From: Caren Ndadaye < caren_ndadaye@hotmail.com >

Sent: Mon, Dec 7, 2015 1:25 pm

Subject: I will like you to help me to contact the bank about my $9.7m. .



Hello Dearest, I have agreat pleasure to speak with youin this medium of communication, You might be wondering why this kind of mail, but because i have decided to have a very good and close relationship with you, that is why i have chose to come in this dimension in order to let you know every thing about me before we can move forward. My name is Caren, I am a single girl of 24 years, I am from Rwanda In Africa but presently living at the Senegal refugee camp Dakar as a result of war that was fault in my country. I am the only child of my parents. The name of my Father is Dr. Ndadaye Henry Kagame ,He was a politician and the managing director of a Gold & Mine industries in Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) . I really like you and will like to meet you some day, if you will like to move along with me as i am now an orphan and did not have any one again around me, I lost my parents during the war in my country. The rebels attacked our home in a mid-night and killed my Father and my mother and set our house ablaze , while i was living in school, I lost every thing including some of my close relatives during the war. I was able to ran to this country where i am staying now with the help of United nation peace keeping team that came to my country. Now i am in Senegal seeking asylum under the united nation high commission. I have desire to come out from here due to so many unpleasant situations that i have found myself into in this place , I do not have my freedom here to help me self, I am just like someone staying in a prison, Hunger and lack, I can not take care of myself as girl, I cries every day and night for what i am passing through here. Now i have something that i want to disclose to you which i will like you to keep only to your self ,I have my late father,s statement of account document in one of the leading banks where he deposited some huge amount of money with my name as his next of kin, I have contacted the bank recently to know how i can access the money in order to help my self out from here. But the bank advised me to look for someone to represent me to transfer the money to his or her position, because my present status as a refugee does not permit them to deal directly with me. With the regard of this information i had from the bank, I decided to tell someone about it which led me to fasting and prayer for a trustworthy person that can help me to transfer the money . Darling this is the main reason, i have decided to contact you after my prayer and became convinced in my heart to tell you about this . I will like you to help me to contact the bank and transfer the money to your personal account so that you will help me and send small of it to me so i can use it and process my traveling document and join you to your country and continue my education, I will be happy to offer to you a 30% percent of the total money for your assistance in doing this for me. The money in question is $9.7 Million USD. I have not told any one about the existence of this fund. So i will like you to keep it within your self till i come over. You can call to speak with me through the general camp telephone, the person in the office is a Catholic Reverend Father, His name is Reverend Father Johnson Anthony, I have already explain things between me and you to him and he accepts me to be receiving your call through him, and can also use his computer to write you always, Here is the phone number 00221.775314032 Any time you call, tell him that you want to speak with Caren Ndadaye from Rwandan section , he will invite me to his office to answer your call, As soon as i have your respond indicating your interest in helping me out of this situation, I will give your the bank contact to contact them immediately . Thanks and God bless you. Yours faithfully Caren 00221.775314032





From: Caren Ndadaye < caren_ndadaye@hotmail.com >

Sent: Thu, Dec 31, 2015 4:52 pm

Subject: i want you to help me to secure the money



Hello my dear, May the lord bless you as you read this, ibelieved that you are doing well over there in your country, dear like i told you i came across your profile why looking for a partner and whom i can trust in life, thank you for your love and concern towards me and my condition over here in refuge camp, i told you something about the fund that my late father deposited in a leading bank leaving me as the next of kin, please my dear i really want to know your plans towards me and my freedom out from this camp, i would love to give you the information of the bank where my late father deposited the fund but i wait to hear from you to know your opinion or your mind. If you think you can not handle the transfer then help me to travel down to your country and go back to my studies, i don't have international passport, i need it before i can move out from the camp, and all this requires money before it can be archived so please i want you to write me a mail soon and telling me in which way you want to help me, if you can send me some money to get my international passport or if you still want to go on with the transfer, then i will give you the contact of the bank so you will write a mail to them requesting them to transfer my late father's money into your account, and i want you to send me your contact informations such as your

Names . . . . . Age . . . . . . Occupation. . . . . Address . . . . . . . Telephone . . . . . . Country. . . . . . . . id card or photocopy of your international passport . . . . .

This information is very important to send a nomination letter on your behalf to the bank,this introduction is necessary so that the bank can recognize and also honor your letter when you contact them on my behalf. hello my beloved darling, i will like to make things so plain to you concerning me in case if you did not got all well as earlier said. I do not have anybody to trust. i have never been into investments before. i have never done any business before. it was the agony death of my late parents that granted me this big opportunity that am sharing with you and i believe that you can wholeheartedly stand for me and transfer this my late father's money into your bank account. i want you to help me to secure the money and then help me to come to your country where we should live together and also where the investments should be done under your capable control of the money and the investments.remember that you are to manage whatever investments we should do there. And please kip everything by you don't let anybody to know about this transaction let it be between me and you i don't want to lose you or the money so promise me that you will keep it to your self. The Rev father's Tel number is +221-775314032 if you call, tell him that you want to speak with the Rwanda girl Miss Caren , he will send for me in the hostel to be at his office to answer your call, i speak English or you can give me your phone number so that i will use it to call you when ever rev come to his office. I am waiting to hear from you take care of your self for me, your dearest in love Caren From: Caren Ndadaye < caren_ndadaye@hotmail.com >

Sent: Tue, Jan 5, 2016 12:14 pm

Subject: I will be happy to offer to you 30% of the total money



Hello Dearest, It gives me great pleasure to speak with you again in this medium of communication, You might be wondering why this kind of mail, but because i have decided to have a very good and close relationship with you,That is why i have chose to come in this dimension in order to let you know every thing about me before we can move forward. My name is Caren, I am a single girl of 24 years, I am from Rwanda In Africa but presently living at the Senegal refugee camp Dakar as a result of war that was fault in my country . I am the only child of my parents. The name of my Father is Dr Ndadaye Henry Kagame , He was a politician and the managing director of a Gold & Mine industries in Kigali(the capital of Rwanda ). I really like you and will like to meet you someday, If you will like to move along with me as i am now an orphan and did not have any one again around me, I lost my parents during the war in my country, The rebels attacked our home in a mid-night and killed my Father and my mother and set our house ablaze , while i was living in school, I lost every thing including some of my close relatives during the war .I was able to ran to this country where i am staying now with the help of United nation peace keeping team that came to my country. Now i am in Senegal seeking asylum under the united nation high commission. I have desire to come out from here due to so many unpleasant situations that i have found myself into in this place , I do not have my freedom here to help me self, I am just like someone staying in a prison, Hunger and lack, I can not take care of my self as girl, I cries every day and night for what i am passing through here. Now i have something that i want to disclose to you which i will like you to keep only to your self ,I have my late father,s statement of account document in one of the leading banks where he deposited some huge amount of money with my name as his next of kin, I have contacted the bank recently to know how i can access the money in order to help my self out from here. But the bank advised me to look for someone to represent me to transfer the money to his or her position,because my present status as a refugee does not permit them to deal directly with me. With the regard of this information i had from the bank, I decided to tell someone about it which led me to fasting and prayer for a trustworthy person that can help me to transfer the money . Darling this is the main reason , i have decided to contact you after my prayer and became convinced in my heart to tell you about this. I will like you to help me to contact the bank and transfer the money to your personal account so that you will help me and send small of it to me so i can use it and process my traveling document and join you to your country and continue my education, I will be happy to offer to you a 30% percent of the total money for your assistance in doing this for me. The money in question is $9.7 Million USD I have not told any one about the existence of this fund , So i will like you to keep it within your self till i come over . You can call to speak with me through the general camp telephone, the person in the office is a Catholic Reverend Father, His name is Reverend Father Johnson Anthony, I have already explain things between me and you to him and he accepts me to be receiving your call through him, and can also use his computer to write you always, Here is the phone number 00221.775314032 Any time you calls, tell him that you want to speak with Caren Ndadaye from Rwandan section , he will invite me to his office to answer your call, As soon as i have your respond indicating your interest in helping me out of this situation, I will give your the bank contact to contact them immediately. Thanks and God bless you. Yours faithfully Caren





From: Caren Ndadaye < caren_ndadaye@hotmail.com >

Sent: Wed, May 11, 2016 5:46 pm

Subject: Please contact UBA where i dropped your cheque of $450,000



Hello Dear

How are you doing today hope fine? with you and your family over their, You might think that i have forgotten you, though its indeed quite a long time, On my singular, I am much delighted and privileged to contact you again after couple of time now. It takes fate, courage and God's fearing to remember old friends and at the same time, to show gratification to them despite circumstances that made things not worked out as we projected then.

I take this liberty to inform you that the transaction we were pursuing together has finally worked out by God's infinite mercy and I decided to contact you just to let you know that I have conscience as a human being. Due to your tremendous contribution to make things workout in retrospect. Meanwhile, I must inform you that, I am presently in United Kingdom with my new husband who helped me achieve this goal for numerous business negotiations and establishment. I just arrived yesterday night and checked in a hotel since then i give then cheque to the servant of God which he did not fulfill to deliver the cheque to you and decided to go down to the hotel business center to mail you but do not respond me back due to i hide myself to write these mail to you.With my sincere heart, I have raised and signed an International Cashier's Bank Draft to the tune of $ 450,000.00 USD (FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) only in your name as compensation to your past effort towards helping my dedication, humanity and contribution, as it were. Please contact the United Bank of Africa where i dropped the cheque. I have instructed the bank to transfer the fund to you . The bank contact information is as stated below:

UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA Dr.Paul Harrison (UBA) infotransferdept@uba-senegal.com +221771436982

They will send the fund through through their ATM Visa Card fund Transfer.Feel free to reach him via this very mail addressimmediately, Your early response to that effect shall be admired. You have to mind the days on route shipment. It will be nice to send an email to the bank as soon as possible . Accept this offer, i give it from the deep of my heart. Sincerely yours, Caren

If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more....
   ,                       .  .
A breakdown in the baggage handling system during the New Year's rush at Incheon International Airport on Sunday created a misery for passengers until Monday and left many without their belongings.

About 160 flights were delayed for up to five hours due to the breakdown of the system, and some aircraft simply took off without passengers' luggage. Hundreds of passengers were still unable to claim their baggage by Monday afternoon.

"Aircraft took off without hundreds or thousands of pieces of baggage per airline," an airline staffer said.

The Korea Airports Corporation has yet to tally the exact number.

Passengers were naturally up in arms, some stuck inside their planes for up to two hours after they had landed. A passenger who had to wait three hours before the aircraft took off said neither the airport corporation nor the airline warned passengers beforehand.

The Airport Operators Committee, a group of 67 airlines at Incheon Airport, is considering suing for damages.

 Mysterious Cause

An Airports Corporation spokesman said the airport saw a record daily number of some 176,400 passengers on Sunday, and that led to some glitches in one or two of the 88-km long conveyor belt lines. "The glitches seemed to cause the entire baggage handling system to break down."

"A momentary congestion appears to have led to the entire baggage handling system becoming overburdened," an official with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said.

But experts point out that the overload was only a matter of time. The airport is designed for up to 44 million passengers per year but last year it was used by 49.2 million.

Another airline staffer said, "It's true that the day saw the largest number of passengers since the opening of the airport, but the airport corporation should have planned for that given that Sunday was the last day of holidays."

Incheon Airport can handle 12,600 pieces of baggage per hour and could have prevented the disaster if it had dispersed baggage properly and deployed emergency personnel, experts say.

Incheon Airport is known as one of the world's best airports and normally highly evaluated for its service quality including baggage claim. But industry insiders worry that the latest blunder would harm its image and reputation.

 Airport Expansion

Authorities have promised that the airport will be able to serve passengers better with the construction of a second terminal, which is slated for completion in 2017 with a budget of about W5 trillion (US$1=W1,190).

But what is to happen until then? On present form a similar debacle could happen any time. "The expansion should have started much earlier given that the terminal was expected to exceed capacity in 2015," an aviation expert said.

Others point out that staff discipline at the airport has become lax because corporation presidents have been coming and going through the revolving doors.

It has had six presidents for some 15 years since its establishment in 1999. Lee Chae-wook, the fourth president, served the longest time of four years and four months but suddenly resigned in 2013 right after the terminal expansion was decided.

His successor Chung Chang-soo lasted for less than a year and left to run for a mayoral election in 2014. After a seven-month management vacuum, Park Wan-su was appointed in October 2014 but he, too, quit recently to run in the upcoming general election.

They appear to have used the job as a springboard into politics, and the frequent replacements have caused lax discipline among staff.
An Auckland woman was airlifted to Whakatane Hospital after suffering abdominal injuries in a rope swing accident.

The Tauranga-based Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter was called to Te Kaha after a 30-year-old woman was injured when she got caught up in a rope swing yesterday afternoon.
People who received Dick Smith gift cards for Christmas are losing out after Dick Smiths receiver confirmed it will not be honouring outstanding gift vouchers or refunding deposits.

The announcement comes after the electronic retail outlet was placed into receivership when its banks refused keep it afloat amid weak sales.
Everyone knows theyre out there, but how well do you know your sharks?

NIWA looks at four of the most common sharks youre likely to spot this summer.
Astro photographer Amit Kamble has again made the international spotlight with the BBC Twitter posting his photo of McLaren Falls under starlight.

Amits work first gained international attention in July last year when his photo of comet PanSTARRS, moon and Venus, taken at Ferguson Park, was the NASA Astronomy Photo of the day of July 23rd.

This year, the BBC picture is McLaren Falls under starlight, a place Amit says has become one of his favourite spots to shoot the milkyway in the North Island.

Really love how the milkyway sets right behind the falls. Ive been at this place around five years ago in daylight but never thought would be this serene at night, the Auckland-based computer programmer and photographer says.

In the images you can see the serene waterfall and the galactic kiwi coming down to earth. Stars, cold rocks to rest on and the calm sound of waterfall is just the perfect combination for a night.

Thanks J Burden Images and Rsnz photography for suggesting this beautiful place, looking forward for more places around.

The image is a 4x4 panorama stitched together in Lightroom. Exif: 15sec, ISO 10000, f2.8 using Samyang 24mm on Canon 6D. He had to use ISO 10000, as it was too dark to get any details in the foreground.

Always fascinated by space, Amits love affair deepened after he came to New Zealand from India six years ago and discovered how many stars were visible from this part of the world.

See more of Amits photos of his Facebook page.



McLaren Falls on BBC Twitter.
Among the first of Tauranga City Councils tasks of the New Year is to time table the discussion about a new, permanent i-Site in Mount Maunganui.

There is a proposal to have an i-Site at or near the Port of Tauranga to cater for the continuing growth in the cruise ship passengers visiting the port.

This season, around 84 ships are expected to bring 166,700 passengers with them.

This is a 15 per cent increase on the number of passengers that visited last season. Its estimated that visitors will spend around $40.5 million  up 6.3 per cent on last seasons figures.

We are aware the numbers are going to grow considerably over the next five years, says Tauranga City Council mayor Stuart Crosby.

The same number of vessels roughly, but they are going to be larger.

The current I-port that marshals the cruise ship passengers, providing information about attractions available in the wider Bay of Plenty, and arranging connections with local operators, consists of two containers and a tent-like roof, and can only be used for about another year.

They have a couple of containers and a roof which probably has one more year left in it with a bit of a do up, so they are staring to talk to us about a more permanent piece of infrastructure to service the cruise ship industry as well as the more usual visitor industry, says Stuart.

Tourism Bay of Plenty has opened the discussions. The priority is the I-port adjacent or within the port. A second priority is whether there will be some sort of information centre as part of the Phoenix car park redevelopment.

We have probably at best 12 months to firm up some ideas, because if there is to be a new one constructed, it will have to get underway within a 12 month period for the 2017/18 cruise ship season, says Stuart.

It will be a permanent building. We will be having discussions with the port about access. Its about making sure we get the most of the opportunity from the cruise ship industry, and if you dont have proper facilities you dont maximise the opportunity.

A possible location is at Coronation Park, somewhere along the port border.

While the Port of Taurangas $50 million capital dredging programme, currently underway, is opening the port to large passenger ships, including the newest Royal Caribbean cruise ship the 348 metre long, 167,800 tonne Ovation of the Seas, due to be launched in Germany this April and currently scheduled to make a Tauranga port call during the 2016/17 season.

Ovation of the Seas will be the largest cruise liner ever to visit New Zealand and carries 4900 passengers and 1300 crew - the equivalent of 12 Airbus A380s arriving at the same time.

In contrast the next cruise ship expected at the port is the 4,200tonne expedition ship Caledonian Sky on Saturday.

Caledonian Sky operates in the niche luxury cruise market whose ticket price for the 100 passengers on board includes wine at lunch and dinner, a high-brow guest speaker programme and in-depth excursions.
Pictures taken during ceremonial events for the New Year in North Korea cast some light on changes at the top of the regime. One figure who has come to prominence is Jo Yon-jun (74), a first deputy of the Workers Party's Organization and Guidance Department.

Jo is seen standing close to leader Kim Jong-un paying homage at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the embalmed remains of former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are displayed.

The younger Kim generally seems to prefer to surround himself with party officials rather than military brass.

Jo is believed to be responsible for supervising recent purges of top brass and other officials.

"Kim Jong-un visits the Kumsusan Palace around a dozen times a year, but the first visit each year draws the most attention, since it coincides with the political goals set for the year."
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong is to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland from Jan. 20 to 23.

An official at the South Korean Foreign Ministry said Monday, "We were notified by the WEF organizers that Ri will be present at the forum."

The WEF is a symbol of global capitalism, bringing together political and economic leaders from around the world.

This is the first time in 18 years that a high-ranking North Korean official is coming to Davos. North Korea sent officials to attract foreign investment in their Rajin-Songbong Special Economic Zone from 1996 to 1998, but their trips were less than fruitful.

Ri and his delegation are expected to try and lure foreign investment by meeting with any of the over 50 heads of state, chiefs of international organizations and over 3,000 businessmen that they can.

"Foreign investment is essential to make progress in Kim Jung-un's various pet projects this year. North Korea will take a more aggressive approach to bringing foreign investment to the country, " said Cho Bong-hyun at the IBK Economic Research Institute.
SHARE Police use a dog to help locate a man suspected of molesting a boy. (Courtesy of Port St. Lucie Police) Police have released a composite sketch of the suspect. (Courtesy photo)

By Will Greenlee of TCPalm

PORT ST. LUCIE  Port St. Lucie Police on Monday searched for a man accused of luring a boy into a wooded area and molesting him, police stated.

About 2:05 p.m. Monday, police went to the area of Northwest Brenda Circle and Northwest Wolverine Road after a report of a 12-year-old boy with no clothes on calling for help.

Police found the boy, who was being helped by a resident.

Investigators say the boy was on his bicycle in the 5900 block of Northwest Brenda Circle when the man lured him into some woods and molested him. The location is in the area of Northwest East Torino Parkway and Northwest California and Northwest Peacock boulevards.

"The detectives are still interviewing him and neighbors and people in that area," said Master Sgt. Frank Sabol, police spokesman. "At this time I'm not able to release how he was lured in."

The man is described as white and 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 6 inches tall. He weighs about 215 pounds, and has brownish black hair in a "buzz" type cut. He wore a white shirt and green shorts.

The man left the area on foot and last was seen headed north on Northwest Wolverine Road.

The child was not struck or beaten, and investigators recovered his bicycle and other belongings.

Police used a dog in trying to find the man, and a St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office helicopter also came to the scene.

Sabol said police will interview people in the neighborhood, account for any sex offenders in the area and try to see whether anyone has surveillance video in hopes of getting an image of the assailant.

"This is extremely unusual," Sabol said. "We haven't had incidents that even remotely resemble that in that area."
SHARE

St. Lucie County felony arrests: Jan. 4, 2015

Donald Allen, 30, 2500 block of Wilkerson Ave., Fort Pierce; sell/possess/use of animal to fight or bait.

Tatjana Woody, 37, 2000 block of Hillmoor Drive, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, introduction of contraband into a county detention facility.

Kyle Smith, 23, Miami; crimes against a person  threats to harm a public servant or family.

Enrique Umana, 30, 100 block of 19th Court, Fort Pierce; public order crimes  misuse of 911 or E911 system.

Vernon Preston, 48, 700 block of Texas Court, Fort Pierce; aggravated assault  using a deadly weapon without intent to kill.

Olalekan Aboderin, 36, 3200 block of Louisiana Avenue, Fort Pierce; battery.

Tedrick Morrison, 25, 3500 block of Sneed Road, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense.

Joseph Boettigheimer, 39, 1800 block of Green Acres Circle, Port St. Lucie; larceny/grand theft.

Christopher Beharie, 20, 1900 block of Del Rio Boulevard, Port St. Lucie; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Terry Lewis, 51, 500 block of 14th Street, Fort Pierce; dealing in stolen property.

Kelvin Toombs, 24, 500 block of Weatherbee Road, Fort Pierce; carrying a concealed weapon; possession of a weapon or ammunition by gang-related felon or delinquent.

Michael Lee, 30, 900 block of Ibis Avenue, Fort Pierce; possession of a controlled substance (oxycodone/amphetamine) without a prescription.

Joseph Stokes, 46, 300 block of Kentwood Road, Port St. Lucie; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense.

Darren Gore, 46, 2700 block of Sheraton Boulevard, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, third or subsequent offense; resisting an officer  fleeing/eluding an officer with lights and siren active.

Chadwick Limberis, 29, 300 block of Naranja Avenue, Port St. Lucie; possession of a controlled substance (Roxicet) without a prescription.

Antonio Osborne, 25, no address; burglary of an unoccupied structure.

Amanda Golden, 25, 1800 block of 12 Street, Fort Pierce; aggravated battery  causing bodily harm or disability.

Horace Culver, 56, 3100 block of Duben Terrace, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Enrique Cruz, 27, 900 block of Fra Mar Place, Fort Pierce; warrant for court order for pretrial detention, possession of 20 grams or less of marijuana, possession of a controlled substance without a valid prescription.

Henry Williams, 30, Plainville, Mass.; cruelty toward child  abuse without a great bodily harm.

Dovie Stanley, 36, Plainville, Mass.; cruelty toward child  abuse without a great bodily harm.

Robert Vaino, 39, 300 block of Weatherbee Road, Fort Pierce; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill.

Ramior Tapia, 36, 1300 block of 14th Circle, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender.

Lue Witherspoon, 28, 2700 block of Kingsley Drive, Fort Pierce; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill.

Gregory Harrison, 29, 700 block of Treemont Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrant for tampering with a witness, victim or informant.

Donald Horne, 26, Lantana; warrant for grand theft.

Jonathan McKinney, 25, 1900 block of Mandrake Circle, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, felony charge. Arrested in Martin County.
Dallas Yates, the first black law enforcement officer in Indian River County, joined the Sheriffs Office in 1962. Yates died Dec. 30, 2015, at age 96. (Contributed photo)

By Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY  He was the first black lawman in the county at a time when many residents were openly hostile to blacks, whether they held a badge or not.

But the children of former Indian River County Sheriffs Deputy Dallas Yates did not see their father deterred by the adversity. Yates, who died Dec. 30 at age 96, spent seven years, beginning in 1962, patrolling Gifford, Fellsmere, Wabasso and the Oslo area.

He was a mentally, physically, and spiritually strong man who knew he had a job to do, said his stepson, Ray Bryant, 68, of Tallahassee. He never said he wanted to hang it up because of what was happening.

Longtime Gifford community activist Victor Hart said he recommended then-Sheriff Sam Joyce hire and train Yates. Hart said Yates was a delivery truck driver for a furniture store at the time.

We had no representation in the Sheriffs Office before then, said Hart, who lives in an unincorporated community north of Vero Beach, which is predominantly black. But Dallas was fair to everyone, black or white.

Friends and family said Yates, the son of an African Methodist Episcopal pastor, developed his sense of fairness based on his faith. His daughter, Dallasteen Yates of Vero Beach, recalled her father used the Lords Prayer, an often recited passage from the New Testament, to ease tensions between two people at a disturbance.

He asked both of them to come out to the front yard to pray, his daughter said. The Sheriffs Office never had to go back to that house.

The deputy saw his role as a peacemaker, family members said. He was proud he never had to fire his gun during his Sheriffs Office career.

In a 2005 interview with the Press Journal, Yates recalled some of the disrespect he endured in the 1960s. He would drive to fights among white people who ignored his commands to stop. In another case, he said he had to tow away a vehicle with the intoxicated owner still inside from the Winter Beach area when the motorist refused to cooperate.

The driver used a racial epithet against Yates and said he wouldnt be taken in by a black deputy, Dallasteen Yates said.

He still made the arrest once the car arrived at the jail, she said.

After leaving the Sheriffs Office in 1969, Dallas Yates created D & J Citrus Inc., a fruit harvesting and packing company. Years later, he opened Yates Supermarket on the corner of 41st Street and Old Dixie Highway, which he owned and operated into the 1980s, the Sheriffs Office said. Later, he owned properties in Gifford to rent to people in need of affordable housing, according to the Sheriffs Office.

Despite moving to the private sector, Dallas Yates maintained his connection to law enforcement and played mentor to other black deputies, said Deputy Teddy Floyd.

Weve lost an icon, Floyd said. I had long talks with him. Hed tell us there were a number of black deputies before us that had given their all and he expected no less from us.

ABOUT DALLAS YATES

In 1962, Yates became the first black deputy for the Indian River County Sheriffs Office and served for seven years.

He was married to Jane Yates, a former first grade teacher in the county, for 33 years. She died in 2003 at age 77.

Dallas Yates had three children, two stepchildren and five grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Peters Missionary Baptist Church, 4250 38th Avenue, Vero Beach. The interment will take place at Hillcrest Memorial Gardens, 6026 North U.S. Highway 1, Fort Pierce.
Dallas Yates, the first black law enforcement officer in Indian River County, joined the Sheriffs Office in 1962. Yates died Dec. 30, 2015, at age 96. (Contributed photo from Indian River County Sheriffs Office)

By Adam Neal of TCPalm

Editor's Note: This article was published Jan. 18, 2005. It is from our archives.

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY  When Dallas Yates went to meet with then-Sheriff Sam Joyce in the early 1960s about a job as a deputy, the jailer stopped him at the door.

The only blacks to enter the jail back then were wearing handcuffs.

"He wanted to know what I wanted and didn't believe me when I told him. I just saw the need for a black deputy," said Yates, 86. "He took his gun and knocked my cap off of my head  right off of my head. He said, 'Pick it up and put it in your pocket.' "

Yates proceeded to see Joyce and, although frowned upon by many residents then, was hired in November 1962 as the first black law-enforcement officer in Indian River County.

The Sheriff's Office honored Yates for breaking the color barrier for all black deputies Monday and presented him with a plaque during the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at the Gifford Neighborhood Park.

"About six months ago (Yates) and I were talking and I thought it would be a good thing for him to receive some recognition for being the first black deputy, " said Sheriff Roy Raymond, who was a wildlife officer in the county when Yates was a deputy. "Dallas did a great job back when there wasn't that many deputies for backup, or radio communications like there are now."

Although Yates said Joyce was "very nice to me and overjoyed" the Gifford resident wanted to be a deputy, being the first black deputy in the county didn't get any easier than the first time he walked into the jail.

One of his first calls as a deputy was a fight in progress between five sisters and a man  all white.

"I pulled in with my siren and lights, but no one would move out of my way when they saw me," he said. "They just ignored me as I inched closer and closer."

After a brief struggle, Yates handcuffed one of the women and put her in his patrol car only to feel something wet.

"That was blood. Someone had stabbed me in the back of my pants with a razor blade," he said. "I never found out who did it, but I still have the same pants today."

Yates later ventured away from the Gifford and Oslo area and started patrolling Fellsmere and Wabasso. He had to tow away a vehicle with the owner still inside  drunk and nearly passed out  from the Winter Beach area when the man refused to listen to a black deputy.

After King, a civil rights leader who worked to get basic rights for blacks in the 1950s and 1960s, was assassinated in 1968, Yates received more than death threats.

"(Citizens) had me killed three times," he said, adding the Sheriff's Office would receive calls to have deputies pick up his body because he supposedly had been murdered. "I had to tell them that it wasn't true because I was talking to them."

Yates retired after more than seven years as a deputy to start his own business, Yates Supermarket on Old Dixie Highway near 41st Street.

Detective Teddy Floyd, a community resource officer in Gifford, said he has heard many stories about Yates.

"You always want to know the officers who came before you," he said. "He is a living legend around Gifford. Those are some big shoes to fill."
MARTIN COUNTY  Sheriff's detectives have determined the man whose body was found in the Okeechobee County Landfill died as a result of a suicide.

The body of Nikolai Bilenko, 44, was found Dec. 26 by an employee at the landfill, said Christine Christofek, spokeswoman for the Martin County Sheriff's Office. His body had been picked up by a Martin County Solid Waste truck the previous week and taken to the landfill.

Bilenko was found with a gunshot wound to the head, Christofek said. A gun also was located in the landfill near the body, but detectives haven't said whether that was the weapon used to inflict the wound.

Detectives confirmed Bilenko's identity through fingerprints, Christofek said. They believe he shot himself in the head while in a dumpster, and the contents of that dumpster were transported to the landfill in Okeechobee.

A car he rented was found behind the Tire Kingdom at 1541 S.E. Federal Highway in Stuart, but detectives can't confirm the dumpster in which Bilenko shot himself.

Bilenko was born in the Ukraine and came to the United States in 1999, Christofek said. His family members are still in the Ukraine and have been difficult to reach. He had an ex-wife who had ties to Hobe Sound but now lives in Palm Beach County.

By speaking to his ex-wife and through investigative efforts, Christofek said, detectives learned Bilenko was dealing with life issues that likely were the reasons he committed suicide.
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By Staff Report

TALLAHASSEE  The Florida Department of Health issued an Emergency Restriction Order for a Stuart doctor last month after an investigation found he had "significant alcohol use," according to a state case report.

Dr. Robert Berg, a dermatologist with Dermatology of the Treasure Coast in Stuart for about 20 years, was issued the restriction order on Dec. 31, according to the report. The order prohibits Berg from practicing as a physician until an approved evaluator notifies the Department of Health that he is safe to resume his work. The dermatology office is in the 500 block of Southeast Osceola Street in Stuart.

An Emergency Restriction Order is not considered final agency action. The individual is entitled to a hearing before final action is taken by a regulatory board or by the department, according to a Department of Health news release.

This article will be updated.
Naples Daily News

TALLAHASSEE  With evidence from 13,435 untested Florida rape kits in a holding pattern, the state agency responsible for processing them said Monday it could cost $9.3 million for a private vendor to perform the work.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement revealed that 41 percent of the untested kits cases were never turned over to FDLE for testing because the victim did not wish to prosecute, and another 31 percent did not move forward because prosecutors declined to file criminal charges. The FDLE report was compiled with the help of a survey that included input from 279 law enforcement agencies around the state.

The Treasure Coast region saw a total of 345 kits from Martin, Indian River and St. Lucie counties that had not been submitted for analysis. Fifty six cases  all from St. Lucie County  still required analysis.

Data provided by FDLE's annual crime report showed an increase in sexual assaults, an increase driven in part by law enforcement agencies pursuing difficult acquaintance rape cases. Due to that trend, the number of sexual assault kits used to collect evidence from victims doubled over the past four years. Data included in the FDLE study showed the agency received 2,239 kit submissions in 2012, and 4,829 submissions in 2015.

FDLE proposed hiring an outside company to process up to 2,800 sexual assault kits each year and then use its own staff to check the work for quality. The plan would pare down the backlog of more than 13,000 untested sexual assault kits that have yet to be submitted by hundreds of law enforcement agencies around Florida.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement responding to the report she would work with lawmakers, law enforcement and victims' rights advocates to allocate necessary resources. In August, Bondi called on FDLE to process more sexual assault kits and to bring more suspects to justice. In response, the Legislature provided FDLE with $300,000 to create the assessment.

The study provided the Legislature with three options to reduce the backlog. One would use $32 million to reduce the backlog in eight and a half years by hiring a company to process burglary cases requiring DNA analysis. Another option, which would reduce the backlog in six and a half years, would cost $23 million to hire vendors for both burglary cases and rape kits, with a $1.2 million grant from the New York District Attorney's Office dedicated to process 1,776 rape kits from FDLE's Jacksonville regional lab.

The third option, which FDLE recommends, would combine the grant from the New York District Attorney's Office and $8.1 million in state money to hire a vendor to process 2,800 sexual assault kits per year, reducing the backlog in about three years.

A vendor that would carry out the testing has not yet been chosen, FDLE officials said.

Bondi has argued that the Legislature should consider providing more money to FDLE's six regional crime labs. The report includes a request that lawmakers consider paying crime analysts better so they no longer leave to take jobs in county agencies or in the private sector. Indian River Crime Lab Director Lesley Perrone said her agency, which serves the Treasure Coast, has hired FDLE analysts and they lose analysts as well.

'It's certainly unfortunate when you think about the amount of training involved, only to have them leave,' Perrone said. The Indian River Crime Lab currently faces a backlog of about 500 DNA cases, which fluctuates with case load and the priority of a case.

'We tend to put sexual assault cases higher in priority than others,' she said.

The results of the study will go before the Florida Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Criminal and Civil Justice, where its vice chair, Sen. Arthenia Joyner, said she would support its recommendation.

'It's going to cost a lot of money but we've got to do it,' said Joyner, a Tampa Democrat. 'When it comes to public safety, we've got to put that at No. 1.'
Combining human and computer intelligence could help solve the worlds most vexing problems, researchers envisioned in an article published Monday in the journal Science.

Researchers fromCornell University and theHuman Computation Institute want more humans to help out in accelerating research and finding solutions to lifes most difficult problems, such as cancer, HIV, climate change and drought.

Crowdsourcing analysis of research materials isnt new. There are already games with a purpose that offload some of the work of analyzing data to humans, who receive the tasks packaged as games.

When the purpose of those games involves forwarding science, its called citizen science, said Pietro Michelucci, director of the Human Computation Institute.

New tools and infrastructure have made it easier to combine various methods of crowdsourcing and create more complex and sophisticated systems, he told TechNewsWorld.

So this means, instead of creating just one-off human computation systems from scratch each time, we now have the ability to connect different methods of engagement and have real-time access to crowds, Michelucci said.

Citizen Science

The discovery of an HIV-related finding, which had eluded researchers for a decade and a half, took only 10 days for citizen scientists to reach. The crowd experts were manipulating 3-D models in protein folding game Foldit.

If you could create an expert by combining people in the crowd, then you have access to a lot more crowd experts, said Michelucci. So we use the wisdom of the crowd method to combine contributions from the general public.

For a smartphone app called Malaria Spot, researchers found that every 23 diagnoses from members of the general public were as accurate as one diagnosis from a certified pathologist. But 23 might not be the right number for Michelucci and companys WeCureAlz initiative for researching Alzheimers disease, and it may be the wrong number of crowd experts for many other systems.

We have to figure out how many members of the public it takes to analyze a certain amount of data before that analysis is as accurate as the one from the trained scientist working in the lab,he said.

When we can make that work, we have this force multiplier. If we have 30,000 people in the general public and it takes 30 people, then we have 1,000 crowd experts, Michelucci added.

Crowd experts could fix problems of all sizes someday, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

For example, human computation can impact litigation, both case law and discovery, primary research on trends and causes, he told TechNewsWorld. Politics would be timely, for instance.

Man and Machine

Human computation is far from humans doing the bidding of machines. It is about leveraging humans in areas where machines fall short, according to Michelucci.

Another way of looking at it is, if machines could do everything humans could do, we wouldnt need AI researchers anymore, he said.

For example, in chess, humans still have the edge in being able to focus on only the logical moves, Michelucci pointed out. Computers are good at chess because they consider every possible move, including the ones that clearly make no sense.

Even if machines can evaluate millions of moves per second, they waste most of their time on moves that wont be successful, Michelucci said. Whereas human abilities  like abstraction, complex pattern recognition, imagination and creativity  those kinds of things make it possible for people to find solutions quickly that machines cant because there are too many possibilities to search through.
Researchers have created a computational model that enables artificial intelligence to learn the way humans do, according to an article published last week in the journal Science.

The model gives AI the ability to recognize handwritten alphabetical characters as fast as humans can.

While AI systems have been able to learn to spot patterns and make inferences from pictures and sounds, they generally have been able to do so only after being given thousands of examples. Humans typically need only a handful of examples before they learn things.

Researchers from New York University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto reversed engineered the way people address problems and built an AI algorithm for that approach.

Their work has given weight to some promising approaches to putting machine learning on par with human understanding, according to the papers lead author, Brenden Lake, a Moore-Sloan Data Science Fellow atNew York University.

Compared to our best machine learning algorithms, people can learn a new concept from less data and generalize in richer and more powerful ways, he told TechNewsWorld. We were able to capture these human learning abilities for a large class of simple visual concepts  handwritten characters from the worlds alphabets.

The National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research and the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environment at New York University supported the AI research.

The Promise of AI

It doesnt take much imagination to cook up use cases for human-like AI in the high-tech sector, but other industries also could benefit from machine learning.

Online university courses would benefit greatly from automated processes delivered by AI, said Susan Eustis, senior researcher and co-founder atWinterGreen Research. It would help professors further personalize content for students and enable them to update textbooks with the latest research on a given topic.

Medical markets stand to gain diagnostic flexibility, greatly speeding the time to achieve an accurate diagnosis and refer patients to an appropriate treatment regime, she told TechNewsWorld.

Supply chain modernization will also benefit from the ability to manage thousands of varying inputs and quickly notify all the appropriate managerial endpoints as to the state of shipments and inventory in a timely manner, Eustis added.

The Potential for Peril

While the rise of AI over humans is a common doomsday scenario, Eustis doesnt see a point at which biological brains fall behind robots in intelligence.

Think of a dolphin that is really smart, but there is no danger that the dolphin will get smarter than the human, she said. The same goes for AI. There is no predictable point where the machines get smarter than the human. They just continue to get really good at designated tasks, better and better.

Theres no reason to worry that the algorithm will someday empower machines to outperform humans, Lake said.

I think this work represents genuine progress in a limited domain, but it also highlights the challenges and major gaps that remain between human and machine learning when all cognitively natural domains are considered, he said. People are still much better learners.
Even though Google and Facebook are competitors, the social media giant's Android products are a big part of the Google Play store, with the Messenger and Facebook apps consistently in the top five applications chart. But with Zuckerberg's company offering an increasing number of services that compete with Google, what would happen if the Alphabet-owned firm decided it was sick of Facebook stepping on its toes and removed the firm's apps from its store?

According to a report by The Information, Facebook has been secretly preparing for this scenario for years, and has contingency measures in place that will allow its apps to operate on Android smartphones without having to go through the Google Play store.

The report states that Facebook has been looking at ways to replicate the services you get from its Google Play-enabled apps, such as updates and in-app purchases. It's also been looking at alternatives to Google maps for location info.

It's even alleged that Facebook went so far as to perform yet another experiment on its customers by testing Android users' dependency on the app. Reportedly, the company knowingly introduced glitches that would deliberately crash its applications (for long periods of time) to see whether or not people would use the social media site if they were unable to access it via the native app on Google's platform. As it turns out, people simply ended up using the mobile web version of the site, rather than stop using Facebook altogether.

Facebook faced a massive backlash last year after it was revealed the company had conducted secret psychological tests on nearly 700,000 users in 2012. These latest revelations of more experiments have resulted in similar criticism from users. Former Facebook data scientist JJ Maxwell defended the tests to The Verge, saying it was the company's "prerogative" and likened it to Walmart removing parking from their store to test the effect of varying levels of parking on sales.

For all Facebook's experiments and backup plans, the company's relationship with Google has never been stronger. Should that suddenly change, however, then Facebook looks like it'll be ready.
The seventh row of the periodic table of elements has finally been completed, thanks to a group of Japanese, Russian and American researchers. The new substances discovered still have no official names and are presently known as elements 113, 115, 117 and 118.

Element 113 was discovered by Japanese research institution RIKEN via a team led by Kosuke Morita. The element is the first contribution of Asians in the world-renowned periodic table.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) announced on Dec. 30, 2015 that RIKEN's Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science should be given recognition for the discovery of element 113. Morita received the official letter on Dec. 31, 2015.

How Element 113 Was Discovered

Morita and his colleagues first embarked on a mission to discover new synthetic superheavy elements in the late years of the 1980s. They used the institution's Linear Accelerator Facility and the GARIS ion separator to perform their work.

In September 2003, the quest to find element 113 began. Morita's group infused zinc ions to a thin layer of the chemical element bismuth. The ions travelled at 10 percent of the speed of light. In theory, the fusion should have formed an atom of element 113.

The road to forming the element was bumpy, as the researchers encountered a total of three events before they finally achieved what they had been aiming for.

The first event happened in July 2004 when the research team observed that the fusion of two atomic nuclei resulted in the creation of element 113's nucleus.

Then in April 2005, they saw further demonstrations on atom decays but were not yet able to determine if the decays had happened via spontaneous fission or via alpha chain. This provided grounds for stronger claims for the team, but there was still no evidence of element 113's existence.

"For over seven years, we continued to search for data conclusively identifying element 113, but we just never saw another event," says Morita. He said, however, that he was not yet ready to give up. He believed that one day, luck would come to their group if they persevered.

Finally, the third event that led to the discovery came in August 2012 when Morita's group was able to identify that the atom decay in element 105 (dubnium-262) occurred through alpha chain instead of spontaneous fission. The group found that the source of the decay chain was element 113.

Future Plans For The Discovery

In the periodic table, element 113 is situated between copernicium and flevorium. The provisional name for the element is ununtrium, but RIKEN mentioned earlier that it is considering "japonium" to be its final, official name.

Morita said he plans to dedicate this year to thinking of a name for the element, as the IUPAC has given his group the privilege to propose an official name for it.

Aside from coming up with a name, Morita hopes to take his group's discovery to the next level. He said his team is now looking at exploring the uncharted territory of elements 119 and beyond. They plan to study the element in the eighth and ninth rows, and even the islands of stability.

Other New Elements

IUPAC also credits the discovery of elements 115, 117 and 118 with the collaboration of Russian and American scientists.

For elements 115 and 117, the naming right was bestowed upon the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Except for Oak Ridge, the same institutions were given the right to name element 118.

Photo: Matthew Frederickson | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A Tesla Model S caught fire and burned down fully during supercharging at a station in Norway, according to a local media report.

Fortunately, state news agency NRK says no one was injured in the blaze.

The electric vehicle maker has installed supercharging stations in countries where it sold its cars to enable the owners to fast-charge their vehicles.

The report says the owner plugged the car in a station and left it. At some point, the fire began and burned down the vehicle completely.

Reddit's r/teslamotors users believe the particular station was a "temporary" one. They claim this could be the reason why the Tesla electric vehicle caught fire.

Firefighters used special chemical foam to put out the fire on the vehicle packed with lithium batteries.

At the moment, not much is known regarding the real cause of the blaze as Tesla and local authorities still need to carry out investigations.

"Nobody was harmed," says a Tesla spokesperson to Jalopnik. "We are undergoing a full investigation and will share our findings as soon as possible."

Tesla Sales

Tesla reveals in a statement on Sunday, Dec. 3, that the company managed to deliver 50,580 Model S sedans and Model X sport utility cars last year.

In February, Tesla projected to ship 55,000 cars in 2015. However, it revised its estimate down to 50,000 through 52,000 cars. This means the total number of sold cars is still within the range.

On Sept. 29 last year, Tesla boss Elon Musk handed over the initial six Model X SUVs to customers who had been waiting for three years from the time they made a deposit.

In the last quarter, Tesla delivered 208 Model X vehicles and manufactured 507.

Ben Kallo, an analyst with Robert W. Baird, is convinced this is good news. He rates Tesla's shares as "neutral".

"They hit within their guidance," says Kallo. "The X number is lower than some expectations, but production has picked up nicely."

In the meantime, the company says that its Model X deliveries are "in line with the very early stages" of its production ramp, emphasizing how it is prioritizing quality over other aspects. It also says that during the last week of 2015, it produced around 238 SUVs.

Tesla's shares increased 7.9 percent last year. The shares closed at $240.01 on the last day of 2015.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CEO of Stark Industries Tony Stark are both billionaires and philanthropists. But as a married man with a new baby, Zuckerberg probably doesn't want the label of playboy to go with the package. But now, he has announced that he wanted to have one more thing in common with the fictional tech mogul: He wanted to build an AI butler for his home, just like Jarvis from "Iron Man."

As his personal goal for 2016, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook that he intends to make his home be connected via AI that allows him to perform tasks while at the same time taking care of his baby daughter, Max.

In previous years, Zuckerberg had taken on other personal challenges such as reading two books every month, meeting a new person every day, and even learning Mandarin which many would agree that he passed with flying colors after being able to deliver a 22-minute speech in Mandarin in front of a room of native speakers in China.

To make the intellectual challenge even bigger, Zuckerberg wrote that he plans to code it by himself as well.

He shared that getting this personal challenge off the ground should actually be simple enough given already existing technologies such as Amazon Echo to recognize his voice commands and control his music from anywhere in his home so that he will have both hands free to attend to the needs of Max.

He also plans to make his home recognize his friends when they are at the door, automatically letting them in without him having to lift a finger.

And just like Jarvis is able to project detailed holograms to Tony Stark to be able to work on every single detail of his Iron Man suit, Zuckerberg also wants his personal AI build to be able to help him visualize data in virtual reality in order to better understand, develop, and improve his products and projects into the future.

In addition to using third-party services like Amazon, he also intends to use Facebook's own developments in AI and VR technology to help him build his own Jarvis. Although he is already proud of how his company has grown to develop technologies such as Internet.org to help bring Internet to millions across the world, he also shared that the appeal of building something for him is also appealing.

"It's a different kind of rewarding to build things yourself, so this year my personal challenge is to do that," he wrote.

And just as with the previous challenges he has undertaken, Zuckerberg intends to keep the world updated of his progress via updates on his Facebook page.

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Google's "Project Sunroof" has just extended its service to 15 more metropolitan areas, which means that more homeowners will be able to take advantage of the company's online service to help them determine whether it is advisable to transform their home into a solar-powered one and where to install solar panels best.

The project's launch in August 2015 limited the service to a few areas in Boston, Fresno and San Francisco Bay Area but Google announced that the project has now been expanded to a few more metro areas in Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Nevada, New York as well.

Project Sunroof was developed by Google Senior Software Engineer Carl Elkin as his 20 percent project and it aims to help out homeowners whether going solar is worth the effort. Users of the online tool will be shown an aerial map of their house - specifically, the rooftop's solar energy potential taking into consideration the height of nearby trees and buildings, as well as local weather patterns - how much energy can actually be saved and a list of local solar panel providers and installers they can contact.

"Google has always been a big believer in zero-carbon energy, and solar power has been a central part of that vision," Elkin wrote.

To put it simply, Google wants to save the Earth with you and Project Sunroof was conceptualized to give you the extra push into taking the initiative by showing you just how much money you can save and carbon emissions you can eliminate in the long run, which may just help you make that crucial decision.

Solar Panels Are Pricey But Google Has Your Back

We can't deny that there's still that belief that installing solar panels can mean a huge withdrawal from your bank account. Even if solar panel installation prices have considerably dropped in recent years, there's still that notion that even having someone come into your home for an estimate can break all the piggy banks you ever owned. Project Sunroof helps to eliminate some of those worries.

Project Sunroof allows you to have an idea of just how much you can actually save should you decide to have photovoltaic panels installed in your home. This also eliminates the possibility of installing the panels only to find out you're not really saving much money because you don't get much sunlight anyway.

Google Is Still A Money-Making Company

If having the convenience of simply typing in your location into a program to know your roof's solar power potential and possibly lessening your carbon footprint isn't a 'pro' enough for you, well there are some things that may make you take a tiny little step back before going full throttle on the program.

Google is, of course a business establishment, which means that there may be some sort of profit to be made from this project, especially from indirect advertising and referral. There's nothing wrong with that, really, but should you decide to push through with installing solar panels, it would be best to research on other companies and not just rely on Google's referrals.

What This Could Mean For The Planet

The human race is actually starting to take responsibility and clean up in an attempt move to save the Earth. Google's "Project Sunroof" could be a game changer in the way we use and produce energy.

Sure it's just a few solar panels here and there and the service is currently offered in a few states, but that doesn't mean the project can't and won't go global. In fact, other equally gigantic companies might even take this as a cue that even business giants can and should take part in saving the planet.

For now it seems that Google hasn't quite worked out the kinks on taking Project Sunroof worldwide, but it's energizing to see that their colorful logo is so much more than cute and interactive Google Doodles.

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A team of dolphins and whales researchers in Tanzania unintentionally discovered the rampant blast fishing practices in the African country. Blast fishing, also called dynamite fishing, uses explosives to kill large numbers of fish, making way for easier collection.

The destructive practice is usually illegal in many countries. Blast fishing kills large numbers of fish as well their natural habitat. The practice destroys the coral reefs along with other sea animals that live in them.

The research team listened to underwater recordings documented in March 2015 and heard around 10 blasts happening every day. In a meeting with the World Wildlife Fund, a member said he often hears as many as 50 blasts a day in his Dar es Salaam home. Dar es Salaam is a commercial port located on the country's Indian Ocean coast.

Blast Fishing In Tanzania

Dynamite fishing was introduced in the country in the 1960s. The practice was made illegal in the 1970s but still persisted. Apart from easier collection and bigger payload, mining in Tanzania also increased, which made dynamites easily available.

Blast fishing also affects tourism, which covers 17 percent of Tanzania's gross domestic product. Explosions kill the coral reefs and makes the underwater scene unsightly.

Efforts To Blast Dynamite Fishing

In June 2015, the Tanzanian government created the Multi-Agency Task Team to handle the increasing crimes that have taken its toll on the country's underwater wildlife.

"The focus will be to target the individuals and networks that control this illegal trade, bring them to justice, and seize any assets obtained through their crimes," said Magese Emmanuel Bulayi, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism's principal fisheries officer.

From 1997 to 2003, Tanzania's marine police and navy joined local programs to curb blast fishing. However, there were confusion on which department should enforce the law. The meager resources and light sentences given to blast fishing practitioners didn't help matters either. Tanzania's Fisheries Act of 2003 carries a minimum of five years in jail for blast fishing, however, it seems offenders rarely get the punishment, said marine conservationist Sue Wells.

Nearly two-thirds of Tanzania's coastline conceals coral reefs which are home to crab, fish and other marine species. These underwater homes also help in stabilizing the ocean's carbon dioxide levels. Coral reefs are abundant in shallow waters, which are also the areas prone to blast fishing.

"Some of these corals have been growing for decades," said World Wildlife Fund's marine conservation scientist Gabby Ahmadia. Damaged corals take decades to recover, while some never recover at all.

The research team also noted that some of the blasts killed dolphins, based on anecdotal evidence. The bottlenose dolphin is an endangered species found in Tanzania's waters.

Photo: Rod Waddington | Flickr

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Rumors about the upcoming Huawei P9 handset started making rounds a while back, hinting at a spring launch. However, the device might reach fans sooner than expected.

CES is the first annual occasion for electronic and car manufacturers to showcase their best and latest tech pieces, and Huawei is no exception. A couple of details reached the media, such as a teaser for the Huawei Honor X3 tablet, but it is apparent that the tech behemoth has more than just one release in store.

Sources familiar with the matter claim that the Shenzhen-based company could unveil its latest flagship as early as CES 2016, which kicks off at the beginning of the year. The official start date of the show is Jan. 6, but companies typically get a head start and make some annoucements in the days prior.

Rumored specs also surfaced, pointing out that the Huawei P9 will pack not one, but two cameras on the backside. One notable detail is that the smartphone comes with a staggering 6 GB of RAM onboard. If it proves to be true, the processing power of Huawei P9 might put handsets packing 4 GB of RAM to shame.

As far as visuals go, the anticipated Chinese flagship will feature a 5.2-inch screen capable of displaying a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440p. Aside from the rumored 6 GB RAM, a confirmed Kirin 950 processor with Mali-T880 MP4 GPU will make sure that apps run smoothly on the anticipated Huawei phone.

Reviews set the Kirin 950 at the top of the food chain when it comes to processing power, as the SoC scored high in single and multi-core tests.

Design fans who appreciate a metallic unibody should know that the smartphone will receive a full metallic build, and the presence of the fingerprint scanner will ensure that the device offers a true premium feel.

Huawei knows that more and more users are careful about their privacy, so the P9's a fingerprint sensor should cater to their needs.

Based on existing information, the Huawei P9 features the same display dimension as its predecessor, the P8, which had a 5.2-inch screen as well. Fans of the Samsung S6 edge might want to know that the P9 will sport a "curved design," although the company did not confirm whether the phone will bend or it will simply have rounded edges, following Samsung's example.

It was in 2015 when Huawei became the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and the Chinese company aims to stay ahead of the pack in 2016 as well. Notable releases from last year were the Mate 8 phablet flagship, the smartwatch Huawei Watch, and last but definitely not least, the P8 flagship line.

A Weibo leak dating back to November 2015 pointed out that the Huawei P9 will feature the commended lastest version of Android's OS. Having Android Marshmallow installed from the get-go could prove a competitive advantage for the P9, making it the first choice of Android fans.

Keeping up with the pricing tradition for premium devices, the Huawei P9 price point might go as high as $500. In comparison, the previous flagship model from Huawei, the P8, had a standard price of about $530.

Leaks from late last year shed light on all three P9 devices, namely the Huawei P9, P9 Max and P9 Lite. It looks like the Huawei P9 Lite stands by its name and delivers the smallest screen, measuring 5 inches. The P9 offers a 5.2-inch panel while the P9 Max takes the cake in terms of size with a massive 6.2-inch display.

Everyone looks forward to the CES 2016 press event that Huawei announced for Jan. 5, in Las Vegas, where we will see if the rumors turn into reality.

As soon as we get additional details on the newest and fasters Huawei handset, you will be the first to know.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Rand Hoppe recently hosted a pop-up exhibition of rare Jack Kirby prints in a vacant storefront space on Manhattan's Lower East Side, a neighborhood where the co-creator of Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the Hulk struggled to survive during the hardscrabble Depression era.

"It was really a pretty horrible ghetto at the time that he worked hard to get his family (and himself) out of," says Hoppe of Lower Manhattan's eight-block grid of trendy nightclubs, restaurants and luxury apartments that was once a cold-water tenement ward of tough immigrants from Eastern Europe and Italy.

Today, Rand is working to bring Kirby's work (Kirby died in 1994) back to the Lower East Side in a museum that will celebrate the native son whose struggles and exploits in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood became grist for a pulp pantheon of distinctly modern heroes.

The Jack Kirby Museum currently lives online and consists of an extensive digital archive of original works drawn from private collectors and Kirby's family.

"Right now we are a virtual nonprofit," says Hoppe, who established an early incarnation of the museum in 1997, when he created a website for The Jack Kirby Collector, a newsletter for Kirby enthusiasts. He has since gone on to spearhead the systematic digitizing of Kirby's entire oeuvre.

"Since 2006 we've been scanning original Kirby art," says Hoppe of his collaborative effort with Kirby Museum board member Tom Kraft to digitize and preserve all of Kirby's surviving art by setting up booths with high-resolution scanners at comic conventions. "We would go around the convention to the dealers booths who were offering artwork and we asked if we could borrow the artwork for a little bit so we could scan it. That's how we've ended up with 4,000 pages in our digital archive."

Initially, the resulting scans resided in Hoppe's Hoboken, N.J., apartment, along with thousands of original pencil drawings belonging to the Kirby family. Three years ago, he moved the collection to a commercial storage space.

Hoppe's carefully maintained originals and extensive digital archive figured prominently in a major exhibition of Kirby's work at the Fumetto - International Comix-Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 2010.

"They have a building that's normally filled with Picasso art and for this particular show they took all the Picassos out and put Kirbys in," says Hoppe from the bunker-like storage space where the collection currently resides. "It was a career-spanning exhibit. We were able to help them find collectors and (prints of) some of our scans were on the walls as well."

More recently, Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby, an exhibit at California State University, Northridge (Aug. 24-Oct. 10, 2015) drew heavily on Kirby prints and drawings from Hoppe's archives, and featured an iPad program Hoppe helped develop to enable swiping between Kirby's pencil sketches and inked originals.





Hoppe believes the relationships he's built with collectors and dealers in his effort to digitize Kirby's work will provide a basis for the exhibition of original art in a Jack Kirby museum on the Lower East Side. Meanwhile, he intends to continue showing the collection at pop-up exhibitions.

"Our goal with them is to make an appearance in New York and just get the word out that this son of the Lower East Side was so involved in developing the language of comic books and so many of these characters  that this guy sat at a table and drew these comic books that people are watching movies about."

Hoppe is planning his next pop-up for May 2016, to coincide with the release of X-Men: Apocalypse, Captain America: Civil War and Iron Man 4.

"We want to get to the point where by 2017 (Kirby's birthday centennial) either we're popping up all over the world or staying somewhere.... That's what we're working for, to have a big party for Jack in 2017."

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began enforcing its new regulation concerning the registration of recreational drones and other Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) beginning Dec. 21. While the FAA may have prepared for continued protest against the new rule, it probably was not expecting to face charges in Federal Court for violating its own rules.

The case was filed by insurance attorney and recreational UAS hobbyist, John A. Taylor, who alleged that the new regulations are a direct violation to the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. According to him, section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 invalidated the new regulations and that the Federal Court should halt the FAAs activities. Taylor's allegations are quite serious, to say the least, but does it really hold water in court?

What Does Section 336 Say?

"The Administrator of the [FAA] may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft," section 336 indicates. This, of course, comes with the following conditions:

1. The UAS must strictly be flown as a hobby or for recreational purposes;

2. Operation of the UAS must follow community safety guidelines within the programming of a nationwide community-based organization;

3. The UAS must weigh 55 pounds at most;

4. The UAS must not interfere with operations of manned aircrafts; and,

5. The UAS may not be flown within 5 miles of an airport. UAS may only go closer to an airport if the operator has contacted the airport and air traffic control tower and was given permission in accordance with a mutually agreed upon operating procedure.

What Does The FAA Say About The Allegation?

The FAA has not given a comment about the allegation; however, its position may be revealed in one of the previous announcements it released with regard to the issue. An official document released by the FAA in June 2014 provided the FAA's interpretations on the scope and limitations of its power over the creation and modification of regulations involving model aircrafts. Specifically, the FAA maintains that interpretation of section 336 is on a rule-by-rule basis.

"The rulemaking prohibition would not apply in the case of general rules that the FAA may issue or modify that apply to all aircraft, such as rules addressing the use of airspace... for safety or security reasons. The statute does not require FAA to exempt model aircraft from those rules because those rules are not specifically regarding model aircraft," the FAA explained.

What Does This Mean For The Case?

Taylor's case did not meet the requirements before the deadline so the Court of Appeals denied it on Dec. 24. However, it will still proceed on Jan. 27, the next filing deadline. Perhaps Taylor's chance would come if the court decides that the rule-by-rule basis that FAA went by still violates the rules put in place to limit its power.

It must be noted, however, that FAA opened the rules for comment prior to passing the regulations but not even the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), the officially recognized national body for model aviation in the United States (U.S.), brought up section 336. Instead, the AMA's focus is to protect the rights of its members who adhere to the organization's strict rules.

"The central issue is whether the FAA has the authority to expand the definition of aircraft to include model aircraft; thus, allowing the agency to establish new standards and operating criteria to which model aircraft operators have never been subject to in the past.... While we continue to believe that registration makes sense at some threshold and for flyers operating outside of a community-based organization or flying for commercial purposes, we also strongly believe our members are not the problem and should not have to bear the burden of additional regulations," the AMA explained.

The AMA has a point considering many of the violators that FAA want to regulate are the UAS operators who do not belong to the AMA and, most likely, did not read the FAA's guidelines.

Photo: Gabriel Garcia Marengo | Flickr

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BB-8 instantly won our hearts as the newest astromech droid from the Star Wars universe. A real life, rolling, spherical BB-8 by Sphero quickly became one of the most wanted items to come out of the Star Wars merchandise and marketing force.

Now, Sphero has announced that BB-8 owners can get a new wearable gadget to play with: The Force Band  a motion control sensor allowing users to move BB-8 with simple hand gestures  as if they are adept Force users!

Sphero was able to give a demonstration of the new hardware at CES in Las Vegas where they had a little BB-8 rushing and rolling around with just a wave of a hand rather than sliding fingers over a control pad on a smartphone. According to it, the ultra-sensitive gyroscopic motion sensors that BB-8 is equipped with enable it to detect even the most subtle of movements from the wearable.

Users will also be able to create pre-programmed gestures to make custom-moves for BB-8 to be able to maneuver more deftly around obstacles, and even control the little droid's head movements!

Just recently, a group of students in Taiwan was able to program their own wearable to control drones in flight. The Force Band by Sphero will allow you to control BB-8 at a distance using cool, Jedi-like movements.

Sphero has yet to release pricing details for the new droid and wearable, which will be made available later this year. However, this is good news for collectors who want to own Sphero's BB-8 and don't have compatible smartphones to control it with.

The company also announced at CES that they will also be releasing a new battle damage edition of BB-8 with artistically painted dust and scratches to really look like he's been on a few adventures around the galaxy.

Check out this video of the possibilities you can do with BB-8 and the new Force Band from Sphero:

Finally, a real-life BB-8 that doesn't need a smartphone to control! This is indeed the droid we are looking for!

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Meet LG's newest smartphones, as part of its all-new K Series.

At the Consumer Electronics Show 2016 Unveiled event Monday afternoon at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, the corporation debuted its brand-new smartphones  the K10 and K7.

Tech Times got its hands on LG's mass-tier smartphone, the K7, and it doesn't disappoint. Each of the K Series devices will be the first to offer LG's glossy-pebble design with 2.5D Arc Glass in what the company promises will be a premium feel and affordably priced in the first quarter  although it hasn't named that price nor a release date just yet. The 2.5D glass refers to the slight curve at the edge of the glass, the contoured edge.

What stands out about the K7 and K10 is its back grip with convenient power button and volume (up and down) controls on the backside of each phone. The K7 and K10 each tout a 13-megapixel rear camera and 8-megapixel front-facing camera. The K7 boasts a 5-inch screen, while the K10 touts a slightly-larger 5.3-inch screen.

LG's K Series also features the company's popular Gesture Shot and Gesture Interval Shot, making taking selfies even simpler than before by only raising an open hand in front of the lens, before turning it into a clenched fist for the snapshot.

If this is the way LG is starting out its CES unveiling, its projections for the rest of the week-long show should be bright.

The K Series smartphones' boldness is sure to jump out at you.

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Rumors continue to trickle out regarding the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S7, which is set to be officially announced on Feb. 21 at the Mobile World Congress 2016.

The latest information regarding the device, reported by tech news website VentureBeat and coming from a source that was briefed on Samsung's plans, brings back a feature that was missing from the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge flagship devices of 2015.

Memory Expansion

According to the source, both the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge variant will be offering microSD card slots that are compatible with memory cards of up to 200 GB. Expandable memory was inexplicably not included among the features of the Galaxy S6, and Samsung fans will rejoice to have the feature back in the Galaxy S7 if the information is true. It's not the first time we hear about the return of expandable memory with the next-gen Galaxy flagship, as rumors of a Galaxy S7 microSD expansion slot have made rounds before.

Batteries

The batteries of the Galaxy S7 duo will see a capacity increase from 2,550 mAh and 2,600 mAh for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, respectively, to 3,000 mAh for the Galaxy S7 and 3,600 mAh for the Galaxy S7 edge. Wireless charging time was revealed to take 2 hours for the Galaxy S7 and 2.2 hours for the Galaxy S7 edge. However, the upcoming smartphones will not be bringing back one other highly requested feature, which are removable batteries.

Displays

The source also revealed that the Galaxy S7 will include an always-on display functionality, which would enable a glanceable screen that shows things such as downloaded content. The feature will be consuming about 1 percent of the smartphone's battery per hour. The display size of the Galaxy S7 is said to be 5.1 inches diagonally, with that of the Galaxy S7 edge at 5.5 inches, refuting earlier reports that it would be carrying the same 5.7-inch size of the Galaxy S6 edge+.

Waterproofing

It was also revealed that the Galaxy S7 will feature IP67 dust and water resistance certifications, a feature that will come in handy for both active users and clumsy ones.

Processing Power

The source claimed that the Galaxy S7 will be powered by the company's own Exynos Octa 8890 chipset, which was partially based on an ARM design. The processor offers four high-performance 2.3GHz cores with four power-efficient 1.6GHz cores. An integrated cellular baseband model, meanwhile, could enable LTE Category 9 connectivity.

It should be noted, however, that Samsung often uses different CPUs for its devices across different regions. Other reports claim that the North American versions of the Galaxy S7 will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. The smartphone will most likely be featuring the same 4 GB of RAM across all regions though, with internal storage options of 32 GB and 64 GB. A third option with 128 GB of internal storage was not mentioned, but it could be a possible choice for certain channels.

Cameras

The main camera sensor for the Galaxy S7 will only be 12 megapixels, down from 16 megapixels in the Galaxy S6 variants. However, resolution is not all that makes up a good camera, as the Galaxy S7 will also be packing an f/1.7 lens aperture compared to the f/1.9 lens aperture of its predecessor. This would maintain the camera's capability to take high quality shots in low-light conditions.

The hump at the back of the Galaxy S6 due to its camera is expected to be removed with the Galaxy S7, while no changes are expected for the 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

Just recently, the front panel of the Galaxy S7 was leaked and compared with those of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 5. The images appear to be confirming a larger 5.2-inch display compared with the 5.1-inch display of the Galaxy S6, which goes against the report by VentureBeat, along with being squared-off similar to the Galaxy Note 5.

The information contained in the rumors has not been confirmed in any way by Samsung, and it would seem that the true details of the Galaxy S7 will only be unveiled once the company officially does so in over a month's time.

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3D printers are advancing at such a rapid rate that it's easy to overlook some of their most-basic functions  like the ability to mix colors.

It's not that XYZprinting boasts being the first company to have a 3D printer that mixes colors. It doesn't. But what the company does think it might have is a 3D printer that mixes colors better than any other 3D printer on the market.

And at the Consumer Electronics Show's 2016's Unveiled event on Monday afternoon at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, XYZprinting showed off its new 3D printer and its ability to mix colors, hoping to make the machine available to the public during the second or third quarter of this year, as told to Tech Times by Gary Shu, XYZprinting's senior manager of global marketing.

The proof was in the objects that XYZprinting had on display at CES on Monday, each touting an impressive mix of colors that you just don't see pulled off as flawlessly on a widespread basis when it comes to 3D printers.

That being said, Shu tells Tech Times that the company has ways to go in perfecting its ability to mix colors to create beautiful 3D objects. He says that as of now, XYZ is happy that its machine can mix red and yellow, green and yellow, and blue and yellow with detailed gradiation in between  some of which can be seen above. However, Shu calls mixing black and white to get gray "the ultimate challenge."

Still, the $499 price point for a 3D printer, especially one that seems to have a real flair for its tints and hues, seems to be a bargain.

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In Brazil, the spread of a mosquito-borne virus called Zika has been associated with the rise of microcephaly cases. In 2015, the country has more than 2,400 reported microcephaly cases across 20 states.

Six states in Brazil declared a state of emergency and health officials advised married couples to put off pregnancy until both Zika and microcephaly cases have mitigated.

Microcephaly is a neurological disorder that causes babies to be born with abnormally small brain and heads. The condition carries severe development issues and can result in infant death.

The Zika virus has spread outside Brazil. In October 2015, Zika cases were documented in Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, Panama and Mexico. In January, Zika cases in Puerto Rico also popped up.

American travelers who vacationed in affected regions showed positive results when tested for Zika virus. To date, there is no treatment or vaccine for Zika. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests carrying an insect-repellant creams and spray, sleeping in air-conditioned rooms with the windows shielded by screens and wearing long-sleeved tops and pants to prevent mosquito bites.

Transfusion-Associated Zika Case

The Zika virus is transmitted to human hosts from the bites of infected Aedes aegypti mosquitos. In December 2015, an alleged transfusion-associated Zika case was reported in Brazil.

According to Marcelo Addas Carvalho from the University of Campinas' Blood Center Hematology Division, a patient received a blood transfusion from an infected donor. Carvalho said the blood donor is a 52-year-old man who donated blood at the university's Blood Center. Without any symptoms, he didn't know that he was infected.

However, three days after donating blood, he became symptomatic. The Adolpho Lutz Institute preformed a virus isolation and sequencing and both patients recovered from the Zika infection.

Sexually Transmitted Zika Case

There are also cases of sexually transmitted Zika infection. Malaria researchers Brian Foy and Kevin Kobylinski from the Colorado State University returned to Colorado from their trip in Senegal, West Africa where they collected mosquitoes.

Foy and his wife, Joy Chilson Foy, became ill a few days after his return. His wife didn't join him in his trip to Senegal but they reported to having vaginal sex upon his return before the clinical symptoms took place five days later. His co-researcher Kobylinski also became ill after five days.

Zika Symptoms

Unfortunately, most Zika infections do not have early symptoms. The illness takes place three to 12 days after being bitten by an infected mosquito. The Zika infection can last from four to seven days.

Zika symptoms are normally confused with that of more common mosquito-borne diseases like Chikungunya and dengue. These include joint pain, fever, rash and headache. Conjunctivitis, which is also known as "pink eye", is the inflammation of the eye's conjunctiva. Conjunctivitis is a symptom more common with Zika infection.

Photo: Natesh Ramasamy | Flickr

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"Alexa, start my car."

"Alexa, check the status of my battery."

"Alexa, open my garage door."

The future of Ford is here ... and it's putting you in the driver's seat of controlling your vehicle even when you're at home in your La-Z-Boy recliner.

During its news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Jan. 5, the automaker announced a partnership with Amazon Echo that will allow Ford owners to essentially control various aspects of their connected vehicles right from the comfort of their home in the near future.

The technology will allow Ford owners to interact with their vehicles hands-free from their home and engage their smart features via voice commands being sent to the Echo, Ford CEO Mark Fields said on stage during the automaker's news conference.

As long as Amazon's Echo wireless speaker unit is in proximity, users can bark commands using the Alexa virtual assistant voice system technology, whether they're in the home or approaching home.

This takes Ford's connectivity and mobility to new levels ... not to mention, its sheer convenience factor.

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German company Raumfeld announced at CES 2016 in Las Vegas on Tuesday that it is expanding support for its multi-room wireless speaker system to now include Google Cast and SoundCloud.

With Google Cast support, consumers will be able to stream music from popular apps such as Pandora, iHeartRadio and Google Play Music directly from the Wi-Fi speakers.

"Raumfeld prides itself on manufacturing streaming speakers that sound as good as traditional premium hi-fi speakers," Max Boit, general manager at Raumfeld, said in a press release. "The integration of Google Cast allows us to offer the same hi-fi sound quality and the convenience of multi-room from a vastly expanded range of sources."

SoundCloud now joins streaming services Spotify, Tidal, TuneIn and Last.fm, which are already available for using with the speakers.

Previously, users could only stream music to the speakers using their smartphone or tablet. Now, the company has announced that it will also allow users to stream to the system from their PC and Mac desktop computers using Chrome.

Google Cast support for Raumfeld speakers will be added in the spring of 2016, with SoundCloud support available when the company's products are released in the U.S. on Feb. 1.

Raumfeld's family of products will ship in the U.S. next month starting at $249.

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Netflix keeps upping the ante when it comes to original content. The streaming service just recently struck a deal with DreamWorks Animation that will give it rights to exclusively stream an entirely new Voltron series, as well as a new series by Guillermo del Toro.

Voltron began life in the 1980s as an anime series, Voltron: Defender of the Universe, about a team of astronauts that pilot a giant robot. The series was one of the top-rated children's shows at the time and spawned other series and comic books.

DreamWorks bought the rights for Voltron several years ago and now plans on working with Netflix to reimagine the show on the streaming service.

Netflix also plans on working with DreamWorks on a new series by del Toro for children called Trollhunters, which follows two friends who "make a startling discovery beneath their hometown." That discovery is trolls, which the children must hunt to protect their town. The show finds inspiration from a book that del Toro wrote with Daniel Kraus.

"I wanted very much to develop a story that could be written for kids but dealt with a genre that was scary," said del Toro to the Hollywood Reporter in 2010. "It essentially combines fairy tales with modern times and is about how difficult it is to be kid. Normally, kids are idealized in animated films. But the growing pains, married with the notion that there is a world right next to us that is completely plagued by creatures of ancient lore, it's thematically fitting with the rest of my stuff."

The agreement between Netflix and DreamWorks also gives Netflix the rights to the company's animated film library, as well as its other series for kids, including The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Dinotrux and Dragons: Race to the Edge.

"This agreement adds to the incredible foundation we've built together with Netflix over a number of years across both film and television," said Ann Daly, president of DreamWorks Animation. "We are proud to work closely with Netflix to continue delivering high-quality programming to audiences around the world."

Netflix expanded its original content this year, with more family-friendly programming added to its service, including A Series of Unfortunate Events, a show based on the Lemony Snicket children's books.

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In the wake of Fossil's newest wearable, a smartwatch named the Q45 Pilot that was showcased at CES 2016 in Las Vegas on Jan. 5, the sartorial giant also had a pretty hefty announcement: the success of its smartband brands over the past year has kickstarted a smartwatch renaissance for the company, resulting in plans for it to introduce over 100 different smartband styles within the upcoming year.

Among the upcoming Android- and iOS-compatible products will be activity trackers as well as smartwatches, some of which are possible due to the company's acquisition of Misfit, a wearable tech brand known for its sleep monitors and fitness bands.

Fossil's year-end goal? To have all 100 different looks available for purchase for the 2016 holiday season. The added bonus? The lines will add a projected 20,000 distribution points, which could hypothetically double company sales.

"We successfully launched wearables with one brand and 10 styles in 2015 and quickly ramped up to launch wearables for several brands in more than 100 styles in 2016," said Greg McKelvey, chief officer of strategy and digital at Fossil Group. "Bringing Fossil Q to market helped us identify additional opportunity, and based on the positive consumer response, we are going big this year. Our retail partners will see the power of Fossil Group's scale and consumers will see the variety of functionality, style, colors and brands they desire."

So far, the Texas-based clothier has released all four of its smart products, including smartwatches the Q Founder and the Q Grant, which were announced this past October. The wearables were aesthetically typified as putting style over tech-savviness; the Q Grant and two respective smart bracelet lines, the Q Dreamer and Q Reveler, were launched on Oct. 25, while the Q Founder was released in November.

Via: CES

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"Ask me anythings", or AMAs for short, are one of the best parts of Reddit. It allows the masses to pick the brains of celebrities, scientists, politicians or just people who want to share what their world is like with questions that range from deadly serious to profoundly dumb.

Now Reddit, with the help of AMA mods, has assembled what it believes to be the best AMAs in the site's history for one sleek, 400 page hardcover book, featuring the AMAs of Bill Gates, Martha Stewart and many more. The book is illustrated by Reddit user youngluck. You can check out some of his artwork from the book on the official Ask Me Anything book website.

"We're excited to have created an almost 400-page volume, filled with some of the sites favorite AMAs from Louis C.K. to Bette Midler, Chris Rock to Martha Stewart," Alexis Ohanian writes on the Reddit blog. "Tech moguls like Bill Gates are rubbing pages with the amazing Waffle House Grill Masters and Nazi Germany survivors. A nuclear missile operator gets as much ink as Ronda Rousey, Andrew WK, Spike Lee, or a person who survived being held hostage in Iraq. It's the beauty of the Reddit on the printed page."

Only 10,000 copies of Ask Me Anything Volume One are being printed, and currently sell for $34.99. If you don't care to own a physical version of the book, a digital ebook can be snagged for just $4.99. A portion of the proceeds from the book will go to charities some of the mods responsible for creating the book choose.

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Here it is, in all of its shiny, rhyming glory. The Mate 8 is Huawei's biggest unveil of the show, kicking off today's pre-CES press conference with eight tenants of smartphone design. We'll spare you the point by point breakdown of the octet of new features and stick to the important bits.

For once, Huawei didn't devote too much time to design basics during the presser, a bit of a surprise given how much the company prides itself on its product builds. Perhaps it's just over any sort of perceived inferiority when it comes to bigwigs like Samsung and Apple. To anyone following the industry, it won't come as any surprise that the company's got another solidly designed product on its hand.

The M8 is a 6-inch that's big and bright, but feels surprisingly light in the hand, fitting nicely, thanks in part to that curved metal backing, an ergonomic touch few companies offer aside from Huawei and Motorola, instead preferring to focus on just keeping the handset as slim as possible.

The rear of the device is a brushed gold that's extremely sparkly under the bright lights of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. It's a bit gaudy for my taste, but the company seems to know its audience fairly well when it comes to things like product color  after all, the big reveal at the end of today's event was the addition of a gold version of Huawei's latest Nexus device.

Also on the back is the Mate 8's upgraded camera and a super secure fingerprint reader that also doubles as a call and selfie button. We'll be putting that to the test when we get our review unit in the not-too-distant future  well, everything but the selfie bit, that is. Ditto for the massive 4,000 mAh battery inside.

At the center of it all is a big, bright 1080p screen, which looks great at first glance, and an octa-core processor with extremely zippy performance. All and all, it's looking like another solid premium offering from the company.

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The Lenovo K3 Note topped a shootout and debate on NDTV among Indias top tech journos, hosted by NDTVs Rajiv Makhni. Last Phone Standing, broadcast in the first week of January 2016, is one of the most popular tech programs on NDTV. (See Last Phone Standing video here.)

For the program, the NDTV Gadgets 360 team along with the jury shortlisted the top five phones under Rs 10k from virtually every candidate on the market, and each jury member then presented and defended one of the phones. The audience then voted on the phone, and the jury and gave it points for features, innovation, and other parameters. Both were added up to the final score.

1. Lenovo K3 Note (397 points) topped. A good overall phone just under Rs 10k with a great 3,000 mAh battery, nice call and sound quality (with Dolby Atmos), and a usable 13MP/5MP camera pair with twin LED flash at the back. The K3 note was presented and defended by Prasanto K Roy of chief editor at Trivone, publishers of TechTree.

2. Moto G 2nd Gen (396 points) came in at second place: Perhaps a bit long in the tooth now, yet the second-gen Moto G is a terrific buy under Rs 7k. Yes, this is the older Moto G (its third generation, which is what TechTree would really recommend you buy, is nearly Rs 13k). This phone was defended by tech consultant Kishore Bhargava, who said its a phone that simply works and goes on working; he also likes that its pure Android with no extra baggage.

3. Coolpad Note 3 (387 points): Also with a 3,000 mAH battery, and, impressively, a fingerprint sensor under Rs 9k. The Coolpad was presented and defended by Nikhil Chawla (founder of The Unbiased Blog), who said this device is a feature benchmark for budget phones, with a good build quality and UI.

4. Meizu M2 Note (386 points): Another 5.5 phone (with a 3,100 mAh battery to match). Great features and specs. 64-bit hardware, nice polycarbonate-covered metal body. This was defended by Rahul Gupta of NDTV Gadgets 360, who agreed that Meizu was still unknown, and the company needed to figure out how to make a bigger splash.

5. Yu Yureka Plus (295 points): Another large phone, with a 5.5 display

and a 2500 mAh battery thats about adequate. This one was defended by Businessworlds technology editor Mala Bhargava, who was impressed with its simplicity, and its ruggedness, a comfortable phone to use.

Lenovo K3 Note, Moto G (2nd Gen) 4G LTE, Coolpad Note 3, Meizu m2 note, Yu Yureka Plus
Acer and Lenovo Launch Worlds First USB-C Monitors which are compatible with Apples latest Macbooks

Acer has announced all-new H7 series monitors as the first in the world to support USB Type-C. The H7 series will be compatible with Apples latest 12-inch MacBooks. According to the presser, the monitors will be able to charge the MacBook, transfer data and display content over one USB-C cable, eliminating the need for multiple cables and adapters.

Acer said that the monitors will be available in 25-inch and 27-inch screen sizes with 2,5601,440 pixels resolution, Acer TrueHarmony and DTS Sound, HDMI 2.0 ports and 100% sRGB coverage. The H7 series launches in the U.S. and other North American markets in February with prices starting at $499.99. The worldwide release will be done at a later date.

Lenovo has also announced the ThinkVision X24 Pro and ThinkVision X1 as its first two USB Type-C monitors, per AnandTech. The bezel-free ThinkVision X24 Pro features a 1,9201,080 resolution IPS display, USB-C and Mini DisplayPort, an Intel RealSense 3D camera, two 3W speakers and more. The monitor starts at $399 and ships in May.

Lenovos 27-inch ThinkVision X1 has an ultra-thin 7.5mm design, 3,8402,160 resolution, USB-C and DisplayPort 1.2 ports, HDMI 2.0, 99% sRGB coverage and more. Apples 12-inch MacBook includes support for DisplayPort 1.2 through USB-C, so it will be able to power this Ultra HD monitor at 60 Hz.
Anonymous threatens to bring down Chinese websites over missing publisher, Lee Bo

The Hong Kong chapter of the online hacktivist group, Anonymous has warned China of mass cyber attacks against its online websites over missing publisher Lee Bo. Lee Bo is a top book publisher from China with a series of hit novels and has been missing since 3rd Jan, 2016 and is presumably in the custody of Chinese PLA.

Anonymous Hong Kong division posted a video on Facebook on Saturday, threatening to hack Chinese government and police websites in honor of Lee, presumed to have been abducted by mainland authorities last Wednesday. Watch the video below:

Anonymous has also posted a message on Sunday night, claiming that its Hong Kong division was in the process of working with overseas teams on the planned attacks.

Lee and his four colleagues  believed to be disappeared as a result of their work at the Causeway Bay Bookstore, known for selling banned works critical of the Communist Party. Ever since his disappearance became known, there has been a huge outcry in Hong Kong.

Student activist group Scholarism also joined the protests, saying that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore.

In light of the threat from Anonymous, a statement from supposedly Lee himself emerged yesterday with a Causeway employee receiving a fax, the contents of which are consistent with Lees last contact from Shenzhen immediately following his disappearance, in which he explained to his wife that he was assisting mainland police with an investigation.

Translation :

Mr Chan, Since I am in urgent need to handle the related issue, and as it cannot be told to the outside world, I have returned to the mainland by my own method to assist the investigation by related authorities  it may take some time. Please continue to run the bookstore as per contract, you can contact my wife for the payments due for books, or you can pay them, and clear the amount when I come back. My current situation is good, everything is normal. Please kindly handle the things at the bookstore, many thanks! Lee Bo 2016.1.3

It remains to be seen what action Anonymous take against China in coming days.
Yahoo Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Sending 500,000 Unsolicited Advertising Messages (Spam)

U.S. District Court Judge Manish Shah has ordered Yahoo Inc. to face a class-action lawsuit over the incident that took place back in March 2013, which violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The internet company was accused of sending more than 500,000 spam text messages to Sprint cellphone users welcoming them to Yahoo Messenger, without their permission.

Shah said that due to the number of lawsuits with similar claims, users could sue as a group if they wanted.

Shah rejected Yahoos arguments that a class action could subject it to damages that were disproportionate to the alleged harm, promote piecemeal litigation covering other time periods and phone carriers, and thwart Congress desire that claims be brought individually in small claims court.

The court paper shows that more than 500,000 cellphone users could be part of the class.

Yahoo was accused by the plaintiffs for sending automated welcome messages when other users sent them messages through Yahoo Messenger service.

Many users felt that the welcome messages amounted to unsolicited advertising messages, violating the federal TCPA and subjecting the Sunnyvale, California-based company to damages of up to $1,500 per message if found guilty. Ultimately, this could very well be an expensive lawsuit for the company, if they are fined the maximum amount, and all 500,000 possible cellphone users join in on the class action.

Rachel Johnson, an Illinois resident who brought the initial lawsuit claimed to have received a welcome message from Yahoo after being sent a spam text message from another user advertising a means to decrease high-cost debt.

A similar, strange case was brought to court in 2014 when a user purchased a used T-Mobile smartphone that kept delivering messages meant for another Yahoo user. However, Shah declined to certify a separate class for this case. He said that in that part of the case, the proposed plaintiff had agreed to receive welcome messages.

Yahoo did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Keith Keogh, a lawyer for Johnson, said: We appreciate the courts thorough analysis.

The case is Johnson et al v. Yahoo Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Nos. 14-02028, 14-02753.
Zerodium puts up a $100,000 bug bounty for Flash Zero-Day Exploit

Zerodium, the company that deals in exploits and zero-days has put up a fresh $100,000 bug bounty for zero-days in the new Flash security feature. Zerodium buys zero-day bugs from security researchers and then sells them forward to government intelligence agencies. It has already been in news for offering a $1 million bug bounty to a security researcher for a zero-day bug in Apples newly released iOS 9 mobile operating system.

Zerodium is offering $100,000 / 93,000 to the first security researcher/security researcher/hacker, who finds a zero-day bug capable of avoiding Flashs new isolated heap protection. Adobe had deployed Heap Isolation in Flash version 18.0.0209 a few months back, with an aim at making the Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerabilities more difficult for cybercriminals to exploit.

Adobe added isolated heap to Flash. This month we pay $100K (with sandbox) and $65K (without sandbox) per #exploit bypassing this mitigation  Zerodium (@Zerodium) January 5, 2016

Heap Isolation was announced by Adobe in December and is Adobes latest weapon against cyber criminals and hackers. Isolated heap protection is a modern security technique that separates data processes inside the computers memory. Adobe worked with Googles Project Zero developers to develop this feature and it was implemented in the Flash Player version 18.0.0.209.

This change will limit the ability for attackers to effectively leverage use-after-free vulnerabilities for exploitation, said Adobe in December.

The heap isolation technique has been difficult to crack as seen from the bounty offered by Zerodium. According to a price list published by Zerodium, the max payout for Flash zero-days is $80000. So the $20000 increment in this latest bug bounty is a certificate of sorts for heap isolation technique.

Adobe which has been a major victim of the Hacking Team data breach in June 2015, has taken steps to secure its ever flawed Flash Player.
Jeremy Corbyn is facing an open revolt from his shadow cabinet after mounting a purge of moderate MPs who have criticisised him over Trident, national security and the takeover of the party by the hard-left, report Steven Swinford, Laura Hughes and Ben Riley-Smith. After two days of deliberations Maria Eagle, who is in favour of Trident, was removed as shadow defence secretary and replaced with Emily Thornberry, an anti-war MP who is sympathetic to Mr Corbyn's calls to scrap Trident. If you can't state these views and be a shadow minister then our party really is being driven off a cliff https://t.co/mELo2ixaKt  John Woodcock (@JWoodcockMP) January 6, 2016 Miss Thornberry was previously sacked by Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, for mocking a family who lived in a terraced home for draping an an England flag over their home. Mr Corbyn was forced to abandon plans to sack Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary who defied him by voting in favour of air strikes in Syria, after being warned he faced mass resignations. Instead Labour claimed that Mr Benn and Mr Cobyn had reached an agreement that there will be "no repetition" of their public split over the Syria vote. Mr Corbyn also attracted fury after sacking Pat McFadden, the shadow Europe minister, for "disloyalty" after he criticised his response to the Paris terror attacks. One Labour MP said that the move was "stupid and vindictive". We got anybody with government experience who's widely respected? "Don't look at me!" What about @patmcfaddenmp ? "Yes. Him. Sack him."  Jamie Reed (@jreedmp) January 6, 2016 Mr Corbyn also sacked Michael Dugher, the shadow culture secretary, a decision which led to open criticism from nine of his front-benchers including Tom Watson, the party's deputy leader. Mr Dugher said that he had been sacked by Mr Corbyn for "too much straight talking, honest politics" as he criticised the Labour leader for "squandering" his vision of a "new politics". He said: "The real casualty today has been the new politics we were all promised four months ago from Jeremy. It's official. New Shad Cabinet pic.twitter.com/pUP2OHWCRg  Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 6, 2016 "I think that's a real shame, a real squandered opportunity, because I think people were attracted by the idea we could unite and come together people of different views, make a virtue of having debates and proper discussions. In Jeremy's words, even have a little dissent - straight talking, honest politics." He criticised Emily Thornberry, the shadow work and pensions minister who is tipped for promotion despite being sacked by Ed Miliband for appearing to mock a family's terraced home draped in England flags. Emily Thornberry: flying the flag for Great Britain's armed forces. pic.twitter.com/bcVnc7JuAD  Stig Abell (@StigAbell) January 6, 2016 He told Channel 4: Islington [Miss Thornberry's constituency] is a very different place to lots of other parts of the country. Its very hard to win election if you cant persuade people who drive vans to vote Labour. There is a reason why she went." Mr Dugher has criticised Mr Corbyn for opening the door to totally destructive and self-indulgent infighting as the left seeks a takeover of the party. The decision to sack Mr Dugher was criticised by Mr Watson along with eight other shadow ministers including Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, Lucy Powell, the shadow education secretary and Vernon Coaker, the shadow international development secretary. Following the sacking Mr Watson said in a statement: "Michael Dugher is a rare politician - a talented working-class MP who hasn't lost his strong Yorkshire roots. "Politicians with his ability and commitment can make a difference in any role. Labour's loss in the shadow cabinet will be compensated for by Michael's free thought on the back benches." Mr McFadden criticised Mr Corbyn's response to the Paris terror attacks when he suggested that the West was partly to blame because of military interventions in the Middle East. Sacking @patmcfaddenmp is vindictive and stupid. A serious, credible & popular shadow minister, respected & liked on all sides of PLP.  Ian Austin (@IanAustinMP) January 5, 2016 Speaking in the Commons, Mr McFadden said at the time: "Can I ask the Prime Minister to reject the view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to what we in the West do?" Mr McFadden was replaced by Pat Glass, David Cameron joked in the Commons that "you could have watched the whole run of Star Wars movies" since the reshuffle began on Monday as he apologised for "interrupting the longest reshuffle in history". One shadow Cabinet member said: "It is the Trotskyists fighting communists overseen by a Russian nationalist." Another said that the reshuffle delays were a sign of Mr Corbyn's "incompetence". Miss Eagle's demotion leaves the party's defence review, which she was jointly chairing, in the hands of Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London who is resolutely opposed to Trident. She was moved to shadow culture secretary. All new appointments in shadow cabinet are women. Now 17 women and 14 men #reshuffle  Laura Hughes (@Laura_K_Hughes) January 6, 2016
The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said the Ministry of Equality and Equity would be a central agency of the Executive Branch. | Read More
China applauds Russia's updated security strategy

From:English.news.cn | 2016-01-05 05:35

BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- China on Monday hailed Russia's updated security strategy which spoke positively of Russia-China ties.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said China had noted a document endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, an updated version of the security strategy adopted in 2009.

Hua said Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin met five times in the past year, and had reached important consensus in developing bilateral ties.

No matter how global and regional situations change, China and Russia are committed to deepening their strategic partnership of coordination, promoting common development, and safeguarding global justice and world peace and stability, the spokesperson told a regular press briefing.

The two countries, as permanent members of the UN Security Council and major emerging economies, will jointly boost high-level development of their strategic partnership of coordination, Hua said.

China and Russia are committed to a new type of international relations featuring cooperation and mutual benefit, while maintaining regional and world peace and stability, she added.
Newly-formed PLA forces vow contributions to building strong military

From:English.news.cn | 2016-01-05 05:35

BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- New People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces have promised to contribute to the Chinese dream of a strong military.

Chinese President Xi Jinping conferred military flags on the general command for the Army of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the PLA Rocket Force and the PLA Strategic Support Force at an inauguration ceremony held Thursday in Beijing.

Officers and soldiers of the three forces will study Xi's instructions made at the ceremony, saying the move is a major decision by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the Central Military Commission (CMC) to deepen reforms in national defense and the military.

The troops will follow the direction of the CPC Central Committee, the CMC and Xi, be absolutely "loyal, pure and reliable" to them, and firmly uphold the Party's absolute leadership over the army.

Officers and soldiers of the PLA Rocket Force vowed to understand their roles and tasks, and follow the requirement of maintaining both conventional and nuclear weaponry and improve the ability to deter and strike across the entire defense area.

The force also pledged to enhance nuclear deterrence and counter-strike capacity which is credible and reliable, medium- and long-range precision strike ability, as well as strategic check-and-balance capacity to build a strong and modern Rocket Force.

The PLA Army which is the oldest force led and founded by the CPC, said they will optimize its structure and composition, and expedite its transformation from a large troop to a powerful modern force.

The PLA Strategic Support Force vowed to speed up the development of new-type combat forces and build into a powerful modern force with Chinese characteristics.
The director of BBC1s War and Peace, Tom Harper, on the challenges of adapting Tolstoys classic novel for the small screen



Director Tom Harpers credits include The Woman In Black 2, The Scouting Book for Boys, Peaky Blinders, Misfits and This is England 86. For the past two years hes worked on BBC1s adaptation of Tolstoys classic War and Peace, from a script by Andrew Davies (Pride and Prejudice). He directed all six episodes

How did you approach adapting such an epic novel? Reading the script and the book, it was very apparent to me that the characters still feel amazingly modern and vibrant  even though the book was written over 150 years ago. It felt very relatable to me living my life now. So I didnt want to impose too much of a stylistic approach on it. I saw my role and my creative teams role as bringing it to life for a contemporary audience, in as truthful a way as possible.

Were you influenced by the many other previous onscreen adaptations? I looked at the other very good adaptations  the (Sergei) Bondarchuk (1966) and the BBC (1972) versions. For all the wonderful things about them, they feel quite of their time. The Bondarchuk battle scenes are phenomenal, but I dont think for a contemporary audience, after Saving Private Ryan, that you can just sit back and watch a battlefield from afar and for it to feel exciting. So you have to use a different visual language. If you are telling a story now, the audience expect different things  to feel like they are in it. It is about trying to convey what characters are experiencing and feeling at any given moment.

What were the key challenges for you as a director? The amount of preparation I needed to do. And also trying to keep it all in my head. There was so much going on, and so many different aspects to the shoot. It was also really hard just finding locations. In the UK we take for granted that we have all these historic houses that we havent touched for 500 years. Whereas in eastern Europe, that is not the case with two world wars and a revolution. That was why we were spread across three countries in the end.

And casting? The great thing about working on War and Peace is that people want to be involved with it. Working with great actors makes my job very easy.

What was it like shooting in Russia, Lithuania and Latvia? They all had different benefits and challenges. Russia has a different sort of infrastructure to the UK, and different working methods. And there is a language barrier. We often needed translators, which slows everything down. We had wonderful co-producers who made everything possible, like filming in St Petersburg outside The Winter Palace and at Catherine Palace. Naively, I thought we could turn up and be ready to go. But like every other modern city, St Petersberg has loads of traffic, street signs, cables and modern things that get in the way. But they gave us permission to close down streets, and film in the busiest areas. We also filmed during the white nights, when it is light all night. Theres a scene where Pierre is crossing the bridge in St Petersberg one evening. That was filmed at 1am in the morning. Lithuania had wonderful villages of wooden buildings, windmills, country roads and farms. And Lativas renovated Palace Rundale has lavish interiors which we used.

What did you shoot on? Arri Alexa. Digital cameras offer a lot of benefits: you can shoot a lot, you can shoot quickly, you can shoot repeat takes, and we had a lot to get through. We used anamorphic lenses, not for the aspect ratio, but for the focus fall-off. The DoP George Steel filtered quite heavily to give it the feel of a period film, referencing big movies of the past.

Did it require a lot of vfx? Quite a lot, mostly for things that dont exist, like Moscow in 1805, which was burnt down. We also used vfx for the battle scenes, for the replication of soldiers and lots of smoke addition. And also to paint out wires and aerials and modern stuff. Every time you go outside there are a lot of challenging things to avoid for a drama set 200 years ago. You could either pick a tiny spot and shoot there and limit your frame size or you shoot wider. We wanted to go as wide as we could  its such a big story that we want to see St Petersberg and the locations as much as possible.

What about the scale of the production? The speaking cast was 130, but the biggest days would involve 400-500 extras. There was a huge logistical and filming crew too  and over 220 locations. We were in Russia for about three and a half weeks, Latvia for three weeks and Lithuania for the rest of the six month shoot.

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TS Govt reduces Property Tax in GHMC area

Hyderabad, Jan 5 (INN): The Telangana Government on Tuesday issued orders authorising the GHMC Commissioner & Special Officer for exemption of Property Tax to a particular category of residential buildings.



As per GO.MS.No. 6 issued by the Municipal Administration & Urban Development Department on Tuesday, any residential building occupied by the owner, wherein the Annual Rental Value does not exceed Rs 4,100/- (i.e. Rs 1200/- Property Tax per annum) would be given Property Tax exemption. However, the beneficiaries would have to pay a nominal amount of Rs. 101/- per annum towards Property Tax.



In its order, the State Government clarified that it would not compensate to the GHMC for the above exemption of Property Tax.









News Posted: 5 January, 2016








IAS officers are acting like KCR's slaves: Uttam

Hyderabad, Jan 5 (INN): Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Tuesday accused the IAS officers of acting like the slaves of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.



Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan here, Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the IAS officers, including Chief Secretary Dr. Rajiv Sharma, were following orders of KCR without even considering their implications. He said several wrong decisions taken by KCR were blindly implemented by the bureaucrats. He said that the officials would be in a soup if KCR's actions are challenged in a court of law. He said that the IAS officials should remain neutral without showing any inclination towards any party in power.



Condemning the State Government for reducing the time period to conduct GHMC elections, the Congress chief said that the amendment in GHMC Act was a proof that KCR was afraid of losing civic polls and therefore, he wants to deny opposition parties the opportunity to approach the voters. He also alleged that the GHMC Commissioner has already provided the list of reserved wards to TRS and MIM which prompted them to take up massive hoarding campaigns. He said TRS-MIM combine would not have launched the publicity campaign without having the exact details of election schedule. He also accused the TRS Government of taking credit for the schemes initiated by the previous Conress regime.



Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the Congress party would lay 100-feet roads parallel to Musi River. He said that the sops announced by KCR for Hyderabad residents were aimed at luring voters during GHMC polls.









News Posted: 5 January, 2016








PM Modi to visit Telangana in February

Hyderabad, Jan 5 (INN): Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Telangana State in the first week of February. This will be first ever visit of the Prime Minister after formation of new State.



Addressing a press conference at State BJP Headquarters here on Tuesday, Telangana BJP president G. Kishan Reddy informed that the Prime Minister would visit Karimnagar district to lay the foundation stone for 4000 MW NTPC power project.



Kishan Reddy accused the TRS Government of depriving the opposition parties their right to approach the voters by reducing the poll process time. He said that the TRS and MIM have a hatched a conspiracy to win GHMC elections through dubious means. He said while the delimitation of wards was done in Darulsalaam, TRS has turned the Secretariat into Telangana Bhavan. He sought clarification on why only 300 voters were removed from Bahadurpura while lakhs of names were deleted in Sanathnagar Assembly constituency.









News Posted: 5 January, 2016








Talasani defends reduction in GHMC polls duration

Hyderabad, Jan 5 (INN): Commercial Taxes Minsiter Talasani Srinivas Yadav has strongly defended the amendment in GHMC Act aimed at reducing the election process to 15 days.



Speaking to media persons at the State Secretariat here on Tuesday, Talasani said that the change in duration for election process was a routine affair. He said that the State Government plans to complete the election process by January 31, as directed the Hyderabad High Court. Therefore, he said amendment in the GHMC Act was essential to complete the entire process in 15 days from the date of notification. However, he said that the opposition parties have been criticising the decision only to politicse the issue as they fear that they would be rejected by the people in GHMC elections.



Talasani also claimed that the State Government was not interfering in the election process and ward reservation was done by the State Election Commission. He said that the opposition parties were unable to digest the rising popularity of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao in Hyderabad.









News Posted: 5 January, 2016








Kalayna Lakshmi benifits will be extended: KCR

Hyderabad, Jan 5 (INN): Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Tuesday announced that the Kalyana Lakshmi and Shaadi Mubarak scheme would be extended to all White Ration Card holders from March this year.



The Chief Minister was addressing a meeting after dedicating the Kakatiya Thermal Power Project Stage-II Chelpur village of Warangal district to the nation.



The Chief Minister said that presently the Kalyana Lakshmi scheme of giving Rs. 51,000 cash at the time of marriage was confined to SC and ST girls. He said other sections of the society including Backward Classes would be included in the scheme from March onwards.



The Chief Minister also promised to reguralise the services of contract junior lineman working with electricity department on immediate basis. Further, he said that the pay scales of outsourcing employees in the electricity department would be increased. He assured that he would sign the related files immediately after reaching Hyderabad.



KCR said that the TRS Government has overcome the power shortage within a short time. He also listed out other schemes being implemented by his government.



The function was attended by Assembly Speaker S. Madhusudan Chary, Deputy CM Kadiyam Srihari, Ministers Jagadish Reddy, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and Ajmeera Chandulal, MLAs T. Rajaiah and Konda Surekha, MPs P. Dayakar, Vinod Kumar and Seetharam Naik, Telangana GENCO CM Prabhakar Rao and others.









News Posted: 5 January, 2016








YS Jagan Meets Dasari: What's up?

In a surprising development, YSR Congress party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy on Tuesday went to Dasari Narayana Rao's home to meet the veteran director cum politician.



Jagan along with senior leaders of the party, went to the residence of Dasari and invited him to join the party. Dasari apparently responded positively and speaking to media he hailed YS Jagan as eligible leader.



The former union minister showered praise on YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and described him as a good leader who works tirelessly for the development of the people of the State. Dasari speaking to media said he had excellent relationship with the family of late Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.



However, Jagan's meeting with Dasari Narayana Rao raised many an eyebrow in the media and political circles. As per reports Jagan is planning to increase his party strength among Kapu voters and believes that inclusion of Dasari who hails from same community will help him in 2019 elections.









News Posted: 5 January, 2016








Neighbors join to fight terrorism

2015-12-17 10:47

China and Kyrgyzstan vowed on Wednesday to work together to combat terrorism, a mutual concern of the two neighbors.

Premier Li Keqiang and Kyrgyzstani Prime Minister Temir Sariyev made the remarks when they met in Beijing.

"Against the background of the complex and severe security situation in the region and around the globe, China and Kyrgyzstan have to strengthen law enforcement and security cooperation, handle threats from terrorism together and combat organized cross-border crime," Li said.

In a joint statement issued later, the two nations vowed to combat the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism, "including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement". The statement said Kyrgyzstan has suggested "transferring China's advanced production capacity to the country".

"China is willing to use its advanced production capacity to help Kyrgyzstan to build a relatively complete industry system," said Gui Congyou, director of the Department of European-Central Asian Affairs under the Foreign Ministry, adding that the production capacity to be transferred to Kyrgyzstan will be "advanced and environmentally friendly".

Li also called on Wednesday for an acceleration of infrastructure cooperation and the resumption at an early date of the working group meeting for the railway linking China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a key international corridor in the region that has been discussed for years.

Sariyev said his country expects Chinese investment in various sectors and will integrate the national development strategies of the two countries. He also promised to implement the railway link project as soon as possible.

lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn

Xi calls for more high-tech cooperation

Zhao Huanxin and Zhang Yunbi

President Xi Jinping called for greater cooperation in high and cutting-edge technologies when he met the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation government heads on Wednesday in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

"Increased cooperation should be encouraged and facilitated among small and medium-sized enterprises of the SCO countries," Xi said.

Xi also suggested that "the research on measures to boost visits should be geared up" to fully tap into the potential of cooperation at the people-to-people level. The president spoke further about working on dovetailing the Silk Road Economic Belt and Eurasian Economic Union, as well as the link between the Belt and respective development strategies of the SCO.

Countries should coordinate industrial adjustment, give full play to complementary economic strengths and seek new highlights for growth for multilateral cooperation, Xi said.
The official Twitter account of the Australian navy's senior adviser on Islamic affairs has been shut down, just days after an anti-Islamic political party complained about tweets that were critical of the party.

Captain Mona Shindy, who also heads the navy's guided missile frigate system program office in Canberra, is a 26-year veteran and until recently tweeted from the @navyislamic Twitter account.

The account disappeared some time before Christmas, days after the Australian Liberty Alliance said it had written to the Chief of Defence complaining of its content.

The ALA took issue with a tweet from the account which said, "Real shame to see these extreme ill informed fringe groups threatening #community #cohesion. #auspol #teamhumanrace".
China said on Tuesday it would allow transit stops in Taiwan for its citizens travelling from three Chinese cities, allowing people from the mainland to travel on from the island for the first time.

The change is another step towards normalising travel arrangements between the two sides which have enjoyed increasingly close business ties over recent years, and follows the launch last week of their first telephone hotline.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou wave to the media at the Shangri-la Hotel in Singapore in November 2015. Credit:AP

It comes days before Taiwan goes to the polls for elections likely to put into power a political party that Beijing distrusts.

Up to now, mainland citizens have been allowed to travel to Taiwan but are not allowed to travel on from there to another destination. Airlines from both sides operate between the mainland and Taiwan.
In his very first week as vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor Brian Schmidt's first official duty was to welcome some of the undergraduates most eager to secure a place at the ANU.

The ANU has made more than 2150 early offers to the nation's top year 12 graduates  including more than 600 ACT school-leavers.

Newly appointed vice-chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt meets new ANU students, from left, Hannah Chan, Therese McMahon and Callum Sambridge. Credit:Graham Tidy

Three of them, Callum Sambridge, Hannah Chan, and Therese McMahon, have used their high Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks to lock in a place at the ANU ahead of their peers who await the main round of offers on January 20.

The Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist admitted he was experiencing a few of those first-week jitters that will be felt across campus when the academic year begins in six weeks.
Malaysia Airlines has retained an unusual ban on checked luggage for its Kuala Lumpur flights to Amsterdam and Paris but is now allowing passengers on its London-bound flights on the larger A380 aircraft to bring their normal checked baggage allowance.

The airline on Tuesday said passengers flying between Kuala Lumpur and Europe, now in the middle of the cold northern winter, would be limited to just 7 kilograms of carry-on luggage in economy class and 14 kilograms in business and first class with no allowance to check any bags on the aircraft. It cited strong headwinds and a longer flight path for its decision.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. Credit:AP

The carrier, which lost two Boeing 777 aircraft in separate incidents in 2014, has been flying a roundabout route to Europe over Egypt rather than Iran since October. At the time, European regulators advised Russian missiles aimed at Syria had been fired from the Caspian Sea and could be flying below an air corridor over Iran that has been used heavily over the past year as carriers stopped flying over Syria and Iraq.

Malaysia Airlines decided to switch is flight path as a result, but most other carriers, including Qantas, did not do so, taking into account the much lower-altitude nature of the Russian missiles. Malaysia Airlines, however, had lost MH17 in 2014 when it was shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine believed to have been fired by Russian separatists.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull promised a new and optimistic style of politics on taking office in September. The statement of ministerial standards he signed his name to soon afterwards was meant not just as a rule book for ministers but as a signal to the public of his serious intent.

But it also left a lot of wriggle room, on interpretation of its eight sections and 51 sub-clauses, and on what should be done if the high standards it sets are found to have been breached.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former frontbencher Mal Brough. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Here the relevant clause is 7.2 under "Implementation": "Ministers will be required to resign if convicted of a criminal offence, and may be required to resign if the Prime Minister is satisfied that they have breached or failed to comply with these Standards in a substantive and material manner".

The italics, added by the Herald, emphasise the discretion left to the Prime Minister in enforcing these standards. In the week between Christmas and New Year he belatedly forced Mal Brough to step aside as Special Minister of State while the Australian Federal Police completes its investigation into aspects of Mr Brough's alleged involvement in the sordid affair which led to the political demise of the former Labor speaker Peter Slipper.
It's becoming difficult to see movies other than Star Wars. Playing on a record 941 Australian screens, The Force Awakens is squeezing other films out. Want to see a different film? You'd better be quick. Since December, other films have been on screens for mere days, as The Force and The Force in 3D monopolise real estate and obliterate potential competition.

Fortunately, many filmgoers I know don't seem to want to watch other films. Some have seen The Force Awakens repeatedly. Others who aren't that interested feel they have to see it to find out what everyone else is talking about.

It isn't what we were told would happen.

Ten years ago, in an award-winning book titled The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, the editor of Wired magazine Chris Anderson argued that blockbusters were on the way out. In their place would be "a market of multitudes". There would still be big sellers, of course, but beyond them would be an ever-growing tail of niche products that would do surprisingly well, "shattering the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards".
How can the Prime Minister's words now be treated seriously when a key minister's default position on a woman who crosses him is that her views are those of a "mad witch"? What hope is there when men of such antiquated views occupy positions of power in Turnbull's government?

Try as they might to hide behind the excuse that the use of the word "witch" amounts to nothing more than a robust sledge, the apologists' days are numbered. Having drawn a nexus between male disrespect for women and the epidemic of violence, the Prime Minister cannot maintain the position that Dutton's comments were merely inappropriate. If he is genuine when he says only cultural change can end the violence, he must either sack Dutton or force him to deliver an apology that acknowledges the harm his words have done to the anti-violence campaign.

If the Prime Minister chooses neither of these courses of action, he faces being pilloried by the opposition.

"If little boys see their fathers disrespecting their mothers, they will grow up to disrespect their partners. If they see their mothers respected, they will respect their sisters." So said Malcolm Turnbull on White Ribbon Day. How can those words carry any weight when one of his ministers fosters the malicious idea among his colleagues that a non-compliant woman should be deemed a "mad witch"?

That Maiden appears to have forgiven Dutton for his comments should not and does not lessen the significance of the words or their implications for the government. How she responds emotionally might be her prerogative, but it has little bearing on any objective judgment, mine or the community's, on Dutton's words. As with the "ditch the witch" posters in 2011, we know there can be no escaping the implications for gender relations of a public figure calling a woman a witch. It remains a black mark on Australian political and social history that Gillard was left to her own devices to decry the posters. How different history would look had Turnbull stood with the prime minister, with both sides of politics rising in the House of Representatives to decry the posters and their dangerous implications for women. It was an opportunity lost.
But for the sake of argument, let's say women do use "sorry" and "just" more than men. If this is the case, I'd argue that they are doing so not because they are carelessly conforming to gendered expectations to the detriment of their careers but because they've learnt through trial and error that using speech this way is ultimately more effective.

In the past couple of years, speech and language patterns associated with women have been subject to increased and unwarranted scrutiny: not just those "undermining" words, but also upspeak (a rising intonation at the end of a sentence) and vocal fry (an unnaturally low, creaky voice). But I'm not even convinced that women use these modes of speaking more than men do. In a great piece for New York magazine's blog The Cut that defends these ways of speaking, Ann Friedman quotes linguist Debbie Cameron who notes, "We've also learnt that some of the most enduring beliefs about the way women talk are not just over-generalisations, they are  to put it bluntly  lies." It's also worth noting that  as Cameron did in a blog post last week responding to Just Not Sorry  often those who come out most strongly against women's use of these speech patterns are business experts "peddling advice to women", not linguists.

There's a new plug-in for Gmail called Just Not Sorry, which is currently making the media rounds. The app is aimed at women who in their emails use what its creator, Cyrus Innovation chief executive Tami Reiss, calls "undermining words", such as "sorry" and "just". When a user types such words, they get underlined in red as if they were misspelled. In a post on Medium , Reiss frames this as a service to women leaders, because such words sabotage their authority.

In her book, Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work, linguist Deborah Tannen points out that at the outset, women are trapped in a double bind when it comes to expressing themselves at the office: they're seen as weak if they speak in a "feminine" way but as domineering and even crazy if they speak in a "masculine" way. If women "speak in the styles that are effective when used by men  being assertive, sounding sure of themselves, talking up what they have done to make sure they get credit for it  they run the risk that everyone runs if they do not fit their culture's expectations for appropriate behaviour: they will not be liked and may even be seen as having psychological problems," Tannen writes. Neither method seems to be a guarantee of getting women the authority they desire.

Because we're already fighting against so many cultural assumptions, in many instances, women have discovered that they are more respected and successful when they conform to those gendered expectations. In Talking from 9 to 5, Tannen offers the example of a doctor who is one of the few women in her specialty. At first, this surgeon tried mimicking the military-style order barking of the male surgeons who trained her. But that approach backfired  none of the nurses would listen to her. So she changed her way of speaking, because she found, "if you try to be authoritarian, like many of your male colleagues are, it won't work with most nurses, but if you ally yourself with them and respect them as professional colleagues, they will be your best allies."

What Just Not Sorry also glosses over is language's highly contextual nature. What is appropriate, effective language when writing to a boss might not work with a subordinate; you wouldn't use the same tone or wording when emailing a close colleague as you would to a new intern; you might not even use the same style of writing when communicating with a woman colleague as with a man. It's a mistake to assume that every style of speech will be interpreted in the same way by different groups of people.

An oft-cited example is a study done by linguist Cynthia McLemore on Texas sorority girls. While young women are often told that upspeak undermines their authority, these sorority sisters used upspeak to cement their authority. As Douglas Quenqua put it in The New York Times, senior members of the sorority, "used uptalk to make junior members feel obligated to carry out new tasks".

Tannen addresses the word "sorry" specifically, which she says is often useful as a "conversational smoother"  making the other participant feel at ease  an approach that has its own logic. As she writes, "For many women, and a fair number of men, saying 'I'm sorry' isn't literally an apology; it's a ritual way of restoring balance to a conversation."
Tarantino is famed for using graphic violence in his films, so it should come as no surprise one of his last projects could be a "really, really scary horror film".

Quentin Tarantino on the set of The Hateful Eight , with cast members including Kurt Russell, centre, and Tim Roth, right.

The 52-year-old has covered a great deal of cinematic ground, creating martial arts film Kill Bill, WWII drama Inglourious Basterds and Western films Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight.

Quentin Tarantino has always said he'll call it a day when he reaches 10 films, and with just two more to go, the famous director is considering his options.

"There is not a genre left where I have that same burning desire I had to do a World War II movie or a martial arts movie," Tarantino told Time Out New York. "I think maybe the one genre left might be a 1930s gangster movie, that kind of John Dillinger thing."

Quentin Tarantino on the set of The Hateful Eight.

"I'm interested in doing something contemporary, where I can have a character who gets in a car and turns on the radio, so I can have a cool driving montage.

"And if I had all the time in the world, I would love to make a really, really scary horror film, like The Exorcist. But I don't know if me taking my sense of humour and putting it in the back seat just to hit a tone of dread from beginning to end is the best use of my talents or my time."

The interview comes ahead of the release of Tarantino's latest film, The Hateful Eight, which will see the director head to Australia later this month for the Sydney premiere and a fan event in Melbourne.
Australian music mogul and musical impresario Robert Stigwood, who managed the Bee Gees and produced musicals including Grease and Saturday Night Fever, has died aged 81.

Stigwood has been remembered as a great showman and creative genius.

He who managed the Bee Gees at the height of their fame and guided musician Eric Clapton's successful solo career while producing musicals for the stage, has died aged 81, friends said on Tuesday.

The announcement of his death was made on Facebook by Spencer Gibb, a son of Bee Gees' band member Robin Gibb.
Tradition, and dealing with inevitable change. That's what Fiddler on the Roof is really about, says Roger Hodgman, the director of Melbourne's newly opened musical.

One of the world's most beloved productions, Fiddler on the Roof, starring Anthony Warlow, Sigrid Thornton, Lior and Mark Mitchell opened at the Princess Theatre on Tuesday night.

The new Melbourne production of Fiddler on the Roof, starring Anthony Warlow and Sigrid Thornton. Credit:Adrianne Harrowfield

While the story written by Joseph Stein about a Russian milkman trying to coerce the oldest of his five daughters, Tzeitel, into an arranged marriage, is somewhat antiquated  it's set in a Jewish village in 1905  the underlying themes of the tensions brought about by change and the fraught task of trying to hang onto old customs are perennial concerns. The musical's enduring appeal can be explained by the timelessness of the story, says Hodgman.

"Often you find with musicals there's some great songs and great music and quite often the book, the libretto isn't quite so good, but this book is great, we've had quite a lot of fun doing it," he says.
The South Australian fishing town of Port Lincoln has rallied around a young mother after her husband deliberately drove his car off a wharf killing himself and their two young boys.

Police on Tuesday released photos of the Little family a day after Damien Little and his sons, Koda, four, and Hunter, nine months, were pulled from the water off a Port Lincoln wharf on the Eyre Peninsula.

Mr Little deliberately drove the family station wagon off the wharf and into 30-metre-deep water in a murder-suicide bid.

His family has now revealed the 34-year-old had suffered with mental health issues for the past three years.
The Facebook event, Remember Cole Miller, was only created on Monday night but more than 2400 people had already RSVP'd by Tuesday morning.

In a show of support very similar to that of a rally for Allison Baden-Clay last month, a Gold Coast woman is urging Queenslanders to head to King George Square on Monday to march for the 18-year-old.

"Lets (sic) march together in his name and raise our voices together to put a stop to these coward punches," the event description read.

Boxer and anti-violence campaigner Danny Green, pictured with one-punch victim Cole Miller. The pair met while Miller was on a water polo trip to Perth. Credit:Facebook

"Please, do it for Cole, his family and the other victims of the coward one punch."

The rally's organiser, 18-year-old Paris Woods, said she had no connection to Mr Miller or his family but was "deeply saddened" by news of the talented water polo player's death.

"Basically I just want people to come out and remember, not only Cole, but the other people who have been victims to one-punch fatalities and just raise awareness as well as remember Cole," the trainee flight attendant said.
A would-be-nurse is feeling humiliated after Victoria University made her an offer for a place in an undergraduate degree but then withdrew it, saying it was a "system error".

After volunteering in India at a women's and children organisation last year, all Amanda Dumesny, 29, wanted to do was learn new skills that would "help save some lives".

Since travelling to India, Amanda Dumesny wanted to become a nurse and help save lives. Credit:Facebook

That's why the former account manager got excited when she received an email from Victoria University on Christmas Eve telling her she had been accepted into the College of Health and Biomedicine.

But her happiness turned to anger when she got another email on Monday telling her the offer had been made in error.
Hand lines, Mr Sullivan said, are containment lines of clear earth that aim to work as a barrier to stop a fire front from spreading. "So we'll do a line by hand, so we'll basically cut a line down to a mineral edge. It's basically like a walking track," he said. And it's a slow process. It took about a day's worth of work to cut a kilometre of line on a 30 degree slope. "I'm looking up to where we might have to go tomorrow and it's looking at closer to 40 degrees," Mr Sullivan said. And they do this laden with about 25 kilograms of gear, including up to 10 litres of drinking water, hand tools and chainsaws.

It's the first time the crew had worked in the state's south-west, but it's not Mr Sullivan's first Aussie fire. His maiden voyage across the Tasman was in 2003 for what was then the largest fires since the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. Eighty seven fires started by lightning in the state's High Country, eight of which joined together to burn more than 13,000 kilometres over 59 days. Forty-one homes were lost and 9000 livestock were killed. The team was based at Swifts Creek and the friendships forged with Australian firefighters there, Mr Sullivan said, have lasted for the decade or so that followed at fronts in Australia, the United States and Canada. "There's always a good bit of banter, but we do have a good relationship," Mr Sullivan said. His crew are expected to work on the Wye River-Jamieson Track fire for the next fortnight before they're relieved by another Kiwi contingent.

"We're doing as much as we can while the weather is mild because it's going to get hotter, isn't it?" he said. "Fire is fire and whether it's 250 hectares or 2000, I only need to look after one little section of it and as long as I do that job then that's good." The fire is not currently posing a threat to local communities and this weekend's Lorne Pier to Pub swimming event is going ahead. Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Chris Godfred says the weather will warm up over the weekend. "We're looking at pretty mild conditions, from low 20s on Saturday, and high 20s to early 30s on Sunday," he told AAP on Tuesday.
The pair, who the state government said were of no risk to the public, fled on New Year's Eve but were later returned to the facility.

Labor MP Dave Kelly has backed the concerns of residents who fear the inmates at Bennett Brook Disability Justice Centre pose a danger to the community.

A disability justice centre in Perth should be closed for a full security review following the escape of two inmates, the state opposition says.

One was caught by police and the other was brought back by his parents.

Mr Kelly and federal member for Perth Alannah MacTiernan joined residents on Monday to also demand more transparency about the facility, which they say should be housed away from residents.

"People aren't happy that the centre's there. People are very unhappy that it seems so easy for people to be able to escape," Mr Kelly said.

He called for the three current residents to be moved out and the centre closed until a complete security audit was completed.

The centre houses people who have been accused, but not convicted, of a crime and have been deemed unfit to plead because of their disability.
Shires in the state's Goldfields and Mid West regions could be competing to join a national cashless welfare trial, after an east Kimberley community declined to take part.

The trial, which aims to combat substance abuse and gambling, would see 80 per cent of a person's welfare payment going on a debit card that will work anywhere but ATMs, bottle shops and gambling houses.

Under the trial, more than 80 per cent of welfare payments will be quarantined on a Visa card that will not work at ATMs, bottle shops or casinos.

Two of three trial sites have been determined, the first being Ceduna, South Australia and the second East Kimberley  including Kununurra and Wyndham, though Halls Creek late last year declined the offer to join in.
"When these things happen in Perth there isn't any one place that can help," she says. Sarah Kelly in the courtyard of the new home she shares with her two boys, a previously barren space made into a garden by supportive friends. "You spend a year driving around trying to contact people in all different areas. "I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I didn't sleep at all, I didn't eat; my phone was constantly ringing with police and prosecutors and dealing with lawyers. "I was depressed ... stressed about going out in public with the damage to my face; and seeing him in court was very intimidating.

"You are left hanging and reliving the nightmare over and over and you can't really move on with your life." Lawyer Shirley McMurdo, who has spent 25 years in diverse areas of legal practice, says her newly-launched Domestic Violence Legal Clinic in Morley, an outreach arm of her existing firm, will be the first service in Australia to charge clients on a sliding scale according to income. It will be a "one-stop shop" for legal work including restraining orders, custody and parenting arrangements, property settlements and compensation claims  but will also manage referrals to services such as financial counselling and crisis accommodation. Ms McMurdo said a recent five-year stint working in affordable legal clinics in Midland and Perth showed her the system is failing those who need it most. She says one barrier is fees as lawyers usually cost upwards of $400 per hour and domestic violence victims' assets are often tied up in mortgages and trusts controlled by their partners.

Even if they can afford the fees many firms do not offer restraining orders, criminal injuries compensation, family court and property issues under one roof which forces victims to repeat their stories for every new lawyer, support service, doctor and psychologist  compounding their trauma. Ms McMurdo says crisis care lines cannot provide legal advice or representation, so many women, already mentally and physically worn out, are completing legal paperwork alone and remain unaware of their eligibility for compensation, which can mean bond on a new home. "For the victim the hardest thing is to pick up the phone," she says. "The last thing they want is more trauma with lawyers and cops. "We're trying to take that pain away, so they can come forward willingly, knowing they will go through a process with sensitivity and confidentiality.

"We are in it for the long haul." Ms McMurdo has a panel of barristers lined up to represent clients for reduced rates. She intends to keep detailed statistics for use in advocacy work and eventually expand interstate. Her existing practice will cover out-of-pocket costs and her support staffer, law and psychology student Lucette Combo-Matsiona, has taken a year off studying to volunteer by manning the phones and managing support service referrals. "We won't be making a lot of money," Ms McMurdo says. "I am 54  I have got to the stage in my life where I want more than that.

"This is what I have always wanted to do and I plan to do it for the next 20 years." Ms Kelly says the service will help women concentrate on recovery during legal proceedings that are often prolonged  a prospect impossible under the present system, she says. In the meantime, she urges women in violent circumstances to keep in constant contact with their support networks and to stay strong to see justice done. "You are not alone. There are thousands of women going through this," she said. "You need to [report] it, otherwise you might never get away."
Washington: Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump, who has remained atop the polls despite little advertising, is out with the first TV ad of his campaign, a 30-second spot that contains some specious footage of an illegal border crossing. The advert also doubles down on some of Mr Trump's more controversial proposals, including one to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the US.

The "Great Again" spot will begin airing on Tuesday in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire  with a $US1.1 million [$1.5 million] a week buy in Iowa and close to $US1 million in New Hampshire, Mr Trump's campaign said.

As with many aspects of the outspoken tycoon's presidential campaign, his first ad did not come without controversy.

US fact-checking site Politifact reported that footage in the ad, showing dozens of people streaming over a border, is not from the US-Mexico frontier, rather from a small Spanish community on mainland Morocco, called Melilla.
On Wednesday, Lee Bo, an editor at the publishing house, Mighty Current Media, whose wife is one of its three owners, became the latest to vanish. He was last seen leaving a warehouse in Hong Kong. On Saturday morning, he called his wife, Choi Ka Ping, from Shenzhen, across the border in the mainland, saying he was assisting in an investigation, according to Bei Ling, a writer based in the US who has been following the case and who talked to Ms Choi.

In the worst-case scenario, the five were kidnapped by emissaries of Beijing and are being held in mainland China, to suffocate their voices and ferret out their Chinese sources.

Hong Kong: The recent disappearance of five men tied to a publisher of provocative books about China's top leaders has alarmed many people in this semi-autonomous city, who fear that the historic agreement guaranteeing the former British colony its separate government and legal system may have been dealt a severe blow.

Mr Lee's disappearance came after the disappearance of four other men tied to Mighty Current and a bookstore it owns in Hong Kong, all of whom vanished in October. One, the co-owner Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, was last seen at his home at a resort in Thailand; the third co-owner, Lu Bo, vanished when he was in Shenzhen. Two employees, Zhang Zhiping and Lin Rongji, were also last seen in southern China in October, according to Mr Bei, local news media reports in Hong Kong and statements from human rights organisations.

Protesters hold photos of missing booksellers during a protest in Hong Kong on Sunday. Credit:AP

The cases, which appear to be related, have given rise to myriad theories. Mighty Current has written, published and marketed books highly critical of Chinese politicians, covering topics such as the sex lives of top leaders and corruption. The titles are banned in the mainland, where the news media and the publishing industry are tightly controlled by the governing Communist Party.

But in Hong Kong, where a broad range of civil liberties was guaranteed to last a half-century by the agreement that paved the way for Britain to return its former crown colony to China in 1997, publishing such books is not only legal but it is also a thriving business catering to visitors from the mainland. While there is no proof that the five were spirited away by the Chinese authorities, the nature of the books they sold has led many to suspect that the continuing crackdown on civil society in mainland China is spreading into Hong Kong and has prompted the Chinese authorities to illegally apprehend Mr Lee, a native of the city.

"It is very concerning for most Hong Kong people because this sort of stuff is just not supposed to happen in Hong Kong," said Dennis Kwok, a prominent lawyer and a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. "If it is confirmed that officials are involved, that would make the case even worse."
Just last year, a man who walked into a church with a gun caused untold suffering in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine were killed - not to mention a divisive debate over whether the Confederate flag should be removed from the grounds of South Carolina's statehouse.

But when a man with a semi-automatic assault rifle walked into Larry Wright's Heal the Land Outreach Ministries in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on New Year's Eve, the outcome was very different.

As about 60 of Wright's flock, present for the final prayer service of 2015, watched, the pastor - a 57-year-old city council member and military veteran, according to the Fayetteville Observer - started with a simple question: "Can I help you?''

What happened next depended on the man. Was he here to rob? To make a point about gun control? To commit another mass shooting?
The full creative team has been announced for the Broadway premiere of Becky Mode's solo comedy, Fully Committed. Helmed by Pitch Perfect and Avenue Q director Jason Moore, the production will star five-time Modern Family Emmy nominee Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

The creative team will be made up of Derek McLane (scenic design), Sarah Laux (costume design), Ben Stanton (lighting design), and Jill BC Du Boff (sound design).

Ferguson will play more than 40 characters in the comedy, which follows a day in the life of Sam, a reservation-line receptionist at one of New York's trendiest restaurants. The play, inspired by characters Mode created with Mark Setlock (who originated the role), was first presented at the Vineyard Theatre in 1999, transferring to the Cherry Lane Theatre and running for nearly 700 performances.

Fully Committed begins performances Saturday, April 2, and opens Monday, April 25. The limited engagement runs through July 24. This marks Ferguson's return to Broadway for the first time since originating the role of Leaf Coneybear in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in 2005. Barbara Whitman and Patrick Catullo serve as producers.

For tickets and more information, click here.
LAS VEGAS -- January 4, 2015: UIEvolution Inc., a global leader in highly scalable connected device software platforms for the automotive, hotel and cruise industries, today announced at the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that its industry-leading middleware platform, UIEngine and development tools now support SmartDeviceLink (SDL), allowing manufacturers and third-party developers an unparalleled ability to support both native and SDL-based connected car applications.

MORE INFO The Best Car Research and Buyer's Guide

SDL is an open source technology set to standardize and make consistent the delivery of applications to the many in-vehicle interfaces existing in the automotive vertical today. SDL enables drivers to personalize their in-vehicle app experience. It also allows automakers to accelerate smartphone app integration while retaining their own brand identity, and app developers to innovate and deliver unique brand experiences.

We are pleased to be a part of the first open solution for integrating applications into infotainment and connected car platforms, said Chris Ruff, CEO and President of UIEvolution, Inc. With strong automotive industry momentum behind new standards like SDL that treat applications equally regardless of phone operating systems and hardware, consumers, for the first time, will benefit from a seamless, integrated user experience and automotive manufacturers wont have to cede control to consumer brands like Google and Apple.

Since 2011, UIEvolutions UIEngine and UIEngine Link have been installed globally on over 5 million vehicles, making it a leader in native connected car applications. With the addition of SDL to the platform, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), vehicle infotainment manufacturers and mobile phone application developers will have a new single solution for safely extending their Android and iOS mobile applications into the connected car ecosystem.

By integrating SDL support into the UIEngine technology, certified SDL head unit software will be integrated, optimized and tested for each OEM and infotainment manufacturer with customizable user experience screens. UIEvolution will also create a SDL Software Development Kit and an OEM-specific infotainment head unit emulator that includes OEM templates and Bluetooth, USB and Wi-Fi transports for debugging SDL applications with no additional hardware needed. UIEvolutions UIEngine and SDL products are anchored by the companys UIE CloudConnectTM, a cloud-based IVI platform that seamlessly links and delivers content and services from the web to the vehicle.

UIEvolution continues to work closely with Livio, a wholly owned Ford subsidiary, and other companies, to help manage the open source project. It announced support for SDL at TU-Automotive Detroit 2015 and continues to work with Livio, Ford and other industry leaders on acceleration toward a standardized way for drivers to interact with smartphone applications across vehicle brands.

UIEvolution will showcase its new SDL technology during International CES 2016 in the Livio booth located at LVCC North Hall, Booth 4230 and in their Demo Suite at The Palazzo Las Vegas. It will also host a SDL event on January 6, 2016 from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. PST at the LVCC, North Hall, Room N-256.

About UIEvolution

UIEvolution is a vertical cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider specializing in highly scalable connected device software and solutions across a broad range of markets, including Automotive, Cruise, Hotel, Retail and more. We believe that technology and connectivity should enhance and never distract from life experiences. From our inception in 2000, we have said - The Users Experience Matters. And, now for nearly 15 years we have made software and provided services that deliver this vision. Headquartered in Seattle with offices in Tokyo and Detroit, UIEvolution has a proven track record with clients like Toyota, Lexus, DIRECTV, Princess Cruises, Samsung, AT&T, Holland America Lines, Microsoft, Disney, Mitsubishi and Panasonic. uievolution
The Duggar familyalong with friends like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabeehave been very hesitant to say anything critical about Josh Duggar, who, over the past year, admitted to sexually molesting his younger sisters, suffering from a porn addiction, and signing up for the cheating website Ashley Madison, all while serving as the executive director of the conservative Christian group the Family Research Council, which lobbies for traditional family values and has been labeled a homophobic hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But now in a New Years blog post, his cousin Amy King (formerly Amy Duggar) shared some seriously harsh reflections about how his indiscretions affected her 2015.

Calling her past year an emotional rollercoaster, Amy recounted how her then-boyfriend Dillon King was hit by a drunk driver, his marriage proposal to her a few months later, and the moment when she first heard about her cousin Joshs troubles while she was getting fitted for her wedding dress.

September was a doozie! Life was just wonderfuldrum roll pleaseuntil one of my family members made some terrible confessions, she wrote. I knew nothing of the molestation charges, and I had no idea what the Ashley Madison site even was? I was completely shocked just like the rest of the world.

A million questions flooded my mind, she added, before dropping a bomb on her cousin. Rage came over me, sadness crept in, and reality sat in that the person I had known my entire life turned out to be a fraud, and a complete stranger. Ive always heard that there were people in this world that lived a double life, but I never thought that someone so close to home would be living a lie.

Despite her disappointment in Josh, Amy apparently remains close to his wife, Anna Duggar, who has stuck by his side despite everything he has put her through. Discussing her September wedding, Amy wrote, Everyone we knew and loved attended including Anna Duggar. Her attendance really touched me, after all she has and still is going through she wanted to be there for our special day.

Finally, in a list of things she has learned over the past year, Amy added this note about Joshs wife: Anna and I have gotten a lot closer this year, Im grateful for that family love/friendship.

She may not be one of the 19 Kids and Counting on the Duggar family reality show, but Amy has appeared on the program, which chronicled her aspiring country music career. Back in October, she told Us magazine that she had spoken to Anna Duggar and she was surprisingly good with the situation. Shes strong, Amy said. I wouldnt be handling it quite the same way."

Then, in an Instagram post last month, Amy responded to a follower who asked how she can stay so positive in the midst of the controversy. I have my faith in God, she wrote. The whole entire family is crushed, Im mentally worn out! My savior is my everlasting rock and what someone else does, and the choices that someone else makes (even though it makes me furious) it doesnt fall on me, on my future marriage or my personal relationship with Christ.

But the latest blog post is the first time she denounced her cousins actions so directly. It has now been more than four months since the Duggar family said in a statement that Josh had checked himself into a long-term treatment center. And there has been no official news from the family about his progress since.

Just this past week, however, People magazine reported that Anna had traveled from her home in Arkansas to the rehab center in Illinois to visit Josh for Christmas, a move that further signals they will not be separating any time soon.
Iranian officials were outraged by Saudi Arabias execution of a prominent Shiite clericand that may be exactly the response the Saudi monarchy was hoping for.

Former U.S. officials and Middle East analysts told The Daily Beast that its inconceivable that Riyadh could not have known that killing Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent critic of the royal family and an icon to Shiite protesters across the Persian Gulf region during the Arab Spring uprisings, would not draw condemnation and potentially a violent response.

The Saudis certainly were aware this was going to have some degree of reaction, Matthew McInnis, a former Pentagon analyst and now a Middle East expert and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Beast.

Nimrs death prompted protesters to storm the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which led to Saudi Arabia severing diplomatic ties with their Persian rivals.

Mohammed bin Nayef, Saudi Arabias crown prince and interior minister and a close ally of Washington, oversaw the execution, so it couldnt have come as much of a surprise to the Obama administration. But the Saudis had threatened to kill Nimr before, accusing him of promoting Iranian meddling in the country, and had always backed down. So, why follow through now?

The decision comes at a moment when the Saudis have several reasons to feel vulnerable to rising Iranian influenceboth in their country and across the regionand may not think the U.S. is doing enough to curb it.

Its not just that Iran has approached more normal relations with Europe and the United States following a landmark deal to curb Irans nuclear weapons ambitions. In Yemen, Saudi forces are fighting Iranian-backed militants in what is frequently seen as a proxy war.

And in Iraq and Syria, the Iranians are also playing an important role in the U.S.-led fight against ISIS. Iranian-backed Shiite militias have been a key fighting force in several key battles in Iraq. Tehran has forged an alliance with Moscow that is likely to help shape the political future of Syria and its embattled president, Bashar al-Assad.

The Saudis see no good coming from the rise of Iran as a regional power.

Theyre in this very insecure period, McCinnis said. Viewed through that lens, the execution of Nimr, after years of threats, could be read as a demonstration of strength.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East analyst at the Brookings Institution, agreed that the execution of Nimr was meant in part to send a signal to Tehran.

I suspect they wanted an Iranian reaction. Salman is a risk taker, Riedel said, referring to the Saudi king. Riedel noted that the Saudi monarchy was also making clear to its own citizens that it wouldnt tolerate any internal political dissent fomented by Iran.

Inciting a diplomatic rift also may play into Riyadhs long-term strategy of undermining Tehran.

Saudi has long opposed diplomatic initiativesbe it in Syria or on the nuclear issuethat Iran participated in and that risked normalizing Irans regional role and influence, Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, told The Daily Beast. From the Saudi perspective, geopolitical trends in the region have gone against its interest for more than a decade now, and the rise of Iranand the U.S. decision to negotiate and compromise with Iran over its nuclear programhas only added to the Saudi panic.

Parsi noted that Saudi Arabias severing of diplomatic ties with Iran gives the monarchy the perfect excuse to slow down, undermine, and possibly completely scuttle U.S.-led talks planned in Geneva later this month aimed at reaching a political settlement in the Syrian civil war. Saudi Arabia has been a reluctant partner in that effort and only joined, after threatening a boycott, if Iran was excluded, Parsi said.

Another unanswered question is what, if anything, the Obama administration may have done to deter the Saudis from executing Nimr and setting off a regional crisis.

Washington hadnt made a strong, public push to stop the execution. And the State Department hasnt condemned it, despite the fact that some European countries have done so.

On Saturday, State Department spokesperson John Kirby issued a statement that the United States was particularly concerned that the execution of prominent Shia cleric and political activist Nimr al-Nimr risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced.

If Washington tried more forcefully in private to get the Saudis to change course, that effort obviously failed.

The Saudis may also have been playing to a domestic audience. Nimr was just one of 47 men put to death, a fact that has been overshadowed in the dispute over him. Nearly all of them were Sunni jihadists, including a group that had plotted to overthrow the monarchy, on the orders of Osama bin Laden.

This was more for internal political reasons, it seems to me, Henri Barkey the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, told The Daily Beast. Killing Nimr provoked Iran, but it may also have placated supporters of those Sunni jihadists, who continue to pose a significant threat to internal security.

If [the Saudis] were trying to distract domestic attention from them by sacrificing a few Shia, including Nimr, theyve done a good job, Barkey said. They are more worried about Salafists [jihadists] at home than anything the Iranians can throw at them.
BURNS, Oregon  Driving through town, you dont get the sense that a group of gun-toting extremists, now calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedoms, have taken over a federal wildlife refuge 30 miles down the road.

Its a quiet town in the middle of the Oregon desert where locals seem unaffected by the sudden presence of national news media and FBI personnel. Aside from one set of signs on the highway going into Burns saying No Bundy Caliphate in Harney County, it appears to be business as usual.

An elderly man running the Elkhorn Club and Lindas Thai Room downtown feigned little interest in the militia occupation, but seemed happy to have three tables for customersall journalists.

Back at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a few families came to see what all the commotion was truly about.

Before a press conference by protesters started, a Chevy Suburban pulled into the press area. Two families brought their eight kids to the occupation site to see why their schools had been shut down for safety reasons.

Were just trying to find out whats happening, one of the moms said as her kids looked around at the reporters. I do feel like its starting to divide the community. We have a lot of really good friends that feel threatened. Theyve taken their families out of our community, theyve left town, and I dont understand.

The woman, who did not give her name, elaborated that her friends and others in the community who have relations to local law enforcement or who work for the government have received threatening calls and feel like theyre being followed.

They feel threatened by somebody, but thats what we dont know. Is it part of this group? Is it somebody who claims to be part of this group?

Upon arriving at the wildlife refuge, the parents said they dont feel that the group presents any dangers to the community, but they dont know whether they support their agenda or not.

Another group of ranchers and cowboys from the surrounding area came with a similar fascination. One of the men who lived down the road said the whole thing seems horrible and intrusive on the part of the militia.

Ammon Bundy, the groups dour leader, spouted the usual doomsday rhetoric about the government infringing on the rights of good people, while some of those locals stood in the background and listened.

Because we have allowed our federal government to step outside the bounds of the constitution, they have come down upon the people and they are now prosecuting them directly, Bundy said, referencing the Hammond ranchers who were sent back to prison for not serving enough time after being found guilty of setting fire to federal land next to their property.

Tune out Bundys extreme rhetoric and listen to the locals, youll find they share his distrust of the federal government but not his methods.

Most folks agree with the sentiment that the government has far exceeded their boundaries, and wed love to see a bunch of that rolled back, said a local cowboy named Pat. But I havent decided one way or another on the Bundys. Thats why were here right now. I do like though, that theyve brought this conversation to the forefront. Thats one positive thing.

Duane Freilino, a hunting guide from nearby Crane, said that he has to deal with local government agencies a lot with land-use permits and hunting rights.

A lot of the times, I dont agree with them, said Freilino. I wish they would do things differently, but thats where you have meetings and try and change the laws.
The Chinese navy has just commissioned a new high-tech spy shipat least its fourth since 1999.

The Type 815 surveillance vessel Neptune , featuring sensitive electronic listening devices, could help Beijing further improve its already impressive ability to gather intelligence on its rivals, in particular the U.S. Navy.

Chinas state media announced the Neptune s Dec. 26 commissioning two days after the ceremony, which reportedly took place at an undisclosed naval base on the South China Sea. Neptune is able to conduct continuous all-weather reconnaissance of various targets within a certain range, explained PLA Daily, the official publication of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army.

Like her sister vesselsone older ship dating to 1999, two newer ones that entered service in 2009 and mid-2015, plus at least one more Type 815 still under constructionNeptune is roughly 400 feet long. The ship boasts several large domes arranged along the superstructure that apparently house antennae for intercepting radar and radio signals broadcast by the military forces of potential enemies. Chinas intelligence analysts at sea and on land can then interpret the signals in order to determine the capabilities of other countries ships, planes, and military hardware.

Its vital work for an aspiring global power. And China has deployed its growing fleet of spy ships far and wide in recent years, paying particular attention to its geographically closest rival, Japan, and its most powerful potential enemy, the United States.

In mid-November, a Japanese air force P-3 reconnaissance plane reportedly spotted a Type 815 vessel snooping near the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, midway between Japan and China. Tokyo administers the Senkakus, but Beijing also claims them under a different name, the Diaoyus. In recent years, both countries have sent patrol ships into the mineral-rich waters surrounding the islands, resulting in some tense moments at sea.

Arguably more provocatively, in July 2014 Beijing sent a Type 815 to the waters off Hawaii, where more than 50 warships from the United States and other countries had assembled for the biennial RIMPAC exercise, the worlds biggest naval war game. The Pentagon had invited four Chinese vessels to play a small role in RIMPAC, but it had not invited the Type 815.

The U.S. Navys exercise planners took care to keep the invited Chinese ships on the periphery of the war game, where they couldnt directly observe the tactics and equipment of American and allied vessels. It was the Americans way of playing nice with the Chinese without also giving up military secrets. But the uninvited Chinese spy ship was bound by no rules or sense of decorum and apparently got close enough to the exercises main events to gather useful intelligence.

Still, every country has the right to sail the open seas, even near other countries war games and within their Exclusive Economic Zones, which extend 200 miles from a countrys coast and delineate the territory where a government has the sole right to fish and drill for oil.

The Chinese navy AGI ships presence is in accordance with international law regarding freedom of navigation, U.S. Navy spokesman Capt. Darryn James told the U.S. Naval Institute Presss news website, using the militarys three-letter code for a spy vessel. Barred from ejecting the Type 815, U.S. forces could only monitor the spy ship as she monitored them.

Unspecified Chinese shipsmost likely Type 815salso spied on the 2012 RIMPAC, the Pentagon reported in the 2013 edition (PDF) of its annual report on Beijings military. If U.S. planners had hoped that inviting the Chinese to the next edition of the biennial exercise in 2014 would dissuade Beijing from also sending a spy ship to the war game, the Americans would be sorely disappointed. The Chinese navy both accepted the 2014 invitation and deployed a Type 815 to Hawaii.

The Chinese spy ships activities wouldnt be so offensive to Washington if Beijing werent itself so sensitive about the activities of Americas own spy shipsof which the United States has slightly more than China doesin waters near China. Military Sealift Command, the quasi-civilian branch of the U.S. Navy, operates five surveillance vessels that are roughly similar to the Type 815s in size and capability. In 2009, Chinese trawlers tailed the American surveillance ship Impeccable while she was sailing in Chinas Exclusive Economic Zone in the South China Sea. The trawler crews, apparently acting on Beijings orders, repeatedly crossed in front of Impeccable at close range in order to block her path.

The U.S. Navy dispatched a heavily armed destroyer to escort Impeccable and prevent further harassment. Notably, Chinese Type 815s deployed into the U.S. and Japanese Exclusive Economic Zones in the years following the Impeccable incident, an act of hypocrisy that the Pentagon pointed out in its 2013 China report. While the United States considers the PLA navy activities in its EEZ to be lawful, the activity undercuts Chinas decades-old position that similar foreign military activities in Chinas EEZ are unlawful.

Now, with more Type 815s joining Chinas fleet, Beijings naval spying missions could become more frequent, potentially more intrusive, andmore likely than noteven more irritating to the U.S. government.
A North Carolina teen suspected of providing material support to ISIS, Hamas, and a branch of al Qaeda was instead busted for child porn.

In October, federal agents searched 18-year-old Ameer Abu-Hammads home and electronic devices seeking evidence that he was providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. When agents confronted Abu-Hammad at college, he asked them if they would also search his phone for other stuff, according to a criminal complaint.

The agents asked him to clarify and soon afterwards, he admitted that he had additionally used the phone to view pornogrpahy online that included minors, the complaint continues, adding that Abu-Hammad allegedly said he prefered his laptop for adult porn and his phone for kid porn.

The youngest child he recalled having seen within pornographic images was a child of approximately 9 or 10 years of age, the complaint said. Hammad admitted that he had been viewing child pornography for roughly two months.

Graphic descriptions of the pornography found on Abu-Hammads devices note that it featured children as young as 6 to 9 months. Agents said they found approximately 39 images on his devices, featuring mostly young girls.

Agents also say they found a document entitled Finding Children Sexually Attractive. The document explained that being asexually attracted to children does not make you a monster, however, sexual contact with children is illegal and child pornography is dangerous and harmful both to the individual with the sexual attraction as well as the children depicted.

When he was questioned why he allegedly looked at child porn, agents say Abu-Hammad responded, Because I have problems.

Abu-Hammads attorney did not return a request for comment.

A search warrant obtained by the George Washington University Program on Extremism alleges a long history of extremist Facebook posts written publicly by Abu-Hammad.

You know theyre executing journalists so they can stop US airstrikes and arming kurds? he allegedly wrote after American journalist Steven Sotloff was beheaded by ISIS. & they claim that those journalists are spreading lies against the Islamic State. But what do i know? Im [sic] only a Jabhat al Nusra fan.

Al Nusra is the Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda.

In another post, he allegedly declared that he has no problem with recklessly switching to my extremist side.

Im an Islamic knight not a fucking nerd!! he wrote.

The complaint says that on his Ask.fm page, Abu-Hammad responded that happiness means Getting the hell out of this country forever.

According to the complaint, this may have meant a desire to go to Syria. It claims he told a presumed ISIS member that he desire[s] death as much as you desire life. When the alleged militant seemingly invited him to Syria, Abu-Hammad responded Soon. inshallah.

It also alleges his Facebook page rotated through several cover photos appearing to back ISIS.

ISIS are a group of pissed off Muslims, whether you like it or not, he allegedly wrote February 2015 in response to a video of an ISIS execution. & even if they are misguided or brutal, its [sic] haram to ally yourself with the kuffar against them.

In other posts, Abu-Hammadwhose social media profiles indicate hes from Jenin, in the West Bankallegedly indicated a desire to fight with militants in Gaza.
I had to see just one detail on the night of the San Bernardino killings to get a clue about the shooters ultraconservative leaning.

On the Facebook page for Syed Farooks mother, the 62-year-old Rafia, I studied her likes. My eyes widened at one of them: shed liked Farhat Hashmi, the founder of the nonprofit school Al-Huda International, based in Islamabad, Pakistan. The school is popular among middle-class and upper-class women in Pakistan, including many of my aunties. It has branches in the U.S. and Canada, and boasts a strong online teaching network. When I had studied among Al-Huda students in Islamabad in the days after the 9/11 attacks, I described them one way: the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary.

It has taken the almost 15 years since the attacksas governments, political leaders and special-interest groups have obfuscated our discussion of Islamic extremismfor me to fully understand the underlying ideology that we must dissect if we hope to dismantle the threat of terrorism in the name of Islam.

While the school says it doesnt support extremism or terrorism, as one observer noted, the group is #Salafi-lite. Its a word anyone interested in Islamic extremism needs to learn: Salafi, a puritanical, literal interpretation of Islam that becomes political Islam, or Islamism, in its radicalized form. This weekend, invoking its Salafi doctrine, known as Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia executed a cleric from the minority Shia sect and 46 others in Saudi Arabias ISIS-like justice, appropriately earning worldwide condemnation. Years ago, a Muslim writer pondered if Al-Huda was in fact cultivating al Qaeda in Muslim women.

Meanwhile, the government of Qatar, with an official state religion of Salafism, too, is known for its official sympathies" with the Salafi movement.

Before long, it emerged that the female shooterFarooks Pakistani-born wife, Tafsheen Malikhad studied under Dr. Farhat, as she is known, an Islamic feminist. It was then that I understood very clearly the family culture of puritanical hyper-religiosity in which the killers had lived. It doesn't necessarily equate to violence. I have many extended family members who are ultraconservative, and guided by their faith to compassion and kindness. However, we shouldnt fool ourselves into thinking Salafis are like the Amish.

In the conveyor belt of radicalization, conservative Salafi doctrine is too often a gateway drug to violenceor what French political scientist Gilles Kepel coined as Salafi jihadism. Al Qaedas Osama bin Laden was considered the most famous of the Salafi jihadists, and the title now goes to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. It is the doctrine being taught by the more inflammatory preachers in Britain and France. The perpetrators of mass terror acts in the past 15 years9/11, London and Madrid, Paris, Bali nightclubs, Lebanon, Mali, San Bernardino and countless otherswere carried out by practicing Salafi-jihadists. At the Rand Corporation, terrorism expert Seth G. Jones released a report early last year, The Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qaida and Other Salafi Jihadists, which documents an increase in Salafi-jihadist groups from three in 1988 to 49 in 2013. The number of fighters has increased from just a few in 1988 to as many as 40,000 to 100,000 in 2013.

The Quilliam Foundation, founded by Daily Beast contributor and counter-extremism expert Maajid Nawaz published a report in 2013, titled Its Salafi-Jihadist Insurgency, Stupid!

In 2014, four girls left Canada to join ISIS after study at the Al-Huda Institute in Mississauga, Ontario.

A few months ago, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation published a report, Inside the Jihadi Mind, dissecting the propaganda and ideology of Salafi-jihadism, with themes of the nobility of jihad, the end of humiliation and the disgrace of enemies. Researchers, including terrorism expert Emman El-Badawy, said they found Islamic teachings in 87 percent of the propaganda of Salafi-jihadism that they studied.

Over four decades, Iand dozens of other Muslims with whom I have spokenhave seen the spirit of religious dogmatism overtake the lives of loved ones, as the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have exported their state religion of Salafism to the world. They are buttressed by the teachings of Islamist ideologues like Syed Qutb, the godfather of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Maulana Mawdudi, a godfather of Islamist movements in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, like Tablighi Jamaat and Jaamat Islami; and Abdullah Azzam, teacher to a generation of Afghan and Pakistani fighters, including Al Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Ladin and Ayman al Zawahiri..

Key to their most extreme teachings is the romanticization of jihad and martyrdom.

When I first arrived in Pakistan in the summer of 1983, I saw the first inklings of this ideology through a female cousin, a dear pen pal of mine. She was starting to get influenced by the Saudi Islamization of Pakistan, which started with the rise to power of General Zia ul Haq in 1977 and the radicalizing of U.S.-sponsored Afghan warriors into mujahideen fighting the Soviets with the USSRs invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. During that time, Salafi ideology cross-fertilized with a traditionally conservative ideology of South Asia called Deobandism. The Deobandi ideology is named for a village in my native state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India where the school is based, at the university, Darul Uloom Deoband, or House of Knowledge Deoband. I have family members who studied there, and its ultraconservative dogmatism influenced my paternal and maternal lineage, with my mother, as a rising teen, having to wear the black face veil and burka, or gown. Militant Deobandism has become the ideology of the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militant groups.

My pen pal retreated away from playing late-night games of gin rummy with our male first cousins, because, by conservative interpretations of Islam, where one can marry first cousins, they were suddenly haram (forbidden or illegal) to her; they were potential marital partners.

Back in the U.S., in the early 1990s, I got disturbing news one day from my mother that a cousin in Gaithersburg, Marylandindoctrinated to extremist Islam through the Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary group founded outside Delhi as an offshoot of Deobandismhad taken his wife and children to India on a ruse and seized their passports, refusing to let them return to America. The story was he had seen a note from his daughter, indicating she had a crush on a white boy at school, and he didnt want his children corrupted. They remained in India. Not long ago, one son returned to the United States. The daughter, a star college graduate in India, got married and lives in Saudi Arabia, wearing a full-face veil by choice.

Back in Pakistan, Dr. Farhat started Al-Huda in 1994, indoctrinating women by the thousands to her hyper-religious doctrine. Born in the province of Punjab in Pakistan, she earned a Ph.D. in hadith studies at the University of Glasgow and taught at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, largely influenced by Saudi Salafi ideology. In fact, Saudi Arabias late leader, Faisal, donated a towering mosque in Islamabad to the university. Soon, some husbands of Dr. Farhats pupils were protesting that their wives had become extremist.

When I went to Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks, I saw my pen-pal cousin had grown even more rigid in her religiosity, now wearing a tight headscarf, and my aunts, otherwise liberal when growing up in our native India, had started to cover their faces in black veils and shroud their bodies in black burkasjust like the newly married Tafsheen Malik did when she arrived years later in the United States, according to the security camera photo released by law enforcement.

For the men who followed their wives leads, they grew their beards but shaved their moustaches, following doctrine promoted on Salafi websites that a hadith, or tradition of the prophet Muhammad, holds that growing the mustache is haram.

In South Asia, the school of thought associated with Salafi are Ahl al-Hadith, or the people with the hadith, with a literal and strict view of hadith.

If the alphabet soup of names is confusing, thats because extremist Islamist ideologies, just like anything, are filled with competition, rivalries and power plays. One Facebook user takes a swath through the groups with this page: We Sunnis Must Unite to Fight Wahabi/salafi/Deobandi Tablig jamat Terrorism.

In Karachi, I saw the face of the Deobandi militancy in the faces of the men who kidnapped my colleague from The Wall Street Journal, Danny Pearl. When I saw a police report on one suspect, on the line for religion, the police hadnt written Muslim or Sunni or Shia. They had written Deobandi.

They knew. And, meanwhile, his kidnapper, Omar Sheikh, had been indoctrinated by radical Salafi clerics in London. And his alleged murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM, had studied under the respected Salafi scholars of the Afghan mujahideen, and, in fact, in 1996, when FBI agent Frank Pellegrino landed in Doha, Qatar, a Salafi state, to arrest KSM, the future mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was alerted by someone in authority and escaped extradition to the United States. U.S. authorities were that close to stopping the 9/11 planning before they had even begun.

Like the clue that I got when I saw the like for Al-Huda International, when I heard the name of the San Bernardino husbands mosqueDar Al Uloom Al-Islamiyah of Americamy heart sank. I knew the husband was immersed in a very rigid Islam, akin to the Deobandi ideology that has cross-fertilized with Salafi jihadists. With or without formal affiliation with the mosque in India, Darul Uloom Deoband, we know in our community that a Darul Uloom mosque follows a hyper-conservative Islam, connected to Deobandi or Salafi Islam, or both. Mosque officials didn't return messages seeking comment.

Salafi thinking is based off of the writings of an 18th -century Saudi scholar, Muhammad ibnAbd al-Wahhab. Thus, Saudi thinking has most often been known as Wahhabism. In the Salafi school of thought, adherents place a great emphasis on literal interpretation of the Quran and hadith, or the traditions of the prophet Muhammad, with skepticism toward the role of human reason in theology, according to a recently released report by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, based in Amman, Jordan, on the worlds 500 Most Influential Muslims.

Salafi adherents try to emulate their strict understanding of the lives of the salaf, or the predecessors, including Muhammad and the first three generations in Islam, starting in the 7th century.

The report by Jordan, which opposes Salafi teachings, says Islamic fundamentalism comprises 9 percent of the worlds approximately 2 billion Muslims and is made up of mostly Salafi (8%) and the Egyptian Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood (1%), as well as Revolutionary Shiism. It describes them as following a highly politicized religious ideology, that is characterized by an aggressiveness.

In the report, No. 3 on the list of the worlds most influential Muslims is Saudi Arabias leader, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, with Moderate Salafi listed as his School of Thought. His occupation is head of the most extensive  network of missionary Muslims in the world, promoting the Salafi brand of Islam. It goes on to note: Salafism is historically rooted in Saudi Arabia, and owes its global spread to the financial backing of Saudi Arabia.

Others on the report listed only as Salafi include Abdul-Aziz Aal Al-Sheikh, the grand mufti, or top cleric, of Saudi Arabia. His family traces his lineage to the original Wahhab and for 250 years it has closely associated and intermarried with the ruling House of Saud. As the Central Figure of Global Salafi Movement, the report notes, the movement [Aal Al-Sheikh] leads is characterized by an authoritative stance on Islamic religious practice.

Like the beheadings, lashings, stonings, and other regressive rulings prescribed by Salman Al-Ouda (No. 17), a Moderate Salafi sheikh and founder of a website, IslamToday.net; Saleh Bin Fawzan Al-Fawzan, the most senior scholar of the Salafi movement in Saudi Arabia; and Rabee Ibn Haadi Umayr Al-Madkhali, one of the most radical thinkers in the Salafi movement, with a branch of Salafi named for him.

Though the government of Saudi Arabia says it will sue anyone who says it is like ISIS, as Twitter users, including me, have said, the report notes that ISIS has 21 pledges of allegiance from Salafi-Jihadi groups, with Salafi-Jihadi foreign volunteers arriving from around the world to fight to re-establi[sh] the Caliphate, which is so important on a psychological plane for radical Salafis.

The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, is also listed on the 500 Most Influential Muslims reportan important addition considering the many Muslim leaders, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Democratic politicians, like President Obama, who have said that the Islamic State isnt Islamic.

He is a Muslim, Abdallah Schleifer, chief editor of the Jordanian report, told The Daily Beast as he explained why his staff picked Al-Baghdadi for the list. A former NBC bureau chief in Cairo and an American convert to Islam from Judaism, Schleifer adds, But if he was standing in front of me, and I had a gun, Id kill him. Hes evil.

Schleifer notes, While I understand that American Muslim leaders are well-intentioned in defending Islam, when they deny the Islam in Islamic State, they are wrong. And they are doing Muslims a disservice by not dealing honestly with the issues that confront us as Muslims.

The officials at Syed Farooks mosque said they dont support violence. Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey announced that the San Bernardino shooters may not have supported ISIS on social media. American Muslims widely shared headlines about this recent revelation, with one Facebook user demanding, WHO WILL MAKE RETRACTIONS ABOUT the San Bernardino case?

The headlines, however, glossed over a more important revelation by the FBI director: In late 2013, before they married, the couple was communicating online, showing signs in that communication of their joint commitment to jihad and martyrdom. Those communications are direct private messages.

The revelation of the joint commitment to jihad and martyrdom underscores a singular point that, unfortunately, too many Muslim leaders still want to deny, with flimsy excuses and conspiracy theories. But most of us in the Muslim world have seen all this too clearlyand painfullyover the past four decades, ever since the government of Saudi Arabia started pumping out the virulent ideology of Salafisms Jihad Inc. into the world, with all its intolerance, rigidity, anti-Western prejudice, hatred of Israel, sexism and misogyny.

The San Bernardino couple are just the latest to ascribe to Salafisms violent belief in a political Islam that supports an Islamic caliphate with a small c, if not the self-proclaimed Islamic State of ISIS.

The FBI director didnt say what kind of jihad it was.

But we know.

It wasnt an Irish jihad. Or a pagan jihad. It was a violent Islamist jihad rooted in the most intolerant expressions of Salafism.

On the night of the San Bernardino attacks, seeing the like of Dr. Farhat by Tafsheen Maliks mother-in-law took me back to the womens halaqa, or Quran study circle sessions, that I attended in Islamabad in the days after the 9/11 attacks, meeting the middle-class and upper middle-class Pakistani women who were devoted AlHuda students. They bragged about the glow of piety on the face of their teacher.

In their halaqa meetings, they prayed feverishly against the West. They lambasted Christians and Jews. And they swapped theories about 9/11, always concluding, the Jews did it. They sold clothes from their wedding trousseaus to raise funds for Taliban and Muslim militants in Pakistan, supporting those on the path to jihad and martyrdom.

Thats why I called the women the Taliban ladies auxiliary.

At one meeting, a woman sold wedding trousseau fineries and second-hand clothes, like a shocking pink fabric with flowers, tagged as suit piece, 200 rupees, to raise funds for the mujahedin fighting the West. The school that Tafsheen Malik attended also teaches Muslim women that they should wear the niqab, or face veil.

The classes so sickened me that I fled to Karachi, where, alas, militants took that same hate against Jews to justify killing my friend Danny, who was Jewish.

This fall, on the night of the Paris attacks, I walked onto the set of HBOs Real Time, hosted by Bill Maher, a liberal comedian who has been a leader in the U.S.forcing a conversation about Islamic extremism, despite being vilified by apologistsand I urged viewers, Wake up! to the threat of Islamic extremist ideology to the West.

I noted, We have to be honest about the fact that there is an ideology of Islam, that is our war, of our generation, and this is an ideology that we have to address, and we have to address it with moral courage.

Since then, I have heard from hundreds of viewers who are heeding the call to action, not out of any irrational fear of Islam or Muslims, but because they, like me, want rational threat assessment and effective solutions, which should include an Islamic reformation in which a progressive interpretation of Islam becomes normative. This past December, I stood with other courageous Muslim women and men in Washington, D.C., to launch the Muslim Reform Movement, to challenge violent Islamist ideology, by whatever names we call it. Following our announcement, we walked through the gates of the Saudi-led mosque on Massachusetts Avenue, because we need to stop the path of Muslims, like Tafsheen Malik, to jihad and martyrdom. There, one of our brave members, Sohail Raza, taped our declaration for reform on the front door with our first precept: We stand for universal peace, love and compassion. We reject violent jihad.
The latest opiate-related mortality statistics, taken from 2014, are in and were seeing more of the same. The death toll rose 14 percent in the last year, making it apparent that, so far, attempts to stem the flow of death have not worked.

Kenneth Anderson, veteran of safe drug-using practices, recently wrote, I would like to see The New York Times publish a front page story tomorrow titled How Not to Die When Using Heroin, as opposed to dedicating yet another story to the dubious comparison between heroin overdose and traffic fatalities.

We need methadone clinics for everyone paid for by the government, Anderson told The Daily Beast, in reference to the Swiss Model, which has seen dramatic reductions in both mortality and infectious disease since doing exactly that.

Though the heroin hysteria, as Anderson called it, is indeed warrantedafter all, we are seeing premature death en masseso few are reporting studied, practical solutions that if taken into effect, would ameliorate the current situation.

***

The group responsible for driving heroins numbers way up happens to be 18- to 25-year-old, white millennials. In order to help this group one must get to know them, their habits, and their practices. I should know, after all this is my cohort and I was once a heroin user, barbarically tying off with my Keds shoelace while driving home from Chicagos West Side. In more than one sense, Im a good example of a bad example.

Perhaps the unusually high millennial death rate is an artifact of geography and class. We covertly shoot up at suburban locales: a Wendys parking lot, Starbucks bathrooms, our childhood bedrooms. In effect, were insulated from life-saving services provided by syringe exchange programs (SEPs) that are commonly found in big cities.

Aside from being issued clean needles and cookers, at a needle-exchange you are provided with safe practices, information, and tested for blood-borne disease. Most importantly, people who run SEPs care about youthe userwho is so often shoved to societys fringe or cast out by their family in the name of tough love.

It appears were dying from missing, yet easily obtained, information; from stigma that forces us into secrecy; from the penal state that criminalized our habit and continues to incarcerate and arrest drug users; from the same government that remains unwilling to treat us humanely, under the umbrella of public health.

I am alive not because Im smarter than the young person who died; Im simply lucky. The world is absurd, and by that I mean it remains silent and still at any attempts to reason with it.

***

Sociology professor and harm-reduction researcher Greg Scott told The Daily Beast what he sees as critical to keeping other injection-drug users alive.

Get your hands on lots of naloxone, the opiate overdose antidote, he said. You can find a place that distributes it near you here. Once youve obtained naloxone, he continued, Provide it to your friends, family, coworkers, and anyone else who might be around when youre using.

Try to avoid using alone or in a place thats not accessible to others who might be able to save your life in case of an OD. Lastly, Scott stressed to train everyone in your network on how to recognize an overdose and respond effectively with naloxone and rescue breathing.

There is also some unlearning one must do. The ODs youve seen in movies are by and large bogus. Overdoses tend not to be instantaneous, a la Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. More often than not, an overdose has a gradual onset, as though the person is gently slipping off to sleep. All the signs and symptoms of overdose are available here.

On top of carrying naloxone, sociologist Julie Netherland, who works for the Drug Policy Alliance in New York, stresses the potential dangers of mixing opioids with alcohol and other drugs such as benzodiazepines (e.g. Xanax). Many of the overdoses were seeing are actually because people are using drugs in combination that are quite deadly, she said.

The good news about opioid overdoses is that many of them are preventable, said Netherland, who understands the shadowy nature of injection drug use as a function of stigma. It cant remain ones shameful secret and people need naloxone, she emphasized.

The fundamental problem that Netherland thinks were facing is the stigma surrounding drug use in general, and toward injection drug users in particularthat stigma is killing people.

Heroin users are sons, daughters, mothers and fathers who deserve to be alive. Kim Brown is an affected parent. My son died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2011, she told The Daily Beast. He used unsafe practices because he was pushed into the shadows.

Brown, a registered nurse, is now president of Quad Cities Harm Reduction in her home state of Iowa. Firmly rooted in failed law enforcement practices, Iowa is particularly against passing public health legislation to combat the opiate problem.

I was told by Iowa legislators that our 911 Good Samaritan bill was soft on crime, she said. Thirty-two states in America have 911 Good Samaritan bills and Iowa is not one of them.Such a bill would grant certain immunities (e.g. paraphernalia/possession charges) to people who phone in an overdose to emergency responders. Midwestern states like Iowa and Missouri that are without these life-saving laws are seeing the grotesque practice of body dumping. People ditch an overdosed body to save their own skin from drug charges, rather than calling 911 to revive the person in time with naloxone.

Iowa is also one of six states left in America that does not have a bill expanding access to naloxone. We cant even get a naloxone access bill here, she said, sounding frustrated. We should all have a naloxone kit in our pocket.

Aside from SEPs and increased access to naloxone, there is data backing another effective, yet even more controversial public health measure. Shilo Murphy, a former heroin user turned advocate, is on a mission to get Safe Injection Facilities (SIFs) operating in his hometown of Seattle.

SIFs are a place that tells someone theyre loved, Murphy told The Daily Beast. They give people a tomorrow.

Since opening its doors in 2003, InSite, a SIF located in Vancouver, has not seen one single fatal overdose. Murphy, along with others at Vocal NY, are seizing on a growing need for these facilities in the United States. Other countries such as Switzerland and Denmark that operate SIFs see significant reductions in opiate-related mortality. Other positive health outcomes are seen through reductions of HIV and hepatitis C.

Denise Cullen is a licensed clinical social worker and co-founder of Broken No More, a grassroots organization helping families cope with addiction. She lost her son to an accidental overdose in 2008, and has created meaning out of her loss by becoming an ardent drug policy reformist.

I fully, absolutely support Safe Injection Facilities, she told The Daily Beast.

She wishes her son Jeffrey had access services like a needle exchange or SIF. It is a sterile environment in which someone who is using drugs can do so safely, without risk of arrest or being hassled, she said.

The last thing drug users need is for their family to turn on them, said Brown. We are all they have, and in the darkest moments of their life, were their lifeline. If you whack that off, they are hopeless.
ISTANBUL  Turkey is getting ready to widen the reach of its military considerably by building a multipurpose aircraft carrier with trans-continental capabilities.

The 225-meter ship dubbed the Anadolu (or Anatolia), set to enter service in 2021, is designed to take fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, tanks, troops, and landing vessels to areas around the Mediterranean and as far as the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, officials say. While some analysts say Turkey needs a carrier like this, some regard the project as an expensive expression of prestige and grandeur that far exceeds the countrys limits.

The move is a sign of NATO member Turkeys determination to become a leading power in the Middle East and beyond, an ambition that has been ruffling feathers. In a region shaken by the Syrian war, a heated row between Turkey and naval superpower Russia over the downing of a fighter jet and an increased naval presence by rival Iran to the southeast have heightened tensions even more.

Behlul Ozkan, an expert on Turkish foreign policy at Istanbuls Marmara University, said the program to build the Anadolu was in line with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglus idea of Turkeys role in the world. He really thinks Turkey can be an oceanic power, Ozkan told The Daily Beast, adding that Davutoglus vision might be beyond Turkeys capabilities. For example, the government has also set a goal for Turkey to become one of the worlds 10 biggest economies by 2023, a target that many think is hopelessly optimistic.

Ankaras naval plans could raise the stakes in its troubled neighborhood, where Turkey has been at odds with countries like Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt. Thats in addition to the conflict on Cyprus and unresolved territorial disputes in the waters of the Aegean with neighbor and NATO partner Greece.

Turkey already has a highly modern military, with more than 600,000 soldiers who form the second-largest force in NATO, with the U.S. as the biggest partner.

As a flagship of the Turkish navy, the 28,000-ton Anadolu, with a capacity of as many as 1,400 crew and troops, would be a demonstration of the strength reached by our countrys defense industry, Orkun Kalkavan, a manager at the Sedef Wharf in Istanbul, where the vessel is being built, told the Milliyet daily this week. The contract to build the ship was signed last year, with the Spanish company Navantia as a technological partner. Kalkavan said the Anadolu, expected to cost more than $1 billion, would be equipped for trans-continental tasks.

Analysts describe the carrier as a landing platform dock, or an LPD, which is a warship used to carry troops to flashpoints and send them ashore with the help of on-board landing vessels, or a landing helicopter dock (LHD). The vessel will come with its own small fleet of F-35 fighter jets and helicopters, a hospital with at least 30 beds, and room for landing boats and other smaller crafts as well as for 13 battle tanks.

Devrim Yaylali, an expert on the Turkish navy who writes a blog on naval matters, said planning for the ship started as far back as 2006. Large amphibious ships are the only real multipurpose ships any navy can possess and are the naval equivalent of Swiss Army knives, Yaylali emailed in response to questions by The Daily Beast. Ships like the Anadolu could be used for force projectionthe most obvious use. The ship could be deployed as a mother ship for small boat operations and helicopters, he added.

With these new features, Turkeys military power would grow dramatically. But the Anadolu could also help deliver humanitarian aid during a crisis or after a disaster and could be used for the evacuation of combatants and non-combatants, Yaylali wrote, adding that the Turkish navy really needs these capabilities.

He pointed to an incident in 2011, when Turkey evacuated more than 23,000 civilians from Libya and needed many commercial planes to do it. With a ship like the Anadolu, the operation would have been much quicker and easier, he wrote.

The combination of military and civilian uses could pay off for Ankara in the future, other analysts agree.

Capabilities offered by the LPD will make it an important instrument of foreign policy that will accentuate Turkeys soft power beyond its military prowess, Metin Gurcan, an independent security analyst and columnist for Al-Monitor, told The Daily Beast.

Marmaras Ozkan said one other possible use for the Anadolu could lie in deployments in crisis spots around the Middle East where Turkeys partners in Europe and the U.S. were reluctant to intervene themselves because of anti-Western sentiments.

Maybe the ship could be deployed in NATO operations there because action by Turkey as a Muslim country would be easier to justify, he said. Given the instability around the region, Ozkan said he expects U.S. support for the project. The Muslim world is in flames, he said. You never know what is going to happen.
Eighteen years after Alaskans were granted permission to use medical marijuana, there is still not a single place to buy it. Its a cruel conundrum caused by the lack of a provision about dispensaries in the bill legalizing it.

Fed up with the treatment of these men and women, some nonprofits in Alaska have begun giving free marijuana to veterans and sick patients. Call it the pot version of Meals on Wheels, the cannabis army, or the reefer buyers clubwhatever you call it, its working.

In past years, some Alaskans have attempted to bypass the system by offering free marijuana, but requiring a donation. Recently the state began cracking down, landing a few of these people in court. Adults in Alaska are permitted to gift up to an ounce of marijuana, but are not allowed to receive any monetary payment in return; this is the part that these groups have subtracted from the equation.

One group leading the charge is Alaskas Green Angels, a 400-member Facebook group started by three friends. Darby Andrews, one of the founders, is a veteran himself who uses marijuana to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder. While hes lucky enough to be able to grow the medicine he needs, hes acutely aware of his less fortunate peers.

After gathering the medicine he needs from the few plants that the state allows Alaskans to grow at home, he makes a stash to give to someone in need. Anything extra we use to help other people, he tells The Daily Beast. Beyond the lack of dispensaries, Andrews cites the lack of doctors willing to prescribe it as another roadblock.

Alaska, despite the difficulty veterans face in obtaining marijuana, has led the way for marijuana reform in many ways. In 1975 it became the first state to allow its residents to keep a small amount for personal use. In 1998, following similar decisions in New Mexico and California, it legalized marijuana for medical use. Then in a historic vote last February, it became the third state in the nation to legalize marijuana recreationally.

Still, with the new law set to take effect in late summer or fall of this year, veterans are struggling to find ways to get the medicine that they need. Activists were hopeful that a reform allowing Veterans Affairs to prescribe the drug would alleviate this problem, but the provision did not make it into the final bill.

Alaskas medical marijuana system is broken, and no one seems willing to fix it. Its like [the state] said, Sure, go ahead, you can have it but you cant buy it, sell it, or transport it, says Andrews. Its just supposed to magically appear.

In a way, thats the scenario his group has created.

Those who need cannabisangels in needcan post on the Facebook group and ask for help. Those with some marijuana to spareangels in deedrespond. At first, Andrews and the other two founders were the primary donors, catering to a small group of members that they knew first hand. But over the course of a year the operation has taken on a life of its own, now a virtual hub for those in need to meet those itching to do a good deed.

The Green Angels have received considerable support from the outside with The Weed for Warriors Project giving them a shoutout on Facebook. Veterans taking caring of Veterans, because the Government doesnt give a shit about us so we must take care of our own, Weed for Warriors wrote.

Many in the medical world have been vocal about their support of cannabis to treat PTSD, which doctors believe is one of reasons the suicide rate among veterans, 22 a day, is so high. More than half of the 24 states in the U.S. list PTSD as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana and veterans nationwide have come out in support of it with their own testimony.

In November, The Daily Beast covered the story of an Iraqi veteran who said using medical marijuana to treat his PTSD got him off opiates and saved his life. All I wanted to do was learn about it, because I was fucking amazed at the way I felt. I got myself back, he said. Once you start feeling, you start healing. Its like Frozen, man.

Thats of course not to say that everyone in the medical community is in favor of using medical marijuana to treat PTSD. In a 2014 hearing Rep. John C. Flemingboth a physician and military veteranspoke out against it. Having treated veterans in VA hospitals, one of the last things in the world we should be doing is giving addicting substances to people with PTSD, he said. Any good physician would tell you that.

The Department of Veterans Affairs specifically advises against it on their website, citing a lack of proof that it works. Controlled studies have not been conducted to evaluate the safety or effectiveness of medical marijuana for PTSD, it reads. Thus, there is no evidence at this time that marijuana is an effective treatment for PTSD.

One researcher in the U.S., Sue Sisley, received approval to test marijuana on veterans with PTSD, but after being fired from the University of Arizona, shes still struggling to find funding.

Until she does, veterans and sick patients in Alaska will have to rely on people like the Green Angels for their medicinea group that Andrews hopes will continue to gain donors. Dont afraid to get out there, he instructs the patients. Accept any help that comes.
A photo of a teenage boy with two bizarre wounds on his chest suggests that child abuser might be a better description than hero for the two ranchers in whose name so-called militia members have taken over a federal building in Oregon.

Raising kids is like raising cows or dogs, one of the ranchers is quoted as saying in a police report to which the photo is attached.

The photo is of Dusty Hammond, nephew of rancher Steve Hammond and grandson of rancher Dwight Hammond.

Dusty was 16 on that March morning in 2004, when Deputy Sheriff Brian Needham of the Harney County Sheriffs Office responded with a human services representative to Crane High School in the Oregon town of the same name. Needham spoke to Dusty about a possible assault involving a student.

Dusty told me that about four to five weeks ago he had scratched some initials into his shoulder/chest area with a paper clip, Needhams subsequent report reads.

The boys grandfather, Dwight Hammond, and grandmother, Susan Hammond, had learned about the scratching.

His grandparents did not know how to handle the situation with Dusty, so they called Dustys uncle, Steve Hammond, the report says. Dusty told me that Steve is the one that disciplines him on any matters that his grandparents do not know how to handle.

The report goes on, Dusty told me that in the past several months the discipline has gotten worse and worse. Dusty told me that two to three months ago he and Steve had gotten into an argument about how Dusty was doing his chores. Dusty stated that Steve became very upset and charged him. Dusty stated that Steve hit him in the chest with a closed fist, knocking him to the ground. Dusty stated that Steve then took Dustys face and rubbed it into the gravel. Dusty stated that this action hurt and made him fearful of Steve.

The report describes Steve as 35 years old, 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds. The report says that when Dusty was caught with alcohol, Steve had driven him at least 10 miles from the ranch and made Dusty walk back.

The report further states that when Dusty was caught with tobacco, Steve made him eat two cans of Skoal Smokeless tobacco, then again drove him 10 miles from the ranch and made him walk back.

On Feb. 29, 2004, there came the incident involving the initials that Dusty had scratched into his chest.

Dusty stated that Steve was very upset with him, the report says. Dusty told me his grandparents were present during the time.

The report continues, Dusty stated that Steve told him that he was not going to let Dusty deface the family by carving on himself. Dusty stated that Steve then took him and began to sand the initials off his chest Steve sanded on each side of his chest for at least five minutes Steve used a very coarse sandpaper to sand off the initials.

The report goes on, Dusty told me that the process was very painful, but that he did not cry because he knew that Steve would continue the process for a longer period of time.

The report says that by Dustys account, the grandmother was in the room the whole time, but the grandfather got up and left halfway through. Steve kept sanding.

Dusty told me that Steve told him that if the sanding did not remove the initials, that he would fillet the initials off Dustys chest, the report says.

The sandpaper did the job.

Dusty told me that after Steve was finished with the sanding process, that the areas were bleeding, the report states. Dusty told me that his grandmother told Dusty to clean the area up and not to have a pity party.

The report further recounts, His grandmother told him to shower if he wanted to, but to make sure that he cleaned the wounds with alcohol and put Neosporin on them. Dusty told me that he did as his grandmother instructed and then went to bed.

The wounds were still raw when they came to the attention of the school 10 days later, on March 9. The human services official, Sandy Gardner, photographed the boys injuries in Needhams presence.

A week later, on March 16, Needham interviewed the Hammonds at their ranch. Needham asked to record the interview, but the Hammonds told him they preferred that he not. He read them their Miranda rights.

I asked everyone if they could tell me what had happened on or about February 29, 2004, when the sanding incident with Dusty Hammond occurred, the subsequent report on this interview says. Steven Hammond began by telling me some background information concerning Dusty Hammond.

The grandparents joined in, telling Needham that they had had custody of Dusty for about four years, since 2000. They had begun having trouble with him in September 2003, they said. They had sought help at the county behavioral health center, and the boy had been put on a medication similar to Prozac for about the last three or four months.

This conversation went on for about fifteen to 20 minutes before I finally got them redirected, the report says.

The deputy asked the Hammonds about the time Dusty had been caught with alcohol and Steve allegedly forced him to walk 10 miles back to the ranch.

The Hammonds changed the subject and would not answer the question, the report says.

Needham then inquired about the time Dusty had been caught with tobacco.

Dwight told me he tried to show Dusty that chewing tobacco was harmful on his body, the report says. Dwight continued by saying that he had Dusty eat a full can of chewing tobacco over a several day period.

Needham asked about that 10-mile trek back to the ranch.

The Hammonds changed the subject and would not answer my question, the report says. I moved to the sanding incident.

Then came the line that would stay with anybody who read it.

Steve Hammond began by telling me that raising kids is like raising cows or dogs, the report says.

As recounted in the report, Steve proceeded to suggest that Dusty would have suffered a lot worse if they had gotten their hands on him after he told the authorities how he got his twin wounds.

Steve then told me that Dusty was lucky that he was not at the ranch when he told on Dwight, Susie, and himself, or there would have been hell to pay and Dusty would have wished he wasnt alive, the report says. I explained to the Hammonds that it was not Dusty that was pursuing this investigation, that it was the State of Oregon. Steve Hammond told me that he did not agree with the government getting involved in family matters.

Needham returned the discussion to the sanding incident.

Dwight Hammond told me that Dusty had accidentally showed him the carvings of the initials on his chest, that a family meeting was called to discuss the incident, the report says. Dwight told me that Dusty was given an opportunity to come up with an alternative punishment. Dwight told me that after a while, when Dusty was not able to come up with a punishment, that it was decided that the initials would be sanded off.

The Hammonds told Needham that it was decided mutually and agreed upon by everyone including Dusty that this was a good plan.

Steve Hammond told me that they have been trying to teach Dusty to respect his body, the report says. During the interview, I asked approximately 10 times who actually did the sanding on Dustys chest. But no one would ever tell me. The Hammonds continued to change the subject when asked.

As recounted in the report, the Hammonds then suggested that Dusty himself was responsible for the severity of the wounds.

The Hammonds told me that after the sanding was completed, Dusty made the comment that he did not think the areas were sanded deep enough and thought that he should use steel wool to sand the areas some more.

Really.

The report continues, The Hammonds told me that they do not know if he actually sanded the areas any moreThe Hammonds told me that none of them saw the injuries after that time. The Hammonds did not have anything else to add.

Even though someone who treats a dog, not to mention a kid, this way could have been arrested, the Hammonds do not seem to have been charged. Dusty returned to living with his mother, then his father, then his mother again.

According to court papers, Dusty told the government investigators who interviewed him five years later that he had been in mortal dread of his uncle.

When interviewed by federal agents, the 21-year-old Dusty Hammond said he feared that when Steven Hammond learned he had talked to police that Steven would come to his front door and kill him, the papers said.

The federal agents had come to ask Dusty about fires they believed his uncle and grandfather had set on government-owned land adjacent to the ranch. Dusty told them a story from when he was 13 and going on his first deer hunt. He repeated this account before a federal grand jury and again from the witness stand when his uncle and grandfather were tried for arson.

Dusty said he had heard a number of gunshots after the others in the hunting party proceeded over the top of a hill but that he had neither fired his rifle nor seen any deer. He did see what his uncle distributed at the end of the hunt.

Steven started handing out boxes of Strike Anywhere matches and said, Were going to light up the whole country on fire, Dusty told the jury.

He said Steve had pointed to a spot on the skyline and told him to head there.

Just said, Start lighting them and walk in that direction until you run out, Dusty testified.

Dusty did as bid, dropping lighted matches into the grass as he went while his uncle and grandfather and others in the party did the same in different directions. He ran out of matches and was turning to rejoin the others when he realized he was surrounded by flames.

Fire was like knee high to start with, and then itI was looking, trying to figure out where everybody else went, and I kind of got, like, trapped by it, he testified. It came up behind me faster than I expected it to It was, like, over my head, eight, 10 feet probably I thought I was going to get burned up.

He dashed down the hill to a rocky stream, he said.

There was Mud Creek, just a little bit of water, not much, but everything was green around it, so I went down there in the rocks and waited for most of [the fire] to go by, he testified.

Dusty eventually reached his grandfathers pickup truck, he said, and rode back to the ranch. They all sat down to a lunch of egg salad sandwiches.

Dwight told me to keep my mouth shut, that nobody needed to know about the fire, Dusty testified.

The prosecutor asked why he had remained silent even long after he was away from the ranch living with his mother.

I was afraid of Steven and Susie, he testified. And I dont like to talk about it. Just never said anything about it. Nobody ever asked.

Someone eventually did ask, did they not? the prosecutor inquired.

Yeah, Dusty replied

In March of 2011?

Yes There were two of them that come up.

He was speaking of the federal agents.

Did you tell [the agents] what youve been telling the jury today?

Yes.

Why?

Because [they] asked. And Im not afraid of [Steve] anymore.

Dusty further testified that his uncle and grandfather had gone up in a private plane later in the day.

Said they were going to go fly over and see what the fire did, and see if they got rid of the juniper trees and something else, Duty testified.

The Hammonds would later admit to setting a number of fires, saying they had only been doing so as a precaution against a much larger wildfire sweeping through. The government would contend that the something else they hoped had been burned was any evidence that they had been poaching deer on federal land. They are said to have become concerned when a group of other hunters happened to see them.

The jury convicted the uncle and grandfather of arson on federal property. A counterterrorism statute mandates a five-year minimum term for the crime, but federal Judge Michael Hogan declared that in these circumstances it would be a sentence which would shock the conscience.

The judge sentenced Steve to a year and a day, Dwight to three months. The government appealed and won in 2014.

Even a fire in a remote area has the potential to spread to more populated areas, threaten local property and residents, or endanger the firefighters called to battle the blaze, the appeals court held. Given the seriousness of arson, a five-year sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense.

As re-sentencing neared, the Hammonds submitted a Sept. 30, 2015, letter to the court in which they described themselves as dedicated men who are highly regarded in their community.

The government noted in a sentencing memorandum that the Hammonds omit any mention of their alleged assault and abuse of their sixteen-year-old grandson/nephew Dusty Hammond. The photo of the twin wounds was entered into evidence along with Deputy Sheriff Neehams reports.

The Hammonds were sentenced to the mandatory minimum of five years but given until after the holidays to surrender. The designated date was Jan. 4, the first Monday of the New Year.

As the time neared, armed members of a so-called militia took over a federal building in supposed solidarity with the Hammonds. Steve and Dwight had the sense to say the deluded attention seekers did not speak for them.

On Monday, the Hammonds did indeed surrender. They could not be reached for comment. Nor could Dusty.

The militia members continue their occupation, insisting they do so in the name of two ranchers they call heroes but might be better described as child abusers.
If 190 Christians were fired en masse from their jobs for wanting to pray for a few minutes, there would be outrage! Franklin Graham would be screaming from the rooftops. Fox News would break into its coverage of Christian victimization to do a special report on it. And, of course, GOP presidential candidates like Ted Cruz would be calling this a jihad on Christians, just as he has used that term to attack LGBT advocates of marriage equality.

But when 190 Muslims were fired from their jobs in Colorado a few weeks ago for simply wanting to take short prayer breaks, we didnt hear a peep from these so-called advocates of religious liberty.

But that probably comes as little surprise to most. Religious libertyin the view of some on the rightis only for Christians. In fact, a poll released last week made that very point. It found that 82 percent of Americans believe preserving religious liberty for Christians was important. However, only 61 percent said the same about Muslims rights to practice their faith. (That number was even lower among Republicans.)

The poll also found that only about 70 percent of Americans believe that religious liberty for Jews was important, meaning that there are roughly 70 million adult Americans who dont view Judaism as being on equal footing as Christianity. This again proves that when some talk about Judeo-Christian values, the Christian part of that phrase far outweighs the Judeo part.

Thankfully for Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and people of other minority faiths, or no faith, we are statutorily guaranteed religious liberty at the workplace by way of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This iconic law states, among other things, that employers are required to provide a reasonable accommodation so that employees can practice his or her faith.

Now that doesnt mean that the employer has to accommodate every religion-related request a person makes. If the accommodation will cause an undue hardship on the employer, they dont have to grant it.

Obviously such a determination is fact specific. But the EEOC has provided a few examples of typical religious accommodations. These include if an employee needs an exception from the companys dress code for religious reasons, such as an Orthodox Jew wearing a yarmulke. Another was a Christian employee at a pharmacy not be required to fill birth control prescriptions. Or an atheist being excused from the religious invocation at the beginning of a staff meeting.

Well, that brings us to the case of the 190 Muslim employees who were recently fired by Cargill Meat Solutions at its Fort Morgan, Colorado, plant. Now just so its clear, Cargill is not some horrible anti-Muslim company. To the contrary, for years Cargill has accommodated the Muslim workers who wanted to take short breaks for their daily prayers. (Devout Muslims will pray five times a day.)

But still at the end of the day there are 190 Muslims, mostly United States citizens, who were fired because of their desire to practice to faith and take two to three short breaks during the day to pray.

Jaylani Hussein, a spokesman for and an executive director of the Council of American Islamic Relations Minnesota chapter, explained to me that Cargill had for years allowed the Muslim employees to take prayer breaks at this location with relatively no issues. And keep in mind the Muslim employees would work on the Christian holidays so that the Christian employees could practice their faith.

But a few weeks ago a dispute arose when a supervisor apparently told workers they could no longer pick their own break time to pray, but instead would need the permission of a supervisor to go pray. When some of the Muslim employees pressed the supervisor about when he would release them to pray, they were reportedly told by the supervisor: If you want to pray, go home.

That sparked a walkout by some Muslim employees. Thereafter hundreds of them remained home in protest of what they viewed as Cargill revoking their religious accommodation to pray. Cargill then fired 190 Muslim employees who refused to return to work until they were provided assurances that they could take prayer breaks.

A Cargill spokesperson responded on Twitter to me that the company respected peoples right to pray and noted that our Muslim employees are still taking prayer breaks at work.

From an outsiders point of view, you would think this would be an easy case to resolve. But as former trial lawyer I can tell you that this is a typical scenario where the parties are not that far apart but still a resolution cant be reached.

So here the parties are, stuck at this impasse. As of Monday, Hussein was still in talks with Cargill. He did lament that while the employees are part of the Teamsters union (its a mandatory join), the union has refused to help. Hussein even traveled to the unions local office but was told by the representative that he had no time to talk for the foreseeable future. Translation: The union didnt believe it was important enough to expend capital in fighting for the rights of the Muslim employees to pray.

The hope, as Hussein noted, was to resolve this dispute amicably, which is typically how most religious-accommodations cases end up. But if that doesnt happen, they will certainly explore their legal rights provided by the Civil Rights Act. And given recent polls that show barely a majority of Americans support religious liberty for Muslims, it makes me appreciate even more the wisdom of the drafters of that landmark law who had the foresight to ensure that our right to religious liberty is not subject to a popularity contest.
Tyga was always a bit of a joke.

The 26-year-old rapper, whose real name, Michael Ray Stevenson, resembles that of a redneck assassin, achieved moderate fame and fortune on the back of his hit single Rack City, a terribly silly track about making it rain on strippers. Hes since garnered considerably more ink for his base tabloid exploits, from being sued by a pair of women for exposing their nipples in his music video sans permission, to being sued for things like jacking $91K worth of grade A bling (TMZs words) and stiffing his landlord (as well as the state of California).

Tyga once even called Drake fake, despite the fact that Aubrey Graham has been very upfront about his past, whilst Michael Ray Stevenson, who claims to be from the mean streets of Compton, appeared on a pilot for an MTV reality series called Bu$tas in 2008 saying he grew up not too tough in The Valley, and his parents got a Range Rover, CL600 doin it big. He lost that hip-hop competition, by the way, to a nerdy white dude who may or may not have worked at Kinkos.

But Tyga, who is half-Vietnamese, is best known for dating the youngest Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, when she was 17 and he was 25which, if you were wondering, qualifies as statutory rape in their home state of California. Kanye West, the husband of Jenners sister Kim Kardashian West, went as far as to compliment Tyga on dating someone underage, telling Power 105 back in February, I think he got in early. I think he was smart.

And the tabloid media, like West, wasnt as dismissive of this illicit relationship as it should have been. They shrugged when Tyga posted a picture of a 17-year-old Kylie to Instagram with the caption, Certain things catch your eye, but only few capture the heart. (People magazine even called the post sweet.) They passed the tea when he was allegedly found to have cheated on the teenager with a transsexual actress, who posted the alleged receiptsincluding a picture of Tygas penisonline. And they turned a blind eye when Tyga released the music video for his statutory-rape anthem Stimulated, starring Kylie, with vile lyrics like, They say she young, I shouldve waited / She a big girl, dog, when she stimulated.

But this joke isnt funny anymore.

On Monday afternoon, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred held a press conference featuring her new client, Molly OMaliaa 14-year-old Instagram model with close to 50,000 followers on the platform. A pixelated picture of OMalia had recently been splashed on the cover of OK! magazine, with the rag insinuating that shed engaged in an inappropriate sexually suggestive relationship with the rapper, according to Allred.

Yes, the whole thing seemed like a publicity stunt for Allred and OMalia, and yes, there shouldnt be 14-year-old Instagram models racking up thousands of likes from creepy men for displaying scantily clad photos of themselves, but none of this makes what Tyga allegedly did the least bit acceptable.

According to OMalia, who lightly wept during the presser, it was the 26-year-old hip-hop artist who initiated the relationship, and it was she who decided to cut off communication when Tyga expressed his desire to meet with her in person.

The truth is that Tyga contacted me first. He direct messaged me on Instagram. I knew who he was but I was surprised that he was contacting me, she said in a statement. I thought that it could possibly be about my music, but he did not mention that in his initial communication with me. I thought that was strange, but I was thinking he would bring that up in his next message to me. However, he didnt mention it in the next message.

I began to feel uncomfortable when he asked me to FaceTime with him, she continued. He asked me to FaceTime three times, but I did not do it. Because of my discomfort with why he wanted to communicate with me I quickly stopped responding to him. Its crazy how so much can come out of nothing.

This isnt nothing, however. If true, this shows that Tyga is a predator with considerable means and influence who targets underage girls, just as he did with a teenage Kylie Jenner. And the publicand tabloid mediashouldnt laugh off this despicable behavior any longer. Its this lack of seriousness and accountability thats allowed a demon like R. Kelly to continue to flourish, despite the countless young girls hes left violated and forgotten.

OMalia ended her presser by saying she decided to speak out because I dont want what happened to me to happen to any other young girl. Neither should the press, or the public.
Its the Bimbo Eruption Redux. As you may have seen, Paula Jones reappeared on Sunday, giving a lengthy interview to a conservative radio host that Breitbart.com pantingly promoted, charging that Hillary Clinton is the enemy of American women. The same day, Clinton was heckled up in New Hampshire by a female Republican state representative to answer for the allegations against her husband regarding two women who say Bill Clinton assaulted or raped them. Back we go to the 1990s.

Will any of this matter? Most of it wont. The vast majority of voters arent going to care about the 20- and 30-year-old alleged sexual activities of an almost septuagenarian man. But Hillary does have a potential Achilles heel here, which she opened the door to herself with one word she uttered back in September, and she may yet have a little explaining to do here to nail down a voting bloc that shes going to need in a big way come November.

First, what wont matter. Monica Lewinsky wont matter. Gennifer Flowers wont matter. These were consensual relationships. Whatever else people might think of Bills judgment, most folks quite rightly consider these affairs to be his (and the womens) private business. Either could decide to make trouble if they wanted to, I guess, especially Lewinsky, but I have trouble seeing how big trouble could really be made.

But what about Jones and Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick? They claim not that they had consensual relations with Bill, but that he did unwanted things to them. Jones said he exposed himself to her and propositioned her in 1991. Willey charged he groped her in the White House in 1993. And Broaddrick alleged that he raped her in 1978.

These things have all been masticated a thousand-million times. Bill Clinton denies all three allegations. With Jones, he settled a civil suit for $850,000, admitting no guilt. She didnt help her case back then by attaching herself to conservative movement lawyers and organizations and letting her suit become the vehicle for what was undeniably a conspiracyperhaps not vast, as Hillary famously charged on the Today show in 1998, but certainly right-wingto lay Clinton low by any means necessary. With respect to Willey, she changed her story and was ultimately regarded by the independent counsel that was sniffing Clintons bedsheets as an unrealiable witness (PDF). Broaddricks charge is obviously the most serious, but inconsistencies have been noted here, too, and its now almost 40 years old.

Willey and Broaddrick havent been that vocal recently. For her part, Jones says... well, lots of stuff: Hillary needs to do a public apology or something or other (for) all the women who have come out and said publicly what her husband did to them. Yes, she does. I believe she does; Hillary is such a liar. And shes so two-faced. I never once was contacted by her. Not one time and apologized about what her husband did to me; I dont see how women would even be able to trust her if the man who is her husband who has abused and harassed and did other things to women and she knew about it.

If Jones had more savvy, shed have planned her reemergence a lot more cleverly than she did. Instead of going to conservative talk radio, shed have tried NPR or something. Maybe NPR wouldnt touch it, but someplace more mainstream, and shed have said something like: Yes, I regret that I let my case get hijacked by people with other agendas; that was wrong, but they were the only ones listening to me at the time. If her goal is actually to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, she needs to move the needle, get people to take her seriously who didnt then, and she sure didnt accomplish that.

But Hillary Clinton still isnt in the clear here. Back last September in Iowa, she said the words: Today I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault. Don't let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed, and were with you. Obviously, believed is the operative word there, and quite reasonably, conservatives pounced on it at the time; oh, well then, do Jones/Willey/Broaddrick deserve to be believed? As Michelle Goldberg noted last week at Slate, a voter asked Clinton essentially this in New Hampshire in December, and her answer wasnt the greatest: Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first, until they are disbelieved based on evidence.

The other potential complication for Clinton may center around the question of what she did, if anything, to discredit Jones and the others. Jones said this in her interview, too. Its been a given for years on the anti-Clinton right that Hillary Macbeth orchestrated vicious campaigns to discredit these women. The mainstream press has never really picked this up; to conservatives, thats because of liberal media bias, to the rest of us, its because theres been no hard evidence of this, and because there exists a long, long, long list of things theyve accused Hillary of doing that she pretty obviously never did.

Chances are, assuming no corroborating evidence turns up in any of these three cases, most voters arent going to be very interested. But Hillary Clinton still has to think through how she handles this. As Goldberg noted in her piece, the politics around sexual harassment and assault have changed a lot since the 1990s, in ways that are for the better in general but sure dont strengthen Hillarys hand if/when she has to discuss these cases directly.

In addition, shell need to bear in mind when she does talk about all this that for most women voters, this story isnt about the old vast right-wing conspiracy, of which most will have at best a fleeting memory. Its about the reality of sexual predation in their lives. That state representative from New Hampshire who heckled her was very rude, as Clinton said; but she is also a rape survivor, as are millions of other American women. Thats the audience Clinton will need to speak to, not liberals who remember who Linda Tripp was.

Shell need a big womens vote. Compared to any of the Republicans, she has the track record to have earned it. Conservatives of course know this, so carrying on about Bill is the way theyll try to neutralize her advantage. Its a bit rich to see members of the party that voted against the Violence Against Women Act among numerous other positions playing the role of defenders of women, but thats how its going to be. Clinton might have to dance away from that believed at some point, and its going to be a delicate dance.
Virgin Trains offer local premium spirits

Virgin Trains has teamed up with suppliers from along the West Coast Mainline to serve locally-produced products to its First Class customers. These include Forest Gin and vodka and whisky from the Lakes Distillery, which are now available at Virgin Trains First Class lounge in Euston.

Forest Gin is made by the Bond family in very small batches with botanicals foraged from nearby Macclesfield Forest and locations within the Cheshire Peak District. The resulting gin is then blended with cool water from forest springs to produce a fresh, herbaceous London dry gin.

Virgin Trains joins Britains finest restaurants and bars in serving the gin, including Heston Blumenthal's Hinds Head in Bray, and Jason Atherton's multi-award winning restaurant in Soho.

Karl Bond, Owner of Forest Gin says: We are so excited and proud to have our gin behind the bar in Virgins First Class Lounge at Euston. We launched the gin at the start of the year and it has already won numerous awards so this is great way to round off our year.

The Lakes Vodka and The ONE, a blend of British whiskies, are award-winning products from the Lakes Distillery, which is located about 25miles from both Penrith and Carlisle. The distillery is listed amongst Cumbrias Top 50 icons and is the largest whisky distillery in England.

Made from water taken directly from the River Derwent just 150 metres away, The ONE blends whisky from each of the British Isles, while Lakes Vodka boasts a rich aroma with a hint of wheat.

Paul Currie, founder and managing director of The Lakes Distillery, said: Virgin Trains has a reputation for providing its customers with only premium products so it is a testament to the quality of our spirit that we are being offered to first class customers. We have invested 7m into our distillery to ensure we produce the highest quality spirits in our handmade copper stills and have enjoyed an outstanding first year in business attracting over 20,000 visitors to our site in Cumbria. We look to working with Virgin Trains into the future.

Amanda Smit, Head of Catering at Virgin Trains said: Were committed to offering our customers premium products while also supporting local businesses along our route.

4 January 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor
The Texas Academy of Family Physicians named H. David Pope Jr. of Kerrville, the 2015 Physician Emeritus during the organizations 2015 Annual Session and Primary Care Summit in The Woodlands on Nov. 14. Pope was nominated by physicians and patients and selected by a Texas Academy of Family Physicians panel.

Pope started his medical career after receiving his undergraduate and medical degrees from Tulane University, an internship with the Air Force, three months in flight surgeon school and completing a general practice residency at a charity hospital in Louisiana. He began practicing as a family physician in 1961.

His career has included having his own practice, being in a multi-specialty clinic and in a 100-bed Catholic hospital, Christian missions all over the world and as a medical director for numerous nursing homes. He also helped found the Texas A&M Family Medicine Residency program in Bryan, as well as the Texas Academy of Family Physicians Brazos Valley Chapter.

Pope continues to travel to the Texas-Mexico border for Christian missions, serves as Physician of the Day during the Texas Legislature every session and is active in his church and community.
While Kharge is considered the firm favourite with his perceived proximity to the Gandhis, Tharoor has pitched himself as the candidate of change.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  During his 14 years as Texas' top lawyer, Greg Abbott oversaw a significant  and expensive  escalation of police and firepower in the attorney general's office, which now boasts 160 cops and an arsenal of assault rifles, handguns and tactical gear.

Meanwhile, the cost to pay and train that burgeoning police force, which primarily investigates white-collar crime, has skyrocketed as a direct result of policies Abbott pursued as attorney general and later approved as governor.

Due to a state law passed this year, dozens hired by Abbott and inherited by his successor, Ken Paxton, were given large pay raises that will cost taxpayers millions more each year.

An Abbott spokesman said the attorney general's police force is a key component in fighting crime and rooting out fraud.

"Under the leadership of Greg Abbott, the Office of the Attorney General prioritized protecting Texas families by establishing the Cyber Crimes and Fugitive Units, making over 5,000 criminal arrests and identifying nearly $1 billion in fraudulent Medicaid overpayments," spokesman John Wittman wrote in an email. "This would not have been possible without effective police personnel."

But a former deputy director who worked under Abbott, along with a leading House Democrat, has questioned the need to spend millions of dollars to arm employees whose jobs rarely put them in the face of anything more dangerous than a sharpened pencil or biting word.

"I've seen it work without peace officers," said former Assistant Attorney General Rod Boyles, who left the agency this month after 23 years. "We don't need peace officers."

The AG's commissioned police work alongside civilian investigators to pursue white-collar criminals, such as computer hackers or doctors and patients who scam Medicaid. Although those officers are held to the same training standards as Texas Rangers and state troopers, they are plainclothed, don't drive police cruisers and, until this year, were paid much less.

"Highly complex investigations are not really assisted by firepower and Kevlar," said Boyles, a former deputy director in the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which houses 115 investigators. "It's straight, white-collar stuff, and your defendants are typically businessmen and business women.

In June, Abbott signed into law a bill that placed AG officers on the same pay scale as officers at the Department of Public Safety. So on Sept. 1, about 158 attorney general staff received pay raises ranging from $10,000 to $44,000 more a year, depending on the officer's seniority.

Those higher salaries will cost taxpayers about $17 million more over the next five years and are projected to increase slightly each year, according to salary calculations obtained by The News.

A spokeswoman for Paxton said the attorney general's office is conducting a "top-to-bottom review of everything" but gave no indication the agency would scale back its spending on police.

"Office of Attorney General law enforcement officers investigate a wide range of complex criminal activity, from child predators to Medicaid fraud to transnational criminal organizations," spokeswoman Katherine Wise said. "And we must ensure they have the resources they need to do their job: catching criminals and keeping Texans safe."

In the last five years, records show, an attorney general officer has fired a pistol while working only once. That incident, in June, was unrelated to the officer's duties as a Medicaid fraud investigator.

Around the early 2000s, Boyles recalled, about a dozen commissioned officers worked among the 4,000 attorney general employees stationed across the state.

Since 2002, when Abbott first won that office, about 150 investigators either came in as sworn officers or were commissioned after being hired, state data show.

And more cops mean more guns.

Purchase orders and spending data show that in the last five years, the attorney general's office spent about $134,000 on ammunition alone, including for rifle and hollow-point rounds designed to inflict serious bodily harm.

In Abbott's last year there, 2014, the attorney general placed orders totaling $68,000 for 23,000 hollow-point rounds, about 115,000 assault rifle rounds and 190,000 target rounds.

Citing security concerns, the attorney general's office would not release an inventory showing how many weapons are in its stores. But an accounting of its rifle cases and diverse bullet selection indicates officers are using M4 assault rifles, 9 mm pistols and .357-, .38-, .40- and .45-caliber weapons.

The office has also spent nearly $1 million in five years on high-end police radios, according to the agency's spending data.

The attorney general's office said the spending on guns and ammunition reflects the training and target practice its officers are required to complete each year by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

As for the array of weapons and bullets, "effective peace officer training has to be ongoing, challenging and dynamic," Wise said.

Boyles contends that all the training is "dumbing down" investigations because less time is spent following paper trails while more time is spent at the shooting range or K-9 training classes, for instance.

"We actually do nothing," he said. "We spend so much time just doing standard peace officer training, firearms training, safety training."

Boyles' former unit investigates doctors and dentists for overbilling or defrauding the state and federal insurance program. Those cases result in both civil judgments and criminal prosecutions.

Boyles said he retired this month after a disagreement with his boss, which was unrelated to this topic.

Having police on staff was "a luxury" that sometimes made investigations easier, he said, but because investigators typically team up with local or federal law enforcement, it's not necessary that they be commissioned themselves.

"It's peace officer training," he added. "It's not related to finding fraud or even knowing what a false claim is."

Rep. Charlie Geren, a Fort Worth Republican and former police officer, said Abbott's administration first approached him a few years ago to draft a bill that would add his police staff to the "Schedule C" pay scale.

That's the seniority pay scale applied to officers at DPS, Parks and Wildlife, and the Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

It was a no-brainer, Geren said, but the bill faced opposition and failed in 2013 for fears that adding those officers would further burden the police pension. The successful 2015 bill, however, did not add attorney general officers to the more expensive pension.

"They were underpaid, and they deserve those raises," Geren said.

Geren's bill was meant to benefit employees like Robyn Wilson. She's a level-three investigator with 26 years of state service who earned $42,840 a year, much less than similarly ranked officers at DPS. Jumping to the Schedule C pay scale more than doubled her salary to $86,495 a year, the largest jump of anyone at the agency.

But an analysis of state salary data shows the measure was also a boon for managers, 17 of whom jumped into six figures after receiving raises ranging from about $19,000 to $36,000 a year.

In the Medicaid unit, which houses nearly half of the attorney general's police force, 71 officers will collect about $1.2 million more in pay and benefits this year than last year, the data show.

An additional 85 officers work in separate units categorized as legal services, which includes cybercrime investigations and a fugitive apprehension program that coordinates with law enforcement agencies to round up felons. Officers in those roles will cost about $2 million more this year compared with last.

Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, says it's difficult to measure the need for police throughout the attorney general's office.

But he's especially skeptical that so many are needed for Medicaid fraud investigations because there are scores of Medicaid fraud investigators, most of them civilians, working on similar cases at the Health and Human Services Commission's Office of Inspector General.

"These are basically white-collar crimes," he said. "A computer, as a tool, is better than a gun. I'm confused in that regard."

Coleman said he voted for Geren's bill because it seemed unfair that equally ranked police in one state bureaucracy were, by statute, paid less than others in another agency.

He said there was little discussion about whether the attorney general actually needed so many commissioned police.

"It appears to be the case around the state," Coleman said. "Law enforcement has to be everywhere, and that means a gun instead of just a brain."
As of Sunday afternoon, The Washington Post called them "occupiers." The New York Times opted for "armed activists" and "militia men." And The Associated Press put the situation this way: "A family previously involved in a showdown with the federal government has occupied a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon and is asking militia members to join them."

Not one seemed to lean toward terms such as "insurrection," "revolt," anti-government "insurgents" or, as some on social media were calling them, "terrorists." When a group of unknown size and unknown firepower has taken over any federal building with plans and possibly some equipment to aid a years-long occupation - and when its representative tells reporters that they would prefer to avoid violence but are prepared to die - the kind of almost-uniform delicacy and the limits on the language used to describe the people involved becomes noteworthy itself.

It is hard to imagine that none of the words mentioned above - particularly "insurrection" or "revolt" - would be avoided if, for instance, a group of armed black Americans took possession of a federal or state courthouse to protest the police. Black Americans outraged about the death of a 12-year-old boy at the hands of police or concerned about the absence of a conviction in the George Zimmerman case have been frequently and inaccurately lumped in with criminals and looters, described as "thugs," or marauding wolf packs where drugs are, according to CNN's Don Lemon, "obviously" in use.

If a group of armed Muslims took possession of a federal building or even its lobby to protest calls to surveil the entire group, it's even more doubtful they could avoid harsher, more-alarming labels.

In fairness to those assembled in Oregon, it is true that there have been no reports of actual violence, injury or anyone being held inside the Oregon building against their will.

And in the interim, some may feel particularly inclined to take real care with the language used to describe the situation so as not to inflame it or offend people who, in some cases, have already been troubled by the decision to charge a father and son pair of ranchers with arson under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The charge not only carries what many of the rancher's supporters believe to be an unjust five-year jail term, but it brings the very same t-word into the mix.

For those who know the father and son - Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond - personally, it is understandable that they would disagree vehemently with any government action that implies that the men they know as engaged members of the community are terrorists. But one really cannot help but wonder where similar outrage lives when data clearly indicate that black Americans are far more likely than white ones to face serious charges and jail time rather than misdemeanor penalties for resisting arrest. Where has the lock-step adherence to careful and delicate language been in all of 2015 when unarmed black Americans were disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than others?

Beyond that seeming incongruity, the Hammonds are not among the occupiers. The man who has helped to organize the building occupation in Oregon is Ammon Bundy. Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who engaged in a standoff in 2014 with the government over grazing rights. And the younger Bundy has, again, described the occupiers as "armed" and prepared to die.

The armed occupation of a federal building might be what Bundy considers an assertion of rights and a mere gathering in a taxpayer-financed space. But it would seem to contain the real risk of violence, serious injury or even death.

Deliberate language choices are always a wise and reasonable move. That is especially true when telling stories of conflict with government and political protests. But the incredibly limited and relatively soft range of words in wide use Sunday seems to extend beyond all of that. The descriptions of events in Oregon appear to reflect the usual shape of our collective assumptions about the relationship between race and guilt - or religion and violent extremism - in the United States.

White Americans, their activities and ideas seem always to stem from a font of principled and committed individuals. As such, group suspicion and presumed guilt are readily perceived and described as unjust, unreasonable and unethical.

You will note that while the group gathered in Oregon is almost assuredly all or nearly all white, that has scarcely been mentioned in any story. You will note that nothing even close to similar can be said about coverage of events in Missouri, Maryland, Illinois or any other place where questions about policing have given way to protests or actual riots.

You will note the extended debate about whether admitted Charleston shooter Dylann Roof's apparently racially motivated shooting spree was an act of terrorism or even violent racism and the comparatively rapid way that more than one news organization began hinting at and then using terms such as Islamic extremism to describe the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

The sometimes-coded but increasingly overt ways that some Americans are presumed guilty and violence-prone while others are assumed to be principled and peaceable unless and until provoked - even when actually armed - is remarkable.
Information wars - can a just compromise be reached?

Many of these labeling supporters cite pesticide residues on GMO foods as a concern, and contradictory science on the safety of GMOs. Some opponents say they don't want to buy products that they feel contribute to corporate control of the world's food supply.

A barcode won't cut it, many of the leading GMO labeling proponents say. They point to a national survey conducted in November by the Mellman Group that concluded 88% of people want a printed GMO label rather than having to use a smartphone app to scan a bar code.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack looks set to sit down with representatives from both sides of the issue in January to try to forge a compromise if one can be found. Both sides say they are willing to meet in the middle.

Millions of dollars have been spent lobbying for and against labeling and fighting the issue out in the courts, and both sides are weary of the war. Details of the discussions to be held are being kept confidential, according to some participants, to give the process the greatest chance of success.

As the discussions loom, we should not lose sight of the fact that this issue - and many others - come down to the power of information, and the critical nature of who controls that information.

Those companies developing and profiting from GMOs have the information they need to patent their creations and track where and how they are used. Farmers planting GMOs are provided a range of information about the seeds, their limitations and their benefits, and can easily choose non-GMO seeds because varieties are labeled and tracked.

Systems are in place to allow food manufacturers to know whether or not they are purchasing ingredients made from GMO crops. It seems consumers are the only ones left out of the information pipeline.

Public 'too dumb to understand' say GMO industry boosters

Indeed, some advocating against GMO labeling argue that consumers aren't smart enough to understand or use GMO labeling information effectively. They argue that consumers are being conned into fearing GMOs.

In a 27th December blog posting opposing GMO labeling, GMO supporters Jon Entine and retired University of Illinois professor Bruce Chassy wrote of consumers "who can't define what a GMO is" and said that pro-labeling efforts are driven by "small groups of well-financed professional activists." Chassy and Entine argue that these "activists" use "misinformation and fear-mongering to whip up support for their agenda."

Such pro-GMO advocates may hope consumers also are not well informed about their connections to the corporate food industry. Chassy doesn't mention in that blog, for instance, that for years while working as a professor of food safety at the University of Illinois, he collaborated quietly with Monsanto executives on multiple projects aimed at countering concerns about health and environmental impacts of GMOs.

Monsanto has acknowledged that it provided several unrestricted grants to the biotechnology outreach program that Chassy helped lead, but said there was nothing improper about the relationship.

That is information some might want to know. But it only became public after the non-profit group US Right to Know obtained emails between Chassy and several other university professors and Monsanto, and shared them with media outlets.

Another batch of emails recently disclosed shows discussions between Kevin Folta, chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida, and a public relations agency about how to counter a Canadian teenager who developed a website questioning the safety of genetically modified foods. Folta also received grant money from Monsanto.

You don't have to be anti-GMO to want to know

I don't know about you, but this is all information I think is important. Knowing what goes on behind the scenes helps me make decisions about who I trust and what I believe about the food I buy for myself and my family.

As a journalist I've been fortunate enough to get behind those scenes a time or two myself: I've toured Monsanto's laboratories, visited Dow AgroSciences' test plots; and spent more time than I can calculate with farmers in their fields.

I've also spent countless hours with scientists on both sides of this debate; waded through stacks of legal and regulatory documents; and sat down with government regulators to talk over the myriad issues.

The knowledge I have gained leaves me straddling the fence a bit. I see benefits to GMOs, and I see risks. And I know with certainty that I want more information, not less.

Whatever one's views are about GMOs, or other aspects of the food industry, the right to information is essential, and not one to be abridged.

Carey Gillam has been recognized as one of the top food and agriculture journalists in the United States, winning several awards for her coverage of the industry, and appearing as an expert commentator on radio and television broadcasts. After a 17-year career at Reuters, one of the world's largest news organizations, Gillam joined U.S. Right to Know as Research Director on Jan. 4.

This article was originally published on US Right to Know (CC BY-SA).
Maybe when the moon turns blue, because if there genuinely were figures to suport his statement Liz Truss would have been touting them around every media outlet she could find.

Let's use some facts

Truss claims that the badger culls in Somerset and Gloucester (their third year of culling) and Dorset (experiencing its first) have been successful. What does that mean? Successful in killing lots of badgers? Or successful in lowering the incidence of bovine TB among cattle?

The culls are being carried out in very small areas of each county (Somerset approx. 4% of the total land mass, Gloucester approx. 7% and Dorset approx. 8%). One really cannot claim that culling badgers in such a small%age of land is affecting the TB rates enough to be counted as 'successful'.

Defra's own statistics show that annual testing of cattle and other bTB control measures in Dorset was reducing TB without culling. And there is evidence, slight it is true, that perturbation of badger populations in Somerset has resulted in new incidents of bTB around the edge of the culling area.

This evidence comes from a website that maps bTB outbreaks in England for the last 5 years. It is worth noting that according to this map there was a total of 9-10 farms in the North Dorset culling area that had bTB breakdowns in 2015, only three of which were still under restrictions at the time of the badger cull. Compared to the spread of incidents in parts of Devon and Cornwall, this looks pretty sparse, and makes one wonder just why Dorset was allowed to have a cull.

The NFU was not happy when campaigners found and used this site. But it is factual, unlike claims based on hearsay rather than figures.

In 2014 the then Environment Secretary Owen Paterson was foolish enough to repeat to a farming journalist, as fact, something a Gloucester farmer had claimed; that since badger culling had started there had been a huge increase in ground-nesting birds (dead badgers don't eat birds, and it's not a staple food for live ones). This was news to the RSPB and embarrassing for Defra when they were queried about it.

This is, if course, a 'science-led' control of badgers

These culls are no longer pretending to be 'pilot badger culls', due to run for four years before being rolled out across the country. Until they are completed there can be no properly assessed scientific evidence that culling badgers will result in less bTB. To have any roll-out without that evidence is utterly unscientific. Nor is it bovine TB control. It is just 'badger control'.

Defra launched a consultation on 28 August 2015 on their plans to 'update' the criteria for culling even more badgers. The 2015 culls started just three days later, on the August Bank Holiday.

They solicited responses by emailing over 300 'interested parties'. Others had to find out for themselves, which meant that some badger groups only had a few days to send in their responses before the month-long consultation closed.

There were 1378 responses, 90% of them from the public. Farmers and farming organisations accounted for just 3%. The fact that the 2010 consultation on badger culling elicited over 59,000 responses demonstrates how unpublicised government consultations can be, particularly when they don't want to hear the answers.

Three proposals were offered:

The length of the culls should not be limited to the current 6 weeks; Allowing culling in a much smaller area (100 sq.km rather than the current 200 sq.km plus); Providing more flexibility (or 'anything goes') for licensing of new areas of culling.

Having dismissed those who were against badger culling in principle ("many responses appeared to have been submitted in response to campaigns ... "), it must have been clear to Defra what the majority opinion was:

All three proposals could increase the perturbation of badger populations, leading to increases of TB in cattle (as proved by the Randomised Badger Culling Trials). All three proposals were moving away from the criteria set by the RBCT - a legitimate argument seeing that the government relied heavily on the RBCT to justify culling badgers, while happily misquoting its findings.

There were also worries on welfare issues and the possibility that local populations could be wiped out. Of the several hundred responses to each question, only 40-46 people broadly supported the proposals mostly, judging from the reasons given, because they would hamper those trying to protect badgers.

To all of which Defra replied that the responses "have helped inform the Secretary of State's decision to implement the proposals", which is a horrifying prospect for England's badgers. It will almost amount to badgers being shot wherever and whenever the gunmen choose.

And, seeing that the government has refused to release the true costs of culling badgers, it will cost unknown sums in policing. On only one thing have they given way - they have apparently agreed to test culled badgers for bovine TB.

And what will they do if it is found that too few badgers have bTB? Apart from staying very, very silent. Or make use of that statement (attributed to Truss) about failing defences in last month's disastrous floods:

"Our defences worked really well right up to the point at which they failed."

Lesley Docksey is a freelance writer who writes for The Ecologist and other media on the badger cull and other environmental topics.

Also on The Ecologist: 'So badger culls are working? Liz Truss, produce your evidence!' by Oliver Tickell.
Efforts to speed carbon cuts pledged under the Paris climate deal will require a fast, mass mobilisation of low carbon technology at costs that can be competitive with coal, a task to which nuclear power will likely be unsuited.

So says a new version of the World Nuclear Energy Industry Status Report, which tracks developments in the sector and provides outlooks based on developments energy and climate policy.

Time is the main enemy of the world nuclear industry, says Mycle Schneider, the author of the report which had its abridged version published in Beijing.

"Everyone needs to speed up energy transition, and cheap quick technology is going to be the first choice", he said, pointing to figures in the report which indicate that 70% of the 60 or so reactors currently worldwide are delayed. Five of these have been listed as 'under construction' for over 30 years.

The 40 reactor units built between 2005 and July 2015 had an average construction time of 9.4 years, suggesting that a fast-roll of the technology in future decades is highly unlikely. In China, where 18 units under construction, the average construction time is faster at 5.7 years.

And as nuclear power has already suffered three major accidents (Three Mile Island in the US, Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union, and Fukushima in Japan), higher safety demands raise standards for construction and operation, ensuring that the majority of postponements or cancellations of nuclear power plants were due to excessive costs, Schneider adds.

Nuclear share of power generation on a long term decline

Meanwhile, wind and solar power are being rolled out at a much faster pace. Between the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and 2014, growth in solar and wind capacity outstripped that in nuclear power. Nuclear power peaked in terms of share of energy production in 1996, at 17.6%, falling to 10.8% in 2014.

Even in China, which is bucking the trend by persisting with plans for nuclear power, the outlook for build-out is looking increasingly uncertain, as nuclear power faces both high costs and fierce competition from other energy sources in the electricity sector.

Wang Yinan, a researcher at the State Council's Development Research Centre, is opposed to large-scale development of nuclear power, believing the risks involved are too great. The latest technology, known as Generation III+, is unproven in practice, with none of these new reactors yet in operation.

To compound the problem, regulatory staff and engineers are not yet up to speed with the new technology, raising concerns about safety.

As Schneider puts it, those capabilities take time to build up - it's not just a matter of taking a training course in nuclear power. And in a country as densely populated as China, an accident could be catastrophic.
How to get registered and vote early in Iowa's 2022 elections

Iowa has 20 days of early voting for the Nov. 8 general election. That's less than in past years. Here's what you need to know.
STAMFORD  Building and Land Technology has officially launched its newly branded Silicon Harbor office complex and is embarking on a transformation of the 500,000-square-foot facility overlooking Long Island Sound at 1 Elmcroft Road within the Harbor Point redevelopment project.

Our transformation of this phenomenal property into Silicon Harbor is a response to the drivers of demand in todays office market. Technology and creative tenants are driving office space absorption nationwide, and if we want Stamford and Fairfield County to benefit from that trend we need to offer the space they want, Norwalk resident Carl R. Kuehner III, CEO of Stamford-based developer Building and Land Technology, said. The financial sector will always be important here, but we need to broaden our horizons in order to diversify the local economy. Its up to us to go out and recruit the companies we want here, and to do that we are creating modernized space in an amenity-rich, transit-oriented package.
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PATHANKOT, India (AP) -- A fifth gunman was killed Monday on the third day of a siege at a heavily fortified Indian air base near the border with Pakistan and at least one attacker remained as troops worked to secure the sprawling compound, a military official said. Seven troops have been killed.

The search operations at Pathankot air force base will continue until all areas have been completely secured, Maj. Gen. Dushyant Singh, from India's elite National Security Guard, told reporters.

The attack has dragged on since early Saturday morning as government troops struggle to contain the heavily armed attackers. At least twice over the weekend it appeared that the attack had ended but fresh gunfire and explosions erupted both times.

Four attackers were reported killed by Saturday evening, and at least two were said to have been exchanging gunfire with troops as of Monday morning. By evening one had been shot dead, Singh said.

Defense officials have said authorities had been alerted about a potential attack in the area on Friday, and that aerial surveillance at the base spotted the gunmen as they entered the compound, leading to criticism of the handling of the situation.

Singh told reporters in Pathankot that it will take a "long time" to declare the base completely secure because of its size and geography. It is spread over more than 2,000 acres, including forests and tall grass.

The commanding officer of the base, Lt. Col. J.S. Dhamoon, described it as a "mini-city" with homes and a school for the children of the personnel stationed there.

An army statement said the last gunmen were firing from a building that is part of the living quarters on the base.

The base has a fleet of India's Russian-origin MiG-21 fighter jets and Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, along with other military hardware. Officials have said no military hardware has been damaged in the fighting.

Military funerals were held Monday for the soldiers who were killed in the attack.

Their killings inside a military base despite intelligence alerts have angered many in India.

"The biggest problem is the multiplicity of command and control. Nobody knows who is really in charge," said Rahul Bedi, an analyst for Jane's Information Group.

The Pathankot base and the northern state of Punjab, where it is located, has "probably the highest concentration of military personnel in India because it's so close to the border with Pakistan," Bedi said.

"It's a huge embarrassment," he said. "It's a major goof-up for everybody."

Since Saturday morning, the base has been swarming with air force commandos, army soldiers, National Security Guard troops and local police. Officials, however, have refused to say how many security personnel were involved in the engagement.

There has also been no clear source of information on the attack for the media. Home Minister Rajnath Singh even tweeted Saturday night to congratulate the troops for successfully killing all of the gunmen.

The air force base is on the highway that connects India's insurgency-plagued Jammu and Kashmir state with the rest of the country. It is also very close to India's border with Pakistan.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in its entirety by both. Rebels in India's portion of Kashmir have been fighting since 1989 for independence or merger with Pakistan.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the insurgents, a charge Islamabad denies, and the attack is being viewed as a possible attempt to unravel recent progress in their relationship.

Police said they do not know if the gunmen came from Kashmir or from Pakistan. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The violence follows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise Dec. 25 visit to Pakistan, where he met his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. The two also held an unscheduled meeting at the Paris climate change talks last month.

Ahead of Modi's visit to Pakistan, the national security advisers of both countries met in Thailand. The foreign secretaries of both nations are to meet in Islamabad later this month.

The responses to the attacks from both countries have been muted so far, with neither New Delhi nor Islamabad giving any indication that the planned talks are under any threat.

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. was encouraged that the government of Pakistan condemned the attack and has said it would not discriminate between groups in its counter-terrorism operations.

"We've been clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan, that it must continue to target all militant groups," Kirby told reporters on Monday.

All political parties in India have condemned the attack, but there were no demands that the government call off the talks with Pakistan. In the past, when it was in opposition, Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party was a vocal critic of engagement with Pakistan.

___

Naqvi reported from New Delhi. Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.
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BURNS, Ore. -- An armed anti-government group took over a remote national wildlife refuge in Oregon as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West, while federal authorities are keeping watch but keeping their distance.

The group came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to contest the prison sentences of two ranchers who set fire to federal land, but their ultimate goal is to turn over the property to local authorities so people can use it free of U.S. oversight.

People across the globe have marveled that federal authorities didn't move to take back the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Residents say they have not seen a large presence of officers, and the government's tactic generally is to monitor protesters from afar but leave them be as long as they don't show signs of violence.

That's how federal officials defused a high-profile standoff last year with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy over grazing rights. Now, Bundy's two sons are leading the push in Oregon.

Ryan Bundy told The Associated Press on Sunday that he hopes the takeover will prompt others to take action across the country to seize control of federally managed land.

"The end goal here is that we are here to restore the rights to the people here so that they can use the land and resources. All of them," Bundy said.

That means ranchers can graze their cattle, miners can use their mineral rights, loggers can cut trees, and hunters and fishers can shoot and cast, he said.

The latest dispute traces its roots to the 1970s and the "Sagebrush Rebellion," a move by Western states like Nevada to increase local control over federal land. While ranchers and others complain of onerous federal rules, critics of the push for more local control have said the federal government should administer the public lands for the widest possible uses, including environmental and recreation.

Residents of the tiny town of Burns, 30 miles south of the wildlife refuge, are concerned about the potential for violence.

Keith Landon, a longtime resident and employee at the Reid Country Store, said he knows local law enforcement officials who fear their kids will be targeted by the group.

"I'm hoping most of it's just muscle, trying to push," he said. "But it's a scary thing."

If the situation turns violent, Bundy contends that it will be because of the federal government's actions.

"I mean, we're here to restore order, we're here to restore rights, and that can go peacefully and easily," he said.

The ranchers whose cause has been the rallying cry also reject the group's support. Dwight and son Steven Hammond were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. They served their original sentences -- Dwight, three months and Steven, one year -- but a judge ruled that the terms were too short under federal minimum sentencing laws.

Both men were ordered back to prison for four years each. They have said they plan to turn themselves in Monday.

The Bundy brothers say the group plans to stay at the refuge as long as it takes. They declined to say how many people were at the property where several pickup trucks blocked the entrance and armed men wore camouflage and winter gear.

"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," Ammon Bundy told reporters over the weekend. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

The FBI is working with local and state authorities to "bring a peaceful resolution to the situation," the bureau said in a statement late Sunday. It said it is the agency in charge and would not release details about the law enforcement response to ensure the safety of officers and those at the refuge.

Some are criticizing the lack of action, saying it is because those occupying the property are white.

Landon, the longtime Burns resident, said he sympathizes with the Bundys' frustrations. Landon was a logger until the federal government declared the spotted owl a protected species in the 1980s, damaging the local logging industry.

"It's hard to discredit what they're trying to do out there. But I don't want anybody hurt," he said.

Landon said that on the surface, it doesn't look like much has changed in Burns, a high desert town of about 2,700 people.

"It's weird -- I woke up this morning expecting the town to be crawling with this and that agency. But you don't see any of it. They're keeping a low presence," Landon said Sunday.

However, most of the hotels in the area are booked, and he's noticed that officers are doing their patrols in pairs instead of alone. The biggest difference since the takeover is the undercurrent of worry, he said.

"I'm glad they took the refuge because it's 30 miles away," Landon said. "I mean, they could have took the courthouse here in town."
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BAGHDAD (AP) -- While many Iraqi Shiites took to the streets in outrage over Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, the country's prime minister has had to walk a more cautious line, trying to contain Iraq's own explosive sectarian tensions.

The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr has inflamed the sectarian divide across the region. Shiite-led Iran has been the most vocal in its condemnation, and protesters stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran over the weekend. That prompted Sunni-led Saudi Arabia to cut diplomatic relations with Iran, and the kingdom's allies have lined up behind it, either cutting or reducing their ties with Tehran.

The government of Iraq, however, is straining to keep the peace amid the regional tumult. Iran is a key ally of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, has helped it in the fight against the Islamic State group, and supports powerful Shiite militias in the country.

At the same time, as the fight against IS extremists enters its second year, Iraq is grappling with the worst political and security crises since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. Only last week, Saudi Arabia sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time in 25 years to try to improve its relationship with Iraq.

In a sign of the government's caution, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a statement expressing regret over al-Nimr's execution and warning that such actions would "bring more destruction and devastation."

His office followed that Tuesday with a call for unity among Iraqis. Regional tensions should be faced "wisely, responsibly and rationally in order to preserve the security and stability of Iraq," according to a statement from al-Abadi's office.

A day earlier, thousands of Shiites gathered a few hundred yards from his office and called for the government to sever diplomatic ties with Riyadh. The protesters, supporters of prominent Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, chanted that al-Nimr's blood had not been spilled in vain and that the Mahdi Army, Sadr's disbanded Shiite militia, would avenge his death if needed.

That points to the government's bigger fear: That the regional dispute over al-Nimr's execution will turn into new violence between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis.

Sectarian violence has quickly spiraled out of control in Iraq in the recent past, and a renewed form could disrupt Baghdad's campaign against the Islamic State group, the Sunni extremists who control large parts of the north and west of the country.

Iranian-backed Shiite militias, whose might rivals that of the military and security forces, have been a major factor in the fight, and the government has already had to cede them considerable authority. At the same time, al-Abadi has sought to encourage reconciliation with the Sunni minority, among whom hatred of the militias is strong, and include Sunnis in the fight against IS.

"This is the last thing (al-Abadi) needs after the high point in Ramadi," said Kirk Sowell, publisher of the Inside Iraqi Politics newsletter, referring to the recent government victory pushing IS fighters out of the western Iraqi city.

While al-Nimr's execution is unlikely to change Iraq-Saudi policy in any meaningful way, it does have the potential to set off violence in Iraq, Sowell said.

Two Sunni mosques were attacked in the southern town of Hilla in apparent retaliation for the execution, but al-Abadi was quick to blame IS and order a buildup of security in the province.

A group of powerful Shiite militias with strong ties to Iran, including Asaib al-Haq and the Badr Brigade, demanded the government cut diplomatic ties with the kingdom, expel the ambassador and execute all Saudis held in Iraqi prisons on charges of terrorism.

Acceding to their demands risks disillusioning Sunnis, who already accuse the government of being too beholden to the militias and who often see neighboring Sunni powerhouses like Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as allies.

"What you have right now is a split," said Sajad Jiyad, a fellow at the Iraqi Institute for Economic Reform in Baghdad, describing the opposing interests al-Abadi is struggling to satisfy. "The prime minister will find himself having to do something or face risking his popular appeal."

Al-Abadi may lack the ability to get ahead of a potential crisis, Jiyad said.

"It's unclear how much control the government has in Iraq," he said.
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BURNS, Ore. (AP) -- The armed activists who flocked to a remote wildlife refuge to take a stand against the federal government also looked prepared for a nippy day of hunting or fishing.

They were bundled in camouflage, plaid shirts, ear muffs and cowboy hats in the bleak, snow-covered high desert of eastern Oregon where they seemed more likely to encounter a bird or animal than a member of the public outside their own group or the throng of news media beyond the pickup trucks blocking the entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

That may be one of the main reasons law enforcement hadn't taken action Monday against the group numbering close to two dozen who were upset about the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.

"These guys are out in the middle of nowhere, and they haven't threatened anybody that I know of," said Jim Glennon, a longtime police commander who now owns the Illinois-based law enforcement training organization Calibre Press. "There's no hurry. If there's not an immediate threat to anyone's life, why create a situation where there would be?"

Schools were closed for the week in Burns, about 30 miles north of the refuge, out of an abundance of caution, but no one had been hurt and no one was being held hostage on Monday.

The takeover puts federal officials in a delicate position of deciding whether to confront the occupiers, risking bloodshed, or stand back and possibly embolden others to directly confront the government.

The activists seized the refuge about 300 miles from Portland on Saturday night as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

The armed group said it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.

The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006, one of which was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors. The men served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

Their sentences were a rallying cry for the group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, whose mostly male members said they want federal lands turned over to local authorities so people can use them free of U.S. oversight.

The group -- led by two of the sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights -- sent a demand for "redress for grievances" to local, state and federal officials.

"We have exhausted all prudent measures and have been ignored," Ammon Bundy said.

The group, which included a couple of women and some boys and girls Monday, did not release a copy of its demands and Ammon Bundy would not say what the group would do if it got no response.

President Barack Obama said Monday federal authorities were monitoring the situation, but agents made no apparent moves to surround the property or confront the group -- an approach that reflected lessons learned from bloody standoffs at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, in the early 1990s.

That prompted complaints from many observers who suggested the government's response would have been swifter and more severe had the occupants been Muslim or other minorities.

"There seems to be somewhat of a reluctance to think white people are as dangerous as people of color," said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

Beirich said the group was emboldened by the government's failure to hold Cliven Bundy or his supporters accountable in 2014 after hundreds of armed anti-government activists rallied to his defense when federal authorities started seizing his cattle over more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

Michael Barkun, an emeritus professor at Syracuse University who has studied extremist groups, said not confronting the Oregon group could embolden others.

"You can say, well, a negotiated settlement emboldens them," he said. "But by the same token it deprives them of a confrontation that some of them want."

The Hammonds have distanced themselves from the protest group and many locals, including people who want to see federal lands made more accessible, don't want the activists here, fearing they may bring trouble.

Seeds of the dispute date back decades in the West, where the federal government owns about half of all land.

In the 1970s, Nevada and other states pushed for local control over federal land in what was known as the "Sagebrush Rebellion."

Supporters wanted more land for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting and opponents wanted federal government to administer lands for the widest possible uses, including environmental and recreational.

The refuge established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect birds from hunters selling plumes to the hat industry has expanded to 300 square miles over the years.

The valley rimmed by distant mountains contains lakes and marshland and now surrounds the ranch Dwight Hammond bought with his father in 1964.

Hammond said his family resisted pressure to sell the ranch as the federal government chipped away at his grazing allotments and increased fees on other lands.

Ammon Bundy said the group plans to stay at the refuge as long as it takes.

___

Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Brian Melley contributed from Los Angeles.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The children of service members are victims in hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse each year, according to data the Defense Department provided exclusively to The Associated Press.

The abuse of military dependents is committed most often by male enlisted troops, the data show, followed by family members.

The figures offer greater insight into the sexual abuse of children committed by service members, a problem of uncertain scale due to a lack of transparency into the military's legal proceedings. With more than 1 million military dependents, the number of cases appears statistically small. But for a profession that prides itself on honor and discipline, any episodes of abuse cast a pall.

Those numbers fall well-short of a full picture.

Ages of the offenders and victims, locations of the incidents and the branch of service that received the report of sexual abuse were omitted. The Defense Department said in a statement that "information that could unintentionally uniquely identify victims was withheld from release to eliminate possible 're-victimization' of the innocent."

It's also unclear how many of the incidents resulted in legal action. The cases represent substantiated occurrences of child sexual abuse reported to the Defense Department's Family Advocacy Program, which does not track judicial proceedings, the department said.

An AP investigation published in November found more inmates are in military prisons for child sex crimes than for any other offense. But the military's opaque justice system keeps the public from knowing the full extent of their crimes or how much time they spend behind bars.

Responding to AP's findings, three Democratic senators have urged Defense Secretary Ash Carter to lift what they called the military justice system's "cloak of secrecy" and make records from sex crimes trials readily accessible.

The senators also raised another concern. Cases involving children are not included in the Defense Department's annual report to Congress on sexual assaults, which focuses primarily on adult-on-adult incidents, they said. The senators -- Barbara Boxer of California, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii -- told Carter in a Dec. 8 letter they are concerned the department may be underestimating how many sexual assaults are occurring in the military.

There were at least 1,584 substantiated cases of military dependents being sexually abused between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, according to the data. Enlisted service members sexually abused children in 840 cases. Family members of the victims accounted for the second largest category with 332 cases.

Most of the enlisted offenders were males whose ranks ranged between E-4 and E-6. In the Marine Corps and Army, for example, those troops are corporals, sergeants and staff sergeants. Officers were involved in 49 of the cases. The victims were overwhelmingly female.

Kathy Robertson, manager of the Family Advocacy Program, said in an emailed response to questions that the incident rates reflect the U.S. military's demographics. Most of the cases involve the E-4 and E-6 ranks because they are the largest number of active-duty personnel and the largest number of parents in the military, she said.

Duplications in the data indicate as many as 160 additional cases of sexual abuse could have occurred during the 2010 to 2014 period, involving a child who was victimized multiple times or a repeat abuser. The figures also account only for cases involving military dependents, which are the only child victims the department tracks.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Concerned that inflamed tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia may threaten key foreign policy objectives in Iraq and Syria, among other places, the Obama administration toed a careful line Monday in seeking to calm a diplomatic storm that many fear could lead the longtime regional rivals to direct sectarian conflict.

The White House and State Department both appealed to Riyadh and Tehran to show restraint and avoid further exacerbating the rift between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran. However, officials said the administration is loath to insert itself but wants to ensure the viability of the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, nascent attempts to end Syria's civil war, peace efforts in Yemen and the Iran nuclear deal.

"We don't want to see any progress that has been made or may be made on those issues affected by this, which is why (we) have been in communication with leaders there, to try to get tensions calmed down, to try to get dialogue started or restarted so that we can focus on these other very pressing issues in the region," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and on Monday with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Kirby said. Kerry also planned a round of calls Monday to the foreign ministers of all the Sunni-led states in the Gulf region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, officials said.

Bahrain followed Saudi Arabia's lead and severed diplomatic ties with Iran, while the UAE downgraded its diplomatic relations with it, after mobs attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran following the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

In addition to Kerry, other senior U.S. diplomats were in close contact with Saudi and Arab officials over the weekend, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the delicate diplomacy.

Yet, officials made clear they did not want to mediate the dispute. They stressed it was up to local leaders to act to ease the situation.

"Ultimately, solutions to problems in this region must come from leaders in this region," Kirby told reporters. "So while we continue to make all efforts to facilitate dialogue, the emphasis is on local leadership to work through their differences and find the best path forward through this tension."

Of particular concern, U.S. officials said, are military operations against Islamic State extremists in Iraq that are being conducted by Iraqi security forces, which answer to an Iran-friendly government, and Sunni and Shiite militias. That cooperation has shown gains in recent weeks, notably with the Iraqi recapture of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Officials were preparing for a high-level U.S. conversation with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to stress the importance of continuing the Iraqi government's outreach to Sunni militias, the officials said.

Also of concern is the state of the Syrian peace effort, which is supposed to swing into high gear in late January with U.N.-sponsored negotiations between Saudi-backed opposition forces and the Iran-supported government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. A U.S. official said Kerry had spoken Sunday with the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to gauge any impact Saudi-Iranian developments might have on the planned Jan. 25 start of negotiations. There was no immediate indication that those talks would be disrupted, the official said.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest urged Saudi Arabia and Iran not to let their dispute derail fragile talks aimed at securing a cease-fire and a political transition to end the war in Syria.

"Hopefully they will continue to engage," Earnest said. "It is so clearly in the interests of both countries to advance a political solution to the situation inside of Syria."

Meanwhile, the United Nations said de Mistura will head to Saudi Arabia and Iran this week to try to ensure the talks go ahead.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said de Mistura "hopes that the adverse consequences of the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran do not affect the peace process with the Syrians."

___

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Jan. 2

Edward Heredia, 22, of 940 St., Nicolas Ave., New York City, was charged with fifth-degree larceny, third-degree forgery and third-degree identity theft. Heredia was issued a $2,500 bond and given a date of Jan. 8 at Norwalk Superior Court.

Ricky Cabrera, 22, of 940 St. Nicolas Ave., New York City, was charged with third-degree identity theft, third-degree forgery and fifth-degree larceny. Cabrera was issued a $2,500 bond and given a date of Jan. 8 at Norwalk Superior Court.

Ana Rodriguez, 44, of 250 Summit St., Bridgeport, was charged with four counts of second-degree failure to appear, two counts of criminal violation of a protective order, third-degree larceny and third-degree burglary. Rodriguez was issued a $38,500 bond and given a date of Jan. 4 at Norwalk Superior Court.

Ann Finch, 55, of 24 4th St., was charged with two counts of interfering with an officer, evading responsibility and operation while under the influence. Finch was issued a $12,500 bond and given a date of Jan. 11 at Norwalk Superior Court.

Mynor Galvez, 44, of 11 Bedford Ave., was charged with operation while under the influence. Galvez was issued a $250 bond and given a date of Jan. 11 at Norwalk Superior Court.

Jan. 3

Efrain Reyes, 41, of 15 Bayne St., was charged with failure to bring motor vehicle to a full stop, engaging in pursuit, failure to keep right on curve/hill, failure to obey control signal, possession of marijuana less than four ounces, failure to obey stop sign, restricted turns fail signal and reckless driving. Reyes was issued a $10,000 bond and given a date of Jan. 11 at Norwalk Superior Court.

Sidney Jackson, 46, of 72 Revere St., Bridgeport, was charged with criminal trespass.

Jan. 4

Jessica Cichowicz, 25, of 140 Wolfpit Ave., was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct. Cichowicz was issued a $1,000 bond and given a date of Jan. 4 at Norwalk Superior Court.
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NORWALK -- Police say a city man was nabbed on a slew of charges after he led officers on a pursuit Sunday night.

Efrain Reyes, 42, of 15 Bayne St., was charged with failure to bring motor vehicle to full stop, engaging in pursuit, failure to keep right on curve/hill, failure to obey control signal, possession of marijuana less than four ounces, possession of narcotics, failure to obey stop sign, restricted turns fail signal and reckless driving.

Reyes was issued a $10,000 bond, which he posted, and was given a date of Jan. 11 at Norwalk Superior Court.

According to a police report, officers from the Special Services Division were out patrolling the area around Ryan Park when they spotted a black-colored Jeep parked with its lights off.

Since it was around 7:30 p.m. and the park was closed, officers drove up to the Jeep in an attempt to speak with the driver, when the vehicle suddenly began to exit the area.

The officers followed the Jeep as it disregarded a stop sign and crossed over a double yellow line while pulling out of the park.

The driver, later identified as Reyes, allegedly passed another stop sign and turned right on red without stopping before officers caught up with him while driving at a fast pace.

Reyes allegedly denied avoiding the officers and was seen swirling an unidentified object around in his mouth before taking a swig of juice to wash it down.

A passenger in the car, Sydney Jackson, 46, of 72 Revere St., Bridgeport, said he was just getting a ride from Reyes and claimed to not know who he was.

When Jackson got out of the car, police say a small bag of crack cocaine fell to the ground. A K-9 called to the scene found two additional bags in the car, both of which had a white residue on the outside.

In addition, police say a cigar wrapper was found in the car, which contained marijuana.

Reyes was arrested and taken into custody, while Jackson was charged with criminal trespass and issued a promise to appear at a future court date.
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NAMPA, Idaho (AP) -- One man's back hair is another man's canvas.

At least that's how Mike Wolfe, 35, of Nampa, Idaho, has decided to approach manscaping.

Wolfe tells KTVB-TV (http://bit.ly/1RbVtWe) that after years of feeling ashamed of his body hair, he asked a friend in 2008 to trim an American flag on his back rather than undergoing hair removal processes like shaving or waxing. Since then, the two meet up several times throughout the year to design a new creation onto Wolfe's back.

"Pssh, it's manhandling back hair," said Wolfe. "It's disgusting. But it's funny. You can't deny it's funny."

Tyler Harding, a former graphic artist who has been friends with Wolfe for more than a decade, says it takes about an hour to complete the artistic trim.

And the creations can now be seen on a calendar -- called a Calend-hair -- available for $20. Some proceeds will benefit a charity at Wolfe's church.

Designs are uniquely named, such as Grim Reap-hair for October and M-hair-achi Band for May.

"Everybody always makes fun of the guy with back hair," Wolfe said. "Well now it's my turn to shine, right?"

Wolfe's wife takes some credit for him flaunting his fur. When they went on their first date, Wolfe told her he was hairy. He felt nervous at the time, but she took it in stride.

"Looking back now this might be because of me," Jamie Wolfe said. "Maybe I shouldn't have given him so much confidence in his back hair."
Editor's note: This letter was orignally sent to Norwalk school employees and school board members. It is reprinted here at the author's request.

Dear Members of the Board of Education and Norwalk Public Schools Central Office:

On behalf of the Norwalk High School Band program I would first like to wish you all a very happy New Year. May the coming year bring you all much joy and success.

As we enter in to 2016 and the 2016/17 budget planning cycle, I also wanted to take a few moments to thank you all for your support and to provide you with an few key updates regarding the 2015/16 Norwalk High School Band program. Thanks to the support of the Board of Education and the Central Office, we have seen the funding for our program increase from $24,000 in 2014/15 to $92,300 in 2015/16. As a result of this funding we have seen the following:

Student Assessments have decreased by 20 percent across the board

Marching Band costs have dropped from $580 per student to $460 per student

Winter program costs have dropped from $1,100 per student to $800 per student

With improved affordability we have seen participation in the program increase by 18 percent year over year. These increases are not just associated with incoming Freshman students, Sophomore and Junior students have joined the program due to improved affordability

20 percent of the total population in Norwalk High School is now participating in the Band and Music program

Beyond affordability however, the program continues to provide benefits to our students and their educational careers:

The average GPA for students within the Band program is 3.276

65 percent of Band students qualify for Honors

45 percent of Band students qualify for High Honors

98 percent of Band students go on to post-high school education, with 91 percent attending a 4 year college or university

All of this from a program that mirrors the racial, ethnic and financial diversity that make Norwalk such an incredible place to live.

I have attached a brief presentation that provides more detail regarding the program and its impact on the students and the community for your review and consideration.

In closing, I would like to thank you again for your continued support for our program and ask that you please maintain the level of investment that you are making as it is clearly having a positive impact on not only our program, but more importantly on the lives and success of our students.

Thank you and Happy New Year again.

Ed Abrams

President

Marching Bears Incorporated
Area firefighters and law enforcement went to Mormon Island State Recreation Area twice Monday to check out a report of an ATV possibly sinking through the ice.

A truck driver passing by on Interstate 80 reported that he may have seen evidence of an accident on the middle of the three lakes. Doniphan Fire and Rescue and Grand Island Fire Department were among the agencies that responded.

The only ATV tracks found on any lake were on the middle lake, but no break in the ice was located, said Shift Commander Ed Carlin of the Grand Island Fire Department. A hole in the ice indicated that an ice fisherman had been there earlier in the day, but he was not there when emergency personnel arrived at about 3:15 p.m.

The Doniphan and Grand Island fire departments returned to the scene at about 4:35 p.m. A Hall County Sheriffs deputy, looking down on the scene from the interstate, saw a spot where an ice break-in may have occurred, Carlin said.

It was an area that firefighters had already looked at. We went back out and looked at it again just to be sure, Carlin said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama unveiled an array of measures on Tuesday tightening control and enforcement of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he implored Congress to pass.

Obama accused the gun lobby of taking Congress hostage, but said "they cannot hold America hostage." He insisted it was possible to uphold the Second Amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in the U.S. that he said had become "the new normal."

"This is not a plot to take away everybody's guns," Obama said in a ceremony in the East Room. "You pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules."

An emotional Obama wiped tears away from his eye as he recalled the 20 first-graders killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He paid tribute to the parents, some of whom gathered for the ceremony, who he said had never imagined their child's life would be cut short by a bullet.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Obama said.

At the centerpiece of Obama's plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks. Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.

Aiming to narrow that loophole, the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is issuing updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone "in the business" of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns. To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.

The White House also put sellers on notice that the administration planned to strengthen enforcement  including deploying 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

To lend a personal face to the issue, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans whose lives were altered by the nation's most searing recent gun tragedies, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and relatives of victims from Charleston, S.C., at Virginia Tech. Mark Barden, whose son was shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced the president with a declaration that "we are better than this."

Invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr., Obama said, "We need to feel the fierce urgency of now."

Obama's package of executive actions aims to curb what he's described as a scourge of gun violence in the U.S., punctuated by appalling mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona, among many others. After Newtown, Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks.

When the effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president's powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

A more recent spate of gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, shootings have spurred the administration to give the issue another look, as Obama seeks to make good on a policy issue that he's elevated time and again but has failed until now to advance.
An Indian American foundation, The Georgina Joshi Foundation Inc., has given a $1 million gift to Indiana Universitys Jacobs School of Music for a state-of-the-art audio recording studio. The new facility, to be named the Georgina Joshi []
New York, NY (TIP): Earlier today, January 4, State Senator Tony Avella and Assembly Member Michael G. DenDekker held a press conference celebrating the passage of their Fines and Forfeitures bill, S.5046A/A7230A, into law. When []
TRENTON, NJ (TIP): A Glen Rock attorney and former federal prosecutor became the countys top law enforcement official on Monday, January 4, the first change in leadership in Bergen County in 14 years, says a []
SAN FRANSISCO: A 68-year-old Sikh man was stabbed to death in Californias Fresno city on January 1, prompting police to launch a hate crime probe into the citys first homicide. Gurcharan Singh Gill, an employee []
A group of self-described militiamen continue to occupy a federal building in the remote high desert of the US state of Oregon in protest against a prison sentence for local ranchers accused of burning government []
Phillies win NLCS opener behind Schwarber's monster homer: 'Just wow'

Zack Wheeler tossed seven scoreless innings and allowed one hit in the Phillies' 2-0 win over the Padres in Game 1 of the NLCS.
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Linkedin Jon Gambrell (The Jakarta Post) Dubai  Tue, January 5, 2016

Iran and Saudi Arabia have had tense diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, although there have been occasional thaws. Here's a look at how ties between the Middle East rivals have shifted:

PRE-REVOLUTION: Iran had rocky relations with Saudi Arabia under the shah, but they improved toward the end of his reign in 1979. Both were original members of the oil cartel OPEC.

POST-REVOLUTION: After the revolution and takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Saudi Arabia became Washington's top ally in the region. In the ensuing war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s that killed 1 million people, Saudi Arabia backed Iraq despite concerns about dictator Saddam Hussein.

1987 HAJJ RIOTS: The annual hajj pilgrimage to Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life, saw bloodshed in 1987 when Iranians held a political demonstration against Israel's occupancy. Iranian pilgrims later clashed with Saudi riot police, and at least 402 people were killed. Iran said 600 of its pilgrims were killed after police opened fire at the crowd. In Tehran, mobs attacked the Saudi, Kuwaiti, French and Iraqi embassies.

SEVERING TIES: Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in 1988, citing the hajj riots of a year earlier and Iran's attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf. The countries restored diplomatic ties in 1991.

EASING TENSIONS: Relations improved after Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, a political moderate, took office in 1997. They warmed further after historic visits by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to Tehran that year and Khatami to the kingdom in 1999.

NUCLEAR DISPUTE: Saudi worries about Iran resumed amid international sanctions against Tehran over its contested nuclear program and the increasingly harsh rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran and Saudi Arabia each backed opposite sides in Syria's civil war and the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia also grew increasingly suspicious of Iran over the nuclear deal reached with world powers.

2015 HAJJ DISASTER: After a Sept. 24 stampede and crush struck the hajj, Saudi Arabia said 769 pilgrims were killed. An Associated Press count from other countries showed that over 2,400 people were killed. Iran said at least 464 of its pilgrims were killed and blamed Saudi "incompetence" for the deaths.

SHEIKH'S EXECUTION: On Jan. 2, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people ' including Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a central figure in Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority. His death sparked protests across the Middle East and attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities in Iran. Saudi Arabia responded by announcing it was severing diplomatic ties with Iran. (ags)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, may replace baggage handlers with conveyor belts following recent luggage theft allegedly committed by employees of Indonesia's largest airline group.



Police earlier detained two baggage handlers, identified as S and M, and two security officers, A and H, after closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras apparently caught S while opening a passenger's luggage.



According to Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Mohammad Iqbal, S admitted opening the luggage and stealing a Blackberry smartphone while handling baggage from a flight of Batik Air ' a full-service carrier belonging to Lion Air Group.



'Based on the suspects' testimony, they committed the crime many times. S said he had broken open luggage 13 times within one year,' Iqbal said on Monday.



Iqbal went on to say that police were currently investigating whether the suspects were part of a syndicate specializing in luggage theft.



Unlike other airlines, Lion Air does not subcontract companies to manage its ground handling services.



Lion Air president director Edward Sirait told The Jakarta Post on Monday that the company had been managing its own ground services at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport since 2004 for cost-efficiency reasons.



He went on to say that Lion Air also took care of its ground services at other international airports: Juanda Airport in Surabaya, East Java, Sultan Hasanuddin Airport in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Sam Ratulangi Airport in Manado, North Sulawesi, and Kualanamu Airport in Medan, North Sumatra.



Responding to the issue, Agus Haryadi, a secretary of airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II, admitted that the manual baggage handling system the airport currently used could be one of the triggers of such theft.



He explained that the system gave baggage handlers a chance to commit such a crime.



He further said that airport management, therefore, planned to use a system requiring only conveyor belts to transport passenger luggage.



He added that currently only two airports in the country used conveyor belts: Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman Airport in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, and Kualanamu Airport.



Agus went on to say that Soekarno-Hatta International Airport already had sufficient security personnel to monitor the baggage-handling area.



'However, we understand that we have to evaluate whether those officers were working properly as instructed by us,' Agus said.



Agus also said that the authorities would add 325 CCTV units in the airport, particularly in baggage-handling areas, to prevent similar crimes from happening in the future. The airport currently has 1,100 CCTV units.



Separately, Sudaryatmo from the Indonesian Consumer Foundation (YLKI) suggested that aside from adding more CCTV units, the airport management should observe baggage-handling spots more carefully by imposing daily security checks on employees working there.



He also advised that the management should be firm with airlines found to have violated regulations.



He then called on airline passengers to check their belongings as soon as they reclaimed their luggage from the airline and immediately file a complaint if they find their luggage broken or something missing.



'Passengers should complain to the airline office in the airport, not later,' Sudaryatmo said.



Meanwhile, YLKI's chairman Tulus Abadi urged Lion Air to swiftly improve its management, particularly in ground handling services. He said that according to consumer complaints received by YLKI, Lion Air has become the worst airline in the country due to delayed flights, a complicated ticketing system, and the baggage handling system.



Tulus went on to say that Lion Air should have been able to improve ground handling services more easily than other airlines as it handled ground services itself.



Regarding the theft case, Lion Air Group public relation manager Andy M. Saladin said his company was currently conducting an internal investigation with the police.



He added that Lion Air Group was committed to responding to any reports on missing or broken belongings. (agn)

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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Immigration officials are ready to implement a free-visa policy for 84 countries that were added to the list at the end of last year, bringing to 174 the total number of countries whose nationals can stay in Indonesia for up to 30 days on a free visa, an official said recently.

Law and Human Rights Ministry's immigration directorate general spokesman Heru Santoso Ananta Yudha said on Monday that implementation to waive visa fees for the latest addition of countries was awaiting the issuance of a presidential decree.

'We at the immigration directorate general fully support the government's decision and will carry out our duties accordingly,' Heru told the thejakartapost.com.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir said the government would maintain appropriate security procedures in relation to the free-visa policy.

He also said the government would continue its efforts to develop Indonesia's tourism and approach potential regions such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe to visit the archipelago.

Security issues

University of Indonesia international relations expert Hikmahanto Juwana said the government needed to be vigilant and selective with nationalities to be granted free visas to Indonesia.

He urged the government to prepare the implementation, including preparing the immigration officials once the policy took effects.

'For Indonesia, even though tourism is important, [the government] must still be cautious in terms of security and the economy."

"Security is a very important issue considering that minimum immigration officials oversee the supervision," he said.

Hikmahanto also warned against including countries whose citizens were often involved in transnational crimes.

Furthermore, the government should also be careful of countries whose citizens may exploit Indonesia as a transit country to illegally enter Australia.

The situation will not only create trouble for both Australia and Indonesia but may also create misunderstandings between the two nations that could in turn harm their relations, Hikmahanto said.

President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo said on Monday that he was not worried the policy would compromise security or stability in the country. He cited neighboring countries like Singapore and Malaysia that issued free visas to the nationals of more 170 countries but remained safe from security disturbances.

Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli announced in December that the government had added 84 countries to the list of nations eligible to free entry from the current 90 countries in order to boost foreign tourist arrivals. The government is targeting 20 million tourist arrivals by 2019 even though development of the country's tourist facilities lagged behind that of neighboring countries.

Australia and Brazil and among the 84 countries. Indonesia's relations with the two countries nosedived following the executions of two Australians and one Brazilian for drug offenses last year.

Australian tourists are among the top five visitors to Indonesia along with Singaporeans, Malaysians, Chinese and Japanese.

Other countries whose nationals will be eligible for free visas are Bangladesh, Cameroon, Kenya, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. (rin)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) has called on President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to uphold human rights and democratic values in line with economic growth, stressing that development should be carried out with respect for human rights.

HRWG executive director Rafendi Djamin said the government's economic-oriented goals in 2015 had neglected its commitment to upholding human rights, while ideally business and human rights principles should be aligned because they had similar objectives, namely to improve welfare of the people.

"The government needs to be consistent in upholding human rights ahead of boosting economic growth with projects that involve Indonesians," Rafendi told thejakartapost.com.

Rafendi said that Jokowi's administration had failed to include human rights principles in its domestic policies that aimed to boost economic and investment growth.

However, HRWG's program manager for the United Nations and Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Muhammad Hafiz, said in contrast to domestic policy, Indonesia had played a significant role in promoting human rights at the global level through the UN in 2015.

Hafiz said that at the foreign policy level, Indonesia had demonstrated the country's commitment to upholding democratic values by endorsing a number of UN resolutions related to human rights.

For example, Indonesia pushed for Resolution A/HRC/28/L.4 on combating intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) during its 28th session and contributed to the drafting of Resolution A/HRC/RES/23/9 on the negative impact of corruption on the enjoyment of human rights, which was adopted at the UNHRC's 23rd session, both in 2015.

"Indonesia's foreign policy in the UN is not in line with its domestic policy. Indonesia pushes other countries to be tolerant and to promote anticorruption efforts, but it's not the same at the domestic level," Hafiz said.

According to Hafiz, the government should translate its foreign policy at the domestic level by integrating human rights principles into policies that were made to propel business growth, particularly in investment.

Hafiz said the central government needed to ensure that companies investing in Indonesia respected human rights principles and insist that it be stated in the working contract between companies and their workers.

He also stressed the need for the central government to help local governments that mostly lacked the ability to adopt human rights principles into their policies.

Rafendi said human rights violations would keep happening as long as the government did not align business and human rights principles. (bbn)
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Linkedin Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post)  Tue, January 5, 2016

Publicly listed CIMB Niaga, the country's fifth-largest lender, expects to maintain its capital levels through asset revaluation as it aims to upgrade its status in 2016, the bank's executive has said.



CIMB Niaga strategy and finance director Wan Razly Abdullah said the bank was in the process of submitting its asset revaluation plan to the government as part of its strategy to keep its capital adequacy ratio (CAR) level in 2016.



'We have told the Financial Services Authority [OJK] that we want to keep our CAR level above 15 percent in 2016, so we are in the process of asset revaluation,' Wan Razly said in Jakarta recently.



Wan Razly said the asset revaluation program was expected to help the bank increase its CAR level by at least 1 basis point in 2016.



CIMB Niaga, part of Malaysia's CIMB financial group, posted a 16.01 percent CAR as of September 2015, the same level the group recorded in September last year after the ratio had decreased to 15.98 percent by the end of June 2015.



The asset revaluation is part of a government-sponsored program outlined in the fifth economic policy package released in September last year, in which the government is offering tax cuts for companies and individuals wishing to reevaluate their assets to allow them greater leverage in accessing external

financing.



Revaluation of fixed assets, such as buildings and land, can help banks recalculate their CAR, thus giving them higher lending capacity.



The asset revaluation is offered in several stages, with the tax rate set at 3 percent before the New Year,

4 percent from January to June 2016 and 6 percent from July to December 2016.



Through asset revaluation, Wan Razly said the bank was convinced that it would be able to upgrade its status from BUKU III category to BUKU IV in 2016 as its core-capital had reached almost Rp 30 trillion at present.



Banks in the BUKU III category includes banks with core capital between Rp 5 trillion (US$359.4 million) and Rp 30 trillion while BUKU IV banks' core capital exceeds Rp 30 trillion. Only four banks qualify as BUKU IV lenders at present, namely lending giants Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) and Bank Central Asia (BCA).



As well as conducting asset revaluation, Wan Razly said the bank would also routinely raise capital through retained profits and would stay open to other possible options, such as rights issue.



However, he declined to comment further about whether the bank's shareholders already had a plan to raise capital through a rights issue scheme by issuing new rights shares in the capital market.



CIMB Niaga suffered from a year-on-year (yoy) profit decline of 45.3 percent in 2014, with 92.4 percent yoy, 91 percent yoy and 88.5 percent yoy in the first, second and third quarters, respectively, due to sharp increases in non-performing loans (NPL) caused by a plunge of commodity prices and a slow economy.



The bank's consolidated gross NPL ratio rose to 3.9 percent at the end of 2014 from 2.23 percent in the previous year, with 4.1 percent and 4.28 percent in the first and second quarter of 2015.



By the end of September 2015, the bank's gross NPL ratio decreased to 3.17 percent as a result of asset sales worth $200 million to an affiliated company of the CIMB Group, Wan Razly said.



In order to raise income in 2016, he said the bank would invest Rp 1.6 trillion in IT and networks that were essential in boosting low-cost funds, especially from digital banking transactions.






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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama has prohibited PT Jakarta Industrial Estate Pulogadung (JIEP) from charging residents for entering the Pulogadung Industrial Estate in East Jakarta, following public pressure to reject the plan.



PT JIEP had installed e-gates at the all access points into the industrial estate on Dec. 22.



Residents protested the JIEP plan by blocking some gateways to the industrial estate, which caused severe traffic congestion on Monday morning. They rejected the charges, which ranged from Rp 2,000 to Rp 8,000 (58 US cents) depending on the sizes of the vehicles.



The company planned to start imposing the fees in March.



Ahok said on Tuesday that residents were entitled to have access to the Pulogadung industrial estate, without paying anything. 'We have told them [JIEP] that the residents should be given access rights,' Ahok told journalists at City Hall on Tuesday.



The governor, however, admitted that some residents in Pulo Gadung had built illegal houses on the land owned by JIEP, so the government would further study the issue. Ahok told the JIEP and residents to find a solution to settle the problem.



Previously, Ahok said he had summoned representatives of PT JIEP because since the beginning he had objected to the installation of the e-gates, particularly because the company wanted to charge residents for access.



'The e-gates should be removed if they bring no benefits to the residents,' he said on Monday, adding that government had a 50 percent share in JIEP.



PT JIEP argued that the e-gates were needed for the sake of security. The gates could be opened with cards issued by the company.



Previously, PT JIEP operational director Bilson Manaloe explained that the e-gate system was imposed for the security and confidence of the investors. He was particularly concerned about the presence of street vendors and illegal parking inside the industrial estate. (bbn) (+)
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Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Jakarta administration recorded another low spending year in 2015, with 69.97 percent of the targeted Rp 65.7 trillion (US$4.71 billion), or about Rp 46 trillion according to data from the Jakarta Financial and Asset Management Board (BPKAD).



Although the Jakarta administration has experienced another lackluster year, its spending percentage in 2015 has increased compared to its performance in 2014, which was dubbed a 'historically low' spending year for Jakarta, at just 59.63 percent of the targeted Rp 72.9 trillion, or about Rp 43.4 trillion.



BPKAD head Heru Budi Hartono, however, said the numbers were not bad considering the late approval of the 2015 budget. However, the city administration has kicked off this year confidently as it has already opened bids.



'As of Dec. 31, our 2015 spending reached 69.97 percent. This is quite high considering that we started spending quiet late last year,' Heru told reporters after a weekly officials' meeting at City Hall Monday.



Early last year, the city administration and the City Council became embroiled in a bitter dispute over the 2015 draft budget. As a result, the Jakarta administration for the first time issued a budget without approval from the City Council. The dispute also caused a delayed budget approval in April, and it was disbursed only in late May.



BPKAD data further shows that the city administration's revenue reached 81.29 percent of the targeted Rp 65.7 trillion, or about Rp 53.4 trillion. Heru said the city administration was set to receive Rp 12.9 trillion in funding from the central government. However, as of Dec. 31, the city administration had only received Rp 5.88 trillion due to the central government's low revenue.



Heru further said that currently the city administration was waiting for the Home Ministry's evaluation of its 2016 draft budget.



'Currently, we are waiting for the evaluation from the ministry. Hopefully we can have the evaluation by Monday night or Tuesday morning at the latest,' he said.



The city's draft budget, which was approved at Rp 66.3 trillion ($4.87 million), higher than the 2015 budget at Rp 65.7 trillion, was submitted to the ministry late last year for approval and evaluation. The ministry must make a thorough evaluation before approving and returning the draft to the Jakarta administration. The ministry may ask for revisions if it feels that there are allocations that need adjustment.



The city administration, however, has kicked off the year confidently as it has already opened bids even though the budget has not yet been disbursed. Separately, Jakarta Goods and Services Procurement Agency (BPPBJ) head Blessmiyanda confirmed that his agency had opened bids for a number of projects, including those at the Housing and Government Buildings Agency as well as the Water Management Agency.



Blessmiyanda said that such a practice was allowed according to Presidential Regulation No. 4/2015 on goods and services procurement.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Soekarto-Hatta International Airport police arrested four employees of the country's biggest budget carrier Lion Air on suspicion of stealing passengers' possession from luggage, a police officer said on Monday.



Jakarta Police spokesman Sr.Comr. Mohamamd Iqbal identified the perpetrators only as S, 22, and M, who worked as Lion Air baggage handlers and airline security officers A, 28, and H, 29.



"They opened the passengers' luggage and took the belongings in the airplane's hull," he said as quoted by Antara news agency on Monday.



Iqbal explained that the police initially arrested A, H, and M on Dec. 18 after discovering their misconduct from closed circuit television (CCTV) footage recorded on Nov. 16.



Investigation of the three men revealed that they worked together to steal passengers' belongings. The police also arrested S in Kalideres, West Jakarta, on Monday.



S told investigators that he stolen goods from passengers' bags on 13 occasions in the past year. He reportedly stole a mobile phone from a passengers' bag on a plane operated by Batik Air -- a full service airline and subsidiary of Lion Group -- on Dec. 16.



Lion Air has been in the spotlight in recent years following cases related to the airliner. Known for delayed flights, the airline was recently in the spotlight over the arrest of three of its crew members on drug charges in December.



State airport operator PT Angkasa Pura II (AP II) will tighten the security of passengers' luggage following the incident, according to the senior general manager of the firm, Zulfahmi.



He said on Monday that AP II would install more CCTVs throughout the airport. "We will strive to help airlines manage luggage theft," he said.

AP II will also coordinate with airlines and ground crew to improve services at Soekarno-Hatta Airport. (rin)
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Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post)  Tue, January 5, 2016

As the government effectively decreased the price of subsidized fuel price on Tuesday, it has decided to delay the problematic collection of a fuel levy, which was to have been imposed on Jan. 5, until it can hold further discussions with energy stakeholders.



Starting Tuesday, the price of premium gasoline distributed on Java, Madura and Bali was lowered from Rp 7,400 (50 US cents) to Rp 7,050 per liter and to Rp 6,950 in all other areas. The price of subsidized diesel was slashed to Rp 5,650 per liter from Rp 6,700 to adjust to lower world oil prices.



Along with that, the government was to have collected fuel levies of Rp 200 from every liter of Premium and Rp 300 from every liter of diesel. The levies would have been pooled in an energy security fund.



According to Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said, the delay at applying the levy is aimed at giving an opportunity to all parties to complete all preparations, whether institutional or legal, or to develop collection and utilization schemes, or to establish better communications with other stakeholders.



"I have listened to all critics' input and concluded that most parties actually support the idea of an energy security fund, but the legal base and the management must be strengthened to preserve the principles of transparency and good governance," Sudirman said in a statement to the press on Tuesday.



Ealier, he estimated that the government would raise between Rp 15 trillion and Rp 16 trillion a year from the fuel fund collection. However, the plan was heavily criticized and opposed by many parties: House members, energy experts, non-government organizations and academics.



The government's plan to establish the energy security fund appeared in mid-2015 through public forums. The initial concept of the fund was raised in a September 2015 meeting with the House of Representatives' Commission VII that oversees the energy sector.



"Following up communications with Commission VII in November, the Ministry had begun drafting a regulatory initiative, which is currently proceeding," Sudirman said.



He added that the 2007 Energy Law and Government Regulation (PP) 79/2014 on national energy policy were the legal basis to form a strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), the country's first reserve deposit of crude oil and fuel for emergency situations.



In comparison, the United States has a fuel reserve for seven months, Japan has one for six months, Myanmar for four months, Thailand for 80 days and Vietnam for 47 days.



Energy mix



Both regulations, Sudirman continued, also mandate that by 2025 the energy mix of new and renewable energy must be 23 percent of the total energy used in Indonesia. Right now, that ratio is only 7 percent.



The minister said the government must speed up the development of energy access for 2,519 villages in remote areas, which only can be supplied by renewable sources. Likewise, energy access to another 12,659 villages can only be improved through renewable sources.



"These projects can only be achieved if the government has additional resources to finance pilot programs on renewable energy, which cannot yet be handed over to private companies," Sudirman said.



Even an oil-rich country like Norway, he stressed, has long had an energy security fund worth US$17 billion, plus a petroleum fund worth $836 billion. England and Australia have ones worth $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively.



"Even our small neighboring country, Timor Leste, which recently built its energy sector, has accumulated a petroleum fund worth up to $17 billion," said Sudirman. (ags)(+)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna H.Laoly's decision to revoke a decree that previously recognized the Golkar Party leadership formed in a national meeting in Ancol, Jakarta, in December 2014, has triggered a new problem in the party's faction at the House of Representatives, a Golkar politician has said.

'Who controls the faction now? Legally, there is a problem in the Golkar faction at the House,' Priyo Budi Santoso, deputy chairman of Golkar's central executive board, which was elected at the meeting in Ancol, said as quoted by kompas.com in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Priyo said that when a party's central executive board was in a vacuum of power, the party faction at the House would automatically be placed in a similar situation.

Priyo further said that apart from the status of the Golkar faction, the submission of a House speaker candidate to replace Setya Novanto, who resigned in December last year due to mounting pressure over his alleged involvement in a Freeport-related ethical violation case, would also face problems because the two candidates being proposed as House speaker were from different Golkar factions.

Ade Komarudin has been proposed by the Aburizal Bakrie-led Golkar leadership, which was formed in a national meeting in Bali in November 2014, and Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita from the party's splinter faction led by Agung Laksono.

According to the 2014 Legislative Institutions (MD3) Law, Setya's replacement must be from the same House faction.

Separately, Bambang Soesatyo, treasurer of the Golkar leadership elected in the Bali meeting, said Golkar officials elected in the Ancol meeting did not have a right to propose a candidate to replace Setya as a House speaker.

Bambang said faction officials from the Golkar leadership elected in the Ancol meeting had no legality.

'The answer is simple. The Agung camp does not have a faction that is legal and acknowledged by the state,' said Bambang on Tuesday, referring to the revocation of a decree that previously recognized the Agung-led Golkar leadership. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The government said on Monday that it would prioritize a soft approach in addressing separatism, including by engaging in negotiation and dialogue, as well as the possibility of granting clemency and unconditional release to political prisoners. However, it added that it may still take a hard approach if met with resistance.



The instruction to use a soft approach was issued by President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo during a plenary Cabinet meeting on Monday.



'A soft approach will always be the priority of the government, since we believe that a soft approach is better than other means,' Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said after the meeting at the State Palace.



Pramono added the government would implement a similar mechanism to that used in handling the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), including the chance of granting amnesty and unconditional release, as stated in a 2005 presidential decree.



'The pattern used for resolving [issues related to] GAM, in line with Presidential Decree No. 22/2005 [on amnesty and unconditional release for GAM members], will be implemented in various regions,' Pramono said.



'However, if it is not possible because there are differences in terms of [political] views, including an intention to separate from the country, then the government will keep using a hard approach,' Pramono added.



National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said the President had indeed made the call to adopt the soft approach used in handling the GAM issue to settle separatism in other areas, including Papua, adding that Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan had been tasked with assessing whether granting amnesty was possible.



'Such a pattern was able to solve violence in Aceh,' Badrodin said. 'However, if it is used to no avail and [a person] still carries out violence, stern action will be needed.'



In May, during his second visit to Papua, Jokowi said the release of political prisoners incarcerated in Jayapura was only the beginning.



At the time, Jokowi granted clemency to five prisoners as part of efforts to foster peace in the restive province.



'There will be a follow-up by granting clemency or amnesty to other [political prisoners] in other regions,' the President said, referring to around 90 political prisoners incarcerated nationwide.



Jokowi has also called on security personnel to promote dialogue with Papuan people in order to build mutual trust, saying he wanted to change the repressive security approach of the past to a development and welfare approach.



The move sparked mixed responses from activists, with some expressing doubt over how Jokowi's administration would follow up.



Budi Hernawan, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM), criticized the government for using a security-oriented approach in Papua instead of a social approach.



According to Budi, building mutual trust was indeed the key to addressing the Papua issue.



'Mutual trust is essential. Papuan people want to have dialogue with the central government. However, the two sides interpret dialogue differently,' he said on Sunday, adding that Papuans wanted a way to freely voice their aspirations, including political aspirations, where they could also discuss past human rights abuse cases in Papua.



According to Budi, assigning the coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister to handle issues in Papua instead of the coordinating human development and culture minister or coordinating economic minister showed the government was still taking a security-oriented approach.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Jakarta Employment Agency (BKD) claims that the number of city civil servants skipping work without permission after the long Christmas and New Year's holidays were fewer than in previous holidays.



BKD secretary Komarukni Sulistyowati said civil servants had been daunted by Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama's new rule against skipping work without permission, as regulated in Gubernatorial Regulation No. 193 on performance allowances. According to the regulation, a civil servant who skips one day of work without permission receives the lightest sanction, which is the three-month suspension of allowances.



'The regulation has proven to be very effective in making civil servants more disciplined because even light sanctions are quiet severe,' Komarukni told reporters at City Hall on Monday.



She said no BKD civil servants had skipped work without permission. Similarly, she said the agency had received a report from the Central Jakarta mayoral office confirming there were no unwarranted absences.



Reports from other working units, she said, were still being collected as of Monday afternoon. Komarukni, however, said she was confident that fewer civil servants had skipped work due to the tough sanctions.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Jakarta administration has allocated Rp 400 billion (US$28.7 million) from the city budget to cover any legal costs arising from its plan to terminate a contract with Bantar Gebang dump operator PT Godang Tua Jaya (GTJ).



Jakarta Sanitation Agency head Isnawa Adji said on Monday that an independent auditor had been hired to go over the contract between the city administration and GTJ.



'We have hired an independent consultant to do the audit. This way we will be prepared when we terminate the contract,' Isnawa said as quoted by tribunnews.com.



According to him, the Rp 400 billion was needed in the event that GTJ filed a lawsuit.



According to the contract between Jakarta and GTJ, the city paysRp 114,000 ($8.30) to GTJ for each metric ton of waste it dumps in the landfill.



Previously, the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) found that GTJ had failed to fulfill the requirements stipulated in its 15-year contract that started in 2008. The BPK said the company had failed to purchase agreed upon technology for treating some 6,500 tons of garbage daily produced in the city.
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Linkedin Brian Rohan (The Jakarta Post) Beirut  Tue, January 5, 2016

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah struck an Israeli armored patrol with a roadside bomb at the border on Monday and Israel responded by shelling the area, with no immediate word on casualties.



Hezbollah said the attack was carried out by a unit named for Samir Kantar, a prominent Lebanese militant killed in Syria last month. Hezbollah had blamed Israel and vowed to avenge his death, suggesting a possible motivation for Monday's attack.



Hezbollah said it set off a large explosive device as the vehicles passed in the disputed Chebaa Farms area, destroying a Humvee and causing casualties among the soldiers inside.



The Israeli army said vehicles in the area were hit with an improvised explosive device and that it responded with targeted artillery fire. It did not say whether there were any casualties.



Hezbollah's television channel Al-Manar said one of the vehicles targeted was carrying "a senior officer."



Tensions on the border have been high since Kantar, who carried out a notorious attack in Israel and spent nearly 30 years in an Israeli jail, was killed in Syria by an airstrike late last month.



Border skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah have quickly escalated into all-out war in the past, with one cross-border raid by the group in 2006 touching off a monthlong Israeli offensive that included a ground invasion and airstrikes that reached across all of Lebanon.



But with Hezbollah currently engaged in the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar Assad, and Israel free to target the group in porous Syrian airspace, both sides seem too occupied elsewhere to opt for a new war in Lebanon.



Later Monday, Lebanese security officials said that more than 50 Israeli shells hit several villages in the area where the Hezbollah operation was carried out. Residents along the border said shelling from Israeli tanks and artillery landed in agricultural areas inside Lebanon, but did not report casualties.



The officials said the patrol was hit near an Israeli army position in the Kfar Chouba hills, which Beirut says is Lebanese land occupied by Israel. The residents requested anonymity, saying they feared for their safety, while the officials did so in line with regulations.



The United Nations force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL said in a statement that it has further reinforced its presence on the ground and intensified patrols in coordination with the Lebanese army.



"UNIFIL has launched an investigation to determine the facts and circumstances of the incident," the statement said.



The statement quoted UNIFIL's Head of Mission, Maj. Gen. Luciano Portolano, as saying calm has been restored in the area and "the parties have reassured me of their continued commitment to maintain the cessation of hostilities."



Just a day earlier, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to avenge the killing of Kantar, who was the longest serving Lebanese prisoner in Israel before he was released in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the raid that kicked off the 2006 war. Kantar joined Hezbollah after being released by Israel in 2008.



Kantar was killed on Dec. 19, along with eight others, in an airstrike on a residential building in Jaramana, near the Syrian capital of Damascus.



Israel has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the airstrikes. (ags)
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Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Officials said on Monday that a Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway would be integrated with existing railway projects, as President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo expected the construction of the US$5.5 billion project to kick off on Jan. 21.



The remarks were made during a limited Cabinet meeting at the State Palace on Monday, which was also attended by Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan, Jakarta Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan, Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil and Bintang Prabowo, a representative from the consortium for the construction project.



In the meeting, it was also decided to seek ways to integrate the nation's first ever high-speed train with existing mass transportation projects, including the ongoing construction of a light rapid transit (LRT) project in Jakarta, such as building an LRT line in Bandung in order to connect the city with the high-speed train.



Jokowi said that this year, he wanted to see an acceleration in infrastructure development, particularly that related to railways.



'The President [also] emphasized that matters related to the licenses [required for the project] must be able to be settled immediately as [he] hopes that ground-breaking can be done on Jan. 21,' Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung told a press conference after the meeting on Monday.



The consortium of PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC) is a joint venture between Indonesian state firms PT Wijaya Karya, PT Kereta Api Indonesia, PT Jasa Marga and PT Perkebunan Nasional VIII with the China Railway International Co. Ltd. KCIC.



The high-speed train, which will run at over 250 kilometers per hour on a 140-kilometer long track, will begin construction in 2016 and is slated to be finished by the end of 2018. It will pass four stations in its first phase, including Halim in Jakarta and Karawang, as well as Gede Bage or Tegalluar in West Java.



The West Java governor said connecting the high-speed train with an LRT line was needed to allow passengers to easily continue their journeys to the center of Bandung or other areas in Greater Bandung, like Soreang, Padalarang, Cimahi and Sumedang.



'The LRT in Jakarta will connect areas in Greater Jakarta; the LRT in Bandung and its wider area will be integrated with the high-speed train,' he added.



It will be another challenge for Jakarta to connect the high-speed train with its ongoing mass transportation projects, including the LRT and an airport commuter train.



'It is Jakarta's task to integrate the high-speed train with Manggarai station [in Central Jakarta] where in the future it will have a line connecting Manggarai to Soekarno-Hatta airport,' he added.



The high-speed train is expected to encourage the economic development of surrounding areas, for example Walini, which is located between Jakarta and Bandung.



Meanwhile, Bintang, who is also PT Wijaya Karya's president director, revealed that the consortium was ready to invest in the Bandung LRT project, saying the group's involvement would ensure that the project and the high-speed train used the same technology and shared similar time frames for completion.



According to Pramono, almost all licensing processes had been completed, and the President wanted all others to be finished by Jan. 14 or 15.
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Linkedin Jusuf Wanandi and Djisman Simandjuntak (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is not the end of community ' building in our part of the world. It has helped push socio-economic development in ASEAN. While many of us are still struggling on the lower end of the development ladder, many have already climbed to the ladder's middle and upper rungs, allowing us to share development experiences with one another more fruitfully through integration and cooperation.



We, the people of ASEAN, are catching up with neighbors far and near who have graduated earlier and set the frontier of development through technological leadership. Gaining a decent position in the increasingly knowledge ' intensive civilization is within our reach. Through community ' building we create an immense geographical and human space. ASEAN accounted for 8.6 percent of the world's population in 2015.



The population is projected to rise to 728 million in 2030. The workforce in ASEAN will continue to grow progressively until 2020 by 20 percent in the Philippines, 11 percent in Indonesia, and 9 percent in Vietnam. Migrant workers add to the complexity of labor and employment issues in ASEAN.



ASEAN originates roughly 14 million migrant workers of whom 6 million live and work within member states. At present, female household workers form the majority of this migrant workforce. In the longer term, familiarity with the world of migrant workers is going to give ASEAN an edge of advantage compared to economies with tightly protected labor markets. In other words, ASEAN is a formidable space in terms of the potential that comes along with a large population.



It can never be overemphasized that the value of a workforce to a society depends greatly on its capacity as human capital. Only a healthy, literate, skilled and entrepreneurial workforce can deliver the progress that ASEAN aspires to amplify through three-tier community ' building; economic, socio-cultural and political-security communities.



On this score, ASEAN has a lot to catch up to do despite the very encouraging increases in government spending on education and training. While enrollment in secondary education has risen strongly, more is needed in vocational education and training (VET). Even existing VET facilities are in urgent need of improvement in order to be able to supply graduates who can compete globally, seamlessly connected to the world market following digitization. Likewise, enrollment in tertiary education has also risen strongly in ASEAN. In 2012, tertiary education figures stood at 16 percent in Cambodia, 25 percent in Vietnam, 31 percent in Indonesia, 34 percent in the Philippines, 37 percent in Malaysia and 57 percent in Thailand.



However, annual spending per student varies widely from US$539 in the Philippines and $2,188 in Indonesia to over $19,000 in Singapore. What is more, the composition of tertiary education in ASEAN is biased against science and engineering, the fields of studies that serve as the springboard for the technological innovations which we enjoy today. In the case of Indonesia and the Philippines, the two most populous members of ASEAN, science and engineering accounts for less than 22 percent and 26 percent respectively in the total number of graduates. The number of outbound students from ASEAN in recent times is less than a quarter of a million or only 32 percent of outbound students from China.



Together with health, literacy and skill constitute a great part of human capital. However, in a modern economy they can only produce marvelous products, services and processes in combination with entrepreneurship. Freedom of skilled workers within the AEC requires freedom of capital and its bearers, the entrepreneurs, serve as a complement to this. As one can gauge from the flow of intra-ASEAN foreign investment, our region is still more dependent on extra-ASEAN investments, suggesting that our work on community building, with regard to enterprise flow, is far below potential.



Our governments have acted too cautiously in integrating our labor markets, fearing that cross-border labor flow is a zero-sum game in that one foreign worker replaces one local worker when in reality it perhaps creates more than one. We are too hesitant in forwarding ASEAN integration. We are running the risk of being pushed to the back corner of Asia-Pacific regional integration and cooperation. We need bold initiatives on ASEAN integration to ensure ASEAN creates rewarding value for each of us, as an arena to acquire competencies needed to prevail globally.



Labor and employment are areas where bold initiatives are needed. We have opened our borders for the intra-ASEAN flow of skilled-workers, yet I am wondering whether we have done enough to make our workers mobile or 'tradable' through world-class education, including world-class VETs modeled, perhaps, on the German-Swiss 'dual VETs' where schooling and working get merged.



Collaboration among our secondary and tertiary education institutions needs elevation, however important extra-ASEAN collaboration may be. Furthermore, ASEAN government, academic and corporate research centers of excellence need catalysts of which ASEAN community deepening is indispensable.



We have accomplished a great deal in making ASEAN part of the solution to the complex problems we have faced in the five decades since 1967. We need to increasingly act together, pooling our human resources more creatively, to ensure that ASEAN is in a decent place when integration in the Asia-Pacific reaches an escape velocity that transforms the vast region into an integrated whole.

_________________________________



The above is based on a presentation for a recent symposium on workforce readiness in the ASEAN Economic Community in Singapore. The writers are from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
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Linkedin Ali Akbar Dareini and Jon Gambrell (The Jakarta Post) Tehran  Tue, January 5, 2016

Iran's president said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia cannot "cover up" its crime of executing a leading Shiite cleric by severing diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, even as the kingdom's allies began limiting their links to his country.

President Hassan Rouhani's comments came as Kuwait announced it had recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic.

The execution last weekend of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric and opposition figure in Saudi Arabia, has heightened the Saudi-Iran regional rivalry, threatening to derail already-shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

A statement posted on his official website said Rouhani discussed the current diplomatic dispute with visiting Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen.

"The Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes of beheading a religious leader in its country," Rouhani said. "Undoubtedly, such actions can't cover up that big crime."

The diplomatic standoff between Iran and the kingdom began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges ' the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980. It's not clear whether al-Nimr was beheaded with a sword, though Saudis routinely use that form of execution.

Al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, was executed after being convicted of sedition and of other crimes, though he long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. Late Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said Monday they would sever ties with Iran. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.

On Tuesday, Kuwait announced the recalling of its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency, without elaborating. It wasn't immediately clear how the Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be affected by the move.

Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

Iran expressed "regret" over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Iran's UN envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the UN Security Council late Monday strongly condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi diplomatic posts. The council statement, agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in the Middle East. Their rivalry deepened following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

World powers have sought to calm the tensions. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran. Iran, a staunch supporter of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. De Mistura has set a Jan. 25 target date for a fourth round of talks.

The White House urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji (The Jakarta Post) Palu  Tue, January 5, 2016

The East Indonesia Mujahiddin (MIT), led by Indonesia's most-wanted man Santoso, who has been accused of spreading the Islamic State (IS) movement within Indonesia, has not only recruited men, but also women as fighters, police have said after the arrest of eight of the group's members.



Central Sulawesi Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Hari Suprapto said that the eight were arrested on Thursday by the National Police's counterterrorism unit, Densus 88, which had been deployed to Palu.



A Poso Police officer who asked for anonymity, revealed that eight people were arrested in Poso, Tojo Una-Una and North Morowali.



'They were Sutriono alias Tri, Bakri aka Bake and Lukman. The three were arrested at Darul Ansor Putra Islamic boarding school in Malino village,' the officer said.



Another suspect was arrested in Panca Makmur subdistrict, Blok C, North Morowali, he said. The fifth suspect arrested was Zubair alias Bair, who was arrested in Tayawa subdistrict, Tojo district, Tojo Unauna regency at around 6:30 p.m.



'Zubair is a fish seller who lives in the subdistrict. He is suspected of being a supporter of the MIT,' the officer said.



Two more suspects, Asri Parakasi and his wife, were arrested later that day at around 10 a.m. by Densus 88 in Labuan subdistrict, Lage district, Poso regency, he added. The couple was also suspected to be members of MIT.



The other suspect ' Moh. Rizki ' was arrested on Jl. Pulau Tarakan, Gebang Rejo Timur subdistrict, Poso city. Rizki was also suspected of being an MIT member who frequently made contact with Santoso.



The eight were taken to the Moengko Poso Police's Mobile Brigade (Brimob) headquarters for questioning before they were transferred to the Central Sulawesi Police headquarters.



The arrest of Rizki and his wife is the first sign that MIT has also recruited women.



Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Idham Azis revealed on Friday that, based on intelligence reports, 32 MIT members were believed to have joined the Islamic movement. Three of them were the wives of MIT leaders Santoso, Basri and Ali Kalora.



'They chose to stay with their husbands in the forests. They believe in the principle of dying with their husbands,' Idham said.



Previously, National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti claimed that Santoso was the leader of IS' Indonesia chapter. Badrodin said that MIT was only one of nine terrorist organizations that the police were currently monitoring.



Meanwhile, terrorism expert Mohammad Marzuki of the Tadulako University in Palu said on Monday that the eight suspected MIT members arrested might only be the tip of the iceberg of terrorist activities in Poso. Marzuki suggested that apart from taking legal action against terrorists, comprehensive supervision in the community should also be a priority.



Central Sulawesi Governor Longki Djanggola said he hoped that the manhunt against Santoso would continue.



'Although the Camar Maleo operation has come to an end, the terrorist manhunt operation in Poso has to be continued and improved,' Longki told The Jakarta Post in a text message on Monday.



He also said he expected stronger cooperation between the police, military and all stakeholders in dealing with terrorism in Poso, an area in which sectarian conflict between Muslims and Christians claimed thousands of lives in the 1990s and 2000s.
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The foundation of the historic Dharma Bhakti Temple in Glodok of West Jakarta will soon rebuild its burned structure following a green light given by Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, who vows the temple will not be affected by the city's road expansion plan.

The chairman of the Dharma Bhakti Temple Foundation, Tan Adipranata, said on Tuesday that he is relieved the city administration would spare the temple, which is located in Jakarta's Chinatown of Petak Sembilan, from being harmed by the construction project.

"Ahok said that this temple is cultural heritage, therefore the city administration exempts the temple from the road widening project," he said at City Hall after meeting Ahok in order to report on obstacles blocking the temple's reconstruction.

Tan said that the groundbreaking ceremony for the temple would be held on Jan. 18. The foundation used its own funds for the reconstruction of the building that burned down in March last year. Tan gave no details on how much money was needed, but he said it was made up of contributions from the temple's congregation.

Similarly to Tan, Ahok said that the Dharma Bhakti Temple had been recognized as part of the city's cultural heritage since 1972 and he supported it being rebuilt.

The city administration would provide a construction license to help accelerate the project.

'They asked us to provide a license fast and I told them, 'Build it quickly'," he told journalists.

The Dharma Bhakti Temple was built in 1650 and was originally named the Guo Xun Guan Temple to honor a Buddhist priest .

It was the biggest temple in Jakarta before it was destroyed by a fire that engulfed it in the early morning of March 2, 2015. (rin)(+)
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo officially kicked off trading activities at the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) Monday following a year-end break and was upbeat that the projected higher growth in the country's economy would have a positive impact on stocks.



In his address at a ceremony to start this year trading, the President said the country's financial sector had faced many challenges in 2015 due to the slowing global economy, concerns about the US Federal Reserve's rate hike and fading optimism about Indonesia's economy.



'However, following last year's journey, I am optimistic that this year [our economy] will be better than last year,' he said, applauded by the attendees.



Among the attendees were Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Agus Martowardojo, Financial Services Authority (OJK) chairman Muliaman D. Hadad and Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution.



Jokowi added that a difficult economic situation was, in fact, a chance to remodel the bureaucracy and regulations that hamper economic development.



'I invite small, medium and big companies to reevaluate their assets to get a tax amnesty. The President and the government guarantee [the tax amnesty will be granted],' he said.



Meanwhile, Muliaman said investors welcomed the government's eight economic policy packages issued since early September last year, which helped maintain their trust in the economy, which was important in keeping financial and stock markets stable.



'We hope more companies will make the bourse a business financing alternative besides bank loans,' he said, adding that his office would simplify the initial public offering (IPO) process, enhance stock market infrastructure and increase supervision and law enforcement to attract more investors.



However, despite the optimism, the Jakarta Composite Index sank on Monday, closing the day at 4,525.92 points, down 1.46 percent from its previous close on Dec. 30.



Hans Kwee from Investa Saran Mandiri said on Monday that the deep plunge seemed to be caused by external factors, such as tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the rout in China's stock market.



'China's bourse was suspended, and that caused almost all global markets to weaken, as they had expected China's economy to get better,' he said.



Trading at China's bourse was halted after the CSI 300 Index, which comprises large-capitalization companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, dropped 7.02 percent, Bloomberg reported.



The drop was triggered by data that showed Chinese manufacturing contracted for a fifth straight month.



The Shanghai Composite Index itself lost 6.86 percent of its value on Monday, the deepest fall among the IDX's World Benchmark Indices Comparison markets. In addition to the suspension, the rupiah depreciation against the US dollar due to higher demand for the greenback also affected JCI's performance, Hans said.



The rupiah retreated 0.9 percent to 13,919 a dollar in Jakarta, the biggest decline since Oct. 29, according to prices from local banks. It sank 10.2 percent in 2015 ' a fifth year of losses and the longest stretch since 1998 ' as exports contracted for a 14th straight month through November amid a slump in commodity prices.



David Setyanto of First Asia Capital wrote in a report that market players would watch the country's macro economic data before deciding their moves. 'If the data are positive, it is possible that the JCI will strengthen this month,' he wrote.
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Linkedin Tom Odulla (The Jakarta Post) Nairobi  Tue, January 5, 2016

A university where Islamic extremists killed 148 people nine months ago reopened on Monday, an event welcomed by many Kenyans as a victory against the jihadis.



"Just by opening the university we have won the war against al-Shabab," said Khadija Mohamed, who was a counselor at the school when it was attacked last April, and who was among the returning staff and faculty. About 60 students are expected when some classes resume next week and the bulk of them, some 600, in September.



Even though there was high security, returning to the college in Garissa, a town in eastern Kenya, was difficult for Mohamed who remembers the carnage and the victims.



"Coming back to this college gives me a flashback of the killings," she told The Associated Press. "As their counselor, the students were very close to me. They were like my children. I lost many of my children."



Four gunmen of the Somali extremist group stormed the university at dawn April 2, separating the Muslims students and killing the non-Muslims.



Before killing the students, some of the gunmen ordered their victims to phone their families and ask them to tell President Uhuru Kenyatta to withdraw Kenyan troops from Somalia.



All four gunmen were killed by a police commando unit, nearly 12 hours after the attack began. The government has been heavily criticized for an uncoordinated and slow response to the attack despite the college being just 500 meters (550 yards) from a military base.



Since then the bullet-scarred walls of the university have been repaired. A dorm where many students were mercilessly shot has been renamed after a river.



Kenyans and media outlets lauded the reopening on Twitter, with one radio station proclaiming: "The pen is mightier than the gun."



Registrar Isaack Mohammed Noor said at least 150 of 200 staff had reported for work. Police wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying automatic weapons patrolled the grounds. A police post with 20 officers has been established at the campus to boost security.



The bloodbath at the university was the worst in the wave of extremist attacks Kenya has experienced since it sent its troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight al-Shabab, al-Qaida's affiliate in East Africa.



Noor told AP that he was living at the school during the attack and has vivid memories of the rampage in which 142 students, many of whom he knew, and six security officers died.



Reopening the university is a victory, said Ali Bashir, a high school teacher who taught Kenyan student Abdirahim Abdullahi, believed to be the leader of the attack.



"The reopening of the university will have youth occupied in pursuing education, and this will prevent terror groups from radicalizing the youth in our region," Bashir said.



Al-Shabab in neighboring Somalia has recruited hundreds of Kenyan youths, who make up the largest contingent of its foreign fighters.



About 60 privately sponsored students who survived the attack are expected to return by Wednesday and teaching should start next week, said Noor.

Some 600 student survivors, who were enrolled on government scholarships, were moved to the main campus in the western town of Eldoret and will continue with their education there, Noor said. New students will be admitted in September, he said. (ags)
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Linkedin Erika Anindita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Attorney General's Office (AGO) signed on Tuesday an agreement on collaborating in corruption cases. The two law enforcement bodies also committed to increasing coordination in tackling legal cases.

Attorney General HM Prasetyo said that through the collaboration it was hoped that corruption eradication efforts ' both preventive and law enforcement -- would improve and have better results.

'We realize that each of the institutions has its own advantages and disadvantages. As one of the advantages, the AGO and National Police have vast networks. In terms of network, the KPK lags behind the two institutions but in terms of authority, the commission is superior to them,' said Prasetyo at a press conference after a meeting with KPK leaders at the AGO complex in South Jakarta on Tuesday afternoon.

KPK chairman Agus Rahardjo highlighted that the anticorruption body aimed to strengthen synergy and cooperation with other law enforcement agencies.

'In the meeting, the attorney general repeatedly pointed out that in the eradication of corrupt practices, the KPK is always in the lead. The KPK is the coordinator and supervisor of [antigraft efforts] as well,' said Agus.

Prasetyo said that when handling a number of tough corruption cases, the AGO faced problems caused by its limited authority. Therefore, he said, the AGO would ask the antigraft body for back up in anticorruption measures. He also expected the collaboration and cooperation commitments agreed upon on Tuesday could be implemented in the near future.

Neither the KPK nor the AGO elaborated on which cases the two institutions would collaborate.

MoU improvement

During the three-hour meeting, the KPK and the AGO also discussed improvements to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two bodies and the National Police.

In 2012, an MoU was signed by then KPK chairman Abraham Samad, then attorney general Basrief Arief and then National Police chief Gen. Timur Pradopo. The MoU expires in March.

Agus said the KPK, the AGO and the National Police would work together to improve details of the MoU in the near future.

"Improvement will focus on the content and substance of the agreement, such as the coordination, supervision and monitoring of antigraft measures, which will be more detailed," Agus said.

Under the MoU, the institutions will arrange a system through which data and information from all parts of Indonesia can be accessed from Jakarta. (ebf)
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Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said on Monday that it had issued a second summons for Banten Governor Rano Karno for questioning as a witness in a bribery case involving the establishment of a bank in the province.



The antigraft body sent the summons to the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician, who failed to appear for questioning in December.



KPK spokesperson Priharsa Nugraha said the actor-cum-politician would be questioned this week without disclosing details about the plan.



He said KPK investigators needed to question the governor regarding the Banten administration's disbursement of hundreds of billions of rupiah for the bank's establishment.



Banten Legislative Council (DPRD Banten) Deputy Speaker SM Hartono of the Golkar Party and the council's PDI-P faction head, Tri Satria Sentosa, were charged with corruption after being caught allegedly accepting US$11,000 and Rp 60 million from PT Banten Global Development (BGD) executive Ricky Tampinongkol in exchange for the disbursement of Rp 350 billion in state funds to establish the regional bank.



'The questioning is related to the plan to establish the bank,' Priharsa said on Monday at the KPK office on Monday.



Priharsa said Rano had asked the KPK to reschedule his questioning in December because he had official duties on Dec. 18 that he could not skip, adding that the politician would be questioned as a witness for Ricky in the case.



DPRD Banten approved the disbursement of Rp 600 billion, on top of Rp 350 billion allocated in the 2016 budget, to support the establishment of the bank. Tri and Hartono are accused of accepting bribes several times between 2012 and 2014.



Rano could not be reached for comment on Monday night to confirm whether he would honor the KPK summons.



Earlier, Rano said the plan to establish the bank was in line with Banten's 2013 mid-term regional development plan (RPJMD) and had nothing to do with his own interest as the highest authority in the province.



He further said the disbursement of funds for the Banten regional bank was justified under a regional regulation issued by the Banten administration on capital injection for PT BGD in 2013.



Rano added that members of the public should not associate the establishment of the bank conducted by the administration with the bribery case implicating the two local legislators in Banten because the Banten administration knew nothing about the alleged bribery.



The PDI-P politician appointed PT BGD to conduct a study on the establishment of the regional bank and to consult with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) to seek advice on the plan for six months in 2015.



After finishing the consultation and study on Nov. 30, PT BDG submitted a report to Rano and told him that four banks should be merged to establish the regional bank.



The four banks are private lender Bank Pundi, which is controlled by Recapital Securities, part of the Recapital Group founded by businessmen Rosan P. Roeslani, Sandiaga Uno and Elvin Ramli; Bank Windu Kentjana International (MCOR), a small, publicly listed lender based in Jakarta; publicly listed Bank MNC Internasional (MNC Bank); and Panin Bank Syariah.



Just three days after PT BGD handed the report to Rano, KPK investigators arrested Ricky for paying bribes to Hartono and Tri for helping to secure the budget allocation from the DPRD Banten to establish the regional bank.



Rano assumed the top job at the Banten administration after former Banten governor Ratu Atut Chosiyah was convicted in a separate bribery case in 2014.
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Linkedin Arif Gunawan S. (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Indonesian sculpture maestro Edhi Soenarso passed away at 83 years of age at 11:15 p.m., Jan. 4 in the Yogyakarta International Hospital, leaving as his legacy dozens of monuments built across the country.



The lecturer at the Indonesian Art Institute (ISI) was well-known among Indonesian artists through his legendary artwork, such as the Monumen Selamat Datang (welcome monument) in the middle of the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle.



'Obituary: Indonesian sculpture artist Empu Ageng [great artist] Edhi Soenarso has returned to the arms of Allah,' said ISI Yogyakarta through its official Facebook account, adding that a funeral would be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday in Nganti village, Sleman, Yogyakarta.

He will be laid to rest next to the grave of his late wife, Sumiyati. Born in Salatiga, Central Java in 1923, Edhi leaves behind four children and 11 grandchildren

Edhi dedicated his life to being a freedom fighter against the Dutch occupation when he was seven years old. His bravery was noted among Indonesian fighters when he ran and threw a grenade at the Netherlands' paramilitary force, the Dutch Indies Civil Administration (NICA).



However, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL), managed to catch him during his participation in the guerilla war to defend the nation's 1945 independence declaration.

He was sent to prison in Bandung from 1946 to 1949, where he learned and shaped his skills with sculpture. Edhi was only a 14-year-old boy when he became a prisoner of war and got tortured by the Dutch army.



Fate changes



After the Dutch government officially acknowledged Indonesian independence in 1949, Edhi was released from prison and rushed to be with his commander and troops in the V Siliwangi regiment.



But during his journey he met an artist named Hendra Gunawan. The meeting changed his life as Hendra successfully persuaded him to lay down his weapons and become an artist.



He formally learned sculpture in the Indonesia Art Academy (ASRI) Yogyakarta ' the first Indonesian college of art that was founded in December 1949 and later merged into ISI in 1984.



Edhi then developed his skill by studying more about sculpture in Kelabhawa Visva Bharati University Santiniketan in India in 1957, two years after his graduation from ASRI.



He completed dozens of monumental works of art, such as the Monumen Dirgantara (sky monument), a sculpture of a man in a sky-grasping position at the Pancoran intersection in Jakarta, and the Monumen Pancasila Sakti (powerful eagle monument) in Menteng commemorating the seven generals who were killed in the lead-up to the 1965 communist purge.



He also created dioramas in the Monumen Nasional (Monas) museum in Jakarta and in other major museums in other areas of Jakarta, as well as in Yogyakarta and Surabaya.



Through his artwork, his legacy will always be remembered.

So long, Empu Edhi. (ags)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Transportation Ministry has withdrawn the permits of three flight routes of low-cost carrier Lion Air and its full-service carrier, Batik Air, as the route permits have not been used for 21 days in a row.



The two revoked Lion Air flight permits were for the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta to Juanda Airport, Surabaya (East Java) route and the Soekarno-Hatta to Kualanamu Airport, Medan (North Sumatra) route. Meanwhile, the revoked Batik Air flight permit was for the Halim Perdanakusumah Airport, Jakarta to Supadio Airport, Pontianak (West Kalimantan) route.



'We will revoke a flight route permit of an airline company if it does not use the permit for 21 days at a stretch,' the Transportation Ministry's air transportation director, Muzaffar Ismail, said as quoted by kompas.com in Jakarta on Tuesday.



He said the revocation of the Lion Air and Batik Air flight route permits was in line with the 2008 Transportation Ministry Regulation (Permenhub) on the organizing of air transportation.



Article 27(2) of the regulation stipulates that if an airline company does not operate its service on a flight route for 21 days in a row without giving any notification to the Transportation Ministry's directorate general of air transportation, the ministry will revoke the company's flight permit for the route.

'Lion Air can request permits for the flight routes again right after the revocation takes effect,' said Muzaffar.



He added that the Transportation Ministry revoked Lion Air's and Batik Air's flight route permits based on inspections conducted by the ministry's air transportation directorate inspectors. During the process, he added, the Transportation Ministry carried out examinations on airports and verified the violations commited by Lion Air.



'We have summoned the airline company authorities and showed data of all the violations we found,' said Muzaffar.

Lion Air is now facing sharp criticisms for allegedly applying low security procedures. On Monday, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport police arrested four Lion Air employees on suspicion of stealing passengers' possessions from luggage. The airline was also in the spotlight over severely delayed flights and the arrest of three crew members on drug charges in December last year. (ebf)(+)
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Linkedin Nani Afrida (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Indonesia will continue to hand down severe punishment to drug dealers as more convicts are waiting to be executed by firing squad, the National Narcotic Agency (BNN) has said.



The agency said 55 drug convicts had been sentenced to death, 14 of whom were now awaiting their execution.



However, the agency did not provide any details on the names or nationalities of the convicts.



'We collect the data [on drug convicts] from the Indonesian Attorney General's Office [AGO], the Custom and Excise Office, the Immigration Agency as well as from the Foreign Ministry,' BNN spokesperson Slamet Pribadi told The Jakarta Post on Monday.



Last year Indonesia put to death 14 drug convicts, including two Australians, who were part of the so-called Bali Nine group, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. The duo was executed in April.



BNN also released data on Indonesian citizens facing capital punishment and imprisonment in other countries in drug-related cases.



In 2015 alone, 40 Indonesians were allegedly involved in drug crimes overseas. Four of them are detained in Guangzhou, China, and might be sentenced to death.



Besides Guangzhou, Indonesians were also arrested in Thailand (four convicts), Timor Leste (nine convicts), Germany (one convict), Hong Kong (15 convicts) and the United Arab Emirates (seven convicts).



BNN chief Budi Waseso said that in total 271 Indonesians were found to be involved in drug crimes overseas since 2009, with as many as 152 possibly receiving the death sentence.



'We predict that the number [of Indonesian drug convicts overseas] will increase, as some countries do not give us any notification that they have detained our citizens. We will find out only when our immigration officers visit the prison or detention center,' Budi said during the release of the BNN's annual report recently.



Indonesia has drawn criticism from human rights activists saying that the country implemented doubled standards on capital punishment. While Indonesia imposes death penalty on convicts in the country, the country has also expressed concern about the death sentence being handed down to Indonesians overseas.



However, the government has argued that efforts to save Indonesian nationals from the death penalty abroad was a separate issue from President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's insistence on executing death-row drug convicts at home.



'Many of our citizens are also facing the death penalty abroad. Will our position on the death penalty weaken our defense of Indonesian citizens facing it? No, it should not, as we are obliged to protect Indonesians facing legal problems abroad,' Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said.



Last year, Jokowi declared that the nation was in a 'narcotics emergency' and called for the death penalty for drug dealers; he also rejected clemency pleas from numerous convicted traffickers.
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Linkedin Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The government plans to get more state-owned enterprises to float shares on the stock market, so that they will no longer rely on state capital injections to finance their growing investment needs.



A number of state-owned companies were being prepared to float their shares on the stock market through initial public offerings (IPO), but at present only aluminum producer Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Inalum) was well prepared to do so, State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno said in Jakarta on Monday.



'We are currently studying whether there are companies that we can encourage to go public this year,' she told reporters following the official launch of trading activities on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) following the year-end break.



Besides asking more state firms to conduct IPOs, the government would also encourage listed state-owned companies to carry out rights issues, so that the investing public would have a chance to increase their ownership in state firms, Rini said.



'We are also studying the possibility of increasing public stakes in state companies that are already listed on the stock market,' she added.



With regard to Inalum, which was formerly owned by a consortium of Japanese companies, Rini said that the company was among the state firms with the greatest potential.



'There are a lot of things that can be developed from Inalum, given the company is currently working on a number of downstream projects,' she explained.



Inalum president director Winardi Sunoto said that as a state-owned company, the aluminum maker was ready to go public anytime the government wanted.



Winardi said that his company needed around US$3 billion for a five-year investment plan, which included a plan to double its production in 2020 from current output of 260,000 tons and to provide necessary infrastructure ' such as power plants and seaports.



Conducting an IPO was among a number of options that were being assessed by Inalum, which has total assets of $1.2 billion, in seeking additional funds to finance its expansion, Winardi said.



'We are prepared to go public anytime. However, holding an IPO requires a process, which includes securing approval from the House of Representatives,' Winardi told The Jakarta Post.



IDX president director Tito Sulistio said that complicated bureaucratic procedures had discouraged state-controlled companies from carrying out IPOs. According to him, a state firm must obtain approval from 25 agencies in order to list on the stock market.



He cited the case of national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, which needed around four years to go public ' in comparison to only around three months needed by private companies.



Tito said that he would propose a scheme to significantly expedite the IPO process for state firms to around 20 weeks.



Ahmad Hafiz Thohir, chairman of House Commission VI, which oversees state-owned firms, said that Rini and Tito's plans should be discussed by House members, adding that the commission opposed any plan to sell the shares of profitable and high-potential state-owned companies to the public.



'We can only sell state-owned companies that do not bring significant benefits for the country,' he added.



This year's capital injections amounting to Rp 40.42 trillion for 24 state-owned enterprises were put on hold as lawmakers argued that the figure set for 2016 was too large and that this year's capital injections had not even been optimally disbursed. A rights issue held by a listed state-owned firm without being preceded by a state capital injection will lead to the government's shares being diluted.



There are 20 state-run companies and two state-run enterprise subsidiaries listed on the IDX, compared with the country's total 119 state-owned firms and more than 700 subsidiaries.



According to IDX documentation, state-run firms account for 24 percent of the bourse's market capitalization, despite their numbers making up less than 5 percent of the 517 companies listed on the bourse.

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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The government is preparing to appeal a Palembang District Court verdict declaring that the operations of pulp producer PT Bumi Mekar Hijau (PT BMH) did not cause any environmental damage.



In the verdict delivered on Wednesday, the court said the evidence collected in the case against PT BMH failed to prove it illegally set fire to 20,000 hectares of its concession in Ogan Komering Ilir, South Sumatra, in 2014.



'We are preparing for the appeal,' said Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya as quoted by kompas.com on Monday.



Siti said she was waiting for a copy of the court verdict.



The lawsuit lodged by the ministry sought Rp 7.8 trillion in damages, which would have been the largest financial award ever levied against a company accused of forest burning in the country, with the intention of sending a strong message to those responsible for the annual haze.



The court said no damage could be proven as the burned land was still fertile and had been replanted with acacia trees afterward.



The judges also failed to take into account the air pollution caused by the fire in the company's concession.



The verdict on PT BMH has been criticized as it is deemed to set a bad precedent for similar cases that have yet to go to trial, with the government pursuing other companies allegedly responsible for forest fires that have eased on account of monsoon rains.



The government has sanctioned 23 companies over the fires, with three having land-use or environmental permits revoked while 16 had permits suspended.'
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) has finally named a replacement for Puan Maharani, a lawmaker who holds the role of coordinating human development and culture minister.



PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto said Puan would be replaced by Alfia Reziani, a party member from Central Java.



'We have forwarded the name to [the General Elections Commission], the House of Representatives and [President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo], he said on Monday as quoted by kompas.com.



Hasto acknowledged that replacing Puan, the daughter of PDI-P chief Megawati Soekarnoputri, was belated as Darmawan Prasodjo, another party member who came second in a vote in Central Java, had been appointed a deputy chief of staff at the Presidential Office.



Darmawan must tender his resignation to the election commission before the party can appoint Alfia.



Hasto said the party had also named replacements for Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo and Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung, both of whom also previously served as lawmakers.



Hasto said Puan's replacement could serve in the House as from the next sitting session starting Jan. 11.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Washington  Tue, January 5, 2016

President Barack Obama will announce a plan Tuesday to keep guns away from those who shouldn't have them, bypassing the Republican-led Congress in his efforts to curb what he has described a scourge of gun violence in the US.

The measures fall far short of what Obama had hoped to accomplish through legislation after a massacre at a Connecticut elementary school shook the country in 2012. Yet even the more modest steps the president will announce rely on murky interpretations of existing law that could be easily reversed by his successor.

Obama's actions ensure that gun rights ' one of the most bitterly divisive issues in America ' will be at the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, which begins in earnest next month with the first primary contests.

Accusing Obama of gross overreach, many of the Republican presidential candidates have vowed to rip up the new gun restrictions upon taking office. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said she was proud of Obama's efforts and promised she would safeguard them.

A spate of appalling mass shootings has inflamed passions in the US over the subject of guns.

After 20 children and six educators were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut three years ago, Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan gun legislation. When the effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president's powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

More recent gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, have spurred the administration to give the issue another look, as Obama seeks to make good on a policy issue that he's elevated time and again but has failed until now to advance.

At the centerpiece of Obama's plan, to be unveiled at a White House event with gun violence victims, is a broader definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of gun sales subject to background checks. At gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers, but officials said new federal guidance would clarify that it applies to anyone "in the business" of selling firearms.

They put sellers on notice that the government planned to beef up enforcement ' including with 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

"This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country," Obama said. Yet he said the steps would "potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses."

Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws.

About a third of Americans live in a household where at least one person owns a gun. Particularly in rural areas where firearms are a way of life, many citizens do not believe gun laws should be made stricter. The reverse is true in urban areas, where majorities want tighter firearm regulations.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other top officials declined to explain why Obama hadn't taken these steps years ago and whether the administration had contemplated these actions in the past but determined Obama didn't have the authority.

"We're very comfortable that the president can legally take these actions now," said Lynch.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers, but many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or in other informal settings don't register as dealers. Gun control advocates say that loophole is exploited to skirt the background check requirement.

Now, the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will issue updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone "in the business" of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns. To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.

The background check provision rests in the murky realm of agency "guidelines," which carry less weight than formally issued federal regulations and can easily be rescinded. Lynch said the administration chose to clarify guidelines because it allowed the policies to be implemented immediately. Left unsaid was the fact that developing regulations would have dragged out likely until Obama's presidency ends and would generate more opportunities for Republicans to intervene.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Ken Thomas in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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Linkedin Khoirul Amin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Palm oil producers are upbeat that this year will bring more luck as crude palm oil (CPO) production is expected to grow slightly and prices are forecast to pick up.



Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (Gapki) executive director Fadhil Hasan said Monday he was optimistic that the country's CPO production would rise slightly this year if the El NiAo weather phenomenon, which brings dryness for crops, was not prolonged.



'I think if El NiAo isn't prolonged until February, our CPO output could reach around 33.5 million tons this year,' he said.



Indonesia, which is the world's largest palm oil producer, was estimated to have produced 32.5 million tons of CPO last year.



Fadhil added that global CPO prices would also likely work in favor of the industry as they were forecast to grow this year.



Global CPO prices strengthened to around US$562 per metric ton in December last year from $483.49 per metric ton in September, according to data from the Malaysian palm oil futures.



CPO prices are expected to trade as high as $700 a ton by the middle of this year because of increased palm-oil based biodiesel usage in Indonesia and the potentially ongoing El NiAo weather phenomenon, according to agriculture business consulting firm LMC International.



Meanwhile, in terms of export volume, Fadhil argued that it would very much depend on the government's biodiesel program and global demands.



'If the B-20 program is fully implemented this year, our export volume may be lower because domestic demand will be on the rise,' he said.



B-20 is a government program that requires a minimum of 20 percent palm oil content in diesel for state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina, set to be implemented this year. The program will replace the previous B-15 program requiring a 15 percent blend.



Last year alone, CPO export volume hit 25 million tons, surpassing an initial target of 20 million tons, according to Gapki estimates.



The increasing export volume was the result of rising demand from China, India and Europe at various times last year, despite their slowing economies.



In a separate development, the government has this month maintained the threshold that it applies to its monthly export tax for CPO.



When international and local CPO prices average below $750 per metric ton, the government imposes a zero percent export tax each month. The threshold has been imposed since March in a bid to ease local CPO business amid the price slump.



Global CPO prices dropped significantly from $1,170 per metric ton in December 2010 to around $562 per metric ton in December last year.



Indonesia's reference price for CPO hit $578.88 per metric ton this month, lower than $580.37 per metric ton in December, the Trade Ministry announced.



The reference price is calculated based on an average of CPO prices in the previous three months.



The Trade Ministry's acting director general for foreign trade, Karyanto Suprih, said that the lower reference price was due to the weakening of global CPO prices.



'The global price weakening is particularly due to the global oil price slump and an oversupply in the global vegetable oil market, especially for non CPO-vegetable oil that has become a CPO competitor,' he said.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Papua has lodged the most regional head election dispute claims with the Constitutional Court, a court official has said.

'The highest number of requests for the handling of disputes on the results of gubernatorial, regental and mayoral elections on Dec.9, 2015, is from Papua, which reaches 16,' court spokesperson Budi Ahmad Johari said as quoted by Antara in Jakarta on Tuesday.

He further said that North Sumatra ranked second with 15 disputes. Meanwhile, Yogyakarta was the only region not to dispute its election results.

'Yogyakarta held three regional head elections but it lodged no election dispute,' said Budi.

After the simultaneous Dec. 9 regional elections, the court accepted election dispute claims until Dec. 26 and received 147 requests from132 regions.

One hundred and twenty-eight disputes were submitted by regent and deputy regent candidate pairs, followed by 11 submitted by mayor and deputy mayor candidate pairs, six by governor and deputy governor candidate pairs and one by observers of a regional election with only one candidate pair in Tasikmalaya regency. The one remaining election dispute, namely in Boven Digoel regency, Papua, was also not lodged by a regional head candidate pair.

Election dispute claims were lodged by governor and deputy candidate pairs in Bengkulu, Central Sulawesi, North Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, Riau Islands and West Sumatra. (ebf)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari and Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

A week after hundreds air-conditioned Kopaja (Kopaja AC) buses were converted into Transjakarta feeder buses, passenger confusion surrounding the recent integration continues.



PT Transportasi Jakarta (Transjakarta) president director ANS Kosasih has said that, with the integration, Transjakarta passengers were not required to pay an additional fee for feeder buses, including Kopaja AC. However, passengers still hesitate to board the converted Kopaja AC, many complaining that they have not seen adequate information with regard to the integration.



Dozens of passengers were lined up in a Transjakarta's shelter in Dukuh Atas, Central Jakarta, waiting for bus to Ragunan in South Jakarta on Monday. After ten minutes, a Kopaja AC, converted into a Transjakarta feeder bus, stopped in front of them but no one seemed willing to board.



'I would rather wait than pay extra money for the feeder bus,' said William Hardi, a Transjakarta passenger, checking his watch as he spoke to The Jakarta Post. William eventually took the Kopaja AC after the bus conductor explained to him that he did not have to pay again.



Dani Lugano, a Transjakarta passenger waiting at Ragunan shelter, complained that there had been a lack of information on the new system from Transjakarta and Kopaja AC operators.



'There should be a big poster or a shelter officer informing us that we will not be asked to pay again when we take the feeder bus,' he said.



In December, to mark the integration of the two public transportation systems, PT Transjakarta launched the operation of 320 Kopaja AC buses.



Unlike previous Kopaja buses that charged passengers a separate fare of Rp 6,000 (44 US cents) for catching the bus from a Transjakarta bus stop, feeder bus passengers will only be charged the normal Rp 3,500 Transjakarta fare.



During the launch, Kosasih said that the additional buses had become Transjakarta feeders, linking more areas to Transjakarta bus stops. Initially, feeder busses will work the route connecting Ragunan with the National Monument (Monas) and Dukuh Atas in Central Jakarta.



However, in Ragunan, Kopaja buses relaunched as Transjakarta feeders served a similar route with the Transjakarta bus.



Ellen Tangkudung, Transportation expert from the University of Indonesia, said that by serving a similar route to the Transjakarta bus, it would have been better to label these former Kopaja buses as support buses instead of feeder buses.



'Feeder transportation should be able to carry passengers from one area to the main transportation. This is not a feeder, Transjakarta and the Jakarta Transportation Agency should think of better route for the feeder,' she said.



On Monday, Kosasih said that his company had proposed to operate the feeder buses along other crowded routes currently used by Metro Mini and Kopaja buses.



Kosasih said that the company would also prioritize routes to Kali Adem port in North Jakarta and low-cost apartment areas.



He said that the routes for current feeder buses were jointly determined by the Transportation Agency, the Jakarta Transportation Council (DTKJ) and the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda).



He added that the company had also changed the infrastructure of the shelters to accommodate the buses, so they could be integrated into the Transjakarta system.



Kosasih cited the example of Dukuh Atas and Latuharhari bus shelters in Central Jakarta, both are ready to take passengers from the left doors of the feeder bus from the non-busway lane.



'We will also speed up procurement of the buses,' he said.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) is eyeing the vacant post of speaker of the House of Representatives left by Setya Novanto, who resigned amid a hearing over an alleged breach of ethics.



'The party, which was trusted by the people to hold the majority seats in the House, should chair [the institution],' said PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristitanto in Jakarta on Tuesday as reported by tribunnews.com.



However, despite PDI-P's aspirations, according to the Legislative Institutions (MD3) Law, the new House speaker should come from the same party of the resigning House speaker. Therefore, based on the law, the Golkar Party holds the right to fill the position.



Hasto admitted that it was not easy to revise the MD3 Law because it had already undergone review.



'Meanwhile, the House is currently focusing on deliberating the bills prepared within the Prolegnas [ National Legislation Program],' he added. He, however, said that he hoped other political parties would initiate a revision to the MD3 Law.



'If any political party wants to revise MD3 Law, PDI-P is ready to help,' he added. (bbn)(+)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The Jakarta Police questioned on Tuesday Yusri Isnaeni, a Jakarta resident, in regard to her claim that Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama defamed her when she reported to Ahok her difficulty in using the Jakarta Smart Card (KJP) to buy school items for her child.

The KJP is issued by the Jakarta city administration to needy students who need financial assistance.

'We just questioned a witness [Yusri]. It is part of an investigation,' said Sr. Comr. Krishna Murti of the Jakarta Police crimes division in Jakarta on Tuesday as reported by kompas.com.

Yusri, who was accompanied by her lawyers, arrived at the Jakarta Police headquarters at 11:30 a.m. Yusri said her statement would be included in the dossier on the slander charges against the governor.

Yusri reported Ahok to the police on Dec. 16. The case started when Yusri sought an explanation from Ahok about the use of the KJP to buy a school uniform. She said shopkeepers gave various reasons for not wanting to serve her when she tried used the card for purchases.

She was advised by people to withdraw funds using the card so that she could pay cash for a school uniform for her child, and she said that was why she had sought an explanation from Ahok when she visited City Hall recently. However, Ahok reportedly responded by accusing her of being a thief. 'I cannot accept being shamed in public,' Yusri said.

After questioning Yusri and other witnesses, Krishna said, police investigators will consult language experts about the slander claim. 'We need to determine if there is an element of slander in the case. It will be experts who decide,' said Krishna.

Language experts will analyze what words Ahok used, how the words were delivered and what was the context when the dialogue occurred. Krishna said that before consulting language experts, the police would question Yusri and other witnesses.

Krishna also police investigators were also considering questioning Ahok. 'We may summon Pak Ahok. He will turn up because he understands the law,' he added. (bbn)
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Tue, January 5, 2016

Your comments on the ASEAN Economic Community, which became effective on Dec. 31 and integrates Southeast Asian economies:

With the establishment of the AEC, Indonesia shall have the opportunity to enlarge its share in overall economic development, because of the large consumer base.



However, one of the biggest challenges we have to face is competitiveness. We have to maintain a professional workforce with highly rated work ethics. Failing to compete, our country would only be an attractive marketplace for our neighbors.



Soebagjo Soetadji

Jakarta



As we enter the new year and a progressive and integrated ASEAN community, maybe we can consider a few policy changes.



First, give the people of Aceh an ultimatum: 'Change your ways and your regional government or, if that is not possible, then protect those that do not want to live in the Stone Age. Do not drag the rest of Indonesia along.'



Second, force those in other parts of Indonesia that encourage extremism in the name of Islam, such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) or those in Bogor that do not heed even a Supreme Court ruling, to move to Aceh or if they want, Saudi Arabia.



I really deplore this trend toward extremism, and the fact that even the word sampurasun (traditional Sundanese greeting) is giving the Purwakarta regent problems, which, of course, our supremely capable police force claims to have solved.



Why don't we have a government ruling that states all greetings must include other ways of greetings other than only assalamu'alaikum such as sampurasun, or salam sejahtera.



Or even better, we should greet each other using Indonesian words, since we are not a province of Saudi Arabia (at least not the last time I checked).



Hing

Jakarta

__________________________________

Topic of the day



ASEAN Community



The ASEAN Economic Community became effective on Dec. 31, aiming to better integrate Southeast Asian economies. Share your thoughts on how far it may improve the lives of over 600 million people.



Send your thoughts by email, SMS, Twitter or Facebook. Include your name and city.
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Linkedin Nattasuda Anusonadisai (The Jakarta Post) Bangkok  Tue, January 5, 2016

Hackers took over several police websites in Thailand, replacing the home pages with a message saying, "Failed Law. We want Justice!"

Police Tuesday said they were investigating if the hack was in response to a Thai court decision that has been widely protested in neighboring Myanmar.

The Dec. 24 ruling resulted in death sentences for two Myanmar men convicted of murdering two British backpackers. Protesters believe the men were scapegoats and have threatened to boycott Thai goods after a trial that raised many unanswered questions about police and judicial conduct in Thailand.

Several police websites were either offline or still displayed the hackers' message Tuesday evening, hours after the online attack was staged late Monday. A black screen showed a white mask and blanked-out eyes and a hashtag Boycott Thailand. It also mentioned a group calling itself the "Blink Hacker Group" and made reference to Myanmar with a line in tiny print that said, "Greetz Myanmar Black Hats."

Thai police spokesman Dejnarong Suthicharnbuncha said about "two or three" websites were affected but Thai media listed more than 12.

"I received an initial report that the hackers are from another country," Dejnarong said. When asked if he meant they were from Myanmar and whether the hack was in response to the Koh Tao verdict, he said, "It's possible. We are investigating."

Protesters have rallied in Yangon outside the Thai Embassy and at border crossings demanding a review of the evidence in the case.

The men, Win Zaw Htun and Zaw Lin, were convicted of murdering David Miller, 24, and Hannah Witheridge, 23 whose bodies were found on the island of Koh Tao on Sept. 14, 2014. Witheridge had also been raped.

Police rushed to solve the crime, under intense pressure to limit negative publicity to the tourism industry, but the investigation and trial drew widespread criticism. Police were criticized for not properly securing the crime scene, conducting more than 200 random DNA tests, releasing names and pictures of suspects who turned out to be innocent, mishandling crucial DNA evidence from the victims and allegedly torturing their prime suspects.
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Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

The country saw almost 8.8 million foreign tourists visit its shores from January to November this year, still full-year short of the government's 2015 target of 10 million arrivals as part of a greater plan to boost tourism and forex reserves from the industry.



Up to 8.795 million foreign tourists from various countries visited throughout the year, a 3.23 percent increase from the January-November period of last year, against the backdrop of weak domestic and global economies.



A significant 3.5 million of that figure accounted for arrivals in Bali, up 5 percent year-on-year (yoy); 2.1 million landed in Jakarta, a 3.02 percent increase yoy; and 1.37 million arrived in Batam, growing by 7.29 percent yoy.



Other major arrival points in the country, however, saw a contraction in growth, namely Riau, down 6.68 percent to 273,369 visits; Surabaya dropping by 7.13 percent to almost 183,988 arrivals; and Bandung slumping 10.61 percent to 142,664 tourist arrivals.



President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo envisions boosting tourism in the archipelago, having targeted 20 million foreign tourist arrivals per year by the end of his term in 2019. To meet this target, the government has waived visa requirements for visitors from dozens of countries and intensified promotions overseas.



Tourism Ministry Asia Pacific promotion director Vinsensius Jemadu previously said the government aimed to net 1 million tourist arrivals in November and 1.1 million in December in order to meet the 10 million target, a plan that did not succeed.



In November 2015, 777,500 foreign visitors visited, which was a 5.85 percent decrease from the 825,800 visitors recorded in October and a 1.7 percent increase on a year-on-year basis.



BPS head Suryamin explained that the drop in Singaporean and Australian tourists, and the drop in visitor numbers in general for November, could be attributed mostly to natural disasters that occurred in November, such as the eruption of Mt. Rinjani in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.



'The eruption of Mt. Rinjani significantly affected flights coming from Singapore and Australia, thereby decreasing tourist numbers from those countries. Most of the visitors from these countries would have been heading to Bali. That's why we saw a 28.51 percent decrease in overall visitor numbers in November compared with October,' Suryamin said on Monday.



Singaporean visitors, the second-largest number of visitors after Malaysians, reached 131,769 in November, down 1.74 percent from 134,104 in the same month last year. Meanwhile, Australia, at fourth place after China, saw visitor numbers decline by almost 30 percent to 62,289 visitors from 87,820 visitors during the same period.



Another area that saw relative decreases in tourist numbers under similar circumstances was North Sumatra, which was represented by Medan.
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Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, January 5, 2016

Vice President Jusuf Kalla said on Monday that the Golkar Party's rival camps led by Aburizal Bakrie and Agung Laksono had agreed to pave the way for internal consolidation that would lead to a national congress.



'The date for the national congress will be set in the upcoming party executive meeting,' he said.



The former Golkar chairman said the two camps in December had committed to holding a national congress, dismissing any possibility that the government would make any concessions on further maneuvers by either camp that strayed from the consolidation plan.



Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly has revoked a decree that acknowledged Agung's leadership to comply with a Supreme Court verdict that returned the party chairmanship to Aburizal, who led Golkar from 2009 to 2014.



The ministry has yet to issue a new decree to recognize Aburizal's new central board lineup, forcing the two camps to hold a national congress to earn government approval.



Aburizal's camp has showed resistance as it recently demanded the ministry issue a new decree to recognize the new central board lineup under Aburizal, with a promise that it would accommodate Agung's camp.



Agung group has threatened to challenge Aburizal's leadership of the party should Aburizal insist on government recognition.



Agung supporter Priyo Budi Santoso said the party now could only rely on a party tribunal for control because neither camp currently had any legal standing to lead the party.



'The only solution is a national congress where we will sit together to reach a consensus, and it is only a party tribunal that has the authority to hold and lead a congress,' Priyo said.



Priyo went on to say that a congress was urgently needed to end the prolonged dispute before it took another twist and impacted the performance of the House of Representatives.



Agung and Aburizal have fought for the party's chairmanship since a failed succession at a national congress in Bali late 2014.



Agung camp challenged Aburizal's re-election in the congress, claiming that the congress was controlled by Aburizal with an 'iron fist' and that he had manipulated his way into a second term as chairman.



Yasonna earlier issued a decree recognizing Agung's leadership after a Golkar internal tribunal issued a ruling in favor of Agung in March without officially naming him the chairman.



In May, the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN Jakarta) annulled the decree issued by the minister and restored the party's leadership to Aburizal.



The decree was then reinstated by the Jakarta State Administrative High Court (PTTUN Jakarta) before the Supreme Court annulled it in October.



Golkar is not the only political party to have an internal dispute. The United Development Party (PPP) under the Djan Faridz and Romahurmuziy camps are still battling for government recognition.



The PPP secretary-general from the Djan-led faction, Dimyati Natakusumah, went to the ministry on Monday to give a copy of a Supreme Court decision and urge the ministry to immediately recognize Djan's chairmanship and revoke Romahurmuziy's.



The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Djan in October, granting him leadership of the PPP.



'We have submitted the administrative document they asked for. It depends on the ministry whether to legitimize Djan's chairmanship or not, meaning violating the law,' Dimyati said.



Separately, Djan said his camp was open to its rival for consolidation and expressed hope that Yasona would respect the law.



'As a minister, he has to follow the court's decision,' Djan said. (foy)

___________________________________________

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Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Tue, January 5, 2016

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit appeared to be shrouded in mystery, but was seen as a positive sign of a much-needed thaw.



However, if one connects the dots, India is gesturing momentarily to open the trade route between India and Afghanistan. If amicably addressed, this action will lower anti-Pakistan sentiments in India and may open ways for resolving other outstanding issues too.



The ground reality is that India's exports have been nose-diving since 2014. This period coincides with the Modi-led 'cold war' against Pakistan. Modi came to power on the promise of turning the Indian economy around, but accomplished the reverse ' which probably also caused his party to lose elections in Bihar.



Ironically, the solution to India's dwindling exports lies with Pakistan. However, Pakistan has big trade with Afghanistan. That should not be affected by Indian goods.



The Indians have estimated that they can build their exports to Afghanistan up to US$3 billion in a short time. Pakistan will have to ensure that its own exports in the region will not be affected. Any treaty signed must be economically beneficial to both countries.



India has been aiming at this trade route since 2011 when former Afghan president Hamid Karzai signed a trade agreement. This route is also mentioned in the recently concluded Heart of Asia conference. Since India remembers how Imran Khan halted Nato supply caravans passing through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they invited him to India to get his blessings too.



There will be thorny questions to be resolved, such as tariff on containers or the ownership of trucks. Will Pakistani trucks carry India containers? Through which border? Probably Wagah would be the Indian choice. Pakistan should recover enough revenue to pay for the damage done to the roads.



If there is enough incentive for both sides, this can become a regular feature, and possibly also open up avenues for other ventures.



Javed S. Ahmad

Dawn/ANN/Islamabad
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Former air force officer arrested at Phuket airport with ya ice

PHUKET: Police at Phuket International Airport arrested a female former Air Force officer yesterday (Jan 4) when she was found to have 40 grams of crystal meth (ya ice) hidden inside sanitary towels in her luggage.

crimedrugspolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Tuesday 5 January 2016, 11:46AM

The arrest came after police received a tip-off that a woman on board a Nok Air flight from Bangkok to Phuket would be carrying drugs. The flight was expected to land at 7:25pm.

When the passengers departed the plane, police noticed a female who resembled the person mentioned in the tip-off so conducted a thorough search of her possessions. Inside her luggage they found four bags each containing 10 grams of ya ice hidden inside sanitary towels wrapped in underwear.

We also found drug taking paraphernalia and digital scales in her bag, said Pol Lt Gen Pravit Engchuan from Phuket City Police.

The woman, 28-year-old Chutima Somboonrit, told police that she was an officer in the Royal Thai Air Forces Department of Electronic Communications. She also said that the drugs did not belong to her, but she had been paid B5,000 to deliver them.

Police contacted the Royal Thai Air Force who told them that Chutima had previously worked for them but had been dismissed a long time ago.

Chutima was taken to Tha Chatchai Police Station where she was charged with possession of a category one drug with intent to sell.

* UPDATE: The initial photo showing Chutima Somboonrit under arrest was removed at the request of Phuket Provincial Police.
Highway holiday toll hits 340 - and rising

Thailand has still failed to curb high traffic fatalities as authorities admitted the New Year death toll would surpass last years total despite a new measure to tackle drink-driving by temporarily seizing vehicles.

accidentstransport

By Bangkok Post

Tuesday 5 January 2016, 09:11AM

This crash between a Fortuner and songtaew (pick up truck-passenger bus, right) in Bangkok's Lat Krabang district yesterday (Jan 4) cost a 14-year-old schoolboy his right leg. (Photo by Pattanapong Hirunard)

As of Jan 3, 340 deaths had been reported over six out of seven days designated as a period for campaigning to reduce road accidents during this years New Year holiday, compared to 301 deaths reported during the same period last year, according to the Road Safety Centre.

In total, compared to the total so-called seven dangerous days in 2015, there were 341 deaths recorded.

National police spokesman Detnarong Sutthichanbancha said the lessons learned from the armys initial implementation of the vehicle seizure measure would be reviewed before possibly adopting it during the Songkran holidays in April.

From Dec 25 until Jan 3, 4,052 vehicles including 3,032 motorcycles were seized from drink-drivers. And on Sunday (Jan 3) alone, 555 motorcycles were seized, according to the National Council for Peace and Order.

The high death toll from road accidents during the New Year holiday this year despite tougher preventive measures, particularly vehicle seizures, is mainly because of the higher number of travellers this year, said Pol Lt Gen Detnarong.

It is estimated that the number of people travelling by road during this New Year period surged to 3 million from only around 1 million in 2015, he said.

According to the World Health Organisaton (WHO), Thailand has the worlds second-highest number of deaths from road accidents after Libya, with a death rate of 36.2 per 100,000 population. The global average is 17.5.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, meanwhile, yesterday (Jan 4) admitted that the tough measures had failed to bring down the number of road accidents.

He presumed that the root cause of the problem was due to drivers habits and stressed the need to come up with better ways of raising public awareness on the importance of safe driving.

National police chief Chakthip Chaijinda, however, was optimistic that the vehicle-seizure measure would pay off in the long run.

He insisted that the measure should never have been regarded as an act that violated the rights of drivers because police took care of the seized vehicles from drink-drivers temporarily before returning them to their owners.

Thaejing Siripanich, secretary-general of the Dont Drive Drunk Foundation, was also optimistic, saying the introduction of this measure was successful in terms of raising public awareness by more than 70 per cent about the dangers of drink-driving.

The government should never give up and should instead continue enforcing the measure throughout the year for a better outcome, he said.

He added that road accidents associated with drink-driving happen all the time, not only during holidays.

Each year more than 24,000 road accidents are associated with drink-driving, he said.

No government has yet implemented so stringent a measure to tackle road accidents. So, I think this really is a good start, said the anti-drink-driving advocate.

Some experts blamed three key factors as to why the number of road accident fatalities still hover around 350 during long holidays, especially over the New Year period, he said.

They are substandard road conditions and unclear traffic signs, violations of traffic regulations, and poor enforcement of the law, he said.

An analysis by the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department showed the three most common factors attributed to the high rate of road accidents over the seven-day New Year period were drink-driving, speeding, and falling asleep at the wheel during long journeys, said Chatchai Phromlert, director-general of the department.

Chanchao Chaiyanukij, permanent secretary for justice, said that his ministry was considering proposing additional measures to punish irresponsible drivers.

As for a proposal to extend the implementation of vehicle seizures, a new guideline for implementing this specific legal measure will be needed, he said.

During the recent New Years implementation of the measure, law enforcement officials were allowed to determine when to seize and when not to seize a vehicle from a drink-driver, he said.

This could potentially lead to an abuse of authority if the measure is implemented all year long, he said.

A meeting was held in Nakhon Ratchasima yesterday, where the highest number of New Year road accidents were reported.

Suthep Ruenthawil, head of the provincial disaster prevention and mitigation office, said after the meeting that drink-driving, speeding and traffic violations were the three major causes of 82 road accidents that left 15 killed and 76 people injured.

Read original story here.
Russian man charged for fatal big bike slam into Chinese tourist

PHUKET: According to police, a 25-year-old Russian tourist has been charged for reckless driving causing death after the big bike he was riding slammed into and killed a Chinese tourist crossing a road in Chalong.

accidentstransporttourism

By Saroj Kueprasertkij

Tuesday 5 January 2016, 10:24AM

Chalong Police say the Russian tourist, named as Robert Ness, 25, has denied the charge of reckless driving causing death. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot

Lt Chanut Hongsittichaikul of the Chalong Police told The Phuket News that the Russian tourist, who he named as Robert Ness, 25, has so far denied the charge, for which he is out on B200,000 bail.

The accident occurred near the Chalong Miracle Lakeview housing estate on Chao Fa West Rd at about 7pm on December 30, said Lt Chanut.

Mr Jielin Deng, 62, from China, was trying to cross the four-lane road after his family had already crossed it to the other side. He made it across the first two lanes and started to cross the other two when he was hit by the big bike, he said.

Mr Jielin was listed as the third person to die in Phuket during the Seven Days of Danger national road-safety campaign. (See story here.)

We did not find any evidence of alcohol or drugs involved in the accident, and Mr Ness was released after his lawyer posted B200,000 bail, said Lt Chanut.

Right now, police are collecting more information about the accident and we will ask Mr Ness to come to the station for more questioning.

Im not sure when the case will be sent to court, but I believe that it shouldnt take more than two weeks, he added.
The thrills gone: Mexicans migrants trudge home from US

UNIED STATES: The United States with its glitter of wealth has long been a powerful lure for Mexicans, but for the first time since accurate record keeping began in the 1970s the net flow is headed back the other way.

immigrationeconomicsculturepolitics

By AFP

Tuesday 5 January 2016, 01:00PM

US Border Patrol agents detain undocumented immigrants after they crossed the border from Mexico into the United States on August 7 in McAllen, Texas. Photo: John Moore/AFP

Mexicans are going home because of the lingering effects of the financial crisis in America, economic stability in Mexico and outright deportation.

From 2009 to 2014, around one million Mexicans packed their bags to return home, while in the same period 870,000 made the trek to the north, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.

Many people spent periods of time without work, or with work in the underground economy, while others lost the homes on which they had spent their savings over so many years, said Ruben Hernandez-Leon, director of the Center for Mexican Studies at UCLA.

The crisis that engulfed the United States in 2008 hit hard in industries such as construction that provided a lot of work for Latinos, he added.

Many Mexicans who crossed the border between 1995 and 2005 to cash in on a real estate boom in America ended up losing their homes and jobs starting in 2008.

They could not provide for their families in the United States nor for relatives depending on them back home for remittances.

Work has been hard to find for several years, said Salvador Rodriguez, a 57-year-old Mexican who builds homes in Los Angeles.

I came because things were really bad in Mexico and here it was easy to make money. But now you have to fight to get by, he said while packing up his tools after a day of construction work.

Mr Rodriguez has no plans to leave for the time being. But co-worker and fellow Mexican Miguel Garcia says he is more and more tempted by the idea.

If I am going to go through hard times, I might as well do it there. At least I would be with my parents and siblings, said Mr Garcia, 48, who has not been back to Mexico since 2003.

Those most exposed to economic uncertainty and thus the prospect of returning home are those Mexicans without papers. There are roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States illegally, about half of them Mexicans, according to the Pew Research Center.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2014 to protect many of these people from being deported. But the measure is now held up in courts after 26 governors called it unconstitutional.

Obamas willingness to create a path for such people without residency papers to gain legal status stands in contrast to government deportation figures. These are one of the main reasons for the net flow back to Mexico.

Since Obama came to the White House in 2009, some 2.5 million people have been expelled, most of them Mexicans.

Each deportation affects a family. People have to return because their loved one has been deported, and they no longer see the option to stay if they lose the breadwinner, said Armando Vazquez-Ramos, a professor at California State University in Long Beach and director of the California-Mexico Studies Center.

He said Obama stirred much hope that the problem of people without papers would be resolved, but his policies have meant that more than 700,000 children born in the United States are now exiled in Mexico.

The new data on the net departure of Mexicans from the United States could pave the way for a change in political discourse and the image of Latinos but professor Hernandez-Leon said that first the numbers must consolidate over time.

The debate sharpened a few months ago when Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump announced with much bluster that if elected he would expel people without papers, build a wall along the border with Mexico and make the Mexicans pay for it.

Democratic hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have shown themselves open to enacting broad immigration reform.

But Mexico faces big challenges as its people come back home, drawn by economic stability in the second largest economy in Latin America. In 2014 its GDP grew 2.1 per cent.

One big problem is that many returning Mexicans are overqualified, says Maureen Meyer, an expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Many people have developed skills, such as in construction, that they will have a hard time putting to use when they return to Mexico. Because of this, these people will concentrate in big cities, even if they are from a rural area, she said.

Mexico is preparing to receive these people. It is not entirely ready. It is a phenomenon that needs to be addressed, Ms Meyer said.
Two arrested in Phuket after French tourist killed by speedboat propeller

PHUKET: A French tourist was killed instantly during a snorkelling day trip off Poda Island, Krabi, today (Jan 5) when she was struck in the head by a speedboat propeller.

accidentsmarinetourismdeathpolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Tuesday 5 January 2016, 06:57PM

The captain fled to Phuket after his speedboat propeller struck and killed French tourist Sylvie Thietau. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Sylie Thietau, 52, died instantly when the propeller of the speedboat So Cool 1, of the Amazing Canoeing Group Co Ltd, struck her head. She died at the scene, said Col Sompong Tiparpakul, Chief of the Krabi Town Police.

Ms Thietaus husband was on the day trip with her at the time of the incident, he added.

The speedboat did not stop, but instead fled to Phuket, said Col Sompong. But Phuket Police and Marine Police tracked the boat to Ao Por (on Phukets east coast).

At Ao Por, officers arrested Myanmar national Maling El, 26, a crewman on the the speedboat, Capt Suchart Luecha of the Thalang Police confirmed to The Phuket News.

We also arrested the speedboat captain, Yothin Suebsak 30, of Nakhon Sri Thammarat, he said.

The pair were taken to Thalang Police Station.

We have to question them first before we can provide any details, Chief Inspector Col Boonlert Onklang told The Phuket News.

But they will be handed over to the Krabi Police for face further questioning, he added.
Fee for repeat offenders who don't mow grass could be increased

Those who fail to keep their lawns cut are charged a $100 fee per incident for the city to cut their lawns. The council looks to increase this fee.
OTTAWAEvery allegation of sexual misconduct in the military now crosses the desk of Canadas top general, underscoring the new priority commanders have put on stamping out systemic harassment in the ranks.

Still, Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence staff, admits the military has a long way to go yet to eliminate the widespread problems of harassment and abuse identified in a scathing report last spring.

But hes hoping that military-wide attention to the problem and stern orders issued from his office giving direction to address it will begin the necessary cultural change.

And that starts with the top general knowing about every single alleged incident.

I am satisfied that they are instantly on my radar screen, Vance told the Star in an interview.

Every one. Its flash traffic for me. I dont interfere. I dont do anything about it other than I know it. I make certain that the report has started, the victim is taken care of, the alleged perpetrator being dealt with appropriately, he said.

The military was rocked this past spring with the damning findings of former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps about sexual abuse and harassment in the military. In her report, Deschamps said there was a sexualized culture within the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) that is hostile to women as well lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members. That produces an environment that is conducive to harassment and assault, often with commanders either turning a blind eye to the disturbing conduct or condoning it, she found.

Comprehensive cultural change is therefore required, and such change cannot occur without the proactive engagement of senior leaders in the CAF, Deschamps wrote.

Vance, a 33-year veteran of the forces, took over the top post in July and one of his first acts was to launch OP Honour, a formal mission to eliminate harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour within the ranks.

He issued a set of orders to those in uniform that made clear that predators and bullies are not welcome.

I will not allow harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour within our organization, and I shall hold all leaders in the CAF accountable for failures that permit its continuation, Vance wrote in his orders.

Asked how the situation got so bad, Vance said the armed forces had become tone deaf to the problem.

I dont think we had the right climate that would allow those who were being victimized to have confidence in going to the chain of command, Vance told the Star.

From my perspective, I had part of my armed forces that simply wasnt happy at work, wasnt coming to work feeling confident and proud to put the uniform on. They were being hurt or damaged or harmed, Vance said.

Vance said his orders have raised the profile of the issue and begun to provide the rank-and-file with the beginnings of confidence in the chain of command.

But just the beginnings, Vance said, adding that he was unable to express satisfaction at the progress so far.

Im satisfied weve got it started and I am convinced Ive got to put a great deal more energy, as do my leaders, as do everybody in the armed forces, he said.

One of the problems identified by Deschamps was that many incidents of sexual abuse and harassment were not being reported because the victims feared repercussions. She concluded that the victims expressed concern about not being believed, being stigmatized as weak, labelled as a trouble-maker, subjected to retaliation by peers and supervisors, or diagnosed as unfit for work.

Vance conceded that even today, victims are likely still staying silent about misconduct in the ranks.

Have all of them been reported? I dont know. I would suspect no, Vance said. But we are creating an environment where they will ought to be. We have to earn our credibility with our people by actions.

The focus on harassment comes as Vance signals that the welfare of the rank-and-file will be one of the defining issues for his time as chief of defence staff.

Indeed, the advice of his father Jack Vance  himself a military veteran who rose to the rank of lieutenant-general and served as vice-chief of the defence staff  and every other officer who mentored him over the years, ring in Vances ears.

Make certain you take care of the troops, Vance said.

In the end, weve got to have a work force that is satisfied, motivated and is ready to do the bidding of the country, he said.

Vance became chief of defence staff just weeks before the federal election, began. With political leaders on the campaign trail, Vance had time to focus on the institutional issues.

I had an opportunity to reflect and actually give some direction on critical things I think in terms of taking care of people, Vance said. I intend to move out on a whole manner of issues.

Its people and how they are trained and equipped and how their quality of life is, he said. He said those changes can be as simple as helping a soldier caught in bureaucratic red tape.

He knows it sounds odd when he says he wants to ensure a good working environment for soldiers who could be called out to serve in the worst possible situations imaginable.

Theyre not inconsistent. You need to be in a positive work environment no matter what so youve got confidence in your institution and the people around you. Only then can you go into extreme danger . . . with an element of confidence that the team will work, Vance said.

As the interview in his office at defence headquarters wraps up, Vance wants one last word.

Weve got over 1,700 people right now who are going to be away from home for Christmas. Working hard on behalf of all Canadians . . . theyre really trying to do the best they can where ever they are in the world, he said.

Theyre worth thinking of over Christmas. Id like it if Canadians just paused for a minute just to think about them and their families.

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It was hardly shaping up as a year for glimmers of hope in the Middle East. But barely four days in, 2016 now is looking more like a sectarian centrifuge, spinning faster than ever, enhancing the toxic extremes even as it flings vulnerable minorities into deeper despair.

You can thank Saudi Arabia for igniting this latest blaze. The Sunni Muslim kingdoms weekend execution of outspoken Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr amounted to an act of diplomatic arson, albeit one buried in a wave of 47 state killings. In a secret Saudi memo issued hours before the execution  and disclosed Monday by The Independent  Riyadh ordered a full security alert, cancelling vacations. The kingdom anticipated a reckless backlash. As one does, in the wake of reckless provocation.

Archrival Iran took the Saudi bait  and consequently, more than a little of the blame  when Tehrans own security forces stood down in the face of the inevitable uproar, enabling an angry Shiite mob to breach and trash the Saudi embassy.

Then came the Big Snip: the complete severing of Saudi diplomatic relations with Iran, sending the regional cold war into its deepest freeze in years.

Its easy to park the blame for sectarianism at the very roots of Islam. Sunni and Shia Muslims would not exist as they do today if not for the ancient schism over who would succeed the Prophet Mohammed. This genie was always there in the bottle just waiting to burst out, right?

Not really. Anyone who walked the pavements of the region barely a generation ago saw vividly how coexistence was the norm, person to person and neighbourhood to neighbourhood, if not dictatorship to dictatorship.

Today, just walking many of those same pavements is potentially lethal, thanks to the way in the Saudis, among a much wider range of equally culpable actors, have used sectarianism as a political cudgel.

History will write George W. Bushs name in the headline. In toppling the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, Iraqs long-suffering Shiite majority was suddenly empowered, and neighbouring Iran along with it. The regional balance of power tilted in a way that has enabled a narrative of Sunni victimhood to grow ever stronger, year by year.

And what about next door in Syria? Hard as it is to imagine today, Damascus a decade ago was the place where regional minorities fled to feel safe. When Baghdad was ablaze in the years following Saddams ouster, Iraqi refugees of all stripes made their way to the Syrian capital, where the promise of pluralism seemed eternal. One could pray. Or one could wander 100 metres past the mosque and enjoy a glass of wine with your meal. Your call.

None of these wars began as sectarian conflicts. But all of them are now  Iraq, Syria, Yemen  in large part because Sunni and Shiite proxies have been provided the political and military tools to make them so. However they began, none are likely to end without the Saudis and the Iranians at the table, agreeing to set aside the sectarian tool box and acquiesce to ceasefires aimed at political outcomes that guarantee minority rights.

That peace table, set for Jan. 25 in Vienna, was the only real glimmer that 2016 could see the beginning of something other than continuing slaughter in Syria after five brutal years. Iran, now in the midst of diplomatic re-engagement in the wake of a U.S.-brokered nuclear deal, would be there. And so, too, would the Saudis, albeit after significant arm-twisting by the Obama administration.

This weeks spiralling tensions now make even that dim glimmer a fading hope at best. Blame whoever you will if Vienna now becomes the peace talks that never were. Me, I have a hard time not seeing these past four days as Saudi Arabias way of setting fire to the table.

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An alarming new superbug gene that makes bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic has been detected in Canada, the Star has learned.

The gene, called MCR-1, produces an enzyme that makes bacteria invincible to colistin, a highly toxic antibiotic used only when all other drugs have failed.

MCR-1 was first reported in November by scientists in China, who published a paper in The Lancet that set off alarm bells across the globe. Analyzing bacterial samples in southeastern China, researchers found 260 samples of E. coli with the MCR-1 gene on meat, hospital patients and farm animals  the likely source of this new superbug, the paper suggests.

But the news that really sent a shudder through the scientific community was that MCR-1 is located on a plasmid, a free-floating snippet of DNA that bacteria can easily share, thus spreading the resistance to other organisms.

Its clearly the biggest story to come out (in 2015), said Lance Price, a professor of environmental health at George Washington University who studies antibiotic resistance. There have been horrible things all year but this is the most disturbing.

So far, there have been no reports of deaths caused by MCR-1 and some people could be harbouring the superbug asymptomatically. But the nightmare scenario is that MCR-1 will spread to more virulent bacterial strains that also carry other resistance genes  thus creating a pan-resistant superbug capable of defeating every antibiotic in the medicine cabinet.

Since the Lancet paper, at least a dozen other countries have also found the MCR-1 gene. Scientists, looking through databases of bacterial samples, detected the gene everywhere from Denmark and Algeria to Laos.

Among them is Canada, where an investigation was triggered in December by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The Canadian findings have not yet been published, but a case report has been submitted to the Lancet, according to Dr. Michael Mulvey, chief of antimicrobial resistance with the PHACs lab in Winnipeg.

The superbug gene was found in three different samples of E. coli, all previously collected for special research projects: one from a 62-year-old patient in Ottawa and two from ground beef sold in Ontario.

The Ottawa patient likely picked up the bug in Egypt, where she lived for several years, according to Dr. Baldwin Toye with the Ottawa hospital, who co-wrote a 2013 paper describing her case and four others.

She was hospitalized three days after moving back to Canada and treated for an abdominal infection. Toye believes another pathogen was responsible for her illness, however, and the patient was simply harbouring the MCR-1 gene, which Mulvey discovered retrospectively during his recent investigation.

Meanwhile, the ground beef samples were found nearly a year apart in different locations in Ontario, a butcher shop and a grocery chain, according to Mulvey. Both were collected in 2010, predating the samples from China, which were collected between 2011 and 2014.

To see it show up was a surprise for me, Mulvey said. It supports that theres global dissemination of this gene already  were now going to have to look back even prior to (2010), because maybe its been around for even longer.

For scientists worried about antibiotic resistance, the emergence of colistin resistance is troubling but comes as no surprise. Bacteria are naturally equipped with resistance mechanisms, but the overuse  and misuse  of antibiotics has exerted an unnatural pressure on bacteria to evolve. Those that can withstand antibiotics survive and reproduce.

Colistin, which belongs to a group of antibiotics called the polymyxins, was actually discovered in the late 1940s but was quickly shelved due to its highly toxic side effects. Pharmaceutical companies moved on to develop other, better antibiotics  but, one by one, bacteria have evolved strategies for knocking them down.

Weve sort of run out of our good drugs, Price said. So out of desperation  we have to revive this old drug because its all we have left.

Colistin is still rarely used in human medicine because doctors want to conserve the antibiotics effectiveness. But polymyxins are often given to livestock animals to prevent infections and promote growth  especially in China, one of the worlds highest users of colistin in agriculture. (While colistin isnt used in agriculture in Canada, polymyxin B  a similar compound that creates the same resistance problems as colistin  is.)

In 2015, the global market for colistin in agriculture reached nearly 12,000 tonnes and is expected to rise to 16,500 tonnes by 2021, according to the Lancet paper. Thats insane, said Dr. Gerry Wright, a microbiologist with McMaster University and expert in antibiotic resistance.

Scientists have already seen colistin resistance emerge. In Canada, for example, ongoing hospital surveillance stemming back to 2010 has found 13 samples of colistin-resistant bacteria, according to Mulvey.

But MCR-1 is unique in that its located on a plasmid which bacteria can share even with different species  the equivalent of a human sharing its DNA with a tree.

For many years, scientists, including me, have been living under the misapprehension that you could never ever get mobile colistin resistance, said Timothy Walsh, a microbiologist with Cardiff University who co-authored the initial Lancet paper. And once its mobilized, what tends to happen is it transfers much more quickly.

Walsh said the Chinese government is taking MCR-1 seriously and he expects it will announce an official ban on colistin use in agriculture.

But microbiologists like Wright, who is now studying MCR-1, would like to see polymyxins banned from agricultural use in every country, including Canada.

Any antibiotic class used for humans should never be used for animals (unless theyre sick), he said. I just find it absolutely mind-boggling that were going into 2016 and were still having this discussion.

The emergence of MCR-1

The discovery of the powerful new superbug gene in China was a global alarm bell, sending scientists scrambling to their labs to check for MCR-1 in their own countries. Two months later, it has already been found in 11 other countries, including Canada  and the list will only continue to grow.

China

Nov. 18, 2015: The superbug gene was first reported in The Lancet by researchers in China. Looking at bacteria collected between 2011 and 2014, the researchers found E. coli with MCR-1 on 21 per cent of slaughterhouse pigs and 15 per cent of raw chicken and pork. Sixteen hospital patients also had MCR-1 positive infections. The effect on human health by mobile colistin resistance cannot be underestimated, the researchers warned.

Malaysia

Nov. 18, 2015: In their Lancet paper, the authors pointed out that Malaysian scientists had published bacterial DNA sequences in late December 2014 with genes that look like MCR-1  suggesting the superbug was already in Malaysia too. The possibility that mcr-1-positive E. coli have spread outside China and into other countries in southeastern Asia is deeply concerning, they wrote.

Denmark

Dec. 3, 2015: After the announcement from China, Danish researchers searched through their own bacterial data  previously collected under a surveillance program for antibiotic resistance  and found MCR-1 in six samples of E. coli. One was from an elderly patient with prostate cancer who suffered a blood infection in 2015; the other strains were growing on European chicken meat imported between 2012 and 2014.

England and Wales

Dec. 11, 2015: The Chinese announcement also triggers an investigation in the United Kingdom, where public health officials combed through the DNA sequences of more than 24,000 archived bacterial samples. Fifteen had the superbug gene; 13 came from patients and two stemmed from a single piece of poultry meat imported from the European Union. These findings confirm, although newly discovered, the mcr-1 gene is already present in England and Wales in various bacterial species harboured by the human population,

The Netherlands, Portugal, Algeria, Laos, Thailand, France

Dec. 17, 2015: The number of affected countries suddenly doubles overnight as The Lancet publishes five letters from researchers around the globe, all announcing that they, too, have detected the MCR-1 gene. It showed up in bacterial samples taken from tourists (in the Netherlands), people (Laos and Thailand), food (Portugal and France), farmers (Laos) and chickens and pigs (Laos and Vietnam). More MCR-1 was also discovered in China  this time recovered from peoples gut bacteria.

Canada

Today: Canada is the latest country to join the MCR-1 club. Government scientists combed through archived samples of bacteria and found three hits that were positive for the superbug gene: one from a human E. coli infection, two from lean ground beef samples. The earliest sample was collected in 2010 and actually pre-dates the China samples that were analyzed in the Lancet report from November.

Correction: The global market for use of colistin in agriculture is expected to rise to 16,500 tonnes by 2021. A Jan. 5 article about a new superbug gene that makes bacteria resistant to the antibiotic misstated the year.

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Of all the Senates inglorious attributes, its lack of gender parity is but one. Women currently hold just 36 per cent of the Red Chambers seats. While thats better than the House of Commons where they hold 26 per cent, the gap is still a wide one.

Little wonder, then, if the New Years advice that is piling up on Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus desk includes a nowcall for gender parity now in the unelected and unpopular upper chamber.

More than 80 prominent Canadian women including former prime minister Kim Campbell and former deputy PM Sheila Copps have urged Trudeau to build on his progressive decision to name women to half his cabinet posts by adopting the same approach to the Senate. They want him to appoint women to fill all 22 current Senate vacancies. That would bring instant parity to the Red Chamber.

The 22 current vacancies should be filled by women from diverse backgrounds, including indigenous women, women from minority linguistic, racial and ethnic communities, and others, consistent with the Senates role in minority representation, the group urged in a letter to Trudeau written by Donna Dasko, co-founder and former national chair of Equal Voice, and by Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, a former Toronto city councillor. The signatories include former politicians, academics, businesswomen and other professionals.

Its an attractive idea, given Trudeaus stated intention to make gender balance a priority as he proceeds to shake up the Senate. Certainly, he could do worse than name qualified women to all (or most) of the five Senate seats he intends to fill in the coming weeks. And over the longer term, balance should be the goal. A reformed Senate will by design include more women.

Even so, arbitrarily filling all 22 vacant seats with women would pre-empt the very merit-based reform process he has launched to clean up an institution that sank very low on Stephen Harpers watch. Stacked with unfit Tory cronies, it was tainted by self-indulgent spending and was racked by allegations of fraud and bribery. Trudeau aims to restore public confidence. If he were to use his prerogative as PM to skew the process at this early stage, even with good intentions, he would discredit it from the get-go.

After cutting loose his own Liberal senators from the party caucus, Trudeau hopes to transform the Senate into a non-partisan, merit-based chamber. He intends to appoint a five-member advisory board to canvass for qualified Senate candidates and to put forward non-binding shortlists of five names from which he can choose. The board will consist of a federally-appointed chair and two members, plus two ad hoc members from the provinces or territories with vacancies.

As the Star has noted, this guarantees broad consultation and regional input. It also keeps the process in the PMs hands, allowing the voters to hold him and his party accountable. And it should put forward plenty of credible women.

The Senate candidates will have to have a solid record of achievement, public service and proven integrity, be non-partisan and understand that their role is to analyze and revise legislation, investigate national issues, and champion regional, provincial and minority interests. As well, gender balance is an explicit goal.

If all goes as planned, the Senates days as a repository of party grandees, failed candidates, bagmen and hacks will be numbered.

Rather than pre-empt this system even before it is tried out, the Trudeau government should give it a chance to produce better results including more gender balance.

Given Trudeaus commitment to fairness it may well turn out that his appointees are weighted toward women until equity is achieved. But Senate balance should be reachable without short-circuiting a process that is designed to turn up the best candidates for the job.

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Donald Trump has built his presidential campaign on off-the-cuff commentary, much of it not based on fact. One claim on which the data backs him up, though, is that toppling Middle East dictators has rarely benefited the U.S.

It's a position the billionaire real estate magnate staked out as early as last summer and repeated in last month's Republican presidential debate.

"We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people," Trump said during the Las Vegas event, broadcast on CNN. "It's a mess," he added, and "the Middle East is totally destabilized."

Trump's comments, though unlikely to curry favor with some wings of the GOP, draw attention to an unpleasant irony. While Americans trace their country's origin to a colonial revolt against the British empire in the 18th century and bask in its image as the "land of the free," attempts to spread democracy abroad, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Iraq in the 2000s, have often backfired.

Supporting dictatorships, such as the shah's regime in Iran through the 1970s or Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq in the '80s, not so much. That strategy has yielded practical benefits such as curbing the influence of hostile nations and maintaining a degree of Middle Eastern stability that helped ensure the U.S. oil supply.

"You could say that the reason there have been so many dictators and monarchs in the Middle East over the last 40, 50, 60, 70 years has been because the United States propped them up," said James Gelvin, a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in Middle Eastern history. "We've been backing dictators and selling them weapons and giving them international legitimacy."

While the rule of such dictators was often harsh, "strong leadership was necessary" for the protection of U.S. interests including protecting the re-established nation of Israel and blocking the Soviet Union's attempt to spread communism, Gelvin said.

In the 1950s, the U.S. and Britain worked together to reinstall the Iranian monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. His secular government, along with that of Saudi Arabia, would safeguard U.S. concerns in the region for more than 20 years until a popular revolt created an Islamic state led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.



Later, in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan provided military intelligence to Saddam's Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, in part to curb Iran's influence. The U.S. orchestrated a global arms blockade against Iran, which had benefited from access to U.S. military equipment during the shah's reign, according to the government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace's Iran Primer.

During the same period, U.S. support for Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet Union invaders led to that country's withdrawal and a series of civil wars in which Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, fell to the Taliban, according to the CIA World Factbook.

That hard-line government remained in power, sheltering Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization, until it was toppled by the U.S. and its allies after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

Later, in 2003, President George W. Bush's administration launched an invasion of Iraq, a campaign the government described as both necessary to contain a nuclear threat and a benevolent attempt to spread democracy.

While Saddam was captured and killed, the move turned out to be more costly than the U.S. expected in both financial and geopolitical terms.

Not only did the government spend trillions of dollars, the military action destabilized the Middle East while empowering Iran, which has opposed American interests since the late 1970s.

"There's no doubt that ISIS would not have emerged had there not been an al-Qaida in Iraq, which eventually turned into ISIS," said Gelvin. "Al-Qaida in Iraq never would have emerged had there not been an American invasion of Iraq in the first place."

The U.S. economy took a hit almost immediately. Oil, which had been selling for about $25 a barrel, rose to nearly $100 a barrel after the invasion.

In total, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the U.S. some $4.4 trillion, including war zone spending, Homeland Security expenses, interest and future obligations for veterans care, according to a study by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. The report examined the period from 2001 to fiscal year-end 2014.



The interest on money borrowed to fund the wars is estimated to be $8 trillion through 2054, the Watson study estimates.

"If we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we've had, we would've been a lot better off," Trump said at the debate.

Years after the Iraq invasion, the vacuum left when President Obama withdrew U.S. troops from the country, the U.S. helped depose Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and Syrians revolted against President Bashar al-Assad created fertile ground for the rise of the Islamic State.

The brutal militant group has seized large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria and used the Internet to recruit followers from the West while sponsoring terrorist attacks like the one that claimed 130 lives in Paris in November and left nearly 400 wounded.

It has also inspired solo actors such as the couple who shot 14 people to death in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

Trump isn't alone in criticizing the results of U.S. efforts to spread democracy through military intervention.

"Toppling secular dictators in the Middle East has only led to chaos and the rise of radical Islam," U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian from Kentucky, has said. "If we truly are sincere about defeating terrorism, we need to quit arming the allies of ISIS. If we want to defeat terrorism, the boots on the ground need to be Arab boots on the ground."

That wasn't the case In Libya, where the U.S., Great Britain and France sent armed forces in 2011 to protect civilians from Qaddafi, who was brutally suppressing an uprising against his 42-year dictatorship.

While Qaddafi was slain in the conflict, armed extremists attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi the very next year, killing four people, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The attack, which occurred during Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's last year as Secretary of State, sparked years of criticism from the GOP that she had failed to protect U.S. personnel as well as Congressional probes.

The world be safer if Qaddafi and Saddam were still in power, said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican backed by the Tea Party movement.

"We keep hearing from President Obama and Hillary Clinton and Washington Republicans that they're searching for these mythical moderate rebels," argued Cruz, who casts himself as an outsider despite holding numerous Washington positions and serving on President George W. Bush's 2000 campaign. "It's like a purple unicorn. They never exist. These moderate rebels end up being jihadists."

q
Editor's pick: Originally published Jan. 5.

There's no such thing as guaranteed success in the auto business.

But three sport utility vehicles offer such compelling combinations of features, styling and value that they should be big successes in 2016 and further enhance the standing of their manufacturers.

One of the vehicles starts at just $22,000. The other two come in at $32,000 and $42,000 respectively. Fully loaded, you can add about $10,000 to those totals.

However, once demand for these SUVs wanes, just as with other cars, you should be able to attain a 10% to 20% discount based on your ability to negotiate with the dealer.

Just one word on the term SUV. These are not extreme, all-terrain cars that are meant to take on challenging, off-road courses as if they were a Jeep Wrangler. They are crossovers. They're the modern station wagon, or a more macho version of a Subaru. You have a little bit better clearance than a regular car. The departure and approach angles will keep you from scraping the undercarriage on a steep driveway or the curb at the grocery store. If it snows and you're on a country road, you'll do great.

1. The $22,000 (and up) champion: Kia Sportage

The best-looking SUV for 2016 is also one of the most affordable. Kiadesign director Peter Schreyer is famous for having designed the Audi TT about a decade and a half ago. But this may be his greatest masterpiece since then. The exterior is extraordinary, and the interior is just as ergonomic as Kia's larger SUV, the Sorento.

The Sportage has been Kia's fourth-best selling nameplate in the U.S. in 2015. The company sold 47,695 Sportages during the first eleven months of 2015, up 20% from 2014.

It is in many ways the sister model to Hyundai's Tucson, but these cars are styled differently. The Hyundai Tucson is a decent-looking SUV in sync with the other newest Hyundai models, but the all-new Kia Sportage that arrives in U.S. dealerships in March 2016 is beyond stunning and has its own unique design language.

If the Hyundai sister model is any indication for fuel economy, the Kia Sportage should deliver 26 MPG city and 33 MPG highway for a 29 MPG combined. Those are good numbers for a smaller-than-average SUV.



2. The $32,000 (and up) champion: Mazda CX-9

The all-new CX-9, which will arrive in U.S. dealerships during the second quarter of 2016, is Mazda's largest car. It's a seven-passenger three-row SUV. It is the last car in Mazda's lineup that has been remade from when Mazda and Ford were developing cars together in the 1990s and early 2000s. As such, it is 100% new.

What makes the all-new CX-9 special? Consider the impressive exterior. The CX-9 looks like an SUV that might begin around $50,000 -- a Volvo XC90 or Audi Q7. But expect the CX-9 to start at $32,000 when it goes on sale around May. The outgoing model priced at about $30,000.

The interior design also looks expensive. Real aluminum made to resemble Japanese hand-made knives complements expensive-rich brown leather and rosewood coming from Japanese guitar makerFujigen. Fujigen makes products for Yamaha, and Yamaha supplies wooden interior trims for Lexus.

Mazda has borrowed some of its new engine philosophy from Volvo, in that the CX-9 will only be available in four-cylinders. This has enabled Mazda to design the front of the car with less mass around the engine bay, not only making the car lighter, but also simplifying the manufacturing.

Mazda has designed the engine to address common driving situations for a large SUV. This is not a car for setting records on the German Autobahn. It's supposed to be driven in a mix of regular U.S. traffic. What matters is a smooth performance in reasonable power situations.

For example, if you're driving at normal highway speed and you need 90 horsepower, the old CX-9 would need to downshift from sixth gear to fourth. In contrast, the new 2017 CX-9 would not need to downshift at all.

Mazda's target is to sell 50,000 of these all-new CX-9 SUVs per year globally with 40,000 of those in the U.S. -- up from what looks to be just under 20,000 of the current ancient model in 2015. Given the SUV's quality, doubling of the US CX-9 sales volume should not be a problem.



3. The $42,000 (and up) champion: Jaguar F-Pace

The F-Pace is Jaguar's first SUV, and because Jaguar and Land Rover (Range Rover) are one company, few people would doubt that it could have excellent off-road abilities. But a Jaguar is meant more for individuals who don't need that capability but like the idea of driving a comfortable SUV. The F-Pace can navigate annoying curbs and uneven city roads in comfort and at a more reasonable price than the Mercedes GLE series, a mid-sized SUV that starts at around $52,000. It is also about $23,000 less than a similar Range Rover base model but offers a similar if not better driving experience on roads.

That's a 35% difference in pricing.

The F-Pace SUV starts at $41,985. That's for the diesel version, which is expected to get class-leading fuel economy, possibly as high as 35 MPG. The F-Pace diesel launches in late 2016. But a 3-liter, gasoline V6, which powers almost every other Jaguar Land Rover, will arrive in May. The F-Pace gas model comes in the usual 340 and 380 horsepower versions and starts at $1,400 more than diesel.

SUV sales last year achieved record highs. Where does the SUV market go from here? These three new SUVs suggest that the market will achieve new levels of style, refinement and value.

They will arrive just in time for summer. So you may just want to delay whatever other SUV purchase plans you have for another few months.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of submitting this article for publication, the author did not have any position in the companies mentioned. However, positions can change at any time. The author attended unrelated vehicle launch events in 2015 where Kia, Mazda and Jaguar paid for airfare, lodging and meals.
Mindfulness and mediation have been around for thousands of years, but companies are just starting to embrace the benefits the practice can have on their employees and workplaces.

As Sheryl Connelly, a futurist at Ford Motor (F) , explained, "There's an emerging body of scientific evidence that can actually prove that mindfulness can be beneficial to your physical well-being as well as your mental health."

The mindfulness trend is a direct response to the increasing complexity in people's lives where being constantly connected on mobile devices can take their toll.

In India, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, more than half of all adults say they make a conscious effort to disconnect from their devices.

"Meditation, yoga, these things can reduce your anxiety, slow down your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure and on the productivity side, not only can you become more efficient but you can also have better morale at work," according to Connelly.

But disconnecting from all the "device noise" is only part of the solution. Employers are also realizing that more "mindful" employees mean better workplace outcomes.

In several countries, employers are actually teaching meditation to their senior leaders. In Japan for example, where firms with more than 50 employees are now required to administer annual stress tests, Yahoo! (YHOO) Japan is adding mindfulness and stress-management techniques to its leadership training programs.

For employees whose firms don't offer special training, there are now mobile apps which might be helpful. One mindfulness app, called Buddhify, has become the No. 1 health and fitness app in more than 40 countries. It offers users more than 80 guided meditations that are specifically tailored to where the user is and what he or she are doing.

For weary business travelers, airports around the world are creating rooms for yoga and meditation between flights. Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and London's Heathrow Airport now have permanent spaces where travelers can do yoga or meditate to help center themselves.
Agriculture giant Monsanto (MON) , the world's largest producer of seeds for planting, will report first-quarter fiscal 2016 earnings results before the opening bell Wednesday. Owing to weakness in its corn seed and traits businesses, which missed Wall Street's estimates in the last two fiscal quarters, Monsanto stock didn't perform as well as investors hoped in 2015, losing about 19% of its value compared to a 0.73% decline for the S&P 500undefined index.

Nonetheless, there are tons of reasons to expect a nicer ROI harvest in 2016. For starters, Monsanto, which provides roughly 30% of all seeds used in modern agricultural farming, is approaching periods of softer year-over-year comparisons, meaning it will have a much easier time beating its quarterly estimates.

What's more, in the aftermath of its steep correction -- which we correctly called -- from around $117 to current levels of around $96, MON stock now trades at just 15 times fiscal 2017 earnings-per-share estimates of $6.33. And while Monsanto still faces operational headwinds, including weakness in its agriculture productivity business (under which its herbicides are housed), the St. Louis-based company is making moves to cut costs and improve long-term growth opportunities, including slashing 2,600 jobs in the next two years to offset revenue struggles.

In that vein, at just 15 times 2017 estimates, it would seem the market is discounting what Monsanto can achieve next year, especially when the company recently announced a $3 billion accelerated stock buyback program that will boost long-term earnings per share. This means the $6.33 consensus estimates for fiscal 2017 -- implying 20% growth from 2016 -- might underestimate the company. Investors who are looking for beaten-down stocks with the potential to out-perform the market in the next 12 to 18 months would do well buying Monsanto ahead of Wednesday's results.

For the quarter that ended in November, the analysts' average estimate calls for a 22 cent per share loss on revenue of $2.40 billion, compared to the year-ago quarter, when Monsanto earned 42 cents a share on revenue of $2.87 billion. For the full year ending in August 2016, earnings are projected to be $5.28 a share on revenue of $14.63 billion, translating to declines of 7.8% and 2.5%, respectively.

The projected quarterly and full-year revenue and earnings declines -- owing to gross profit margin weakness in its seeds and genomics segment (among other things) -- would help explain why the stock dropped in 2015. But with tons of cash at its disposal, and initiatives in place to boost long-term revenue and profits, Monsanto -- which has a consensus buy rating -- has multiple routes to grow shareholder value. And its 54 cent quarterly dividend that currently yields 2.2% annually will be an added bonus.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Originally published Jan. 5.

When all is said and done, a bank is only as good as the economy it serves. And with the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico teetering on the edge of financial crisis, one financial institution -- and its stock -- is poised for a giant tumble.

Whereas banks such as Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America are expected to see decent performances in 2016, Puerto Rico's First Bancorp (FBP) appears doomed to a disastrous year. It's easily one of the worst stocks to own in 2016.

FBP

data by

YCharts

The geopolitical situation of our Caribbean island is far from paradisiacal. Staring down a debt burden of approximately $70 billion, Puerto Rico is defaulting on $37 million in bond payments due Jan. 1. This is just a fraction of the nearly $1 billion in interest due. The territory will skip payments on $35.9 million of non-commonwealth guaranteed debt from the Puerto Rico Infrastructure Financing Authority and $1.4 million from Public Finance Corp. bonds. Puerto Rico owed $328.7 million of interest on general obligation debt to investors; the defaulted money will be used to help pay that down.

To make the payments on which it is not defaulting, the Puerto Rican government has diverted $163 million in revenues from other agencies, including its highway, convention center and transportation authorities. And rumors are circulating that the territory will take money from the public employee pension fund to meet its payments.

Puerto Rico has taken other austerity measures to meet short-term obligations to its creditors, including raising sales tax from 7% to 11.5% and laying off more than 30,000 public sector workers. But these actions have done little other than to drive the territory's economy further into collapse. In December, the government slashed its revenue forecast by 5.2%.

Since 2001, Puerto Rico's economy has shrunk 10%. The poverty rate now sits at 45%. The unemployment rate is 12.5%, more than twice the national U.S. average. As a result, the population is shrinking as citizens emigrate to the mainland U.S. in search of better opportunities. In 2014, as many as 84,000 Puerto Ricans fled the island. A smaller, poorer population must now bear the burden of the territory's massive debt obligations.

In addition, Puerto Rico is plagued with notorious government corruption. Just last month, the FBI arrested 10 officials and businessmen on bribery and corruption charges.

It should come as no surprise that any publicly traded financial institution dependent on Puerto Rico would become one of the worst possible stocks to own now.

And First Bancorp, a financial institution headquartered on the island, has seen its fair share of trouble as the island's economy has struggled. Over the past 10 years, the stock has fallen about 98% -- nearly 45% in 2015 alone -- and now sits around $3.

In fact, the bank's fortunes are so closely tied to those of its home that bad economic news from Puerto Rico can send shares drastically plummeting in a single day. This happened in dramatic fashion on June 30, when the governor's comments that the island's debts were "not payable." FBP stock dropped by 15% on the same day.

First Bancorp's business depends on the citizens and commercial establishments of Puerto Rico to originate loans. With a bleak economic picture, a thriving demand for loans seems farfetched.

In addition, the bank's customer base continues to shrink as Puerto Ricans leave the island, and those who do remain face a growing inability to find employment. This is hardly a good environment for a profitable banking investment. First Bancorp is poised to be one of the worst -- if not the worst -- banking stock for 2016.

As you can see, First Bancorp looks like a stock to avoid right now. However, if you want to see a list of the absolute worst stocks you can own right now, I urge you to take a look at this report called 29 Dangerous Stocks: Sell Now! Inside, you'll see a full list of the markets most overvalued stocks, and learn the process you can use to keep avoiding them in the future. Click here now for a copy.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
GM (GM) announced Monday it was putting $500 million into Lyft's latest $1 billion fund-raising round. Efraim Levy, analyst at S&P Capital IQ, said GM's investment in the ride-sharing service is hardly the only positive thing the automaker has going for it.

"Lyft has the app so when somebody wants to order a Lyft, they know how to get it," said Levy. "GM knows how to manufacture the vehicles that can be used to partner with Lyft. I think together there is a strategic benefit for both companies considering the way the auto industry is heading."

Shares of GM fell 2% in 2015, while shares of Ford (F) dropped 8% for the year despite strong North American sales. Levy is bullish on Ford, saying the automaker was hurt by the strong U.S. dollar last year, as well as weakness in certain overseas markets.

"There have been some weak spots internationally in different emerging markets," said Levy. "When oil prices went down in those territories, demand for the product also dropped, such as in South America."

Shares of auto parts manufacturer Lear (LEA) rose 25% last year even as GM and Ford saw their stocks fall. Levy said there is a high correlation between the companies, yet it does not always translate over to their stock prices.

"Lear is a company that is able to generate a lot of free cash flow, they have improving margins, and they are expanding their customer base," said Levy. "All these things have been positive for them and investors rewarded them for it."

Finally, Levy is still a fan of Magna International (MGA) , even though the Canadian parts maker saw its stock drop 25% last year. He said he likes Magna's management and is "surprised" it fared as poorly as it did.

"They have wonderful technology," said Levy. "If they want, they can build a whole car on their own, even though they won't do that because they would be competing with their own customers."
Worries about the Chinese economy shocked global stocks on the first day of trading in 2016. Nevertheless, investors should take the long view and look to U.S. consumer strength and corporate earnings before writing off the entire year, said Eric Wiegand, senior portfolio manager at U.S. Bank.

"The number itself was not so great, but certainly not cataclysmic," said Wiegand. "I think the reaction was more to the response of the Chinese market than the data point itself."

China's Shanghai Composite plummeted 7% before triggering a trading halt after manufacturing activity contracted for the 10th straight month. The official manufacturing PMI came in at 49.7, while the Caixin manufacturing PMI fell to 48.2. A reading below 50 indicates contraction. China's economic growth came under scrutiny in 2015 as data indicated a steeper slowdown than feared.

Global markets were also lower after Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran on Sunday. Protesters torched a Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran on Saturday in response to Saudi Arabia's execution of 47 prisoners, including Shiite cleric Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. Crude oil spiked 3% on the news above 38% a barrel, but finished the day down almost 1% to just under $37.

"Since there is such a deeply held religious gulf between the two, we can certainly understand if Saudi Arabia was looking to produce at even more aggressive levels to put further pressure on their Iranian counterparts," said Wiegand.

Gold jumped 1% on the rising tension in the Middle East. However, Wiegand said he is still wary of the commodity sector, which continues to bump along the bottom. He said lower input prices has not been reflected in retail or restaurant sales because the consumer has chosen to save the dividend from lower gas prices. Wiegand expects this change, which is why he remains bullish on consumer discretionary stocks.

"We continue to like health care, which is more of a sector for all seasons," said Wiegand, who expects a constructive year with high volatility. "We also like technology, which should benefit from increased demand and increased e-commerce."
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Norfolk Southern (NSC) stock closed down by 3.29% to $81.81 in Monday's trading session as a hostile takeover bid by Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) faces opposition from industry groups.

The groups are urging U.S. rail regulators to block the potential takeover, Reuters reports.

The broad resistance to the hostile bid might negatively impact Canadian Pacific's chances if the deal makes it to a review by the Surface Transportation Board, Reuters adds.

Norfolk Southern has rejected a number of takeover offers by Canadian Pacific since November. In mid-December, Canadian Pacific Railway sweetened its $30 billion cash-and-stock bid by offering to compensate Norfolk Southern shareholders if Canadian Pacific shares declined during the merger process.

The most recent bid by Canadian Pacific Railway was "grossly inadequate," Norfolk Southern said in a statement.

Separately, recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP as a Buy with a ratings score of B. This is driven by multiple strengths, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and expanding profit margins. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had sub par growth in net income.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Southwestern Energy (SWN) are down by 2.59% to $7.51 at the start of trading on Tuesday morning, as some energy and related stocks retreat due to the decline in oil prices.

The commodity is trading in the red today as concerns regarding China's economic growth and a strong dollar weigh. Oil prices rallied on Monday following escalating tensions in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Chinese markets are continuing to decline, having dipped by 7% on Tuesday, Reuters reports. Trading in China, the world's second largest oil consumer, was halted on Monday after a sharp selloff which followed the release of the country's latest manufacturing data.

"Last year we talked about supply and demand even surprised on the upside. But with this news flow from China, demand fears have come back," oil analyst at Baden-Wuerttemberg told Reuters.

Crude oil (WTI) is lower by 1.06% to $36.37 per barrel and Brent crude is slipping by 1.64% to $36.61 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate SOUTHWESTERN ENERGY CO as a Sell with a ratings score of D. This is driven by several weaknesses, which we believe should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- International Business Machines (IBM) stock is declining by 0.35% to $135.49 in mid-morning trading on Tuesday, as Steven Mills, executive VP, software and systems, will retire after more than four decades with the technology company.

Mills had been with the company since 1973 and held a range of leadership positions throughout his career.

He was named executive VP of IBM software and systems in January 2015.

Before this role, he played a significant part in shaping the IBM software group since its creation in 1995, according to his company biography. As the senior vice president and group executive of the IBM software group, Mills helped the company acquire more than 30 software firms since 2001, Reuters reports.

Mills turned down an offer in 2010 to become Hewlett-Packard's CEO, according to Reuters.

Separately, recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate INTL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP as a Hold with a ratings score of C+. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its increase in net income, good cash flow from operations and expanding profit margins. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself, generally higher debt management risk and feeble growth in the company's earnings per share.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of ON Semiconductor Corp. (ON) are increasing by 0.67% to $9.77 on Tuesday morning, even as a Chinese investor group trumped the company's bid to takeover Fairchild Semiconductor International (FCS).

In November, the semiconductor companies agreed to merge for $20 per share, valuing Fairchild's equity at $2.4 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Fairchild said it received an unsolicited and revised offer from China Resources Microelectronics and Hua Capital Management Co. of $21.70 a share last week, Bloomberg added. The San Jose, CA-based company believes the new offer is likely a "superior proposal."

On December 14, the company declined an offer from the Chinese investor group because it was not "superior" to its agreement with ON Semiconductor, Bloomberg noted.

ON Semiconductor has limited resources and should not partake in a bidding war with the Chinese group, Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, told Bloomberg. The two companies have too many overlapping products, he added.

The Phoenix-based company offers a portfolio of analog, digital and mixed signal ICs, image sensors and custom devices for customers to solve their design challenges in electronic systems and products.

Separately, recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate ON SEMICONDUCTOR CORP as a Hold with a ratings score of C. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, growth in earnings per share and increase in net income. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including disappointing return on equity and a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
Corrected to reflect Fitbit's Chief Business Officer is named Woody Scal, not Woody Scott. TheStreet regrets this error.



LAS VEGAS -- Fitbit (FIT) -- doing what it can to remain relevant and stay ahead of the competition in the digital health and fitness space -- unveiled the Fitbit Blaze, a smart fitness band that looks an awful lot like the Apple (AAPL) Watch.

At CES in Las Vegas, Fitbit CEO James Park, who helped take the company public in the middle of 2015 at a roughly $4 billion valuation, unveiled the smart fitness watch that puts fitness first.

"It's really going to ignite the world of fitness," Fitbit's Chief Business Officer Woody Scal said at a press conference. "It's the most advanced, smartest, motivated, stylish product yet."

Wall Street, however, was not impressed, sending shares sharply lower, falling 12.5% to $26.05.

S&P Capital IQ analyst Angelo Zino, who rates shares "hold," said that despite some of the small positives, "the price point may prove to be too high for a device that will not offer access to third-party apps, unlike other smartwatches. We think FIT should focus on the sub-$100 category and opportunities within the wellness area."

The Blaze, which is available globally in March for $199, has several bands to go along with it, including those geared toward fitness, a luxe line in stainless steel and three leather bands in mist grey, camel and black.

Compatible with over 200 devices, the Blaze works with both Apple iOS and Google (GOOGL) Android platforms, as well as Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Mobile, with dedicated native apps for each platform.

The fitness bands cost $29.95 each, while the leather bands cost $99.95 and the stainless steel band costs $129.95.

The new device, which adds to the Fitbit Charge, Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge lineup, is designed to help Fitbit maintain its dominant position in the health and fitness tracker market.

On Google Trends, Fitbit is searched more than brands such as Apple, North Face, Bose, Apple-owned Beats, Adidas, Garmin and others, Park said at the press conference.

The Fitbit Charge HR is the best-selling tracking device in North America, while the Surge is the best-selling GPS watch. As of the third quarter, Fitbit had shipped 30 million devices in 55 countries. It's in more than 48,000 stores.

By contrast, Apple has not released public information about sales of the Apple Watch, though CEO Timothy D. Cook has publicly stated before he expected the Apple Watch to be among the best-selling products of the holiday season.

The Blaze, which comes with Fitbit's pure pulse technology, allows users to track their heart rates on their wrist continuously. It also comes with several quick, personalized workouts and multiple sport modes, including weights, yoga, biking and boot camp, with a summary of each workout displayed on the watch at the end of the workout.

Ftbit has tried to distance itself from the Apple Watch by only putting what it deems as essentials on the watch. "It's not about putting things on your phone on your wrist," Scal said. "It's about maximizing essentials. You need a tool, not a toy."

Yet much like the Apple Watch, the Blaze uses Bluetooth to give users access to their calendars, calls and texts on the screen of the watch. It also offers a "do not disturb" feature and has the ability to play music via connected playlists.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) shares are higher 1.02% to $42.39 Tuesday afternoon largely due to falling oil prices.

Crude oil (WTI) is slumping 1.47% to $36,22 per barrel and Brent crude is declining 1.91% to $36.52 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index.

Oil futures were tumbling on the stronger dollar and worries about China's economic status.

Chinese stock markets dropped 7% on Monday causing the country's central bank to take action by injecting $20 billion in short-term funds into the its financial system. This was to help calm investors nerves following Monday's sharp stock selloff, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Separately, the company last week announced that it reached a deal with Transport Workers Union Local 555, a union that represents over 12,000 employees.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate SOUTHWEST AIRLINES as a Buy with a ratings score of A. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, impressive record of earnings per share growth, good cash flow from operations, expanding profit margins and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. Although the company may harbor some minor weaknesses, we feel they are unlikely to have a significant impact on results.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.undefined are down by 0.63% to $17.47 on Tuesday afternoon, due to today's lower oil prices.

Oil prices are falling on a stronger dollar and growing U.S. crude oil inventories, Reuters reports.

The greenback reached a one-month high today, increasing by almost 0.6% by midday as traders looked for safety on worries about decelerating global growth and the plunging Chinese market, Reuters noted.

Crude oil (WTI) is slumping by 2.09% to $35.99 per barrel this afternoon and Brent crude is dropping 2.02% to $36.47 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index.

Crude inventories unexpectedly rose in Cushing, OK, Reuters added. The American Petroleum Institute will announce its data after the market close on Tuesday.

"The markets keep falling because globally, we're still oversupplied," Carl Larry, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan told Reuters.

Headquartered in Houston, Cabot Oil & Gas is an independent oil and gas company engaged in the development, exploitation and exploration of oil and gas properties.

Separately, recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate CABOT OIL & GAS CORP as a Sell with a ratings score of D+. This is driven by a few notable weaknesses, which we believe should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its feeble growth in its earnings per share, deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally high debt management risk.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Nutrisystem (NTRI) are up 1.76% to $21.31 in afternoon trading on Tuesday after the company's CEO told TheStreet that it hasn't seen a negative impact from Oprah Winfrey endorsing its rival, Weight Watchers (WTW).

"There has been a lot of stock market volatility, but I haven't really seen Oprah impact our business," said Nutrisystem president and CEO Dawn Zier.

"I think Oprah is an amazing woman, she will be great for the industry -- what she is doing is shining a big spotlight on a really important issue," Zier added.

The debut of the first set of ads featuring new investor Oprah Winfrey sent the stock soaring last week. Winfrey purchased a 10% stake in the New York-based weight loss company in October.

Weight Watchers stock more than doubled following the news of Oprah's investment.

Earlier in the year, Weight Watchers stock bottomed out at $3.67 in July, an 85% decline from the year ago period.

Weight Watchers has since spiked more than 500% since its summer low.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate NUTRISYSTEM INC as a Buy with a ratings score of A-. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, notable return on equity, reasonable valuation levels and solid stock price performance. Although the company may harbor some minor weaknesses, we feel they are unlikely to have a significant impact on results.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
A member of the foreign security forces looks out through his vehicle's window, at the site of a suicide attack near a compound belonging to foreigners in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 4, 2016. Afghan troops rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a four-story building near the Indian Consulate in a northern city on Monday to drive out gunmen who had attacked the diplomatic mission the night before, officials said. (AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini)
In this Sept. 23, 2015 file photo Volkswagen ornaments sit in a box in a scrap yard in Berlin, Germany. Federal authorities are suing Volkswagen over emissions-cheating software found in nearly 600,000 vehicles sold in the United States. The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday filed a civil complaint against the German automaker in U.S. District Court in Detroit. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)
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President Barack Obama defended his administrations plans to tighten the nations gun-control restrictions without going through Congress, insisting Monday that the steps hell announce fall within his legal authority and uphold the constitutional right to own a gun.

Flanked by his attorney general and the head of the FBI, Obama offered few details about the list of recommendations hes received and will come out with over the next few days. Behind the scenes, though, Obamas administration has been preparing an effort to expand background checks on gun sales by forcing more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers.

This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, Obama said, setting expectations for what he can do on his own. Its not going to prevent every mass shooting; its not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal. It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses.

More than three years after the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, with many other mass shootings since, Obama is training his attention once again on a policy goal that has eluded his administration. He tried the legislative route in 2013, pushing hard for a package of gun control measures including expanded background checks. But that effort collapsed spectacularly in Congress.

(AP)
By executing a senior Shiite cleric, Saudi Arabia effectively lit a match to set off regional sectarian tensions and its rivalry with Iran, threatening to derail already-shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

It also is part of a more aggressive stance by the kingdom in the past year, which included launching an air campaign against Shiite rebels in Yemen and increased aid to rebels in Syria.

The policy in part reflects a greater willingness for risk-taking to counter Iranian influence in the Arab world, especially with Riyadh worried about a potential easing of relations between Tehran and Washington in the wake of last years nuclear deal.

But it also has a powerful domestic factor: a show of toughness by King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aiming to bolster their rule at a time when Saudi Arabia is facing an economic crisis brought on by low oil prices.

To the greater world, however, the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr took on a different appearance.

It looks like an extremely irrational and ill-considered decision to do this, said Christopher Davidson, a professor of Middle East politics at Durham University in Britain. In my view, it speaks more about the local dynamics in Saudi Arabia itself that are shifting steadily away from the ruling familys control.

The execution sparked outrage among Shiites around the world, with protests in Iraq, Bahrain and Pakistan, and even in Saudi Arabias tightly controlled Shiite heartland in the east. Irans government  which presents itself as a defender of Shiites in the region  loudly condemned the killing. Attackers stormed, ransacked and burned the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, prompting Riyadh to cut off ties in response.

Al-Nimrs death was a dramatic step because Saudi Arabia has rarely resorted to the death penalty in dealing with unrest among its Shiite minority, which has long complained of discrimination in the Sunni-led kingdom. A vocal opponent of the Saudi royal family, al-Nimr was seen by Shiites in the region as a political dissident, although he always contended he did not foment violence.

Shiites had warned against his execution ever since a Saudi court convicted him of sedition and other charges and sentenced him to death in 2014. He was executed among a group of 47 people convicted on terrorism charges  almost all connected to Sunni radicals and al-Qaida  painting him with the same brush as a threat to security.

For the royal family, the execution signals a tough hand against any trouble from Saudi Arabias Shiites and bolsters the kingdoms posturing as the champion for Sunni Muslims in the region against Iranian influence.

Saudi Arabias allies rallied it to its side Monday, with a number of nations following its lead in either cutting or reducing diplomatic ties with Iran. The Arab League called an emergency meeting of foreign ministers for Jan. 10 to discuss the attack on the Saudi Embassy and other Iranian interference in Arab affairs.

The execution also placates the kingdoms Sunni ultraconservatives, a key source of support for the ruling family. Shiites remain a favorite target of slurs by Saudi clerics, who follow the ultraconservative Sunni doctrine known as Wahhabism. While the kingdoms Shiite community  an estimated 10-15 percent of the population of nearly 29 million has seen only relatively low-level restiveness over the years, clerics often depict Shiites as a threat, a potential lever for Iranian influence.

Ultraconservative support is particularly important at a time when Saudi Arabia is facing the rise of an insurgency by Sunni extremists linked to the Islamic State group. Young Saudi Sunnis have been involved in a string of suicide bombings in the kingdom. Since Syrias civil war escalated in the past four years, Saudi clerics urged young men to fight alongside Sunni rebels there against the Iranian-backed Syrian government.

Analysts believe Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed, the kings 30-year-old son, has been the driving force behind the kingdoms more assertive stance and its willingness to take extreme political risks in the region, particularly the push into the war in Yemen.

Tellingly, it was Prince Mohammed, the Saudi defense minister, whom U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the German defense minister and a Sudanese official contacted for consultations Monday as the crisis spread.

What we have is a Saudi Arabia thats increasingly unhinged, that is run by a young man seeking to prove his bona fides, willing to take a lot of risks and of questionable judgment, said Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of the Eurasia Group. I think that any independent analyst would have to come to the conclusion that the trajectory of the Saudi regime is one of the biggest political risks hanging over the Middle East at this point.

The intensified Saudi-Iranian tensions could doom the multilateral talks launched by the U.S. and Russia in Vienna last month aimed at pushing a plan to end Syrias civil war. Riyadh and Tehran were both participating in those talks, and it was already going to be extremely difficult to get them both fully behind a peace plan: Iran is the main backer of Syrias President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia has backed the rebels, determined to oust Assad and deprive Iran of a key ally.

One has to especially worry about the future of the Vienna talks, given this incendiary episode, Kupchan said.

Efforts for peace in Yemen already appeared to be crumbling. A truce there  largely ignored by combatants  ended this weekend. That civil war has killed more than 5,880 people since March and keeps Saudi Arabia and its allies mired in a conflict that has no clear sign of ending soon.

All the while, Saudi Arabia faces budgetary pressure as global oil prices have sunk under $40 a barrel and likely will remain low well into this year. The kingdom already has made some cuts, but more could be around the corner, forcing it to make unpopular decisions for a society used to government subsidies.

But theres one place its not cutting back: It allocated $57 billion in defense spending for 2016.

Those domestic worries are part of the reason for the show of toughness abroad.

Saudi rulers cant be seen as backing down, and thats not because its necessarily giving the region away to Iran, Davidson said. It is also because they know their own population will drift away from them and it will be interpreted as a great sign of weakness.

(AP)
The Cabinet, at its weekly meeting on Sunday 22 Teves announced Mr. Buki Carmeli will serve as the head of the National Cyber Defense Authority.

Prime Minister Netanyahu commented Carmeli is deserving, experienced and multi-faceted. He is thoroughly familiar with the cyber field in both its security and civilian aspects.

While we are indeed cyber leaders, we need to continue to race forward. In this era we must be prepared in advance for national defense and private defense. The threat is very great and proper deployment is vital. All countries look to us in this field.

A unified cybernetic alignment is necessary to deal with these threats.

Israel National Cyber Bureau Director Dr. Eviatar Matania added Appointing a head of the national cyber defense authority indicates the start of its activity in the coming months. This is a main milestone in implementing the national deployment that was approved by the Cabinet last year in the face of the growing threats in the cyber field. I have no doubt that Buki Carmelis rich experience in both the security establishment and the private sector, especially in the cyber defense field, will allow him to establish the authority over time as a technological-operative leader on a global level.

Buki Carmeli, 53, served for over 20 years in Unit 8200 and in the security establishment. His most recent position was head of the technological unit in the Defense Ministry Office of the Director of Security for the Defense Establishment, where he led cyber defense for the security establishment. He was previously involved in initiatives in the field of defense for sensitive systems and also headed a fund dealing in international technology funds.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey must accept that it needs Israel.

The statement came as the two countries seek to normalize their relations.

NATO member Turkey was a key regional ally of Israel until the two countries fell out over the storming by Israeli commandos in 2010 of a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, bound for Gaza.

Israel is in need of a country like Turkey in the region, Erdogan said in remarks to Turkish reporters published in leading dailies Saturday.

And we too must accept that we need Israel. This is a reality in the region, saidErdogan.

If mutual steps are implemented based on sincerity, then normalisation will follow.

Analysts have suggested that Turkeys rapprochement with Israel has been accelerated by the need for Ankara to make up for its crisis in ties with Moscow after the shooting down of a Russian warplane.

Last month it was reported that a breakthrough was reached in the reconciliation talks between Turkey and Israel, but Jerusalem and Ankara made it clear that the reports were premature.

(Source: EJP)
Three Palestinian stabbing attacks were Bichasdei Hashem prevented on Monday.

At around 11:45AM, a Palestinian terrorist armed with a knife was apprehended near Kikar Bahad 3 in the Shomron, not far from Shechem. Bchasdei Hashem he was restrained and taken into custody before he could perpetrate a stabbing attack.

Soldiers from the Rotem Battalion felt the man was suspicious and directed their weapons at him and ordered him to halt. They were able to check him under scrutiny and they found he was concealing a knife.

The terrorist is a 17-year-old from Kabatya.

at around 2:15PM, border police at Tapuach Junction checked a 16-year-old Jenin resident and found he too was concealing a knife. The terrorist admitted he was planning to try to attack border police at the checkpoint.

At 3:30PM, two 15-year-old Arab teens near Herods Gate of Jerusalems Old City appeared suspicious to border police. The two were stopped and checked. The knives seen in the photo were being concealed by them as they planned to carry out a terror attack.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem / Photo: Medabrim Tikshoret)
Yafeh Orbachs mother HYD was murdered when she was five years old. Today, Mrs. Orbach is 80. Mrs. Ethel Lachs, 88, survived Auschwitz and hid in the woods. Mrs. Ruth Bauman, 82, still has a hard time talking about the war years. Last week, they along with others, celebrated their bas mitzvah at the Kosel for as children, they never were able to have one.

Some 70 years later, thirty survivors who live in Kfar Saba were taken to Yerushalayim to celebrate a bas mitzvah together due to the initiative of Kfar Saba Mayor Yehuda Ben-Chamu.

Mrs. Orbach arrived in Israel at the age of 12, and for her, the bas mitzvah at the Kosel was the closing of a circle. She explains as a little girl she was starving for bread and back then, she never dreamed that one day she would merit celebrating a bas mitzvah, yet alone at the Kosel.

Mother died and father was taken to Siberia and I remained with my older brother who was six years older than me in the streets she explains. I was born in Chernovitz in Vienna, a city that prior to WWI was Austrian. It moved to Romania after the war. We were taken from there in freight trains. My brother and I endured hell. We went from one orphanage to another and at the end of the war, when we returned to Chernovitz, we were sent to another place for children and we were both suffering from malnutrition. When I was 12, I got to a Greek vessel from Cyprus to my family in Tel Monde.

Mrs. Orbach eventually joined the IDF, got married, and had two daughters. Today Baruch Hashem she is the grandmother of six. I am proud to be the bridge between the Holocaust and the revival she adds. She also proudly reflects to the time when she worked in Kibbutz Sdei Boker alongside David Ben-Gurion.

Mrs. Lachs was born in Romania, and her entire far with the exception of her brother perished in the Holocaust, in Auschwitz. She too hid in the forests and made her way to Israel with the assistance of the Russians. She explains that immediately after the war she returned to Romania and joined Bnei Akiva and when she arrived in Israel, she joined a Bnei Akiva kibbutz.

Mrs. Bauman explains she could not wait for the bas mitzvah, and she was counting the hours from a week before. I am almost 83 and celebrating my bas mitzvah, and at the Kosel, in Yerushalayim, my capital, in my land she adds. She arrived in Israel at the age of 15 and a half.

The event was full of emotion for all thirty women, who thanked the mayor for the opportunity to mark this special day in their lives, albeit several decades later than most.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem / Photo: Kfar Saba City Hall)
A couple from Rishon LTzion was looking for a wedding hall but the one they selected would not work as the operator refused to book their wedding after learning they planned to read portions from the New Testament at the ceremony.

The couple has decided to file a NIS 100,000 lawsuit against the Yavne wedding hall because according to them, they were refused simple because of their religious beliefs.

The couple was looking for a hall six months ago. It was clear to them that they were going to read from the New Testament during the ceremony along with performing a number of other Christian customs as they explained that while being Jewish, they are believers in J. Obviously, such a ceremony is also not sanctioned by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

They finally found the hall that would work for them, both the ambiance and the cost. They began finalizing the wedding with the manager. During their discussion they explained details about the actual wedding ceremony and the hall representative objected, explaining this was not possible. They add the hall owner agreed to permit the wedding providing they eliminate reading portions of the New Testament.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Tensions are rising in the frum community in Pisgat Zeev amid plans to open a branch of Kashtan Deli, a treif store. In other areas, branches operate on Shabbos and yomtov, and they sell non-kosher items along with kosher. The opening of this branch is set for February 2016 and religious residents appear willing to do what they can to prevent this from occurring.

A protest including shofaros and tefilos is planned for the coming days. Rabbonim will be taking part in a protest at the location sometime next week. MyNet quotes Rabbi David Amar saying This is simply awful, opening such a store in our neighborhood. This is a neighborhood that is a part of Jerusalem and everything is based on kashrus and tahara. Now they wish to bring a sheretz into our community. This is a blow for us. While this neighborhood is basically non-religious, it is becoming perhaps chardali, or I would say at the very least traditional.

Many of the area residents welcome the opening of the deli, explaining everyone has the option and no one is compelled to shop in the store.

Roni Ben-Yair, a member of the minhal (local government) explains what has many upset is the location of the store, on the main street adjacent to the light rail stop.

It is pointed out that two branches of Kashtan Deli already exist in the capital and this will be the third.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of visitors to Israel in 2015 is expected to total about 3.1 million. Despite the geo-political situation in recent months and the effects of Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, tourism shows resilience with only a slight decrease of 3% on 2014. It should be noted that, in the first half of 2014, there were dramatic increases in incoming tourism. The number of tourist entries (not including day visitors) is expected to total about 2.8 million entries, a decrease of 4% compared to 2014.

It is noted the statistics in points 1-3 relate to the period Jan-Dec 2015, in which the December 2015 statistics are based on an estimate.

1. Tourism by mode of travel

Out of 3.1 million visitors, 2.5 million arrived by air (78%), a decrease of less than 1% compared to 2014. About 292,000 came through the land borders (9%), a 27% decrease compared to 2014. 313,000 entries (10%) were day visitors, 32% more than in 2014. Of these day visitors, 101,000 (3%) came on cruise ships, 16% more than in 2014.

2. Tourism by Country of Origin (visitors, including day visitors and cruise ships)

As in previous years, tourism from the USA continued to represent the largest country of origin for incoming tourism to Israel, with 586,000 visitors arriving in 2015, (representing 20% of all incoming tourism), 2% more than 2014. In second place is tourism from Russia with 392,000 visitors, a decrease of 26% on 2014. Tourism from France takes third place, with about 277,000 visitors (no change on last year), followed by Germany (185,000; no change on last year) and the United Kingdom with 184,000 visitors, 10% less than 2014.

Other countries worthy of note: Ukraine with 128,000 visitors, 5% up on 2014; Italy with 82,000 visitors, 26% down; Poland, 63,000 visitors, 15% less than 2014; 62,000 visitors from Canada (an increase of 2%); from the Netherlands 46,000 visitors, 6% less than 2014.

3. Leading Countries of Origin (tourists, excluding day and cruise visitors):

In first place; USA with 571,000 tourists, 3% more than in 2014. In second place, Russia with 279,000, 28% less than last year. In third place, France with 272,000, (2% more than 2014). In fourth place, UK with 162,000 ,6% more than 2014, followed by Germany with 149,000, Ukraine with 106,000, Italy with 77,000, Poland and Canada with 55,000 and the Netherlands with 44,000.

4. Tourism to Israel: Characteristics

 52% of incoming tourism was Christian tourism (35% of which is Catholic, 32% Protestant and 28% Russian Orthodox). 27%of incoming tourism was Jewish, with the remaining of other religious denominations or non-affiliated.

 50% of tourists were first time visitors.

 22% defined their visit as part of a pilgrimage, 18% as tour and travel, 13% as vacation and leisure. Overall, 53% defined their visit for tourism purposes, 28% visited friends or relatives and 10% came for business or to attend conventions.

 24% came as part of an organized tour, 7% on a package deal, and 69% came as FITs (frequent individual tourists).

 56% of tourists stayed in hotels, 28% stayed with friends or relatives and 5% stayed in youth hostels, 2% stayed in religious hostels. 6% stayed in rented or owned apartments.

5. Cities Visited

Jerusalem is the city most visited by incoming tourists in Israel, (77% of all tourists). Tel Aviv-Jaffa holds second place with 69% of all tourists having visited and in third place, the Dead Sea area with 48%. The Galil area, including Tiiveria and the Kinneret, holds fourth place with 35% of all tourists.

6. Tourist Satisfaction

The satisfaction level of tourists visiting Israel in 2015 was very good to excellent (4.4 out of 5). Services that received a high rating included: archeological sites (4.5); tour guides and organized tours (4.5). Among those services which did not rate so highly: value for money (3.1), disabled access to tourist sites (3.3), taxis (3.4) and cleanliness in public bathrooms (3.5).

7. Hotels

During the first half of 2015, 369 tourist hotels operated in Israel with a total of 50,243 rooms. 76 hotels with 9,863 rooms operated in Jerusalem, 50 hotels with 11,023 rooms in Eilat, 61 hotels with 7,275 rooms in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, 15 hotels in the Dead Sea area with 4,052 rooms and 50 hotels with 6,397 rooms in the Tiveria and Kinneret area.

10 million bed nights were registered in these hotels in the first half of 2015, 8% decrease on 2014. Since 2008, there has been a trend in tourist bed nights, away from tourist hotels into other accommodation (youth hostels, Christian hostels and privately-owned/rented apartments). About 5.9 million bed nights (59% of the total) were from Israelis, an increase of 8% on 2014.

8. Domestic Tourism

About 7.6 million domestic overnight stays were registered in the first half of 2015 in all the various types of accommodation, 7% more than last year (7.1 million). There was an increase of 8% in hotel stays (6.3 million overnight stays). Rural tourism registered 734,000 bed nights by Israelis (2% increase on 2014), 405,000 Israeli bed nights in youth hostels (no change), 153,000 bed nights in field schools (8% decrease on 2014).

Source: Tourism and hotel services statistics quarterly

9. Tourisms contribution to the Israeli economy

Revenue from incoming tourism in the first half of 2015 (including the income of the Israeli aviation companies from inbound tourism) totals about $9.9 billion.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Concerned that inflamed tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia may threaten key foreign policy objectives in Iraq and Syria, among other places, the Obama administration toed a careful line Monday in seeking to calm a diplomatic storm that many fear could lead the longtime regional rivals to direct sectarian conflict.

The White House and State Department both appealed to Riyadh and Tehran to show restraint and avoid further exacerbating the rift between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran. However, officials said the administration is loath to insert itself but wants to ensure the viability of the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, nascent attempts to end Syrias civil war, peace efforts in Yemen and the Iran nuclear deal.

We dont want to see any progress that has been made or may be made on those issues affected by this, which is why (we) have been in communication with leaders there, to try to get tensions calmed down, to try to get dialogue started or restarted so that we can focus on these other very pressing issues in the region, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and on Monday with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Kirby said. Kerry also planned a round of calls Monday to the foreign ministers of all the Sunni-led states in the Gulf region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, officials said.

Bahrain followed Saudi Arabias lead and severed diplomatic ties with Iran, while the UAE downgraded its diplomatic relations with it, after mobs attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran following the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

In addition to Kerry, other senior U.S. diplomats were in close contact with Saudi and Arab officials over the weekend, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the delicate diplomacy.

Yet, officials made clear they did not want to mediate the dispute. They stressed it was up to local leaders to act to ease the situation.

Ultimately, solutions to problems in this region must come from leaders in this region, Kirby told reporters. So while we continue to make all efforts to facilitate dialogue, the emphasis is on local leadership to work through their differences and find the best path forward through this tension.

Of particular concern, U.S. officials said, are military operations against Islamic State extremists in Iraq that are being conducted by Iraqi security forces, which answer to an Iran-friendly government, and Sunni and Shiite militias. That cooperation has shown gains in recent weeks, notably with the Iraqi recapture of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Officials were preparing for a high-level U.S. conversation with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to stress the importance of continuing the Iraqi governments outreach to Sunni militias, the officials said.

Also of concern is the state of the Syrian peace effort, which is supposed to swing into high gear in late January with U.N.-sponsored negotiations between Saudi-backed opposition forces and the Iran-supported government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. A U.S. official said Kerry had spoken Sunday with the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to gauge any impact Saudi-Iranian developments might have on the planned Jan. 25 start of negotiations. There was no immediate indication that those talks would be disrupted, the official said.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest urged Saudi Arabia and Iran not to let their dispute derail fragile talks aimed at securing a cease-fire and a political transition to end the war in Syria.

Hopefully they will continue to engage, Earnest said. It is so clearly in the interests of both countries to advance a political solution to the situation inside of Syria.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said de Mistura will head to Saudi Arabia and Iran this week to try to ensure the talks go ahead.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said de Mistura hopes that the adverse consequences of the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran do not affect the peace process with the Syrians.

(AP)
[PHOTOS BY HILLEL ENGEL IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

On Monday morning, administrators and principals from over 130 schools gathered at the Tiferes Mordechai Ballroom to hear from top NYPD officials and FBI regarding urgent measures that need to be taken to secure local schools from terrorism and active shooter situations. This event was coordinated by Misaskim in an effort to further the safety measures in our schools and yeshivos. Attending the conference were representatives from schools in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Flatbush. At the dais were FBI Assistant Director in Charge New York Field Office Diego Rodriguez and his team, Commanding Officer of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force Deputy Inspector Mark Magrone, Ira Tannenbaum Deputy Commissioner for NYC Office of Emergency Management, Patrol Boro Brooklyn South Assistant Chief Powers, Patrol Boro Brooklyn North Deputy Chief Trabitz and NYPD School Safety Division Inspector Harell. Also in attendance were representatives from Hatzolah and Shomrim of Flatbush Boro Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg.

Misaskim Director Rabbi Yanky Meyer opened the event by stressing that the urgency of the matter cannot be overstated. According to Rabbi Meyer the goal of the event was for school officials to hear the messages from law enforcement as to what schools should be doing in the event of active shooter situations and terrorism cv.

The officials elaborated on the ever-growing threat of terrorism around the world, pointing to the recent horrific terror attacks in Paris and San Bernandino, California. In addition, they described the sad reality of the threat of mass shootings in the U.S., particularly in schools.

FBI Director Rodriguez stressed the importance of coordination of community leaders and law enforcement officials. In fact, this is the first time ever that the FBI Director came to address the Jewish Community. Now more than ever, we must rely on each other, Rodriguez said. He warned that despite the fact that the threat of terror is very real I urge you not to let fear become disabling; instead turn that fear into healthy awareness.

Inspector Magrone defined what constitutes a hate crime and how his department makes an effort to best tackle every reported incident. He encouraged participants to report any occurrence however insignificant they seem. Hate crimes are treated very seriously even when it is committed by a minor, he explained.

In his address to the school representatives, Chief Powers challenged the audience: What are you doing to protect your schools from this threat? He stressed about the importance of prevention and the need to take a soft target and turn it into a hard target, by securing entrances and exits with professionally trained armed guards in every school. He reiterated that school security depends on you since the overwhelmingly large number of schools in the area make it impossible for the NYPD to protect all facilities at all times.

Chief Trabitz then outlined simple steps schools can take to protect their staff and students in the event of an attack. He urged the administrators to each develop an emergency plan, which would be activated in an active shooter situation.

Inspector Harell and Lieutenant Kalim educated the audience about the programs available by the NYPD School Safety Unit, which include NYPD officers surveying locations, assessing the risks, and issuing security recommendations as well as a hands-on drill in the school building.

The audience participated in an energetic question and answer session with the officials, showing their dedication and determination to do everything possible to protect our communitys most precious asset- our children. They discussed immediate steps they would take as well as long term changes that would gradually be implemented. A lively discussion took place regarding the very relevant question of the financial cost to our already cash-strapped schools. However, many made it clear that they would not allow cost to delay or obstruct their plans to protect the children under their care. For my kids, I would spend whatever it takes to ensure their safety, one administrator expressed passionately at the meeting. Its the first expense every school needs to think about.

It should be noted that ONLY ONE Yeshiva administrator stood up and said that they have an armed guard.

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC)
Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of a Shiite cleric and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond.

Some nations have followed the Saudis lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution aimed at cooling the war of words before it escalates further.

Heres a look at where countries and other regional actors stand at this point:

THE MAIN ACTORS:

SAUDI ARABIA  The kingdom severed ties to Iran after attacks on two of its diplomatic posts following its execution of a Shiite cleric last weekend; it also later cancelled all flights between the two nations.

IRAN  Since the attack on the diplomatic posts, Iran says it has made arrests and has criticized the violent protesters. However on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani took a slightly harder line, saying Saudi Arabias move to sever ties with his country couldnt cover its crime of executing Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

COUNTRIES BACKING SAUDI ARABIA:

BAHRAIN  The tiny, Shiite-majority island kingdom off the Saudi coast, which long has relied on Saudi Arabia for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran. Bahraini officials repeatedly have accused Iran of training militants and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet.

SUDAN  The African nation cut its diplomatic ties to Iran and gave Iranian diplomats two weeks to leave the country. Sudan once tilted toward Iran, but has been looking to Saudi Arabia for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES  The oil-rich country of seven emirates says it will reduce the number of diplomats in Iran, recall its ambassador and focus only on business relations. While backing Saudi Arabia, it may have chosen to reduce  rather than completely sever ties  because of a long trading history with Iran.

KUWAIT  The oil-rich country is recalling of its ambassador from Tehran, but it isnt immediately clear how Kuwaiti-Iranian diplomatic ties will be affected. Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

JORDAN: Overwhelmingly Sunni Jordan is a close ally of Saudi Arabia in the region and a beneficiary of Gulf aid. Jordans government spokesman, Mohammed Momani, has condemned the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Iran.

THE MEDIATOR:

OMAN  The sultanate has long historical ties to Iran and served as the base for secret talks between Iranian and U.S. officials that jump-started the deal reached between Iran and world powers over the Islamic Republics contested nuclear program.

THOSE BACKING IRAN:

LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH MOVEMENT  Hezbollah was founded in 1982 with the help of Irans Revolutionary Guards after Israel invaded Lebanon. The group is one the main Iran-backed factions in the region.

SYRIAS EMBATTLED PRESIDENT BASHAR ASSAD  Iran has been one of the biggest supporters of Syria since the 1980s and has stood by Assads government in his countrys grinding civil war. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest benefactors of those trying to overthrow him.

IRAQS SHIITE-LED GOVERNMENT IN BAGHDAD  Even as Iraq is embroiled in a major war against the militant Islamic State group, al-Nimrs execution sparked outrage among the countrys majority Shiites who have taken to the streets in Baghdad and the south, calling for an end to ties with Saudi Arabia. The Shiite-led government has warmed Riyadh that such executions would lead to nothing but more destruction.

OTHER REGIONAL ACTORS:

ISRAEL  Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear program, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel militant groups and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia either, the countries have come closer because of a shared concern over Irans growing influence.

THE PALESTINIANS  The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of al-Nimr saying that it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against terrorism. The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The PA, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.

YEMEN  The Arab worlds poorest country is torn by a civil war pitting its internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are supported by Iran.

THOSE URGING CAUTION:

THE UNITED NATIONS  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to support peace efforts in Syria and Yemen and avoid escalating tensions.

EUROPEAN UNION: The 28-nation bloc, which opposes the death penalty, criticized Saudi Arabias mass executions and said al-Nimrs case undermined freedom of expression and basic political rights in the kingdom. Since tensions flared between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the EU foreign policy chief has had phone contact with both sides, fearing an escalation would further destabilize the whole region.

THE UNITED STATES  The White House has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war, while President Barack Obamas administration also hopes to see the Iranian nuclear deal through.

UNITED KINGDOM  Britain and Iran reopened their respective embassies in 2015, four years after hard-line protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia is a key diplomatic and economic ally of Britain, though Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood said Britain told the kingdom about its disappointment at the mass executions.

TURKEY  Turkey has urged both Saudi Arabia and Iran to ease tensions, saying the Middle East region is already like a powder keg and cannot withstand a new crisis.

GERMANY  Berlin has called on Saudi Arabia and Iran to work to mend their diplomatic ties, while condemning both the mass executions in the kingdom and the storming of the Saudi missions in Iran.

RUSSIA  State news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Its unclear whether Russian officials have made a formal offer to work with the two nations.

(AP)
In a significant development in Agudath Israel of Americas broadly respected Division of Yeshiva Services, it has been announced that Avrohom Weinstock, Esq. has assumed the position of Associate Director of Education Affairs.

Mr. Weinstock, a practicing attorney, spent the past seven years at the firm of Deloitte Tax, LLP, where he counseled Fortune 500 companies.

A resident of Passaic, New Jersey, Avrohom Weinstock attended beis medrash at Yeshivas Toras Moshe in Eretz Yisroel followed by Yeshiva Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, and attended Brooklyn College and the Fordham University School of Law. He commenced his new position at Agudath Israel in November.

Agudath Israels Yeshiva Services Division, under the directorship of Mrs. Deborah Zachai, serves as a liaison between federal, state and local governments and the growing network of yeshivos and day schools in the tri-state area and across the country.

As explained by Mrs. Zachai, the Yeshiva Services Division disseminates vital information to the Orthodox Jewish school community about laws and regulations that are binding on the schools, as well as services and funding that are available to the schools. It represents and advocates on behalf of the yeshiva community in judicial, legislative and administrative arenas. Its staff fields hundreds of inquiries regarding government programs and legal mandates.

The Yeshiva Services Division works alongside Project LEARN, a sister division capably led by Mrs. Leah Steinberg, which is devoted to helping parents of children with special needs attain the most educationally appropriate placements and services they possibly can. Together, Project LEARN and the Yeshiva Services Division strive to improve the prospects of every child in every yeshiva.

We are extremely fortunate that a person of Avrohom Weinstocks caliber has chosen to use his impressive skills in the service of Klal Yisroel, commented Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Agudath Israels executive vice president. His keen legal mind, his strong yeshiva background, his ability to interact with people from all backgrounds  all of these qualities, and others, make him a natural fit for our Division of Yeshiva Services.

As Mr. Weinstock assumes his new post, Agudath Israel bids a warm farewell to Dovid Tanenbaum, who has announced his retirement after having served in the Division of Yeshiva Services for the past 13 years.

During his tenure, Mr. Tanenbaum developed a reputation in both the yeshiva community and government circles as one of the most respected experts in the field. He successfully administered numerous programs for New York yeshivos, including the federally funded Safe and Drug Free Schools program and the state funded School Bus Grant program, and was at the forefront of advocacy on behalf of equitable security funding for nonpublic schools.

Dovid Tanenbaum brought not only great expertise and skill to his work on behalf of the yeshiva community, said Rabbi Zwiebel, he also brought tremendous integrity and dignity, and in turn created tremendous kiddush Hashem.

We will miss Dovid Tanenbaum greatly, Mrs. Zachai said, but it is comforting to know that the work he has done over the past 13 years will be carried forward by such a talented and worthy individual as Avrohom Weinstock. Concluded Rabbi Zwiebel, Agudath Israel will never waver in its commitment to serving the yeshiva community with devoted professionals of the highest caliber.

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC)
It happened in November in Mexico City. A frum 19-year old boy was kidnapped and a larhe sum of money was demanded for his safe release.

The youth named Shlomo was freed on Dec. 30th. The release of the news was not publicized until Monday.

His parents were quickly contacted following his abduction on Nov. 12 from inside the apartment building where he lived.

The kidnappers had little to no difficulty in getting past the security guard  but the negotiations lasted for a full 40 days.

According to the Mexican Jewish press, the family paid a large ransom for Shlomos release.

In Mexico, with its history of drug-war violence and corrupt police, kidnapping is rather common. In the past, they used to target the rich. Now, victims are often shopkeepers, taxi drivers, service employees, parking attendants and now frum kids. Targets also tend to be young  students, with parents willing to pay ransoms, are commonly targeted.

In late December, a Jewish father and son were also kidnapped and freed in Venezuela.

(Source: OnlySimchas.com)
Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) urged the community to remain alert and to report criminal activity to police after learning of two incidents that transpired last week, involving a carjacking by a police impostor and a kidnapping.

A man impersonating a police officer, described as a Pakistani male, stopped a car on East 8th Street and 18th Avenue on December 31 around 8 p.m., and proceeded to tell the 55-year-old driver to get out of the car and kneel in front of him. Also in the car was the drivers son  a 13-year-old boy who had just been bar mitzvahed. The perpetrator had the two passengers exit the vehicle, taking the car and fleeing the scene.

Captain Kenneth Quick of the 66th Precinct acknowledged that 18-year-old Sabbir Miah was found driving the stolen Pontiac around 1720 Avenue O and had been apprehended late that night, but reiterated that the carjacker was still on the loose. Miah was charged with criminal possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a vehicle.

A Bensonhurst woman living near 26th Avenue and Bay 41st Street was parking her car after returning home from work around 7 p.m. when two African Americans approached and grabbed her from the back. The victim, who was gathering computers from the trunk of her car to take into the house, was punched in the face repeatedly. The assailants then demanded that her keys be handed over.

After being kidnapped for nearly 15 minutes and her vehicle carjacked, the victim was dropped off nearly three blocks from her house. Her purse was taken, along with credit cards, an iPhone, a blackberry phone and two laptop computers. She was taken to the emergency room after sustaining multiple facial fractures, bilateral nasal fractures and bites to the face. The victim will undergo surgery to correct the nasal fractures this week.

Police informed Assemblyman Hikind that the two Bensonhurst perpetrators were arrested Monday night. In addition, the police recovered the victims vehicle, which had been destroyed.

I urge everyone to continue to be vigilant and alert of their surroundings, Assemblyman Hikind said. We have to unite as a community, we cannot tackle this alone. Everyone needs to do their due diligence in reporting criminal activity. Lets give our police force and our Shomrim all of the help they need to catch these criminals for these heinous crimes.

Hikind added, I will continue to work with the NYPD and the Shomrim to keep our community safe. I applaud their efforts in doing so. They do a fantastic job. But, we need to do our part in reporting everything we see.

(YWN Desk  NYC)
Shomron residents, who unfortunately have a great deal of experience with Arab terror attacks, will be heading to assist their brethren in Tel Aviv beginning on Tuesday afternoon, 24 Teves.

A representatives of the program explained to Kol Chai Radio host Mordechai Lavi on Tuesday morning that later in the day, they will head to Tel Aviv and begin escorting children home from schools as the city is in the fifth day of a terror alert.

Tuesday is day five of the manhunt for terrorist Nashat Melhem, who perpetrated the Dizengoff shooting attack on erev Shabbos. A heavy police presence is still visible in the city as Melhem is at large and believed to still be in possession of an automatic weapon, the one used in the attack.

The Shomron residents feel this is an area in which they can assist as they are more accustomed to the stress of Arab terror. In addition, it is pointed out that many Shomron residents have gun permits while the same is not true of Tel Aviv residents. Therefore, they decided to travel to Tel Aviv and add to the security force protecting the citys school children.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Today, Councilman David G. Greenfields historic legislation protecting New York Citys non-public schoolchildren with trained, equipped and well compensated security officers was signed into law by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The new law, Introduction 65-A, which takes effect on April 1, 2016, will protect as many as 200,000 children attending hundreds of non-public schools by providing most non-public schools with security officers.

All of New Yorks children, regardless of where they go to school, deserve to be safe in school, said Councilman Greenfield. I am extremely grateful to Mayor Bill de Blasio and proud that after five years of hard work that our vision of protecting every child in New York City has become a reality. This law is also a tremendous testament to the leadership of Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Public Safety Chair Vanessa Gibson. Finally, I am especially thankful to the Orthodox Union, the UJA-Federation of New York, Agudath Israel of America, the Sephardic Community Federation, the Catholic Community Relations Council, the Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Brooklyn & Queens, the Islamic Schools Association, the Muslim Community Network and SEIU 32 BJ building service workers union for their passionate advocacy and tireless support that has led us to this historic day. Greenfield also responded to critics of his bill at the bill signing with the following, Finally, I want to repeat something that the Mayor said an hour ago at the incredible interfaith breakfast I attended  separation of church and state doesnt mean we treat the church worse. It means that no one gets a preference, but that certainly we treat the church the same  equally. Thats what this bill does. Our city decided years ago that children deserve to be protected before something happens because they are children. All we are doing today is extending that same protection to non-public school children. Thats something we should all be proud of.

Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged Councilman Greenfield leadership in passing this legislation and for putting together a diverse group leaders in support of Greenfields law, David, I thank you for your hard work on this issue and the wonderful coalition of people who worked together.

This first-of-its-kind program in New York City is going to help keep more of our children safe, regardless of what type of school they attend, said Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. The Council is proud to lead on this landmark public safety measure and we look forward to its implementation.

Every student needs a safe environment in which to learn, said Council Member Vanessa L. Gibson, Chair of the Committee on Public Safety. As biased and nonbiased related violence rises on campuses and in classrooms around the country, it is essential we find creative solutions to maintain security in all our schools. The safety provisions Int. 65 will provide to non-public schools meeting certain criteria will make our non-public schools, and by extension our City, safer for students, parents, and educational professionals everywhere. I thank Council Member David Greenfield for his tireless leadership on this effort and thank Mayor Bill de Blasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito for recognizing the need to protect the public safety of all children.

This legislation reflects our responsibility to ensure the safety of every child in this city, no matter what school they attend. As security threats grow in New York City and around the world, we are doing what is necessary to ensure a safe learning environment for all of our students. I applaud Mayor de Blasio, Speaker Mark-Viverito, Council Member Greenfield and advocates across this city whose leadership will provide a measure of much-needed protection for students regardless of their background, said Council Member Mark Levine, Chair of the City Council Jewish Caucus.

All students deserve to have safe, protected and supportive learning environments free of fear or harm. The agreement reached by the Council and the Administration is an innovative approach that will safeguard public resources while ensuring student safety in schools. This is a victory for all parents, teachers and students that will heighten public and school safety across the City, said Council Member Ritchie Torres.

New York City has a commitment to keeping every one of its students safe regardless of the type of school they attend. The Finance Committee and I are proud to support Intro 65 to equalize the distribution of security officers at schools across New York City; and I commend Council Member Greenfield for identifying this need in our communities, Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, chair of the Committee on Finance.

Currently, every New York City public school receives security provided by NYPD school safety agents regardless of its size, location or the particular threats to campus security. Non-public schools, on the other hand, have until now had no comparable security guarantee  despite the fact that approximately one in five New York City students attend non-public schools and the unique risks that many of those non-public schools face. The enactment of Councilman Greenfields legislation marks a significant step toward repairing that inequity and securing the next generation of New Yorkers from would be attackers, whether spurred by mental illness or extremist ideology. Capped at $19.8 million in its first year, the program is a worthy investment in a safer city.

In addition to providing peace of mind to parents whose children attend non-public schools, the bill will also create as many as 500 new prevailing wage jobs for security officers who must be licensed and work for a licensed agency. Accordingly, the program supports the goals of increased access to living wage work and decreasing income inequality. The bill provides for uniquely tailored training for security guards to provide them with the expertise needed to work in the citys diverse non-public schools and keep New Yorks children safe.

The bill was overwhelmingly approved by the City Council in December, passing with 43 votes in favor and only 4 votes against from the Councils 51 members.

(YWN Desk  NYC)
By: Shoshana Bernstein

Professionalism, medical expertise and timeliness were all in high gear this past weekend as VitalOne defied the odds and executed a politically and logistically complicated emergency Medevac from Havana, Cuba to Miami.

It is safe to say that when Mrs. X left Israel for her much anticipated family getaway in Cuba she never envisioned returning by way of an elaborate airborne ICU taking up the entire first class cabin of El Al airlines.

The 70 year old womans vacation took an unexpected and potentially deadly turn when she collapsed Thursday morning in the lobby of her Cuban hotel. The victim of a sudden stroke, she was rushed to Cubas severely substandard hospital where it was determined that she had suffered an intracranial hemorrhage.

I got the call Friday morning, explains Isaac Leider, dubbed Rabbi 911 for his world-renowned success in dealing with air medical transports. There was no way the patient was going to survive in a Cuban hospital. The logistics for the 60 minute flight from Havana to Miami are always complicated. This time the complications were tenfold.

Due to the holiday weekend, there was no one available to sign off on the necessary permits which would allow VitalOne to send an ICU jet to land in Cuba. Furthermore, assuming the Cuban airport handler could be reached and the permits secured, there were no beds available at any tertiary care (top medical) facility in Miami. Without an ICU bed assignment, the medical parole visa would not be approved.

No challenge is too great for the VitalOne team. They began reaching out to their high level contacts, amongst them a black card carrying philanthropist, who requested anonymity. With just one call to the CEO of Baptist Hospital in Miami, a bed was procured.

But the challenges kept coming. For inexplicable reasons, Cuban immigration officials put a 24 hour hold on granting permission for the VitalOne jet to land and pick up the patient. Isaac contacted the Israeli Foreign Ministry Situation Room but needed someone in the United States with the ability to secure the permit to land. Enter Mr. Michael Wildes, Esq.; a well known immigration attorney and former federal prosecutor.

Ive worked with Isaac Leider on many occasions. When I see Rabbi 911 on my caller ID, I know it is a matter of life or death, explained Mr. Wildes, who returned my call while on vacation in Mexico. VitalOne was facing a bureaucratic glitch and with no one available to countermand this order, there was a good chance the patient would not live.

Michael Wildes, former mayor of Englewood, New Jersey and a 23 year veteran of Hatzalah, spent the next several hours working the phones well into Friday night, along with Isaac, to save this Jewish womans life. A board member of NORPAC (a political action committee working to improve Unites States and Israel relations) he reached out to Dr. Ben Chouake, the President of the organization, who in turn contacted Senator Menendez Chief of Staff, whom he has known for twenty years.

Mr. Wildes credits Isaac, who he dubs an angel with doing a great job of smoothing the way, arranging for an available bed, collecting the proof needed for a medical parole visa, verifying that the patient would not become a medical charge in the Unites States and a burden to the taxpayers (travelers insurance is covering 100%), and securing the written assurances that there was no other medically mandated option to save this womans life.

The situations was further complicated since the patient is Israeli, and Israel has no diplomatic relationship with Cuba. Mr. Wildes reached out to United States Congressman Ed Royce of California who serves as the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Congressman Royce jumped into action; personally making calls to various State Department officials to help secure the permits.

This was a truly heartwarming instance of partisan efforts. These are busy politicians who stepped in and used their time and contacts to affect a positive outcome. Everyone appreciated the fact that we were Observant Jews, nonetheless on the phones on Shabbos, committed to saving a life. VitalOne leads by example and I tip my hat to everyone who helped make this Medevac possible.

By Shabbos morning, permission was granted and a bed waiting in the Miami hospital. The ICU jet landed in Cuba with a medical team and all the equipment necessary to safely fly the patient, at sea level, to Miami. Seventy-two hours later, thanks to life-saving surgical intervention, VitalOne was once again on the scene, flying her via air ambulance to Newark Airport where they had turned the entire first class cabin of an El Al flight into a completely retrofitted airborne ICU.

VitalOne was able to repatriate the patient where she will receive further care from Professor Zvi Ram at Tel Avivs Sourasky Medical Center. Thanks to VitalOnes experience and know-how, they were able  with G-ds help and the dedicated assistance of the various people involved to get this patient the emergency medical care she needed to survive, all at no cost to the family; VitalOne procured insurance coverage for everything.

Proving once again how fitting the name VitalOne is for a team of medical transport experts that is considered the number one choice of doctors around the world, when vital air transport is needed to save a life.

Authors note: VitalOne maintains the importance of choosing your vacation spot with a potential medical crisis in mind. At the very least, make sure your insurance provides for medical transport and/or purchase additional insurance when you book your flight. You never know.
Britain's second biggest supermarket chain Sainsbury's has confirmed it made a bid approach for Home Retail Group which was rejected, sending the Argos owner's shares soaring 36 per cent.

Sainsbury's said it is considering its position, adding that there can be no certainty that it will make a formal offer for the business, which also owns DIY chain Homebase.

But it added: 'The board of Sainsbury's believes the combination of Sainsbury's and Home Retail Group is an attractive proposition for the customers and shareholders of both companies, establishing a platform for long-term value creation.'

Rejected approach: Sainsbury's said it is considering its position, adding that there can be no certainty that it will make a formal offer for Argos-owner Home Retail, which also owns DIY chain Homebase

Sainsbury's did not disclose the details of its cash and shares approach, but Home Retail Group has a stock market valuation of just over 1billion.

The supermarket said it first made its approach for Home Retail Group in November. It made a statement to the stock market disclosing its approach after Home Retail shares leapt this morning.

Shares in FTSE 250-listed Home Retail jumped 35.8p to 134.5p, while FTSE 100-listed Sainsbury shed 3.5 per cent or 8.9p to 246.4p in early afternoon trading.

Sainsbury's said a combination of the two stores will create a strong food and non-food retailer with strong heritages.

It added that the benefits of a tie-up would include profitable sales growth, create a wider financial services business and would generate savings by cross-selling each firm's products and services across the wider group's stores.

The supermarket firm said that over the last year it has worked in partnership with Home Retail Group testing a number of Argos concessions in Sainsbury's stores.

Under pressure: Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe is feeling the strain from discounters Lidl and Aldi and the bid for Home Retail Group will be viewed as a bid to increase its customer base

The move comes as the supermarket sector remains locked in a price war, which has seen majors such as Sainsbury's and Tesco battle to maintain market share against discounters Aldi and Lidl. The grocery sector has seen prices fall for more than a year.

The industry will see the approach by Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe, who took over from previous successful boss Justin King in July 2014, as a bold move in a sector that is struggling to regain its equilibrium.

Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said: 'The bid suggests that the avenues for growth as a pure supermarket are thin.

'This makes sense given the fierce competition by the German discounters Lidl and Aldi who have reached the landmark 10 per cent market share of UK groceries and who could well take more as they make sure they evolve to compete on as level a playing field.'

He added: 'Sainsbury's branch-out a sign of growth needing to be external rather than organic?

'Should we be set for more big spending by the market leaders as they fight to regain market share in a deflationary and cost-conscious consumer environment while living with higher costs than their rivals.'

If the offer had been accepted it would have marked the second time that Homebase has come under Sainsbury's control after it co-founded the DIY chain in 1979 with Belgian retailer GB-Inno-BM.

Back in 2000 Sainsbury's sold Homebase to DIY chain Kingfisher and Schroder Ventures in a two-fold deal worth 969million.

And two years later retail and financial services group GUS bought Homebase for 900million. At that time current Sainsbury's chairman David Tyler was finance director at GUS and it is understood that he has a deep working knowledge of the business.

Keith Bowman, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said: 'On the upside, Sainsbury could reap the reward of parting Argos and Homebase, potentially selling Homebase (for a second time) and therefore concluding a deal investors look to have been awaiting, whilst the format of Argos and its full potential to exploit online sales enhanced.

'As with any takeover, reduced costs will be in the sights of both management and investors, while Argo's relationship with eBay potentially further explored.'

Tony Shiret, at Haitong Research, added: 'The news that Home Retail Group received and rejected an offer from Sainsbury in November comes both as a shock and a reminder of the weakness of UK food retailers and the desperation embedded in their strategic thinking.

'Why else would anyone countenance adding Amazon to their list of major competitors and take on 850 low-margin Argos retail outlets and 250 or so Homebase units that they thought would be a good idea to get rid of in 2000?'

Interestingly hedge funds are this afternoon's biggest losers after taking out large short positions against Home Retail Group stock.

According to Castellain Capital, a total of 8.53 per cent of Home Retail Group shares have been sold short, making it the sixth most bet against UK listed company.

A breakdown shows that Crispin Odeys Odey Asset Management had sold short 2.18 per cent of Home Retail Group shares, while fellow London-based fund Marshall Wace is shorting 0.52 per cent.
#DP DP bristles at prosecution probes targeting top officials of previous administration The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) strongly protested prosecution investigations that led to arrest warrant requests for former top officials of the previous Moon Jae-in gov...


Sir,



With just a few years to go before 2022, it seems that the government of this country is completely clueless as to how to achieve the status it covets. One of the main characteristics of a First World country is a low poverty rate and this can only be achieved with a low unemployment rate.



In Swaziland, however, the already high unemployment rate is actually increasing.

Therefore, so will the rate of poverty. The government is in fact contributing to the high levels of unemployment in the country. Not only did it ignore the implications of Swaziland losing AGOA along with thousands of jobs that relied on it, but it also makes it very difficult for Swazis to do business in the country because of the exorbitant taxes.



Another problem with the government is its failure to pay some suppliers and contractors on time.

This not only causes cash flow problems for those companies that do business with government but it has also led to a number of company closures.

You cannot run a company successfully when you are made to wait for months and months before getting paid for goods supplied and for work done. This is in the same way you cannot drive a car with no fuel.



However, many jobs could be created if the government invested heavily in agriculture because there are always food shortages somewhere in the world, including right here in Swaziland.

Unfortunately, it seems like job creation, and by extension poverty reduction, is not part of governments priorities if the budget allocated to agriculture is anything to go by. So just how we are expected to reach First World status in this time remains a mystery to me.



Swazi citizen, Mbabane


MBABANE  Form III results are expected to be presented this morning in Cabinet before being released to the public.



This was said by the Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Education and Training, Pat Muir, who said if all went according to plan, Cabinet would be briefed this morning during their weekly Cabinet meeting and, thereafter, the results would be released to the public.



This, in essence, means the results will be published tomorrow. Last year, KaBoyce High School came out tops in the Junior Certificate examinations, achieving an unprecedented 64 Merits.

Meanwhile, Senior officials from the Ministry of Education and Training including the Minister, Phineas Magagula, yesterday indefinitely postponed a meeting which was supposed to be held with the 17 head teachers whose schools had their Standard V results withheld.



The meeting was expected to take place yesterday morning at the ministry, but PS Pat Muir said they had decided to postpone the meeting until after the Form III results were released.

We are not anticipating that some of the Junior Certificate (JC) results will be withheld because of malpractice, but just in case there are such cases, we have decided that we will wait until they are all released, said Muir during an interview yesterday.

In a shocking revelation last week, Minister Magagula, who is also Lomahasha Constituency Member of Parliament (MP), said 17 schools, which included St Michaels Primary School, had their results withheld for suspected copying.



Magagula had, as a result, summoned all head teachers of the suspected schools to the ministry for a meeting yesterday. Annandale Primary School, which is a private school in Mbabane, also had its results withheld.

Dwalile Primary School, where in 2014 all the pupils at the school were made to repeat, is also on the list of schools suspected of malpractice in 2015.

The minister said this was bad news and that was why he wanted to meet with the head teachers in order for them to address the issue.
MANZINI  Government has said civil servants will be happy people, come April this year, as the now controversial salary review will be implemented.



Government has dispelled a report that was released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that stated that the former had informed the delegation from the IMF that plans of a salary review have been put on hold to mitigate an unfavourable financial climate caused, chiefly, by reduced Southern African Customs Union (SACU) receipts.



We have not changed our position, April 2016 is still the month on which civil servants will be happy, said Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Public Service Evart Madlopha.

In fact, Madlopha, when questioned, said he was equally surprised when he saw reports that they had decided to freeze the salary reviews.

I do not know where the IMF sourced this information but it is news to us as government. We have not shelved salary reviews for civil servants, the PS said.



He conceded that there were delays in handing over the report to unions but said it did not mean that government was abandoning talks, which were currently ongoing among members of the Joint Negotiations team.

Even the Prime Minister, Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini, is on record having informed civil servants that come April 2016, they would be very pleased, Mdlopha said.



According to the information that was released in December, the staff report from the IMF stated that the countrys authorities planned to implement several measures to address the forthcoming SACU shock decline in receipts, and this included the freezing of the salary review. This is according to the Kingdom of Swazilands 2015 Article IV Consultation Report, which has been published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C.
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By Tom Momberg

In a review of the current fiscal year city budget, the Independent Budget Office found that the city has not come up with enough funding for the 2016 summer session of Mayor Bill de Blasios Schools Out New York City initiative.

The club-like structure of the city program encourages young adolescents to take part in athletics and arts for three hours a day, five days a week.

SONYC, as the mayors initiative is also known, was introduced last September and was quickly expanded as an afterschool program, now serving about 49,000 middle school kids, 36,000 of whom were added this year, according to the report.

The summer session of SONYC, on the other hand, which provided programming to a total of nearly 58,000 students, included over 17,500 middle school students who were new to the program. But funding did not keep up with the programs expansion, the IBO found.

The $317 million allotment for the program this fiscal year leaves out the 17,500 middle school slots that were added in the summer of 2015.

The IBOs investigation found that in May, the city executive budget moved $27.7 million from the SONYC expansion to the mayors Renewal Schools initiative, which seeks to increase academic performance at chronically failing schools in the city.

~Tom Momberg
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Beaver County COVID-19 cases and deaths tracker

New coronavirus cases increased 6.6% in Pennsylvania in the week ending Sunday as the state added 13,256 cases. The previous week had 12,431 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.
<p>WFISD Education Center</p>

By John Ingle of the Times Record News

Workforce Solutions North Texas will host a hiring event Wednesday for GCA Services, the new janitorial and custodial contractor selected by the Wichita Falls Independent School District to replace embattled Aramark.

Crystal Ojeda, job developer at WSNT, said the event will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Galaxy Building located at 4309 Old Jacksboro Highway, Ste. 300. She said applicants need to bring I-9 documents such as Social Security card and driver's license.

"They're going to interview and hire people on the spot," she said. "It'll help the hiring process."

According to numbers released by the Texas Workforce Commission, Aramark reported to the state agency that they will lay off 114 employees on Jan. 15.

Marti Wells, human resources director for GCA Services, said Aramark employees will have the "first crack" at filling positions for the new contractor.

"It's a courtesy, No. 1, to them," she said. "Also, it is in our best interest to have people who are familiar with the schools and have longevity with the school."

Information as to the number of employees GCA will hire was not available. A GCA at a WFISD school board meeting in December said about 110 employees will be hired as well as a general manager and three clusters of managers.

The school district grew weary of Aramark in December after several episodes of unacceptable cleaning practices since it began servicing 31 facilities in May on an annual contract of $2.65 million. Issues included staph infection in a Rider High School locker room and a rodent infestation at Wichita Falls High School, however the contract with Aramark did not stipulate that they would be responsible for rodent control on campuses.

The board voted to sever ties with Aramark at a Dec. 18 special session.

GCA's one-year contract is worth more than $3 million.
VOLLEYBALL ROUNDUP: Holliday clinches third straight district title

Check out results from Monday's and Tuesday's high school volleyball action, including a district title for the Holliday Lady Eagles.
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill Tonya Couch, center, is taken by authorities to a waiting car after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, Thursday, Dec. 31, 2015, in Los Angeles. Authorities said she and her son, Texas teenager Ethan Couch, who was sentenced to probation after using an affluenza defense for a 2013 wreck in Texas, fled to Mexico together in November as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation. Affluenza is one of the words from 2015 that should be banned in 2016.

Lake Superior State University: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

LSSU, which appreciates wordsmithery as much as I do, though the ink-slingers may balk at my use of wordsmith as a verb, released its 41st annual list of banished words  a tradition that started with these scribes talking about words and phrases they hated at a New Year's Eve party in 1975. They followed up by publishing their first list of banished words on Jan. 1, 1976.

The word lovers recently released this year's list, which includes such words as "manspreading"  when someone takes up too much space on a bus or subway station; "vaping," the term that arrived with the e-cigarette craze; "presser," a hipper way of denoting a press release; and the more common word of "so" to start a sentence, since it's overused and pretty much superfluous as the bird flies.

Inspired by the word nerds at LSSU, I, too, have a list of my own.

This list, by the way, won't include my 11-year-old Chocolate Pie Eater's faux pas when she called me at work the other day.

"Mom," she said. "Um, the plungers are here and they want to know where exactly is the puddle in the backyard that you want them to look at?"

Plungers, of course, being the newly coined word in the Shults household for "plumbers."

But I digress.

If I were part of the LSSU team, I would add these to the banned list:

1. "BEST PRACTICES." I have heard this term at conferences and meetings aplenty. "So, what can we take away from this meeting? What are the best practices you'll take back to your offices?"

I'm not a fan of corporate-speak or goofy buzzwords, and "best practices" seems like the whole corporate lingo conundrum with the stink of overuse and pomposity about it. Why not just say, "What have you learned that you can bring back to your office?"

My best practice: Not to ever use the term "best practices" in 2016.

2. "LEGACY JOURNALIST." In the journalism industry, I am a "legacy journalist," which is just a more affable way of saying I am old. I am an old journalist who works in legacy media, which means I work for an old-school form of media  newspapers  compared to the newfangled form of digital media.

3. "WHIP AND NAE NAE." I never in my life have Whipped, nor have I Nae Nae'd and never will  and yes, I did once again turn a noun into a verb. This dance craze from 2015 is like the "Harlem Shake" and "Gangnam Style" before it.

4. "IT IS WHAT IT IS." This submission is a contribution from my work pod-mate. Things don't have to be what they are, apparently. They can be something else. In short, "It is what it is" is just a cop-out, relaying that no one has the power to do anything about your problem when everyone knows that's pretty much not true. "It is what it is" doesn't have to be what it is, and don't let anyone fool you.

5. "INTUITIVE." My college-aged Chocolate Pie Eater insists computers are "intuitive" and digital devices are "intuitive" and you  he means me, the legacy journalist  should know how to do something on these computers and digital devices without a workbook or instruction. My question is, if these things are so intuitive, why does customer support exist?

6. "SELFIE." I'm just tired of all of it  selfie sticks, Kim Kardashian's whole book of selfies and something I discovered that I didn't know existed  yes, selfie shoes.

7. "FIERCE." This may be an older, aka "legacy," term from the past few years, but I'm feeling that the only things that should be fierce in the world are lions, thus fashion models, or any Kardashian, cannot be described as "fierce."

8. "CAJ." The Urban Dictionary says the word "caj," a shortened form of "casual," has been around since the 1990s. Well, that's about two decades too long for me.

9. "AFFLUENZA." Since the affluenza teen and his mom were caught hiding out in Mexico, I hope not to hear this term again.

10. "BYE, FELICIA!" I don't know who Felicia is, but everyone said bye to her in 2015. It is a term from the film "Friday," in which Ice Cube's and Chris Tucker's characters say the words to a character named Felicia. It means, "I'm done; go away."

And for a little something extra, I will predict one word in 2016 that's already getting my banned vote for 2017: "body positive," meaning you are good with your body, overweight, underweight or whatever it may be.

With that said, "Bye, Felicia!" and good wishes for the new year.
TRN archives

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By Bridget Knight of the Times Record News

Lesley Bradley and Galey Tucker, co-chairwomen of the Wichita County Heritage Society's Depot Lunchroom in 1987, oversaw the last year of the dining spot that drew crowds to the restored MKT Depot Building in downtown Wichita Falls' Depot Square Heritage District during the 1980s.

The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Depot building traveled almost as much as the trains it supported. The depot was built in 1907 in Burkburnett.

It was restored there in the 1970s by the Wichita County Heritage Society, then moved to Wichita Falls in 1980, when its popular lunchroom was opened as a fundraiser to recoup the restoration cost.

But what organizers thought would be a leisurely 50 customers a day quickly blossomed to more than 150 diners, who feasted on a menu featuring revolving items like spinach salads, beans and cornbread, sandwiches and homemade pies and cakes.

The restaurant paid for the depot's restoration in just two years, with the next five years' worth of profits going to the Heritage Society's Kell House Museum project.

In 1998, though, it was time for the depot to return home to Burkburnett, where it proudly stands today as that city's oldest building and headquarters of Trails & Tales of Boomtown USA.
SHARE Winner

By Times Record News

Ryan Anthony Winner of Olney was sentenced Monday to serve 60 years in federal prison for production of child pornography.

Winner, 34, pleaded guilty to two counts in September and has been in custody since his arrest in July on a related federal complaint.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Dallas said documents filed in the case claimed law enforcement learned Winner had created albums containing images of a minor male on a website that is used by people interested in exchanging child pornography in order to meet and become child pornography trading partners.

On July 16, law officers executed a search warrant at two residences in Olney  one belonging to Winner and the other to his father. Officers seized Winner's laptop and identified several files depicting a nude male child whom Winner admitted he had taken on a camping trip where he and the boy had gone "skinny dipping." A forensic analysis of the laptop revealed the existence of another file, a still image of the same boy engaged in sexually explicit conduct with an adult male. That image appears to have been taken at the church where Winner worked as a youth minister.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said Winner admitted that in late May 2015, he used a laptop computer to produce a video of a minor male whom he had enticed to engage in sexually explicit conduct. He also admitted that in August 2014, he used a laptop computer and a digital camera to produce a visual depiction of the same minor male engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative, which was launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorney's Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals, who sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue victims.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Texas Department of Public Safety investigated the incident.
TRN file photo A gun dealer displays his wares at a Wichita Falls Gun and Knife Show. President Obama wants to clamp down on sales by unlicensed dealers at such gun shows.

SHARE TRN file photo A gun dealer fills out paperwork on a transaction at a Wichita Falls Gun and Knife Show. The Obama administration wants to eliminate a loophole by which some dealers can buy and sell guns without background checks. File photo Shoppers line the vendor tables at a Wichita Falls Gun and Knife Show. The Obama administration is targeting some dealers who sell at gun shows without requiring background checks..

By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News

Anticipated gun control recommendations from the White House may require all gun sellers to be federally licensed, a measure that likely will be ineffective, a local gun show promoter said.

President Obama announced Monday afternoon his administration had made recommendations regarding gun control, but no details were given at that time. However, it's been widely reported that at least one of those recommendations could require anyone who sells a firearm  whether it be a big-time gun dealer or an individual selling a small number of weapons  to obtain a federal license to do so.

Joe Tom White, a Wichita Falls gun show promoter, pointed to a familiar argument made by those who oppose stricter gun control: that placing restrictions on people who buy and sell guns legally leaves the vast network of illegal gun sales unregulated.

"It's reasonable, but I don't think it's going to have an effect," White said. "The new gun law, the criminals aren't going to pay any attention to it."

Currently, federal law requires that firearm dealers of a certain size be licensed. It also mandates that any potential customer buying from a federally licensed dealer pass a background check before obtaining a gun.

But current law also allows some individuals to sell guns without being licensed and without subjecting customers to background checks. White estimated that about 20 percent of the dealers at his quarterly gun shows are unlicensed.

He said unlicensed dealers already are encouraged to keep good records of who purchases guns from them.

White said the recommendation would be "workable" if it went into law, though it would affect the bottom line of unlicensed dealers. Some will go through the steps of becoming licensed and others won't.

Another result of the possible measure is a jump in gun sales, which generally occurs when the President enacts new gun control rules, White said.

"I think it's going to boost gun sales through the roof," he said.

It wasn't known on Monday how the recommendations would play out in U.S. government, though some have speculated Obama will issue an executive order. The President's actions appear to be linked to a string of deadly mass shootings in recent years.

Working under the assumption that the recommendations will be delivered as an executive order, some Republican legislators have criticized Obama for attempting to circumvent the Legislative branch of U.S. government. Related gun control measures have failed in Congress in the past.
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Israel, surrounded not only by threats to its existence but also by governments and movements that practice tyranny, is a stubbornly free society. While its democracy is imperfect and rowdy, the bedrock commitment has remained during years of intense conflict. That commitment is precisely why Israel's parliament should reject proposed legislation that would stigmatize nongovernmental organizations that receive funding from overseas. The proposal reflects the kind of tactic that Russia and China have employed to squelch dissent, and it is not in keeping with Israel's core values as a democratic state.

The proposed law, introduced by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, was approved by a cabinet committee Dec. 27 and sent to the Knesset, where it faces additional debate and votes. It would apply to those organizations that receive more than half their funding from "foreign government entities." The groups would be required to identify themselves as principally funded from overseas in any public communications and in interactions with government officials, and they would have to list the sources of funding in reports. Members of the groups would also be required to wear a special badge when present in the Knesset, with their name and the name of the NGO. This is now a requirement of lobbyists. Violations could result in stiff fines.

Shaked has advertised the legislation as providing more transparency, but that is not the real agenda. In fact, the legislation is aimed at delegitimizing progressive groups in Israel that have long been advocates for human rights and opposed to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, such as Peace Now, B'Tselem, the New Israel Fund and others. The reality is that many of these progressive groups rely on such funding from foreign organizations, and the law would force them to carry an unpleasant label suggesting that they are somehow at odds with Israel's interests. Millions of dollars are also being sent to Israel to support right-wing causes such as settlement activity, but it comes largely from individual donors, not governments, so it would not be covered by the law. Israel's nongovernmental organizations are already required, under an earlier law, to file disclosure reports of their funding, so the only effect of the new requirement would be to force them to wear a public badge in a way that is odious.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has made NGO groups register as "foreign agents," as if they were enemies of the state. In China, the new restrictions on nongovernmental organizations will forbid support from abroad and give oversight to the security apparatus. In both cases, dissent is being purposefully silenced, and valuable services will be denied to people who need them. Israel should not allow itself to be lumped with these regimes.

Israel's democracy has been a pillar of strength through years of siege. It is not always easy to tolerate or defend groups that criticize the state or those in power, but allowing them to function normally is an important test of democracy, and, ultimately, the mark of an open and free society.

The Washington Post
SHARE Contributed photo U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, walks with a soldier in the U.S. Army during a 2011 visit to Afghanistan. Thornberry said strenghening the screening process for the visa waiver program is a priority following information learned about the couple that carried out attacks in San Berarndino, California, on Dec. 2.

Frank Egnoto, Burkburnett

This week, the House Oversight Committee questioned the Homeland Security and the State Department about the whereabouts of 9,500 tourist who overstayed their visas back in 2001. These visas were revoked for terrorist reasons. The committee asked Homeland Security where these people are, Homeland had no answer.

The committee asked Homeland Security where the revoked Syrians visas that enter the country are. How many were there? Again there was no answer from the Homeland Security or the State Department. When DHS was asked about our vetting system, they replied they have a couple programs they are working on.

In the last two years Obama has released 66,000 rapists, murders, kidnappers and convicted criminal felons. DHS have no idea where they are. And when these criminals and illegals are caught committing another crime or felony, the DHS is allowed to use prosecutorial discretion to either deport them or release them back into society. Most are just released.

I feel so much better now that I know Obama, the State Department and the DHS has this security of the country under control. Whenever Obama speaks to the nation on how safe we are, I get this warm feeling running down my legs. I go to bed every night believing Homeland Security is protecting us from terrorist and all the criminals. And I believe in Santa Claus and that pigs can fly.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year and God bless us all.
Washington

The Justice Department sued Volkswagen on Monday over emissions-cheating software found in nearly 600,000 vehicles sold in the United States, potentially exposing the company to billions in fines for clean air violations.

The civil complaint against the German automaker, filed on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency in U.S. District Court in Detroit, alleges the company illegally installed software designed to make its "clean diesel" engines pass federal emissions standards while undergoing laboratory testing. The vehicles then switched off those measures to boost performance in real-world driving conditions, spewing harmful gases at up to 40 times what is allowed under federal environmental standards.

"Car manufacturers that fail to properly certify their cars and that defeat emission control systems breach the public trust, endanger public health and disadvantage competitors," said John C. Cruden, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.

"The United States will pursue all appropriate remedies against Volkswagen to redress the violations of our nation's clean air laws alleged in the complaint," he said.

The company is in the midst of negotiating a massive mandatory recall with U.S. regulators and potentially faces more than $18 billion in fines for violations of the federal Clean Air Act.

The company and its executives could also face separate criminal charges, while a raft of private class-action lawsuits filed by angry VW owners are pending. Volkswagen Group of America spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said the company "will continue to cooperate with all government agencies investigating these matters."

In past statements, high-ranking VW executives have sought to blame only a small number of software developers in Germany for the suspect computer code designed to trick emissions tests. The company has hired a U.S.-based law firm to conduct an internal investigation into the scheme. Preliminary results of that review have not yet been made public.

The company first acknowledged in September that the cheating software was included in its diesel cars and SUVs sold since the 2009 model year, as well as some recent diesel models sold by the VW-owned Audi and Porsche brands. Worldwide, the company says cheating software was included in more than 11 million vehicles.

The federal lawsuit alleges that Volkswagen intentionally tampered with the vehicles sold in the U.S. to include what regulators call a "defeat device," a mechanism specifically designed to game emissions tests. Under the law, automakers are required to disclose any such devices to regulators.

Because Volkswagen kept its suspect software secret, the lawsuit alleges the company's cars were sold without a valid "certificate of conformity" issued by EPA to regulate new cars manufactured or imported into the country.
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Albany

A former director of operations for the internal affairs unit that oversees state prisons pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor coercion charge in Albany County Court on Tuesday as the first witness at his criminal trial was about to testify.

James A. Ferro, 56, offered to plead guilty moments after a state prosecutor and his attorney gave their opening statements to a jury. Ferro was indicted last year on misdemeanor charges accusing him of sexually harassing a male subordinate during a four-year period, and threatening to change the employee's schedule or have him returned to a prison job if he reported the incidents.

Ferro, of Clifton Park, retired two weeks before he was arrested in January 2015 on charges of coercion, official misconduct, forcible touching and harassment.

His sudden guilty plea took place after the jury sent a note to Judge Peter Lynch on Tuesday afternoon saying the panel had a "serious concern" because Ferro appeared to write down their names and personal information during two days of jury selection. The judge told the panel they should not be concerned about Ferro's note-taking, and that Ferro had a right to assist his attorney, Brian W. Devane, in the jury selection process.

After Ferro's plea, Lynch immediately sentenced him to 120 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.

"This is not a good day for you," the judge told Ferro. "I've reluctantly approved this agreement."

The plea agreement with the state Attorney General's office, which prosecuted the case, had been on the table for a year. The deal calls for the conviction to be discharged in a year if Ferro is not arrested during that period, and completes his community service within nine months.

In his opening statement, Devane characterized the allegations by Mark Miller, an assistant deputy inspector general for DOCCS, as "immature, weird, locker-room stuff."

The charges were the result of an investigation by the state Inspector General's office into allegations that the DOCCS inspector general's office was mismanaged and that supervisors covered up or ignored complaints about workplace harassment.

Assistant Attorney General Bridget Holohan-Scally, who prosecuted the case, said Miller became a corrections officer 24 years ago and, after working in the internal affairs unit since 1997, he did not want to return to work at a maximum security prison.

"I'm glad it's over," Miller said as he left the courthouse, declining further comment.

Ferro, like nearly all of the investigators in the DOCCS internal affairs office, is also a former correction officer. He began working for the state agency in 1981.

Ferro was placed on leave in March 2014. Two months later, his supervisor Vernon Fonda retired just before he was scheduled to be interviewed by the state Inspector General's Office. Fonda, 59, was also chief of operations for the DOCCS inspector general's office; he had worked for the agency since 1977.

Ferro and Fonda were part of a unit that handles internal investigations for DOCCS. It is the state's largest agency, with 40,000 employees, including correction officers and support staff at prisons across the state. The unit also investigates alleged inmate abuses at state correctional facilities.

The Times Union reported two years ago that the investigation began around the time a female employee accused Ferro of grabbing her and allegedly threatening that it would be a "bad career move" if she filed a harassment complaint against him. But the criminal case was related to Miller's allegations that Ferro kissed and hugged him, touched the employee's genitals, struck Miller on the knee with a small bat and other inappropriate behavior.

After the state Inspector General's office investigation became public two years ago, DOCCS renamed its inspector general's unit the Office of Special Investigations and appointed a new director, Stephen J. Maher, who was previously a deputy bureau chief with the state attorney general's Criminal Enforcement and Financial Crimes Bureau.

"The defendant's guilty plea ... makes clear his criminal culpability for the years of torment, abuse and reprehensible conduct he subjected his subordinates to while in his role overseeing investigations of misconduct within the New York state prison system," Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott said in a statement issued after Ferro pleaded guilty.

blyons@timesunion.com  518-454-5547  @brendan_lyonstu
Bethlehem

An 18-year-old Bethlehem High student suspected of being under the influence at school was arrested Monday morning after school officials found two BB guns, a switchblade knife, a soft-pellet gun, prescription pills and marijuana in his bag.

Police are still investigating and have not released the student's name. The incident happened around 11:25 a.m.

According to an email sent to parents and posted on the school department's website, a staff member suspected the student of being under the influence and reported him to administrators.

School personnel searched the student and his belongings and found the contraband.

"The BB guns and knife were never displayed and no one was hurt, which of course does not minimize the seriousness of this incident," Principal Scott Landry said in the email.

School officials immediately contacted police. The student was arrested and charged with misdemeanor counts of criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a controlled substance, and unlawful possession of marijuana and unlawful possession of weapons on school grounds, which are both violations.

The student, who police said became unruly during his arraignment in town court, was sent to Albany County Jail with bail set at $2,500.

Landry said the school has a strict policy to contact police if criminal activity is suspected.

"Our policy is to also search any student on campus who is suspected of being under the influence. A student found in possession of a weapon, drugs, or alcohol is immediately reported to law enforcement, suspended from school, and referred to a hearing with the superintendent of schools," he said.

ccrowley@timesunion.com  518-454-5348
Washington

Cpl. Aaron C. Masa befriended a fellow Marine during field training in North Carolina. But behind his buddy's back, Masa sexually abused his 3-year-old stepdaughter and took sexually explicit photos of her and the Marine's baby girl.

A military judge convicted Masa last year of sexual abuse of a child and production of child pornography, according to court records and other documents detailing the case. Under the terms of a pretrial agreement, Masa pleaded guilty and received 30 years in prison.

The sexual assault of military dependents occurs hundreds of times each year, according to data the Defense Department provided exclusively to The Associated Press. There were at least 1,584 substantiated cases between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, according to the data, which is the most current available. The abuse is committed most often by male enlisted troops followed by family members.

The figures offer greater insight into the sexual abuse of children committed by service members, a problem of uncertain scale due to a lack of transparency into the military's legal proceedings. With more than 1 million military dependents, the number of cases appears statistically small. But for a profession that prides itself on honor and discipline, any episodes of abuse cast a pall.

Those numbers fall well-short of offering a full picture.

The ages of the offenders and victims, the locations of the incidents and the branch of service that received the report of sexual abuse were omitted. The Defense Department said in a statement that "information that could unintentionally uniquely identify victims was withheld from release to eliminate possible 're-victimization' of the innocent."

It's also unclear how many of the incidents resulted in legal action.
Washington

The administration on Monday unveiled a series of new executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence and hoping to make progress in one of the most frustrating policy areas of President Barack Obama's tenure.

The package, which Obama plans to announce on Tuesday, includes 10 separate provisions, White House officials said. One key proposal would require more gun sellers  especially those who do business on the Internet and at gun shows  to be licensed and would force them to conduct background checks on potential buyers. Obama would devote more federal funds to treating mental illness  a move that could require congressional approval  and require that firearms lost in transit between a manufacturer and seller be reported to federal authorities.

Even before its official unveiling, Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have blasted the idea, and some advocates have threatened to challenge it in court. While it is modest compared to any legislation that Congress could adopt, it will still affect everything from how the federal government might leverage its purchasing power to advance "safe gun" technology to what information federal and local law enforcement will share on individuals who are illegally trying to purchase weapons.

The president said inaction by Congress in the wake of several high-profile mass shootings and other gun-related violence justified his decision.

"It is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arms around the problem, Congress must act," Obama said. In lieu of that, he added, the actions "are well within my legal authority in the executive branch but also are ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support and believe in."

One of the main provisions is new federal guidance requiring some occasional gun sellers to get licenses from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and conduct background checks on potential buyers. Rather than set a single threshold for what triggers this requirement, it will be based on a mix of business activities such as whether the seller processes credit cards, rents tables at gun shows and has formal business cards.

Other aspects of the plan aim to bolster the FBI's background checks system and a proposal to add 200 new ATF agents and investigators for enforcement.
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Burns, Ore.

Father-and-son ranchers convicted of setting fire to federal grazing land reported to prison Monday as the armed anti-government activists who have taken up their cause continued to occupy a building at an Oregon wildlife preserve.

Federal authorities made no immediate attempt to retake the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the remote high desert of eastern Oregon, which about two dozen activists seized over the weekend as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

There appeared to be no urgent reason for federal officials to move in. No one has been hurt. No one is being held hostage. And because the refuge is a bleak and forbidding stretch of wilderness about 300 miles from Portland, and it's the middle of winter, the standoff is causing few if any disruptions.

Meanwhile, the armed group said it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after the father and son were ordered back to prison for arson on federal grazing lands.

The group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom demanded a government response within five days related to the ranchers' extended sentences.

Ammon Bundy  one of the sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights  told reporters that Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven Hammond, were treated unfairly.

The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006, one of which was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors. They said they lit the fires to reduce the growth of invasive plants and protect their property from wildfires.

The men served their original sentences three months for Dwight and one year for Steven. But an appeals court judge ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

Their sentences have been a rallying cry for the group, whose mostly male members said they want federal lands turned over to local authorities so people can use them free of U.S. oversight.

The father and son reported to a federal prison Monday in California, said Harney County, Oregon, Sheriff David Ward. He provided no other details.
Washington

Concerned that inflamed tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia may threaten key foreign policy objectives in Iraq and Syria, among other places, the Obama administration toed a careful line Monday in seeking to calm a diplomatic storm that many fear could lead the longtime regional rivals to direct sectarian conflict.

The White House and State Department both appealed to Riyadh and Tehran to show restraint and avoid further exacerbating the rift between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran. However, officials said the administration is loath to insert itself but wants to ensure the viability of the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, nascent attempts to end Syria's civil war, peace efforts in Yemen and the Iran nuclear deal.

"We don't want to see any progress that has been made or may be made on those issues affected by this, which is why (we) have been in communication with leaders there, to try to get tensions calmed down, to try to get dialogue started or restarted so that we can focus on these other very pressing issues in the region," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and on Monday with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Kirby said. Kerry also planned a round of calls Monday to the foreign ministers of all the Sunni-led states in the Gulf region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, officials said.

Bahrain followed Saudi Arabia's lead and severed diplomatic ties with Iran, while the UAE downgraded its diplomatic relations with it, after mobs attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran following the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

In addition to Kerry, other senior U.S. diplomats were in close contact with Saudi and Arab officials over the weekend, according to the U.S. officials.

Yet, officials made clear they did not want to mediate the dispute. They stressed it was up to local leaders to act to ease the situation.

Of particular concern, U.S. officials said, are military operations against Islamic State extremists in Iraq that are being conducted by Iraqi security forces, which answer to an Iran-friendly government, and Sunni and Shiite militias. That cooperation has shown gains in recent weeks, notably with the Iraqi recapture of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Officials were preparing for a high-level U.S. conversation with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to stress the importance of continuing the Iraqi government's outreach to Sunni militias, the officials said.

Also of concern is the state of the Syrian peace effort, which is supposed to swing into high gear in late January with U.N.-sponsored negotiations between Saudi-backed opposition forces and the Iran-supported government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. A U.S. official said Kerry had spoken Sunday with the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to gauge any impact Saudi-Iranian developments might have on the planned Jan. 25 start of negotiations.

There was no immediate indication that those talks would be disrupted, the official said.
In her brilliant final book, "Regarding the Pain of Others," Susan Sontag noted that "the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked."

Sontag was writing about photographs and paintings, but her essay touched on the disquieting impulse of cinema, one that's on particularly extravagant display this season.

Both "The Hateful Eight," which opened last Friday, and "The Revenant," which will arrive in theaters Friday, make promiscuous use of bodies in pain. Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, respectively, both films are set against the pitiless, snowy backdrop of the 19th-century American West. And both traffic in lingering wide-screen images of savage brutality and mortification, as their protagonists claw, fight, shoot and stab their way to preserving their own lives.

In "The Hateful Eight," an ensemble of actors gathers in an isolated cabin that becomes an improbably cozy backdrop for the usual Tarantino descent into cartoonish gore and mayhem. In "The Revenant," a trapper named Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is mauled by a bear, his back, chest and throat horribly mutilated; left for dead by his fellow travelers, he literally crawls his way back to life, driven by a primal desire to avenge his presumed death.

It's possible to appreciate both films, even admire them, for their sheer ambition and near-flawless execution. But the virtuosity on display also produces its share of deep misgivings. Whether by way of Tarantino's ironic distance or Inarritu's artily masochistic extremes, it's genuine empathy and self-reflection that get short-circuited, swamped by surface values of aesthetics, technical achievement and shocking, vicarious jolts.

The vicious assaults and bloodletting of "The Hateful Eight" have Tarantino's usual quote marks around them, with his protagonists barely blinking an eye when their bodies are ravaged and riven, tortured and abused. By contrast, every excruciating moment of Glass' journey is drawn out and solemnly lingered over in "The Revenant," in which Inarritu ludicrously raises the ante with increasingly improbable stunts, each more shudder-inducing and poetically filmed than the last.

"The Revenant" is essentially a fetish film, guided by the same grindhouse aspirations of "The Hateful Eight." Both movies are set up as endurance tests, designed to elicit awe at the physical extremes it took to film them.

They also present an implicit dare to audiences far more inured to seeing bodies in pain, to use Sontag's construction, than bodies that are naked.

Suffering has been a longtime mainstay of film grammar, and not always predicated on violence. In two recent films  Michael Haneke's 2012 drama "Amour," as well as this year's intimate mother-son drama "James White"  the sight of loved ones caring for one another through the messiest moments of life and death becomes a way to bear witness to compassion, self-sacrifice and resilience.

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Two of this year's finest films, "Room" and "Spotlight," deal with similarly wrenching subject matter, without being grimly exploitative: One is a portrait of a woman who's been kidnapped and repeatedly raped, often in the presence of her young son, who was conceived while she was in captivity; the other chronicles a journalistic investigation of child sexual abuse within the Catholic church.

In "Room," a sexual assault is depicted quietly, just outside the boy's view, his mother's despair, terror and helplessness made palpable in the dim shadows outside a closet door. In "Spotlight," rather than scenes of molestation, victims tell their stories with hushed forthrightness.

The difference between these films and the exercises in style of Tarantino and Inarritu comes down to what's being demanded of the audience: Whereas "The Hateful Eight" and "The Revenant" encourage us to sit back and be dazzled, "Room" and "Spotlight" call on each viewer's memory, conscience and moral Filmmakers invite the audience to be passive spectators or active collaborators, to see suffering as a spectacle or a struggle to be honored. Regarding the pain of others has always been part of going to the movies.

The question is whether we're asked to do more than just watch.
I examined Gov. Andrew Cuomo's five State of the State addresses, focusing specifically on his education policy. To his credit, he was consistent when speaking about the need for school reform. However, Cuomo's tone was different in his 2015 address.

Last year, Cuomo ramped up his criticism of teacher performance and acknowledged state government did little to reform public education, particularly schools that poor children attend. According to Cuomo, "Over the last 10 years, 250,000 children went through those failing schools while New York state did nothing."

Although Cuomo declared this would end in 2015, it has not ended. Unfortunately, Cuomo's repetitive education policy speeches have done little to reform public urban schools, because he failed to deliver on his promises.

Cuomo's current education agenda includes evaluating teachers, removing ineffective teachers, transforming failing schools and districts, extending mayoral control over education in New York City, expanding charter schools and passing an education tax-credit law.

More Information Bernard Gassaway of Hempstead is a former New York City teacher and administrator. See More Collapse

One year after Cuomo characterized the teacher-evaluation system as "baloney," he has signaled that he is prepared to accept the recommendation of his Common Core panel to delay tying student test scores to teacher evaluations until 2018-2019. The Board of Regents has proposed a delay until 2019-2020. This delay will affect Cuomo's pledge to make it easier for school leaders to expeditiously remove ineffective teachers.

Another of Cuomo's decisions  to place failing districts under a state-led receivership  is not grounded in research. There is no evidence of this approach being successfully implemented anywhere. In fact, the state Education Department is not prepared to support or implement Cuomo's turnaround design.

Cuomo and state legislators approved extending mayoral control over education in New York City for a year. Cuomo says he will study mayoral control for one year, to determine whether other urban school districts should replicate this approach. Yet there is no evidence that Mayor Bill de Blasio has a comprehensive, research-based plan to improve the city's failing schools under his control.

Cuomo has failed to convince the Legislature to pass his controversial education tax-credit plan. He also failed to significantly expand charter schools. These initiatives were major pillars of his education agenda.

As a public school teacher, assistant principal, principal and superintendent who worked in New York City's deprived and struggling schools for more than 20 years, I offer Cuomo the following suggestions to aid his reform efforts:

 Learn from existing research about teacher recruitment and retention. Recruit and train the top 5 percent of the graduating classes from the top colleges and universities to replace the 30 to 40 percent who are expected to leave teaching within the next five years. It is clear that new teachers are not prepared nor trained to handle the most difficult assignments, where they are often placed.

 Focus on system reform, not school reform. Current efforts to improve schools are futile at best unless reforms are made to the system that is failing to support the schools. To this end, Cuomo should first overhaul the state Education Department. Second, he should examine school districts in the state that do work well. Scarsdale's might be a great place to start. Yes, that community is wealthy; however, what makes Scarsdale work is its sound principles and practices, adopted by a community that values education.

 Study the 12 years of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's mayoral control. Glean best practices and revise policies to achieve community buy-in. Know that, regardless of the laws in place, control in the hands of the wrong mayor would be a disaster.

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 Attempt to reframe the charter school debate. The current debate is divisive. It is not enough to simply focus on charter school expansion. If Cuomo were to improve all public schools, there would be no charter school debate, nor any need for education tax credits. Charter schools, vouchers and education tax credits are remedies to redress public school failure and educational inequity and inequality.

As Cuomo acknowledged in his 2015 State of the State address, real and meaningful reform will not be easy. It will take a tremendous amount of care and courage to do the right thing.

Cuomo's failure so far to reform urban education in New York will likely widen the achievement gap between the state's rich and poor children.

Cuomo's actions vis-a-vis education indicate that he may not be the education governor New York needs to reform the dysfunctional school system that he strongly criticized in each of his State of the State addresses.

What can Cuomo say in 2016 that will be different and believable, given his willingness to retreat from past pledges and promises?

We know that sustainable school system reform will take more than a series of passionate speeches. It will take vision, courage and leadership.
THE ISSUE:

Armed militia members seize a federal building to protest sentences for arsonists.

THE STAKES:

Authorities need to send a message that such anarchy is intolerable.

More Information To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com or at http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion See More Collapse

Ammon Bundy, one of the leaders of an armed occupation of a federal building on a wildlife refuge in Oregon, got one thing right when he declared, "The rest of America can see that there's something wrong."

There sure is, but it isn't the supposed tyranny of a government that refuses to let ranchers rip off taxpayers by grazing livestock on public land for free or setting fires as they please. It's the dangerous, anarchistic tactics that the Bundys and their anti-government militia allies resort to while proclaiming that they're just patriots defending the Constitution.

The last time the government faced a serious challenge like this, in 2014, it prudently avoided bloodshed. But it failed to follow through and send a clear message to those who think that the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances is best exercised with an assault weapon and a threat to  as Mr. Bundy's brother Ryan put it  "kill and be killed."

This time, it needs to send the message that this behavior is intolerable in a nation of laws.

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The Bundys are sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who became an icon of the anti-government crowd when he clashed with the Bureau of Land Management over an unpaid bill of more than $1 million for grazing his herd on federal land. When the BLM moved to seize his cattle, militia supporters showed up with guns. The BLM backed down, and even released the cattle it had already taken.

Now, his sons have ventured to Oregon to take up the cause of ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, convicted of setting fires on BLM land on which they had leased grazing rights. The Hammonds say they were burning out invasive growth; the government suggests they were covering up evidence of slaughtering deer. A court initially sent Dwight Hammond to jail for three months and Steven Hammond to jail for a year, but the government appealed, and won an order for the mandatory five-year sentence for arson on federal land. They were to begin serving the sentence this week.

But after a rally last weekend, the Bundys and others seized an unoccupied government building at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Ammon Bundy invited more people to come and bring their guns, and declared that "We will be here as long as it takes"  whatever "it" is  and "would defend ourselves" if the government tries to forcibly remove them.

There's no need to precipitate a violent confrontation if it can be avoided. At the same time, letting these people off the hook would be an open invitation for self-proclaimed militias to take their ad-hoc constitutional theories and their guns to these kinds of extremes. When the dust settles, authorities should see to it that anyone associated with this lawlessness is barred from buying or possessing a firearm again. With all due process, of course. It's time to send a message that America is a nation of laws, not thugs with guns.
Will Waldron

Sen. Liz Krueger's commentary "State citizens deserve end to New York's corrupt politics," Dec. 3, could not be more welcome. We applaud her strong support of campaign finance reform: "Yes," to closing the LLC loophole for good; "yes," to implementing common-sense restrictions on legislators' outside income; and "yes," to lowering contribution limits and requiring greater disclosure and transparency.

But Senator Krueger should have also mentioned that the passage of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United vs. FEC would go a long way in addressing contribution limits, as this Supreme Court decision gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums to influence elections.
Edgewater Networks Eyeing the Untapped SMB Market for eSBC Solutions

By Laura Stotler - Virtual PBX Contributing Editor

Traditionally an enterprise session border controller (SBC) company, Edgewater Networks has been increasingly focused on putting more intelligence at the edge of the network. The move to the intelligent edge gives the companys service provider and enterprise customers invaluable information about whats happening with their voice networks as well as an eagle eye view of their own customers networks.

TMC CEO Rich Tehrani recently sat down with Rosa Lear, director of marketing at Edgewater, at the Editors Day Santa Clara 2015 event. Lear said that while the company has traditionally focused on the enterprise, Edgewater has begun to target small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with its intelligent edge solutions.

Were adding a lot of intelligence to the edge so that our customers, our service providers, are able to deliver a seamless experience to their customers, said Lear. The companys EdgeView platform gives service providers insights into their customers networks as well as providing important information on packet loss, jitter and approximately 40 parameters impacting the quality of their voice networks.

By combining an intelligent eSBC at the network edge along with comprehensive software in the cloud, Edgewater is able to offer their customers a comprehensive monitoring and analytics package. The company has recently turned its attention to the SMB space after conducting a study with Metaswitch Networks on this growing market. The companies found that the addressable market for hosted IP services in SMBs is $26 billion annually, creating massive opportunities.

A huge area of growth is the hosted PBX market, said Lear. Right now were focused a lot on the SMB as well as the enterprise, but the SMB we see opening up a lot.

Edgewater has also been focused on growth and expansion, and in November signed a deal with SoftBank Corp. to deliver managed services in Japan. The companies are working together to integrate Edgewater eSBCs into SoftBanks managed unified communications platform. The move will enable the service provider to offer customers a single appliance for handling IP trunking and remote access for UC.

Please enable JavaScript to view the

Edited by Maurice Nagle
[January 05, 2016] Enterprises Go 100% Digital with DocuSign on iOS Devices to Deliver Great Customer Experiences

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DocuSign, Inc. (DocuSign) today showcased how it's helping companies of all sizes and industries delight customers by transacting business 100% digitally. As part of its mobility partnership with Apple, DocuSign helps customers deploy its Digital Transaction Management (DTM) platform and eSignature solution on iOS devices to empower customers, partners, suppliers and staff to make every decision, approval, contract and workflow fully digital. The result is faster, easier, more convenient and trusted transaction experiences for everyone. DocuSign helps enterprise teams  including retail, field sales, support and operations staff  improve productivity, boost security and compliance, and delight customers by automating manual processes. DocuSign eliminates the hassles, costs and lack of security in printing, faxing, scanning and overnighting paper documents to transact business 100% digitally with trust and confidence. "With more than 65% of our corporate and enterprise customers operating on iOS, the success that our customers are achieving with DocuSign on Apple devices formed the foundation for our deeper relationship with Apple as a customer and DocuSign as one of Apple's first mobility partners," said Gordon Payne, COO, DocuSign. "Organizations large and small  like Comcast Business, Tishman Construction, Butte Country District Attorney's Office, Nevada Department of Transportation and GoodLife Realty  are differentiating themselves by going fully digital with DocuSign and Apple to deliver great customer experiences." Comcast Business field sales teams are equipped with DocuSign on iPads to serve customers faster and more efficiently. "Customer experience is our top priority at Comcast," said Terry Connell, SVP of Sales and Sales Operations at Comcast Business. "With DocuSign on iPads, our field sales teams are closing deals on the spot  cutting sales cycles in half and putting our services in customers' hands faster, so they can get to work and focus on growing their business." View DocuSign's video with Comcast: www.youtube.com/watchv=JGYuCRYFxew.



Tishman Construction, an AECOM Company engaged in the construction of landmark projects including the World Trade Center and Hudson Yards, speeds signoffs on coordination documents with DocuSign on iOS devices. "Prior to construction, each of Tishman's projects is reviewed in our Building Information Model (BIM) tool and signed off on by up to 35 different subcontractors," said Michael Lorenzo, Director of Emerging Technologies, Tishman Construction. "Being able to use DocuSign on iPads saves us time and stress by automating our signing workflow while creating a great experience for our subcontractors who can sign off on paperwork from anywhere at their convenience." The Butte County District Attorney's Office is using DocuSign on iOS devices to process search warrants significantly faster. "By implementing DocuSign into our workflow and equipping judges in the county with iPads, we've seen a significant improvement in the time needed to turnaround warrants," said Albert Tong, Information Systems Analyst, Butte County. "Today, officers can get a warrant signed via mobile device in just minutes." View DocuSign's video with Butte County: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwmS0oCAqNY

Managing more than 1,800 agency employees and an annual budget of $1.25B, Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) is using DocuSign on iPads to streamline work in the field. "We've seen the biggest win with DocuSign's mobile application," explained Teresa Schlaffer, Business Process Analyst, Nevada DOT. "Directors can be out of the office for several weeks at a time. Paperwork used to sit in the office waiting for a signature. Now we can DocuSign on our iPads on the spot while in the field to keep business moving forward." At Austin-based real estate brokerage GoodLife Realty, all agents conduct business and manage contracts with DocuSign on their iPhones and iPads. "The convenience of signing real estate documents electronically helps us deliver unparalleled customer experiences," said Krisstina Wise, CEO, GoodLife Realty. "During face-to-face appointments, the customers sign in person on iPads. Our clients are ecstatic about how simple it is to use DocuSign to buy or sell a home." Individuals and businesses interested in getting DocuSign today may visit the App Store. To learn more about DocuSign, please visit www.docusign.com. Contact:

Gregor Perotto

DocuSign, Inc.

+1 (206) 576-8081

[email protected] About DocuSign, Inc.

DocuSign is changing how business gets done by empowering more than 100,000 companies and more than 50 million users in 188 countries to sign, send and manage documents anytime, anywhere, on any device with trust and confidence. DocuSign replaces printing, faxing, scanning and overnighting documents with the easiest, fastest, most trusted way to make every approval and decision digital. Organizations of all sizes, industries and geographies are accelerating contracts, approvals and workflows with DocuSign's eSignature software and Digital Transaction Management (DTM) platform. DocuSign keeps life and business moving forward. For more information, visit www.docusign.com, call +1-877-720-2040, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Copyright 2003-2015. DocuSign, Inc. is the owner of DOCUSIGN(R) and all of its other marks (www.docusign.com/IP). All other marks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151102/283113LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/enterprises-go-100-digital-with-docusign-on-ios-devices-to-deliver-great-customer-experiences-300199055.html SOURCE DocuSign, Inc.

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[January 05, 2016] Iowa Virtual Academy Welcomes Students to Open Enroll for 2016-2017 School Year

GARNAVILLO, Iowa, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Iowa Virtual Academy (IAVA), an online public school program of the Clayton Ridge Community School District, is open for enrollment for the 2016-2017 school year. Enrollment is open to students in grades K-12 who reside anywhere in the state, however families considering Iowa Virtual Academy must submit an application before the state's open enrollment deadline of March 1, 2016 (September 1, 2016 for kindergarten students). Submitting an open enrollment application does not commit students to enrolling in the fall, but does provide them the option to at a later date. "Choosing a program with high quality curriculum was really important to me," said Amanda, the mother of three IAVA students. "The curriculum at Iowa Virtual Academy is rigorous and more detailed than the others I researched. Plus, having the support of a teacher really makes a difference to me. It's a team effort, and we collaborate on the best approach for my sons." Iowa Virtual Academy offers a tuition-free academic option for students who seek alternatives to a traditional brick-and-mortar education. Lessons are accessed online and each student is supported by a highly-qualified, Iowa-certified teacher who monitors student progress while prviding professional insight and instruction. Teachers communicate with students via phone, email and the online classroom technology in order to provide a highly individualized approach that helps prepare students for post-graduation career or college success.



"Iowa Virtual Academy is for those students who want more out of their education," says Steve Hoff, Iowa Virtual Academy Head of School. "The curriculum we use is structured around the individual student, so advanced learners can move ahead at their own pace or explore supplemental opportunities for enrichment." The IAVA high school program offers more than 150 core, elective and Advanced Placement courses designed to let students enjoy a high school program tailored to their goals and abilities. Subjects like Language Arts, History, Math and Science are available as Honors- or AP-level courses, and students have access to a wide selection of electives such as world languages and Career Technical Education (CTE) courses designed to give them a head start on job skills.

Families are encouraged to take the necessary steps to ensure they have a high-quality educational option for their students this fall. IAVA will host several online and in-person events in January and February in Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines and other areas of the State to help parents learn more about the program in advance of the March 1 deadline. Event dates and locations can be found on the school's event calendar. For more information about Iowa Virtual Academy and the application process, visit http://iava.k12.com/ About Iowa Virtual Academy

Iowa Virtual Academy is an online public school program of the Clayton Ridge Community School District, which uses the award-winning curriculum and tools provided by K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the nation's largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs. Iowa Virtual Academy's individualized approach gives Iowa kids the chance to learn in the ways that are right for them. For more about IAVA, visit http://iava.k12.com/. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150205/173870LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iowa-virtual-academy-welcomes-students-to-open-enroll-for-2016-2017-school-year-300198705.html SOURCE Iowa Virtual Academy

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[January 05, 2016] MongoTEL Inspires Low Voltage Installers to Be Great with Complimentary Vegas Trips and Sponsored Admission to ISC West, the Largest Industry Event

MongoTEL is ringing in the New Year with an exciting offering for Low Voltage Dealers Nationwide: the opportunity to attend the industry's largest security conference and exposition, International Security Conference (ISC) West 2016 at the Sands Expo, in Las Vegas, Nevada April 6-8, free of charge! The MongoTEL Certified Dealer Program is designed specifically to provide dealers and integrators with additional services and subsequent recurring monthly revenue (RMR) from the sales and installation of VoIP and hosted telephone communications services to end-user customers. MongoTEL's high-definition, cloud-based phone systems and virtual PBX (News - Alert) platforms are a natural fit with current dealer offerings. MongoTEL's acclaimed VoIP Telephony Systems, sold exclusively via industry installers, are based on the company's proprietary solutions and are best leveraged and delivered by professional, certified low-voltage installers. The program and equipment allows them to migrate easily to new sources of RMR in the burgeoning VoIP market with a proven, high-quality, professionally installed telephony solution that "just works" for their end-user customers. "We're excited to run this promotion and reward our security and low-voltage partners for their business. They understand that VoIP telephone services need tobe expertly specified, installed and delivered and are not plug and play," said Moshe BT (News - Alert), President of MongoTEL. "They know how to deliver on the technology."



As the telecommunications infrastructure continues to move away from copper phone lines to Internet-based communications, professional low-voltage contractors are in the perfect place to offer these solutions to their customers, increasing their subscriber base and providing their customers with a modern telephony solution that works today and will remain cutting edge as we move into the future. Program Specifics

The program particulars are simple: all dealers have to do is bring in a total of 48 new extensions by the end of February - and they are on their way. The reward program pays for two (2) roundtrip airfares from anywhere in the continental U.S., one hotel room for three days and two nights and two exhibit hall passes for the three-day event. It applies to all dealers who meet the installation requirements, and is not a random drawing. Moshe BT said most commercial or enterprise customers have at least 25 or more users, so reaching that mark will be highly attainable, adding that the 48 extensions can equal about $10,000 annually in RMR. "Professional low-voltage installers can easily add VoIP and cloud-hosted PBX solutions to their portfolio and significantly boost their RMR with strong, residual income." The MongoTEL Certified Dealer Program includes: A superior VoIP product available exclusively through certified dealers and not available to consumers directly; online or offline.

No minimum starting requirements for hardware purchases.

MongoBILL, an installer-only payment platform that takes care of all their client RMR billing and payments, giving installers a 100% hassle-free solution. Simply install the phones and receive a monthly ACH directly into your bank account!

Technical training and sales and marketing assistance.

Comprehensive lead generation program and other support. Find out more today! Contact MongoTEL at: (718) 942-9990; email [email protected]. About MongoTEL Built by experts in the telephony business, MongoTEL is a leading service provider of quality, cloud-based VoIP and PBX phone systems. Designed specifically for the low-voltage community as a professionally installed solution, MongoTEL offers a proprietary hardware/software platform. Live U.S.-based support, providing the industry's most clear telephony communications, is integrated seamlessly in a full-featured solution for every end-user customer. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160105005485/en/

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[January 05, 2016] Pep Boys Wins Retail TouchPoints' Customer Engagement Award for Yext-Powered Instagram Monitoring Program

NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Retail TouchPoints announced that Pep Boys has received a Gold 2015 Customer Engagement Award for its innovative Instagram Monitoring program, which the Yext platform powers. Retail TouchPoints' Customer Engagement Awards program recognizes retailers that are employing the most creative and unique strategies to deliver on the promise of customer-centricity. This year's winners include several other top retail brands, such as AT&T, Kate Spade, Kohl's, and Payless ShoeSource. In early 2015, Pep Boys turned to Yext to help integrate Instagram as a key component of its Search and Response customer engagement program, which is focused on improving the brand's social media following by actively tracking and responding in real-time to all relevant social media posts. Instagram's limited search function only lets brands track and search by hashtags and @mentions, but not by location. Pep Boys solved the problem by leveraging Yext's unique technology, which pulls in user-generated content that is geo-tagged at their store locations even if the user doesn't include a hashtag. This allows Pep Boys to gain access to an important audience segment they would not have been able to reach otherwise: the local customers who are actually visiting their shop locations. "Thanks to Yext, Pep Boys can now see all user-generated content tagged at any of our 800 locations in a single, searchable feed and reply to them directly without ever leaving the Yext dashboard, says Emily Smith, Pep Boys' Online Marketing Manager. "We also leverage Yext's real-time tracking and response capabilities to respond immediately to customers who have urgent questions and concerns, which has really elevated our quality of customer service and helped us build better customer relationships."



With Yext powering their Instagram monitoring, Pep Boys is always just a click away from engaging with local customers who are posting about their business in the moment it actually matters - when they are shopping in-store. Since launching in early 2015, Pep Boys has tracked in real-time over 6,400 Instagram posts in the Yext platform. "By leveraging Yext to improve our social media presence in general, we are able to attract the attention of new users who have not interacted with our brand before and thereby grow our customer audience," adds Rachel Silva, AVP of Marketing.

"We love partnering with forward-thinking brands like Pep Boys who understand the importance of leveraging technology to engage today's mobile-empowered customers," says Jeff Rohrs, Yext's CMO. "Through Yext's platform, Pep Boys is effectively harnessing the power of location to expand their social media audience and create more meaningful engagement that has a positive impact on their customer experience." To learn more about Pep Boys' Instagram Monitoring program, you can visit the Customer Showcase on Yext's website. About Yext

Yext is the global Digital Location Management (DLM) leader, helping over 500,000 business locations reach mobile consumers across a network of 100+ app, map, directory, search engine, and social media partners including Apple, Bing, Facebook, Foursquare, Yahoo, and Yelp. Yext's mission is to enable the world's 50 million businesses to tap into the power of location and drive face-to-face and digital interactions that boost customer engagement, build audiences, and increase sales through three core productsPowerListings, Pages, and Xone. Based in the heart of New York City with a growing team of over 400 employees worldwide, Yext has been recognized as one of America's fastest growing companies by the Inc. 500 (#212 in 2015), one of Forbes' Most Promising Companies (2014 & 2015) and one of Fortune's Best Places to Work (2014 & 2015). Learn more about how Yext helps people go places at yext.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/318881LOGO

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150223/177279LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pep-boys-wins-retail-touchpoints-customer-engagement-award-for-yext-powered-instagram-monitoring-program-300199184.html SOURCE Yext

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[January 05, 2016] University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Selects Local Startup, VIDA, for Precision Pulmonology Imaging Solution

CORALVILLE, Iowa, Jan 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VIDA Diagnostics, Inc. ("VIDA"), the leader in precision pulmonary imaging, today announced an engagement to provide clinical imaging software and analysis services to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. "VIDA's leadership position was born from a vision of taking precision imaging from bench to bedside," said Susan A. Wood, Ph.D., President and CEO of VIDA. "It is both thrilling and fitting that the University of Iowa is VIDA's first direct clinical sale. Together we will ensure that every pulmonary patient gets precision care." VIDA's solution will support key pulmonary care initiatives at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, including lung cancer screening, interventional pulmonology and other precision healthcare efforts. VIDA provides a quality-controlled image analysis service, with advanced analytical sotware, to provide clinicians rich quantitative lung measures that inform critical care decisions.



"The University of Iowa has always pursued advancements in pulmonary care," said Joseph Zabner, M.D., Professor and Director, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Occupational Medicine. "Bringing advanced pulmonary analysis to the bedside was always the focus of Geoff McLennan, M.D., who was critical to our early successes in interventional bronchoscopy." VIDA's strong commercialization momentum is an early outcome of support from the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA). VIDA was granted an IEDA Accelerate loan in February 2015 through the Iowa Innovation Acceleration Fund to aid the company in marketing and sales efforts. This loan was used to invest in early commercialization efforts and this opportunity with the University of Iowa marks the first commercial sale resulting from the State investment.

"Iowa has worked hard to create a continuum of innovation funding to help companies start and grow in our state. We are thrilled that the investment in VIDA has enabled them to advance their commercial efforts so rapidly and provide best-in-breed opportunities for patients with or at risk of pulmonary disease," said Debi Durham, director of the IEDA. About VIDA VIDA is a leader in precision pulmonary imaging to aid early detection, evaluation, and treatment planning of lung diseases including COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, and asthma. FDA approved, CE, CMDCAS and TGA certified, VIDA's software and services are routinely used in clinical practice, along with academic, device, and pharmaceutical clinical trials. VIDA's offices are located in Coralville, IA and Minneapolis, MN. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/319103LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/university-of-iowa-hospitals-and-clinics-selects-local-startup-vida-for-precision-pulmonology-imaging-solution-300199044.html SOURCE VIDA Diagnostics, Inc.

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[January 04, 2016] Gigastone to Showcase Its Apple iOS Flash Drive Range at CES 2016

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gigastone the Leading Global Mobile Technology Accessory Brand today announced that it will be using CES 2016 as the primary platform to introduce the industry to the largest range of Apple iOS Flash Drives on the Market. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/318984 Michel Hassan, Gigastone USA President, when asked about CES, said, "CES is the preeminent industry event to announce product and innovative technologies." He expanded, "This year we are utilizing the PhotoFast Booth (# 5335  LVCC North Hall) to showcase the Gigastone PhotoFast range of products, while the balance of our products will be presented at our executive suite (# 2828 Westgate North Tower). We are proud to be a part of this industry and are especially excited this year with our expanded range and offering." The Gigastone PhotoFast Range of Apple iOS Flash Drives fit into three distinctive categories; The MAX, EVO and Memory Cable ranges. With both USB 2.0 and 3.0 products. Memory capabilities from 16GB to 128GB, fast speeds and form factors to match any consumer's needs. The recently introduced longer memory cable, which has an iOS Flash Drive embedded into a standard length carging cable, could prove to be a show stopper."



The Gigastone PhotoFast Memory Cable delivers fundamental features to consumers; iPhone & iPhone users can easily expand their existing storage.

Sensitive data on an iPhone or iPad can be easily backed up off the Cloud and in the pocket.

The device has an Apple lighting adapter and a USB adapter on the other side to transfer data to any computer. These super functional devices are of the highest quality and are bundled with free iOS, software available on the Apple App Store. "The software automatically backs up iPhone data without iTunes," explained Harold Katz, Gigastone CMO. "Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Google Drive and Dropbox are just some of the supported social media systems and data encryption is a standard feature in the software. Watch this space that Gigastone is trailblazing."

Find out more about the Gigastone PhotoFast Apple iOS Flash Drives at http://goo.gl/O03ty8 Gigastone focuses at delivering cost-effective and high quality mobile technology accessories and has been distributing mobile technology in the Americas for 20 years. About Gigastone Gigastone is the leading global mobile accessory brand, specializing in state-of-the-art, high-end mobile peripherals and technology. For two decades, Gigastone has been distributing technology to all the major big-box stores and e-tailers. Gigastone has leveraged its engineering, manufacturing and quality control skills to drive world-class production and deliver quality products. A uniquely positioned company, poised to continue to grow and maintain its leadership in the fast paced consumer electronics space. Gigastone currently has eight major offices around the globe; USA, Toronto, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, France, Brazil and China, with distributors in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Notable distributors include Walmart, Costco, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, Guo Mei, JD.com, E-Mart and The Source. Gigastone continues to launch world-class mobile peripherals, constantly diversifying its product range to meet consumer demand. Customer focus is the key to ongoing Gigastone global success. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gigastone-to-showcase-its-apple-ios-flash-drive-range-at-ces-2016-300199017.html SOURCE Gigastone

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[January 04, 2016] XYZprinting To Expand Beyond 3D Printing Product Ecosystem At 2016 Consumer Electronics Show

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- XYZprinting, the world's leading 3D printing company, announced today that it will unveil exciting new products aimed at providing a comprehensive line of economic commercial 3D printing solutions, brand new consumer-aimed printers at sub-$300 MSRP pricing, and next generation concept devices, when the brand returns to the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Beginning with a sample preview at CES Unveiled's pre-show event on Monday, January 4th and exhibiting throughout the entire week, XYZprinting will demonstrate and provide a first look to its new products, from eight different 3D printer models, including a sub-$300 Mini aimed at consumers, to those targeted for commercial use at higher price points as well as extending beyond 3D printing to wearable devices, robotics and more. "XYZprinting has been assertive in breaking down the technology barriers in the consumer 3D printing market, by introducing easy-to-use devices that deliver innovative experiences to consumers at cost-effective prices," said Simon Shen, CEO of XYZprinting and New Kinpo Group. "At this year's CES, we are making an aggressive push in the B2B market by introducing new products and devices to our product ecosystem within and beyond the 3D printing ideology, while continuing the successes we've experienced with our accessible 3D printers." New Leading 3D Printing Products in 2016: Consumer3D Printing solutions: da Vinci Mini : This ultra small device will be XYZprinting's most affordable 3D printer yet with an expected MSRP of $269 , perfect for the general public. The small, but versatile 3D printer comes with Wi-Fi capabilities and also includes USB ports. Thirty percent smaller than the 2015 da Vinci Junior , this printer maintains the same build size of 5.9"x 5.9"x5.9". It is the ultimate, light-weight desktop 3D printer for those that value desk space, simplicity and portability.

: This ultra small device will be XYZprinting's most affordable 3D printer yet with an expected MSRP of , perfect for the general public. The small, but versatile 3D printer comes with Wi-Fi capabilities and also includes USB ports. Thirty percent smaller than the 2015 da , this printer maintains the same build size of 5.9"x 5.9"x5.9". It is the ultimate, light-weight desktop 3D printer for those that value desk space, simplicity and portability. da Vinci Junior 1.0 3-in-1 : Accessible to a broad range of consumers, educators and hobbyists, the compact da Vinci Junior 1.0 3-in-1 printer, with an expected MSRP of $549 , features scanning capabilities and Wi-Fi connectivity. A laser engraving module is also available to consumers as an add-on accessory. By simply pressing a button, its auto-calibration feature allows users to move the da Vinci Junior 3-in-1 extruder around the print bed, while also determining the correct distances between the extruder nozzle and the print bed. This process ensures that each print comes out in the best quality possible.

: Accessible to a broad range of consumers, educators and hobbyists, the compact da 1.0 3-in-1 printer, with an expected MSRP of , features scanning capabilities and Wi-Fi connectivity. A laser engraving module is also available to consumers as an add-on accessory. By simply pressing a button, its auto-calibration feature allows users to move the da 3-in-1 extruder around the print bed, while also determining the correct distances between the extruder nozzle and the print bed. This process ensures that each print comes out in the best quality possible. da Vinci Junior 2.0 Mix: Bringing more color to life, the da Vinci Junior 2.0 Mix is capable of blending two colors by using a brand new, dual-extruding single nozzle that combines two filaments to create a print that gradually changes color. The da Vinci Junior 2.0 Mix has an expected MSRP of $499 . Professional 3D Printing Solutions: XYZprinting Nobel 1.0 Advanced (1.0 A) : As the most cost-effective stereolithography (SL Laser) 3D printer on the market, with an expected MSRP of $1,699 , the Nobel 1.0 Advanced uses a laser to cure the photosensitive resin, producing higher resolution print objects with more complex geometry. The device features an X/Y-axis print resolution of 0.13mm and a Z-axis resolution up to 0.025mm, allowing users to achieve print results with astounding detail. This simple and easy to operate printer is perfect for designers wanting to achieve superior print results at an affordable cost.

: As the most cost-effective stereolithography (SL Laser) 3D printer on the market, with an expected MSRP of , the Nobel 1.0 Advanced uses a laser to cure the photosensitive resin, producing higher resolution print objects with more complex geometry. The device features an X/Y-axis print resolution of 0.13mm and a Z-axis resolution up to 0.025mm, allowing users to achieve print results with astounding detail. This simple and easy to operate printer is perfect for designers wanting to achieve superior print results at an affordable cost. da Vinci 1.0 Pro 3-in-1: Perfect for designers, engineers, architects, and anyone looking for a user-friendly 3D printer that can print objects at a high volume, the da Vinci 1.0 Pro 3-in-1 printer, with an expected MSRP of $899 , features scanning capabilities and Wi-Fi connectivity. Compatible with non-proprietary filament, users can print with any PLA or ABS thermplastic filaments of their choice. The extruder can be switched out with the optional laser engraver add-on that allows users to engrave their designs on materials such as wood, leather, cardboard and others.



Commercial 3D Printing Solutions : XYZprinting Nobel DLP : With the latest DLP technology embedded, the compact Nobel DLP is XYZprinting's fastest and most precise 3D printer, ideal for the application of jewelry, and comes at an enticing price point of $1,999 expected MSRP compared to other high-tech devices on the market. Unlike Fused Filament Fabrication printers, the Nobel DLP uses Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology that prints castable resin and standard resin, thus resulting in outstanding print quality. Attributed to the DLP technology, the resolutions are amazing, achieving an X/Y-axis resolution of 50 microns (0.05mm) with a layer thickness (Z-axis resolution) reaching up to 25 microns (0.025mm). For comparative purposes, a human hair is on average 75 microns!

: With the latest DLP technology embedded, the compact Nobel DLP is XYZprinting's fastest and most precise 3D printer, ideal for the application of jewelry, and comes at an enticing price point of expected MSRP compared to other high-tech devices on the market. Unlike Fused Filament Fabrication printers, the Nobel DLP uses Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology that prints castable resin and standard resin, thus resulting in outstanding print quality. Attributed to the DLP technology, the resolutions are amazing, achieving an X/Y-axis resolution of 50 microns (0.05mm) with a layer thickness (Z-axis resolution) reaching up to 25 microns (0.025mm). For comparative purposes, a human hair is on average 75 microns! XYZprinting 3D JET: As one of XYZprinting's most competitive products for 2016, the 3D JET is capable of printing small, but precise objects. The commercial printer has a dedicated print head to print support material, which makes it ideal to print movable parts or for one-print assembly projects. Using a photopolymer resin through an inkjet, similar to a standard printer, the 3D JET produces extremely high-quality prints and interlinking parts for large and small projects. The 3D JET is aimed at engineers, toy makers, entrepreneurs, project designers, and other prosumers that need a 3D printing machine that can build prototypes in great quality. With its large size printing (300mm x 150mm), the 3D JET supports high-hardness/rigidity and high-stress resin, making the 3D printer a great asset for engineering prototypes. 3D Printing Education Solutions:

XYZ STEAM : An online curriculum exchange program suited for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics educators to incorporate 3D printing seamlessly into the classroom. XYZprinting will offer education curriculums, discounted XYZprinting 3D printers, as well as tools to engage students in practical, real-life applications of 3D printing. Curricula consist of downloadable 3D printing models, assembly instructions, photos, videos and operation instructions that stimulate learning. Join XYZ STEAM at http://us.xyzprinting.com/steam.

: An online curriculum exchange program suited for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics educators to incorporate 3D printing seamlessly into the classroom. XYZprinting will offer education curriculums, discounted XYZprinting 3D printers, as well as tools to engage students in practical, real-life applications of 3D printing. Curricula consist of downloadable 3D printing models, assembly instructions, photos, videos and operation instructions that stimulate learning. Join XYZ STEAM at http://us.xyzprinting.com/steam. XYZmaker: A 3D modeling app, compatible on Windows OS, with Android and iOS versions available in the second half of 2016, is perfect for young designers to edit projects intuitively in the classroom. The XYZmaker app is aimed at making 3D printing technology more accessible and providing a solution and service to expedite the process from design to print. It will be available for download at XYZprtinting.com in Q1 2016. 3D Printing Accessories: XYZprinting 3D Pen : XYZprinting's first 3D printing pen with an expected MSRP of $49 is great for DIY craft projects. This exciting new product has no restrictions on print size and doesn't require a computer or software to use.

: XYZprinting's first 3D printing pen with an expected MSRP of is great for DIY craft projects. This exciting new product has no restrictions on print size and doesn't require a computer or software to use. XYZprinting Nobel Post Curing Machine: A quick-hardening and energy efficient UV chamber to work in tandem with products printed on the Nobel photosensitive, resin-based printing line. The LED lamp cycles around the printed object every 30 seconds to create a consistent stereolithography. The XYZprinting Nobel Post Curing Machine has an expected MSRP of $299 . As an added bonus, XYZprinting will feature new products from its XYZlife and XYZrobot lines. The XYZlife product line will feature the BC1, a long-term, continuous ECG monitor that integrates into consumers' clothing or as a wireless patch. The BC1 system provides users with seamless and accessible information to their body's data without time or place limitations. In addition, XYZprinting will unveil its new Humanoid Robot Line, Bolide, and its new smart life concept, the Smart Service Robot. Bolide is a unique DIY engineering learning kit designed to teach STEAM education in an engaging and entertaining fashion. XYZrobot's Smart Service Robot, with auto-navigation, mapping and surveillance, allows people to interact with others wirelessly and is accessible via Android systems to guide people from phones or tablets. Consumers purchasing a XYZprinting 3D printer will have the benefit and insurance of XYZprinting's one-year free warranty, upon online product registration. Useful tutorials available via YouTube, online and phone customer service, and free design galleries and 3D models for download at XYZprinting.com also provide a cohesive, consumer-friendly experience from purchase to print. Backed by its award-winning 3D printing product ecosystem, the XYZprinting brand has focused on widespread, cost-effective, and easy-to-use 3D printing adoption in the marketplace for 2015. XYZprinting products require no assembly or equipment adjustments, and provide a straightforward user experience. In the past year, XYZprinting has been recognized as the leader in the 3D printing industry, having been honored with awards such as TWICE's "Best Pick" award, Digital Trends' "Top Tech of CES" award, Reviewed.com's "CES Editor's Choice" award, PC Mag's "Best of CES" award, COMPUTEX Taipei 2015 "Best Choice" award and Tech & Learning Magazine's "Best of ISTE 2015" award. Its 3D printers have received widespread attention and reviews from the top media influencers in business and technology, including TechCrunch, Forbes, CNET, and VentureBeat. To learn more about XYZprinting at CES 2016 or to schedule a demo at the show, visit booth #72326 in the Sands Expo Convention Center, Halls A-C, in Las Vegas, January 6-9, 2016. About XYZprinting

XYZprinting, a New Kinpo Group company, is dedicated to bringing cost-effective 3D printing to educators and classrooms, consumers and artists, small-to-midsized businesses, and households around the world. With proven industry expertise, XYZprinting has broken down the barriers of 3D printer ownership by providing an easy-to-use device that delivers an outstanding user experience, connected to a computer or via mobile. Its printers have won numerous other accolades within the 3D printing industry, at major industry events and with top publications. XYZprinting currently has offices in China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, the United States and Europe. To learn more, please visit http://us.xyzprinting.com. Contact:

[email protected] About New Kinpo Group (NKG)

New Kinpo Group, a corporation of several subsidiaries including Cal-Comp, XYZprinting, Kinpo Electronics and AcBel, is a global electronic manufacturing services (EMS) and original design manufacturing (ODM) company that offers its customers lower costs, faster delivery times and world-class product quality. The company's EMS business spans multiple product lines, including storage, printers, network-attached storage (NAS), wireless and broadband, digital home, consumer electronics, wearables, 3D printing, robotics, power management and smart grid, industrial, automotive, security, medical/healthcare and emerging technologies. New Kinpo Group's network of strategically located manufacturing sites have the added benefit of allowing customers to manufacture products closer to their end customers, resulting in dramatically reduced shipping costs, lower tariffs and more cost-effective inventory management. For more information, visit http://en.newkinpogroup.com/ To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/xyzprinting-to-expand-beyond-3d-printing-product-ecosystem-at-2016-consumer-electronics-show-300198723.html SOURCE XYZprinting

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[January 04, 2016] Aspenta Showcasing Vectu Location-tracking Products at CES 2016

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Aspenta, a U.S. based fully-integrated mobile operator and IoT solutions provider, will showcase a suite of new products, including its innovative vehicle tracking products, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company will feature live product demonstrations at booth #80953 at the Sands Convention Centre, from January 6-9, 2016. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160102/318721 The company's Vectu line of GPS tracking devices allows consumers and businesses to keep track of people, possessions and vehicles in real time through a web or mobile app. At CES, Aspenta will showcase: Vectu PRO, two models of an installed vehicle trackerone with external GSM & GPS antennas and one with internal antennaswhich provide security and location awareness

Vectu Portable Vehicle Tracker, which provides real-time security and location awareness in an portable device

Vectu On-Demand Personal GPS Locator, which provides real-time, on-demand location updates for people or possessions.

Vectu Personal Emergency GPS Locator, which provides real-time positioning upon help alert The FBI reports that in 2014, total motor vehicle theft in the United States was nearly 700,000 vehicles, with a vehicle stolen on average every 46 seconds. Moreover, The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 2,000 children are reported missing every day in the United States. With Vectu's comprehensive product range including personal and vhicle tracking devices, low annual service fee, and international roaming, the Vectu products provide peace of mind at the lowest possible cost. Parents with students abroad, caretakers of an elder or child, or people who want to monitor motor vehicles locally, across the country or across country borders can stay connected in all scenarios with Vectu.



Vectu products work in over 190 countries with no roaming charges and a low, flat rate, reducing the barrier for global mobile applications due in part to Aspenta's global roaming market. All Vectu devices can be followed in the free myAspenta app available for Android and iOS. For added convenience, Vectu users can track or locate devices on the web at myAspenta.com. Each device can be shared with other users and notifications settings let users add additional phone numbers and email addresses to receive notifications. As an innovative player in the IoT market, Aspenta's Vectu utilizes state-of-the-art encryption technology, which grants access to only those users permitted.

"The Vectu location trackers provide security and peace of mind for users that want to connect and locate in real time what is most important to them," says Dr. Walid Moneimme, CEO of Aspenta. "Because of the global network we have in place, Vectu is able to offer worldwide tracking capabilities with no roaming charge, a key differentiator for us in the market." Aspenta also benefits businesses which need to accurately and efficiently locate assets worldwide, including transportation fleets, goods and people. Additionally, Aspenta products significantly reduce business expenditures by providing an affordable option with no roaming costs and safer ways to expand operations across borders. Vectu products are available from www.aspenta.com and Amazon.com for $99.99 and $139.99 (depending on model), with the first year's annual service fee included. About Aspenta

Aspenta is a U.S. based fully-integrated mobile network operator and IoT solutions provider focusing on providing seamless global connectivity for businesses and individuals. Aspenta operates across three major market verticals  Global Roaming, Machine to Machine, and MVNE. Aspenta aims to transform business models and improve consumers' daily lives when they are on the move through the development of products that provide peace of mind, value proposition and efficient, easy-to-use technology with an international reach. For more information about Aspenta, please visit www.aspenta.com. Sales Enquiries

[email protected] Press link

http://ces.vporoom.com/Aspenta To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aspenta-showcasing-vectu-location-tracking-products-at-ces-2016-300198376.html SOURCE Aspenta

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[January 05, 2016] DarkMatter Appoints Michael Pak as SVP of Secure Communications Engineering, Adding to Already Impressive Management Team

DUBAI, UAE, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pak has 20 years of security engineering experience

During his career, he founded and managed Samsung Mobile Communications' global security engineering team DarkMatter, a cyber security firm with global aspirations, announces the appointment of the former head of Security and Privacy Engineering at Google Nest and VP of Security R&D for Samsung Electronics, Michael Pak, to its senior management team. The executive is a 20-year security technology expert and assumes the position of Senior Vice President - Secure Communications Engineering at DarkMatter. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160105/319245 )

Pak holds 18 security patents and has international security experience spanning the US, South Korea, Japan and other regions of the world. His most recent position was as Head of Security and Privacy Engineering, Google Nest Labs in the US. He has also held leadership positions with leading technology innovators including Samsung Mobile Communications in South Korea; Wind River (an Intel company) in the US; and was co-founder of McAfee Mobile Security Group, also based in the US. Amongst his accomplishments, Pak directed development of the world's first mobile devices certified for the Mobile Device Fundamentals Protection Profile (MDFPP) Common Criteria and approved for classified use by the US government (CSfP-Commercial Solutions for Classified). He also managed development of the world's first hardware-based mobile security platform, and directed development of the world's first biometric-based mobile payment system. Commenting on Pak's appointment, Faisal Al Bannai, Chief Executive Officer of DarkMatter said, "We are proud that Michael has joined our ranks and I am confident that he will add significant value to the impressive team of international subject matter expers we are gathering in the UAE."



In the past, Pak has represented the companies he was working for within leading industry bodies including the Open Mobile Alliance, Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo), Fast Identity Online (FIDO), and Tizen Alliance. Commenting on his appointment, Pak said, "I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to be able to contribute my skill set in a way that fundamentally alters the approach to cyber security from a Secure Communications Engineering perspective on a national level, down. The forward-looking nature of the UAE is aligned to providing a perfect springboard to take this approach to other countries and regions."

DarkMatter is staffed by tier one international cyber experts who develop, manage and deploy the most innovative technologies, adhering to the company's Cyber Security Life-Cycle, which incorporates a four-stage approach involving planning, detection, protection and recovery, and reinforces its secure business solutions. Already a strategic partner of the UAE government, DarkMatter is leveraging this experience in the wider market as it looks to serve regional and international clients. The company provides a complete portfolio of cyber security solutions and services to organisations that have sophisticated security requirements, from governments and infrastructure operators to large corporations. About DarkMatter DarkMatter is a company that is transforming the cyber security landscape by providing a complete range of state-of-the-art services and solutions to government and commercial clients. Its end-to-end expertise extends to: Governance, Risk and Compliance We work with public and private entities in all verticals to audit and assess their performance against regulatory standards, helping identify gaps and meet obligations. Cyber Network Defence Our elite team of cyber experts, engaged across all competencies and functions, tasked with identifying and responding to the most advanced threats, threat actors, and cyber attacks. Managed Security Services We offer a remote monitoring remediation and resolution service that puts the full capabilities and resources of the DarkMatter organisation at the service of our MSS teams. Whether you need a SOC built and operated from scratch or you need assistance in upgrading what you currently have in place, DarkMatter can provide assistance. Secure Communications DarkMatter's Secure Communications Suite protects fixed and mobile voice, video, chat, email, file sharing, data communication, as well as device management across various platforms and operating systems. Infrastructure and System Integration This area underpins our professional services offering for governments and corporations, providing applications, services and solutions that ensure our clients remain at the forefront of cyber security. Smart Solutions We offer a comprehensive security suite of services comprising elements of protection for both homes and businesses: The Connected and Secure Home & Office; Technical Surveillance and Countermeasures; Mobile Peace of Mind; and Trusted Hardware supply. Staffed by global experts and headquartered in the UAE, DarkMatter provides peace of mind through consulting and project implementations that are scalable to clients of any size and that address any domain of cyber security threat or risk. As a trusted partner to the UAE government and critical infrastructure entities, the firm also works with leading global companies operating in the field of electronic and cyber security. Agile and innovative, DarkMatter takes a comprehensive approach to helping its clients navigate the complex and ever-evolving world of threat and risk mitigation strategies, tools, policies and systems. http://www.darkmatter.ae Media contact:

Kevin Healy, Marketing and Communications Director, DarkMatter

Tel.: +971-56-538-7806

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE DarkMatter

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[January 05, 2016] Ricoh Positioned as a Leader in 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Managed Print and Content Services Worldwide

MALVERN, Pa., Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ricoh today announced that it has been positioned in the "Leaders" quadrant of the Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Managed Print and Content Services Worldwide"*[i]. This is the sixth consecutive year Ricoh has received the leadership designation from Gartner. This year's Magic Quadrant encompasses Managed Print Services (MPS), which Gartner defines as a service offered by an external service provider to optimize or manage a company's document output to meet certain objectives, and Managed Content Services (MCS), which Gartner defines as a comprehensive solution that rationalizes, streamlines and optimizes business communications by providing customers with consultative help, software, and implementation. As a part of its focus to empower customers with the ability to seamlessly capture, transform and manage information, Ricoh has developed a single, customizable managed print services plan. Along with this, the company also delivers managed content services (MCS) across the IT side of printing, business process automation and business process optimization. Further to this, Ricoh embeds services in a comprehensive needs assessment and solution development process that evaluates how a company manages information and business processes, with a goal of driving value and reducing the burden on IT departments. Although many MPS offerings focus tightly on devices and print management, Ricoh's managed services are delivered through a more holistic approach, employing Ricoh's five-phase Adaptive Model. This approach delivers a unique offering for each customer that focuses on understanding, improving, transforming, optimizing and governing the overall services process. This customer-focused approach to MCS offers consultative help to optimize the IT side of their printing environment, business process automation and business process optimization, along with a superior organizational change management methodology. To continue helping cstomers achieve success in this area, Ricoh extensively trains its own staff in MPS and MCS.



"We believe our positioning in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant demonstrates our commitment to enabling our global customers with the most effective ways to continuously improve and remain competitive in their respective industries," said Carsten Bruhn, Group Vice President & General Manager, Services Business Center, Ricoh Company, Ltd. "We approach every customer engagement with the five phases of Ricoh's Adaptive Model. This creates a journey of continuous improvement that increases the value of the services we deliver and extends our long-term partnerships with our customers. As the MPS industry evolves, this approach enables us to be flexible and address our customers' changing needs, no matter where they are in their journey." For more information on Ricoh's services portfolio, visit http://www.ricoh.com/services.

*i. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Managed Print and Content Services, Ken Weilerstein, Tomoko Mitani, 21 December 2015 About the Magic Quadrant Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology provides a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers in fast-growing markets: Leaders, Visionaries, Niche Players and Challengers. As companion research, Gartner Critical Capabilities notes provide deeper insight into the capability and suitability of providers' IT products and services based on specific or customized use cases. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. | About Ricoh | Ricoh is a global technology company specializing in office imaging equipment, production print solutions, document management systems and IT services. Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in about 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ending March 2015, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,231 billion yen (approx. 18.5 billion USD). The majority of the company's revenue comes from products, solutions and services that improve the interaction between people and information. Ricoh also produces award-winning digital cameras and specialized industrial products. It is known for the quality of its technology, the exceptional standard of its customer service and sustainability initiatives. Under its corporate tagline, imagine. change. Ricoh helps companies transform the way they work and harness the collective imagination of their employees. For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com/about/  2016 Ricoh Americas Corporation. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies. Contacts: John Greco

Ricoh Americas Corporation

(973) 882-2023

[email protected] Tracey Sheehy

Breakaway Communications

(212) 616-6003

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140718/128670 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ricoh-positioned-as-a-leader-in-2015-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-managed-print-and-content-services-worldwide-300199305.html SOURCE Ricoh

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[January 05, 2016] Visteon to Present at Deutsche Bank's 2016 Global Auto Industry Conference on Jan. 12

VAN BUREN TOWNSHIP, Mich., Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Visteon Corporation (NYSE: VC) is scheduled to present at Deutsche Bank's 2016 Global Auto Industry Conference at the MGM Grand in Detroit on Tuesday, Jan. 12. Visteon's presentation will begin at approximately 3:50 p.m. ET and is expected to last about 40 minutes. Sachin Lawande, president and CEO, and Jeffrey M. Stafeil, executive vice president and chief financial officer, will provide an overview of the company's strategy, financial profile and related matters. A live audio webcast, along with the presentation material and other supplemental information, will be accessible through Visteon's website at www.visteon.com/presentations. A replay will be available following the event. About Visteon Visteon is a global company that designs, engineers and manufactures innovative cockpit electroncs products and connected car solutions for most of the world's major vehicle manufacturers. Visteon is a leading provider of instrument clusters, head-up displays, information displays, infotainment, connected audio, and connectivity and telematics; its brands include Lightscape, OpenAir and SmartCore. Headquartered in Van Buren Township, Michigan, Visteon has nearly 11,000 employees at 50 facilities in 19 countries. Visteon had $3.1 billion in electronics sales over the last 12 months. Learn more at www.visteon.com.



Follow Visteon: www.twitter.com/visteon

www.youtube.com/visteon

http://blog.visteon.com

www.google.com/+visteon

www.linkedin.com/company/visteon

https://www.facebook.com/VisteonCorporation

https://www.instagram.com/Visteon

http://www.slideshare.net/VisteonCorporation

https://vine.co/u/1264235937429684224



Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20001201/DEF008LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/visteon-to-present-at-deutsche-banks-2016-global-auto-industry-conference-on-jan-12-300199634.html SOURCE Visteon Corporation

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[January 05, 2016] Tech Tools Make Home Searches Easier, Helping Shorten Sales Times, Say RE/MAX Agents

CHICAGO, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chicago-area homes tend to sell more quickly than they did just a few years ago. According to RE/MAX, the average market time for all homes sold in the metro Chicago market fell from 139 days in 2012 to 93 days in 2015. That's a 33 percent reduction in average market time over the three year period. The last time homes sold as quickly was 2006, near the peak of the housing boom. The RE/MAX analysis is based on activity reported by Midwest Real Estate Data, the regional multiple listing service. Jim Merrion, regional director of RE/MAX Northern Illinois, sees two primary reasons for the sharp reduction in market times. Contemporary technology has given buyers and brokers new tools to make the home buying process easier and faster. Smartphones, for example, allow buyers, wherever they may be, to view new listings immediately and set up a showing if they are interested. Virtual tours also allow buyers to eliminate homes without even stepping inside. Home values have risen, giving buyers greater confidence. Meanwhile, the inventory of homes for sale, especially when distressed properties are excluded, has remained quite limited for the last two years. That encourages buyers to act quickly because desirable homes often attract multiple offers. Inventory levels vary from area to area and between different market segments, explained Josie Morrison of RE/MAX Action in Lisle, Ill. "When my friends wanted to downsize to a townhouse, they faced a limited supply and had to be aggressive. The home they bought was on the market for just five day," she said. "Conversely, the house they were selling had ample competition and took considerably longer."



Given such variations in supply and demand, buyers and sellers should be keenly aware of market conditions, Morrison emphasized. Fortunately, modern technology makes that easier than ever. "Buyers usually have a fairly good picture of the market when they start house hunting seriously," said Liz Sidorowicz of RE/MAX Premier Properties in Chicago. "Those I've worked with recently, especially younger buyers, rarely need more than two months to find a home because they are so well prepared. Not many years ago, that process would have taken four to six months."

Brian Corwell of RE/MAX Sauk Valley in Sterling, Ill., estimates that a typical buyer in his market takes 30 days to find a home, down from 45 days 10 years ago. He believes improved communications has been vital to speeding the process. "Years ago, considerable time was lost calling people and leaving messages," Corwell said. "Now, we use text messaging and stay in essentially constant contact when needed. I've worked with buyers while sitting on a Mexican beach. Plus, there are excellent mobile apps  RE/MAX Northern Illinois has one  that give buyers all kinds of great tools they can use anywhere." According to Scott Paul of RE/MAX Center, Grayslake, Ill., buyers today are more confident in their decision making for two main reasons. First, they will have at least taken an online tour of every listed home in their price range. "My buyers will physically visit fewer homes than once was the case, but they can screen many more homes online," Paul said. A second confidence-building factor, he noted, is the availability of automated value estimates. "I do a comparative market analysis of homes my buyers are considering. If my estimate matches up fairly well with the automated estimates available online, it provides an added level of reassurance," Paul said. "Of course, they won't always match, and buyers need to understand that automated estimates aren't infallible." RE/MAX has been the leader in the northern Illinois real estate market since 1989 and is continually growing. The RE/MAX Northern Illinois network, headquartered in Elgin, Ill., consists of more than 2,250 sales associates and 105 independently owned and operated offices that provide a full range of residential and commercial brokerage services. Contact:

Stephen Johnson

RE/MAX Northern Illinois

847-428-4200

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tech-tools-make-home-searches-easier-helping-shorten-sales-times-say-remax-agents-300199845.html SOURCE RE/MAX Northern Illinois

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City Council discuss owner occupied home rehabilitation program

The $250,000 grant would be would be split between 15-20 city homeowners, who would be afforded up to $15,000 each for repairs to their homes.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 not only performs the most thorough malware scans with the least system impact, but also includes ransomware protection and things you'd normally pay extra for, such as a password manager and a file shredder

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Bitdefender goes well beyond basic security protection with its Antivirus Plus 2016, which not only protects your PC against ransomware, but also provides several unexpected extras, such as a password manager and a file shredder.

The software had the top score for finding and eradicating malware, and scans a system quickly with minimum performance impact. It's among the best antivirus software products and is our Editor's Choice for basic Windows antivirus software.

Costs and What's Covered

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus at Amazon for $19.99 (opens in new tab)

Like many of its competitors, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 sells for $40 for a single PC and $60 for three PCs, with frequent online discounts. (There's nothing like McAfee's all-you-can-eat unlimited license.) It signs you up for auto-renewal of subscriptions, but you can change that setting after installation.

MORE: How We Tested

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 runs only on Windows 7 (with Service Pack 1) through Windows 10, which leaves behind older computers. There's a separate package called Bitdefender Security for XP and Vista; at $60, it's more expensive than Antivirus Plus 2016, but includes extras such as a firewall and a system optimizer.

Antivirus Protection

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 checks for digital signatures of known malware and uses behavioral monitoring to look for telltale signs of rogue files. These are backed up with information from Bitdefender's Global Protection Network, which gathers data about new malware from the 500 million computers running Bitdefender software.

No other brand we reviewed matched Bitdefender's nearly perfect AV-TEST record.

Bitdefender's Autopilot feature configures security parameters for you based on the Web's current threats and on what you're currently doing with your PC. A vulnerability scanner looks for uninstalled Windows updates, out-of-date software components and weak passwords.

Bitdefender also has something few antivirus makers yet offer: a way to safeguard your system from encrypting ransomware such as Cryptolocker. It does so by shielding specified folders from unauthorized encryption; unfortunately, you'll need to manually designate those folders ahead of time, and, if you're like most computer users, you may not know which ones ought to be protected until after an attack.

The company has two free tools anyone can use: QuickScan (opens in new tab), which scans a PC remotely over the Internet, and the 60-Second Virus Scanner (opens in new tab), which uses similar technology but is PC-based.

Antivirus Performance

To assess how well Bitdefender protects a Windows system, we used evaluations conducted by two independent testing labs, AV-TEST in Germany and AV-Comparatives in Austria. Both subject products from about 20 leading antivirus brands to an onslaught of malware and measure how much malware each brand catches  and, more importantly, fails to catch.

Overall, Bitdefender's scanning engine was a very effective malware killer. Its AV-TEST results on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 were perfect, with 100 percent detection rates of both zero-day malware, which must be detected by behavioral analysis, and widespread malware, which can be found via signature matching. Bitdefender did have one false positive in Windows 7 testing.

Bitdefender's work with Windows 10 was impressive as well, blemished only by a 99.9-percent detection rate in one of AV-TEST's two widespread-malware rounds. The software scored 100 percent in the other three Windows 10 rounds. No other brand we reviewed matched Bitdefender's nearly perfect record on all three operating systems, although Avira came close.

Bitdefender had tougher competition in AV-Comparatives' tests, which were conducted on Windows 7. In September, Bitdefender detected 99.8 percent of the Web-based zero-days thrown at it, matched by Avira.

But it was beaten by Kaspersky and Panda's perfect scores. In October, the tables were turned  Bitdefender joined Avira and Kaspersky in finding and blocking everything thrown at it, while Panda slipped to 99.7 percent.

These four sets of results put Bitdefender in the upper echelon of antivirus brands we've reviewed, alongside Avira; Kaspersky and Panda are a bit lower.

Security and Privacy Features

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 has no parental controls, file encryption or custom firewall. But it does include a password manager and a file shredder, two features often found in more expensive products.

The password manager integrates nicely with Bitdefender's Safepay, a hardened stand-alone browser that makes online banking and shopping safer by limiting add-ons and disabling screenshots. Safepay includes a virtual keyboard for thwarting keylogging malware.

It screens Web links in emails, Web browsers and instant messages, but Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 lacks specific protection against potentially unwanted applications, such as adware or browser hijackers. Nor does it have the dedicated webcam protection found in mid- and high-range Kaspersky products, which often also include licenses for the best Mac antivirus software and the best Android antivirus apps.

MORE: Kaspersky Antivirus Review

Bitdefender's file shredder can obliterate any compromising or sensitive material, but doesn't use U.S. military standards. If your system is so gunked up with malware that it can barely be used, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 has you covered.

During installation, it puts a hidden "rescue" partition on your hard drive that can boot and clean the PC. But the rescue partition won't work with PCs that use Microsoft's Secure Boot  for those systems, you'll need to download the company's Rescue CD software and burn it to an optical disc or USB stick.

Performance and System Impact

Antivirus Plus 2016 lacks Bitdefender's PC Optimizer, which comes with the more expensive Total Security suite and can also be bought as a $60 add-on. But it does have the company's Photon performance technology, which streamlines operations during malware scans. The payoff is one of the best performance scores in the basic-security-software arena.

We installed Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 on a Windows 8.1-based Asus X555LA notebook with an Intel Core i3 processor, 6GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive containing 36GB of assorted files.

We used our custom OpenOffice benchmark test, which matches 20,000 names and addresses in a spreadsheet, to measure system performance before and after Antivirus Plus 2016 was installed. We timed how long it took to run quick and full malware scans, then ran those scans concurrently with the OpenOffice test to see how much longer it took the benchmark to complete.

The results were very impressive. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 had no passive effect on performance at all, with our OpenOffice benchmark taking 6 minutes and 53 seconds to complete its tasks  the same as before the software was installed.

Bitdefender has something few antivirus makers yet offer: a way to safeguard your system from encrypting ransomware.

It was also one of the fastest programs to scan our Asus test system. After an initial full scan that took 60 minutes and 25 seconds to examine 1,560,493 files, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 settled down to an average scan time of 25 minutes and 31 seconds, looking at 528,800 files. The other million or so files were presumed to be safe, and ignoring them helps quicken the pace.

Overall, Bitdefender's full-scan time was in the middle of the pack  significantly slower than Kaspersky Anti-Virus' full scan, which took only 3.5 minutes, but well ahead of Avast Pro AntiVirus' seemingly interminable scans of more than an hour. But Bitdefender's QuickScan was the fastest we've seen, looking at 3,390 key files in just 5 seconds.

MORE: Best Antivirus Software

Antivirus Plus 2016 completed our OpenOffice benchmark test in 7 minutes and 48 seconds during a full scan, a 13 percent slowdown from the baseline, which might not be noticeable during regular computer tasks. That puts Bitdefender into a virtual tie with Panda Antivirus Pro 2016 as having the least impact on performance during a full scan. (McAfee AntiVirus Plus slowed the system the most, with a 44 percent hit.)

Bitdefender's Quick Scan easily led the pack in least system impact, letting the OpenOffice test complete in 6:58, only 1 percent longer than the baseline. Second-place finisher Kaspersky Anti-Virus was 16 seconds behind.

Setup and Support

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016's installation process starts with a 9.3MB beachhead installer that runs a quick scan of your system. After that, the company's servers send down the full installer. The installation software has three progress bars for scanning, downloading and installing.

Like many other security programs, Antivirus Plus 2016 sets you up for automatic renewal when the subscription expires. This can be undone, but requires sending an email (opens in new tab) to Bitdefender's support staff.

Once you've created an account with Bitdefender or set it up to use your Google+, Facebook or Microsoft login credentials, you're set. It took us 5 minutes and 54 seconds to download and install Antivirus Plus 2016.

Bitdefender includes 24/7 phone, email and online tech support, which some other antivirus makers charge extra for. Bitdefender warns on its website that there could be a 10-minute wait to talk to a human.

Interface

The main screen of Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016's dark interface is dominated by a green checkmark that shows everything is protected.



It turns to yellow for noncritical items, and red when the PC is under attack.

A large icon on the main screen sends you to the Bitdefender Central website, where you can make account changes, check on your subscription and contact support personnel.



It's also where you set up Parental Advisor to keep children away from dangerous websites. But this feature stops short of full parental controls; for those, you'll need to upgrade to a more expensive package, or shell out for a $30 download.

Image 1 of 25

The main window puts a scan only one click away. You can set scans to be Aggressive, Normal or Permissive, or instead let Autopilot take care of them. Scans can be scheduled for anytime, day or night, and can be repeated daily, weekly or monthly.

Bottom Line

One of the most effective shields against dangerous and intrusive malware, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 is fast and has a very small performance penalty. It includes features that other companies charge for, such as a password manager and file shredder. Although you can't use Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2016 on XP or Vista machines, this is the best $40 you can spend on protecting a PC.
I recently had the chance to have a chat with Matt Dalio, CEO, Founder and Chief of Product at Endless, and if theres one thing Ive taken away from that talk, its that he is passionate about bringing access to the information age to the rest of the world. Endlesss newest computer, the Endless Mini, launches today, and it will lower the price of entry to home computing to be accessible to vastly more people than ever before.

The Problem

Its hard to believe that in the beginning of 2016, when the average person in Western civilization carries a smartphone in their pocket at all times, more than half the worlds population doesnt have access to a home computer. The community at Toms Hardware would probably find that harder to believe than most people; as computer enthusiasts, we tend to take for granted what these wonderful devices do for us every single day. I cant even comprehend what it would be like to not have constant access to a computer, but for 4.5 billion people, that is their reality.

One of the major reasons for the limited access to computers in emerging markets is the cost. Dalio explained that there are a number of factors that cause this, such as import taxes and low sales volume. He said computers cost more in developing nations from his observations. A home computer is an expensive purchase for people in these countries but if you can keep the price low enough so that anyone can afford one, the problem is abated.

Driving Down Costs

Dalio said it occurred to him that the average smartphone has the potential to be a desktop computer. To cut the costs down, he and his team at Endless started with more or less that level of hardware. They omitted the display, because so many people have a TV screen already, as well as the antennas for cellular data, which arent needed in a desktop, and built the Endless PC around what was left. The company then created its own operating system based on a customized Linux distribution that Dalio said is easy to pick up, even if youve never used a computer.

The first iteration of the Endless PC has been selling in Guatemala in two versions. One is a system with 32 GB of storage for $169, and the other is a 500 GB version for $229. Dalio said the original product was designed to be the best possible PC for emerging markets, regardless of price. That computer sold well, but it wasnt accessible to everyone. Endless is now ready to lower the price of entry even further with the launch of the Endless Mini.

Dalio said the Endless Mini PC is a fully functioning desktop PC priced at an incredibly low price. Although, as Dalio stated, the Endless Mini PC is a fully functioning desktop PC, it's by no means a super high-performance system such as those found on the desks of many of our readers, but it does provide everything you would need to get access to the Internet and all of its vast troves of information.

The Endless Mini features an Amlogic S805 quad core ARM Cortex A5 SoC operating at 1.5 GHz and comes in two variants. The Endless Mini 24GB has 24 GB of solid state storage and 1 GB of RAM, and the Endless Mini 32GB has 32 GB of storage and 2 GB of memory, as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Both options include HDMI and composite video output, 3.5 mm stereo and mic jack, gigabit Ethernet and three USB 2.0 ports. The systems come preloaded with the Endless operating system.

Dalio said that the Endless operating system has been designed to be used by people who dont normally use a computer. He said the interface is simple to learn and at the same time has tons of potential for robust applications because it was built on top of Linux.

Content With No Connection

The Endless OS comes pre-loaded with lots of compelling content that you can get to with or without an Internet connection. It features Wikipedia, Khan Academy and over 100 applications pre-loaded on the device that you can access offline. It even includes first aid information, which could be invaluable to someone who has to travel long distances for medical attention.

When queried about how the contents of Wikipedia could fit onto the local system, Dalio explained that 80 percent of searches on Wikipedia are for three percent of the data. Endless focused on archiving the most important information to be accessed offline. Dalio noted that there is more than three percent of Wikipedia on the device, though.

The Endless operating system also comes pre-loaded with many courses from Khan Academy. Again, the company took the approach of storing the most relevant information locally. Dalio said there is approximately 6 GB worth of Khan Academy lessons stashed on board.

As the entire world shifts online, Endless Mini will be a key catalyst in bringing the unconnected people of emerging areas into the information age. Endless Mini will provide people in remote areas of the world the opportunity to learn different languages, develop technical skill sets and build businesses. At the affordable price of $79, Endless Mini is the first product since the mobile phone to ignite technology innovation on a global scale, said Dalio. Endless Mini will be a key product in the future of this evolution and the knowledge economy, Endless will be an integral part in bringing the next five billion people online.

Latin America, Prepare

The Endless Mini will go on sale in February. Dalio said it is focusing on Latin America to start off and will expand to other markets once distribution channels, such as the agreement in Guatemala, are in place.

Endless has worked with a cellular carrier in Guatemala to distribute the Endless Mini locally, and Dalio told me that company has agreed to sell the hardware with zero profit margin. He wouldnt name the company in question, but he said that it believed in the mission of bringing home computers to its nation and is willing forgo profits for widespread distribution. Dalio noted the Endless Mini will be available with data plans that will spread the cost of the device over several months.

ENDLESS MINI 24GB ENDLESS MINI 32GB PROCESSOR Amlogic S805, Quad Core, ARM Cortex A5, 1.50 GHz, Mali-450 GPU Amlogic S805, Quad Core, ARM Cortex A5, 1.50 GHz, Mali-450 GPU OPERATING SYSTEM Endless OS Endless OS MOTHER BOARD Custom Endless Design Custom Endless Design CHIPSET Mali-450 GPU (part of SoC) Mali-450 GPU (part of SoC) I/O HDMI, Composite Video, 3.5mm stereo out plus mic HDMI, Composite Video, 3.5mm stereo out plus mic MEMORY 1 GB RAM 2 GB RAM MEMORY SLOTS None: Soldered to Board None: Soldered to Board HARD DRIVE 24 GB Solid State Storage 32 GB Solid State Storage WIFI No 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi enabled BLUETOOTH No Bluetooth 4.0 AUDIO 3.5 mm out with mic in 3.5 mm out with mic in NETWORKING RJ-45 gigabit Ethernet port RJ-45 gigabit Ethernet port KEYBOARD not included not included MOUSE not included not included SPEAKERS not included not included POWER SUPPLY 15W, 5V output 100-240v, 50/60Hz input 15W, 5V output 100-240v, 50/60Hz input PORTS 2x USB 2.0 ports (rear), 1x USB 2.0 port (front) 2x USB 2.0 ports (rear), 1x USB 2.0 port (front)

The Endless Mini is meant for emerging markets, but it is possible for you to order one online and have it delivered to North America. Its easy interface could be perfect to introduce elderly family members, for example, to the benefits of computer use.

Nearly half of the worlds population has access to personal computers and Internet access on a daily basis, and as a result, the people with that access have seen their lives flourish. Imagine what the world will be like when the rest of us are online. Thats the future that Endless is striving for.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.
Huaweis recent success in the North American market is an unlikely of a success story as can be. It's a brand with no consumer cachet here, blessed with a name that many still have trouble pronouncing (its wah-way). However, it is one of the biggest smartphone OEMs globally, hugely successful in its Chinese home market, and its presence in European markets has been growing. Its biggest achievement so far, though, was the vote of confidence Google gave Huawei by picking it to be the manufacturer of one of its two Nexus phones this year.

Back in November, Huawei announced the latest phone in its Mate series of phablets, the Mate 8. These phones are usually only sold in China, and a handful of other Asian and European markets, but flush with the reception that the 6P received, it looks like Huawei thinks that the U.S. market is ready for a Huawei-branded premium device. Todays CES announcement marks the global launch of the Mate 8 (which Huawei is optimistically dubbing the ultimate high-end smartphone), including North America.

Along with a U.S. release, the other big story of the Mate 8 is its SoC. Huawei is like the other giant on the Android OEM phone block in that it also makes its own SoCs, and the Mate 8 is powered by the new 16nm FinFET+ HiSilicon Kirin 950 chip. This is one of the first SoCs that uses ARMs powerful new Cortex-A72 microarchitecture, which is expected to be one of the best performing mobile CPUs of 2016.

Huawei was kind enough to let us get our hands on a Mate 8 before todays announcement, and in the short time weve had it, weve been able to run our full suite of performance tests on it. Right now, we are giving you a first look at the Mate 8 and also a teaser as to its performance, which (spoiler alert) is impressive to say the least.

Specifications

HUAWEI NXT-L29 HUAWEI NXT-L09 Size Height: 157.1mm; Width: 80.6mm; Depth: 7.9mm; Weight: 185g Height: 157.1mm; Width: 80.6mm; Depth: 7.9mm; Weight: 185g Colors Moonlight Silver; Space Gray; Champagne Gold; Mocha Gold Moonlight Silver; Space Gray Display 6-inch FHD 1080p (1920 x 1080) Screen, 368ppi 16.7M colors, color saturation (NTSC) 95%, High contrast 1500:1 6-inch FHD 1080p (1920 x 1080) Screen, 368ppi 16.7M colors, color saturation (NTSC) 95%, High contrast 1500:1 CPU HUAWEI Kirin 950 (64-bit,16nm FinFET+), Octa-core (4 x 2.3 GHz A72+ 4 x 1.8 GHz A53) + i5 co-processor HUAWEI Kirin 950 (64-bit,16nm FinFET+), Octa-core (4 x 2.3 GHz A72+ 4 x 1.8 GHz A53) + i5 co-processor GPU Mali-T880 MP4 Mali-T880 MP4 OS Android Marshmallow 6.0 with EMUI 4.0 Android Marshmallow 6.0 with EMUI 4.0 Memory 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM or 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM Network 4G TDD LTE: Band 38/39/40 4G FDD LTE: Band 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/12/17/18/19/20/26 4G TDD LTE: Band 38/39/40 4G FDD LTE: Band 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/12/17/18/19/20/26/28 Dual SIM Dual SIM Supported N/A GPS GPS/A-GPS/Glonass/BDS GPS/A-GPS/Glonass/BDS Connectivity Wi-Fi 2.4G/5G, a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct support BT4.2, support BLE MicroUSB (High Speed USB) Wi-Fi 2.4G/5G, a/b/g/n/ac with Wi-Fi Direct support BT4.2, support BLE MicroUSB (High Speed USB) Sensors Fingerprint Sensor, G-Sensor, Gyroscope sensor, Compass, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity sensor, Hall sensor, Barometer Fingerprint Sensor, G-Sensor, Gyroscope sensor, Compass, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity sensor, Hall sensor, Barometer NFC NFC supported NFC supported Audio Bottom-facing speakers Bottom-facing speakers Camera Main camera 16MP 1/2.8" Sony Exmor RS IMX298, 1.12 m pixels, f/2.0 with OIS (optical image stabilization), Dual-tone flash, PDAF+CAF auto focus Video recording: 1080p, 60 fps support 720P 120FPS Slo-Mo recordingFront camera 8MP, f/2.4 Photos: max 3264 x 2448 pixels Video recording: 1080p, 30 fps Main camera 16MP 1/2.8" Sony Exmor RS IMX298, 1.12 m pixels, f/2.0 with OIS (optical image stabilization), Dual-tone flash, PDAF+CAF auto focus Video recording: 1080p, 60 fps support 720P 120FPS Slo-Mo recordingFront camera 8MP, f/2.4 Photos: max 3264 x 2448 pixels Video recording: 1080p, 30 fps Battery 4,000 mAh (non-removable) 4,000 mAh (non-removable) In the box Handset; Headset; Charger; USB cable; Quick Start Guide; Safety Information Handset; Headset; Charger; USB cable; Quick Start Guide; Safety Information

The specification charts we were provided show two models of the Mate 8, and its not clear in which markets each model will be available. The model weve been playing with is the dual-SIM NXT-L29 with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. This model is optionally available with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, and it's the model on sale in China as far as we know.

Beautiful Premium All-Metal Design

Design-wise, the Mate 8 uses the unibody aluminum construction that Huawei has basically perfected. Its design language should be familiar to anyone whos seen a Nexus 6P, complete with the circular fingerprint reader. The Mate 8s screen is a lot bigger, though, at 6 inches, which is pushing the upper limits of whats considered acceptable to North American consumers. However, the Mate 8 also has super-thin bezels and an incredible screen-to-body ratio of 83%. This makes the Mate 8 shorter that the 5.7-inch 6P. When using it, it never feels like youre using a phone with such a big display.

In contrast to most current flagship smartphones, the Mate 8s screen is only 1080p, although in the end we couldnt see much difference between this display and that of all the QHD phones weve been using. The Mate 8s 368ppi clearly demonstrates that once you get about 350ppi, you dont really notice the pixels.

Huawei Continues Its Photographic Excellence

Before we get into a performance preview of the Mate 8 and Kirin, the other significant component of the Mate 8 is its camera. It uses Sonys brand-new Exmor RS IMX298 sensor (and is the only phone that does, so far), a chip that is philosophically quite different than the Google-mandated 12MP IMX377 sensor used in the Nexus 6. The 377 favors a lower MP count with a big sensor to create large (1.55 m) pixels than capture more light. The size of these pixels is large enough that Google dispensed with OIS on the 6P.

The IMX298 is more of a traditional smartphone camera sensor, smaller in size with smaller pixels, so OIS is a necessity, and found on the Mate 8, along with fast-phase detect autofocus. Although we havent been able to put the camera through its paces properly, our first impressions are positive. It's also important to note that the physical camera hardware is only half the story when it comes to final picture quality. The ISP (image sensor processor) also plays a big role, and Huawei apparently assembled a team of 300 engineers and spent $98 million to ensure that the ISP in the Kirin 950 was up to snuff. At first glance, it looks like that was money well spent.

How Does It Perform?

Very well, actually. The first result above is PCMarks Work Performance that measures overall system performance by running a series of realistic workloads. In this test, the Mate 8 and Kirin 950 outperformed every device weve tested so far, including the pre-release Snapdragon 820 in the Qualcomm mobile development platform we tested.

When you look at the individual PCMark test scores, the Mate also does very well.

The Mate 8 has a huge 4,000 mAH battery, and Huawei claims that it delivers industry-leading power efficiency offering over two days of normal usage. We believe them. Looking at the results above, the Mate 8 clearly outlasts every phone weve tested.

There is one negative aspect we want to point out now: Its Mali-T880 MP4 GPU isnt particularly powerful, especially for a premium flagship phone. This isnt due to its architecture, because like the A-72 CPUs, its brand new. It is the result of Huawei deciding to go with only a 4-core GPU in the 950. That means that despite its incredible overall system performance, the Mate 8 isnt exactly a mobile gaming powerhouse, and this does explain the choice to stick with a 1080p display.

It Comes With Marshmallow but

Lets get the good news out of the way first. The Mate 8 does run Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Unfortunately, it isnt stock Android, like on the 6P. It uses a new version of Huaweis standard E Emotion UI (EMUI), and its clear that this UI is more designed for its home market. Like many Chinese OEM OSes, it blends elements of iOS and Android, so there is no application drawer, all your program icons reside on your homescreen, and it uses its own notification system, instead of the standard Android one introduced with Lollipop.

This is the one aspect of the Mate 8 that I cant get behind, and while EMUI is by no means an unattractive UI, and is packed with some useful and intelligent features that go beyond the functionality of standard Android, I still found myself installing a third-party launcher to make it usable for me. Because we were testing a unit running pre-release software, we have encountered some bugs and issues, but it would be unfair to ding Huawei for this. Beta software isnt supposed to be perfect, so we cant pass final judgment on the Mate 8s software until weve played with the final version.

Color Us Impressed

Our initial thoughts about the Huawei Mate 8 are very positive. This phone shows that the Nexus 6P wasnt a fluke and that Huawei is capable of producing a world-class smartphone without having to partner with Google. The Mate 8 is blisteringly fast thanks to its Kirin 950 SoC, and it has excellent battery life and a great camera. Our only reservations about it so far are to do with its EMUI, but seeing as we were testing out a Chinese market model running unfinished software, were sure that Huawei will address many of the issues we have with it. Dont expect EMUI to come with an app drawer anytime soon.

Presently, we don't know the Mate 8s pricing, nor when it will be coming to North America. Hopefully, well know more soon on that front.

Update, 1/05/16, 12:15 pm PT: At todays CES press conference Huawei announced that the Mate 8 will be available globally and will be 599 for the 3 GB/32 GB model and 699 for the 4 GB/64 GB model. That works out to approximately $650 and $750, respectively.

Unfortunately, it looks like for now it isnt officially coming to North America, and there it will certainly not be sold by any carriers. However, it is fully compatible with all North American cellular bands, and we were told that you can still buy it online to use it in the U.S. and Canada. We arent sure if this means if it will be sold directly by Huawei or if youll have to go through an online retailer.
Bev Crair, the Vice President and General Manager of the Storage Group at Intel, turned the information faucet on a little more at Storage Visions today. Information about 3D XPoint has been slow to emerge since Intel and Micron first announced it in 2015, which has fueled wild speculation. In the tech world, it's the equivalent to the predictions about the new Star Wars series, and a similar number of rumors abound.

To our knowledge, this is the first known close-up image of a working 3D XPoint device. We used a Storage Visions badge to prop the drive up for lighting purposes, and the metal clip extending from the middle of the DIMM is not part of the Intel NVDIMM.

The DIMM package is nearly identical to older FBDIMMs and even features a similar raised FPGA section in the middle of the heatsink. The FPGA is employed to orchestrate the internal NVDIMM functions, much like an SSD controller.

The 3D XPoint NVDIMM utilizes the DDR4 interface to communicate directly with the CPU. Intel stated today that the current maximum capacity per 3D XPoint NVDIMM is 512 GB, and dual-socket servers can address up to 6 TB total with two CPUs. The largest DDR4 modules weigh in at a mere 128 GB apiece. To put the 6 TB per-server density server into perspective: Windows Server 2012 R2 supports only 4 TB of memory (opens in new tab).

The implications of the enhanced memory density for in-memory compute is nothing short of revolutionary. Intel also indicated that it continues to work on the NVMe Over Fabrics initiative, which will help servers blast data across the network at near-local performance.

From previous pictures of Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint, we know that the die size is likely very large, but we aren't sure of its density, which is a key consideration when calculating cost efficiency.

Intel has historically skirted defining the 3D XPoint performance specifications as well, choosing instead to leave us with generic answers such as "similar to 100x the performance of current generation NAND." That equates to roughly the performance of current DDR4 DRAM, and Intel reiterated again today that we should expect DRAM-like speeds.

The FBDIMM-like package, with its FPGA in the middle, is very interesting and allows us to gain a little further insight. Intel used FBDIMMs on one mainstream Intel chipset generation, and it also employed the use of an FPGA in tandem with memory packages. The chipset spanned enterprise systems with two, four and even eight processors, but the most famous version also reached the market via Intel's Skulltrail enthusiast-class dual-socket system.

FBDIMMs ran very hot, and the FGPA controller could reach as high as 95 degrees Celsius for double refresh products. Unfortunately, that was the maximum "within spec" rating, which hampered adoption and eventually limited the use of FBDIMMs. Any serious enthusiast with a Skulltrail system knows this all too well, and may even still have the scars as a reminder.

Intel recently acquired Altera (for $16.7 billion), a semiconductor design-house that also recently announced an FPGA-based SSD controller.

Microsoft also detailed its role for enabling NVDIMM functionality, and thus 3D XPoint, in a panel today. Microsoft has an in-house build of Server 2016 with a new file system designed specifically to address new ultra-low latency NVDIMM devices. NVDIMMs are a range of Storage Class Memory (SCM) products that utilize the memory bus and DRAM, NAND, and now 3D XPoint to provide ultra-fast storage performance.

There are three classes of NVDIMM products, as outlined here. Microsoft is focusing on providing NVDIMM-N support at first, which is also the logical form factor for 3D XPoint NVDIMMs. Microsoft is designing ReFS and NTFS to be SCM-aware and feature latency optimizations that exploit the inherent advantages of storage-class memory. A Microsoft representative stated that the new system would first release to end users as an upcoming Technical Preview build.

Intel is still holding the details of its latest technology close, but some information is beginning to trickle out as the ecosystem develops and expands. There are reports that leading-edge samples are already in the hands of some Intel/Micron partners, but Intel is incredibly vague about general availability (as usual for anything 3D XPoint related), though it is predicted to be sometime this year.
Although Lenovo already unveiled its CES product lineup for the professional Thinkpad series, today the company is showing off its new gaming gear and consumer-oriented products. In this article well talk about the gaming products, while we tackled the consumer-oriented idea products here.

The new gaming products include three peripherals, two monitors, a gaming desktop, and a gaming laptop. So, without further ado, lets get to it.

Lenovo Ideapad Y900 Gaming Laptop

The Ideapad Y900 gaming laptop is a 17 model that comes with a rather impressive spec sheet. Inside, it can be configured to carry up to a 6th gen Intel Core-i7 (Skylake) unlocked K-series mobile CPUs, 64 GB of DDR4 memory, a 512 GB PCI-Express SSD (in a RAID-0 array), a 1 TB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, and more. Standard, it comes with a GTX 980M graphics card with either 4 or 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, which powers the 17.3 Full-HD IPS display.

Using a boost key, users can overclock the CPU, memory, and graphics card for added performance, and things dont stop there. The keyboard is multi-color backlit, and it is fully programmable using Lenovo's custom software. There is also USB 3.1 Type-C support with Thunderbolt, a 5-hour battery, JBL speakers, and DisplayPort.

Pricing will start at $1,999, with availability slated for June 2016.

Lenovo Ideacentre Y900 RE

The "RE" in the Ideacentre Y900 REs name stands for Razer Edition. This system is a gaming PC built with Razers Chroma lighting effects, and it also comes bundled with a Razer BlackWidow Chroma keyboard and Mamba Tournament Edition Chroma gaming mouse.

Inside the system, users will find up to a 6th gen Intel Core i7 (Skylake) CPU, two GTX 970 graphics cards, 32 GB of DDR4 memory, 2 TB HDD and a 256 GB SSD, along with all the connectivity that youll need. The side window is transparent, and the inside comes painted too, with neat cable routing and dust filters at the front and power-supply air intake locations.

Pricing will start at $2,299, with availability also scheduled for June this summer.

Lenovo Y27g (RE) Curved Gaming Monitor

For the gaming monitors, Lenovo will be carrying two variants. The Y27g and Y27g RE are both almost identical, with the only difference being that the RE version comes with Razer Chroma RGB lighting effects.

Both monitors come with a 27 curved 1800R Full-HD VA panel and Nvidia G-Sync support. The refresh rate sits at 144 Hz with an 8 ms response time. Both monitors also have a headphone hook; flexible stands that support tilting, swivel and height adjustment; and cable routing options.

Both will be available, you guessed it, in June 2016, with pricing sitting at $549 for the standard version, and the Razer Edition with RGB lighting taking a $50 premium, bumping its MSRP up to $599.

Lenovos Gaming Peripherals & Backpack

Back in September, Lenovo showed off its lineup of gaming peripherals, including a keyboard, surround headset, and a precision gaming mouse. Today, the company is adding to that assortment with a stereo headset and simpler gaming mouse. These are the Lenovo Y Gaming Mouse and the Y Gaming Stereo Headset.

The mouse comes with a 4000 DPI sensor and communicates with your PC at 1000 Hz over USB. It has the usual left, right, and navigation buttons, as well as one DPI switcher that allows four different DPI levels. The selected DPI level will be indicated with LEDs. All around, its a simple gaming mouse that should do the job, for $39.99.

The Y Gaming Stereo headset isnt too surprising either. It comes with the Lenovo black and red color scheme and produces its sound through two 50 mm drivers. It also has a retractable microphone, and it will cost $49.99.

Lastly, Lenovo showed off its Y Gaming Armored Backpack. This bag will fit up to a 17.3 notebook (so its perfect for the Y900 notebook above) with three compartments and a hard EVA shell at the front to protect its contents. It will cost $89.99.

These three gaming accessories will be available in May 2016.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
As Tone Deaf reported yesterday, the crowdfunding campaign to finance the inaugural Legion Music Festival, which aims to replace the cancelled Soundwave 2016, has officially launched, bringing with it the festivals first round lineup.

Australias first ever fan-funded heavy music festival, will feature performances from former Soundwave 2016 acts like Devil You Known, Darkest Hour, Darkc3ll, Battlecross, Caligulas Horse, and Rick Dangerous And The Silkie Bantams, with more to come.

Each of these bands have offered their truly amazing support and are ready to get loud and sweaty on the Legion stages, wrote festival organisers in a statement, which promised fans a full lineup of more than 20 bands, including unnamed headliners, is coming soon.

Please know: We have many more set to announce and are very excited to bring you a complete line-up, including Headliners as soon as possible, this is just the start! The festival will take place in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne with club mini-fests in Adelaide and Perth.

So, 24 hours in and with 20 days to go, how is Legions Pozible campaign doing? Actually pretty well. At the time of writing, the campaign has managed to raise just over $88,000 from a mere 443 supporters. At this rate, they should hit six figures in the next 24 hours.

However, whether this will ensure the success of the festival is still up in the air. The organisers have set an ambitious target of $3 million, unveiling a detailed budget breakdown so fans know precisely where their pledges are going.

[include_post id=467790]

The festival will be fully crowd funded, with a pledge of $125 guaranteeing admission to 2016 Legion Music Fest as well as pre-sale ticket allocation for every future Legion festival (organisers are hoping to make it a five-state festival by next year).

Considering the campaign has managed to raise almost $90,000 without announcing a full lineup, it certainly bodes well for Legion, which organisers say will only go ahead if the target is met or no pledges will be processed.

The festival will be taking place over March and April, with Devil You Know drummer John Sankey, whos acted as the primary organiser behind the event, promising to put an emphasis on up-and-coming acts as well as established talent, particularly from Australia.

Legion Festival 2016

Devil You Know (USA)

Darkest Hour (USA)

Battlecross (USA)

Caligulas Horse (AUS)

Darkc3ll (AUS)

Rick Dangerous And The Silkie Bantams (AUS)

Saturday, 26th March 2016

Melbourne

Sunday, 27th March 2016

Sydney

Monday, 28th March 2016

Brisbane

Friday, 1st April 2016

Adelaide (Club mini-festival)

Saturday, 2nd April 2016

Perth (Club mini-festival)
Loving live music isnt just about attending music festivals and seeing an international artists massive arena show. Even the biggest of big-name headliners started in the trenches, on the sticky carpets and bandrooms of your local bars and pubs  which is exactly where you should be if you want to discover your new favourite band or venue. Heres our picks for this weeks best local gigs from Aussie talent  from Perth to the East Coast  and all for the price of a good meal.

POWER

Where? Red Rattler Theatre, 6 Faversham Street, Marrickville, Sydney

When? 8pm, Friday 8th Jan

Why? Having just slayed Meredith Festival mid-December following the release of their debut album Electric Glitter Boogie (out via Cool Death Records), Aussie rock n roll innovators Power will be popping by Sydney for a coupla shows. On Friday theyll be playing Red Rattler Theatre alongside Low Life and Orion, for only 10 bucks! Cmon theres no reason not to start your 2016 right.

Tickets & Info: $10, Facebook event

Society Of Beggars

Where? Cherry Bar, AC/DC Ln, Melbourne CBD

When? 8pm, Saturday 9th Jan

Why? One of Melbournes most well-loved (and fun to drink to) Alternative Rock n Roll bands Society Of Beggars return to everyones favourite second home Cherry Bar for their first show of 2016. Following on from recording a new batch of songs with renowned Melbourne producer Lindsay Gravina, the band will be debuting new material along with their recent singles Hyena and Terrible Rain. With support from Soul Psych rockers Neon Queen and rumbling rock duo Vulgar Born its a must not miss kinda night!

Tickets & Info: $13, Facebook

Make Them Suffer

Where? Rosemount Hotel, 459 Fitzgerald St, North Perth

When? 8pm, Friday 8th Jan

Why? It was a huge 2015 for Perth metal band Make Them Suffer, having released their critically acclaimed second album, Old Souls as well as hitting the road both at home and in Europe with In Hearts Wake, Thy Art Is Murder, Oceano and making appearances at festivals like Summerblast and Ghostfest. Theyre showing no signs of slowing down though, having recently announced a massive gig at the Rosemount Hotel  catch them this week before theyre off again.

Tickets & Info: $15+b/f, rosemounthotel.com.au

Terrible Truths + Sui Zhen + Harpoons

Where? The Gasometer Hotel484 Smith St, Collingwood, Melbourne

When? 7:30pm, Friday 8th Jan

Why? Some of Melbournes most exciting creatives, the crew behind Banalarama are back with the latest edition of their filmed gig series ABABCd, featuring some of Australias most interesting bands. Kicking off the 2016 will be The Harpoons, Mangelwurzel, Sui Zhen and Terrible Truths while Melbournes first lady of disco CC:DISCO! will be spinning tracks between live sets. An insane local line up for just over $12!

Tickets & Info: $12.75, Facebook event

iiah + Apollo Sons +Flying Doormat

Where? Crown & Anchor, 196 Grenfell StreetAdelaide, South Australia

When? 8pm, Friday 8th Jan

Why? Blistering post rock crew iiah are hosting a killer show this weekend alongside jazzy and soulful hip-hop collective Flying Doormat and contemporary rock five piece Apollo Sons this Friday for only $5! So what are you waiting for Adelaide folk? Probably havent even pardoned this incredibly venue since last year (urgh sorry for the Dad joke)

Tickets & Info: $5, Facebook event

Dorsal Fins

Where? Northcote Social Club, 301 High Street, Northcote, Melbourne.

When? 8pm, Friday 8th Jan

Why? Having slayed last year  playing Bigsound, Melbourne Music Week, Paradise Music Festival and having just been announced for industry scouting event The Great Escape in the UK next year, Melbouurne collective Dorsal Fins are playing a very special show this weekend to celebrate the release of their clip for Heart On The Floor. If yu havent seen these guys yet youre nuts! Go go go!

Tickets & Info: $14.50, iheardawhisper.com

Fire Night

Where? Black Bear Lodge, 322 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane

When? 8pm, Wednesday 6th Jan

Why? Its time to get to know new music event Fire Night an initiative from music industry crew DBL Team, Strictly For The Heads and Kick Push PR wanting to bring you an evening of fresh exciting new talent to ride you out though the week. The hip hop heavy line up features talents Erik Sanders, Travy P, Velcro Raptor and Gallu$ to round out the

Tickets & Info: $10-15, Facebook event
If you happened to have plans for tonight, you might want to cancel them or risk missing out on a once in a lifetime live music experience. Disclosure and Foals have announced a last-minute performance in Sydney together.

Both bands are hot on the heels of two of the biggest releases of 2015, respectively  and in Foals case, one of the best Like A Versions  and both have garnered massive acclaim as they made the rounds of the recently concluded Falls Festival.

The two will be hitting up Sydneys Tatler in Darlinghurst tonight after they wow crowds at Hordern Pavilion and the Opera House. Doors are set to open at 10pm but make sure you get there early because its liable to hit capacity very quickly.

The whole thing is first in best dressed and according to Pedestrian.tv, you can expect Foals and Disclosure to be taking the stage to play a set of whatever they happen to feel like in the moment from about 1am onwards.

Uh oh Sydney! Us & @foals are in town tonight! Afterparty for both shows at 'Tatler Sydney'. First come first served. Doors at 10pm.  Disclosure (@disclosure) January 5, 2016

We dont actually open til Friday. Ive had to call in staff from holidays to make this happen, so its really all hands on deck, Tatler co-owner Tim Clark told Pedestrian.tv. Its been a mad scramble, trying to get security and everything organised with only hours notice.

Foals & Disclosure @ Tatler, Sydney

Tuesday, 5th January 2016

Tatler, Sydney

FREE ENTRY
Here's an important story about the many challenges confronting resident of the urban core . . .Earlier this morning Kansas City activist Alonzo Washington was asked for help by a family with a special needs child who has recently had their van stolen. In a callous after X-mas move, it turns out a loan company had repo'd the van without informing the family . . .The reality here is that locals are confronted by many challenges in the crime-ridden urban core including what some call predatory lenders. Public awareness of lending terms and crime stats in these circumstances is essential.Developing . . .
"Mayor James said gun violence increased when Missouri's permit-to-purchase law was repealed in 2007, and says that "keeping guns out of criminals and those who intend to do harm, then better off."





"Mayor James says he and other city leaders would like to do more to curb illegal gun ownership in the city, but state law makes local regulation very difficult.

Followup for the ongoing blame game attempt to target Missouri Republicans with urban core problems . . . Here's the constant refrain . . .Money line . . .More important than this debate is the fact that Mayor Sly has lost credibility among the Missouri General Assembly and now seems to be attacking the legislative body who has this town's e-tax in its sights.It should be interesting to see who wins.Developing . . .
"Standard bullets need not be eliminated completely; more dangerous ammunition can be kept on reserve for escalated situations, for instance if it was determined a suspect was wearing a bullet-proof vest.





"Kansas City can lead by example, showing America how many lives can be saved if we use the technology available to us."

To which the Chief responds : "Unfortunately officers won't have time to determine if a subject has a vest on before real bullets are loaded."

A great deal of Kansas City discussion today. . . Here @ TKC we want to take a moment to note an intriguing attempt at a solution . . .This writer contends that the use of rubber bulletscurb the number of deadly police shootings . . .Here's the basics of the argument:Reax . . .All of this is something to consider for the late night as the quotient of violence in Kansas City, Missouri increases.Developing . . .
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Most Middle East stock markets tumbled on Monday in a global sell-off triggered by China, while growing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran added to the gloom.



Chinese stocks slumped by 7 per cent after weak manufacturing data, causing emerging markets in general to suffer their biggest fall in four months.



"The broad market sell-off is part of the general weakness in global equity markets," said Muhammad Shabbir, head of equity funds at Dubai-based Rasmala Investment Bank.



The lack of a catalyst that would support a market rally in the Gulf leaves the region vulnerable to volatile trade, he added. In past years, the region outperformed emerging markets because of its strong budget and current account surpluses, but most of those surpluses have now been erased by low oil prices.



"While rising geopolitical tension makes headlines and weighs on sentiment, weakness in oil and worries about Chinese demand remain the primary drivers of GCC stock markets," said Akber Khan, director of asset management at Doha's Al Rayan Investment.



Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday in response to the storming of its embassy in Tehran. The attack came after the Saudis executed a leading Shi'ite cleric, Nimr al-Nimir, on terrorism charges, infuriating predominately Shi'ite Iran.



Local investors have largely ignored geopolitical tensions in the Gulf for some years. But the latest events marked an escalation, and foreign investors in particular may become more cautious about the region.



Reflecting that caution, the Saudi riyal fell to near a 16-year low against the US dollar in the forward foreign exchange market on Monday. Meanwhile, the cost of insuring Saudi sovereign debt against default rose to multi-year highs .



Riyadh's equities benchmark faced a heavy sell-off in the last hour of trade as investors dumped stocks across the board. The index sank 2.4 per cent.



Savola, one of the few Saudi companies with a presence in Iran, fell 3.2 per cent. The food conglomerate has factories in Tehran; Iran provided 11 per cent of its revenue in the third quarter of 2015 and the company's revenues from Iran totalled 2 billion riyals ($534 million) in the first nine months of 2015, its financial statements showed.



Islamic lender Alinma retreated 3.7 per cent after rising in early trade. Health insurer Bupa Arabia, usually a favourite of foreign investors, plunged 9.6 per cent.



Petrochemical shares showed some early strength after being hit hard by higher natural gas feedstock prices in last week's 2016 state budget. But they succumbed in late trade, with Saudi Basic Industries losing 1.6 per cent.



While Bahrain also severed diplomatic ties with Iran, relations between Iran and other Gulf Arab countries may not become quite as confrontational. The UAE said it was merely downgrading diplomatic ties with Tehran and limiting the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.



But the UAE also stands to lose from greater tensions. The UAE is Iran's fourth-largest trading partner, and the International Monetary Fund has estimated the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran early this year could add 1 percentage point to the UAE's gross domestic product growth from 2016 to 2018.



Dubai, with its sophisticated trading infrastructure, could grab most of that benefit - but any benefit may now be reduced or delayed by politics.



The Dubai stock index dropped 1.6 per cent on Monday with all but two shares ending lower. Blue chip Emaar Properties fell 1.8 per cent in its fourth session of declines, while Dubai Islamic Bank lost 1.5 per cent and Emirates NBD, a stock that rarely trades, sank 1.3 per cent.



Trading volumes were thin, partly because institutional and foreign investors were still largely absent from regional markets after New Year holidays, leaving local retail investors to dominate activity even more than usual.



"Retail day traders are impulsive and are reacting to the slump in Chinese stocks," said Tamer Kamal, head of asset management at Abu Dhabi's Union National Bank.



Abu Dhabi's benchmark retreated 1.3 percent; Dana Gas , whose affiliate Crescent Petroleum has been in dispute with Iran over natural gas supply, dropped 5.8 percent and Aldar Properties lost 3.0 percent.



In Qatar, the index tumbled 2.6 percent in modest volumes. Two property developers, Ezdan Holding and Barwa Real Estate, led declines, slumping 4.1 and 3.6 percent respectively.



Cairo's main index declined 1.5 percent, erasing all of Sunday's gains in a broad sell-off. Blue-chip lender Commercial International Bank fell 2.5 per cent after surging 7.4 per cent in the previous session. Orasom Telecom , a favourite of non-Egyptian Arab investors, sank 5.6 per cent.-Reuters
Oman's biggest sovereign wealth fund, the State General Reserve Fund (SGRF), plans to cooperate with other state and private investors to establish a venture to buy into the mining industry, officials said on Tuesday.



The venture, Mining Development Oman (MDO), will have SR100 million ($260 million) of capital and establish vehicles for its investments in various locations, the SGRF's executive president Abdulsalam Al Murshidi told Reuters.



Three other state bodies, the Oman Investment Fund, Oman Oil Co, and Oman National Investments Development Co, will combine with the SGRF to take a total 60 per cent stake in MDO.



"Forty percent of the company will be offered to the public. The IPO (initial public offer) is expected by the end of quarter two," Al Murshidi said.



He said MDO would be a partial investor in mining projects, seeking partners locally, regionally, and internationally, but did not elaborate on where the projects would be located or give other details.



With its state finances strained by low oil prices, Oman is trying to involve the private sector more in major economic development projects. Last week it announced a five-year economic plan that is to make heavy use of public-private partnerships, with 52 percent of total investment to come from the private sector during the period. - Reuters
Bahrain-based Ithmaar Development Company (IDC) said it has signed up top design consultancy firm Dar Al Handasah Consultants (Shair and Partners) for its upcoming Dilmunia Gateway Bridge (DGB).



To be located on the west entrance, the bridge will connect Dilmunia island to the mainland, stated Mohammed Khalil Alsayed, the IDC chief executive after signing the deal with Bassam Shakhshir, director of operations (UAE, Bahrain and Oman) at Dar Al Handasah Consultants (Shair and Partners).



The DGB will be a unique structure compatible with the architectural theme of the Dilmunia Island, an ambitious 125-hectare man-made island being managed by IDC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ithmaar Bank, a Bahrain-based Islamic retail bank. Ithmaar Bank is also the investment manager of Dilmunia Development Fund.



It will blend well with the spirit of Dilmunia, and be visually prominent in its settings, differentiating Dilmunia from other projects, said a statement from IDC.



It will be designed at a high standard to be an aesthetically appealing landmark in Bahrain, it added.



The $1.6-billion Dilmunia Island is a mixed-use development built on a man-made island off the coast of Muharraq, with a unique health and wellness anchor including residences, hotels and leisure and shopping districts anchored around a health and wellness cluster.



We are confident that the bridge design shall ensure the objectives of aesthetics, traffic and utility crossings, while maintaining the constraints of cost effectiveness and life span durability. This, we believe, will further enhance the development's identity, remarked Alsayed.



On the deal, Shakhshir said: "We are delighted to sign the consultancy agreement; this milestone marks the commencement of our services by initiating the design process after succeeding in winning the consultancy services."



Our target is to provide IDC with a high quality service to ensure the fulfilment of their objective by developing a futuristic landmark that will stand out to be the signature identity of Dilmunia island, he added.

Founded in 1956, Dar Al Handasah is one of the leading consultancies specialising in engineering, architecture, planning, environment, project and construction management, and economics.

Its principal design head offices and technical support facilities are located in Beirut (Lebanon), Cairo (Egypt), London (UK), Pune (India) and Amman (Jordan) with a network of 40 permanent local branch offices throughout the Middle East, Africa, Central Eastern Europe, CIS and Asia.-TradeArabia News Service
Pegasus Airlines, a Turkish budget carrier, said on Tuesday it has suspended flights to and from Russia until January 13 after authorities there failed to give its crew members visas.

Russia has instituted a number of sanctions against Turkish companies and individuals after the Turkish military shot down a Russian jet in November it said had breached its airspace while on a bombing campaign in neighbouring Syria.

A spokesman for state-run carrier Turkish Airlines told Reuters it has obtained visas for crew and its flights to Russia have not been affected. - Reuters
Ramada, part of international hospitality chain Wyndham Hotel Group, will expand its operations in the Middle East with the opening of four new hotels across Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain.



The hotels include the 161-room Ramada Resort Dead Sea in Jordan; the 165-room Ramada Jeddah Corniche in Saudi Arabia, the 162-room Ramada Hotel & Suites Amwaj Island and the 140-room Ramada Manama City Centre, both located in Bahrain.



Ramada currently has more than 840 midscale and upscale properties across 60 plus countries worldwide, including 29 open and operating in the Middle East.



Wyndham Hotel Group, which presently has two properties in Manama - namely Days Hotel Manama and Ramada Bahrain - is growing its footprint in Bahrain by adding four additional hotels including Ramada Manama City Centre, Ramada Hotel & Suites Amwaj Island, Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham Al Juffair and finally the Wyndham Grand Manama, bringing the total portfolio in market to six hotels representing a total of 1,197 rooms.



The Middle East continues to see strong growth and development thanks to its rising middle class, commented Dan Ruff, Wyndham Hotel Groups president and managing director, EMEA. This is driving increased interest from developers for globally known brands like Ramada and others offered by Wyndham Hotel Group, which are well positioned to meet the emerging travel needs of consumers in the region. The Middle East is a key region of focus for Wyndham Hotel Group and to help meet growing demand, the company recently bolstered its management resources there by more than 30 per cent.



The Ramada Resort Dead Sea  now open: The Ramada Resort Dead Sea is located between the mountains of Mount Nebo and the Jordan River, along the northern edge of the Dead Sea. The only four-star, chain-affiliated hotel on the Dead Sea, the property offers guests spacious, elegantly appointed guestrooms along with easy access to white sandy beaches, two swimming pools and a spa, among other amenities. The 161-room property is a less than a one hour drive from Queen Alia International Airport and is owned by the Winter Valley Tourism Investment Company.



Ramada Jeddah Corniche  now open: Located on Corniche Street in Jeddahs downtown district, opposite both the Red Sea and King Fahds Fountainthe tallest water fountain in the worldthe three-star Ramada Jeddah Corniche offers 165 rooms including 29 suites offering panoramic city and sea views. Among its many amenities, guests can enjoy two on-site restaurantsincluding one on the hotels seventh floor offering sweeping terrace viewsa coffee lounge and a fully equipped gym complete with sauna, Jacuzzi and Moroccan bath. The hotel is owned by Al Ghunaim Hospitality Group.



Ramada Hotel & Suites Amwaj Island  opening by March 31: The four-star, Ramada Hotel & Suites Amwaj Island is located within walking distance from Amwaj Marina and the Amwaj Lagoon and will offer 162 rooms and suites, many with sea views. Dining options at the hotel will include an all-day restaurant and lobby cafe, as well as the citys first Moroccan fine dining outlet, which will be situated on a rooftop terrace offering stunning views of the Arabian Sea. Flexible meeting space will accommodate up to 175 people theatre-style, while extensive leisure facilities will include a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a spa, a swimming pool and an indoor Jacuzzi with a sauna and steam rooms. The hotel is owned by Mannai Holding, one of Bahrains largest conglomerates and a prolific hotel developer. The group also owns the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham currently under construction in the city.



Ramada Manama City Centre  opening by March 31: Located on the doorstep of the largest shopping mall in Bahrain, the four-star Ramada Manama City Centre is the perfect base for holidaymakers looking to take full advantage of this retail paradise. The shopping centre is spread across 158,000-sq-m of retail space, featuring over 340 exclusive brands, including an indoor water park, multiple cinemas and 60 dining outlets to choose from. The hotel itself is the first managed Ramada property in Bahrain and has a rooftop pool, a restaurant specialising in authentic Lebanese cuisine and 140 rooms and suitesmany of which are interconnectingideal for families. The hotel is owned by Bukhowa Investments Holding Company and is expected to generate an additional 150 jobs within the city.



All Ramada hotels in the Middle East participate in Wyndham Rewards, the loyalty programme from Wyndham Hotel Group.  TradeArabia News Service
A couple from California became the target of hundreds of bedbugs hiding underneath their mattress in one of Astor on the Park hotel's $400-a-night rooms.

Elgin Ozlen is from Long Beach, California. His girlfriend, who was with him, suffered more or less 75 bedbug bites all around her body, including in her stomach, fingers, toes and arms.

'It looked like black mud was jammed into the seam of the bed,' Ozlen recalled. I lost it. They looked like they could hurt horses. It was a colony, a breeding ground.'

As a result of such a 'disgusting' event, the couple spent hours of her New Year's Day looking for a soothing ointment instead of having fun. The incident also resulted to the couple missing the annual Radio City Music Hall Christmas show with the Rockettes. More than $1,000 worth of clothes were damaged due to the bug infestation. Among these clothing were leather boots, gloves and other items. Ozlen further revealed that the hotel has not offered him a refund as of posting time.

A hotel employee who answered the phone declined to release any comment. Furthermore, the hotel owner cannot be reached during the time. It was only the general manager who faced the couple. According to Ozlen, he was 'repulsed' when confronted with the video.

'He was trembling, covering his mouth. He was disgusted. He started apologizing and offering us a different room. I told him, "We're getting the hell out of this hotel!"'

Ozlen later on posted the video on YouTube showing the 'skin-crawling sight that greeted him when he flipped the mattress inside the Astor on the Park hotel.'

The couple was on vacation to spend the New Year as well as Ozlen's birthday which was also on Jan 1.

'It was an unforgettable nightmare. It didn't even feel real. And the fact that it was New York and my birthday made it even worse,' Ozlen revealed.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
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Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu follows up the Oscar-winning Birdman with another punitive plot, albeit a very different one. The writer-director, along with The Holes Mark L, Smith, adapts Michael Punkes novel to pile misery on top of misery on his lead again in this Jeremiah Johnson by way of Sam Peckinpah gritty western. The Revenant is an endurance test for DiCaprios hapless frontier scout, and he deserves an Oscar nomination not only for the steely determination on show but for what must have been a particularly trying shoot. Hell be in good company with Hardy serving up his best performance since Bronson.

Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) leads a party of frontiersmen seeking pelts in a wintry 1820s South Dakota. Set upon by marauding Pawnee, the survivors, led by Captain Henry (a solid Gleeson), are forced to abandon their boat and trudge inland. When Glass is mauled by a bear, Henry, fearing hauling the barely conscious guide across a mountain will slow them down, elects malcontent Fitzgerald (Hardy), the naive Bridger (a terrific Poulter) and Glass dutiful son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) to watch over him. But Fitzgerald murders Hawk and, thinking Glass is good as dead, forces Bridger to accompany him home. But Glass isnt dead

The Revenants two best sequences arrive early. The incredible opening attack on the partys camp has Inarritus playful camera acting as relay, shifting from one characters perspective moments before he dies before moving on to his killer, staying with him until hes on the wrong end of a musket/hatchet/arrow before moving on again. The bear attack is simply astounding and a feat in special effects. While it never tops the shock value of these two breath-taking action scenes Inarritu does ensure that were with an impressive DiCaprio through every strained crawl and every moan through gritted teeth.

The Revenant first appears to be just a survival B-movie but theres more going on. While Inarritu puts DiCaprio through the wringer the age-old battle of Nature vs Civilisation rages, exploring how humanity holds up in an inhuman world. To survive, Glass must be reborn as an animal (he actually rises from a grave) and with his open sores, unruly, snot-splattered beards, and matted, greasy hair, he looks more animal than man. He promises to stay beside Hawks body but the howl of an unseen wolf convinces him to move on  codes of honour and morals have no place here. He must close a wound in his throat (Rambo III-like) and sleep out a particularly frosty night inside the remains of a horse (Tauntaun-like). He watches impassively as wolves take down a buffalo calf. He catches a fish and doesnt wait to cook it before chowing down. But the hero must balance the animal and the man; unlike Hardys villain, who clings steadfast to his survival of the fittest, Him Or Me mantra, Glass rediscovers his humanity with a heroic act later. The Revenant is meatier than it lets on.

But Innarritu doesnt have all his way. With his hero isolated, and so hampered by a lack of opportunity for exposition to fill in some backstory via dialogue, Inarritu leans on dreamy Malickian flashbacks to Glass Native American wife (Grace Dove) to flesh Glass out. These moments are pretty but remove one from the moment  reminders of whats driving him on when no reminder is needed.

But Inarritu, DiCaprio, Hardy and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (ensuring the wintry landscape is beautiful yet unforgiving and dangerous) should be in and about the awards.
Who says that Daniel O'Donnell is just for the mammies out there?

An 18-year-old fan from Plymouth in England has gone semi-viral in the last day after a report in his local newspaper described him as 'distraught' that Wee Daniel wouldn't be playing his hometown in 2016. O'Donnell is touring the UK this year, but Plymouth is not on the list.

The Plymouth Herald report that David Marks from St. Budeaux has been a 'superfan' of the Donegal crooner since he was 14, after first hearing him through his dad. They also quote him as saying it would "ruin his life" if he couldn't see him in 2016 and that the nearest tour stop-off to his home, Bristol, was too far to travel.

You know the ending that this story needs: a helicopter journey followed by an emotional meet & greet with lots of special edition merchandise followed by a song dedication. Make it happen, Daniel.
Anyone with a functioning pair of ears will be aware of what a timeless song Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman' is.

The song has been covered many times over the years, and now the latest act to take it on is Dublin's own Villagers, aka Conor O'Brien and co.

The band release their new album 'Where Have You Been All My Life?' this Friday, which is a collection of reworked songs from their three studio albums to date.

Their cover of 'Wichita Lineman' is also on the tracklisting, but you can hear it below for a taster:
It was the show that gave 50 Shades star Jamie Dornan his big break as the chilling serial killer and family man Paul Spector. Now he will return to this character for one last final season of The Fall alongside his co-star Gillian Anderson, who plays Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson.

It was touch and go there for a while over whether the show would return for another series given that the last we saw of Spector he was lying in his own blood beside Gibson after being shot. Many also speculated that Dornan's new found success in Hollywood would deter him from returning to the show while Anderson has also been busy with the new series of The X Files.

However, just over one year after season two has finished, the pair have returned to filming in Belfast, and have a few more familiar faces from the Irish acting world joining them including Ruth Bradley, who you may have seen in Rebellion last Sunday as well as in Channel 4's Humans, Aisling Bea (Trollied), and Aidan McArdle (Mr Selfridge, Clean Break). While Krister Henriksson (Wallander), and Richard Coyle (Crossbones) will also be joining the cast.

Series regulars Colin Morgan, John Lynch, Valene Kane, Stuart Graham, Bronagh Waugh, Aisling Franciosi will also be returning.

The Falls writer and director Allan Cubitt said; "Ive been on a very exciting journey over the last five years with Stella Gibson and Paul Spector  the central characters of The Fall  and Im thrilled.

"Gillian and Jamie have lived and breathed those characters during that time and Ive been incredibly well-served as both writer and director by their stellar performances. Obviously I dont want to give anything away about how the third series will end but I can say that I am looking forward to working with both Gillian and Jamie again in the near future!"

No word yet on a transmission date but safe to say it will be mid-to-late 2016 until we get to see the 'sexy serial killer' on our screens again.

What? That's what they call him.
By Yilma Bekele: This issue of Eritrea has been with us for more than I can remember. In fact it is fair to say like most of you I ...
Gregory Chauzal and Team (Netherlands Institute of International Relations  Clingendael)

Although it might seem that the terrorist attacks in Paris are a direct response to the increased involvement of France in the fight against the Islamic State, a high degree of coordination between attackers and the symbolically selected venue and time indicate that the event had been planned long in advance and that the target had not been chosen randomly. Answering the question of why terrorists struck exactly in the French capital has a myriad of potential causes and justifications that can be found both on the side of the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, as well as in the country of the Gallic rooster.

Over the past year, the Islamic State has, unfortunately, repeatedly demonstrated via the terrorist attacks carried out directly in the West or on the soil of the allied coalition against the Islamic State that its ambitions do not end with territorial gains and the ideological indoctrination of its people. In addition to the recent attacks in Paris, the shooting down of the Russian civil aircraft in the Sinai, the recent attacks in Ankara and Beirut, on the beach of the Tunisian coastal resort and others fall into the category of activities meant to spread fear and antipathy towards the Muslims (and thus cause excessive and sometimes almost hysterical response of the West). In all these cases, the Islamic State claimed responsibility while the terrorists who were directly in charge of its implementation belonged to the local group swearing loyalty to the caliphate.

France, on the other hand, has been neglecting the alarming situation in some suburbs (banlieues) of French cities, which are mainly inhabited by the descendants of Muslim immigrants, who are exposed to worse socio-economic conditions and they find themselves socially excluded within their communities. These material factors then in turn create conditions for their radicalization, which France is also accountable for due to its long-term disproportionately low attention to the problem.

The measures adopted by French politicians in response to the Paris tragedy of Friday, 13 November 2015, are unfortunately only of repressive nature, aiming to detain and punish the perpetrators of the attacks. In addition to the necessary repression, the ideal strategy in the fight against terrorism is, however, an increased emphasis on preventive measures, thanks to which further radicalization of potential terrorists can be avoided. This requires a comprehensive, long-term and multi-disciplinary approach as well as appropriate policy actions. The advice to French lawmakers, and not only to them, on how best to put an end to the disasters like that of Friday, 13 November, is best defined by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: Missiles may kill terrorists, but I am convinced that good governance will kill terrorism.

(The study can be downloaded here: http://www.clingendael.nl/sites/default/files/Policy_Brief_Clingendael_ICCT-Paris111315Analysis_and_Policy_Options_November%202015_final.pdf)
The European Union has strongly condemned the series of Saudi Arabias executions that took place at the beginning of this year. The kingdom executed 47 men convicted of terror-related offenses, carrying weapons and political activism, including the prominent Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, critical of the Saudi ruling class. Brussels warned that his death has the potential of enflaming further the sectarian tensions that already bring so much damage to the entire region, with dangerous consequences.

On 2 January, EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini expressed the EUs strong opposition to the use of capital punishment in all circumstances and especially in mass executions. The specific case of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr raises serious concerns regarding freedom of expression and the respect of basic civil and political rights, to be safeguarded in all cases, also in the framework of the fight against terrorism, Ms Mogherini commented. Both the United Nations and the United States have supported the Unions stance, warning that the kingdom risked exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced.

Amnesty International commented that Riyadh was using Nimrs execution to settle political scores. On Sunday (3 January), Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran. Nimr al-Nimr was a dissident Shiite cleric who had participated in anti-government demonstrations in eastern Saudi Arabia where the Shiites had suffered from marginalization. He had criticized Saudi rulers in his sermons as well as Iran for supporting the regime in Syria and exporting terrorism. He was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to death in 2014. Other 46 men that were executed with him included those involved in al-Quada attacks in 2003 and 2004.
News Sep 30th, 2022 at 16:55

Last year's winner of the Travolution Award for Best Technology Innovation believes it can help travel firms generate better return on investment in...
Program helps travelers around the world plan ecologically responsible trips



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - January 3rd, 2016 - ST. LUCIA (January 3, 2015) - Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain, two of St. Lucia's most picturesque resorts, have been recognized by the TripAdvisor GreenLeaders program, which helps travelers around the world plan ecologically responsible trips by identifying hotels engaging in environmentally-friendly practices.



TripAdvisor GreenLeaders properties have to meet a set of environmental standards developed for TripAdvisor by a leading environmental consulting firm, with input from expert partners. The more green practices a hotel has in place, the higher its GreenLeader level, which is shown on the property's listing on the TripAdvisor site. Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain, which are owned by husband-and-wife team Nick and Karolin Troubetzkoy and offer majestic views of the twin peaks of the Piton mountains, earned gold and platinum designations, respectively.



Karolin Troubetzkoy, who serves as Executive Director, said she was honored by the elevated status: "My husband Nick, who designed and built both resorts, is known for going to extraordinary lengths to conserve the natural environment, and everything we have done reflects his philosophy. Our dedicated teams always go the extra mile to ensure our resorts protect our environment."



"TripAdvisor GreenLeaders are leading the hospitality industry in making efforts to improve their environmental footprint," said Jenny Rushmore, director of responsible travel at TripAdvisor. "We greatly applaud these hotels and B&Bs, and are pleased to share their eco-friendly practices with our online community of more than 260 million travelers who visit the site each month."



The TripAdvisor GreenLeaders program was developed in consultation with the United Nations Environment Programme, the U.S. Green Building Council, ENERGY STAR, and the International Center for Responsible Tourism Canada, among other leading environmental organizations. For more information, visit www.tripadvisor.com/GreenLeaders.

For more information about Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain, call 1 800 223-1108, or visit www.ansechastanet.com and www.jademountain.com.

ENDS

###
Leila Coe Joins Day-Long Effort to Dispel Myths of Travel Agents



(TRAVPR.COM) USA - January 4th, 2016 - (Kissimmee, FL, December 22, 2015)  Leila Coe, CTA, a travel agent in central Florida, (www.GoYourOwnWayTravel.com) announces her participation in the quarterly Travel Agent Awareness campaign, an effort by the travel agent industry to promote its value to the public. This is the second such online event organized by the travel agent community, and takes place on Monday, February 1, 2016. The theme of this event is Ask an Agent, and travelers are encouraged to tweet their questions using the hashtag #AskAnAgent.

The Travel Agent Awareness campaign is the brainchild of Coe, who established the group as a way to open the lines of communication between the public and the travel agent industry. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about travel agents; that we are a dying breed, that online booking engines are better or cheaper. Coe goes on to explain, The truth is that travel professionals know the ins and outs of the destinations and can help you out in difficult situations  the immediate response by travel agents in the wake of the tragic attacks in Paris highlights the ability of a travel professional to make travel safer and more convenient for clients.

Coe is a certified travel agent with over 12 years of experience specializing in European, culinary/wine and complicated international vacations. Coe believes the campaign is an important step to demonstrate to travelers why travel agents are still relevant in todays world of online booking services. Coe believes, experienced, professional travel agents are the best way to book a vacation. We listen to our clients to match them up with what they are looking for instead of being an algorithm producing random information and quotes. I enjoy working with my clients to get to know their interests and expectations, and then I use that knowledge to handpick and create the perfect itinerary for them. I am a travel agent to make dreams come true and I am open to any questions relating to my profession.

For more information, find Coes travel agency online at www.GoYourOwnWayTravel.com or call (407) 504-6768. To ask your travel-related questions, follow Coe on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/goyourownwaytravel or on Twitter @GoOwnWayTravel and use the hashtag #AskAnAgent. The Travel Agent Awareness organizations hashtag is #TravelAgentAwareness.

###
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Tribune News Service

Bathinda, January 4

Continuing with their annual joint exercise in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism environment, which, over the years, has added substantial experience to the rank and file of both the Indian and French Armies, a contingent of the French Army personnel will arrive in Mahajan Field Firing Range in Rajasthan for a joint training exercise to be held this month.

Exercise Shakti-2016 reflects the vibrancy of the continued Indo-France strategic partnership.

Shakti-2016 is the third edition in the series of bilateral exercises under this banner. The joint exercise would focus on counterterrorism operations in the backdrop of semi-urban terrain under the United Nations mandate.

To achieve inter-operability in joint real life operations in future, troops from French (I) Motorised Brigade and Indian Armys Infantry Unit will strive to acquaint themselves with the arms and equipment, command and control system and operational tactics of each other.

The joint training will also focus on high degree of physical fitness, tactical drills, techniques and procedure.

A comprehensive training programme for a period of two weeks has been worked out for achieving the objective.

During the exercise, participants will engage in a variety of missions from joint planning, cordon and search operations, search and rescue, joint tactical drills and basics of special arms skills.

The exercise will be conducted at Mahajan Field Firing Range and on its completion, the personnel of the two Armies will strive to learn from each other on terrorist solutions.

The exercise will be conducted in two phases, namely combat conducting and tactical training and validation exercise.

The size and scope of this combined exercise is unparalleled and it will be characterised by regular, realistic, academic and natural exchange.

The broadened and unprecedented scope of the exercise stands as a testament to the well-netted people-to-people and military-to-military ties between France and India.
Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, his top aide (and ex porn distributor and relative) Benzion Suky, and Pinto's US organization sued Ilana Dayan and Israel's Channel 2 News in a New York court last year for defamation. Today a US court threw the lawsuit out and castigated Pinto and Suky for filing it.

Above: Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto

Sefardi Haredi Kabbalist Loses US Defamation Lawsuit

Shmarya Rosenberg  FailedMessiah.com

It's been a bad day for Sefardi haredi kabbalist Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto.

Pinto, his top aide (and relative) Benzion Suky, and Pinto's US organization sued Ilana Dayan and Israel's Channel 2 News in a New York court last year for defamation.

Dayan exposed much of Pinto's darker side in an investigative report. Pinto, Suky, et al, claimed enough people living in the US could see the report online for a US lawsuit to be justified.

After dragging out the proceedings as long as they could, today Pinto, Suky  an ex porn distributor et al had their case tossed out of court. They were also ordered to pay Dayan and Channel 2's legal fees and were barred from bringing the case to any other US court.

You can read about in Hebrew on Globes here.

Pinto also lost his Israel Supreme Court appeal today of his one-year prison sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice. But he still doesn't have to report to prison for more than a month, plenty of time for Pinto to disappear or cook up some other escape plan.

Related Posts:

All Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto Posts.
Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, January 5

Global research university, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has agreed to set up a Super Fab Lab in the coastal Andhra city of Visakhapatnam.

Fab Labs are set up as part of outreach component of MITs Centre for Bits and Atoms (CBA)  an extension of its research into digital fabrication and computation. It is a technical prototype platform to encourage innovation and invention among budding entrepreneurs.

The Fab Lab offers a wide array of digital fabrication. The work on the project would start in a couple of months, the officials said. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is keen on getting the project as it would help boost the brand image of Visakhapatnam as an emerging investment destination.

An EoI in this regard was signed by Andhra University, AP Innovation Society and MIT FABLAB.
Tribune News Service

Mohali, January 4

The CIA wing of the Mohali police claims to have busted a notorious gang of international drug smugglers, having a connection with Pakistan, with the arrest of three of its most wanted members and seizure of foreign-made firearms, including a Pakistani automatic double-magazine Sten gun, nearly 190 live cartridges, 31 mobile phones, a Pakistani SIM card and a Swift car from the Kharar area here.

The suspects, identified as Gurjant Singh, alias Bholu (26), Sandip Singh (25) and Jatinder Singh, alias Jindi (34), from Ludhiana have been involved in smuggling of heroin and other drugs from Pakistan on a large scale and in cases of murder, robbery, dacoity and forcibly taking away vehicles, said the police.

Mohali Senior Superintendent of Police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said so far there was nothing to suggest that they had any connection with terrorist activities.

The recovered firearms included the Sten gun (.9 mm), two pistols (.9 mm), two other pistols (.30 bore) and an airgun.

Other gang members, including Jaipal Singh from Ferozepur, Tirath Singh from Dhilwan village, Faridkot, and Rachpal Singh, alias Dana, from Tarn Taran, are yet to be arrested.

Giving details, the SSP said the gang was active in Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana. The gang members were involved in large-scale smuggling of heroin from Pakistan. The gang has ties with a Pakistani smuggler, Imtiaz, and some members, including Bholu, had visited Bangkok on fake passports, said the SSP.

He said in 2010, the gang had smuggled 1.24 quintals of heroin from Pakistan. Later, the gang had smuggled 1.44 quintals of heroin and firearms, including the Sten gun, five pistols and cartridges, from Pakistan.

We are investigating where they used to sell such a huge quantity of the drug, said the SSP.

He said apart from allegedly murdering one of their accomplices, Charath Singh, in March 2015 at Khemkaran, Tarn Taran, and another gangster, Raju Nakodaria, in 2010 in Ludhiana, the suspects were involved in several attempt-to-murder cases. They were also accused of opening fire at police parties.

During their interrogation, Bholu confessed that he, along with Dana, was arrested by the Amritsar police after 20 kg of heroin was recovered from their possession in March 2010. The court had pronounced a 20-year jail term to both of them in the case, but they fled from custody with the help of the Shera group in January 2013 when they were taken to the Ferozepur Civil Hospital for treatment.

Another suspect, Sandip Singh, had jumped parole in 2014. He had been lodged in jail for 12 years in connection with a drug case.

In 2014, members of the gang had opened fire on a Rajasthan Police party after being trapped near the Hindu Mall Kot border, but managed to escape. The suspects had also opened fire when our CIA team was chasing them near Kharar, said Bhullar.

Inspector Gurcharan Singh, in charge of the CIA team, said they got information on December 29 that Bholu and Sandeep were going to loot some ATM on the Landran road using a Swift car. When we challenged them, they opened fire at us, but we managed to overpower and arrest them, said Inspector Gurcharan Singh.

The police claimed that the gangsters were staying at Sunny Enclave in Kharar for the past around six months.

On September 1 last year, we got information regarding the movement of the gangsters near Sunny Enclave, but they managed to flee before our teams reached the spot, said SSP GS Bhullar.
Tribune News Service

Kurukshetra, January 4

Two Kurukshetra women have been selected as the 100 Women Achievers of India, an initiative taken by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Santosh Dahiya, president of the womens wing of the Sarv Jat Sarv Khap Mahapanchayat, and Monika Sharma, social activist, have been selected in the category of Women in Public Life and will receive the awards from President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhawan on January 22.

The ministry, in collaboration with Facebook, had launched the 100 Women Initiative with the aim to recognise and acknowledge women who have been making a difference to society. The selection had to be made through public nominations and voting via social media.

Santosh Dahiya (45), who is an associate professor of physical education in Kurukshetra University, said, has been working in the field of womens empowerment, female foeticide, honour killing, domestic violence and purdha pratha for more than six years.

The khap leader said, The condition of women is still deplorable in villages and we need to work harder. I will continue to play my role.

Monika Sharma (28), member of Green Earth, a non-government organisation, said, Getting selected for the award was a great achievement. I dedicate my achievement to those who struggle and become a role model for society.

Rohtak: Prof Renu Chugh of the department of mathematics at Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) here has been selected among the top 100 women achievers of the country. She has been selected by under the education category.

Talking to The Tribune here today, Prof Chugh said she was overwhelmed at her selection and felt indebted to her family, mentors and students for their unflinching support.
Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, January 5

Taking a serious note of the slackness in administration and his government taking a beating over the absence of ministers, Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPS) and bureaucrats from the Secretariat, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh has directed them to ensure a minimum of 15 days presence in the office here and focus on reviewing the progress of the schemes in their ministries.

The issue of very poor availability of both ministers as well as bureaucrats here in the state secretariat, especially when the chief minister is either away to Delhi or touring the state, has become a major cause of criticism. The government has come in for flak on this account as the secretariat on most occasions wears a deserted look and government work suffers.

Every minister has been asked to apprise the Chief Ministers Office about their tour programmes, a practice which is already in place.

Sources revealed that with the issue being brought to his notice time and again, Virbhadra has been forced to issue these directives. As per the directive, he has desired that ministers and the CPSes should ensure their presence in their offices in the secretariat on every Monday and Tuesday and for a total of at least 15 days in a month, said sources.

Of late, ministers have been busy with the panchayat elections. Otherwise, barring Irrigation and Public Health Minister Vidya Stokes, Health and Family Welfare Minister Kaul Singh Thakur and occasional presence of Transport Minister GS Bali and Forest Minister Thakur Singh Bharmouri, others are not present in the secretariat for days together.

The ministers have also been asked to hold monthly review meetings of their portfolios so that the progress of the ongoing works can be done and hurdles if any can be removed. The ministers have also been asked to hold press conference once in a month on rotation basis so that the achievements and work of the Congress regime during the last three years can be highlighted.

The Chief Minister is also unhappy with the failure of officials in pursuing the projects pending with the Central ministries. As such he wants that the ministers should evince keen interest so that funds can be raised from various agencies. Despite there being no dearth of funds under various central schemes, the delay and non-submission of detailed project reports (DPR) has resulted in Himachal not gaining much from these schemes as compared to some other states.

Chief Secretary P Mitra on the directions of the Chief M has already asked the bureaucrats to devote maximum time in office so that the public does not suffer on account of their continued absence. The presence of the bureaucrats in the secretariat is very poor as they are on tours for days together, especially to Delhi.
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 4

The Supreme Court today extended the status quo order exempting Air-India (A-I) from operating flights to Shimla.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur gave the relief to A-I which has come to the SC challenging December 7, 2015, directive of the Himachal Pradesh High Court for starting flights from the Jubbarhatti Airport, Shimla, on a trial basis. The HC had passed the order on a PIL.

The Bench also issued notice to the Centre and the state government and the PIL petitioner in the HC, seeking their response to Air-Indias plea by February 16, the next date of hearing. Arguing for the airlines, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar pleaded that Delhi-Shimla flights were uneconomical.

Before granting the relief, the Bench grilled the airlines on its losses, pointing out that private airlines were prospering. Who should be held responsible for Air-Indias losses, it asked.

Pointing out that more than Rs 100 crore had been spent on the construction of the airport in Shimla, the Bench said the airlines should not refuse to operate flights citing problems such as lack of the refuelling facility.

The Solicitor General pleaded that there were daily flights to Dharamsala and Kullu, but the Delhi-Shimla flight would not get more than 15 passengers. Even Jet Airways had refused to operate Delhi-Shimla flights, he contended. Air-India was willing to operate Shimla flights if the government was ready to cover its losses.

Nevertheless, there was a proposal to start Chandigarh-Shimla flights, he said.

The Division Bench of the HC comprising Chief Justice Mansoor Ahmad Mir and Justice Tarlok Singh had passed the order on a PIL pleading for resumption of flights to Shimla which remained suspended since September 2012.
Our Correspondent

Hamirpur, January 5

The political scene has hot up in Hamirpur. Despite the BJP asking rebels to withdraw their papers, they have decided to contest the elections.

Sources said the rebels were even offered better positions in the party, but they refused to back out.

The BJP had denied support to its sitting MC president Deep Kumar, who then fielded his candidates from 11 wards of the MC.

In ward one, the contest is tough for the Congress and the BJP.

In ward two, the contest is triangular, with the BJP making way for the Congress. Deep Kumar is considered a heavyweight, but chances of Congress-supported candidate Amit Thakurs victory are bright as per sources.

The rift between sitting ward member of the MC Ved Prakash and sitting president of the MC Deep Kumar over development has come to the fore.

In ward three, four rebels seem to have made things difficult for the BJP-supported candidate, Anil Soni. In ward four, it is going to be a keen contest with BJPs Monica Handa BJP having a face-off with Reeta Khanna.

In ward five, the contest is between Joginer Balla and Rajesh Chaudhary, the husband of a sitting councillor.

The infighting within the BJP may prove beneficial for Independents and the Congress.
Deepika Padukone has evolved as an actor over the years and 2015 was the best year for her career. Not only did she mark critical acclaim but also commercial success. Its just not her movies but also other endeavours that made her the well-sorted actress of todays generation.

The new queen

Deepika definitely has been accepted as the new queen of Bollywood. While we talk about her film Piku, she simply stole the show. The father-daughter chemistry with Amitabh Bachchan aka Bhaskor Banerjee was lauded by all. After Piku, her happy-go-lucky character in Tamasha as Tara with Ranbir Kapoor was also appreciated well. Deepika has been taking different kind of scripts and has showcased her versatility as a performer. The actress stole everyones heart as Mastani in her recently released film Bajirao Mastani. From an independent woman, to a care-free girl to a warrior princess, she absolute charmed us all.

Fashion first

While Deepika has not been openly called a fashionista in B-Town, but every bit of her presence is no less. She has launched her own clothing line All About You - From Deepika Padukone in collaboration with Myntra. With launching the clothing line, she shared her impeccable style statement with tens of thousands of her followers. Her recent appearances in the promotional events have been the talk of the town. From donning rugged denim to draping in traditional sarees, Deepika looks extremely glamorous in whatever she picks.

Dark secrets

While Deepika was extremely bullied for revealing her darkest secret, many sympathised with her. Deepika revealed that she was a victim of depression. While she was smiling for the world as every eyeball was on her, she was constantly going through a rough storm from within. Deepika came up in Barkha Dutts show, where she spoke about her journey, the support she received from friends and family and how she overcame it. She also started her foundation called Live Laugh Love on the World Mental Health Day. The foundation aims to help people deal with depression.

Westward ho

While Deepika has proved her calibre in Bollywood, its time for her to swim in deeper ocean. Taking a high jump in her career, Deepika signed a Hollywood flick with Vin Diesel. While her picture with Vin Diesel on her social media account with XXX franchise logo behind, fuelled speculations of the actor working in Xander Cage Returns as the leading lady. Although speculation was high, her Piku co-star Irrfan Khan, who has already made a mark in Hollywood, confirmed it by congratulating her openly.
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, January 4

As five terrorists, in army fatigues, stormed the Air Force base in Pathankot, the police today carried out search at shops near railway station where fabric and shoes of army uniform are sold.

Gurpreet Singh, Station House Officer of the Kotwali police station, said no one had been caught for illegally selling Army fatigues. Sources said four persons were rounded up and taken to the Kotwali police station. However, they were let off following a warning.

Paramraj Singh Umranangal, Commissioner of Police, said: So far, there has been no report of anyone selling Army uniform illegally. Further, the police have been directed to nab anyone found violating the law.

Meanwhile, the police continued round-the-clock nakas in the city. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Narinder Bhargav carried out a surprise visit across the city early morning to check security arrangements.
Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Pathankot, January 4

The terrorists who attacked the air base may have sneaked into Pathankot either from Pakistan via the Bamyal sector or from the Jammu and Kashmir side in two batches on the intervening night of December 30 and 31, almost 24 hours before they were first reportedly seen by SP Salwinder Singh on January 1. Earlier, it was believed that the terrorists came on January 1.

They seemed to have spent the night in the forest area along the Ravi river where local handlers, probably drug smugglers, helped them in exchange of a consignment. The location of the SPs phone, which the terrorists snatched, pointed towards a forest area on January 1 and inside the Air Force Station on January 2.

Efforts are on to identify the group of handlers.

While the BSF officials in both Punjab and Jammu sector remain in denial mode on the breach of border, Army and police investigators insist the terrorists crossed the border. BSF officials maintain the terrorists could have come from Kathua through Narot Jaimal Singh. This road which passes through the forest area has negligible traffic.

The identity of the terrorists, their exact number and the route adopted would only be cleared by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), said sources.
A group of Israeli Jews stopped a Greek Aegean Airlines plane from flying from Athens to Tel Aviv Sunday after two Israeli-Arabs boarded the plane and the Israeli Jews feared they were terrorists.

Israeli Jews Fears of Terrorism Disrupt Aegean Air Flight In Athens

Shmarya Rosenberg  FailedMessiah.com

A group of Israeli Jews stopped a Greek Aegean Airlines plane from flying from Athens to Tel Aviv Sunday after two Israeli-Arabs boarded the plane, Maariv reported based on a report by Israel Radio.

Some of the Israeli Jews feared the Israeli-Arabs were terrorists and demanded they be removed from the plane.

The Aegean Air crew did not see any reason to suspect the two Israeli-Arabs of being anything other than regular passengers and refused to remove them, but it did delay the flight to have the passengers documents rechecked by security.

After a delay of more than an hour, that additional security check was completed and the plane should have departed for Tel Aviv  but it didnt because many of the Israeli Jews stood up in their seats and refused to sit down until the two Palestinians were removed from the plane.

Because the plane is not allowed to take off when any passenger is standing, it sat on the tarmac.

After another significant delay, the airports closing time was rapidly approaching. To end the standoff while it was still possible to take off, Aegean Air offered to compensate the two Israeli-Arabs if they would agree to disembark and spend the night a a hotel, all expenses paid by Aegean Air. The two Israeli-Arabs agreed and disembarked.

But then the Jewish passengers demanded to inspect the Israeli-Arabs luggage, which was still on board.

Aegean Air refused.

The Israeli Jews remained adamant and insisted they must inspect the Arab-Israelis luggage before the plane could leave.

The exasperated pilot told the Israeli Jews they could choose to disembark or they could choose sit down and allow the plane to take off. The choice was the Israeli Jews and the cost of disembarking would be theirs, as well, because neither Aegean Air did not offer the Israeli Jews compensation for disembarking or paid hotel rooms.

The Israeli Jews sat down, and the plane flew to Tel Aviv.
Anirudh Gupta

Ferozepur, January 4

A local BJP leader is in the dock in a cash-for-job scandal. Complaints have been filed by certain victims who claimed to have paid large amounts of money for getting recruited into the police force.

According to these jobless youths who have submitted complaints to the police, Patras Soni, who was the president of the district BJP Minority Morcha, had even allegedly provided them police uniforms and bogus joining letters which carried the forged signatures of the DGP, Punjab Police.

Sources in the police confirmed that the suspect BJP leader has been undergoing interrogation in the CIA Staff headquarters for the past two days. However, no case has been registered in this connection so far.

Major Singh, a resident of Warring village in Tarn Taran, alleged that he had paid Rs 7 lakh to Soni through a person named Bhola for the recruitment of his son Ranjit Singh last year.

Soni had promised to get my son into the police using his political connections. But despite taking the money, he has not fulfilled his commitment, said Major, who works as a salesman in Markfed.

Ironically, Soni provided us two sets of police uniform for which he charged another Rs 3,000 per set, alleged Major. He said he had already submitted a complaint to the police last Thursday.

Another victim, Raghbeer Singh belonging to Wadala village in Amritsar, said that he had paid Rs 3 lakh for a police job. Raghbeer said that he has been following the matter up with Soni, but never got any satisfactory reply from him. Soni has been evading me of late, he said.

Raghbeer claimed that he was given a fake recruitment letter by Soni (a copy of which is with The Tribune) which even carried a belt number and date of joining, besides the forged signatures of the DGP.

Sources said that there were several other such cases, including some girls, who have been taken for a ride by Soni and his associates.

In August last year, a person named Mukha, a resident of Hakewala village near here, had also accused Soni of taking Rs 1.21 lakh from him to get his nephew recruited into the police.

Demanding stringent action against the suspect, two-time BJP MLA from Ferozepur Sukhpal Singh Nannu said that many black sheep with criminal background have gained back-door entry into the district BJP unit.

The police are tightlipped in the cash-for-job case. Hardyal Singh Mann, SSP, admitted that the police have received several complaints. We are conducting a thorough probe, he said.

Another police official admitted that Soni has been detained for interrogation, but has not been formally arrested till now. Sources said that the police had even raided his house, but whether they found any evidence or not is unclear.

Meanwhile, there is contradiction over the status of Soni being in the party. State vice-president Mohan Lal Sethi claimed that he had been shown the door several months ago due to his shady activities. District general secretary Surinder Singh Bagge-Ke Pippal said that he had no information about Soni being shunted out of the party.

State BJP chief Kamal Sharma said that Soni was not in the party anymore. Sharma said that he has asked the police to conduct a fair enquiry into the case and bring the guilty to book.
Our Correspondent

Fazilka, January 4

A local court has rejected the anticipatory bail application of Shiv Lal Doda, the main accused in Bhim Tank murder case of Abohar.

In view of the seriousness of the case, Additional Session Judge Jatinder Walia pronounced the decision today. She did not listen to any arguments. She had spoken to the witnesses on December 26.

Liquor baron Doda has been named as a conspirator in the brutal murder of Tank at Dodas farmhouse on December 11, 2015. Tanks friend Gurjant Singh Janta was also seriously injured as his limbs were also chopped off. He is undergoing treatment at an Amritsar hospital.

Since then Doda has been evading arrest and applied for an anticipatory bail in Fazilka session court on December 22. Defense counsel Rahil Birla said Doda would now approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court for anticipatory bail.

The police have already issued a look-out circular against former SAD halqa in charge Shiv Lal Doda and alerted airport authorities. Opposition party Congress has been accusing the Punjab Police of going soft on Doda under pressure from the ruling SAD government.
San Francisco, January 4

A 68-year-old Sikh man has been stabbed to death in California's Fresno city on January 1, prompting police to launch a hate crime probe into the city's first homicide.

Gurcharan Singh Gill, an employee at local liquor store at Shields Express in West Shields Avenue was at work when he was stabbed to death during broad daylight, Lieutenant Mindy Casto said.

While investigations are still on-going, local community members feel Gill was attacked due to his identity and skin colour, Casto said.

When officers of Fresno Police Department arrived at the scene they found an elderly man lying in the shop. Emergency medical team tried to provide first-aid but it was determined that Gill had already died, Fresno Bee reported.

The motive and cause of death are not known yet. His death marked the city's first homicide of 2016, police said.

On December 28, another elderly Sikh man was brutally assaulted by two persons in Fresno. No arrests have been made in either cases.

The police have appealed to the local people to report if they find any leads to the incident.  PTI
GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 4

Former Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) activist Baaj Singh was today released from the Amritsar Central jail. Another former militant Hardeep Singh will be released officially on January 7.

The state government has okayed their release on the recommendation of the jail authorities. Both figured in the list of Sikh activist Surat Singh, who had been on an indefinite fast demanding release of Sikh prisoners.

Jail Superintendent RK Sharma said: It was their good conduct during the jail term which qualified their release. Baaj Singh was released today. The orders to release Hardeep Singh have been received, but he is out on parole for 14 days. He will return on January 7 and after completing the formalities, he too will be released.

Baaj Singh (62) left the jail with his family members. His elder son Gursharan Singh is a granthi (priest), younger one is studying and daughter is married.

Baaj Singh said he was happy to reunite with his family. He had joined the terrorist group after the Operation Bluestar. The attack on the Golden Temple had a drastic impact on me and I chose to revolt. But after spending over two decades in jail, I felt like having missed the best moments of my life. But I am happy that I will live the remaining part of my life with my family with no burden on my mind. I have agricultural land sufficient enough to support my family, he said.

Baaj Singh, a native of Bhullar village in Lopoke, was caught in 1993 and again in 1997. He was sentenced under TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act) and in a murder and arms case registered in 1993.

The court had absolved him of TADA charges but convicted him in a murder and arms case. He was awarded life imprisonment.

His sentence ended in 2007. Since then he had been languishing in various jails at Ropar, Faridkot and Amritsar. He was in Amritsar jail since 2001. Hardeep Singh who belongs to Chuselewal village in Tarn Taran, had been in jail for 18 years. He too was relieved of TADA charges, but was imprisoned for life in 1997 in a case of murder. He was 27 when he was arrested for the murder that took place in 1991. He got married while on bail in 2001. He has two sons.
San Fransisco, January 4

A 68-year-old Sikh man has been stabbed to death in California's Fresno city on January 1, prompting the police to launch a hate crime probe into the city's first homicide.

Gurcharan Singh Gill, an employee at local liquor store at Shields Express in West Shields Avenue, was at work when he was stabbed to death during broad daylight, Lieutenant Mindy Casto said.

He said: While investigations are still on, local community members feel Gill was attacked due to his identity and skin colour.

When officers of the Fresno Police Department arrived at the scene, they reportedly found an elderly man lying in the shop. Emergency medical team tried to provide first-aid but it was determined that Gill had already died, Fresno Bee reported.

The motive and cause of death are not known yet. His death marked the city's first homicide of 2016, the police said.

On December 28, another elderly Sikh man was assaulted by two persons in Fresno. No arrests have been made in either cases.

The police have appealed to the local people to report if they find any leads to the incident.  PTI
Jalalabad, January 5

A small bomb exploded near the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday, authorities said, after a series of attacks on Indian installations in the region.

The blast, which happened the morning after a gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in a northern Afghan city, was some 200 metres from the consulate in Jalalabad, an Indian diplomatic source said.

The source and Afghan authorities said no one had been injured.

The explosion also follows a bloody weekend assault on an air base in India near the Pakistan border.

But Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for India's ministry of external affairs, said the Jalalabad consulate "was not the target".

The area also houses the consulates for Pakistan and Iran.

Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar province's governor, said authorities were unsure what the target was but a police convoy had been passing at the time.

"The explosives were placed in a garbage can," he added.

The attack was not immediately claimed. Indian interests have been targeted twice since Saturday in spectacular assaults: an attack on its consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, and a raid by Islamist insurgents on an air force base in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

The spike in violence came roughly a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise peacemaking visit to Pakistan following a whirlwind tour of Kabul.

India has been a key supporter of Kabul's post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan.

The Taliban have also stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan, including a series of assaults in Kabul over the weekend, underscoring a worsening security situation.

The volatile province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, also faces an emerging threat from loyalists of the Islamic State group, which is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan, challenging the Taliban on their own turf.  AFP
Kabul/New Delhi, January 5

An explosion took place today 400 metres away from the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, two days after the country's mission was attacked by terrorists in Mazar-e-Sharif.

However, official sources in New Delhi said the reports suggested that the mission was not the target of the blast.

Further details about the explosion were awaited, they said.

"The Indian Consulate was not the target," a source said dismissing reports that the explosion was targeted at the Indian mission.

"Pakistan Consul General's house in Jalalabad was closer to the blast site than the Indian mission which was 400 metres away," the source said.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end last night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight earlier, the remaining were neutralised by the night.

A group of terrorists had attacked the Consulate on Sunday night with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces. PTI
Washington, January 4

Democratic party presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has been heckled at a campaign rally by a Republican lawmaker who asked her questions about her husband former US president Bill Clinton's alleged sexual impropriety. The heckler, later identified as Republican State lawmaker Katherine Prudhomme O'Brien, has for years followed the former first lady, peppering her with questions about allegations of past sexual misconduct by Bill.

Clinton, 68, who is aiming at becoming the first-ever woman president of the US and is so far leading the Democratic Party's race, described the repeated disruption in her speech as very rude.

You are very rude and I'm not never ever going to call on you, Clinton said as O'Brien was repeatedly shouting at the former First Lady and the Secretary of State.

O'Brien told reporters that she was trying to ask Clinton about her husband's sexual impropriety decades ago. "I asked her how in the world she can say that Juanita Broderick and Kathleen Wiley are lying when she has no idea who Juanita Broderick is, she said.

"She told me this summer she doesn't know who she is and doesn't want to know who she is. How can she access that they are lying, which she told someone last month?" O'Brien said.  PTI
Aden, January 5

Three senior southern Yemeni officials survived a suicide car bomb attack on their convoy in Aden and a subsequent gun battle that killed three of their guards on Tuesday, a government spokesman and security sources said.

The incident highlights the security chaos in the port city, the temporary seat of Yemen's embattled government, as its loyalists seek to wrest the capital Sanaa from the Iran-allied Houthi movement with support from a Saudi-led coalition.

"A suicide bomber in a car detonated as the convoy of the governors of Aden and Lahj provinces along with the Aden security director passed through the area of Inma," Nizar Anwar, a government spokesman said.

Three soldiers were killed in the exchange of fire that followed the attack, security sources said, before the assailants retreated into the surrounding desert.

Aidaroos al-Zubairi was appointed governor of Aden after his predecessor was killed in a car bomb attack on December 6 claimed by Islamic State, the latest attack by the new Yemen branch of the militant group against government targets.

Islamic State' has stepped up operations since the outbreak of civil war in Yemen, emerging as a forceful rival to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the main militant group in the country in recent years.

Security officials have launched a crackdown on suspected militants, imposing a curfew and arresting at least 70 suspects overnight, according to security sources.

The mostly Gulf Arab alliance intervened in Yemen's civil war on March 26 to support the government.

Alliance and anti-Houthi forced seized Aden from the Houthis over the summer but have yet to impose their writ on the city, where militants and other gunmen have a prominent presence.

Meanwhile, Yemeni security forces have arrested a local Al-Qaeda leader during a sweep targeting jihadists in the southern city of Aden, security officials said on Tuesday.

The capture of Mohammed al-Lahji, the al Qaeda chief in the city's Tawahi district, along with two of his bodyguards sparked a gunfight overnight in which a policeman was wounded, they said.

The government imposed a night-time curfew in Aden for one month after clashes on Sunday blamed on jihadists killed at least 22 people, including 10 members of the security forces.

An official at the Aden governor's office said that "homes in Tawahi and Mualla districts are being searched one by one to hunt down terrorists."

Life came to a near halt in Aden as the curfew took effect with shops closed and streets empty, residents and security officials said.

Pro-government forces trained by a Saudi-led coalition supporting President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi set up checkpoints across the city, they added.

Sunday's clashes erupted when forces loyal to Hadi came up against resistance while trying to secure the Aden port, security sources said.

Pro-Hadi forces eventually managed to take control of the facility after hours of fighting.

Aden, declared by the government to be the temporary capital, has seen a growing jihadist presence with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, long active in Yemen, and the Islamic State group apparently vying for influence.

The extremists are occupying government buildings and are frequently seen patrolling several districts of the city.

"We will work on forcing the armed groups out of government buildings. We will cleanse all neighbourhoods from terrorists" Aden police chief General Shallal Ali Shayae told reporters late on Monday.

The city was rocked by months of fighting last year between pro-government forces and Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 before expanding south.

Loyalists have regained control of Aden and four other southern provinces since July, but the rebels still hold Sanaa and have besieged the third city of Taez for months.

Peace talks held in Switzerland last month ended without any breakthrough after a ceasefire aimed at calming tensions was widely violated.  Agencies
Deandre Charles' DNA may have been on Chabad Rabbi Joseph Raksin's right sleeve. But will that at this point limited and seemingly weak DNA evidence along with a seemingly shaky ID be enough to convict him?

Less than a month ago, a grand jury indicted 15-year-old Deandre Charles for the 2014 murder of Chabad Rabbi Joseph Raksin. But that indictment came after a long lull in the case caused, I'm told, by what appears to be the shaky nature of some of the physical evidence.

A new report by CBS4 News in Miami appears to confirm this without explicitly stating it:

Most of the more than 600 pages of discovery focused on physical evidence  including the autopsy, DNA tests and fingerprints. Most of the testing cleared many friends of 15-year-old murder suspect Deandre Charles. A witness identified Charles as one of two young men who tried to rob, and then shot and killed Rabbi Raksin, who was on his way to synagogue in Northeast Miami-Dade nearly a year and a half ago. The 58-year-old witness told investigators, I heard a man say, Help! Help! Two time. Help. He added, When I opened the front door I saw two guys running, going up NE 7th Place.One of them turn and look back. He says he saw his face and his bright eyes. That is the same witness who drew the rudimentary picture of the suspect, which State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle displayed during a news conference about Charles arrest. (The murder) was mean, cold. He didnt have any money on him so he shot and killed him. Just as sad as that, said Fernandez Rundle in December. Prosecutors also plan to present DNA evidence in their case against Charles. After testing several other suspects supposedly part of his group of friends, Charles was the only one who could not be excluded from a DNA sample from the Rabbis right sleeve. The autopsy shows Raksin was shot on the right side of his body.

The report is unclear, but there is a big difference between a DNA match and not being able to exclude a match. It's kind of like saying, "we know that fingerprint can't match these five guys, but it might match the sixth." The problem is, that print  or, in this case DNA  could match a dozen or a hundred other people, maybe more.

CBS4 continues:

DNA may also link Charles to parts of the murder weapon. According to the forensics report, a mixture of DNA profiles was obtained from the swabbing of the magazine extension and follower. The DNA profile obtained from DeAndre Charles is included as a possible contributor to the profile obtained in the mixture.

Again, note the wording: "possible contributor to the profile obtained in the mixture." This is not, at least at this point, solid DNA evidence and no matter what they say, police have not released any evidence that solidly puts Charles at the scene. All they really appear to have is a shaky ID of many who saw the murderer at a distance and who drew a picture that loosely resembles Charles  and likely resembles dozens or even hundreds of other young Black males, as well.

Charles cooperated with police during the 16 month investigation and voluntarily gave DNA sample. Police did not move to arrest Charles after that sample was read, and prosecutors did not move to indict him. It was only after political pressure mounted that an indictment and arrest happened.

In interviews with police, Charles said he was home all day with his siblings [on the day of the shooting]. He reiterated he did not ever leave his residence on the date in question that he had no knowledge of the death of Joseph Raksin," and Charles' family maintains his innocence.

A police dog found a .45 caliber handgun in a dresser inside the Charles family home.

However, there was no DNA on the bullet casings found at the site of Raksin's murder and there appears to be nothing to link the gun to the crime. And for all we know, there may not even be anything to link it to Deandre Charles, either.

The State Attorney reportedly said phone records would also play a role in the case but none of those records have been released.

Does all this mean Charles is innocent? I don't know. There seems to be enough related evidence against him to get a conviction.

But if CBS4's reporting is correct, the case against Deandre Charles is weaker than police made it appear on the day of his arrest. And that could led to an acquittal down the line or to a conviction many people will dispute for years.

Related Posts:

All Rabbi Joseph Raksin Posts.
Source: EIA

The price of on-highway diesel fuel and regular gasoline dropped slightly in the last week of 2015, capping off a year marked by falling energy prices, according to recent Energy Department numbers.

The average price of a gallon of on-highway diesel fuel dropped 2.4 cents from the previous week, settling at $2.211. The price ended the year 92.6 cents cheaper than for the same week in 2014.

Prices were down across the U.S., with the largest decrease in prices coming to the Rocky Mountain region at 3.6 cents. The smallest decrease in prices was a miniscule 0.3-cent decrease on the West Coast.

The average price of regular gasoline was essentially flat for the week with a 0.6-cent drop to $2.028 per gallon. That price is 18.6 cents cheaper than in the last week of 2014.

Prices were down in most areas, except for the West Coast where gas prices increased by 3.3 cents. The area that saw the largest decrease in prices was the Central Atlantic at 1.9 cents.

The price of crude oil was down on Jan. 4, after an up-and-down day of trading due to a possible conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, according to a MarketWatch report.

Market instability was expected by some oil analysts to start 2016 as tensions increased between two of the most influential countries in OPEC after Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran.

Big test Monday: Saudi/Iran hostilities, plenty of big money shorts, and influx of 2016 money sets up possible temporary rally for oil.  Tom Kloza (@TomKloza) January 3, 2016

Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric, which sparked outrage in the predominantly Shiite population of Iran. Despite the tensions, oil prices are expected to remain low-- barring an actual war between the two countries.
On Saturday, longtime guide and angler Larry Clark will be in town to share as many secrets as he can about fishing the upper Illinois River when its not in my yard or in my house, he said.

The fly-fishing instructor and owner of On The Fly guide service near Tahlequah is one of many riverside residents flooded out by the Christmas-weekend deluge in the Illinois River drainage. Thats not stopping him from being a featured speaker at the Oklahoma Flyfishers Sixth Annual Fly Tying Extravaganza Saturday at the Creek County Fairgrounds in Sapulpa, however.

He lost a gazebo and an outbuilding with lawn-care equipment, and water was 5 feet deep inside his home located on a high bank along an oxbow between Eagle Bluff and Arrowhead, he said.

Theyre just gone, period, he said of the gazebo and storage shed.

Before he evacuated with a U-Haul trailer filled with his most valuable items, he tied a rope to another 10-by-10-foot outbuilding that holds his boating gear and extra paddles.

It was moved, but the rope saved it, he said.

As a river guide, he watches the rivers flow religiously, but even he was caught off-guard by the Christmas flood.

I didnt expect it to get that deep. I got about 4 more feet than I planned, he said. I was flooded in 2011, but this time it was higher, and it came with force, a lot of force. It was very powerful.

Sometimes paradise fights back.

The deeper water meant he lost some flies and fly-tying materials, and his home suffered structural damage. He stayed at a hotel a few nights but now is back on his property, sleeping in a travel trailer on loan from a friend.

Ive had lots of help, he said. Fortunately I know a lot of people and a lot have come to help me dig out of this mess.

Ive got my best fly rods and gear and my drift boat so Im good, right?

During Saturdays talk he will focus on the river the way its supposed to be  within its own banks.

He has been guiding along the river 15 years and has more than 30 years time fly fishing the area on foot, in kayaks, rafts and, most recently, by drift boat.

Saturday Im probably going to talk mostly, more or less, about popping bugs  thats kind of my thing lately, he said. Its amazing how many species you can catch on popping bugs, and a lot of people dont realize that. So Ill talk about a lot of things, but Ill lean toward poppers as a main topic.

The Upper Illinois is prime fly-fishing territory and offers smallmouth, largemouth and Kentucky spotted bass, crappies, bluegills and even catfish and redhorse suckers.

A catfish, especially in low water in August, theyll roll on a popping bug or a grasshopper, Clark said.

Hes also ready to talk  at any time  about the Upper Illinois River in general.

After the flooding, springtime will unveil a new body of water for fishing, he said.

Every high-water event changes the river, he said. The sandbars move, old dead-falls and root balls wash away to be replaced by new ones in different locations, new holes form and new riffles are left behind.

Its always interesting to see and explore whats changed, he said. It will be really interesting this time after the water was so high.

Clark said the question most anglers ask is when the Illinois is best for fishing.

My personal saying is the best time is whenever you can get away from work, he said. Regardless of whats going on you just gotta get out there and then you can adjust to whatever the environment is doing to you at the time.

As long as its not flowing through his living room, that is.

The Fly Tying Extravaganza is 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Creek County Fairgrounds in Sapulpa. It features a variety of fly tiers from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas and Missouri, all willing to share some of their secrets. Prize raffles and award-winning barbecue also are part of the family-friendly fun.

Clark presents his program at 1 p.m. Dominic Zametto, fly fishing guide and owner of Two Rivers Fly Shop in Norfork, Arkansas, will present Targeting Big Fish on the Norfork at 10 a.m.

The fairgrounds are located just off the Turner Turnpike at the Kellyville exit in Sapulpa, on Route 66.

For information, contact Ray Yee at 918-808-3208 or see oklahomaflyfishers.org.
Tulsa Public Schools released the final draft of its five-year plan Monday.

The plan, titled Destination Excellence, sets big-picture goals for 2016-20 and is scheduled to go before the school board for approval at a Jan. 19 meeting.

If given the go-ahead, the next step is to operationalize the plan, Superintendent Deborah Gist said.

This is the kind of plan that tells us what direction were going in as a district, Gist said. It starts to set a tone for an expectation for what we want to see in Tulsa for our schools.

The first draft was a high-level overview containing the districts beliefs and core values, but lacked many details.

A second version, released in November, started adding more detail to the ideas outlined in the plan.

Most of the changes from the second to final draft basically involve wording.

I think all the engagement we had leading up to the development of the draft meant that by the time we had something we were sharing we had a pretty good sense of what the public was interested in, Gist said.

More hands-on work and student involvement in critical thinking ranked high in the feedback the district received from the community.

You see that kind of work reflected here in this document, she said. When we start to operationalize this, what that means is well get really specific about what exactly is going to happen next year, when its going to happen and who is going to be responsible and what kind of outcomes we expect to see.

A key element in the plan is the belief that the entire Tulsa Public Schools community must be learners, contributors and designers for students to be successful.

Part of that belief means having the proper social and emotional supports in place in the district. One example is the new Office of Student and School Supports, which is designed to help improve the culture within the districts schools as well as build students who will be a productive members of the community, Gist said.

Theres also an emphasis on innovation at the school and district level, including efforts such as the recent Kickstart campaign, a program that awards grants for teachers to bring technology to classrooms.

The plan also looks at how to best use technology investments from past bond efforts in the area of blended, or personalized, learning.

When our teachers have tools like technology and we are supporting them in using that technology well, they can better personalize learning for each individual student, Gist said.

She acknowledged concern about state budget shortfalls, but said those worries wont stop the district from implementing its vision for the next five years.

However, Gist said the state budget situation could have huge implications on teacher retention, which is already a concern statewide and in the district.

We really made a decision as a community that this plan will focus on teachers, and that Tulsa Public Schools will be the district that teachers will want to be a part of because they will know their voice matters and they will have the opportunity to be innovative and create and make decisions based on whats best for their students, Gist said.
9:16 a.m., Jan. 5, 2016--Michelle Rodgers, associate dean of the University of Delawares College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and director of UD Cooperative Extension, has received two national Extension honors.

Rodgers was named chair of the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) and elected as a trustee on the National 4-H Council.

Rodgers said her position as ECOP chair is a major responsibility and that she looks forward to representing a diverse group of leaders with different opinions on Extension decisions made on a national scale.

Im very cognizant of those who may think differently than I and I want to reflect on all the interests of Extension directors from across the country, said Rodgers. Its a good challenge for any leader of a group to reflect the diversity of the thoughts and opinions of the group but also to bring some consensus and decision making to move forward on the items.

The executive committee has set forth many national goals for Cooperative Extension for the coming year, among them figuring out best practices for Extension programming in urban areas, focusing on innovation, and professional development.

Officials also are looking at the core values for Cooperative Extension on a national scale.

Rodgers said that providing a framework for a national Extension system is a challenge because each state is staffed and funded differently.

A topic I talked about recently in Washington, D.C., was pesticide safety education. In Delaware we have no one individual assigned to pesticide safety education, whereas Texas has eight or nine people, Rodgers said. Extension is staffed from a statewide perspective but when we talk about doing things nationally, what does that look like and how can we speak as a national system when were still based in a state, funded in part by state dollars, and have expectations from our state legislators? What are the common things around the national focus that we can agree on and work with?

Rodgers said that an example of a successful national program came about last year when Extension developed common training and curriculum for agents across the country with regard to farm risk management education.

In our state, Laurie Wolinski and Dan Severson were the key leaders. They attended national trainings and then provided education to producers here in our state in combination with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA). All states used the same evaluation instrument and we were able to compile data and tell a wonderful story about the impact that Extension made nationally as a result of the effort across the states, Rodgers said.

We have the capability to work locally but on a national scale and that really helps to show the impact of our national system and why people should continue to invest and fund and support Cooperative Extension, Rodgers added. Its more than a state system; its really bringing our collective pieces together on key issues at a national level.

National 4-H Council

As a trustee on the National 4-H Council, Rodgers will have a role in providing leadership for fund development, marketing and promotion for 4-H nationally.

Were getting ready to launch a national marketing campaign across the country about 4-H and, again, instead of each state having to do their own individual marketing, were working with professional partners, Rodgers said. Were getting ready to launch a national marketing campaign with some national spokespersons this spring. About 10 people are lined up, great people who are 4-H alums and who will speak to that.

Rodgers is an alumna and a product of the 4-H program and her parents met in 4-H.

I wouldnt be here if my parents hadnt met in 4-H, and 4-H was a major factor in my career choice, said Rodgers, who got her first job working with a family and consumer science educator who had been her mentor while in 4-H.

I have 35 years of work in Cooperative Extension as a direct result of having been a 4-Her and having been opened up to the career opportunities through 4-H. I also think it had a lot to do with my success in my college years in terms of my abilities to organize, make presentations and to work with others. I think it had a major impact on my capabilities to be a good scholar because I had skill sets that I had learned in 4-H.

Rodgers said she thinks 4-H is one of the best youth-serving organizations in the country, with great adult mentorship for young people and important life skill development, and singled out all that Delaware 4-H has to offer.

Im very proud that Delaware has a wonderful menu of ways to be involved in 4-H. We have in-school, after-school, community clubs, we have camps, we have self determined projects that you can do -- theres many ways that you can be a 4-Her in this state depending on what works and what your interests are, she said.

As to the future, Rodgers said that, much like institutions of higher education are reaching out to first generation college students, she would like to try and reach more first generation 4-Hers.

Im a product of the program, but what about the kids who havent had the opportunity to be a product of the program? How do we reach out to the first generation of 4-Hers who may or may not have had exposure to 4-H? I think theres a great opportunity for us to expand our program by focusing on the diversity of young people who are first generation 4-Hers. And I think we do some of this, but I also think we could do more, said Rodgers.

Article by Adam Thomas
11:44 a.m., Jan. 5, 2016--During the University of Delawares Winter Session, Residence Life and Housing, the Office of Service Learning and the Religious and Spiritual Life Caucus are hosting the program Serving Better Together.

This program is taking place for a second year after winning a Bright Initiative Award through the Division of Student Life the previous year.

Recognizing the diversity of worldviews and religious identities that exist on campus, this initiative seeks to bring together participants from across diverse religious and non-religious backgrounds to engage with one another through dialogue and community service, a program representative said.

Service opportunities are focused on the theme of housing security and homelessness.

Over the course of Winter Session, undergraduate students will have the opportunity to create relationships and learn from one another across lines of difference, the representative said. Through these relationships, they will learn more about diverse religious and non-religious worldviews, cultivate respect for one another and work together on a common goal.

There will be a number of ways that students can participate. Starting this week, students will be able to attend an interfaith Shabbat service and dinner at Hillel (RSVP at the Facebook events site) and on Saturday, Jan. 9, they can participate in a daylong workshop facilitated by Interfaith Youth Core, a non-profit based in Chicago focused on fostering interfaith cooperation on college campuses across the country.

This workshop will provide the foundation to explore the idea of religious diversity and interfaith cooperation, learn from one another, and develop ways to foster interfaith cooperation at the University of Delaware.

Other opportunities will include weekly local service opportunities, the chance to experience diverse faith traditions such as Friday prayers at the Islamic Society of Delaware, and participation in a Labyrinth walk at the Newark United Methodist Church on Main Street, along with an overnight trip to Vineland, New Jersey, to work with Habitat for Humanity.

The series of events will end with a dinner to reflect on the experience and plan an interfaith initiative on campus for the spring semester.

Students who are interested in learning more about getting connected to these opportunities can sign up at this website. There will be a wide variety of ways to participate, and students can participate in as many or as few of the opportunities as they would like, however space is limited. For questions, contact Joe Pritchett at jepritch@udel.edu.
Intercity+ train 744 Lviv - Kyiv stopped because of emergency at Rudnya-Pochaevskaya station as a result of adverse low temperatures conditions on the power system of the train on Monday at 7.32.

The state-owned Ukrzaliznytsya rail operator reports.

"Today at 7.32 Intercity + train 744 Lviv - Kyiv serviced by Tarpan, made an emergency stop. The train halt occurred due to technical reasons, namely because of low temperature impact on the power system of the train," a statement said.

At 11.05 the passengers were transferred to a Hyundai high-speed train at Shepetivka station, which arrived from Kyiv to resolve the situation.
Last week, several Ukrainian power companies were hit by a powerful cyberattack that could damage them.

Robert Lipovsky, a senior malware researcher at Bratislava-based security company ESET, said this to Reuters.

"While Prykarpattyaoblenergo was the only Ukraine electric firm that reported an outage, similar malware was found in the networks of at least two other utilities," Lipovsky said but declined to name them or elaborate.

December 23, 2015, the Prykarpattyaoblenergo western Ukraine power company reported an outage, saying the area affected included regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk. The Security Service of Ukraine responded by blaming Russia while the Ukraines Energy Ministry set up a commission to investigate the matter.

Researchers with computer security firms Trend Micro and iSight Partners said ESET's assessment that the attackers sought to infect other utilities appeared credible, shedding new light on evidence that this is the first power outage proven to have been caused by a cyber attack. Experts have warned for years, with growing urgency, that electric utilities are vulnerable to cyber attacks that could cut power.

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Ukraine will supply meat and dairy products to Moldova as 35 Ukrainian companies that make products of animal origin have received permits for exports.

Agrarian Policy and Food Minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Pavlenko posted this on Facebook.

"Thirty-five Ukrainian companies. Nineteen diary producers, eleven producers of meat products, three manufacturers of fish products, and two companies that produce eggs and products made of eggs have received the permits," he wrote.

Oleksiy Pavlenko noted that the permits, issued by the National Food Safety Agency of the Republic of Moldova, had once again confirmed that the Ukrainian products met the international quality standards.

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Southern Kherson regions Henichesk town authorities cant tell how long will the town have the additional volume of Ukrainian natural gas that is necessary for the good life in winter. Supply has started flowing on January 4 from the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Deputy head of Henichesk district administration Olekii Syshchenko told Ukrinform on Tuesday.

"I do not know how long this gas will be delivered to Henichesk. I can not comment on this. The issue of its supply has been resolved at the level of the cabinet of ministers of Ukraine," said Syshchenko.

As a background note, the Arbatska Spit located in Henichesk ditrict of the Kherson region has the natural gas producing well near the village of Strilkove. This gas was also supplied by pipeline to Crimea from the Soviet times, where it was accumulated in the Crimean underground storage facility from there it was supplied to the town of Henichesk. However, the new Crimean government, installed by Russia after its annexation, halted the supply of gas from the peninsula to Henichesk in 2015.
New Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko has stated that deployment of the UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas could be one of the forms of UN participation in the de-escalation of the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

This is reported by the Ukrayinska Pravda (Ukrainian Truth) online newspaper.

"We are ready to discuss the mandate and other aspects of such an operation. In order to analyze the situation on the ground we invite the assessment mission of the UN Secretariat to visit Ukraine," Yelchenko said during the meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon while presenting the credentials to him on Monday.

According to the Ukrainian diplomat, the establishment of the UN mission in support of the implementation of the Minsk Agreements in Ukraine could be another possible area for cooperation. Yelchenko noted that this mission could be engaged in the coordination of a land mine clearance operation in the east of Ukraine due to the UN's huge experience in that area.

The parties also discussed the Ukrainian agenda in the UN Security Council.

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First Vice-Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament Andriy Parubiy believes that the early elections will not be held in the country in the near future.

He said this on the air of Ukraines Channel 5.

According to him, the early elections will be a key scheme to destabilize the situation in the country. Parubiy also recalled that presidential, parliamentary, and local elections had been already held in Ukraine within a short period of time.

First Vice-Speaker believes that the reform process will be simply stopped in case of a new election campaign.

"The political parties will start to think about the rankings and next elections rather than about voting for sometimes unpopular, but very important decisions... At this stage, we have to stop at least for a while to stabilize the situation," the First Vice-Speaker said.

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The citizens of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have arranged simultaneous rallies of solidarity near the diplomatic missions of Ukraine.

The rally participants in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Kaunas were holding the banners reading "Do not forget about Ukraine", "Putin hands off Ukraine", "Stop Putin" and others, Radio Liberty reports.

"We understand that the Minsk Agreements have no effect. The war in Ukraine continues and the world forgets about it, shifting to the conflict in Syria. That is why we conduct the international campaign of solidarity with Ukraine," Vilnius rally organizer Mindaugas Sidaravicius said.

The participants laid flowers and lit candles in memory of the victims of the war in eastern Ukraine.

The organizers of the international campaign were the youth patriotic organizations of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine which cooperate in the Alliance of Baltic-Black Sea Nations.

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| By Patricia Fanning

The CURE Scholars Program of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and its promise for West Baltimore families is being showcased by WYPR-FM.

The Universitys role in encouraging middle school youngsters to become physicians, cancer researchers, and other health workers through the innovative program is the focus of an audio story that aired Dec. 24 and continues to be available online.

Seeing, Really Seeing, Urban Youth, by reporter Fraser Smith, describes the opportunities being offered to 40 CURE Scholars from three public schools in Baltimore through a partnership of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center, and UMB.

UMB CURE is a new pipeline initiative that prepares children through hands-on workshops and lab experiences, and mentorship. The program addresses two major issues  race- and income-based cancer disparities  as well as diversity in the cancer health workforce. The students who began the process of matching with mentors at the launch are the first class of children to enter UMB CURE, and the youngest ever to participate in the NCIs Continuing Umbrella for Research Experiences (CURE) national program.

The WYPR story takes listeners back to the launch event on Oct. 10, 2015, during which U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore thanked the NCI and UMB for paying attention to young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Baltimore and helping them to meet high aspirations. The NCI was represented by Sanya A. Springfield, PhD, director of the NCIs Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, which established the CURE nationwide initiative.

Cummings, a 1976 alumnus of the Francis King Carey School of Law at UMB, said the urban challenge is to have "a new vision." He directly thanked UMB President Jay A. Perman, MD, for his role in UMB CURE.

In the piece, Perman recalls interacting with a Baltimore boy who talked about his future even though, in reality, difficulties were likely. He said urban youngsters face numerous obstacles and his job as president is to remove those obstacles one by one.

The story includes interviews with Karin Soden, the parent of one of the CURE Scholars, Katelyn Paige, and with a teacher at the sixth-graders school, Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School. He is Maryland Carey Law alum Kirk Crawley, JD '88, who is a member of the CURE Scholars advisory board.

Other participating schools are Southwest Baltimore Charter School and Green Street Academy. The CURE science activities at the latter and an interview with CURE Scholars Executive Director Robin Saunders, EdD, MS, aired on WBAL-TV in the fall. A group of CURE Scholars also were greeted warmly on Dec. 7 during a presentation to the Baltimore City Council.

Smiths story is the third part of a WYPR series on the Southwest Partnership, a collaboration involving UMB and seven neighborhoods that lie south and west of the campus. The Universitys commitment is led by its Office of Community Engagement (OCE), which welcomed the CURE Scholars in November to its new Community Engagement Center, where they began preparations to compete in the Maryland Science Olympiad. These science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) activities are among many designed to put UMBs CURE Scholars on a path to the bright futures envisioned by Cummings, Perman, and the youngsters mentors.
The Hubble Space Telescope delivered yet another stunning image, this time showing the merging of two galaxies into a larger, more chaotic-looking one.

The European Space Agency detailed the galaxy, dubbed NGC 6052, in a news release NASA posted to its website.

"It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such," the ESA said in the release. "However, it is in fact a 'new' galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure.

"As the merging process continues, individual stars are thrown out of their original orbits and placed onto entirely new paths, some very distant from the region of the collision itself. Since the stars produce the light we see, the "galaxy" now appears to have a highly chaotic shape. Eventually, this new galaxy will settle down into a stable shape, which may not resemble either of the two original galaxies."

Space.com pointed out that the merging of two galaxies is not uncommon and astronomers do not have to look too far to find one. For example, the Milky Way Galaxy housing our solar system is headed toward its close neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Blog Blessing

May this blog be used to promote the gospel of Christ, the good of mankind and the eternal life that awaits any who believe that "Jesus is LORD" - the Divine Son of God!



Blessings and good wishes to all! Amen!



Father Bill




















SHARE William Mitzel Marlene Faltemier

By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star

The judge who has been presiding over preliminary matters in the criminal indictment against the Santa Clara Waste Water Co. recused himself Monday from hearing a second complaint.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge David Hirsch announced that he was removing himself from the case connected to the arrests last month of company CEO William Mitzel and Assistant General Manager Marlene Faltemier.

Prosecutors filed new felony and misdemeanor charges against the two officials after investigators reported finding hazardous materials on the site a year after the November 2014 chemical explosion at the company's waste water plant near Santa Paula.

Mitzel and Faltemier were charged in the second case along with the company and Green Compass, its affiliated business unit. The four defendants were also indicted in August on the major charges related to the explosion.

Hirsch did not give a reason and is not required to disclose it. Attorneys on both sides said they did not expect the recusal.

"We had no say whatsoever, nor did we expect that the judge was going to recuse himself," said Miles Weiss, chief deputy district attorney.

Judges generally recuse themselves when they perceive they may have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. Most commonly judges do so when they have a business or personal relationship with one of the parties in the case or their lawyers, Weiss said.

Hirsch could not be reached for an explanation Monday. It is not clear yet whether he will recuse himself from the main case.

Hirsch referred the second case to Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Bennett, who set a Jan. 19 hearing on defense challenges filed Monday morning. Prosecutors had no comment on the challenges, saying they had just seen them.

A separate arraignment hearing in the 71-count indictment is scheduled Jan. 14. Faltemier and Mitzel appeared in the courtroom Monday for a scheduled arraignment on the new charges, but did not enter pleas. Mitzel's attorney, Barry Groveman, said no pleas can be entered until after the defense challenges are heard.
STOCK PHOTO Gavel.

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By Marjorie Hernandez of the Ventura County Star

An Oxnard man was sentenced to 43 years to life in state prison for the 2011 shooting death of his former friend.

Hugo Angel Chavez, 35, appeared before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kent Kellegrew Monday, nearly two months after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder.

Chavez was initially charged with first-degree murder in the Dec. 27, 2011, fatal shooting of his former neighbor, 25-year-old Isaac Mejia. Oxnard police found Mejia's body four days later in the Chavez family's garage in the 1300 block of West Cedar Street.

In addition to second-degree murder, the jury found true a special allegation that Chavez used a firearm to cause great bodily harm.

During the trial, detectives testified Mejia's body was found wrapped in a heavy-duty black bag and covered with a bedspread.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Catherine Voelker said Chavez would have to serve 43 years before he is eligible for parole.

Voelker said Chavez lured Mejia to his home by asking for help on a construction project.

"This was a tragedy and a huge betrayal of trust," Voelker said in an interview after Monday's sentencing. "Little did the victim know he would never walk out of that door and never see his children again."

Mejia's family members, including his young children ranging from ages 6 to 13, addressed the court and spoke about the impact the murder has had on the family, Voelker said.

Prosecutors said that Chavez orchestrated a plan to kill Mejia because he thought the man touched his girlfriend and harassed her.

Voelker said Chavez also planned to dispose of the body by either dissolving it in acid or burning it in a makeshift backyard crematorium.

During the trial, Heather Tomka, of the Public Defender's Office, argued Chavez's then-girlfriend sent text messages to him the night of the shooting saying she thought Mejia was probably watching her and was going to hurt her.

Chavez testified during the trial and said he shot Mejia in self-defense.
ROB VARELA/THE STAR Tim Abernathy plays with his daughters Taylor (left) and Natalie in their temporary home in Simi Valley on Thursday.

SHARE ROB VARELA/THE STAR Dee Ann Abernathy, her mother, Mary Ann Hooper, and her daughters Natalie (left) and Taylor hang out in the kitchen of their temporary home in Simi Valley on Thursday. The family relocated from the Porter Ranch area because of the ongoing natural gas leak. ROB VARELA/THE STAR Tim and Dee Ann Abernathy and their kids (from left) Natalie, Taylor and Ryan hang out in their temporary home in Simi Valley on Thursday. The family relocated from Porter Ranch because of a natural gas leak. ROB VARELA/THE STAR Mary Ann Hooper stands in the kitchen of her temporary home in Simi Valley on Thursday. Hooper, who has lived in the Porter Ranch area for 50 years, relocated with her daughters family because of a natural gas leak. ROB VARELA/THE STAR Tim Abernathy and his wife Dee Ann watch as their son Ryan plays with an iPad in their temporary home in Simi Valley on Thursday. The family relocated from the Porter Ranch area.

By Wendy Leung of the Ventura County Star

The Abernathy family celebrated the new year in Simi Valley, staying in and entertaining church friends. Their Christmas tree was still up with stockings hanging by the fireplace. The family room was neat and tidy except for an unfinished game of Connect Four.

It felt like home. Sort of.

A week before Christmas, the family of six uprooted their lives in Porter Ranch after getting ill from an ongoing gas leak. At first they lived in a hotel, but now they're staying in a two-story house in Simi Valley, about 20 miles away.

Nobody knows exactly when the leak that began in October will be fixed. Nobody knows when the Abernathys and the thousands displaced can move back.

"There's a lot of what ifs," said Tim Abernathy, a father of three.

Natural gas continues to leak from a Southern California Gas Co. storage well, leaving behind a noxious odor in a San Fernando Valley neighborhood of 30,000. Some neighbors complain about the bothersome odors and others like the Abernathys have experienced headaches and vomiting. To date, 2,300 people have moved out and an additional 1,500 are in the process of relocating.

As more and more residents leave the bedroom community, the nearby hotels and rental homes are filling up.

Ventura County hotels and rental properties have seen an uptick this winter, which is typically the slow season.

About 10 Porter Ranch residents are now staying at the pet-friendly Extended Stay America Hotel in Simi Valley, where rooms have a small kitchen and pots and pans and on-site laundry facilities.

"Business is certainly welcome and appreciated," said Chris Govani, general manager at Extended Stay.

Govani said with the gas company paying for the rooms, there isn't the hassle of having to settle a bill with guests who have credit card or other financial issues.

The gas company is paying for the hotel and daily meals allowances for relocated residents. For those moving into a condominium or a house, their relocation costs are also covered.

Felix Wang, general manager of the Best Western in Thousand Oaks, said the hotel has about five families from Porter Ranch, so there's not much of an impact. But Wang said he would be worried if the gas leak were to drag on into the start of summer.

"We're 90 percent committed through Memorial weekend. If this drags out, it would be a problem for (the Porter Ranch residents)," Wang said.

With rooms already booked for the long weekend, Wang said Porter Ranch residents could be displaced.

"It's not going to be easy. Where will they go?" Wang said. "Knock on wood it'll be solved by then."

The gas company is trying to stop the leak by drilling a relief well 8,000 feet below ground. The process is expected to be finished some time between late February to late March, according to Kristine Lloyd, a Southern California Gas Co. project manager.

Odor from the gas leak has stayed primarily in Los Angeles County. Of the 1,700 odor complaints received by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, just one came from Ventura County, in Simi Valley.

For some residents, odor is the least of their concerns.

Dee Ann, wife of Tim Abernathy, and their 6-year-old daughter Natalie have suffered the most. Dee Ann's mother, who lives with the family, has experienced bad headaches as well.

Natalie had to miss school because she developed a rash and was experiencing headaches, nausea and vomiting. The Abernathys eventually enrolled their children in Township School in Simi Valley. Not long after, the Los Angeles Unified School District board decided to close the two schools in Porter Ranch.

It was hard on the children at first because they missed their classmates and weren't able to finish the Christmas gifts they had started making in class.

"I miss our home," said Taylor, 3.

Her brother Ryan, however, likes his Simi Valley school because he gets to make new friends.

"It's a good lesson that family is the most important," Dee Ann Abernathy said. "As long as we have each other, the other stuff doesn't matter."
STAR FILE PHOTO

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By Megan Diskin of the Ventura County Star

Within a week of last month's San Bernardino shooting, the department heads of each Ventura County agency held a meeting to review security practices.

For the better part of a Friday afternoon, county leaders created a list of possible ways to increase safety, said Matt Carroll, assistant county executive officer.

"Employee safety and security is one of our foremost concerns," Carroll said.

There are about 600 county-affiliated sites, and each has its own safety concerns. Each agency will work with its employees to design security measures that seem appropriate, Carroll said.

"We were able to discuss a range of certain items. Most of the items were not new but (involved) where we come down in terms of openness in government vs. putting barriers between the public we serve," Carroll said.

Fourteen people were killed and 22 seriously injured in the Dec. 2 attack at the Inland Regional Center, where San Bernardino County public health employees were having a holiday party. Syed Rizwan Farook, who worked for the county, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, had become radicalized and committed an act of terrorism, federal authorities believe.

An immediate change by Ventura County, expected to be put in place by early next week, is limiting public access to the Hall of Administration in Ventura to one entryway, said Paul Grossgold, director of the General Services Agency. Grossgold said it will help security guards better monitor who enters the building where Board of Supervisors offices are located.

In some departments, once a person is inside the building, there is no physical barrier separating the public from employees. A receptionist is the only buffer, Carroll said. "That could be an issue in a certain situation," he said.

A reception window and the addition of a secured door limiting access to offices could create better security, Grossgold said. There are already plans in place for some offices to get those barriers, Carroll said.

Carroll said that for some buildings, there was discussion of whether a security screen of those entering would be more effective than improved security at the counter or reception desk.

Some sites, like libraries, may be more difficult to assess because by nature they are open to the public, Grossgold said. But there are steps that can be taken, he said.

Over the next few months, indoor and outdoor security cameras at county sites will be reviewed to make sure trees haven't grown and obstructed the view, Grossgold said. Officials will also make sure that every area that needs a camera has one, he said. Lighting in employee parking lots is also on the checklist.

But the San Bernardino attack was an inside job, and some of these safety measures may not be effective if an attacker has access.

The county will review its background-check procedures for job applicants to see if they can be improved, said Shawn Atin, director of the human resources division.

Officials are also considering whether to increase Live Scan fingerprinting, which is more expensive, Carroll said. The electronic fingerprinting is faster, cleaner and more accurate than the traditional ink method.

After the attack, a greater emphasis has also been placed on employee training, Grossgold said. More employees will take an active shooter training course offered by the Sheriff's Office, as early as next week.

New employees watch a 30-minute training video about active shooter situations as part of orientation, said Shawn Atin, director of human resources.

Carroll said there is already a training course offered to county employees about recognizing when an employee or member of the public is distraught. The employee is taught how to de-escalate the situation, he said.

County officials will be assessing whether the active shooter, de-escalation and other training need to become mandatory and recurring.

"We understand this is a priority," Atin said. "What happened in San Bernardino cut close to home."
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Ventura police arrested a Texas man on Monday after finding two concealed and loaded firearms in his vehicle along with an injured female.

Police said they were called to the 200 block of Ute Lane around 2:45 p.m. after being told that a female had left the home with her husband and that she had been injured in a domestic violence incident.

Police said they later stopped a vehicle driven by Fred Norris, 57, along the 200 block of Ventura Avenue.

Police said the female who was injured in the domestic violence episode was in the vehicle with Norris.

Police said Norris was arrested and charged with possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle and domestic violence.

The woman refused medical attention, police said.
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The weatherman tells us that if you are reading this Tuesday morning you should be able to look out the window and see rain.

El Nino is here.

That's a cause for celebration for most of us. It could mean an end to four years of drought in California that has severely tested us. We survived, just like we have done in all our past California droughts. And, we hope, we have learned a little something about ourselves, our neighbors and our state.

Now it's time to sit back and enjoy the rain.

That comes with a few qualifiers, of course. Those living and working above steep, barren and fire-scarred hillsides are naturally uneasy about whether the rain will trigger slides that could wreak havoc. From the rapid response to the Solimar Fire, to the agreement on the Camarillo Springs hillside, to the work performed on riverbeds, drainage ditches and waterways throughout the county, local government agencies have been busy in recent weeks to get us as prepared as possible to avoid disaster.

It will be enjoyable for the rest of us to watch our lawns revive, to see the hillsides with any remaining vegetation begin to turn green, to watch the grime and grit of too many dry hot days wash away from our communities.

So get yourself prepared. Dig out the raincoats and umbrellas. Take a little more time driving on the slick roads. And enjoy the rain.


As part of the official kick off to National Blood Donor Month, the cast of Evil Dead: The Musical at V Theater inside Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino hosted a blood drive to benefit United Blood Services.

Over the course of four hours, 45 total units were collected with 39 successful donations, surpassing the expectations for the event. All donors received a free pair of tickets to Evil Dead: The Musical, a comic book from MaximuM Comics, and one donor won a year subscription to the comic book of their choice.

January is one of our most difficult months because donations tend to go down significantly during the holidays, said Paul Milakeve, donor recruitment manager for United Blood Services. The blood that we raised with the help of the Evil Dead cast definitely helps to replenish our supply. We are grateful for the community members that came out to roll up their sleeves and be heroes.


Touro University Nevada and The Council of Osteopathic Student Government Presidents alongside community partners will host a fun and informative health fair for the entire family.

Visitors can learn about medical techniques and take advantage of free screenings of their blood pressure, eye exams, balance testing and much more. Children can take part in a mini-med school with entertaining and informative activities while adults enjoy Yoga and Pilates sponsored by Trufusion as well as Zumba taught by Teddy Sim, DC.

Admission into the health fair is FREE and open to the public. For more information please visit www.tun.touro.edu or call 702-777-3100. Attendees are asked to bring canned food that will be donated to Three Square Food Bank to help the Southern Nevada community. Those that donate will be entered to win a variety of prizes including an Apple Watch, picture of the Rat Pack and many more.


Chateau Nightclub & Rooftop at Paris Las Vegas will offer complimentary entry for Consumer Electronics Show badge holders on Wednesday, Jan. 6, Friday, Jan. 8 and Saturday, Jan. 9 (Pictured: Chateau Main Room  Photo credit: Anthony Mair).

On Wednesday night, resident DJ ShadowRed, will take over his rightful spot in the DJ booth of the clubs lavish Main Room for industry night, while the party continues on Friday with Las Vegas DJ Blanco.

Los Angeles Power 106 DJ, DJ P-Jay will take over the stage on Saturday night. Popular for hosting The Morning Zoo, the DJ has been involved in several of the radio stations award winning festivals, including iHeartRadio.

Tickets to the events for those who do not have a CES badge start at $20 for ladies and $30 for gentlemen.
Artist Chad Brown brings his fusion of architectural imagery and abstract techniques to the Winchester Gallery beginning Feb. 17. An artist reception will be held in his honor from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 at the gallery, located inside the Winchester Cultural Center at 3130 S. McLeod Drive. The exhibit will continue at the gallery through April 17.

Brown, who has presented a number of exhibits in the Las Vegas valley during the last few years, reintroduces his every man figure, clad in a white shirt and black pants, into a new collection of paintings. Although looser than previous depictions, the appearance of his every man is a call to arms for viewers. The connection between this figure and the often chosen similar dress of President Barack Obama is a poignant statement for the artist. Browns intent is to suggest a space that asks the viewer to consider how they can participate in this new era. The collection also will include a 30-foot mural designed specifically for the curved wall of the gallery space.

Brown earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001 and his Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2006. That same year, he received the Wally Goodman and Patrick Duffy Best in Show award for his work in the 55th Art Roundup Juried Exhibition at the Las Vegas Art Museum. Recently, Brown participated in a two-person show at the Dust Gallery.

Clark County Parks and Recreation sponsors the exhibit with partial funding from the Nevada Arts Council. The Winchester Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. The gallery is closed on Mondays.

Those interested in your move by Chad Brown can call the Winchester Cultural Center at 455-7340 or visit the Web site at www.accessclarkcounty.com/parks.
Local business and government leaders are invited to attend Under One Roof, a forum on employer-assisted housing programs to be held Jan. 25 at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Town Square, 6671 South Las Vegas Blvd., Suite 300.

The three-hour event begins at 8 a.m. and is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to register online at http://underoneroof.eventbrite.com.

Scheduled speakers include North Las Vegas Mayor Shari Buck; Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen; Richard Lee, of First American Title Company; Ken LoBene, of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); Holly Moskerintz, of the National Association of REALTORS (NAR); Margarita Rebollal, of Community Services of Southern Nevada; Jodi Royal-Goodwin, of the Nevada Housing Division; Z olt Szorenyi, of Lenders Clearing House; and Michelle Villero, of NeighborWorks America. Clark County and Las Vegas officials are also invited. And Patty Kelley, president-elect of the Nevada Association of REALTORS (NVAR), will give some brief remarks.

Event organizer Dawn Lane, founder of the HOPE Home Foundation, said this is the first event of its kind primarily targeting employers in Southern Nevada.

The goal for the forum is to focus our business leaders on strategies and solutions for responding to todays two most critical areas  housing and employment, Lane said. We want our audience of housing industry professionals, opinion leaders, business owners, human resource managers, elected officials and members of the media to engage in a comprehensive conversation about how to stabilize and strengthen the housing sector using employer-assisted housing programs to encourage sustainable home ownership  especially in neighborhoods near employment centers and in areas needing stabilization.

Lane said local companies are struggling to retain productive, stable workers. Employer-assisted housing is an emerging strategy that can give businesses a tool to help. Through such programs, she said employers can offer affordable housing solutions for their employees. Options can include businesses helping their employees buy or rent a home and offering first-time home buyer and foreclosure prevention counseling. Businesses can benefit financially by hiring and retaining quality employees, through improved morale, greater productivity, lower turnover and more.

The Nevada Association of REALTORS (NVAR) is a primary sponsor of the event, along with the HOPE Home Foundation, Lenders Clearinghouse, Chase, Evergreen Home Loans, Southern Nevada Issues Mobilization Fund, Nations Title Company, Stewart Title of Nevada, First American Title Company, All Western Mortgage, and Professional Realty Group.
Blizzberry will open this summer inside the Food Court at the Palms Casino Resort, offering a wide selection of non-fat and all natural frozen yogurts. Its founder, Tony Ravelo and prominent Beverly Hills Facial Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Paul S. Nassif, are excited to bring the Blizz to Las Vegas. The hours of operation will be 11am-2am seven days a week.

Originating in Los Angeles, Blizzberry, described as Britneys Latest Dessert Obsession, has rapidly become a hit with the public, offering a range of customer-pleasing items, nearly a dozen flavors of yogurt including Original Blizz tart, Pina Colada, Mango, Pomegranate, Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, and no sugar added Blueberry.

Other items include refreshing Smoothies, Belgian Waffles, Milkshakes, and Iced Blended Coffees. And for lovers of toppings, there is no shortage, including fresh fruit and rows of other assorted treats.

We are thrilled to have Blizzberry at the Palms, says Palms owner George Maloof. Guests will truly enjoy what is has to offer.


photo source: nld.com.vn

After receiving complaints from several households near the companys facility, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) requested the Department of Central and Central Highlands Environment to inspect the companys activities. The department proposed the MONRE an extensive action plan to mitigate the damages brought about by the companys violations. The MONRE will announce the final conclusion in the next two or three days, said Pham Hong Son, acting director of the Department of Central and Central Highlands Environment.

Representatives of the Management Board of Chu Lai Open Economic Zone also held a working session with the companys leadership to verify the residents complaints. During the inspection process, we found that SODA currently has wastewater treatment plans at its disposal to reduce the pollution. However, there are no detailed plans as to effectively carrying out such operations, said Le Vu Thuong, deputy director of the Management Board of Chu Lai Open Economic Zone.

According to the boards inspection record, the company discharged coal and black carbon, both substances being banned in regulations, into the environment. Along with violations of the discharging process guidelines, the company has not built appropriate wastewater and solid waste treatment facilities.

Previously, hundreds of households living in the central province of Quang Nams Nui Thanh district complained that their daily life was affected by environmental pollution caused by the company.

According to the residents complaints, the company discharged wastewater directly into the river, causing severe water, air, and noise pollution. The fish in the river already died en masse.

Furthermore, the wastewater as not only dumped into the river, but also into residents'(fishery ponds and fields located at the back of the factory, also killing all flora and fauna.

Local authorities statistics state that about 40 residents have died of cancer in the past three years, most of them from lung cancer. Local authorities suggested that the responsible agencies relocate the 300 households in the vicinity of the company to a safer location.
Refugees stand behind a fence at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos on Sep 16, 2015. (Photo: AFP/Armend Nimani)

BERLIN: Germany on Monday (Jan 4) warned the passport-free Schengen zone was "in danger" after Nordic countries announced new controls at their borders to stem a migrant influx.

"Freedom of movement is an important principle - one of the biggest achievements (in the European Union) in recent years," foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer told reporters.

"Schengen is very important but it is in danger," he added when asked about Denmark's announcement of checks at the German border, on the same day Sweden introduced controls on its frontier with Denmark.

Last week Norway, which is not an EU member but does belong to the Schengen area, said it would start turning back refugees without visas arriving from elsewhere in the Schengen zone, particularly Sweden.

Schaefer said it was "crucial that we in Europe find common solutions" to the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and said the EU must now focus on ensuring the security of its external borders.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said that the Schengen accord, which provides for borderless travel across most of the 28-nation EU, was dependent on better protection of the EU's frontiers. "We need a common strategy," he said.

Seibert said that Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen had informed Merkel of his decision before making the announcement.

The migrant crisis, which saw some one million people flooding into Europe in 2015, mostly via Greece and Italy, has sorely tested Europe's commitment to free movement, with several EU members temporarily reimposing border controls as they try to slow the influx.

Seibert noted that Germany, which took in around one million migrants in 2015, had in September also implemented such measures and acknowledged that the Schengen rules allowed such steps in extraordinary circumstances.

Up to 300 asylum seekers leave Germany each day for Denmark, according to Berlin, many of them headed for Sweden, which has received more migrants per capita than any other EU state.
An official from police in Bac Tu Liem District confirmed to Tuoi Tre(Youth) newspaper on Monday that Hung had been indicted.

Police officers had received a complaint from the restaurant owner, and officers also found out that besides breaking the jar, Hung also hurt somebody at the eatery, he said.

They decided to file the charge since the jar was worth more than VND2 million ($89), he added.

Hung also has a criminal record, according to Bac Tu Liem police.

On December 24, the family of Nguyen Do Hung, residing in Bac Tu Liem, lodged a petition to the districts procuracy to protest the charge, but prosecutors forwarded the complaint to the local police unit, according to documents seen by Tuoi Tre News.

In November 2015, Hung, 36, accidentally broke a 100-liter jar containing wine at an eatery owned by Nguyen Thi Hien, and later recompensed her with a new one.

Hien agreed to receive the new jar, which Hung had bought at VND1.8 million (US$80), and the customer believed that the incident was settled.

However, on December 3, Hung received an announcement from the Bac Tu Liem police, saying he was indicted for destroying assets, as the jar was valued at VND2.7 million ($121) by police officers.

As per the current Vietnamese law, an individual will face criminal charges if he causes property damage worth VND2 million and above, otherwise only a civil penalty will be imposed.

Nguyen Van Dung, who is Hungs father, said the family had heard nothing about the case until the announcement was sent all of a sudden.

I believe that there are signs of justice miscarriage in the way Bac Tu Liem police officers handled this case, where objectivity was not ensured, he said in the petition submitted to prosecutors.

Upon receiving the petition, the Bac Tu Liem Procuracy said valuing the broken jar was the authority of the districts police, so it had forwarded the complaint to the police.

As the crucial factor to file a criminal charge is the value of the broken jar, Dung said the evaluation of the police was non-objective and groundless.

Dung said he had bought the new jar to recompense the restaurant owner, and it is impossible for the container to cost as much as VND2.7 million.

The jar fetches from VND1.2 million ($54) at retail stores, and at the ceramic village of Bat Trang in Gia Lam District, the price is much cheaper, according to the petition.

So I would like to know on which grounds Bac Tu Liem police have valued the jar my son had broken, especially when Hien had agreed to take the new jar as compensation, Dung said in the document.

Authorities in Bac Tu Liem are still clarifying the case.
The top brand award is one of the ministrys activities to help develop the distribution system of Vietnamese goods, which goes with the Vietnamese consumers use Vietnamese goods campaign in the 2014-2020 period.

Aiming to help brands that meet certain quality standards and whose production meets certain environmental standards set by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) be known by consumers and get the position they deserve in the market, this years award honoured the IZZI brand from Hanoimilk, besides brands from other companies such as Duc Viet Foods, Masan Consumer, Long Hai and Hanoli.

The top brand award is a recognition of Hanoimilks effort to make IZZI the top milk brand for children in Vietnam, said Ha Quang Tuan, chairman of Hanoimilk.

Earlier, in April of last year IZZI was among the top 20 food brands of Vietnam, as voted by the Ministry of Health, the MoIT and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In November IZZI was voted by consumers in a poll organised by the Vietnam Economic Times as most loved by mothers and children for the third consecutive year.

Hanoimilk was established in 2001 and officially started production in 2003. The companys brands now include IZZI, Yotuti and Hanoimilk 100 per cent fresh milk.

Vietnams demand for milk and products made from milk is high and on an increasing trend with the countrys growth in population of about 1.2 per cent per year and GDP growth of 6-8 per cent per year. According to market research company Euromonitor International, in 2014, the size of the milk market in Vietnam was VND75 trillion ($3.5 billion), up 20 per cent on year. The growth came mostly from the powder and liquid milk, which account for a combined 74 per cent of the value of the market.

Notable players in the market include Vinamilk, TH Milk, NutiFood and Friesland Campina.
Photo : nasa.gov

The US space agency had already pushed back the launch by a day to Tuesday.

If technicians are able to finish their repairs as planned, Discovery and its six American astronauts will now launch from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 3:52 pm (1952 GMT) Wednesday, NASA test director Jeff Spaulding said.

The flight to the orbiting International Space Station is the fourth and final shuttle flight of the year, and the last scheduled for Discovery, the oldest in the three-shuttle fleet that is being retired in 2011.
Afghan firefighters use hoses to clean the road after a suicide bomb attack near the international airport in Kabul, the latest in a wave of attacks on the Afghan capital. (AFP PHOTO/WAKIL KOHSAR)

KABUL: A powerful car bomb struck near Kabul's international airport on Monday (Jan 4) evening, just hours after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the war-scarred Afghan capital.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, which appeared to target a compound for foreign contractors, an Afghan security official told AFP. Officials said there were no immediate reports of casualties from the explosion, which was strongly felt across downtown Kabul and blew out window panes of homes.

But the Italian-run Emergency Hospital in Kabul said on Twitter: "#Afghanistan two attacks today in #Kabul, we're currently receiving victims of the #masscasualty at our Surgical Centre".

The violence comes as Afghan forces battle to end a protracted siege near the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif which began on Sunday night.

Gunfights and grenade explosions echoed as commandos battled to flush out militants holed up in a building near the consulate, with powerful provincial Governor Atta Mohammad Noor overseeing the operation.

Nearly 24 hours after the siege began, security officials said they were proceeding cautiously in the residential area to limit civilian casualties.

Earlier Monday, a suicide bomber struck a street leading to the city's international airport, near where the second blast took place, but no casualties were reported. The bombings mark the latest assaults on the war-scarred Afghan capital.

A Taliban suicide car-bomber struck a French restaurant popular with foreigners in Kabul on Friday, killing two people in a New Year's Day attack. Fifteen others were wounded in the attack on Le Jardin, an Afghan-owned eatery, which caused a piercingly loud explosion and left a building engulfed in flames.

The spike in violence coincides with a renewed international push to revive peace talks with the resurgent Taliban. Islamabad is set to host a first round of dialogue between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China on January 11 to lay out a comprehensive roadmap for peace.

Pakistan, which wields considerable influence over the Afghan Taliban, hosted a milestone first round of talks in July but the negotiations stalled when the insurgents belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar.
Rampant corruption: Si Tien is among artists of the Youth Theatre performing in The Government Inspector. - Photo courtesy of the Youth Theatre

It is director Chi Trung's first classic play. Trung was voted the best stage director at a festival held in Ha Noi.

"The Government Inspector was written nearly 200 years ago, but its story is still meaningful to us," Trung said.

"The play focuses on corruption, which is of concern to the public. That is why I selected The Government Inspector for the stage."

Trung spent time poring over dozens of scripts from the book entitled One Hundred Stage Masterpieces, launched by Theatre Publishing House.

He had to brainstorm for two months, cutting down a 115-page Vietnamese script to a 61-page play that was ready to be staged over a two-hour period.

The Government Inspector was written by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, who is considered to be the father of modern Russian realism. It is among his best known works.

The entire play is based on mistaken identity and on the panic that arises  for good reason  among officials. The actual theme is supposed to have been suggested by Russian writer Alexander Pushkin and, in its time, it was considered a daring piece of work.

The play is set in the early 1800s in a small Russian town where corruption was rampant among officials.

The mayor of the town receives a message that there is to be a visit by a government inspector who will be travelling incognito.

The officials are anxious to get the town straightened out and act in a very sycophantic manner to impress a man they believe to be the inspector. The work portrays the deep corruption of the powers in Russia, the failings of human greed and the stupidity of the gullible.

The crew include veteran composer Dang Huu Phuc, choreographer Lam Yen and stage designer Doan Bang.

Three-dimensional images of ancient villas and architecture of the 19th century will be projected as the stage backdrop.

Two shows will be held on January 11 and 12 at Ha Noi Opera House.
The promotion is applicable for traveling periods from January 15 to December 31, 2016. Tickets can be booked at www.vietjetair.com (also compatible with smartphones at https://m.vietjetair.com) or at www.facebook.com/vietjetvietnam (by clicking the Booking tab). Payment can be made with Visa, MasterCard, JCB, American Express, and ATM cards issued by 24 Vietnam banks that have been registered with internet banking.

The Pleiku  Haiphong route, whose debut flight is on January 15, is operated with a frequency of four return flights per week. Flights are on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Flying time is about 1 hour and 35 minutes. Flights depart from Pleiku at 9:50 and arrive in Haiphong at 11:25. Return flights depart from Haiphong at 12:00 and arrive in Pleiku at 13:35.

The Pleiku  Vinh route, whose debut flight is on January 16, is operated with a frequency of three return flights per week. Flights are on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Flying time is about 1 hour and 25 minutes. Flights depart from Pleiku at 9:50 and arrive in Vinh at 11:15. Return flights depart from Vinh at 12:00 and arrive in Pleiku at 13:25.

The Ho Chi Minh City  Tuy Hoa route, whose debut flight is on January 20, is operated on a daily frequency. Flying time is about 1 hour. Flights depart from Ho Chi Minh City at 7:35 and arrive in Tuy Hoa at 8:35. Return flights depart from Tuy Hoa at 9:10 and arrive in Ho Chi Minh City at 10:10.

Vietjet boasts a fleet of 30 aircraft, including A320s and A321s, and operates 190 flights each day. The airline has already opened 41 routes in Vietnam and across the region to international destinations such as Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, China and Myanmar. It has carried nearly 20 million passengers to date.
A woman stands on a street as security guards march behind her outside the Bank of China headquarters in the financial district of Beijing in this August 19, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/David Gray/Files

By Anshuman Daga and Fiona Lau

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Bank of China has hired Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and BOC International as joint sponsors for a $3 billion Hong Kong listing of its aircraft leasing arm, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Bank of China plans to launch the IPO of Singapore-based BOC Aviation in the second quarter of this year, the people said, in what is set to be the world's biggest listing by an aircraft lessor.

The IPO comes as Asian lessors raise funds to challenge Western rivals in the nearly $217 billion global industry, with huge orders or acquisitions to service the world's fastest-growing aviation market. Rival CDB Leasing, owned by state-controlled China Development Bank, plans to raise $1 billion in another IPO set for the second-quarter 2016, the people said.

"There won't be any shortage of investors because they are looking at not just an aircraft leasing company (BOC Aviation) but at a company whose future is entrenched in Asia Pacific. It's a growth story," said Shukor Yusof, an analyst at Malaysian aviation consultancy Endau Analytics.

Morgan Stanley (MS.N) has been hired as joint global co-ordinator for the lessor's IPO, the people said, adding that the final deal value could change depending on market conditions and more banks could join the deal. The people declined to be identified because the information was not public.

BOC Aviation, formed after Bank of China's 2006 purchase of a firm formerly backed by Singapore Airlines Ltd (SIAL.SI), has grown to become Asia's second-biggest lessor with a portfolio of about 250 planes valued at $9.4 billion, according to estimates from industry publication Flightglobal.

The lessor, which has an investment grade rating, has already tapped into different sources of financing, including offshore renminbi-denominated bonds.

Longer-term investors such as insurers and pension funds are warming up to the sector as aircraft leases offer fixed incomes and are often seen as safe transactions. Paid for in U.S. dollars, aircraft are comparatively easy to re-lease to different geographies.

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"Investors should avoid airlines but aircraft leasing companies are among the best assets investors can go for because you are looking at returns of at least 12 to 13 percent a year," said Endau Analytics' Yusof.

BOC Aviation posted a 5 percent rise in net profit to a record $171 million in the first half to June 2015.

Goldman Sachs and BOC Aviation declined to comment.

Bank of China and BOC International, its investment banking unit, declined to comment, while Morgan Stanley was not available to comment.

China Aircraft Leasing (1848.HK) is the only listed aircraft lessor in Asia, while the U.S. has a few listed sector players including AerCap Holdings NV (AER.N) and Air Lease Corp (AL.N).

At least five Asian companies, including units of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd as well as BOC Aviation, now rank among the world's top 15 aircraft lessors, according to Flightglobal.

GECAS, a unit of General Electric Co (GE.N) and AerCap dominate the sector in which the top 50 lessors control a fleet of just over 7,800 planes valued at nearly $217 billion.

(Additional reporting by Shu Zhang in BEIJING; Editing by Lisa Jucca and Kenneth Maxwell)
Prime Minister Hun Sen will join other Asean leaders for a special meeting with US President Barack Obama in California next month, Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said Monday.

The US has sought in recent years to improve its diplomatic relations with the region, and the talks, to be held at the Sunnylands resort, in Rancho Mirage, will take place at the same venue where Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jingping in 2013.

Hor Namhong added few details about the talks, the first of their kind on US soil, expected in mid-February.

Ou Virak, head of the think tank Future Forum, said the invitation was likely a part of the broader US effort to curb Chinas growing influence in Southeast Asia.

The US is interested in Cambodia on the point that Cambodia can be a tool for China, he said. Thus, this worries them, as well as other Asean nations. This is an important point. I hope that Cambodia will adjust its international policies in a way that they maintain balance in the relationship with China and the West during this important visit.

Chinas attempts to claim islands and waters in the South China Sea has stirred concerns among four Asean members who have overlapping claims there: Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. That means China will need allies inside Asean, and Cambodia is a prime candidate, Ou Virak said. China will attract Cambodia to be its tool inside Asean, in a manner that wont let member countries of the association have solidarity, he said. If Asean is divided, its easier for China.

In the past, China has leaned on Myanmar to disrupt Asean unity, he added, but now they are focused on Cambodia. And if we are Chinas pawn, the US can try to use other parties to break off Cambodia and turn it toward its interests. This is risky for Cambodia, which has seen bitterness since the 1970s.

Meanwhile, Asean members Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam are all part of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, one that Cambodia will one day need to decide whether to join, Ou Virak said.

The pact lowers tariffs on agricultural and industrial products for its members, but could take years to complete. Cambodian economists say it could be raised at the Sunnylands meeting.

Chab Sothavith, a senior economist at the Cambodia Institute for Cooperation and Security, said Cambodia should seek entry into the TPP, which would help strengthen its ties to the US. Cambodia is already aligned with Russia and China, all the big powers, he said. We are not an enemy to any nation.

Still, he said, China has undertaken many initiatives in Southeast Asia in general, and Cambodia in particular, including free trade agreements and investment. It has also created an investment bank for development, one that Cambodia is signed on as a member of. Well never forget our friend China, Chab Sothavith said.

Chab Sothavith said Cambodia has remained neutral in the South China Sea issue, including when it was the chair of Asean, when other analysts say Cambodia used its position to aid China in keeping Asean from unifying on the issue. Cambodia sought to hold talks in a peaceful manner and not let the dispute worsen, because it could destabilize the region, he said.

In a meeting with university students on Monday, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong blamed an unnamed global powerhouselikely the USfor creating tension in the region over the South China Sea.
The Ministry of Justice has rejected a proposal by Cambodias opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, that he testify before court via Skype.

Sam Rainsy is in exile abroad, facing a jail sentence if he returns to Cambodia, but he is facing more charges still, in a defamation case brought by the president of the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party, Heng Samrin.

He was expected in court on Monday. A Justice official told VOA Khmer that Cambodia has no law or procedures that would allow for remote testimony, but Sok Sam Oeun, a legal expert at the Cambodian Defenders Project, said such a procedure is not unheard of in developed countries.

Heng Samrin brought the suit against Sam Rainsy after he posted on his Facebook page a video of the late King Norodom Sihanouk criticizing Heng Samrin as a puppet of Vietnam.

Sam Rainsy said on his Facebook page on Saturday he would answer questions from the court via Skypea communication tool of the Internet, which is consistent with the fact that I am accused of defaming Mr. Heng Samrin on the Internet, as well.

Ministry of Justice spokesman Chin Malin told VOA Khmer Monday that a Skype appearance would be impossible, because Cambodias judiciary lacks the proper procedures and protocols. The law states that a person summoned must show up in court, he said. Therefore it is clear that all summoned persons must show up before the prosecutor or investigating judge.

Thats because judges need to verify the identity of a person and they need to be able to observe their behavior before deciding how to proceed with a case.

So in this case, it is a criminal policy, [court officials] rarely use online communications and satellite systems, because it is difficult to make a judgment for the real identity, and also it is difficult to judge the accused persons mindset and to ask follow up questions, he said.

Chin Malin said authorities will likely issue an arrest warrant for Sam Rainsys failure to appear to his Jan. 4 summons.

However, Sok Sam Oeun said court officials can do all the same work via Skype, particularly in a case of defamation, which is not serious.

If it is not criminal a case, like murder, it would be OK, he said. We dont need to force defendants to appear in court, and its just a complaintthat doesnt carry a jail term.

In the US, for example, witnesses have appeared via Skype, which is different from telephonic communication, in that it allows the speaker to be seen.

Meanwhile, Sam Rainsy remains abroad, facing a two-year jail sentence in a criminal defamation case brought by Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, over comments Sam Rainsy made in a 2008 speech, accusing the minister of collusion with the Khmer Rouge.

A final ruling in that case only came in 2015, after political divisions grew between the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party and Sam Rainsys Cambodia National Rescue Party, which made major gains in the 2013 elections.
An Islamic State judge is among the latest top jihadists to be killed in targeted coalition airstrikes that are seen as beginning to take a toll on the leadership ranks of the terrorist army.

U.S. officials vow 2016 will see many more strikes aimed at degrading the militant group's command and control structure and especially of its mid-level battlefield leadership.

U.S. commando raids designed to throw the groups leadership off balance are also more likely.

The targeted airstrikes appear to be alarming the group  that is if the latest IS propaganda video is anything to go by, analysts say.

A gruesome ten-minute execution-style video released at the weekend, featuring five men from the city of Raqqa confessing under duress to having helped pinpoint locations and foreign jihadist fighters for bombing runs, suggests that airstrikes are figuring prominently in the minds of IS propagandists.

None of the men from Raqqa  all were filmed being shot dead at point-blank range  admitted in their forced confessions to having spied for any particular country, although the British-accented IS narrator says on the video they were working for British intelligence.

That allegation is dismissed by British authorities. And media activists with Raqqa is being slaughtered silently say the men were linked with their anti-IS network, which documents IS atrocities in the Syrian province.

Afzal Ashraf, an analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, says it is doubtful that the men were members of a British spy cell.

Frequent airstrikes

Whatever the truth about the murdered men, coalition airstrikes targeting IS leaders and battlefield commanders and modeled have become more frequent in recent weeks.

Last week, a Pentagon spokesman said 10 Islamic State leaders had been killed since early December, including individuals linked to the planning of the November terror attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.

Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State, told reporters that the leadership deaths were affecting IS on the battlefield.

He attributed several successes of anti-IS fighters on the ground in recent weeks, including the retaking of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, to the fact that the organization is losing its leadership.

The latest targeted strike came Saturday on the Iraqi town of Tel Afar  an attack that killed Sharia Court judge Hisham Hussein Shakhbalar al-Afri and well as the IS security chief in the town, Taha Muhammad Nur Qazzan, according to Iraqi security sources.

They say a missile launched from a drone struck a convoy carrying the judge, killing him and Tel Afars security chief along with their 11 guards.

Other top figures from the group killed recently include Abdul Qader Hakim, who was slain in the Iraqi city of Mosul on December 24 and, in Syria on the same day, Charaffe al Mouadan. U.S. and European officials say both men were linked to the Paris attacks and were helping to plan other terrorist assaults in Europe.

Western governments appear keen to strike back quickly at IS planners responsible for the killing of their citizens, if for no other reason than to reassure their own publics.

Last November, British IS militant Mohammed Emwazi, who was dubbed by the press as Jihadi John and who appeared in several beheading videos, was believed to have been killed in a British drone strike in Syria. In August a British drone strike killed Reyaad Khan, a 21-year-old from Cardiff in Wales. In the same month, Junaid Hussain, a 21-year-old hacker-turned-jihadist from Birmingham in Britain, who ran an IS information and recruitment arm from Syria, was killed in a U.S. drone strike near Raqqa.

Granular intelligence

Targeted airstrikes require so-called granular intelligence, collected from phone-call intercepts and the monitoring of emails and text messages, information supplied from the ground either from drone and satellite surveillance, and human intelligence offered by spotters and spies.

Its not as easy as looking at an iPhone video of a convoy and then immediately striking, General Martin Dempsey, who stepped down in September as the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, once cautioned a Senate panel.

With targeted strikes mounting, IS appears ever more concerned about spies helping to direct the bombing runs or spotting possible jihadists to strike. In the IS propaganda video released Sunday, one of the detained men, Obay Mohammed Abdul Ghani, a 26-year-old, claimed under duress that he was asked to film the tags of a specific car to pinpoint its location so it could be bombed.

In his forced confession, he said he was asked also for a map of the Islamic court building in Raqqa so that it could be bombed - and told to secure the computer IP address for an Australian member of IS so his location could be pinpointed.

In another forced confession a detainee says he was sent photographs of British IS fighters and asked to pinpoint their locations so they could be attacked.

IS appears to have become increasingly concerned about its vulnerability to airstrikes in Syria. In Raqqa the group has evacuated landmark buildings or thinned out the number of fighters occupying them,and more IS members are showing signs of being security conscious by wearing ski masks. Also, more fighters are being housed among the civilian population, according to anti-IS activists.
Drinking tea on his traditional Yemeni low sofa, Sultan Zaied, a 41-year-old accountant in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, says the diplomatic battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran has already intensified tensions in Yemen, and the crisis is still growing.

They are attacking everything, he said, referring to the Saudi-led coalition air assaults on the Houthis, believed to be supported by Iran. This is proof that the attempts at negotiations are failing.

As countries and militias line up behind regional giants Iran and Saudi Arabia, analysts say the diplomatic crisis is already having an impact across the region. If it continues, they add, Middle East wars  including the fight against Islamic State militants  are more likely to expand than to be resolved peacefully.

This diplomatic crisis has diminished the prospects for peace in Syria and the same can be said about Yemen, says Gulf State Analytics founder Giorgio Cafiero, speaking by phone from Oman.

Islamic State militants have the most to gain from the crisis, which is spreading the chaos the group thrives on and dividing the region, he adds.

Kuwait is the latest Sunni-dominated country to withdraw its ambassador from Iran, following Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, which have all either cut ties or downgraded their relationships with Iran following an international dispute over the execution of Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

After the execution, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked and Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties.



Roots of dispute



The regional rift is far deeper than the current dispute, according to Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the United States.

Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have all been pretty much in sync with Saudi Arabia concerning the perceived threat from Iran, he says, adding that the threat that has been exacerbated by the nuclear deal.

If the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers is implemented, Tehran is expected to be relieved of sanctions, greatly expanding its economic power and ability to fund militias in the region, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But it is not just an economic rivalry, says Fitzpatrick.

This conflict has become more of a Sunni-Shia split and also the ages-long dispute between Persia and the Arab states," he explains. "Its part of history and its part of the worsening of the relations in the region.

Additionally, both countries are using the dispute as a power play in domestic politics, says Max Abrahms, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and political science professor at Northeastern University.



The Saudi and Iranian governments are mirroring each other, he explains, by directing their rhetoric against the other country in order to shore up support for the hardliners at a time when both governments are accused of going soft for different reasons.



Long-term impact



Regional wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya are less likely to be solved through peace talks if the major players in the region  and on the battlefields  cannot negotiate, according to Cafiero of Gulf State Analytics.

An outright war between the powers may be unlikely, adds Cafiero, but both Saudi Arabia and Iran may increase their involvement in Syria and Yemen, often seen as a fight between two regional giants.

Its far more likely we will see the two sides wage proxy wars more aggressively, he says.

The sectarian nature of the dispute  regardless of its causes  could deepen divisions in the region, adds Abrahms of Northeastern University.

Angry rhetoric is already fueling the current wars and Shiite groups have long vowed revenge in the event of al-Nimrs execution. Shiites across the region have already expressed anger and none of this bodes well for the coming year, according to Abrahms.

To a large extent the conflicts in the Middle East are an outgrowth of this sectarian discord, says Abrahms. And the fact that there is now this fallout at the very beginning of 2016 between the Saudis and the Iranians, that bodes very badly for the rest of the region.
The protesters occupying a U.S. national wildlife refuge in Oregon State are a diverse group with divergent concerns, say analysts, but they have been influenced by the extremist militia movement, which looks forward to a war with the federal government.

The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon occurred Saturday, as the center was closed for the New Year's holiday weekend.

The refuge is 50 kilometers from the nearest town. It's ranch country, with wide open views and a whole lot of sagebrush, said Oregon video-journalist Steve Kaufmann, who has been reporting from the scene. He says the influx of outsiders has put the community on edge.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy is a rancher from Nevada. His family was in the news in 2014, when Bundy, his father, Cliven, and his brothers took part in an armed standoff with federal officials, after refusing to pay fees for grazing their cattle on federal land. Ammon Bundy is at the Oregon compound with two of his brothers.

Bundy said Monday the occupying group has named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.

Grievances

The protesters are addressing issues of concern to many Western ranchers, said John Freemuth, an expert on land use at Boise State University in neighboring Idaho. Freemuth notes there has been a shift in public values toward wildlife protection, which he says has left ranchers feeling squeezed by all these changes, new environmental laws ... and they feel that they're not listened to. The U.S. government controls huge swaths of land in the West, including more than half of the state of Oregon.

The loosely organized occupation group has drawn people with various concerns, including gun rights. Oregon is one of 45 states with so-called open carry laws, which allow people to carry firearms.

Protester Jon Ritzheimer has led armed anti-Islamic protests in his home state of Arizona.

Rick Eaton, a researcher on extremist groups at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, notes that an anti-Islamic website linked to Ritzheimer is raising funds online in support of the Oregon occupiers. Ritzheimer posted an emotional declaration on YouTube warning that there's no stopping us.

John Freemuth says most Oregonians are appalled at the confrontation sparked by outside activists who have rolled in, armed and threatening, and have gone way beyond what the local folks were protesting.

Sandy Volley told the Associated Press, Nobody agrees with everything that the federal government does, but the way they (the protesters) are handling this is not the right way.

Federal response

Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which studies extremist groups, says some ranchers who have legitimate grievances with the federal government have been influenced by what he calls fringe ideologies, including some that anticipate a war by so-called patriots against the government. He says anti-government extremists should not be the arbiters of what is lawful in a country where we have a longstanding system of jurisprudence as organized by our courts.

Researcher Rick Eaton believes federal officials have shown restraint. To their credit, the government has backed off and has not created a standoff, said Eaton.

The 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch in Nevada ended when the U.S. government returned cattle to the family that it had seized for non-payment of fines and grazing fees. Ryan Lenz says the government backed off then in the face of armed protests. He questions whether authorities have an adequate strategy this time.

As the Oregon standoff continues, land-use analyst John Freemuth says that many people feel that these confrontations cannot keep continuing out here in the West, where a couple of crazy people seem to have adopted warped theories of the Constitution and American history.

Sheriff David Ward of Harney County addressed the protesters in a news conference Monday. It is time for you to leave our community, he said. Go home to your own families and end this peacefully.
For black communities in the United States, presidential election participation rates are strong and momentum is building.

In 2012, black voters showed up at the polls in the largest numbers (66.2 percent) and voted at a higher rate than non-Hispanic whites (64.1 percent) for the first time since rates were published by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1996.

Black Americans tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections. This was true by historic margins in President Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 victories  95 and 93 percent, respectively. And their turnout rate in 2016 could be an important factor in deciding the next president of the United States, especially in a tight race.

That's good news for black community leaders who want to ensure their voices are heard and hold future leaders accountable.

Civil rights leadership

The 2014 and 2015 cases of deadly police force against unarmed African-Americans have galvanized a tech-savvy generation of activists to inject new life in an age-old push for racial, economic and social equality.

More and more, movements such as Black Lives Matter are becoming international household names and are holding candidates accountable to specifically address and push for legislation on these issues.

One such organization, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), engages and advocates on behalf of African-American and black immigrant communities on issues of racial justice and immigrant rights.

BAJI's policy and legal manager, Carl Lipscombe, says part of the greater push nationwide to organize and bring to light instances of police brutality results from what he describes as a community-wide fear of "being killed when walking to the corner." He says these police cases are enhanced by the advent of social media and by the ability to capture events on camera that wasn't possible in the 1980s.

Lipscombe says candidates must do more than "throw a bone" if they expect communities of color to go to the polls in droves.

"It's not enough to just say we want free education for everyone," Lipscombe said. "We want to know how this is going to impact black people."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among blacks in the United States, at 9.4 percent, remains significantly higher  nearly double  than the overall rate of 5 percent nationwide.

Black wealth also has declined. The non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, in coordination with the liberal research institution Center for Popular Democracy, reports that black workers' wages have fallen by 44 cents on the hour in the past 15 years, while wages of both Hispanic and white workers have increased by approximately the same amount.

African immigrant concerns

The Migration Policy Institute reports that black immigrants from Africa are better educated than the overall U.S. population, age 25 and older.

In 2007, 38 percent held a four-year degree or more, compared to 27 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, black immigrants earn lower wages and hold the highest unemployment rate in comparison to other immigrant groups, according to the Center for American Progress.

Bakary Tandia, case manager and policy advocate at African Services Committee, a Harlem-based agency dedicated to assisting African immigrants, refugees and asylees, says progress is necessary across all levels of government.

"Even if you take the case of [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio, Tandia said, he is a progressive mayor, but in his administration, I have not seen any African immigrant appointed or in a meaningful position, and the same thing goes at the state level, at the federal level."

New leadership

Grass-roots coordinators say anti-immigration rhetoric among some presidential candidates has fueled electoral participation, as well as greater community leadership.

Steve McFarland, whose organizing efforts include get-out-the-vote campaigns among disenfranchised communities in New York, says the immigration reform movement, combined with the work of Black Lives Matter, has produced a new generation of civil rights leaders.

"It doesn't look the way that it used to look," McFarland said. "It's not big organizations, but they can mobilize people, they have a clear voice, and they are winning changes across the country."

Ahead of the 2016 presidential primaries, there is good news for Democratic frontrunner and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She currently enjoys an 80 percent favorability rating among adult blacks, the highest positive net rating of all candidates, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Clinton, who has met privately with Black Lives Matters activists, specifically addressed racial profiling in an October speech at Clark Atlanta University.

"Race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind," Clinton said. "Racial profiling is wrong, demanding, doesn't keep us safe or help solve crimes. It's time to put that practice behind us."
Peace talks between Burundi's government and opposition groups have been postponed, with no word on when they may resume.

The talks, which opened in Uganda late last month, were set to continue Wednesday in Arusha, Tanzania.

But a senior official in Burundi's foreign affairs ministry, Joseph Bangurambona, said Tuesday the government will not participate due to the inclusion of those who he said are "supporting violence."

Also, a leading opposition coalition, CNARED, said they have not received an invitation to the talks.

Jean Minani, leader of the Frodebu political party and a member of the coalition, accused the government of stalling.

"It is not about President Nkurunziza to choose with who has to negotiate," said Minani. "They don't want to negotiate because they know, they are the causes of all the problems of Burundi."

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is attempting to mediate an end to Burundi's political crisis, triggered by President Pierre Nkurunziza's announcement last April that he would seek a third term.

Since then, clashes between police and protesters and series of attacks in the capital, Bujumbura, have killed more than 400 people.

Tension has run especially high since the African Union said last month it may deploy up to 5,000 peacekeepers in Burundi to stop the violence. The government has said the troops will be attacked if they attempt to come without permission.

President Nkurunziza was re-elected last July in a poll boycotted by the opposition. His critics say he violated two-term limits in the constitution and the Arusha agreement that ended Burundi's civil war. The president said his first term didn't count against the limit because he was elected by parliament instead of a popular vote.
The government of Cameroon announced last month that it has banned the importation, sale and use of toy guns. Officials say the ban is aimed at discouraging violence and improving public safety. Many people are applauding the ban, and some think it should be made law in parliament.

Nine-year-old Kennedy Afubai used his electronic Kalashnikov toy gun to shoot at objects at Saint Anastasie, a popular park and tourist attraction in the heart of Yaounde, Cameroon's capital. The toy gun sprays little water-filled balloons when Kennedy pulls the trigger.

"As you can see, I am using my Kalashnikov gun to shoot and kill enemies so that they should not continue attacking us. I will kill all of them," he said.

It's that kind of talk that makes many Cameroonians nervous, especially since the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has carried out several massacres in far northern Cameroon.

Elvira Tomo is the 35-year-old mother of three girls. She said she preferred toys that, for example, look like kitchen utensils.

She said she would never buy toy guns because they taught children violence and that her parents never bought toy guns for her. She said a child who was offered a toy gun would eventually desire a real gun, which is dangerous for the society.

Cameroon announced the ban on toy guns last month shortly before the end-of-year feasts when people exchange gifts and buy toys for children.

Mani Dieudonne, an official charged with implementing the ban at Cameroon's ministry of territorial administration, said officials made the decision because of the increasing threat of gun violence in the central African nation.

She said in one case, replica guns were used to commit armed robbery.

"A family in Douala was harassed and at the end when the police arrested them [the criminals], they noticed that they had but toy guns. Because the family had very little time to notice or to look at what the criminals were holding, they surrendered all they had," said Dieudonne.

Cameroon's national commission on human rights and freedoms has saluted the initiative and is asking for additional efforts to make sure the ban is effective.

There are still no laws on the books banning the use of toy guns in Cameroon. Sociologist Anni Doriane said it was imperative the country enact an anti-imitation firearms law.

She said toys should be made in respect of security norms because dangerous toys exist. She said society had ethics so people should avoid toys that seem to encourage violence and consider ethics in their choice of toys.

So far, no one has issued a legal challenge to the ban. The main question is how it can be enforced, especially without an actual law to back it up.
Twenty of the 30 candidates seeking the presidency in the Central African Republic are demanding that authorities immediately stop vote counting from December 30 polls, which they allege were marred by ballot irregularities and voter intimidation.

In a joint statement seen by French news agency reporters Monday, the dissenting candidates called the polls "an electoral masquerade" and called for "the whole process to be purely and simply stopped." They also called for all parties to negotiate procedures "for safeguarding the nation" of 5 million residents.

The statement came as partial vote tallies released Sunday showed independent candidate Faustin Archange Touadera, a former prime minister, winning with 23 percent of the vote, a tally of 139,498 ballots.

The most prominent candidate to contest the results was Desire Kolingba, the son of a former president in fourth place with just under 35 percent of the vote in the former French colony.

A likely second round of voting is set for January 31.

Ahead of the vote, many analysts cast the election as an opportunity to restore peace after three years of conflict between Christian militias and Muslim rebels who seized power in 2013.

But hours before polls opened, political analyst Eugene Pehoua Pelema, the president of the U.S.-based Central African Community Council, described the widespread presence of armed groups in the country. He told VOA the government had failed to disarm them, and said he did not believe the election - designed to replace a transitional government - could be free or fair.

For their part, electoral authorities have said all candidates signed an agreement to respect the electoral code of conduct, which permits candidates to contest final results before they are ratified by the country's constitutional court.

Thousands have been killed in the C.A.R. and hundreds of thousands of others driven from their homes since 2013, when Muslim Seleka rebels ousted President Francois Bozize. That coup led to the rise of Christian militia and the eventual presence of French troops and a United Nations peacekeeping force.
The European Commission said on Monday it would examine the impact of laws pushed through by Poland's new right-wing government amid growing concerns for democracy and the rule of law in the EU's largest eastern

member.

Since winning an election last October, the Law and Justice party (PiS), which advocates higher state spending, conservative Catholic values and Euroscepticism, has moved to put Polish public TV and radio broadcasters under direct government control and to change the makeup of the constitutional court.

The court changes prompted public protests, rattled investors and drew accusations from rights activists that PiS is undermining democratic checks and balances in a country long seen as a bulwark of economic and political stability in Europe. PiS strongly denies such charges.

Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a regular news briefing in Brussels that the EU executive would hold a "political debate" on Jan.13 on the rule of law in Poland.



Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, responsible for the digital economy and society, said on Sunday Warsaw should be put under the EU's rule of law supervision, a three-step procedure that could end up with the suspension of Poland's voting rights within the 28-nation bloc.

The rule of law supervision framework was adopted in 2014 to deal with "systemic threats" to EU values. It was created amid concerns over judicial independence in two other former communist member states, Hungary and Romania.

Schinas said the planned discussion of Poland did not amount to a first step in the rule of law procedure.

Under that mechanism, the Commission raises its concerns with the relevant EU member state if it deems there is a systemic threat to the rule of law there. It can give the country a deadline for addressing its concerns.

Should that fail, the EU executive arm can resort to the "nuclear option" of suspending the country's voting rights, a thing that has never happened before.

Fears of creeping 'Orbanisation' in Poland

The latest move from Brussels comes amid growing EU scrutiny of Poland since PiS took over in Warsaw, returning to the helm after turbulent rule in 2005-2007 that ended in acrimony.



Jean Asselborn, foreign minister of Luxembourg, which held the bloc's rotating presidency in the second half of 2015, in December criticised Warsaw's new cabinet, saying it was following the footsteps of Hungary's Viktor Orban.

For all its criticism of Orban, who has long been at loggerheads with the EU over economic policies and democratic freedoms, Brussels has had only modest results in reining in Hungary's ruling Fidesz party.

Some in Brussels are determined not to let the same mistake happen again, which may put the EU capital on a collision course with Poland where PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has often praised Orban's policies.



The PiS government accuses the opposition, strongly pro-EU centrists it ousted in last year's election, of orchestrating the protests and criticism from Brussels.
For banks, controlling costs through job cuts has become one of the most preferred ways of sustaining profitability. In sync with this strategy, Barclays PLC BCS plans to cut further jobs. The news was first reported by Bloomberg.



According to persons familiar with the matter, the London-based bank intends to cut 20% additional workforce at its investment banking division as losses in Asia and global cash equities operations continue to hurt its profitability. Barclays Asia securities business, operating in markets such as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, has become less profitable.



Therefore, Barclays seeks to axe more employees (this is separate from its current plan to trim 7,000 jobs at investment banking division by 2016). The latest announcement is expected to go official by early next year. As of Dec 31, 2014, the company employed 20,500 people at its securities unit.



At present, Barclays is on track to reduce 19,000 jobs through 2016 as part of its global cost-reduction plan. Further, the company restructured its entire business and created a Bad Bank as well (read more: Barclays to Slash 14K Jobs, Create 'Bad Bank').



Additionally, all these initiatives by Barclays have started to bear fruits, as evident from a continued decline in operating expenses. The company is also exiting from less profitable countries, by selling its consumer banking businesses in Portugal, Italy and Spain. Further, the companys French business is on the block for divestiture.



We believe that Barclays, despite balancing the increasing litigations and settlements with cost-saving initiatives as well as restructuring efforts, needs to improve its revenues, costs and capital performance for boosting its financial performance, going forward. So the companys plan to cut additional jobs is consistent with its long-term growth strategy.



Of late, many global banks are resorting to job cuts at less profitable units in order to focus more on profitable areas. In the last couple of months, Deutsche Bank AG DB, Standard Chartered plc SCBFF and Credit Suisse Group AG CS announced substantial job cuts amid a continued decline in profits.



Currently, Barclays carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



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French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday kicked off a week of commemorations marking Islamic extremist attacks in Paris that began with an assault on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, a kosher market and police a year ago this week, claiming 17 lives.

The January 7, 2015 attacks, dubbed "France's 9/11," marked the start of a string of jihadist strikes in the country that culminated in the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.

Victims' families joined Hollande and other dignitaries to unveil a plaque at Charlie Hebdo's former offices where staff last year were holding an editorial meeting when two heavily armed brothers stormed in, killing 11 people.



They then paid homage to a police officer killed as he tried to chase down the fleeing gunmen. Spray painted on the sidewalk was a message of support for the Muslim officer, reading "Je suis Ahmed," or "I am Ahmed," in the red, white and blue of the French flag.

Hollande later commemorated four people killed at a kosher supermarket in an attack that revived concerns about anti-Semitism in the country with Europe's largest Jewish community.



The French president briefly met with some of the survivors of the attack inside the supermarket, including Lassana Bathily, a Mali-born employee of market who hid a group of hostages in the store's underground stockroom.

Bathily, who helped the operation to free the 15 hostages and kill the attacker, has been hailed as a hero and granted French citizenship.

The Charlie Hebdo memorial plaque was quickly covered up after authorities discovered a spelling error in the name of slain cartoonist Georges Wolinski. The black covering was later removed, and a new plaque is being prepared.



Hollande will unveil another plaque on Saturday to honor police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who was killed in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge by one of the attackers on January 8.

The massacre at Charlie Hebdo unleashed an outpouring of solidarity for freedom of expression, with the rallying cry "Je Suis Charlie" taken up around the world.

Tuesday's ceremonies come as Charlie Hebdo is releasing a special anniversary issue laced with obscene and offensive cartoons, its surviving artists and columnists vaunting their freedom to lampoon everyone from Muslim fundamentalists to children, politicians and Catholic priests.
The governor of Yemen's port city of Aden survived an apparent assassination attempt Tuesday.

A car bomb blew up as the convoy carrying Governor Aidarous al-Zubaidi passed by. Al-Zubaidi was apparently unhurt, but several bodyguards were wounded along with, according to a witness, some civilians.

No one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack. But a pro-Islamic State group was behind last month's bombing that killed al-Zubaidi's predecessor, Jaafar Saad.

Tuesday's attack came a day after a gunbattle in Aden between Yemeni forces and secessionist militants -- one of a number of groups jockeying for power in Yemen as they try to drive out Houthi rebels who control the capital, Sana'a.

Saudi airstrikes and ground forces are in Yemen on the side of the internationally recognized government.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council urged all sides in Yemen to "resume a meaningful and sustainable cease-fire" and return to peace talks.

The 15 members again expressed concern for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, saying it is getting worse.

U.N relief officials say 80 percent of civilians in Yemen are in dire need of food and adequate medical care.

Recent talks on putting together a unity government in Yemen have failed.
The Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah says it was behind the bomb blast that struck an Israeli military convoy along the Israeli-Lebanese border Monday.

Israel confirms there was a blast and says it retaliated by shelling Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

The Israelis gave no details, and neither side would confirm if there were any casualties.

The roadside bomb blew up in the long-disputed Shebaa Farms area.

Hezbollah claims the blast was to avenge the death of Samir Kantar, one of its top militants killed in an airstrike near Damascus last month.

Hezbollah accuses Israel of assassinating Kantar. The Israelis refuse to confirm or deny involvement.

Kantar spent nearly 30 years in an Israeli prison for terrorism. He was freed in 2008 and later fled to Syria to fight for President Bashar al-Assad.
India's defense minister said Tuesday a total of six militants have been killed after an attack on an airbase in northern India, and that the multi-day effort to secure the site was ongoing.

The gunmen who began their attack on the strategic base in Pathankot town near the Pakistani border on Saturday killed seven security personnel.Indian officials say they will continue sweeping the area for any potential remaining militants until they are sure it is secure.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office said he spoke by phone Tuesday with Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and told him Pakistan is working on leads and information provided by India to help investigate the attack.

Sharif said whenever there is a serious effort toward peace, terrorists try to derail the process and that the two leaders agreed a cooperative relationship is the most appropriate response.

Militant alliance claims responsibility



An alliance of of more than a dozen militant groups called the United Jihad Council, based in Pakistani Kashmir, has claimed responsibility for the attack.The group, which is fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir, said it wanted to show India that no military installation was out of the reach of militants and India should allow Kashmiris to decide their political future.



The claim of responsibility came in a statement issued to a Srinagar-based news agency.

Reports in India have suggested that the Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammad group carried out the attack.

Officials stressed that all the installations at the base, which houses fighter jets and assault helicopters, are safe. I would like to assure everybody that all these air assets have been secured and are safe, there has been no damage to anyone of them, Brigadier Anupinder Belvi told reporters.

Although officials are trying to stress that damage at the airbase was minimized, questions are being raised over how the gunmen managed to enter the military facility despite intelligence alerts about a possible terror attack.

There are serious holes in the entire security structure, says Sukh Deo Muni at New Delhis Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses. How should this happen after all the alerts that were given?



Even as operations were continuing, India witnessed a second militant attack when four unidentified gunmen tried to storm its consulate in the Afghan town of Mazar-e-Sharif.



Investigating attacks



Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi held a meeting Monday to review both the attacks, which took place about a week after he visited Lahore in an effort to boost a flagging peace process with the rival nation.

Questions are now being raised in New Delhi on how the government will react and whether the attacks will impact talks scheduled to be held between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in Islamabad later this month.

Pakistan on Monday again condemned the airbase attack in India and said it is "working on the leads provided by" New Delhi to help investigate the deadly assault in line with Islamabad's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism.

A foreign ministry statement said that "living in the same region and with a common history, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained dialogue process."It added that the challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to cooperative approach.



Analyst S.D. Muni said there is pressure from both within the ruling party, opposition parties and civil society to cancel the bilateral dialogue, but New Delhis options are limited. I dont think government has many better options, because canceling the talks again puts the whole thing into square one. What do you? If you dont talk, this is where you come to a dead end of diplomacy, says Muni.
Indian forces searched an airbase in the northern Punjab state Tuesday for any possible holdouts from a Saturday attack by heavily armed gunmen that killed seven security personnel.

Security officials have said the search at the strategic base in Pathankot town near the Pakistani border will continue until they are sure the area is secure. Indian forces have killed five attackers, the last on Monday, and it is not clear if any others remain.

The entire operation will continue till all the personnel, assets, structures are physically combed, so it is likely to take a long time, but we would like to assure everyone that," Major General Dushyant Singh, a top officer of the National Security Guards, said Monday.

Officials pointed out that besides strategic assets, the airbase houses many families and schools.

It is like a mini city, said Lt. General J.S. Dhamoon.

An alliance of more than a dozen militant groups called the United Jihad Council, based in Pakistani Kashmir, has claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, which is fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir, said it wanted to show India that no military installation was out of the reach of militants and India should allow Kashmiris to decide their political future.

The claim of responsibility came in a statement issued to a Srinagar-based news agency.

Reports in India have suggested that the Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammad group carried out the attack.

Officials stressed that all the installations at the base, which houses fighter jets and assault helicopters, are safe. I would like to assure everybody that all these air assets have been secured and are safe, there has been no damage to anyone of them, Brigadier Anupinder Belvi told reporters.

Although officials are trying to stress that damage at the airbase was minimized, questions are being raised over how the gunmen managed to enter the military facility despite intelligence alerts about a possible terror attack. There are serious holes in the entire security structure, said Sukh Deo Muni at New Delhis Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses. How should this happen after all the alerts that were given?

Even as operations were continuing, India witnessed a second militant attack when four unidentified gunmen tried to storm its consulate in the Afghan town of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi held a meeting Monday to review both the attacks, which took place about a week after he visited Lahore in an effort to boost a flagging peace process with the rival nation.

Questions are now being raised in New Delhi on how the government will react and whether the attacks will impact talks scheduled to be held between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in Islamabad later this month.

Pakistan on Monday again condemned the airbase attack in India and says it is "working on the leads provided by" New Delhi to help investigate the deadly assault in line with Islamabad's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism.

A foreign ministry statement says that "living in the same region and with a common history, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained dialogue process." It added that the challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to cooperative approach.

Analyst S.D. Muni said there is pressure from both within the ruling party, opposition parties and civil society to cancel the bilateral dialogue, but New Delhis options are limited. I dont think government has many better options, because canceling the talks again puts the whole thing into square one. What do you? If you dont talk, this is where you come to a dead end of diplomacy, said Muni.
The Israeli military said a Palestinian stabbed a soldier Tuesday in the West Bank, then was shot dead by troops.

The attack in the Gush Etzion area was the latest in what has been near-daily violence that has left more than 20 Israelis dead in the past three months.

During the same period, more than 130 Palestinians have been killed, most identified by Israeli authorities as attackers using knives, guns or vehicles to target Israeli civilians and soldiers.

The wave of violence has been blamed on Palestinian frustrations about Israeli occupation and settlement construction on land they want for a future state, as well as rumors about Israeli plans to take over the East Jerusalem holy site known to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that Saudi Arabia cannot "hide its crime" of executing a Shi'ite cleric critical of the Riyadh kingdom by severing its diplomatic ties with Tehran.

Riyadh executed the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, last weekend and then cut its diplomatic links with Tehran after demonstrators stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in protest of the killing, smashing furniture at the Tehran embassy and torching it.

"One does not respond to criticism by cutting off heads," Rouhani said of al-Nimr's role in 2011 Shi'ite protests against Saudi Arabia's ruling royal family.

The Iranian government said the diplomatic split with Saudi Arabia "will have no impact on Iran's national development," contending that "it is Saudi Arabia that will suffer."

Tehran's latest reaction to al-Nimr's execution came as Kuwait joined other Saudi allies in taking diplomatic action against Iran. The state-run KUNA news agency said Tuesday Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Tehran and reiterated its support for all measures Saudi Arabia takes to maintain its security.

The move follows decisions by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan to cut diplomatic ties with Iran, while the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations with the country. All four nations are members of the Arab League, which is due to hold a special meeting Sunday to discuss the Saudi-Iran developments.

The United Nations Security Council issued a statement Monday condemning the attack on the Saudi embassy. It called on Iran to respect its international obligations to protect diplomatic property and urged all parties to "maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region."

In a letter earlier Monday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as to the presidents of the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly, Saudi Arabias U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi strongly condemned the invasion of its Tehran embassy and damage to its consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad.

He said Riyadh is appalled at the failure of Iranian authorities to prevent the attacks. Under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, host countries are required to take necessary steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises and staff.

In his own letter to the U.N. chief, Iranian envoy Gholamali Khoshroo acknowledged that around 8,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration that got out of control, despite extensive efforts by police. He said more than 40 protesters were arrested and an investigation to find other perpetrators is under way.

Regional consequences

Secretary-General Ban expressed concern at the escalation in tensions between the two regional powers, urging them to avoid actions that could exacerbate the situation bilaterally and in the region as a whole. He added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Tehran is deeply worrying.

This escalation is likely to have regional consequences in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, said George Washington University international affairs professor Edmund Ghareeb. He warned it could hurt efforts to push the fledgling peace process forward in Syria. The U.N. hopes to hold the first round of intra-Syrian talks on January 25.

This escalation is likely to complicate the efforts of the United Nations, Russia and the United States to bring the parties together, Ghareeb added.

Britains U.N. ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters London is concerned the dispute "could escalate and could derail the Syria talks; it could derail the Yemen talks; it could potentially become a much bigger problem." He said he hopes the Security Council will do its part to manage the tension and to seek de-escalation.

The secretary-general spoke Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and on Monday with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir in a bid to calm the situation.

The U.N. said Ban expressed his condemnation to Zarif of the attack at the Saudi embassy in Tehran and urged the foreign minister to take the necessary measures to protect diplomatic facilities in the country. He also reiterated his deep dismay at the execution of Sheikh Nimr and 46 other prisoners.

Death penalty

In his call with the Saudi foreign minister, the U.N. said the secretary-general reiterated his views on capital punishment and his disappointment over the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr, whose case he had raised with the Saudi authorities on several occasions.

Ban has previously said the death penalty has no place in the 21st century, and has urged a worldwide moratorium on its use.

In a statement Saturday about the mass executions, Ban expressed concern that they were carried out following trials that raised serious concerns over the nature of the charges and the fairness of the process.

Saudi Arabia rejected that criticism, saying in a statement from its U.N. mission that all of those convicted had fair and public trials and the right to appeal.

He was very much misinformed, the Saudi ambassador told reporters about the secretary-general. The allegations that the trial and the procedures were somehow tainted is simply misinformed, he added.

The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, arrived in Riyadh Monday to meet with officials. He said this is a very worrisome development and he will assess the implications of it on the Syria peace process. He will visit Tehran later this week.

The U.N.s Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, also is due in the region Wednesday to try to secure a new cease-fire after the Saudis ended a shaky one put in place on December 15 that coincided with peace talks in Geneva. Both sides repeatedly violated that truce.
A state law minister said Monday that around 100 Pakistanis have left the country to join Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Rana Sanaullah, Punjab's law minister, also said 42 Pakistanis were arrested in recent days for trying to establish IS sleeper cells. The raids came in four Punjab cities over the weekend and IS literature and weapons were found, he said.

"According to our probe and investigation, those who left the country to join the IS are not more than 100," Sanaullah said.

It is the first time that a senior minister has released figures about Pakistani citizens who left the country to join IS.

Pakistani officials have consistently denied that IS has a presence in the country. But recent arrests, raids and intelligence reports indicate IS may be gaining a foothold, analysts and government critics say.

No footprint

Despite his revelations, Sanaullah attempted to downplay IS's presence in Pakistan, telling VOA's Urdu service that unlike many other countries, there is no IS "footprint" in Pakistan. He said only a few Pakistanis have been lured through social media or literature to join IS abroad, and that does not mean the group has a presence in the country.

"Hundreds of people from different countries have fled to Iraq and Syria to join IS," he told VOA. "However, only a very few Pakistanis have left the country in hopes of joining the militant group."

Sanaullah said the group has no network inside the country that could plan or carry out terror activities.

Among the 42 detained over the weekend were alleged IS Islamabad chief Amir Mansoor; his deputy, Abdullah Mansoori; and the group's chief for Sindh province, Umer Kathio, officials say.

Previous arrests

The raid came days after Pakistan's counterterrorism authorities told VOA that they had arrested a group of 13 suspected militants last week and accused them of operating a recruiting and training facility for IS in Punjab state.

Security forces found "an underground training center and seized automatic weapons, communication equipment, bomb-making material, laptops, CDs containing IS propaganda material, maps of Pakistan military's bases and other facilities," the officials said, requesting anonymity.

The officials told VOA the suspects confessed that they pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi. One of the detainees facilitated contacts between the suspects and a Pakistani national who was in charge of recruiting Pakistani militants to Syria.

The man helped nine suspected militants reach Syria through Turkey, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper said, citing official documents.

Turkish officials arrested two Pakistanis last week, along with a Briton, in Istanbul for links to IS.

And according to Pakistani news reports, three women, along with their children, reportedly left Punjab's capital city of Lahore recently to join IS in Syria and Iraq.

Authorities in Karachi last month discovered a network of women raising funds for IS. And Pakistan's Counter-Terrorism agents apprehended a suspect last week who allegedly was involved in generating funds for IS in Sindh province.

A divided Pakistan

The reports of a possible growing IS presence in the country are causing concern among some Pakistani politicians and analysts.

A leader of the opposition parties in Pakistan's parliament, Sayed Khurshid Shah, accused the government of not doing enough to counter the militant group's activities in Pakistan. He said recruitment for IS has been going on in Punjab, and lists of the enrollees have been prepared.

Pakistan's former secretary of the interior, Tasneem Noorani, told VOA's Urdu Service that the Pakistan government must stop Pakistanis from leaving the country to join IS in Syria and Iraq.

They could pose a greater threat to the country once they return, he said, and they will be equipped with "real life" experience and would have established contacts with IS's global leadership.

The increasing presence of the militant group in Pakistan could further widen the sectarian divide that has hard hit the country for decades, analysts say.

"This is very dangerous, as the country has been divided into two parties," former Pakistan military brigadier Syed Nazir told VOA's Deewa service. "One group is fighting against the IS and the other group is supporting IS."

"This is very dangerous.  this war may expand, which will have extremely dangerous consequences for Pakistan," he said. "IS's influence needs to be countered."

IS activity in Pakistan is blending into IS's growing stronghold in neighboring Afghanistan, where the group has launched attacks against government facilities in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan. The group also has been engaged in fierce fighting with rival Taliban militants.

"IS is present with full strength and capability in the Afghan-Pakistan border region," Pakistan-based analyst Aqeel Yusafzai told VOA.

Several Pakistani militants who have joined IS have been killed in ongoing clashes between IS and Taliban militants in Nangarhar during the past few days, he said.
Libyan TV is reporting that fighting resumed Tuesday around the oil exporting port of Sidra, between fighters claiming loyalty to the Islamic State (IS) group and Libya's petroleum infrastructure force. Seven people were reported killed and 25 others wounded during battles Monday.

A fire raged at a petroleum storage tank in Sidra Tuesday, struck by a missile reportedly fired by IS militants west of the town. Another oil storage tank was set ablaze in nearby Ras Lanuf Monday after IS attacked forces protecting the facility.

Mohammed al Harari, a spokesman for the Libyan National Oil Company in Tripoli, told Libya li Kul Ahrar TV that fighting was preventing firefighters from quelling the flames.

He said that fire and smoke continue to pour from a 500,000 barrel crude oil storage tank in Sidra, and a pipeline between tanks. He adds that fire crews with the Waha Oil Company, which operates the port, have been unable to tackle the fires due to ongoing clashes.

Militants claiming allegiance to the IS group attacked Ras Lanuf Monday with rockets and multiple suicide car bombs, killing at least seven oil company security guards. IS fighters later reportedly withdrew to the nearby town of Ben Javad.

Libya's oil triangle near the eastern capital of Benghazi is the country's most valuable economic asset. Competing militias control vast swathes of territory, and are beyond the control of the two rival governments vying for dominance.

Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, said that gaining control of Libya's oil facilities could give the IS major clout over the rest of the country.

"Libyans know that whoever controls the country's oil can control Libya. [But I don't] think that ISIS has a chance of controlling the country's resources because sentiment in either the east or west is averse to ISIS, Khashan said, using another acronym for the Islamist extremist group. The real threat is al-Qaida," he added.

Khashan argues that Libyans will side with al-Qaida against ISIS and in due time they will turn against al-Qaida. He also stressed that Libyans for the most part are not militant Islamists."

Libya's oil production has reportedly fallen to less than a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day it averaged before the start of the 2011 revolt against the countrys late strongarm leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Authorities in the southern state of Florida have arrested a man accused of vandalizing a mosque with a machete and leaving pork products at the scene.

Michael Scott Wolfe, 35, was arrested Monday in Titusville, Florida. He is being charged with criminal mischief of a religious building, a third degree felony. It is unclear whether he will be charged with a hate crime, which carries stiffer penalties.

Authorities said on the evening January 1, Wolfe broke into the Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque and used a machete to smash windows, lights and cameras on the property.

He is also accused of placing bacon and other pork products, which is prohibited in Islam, around the front door.

His arrest comes amid a recent increase in vandalism at mosques across the country. Last month, vandals spray painted graffiti at mosques in Florida and in California. Also, federal authorities are investigating whether a fire at a mosque in Texas was intentionally set. No one was injured in the December blaze. Officials say the fire had "multiple points of origin," which is an indicator that a fire accelerant may have been used.
Bernie Sanders

US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on Tuesday ratcheted up his criticism of former US Secretary of State and Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton.

At an event in New York billed as a major speech on Wall Street and financial policy, Sanders slammed Clinton's financial-reform plan.

He said Clinton was unnecessarily dismissing his proposal to separate investment and commercial banks, a return to the Glass-Steagall Act that split the two for much of the 20th century.

"My opponent, Secretary Clinton, says that Glass-Steagall would not have prevented the financial crisis because shadow banks like AIG and Lehman Brothers, not big commercial banks, were the real culprits," Sanders said to an audience at The Town Hall venue in midtown Manhattan.

He continued: "Secretary Clinton is wrong."

Sanders also took a subtle shot at Clinton's husband, former US President Bill Clinton, noting that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed during his administration. And he suggested that Clinton was part of an "establishment" culture not serious enough in its punishments of the culprits of the 2008 financial collapse.

"My opponent says that as a senator she told bankers to 'cut it out' and end their destructive behavior," Sanders said, pausing while the audience laughed. "But, in my view, establishment politicians are the ones who need to 'cut it out.' The reality is that Congress doesn't regulate Wall Street. Wall Street and their lobbyists regulate Congress."

The sharpening of Sanders' rhetoric comes as he continues to trail Clinton by somewhat healthy margins in most national polls of the Democratic primary.

The crowd at the venue  a mix of Communications Workers of America union workers, local lawmakers from New York and New Jersey, and many younger attendees  embraced Sanders' attacks on the former secretary of state.

When Sanders name-checked Clinton, scattered boos splattered through the audience. And when he twice declared that Clinton was "wrong," the audience erupted in applause.

Story continues

In a lengthy speech that totaled more than 3,000 words, Sanders pledged to create a list of "too big to fail" institutions within his first 100 days in office. He also declared that he plans to break up the major financial institutions within one year of taking office.

Though it featured much of the same populist rhetoric as Sanders' usual stump speech, the senator incorporated a few more pieces of applause-ready zingers into his normal routine.

"Here is a New Year's resolution that I will keep if elected president," he quipped. "If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them."

The audience seemed pleasantly familiar with Sanders' routine. At multiple points in the event, attendees attempted to finish Sanders' one-liners about financial reform.

NOW WATCH: CLOSE UP THE INTERNET: Donald Trump wants to shut down parts of the web





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When it comes to the deepening rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a senior State Department official says the two dominant Middle East powers ultimately need to work things out for themselves.

However, analysts doubt the two countries have the will to mend fences, even though their rift could impact diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the region.

"It is probably not helpful in the long run for [the United States] to own this, said the senior State Department official Monday.

Saudi Arabia announced Sunday it had decided to sever ties with Iran after protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Bahrain and Sudan followed suit Monday while the United Arab Emirates downgraded relations with Iran.

The protests took place after Sunni-led Saudi Arabia executed a leading Shi'ite cleric, Sheikh Namr al-Namr, on Saturday along with 46 other people. The cleric's execution angered Shi'ites in Iran and other nations.

"They have got to work this out for themselves," said the senior State Department official. "A solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable and keep them focused on what we all ought to be focused on, which is larger issues in the region."

Syria political talks

Those regional issues include a U.N. plan to begin mediating talks this month between the Syrian government and moderate opposition. Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States are among the 18 nations in the International Syria Support Group, which helped craft the plan that includes a cease-fire in Syria. However, Iran is more closely aligned with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We still hope and expect that the meetings between the opposition group and the regime can happen this month," said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

"Obviously, in light of these events [between Iran and Saudi Arabia], we are watching it closely," he added.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said there was reason for optimism that the talks, which could ultimately help stabilize Syria, could go forward.

"The reason that Iran and Saudi Arabia have participated in those conversations that are led by Secretary [of State John] Kerry are not out of charity," Earnest said in a Monday briefing.

He said both Saudi Arabia and Iran have "their own vested interest" in trying to bring an end to Syria's chaos.

Zero trust now

In recent days, Kerry and other State Department officials have reached out to Iran and Saudi Arabia to urge both sides to exercise calm.

However, there may be little the U.S. can do in what is essentially a "regional struggle for power and control," said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Wilson Center.

He predicted the increased tensions between the two regional powers and their allies could make it difficult to hold together the diverse international group that has backed talks on a political transition in Syria.

"It is going to make what was mission impossible now mission completely improbable," he said.



Miller also projected that the rift between the two countries could prompt Iran to strengthen its support for Shi'ite Houthi rebels in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has led airstrikes against the rebels.

"The problem is that there is just zero trust now on both sides," said Atlantic Council analyst Barbara Slavin. "This is their region. They are tearing it apart."

Iran nuclear tensions

The new friction between Saudi Arabia and Iran has also come at a time when Iran appears to be nearing completion of its obligations to get relief from crippling international nuclear-related sanctions.

Iranian officials have said they expect to reach so-called Implementation Day in January.

Kerry has held several rounds of diplomatic talks with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies that have expressed concern that an empowered sanctions-free Iran could be destabilizing to the region.

In the wake of the new rift between the two countries, the U.S. may need to again reach out to Saudi Arabia to ease its concerns, said Patrick Clawson, analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"This reassurance would be particularly helpful as the nuclear deal moves forward and sanctions are eased on Implementation Day," Clawson said in a Monday article.

It remains unclear how the increased tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran will ultimately affect other regional issues where the U.S. has a stake.

However, Kirby said the U.S. would continue to do what it can to try to defuse tensions.

"We have consistently urged everyone to de-escalate tensions in the region so that we can all continue to work on resolving the pressing issues in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East," he said.
The first female commandant of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy was sworn in Tuesday, the latest milestone for American women who now are allowed to serve in all military combat roles.

Brigadier General Diana Holland, 47, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, assumed the leadership post after being honored in a packed ceremony at the academy 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of New York City, whose graduates typically serve as Army officers.

"I'm very grateful for this opportunity," said Holland, a 1990 West Point graduate who thanked her husband and father for their support. She said she looked forward to working with the cadets. "They ask for so little, only to be well led," she said.

Holland took over the historic leadership position a month after the U.S. military struck down gender barriers in the armed forces, announcing it would accept women in all combat jobs previously open only to men, from leading infantry soldiers into battle to serving as Navy SEALS.

At the ceremony, West Point's superintendent, Lieutenant General Robert Caslen, gave a nod to other female alumni who recently made military history, including the first two women to receive the coveted U.S. Army Ranger title, Army Captain Kristen Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver. They completed their training in August 2015.

Holland's resume includes barrier-breaking accomplishments such as becoming the first female general of the U.S. Army Fort Drum & 10th Mountain Division.

Holland, whose hometown is Santa Barbara, California, served in Germany as well as in deployments to Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2010 and 2013.

As the 76th commandant of cadets, she replaces Major General John Thomson III.

The new post marks a return to West Point for Holland, who taught history at the academy after earning a master's degree at Duke University.

West Point, founded in 1802, accepted its first female cadets in 1976.
Armed anti-government activists pressed on with their occupation of a wildlife reserve in the northwestern U.S. state of Oregon on Tuesday, despite the father and son at the center of the group's protest returning to jail and distancing themselves from the activists.

What began with a splinter group from peaceful protests backing local ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond has turned into a four-day standoff focused on larger complaints about the way the federal government manages the land it owns, especially in western states.

The group, led by Ammon Bundy, has pledged to stay for as long as is necessary to achieve its goals. Harney County Sheriff David Ward told them it was time to leave his community.

"You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County," he said Monday. "That help ended when a peaceful protest became an armed and unlawful protest."

It is not clear how many people are involved in the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Organizers indicated at one point there were as many as 100 people there, but Bundy declined Monday to give a number.

A collection of local and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, are collaborating on a response to the situation, but so far have not taken any direct action against the group.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama is aware of the situation and "hopeful it can be resolved peacefully and without violence."

WATCH: Related video report

The ranchers -- 76-year-old Dwight Hammond and his 46-year-old son, Steven -- turned themselves in Monday to return to prison after a federal appeals court ruled they had to serve five-year terms for setting fires on federal land they had used to graze their cattle. Their attorneys said they would seek clemency from Obama to win their freedom again.

Bundy's family had its own month-long standoff with federal authorities in 2014 over unpaid fees the government said they owed for letting their cattle graze on federal land in Nevada. Hundreds of supporters joined the Bundys and eventually the government backed down and decided to return the cattle it had confiscated to try to force payment.

The federal government's land ownership has long been a contentious issue, particularly in the western part of the United States. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, federal agencies own 28 percent of the country's land, most of which is in the western states and Alaska.

At 53 percent, the state of Oregon has the fifth-highest percentage of federally owned land.
Five men associated with a Hong Kong publisher known for books critical of China's leaders have vanished one by one in the last three months, alarming activists and deepening suspicions that mainland authorities are squeezing free expression in the enclave.

The mystery took another turn Tuesday when the wife of the latest man to disappear said she now believes he went to China voluntarily and has canceled a missing person's report for him.



Lee Bo, a British citizen who vanished Dec. 30, purportedly wrote to say he went to mainland China to help with an investigation. His case has sparked fears that he was seized in Hong Kong by security agents from the mainland and taken there in violation of an agreement giving Hong Kong a high degree of control over its own affairs.



Lee's wife said she believed the letter showed he wasn't acting under pressure.



"I believe that it was voluntarily written, so that's why I retracted the case,'' Choi Ka-ping told reporters in brief comments.



Lee and the other four missing men are associated with the publisher Mighty Current, which specializes in gossipy books on political scandals involving China's Communist leaders and other sensitive topics that are banned in the mainland.



The disappearance of the five  all since October  has raised concerns Beijing is eroding the "one country, two systems'' principle that's been in place since Britain ceded control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The principle maintains civil liberties in Hong Kong that are nonexistent on the mainland, including freedom of the press.



British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, on a visit to Beijing, said he pressed officials for information on Lee.



"We have urgently enquired, both of the Hong Kong authorities and of the mainland Chinese authorities, what  if anything  they know of his whereabouts,'' Hammond said. He added that if Lee is involved in any investigation, it should be settled by the Hong Kong judicial system.



Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the same press briefing, warned against making "assumptions or meaningless speculations'' about Lee, saying that "above all, he is a Chinese citizen.''



When Lee vanished, he reportedly did not have a travel permit for mainland China with him, an indication he didn't plan to go there that triggered speculation about Chinese security agents abducting him. The four others were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.



An image of Lee's handwritten letter was published by Taiwan's government-affiliated Central News Agency late Monday and subsequently by Hong Kong media.



The letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing company's Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, said: "Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren't to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties.''



"It might take a bit of time,'' it said. "My current situation is very well. All is normal.''



The letter gave no details on the investigation to which it refers and raised more questions than it answered.



Hong Kong police still have missing persons' files open for three other staff members or shareholders of the publisher or the bookstore. One of the publishing company's owners, Gui Minhai, is a Swedish national who disappeared in Thailand in October, according to Hong Kong media and human rights groups.



Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Joakim Edvardsson said Monday the government was "very concerned'' about the disappearance of one of its citizens.



Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers and human rights activists were skeptical the letter proved Lee was safe.



"If he did indeed write the letter, it was almost certainly written under duress,'' said William Nee, Amnesty International's China researcher. "What we see in mainland China all the time is that police and state security put enormous pressure on family members not to speak to media and not to raise a fuss on social media. If indeed it was state security that detained Lee Bo, one wonders whether the same tactics are being used to silence family members here in Hong Kong.''



China's nationalist newspaper Global Times slammed the bookstore in an editorial Monday for "profiting on political rumors'' and selling books with "trumped-up content.''



"Although the Causeway Bay Bookstore is located in Hong Kong, it actually stays in business by disrupting mainland society,'' the paper said.
The mother of a fugitive American teenager, wanted for violating his probation in connection with a drunk driving case, has agreed to be extradited from California to Texas.

Tonya Couch appeared for a brief court hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles, where she was flown after being deported from Mexico.

Couch is wanted on a charge of hindering the apprehension of her 18-year-old son, Ethan, after the pair fled to Mexico as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he violated his probation in a car crash that killed four people.

Last month, Ethan Couch and his mother were taken into custody in Puerto Vallarta on Mexicos west coast.

Ethan Couch is still being held at a detention facility in Mexico City, where he is fighting extradition to the United States.

Officials in Texas believe the mother and son fled the country in November after a video surfaced showing him drinking at a party in what would be a violation of his probation conditions.

The 2013 crash happened when Couch was 16 years old and drunk, and slammed into an SUV that was on the side of the road. He pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years of probation.

The case made national news when a defense expert said that his wealthy parents treated him too softly, which ingrained a sense of irresponsibility, or what the expert termed affluenza.
On December 31, President Vladimir Putin signed off on a new national security strategy for Russia that unequivocally identifies NATO as a threat. The new strategy, observers say, reflects the recent deterioration in relations between Russia and the West, following Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as its more recent military intervention in Syria.

The 40-page document is generally harsh in tone, focusing on what it characterizes as Russia's isolation in the current international system. In addition, it gives clear priority to state interests over personal interests. It emphasizes the need to guarantee "the inviolability of the constitutional order, the sovereignty, independence, government and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation."

US, both opponent and partner

The strategy document takes a two sided approach to the United States. On the one hand, it says that Russia's "independent" foreign and domestic policy has "provoked opposition from the United States and its allies, which are seeking to maintain their dominance in world affairs." It condemns the United States for continuing to deploy anti-missile defenses, accuses it of supporting an "anti-constitutional coup" in Ukraine and even claims that "a network of U.S. military-biological laboratories" is being expanded on the territory of states neighboring Russia.

On the other hand, the document goes on to say that Russia is interested in building a full partnership with the United States. It notes the need to further develop arms control and confidence building measures related to nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The new strategy also calls for expanded cooperation" in fighting terrorism and resolving regional conflicts.

The call to partnership is almost at the end of the document.

'Threat' from NATO

Taking aim at the Western military alliance, the new Russian national security strategy describes a "buildup" of power on the part of NATO, "imparting to it global functions undertaken in violation of the norms of international law, the intensification of military activities of the bloc countries, the further expansion of the alliance, the approach of its military infrastructure up to Russia's borders." Russia says all of this is a threat to its national security.



Writing in The National Interest Thomas Fedyszyn, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, says that the document fails to note that NATO decided to bolster its rapid reaction force "in direct response to Russian revanchism [a foreign policy aimed at the regaining of lost territories] in Crimea and Ukraine, several months after the aggressions occurred."

Fedyszyn, who served as U.S. Naval Attache to Russia and two tours of duty at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, also notes that NATO troops in Poland and the Baltic states are "rotational," not permanently-stationed forces, and that their numbers "are dwarfed by Russian counterparts across the border."

'Defensive-aggressive'

Alexander Konovalov, president of the Moscow-based Institute for Strategic Assessments, noted in an interview with VOA that the new strategy document reflects Russia's international isolation since it no longer seeks to connect with either former Soviet countries or those in central Asia.

"In the previous strategy, the priority in foreign policy and security policy was given clearly, directly in the text, to cooperation with the CSTO [the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which includes, Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan], with some Asian countries - the SCO [the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes China, Russia and four Central Asian countries] was mentioned. This time I found no mention of the priority of cooperation with CSTO member states, the widely publicized turn to the East."

Alexander Golts, a Moscow-based independent military expert, said the new national security strategy is more "defensive-aggressive" than its predecessors.

"The ideology of the document is that Russia is ringed by enemies; Russia is resisting Western countries, which don't like that it is conducting an independent and autonomous foreign policy," he told VOA. "It explicitly states that if Russia cannot achieve its goals using diplomatic and political means, it may resort to military means."

Still, Golts said he is sure that the document approved by Putin is not a practical guide for the Russian governmental bodies responsible for national security.

"It is necessary to understand that such documents in Russia are purely bureaucratic," he said. "A meticulous researcher could find signs here of conflicting points of view between different bureaucratic clans. But you have to understand that this 'strategy' does not represent the thinking of Russia's leaders: it is what Russia's leaders want to convey to the world about their views, so that the world thinks this is how they are thinking."
U.S. President Barack Obama will discuss his new initiatives to curb gun violence in remarks Tuesday at the White House, as he works to detail to Americans the executive orders he says will not step on Constitutional rights.

Some of the measures, first announced by the White House on Monday, include expanded background checks, more effective enforcement of gun laws, increased mental health treatment and reporting to the national background check system, and more research into gun safety technology.

Obama presented the recommendations discussed during a White House meeting Monday with top officials including U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey.

The good news is that these are not only recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch, said Obama after the meeting. But they are also ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support and believe in.

One key element of the plan includes requiring any business selling firearms, including at gun shows, to get a license and conduct background checks.

We intend to make this system more efficient and make it more comprehensive, said Lynch on Monday. The goal is keeping bad actors away from firearms and also to make it easier for authorities to make sure that the gun laws are properly followed and enforced.

Part of the effort includes increasing by 50 percent the number of FBI personnel who staff the national background check system, said Lynch.

Recent polls show an increase in the number of Americans who support background checks on those seeking to purchase a firearm. Among other actions, the White House is pushing for stricter background checks.

A new survey by Webster's research center found that 85 percent of gun owners believe there should be background checks for every individual seeking to buy a gun.

Each year, tens of thousands of people are killed by guns in the United States, including in mass shootings and suicides, committed at far greater rates than in other countries around the world, said the president.

The Republican-led Congress opposes more restrictions on gun ownership, and any actions planned by the president likely will face legal challenges.

House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized the presidents plan Monday, saying the underlying cause of gun violence is mental illness, and that the gun control measures advocated by the White House will not stop such attacks. Ryan pointed out that Congress has rejected gun control measures supported by the White House.

The president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch and potentially overturning its will, said the Republican congressman. The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights - all of them.

But Obama insisted the gun control initiatives he plans are within his power to implement.

The recommendations are entirely consistent with the second amendment and peoples lawful right to bear arms, Obama said. We have been very careful recognizing that although we have a strong tradition of gun ownership in this country, that even those who possess firearms for hunting, for self-protection and for other legitimate reasons want to make sure that the wrong people dont have them for the wrong reasons.



WATCH: Related video clip
President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a series of new "common-sense" measures meant to reduce gun violence, bypassing Congress on the controversial issue.

Obama rolled out the new policies during a White House address, where he chided lawmakers for failing to enact tighter gun control measures despite a wave of recent mass shootings and called on them and the American people to find the courage to do more.

"We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency," said Obama, who was surrounded by victims of recent gun attacks. It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. Its not even close.

'People are dying'

"People are dying. And the constant excuses for inaction will no longer suffice," he said. "That's why we're here today  not to discuss the last mass shooting, but to prevent the next one."

The executive actions will require more gun sellers to get licenses and more gun buyers to undergo background checks. The plan will also tighten enforcement of existing gun laws, and it asks Congress to invest $500 million to improve access to mental health care.

In addition, the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments will research smart gun technology in the hope of preventing accidental shootings by children and to help identify lost or stolen guns.

"We know we can't stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we can stop one act of evil, one act of violence," said Obama, who at times appeared emotional.

At one point, the president became emotional as he recalled the 20 young children and six others who were killed in a 2012 shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

"First-graders!" he said. Tears ran down his cheek as he added, "Every time I think about those kids, it makes me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

Critics argue that gun control measures will do nothing to reduce violence and are a threat to Americans' right to bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Obama rejected those claims, saying, "This is not a plot to take away everybody's guns."

Furthermore, he noted, it was the rights of people killed in recent mass shootings in the U.S. that were violated.

Referring to some of those massacres, the president said, Our right to worship freely and safely  that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina. And that was denied Jews in Kansas City. And that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek.

Obama, a Democrat, for months has said he was looking into ways to reduce gun violence unilaterally without having to go through a Congress led by his Republican rivals who defeated his earlier, more ambitious gun control proposals.

Obama said the new rules fall "well within" his legal authority as president.

WATCH: Candidates speak out on gun control

GOP reaction

Republicans, who generally oppose gun control measures, reacted angrily to the president's proposals. Many Republican presidential candidates said they would reverse the rules if elected.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump told CNN on Monday that Obama's proposals were the first step toward tighter restrictions on gun owners, saying: "Pretty soon you won't be able to get guns. It's another step in the way of not getting guns."

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, called the proposals a "dangerous level of executive overreach" and said the president was "at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will."

Ryan also contended that Obama's plan goes after the most law-abiding of citizens, rather than after criminals and terrorists.

No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment, Ryan said. We will conduct vigilant oversight.

Due process concerns

Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said he worried that the presidents actions could encroach on due process by giving the government the power to deny gun ownership to those it considered mentally incompetent.

In a statement, Goodlatte said, The House Judiciary Committee will closely monitor the administrations actions and consider whether legislation is needed to further protect Americans constitutional rights.

In the Senate, the lead Republican sponsor of legislation that would expand background checks for gun sales criticized Obama for taking action on the issue without Congress.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said, The president has abused these actions in the past and exceeded the boundaries of the law. This should not be allowed under our constitutional framework.

Toomey worked with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia in 2013 on a bill that would have expanded background checks for all gun purchases, but it was unable to get the 60 votes needed to advance.

Past time to act

Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, embraced the presidents gun safety measures.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said, The vast majority of Americans support common sense action to reduce gun violence.

She and many other Democratic members of Congress said it was past time for Congress to act to curb what they called an epidemic of gun violence.

The National Rifle Association, a powerful gun rights lobbying group, also vowed to look into the new rules to see whether it would challenge them in court. However, an NRA spokeswoman quoted in The New York Times appeared to downplay the significance of the measures.

"This is it, really?" said NRA official Jennifer Baker, according to the Times. "This is what they've been hyping for how long now? This is the proposal they've spent seven years putting together? They're not really doing anything."

More background checks

One key element of Obama's plan is a measure that will widen the definition of a gun dealer. The White House hopes this will require more businesses selling firearms, including those at gun shows, to get licenses and therefore be required to conduct background checks.

"We intend to make this system more efficient and make it more comprehensive," said Attorney General Loretta Lynch. "The goal is keeping bad actors away from firearms and also to make it easier for authorities to make sure that the gun laws are properly followed and enforced."

Part of the effort also includes increasing by 50 percent the number of FBI personnel who staff the national background check system, said Lynch.

Public opinion

Recent polls show an increase in the number of Americans who support background checks on those seeking to purchase firearms.

A new survey by Webster's research center found that 85 percent of gun owners believe there should be background checks for every individual seeking to buy a gun.

Each year, firearms claim the lives of more than 30,000 Americans in mass killings, suicides, domestic violence and other incidents, according to the White House.
The pace of the 2016 presidential election campaign is quickening as White House contenders from both major political parties hone their closing arguments less than a month before the first votes are cast in Iowa.

President Barack Obama injected a new issue into the campaign Tuesday with new executive actions aimed at tightening criminal background checks for gun buyers. An unusually emotional Obama, tears streaming down his cheeks, said he still gets mad when he thinks about the 20 first-graders killed during a shooting spree at a Connecticut elementary school in 2012.

The gun control moves got immediate pushback from several Republican presidential contenders including real estate mogul Donald Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who vowed that the Obama orders would be gone on his first day in office.

Strong focus on Iowa

The elevation of gun control as a major issue in the campaign comes less than a month before the Iowa party caucuses. With much of the attention is focused on the crowded Republican field in Iowa, Trump continues to lead in national polls.

The latest NBC News/Survey Monkey poll had Trump with 35 percent support from Republican and Republican-leaning voters, Cruz in second place with 18 percent. Rubio followed with 13 percent, then Ben Carson with 9 percent, former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 6 percent and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie with 4 percent.

Trump has launched his first television campaign ad that vows to cut the head off of ISIS and stop illegal immigration by building a wall along the U.S. southern border. The ad also defends Trumps call for a temporary ban on non-American Muslims entering the U.S. until, as the ad says, we can figure out what is going on.

Trump targets Hillary

Trump insists he is ready for the challenge of turning his poll support into votes, and is already looking ahead to facing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. And just in case you have any question, the last person that Hillary Clinton wants to run against is me - believe me, believe me, Trump told another large crowd at a rally recently in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Analysts say Trumps success so far is partly a result of the anger and frustration being vented by conservative Republicans. But its also a desire to make a break with what many voters see as a broken political system. I think the perception that Donald Trump, whatever his other failings, would be able to do that - just blast through the walls of partisanship and polarization that have prevented the government from acting - is a major piece of his appeal, said William Galston, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Cruz leads in Iowa

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has emerged as Trumps main challenger. He leads in polls of Iowa Republicans, thanks in large part to growing support from evangelical Christians and conservatives most concerned with social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Cruz believes that his reputation as a Washington outsider willing to buck even his own party leaders will play well with conservative activists looking for a presidential candidate to shake up Washington. And the single biggest difference between me and the other very fine men and women standing on that debate stage is that with me, when I tell you I am going to do something, Im going to do exactly what I said I would do! Cruz told a rally recently in Trussville, Alabama.

Rubio, Christie challenge Cruz

But Cruz is feeling the heat from rivals Marco Rubio and Chris Christie who question his commitment to taking on the Islamic State group. Rubio has been critical of Cruz for proposing to use air power as the primary weapon against Islamic State fighters. Rubio believes an Arab coalition ground force must be deployed, and he told New Hampshire voters this week that isolationist candidates would make the U.S. less safe - an apparent reference to Cruz.

Christie also spoke in New Hampshire and seemed to have Trump in mind when he said Republicans should nominate someone with executive experience instead of turning to D.C. insiders, the politicians of yesterday and the carnival barkers of today. He added, Its not enough to express anger. We must elect someone who actually knows how to get things done.

Looming battle in New Hampshire

Trump leads in recent New Hampshire polls, but Christie has been gaining. Christie, Rubio, Bush and Ohio Governor John Kasich have all focused on New Hampshire; and the top finisher among them could claim the mantle of the mainstream Republican contender to take on Trump, Cruz and the other more conservative candidates.

For months now opinion polls have shown that about 60 percent of Republican voters seem to prefer Trump, Cruz or Carson, all of whom are political outsiders. This isnt a good year for the Republican establishment, said American University presidential historian Allan Lichtman. The Republican establishment doesnt seem to be offering anything thats appealing to the Republican electorate.

Bill Clinton is back

The big development in the Democratic race is the emergence of former President Bill Clinton as a lead campaigner for his wife and current frontrunner, Hillary Clinton.

Clinton seemed right at home as he took to the campaign trail in New Hampshire, greeting voters in Nashua and Exeter. In my adult lifetime there has never been anyone better prepared for the job that awaits the next president than Hillary. Never!

Sanders leads in New Hampshire

Hillary Clinton has a sizeable lead over main challenger Bernie Sanders in national opinion polls, but the margin is close in Iowa, and Sanders is actually ahead in New Hampshire. But Clinton has also focused on Donald Trump of late, and his efforts to invoke the Clinton impeachment scandal of the late 1990s. Thats why it is important to stand up to bullies wherever they are, and why we shouldnt let anybody bully his way into the presidency because that is not who we are as Americans, Clinton said to applause at a recent town hall event in Keota, Iowa.

Sanders has raised nearly as much money as Clinton and continues to draw enthusiastic crowds with his laser-like focus on the economic struggles of middle-class Americans. And you should be angry that almost all of the new income and wealth is going to the top one percent, and you should be angry that you cant find affordable child care, or its hard for you to send your kid to college. You have a right to be angry, Sanders told voters in Harlan, Iowa.

Most pundits regard Clinton as the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination, but her prospects in the general election will depend largely on whom the Republicans select as their nominee, said Galston. I believe that if the Republicans nominate a credible candidate that this will be a very close election. And if they dont, it wont be.

Iowa holds its presidential caucuses February 1st followed by the New Hampshire primary eight days later.


Tensions are rising between China and its regional neighbors after Beijing tested out a runway on one of its artificial islands in the South China Sea.

A civilian plane landed on a runway on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands, one of many islands and reefs in the South China Sea claimed by China and other Asia-Pacific nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Vietnam has lodged a formal diplomatic protest with China over its action, while a spokesman for the Philippines Foreign Minister said Monday it was planning to take similar action.

A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry says aircraft were sent to the island to determine whether the runway conformed to civilian aviation standards. Beijing launched a massive building project last year to transform the submerged reefs into islands that can support runways and other facilities.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that China's test flight on Fiery Cross Reef "raises tensions and threatens regional stability." Washington deployed a guided missile destroyer within 22 kilometers of the Subi Reef in the Spratly's last October on an operation aimed at establishing rules of "freedom of navigation" in international waters.
One U.S. service member was killed and two others were wounded Tuesday during fighting in Afghanistan's Helmand province, where Taliban fighters recently have expanded their operations.



U.S. defense officials said American special forces units were involved in the operation near the city of Marja, a scene of intense fighting in recent weeks.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters Tuesday the U.S. troops "came under fire while conducting a train, advise and assist mission with their Afghan special operations counterparts."



A helicopter was sent to evacuate the wounded, but was unable to take off from Marja when a rotor struck a wall compound, a senior defense official told VOA Tuesday on the condition of anonymity. He added that the helicopter is still in Marja trying to evacuate the wounded.



Another official, U.S. Colonel Michael Lawhorn, told VOA the helicopter "was not shot down."

Intense mortar fire prevented a second U.S. military medevac helicopter from landing, according to a senior defense official.



Marja is one of several parts of Helmand under control of the Taliban. Taliban insurgents have put pressure on the province in southern Afghanistan's poppy-growing region for months.



Ten of Helmand's 14 districts either have fallen to the Taliban or have an uncertain status in the midst of fighting between the Afghan government's security forces and Taliban fighters.



The insurgents' advances have prompted commanders of NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan to deploy American and British military advisers last month to help Afghan forces better coordinate their efforts to re-take lost territory in Helmand, Afghanistan's largest province.

"The support we're providing to the Afghan security forces is not only necessary, but it's improving their capability, improving their resiliency," Cook said.

According to U.N. data from October, the Taliban insurgency has spread across Afghanistan more than at any other point since 2001. Cook would not concede that Afghan security forces are losing ground.

The U.S. soldier killed Tuesday was not identified.

"We are deeply saddened by this loss," Brigadier General Wilson A. Shoffner, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said.

VOA's Ayaz Gul contributed to this report
2015 was, by all accounts, an intense year on South Africas political scene. The year kicked off with an actual brawl in Parliament, in February, after opposition members yelled at the president, prompting the speaker to call in parliamentary police.



And it went downhill from there, as scandals of every possible variety hit the beleaguered president and culminated in a rash of end-of-year marches calling for Jacob Zumas removal.

In the last 12 months, his critics have protested  among other things  his alleged misuse of government funds, his refusal to arrest Sudans visiting president on an international war crimes warrant and his sudden, little-explained recent decision to fire and hire three different finance ministers in one week.

And, analysts say, if you thought that was dramatic, 2016 is going to be even more significant, when all of these issues get thrown into what is usually seen as a boring but necessary fixture of democracy: local elections.



This year, unlike any other, South Africas midyear local elections, in which voters choose partisan candidates for local councils, are likely to serve as a proxy war for the nations bigger political battles  and have huge consequences for the next round of national elections in 2019. The local elections will be held over an extended period between May and August.



The ANC's loosening grip on power

Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said the ruling African National Congress which swept into power during the nations first all-race democratic elections in 1994  has seen a 3 percent drop in every election, which is partly attributed to changing voter sentiment, but also to the growth of opposition parties, which give voters more options.

And, he said, opposition parties have increasingly realized the potential of local government as a springboard to power. The opposition Democratic Alliance proved that was possible when they won the city of Cape Town in the 2000 elections, and then later, the entire Western Cape Province. This year, they and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters are eyeing the nations other major cities, where urban, educated voters are exacerbating the ANCs decline.

In some areas that decline becomes sharp, radical, more than three percent, because of the legitimate crisis that the Jacob Zuma administration has encountered in its two terms, he told VOA. And that is accelerating this decline, is accelerating what ought to happen, but is just increasing the pace of what is not unexpected. Jacob Zuma is a liability when it comes to that, and the metros that were talking about, your Tshwane (also known as Pretoria), your city of Johannesburg, your Cape Town, your Nelson Mandela Bay.

The fight for Johannesburg



The jewel in the crown is no doubt the city of Johannesburg, often known by its isiZulu name, Egoli -- which translates to Place of Gold.

The enormous gold seam that ran below the streets of the nations economic hub is mostly gone, but has been since replaced by the nations stock exchange, the headquarters of multinational mining giants and the nations top decision makers.



Mathekga said hes eagerly watching Johannesburg. The ANC lost a whopping 10 percent of its hold on the province of Gauteng  which contains Johannesburg and Tshwane  in 2014s national elections, to win by a narrow 55 percent. The opposition Democratic Alliance picked up a lot of that poll share, surging from nearly 22 percent to just under 29 percent.

If you lose the city of Johannesburg, you cannot legitimately claim to run the country, he said.

Joy Coplan is an ANC councillor for a wealthy Johannesburg ward, and said shes seeing the party lose ground right before her eyes. Her appointment exemplifies this: she was put in the post by the ANC through South Africas proportional representation system, in which voters cast a ballot both for an individual candidate and, separately, for a party. The individual actually elected to her ward is from the DA; they work in parallel.

She said her two terms have been fulfilling  though she isnt running again for personal reasons  but that she knows voters in her area have turned away from the ANC.

In the suburbs I work in, it is a DA stronghold and ... we might increase our figures from previous, but we would not be able to overcome the DA majority, she said.

She blames the scourge that South Africa has never really been able to shake: racism. To illustrate, she said, Johannesburgs ANC mayor is pushing for densification of the citys wealthier neighborhoods, a move that will bring in cheaper housing, and therefore, may usher in more racial diversity. Her constituents are largely opposed to the idea  and therefore, to the ANC.

Blame it on the electricity

Former Johannesburg ward councilor Darren Bergman, now a DA member of parliament, disagrees. He said that South Africans are upset at the ANC mainly because of failures at the local level  the nation has for years struggled to provide regular electricity, water and basic services to everyone.

He said he still looks back fondly on his two years as a councilor in one of Johannesburgs largest  and poorest  wards. It was in that job, he said, that he really had the chance to change peoples lives.

Being a ward councilor is very rewarding because you pretty much on a daily basis are changing lives directly, he said. Ive had a case where a child was on a ventilator, but because they were terminal, they were allowed home. And then of course we were going through the power outages, and this childs backup battery had gone, and so this child was literally dying. And we managed to get power back specifically to that house, which was an achievement.

Mathekga, the analyst, said this year is the start of a major political shift in South Africa towards local government. He predicts, however, that this scramble for local seats may bring in some instability if the fractious parties have to form local government coalitions  but said its ultimately good for the country.

Its the most immediate form of democracy that you find through local government, he said. I see the future where local government becomes the basis for national politics in the long run. Its not going to happen anytime soon, but it is evolving in that direction.
Rice farmer Weerasinghearchchilage Darmarathana is used to periodic flooding in his low-lying village of Galella in central Sri Lanka.

The 60-year-old has lived all his life on the flood plains of the country's longest river, the Mahaweli, in Polonnaruwa District, some 250 km (155.34 miles) northeast of the capital Colombo.

"It used to be maybe twice, three times a year the road would go under, but the last year has been insane," said the paddy farmer. In his recollection, Galella has never been flooded with the same frequency as in the last two months of 2015.

The village was hit six times in less than two months, Darmarathana said, after unusually heavy rains battered the region in November and December.

Over a million people were marooned in Sri Lanka's Northern, North Central and Eastern provinces, and more than 400 homes and other buildings were destroyed.

An advisory issued by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in early December attributed the rains to the current el Nino weather phenomenon, likely to be the strongest since 1997-1998.

More rain ahead

Extreme rainfall also caused havoc in India late last year, including extensive flooding in the city of Chennai.

"The consensus that strong el Nino conditions has led to abnormal rainfall during the northeast monsoon season in South Asia indicates that el Nino had a part to play in the sequence of extreme weather events in India," the ESCAP advisory said.

Excessive el Nino-linked rainfall across southern India and northern Sri Lanka was expected to continue into early 2016, it added.

Sri Lankan authorities said they were prepared.

"Historically el Nino has meant more rains in this region, so we have been making our predictions on those lines," said Lalith Chandrapala, head of the island's Department of Meteorology.

Chandrapala said the country could be in a position to benefit from the el Nino-induced rains, which began in mid-November on the back of a weak monsoon he assessed to be 75 percent below average.

"We have been telling agencies like the Department of Agriculture to advise farmers to prepare for rains," he said.

Changing mindsets

The ESCAP report also noted that the waters from the current bout of rains could be used for the upcoming planting season.

As the heavy rains struck when there was no harvest, agricultural losses have been negligible.

Pradeep Koddiplili, deputy director at the Disaster Management Center, said no warnings had yet been issued for potential el Nino-related crop damage, mainly because the rains had coincided with the preparation of fields for planting.

But disaster-risk experts working in rural areas say awareness of changing weather patterns remains low and could prevent farmers from making the most of the unseasonal rains.

Sarath Wickramasinghe, a disaster-risk reduction specialist with the Sri Lanka Red Cross who works in North Central Province, said people in the country's dry zone lacked sufficient infrastructure and knowledge to adapt to shifting rains.

"They are traditionally geared for the monsoon, which comes twice a year  even some officials are," he said. "That mindset needs to be changed."

Farmers must adjust to long dry spells, like that experienced in parts of Sri Lanka between June and October 2015, broken by heavy rains.

"Right now the cultivation cycles follow the traditional monsoon," he added.

Farmer Darmarathana from Galella has worked according to the monsoon since he started farming in the 1970s.

"I don't know any other timetable," he said. "Someone needs to teach me the new methods, if there are any."

Wickramasinghe said the approach of traditional farmers needed to evolve "if we are to gain any kind of advantage from the changing rain patterns."

The Red Cross and the U.N. Development Program have launched a pilot project in Polonnaruwa District to help farmers adapt to uncertain weather and climate conditions.

Targeting 100 families in Nagastenne village, it provides them with assistance including seeds and technical knowledge to develop sustainable agriculture methods, such as water harvesting, and to restore degraded land.
Fierce clashes have reportedly erupted between Taliban and Islamic State (IS) fighters in eastern Afghanistan, leaving dozens of people dead on both sides.

Afghan police reported Tuesday the fighting in the remote Batikot and Chaparhar districts of Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, began after hundreds of Taliban insurgents mounted a big attack on IS bases earlier this week.

The Taliban offensive is said to have captured the two districts but attempts to dislodge the rival group from the nearby Nazyan district, which is considered the IS stronghold in Afghanistan, could not succeed.

Separately, the provincial governors office told media that security forces ambushed and killed at least 15 IS fighters near the conflict zone late on Monday.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed to VOA that clashes have taken place and claimed Taliban fighters ousted IS militants from the two districts. Mujahid did not give further details.

The Taliban apparently considers IS a threat to its ongoing violence campaign against the NATO-backed Afghan government.

The Islamist insurgency initiated attacks against IS militants from southern Zabul and western Farah provinces in November and succeeded in dislodging them from the area, a development acknowledged by local Afghan officials.

IS, which controls large areas in Syria and Iraq, has recently established bases in parts of Nangarhar before attempting to extend influence to other parts of the war-ravaged country.

Afghan authorities insist most of the IS fighters are Pakistani nationals hailing from areas such as Orakzai, Khyber and Bajaur, three of the seven semiautonomous tribal districts of Pakistan lining the border with Afghanistan.

IS has recently launched its propaganda FM radio station from an unknown location in Nangarhar to encourage Afghan youth to join the group.

Afghan authorities recently claimed to have jammed the broadcast but residents and local media say the transmission is continuing uninterrupted, encouraging the public to join the IS fight against the Kabul government, its NATO allies and the Taliban.

Meanwhile, local media in Pakistan has also quoted officials as confirming the Taliban assault on IS militants in the Afghan border areas, saying the hostilities killed more than 150 militants, mostly Islamic State supporters and commanders.

Pakistan has been conducting counterterrorism army operations on its side of the volatile border and officials have acknowledged some insurgents have fled to Afghanistan.

Pakistani authorities have also stepped up a crackdown on suspected IS hideouts in major cities, rounding up dozens of militants linked to the Middle Eastern terror group.

Rana Sanaullah, law minister of the countrys populous Punjab province, revealed on Monday as many as 100 suspected extremists have left Pakistan for Syria to take part in the conflict there.

The revelation contradicted repeated claims by the federal authorities that IS has no organized presence in Pakistan.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, is visiting Turkey as regional tensions rise. Ankara is an ally in the US-led war against Islamic State group, but Dunford's visit comes as Turkey is alarmed over recent gains by Syrian Kurds.

The war against Islamic State is expected to top the agenda during Dunford's visit. Turkey, which borders Iraq and Syria, is viewed by Washington as key to the battle against the jihadist group. But political columnist Semih Idiz of Turkeys Cumhuriyet newspaper says Dunford is aware cooperation has not been easy with the fellow NATO member.

"There have been difficulties in the past, and there are continuing difficulties: the fact the Americans have allied themselves with Kurdish elements in Syria, that Turkey is not agreement with," said Idiz. "But there is far more cooperation at the moment than might have been the case a year or two ago."

The U.S. military is providing air support to the YPG, the militia of the Syrian Kurdish group, which has been one of the most successful ground forces battling IS. But Ankara accuses the PYD of being linked to the Kurdish rebel group the PKK, which Turkish forces are currently fighting.

Turkey has said it will not allow Syrian Kurdish forces to take control of any more territory along its border. But those warnings have been ignored, with Syrian Kurds making further gains last week.

Sinan Ulgen of the Carnegie Institute in Brussels says Dunford will be pressured by his Turkish counterparts.

"Turkey expects the United States to deliver on its promise that it will, as best as it can do, limit these territorial ambitions of the PYD," said Ulgen. "That was part of the July deal with the U.S."

Under that deal, which took months of intense U.S. lobbying, Ankara agreed to open up its airbases to forces of the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition. But analyst Ulgen warns those efforts could now be at risk.

"If Washington remains insensitive to Turkeys concern then this can create quite a significant crisis at least in terms of trust," said Ulgen. "Fundamentally its going to be about Turkey becoming less cooperative on the fight against IS, at least in areas where the US is more willing, or is putting a priority."

Adding to Ankaras concerns is that with Russian forces present in Syria, Turkey has all but ruled out the possibility of a military intervention against Syrian Kurdish forces.
U.S. officials say immigration authorities have taken 121 people into custody since Friday, in the first raids targeting the deportation of families who have entered the United States illegally since May 2014.

Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson said the detainees were taken into custody in the states of Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. He described them as members of Central American families who crossed into U.S. territory from Mexico.

Authorities said the detainees already had been ordered removed by an immigration court, after they had exhausted legal means to avoid being sent to their homelands.

Johnson said most were placed in family detention centers in Texas to await deportation.

The White House did not comment on specifics of the apprehensions, which have divided U.S. political leaders and stoked controversy with the American public. But spokesman Josh Earnest said immigration enforcement priorities are focused on deporting felons as opposed to families, while targeting recent border-crossers.

The latest detentions impact only a small fraction of some 100,000 Central Americans  most of them mothers or unaccompanied children  who began crossing the U.S. border in waves nearly 20 months ago.

Analysts have linked the surge to sharp rises in gang-related violence in Central America, as well as to efforts by people seeking to reunite with family members already in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the deportations, which were first publicized in late December. An ACLU statement accuses federal officials of targeting families, and using the detentions as a "scare tactic to deter other families fleeing violence in Central America from coming to the United States."
The Obama administration had warned Saudi Arabian officials about the potential consequences of executing the Shi'ite cleric whose death has roiled the Mideast and set off worldwide protests, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.

"There have been direct concerns raised by U.S. officials to Saudi officials about the potential damaging consequences of following through on the execution -- on mass executions, in particular, the execution of" Nimr al-Nimr, Earnest said during a Monday news briefing.

"This is a concern that we raised with the Saudis in advance, and unfortunately, the concerns that we expressed to the Saudis have precipitated the kinds of consequences that we were concerned about," he said.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby echoed the White House comments, saying, "We are particularly concerned that the execution of (al-Nimr) risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced."

Worldwide reaction

Shi'ite communities have reacted furiously to the execution of al-Nimr, a prominent critic of Saudi Arabia's ruling royal family and who was a key leader of Shi'ite protests in eastern Saudi Arabia in 2011. He was convicted in 2014 of sedition and other charges, and was one of 47 people executed in Saudi Arabia Saturday.

Following the news, protesters set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and the Sunni kingdom cut diplomatic relations with Iran, its Shi'ite regional rival.

Earnest also expressed concern Monday about the Iranians' failure to protect the Saudi diplomatic facility. At least 40 protesters were arrested in the attacks, which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called "totally unjustifiable." But he also denounced al-Nimr's execution.

Over the past two days, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has spoken with Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and with Saudi Arabias deputy crown prince and defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, and with Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in an attempt to defuse the escalating tensions.

Kerry also planned a round of calls to the foreign ministers of all the Sunni-led states in the Gulf region.

The rift comes at a fragile time in the region and the White House has urged the regional rivals to not let the dispute derail efforts to end Syria's 5-year-old civil war.

"Hopefully, they will continue to engage," Earnest said. "It is so clearly in the interests of both countries to advance a political solution to the situation inside of Syria."

The administration doesn't want to see the latest dispute affect progress made against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, and efforts to end conflicts in Syria and Yemen. But Kirby said, Ultimately, these are issues that these countries have to work out for themselves. ... So while we continue to make all efforts to facilitate dialogue, the emphasis is on local leadership to work through their differences and find the best path forward through this tension.

"If youre asking if were trying to be a mediator in all this, the answer is no," he added.

Alex Vatenka of the Middle East Institute said the United States cannot do much to resolve the dispute. He told VOA's Deewa Service he believes that "one party will accuse the U.S. of siding if it says anything about the other."

Brother's accusation

Meanwhile, al-Nimr's brother, Mohammad al-Nimr, has accused U.S. President Barack Obama of failing to influence the Saudi government to prevent the cleric's death, according to a Yahoo News report.

I am sorry to say that the American government did not offer to make any efforts on this, although they knew the danger of this action and the repercussions, Mohammed Al-Nimr told the online news site. We asked very clearly for the American president to intervene as a friend of Saudi Arabia -- and the Americans did not intervene."

Mohammed al-Nimr told Yahoo News that he personally asked officials at the U.S. consulate in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, to urge Obama to speak out against his brothers death sentence. But he said no statement was issued. They limited themselves to general statements from the State Department."

Earlier this year, two other Shi'ite men involved in the protests were sentenced to death, including Ali al-Nimr, the son of Mohammed al-Nimr, who was 17 years old at the time of the demonstrations.

The sentences have yet to be carried out.

At the time, State Department spokesman Kirby said the U.S. government was deeply concerned by the case of Ali al-Nimr, noting that he was then a juvenile and that a confession he made in a Saudi jail was reportedly made under duress.

A White House spokesman declined to comment to Yahoo News about Mohammed al-Nimrs statements, including his criticism of Obama.

However, a senior administration official emailed Yahoo News, saying: We have spoken to the Saudi government about the cases of Nimr al-Nimr and Ali al-Nimr, as well as other (Shi'ite) protesters who were sentenced to death, and asked the Saudi government to ensure fair trial and appeal guarantees and transparent judicial proceedings in all cases.

Obama administration officials privately acknowledged, according to the Yahoo report, the Saudi mass executions and other human rights abuses have raised difficult diplomatic issues as the U.S. attempts to push the Saudis to take a more active role in the anti-IS fight.
The United States expressed concern on Monday that the Venezuelan government is trying to obstruct the actions of the country's National Assembly, which convenes on Tuesday for its first session with an opposition majority in more than 16 years.

"We are concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to interfere with the newly elected National Assembly exercising its constitutionally mandated duties," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, without giving details.

President Nicolas Maduro responded saying that Venezuela would "not accept imperialism."

"Why does the State Department and the U.S. government care about the installation of the National Assembly?" Maduro said during a television address on Monday evening.

In a letter to President Barack Obama on Monday, Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he was deeply troubled by attempts by Maduro's government to "reverse the results" of the National Assembly elections.

Menendez, who sponsored a bill that imposed sanctions against Venezuela in 2014 after a crackdown on political opponents, urged the White House to take further measures to stop Maduro's government from trying to undermine a meaningful political transition in Venezuela.

"I write to urge you and your administration to take immediate steps to ensure that Mr. Maduro's regime is denied the space to obstruct Venezuela's path to democratic order," Menendez wrote. "I believe you can accomplish this with a combination of close monitoring of key international organizations and meaningful, internationally imposed penalties."

Venezuela's opposition coalition on Sunday chose Henry Ramos, 72, who is secretary of the Democratic Action party, to lead the new National Assembly.

The new Congress is likely to get off to a conflictive start on Tuesday when it formally chooses the body's president.
New United Nations figures reveal the terrible toll the ongoing conflict in Yemen is taking on civilians. The U.N. human rights office reports more than 8,100 civilians were killed or wounded between March 26 and the end of last year, the vast majority from airstrikes by Saudi-led coalition forces.

Since Saudi Arabia began its bombing campaign against Houthi rebels at the end of March, the U.N. says 2,795 civilian men, women, and children have been killed and 5,324 wounded. The figures do not reveal the full extent of the tragic toll of this war, as they do not include fighters among the estimated number of dead and injured.

The U.N.-mediated peace talks on Yemen in mid-December in Geneva apparently were unable to stop the carnage. Indeed, the figures show the number of civilians killed in December by Saudi airstrikes was more than twice that in November.

U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville notes the cease-fire agreed to by the warring parties before the start of the talks was broken within minutes. He says airstrikes have continued into the New Year, with around 11 strikes taking place in the capital, Sanaa, this week and continuing into Tuesday.

We have not yet been able to confirm whether or not these latest strikes have resulted in more civilian casualties, although initial reports indicate several private and public civilian buildings have been hit since Sunday, some of them located in densely populated areas of Sanaa," said Colville.

Colville says the U.N. also has received alarming information on the alleged use of cluster bombs by coalition forces in Hajjah Governorate, with reports of several people having been maimed after stepping on unexploded sub-munitions.

He says the humanitarian situation for people in Taiz, the scene of violent clashes for more than eight months is particularly dire. He says rebel Houthi forces, who control entry points into the city, are limiting food and other essential relief from entering.



The U.N. refugee agency reports about 2.5 million people are internally displaced and 167,000 have fled Yemen to surrounding countries. Despite the chaotic situation, UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards tells VOA thousands of people continue to make the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden or Red Sea into Yemen.

About 70,000 people from the Horn of Africa arrived in Yemen last year after the violence broke out even with this desperate situation there," said Edwards. "So, it is a sort of mixed situation.

Edwards says those arriving in Yemen are caught in an extremely alarming situation. He says aid workers have very little access to them and have great difficulty in delivering critical aid to them.
With the New Year, the Zimbabwean government has put in place new ways of raising revenue.Traffic fines have increased by at least 100 percent, and the fine for running a red light has jumped from $20 to $100.

Zimbabwes natural resources such as gold, platinum and diamonds have failed to make the country's economy tick.Now the government is turning to another source to raise funds  traffic fines.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa hiked fines for speeding, running red lights and other infractions by 100 percent or more as of January 1st.This is the first time in Zimbabwe's history that fines have been used to generate revenue for the government.

Tawanda Majoni, an independent analyst in Harare, said it is clear the government is desperate for money. "It has been struggling to pay civil servants, it has been struggling to fund key projects, she explained. Apparently it is now looking at fines as one way of raising revenue. But that is a very desperate and sorry way of doing that. What the government is actually doing is to look at crime as a source of income."

In the streets, motorists urged President Robert Mugabe to reconsider the new traffic fines.

"It is not fair. They should reduce those fines, because we cannot afford a $100 fine," said one motorist.

"Cant afford" is a common phrase in Zimbabwe, given that most of the population is unemployed.

That is the view of Chris Madamombe, a public transport driver. "The fines are not reasonable. [They] cause a lot of corruption with the police," he said.

From here Madamombe slips into the Shona language, saying "police would be asking for some cash if they see that I cannot afford the new fines.

On Monday, Finance Minister Chinamasa told journalists that the new traffic fines would stand regardless of criticism of the idea.

Zimbabwe's economy has struggled for the past 15 years, a situation President Mugabe blames on Western sanctions against him and his political allies, but which most analysts attribute to corruption and a series of poor economic decisions.

Few if any Zimbabweans seem to think that traffic fines can get money flowing to the treasury again, and turn the economy around.
BOGOTA, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Canada's Brookfield Asset Management and Chile's Colbun will bid for the controlling stake in Colombian power generator Isagen at an auction on Jan. 13, the Colombian Finance Ministry said on Monday.

Consortiums controlled by the two companies confirmed their continued interest in the 57.6 percent stake in Isagen to authorities, the ministry said. The stake is valued at around $1.94 billion.

"Both consortiums are now authorized to present offers in the auctions of the state's shares in Isagen, which will take place on 13 January 2016," the statement said.

The government plans to invest proceeds from the sale in infrastructure projects.

The sale of the utility has been suspended at least twice because of legal challenges. The latest appeal seeking to halt the sale was rejected in September.

(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Zimbabwes once rigid indigenization or black empowerment law that compels foreign companies to cede majority shares to the countrys indigenous blacks, has taken on a softer, more accommodating stance, following internal and external pressure.

The Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Act, which became law in March 2008, was controversial from the start.

Propagated by the ruling Zanu-PF party as a means to empower the countrys black majority, opposition groups, some economists and civic groups, pushed back against it, fearing that it would deter foreign investors from doing business in Zimbabwe.

But Zimbabwes government pressed on declaring any foreign company unwilling to comply with the law, which stipulates that foreign and white-owned companies with assets of more than $500,000 should cede or sell a 51-percent stake to black nationals or the countrys National Economic Empowerment Board, unwelcome in Zimbabwe.

Many foreign companies in the country, including Impala Mining, Zimplats and international banking institutions like Barclays and Stanbic Bank, have yet to comply.

Indigenization Minister Patrick Zhuwao conceded there was a challenge with that.

If you look at the framework, I do acknowledge that theres been rampant non-compliance with the legislation, said Zhuwao. What we are concerned about is that there have been some sectors where compliant levels are not as we would like them to be and this is where the President [Robert Mugabe] has said that we want to make sure that we get compliance.

As a result, over the years, Zimbabwes once rigid, hardline tone on enforcing the law, gave way to more conciliatory assurances that the government was open to negotiating terms of compliance as it was not a one size fits all policy.

Fast forward to 2016, while the law is still intact, the country has clearly made a turn, analysts say, though the government has not conceded to its defeat.

On Monday, Zhuwao and Zimbabwes Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who had openly clashed on the laws implementation, jointly introduced new measures or what they called clarifications, where it affects foreign companies that have not complied.

These frameworks are not new, they are frameworks that seek to accommodate current policy positions, of government, with regard to the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation [ZIMASSET] and the 10-point plan guideline, to enable businesses that have not yet complied with indigenization, to start making efforts to start making compliance, in line with the pronouncement made by his excellency the President [Mugabe], Zhuwao said.

Zhuwao said foreign companies that have not complied with the indigenization law will be charged a levy, or a fine of sorts, and are expected to submit their indigenization plans of compliance by March 31st.

Obviously we will be putting in place a levy, and the levy will effectively enable us to effectively punish those entities from a monetary perspective, he said, adding that the government will take even sterner measures against those who break the law.

We still have other measures within the act that can allow for the cancellation of the license. So if those companies continue to not respect the laws of the land, then we have no option but to ask them to stop operating in Zimbabwe, Zhuwao said.

However, Zimbabwes former Finance Minister and leader of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, scoffed at Zhuwaos threats, saying the country had no leverage to take such measures.

This is crazy in that this economy is overtaxed, this economy is in a recession, companies are shutting down, because they cant bear the weight of cost overrun, so to add an additional tax in the form of an empowerment levy, is just crippling the remaining companies, he said.

Biti concluded that if the levy or other actions were enforced on foreign companies, it would cripple the countrys already faltering economy, by driving away their business.

I can assure you that many companies, many individuals, would rather shut down than pay this additional levy.

Biti also dismissed the new regulations announced by Zhuwao and Chinamasa as a ploy to hoodwink the International Monetary Fund which last year stressed Zimbabwes need to clarify its indigenization law as a means of unlocking investments.

Biti said for foreign investment to come in, Harare must amend the act, not introduce cosmetic regulations. He noted that until the law itself is repealed, no changes can be made.

The key thing that drives indigenization in Zimbabwe is the Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Act, Chapter 14;33. And that section has got a section which is very clear  Section 31A of the act, and this says that all companies in Zimbabwe, at least 51% should be held by indigenous people. So that section has not been repealed. So you cant put make up or try to panel beat or try to mitigate this provision.

Among some of the changes under the new regulations, companies will be given up to five years to comply with the 51% threshold and the latitude which could be relaxed for up to 20 years.

Companies will also be allowed to apply for a further grace period of up to 20 years after the five years.
Zimbabwe is seeking to clarify the divisive indigenization law following internal and external pressure as the country struggles to attract foreign investors.

Under Zimbabwean law, foreign and white-owned companies with assets of more than $500,000 must cede or sell a 51 percent stake to black nationals or the countrys National Economic Empowerment Board.

On Monday, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Indigenization Minister Patrick Zhuwao, who had been clashing on the implementation of the law, addressed a joint press conference to introduce new measures and put a March 31st deadline for all foreign companies to submit their indigenization plans.

The government has also introduced an Empowerment Levy, with companies that have a large foreign shareholding paying a greater amount.

The new guidelines outline reserved areas for investment by locals and these include retail, agriculture, bakeries, advertising agencies, cigarette manufacturing, milk processing and fuel retailing, among others.

The government has also backed down from its earlier position, which rejected empowerment credits and corporate social responsibility as part of the measures through which to achieve black economic empowerment.

In the resource-based sectors like mining, government said there is no compromise as state entities are entitled to get a 51 percent stake. In an exclusive interview with VOA Studio 7s Blessing Zulu, Zhuwao said the new regulations are very clear.

Studio 7 also reached former Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who is also president of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, who dismissed the gazette regulations as hot air aimed at hoodwinking the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Last year IMF head of delegation to Harare, Domenica Fanizza, said Zimbabwe will need to clarify its indigenization law as a means of unlocking investments in the southern African nation.

He said, Clarifying indigenization and empowerment laws is a key measure that Zimbabwean authorities intend to take.

He said the move would help allay investor concerns about the security of investments and property rights in Zimbabwe.

Biti noted that Harare must amend the act not introduce cosmetic regulations.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change formation led by former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has condemned reports that the government will soon export more elephants to China in an effort to deal with their over-sized population.

Spokesman Obert Gutu said the government should not destroy Zimbabwes heritage amid claims that some top officials are lining their pockets with elephant proceeds.

Gutu was reacting to reports quoting Environment minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, currently in China, as saying her government was going to increase the number of elephants exported to China as it was doing a good job in looking after those that are already were in that country.

Environment ministry permanent secretary Prince Mupazvirihwo declined to comment saying he only heard about this issue in the press.

But Gutu told Studio 7 that Zimbabwe has enough land to accommodate its wildlife rather than sell it to China.

Wildlife experts say Zimbabwe has enough land for its large numbers of wild animals.

Gutu condemned what he called rampant poaching by top, well-connected people who he said were working in conjunction with some Chinese nationals.

Zimbabwe has lost hundreds of elephants in the past months due to poaching activities.

Last year alone the country lost over 60 elephants from cyanide poisoning in the Hwange National Park.

Last year, China gave Zimbabwe resources in the form of vehicles, tents and flash lights to help fight poachers in Hwange National Park and Mana Pools.
Masvingo residents have expressed concern over the city councils decision to buy luxury vehicles for top officials worth over $500,000 when the local authority cannot provide essential services like water.

The city council angered residents when it placed an advert in a local newspaper seeking tenders for the supply of canopies, bumpers and meg wheel at a cost of $22,000 for Mazda BT50s bought for council management last month.

The residents are fuming that they were not consulted when the city council bought the vehicles and to make matters worse the local authority wants to spend more money on vehicle accessories when it cannot provide necessary services to local people.

Tryson Gavi of Runyararo West high density suburb said it is improper for the city council to seek tenders for the supply of canopies, bumper stickers and other items while it cannot cater for the needs of local ratepayers.

Gavi said, The city council does not have the residents at heart. How can they use such huge of amounts to please few individuals when service delivery is diminishing? They should consider us residents first and prioritize serious issues, the roads are in bad shape, water is still a problem and they rush to buy cars.

Residents feel that the city council should have used the money to boost water supplies as some households go for a long time without water these days.

They also noted that the local roads, clinics and education facilities needed to be upgraded due to the fact that some of them are in a bad state as a result of lack of financial resources.

Another resident, Jefferson Chitando of Mucheke, said the council is abusing residents money and called on for the local authority to be accountable.

They are abusing the road levy paid by residents and we want them to account for this. This is true evidence that the councillors are abusing money and are not worth to be returned, said Chitando.

Other residents questioned the rationale of buying the expensive vehicles when the city council is also struggling to collect refuse because it has only two functional garbage collection trucks for a city with about 100,000 people.

But Masvingo Mayor, Hubert Fidze, defended the decision saying the council is trying to please local residents while catering for the needs of its management.

We have since bought another refuse compacter and it will be delivered soon. We are not prioritising vehicles for managers but we are simply trying to balance with service delivery and we are doing well in that, said Fidze.

Masvingo United Residents and Rate Payers Association director, Anoziva Muguti, said the residents body is worried about what the council is doing.

We are very worried by the way council is expending our resources. Buying those vehicles at the expense of service delivery left us wondering as to which direction the council wants to take the city to, said Muguti.

Residents have vowed to force the council to stop looking for vehicle accessories for city council managers and concentrate on providing services for ratepayers.
James Foley. Photo: Steven Senne/Corbis

HBO has acquired the television rights to Brian Oakess documentary Jim: The James Foley Story, which tells the story of reporter James Foley, who was murdered by members of ISIS in 2014 after being kidnapped two years earlier. Foley had been working as a freelance war correspondent in Syria when he was taken hostage and beheaded in a recorded video, apparently as a response to the U.S. strikes in Iraq. I made this film to carry on the stories that Jim needed us to know, said Oakes, who was a childhood friend of Foleys. Its important that we understand the significant role of todays conflict journalists and why they risk their lives to tell the world how bad it can be. Jim will premiere at Sundance and air on HBO on February 6.
Photo: Discover Channel

Discovery Channels new true-crime series Killing Fields follows an actual ongoing criminal investigation. The network is calling this real time, which is not quite accurate, but lets grant that the turnaround is brief and the case itself is still unfolding. Thats a genuinely unusual format  outside of, you know, the news  and in such crowded TV times as these, who could begrudge a gimmick? Except Killing Fields is doing what so many other shows in the last ten years seem to be doing, and to its severe detriment: taking a compelling idea and turning it into another damn cop show.

Of all the stories out there, all the investigators, all the unsolved crimes, executive producers Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson have brought us the one that is maybe the most trope-filled of them all:

A retired detective who wants one last shot to close a cold case thats haunted him for the last 20 years teams up with a muscular but perhaps hotheaded young partner whose own painful past motivates but also tortures him; our retiree is old-fashioned, perturbed by the younger generations affection for time-wasting technologies, but even he has to admit that advances in forensic science could be the key to solving the case this time around. And, hey, remember that serial killer who was around back then? Hes in prison now, but maybe he was involved somehow? Maybe not. But you know what was involved for sure? The ominous, evidence-destroying swamps here outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Just ask any of these interesting witnesses, informants, and various locals, like the woman wholl artfully describe the differences between the scents of decaying human bodies and decaying animals. Its hard for our graying detective, you see  because of how much he relates to this victim. He, too, has been lonely. He just wants to give her mother closure. Ponder that as you watch B-roll of the fecund but spooky swamplands. People are innocent until proven guilty, says the text on the screen.

The show indulges in the worst vices of a variety of genres, from the bizarre proclamations wed generally expect from, oh, True Detectives true detectives, and the cheesy dun-dun-duuuun music you get from crapola newsmagazine murder shows. Theres the strained dialogue we see on the first seasons of situational reality shows, where people arent comfortable yet repeating things for the camera.

Our main detective is Rodie Sanchez, who decides to come out of retirement because of the murder of Eugenie Boisfontaine, who was killed in 1997. In the first two episodes of the show, its not clear why the case went cold or what investigative strategies were previously exhausted. Sanchez, in one of his many talking-head soliloquies, tells us that Boisfontaine was divorced, and that he has been married six times, so he gets it. She was probably lonely, he says, though its not clear what hes basing that on. The only person that showed her sympathy or kindness  I think was the one that killed her. If he has a reason for thinking that, its never disclosed. In the immediate next scene, he says he has no idea if Boisfontaine was dating anyone at the time of her death  which seems like awfully significant information. Why wasnt that part of the investigation 20 years ago? No one explains this lapse. Sanchez is certainly larger than life, and one can understand the desire to make a show with him at the center, with his frost-white eyes and overintensity. But why this show?

Theres plenty of true-crime television out there  most recently Making a Murderer, though the shows have very little in common  and the genre contains both high art and nasty garbage. We have entire cable networks dedicated to tabloid-oriented crime shows, network newsmagazine hours focused exclusively on tawdry, horrifying tales of murder and violence. Pretending murder doesnt exist is silly and prudish, and theres no point in denying that we all have a sense of human curiosity about depravity. But theres a strange thing happening with nonfiction programming right now. It has to contend with not just its own content but its competing format  reality TV  and with that comes a packagedness, a confounding irony that reality is synonymous with contrivance.

Thats tolerable most of the time. This isnt TV court; people dont care that the Real Housewives wouldnt actually be putting on a charity fashion show without Bravo producing one, or that the people on Duck Dynasty are monstrously homophobic. They know the people on Top Model dont become top models. Even blogs, which once upon a time were this authentic-seeming antidote to the artificiality of other mass media, have trended toward staginess; life is not made of poised Instagram latte-scapes, but oh, that it were. If we all just wanted to watch actual, real life, we could just pull up a chair and stare out the window, or, I dont know, volunteer somewhere?

Killing Fields certainly didnt create this environment, but it does exist in it, albeit clumsily. Yes, these are real people, but so much of it feels phony. It adapts its moves from scripted dramas, reality television, and tabloid newsmagazine shows  genres that distance us from the immediacy of being a human being. Sometimes, in scripted dramas, this is in the pursuit of a grander truth; its not inherently a bad thing to use context or framing or devices. But Killing Fields also is based on  is advertised on, sold on, the whole point of it is that its a real-deal case thats legitimately currently being investigated, and its still being filmed, and no one knows what the outcome will be. Someone real has actually been murdered, and that part isnt staged, and she had a real life, with real joys and real sorrows, and she has a real mother and a real brother, and she really did die. Its an uncomfortable tension, and on a show that has so much else to solve, its one issue too many.
Photo: Netflix

Spoilers ahead.

Starting with episode eight, there is no good news for either Brendan Dassey or his uncle Steven Avery. The glimmers of hope that do interrupt the darkness  a new girlfriend for Avery, a new set of committed, intelligent lawyers for Dassey, a sex scandal that brings down DA Ken Kratz  only intensify the grim, overall truth, which is that nothing positive is ever going to happen for Avery or Dassey in the Wisconsin justice system.

In the last three episodes of the series, we see uncle and nephew repeatedly stand up in court and get knocked down. During sentencing, Averys judge calls him the most dangerous individual to ever set foot in this courtroom. Both defendants are sentenced to life in prison, in Dasseys case with the possibility of early release in 2048.

They are then both denied do-over trials, even though Dassey, with the help of eager and efficient new counsel, persuasively argues that his original lawyer was as ineffective as he was ineffectual. Their appeals are denied by the appellate courts and then by the State Supreme Court, leaving them with almost no options  and without any further right to an attorney.

A lot was packed into these three episodes. What was left out?

Despite what the prosecution alleges during the trial, false confessions are disturbingly common.

It seems all the state has to go on is Dasseys disjointed and contradictory series of confessions. They do not provide any scientific evidence or witnesses linking Dassey to the crime scene. Yet, while Dasseys lawyers play up his low IQ, they dont put up expert witnesses to explain the phenomenon of false confessions. And DA Ken Kratz instructs the jury, Innocent people dont confess.

According to the Innocence Project, though, Kratz is quite wrong. More than 1 out of 4 people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement. Why? Sometimes because they are coerced by actual violence or the threat of it. Other times because their understanding is impaired, either by below-average intelligence or artificial means, such as alcohol. Occasionally, because they are simply exhausted by not being believed. But most often its because they think telling the police what they seem to want to hear is a better bet in the long term than continuing to maintain their own innocence.

From what was portrayed in Making a Murderer, Dasseys lawyers never tried to explain this to the jury. In the hopes of a better outcome, his latest set of lawyers, who more capably but still unsuccessfully argued that the ineptitude of Len Kachinsky was cause enough for the state to grant Dassey another trial, are taking Dasseys case before a Federal Magistrate judge and are awaiting a ruling.

Brendan Dassey could indeed have gotten some of the disturbing details he supplies as part of his confession from the book  or at least the movie version of  Kiss the Girls.

The crime novel by James Patterson begins with a teenage boy who calls himself Casanova committing his first few murders. Plenty more follow both at his hands and at the hands of another older serial killer, known as the Gentleman Caller, who also mutilates corpses.

In the 1997 film version of Kiss the Girls, sadomasochistic serial killers kidnap and rape women before killing them. The film version also contains a scene not found in the book, wherein one killer cuts off some of a female captives hair.

There is, however, no one scene that depicts a scene such as the one Dassey describes under interrogation or memorably draws for investigator Michael OKelly, with a woman shackled naked and spread-eagled to a bed.

OKelly administered a polygraph to Dassey, which he then told his client he had failed.

According to the transcript of Dasseys session with investigator Michael OKelly, OKelly administered a polygraph and told Dassey the results indicated a very high probability that he was not telling the truth.

MOK: This is your polygraph. Can you read up here? BD: [Shakes head no.] MOK: You cant see that far? Can you see what color it is? BD: Red. MOK: Okay. Well, Ill read it for you. It says deception indicated. Probability of deception is point 98. Thats 98 percent. BD: So, what does that mean? MOK: What do you think that means? BD: That I passed it? MOK: It says deception indicated. BD: That I failed it. MOK: Yes.

Apparently, the actual results of the polygraph were inconclusive.

Later, in the same session with OKelly, Dassey supplies a possible motive for Averys alleged kidnapping and killing of Halbach: He couldnt control his temper and became enraged when family members suggested he seek therapy.

BD: I could have a reason why he could have did it. MOK: Go ahead. BD: That I think he wanted to do it because like maybe he wanted to go back to jail. MOK: Why do you think that? BD: Because some days he couldnt control his temper, so the whole family told him to go see the people that you go talk to about your feelings and that. And he, he got pissed off and he went for a ride.



Dassey also claims in the session to have cleaned up the blood in the garage, and the prosecution refers, as corroborative evidence, to bleach stains on his pants.



Len Kachinsky is still practicing in Wisconsin. Ken Kratz, meanwhile, is a criminal defense attorney.

Dasseys second court-appointed attorney is now a name partner at a Wisconsin firm, though its web page seems to have hidden his bio. Meanwhile, disgraced former DA Ken Kratz switched sides after being forced to resign (and seek treatment for drug and sex addiction).

There was official pushback to the making of the documentary.

The two filmmakers had to fight, in conjunction with a lawyer of their own, not to hand over their material to the prosecution. Buzzfeed reports that the government did certainly go out of their way to try and quash their documentary. In the fall of 2006, the state essentially tried to subpoena the footage. One of the filmmakers describes the states action as a fishing expedition, and we really think it was an effort by the state to shut down our production.

There are currently two petitions circulating, asking for presidential pardons for Avery and Dassey.
This week on The Vulture TV Podcast, classic TV buff Stephen Bowie joins Margaret, Matt, and Gazelle to discuss the evolution of TV directing, a medium that, unlike film, has traditionally been a writers world. Who are some of todays best TV directors, and can you make a name for yourself directing television without some films on your resume? Plus, we debate the moral issues raised by the narrative structure of Netflixs Making a Murderer, and why a series like this is ultimately a net positive for society.

There are spoilers in the following discussion:

Making a Murderer, 16:2443:04

Further reading: Margarets review of Making a Murderer; what was left out of Making a Murderer; Matt on why Michelle MacLaren is the best director on TV.



Tune in to The Vulture TV Podcast, produced by the Slate Groups Panoply, every Tuesday, on iTunes or SoundCloud. And please send us your burning TV questions! Tweet us @Vulture, email tvquestions@vulture.com, or leave us a voice mail at 646-504-7673.
Happy New Year, everyone! While we were away bidding 2015 adieu, Supergirl remained exactly where we left it, with its hero suspended in midair in front of Lord Technologies, flying headfirst into Non, the militant, radicalized husband of Karas less-than-friendly, currently imprisoned aunt, General Astra. This, youll remember, happens right before Cat Grant corners Kara and tells her that she knows her meek assistant is really Supergirl. And that wasnt all that long after Karas sister, Alex, found out DEO chief Hank Henshaw is really a shape-shifting Martian hero named Jonn Jonzz, better known to comic aficionados as the Martian Manhunter.

Okay, maybe its time to take a deep breath.

Supergirl was getting pretty busy before it went away for the holidays, and its just as busy now. Which brings us back to Kara, as she pummels her way toward Non. Unfortunately, shes not nearly as skilled a fighter as he is. He easily gets the upper hand against Kara  and Hanks plan to save her by distracting him backfires. Non grabs Hank, then flies away with his Kryptonian henchmen.

In the aftermath of the fight, Maxwell Lord gets extremely testy with Alex; hes furious that Supergirl has seemingly brought aliens to his doorstep. Hes decided hes going to take care of this new menace himself, somehow.

Back at the DEO, we find out that Hank had planned for Alex to take over in his stead  but that doesnt work out either, when the president of the United States steps in to say, Nah man, youve got too much of a personal interest in this. Let world-class jerk General Lane take over instead. Remember how he was the only competent Secret Service agent in 24? If that guy is good enough for Jack Bauer, hes good enough for me. (Okay, so the president didnt actually show up, but wouldnt it have been fun if that happened?)

Alexs conflict of interest develops when Non gets in touch with the DEO with an offer: Hes willing to exchange Hank for Astra if they hand her over in the next 48 hours. And if they dont, Hank is donezo. General Lane is a jerk, but yeah, maybe this conflict-of-interest thing is legit.

Then, its time for the first CatCo scene of 2016, where Kara has a mild panic attack in front of Winn and James, stressing to them that they have to act extra normal and mundane and boring because Cat may have figured out her secret identity. So, Kara has to fool Cat Grant into thinking shes wrong. The same Cat Grant who allegedly saw right through Paul McCartneys incessant reassurances that Yoko Ono was just a pal of his who came over to play Xbox and totally not make out or anything.

Thats a longish way of saying that Kara is not good at convincing Cat that she isnt Supergirl. To Karas credit, however, she sticks to her story.

At Lord Technologies, Jimmy Olsen is taking some day-after photos of the attack  hes suspicious because Lord chalked up the chaos to a lab accident, covering up the fact that his building was raided by super-strong, flying alien ex-cons. Lord knows thats why Jimmy is really there, and takes the opportunity to confront him about his continued support of Supergirl. This guy is really leaning into the whole xenophobia thing, yknow?

So, at this point, you might be wondering how General Lane is handling his first day on the job as head of the DEO. The answer is: horrifically. He goes to Astras cell, gives this prepared speech about how The Day the Earth Stood Still terrified him as a child the same way that Astra terrifies him now  apparently admitting your fears to your enemy is a sign of honor on Krypton  then begins torturing her with Kryptonite injections to learn Hanks location. Kara arrives in time to try and stop him, but thanks to all that Kryptonite, shes literally powerless.

Meanwhile, James reveals to Winn that he wasnt really taking pictures of the scene at Lord Technologies  he was scoping out security. He believes Lord is working on something to take out Kryptonians, and he wants to find out what it is, so he enlists Winn to helping him crack Lords security and break into the building. (Winn Schott and Jimmy Olsen: Heist Buddies is a spin-off I would watch.)

Unfortunately, Jimmy and Winns Big Heist doesnt quite go according to plan: James is caught by Maxs goons and tied up in a creepy basement where Max beats him up. Maxwell Lord, a wealthy, public-facing Science Philanthropist, is detaining and punching out James Olsen, a journalist. This is a little weird. It always seemed like he would tease out the whole Im actually evil thing, but no, hes gone full Say goodnight to the bad guy! now. Okay, I guess. The confrontation ends with Maxwell smashing Olsens camera, then threatening to do worse if Jimmy meddles again. Were all sure that the threat will work, right?

Kara is also having a miserable time of things, as the DEO believes theyve found Hank only to fall into a trap  its a bomb disguised to look like Hank, and it takes out an entire squad. Karas day job falls out from under her too, as Cat Grants final gambit after days of grilling is to demand that Kara either prove she isnt Supergirl or pack up her desk. If she is National Citys big hero, as Cats thinking goes, she cant conceivably waste her time at CatCo when she could be helping others. Rather than reveal herself, Kara chooses to quit.

This is when Supergirl pulls off yet another Perfect Superhero Moment, something its proving itself to be really good at doing.

After retreating to Team Supergirls abandoned office hangout, Kara finds Olsen nursing his wounds and flips the hell out on Winn and James for going after Lord half-cocked on their own, which bubbles over into her frustration and anger about every other part of her life. She has all this power, and yet she cant hold onto her day job, save Hank, stop Non, or get around General Lanes horrible decisions. She is angry and lost and wants to take the fight straight to Maxs doorstep, but Winn reminds her that she cant. If she does, shell only prove his point about aliens being dangerous. Then, James tells her that everythings going to be okay, because when things look bleak, thats when heroes find a way.

I love this show so much for that. Its the most Superman thing to ever Superman and its not even about Superman.

So, Kara finds her way: She goes back to Astra and admits her fears, her fury, and how she has to be better. Her estranged aunt is moved, then Kara asks her to tell her the truth of what happened between Astra and her mother. We find out the broad strokes of Astras version is true  she fought to reveal Kryptons impending ecological disaster, and Alora sent her to Fort Rozz for it  but we also learn that Astra was hiding the fact that Alora believed her about Kryptons doom, and had to imprison her because she resorted to terrorism and violence. Before she sent Astra to Fort Rozz, though, Alora pledged to carry on her work. Shed try to find a way to save their homeworld.

After reaching an understanding with her aunt, Kara agrees to carry out the trade and convinces Alex that its the right call. Lane objects, but stands down when one of his men places his trust in Kara. (She saved his life during that disastrous rescue attempt.)

Kara and Alex go to make the trade, and Non nearly calls in his goons to double cross them  which leads Alex to panic and tell Hank he needs to transform  but Astra demands they stand down. She asks Non to honor the deal, which he does. Astra tells Kara not to mistake her gesture for a truce. Kara says they can call it a start, so who knows what will happen the next time they all get together.

Hank, however, has some splaining to do, since Kara overheard her sisters whole transform comment. He decides to spill the beans  which, neatly enough, gives Kara a solution to her Cat Grant problem. As a Martian, Hank/Jonn can shape-shift and also happens to have Supergirl-like powers. All he has to do is pay a visit to Cats office disguised as Supergirl, while Kara shows up at the same time. They shake hands, Cat is astounded, then tells Kara that she can have her job back if she never speaks of this whole thing ever again. Problem solved.

Next up on the agenda for Team Supergirl: What is Maxwell Lord up to? Whatever his plan is, it involves a top-secret room where hes storing Red Tornados arm and a blonde Jane Doe with freakish black eyes.

It looks a bit  bizarro, dont you think?
Last night, at a concert at Hollywoods Catalina Bar and Grill, the audience arrived expecting a performance by Jason Robert Brown (and, according to their website, maybe some drinks and Italian-American fare), but they got so much more! Ariana Grande made a surprise appearance, coming out onstage in an oversize sweater and big glasses, like someone just woke her up from a cozy sweater-nap. You cant tell if shes holding a tiny kitten or just finished her favorite novel, but lets face it, probably both! Grande sang three songs, two of which were from the musical that marked her Broadway debut, 13, composed by Jason Robert Brown. Hows that for a coincidence?
Xander Berkeley will play a no-good, very bad man. Photo: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

As the midseason teaser for the sixth season of The Walking Dead has made abundantly clear, Negan is coming. And along with him comes a whole world of other characters, some good (praise Jesus!) and some not so good. One of the latter will be played by Xander Berkeley, who TVLine now reports will play Gregory, the leader of the Hilltop Colony in Robert Kirkmans comics and another terrible person in a terrible world. But hes more cowardly bad, in the way of those two bozos who stole Daryls crossbow after he saved them, and less embodiment-of-evil bad, in the way of Negan. Either way, hell be sure to make life hard for Rick and the Alexandrians. Man, this post-apocalypse is rough.
(Adds details of release, background)

OTTAWA, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Canadian producer prices fell 0.2 percent in November, their fourth consecutive drop, on lower prices for precious metals such as gold and silver, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday.

Market operators polled by Reuters had forecast no change from October. Among the 21 major commodity groups, 11 rose, eight declined and two were unchanged.

Prices for primary non-ferrous metal products dropped by 3.5 percent in the largest month-on-month decline since April 2013, pulled down by unwrought silver and gold and their alloys. Copper and aluminum prices also fell.

The decline was largely moderated by a 1.2 percent increase in motorized and recreational vehicle prices, which rose on the back of a weaker Canadian dollar.

Some exporters price their goods in U.S. dollars, which means they get more Canadian dollars as the domestic currency loses value. The Canadian dollar depreciated 1.6 percent against the U.S. greenback in November.

Raw material prices fell by 4.0 percent from October on the back of a 5.7 percent drop in prices for crude energy products. Compared with November 2014, raw materials prices fell by 16.3 percent.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
Motorists who enjoyed the view from the gas pump in 2015 could find themselves downright giddy in 2016.

Gasoline prices that fell last year likely will continue to slip, or at least remain stable, as the worlds appetite for petroleum continues to fall short of supply, according to sources with the AAA Auto Club and GasBuddy.com, as well as Waco-based economist Ray Perryman.

Gas prices in Waco already are starting 20 cents cheaper than they were at this time last year, and I see the yearly average for 2016 coming in even lower than 2015, said Patrick DeHaan, an analyst with GasBuddy.com, who said Monday he was preparing a forecast for 2016 but agreed to provide a few sneak peeks.

Statewide, the yearly average in 2015 for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline stood at $2.18, though it dropped to right around $2 as the year wound down, DeHaan said.

What we see for the coming year may be lower than that $2.18, but probably not lower than $2, he said.

DeHaan said prices in Central Texas could continue to slip in the next few weeks, then experience a seasonal rise in late February or early March, as refineries shut down briefly to convert to the production of so-called summer gasoline, which is formulated to create less pollution in warm weather.

That seasonal change usually adds 35 to 70 cents per gallon to the price of gasoline, then it will slowly taper down, DeHaan said.

Average price

In the Greater Waco area Monday, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded stood at $1.748, down from $1.76 a week earlier, $1.85 a month earlier and $1.94 a year ago.

Travelers could find bargains at Sams Club, Bens Short Stop on Clay Avenue and the Exxon at Waco Drive and North 12th Street, all of which were charging $1.62 per gallon.

Several locations around town had pegged regular unleaded at $1.63, including the Valero Corner Store at South New Road and Memorial Drive.

Prices are likely to stay low for most of the year, and could go lower due to continuing oversupply, relatively weak global demand and a potential increase in direct shipments from Iran, Perryman said in an email.

Iran soon will see world trade sanctions against it removed.

The major wild card at the moment is the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, although there are others, Perryman said.

Perryman said he thinks prices will begin to rise late in 2017, primarily because oil-producing and -exporting countries (OPEC) cant survive a more extended period of low prices and will reduce production.

Other factors that could create a surge in oil and gas prices next year, Perryman said, include a rapid decline in shale-based oil production because of the nature of the wells, which gush with oil initially but quickly wane, as well as a pickup in world demand.

The United States could find itself more involved in supplying the world with crude oil, since the repeal of the federal governments 40-year ban on the export of domestic crude.

The first shipment from the U.S. in four decades left Corpus Christi last week bound for Vitol, an international trading company.

Oil on the tanker was light crude pumped from the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, according to published reports.

AAA Travel Club estimates that Americans saved more than $115 billion on gasoline last year compared to 2014, an average of $550 per licensed driver.

That creates more spending power for individuals, who can use that extra cash to pay for a haircut, buy a movie ticket or place another item in the grocery cart.

Perryman said most regions of the country welcome lower gas prices and the boost they provide to the economy, directly and indirectly.

The attention is always on lower gasoline prices because they are highly visible and have a direct effect on consumer spending capacity on other goods and services, he said. However, oil is also a key input to other fuels, electricity, cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, plastics, synthetic fibers and many other products.

Serious disruption

But low prices can cause serious disruption in areas with high levels of oil production, including the Texas oil patch.

The fallout affects manufacturing as well as a large segment of support and service industries, Perryman said. Texas has several major oil-rich areas and, thus, the state is better off on balance with higher oil prices. For areas without a large petroleum sector, such as Waco, low oil prices are beneficial.

For example, cities and other taxing entities do not receive sales tax rebates on gasoline sales, but they do on goods and services people may purchase with their savings on gasoline, said Laura Chiota, budget officer for the city of Waco, who celebrated larger year-over-year rebates for most months in 2015.

Nationally, the annual average price of gas in 2015 was $2.40 per gallon, the lowest average in the past 10 years and well below the averages of recent years of $3.34 in 2014; $3.49 in 2013; $3.60 in 2012; $3.51 in 2011; and $2.78 in 2010, according to the AAA Auto Club.

The average price of diesel in 2015 was $2.71 per gallon, which was the lowest average for the fuel since 2009. The price of diesel averaged $3.81 per gallon in 2014.

Doug Shupe, a spokesman for AAA Texas, said gas prices are lower than $2 per gallon in most parts of the country.

About 71 percent of U.S. stations were selling gas for less than $2 per gallon Monday, and drivers could find at least one station selling gas for less than $2 in 47 states.

The five states with the lowest average prices on Monday included Missouri ($1.72); Oklahoma, South Carolina and Arkansas ($1.75 each); and Tennessee ($1.76).

Updated figures released by AAA Auto Club on Monday afternoon showed that the Texas average also had slipped to $1.75.

Those states with the highest prices Monday included California ($2.85); Hawaii ($2.69); Nevada ($2.51); and Washington and Alaska ($2.47 each).

In Los Angeles, the average price paid for a gallon of regular unleaded last year was $3.29.
An Austin-based firm hopes to develop a $13 million-plus affordable housing development in Hewitt for the older baby boomer generation, or the silver tsunami.

Hewitt City Council voiced support for the move Monday after hearing a presentation from DMA Development Co. about bringing the first seniors-only housing complex to the city.

Janine Sisak, DMA senior vice president, said the idea is to construct a 106-unit senior complex on 10 acres on North Old Temple Road.

The company will return for a Jan. 18 city council meeting to ask for a general resolution of support from the council and a financial contribution between $100 and $500, which can be given in a move like waiving a fee.

Sisak said the project came to fruition through the application of Housing Tax Credits from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

The tax credit program was created to meet the need for housing for those with incomes above the eligibility for subsidized housing programs.

Only so much funding is approved by the state for the housing projects, so if the council backs DMA, it will apply with the state in hopes of bringing the project to the area, she said.

She said the company will know by next week how likely the project would be to come to Hewitt, as they will know with which other cities they will be competing.

Sisak said Hewitt has a higher probability of winning the project because it has no housing tax credit projects.

I feel really good about this, she said. I feel like this is our year.

City Manager Adam Miles said the tax credit housing program is competitive, as there are only so many millions of dollars worth of credit granted yearly.

Sisak said the company has helped build senior housing in almost every state across the country.

We really do have our heart in senior housing, she said.

She said they love housing seniors for many reasons, including because they pay rent early and rarely move out. The senior communities typically consist of two- or three-story structures and single-story cottages.

They feature kitchen appliances, washer and dryer hookups, 9-foot ceilings with fans, and are energy-efficient. The community amenities include a movie theater, fitness center, library with computers, a TV lounge and laundry facilities, among other features.

Depending on the market, Sisak said, they set the age limit of the senior complexes at 55 or 62 and older.

Mayor Ed Passalugo said he would like to see the minimum age set at 62. About 5 percent of the citys population is seniors, he said.

Sisak said they can deny occupancy to someone age 62-plus who plans to bring along, for instance, a son who is 40, or someone who has custody of a grandchild, to ensure the area stays true to its purpose.

Sisak emphasized the project was not HUD housing. The rents are pegged to what people can afford based on income brackets. Tenants would need to make enough to live there.

One person could make no more than $20,000, whereas the high end for a couple would be $27,000. About 10 percent of the units would be reserved for those who make less.

Sisak said the company owns its own management company and, for a variety of reasons, never flips its properties.

The company, which was founded in 1998, owns and operates more than 1,900 units of affordable and market-rate housing.

Weve been doing this for a long time and we get very emotionally attached to them, she said. Were very involved with our residents and in our communities. Its really kind of personal for us.

If DMA receives the award, construction would begin in spring 2017.

Last year, DMA Development Co. notified Midway Independent School District it applied for state tax credits to build Artesian Flats, a 100-unit apartment complex at 1800 Woodgate Drive for residents earning between $8.50 and $14 per hour.

The Midway ISD board of trustees asked the administration to write a letter to the state expressing the districts position of concern for the low-income rental project, according to board minutes.

Sisak said Monday the company dropped plans for that project.
Congress is often characterized as a place of partisan bickering and gridlock  where debate and partisan rancor is widespread but little is actually accomplished. Too often, this assessment has proven accurate. But in fall 2014, the American people decided to change that, sending a Republican majority to the U.S. Senate. Since then, and under Republican leadership, the Senate has delivered on our promise to pass legislation to help American families, grow our economy and keep us safe.

At the beginning of the 114th Congress, I introduced the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act  legislation aimed at defeating the scourge of human trafficking in this country. Human trafficking is a horrendous practice that, tragically, can be found in every state. Fortunately, members in both parties, and in both chambers, understood the great need to urgently fight this reprehensible practice.

Legislators from across the political spectrum united under a common cause: to help victims of modern-day slavery recover and rebuild their lives. In the spring, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act passed with 99 votes in the Senate and paved the way for these brave survivors  some young children  to find a path to healing. Its now the law of the land.

Congress also tackled major issues concerning our national security. Last fall, both chambers overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is integral to ensuring that our military is resourced, trained and ready for action when called upon.

And in the wake of serious security breaches of federal government computer servers over the summer  and brazen theft of the personal information of millions of Americans  the clear need for robust cyber-security legislation became even more apparent. So the Senate passed the Cyber Information Sharing Act to give the public and private sectors the tools to act more nimbly when attacks are detected.

Weve also passed legislation to grow our economy not just for today but for years down the road. In June, Congress passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation. TPA is a blueprint for pending and future trade negotiations  one that ensures that American farmers, ranchers and manufacturers get the best deal possible. By setting the ground rules on agreements with countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe, TPA opens doors of opportunity to our countrys businesses around the world. It is essential to growing our economy.

But perhaps the most significant achievement was confronting entrenched policy problems that proved too divisive or complicated to tackle in the past. In April, Congress came together to bring about much-needed reform to the payment system for doctors who treat Medicare patients. The legislation preserved seniors access to care and ended years of uncertainty for physicians.

And for the first time in more than a decade, Congress passed a multi-year transportation bill, the result of hard work across party lines over the course of this year. Passage of this bill marked an end to years of short-term extensions. It will allow states the freedom and flexibility to plan for and deliver major transportation and infrastructure projects across the country. This will help make our nations transportation system safer and more efficient and lays the groundwork for even greater economic growth.

Last year Republicans set the bar high for the new Senate majority. We pledged to get back to work and to create and pass substantive pieces of legislation. We did that and proved that inaction didnt have to be the norm. As we look to the year ahead, our work is far from over. But by keeping the American people in the drivers seat, we will continue to deliver real solutions for our country.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, is a member of the Senate Judiciary and Finance Committees.
Americans mostly view hummus as a snack dip, but DGS Delicatessen co-owner Nick Wiseman want to change that perception with the opening of Little Sesame. The 16-seat, counter-order shop below the deli stars hummus as the main event, inspired by quick-service hummusiya in Israel.

Wiseman teamed up with Israeli friend Ronen Tenne to launch the restaurant, whom he met while cooking in New York City. Like any chefs who want to elevate a simple dish, the duo honed in on the ingredients and techniqueorganic chickpeas from Montana, tahini imported from Israel, both pureed with lemon, oil, and water for maximum richness and a creamy texture. Guests can pick between five hummus bowls, which come with seasonal toppings like crispy cauliflower, green onion, and everything spice, or DGSs chopped pastrami and pickled mustard seeds. All range from $9 to $12, and arrive with a thick round of warm pita, and mixed greens tossed with honey-sumac dressing. For dessert: vanilla ice cream drizzled with more tahini, which Wiseman says boasts a sweet, nutty flavor.

Little Sesame is at the front of what may become a hummusiya trend in the United States, joining Zahav chef Michael Solomonovs Dizengoff in Philadelphia.

Little Sesame. 1306 18th St., NW (below DGS Delicatessen); 202-463-2104. Open Monday through Friday, 11:30 to 3 pm.

Join the conversation!
With a royal pair of monikers topping Canberra's most popular baby names, you could be forgiven for thinking Canberra is a city of monarchists.

William and Charlotte were ruled the most popular baby names in the ACT in 2015, according to a list released by Access Canberra on Monday.

William Klefisch, 4 months, of Higgins, with mother Katherine Klefisch. The decision to name him William was personal. Credit:Graham Tidy

Of the 5586 babies registered in the ACT in 2015, 58 were named William and 42 named Charlotte.

This year's suite of traditional names could reflect our renewed affection for the royal family thanks to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, an Access Canberra spokesman said.
The bodies of a father and his two young children have been pulled from a car that appeared to have been deliberately driven off a wharf in the South Australian town of Port Lincoln on Monday.

Police divers made the discovery shortly after recovering a rifle from the Ford station wagon that drove at high speed off Brennan Wharf, South Australian police said.

Police were called to the wharf just after 6am on Monday after witnesses reported seeing a white car, which appeared to deliberately drive off the end of the wharf, police said in a statement.
The NSW government will spend up to $2 million recruiting new executives to oversee TAFE as it prepares to cut up to half the vocational education provider's guaranteed funding.

The restructure will see eight new "executive leadership team positions" created to take charge of the state's vocational education and training sector, taking home salary packages of up to $243,000 each according to pay guidelines published by the NSW Public Service Commission

The hiring spree comes as the guaranteed TAFE NSW budget looks set to be slashed in half, according to a document seen by Fairfax Media based on estimates prepared by the NSW Department of Industry and Skills. Under the state government's Smart and Skilled reforms the public provider has been forced to compete for funding with up to 400 private colleges.
Melbourne's much-loved Skipping Girl Vinegar neon sign may soon be overshadowed and partially obscured by a tall apartment building, if a property developer gets the go-ahead from the local council.

While the historic sign once dominated the Abbotsford skyline, it sits in the middle of a rapidly developing suburb. Nicknamed Little Audrey by locals, the sign was first installed above a vinegar factory in 1936. A new version of Audrey was erected in 1970 near the original site, but switched off in 2001. She was resurrected by the National Trust and AGL in 2009.

The Skipping Girl Vinegar sign in Richmond.

"The Skipping Girl sign has been crowded in on by high-rise development in contradiction to City of Yarra's own landmark structure policy," National Trust conservation manager Paul Roser said, "and this building is going to have the greatest impact of the lot because it is the closest."

Developer Salta Properties defended its plans, saying its proposal for 647 Victoria Street provided more public access to the river and better views of Audrey than the old fire brigade training college and factories which used to be in the area.
Victoria's national parks are increasingly struggling to cope with feral animals, weeds, fire threats and degraded infrastructure after deep budget cuts.

Parks Victoria's most recent annual report shows direct funding from the state government has collapsed by 37 per cent in nominal terms over the past three years, from $122 million in 2011-12 to $76.8 million in 2014-15.

National parks are said to be vulnerable to weeds, deer, horses, foxes and cats. Credit:Jason South

Over the same period, the organisation slashed its spending by more than 16 per cent. Even after adding in cash from trusts and other sources, total income was still down almost 20 per cent, leaving Parks Victoria $6.2 million in the red.

"This was in line with expectations and follows a challenging financial period due to a decline in funding for Parks Victoria's core operations," the annual report says.
So now the former defender of all human rights is proposing changing the immigration laws "to ensure that the Department of Immigration has the final say on who has a right to come and live in The Bahamas."

Do we realise how serious this is/could be?

In case Mr. Mitchell has forgotten, our country is still a country of laws bound by a Constitution. We are not a dictatorship where a man can arbitrarily decide who has the right to live in The Bahamas or who has to leave without deference to the courts.

Surely even governing party (PLP) Members of Parliament will take issue with this.

If the Official Opposition (FNM) do not raise the roof on this issue it will speak volumes about their commitment to democracy as well.

We have been seeing more and more laws providing the absolute power of the Minister to circumvent the courts.

To repeat Fred Mitchell's words again, this dangerous trend is insidious.

Quo Vadis Bahamas?
Luo Yunfei | ChinaFotoPress | Getty Images. European markets reversed gains to trade mixed to slightly higher on Tuesday, as concerns over the Chinese economy continue.

European markets finished higher on Tuesday, as global sentiment regained some ground after steep falls in the previous session.

The pan-European STOXX 600 (^STOXX) ended trade around 0.6 percent higher provisionally, with most sectors finishing in positive territory. London's FTSE (FTSE International: .FTSE) closed up 0.7 percent, boosted by its mining sector. However, France's CAC (Euronext Paris: .FCHI) and Germany's DAX (^GDAXI) wavered, both closing up around 0.3 percent.

Asian markets remain firmly in focus for investors after Chinese equities plunged on Monday's session, on the back of weaker manufacturing surveys that renewed concerns for the country's growth prospects. Also spooking investors was the prospect that a six-month lockup on sales by big shareholders was due to expire Friday, sparking fears of an exodus by companies' large stakeholders.

In a bid to calm the markets, China's central bank injected 130 billion yuan ($19.9 billion) in short-term funds into the country's financial system. Still, China's shares oscillated between gains and losses , even as other Asia markets recovered.

China's securities watchdog, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), defended its use of a new circuit breaker on the countries' volatile stock exchanges on Monday , saying that the mechanism protected investors and calmed markets.

The intervention by the People's Bank of China (PBoC) helped push metal prices slightly higher, pushing the basic resource sector up sharply, after it took a battering on Monday. Glencore (London Stock Exchange: GLEN-GB) and ArcelorMittal (Euronext Amsterdam: MT-NL) were top gainers in the sector, closing up 3.5 and 6.1 percent respectively.

However, oil prices continued to weigh on sentiment, as both Brent and U.S. crude slipped sharply on concerns over China and a strong U.S. dollar. Both were trading within the low to mid $36 range by Europe's close. The drop caused oil stocks to tumble, with oil services firm Subsea 7 (Oslo Stock Exchange: SUBC-NO) tanking to the bottom of the STOXX 600, off 10 percent.

Story continues

Orange and Bouygues (Euronext Paris: EN-FR) were in focus after Orange confirmed it was in talks with Bouygues to buy its telecoms unit. Shares in both firms closed higher and gave a boost to other stocks in the sector. Numericable-SFR (Euronext Paris: NUM-FR) soared to the top of benchmarks, up over 12 percent while Altice jumped 9.3 percent. France's Iliad also posted strong gains.

British supermarket chain Tesco (London Stock Exchange: TSCO-GB) came off session highs, yet remained 1.5 percent higher by the close, after Deutsche Bank raised its outlook on the stock from "hold" to "buy".

Another retailer, Sainsbury's (London Stock Exchange: SBRY-GB) confirmed that it had made an approach to Home Retail Group in November, however the move was ultimately rejected. Sainsbury's shares slipped sharply on the news, closing over 5 percent down, while London-listed Home Retail (London Stock Exchange: HOME-GB) skyrocketed 41 percent.

Meanwhile, U.K. clothing retailer Next (London Stock Exchange: NXT-GB) reported disappointing fourth-quarter sales which it attributed to unusually warm weather in November and December, sending shares to close sharply lower, by 4.6 percent.

And embattled German carmaker Volkswagen (XETRA:VOW3-DE) slipped down 4 percent after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the company for allegedly cheating emissions test by installing special software.

On the data front, new figures showed consumer prices rose 0.2 percent in December in the euro zone .



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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Jan. 05, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 05, 2016 | 10:56 AM | PADUCAH, KY

Whether a defamation lawsuit against the Paducah Economic Development Board and its CEO will be dismissed was supposed to be decided in court, but the hearing wasn't held as scheduled.



Lawyers were supposed to attend a motion hour Monday, with GPED and Darnell wanting to dismiss the defamation case altogether. After being delayed to Monday afternoon, the motion hour was not held at all, and another date has not been set.



The lawsuit was brought by the St. Louis-based Sansone Group over allegations that GPED CEO Scott Darnell was trying to undermine a proposed 400,000 square foot shopping development near Kentucky Oaks Mall. It would be the first of its kind in nearly 20 years for Paducah.



The lawsuit alleges that Darnell defamed Sansone by directly interfering with their proposal with the retailers that agreed to open in the new development. Jim Sansone with the Sansone Group, told West Kentucky Star last week that they are still moving forward with the project as planned.



"We are continuing to move forward with the project. It's certainly is taking some turns that were unexpected, and it has certainly taken a lot longer than we had originally hoped. We know the people in McCracken County would like to see this project. We think it's a good area, and so we are continuing to pursue the development and we're hopeful that we will be able to bring it to the residents of McCracken County," said Sansone.



Sansone says the project may end up being a little more than the original 400,000 square feet initially planned. He says 100% of the businesses scheduled to locate in the new shopping center are new to Paducah.



Sansone says they anticipate an announcement about construction of the development sometime before the end of the 1st quarter of this year (2016).






One dead, one injured in falls from cliffs in Shawnee Forest
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By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 04, 2016 | 03:44 PM | MARTIN, TN

The outstanding academic achievements of undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee at Martin have been honored with publication of the Fall 2015 Chancellors Honor Rolls for the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, College of Business and Global Affairs, College of Education, Health, and Behavioral Sciences, College of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

Students can make the Chancellors Honor Roll with honors (3.2 through 3.49 GPA), high honors (3.5 through 3.79 GPA) or highest honors (3.8 through 4.0 GPA).

Area students who made the honor rolls are:

 Danielle P. Allison, Mayfield, Honors

 Richard A. Null, Mayfield, High Honors

 Natalie C. King, Wingo, High Honors

To be eligible for Honor Roll, a student must take at least 12 hours of credit (pass-fail courses are not included) and achieve at least a 3.2 (B) grade point average based on a 4.0 scale.
Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
Board to Consult Company and Subsidiaries on Assembly Bills 266, 243 and Senate Bill 643

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 5, 2016 / Gala Global, Inc. (GLAG), a startup supplier of new products and services in the hemp and cannabis industries, today announced the creation of a seven person advisory board that will specialize in maximizing Gala Global's business development in light of California's new landmark marijuana legislation. This announcement comes with the introduction of five new members that will merge into the two-person advisory board formed back in October 2015.

The new advisory board will focus on the individualized needs of each one of the Company's subsidiaries and affiliated companies: Cannabis Ventures, Inc., a company that focuses on the commercialization of cannabis and hemp, CBD Livin, which delivers products such as oils, lotions, water, teas and vapor pens and Cloneville (CCSC), an affiliated organization that has been at the forefront of the legalization and medical marijuana movements. Each member of this seven person advisory board will bring a specialized knowledge and experience tailored to the different facets of each one of the Company's subsidiaries and affiliates.

Gala Global believes that with California medical marijuana bills AB 266, AB 243 and SB 643 having gone into effect on January 1, 2016, the State is primed to become a hemp and cannabis global economic leader. It is therefore paramount that the Company assembles the best minds and leaders from across all sectors of the industry under the Gala Global umbrella to assure a prosperous ushering into the new regulatory framework that awaits.

The newly appointed advisory board members include James M. Haas Jr., CEO of GreenGro Technologies, Inc. (GRNH), a manufacturer specializing in eco-friendly green technologies and agricultural science systems, Dr. Albert Sanchez Sr. EdS. PhD., a holistic doctor with more than 54 years of experience dedicated to finding cures for chronic degenerative diseases, George W. M. Mull Esq., Attorney At Law, specializing in medical marijuana compliance, licensing and regulation, Will Senn, an industry retail and medicinal dispensary operations innovator and political activist, and Sammy Trujillo, a cannabis industry sales and marketing professional with more than six years of experience throughout all of California. They join original members Calvin Frye, CEO of Gala Global and Allison Hess, legal consultant specializing in the cannabis industry to round out the new advisory board.

Story continues

"Right now is an exciting time to be in the hemp and cannabis business in California," said Calvin Frye, CEO of Gala Global. "The industry will no longer be the wild west, but a viable regulated market with new opportunities for growers, transporters, manufacturers, dispensaries and distributors to be profitable  legally, for the first time," Frye continued. "These changes are why we established a knowledgeable and robust advisory board."

Ms. Hess concluded, "California is the world's eighth largest economy. We are strategically placed at the center of a market that is on the verge of unprecedented economic growth. Having all of these great minds from different sectors of our industry working together under one roof all complimenting each other is such a tremendous addition to Gala Global's value. This is just exciting. The synergies will be amazing to watch unfold for us."

About Gala Global

Gala Global, Inc. is a publicly traded development stage company, which plans to expand in the hemp and cannabis industries. The company is refocusing its purpose on the development, research, and commercialization of products derived from the hemp and cannabis plants, while expanding its clothing operations and upcoming hemp based fiber apparel and accessories division.

For more information, please visit galaglobalinc.com, cbdlivin.com and cannabisventuresinc.com.

Disclaimer: The Company relies upon the Safe Harbor Laws of 1933, 1934 and 1995 for all public news releases. Statements, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements. The company, through its management, makes forward-looking public statements concerning its expected future operations, performance and other developments. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily estimates reflecting the company's best judgment based upon current information and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that other factors will not affect the accuracy of such forward-looking statements. It is impossible to identify all such factors. Factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those estimated by the company include, but are not limited to, government regulation; managing and maintaining growth; the effect of adverse publicity; litigation; competition; and other factors which may be identified from time to time in the company's public announcements.

CONTACT:

Calvin Frye

CEO, Gala Global, Inc.

info@galaglobalinc.com

(714) 660-3081

SOURCE: Gala Global, Inc.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy failed to impress officials at General Electric (NYSE:GE) with a last-ditch effort to keep the conglomerate from moving its corporate headquarters out of the state even after he vowed to match the best offer dangled by other governors looking to lure away the company and its bevy of jobs and taxes, the FOX Business Network has learned.

Though no final decision has been made, people with direct knowledge of the matter say Malloys December presentation, described as lackluster by GE officials, increases the possibility that the company CEO Jeffrey Immelt will move its long-time corporate headquarters out of Fairfield, Connecticut.

A final decision is expected before the end of January.

They [Malloy and other state officials] basically came in and said we will match the best proposal offered by any other state, said a person with direct knowledge of the meeting. But Immelt isnt looking for a deal; this is more complicated.

A spokesman for Malloy declined to comment. A GE spokesman said: We have formed an exploratory team to assess the companys options to relocate corporate headquarters. The team is currently engaged in the process and is taking many factors into consideration. When there is a final decision on relocation, we will communicate it publicly.

Such a move would be a blow to Connecticuts economy, which has failed to fully recover from the 2008 financial crisis and could have political implications in a state dominated by Democrats, like Malloy, who was elected governor in 2010. The states senior U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal is seeking re-election in November, and his likely Republican challenger, economist and television personality Larry Kudlow will likely make the states dismal business climateand GEs possible movea central theme of his campaign.

Immelt announced in June that GE was considering moving its corporate headquarters out of Connecticut to a more tax friendly state. The announcement came after Malloy reneged on a campaign promise not to raise taxes and then crafted a budget with the states Democratically-controlled legislature that called for higher levies on individuals and corporations.

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Since then, officials from around a dozen states such as Texas and Ohio have met with Immelt and his exploratory team in an attempt to woo the company and its jobs. GE insiders say Immelt has narrowed the potential sites of a relocation to Westchester County, NY, New York City, Providence, RI and Boston, MA. He might also opt to remain in Fairfield in the end.

Part of the decision to remain in the northeast is predicated on the proximity to the companys massive leadership and development center in Crotonville, New York near the Westchester County town of Ossining, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. If the firm decides to leave Connecticut it would likely keep some employees in the state and could donate its headquarters to Sacred Heart University, which named its business school after the companys former CEO, Jack Welch.

About 800 people work at GE corporate headquarters in Farfield, and the relocation would also bring significant corporate and individual tax revenues to the winning state. GE is one of the worlds largest companies with a market value of close to $310 billion. Earlier in the year, it announced it would sell off most of its massive GE Capital unit, amid tougher regulations that have made the financial business less profitable.

Immelt did not attend the December meeting between Malloy and the companys exploratory team, but he was immediately briefed on the matter, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting. The biggest sticking point for GE in Malloys presentation was that it didnt address all the factors that Immelt is considering in determining whether or not to move the corporate headquarters aside from the states tax structure.

They include Connecticuts access to quality transportation and the overall business climate that remains sluggish even years after the 2008 financial crisis, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

A big part of the problem facing Malloy in keeping GE at its current location in the state is that GE officials believe he didnt take Immelts threat to leave Connecticut seriously, these people say. A number of other state officials met with Immelt even before Malloy made his initial pitch to the company in the summer, and when he did, Malloy made a crucial error.

In a power-point presentation, Malloy used a photo of a jet engine that was built by a GE competitor, Pratt & Whitney. Immelt pointed out the mistake during the meeting, these people say.

That incident has set the tone for the rest of the negotiations, a GE insider tells FOX Business.

And GE's final decision may set the tone for other large corporations located in Connecticut including Aetna (NYSE:AET), Hartford Financial Services Group (NYSE:HIG) and United Technologies (NYSE:UTX).

Related Articles
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/01/2016 (2480 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No one was searching for MacGyver the budgie a couple of days ago but now, 15 people are claiming to own Winnipegs survivor bird.

Melanie Shura, president of the local parrot resource group Avian Welfare Canada, is now caring for the little green budgie who was caught on Jan. 1. He had survived outdoors in some of this winters most bitter temperatures for more than two months by joining a flock of sparrows.

No one had responded to various posts on Facebook and kijiji looking for his owner but Shura said many people have come forward and emailed her, hoping MacGyver is their lost bird.

Its very sad. What has come out of this for me is that theres a lot of birds that go missing that people never follow up on and they never knew what happened and want so badly for this to be their little friend, said Shura, who had had set trap cages in two different yards and worked with two couples on gentle behaviour modification techniques for over the past six weeks to try to lure in the budgie before he froze to death or was killed by a predator.

All the pictures Im getting are just the most cherished little pets, its on a shoulder, its on Grandmas hair. They never put in a claim (on social media or elswhere), they never tried to find the bird. They just gave up hope right away.

Shura said budgies have indentifying markings that can individualize them so she is keeping confidential some of MacGyvers physical traits in case his owner comes forward.

Some of the birds (in photographs emailed to Shura) do not even look like him. One is from two years ago, one is from Brandon, Im doing more kind of grief counselling. Its more of an issue that you really want so badly to know what happened to your little friend, Shura said.

One person (photograph of a bird), that bird looked very, very close but the one they had only had two black dots on each side, she said noting MacGyver has different markings than that.

Winnipeg Free Press Sunday, January 3, 2016 - MacGyver, a domestic tropical green-and-yellow budgie who was living outside for over a month and was trapped and rescued thanks to the cooperation and effort of Melanie Shura, president of Avian Welfare Canada Inc., and at least two couples, is photographed in Melanie's home Sunday, January 3, 2016. He was trapped using behaviour modification techniques that are time-consuming and require the people trying to catch the bird to be monitoring the trap at all times. John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press While MacGyvers survival story has garned much public attention through media coverage, Shura said she understands it has also given new hope to people who had lost birds.

I will do my best to go through every single case and try to find the right owner, Shura said. I will go through every case and respond to every single inquiry. What is helpful, what I need, are photos, dates that the bird was last seen and where, anything special about the bird in terms of markings or behaviour, the age of the bird. A lot of the psychological stuff is out the window because he a totally different bird now. Hes still speaking sparrow (making sparrow chirping sounds instead of budgie sounds).

MacGyver was found through the combined efforts of Shura, Sylvia and Norm Cassie and Shelley and Val Corvino, as well as posts on the Winnipeg Lost Dog Alert Facebook page which had helped track the bird to the area near the Royal Canadian Mint and then to Southland Park. The bird was safely captured in the trap cage at the Corvino home. The couple had named the bird MacGyver, for the 1980s TV series star who could make contraptions out of scraps, because of the creativity and patience needed to catch him unharmed.

Shura said MacGyver is making slow progress. He will need more time to rest and rehabilitate after his long outdoor ordeal and re-learn behaviours if he is to once again be someones pet.

Hes becoming a bit more accepting of hands, its not so threatening to him (today as opposed to the previous day). I put a little bird bath in the bottom (of his cage) today and he didnt panic like he did yesterday when I had to change his paper (on the bottom of the cage), she said.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/01/2016 (2480 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Manitoba NDP MP Niki Ashtons campaign team has filed an official complaint with Elections Canada alleging possible voting irregularities in her Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding during Octobers federal election.

Before Christmas, Ashtons campaign manager wrote to Elections Canada to ask for an investigation to explain why the number of ballots counted in the community of Fairford exceeded the number of people who were documented to have cast ballots there by a couple of hundred votes.

We are really concerned things happened there that should not have happened, said Ashton.

THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES / Sean Kilpatrick NDP MP Niki Ashton asks a question during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 2, 2015.

Fairford, also known as Pinaymootang First Nation, is about 220 kilometres north of Winnipeg in the Interlake region.

Although officials with the elections agency wont confirm the complaint, spokesman John Enright said Elections Canada investigates every complaint it gets.

Ashton won the election with a margin of 912 votes over second-place finisher, Liberal Rebecca Chartrand. She said the number of questionable votes in Fairford wouldnt change the outcome of the election and she is not specifically alleging anyone did anything wrong on purpose, but she still wants to know what happened.

On Election Day, Oct. 19, a voting list is provided to polling stations based on who registered to vote, updated to account for who voted in the advance polls. As people vote, their names are marked off the list so they cant vote again.

Voters can sign up to vote right at the polls, and their names are manually added to the list.

Enright said its possible concerns about more ballots being cast than electors who voted are due to a high number of people registering on election day. That does not, however, account for why the lists werent marked properly, and Enright was not discussing this specific case, just the concern in general.

Ashton said her campaign asked for the final list of who voted but it was never provided; nor has Elections Canada explained why it took more than two weeks to validate the results and why there was a substantial change to the vote tallies between election day and the results being validated.

Every other riding in Manitoba was validated within one to four days.

Vote tallies often change once results are validated. Enright said thats almost always due to math errors or transcription mistakes. In Manitoba, at least 35 candidates had their vote tallies change after election day, and not a single riding got every candidates results accurate at first. However, the average difference by riding was 304 votes. In Churchill, it was 1,351.

Ashtons own vote count dropped 982 votes and Chartrands dropped 339. The total number of votes cast dropped to 30,196 from 31,254.

The change is particularly puzzling since the preliminary results were missing tallies from seven polling stations, so one might expect the total vote count to go up, as it did in Winnipeg South. In that riding, four polls didnt report on election day but the validated results saw an increase of 972 votes.

The NDP also heard numerous anecdotal complaints from electors in the riding about election day problems, including scrutineers suggesting to people who they should vote for, teenagers who were hired to do jobs on election day they were ineligible to fill because they werent old enough, and inadequate supports and training for election officers to ensure voting went smoothly.

Enright said it often takes longer to validate results in ridings that are geographically large because it takes extra time to get the ballot boxes from the polling station to the returning office. He noted Churchill-Keewatinook Aski didnt have the longest validation period. That went to Nunavut, where the results werent finalized until Nov. 9.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/01/2016 (2479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The NDP is making a pre-election promise of one of the largest increases in annual public school operating grants in its 16 years in government.

Education Minister James Allum will announce Tuesday morning he is increasing the provinces share of the $2.25-billion public education system by $32.5 million  or 2.55 per cent.

That is above (provincial) economic growth, Allum said in an interview Monday. Well be focusing on the prime elements: quality and accessible and inclusiveness education for every child in Manitoba.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press files Advanced Learning Minister James Allum.

School divisions will learn their individual funding within a few days. Allum said about half the 37 divisions will receive no increase in funding this year, but the NDP again this year guaranteed no division would lose money under its complex funding formula.

Allum said literacy and numeracy, opportunities for careers, indigenous education and education services for newcomers to Canada will be the main targets of his spending.

A new program pumps $500,000 into helping First Nations students make the difficult transition moving into public high schools in cities, the aboriginal achievement grant goes up by $500,000, and theres $375,000 for aboriginal education programs under a plan launched several years ago by former prime minister Paul Martin. Its in place at Gordon Bell Hugh School in Winnipeg and Major Pratt School in Russell, along with several other Manitoba schools.

With a significant influx of Syrian refugee children imminent, Newcomer support will also be enhanced, the minister said.

The funding includes $750,000 for school divisions to receive and to assess the education and language levels of newcomer students, $300,000 for an intensive newcomer grant, and $250,000 to boost English as an additional language classes.

Allum said he will be making special announcements over the next few days to lay out details of the indigenous and newcomer education grants.

As well, Allum is increasing money to improve literacy and numeracy by $760,000  a five per cent increase  and theres a 124 per cent increase of $1.04 million to innovative programs to enhance student achievement.

The NDPs education spending promise depends upon the results of the April 19 provincial election.

Operating grants must be approved in the next governments budget, unlikely to happen until late May at the earliest.

They can count on this as school funding as long as were in government. This is our governments and our partys commitment to public education in Manitoba, Allum said.

The NDP has increased its share of funding in operating the public school system at or above the rate of provincial growth every year that it has been in office, generally around two per cent or $25 million in recent years.

The province covers about 60 per cent of operating the $2.25-billion system.

Last year, overall costs rose by almost four per cent, or $86.7 million. School property taxes paid for the rest  a 5.03 per cent increase, or $97.10 on an average home assessed at $300,000. The track record suggests school trustees could be looking at about $45 million in increased school taxes to avoid cuts in the budgets they need to pass by March 15.

Two-thirds of the school divisions in Manitoba have settled contracts with teachers through June 2018, at annual increases of two per cent, plus two phased-in increases of 1.5 per cent in January and June of 2018.

However, benefits, increments for teachers with less than 10 years experience, and more teachers on the payroll resulted in the total amount of money spent on teachers salaries and benefits going up by 4.12 per cent this current school year.

All that means school divisions are locked in on teachers wages and benefits through the summer of 2018  though not on the number of teachers employed.

Manitobas next provincial government wont have a throne speech, let alone a budget, until May at the earliest. Any changes in funding could force trustees to make a harsh decision between much higher property taxes or a reduction in employees, services and programs.

Allum announces his funding at 10:30 a.m. at College Sturgeon Heights Collegiate.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/01/2016 (2480 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shaylene Wilson says its a miracle shes alive. And now the young Winnipeg woman plans to use her second chance to try and help other victims of domestic abuse escape before its too late.

Wilson, 22, suffered serious injuries on New Years Eve after police say she was pulled into a vehicle that was then deliberately smashed into a parked semi-trailer.

Christopher Rutherford, 31, is in custody facing several charges including kidnapping, attempted murder and breach of a court order. None of the allegations has been proven and he is presumed innocent.

John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press Shaylene Wilson, 22, who suffered serious injuries after police say she was allegedly pulled into a vehicle which was then deliberately driven into a parked semi-trailer on New Year's Eve.

You see things and think that will never be me, Id never let it get that bad, Wilson told the Free Press on Monday as she recuperated at home from a variety of cuts, scrapes and whiplash. But its amazing I can even walk. That was intent to kill. That was no accident.

Wilson met Rutherford about eight months ago on Tinder, a popular social media app used for dating. She said her relationship with the burly bodybuilder went well at first, but took a violent turn this past fall.

Rutherford was first arrested on Nov. 8 and charged with four prior assaults against Wilson, which allegedly occurred on Sept. 1, Oct. 24, Oct. 30 and Nov. 8. It was only after the final incident that Wilson called for help. Rutherford was also charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer on that day.

Rutherford spent five nights in custody until he was released on bail. One of the conditions was to have no contact with Wilson.

We didnt see each other for a couple weeks after. But by the end of November, we were pretty much back living together, Wilson said Monday.

She now regrets allowing the accused back into her life  especially after helping her own mother escape an abusive relationship years earlier.

Wilson said things had gone smoothly through the month of December, and the couple decided to head to a bar on Portage Avenue last Thursday night to ring in the new year.

We were having a fun time, said Wilson, noting her phone is filled with pictures of them celebrating that night. But things took a turn just after midnight. An argument erupted, and the situation turned violent.

It escalated very quickly, she said.

Facebook Wilson was trapped in her vehicle and had to be freed by emergency workers using the Jaws of Life.

Wilson said she was repeatedly threatened with death and pulled into the vehicle against her will. She described having her hair pulled, being punched and having her face smashed against the window.

Then came the crash near Arlington Street and St. Matthews Avenue. Wilson was trapped in her vehicle for about 20 minutes and had to be freed by emergency workers using the Jaws of Life. Police say the driver deliberately ran the vehicle sideways into the semi to maximize damage on the passenger side where Wilson sat.

I remember repeatedly saying how I could move my fingers and toes, that I wasnt paralyzed, Wilson recalled Monday. I kept repeating that he tried to kill me, he tried to kill me. I was crying and asking for my mother and sister.

The accused fled the scene but was arrested at a residence later that day. Rutherford remains in custody without bail.

Wilson believes the truth about the incident would have gone with her to the grave had she not survived. But she has a voice  not only to tell police what happened, but to try and inspire other women who may be in similar situations.

This attack came on the heels of a pair of recent domestic-homicides in Winnipeg in which the female victims had sought judicial protection against their alleged killers.

Wilson took to social media this weekend, acknowledging her own role in the relationship.

I was the stupid girl who took her (alleged) abuser back. Which very well good have ended my life, Wilson wrote on her Facebook page following her release from hospital.

Winnipeg police called the incident unique, extreme and frightening. Const. Jason Michalyshen said incidents of domestic violence arent usually made public even though theyre an all-too-common occurrence.

Facebook Shaylene Wilson and her boyfriend the night of the assault.

Its a topic thats a big part of the daily operations of the Winnipeg Police Service, he said. Police decided to report the case through the media to encourage the public to talk about healthy relationships.

Wilson acknowledged there are plenty of resources made available for victims of domestic violence but that accepting help can be difficult.

Take the help that is given to you, she said Monday.

I want to thank everyone for their kind words and prayers. Physically Im a lot better than I should be, if you know me Im not religious but I know I had someone looking over me. I should not be here. Im very sore, but I will be OK. Emotionally will definitely take longer to mend but I have a wonderful family beside me, Wilson said. Im alive, Im still a mother, still a sister and still a daughter. Im not sure why Im still here but I hope in some way this ends up being a positive. Obviously not in my life but it could help save others. It doesnt matter what they blame, it doesnt matter how sorry they say they are. This isnt something I would have ever expected, and things can happen so quickly.

www.mikeoncrime.com
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/01/2016 (2479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Friday, Saudi Arabias Sunni Muslim rulers beheaded their countrys leading Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, on charges of seeking foreign meddling in the kingdom.

On Saturday, an angry crowd of Iranians  all Shia Muslims, of course  attacked the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran. And Irans Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, put a cartoon on his website comparing Saudi Arabias head-chopping orgy on New Years Day (46 other executions on the same day) to the mass executions carried out by the Sunni extremist Islamic State group.

So on Sunday, Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic relations with Iran  and all the pundits started talking about the Sunni-Shia war of religion that is about to engulf the Middle East.

Hasan Jamali / The Associated Press Files In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, a Bahraini protester holds up a picture of Saudi Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr toward a riot police officer in Daih, Bahrain, a largely Shiite suburb of the capital. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdom's execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. Bahrain, which long has relied on Saudi Arabia for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran.

This raises two questions. First, what would a Sunni-Shia war of religion actually look like? And second, has everybody in the Middle East taken leave of their senses?

The first question is best answered by looking at the history of the Christian wars of religion, ca. 1520-1660.

The Muslim world now, like Christendom in the 16th century, is made up of many independent countries. And the current phase of the Muslim wars of religion is being fought out between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, just as the first phase of the Christian wars of religion was fought out mainly between Catholics and Protestants in individual countries.

From the start of the conflict in Europe, however, each European state tried to help its co-believers in neighbouring countries as well, and alliances were increasingly shaped by religious considerations. In the second phase, these alliances dragged most of Europe into the catastrophic Thirty Years War (1618-1648), fought mostly in the middle of Europe but involving armies from as far apart as Sweden and Spain.

The main battleground, Germany, lost between one-third and one-half of its population. Nobody won, of course, and in the very long run everybody just lost interest in the question. But it was a very great waste of lives, time and money.

The Muslim world is already caught up in the first phase of a comparable process, but it is not condemned to go the whole distance. One big difference is that the Sunni-Shia split is ancient  more than 1,350 years old  whereas the Catholic-Protestant split was new and still full of passion at the time of the Christian wars.

More than 99 per cent of todays Muslims were simply born Sunni or Shia, whereas many 16th-century Christians had made a conscious choice about their religion. The current killings in the Muslim world are mostly driven by state policy, so maybe Muslims will not throw away a couple of generations following the same foolish, bloody road that the Christians took 500 years ago.

Those who live at the geographical extremes of the Muslim world  Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh in the East; Morocco, Algeria, Tunisa and even Egypt in the West  will certainly not suffer the same fate, for there are only tiny Shia minorities in these countries. But for those who live in the heart of the Muslim world, from Yemen to Turkey and from Lebanon to Iran, the future may be much darker.

And so to the second question: has everybody in the Middle East taken leave of their senses? Not exactly, but many players have lost sight of the bigger picture.

George W. Bushs invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed the sectarian demon in the region. The Arab Spring of 2011 frightened the regions dictatorships and absolute monarchies into increased repression and greater reliance on appeals to sectarian loyalty. Then King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died a year ago, and the kingdom spun out completely.

Saudi Arabia under its previous monarchs was very cautious and conservative in its foreign policy. It subsidized various extreme Sunni groups in other countries, but it clung tightly to its American alliance and never engaged directly in adventures abroad.

The new Saudi king, Salman, is 80 years old and infirm, so in practice most decisions are made by his nephew, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (aged 56), or his son, deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (aged only 30). There is intense competition between the two men for the succession to the throne, and the decisions coming out of Riyadh have been much bolder than ever before.

The past nine months have seen a major Saudi Arabian military intervention against the Shia side in the Yemeni civil war, the creation of a Saudi-led alliance of almost all the Sunni-majority Arab states, and now the execution of a Shia leader in Saudi Arabia that was clearly calculated to cause a diplomatic breach with Iran.

Its just dynastic politics, in other words, not some inevitable geopolitical juggernaut. But it was similar dynastic politics half a millennium ago that triggered the worst phase of the Christian wars of religion.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/01/2016 (2480 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the ringing in of the new year, groundbreaking legislation regarding post-traumatic stress disorder went into effect in Manitoba. Its a bold and important step for this province and sets the tone for others to follow suit.

To put it into context, one in 10 people will suffer from PTSD at some point in their career. According to the Paramedic Association of Manitoba, from April to December of 2014 in Canada, 27 first responders killed themselves as the result of PTSD.

This is the first province that does not limit the occupations eligible to make a Workers Compensation Board claim for PTSD. As well, the new legislation presumes PTSD is the result of workplace trauma and places the onus on the employer to prove otherwise, meaning those already suffering do not have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to prove they suffer from this serious condition in order to obtain WCB support.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press Files MGEU president Michelle Gawronsky

As was outlined in the WCBs consultation document: Psychological injuries, including PTSD, are already compensable under the act. However, it is sometimes difficult to establish a causal link between workplace incidents and PTSD, which can result in delay and inconsistency in adjudication. A legislative presumption eliminates the need to draw a causal connection between a stressful event and PTSD.

Alberta was the first province to provide presumptive PTSD support under workers compensation, but limited the claims to first responders such as firefighters and police officers.

In Manitoba, the occupational designation has been widened, allowing for employees such as teachers, social workers, transportation and health-care workers who have witnessed traumatic events to be diagnosed and treated through the WCB. In Alberta, there was some criticism limiting the occupation to just first responders created a two-tiered system; the broader approach has been applauded by the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union.

In its submission during consultations on the proposed changes, the MGEU suggested if PTSD claims can be adjudicated efficiently by the WCB, workers will be able to access the necessary treatment and supports that will improve the likelihood of a successful return to work. Further, the legislative presumption is viewed as moving the workers compensation system a step closer to modernization.

Of course, not everyone is happy with the new legislation. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business suggests it will result in an increase in premiums, which is hard on small businesses. Plus, putting the onus on the employer to prove PTSD is not the result of a workplace is expensive and difficult.

The Manitoba Employers Council, which includes the CFIB, also voiced concerns there will be a lot of pressure placed on physicians to make a diagnosis of PTSD.

The WCB has said it has had few claims made under the old legislation in regard to PTSD and doesnt anticipate those numbers climbing at such a high number that rate increases would be necessary.

However, a much larger and perhaps grounded concern is there are not enough professionals available to treat PTSD in Manitoba, making the ability for a worker to receive treatment difficult. Even MGEU president Michelle Gawronsky concedes that point.

Which puts the ball back in the Manitoba governments court. Kudos for implementing progressive legislation; however, unless its accompanied by a commitment to recruit and attract professionals who can provide the necessary services, it is useless.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A U.S. lawsuit against Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has sparked concern among German politicians that a multi-billion-dollar fine could endanger jobs at the country's biggest carmaker.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday it has sued VW for allegedly violating environmental laws by installing devices to cheat emissions tests in several 2.0 liter diesel vehicle models.

While any fine is likely to be well short of the theoretical maximum of $48 billion, the claim has shone the spotlight back on the German company's problems just as Volkswagen (VW) had hoped it was starting to make progress in tackling the scandal.

"Of course the news from the United States is worrying to those who are concerned about securing jobs in the German automotive industry," said Hubertus Heil, deputy head of the Social Democrats (SPD) in the German lower house of parliament. The SPD is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.

Heil said he still hoped "dramatic consequences" could be avoided by clearing up the scandal swiftly and comprehensively. He added VW's workers should not be made to bear the responsibility for the misconduct of those who carried out the emissions test cheating.

Germany has largely rallied around VW since the scandal was uncovered by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a bid to try to limit the damage to a company that employs some 270,000 people in Germany.

Michael Fuchs, deputy parliamentary leader for Merkel's conservatives, said the hard line taken by U.S. authorities could bolster U.S. automakers at the expense of German rivals.

But Kerstin Andreae, deputy head of the opposition Green Party in parliament, which has criticized the coalition government's handling of the scandal, said the U.S. government's actions were to be expected.

"It's in nobody's interests that VW is crushed by this - but there can't be a legal vacuum for companies, even if they are firms which are of great significance to the economy like VW," she told Reuters, adding she also feared an impact on jobs.

Story continues

In contrast to a crackdown in the United States against VW, German politicians and regulators have handled the company with kid gloves, critics say.

German regulators have rubber-stamped an inexpensive and simple fix for the majority of the 8.5 million affected vehicles sold in Europe and VW's top executives have not faced interrogation from lawmakers in Germany.

(This story corrects the maximum penalty from $90 billion to $48 billion in the first bullet point and third paragraph)

(Reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Mark Potter)
MINNESOTA

MNsure enrollment up as deadline at months end nears  ST. PAUL  MNsure says its tracking well to meet registration projections for this open enrollment period. A fee on individual health plans helps fund Minnesotas health insurance exchange. But the state has repeatedly missed registration projections, leading to rounds of budget cuts. MNsure said Monday it had signed up nearly 68,000 by a late December deadline for coverage to kick in for the New Year. Its aiming to sign up 83,000 customers before open enrollment ends on Jan. 31. MNsure chief executive Allison OToole says the preliminary numbers are encouraging that the exchange will meet that goal. The marketplace is touting tax credits available only through MNsure in a year when health insurance premiums are increasing.

Woman found dead in snow in Northfield  NORTHFIELD  Police in Northfield are investigating the death of a woman whose body was found in the snow outside a residence. Authorities say the womans body was discovered Sunday about 3 p.m. The woman had been there for more than a day. There were no signs of a struggle or suspicious activity. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner will do an autopsy.

Survey gives continuing signs of Midwest economic doldrums  OMAHA, Neb.  The economy continues to slow in nine Midwestern and Plains states because crop and energy prices remain low and the strong dollar is hurting exports, according to a survey released Monday. The regions overall economy index remained in weak territory and declined to 39.6 in December, from 40.7 in November. Any figure below 50 suggests a slowing economy. Business leaders are asked about a variety of factors each month and the results are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests economic growth. A score below that suggests decline. The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Minneapolis man in wheelchair dies after being hit by train  MINNEAPOLIS  A man in an electric wheelchair has died after being struck by a light-rail train in south Minneapolis. Metro Transit officers responded to a call around 6 p.m. Sunday of a man who had been hit by a northbound train on Blue Line tracks. The pedestrian was not alone when he crossed the tracks. He was taken to a local hospital and died about three hours later. Metro Transit spokesman Howie Padilla says all warning devices were operating at the time of the accident. He says an investigation will look into whether the mans wheelchair played a role in his inability to cross the tracks. The Blue Line Station is located near about seven group homes for individuals with disabilities.

WISCONSIN

Divers search frigid Wisconsin lake for 2 Illinois men  EAST TROY  Divers are fighting frigid water as they search for two men who went missing at southern Wisconsin lake, after the bodies of two of their friends were pulled from the water. Authorities in East Troy say the four men from Illinois were staying at a house on Mill Lake, which is part of Lake Beulah. Friends told investigators the men went outside to smoke around 2:30 a.m. Sunday. The friends discovered the four were missing around 9 a.m. They found footprints in the snow to the boathouse and a canoe overturned in the lake. Two bodies were found Sunday. Authorities were searching Monday for the other two.

Group launches ads calling for vote on fetal research bill  MADISON  An anti-abortion group has started airing a television commercial calling on Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to hold a vote on a bill that would prohibit research using tissue taken from aborted fetuses. Wisconsin Family Action says the commercial began airing in Milwaukee on Monday and will run later this week in the Green Bay area as well. The ad asks views to call Vos and tell him to schedule a vote on the bill. Wisconsin Family Action President Julaine Appling said in a news release using fetal tissue in research is unnecessary and horrific. Researchers have countered that banning experiments using such tissue could chill work on potentially life-saving cures and treatments.
Beaver Dam Administrative Committee is taking a close look at Saturdays Bar, 208 Front St., after the establishment racked up more than 200 demerit points violations within an 18-month period.

I find it disturbing, Jon Litscher, council president said.

As Monday night, Saturdays Bar has 230 demerit points assessed against it, which could lead to a warning, suspension or revocation of the owners liquor license.

The demerit point system is used to guide the committee in making possible suspensions and revocations of liquor licenses. In the Beaver Dam municipal code it states that for demerit points totaling 25 to 149, within a rolling 12-month period, its recommended that the licensee be warned.

If a licensee exceeds 200 demerit point violations within a rolling 18-month period, the owner could lose his or her license.

City Attorney Maryann Schacht said that a meeting will take place before the next Administrative Committee meeting. Within the meeting, Schacht said the option to issue a warning, suspend Saturdays Bars license or revoke its license will be the main topic.

Beaver Dam Police Chief John Kreuziger said if it is decided to suspend or revoke Saturdays Bars license, a formal complaint from a Beaver Dam citizen must be filed before further action can be taken. From there the complaint will be issued to the bar owner followed by a hearing.

As of right now, two complaints have been filled against Saturdays Bar following two incidents that resulted in demerit point assessments. Kreuziger said another complaint taking into account the previous two demerit point assessments could result in a suspension or license revocation, if the Administrative Committee decides to go down that route.

The most recent incident occured on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. On that day, two Beaver Dam police officers noticed the bar was open past 2 a.m. and people were still entering the bar.

According to the incident summary, both officers witnessed people at the bar being served drinks, a large number of people on the dance floor and music still being played. The incident summary states, the manager and another bartender said they forgot it was Wednesday because Saturdays is usually open on Saturdays. The law requires bars to close at 2 a.m. during the week, but allows them to stay open until 2:30 a.m. on Saturdays.

This violation resulted in 80 demerit points assessed against the bar.

The previous complaint took place in April when a Beaver Dam police officer received an anonymous tip that there was underage drinking activity in the bar. The anonymous individual provided a photo he/she found on Facebook that had the underage suspects visible.

After an officer interviewed one of the suspects, he said that he and his twin brother entered the bar through the back door to the main parking lot and there was no one there to check their identification. The suspect said he walked into the bar to see a band and that neither he nor his brother drank any alcohol. He also added that he was not with any parent.

This caused the bar to be assessed 150 demerit points. It was its first violation.

Litscher said the first violation ties the committees hand a bit because of a Wisconsin State Statute, which slightly muddies the water.

According to Wisconsin State Statutes, an establishments liquor license cant be suspended or revoked if its first violation is serving alcohol to an underage person unless the establishment serves an underage person again within one year. An establishment is allowed one violation per year without the fear that it will loses its license or have its license suspended for serving alcohol to a person underage.

Kreuziger said Saturdays first violation doesnt fit this statute because police were unable to prove if the two minors were served alcohol in the bar or not. However, that doesnt discredit the 150 demerit point assessment issued in April for allowing a person under the age of 21 on premise without a parent, guardian or spouse of legal drinking age.

The next Administrative Committee meeting will take place Jan 18.
JUNEAU | A 30-year-old Beaver Dam woman pleaded no contest to stealing her mothers checks and debit card and using them without permission.

Deena Landsee entered a no contest to two felony counts of misappropriating ID information to obtain money as a repeater as well as misdemeanor theft of movable property. Four additional counts of felony misappropriating ID information to obtain money as a repeater were dismissed but read into the record.

Judge Steven Bauer accepted her plea and found her guilty of the theft charge but withheld finding her guilty of the felony charges. Landsee signed a deferred prosecution agreement and will not be sentenced in this case for a year.

According to the criminal complaint, on Jan. 1, 2015 officers were dispatched to a residence in Beaver Dam for a theft complaint. The complainant said the week before Christmas 2014 four personal checks were stolen from her checkbook. The woman said the checks were used at Walmart for a total value of $229.87.

The woman said her daughter, identified as Landsee, had told her that she used the checks without her permission. The complainant also said that her debit card was missing and had been used for seven transactions totaling $539.93.

When questioned by officers, Landsee admitted to taking the checks from her mothers purse on four different occasions. She also admitted to taking her mothers debit card without permission and using it several times. Landsee told officers that she took the money to support a bad heroin addiction.

Landsee will appear in court again for her sentencing hearing on Jan. 30, 2017.
Beaver Dam Municipal Court recently released the names of the following individuals who have open warrants through the court.

The warrants will be cancelled when the fine amounts have been paid in full. Payments may be made to the Beaver Dam Municipal Court, 123 Park Ave.

After normal business hours, payments may be made at a local police department. Anyone with questions may call 887-4622.

Carlos E. Alvarez, 20, 312 Fond du Lac St., Waupun, is wanted for a $187 warrant for underage drinking.

Joshua D. Alvin, 37, 221 E. Maple Ave., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $598.80 in warrants for non-registration of vehicle and two operating after suspension citations.

Joanna M. Amidon, 21, 112 Lakecrest Drive, Apt. 210, Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $313 warrant for disorderly conduct.

Brooke L. Barrett, 22, W6208 County Road B, Burnett, is wanted for $374 in warrants for operating after suspension and operating without vehicle insurance.

Osmar Bautista, 20, N8283 Kellom Road, Lot 50, Beaver Dam, is wanted for $513 in warrants for absolute sobriety violation and operating after suspension.

David W. Bingham, 52, 123 Gould St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $2,819 in warrants for consume intoxicants in a vehicle and two possession of drugs/paraphernalia citations.

Marissa N. Birkholz, 19, 209 E. South St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $919 warrant for obstructing an officer.

Christopher J. Bollig, 24, W616171 Prospect Road, Juneau, is wanted for $372 in warrants for operating without vehicle insurance and operating after suspension.

Jimmy A. Demars, 53, 120 Stone St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $222.80 in warrants for non-registration of vehicle and operate without vehicle insurance.

Christian Diaz Cisneros, 22, 405 Stark St., Apt. 8, Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $250 warrant for operating after suspension.

Todd A. Dittberner, 44, 914 Madison St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $250 warrant for operating after revocation.

Joshua D. Griswold, 24, N7256 County Road I, Juneau, is wanted for a $313 warrant for damage to property.

Jacob T. Hespe, 29, N3075 County Road D, Jefferson, is wanted for a $124 warrant for operating while suspended.

Nicholas P. Hoban, 29, 112 Industrial Drive, Apt. 202, Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $1,301 warrant for possession of drugs/paraphernalia.

Jeffery JA Holst, 18, 121 Haskell St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $70 warrant for unlawful use of computerized communication.

Chivas A. Hopkins, 29, 127  Front St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $1,409.80 in warrants for non-registration of vehicle, possession of drug paraphernalia and four operating after suspension citations.

Andy C. Huth, 34, N8466 County Road CP, Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $313 warrant for retail theft.

Clifford D. Jones, 44, 414 W. Third St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $949.63 warrant for possession of illegal drugs or paraphernalia.

Christopher J. Keson, 22, 627  S. Spring St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $124 warrant for operating without a valid driver license.

Kaleb K. Kuhn, 34, W11125 State Road 33, Randolph, is wanted for $374 in warrants for operating without vehicle insurance and operating after revocation.

Yurem V. Martinez, 24, 302 Park Ave., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $124 warrant for operating without a valid driver license.

Kassandra S. Meloy, 25, 328 E. Third St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $500 in warrants for two operating after suspension citations.

Cory M. Meyers, 30, 101 Cleveland St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $313 warrant for retail theft.

Daniel L. Mosby, 40, 709 Beaver St., Apt. A, Beaver Dam, is wanted for $2,642 in warrants for two possession of drugs/paraphernalia citations.

Edward Over, 28, 210 North St., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $2,284 in warrants for theft, disorderly conduct, possession of drugs/paraphernalia and two operating after suspension citations.

Pierre R. Page, 31, 302 W. Maple Ave., Beaver Dam, is wanted for $748 in warrants for operating without vehicle insurance and three operating after suspension citations.

Justin R. Peterson, 21, 913 N. Spring St., Apt. 208, Beaver Dam, is wanted for $455 in warrants for obstructing an officer and two underage drinking citations.

Angela M. Pinkerton, 38, 916 S. Madison St., Apt. 20, Waupun, is wanted for $374 in warrants for operating after revocation and operating without vehicle insurance.

Sandra K. Powell, 57, 125 Knaup Drive, Apt. 3, Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $313 warrant for disorderly conduct.

Alezander A. Ramirez, 22, W5943 Teal Road, Burnett, is wanted for a $225 warrant for operating after revocation.

Jesus D. Rodriguez, 21, 1020 Madison St., Apt. 3, Beaver Dam, is wanted for a $313 warrant for disorderly conduct.
Litter  Wednesday at 12:08 p.m., someone at Saint Vincent De Paul, 125 Dodge Drive, reported that after refusing a microwave someone placed the microwave in their dumpster.

Accident  Wednesday at 12:20 p.m., Vics Auto, 107 Monroe St., told police that a person driving pulled out and hit another vehicle.

Retail theft  Wednesday at 1:37 p.m., an employee at Wal-Mart Supercenter, 120 Frances Lane, reported that a woman was caught shoplifting.

Litter  Wednesday at 1:44 p.m., a man reported that old tires and furniture keep being dumped in the 1200 block of DeClark Street.

Accident  Wednesday at 3:22 p.m., a semi-truck collided with low hanging wires near the Jackson Street and North Lincoln Avenue intersection.

Accident  Wednesday at 7:53 p.m., a woman and a man were involved in a vehicle accident in the 200 block of East Maple Avenue.

Suspicious  Wednesday at 8:36 p.m., a woman reports that someone approached her son in the 700 block of Grove Street and offered him marijuana.

Suspicious  Thursday at 1:43 a.m., a woman in the 700 block of North University Avenue told police that someone is ringing their doorbell and running away.

Intoxicated person  Thursday at 3:24 a.m., a woman in the 1200 block of Wayland Street reported that a woman was at her residence, drunk and yelling at her. The drunken woman later left.

Accident  Thursday at 9:45 a.m., someone in the 800 block of North Spring Street told police that a vehicle backed into another vehicle.

Suspicious  Thursday at 10:45 a.m., a woman told police that a known man was trying to get into vehicles and that he hides in her basement in the 100 block of Fourth Street. She said he might also be sleeping in peoples vehicles.

Retail theft  Thursday at 10:57 a.m., someone at Shopko, 822 Park Ave., reported a woman from retail theft.

Retail theft  Thursday at 11:50 a.m., an employee at Kohls, 1734 N. Spring St., reported that a woman was shoplifting. She was cited for retail theft and obstruction.

Break-in  Thursday at 2:59 p.m., a 22-year-old man reported that someone attempted to break into the laundry room located in the 100 block of West Davis Street.

Accident  Thursday at 4:53 p.m., a 67-year-old man reported a fender bender near the Oneida Street and North Spring Street intersection.

Accident  Thursday at 6:40 p.m., a 71-year-old woman and a 24-year-old woman were involved in a vehicle accident near Walgreens, 607 Park Ave.

Battery  Friday at 12:07 a.m., a man and a 21-year-old man were in a physical altercation in the 900 block of North Spring Street. The 21-year-old man was arrested with charges for battery, disorderly conduct and bail jumping.
A fish fry will be held at the Reeseville Community Center, 406 N. Main St., Reeseville, on Friday, Jan. 8, from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

The menu includes a two-piece fish dinner (cod, deep-fried or baked) for $10, a three-piece fish dinner (cod, deep-fried or baked) for $11 and a three-piece chicken tenders meal for $8. Meals will be served with sides of potato salad, coleslaw, french fries and rye bread.

Carry-outs will be available for 50 cents extra.

Lakeside 4-H Club is a co-partner of this event. Raffles and a bake sale will be held.

A total of 84 people were served at the November fish fry.

The winner of the drawing for a free fish fry in January was Gene Gentz. The radio giveaway winner was Fred Gay of Reeseville.
* BGA less optimistic than government on German growth

* Refugees seen as opportunity, though balanced budget at risk

* Says ECB damaging trust in euro with low rate policy (Adds details, quotes)

BERLIN, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Germany's BGA trade federation criticised euro zone countries including France on Tuesday for failing to reform their economies, saying this was opening the door to populists and leading to an "internal erosion of Europe".

The BGA, which speaks for the German wholesale, foreign trade and service sectors, also reiterated its warnings about the loose monetary policy of the European Central Bank, accusing the bank of "damaging the foundations of our currency and trust in the euro".

"The influx of refugees and the threat from terrorism are huge challenges," BGA President Anton Boerner said in a statement. "But in my view the biggest danger is the unwillingness and inability of Europe to address the root causes of the euro zone debt crisis."

Boerner singled out France, saying much-needed structural reforms had been neglected by Paris for years, leading to an overly indebted economy that was struggling to generate growth.

"The creeping de-industrialisation and associated high unemployment (in France) is fuelling populists on the right and left," Boerner said.

The BGA said it expected German gross domestic product (GDP) to rise by 1.25 percent this year, well below the government's forecast for an expansion of 1.8 percent.

A survey of its members showed that 70 percent believed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees to Germany was an opportunity for the country, although 62 percent were concerned that costs associated with the influx would endanger Germany's balanced budget.

Boerner described China as a "risk factor" for the stability of the global economy, adding that a hard landing there would threaten to push Germany into recession.

He hoped stock market falls on Monday after weak Chinese economic data were a one-off but added that it was clear "that the Chinese do not have the problems under control."

(Reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Paul Carrel)
The City of Mauston could have some new, exciting additions to its park improvement plan, including a dog park and a splash pad.

The Mauston Board of Park Commissioners discussed the projects at its meeting on Monday at the citys public works facility. The board talked about future locations for the dog park and possibly forming a committee to plan the project.

The Board of Park Commissioners plan to continue discussion at its next meeting on Feb. 1 at 5 p.m. and are inviting interested residents to attend and provide input.

City Administrator Nathan Thiel believes Oak Ridge Park, on the outskirts of Mauston, could be an ideal location for the dog park. In order to house a dog park, an area needs fencing, shade, drinking water and signs to dispose waste. A Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Stewardship Grant could help the city fund a dog park and splash pad with a 50 percent matching grant.

At Mondays meeting, the board discussed developing a Friends of the Park Committee for future project planning. It also talked about how much a dog park would cost. The city already has $30,000, which could be enough to cover the dog park. Regarding the splash pad, the city would need to look into fundraising opportunities to cover a portion of the cost.

The city will be sending out a survey in March to gauge interest in future park improvements and program expansion.

I would like for us to start working on the next outdoor recreation plan for this year so that for 2017, were ready to go, Thiel said.

At the Feb. 1 meeting, the board is looking to brainstorm ideas and ask residents what amenities they have seen in other dog parks.

I have a dog and I think it would be a great idea and would definitely like to be a part of it, said board chairperson Melanie Gray. But we have to decide if we want to confirm a committee to move forward on this.

The splash pad would be more costly. Director of Public Works Rob Nelson estimated the cost to be around $150,000. Thiel said while the city doesnt have enough funds this year, a grant from the DNR could help cover half of the amount. An application for the grant is due in April.

We would have to see what is conceivable in the DNRs mind, Thiel said. We would also have to decide how much we would want, what materials we need, how big we want it to be and what features it will have.

The city received a $70,000 donation for the project and its possible more donations could come in. If not, the city would be looking for another $70,000 from the DNR.

The dog park is smaller and we have the money for that so we could deal with that first, Thiel said. For the splash pad, if we applied for a grant this year, we wouldnt receive the money until 2017.

Its likely the dog park would be a project slated for this summer, while the splash pad would be a summer of 2017 project. The board would also like to do some research on what the city would need to facilitate a splash pad.

Five-year outdoor recreation plan

The city is also looking into updating its five-year recreation plan, which expires this year.

On Monday, the board discussed what questions to include in its upcoming spring survey.

We could look at what we need to review and upgrade, along with offering program choices and allow people to compare costs, Thiel said.
Each year more than $1 trillion goes up in smoke. More accurately, it is stolen from the middle and working classes and shipped off to the one percent. I am talking about the massive yearly bill to maintain the U.S. empire.

Washingtons warmongers have sold the lie that the military budget has been gutted under President Barack Obama, but even when the Sequester was in effect, military spending continued to increase. Only the pace of increase was reduced, not actual spending.

None of this $1 trillion taken from us is spent to keep us safe, despite what politicians say. In fact, this great rip-off actually makes us less safe and more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, thanks to resentment overseas at our interventions and to the blowback it produces.

The money is spent to maintain existing conflicts and to create new areas of conflict overseas that in turn feeds the demands for more military spending. It is an endless cycle of theft and deceit.

Billions were spent not long ago overthrowing an elected government in Ukraine and provoking Russia. A new Cold War is a bonanza for the military industrial complex, the pro-war think tanks, and the politicians. NATO is on the move in eastern Europe, placing heavy weapons right on Russias border and then blaming the Russians when they complain about the rising militarism. NATO military exercises on Russias border have increased and become more confrontational.

In the Middle East, more billions have been spent attempting to overthrow the secular government of Syria over the past five years. The big winners in this grand scheme have been the Islamist extremists, who are funded directly and indirectly by the U.S. and its allies. NATO is planning to go back into Libya, an admission that its 2011 liberation of that country has been a disaster.

In Asia, the U.S. empire challenges and provokes China, sending military ships and aircraft into territory China claims in the South China Sea. How much will they continue to escalate before China gets fed up?

The more money sent to the Pentagon and other parts of the Washington war apparatus, the more we all are placed in danger.

Meanwhile, almost all of the presidential candidates promise more military spending and more war if they are elected. Did no one tell them we are broke and making enemies fast with our interventions? Do they think Fed-created money will really continue to fuel the U.S. empire indefinitely?

What are the prospects for a u-turn toward peace and prosperity in 2016? We must be realistic. Presently the numbers are not on our side. But the good news is we do not need a majority to succeed in our fight for peace and liberty. We need only a dedicated and uncompromising critical mass to make great headway.

What can we do to work for peace in 2016? First we must tune out the lying propaganda served up by the U.S. mainstream media. We must educate ourselves so that we can help educate others. We can be sure to tune in and support alternative sources of news and analysis like the Ron Paul Liberty Report, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and many others. We can tell others about the wealth of truth available to those who seek and question. We must not compromise and never accept the lesser of two evils.

If the people demand peace, the politicians will follow. Lets demand peace in 2016.
The new year began with appreciation for those in law enforcement as a whole and one Portage police officer in particular who was promoted Monday to the rank of detective.

It was 17 years ago today that he was sworn in as a Portage police officer, Portage Police Chief Ken Manthey said at a ceremony in city hall. Now Jason makes the transition to detective. He knows the importance and the responsibility that comes along with being a good detective and this was a decision that he did not make lightly.

Officer Jason Stenberg, sitting in the front row, with his wife, Heather, beside him, watched as a line of speakers took to the podium in the Common Council chambers to congratulate him and thank him for his nearly two decades of service with the Portage Police Department. The room was filled to capacity with a dozen visitors with the Portage police, city administration and Columbia County Sheriffs Office filing the standing room around the doors.

Speakers, including Manthey, Police and Fire Commission President Tom Drury, Detective Lt. Dan Garrigan and Lt. Keith Klafke, talked about a mix of Stenbergs experience and the long process that led to his promotion. Manthey then invited Stenbergs former supervisor, Lt. Penny Kiefer to speak on her time working with him.

Jason, congratulations, Kiefer said, looking straight at him, unapologetically emotional, Im so proud of you. Youre going to do a great job, my little Norwegian brother.

I guess I really hadnt set my goal to be a detective, but through the events that took place at the Portage Police Department  Ive always enjoyed running interviews and Ive been through some training for investigations, said Stenberg. It kind of just fell into place for me and I thought that this is for me.

The Portage Police Department now has a three-person detective division, led by Garrigan, along with Detective Robert Bagnall and now Stenberg. Detectives work on yearlong rotations, with Theresa Johnson moving back to a patrol position from the detective division.

The room was decorated with flags, and the members of the Columbia County Sheriffs Office Color Guard standing at the ready. This isnt all just for you, Manthey said to Stenberg at the opening of the ceremony.

Following Stenbergs swearing in as a detective, the Color Guard took its position and welcomed Bill and Joan Maxwell to the podium. Manthey introduced the Maxwells as longtime volunteers and supporters of Portages local law enforcement. Their 22-year-old son, Richard Maxwell, was on patrol with the California Highway Patrol in July 1994 when he was gunned down during a traffic stop.

We just want to say that we are so grateful for law enforcement, sometimes you get a bad rap, but we appreciate each and every one of you from the bottoms of our hearts, said Joan.

Mayor Bill Tierney then pronounced that Saturday would be Law Enforcement Appreciation Day in Portage. Residents are encourage to wear blue in recognition of the service of law enforcement officers.

Lets step back in time and remember when people who were in public service were more appreciated, maybe than they are today. I read the statistics how many are killed and how many are injured, and again look at the suicide ratio. It is a really stressful job. So appreciate them for what they do, said Tierney.

The moment had a particular significance for Tierney, he told visitors, having grown up around the Portage Police Department.

In fact if my father was still here  he winters in Florida  he would have been in that audience. Hes 88 years old and he would wear a badge if he could, the mayor said.
PORTAGE | Upcoming changes in the University of Wisconsin-Extension dominated the discussion at Mondays meeting of the Columbia County Boards Agriculture Land and Water Conservation and Extension Committee  even though no one knows, yet, what those changes will look like in Columbia County.

Committee members expressed hope that what the Extension offers now  programming suited to local needs, unbiased educational information and a staff that knows the people, communities and farms of Columbia County  will continue, even after a $3.6 million statewide cut in Extension services is implemented late this year or early next year.

Committee members received a two-page letter, dated Dec. 17, from Cathy Sandeen, chancellor of the UW-Extension and UW Colleges  a letter that outlined, in broad strokes, the process for the coming changes.

Columbia County Extension officials said they have not yet seen Sandeens draft plan for the Extensions reorganization, which Sandeen said in her letter was to be finalized and sent to her for review around Dec. 18.

Sandeen said she would, after reviewing the plan, share it statewide and seek feedback.

Committee members offered immediate feedback.

Supervisor John A. Stevenson said his major concern is the potential loss of Extension experts who know Columbia County well, if some Extension functions are regionalized and others are shifted to the Internet.

Theres a lot to be gained by knowledge of our area, he said. We have a lot of different areas, just within Columbia County, and that knowledge is something that is learned over several years.

Also, noted Supervisor Tim Zander, not all areas of Columbia County can get high-speed broadband Internet service at an affordable price, or at all.

Its fine to have more digital services for people who know how to set it up, he said, but the more digital we become, the less community bonding and bringing people together.

Columbia Countys Extension office now includes Karen Nelson, 4-H youth development educator; Kathleen Haas, community resource development specialist; George Koepp, agriculture agent; and Patti Herman, family living educator. Amber Schneider recently joined the office as the 4-H program assistant, and a search is continuing for a replacement for Becky Gutzman, who recently retired as the Extension nutrition educator for Columbia and Dodge counties.

Several committee members noted that Columbia Countys new administration building  where the Extension will be housed  will have state-of-the-art facilities that could make Columbia County an attractive place to locate Extension staff and programs to serve multiple counties.

But, asked Supervisor Jo Ann Wingers, what will happen to the Extension programs that Columbia County Extension staff have created specifically for Columbia County  programs like Future Leaders Active in Government, or the interactive parenting education offered to Columbia County jail inmates?

Herman noted that Extension personnel throughout Wisconsin have developed programs geared to the needs of their counties, and Sandeen would likely want to hear from people who value those programs.

We appreciate hearing these things from you, she said.

Supervisor Matt Rohrbeck suggested inviting Sandeen to the committees March meeting, to learn more about the plans for the statewide Extension reorganization, and to offer suggestions and opinions.

Nelson said its probably too early to consider making a presentation to the full County Board on Jan. 20, because little is known about how the reorganization might affect Columbia County. But the County Boards chairman and vice chairman should be kept apprised as the process progresses, she said.
Local businesses have a lot to look forward to in the New Year, said Marianne Hanson, but that shouldnt stop you from looking back, too.

The Portage Area Chamber of Commerce is seeking nominations for its annual Meeting and Awards Banquet to be held Jan. 27, an annual event that honors the work of exceptional businesses and people, the organizations executive director said.

This is our chance to represent the local people in the Portage community, said Hanson, noting the Chamber in 2015 had 20 ribbon cuttings for new businesses, new locations for businesses and businesses introducing new product lines.

Nominations for the organizations seven awards will be accepted through Monday, Jan. 11. Awards include two categories for the Business Excellence Award  one for a business with 20 or more employees, and the other for a business with less than 20 employees, renamed the Susan Weyh Business Excellence Award, in honor of Weyh who died in February.

Weyh is a past president of the Chamber and served on the Chambers board of directors for six years, Hanson said. Along with her husband, Weyh owned the business Maid Spotless, which is still operating today.

The Business Excellence Award recognizes a business with a longstanding impact in the community. Last years winners were Blau Family Chiropractic (less than 20 employees), and Crawford Oil and Propane.

Other Chamber awards include Rising Business Star Award (2015 winner: 205 Vino); Community Service Award (2015 winner: Rotary Club of Portage); Educator Commitment Award (2015 winner: Ed Carlson); First Impression Award (2015 winner: Trecek Automotive of Portage); and Tourism Award (2015 winner: Cascade Mountain).

Hanson said the citys selection as one of Frontier Communications Americas Best Communities, along with the Columbia County building project and Divine Savior Healthcares expansion stood out to her in 2015.

The countys work, in particular, likely means great things ahead for downtown, she said.

Itll be more walking traffic, more cars. Were going to have a lot more people here. I think the downtown is a wonderful place already, so if we can continue to add to it, thats a great benefit.

The Chamber Meeting and Awards Banquet will be held in The Ball Room, with registration beginning at 5:30 p.m. Dinner will be served at 6:15 p.m. with a program to follow. This years featured speaker is Kurt Bauer, president/CEO of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC).

The cost to attend is $35. For more information, contact the Chamber at 608-742-6242.
Donald Trump tells outrageous lies with no regard for reality.

Theres his claim  never supported by any visual evidence  that thousands and thousands of people in New Jersey cheered the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Or the accusation that President Barack Obama wants to bring 250,000 Syrian refugees into this country, when the real figure is 10,000.

On Capitol Hill, some Republicans are conducting a quieter version of Trumps truth-trashing. The GOP majority is trying to quash scientific studies that could dispute party scripture on two controversial subjects: gun control and climate change.

Elections have consequences, and the Republican majority has the right to block Democratic proposals and conduct oversight inquiries. If Democrats had won, they would be asserting the same prerogatives.

But what the Republicans are doing goes far beyond the fair exercise of majority power. They are not just thwarting the minority in a legitimate debate; they are denying the ability of independent fact-finders to establish an impartial basis for that debate.

They are conducting a war on science itself.

Start with gun control. Since 1996, Congress has barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from researching the health impacts of gun violence.

If there is no research, it is harder to make suggestions for policy reform, Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis told the Huffington Post. And if you have a vested interest in stopping policy reform, what better way to do it than to choke off the research? It was brilliant and it worked. And my question is, how many people died as a result?

Fair question. And the author of the original ban, former Republican Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas, now admits that his amendment throttled research and cost lives. He points to studies in auto safety that led to the installation of metal barriers along dangerous stretches of highway.

If we had somehow gotten the research going, we could have somehow found a solution to the gun violence without there being any restrictions on the Second Amendment, he told the Huffington Post. We could have used that (research) all these years to develop the equivalent of that little, small fence.

But even sensible arguments like Dickeys failed to sway his fellow Republicans, who are still paralyzed by the influence of the National Rifle Association. They blocked an attempt to restore federally funded research on gun violence in the omnibus spending bill recently passed by Congress.

Once again, lamented Rep. Mike Thompson of California, the Democratic point person on guns, Republicans simply refused to get out of the way and let our experts do what they do best  conduct research that will save some lives.

That disdain for experts and their research also infects the GOPs attitude on climate change. Scientists working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a highly professional, peer-reviewed article last June rebutting a favorite position of climate change skeptics: that the pace of global warming has somehow paused in recent decades.

Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who heads the House Science Committee, launched a jihad against the NOAA researchers, accusing them of rushing their study and manipulating their data to bolster an extreme climate agenda. He demanded thousands of their private emails and threatened reprisals against anyone who did not comply.

The counterattack has been fierce, led by President Obama, who said on NPR that the Republican Party in the United States is perhaps literally the only major party in the developed world that is still engaging in climate denial.

As in the case of gun violence, this is not just a policy dispute. This is a blatant attempt by Republicans to stop scientists from pursuing research that could undermine their preconceived prejudices.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the Science panel, blasted Smith for conducting an ideological crusade and committing a serious misuse of Congressional oversight powers.

Scientific researchers have also rallied around their colleagues at NOAA, knowing that their own projects  and federal grants  could be next on the anti-expert hit list.

A typical letter from the Science Network of the Union of Concerned Scientists reads: We urge you to stand firm against these bullying tactics in order to protect NOAA scientists ability to pursue research and publish data and results, regardless of how contentious the issue may be.

Good advice. Bullies will only stop when opponents stand firm against their tactics. Thats as true on Capitol Hill as it is on the campaign trail.
In a Christmas video, a Wisconsin lawmaker passed a message on to constituents and the public.

Freshman Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, stood in front of a Christmas tree and invited the public to consider the hope offered by the Prince of Peace.

He didnt demand everyone convert or threaten or discriminate. It was a heartfelt message.

Yet, the Freedom From Religion Foundation wasnt happy and tried to make this into a political issue, questioning if public resources were used and citing the Constitution as a reason the video should not have been made.

But that makes no sense. The First Amendment of the Constitution states, in part: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

It doesnt say people cannot share their beliefs.

If you go back centuries, it was commonplace for our forefathers to share their faith publicly.

In 1798, John Adams declared a national day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer. Humility was referring to being humble before God.

In his proclamation, he stated: As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God  it has appeared to me that the duty of imploring the mercy and benediction of Heaven on our country, demands, at this time, a special attention from its inhabitants.

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln stated in a similar proclamation, When our beloved country  is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God.

He encouraged people around the nation to unite in prayer to bring blessings upon the country.

In this day and age, some people worry about offending others. But they shouldnt be so worried that they stop expressing their beliefs.

Yes, that means people of all faiths should be able to express their beliefs, whatever those beliefs are.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, confirmed that Allen used state resources to make the Christmas video. But he felt it was appropriate.

We have to agree with Vos who said: People are really making a mountain out of a molehill.
Stakes higher than ever for farmers as they feel squeeze of inflation

Money
ATHENS, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Greece sold 1.625 billion euros ($1.75 billion) of six-month T-bills to refinance a maturing issue, the country's debt agency PDMA said on Tuesday.

The debt agency sold the new paper at a yield of 2.97 percent, unchanged from a previous sale last month. The amount raised included 375 million euros in non-competitive bids.

In the rollover, T-bill holders - mostly Greek banks - renew their positions instead of getting paid on the maturing paper they hold.

The sale's bid-to-cover ratio was 1.30, unchanged from a previous auction in December. Settlement will be on Jan. 8.

(1 US dollar = 0.9285 euro) (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos)




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By George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas

ATHENS, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Greece's leftist-led government offered a reform plan for the country's pension system that would cut future benefits, with no backing from the political opposition, before talks with official lenders resume later this month.

Reforming the country's ailing pension system, which Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said is on the verge of collapse, is a prerequisite for the first review of Greece's 86 billion-euro ($93.4 billion) bailout agreed in July last year.

The tough pension reforms will be a test for Tsipras' ruling coalition, which has a majority of just three seats in parliament, and his resolve to carry out measures demanded by international creditors, who must sign off on the plan.

The proposed overhaul of the pension system, which has been a drag on the budget for years, sets a ceiling of 2,300 euros on the maximum monthly pension outlay and an upper limit of 3,000 euros for those getting more than one pension.

The plan calls for merging all six main pension funds into one and foresees cuts in future main pensions that could reach up to 30 percent. It sets a lower limit at 384 euros per month.

The plan includes higher social security contributions for employers and employees, by one percentage point for those paid by employers and by 0.5 percentage point for employees.

"The government is trying to avert the collapse of the social security system ... the opposition parties must lend support in this national goal," said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili. She blamed previous governments for drastic cuts in benefits during the debt crisis.

"The average (monthly) pension was 1,480 euros in 2010 but ended up at 863 euros when the (conservative) New Democracy and (socialist) PASOK handed over the government," she said.

All parties in the political opposition object to the benefit cuts in the plan, which has been handed over to the country's lenders.

Story continues

The overhaul, which must deliver savings worth 1 percent of gross domestic product, or 1.8 billion euros, next year, is the most sensitive of a raft of reforms demanded by the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for aid.

"We disagree with raising social security contributions," former conservative Labour Minister Yannis Vroutsis told Skai TV. "This would reduce growth and raise unemployment."

The government aims to submit the legislation to parliament by mid-January and have it voted into law by early February, a government official told Reuters, declining to be named.

Official lenders have warned that raising social security contributions may deter job creation and set back economic recovery, meaning negotiations before the final version of the sweeping reform gets to parliament will be tough.

(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas, editing by Larry King)
India charts progress with overseas partners

05 January 2016

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Commercial negotiations between Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and Westinghouse on the construction of six AP1000 units at Mithi Virdi in India are on course to be finalized in 2016, the Indian cabinet has said. Separately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have welcomed progress towards identifying a new site for VVERs in India.

A statement issued by the cabinet on 30 December also noted its ratification of the administrative arrangements for the implementation of the India-Australia Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement that came into force on 13 November.

The Cabinet said that the administrative arrangement for the implementation of civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the USA and India have now been signed and "international and domestic concerns" over India's liability laws have been resolved with the 2015 establishment of the India Nuclear Insurance Pool.

Mithi Virdi, in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, is intended to host up to six AP1000s built in three stages. NPCIL commenced site works in 2012, and Westinghouse and NPCIL signed a preliminary commercial contract in September 2013.

Mithi Virdi is on a list of ten proposed sites for new nuclear power plants given in-principle approval by the Indian government in April 2015. The list included sites for indigenous pressurized heavy water reactors at Gorakhpur in Haryana's Fatehabad; Chutka and Bhimpur in Madhya Pradesh; Kaiga in Karnataka; and Mahi Banswara in Rajasthan, and plants with foreign cooperation at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu (VVER); Jaitapur in Maharashtra (EPR); Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh (ESBWR) and Haripur in West Bengal (VVER).

Russian links

India and Russia signed 16 agreements during Modi's visit to Moscow on 24-25 December, which included those on the nuclear and defence sectors.

In a joint statement following their talks, Modi and Putin said that cooperation between the two countries on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy was a "cornerstone" of their strategic partnership.

Putin said that unit 2 of the Russian-built Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu will be commissioned within weeks and that negotiations are at an advanced stage for units 3 and 4.

The statement added that the two leaders welcomed progress in identifying the second site in India for an additional six units. They agreed to work towards localisation of manufacturing in India under Modi's 'Make in India' program.

Modi said: "The pace of our cooperation in nuclear energy is increasing. We are making progress on our plans for 12 Russian nuclear reactors at two sites. The agreement today will increase Indian manufacturing content in these reactors. It supports my mission of Make in India. I thank President Putin for his support."

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Migrants and refugees walk to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni on December 9, 2015 Greek police launched an operation to remove a thousand migrants gathered at the border with Macedonia, after Skopje introduced a system of filtering those who can cross the frontier by nationality. (AFP Photo/Sakis Mitrolidis)

Athens (AFP) - Greek police launched an operation Wednesday to remove more than 2,000 migrants gathered at the border with Macedonia, after Skopje began filtering those who can cross the frontier by nationality.

"Some 2,300 foreigners of various nationalities are being moved to open hospitality facilities in Athens onboard 45 buses," police said in a statement.

The migrants -- mainly from Pakistan, Somalia, Morocco, Algeria and Bangladesh -- will be sheltered in disused Olympic stadiums, police said, adding that some 350 riot officers were mobilised at dawn for the operation.

Humanitarian workers had been asked to leave the area while reporters and photographers, some of whom were briefly detained, were held back at a distance of about three kilometres (two miles).

Police said media were moved away "to ensure their protection".

Greece and Macedonia are both on the migrant trail that has seen hundreds of thousands of people, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere, head to northern Europe this year after landing from Turkey in flimsy boats.

UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called Europe's refugee situation "chaotic" as he visited a refugee centre near the Finnish capital Helsinki with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

"The present chaotic situation with people moving across the Balkans and then coming essentially to three or four countries -- Austria, Germany, Sweden and Finland -- is not sustainable," Guterres said.

"Many European countries are not doing their part of the job," he added, calling for a fairer distribution of the influx.

The EU is planning to distribute 160,000 asylum-seekers across the bloc under a quota system as it struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II, but is facing legal challenges from Hungary and Slovakia.

- Macedonia builds new border fence -

Macedonia has started building a second barrier on the Greek border in a bid to better control the influx, a military source in Skopje told AFP.

Story continues

"We will build a fence near the border crossing at Medzitlija" in the southwest, the source said.

"This part of the border is porous and we want to stop illegal entries."

Macedonia has already built a fence 2.5 metres (eight-feet) high stretching some three kilometres at the Gevgelija crossing, further east.

On November 19, Macedonia began screening new arrivals for nationality, only letting through people from conflict zones -- Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

People considered "economic migrants", from countries such as Morocco and Pakistan, have been stuck on the border for days or even weeks.

Their anger boiled over last week when groups of migrants seized communal tents operated by humanitarian agencies and destroyed some prefab houses set up by the UN refugee agency.

One migrant was electrocuted to death when he grabbed high-voltage train cables.

Police on the Greek side on Wednesday dismantled tents that have blocked the main train connection with Macedonia for the past month, leading to losses for the rail operator and Greek exporters.

"The operation of the railway line has been fully restored," police said.

After previously ruling out the use of force to clear the area, Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas decided that intervention was necessary as European pressure and local complaints grew.

In Athens the migrants will be allowed to file for asylum but the government plans to repatriate them when possible.

Greece recently sought to return some 50 Pakistanis but Islamabad accepted only 20 of them, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said this week.

"Greece cannot become a warehouse of souls for people who don't want to stay here," Tsipras said.
New Town Centre Police Station Plans Deferred  Again

This article is old - Published: Monday, Jan 4th, 2016

Plans to convert the former Oriel Gallery into a new town centre police station have been deferred for a second time amid fears of the impact the development will have on disabled car parking spaces.

Members of Wrexhams Planning Committee voted in favour of deferring an application by North Wales Police to convert the former Oriel Wrecsam site, in the library, into a small town centre police station.

As we reported in December 2015 the main new police HQ in Llay has had the green light, however there is an issue with car parking holding up the plans to remodel the library in to a smaller town station. The concerns are over eight dedicated disabled parking spaces on Rhosddu Road, which would be lost if planning permission for the station was granted.

Speaking at this evenings meeting, Planning Officer David Williams said: There were issues

in relation to loss of eight disabled parking spaces on the Rhosddu Road side of the library because that area will be taken up by police to house operational vehicles. They have indicated they need 20 spaces.

Those spaces were to be accommodated on the Chester Road side of the building with police providing an additional space and a further seven within the car park, which form an extension of the existing disabled spaces.

Referring to the original deferment he said: The issues relate to the proximity of the replacement parking provision to shop mobility on Egerton Street.

It is possible if this isnt approved, then we wont have a police presence in Wrexham Town Centre. We need to weigh up a single issue against the need to have a police station in the town. There is a potential danger if it is refused that the facility can be lost.

Later due to the Council Officer telling the meeting that the town centre station could be lost permanently if the proposals were rejected a Councillor challenged the claim and referred to it as blackmail.

Mr Williams added that the proposal is to not provide blue badge parking facilities on Egerton Street, which would provide an additional six disabled parking spaced. The proposal would see Egerton Street becoming a pedestrianised area  aside from delivery vehicles and those who have offices on the street.

However concerns about the loss of the disabled car parking remained, with Cllr Steve Bayley saying: Its long established and a well used disabled facility. I looked at Egerton site and if you can get five vehicles on there you will be doing well.

Where the spaces are now there are plenty of space whether you are a driver or passenger. If look to relocate disability parking spaces, why not look at relocating eight police spaces to Chester Street side?

Chairman Mike Morris added: That was one of the questions I have asked, if eight spaces can stay where they are, why cant police spaces go to the other side.

Reference was also made to a local petition objecting to the loss of the parking spaces, which was signed by over 250 residents.

Cllr Phil Wynn said: I am aware that a petition was signed by over 250 local residents, it hasnt been acknowledged in the addendum. Members should be made aware of it if they havent already. As an authority we have had since August 2014 to foresee this problem with the loss of disability parking and the lead member at the time gave assurances there will be no loss of spaces when the Oriel moved.

I welcome a new purpose built police station, however with ageing population we should be discussing more provision of disability parking in town, not less.

After the meeting a post on the Wrexham.com Forums stated that the petition had been submitted in time and could have been included.

Cllr Paul Pemberton added: We are looking at the position of the disabled parking spaces, not the amount. Ive been lobbied several times as a councillor by disabled people who lobby for disabled parking outside their own homes and have been told the council dont have the means or provision or policy to provide this.

By doing this on Egerton Street we will be setting a precedent throughout the Borough, this will cost an absolute fortune and it will be us to pick the bill up. I cant see that Egerton Street is suitable on safety grounds and I cant see how you will get six vehicles there and wheelchairs in and out. There are a number of heavy delivery trucks delivering stuff, and I propose its deferred until more suitable application comes forward.

Clr David Kelly pointed out his perceived difference between treatment of the police application and what would happen with a normal development application involving parking where outright refusal would likely occur.

The feel of the meeting was one critical of the parking plans, with one councillor saying he felt the police had not got off their backsides on the issue.

Rather than outright refusing the plans, which the meeting was told could then result in an appeal and the development pressing ahead with the parking unchanged, a deferral again was opted for to retain some form of influence over the outcome of the issue with the hope that further discussions this month will see a compromise solution put in place.

Members voted in favour of deferring the application for a second month  with two councillors abstaining from the vote.
In Chester, Mold or Shrewsbury People Would Be Praising It

This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Jan 5th, 2016

A robust discussion took place this morning at the Town Centre Forum over the plans to partially convert the Peoples Market to an Arts Hub.

As the plans near decision point both locally with Councillors and further afield with co-funders, Arts Council Wales was the topic that dominated the public meeting today  with Wrexham urged to be more positive over the plans.

Perhaps preempting the debate that followed the Lead Member for the project, Councillor Hugh Jones jokingly referred to a leaflet distributed to attendees on the topic of a course dealing with conflict and managing difficult people and situations.

Cllr Jones provided an update to the status of the Arts Hub plans in a manner that was commended by many in the room for being not only eloquent but passionate. Anticipating the questions from the meeting he gave a brief overview of the history of the proposals, pointing out that elected Councillors themselves had requested a report on the future of the Peoples Market and from that work (Quarterbridge) the Arts Hub idea was born.

Cllr Jones headed off the market provision criticism by noting: Any future development of the Peoples Market should and ought to have a market provision. This has been a key element of the development coming forward. We have had design and business experts look at the plans, we have a recommendation that has a modern and fit for purpose market element. In terms of bringing this forward we felt it was important to have the Arts Council on board, they are key to part of the funding. We now have a proposal for a project which we believe is viable.

Speaking of a vision for Wrexham where both areas of the development support each other he said: Arts and culture will never be financially viable, what we have done is put together a proposal where arts and cultural hub will compliment and enhance the market provision.

This is a vision for the future of Wrexham, the Arts Council Wales see Wrexham as a strategic regional centre for the arts.

One point made by Nigel Lewis, Chair of the Forum referred to a document submitted by Wrexham Council: I have the tender document, its a 15 page document , with three paragraphs on markets. The briefing to the consultant asks them to recommend the minimum number of traders to make the operation viable.

Further questions were raised over the apparent non-provision of requested documentation by stakeholders, including the business case, and keeping documents back to Part 2 / private parts of meetings. Mr Lewis stated: We were assured we would have sight of these items.

In reply to questions over such document retention, Council Leader Mark Pritchard told the meeting: We only take things into Part 2 if they are commercially sensitive or involve jobs. We take legal advice off our officers. Providing an example to one forum member he explained that if the Council was negotiating a lease with local business, you wouldnt want that in public.

Cllr Jones further explained in detail on what is possible to publish, or not publish, in terms of information reports stating: As a local authority we are governed by financial regulations most are subject by audit by the Welsh Audit Office. If as elected members we go against the advice of the monitoring officer, and we can be surcharged as elected members. What we have tried to do is to work inside those rules.

Legal advice was cited as the deciding factor on keeping sections of reports private rather than a personal preference. To a degree the discussion was moot, with the document being declared in public domain.

The commercial content of the Arts Hub was questioned by one town trader, who said: Wrexham needs entrepreneurs and the greatest place to get people off the ground is a market. I would like to see a cultural and arts component in the Peoples Market but I have no confidence in the arts for arts sake approach.

Stating a preference for entrepreneurial arts examples were given: A lot of people have lost total confidence in what we are doing. We need artisans crafts, people doing jewellery, woodcrafts such as Simon ORorke tree carving is for example  they are retailed to market not themselves.

It is not introverted, rather it is geared to the marketplace and drives footfall. The plan needs totally restructuring.

Cllr Jones replied: I dont disagree with thrust of what you are saying. 150 square metres of this project is for doing what you say. Artisan marketing would be a key element of this project and there will be provision to encourage it.

Cllr Jones went on to use Ruthin Arts and Craft Centre as an example, citing 99,000 visitors a year go to a relatively remote part of North Wales because of the arts and crafts there.

Countering the perception of high brow arts provision, Cllr Jones went on to give examples of outreach work conducted by the Oriel in Caia and other areas of Wrexham, We are trying to make sure we incorporate a broad cross section, not just highbrow.

Still not convinced the debate continued with the town trader replying:  You want to maximise the space for retail, it is retail and other forms of entrepreneurial that will drive footfall. We have several arts facilities and these can conduct the educational elements of this. I dont think that what you are doing currently is reinvigorating a market, it is changing the brand. If you want to call it a duck we have to make it look like a duck.

Picking up on the specific educational benefits of the plans Cllr Jones said Wrexham as a town was losing graduates as there is no provision of facilities as are planned in the Arts Hub, We are trying to retain the graduates that are trained in Wrexham.

At this point the Wrexham Council Officer present said: We have not articulated it as best as we have could.

The Chair interjected: If we could see what you have paid for, we could comment. Unfortunately aside from a few floor plans and elevations we have seen nothing. That is the problem.

A Plan B was referred to as having been created by the Town Centre Forum and appeared to have been circulated prior to the meeting. Several Forum Members have stated they were unhappy with being associated in support of, or co-authoring the document, prompting a small discussion to the actual make up and structure of the Forum.

Cllr Carol OToole spoke to commend the work done on the plan, however asked: If the document is circulated more widely some references are made that the document doesnt represent the views of everyone here. The people who are members who contributed to Plan B should be listed and referred to as a working party or sub group.

Looking towards a more conciliatory approach Cllr OToole said: The strength of the Forum has been in partnership working. We all come from different viewpoints, we have always acknowledged there are differing views, but have always managed to work in partnership. We are talking about the report going before Councillors , and it is a backwards step if we talk about two plans.

People have referred to the idea of working together going forward to bring out the best of the proposals that will bring us back to one plan. The reason I am pleading is that there is a risk it will be derailed and we will end up with nothing. Arts Council Wales (funding) is not offered to us every six months, we cannot risk losing it. Without it we cannot take forward this project in any reasonable way.

A digital presentation screen was fired up in the room, however an expected run through of a Plan B document or presentation did not occur so it is not possible to report on the exact contents. The meeting was told by the Chairman the Plan B was put together inside a week and offers what they believe is a viable option to that market, and has a strong cultural offering.

The plan has estimated costs of 500,000 and would be quick to implement. No details of costings, expenditure, research or sources of funding were given. With the lack of consultation and openness being one main criticisms of the Council from the group preparing Plan B, there was no mention of wider discussions to the source of ideas or proposals, nor if any consultation would be part of their plan. At the latter stages of the meeting it was said the Plan B would be circulated to members.

Wrexham Council did state they wished for elements of Plan B to be taken on board to improve the overall plans, however did say they could not comment on the plan fully due to the short period of time from receipt. A comment was made along the general flavour of the meeting that the short period was of the Councils own making as the wider information had not been made public and therefore until now such a plan was not seen as needed by some.

The debate over clarity was conducted forcefully, with the Chairman replying to a comment over working in partnership said: For a partnership the key is openness, honesty and transparency and parties having access to information. We are not party to any financial information on this project, it is difficult for us to be active partners. It is more of a master and servant relationship. We cannot do that unless we have the deliverables that have been paid for by its constituents.

One of the reasons this has gone forward as there has been no investment in the Peoples Market for years. We have never been told that Wrexham Council would be considering 1.5m of capital expenditure and an operational loss.

Wrexhams Assembly Member Lesley Griffiths was attending the meeting, who is also a Minister in Welsh Government, and noted the views of many constituents that had contacted her saying: The lack of consultation and lack of transparency is concerning that it is still going on and referred to the viability of the plans being of huge concern.

Although stating he was attending the meeting to observe and listen the Council Leader Mark Pritchard weighed in with a forthright defence of the plans, transparency and questioned why the ambition of Wrexham was different to other places nearby:

None of us have a monopoly on passion, but there will be times when yourselves and others will not be able to see everything as it will be commercially sensitive. said Cllr Pritchard.

Wrexham should be and hopefully will be the Capital of North Wales. We have the right. We have the aspirations and the business people to take ourselves forward. For some reason in the past we have doubted ourselves and have been self critical. We should have had a theatre, but have not as people tore themselves apart on personal issues. We need to be aware of that.

If this was being proposed in Chester, Mold or Shrewsbury, people would be praising it saying lets have it, in Wrexham we get negativity, negativity, negativity.

I dont mind constructive criticism, but I dont like the we dont like it for personal reasons, we should be getting together and taking it forward and working in true partnership.

What we have is an opportunity for today, the Minister is here today, we (Wrexham Council) will commit 1.5m, we have money from the VVP (Vibrant and Viable Places) and are hoping to work with the Arts Council. Why wouldnt we want to work with them and bring money to this town?

Stating his frustration he ended by saying: I am a little perplexed here this morning why dont you want it. Why cant we have it? Lets be aspirational! If we dont get the money, its dead in the water, we cant afford it.

The meeting was told that as the fuller report has become public knowledge it will remain in the public domain and the majority will now be discussed in public tomorrow at the Scrutiny Meeting rather than in secret. There will still be a Part 2 secret element, with the contents explained as not affecting the business plan but dealing with a breakdown of the source of the Councils 1.5m contribution. The meeting expressed a view that such a restriction and private discussion was sensible and reasonable for such a debate.

Further, an open book meeting period was offered via an open surgery at the Markets Office in the Peoples Market we are double checking the details of this offer and will update shortly .

Wrexham Council have clarified saying: An information event on plans for the Arts Hub will take place from 10am until 4pm on Friday, January 8 at the Markets Office, Peoples Market South Mall, Wrexham

The event will be open to all those stakeholders affected by the development of the Arts Hub, and Cllr Hugh Jones, Lead Member for Communities and Partnerships, will be available to discuss plans alongside officers. Those wishing to share their views can do so by e-mailing peoplesmarketdevelopment@wrexham.gov.uk 
Further information has come to light concerning the Montreal Police Departments use of agent-provocateurs disguised as Black Bloc protestors at a December 18 demonstration against police violence and the anti-austerity policies of the Quebec Liberal government.

Initially the police refused to admit that they had infiltrated the protest. But now they are strongly defending the actions of an undercover cop who drew his revolver and threatened protesters who had outed him as a police agent provocateur.

On the night in question about 100 people, most of them students, had gathered for a protest. As the march proceeded through the streets of downtown Montreal, fireworks were shot towards police lines from amongst the ranks of the protestors. Police then unleashed tear gas and flash-bang grenades against the demonstrators.

Near the end of the confrontation, university student Katie Nelson, who reported that the demonstration had gone strangely violent right away, noticed four men in black clothing and face masks who appeared to be members of the Black Bloc anarchist formation. But when one man removed his mask, Nelson immediately identified him as an undercover police officer who had arrested her at a previous demonstration. Having seen that Nelson had recognized him, the undercover cop quickly put his mask back over his face, then whispered something to a fellow undercover officer.

Shortly thereafter, a brief melee ensued. Two undercover officers arrested a protestor who had also questioned their identity, shoving his face into the ground. A member of the press who moved to record the incident was then manhandled. Nelson, who was leaving the scene, was violently struck from behind by one of the men she had identified as a provocateur. She was taken from the scene by ambulance and hospitalized with a serious neck injury and possible concussion.

In the midst of all this, several demonstrators converged on three of the undercover policemen to demand that they identify themselves and who they work for. One of the officers then pulled a gun on the protestors. When questioned days later by the press about this particular incident, Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafreniere vehemently defended the undercover cops actions, claiming that he had feared for his life. According to Lafreniere, the undercover cops, cried, Police, back off! It didnt work, so one of them took out his gun, and at that point, the protesters fled.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre and Quebec Public Security Minister Pierre Moreau have refused all comment on the polices actions at the December 18 demonstration. Their silence implies supportsupport for the police practice of infiltrating demonstrations and inciting violence and for the intimidation of protesters with a lethal weapon.

This is not the first time that the police have used agent-provocateurs to justify the adoption of repressive measures aimed at limiting, if not abolishing for all practical purposes, the democratic right to demonstrate in opposition to government policy.

In documents released in 2011 as part of a plea deal between 17 social activists and Crown attorneys, it was revealed that 12 undercover police agents either spied on or infiltrated protest groups who were planning to participate in demonstrations against world leaders at the June 2010 G-20 summit meeting in Toronto. At least two of these undercover officers played central roles in organizing protest activities of various anarchist collectives. This included helping to identify targets to be vandalized in downtown Toronto.

To cite only a few other incidents of police provocation, there was the widely publicized Germinal affair at the April 2001 Quebec City Summit of the Americas. A few days before the summit, police arrested seven young men traveling to Quebec City, who had in their possession sticks, smoke bombs, dummy grenades and gas masks. The press trumpeted the incident and loudly applauded the draconian security measures surrounding the summit.

Rapidly, however, the affair was shown to have been a state provocation. The reputed leader of the Germinal group was an ex-member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Of the groups 15 members at least two others were RCMP double agents and two more part of the Canadian military. It was one of the soldiers who had introduced the RCMP moles to the Germinal group. The RCMP agents urged the group to use Molotov cocktails in Quebec City, an idea the group rejected citing the possibility of damage or injury. The moles also furnished a large part of the equipment used to incriminate the Germinal members.

A similar anti-democratic modus operandi was unmasked at Montebello, Quebec in 2007, in part through an amateur video posted on the internet. The video documents how Quebec Provincial Police (SQ) cops disguised as anarchist protesters sought to provoke fights between riot police and demonstrators protesting a summit meeting of the US and Mexican presidents and Canadas prime minister.

The video shows three burly, aggressive-looking masked men trying to join a group of smaller, youthful demonstrators wearing black and carrying red flags. One of the police thugs is carrying a sign that says, An end to war and globalization. Another has a rock in his hand.

One of the demonstrations organizers confronts the three thugs. He asks the one with a rock to drop it and asks all of them to show their faces. One of the masked men then shoves the march organizer and gives him the middle finger. At this moment, a group of peaceful demonstrators begins chanting, Police, police. One hears a young demonstrator say, They want to trick us. They want us to be aggressive with them. [...] They are agent provocateurs.

In the meantime, the three masked men quietly approach the riot squad, which is forming a cordon a few paces away. One of them whispers something into the ear of a policeman. After a brief staged scuffle, the police cordon opens, letting the men through and they are gently placed in handcuffs. As the three walk away, one clearly sees that the fake demonstrators are wearing the same boots as their police escorts.

In keeping with security forces standard procedure, top SQ officials initially categorically denied that the three men in question were policemen. But after the video was posted to YouTube, the SQ was forced to admit that the men were indeed SQ cops.

The police provocation last month in Montreal came as hundreds of thousands of workers in Quebec were taking strike action against the Liberal government of Premier Phillipe Couillard. Just days before the street protest, the vast majority of Quebecs half-million public sector workers joined a one-day province-wide strike to oppose concessionary contract demands and savage social spending cuts.

The same week saw 8,000 City of Montreal white collar workers, who have been without a contract since 2012, stage a one-day walkout and 2,000 Montreal blue collar workers defy a provincial Labour Board order prohibiting them from attending a union meeting during working hours.

Under conditions of mounting social unrest, police agencies are more and more placed to the fore as part of the drive by the state to criminalize all forms of working class opposition. These recent incidents of police provocation should be emblazoned on every workers memory: When the state deploys its repressive apparatus under the pretext of fighting extremism, it sends its own thugs and agents to make trouble and incite violence. Its objectives are clear: to intimidate demonstrators; to discourage the populace in general from exercising its democratic right to express its opposition to the reactionary agenda of the ruling elite; and to discredit opponents of the government, especially the youth, by smearing them as vandals and criminals.
The UK governments spending review on public sector funding in November aimed to save more than 20 billion in public finances as part of the governments austerity agenda across health, housing, social services and the education sector.

In education, the main reform to be rolled out over the course of this parliament is a new funding formula for schools. The purported aim is fairer funding for schools, but the reality is another package of cuts to education and services.

Inequality in funding for schools has existed in one form or another for decades and has escalated over the past decade through the process of academisation and the creation of free schools. Academies and free schools are free from control of Local Education Authorities, funded directly by central government and not bound by national teaching pay and work agreements. These have systematically taken public funding away from the state sector and handed it directly to private companies.

Chancellor George Osborne announced that allocation of school funding would be set by a national rate. This rate will be determined on an age-weighted pupil unit (AWPU). The governments schools revenue report for 2016-2017 lays out a single rate for primary-age pupils, which must be at least 2,000. There will also be different rates for key stage 3 (aged 11-14) and key stage 4 (14-16), with a minimum of 3,000 for each.

A 2014 government report set an AWPU of 2,880 for primary, 3,950 for key stage 3 and 4,502 for key stage 4. This shows that projections per pupil have been significantly reduced, by almost 30 percent. In addition, the absence of a fixed amount, as in previous reports, means that the minimum rate will not meet the needs of many schools nationally.

Teachers unions note that the overall national picture is a forecast fall of 8 percent in real terms to school budgets.

According to the Times Educational Supplement (TES), Some schools could face extra budget cuts of up to 2 percent a year under government plans. Furthermore, where the funding is coming from is unclear. Officials at the Department for Educationare understood to be considering finding extra cash for low-funded schools by imposing annual 2 per cent cuts on schools in the areas that currently receive the most money.

The cut in real-term school funding comes as the accumulation of budgetary debts by many schools has risen dramatically, and is forecast to escalate over the new tax year as previous reforms are imposed from April.

The TES found that borrowing by schools in 137 local authorities increased from 20 million in 2013 to 56.7 million in 2015. A freedom of information enquiry for the financial years 2013-2014, and up to the end of November 2015, showed that since 2014 the average permitted deficit per school, for indebted schools, has almost doubled to 122,828.

The impact of cuts is hitting educational support serviceswith the Local Government Association warning of 600 million being taken from budgets for services such as speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, music and checks on staff.

As funding for schools has been squeezed, teachers have suffered cuts in pensions and been hit by the imposition of performance-related pay. These attacks provoked widespread opposition. But a unified response was prevented by the teachers unions channelling opposition into exerting pressure, first on the previous Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, and now on the Conservative government, to enter negotiations.

The pseudo-left groups, including the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Socialist Party, have played a critical role. National Union of Teachers (NUT) deputy general secretary Kevin Courtney is a leading figure in the Socialist Teachers Alliance and is backed by the SWP.

Over the past five years, resounding votes for strike action have been returned in ballots. In response, any action organised by the unions has been token, with occasional one-day stoppages. Despite rhetoric by the two main teaching unions, the NUT and the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), about organising a unified campaign, only the most limited action was held. National strikes have been cancelled at the 11th hour in return for discussions, allowing the agenda of the government to be implemented.

Teachers are leaving the profession in droves due to the intolerable conditions they face, while the large rise in pupil numbers adds to budgetary pressures. The annual school census shows numbers rising across the state school systemup by 2.1 percent in primary and 0.1 percent in secondaryto a total of 8.4 million pupils. This is an increase of about 200,000 children in two years.

The government claims that 5 billion was allocated to local authorities in education funding from 2010, with even more being offered over the current parliament. However, this has not resulted in any improvement in the conditions teachers work under. From 2010 to 2015, the number of classes containing over 30 children in primary schools rose. The 100,800 pupils now in oversized classes represent an increase of 8 percent, compared with 2014. The number has more than doubled since 2012, when there were about 47,000 infants in classes of more than 30. In 2008, the figure was fewer than 25,000. Such increases in class sizes damage childrens standard of education.

In secondary schools, the picture is no better. The government predicts a 20 percent rise in pupil numbers over the course of the next decade. By 2024, nearly 3.3 million pupils are expected to be attending state-funded secondary schools, compared with just over 2.7 million in 2015, a rise of 547,000.

Teachers are expected to raise standards and results with stretched resources and rising class sizes. Furthermore, these conditions are being ignored in relation to teacher pay targets. The Performance Management targets set by head teachers and governors are increasingly tougher and in some cases impossible to achieve.

A recent report revealed that 1.3 billion is spent annually on supply teachers in England, as staff retention becomes harder and the number of teachers entering the profession falls.

Lucy Powell, Labour Party shadow education secretary, said that schools face chronic shortages of teachers and blamed the government for talking down the profession.

Powells claims expunge the role played by the Labour Party and the trade unions, who, prior to the Tories coming to power, began implementing the changes that have brought the profession to a breaking point and laid the basis for the eventual privatisation of state education.

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On Saturday, approximately two dozen armed, right-wing militia members took control of an unoccupied visitors center at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a federal nature preserve approximately 30 miles south of the city of Burns in sparsely populated Harney County, Oregon. The action is being carried out in protest against restrictions on government-controlled land.

The Malheur occupation began after a march by some 300 people in Burns to protest the reimprisonment of ranchers Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, who were convicted in 2012 of setting fires on federal lands in 2001 and 2006.

Despite the protest and ongoing occupation, both Dwight and Steven Hammond voluntarily reported to prison Monday, while their lawyers sought clemency from President Obama. Suzie Hammond, Dwight Hammonds wife, told Fox News that her family had no role in the occupation and she was not planning to visit the militiamen occupying Malheur.

The group, known as Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, is led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Speaking to the Oregonian Saturday night, Ammon Bundy said the group was planning on staying here for years, absolutely. He added, This is not a decision weve made at the last minute.

The Bundy family gained notoriety in 2014 after it rallied support among militia members in a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over grazing rights on federal property. The family successfully forced BLM agents to back down, an outcome that emboldened far-right elements throughout the country.

In an interview with CBS News on Monday, Ammon Bundy said that a demand for redress of grievances of ranchers intimidated by federal authorities had been sent to local, state and federal officials. The group has set a deadline of five days for a response, but has not indicated what it will do if it does not receive one.

The wildlife refuge has been a tool that government has used for many years to take the land and resources away from the people, Bundy said. He continued, The people of this county are being abused and they're being prosecuted because they're not willing to sell to the federal government, and it's just one of those things that just cannot continue.

The Hammonds were tried and convicted under a subsection of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which carries a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for setting fire to federal property. During initial sentencing in 2012, US District Judge Michael R. Hogan rejected the mandatory sentence as unfair and instead sentenced the elder Hammond to three months and his son to one year and one month. The two ranchers were also ordered to pay some $400,000 in damages to the federal government. Both men served their sentences and were released.

In the meantime, Justice Department attorneys appealed the sentences as a violation of the mandatory minimum stipulated by the law. In 2014, a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lesser sentences and ordered that the Hammonds be re-sentenced and finish out the minimum prison terms.

In a previous confrontation at Malheur in 1994, Dwight and Steven Hammond were arrested by armed federal agents after they blocked a work crew that was seeking to erect a fence to keep the Hammonds cattle from grazing on government property after their grazing rights were revoked.

While the occupation by the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom has so far attracted a very limited number of people, the group has been given substantial media coverage. Right-wing militia groups enjoy a sympathetic ear from sections of the Republican Party and the military. For all their attempts to portray themselves as common citizens, it is clear that they are working with experienced political forces.

During the standoff in 2014, which was covered extensively by Fox News, the Bundys received support from a number of Republican politicians, including Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, both now seeking their partys nomination for president. The Bundy family, in turn, has donated money to the campaigns of both Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul.

Ammon Bundy and the other militia members may couch their appeals in populist language, but they have a definite right-wing political agenda and see the Malheur occupation as an event that can strengthen and rally far-right forces.

In this context, it is notable that the response of the Obama administration and state law enforcement agencies is vastly different from what normally occurs when there are popular protests reflecting mass grievances, particularly over incidents of police violence.

The first official response from the White House to the occupation came on Monday and was decidedly low-key. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged that President Obama was aware of the situation and that the FBI was monitoring the situation and providing aid to local authorities, but insisted that the seizure of federal property remained a local matter.

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward released a statement Saturday urging residents to stay away from the area and maintain a peaceful and united front. He also warned that the group had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.

There is a palpable sense that federal and local officials are wary of generating any broader sympathy for the militiamen. The FBI released a statement indicating that it was working with the Harney County Sheriffs Office and Oregon State Police to bring a peaceful resolution to the situation.

Bloody assaults by federal agents on Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho in 1992 and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993 fueled the growth of the right-wing militia movements throughout the US, culminating in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 680 others.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the anti-government militia movement has experienced a notable growth in the last year, expanding from 202 to 276 known active organizations. With the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 and the election of Obama, the first African American president, the number of militia groups grew dramatically from 42 to a peak of 334 in 2011.

The Socialist Equality Party opposes the use of federal forces against these groups, not because socialists sympathize with their political demands, but because long experience has demonstrated that repressive measures used against the right are employed with redoubled force against the left.

Nevertheless, the proliferation of such right-wing groupings and their ability, however limited, to appeal to a broader audience should be taken as a warning. To the extent that far-right tendencies can cast themselves as victims of government violence, they do so under conditions where much broader popular protests are severely limited and suppressed and genuine grievances cannot find a progressive outlet within the political or media establishment.

The answer to the threat posed by right-wing forces such as those occupying Malheur does not lie in the mobilization of the forces of the state, but in the development of an international movement of the working class fighting for social equality in a struggle against the capitalist system.
For the first time since the dissolution of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism in 1991, a strategic document of the Russian state has openly designated the United States and the NATO military alliance as threats to Russian national security.

The document, About the Strategy of National Security of the Russian Federation, was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on New Years Eve. It warns that Russia faces counteraction from the USA and its allies, which are striving to retain their dominance in global affairs. It predicts that this will lead to further political, economic, military, and informational pressure on Russia.

The document points in particular to actions NATO has taken since backing the February 2014 coup that installed a far-right, pro-Western regime in neighboring Ukraine. It cites the intensification of military activities of [NATO] member countries, the further expansion of the alliance into Eastern Europe along Russian borders, and moving military infrastructure closer to Russias borders as national security threats to Russia.

The publication of such a document is a warning that preparations for war between NATO and Russia, a nuclear-armed state, are well advanced. In diplomatic parlance, a national security threat is a threat so severe that a state is prepared to use military force to suppress it, and the strategy document states that Russia reserves the right to use military force if other measures to protect national interests are ineffective.

The Russian national security document amounts to an official recognition by the Russian state that its relations with NATO, and in particular with the United States, are in a state of collapse. The policies pursued by NATO over the last two years signify that war between NATO and Russia is a real possibility.

Since backing the coup in Kiev, NATO has supported the war pursued by the Ukrainian regime and allied far-right militias on Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine. Early last year, the US government proposed to openly arm the Kiev regime for war against separatist forces tacitly backed by Moscow. The current Russian national security document refers to Ukraine as a long-term source of instability in Europe, and directly at the Russian border.

This was part of a broad build-up of NATO military power threatening Russia. NATO posted thousands of troops and warplanes in the Baltic republics, only a few minutes by fighter flight from the Russian city of St Petersburg. It has sent troops, organized military exercises, and posted missile defense units across Eastern Europe, and deployed naval forces on missions or exercises from the Arctic to the Baltic.

The strategy document reportedly does not mention the Middle East, where NATOs proxy war to oust Syrias Russian-backed president, Bashar al-Assad, thus placed the Middle East and the entire world on the verge of all-out war. However, it is clearly a response to Turkeys decision, endorsed by US President Barack Obama shortly afterwards, to shoot down a Russian jet last November over Syria, in a blatant act of war.

NATO is making even more dire threats, however. Washington in particular has shifted to open preparation of aggressive nuclear war against Russia. Last year, US officials testified before the Congress that US forces are preparing for possible preemptive counterforce strikes with nuclear weapons against military targets inside Russia, before any attack by Russia took place.

In its national security document, the Kremlin concludes that the NATO powers are seeking to overthrow the Russian government, on the model of color revolutions that produced US-backed regime change in countries like Georgia and Ukraine. It also warns that the NATO powers will seek to dissolve Russia. It lists radical social groups which use nationalist and religious extremist ideologies, foreign and international NGOs, and also private citizens among potential threats to Russian internal security and territorial integrity.

With the Kremlin fearing the worst, its national security document advocates a strategy of seeking to maintain good relations with the NATO powers, while relying on Russias military strength to deter NATO attacks. This includes above all maintaining Russias nuclear arsenal. The document stresses that Russias nuclear stockpile will be reduced only if this can be done without damaging international security and strategic stability.

The contents of the Russian national security strategy testify to the bankruptcy of the world capitalist system and amount to an indictment of the reckless policy of the imperialist powers. In an attempt to whip Moscow into line and assert their geostrategic interests in Eurasia, they are fueling a military escalation and an arms race that threatens to explode into a war that could claim millions or billions of lives.

The response of Putin and the Russian capitalist oligarchy that emerged from the dissolution of the USSR is however bankrupt and reactionary. They are both unable and unwilling to make any appeal to opposition to war in the international working class. Desperately trying to maintain relations with the imperialist powers and their financial and economic resources, they oscillate between trying to cut deals with the NATO countries and threatening to defend themselves by fighting a catastrophic war with them.

What emerges from the statements of the Kremlin and of Putin are the disastrous consequences of the dissolution of the USSR for Russia and the world. Surrounded by hostile NATO outposts in former Soviet republics in the Baltics, the Caucasus and Ukraine, devastated by the industrial and economic collapse that followed capitalist restoration in the USSR, Russia has been unable to rely on anti-imperialist solidarity that existed in the international working class with the USSR. The entire region has been thrown open to imperialist intervention, with catastrophic results.

The national security document itself points to the backward and parasitic character of Russian capitalism as a major national security threat. It bemoans Russias lag in the development of advanced technologies, the vulnerability of the financial system, the imbalance of the budgetary system, the economy going offshore, the exhaustion of the raw materials base, the strength of the shadow economy, conditions leading to corruption and criminal activities, and uneven development of regions.

All this makes it easier for the NATO powers to threaten Russia with financial sanctions, trade penalties, and the partition of the Russian Federation along regional or ethnic lines.

Above all, Russia is being confronted with the full brunt of the economic and geostrategic crisis of world imperialism. To the extent that the continued existence of the Russian state is emerging as an obstacle to the assertion of imperialist interests in the Middle East and Eurasia, it has become the target of ruthless military pressure from NATO.

Significantly, Putin made dire warnings about the rising danger of war between the major powers in his remarks last year to the Valdai Discussion Club.

According to Putin, the world leaders of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s did treat the use of armed force as an exceptional measure. In this sense, they behaved responsibly, weighing all the circumstances and possible consequences. The end of the Cold War put an end to ideological opposition, but the basis for arguments and geopolitical conflicts remained... In the past 25 years, the threshold for the use of force has gone down noticeably.

He warned that as a result, political, economic or military competition may get out of control. He cited the dangers of regional conflicts, especially in border areas, where the interests of major nations or blocs meet, and of a new spiral of the arms race. He attacked the concept of the so-called disarming first strike [i.e., a preemptive US strike to destroy the Russian nuclear arsenal] including one with the use of high-precision long-range non-nuclear weapons comparable in their effect to nuclear weapons.

Putin concluded that Russias nuclear arsenal would no longer deter other countries from attacking it, and seeking to advance their interests via global nuclear war. He declared, The nuclear deterrent lost its value. Some probably even had the illusion that victory of one party in a world conflict was again possiblewithout irreversible, unacceptable, as experts say, consequences for the winner, if there ever is one.
As the 2016 US presidential campaign enters a new stage, the final month before the initial caucus and primary contests, billionaire Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, released his first television ad on Monday.

The 30-second spot, which is to begin appearing this week on local television stations in Iowa and New Hampshire, recycles Trumps most notoriously racist attacks on immigrants and Muslims.

The ad smears both immigrants and Muslims by linking them to the attack last month in San Bernardino, California, where two gunmen, husband and wife, opened fire on a workplace meeting, killing 14 people.

The faces of the two attackers, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, are flashed on the screen immediately after the announcer repeats Trumps call for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

Adding militarism to racism, the announcer then declares, Hell quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil.

This is followed by film of immigrants apparently storming a border fence, while the announcer invokes Trumps notion of building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.

In keeping with the gross dishonesty and cynicism of the Trump campaign, the scene is not even filmed on the US-Mexico border, but rather shows African immigrants seeking to enter the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco.

In an interview with the Washington Post on Sunday, Trump claimed he would spend at least $2 million a week running the ad on television stations in Iowa, where the first Republican caucus will take place February 1, and in New Hampshire, where the first primary election is February 9.

If actually carried out, this would be the first significant outlay by the Trump campaign, which has up to now been sustained by saturation media coverage and the candidates first-place ranking in opinion polls (derived at least in part from his celebrity and the media attention).

Trump underscored the central focus of his campaign, on anti-immigrant racism, telling the Post he hoped the new television ads would reach voters concerned that the United States has become a dumping ground.

A remarkable aspect of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is that there has been little criticism of Trump, the apparent frontrunner, from most of his rivals, and almost no effort to rebut his brazen appeals to racism and anti-Muslims bigotry.

There was an initial flurry of statements rejecting his call to bar Muslims from entering the United States, largely tied to foreign policy concerns about offending US allies like the Persian Gulf monarchies.

Since then, however, both congressional Republican leaders and rivals for the presidential nomination have stopped talking about Trumps call for flagrantly unconstitutional attacks on democratic rights. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have largely downplayed the issue as well.

In speeches, rallies and advertisements, candidates like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Marco Rubio, supposedly vying for support from the Republican Party establishment and moderately conservative voters, have targeted each other and avoided any comment on Trumps increasingly provocative statements.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, perhaps the most right-wing of the Republican candidates, has explicitly disavowed any criticism of Trump, repeatedly praising him while offering himself as a less eccentric but equally reactionary alternative.

Cruz leads in polls in Iowa, in large part because the Republican caucuses have been dominated by Christian fundamentalist groups, most of which are supporting Cruz or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Trump is currently polling in second place in Iowa, and he admitted last week that he could well lose the state. He is ahead in polls of the somewhat broader Republican electorate expected in the New Hampshire primary a week later, and in the third contest in South Carolina February 20.

Trumps choice of Mexican immigrants and Muslims as the targets of his first television advertising only underscores the fascistic character of his campaign, which has vaulted him to the front rank of Republican candidates. The billionaire denounced Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers when he first announced his candidacy last June. He took up the cudgel against Muslims after the November 13 terrorist attack in Paris, and made his now-notorious pledge to halt the entry of all Muslims into the United States after the December 2 attack in San Bernardino. These were not verbal gaffes, but deliberate racist provocations aimed at encouraging a pogrom-like hysteria.

This right-wing anti-immigrant campaign is facilitated by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. This week the Department of Homeland Security launched a new series of raids targeting Central American immigrants, aimed at rounding up and deporting women and children who have fled gang violence and savage repression by US-backed regimes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Trump applauded the raids, tweeting, Does everyone see that the Democrats and President Obama are now, because of me, starting to deport people who are here illegally. Politics! He also cited the new DHS actions at his campaign rallies, declaring, Its about time.
VALDOSTA, GA (WTXL) - One of the three men accused of stealing rental equipment in Valdosta has been arrested.

According to the Valdosta Police Department, Bobby Richardson was arrested on an outstanding theft warrant.

Police say Richardson and two other men rented construction equipment from a local company then reported them stolen.

According to investigators, the theft ring has been operating in cities around Florida and Georgia.

The Valdosta equipment is valued at $40,000 and none of the equipment has been recovered; police believe the items were sold.

Authorities are still searching for two other suspects, Desmond Andrews and Terrez Ellis.

If you have any information on where they are, call Valdosta Police at (229) 293-3145.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Monday, January 4, 2016 marks the beginning of First Responder Appreciation Week in Florida. Governor Rick Scott made the proclamation last month.

Scott says Florida's crime rate is at a 44 year low, and its all thanks to the state's first responders.

students from Fairview Middle School gathered this afternoon to honor the men and women who put their lives on the line each day to protect others.

They wrote notes for first responders in our area, thanking them for the sacrifices they make to keep us safe.

"First responders, personally I can't imagine a world without them,' says student Grace Dennig. "It's just as simple as picking up a phone and dialing three numbers and there's a set of trained people waiting to come save you. I mean I can't imagine a world without them. As Governor Rick Scott said, take a moment to thank a first responder this week, at least one."

This is the second year Governor Scott proclaimed First Responder Appreciation Week in the state. It concludes this Friday.
SUGAR LAND, TX--(Marketwired - Jan 5, 2016) - Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- As shale-play production booms in North America and other sectors return to growth, demand is high for quality information on the U.S. labor market, particularly on where it is most costly. Industrial Info provides users with details on the risk and the reward of local labor, including the competing wage and per diem rates across numerous tight labor markets. Estimators can see where labor will be short and where wages and per diems may rise, and what other metropolitan areas are competing for the same labor. Industrial Info can "build" the forecast for any metropolitan area or region in the U.S. and Canada.

Industrial Info analyzes labor demand by estimating the hours required for current plant operations, planned project spending, and unit turnarounds and outages in all 12 industrial markets. Among the craft types identified are welders, pipefitters, electricians, operators, boilermakers, insulators, scaffold builders, carpenters, millwrights, instrumentation technicians, painters, iron workers and riggers.

Industrial Info also provides labor supply statistics for qualified journeymen at industrial plants. Data is gathered estimating the overall labor population by craft, then surveying union locals and non-union contractors in each region to determine how many qualified workers are available. The data is validated and grouped by metropolitan area, and revised quarterly.

To learn more about these and other labor-related products, contact Industrial Info's VP of Labor Analytics, Tony Salemme, at tsalemme@industrialinfo.com or by calling (209) 547-9878.

For further details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. To contact an office in your area, visit the www.industrialinfo.com "Contact Us" page.
The murderer from Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street and Amiram Ben-Uliel and his friends, who are suspected of committing the murder in the Palestinian village of Duma, are two sides of the same coin - not errant weeds, not mentally Ill, not lone wolf terrorists and definitely not confused and adventurous young people.

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They are filthy fingers, which are connected to hands and a body that maintain them, move them and protect them. These murderous fingers should be cut off by the Shin Bet, but the hands and the body - the ground they developed on - should be handled like a spreading epidemic by both societies, the Jewish and the Arab.

Shin Bet Interrogations Its all by the book Yael Stein Op-ed: The fact that something is legal doesnt make it justified; sometimes, the fact that something is legal serves only to illustrate the bankruptcy of the legislative mechanisms in a place where criminal acts have become lawful. Its all by the book

But the two sons, like some of their siblings, have radicalized the values they learned in their surroundings and taken a step forward to cross the rickety fence which still separates between the societies they were raised in and anarchy and hatred towards anything the Israeli establishment represents.

Duma murder suspect Amiram Ben-Uliel. Hatred towards anything the Israeli establishment represents

Several hours after the murder in Duma, the Shin Bet's Jewish Division already had the names of two suspects: Amiram Ben-Uliel and A., a minor. Yet it took five months and unusual interrogation methods to turn the intelligence evidence into a confession, a reenactment and indictments.

It wasn't unintentionally that from day one, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and senior defense establishment officials rejected claims made by Yesha Council leaders and Knesset members and ministers that the murder was committed by Arabs. Even when the Shin Bet presented the texts found in the possession of the "revolt group," as well as additional evidence, the heads of the radical right chose to ignore them and demand that the Jewish Division be shut down.

The reason it took five months till the prosecution is that the Shin Bet is a thwarting body whose goal is to prevent terror attacks. It's not its job to lead people to court. So even after it obtained names of suspects, it focused on the effort to thwart concrete attacks planned by the group which the Duma murderers came from.

The second effort was to neutralize the group, which eventually led to the four indictments filed Sunday. That is the reason why the minor was placed under house arrest, while Ben-Uliel - who had disconnected himself from the group - was under tight surveillance.

The attempt to create a picture of confused minors who have been thrown out of educational systems is their relatives' way of building an alibi for them. The acts they are suspected of carrying out, which likely include unsolved affairs, allow no leniency over their age. Moreover, the definition of the term "minor" is flexible" - in the territories, an Arab is considered a minor up to the age of 16, not 18 like among the Jews.

The Duma affair calls for a reexamination of the discrimination in the definition of minors, particularly as senior defense establishment officials declare that a Jewish terror attack is much more dangerous for the Israeli society and national security than a Palestinian terror attack. Jewish terror - as revealed in the indictments - is aimed at creating a shockwave which will lead to a series of clashes between Jews and Arabs that will require the army to enter the territories, eventually leading to regional chaos which will make it possible to fulfill the vision of a halachic state.

Fortunately, the revolt group was caught at its inception. They were planning to create provocations on the Temple Mount, but estimated that their chances of succeeding at the moment were not high, so they focused on two targets: Creating a wave of riots by burning Palestinians homes along with their inhabitants, and embarrassing the State of Israel vis-a-vis the Christian world by targeting churches. The revolt group was neutralized, but the Shin Bet is concerned by the fact that imitators, followers and avengers exist and continue to develop around them.

In the past year, the Shin Bet reached most parents of the revolt group members and of members of the wider circles. Some of them are people from the heart of the Judea and Samaria settlements, who were shocked by their children's misdeeds and expressed their helplessness. On the other hand, some of these parents were familiar with their children's comments, were aware of some of their activities, and in cases of arrests even made up alibis for them. In any event, no one in the body which developed these filthy fingers took any real steps to stop them.

The suspects were defined in the media as a "ticking bomb," which justified the special measures used against them, but officially the Shin Bet has no such term. The unusual interrogation measures are used according to Clause 113 in criminal law, which states that if there is an almost certain likelihood that the interrogatee holds information which could help thwart an attack, a special investigation can be permitted and then presented to the attorney general's examination.

If the attorney general decides that the clause was applied without justification, the investigator may be punished, but so far all cases of torture complaints have been closed. That will likely happen again in this case.
Two books, diametrically opposed and written by two of the most famous figures of World War II, are both currently at the center of international legal battles - Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl." One book is a diatribe from the most heinous murderer of all. The other collects the thoughts of the innocent victim who stubbornly continued to believe in humanity's goodness and has since turned into one of the symbols of the Holocaust.

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On January 1, 2016, 70 years after their authors' deaths, the works are supposed to enter the public domain in accordance with European copyright law.

Anne Frank

While the danger in allowing the fair use of racist and anti-democratic writings like Hitler's is clear to almost all, as is the understanding why the distribution of "Mein Kampf" must be limited, objections to introducing "The Diary of a Young Girl" to the public domain are not as clear and have raised quite a few questions.

Never Forget Anne Frank remembered in her own words 70 years after her death Reuters UK campaign invites celebrities and public to record themselves reading one-minute extracts from Jewish girl's diary about life in hiding from Nazis and post their videos online under #notsilent hashtag. Anne Frank remembered in her own words 70 years after her death

Otto Frank found the diary at the apartment where his family hid during much of the Holocaust. After learning that his entire family was dead, Otto went over the manuscript, edited his daughter's memories into the book, and brought it to publishers.

The foundation, which threatens to sue anyone who breaches its copyright, claims that the definitive version of the diary was published in 1986, six years after Otto's death. "Under Dutch copyright law, a work first published posthumously before 1995 remains protected for 50 years after the initial publication," the foundation said.

'Don't let them forget the Holocaust'

A French parlamentarian and a university lecturer decided to take the legal risk upon themselves and published "The Diary of a Young Girl" in Dutch (the original language in which it was written) on their websites on Friday, New Year's Day.

French MP Isabelle Attard is a director of museums, well-known researcher, and an activist in left-wing organizations that fight for the public's right for free access to information. Scholar Olivier Ertzscheid is a lecturer on the freedom of information and the media at the University of Nantes in western France.

Two months ago, Ertzscheid published the French translation of the diary online, but quickly took it down after being threatened with a lawsuit by the French publisher. The academic believes that he has more of a chance to win the battle with the original Dutch version of the diary.

On his website, accordance.info ("the blog of a lecturer on the freedom of information"), Ertzscheid wrote that "because the diary helps us to never forget what happened and provided many readers with the ability to understand, I am convinced that there is no other struggle to be conducted other than releasing the diary for the good of the public."

Ertzscheid also replied to the warning letter sent by the Foundation's lawyers warning of legal action. "One thing is important to me," wrote the academic, "and that is for Anne Frank's work to be distributed among the public at large, so this text gets wider circulation and recognition than it has now."

Ertzscheid accused the foundation of exploiting copyright law. "Given the rise of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, and in the face of the growth of the radical right in a number of European countries, at the time 'Mein Kampf' becomes public property, I think the common interest is to publicly disseminate the diary without calling into question the memorializing and educational work conducted by the Anne Frank Foundation," he wrote.

Attard went further, with her spokesperson accusing the Anne Frank Foundation of greed. "Saying now that the book was not written by Anne alone weakens the weight the book had for decades as testimony to the horrors of war," argued Attard.

Last Tuesday, before the directors of the Anne Frank Foundation had the chance to respond legally to Attard's publication of the diary on her site, a Dutch court ruled that parts of the diary could be copied for research purposes.

"The Diary of a Young Girl" is without a doubt the most well-known documentation of Nazi persecution in the world, having sold over 30 million copies. Anne Frank's family moved from Frankfurt, Germany to Amsterdam shortly before the Nazis rose to power. Once the Germans occupied the Netherlands and began persecuting the country's Jews, the Franks found a hiding place, a secret annex in an apartment owned by an employee of Otto Frank.

The family hid for about two years, forced to constantly be careful about noise and light, until being betrayed to the Nazis by an individual who has never been identified.

The entire family, as well as the family hiding with them, was sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot were later moved to Bersen-Belsen, where Anne died at the age of 15 of typhus, only three weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allies. Otto was the only member of the family to survive.

Among the most famous passages in the book appears in an entry written about two weeks before the Franks' arrest.

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out," wrote Anne. "Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
The roadside minefield that was planted on the slopes of Mount Dov to target IDF patrols was probably part of an operation to avenge the assassination of Samir Kuntar. Kuntar was killed in an airstrike two weeks ago at a suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly claimed that Israel was behind it.

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He might be right. After all, the Druze terrorist, who was released from Israeli prison, has returned to his evil ways on the Syrian border in the service of Hezbollah and Iran, and Israel had good reason to believe he was about to launch attacks against Israeli communities in the Golan Heights.

A bomb exploded next to IDF forces on the Lebanese border (:  )

X

attack on Monday was probably his way of settling the account. Just in case, so others in the Middle East see that Nasrallah keeps his promises, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack and announced the explosives on Mount Dov were planted by the "Samir Kuntar Brigades."

However, it's too early to declare that this as the end of this round of assassination, retaliation, and retaliation over the retaliation between the IDF and Hezbollah. There were no casualties among our troops in this attack, and that is why Nasrallah might decide that the account on Kuntar remains unsettled. There is still a possibility that Hezbollah would try to launch additional attacks against Israel on the northern border, and particularly on Mount Dov.

IDF troops on the scene after a bomb exploded close to an army unit near the Lebanese border (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

The precautions taken over the past couple of weeks on the northern border and on the Mount Hermon slopes should, therefore, stay in place. In addition, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that under the cover of the stormy weather that descended on the area over the past few days, Hezbollah planted even more explosives and perhaps even anti-tank launchers ready to ambush IDF troops in other places along the northern border. That is why the Galilee Division, which is responsible for the area the bomb was planted in, closed off a few of the roads.

This round might also not be done as far as Israel is concerned, which means IDF soldiers and farmers working near the border fence should be particularly cautious and remain on high alert.

When it became apparent to Israel that Nasrallah intends to follow up on his threats - and this time Military Intelligence's predictions were correct and accurate - the prime minister, defense minister and IDF chief of staff, as well as security sources speaking to the media, were all quick to stress that Israel would respond with force to any kind of revenge attack committed by Hezbollah.

A year ago, Hezbollah committed a revenge attack after the IAF, according to foreign sources, bombed a patrol of commanders from Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Syrian Army, who were scouting the area for a series of terror attacks they were planning against Israel. Jihad Mughniyeh and an Iranian general were killed in the airstrike. Hezbollah took its revenge 11 days later by firing anti-tank missiles at a Givati patrol making its way from Mount Dov to the Galilee panhandle.

IDF soldiers on the scene after a bomb exploded close to troops near the Lebanese border (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

Two IDF fighters were killed then, but Israel chose restraint in order to avoid further escalation. It might be that someone in the defense establishment thought in hindsight that this had been a mistake. So this time the heads of state and the IDF announced in advance and in a way that leaves no room for doubt that if Hezbollah launched a revenge attack, the Israeli retaliation would be severe and destructive.

The message was fully understood not just by Hezbollah, but likely also by Tehran and by the heads of large communities in Lebanon. This led to Hezbollah being pressured by Iran, Russia (via the Syrian regime) and inside Lebanon not to act or to settle for a symbolic retaliation.

Nasrallah probably responded to the pressure with more than relief. It is likely that he also did not want to get involved with Israel over Samir Kuntar. He therefore probably decided to instruct his people to carry out a less serious activity as far as Hezbollah's terror attacks go: a minefield on the slopes of Mount Dov.

On this point it is also important to understand that the IDF and Hezbollah work opposite one another according to a set of rules that have been consolidated since the Second Lebanon War. It explains, among other things, why Hezbollah has preferred over the last few years to operate in the Mount Dov area (Jabal Ru'us) on the western ridge of the Hermon mountain.

This area is known to the Lebanese - and especially to Hezbollah - as the Shebaa Farms and is, they claim, sovereign Lebanese territory. This is despite Mount Dov having been under Syrian rule until Israel gained control over the area in the Six Day War. But the Lebanese claim it is their territory, going by old French Mandate maps.

Hezbollah's perception is thus that an attack against the IDF in the Mount Dov area is not thought of as breach of Israel's sovereignty but rather as a legitimate action in a kind of "playground" that actually belongs to Lebanon. In Hezbollah's view, there is no legitimacy in Israel viewing activity in Har Dov as an attack on its sovereignty that would justify a serious military response.

An explosion seen in the distance from the Lebanese border

Hezbollah estimates there will not be losses

The type of attack  a minefield  is also no coincidence. It is reasonable to estimate that this method was chosen precisely because Hezbollah expects that an attack of this nature will not cause heavy damage or losses to the IDF, and therefore will not lead to escalation.

Indeed, Hezbollah knows full well that the IDF has learned over the years how to deal with explosives in a way that will not cause substantial losses among its soldiers.

They know that the army uses heavy-duty vehicles in suspicious locations so that even a large explosion next to them would not cause significant damage or losses.

And indeed, this is exactly what happened on Monday. The IDF incurred no losses; Hezbollah can claim, as it is quick to do, that it avenged Kuntar's death; the IDF unleashed its artillery causing damage and injuries in several south Lebanon villages  and everyone can be satisfied that an escalation was prevented without denting anyone's prestige, and that each side has now been deterred.

This may be surreal but such a volatile reality dictates that these strange rules be observed in the "playgrounds" on our borders. Nonetheless, as mentioned, it is important to remain alert. It is quite possible that Hezbollah is preparing further surprises for us in the area, and we cannot be caught unprepared.
Police on Tuesday arrested the father of Nashat Melhem, the suspected terrorist behind the terror attack on a Tel Aviv pub on Friday that claimed the lives of two people and wounded several more. He is also suspected of killing a taxi driver during his escape from the scene of the shooting.

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According to the Melhem family's attorney, Nechumi Feinblatt, Mohammed tried to contact his son on the day of the attack.

"They spoke that day, it's not clear if it was before or after the attack," Feinblatt told Ynet.

Ahmed and Nashat Melhem (Photo: Hassan Shaalan)

Five others were arrested along with Mohammed Melhem, including two cousins and a friend, on suspicion of acting as an accessory to murder, while his mother was detained for questioning.

A relative of Melhem said following the father's arrest that "the arrest will not do anything. Nashat will not care about seeing any of his relatives under arrest... He is an insane person. I ask the Shin Bet and police to leave the family alone and search for Nashat. We are also urging him to turn himself in."

It was Melhem's father who first contacted police after seeing his son's photo on television. "It's important to me now that they reach my son and arrest him, because he's still armed, and just like he murdered two people he could murder more," he said on Saturday.

A friend of the father, G., identified the weapon Nashat used in the attack when he saw it in the news. "I saw the magazine and remembered that there was one person I know that has a weapon like this to this very day, and that's Mohammed Melhem," G. said of the rare weapon.

"I called him, asked him where was his weapon. He told me 'at home in the safe.' I told him to see if it's still there. He was not at home at that point so he told me he was going there to check. After half an hour he called me back and said, 'the weapon is not here.' I told him 'go to the police right away, report to them about the weapon.'"

The magazine of the weapon used by Nashat Melhem in the attack (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

"Mohammed called his son after he learned his weapon was taken from him, and he tried to find out if there really was suspicion that one of the family members took the weapon," the lawyer, Feinblatt, said.

Despite that, Feinblatt insists Mohammed was not involved in the attack itself. "The Shin Bet knows about (the call). I can say for sure that the father did not help his son escape. He's very much worried about his standing. He was a police volunteer, and has been working in security for 30 years," Feinblatt told Channel 10.

Mohammed Melhem in court (Photo: Hassan Shaalan)

As part of the investigation, two youths from East Jerusalem have also been arrested - one a resident of Shuafat and the other living in the Old City. Police is investigating whether the two had been in contact with Melhem prior to the attack.

The Haifa Magistrate's Court extended Mohammed Melhem's remand by only two days, after police asked to extend the remand by 12 days. The remand of Nashat's uncle and two other relatives has also been extended.

Earlier, a judge ordered the release of Nashat's brother Jodat, who was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of being an accessory to murder. Police, which asked to extend Jodat's remand by six days, is considering appealing the decision.





Jodat Melhem, the suspect's brother, arrested on suspicion of helping Nashat

A family friend said that "We are certain none of the relatives who were arrested have anything to do with the murder. I hope the police find every person who was involved. Criminals like that should not stay alive, including Nashat. They are a danger to the public."

He called on Nashat Melhem to turn himself in. "You're still running crazy. Stop with these actions that have destroyed us. Shame on you. Reveal your hiding place. Eventually they will arrest you. If not today, then in the coming days."

Meanwhile, new details from the investigation emerged, with two police intelligence assessments suggesting that Melhem may have escaped to northern Israel. Another assessment raised the possibility that he managed to reach the West Bank.

As time goes by  the search for the killer is now on its fifth day  the belief is growing among police that the suspect received help after escaping his crime scenes, which is why it decided to focus its investigation on the Melhem family.

Despite these assessments, the Tel Aviv Police has continued to operate at high alert levels as the hunt goes on for the loose gunman.

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh visited the family of Alon Bakal, one of the two people murdered at the Tel Aviv pub, on Tuesday morning. Alsheikh addressed the search for the first time, stressing the importance of keeping investigation details confidential.

He hinted that some progress had been made, saying that residents of the Tel Aviv metro area could significantly "reduce tensions."

Some public criticism had been leveled at police and security officials, as no senior official publicly discussed the hunt for Melhem during the first few days of the search.
The IDF began over the last two weeks marking identity cards of Palestinians who live next to the Jewish part of Hebron with a sticker bearing an additional number, the idea being that the card's owner can be quickly identified as a local resident when being checked by soldiers.

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The procedure has raised anger among Palestinian residents, who argue that Israel is the last place in the world that should give people numbers.

ID cad with number sticker

The procedure stemmed from a preponderance of knife attacks on Israelis in that part of Hebron. A month ago, the IDF decided to close the area to Palestinians, excepting residents, in order to reduce friction between Palestinians and Israelis as much as possible.

Residents initially had their ID numbers checked, but the process was length. This led to the decision to mark the cards with numbers to speed up the process. The numbers were issued to about 600 residents who live in the area.

"One resident who lives on Shuhada Street told the officer at the checkpoint, 'Are you crazy? Don't you remember history?'" local resident Issa Aamar told Ynet. "We told the officers that we are people, not numbers. We have no problem with a security check, but not in this manner."

Shuhada Street residents are planning a protest this weekend in which they will wear large stickers bearing their assigned numbers on their chests.

The IDF spokesperson said that given the security situation, the neighborhood of Tel Rumeida was defined as a closed military area. "Numbering the ID cards is a local inititiatve meant to ease and speed up the inspection procedure for Palestinians," said the spokesperson. "Upon learning of the event, commanders decided to immediately remve the stickers, and alternative solutions will be examined in the coming days to streamline the checking process."
If you thought the Jewish calendar was an accurate model, think again. While it is filled with wisdom and connects the lunar and solar calendars, it does include some bugs. What kind of bugs? The kind which will make Passover - the festival of spring - take place in the summer in several hundred years.

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"Passover is just one example," says Dr. Eran Raviv of Bar-Ilan University. "All the holidays will move. And because the holidays need to maintain both an agricultural system and the system of Hebrew months - the moment the entire holiday system moves compared to the solar year, there is a problem which must be considered, and it is keeping us busy theoretically."

In Pictures Jewish calendars throughout the ages Michal Margalit Digging through the archive of Israel's National Library reveals an amazing collection of Jewish calendars spanning over hundreds years and coming from places as diverse as Jamaica. IN PICTURES: Jewish calendars throughout the ages

In any event, there is a problem, which has led to the introduction of a special seminary at the university, bringing together researchers from different fields to discuss the future of the Hebrew calendar.

So when will Jews celebrate Seder night a few hundred years from now? (Photo: Shutterstock)

"Maimonides, in Hilchot Kiddush Hachodesh (the laws of the sanctification of the new moon)" tells us that the sons of Issachar were 'full of wisdom about the seasons,' but the books they wrote have been lost," Dr. Raviv tells Ynet and Orot TV. "And since then, Maimonides writes, Greek philosophers have written many books about them. In this sense, we are basically entering a slot which aims to reenact those books, whose center of knowledge belonged to the Jewish people. We are rebuilding it."

'Compared to all other calendars, ours is the best'

Prof. Merzbach explains that "there are many calendars in the world. There are lunar calendars which only consider the moon, like the Muslim calendar. There are solar calendars, which only consider the Earth's motion around the sun, like the civil Gregorian calendar. Our Jewish Calendar is very special - a lunar-solar calendar, which considers both the moon's motion around the Earth, and the Earth's motion around the sun.

"There are irregularities in the Jewish calendar, and these irregularities are occasionally balanced by adding a month. That's what we call a leap year. A month is added seven times in a 19-year cycle, but compared to all other calendars, our calendar is the best."

The Hebrew calendar, according to Prof. Merzbach, has existed for some 1,600 years. "In any event, there was a period when there was a dispute between the Land of Israel scholars and the Babylon scholars. It was about 1,200 years ago. The Jews marked Yom Kippur, Passover and Sukkot two days apart, until Rabbi Sa'adia Gaon arranged the calendar as we know it today."
Foreign Ministry officials believe that there is no longer any chance that Brazil will approve the appointment of settler leader Dani Dayan as Israel's ambassador, following the South American country's strenuous objections

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These officials advised the political leadership to renounce the former head of the Yesha Council's appointment as envoy to Brazil, and appoint him to a diplomatic post in a different country.

When a country does not want to approve the appointment of an ambassador, it is customary to transmit hushed messages conveying that it would be better to retract the candidate's appointment so as not to encounter rejection. But in this case Brazil actively rejected it.

Former Yesha Council head Danny Dayan (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

The Foreign Ministry reached its conclusion after analyzing the messages coming from Brazil in recent days, which suggested the Brazilians had decided finally not to approve Dayan's appointment. Nevertheless, the heads of the Foreign Ministry have not cried uncle and are giving it one last chance.

Next week Brazil's ambassador to Israel will reportedly be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a discussion, during which the gravity with which Israel views the non-approval of Dayan's appointment will be made clear to him. A senior Foreign Ministry official said that only after all options have been exhausted, including initiating a phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, will they "calculate a new move".

One of the options being considered is to nominate Dayan as ambassador to another country and to send a new ambassador to Brazil. Dayan's name has already been mentioned as a possible candidate for the position of Israel's Consul General in New York or Los Angeles.

Ironically, although he will most likely not be appointed for the job, on Monday Dayan took part in a representatives' course, in which ambassadors and consuls participate in prior to leaving on a diplomatic mission.
While we were busy and occupied with the knifing terror and the search for the Dizengoff Street terrorist, another conflict point in one of the most explosive parts of the world - the Persian Gulf - has been escalating.

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The most senior Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia was executed last week, despite warnings from Iran's leaders about the act's ramifications. And indeed, the Iranian response was quick to follow: The Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad were torched and ransacked, and as a result, the ties between the two countries were severed

Clash of the Titans Saudi Arabia recruits Sunni allies in row with Iran Reuters Riyadh halts flights and commercial relations with Tehran, while Bahrain and Sudan cut ties and the UAE downgrade relations with the Islamic Republic Saudi Arabia recruits Sunni allies in row with Iran

The countries experienced quite a few states of heightened tension in the past 37 years, including the Saudi support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, the death of hundreds of Shiite Iranian pilgrims during the Hajj in 1987, and the terror attack in Khobar in 1996.

Oil may also be playing a part in Saudi Arabia's considerations (Photo: AFP)

There is no doubt that the tensions increased even more following the Arab Spring, and that was reflected in the Saudi invasion of Bahrain in 2011 in order to silence the Shiite revolt there and in the new round in the historic Shiite-Sunni conflict, mainly in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Why has the Saudi leadership decided to take action which would be like adding fuel to the fire at this time? The answer may be hidden in the fact that according to the Saudi perception, aggravating the conflict could serve its interests. Iran, which until its agreement with the West in July 2015 was isolated and subject to tough sanctions, is about to see them lifted and about to return to the family of nations. It is taking part in the talks for solving the crisis in Syria, some ministers from Western countries have already visited Tehran, and there are talks about Iran joining the World Trade Organization. In addition, Iran is perceived by the Western world as one of the main powers capable of stopping the Islamic State.

The possibility that Iran will gain a better regional and international standing than in the past annoys the Saudis. For this reason, aggravating the battle against Tehran could cause the Iranians to take actions which will lead to renewed sanctions.

The oil may also be playing a part in Saudi Arabia's considerations. While its expenses are growing (the costs of the war in Yemen, the support for Sunni groups in the Shiite-Sunni battle, the purchase of advanced weapons, aid and development projects, the growing unemployment among young Saudis), the price of oil - which most of Saudi Arabia's income is based on - is at a constant decline. All this has led to a significant deficit and depleted Saudi Arabia's foreign-exchange reserves, and there is a concern that they will be eliminated within five years. Aggravating the conflict may send the oil prices up again, which will give the Saudi regime some breathing space.

What direction can the current round of tension develop in? Neither country can afford to enter a direct conflict. Therefore, the aid provided by each of them to its regional allies and militias is expected to continue and maybe even increase. Its also reasonable to assume that the attempts to end the fighting in Syria and Yemen, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are on both sides of the divide, will not be sped up.

Another question is what will the rest of the Arab states in the Persian Gulf do. Bahrain has already taken sides and announced that it is cutting off its ties with Iran. Oman will prefer to remain neutral and try to maintain its status as mediator. Of the three remaining countries, the United Arab Emirates will likely support Saudi Arabia eventually, Qatar will try to maintain its relations with both sides, and Kuwait will likely try to play for time as well before making a decision.

Dr. Soli Shahvar is the director of the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf Studies at Haifa University.
An elegant brown wooden pole, named "The Mossad Rod," is respectfully stored in a closed room in the Mossad headquarters north of Tel Aviv. Displayed on one of its ends is the secret organization's symbol and its famous slogan, borrowed from a verse in the Book of Proverbs (11:14): "Where no wise guidance is, the people falleth; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety.." The bottom of the pole is encircled by 10 golden rings, each of them bearing the name of one of the Mossad chief who ended their terms.

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On Wednesday morning, the "Mossad Rod" will receive a new ring, its 11th one, and the name of the organization director ending his term that day, Tamir Pardo, will be imprinted on it.

No. 1 Spy New Mossad chief: Netanyahu's real foreign minister Ron Ben-Yishai Analysis: The prime minister's decision to appoint his national security advisor, Yossi Cohen, as the secret service's new director reflects his clear preference for secret relations with countries that have no official diplomatic ties with Israel and with foreign intelligence communities. New Mossad chief: Netanyahu's real foreign minister

Yossi Cohen , who will replace Pardo that day and become the 12th Mossad director (the seventh to have grown within the organization) will be completely different, if only because of the major personality and outlook differences between them, alongside the regional environment in which the Mossad is required to operate and is undergoing dramatic and swift changes - the Arab Spring, the Iranian nuclear project challenge and the influence of the Islamic State.

Cohen and Netanyahu. A master in interpersonal relations, he won the prime minister's trust, but did get into arguments with other important players such as senior Shin Bet and IDF officials and some politicians (Photo: AFP)

When Cohen takes office, he will make history: The first Mossad chief to have grown and operated in the organization throughout almost all his years of activity, commanding Junction (Tzomet in Hebrew), the organization's biggest department which is responsible for recruiting and operating agents. Traditionally, most of the Mossad directors' bureau chiefs came from that department, but the head of the organization had never been appointed from there.

Cohen will be making further history due to the fact that for the first time, a head of the National Security Council is being promoted to a higher position and is not ending his career in that position.

* * *

The Mossad which Yossi Cohen is taking charge of Wednesday is a large organization, one of the biggest intelligence organizations in the Western world, which deals with a diverse and difficult target list. According to the Mossad charter, the organization's goals are: "Secretly collecting information (strategic, diplomatic and operative) outside the State's borders; conducting special operations beyond the State of Israel's borders; stopping hostile countries from developing unconventional weapons and arming themselves with them; thwarting terrorist activities against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad; bringing Jews from countries which are preventing them from immigrating and creating a defense framework for the Jews in those countries."

The definition of these goals clarifies just how different the Mossad is from other intelligence organizations: It is not only required to provide intelligence, but also to carry out special operations; it is responsible for both intelligence relations and diplomatic relations with countries which do not have open ties with Israel; it is required to protect not only the citizens of the State of Israel, but sees itself as the defender of all Jews in the world, and as an organization required to help smuggle Jews from hostile countries.

There has never been another intelligence service in the history of mankind which has been forced to engage in so many missions, which are so different from each other.

Cohen is arriving at this position after two prominent and strong-minded Mossad chiefs, who shaped the organization according to their image and outlook. In 2002, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided that he was looking for someone with "a knife between his teeth" for the organization's leadership, and decided to give the job to his subordinate and associate from the IDF, Meir Dagan.

After a period which was considered drowsy under Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, Dagan sent the entire organization into a state of operational madness. He narrowed down and emphasized the organization's list of targets, opened the organization to cooperation with moderate countries in the Middle East, which see the situation in the region as Israel sees it, and mainly pushed for more and more operations. The Mossad went back to being an important player vis-a-vis other intelligence organizations in Israel and vis-a-vis colleagues in the United States and Europe.

Meir Dagan. His passion for operations carried a price (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Dagan, a man with particularly sharp senses, realized that the war is against enemies, but it also over consciousness. The thunderous operations attributed to the Mossad made his workers proud and perpetuated once again the myth about the most mysterious, efficient and lethal organization in the world. After every headline about a mysterious blast or assassination which no one knew who was behind but assumed it was the Mossad, the organization's website nearly collapsed with so many requests flowing in from candidates.

During that period in Dagan's term, Yossi Cohen made a name for himself as a meteor in the skies of the Mossad. Then, about 10 years ago, we wrote that he would make a possible candidate to serve as head of the organization one day.

As it is forbidden to identify active Mossad personnel by name under Israeli law, we gave the senior organization officials nicknames. We called Cohen "the model" due to his handsome appearance and meticulous clothing (he was the only one who had the courage to wear pink shirts in the ultra conservative Mossad working environment, and with cufflinks, no less). This nickname, which was later criticized as superficial and objectifying, was well received and many in the Mossad and the intelligence community began referring to Cohen that way.

Cohen himself, upon joining the Mossad in the early 1980s, chose the operational nickname "Callan," after the tough, brilliant, and sarcastic hero of a spy series from the 1970s , who does not hesitate to use the most aggressive methods, including torture and assassinations, in order to protect the United Kingdom's citizens. It wouldnt be a wild guess that Cohen saw himself as very similar to that "Callan."

Yossi Cohen was raised in a religious family in Jerusalem and studied in a yeshiva. To this very day he (partially) and his family (fully) observe a religious lifestyle and he is very knowledgeable about the Mishnah and debates of Jewish wisdom.

He completed a case officers' course, one of the organization's three most important courses in which cadets learn how to recruit and run agents. Cohen stood out in the course thanks to his skills and was considered an outstanding student. One of the course instructors was legendary agent case officer, Yehuda Gil, who later nearly got Israel involved in a war in Syria when he brought false information from a "top agent" in the heart of the Syrian General Staff, which did not really exist, about a Syrian preemptive strike.

It is because of people like Gil and the tremendous abilities of case officers to manipulate that these people and this profession have always been treated in the Mossad with a certain amount of suspicion, which some sources see as the reason for non-appointments for the position of Mossad chief to this very day.

Cohen served as an agent recruiter and handler in Paris, and later as the head of the Mossad branch in a different European country. He was perceived as a rising star and as always being slightly different.

He did not only perform a job which appears partially similar to James Bond's job, but also looked, acted and spoke with Bond's smoothness. Cohen has a lot of charisma, plenty of personal charm, an ability to sweep people away and an ability to understand how they can be operated and manipulated. But he is also considered quite a difficult colleague and boss, and quite a few of the people who have worked with him suffered from his sarcastic tongue. He is not ashamed of the fact that he is a tough and demanding commander.

In 2000, he decided to take an unpaid leave from the organization in favor of private business and in order to dedicate more time to his children, including Yonatan, who has cerebral palsy (but still enlisted with the IDF and reached an officer's rank in an intelligence unit). In 2002, Cohen rejoined the Mossad in a new position, head of Junction's Special Operations Center, in which he achieved greatness.

As part of the center, a new and fascinating method was developed to adapt the ancient profession of agent operation to the modern era. Thanks to the combat doctrine which Cohen co-founded and led, the Mossad succeeded in infiltrating and hitting its main targets. Junction won five consecutive Israel Defense Prizes, the highest decoration awarded in this area, thanks to this method, which is so secret we cant even mention its name. One of the prizes was personally given to Cohen for a key operation he initiated and commanded.

Meir Dagan was fond of Cohen (although the two argued often) and promoted him again and again. In 2006, Dagan appointed Cohen as head of the Junction Department and put him in charge of large parts of the Mossad's main target in the past 15 years: Infiltrating and harming Iran's nuclear program.

Junction's activity was incorporated into countless operations that the Mossad had to execute, based on information collected by, among others, the agents recruited by Cohen and his people. During this period, the Mossad succeeded in locating deliveries of equipment and raw material from around the world for the Iranian nuclear program. Some of these shipments were sabotaged. Some were seized in the countries they departed from after the Mossad, in cooperation with the American intelligence, warned of their existence.

Anonymous entities succeeded in planting lethal viruses in the nuclear project's computers and were able to locate six of the 15 senior scientists of the "weapon group," the military part of the nuclear program, and assassinate them. Israel never admitted its connection to any of this. But if the Mossad was indeed behind all of these operations , as the Iranians believe, Yossi Cohen played an important part in them.

* * *

Dagan's passion for operations carried a price. He often got into credit and authority quarrels with senior AMAN (IDF Military Intelligence Crops) and Shin Bet (Israeli General Security Agency) officials. The significant increase in the organization's manpower and activity generated a resonating failure: The Mossad's screening and control system completely missed the tragic Ben Zygier affair - the Mossad worker who got involved in terrible acts, was exposed, arrested and committed suicide in prison after realizing that his wife was about to leave him and that he would likely receive a two-digit-year prison term.

The significant increase in the volume of operations led to an exposure of the assassins and the methods of action in the assassination of Hamas activist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010. And if some press reports are true, different operational mistakes led to the exposure of joint Israeli-US Operation Olympic Games - now the Iranians know that sophisticated viruses hit their nuclear facilities.

Pardo inherited the fallout of all this, alongside Dagan's extremely strained relationship with Netanyahu. After the Dubai affair, the prime minister grew very hesitant in his approval of such complicated and risky operations. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon did say recently (in a very subtle hint in an interview to Holger Stark and myself in Der Spiegel ) that "I am not responsible for the life expectancy of Iranian nuclear scientists," but there is no doubt that since the Dubai operation the public has been hearing much less about assassinations, sabotages and mysterious accidents in the Iranian nuclear program.

Netanyahu believed that the Mossad's activity may have well been utilized to the fullest and that he should consider a massive (and open) aerial strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Dagan thought otherwise and got into a serious conflict with Netanyahu. On his last day in office on January 6, 2011, in a very unusual move, he summoned a group of journalists to the Mossad headquarters and presented us with his criticism against the prime minister in detail. In that same conversation, Dagan estimated that "Mubarak's regime in Egypt is more stable than over" and that he would be succeeded by his son Gamal.

Dagan wasnt the only one who failed to predict Mubarak's fall about a month later. The entire world and its intelligence services completely missed the Arab Spring, which became one of the key challenges that Dagan's successor, Tamir Pardo, had to deal with. The series of revolutions in the Middle East, which many right-wing elements and military personnel in Israel very quickly termed as a "Jihadist Winter," reshuffled the region and turned it into a place where it is more unclear than ever who are your friends and who are your enemies.

Tamir Pardo. Believes secrecy is not just an ideology but also a strategy (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Pardo changed the organization's perception. He introduced clear measures for examining Israel's ability and the Mossad's success in thwarting the Iranian nuclear project. According to his perception, there is no point in counting how many nuclear scientists have ceased to live, but how far Iran actually is from the bomb.

Secrecy, as far as Pardo is concerned, is not just an ideology but also a strategy. According to his perception, an operation exposed in the media - be it the most successful operation - is in fact a failure. A reported incident attributed to the Mossad, Pardo believes, will lead to an investigation and to the exposure of ways of action and operational methods. It's true that buzz-creating headlines in the press about spine-tingling operations attributed to the Mossad produce important deterrence as well. But as far as Pardo is concerned, the enemy can be targeted - and deterred - through other, less thunderous means.

In a world which has become accustomed to reality shows, this is not a popular approach. It is not so good for newspaper headlines. On the other hand, the fact that in the past five years we have heard about less "mysterious explosions" and operations in the heart of the target countries, which are attributed to the State of Israel, does not mean that there have necessarily been less operations. A lot has happened in the past five years, and only very little has been published. Sometimes, the calm on the outside covers up a lot of secret action.

During Pardo's term, the Mossad succeeded in thwarting dozens of attempted terror attacks in joint operations of the Iranian intelligence and Hezbollah in a bid to avenge the death of Imad Mughniyeh by targeting Israelis and Jews outside the State of Israel and the Middle East.

Pardo devoted a special effort to the prevention of the smuggling of weapons and equipment to Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. The Israeli media are forbidden to report such issues, but press reports outside Israel attribute dozens of attacks on these supply routes in Sudan, Libya, Syria and Lebanon to the Israel Air Force. If the reports are true, it was Pardo's Mossad which provided the information.

The Mossad was able to provide Netanyahu with a lot of information on the secret talks conducted by the United States with Iranian representatives behind Israel's back in Muscat, Oman, and later with information from the talks between Iran and the world powers, information which alarmed Netanyahu when he discovered that the West had withdrawn during the talks from many of the red lines he had set.

The changes in the Arab world forced the Mossad to adapt itself at a record pace. For example, to adjust to the security relations with the Mohamed Morsi regime in Egypt, and later to the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regime, and to Turkey's abandonment of the intelligence relations with Israel, in favor of developing security relations with Greece and other countries.

Pardo also executed a series of important structural changes. He established three administrations - technology, operations and intelligence - which coordinate all the activity on these issues. While in the past the special operations division, Caesarea, operated as a Mossad within the Mossad, completely isolated and separated, it is now subject to the operations administration and incorporated into the operations of other departments. Pardo also invested a lot in the technological areas, while at the same time greatly increasing the number of case officers in the organization - evidence of the importance he ascribes, even in today's cyber era, to the classic field of human intelligence.

Pardo also improved the relationships with other security bodies in Israel. His relations with IDF Chiefs of Staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot and Air Force Commanders Ido Nehushtan and Amir Eshel were particularly close. Pardo's relationship with the Shin Bet was not as close but still polite and efficient, as was his relationship with the police, which the Mossad provided with guidance and help, particularly in the cyber sphere.

Pardo was unable to avoid one phenomenon which characterized Dagan's last days in office: A strained relationship with Netanyahu, particularly in terms of how to handle Iran and its agreement with the West. During many discussions, Pardo was among the only ones, if not the only one, who dared to speak honestly to the prime minister, even when his comments contradicted his doctrine.

Upon Pardo's appointment as Mossad chief, Netanyahu appointed Cohen as his deputy. The relations between Cohen and Pardo in the two and a half years in which they served as Mossad chief and his deputy were not great.

According to the Mossad's internal covenant, and in order to ensure continuous leadership in case the Mossad chief travels abroad, has lost contact or is unable to continue functioning, the deputy must be exposed to the all the information in the Mossad chief's hands. Cohen has been heard claiming that Pardo is excluding him or at least avoiding giving him essential roles and authorities. Pardo's associates argued that the Mossad chief felt Cohen was trying to act behind his back in order to ensure that he would be the one to replace the Mossad chief in due course.

In August 2013, when Cohen ended his term as deputy Mossad chief, Netanyahu announced his appointment as national security advisor, saying that "Cohen's special skills make him highly worthy of the position."

Yossi Cohen took a huge and triple gamble when he accepted Netanyahu's offer. First of all, because the position of national security advisor has almost always been the last in a person's career, and in any event, it was not seen as a step to a higher position in the defense establishment.

Secondly, because Cohen aimed to use the position in order to close gaps in areas which he had not dealt with before in the Mossad - foreign relations, analysis and strategy - but the National Security Council's unclear status did not guarantee that he would succeed in closing those gaps.

Thirdly and most importantly, the person in that position has to work very closely with the prime minister. Such closeness to the boss could yield results in two opposite directions. The numerous hours he spent with Netanyahu, who is known as quite a difficult boss, to say the least, could have also developed differently.

Only few people have managed to survive and maintain good relations with Netanyahu for such a long period of time. But Cohen, who is a master in interpersonal relations, won Netanyahu's trust.

On the other hand, Cohen managed to get into arguments with other important players such as senior Shin Bet and IDF officials and some politicians. At least partially, Cohen is not to blame. Netanyahu simply paints everyone in his own colors, and the ones who were incapable of criticizing Netanyahu saw Cohen as a convenient punching bag.

Cohen's gamble paid off, and about a month ago Netanyahu announced that he had he found Yossi Cohen to be "the most suitable person with leadership skills and professional understanding" to lead the Mossad in the next five years.

Now he must prove that it was the right decision. Cohen will have to continue the same process he dealt with in the Junction Department - adjusting to the time and place, but not just as a middle-ranking commander in one division, but as head of the entire organization.

The Mossad's main challenge remains Iran. It's very possible that in the coming years, perhaps even earlier, Israel will have to make a tough decision on this matter. Now, after the agreement between Tehran and the West, Israel has been left alone, Netanyahu has been left alone, to decide whether - given established information, if and when it arrives, that Iran has re launched the military angles of its nuclear project - to order an attack on the atom facilities or to accept Iran's existence as a radical Shiite nuclear power. What will Cohen advise him in this deliberation?

Iran has been at the top of the Mossad's assignment list for 15 years now, but Cohen's challenge is relatively more complicated than the challenges faced by Dagan and Pardo. First of all, because the Iranian intelligence is much more aware of what the Mossad is capable of doing - from plating lethal viruses in computers operating the centrifuges to assassinating nuclear scientists.

Secondly, because the current prime minister approves much fewer dangerous operations compared what he approved until the Dubai operation and definitely compared to what his predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, approved.

Thirdly, because the United States, which helped Israel significantly in the past decade, is now sanctifying a diplomatic dialogue with Iran and has not only almost completely halted the active intelligence cooperation (as opposed to exchange of information) with Israel on the Iranian issue, but is also indicating that it is unhappy with some operations conducted by Israel on its own.

Dealing with the Mossad's other preferred target - the regional terror linked to Iran and Syria (Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad) includes new challenges as well. For example, Hezbollah's claims that it exposed a key agent for Israel in its foreign operations Unit 910, and that Israel succeeded in killing Imad Mughniyeh and foiling the attempts to avenge his death thanks to information received from that man. Beyond the credit that should be given to the Mossad for managing to recruit the man in the first place, if the reports are true, then this is a significant loss and perhaps partial blindness towards the organization.

Hamas, on its part, has moved its headquarters to places where the Mossad would find it difficult to carry out aggressive activity, such as Turkey, which will definitely not accept assassinations of Hamas leaders on its territory (the Turks suspect that Israel's flames were the ones which burned a hole in the interior of one of the protest vessels they had planned to send following the Mavi Marmara affair).

Another Mossad mission, a very difficult one, is protecting Israeli representatives and Jewish facilities around the world. Such targets have been attacked by both Hezbollah and the Islamic State. It seems like a serious threat, but "it will be much more difficult and complicated for the Mossad to operate in the West nowadays," says a former senior Mossad official. "We are not just talking about the risk coming from a few PLO factions, like in the 1970s, but about numerous global jihad organizations and cells, which are weakly linked, if at all, and thousands of ISIS volunteers who are about to return from the Middle East.

"Besides, this time, unlike in the 1970s, Europe's intelligence services are also trying - doing a better or not as good job - to operate on the exact same targets, and they really wouldnt want the Mossad to get in their way.

"And one more thing. In the current political climate and the negative attitude towards Israel, assassination attacks which were forgiven at the time, even if they failed, would not be forgiven today."

If Cohen wishes to be considered as a partner for conversation with equal rights in today's intelligence community, he must provide added value from the Mossad, unique information about the Islamic State (Photo: AP)

ISIS is an international challenge. The Mossad is interested in being involved in the efforts to tackle it. More than a decade ago, Israel made a certain contribution to the war on al-Qaeda, the West's main rival at the time. For example, it was thanks to an Israeli intelligence source that the Americans knew about the decision made by Osama bin Laden and his deputy and successor upon his death, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to pack up and withdraw from their activity in the West.

If Yossi Cohen wishes to be considered as a partner for conversation with equal rights in today's intelligence community, he must provide added value from the Mossad, unique information about the Islamic State organization.

The Mossad can provide the West, and mainly the United States, with further value by monitoring the manner and abilities of the old-new guest in the region - the Russian army and Putin's intelligence community, which are strengthening their foothold in Syria. The US has few intelligence abilities in this area, particularly in the human field. If the Mossad is able to close at least some of the gaps, the CIA will be grateful.

Another field is the world of cyber which is taking the lead from all worlds of intelligence. The Mossad's ability to fight the fourth dimension has been greatly improved thanks to Cohen's serious competitor for the position of Mossad chief, N., who served as head of the Mossad's technological division for a long and important period of time and left the position recently. During that period, the division tripled its manpower and became involved in countless operations for the first time in its history.

It was a major leap forward, but the development of the cyber world requires the Mossad chief to vigorously invest more and more in this field, where the attackers have the upper hand these days.

Cohen said recently in a lecture that Israel doesnt have a "conventional" enemy (in other words, a regular army with tanks, planes and ground forces) which poses a serious threat and that such a war is not expected soon. That's true, but there is also a capable enemy in the world of cyber, and the Iranians - as Military Intelligence Chief Herzl Halevi warned recently - are closing the qualitative gap with Israel in this area. The Mossad's job is to discover their plans and abilities in this field.

The relations between the prime minister, who is in charge of the Mossad, and the organization's director are critical. Without trust, the Mossad will find it difficult to function. But excessive closeness is not a good thing either. Prime Minister Golda Meir had too much faith in the heads of the intelligence services and the IDF and got the Yom Kippur War - the surprise attack by Arab states in October 1973. Prime Minister Menachem Begin trusted the IDF and Mossad's promises that the Christians in Lebanon would help Israel "get rid" of the PLO members and ordered the tragic invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which got Israel entangled in 18 years of occupation.

Excessive closeness can be harmful not only at times of war but also in missing the opportunity for peace. Meir Amit, the third Mossad director (1963-1968), determined, as he told me once, that "the Mossad must also be the one to advance peace, rather than just engage in preparations for war and victory." He launched a battle against Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, demanding that he be allowed to travel to Egypt and meet with the minister of defense, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, after a secret project which led to the establishment of secret ties with him, but failed. The Six-Day War broke out a year later.

There is a difference, an important difference, between all the roles Cohen has filled until now and his next role at the top of the pyramid. He has nowhere to advance from here. It's very difficult, even for a prime minister, to oust a Mossad or Shin Bet chief once they have begun their job. The Mossad chief must report to his supervisor, the prime minister, but he must also report to his thousands of subordinates, the ones he meets every day when he arrives at the Mossad chief's bureau.

The Mossad people are known to be critical and sarcastic, as Cohen himself, and they wont spare him their criticism if he becomes a person who only fulfills the desires of the prime minister, who is leading a policy which many in the Mossad perceive as right-wing and wrong, if not more than that.

Among quite a few of the directors of Israel's intelligence arms throughout the years, assuming the position and the confidence which came along with it later on led to a significant change, to the development of an independent opinion and stance which they insisted on, even vis-a-vis a strong-minded prime minister or defense minister with little patience for disagreements.

Will Cohen establish an independent and assertive opinion too? Will he also lead secret diplomatic moves? Only time will tell. In the Mossad's case, to be more accurate, time may tell - but only a small circle of people who are in on the secret.
Hezbollah-affiliated media in Lebanon published on Tuesday photos from the scene of the attack on IDF troops in the Mount Dov area the previous day.

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The photos show where a roadside bomb planted by the "Samir Kuntar Brigades" detonated, hitting an armored Israeli vehicle, as well as a nearby IDF post.

Ever since Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack - as revenge, or part of it, over the assassination of Samir Kuntar in Syria two and a half weeks ago - the organization has been trying to glorify it as much as possible both in its scale and in its results.

Scene of the attack in the Mount Dov area

The IDF's initial investigation found that the reason the attack ended without casualties on the Israeli side was the fact that, due to the high tensions following Kuntar's killing, the patrolling force was accompanied by a D9 bulldozer, which took on most of the damage from the bomb.

Scene of the attack in the Mount Dov area

IDF forces are constantly reconnoitering the area to ensure Hezbollah militants can't take advantage of the fog that at times covers the slopes of the mountain range, as well as the densely wooded terrain, in order to come close to the border again.

The IDF will remain on high alert in the coming days and will continue its disruption and prevention activities along the border.

Unlike the anti-tank missile attack on the slopes of Mount Dov last year, which was done in retaliation for the assassination of Jihad Mughniyeh, this time the IDF allowed for a relatively quick return to routine, and civilian traffic on Route 99 between Kiryat Shmona and the Hermon Mountain remained open without unusual military presence.

Scene of the attack in the Mount Dov area

On Route 899, from the Galilee panhandle westward, several manned IDF roadblocks remained in some of the junctions closer to the border fence, but the military allows free movement to civilians in that area as well.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon visited the Israel-Lebanon border on Tuesday following the attack the previous day and said that "The IDF is on alert and prepared for any development, as we saw yesterday as well. The military is prepared to respond based on what is needed, as it had done yesterday, responding severely."
The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group says the militants have lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdad-based spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Tuesday that the extremists have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, saying they are now in a "defensive crouch."

The US-led coalition has been launching airstrikes since 2014 in support of Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters.

Last month, Iraqi forces backed by US-led airstrikes pushed IS out of the city center of Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Baghdad that fell to the extremists last May.

IS still holds much of northern and western Iraq, including the country's second-largest city Mosul, and large parts of Syria.
Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni has been arrested on suspicion of rape, corruption, and fraud. The Rishon LeZion Magistrate's Court extended his remand by eight days on Tuesday.

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Shimoni was arrested along with his brother Ofer, a municipality employee and two businessmen, one of whom allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of shekels on Shimoni's behalf to a woman who wanted to submit a police complaint about the mayor, alleging sex offenses.

The court also extended the remand of the mayor's brother Ofer by eight days.

Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni at court (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

"This is a serious case of sex offenses combined with bribery. The suspect took bribes from interested parties, and then used them to pay for the sex offenses he committed against women," a police representative said at court.

At least two women complained to the police about Shimoni, accusing him of committing sexual offenses against them.

According to the suspicions attributed to Shimoni, a woman who had worked with him while he was the head of the company Atarim wanted to submit a complaint against him regarding sexual abuse, but the two settled the matter between them.

The mayor allegedly reached a secret agreement with the woman and "bought" her silence for hundreds of thousands of shekels, Israel's Channel 10 reported.

Shimoni obtained a part of the sum, police suspect, from a contractor in Ashkelon in return for advancing construction projects. The contractor, well known in Ashkelon, constructed many buildings in the city, including public buildings. He is considered a close associate of Shimoni's.

The possibility that Shimoni could be arrested leaked to several members of the city council. Some of them cooperated with the police, providing investigators with documents. Employees at the city's engineering department also provided police with allegedly incriminating materials.

"We want the police to investigate and reach the right findings," said Shimoni's lawyer, Yaron London. "There's no reason to keep him under arrest when things happened a long time ago. This is a mayor with no criminal record and there's no concern he will obstruct the investigation."
A soldier accused of leaking classified information to right-wing Jewish activists was on Tuesday sentenced to 45 months in jail.

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Corporal Elad Sela, 26, is a resident of Bat Ayin settlement in Gush Etzion. He has been convicted for passing on confidential military intelligence to "price tag" activists, as well as assisting them to evade security services and continue their hostile activities against the Palestinian population.

Elad Sela, jailed for 45 months after leaking classified information to 'price tag' activists (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

He was also sentenced to probation and removed from his military rank.

Sela served in the Etzion Regional Brigade, and has also been convicted for conducting searches within the intelligence system that were beyond his security clearance.

According to the charges, the purpose of these searches was to find information relating to "price tag" activists from the Bat Ayin settlement, as well as intelligence on activities the security forces were planning against them.

Throughout a prolonged period that ended with his arrest, Sela distributed classified information to different people, including those whom the intelligence concerned.

At the time of Sela's indictment, prosector Major Thea Shalit claimed: "The soldier repeatedly took advantage of his access to confidential information, which he passed to those who were the subject of that information.

"He was assigned to a sensitive post, and the military trusted him to perform his duties with loyalty to the army and the state, and his actions abused that trust in the gravest possible way," Shalit continued.

Sela, who is married and a father of two, was arrested on March 11 by the Nationalist Crimes Unit of the Samaria and Judea District Police. His arrest occurred after security forces established that right-wing activists were notified in advance of plans to arrest them following a "price tag" attack on a mosque in the area.

Suspicions were raised that the leak was coming from within the regional brigade because the physical area in question is under the responsibility of the military, and the activities of security forces in that area is displayed on the regional brigade's computers.

Sela was recruited to the army as part of a special track for ultra-Orthodox soldiers. He was appointed as a non-commissioned intelligence officer on the Etzion Regional Brigade base close to his house because he was married with a baby son.

Sela suffers from medical problems, and during his arrest and Shin Bet interrogation he was admitted to Beilinson Hospital because he felt unwell.

Responding to the sentence, the IDF said: "The punishment reflects the rigorous approach of the military prosecutor.

"Leaks such as this must be eradicated from the army and those who breach the trust given to them by the army and who harm security interests must be punished severely."
An IDF officer was killed and another soldier lightly injured on Tuesday afternoon in a training accident at the Tze'elim base in southern Israel.

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The accident happened during a course for company and battalion commanders when a force from the 75th Battalion of the 7th Armored Corps Division fired a mortar shell in the wrong direction.

IDF soldier 1st-Lt. Yishai Rosales, killed in a training accident at Tze'elim base

The officer, 1st.-Lt. Yishai Rosales from the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda Battalion, was participating in another drill nearby when a piece of shrapnel from the mortar shell, which fell in an open area, hit him in his upper body, killing him.

Rosales was 23 years old, from Beit Meir, a religious moshav in central Israel.

Following the training accident, GOC Army Headquarters Maj.-Gen. Guy Tzur ordered a halt to training in the IDF until the initial investigation into the incident is completed.

The IDF is investigating the incident, trying to find out why the troops fired the mortar shell in the wrong direction. Among the possible reasons being examined are human error of the firing soldier or a wrong fire command being given.

In addition, Gen. Tzur has summoned a team of experts, led by the head of the Armored Corps Col. Ophir Levy, to investigate the incident. On Sunday the IDF had announced that three years had passed since a soldier had been killed in a training accident.

During the 1990s the term "Disaster at Tze'elim" became the most-used phrase to describe IDF training accidents. On July 16, 1990, five reserve soldiers were killed and 10 injured, including three seriously, when an artillery shell exploded during a training exercise.

The accident came to be known as "Tze'elim Disaster A." During the incident the Artillery Corps, which was assisting the Infantry Brigade, shot at a target which had already been fired on beforehand. During the second round of fire a number of troops were in place at the target location, and were hit.

On December 5, 1992, foreign media reported on a Sayeret Matkal training exercise in preparation for an attempt to assassinate then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. During the exercise a soldier shot a live missile at a "target," not knowing that the "dry" part of the drill was still in progress and that the fire was supposed to be a simulation only.

The shooting killed five soldiers and wounded another six, and the event came to be known as "Tze'elim Disaster B." The soldier who fired the missile was killed in a road accident in 2000.

In May 2015, a reservist was seriously wounded and another three lightly wounded when an armored personnel carrier overturned during a training exercise in Matzok Orvim in the Golan Heights.

In December 2013, two soldiers were seriously wounded in another training accident in the Golan Heights.

Rosales' funeral will take place on Wednesday night. He will be laid to rest at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
WASHINGTON - The US State Department said on Tuesday it was in discussions with other US agencies on imposing sanctions against Iran for an Oct. 10 ballistic missile tests by Tehran that violated UN Security Council resolutions.

"We are fully prepared to use sanctions with respect to this most recent ballistic missile test (and) are still working through some technical issues there," spokesman John Kirby said.

Responding to news reports that the State Department stopped sanctions from being imposed because Iran objected, Kirby said: "There continues to be a robust inter-agency discussion about moving forward on sanctions."

He added: "We don't take sanctions advice or guidance from Iran or any other country."
Israel's National Council for Building and Planning on Tuesday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's initiative to establish a new Druze town in the north of the country.

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The town will be established in the Lower Galilee Regional Council, next to Tiberias in the Naftaly Estate area, which is south of the Karnei Hittin National Park and north of the Golani industrial zone and Route 77.

Yarka, a Druze village in Israel's north (Phtoo: Hassan Shaalan)

According to Netanyahu, this will be the first new Druze town to be built by the state since 1948. Additionally, this will be the first time in 130 years that a new Druze community will be established in the territory of what is now Israel.

There are currently 18 Druze towns recognized by the state  four in the Golan and 14 in the Galilee.

The Steering Committee of the National Council for Building and Planning took the decision two months ago to establish the Druze town, with the support of the heads of the Druze authorities and Druze religious councils, as well as the backing of MK Ayoob Kara, who is the deputy minister for the development of the Druze and Circassian sectors.

The National Council's housing commission, headed up by Avigdor Yitzhaki, explained that the town will be established as a community settlement that will initially consist of 400 housing units. Over the long term, the town will be able to expand gradually.

The National Council also confirmed that 10 different possible locations for the new town had been considered, and that Naftaly Estate was considered the most suitable because of its location by Tiberias and its proximity to existing infrastructure and a network of national roads. Additionally, it was found that the building of the new town would not have any impact on the nearby Karnei Hittin National Park.

Most existing Druze towns were built on mountainsides, meaning that they suffer from planning restrictions due to their proximity to nature reserves. As a result, the new town will be established near urban infrastructure on ground that is suitable for development and close to areas where there are employment opportunities.

In a statement regarding the approved plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "For the first time since the founding of the state a new Druze town will be established. I view the building of this new town as a very important initiative that will bring progress to the Druze sector."
A cash reward for information that could lead to the capture of Nashat Melhem, the suspect in Friday's deadly shooting attack in Tel Aviv, was offered on Tuesday by Mazen Qaq, the head of the merchants' committee in Jerusalem's Old City.

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The sum offered stands at NIS 40,000, and comes four days after the attack that killed Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi.

Mazen Qaq, head of the merchants' committee in Jerusalem's Old City, has offered NIS 40,000 to whoever provides information that could lead to the capture of suspected Tel Aviv shooter Nashat Melhem (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

"This is someone who acted against Israeli citizens, and I won't allow someone like him to destroy trust and security," Qaq told Ynet. A resident of East Jerusalem, he emphasized that he sees himself as Arab-Israeli and not as Palestinian.

Qaq represents many business owners in the Old City, and reported a decrease in business as a result of the current intifada. He is looking to restore the faith between Jews and Arabs that has been damaged by the current events.

"The attacks have had a big impact on business. Revenue is down 70 percent and we estimate a loss of NIS 15 million among merchants. We want the situation to go back to what it was," Qaq said.

"We're cousins. We need to forget this nonsense about Arabs and Jews. We are all human beings, no matter what your religion is, we are one people. We give you a hand, you help us and we help you," he continued.

"I invite everyone to come and visit Jerusalem. We want to live in peace, hand in hand."

Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, in his first statement addressing the manhunt for Melhem, said on Tuesday that the level of tension in Israel's central Gush Dan region "can lessen considerably."

Nashat Melhem, who is suspected of carrying out a deadly shooting attack in the center of Tel Aviv

The police are, according to Alsheikh, "focusing on a single goal  to get our hands on the murderer. Anything that will interfere with or lengthen the chase, we won't do. Therefore the policy is to stop releasing details about the investigation."

On Tuesday morning the police arrested Mohammed Melhem , the suspect's father, along with five other people. Two of Nashat Melhem's brothers were also arrested in the last few days.
ST. LOUIS - A Bosnian immigrant formerly from Illinois was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for giving money in support of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, despite her attorney's plea that she is by no means a terrorist.

Jasminka Ramic pleaded guilty in September to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. She was sentenced in US District Court in St. Louis.

"I did make a mistake," Ramic, 43, told Judge Catherine Perry in broken English. "I admit I did something I was not supposed to do."

Ramic was among six Bosnian immigrants indicted in February for funneling money and military supplies for use by terrorists in Syria and Iraq.
Santa collects toys for tots

Santa Claus collects toys from personnel entering the base via the main gate during the December Unit Training Assembly here, Dec. 6, 2015. Toy donations benefitted the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots campaign which provides toys for local children during the Christmas season. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Rick Lisum)
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland does not expect European Union regulators to issue a decision on the country's tax deal with Apple until after upcoming parliamentary elections, finance minister Michael Noonan said on Tuesday.

The EU last year accused Ireland of swerving international tax rules by letting Apple shelter profits worth tens of billions of dollars from revenue collectors in return for maintaining jobs. Apple and Ireland reject the accusation.

"It seems to me that the date for a decision has been put back again, it looks like it will be post-election, rather than pre-election," Noonan told a news conference. Prime Minister Enda Kenny is expected to call elections for late February.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Susan Thomas)
A copy of "Mein Kampf" which Adolf Hitler wrote from prison in the early 1920s, is displayed at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem (AFP Photo/Menahem Kahana)

Jerusalem (AFP) - The controversy over the upcoming re-publication of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in Germany is having particular resonance in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust run deep and the book remains taboo.

Hitler's anti-Semitic rant, which he wrote from prison in the early 1920s, loses its copyright in Germany on Friday, and the country's first release of it since 1945 is due out soon in the form of an extensively annotated version.

The copyright had been held by the German state of Bavaria, to which it was granted by the victorious Allies after World War II, and now enters the public domain.

New versions are expected in many countries, sparking fierce debate over how one of the most controversial books in history should be treated.

Mein Kampf -- which means "My Struggle" -- does not face a total legal ban in the Jewish state, but any large-scale publication remains forbidden, the Israeli culture ministry says.

Even if there were no restrictions at all, publishers say there is still stigma around the book in a country formed after the Holocaust inspired by Hitler's writings.

According to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, 180,000 of them live in the Jewish state.

Murray Greenfield, founder of Gefen Publishing, which specialises in works about Judaism and its history, said he wouldn't publish it "even if they paid me".

"My wife is a Holocaust survivor," he said. "We have a built-in censorship on this book, in spite of being very much against censorship (generally)."

In many countries, including some of Israel's Arab neighbours, copies of the book are widely available. It can also be found on the Internet, including in Israel, so those keen to access it are able to do so.

"The book is available online," Dan Michman, head of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, pointed out.

"Many copies are to be found. Some 12 million copies were printed in German, so it is not rare."

Story continues

- 'No publisher will do it' -

But the book is also available in a shortened version in Hebrew in Israeli universities, the result of a campaign in the late 1980s by Holocaust survivor Dan Yaron.

Yaron, who died in 1999, fought for the book, totally forbidden until then, to be published in Hebrew for educational purposes.

"He said it was important for the people to know and to prevent future such events by reading what the (Nazi) leader was saying," Michman told AFP, saying Yaron approached him to publish it but there was no money at the time.

In the end, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem financed the project, and a condensed version of the rambling 720-page original is available in Israeli universities and research institutes.

The taboo status of "Mein Kampf" is special among anti-Semitic writings, said Meir Litvak, an expert on Holocaust texts.

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" -- a fictional book from the early 1900s claiming to document a Jewish plan for global domination that allegedly inspired Hitler -- is available across Israel, Litvak said.

"The book is common, even though it was the most popular anti-Semitic tract of the 20th century."

For "Mein Kampf", however, "there is an emotional rejection," he said. "No publisher will do it."

The German reprint, expected out in the coming days, includes 3,500 explanatory notes and the book will remain outlawed if it is not contextualised.

Michman said it is positive to put the book in a wider context.

"It will include a lot of issues around the text -- where Hitler took his ideas from (and) when he suggests something it explains if and how it was translated into deeds."
A logo is seen in a retail store of French telecom operator Orange in Bordeaux, southwestern France, July 3, 2015. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Partner Communications, Israel's second-largest mobile phone operator, said on Tuesday it has notified French telecoms group Orange of its decision to terminate its Orange brand license agreement.

Partner, which said it will start a process of looking for a new brand name, will continue providing services under the Orange brand name until further announcement.

Orange and Partner - which pays a fee to use Orange's brand - in June agreed terms to end their licensing deal following a public row. Israel had protested to France after Orange Chief Executive Stephane Richard said he would terminate the licensing arrangement with Partner "tomorrow morning" if the contracts allowed. He later apologised.

Orange had that should the branding agreement be terminated, Orange would rebrand its research and development operations in Israel under its own name.

(Reporting by Tova Cohen and Steven Scheer)
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
(Corrects in paragraph two to show the airline did not elaborate)

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines said on Tuesday it has temporarily banned checked-in baggage on some flights to Europe because of "unreasonably strong head winds" on the longer routes it is taking for safety reasons.

The airline did not elaborate on the safety reasons behind its new flight paths to Europe but one of its airliners was shot down over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of all 298 people on board.

The national carrier said in an advisory on its website it could only accommodate one cabin bag of up to 7 kg for economy passengers and two bags of up to 14 kg for business and first class passengers.

"The longer flight path consumes more jet fuel and for safety reasons Malaysia Airlines has had to impose temporary limitations on checked in baggage allowance," it said, referring to the routes to Europe it was flying for safety reasons.

"Passengers who wish to check in their luggage will be able to do so, however their baggage will only arrive later," it said.

The airline said the baggage limitations applied to flights to Amsterdam and Paris operated by its Boeing 777 aircraft.

The airline suffered two disasters in 2014.

In March that year, its flight MH370 carrying 239 passengers and crew disappeared while on a flight to China and is believed to have gone down in the Indian Ocean.

Last year, it appointed a new Chief Executive Christoph Mueller, who turned around Aer Lingus during his tenure as chief executive of the Irish carrier.

(Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Robert Birsel)
New Delhi: Delhi Police on Tuesday argued in a court here that testimonies of 52-year-old Danish woman and an eyewitness along with medical evidence established that nine accused including three juveniles had raped the foreign national here in 2014.

Commencing final arguments in the case, the prosecutor said the woman's deposition in the court strengthened the case of prosecution and she has stood by her statement given to the police earlier.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava argued before Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja that the woman had identified three of the six adult accused, facing trial before the court, as the offenders and the involvement of others were proved by testimony of the eye witness and medical evidence.

"The eye witness Shivji Singh has identified all the accused as the ones who had gangraped and robbed the woman in January 2014. Even the case property, including the woman's articles, were recovered from these accused and their DNA has also matched," Shrivastava said.

He added that though the woman had identified three accused in the court, she did not say that the others were not involved in the case. Regarding others, she has said she was not 100 per cent sure.

Shrivastava's arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow.

The police charge sheet has said the nine accused, all vagabonds, had allegedly robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2014, after leading her to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers' Club near New Delhi Railway Station.

All the nine accused were arrested. While the three juveniles are facing an inquiry before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), the six adult accused - Mahendra alias Ganja (26), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun (21), Raju Chakka (22) and Shyam Lal (55) - are in judicial custody and facing trial.

The nine accused have been booked on charges of gangrape and robbery or dacoity, with an attempt to cause death or grievous hurt. During recording of their testimonies, the six adult accused had claimed innocence and alleged that the police had falsely implicated them in the case.

They had also said they do not want to examine any witness in their defence.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday slammed the Congress Party for criticising the ruling dispensation on the terror attack at Pathankot air base, saying the age old party needs to stop politicising terror.

"I think there are certain issues primarily issues like national security is a matter of concern to the whole country, so we feel that the Congress Party needs to stop politicising terror," BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao told ANI.

Rao further said that any party trying to derive political mileage by making such untimely comments was condemnable.

"They are making such comments even when an operation is going on the field and our security forces are fighting bravely and have given their life. It shows the Congress Party in utterly poor light," he added.

Launching a frontal attack on the Congress party, Rao said the former under its regime had completely emasculated the Prime Minister's office, as Dr. Manmohan Singh remained only a figure head Prime Minister as the entire government ran from 10, Janpath.

"It would be better for the Congress Party to keep mum on such issues. For the BJP and for Prime Minister Modi it is the nation that comes first and for the Congress it is the family that comes first," he added.

The Congress Party have come down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for engaging in talks with Pakistan amid the ongoing attack of the IAF base in Pathankot, saying the Foreign Secretary level talks needs to be called off.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) team also reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot today to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

Meanwhile, Pakistan condemned the terrorist attack in Pathankot and said that they were working on the 'leads' provided by India as a sign of their 'commitment'.

"We have extended our deepest condolences to the Government and people of India. In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it," Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in statement.
A Malian police officer stands guard as workers clean up ouside the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on November 22, 2015, two days after a deadly attack (AFP Photo/Issouf Sanogo) (AFP/File)

Bamako (AFP) - Mali reimposed a nationwide state of emergency for the final 10 days of the year to head off any terror threats, after a deadly jihadist attack in the capital last month.

A government statement issued overnight said it was imposed because of "the evolution of the security situation in Mali and in the surrounding area."

The "state of emergency covers all national territory as of midnight December 21, 2015 for 10 days," said the statement made public after a cabinet meeting late Monday.

It "aims to give authorities the means to better prevent and fight any plan to attack the security and property of citizens and any attempt to disturb peace," it said.

The measure notably allows security forces to act to pre-empt any threat and to restrict public gatherings.

It's the second, 10-day state of emergency Mali has declared in a month.

The last one was ordered after 20 people, 14 of them foreigners, were killed in an attack claimed by two jihadist groups on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on November 20, according to an official toll. Two of the attackers also lost their lives in the incident.

Asked by AFP if there was any concrete threat in Mali at the moment, a government minister who asked not to be named said: "Mali's duty is to take precautions."

"Even in France security measures are taken at the end of the year," he said. "This is what we're doing. Crowds must be avoided for end-of-the-year celebrations. The enemy could take advantage of such crowds."

The November 20 attack was claimed the same day by Al-Murabitoun, led by one-eyed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, as a joint operation with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) and later released an image of two fighters it presented as the assailants.

Another jihadist group that recently appeared in central Mali, the Macina Liberation Front, later also claimed responsibility, "in collaboration with" Ansar Dine, a group from northern Mali.

Story continues

Northern Mali fell under the control of jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in 2012.

The Islamists were largely ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013.

But large swathes of Mali remain lawless and prone to attacks.

Jihadist attacks were long focussed on the north but spread to the centre since the start of the year and since June, to the south near the borders with Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.
New Delhi: With the Congress targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'inconsistent' Pakistan policy following the ongoing attack on the Air Force Base in Pathankot , Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Tuesday asked the grand old party to keep petty politics aside when it came to National security.

"Terrorism is an international challenge and the world is fighting against it as one. Amid such a situation, things should not be said that bolster the confidence of the terrorists and our global war against terrorism is affected," Naqvi told ANI.

Asserting that political fights were a different matter altogether, he added that when it comes to national safety, the Congress needed to support the Centre's endeavours.

"They (Congress) need to introspect and think about their political childishness. They also need to think about what they say during such sensitive times when the nation is standing together," Naqvi added.

However, the Congress continued with their barrage on the Centre, targeting India's soft stand with Pakistan and said that the Pathankot attack was an attack on the nation.

After cancellation of the NSA level talks in August what was the understanding reached between NSA Ajit Doval and his Pak counterpart in Bangkok? The Pathankot attack was not only an attack on humanity but on India as well. The government should take nation into confidence and consult all political parties," Congress leader Anand Sharma said in a press conference.
New Delhi: Even as the Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh claimed that he was abducted by the terrorists who attacked the Pathankot air base, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said on Tuesday that the officer may have played a crucial role in leaking vital information to Pakistan Army's intelligence wing ISI and the militant organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad.

The NIA today grilled Singh along with his cook Madan Gopal thoroughly and has revealed that the SP's late night visit to 'Pir Baba' Dargah to offer prayers is highly suspicious and thus have been put under scanner, as per CNN-IBN.

The investigating officer further said, Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh may have provided logistical support to the terrorists.

The NIA, which is probing the Pathankot terror attack case, also revealed that Singh may have been honey-trapped by the ISI.

As per the report, NIA will also be investigating Punjab Police officer's link with ISI and JeM terror group, who claimed to have carried out the attack.

The NIA also questioned Singhs businessman friend Rajesh Verma at Gurdaspur SPs official residence here today evening.

The police superintendent, who was transferred from here last week only, had earlier claimed that he, along with Verma and the cook, were stopped and abducted by 4-5 heavily armed terrorists near Kolia village, 25 km from Pathankot, on the night of December 31.

Under fire and suspicion about the entire incident, Salwinder Singh told the media earlier today: "My information was 100 percent true. There is no doubt about it.

"After untying myself, I went to a nearby village Golpur Simbli and told them who I was. I called up my officers and gave them the information. My information prevented a major incident. They (terrorists) could have done big damage to the public if I had not informed."

The police superintendent`s seniors did not take his version seriously for many hours.

"I informed senior officers immediately. I don`t know why the delay took place," Salwinder Singh said.

The police officer has said his car was stopped around 11.30 p.m. on Thursday (December 31), while the attack began early on Saturday (January 2).

Punjab Police and security agencies did nothing till the terrorists entered the Pathankot Air Force Station (AFS).

"Only I know what happened with me. I have got a new life. The truth has come out. Only I and god know how I returned," Salwinder Singh said.

He claimed that the terrorists came back in his car, which had a blue beacon on top, to find him, where he and his cook had been dumped near a drain in a forest area on Thursday night.

The counter offensive against the terrorists by security forces inside the Pathankot base saw six terrorists being killed. Security forces lost seven personnel.

Earlier, NIA had registered three cases in the probe and a 20 member team has been stationed in Pathankot. NIA DG Sharad Kumar will also visit Pathankot tomorrow to monitor the probe.
New Delhi: Hundreds of former servicemen at India Gate here on Tuesday paid homage to the soldiers martyred during Pathankot air base terrorist attack.

On the occasion, retired Brigadier J.S. Sandhu said: "India needs to sharpen its action towards Pakistan".

"The government needs to let the army act against these terror groups... We have always been lenient and soft towards Pakistan, but in return we were only rewarded with attacks," Sandhu told IANS.

Among others who gathered to pay homage to the martyrs were students, families of ex-servicemen and activists.

Himangi, a 19-year-old law student, asked the nation to learn to pay homage and respect to the martyrs.

"Those army men fought for us to be safe. And we are not even bothered to pay them a homage or respect," she said.

"Why aren't the politicians or bureaucrats bothered?" she asked.

Later, a candle light vigil was also held by the ex-servicemen.
Delhi/Pathankot: Even as the security agencies and the government is trying to put together pieces to unravel the Pathankot terror attack, a media report said that a former Indian Air Force officer may have leaked information about the air base.

As per a report in CNN IBN, airman Sunil Kumar was arrested for passing information about the airbase to a Pakistani woman in 2014.

He was based in Pathankot and was supposedly being paid for for the information that he passed on to the Pakistani woman, Meena Raina.

The report said that his e-mails to the Pakistani woman led to Kumar's arrest.

Meanwhile, the report pointed out that the investigators did not file a chargesheet against him within the stipulated time.

On the other hand, bringing the curtains down on Day 4, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Tuesday all six terrorists at the Pathankot air base have been killed but admitted to "some gaps" in security that led to the terror attack in which some "Pakistan-made material" have been used.

Addressing the media after a visit to the forward base that was under siege from Saturday morning, he said the terrorists were neutralised in an operation that was over in 38 hours but combing operations are still on and may continue for a day or two.

He said the combing operation is for safety purpose as there are live, unexploded bombs besides rest of the ammunition.

(With Agency inputs)
Chennai: In the wake of the latest instance of arrest of Indian fishermen by Sri Lankan navy, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today shot off another letter to the Centre, seeking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in the matter.

Jayalalithaa said people of the state were "unhappy with the lack of any concrete measures on behalf of the Government of India on the vexed fishermen issue."

In the letter to the PM seeking his intervention for release of 104 fishermen and 66 boats from Sri Lanka, she said it was very regrettable that many of these fishermen remained under Lankan custody for long period, unable to spend the festive season with their families. She wrote to Modi following the arrest of 12 Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy when they were fishing near Katchatheevu today.

"The continued incarceration of the fishermen and their boats for extended periods and the apparent lack of any serious effort on behalf of the Government of India to obtain their early release has contributed in no small measure to the sense of despondency amongst the coastal fishermen community," she said.

On Tuesday, the Sri Lankan Navy arrested another 20 Tamil fishermen when they were fishing near international maritime boundary line. Apart from 20 fishermen, the Lankan Navy also detained four fishing boats.There is tension in the fishermen hamlets of Nagapattinam and Rameswaram. The local fishermen want their fellow fishermen to be released before Pongal festival next week.
NEW DELHI: The hijacking of a police officer`s car by gunmen disguised in uniform should have set off alarm bells and helped prevent a deadly weekend attack on a military air base, officials and security experts said.

His colleagues` slowness to react was one of several security lapses in the buildup to the pre-dawn raid, blamed by India on Pakistani militants and a blow to the recent improvement in ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Three days on from an assault that killed seven military personnel and wounded 22, five attackers have also been eliminated, but an operation was still under way to secure the sprawling compound in Punjab that lies 25 km from the border with Pakistan.

Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh`s call to a colleague in the early hours of Friday morning, after his car was hijacked, was at first treated as a case of armed robbery, the officer who answered the phone said.

"The truth is that we did not take Singh`s complaint seriously, because his record has not been clean," a second senior officer in the Punjab police told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

The police sources said Singh had just been transferred after a woman constable filed a sexual harassment case against him. Singh, who was interrogated on Monday for six hours by federal investigators, could not be reached for comment.

Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi has said the location of the attackers was only pinpointed as Pathankot on Friday afternoon.

That was at least 12 hours after the seizure of Singh`s unmarked vehicle, in which he was travelling with two other men following a visit to a shrine near the border with Pakistan.

"Too much time was wasted," said A.S. Dulat, a former head of the Research & Analysis Wing, India`s main foreign intelligence agency. "How did they infiltrate to where they did? How were they allowed to roam around for 24 hours?"

Civilian and military officials say a security alert was circulated quickly enough to prevent the assailants from damaging fighter jets and helicopters at the base.

Nevertheless, a lack of inter-agency cooperation may have hobbled the security response, with another local police chief calling the air base a "fortress" that senior colleagues cannot enter without a written request.

"It always operated like a self-sufficient township but had no interaction with the city police or local administration," Manoj Kumar, Pathankot`s deputy superintendent of police, told Reuters.

DUMPED BY THE ROADSIDE

Singh`s cook, Madan Gopal, said he was dumped by the roadside with his employer after a long drive during which their eyes were taped shut. The gunmen took fellow passenger Rajesh Verma, a jeweller, with them.

"We both walked for an hour to reach a nearby police outpost," Gopal, 61, told Reuters. "Singh got in touch with his superiors but they told him to go home and come to the office the next day."

Verma survived and testified to police that the attackers had used his phone, possibly to call their handlers, according to the Indian Express.

One local report said the assailants dumped Singh`s car 500 metres from the base. How they got into the compound is still unclear. Once inside, they burst into a guards` mess and fired indiscriminately.

One guard tackled and killed an attacker, only to die from another gunman`s bullet, said Air Commodore J.S. Dhamoon, commander of the base.

Three more suspected militants were killed later on Saturday after running through the compound, firing into windows.

The guard who died was a member of the Defence Security Corps (DSC), a unit made up of veterans who guard military facilities. Five of the seven military personnel to die served in the DSC, some of them in their fifties.

Some observers said the DSC should not guard high-value military assets.

"They were not up to speed," said Nitin Gokhale, a security analyst who edits a defence portal.

Yet the greater weakness at the base, with a 24-km perimeter and a 3-metre (10-foot) wall topped by barbed wire, may have been a lack of adequate surveillance.

"You can have a wall, but a wall can be scaled and, probably, a surveillance system such as CCTV was lacking," said Govind Sisodia, a former senior commander of the National Security Guard counter-terrorism unit.

There have been conflicting reports of how many attackers were involved in the raid, since claimed by the United Jihad Council, an alliance of more than a dozen pro-Pakistan militant groups based in Pakistan-run Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir, both claiming the region in full but ruling it in part. Tight security along the frontier there has pushed militant attacks south to Punjab.

Analysts and officials said the attackers may have worked in groups, with the carjackers acting together and two others believed to have entered the air base separately, possibly before the main attack. One remains unaccounted for.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted his congratulations on Saturday evening to India`s security forces on "successfully neutralizing all the five terrorists in `Pathankot Operation`".

At the time, the official body count was four. Singh`s tweet was later deleted.
New Delhi: In a move which is seen as an attempt to empower Delhi traffic cops for handling emergency situations, authorities are planning to arms them with pistols.

Delhi Police chief on Monday said that about 1000 traffic cops in the city will be armed with small weapons like pistols to tackle any untoward incidents and emergencies.

"Pistols will be given to 1000 traffic officials, especially those posted at critical areas, to deal with untoward incidents and emergencies. This is a move towards capacity building. The arms are likely to be handed over by next month," said Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi

Bassi was speaking at Delhi Police's Annual Conference on Monday.

Bassi's recent announcement is likely to kickstart another controversy regarding jurisdiction as the Delhi traffic cops are authorised only to manage traffic movement in the city.
Palakkad: The body of Lt Col EK Niranjan of the National Security Guard, who was killed in the counter-offensive against terrorists at the Pathankot air base, will be cremated on Tuesday at his ancestral home.

The body was flown in a helicopter from Bengaluru last evening, while his close relatives and colleagues came in another chopper to his Elumbulsherry village in Palakkad district.

Even though Niranjan was bought up in Bengaluru, where he did his schooling and college education, he maintained close links with the village and was last here during the Onam season.

Villagers turned out in large numbers to receive the body and were also seen at his home on Monday.

Teary-eyed people filed past the body as the martyr's family members sat near it. "He was always interested in the Army. I am proud of his sacrifice," Niranjan's father

Sivarajan said.

Niranjan's sister said, "I look at him as Arjuna who fought for his karmabhoomi."

The body is being kept at a state-run school and will be cremated with full state honours this afternoon.

Thirty-two-year-old Niranjan was commissioned in the Engineers Regiment of the Army in 2004.

Niranjan, the head of the elite bomb squad of the NSG, was killed while defusing an IED at Pathankot IAF base, on Sunday.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy paid his last respects to the officer yesterday.

Niranjan is survived by his dentist wife Radhika, 18-month-old daughter Vismaya, father Sivarajan, step-mother and brother Shashank.

The Kerala Cabinet that meets on Wednesday will decide on how to compensate the family. The Karnataka government has announced a Rs 30 lakh compensation.

(With Agency inputs)
Pathankot: It's been four days since terrorists stormed Pathankot's airbase. A number of reports have hinted at Pakistan's role in the terror attack but now some items recovered from the possession of slain terrorists have made the picture clearer and point the finger at Pakistan for cross-border terrorism.

Here are three 'Made in Pakistan' items recovered from the killed terrorists:-

'Made in Pakistan' shoes

According to media reports, the shoes of terrorists who stormed the airbase bore a Pakistani brand. The brand is very popular in Pakistan.

'Made in Pakistan' batteries

Some batteries recovered from the slained terrorists were also Pakistan's marking on it.

'Made in Pakistan' rifles

The Pathankot attackers were armed with some advanced weapons including AK 47 rifle and according to reports the weapons had 'Made in Pakistan' markings on it.

However, Pakistan-based United Jehad Council (UJC), an umbrella organisation of about a dozen militant outfits, has claimed responsibility for the deadly attack but experts in Delhi express doubt over the authenticity of the claim as the Pathankot attack is widely believed to be the handiwork of Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit, which is not part of UJC.
New Delhi: India is expected to send to Pakistan Letter Rogatory (LR) along with DNA samples of slain terrorists who attacked Pathankot air base, their phone call details, numbers of handlers based in that country and other information to help nab the mastermind of the crime.

The DNA test of the six killed terrorists will be conducted as early as possible while the details of the phone calls made by the terrorists to their Pakistan-based handler are being prepared to be sent to Pakistan.

All these will be sent through an LR so that the Pakistani authorities could take forward the case in that country, official sources said today. LR is a formal request from a court to a foreign court for some type of judicial assistance. The most common remedies sought by letters rogatory are service of process and taking of evidence.

Security agencies believe that through the call details, Pakistani authorities could reach the mother of one of the terrorists who had telephoned her saying he was on a suicide mission.

The DNA samples would also help to establish that one of the terrorists was her son. Besides, the terrorists have made multiple calls to their handlers, believed to be based in Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab, which is headquarters of terror group Jaish-e- Mohammad. JeM is suspected to be behind the attack in Pathankot air base.

Pakistan Premier Nawaz Sharif today gave an assurance to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that "prompt and decisive action" will be taken against the terrorists behind the Pathankot attack after Modi pressed for immediate steps on "specific and actionable" information provided to them.

Modi received a call this afternoon from Sharif regarding the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase.
20160104_194818

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson got a positive reception at a Monday town-hall event in Staten Island, New York, but was separately asked by two critical attendees to "reconcile" his campaign positions with the US Constitution and the Bible.

Hesham El-Meligy, the chairman of the Staten Island Libertarian Party, asked Carson how the Republican candidate could square his stated opposition to a Muslim president with Article 6, Section 3 of the Constitution.

"It says, 'No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,'" El-Meligy said.

Last September, Carson said in an interview that he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," and that he "absolutely would not agree with that." He later said he would be open to a hypothetical Muslim candidate who renounced Sharia law.

Carson's answer was similar Monday night.

"Very easy to reconcile, actually," Carson told El-Meligy.

The crowd cheered and clapped in approval after Carson reiterated his belief that Sharia law, a body Islamic law, was not "compatible" with the US' constitutional values.

Watch below:

El-Meligy told Business Insider after the event that he was not impressed with Carson's answer.

"I wanted to give him a chance to maybe clarify or correct his position. But he stuck to his wheels, which is clearly against the Constitution, in my opinion," he said.

El-Meligy also said he didn't think Carson "really understands the Constitution."

"I don't think he understands a lot of things," added Hina Naveed, who said she was with the Staten Island Dream Coalition and was sitting near El-Meligy during the town hall.

Naveed pointed to the high-profile resignations that rocked Carson's campaign the previous week. Carson lost multiple staffers on New Year's Eve, including his campaign manager and communications director, who apparently did not get along with an outside adviser to the candidate.

Story continues

"To be quite honest, I think he just kept it tame. He's lost 20 staffers. And he needs to kind of keep it calm, generate support, try to get a bump in the polls," Naveed said. "We wanted to hear what he has to say. We are Staten Islanders. ... We heard a lot of the divisive things that he's said."

ben carson

Another man at the event also challenged a Carson policy position: his opposition to the US accepting refugees fleeing the violence in Syria. The attendee, who said his name was Rich, recalled how the US had once turned away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.

"Later, some of those people would be victims of the Holocaust," he said.

Rich then cited the Bible, the text of which he suggested would support reaching out to the downtrodden refugees of today.

"How does your position against accepting these refugees of today reconcile with Matthew 25:35, in which Jesus teaches: 'I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me water. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Truly I tell you,' he said, 'whatever you did for one of the least of these [brothers and sisters of mine], you've done for me,'" Rich said.

Carson responded by citing his November trip to a Syrian refugee camp in neighboring Jordan.

"Very good question and I have a very good answer for you," Carson replied. "I went over there. I talked to the Syrians. I asked them what they would like to have, what is their chief desire. Not a single one of them said, 'To come to America.' They said they wanted to go back to Syria."

After the event, Rich would only tell Business Insider that Carson's answer had spoken for itself.

NOW WATCH: Ben Carson isn't backing down from his theory about the Egyptian pyramids





More From Business Insider


New Delhi: The hijacking of a police officer's car by gunmen disguised in uniform should have set off alarm bells and helped prevent a deadly weekend attack on a military air base, officials and security experts said.

His colleagues` slowness to react was one of several security lapses in the buildup to the pre-dawn raid, blamed by India on Pakistani militants and a blow to the recent improvement in ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Three days on from an assault that killed seven military personnel and wounded 22, five attackers have also been eliminated, but an operation was still under way to secure the sprawling compound in Punjab that lies 25 km from the border with Pakistan.

Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh`s call to a colleague in the early hours of Friday morning, after his car was hijacked, was at first treated as a case of armed robbery, the officer who answered the phone said.

"The truth is that we did not take Singh`s complaint seriously, because his record has not been clean," a second senior officer in the Punjab police told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

The police sources said Singh had just been transferred after a woman constable filed a sexual harassment case against him. Singh, who was interrogated on Monday for six hours by federal investigators, could not be reached for comment.

Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi has said the location of the attackers was only pinpointed as Pathankot on Friday afternoon.

That was at least 12 hours after the seizure of Singh`s unmarked vehicle, in which he was travelling with two other men following a visit to a shrine near the border with Pakistan.

"Too much time was wasted," said A.S. Dulat, a former head of the Research & Analysis Wing, India`s main foreign intelligence agency. "How did they infiltrate to where they did? How were they allowed to roam around for 24 hours?"

Civilian and military officials say a security alert was circulated quickly enough to prevent the assailants from damaging fighter jets and helicopters at the base.

Nevertheless, a lack of inter-agency cooperation may have hobbled the security response, with another local police chief calling the air base a "fortress" that senior colleagues cannot enter without a written request.

"It always operated like a self-sufficient township but had no interaction with the city police or local administration," Manoj Kumar, Pathankot`s deputy superintendent of police, told Reuters.

DUMPED BY THE ROADSIDE

Singh`s cook, Madan Gopal, said he was dumped by the roadside with his employer after a long drive during which their eyes were taped shut. The gunmen took fellow passenger Rajesh Verma, a jeweller, with them.

"We both walked for an hour to reach a nearby police outpost," Gopal, 61, told Reuters. "Singh got in touch with his superiors but they told him to go home and come to the office the next day."

Verma survived and testified to police that the attackers had used his phone, possibly to call their handlers, according to the Indian Express.

One local report said the assailants dumped Singh`s car 500 metres from the base. How they got into the compound is still unclear. Once inside, they burst into a guards` mess and fired indiscriminately.

One guard tackled and killed an attacker, only to die from another gunman`s bullet, said Air Commodore J.S. Dhamoon, commander of the base.

Three more suspected militants were killed later on Saturday after running through the compound, firing into windows.

The guard who died was a member of the Defence Security Corps (DSC), a unit made up of veterans who guard military facilities. Five of the seven military personnel to die served in the DSC, some of them in their fifties.

Some observers said the DSC should not guard high-value military assets.

"They were not up to speed," said Nitin Gokhale, a security analyst who edits a defence portal.

Yet the greater weakness at the base, with a 24-km perimeter and a 3-metre (10-foot) wall topped by barbed wire, may have been a lack of adequate surveillance.

"You can have a wall, but a wall can be scaled and, probably, a surveillance system such as CCTV was lacking," said Govind Sisodia, a former senior commander of the National Security Guard counter-terrorism unit.

There have been conflicting reports of how many attackers were involved in the raid, since claimed by the United Jihad Council, an alliance of more than a dozen pro-Pakistan militant groups based in Pakistan-run Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir, both claiming the region in full but ruling it in part. Tight security along the frontier there has pushed militant attacks south to Punjab.

Analysts and officials said the attackers may have worked in groups, with the carjackers acting together and two others believed to have entered the air base separately, possibly before the main attack. One remains unaccounted for.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted his congratulations on Saturday evening to India`s security forces on "successfully neutralizing all the five terrorists in `Pathankot Operation`".

At the time, the official body count was four. Singh`s tweet was later deleted.
New Delhi: Lashing out at Centre in the wake of Pathankot terror attack, Opposition parties stepped up attacks on government's handling of ties with Pakistan.

Congress on Tuesday condemned the the air base terror attack and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to explain the outcome of his Lahore visit and re-starting the talks with Pakistan government. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said, "Pathankot attack is an attack on the country and on humanity and it cannot be termed as a small incident." He also asked PM Modi to take the Opposition in confidence on engaging the neighbouring country.

Attending a press-conference today, Sharma said, "PM must tell us the outcome of his Lahore visit. He should also explain on what basis did he say that there's an atmosphere to start talks with Pakistan. While we support dialogue, we want to make it clear that our security and integrity are non-negotiable.

At the press-conference, Sharma posted five questions to Modi. They are as follow:

1.Last year, after the NSA -level talks were cancelled, what was the understanding reached between NSA Ajit Doval and his Pakistan counterpart in Bangkok?

2.The then UPA's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not visit Pakistan during his regime because the latter did not honour its promises. What assurances were received by PM Modi which prompted his visit to Lahore?



3.During his sudden visit to Lahore on December 25, the National Security Advisor of Pakistan was conspicuously absent. Was PM Modi doubtful about it?

4.Does PM Modi believe that Pakistani establishment, including their Army and ISI are for the dialogue process? What assured the Prime Minister that the resumption of peace process has the full support and endorsement of entire Pakistani establishment?

5.We sought the Pakistan government to take severe action against 26/11 mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Lakhvi. What progress has been made in the case so far?

Sharma also raised questions on the functioning of NSA and said, "the NSA task is to alert the security department and they should do their job properly so that the country is not ashamed before its citizen.
Pathankot/New Delhi: Four days after suspected Pakistani terrorists raided the IAF base in Pathakot, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday admitted to "security lapses" that led to the terror attack that left seven security personnel and all six terrorists dead.

Parrikar said the battle against the terrorists who sneaked into the sprawling base before dawn on Saturday effectively ended after around 36 hours (at 7.30 pm on Sunday) and that combing operations going on since then were "for safety purposes".

"It started at 3.30 am when (IAF) Garud force engaged the terrorists... At 7.30 pm (on Sunday), they (terrorists) were finished. So it is about 36 hours," Parrikar said when asked how effective the counter offensive of the security forces was.

Parrikar told the media after visiting the base that combing operations were still going on but "this is only for safety purposes" and that no more terrorists were believed hidden in the Indian Air Force complex.

Some gaps led to security lapses, the minister said. He did not elaborate. "What is worrying is how they (terrorists) entered the base."

"The things that we have found so far, there are some indications some of the material is made in Pakistan.

"Let the NIA (National Investigation Agency) investigate it, everything about whom they were linked to and who sent them will emerge," he said of the suspected links of the terrorists to Pakistan.

The NIA, he said, had "initial leads, where they (terrorists) have come from, how they have come".

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today promised his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Islamabad will take "prompt and decisive action" against the terrorists linked to the attack.

Sharif, who telephoned Modi from Sri Lanka, gave the assurance after New Delhi provided "specific and actionable information" to Islamabad regarding the terrorists. Modi underlined the need for Pakistan to take "firm and immediate action" against organisations and individuals responsible for the audacious attack.

The Sharif-Modi conversation followed the killing of all six terrorists in Pathankot, which is home to one of the biggest IAF bases.

Parrikar said body parts of the last two terrorists killed were found at two places. He said these would go for DNA tests.

Parrikar visited the Pathankot base on Tuesday along with the chiefs of the army and air force. The head of the NIA also visited it separately.

"Combing operations are (still) going on," he said. "This is only for safety purposes."

The minister said the body of one of the terrorists still had a suicide vest, with a grenade sticking out.

"I am very, very clear that they (our officers) should not take any risk," he said, recalling how a National Security Guard (NSG) officer lost his life earlier while trying to reportedly shift a similar body.

Parrikar said the entire operation was "a very difficult" one but it had been accomplished without compromising not just the strategic assets but also even the buildings.

He said barring one building where the terrorists took shelter, no other building was even damaged because the security personnel cornered the raiders in a corner of the base.

The Pathankot Air Force Station, where a MIG-21 Bison squadron and MI-35 attack helicopters are based, is spread over 1,900 acres. Over 1,500 families live inside the campus which also has a school, a hospital and a market.

He said the terrorists had AK-47 rifles, pistols, Swiss knives, commando knives besides 40-50 kg of bullets. They also had improvised mortars. "They had high quality explosives."

The Pathankot attack came after Modi and Sharif met on Christmas Day in Lahore when the Indian leader, while flying home from Kabul, dramatically made a two-hour halt.

In Kerala, NSG commando Lt. Col EK Niranjan, killed during mopping up operations at the air base on Sunday, was cremated in Elumbulsherry village in Palakkad district.

Hundreds of people stayed awake through the night after his body was brought here on Monday evening.
Gurdaspur: Lauding the valour efforts of the security forces for defending the Pathankot air base from the ulterior motive of the fidayeen, Punjab Police on Tuesday denied any lapse in security leading to the entry of the terrorists.

While briefing the press, Punjab DGP Suresh Arora said, We worked in coordination with all agencies, our officers reacted immediately when attack happened.

He further said, Punjab Police was stationed inside the air base in Pathankot.

We have decided to post one AIG counter intelligence unit in Pathankot and install cctv network, he added.

Further speaking on NSG's action during the combing operation, the Punjab DGP said, This is probably the first time that NSG unit was posted before the attack took place.

Before we could start the operation the NSG was present here so you could understand what could be the reason behind such a move, he added.

However, Arora further said, Seeing is believing, what we saw was highest standard of professionalism from Defence forces.

The Punjab DGP further said it was a matter of concern as to find out how the terrorists managed to enter India.

"That is a matter of investigation," said DGP Suresh Arora on how a private car with blue beacon was allowed to pass through checkpoints in Pathankot.

"No information on any terrorists outside air base," DGP Punjab added.

He further informed that the Punjab Police have registered an FIR regarding terror attack on Pathankot air base. In it's FIR, the cops named terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad which is responsible for the attack.

Meanwhile, the NIA has said that it expects cooperation from Pakistan for tracing the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.

The NIA team today reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab yesterday to probe the 'conspiracy' angle behind the attack.

The Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan scheduled for January 14-15 in Islamabad looks in jeopardy in the wake of the Pathankot attack.
New Delhi: Actor-turned politician Shatrughan Sinha is all set to take the nation by storm as he will be releasing his biography 'Anything But Khamosh' in New Delhi on January 6.

The book will be released by BJP veteran leader and Sinha's mentor LK Advani. Sinha's actor-daughter Sonakshi Sinha will also be present at the occasion.

Shatrughan has been making headlines since BJP's debacle in the Bihar Assembly polls. Recently, he openly supported suspended BJP MP Kirti Azad, who accused Finance Minister Arun Jaitley of massive irregularities in DDCA.

Looking at the content from the biography, it seems Shatrughan is no mood to give up his aggression against the ruling party. The book, however doesn't take any name but hints towards Amit Shah and Smriti Irani as the two prominent leaders who were given Cabinet posts despite performing poorly in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Here, we take a look at some of the quotes from Shatrughan's biography.
Gurdaspur: Rajesh Verma, the friend of Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, on Tuesday said that the terrorists, who took away their vehicle forcibly, slit his throat and left him bleeding.

The Gurdaspur SP and Verma were returning after offering prayers at the `Pir Baba` when their vehicle was hijacked by the terrorists. Verma said that the terrorists kept talking to their Commander and kept him informed about their every move.

"They were four persons in army fatigues. I was driving the car when they stopped us. They pointed guns at us and forcibly boarded our vehicle. They tied our hands dumped us at the rear of the vehicle while they started driving it," he told ANI.

"They tied us and took our mobile phones, also asked my mobile code. They said that they wouldn`t hurt us if we cooperate with them. Then they let the other two go and warned them not to go anywhere.

They took my phone and they were repeatedly speaking to someone called commander," he added.He said that the terrorists did not use names while communicating with each other but instead use codes such as `alpha` and `major`.

"They had GPS equipment with them. They drank Red Bull (energy drink) and ate chocolates. They came near a bridge where they decided to let me go. One of them said that I should be sent to heaven. I was sure then that they would kill me," Verma said.

"Two of them came and beat me up with rifle butts. Then they placed a knife on my throat and slit it. Blood spurted out of my throat and they said that I would reach heaven within minutes. They also stuffed some napkins in my mouth, left me near vehicle and fled," he added.

Meanwhile, the combing operations are still underway at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.The operation against the terrorists at the air base entered its fourth day today as security forces continue to carry out combing operations to smoke out any remaining terrorist. Security forces declared yesterday that the fifth terrorist was killed and the building in which they were hiding was also bombarded.
Washington: The US expects Pakistan will take action against the perpetrators of the terror attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, a top American official said, hours after Islamabad said it is working on the "leads" provided by India.

"The government of Pakistan has spoken very powerfully to this and it's certainly our expectation that they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they would," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said on Monday.

Pakistan has said it is working on the "leads" provided by India on this attack.

Describing terrorism as a "shared challenge" in South Asia, the US also asked all countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and bring justice to the perpetrators of the Pathankot terrorist attack.

"We urge all the countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and to bring justice to the perpetrators of this particular attack. I would note that the government of Pakistan, also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian air base."

"We have been clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups," Kirby said.

The government of Pakistan has said publicly and privately that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups as part of its counter-terrorism operation, he said.

"So this is a shared challenge that we all face in the region and we in the United States want everybody to treat it as a shared challenge," Kirby said, adding that the US has strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force base in Punjab's Pathankot.

"We extend our condolences to all the victims and their families," he said.

He said the US has for a long time talked about the continued safe haven issues there in between Afghanistan and Pakistan and certainly between India and Pakistan.

"We're mindful that there remain some safe havens that we obviously want to see cleared out. And we continue to engage with the government of Pakistan to that end. And again, I would point you back to what the government of Pakistan itself has said and acknowledged that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups and it will continue to take the fight," Kirby said.

The Pakistani government, the Pakistani people very much understand the threat in Washington, Kirby said.

"What we want and what we continue to say we want and will continue to work for is increased cooperation, communication, coordination, increased information-sharing and increased efforts against what we all believe is a shared challenge in the region."

"We want to see the government of Pakistan continue to press the fight against terrorists, all terrorists, and to meet their own expectations that they're not going to discriminate among groups. They've said themselves and our expectation is that they'll live up to that pledge," he said.

"We recognise there's more everybody can do, not just Pakistan but every nation can do because it is a shared challenge and it's a challenge, as you well know, that doesn't necessarily observe borders and boundaries. So it's something that everybody can attack more," Mr Kirby said.

Pakistan on Monday said it is working on the "leads" provided by India on the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot, according to the Foreign Office.

Extending Pakistan's deepest condolences to the Government and people of India on the "unfortunate terrorist incident" in Pathankot, a statement by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it."

The statement, however, did not give details of the "leads" provided by India.
New Delhi: The combing operation in Pathankot are not over yet and the Delhi Police went into a tizzy on Tuesday after they received an anonymous call about a bomb inside the Parliament.

However the officials declared it a prank call after nothing was discovered inside the premises. The caller was tracked down at a northeast Delhi area.

The Delhi Police received an anonymous call at 6:12 pm today which informed them about the presence of a bomb inside the Parliament. Several police teams and bomb disposal squads were rushed to Parliament and conducted a thorough search at the premises. The fire department and fire tenders were also alerted.

"It was a hoax call and we have tracked down the caller, who is a resident of Jyoti Nagar area. The motive behind the act hasn't been ascertained yet. The caller is being brought to the Parliament Street police station, where he will be questioned," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said, adding that the caller may have to face legal action too. The police did not reveal the caller's identity citing security concerns.

The national capital is on a high alert and security was already stepped up following the terror attack at Pathankot and then inputs received by the police about the presence of two suspected Jaish-e-Mohammad key members here.
Hoshangabad: A 35-year-old woman train passenger was allegedly gang-raped by three persons near Itarsi railway station, Government Railway Police (GRP) said here on Tuesday.

Three accused, identified as Laxman Ahirwar (28), Mohammad Azhar (24) and Chotu Patel (28) were today arrested for the incident that took place last night, police said.

"The woman hailing from Satna district in Madhya Pradesh and her male relative had boarded a wrong train at Nagpur in Maharashtra to return home," GRP Havaldar Darshan Singh said.

Before the train entered Itarsi station, the man accompanying the victim got down when it slowed down in the outer section, although the woman could not disembark with him, he said.

"When the train stopped at Itarsi station, the three accused snatched a gold chain that the woman was wearing and took her to a nearby place and gang-raped her," Singh said.

The victim lodged a complaint with GRP yesterday, following which the arrests were made. Further investigation into the case is on, he said.
Mumbai: Renowned academic and Marathi litterateur Shripal Sabnis, who had criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Pakistan trip, saying the BJP leader could have been killed in Lahore, has filed a police complaint after receiving alleged death threats from two BJP members over his controversial remarks.

Sabnis, a Pune resident, had said at a college event last Thursday that "had Modi been attacked in Pakistan, we would have been compelled to pay tributes to him before (eminent Marathi poet) Mangesh Padgaonkar (who died on Dec. 30)."

Sabnis, who has authored 29 books, had filed police complaint with Umarga police in Marathwada against two BJP members for threatening him.

Sabnis has, however, refused to apologise for his remarks.

Criticising Modi over his silence on the recent intolerance controversy, the writer said, ''the PM lives in the shadow of fear.''

Some right-wing activists have threatened to "break his limbs" and "kill him" for daring to speak against Modi.

"Intolerance? I know what it is. My family and I are cowering in it. We live in sheer fear with death staring at us. There is no help from the police or government - barring an assurance by MoS, State Ram Shinde. The family members are weeping," Sabnis said in an interview.

Practically under a self-imposed exile in Pune, Sabnis, 64, lives with wife and two children even as the family comes under increasing siege from right-wing elements.

They have sought his resignation, burnt his effigies and issued threats.

According to the writer - now elected president of the prestigious four-day 89th All India Marathi Literary Conference (AIMLC) scheduled to open in Pimpri-Chinchwad on January 15 - he had lavished "conditional praise" on Modi, which was not appreciated by the hardliners in the BJP-RSS.

"I had expressed pride that our prime minister had showed the courage to go to Pakistan with his heart in his hands, since there could be treachery and his life could be at risk. What is wrong with that statement?" he said.

Talking about the Godhra incident, which was the starting point of 2002 riots in Gujarat, Sabnis said that "the whole country knows what is the truth about Modi when he was the chief minister of Gujarat."

"I have actually praised the PM for his good work. However, if Modi feels I have said something objectionable, let him say so and I shall immediately apologise to the entire nation," Sabnis declared.

He said it was regretful how certain elements in the BJP and the RSS selectively used his statement to attack him (verbally) and issue death threats, asking for an unconditional apology. However, he said he was in no mood to oblige "the goons" who failed to understand his statements.

Dwelling on the freedom of speech enshrined in the Indian constitution, Sabnis asserted out that "nobody has the right to take it away from me".

With IANS inputs
Imphal: The newly-constructed building of the Manipur Assembly at Chingmeirong here was partially damaged due to Monday`s earthquake, an official said here.

An engineer who visited the complex along with Works Minister T Ratankumar on Tuesday morning said on condition of anonymity that the building might not withstand another earthquake of high magnitude.

Officials said once an expert committee submits a report, a decision will be taken on whether a new Assembly secretariat should be constructed or the present one repaired and strengthened.

Earlier, accompanied by engineers and high officials, Ratankumar visited the Assembly complex on Tuesday morning to assess the damage to partially damaged buildings.

A temblor had jolted Manipur and other north-eastern states apart from West Bengal and adjoining countries of Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan at 4.35 am on Monday.

The quake`s epicentre was in Manipur`s Tamenglong district.

Lok Sabha MP T Meinya said he had sanctioned Rs 10 lakh from his MPLAD (Member of Parliament Local Area Development) funds for undertaking relief in his Inner Manipur constituency. "This is the first instalment. If necessary, more fund will be released," he said.
Gurdaspur: Punjab Police officials took their own senior officer`s version on the presence of Pakistani terrorists in the area lightly and slept over the information on the impending terrorist strike on the Pathankot air base, sources said.

Sources in the Punjab Police confirmed to IANS that an internal probe was being conducted to ascertain the role of some senior officers who took Gurdaspur`s Superintendent of Police (under transfer) Salwinder Singh`s version and information regarding the terrorists "lightly and casually" despite he being a crucial witness to the presence of the terrorists.

Salwinder Singh said that after "untying" himself, he called up his officers and gave the information about his kidnapping and the terrorists.

The officers did not react to the crucial information for hours, giving enough time for the terrorists to make their way to the Pathankot Air Force Station (AFS) and carry out the attack that left seven security personnel dead and made the high security defence facility and its vital assets vulnerable.

The union home ministry, top police sources said, has sought a report from the Punjab director general police (DGP) on the incident related to the SP`s abduction and the delay in taking action on the information regarding the terrorists.

"Not only were some senior officers not ready to hear the SP`s version but even tried to fix him in a case. They threatened to involve his name in the murder of Innova taxi driver Ikagar Singh who was killed by the same terrorists," the police source said.

Under fire and suspicion by his own senior officers about the entire incident, Salwinder said on Tuesday: "My information was 100 percent truth. There is no doubt about it. After untying myself, I went to a nearby village Golpur Simbli and told them who I was. I called up my officers and gave the information. My information prevented a major incident. They could have done a big damage to the public if I had not informed."

Salwinder said that he even called up the Gurdaspur Senior Superintendent of Police Gurpreet Singh Toor early (around 3.30 a.m.) on January 1 who told him to inform the police control room instead.

"I informed senior officers immediately. I don`t know why the delay took place," Salwinder said.

Police sources said that one senior Punjab Police officer, who came later to the spot (Akalgarh) where the SP`s car was found, even made fun of Salwinder Singh saying that he had gone to meet his woman friend in Kalanaur (in Gurdaspur district). They levelled other charges against him, including the killing of the taxi driver.

"It was only after the SP`s mobile phone was put on surveillance that the police officers realised that it was used to make calls to Pakistan. It was then that they really got alerted and sounded others. Crucial time had been lost by that time and the terrorists walked into the air base," the source said.

The SP has been questioned in this case by the NIA, other central agencies and Punjab Police.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has registered three FIRs in the matter. These relate to the abduction of the SP and others, the killing of the taxi driver and the attack on the Pathankot AFS.

The police officer was abducted with his friend Rajesh Verma and cook Madan Gopal by the Pakistani terrorists in his Mahindra XUV multi-utility vehicle.

His car was stopped around 11.30 p.m. on Thursday (December 31). The attack took place early Saturday (January 2).

The Punjab Police and security agencies did nothing till the terrorists entered the Pathankot Air Force Station (AFS).

"Only I know what has happened with me. I have got a new life. The truth has come out. Only I and god know how I returned," Salwinder said.

Salwinder claimed that the terrorists came back in his Mahindra XUV car, which had a blue beacon on top, to find him, where he, along with his cook Madan Gopal, had been dumped near a drain in a forest area on Thursday night.

The counter offensive against the terror attack by security forces inside the Pathankot AFS continued for the fourth day on Tuesday. Five terrorists have been eliminated so far.
Geneva: At least 81 civilians were killed in Yemen last month, most of them in Saudi-led airstrikes, despite a short-lived and repeatedly violated ceasefire, the United Nations said Tuesday.

"During the month of December, at least 62 civilians were reported to have been killed by airstrikes attributed to the coalition forces," Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN human rights agency, told reporters.

That number, he pointed out, was more than double the 29 civilians reported killed in such strikes a month earlier.

The number of civilians killed by the Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies was meanwhile cut by two thirds to at least 11 in December from 32 a month earlier, Colville said.

The remaining eight civilian deaths last month have not yet been conclusively attributed to either side, he told AFP.

The dramatic increase in the number of civilians killed in airstrikes came despite a ceasefire declared on December 15, at the same time as UN-backed peace talks between the warring sides began in Switzerland.

But the talks ended five days later with no major breakthrough, and the ceasefire collapsed on January 2 after being violated on a daily basis. Colville pointed out that UN rights agency staff had begun receiving reports of violations "within minutes of the ceasefire beginning. The ceasefire certainly did little to shield civilians."

On December 18, he pointed out, 18 civilians were allegedly killed when two airstrikes hit a civilian house in Wadi Kena, in Saada, and two days later, six civilians, including three children, were killed in strikes on a residential neighbourhood in Al Hudayhda City.

The airstrikes have continued into the new year, with some 11 strikes taking place in Sanaa on Sunday and Monday alone, with reports of further airstrikes Tuesday morning, Colville said, pointing to reports indicating that civilian buildings had been hit in densely populated areas of Sanaa.

Colville also decried "alarming information" that coalition forces used cluster bombs in Hajjah governorate, saying that a field visit by UN rights office staff last month had found remnants of 29 cluster submunitions near banana plantations in the village of al-Odair in Haradh district.

He said other villages and other districts also appeared to have been affected. Colville also voiced particular concern at the humanitarian situation in violence-wracked Taez, lamenting that "strict control of all entry points into the city by the popular committees affiliated with the Huthis has resulted in limited access to essential items, including food."

Yemen`s conflict erupted in September 2014, when the Huthis advanced from their northern strongholds to occupy the capital Sanaa. Since the conflict escalated dramatically when the Saudi-led air strikes began in March, at least 2,795 civilians have been killed and 5,324 wounded, Colville said.

A new round of peace talks have been scheduled for January 14 in an unspecified location.

And UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed is set to visit Riyadh on Wednesday amid fears that a diplomatic storm unleased by Saudi Arabia`s break in relations with Iran could thwart the efforts to end Yemen`s conflict.
Bill Clinton stepped into the limelight Monday, making his first solo campaign appearance in wife Hillary`s 2016 bid for the White House, calling her the most qualified US presidential candidate in decades.

The 69-year-old former president went to New Hampshire in support of the former secretary of state, senator and first lady who leads national polls for the Democrats ahead of the state`s voting contest next month.

Popular among party faithful, Clinton is nonetheless still tainted by allegations of infidelity and sexual impropriety that his wife`s Republican rival, Donald Trump, has sought to exploit by calling him "fair game."

On Monday, he addressed a rally at a community college in the city of Nashua, paying tribute to Hillary`s determination to make America a fairer, safer country for the poor and struggling middle classes.

"I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job in a moment of great importance who is better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done," he said.

New Hampshire hosts the nation`s first presidential primary on February 9.

Calling himself a "happy grandfather," a relaxed Clinton said he thought Hillary was "the most amazing person" when they met and fell in love, 45 years ago at Yale Law School.

She could have won any job but wanted only to provide legal aid to the poor, said her husband, dressed in an open-necked shirt, dark pullover and blazer, wearing a Hillary pin on his lapel."Everything she touched, she made better," he said, calling her a "change maker."

"In an uncertain world, where borders look more like nets than walls, and no one is in total control, she understands what it takes to keep our country as safe as possible," he added.

But Trump, the real estate tycoon who has led Republican polls for months, has blasted Bill Clinton`s "terrible record" with women -- an apparent allusion to his past alleged marital infidelities.

He stepped up his personal attacks on the Clintons on Monday, criticizing Hillary for calling him sexist.

"How can she do that when she`s got one of the great women abusers of all time sitting in her house, waiting for her to come home for dinner," he told CNN.

"The worst thing Hillary could do is have her husband campaign for her. Just watch," he tweeted to his 5.5 million followers on Sunday.

Republicans in Congress tried but failed in 1998 to remove Bill Clinton from the White House for alleged perjury and obstruction during an investigation into an alleged affair.

On Sunday, Hillary Clinton was heckled by a Republican state representative in New Hampshire about her husband`s alleged sex scandals. "You are very rude," she snapped back before addressing another audience member.

Her husband did not mention Trump during his 30-minute speech in Nashua, but warned that key gains in environmental and health care policy would be reversed if the country elects a Republican president."It`s kind of scary," he said in reference to the campaign, urging supporters to take the candidates seriously. He later addressed another campaign event in Exeter, New Hampshire.

According to Real Clear Politics, Clinton trails her party rival, Bernie Sanders, by 44.7 to 49 percent of the Democrat vote in the state.

On Monday, she was in Iowa, hundreds of miles apart from her husband. "I think I can be the president America and Iowa needs, with your help," she told supporters.

Trump on Monday unveiled his first TV ad of the campaign, fanning fresh controversy by incorporating footage of migrants fleeing Morocco into a Spanish enclave with a voice over talking about the Mexico-US border.

The 30-second ad will be broadcast from Tuesday, costing $2 million a week ahead of the first-in-the-nation voting contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

It spotlights his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, pledge to crush the so-called Islamic State extremist group and promise to end illegal immigration from Mexico.

But a fact-checking website gave the ad a "Pants on Fire" rating, saying it uses footage, not from the Mexico-US border, but from Melilla, a small Spanish enclave across the Atlantic Ocean on Morocco`s coast.

Trump`s campaign said the footage was deliberately "selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border" and the "very real threat" to America by not building a wall on the Mexican border.
London: Britain has raised its concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia with authorities there following the execution of 47 men including a prominent Shi`ite Muslim cleric, a Foreign Office minister said on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia`s execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr has angered Shi`ites across the Middle East and caused a major diplomatic row between mainly Shi`ite Iran and Saudi Arabia`s conservative Sunni monarchy.

"The UKs close relationship with Saudi Arabia does not mean that we shy away from raising legitimate human rights concerns," Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Foreign Office, Tobias Ellwood, told parliament.

"We make this point very clearly in public and in private. The Saudi authorities are well aware of our views, and I have raised them most recently myself with the Saudi authorities yesterday following the execution of 47 people over the weekend."

Ellwood said escalating tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, one of Britain`s closest military allies in the Middle East with which it does billions of dollars worth of business every year, were "deeply concerning".

The Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that British Prime Minister David Cameron had delayed a trip to Saudi Arabia. A spokeswoman for Cameron would not confirm that a trip had been planned or delayed due to Nimr`s execution.
London: British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday condemned a new execution video by Islamic State (IS), calling it a "desperate stuff" from an organisation that is "losing anybody`s sympathy".

In the video released on Sunday, a masked IS executioner with British accent threatened to invade the UK and called British Prime Minister David Cameron an "imbecile", before executing five men who appeared shackled and dressed in orange boiler suits. They were accused of spying against the IS for the UK.

The footage revived memories of "Jihadi John", a British Islamic State member who appeared in several videos in which hostages were killed before his own death was reported in an air strike late last year.

Some British media speculated that the militant in the new video might be Siddhartha Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumaysah, a convert from Hinduism and a high-profile Islamist, although security experts were divided on whether it was him.

The British-Indian Muslim convert left Britain with his family to travel to Syria despite being on police bail after being arrested in late 2014 on suspicion of being a member of a banned organisation.

Dhar's mentor is radical London cleric Anjem Choudary.

The United States said in November it had killed Mohammed Emwazi, who as "Jihadi John" had become a symbol of Islamic State. The voice and appearance of the masked militant shown in the new video was different from Emwazi, but he spoke in a clear English accent, waving a gun at the camera while criticising Cameron.

"This is a message to David Cameron, O slave of the White House, O mule of the Jews," the man said in the 10-minute video released on Sunday.

One would have thought you'd have learned the lessons of your pathetic master in Washington and his failed campaign against the Islamic State," the man said.

Born a Hindu, the 32-year-old ran a business renting out bouncy castles in London before converting to Islam and joining the radical Islamist group Al Muhajiroun.

Dhar's mother and sister have also watched the video, released by ISIS on Sunday, and noticed similarities between the voice of the masked terrorist, being referred to as the "new Jihadi John" by the British media.

"I heard the voice, yes, but I don't know, I'm not sure of the voice. These are the most difficult questions to answer. I just cannot say. I'm not sure within myself whether it is the truth or not," his mother Sobita Dhar told The Daily Telegraph.

His sister, Konika Dhar, from north London, said: "I believed the audio to resemble, from what I remember, the voice of my brother but having viewed the short clip in detail, I wasn't entirely convinced which put me at ease."

"I can't believe it. This is just so shocking for me. I don't know what the authorities are doing to confirm the identity, but I need to know if it is."

She said her brother had converted to Islam more than 10 years ago and her memories of him are from when they were children and teenagers.

"He was a very pleasant boy, and I know it may be hard to believe but he still is, and I still believe that he still can be that person," she added.

In November, British officials said that up to 800 Britons had travelled to Iraq and Syria, some to join Islamic State. About 50 percent had returned home while about 70 were believed to have been killed.

(With Agency inputs)
Catalonia: Catalonia`s outgoing separatist leader Artur Mas said Tuesday he was reluctantly "ready" to call fresh parliamentary elections, with the Spanish region`s secessionist faction unable to agree on who should lead a new government after winning September`s polls.

"I`m ready -- against my will, this is not what we wanted and it is not what I want -- but I`m ready to sign the decree to convene elections," he told reporters in Barcelona as Saturday`s deadline to form a new government drew dangerously close.

Calling fresh polls -- which would be the fourth since 2010 in Catalonia -- would be a setback for the region`s secessionist drive, which has been a major thorn in the side of Madrid.

In September, Mas`s "Together for Yes" secessionist alliance -- helped by the more radical, far-left separatist CUP party -- won a majority of seats in the 135-seat parliament in the wealthy, 7.5-million-strong northeastern region.

But the honeymoon was short-lived as "Together for Yes", which won 62 seats, battled with the CUP to form a government.

Despite more than three months of intense negotiations, the small party that got 10 seats refused to give Mas the backing he needs to head up Catalonia again, resenting the austerity measures he implemented and corruption scandals linked to his party.

"I don`t know if they realise the magnitude of the mistake they are making," Mas told reporters.

But he said there was still time to reach an agreement of some kind before the deadline at midnight on Saturday.

"I want to say this very clearly though: `Together for Yes` has already made so many proposals that we cannot make any more," he warned.

The CUP has said it could back another candidate, but Mas`s CDC party -- which is part of `Together for Yes` -- has ruled that possibility out.

The only option that remains is to convince a few CUP lawmakers to break rank and support them.

If they fail to do so, parliament will be dissolved after Saturday`s deadline and Mas will call the elections."It`s a risk because right now there are 72 separatist lawmakers," said Ferran Requejo, politics professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

"It could be that the result will be worse, because voters have seen that three months of secessionist majority in parliament has not resulted in a government agreement.

"That has resulted in the separatist factions running out of steam."

Spain`s conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has fiercely opposed Mas`s independence drive, said new regional elections in Catalonia were inevitable.

"I honestly don`t know what (Mas) can do in the next five days after everything that has happened," he said during an interview with radio Cope.

"I believe that the best that could happen is that Mas drops his independence drive. Since I don`t believe that is possible...the best outcome would be if elections were held," he added.

One of Spain`s 17 semi-autonomous regions with its own language and customs, Catalonia already enjoys a large degree of freedom in education, health and policing but it wants more, particularly where taxation is concerned, complaining it pays more to Madrid than it gets back.

A 2010 decision by Spain`s Constitutional Court to water down a statute giving Catalonia more powers has added fuel to the fire and caused support for independence to rise.

Polls show that most Catalans support a referendum on independence but are divided over breaking from Spain.
Beijing: China said on Tuesday it had lodged a protest with Myanmar after a land mine injured a Chinese person on their common border, the latest incident of cross-border conflict to strain ties between the neighbours.

China has repeatedly demanded effective action from Myanmar to contain fighting along the border between the Myanmar military and ethnic minority rebels.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the person was injured by a land mine on Sunday but she did not say exactly where the explosion happened.

"This situation is under further investigation," Hua said at a daily news briefing. "We express serious concern over this."

"The Chinese side has already made solemn representations to Myanmar and demanded that Myanmar take effective measures to avoid the future occurrence of a similar situation and prevent the conflict in north Myanmar from endangering the security of Chinese people`s lives and property."

The Myanmar military has been battling several rebel groups including at least two that operate near Myanmar`s border with China, in Myanmar`s Shan State and Kachin State.

Thousands of Myanmar civilians have sought safety on the Chinese side of the border over the past few years because of the fighting.

Hua urged Myanmar to work with China to "safeguard the peace and stability of the China-Myanmar border region".

When contacted by Reuters, Ye Htut, Myanmar`s minister of information and spokesman for the president`s office, declined to comment.

Last March, China was infuriated when five people were killed by stray bombs falling on its territory in Yunnan province during fighting in Myanmar.

China and Myanmar share a 2,000 km (1,250 mile) border, much of it remote and hard to access.

Myanmar`s Aung San Suu Kyi said on Monday the peace process would be the first priority of her new government that will take power later this year, following a landslide victory in a November election.
All Coca-Cola wanted to do was to wish consumers a Happy New Year, but instead it ended up stirring anger in two markets, Russia and Ukraine, over the disputed territory of Crimea.

The Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula was annexed by Moscow in March 2014 and remains a trigger issue in the Russian-Ukrainian crisis today.

In a New Year`s message on VK, the most popular Russian social media network, Coca-Cola published a map of Russia that did not include Crimea.

Faced with barrage of criticism from Russian users of VK, it published the map again on Tuesday, this time with Crimea, and apologised.

For good measure, the new map also included the Kuril Islands, the western Pacific archipelago that Moscow seized in 1945 from Japan, which still claims it.

The second version also included Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave situated between Poland and Lithuania, that is globally recognised as belonging to Moscow.

But by including Crimea, Coca-Cola unleashed a firestorm in Ukraine, where demands for a boycott of the popular soda got underway.

On Tuesday, the corporation threw in the towel and simply axed the New Year`s message.

"Dear friends! Thank you for your attention. It has been decided to delete the item which caused the upset," Coca-Cola`s Ukrainian subsidiary said on Facebook.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine plunged after pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich was ousted by pro-European demonstrators in February 2014.

Russia responded by annexing Crimea while ethnic Russian Ukrainians seized control over parts of eastern Ukraine, beginning a conflict that has left more than 9,000 dead since April 2014.
Tehran: Iran aired fresh footage Tuesday of an underground bunker that houses its latest ballistic missile, which less than a week ago prompted US threats of new sanctions.

State television showed parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Revolutionary Guards officers inspecting the Imad missile, which has a range of 1,700 kilometres (1,020 miles) and is at the centre of a dispute over the missile programme.

The United States considered -- and then shelved -- imposing new sanctions following two recent missile tests which a UN panel said broke past resolutions aimed at stopping Tehran from developing missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

If such measures, reportedly targeting companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates with alleged links to the missile programme, were imposed they could jeopardise a hard-won nuclear deal due to be finally implemented within weeks.

Iran`s President Hassan Rouhani denounced the possible US sanctions as "hostile and illegal interventions", and ordered his defence minister to expand the missile programme.

Larijani was quoted as saying parliament would support an enhanced missile programme in a future five-year plan for the country. State media reported a test of the Imad on October 11 and also that month showed footage of an underground missile base for the first time. Tehran has always denied seeking an atomic weapon and argues that its missiles have never been designed to, nor ever would, carry a nuclear bomb.

Iran`s ballistic missiles were not within the remit of the nuclear talks which resulted in an accord last July when Tehran agreed to curbs on its atomic programme in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions.

Although Iran`s ultimate authority, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, explicitly endorsed the nuclear deal in October, he warned that new sanctions, under any pretext, would be a violation. The accord is due to come into effect on "Implementation Day", expected later this month, or soon after, when UN monitors sign off that Iran has applied the agreed restrictions on its nuclear activities.
Baghdad: At least two Sunni Muslim mosques have been attacked in Iraq and two people killed in apparent retaliation for the execution of a senior Shi`ite cleric in Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia, officials and police said on Monday.

Iraqi Shi`ites protesting the Jan. 2 execution of Saudi Shi`ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr separately marched in Baghdad and southern cities, while a powerful Iranian-backed Shi`ite militia group pressured the government to sever ties with Riyadh.

Iraq`s Interior Ministry confirmed the attacks on Sunni mosques late Sunday in Hilla, around 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi blamed them on "Daesh (Islamic State) and those who are similar to them," without further explanation.

He ordered provincial authorities "to chase the criminal gangs" who attacked the mosques.

Iraq has faced sectarian bloodletting for years, mainly between minority Sunnis and a Shi`ite majority empowered after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The battle against Sunni Islamic State militants who control large swathes of the north and west has only exacerbated those tensions.

The spark for Sunday`s attacks appears to have been Nimr`s execution a day earlier, which triggered angry reactions in Shi`ite-led Iraq and Iran.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with regional rival Iran on Sunday after protesters attacked the kingdom`s embassy in Tehran. Bahrain, the Shi`ite-majority Gulf state ruled by a Sunni family, and Sudan followed suit on Monday.

The attack on a mosque in central Hilla destroyed its dome and several walls, according to a Reuters TV cameraman who visited the site. Provincial council member Falah al-Khafaji and a police source said a guard in the building was killed.

"We saw smoke rising from the dome of the mosque. We found all the walls destroyed and the furniture inside in shambles," said resident Uday Hassan Ali.

Another mosque in Hilla`s northern outskirts was also attacked, and a Sunni cleric was killed in a separate incident in Iskandariya, about 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, Khafaji and the police source said.

"We have leads and security measures will be taken near mosques," said Khafaji, pledging to rebuild the buildings.

Protests

Prominent religious and political leaders in Iraq have called on the government to cut ties with Saudi Arabia, which reopened its Baghdad embassy last week after closing it in 1990 following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

While Abadi and Iraq`s foreign ministry have condemned Nimr`s execution, they have given no indication of a more severe response.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a powerful Shi`ite militia backed by Iran, on Monday warned the government against inaction.

"We demand the government expel the Saudi ambassador... (otherwise) the government will be responsible for the popular backlash," it said in an online statement calling for the implementation of death sentences issued against Saudi "terrorists".

The group said it was speaking on behalf of the "Islamic resistance", a term commonly used for Iranian-backed Shi`ite militias, but did not specify which groups it represented.

Earlier thousands of protesters marched in Baghdad and Shi`ite cities in southern Iraq, heeding calls by prominent Shi`ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to protest against Nimr`s execution.

In Baghdad, demonstrators carrying portraits of Nimr, wearing a grey beard and a white turban, rallied outside the heavily fortified Green Zone housing government departments and diplomatic representations, including the newly reopened Saudi embassy.

Police guarding the zone pushed back a group of protesters trying to cross a line of barbed wire as they chanted "damned, damned be Al Saud," referring to the Saudi ruling family.
Tokyo: Japan will send a huge cache of plutonium -- enough to produce 50 nuclear bombs -- to the United States as part of a deal to return the material that was used for research, reports and officials said on Tuesday.

The plutonium stockpile, provided by the US, Britain and France decades ago, has caused some disquiet given that Japan has said it has the ability to produce a nuclear weapon even if it chooses not to.

Some 331 kilograms of the highly fissionable material will be sent by ship to a nuclear facility in South Carolina by the end of March, Kyodo News reported yesterday in a dispatch from Washington that cited unnamed Japanese government sources.

The shipment, which comes ahead of a nuclear security summit in Washington in March, is meant to underscore both countries' commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and is part of a deal they made in 2014.

It will be one of Japan's most significant overseas movements of plutonium since it transported one tonne from France in 1993 to be used in nuclear reactor experiments.

That shipment triggered an outcry at the time from countries citing environmental and security concerns. A Japanese official confirmed the amount of plutonium to be sent to the US and said that preparations for the shipment are under way. "But we can't comment on further details, including the departure date and route, for security reasons," the official in the nuclear technology section at the education ministry told AFP today.

The material has been stored at the Nuclear Science Research Institute northeast of Tokyo, he added. Japan relies heavily on nuclear technology for its energy needs.

In 2006, then foreign minister Taro Aso sparked panic in neighbouring countries by saying Japan, a scientific superpower with numerous Nobel prizes to its credit, had the know-how to produce nuclear arms but opts not to.

Japan is the only country to ever have been attacked with nuclear weapons, and under a 1967 policy it refuses to produce, possess or allow nuclear weapons on its soil. But in 2010 Tokyo admitted to previous secret agreements with the United States to allow American warships to carry nuclear weapons across Japanese territory and to take the arms to US bases on Okinawa island in an emergency.
UN peacekeepers are facing fresh allegations that they sexually abused four young girls in the Central African Republic, the latest in a wave of child rape cases to hit the mission.

The United Nations said Tuesday it had informed three countries of the claims and asked them to investigate their soldiers serving in the MINUSCA mission in Bangui.

A UN spokesman declined to name the countries and to specify how many troops were involved, but sources said the soldiers were from Gabon, Egypt and Morocco.

The UN mission said in a statement that it was also investigating allegations against "international forces" in Bangui, without providing details.

The latest allegations bring to 26 the number of sexual abuse cases targeting UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic.

The UN mission "is investigating new allegations concerning both sexual exploitation and abuse and other misconduct by UN peacekeepers in Bangui," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Mission chief Parfait Onanga-Anyanga told troops and police in Bangui that there would be "zero tolerance" for such actions and "no complacency for perpetrators," he added.

The four girls, all minors, received medical care, along with shoes, clothes and hygiene kits.

The troops were accused of rape, sexual exploitation and transactional sex with the girls, some of whom were living in a camp for displaced civilians in Bangui, a UN official said. The latest scandal was discussed by the UN Security Council during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, prompting fresh calls for action to put a halt to the recurring cases.

"We are really sick and tired of this coming back each time," New Zealand`s Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen told reporters after the meeting.

"There are calls for the council to be given specific information about what is going on in response to these allegations," he said.

Under UN rules, it is up to the troop-contributing country to investigate and prosecute soldiers accused of misconduct while serving under the UN flag.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon fired the head of the 10,000-strong MINUSCA force last year over the mounting number of cases, but the allegations have continued to surface.

Ban has warned that he is ready to throw out an entire peacekeeping unit if their country fails to prosecute soldiers accused of sex abuse.

The United Nations has been badly shaken by allegations last year that French and African troops forced children to perform sexual acts in exchange for food, from December 2013 to June 2014.

France has several thousand troops deployed in the Central African Republic as part of its Sangaris force, which is not under UN command. Fourteen soldiers from that force are under investigation in France as a result of those allegations.

An independent panel last month sharply rebuked the United Nations for failing to take action to address the allegations that were detailed in a UN mission report. The Central African Republic is struggling to recover from sectarian violence that exploded after a 2013 coup, pitting mainly Muslim rebels against Christian militias
An Islamic court in Kano, northern Nigeria, has sentenced a Muslim cleric to death for blasphemy against Islam`s holiest figure, the Prophet Mohammed, prosecutors and justice officials said on Tuesday.

"The Sharia court found Abdul Nyass guilty of blasphemy against the Prophet, which is punishable with death in accordance with the provisions of the Sharia legal system Kano state operates," prosecutor Lamido Abba Soron-Dinki told AFP.

"The convict had legal representation throughout the trial which was done in secret to avoid a repeat of the mob action that disrupted a court session on the case."

Nyass drew public outrage in May last year when he made derogatory remarks about the Prophet to followers as they marked the birthday of the former leader of the Tijaniyya Sufi order, Ibrahim Nyass.

An angry crowd attacked the ceremony in the Makwarari district of Kano and later burnt down Abdul Nyass` home, police said at the time.

Abdul Nyass belongs to a separate branch of Tijaniyya that includes beliefs considered heretical because of their different interpretation of some basic Islamic principles.

He fled in the wake of the violence while nine of his followers were arrested and charged before a Sharia court in the city in June last year. Five of them were later sentenced to death and have since launched appeals, while four were acquitted.

The trial of the nine followers was also held in secret to avoid violence, after crowds set fire to a section of the Sharia court when they first appeared. Nyass` comments, made during a religious ceremony, sparked anger and violence across Kano, which is a historic seat of Islamic scholarship. The cleric was arrested last August in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where he was in hiding. He was brought back to Kano and charged, said Soron-Dinki. "He has up to a month to appeal the sentence and it is most likely he is going for appeal," he added.

Nyass` lawyer declined to comment and concealed his identity for fear of reprisals.

Kano`s justice commissioner Haruna Mohammed Falali welcomed the death sentence and said the state government would pursue the matter "to its legal conclusion".

"It is their right to appeal, but we will follow this case through all the legal appeal stages and ensure the sentence is carried out," he said.

Sharia courts in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria have handed down death sentences for adultery, murder and homosexuality since they were set up in the early 2000s.

But to date, no executions have been carried out.

Twelve states in the north operate Islamic courts, which run parallel to the state and federal justice system.
West Bank: A Palestinian stabbed and wounded a soldier in the southern West Bank on Tuesday before being shot dead, the Army said, the latest in a three-month wave of attacks.

"An assailant stabbed a soldier at the Gush Etzion junction," an Army statement said.

"Forces at the scene responded to the attack and shot the assailant, resulting in his death. The victim is receiving emergency medical treatment."

A spokesman for Israel`s Magen David Adom emergency medical service said a 34-year-old man was taken to hospital with stab wounds to his face and hand.

Twenty-two Israelis, an American and an Eritrean have been killed in Palestinian attacks including stabbing, car ramming and gunfire targeting security forces and civilians since October 1.

At the same time, 139 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks.
Jerusalem: A Palestinian stabbed and wounded a soldier in the southern West Bank today before being shot dead, the army said, the latest in a three-month wave of attacks.

"An assailant stabbed a soldier at the Gush Etzion junction," an army statement said.

"Forces at the scene responded to the attack and shot the assailant, resulting in his death. The victim is receiving emergency medical treatment."

A spokesman for Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service said a 34-year-old man was taken to hospital with stab wounds to his face and hand. Twenty-two Israelis, an American and an Eritrean have been killed in Palestinian attacks including stabbings, car rammings and gunfire targeting security forces and civilians since October 1.

At the same time, 139 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks.
Seoul: South Korean prosecutors on Tuesday formally charged a prominent labour activist who had evaded arrest for weeks by seeking sanctuary in a major Buddhist temple in Seoul which came under siege by police.

Han Sang-Gyun, the head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), was charged with inciting violence and obstructing justice during a massive anti-government rally in November, Yonhap news agency said.

Dozens of police officers and protestors were injured and dozens of police buses damaged in the November 16 protest in central Seoul.

To evade arrest following the rally, Han sought sanctuary in the capital`s Jogye Temple, where leading monks negotiated with police over his fate.

He finally surrendered in early December after police threatened to storm the temple and remove him by force.

Tensions had run high around the temple, with hundreds of police facing off against a human barricade of monks and lay Buddhists.

South Korean religious venues have a long history of providing refuge for political activists, most notably in the 1980s when many pro-democracy activists sought sanctuary from police arrest in Catholic churches.

The November protest -- involving more than 60,000 people -- was the largest in more than seven years in the South.

Protestors demanded that Seoul scrap labour reforms that critics say would make it easier for firms to fire workers.

They also called for President Park Geun-Hye to cancel a controversial plan to impose state-issued history textbooks in schools.
Saudi Arabia`s mission to the United Nations on Monday defended the execution of 47 men including a prominent Shiite cleric that outraged Iran, saying all of the accused had been granted fair trials.

"The kingdom of Saudi Arabia reiterates that all convicted persons were granted fair and just trials without any consideration to their intellectual, racial or sectarian affiliation and that the final rulings against them was reached based on their own criminal and illegal actions," said a statement from the Saudi mission.

Riyadh expressed "deep regret" over a statement from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said he was "deeply dismayed" by the executions.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
United Nations: Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.

Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom`s execution of prominent Shi`ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."

He added, "If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh`s example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.

Jubeir blamed Iran`s "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom`s embassy in Tehran.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.

Shi`ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.

A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia`s Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq`s Shi`ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East`s top Sunni and Shi`ite powers.

But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones.

"The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Calls for restraint

Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.

Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a U.S. senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.

"It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the U.S. official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable."

Brent jumped 4 percent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.

Reuters
Donald Trump

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump said on Monday that the hecklers who interrupt his rallies remind him a bit of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

At a campaign rally in Massachusetts, the Republican presidential front-runner said that the hecklers' weak voices reminded him of Clinton.

"They remind me a little bit of Hillary. No energy, no stamina, no strength," Trump said.

He has frequently accused Clinton of having "no stamina," which some observers have interpreted as a jab at her age and health. Trump is actually just over a year older than Clinton, though both candidates have released health summaries affirming their fitness for the Oval Office.

Trump was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers during his Monday event in Lowell, Massachusetts, in which over six different groups shouted during his speech.

His campaign has become accustomed to a high number of protesters during rallies, and has even developed a routine for how to handle disruptions. Trump will lead the crowd in chants of "U-S-A," wave at protesters as they exit, and occasionally tell security to "get them out of here" as his audience roars in approval.

At Monday's rally, Trump also compared his own response to hecklers to how US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a Democratic presidential candidate, handled Black Lives Matter protesters last summer.

"I remember Bernie Sanders, when they took over his microphone," Trump said. "That's not happening with Trump, folks. Wasn't that a pathetic scene?"

Clinton takes a much different tack with people who interrupt her campaign events.

If the disruption isn't incredibly notable, the Democratic front-runner will often attempt to power through or wait until the heckler is escorted out. At a December event in front of immigrant advocates in New York, Clinton was interrupted twice by protesters speaking out against one of the corporations sponsoring the event, but she did not stop her speech.

But during a town-hall event on Sunday, Clinton did address a heckler who stood up to confront the former secretary of state about her husband's sex scandals.

Story continues

"You are very rude, and I'm not ever going to call on you," she said.

NOW WATCH: Donald Trump on the Lewinsky scandal: It's 'fair game'





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Tehran: Saudi Arabia should not respond to criticism of its regime by beheading people, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday following Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

He was referring to the execution for "terrorism" Saturday of Nimr al-Nimr, who had been behind anti-government protests among Saudi Arabia's Shiite Muslim minority.

Officials have not said how Nimr was put to death, but beheading is common in the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom, which has since cut diplomatic ties with predominantly Shiite Iran.

"One does not respond to criticism by cutting off heads," Rouhani said as he welcomed visiting Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen to Tehran.

"I hope that European countries who always react on human rights matters will meet their duties."

Human rights groups frequently criticise use of the death penalty in Iran, where hanging is employed.

Rouhani also accused the Middle East's top Sunni Arab power of using the row over Nimr, which led a mob to ransack and set fire to the kingdom's embassy in Tehran, as an excuse to sever ties.

Saudi Arabia's consulate in second city Mashhad was also torched.

"Saudi Arabia cannot cover its crime of having cut off the head of a cleric by cutting relations," he said.

The violence was condemned by Rouhani, and Iran's judiciary has said 50 people involved in the incidents, including ringleaders, have been arrested and will face legal action.

Iran's mission at the United Nations also expressed "regret" at the fireraising and disobedience in a letter to the UN Security Council.

Before Rouhani spoke, a government spokesman, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, said cutting diplomatic relations would not hurt Iran or damage its development.

Bahrain and Sudan also broke ties with Iran, and a number of other Arab countries have recalled their envoys, in sympathy with Riyadh.

Commerce between Iran and the countries that have severed relations is low, according to official figures released today by economic daily Donaye Eghtesad.

Bilateral trade between Iran and Saudi Arabia reached USD 172.5 million during the first eight months of the Iranian year that began on March 20, 2015.

It comprised USD 132.2 million of Iranian exports, particularly fruit and steel, and USD 40.2 million of imports from Saudi Arabia, mainly fabrics and packaging products.
Beirut: Syria`s political opposition in exile urged all Arab countries on Monday to sever diplomatic ties with Iran after Saudi Arabia, a strong supporter of the Syrian opposition, cut relations with Tehran.

Saudi Arabia has been rallying Sunni allies to its side in a growing diplomatic row with Iran, deepening a sectarian split across the Middle East following its execution of a prominent Shi`ite cleric.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition declared its support for Riyadh`s move, calling on "all Arab and Islamic countries to take a similar step" and criticised what it said was Iran`s support for militias in Syria and Iraq.

Iran supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces, backed also by Russia, are fighting against an array of insurgent groups including rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region.

Sunni-Shi`ite tension in the region spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom`s embassy in Tehran after Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi`ite cleric.
Istanbul: Turkish authorities on Tuesday found the bodies of at least 21 migrants, including several children, washed up on beaches and floating in the sea off its western coast after their boats sank while crossing the Aegean Sea to EU member Greece.

The tragedies, the deadliest so far reported in the Aegean in 2016, come as the EU seeks to push Turkey to halt the flow of migrants across its borders in exchange for financial help.

Twenty-two migrants seeking to reach the Greek island of Lesbos set out before dawn aboard a rubber boat but it capsized in bad weather and high seas, the Dogan news agency reported.

The bodies of fourteen people were found either washed up on the beach near the resort of Ayvalik or in the sea nearby, Dogan said. Eight more migrants were rescued.

Among those found dead was a woman who was six months pregnant.

Images published by Dogan showed the small corpses of children, fully dressed and wearing shoes, lying on the beach with their life-jackets still on.

Video footage showed Turkish security forces lifting other bodies from the waves in the shallows on the shore.

In a second disaster, seven migrants were found dead off the resort of Dikili just to the south, it added. The victims there also included women and children, Dogan said.The tragedies are the latest involving migrants fleeing war and misery in the hope of finding a new life in Europe.

The images of the small lifeless bodies on the sand echo those of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, pictures of whose corpse lying face down on a Turkish beach in September 2015 spurred Europe into greater action on the migrant crisis.

A drowned two-year-old boy became the first known migrant casualty of the year on Saturday after the crowded dinghy he was travelling in slammed into rocks off Greece`s Agathonisi island, the coastguard said.

Turkey, which is home to some 2.2 million refugees from Syria`s civil war, has become a hub for migrants seeking to reach Europe, many of whom pay people smugglers thousands of dollars for the risky crossing.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 1,004,356 migrants and refugees reached Europe in 2015, almost five times the previous year`s total of 219,000.

The IOM also said Tuesday that 3,771 migrants and refugees died crossing the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe in 2015, making the past year the deadliest on record.

It said 77 percent of the deaths occurred in the central Mediterranean route mostly used by smugglers operating from Libyan shores. But it noted a surge in the numbers who died in the eastern Mediterranean around Turkey and Greece.

"In 2015, 21 percent of deaths occurred in the eastern Mediterranean compared to only 1 percent in 2014," the IOM said.

Ankara reached an agreement with the EU in November to stem the flow of refugees heading to Europe, in return for financial assistance.

Brussels vowed to provide three billion euros ($3.2 billion) in cash as well as political concessions to Ankara in return for its cooperation in tackling Europe`s worst migrant crisis since World War II.

But onset of winter and rougher sea conditions do not appear to have deterred the migrants, with boats still arriving on the Greek islands daily.

The IOM said it estimated that in the first three days of 2016 alone just over 5,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece.

Citizens of Syria and Afghanistan accounted for almost 80 percent of these migrants with others coming from Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian Territories, it said.
Ankara: Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday said Turkey was ready to do everything it could to help calm flaring tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, after Ankara expressed alarm over the consequences of the dispute between two key Muslim powers for the region.

"We expect all countries in the region to show common sense and take steps aimed at easing the tensions in the region," Davutoglu told his ruling party in a speech in Ankara.

"As Turkey, we are ready to make any effort to solve the problems between the two countries," he said, without specifying what this could entail.

The crisis began at the weekend when Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as well as 46 other convicts, prompting a furious reaction from Tehran.

Iranian protesters then ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Riyadh, Bahrain and Sudan severed relations with Tehran while Kuwait recalled its ambassador. Davutoglu said Turkey strongly condemned attacks against embassies.

"Whatever the reason, such attacks are unacceptable," he said. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said late Monday that the hostility between the two major Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in a "powder keg" region.

"Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region," he said.

Turkey`s relations with fellow mainly Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia have warmed considerably in recent months. Relations had been damaged by Saudi`s role in the 2013 ousting of Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, a close ally of Ankara. In December, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Riyadh for talks with King Salman as well as key decision-makers crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef and deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia share the same vision over the conflict in Syria where they believe only the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad can bring an end to almost five years of civil war.

As Turkish ties with Riyadh have warmed, Ankara`s relations with Tehran have grown more tense, notably over Iran`s role in Syria -- where the Islamic republic supports Assad`s regime -- and over its burgeoning relations with Russia. But in a rare public criticism of Saudi Arabia, Kurtulmus emphasised that Turkey, which abolished the death penalty in 2004 as part of its bid to join the EU, was opposed to capital punishment.
A fact-finding mission by the UN chemical weapons watchdog has found that some people in Syria may have been exposed to sarin or a sarin-like gas, according to a report released Monday.

The mission by the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it was investigating 11 incidents of the use of toxic chemicals reported by the Syrian government.

The report did not say when the 11 incidents took place or specify any location.

"In one instance, the analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance," said the OPCW report sent to the Security Council last week.

"Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred," said the report.

Previous fact-finding missions by the OPCW in Syria have pointed to the use of chlorine and mustard gas.

The UN Security Council is due to discuss Syria`s chemical weapons use during a meeting on Tuesday.

President Bashar al-Assad`s regime and rebel forces have accused each other of using chemical agents in the nearly five-year war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

After an August 2013 sarin attack outside Damascus that much of the international community blamed on Assad`s government, the regime agreed to turn over its chemical arsenal.

The report said that 99.6 percent of all declared chemical weapons in Syria had been destroyed.
Washington: North Korea is proceeding with its development of a submarine-launched ballistic missile despite reports of a failed test several weeks ago, a US research institute has said.

The US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies yesterday said that December 23 commercial satellite imagery of a naval shipyard at the east coast site of Sinpo suggests that the submarine used in the

test remains seaworthy and that there may be new testing activity.

The imagery also shows North Korea is constructing facilities that could accommodate the building of bigger submarines, according to the analysis published by 38 North, the institute's website.

Missiles launched from submerged vessels would be harder to detect that land-based ones, but the institute says North Korea likely remains years away from having an operational system.

International concern has deepened over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Last May, North Korea said that it successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in what it touted as a display of the country's advancing military capabilities, although some experts questions the authenticity of the photos Pyongyang publicised of the test.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said the missile travelled about 150 yards. In late November, South Korean media reported that another test had failed and that the North's experimental missile-launching submarine may have been damaged.

In yesterday's analysis, Joseph Bermudez, a specialist in satellite imagery and North Korea's military, writes that the submarine can be viewed afloat in a berth, partially concealed under netting possibly for repairs or post-test maintenance.

There are also signs of activity at a nearby facility on land for testing missiles, he writes.

"North Korea is clearly serious about developing a sea-launched ballistic missile that would pose a new threat to countries in the region," said Joel Wit, a former State Department official and editor of 38 North.
Washington: US President Barack Obama on Tuesday wept in public as he announced a slew of executive measures to tackle the gun violence that claims thousands of lives in the country each year, amid stiff resistance from Republican- controlled Congress to steps for tightening control on firearms.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Obama said as tears streamed down his cheeks in the East Room of the White House in the presence of a large number of victims of mass shootings.

He summoned the memory of the 20 elementary school children killed three years ago in Newtown, Connecticut.

Obama warned that the US gun lobby cannot be allowed to block government action.

"The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they can't hold America hostage," he said.

"All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important. Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about as well. And we have to be able to balance them, because our right to worship freely and safely -- that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina," he said.

"That was denied Jews in Kansas City, and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights too. Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette.

Our inalienable right to life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high- schoolers in Columbine, and from first graders in Newtown," he said.

"First graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day," said the US president as he paused for a moment to control his emotions.

Obama said the gun lobby is taking "Congress hostage, but they cannot hold America hostage."

"So, all of us need to demand that Congress be brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors, and legislators and businesses do their part to make our communities safer," he said.

"We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners, who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented, to join with us to demand something better," he added.

Announcing his executive measures, Obama said anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecutions.

"We're also taking steps to make the background check system more efficient," he said.

"We're going to do more to help those suffering from mental illness get the help that they need," he said, adding that the government is going to boost gun safety technology.

Noting that the US is not the only country on Earth with violent or dangerous people, Obama said the US is only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency.

"It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close," he said.

"Instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarised, partisan debates," he said.

"I am not on the ballot again, I am not looking to score points. I think we can disagree without impugning other people's motives or without being disagreeable. We don't need to be talking past one another, but we do have to feel a sense of urgency about it," Obama said.

He called for a united front by the people in support of his gun control laws.

"We have to be just as organised in the defence of our kids. This is not that complicated. The reason Congress blocks laws is because they want to win elections. If you make it hard for them to win an election if they block those laws, they'll change course, I promise," he asserted amidst applause.

However, he acknowledged that it is a tough call. "It will be hard and it won't happen overnight. It won't happen during this Congress; it won't happen during my presidency. But a lot of things don't happen overnight. A woman's right to vote didn't happen overnight, the liberation of African-Americans didn't happen overnight. LGBT rights, that was decades worth of work. So just because it's hard that's no excuse not to try," he said.

According to a White House fact sheet, over the past decade in America, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence and millions more have been the victim of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun.
United Nations/Dubai: Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.

Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom`s execution of prominent Shi`ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."

"If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran," he said. "We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh`s example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.

Jubeir blamed Iran`s "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.

Shi`ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.

A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia`s Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq`s Shi`ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East`s top Sunni and Shi`ite powers.

But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones.

"The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

CALLS FOR RESTRAINT

Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.

Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a U.S. senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.

"It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the U.S. official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long lasting and sustainable."

Brent jumped 4 percent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.

Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 percent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil.

SYRIA, YEMEN

The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria`s five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria`s political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad`s government.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva.

Saudi U.N. Ambassador Mouallimi said his country`s severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we`re not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh`s decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling.

The U.N. chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shi`ite Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months.

Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared with the size of their economies, but some business is routed through the United Arab Emirates; comprehensive figures are not available. Investment ties are also minimal, though Saudi food conglomerate Savola has major manufacturing operations in Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shi`ites on terrorism charges on Saturday, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shi`ite Iran hailed him as a "martyr" and warned Saudi Arabia`s ruling Al Saud family of "divine revenge".

Shi`ite groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State.

Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticised Saudi Arabia`s judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies.
25-year-old Terri Hunter has revealed that she needs to have sex up to 12 times and that her sexual addiction is out of control. The youn...
(Adds White House spokesman's comment on Syria talks, Saturday's embassy protest)

* Bahrain, Sudan join Saudis in severing ties to Tehran

* Riyadh to halt flights, trade -Saudi foreign minister

* Oil prices spike but settle back

By Michelle Nichols and Sam Wilkin

UNITED NATIONS/DUBAI, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.

Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."

He added, "If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh's example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.

Jubeir blamed Iran's "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom's embassy in Tehran.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.

Shi'ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.

A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq's Shi'ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East's top Sunni and Shi'ite powers.

Story continues

But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones.

"The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

CALLS FOR RESTRAINT

Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.

Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a U.S. senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.

"It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the U.S. official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable."

Brent jumped 4 percent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.

Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 percent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil.

SYRIA, YEMEN

The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

"It was very difficult to get everybody around the table," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism."

Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria's political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad's government.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva.

Saudi U.N. Ambassador Mouallimi said his country's severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh's decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling.

The U.N. chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months.

Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared with the size of their economies, but some business is routed through the United Arab Emirates; comprehensive figures are not available. Investment ties are also minimal, though Saudi food conglomerate Savola has major manufacturing operations in Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shi'ites on terrorism charges on Saturday, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shi'ite Iran hailed him as a "martyr" and warned Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family of "divine revenge".

Shi'ite groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State.

Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticised Saudi Arabia's judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies.

(Additional reporting by Katie Paul, Noah Browning, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations, Tom Perry in Beirut and Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Editing by William Maclean, Howard Goller and Lisa Shumaker)
By Catherine Ngai NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices dropped over 2 percent towards its 11-year low on Tuesday, as traders shrugged off growing tensions between two of the world's biggest oil producers and focused instead on a stronger U.S. dollar and swelling U.S. crude inventories. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran collapsed in acrimony this week after the Kingdom's execution of a Shi'ite cleric set off a storm of protests in Tehran. On Tuesday, Saudi state news agency reported that four armed men set on fire a bus transporting workers in the nation's oil-producing Eastern Province. Instead of fanning fears of a disruption in supplies, however, some Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries delegates said the rift could exacerbate oversupply concerns by quashing already faint hope on a cut in output. The oil market fell under additional pressure from a firmer U.S. dollar <.DXY>, which gained 0.5 percent to hit a one-month high as traders sought safer havens, and signs of a further swell in already record U.S. inventories. [USD/] Brent crude prices fell 80 cents to settle at $36.42 a barrel. Prices hit an 11-year low of $35.98 a barrel just before Christmas, capping a year where the benchmark's value dropped by more than a third. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped 79 cents to settle at $35.97 a barrel. The discount for U.S. WTI crude versus Brent widened by some 25 cents after a report that BP Plc was planning work at a large crude unit at the 413,5000 bpd Whiting, Indiana, refinery, effectively backing more crude into the Cushing, Oklahoma hub. U.S. crude inventories fell 5.6 million barrels last week, American Petroleum Institute data showed. At Cushing, stocks rose 1.4 million barrels. [API/S] Prices pared losses by around 30 cents afterwards, but slipped again afterwards. With so much production globally and healthy inventories, rising geopolitical risks appear muted, according to Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData. "These two elements are serving as not one, but two security blankets for the market, assuaging any potential supply fears." A Reuters survey found that OPEC oil output fell in December. Yet, OPEC production was pumping close to record amounts, signaling few signs that producing members were choosing to reign in output that has pushed prices to 11-year lows. Iran said it was prepared to moderate its output and exports, once sanctions are lifted, to avoid pressuring prices, a senior National Iranian Oil Co official said. (Additional reporting by Karolin Schaps in London; Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
By Malathi Nayak NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc will expand its smart city services to help municipal authorities remotely monitor conditions of roads and bridges in real time and give citizens mobile apps to stay informed about things like traffic and safety problems, the company said on Tuesday. The company's smart cities efforts are aimed at tapping into a market that some expect to grow beyond $1 trillion by 2020. AT&T has not yet broken out revenue or profit for such "Internet of Things" services. These include things like connected cars and wired homes with automated thermostats and security systems. AT&T has been demonstrating its smart cities technology at an event for developers on the sidelines of this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. So far, AT&T's existing smart-city services comprise Web-connected utility meters, street lights and water systems. The No. 2 U.S. wireless company said it is also building a digital dashboard to help city authorities monitor city conditions and developments from power outages to traffic jams. In recent years, authorities of some cities from Barcelona, Spain to San Jose, California, have slowly been working on "smart cities" with telecom and technology companies. The technology being developed aims to improve the quality and cost-efficiency of services such as energy and transportation, and to help manage resources better. Some cities including Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta "have agreed to partner and work with us to deploy some of these solutions together." Chris Penrose, senior vice president of AT&Ts Internet of Things division, said in an interview. "We can actually monitor and measure the real feedback from both citizens and ... savings and improved operational costs for the cities that we can then take that and use with other cities going forward." With the U.S. wireless market reaching saturation, AT&T is looking for new revenue sources by developing Web-connected services including smart cities, connected cars and automated homes. The global market for "smart cities" is expected to grow to about $1.6 trillion in 2020, according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Technology companies have also embarked on smart city efforts such as Alphabet Inc's Sidewalk Labs that is developing technologies aimed at improving urban life and city services. AT&T has forged partnerships with companies including Cisco Systems Inc , General Electric Co , Intel Corp and Qualcomm Inc to develop services for smart cities. In September, it set up a new division to focus on smart cities. (Reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by David Gregorio)
By Paul Ingrassia and Joseph White LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Automakers, not technology companies, are in the drivers seat in developing self-driving, autonomous cars, and Japans Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> is best positioned to lead the way, according to a new report on patents for the fast-evolving technology. As automakers enter agreements with Silicon Valley companies to develop self-driving cars, Tesla Motor Inc and Apple Inc would make logical partners, the report says. The report, by the Intellectual Property and Science division of Thomson Reuters , is based on a detailed analysis of patent filings by automakers and tech companies for autonomous-car technology. The findings illuminate the challenges for both established automakers and Silicon Valley companies as they compete to profit from moving people around in a world that is increasingly congested and concerned about carbon emissions. The global auto industry is in the midst of three simultaneous, and interconnected, technology revolutions. The first is the quest for cleaner alternatives to internal-combustion engines. The second involves connectivity and linking cars to information or data services. Lastly, the autonomy revolution is the effort to develop self-driving cars that could enable services in which electric cars connected to the Web can be summoned to provide rides on demand. "Automakers arent as good as technology companies in tooting their own horns," Tony Trippe, principal author of the report, told Reuters in an interview. "But when you look at the patent data, the automakers are all over this." Toyota is, far and away, the global leader in the number of self-driving car patents, the report found. Toyota is followed by Germanys Robert Bosch GmbH [ROBG.UL], Japans Denso Corp <6902.T>, Koreas Hyundai Motor Co <005380.KS> and General Motors Co . The tech company with the most autonomous-driving patents, Alphabet Inc's Google, ranks 26th on the list. The report from the Thomson Reuters unit comes as auto and technology industry executives are gathering at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where alliances to advance autonomous driving and connected vehicles will be central topics. GM said on Monday it will invest $500 million in Lyft Inc as it forges a Detroit-Silicon Valley partnership with the ride-sharing service to develop an on-demand network of self-driving cars. Toyota, the Thomson Reuters report found, has more than 1,400 patents on autonomous-driving devices, more than twice as many as any other company. One recent Toyota patent application, for example, is for software that avoids a cars self-driving system being switched off, and thus defaulting to manual mode in which the driver controls the car, unless the driver intends to turn off the system. The raw number of patents does not necessarily equate to leadership in developing self-driving cars, Trippe said. Non-U.S. companies tend to be more aggressive in filing patent applications than American companies. The quality of patents is also important, since not all are created equal. Another potential limitation of the report is the 18-month lag time between patent filings and when the filings are published for the public. In reality, driverless-car development will require alliances between automakers and technology companies, even though both sides will try to gain the upper hand in partnerships. A Toyota spokesman said the automaker views a fully self-driving car as a long term goal, but one that must wait for autonomous driving systems that never make a mistake. In the meantime, Toyota is accelerating efforts to equip cars with automatic braking and other safety systems that can help avoid crashes. Most experts say fully self-driving vehicles are unlikely to be roaming roads in large numbers for many years yet. Google has been testing self-driving cars since 2009, though, and automakers such as Daimler , BMW and Volkswagen AG's Audi unit have revealed cars that can travel long distances without human intervention. Trippe said Apple and Tesla would make logical partners in autonomous cars because they have complementary, not duplicative patents. Tesla's strength is propulsion technology, notably batteries, while Apple's is in electronic navigation and communication systems. As the race to develop self-driving cars heats up, automakers are also introducing more semi-autonomous driving systems that handle tedious or tricky situations. Audi, for instance, is expected to use the CES show to outline progress on a system that allows cars to pilot themselves in traffic jams at low speeds. (Reporting By Paul Ingrassia and Joseph White; Editing by Tom Brown)
Terror group Islamic State is employing scientists and weapons experts to train jihadists to carry out sophisticated "spectacular" attacks in Europe, while also modifying weapons systems capable of targeting passenger jets and military aircraft.

:: IS Killings Video: Voice Likely To Be Rumaysah

From a "jihadi university" in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the scientists have stunned western weapons experts by producing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles.

It had been regarded as a virtually impossible feat for terror groups working without a military infrastructure.

But footage exclusively obtained by Sky News shows that IS can now recommission thousands of missiles assumed by western governments to have been redundant through old age.

Heat-seeking warheads can be used to attack passenger and military aircraft. They are 99% accurate once locked on.

For decades terror groups, including the IRA, had these weapons but storing them and maintaining the thermal battery - a key component to the warhead - was very difficult.

It seems that IS scientists have got round the problem, and that revelation will shock the world of international security.

The IS research and development team has produced fully working remote controlled cars to act as mobile bombs, while they have fitted the cars with "drivers"; mannequins with self-regulating thermostats to produce the heat signature of humans, allowing the car bombs to evade sophisticated scanning machines that protect military and government buildings in the West.

The group trained fighters from a variety of countries to carry out attacks and to train more jihadists in their own countries.

An IS trainer with more than eight hours of unedited training videos was captured by the remnants of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as he headed north through Turkey towards Europe.

The FSA passed the material to Sky News but was not aware of the importance of the videos, described by a weapons adviser to the British military as an intelligence "gold mine".

Story continues

Using aerial and satellite imagery Sky News has identified the location of the "university" and pieced together the apparently random collection of video files to reveal the true extent of IS's sophisticated development and training team.

Although this type of activity had been widely suspected by western intelligence services, this is the first concrete evidence that it is taking place.

Crucially, it is far more developed than had previously been thought possible.

Groups of trainees from a range of countries including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Egypt and Pakistan were given terror training courses using science labs and facilities based around the former Equestrian Centre in Raqqa.

The extensive collection of videos shows the men being trained to adapt the electronic parts of scrap cars to make the remote controlled cars work using sophisticated un-jammable radio sets; and long lessons on how to configure the mannequins to appear like human drivers.

Some of the trainers and designers make no effort to disguise themselves but the "students" remain largely concealed.

While it is clear that all those involved have a clear idea what their objective is, at no point do they reveal the nature of their intended targets.

Security analysts believe it is an indicator that they are trying to preserve their own operational security while accepting that they need to train and circulate the videos to followers abroad.

Major Chris Hunter, a former bomb technician in the special forces and adviser to the British military, said he was shocked at some of the developments revealed in the videos .

He said: "I think this is one of the most significant intelligence finds in terms of Daesh.

"What we've seen with their typical propaganda videos is they're very, very high quality.

"They're designed, they're produced to inspire people and prospectively touch the nerves of anybody who is viewing them; they're done in a very specific way.

"With this training footage it's very clearly purely designed to pass on information - to pass on the progress in the research and development areas - and it gives us a very good insight into where they are now, what they're aspiring to do and crucially the diversity of the types of threats we might face.

"So I would say it's an intel gold mine."

In one of the videos a man speaking in Russian walks a camera through a store containing an array of explosive materials from TNT, improvised missiles to plastic explosives.

He explains how the materials can all be used to make bombs if they have obtained the correct fuses.

In Turkey an IS defector confirmed to Sky News that a top secret training programme was known about in Raqqa, his home town. He confirmed the programme was designed for attacks in Europe and further afield.

The defector told Sky News: "Videoing and documenting this training programme was meant for Europe to cause huge damage.

"If it was meant internally (inside Syria) they could send someone to set an explosive device or wire a car as they are able to do this (openly).

"But doing such a programme and documenting it was meant to target a large number of people and in more than one location, of course it wasn't meant either for Syria or Iraq."

This collection of videos is far more serious than anything we have seen from IS before.

A jihadi college training foreign fighters to fight in other countries, while developing missiles to continue the war in Syria, was suspected but never seen.

Although this film was intercepted it is thought likely there will be others in circulation, and there are hundreds if not thousands of jihadists eager to learn.

Sky News has alerted the authorities to the material that has come into its possession.

The Foreign Office responded with a statement: "Daesh will use all measures at their disposal to cause harm, and Britain will never be cowed by such terrorists. Our values are so much stronger than theirs. It will take time but this is an organisation that is losing territory and will be defeated."

:: Download Special Reports and Documentaries from Sky News on Catch Up. Available to Sky+ HD customers with set-top boxes connected to broadband.
(Reuters) - Federal officials are investigating the lead contamination of drinking water in Flint, Michigan, after the financially beleaguered city switched sources to save money, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney in Detroit said on Tuesday. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder apologized in late December for the state's mishandling of lead contamination of Flint's water supply and accepted the resignation of the state official whose department is responsible for overseeing water quality. The U.S. Attorney's Office is working closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address the concerns of Flint residents and investigate the contamination of Flint's water supply, said Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney. Balaya would not say whether the office was looking at possible criminal or civil violations and said the U.S. Attorney normally would not even confirm the existence of an investigation. "In light of the situation and the concerns of Flint residents we felt it necessary to put out there that we are looking into it," Balaya said. Snyder later on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in Genessee County, which includes Flint, authorizing additional state resources to address the health and safety issues. The city declared a local emergency in mid December. Snyder spokesman Dave Murray said the state would cooperate with any requests from the U.S. Attorney's Office "as it looks into Flint's water challenges." The governor has appointed an independent panel to review local, state and federal actions related to the drinking water situation and is working with city and county leaders, he said. The financially strapped city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its source of tap water to the nearby Flint River in April 2014 from Detroit's water system to save money. Flint, about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit, returned to Detroit water in October after tests found some children had elevated levels of lead in their blood and lead was found in higher-than-acceptable levels in the water. Lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities and at high levels can lead to seizures and death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Flint residents also have filed a federal lawsuit accusing the city and state of endangering their health by switching the water source. (Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
France has marked the first anniversary of the attacks in Paris which started at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and ended with 17 people killed.

President Francois Hollande unveiled plaques outside the publication's offices, at the spot where a policeman was shot and at a supermarket where more were murdered a year ago this week.

He was accompanied by families of those who died, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

It comes nearly two months after later attacks, claimed by Islamic State, that saw another 130 people killed by extremists.

Nearby the Charlie Hebdo offices, a message of support for the Muslim officer who was shot dead while responding to the attack was painted on the pavement, reading "Je suis Ahmed," or "I am Ahmed".

Ahmed Merabet was trying to stop two heavily armed men from fleeing the scene and was gunned down.

Two Kalashnikov-wielding brothers had stormed into the offices of the satirical magazine on the morning of 7 January, 2015, while an editorial meeting was under way before killing 11 people.

The "Je suis Ahmed" slogan was adapted into "Je suis Charlie" to provide a way for millions of people around the world to show their support for freedom of speech and reject the terrorists' ideas.

Another terrorist killed four people at a kosher supermarket in an attack that revived concerns about anti-Semitism in the country with Europe's largest Jewish community.

A siege at the supermarket in Porte de Vincennes ended on 9 January when police carried out a raid and shot Amedy Coulibaly dead.

The two brothers who attacked the magazine, Said and Cherif Kouchai, died around the same time when they too were shot by marksmen.

In its anniversary edition, Charlie Hebdo accuses Islamic fundamentalists, organised religion, an irresolute government and intelligence failures for the violence in France in 2015.

The widow of a bodyguard killed at the Charlie Hebdo offices said on Tuesday she wants an investigation into security there.

Ingrid Brinsolaro said her husband "saw dysfunctions" and "it was impossible to do his job correctly in these conditions."
A Canadian filmmaker found stabbed to death outside his home in Belize Monday evening is being remembered as a multi-talented "ambassador" for his hometown of Gatineau, Que.

Belize police told CBC News that Matthiew Klinck, 37, was found lying face-up about five-metres from his home, which "appeared ransacked." He had been stabbed 14 times in his lower neck and upper back, local police Supt. Andrew Ramirez told CBC News.

There are no suspects at this time.

His mother Louise Dallaire, who lives in Gatineau, told Radio-Canada that she is flying to Belize with family members on Thursday.

Jacques Menard, commissioner for the Gatineau-Outaouais Film and Television Office, knew Klinck as someone with an "entrepreneur spirit," who worked as a producer, director, videographer and editor.

"He was great as an ambassador for the region because of his travels all over the world," he said. "It's just a very sad story that his family would lose him, his friends would lose him and the region would lose this guy."

Klinck directed the 2007 film Greg & Gentillon, about two small-time comedians, and the 2008 film Hank and Mike, an Easter movie about holiday mascots. He was living and working in Belize at the time of his death.

Klinck last seen alive Saturday

Klinck's body "was in its initial stage of decomposition" when it was found around 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 4 in an "isolated" area in the village of Selena in the western part of Belize, Ramirez said.

He had not been seen since Saturday afternoon, Ramirez said.

He offered his "sincerest condolences" to Klinck's family.

"We will try our utmost best to find out who did this heinous act upon Mr. Klinck and to bring proper closure and make sure justice prevails," Ramirez said. "We want to know if he has any enemies around the community."

An autopsy confirmed that he died of internal and external bleeding, Ramirez said.
By Jonathan Allen and Jim Urquhart

BURNS, Ore. (Reuters) - Residents of the Oregon town thrust into the spotlight after self-styled militiamen took over a U.S. wildlife refuge voiced sympathy for the jailed ranchers whose plight inspired the action but were critical of the armed protesters.

Saturday's takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Oregon, marked the latest protest over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual rights.

Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, who on Monday surrendered to serve longer prison terms for setting fires that spread to federal land, had been regulars at a town diner where residents were sympathetic and said they feared the federal government wanted to seize ranch lands for its own use.

"The BLM wants that land bad and they'll probably end up getting it," said Tim Slate, a butcher who said he had gone out to slaughter the Hammonds' cattle many times over the years, using an acronym for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "The federal government wants to take over the state of Oregon and turn it into a park."

Diners voiced skepticism about protest leader Ammon Bundy, the son of a Nevada rancher who along with a large group of armed men successfully stared down federal agents in 2014 when the government attempted to confiscate his livestock because he refused to pay grazing fees.

"I don't think it's right to take over a public building," said James Arndt, a retired painter. "I'm kind of mixed about that."

He echoed other residents of the town of some 3,000 people about 280 miles (451 km) southeast of Portland, who viewed the occupation as the work of outside agitators. Lawyers from the Hammonds have sought to disassociate themselves from the occupiers, saying that the action did not represent their clients' will.

Story continues

But Bundy said some locals had been stopping by with food for the occupiers.

"A particular rancher ... brought a very, very good pot of soup that was needed on a late night when we were very hungry," he said.

Authorities have closed schools for the week in the area out of concerns of possible violence, although so far the occupation has been peaceful.

'NOT ABOUT FEAR'

Bundy on Tuesday said his group, which has named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, wanted to work with residents of Harney County to help them regain unfettered access to public lands for ranching and logging.

"We're not about fear, we're not about force, we're not about intimidation," Bundy told reporters at the refuge. "If the government is bringing that fear and intimidation, it needs to be checked and balanced."

Early in the occupation Bundy said that many of his supporters were armed, although members of the occupation have not been showing weapons in recent days.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward, in a statement on behalf of himself and County Judge Steven Grasty on Monday, asked group members to go home. He called a Tuesday afternoon meeting for county residents to discuss their concerns about the situation.

Neither protesters nor authorities have said how many people are involved in the occupation. About a dozen occupiers have been visible at the site.

The FBI said it was working with state and local law enforcement for a peaceful resolution and federal law enforcement officials have kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which is closed to visitors. They are following U.S. policy guidelines instituted to prevent such standoffs from turning deadly as they did in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas in the early 1990s.

"It's not exactly clear what the motives or intentions are of the individuals who are involved in this particular situation. The speculation by some is that it's politically motivated," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday. "I certainly wouldn't want to say something from here that could be construed as inflaming that situation."

The success of the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch, likely emboldened the occupiers of the refuge, observers said.

"They forced the federal government at gunpoint to stand down. They won," said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups.

"The group that's holed up there in Burns seems to think they're going to take that same idea to another level: You solve your issues over land usage or grazing fees or whatever by refusing to pay up and then using weapons to run cops off the land."

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Andy Sullivan and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott)
By Kevin Drawbaugh and Emily Stephenson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. politicians condemned Pfizer Inc's deal with Allergan Plc as a tax dodge on Monday, bringing another round of hand-wringing in Washington over the corporate tax code, though legislative action before 2017 is unlikely. Democrats heaped the most criticism on the New York-based drug maker, with Hillary Clinton accusing Pfizer of using legal loopholes to avoid its "fair share" of taxes in a deal that she said "will leave U.S. taxpayers holding the bag." The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in the November 2016 election said she will propose steps to prevent more inversions, but she did not provide details. "We cannot delay in cracking down on inversions that erode our tax base," said the ex-U.S. secretary of state and former New York senator in a statement. Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has called for a corporate tax overhaul, called the deal "disgusting" in a statement, saying "our politicians should be ashamed." Pfizer is doing the largest inversion deal of all time. In a $160-billion transaction, it plans to move its tax address from the United States to Ireland, if only on paper, by buying and merging into Allergan, a smaller, Dublin-based competitor. The combined company will be called Pfizer and will be run by Pfizer's CEO, with executive management staying in New York and extensive operations across the United States, but it will no longer be taxed as a U.S. company. More than 50 similar deals have been done over three decades by well-known companies such as Medtronic Plc, Fruit of the Loom and Ingersoll-Rand Plc. Congressional researchers have estimated inversions, left unchecked, will cost the U.S. Treasury nearly $20 billion in the next 10 years. The White House declined to comment on Pfizer's deal, but a spokesman told reporters in a briefing that Congress should take action to prevent more such transactions. The U.S. Treasury Department last week unveiled new rules to clamp down on inversions, its second attempt to do so since a wave of deals peaked in September 2014. But the latest rules amounted to tweaks of existing law and will not impede the Pfizer-Allergan transaction, tax experts said. Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's chief rival for the Democratic nomination, said the deal "would allow another major American corporation to hide its profits overseas." Perhaps anticipating the deal would draw fire, Pfizer CEO Ian Read sent a letter on Monday to senior senators. The letter said, "We will maintain our global operational headquarters in New York City. At the time we close the transaction, we will have over 40,000 employees across 25 states ... We will be gaining greater access to resources that will enable us to make significant investments in the U.S." TAPING OFFSHORE ABROAD Pfizer holds about $74 billion in profits offshore that, thanks to another loophole, it has not brought into the United States to avoid paying the taxes due under America's worldwide corporate tax system. As an Irish-domiciled company, it will have less costly access to those funds. Representative Tom Price, one of few congressional Republicans to comment on Monday, said in a statement that more Treasury regulations will not solve the inversions problem. "The only real solution to curbing inversions is tax reform," he said. But Congress, divided over fiscal issues, is widely seen as unlikely to tackle a tax overhaul before the 2016 elections. Pfizer built their business on the back of our research and development tax incentives, our federally supported medical research, our skilled workforce, and our infrastructure," said Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro in a statement. "We cannot continue to allow Pfizer and other corporations to pretend that they are American while reaping the benefits this country has to offer, yet claiming to be another nationality when the tax bill comes," she said. (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Julia Edwards and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Christian Plumb and Lisa Shumaker)
A Scottish man is being deported from Kyrgyzstan after he compared the countrys national dish to a horses penis, according to reports.

Michael McFeat, a mine worker from Abernethy based in Kyrgyzstan, was arrested after he posted the joke on Facebook.

Alongside a picture of his co-workers queuing in the canteen for chuchuk horse meat sausage on December 31, 2015, he posted a message comparing the delicacy to horse penis.

The post read: The Kyrgyz people queuing out of the door for there special delicacy the horses penis!!!

Mr McFeat later deleted the message and posted an apology on his Facebook page, writing: I would like to take the opportunity to sincerely apologise for the comment I made on here about the kygyz people and horses penis.

I truly never meant to offend anyone and Im truly sorry as it was never my intention.

I would also like to say the people in the picture had absolutely nothing to do with it. Again Im very very sorry.

However, despite the apology, it is believed Mr McFeat was held by police. The BBC reported that he is being deported, but because of a problem with his documentation, not because of his joke.

It was reported that Mr McFeat was arrested at Manas International Airport, near the capital Bishkek, on Sunday.

Under race hate laws in Kyrgyzstan, he could have faced up to five years in prison for his joke.

He worked at the Kumtor gold mine, which is operated by Canadian company Centerra Gold.

Staff offended by his joke went on a temporary strike at the mine, it was reported.

(Picture: Michael McFeat/Facebook)
A political strategist in Ottawa is praising St. Johns South-Mount Pearl MP Seamus O'Regan for going public about his battle with the bottle, but Tim Powers says staying sober will be a lifelong challenge.

Its a very brave thing to do, and we all wish him luck as he begins this battle, which doesnt end. It lasts your whole life, said Powers, in an interview Monday with CBC Television's Here and Now.

I say bravo to Seamus on both fronts, he said about O'Regans decision to seek treatment, and to talk openly about it.

As a politician, hes a leader, said Powers. And by going public and talking about his struggles, he helps humanize an issue  alcohol addiction  thats very real for many people.

Power, who spoke with O'Regan Sunday said he doesnt know if any one thing was a catalyst.

Seamus has had a lot of change in his life over the last year-and-a-half. Im not a doctor so I wont try and diagnose how that manifested itself, but I think he decided.that now is the time to take control.

Ottawa like a frat party

Powers, who is now vice chair of Summa Strategies, has worked with the Conservative Party of Canada and with John Crosbie when he was Minister of Fisheries.

He said Ottawa can be a tough place to stay sober.

There are a number of other politicians here that fight the demon drink, said Power.

Ottawa is a bit like a frat party all of the time. Hes going to need good support around here, and people who will help him when he feels the temptation to drink again.

He said O'Regan is not the first MP to struggle with alcoholism.

In 2012 an MP here in Ottawa on the NDP side, Romeo Saganash, announced he was taking a leave to deal with alcohol. The current immigration minister John McCallum had some struggles before that were publicized, said Powers.

Historians will tell you Canada was conceived over a bottle. John A. Macdonald and all the fathers of confederation drank quite heavily when they brought Canada together a hundred and some odd years ago, so its sadly part and parcel of political life, and everyday life.

Story continues

As for O'Regans poliitcal future and his friendship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Powers said the most important thing is O'Regans own health.

Every relationship he has, has likely been influenced by alcohol and now he wants to put that out of his life, and one would think that only creates the opportunity for improvement.

Powers said O'Regan will have to lean on his friends and family when he returns to Parliament, and to everyday life.

He may fail, he may stumble sometimes. Humans do that, but as long as he continues to try to get back up I think he will always have support.
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army and allied militias launched an offensive in the Golan Heights on Thursday, in what rebels said was part of a major assault to regain ground in southern Syria the government had lost over the last three years. Rebels said the attacks began at dawn, when the army stormed the village of Samdaniya al Gharbiya, near the border with Israel. The army said the village was captured, but rebels in the area said heavy fighting continued. Under cover of rain and fog, government troops pushed toward the strategic town of Hamdanieh, in the Syrian Golan Heights, which they lost two years ago, according to residents and rebels. "They staged a large-scale attack under cover of heavy fog, where you can hardly someone only a few meters away from you, on the two villages," said Abu Yaha, a spokesman for al-Wiyat al Furqan, a rebel group in the area. The attacks came in Quneitra province, a sensitive piece of territory around 70 km (40 miles) southwest of the capital, Damascus. It has seen frequent fighting between various insurgent groups and the Syrian military and its militia allies. The army was mostly relying on ground troops and heavy artillery bombardments, said a member of another rebel group, Seif al Sham. Proximity to the Israeli border makes it difficult to use air power extensively. Israel seized part of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed it later. Concern is growing in Israel over the presence in Quneitra of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, an ally of the Syrian government. Syrian state media said Samir Qantar, a Hezbollah leader killed in Damascus two weeks ago, had been involved in another offensive earlier this year in Quneitra. Israel welcomed Qantar's death but has not confirmed it carried out the attack that killed him. The offensive in Quneitra was the government's first in the south since Russia joined the war on Sept. 30 in support of its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Thursday's attacks came just days after an assault on the town of Sheikh Maksin that saw Russia's heaviest bombing campaign so far in the south. The commander of one rebel group in the region said Russia had launched at least 100 air raids against its positions over two days. The air campaign had tipped the balance in favor of the government, the commander said. But its initial gains were lost and the army repelled. Before it gained Russia's help, the government had mounted an offensive in the south last February but failed to make much headway after months of attacks. Sheikh Maskin appears to be the main objective of the latest offensive. The town lies on one of the main supply routes from Damascus to the city of Deraa, close to the border with Jordan. Taking Sheikh Maskin would allow the army to press further south against other mainly rebel-held towns. Rebels have seized almost 70 percent of the countryside over three years. But this year they failed to capture Baath city and Khan Arnabah, the last remaining major towns in hands of the government. Baath city, effectively the provincial capital of Quneitra province, was shelled with mortars on Thursday in response to the army assault, two rebels in the area said. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, editing by Larry King)
Industry News

Association of American Colleges and Universities Selects New President

The Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has selected Lynn Pasquerella as the organization's newest president. AAC&U's 4th president, Pasquerella will take office July 1.

"Pasquerella began her own education as a student at Quinebaug Valley Community College in Danielson, CT," according to a news release from the organization. "A first-generation college student, she earned her bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College and her PhD in philosophy from Brown University. Serving as president of Mount Holyoke since 2010, Pasquerella has led a robust strategic planning process and extensive outreach to local and regional communities as well as the worldwide network of Mount Holyoke alumnae. She has focused on access for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds to a powerful, engaged and public-spirited liberal education."

Pasquerella previously spent 23 years at the University of Rhode Island as a professor of philosophy and in various administrative roles, including department chair and dean of the graduate school. She also served as provost at the University of Hartford from 2008 to 2010.

"Throughout the search process, Dr. Pasquerella impressed the committee with her clear commitment to liberal education and inclusive excellence, which are the pillars of AAC&U's mission; her ability to articulate those principles; and her understanding of higher education in today's society," said Past Board Chair Kenneth P. Ruscio, president of Washington and Lee University and chair of the search committee, in a prepared statement.

"Lynn Pasquerella has long been a friend and colleague to me and an admired AAC&U president and leader," said current AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider, in a news release. "I am completely delighted to welcome her as my successor. Her extensive experience in both public and private higher education, together with her life's journey from early studies in a community college to worldwide recognition as a public ethicist, show both the reach of AAC&U's mission and the power of our educational vision. I look forward to working with her on a smooth transition and a great launch for AAC&U's next era of creativity and educational leadership."
Security and Safety

Universities Roll Out Custom Mobile Safety Apps

Several universities in the US and Canada are turning to custom mobile safety apps to enhance security and safety on campus.

Red River College, the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Georgian College, Centennial College and the University of Florida have each partnered with developer AppArmor to create safety apps customized for their campuses. The AppArmor platform provides smartphone users with "instant access to their campus's safety resources in order to help raise awareness of those services and improve emergency responses in a crisis," according to the company.

Features of the platform include:

Campus Police resources;

Unlimited mass notifications;

Real-time chat with dispatch;

Geolocation tracking features;

Interactive crime mapping;

Offline ready emergency plans; and

Student support resources.

The University of Florida's implementation of AppArmor took just under two months, reported David Sinkinson, AppArmor co-founder, in a press release. "Our customization technology and the amazing team at the UFPD helped take this project from idea to completion in less than 60 days."

"The new application, Gator Safe, has all of the requested features at a fraction of the cost of the application the university was previously using," said Edward Posey, administrative coordinator for the University of Florida Police Department, in a statement. "I can't think of any other company that has been as easy and beneficial to work with."
Global Manufacturing Activity Entered 2016 Like a Lamb

(Continued from Prior Part)

Japanese manufacturing PMI unchanged at 52.6 in December

Manufacturing is the backbone of any economys growth. The manufacturing sector accounts for ~19% of Japans GDP. According to Markit, Japans manufacturing PMI (purchasing managers index) remain unchanged at 52.6 in December 2015, same as November PMI level.

Although Japanese manufacturers have reported strong numbers, the global manufacturing was weak in December. As a result, the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ) and the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity ETF (DXJ) fell 1.6% and 2.2%, respectively, on January 4. Over the past month, EWJ and DXJ have declined 3.7% and 11.2%, respectively, as of January 4.

Sony Corporation (SNE), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MTU), Honda Motor Co. (HMC), and Toyota Motor Corporation (TM) fell by 2.3%, 5.5%, 5.0%, and 3.0%, respectively, over the past month as of January 4.

New orders and production grew in December

In Japan, Decembers readings for new orders and production increased, yielding the highest readings since March 2014. The consumer goods and investment goods subsectors both saw growth in December.

This indicates a sustained improved performance by Japanese manufacturers. New product launches and their advertising campaigns helped gather steam for new product demand in domestic and international markets.

The total increase in new orders in December was led by a jump in new export orders, particularly from Taiwan and Southeastern Asian countries. This number has risen at its fastest rate since June. An increase in output and new orders led to an increase in Japans employment in December.

Input cost declined in December

The decline in crude prices has resulted in a decrease in input costs for manufacturers. Japanese manufacturers passed their lower cost benefits to customers, but at a slight rate in December.

With continued strong readings in December, the manufacturing sector may help Japans GDP to signal growth in 4Q15. Lets look at manufacturing activity in Mexico in the next article.

Story continues

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
By Igor Ilic ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia's small reformist Most party on Tuesday renounced coalition talks with the outgoing Social Democrats (SDP), saying it was trying to poach some of its members, in the second month of squabbling since an inconclusive election. Most, meaning "bridge" in Croatian, holds 15 seats, enough so that no party can form a cabinet without its support. Since the Nov. 8 vote, Most has held talks with both the SDP and the opposition conservative party HDZ. President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic held a fourth round of consultations with the parliamentary parties on Tuesday in the hope of reaching a deal. She is due to make an announcement later in the day on what steps will be taken. If no one proves capable of forming a government she must call a new election, although there is no legal deadline for such a move. Most leader Bozo Petrov said the Social Democrats (SDP) had tried to convince some Most deputies to join them in the event that talks on a coalition government fail. "We cannot have confidence in such a partner," Petrov told reporters. Prime Minister and the SDP leader Zoran Milanovic rejected the accusation and said his party had accepted almost all of Most's conditions for a future cabinet. The November polls gave the main opposition conservative HDZ party 59 seats in Zagreb's 151-seat parliament, three more than Milanovic's center-left bloc. Croatia, the newest European Union member, is under pressure from the bloc to enact reforms, including some to encourage investment and restrain public debt, which is running close to 90 percent of gross domestic product. Any prolonged delay in forming a government could hold up these much-needed changes. Most wants a reformist government comprising all three parties, and a non-party, technocrat prime minister. However, the party has also said it was ready to side with one of the major parties if the other rejected its conditions. The conservatives have rejected the trilateral talks but said they could accept Most as a partner in the government. Most, founded three years ago by municipal politicians and independents, says it wants to overhaul Croatia's bloated public sector, reduce debt and attract foreign investors. "Most can hardly be seen as a credible partner as it has changed attitude several times during the coalition talks." political analyst Ivan Rimac said. Croatia's economy is expected to grow around 1.5 percent this year after it lost 13.1 percent of its overall output from 2009 to 2014. (Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Oil prices ended the final trading session of 2015 by posting an annual drop of 31%. On the other hand, natural gas continued its rebound from multi-year lows but was still down 19% in 2015.

On the news front, ConocoPhillips COP and NuStar Energy L.P. NS claimed to have loaded the first export cargo of domestic crude oil following recent lifting of the 40-year federal ban.

Overall, it was a mixed week for the sector. While West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures slumped 23% to close at $37.04 per barrel, natural gas prices soared 12% to $2.337 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: Shell Cuts 2016 Budget, Chevron Axes 1200 Jobs.)

Oil prices fell in reaction to the U.S. Energy Department's latest inventory release that showed a surprise increase in stockpiles. Crude received a further jolt after Saudi Arabia said that it wont limit oil production and is ready to meet any additional demand.

Natural gas, however, fared much better after an inventory report showed a bigger-than-expected withdrawal. The heating fuel was also buoyed by predictions of strong demand due to cooler weather forecasts over the next two weeks.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. Following the lifting of the four-decade long U.S. oil export ban last month, the first crude tanker departed from Texas for export.

The light crude  loaded in the tanker by oil and gas finder ConocoPhillips and midstream firm NuStar Energy L.P.  was pumped from South Texas-based Eagle Ford Shale.

As per NuStar, Switzerland-based crude trading player Vitol Group  which also has interests in the refineries  will purchase the crude cargo. Vitol Group is also expected to be the buyer of the second light oil cargo that may be exported from Houston this week. (See More: U.S. Light Crude Sails Overseas After 40 Years.)

2. Canadas largest energy firm Suncor Energy Inc. SU may not close the door on its Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. buyout even if shareholders of the latter reject the deal.

Story continues

Shareholders of Canadian Oil Sands have until Jan 8, 2016 to decide on whether to accept Suncor Energys offer of 0.25 share for every share of Canadian Oil Sand. For Suncor Energy, this would be a winning deal if and only if 67% of Canadian Oil Sands shares get tendered. Most importantly, Suncor Energy believes its offer is quite acceptable especially when oil price has been weak for more than a year now with almost no chance of any near-term recovery.

But Canadian Oil Sands has considered Suncor Energys bid significantly undervalued and is mulling over remaining an independent player. In fact, billionaire Seymour Schulich, having a 5.2% stake in Canadian Oil Sands, has considered the bid totally unacceptable.

3. Norways Statoil ASA STO has concluded two deals involving farm in and farm out of fields, which are likely to increase the companys operatorship in priority areas. These transactions will also enhance its control over asset development and costs.

To begin with, Statoil has divested a 15% interest in the Gudrun field on the Norwegian Continental Shelf to Spain-based Repsol. Even after shedding the stake, Statoil remains the operator and largest equity holder with an interest of 36%. Statoil has also acquired a 13% stake in their Eagle Ford joint venture from Repsol. With this purchase the company will become the fields sole operator. This will facilitate Statoil to optimize field development along with driving efficiency in operations and cost savings.

Both the Gudrun and Eagle Ford transactions, effective Jan 1, 2016, were valued at the same amount. The deals, which were first announced on Dec 11, 2015, were concluded at year's end following the receipt of government approvals.

4. ConocoPhillips, the operator of Eldfisk and Embla oilfields in the North Sea, announced that both these fields have restarted production. Both the fields were shutdown on New Years Eve following concerns that the installations could be hit by a drifting barge.

Located in the middle of the North Sea between Norway and Britain, BP plc's Valhall platform and ConocoPhillips's Eldfisk and Embla, lay on the way of the drifting vessel, instigating staff evacuations.

Ekofisk crude oil stream represents one of four North Sea crudes supporting the global Brent oil benchmark. ConocoPhillips' Embla and Eldfisk fields form a part of the Ekofisk crude oil stream. (See More: ConocoPhillips' Eldfisk and Embla Oilfields Restart Production.)

5. With the sale of its stake in natural gas distribution unit, Brazils Petrobras PBR has ultimately reached its 2015 asset sale goal of $700 million. Raising cash through divesting properties has been a prime way for the company to pay off its massive debt load after it got involved in a money laundering scam.

In details, Petrobras announced the closure of sale of its 49% interest in Petrobras Gas S.A., or Gaspetro  primarily involved in the transportation and storage of natural gas and natural gas liquid  for $501 million to Mitsui & Co Ltd. of Japan. After fulfilling its 2015 asset sale program, the largest integrated energy firm in Brazil is on its way to fetch as high as $15 billion from its asset disposal program spread over 2015-2016. (See More: Petrobras Closes $700 Million Asset Sale Program for 2015.)

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major oil and gas players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Company Last Week Last 6 Months XOM -1.71% -6.14% CVX -3.38% -6.25% COP -2.82% -20.62% OXY -0.53% -8.78% SLB -1.20% -17.14% RIG -2.46% -15.88% VLO -2.41% +7.04% TSO +3.51% +17.04%

Over the course of last week, The Energy Select Sector SPDR suffered a loss of 0.25% as investors witnessed a bout of selling in major companies. The worst performer was U.S. energy behemoth Chevron Corp. CVX whose stock shed 3.4%.

Longer-term, over the last 6 months, The Energy Select Sector SPDR lost 19.1% of its value. Houston-based energy major ConocoPhillips was the main laggard, as it witnessed a 20.6% price decline. However, refiner Tesoro Corp. TSO was able to buck the trend and was the chief beneficiary on the bourses with its shares advancing 17% during this period.

Whats Next in the Energy World?

Apart from the usual releases in this week  the U.S. government data on oil and natural gas  market participants will be closely tracking a series of top-tier economic readings, including those on factory orders, jobless claims and nonfarm payrolls.

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IRVING, TX--(Marketwired - January 05, 2016) - Reata has enrolled its first patient with pulmonary hypertension associated with interstitial lung disease (PH-ILD) into LARIAT, a Phase 2 study examining the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of bardoxolone methyl in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). The expanded LARIAT trial is now enrolling patients with PH associated with certain types of interstitial lung disease that are classified in the following categories:

WHO Group 3 pulmonary hypertension patients with interstitial lung diseases:

WHO Group 5 pulmonary hypertension patients with sarcoidosis

Data recently presented at the CHEST meeting demonstrated that bardoxolone methyl improves functional capacity as assessed by the 6 minute walk test in WHO Group 1 PH (pulmonary arterial hypertension) patients who are already receiving stable, approved background therapies. The largest magnitude changes were noted in patients with connective tissue disease-associated PAH (CTD-PAH), and these patients typically respond less well to available therapies and have poorer overall outcomes. On the basis of these clinical data, as well as preclinical data demonstrating activity of bardoxolone methyl and analogs in several types of connective tissue disease and fibrotic pulmonary conditions, Reata has expanded its PH program into these interstitial lung disease patients.

"We are pleased to announce that we have quickly expanded our PH program into interstitial lung disease patients who have no approved therapies to treat their pulmonary hypertension," said Colin Meyer, M.D., Reata's Chief Medical Officer. "We hypothesize that bardoxolone methyl's novel mechanism of action of improving mitochondrial function and suppressing inflammation can translate to improved functional capacity in PH patients with interstitial lung disease."

About Bardoxolone Methyl

Bardoxolone methyl is an experimental, oral, once-daily antioxidant inflammation modulator (AIM) that has received orphan drug designation for the treatment of PAH by the US Food and Drug Administration. Bardoxolone methyl directly targets the bioenergetic and inflammatory components of PH. PH patients experience mitochondrial dysfunction, increased production of NF-B and related inflammatory pathways involved in ROS signaling, cellular proliferation, and fibrosis. Bardoxolone methyl, through the combined effect of Nrf2 activation and NF-B suppression, has the potential to inhibit inflammatory and proliferative signaling, suppress ROS production and signaling, reduce the production of enzymes related with fibrosis and tissue remodeling, and increase ATP production and cellular respiration.

Story continues

About the LARIAT Study

LARIAT (A Dose-Ranging Study of the Efficacy and Safety of Bardoxolone Methyl in Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension) is a Phase 2 dose-ranging study examining the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of bardoxolone methyl in patients with PH on stable background therapy. To determine if bardoxolone methyl could complement approved PAH therapies, the Phase 2 study is designed to assess efficacy through exercise capacity.

Reata announced initial data from the LARIAT trial evaluating bardoxolone methyl in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients at the annual meeting of the 2015 American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) in Montreal, Canada.

All patients in the initial study cohorts were on stable doses of background PAH therapies at baseline and throughout the study. Efficacy analyses showed that bardoxolone methyl increased 6-minute walk distance (6MWD) in idiopathic PAH patients at doses of 2.5 to 10 mg through 16 weeks of treatment. PAH patients treated with bardoxolone methyl demonstrated a statistically significant mean increase in 6MWD compared to baseline of 22 m and a placebo-corrected difference of 21.4 m (p = 0.037). Notably, patients with connective tissue disease associated PAH (CTD-PAH), who typically experience less therapeutic benefit from approved PAH therapies, demonstrated a mean increase from baseline in 6MWD of 30 m and a placebo-corrected change of 44 m. This change may reflect the novel anti-inflammatory, metabolic, and mitochondrial effects of bardoxolone methyl.

Safety analyses from LARIAT demonstrated that bardoxolone methyl was well-tolerated with relatively fewer discontinuations in bardoxolone methyl-treated PAH patients compared to those who received placebo. No drug-related serious adverse events were reported, and the adverse event profile was manageable. Importantly, unlike previous observations in a subset of patients with advanced kidney disease, no fluid retention events or less severe manifestations of fluid retention were observed in the LARIAT PAH subjects. No meaningful or dose-related changes in blood pressure, heart rate, other measures of fluid status, and echocardiographic parameters were noted.

Reata completed an end of phase 2 interaction with the FDA in October, and the FDA concurred with Reata's proposal for an initial Phase 3 study in CTD-PAH patients using 6MWD as the primary endpoint. The primary endpoint will be assessed after 24 weeks of treatment. Reata plans to initiate this first Phase 3 study in the second half of 2016.

For more details on the LARIAT study visit https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02036970.

About Pulmonary Hypertension

PH is a multi-organ condition characterized by an abnormally high pressure in the network of arteries and veins that lead to and from the lungs due, in part, to narrowing of the pulmonary vasculature as a result of inflammation, remodeling, proliferation, and endothelial dysfunction. Mitochondrial dysfunction has also been implicated in PH. PH patients experience increased pressure on the right side of the heart, ultimately leading to ventricular failure and death. Although PH does not involve metastasis or disruption of tissue boundaries, it shares some features with cancer, including hyperproliferation and resistance to apoptosis, or programmed cell death, of vascular smooth muscle and other cells. Further, impaired energetics of skeletal muscle is a common feature of PH.

PH can be caused by a number of different underlying defects, which have been classified into five groups by the World Health Organization, or WHO1.

PAH, like PH more generally, results in a progressive increase in pulmonary vascular resistance, which ultimately leads to right ventricular heart failure and death. PAH has a number of different etiologies, with approximately 72% of PAH cases being associated with either connective tissue disease, or CTD, or being idiopathic2. Patients with CTD-PAH are generally less responsive to existing therapies and have a worse prognosis than patients with other forms of PAH3. In comparison to patients with idiopathic PAH, or I-PAH, patients with CTD-PAH have a higher occurrence of small vessel fibrosis and greater incidence of pulmonary veno-obstructive diseases4. CTD-PAH represents a subset of the PAH population with a significant unmet medical need.

Interstitial lung disease, or ILD, patients experience extensive pulmonary vascular remodeling, which ultimately leads to PH-ILD in approximately 30% to 40% of ILD patients5. PH-ILD falls under both WHO Groups III and V1. PH-ILD patients have a one-year survival rate of approximately 63%, as compared to approximately 92% for ILD patients without PH6. Recent studies have demonstrated that mitochondrial abnormalities are key contributors to PH-ILD7. Currently, there are no therapies that are specifically approved to treat PH in interstitial lung disease patients.

About Reata Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Reata Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on identifying, developing, and commercializing product candidates that modulate the activity of key regulatory proteins involved in the biology of oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, and inflammation to address the unmet medical needs of patients with a variety of serious or life-threatening diseases. We focus on drugs with novel mechanisms of action that modulate important regulatory proteins, called transcription factors, that coordinate the cellular response to stressors by activating or suppressing the activity of many target proteins. The effects of AIM pharmacology have been documented in more than 200 scientific papers and are potentially relevant to a wide range of diseases.

References

Simonneau G, Gatzoulis MA, Adatia I, Celermajer D, Denton C, Ghofrani A, Gomez Sanchez MA, Krishna Kumar R, Landzberg M, Machado RF, Olschewski H, Robbins IM, and Souza R. Updated clinical classification of pulmonary hypertension. J Am Coll Cardiol 2013;6:D34-41.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24355639

Badesch DB, Raskob GE, Elliot G, Krichman AM, Farber HW, Frost AE, Barst RJ, Benza RL, Liou TG, Tunrer M, Giles S, Feldkircher K, Miller DP, McGoon MD. Pulmonary arterial hypertension: baseline characteristics from the REVEAL registry. CHEST 2010;137(2):376-387.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19837821

Rhee RL, Gabler NB, Sangani S, Praestgaard A, Merkel PA, Kawut SM. Comparison of treatment response in idiopathic and connective tissue disease-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2015.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26291092

Overbeek MG, Vonk MC, Boonstra A, Vosukyl AE, Vonk-Noordegraaf A, Smit EF, Dijkmans BAC, Postmus PE, Mooi WJ, Heijdra Y, Grunberg K. Pulmonary arterial hypertension in limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis: a distinctive vasculopathy. Eur Respir J 2009;34:371-379.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19282344

Behr J and Ryu JH. Pulmonary hypertension in interstitial lung disease. Eur Respir J 2008;31:1357-1367.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18515559

Lettieri CJ, Nathan SD, Barnett SD, Ahmad SA and Shorr AF. Prevalence and outcomes of pulmonary arterial hypertension in advanced idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Chest 2006; 126: 746-752.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16537877
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
Russia and China are both drastically scaling up their presence in Antarctica in a bid to increase their influence in the last unclaimed part of the globe, The New York Times reports.

For Russia, operations in Antarctica are continuing along the lines first put in place by the Soviet Union.

Building off of Soviet bases already in place, Russia is expanding its development of a global positioning system meant as a rival to American GPS.

Moscow has so far constructed a minimum of three satellite monitoring systems in the Antarctic, the Times reports, with future bases planned.

Russia also has more long-term ambitions in the region. Moscow, for example, was the lone country to oppose the creation of an Antarctic sanctuary that would have protected regions around the pole from fishing.

It is in terms of fishing and future access to resources that Russia and China's ambitions in the Antarctic converge. Although Beijing did not establish its first Antarctic research base until 1985, Chinese efforts to expand its influence across the continent have intensified and are now outpacing other nations' plans. As this map from 2013 shows, at the time China only had three bases in Antarctica.

China Antarctic base

Now, China's plans to open a fifth base in Antarctica are proceeding on schedule, after Beijing opened its fourth base last year. The bases, unlike Russia's holdovers from the Soviet Union, are brand new and reflect the country's growing international ambitions and power, the Times reports.

Beijing claims that its bases are for scientific research. However, it also admits that its push for Antarctic influence plays into future operations aimed at ensuring access to resources, including plentiful fishing waters and mineral and hydrocarbon wealth.

A current ban on commercial drilling of resources in Antarctica is due to expire in 2048, unless the Protocol on Environmental Protection is re-ratified by consensus. If the accord does expire, Antarctica could become the next major source of hydrocarbons on earth. The region is believed to have an approximate 200 billion barrels of oil, in addition to being the largest single repository of fresh water on the planet.

Story continues

china xue long icebreaker

China's current investments could place it in an unrivaled position to take advantage of any resources on the continent in 2048.

"China's exploration of the continent is like playing chess. It's important to have a position in the global game," Guo Peiqing, a law professor at the Ocean University of China told The Guardian. "We don't know when play will happen, but it's necessary to have a foothold."

NOW WATCH: China has been upgrading its military and is now stronger than ever





More From Business Insider


UConn Students Show Middle Schoolers How Fun Engineering Is at Science Center

Helping to Build a More Diverse Engineering Workforce of the Future

By Grace Merritt

Vanessa DeJesus examined a human skull, slowly turning it over in her hands at the Connecticut Science Center on a recent November night. She was trying to figure out whether the skull was from a man or a woman based on clues a couple of biomedical engineering UConn students gave her.

DeJesus, a sixth grader from Two Rivers Magnet Middle School, was among 275 middle school students who got to interact with 75 UConn engineering students as they conducted kid-friendly experiments, such as walking barefoot over a tray of eggs and riding on a plywood hover board three inches off the ground.

I like how the UConn students are teaching us to do things, DeJesus said. I like the experiments because Im a hands-on learner. We touched real human bones.

It was Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) night at the museum. The event was designed to engage younger students, particularly girls and minorities, in fun experiments to get them excited about engineering and the sciences. Girls and most minority groups are underrepresented in many STEM fields, particularly engineering and computer science, so the intent is to get them interested earlier.

The event was run by the UConn Engineering Ambassadors, a student service group committed to promoting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education in grades K-12.

We show them what engineering is like. We want to show them that it is not only powerful knowledge, but its also something that is fun and obtainable, said Alex Choi 16, co-president of UConns Engineering Ambassadors.

While the number of women and minorities earning degrees in STEM fields has risen over the past 20 years, it remains well below the rate for white men, according to the National Science Foundation.

The Engineering Ambassadors is the brainchild of Al Brockett, who served as Pratt & Whitney vice president, Engineering  Module Centers, until he retired. Brockett noticed a deficit in minority and female leadership positions, so he decided to try to engage students at an earlier age. It is important to bring more viewpoints to the table to come up with better solutions, said Kevin McLaughlin, director of Engineering Diversity and Outreach at UConn.

Many times we are faced with solving a problem that needs to consider the larger community. When you have this type of problem, having engineers from a variety of backgrounds makes it more likely the solution will serve the population well, McLaughlin said.

The program is underwritten by United Technologies Corp., which has been a generous donor to the UConn Engineering Department, and has given UConn students internships and jobs over the years.

The Engineering Ambassadors reached out to the Connecticut Science Museum and, together, came up with the idea of hosting the STEM night at the museum.

After some pizza and brief instructions, the students, drawn mainly from greater Hartford middle schools, rotated through the students presentations and the museum exhibits.

One of the most popular experiments was the oobleck exhibit, where students watched a gooey mixture of corn starch and water dance around on a plastic wrapped-amplifier in time to music. When the oobleck jumped up, it briefly turned into a solid before falling back into a liquid.

It looks like a liquid, but it feels dry, said Lauren Anderson, of the Carmen Arace School in Bloomfield, as she touched the green goo.

The experiment was a way to visibly illustrate sound. The sound waves cause enough pressure to give the oobleck solid properties.

Its a cool concept to see, said Esther Kim, an Environmental Engineering major who helped run the experiment.

As engineering students we want to show them what you can do, she said. We want to plant the seed. Its an amazing feeling just seeing their reaction and knowing that we are making a difference in their future in STEM.

In other areas of the museum, UConn students demonstrated a homemade hover board and made a pumpkin glow green by burning a mixture of rubbing alcohol and light copper sulfate inside it. Another group helped middle school students walk over cartons of eggs without breaking them to illustrate the structural strength of the arch as seen in the shape of the egg. The key was to evenly distribute their weight in their feet as they walked over the tray of eggs.

Several other students made elephant toothpaste. Katie Bradley, a biomedical engineering major, mixed hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and food coloring together in a large beaker. She swirled it around a few times and grinned as students gasped at the green foam began spouting out the top in a long, thick tube.

The kids are very interested in it, Bradley said.

And that is the whole idea.

Were trying to be a role model and mentor and show how exciting math and science can be, McLaughlin said. They love it. We try to help them make connections between the math and science that they learn in school and engineering and design by making it as visual as possible.

The Engineering Ambassadors targets middle school age students to try to engage them early and give them a taste of what lies ahead in high school and, eventually, college.

Typically math and science is you what get in middle school, McLaughlin said. Were trying do fun demonstrations so we can show the kids whats out there. When they go to high school, they can try them and find new ones and continue to challenge themselves.

The UConn students visit classrooms in grades K-12 in greater Hartford throughout the year, bringing experiments designed to intrigue students and hook them on science, technology, engineering, and math. The Engineering Ambassadors also invite the students to campus where they give them personal tours of the Engineering Department and the universitys co-generation plant.

Aside from feeling good about making STEM seem fun and accessible, the organization has benefits for the Engineering Ambassadors as well.

We want our students to get the experience teaching. We also want them to feel the social obligation of mentoring, especially the kids who dont have a lot of role models around them, McLaughlin said.

The Engineering Ambassadors program originally started at four colleges: UConn, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, and Penn State. The program quickly proved successful and other colleges, such as Union College and Cornell University, have started their own chapters as well.

New club members go through a specially designed leadership and communications workshop to learn how to effectively communicate technical information to a variety of audiences and engage the younger students in the excitement of engineering.

This was the groups first collaboration with the Connecticut Science Center, and it was so successful that they are already planning to hold another one in April.
Claycos chairman and CEO, Robert G. Clark, along with the companys partners, have committed $4.1 million to Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to advance research into a rare blood vessel disease that results in death five to 10 years following diagnosis.

The gift  which has been committed through The Clayco Foundation  will fund research in the laboratory of John P. Atkinson, MD, the Samuel B. Grant Professor of Medicine and chief of the Division of Rheumatology. Atkinson, who treats patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, was part of a team that originally identified the disease  cerebroretinal vasculopathy (CRV)  in 1988 and, in 2007, the genetic defect that causes it. The disease is caused by the progressive loss of small blood vessels in the brain and retinas.

Additionally, The Clayco Foundation is donating $25,000 to support an international CRV symposium sponsored by the School of Medicine.

Rare diseases such as CRV often receive scant attention and modest research funding, despite the fact that research into such disorders often leads to findings and treatments relative to more common diseases.

Typically striking patients in midlife, CRV results in mini-strokes in the brain that cause progressive central nervous system degeneration. Symptoms such as impaired vision, cognitive decline and motor impairment often lead to patients being misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis, brain tumors or strokes.

This generous gift by longtime supporter Bob Clark officially establishes Washington University as the worlds leader in CRV research and related diseases, said David H. Perlmutter, MD, the School of Medicines new dean and executive vice chancellor for medical affairs. We are committed to better understanding and, through a continued and dedicated research focus, improving the lives of people affected by this disease.

Clarks experience with the disease is personal. His first wife, Ellen S. Clark, a mother of five and a grandmother of three, succumbed to CRV in 2010, at age 50.

Since then, under Atkinsons leadership, Washington University researchers have developed a simple blood test to identify defects in the CRV gene.

He and his colleagues also have established a mouse model to study the disease, leading to a breakthrough in 2015 that identified potential therapeutic agents. The researchers plan to expand studies using the mouse model as well as cells from patients with the disease as part of an upcoming clinical trial.

We want patients with CRV to have hope, said Clark, head of the Chicago-based Clayco, one of the nations largest design-build firms. I am forever grateful to Washington University School of Medicine for helping to diagnose my wifes genetic disorder and for the care she was given. We had visited specialists across the country and had no success until we came to the university.

To honor his wife, Clark made an earlier gift to the university to construct the Ellen S. Clark Hope Plaza, a reflecting pool with native landscaping that welcomes visitors to the BJC Institute of Health and surrounding buildings on the Medical Campus. The plazas landscape and water feature was designed by world-renowned artist Maya Lin, best known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

A longtime supporter of Washington University, Clark serves on the National Council for the School of Medicine and on the board of the Central Institute for the Deaf. He was instrumental in successfully orchestrating the merger of the Central Institute for the Deafs research and faculty programs in hearing and deafness with the School of Medicines Department of Otolaryngology, creating the CID at Washington University School of Medicine.

Progress against CRV also may mean advances against other diseases related to blood vessel deterioration, including aging, macular degeneration, Alzheimers disease and diabetic retinopathy, among other conditions. While Atkinsons research will be housed at the School of Medicine, he will collaborate with other leading CRV researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

I am grateful to Bob Clark and The Clayco Foundation for their very generous commitment, Atkinson said. We have made great progress in understanding CRV and are hopeful that we will find a treatment for this devastating disease.

Washington University School of Medicines 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient-care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - A judge set bail at $500,000 on Monday for a white former police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man who ran from a traffic stop in South Carolina last year.

Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager will be on house arrest if he is released from custody, said Justin Bamberg, one of two attorneys in the case who reached a wrongful death and civil rights settlement with North Charleston and its police department late last year.

Slager has been jailed since his April arrest in the death of Walter Scott, whose fatal shooting was caught on video by a bystander.

The shooting renewed national debate over police treatment of minorities and led to Slager's firing from the North Charleston police force.

Judge Clifton Newman set Slager's trial for Oct. 31.

"Of course, the family is not happy that former Officer Slager is getting bond, but they understand that any criminal defendant can ask for bail," Bamberg said. "As far as him being out (of jail), it does hurt. It hurts a mother and father who have to go visit their child in a cemetery. Everybody is just looking forward to and preparing for the trial."

In denying bail to Slager in September, Newman wrote in an order filed to the court record that releasing Slager on bail "would constitute an unreasonable danger to the community."

Defense attorneys argued that Slager was not a flight risk and had been violently attacked by Scott, 50, in a confrontation after Scott fled a routine traffic stop and Slager chased him.

Prosecutors said Scott was trying to get away from Slager, not attack him, and accused the officer of tampering with evidence by retrieving his stun gun from where it had fallen and placing it near Scott's body.

On Monday, Newman granted bail after noting that Slager's trial would not begin until later this year, a delay caused by prosecutors preparing for the trial of Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine people in a church shooting in Charleston in June, the Post and Courier newspaper reported.

(Reporting by Harriet McLeod; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Leslie Adler and Peter Cooney)
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey on Monday urged Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

"We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in Ankara's first reaction to the crisis.

"The region is already a powder keg," Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting, quoted by the Anatolia news agency. "Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region."

The crisis began at the weekend when Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as well as 46 other convicts, prompting a furious reaction from Tehran and anti-Saudi protests.

Riyadh and then Bahrain and Sudan have now severed relations with Tehran, the main Shiite power.

Turkey's relations with Saudi Arabia have warmed considerably in recent months and in December President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Riyadh for talks with King Salman and the entire Saudi elite.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim powers, share the same vision over the conflict in Syria where they believe only the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad can bring an end to almost five years of civil war.

But in a rare public criticism of Ankara's ally, Kurtulmus emphasised that Turkey, which abolished the death penalty as part of its bid to join the EU, was opposed to capital punishment.

"We are a country that abolished the death penalty. Death penalties, especially ones that are politically-motivated, are of no help to making peace in the region," he said.

As Turkish ties with Riyadh have warmed, Ankara's relations with Tehran have grown more tense in recent months, notably over Iran's role in Syria -- where the Islamic republic supports Assad's regime -- and over its burgeoning relations with Russia.

But Kurtulmus said: "These are two major Islamic countries for Turkey. We have good relations with each of them."
As part of its growth plans, Colliers International has announced two senior appointments to strengthen its Singapore team.

Duncan White will head up the Office Services team, while Anthea To (pictured) joined the firm in November last year to lead Research and Advisory.

White joined the team in June 2015 and has more than 10 years' experience in corporate commercial real estate and workplace strategy. He will be responsible for driving Colliers' Office Services business through an advisory-led approach and a commitment to best practices.

To, who relocated from the UK, has more than 10 years' experience working with major real estate research houses in the European markets. She will focus on creating market-leading, forward-looking research and thought leadership to support clients and industry professionals.

Commenting, Tang Wei Leng, Managing Director of Colliers International, Singapore, said: "Our most important resource is our people. In building our business, we are always seeking to attract, grow and retain the best talent the market has to offer.

"We chose Duncan and Anthea because they are ambitious, passionate, driven and fit well into our collaborative and high performance culture. Duncan's promotion demonstrates our commitment to accelerate the success of our people," she added.

The new business leaders will report directly to Tang and work closely with the regional team.

Meanwhile, former Deputy Managing Director, Calvin Yeo, has left the company, while Grace Ng will continue to head up the Auction team and grow the local brokerage business, noted Colliers.

Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg

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The plan to have two services one direct service and another with transit stops on the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail (HSR) route remains under discussion as both countries consider the commercial and operating models of the project, including the possibility of two different services, said Singapores Transport Ministry in response to a report by The Edge.

Mohd Nur Ismal Mohamed Kamal, Chief Executive of MyHSR Corp Sdn Bhd, mentioned about stakeholders envisioning to start with two services one that will go directly to Singapore, and another that will stop with transit services in Bandar Malaysia, Seremban, Malacca, Muar, Batu Pahat and Nusajaya, and then (across the Causeway to) Singapore, reported TODAYonline.

According to a spokesperson from the Transport Ministry, Singapore has proposed that the transit service, which will stop at several stations in Malaysia and hence primarily serve commuters travelling within Malaysia, be operated separately from the express non-stop HSR service. This will give Malaysia autonomy over the transit service to serve Malaysias domestic needs, while both countries work together on the cross-border HSR services.

Mohd Nur Ismal also said that travel time on the non-stop service would take 90 minutes, while the other service with six transit stops would take around two hours.

On Mohd Nur Ismals statement that both parties have come to a consensus on the alignment of the 330km high-speed rail, Singapore explained that the issue is still under discussion and will be finalised following the completion of detailed engineering studies.

A few months ago, Singapores Land Transport Authority and Malaysias Land Public Transport Commission jointly launched a request for information (RFI) exercise to assess industry opinion, public perception as well as gauge market interest in the HSR project.

Singapore revealed that the exercise was already completed last month, with both countries studying the feedback, which will be used to improve the projects commercial and operating models and procurement approach.

Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg

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Private home prices down 3.7% in 2015

HDB resale prices down 1.5% in 2015


Hundreds of dead fish washed up in Sungai Toggek in Gebeng, Pahang, this morning have put residents in the area on alert to the possibility of bauxite contamination. Businessman Idahar Zulkupli, 40, said this is the first time he saw the dead fish washed up from the river in the area and feared it could be because of bauxite mining. Idahar, who has lived in the area since childhood, said that the suspicion was valid as the state was hit by the effects from uncontrolled bauxite mining. I cannot say for sure that bauxite was the cause of what happened today but i fear that this could be the reason. It can also be because of the chemical accidentally released by the factories from the industrial area here, said Idahar. He added that two days prior to todays incident, the water at Pantai Balok went murky. It was pretty bad. Its not the normal sea water. It smells of dirt, earth. Then this happened. I cant help thinking that this could be because of bauxite, said the man. The dead fish along Toggek River was spotted by passers-by at 8.30am who then alerted the authorities, including the Fisheries Department. PASs Beserah state assemblyman Andansuran Rabu said that the agency came at about 10am to take dead fish and water samples from the scene and would be sending it to the Chemistry Department for tests. All we want is for the result to be made available to all once its ready. We do not know if its from bauxite but people are scared, he said. He added that the river is also near to bauxite stockpile storage. The storage is on top of a hill some 1.5km from the river. When it rained, the water will flow into the river, he said. Rampant bauxite mining has been blamed for turning rivers and the shoreline off Kuantan, on Peninsular Malaysia's east coast, red after two days of heavy rain earlier last week. Since Kuantan ramped up its mining of bauxite for export to China last year, residents in the area have complained about pollution, caused by red dust from the mining and leakage from lorries transporting bauxite to the Kuantan port. It was reported that in the first 11 months of 2015, Malaysia exported more than 20 million tonnes of bauxite to China, up nearly 700% on the previous year. In 2013, it only shipped around 162,000 tonnes.  January 5, 2016.
French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday honoured the victims of the jihadist rampage a year ago in Paris that began with an assault on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, but the widow of a slain police bodyguard said she was taking legal action over alleged security failings. Hollande began the commemorations by inaugurating a plaque at Charlie Hebdo's former offices, where cartoonists who were household names in France, nicknamed Cabu, Wolinski and Charb, were killed along with nine others by radicalised brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi. But Ingrid Brinsolaro, the widow of Charb's bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro who was killed alongside him in the attack on January 7, 2015, said she had filed a lawsuit claiming that her husband was left vulnerable because Charlie Hebdo was inadequately protected. "To me, Franck was sacrificed, there's no other word for it. He saw shortcomings, he regretted the lack of security at the offices. He said it was a 'sieve' and it was impossible to do his job right in those conditions," she said on French television Tuesday. In the two days after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, a policewoman and four Jews at a kosher supermarket were shot dead by another jihadist, Amedy Coulibaly. Dubbed "France's 9/11", the attacks marked the start of a string of jihadist strikes in France that culminated in the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 dead. The massacre at Charlie Hebdo unleashed an outpouring of solidarity for freedom of expression, with the rallying cry "Je Suis Charlie" taken up around the world. After Tuesday's sombre ceremony, Hollande could be seen embracing cartoonist Georges Wolinski's widow Maryse. Red-faced authorities admitted later that they had misspelled Wolinski's name on the plaque, and rapidly corrected the error. The president and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo unveiled a separate plaque nearby at the site where one of the gunmen shot police officer Ahmed Merabet as he lay on the pavement. - 'Remembrance tree' - They went on to unveil a third plaque at Hyper Cacher, the kosher store in an eastern suburb where three shoppers and an employee were killed during a horrifying hostage drama. Hollande greeted Lassana Bathily, the Muslim worker at the supermarket credited with saving many shoppers' lives by helping them hide in an underground cold room and later helping police to mount the raid in which they killed Coulibaly. Bathily, a Malian who was given French nationality in the wake of the attacks, told AFP: "It's sad... In our hearts, we are here, offering support to their (the victims') families." On Saturday, a fourth plaque is to be unveiled at the site in the southern suburb of Montrouge where Coulibaly gunned down a policewoman. Commemorations will culminate in a public event Sunday in the Place de la Republique, the vast square that has become the rallying point for "Je Suis Charlie" solidarity and for the mourning after the November 13 carnage. An oak "remembrance tree" standing some 10 metres (35 feet) tall will be planted in the square. Veteran rocker Johnny Hallyday will perform "Un Dimanche de Janvier" (One January Sunday), a song recalling the vast march in Paris that attracted 1.6 million people on January 11, 2015. Dozens of world leaders including British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the march. Charlie Hebdo had been a target for jihadist attack since publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons in 2006 and its offices were firebombed in 2011. Responding to the claims from the bodyguard's widow, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve defended the decision to reduce security at the magazine's offices before the attack, saying the authorities had determined that jihadists had shifted to targeting soldiers and police. Charlie Hebdo, whose biting, often vulgar humour has spared no religion or political persuasion, will publish a special commemorative edition on Wednesday. True to form, the cover is unabashedly provocative, featuring a Kalashnikov-toting God figure wearing a blood-stained white robe, under the headline: "One year on: The killer is still at large." In an editorial, cartoonist Riss, who survived the attack, said his colleagues had been killed "for having dared laugh at religion".
The cashback mobile app plans to expand to the Philippines in early 2016

Snapcart team during its launch in Jakarta in September 2015

Jakarta-based cashback mobile app Snapcart today announced that it has secured US$1.6 million in a pre-Series A funding, which saw participation from Wavemaker Partners, SPH Media Fund, SMDV and Ardent Capital.

The startup plans to use the funding to develop new features such as engagement videos and analytical dashboard tools that will accommodate brands to see consumer behaviour in real-time, as well as aid brands in formulating marketing actions.

Snapcart is also planning to expand to at least two other Southeast Asian markets, starting with the Philippines in early 2016.

Our first stage of development was focussed on mass data collection and user acquisition, activation and engagement. Now, we are looking to perfecting the built-in automation system and upgrading the app, said Laith Abu Rakty, CTO of Snapcart.

In Indonesia, there are many different formats for receipts, even within the same retail franchise, which makes it harder to be automated. This is the hassle that we want to tackle in the next stage, he added.

Also Read: Hire the right people and mentor them to be leaders: Snapcart Co-founder

Reynazran Royono, CEO and Founder of Snapcart, cited the role of partnerships with major FCMG brands such as Nestle and LOreal Indonesia as key to earning investors confidence.

He also added that the company is targetting one million downloads in less than a year.

User acquisition is always on the agenda, but now were doing it by partnering with FMCG companies and other verticals through a combination of offline activities and online marketing, he said.

Since launched in September 2015, Snapcart has secured over 150,000 downloads and more than 85,000 MAU (monthly active users).

Snapcart also announced Mayeth Condicion, former Procter & Gamble Market Research Director, as its new Chief Data Officer and Co-founder of the startups new operation in Manila.

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Enjoy 2-for-1 tickets to Echelon Indonesia 2016 now. Do not miss out on Indonesias biggest international tech conference!

Disclaimer: Snapcart is an Ardent portfolio company. Ardent Capital is an investor in Optimatic Pte Ltd, the parent company of e27.

Image Credit: Snapcart

The post Indonesias Snapcart announces US$1.6 million pre-Series A appeared first on e27.
The online beauty and wellness marketplace was founded by former foodpanda Managing Director Pawel Netreba

(L to R) Bfab Founders Pawel Netreba, Raeesa Sya and Sergey Gaydar

Bfab, a Malaysia-based online beauty and wellness marketplace started by former foodpanda Managing Director Pawel Netreba, has secured an undisclosed amount in seed investment, led by Singapore-based VC firm KK Fund.

Silicon Valley-based early-stage fund 500 Startups and Southeast Asia-focussed multi-stage investor Captii Ventures also joined the round.

Kuala Lumpur-headquartered Bfab will use the funds to build the platform, launch the product and build traction.

Also Read: 500 Startups leads US$500K seed round in Malaysian health marketplace

Bfab (which stands for Be fabulous) was started last year by Netreba, Co-founder and former Managing Director (Russia & CIS) at foodpanda, along with Raeesa Sya and Sergey Gaydar. It is an online marketplace for beauty and wellness, where users can book for hair, massage, spa, nail, waxing and makeup services with various salons listed on the platform. In addition, the portal also allows users to compare prices, and comment and rate the services.

The instant booking CRM system gives the ability for users to view available slots at the salons in real time, book the service and receive confirmation instantly, claims the startup.

The online beauty industry in Malaysia has been practically absent. Apart from Groupon, which has been pushing for beauty promotions/deals through its online channel, no beauty provider (with some exceptions) provides online appointments. At the moment, therere several marketplace players similar to ours evolving in the country, but all lack in funding, relevant background and the technology, Netreba told e27..

bfab

The startup said that it has already sign up around 250 salons in Klang Valley, including A Cut Above, Amante, Mandara Spa, The Soloist Salon, Kimarie, and Makeover Hair Salon.

Bfab is now planning to launch a mobile app in the next six weeks.

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By bringing customers and salons together onto one marketplace, we help salons to push their online presence/exposure, bringing them new customers and hence increased revenues and profitability. This can make the difference, said Gaydar.

Other prominent players operating in the segment in Malaysia include beaupass and Clique Guide.

KK Fund is a Singapore- and Japan-based VC firm investing in seed-stage Internet and mobile startups in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Started in February 2015, the fund has invested in 10 companies till date, including Kaodim, The Lorry and Febelio.

A subsidiary of SGX-listed Captii Limited, Captii Ventures invests in marketplace enablers that deliver mobile and e-commerce innovation and ventures that build mobile-first media platforms.

The post Malaysias Bfab gets seed funding from KK Fund, 500 Startups, Captii appeared first on e27.
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea may send a delegation to the World Economic Forum meeting in Switzerland for the first time in 18 years, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Monday, a sign that it sees international engagement as a way to bolster its economy. Yonhap cited unidentified sources as saying North Korea was in talks with organisers to send a delegation to the annual event in the town of Davos, which attracts heavyweights from the worlds of business and politics. A World Economic Forum spokeswoman declined to give details on attendees ahead of the Jan. 13 release of a list of participants list. The conference takes place on Jan. 20-23. Impoverished, isolated North Korea is under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and missile programmes, and struggles to attract investment. It last sent a delegation to the forum in 1998, Yonhap said. Yonhap said the North Korean delegation would be led by Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, who spent two decades in Switzerland as ambassador and representative at the United Nations in Geneva. Ri acted as surrogate father to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when Kim was a student at a Swiss school. Kim, believed to be in his early 30s, focused on development of the economy during a New Year's Day speech. "We should concentrate all our efforts on building an economic giant to bring about a fresh turn in developing the country's economy and improving the people's standard of living," he said. (Reporting by Tony Munroe, Choonsik Yoo and Ju-min Park; Editing by Robert Birsel)
In Panama, a retired American couple can live on the beach and eat farmer's market fruits and vegetables all year-round, without sacrificing the conveniences and amenities of home for $1,500 a month -- all in.

The cost of living is low compared to the quality of life in Panama, which is why the Central American country was named the best place to retire in International Living's Annual Global Retirement Index for 2016.

Already home to 50,000 US expats, Panama topped the index after raking in top scores across 10 categories including: buying and renting property, visas and residence, cost of living, environment and amenities, health care, infrastructure, and climate.

The list was compiled after consulting a team of correspondents, editors and retirees around the world.

New this year, voters were also asked to weigh in on two added categories which have emerged as important issues for expat retirees: healthy lifestyle and visas and residence.

Couples interviewed for the index raved about their new life in Panama, where the sweet life is described as not only cheaper, but simpler and stress-free.

"We're healthier and living a better lifestyle here than we ever did in the U.S.," says expat Mitzi Martain, who has lived on her farm near Santa Fe, Panama for nearly the last nine years.

Added Connie and Mikkel Moller who have been in Panama since 2012: "Our stress level is 10 percent of what it used to be."

Utilities are a fraction of what retirees are used to paying back in the US, clocking in at around $100 a month for electricity, water, internet, cellphone cards, and trash pickup and allowing renters to live happily on $1,500 a month.

That can be slashed by up to half for couples who own their own property.

"In Panama's capital I have the best of both worlds," said IL Panama Editor Jessica Ramesch.

"There's a growing cultural and arts scene...opera showcases, art exhibit openings and handicraft festivals...[and] there are so many new restaurants every week, I stopped trying to keep track."

Here are the top 10 places to retire according to International Living's Global Retirement Index 2016:

1. Panama

2. Ecuador

3. Mexico

4. Costa Rica

5. Malaysia

6. Colombia

7. Thailand

8. Nicaragua

9. Spain

10. Portugal
Saudi King Salman called for political solutions to the wars in Syria and Yemen, while condemning "terrorism," at the opening of an annual Gulf summit in Riyadh. Kings and emirs from the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states began two days of talks in the Saudi capital, at the same time as unprecedented discussions by the Syrian opposition at a luxury hotel in another part of the city. Salman voiced "support for a political settlement which guarantees the territorial integrity of Syria," after nearly five years of war. On behalf of the Gulf states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- Salman also called for "a peaceful solution" in neighbouring Yemen. For more than eight months, Gulf military forces have been fighting in Yemen to support President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's government alongside an array of local anti-rebel forces. The coalition has been trying to push Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels and allied troops from territory they occupied. Jihadists have taken advantage of the chaos to expand their presence in the country. In his opening address at Diriyah Palace, Salman said all countries have a responsibility to combat terrorism and extremism. "Islam rejects and abhors terrorism, because it is a religion of moderation and tolerance," said the monarch whose kingdom is founded on the teachings of fundamentalist cleric Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab. Wahhabi thought has been accused of fuelling deadly Sunni extremism around the world, including the murderous drive of Islamic State group militants. But Saudi Arabia itself has seen an upsurge of attacks claimed by IS over the past year, against minority Shiites and members of the security forces. - 'Odious scourge' - Qatar's emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani told the summit that recent attacks in several countries prove that this "odious scourge" is a threat to everybody. "The international community must, more than ever, intensify efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms and eliminate its real causes by all means," the emir said. The kings and emirs passed ceremonial guards on horses as they arrived for their summit at one of Riyadh's main royal palaces, protected by armoured vehicles and machineguns. Across town, about 100 representatives from Syria's fragmented political and armed opposition groups are making an unprecedented bid for unity ahead of potential negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar support some rebels in Syria. Assad is backed by Saudi Arabia's predominantly Shiite regional rival Iran, and Russia, which has for more than two months been conducting air strikes in Syria. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in late November that if Assad does not step down peacefully "he could be ousted militarily". Pressure for peace is also building in Yemen. According to the United Nations envoy to Yemen, another attempt at peace talks will start on December 15, after earlier efforts collapsed. Yemeni rivals are to gather in Switzerland to try to end the costly war that has drawn in Gulf nations. Oman is the only GCC state not part of the coalition in Yemen but has mediated and provided a neutral venue for talks. Fighting a war in Yemen, the oil and gas-based Gulf states are also battling falling revenues. Crude prices have more than halved since early 2014 and the International Monetary Fund has projected a $275 billion drop in export revenues this year for the resource-dependent Gulf economies. Despite the urgency of the challenges they face, analysts say the Gulf monarchs struggle to find common ground. "This summit comes as the Gulf is witnessing one of its most critical years," said Farea al-Muslimi, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Centre. He sees "internal disagreement" among the Gulf states confronting complicated economic and security challenges.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia signalled on Tuesday its breach in relations with Iran would not affect talks on Syria, another round of which is scheduled in Geneva this month. Riyadh and Tehran have attended previous talks and support opposing sides in the war. There is concern the rift between them could set back diplomatic efforts to bring peace. Speaking after talks in Riyadh with U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA): "The recent tensions that impacted the region negatively will not affect ... the operations that the United Nations carries out alongside the international community to achieve a political solution in Geneva soon." Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on Monday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday. Restating the kingdom's position on Syria, Jubeir said Riyadh sought a solution based on the Geneva 1 communique, a 2012 document setting out guidelines for a path to peace including a transitional governing authority, SPA said. He reiterated President Bashar Al Assad would have no role in the future of Syria, SPA said. The United Nations has set a target date of Jan. 25 for the talks. But Damascus has dismissed a new opposition body formed to oversee negotiations, and the opposition wants to see confidence-building steps from President Bashar al-Assad, a demand that could complicate efforts to start talks. De Mistura, speaking after he met Jubeir and the Syrian opposition in Riyadh, said there was a clear determination on the Saudi side that current regional tensions would not have a negative impact on the momentum of the talks and on the continuation of the political process in Geneva. De Mistura did not characterise the position of the Syrian opposition at the meeting, but said: "We cannot afford to lose this momentum despite what is going on in the region." Syria's opposition has said it wants to see confidence-building steps from Damascus including a prisoner release, a halt to bombardments of towns and cities, and the lifting of blockades imposed by the government on rebel-held areas. Britain's Special Representative for Syria on Tuesday urged the government to lift sieges as a step towards ending the nearly five-year-old conflict. "Starving civilians is an inhuman tactic used by the Assad regime and their allies," Gareth Bayley said in a statement, referring to a months-long blockade in the town of Madaya, near Damascus. "Sieges must be lifted to save civilian lives and to bring Syria closer to peace ... this human tragedy underscores the need for an end to this conflict." The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said many of Madaya's 40,000 residents are starving. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; additional reporting by John Davison in Beirut, Omar Fahy in Cairo and Hadeel al Sayegh in Dubai; Editing by William Maclean and Andrew Roche)
In building the foundation of a solid startup ecosystem, is the development of co-working spaces in Vietnam lagging? Toongs CEO weighs in

Co-working space Toong in Hanoi

The author Do Son Duong is Co-founder and CEO of Toong a professional co-working space chain in Vietnam. Duong was MD of Richard Moore Associates, a New York-based brand consulting firm, in Vietnam. He has participated in numerous brand consulting projects for big corporations.

Co-working spaces have been sprouting up in Vietnam over the past three years. However, people are skeptical about this model due to Saigon Hubs closure and the gloomy business results of similar models. Is Vietnams market not ready for the co-working space or is the strategy of existing co-working spaces not effective enough?

How it works

An effective co-working space consists of two parts  the first one is tangible facilities for work, and the second one is the community of people working there.

Professional facilities for working is an obvious need but only counts for the appearance of a co-working space while the community actually makes up its soul. The soul, therefore, becomes the decisive factor for the success or failure of a coworking space. From this aspect, its clear that identifying the right group of customers is critical to the development of co-working spaces.

Due to the disappearance of Saigon Hub and the limited number of members working in similar models in Vietnams market, those who are interested in Vietnams startup ecosystem may be skeptical about the success of this model.

Also Read: Toong is Hanois latest co-working space for tech startups

Why it works

However, with a closer look into the community working at Saigon Hub and existing models including Hub.IT, Hatch, we can easily recognise the young age of those startups. From my viewpoint, Saigon Hub, Hub.IT and Hatch act more like incubators while Work Saigon and Saigon Coworking are smaller spaces. Therefore, it is still too early to make a negative evaluation on the potential of the co-working space model in Vietnam based on these startups.

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This model was introduced to improve the quality of working environment for people who work from nine to five and beyond, every day. Apart from their homes, people spend most of their time at work. Thus, the quality of working environment has a great impact on their own quality of living.

Lets think about a small company of five to ten people or independent workers: How can they create an inspiring working space with professional working and entertaining facilities, or an inspiring culture at work? It is not easy, is it? Working in co-working spaces can efficiently satisfy all those needs. Also, it can generate more cooperative opportunities between members from different backgrounds.

A co-working space, therefore, should be seen as a professional service for entrepreneurs and enterprises including startups who are starting to gain revenue. Such startups need a more economical and efficient solution for a high-quality working environment, a more mature image to project to partners and to attract skilled employees.

Also Read: Infographic: Why working from a beach in Bali is the new cool

Vietnam is ready, even if people think it isnt

In the macro view, I see that Vietnam is ready for the co-working space model. Statistics has shown that 30 per cent of Vietnams population is between the ages of 20-30, 13 per cent is managing startups that are under 3.5 years (Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry Report). The number of small and medium size companies is approximately 324,808, and there are 300 newly registered enterprises in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, as of April 2015.

In addition, the strong tidal wave of cultural exchange from over 100,000 students studying abroad every year and the cultural integration through the Internet have encouraged the enhancement of living needs, including a more evolved working environment.

I believe it is the right time for the co-working space model in Vietnam, but it needs a pioneer to educate the market. It is this challenge that professional and large-scale co-working spaces such as Toong in Hanoi and Dreamplex in Ho Chi Minh City, who have made their debut recently, have to rise to.

Toong, Vietnam

Toong, Vietnam

Providing a service for a need people are unaware of

A closed working culture, coupled with the misunderstanding between professional co-working space and similar models including incubators, maker space, or even coffee shops with rental service in the past few years, has given the wrong perception to a majority of the people.

In the early days, many came to our co-working space simply to have a cup of coffee.

In Toongs case, we have earned positive cash flow at the first outlet after three months of launching. This success is very encouraging because Hanoians are considered to be traditional, conservative and reluctant to change their way of doing things. Two months after its debut, the space has received a funding of over US$300,000 to develop the second outlet. This expansion is under our plan to educate the market by actual experience and accelerate market readiness.

I often tell my colleagues and partners that we are providing a service for a need that our target customers are not even aware of. From the psychological aspect, people tend to resist change and say No to what they have never heard before. Therefore, if Vietnamese are directly asked if they need a co-working space, the response would be mostly in the negative.

Also Read: Singapore co-working space may have citys best feature: It is free

Many new business models had to deal with resistance and skepticism at their launch: Amazon in 1997, Alibaba in 1999 or Airbnb in 2008, being a few examples. However, they have now become market leaders in their industry because they had courage enough to overcome the barrier of market perception.

If we apply this basic marketing mindset and follow the market, we will easily come to the conclusion that the co-working space model does not have potential in Vietnam. But I believe that a strong brand is one that leads the markets needs. If you want to be a leader, it is critical for you to be able to lead and inspire others.

The views expressed here are of the authors, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asias tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, please send us an email at writers[at]e27[dot]co

Image Credit: Toong

The post Is it still too early for co-working spaces in Vietnam? appeared first on e27.
Ricky Tay takes on the role of VWs managing director here

SINGAPORE  Volkswagen Group Singapore has a new managing director, and hes a Singaporean. Ricky Tay takes charge of the brands operations and starts work today. He is the first local to head the business.

Mr Tay (pictured above) has more than 30 years experience in the car trade, 15 of them with Volkswagen. The 59 year-old joins the Singapore office after a stint in China, where he was the group managing director of the territorys import operations. He was also managing director of Bentley Motors China.



Mr Tay replaces Steffen Schwarz, who became MD in January 2013. Mr Schwarz had decided in the middle of the year to accept an offer to return to Germany, where he will continue to work for Volkswagen Group.



An analytical, straight-talking man who openly admires Singapore, Mr Schwarz (above) steered VW through stern challenges here.

Having arrived from the post of aftersales chief in China, he worked hard to improve the brands customer service, after well-publicised gearbox woes put a dent the dealerships reputation.



He opened Volkswagen Exclusive, a second outlet at MacPherson, ostensibly to provide a showroom for would-be customers in the East, but also to boost the companys workshop capacity as part of a revamp of its aftersales operations. That helped to cut waiting times for a servicing appointment from weeks to three days.



By 2014, the company received as many as three compliments for every customer complaint in a month  an increase from zero. There are months now when more than a hundred compliments come in.



In April 2014, Mr Schwarz also opened Das WeltAuto, the companys approved used car business, to provide customers with a lower entry point for the brand, price-wise.



The new boss, like Mr Schwarz, will report directly to Soh Weiming, who is the president of VWs commercial operations in China and ASEAN, as well as the chairman of Volkswagen Group Singapore.



Mr Soh is also Singaporean, most likely the highest-ranking one in any car business worldwide.

For the latest motoring news and Singapore car reviews, there is only CarBuyer.com.sg




New Zealand sealed the one-day series against Sri Lanka on Tuesday with Martin Guptill's century spearheading a 36-run victory in the fifth and final one-dayer at Mount Maunganui. Matt Henry's five-wicket bag helped ensure the hosts took a 3-1 series win to go with their 2-0 Test domination last month. New Zealand posted 294 for 5 batting first at the popular beachside resort venue with Guptill making 102, before Sri Lanka were all out for 258 with 17 balls remaining. Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews, with a brave knock of 95, had set the scene for a cliff-hanger finish when he led his side to 223 for 5 before the tail folded in six overs for the addition of only 35 runs. The last three wickets fell for six runs in the space of 10 deliveries. Along with Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Milinda Siriwardana played their part in keeping Sri Lanka in with a chance for most of the their innings. Mathews and Chandimal produced a 93-run stand for the fourth wicket before Trent Boult, making his first appearance in the series, dismissed Chandimal for 50. After Thisara Perera (15) made a brief appearance at the crease Siriwardana and Mathews cracked 62 off 40 to have Sri Lanka at 223 for 5 with nine overs and five wickets to get the remaining 72 runs. But when Siriwardana fell to Mitchell Santner for 39, New Zealand rammed home their advantage. At the start of the day Guptill capped a remarkable home season with his 10th ODI century, reaching 102 in 109 deliveries to go with his 79, 93 not out, 30 and 27 earlier in the series. When Mathews won the toss and put New Zealand into bat he had an immediate result with Tom Latham out in the first over without scoring. But Guptill and Kane Williamson then established New Zealand's dominance with 122 for the second wicket. Any loose ball was despatched towards the boundary with a Guptill four bringing up their century partnership in 115 balls. But a lapse in timing by Williamson on 61 led to his undoing when he gloved an attempt to sweep a leg-side delivery from Tillakaratne Dilshan and wicketkeeper Dinesh Chandimal snared the catch. Ross Taylor put on 81 for the third wicket with Guptill who was caught by Thisara Perera off Nuwan Kulasekara. Taylor brought up his half-century with a six to mid-wicket before also falling to Kulasekara. Sri Lanka in reply were on the back foot in the third over when Dilshan, marking his 300th ODI, was removed by Boult for five. Henry bowled Lahiru Thirimanne for two and had Danushka Gunathilaka caught for 15 as Sri Lanka slumped to 33 for 3 after nine overs before Mathews put some respectability into their innings. Henry, who was only required by New Zealand for three of the five matches, finished with five for 50 to give him 13 wickets in the series, while Boult took three for 43.
By Allegresse Sasse COTONOU (Reuters) - The candidate favoured by Benin's president to succeed him in next month's election would make a disastrous leader of the West African nation, a group of dissidents from the ruling party and opposition politicians said on Tuesday. The group, which includes trade union leaders, did not propose its own candidate but the statement is likely to raise the temperature ahead of the election to replace President Thomas Boni Yayi, who must step down after two terms in office. The election is considered open because there is no incumbent but, in a first for Benin, Boni Yayi has backed a candidate, his prime minister Lionel Zinsou, an economist and former investment banker of French and Beninese origin. "They have parachuted in to us a coloniser whose mission is to safeguard the economic crimes of Boni Yayi," Paul Isse Iko, the secretary-general of the Confederation of workers' unions in Benin, told journalists on behalf of the group. Zinsou, who spent a large portion of his life in France, is viewed by some as an outsider far removed from the realities of life in the West African nation. The group, which includes a former president of Benin and former leader of the national assembly, said they wanted to prevent Zinsou from running and planned to form a coalition against him once a final decision had been made. The government issued a press release on Sunday in response to similar statements made about Zinsou, saying: "These assertions ... call to the base instincts of hatred, racism, fear and intolerence." "Our countryman targeted by these remarks is a full citizen of Benin," the statement added. Zinsou, who was named last June to head a cabinet tasked with bolstering Benin's economy, said his presidency would focus on alleviating poverty and getting more workers into the formal sector. The West African nation has been affected by a slowdown in Nigeria, its much larger neighbour and a major trading partner. The International Monetary Fund said Benin's national product would grow 5.5 percent this year. (Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Gareth Jones)
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi's government will not take part in peace talks with the opposition scheduled for Wednesday because it holds some of the participants responsible for recent months of violence, a senior official said. The talks in neighbouring Tanzania were announced last month as part of regional efforts to resolve a crisis triggered by President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term in office - a move opponents said broke the constitution. International monitors say they fear Burundi could be headed for civil war. The government refused to join the talks due to the inclusion of "those who are supporting violence", Joseph Bangurambona, the permanent secretary in Burundi's foreign affairs ministry, said. "No dialogue tomorrow, neither on January 16 as many may think, because there has been no consensus on that date," Bangurambona told Reuters on Tuesday. He said the government was particularly opposed to the inclusion of Carine Kaneza, representing Burundian women, adding the government did not recognise her role or the organisation she represents. He said Kaneza was fired from her job as secretary at the Burundian embassy to the United States last October due to "her mistakes". Kaneza was not immediately available to comment. "The dialogue will resume on condition that the mediators iron out the irregularities and set another agreed-upon date," Bangurambona said. Uganda, whose President Yoweri Museveni is mediating in the Burundi crisis, confirmed: "The Burundi peace negotiations will not resume tomorrow and at this moment we can't tell when they will." Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the Ugandan military, added: "What is going on is that all the parties involved are still making consultations; talks of this nature are never easy." Thacien Sibomana, the spokesman for the opposition UPRONA party, said they had not received an invitation for the talks on Wednesday, and accused the government of railroading. "This is a government strategy to drag on this dialogue while people are continuously being killed. That is why we ask an urgent deployment of troops," Sibomana said. Two people were injured in a grenade attack in the capital Bujumbura on Monday, the latest in the conflict. Police said they were investigating. The United Nations estimates 400 people have already been killed. More than 220,000 people have fled Burundi since April, and Rwanda, which has similar ethnic faultlines, says more than 73,000 Burundians are now on its soil. (Writing by Duncan Miriri; Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema in Kampala; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
Regional competitors are no match for local healthcare providers.

According to a report by OCBC, Singapore healthcare providers need not be fazed right now by regional competitors. Local healthcare players remain strong contenders thanks to their established brand and reputation and their focus on enhancing expertise offering. Also, Singapore healthcare providers target premium-end patients.

Despite the availability cheaper treatments in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the pullback in medical tourist volume in Singapore will probably be constrained.

Thailand attracts a different mix of patients since it is known for aesthetics treatments, and therefore is not a significant threat. Its medical tourists come from Japan, Russia, China and the US. In contrast, Singapore and Malaysias main source of medical tourists is Indonesia.

Meanwhile, Indonesias government is still struggling with rising deficits and attempts to raise healthcare premiums. Developments in their healthcare sector will take time, thereby driving wealthy citizens overseas for complex treatments and procedures.

In Malaysias case, the country may draw in more patients due to the MYR weakening. OCBC asserts, however, that the loss of patient volume to Malaysia will likely be limited to price-sensitive patients.

Further, most neighbouring countries are struggling with a talent crunch. These countries hold positive domestic demographics, but they will need a few years to bridge the supply-demand gap in healthcare infrastructure. Thus, their citizensespecially the wealth oneswill likely still travel overseas for medical treatments in the medium term.





More From Singapore Business Review


WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland has invited the European Commission's representative in Warsaw to the foreign ministry to discuss European Union concern over laws proposed by the new government that increase its control over Poland's top court and state-owned media, the Polish foreign minister said on Tuesday. Since winning an election in October, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which advocates conservative Catholic values and euroscepticism, has moved to put public media under government control and to change the makeup of the constitutional court. The European Commission said it would hold a "political debate" on the rule of law in Poland on Jan. 13, amid growing concern the government is undermining democracy in the EU's largest eastern member, until recently a poster child for post-communist transformation. Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, the EU commissioner responsible for the digital economy and society, told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Sunday that Warsaw should be put under the EU's rule of law supervision. This is a three-step procedure that could end in suspending Poland's voting rights within the 28-nation bloc. The "courtesy talk" with the EU representative would be aimed at clarifying media speculation, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski told private broadcaster TVN24, and "strange, unclear statements of some European Commissioners, who, based on press reports ... start to judge Poland." "We want to clarify why the Commissioners are not using the official channels of communication with the Polish government, but (instead) give weekend interviews to the German press." Waszczykowski said he hoped the meeting with the EU official would take place on Friday. A spokesman for the European Commission's representative in Poland told Reuters the invitation had been received and would be accepted. Separately, the Council of Europe, a 47-nation human rights group that works closely with the European Union, on Tuesday called on the Polish president not sign into law the new media bill. "I call on the President of the Republic of Poland not to sign the law ... and to uphold the independence of Poland's public-service television and radio," said the Council of Europe's top human rights official, Nils Muiznieks. "These arrangements contradict Council of Europe standards which notably require that public-service media remain independent of political or economic interference," he said. (Reporting by Wiktor Szary, additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels, editing by Larry King)
By Diego Ore and Brian Ellsworth CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition took control of Congress for the first time in 16 years on Tuesday in a rowdy session, setting up a power struggle with President Nicolas Maduro amid a worsening economic crisis. The Democratic Unity coalition won a two-thirds majority in December's legislative election by capitalizing on anger over a shrinking economy, soaring prices and chronic product shortages reminiscent of Soviet-bloc economies. Maduro has dismissed the new assembly as "right-wing" and "bourgeois," and accuses the opposition of preparing to roll back social programs created by late socialist President Hugo Chavez. Veteran opposition legislator Henry Ramos was elected the new head of Congress in a session in which the two sides chanted slogans at one another and traded charges of corruption and betrayal. "What did we offer in our campaign? To recover the autonomy of the legislative branch," said Ramos in his opening speech to Congress. "This has been the loudspeaker of the presidential palace, the echo chamber of the executive branch." Ramos flaunted the opposition's newfound control over the legislature by abruptly cutting off one Socialist Party deputy's diatribe against the opposition, saying he had run out of time. When heckled by another socialist deputy over a procedural complaint, Ramos brushed him aside by saying "Take it easy, congressman, things have changed here." The Dec. 6 election gave the opposition its most decisive victory since Chavez took power in 1999. His generous spending of oil revenue had made him nearly invincible at the polls during his 14-year rule. Maduro, a former bus driver and Chavez's anointed successor, has struggled since his election in 2013 to match the latter's charisma. His government has repeatedly balked at implementing broad economic reforms despite promising them. On Tuesday, reporters interviewed deputies and walked freely on the floor of Congress for the first time in years, a practice that had been prohibited by the socialist leadership. A portrait of late Chavez that hung in the main congressional chamber, a symbol of what critics call illegal politicization of public institutions, was removed. SOCIALISTS WALK OUT The Socialist Party deputies ultimately walked out of the session en masse following the election of the new assembly leadership, arguing Ramos had violated parliamentary rules by giving a speech during the opening session. "They've barely even opened the first session and they've already violated the debate regulations," said Socialist Party Deputy Diosdado Cabello, previous head of the assembly. The deputies joined a nearby demonstration where hundreds of government supporters clad in red-shirts chanted slogans and played drums. Police and National Guard troops were deployed in the area around the National Assembly to prevent violence between opposition sympathizers and Maduro supporters. No major incidents had been reported as of the early afternoon. The opposition coalition won 112 seats in the Dec. 6, for a commanding two-thirds majority. But the Supreme Court in December granted injunctions that blocked four deputies - three from the opposition and one allied with the government - from taking office after losing Socialist Party candidates filed legal challenges to the results. The opposition dubbed the ruling a "judicial coup" meant to strip it of its supermajority. It has said it will swear in the three barred lawmakers, though government allies say that would defy justice and render the assembly's decisions illegitimate. The court did not describe the underlying arguments against the election of the deputies, all of whom are from the rural and sparsely populated southwestern state of Amazonas. Disputing all the results in that state required the Socialist Party to contest the seat won by its own candidate. Although the opposition's legislative victory was driven by anger over the economy, it has few options to resolve the crisis because Maduro's government controls the most important day-to-day operations of the economy. Opposition lawmakers have instead promised to take up an amnesty law seeking the freedom of opposition activists jailed for protesting against Maduro, and a measure to grant property titles to those who received homes from the government. "We've come because Venezuela is celebrating. Today democracy returns to our country," said Milagros Hernandez, 58, a housewife who joined an opposition rally in downtown Caracas. (Additional reporting by Girish Gupta and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Girish Gupta, Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell)
By Greg Torode and Michael Martina HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - China's first landing of a plane on one of its new island runways in the South China Sea shows Beijing's facilities in the disputed region are being completed on schedule and military flights will inevitably follow, foreign officials and analysts said. China's increasing military presence in the disputed sea could effectively lead to a Beijing-controlled air defence zone, they said, ratcheting up tensions with other claimants and with the United States in one of the world's most volatile areas. China has confirmed that a test flight by a civilian plane landed on an artificial island built in the Spratlys, the first time Beijing has used a runway in the area. Vietnam said the plane landed on Jan 2 and launched a formal diplomatic protest, while Philippines Foreign Ministry spokesman Charles Jose said Manila was planning to do the same. Both have claims to the area that overlap with China. "That's the fear, that China will be able take control of the South China Sea and it will affect the freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight," Jose told reporters. In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said China's landing of the plane "raises tensions and threatens regional stability." Senator John McCain, the chairman of the influential U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, criticised the Obama administration for delaying further "freedom of navigation" patrols within 12 nautical miles of the islands built by China. China has been building runways on the artificial islands for over a year, and the plane's landing was not a surprise. The runway at the Fiery Cross Reef is 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) long and is one of three China was constructing on artificial islands built up from seven reefs and atolls in the Spratlys archipelago. The runways would be long enough to handle long-range bombers and transport craft as well as China's best jet fighters, giving them a presence deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia that they have lacked until now. Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed that the new islands would be mostly for civilian use, such as coast guard activity and fishing research. The airfield on Fiery Cross Reef will serve to "significantly" cut travel time between the Spratly islands and mainland China, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a top engineer from the transport ministry. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at the weekend that the test flight was intended to check whether the runway met civilian aviation standards and fell "completely within China's sovereignty". Asked about McCain's remarks on Tuesday, she said: "We hope the U.S. can take an objective and fair attitude, and not make statements that confuse the situation and are harmful to regional peace and stability," she said. DE FACTO DEFENCE ZONE However, military landings on the islands were now "inevitable", said Leszek Buszynski, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. "The next step will be, once they've tested it with several flights, they will bring down some of their fighter air power - SU-27s and SU-33's - and they will station them there permanently. That's what they're likely to do." Ian Storey, a South China Sea expert at Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, said he expected tensions to worsen as China used its new facilities to project power deeper into the South China Sea. Even if China stopped short of formally declaring an Air Defence Identification Zone, known as an ADIZ, Beijing's need to protect its new airstrips and other facilities could see it effectively operating one. Work is well underway to complete a range of port, storage and personnel facilities on the new islands, U.S. and regional officials have said. Fiery Cross is also expected to house advanced early warning radars and military communications facilities, they said. "As these facilities become operational, Chinese warnings to both military and civilian aircraft will become routine," Storey said. "These events are a precursor to an ADIZ, or an undeclared but de facto ADIZ, and one has to expect tensions to rise." China sparked condemnation from the United States and Japan in late 2013 when it declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea, covering uninhabited islands disputed with Tokyo. Hua, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Monday that there were no immediate plans for an ADIZ in the South China Sea. However, regional military officials say they are logging increased warnings to aircraft from Chinese radio operators, including some from ground stations on Fiery Cross reef. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of world trade ships every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims. The United States has no claim in the South China Sea, but has been highly critical of China's assertiveness and says it will protect freedom of navigation. In Washington, McCain said that the lack of U.S. action after a navy patrol near the islands in October was allowing China to continue to "pursue its territorial ambitions" in the region. U.S. officials remain committed to carrying out further "freedom of navigation" patrols near the disputed islands, but are still debating the timing of another patrol, said one U.S. defense official, who was not authorised to speak publicly. (Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in WASHINGTON, Megha Rajagopalan in BEIJING, Manuel Mogato in MANILA and Matt Siegel in SYDNEY; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain.
Sports and wellness-focused venture capital firm Will Ventures has picked up $150m for its sophomore fund, almost triple the total it collected for its debut vehicle in 2020.
Jim joined Greenspring Associates in 2004. Previously, he was a Director at Commonfund Capital, a fund-of-funds firm that, as of the time of his...
An overseas rout in China has Wall Street traders seeking cover on the first trading day of the year. Will the old adage "as goes January, so goes the year," take hold for the market?

China rout

Starting with Chinastocks were hit hard after more weak data, triggering a circuit breaker in the process. What was behind the market fireworks there on the start of the year? Nick Consonery, Asia Director for the Eurasia Group, broke down the China effect.

Winners & losers

Stocks hit hard in today's sell-off include American Express, Chipotle, and Netflixlast year's top performing S&P 500 stock was taken to the woodshed today after a downgrade by Baird, with analysts claiming they expect weak U.S. subscriber results for a second straight quarter based on a subscriber survey.

Stocks that bucked the market downturn include Lululemon, Kohl's, and Baxaltareports suggest that Ireland based Shire Group is close to buying the U.S. biotech firm for about $32 billion in cash and stock. In addition, Baxalta has agreed to pay biotech firm Symphogen $1.6 billion to co-develop six experimental cancer drugs.

Technicals: Shanghai Composite vs. iShares China 25 ETF (FXI)

While investors are focused on what China is doing today, let's take a bigger-picture look at what the Shanghai Composite Index has been doing over the past few years and how closely China's large-cap ETF has tracked it. Yahoo Finance's Justine Underhill delves into the details with the charts.

James Altucher on the markets

Does the year's shaky start foreshadow more trouble in 2016? Joining us now is James Altucher, hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, and author of "The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth."

Looking ahead
Weve been telling stories for thousands and thousands of years, dating back to when cavemen drew hunting stories on stone to brag about their adventures. Telling stories is an innate way for humans to communicate and build relationships. Think about any date youve ever been on. When getting to know one another and trying to develop a relationship, you wouldnt simply spit out your own features, rather youd tell your story.

Example 1: I have a great job. I have green eyes. I wear size 7 shoe.

Example 2: I love what I do. I help people achieve their dreams every day and I wouldnt change that for the world. Or- My parents always told me that my green eyes run in our family because were of Irish decent. My great grandparents emigrated here from Ireland.

Which example is more likely to strike a chord with your date? People dont buy features and benefits; they buy your story. Take a look at five reasons storytelling is important to your marketing strategy:

Stories strengthen relationships

Your stories create connections with members on a deeper level than standard marketing tactics. By telling your brand story and sharing member stories, youre creating invaluable emotional connections between your members and your brand. Good storytelling that creates the ultimate connection are those that arent necessarily about you, your products, or features, they are stories about emotions, experiences, needs and wants.

Stories create experiences

By telling your story you leave lasting impressions on those who come in contact with you. By creating a story-based experience, your audience walks away with something way more tangible than traditional product-based marketing message. They walk away with an experience that they are more likely to remember.

Stories are more likely to be shared

When was the last time you called your friend to tell him/her about the features of a new checking account you just opened? Probably not recently. But if you saved money by switching to a credit union and felt like you family from the moment you walked through the door, you might share that story with your friend, no? Sharing of stories has been amplified by social media, making storytelling that much more important to your brand.

Stories shape information into meaning

Remember that grade school teacher who always told stories while he/she taught? Sure you do. Thats because those stories made you remember the educational content better than the boring teacher who just taught textbook content. Stories can help shape useful information into inspirational, shareable content.

Stories are less likely to be resisted

The average consumer is exposed to over 5,000 marketing messages per day (Yankelovich Consumer Research). When we know were being sold to, we tend to close our ears. Miraculously, when someone tells us a story, we are captivated and have all the time in the world to listen. Telling your story will help break through the marketing clutter that consumes people today.

A great example of a credit union that uses storytelling in their marketing is BECU.
The EU Commission has launched a public consultation on the greening measures of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The 12-week consultation seeks the views of farmers, landowners and farming groups on the first year of greening measures that were introduced following the 2013 reform of the CAP.

Comprising three different environmentally friendly agricultural practices  Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs), crop diversification and maintaining permanent pasture  greening has applied from the start of 2015 and is linked to 30% of CAP direct payments.

See also: CAP greening views will change  but not until 2017

The commission has already agreed to review the rules about EFAs after the first year of the new package. In particular, it will look at the administrative burden, the potential to simplify the policy and whether it offers a level playing field  as well as aspects of production potential.

The consultation, which is available to respond to on the ECs website, will be open until 8 March 2016.

Farm leaders and politicians in the UK have repeatedly called for greening rules to be reassessed. In particular, there is huge concern about the three-crop rule, which many maintain is unnecessary and encourages inefficiency.

EU farm commissioner Phil Hogan has said proposed changes to the greening rules will be published before this summer.

Speaking after a recent EU agriculture and fisheries council meeting on CAP simplification, Mr Hogan said: In my view, we need to look at the wider greening measures and ask ourselves whether they are delivering on their intended environmental objectives or whether there are ways to deliver these objectives in a way that is efficient but with less red tape.

NFU Scotland has described the EUs timetable to deliver simplification in CAP rules as frustrating.

Its president, Allan Bowie, said: When the commissioner [Phil Hogan] accepted our invitation to visit an East Lothian farm this summer, the desperate need for him and his officials to simplify the rule book was top of our list of priorities.

While we welcome his acceptance of the need for change, the timetable shows a worrying lack of urgency and the reality that there will be no discernible benefit from this review for Scottish farmers until 2017.

As if trying to generate a fair return from producing food isnt difficult enough at this time, politicians and policymakers in Scotland and Europe need to wake up and realise that their approach to rules and requirements is hindering food production.

The NFU will respond on behalf of members to the consultation and will be encouraging members to send their responses to the European Commission directly.

Gail Soutar, NFU chief economics and international affairs adviser, said: The NFU welcomes the commissions efforts to simplify the CAP rules. Overly burdensome regulation and specifically CAP reform is consistently cited by our members as having the biggest negative impact on business confidence.

The new rules were introduced with very little time for farmers to prepare and in many cases guidance was changing throughout the application window. The full impact of that is only now being felt as farmers face late payments and in some cases reductions in the value of their payments due to errors and mistakes being identified. 
It was with sadness that the United Farm Workers, the Cesar Chavez Foundation and the Chavez family learned of the Dec. 14 passing of Juan Huerta, 88, who became a central figure in the Salinas Valley for his sacrifice and service during some of the most difficult and momentous periods in the movements history.

Juan always completely gave himself in the service to the farm workers, helping them negotiate and administer their union contracts, and directing UFW offices in King City and Salinas during the 1970s and 80s. He especially focused on providing a variety of much needed social services to poor farm workers through what today is the Chavez foundation. Most importantly, Juan helped empower people who previously had no voice.The farm worker movement is privileged to be among the good causes Juan championed over a long and distinguished career as an activist deeply committed to family and community, including advancing affordable housing and health care. He continued assisting people until only a few weeks before his passing.Born in the Mexican state of Veracruz, Juan immigrated at age 17 to the United States in 1944, seeking a better life. He labored in the corn and sugar beet fields of Montana and in the cotton rows of Californias Central Valley before settling in southern Monterey County. Juan met his wife, Angelita Perez, in 1947 in King City, and they were married for 68 years. He was a member of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Greenfield and co-founder of the Guadalupana Society.In a joint letter to Juans widow, Angie Huerta, UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Cesar Chavez Foundation President Paul F. Chavez wrote, Cesar Chavez, who came to consistently rely upon Juan to help advance La Causa in the Salinas Valley, would distinguish between people who are of service and those who are servants. Many decent people perform regular acts of kindness or charity in their everyday lives. But a relative few become genuine servants by dedicating their entire lives to the service of others in need. By that definition, Juan Huerta was a true servant.The UFW and Chavez foundation ask everyone in the movement to keep the Huerta family in their prayers in honor of Juans lengthy dedication and service to farm workers.Juan Huerta is survived by his wife, Angie Huerta, of Greenfield; five children: Yrma (Ramon) Rendon of Greenfield, Frank (Liz) Huerta of San Luis Obispo, Henry (Martha) Huerta of Whittier, Angela (Miguel) Rendon of Greenfield and John (Michele) Huerta Jr. of Greenfield; 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.United Farm Workers
Workers who grow, harvest, and pack Driscolls lucrative berries are struggling against the systematic abuses they are forced to endure, and the companies profiting from the exploitation of their collective labor.

Boycott Driscolls Action in Watsonville

[ Gloria Gracida, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice based in San Quintin, Baja California, informs shoppers at Mi Pueblo Market in Watsonville why they should boycott Driscoll's. ]

By Bradley Allen (@BradleySA)

On January 2, a couple dozen people kicked off 2016 with a protest in Watsonville, where Driscoll's, the world's largest distributor of fresh berries, is both headquartered and first began producing strawberries in 1904. The demonstrators are amplifying a campaign initiated by farmworkers in Washington State and Baja California to boycott Driscoll's strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Workers who grow, harvest, and pack the lucrative berries are struggling against the systematic abuses they are forced to endure, and the companies profiting from the exploitation of their collective labor.

On the website Karani: Escribir o Volar, Tomas Madrigal documents the boycott launched by farmworkers in 2013 against berries grown at Sakuma Brothers Farms in Burlington, Washington. In response to the successful boycott against their brand, Sakuma Brothers shifted production in 2014 and began packing fresh market berries exclusively into Driscolls label cartons.

As Driscolls continues to stand behind Sakuma Brothers Farms, workers in Washington State expanded their focus from Sakuma Brothers and towards the boycott of Driscolls.

A portion of Driscolls website outlines the company's commitment to Worker Welfare Standards. Driscolls states that Sakuma Brothers has been an independent berry grower for Driscolls for 25 years. Driscolls maintains that they do "not have a direct role in any labor negotiations between growers and their farmworkers."

This claim by Driscolls is disingenuous. Madrigal, a childhood farmworker born in Walla Walla County, Washington, states the company has a "notorious track record ... when it comes to fighting against farm worker campaigns for worker rights and dignity." Worker campaigns at Driscolls subcontractors have taken place many times over the years, including in Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, and Ventura County in California, as well as in Washington State.

Driscolls says, "The majority of Driscolls berries are grown in the United States, with California being the largest growing region. Other growing regions in the U.S. include Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, North and South Carolina and Florida. Outside the U.S. Driscolls independent farmers grow berries in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Australia, and in a variety of European countries." A tremendous amount of strawberries and raspberries are grown for Driscolls in Baja California, Mexico.

San Quintin Valley, Baja California

The intensity of the boycott grew beyond borders as a farmworker rebellion in the San Quintin Valley of Baja California reached a boiling point in March 2015. According to Free Speech Radio News, "When the strike first began on Tuesday, March 17th as many as half of the areas 75 thousand farmworkers refused to show up to harvest the fruits and vegetables now ripe for export to U.S. markets."

Gloria Gracida attended the January 2, 2016 demonstration at Mi Pueblo Market on Freedom Boulevard in Watsonville, which sells the berries, and explained that contrary to claims made by Driscolls and its subcontractors, there are ongoing labor disputes with Driscolls growers in San Quintin over unfair wages and wage theft, mistreatment and sexual harassment in the workplace, and against the dependency upon child labor for production. Gracida, known as Maestra Gloria, was born in San Martin Peras, Oaxaca, and spoke on behalf of the Alianza de Organizaciones Nacionales, Estatales y Municipales para Justicia Social (the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice) based in San Quintin.

As reported by Free Speech Radio News, "The vast majority of the farmworkers in the fields of San Quintin are indigenous migrant laborers from Mexicos poorest states: Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero. Their demands include raising the daily minimum wage to the equivalent of about $20, reducing the average workday from 12 to eight hours, payment of overtime for work performed on Sundays, the right to organize independent of the official unions and an end to rampant sexual abuse of women in the fields."

More Information and Resources:
Location Details:

Gather @ 1:30 at Market and Montgomery (north corner plaza). Mobile street action will move through downtown SF, ending at SF City Hall @ 4:00 pm.

Walk with us on Monday, January 11, the 14th anniversary of the torture chamber prison at Guantanamo. YOU ARE INVITED. A group of people in orange jumpsuits representing the Guantanamo prisoners will walk thru busy downtown San Francisco. People walking alongside them will explain our message with words and flyers to those we meet. This is about bearing witness AND engaging many more people to challenge and change what they think about this horrible crime of torture and indefinite detention.



As this illegal, immoral prison enters its 15th year, with 107 men still behind its bars, protests demanding CLOSE GUANTANAMO NOW! will hit the streets in D.C., Miami, New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. World Can't Wait is joining together with other movements and organizations to make these actions happen (for more details see our national website) and we urgently welcome you to join us.



Under two U.S. presidents/commanders-in-chief -- and now about to be handed over to a third -- what has been going on at Guantanamo is an insult to humanity. And although what 774 prisoners have experienced there is no secret (indefinite detention, brutal torture, and the total trashing of due process and any semblance of legality), Guantanamo is not supposed to be a topic of conversation in polite society generally, or in the current discourse about the 2016 presidential elections in particular. But that just means that it's on us, the impolite activists, journalists and writers, human rights and legal fighters, to speak up. It is on us who reject the thundering silence of complicity, to keep exposing the facts and demanding an end to the torture which is a war crime, and a crime against humanity.



Think about this: we ("the "impolite" above) have been shouting for years. But it was the prisoners themselves, through their heroic and collective hunger strike, who two years ago forced Obama to break his silence, acknowledge that Guantanamo is illegitimate (and make more promises, which have stayed broken -- but that's on him and not the fault of the prisoners!) But whatever Obama meant when he spoke back then -- today, the situation is what it is. And as you probably are already clear about it yourself: the claim that "Congressional opposition is blocking Obama's ability to close Guantanamo" is not true. Legally this President has the authority as commander-in-chief and under the law including the NDAA, to close the prison.



But whether the powerful abide by law or not, there is still a more fundamental question of right and wrong. The Guantanamo prisoners have for years done all they could to put their plight before the world. Now, who will stand with them, who will ensure their voices are not silenced?



And there's more to the need for January's actions than just marking the anniversary. Current events have led to a situation where "protecting America against terrorism" has taken new wind into its sails. The "keeping Americans safe" mythology being spun to legitimize and to suck people into supporting every new Big Brother measure that intensifies political surveillance and repression -- and makes Muslims, immigrants, and others unworthy of rights and respect -- is an ugly, fraudulent and dangerous sinkhole. If no one challenges this atmosphere, where will it all go?



If your organization can endorse the action that's welcome (please reply to this email to affirm the endorsement). But what we most want and need is for many groups to send two or more people to take part in the action (walk with us). PLEASE RSVP.



You are welcome to publicize this action, to bring your own flyers for handout and your own signs, and to issue your own press releases. In any of that, please acknowledge the three (3) action sponsors: World Can't Wait, CODEPINK, and School of the Americas Watch SF Chapter. (List in formation)
Delta Smelt and other fish species plummet to record low levels by Dan Bacher

Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), said the fall survey shows the continuing collapse of the estuary caused by the failure of the state and federal regulatory agencies to comply with the law.



Photo of Delta Smelt courtesy of California Department of Water Resources.

California's Biggest Environmental Disaster: Delta Smelt and other fish species plummet to record low levels



by Dan Bacher



Fish species ranging from endangered Delta Smelt to Striped Bass continued to plummet to record low population levels in 2015 in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, according to the annual fall survey report released on December 18 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).



Only 6 Delta smelt, an endangered species that once numbered in the millions and was the most abundant fish in the Delta, were collected at the index stations in the estuary this fall. The 2015 index (7), a relative number of abundance, is the lowest in history, said Sara Finstad, an environmental scientist for the CDFWs Bay Delta Region.



The Delta Smelt, a 2 to 3 inch fish found only in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, is an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Delta, an estuary that has been dramatically impacted by water exports to corporate agribusiness interests and Southern California water agencies during the record drought, along with other factors including increasing water toxicity and invasive species.



The Fall Midwater Trawl Survey, used to index the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes most years since 1967, conducts monthly surveys from September through December. The 2015 sampling season was completed on December 11.



In September, the only Delta Smelt collected were from index stations in the lower Sacramento River, said Finstad. In October the only Delta smelt collected came from a non-index station in the Sacramento Deep Water Shipping Channel.



In November, no Delta Smelt were collected - and in December, the only Delta Smelt collected were from index stations in Montezuma Slough and the lower Sacramento River, according to Finstad.



The population of striped bass, a popular gamefish, has also declined to record low levels. The 2015 abundance index (52) is the second lowest in history. Only 42 age 0 striped bass were conducted at the survey stations, noted Finstad.



Likewise, Longfin Smelt, a cousin of the Delta Smelt, declined to the lowest abundance index (4) in the history of the survey. Only 3 longfin smelt were collected at the index stations throughout the three-month period.



The abundance index (806) for Threadfin Shad, an introduced species from the East Coast that provides forage for larger fish, reached its eighth lowest level in survey history. The biologists collected 634 Threadfin Shad at the index stations.



Finally, the 2015 abundance index (79) for American Shad, a relative of the Threadfin Shad that is pursued by anglers on Central Valley rivers every spring, is the lowest in history of the survey. Only 59 American shad were collected at the index stations.



Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), said the fall survey shows the continuing collapse of the estuary caused by the failure of the state and federal regulatory agencies to comply with the law.



Every survey conducted, including the 20 mm Delta Smelt, spring Kodiak trawl, summer tow net, and the fall midwater trawl surveys, shows record low levels of the fish surveyed, said Jennings.



He emphasized that in spite of the continuing record drought conditions, that water exports south of the Delta through the state and federal pumping facilities averaged 7500 cubic feet per second (cfs) over the past week. The State Water Project pumps are averaging 5154 cfs, while the Central Valley Project Pumps are averaging 2360 cfs, said Jennings.



As fish populations continue to collapse, the California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation are going forward with permit petitions to the State Water Resources Control Board to change the point of diversion on the Sacramento River to implement Governor Jerry Browns Delta Tunnels Plan, the so-called California Water Fix.



Jennings and other public trust advocates point to these latest fish survey results  and the state and federal water agencies permit petitions to divert more water from the Sacramento River at new diversion points  as just more evidence of the capture of the regulators by the regulated.



The current collapse of Delta fish species occurs as part of a long-term decline. The operation of the state and federal water projects by the California Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation Reclamation has brought fisheries to historic lows.



Since 1967, populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9, 97.7, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Jennings.



The natural production of Sacramento winter-run and spring-run Chinook salmon has declined by 98.2 and 99.3%, respectively, and are only at 5.5 and 1.2 percent of doubling levels mandated by the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, California Water Code and California Fish & Game Code.



To make matters even worse, over 95 percent of endangered juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon perished in lethally warm water conditions on the upper section of the Sacramento River in 2014 and 2015, due to mismanagement by the state and federal water agencies.



"Our captive regulatory agencies are sending fisheries to the scaffold because the demands of special interests outweigh the protection of public trust resources belonging to all Californians," concluded Jennings.
Armed Yemeni tribesmen from the Popular Resistance Committees, supporting forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, fire as they hold a position in the area of Sirwah, west of Marib city, on December 18, 2015 (AFP Photo/Abdoullah al-Qadry)

United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations special envoy for the conflict in Yemen warned UN ambassadors on Tuesday that a fledgling peace process was hanging by a thread.

At the weekend Yemen's Saudi-backed government and Iran-backed Huthi rebel's wound up peace talks in Switzerland without a breakthrough.

On the ground ceasefire violations are continuing even as UN humanitarian agencies warn that civilians are under fire and living in desperate conditions.

"The talks revealed deep divisions between the two sides on the path to peace and the shape of a future agreement... trust between the parties remain weak," UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed warned.

Ahmed called for a stronger ceasefire agreement and urged UN member states to support his efforts to mediate a dialogue in the run-up to renewed talks next month.

"I have to admit that there were several days when I feared that the two sides would not find a way to make progress on any of the central issues," he said.

"We all know that the path to peace in Yemen will be a long and difficult one -- but we also know that failure is not an option," he insisted.

In Yemen, Shiite Huthi rebels have allied themselves with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh to take on government forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Iran has supplied weapons to the Huthi, and Saudi Arabia -- with logistical support from the United States -- is leading a Sunni coalition campaign in support of Hadi.

Human rights watchdogs have accused the Saudi-led coalition of the careless aerial bombing of civilian targets and Huthi forces of indiscriminate shelling.

The situation for the surviving civilian population is dire.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein told the UN Security Council that the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for a "disproportionate amount" of the strikes hitting civilian homes, schools and hospitals.

Story continues

"Conditions of life have become untenable for the vast majority of people in Yemen," he said.

"I call on the council to do everything within its power to help restrain the use of force by all parties and to urge all sides to abide by the basic principles of international humanitarian law."

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, supported the call for international law to be respected -- but pointed the finger at Huthi forces.

"Militia loyal to the Huthis and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh must stop any indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, including Taiz, and they must stop their cross border attacks," she said.

"We continue to urge the Saudi-led coalition to ensure lawful and discriminate targeting and to thoroughly investigate all credible allegations of civilian casualties and make adjustments as needed to avoid such incidents."

According to UN figures, the war in Yemen has killed 2,700 civilians, including 637 children, and left four fifths of the 21 million-strong population in need of humanitarian aid.
Orlando, FL A couple from Florida are not at all happy with their residential loan servicing company and the insurance company their A couple from Florida are not at all happy with their residential loan servicing company and the insurance company their Force-Placed Insurance Bank teamed up with to ram what they view as unnecessary and excessive insurance coverage down their collective throats. To that end, John C. Sekula and his wife, Jacqueline, have filed a class-action Force-Placed Insurance Bank lawsuit, in an attempt to achieve some justice against forces that appear to be motivated by greed.

According to court documents, the Sekulas allege their mortgage provider - Residential Credit Solutions - mandated insurance with coverage limits that exceeded the replacement value of the home, at a value that went beyond the lenders protectable interest, or so it is alleged. The lawsuit further alleges that were the Sekulas to fail in this demand by their residential loan servicing company, Residential Credit Solutions would force-place an insurance policy that met the lenders demands and criteria.The Sekulas have launched a lawsuit with the help of their Force-Placed Insurance Bank attorney, listing Residential Credit Solutions and American Western Home Insurance as defendants. The class-action lawsuit alleges the two defendants teamed up to force-place insurance the plaintiffs deemed as unnecessary and excessive, with defendants benefiting from kickbacks, commissions, discounted services, financial benefits, reimbursements or other compensation, which were concealed from borrowers.Force-placed insurance indeed has a legitimate place, and represents a defendable right for the mortgage holder of a real property should the property owner fail to provide adequate insurance coverage needed to cover a loss. Some homeowners, due to negligence or out of financial duress, will allow an insurance policy to lapse, leaving real property unprotected against catastrophic loss.The ability to force-place insurance, as needed, provides to Forced-Placed Insurance Banks the legal means by which to protect their investment.The problem - as many a Force-Placed Insurance Bank lawsuit has asserted - is when banks collude with insurance companies to profit from the force-placement of insurance that is deemed unnecessary. Numerous plaintiffs have alleged that defendants have forced onto homeowners coverage that is excessive and needless, at rates that far exceed those of standard policies providing more coverage.The Sekulas seek to represent others similarly situated in their Force-Placed Insurance lawsuit, alleging breach of contract, breach of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment, violations of the Truth in Lending Act, and tortious interference with a business relation. The plaintiffs are seeking actual and statutory damages, refund, interest, and attorney fees and costs, together to exceed $5 million.The lawsuit isCase No. 6:2015-cv-02104, filed December 15, 2015 in Florida Middle District Court.
(Adds details from speech; additional policy proposals)

By Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders warned on Tuesday that financial-sector greed was "destroying the fabric of our nation" and said the starting point of any Wall Street reform effort is breaking up "too big to fail" banks.

"If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist; when it comes to Wall Street reform, that must be our bottom line," Sanders said in a blistering speech. He said allowing banks that are too big is essentially providing them with a "free insurance policy" to make risky investments knowing the U.S. government will prevent their collapse.

The U.S. senator from Vermont - an independent and a democratic socialist popular with the Democratic Party's populist wing - gave his speech at a theater near New York's Times Square, just "a few subway stops away from the epicenter of the global financial crisis," as his campaign put it.

Sanders also called for structural reforms to the Federal Reserve, making credit rating agencies nonprofit entities, and a tax on speculative investments. He urged increased penalties for financial fraud or malfeasance by institutions, calling fraud the business model of Wall Street.

His remarks were laced with direct and indirect criticisms of the policies and track record of primary campaign front-runner Hillary Clinton, whose constituency when she was a U.S. senator from New York included the financial industry. The former secretary of state, however, has taken a tougher stance against Wall Street as a presidential candidate.

Clinton, Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley are vying to face the Republican nominee in the November 2016 election.

Sanders and Clinton have tussled over the best way to curb the risky behavior on Wall Street that caused the 2008 financial crisis and triggered the worst U.S. economic slump since the Great Depression.

Sanders favors breaking up too-big-to-fail banks and reinstating a version of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment banking activities.

Story continues

Clinton has endorsed an approach that would break up large banks if they take excessive risks. She also believes that reinstating Glass-Steagall, an idea popular with progressive Democrats, would not address the types of institutions that have risen since the law was written in the 1930s.

Glass-Steagall's main provisions were repealed in 1999 during the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton - a fact that Sanders highlighted in his speech.

The back-and-forth between Sanders and Clinton over breaking up banks and regulating the so-called shadow banking sector intensified this week, with one of Clinton's top Wall Street advisers, former U.S. financial regulator Gary Gensler, criticizing Sanders as not focusing on regulating non-bank institutions such as hedge funds and insurance companies.

Sanders said Tuesday that if elected, "Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks will not be represented in my administration."

Gensler, before serving as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama and a U.S. Treasury Department official under Bill Clinton, was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson were also Goldman alumni.

Sanders highlighted how he has pushed for legislation to reinstate Glass-Steagall alongside Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite of progressives. He also quoted another progressive icon, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, as criticizing Clinton's proposals to regulate Wall Street as too weak.

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, a progressive, is among those in Clinton's corner. In a statement on Tuesday, he said that "having studied all the Wall Street reform proposals," he believes Clinton's is the "toughest, farthest-reaching plan of anyone running for president."

On the Federal Reserve, Sander said it should not pay financial institutions interest for the money they keep at the Fed and that such institutions should instead pay the U.S. central bank a fee. He also said he would not put financial industry executives on the Fed's presidentially appointed board.

Individual companies were also name checked by Sanders. He said that JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and Wells Fargo & Co are nearly 80 percent bigger than when they accepted money from the U.S. government during the 2008 bailout.

(Reporting By Amanda Becker; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
The Biafra Independence Movement (BIM) has stepped up its plan to formalise operation by appointing a catholic priest, Rev. Fr. Samuel Aniebonam as the chairman of Biafra Independent National Electoral Commission (B-INEC), Vanguard reports.

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This appointment was announced by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, the leader of BIM.

READ ALSO: Uwazuruike Warns Politicians About Expelled Members

Uwazuruike was the founder of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and was also the leader of the Biafra group before he was ousted due to internal crises and accused of disloyalty. This led to the formation of BIM.

Uwazuruike who made this announcement at Ojukwu memorial library, Owerri in Imo state explained that the new development was in tune with BIMs effort to establish an independent Biafra state without using violence.

Chris Mocha, Uwazuruike who was newly appointed as Biafra director of information explained that Fr. Aniebonam and his team of officials of B-INEC would conduct and supervise the internal election in all the offices of BIM on Monday, February 22.

READ ALSO: MASSOB Members Defrauding Politicians - Uwazuruike

BIM is one of the saparatist groups agitating for an independent Biafra state away from Nigeria. Some of the other suister groups are the aforementioned MASSOB and Indegenous People of Biafra

Meanwhile, MASSOB threatened to expose alleged immoralities committed by its former leader, Uwazurike.

Source: Legit.ng
After spending 22 years in a California prison, Musa Jack Ngonadi, the son of a former Nigerian president, is back in Nigeria.

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The 47-year-old son of Yakubu Gowon allegedly arrived in Nigeria on January 1, 2016. Last year he was released on a state pardon granted him by President Obama after spending 22 years in jail.

R-L: Gowon and Son, Musa

Musa was living in the United States with his mother, the late Edith Ike Okongwu, when he was arrested on November 18, 1992 at the age of 23. Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Customs Service arrested him for conspiring to import in excess of one kilogramme of heroin.

He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for smuggling heroin, although Ngonadi protested vehemently through his legal team that he was innocent and was framed.

READ ALSO: Nigeria Awaits Released Gowon's Son

However, Ngonadi decided being in prison was not the end of life. He enrolled in a university and successfully graduated with a degree in law as a prison inmate. He was also a role model and a legal adviser to all the inmates. He carried himself well and was a source of inspiration to co- inmates who had given up on life. He was rewarded for all his good conduct several times by the prison authorities.

His family, however, did not relent in their efforts to get him out of prison. Calls for his release began to grow louder and President Obama hearkened to one of the moves and acted by granting him parole. Ngonadi walked out of Taft Correctional Facility Bakersfield California as a free man on November 2, 2015.

Just recently, General Yakubu Gowon, Nigerias former head of state said his experience after governing the country showed that Nigeria is not an easy country to lead.

Source: Legit.ng
Abubakar Malami, the attorney general of the federation, and the minister of justice, Senator Ali Ndume and other eminent Nigerians have described as laughable allegations by some critics that President Muhammadu Buhari is a tyrant.

The AGF, Ndume, Chief Ebenezar Babatope and retired police commissioner, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav rose to the defence of Buhari arguing he was not dictatorial but only being serious minded and being a promoter of the public interest, Vanguard reports.

They were reacting to criticisms against Buhari over his insistence that the federal government would not release the former national security adviser, Col Sambo Dasuki (retd), and the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, despite several court directives to that effect.

which directed that Dasuki and Kanu be released.

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According to Malami, those accusing Buhari of being a dictator were oblivious of the national interest, which the president was protecting.

He added that what was at stake was a conflict between public and private interest, insisting that there was no way any right-thinking leader would allow individual interest to override the national interest.

The minister of justice noted that national interests were always given top priority over individual interests in all democracies around the world, adding that Dasuki and Kanu had committed very serious crimes against the nation and its people and should not be made to appear as victims of any state victimisation.

READ ALSO: SANs Unhappy With Buhari Over Comments On Dasuki, Kanu

Are we now saying that the collective national interest should give way for the individual interest of a few people who are working hard to cause more havoc? he queried.

Malami said there was no basis whatsoever to label Buhari as a tyrant because he was only trying to end the unfortunate regime of impunity.

For his part, Ndume said that in the past, Nigeria had a very funny, unserious and weak president but now the country has Buhari who is very serious.

If you accuse him of being a serious President, I will agree with you, but not as a dictator who does not respect rule of law, he said.

Also speaking, Babatope said Buhari has been fair enough to allow the opposition have a say at any given time.

Tsav said that the president has allowed the courts and other institutions of the state to do their jobs without interference.

Therefore, I dont think the perception of him having dictatorial tendencies holds water. People dont know that sometimes some suspects are jailed in their own interest Mr. President is not a dictator, he said.

READ ALSO: President Buhari's Media Chat And The Words Of A Tyrant, By Femi Fani-Kayode

Datti, a close associate of Buhari said the president has not violated any law through the non-release of Dasuki and Kanu.

Kanu, who is facing a six-count charge including treason, has been in detention since October 14, 2015, when he was arrested by operatives of the Department of State Service. Though he has been granted bail by the court, the federal government has refused to obey the court order.

On the other hand, Dasuki, who is facing multiple charges before three different courts, was re-arrested last week at the gate of Kuje Prison, Abuja, shortly after he honoured all his bail conditions.

Buhari had during his first presidential media chat given reasons why both Dasuki and Kanu could not be released from detention.

Some senior Nigerian lawyers had disagreed with President Buhari. Some of those who had faulted the president were Mahmud Magaji, constitutional lawyer, Festus Ogwuche and others.

Source: Legit.ng
Former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairman, Dr Mohammed Haliru, appeared in court in a wheelchair today, January 5.

Dr Haliru Mohammed in court today

Recall that the arraignment of Mohammed at a Federal High Court Abuja was on Wednesday, December, 30 stalled due to ill-health.

READ ALSO: SANs Unhappy With Buhari Over Comments On Dasuki, Kanu

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Mohammed, an ex-chairman of the PDP and former minister of defense alongside his son, Abbah Mohammed, are alleged to have aided in the diversion of funds slated for arms procurement by the Office of the National Security Adviser.

The ambulance that brought Dr Haliru Mohammed to court

The charge sheet  a four-count charge  by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was scheduled for afore-mention on the day he appeared in court in December.

Abbah Mohammed is alleged to have received N600 million from Dasukis office on behalf of BAM Projects & Properties Limited, an Abuja-based realty company.

Dr Haliru Mohammed assisted by his aides out of the court room

Abbah Mohammed was arrested by the EFCC on November 30 this year, along with Bashir Yuguda, who is the former minister of state for finance; Sagir Bafarawa, son of the former Sokoto state governor Attahiru Bafarawa; and Shuaibu Salisu, the director of finance in the office of the former NSA.

READ ALSO: Kanu, Dasuki: For Calling Buhari A Tyrant, AGF, Senator Ndume And Others Lash Critics

The FCT Federal High Court had directed Nigerian commercial banks to freeze the accounts of some suspects involved in the arms procurement scandal that has been traced to Sambo Dasuki, the former national security adviser.

Source: Legit.ng
Think You Need to Wait to Purchase Your Next Home? Think Again! By Anthony Wheaton January, 2 017 FMRealtyConsulting.com W...
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Monday Hounga who was suspected of killing his partner, Cecelia Joseph on Christmas day and subsequently fled to Benin Republic has surrendered voluntarily to the police.

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The Punch reports that the 28 year old claimed that he and his lover were attacked by a gang on the fateful day and that while Cecelia was stabbed to death, his stomach was ripped.

Monday Hounga Image/The Punch

Hounga claimed that the reason a relative took him to Benin republic was because four hospitals refused to admit him for treatment in Nigeria. He said he surrendered when he heard in the news that he was wanted for the death of his lover.

It was earlier reported that a bloody fight ensued between the couples in their residence in Raji Rasaki Estate, in the FESTAC Town area of Lagos. This led to the death of the victim.

The police released a statement that it had arrested a woman, Taiye Ganiyu, and one Sodjinou Singbo, for aiding his escape.

READ ALSO: Woman Arrested For Beating Husband

Hounga said after he surrendered that he and Cecilia have been together for more than a decade and he couldnt have killed her.

We have known each other for more than 10 years now. We met while in the primary school. Although we attended different primary schools, we usually met during inter-house competitions and that was when we started dating.

I rented the apartment where we lived and we had been living together for more than one year. We would have been married, but her parents said she should get pregnant for me first.

On December 25, around 12.30am, while we were both asleep, she (Cecelia) suddenly shouted, Monday, help me. As I opened my eyes, I woke up to see a gun pointed at my head. The intruders were three, but only one carried a gun. He said if I shouted, he would blast my head off.

They stabbed me in the hand and in the wrist when I tried to struggle with them. They later stabbed me in the stomach. I forced myself to pull out the knife from my stomach. When I checked Cecelia, she was dead.

He said when hospitals in Nigeria could not admit him for surgery; he had to go to Benin for treatment. He said he loved her so much and wouldnt have killed her.

Titilayo Joseph, the elder sister of the victim said Cecilia was living with her and not with the suspect and had only gone to his place during the festive period.

READ ALSO: Ogun Police Arrests Man For Rape

I was at home on December 26 when I received a call that she had a fight with her boyfriend and he had stabbed her to death.

He claimed they were attacked by robbers; were they the only one living in that compound? Why was she the only one that was stabbed to death? Why didnt he raise the alarm?

The Lagos state police vowed to investigate the matter and bring the culprit to Justice.

Source: Legit.ng
Officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday, January 5, stormed the Abuja home of the spokesman the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olisa Metuh and whisked him away.

Olisa Metuh has been whisked away by officials of the EFCC.

[article_adwert]

READ ALSO: $2.1Billion Arms Deals: Top Military Official In EFCC Net

According to a statement by Richard Ihediwa, the special assistant to the partys national publicity secretary, the anti-graft agency stormed the compound this morning and asked Metuh to follow them to the commissions headquarters.

He said the operatives who were four in number came in a White unmarked Toyota Hiace bus, adding that when they were asked the reason for the invitation, the officials stated that he has some issues to clear with the commission.

The special assistant said the commission, however, stated that Metuh was not being arrested but friendly invited.

Ihediwa further disclosed that as at the time of issuing this statement, Metuh is still being kept at the commissions headquarters and his lawyers were making frantic efforts to reach him.

He said though details of why Metuh was invited is yet to be made public by the commission, he recalled that severally the PDP spokesman had alerted in various press conferences and statements that he has been under threat and that the ruling party and the government have been very uncomfortable with his stance.

READ ALSO: $2.1Bn: We Will Hand Over Any Officer To EFCC  DHQ

According to him, the latest being the outburst and threats by the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Oyegun in reaction to Chief Metuhs criticisms of President Buharis widely criticized response on governments disobedience of court orders, during the last Wednesdays Presidential Media chat.

The special assistant said the office of the national publicity secretary will keep the public updated on any development on the issue.

Recall that Metuh was implicated in the $2.1 billion arms contracts as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) traced N1.4 billion to the account of a company allegedly linked to him.

The PDP stalwart had earlier alleged that his life was under threat by some suspected federal government agents, and in a stone throw, report also emerged that the Department of State Service invited him for questioning but his party dismissed the report that he was under investigation by the EFCC.

Source: Legit.ng
Former militants of the Niger Delta have threatened war if the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and director of radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu is not released by the Federal Government.

Nnamdi Kanu with mother, Ugoeze Nnenne, and siblings.

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READ ALSO: EFCCs Invitation: Tompolo Gets Support

Ireporter have it that the former militants under the guise of Niger Delta Peoples Democratic Front (NDPDF) issued the threat at the weekend in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital.

The leader of the group, Precious Iyoyo (aka General Playboy) advised President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately release Kanu, in order to reduce the growing tension in the country.

According to him, the continued detention of Kanu after a competent court had granted him bail was provocative and dictatorial. He also demanded the immediate pullout of the military personnel drafted to Niger Bridge in Onitsha, Anambra state, to allow free flow of traffic for the innocent citizens of South- South and South East.

Iyoyo further hinted that the former warlords would not fold their hands and watch their brothers and sisters from the South-South and South East geo-political zones chased, tortured or enslaved with impunity in our land.

The Nigerian government is dangerously pushing us to the wall. The unprovoked mass shooting and killing of our brothers and sisters will no longer be tolerated, he said.

READ ALSO: Ijaw Leader Urges Buhari To Maintain Amnesty

The NDPDF leader promised that his group would support and sustain the Biafra agitation, and called those from the two regions who are sabotaging the struggle to have reconsideration.

The director of radio Biafra and leader of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu who is undergoing treasonable felony and terrorism charges in a Federal High court sitting in Abuja, was granted bail but had since remained in custody.

Meanwhile, the Former Niger Delta militants beating drum of war against the Federal Government now had earlier called on President Muhammadu Buhari to prevail on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to leave their former leader, Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, alone.

Source: Legit.ng
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AEW Europe has purchased Edifico Amura, an 18,178 sqm office building on the outskirts of Madrid, for approximately 37 million.The asset has been acquired on behalf of the Europe Value Investors fund (EVI) from Union Investment Real Estate GmbH.

Developed in 2002, Amura is a modern and well-mainta...

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Acting on behalf of Ryan Grant, Lee Causer, Catherine Williamson and Elizabeth MacKay of AlixPartners, the Joint Administrators of Fontenhall Scotland Limited, JLL Hotels and Hospitality Group has sold the Crowne Plaza, Royal Terrace in Edinburgh. The 4-star hotel comprises 100 bedrooms, bar, restaurant, three meeting and event spaces, a

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John Lord once walked into a federal government building with $2 million in cash in his backpack to pay his taxes for the cannabis he sells.

Due to federal laws, he couldnt get a bank account to bank his drug profits. Its different now.
A puppy who was once terrified of being touched is now learning to love the feel of a caring hand.

The young dog, named Kayne, has captivated social media users around the world after Monica Mitreanu shared video of him at an animal shelter in Romania last November. So extreme was the untold abuse he suffered prior to being rescued that he literally screamed out in terror at the notion of being petted.

The distressing clip has since been viewed millions of times online, making Kayne an unwitting icon for the horrors of animal abuse. But his story doesn't end there.
Every time Zach Skow looked in the mirror, he saw a dead man. His skin was a ghoulish glint of yellow. His body had crumpled into itself, gaunt and haggard. And his eyes? Well, it was best not to stare too long into those pools of despair. "Your eyes are grey and bright yellow," Skow told The Dodo. "There is this death just lingering behind the surface of your eyes. It was a tough thing to look at." "I stared at myself in the mirror going, 'Oh my God, your soul is fucking gone.'" But the mirror revealed something else. Just behind him, nipping at the mirror's edge, was a Labrador mix named Tug wagging his tail at Skow's hollowed reflection. Tug was one of three dogs Skow rescued from shelters in Southern California. Zach Skow

Zach Skow

Somehow, this man, whose organs were failing after years of abuse, had been their salvation. He always felt a connection with dogs who had been thrown away. And at dawn, Tug, along with Skow's other dogs Marley and Buddy, couldn't care less about Skow's condition - the end-stage liver failure that doctors said he was unlikely to survive. They only cared that it was a golden early morning in the mountains of Tehachapi, about two hours north of Los Angeles. It was playtime. Their owner was going outside. Dead or alive. So Skow slipped on a pair of sunglasses to hide his goblin-yellow eyes, the telltale color of liver failure. And he stepped, reluctantly, into the light.

Dodo Shows Comeback Kids Family Stops At Nothing To Help Their Great Dane Run

The rescue dogs represented an unlikely antithesis of everything Skow spent so many years striving to obliterate in himself. Life. In fact, for Skow, the siege of himself had been a long campaign. He started drinking heavily when he was just 16. But it was really while working at a comedy club in Tempe, Arizona that he stepped up his end game. Running the door at a bustling improv club in the mid-2000s, Skow was responsible for everything that happened there: the comedians, the patrons, the proceeds. And, crucially, the party. Skow was soon selling drugs. Drinking. Smoking crack. Drinking. Drugs. Drinking. Drinking. Drinking. "I drank 24 hours a day," he recalls. "There was never a period when I wasn't intoxicated." It took a doctor's diagnosis to jar his life into focus. Just in time for the 28-year-old to learn he was dying. Skow's alcoholism and drug addiction ravaged his liver and led to weeks of hospitalization to treat acute alcoholic hepatitis and kidney failure. One estimate gave him an 18 percent chance of survival if he didn't get a liver transplant within 30 days. But in order to be eligible for a liver transplant at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, Skow would have to be six months sober. Entering at a healthy 165 pounds, Skow left the hospital weighing just 140 - the skeletal remainder of a human being bombarded with medical interventions. Skow immediately went into withdrawal, suffering from grossly enlarged veins in his neck called esophageal varices. His mind careened in and out of hallucinations. "I had no fight in me," he says, recalling how he would beg his father to take him back to the hospital for a shot of the drugs he now craved. He ended up tucking himself away in the mountains of his family home in Tehachapi - a space he also shared with his three dogs. "When I was going through withdrawal I couldn't tell what was real or what was fake," he says. "Having the dogs there with me, having the dogs touched me, helped me immensely, helped me feel connected." Zach Skow

Zach Skow

This was also where he started having those long, "fucking terrible" moments with himself in the bathroom mirror. But always behind him were those dogs. "I turned around and Tug was looking back at me, wagging his tail. He doesn't see any physical issues," he says. "He doesn't see that I am hurting or suffering, he doesn't see that I am suffering or yellow. He just sees me. He just sees my soul." "And he knows that it is just me. The person and the thing he loves most in this world." Skow had long felt a kinship with dogs. He had volunteered at his local humane society back in 2007, a move he admits was prompted by his looming high school reunion and feelings of "what-the-fuck-am-I-going-to-say-at-my-reunion." But his experience fostering dogs cast a spell on him. "I fell in love with it and quickly found out I was really good at it," he says. Zach Skow

Zach Skow

Eventually, growing sicker, Skow found himself not really wanting to live, but having to live for Tug, Buddy and Marley. Hauled outside by these hounds of love, Skow began taking short walks. He started a journal. Walks became hikes. Skow pushed ever farther into the heights of Tehachapi. One icy morning in October 2008, as the sun was just beginning to skitter over the mountains, Skow spied a shadow shuffling up the path. Is that a bear, he wondered? As the shape drew nearer he realized it was an old man. Skow was reluctant to engage with him, sensitive about his monstrous appearance. Bakersfield Tuff Magazine

And yet, when the man reached him he paid Skow's appearance no mind. He was entirely interested in his dogs, petting them and asking their names. "Up until this point, everything was just about me, about my life and my struggle and how my liver is failing and my difficulties," he recalls. "Everything was about poor, poor pitiful me." But the old man cared only about his dogs. Skow finally managed to ask him some questions. His name was Wendell. A neighbor. And that winter morning walk was Wendell's first since his wife died. The two used to make that trek every morning. That day, he made it alone. "He didn't ask me why I looked fucked up," Skow notes. "I'm sure he knew I was fucked up. It was a wake-up call because this guy has gone through something as gnarly, if not more gnarly, emotionally than me and he's not looking for any sympathy." After that meeting, Skow became friends with his neighbor, the man who, until his passing a few years ago, he simply called Wen. And gradually, he turned his sympathy outward, beyond himself. If there was a message in that fateful meeting, it was a simple one: Sometimes, you have to just let go, Zach. And just put your faith in a dog. Or three dogs. Or all the dogs in the world. Zach Skow

Zach Skow

Which is exactly what Skow did. He founded his own rescue in 2009, calling it Marley's Mutts after one of his own beloved castaways. Since then, Marley's Mutts has rescued, rehabilitated and re-homed more than 3,000 dogs, many from nearby Kern County's high-kill animal shelters. And a funny thing happened on the way to saving those dogs. Skow ended up saving himself. His hikes got longer and longer, dogs dragging him every step of the way. Zach Skow

Zach Skow

Skow has stayed clean for seven years now - long eclipsing that six-month stretch during which doctors said he would need to remain sober before being eligible for a liver transplant. The thing is, he didn't need one any more. Zach Skow

Zach Skow
A bush doof slated for the Australia Day weekend has sparked a firestorm of controversy after it was accused of showing disrespect towards Indigenous Australian culture. The wave of criticism has now resulted in the event changing its name.

Lets Go Walkabout: Traditional Aussie Bush Doof has since been renamed Lets Go Walk-around and is set to take place in the NSW bush two hours outside of Sydney, with a lineup of local and international electronic performers.

Criticism was levelled at the event and its organiser, Leigh Weller, almost as soon as it was announced, with many finding the title of the event offensive. Many also cited dissatisfaction with the fact that such an event was being held on Indigenous land.

The term walkabout is a contentious issue for many Indigenous Australians. The word is considered an archaic colonial term, historically referring to a rite of passage in which Indigenous males would undergo a journey during adolescence.

Though in recent times it has been reclaimed by some Indigenous people, its use by non-Indigenous people is considered inappropriate and groups such as Reconciliation Queensland Incorporated advise against its use when discussing Indigenous culture.

Furthermore, the event is being held on Indigenous land and many critics were curious as to whether permission had been given by local elders to host the event on the site or if a Welcome to Country, wherein a local elder or custodian welcomes you to the land, would be held.

The event is also slated for the Australia Day weekend. Australia Day is a controversial topic for many Indigenous people, with many referring to it as Invasion Day or Survival Day. However, organisers were less than receptive to complaints.

After an unnamed writer for the blog Black Australia raised these issues with Weller on the events official Facebook page, Weller attempted to let himself off the hook by explaining that he has no affinity to Australia as a country.





The writer also shared an image allegedly of a private message from Weller telling them, Please dont [sic] come. Weller has since changed the name of the festival, though graphics featuring the original title and Indigenous-style artwork remain on the event page.

How about instead of trashing traditional Aboriginal lands with your doof you go educate yourself on Aboriginal culture, spirituality, civilisation and history? wrote Ruby Wharton of the Aboriginal Provisional Government.

However, the event page has been flooded with comments siding with organisers, arguing that complaints about the event are simply a matter of PC gone too far. Readers can check out the backlash via the festivals Facebook event page to make their own decision.
Breakthrough! How Three People Saved Blue Babies and Changed Medicine Forever By Jim Murphy Clarion. $18.99.

going where its dark By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Delacorte. $16.99 (Clarion)

The child in Guojings impressive, wordless picture book The Only Child (Ages 4-10) could be any small girl, round-cheeked and barely out of toddlerhood, clinging briefly to her mother in the morning  and later at home feeling alone during her parents work day. She plays dolls and dress-up and watches television briefly before a photo in an album catches her thoughts. Donning a sweater and a pair of snow coveralls, she ventures into the chilly streets and boards a city bus, where she falls asleep. When the girl wakes, the bus is empty and stranded in a forest. An antlered deer appears and rescues the sobbing child, ascending a misty staircase to a bright cloudscape. Guojings single palette in graphite black and gray suggests an old photograph come to life, while the story seems to come from a dream country reminiscent of Raymond Briggss beloved book The Snowman. The visual narrative features sequences of frames interspersed with dramatic full scenes, as when the deer brings the little girl back to her anxious parents. Although Guojing attributes some of the books emotional territory to her own experience as an only child under Chinas one-child policy, many children will recognize themselves and their own moments of loneliness and connection.

 Kathie Meizner

[Best childrens books of 2015]

Jim Murphys latest medical history book, Breakthrough! (Ages 9 to 12), begins in Baltimore in November 1944, with an 18-month-old patient who weighed less than nine pounds. Born with severe heart defects that made breathing difficult, Eileen Saxon was called a blue baby because her bloods chronic lack of oxygen turned some of her skin blue. Like HBOs 2004 movie Something the Lord Made, Murphys book focuses on the team that came together for the risky medical intervention that helped galvanize modern heart surgery. Leading the group was Alfred Blalock, a doctor who had pioneered a better approach to treating shock victims. Offering vital guidance was Vivien Thomas, an African American man who had helped formulate the blue baby cardiac procedure (and devised some of its surgical instruments) despite never having gone to college or medical school. Another key figure was Helen Taussig, who specialized in childrens heart defects and showed great compassion. Some of Murphys choices are debatable; for instance, only in a footnote does he mention that Saxon died before she was 3. Still, the books clear and concise account offers a compelling picture of all that goes into medical  and societal  advances.

 Abby McGanney Nolan

Buck Anderson loves to explore the natural tunnels and caves beneath the Virginia countryside, where he lives. They are a refuge for the small, 13-year-old protagonist of Phyllis Reynolds Naylors new novel, Going Where Its Dark (Ages 10 and up). Buck stutters, and in these quiet underground places he doesnt have to deal with his concerned family or the mockery at school. A grouchy new neighbor  a retired speech pathologist  may be able to help, but the man wants Buck to learn to relax and talk to, rather than avoid, people. Good luck with that! When bullies force Buck into a dire situation, he must mobilize all his emotional and physical strength to find the best course of action. As with many of her 140 books, including the Newbery Medal-winning Shiloh, Naylor beautifully conveys a sense of rural life, with its chores and seasonal rhythms. And she captures the humorous, complex dynamics of a large, multi-generational family, from patriarch Gramps to Bucks supportive, gregarious twin, Katie. Subplots involving stolen property and an older brothers aspirations deepen suspense and secondary characters. The caving scenes are heart-in-your-throat thrilling, as Buck wriggles through dank passages and discovers skulls and rock formations. Readers with their own passions and insecurities will relate to diffident Buck as he braves dark caverns and his social fears.

 Mary Quattlebaum
Taffety Punk company member Kimberly Gilbert narrates Shakespeares The Rape of Lucrece at the Black Cat in Washington in June of 2013. (C. Stanley Photography)

The big news coming out of Taffety Punks season announcement this week isnt what shows the small theater company has planned for 2016, but what play it wont be staging: There will be no all-female Taming of the Shrew.

The whole city has been asking, said Marcus Kyd, Taffety Punks artistic director. As soon as Shakespeare Theatre made the announcement [that it would stage an all-male Shrew], our email box went berserk.

The Riot Grrrls  an all-female offshoot of the Taffety Punkers  were born in 2008, when Shakespeare Theatre staged an all-male Romeo and Juliet. The Riot Grrrls followed suit with their own version of the classic tragedy.

Since then, the Grrrls have produced all-female versions of Shakespeares Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar and The Tempest. But although the collective may have arisen from concern that Washingtons largest classical theater company was looking like an old boys club, thats not why it has continued to stage all-female plays, providing D.C. actresses with more opportunities to perform Shakespeare.

The Riot Grrrlss mission is not to respond to the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Kyd said.

And so, the troupe decided not to stage an all-female Shrew during Shakespeare Theatres May-June run of the play at the Harman Center for the Arts. I thought that was an appropriately punk response, Kyd said. They were nearly unanimous in saying, No, we are not doing this. 

The Grrrls ranks include prominent D.C. actresses Kimberly Gilbert and Tonya Beckman, director Lise Bruneau and a rotating cast of about 10 other theater professionals, all of whom are also members of Taffety Punk.

If Taffety Punk is a record label, then the Riot Grrrls are one of our bands, Kyd said.

Another band is the Bootleggers, actors who get together annually to rehearse and stage a Shakespeare play in one day. This year, it will be Henry VI, Part 1, over the summer at the Folger Library.

Taffety Punk will put on its mainstage shows at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Phaeton, a retelling of the Greek myth by Michael Milligan, opens April 29, with Kyd directing, longtime local dance instructor Kelly King providing choreography, and Gilbert starring as Phile. Next fall, Bruneau will direct Georgette Kellys In the Belly of the Whale, a contemporary reimagining of the Jonah story.

Bard fans still seeking an all-female Shakespeare fix are advised to head to Towson University, where, starting Jan. 15, Center Stage will be staging an all-female As You Like It, featuring Riot Grrrl Tia Shearer as Oliver.

Changes at the top at Synetic

The other As You Like It running in town is the wordless version at Synetic Theater. Down the labyrinthine hall at Synetics offices in Crystal City, a new managing director is settling in. Ann Allan, who had been Synetics production manager since 2013, is replacing chief operating officer Yulia Kriskovets, who left her full-time position to spend more time with her baby.

This really is an ideal situation to step into, Allan said Monday, her first day on the job. Allan has been working at Washington theaters since 2007, when she left a theater in Pennsylvania to become a master electrician at Woolly Mammoth. Two years later, she became the theaters retail event manager and gradually gravitated to the business side. She views taking on Synetics managing director role as a logical progression, but she also knows there are disadvantages to not having a masters degree in arts management like so many other aspiring cultural leaders in the area.

What she does have is an affinity for Synetics unique aesthetic and experience working with Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili, who founded the theater.

My work will be to get all the administrative things happening so that the creative team doesnt have to worry about it, she said.

Synetic does have a different process  a lot of artists have their eccentricities, and Paata is one of them  but Ive had 2 1/ 2 years to adjust to that.

Director Tim Vasen dies

Many actors and theater administrators who have been working in the Baltimore-Washington area for more than a decade are mourning the death of Tim Vasen, who worked closely with Shakespeare Theatre and Center Stage from 1997 until 2003.

Vasen, 51, died Dec. 28 in what reports have described as a back-yard accident at his home in Brooklyn. Since 1993, Vasen had been affiliated with Princeton University as a director and adjunct lecturer. He joined the university faculty in 2003 and three years ago became the director of Princetons theater program.

As resident director of Center Stage in Baltimore, Vasen shepherded plays such as Lynn Nottages Intimate Apparel, which is considered a 21st-century classic. He also helped launch the First Look series for commissions and readings. A spokeswoman for the theater called Vasen the fairy godfather of Center Stages play-development efforts.

In Washington, Vasen helped establish the Shakespeare Theatre Academy for Classical Acting, the theaters MFA program with George Washington University. In 2001, Vasen directed The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster and returned the following year to helm Shakespeares Alls Well That Ends Well.

George Washington theater professor Leslie Jacobson, who directs the academy, called Vasen an important guest artist and described those first two shows as powerful and compelling experiences for audiences and actors alike.

A memorial service was held Sunday in Princeton, N.J.

Ritzel is a freelance writer.
A rhinoceros in the Hluhluwe game reserve in South Africa, which may have experienced a decline in poaching. (Schalk Van Zuydam/Associated Press)

The number of rhinoceroses killed in South Africa in 2015 was slightly lower than in the year before, representing modest progress by law enforcement in stopping poachers who have killed rhinos in record numbers, according to a conservation group.

Citing unidentified sources, Elise Daffue, founder of StopRhinoPoach ing.com, said there were about 1,160 reported cases of rhino poaching last year, down from 1,215 in 2014. If the number is confirmed, it would be the first annual drop in numbers since rhino poaching surged around 2008 in South Africa, home to most of the worlds rhinos.

But conservationist Allison Thomson says the 2015 number is higher. She said there was an increase in rhino orphans whose mothers were killed by poachers.

Thomson suggested that the government was downplaying the poaching problem by issuing less-frequent updates. Edna Molewa, South Africas environment minister, said the government provides accurate, timely data.

Poachers have targeted rhinos to meet rising demand for their horns in Asia. Consumers believe rhino horn has medicinal benefits, but there is no evidence to support this.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and the head of the D.C. Councils Judiciary Committee butted heads Monday over the citys efforts to find a solution to an ongoing spike in homicides.

In public appearances meant to promote her anti-crime legislation, Bowser (D) scolded the council for moving too slowly. Meanwhile, Judiciary Chairman Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) criticized Bowsers proposal as a knee-jerk reaction and said it was the Bowser administration that was dragging its feet.

Bowser and McDuffie separately introduced broad crime bills a day apart in September, after a spate of summer killings set the city on edge. Bowsers proposal, which would allow warrantless searches of former violent offenders, quickly drew condemnation from activists and community leaders, while McDuffies bill, which focuses on expanding community outreach, found 10 co-sponsors.

With the close of 2015 and a District homicide tally for the year that reached 162  a 54 percent spike  District leaders response to the number seemed to take on new political import in the first workday of the new year. Even as they urged action on homicides, however, both Bowser and McDuffie noted that overall violent crime is down.

McDuffie said the council would move forward this month with a revised version of his bill that incorporates some of Bowsers ideas, rather than holding separate votes.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser slammed the Council Judiciary Committee, accusing them of moving too slowly to implement her anti-crime package. (WUSA 9)

Bowser, who embarks this week on her second year in office, is under pressure to provide a solution to residents concerns about crime. In appearances Monday at the D.C. crime lab, at a Southeast pizza parlor, at a popular radio show and at the D.C. jail, she said her bill provided a comprehensive public safety plan.

To implement it, however, Bowser may have to work closely with McDuffie and other council members. And the competing narratives on the appropriate legislative response put forth Monday underscored a palpable tension between the mayor and council.

Bowser has repeatedly expressed frustration and impatience with the council for moving too slowly, while council leaders have questioned her judgment on issues ranging from crime to economic development.

Bowser said Monday that she would accept a combined legislative solution to address District crime, but she also said she stood by her original bill, which includes higher penalties for some violent crimes and incentives to keep police officers from retiring.

The council in October held a joint hearing on Bowsers and McDuffies bills. His bill would create an Office of Neighborhood Engagement and Safety to engage at-risk youth and would embed social workers in hospital emergency rooms and the police force.

But Bowser said there has been no robust discussion among the council since then. In a letter Monday to constituents, Bowser accused the council of neglecting a vital piece of legislation for 131 days and counting.

[D.C. Mayors plan for warrantless searches appears dead on arrival.]

Speaking inside the D.C. jail, Bowser sought to highlight an expansion of a popular job-training program for inmates, giving participants 10 days credit toward early release, but she said was being held up by McDuffies committee.

If there are things that you disagree with in the bill, change them, she said. But we want it to move. I dont think there is any reason to hold up good-time credits . . . but vote yes or no.

McDuffie said Bowsers assessment was wrong.

You would have to be under a rock over the last 12 months not to know how important public safety is, McDuffie said.

The Judiciary Committee has been focused like a laser, he said, on policies that actually keep residents safe. That focus has included discussions with leaders of successful crime-prevention programs in California and Massachusetts and an effort to evaluate data that helped shape Bowsers bill, he said. But the administration has stood in the way of some efforts and failed to provide the data that informed Bowsers anti-crime package, despite promising to, McDuffie said.

Bowser declined to say whether she had provided statistics and played down a question of whether the administration had provided McDuffie with adequate data to justify one proposal: to enhance criminal penalties for violence on Metro.

She said her proposal to raise the penalty for violence committed on Metro trains was motivated by a desire to equalize the law. She said penalties are currently higher for those who commit violence against transit operators than against passengers.

I know there has been a question about some stats, she said. But she urged action: If you dont like it, vote no, but lets act.

McDuffie also said that while his bill is evidence-based and data-driven, aspects of Bowsers bill would set the city back. What were not going to do in the Judiciary Committee is to be knee-jerk, to be reactionary, he said.

During her appearance at the D.C. crime lab Monday, Bowser said one council member, Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), was so supportive of her proposal that hes moving a component of her bill as emergency legislation Tuesday.

Allen, whose bill would create a rebate program for homeowners and business owners who buy security cameras, said more security cameras around the District would act as a crime deterrent and a useful tool for police.

But Allen said his proposal predates Bowsers. In September, I introduced permanent legislation to help create incentives to have homes and businesses put up security systems, he said. I think that everybody thought it was such a great idea that it then found its way into the supplemental budget that we passed a couple of weeks later.

Allen, who is one of 10 co-

sponsors on McDuffies crime bill, also said he has a lot of confidence in McDuffies ability to merge his and Bowsers legislation and do so with urgency.
Acting Education Secretary John King Jr. sits on the floor to play with students at JoAnn Leleck Elementary School on Jan. 5 in Silver Spring, Md. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

John B. King Jr. settled into the rocking chair before a group of cross-legged kindergartners and fielded a question from a little boy.

Wait, are you a president? the boy asked the grown-up in the gray suit, who had been escorted into their small classroom at JoAnn Leleck Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md., by an army of photographers, cameramen, reporters, and assorted school and county officials.

No, but I work for the president, King said with a smile. Hes very nice.

King is the nations acting education secretary, replacing Arne Duncan, who relinquished the job last week after seven years as one of the most influential policymakers for the countrys 100,000 public K-12 schools.

King, who turned 41 Tuesday, will retain the acting modifier for the rest of President Obamas time in office. He has not been nominated by the president, and he will not undergo the confirmation process required of Cabinet-level officers under the Constitution.

Acting Education Secretary John King, Jr., chats with students during a visit to JoAnn Leleck Elementary School. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Decisions around nominations are decisions for the president to make, King said when asked whether his acting status will make it more difficult for him to execute his duties. I will say the authorities of the acting secretary are the same as authorities of the secretary.

[Next U.S. education secretary talks computer science, and college, with D.C. high school students]

Republican congressional leaders in the Senate and the House say they want King to undergo the vetting process.

I personally recommended to President Obama in December that he nominate a secretary of education and that, if he did, our education committee would consider him or her in January and that  barring some sort of ethical lapse found in the confirmation process  I would work to confirm that nominee before the end of the month, said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate education panel and an education secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

For proper accountability, especially as we work with the administration on implementing the new law governing elementary and secondary education, it is important to have in charge of the department a member of the presidents Cabinet confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Alexander said.

Congress overwhelmingly passed an overhaul of federal education policy last month that significantly dials back the federal role in local schools, shifting greater authority to state and local officials.

[Obama signs new K-12 education law that ends No Child Left Behind]

But the Education Department must craft regulations to implement the law, and tensions already are growing between officials who want to embed Obama administration policies into new regulations and critics in Congress who want to limit the administrations influence.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said he plans to conduct robust oversight to ensure the conservative reforms in the law are properly implemented, according to a spokeswoman. Kline also has called for Obama to formally nominate King.

Alexander plans at least three oversight hearings on how the Obama administration carries out the new law.

Asked Tuesday whether the president intends to nominate King, press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration doubts that King would get a fair hearing from a stridently partisan Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

It would be better if the leader of a 4,200-employee federal agency were not acting, Earnest said. When youre in charge of an organization as large as the department, it is helpful, and you can be more effective, if it is quite clear that youve earned the approval of a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate, he said.

Federal law allows an acting Cabinet secretary for no longer than 210 days. In Kings case, that deadline would be July 29. But there are ways for the administration to get around that, experts say.

King has a compelling life story but a complex recent professional history. The son of New York City educators, King was orphaned by age 12. He credits his public school teachers with saving his life and setting him on a path that led to degrees from Harvard, Yale and Columbia. He founded a high-achieving charter school in Boston and in 2011 became the first African American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York state education commissioner.

But in New York, he oversaw a rocky rollout of both the Common Core academic standards in math and reading as well as a teacher evaluation system tied to new tests based on those standards.

Critics said the state rushed the rollout, without properly training teachers and then holding them accountable for the new standards before local districts had completed new curriculums and classroom materials. Scores from the new tests were used as an element of a controversial evaluation system that affected personnel and salary decisions for some teachers. More than a third of principals in the state signed a letter protesting the new system, saying it was unfair to educators and created an unhealthy focus on test scores. They were joined by thousands of parents, teachers and administrators.

King scheduled a series of public meetings across the state in 2013 to try to quell the growing pushback, but they quickly dissolved into heckling sessions commandeered by irate parents.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) called the states handling of the Common Core standards deeply flawed and convened a task force that called for a total reboot, recommending that teachers not be judged on test scores until 2019.

King joined the Obama administration last year as senior advisor delegated duties of deputy secretary of education and was identified as Duncans successor in October.

One immediate dilemma for King: About 20 percent of students in New York  one in five  refused to take the states Common Core tests last spring in protest. Federal law requires that states test 95 percent of their students in math and reading. As acting education secretary, King will have to decide whether to penalize New York for missing that mark.

At Leleck Elementary, the children listened attentively as King read Snowmen at Night and, prompted by their teacher, wished their visitor a happy birthday. When King invited the class to guess his age, the 5-year-olds sized up the bearded, bespectacled King and shouted out estimates: Thirteen? one boy asked. Thirty? another tried.

Im 41, King told them. But I feel young.

David Nakamura contributed to this report.
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) at an Oct. 16 rally to protest the announced closure of Safeway's two distribution centers in Upper Marlboro and Landover. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.), who is running for the U.S. Senate, on Monday accused the media of a racial double standard in covering the armed anti-government activists who are occupying a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon.

The group took over a federal building at the refuge Saturday to protest the treatment of a pair of local ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal land. Edwards said in a statement that the activists should be called lawbreaking . . . militants and that they are being judged differently than black activists who have demonstrated throughout the country over the past 18 months as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I am deeply troubled by the media portrayal of the events in Oregon and the armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge, Edwards said in a statement. Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists . . . have been referred to variously as thugs, criminals, and drug users. To the contrary, most of these protests and protesters have been peaceful, and organizers have sought and obtained permission to peaceably assemble in exercise of their Constitutional rights. But in Oregon, a group of armed men illegally occupying a federal building have been referred to as an armed militia, or simply occupiers, as though that behavior is acceptable in a nation of laws. What is happening in Oregon is not protest sanctioned by the Constitution, it is lawbreaking.

[FBI takes lead on investigating armed takeover of federal building in Oregon]

Without naming specific news organizations, Edwards said in her statement that the media have a responsibility to avoid language that paints these armed militants in a positive light.

(The Washington Post/Reps. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are seeking the Democratic nomination to succeed U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who is retiring.)

She also argued that a nonwhite group would never be allowed to seize control of government property in this way. One could not imagine a group of armed black men taking over an unoccupied federal building in one of our nations cities as they have in Oregon, she said. It is time to tell that tough truth.

Asked for specific examples of media bias, Edwards spokesman Benjamin Gerdes cited a comment by CNNs Don Lemon during Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Mo., that obviously there is the smell of marijuana in the air. He also described Fox News Bill OReilly comparing Black Lives Matter activists to Nazis and remarks by other Fox News hosts who called the protesters criminal and a hate group.

Gerdes also referred to the repeated use of the word thug to describe rioters in Baltimore after the death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray last spring. The mayor of Baltimore used the word, although she later apologized. In addition, Gerdes pointed to news stories by a variety of outlets that connected a rise in murder rates in several cities with Black Lives Matter protests.

[Why arent we calling the Oregon occupiers terrorists?]

The media have struggled with how to describe the Oregon occupiers, as The Washington Posts Paul Farhi has written. Major news outlets, he reported, were avoiding the term  terrorist . . . saying it was unclear that the groups action was designed to terrorize or harm anyone.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) wrote Monday on Twitter that its time these criminals get to occupy another federal facility: prison. The FBI says it will work with local and state authorities to seek a peaceful resolution to the situation.

Edwards, an African American, is running against Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who is white, for the Democratic nomination to replace Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who is retiring.

There are no black women serving in the U.S. Senate, and the congresswoman has repeatedly argued that she would bring sorely needed diversity to Congresss upper chamber.

In an op-ed for The Post in April, she said that as a black mother she was moved by the protests against police brutality and disgusted by looting in Baltimore and Ferguson.

Sen. Martin Heinrichs name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D) wants to make history as the first black female senator from Maryland. But she is struggling to find the money to compete with her primary rival, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, whose connections with donors in the state and nationwide have helped him build a formidable war chest.

By the end of September, Van Hollen, whose congressional district is based in Montgomery County, had $4.1 million in the bank. Edwards, who represents Prince Georges County and part of Anne Arundel County, had $368,500. The next round of financial disclosures is due Jan. 31.

Van Hollen has spent nearly $1 million since October on television advertising in Baltimore, where he and Edwards are not well known. But with less than four months to go until the April 26 primary, Edwards has not aired a single commercial. Campaign finance records suggest that she is struggling to pay staff salaries and come up with money for other basics in her quest to succeed retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D).

Its an enormous problem for her, said Matthew Crenson, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University. She cant finance as many ads as Van Hollen can . . . [and] he got [to Baltimore] first. Shes going to have trouble catching up.

The challenge, according to those who know Edwards, is that during her years in Congress, she has positioned herself as an outsider, bucking the establishment and spending relatively little time building a donor base.

Reps. Donna Edwards, left, and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) (TWP)

[Edwards alleges media bias with Oregon occupiers]

Marylands Democratic electorate is about 40 percent African American, and black women have turned out at higher rates than any other demographic group in the past two presidential elections. But Van Hollen, who is white, has spent his years in office building solid relationships with political leaders across racial lines.

Edwards does have strong backing from the powerful Democratic womens group Emilys List, which is airing commercials on her behalf in Baltimore and has pledged to spend at least $1 million on that effort. But outside groups pay higher rates for such ads than candidates, meaning that Van Hollen is getting more air time for his expenditures. And it is extremely rare for a politician to win federal office after a campaign financed almost entirely by outside groups.

Edwards, who declined to be interviewed for this article, raised $638,520 in late summer. But she spent more than she took in. Her dire financial situation was at the core of a fundraising message she sent to supporters in an email last month.

My opponent has outraised us by millions of dollars  and if we dont catch up, and fast, we will lose our shot, the email said.

The most recent polling, conducted by the Baltimore Sun after Van Hollens commercials began airing, gives him a 14-point lead with likely primary voters, even though Edwards is ahead among black respondents by 21 points.

[Edwards fishing for votes in challenging territory]

Edwards prides herself on forging her own path  an attitude that wins her some fans but also can alienate potential supporters. She made establishment enemies in 2011 when she opposed a redistricting plan that favored Maryland Democrats, and again in 2012 when she backed now-Rep. John Delaney over a state lawmaker in a contentious primary. She has been critical of policies regarding Israel, angering some Jewish donors.

Donna has always kind of been her own woman  she wasnt someone who would pal around at party events with our donors, said Matt Verghese, a former state party staff member who wrote an analysis of the third-quarter fundraising reports for the blog Maryland Juice 2.0. She values being outside the party mainstream . . . and I think thats made it hard for her to come out and raise money.

Maryland is not a swing state that would draw a lot of money from national fundraising groups. And unlike the moderate Democrat whom Edwards unseated in 2008, Van Hollen shares most of Edwardss liberal positions, which could limit the involvement of left-leaning advocacy groups. In addition, Edwards is not the only woman of color running for the Senate  Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and California Attorney General Kamala Harris share that spotlight.

The national liberal groups Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee are backing Edwards. They have directed only small amounts of money her way, though in the case of the PCCC, those small donations have added up to more than $50,000.

A spokeswoman for Emilys List said that the outcome of the contest will not rest on fundraising alone. This is a race thats going to be won on message, on whose voice needs to be heard the most, spokeswoman Jess McIntosh said, adding that her organization can do a lot to even the playing field.

Although no one in Marylands congressional delegation has endorsed either primary candidate, more than a dozen political action committees and more than 100 donors who have supported Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D) in the past are backing Van Hollen. Several major donors to Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the House Democratic whip whose district includes parts of Prince Georges County, have given to Van Hollen, a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Benjamin Gerdes, the communications director for Edwards, described her supporters in Maryland as workers struggling to make ends meet.

Theyre giving what they can because they believe in this campaign and in a woman who will fight every single day to level the playing field for Marylands middle-class families, he said.

[In Senate race, connections trump race and gender]

Edwardss home turf of Prince Georges County, while still the nations highest-income majority-black county, was hit hard by the financial crisis and lags far behind its wealthy white neighbors. And Edwards cant count on power brokers in her district to help get out the vote; both County Executive Rushern L. Baker III and state Sen. Joanne C. Benson are backing Van Hollen.

When people meet her they like her, but shes less well known in the donor circles, said Patricia Bauman, an Edwards supporter and prominent Democratic donor. I think its hard for women to raise money; I think its particularly hard for black women to raise money.

Edwards may have been hurt by Rep. Elijah E. Cummingss public flirtations with entering the race. Cummings (D), a popular congressman from Baltimore who is African American, has not made a final decision. I think it has had some negative impact on Donnas ability to raise money, said Valerie Ervin, a former Montgomery County Council member who is backing Edwards.

Along with courting state politicians, Van Hollen has neutralized some of Edwardss potential national support. J Street, a liberal Jewish group, says it is backing both candidates. The AFL-CIO will not endorse. The Service Employees International Union, which helped Edwards win her House seat, is now behind Van Hollen. Leaders said Edwards has not been responsive to their needs in Congress.

Van Hollens campaign has sent letters to Emilys List donors, touting his record with women and accusing the Edwards campaign of misleading tactics. (Emilys List, in turn, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Van Hollen of illegally targeting its donors.) Van Hollens supporters in the Maryland chapter of the National Organization for Women tried to keep the group from endorsing Edwards and protested publicly when it did.

In addition to events with Emilys List, Edwards spoke at Netroots Nation last year and at the spring meeting of Democracy Alliance, a group of rich liberal donors. She has been using free, online media platforms to try to reach younger women, doing interviews with the fashion-based Refinery29, Lena Dunhams newsletter Lenny and the millennial-focused Mic.

Correction: Earlier versions of this article misidentified Matt Vergese as a staffer with the state Democratic Party. He is a former staffer. The article has been corrected.
A sign welcomes visitors to the Diamond Valley in southeast Oregon in mid-December 2015. The prosecution of Dwight and Steven Hammond for burning public lands has brought fresh focus to the debate over how federal land is managed. (Les Zaitz/The Oregonian via AP)

The dispute between Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond and the federal government would not seem like the type to ignite a standoff by armed protesters. But sometimes the facts get lost amid the long-brewing conflict between private landowners in the West and their neighboring landlord, the Bureau of Land Management.

The case also revives the controversy around mandatory minimum sentences, which many advocates feel require judges to issue unfairly long prison terms, often in drug cases, which Congress is gradually addressing. The original judge in the Hammonds case elected to defy the mandatory minimums after their convictions, setting up the protests on behalf of the ranchers when they were resentenced to five-year terms.

The facts are these, court records show:

1.) The Hammonds admitted to, and were convicted of, setting two small fires that had nothing to do with the unrest over how the Bureau of Land Management rules its own land. In Harney County, Ore., roughly 75 percent of land is federally owned.

2.) The key witness against them in the first fire was Dwight Hammonds then-13-year-old grandson, Dusty, who said he and four of his relatives set the fires at his familys instruction to conceal their illegal deer hunting, and that he nearly died when the flames quickly surrounded him. He said the fires were set because his uncle, Steven Hammond, wanted the evidence of their hunt destroyed. Prosecutors said the fires also were intended to chase away witnesses whod seen them hunting illegally.

3.) The Hammonds claimed that the second fire was set as a back fire on their own property to protect it from wildfires sparked by lightning. But trial testimony showed that the back fires were actually set more than a mile from the Hammonds ranch, on federal land.

4.) After a jury convicted both Hammonds of some counts, but was still deliberating on others, the Hammonds accepted the convictions and agreed not to appeal, in exchange for the government not seeking consecutive sentences and dropping the remaining counts. The prosecutor told them they still faced five-year mandatory minimum sentences for the convictions, court transcripts show.

5.) The sentencing was handled four months later by U.S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan, in his last day on the federal bench after 39 years. He elected to ignore the five-year mandatory minimum terms because he felt it was grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here, instead sentencing Dwight Hammond to three months and Steven Hammond to a year and a day. The government appealed, as it routinely does in cases where judges defy mandatory minimums, and a federal appeals court ordered the Hammonds resentenced. A new judge gave them five-year terms in October, and allowed them until January to surrender.

6.) The Hammonds lawyer has made it clear publicly that they are not affiliated with the armed group now occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Their lawyers released a statement Monday saying that Dwight and Steven Hammond respect the rule of law. They have litigated this matter within the federal courts for over five years and, in every instance, have followed the order of the court without incident or violation. ... As the Hammonds have previously stated, they will be reporting to the United States Bureau of Prisons today to serve their sentences.

The Hammonds have run their cattle ranch in southeast Oregon since 1964, according to court documents, on a combination of public and private land. It is essentially a two-man operation, attorneys Marc D. Blackman and Lawrence H. Matasar wrote in 2012: Dwight Lincoln Hammond Jr., now 73, and Steven Dwight Hammond, now 46.

The Hammonds owned over 10,000 acres of private pasture, and had a BLM permit authorizing grazing on tens of thousands of acres of adjacent public land, their attorneys wrote. In 1999, after setting fires on their own property which spread to federal land, they were warned that they would be prosecuted if that happened again.

Steven and Dwight Hammond opposed the BLMs management policies of that property, assistant U.S. attorney Frank R. Papagni Jr. wrote in a sentencing brief last September. While having the right to disagree with such policies, a jury found the Hammonds had no right to burn those public lands regardless of their purported motives.

Prosecutors said that trial testimony from both Dusty Hammond and three nearby hunters showed that on Sept. 30, 2001, Steven Hammond provided matches to his 13-year-old nephew and other family members less than three hours after Steven Hammond illegally shot several deer on BLM land.

Dusty Hammond testified that he thought (he) was going to get burned up and dove into a nearby creek to escape the flames. Almost 140 acres were burned and unavailable for planting in the next two seasons, prosecutors said. They said the possibly fatal danger to Dusty Hammond increased the seriousness of the crime.

In August 2006, Steven Hammonds attorney said, the younger Hammond intentionally set a fire on his own property to head off an approaching blaze sparked by lightning. But BLM firefighters were nearby and one testified that the spot fires set by Steven Hammond were more than a mile from the ranch property.

In June 2012, after an eight-day trial, the jury deliberated until nearly 11 p.m. one night, telling Hogan it had reached verdicts on some counts but not on others. They revealed their verdicts and went back to deliberate some more. During that deliberation, the government and the defense reached an agreement to end the trial with the verdicts already reached.

Hogan scheduled the sentencing for October 2012, his final day on the bench, and opined that five-year sentences were simply unfair for the Hammonds, who were well-respected in the community. Dwight Hammond had no prior record, Steven Hammond only misdemeanors.

It is a quandary federal judges have faced since the 1980s, when Congress enacted harsh penalties for even small amounts of drug possession, and then again after the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which added mandatory minimums for a laundry list of existing statutes, the Hammonds lawyers wrote.

Hogan said five years for using fire to damage or destroy property of the United States was simply too much. This sort of conduct could not have been conducted intended under that [anti-terrorism] statute, the judge said. Out in the wilderness here, I dont think thats what the Congress intended. And in addition, it just would not be  would not meet any idea I have of justice, proportionality.

Hogan gave sentences in accordance with what federal sentencing guidelines would have provided the Hammonds if the mandatory minimums werent applicable. The Hammonds surrendered in early 2013 and served their sentences while the government appealed. In March 2015, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back for resentencing, ruling that given the seriousness of arson, a five-year sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense.

Kevin Ring, director of strategic initiatives for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said in a statement that mandatory minimums upset the local community and violate, as all mandatory minimum sentencing laws do, the fundamental American principle that the punishment should fit the crime.

Ring said Hogan was a seasoned federal judge, appointed by a Republican president, who properly imposed his sentences after hearing the evidence and considering the unique and relevant facts.

If this were how our criminal justice system worked, we might not be experiencing the protests we see today in Oregon, Ring said. Federal mandatory minimums once again have destroyed a local communitys ability to hold its citizens accountable. ... The 535 individuals who served in Congress 20 years ago, who know nothing about the ranchers case, fixed their sentence  and stoked a communitys outrage.
A Metrorail train was evacuated Monday night after a fire broke out in newspapers or magazines inside one of its cars, authorities said.

Passengers left the train at the Addison Road station about 7:45 p.m., and no injuries were reported, said Prince Georges County fire department spokesman Mark E. Brady. A Metro employee put out the fire before firefighters arrived, he said.

Brady said authorities were looking into the possibility that the fire was set deliberately, by male teenagers.

He said the fire generated smoke, but not a lot.

The train was headed towards the District. The fire appaprently broke out shortly before the train reached Addison Road.
Authorities said a man died after he was struck by a car while walking in a travel lane on Interstate 95 in the Springfield area.

The crash happened around 8:30 p.m. Monday near the Franconia exit.

Authorities said a 2012 Toyota Corolla was headed south on Interstate 95 when he hit the man, who was walking across the travel lane, according to Virginia State Police. The pedestrian was wearing dark, non-reflective clothing, authorities said.

Despite the drivers attempts, he could not stop [the car] in time, and, due to traffic, was not able to change lanes, according to a statement from Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the department.

The pedestrian was struck and died at the scene, police said.

The man had no identification on him at the time of the incident, Geller said. His body was taken to the medical examiner for identification and autopsy.

The driver of the Toyota Corolla  a 21-year-old Fredericksburg, Va., man was taken to an area hospital for minor injuries. Police said he will not be charged in the crash.

The crash remains under investigation.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe visited the Port of Mariel, where an agreement was signed between the Cuban Port Authority and the Virginia Port Authority. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday boosted hopes that President Obama will visit Cuba before his term is up, telling an audience of Cuban and foreign reporters, Id be surprised if he didnt visit.

This is a major legacy item for President Obama, McAuliffe (D) said, wrapping up a trade mission that highlighted Virginias decade-long trading history with the communist nation as well as the recent U.S.-Cuban detente. I believe the president should come and will come visit Cuba.

The White House has said such a trip is under consideration, but it is by no means certain.

McAuliffes news conference took place at the Port of Mariel. Site of a massive 1980 exodus, the port represents Cubas desire to become a hub for international trade, thanks to a $1 billion modernization project largely bankrolled by Brazil.

At the port, about 25 miles west of Havana, officials from Mariel and the Port of Virginia formally pledged to explore ways to work together. The event concluded McAuliffes three-day trip here, the first by a sitting Virginia governor.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday visited the Port of Mariel in Cuba, 28 miles west of Havana, where an agreement was signed between the Cuban Port Authority and the Virginia Port Authority. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

After wooing Cuban ministry officials, McAuliffe said he was heading home to play salesman to seemingly tougher customers: congressional Republicans opposed to fully normalizing relations with a Cold War adversary.

McAuliffe, who is vice chairman of the National Governors Association, said he would be in Washington on Thursday, pressing for a full end to what he called the United Statess foolish trade embargo against Cuba.

Ill be meeting with the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Senate majority leader, other members of the House and Senate, as well as administration officials, he said. And I will clearly use that opportunity to say, 2016 needs to be the year that we move our relationship forward, that we end this embargo, and we do the right thing for the citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of Cuba. 

[McAuliffe sets sights on foreign markets]

McAuliffe has made expanding and diversifying Virginias economy the chief focus of his administration, with foreign trade and investment a large part of that. Virginia Republicans who have vigorously fought some of his liberal policy goals, such as expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and tightening gun control, have been on board with his economic development efforts, though some take issue with particular projects.

Cuban officials want us to come and do business, the governor said Tuesday. It is now up to us to do our work back in Washington to make sure our Virginia businesses can effectively do business here in Cuba.

Just two deals were officially inked during McAuliffes Cuba trip  and both are nonbinding. The port agreement was a memorandum of understanding under which officials in Cuba and Virginia agreed to look for ways to cooperate. Both ports are eager to become major hubs for the huge post-Panamax ships that will be coming when the Panama Canal expansion project is completed.

On Monday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe drove a 1956 pink Chevrolet Bel Air named Lola to various places in Havana, to the dismay of his security detail. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

The other completed deal was also a memorandum of understanding, in which Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Havana promised to explore academic exchanges and joint research projects.

Most of the 20 business leaders traveling with McAuliffes delegation were visiting Cuba for the first time, feeling out an entirely foreign market and harboring no illusions about striking gold on this trip. Several said they had made promising headway and expected to continue working toward deals of their own.

Weve had great meetings with folks who want to sell wood flooring, who want to open up a manufacturing facility here, who want to start agriculture farms here, McAuliffe said. This visit is to make it clear to every Cuban official and every Cuban citizen that the Commonwealth of Virginia wants to be your largest trading partner. . . . We have an opening. Its now incumbent upon us in America to make sure were opening that door wide enough.
HEALTH

FDA adds checks

on mesh implants

Mesh implants used to repair pelvic collapse in women will face new federal scrutiny under rules implemented after thousands of injuries were reported with the problem-prone devices.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that makers of pelvic mesh must submit new applications demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of their products. The change follows years of reports of pain, bleeding and infection among women receiving the implants. Those complications sometimes require multiple surgeries to remove or reposition the mesh.

The new requirements do not apply to mesh products when used to treat other conditions such as hernias or urinary incontinence. The FDA action comes more than four years after the agency concluded that women getting vaginal mesh have more complications than women who undergo traditional surgery with stitches.

 Associated Press

OKLAHOMA

Authorities find

singers body

The body of Craig Strickland has been found more than a week after the country singer disappeared during a severe storm.

Strickland, the 29-year-old frontman for Backroad Anthem, had gone duck hunting with his friend Chase Morland on Dec. 27 when a springlike severe weather system hit the Kaw Lake area in Oklahoma. Morlands body was found the next day. According to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Stricklands body was recovered Monday at Kaw Lake, the Oklahoman reported.

 Elahe Izadi

Former S.C. officer charged in shooting is freed on bail: A former South Carolina police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist was released from jail Monday evening and will remain under house arrest until his trial is set to begin at the end of October. Circuit Judge Clifton Newman agreed to a request earlier that Michael Slager be released on a $500,000 surety bond. Slager, who is white, is charged with murder in the shooting death of Walter Scott last April.

Calif. terrorist attack site reopens: The Inland Regional Center complex in San Bernardino, Calif., the site of a terrorist attack last month that left 14 dead, reopened Monday. On Dec. 2, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, an inspector with San Bernardino Countys Department of Public Health, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, carried out their shooting rampage during a holiday party. The couple were killed in a police shootout hours later.

Ga. governor rescinds order on Syrian refugees: Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) rescinded an executive order trying to stop resettlement of Syrian refugees Monday, five days after Attorney General Sam Olens issued an official opinion that he didnt have that authority. Deal directed state agencies on Nov. 16 to halt any involvement in the acceptance of Syrian refugees until federal authorities changed the process for vetting them.

 Associated Press
Ammon Bundy's attorney Mike Arnold, second from left, walks at the Narrows roadblock near Burns. Ore. The last four occupiers of a Malheur National Wildlife Refuge surrendered to authorities. The holdouts were the last remnants of a larger group that seized the wildlife refuge nearly six weeks ago, demanding that the government turn over the land to locals and release two ranchers imprisoned for setting fires.

Feb. 11, 2016 Ammon Bundy's attorney Mike Arnold, second from left, walks at the Narrows roadblock near Burns. Ore. The last four occupiers of a Malheur National Wildlife Refuge surrendered to authorities. The holdouts were the last remnants of a larger group that seized the wildlife refuge nearly six weeks ago, demanding that the government turn over the land to locals and release two ranchers imprisoned for setting fires. Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian/AP

The armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge ended after 41 tumultuous days, as the final occupants surrendered. Cliven Bundy, father of the groups leader and himself a veteran of armed standoffs, was arrested as he arrived in Portland.

Activists protesting federal land use in the West and the arson convictions of two local ranchers are occupying part of a national refuge in southeastern Oregon.

Activists protesting federal land use in the West and the arson convictions of two local ranchers are occupying part of a national refuge in southeastern Oregon.

What it looks like at the armed occupation at a wildlife refuge in Oregon

What it looks like at the armed occupation at a wildlife refuge in Oregon

B.J. Soper has seen the frustration building for years in this rural corner of Oregon.

The federal government owns more than half the land in the state, as it does across much of the West. It used to be routine for ranchers to get permits to graze cattle or cut timber or work mines  a way to make a living from the land.

Then came increasing environmental regulations, and the federal land became more for owls and sage grouse than for local people trying to feed their families, said Soper, 39, who lives 100 miles up the road in Bend.

What people in Western states are dealing with is the destruction of their way of life, said Soper, a father of four who was once a professional rodeo rider. When frustration builds up, people lash out.

Anger at the federal government boiled over this past weekend, when a small group of people took over a remote federal wildlife refuge east of here. Their specific aim was to support two local ranchers sentenced to prison over arson charges. But the larger issue is a decades-long struggle over federal land rights in the West that often flies under the radar in much of the country.

These are tough issues to resolve, because they are about peoples values, said John Freemuth, a professor of public policy at Boise State University in Idaho, about 220 miles east of Burns.

Freemuth said that in recent decades, the federal government has placed increasing emphasis on the environment, which has led to more restrictions on ranching, grazing, mining and other traditional uses of the land. That has led to frustration among many rural Westerners, who feel a sharp disconnect with a federal government run by people in urban centers.

They have a concern that they are being left behind, that their values and their concerns are really irrelevant to the urban folks around the country, Freemuth said.

The extent of federal land ownership in the West is often not well understood by people from other parts of the country, he said. According to a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service, the federal government owns 27.4 percent of all U.S. land.

But the vast majority of that territory is concentrated in a handful of Western states. According to the report, the federal government controls 84.9 percent of Nevada, 64.9 percent of Utah, 61.9 percent of Idaho, 61.2 percent of Alaska, 52.9 percent of Oregon and 48.1 percent of Wyoming.

Late Sunday, the FBI took charge of the law enforcement response to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, saying that it will work with local and state authorities to seek a peaceful resolution to the situation.

Due to safety considerations for both those inside the refuge as well as the law enforcement officers involved, we will not be releasing any specifics with regards to the law enforcement response, the FBI said in a statement.

Ammon Bundy and a group of armed supporters, including his brother Ryan, took over the an Ore. wildlife refuge over the weekend. Here's a look at the Bundy family's history of anti-government actions. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

The armed activists, led by rancher Ammon Bundy, announced plans to stay indefinitely. Bundys father, Cliven, is a Nevada rancher who has sparred with the government for years and who in 2014 had an armed standoff with federal agents trying to prevent him from illegally grazing his cattle on federal land. After the federal authorities backed down, experts said the showdown invigorated anti-government groups in the United States.

On Monday, Ammon Bundy said his group of occupiers had taken on a name: Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. He also said the group wanted to help people in the county in claiming their rights, using their rights as a free people. He did not offer any further specifics on how long they intended to stay.

Freemuth said that while most people in the rural West feel tension with the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), few agree with an armed takeover of federal property.

Most of the folks there understand the tensions and the grievances, but Bundy is way out of the loop on that stuff, he said. They are kind of appalled at what hes doing. Violence and seizing the land is not the answer.

Len Vohs, who was mayor of Burns from 2008 to 2010, said he, like many locals, shares the frustration with the federal government that drove Bundy and others to occupy the wildlife refuge. But he said few support their tactics, and most wish they would just go home.

Its anarchy, Vohs said. What we have here is old-style thinking, that might is right.

Local people held a peaceful march and rally Saturday to support two ranchers  Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven  who were convicted of arson on public land. The Hammonds had already served time for the arson conviction, but then a federal judge ruled that they had not served enough.

On Monday, they surrendered without incident to federal custody in California, according to Harney County Sheriff David Ward. Afterward, Ward used an afternoon news conference to address the occupiers directly.

To the people at the wildlife refuge: You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County. That help ended when a peaceful protest became an armed occupation, he said. The Hammonds have turned themselves in. Its time for you to leave our community, go home to your families and end this peacefully.

The armed occupiers at the wildlife refuge attended the rally for the Hammonds, and they said their situation illustrates the larger issue of excessive federal government control over citizens lives.

Even those disturbed by the way federal authorities dealt with the Hammonds criticized the refuge occupation.

The federal government has done a gross injustice to the Hammonds, which has severely damaged the long-term trust and cooperation that ranchers and foresters and recreationists have had with BLM, the Oregon Farm Bureau, a nonprofit representing the states farmers and ranchers, said in a statement. However, the illegal activity of so-called militia groups only harms the Hammonds and the rest of the community because it diverts public attention and scrutiny away from the injustice that the federal government perpetrated on this Oregon family.

Vohs also said the occupiers, few if any of whom are from Burns, do not speak for the town.

The majority of us support the Hammonds, but we dont need outsiders telling us what to do, Vohs said.

Vohs said that during his mayoral term, he was proud of the consensus he built among local residents, commercial interests and government agencies to try to resurrect the communitys failing economy. Now, he said, he hears frustration that such cooperation has all but vanished.

Glen Williams, known as The Boss to many locals, sees government increasingly as standing in his way of putting more food in peoples mouths. He owns Central Pastime, the only bar in town, and, as he views it, federal mandates have chipped away at the ability of locals to do business, work the land and manufacture.

The town sticks together, he said. We take care of each other. But theres getting to be less and less of us to take care of.

Williams has lived in Burns on and off since 1974 and remembers when six or seven bars served patrons. His bar weathered a mill shutdown, the demise of a motor home manufacturing plant and the struggles of ranchers trying to scratch out a living.

Williams blames the sagging economy, in part, on ever-increasing federal mandates and environmental regulations that have restricted timber harvests, limited grazing and toughened emissions standards. That made it hard for the mobile home manufacturing plant to compete.

If everyone was happy with the government, you wouldnt have seen the rally, he said.

Soper also said he disagreed with an armed takeover of federal property, but he said the government had invited it with excessive regulations that are hurting people economically.

The frustration of the people built up to cause this, Soper said. Its really no different than the Occupy Movement or a sit-in at a college.

He said rural Oregonians view the governments policies as blocking working people from earning a living.

True wealth comes from the land. If they cant feed their cows, theres not going to be beef in the supermarket, he said. People are no longer [able] to make a living.

Federal agencies, he said, are taking food out of peoples mouths.

Berman and Sullivan reported from Washington.
ASIA

Earthquake kills 10 in India, Bangladesh

A 6.7-magnitude earthquake left at least seven people dead, scores injured, and houses and buildings flattened in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur early Monday.

The quake occurred about 18 miles west of Imphal, the state capital, around 4:35 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Strong tremors were felt in Chinas Tibet region, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Burma. Three people were reported dead in Bangladesh.

An aftershock, magnitude 3.6, was felt about five hours later.

Manipurs chief minister, Okram Ibobi Singh, told reporters that the state was assessing the damage. Two teams from Indias National Disaster Response Force have been deployed to the area, he said.

The deputy commissioner of the Imphal West area, Ningthoujam Geoffrey, said three people died in his jurisdiction and 45 suffered injuries. Sixty houses and other buildings were damaged, Geoffrey said.

The temblor was the deadliest in India since the Nepal earthquakes in April and May, which killed more than 8,000 people, including more than 100 in Indias border states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The collision of two of Earths tectonic plates  the Indian plate and the much larger Eurasian plate  has made the Himalayan region one of the most high-risk zones in the world for seismic activity.

 Annie Gowen

MIGRANTS

Sweden, Denmark step up border checks

Sweden and Denmark tightened border checks Monday to stem the flow of migrants coming in from Germany, dealing fresh blows to the vision of a Europe without national boundaries.

As of midnight Sunday, Sweden demanded that all passengers traveling by train from Denmark show ID, something that has not been required since the 1950s.

Within hours, the Danish government announced that it was stepping up controls of its border with Germany, to ensure that migrants headed for Sweden do not get stuck in Denmark.

The government doesnt want Denmark to become a new big destination for refugees, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.

The moves were the latest by European Union countries to suspend an agreement to keep internal borders open after 1 million migrants entered the 28-nation bloc last year, most of them by crossing the Mediterranean to Greece or Italy.

Rasmussens center-right government has taken several measures to discourage migrants from coming to Denmark, including a proposal to seize their jewelry to cover their expenses in the country.

Swedens left-leaning government initially had a welcoming attitude to migrants but reversed course after more than 160,000 Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others applied for asylum in 2015, the highest number in Europe except for Germany.

After Denmark introduced the border controls, German officials warned that Europes system of mostly passport-free travel across internal borders was at risk and called for a pan-European agreement on how to control the flow of migrants.

 Associated Press

EL SALVADOR

Homicides surge nearly 70 percent

Killings spiked nearly 70 percent last year in El Salvador, authorities said Monday, resulting in a homicide rate that could make the gang-plagued Central American nation the worlds most violent country.

Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde, the national police director, said El Salvador officially registered at least 6,657 homicides in 2015, compared with 3,942 the previous year.

The overall yearly homicide rate was the countrys highest at 104 per 100,000 inhabitants, putting it in a position to take over the dubious title of the worlds murder capital from neighboring Honduras.

Honduras has led the world in homicide rates in recent years. It hit 92 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011, according to World Bank data, before falling off somewhat since then.

Authorities in El Salvador blame most of the killings there on gangs that are deeply involved in drug trafficking, extortion rackets and other criminal activity.

The wave of violence in El Salvador came after a truce between the countrys two largest gangs fell apart and despite police initiatives to crack down on organized crime.

Authorities say most of El Salvadors homicide victims are gang members slain by rivals.

 Associated Press

Dozens dead in Poland from cold weather: Officials in Poland said that more than 40 people have died of hypothermia or fallen to their deaths in the mountains in subfreezing temperatures. A national police spokeswoman said 39 people have frozen to death since Nov. 1, including 21 last weekend. Rescuers said six tourists have slipped and fallen to their deaths since Dec. 25 while trekking in the Polish Tatras. Seven others died in falls in the Slovak part of the Tatras.

Yemen declares nighttime curfew in key port city: Yemens internationally recognized government declared a nighttime curfew in the key southern port city of Aden in a bid to push back against recent incursions by al-Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, the citys governor said. He added that the curfew will be in place from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. for an unspecified period. The measure came after government forces retook Adens strategic port after heavy clashes with militants.

 From news services
Ammon Bundy and the other armed militants occupying a federal facility at a wildlife refuge in Oregon have a beef with the administration  the Teddy Roosevelt administration.

It has been provided for us to be able to come together and unite in making a hard stand against this overreach, this taking of the peoples land and resources, proclaimed Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led a similar armed rebellion against the government two years ago. If we do not make the hard stand, then we will be in a position where we wont be able to as a people.

But this taking of the peoples land, the overreach that moved these rebels to take up arms, occurred 108 years ago, when Roosevelt  a Republican president and a great conservationist  established the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, one of 51 such refuges he set aside, as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.

So why have the militants chosen this moment, more than a century after the fact, to unwind all these unconstitutional land transactions, as Bundy put it? Perhaps its because they think the political atmosphere now condones such anti-government activity.

You can see why they might think so. Several of the Republican presidential candidates have been encouraging lawbreaking, winking at it or simply looking the other way.

Ammon Bundy and a group of armed supporters, including his brother Ryan, took over the an Ore. wildlife refuge over the weekend. Here's a look at the Bundy family's history of anti-government actions. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

A few months ago, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and others rushed to defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to obey federal law. A federal judge had held her in contempt of court for refusing to recognize same-sex marriages, and the Supreme Court specifically declined to give Davis relief. But Cruz identified her jailing as judicial tyranny and said Davis was operating under Gods authority.

Donald Trump has put at the center of his campaign an extra-constitutional ban on admitting Muslims into the country. Marco Rubio said that if the law conflicts with the Gospel, Gods rules always win, and that we are called to ignore the governments authority. Huckabee and Rick Santorum signed a pledge not to respect an unjust law that directly conflicts with higher law. Huckabee floated the notion of using federal troops to block people from getting abortions and questioned the Supreme Courts authority.

And, of course, there was the 2014 standoff in which Cliven Bundy, who refused to pay grazing fees for his use of federal land, got support or sympathy from Cruz, Trump, Huckabee, Rand Paul and Ben Carson. Cruz denounced the federal government for using the jackboot of authoritarianism.

The rancher lost much of his support when he delivered a racist rant. But not all of it: Last summer, Paul had a private meeting with the elder Bundy that the rancher said lasted 45 minutes. As my colleagues Katie Zezima and David Weigel noted, Paul and Cruz have both campaigned to transfer federal lands in the West to private ownership.

Flirting with extremists helps conservative candidates harness the prodigious anger in the electorate. A poll released this weekend by NBC, Esquire and Survey Monkey found anger is particularly intense among Republicans: Seventy-seven percent said the news makes them angry at least once a day (compared with 67 percent of Democrats). Seventy-three percent of white Americans are angered daily (vs. 66 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of African Americans).

So when some very angry people led by Ammon Bundy took over the (unoccupied) compound at the wildlife preserve over the weekend, the Republican presidential candidates reacted mostly with silence. A scan of tweets from Republican lawmakers also found nary a peep about the armed takeover of the federal facility. An admirable exception (and one whose low standing proves the rule) was John Kasich, whose strategist John Weaver suggested a good federal compound for Bundy and his gang: a U.S. penitentiary.

Finally, in a radio interview Monday, Marco Rubio said the militants cannot be lawless  though he added that he agrees with their complaints about federal lands. And Cruz, responding to a question, said he hoped Bundys gang would stand down peaceably because we dont have a constitutional right to use force and violence.

Ammon Bundy and his armed supporters arent being called thugs. They arent being called rioters. Theyre not even being branded terrorists. But thats exactly what they are, says The Post's Jonathan Capehart. (Thomas LeGro/The Washington Post)

That was mild criticism  Bundy had said he has no intention of using violence  but better than the usual wink.

As it happens, Cruz also released a TV ad Monday protesting inadequate enforcement of the border. The rule of law, he says in the ad, wasnt meant to be broken. Thats a fine sentiment. But to live under the rule of law we must follow all laws  not just those we like.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
In the late 1940s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy arrived in Columbus, Ohio, to make a speech but within an hour allegedly was shooting craps. It was a disgusting sight, according to a source, to see this great public servant down on his hands and knees, reeking of whiskey and shouting, Come on, babies, Papa needs a new pair of shoes.  What Papa really needed was a kick in the butt.

That kick  being censured  was administered in 1954. The Senate had finally had enough of McCarthy. He was a liar and a demagogue, a concocter of evidence and an abuser of witnesses, but what probably mattered most to many of his colleagues is that he was rude to them. Three years after he was censured, McCarthy was dead, leaving a widow, a child and an unsavory term: McCarthyism. Even that, though, is in danger. Trumpism may trump it.

Donald Trump is not quite yet ready to fill McCarthys boots. He has the late senators gift for exaggeration and self-worship, and he needs the spotlight the way a vampire needs blood. But he holds no public office, least of all a Senate seat. He commands no committee, the way McCarthy did the one that investigated the Army. He cannot subpoena and he cannot compel testimony and he does not have access to FBI and other confidential files that can be used to destroy careers and reputations. All this is something to shoot for.

As with McCarthy, Trump has his reluctant defenders. On TV and elsewhere, they acknowledge that he goes too far. They concede he says ugly things about women  that crack about Carly Fiorina, the swipe he took at Megyn Kelly and, of course, his juvenile remark about Hillary Clintons restroom break  but they let that go. They concede also that he probably should not have called Mexican immigrants rapists and stated that the Mexican government was sending them north of the border just to get rid of riffraff.

They admit also that Trumps crack about John McCain not being a hero was really despicable but then, as Trump himself pointed out, he had attended a military prep school so he knew something about war and torture. He was probably required to make his bed first thing in the morning  and that, as you can imagine, is sheer hell.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump released his first television ad spot on Jan. 4. (Donald Trump)

It was the same with Muslims. Here, too, it is conceded that he went too far. His proposal to bar entry to any of the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims is impractical. He would have to include almost all Indonesians, not to mention the occasional Saudi billionaire. So, who is going to stop everyone at the airport and ask them to prove they are not Muslim? (Are you now or have you ever been a Muslim?) I foresee some problems.

But as with McCarthy, Trumps apologists insist he has put his finger on major problems. With McCarthy, it was particularly the number of alleged communists in the government who were supposedly doing the bidding of the Soviet Union. McCarthy was buttressed in his claims by the occasional real spy who was caught and by the support of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, whose files were fodder for right-wing journalists. In fact, there was no domestic communist menace. By the end of World War II, there was no domestic communist party to speak of.

It is similar with Trump. What I hear is robust condemnation of him followed almost instantly by a whispered assertion that he is on to something. Maybe so. Our immigration laws are broken and need to be fixed. There is an Islamist threat, but it comes from sociopathic radicals, not from the vast Muslim community.

McCarthys contempt for the truth was evident from his earliest days in public office. Yet countless Republicans thought he could be useful and, besides, he raged against the political correctness of his day. His defenders insisted he said what needed to be said. Never mind the exaggerations and the lies. He supposedly spoke a greater truth.

Trumps constituency, we are told, is primarily composed of white males who top out at a high-school diploma. But recently Ive been talking to people who have advanced degrees, some of them female. They all, to a person, condemn him, but then the other shoe drops  the one about you having to give him credit for assailing PC.

Weve been this way before. But this time, instead of a demagogue on his knees shooting craps, weve got one who owned the tables in Atlantic City.

Read more from Richard Cohens archive.
IN A remarkable move last month, the African Union recommended the deployment of up to 5,000 peacekeeping troops to Burundi to prevent further bloodshed. The African nation has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for an unconstitutional third term. Almost 400 people have died, and hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring Tanzania and Rwanda. The proposed African Prevention and Protection Mission in Burundi, called by its French acronym MAPROBU, would be deployed for six months to contribute . . . to the protection of civilian populations under imminent threat and if necessary, the disarmament of militias and other illegal groups [and] the protection of political personalities. This marks the first time the African Union has threatened to invoke Article 4(h) of its charter, giving the A.U. the right to intervene in a member state in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Unsurprisingly, Burundis defiant government has rejected the proposal, with Mr. Nkurunziza declaring last week that a deployment would be considered an attack on the country and that Burundians will stand up and fight against them. The A.U. has insisted that it will continue to push for Burundi to allow troop deployment.

Burundis already untenable situation is fracturing even further. The country has the same Hutu-Tutsi makeup as neighboring Rwanda, site of a 1994 genocide, and has weathered its own share of devastating ethnic conflict. Though the current crisis has chiefly been political, violence along ethnic lines has been increasing. Police have reportedly cracked down on protesters in Tutsi neighborhoods outside of the capital, Bujumbura.

In an even more worrying development, the army, which largely refrained from cracking down on civilians, has now fractured. A Tutsi colonel, Edouard Nshimirimana, defected from the army and declared the creation of a new rebel force. Mr. Nshimirimanas group was behind a deadly attack on three military camps on Dec. 11, which killed nearly 90 people.

The East African Community hosted regional mediation efforts in Uganda last month, but Mr. Nkurunzizas government continues to undermine the peace talks. The government has reportedly demanded that opposition members it accuses of taking part in an attempted coup in May be prevented from attending the dialogue. The Burundi government has threatened to skip the next round of talks in Arusha, Tanzania, on Wednesday. All of these signs point to Mr. Nkurunzizas unwillingness to put the peace and security of Burundis citizens ahead of his own desire to stay in power.

The African Union should be commended for showing bold leadership in the crisis, which demands an African-led solution. Beyond the threat of deploying peacekeeping forces, the A.U. has also threatened sanctions on Burundian actors who refuse to attend peace talks. The United States has announced its support for the African Unions efforts to deploy troops to Burundi. The U.N. Security Council also should stand behind the people of Burundi, pass a resolution in support of the African Unions efforts and make clear that boycotting peace talks is unacceptable.
Regarding Colbert I. Kings Jan. 2 op-ed, In D.C. schools, a chasm of racial difference:

Mr. King was right about the effect of home environment in keeping or chang ing the status quo. Unless and until students live in homes where education is supported and valued, nothing will change.

One more immediate answer than charter schools lies in residential and military academies that surround students with the structure they need to break the cycle of low educational attainment. Academies built by private-public partnerships would represent investment in changed futures for those trapped in failing school systems. Job training and parenting classes would help change home dynamics such that more students would feel supported.

If we change education only around the edges, we should not be surprised that the results remain the same. Schools wont improve with another No Child Left Behind bumper-sticker program, as thousands of young people will still be left behind.

Pat Ranney, Millersville

Colbert I. King was correct to draw attention to big differences in the 2015 test scores of white and black D.C. students on tough new exams, but it is important to do the right analysis of what this means.

Average scores of thousands of students, divided by race or any other variable, obscure key questions whose answers can lead us forward  specifically, where are teaching and learning working well, for whom, and why?

Its a good challenge for the new year to ask how the District could create an ongoing research capacity along those lines, with investment from all stakeholders in independent, rigorous work over the long term to learn from practice and improve education based on the best of what is already happening. The lack of solid data and quality analysis was a central theme of the National Research Council evaluation last year of the Districts education reforms .

Without such a capability, well continue the fruitless search for the one best innovation or technology that will address the complexity of urban schooling District-wide. As Mr. King underscored, it should be clear where that approach has gotten us.

Fritz Mulhauser, Washington
Ammon Bundy and a group of armed supporters, including his brother Ryan, took over the an Ore. wildlife refuge over the weekend. Here's a look at the Bundy family's history of anti-government actions. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Ammon Bundy and a group of armed supporters, including his brother Ryan, took over the an Ore. wildlife refuge over the weekend. Here's a look at the Bundy family's history of anti-government actions. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

WE WANT the government to abide by the Constitution and play by rules, Ammon Bundy, the leader of a group occupying Oregons Malheur Federal Wildlife Refuge, tweeted . This is what this protest is about.

Wrong. Mr. Bundy and his followers are flagrant lawbreakers. The Bundy clan has now twice crossed the line between civil disobedience and dangerous, armed anti-government agitation. Law enforcement has taken a patient approach, which is prudent. We are tempted to recommend that federal authorities simply let Mr. Bundy and his fellow crackpots shiver in the cold. That strategy may do for the time being.

Yet, as Mr. Bundy and his gang insist, this is the peoples land  and these outlaws are keeping the people from enjoying it. Wildlife refuges exist for public recreation, such as bird watching at Malheur, as well as to preserve habitat. Eventually, Mr. Bundy and his gang will have to go  or be removed. Then they should be criminally charged.

Meanwhile, we can only hope that the Bundy clans actions help discredit the persistent movement challenging federal ownership of land. The federal government owns roughly 30 percent of U.S. territory, its holdings concentrated in vast, relatively unpopulated Western states. These lands are open to mining, logging, ranching and other economic activities  but, since the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, are subject to restrictions meant to balance those uses with other legitimate concerns, such as preservation and recreation.

For decades legislatures in Western states have chafed against the rules, sometimes illegally claiming rights over federal property. It should have surprised no one when the Bundy familys first armed protest received praise from conservative pundits and politicians. Yet the Constitution explicitly allows the federal government to own and manage land; moreover, states such as Nevada explicitly waived any rights over federally owned land when they became states. The arguments otherwise are nothing but self-serving nonsense, and the courts have consistently said so.



Ammon Bundy departs after addressing the media at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., on Monday. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

Even clear law and precedent did not stop Utah from trying again in 2012, ordering the federal government to turn over virtually all federal land to the states control by 2014. The feds rightly ignored the command. But this kind of grandstanding encourages the constitutional mythologies of the Bundys and other anti-government extremists.

The only body that can turn over federal land is Congress, which has set land policy since the countrys founding. Western states can appeal to their representatives to fight for looser restrictions on federal property or for the federal government to sell its tracts. They would encounter opposition from environmentalists, outdoorsmen and others who prefer that the federal government properly balance the interests of ranchers and miners with those of everyone else. Too bad: Washington  not the statehouse in Utah or an occupied wildlife refuge in Oregon  is the only place where these differences can be resolved with legitimacy.
In her syndicated newspaper column on Jan. 6, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote , America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing.

That afternoon, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his annual State of the Union address and elaborated on what America is and is not. He spoke powerfully about the fundamental values at the heart of American democracy, which he portrayed as a potent antidote to the tyranny overtaking Europe. He envisioned a world with four essential human freedoms at its core: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. And he proclaimed that such a world could be attainable in our own time and generation.

Seventy-five years later, Roosevelts vision is being threatened by a retrograde politics that treats freedom as the punch line of a cruel joke against the American people. On the eve of the 2012 election, I argued that Republican politicians  in their fealty to billionaire mega-donors, zealous opposition to a womans right to choose, callous disregard for the working poor and terrifying enthusiasm for assault weapons  had perverted the four freedoms beyond recognition. Now, as voters prepare to choose the next president, the idea of freedom is once again under stress and being tested in new ways.

Although Donald Trump is leading in the polls, the real winner of the Republican presidential primary contest has been the politics of fear. With his signature bombast and bellicosity toward immigrants and Muslims, Trump has seemingly mastered the demagogic art of fearmongering. But he is certainly not alone in cynically sowing fear and hysteria among voters. During last months debate on national security, for instance, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie promised to escalate an alreadydangerous confrontation with Russia, citing President Obamas aversion to military aggression as evidence that hes a feckless weakling. Christie then defended his bluster in a nationally televised interview the following morning, declaring, Were already in World War III.

Meanwhile, in the wake of horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, overheated political rhetoric and sensationalistic media coverage have contributed to an exaggerated sense of the dangers of terrorism. As Stephen Kinzer recently wrote in the Boston Globe, Fear is becoming part of our daily lives. Yet it is not justified by reality. The true terror threat inside the United States is a fraction of what many Americans want to believe. We are rapidly becoming, in Kinzers words, the United States of Panic.

This suspension of freedom from fear has jeopardized another of Roosevelts four freedoms  freedom of worship. Whereas religious freedom has been abused for years to justify everything from restricting access to contraception to discriminating against the LGBT community, we are now witnessing political threats against an entire religion. Trump has called for a database of American Muslims while Sen. Marco Rubio has suggested closing down any place where radicals are being inspired, including mosques. Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida governor Jeb Bush have argued for a ban on refugees fleeing the Middle East unless they can prove they are Christian. Hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise. And yet, Rubio, the purported establishment Republican candidate, asks: Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims?

Roosevelt believed that freedom from want is inseparable from freedom itself. That was the basis for his Economic Bill of Rights, which he introduced in 1944, saying, True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. But todays Republican Party clearly does not share that understanding. Beyond their typically regressive tax proposals, the Republican candidates overwhelmingly support cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. Until recently, Ben Carson supported abolishing Medicare and Medicaid; Carly Fiorina opposes the federal minimum wage; and Bush claimed that Democrats appeal to African American voters with free stuff. Indeed, as conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru observed, Republican candidates simply have not offered ideas that would give any direct help to families trying to make ends meet.

And while there is nothing new about their neglect of those who are struggling, Republican politicians are increasingly hyper-attentive to the demands of billionaire donors, who fund the super PACs propping up their campaigns. Ever since the Supreme Court ruled that money equals speech, the cost of our elections has exploded, making it harder for ordinary Americans to have a say in the political process. At the same time, with the corporate media setting the parameters of legitimate debate and drowning out independent voices, dissenting opinions often do not get the public hearing they deserve. Taken together, the result is that freedom of speech applies to a privileged few more than everyone else.

In 1941, Roosevelt spoke with clarity about the serious threats to America from without. Today, we are facing a different kind of danger  but one that also demands our attention  from within. On the 75th anniversary of Roosevelts four freedoms speech, may people fight to defend the core freedoms that have animated our nation at its best. In 2016, we are not just choosing a president. We are choosing what kind of country we want to be.

Read more from Katrina vanden Heuvels archive or follow her on Twitter.
Regarding the Jan. 4 front-page article Occupiers in Oregon pledge long standoff:

I want those hoodlums off our property now. If President Herbert Hoover could send in the U.S. Army to roust the World War I Bonus Army from the Mall in the early 1930s, President Obama should certainly roust this bunch with the Army.

A real government does not allow a bunch of bullies to flout the law. Its time to get on with it. Once this is done, Congress should improve the law that allows ranchers to graze cattle on federal land at a loss to the government (and an even greater loss to the environment).

John Fay, Wheaton

While the news media may be in a pickle about what to call armed men who seized a national wildlife refuge in Oregon [Style, Jan. 4], George Washington would have no such problem. When faced with a similar situation in 1794, he led an army into western Pennsylvania to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. In a letter dated Aug. 26, 1794, to Light Horse Harry Lee, Washington noted that the insurgents had raised universal indignation and abhorrence in the public.

We and the news media should not have a problem either. The armed insurgents in Oregon are correctly called rebels and traitors.

Howard Gofreed, Alexandria
President Obama is announcing executive orders on gun control, but how does that work? Here's a look at how the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court have roles  and limitations  in executive orders. (Julie Percha,Jackie Kucinich,Rebecca Schatz/The Washington Post)

President Obama is announcing executive orders on gun control, but how does that work? Here's a look at how the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court have roles  and limitations  in executive orders. (Julie Percha,Jackie Kucinich,Rebecca Schatz/The Washington Post)

The Obama administration on Monday unveiled a series of new executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence and making some political headway on one of the most frustrating policy areas of President Obamas tenure.

The package, which Obama plans to announce Tuesday, includes 10 separate provisions, White House officials said. One key provision would require more gun sellers  especially those who do business on the Internet and at gun shows  to be licensed and would force them to conduct background checks on potential buyers. Obama would devote $500 million more in federal funds to treating mental illness  a move that could require congressional approval  and require that firearms lost in transit between a manufacturer and a seller be reported to federal authorities.

At the presidents direction, the FBI will begin hiring more than 230 additional examiners and other personnel to help process new background checks 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Also, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has established a new investigation center to keep track of illegal gun trafficking online and will devote $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.

The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage, but they cant hold America hostage. We cant accept this carnage in our communities, Obama said in a Twitter message Monday evening, referring to the National Rifle Association.

The president is scheduled to talk about his new policies in the East Room on Tuesday, and two days later he will participate in a town hall at George Mason University that will be televised on CNN.

President Obama formally announced a set of executive orders on gun control on Jan.5. Here is what you need to know about how the regulations tighten gun sales and expand background checks. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Even before Obamas official announcement, however, Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail blasted the actions, and some gun rights advocates threatened to challenge them in court.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) issued a statement Monday saying that even without knowing the plans details, he thinks the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will. . . . This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said Monday that he and his colleagues would be taking a deep look at the presidents proposals, with an eye toward ensuring that the Second Amendment is preserved.

Although modest compared with any legislation that Congress could adopt, Obamas executive actions will affect areas such as how the federal government might leverage its purchasing power to advance safe gun technology as well as what information federal and local law enforcement will share on individuals who are illegally trying to purchase weapons.

The president, who went over the initiatives in the Oval Office on Monday with administration officials including Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey, said inaction by Congress in the wake of several high-profile mass shootings and other gun-related violence justified his decision.

And although it is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arm around the problem Congress needs to act, what I asked my team to do is to see what more we could do to strengthen our enforcement to curb illegal gun sales, Obama said in brief remarks to reporters after the meeting. And the good news is, is that these are not only recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch, but theyre also ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support and believe in.

One of the main provisions is new federal guidance requiring some occasional gun sellers to get licenses from ATF and conduct background checks on potential buyers. Rather than set a single threshold for what triggers this licensing requirement, it will be based on a mix of business activities such as whether the seller processes credit cards, rents tables at gun shows and has formal business cards.

In some cases, officials said, a person who sells a single gun could be required to get a license, though in other cases, sellers who are classified as hobbyists or collectors could still qualify for exemptions.

A recent survey of more than 2,000 gun owners by Harvard University researchers found that of those who purchased their most recent firearm, about a third did not undergo a background check.

In a conference call with reporters, Lynch said the administration could not estimate how many more people would be affected by the new licensing provisions. She said gun sales are increasingly moving online and into largely unregulated areas of the dark Web where illicit activities take place in hidden transactions.

The industry is shifting and growing, she said. If it does stop one act of violence, this will be worth it.

Other aspects of the presidents plan aim to bolster the FBIs background-check system, including a push by the U.S. Digital Service to modernize its processing operations and a proposal to add 200 new ATF agents and investigators to bolster enforcement.

Obama will instruct federal agencies, which collectively represent the nations largest firearms purchaser, to explore potential ways to promote technology that would prevent the accidental discharge or unauthorized use of a gun, according to White House officials.

Another measure will require federally licensed gun dealers to report any lost and stolen guns to the National Crime Information Center. Over the past five years, according to the White House, an average of 1,333 guns recovered in criminal investigations each year were traced back to a seller who claimed the weapon was missing but did not report it to authorities.

This is a broad set of actions that tackles a variety of the issues related to gun violence, said Arkadi Gerney, a senior fellow at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and in combination it represents a comprehensive effort to strengthen the laws we already have on the books.

[Heres what Obama plans to do on gun control]

Although the number of mass shootings in the United States has risen in recent years, overall gun violence is at lower levels than in previous decades. Obama, however, emphasized that gun deaths in the United States remain higher than in other developed countries in almost every category, including suicides.

And although we have to be very clear that this is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, its not going to prevent every mass shooting, its not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal, he said, it will potentially save lives and spare families the pain and the extraordinary loss theyve suffered as a consequence of a firearm getting in the hands of the wrong people.

Obamas determination to act in his final year in office comes after he pledged last fall to make guns a political issue after a gunman killed 10 and wounded seven others at a community college in Roseburg, Ore. The president has made public statements after at least 16 mass shootings during his presidency, including the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., last month by a married couple, reportedly inspired by the Islamic State.

His administration failed to persuade lawmakers to approve tighter legislative controls on gun sales in 2013, in the wake of the December 2012 killings of 20 children at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. After that, the president issued a series of 23 executive actions to tighten controls and increase safety preparations, and he added two more in subsequent years.

But the White House was moved to act again after the shootings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. Administration lawyers have spent months reviewing various proposals to ensure that the redefinition of what it means to be engaged in the business of selling firearms can withstand legal challenges.

The law has long been fuzzy, and the transition of gun sales away from brick-and-mortar stores to gun shows and the Internet requires the administration to clarify the definition, said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who met with Obama along with other lawmakers on Monday. By forcing more dealers at gun shows to run background checks, there will be less criminals that buy guns and less illegal guns sold on the streets of America.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview Monday that it was a historic step that would subject thousands of gun sales each day to stricter scrutiny.

One dilemma for the Obama administration would be that a legal fight could put the executive actions on hold as a court deliberates, potentially dragging out the process until Obama leaves office next January. The presidents executive actions to defer the deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants, announced in 2014, have been held up in a legal battle that could head to the Supreme Court this spring.

I wouldnt be surprised if they try, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said when asked whether gun rights advocates would mount a legal challenge, but the arguments we could mobilize in a court of law would be powerful and persuasive.

Obamas plans already have resonated on the presidential campaign.

Every GOP presidential candidate who has spoken about Obamas potential actions has vowed to reverse the executive order if elected president, underscoring the fragility of any initiative that has not won congressional approval.

[Cruz vows to repeal any executive action on guns]

Speaking at a Christian bookstore Monday in Boone, Iowa, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called the idea illegal and unconstitutional, a theme echoed by several of his colleagues in recent days.

On Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told an audience in Raymond, N.H., that Obama has waged war on the Constitution.

You can pass all the gun laws in the world that you want, he said. It will not stop the criminals.

But Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton applauded Obama during a campaign stop in Iowa on Monday, saying she would go even further as president, and White House officials remained confident that public opinion is on their side.

We are dedicated to doing everything we can to get guns out of the wrong hands, said senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Weve talked to so many gun owners who dont believe the NRA represents their views.

Anne Gearan and Katie Zezima in Iowa contributed to this report.
Donald Trump, left, watches as Ted Cruz speaks during the Dec. 15 CNN Republican presidential debate at the Venetian Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. (John Locher/AP)

Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruzs Canadian birthplace was a very precarious issue that could make the senator from Texas vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee.

Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years? Thatd be a big problem, Trump said when asked about the topic. Itd be a very precarious one for Republicans because hed be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You dont want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.

Trump added: Id hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.

Cruz responded to Trumps comments on Twitter later Tuesday evening by referring to an iconic episode of the sitcom Happy Days, in which the character Fonzie jumps over a shark on water skis. The image has become a symbol of something shopworn and overdone.

Trumps remarks  part of a backstage interview before a rally here Monday night  come as Cruz is rising as a serious threat in the presidential campaign, especially in Iowa, where some polls have shown Cruz eclipsing the billionaire mogul. The two have had a cordial and at times even friendly relationship over the past year, but they are competing intensely for the support of conservatives as the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses draw near.

1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Trump captures the nations attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the partys convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

There have been recent signs of tension. At a rally last month in Iowa, Trump told voters of Cruz: Just remember this  youve got to remember, in all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay? Just remember that . . . just remember.

In the interview with The Washington Post, Trump said he was providing a candid assessment of his leading opponent rather than initiating a personal attack and reviving the birther debate that he once led against President Obama. He repeatedly said he is hearing chatter on the topic among voices on the right. People are bringing it up, he said.

Trump has veered from shrugging off the issue to raising more questions himself. In an interview with ABC News in September, Trump said he did not think Cruzs birthplace was an issue. I hear it was checked out by every attorney and every which way and I understand Ted is in fine shape, he said.

But months earlier in Iowa, Trump told reporters that it could be a difficult problem.

Hes a friend of mine. I have great respect for him. . . . certainly its a stumbling block, and hes going to have to have it solved before he goes too far, Trump said, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Speaking late Tuesday in Sioux Center, Iowa, Cruz laughed off questions about Trumps comment, saying he would let his campaigns Happy Days tweet speak for itself.

When pressed, Cruz turned it back to the media, saying the focus should be on substantive issues.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has been complimenting one of his 2016 rivals, businessman Donald Trump, for months. Now, Trump is warming up to Cruz, too. Here's what the two men have had to say about one another on the political trail. (The Washington Post)

And one of the things that the media loves to do is gaze at their navels for hours on end by a tweet from Donald Trump or from me or from anybody else. Who cares? he said. When asked why he would tweet a video clip, he said: Why do it? Because the best way to respond to this kind of attack is to laugh it off and move on to the issues that matter.

Despite this, Cruz maintains he still likes Trump and doesnt intend to throw insults.

The Constitution requires a president to be a natural-born citizen. Anyone born to a U.S. citizen is granted citizenship under U.S. law, regardless of where the birth takes place, as long as the citizen parent has resided in the United States or its territories for a certain period of time. At the time of Cruzs birth, the required period was at least 10 years, including five years after the age of 14.

Cruzs mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born in Calgary in 1970; his father was born in Cuba. Cruz has long said that because his mother is a citizen by birth, he is one as well and fits under the definition of a natural-born citizen. Since his election to the Senate, Cruz has released his birth certificate and renounced his Canadian citizenship.

Legal scholars agree that Cruz meets the Constitutions natural-born citizenship requirement, though it is untested in the courts.

Several previous presidential candidates have run for office with similar backgrounds, such as Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the 2008 Republican nominee, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone to U.S. citizens.

In the interview, Trump alluded to an ongoing lawsuit in Vermont, where a man is trying to keep three Republican presidential candidates, including Cruz, off the ballot. According to the Rutland Herald, the lawsuit names state officials as defendants.

Trump has long flirted with birtherism, questioning Obamas love of country and legal claim to the presidency. He supported efforts to investigate Obamas birth in Hawaii and often suggested that the president was born outside the country.

Trumps crusade reached its zenith in 2011, when Obama felt obliged to publicly release his long-form birth certificate. The president then mocked Trump over the issue at the White House Correspondents Association dinner that year. Since then, Trump has quieted his speculation about Obamas birth, while still declining to accept Obamas legitimacy as president.

Katie Zezima in Sioux Center, Iowa, contributed to this report.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), seen here campaigning in Iowa last fall, is fighting back against criticism of his record from some opponents. (Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post)

As Chris Christies establishment rivals seize on his blue-state governing record, the New Jersey governor punched back here Tuesday with the kind of bluntness that had been his trademark but in this presidential campaign has been the domain of Donald Trump.

Signaling a turn among center-right candidates into a tougher phase, Sen. Marco Rubio charged that Christie has been too closely aligned with President Obama on gun control, health care and Common Core education standards, echoing twin attack ads aired here by his allied super PAC. Meanwhile, allies of Ohio Gov. John Kasich filled mailboxes in New Hampshire with a biting pamphlet that reads, Chris Christie: Tough talk. Weak record.

In an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post, Christie responded with a sharp broadside against Rubio and shrugged off Kasich, vowing that voters would coalesce around his candidacy in spite of his ideological impurity because he projects strength.

I just dont think Marco Rubios going to be able to slime his way to the White House, Christie said. He wants to put out a whole bunch of negative ads? Go ahead. I hope that he will acknowledge at some point that I couldnt care less.

Christie mocked Rubio as naive in the arts of political street fighting  Hes never been in a tough race in his life, he said dismissively  and tore into Rubios work in the Gang of Eight on a 2013 immigration bill that has since become anathema to conservatives.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) attacked Christie on Tuesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, saying the New Jersey governor is too closely aligned with President Obama. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

The guy who advocated for amnesty and then ran away when the topic got too hot tells you two things: Hes not a reliable conservative, A, and, B, whenever it gets too hot, Marco turns tail and runs, he said. Im not the least bit concerned that Marco Rubio will hurt me with conservatives. Marco Rubio has work himself to do with conservatives.

Christies blunt attacks on Rubio suggest he sees the senator from Florida as a clear obstacle in his bid to gain the Republican nomination. At the same time, signs of possible momentum for Christie in New Hampshire mean that he has emerged as a possible barrier for Rubio, who has no clear advantage in any of the early states.

Christie is gambling that, in a race dominated by Trumps pugnacity, his attitude and experience will offset his past statements and blemishes. After he climbed the political ladder in heavily Democratic New Jersey, Christies national candidacy is now becoming a test of whether an outsize persona can blanket over a record seen by conservative activists as inconsistent, if not disloyal.

Hes returning to form, said Thomas H. Kean Sr., a former New Jersey governor and Christie mentor. Hes a tough guy and hes decided weve reached a stage in the campaign where people are looking for that, so hes going to let that side of him show.

[Chris Christie: The human opera takes the stage]

In the recent past, Republican presidential primaries were shaped by whether candidates passed a series of ideological benchmarks. But the 2016 race has been dominated instead by personality. This shift is most evident in the front-running candidacy of Trump, whose past is littered with conservative apostasies.

Nobody cares, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said. Political records and promised plans have turned to dust in front of us. . . . Thats not what this election seems to be about for Republicans. Its about rescuing the country before it goes over the cliff.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is a Republican contender for the White House in 2016. Heres his take on gun rights, entitlement reform and drug policy, in his own words. (Pamela Kirkland/The Washington Post)

The jockeying among four center-right candidates  Christie, Rubio, Kasich and former Florida governor Jeb Bush  is intensifying in the new year, especially here in New Hampshire, where there is a veritable traffic jam as they compete for the affections of mainstream primary voters.

New Hampshire may be their last hurrah, said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP consultant based in Washington. Theyre sailing into an election that is anti-incumbent, anti-the-past, and desperately looking for someone future-oriented. Theyre adjusting to that mood while trying to beat each other.

Sunday on NBCs Meet the Press, Kasich attacked Christie by comparing their records as governor. Here in Ohio, we have a balanced budget; they dont over in New Jersey, he said. Our credit has been strengthened; their credit has been downgraded. Weve got more jobs.

Conservative Solutions, a pro-Rubio super PAC, is airing two ads in New Hampshire aimed squarely at Christie. The first is targeted at conservative voters and slams the New Jersey governor for having backed Common Core and expanded Medicaid under Obamas health-care law. After images show Christie huddling with Obama after 2012s Hurricane Sandy, the narrator intones, One high-tax, Common Core, liberal-energy-loving, Obamacare-Medicaid-expanding president is enough.

The second ad, aimed at independent and moderate Republican voters, casts Christie as corrupt by noting the George Washington Bridge scandal that engulfed his administration in 2014.

Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for the super PAC, said: If Governor Christie hopes to be successful in New Hampshire, hes going to do everything he can to paper over his record and the legacy hes leaving in New Jersey. But its incumbent upon us to highlight that record.

On the campaign trail Tuesday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rubio told reporters that he agreed with his super PACs ads.

Theres nothing in them thats inaccurate, Rubio said. I guess the point is something I would say, too, and that is that this country cannot afford a president thats not going to reverse the direction Barack Obamas taken our country. We cant have another president that supports Common Core or gun control or expanding Obamacare.

Added Rubio spokesman Alex Conant: If Christie was honestly telling it like it is, he would say there is nothing inaccurate about the new ads and stop attacking Marco.

Christie swatted back at Rubio in the Post interview.

If Marco thinks that . . . having his big donors from Madison Avenue put a few ads up in New Hampshire is going to shake me, that just again shows his inexperience and shows you what hell be like against Hillary Clinton, he said. If hes overreacting to this  now  that just proves my point that hes not ready to be the nominee.

And when asked about Kasich, Christie deadpanned: Kasich. John Kasich? Hes attacking me from the right? Okay. From the right? I mean, come on. Please.

Conservative commentators have long been loudly skeptical of Christies beliefs and resentful that he has not courted them more assiduously. They see in Christie an eagerness to compromise with Democrats, as he has done with New Jerseys Democratic legislature.

Of course hes vulnerable, said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. At the same time, hes a good campaigner whos got a focused long-shot strategy, whos not flailing around with a hope and a prayer. . . . In a sense, its a little bit of the Trump effect, but with real governing experience.

The Christie campaign believes that much of his past  especially his Hurricane Sandy embrace of Obama and the bridge incident  is baked in with voters, to use the political parlance.

Theyre not looking for someone they agree with 100 percent of the time, Christie senior adviser Maria Comella said. Theyre looking for someone who is a grown-up, a strong, tested leader who can get things done.

Christie said in the interview that he would survive the negative attention from his opponents. He pointed to his first gubernatorial race in 2009, when incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine spent tens of millions of dollars against him.

The reason we won is because I had the better message and I was the better messenger, Christie said. I think every successful campaign is about tomorrow, not about yesterday. What yesterday does is to provide you some kind of foundation of credibility. But really, voters dont vote on what you did. They vote on what you say youre going to do.
A Bahraini woman holds a poster of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr during clashes with police after a protest against his execution in the Bahraini capital, Manama, on Jan. 4, 2015. (Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images)

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that its feud with Iran would not interfere with Syrian peace talks scheduled to begin later this month, signaling an easing of the tensions that erupted after the kingdoms execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Kuwait meanwhile joined the list of Saudi Arabias Sunni-led allies to cut or downgrade ties with Iran, saying that it has recalled its ambassador to Tehran in solidarity with the kingdom after Riyadhs severance of diplomatic relations with Iran on Sunday.

The rift is the most serious between the regions rival Sunni and Shiite powers since Saudi Arabia and Iran last cut ties in the 1980s over tensions stemming from the Iran-Iraq war, and it raised the specter of a wider conflict in a region already convulsed by several wars.

[The seven most important moments of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry]

Among them is the conflict in Syria, which has raged unchecked for nearly five years and only now has emerged as a key priority for the Obama administrations foreign policy team. Bringing peace to Syria will be the administrations foremost challenge for the year ahead, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in an opinion piece marking the new year.

Central to the challenge is the effort to reconvene peace talks in Geneva that failed spectacularly two years ago after less than a month. The new rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran had imperiled those talks, which could not proceed without the support of both countries, as sponsors of rival factions in the war in Syria.

Kerry spent most of the past two days on the telephone with Saudi and Iranian leaders as well as with officials of other coalition countries in the region to encourage de-escalation, according to Brett McGurk, President Obamas special envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State group.

One of the key things on Kerrys mind is not letting the Vienna process stall or fall backward, said State Department spokesman John Kirby, referring to a statement in Vienna last year proposing ways to end the Syrian war that was agreed to by Saudi Arabia and Iran.

After meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in Riyadh on Tuesday, the U.N. special envoy for Syria said he had been assured that Saudi Arabia would not allow the latest falling-out with Iran to interfere with the talks.

There is a clear determination on the Saudi side that the current regional tensions will not have any negative impact on the Vienna momentum and on the continuation of the political process that the U.N, together with the International Syria Support Group, intend to start in Geneva soon, special envoy Staffan de Mistura said after the meeting, according to a U.N. statement.

Saudi Arabia affirmed those sentiments, with the official Saudi press agency saying that the spat with Iran would not affect the peace talks negatively.

We will continue working with you and the international community in order to reach a political solution for the Syrian crisis, the agency quoted Jubeir as saying.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have harbored long-running suspicions and outright hostility toward each other. Heres why. (The Washington Post)

Jubeir also told de Mistura that Saudi Arabia would continue to provide military, political and economic support to the Syrian people, a reference to Saudi Arabias backing of the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government.

It remains unclear whether Iran will remain committed to the talks in light of the rupture. De Mistura is due to visit Iran for a previously scheduled meeting at the weekend, according to Iranian media reports.

But the State Department welcomed expressions of regret by Iran for the ransacking and burning of the Saudi Embassy contained in a letter to the United Nations from Iranian officials. A senior Obama administration official also noted that while Bahrain and Sudan had followed Saudi Arabias lead in severing relations with Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had only downgraded them.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive rift, which has presented the Obama administration with a dilemma: As it is seeking improved relations with Iran, a long-standing U.S. enemy, a major rupture has taken place between Iran and its longtime regional ally Saudi Arabia.

The crisis erupted over the weekend when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric, Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, triggering angry demonstrations in Tehran during which the Saudi Embassy was ransacked and burned.

[Who is the Saudi cleric whose execution caused the Riyadh-Tehran blowup?]

The crisis drew worldwide expressions of alarm and appeals for restraint, amid growing concerns about the potential for conflict in an already volatile region that controls access to a third of the worlds oil supply.

DeYoung reported from Washington. Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

How Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State find common ground in beheadings

The seven most important moments of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry

Who is the Saudi cleric whose death caused the Riyadh-Tehran blowup?

7 remarkable insults in the Iran-Saudi Arabia war of words
Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters place Islamic State militants bodies in a truck as they celebrate repulsing an Islamic State attack in Haditha on Tuesday. (AP)

Islamic State militants have launched a deadly offensive against security forces in a key part of western Iraq, residents and tribal fighters said Tuesday, unleashing a wave of car bombs and seizing an area near one of the countrys largest dams.

The fresh attacks in Haditha district have set off some of the fiercest fighting in that area in months  and follow the stunning defeat of the Islamic State in the nearby city of Ramadi in December. An Iraqi army offensive backed by U.S. airstrikes forced the radical Islamists to retreat from Ramadi last month, marking a devastating blow for a group striving to expand its Islamic caliphate.

[Victory in Ramadi may not yet be proof of strategy, but it is a milestone]

But this week, the militants turned their guns on Haditha, a strategic area about 90 miles northwest of Ramadi and home to Iraqs second-largest hydroelectric dam. U.S. troops are also training Iraqi forces at the Ayn al-Asad military base just 20 miles away. The militants have had Haditha encircled for more than a year.

Haditha, in Anbar province, holds both symbolic and strategic significance. The district is one of the last government redoubts amid swaths of militant-held territory in the desert of western Iraq. In addition, its six-mile-long dam generates power for large tracts of the country, granting whoever controls it influence over much of Iraqs electricity and water supplies.

Troops in Haditha said the three-day attacks by the Islamic State were unprecedented in the area. On Monday, the U.S.-led coalition launched two strikes on several Islamic State targets near Haditha  the first time warplanes have struck in the area since November, according to coalition statements.

These are the most violent attacks weve ever seen in this area, Sabah Ali, an Iraqi army captain with the 7th Division in a largely rural area known as Barwana, said of the Islamic State offensive.

[Ramadi residents describe their nightmare escape from Islamic State]

Other tribal fighters said the Islamic State killed scores of people, including local police and civilians, in the village of Sakran, but the reports could not be confirmed.

The Islamic State holds territory across Syria and Iraq but has suffered a string of setbacks in recent months. Iraqi forces and pro-government militias have ousted the extreme Islamists from the Iraqi cities of Sinjar, Tikrit and now Ramadi. Security forces and analysts said the groups focus on Haditha is meant to distract from its collapse in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar.

They have been attacking us with car bombs constantly and from all sides, Ali said of the attacks in Haditha. They are trying to make up for what they lost in Ramadi.

On Sunday, the radical Islamists began to step up attacks in Haditha, launching ambushes on checkpoints, arriving in villages atop armored convoys and engaging Iraqi troops in pitched battles on local farmland.

Early Tuesday morning, Islamic State fighters, bolstered by what locals said were reinforcements from outside Haditha, staged a surprise attack on Iraqi forces in Barwana. They seized two villages before Iraqi troops recaptured one of the hamlets later in the day.

Between two dozen and 60 Iraqi soldiers and others fighting on the side of the government have been killed in the attacks since Sunday, security forces and media reports said. The discrepancy in the reported death tolls could not immediately be reconciled.

[Why success against the Islamic State in Ramadi hints at U.S. military strategy to come]

In 2005, U.S. Marines committed what was widely seen as a massacre in Haditha after a roadside bomb killed one of their comrades while on patrol. For many Iraqis, the bloodshed became a bitter emblem of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

More recently, Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, a Syrian, urged attacks on Haditha and called on its tribesmen to repent and join the extreme Islamists.

The militants have Haditha under siege and may enter it at any moment, Adnani said in an audio recording released in June. He also threatened to wipe out a local tribe if its members continued to work with the Iraqi government.

Hadithas residents have been cut off from the rest of Iraq for more than a year, surviving on aid that needs to be airlifted from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The World Food Program said last month that it had distributed food assistance to nearly 70,000 people in Haditha and the nearby town of Baghdadi, the first time the agency had dispensed aid to the area since April.

Abu Fahad al-Nimrawi, a tribesman opposed to the Islamic State, said he fled with his family as soon as word spread that the groups fighters were arriving in Barwana on Tuesday morning. He took them to the Haditha city center, which is still largely protected from the violence.

All of them were armored vehicles. It was in the morning, said Nimrawi, who returned to Barwana to fight. I took my family and we ran. The people who couldnt leave, they were killed.

Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.

Read more

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Iraqi police officers stand guard holding posters of prominent Shiite cleric Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, who was executed by Saudi Arabia, during a demonstration in Baghdad on Monday. (Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)

The Obama administrations cautious approach to the latest eruption in tensions between two major Middle Eastern powers reflects a reluctance to take sides in a dispute where it believes both are at fault, and a sense that a strong U.S. intervention would have little effect and might make things worse.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry spoke by telephone Monday with Saudi Arabias deputy crown prince and defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, and with Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, following a call Sunday to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, senior administration officials said.

Kerry appealed to both sides to deescalate their dispute  which was sparked over the weekend when the Saudis executed a prominent Shiite cleric, mobs attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in retaliation, and Riyadh then severed diplomatic relations with Iran  before it goes any further. But ultimately these are issues that these countries have to work out for themselves, State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

If youre asking if were trying to be a mediator in all this, the answer is no, Kirby told reporters.

[7 important moments in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry]

At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest emphasized the same message. I guess the point is theres plenty of blame to go around, and what we would like to see is all sides begin to take the kinds of steps that will deescalate and not inflame the tensions that are obviously pretty raw right now.

The administrations attempt at balance illustrates the thin line the United States walks in maintaining a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia, a major oil producer and regional power whose conservative Sunni majority has long been seen as part of the problem as well as the solution in countering terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The call for both sides to calm down brought criticism from at least two Republican presidential candidates, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. Both called Saudi Arabia a strong U.S. ally that should be supported, and they repeated their criticism of the Iran nuclear deal as a partial explanation for Saudi actions.

But administration statements, if anything, seemed more critical of the Saudis for provoking a conflict that could undermine another top U.S. priority in the region: negotiations between the Syrian opposition and the government of President Bashar al-Assad to end that countrys civil war.

[Could the impasse complicate the fight against the Islamic State?]

Kerry succeeded last month in persuading Jubeir, whose Sunni government backs the opposition, and Zarif, whose Shiite government supports Assad, to sit down together for the first time as part of an international effort to promote a negotiated end to the Syrian civil war. Either side could now upend the talks, scheduled to begin Jan. 25.

We dont want to see any progress that has been made or may be made [on Syria] affected by this, Kirby said. We still hope and expect that meetings between the opposition groups and the [Assad] regime can happen this month as planned.

While U.S. officials and even the Russian government  allied with Iran in Syria  condemned the sacking of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, most attention was focused on Saudi Arabia.

Administration officials and Middle East experts attributed the execution of Saudi Shiite leader Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr primarily to domestic concerns stemming from the royal familys perceived need to appease influential Sunni clerics in that country.

If youre sitting in Riyadh, the confluence of external forces and domestic pressures tend to blur, said Frederic Wehrey, a senior associate in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They look beyond their borders and see perhaps the balance of power tilting toward Iran. The flip side is the domestic pressure they face from their Sunni constituents.

The best way to bind them to the royal family is to play that Iran card. . . . They cant push too hard and antagonize these clerics, he said.

Officials said the Saudis informed the administration several weeks ago of a pending mass execution of dozens of alleged terrorists. The vast majority were al-Qaeda-related Sunnis, and Wehrey speculated that Saudi leaders figured they would take care of some Shia while were at it to try to balance the equation.

The United States has long joined international human rights organizations and other Western governments in criticizing Saudi human rights abuses and the countrys opaque judicial system. Nimr had become a particular cause celebre among human rights campaigners, and Iran had repeatedly demanded his release.

In this case, U.S. officials said they privately pressed the Saudis to leave Nimr, convicted two years ago of promoting terrorism because of his support for dissidents among the kingdoms Shiite minority, out of their execution plans. Nimrs nephew, arrested in 2012 at the age of 17 for alleged participation in anti-government protests, had also been sentenced to death by crucifixion.

The inclusion of Nimr among the 47 executed Saturday came as a surprise to the administration. It was quickly followed by condemnation in Iran and the storming of the Saudi Embassy there. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran. A number of Sunni governments followed suit.

This domestic balancing game is really where we should focus in the sense that the royal family is under pressure for siding with the United States against the Islamic State and the need to show theyre tough on Iran as well, Wehrey said. Nimr has been the object of so much vitriol and hate from the Sunni establishment, he was an easy target, someone they could use to temper some of the pressure from the clerics.

With no chance to undo the execution, Kerry and other U.S. officials who have communicated with the Saudis have focused on trying to walk back the breach in diplomatic relations. So far, the Saudis have not agreed, officials said, but they have not said no. The administration also believes that it has received some assurance that Nimrs execution will not be followed by a similar fate for his nephew.
An official North Korean photo shows crew members of the USS Pueblo being taken into custody on Jan. 23, 1968. Their spy ship was seized by North Korea in international waters. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

The memory of 11 gruesome months of captivity in North Korea came flooding back to Tom Massie when he heard that the American hostages held in Iran for 444 days more than three decades ago will finally be compensated for their ordeal.

Good for them, he thought. But for Massie and his 81 fellow crew members on the USS Pueblo, a Navy spy ship that North Korea seized in international waters in 1968, financial recompense remains elusive.

Now in their 60s and 70s, many disabled and struggling on fixed incomes, the men of the Pueblo have received almost nothing in damages. The government once paid them about $800 for food they didnt eat, calculated at the World War II rate of $2.25 a day.

Thats far less than the $4.4 million to which each Iran hostage is entitled under a law passed by Congress last month  $10,000 for every day of captivity in Tehran, coming from a fund established in part with penalties paid by sanctions-busting banks.

The contrast strikes many of the Pueblo crew members as another slap in the face from a government that has sometimes regarded them as an embarrassment.

1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The harrowing ordeal of American sailors held hostage by North Korea in 1968 View Photos Their ship, the USS Pueblo, was captured, and they spent 11 months in brutal captivity. Caption Their ship, the USS Pueblo, was captured, and they spent 11 months in captivity. Jan. 23, 1968 In this official North Korean photo, crew members of the USS Pueblo are led into captivity after the U.S. Navy intelligence ship was seized by North Korean patrol boats in the Sea of Japan on Jan. 23, 1968. The photo was released in 1988 by Robert Chicca, who organized the crews reunion 20 years after the incident. Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Images Wait 1 second to continue.

Im glad theyre getting something, said Massie, 67, a retired heating and air-conditioning vendor who lives in Roscoe, Ill., and still suffers the physical and emotional effects of torture.

But I really dont think its fair, if theres a law passed where somebody gets compensated and everybody dont get the same treatment, he said. They were POWs, we were POWs. We were held for 11 months and beaten every day, humiliated, starved, just about anything you could think of.

The $1.1 billion fund to pay the Iranian hostages, and potentially the victims of terrorist attacks at U.S. embassies in Beirut and East Africa, has reopened old wounds for victims of similar international incidents.

The crew members of the Pueblo are particularly angry. More than 60 are still alive. Since learning that the Iran hostages can make claims, they have been furiously emailing one another, writing their representatives in Congress and calling lawyers to see if they can get a share of the money, too.

Weve always thought we ought to be compensated, said Alvin Plucker, director of the USS Pueblo Veterans Association. Now, were lighting the flames out there. Were communicating back and forth. Some of the emails are in favor of doing something. And some say, Show me the money. In other words, they dont believe its ever going to happen.

As the 48th anniversary of their capture approaches, several crew members said one potential obstacle is that many Americans are too young to remember the Pueblo incident.

An environmental research vessel outfitted as a spy ship, the Pueblo was on an intelligence-gathering mission in the Sea of Japan on Jan. 23, 1968, when it came under attack by North Korean submarine chasers, torpedo boats and MiG fighter jets. One crew member died during the assault. The crew burned many of its records and surrendered.

In North Korea, the crew members were imprisoned under harsh conditions and tortured in an attempt to get them to confess to espionage and violating North Korean waters. They posed for propaganda photos, often extending their middle fingers to convey their true feelings about their captors, who were clueless about the acts.

Public response to their sly defiance helped persuade Washington to officially apologize to North Korea to end the incident, and the crew returned home on Christmas Eve. The Navy held a board of inquiry that recommended that Cmdr. Lloyd M. Bucher be court-martialed for abandoning the ship, but the Navy secretary closed the case, reasoning that the crew had suffered enough.

Many of the crew members have had difficulty getting over their experience. Several said they have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and have taken disability payments.

In the one serious attempt to get compensation from North Korea, Massie, two other crew members and Buchers widow filed a lawsuit. Other crew members didnt take part  for most, because they couldnt afford the lawyers fee of $5,000.

In 2008, the four plaintiffs won a $65 million default judgment in a federal court in Washington. But they never were able to identify any of North Koreas assets to collect.

They may now be the only four connected to the Pueblo who are potentially eligible to make a claim on the fund just established by Congress, since the law requires a legal ruling that is not collectable. An exception was made for the Iran hostages because they were banned from suing as a condition of their release.

The fund has nonetheless resurrected long-buried hopes among crew members.

Why cant we be in on something like that? said Rick Rogala, 68, of Sarasota, Fla., a seaman apprentice on cooking duty when the Pueblo was seized. The money is out there for that kind of situation. We seem to be the forgotten ones.

But others are skeptical.

Ive tried to distance myself to some degree, said John Mitchell, 68, of Kneeland, Calif., an engineering yeoman on the ship. I dont want to make my life about the Pueblo. Hey, if somebody wants to give me $3 or $4 million, Ill take it. But I doubt were going to get anything.

Ralph McClintock, secretary of the USS Pueblo Veterans Association, said he still feels the way he did in 2008, when South Korean television came to the groups 40th reunion and asked him about the lawsuit he refused to join.

I dont want their money, he said of North Koreas secretive first family. I want them, the Kims, gone. I want the Korean Peoples Army disbanded. I want whatever I may be entitled to passed to the Korean people. Theyve been through hell.
A man reacts as he arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, in October last year after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

Turkish military police found the bodies of at least 21 migrants, three of them children, washed ashore at two separate locations on Turkeys Aegean coast near rough seas, Turkish media reported Tuesday.

The bodies were all wearing life jackets, the BBC reported, quoting Turkish media. The migrants boat apparently capsized as they attempted to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

About a dozen bodies were found on a sandy beach in the Turkish district of Ayvalik, and others were found in Dikili, the Reuters news agency reported, quoting a local Turkish gendarmerie official.

The Turkish coast guard discovered the first bodies at around 5 a.m. local time. Initial reports said the coast guard rescued a few people at sea.

Three boats and a helicopter were searching for survivors, news agencies said.

More than 500,000 refugees and migrants entered Greece by boat through its outlying Aegean islands in 2015, the first stop on a migration destined for central and northern Europe in the largest humanitarian crisis to hit the continent in decades.

The Greek island of Lesbos is less than six miles from the Turkish coast and so has become a primary port of entry to the European Union through its southernmost border. Most of the migrants are fleeing Syrias civil war.

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Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Iraqi Shiite protesters chant slogans against the Saudi government as they hold posters showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week, during a demonstration in Najaf, Iraq on Jan. 4, 2016. (Karim Kadim/AP)

Had Saudi Arabia not sentenced Sheik Nimr Baqr al-Nimr to death, it is unlikely his name would have resonated much beyond the Shiite communities of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where he helped inspire anti-government protests by disgruntled Shiites in 2011.

As it was, his name became synonymous among Shiites across the region with the oppression of Shiite minorities in the Sunni Arab Gulf, and his execution on Saturday put him at the heart of the most dangerous rupture between Saudi Arabia and Iran in decades.

Forgotten in the furor over the trashing of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the subsequent rupture of diplomatic relations by Riyadh is Nimr himself, an enigmatic figure onto whom both sides in the regional conflict have projected their dueling visions.

He would not have reached this level of prominence if the Saudis hadnt turned him into a martyr by executing him, said Mohamad Bazzi, a professor at New York University who is writing a book about the Saudi-Iranian rivalry.

Exactly who Nimr was and what he stood for remain something of a mystery, Bazzi said.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have held long-running suspicions and outright hostility towards each other. Here's why. (The Washington Post)

To the Saudis, he was as much a terrorist as any of the al-Qaeda operatives executed the same day, a traitor who had incited violence and called repeatedly for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family.

His execution was every bit as justified as the killing by U.S. Navy SEALs of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen, said Abdullah al-Shammari, a Saudi political analyst. Osama bin Laden didnt kill Americans with his own hand, but his role was to incite people to commit terrorism, he said.

Iran has cast Nimr as a martyr who died for his faith at the hands of a tyrannical and illegitimate Sunni regime, an heir to the legacy of a long line of martyrs to the Shiite cause.

To his followers, he was an inspiration, a man who articulated their demands for a fairer society and in some instances marched alongside them in their protests. He insulted the royal family in language few Saudis would dare to use, saying in one sermon that he hoped that a Saudi prince who had recently died will be eaten by worms and suffer the torment of hell in his grave.

In his own words, according to the available records of his sermons and the few interviews he gave, he was an ardent and uncompromising advocate of the rights of the downtrodden, wherever they might be. Defying the sectarian straitjacket into which he has been cast by the uproar that followed his death,

he identified Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Irans ally, as being among the tyrants worthy of being overthrown. He favored peaceful protests  the roar of the word against authorities rather than weapons, according to an interview he gave to the BBC in 2011  but did not explicitly rule out violence as a means of defeating tyranny.

He also defined Shiites as intrinsically more peaceful than Sunnis, telling U.S. diplomats in Riyadh that Shiites, even more than Sunnis, are natural allies for America, according to a 2008 diplomatic cable on the WikiLeaks website.

In contrast, he said, Sunni sheiks regularly issue fatwas calling for violence and defending murder in the name of God.

1 of 21 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Protests erupt after Saudi Arabia executes Shiite cleric Nimr Baqr al-Nimr View Photos The countrys announcement that it has killed 47 people has caused an uproar across the region. Caption The countrys announcement that it has killed 47 people has caused an uproar across the region. Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran on Sunday amid the furor. Jan. 3, 2016 A Kashmiri Shiite Muslim, bottom, holds a portrait of Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, as others shout slogans during a protest against Saudi Arabia in Srinagar, in India-controlled Kashmir. Mukhtar Khan/AP Wait 1 second to continue.

Born in 1959 in the village of Awamiya in the majority-Shiite province of Qatif, he studied in Iran and spent time in exile there during a crackdown against a surge of Shiite militancy in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.

It was only in the middle of the last decade that he began to earn a reputation for his outspoken remarks. His detention by Saudi authorities on at least two occasions drew the interest of the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, which summoned him to a meeting in 2008, according to the cable leaked by WikiLeaks.

The cable referred to him as a second-tier political player with no known affiliation with any of the main political movements driving activism in the restive majority-Shiite regions of eastern Saudi Arabia. Despite Saudi allegations that he belonged to Hezbollah al-Hejaz, the militant Shiite Saudi movement responsible for the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in which 19 American servicemen were killed, the U.S. diplomats gave no indication that was true.

They concluded, however, that his views were difficult to discern, pointing out that his stated opinions in the meeting did not match some of his more fiery sermons.

Arguing that he is portrayed publicly as much more radical than the true content of his words and beliefs, the Sheikh also espoused other conciliatory ideas such as fair political decision-making over identity-based politics, the positive impact of elections, and strong American ideals such as liberty and justice, the cable said.

Despite this more moderate tone, Al-Nimr reasserted his ardent opposition to what he described as the authoritarianism of the reactionary al-Saud regime, stating he would always support the people in any conflict with the government. He also continued to argue for the right of the Saudi Shia community to seek external assistance if it were to become embroiled in a conflict.

Though Nimr did not specify which country he meant, that and other similar comments he made in public addresses were assumed to refer to Iran. The charge that he had advocated Iranian intervention in Saudi Arabia was one of the main reasons Saudi authorities regarded him as so dangerous, said Salman al-Ansari, a Saudi political analyst based in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia does not distinguish between Shiite terrorism and Sunni terrorism, he said. This guy has been busying himself inciting violence and asking people to change the regime, and if this is not enough reason to execute him, then there is an issue with the perception of terrorism.

There is no record of Nimr inciting terrorism or violent acts, however, according to Maryam al-Khawaja, a Bahraini human rights activist and co-director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, who is living in Denmark.

This made him very difficult for the regime to deal with, because they tried to brand him a terrorist, but he wasnt, she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Maryam al-Khawaja as a political activist. She is a human rights activist.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a two-day visit to Russia on December 23-24 to develop existing strategic and economic ties. While aligning India closely with the US pivot to Asia against China, the Modi government still considers New Delhis long-standing alliance with Moscow important for its geo-political ambitions. For its part, Moscow is keen to develop strategic ties with India to counter US provocations against Russian interests in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

India, both under the Congress Party-led government that held office as the conflict over Ukraine intensified in the first months of 2014 and the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime, has refused to line up with the US against Russia. While seeking to avoid any confrontation with Washington, New Delhi distanced itself from the February 2014 US-backed fascist-led coup in the Ukraine, abstained on the March 2014 US-sponsored UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for incorporating Crimea following a pro-annexation plebiscite, and has repeatedly declared that any solution to the Ukraine crisis requires recognition that Russia has legitimate strategic interests in the Ukraine.

New Delhi, like the other BRICS states, has also refused to support the US-led economic sanctions against Russia, as was underlined by the sizeable business delegation that accompanied Modi on his Moscow trip.

Indias attitude has perturbed Washington. While assiduously courting India with offers of arms development-deals and help in developing economic and strategic ties with East Asia, the Obama administration has signaled that it intends to disrupt and eventually break Indias longstanding strategic partnership with Russia.

In Moscow, Modi held a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin before joining other delegates for the annual India-Russia summit. They addressed a joint press conference and also met with the CEOs of Indian and Russian companies.

At the summit Modi referred to Moscow as New Delhis strong and reliable friend, which has always been with us in hard times. During the Cold War, India, a leader of the so-called non-aligned movement, developed close relations with the former Soviet Union. Putin added his own praise, characterizing relations between India and Russia as a privileged strategic partnership, which was developing consistently and confidently.

Sixteen bilateral agreements were signed during Modis visit including on defence and nuclear energy. Among the more important were deals on the production of BrahMos missiles and the Kamov-226 attack helicopter in India. Modi boasted that the latter was the first project for a major defence platform under the Make in India missionhis governments bid to transform India into a major cheap labour platform. Indian company Reliance Defense signed a $US6 billion agreement with Russian state-owned weapon maker, Almaz-Antey, to manufacture and maintain the helicopter.

Russia offered the co-production arms deals in an attempt to regain its status as Indias top arms suppliernow held by the US. A government source told Reuters that Russia was a more reliable seller, saying: While others are making promises, Russia is moving forward with the Make-in-India program.

However, an expected agreement for India to buy five S-400 air defence systems for $4.5 billion from Almaz-Antey failed to materialize. The S-400 would significantly boost Indias military advantage over its regional rival Pakistan. Reliance Defense hinted in a statement on Thursday that the air defence system could be part of its negotiations with the Russian company.

Moscows concerns over Indias growing strategic ties with the US clearly played a role in its caution in providing hi-tech air defence systems. Russia wants India to at least remain neutral in the rising tensions between Moscow and Washington.

At the same time, as New Delhi has tilted more to Washington, Russia has begun selling arms to Pakistan. Though limited at this stage to attack helicopters, future sales could include fighter aircraft. China is widely believed to have facilitated the recent, virtually unprecedented warming of relations between Russia and Pakistan.

Other agreements included a deal for Russia to build at least six more nuclear power plants in India. Russias state-owned oil company Rosneft agreed to provide 10 million tons of oil annually to India over the next decade. As a part of developing co-operation in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons, India will increase its stake in the Rosneft-owned Vankor oilfields in Siberia.

Modi appealed for Russian CEOs to invest in India, including in the infrastructure and aerospace sectors. At his joint press conference with Putin, Modi declared: I see Russia as a prominent partner in Indias economic transformation. Modi was accompanied by 19 Indian CEOs while more than 30 leading officials from Russian companies attended the India-Russia CEO meeting addressed by Modi and Putin.

Faced with sanctions from the West, Russia is keen to develop trade and investment ties with India. Bilateral trade is expected to increase from the current $US10 billion to $30 billion by 2025.

Acutely aware that Washington is seeking to undermine Russian ties with India, Putin sought to woo Modi by giving strong support to New Delhis ambitions to be a global power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. India was, he said, a deserving and strong candidate which could bring an independent and responsible approach to the top UN body.

However, Putin stressed: It is important Russia and India make similar approaches to key international problems. Our countries are for a political settlement of the conflict in Syria and promotion of national reconciliation in Afghanistan  We are certain that it is in the interests of the world community to form a wide anti-terrorist coalition operating on the basis of international law and under the auspices of the United Nations.

In Syria, the US and its allies have intensified their military intervention aimed at ousting President Bashar al-Assad under the pretext of fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Russia, which is providing military support to Assad including carrying out strikes on opposition militia, is seeking to shore up its interests by advocating a political settlement that includes sections of the Assad regime alongside opposition groups.

India has signaled its willingness to back Russia on the issue. On the eve of Modis visit, Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar declared that India and Russia shared the same stand of resolving the Syrian issue through political and diplomatic means and through intra-Syrian dialogue. In response to a question, he said that India backed Russian military intervention in Syria as its forces were acting with the consent of the Assad regimean implicit criticism of the US and its allies.

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India attempts precarious balancing act in Ukraine crisis

[28 March 2014]
Public education in the state of Michigan is increasingly being placed on rations. According to a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Michigan has reduced K-12 spending by 7.5 percent since 2008, the 12th deepest cut in the nation. Per-pupil funding in the state declined by $526 between 2008 and 2015, with only $45 restored last year.

At the same time, the state superintendent of schools has announced that measures will be finalized this month to determine the fate of 11 financially distressed school districts. New legislation was passed this year to impose stringent financial reporting and deficit reduction plans on school districts and to provide broad new powers for state intervention. It is predicted the law may quickly double the number of school districts under state control or monitoring.

The proliferation of charter schools and cuts to per-student funding has devastated district budgets across the state and pushed unfunded liabilities to the teachers pension plan to over $25 billion. The defunding of K-12 schools has already led to the shuttering and/or charterization of entire districts in the Great Lakes state.

Compounding the assault, Moodys Investors Service downgraded 47 of Michigans 206 districts in the beginning of December, a measure which forces higher borrowing costs on the beleaguered districts and deepens their growing debt burden. General fund reserves for 41 of these districts suffered a median collapse of 45 percent over the last five years. The majority of school districts in the state150 of themhave faced such fiscally punitive measures and Moodys says more downgrades are in the works for 2016.

Mike Addonizio, a school finance expert and professor of education at Wayne State University, says Moodys rating cuts reflect a long, steep recession in which Michigan fell behind many other states economically. Michigan is now a relatively poor state, ranking 41st among states in Gross State Product per capita, he said. That would impair the credit worthiness of local governments, including school districts.

The states new legal early warning system provides for state monitoring of all schools without a 5 percent general fund balance (or surplus) for the two most recent school years. Under the new rules, a total of 249 districts will be subject to state monitoring.

For districts in more severe fiscal crisis, there will be some level of direct state intervention. This will affect 141 of Michigans 541 traditional districts and about 50 of 302 charter school districts. For example, Pontiac and Benton Harbor Schools, which both faced the threat of takeover by an emergency manager, are now working with the state under a consent agreement, a preliminary stage of state oversight. In Pontiac the consent agreement was used to impose massive cuts: Teachers pay was slashed by 11 percent and district employees are forced to pay an additional $7,000 annually to cover their family health care costs.

But the most extreme measures will be meted out against districts, which are in deficit, or are expected to be so, for more than five years. These are labeled as financially distressed and the law empowers the state treasurer to recommend an emergency manager (EM) to usurp the authority of elected local school boards. The state can also withhold a portion or all of state school aid, force a consent agreement or recommend Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

These draconian measures were modeled on the Detroit municipal bankruptcy of 2013-14. They streamline the process of imposing an EM oreven more ominouslyof dissolving the public school system itself. Such measures have proven useful to the business interests pursuing privatization efforts, as well as providing a pseudo-legal cover to rob pension funds.

Privatization of education has been pursued by both Democrats and Republicans in state government since 1994, but was singled out for acclaim by Obamas former Education Secretary Arne Duncan when he cited Detroit as ground zero for school reform.

The 11 targeted districts collectively educate tens of thousands of children and include a diverse group of city, suburban and outstate school districts: Bridgeport Spaulding Community, Clintondale Community, Flint Community, Hazel Park City, Lincoln Consolidated, Mackinaw City, Mt. Clemens Community, New Haven Community, Southgate Community, Vanderbilt Area and Westwood Community.

Among these districts are many in the inner-ring suburbs of Detroit where large sections of the working class have been turned into the working poor, particularly since the 2008 recession. Presently, 58 percent of those living below the poverty line in Metro Detroit now residenot in the city properin suburban communities in the Detroit tri-county area. The loss of jobs in these areas has translated into steep drops in K-12 enrollment, dramatically impacting school budgets.

Even before these measures took effect, Flint Community Schools extracted $8.1 million in concessions from teachers and paraprofessionals, imposed wage freezes and closed buildings.

Emergency managers have been utilized to cut education budgets in Michigan since 2009, when Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm first appointed an EM for the Detroit Public Schools. Since that time no school district under an EM has ever exited this form of state receivership unless the district was dissolved.

This has happened in two districts: the Buena Vista Township Public Schools, located outside of Saginaw, and Inkster Public Schools in the western suburbs of Detroit. In the summer of 2012 state-appointed emergency managers converted all the schools in both Muskegon Heights and Highland Park to charters, effectively dissolving both school districts. This allowed the local property millage to be used exclusively to pay off old debts.

The Leona Group, a for-profit Education Management Organization (EMO) hired by the EM, later closed Highland Parks last remaining high school outright, with parents forced to find places elsewhere for their children.

Not only has state funding declined since 2008, it has been coupled with the downgrading of federal support to education. Under the Obama administration, there has been an 11 percent decline in Title 1 funding to the most impoverished schools and another 9 percent cut in special education. Additionally, local property tax revenues have fallen and in some cases collapsed under the impact of deindustrialization and economic downtown.

This systemic crisis has been exacerbated and seized upon by the pro-privatization forces controlling the State of Michigan education system. Michigan has a greater percentage of students in charters than all but two other states. In Detroit, 55 percent of students attend charters, in Flint 44 percent.

Michigan school superintendents have increasingly charged that charters are cannibalizing their districts and destabilizing enrollment, which is their baseline funding source. For-profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs) run 80 percent of Michigans charter schools, the highest percentage in the nation.

With enrollment levels devastated by the growth of charter schools, the Detroit Public Schoolsthe largest district in the stateis teetering on the verge of collapse. DPS is the subject of several competing reorganization plans, all of which aim to increase privatization.

In a major political provocation announced in the Detroit News Monday, the State of Michigan is demanding that DPS begin $26 million monthly payments in February on its accrued deficitsa measure which will literally bankrupt the schools within a couple of months. The move is a transparent attempt to ram through the state-dictated reorganization, slashing jobs, pensions and educational services.

In 2015, debt service cost the deficit-ridden Detroit Public Schools $53 million, including over $13 million annually in interest payments. This amounted to a whopping $1,111 per student per year (out of the per student foundation allowance of $7,296). The new measures, set to take effect in a month, would triple the tribute being exacted by the finance industry from the citys children.

The district is under its fourth emergency manager and has seen a decline of state aid by whopping 33 percent since 2011from $591 million down to $394 in fiscal year 2015.

All in all, the measures being implemented throughout the state are designed to insure that school districts debts to wealthy bondholders are repaid through the elimination of teachers, the destruction of their pensions and the closure of schools and entire districts.
On Wednesday December 30, Puerto Ricos Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla made it official: Puerto Rico would default on a $37.3 million interest payment on bonds issued by two of its public agencies: the Infrastructure Financing Agency ($35.9 million) and the Public Financing Corporation (PFC, $1.4 million). PFC bonds have been in default since last August, when it missed a $58 million payment.

Garcia Padilla did say that General Obligation bonds, which are guaranteed by the Puerto Rican Constitution, would be making a payout of $434 million. Eighty-five percent of the islands $72 billion debt consists of debt issued by Puerto Rican government agencies.

The governor indicated that the General Obligation bonds payment was being made on time by diverting $163 million from taxes and fees earmarked for other government agenciesthe so-called claw back. These are the Road Authority, Public Transport, the Bus Authority, and the Tourism Corporation.

Other agencies, including the Public Housing Authority, the University of Puerto Rico, the Convention Center Authority, the State Pension System and Industrial Development made payments totaling $383 million over the weekend and on Monday. These agencies will remain current for the time being.

According to Garcia Padilla, his administration was not able to divert funds from those agencies in time, due to the abrupt implementation of the clawback.

When asked by reporters to predict future debt paymentssome $3 billion due between now and the end of June 2016the governor made future payments contingent on Puerto Rico recovering from its deep recession. At the same time, he reported that the January payments, absent a restructuring plan, are an obstacle to the Islands recovery:

It places us in a crucible over which payments can be made with the few resources that we have. It has forced us to balance the risks that come from a non-payment. In this crucible we have had to weigh the risk of a general cessation of payments for the provision of essential social services that the government offers the people.

The San Juan Star, an English-language weekly, observed that the amount of the default was relatively small. It quoted financial analyst Daniel Hanse from the Washington, D.C.-based Height Securities who declared that the default was remarkably mild, given that more than $900 million in debt service was paid out.

Clearly, the relatively small amount of this selective default is a message from the Garcia Padilla administration intended to pressure Wall Street and the US Congress to come up with a rescue package soon. We would not be in this press conference with this announcement if [the US] Congress had acted, said the governor. I expect that legislators will not forget the faces of those lobbyists that claimed that Puerto Rico was capable of making all its payments. He also raised the prospect of a government shutdown due to lack of funds.

We are all aware that our creditors have spent a fortune lobbying Congress against Puerto Ricans and that they are willingindeed, eagerto engage in costly court actions against Puerto Rico, and, as we know, eager to sequester our funds, to deprive us of the little cash that we have available to provide our people basic services, to put pressure on me, added Garcia Padilla.

Aside from severe austerity policies, Puerto Rico, mired in a decade of economic slump, does not have the resources to service its $72 billion debt. Like Greece (with which it is increasingly compared), Puerto Rico, cut out from credit markets, faces impossible choices.

The Puerto Rican economy continues to fall. The index of economic activity, driven by cement sales and gasoline consumption, fell again in November (cement sales fell 2.5 percent; gasoline consumption fell by 8.8 percent).

There are very few prospects that Puerto Rico, economically and politically dependent on the United States, will grow out of this crisis in the near future. Even tourism, which represents less than 10 percent of Puerto Ricos GDP, is expected to contract with the thaw in relations between Washington and Havana and tourists being able to opt for Cuba.

The magnitude of Puerto Ricos debt, the equivalent of 90 percent of its Gross Domestic Product, or $19,000 per capita (nearly four times as high as Massachusetts $5,070 per capita debt), would require a massive contraction of living standards, education, pensions, and health and government services. This would in turn spell an acceleration in the wave of emigrants from the island and an explosion in the class struggle.

So far, both the White House and Congress have said no to a federal rescue package or to granting Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection. The capitalist alternative that Wall Street demands is the destruction of pensions, jobs, wages and social programs.

Government officials announced that negotiations with advisers to the thousands of individual creditors and many hedge funds would continue in the next few weeks.
Tensions within the war-ravaged Middle East have escalated sharply in the wake of Saudi Arabias January 2 mass executions of 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shia cleric who had criticized the ruling monarchy and its suppression of the countrys Shia minority population.

Saudi Arabia cut all diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday, using angry protests against the beheading of the Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as the pretext. Demonstrators Sunday stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and firebombed a consular facility in the Iranian city of Mashhad. At least 50 of the protesters were arrested and no Saudi functionaries were injured.

On Monday, the Saudi monarchy followed up its severing of diplomatic links with the announcement that it is also banning all flights to and from Iran and also cutting trade ties.

The Saudi actions were followed Monday by Bahrain and Sudan severing diplomatic ties with Iran as well. Bahrain, which is host to the US Fifth Fleet, is a majority Shia country ruled by a dictatorial Sunni monarchy. Saudi troops and tanks played the decisive role in suppressing mass protests that swept the country in 2011.

For its part, Sudan, a former ally of Iran, switched allegiances last year after heavy Saudi investments in the Sudanese economy, including a reported deposit of up to $4 billion from the Saudis and their Gulf Cooperation Council into Sudans central bank.

Another Sunni gulf oil sheikdom, the United Arab Emirates, downgraded its diplomatic relations with Tehran, but stopped short of severing all ties with Iran, which is a major trading partner.

Irans Foreign Ministry condemned the Saudi regime for using the protests as a pretext to cut ties and ratchet up tensions. Saudi Arabia sees not only its interests but also its existence in pursuing crises and confrontations and attempts to resolve its internal problems by exporting them to the outside, ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said Monday.

He insisted that Iran was committed to providing diplomatic security, adding, Saudi Arabia, which thrives on tensions, has used this incident as an excuse to fuel the tensions.

Evidence emerged Monday that, indeed, the mass executions and the subsequent breaking of relations were part of a well-planned Saudi provocation.

The British daily Independent made public the contents of a leaked Saudi government memo showing that the ruling monarchy knew the mass execution of 47 people would spark an angry backlash and ordered its security services to be on full alert before going ahead.

The memo, directed from the head of security services to police agencies across the desert kingdom, placed the regimes extensive repressive apparatus on a high state of alert.

The British human rights group Reprieve, which first received the leaked memo, said it pointed to the politically motivated character of the mass beheadings.

This letter shows the level of preparation the Saudi authorities went to ahead of Saturday, having predicted the outrage that would follow their politically motivated executions of protesters, said Maya Foa, head of the death penalty team at Reprieve.

Mass protests have continued in the wake of the state killings. A crowd of several thousand gathered in Tehran again on Monday, while demonstrators in Iraq besieged the recently reopened Saudi embassy in Baghdads Green Zone and took to the streets of the predominantly Shia cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf.

In a disturbing sign that the Saudi action is stoking sectarian strife, two Sunni mosques in the area of Hilla, 50 miles south of Baghdad, were rocked by bomb blasts. A muezzin was killed at one of the mosques. In a separate attack, the Sunni imam of a mosque in Alexandria in central Iraq was shot and killed by gunmen.

Meanwhile, the Saudi regime itself reported a deadly shooting incident in Sheikh Nimrs hometown of Awamiya, in Saudi Arabias predominantly Shia Eastern Province, on Sunday night. While the regime claimed that its security forces had come under fire, the only victims reported were a civilian who was killed and a child who was wounded.

As the linchpin of repression and reaction in the Arab world, the Saudi monarchy has been the foremost instigator of sectarianism, deliberately exacerbating and exploiting tensions between Sunni and Shia as a means of dividing popular opposition within the country and isolating Iran, its principal regional rival.

Until now, the ruling monarchy has refrained from murdering leading figures within the Shia communityarresting and harassing them, suppressing demonstrations, but ultimately releasing them in an attempt to assuage anti-regime sentiments.

The beheading of Nimr, together with the 46 others, was clearly organized for political ends. He himself had been in prison since 2012, while the bulk of those whose heads were chopped off or were shot to death were Sunni accused of involvement in Al Qaeda attacks inside the kingdom. They had been jailed for upwards of a decade. Joining Nimrs execution with theirs was meant to signal that Shia opposition to the monarchys absolute rule was tantamount to terrorism.

The political purposes of this bloody provocation are both foreign and domestic. It was staged barely three weeks before Syrian peace talks were set to begin in Geneva and less than two weeks before UN-brokered talks on a settlement of the bloody nine-month-old Saudi war in Yemen were due to resume.

The Saudi monarchy, which has been a principal financier and sponsor of the Al Qaeda-linked Sunni Islamist militias unleashed in the war for regime change in Syria, has no interest in ending the nearly five-year-old conflict short of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, Irans principal Arab ally.

Nor does it want to end its war in Yemen under the present conditions, with the Houthis, a Shia-based insurgent movement, undefeated. The mass beheadings coincided directly with the Saudi announcement that a supposed ceasefire declared on December 15 had formally ended.

The war in Yemen has claimed nearly 6,000 lives since the Saudi military began launching indiscriminate air strikes last March. The US has aided the intervention with arms, intelligence and midair refueling of Saudi bombers, which have dropped American-made cluster bombs on civilian targets and struck at least 100 hospitals. While it is an increasingly costly debacle for the Saudi monarchy, to end the war without defeating the Houthis would be seen as a humiliating defeat.

Ultimately, the aim of the Saudi regime is to disrupt any rapprochement between Washington and Iran in the wake of the recent nuclear deal and, if possible, to drag US imperialism into a wider war against Iran itself.

Domestically, the fomenting of sectarianism and clashes with Iran serves as a means of diverting explosive social tensions away from the monarchy itself. The kingdom faces an increasingly intractable economic crisis driven by the collapse in oil prices for which its own policies bear major responsibility. It has already implemented cuts in gasoline subsidies and increases in fees for water and electricity in an attempt to confront its fiscal crisis. More drastic austerity measures, aimed at social subsidies used to quell popular unrest, are expected.

Within official Washington, the reaction to the mass beheadings and the judicial murder of Sheikh Nimr has been muted at best. There has been no direct condemnation of the grisly mass killings, and no senior official has so much as issued a statement.

Within the ruling political establishment, policy toward the Saudi monarchy, the number one arms market for the US and Washingtons closest Arab ally, is, like most basic foreign policy questions, an issue of conflict and divisions.

This was expressed Monday in editorials published by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The Journal, expressing the views of the most right-wing layers within ruling circles, as well as the constituency of the military-industrial complex and finance capital, which have both reaped super profits off the Saudi monarchy, posed the issue not as a matter of Saudi crimes or even crisis, but rather of the supposed danger of Iran and Russia toppling the House of Saud, and the question of whether the Obama administration would do anything to stop them.

The Journal editorial chided the Obama administration for having walked back sanctions against Iran over recent ballistic missile tests. While acknowledging problems in Saudi support for the export of Wahhabism, the ideological underpinnings of Al Qaeda, ISIS and similar outfits, the Journal concluded: But in a Middle East wracked by civil wars, political upheaval and Iranian imperialism, the Saudis are the best friend we have in the Arabian peninsula. The US should make clear to Iran and Russia that it will defend the Kingdom from Iranian attempts to destabilize or invade.

The Post took a somewhat more concerned approach, recognizing that the execution of Nimr was an act that appears boundand maybe was intendedto further inflame conflict between Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East. It warns against the Saudi ruling family sowing chaos in an already stricken region while undermining itself.

However, it attributes Riyadhs reckless moves to Saudi perceptions that the United States is no longer willing or able to stop Irans drive for Middle Eastern hegemony, forcing Sunni regimes to act in their own defense.

In the end both editorials point to the same supposed remedy for the destruction and bloodshed wrought by both US imperialism and its Saudi client state in the Middle East: the escalation of militarism and the preparation of new and even wider wars directed against both Iran and Russia.
Tensions in the South China Sea have again flared after a chorus of criticism from Vietnam, the Philippines, the US and Japan directed against the landing of a Chinese civilian aircraft on Fiery Cross Reef, an islet under Chinese control. The latest incident takes place amid a provocative US-led campaign over the past year against Chinas land reclamation and construction activities in disputed areas of the South China Sea.

The Vietnamese foreign ministry fired off a formal protest to the Chinese embassy calling on Beijing to refrain from landing another aircraft on the reef. Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh declared that China had illegally built an airstrip on the islet and condemned the landing as a serious infringement of the sovereignty of Vietnam. He went on to claim that China had breached an agreement between the two countries on the resolution of maritime disputes in the region.

Both Vietnam and China claim all of the Spratly Islands, of which Fiery Cross Reef is a part, and accuse each other of illegally occupying their national territory. Vietnam currently occupies 29 atolls and reefs in the island group (compared to just 8 by China), has its own airfield on Spratly Island and is also carrying out reclamation and expansion. The two countries also have a long-running dispute over the Paracel Islands that resulted in a physical confrontation between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels when China established an oil rig in 2014 near islands under its control.

China rejected what it described as the unfounded accusation from the Vietnamese side, insisting that the test flight to the airport with a civil aircraft [was] in order to test whether or not the facilities on it meet the standards for civil aviation. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying added that the relevant activity falls completely within Chinas sovereignty.

The Philippines, which also claims some of the Spratly Islands and has its own airstrip on Thitu Island, also foreshadowed a formal protest to China over the flight. The Japanese foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, weighed in, saying that such acts dont contribute to the peaceful settlement of the dispute and should be avoided.

US State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala called on all claimants to actively reduce tensions by refraining from unilateral actions that undermine regional stability and for steps towards meaningful diplomatic solutions. She repeated the US demand for a halt to all land reclamation, construction of new facilities and militarisation of the disputed features.

Washingtons response is utterly hypocritical. Over the past five years, the Obama administration has systematically inflamed dangerous flashpoints throughout the Indo-Pacific, including in the South China Sea, as part of its pivot to Asia aimed at undermining Chinas diplomatic, economic and military position. The US is engaged in a reckless campaign to ensure its dominance in Asia by all means, including war if need be.

The kneejerk response to a Chinese flight in the South China Sea is in marked contrast to the decades during which Washington largely ignored confrontations and indeed clashes in the disputed waters. In mid-2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared for the first time at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit that the US had a national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation through the South China Sea, provoking a shocked and angry response from Beijing.

What freedom of navigation signifies to the US is the untrammelled right to send its warplanes and naval vessels into the strategic region, including close to the Chinese mainland and major military bases. China is heavily dependent on key shipping routes in the South China Sea through which pass its huge imports of energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East. Imposing an economic blockade of China by seizing control of chokepoints in South East Asia, such as the Malacca Strait, is part of the Pentagons strategic plans for war against China.

Over the past year, the South China Sea has become a central focus of US provocations in Asia with repeated condemnations of Chinese expansionism and militarisation of the disputed waters. The accusations have provided the pretext for forging stronger military ties with countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam, which, far from seeking to reduce tensions, have been encouraged to more aggressively challenge Chinese territorial claims.

The US has signed a new basing agreement with the Philippines that gives American forces virtually unfettered access to Philippine military bases including those directly adjacent to the South China Sea.

The Pentagon has also begun mounting freedom of navigation operations that directly challenge Chinese territorial claims and threaten to precipitate open conflict. Last October, the USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, deliberately intruded within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around two Chinese-controlled islets and later in the month, nuclear-capable B-52 bombers flew close to the same area.

Last month, an American B-52 bomber flew within two nautical miles of Chinese-administered Cuarteron Reef provoking angry protests from Beijing. The Pentagon responded by claiming that the intrusion had been a mistake as for this mission, there had been no intention of flying within 12 nautical miles. The Chinese defence ministry branded the action as a serious military provocation and warned that it would take all necessary measures to protect Chinas sovereignty.

The claim that the US breach of the territorial limit was unintentional is hardly reassuring. Clearly the strategic bombers intended to fly close to Chinese-claimed territory to test Beijings reactions. Any mistake or miscalculation has the potential to lead to a clash that could precipitate war between the nuclear-armed powers.

Moreover, by encouraging other claimants in the South China Sea, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, to take a more aggressive stance, the US is unleashing forces over which it has no control. Vietnams latest reaction to the test flight of a civilian Chinese aircraft warning against further landings in the contested Spratlys further fuels tensions in what has become one of the most dangerous flashpoints in Asia.
In its biggest military re-armament program since the end of the Vietnam War, the countrys leadership is accelerating a decade-long drive to modernise its armed forces.

A Reuters report, Vietnam builds military muscle to face China, published on December 18, said Hanoi was seeking to deter China as tensions rise over disputes in the South China Sea. If that fails, Vietnam is rapidly preparing to be able to defend itself on all fronts the article claimed.

Senior officers and other highly placed sources in Hanoi told Reuters that Vietnams strategy has moved beyond contingency planning into full-scale preparation for war. Key army units, including the elite Division 308 which guards the mountainous north, have been placed on high combat readiness, to fend off any sudden attack.

A video report accompanying the article noted that historically Vietnam has defined itself by conducting wars against bigger powers, and it is now preparing for its next one. In reality, Vietnam is preparing to enter an imperialist war as an accomplice of the United States, which waged a neo-colonial war to subordinate the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

In line with the corporate medias demonising of China over the intensification of hostilities in the South China Sea, Reuters falsely depicted Vietnams military build-up as defensive. It claimed that the turning point was Chinas positioning, in May 2014, of an oil rig just 80 nautical miles from Vietnams coast. The dispute escalated into a dangerous confrontation between Chinese ships and the Vietnamese coast guard.

The oil rig was in fact set up near the Paracel Islands, which are claimed by both countries, but have been controlled by China since 1974. The area overlaps a Vietnamese oil exploration block which Hanoi had earlier awarded to the US energy giant, ExxonMobil. The US quickly intervened in the conflict, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki branding the placement of the rig as provocative and unhelpful to the maintenance of peace and stability in the region. Vietnamese authorities, in turn, encouraged a wave of sometimes violent protests at Chinese diplomatic offices and Chinese-invested businesses, denouncing China and driving thousands of Chinese citizens from the country.

As part of the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, Washington has deliberately inflamed longstanding but low-level regional disputes into dangerous flashpoints by declaring its national interest in ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and encouraging countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines to press their territorial conflicts with China.

Since 2007, visits by American warships to Vietnamese ports have become a regular feature of military relations, along with a growing number of joint exercises.

The Obama administration is working assiduously to strengthen US strategic engagement with Vietnam. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter and the Vietnamese government signed a Joint Vision Statement in July, under which the US would train Vietnamese troops to participate in UN peacekeeping operations.

Carter committed to providing Vietnam with $US18 million to purchase two US-made patrol boats, as a prelude to the co-production of weapons and defence supplies, seeking to curtail Russian military influence. This followed a decision by the US in October 2014 to lift its longstanding ban on the sale of maritime weaponry to Vietnam. In July President Obama met with Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). The meeting declared a joint commitment to the US demand for freedom of navigation.

The US and its main regional ally Japan are seeking to boost the military capacity of Vietnam and other countries in Asia to prepare for war with China. Japan and Vietnam have agreed to hold their first-ever joint naval exercise in the near future with a Japanese warship expected to visit the strategic naval base at Cam Ranh Bay.

Vietnamese crews are also undergoing training in undersea warfare at Indias INS Satavahana submarine centre. Coinciding with a series of defence, trade and economic agreements signed by the two countries leaders in November 2014, India is engaged in energy projects with Vietnam in the South China Sea, including in areas claimed by China, while simultaneously providing a $US100 million line of credit to Vietnam to buy military hardware.

In recent months, the first four of six heavily-armed submarines purchased from Russia began patrolling the South China Sea. The fleet is expected to be fully operational by 2017. The navy is also acquiring Russian-designed ships equipped with anti-ship missiles, as well as 2 frigates, 6 corvettes and 18 fast-attack missile boats. New vessels will have enhanced anti-submarine weapons. Coastal defences have been strengthened with anti-ship artillery batteries.

Vietnams Air Force operates 30 Russian-supplied fighter-bombers, which patrol its military bases in the Spratly archipelago. Air defences have been upgraded and expanded with Israeli early warning radars and Russian surface-to-air missile batteries. Negotiations are underway with European and US arms manufacturers to buy more fighter jets, maritime patrol planes and unarmed surveillance drones.

The army maintains a conscript-based force of an estimated 450,000 troops. It has recently started manufacturing Israeli rifles under license, and has used Israeli and European technological help to refit some 850 Russian tanks. Laws were passed last year lengthening compulsory military service from 18 months to two years.

The Vietnamese leadership is engaged in a delicate balancing act; while not an official US ally, it has tilted markedly towards Washington, despite longstanding economic ties with China, its largest trading partner. In an attempt to counter Americas growing influence, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Vietnam and Singapore in November, promoting Chinas Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative. This includes major transport and power plant construction projects in Vietnam, with financing from the Bank of China.

According to a commentary in the Diplomat on November 6, Xis visit was also intended to boost the pro-China faction within the VCP leadership, co-led by Party Secretary Phu Trong and Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh. Tensions between these elements and the more US-oriented faction of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung are likely to be a major factor in the party congress, held every five years, which will convene later this month to select the new leadership of the VCP.
Latin America

Mexico: Municipal workers demand Christmas bonuses

Employees of the city of Chiconcuac in Mexico state blocked the Texcoco-Lecheria Highway demanding the payment of their traditional aguinaldo (Christmas bonus) on December 30.

The demonstration is an escalation of a series of rallies at City Hall over the nonpayment of the bonus, which was due on December 20. The nonpayment affects 130 municipal employees. In nearby Tlalnepantla de Baz, 6,000 workers have neither received aguinaldos, nor vacation pay, nor their regular bi-weekly paycheck.

Workers in other cities in Mexico state (including Tlalnepantla, Atizapan de Zaragoza, Ecatepec, Metepec, Valle de Chalco, Los Reyes La Paz, Coacalco, Almoloya de Juarez, Jaltenco, Ixtlahuaca and Ocoyoacac) are facing similar conditions of delays in pay. In several other cities (including Tlalnepantla, Atizapan and Naucalpan) refuse collection has stopped due to lack of funds to purchase fuel for trucks.

In Atizapan refuse truck drivers blocked a main highway in Mexico state to protest a 30 million peso debt to the 150 employees of the Eiffel refuse company. The workers are owed six months wages, aguinaldo and vacation pay.

Retirees protest in Monterrey, Mexico

Scores of senior citizens in Monterrey, Mexicos second most populated city, took over the offices of the Tax Administration (SAT) on December 30. At issue is the failure of the Economics Ministry to deposit resources for the 65 and more program, leaving retirees with no checks.

65 and more (65 y mas) is a welfare program from the federal government of 525 pesos (US$30.51), monthly (paid in two-month installments) for impoverished seniors that have no social security pensions. The welfare program was recently instituted as a complement to 70 y mas, a stipend of 500 pesos for those impoverished seniors over the age of 70. Both programs include 6.5 million seniors.

Fifty-seven percent of Mexican seniors report not being able to cover their most basic needs.

The Monterrey demonstrators invaded the SAT building in downtown Monterrey with picket signs repudiating Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto, Social Development Secretary Antonio Meade, and Economics Secretary Luis Videregaray. They vowed to remain in the building until they receive a response from the government.

No explanation was given for the lack of funds. It now appears that the deposits for the 65 and more program will not be made until February.

Acayucan, Mexico water workers threaten to strike

Workers at the Acayucan branch of the Veracruz State Water Commission are threatening a strike if their wages and other benefits are not paid on time this month.

Workers declared that they have been forced into this decision, when they were not paid on December 31 and had to mobilize in front of the Water Commission headquarters, demanding their pay.

Federal and state employees in Argentina carry out one-day national strike

On December 29, members of the Association of Government Employees (ATE) went on strike and mobilized in downtown Buenos Aires in defense of their jobs and living standards.

ATE General Secretary Hugo Godoy demanded that the newly installed administration of president Mauricio Macri renew the contracts of 695,000 state and provincial contingent employees, whose contracts ended December 31.

Godoy also demanded a 5,000 pesos bonus (US $376) as compensation for lost buying power, pointing out that to raise workers purchasing power to the 2007 level would require a 46 percent raise in 2016.

The strike and mobilization took place after the Macri government announced plans to evaluate the contracts of 64,000 temporary employees and those of permanent workers employed during the last three years of the Cristina Fernandez administration. Supposedly, those workers who are allegedly collecting a paycheck without performing any function would be sacked. Many public employees view this move as a convenient pretext to eliminate thousands of jobs. The protest strike is expected not to impact Macris plan.

Equally undeterred, Buenos Aires Governor Maria Eugenia Vidal announced that workers wages would be discounted for the strike day.

Patagonian transit workers to strike this week

Over the holidays, the Indalo bus company in the city of Neuquen sacked six drivers. Transit bus drivers in this city, capital of Neuquen province, called a strike of indefinite duration for Monday January 4. The strike was organized by workers independent of their union (UTA) leadership.

Leaders of the transit union UTA intervened, calling a Monday meeting to define what steps to take next, not mentioning the strike call, making it clear that the union would not approve of the strike.

Since the beginning of 2015, over 30 drivers have been sacked.

This is the second strike this year by Neuquen city bus drivers. Last March, the drivers struck for 36 hours to protest delays in their wages.

Rosario, Argentina taxi drivers announce protest strike

This Saturday, taxi drivers will carry out a 24-hour strike to protest an attack on one of their own, Marcelo Fabian Viva. Viva was shot by two assailants and is hospitalized with serious wounds.

The United States

Chicago Coca-Cola strike ends with tentative agreement

Coca-Cola workers at two Chicago-area facilities began to return to work December 30 after Teamsters Local 727 reached an agreement with management on a new three-year contract. The 319 workers involved in the 27-day strike have yet to ratify the new agreement and the union has not set a date for the vote.

The contract provides for wage increases of 3 percent in the first year and 2.5 percent in the second and third years of the contract. On a previously rejected agreement, the union claimed that wage increases would be wiped out by company demands for concessions on health care.

Under the new agreement, workers health care coverage will be transferred to a plan currently covering Coke management. That plan reduces the cost of premiums by $7 a week for single coverage and more than $40 a week for families. There was no indication of the quality of the new plan. The union has recommended the new proposal, calling it fair.

Ultimatum to Connecticut orchestra: Pay cut or shut down

The board governing the Hartford Symphony Orchestra has threatened to shut down the organization unless musicians accept a 30 percent cut in pay. Artistic director Stephen Collins claims it must have the concessions in order to overcome a $1 million structural deficit.

During the 2008-2011, the capital city symphony cut its budget from $6.5 million to $4.8 million. Michael Pollard, violinist and member of the unions negotiating committee, responded, We are not the problem.  Even if we accepted everything they are asking of us, that doesn't take care of the problem.

The threatened shutdown of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra is preceded by the loss of the regions ballet and opera companies.

Canada

Locked-out Ontario casino workers struck by vehicles on picket line

Since being locked out by their employer on December 15, at least three casino workers have been struck on the picket line by vehicles entering the Rideau Carleton Raceway Slots south of Ottawa, with some requiring hospitalization.

Attendants, cashiers and housekeepers are employed by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) and are represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). They have been working without a contract since May of 2014 and have not had a wage increase since 2009. They are seeking wage parity with workers in similar jobs across the province as well as protection for their pensions.

The police have still not laid charges in any of at least three reported incidents. A union spokesman has said that he is confident that charges will be laid against the drivers, as they are warranted.
Sleep deprivation sets you up for more than just snoozing on your morning commute it could have a serious impact on your future health. (Photo: Getty Images)

Experts have long known that too little, or too low-quality, sleep is linked with a host of health issues from weight gain to depression to strokes. But for the first time, a group of scientists might be able to prove that poor sleep can leave brains vulnerable to Alzheimers disease, which is increasing at alarming rates.

Brain scientist Jeffrey Iliff, who works at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland told NPR that sleep is valuable for brain health, particularly because your brain purges amyloid, a toxin linked to Alzheimers, overnight, through whats called the glymphatic system. If the glymphatic system isnt able to properly clear the brain of amyloid, the researchers posit, it puts a person at a higher risk of Alzheimers.



Filmmaker Max Lugavere, who is working on a documentary about brain health, puts it in terms we can all understand: The glymphatic system is basically the brains garbage disposal system, he explains. When sleeping, the glymphatic ducts swell (up to 60%) and pulse with cerebrospinal fluid, squirting it throughout and cleaning [the brain] of interstitial waste products like amyloid that could cause damage when aggregated.



Now, Iliff and his team are getting ready to launch a study thatll focus on the glymphatic system and how its affected by sleep.

Related: Want to Be Truly Great? Take Care of Your Brain

We all make amyloid in our brains, but its the aggregation of it that is problematic, says Lugavere. If a person doesnt get enough sleep, theyre simply handicapping their brains ability for this vital function to occur. This self-cleaning process doesnt happen nearly as effectively while were awake.

The teams research could shed new, valuable light on what causes degenerative brain diseases, as well as how to prevent and fight them. In the meantime, catch those Zs. Even if scientists havent yet proven why its so valuable, theres enough evidence to prove that it is.

Read This Next: 9 Foods That Can Keep Your Brain Sharp

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Health on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.


A politician in New Hampshire has removed his name from a proposed bill after saying that a mother has a right to breastfeed, but if a woman wants to take out her nipple in public, a man should have a right to stare or grab at that nipple too.

The comment, posted on Facebook by New Hampshire state Rep. Josh Moore (pictured), was in response to another state representatives post about a proposed bill that would make it illegal for a woman to purposely expos[e] the areola or nipple of her breast or breasts in a public place and in the presence of another person with reckless disregard for whether a reasonable person would be offended or alarmed by such act. Currently, it is legal in New Hampshire for men or women to expose their nipples, but this law would change that  at least for women. The proposed bill does make an exception for public breastfeeding.

STORY: Breastfeeding Tips: What Every Mom Should Know

New Hampshire state Rep. Amanda Bouldin. (Photo: Amanda Bouldin/Facebook)

New Hampshire state Rep. Amanda Bouldin, a Democrat, opposes the new bill. We shouldnt be introducing new legislation that only applies to women, she told Slate. If we had any laws that started with the sentence women should not, they should have been repealed by now.

In a Facebook post on Dec. 30 that has since been taken down, Bouldin spoke out against the new law, specifically pointing out that despite being sponsored exclusively by Republican men, the bill does a lot of individual policing for a party that supports limited government. In her Facebook post, Bouldin called the bill sexist, according to Slate, and got a response from Moore, a Republican.

STORY: Trump to Breastfeeding Mom: Youre Disgusting

Who doesnt support a mothers right to feed? Moore asked in his comment, suggesting that he is a supporter of nursing mothers. But then he went on to question any woman who would expose her nipple in public. If its a womans natural inclination to pull her nipple out in public and you support that, then you should have no problem with a mans inclination to stare at it and grab it. After all.. Its ALL relative and natural, right?

Story continues

Though the conversation has been deleted from Facebook, Bouldin took a screenshot of Moores comment and shared it on Twitter, and it has elicited a strong backlash. On her Facebook page, users from across the country have posted messages of thanks to Bouldin for standing up for womens rights and have skewered Moore as well as Rep. Al Baldasaro, who also commented in Bouldins Facebook post. Amanda, no disrespect, but your nipple would be the last one I would want to see, Baldasaro wrote. You want to turn our family beaches into a pervert show.

On Tuesday, Moore posted a statement on Facebook, announcing that he is withdrawing his name from the proposed bill. I fully support a mothers right to breastfeed, he wrote. My comment was misrepresented and was not a threat towards my colleague.  I emphatically denounce any mans unwanted advances towards any woman under any circumstances. I have always defended family values and will continue to do so. I will be withdrawing my name from HB1525 due to the fact that I have brought negative attention to this bill.

Despite the backlash, Bouldin says she isnt looking for either of her colleagues to say theyre sorry. To those whove been demanding an apology of Rep. Moore or Rep. Al Baldasaro, I dont need that, Bouldin wrote on Twitter on Saturday. Just kill the bill.

(Top photo: Josh Moore/Twitter)

Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.


Mohammed al-Nimr, brother of the Shiite cleric executed by the Saudis. (Photo: AFP)



The brother of a prominent Shiite cleric whose execution has roiled the Mideast and set off worldwide protests is blaming President Obama for failing to use his influence with the Saudi government to prevent his death.



I am sorry to say that the American government did not offer to make any efforts on this, although they knew the danger of this action and the repercussions, Mohammed Al-Nimr said about the weekend execution of his brother, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, in an interview with Yahoo News.

We asked very clearly for the American president to intervene as a friend of Saudi Arabia  and the Americans did not intervene, he added.

While he personally asked officials at the U.S. consulate in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, to urge the president to speak out forcefully against his brothers death sentence, the Americans did not issue such a statement, al-Nimr said in a telephone interview from Awamya in eastern Saudi Arabia. They limited themselves to general statements from the State Department.

The question of how forcefully the Obama administration raised the treatment of Sheik al-Nimr with the Saudi government  and whether it was caught flat-footed by the intense response in the region  got new attention Monday, a day after protestors stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution, and Saudi Arabia cut off relations with Iran in response. Iran is the leading Shiite power and views itself as the protector of Shiite interests in the Mideast. The issue also made its way to the presidential campaign trail where Hillary Clinton  whose former top legislative aide at the State Department is now a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia  mildly criticized the execution of al-Nimr, one of 47 prisoners who were put to death, mostly by beheading, by the Saudis over the weekend.

Clearly, this raises serious questions that we have to raise directly with the Saudi government, Clinton said at a campaign event in New Hampshire.

Story continues

The comments by Mohammed al-Nimr, himself a Shiite political dissident as well as a businessman, had added poignancy because his son, Ali al-Nimr, is also facing a Saudi death sentence.

Arrested by Saudi authorities in 2011 when he was 17 for participating in street protests during the Arab Spring, Ali al-Nimr was sentenced to be executed  with his body to be crucified following his death  last September, an action that has been widely condemned by human rights groups. State Department spokesman John Kirby said at the time that the U.S. government was deeply concerned by the case of Ali al-Nimr, noting that he was then a juvenile and that a confession he made in a Saudi jail was reportedly made under duress.

SLIDESHOW  Saudi embassy damaged in Tehran

Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr hold posters of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr in Baghdad on Monday, Jan. 4. (Photo: Khalid Mohammed/AP)



Mohammed al-Nimr said that, in the aftermath of his brothers execution, he is now increasingly concerned that his son will also be put to death.

Our fears were great, but now our fears are greater, he said. We dont trust promises anymore. This issue needs political energy from the friends of Saudi Arabia. I am certain that if somebody like Obama calls for the release of Ali al-Nimr, Ali would be set free.

Asked for comment about Mohammed al-Nimrs statements, including his criticism that the president did not use his influence with the Saudis to prevent his brothers death, a White House spokesman declined comment. However, a senior administration official emailed Yahoo News: We have spoken to the Saudi government about the cases of Nimr al-Nimr and Ali al-Nimr, as well as other Shia protesters who were sentenced to death, and asked the Saudi government to ensure fair trial and appeal guarantees and transparent judicial proceedings in all cases.

At a State Department press briefing on Monday, chief spokesman Kirby made a similar point, telling reporters Weve been very clear about our concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia. Its something that we have talked to Saudi officials about before. We all continue to do so.

But in recent weeks, Obama administration officials have privately acknowledged that the Saudi kingdoms mass executions and other human rights abuses, including reported widespread civilian casualties from its military intervention in Yemen, raise difficult diplomatic issues at a time the U.S. government is attempting to encourage the Saudis to take a more active part in the campaign against the Islamic State. Sometimes, its better to raise these issues privately, one official said last month when asked about the impending death sentence of Ali al-Nimr.

But the intensity of the response in the Shiite world to Nimr al-Nimrs death, and the inflamed tensions with Iran over the issue, appears to have caught the administration off-guard. They were blindsided, said Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Gulf Affairs and a frequent critic of the Saudi human rights record. This is a huge problem that will hurt the United States. I think they failed to understand that this is an issue that is not going to go away.

Shiite protesters burn an effigy of Saudi Arabias King Salman in Baghdad on Monday. (Photo: Khalid Mohammed/AP)

Mohammed al-Nimr said he had been hopeful that Saudi King Salman would not sign the writ of execution for his brother because of Nimr al-Nimrs stature as a widely respected Shiite cleric who had publicly disavowed violence even as he protested the Saudi government. The fact that the king did so  and equated his actions with al-Qaida terrorists  was shocking, he said.

His brothers case was a political problem, it was not a security problem, said al-Nimr. Many of the others executed over the weekend were in fact al-Qaida terrorists, he said. Their hands were tainted with blood and they deserved the punishment, he said. But this mixing of the names together  the whole word noticed this.

Mohammed al-Nimr said that the execution of his brother is emblematic of more hard-edged, aggressive Saudi policies under King Salman. He cited stepped up repression against the countrys Shiite minority and the military intervention against Iranian-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen. In the past, Saudi policy was much more pragmatic, he said, blaming the shift on inexperienced, young advisers to the king  an apparent reference to 30-year-old Mohammed bin Salman, King Salmans son, the deputy crown prince and minister of defense.
Malaysia Airlines is prohibiting checked baggage on Tuesday and Wednesday on flights to Paris and Amsterdam. (Photo: AP)

In a move that confused many and angered others, Malaysia Airlines banned passengers from checking luggage on flights to Paris and Amsterdam.

The airline, which as been no stranger to bad news over the past two years, issued the rule for flights on Tuesday and Wednesday, citing unseasonably strong headwinds on its new flight route.

The longer flight path to Europe now takes the Boeing 777 aircraft over Egyptian airspace, which according to the airline, was decided due to safety reasons. The previous path took planes over eastern Ukraine, where a Malaysia Airlines jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a missile in 2014. That incident killed all 298 people on board.

Related: Another Bad Headline for Malaysia AirlinesPlane Goes Wrong Way

As one might expect, passengers were up in arms over the news, with many taking to social media to air their grievances. According to the AP, travelers bombarded the Malaysia Airlines Facebook page, complaining about their decision and asking for refunds.



The airline announced that passengers could reschedule flights for free, but would receive no other compensation.



Eliminating checked baggage is presumably the airlines way to avoid getting a weight penalty for the extra fuel it will need to carry on the longer route. But according to Joe Brancatelli from Joe Sent Me, there are two ways that airlines typically deal with this issue.

(Photo: Malaysia Airlines/Facebook)

If an airline needs to take a weight penalty to carry more fuel, they will sell fewer seats, he told Yahoo Travel. Thats why youll sometimes see a seat or entire section empty on a plane.



Another option is to limit the number of bags each person can check, he continued. I have never heard of them stopping checked luggage for all passengers. Thats new to me.

Those traveling in Malaysia Airlines economy class are only permitted to carry a cabin bag weighing no more than 15.4 pounds. Business and first class passengers can carry two pieces of luggage totaling 30.8 pounds.

Story continues

The baggage limit does not affect flights from those cities heading to Malaysia.

None of the other carriers operating in Southeast Asia are making similar adjustments  which only supports Brancatellis notion that this wasnt the best call.

Its crazy and impractical. Its not what an airline thats running logically would do, he said. Thats been Malaysia Airlines problem in the last 10 years.

In addition to the plane gunned down over the Ukraine, this news is just the latest in a string PR nightmares for the airline.

In Dec., Malaysia Airlines made headlines when a flight taking off from Auckland, New Zealand to Kuala Lumpur flew in the wrong direction because air traffic control was given the wrong flight plan.

And theories are still circulating as to what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which disappeared somewhere over the Indian Ocean in March 2014 with 239 passengers on board.

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A group of Israelis refused to sit in their plane until two Palestinian-Israelis agreed to take a later flight. (Photo: Aero Icarus/Flickr)



While the airline conceded this was possibly racially profiling, two Palestinian-Israeli passengers were forced to disembark their plane and stay overnight for a new one because of Israeli passengers repeated demand for security checks.

The incident happened Monday on an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv and involved two Arab-Israelis, who according to Israeli news site Maariv, are from the hotly contested region of east Jerusalem. They were given apologies, offered overnight accommodations and transportation, and passed further checks from police before flying home Tuesday, an airline spokesperson told Newsweek.

While it is indeed unfortunate that they were possibly racially profiling the customers, indeed their fellow Israelis, safety must be first, spokesperson said in a statement. The pilot did feel compelled to delay the flight and call the police so to check again the two [Arab-Israeli] passengers documents and identities.

Related: U.S. Issues Terror Warning for Visitors to Israel



The always-tense relations between Palestinians and Israelis were inflamed again New Years Eve, when two Palestinian gunmen opened fire into a crowded Tel Aviv bar, killing two and wounding at least seven others.

Related: Why I Feel Safe as a Tourist in Tel Aviv in Israel



The airline spokesperson said the incident began when a group of Israelis on the flight very vocally and persistently requested a security check on the two Palestinian fliers. The passengers passed that check, but a larger group of fliers then demanded a further check of the cabin. With the plane ready for takeoff, the Israelis then refused to sit down, leading to the Palestinians agreeing to leave the plane.

An Israeli embassy spokesperson in Greece told Newsweek the incident was unfortunate, but wouldnt comment further.

Story continues

WATCH: What Suspicious Behavior Should You Report in the Age of Terrorism?

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It may be a new year but misbehaving tourists are still up to their usual tricks abroad. (Photo: Thinkstock)

Thai police have fined two women for public nudity after a video surfaced of the bare-chested duo hanging from the windows of a slow-moving SUV surfaced online over the weekend.

According to the Phuket Gazette, the incident occurred on Jan. 2 in the streets of Patong, Thailand a popular beach resort towns on Phuket Island.

We were made aware of the video at about 2 pm yesterday, Lt. Col Sutthichai Thianpho of the Patong Police told the Phuket Gazette. It didnt take long to track down the suspects as we had the license plate number of the vehicle.

Related: Couple Finds Bloody Elevator on Carnival Cruise Ship

The two women from the U.S. and Austria were apprehended on Sunday night after police tracked the SUV to Malee Villa in Rawai. The resort-owned vehicle was reportedly available for guests use.

The tourists were brought into the Patong police station where officials charged them with indecent public exposure.

Related: Malaysia Launches First Shariah Compliant Airline

Said Thianpho, We explained to them why such behavior was inappropriate and charged them for public nudity. They both said they understood and each paid the 500-baht fine.

500 Thai baht is about USD $13.

The streaking episode comes amid a rising number of indecent exposure incidents throughout several Asian countries.

Related: Russell Crowe Goes on Twitter Rant Against Virgin Australia

WATCH: 9 Unexpected Surfing Spots
Photo: Beijing Capital Airlines/Facebook

It was terror in the skies when a distraught passenger tried to open a planes emergency exit door mid-flight then threatened to kill herself.

According to a Weibo user called @RogerStandy, the drama started when crew members noticed a woman on the Beijing Capital Airlines flight tampering with the exit door  apparently trying to open it. When the staff intervened, the woman reportedly threatened to commit suicide on the airplane. A fight then broke out, according to China Aviation Daily, when two other passengers joined in the melee.

A female passenger got up and tried to do something at the door, but was stopped by crew members, said a statement from Capital Airlines of yesterdays occurrence.

Those involved were restrained and eventually arrested when the plane landed.

Its not the first time a Chinese flyer has encountered trouble.

Related: China Tells Its Tourists: Behave Overseas, Or Else

Last year, Chinas tourism started keeping records of uncivilized behavior by its tourists after a string of embarrassing incidents. The China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) keeps tabs on such transgressions as violating order on public transportation  including flights.

Some of the incidents include:

In January of last year, police in southwestern China detained a group of tourists after one of them actually opened the emergency exit doors on their plane as it was pushing off from the terminal. The group reportedly was upset about the planes long delay.

In December 2014, a crying baby led to a mid-flight brawl between three women during an Air China Flight.

Also that December, a Chinese woman on an AirAsia flight from Bangkok to China apparently threw a cup of hot noodles on a flight attendant as her travel companion threatened to blow up the plane.

The emergency exit incident also comes days after a South Korean Jin Air flight flew for 40 minutes with one of the airplane exit doors ajar. An investigation is under way. Though no there were no serious injuries reported, according to the Associate Press, but passengers complained of headaches during the trip.

Story continues

WATCH: 7 Stage of Getting Kicked Off a Plane

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Tokyo, Jan. 5 (CNA) Taiwan's representative office in Japan said Tuesday it will continue to ask Japan to negotiate the "comfort women" issue with Taiwan, after Japan indicated that it does not intend to resolve the issue with other countries the same way it did with South Korea.
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Taipei, Jan. 5 (CNA) A Taiwanese research team has developed what it dubs an "X-ray eyes" system, which will allow surgeons to peer directly into the designated location for surgical treatment when using angiography guidance, without the need to constantly stare at a screen to monitor the condition of blood flows.
HUMILITY.Neuman wrote a letter to the Pope asking to be dismissed from the responsibility of being Bishop of Philadelphia; he felt inept. He had an accent; was not urbane and refined like many from Philadelphia. Still more, he was not endowed with keen administrative talents. He felt it best for him to step down and be moved to a more simple Diocese where he could work, side by side with the poor, the farmers, the coal workers and miners. This, he believed, would be a better suit. However, the Holy Father never accepted his desire for this change.Gods plans are not our plans. As the heavens are above the earth, so are Gods thoughts above our thoughts. In his late 40s walking the streets of Philadelphia he collapsed and dropped dead of a sudden heart-attack. In a mere eight years as Bishop he radically transformed one of the most prestigious Dioceses in the country. This happened because of his profound humility, his great love for his people, the flock that God entrusted to him, but especially because of his great love for God and the accomplishment of His holy will.
Bangkok: Thai authorities adopted harsh measures to tackle drink-driving but could not control the traffic fatalities during New Year holidays.

Thai army leaders introduced new law to put brakes on the traffic accidents. About 340 deaths have been reported over six out of seven days designated as a period for campaigning to reduce road tragedies. The local security forces seized 4,050 vehicles including 3,000 motorcycles from drink-drivers since Christmas.

From December 29 until January 3, more than 3,000 accidents occurred nationwide as compared to 2,700 during the same period in 2015. It is estimated that the number of people traveling by road this New Year period surged to 3 million from only about 1 million in 2015. Last year, the Southeast Asian nation recorded 341 deaths during the so-called seven dangerous days.

On Monday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha admitted that the tough measures have failed to bring down the number of road accidents. It is believed that three most common factors attributed to high rate of road accidents over the seven-day New Year period: drink-driving, speeding and falling asleep at the wheel during long journeys.

National police spokesman Detnarong Suthichanbancha said the lessons learned from the juntas implementation of the vehicle seizure measure would be reviewed before possibly adopting it during the Songkran festival in April.

The introduction of this measure was successful in terms of raising public awareness by more than 70 percent about the dangers of drink-driving, said Thaejing Siripanich, secretary-general of the Dont Drive Drunk Foundation.

The government should never give up and should continue enforcing the measure throughout the year for a better outcome, he added.

Thailand has the worlds second-highesr number of deaths from road mishaps after Libya, with a death rate of 36.2 per 100,000 population. The global average is 17. IMAGE/Pattanapong Hirunard/Bangkokpost
A 32-year-old man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison on two felony charges Monday morning in Dodge County District Court.

Marshall Lawson of Leshara pleaded guilty and was found guilty of being in possession of a controlled substance  methamphetamine, a Class IV felony; and for being a prohibited person in possession of a deadly weapon, a Class III felony.

During an arraignment hearing, Lawson waived his right a pre-sentence investigation and moved immediately to sentencing.

Lawson was sentenced one year in prison for being in possession of methamphetamine and three years in prison for being a prohibited person in possession of a deadly weapon.

Lawson was given credit for 96 days served in jail, and under the Nebraska Good Time Law, could serve a total of two years on the concurrent sentences  six months for the meth charge and 1.5 years for the weapons charge.

Additionally, Judge Geoffrey Hall is requiring Lawson to participate in one year of supervised probation on both charges when he is released.

The charges brought before the court stem from an incident that occurred on Sept. 30.

The III-CORPS Drug Task Force arrived at the residence 1415 E. Sixth St. and conducted a search of the home, court records show.

Contact was made with Lawson, and he allowed law enforcement to enter his basement room to search the premises.

Upon entering the room, law enforcement found seven knives that were illegal to be in the possession of a convicted felon, and also found a crystal-like substance that tested positive as methamphetamine.

Lawson was previously convicted of a drug charge in 2014.

In other District Court news:

*Ashley M. Jensen, 29, of Fremont pleaded guilty to two counts of being in possession of controlled substance  methamphetamine and tramadol, both Class IV felonies.

Jensen faces a maximum sentence of two years in prison on both charges, a $10,000 fine and nine to 12 months of post-release supervision.

Jensen, who is applying for drug court, was arrested on Oct. 28 when officers of the Fremont Police Department were dispatched to Walmart in regard to a shoplifting complaint.

Officers were informed that a woman driving a white pickup truck had taken several items without paying.

Jensen was located driving down Johnson Road, where she was seen throwing a methamphetamine pipe out of her window. The pipe  when retrieved  contained a crystal-like substance which tested positive as methamphetamine.

A search of the car led to the discovery of the stolen items and tramadol pills. A bag of methamphetamine was later discovered in her possession.

Judge Hall ordered a pre-sentence investigation and scheduled sentencing for 9 a.m. Feb. 22.

*Nicholas Robbins, 24, Omaha pleaded not guilty to the sole charge of theft by unlawful taking, a Class III felony. Judge Hall set a status hearing for 9 a.m. on Feb. 8.

*Veronica Bannister, 41, of Fremont was sentenced to 30 months of intensive supervised probation for being in possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver  marijuana, a Class III felony.

*Paul B. Cannaday, 24, was arrested for failure to comply with the Sex Offender Registration Act. Cannaday returns to court for a status hearing at 9 a.m. Feb. 16.
Thirty-five years after the Jan. 10, 1976, Hotel Pathfinder explosion that killed 20 people and injured more than 40, emotions remain strong.

Retired firefighters struggle with photos reminding them of their efforts to rescue people, fight the ensuing fire and recover bodies after the explosion.

Judy Nelson of Fremont still feels the pain of losing her mother, Dolores Fritz, 46, among the victims.

"My mother was a single mom, there were five of us," Nelson said. "I was the second oldest at 26. When she was killed, we had five kids in their 20s making funeral arrangements for basically the only parent that we had known for a long time, so it was really emotional."

"We get melancholy this time of year," she said. "Every time Jan. 10 comes around, it's an emotional thing.

"My mom actually worked at the hotel in different aspects for years," Nelson said. "In fact, we kind of grew up there, we knew that place inside and out, it was a beautiful hotel and a beautiful ballroom.

"The story I hear was that they came in to evacuate, and she and the employees went out, but then the phone rang," Nelson said. "She went back in to answer the phone and that's when it exploded."

Nelson was downtown when it happened.

"I went down to Broad Street and looked down towards the hotel, and it looked like a war zone," she said.

"It was just horrible," she said. "The curtains were flying in the window and you could see the older people who stayed in the apartments hollering out the window."

She doubted her mother had survived, but she had to wait until Tuesday to be sure, when Fritz was one of the last victims pulled from the carnage.

Firefighter Don Sawyer rescued 10 people from the southeast corner of the six-story building. He was among the first to respond when the call came in at 9:32 a.m.

"The basement went out underneath the sidewalk so the sidewalk was gone and there were people laying down in there," Sawyer said. "I went to start helping there and the captain told me to get a ladder and go around the back."

Sawyer helped people off the roof and rescued three women from a fifth-story window.

"We had been to that building a lot of times preplanning and deciding how we'd set up," Sawyer said. "That was down the tubes when we got there. You couldn't even get the trucks alongside there. It was unbelievable. There were a lot of heroes that day.

"Usually when they have a gas leak we get called," Sawyer explained. "They didn't call us, the gas company was there. If we'd have been called we'd have lost probably the biggest share of the shift and the trucks the way it went up."

Howard Schneider was Fremont's fire chief. A U.S. Army veteran who saw bombed out buildings in Germany during World War II, he was not prepared for a similar sight in his hometown.

"It blew concrete from that sidewalk clear across the street two stories high and down into the buildings across the street," Schneider said.

"I can remember one old couple up in the top floor," he said. "They were at the window and then they were gone. They were both in their 80s, a man and a woman. I still think they died of a heart attack rather than smoke inhalation.

"On the north side of the building there was another old gentleman. He lived in an apartment over there. When we found him he was sitting in a chair with his feet up. There was no evidence of smoke or anything in there, and he was dead," he said.

"The last body we found was on Wednesday and that was Art Chambers," Schneider said. "We found maybe a small handful of teeth and that's all we ever found of him. This dentist knew him well enough and got a hold of another dentist and they figured that's who it was."

Mutual aid departments came from all over, Schneider said.

"We didn't have to call for mutual aid, they came in on their own," he said.

"The people on the fire department really put out," he continued. "There was no question about what they were going to do and when they were going to do it."

Butch McDuffee was on a ladder in the back of Vienna Bakery across the street and doesn't remember hearing the explosion.

"The first thing we heard in the back was the ladies up front screaming," he said.

"The next thing I remember was walking outside the back of the bakery and coming around front. I don't remember if I climbed down the ladder or got knocked down," he said.

"There was a guy buried in cement and we got him out," he said.

"When we were trying to get that guy out from underneath all that cement, this guy walked by smoking a cigarette," he said. "The bakery always had this glass window in the front with racks of donuts. This guy walked by, grabbed a chocolate donut, wiped all the glass off, and said, Oh, free donuts today,' and he started eating it."

Emergency responders eventually led McDuffee out of the area.

"I couldn't drive anywhere because my car was gone," he said.

The Monte Carlo had been destroyed by debris.

The blast was blamed on an underground gas coupling that pulled apart. Northern Natural Gas Co. was found liable.
Emirates will launch a daily circular service from Dubai to Cebu (CEB) and Clark (CRK) in the Philippines, starting March 30, 2016. The new service will help to enhance the Philippines trade links with the rest of the world and boost incoming tourism, supporting the Department of Tourisms Visit the Philippines Again 2016 campaign.

The island of Cebu lies in Visayas, one of the three principal geographical divisions of the Philippines. The new flights will also expand travel options for Filipinos from the Central Luzon region as well as the Visayas region and offer more flexibility for overseas workers departing Philippines or looking for options to fly home.

Cebu is one of the most developed provinces in the Philippines, and continues to evolve as a key hub for furniture-making, business processing services and heavy industry. With Cebu and the surrounding islands rich tourism offering, which includes white sandy beaches and picturesque diving spots, central Visayas attracted a total of 1.6 million foreign tourists last year. Cebu is also an ideal base for exploring the nearby Chocolate Hills of Bohol and idyllic islands such as Boracay.

Clark is based in Pampanga, a province in the Central Luzon region in the Philippines and a well-known hub for business processing services and tourism. Pampanga is served by Clark International Airport which is in Clark Freeport Zone, a redevelopment of the former Clark Air Base, previously a United States Air Force base in the Philippines.

The two-class configured Boeing 777-300ER which Emirates will operate on the route offers 42 seats in Business Class and 386 seats in Economy Class. In terms of cargo, up to 14 tonnes of capacity will be offered in the bellyhold on this service. Popular Philippine exports on this route are expected to be perishables, such as dairy products, fruit and vegetables, meat, seafood and electronic equipment.

Emirates flights to Cebu and Clark will depart daily from Dubai as EK338 at 02:55hrs arriving at MactanCebu International Airport at 15:50hrs. The service will then depart from Cebu at 17:25hrs and arrive at Clark International Airport at 18:45hrs. The return flight will depart Clark at 20:20hrs, arriving at Dubai International Airport at 01:25hrs the next day.

Timings of the new service have been scheduled to allow for seamless connections to many European and GCC routes, via a convenient stopover in Dubai.
The Lufthansa Group announced their need for new employees. The group will hire more than 4,000 new employees in 2016. The main focus of the new recruiting will be the flight attendant training. In 2016 approximately 2,800 flight attendants will be hired in various locations and for different airlines of the Lufthansa Group:

Lufthansa 1,400 (800 in Frankfurt and 600 in Munich)

SWISS 800 (in Zurich)

Eurowings 360 (in Vienna, Dusseldorf and Hamburg)

Austrian Airlines 200 (in Vienna)

Lufthansa CityLine 30 (in Munich)

We are proud that yet again this year the companies of the Lufthansa Group are able to offer many people an exciting new outlook and attractive working conditions in the aviation industry. For many applicants the Lufthansa Group is a dream employer. We are therefore even more pleased that we can fulfill this dream for 4,000 people, says Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

Interested parties can find more information at the following link:

https://www.be-lufthansa.com/en/jobs-and-apprenticeship/flight-attendant-mf/

Lufthansa Flight Attendants

Lufthansa flight attendants will start in the Frankfurt and Munich hubs on short, medium and long- haul destinations. Basically Lufthansa offers two kinds of entry-level contracts:

A permanent position with a part time factor of 83 percent in which flight attendants fly full time in summer and part time in winter.

A two year contract with a part time factor of 50 percent which can be extended once every two years. In this model flight attendants work full time in summer followed by six months free time. Entry to this type of contract is possible from November to January.

In both models salary and social insurance are paid over twelve months. New employees take training courses over twelve weeks in order to become flight attendants. Interested parties who are at least 18 years old and who have completed their secondary education may apply directly to www.be-lufthansa.com.

Flight Attendants for Eurowings Europe in Vienna

The newly founded Eurowings Europe starts off the year with modern A320 jets flying to attractive locations in Europe. Under the umbrella brand Eurowings the new airline with its headquarters in Vienna will in future offer an attractive flight program. Interested parties who are at least 18 years old and who have passed their secondary school examinations may apply to:

www.aircrew-service.de/eurowings_karrierecenter/

Pilots for Eurowings and Austrian Airlines

This year the Lufthansa Group is hiring 240 pilots, of which 140 will be for Eurowings in Austria and Germany and 100 for Austrian Airlines. Both first officers and captains are wanted. Further pilots are needed for SunExpress in Germany. The joint subsidiary of Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines operates long-haul flights on behalf of Eurowings. Interested parties will find information about requirements and may apply for a place in the cockpit at the following links:

www.career.aero/eurowings/

www.career.aero/sunexpress

Service Staff at Munich Airport

This year the Lufthansa Station in Munich is looking for 150 new employees for their passenger service at Munich Airport. The new colleagues will be deployed in taking care of passengers at the check-in or at the Lufthansa transfer and ticket counters in the multiple award winning Terminal 2. Lufthansa will hire station employees for one year on a full time basis. Interested parties with an intermediate school leaving certificate and a good knowledge of both spoken and written English may find further information here:

https://www.be-lufthansa.com/en/jobs-and-apprenticeship/customer-service/

Further Vacancies and Apprenticeships

Just as it does every year, in 2016 Lufthansa will be giving numerous apprentices a start in their professional career. The beginners will be trained in over 30 different careers at different locations. Moreover the organization is also looking for more employees in various areas of the company. Interested parties may find detailed information about possibilities to enter the Lufthansa organization and requirements under www.be-lufthansa.com. Applications may be sent exclusively via the career portal.
July is almost here, ready for the sunflowers? I am showing you a photo of the very small sunflowers from July of 2016 when we had a sever...
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There are so many "temporary" border controls in the EU I have lost count. Fences, train checks, walls, payoffs to Turkey, pressure on Greece, are among the methods.



Today we can add another "temporary" measure to the list as Denmark Tightens Border Controls with Germany.



Denmark has imposed controls on its southern frontier with Germany in a move that is intended to stem the flow of migrants but will also deepen concerns about Europes fraying commitment to the free movement of people.



Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Danish prime minister, said the decision was prompted by Swedens move hours earlier to introduce identity checks for all passengers arriving by train, bus or ferry from Denmark.



The new Swedish requirement for ID checks poses a serious risk of a large number of asylum seekers accumulating in a short time, for example in and around Copenhagen, threatening public order and safety. We do not want this, he said at a hastily called press conference on Monday.



The Danish controls are temporary and will last for the next 10 days but can be extended. Distinct from the Swedish measures, they will involve random checks and will not automatically require all cars and passengers crossing from Germany to show their passports. Mr Rasmussen said Angela Merkel, German chancellor, and the European Commission had been notified.



Sweden was long regarded as Europes most generous country to asylum-seekers, offering permanent residence in recent years to Iraqis and then Syrians. But after a surge in the number of asylum seekers last year, Swedens centre-left government buckled under pressure from local authorities and the public to crack down on immigration.



The controls have stoked tensions between Sweden and Denmark, where the centre-right government and its centre-left predecessor have been critical of Stockholms generous immigration policies.



Hans Christian Schmidt, Denmarks transport minister, said: It is sad that Swedes have run a failed immigration policy which now means that they are forced to do this. It is sad and annoying for the whole region.



The anti-immigration Danish Peoples party that acts as the main support for Mr Rasmussens government in parliament, has long called for border controls and celebrated their arrival.



A step in the right direction . . . Schengen has collapsed. The illusion of external borders has burst. Why does it take such a long time to recognise this? Kristian Thulesen Dahl, the partys leader, wrote on Facebook.

Sweden began enforcing tighter border controls Monday to curb the influx of asylum seekers, prompting Denmark to begin similar checks in a further weakening of Europes principle of open borders.



Sweden warned weeks ago that it would impose systematic identification checks at its borders, saying that the country of close to 10 million people was already straining to cope with the estimated 160,000 migrants who arrived in the Nordic nation last year.



Fearing that it would become the new destination for migrants unable to reach Sweden, Denmark said Monday that it was stepping up controls along its border with Germany.



To the north, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have chosen to erect administrative barriers, rather than physical ones. In Storskog, the Arctic border post between Norway and Russiaalong an Arctic route some refugees and other migrants have chosen as more obstacles emerge on the trail through southeastern EuropeNorwegian authorities have stopped allowing in asylum seekers since Nov. 30.



Germany, one of the main destinations for migrants pouring into Europe, has also sought to stem the human tide also by imposing document checks at some of its borders.



Transport companies have complained that the controls place too much responsibility on their shoulders, that their staff are poorly prepared to check documents and that stations arent designed to restrict pedestrian access to trains and buses. Swedish train operator SJ has suspended services to Denmark until it can iron out such problems.

The US and UK destabilized the Mideast. Meddling in Iraq created ISIS. US backing of alleged "moderate" Al Qaeda terrorists expanded the civil war in Syria. The US attempt to oust Syrian president Assad with no stable replacement was an enormous mistake. There are insufficient border controls between Schengen countries and non-Schengen countries. A ridiculous EU rule states that refugees must register in the country of first entry. That puts tremendous pressure on the peripheral countries. Greece is not up to the task. The high level of guaranteed benefits for refugees in German and Sweden acts as a magnet, near and far. There is no clear distinction between political refugee, economic refugee, and war refugee. Someone who has escaped the war in Syria to Lebanon or Turkey, has by definition already escaped. Further migration to Germany or Sweden makes them economic refugees, not political or war refugees. Welcoming refugees with open arms as did German chancellor Angela Merkel and Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofven openly invited trouble. And trouble arrived by the millions.

The Wall Street Journal reports Sweden and Denmark Step Up Border Controls in Bid to Slow Flow of Migrants Problems are many, but the Schengen agreement that allows free movement between participating countries is not one of them. Here is a synopsis of the key issues.Given there is an unlimited demand for free services, free food, and free shelter, the refugee crisis will not go away until those six fundamental problems are fixed.No key political leader in Europe understands the problem, especially chancellor Merkel. This refugee crisis will be her downfall.Mike "Mish" Shedlock
NASHUA (AP) | Authorities have identified a Nashua man found dead after being shot.

Karl Phillip White, 56, was shot in his Nashua home about 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

Autopsy results have determined White's official cause of death was a gunshot wound. No criminal charges have been filed in the case.

The person who fired the weapon has been identified by authorities but hasn't been publicly named.

A preliminary investigation indicates it may have been an accidental discharge by another person, but the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is still looking into the case.
DES MOINES  Despite some pressing challenges on land and water, 2016 is not shaping up to be a banner year for Mother Nature in the Iowa Legislature.

The best hope for generating the kind of revenue the state needs to help clean up polluted waters and conserve Iowas soil is a voter-endorsed sales tax increase that is given little hope for consideration in an election-year session.

Rural forces led by Gov. Terry Branstad, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey and state Department of Natural Resources Director Chuck Gipp have pushed a voluntary approach to reducing farm nutrients causing nitrate problems in Iowa waterways.

They advocate practices such as cover crops, no-till or strip till planting preparations or using a nitrification inhibitor when applying fall fertilizer.

Northey said more than $325 million in state and federal funds have been directed to programs with water quality benefits in the past year  a total that does not include money farmers have spent on their own.

However, critics say the effort isnt enough to reduce farm chemical runoff and the voluntary approach has not been effective in staving off water-quality concerns.

The Des Moines Water Works filed suit against drainage districts in three upstream counties that feed into the Raccoon River basin. The lawsuit claims farm drainage tiles raise nitrate levels by acting as a conduit to move fertilizer from farm fields into Iowa waterways, negatively affecting drinking water supplies.

Environmental advocates also are pushing federal regulators to take tougher steps to enforce clean water requirements and impose nutrient management plans that farm groups fear will negatively impact a major sector of Iowas economy.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa Democratic governor, has appealed for patience and collaboration rather than conflict and confrontation to address and improve water quality in Iowa.

Vilsack told Iowans during a visit last summer that water-quality concerns have built up over time and involve complex factors that will not be resolved by a quick answer.

Iowans approved a measure in 2010 that would funnel three-eighths of a cent of a 1-cent sales tax increase into a constitutionally protected natural resources fund, up to $180 million annually  if that sales tax increase is ever approved.

But Sen. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, the ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said he does not see lawmakers passing a tax hike during the 2016 election-year session.

I dont see that getting any consideration, said Feenstra. We passed the gas tax last year. I havent talked to anybody that says theyre working to get (the sales tax increase) passed. I think there are other ways to make this work.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett and his Engage Iowa think tank are pushing for the 1-cent sales tax increase.

Corbett, a former Republican speaker of the Iowa House, also is calling on the private sector to provide a $40 million match to go toward reducing agricultural runoff carrying nitrates and other pollutants into waterways.

Sen. David Johnson, R-Ocheyedan, has authored a bipartisan bill seeking to implement the three-eighths of a percent sales tax for natural resources to fund a federal-state cost share effort,

Senate GOP Leader Bill Dix, a farmer from Shell Rock, said farmers want nothing more than to keep nutrients in the soil to maximize yields and investments and are willing partners in voluntary solutions.

But, he said filing lawsuits such as the one by the Des Moines Water Works is not conducive to building a trust relationship and many are leery of partnering with federal officials given the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys history of heavy-handed government regulations.

Northey asked Branstad to include a $10 million request for the Iowa Water Quality Initiative when the governor submits his fiscal 2017 state budget plan to a joint session of the Legislature next week.

Northey said the money  on top of $9.6 million approved for the current fiscal year  would allow his department to continue offering cost share statewide to farmers trying new water quality practices, expand work in targeted watersheds to and continue to develop new programs. He also want $7.5 million for conservation cost share and $1.92 million to close ag drainage wells.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said the Legislature has worked to address environmental concerns in past sessions only to have some of their actions met with gubernatorial vetoes. He said lawmakers will be interested to see what Branstad proposes, given the states current financial situation.

I think Gov. Branstad is going to be embarrassed by his environmental record and probably come back with some recommendation, Gronstal said.

We certainly would be willing to look at that, but were not going to cannibalize education or the basic social safety net so that he can put a fig leaf on his record on the environment, the Senate Democratic leader added.
MASON CITY  Investigators say a Minnesota man who died at the Cerro Gordo County Jail over the weekend was not a victim of foul play.

Edward Michael Hochstatter, 54, of Bloomington, was found unresponsive in a dormitory at the Mason City correctional facility about 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

Jail staff and Mason City firefighter paramedics were unable to revive him.

An autopsy conducted Monday by the Iowa Medical Examiners Office found no signs of trauma or foul play, but did not determine a cause of death, said Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Chris Callaway.

The investigation, which included a video review of Hochstatters stay, interviews of inmates and staff, and the autopsy, determined there was no foul play, according to a statement from the Iowa Department of Public Safety, which includes the DCI and the medical examiners office.

Samples taken during the autopsy will be sent to laboratories, experts or consultants for additional analysis. Receiving results could take several weeks.

Hochstatter is the second inmate to die at the Cerro Gordo County Jail in about a month.

On Dec. 1, 28-year-old Dacota Witham was found unresponsive in a jail cell. Unlike Hochstatter, who was in a dorm with four other inmates, Witham was alone in his cell.

Withams cause of death has not been determined, but a preliminary investigation determined foul play was unlikely in that case as well.

Investigators wouldnt speculate Monday on what may have caused Hochstatters death, but Cerro Gordo County Sheriff Kevin Pals said Sunday he was confident it was a medical issue versus anything our staff was or was not doing.

Pals requested the separate DCI investigations on Hochstatters and Withams deaths.

Hochstatter had been at the jail since his arrest Friday afternoon in Clear Lake for suspicion of drunken driving, according to the Iowa DCI statement.

Clear Lake Police Lt. Paul Chizek said a Clear Lake officer pulled over Hochstatters vehicle at the Highway 122 entrance ramp for northbound Interstate 35 because the officer was concerned about his driving.

Chizek said Hochstatter was taken to the Clear Lake Police Department, processed and then transported to the Cerro Gordo County Jail, 17262 Lark Ave.

He was booked for misdemeanor charges of drunken driving and an open container violation.

There were no signs Hochstatter was in distress, Chizek said.

We didnt have any red flag, he said.

DCI Agent Callaway said investigators do not believe Witham and Hochstatters deaths are connected.
Jody I. (Ketchum) Briola

AURORA, Colo.  Jody I. (Ketchum) Briola, 56, formerly of the Rowan/Belmond, Iowa area, passed away, December 27, 2015, at her home in Aurora, with her husband by her side following a valiant battle with cancer.

Funeral services will be held 11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, at the United Church of Rowan, 811 Pesch, Rowan, Iowa. Pastor Nancy Hofmeister will be officiating. Burial will be in Graceland Cemetery, near Rowan. Visitation and viewing will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, January 5, at Andrews Funeral Home, 516 First St. S.E., Belmond, Iowa, and continues one hour prior to services at the church on Wednesday. There will be no viewing on Wednesday.

Jody Ilene Ketchum Briola, wife of Steven Briola, daughter of Robert (Bob) Ketchum and Inez (Koenen) Ketchum was born Nov. 25, 1959 in Belmond, Iowa. Jody was the youngest sibling and had a sister Julie and brother Kevin Ketchum.

Raised a true country girl, she spoke many times of growing up in rural Iowa. She spoke of picking bean fields, family travels and family times. Her love for animals led many to believe she would become a veterinarian. Jody had a strong religious foundation instilled by her parents.

Jodys true calling was to be in education, a trade gained through her mother who was also a teacher. Jody attended grades 1-3 in Rowan, Iowa. The remainder of grade school, junior high and high school were in Belmond, Iowa. Upon graduation from high school she attended Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then became a social worker in Tyndall, South Dakota at a nursing home.

Jodys yearning to further her education lead her to Colorado where she lived until her death. She worked for several school districts doing social work while attending the University of Denver and getting her Master of Social Works degree. Jody finally found her educational calling with the Aurora Public Schools where she was an educator for 16 years until retiring in 2015.

Her education did not stop with one Master Degree and she earned a second Master Degree in Arts from the University of Colorado. She also obtained her Principal Licensure from the University of Denver. Through her educational years and employment she remained devoted to God and his teachings, and was involved in many church functions.

Jody met her true love Steve through a school acquaintance in 2009. They dated for several years before getting engaged in June 2013, a true highlight in Jodys life. Both traveled back to Iowa several times a year to be with family and friends. Jodys diagnosis with cancer in 2011 strengthened their love and they were married in Clarion, Iowa, on Sept. 9, 2013, surrounded by family and friends. Her tough Iowan nature shined steadfast as she battled the cancer for five years and was determined to beat the disease. Through the many travels back to see family and friends, Jody and Steve knew that Iowa was the place to start the next chapter in their lives and started planning their retirement in the Belmond area. A plan still in Steves future.

Jody is survived by Steve Briola and his kids, Tyler and Lauren Briola, Steves parents Fred and Norma Briola, and his sister Debbie Jackson and her husband Fred, all of Colorado; Jodys sister Julie Ketchum and sister-in-law Marcia Ketchum both of Belmond, Iowa; a niece Nikki (Matt) Olson, Lilly and Noah of Clear Lake, Iowa, and a nephew Mark (Katie) Ketchum, Kylie, Emma, Cooper and Charli of Belmond, Iowa, and many aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. She was preceded in death by grandparents, parents and brother, Kevin.

In lieu of flowers family is requesting donations be made to Lutheran Hospice (Collier Center) Lutheran Medical Center Foundation, 8300 W. 38th Ave., Wheat Ridge, CO 80033.

Andrews Funeral Home, 516 First St. S.E., Belmond, IA 50421; 641-444-4474.
Calls by the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination to ban or severely limit immigration by Muslim refugees are probably counterproductive and maybe even un-American. But theyve got an appealing logic that can be put to good use politically.

Lets not mince words: Many brutal atrocities are being committed today in the name of Islam. The great majority of the worlds 1.3 billion Muslims have nothing to do with this violence, but its easy to connect them to the faith that vicious zealots proclaim.

Thus, because we associate Islam with terrorism, many Americans immediately reject the admission of refugees from Syria and Iraq on the basis of their religion. This position isnt irrational, but it doesnt give us much credit for our capacity to make judicious decisions about whom we should admit and whom we should not.

The easiest course  and safest, I guess  is to reject them all. But Syrians and Iraqis  many of them desperate women and children  who do not find refuge somewhere will be condemned to miserable, short lives.

By comparison with other countries, the U.S. response to the refugee crisis has been modest, and one wonders how well the surrender of the moral high ground on this issue will serve us as we compete for the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere.

What Muslims think about us matters. Islam is at a point of crisis. The Sunni/Shia divide is more than a thousand years old, and the United States is unlikely to play any effective role whatsoever in its resolution.

But the other, bigger crisis  between modernity and moderation at one pole and rigid fundamentalism at the other  has a long way yet to play out.

Im betting on modernity and moderation. No one should presume to tell Muslims how to practice their faith, but as human culture becomes more global, the rights, comforts and pleasures of individuals tend to gain ground on the inflexible strictures imposed by traditional institutions.

A religion that prohibits entirely the use of alcohol? That requires its practitioners to prostrate themselves humbly five times a day? To fast from sunup until sundown for a full month every year?

If these demanding practices help Muslims find peace and God, no one has a right to gainsay them. But Islam will never make its way into the modern world  or rid itself of the wretched radicals at its fringes  until it raises the status of women and abandons the exclusivity that convinces its adherents that they have a monopoly on spiritual truth.

Other religions are in the transition from inflexible, exclusive, overbearing doctrine to a more tolerant, modern and progressive spiritual perspective, though not all of them have completed the journey. Islam can make this transition, as well, and indeed many Muslims already have.

This is another good reason to admit more Muslims to the U.S.: The Department of Commerce says that about 111,000 Saudis are studying in U.S. colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed reports that around 10,000 young Iranians are studying in the U.S. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has said that the number of students from Iran should be at least 50,000 more.

Its a good bet that nearly all of the children of Muslim refugees and nearly all of the students who study in the U.S. will be moved from inflexibility toward tolerance by their experience among free people who value the rights, comforts and pleasures of the individual.

Will this push Islams center of gravity toward moderation and modernity? Its worth a try; it has a better chance than simply bombing more Muslims.
This might come as a shock to some, but I am an Iowa farmer and I am not offended by the Stanford Band's Rose Bowl halftime show.

The band's performance, however distasteful, had no partisan ideology and was politically and monetarily unmotivated; it wanted nothing more than to get a rise from fans and to become a trending topic on social media platforms.

Iowa agriculture has much bigger enemies than the Stanford Band.

For instance, Des Moines Water Works is pursuing a lawsuit against three northwest Iowa counties over water quality. This activist-driven lawsuit alleges that farmers in Buena Vista, Calhoun and Sac counties are contributing to high nitrate levels (greater than 10 parts per million) in the Raccoon River, one of two main sources of drinking water for the Des Moines area. The lawsuit calls for federal oversight of the drainage basins in these three counties, which will effectively put farmers living and working in these areas under much greater scrutiny of the federal government.

The catch is Iowa soil is naturally rich in nitrates. It's a big reason why crops can grow so well here. In fact, Iowa soil is so rich in organic nitrates that even drainage from unfarmed land, which is free from added nitrates, can check in well above the 10 ppm threshold.

Now, I didn't go to Stanford, but if Des Moines Water Works wants the federal government to regulate Iowa drainage basins that test at over 10 ppm in nitrates, yet practically all drainage basins in the state -- even ones near land that isn't farmed -- can show levels over 10 ppm naturally, then all basins fall under federal control if this lawsuit is successful. Is that what we want?

If anybody was offended by the Stanford band's performance, maybe those people should focus their energies into looking at what Iowa agriculture is really up against. That might really be shocking.
LOS ANGELES, Calif., Jan. 5, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - World Patent Marketing, a vertically integrated manufacturer and engineer of patented products, announces the Hay Strapping Hook, a farming invention that revolutionizes the packing and gathering of bales of hay.

"The Wheat, Barley and Sorghum Farming industry is worth $13 billion," says Scott Cooper, CEO and Creative Director of World Patent Marketing. "While the farming industry was hit hard recently by unpredictable weather patterns, demand for wheat and other crops will remain stable. The industry will continue to grow as farmers introduce new technology and equipment to make the process more efficient."

"One of the most physically draining tasks in a farm is to collect and stack bales of hay," says Jerry Shapiro, Director of Manufacturing and World Patent Marketing Reviews. "In addition to being tiring, it can even cause accidents whenever these stacks of hay are not properly secured. The Hay Strapping Hook is a farming invention that will aid in the proper and safe collection and stacking of bales of hay at a farm."

The Hay Strapping Hook is a farming invention which aids in keeping bales of hay securely in place. It is made of multiple sturdy arms and straps that will withstand constant use and abuse. This invention is able to easily and conveniently strap a large amount of hay stacks on a trailer via its vertical and horizontal arms. By using this nifty device, haystacks are now safely secured even when in large quantities. With the Hay Strapping Hooks, gathering and securing bales of hay is not as time consuming and tiresome.

""This tool works I use it every time I load hay. It saves time and is more safe than climbing up on load of hay in the wind," says inventor Terry B. "This farming invention will allow them to easily collect hay and even stack bales of hay on trailers without having to worry about it falling off or flying away due to strong winds, thus making these tasks quicker to accomplish and less physically tiring."

Jim Cullen, a crops and livestock farmer from Kansas, MO, has this to say about the Hay Strapping Hook: "Farming entails a person to accomplish a multitude of physically tiring tasks. So when it comes to gathering hale and stacking them up, it can significantly consume much needed time to accomplish more important farming errands. With the aid of the hay Strapping Hook, it significantly speeds up the gathering and stacking of hay stacks, thus giving more time for other tasks."

The Hay Strapping Hook is a farming invention that will be of great help to farmers thanks to its unique features that speed up the collection and stacking of bales of hay.

ABOUT WORLD PATENT MARKETING

World Patent Marketing is an innovation incubator and manufacturer of patented products for inventors and entrepreneurs. The company is broken into eight operating divisions: Research, Patents, Prototyping, Manufacturing, Retail, Web & Apps, Social Media and Capital Ventures.

As a leader in patent invention services, World Patent Marketing is by your side every step of the way, utilizing our capital and experience to protect, prepare, and manufacture your new product idea and get it out to the market. Get a patent with World Patent Marketing and the company will send representatives to trade shows every month in order to further advocate for its clients. It is just part of the world patent marketing cost of doing business.

World Patent Marketing Success Stories are made possible because of its A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and its five star ratings from consumer review sites including: Consumer Affairs, Google, Trustpilot, Customer Lobby, Reseller Ratings, Yelp and My3Cents.

World Patent Marketing is also a proud member of the National Association of Manufacturers, Duns and Bradstreet, the US Chamber of Commerce, the South Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, Association for Manufacturing Excellence, and the New York Inventor Exchange.

Visit the worldpatentmarketing.com website and find out how to patent an invention. Contact us at (888) 926-8174.

This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.prweb.com/releases/worldpatentmarketing/HayStrappingHook/prweb13145516.htm
DGAP-News: B.R.A.I.N. Biotechnology Research And Information Network AG / Key word(s): IPO BRAIN AG announces Intention to Float 05.01.2016 / 08:00 The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The information contained herein is not for publication, release or distribution (directly or indirectly) in or into or to persons in the United States of America, Canada, Japan and Australia or any other jurisdiction in which publication, release or distribution would be unlawful. PRESS RELEASE BRAIN AG announces Intention to Float - First German company from the field of Bioeconomy plans an Initial Public Offering on the Frankfurt stock exchange with admission to the Prime Standard - BRAIN develops bio-industrial product solutions for globally active industrial partners and for its own commercialisation - BRAIN promotes as key enabler the "Biologisation of Industries" - Planned IPO will allow BRAIN to accelerate the commercialisation of its own product pipeline and to promote its successfully initiated industrialisation strategy - Special subscription programme for retail investors Zwingenberg, January 05, 2016: B.R.A.I.N. Biotechnology Research and Information Network AG ("BRAIN AG", "the Company" and together with its subsidiaries "BRAIN" or "the Group") is preparing an initial public offering ("IPO" or "the Offer") in the Regulated Market (Prime Standard) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. BRAIN AG is one of Europe's leading technology companies in the field of industrial biotechnology, the core discipline of the Bioeconomy. Using proprietary technology platforms, the Company identifies previously untapped, efficient enzymes, microbial producer organisms or bioactive natural substances from all that biodiversity has to offer to put them into industrial or rather bioeconomical use. The innovative product solutions developed by the help of this "Toolbox of Nature" are successfully applied in the chemical industry as well as in the consumer goods, cosmetics, animal feed, and food industries. To secure its technologies and product candidates, BRAIN AG holds more than 350 patents and patent applications divided in 48 patent families. Clearly focussed business model BRAIN's business is based on two pillars - "BioScience" and "BioIndustrial". The "BioScience" pillar comprises the Company's - frequently exclusive - collaboration business with selected globally active industrial partners. Since its foundation, BRAIN AG has successfully entered into more than 100 of such long-lasting industrial partnerships. Basically, these involve BRAIN providing research and development services aimed at sustainably improving processes or at identifying new products and technical solutions harnessing the methods of industrial biotechnology. To this end, the Company receives a combination of running research and development fees, milestone payments, performance payments and license fees from the respective industrial partner. Among these collaboration partners are companies such as BASF, Bayer, Clariant, DSM Nutritional Products, Evonik, Fuchs Europe, Henkel, Nutrinova, RWE, SAdzucker, or Symrise. The second pillar of BRAIN's business, "BioIndustrial", comprises the development and commercialisation of its own products and active product components. In order to promote the underlying industrialisation strategy, BRAIN AG targets rapidly growing market segments such as enzymes, food, wound care, or BioSubstitutes (biological substituents for chemical ingredients) as well as cosmetics and care products within the consumer goods market. For these target markets, the Company has built an extensive product pipeline intended to contribute significantly to its future sales growth. These products and active product components are either marketed by granting licenses to third parties or by acquiring companies which are already active in the relevant markets. In this pillar of the business, BRAIN thus participates in the market through own product sales, or by license payments and royalty payments linked to the licensee's final product sales. In fiscal year 2014/15, the Company has acquired a majority interest in a well-established manufacturing and sales company - WeissBioTech - for the enzyme and food target markets. In earlier years, BRAIN AG had already acquired two other industrial enterprises providing both the required manufacturing capacities and market access to end consumers (B2B, B2C) within the market for cosmetics and care products. Consistent growth strategy More than 20 years of experience in the industrial collaboration business have paved the way for BRAIN AG's consistent expansion over the past few years. During the same time period, BRAIN has established robust contacts to the industry, the scientific and academic community and political bodies in order to be accepted and act as a key enabler in the change towards a bio-based economy. After the adoption of its industrialisation strategy in 2008, the Company had a special focus on investing into and scaling up its own product pipeline. In addition, the Company was sustainably strengthened through selective corporate acquisitions which were successfully integrated into the value chain and well positioned in attractive markets. BRAIN's strong growth path is also reflected in the Company's financial development. The Group's operating performance (sales revenues + changes in finished goods and work in progress + other income including R&D grants) increased by a compound annual growth rate of 59 per cent, from EUR 10.2m to EUR 25.7m, between the 2012/13 and the 2014/15 fiscal years. A significant portion of this growth is attributable to the "BioIndustrial" division, where the operating performance increased by an average of 68 per cent per annum from EUR 4.8m to EUR 13.5m, over the same period. Consequently, already today, this business pillar accounts for more than half (53 per cent in fiscal year 2014/15) of the Group's operating performance. The Group's EBIT remained almost stable in absolute numbers, with EUR -4.4m in 2012/13 and EUR -4.6m in 2014/15, while margins improved over time. The different relations between the absolute revenue and earnings developments is due to the significant increase of Research & Development capabilities on the one hand, and the initial consolidation of WeissBioTech on the other hand, which does not yet include the expected earnings potential from the use of BRAIN's product pipeline. BRAIN AG sees future growth opportunities mainly in the expansion of its BioArchive, the so-called "Toolbox of Nature". This is how the Company intends to secure additional rights to use and exploit biotechnology solutions. In addition, the Company continues to pursue its "multi-product opportunity" approach, which is based on the fact that one innovative solution developed by BRAIN may often be used and monetised in different market segments in parallel. Finally, BRAIN AG plans to further expand its business activities in the "BioScience" division with its collaboration partnerships. It also aims to extend its "BioIndustrial" activities on a more global scale, i.e. beyond the German-speaking countries and Europe. To be prepared for this next level of growth especially in view of the additional tasks in the product business, the BRAIN management team has been strengthened and equipped with more responsibilities during the last year. The Management Board, led by its Chairman Dr JArgen Eck, who belongs to the group of BRAIN shareholders since 1994, was complemented by Henricus Marks (COO), who has more than 25 years of industry experience, in particular in global sales operations and key account management particularly in the enzyme business. In addition, Dr Georg Kellinghusen, former member of the BRAIN Supervisory Board, was appointed CFO with effect from January 01, 2016. The experienced management team, now consisting of ten people, is highly motivated to make a significant contribution for BRAIN and the biological transformation of the target industries. Offer for institutional and private investors The planned offer primarily consists of newly issued shares from a capital increase; meaning, the Company will receive all the proceeds from these primary shares. Besides, one existing shareholder is planning to provide shares to be used in an over-allotment option. ODDO Seydler Bank AG is acting as Sole Global Coordinator and Bookrunner in the transaction. Blaettchen Financial Advisory GmbH is supporting the Company as IPO consultant. Some 51 per cent of BRAIN AG's current equity capital is held by the family office of MP Beteiligungs GmbH and around 20 per cent is owned by MIG, a group of venture capital funds. The remaining around 29 per cent are primarily in the possession of the Company's founders and senior management. These existing shareholders will continue to hold a significant equity portion after the planned IPO. The Offer will consist of initial public offerings in Germany and Austria as well as private placements in certain jurisdictions outside of these countries and outside the United States of America. With the aim to adequately target retail investors, BRAIN wants to reserve some 10 per cent of the offered shares for this group of investors. Plans are being made to provide dedicated subscription channels - also via the Company itself - for this particular purpose. "Over the past few years, we have built up an excellent reputation within the research community, political bodies and the relevant industry players, and have realised successful collaboration projects. We have also made good progress with our industrialisation strategy - thanks to successfully integrated acquisitions on the one hand and the expansion of our product pipeline on the other hand. Now we are ready to increase our independence on the financing side, in order to properly benefit from the tailwinds in our industry. The planned IPO will bring the expansion of our Company an important step forward", says Dr JArgen Eck, Chief Executive Officer of the Management Board (CEO) of BRAIN AG. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the IPO primarily to fund the research and development of new products, to continuously improve and upgrade existing products and technologies, and to enhance the marketing of its own product pipeline. Some portion may also be dedicated to finance further acquisitions or to increase stakes in certain subsidiary companies, if this supports the implementation of the Company's industrialisation strategy. Finally, a small portion of the proceeds shall be used for working capital requirements and the repayment of shareholder loans granted for operational purposes. Increased sustainability through Bioeconomy Bioeconomy involves using resources from nature such as microorganisms, enzymes or individual biomolecules in industrial production processes amongst others, to achieve significant improvements compared to conventional processes or products. This results in, for instance, more resource-friendly, energy-efficient and sustainable processes in the chemical, mining and consumer goods industries, or more natural products in the food, animal feed and cosmetics industries. How such a bio-based economy needs to be built, was recently discussed in Berlin on the "Global Bioeconomy Summit". This international event, initiated by the bioeconomy council of the German government, attracted more than 700 participants from 82 states at the end of November 2015. Shortly after, on 30 November 2015, negotiations started on legally binding universal targets for sustainability and resource efficiency within the scope of COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris climate conference. Industrial biotechnology as harnessed by BRAIN is considered a key technology in the transition from an economy that is frequently based on fossil fuels into a sustainable and biology-based economy. In politics and industry, the term often used for this is "the biologisation of industries". Against this backdrop, BRAIN AG perceives the global population growth, scarcity of resources, climate change as well as consumers' needs for natural solutions in food and cosmetics products as major growth engines for products based on biotechnological processes and solutions. Another key driver identified by the Company is the increasing cost of healthcare, which can be reduced through the development of healthy foods. "BRAIN is rethinking biology. The technological use of biological processes in an industrial environment reflects the Company's core competence and philosophy. Inspired by the vision of a bio-based economy or so called Bioeconomy that is geared to natural material cycles, BRAIN is one of the creative players in this global transformation process", explains Dr JArgen Eck when asked about his long-term view of the industry and BRAIN's role in it. The Company aims to facilitate and expand the use of biotechnology solutions and biological products, and intends to service both the industrial and the end consumer markets. A particular growth potential is seen in large parts of the chemical industry. Here, BRAIN AG focuses on the specialty chemicals and the consumer chemicals divisions, with an emphasis on nutrition, cosmetics and wound care. According to a scientific publication from the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology (Festel et al., 2012), experts expect the share of biotechnology products and procedures in the chemical industry to grow from approximately 12 per cent today to up to 20 per cent by 2020. In this environment, the two aforementioned market divisions BRAIN focuses on are expected to grow at an annual rate of 15.5 per cent. According to CEFIC, the European Chemical Industry Council, total sales in the chemical industry in 2013 already amounted to some EUR 3,156 bn worldwide, with a growth forecast of approximately 4 per cent per annum. +++ENDS+++ About BRAIN BRAIN is one of Europe's leading technology companies in the field of industrial biotechnology, the core discipline of Bioeconomy. As such, BRAIN identifies previously untapped, efficient enzymes, microbial producer organisms or natural substances from complex biological systems that can be put to industrial use. The innovative solutions and products developed by help of this "Toolbox of Nature" are successfully applied in the chemistry, the cosmetics and the food industries. Today, BRAIN's business model is based on two pillars - "BioScience" and "BioIndustrial". The first pillar, "BioScience", comprises its - frequently exclusive - collaboration business with industrial partners. The second pillar "BioIndustrial" comprises the development and commercialisation of BRAIN's own products and active product components. Further information is available at www.brain-biotech.de/en Contact: B.R.A.I.N. Biotechnology Research And Information Network AG Dr. Martin Langer Executive Vice President Corporate Development DarmstAdter Str. 34-36 64673 Zwingenberg, Germany Tel.: +49-6251-9331-0 Fax: +49-6251-9331-11 E-Mail: ir@brain-biotech.de www.brain-biotech.de Disclaimer This document and the information contained herein are for information purposes only and do not constitute a prospectus or an offer to sell securities in the United States or a solicitation to purchase such securities in the United States. Any securities referred to herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended ("U.S. Securities Act"). Such securities may not be offered, sold or delivered within the United States absent from registration under or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act. Neither BRAIN AG nor any of its shareholders intends to register the securities referred to herein in the United States. This publication constitutes neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation to purchase any kind of securities. Such an offer is made solely by means of and on the basis of a published prospectus. The prospectus will be available free of charge at BRAIN AG, Zwingenberg, Germany, and on the Internet at www.brain-biotech.de/en. This document does not constitute an offer document or an offer of transferable securities to the public in the United Kingdom to which Section 85 of the U.K. Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 applies and should not be considered as a recommendation that any person should subscribe for or purchase any securities as part of the transaction. This document is only being distributed to and is only directed at (i) persons who are outside the United Kingdom or (ii) to investment professionals falling within Section 19 (5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Order") or (iii) high net worth entities, unincorporated associations and other persons or entities falling within Section 49 (2), (a) to (d) of the Order (all such persons together being referred to as "relevant persons"). This publication or its contents must not be acted or relied on by persons who are not relevant persons. Any investment or investment activity to which this publication relates is available only to relevant persons and will be engaged in only with relevant persons. This document (or parts thereof) may not be published, reproduced, distributed or made available to third parties in any other way without the prior consent of the company. Reservations regarding forward-looking statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the current views, expectations, and assumptions of the management of BRAIN AG and are based on information currently available to the management. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. There are numerous factors which could influence the future performance by and future developments at BRAIN AG and the BRAIN group of companies. Such factors include, but are not limited to, changes in the general economic and competitive environment, risks associated with capital markets, currency exchange rate fluctuations, changes in international and national laws and regulations, in particular with respect to tax laws and regulations, and other factors. The company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05.01.2016 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Media archive at www.dgap-medientreff.de and www.dgap.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 426865 05.01.2016
DENVER, Jan. 05, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FORTRUST, a leading data center and colocation services provider, has been selected by Altitude Digital as part of a strategic move to take their platform out of the cloud and into a data center. Altitude Digital has reinvented their ARENA programmatic platform to provide publishers with more control, demand, and insight to optimize video, mobile, and display inventory in a more powerful and intelligent video advertising solution.



Seeking increased control, flexibility, and predictable pricing, Altitude Digital chose to focus on infrastructure as a core competency and move from the cloud into a data center. Built on big data, Altitude Digital needed a powerful data center that could handle the load of information, provide effective, multilayered security, and deliver consistent availability without interruption.

FORTRUSTs combination of top-of-the-line infrastructure and our highly trained operations team allows us to readily accommodate big datas high density requirements, states Josh Moody, FORTRUSTs Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, We are honored to be able to count Altitude Digital among the many satisfied big data companies currently colocating at our facility.

We process billions of events every day and need a reliable infrastructure to support our business," said Manny Puentes, CTO of Altitude Digital. "FORTRUST provides the dependable uptime, enhanced security, and control we need in a colocation partner."

About FORTRUST

FORTRUST is one of the most progressive high-availability data center services providers in North America, serving clients across the globe who depend on colocation services for a critical lifeline of their business. FORTRUST Denver is the largest data center in the region with over 300,000 square feet and 34 megawatts of data center capacity. FORTRUST offers agile, reliable, sustainable and secure raised floor and modular data center capacity for any-size enterprise supported by optimal power infrastructure and connectivity to safeguard mission-critical business services. In addition to the national headquarters in Denver, FORTRUST has data center locations in Phoenix, Arizona and Edison, New Jersey. www.ftdc.com

About Altitude Digital

Altitude Digital delivers powerful video and mobile advertising technology and actionable big data to online publishers and advertisers to help them expand their available ad inventory, increase the value of this inventory and grow their revenue. Altitudes ARENA programmatic platform delivers greater insight, control and better performance for publishers. The company is one of the fastest growing video advertising platforms and is listed as one of the 10 largest video providers by both comScore and Quantcast. Altitude Digital is headquartered in Denver, Colorado with offices in New York and San Francisco.
RickRoy wrote:

Hi



Can someone please evaluate my profile



Undergrad GPA : 65% (Mumbai University) - Though I did my graduation and CA together.

Work Experience : 2 years in Project Finance in a leading Infra companies in India and currently 1.5 years into a business strategy role at one of the leading manufacturing companies in India (spent 3 months in Tokyo with the Technology partners).

Also as a sidenote, as a part of my CA Course, I've worked as an Article for 3.5 years with KPMG (statutory audit)



GMAT score : 720

Chartered Accountant - 1st Attempt

CFA Level 2 cleared



Extra curricular activities : Won quiz competitions in school / Part of Shiamak Davar Dance academy for about 4 years (Featured in a few Bollywood movies)



Would be able to get a really good recommendation.



Schools Targeted : Ross Michigan / INSEAD Singapore / ISB / NUS / Chicago Booth

Hey there Rick,And good to hear from you!Now, I'd LOVE to help you out and get down with your profile.The thing is I am missing detail.I need a LOT more info from you - semployer name, titles, promotions, greatest achievements, volunteer work, sports, community service, religious involvement, leadership.. etc. before I can give you a real evaluation.It will also be very helpful if you can elaborate upon your goals.Have a look at some of the other very detailed profile requests on this board and do something similar and I'll be happy to get back to you.Best,JF
Flood Map allows you to view the risk of flooding at any location in the world. Using flood map you can set a water elevation height for ...
The Gorilla Radio archive can be found at: www.Gorilla-Radio.com. G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in State and Corporate media. Gorilla Radio airs live Thursdays between 11-12 noon Pacific Time. Airing in Victoria at 101.9FM, and featured on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca and www.pacificfreepress.com. And check out Pacific Free Press on Twitter @Paciffreepress
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David Henry Hwang, the Tony award-winning playwright who was slashed in the neck by an unknown assailant near his Fort Greene home in late November, nabbed a corner of the NY Times Men's Style section to recount the shocking chain of eventsfrom the sidewalk, to his foyer dripping blood, to a gurney at the Brooklyn Hospital Center.

In an essay titled, accurately, "The Time I Got Stabbed In The Neck," we learn from Hwang that his attacker, still at large, managed to sever Hwang's vertebral artery. According to the playwright, the same injury has been known to cause strokes and permanent loss of feeling.

"I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have survived with no long-term damage," he writes.

Hwang, 58, was walking home laden with groceries on South Portland Street between Lafayette and DeKalb Avenues around 8:50 p.m. on Sunday, November 29th when he was attacked, according to the NYPD.

In the playwright's own words:

Carrying my groceries around 9 p.m., I crossed onto my block, about a dozen doors from my home. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt as if someone had hit me on the back of my head. I yelled an expletive. Turning around, I saw the silhouette of someone running away across the street. I wasnt going to take off to pursue my assailant, so I decided to continue home. But I found that I couldn't walk steadily and veered, first into a wall, then into a parked car. I placed my hand to my neck, and it came away covered in blood.

Normally, in the case of a severed artery, a surgeon will intervene to cap it. But because Hwang's injury was so close to his skull, there was an apparent risk of brain damage.

Instead, the following day Hwang went under the knife of a Mount Sinai neuroendovascular surgeon for more than four hours. The procedure was not a a simple one. As Hwang writes: "...the surgical team performed minimally invasive surgery, navigating through my arterial system from my groin to the severed artery, which they closed off with over a dozen coils and vascular plugs."

Hwang also details the ongoing investigation into his attack, which he believes may have been a hate crime. He references attacks on Asian American women that proliferated last year, and the slashing, days after he was attacked, of a 16-year-old Chinese girl in Queens.

"I have since learned that Asians are seen as easy targets because of perceived language barriers and a reluctance to report crimes," Hwang writes.

The NYPD believes that the November 29th attack was perpetrated by someone with no personal connection to Hwang himself. Officials released a grainy surveillance still of a suspect in Decemberan individual with his or her back turned to the camera.
Financial wizards say it's cheaper in the long run to buy than rent, but what they really mean is that your future living space will be a cardboard box by the Queensboro Bridge (on the Queens side, but near Scandals at least?)the median apartment price in Manhattan is 1.15 million, the average price is $1.9 million, and Manhattan ISN'T EVEN COOL ANYMORE.

According to a new report from Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the median sales price in Manhattan ticked up 17.3 percent in 2015, setting a new record. The average sales price, terrifyingly, went up about 12.1 percent. "It was an extraordinary year," Pamela Liebman, the chief executive of the Corcoran Group, told the Times, though it was perhaps less extraordinary for those of us who had to fight to get our credit card limits increased to $5,500.

Real estate experts say the sales uptick is likely thanks to all those cool luxury buildings that keep popping up around town, though folks who aren't Saudi oil barons seem to be having some trouble finding reasonable deals. "The increased supply on the high end has taken some of the urgency out of the market," Liebman told the Times, "yet the low end is still suffering from not enough product at achievable price points."

The good news is, real estate analysts say developers need to focus less on high-end luxury developments and more on developments for actual humans, should they want to see big sales in 2016. "Were seeing buyers definitely willing to sit on the sidelines, Diane M. Ramirez, the chief executive of Halstead Property, told the Times. Anything priced overly aggressively has to be addressed. So will developers listen? Probably not! But perhaps that $550K West Village fixer-upper/ostensible crime scene is still available?
By mid-January, the first of New York Citys free public Wi-Fi stations will be available for use along 3rd and 8th Avenues in Manhattan. By July, there will be 510 of the LinkNYC kiosksLinks, for shortbringing gigabit-speed Wi-Fi, free telephone calls, and cellphone charging portals to the husks of old payphone booths across five boroughs. But how fast will this internet actually be? Who will be able to use it? And whats the catch?

IS THIS FREE INTERNET GOING TO BE FASTER THAN THE SLOW STUFF THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN SOME PARKS AND SUBWAY STATIONS?

This is going to be the fastest internet connection youve ever used, Colin ODonnell, the chief operating officer of Intersection, one of the groups overseeing LinkNYC, told reporters yesterday. Gigabit speeds means Links will be up to 100 times faster than anything thats publicly available. According to ODonnell, uploading a bunch of photographs would take two minutes, not two-and-a-half hours, like it might with your cable provider with only 5 mbps of upload speed.

If you want to download a movie off of iTunes or Google Play and save it offline, you can do that in a couple seconds on a Link, whereas on a home network its gonna take you several minutes."

YOU SAID UP TO 100 TIMES FASTER. IM NO FOOL. DOESNT THAT MEAN ITLL BE MUCH SLOWER?

The actual speed of the kiosks remains to be seen. But according to the City, there will be 4,550 Links in New York City within four years, and every one of them in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens will have gigabit speed. Over the course of 12 years, the City will install at least 7,500 Links, but its not yet clear how many of those will feature gigabit speeds.

IS THERE A DATA CAP FOR HOW MUCH CRAP I CAN DOWNLOAD ON MY DEVICE?

Nope. Experts in the industry are predicting 1,000 times an increase in data utilization over the next ten years, so our data utilization of mobile networks is doubling every year. Were anticipating that and building for that, ODonnell said.

WHAT ABOUT A TIME LIMIT?

Nope. According to the City, each Link is being built to withstand 500 users at one time. We will protect the network, ODonnell told reporters. If somebodys abusing it or hurting someone elses performance we can send them a message or tell them to stop doing what theyre doing, or worst case we could exclude that rogue device.

NOT EVEN ON THE FREE PHONE CALLS?

Correct.

DO YOU HAVE TO STAND NEAR THE LINK, OR PLUG IN TO IT TO RECEIVE INTERNET?

The two USB charging portals require that you plug in (though they do not share any data with the Link). Phone calls can be conducted through a speaker, a headphone jack, or you can place a video call on the tablet screen (its an Android tablet). But the internet is wirelessthe contract with the City stipulates that users must receive gigabit speed internet within 150 feet of the Link.

SO YOURE SAYING THAT THE CITY IS INSTALLING FIBER OPTIC INTERNET THAT IS WAY, WAY FASTER THAN WHAT I PAY TIME WARNER FOR, AND THAT IT'S 100% FREE. IF I LIVE NEAR A LINK (OR HAD A BUSINESS NEAR A LINK), WHY WOULDNT I JUST CANCEL MY CABLE CONTRACT AND USE THE LINK?

I dont know why wed stop you from doing that, ODonnell told us. He later added, This is not aimed to replace Time Warner, this is really aimed to create a public Wi-Fi network on the streets of New York in all the major commercial areas where people are out and about and traveling.

Anne Roest, the commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, also cautioned against this logic: If you think about it, 150 feet, some of these streets have really tall buildings, youre not going to be driving Time Warner out of business.

Yet ODonnell told reporters that when testing the Links, his group found broadband speeds of up to 400 feet away. Thats around 30 stories high! Your mileage will vary depending on what kind of device you have, depending on where you are, what kinds of obstructions are on the street.

Pressed further on this point of chipping away at the internet oligopoly that currently exists in New York, he added, If we can create a product where theres no data caps, its really fast, where you have unlimited usage, and really good service all around the city, we hope that that would spark some changes in the industry, but were really excited about what we could do.

WHAT DOES TIME WARNER THINK OF ALL THIS?

As you can see from our TWC Wifi coverage map, Time Warner Cable provides Internet customers with free, unlimited access to more than 20,000 WiFi hotspots around NYC (and 400K+ nationwide!) so that they can stay connected outside of their home and receive more value from their TWC services, Time Warners director of public relations, Eric Mangan, wrote in an email.

Simply put: if you pay for Time Warner Cables internet, you get it for free!

(Verizon declined to comment.)

HOW WILL THEY KEEP THE LINKS FROM BEING COVERED IN BURNT HAIR AND SHEPARD FAIREY STICKERS?

The Links will be cleaned twice a week, and are "extremely rugged, made out of cast aluminumtheyre really robust and weather-tight," according to O'Donnell.

They'll also have cameras and vibration sensors on them, in case someone strikes them.

But O'Donnell hopes it doesn't come to that: "If you build a product that provides a great service that people love, people tend not to abuse it." [Ed: LOL]



(CityBridge)

WAIT, BACK UPWHO IS BUILDING THESE THINGS?

CityBridge, a group of companies that includes Qualcomm, CIVIQ Smartscapes, and Intersection (formerly the more sinister-sounding Control Group) won the contract from the city to build 7,500 of the kiosks over the course of 12 years4,550 of them within four years. Theyre investing $200 million to build the fiber optic network from scratch.

We started in Manhattan because thats sort of where the internet comes into New York City, Jen Hensley, the general manager for LinkNYC, told reporters. It comes from where the internet crosses the Hudson River; we pulled it over across the city and up 3rd Avenue because thats the direct route into the South Bronx, and then into the northern Manhattan areas.

WHATS IN IT FOR THEM?

Money, through advertising. The contract guarantees $500 million in revenue to the City over a 12 year period (or the greater of 50% of the revenue that is generated) coming from ads broadcast on the giant screens on the sides of the Links. The more people around the Link location, the more money you can charge advertisers.

ARE YOU SURE THERE'S SPACE IN MY BRAIN FOR ALL THESE IMAGES THAT TRIGGER DESIRE AND THE IMPULSE TO CONSUME? NEW YORK IS PRETTY SATURATED AS IT IS, THERE'S NO QUIET SPACE TO

Of course there is! "Its really the first of its kind digital advertising network thats using local data, geographic data and environmental conditions to serve the right ad to the right audience at the right time," O'Donnell explains.

Sensors on the Link might tell advertisers that it's 90 degrees outside, which would then trigger ads for air conditioning.

"We can use aggregate anonymous analytics, demographic informationthink of really broad demographic info. How many people are in an area, do they skew more male or female, what kind of day is it? Right now were upgrading from posters that are put up on a monthly basis and now were able to change content every 15 seconds and really based on a particular area."

WILL THE LINKS LOOK AT WHAT I'M BROWSING AT ON THE INTERNET AND GIVE IT TO ADVERTISERS?

Yes, so long as it's anonymized. (A LinkNYC spokesperson writes in an email: "LinkNYC will not monitor web traffic on the Wi-Fi [network]." You can read their privacy policy and parse that language for yourself.)

WHAT IF THE GOVERNMENT WANTS MY PERSONAL INFORMATION?

From LinkNYC's privacy terms: "In the event that we receive a request from a governmental entity to provide it with your Personally [sic] Information, we will take reasonable attempts to notify you of such request, to the extent possible."

WHAT IF THE HACKERS WANT MY PERSONAL INFORMATION?

"Were making sure were as protective of everyones information as possible," Commissioner Roest told reporters.

"Its difficult to encrypt a large scale network with millions of users for each user but were deploying a new technology called Hotspot 2.0 that allows each device to be encrypted on top of all the traditional network security," O'Donnell added.

This portion of the privacy policy seems relevant and perhaps not entirely reassuring for what is essentially a public utility:

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your information, we cannot guarantee against access to your Personally Identifiable Information by unauthorized third parties.

WHAT IS THE CITY DOING TO ENSURE THAT LINKNYC ISN'T JUST FOR WELL-TO-DO NEW YORKERS? ONE QUARTER OF US DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO FAST INTERNET.

Manhattan is getting 52% of the Links, while the other four boroughs are getting 48%. You can see the full map here.

"Weve been working with community groups within every demographic from high school for new immigrants, people whose main experience is on an Obama phone, you know a free phone," O'Donnell said. "People who go from Brooklyn to the Bronx to get on a free Wi-Fi connection because what we consider a free Wi-Fi connection at a cafe isnt free because you actually have to buy a coffee to enjoy it.

"But weve also been working with professionals uploading major files, or who want to download a movie before you jump on the train. If we could save 10% of New Yorkers half of their mobile bill, I think thats putting hundreds of millions of dollars back into peoples pockets on a yearly basis."

Another part of the LinkNYC project is building a community center in each borough that will feature free gigabit speed internet indoors, "where people can learn about safe internet browsing, learn how to develop applications, and participate in this new internet experience," O'Donnell said.

Commissioner Roest noted that "there are people who cant afford a data plan or dont have much of a data plan. To think about it in terms of to find an apartment or to get your homework, and you dont have a data plan, this is where it adds real value."

SO WHEN AND WHERE CAN I START USING THIS THING?

Roughly 15 of them will be up and running along 3rd and 8th Avenues in Manhattan by mid-January, with only Wi-Fi access to startphone service and tablet usage will come soon after. Links will be installed in the Bronx "within the first quarter," O'Donnell said. By late summer, the City will be installing as many as 10 or more Links each day in all five boroughs.
A female undercover NYPD detective converted to Islam to spy on Muslim students at Brooklyn College, none of whom were ever accused of a crime. The spying continued for years, long after Mayor de Blasio vowed to end the NYPD's blanket surveillance of the Muslim community. While the NYPD didnt respond to Gothamists calls or emails when we published the account, they later claimed that the story was bogus.

"There's truth in the Gothamist story, if you pick out certain facts you can say, 'Well, this is true,' or 'That's true, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, told WNYC in November.

But it's wrapped around this narrative that there was this overarching blanket surveillance, which is not the case."

Jethro Eisenstein, an attorney who has been part of the lawsuit challenging the citys investigations into political and religious groups since 1971Handschu v. Special Services Divisionwasnt so sure.

Eisenstein read Gothamists story and wrote to his NYPD counterparts, expressing concern about the length of the reported four-year secret investigation and the undercovers intimate involvement in the lives of those she was spying on.

This came to our attention and we asked them about it, Eisenstein says.

While cellphone videos have transformed the national conversation when it comes to police brutality, no similar mechanism of public accountability exists when it comes to how the NYPD conducts its counterterrorism surveillance.

Almost all the information released by the NYPD about its undercover operations has been obtained as a result of the Handschu lawsuit.

And it really depends on them coming to light in some other way, Eisenstein explained, often through the press. The undercover operationsunless they result in an arrestare by definition secrets.

NYPD lawyers told Eisenstein it was true that a female undercover detective using the alias Melike Ser, or Mel, was deployed to infiltrate the Brooklyn College Islamic Society in 2011 for most of a year, but that the investigation was closed in early 2012.

The NYPD said they reactivated Mels identity again in 2013, but for a completely unrelated terrorism investigation involving two Queens women, Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui, which ultimately led to their arrests this past spring for an alleged bomb plot.

Under Handschu, for the use of an undercover operative to be considered, an investigative statement must be submitted that demonstrates a reasonable possibility of ongoing criminal activity. NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller, who gave the interview to WNYC, approves or denies these requests.

From what [the NYPD attorneys] said, there was no connection between the second deployment and Brooklyn College, Eisenstein said.

Yet former students and Brooklyn College Islamic Society members insist this is not true.

Though her investigation may have been terminated in 2012, they say Mel remained on campus and in their lives through January of 2015. According to these former students, Mel attended religious gatherings, discussed the role of the hijab, and knew what to say after a bad breakup.

Other current and former Brooklyn College students have come forward since Gothamists initial report was published. They remember Mel as one of a handful of people who attended planning meetings at Brooklyn College for another student group, introducing herself as a member of the Islamic Society, long after her assignment supposedly ended.

These two starkly different narrativesfrom the NYPD and their targets of surveillance illustrate the difficulty of determining the truth about undercover operations and raise questions about whether the police overstepped their authority.



Mayor Bill de Blasio delivers Remarks at Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens, New York. Friday December 4, 2015 (Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)

Thats not true, said Thomas DeAngelis, a current Brooklyn College student, when asked to respond to the NYPDs claim that Mels policing duties at Brooklyn College ended in 2012.

DeAngelis, 22, had been a lead organizer for the UNITY group, a coalition formed on campus in the spring of 2014 and dedicated to increasing cooperation and coordination amongst students of color.

UNITY was composed primarily of students of color groups on campus, including the Puerto Rican Alliance, the Dominican Student Movement, the Haitian American Student Association, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as others.

At the time, DeAngelis was Vice President of the Hispanic Society, another UNITY member group. The coalition met to build support and share dates of upcoming events. (Gothamist has reviewed notes from the meeting to verify dates and participating groups.)

I positively remember meeting her at that meeting, DeAngelis said of the first UNITY planning session, which occurred in the Brooklyn College Student Center building on May 15, 2014.

DeAngelis learned about Mels true identity this past April, after Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui were arrested, which was around the same time that some former ISO members who were in the same social circles as the two accused women also realized that Mel was the undercover officer in that case; they texted others about it and posted the news on Facebook.

DeAngelis immediately recognized Mels name because it had appeared on UNITY listserves, and when former ISO members posted a photograph of Mel online, he remembered her face.

A second Brooklyn College student also recalled meeting Mel at the UNITY meetings. The student, whose attendance at the UNITY meetings was confirmed by DeAngelis, spoke on the condition that she not be identified in this articlewell call her Amanda.

Amanda, 23, graduated from Brooklyn College last spring. I dont trust the police, she said. Amanda recalled that at a UNITY meeting in early fall of 2014, one woman introduced herself to the group as Melike, or Mel for short.

I went up to her afterwards because I recognized that Melike is Turkish. Amanda had lived in Turkey in 2012, so she wanted to introduce herself. She told Gothamist that everyone at the meetings took notes, including Mel. Amanda also recalled running into Mel at a demonstration just outside Brooklyn College campus during the siege of Gaza on September 2, 2014.

A third source, a current student at Brooklyn College, said that she also saw Mel at UNITY meetings that spring. The source, also who asked not to be named out of fear of law enforcement surveillance, remembered that Mel introduced herself as a member of the Islamic Student Organization. DeAngelis also confirmed the sources account.

The Brooklyn College students were engaged in political activity during their organizing meetings, and the NYPD had an undercover officer at those meetings, said Michael Price, who serves as counsel for the Brennan Center for Justices Liberty and National Security Program.

If Mel was not there as part of an authorized investigation, then it would constitute a Handschu violation.

Asked whether Mels presence at the UNITY meetings in spring and fall of 2014 would constitute a violation the Handschu Guidelines, Eisenstein replied, Yes. Unless, he clarified, the NYPD believed that the meetings were open to the public.

Even without an investigation, the NYPD can attend a public function on the same terms as members of the public generally, but cannot retain any information gathered in that activity unless it relates to criminal activity or terrorism, Eisenstein explained.

DeAngelis said that the first UNITY meeting was held in the student center at Brooklyn College, which requires a CUNY ID to enter. Subsequent meetings were held elsewhere on campus. The UNITY gatherings were planning sessions and people were mostly invited through word of mouth, although DeAngelis does not remember what kind of invitations he sent out online, if at all.

According to Michael Price, The use of Facebook or a listserv doesnt change whether an event is public or private, but it gives us more facts to consider, like whether access to the group was restricted or if permission from an administrator was required to join.

But, Price clarified in an e-mail, I would argue that if the only reason the NYPD has access to an online forum is because of (continuing) fraud and false pretenses, then they are not following the same terms and conditions that apply to the public generally.

Given the details available about where the UNITY meetings were held and what was discussed during them, Price said, It doesn't seem like these meetings were public.



Brooklyn College's student center, where UNITY meetings took place (CUNY)

After the alleged closing of the Brooklyn College investigation, Mel also maintained and strengthened relationships with women she had met at the Islamic Society. The former students frequently saw Mel at events around town, including a Ramadan preparation event in June 2013, a youth gathering in November 2013, an all-day, women-only event about the hijab in February 2014, and religious classes held at mosques across the city.

Jehan, 30, first met Mel in the spring of 2012 in the ISO prayer room. (Jehan is a pseudonym for an individual interviewed in the initial Gothamist investigation.) She saw Mel several months later, at the November 2013 youth conference, but the two didnt get a chance to speak, so she reached out to her shortly after. Jehan was going through a difficult separation, and recalled that Mel spent hours on the phone with her that December providing emotional support.

In an email to Jehan dated January 13, 2014, Mel wrote, I will keep you in my prayers and hope that things continue to get better for you iA [InshaAllah, or God willing]. You are very brave and I appreciate you opening up about your personal life.

About a year later, in early December 2014, Jehan texted Mel to let her know she had changed her phone number. Mel, who still had the same phone number, responded and thanked her for getting in touch. The two spoke on the phone and texted back and forth for about six weeks. In April of 2015, Jehan, who helps coordinate a center for Muslim youth, reached out to Mel to keep her abreast of upcoming events she was organizing. Mel didnt respond to her messages.

The Handschu Guidelines do not specify if an undercover can maintain personal relationships with individuals after an investigation has been closed, but they may not gather information on the political activities of their contacts.

During his conversation with the NYPD, Eisenstein said they made reference to continued contact with some of the people the undercover had encountered during the initial investigationwhich he believes occurred so that Mel could maintain her covert identity. If Mel completely disappeared from the lives of the women she met, it might raise suspicion, and make it harder to redeploy Mel in a later investigation.

The fact that you get a woman of appropriate age, and a vaguely appropriate ethnicity whos a police officer operating undercover, thats a pretty valuable resource, Eisenstein explained when asked why the NYPD would invest so much time and resources in maintaining Mels cover.

Michael German is a former FBI undercover agent and a fellow with the Brennan Center. German suggested that the NYPD could have invented a creative story to maintain Mels cover without requiring her to stay in contact with the Brooklyn College womenperhaps Mel could have gone to study or work abroad.

Embedding undercover police officers in lawful social, religious, or political groups with no criminal investigative purpose and for an unlimited time period just in case they might someday find something worth investigating is an anathema to a free society and exactly what the [Handschu] guidelines were designed to prevent, he said.

Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele is the Senior Community Organization for the NAACPs Legal Defense and Educational Fund and sits on the board of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR), which organizes for police accountability in New York City.

Part of what may be surprising to people in this society is that law enforcement can lie, he said. Thats a huge reality for the work that we doso its far from surprising. Its expected, in fact.

A spokesperson for the Mayors Office, Monica Klein, declined to comment on whether the NYPD may have violated the Handschu Decree, citing the fact that Handschu litigation is still pending.

In an email, she wrote that the Mayor has said he is committed to strengthening the relationship between the city and communities of faith, including Muslim communities, to ensure residents of all backgrounds feel respected and protected by this administration.

In response to a list of questions, an NYPD spokesperson wrote an email from the departments press office stating that they would not comment on the story, despite Deputy Commissioner Millers appearance on WNYC in November.

It is our understanding you were already in touch with City Hall regarding this inquiry and that you were advised due to pending litigation we will refrain from commenting, the spokesperson wrote.



John Miller, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism, speaks at the Police Commissioner's Executive Tabletop Exercise at Police Headquarters on September 9, 2015 (Getty Images)

None of the individuals active in UNITY group or the Brooklyn College Islamic Society recall seeing Noelle Velentzas or Asia Siddiqui, the two Queens women accused of hatching a bomb plot, on campus. While students like Amanda saw members of the Islamic Society posting messages on social media about Mel after their arrest, the Queens women had no known connection to Brooklyn College. One possibility is that Mel encountered them at a public event, perhaps even one she attended with former Brooklyn College students.

In a statement released in late November, Frederick P. Schaffer, the General Counsel and Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs at CUNY, said the administration "has no knowledge of any undercover operations by the NYPD at Brooklyn College, or any of its campuses, targeting Muslim groups or any other groups."

He added:

CUNY recognizes that the use of undercover officers in the context of political or religious groups can inhibit the free exercise of constitutionally protected rights. It is for that reason that limitations were imposed on that practice in the guidelines set forth in the consent decree in the Handshu case. The Mayor and Police Commission have publicly stated that the NYPDs activities are conducted in compliance with those guidelines. CUNY has no information as to whether the alleged undercover operations comply with the guidelines.

Contacted by Gothamist for the first story, the attorney for Noelle Velentzas declined to comment due to the existing protective order and other constraints.

Stephen Schulhofer is a professor at New York Universitys School of Law and an expert on how the landscape of American civil liberties has changed since 9/11.

These [police] claims, that there is a predicate or that its a justified, legitimate undercover operation, you have to take these on faith, because theres no system of oversight or independent accountability, he said.

I dont think it would be right, to prohibit [undercover agents] entirely, Schulhofer added. But while undercover spies do give you a little better chance of finding that needle in the haystack, they also make it more difficult for you to find that needle in the haystack.

When used indiscriminately, Schulhofer believes that the NYPDs surveillance activities really chill very substantially the willingness of people in the community to cooperate. And that cooperation is essential for success in countering terrorist activity.

With the latest disclosures from the NYPD, former UNITY members are left wondering why Mel would be sent to spy on the group, especially if the terrorism investigation at the schools ISO had long been closed. Historically, inter-ethnic coalitions have been targeted, said DeAngelis. Thats the only reason I could think of, to monitor whats going on.

Jehan, who has lived in New York for 25 years, also struggled to make sense of why the NYPD would have kept Mel active for so long. I was at a point in my life when I needed someone, she said. What did she want from me?

Aviva Stahl is a Brooklyn-based journalist who primarily writes about prisons, especially the experiences of terrorism suspects and LGBTQ people behind bars. Follow her @stahlidarity.
The elimination of tippingand the push for a living wageis undoubtably where the service industry is headed, and should make the experience of paying even easier: no awkward sprints back to the table after Uncle Earl leaves his customary 15% and, most importantly, no math. But in the transition, as different restaurants employ different methods, there's bound to be confusion. Administrative fee, service included, hospitality included, Obamacare surcharges and now "Surcharge Mandates," as applied by a Manhattan restaurant.

Hillstone, which operates two Manhattan locations and others on Long Island, had been applying a 2% line item to guest checks billed as a "Surcharge Mandate" until today. The restaurant's vice president told NBC New York they didn't want to "hide these increased operational costs in our menu prices such that our guests might then question the value of what we offer." Though they don't say so explicitly, it's likely the state's increased minimum wage may have spawned the fee.

While other major cities like Los Angeles are accustomed to surcharges of this variety, the practice isn't legal in New York City, according to the Department of Consumer Affairs. The DCA didn't immediately return requests for comment on how a restaurant would be disciplined for employing the fee, but an attorney told NBC it would likely be around $500 per plate. Apparently, the only time the DCA investigates is following a complaint from a customer who observes the illegal fee.

It's unsurprising that restaurants are trying whatever they can to both guarantee a living wage for their employees while also trying to offset what will inevitably be increased operational costs. While some restaurants employ the administrative feea percentage of the bill tacked on at the endothers are making bolder steps by raising menu prices and building in employee wages to the base cost of the meal.

For big name restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, restaurateurs like Danny Meyer and neighborhood joints like Diner, destination diners and loyal fans are likely tuned in to the changes; for restaurants in more touristy spots, like Hillstone, it may take more time to get the message out.
After drunkenly crashing his Porsche into a utility pole in the Hamptons and killing his passenger, a Manhattan real estate developer shoved the dead man's body out of the car and tossed his possessions into the woods, prosecutors said on Monday. You'll recall that Sean Ludwick, 43, was arrested at the end of last summer after driving away from the scene of his crash in Sag Harborhis dying acquaintance, Paul Hansen, was left at the side of the road.

But Ludwick didn't get far in his smashed up Porsche due to two flat tires, and police followed a trail of debris down the road to where they found him, standing outside the damaged vehicle. Police say Ludwick was uncooperative and slurring his speech, and when his blood alcohol level was finally tested by drawing blood four hours later, it was still 0.18, more than twice the legal limit in New York.

Last year a bereaved friend of Hansen told us, "When officers stumbled upon [Sean], he never mentioned that Paul was there. He didn't say, 'Oh, can you go help my friend.' He didn't mention it at all." Hansen was found dead on the side of the road steps from his home. The friend, who requested anonymity because Hansen's family had not authorized anyone to speak about his death, believed that Ludwick dragged Hansen from the car after the crash and tried to escape.

Prosecutors agree, and they say that Ludwick went even further by tossing Hansen's wallet and other possessions from the vehicle, into a wooded area where investigators later found them. "There were some personal effects from the victim, Mr. Hansen, that he threw out into the woods," prosecutor John Scott Prudenti said at Ludwick's arraignment yesterday.

Ludwick pleaded not guilty to DWI, aggravated vehicular homicide and a slew of other charges, and was released on $1 million bail. Outside the Central Islip courthouse, his attorney, Benjamin Brafman, told reporters, This is a very sad case. There is no good answer to the fact that someone is dead. There is a difference between a homicide and an accident that results in a persons death.

Ludwick owns residences in Bridgehampton and Manhattan, and is the founder of BlackHouse Development, which has built luxury condos and hotels around Manhattan, including the boutique Hotel Americano overlooking the High Line.

Ludwick also faces a civil suit from Hansen's widow, with whom he had two sons, ages 11 and 14 at the time of his death. Hansen's friend told us "he spent every waking moment that he could with his sons. They were his reason for doing everything. Everything he did was for those boys. It was like he was on a mission to be the best dad ever."
A 22-year-old woman was fatally struck by a runaway taxi on a Midtown sidewalk last week, after the driver parked and stepped out to assist his passenger. The NYPD confirmed only that the driver parked his taxi, and investigators are still trying to determine what caused the vehicle to roll, driverless, onto the adjacent sidewalk.

The vehicle plowed through the sidewalk and struck Suhuyn Park and a 21-year-old male pedestrian. Park, from South Korea, succumbed to her injuries at New York Presbyterian on Monday.

The 67-year-old driver, whose name has not been released, parked his 2012 Toyota taxi near the corner of West 51st Street and Eighth Avenue around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday December 30th, according to the NYPD. He was helping his passenger out of the taxi when it began rolling onto the sidewalk, striking Park and the second pedestrian before hitting the back of another cab at the intersection of 51st Street and Eighth Avenue and coming to a halt.

EMS on the scene transported both victims to New York Presbyterian. Park was initially listed in critical condition. The male pedestrian suffered only minor injuries and has since been released.

The driver remained on the scene, and no arrests have been made. An investigation by the NYPD's Collision Squad is ongoing.

Traffic deaths decreased in New York City in 2015. The Department of Transportation says that 230 people died in crashes last year, down from 257 in 2014, and 297 in 2013.
An altercation in an Upper West Side subway station led to two arrests on Sunday night, when a 73-year-old man allegedly bumped into a toddler's stroller and was punched in the face by the 1-year-old's father.

At 8:00 p.m., Lenin Cancel, 44, was exiting the 1 train at 72nd and Broadway with his wife and son when Kurt Nachum jostled the stroller, police say. The collision caused the 1-year-old's head to hit the frame of the stroller, giving him a bruise across the left side of his face. In retaliation, Cancel punched Nachum in the face, causing a laceration, and again in the chest, according to the criminal complaint filed with the Manhattan District Attorney.

Cancel was charged with two counts of assault in the third degree, as well as attempted assault in the third degree and harassment in the second degree. Nachum was charged with assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17 years old, but his charges were dropped, according to the Daily News, which also reports that Cancel was held on a $1,500 bond or $3,000 cash bail.

Cancel's mother, who learned about the incident from his wife, objected to the lack of action taken by the DA against Nachum.

"She said that the man pushed the stroller so hard that he bumped his eye, he bruised his eye and went to the hospital," she told the tabloid. "I dont understand how they press charges against my son and not against the man, I honestly dont. He injured a child. And if my son struck him, he was defending his family...That was his child. Any reasonable human being would have done the same."
The Connecticut driver who allegedly struck a pedestrian and a cyclist, attempted to carjack a taxi, and ultimately punched a traffic cop on the Upper East Side on Christmas Eve told police officers after the fact that he was on a suicide mission to the Empire State Building.

"I honestly was on my way to the Empire State Building because I wanted to jump off," Cameron Coelho, 27, told a police officer at New York Presbyterian Hospital less than two hours after his driving rampage. "I'm sorry, I'm very sorry. I shouldn't have done that. Now I understand that what I did was wrong."

Coelho's statements were included in court documents provided by the Manhattan DAs office.

Coelho also told officers that he has been diagnosed with both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but had not been taking his prescribed medication for "over eight months." In the days leading up to the fateful drive, Coelho said, he had been fasting and drinking only water.

"I don't drink [alcohol]. This is just what I wanted to do. I needed to tell my story," he said.

He also said that he took his aunt's car "without anyone's permission" and drove to NYC from Connecticut.

Later that evening, en route to Bellevue Hospital, Coelho asked an officer if the arrest was going to impact his chances of becoming a police officer in Connecticut, wondering, "Will it affect me getting in Connecticut PD?"

Police said that Coelho went on his vehicular rampage between noon and 1:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Coelho drove southbound, from East 91st Street to East 60th Street between First and Third Avenues, and was ultimately arrested on the Queensboro Bridge exit ramp between 62nd and 63rd Streets.

Coelho allegedly sped through red lights and against traffic and mounted a sidewalk, according to the criminal complaint. He struck a taxi at 72nd Street and 2nd Avenue while driving against a red light, and fled the scene. He proceeded to strike another vehicle on East 71st and 2nd Avenue, as well as a pedestrian and a cyclist. Without stopping, he rear-ended another vehicle at 69th Street, then abandoned his car on the Queensboro bridge, and attempted to carjack another taxi. When a traffic enforcement cop tried to intervene, he allegedly punched him in the stomach, causing swelling, bruising, and "substantial pain."

The NYPD apprehended Coelho around 1:00 p.m. According to court documents, he told officers on the scene that he wanted people to "hear my message."

"I wanted to go out in a glorious way," he added. "I've had everything my whole life and I wanted people to see that I've done nothing with it." And, chillingly, "I know who I hit in the cars. I can tell you how many people I hit."

Coelho was ultimately charged with five counts of leaving the scene of an incident, a felony offense, as well as injuring a transit employee, reckless endangerment, and attempted grand larceny of a vehicle. He pled not-guilty to all counts in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday, and the judge set a $15,000 cash or bond bail.

Stephanie Kaplan, Coelho's attorney, told the News that she is seeking treatment options for her client.

Coelho did not post bail following the arraignment. His next court date is set for February 4th.

If someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide: do not leave the person alone; remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt; and call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
La tricolor, la de la estrella solitaria, la mas linda de todas. Distintos apelativos para hablar de la bandera nacional, la cual se oficializo en 1818. Pero, sabias que la bandera chilena actual no ha sido siempre la misma? Antes de nuestra bandera hubo dos mas. Conoce mas detalles sobre este tema. Durante la etapa de la Patria Vieja, por iniciativa de Jose Miguel Carrera, Chile tuvo su primera bandera, con tres franjas: azul, blanca y amarilla, que representaban la majestad, la ley y la fuerza, atributos del estado, segun el literato Camilo Henriquez o, segun otra teoria, el cielo, la nieve cordillerana y los campos de dorados trigales. Flameo por primera vez, el 4 de julio de 1812, bordada por Javiera Carrera, hermana de Jose Miguel, siendo ella quien inculco el ideal de la independencia, a sus hermanos menores. El 30 de septiembre fue al igual que la escarapela, oficialmente adoptada, aunque ningun decreto legalizo su uso. La vida de este simbolo se extinguio, luego
Sport

Neymar denies wrongdoing over Barca transfer, says he signs what his father tells him to

Neymar only signed documents his father gave him and did nothing illegal, the Brazil superstar told a Spanish court on Tuesday where he is on trial for alleged irregularities over his transfer to Barcelona nearly a decade ago.






About Me

I am a retired professor. I last taught at Ewha Womans University, mostly composition, research writing, and cultural issues, but also the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history. My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism. I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested. I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."

View my complete profile
1. To believe in the existence and providence of G-d.

2. Not to believe that there are any other gods.

3. To believe that G-d is an absolute unity.

4. To love G-d.

5. To fear G-d.

6. To guard oneself from foreign thoughts.
1. Fill in your name or an alias. Do not leave blank or use the name 'guest' or 'anonymous'.

2. No Nivul Peh. Profanity will be deleted.
404

  

              
MISSOULA -- When a grizzly bear killed a hiker in Yellowstone National Park last year, millions of people took it personally.

The public response was 100 percent different than two years ago, said Kerry Gunther, Yellowstones bear manager. Twenty-five grizzly bears a year die in Yellowstone Park, but this one had a name.

Her name was Blaze, according to the outpouring of outrage on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets that appeared within a day of the Aug. 11 incident. Gunther and other park officials still arent sure it was that particular, often-photographed sow with two cubs (there were four such females with two cubs in the area). But they are sure their decisions, and all future debate about managing grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountain West, are under a new level of scrutiny.

The attack took place on a Thursday. It was reported to rangers at 9:01 a.m. Friday. By noon, a search team had found the hikers body, and saw a bear leaving the scene. They spent that afternoon combing the area by air and setting up a culvert trap 9.4 meters away from the bodys location. The bear was caught shortly after midnight, and a news release was issued Saturday morning.

It totally blew up on Saturday afternoon, Gunther said. Very quickly, my email and voicemail were overloaded. I was getting letters from all over the world. Our office was getting hate mail and death threats. One person even had her children threatened. We had law enforcement patrolling their houses.

Shortly after the controversy got rolling, someone created a petition asking Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk to not kill Blaze, the Yellowstone grizzly sow and her infant cubs. The petition was closed after the announcement that the bear was killed, but not before it gathered 143,170 signatures.

Just think if everyone who signed that donated $25 for habitat conservation, Gunther said. Bears would be a lot better off. I wish we could find a way to funnel that hatred and passion into conservation.

Misinformation

It also overwhelmed the parks media office. Aware that the case was going viral, the investigators tried to publish results of their efforts as soon as they got them. But other commentators kept adding different scenarios that conflicted with what the rangers had on record.

There are no good answers to that, said Sandy Snell-Dobert in Yellowstones Office of Strategic Communication. With all the ongoing discussion going about this, youll see us much more trying to be proactive and trying to get ahead of things. But just trying to monitor everything thats out there is more than a full-time job.

One meme stated that a large male grizzly had fed on the hikers body, so the female was falsely accused and killed. Yet another described the final moments of the incident, claiming the hiker ran from the bear and at one point, punched it in the nose.

But the evidence from the scene showed no adult male paw prints in the area, only female bear bite marks on the hikers body and only the suspect females DNA on the hikers wounds. Those DNA samples were flown out of the park to a lab in Bozeman, with results delivered 36 hours later.

The hiker had defensive wounds on his arms and face, indicating he tried to protect himself as the bear attacked. There were no tracks indicating he ran from the initial encounter. There was no GoPro or dash-cam footage to record the battle.

That didnt stop scenarios accusing the hiker of jogging through bear country, in what Gunther called an attempt to cast blame on the hiker instead of the bear. But the jogging idea failed to account for the hikers leather boots, canvas pants, button-down shirt and previously sprained ankle.

Others pounced on the facts that the hiker was traveling alone and wasnt carrying bear spray. Gunther agreed that traveling in groups with bear spray have been shown to deter bear attacks. But he also noted that trail-use surveys have found 60 percent of Yellowstone hikers travel in groups of three or less, and just 14 percent carry bear spray.

He wasnt following recommendations, Gunther said. But he wasnt doing anything unusual either.

The story added new levels. Some commenters posted that Blaze was related to Lightning, another socially popular bear that was killed after attacking a hiker in 2011. Yellowstone officials reported the DNA test showed no family link between last summers dead bear and Lightning, but that didnt stop the discussion.

Instead, it rekindled suppositions that Lightning was killed after ripping open an unattended backpack looking for food. For the record, the hiker in that case was using his pack to fend off the bears attack, and it got torn open in the clash.

Commenters moved on to the National Park Services motivations. Some claimed it was fear of litigation from the hikers family that prompted the kill order for the bear.

We wanted to make sure this bear couldnt do this again to another hiker, Gunther said. Our guidelines state that removal from the population is called for when serious injury or loss of life is involved.

Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Guidelines for bear management may get a lot more complicated next year when the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee releases a new proposal for removing federal Endangered Species Act protection from grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. More than 700 grizzlies live there now, and IGBC biologists argue thats about the carrying capacity for the area.

In 2015, 55 grizzly bears died and four were removed in the GYE. Thats a record high year for bear losses in the GYE, beating the previous high of 56 in 2012. In 2014, a year with good bear food availability, 28 grizzlies died or were removed.

Wildlife managers killed 24 bears after conflicts with people or livestock in 2015. Four were hit by vehicles and eight were killed by hunters. And 19 incidents remain under investigation.

The four removals were orphaned cubs sent to zoos, including the two belonging to the bear that killed the hiker in August. They are added to the loss total for the area, bringing it to 59.

The delisting proposal isnt public yet, but its already stirred up its own social media debate. Many people are using the Blaze incident as a talking point.

A lot of the photographer community is divided whether they should have killed her or not, said Daryl Hunter, an Idaho professional photographer whos reasonably certain hes seen the suspect bear for years. A lot of regular photographers agree with the decision. I do. I lead tours out here, and I tell people well be seeing bears out here. They dont associate us with a food source. But bears are quick learners. Those who are out there often dont want bears that have eaten people out there with us.

Hunting grizzlies isnt an easy solution, however.

Im one of those people in the middle, Harris said. Im a political conservative, and a wildlife photographer. The Endangered Species Act is a double-edged sword. Weve recovered the grizzlies pretty well, and I think its OK to delist it and have a hunting season.

But photographing and watching bears is a huge business in Grand Teton and Cody and Gardiner. The bears we see are an economic resource. (The delisting plan) has a 20-mile section between Grand Teton and Yellowstone that would be open for hunting. When hunting opens, thats going to eliminate all the bears that are not afraid of us.

Part of a larger trend

Frequently seen bears like Blaze, 399, Scarface and other roadside attractions have almost become a pseudo-subspecies from grizzlies that live in more remote wilderness, according to biologists. They develop a different social structure, tolerating one another in closer quarters instead of getting into deadly territorial battles. They also tolerate human activity, learning to avoid the temptation of people food that wilder bears investigate. Living along road corridors adds to their notoriety.

Having hung out in some of those Jackson Hole bear jams, its not my cup of tea, but I found the whole phenomenon fascinating, said Louisa Willcox of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a frequent critic of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. It is really meaningful for people. Its a way of understanding the ecosystem, the world in a really different way. And then they write about it on Facebook.

Willcox said the reaction to incidents like the killing of Cecil the Lion in Namibia last summer was an example of the kind of energy social media can spin up.

A lot of other lions were killed around the park, but that lion had a name and a fan club, Willcox said. It had an emotional resonance with people. I think these bears are part of bigger phenomenon going around the country and the world, elevating the rights of animals. They have families and feelings just like we do.

Bringing these other voices to the debate could change the way public wildlife agencies function, Willcox said.

Right now, thats what they do -- they hunt things, Willcox said. Yes, they also promote coexistence with grizzly bears and wolves, but theyre based around killing things. Thats their financial framework. But in other parts of the country, theres been great deal of reform of culture and financial makeup of state game agencies. People are saying whoa -- animals have a right to be treated differently. Isnt the hope, in having more diverse voices, that theres some promise of more representative democracy?

Unfortunately, theres no voting booth in the Twitterverse.

I guess what this shows is theres a lot of passion out there for bears, bear manager Gunther said. But all that passion didnt do anything for bear conservation or for Blaze.
LIVINGSTON  Sean O'Brien, 37, has been identified as the man killed in an officer-involved shooting in Livingston on Saturday night by Park County Coroner Al Jenkins.

O'Brien had lived in Livingston for the past eight or nine months, Jenkins said.

O'Brien was killed after he threatened police with a knife and attempts to subdue him with a taser failed, Police Chief Dale Johnston said.

At about 7:40 p.m., Livingston police responded to a report of a man threatening Shopko Hometown employees that "someone was going to die" if the police were not called to the store at 100 Washington St., Johnson said.

Officers found O'Brien outside of the store and threatened them with a knife, Johnson said

Police tried to subdue O'Brien using a Taser, but the attempt was ineffective, Johnson said in a news release.

The officer who approached the man started to back away and attempt to de-escalate the situation. The man refused to comply with commands and ran at the officer with a knife. Officers employed deadly force.

The officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated by the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office and Bozeman Police Department.

Johnson said it's common for the police department to call in outside assistance on major investigations. The officers' use of deadly force was not the reason for handing off the investigation to other agencies.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Jan. 3

At 12:52 p.m. an officer was dispatched to the 2900 block of Prospect Avenue for an assault on a minor. This is an active case and all parties involved are safe at this time.

At 12:51 p.m. an officer was dispatched to the 1300 Marshall Lane on the report of theft of a vehicle. This theft could have occurred between Dec. 31 and this date. If you have information on this case, please call the Helena Police Department.

At 4:03 p.m. an officer was dispatched to area of the 1400 block of Phoenix Road for a vehicle -- Red Blazer style -- driven by a male through the yard. If you have information on this case, please call the Helena Police Department.

At 5:37 p.m. an officer was dispatched to the 3100 block of Queen Anne Street on the report of shoplifting. At the conclusion of the investigation it was reported that a 34-year-old Helena man attempted to assault the staff from store to get away. He was charged with robbery and possession of toxic substance.

At 6:25 p.m. HPD responded to a call of theft and unauthorized use of a vehicle. At the conclusion of the call a 34-year-old female was placed under arrest for warrant.

6. At 7:15 p.m. HPD was dispatched to the 2700 block of Prospect Avenue on the report of a female trespassing on the property. At the conclusion of the investigation an 18-year-old woman was cited for trespass.

Jan. 4

At 12:08 a.m. an officer was dispatched to the 500 block of Rodney Street on the report of male who had entered a residence without permission. At the conclusion of the investigation a 42-year-old man was cited for trespass.

At 12:34 a.m. an officer was dispatched to the 3100 block of Queens Anne Street on the report of theft. During the conversation with Dispatch an altercation had taken place between the suspect and staff. Officers arrived and at the conclusion of the investigation. A 33-year-old man was placed under arrest for robbery.
A 57-year-old inmate is accused of biting a deputy at the county jail in Helena.

Patrick Mark Tracy of Butte faces a felony charge of assault on a peace officer or judicial officer.

Prosecutors allege the attack occurred Friday at the Lewis and Clark County Detention Center, where Tracy is being held for an alleged probation violation. Tracy is accused of pushing a detention officer, ripping the jailer's ear piece out and trying to punch the officer.

The jailer called for assistance from sheriff's deputies. According to documents filed in Lewis and Clark County Justice Court on Monday, a deputy attempted to restrain Tracy, who then bit the victim's right forearm, causing a small wound.

Tracy admitted to trying to entice the officers to fight with him. The documents note Tracy then said "he did not have teeth to bite the victim." The arresting deputy noted Tracy has teeth on the upper left side as well as across the bottom of his mouth.

Tracy refused to leave his cell for Monday's initial court appearance. He is being held on $25,000 bond.

Tracy's criminal record includes felony convictions of aggravated assault, burglary and criminal possession of dangerous drugs.
COLSTRIP  In the shadow of one of the West's largest coal-fired power plants, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock announced Tuesday the 27 members of an advisory council that will help shape the way the state plans to meet cuts in carbon dioxide pollution required by new federal rules.

No matter what ones opinion of the Clean Power Plan is, we cant afford to ignore it, Bullock said. We have far too much at stake.

Montana is one of 24 states suing the federal government over the new rules, but the state still needs to create its own path to compliance, Bullock said.

We must not let the federal government ultimately dictate a plan for us, and thats whatll happen if we dont come up with our own plan written by Montanans in a way that works for our state. The new standards did single out Montana and move the goalposts on us. Ive said time and time again its not fair for Montana.

Bullock, speaking from City Hall in Colstrip, made several references to this regions long ties to and reliance on both coal mining and the four units at the coal-fired electric plant that looms large over town.

This is the house that coal built, so its very appropriate to have it here, said state Sen. Duane Ankney, a member of the panel who lives here.

Ankney, a 32-year veteran of coal mines, said he wishes it was 20 years ago, when we worried about getting coal from point A to point B.  But today is a different day.  Personally, I hope they throw the whole thing out, but that being said we will have a plan.

Kathy Hadley, the executive director of the National Center for Appropriate Technology in Butte and conservation advocate and a council member, said the effects of climate change already are harming Montana.

NCAT coordinates many energy efficiency programs, including partnering with NorthWestern Energy to audit electricity use, identify financial incentives to make homes and business more energy efficient and recommend changes for NWE's customers.

Weve seen the increase in wildfires, we've seen the prolonged hoot-owl restrictions we all had last year, and that has huge impacts on our fish and wildlife resources, Hadley said.

If nothing is done, climate change could cost 11,000 jobs in Montana, she said. Those numbers come from a December report by Donovan Power Consulting and commissioned by the Montana Wildlife Federation.

Bullock said members of the council come from diverse backgrounds, including energy producers, utilities, organized labor representatives, conservationists, hunters and anglers, tribes and small business owners.

The governor implored the council to focus not on their differences and divisions, but the future. As Montanans, value the perspective of folks who may not always see things the way that we do, he said.

He stressed the preservation of Montanas existing energy-production landscape, as well as the need for the state to adapt efficiency measures.

Were fortunate to have some of nations largest coal reserves, highest-rated wind potential and a legacy of hydroelectric power, Bullock said.

He said the state doesnt have to choose between addressing climate change and continuing to produce power from coal.

Thats a false choice, Bullock said. I know that we can do both. But we need to stop assigning blame and we need to work together to find Montana solutions.

Anne Hedges, deputy director and lead lobbyist for the Montana Environmental Information Center, called the council a huge disappointment.

Its not going to come up with any solutions to the problem, she said. They appointed the same people who created the problem in the first place.

Hedges was referring to people on the council who are associated with the coal mining and coal-powered electricity industries.

The Clean Power Plan requires solutions and that means renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean energy and there are not representatives from the wind, solar and geothermal industry.

Hedges said the council and governor are incapable of creating a plan that will reduce emissions in Montana.

Id rather have a federal plan than the status quo, she said.

The economics of the electricity market will help create solutions going forward as well, Hedges said. Its far more expensive for NorthWestern Energy to get power out of Colstrips older units than it is from the Judith Gap wind farm, she said.

The market is taking care of itself.

While Montana works toward ways to comply with the Clean Power Plan, a more immediate issue threatens operations at the Colstrip plant.

A bill supported by Puget Sound Energy, a Washington state company, that could result in the closure of two of Colstrips four units will be heard by that states Legislature later this month.

PSE, which owns 50 percent of Colstrip Units 1 and 2 and 25 percent of Units 3 and 4, wants to buy out Talen Energys share of Unit 3, which means PSE would own 55 percent of Unit 3, and decommission the older Units 1 and 2.

Puget Sound, which is is being sued by the Sierra Club over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act, needs approval from Washingtons Legislature because of laws in that state that prevent utilities from buying electricity from coal-fired power plants to be used in that state.

A group of lawmakers from Washington toured the units at Colstrip in late November, Ankney said. A conference call will take place soon between Montana and Washington state legislators to discuss whats next, Ankney said.

My issue is, if you prematurely close this, not because of economic reasons or anything else, youre leaving about 350 people out of work, about 100 homes that dont have buyers, so youre really putting some economic hardship on the folks in Colstrip, Ankney said.
The year 2015 ended with a bang for 23 elk that found themselves fatally caught in the headlights of an oncoming Montana Rail Link engine 3 miles east of East Helena Wednesday night.

Once again, it was as dramatic a demonstration of Manifest Destiny at its most dangerous and ironic as you could imagine. You can't invent symbolism as powerful as this: A symbol of onrushing "civilization" pulverizing a symbol of unspoiled nature upon which it has encroached.

Making the best of a bad situation, the herd was probably traveling down the tracks because they are relatively clear of snow -- like humans who take delight in the opening of shipping lanes in once-frozen Arctic waters even though the melting of the polar icecaps in and of itself may prove disastrous for the race.

The elk are stuck with us and our trains, fences, roads, rifles and headlights. Our presence is not their fault, and we're only getting to be more of a nuisance with every passing day. So why shouldn't the elk take advantage of our tasty and conveniently located grains and grasses and travel down the shallow tracks our deadly machines create in the snow?

I read once that no wild animal -- predator or prey -- dies a peaceful death. They starve or get eaten. The smart and the strong stand a better chance of surviving longer in the natural order of things, but in the civilized order of things, all bets are off. In a collision, would you rather be the cow catcher or the elk?

There's no reason to assume that these were genetically inferior elk, doomed by Darwin. They were just in the wrong place at the worst possible time.

And what of the train? Was it a coal train spewing diesel fumes as it headed east to pick up more deadly carbon and create more dust to poison the air elk and humans alike are fond of breathing?

Or was it a Bakken-bound shale oil train. Did those 23 elk give up their lives for fracking, a practice that disrupts and threatens wildlands and may well kill us all slowly as it contaminates drinking water, pollutes the air with the carcinogen benzene and toxic hydrocarbons known to cause respiratory and neurological problems, leaves a carbon "footprint" 20 percent higher than coal and causes earthquakes?

Of course, the truth about fracking is notoriously difficult to discover. Its perpetrators assure us that it's harmless. If they're not hoodwinking us, maybe the worst thing about Bakken fracking and shale oil is that cheaper fuel encourages more transporting which in turn requires more fuel which in turn necessitates more extraction.

Why have we chosen Montana for our home? Why do we love it so? The Berkeley Pit? The Asarco slag heap? The man camps of Sidney? Or rather the elk, the mountains, the general lack of people, the clear lakes and rivers?

The trains, mines and sawmills are means to an end. They are not the end in and of themselves. Tell that to the 23 elk who died on the tracks last week.

***

Leah Gilman will now go out and hug a tree.
The election of two new city commissioners and municipal court Judge Bob Wood was completed Monday as all three took the oath of office.

Joining Wood for the ceremony were Rob Farris-Olsen and Ed Noonan, who were elected from a field of five candidates to fill two openings on the city commission.

Commissioners Katherine Haque-Hausrath and Matt Elsaesser declined to seek re-election and noted the demands on their time among reasons for their decisions.

People filtered into the meeting room on the third floor of the City-County Building for the ceremony singly and in pairs.

The preamble to the actual ceremony was marked by light conversation among members of the public, as well as officials from the city of Helena and Lewis and Clark County.

This was a time for handshakes and hugs, acknowledgements of those who hadnt been seen in a while.

Members of the Helena Police Department stood against the back wall of the meeting room and left the bench seats open that slowly filled as the count rose from the 50 people who had arrived previously.

In my years of service to you as your mayor, my world has gotten very small, Mayor Jim Smith said as he began his remarks.

I try to keep my eye on the little picture. I really have made it a point of trying to ignore or disregard all of the troubles of a challenged world these last 14 years. And even when you try and put your blinders on though, the rest of the world does intrude on your consciousness on a day-to-day level. So we all know the worlds an unsettled place at this very moment, Smith said.

There are a lot of places in the world where a change of government happens under conditions and circumstances not at all like this. So it makes what were doing here even more important and significant in my opinion. And these simple yet meaningful ceremonies represent our continuity of government, our ability to live together civilly and peacefully and to resolve our differences equitably and fairly and peacefully," Smith added.

This is what we have in Helena and Montana and the nation, Smith continued before saying, It is the most precious thing well ever have.

The meaningfulness and significance of a ceremony like this ought not to be taken lightly, he said before administering the oath of office.

Im honored and pleased to be here, Judge Bob Woods said afterward. Im honored to be a part of this city family that Ive known for a long time.

Noonan said he moved to Helena 37 years ago with his two best friends.

They spent their first night in a hotel and began their exploration of the city, he said before adding, Thats what Ive been doing ever since, and I have a beautiful sense of what this community is and I honor it and Im really excited to learn more about all of its depths."

The thing I honor most about it is the generosity of the community. I am especially honored to serve the people who do so many good things, Noonan said before introducing his guests who came for the ceremony.

Farris-Olsen acknowledged Elsaesser and Haque-Hausrath before recognizing his guests in the audience and then saying he looked forward to the next chapter in his life.

What awaits Farris-Olsen and the others on the commission is a discussion with City Manager Ron Alles on the future financial decisions the commission will make on behalf of the city.

In the next two or three weeks, a presentation is planned by Alles that will examine each of the citys departments and their top one or two issues or challenges.

You have decisions to make, Alles said of what will be required of the commissioners.

In the last 25 years that he's been a part of government, the city manager said, there has not been a year where there have been more resources than demands.

While noting that the city is in good financial shape, the commission will have decisions to make, choices to make, Alles said.

Every commission has had to make decisions on the use of resources, Alles said, adding this commissions no different.

The city manager noted during a preliminary budget presentation in May that he wanted to have a conversation with the commission that would address if and where the city needs to reduce its general fund expenses.

The general fund handles much of the expense for running the city outside of services such as those for solid waste, water and wastewater that are all funded by the fees they collect.

To help the city prepare for reducing spending in the fiscal year that will start on July 1, some of the vacancies in city staffing won't be filled until Alles and the commissioners have their discussion.

Keeping positions vacant temporarily allows the city to be proactive to address potential issues down the road, Alles had said in May.

Among larger issues that faced the commission in recent years is some $18 million in failed streets in the citys older parts of town. When the costs of curbs and gutters were added in, the cost rose to more than $26 million.

During preliminary budget discussions this year, Tim Magee, who has since retired as the citys administrative services director, said the city had only $525,400 to use toward $4 million in scheduled capital improvement projects.

Without new fees for service, increasing existing fees or expanding uses for existing fees such as for street maintenance, the city is limited in its ability to increase revenues to offset some of the loss in buying power because of higher costs for goods and services.

However, the city agreed to use the comprehensive capital improvement project fund this year along with other city funds for the $1.1 million purchase of a warehouse that will benefit several city departments.

The city also used the fund to purchase a new fire truck after receiving a grant that paid for most of another truck. The grant application had sought funds for two trucks.
A Montana Army veteran who lives in Anaconda is one of the leaders of the anti-federal-government militia group that has seized and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural southeastern Oregon.

Several media outlets, including the New York Times, report that Ryan Payne, 30, is one of an undetermined number of armed men who commandeered the refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns, Oregon indefinitely as part of an overall protest against government-owned lands and federal land-management overreach.

The latest armed protest is part of a long struggle between federal officials and local landowners and ranchers over property rights.

In addition to Payne, leaders of the occupation are three sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who engaged in a tense conflict with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights.

In 2014, Payne joined an armed anti-government group in Nevada that successfully kept the federal government from rounding up cattle Cliven Bundy had been grazing on federal land without a permit for some 20 years.

Bundy was later roundly criticized for making remarks that African Americans -- whom he termed "the Negro" -- were "better off as slaves" than as free citizens.

According to a June 2014 Missoula Independent story, Payne lives in a cabin south of Anaconda with his wife, two children and grandparents, although according to public records he also has a residence in downtown Anaconda.

He told The Independent that he founded Operation Mutual Aid, a loose coalition of militias and sympathetic individuals from across the United States, in 2013 with Pennsylvania resident Jerry Bruckhart, as a mechanism for using the power of the nations hundreds of disparate militias to defend all oppressed Americans."

Bundy accepted OMAs offer of support.

Payne told the Independent he served five years in the military, including time in the 18th Airborne Corps Long Range Surveillance Company. When a 2005 mission pursuing an unspecified intelligence target reportedly backfired, leaving his team unexpectedly in the line of fire and without planned backup, Payne said he soured on the military.

His suspicions eventually led him to anti-government actions, like the Bundy standoff against federal officials that drew many armed supporters and media attention.

"I discovered that I was working for the wrong team if I were in the pursuit of liberty and freedom," he told the Independent in 2014, "because we're the great oppressors of the world right now, unfortunately. We're the ones who are pushing oppression upon a lot of the world. And I have found that out, especially once I got out and I can look in and I can see what we're doing. It just isn't right."

Over the weekend at the Oregon refuge, Payne told The New York Times, We will be here for as long as it takes ... People have talked about returning land to the people for a long time. Finally, someone is making an effort in that direction.

Oregonlive.com reported Payne claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents" in the Bundy standoff. "He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move.

A protest on Saturday in the town of Burns preceded the occupation of the refuge. Oregonlive reported that an estimated 300 marchers -- militia and local citizens -- paraded to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond, Jr., and Steven Hammond.

On social media, the protesters have been labeled everything from patriots to armed militia to terrorists.

Payne changed his Facebook profile over the weekend to indicate he is "Response Coordinator at Operation Mutual Defense" and that he now lives in "Burns, Oregon." An effort to reach him through Facebook Monday was unsuccessful.

While he characterized the group as not violent, Payne told The New York Times that the militia members had discussed the possibility of the standoff turning violent.

Referring to the federal government, Payne told the Times:

If they think thats worth bringing their armies in here and harming or fouling that endeavor, well just have to read the Constitution and look at our Bibles and see whos on the right side.
In 2013, Americans learned about a new epidemic, affluenza. As psychologist G. Dick Miller explained the phenomenon, children of wealthy parents are taught not the golden rule but "we have the gold, we make the rules."

The unsympathetic carrier of the affliction, Ethan Couch, Miller's client, then 16, pleaded guilty in 2013 to manslaughter charges after he killed four innocent people in a drunken driving accident. Prosecutors recommended that Couch serve 20 years in prison. The sentencing judge said she was not moved by the affluenza defense, but nonetheless, she chose to sentence the son of privilege to 10 years of drug- and alcohol-free probation, as well as a stint in a rehabilitation center.

"You're basically saying that bad character is a defense or at least a mitigation to a criminal case," said Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

The lesson of the success of the affluenza defense is: If you think you have so much money that the law does not apply to you, you may be right.

Sometime after Couch emerged from a pricey Southern California rehab clinic known for offering equine therapy, yoga and martial arts instruction, Couch and his mother, Tonya, 48, headed to Mexico, whence young Couch missed a Dec. 10 appointment with his probation officer.

The pair took off after a video that showed young Couch playing beer pong went viral; drinking is a violation of his probation terms. Bristling at the young man's light sentence for an offense that left four dead, prosecutors have been trying to move Couch's case to the adult criminal justice system, where probation violations invite tougher consequences, when he turns 19 in April. So the Couches went for the border; after they threw themselves a going-away party.

This week, Mexican authorities detained mother and son, who had changed their appearance. Whereas Ethan Couch may have to do up to four months for violating juvenile probation when he is returned to Texas, Tonya Couch faces two to 10 years if convicted on a felony charge of hindering apprehension.

The Couch family's arrogance is so offensive that most readers, no doubt, are rooting for the harshest sentence possible for mother and son. Ethan's defense team flaunted its belief that the poor little rich kid shouldn't have to go to prison because he was a poor little rich kid. Few would call the outcome justice. Couch evaded a prison sentence even though he tested at three times the legal alcohol limit (for drivers 21 or older) and had traces of Valium in his system when his pickup truck swerved into a stalled SUV owned by Breanna Mitchell, 24. Mitchell died along with three good Samaritans who were trying to help her, including youth pastor Brian Jennings, 41, Hollie Boyles, 52, and her 21-year-old daughter, Shelby.

Anyone outside that courtroom could have predicted Couch would find himself in trouble with the law in short order. The affluenza defense demonstrated a refusal to face responsibility for a crime spree that started when Couch and friends stole some beer and ended with four corpses. Of course he ran. He's not just some kid who screwed up. He's a criminal.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner spent some time out of the country over the holidays.

That isnt shocking news, except that the Rauner administration didnt make public where he was going for what was probably a well-deserved vacation. That raised a few eyebrows around the state, especially because Rauner had vowed to be the most transparent governor Illinois has seen.

Its a legitimate question, however, of where transparency ends and invasion of privacy begins.

The governors public schedule, including his appointment book, should be public record. Any citizen should be able to view who the governor met with, when and for how long. Thats not currently the case and the governors office is involved in a dispute with Illinois Times magazine over the accessibility of his daily calendar.

At the same time, governors need some private time. Theres no legal requirement that a governor should have to share every bit of family time or time off with the public.

The Rauner administration may be especially sensitive to the issue because the governor is a very rich man. He owns several homes around the world and the governors handlers may well have been trying to avoid the image of the governor vacationing in some exotic locale in the middle of the states budget stalemate.

And the governors political opponents have not been shy about criticizing Rauner for reaping the rewards of his successful business career. Whats ironic is that many of those critics are also quite wealthy, although certainly not in Rauners class.

Although the political comments might sting, were not sure most Illinois residents are that concerned about the wealth of any governor or where he vacations. At this point, citizens are more concerned about a governors accomplishments than the size of his bank account.

While the governor may well be within his legal rights not to share where he spent his vacation, wed encourage him in the future to let people know.

It would show that the governor understands he works for the people. Most of us tell our bosses where we are spending our vacations and even share phone numbers and other contact information. The governor doesnt have to go to that extent, but he could let folks know which country hes visiting.

Finally, and this is important for Rauner, it would demonstrate that the governor understands hes not a private business person any longer. Rauner can better prove hes now a public servant by performing acts that make that clear.

Its admittedly a small thing, but the governor should voluntarily tell folks where he spends his vacations.
NORMAL  Demolition of the old Feeney Dining Center is under way at Illinois State University as interior work continues in the closed residence halls on either side.

The plan is to do Feeney first, said David Gill, ISU director of facilities planning. That will be followed by Whitten-Hamilton, then Atkin-Colby residence halls along busy Main Street in Normal.

It's going to take awhile, he said.

Gill said Feeney's demolition should be done by mid-February. Whitten-Hamilton isn't expected to be down until April 1, with Atkin-Colby following about a month later, he said.

Dore & Associates is the contractor for the $3.9 million project.

The residence halls have been vacant for three years, and Normal City Manager Mark Peterson said it will be a positive to have the buildings down and the property cleaned up.

The city expects to start construction this spring on a fire station south of the buildings site. Peterson said Normal hopes to have the station completed by the end of the year, although it could go into early 2017.

Gill said asbestos abatement is finished at Feeney and Whitten-Hamiliton, but is not quite complete at Atkin-Colby, adding the contractor also is doing interior demolition, such as taking out nonload-bearing walls and partitions.

Although there was speculation, serious or joking, that the 10-story buildings could be imploded, perhaps using the event as a fundraiser, that wasn't really an option. Gill explained that implosion wasn't possible because the site is next to a state highway, which would have to be closed, something the state doesn't want to do.

Instead, the demolition method is up to the contractor, and Gill said, most likely, will be a large wrecking ball.

A separate contractor will be hired for the next phase: landscaping, a parking lot and other improvements.

Peterson said there is continuing interest in the Main Street corridor, noting, "Over the past 10 years, the corridor has seen a lot of new investment," including restaurants and apartment buildings.

Normal is hoping to work with the Illinois Department of Transportation on a study of pedestrian routes to improve the sidewalk network and pedestrian crossings, he said.

The city also wants to do beautification work along the corridor, said Peterson, noting that "will dovetail well with the long-range plan of the university."

Gill said, The Campus Master Plan calls for the site to house the Mennonite College of Nursing building.

But when that building will be built is anyone's guess.

The college is spread out over several locations on campus. A building to bring the classrooms, offices and lab spaces under one roof has been on the university's capital improvements request list for several years. It is highly dependent on the state having a capital projects program.

In the capital improvements request for fiscal year 2017 approved by the ISU Board of Trustees in October, the Mennonite College of Nursing building was ranked second on the university's priority list, behind rehabilitation of Milner Library.

The estimated cost of the building in that latest request is $28.3 million.

Whitten-Hamilton opened in 1960, followed two years later by Atkin-Colby. Together, they housed about 1,500 students. Their life as residence halls ended in the summer of 2012. Compliance with a state law requiring the buildings to be retrofitted with sprinklers by 2013 was deemed too expensive by university officials.
The homepage of Canadian General Tower, Ltd.

Fast Facts

 Canadian General Tower, or CGT, is based out of Ontario, Canada.

 It manufactures and supplies coated films for automotive and industrial applications.

 It has received $2 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund and two incentives from New Braunfels and the 4B board worth $1.1 million.

 Comal County Commissioners Court also approved giving CGT a 60 percent rebate of county property taxes for 10 years.

 As part of the incentive, CGT will invest around $50 million in facility machinery and equipment by January of 2018 with an expected space of 240,000 square feet.

 A second phase is another $20 million in capital investment by 2024 and $10 million by 2033, resulting in a 400,000 square-foot facility and $80 million in capital investment.
Thursday, January 7, 7pm (Akanat Cafe, Koghbatsi 28, Yerevan)

Asl Cavusoglu is a conceptual artist whose installations have been exhibited in Paris, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, London, Vienna, and New York City. Her recent work, Red/Red was part of the 2015 Istanbul Biennial and received high praise from various media outlets.

Red/Red uses the paint vordan karmir that the artist obtained from Dr. Armen Shahakyan from Madenataran. The installation tells a story through its color. Cavusoglus work often challenges the ways in which history and culture can be distorted and manipulated by authoritarian powers. Her installations explore the individuals struggle to reclaim truth, memory, and freedom.



The event will be moderated by Arto Vaun, Senior Lecturer at the American University of Armenia.

Admission: Free / Talk will be in English with Armenian translation.
BLACK RIVER FALLS  A group of landowners has officially launched its effort to halt frac sand mining in Jackson County.

A petition filed in Jackson County Circuit Court last month says county officials havent followed proper procedures for appealing zoning decisions and should re-consider a challenge of a rail spur for sand transportation in the town of Adams.

Attorney Tom Lister, who filed the court action, said the interested landowners wanted to begin with the rail spur because overturning its approval likely would help halt its associated mining operation in the town of Alma.

We believe that the rail spur will, upon a full hearing, through the (court action), be avoided, and if there is no rail spur, theres far less likelihood of a mine, said Lister, who filed the action on behalf of Adams residents Ronald and Susan Kloss.

Land in Adams was rezoned to allow for the rail spur, the property for which is adjacent to the Kloss property. The couple gave notice of an appeal of the rezoning decision within 30 days, but the notice didnt prompt a hearing in front of the countys Board of Adjustment, which Jackson County established years ago to provide an avenue to challenge zoning and land conservation decisions.

Last weeks filing in circuit court asks a judge to rule that the county follow its own procedures for the Board of Adjustment. Jackson County Judge Anna Becker already has recused herself from the civil case, and there will be no court dates until a new judge is assigned.

The court filing alleges the county has repeatedly misrepresented the procedure for appeals to those interested in them, instead suggesting that their only recourse was another type of challenge in circuit court.

The county has intentionally failed to do that because they didnt want people appealing the decisions they were making and they were instead telling people that their only remedy was to go to court, said Lister, a former Jackson County judge. (Going to circuit court) offers a very limited review and a strong presumption in favor of the agency decision, whereas the Board of Adjustment has to provide a full, recorded evidentiary hearing where we intend to show that there was and has been substantial misconduct by county and town officials and their attorneys.

Zoning and land conservation officials couldnt be reached for comment as of press time Monday.

The court filing will be the first of several landowners plan to file to halt in-progress mines, which they argue are unnecessary public nuisances. The group is considering taking action against sand mines, including those in the towns of Alma, Curran and Hixton, and the work also has involved working with environmental advocacy groups in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., in efforts to hold public officials accountable, Lister said.

Were trying to clean up government, he said.
Propeller Health, with a sensor system for asthma inhalers, is getting another $21.5 million infusion from investors.
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
Repairing or replacing parts of the Merrimac bridge to ensure future railroad service through Sauk County is estimated to cost at least $7.6 million, a state official says.

The source of those funds has yet to be determined, but would likely include mainly state government and railroad money.

But again, its too early to tell what work will be done, when it needs to be done, and what source of funds will be used, Wisconsin Department of Transportation Railroads and Harbors Section Chief David Simon said.

In a letter to Sauk County Board Chair Marty Krueger, DOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb said his agency recently completed a review that favored repair or replacement of major components of the Merrimac bridge.

Simon said the current estimate for that project is $7.6 million, although that could go higher depending on which repairs and replacements are selected. Typically, upgrades to a state-owned line such as the one that runs through Sauk County are funded by a Railroad Preservation grant.

The railroad  Wisconsin & Southern in this case  must apply for the grant. And the project is then funded with 80 percent state funds and 20 percent railroad funds.

Analysis completed

With the interest of ensuring rail service to Baraboo and Reedsburg continues, the DOT recently completed a cost-benefit analysis of alternatives involving the rail bridge in Merrimac and the separate, defunct line that runs through Sauk Prairie. The two tracks meet south of Baraboo before the adjoined line continues up through Baraboo and Reedsburg.

Based on that analysis, the DOT decided that the line currently in use over the Merrimac bridge was the best long term option. But the state said major components of the bridge will have to be repaired or replaced.

As part of its inquiry, the DOT contracted with the engineering firm Ayers Associates in September to refresh structural analysis the firm conducted in 2010 and 2014. Engineers identified structural upgrades that would extend the life of the service life of the bridge for 40 years.

However, the load capacity of the bridge would not be upgraded, as railroad representatives have previously requested.

A study done by Ayers Associates in 2010 determined that the bridge should be replaced if the railroad wants to increase traffic and haul heavier loads. The study said the bridge could continue to be used at its 2010 load capacity for another 25 years with an investment of $4.2 million, although railroad officials said that option was not desirable.

The most recent study compared the Merrimac bridge to the Sauk Prairie line from a cost perspective.

Calculations showed that over a 40-year time horizon, the Merrimac Bridge route is substantially more cost effective than restoring rail service to the abandoned Sauk Line that runs through Sauk City, Prairie du Sac, and the now defunct Badger Army Ammunition Plant, Gottlieb wrote in his letter to Krueger.

Even with a 105-year analysis that included the cost of replacing the bridge, the Merrimac route had the lowest life cycle cost, the DOT determined.

Future service ensured

Upgrades to the Merrimac bridge not only would ensure future rail service through Sauk County, but would allow progress on conversion of the Sauk Prairie line into a multi-use trail that will be known as the Great Sauk Trail.

In consideration of the Departments commitment to the Merrimac bridge route and the resulting obsolescence of the Sauk rail corridor, WisDOT will proceed with a plan to rail-bank the Sauk rail line by removing the railroad track and entering into an interim rails-to-trails agreement with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Gottlieb wrote. The interim trail agreement will contain language that preserves the corridor as a federally rail-banked corridor until such time rail service is restored.

During a meeting last month, Sauk County Board Chair Marty Krueger said the villages of Sauk City and Prairie du Sac each have committed $207,500 to the first segment of the trail. And the county board may consider a resolution later this month to pledge the same amount.

Krueger said a fundraising group known as the Friends of the Great Sauk Trail is prepared not only to fill the gap in the funding for segment one, but intend(s) to go after raising enough money to actually see the project through Badger to Devils Lake.

Simon said the rail banking process  which includes removal of the track  can sometimes pay for itself with the scrap value of the steel rails.

In other words, a contractor may choose to bid the project at zero dollars because (they) can get paid by selling the steel rails, Simon said. This is yet to be determined as well.
When Hamilton's on the Square lost its talented executive chef Rob Grisham, known for the seven years he spent as head chef at Brasserie V on Monroe Street, it had another experienced chef waiting in the wings.

Luckily for Josh Kregness, 29, who opened Hamilton's in August at 101 N. Hamilton St., he had sous chef Adam Naumann to fall back on.

When Grisham left abruptly in October to start his own meal preparation and catering operation, Naumann was able to step up and take over the kitchen.

The Baltimore native "is really talented with meat fabrication and seafood preparations and we're really focusing on a lot of fresh seafood, especially Friday nights and oftentimes throughout the week as well," Kregness said.

"I'm just so happy with how things are," he said. "It was a good change, it was for the better. The collaboration is a lot better in the kitchen."

Naumann has been with Kregness from the beginning. He didn't have much input in creating the menu when Grisham was there, but has now almost completely revamped Hamilton's menu.

"We didn't want to take everything off because he got some pretty good reviews so we didn't want to alienate the people who liked it," Naumann said about Grisham's menu. "Right now it's a 100 percent mine, but in the beginning we kept a couple things."

Grisham quit in between when the reviews were conducted and when they were published, Naumann said. "We couldn't just take the stuff off."

Before Hamilton's, Naumann had experience designing menus. He was executive chef at La Brioche True Food on University Avenue and worked as head butcher for Jacobson Brothers meat counter inside Brennan's Farm Market on the city's West Side. He also did brief stints with the Fountain on State Street and Bonfyre American Grille on the Beltline.

For his part, Kregness was a longtime employee at The Library Cafe & Bar on campus and left his role as co-owner and general manager of the Free House Pub in Middleton to open Hamilton's.

Kregness talked up the Cuban sandwich that is popular on the lunch menu with homemade bread, pickles, aioli and mustard. Naumann roasts the pork himself. "It seems to be a crowd pleaser," Kregness said.

Years ago, Naumann went to music school in Clearwater, Florida, in the Tampa Bay area. "When I came up here, nobody did them," he said. "It's a pretty special sandwich for sure. If you're from that area it's pretty legit."
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Over nearly 40 years, RenewAire has built a healthy bottom line by selling products that help make for a healthier planet.

Less healthy are the taxpayer-subsidized economic development programs that have become such an integral part of Americas free-market economy that even company officials with qualms about the programs know they wouldnt be doing right by their shareholders and employees to ignore them.

RenewAire makes building ventilation equipment that helps reduce energy consumption. It is planning to move from its site on Helgesen Drive in Madison to a vacant building in the Waunakee Business Park and plans to spend some $12.6 million to buy and improve the property.

Greasing the move would be a tax incremental financing deal the Waunakee Village Board is expected to take up next month. It would return 50 percent of the new property taxes generated at the site  the increment  to the company, or about $900,000 over the 23-year life of the deal.

RenewAire president Chuck Gates told this newspaper hes seen at least 10 percent yearly growth in each of the last 16 years. Given the reality of human-caused global warming and the related need to reduce fossil fuel consumption, the companys future looks just as bright.

Im sure we would be successful without it, he told me, referring to TIF assistance, but we assumed we could get it for every site the company considered moving to. Shame on me if I dont make it a part of the equation, he said.

You cant blame a company for seeking to take advantage of all the resources available for expanding business, employing more people and making more money. Those are all good things, especially in capitalism.

Gates also said he never sought to play one communitys offer of assistance off anothers to try to get as much as he could, and that hes conflicted about the whole TIF process.

His ambivalence in understandable. TIF has changed dramatically since it was developed in the 1950s  going from a government tool to encourage renewal in blighted areas that, but for government assistance, no private developer would touch, to a kind of gimme for developers used in everything from new, greenfield construction to massive redevelopment projects in already booming Downtown areas.

Waunakee Village Administrator Todd Schmidt said its not like the village is taking on debt or digging into its general fund for the $900,000.

The incentive is funded by the project itself, he said.

Not giving back any of the additional taxes generated by RenewAire would be even better, though, and, in theory, the way things are supposed to work. I wonder how many fire trucks or school building expansions $900,000 could buy.

The problem is that any village that adopts such an old-fashioned approach is sure to lose out on economic development opportunities as long as every other village, city and state is willing to open its checkbook.

A mayor I once knew was fond of defending TIF and other incentives by saying 50 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing.

The question is: When did 50 percent start qualifying as success?
A Mazomanie teenager pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing his former girlfriends sister and her mothers boyfriend, setting up a two-hour sentencing hearing that was scheduled for March.

Dean M. Sutcliffe, who turned 18 on New Years Eve, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree intentional homicide for the Feb. 9 shooting deaths of Ariyl Brady, 16, and Chris Schwichtenberg, 39, at their home at the Rio Valley Estates trailer park just outside Mazomanie.

As Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan asked him for his pleas to each of the charges, Sutcliffe responded, Guilty, your honor, and Guilty as well, your honor.

Flanagan did not immediately impose life sentences, the mandatory sentence for first-degree intentional homicide. Instead, he ordered a pre-sentence investigation by the state Department of Corrections, as requested by Assistant District Attorney Paul Barnett, and set sentencing for March 18.

While the life sentence is mandatory under state law, Flanagan can set a time after which Sutcliffe would be eligible for release from prison on extended supervision. The minimum time he would have to spend behind bars before he is eligible is 20 years, but Flanagan could set that time further in the future or rule that he will never be eligible. That will be determined on the sentencing date.

There was little else done during the brief plea hearing, which was attended by members of Sutcliffes family and relatives of Brady and Schwichtenberg.

The case, which had been set for a trial in April, was long delayed while the defense sought an experts opinion about whether an insanity defense was warranted in the case. While Sutcliffe acknowledged to Flanagan that he takes medication for a mental illness, he said it did not interfere with his ability to understand what was taking place in the courtroom.

A criminal complaint and other court documents state that Sutcliffe had recently broken up with his girlfriend, Amanda Brady, and blamed the breakup on her mother, Mary Brady, and Schwichtenberg, and that he also blamed Ariyl Brady.

During the two weeks before he shot Ariyl Brady and Schwichtenberg, court documents state, Sutcliffe sent repeated harassing text messages to Mary Brady and to Schwichtenberg. Then, after the shootings, he told Mary Brady, None of this would have happened if you wouldnt have messed with me and Mandy, and, I warned you something like this would happen.

Mary Brady told investigators that she and Schwichtenberg had encouraged Amanda to break up with Sutcliffe after noticing changes in her behavior, and said her mood improved after the breakup.
A bill seeking a $25 million construction grant for a planned $125 million College of Osteopathic Medicine in Jefferson was introduced Monday.

The measure, by Rep. Cody Horlacher, R-Mukwonago, requires the college to raise $75 million before the state money can be approved.

Organizer Mark Lefebvre declined to say how much of the $75 million has been raised, but he said the momentum behind the college is great.

Lefebvre and co-organizer Jennifer DeKrey, former executives with UW Foundation, say they plan to open the college in 2018, with 150 to 160 students the first year and eventually 600 students at a time.

In December 2014, the city of Jefferson gave the college 100 acres near the citys business park with conditions, such as raising adequate funds and securing accreditation.

It would be the states third medical school, joining UW School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison and the Milwaukee-based Medical College of Wisconsin, which is opening campuses in Central Wisconsin and Green Bay.

Lefebvre and DeKrey say the osteopathic college will help Wisconsin reduce a projected shortage of 2,200 doctors by 2030. They say the college could attract students who dont get into Wisconsins two medical schools, go to other medical schools and end up practicing out of state.

Leaders of the states two medical schools oppose the osteopathic college, saying they are addressing the doctor shortage and there arent enough Medicare-funded residency slots to train doctors after graduation.

Horlachers bill, co-sponsored by four Assembly members and two state senators, was referred to the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities.

A separate plan for a Wisconsin College of Osteopathic Medicine in Jefferson was dropped in 2013 after financial troubles and leadership changes.

Osteopathic doctors are like other doctors, but they often focus on disease prevention and sometimes do hands-on manipulations.
Gov. Scott Walker, in keeping with past practice, wont pardon Steven Avery or his nephew for a 2005 homicide that has received widespread attention after a new documentary raised questions about the case.

Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick said Tuesday that Walker has not seen the 10-part documentary, Making a Murderer, which was released last month on Net- flix, and emphasized that the events in the film took place before Walker took office.

Early in his administration, Governor Walker made the decision not to issue pardons, Patrick said. Those who feel they have been wrongly convicted can seek to have their convictions overturned by a higher court.

The Avery documentary has generated renewed interest in the case. A change.org petition asking President Barack Obama and Walker to pardon Steven Avery has received more than 270,000 supporters as of Tuesday afternoon. The case was tried in state, not federal, court so Obama doesnt have the power to grant a pardon.

Walkers policy against pardons has been well-documented. It included refusing to pardon Eric Pizer, an Iraq War veteran who couldnt become a police officer because of a felony conviction for punching someone in a bar fight a decade earlier.

The documentary chronicles the investigation and trial in the murder of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach, whose charred remains and vehicle were found on Averys property in November 2005. Averys nephew Brendan Dassey was also convicted of homicide, sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse in the case, which drew nationwide interest because Avery was previously exonerated with DNA evidence after spending 18 years in prison for a 1985 sexual assault.

The film includes exclusive access to Averys family and focuses on his defense attorneys contention that the members of the Manitowoc Sheriffs Office ignored other possible suspects and planted evidence to ensure a conviction. At the time, Avery was suing Manitowoc County for $36 million for his wrongful conviction.

Those who dispute the framing defense, including former Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz, who prosecuted the case to avoid a possible conflict of interest, emphasize Averys DNA was found in Halbachs vehicle, her DNA was found on a bullet that investigators matched to Averys gun and that Avery had asked specifically for Halbach to be sent over to photograph a vehicle for Auto Trader Magazine.

Averys appeals have been rejected all the way up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Dassey, who did not testify against Avery, was convicted based on statements he made to police during hours of interrogation that he later recanted when he took the stand in his own trial. His case is being appealed in federal court.

State Rep. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, who represents the Mishicot area where Averys salvage yard is located, said he hasnt watched the documentary and doesnt know if he will. He said hes received a handful of emails about the film, but all of them have been from people outside of his district.

I wouldnt say Ive received any sort of outcry from my constituents that anything was wrongly decided, Jacque said. He added that many Wisconsinites already know about the Steven Avery case and the documentary brought it to a wider audience.

Having followed the Avery and Dassey cases in 2007, it seemed as if the burden of proof was met in both convictions, Jacque said.

In response to the films central allegations of police planting evidence in the Avery case, Jacque said its unfair to cast aspersions simply by saying somebody might have done that.

State Journal reporter Mark Sommerhauser contributed to this report.
Before Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley became a judge, she and fellow attorneys urged candidates for the states highest court not to sign a so-called clean-campaign pledge pushed by the state bar association.

Bradley and Milwaukee attorneys Don Daugherty, David Simon and Daniel Kelly said in a 2008 opinion column that a pledge put forward by the State Bar of Wisconsins Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee shouldnt be signed by candidates because it infringes on free speech.

The Bar should not try to regulate speech by judicial candidates in a way that would be plainly unconstitutional if done by the government, the four wrote. The far better course is for candidates and their supporters to provide information they believe appropriate  good, bad, even ugly  and let voters decide.

The committee was created in 2007 by the bar associations then-president, Tom Basting Sr., as a self-appointed watchdog group that tried to referee that years race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. The committee was disbanded in 2009, according to the bar association.

Basting and his group issued seven statements reacting to advertising in the race that it deemed false or to have impugned the reputation of either candidate or the court.

His group was criticized, mostly by conservatives, for being biased toward incumbent Justice Louis Butler, who signed the committees clean-campaign pledge, and against then-Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman, who did not.

The committee issued a strong statement decrying one of Gablemans ads, and it found fault with commercials run by both liberal and conservative third-party groups.

Gableman won the race but received an ethics charge from the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which said one of his ads attacking Butler violated the state Code of Judicial Conduct by lying about Butlers record.

The 2008 column, published before that ad was released, was co-authored by Bradley and said no matter how well-intentioned, the pledge will effectively prevent Wisconsin voters from obtaining the fullest information possible for deciding who is best-suited to serve on our highest court.

Bradley in the column said the bar association shouldnt determine when speech crosses the line.

Although it pays lip service to the First Amendment, the pledge will force candidates to choose between exercising their free speech rights as they see fit and facing a possible scolding by the committee, they wrote.

The column noted the pledge should not preserve the judiciarys image (at) the expense of free speech.

That raises the question why the committee should be deciding for voters when words are poorly chosen, the four wrote. The committees task of determining conclusively and objectively whether statements made during a campaign are false or unfair is quixotic, at best.

Bradley said last week in an interview that she and the fellow attorneys wrote the column to address the creation of the committee, which they believed to be unique.

It was rather unprecedented in Wisconsin and somewhat alarming in its attempt to stifle free speech and First Amendment rights, Bradley said. She said the group worried the pledge would end up restricting the amount of information available to voters.

The column refers to a portion of the pledge that asks candidates to publicly disavow advertisements that impugn the integrity of the states judicial system, another candidate or erode public trust and confidence in the independence and impartiality of the judiciary by verbally or visually attempting to lead voters to believe that a candidate will decide issues or cases in a predetermined manner.

Bradley said she relies on the states judicial code of ethics, which includes rules for judicial candidates campaign activity. The pledge relies on much of the codes language.

Liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now executive director Scot Ross said the column brings Bradleys integrity into question, and characterized her column as endorsing lying in campaigns.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joe Donald, who also is running for the Supreme Court seat Bradley is seeking, said through a spokesman he would have no problem signing the pledge.

This pledge is no different than the pledge my mother held me to when I was a child growing up, he said. Wisconsin voters deserve to be treated with respect, and I intend to conduct my campaign with the same integrity that I have demonstrated during my two decades as a judge.

Melissa Mulliken, spokeswoman for state court of appeals judge and Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg, said Kloppenburg would sign the pledge if it made clear that it was meant to apply to advertisements that are untrue or inaccurate.

She said Kloppenburg is scrupulous in adhering to the states code of judicial ethics.

In addition, our campaign already adheres to the fundamental precepts laid out in the pledge, Mulliken said.
After the grim foreign-policy news from the Mideast in 2015, can we hope for anything better in the new year?

That would be a relief, after a year in which the Islamic State thrived amid the Mideast chaos and civil wars that flooded Europe with 1 million refugees, half of them from Syria.

So is there any reason to expect things to improve in 2016? After all, in December the worlds major powers agreed on a framework plan for ending the Syrian civil war, right? And the Iraqi army (retrained, yet again, by U.S. officers) made some progress against the Islamic State last month, didnt it? And Iran is implementing the nuclear deal it reached with the West, Russia and China, right?

All true, and I dont want to be a wet blanket, but its hard to be optimistic. Well know soon whether these developments foretell a less violent 2016. Here are the signs to watch for in the coming months:

On Syria. Despite the framework for a peace accord, there is little sign the combatants or their foreign backers are ready to make the necessary compromises. Russia wants to keep the murderous Bashar Assad in power by carpet-bombing all the Sunni rebel groups that oppose him  except for the Islamic State. That way, Moscow can present the West and Sunni Arab states with only two options  Assad or the jihadis  and tell them to choose.

That brutal approach may appeal to Donald Trump, who has declared his admiration for Vladimir Putin, but it wont stop the Islamic State or end the civil war.

Why so? Because neither Putin nor Assads other best ally, Iran, is willing to make any concessions to Syrias Sunni population, which makes up the majority of the country. Sunni civilians are being devastated by Assads barrel bombs and by indiscriminate Russian bombs that target hospitals and markets. These war crimes are driving more civilians out of the country or into the Islamic States ranks.

There has to be something in this deal for Syrias Sunnis and their Arab backers, who view the war as an attempt by Shiites (Iran and its proxy, Assad) to dominate the region and its majority of Sunni Arabs. Moreover, Syrian Sunnis can no longer live under the rule of the man who tortured and murdered them by the tens of thousands. Until these grievances are addressed, the fighting will go on.

So watch to see whether a formula emerges that would ease Assad out of power before elections two years from now and replace him with another (more broadly acceptable) strongman. And watch to see whether the Syrian and Russian militaries finally get serious about targeting the Islamic State. I doubt either will happen.

Take note of whether Putin has a Plan B that might accept a de facto partition of the country into three parts: a rump Syria ruled by Assad, an autonomous Kurdish region, and a Sunni area in which the rest of the world would aid non-Islamic State militias to oust the Islamic State. That might be a plan Sunni Arabs and the West could consider as the least bad option. Otherwise, the fighting will continue and the Islamic State caliphate will survive.

On Iraq. Yes, the Iraqi armys (not yet complete) retaking of Ramadi, a Sunni city seized by the Islamic State in May, is a belated step forward. Given the difficulties of making headway against the Islamic State forces in Syria, it is essential to first rout them in Iraq.

But the Ramadi victory is only a first step.

In retaking the city, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had to fend off efforts by Iranian-backed Shiite militias to spearhead the offensive, which would have terrified Ramadis Sunni inhabitants and undercut the operation. To hold the city, Abadi will need to empower Sunni tribes in the province. And to liberate Mosul, a much larger city that is the economic heart of the so-called caliphate, it will be necessary to arm Sunni tribes in the north, something that still is not being done.

So watch to see if Abadi derives enough political capital from the Ramadi victory to start reintegrating Sunnis into Iraqs political and military system.

One key: whether he can circumvent Irans proxy politicians and militias in Iraq and authorize Sunni tribes to form an official national guard.

And watch to see if President Barack Obama puts full U.S. muscle and focus behind this effort. With a Sunni Arab ground force in Iraq there could be real pushback against the Islamic State in 2016. Otherwise, the Islamic State will remain in Mosul for a long, long time.

On Iran. Yes, Tehran is implementing key terms of the nuclear accord  sending its low-enriched and 20 percent-enriched uranium out of the country to Russia and dismantling thousands of centrifuges as well as its plutonium reactor.

This is big stuff  Iran was heading inexorably toward the point where it had enough fissile material to make a bomb, and now that threat is pushed back for at least 10 to 15 years. Most experts believe Iran will not cheat on this deal in any major way in the initial years because it wants to get and keep sanctions relief.

But Tehran will continue to pursue its own regional interests, such as arming Hezbollah and sending fighters to Syria and Iraq  behavior that is not covered by the accord, and must be countered independently of it. So watch to see if hard-liners in Congress use this as an excuse to try to undermine the deal as they are already attempting.

And pay attention to the results of Irans elections in late February, which might undercut hard-liners in Tehran who want to do the same.

In other words, it is possible there might be better foreign-policy news this year from the Mideast, but not very probable. That doesnt mean we cant hope.
To be a princess--spoiled and adored! Few real princesses have enjoyed such a life. The real princesses have been lost in our love of fairytales. Princess Palace explores their lives and loves, adventures and tragedies. Lets celebrate and commiserate with these most (un?)fortunate of women.
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-05 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] UN Adviser on Cyprus Eide in Athens [02] Greece to focus on green business programmes [03] No cuts in pensions, Labour minister says [01] UN Adviser on Cyprus Eide in Athens UN Special Adviser for Cyprus Espen Barth Eide is currently in Athens to meet with Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias. The meeting will take place at 15:00 at the foreign ministry. The two officials will discuss the latest developments in the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot negotiations over the solution of the Cyprus issue. Kotzias has clearly stated in the past that the matter of the guarantees as well as the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Cyprus constitute a fundamental prerequisite for the solution of the Cyprus issue. On her part, Cyprus has expressed the same position in contrast with Turkey which insists the guarantor powers to remain on Cyprus. [02] Greece to focus on green business programmes Greece plans to use part of new community funds to support green sectors of production which have been either downgraded or remain in hypnosis, Economy Deputy Minister Alexis Haritsis said. In an interview to Greenagenda.gr, Haritsis said that Greece has neglected the dimension of environmental and social sustainability of development interventions although there were and still are serious needs and several possibilities. In this framework, the management of new EU funds will signal a turn to sectors such as waste management, energy, tourist services, agricultural-food complex and living quality in cities. At the same time, authorities are redesigning existing funding tools and extend their operation until September, while new tools are planned to support business activity which will not be operated by systemic banks, but by new agencies such as a new Development Bank, the minister added. Haritsis said the government planned actions worth around 500 million euros in 2016 aimed to boost green business, including some sub-contracts from the previous period (2007-2013), such as collection and processing of urban waste, while other actions will be completely new such as waste management, restoring of mountain tracks in tourist destinations, modernizing camps in regions of increased environmental interest and initiatives to improve city environment. Haritsis said that the government will announce invitations to launch the new EU funds programme in January. [03] No cuts in pensions, Labour minister says Labour Minister George Katrougalos reiterated the government's position that there will be no cuts in main pensions and that the aim was not accept any cuts in supplementary pensions as well. In a television interview late Monday, Katrougalos presented the government's plan for pension reform which envisages a National Pension of 384 euros which will be offered without any income criteria. "We want a system of fair and single rules," the minister said, adding that the goal was not to have two-speed pensioners. "Negotiations with creditors will be tough but we want to win and I am optimistic," he said. He underlined, however, that in case that negotiations with creditors failed to offer a positive result he will address to Greek political leaders again. He also accused opposition political leaders for hypocrisy over their stance in the pension reform plan. The pension reform plan moves along three main lines: an overall restructuring of the pension system, action to tackle the deficits and the presentation of a general alternative equivalent to individual memorandum commitments. It is expected to be voted on in Parliament at the end of January, after the negotiations with the institutions and a process of consultation is complete. The plan calls for a recalculation of pensions using new pension replacement rates and the unification of all pension funds into one. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-05 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] PM Tsipras concludes meeting on government's work, economy, refugee issues [02] Vanessa Redgrave in Athens to highlight plight of refugees [01] PM Tsipras concludes meeting on government's work, economy, refugee issues A government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the Maximos mansion was concluded on Tuesday afternoon. According to sources, it focused on planning the government's work, the economy, the refugees issue and public administration matters. [02] Vanessa Redgrave in Athens to highlight plight of refugees Noted actress, activist and Unicef Goodwill Ambassador Vanessa Redgrave on Tuesday paid a visit to an open reception centre for refugees and migrants in the Elaionas district of inner city Athens. Redgrave praised the humanity shown by the country toward the waves of refugees and other Third World nationals landing in the country from neighboring Turkey, and said that other governments must also assume responsibility, since Greece was unable to cope with the refugee crisis alone. She particularly praised the residents of the eastern Aegean islands and volunteers arriving from all parts of the world to help the refugees, urging people everywhere to exert pressure on their governments for a more positive approach to the refugees issue. She was accompanied on her visit by Alternate Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas and Athens Mayor George Kaminis. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
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Hyperbolic Crochet - some fiber for thoughts about art, math, crochet, and all the various threads in our lives.
CHICAGO - Even if the recall legislation State Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) introduced in December was to reach Governor Bruce Rauner' s desk and he signed it into law, it may ultimately take a lawsuit to have any effect on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

In the past, Illinois courts have ruled that election code changes such as a recall law do not affect those currently holding the office, only those that come into office after the bill become law.

So, despite Governor Rauner's willingness to sign the bill into law, all the uproar and demand for the right to recall Rahm Emanuel as Chicago's mayor would most certainly end up in Illinois courts - by either the mayor resisting or the mayor's enemies pressing for immediate application.

And that's fine if that's what it takes, says State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton), who has signed on as a co-sponsor to Ford's proposal.

"My take is that it is worth a lawsuit to find out," Ives told Illinois Review. "It seems to me that public sentiment is against Mr. Emanuel continuing to govern."

Ives is right about that.

Mayor Emanuel's popularity was always fragile, but since the public discovered his office was hiding a shocking video of a 17 year old being shot 16 times by a Chicago officer, calls for him to resign have hit Chicago's streets. The video - withheld for a year and released only then due to a court order - topped the city's embarrassment of out-of-control gang wars and crime in Chicago's struggling neighborhoods.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was the first to be thrown under the bus. He "resigned" under pressure shortly after the video hit the Internet.

Thus far, two members of the Illinois House's Democrat black caucus have signed onto Ford's legislation as co-sponsors - one besides Ford, is State Reps Mary Flowers. Chicago Democrat and Jaime Andre, Jr has also signed on.

Five Republican House members - Jeanne Ives, Ron Sandack, Peter Breen, Tom Morrison and David McSweeney - have also signed on as co-sponsors.

In addition, 15 Republican House candidates have voiced their support for the effort.

Illinois Opportunity Project's Dan Proft is calling on more Chicago Democrats and Republican leaders to add to the pressure on Emanuel. He says that all the speculation that the law wouldn't apply needs to be argued in court.

"We argue it should apply to Rahm this term upon signature into law," Proft told Illinois Review. "If Rahm wants to litigate it, let's do so. The worst case scenario is an appropriate recall mechanism in place for Chicago mayor and aldermen a la the mechanism in place for the Governor and state legislators on a go-forward basis."
CHICAGO - Internal aviation department documents obtained by CNN instruct officers not to become part of the response to an attack.

If evacuation is not possible, you should find a place to hide where the active shooter is less likely to find you. Block entry to your hiding place and lock the door, but Matt Brandon, secretary-treasurer of the airport officers union, told CNN they have serious issues with the protocol.

These men and women are sent to the Chicago police academy, and trained as police officers, and being a former police officer, I know your first instinct is to go to the problem  not run away from the problem.



From the Daily Caller.
SPRINGFIELD - When President Barack Obama submitted petition signatures to get on the 2012 Democratic primary ballot, he chose not to sign Illinois' optional candidate loyalty oath that officially assured voters he did not teach or advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.

It may not be a big deal to most Democrat or Republican voters four years later, but it might matter to some that the president did not find it necessary to assure Illinoisans that he was not working with America's enemies.

The state's loyalty oath, which was mandatory for all Illinois candidates until the 1969, says:

I, (candidate's name), do swear (or affirm) that I am a citizen of the United States and the State of (candidate's state), that I am not affiliated directly or indirectly with any communist organization or any community front organization, or any foreigh political agency, party, organization or government which advocates the overthrow of constitutional government by force or other means not permitted under the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of this State; that I do not directly or indirectly teach or advocate the overthrow of government of the United States or any unlawful change in the form of the governments thereof by force or any unlawful means.

That year, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum signed the vow when they filed for candidacy in Illinois.
"This is not to debate the last mass shooting, but to do what we can to prevent the next one," the president said in his comments, accompanied by parents whose children were killed in the Shady Hook Elementary in 2012.

WASHINGTON - Tuesday, President Obama laid out a short list of executive actions that he intends to use to stop gun violence in America. He said how to stop the violence has become America's "single most polarizing partisan debate."

"These actions will not hold up in court. They will not stop gun violence. And they will be met with a legislative response because we, conservative Republicans in Congress, do not take kindly to people touching the Bill of Rights."

Illinois Congressman Mike Bost wrote:

Ever since taking office, the President has made it clear he was taking aim at Americans' Constitutional right to bear arms. Today is no exception. The Presidents actions are not only legally dubious, but they impose substantial burdens on law-abiding citizens while doing little to nothing to stop criminals. As a father and grandfather, Ive shared in the heartbreak we all feel when news breaks of another tragedy. That being said, if the President was serious about stopping the criminal use of firearms, he would more rigorously enforce existing laws rather than sidestepping Congressional authority and trying to make the laws himself.

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger said:

Time and again, the President has chosen to push his authoritative agenda with little regard for Constitutional process. I agree that we need to be making sure those who shouldnt get guns are not able to do so, but the actions laid out today will do nothing to achieve those results. The President has chosen politics over substance by pursuing regulations that will not solve the issue of gun violence, but will instead hinder the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. The violence we are seeing requires action, but the action must solve the problem and not be forced upon the American people.

C-SPAN has made the president's comments viewable HERE.
One day after Christmas, Washington state quietly adopted a set of new policies regarding transgender individuals using sex-specific facilities. The rules, adopted by the state Human Rights Commission, make it illegal for business owners to limit sex-specific facilities such as bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms to persons with the anatomical parts of one sex.

SPRINGFIELD - Could Illinois be the next to follow the state of Washington's new policy concerning sex-specific bathrooms and showers?

To my knowledge, this is the first time in the country that theres been a statewide effort to mandate all public accommodations cooperate with the gender identity concept that somebody declares, Joseph Backholm, executive director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, told The Daily Signal.

This is the next step in this war on gender.

The rules, which a state legislator told The Daily Signal took effect on Dec. 26, apply to businesses with eight or more employees. They also dictate that schools should allow students to use the restroom that is consistent with their gender identity and in most cases, give transgender students access to the locker room that corresponds to their gender identity.

If another student expresses concern about sharing a sex-specific facility with transgender individuals, the policy says the student should be directed to a separate or gender neutral facility, if available.

The Washington State Human Rights Commission has not yet posted the final rules online. The commission also could not be reached for comment.

More at The Daily Signal
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I spent some time literally weeping for my country today. I know we're all worried about a lot of things. But what triggered my tears to...
South Korean car maker Hyundai along with sister company Kia has missed their sales target for the year of 2015.

Hyundai has for the first time since 2008 missesd their global annual sales target. Photo Courtesy - Reuters

By India Today Web Desk: Hyundai has missed its global target of sales for the year 2015. The South Korean car maker had set itself a target of 5.05 million vehicles to be sold last year and could only manage to sell 4.96 vehicles.

Hyundai's sister company, Kia, also suffered a similar faith with the company setting itself a target of 3.15 million vehicle sales and falling short with only 3.05 million units being sold in the year.

This is the first time the South Korean major has missed its global sales target for the year since 2008. A sales slump in China and unfavourable exchange rates with Brazil and Russia also dented their coffers.

Both the companies will be increasing their factory capacity in 2016 and will look to recover back their footing in China, a major market for all car manufacturers.

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: US astronaut Scott Joseph Kelly, who is currently posted at the International Space Station, is one of the most followed personalities on social media platforms. Kelly has recently posted breathtaking images of the southern tip of India with a prominent bridge between the country and Sri Lanka.

Image source: Twitter

Kelly has posted another photo showing the sandy beaches of South India and the lash of green that covers the north.

Image source: Twitter

Kelly's photos have rekindled the interest of many people about the beautiful oceanic border between India and Sri Lanka.

Here are some amazing facts about the India-Sri Lanka border:

1. The border between India and Sri Lanka is one of the oldest territorial boundaries. History of political milieu and disputes between the two nations dates back to around 2,500 years.

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2. The border is defined by the Gulf of Mannar that is 53 to 80 kilometres wide.

3. There is a series of low islands and reef shoals between the Pamban Island in Tamil Nadu and the Mannar Island in Sri Lanka. The series of islands is called the Adam's Bridge.

4. The Adam's Bridge is also known as the Rama Setu in India. The mythological epic Ramayana depicts Rama building a bridge to the land of Lanka to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana.

5. The Pamban Island, also known as the Rameswaram Island, is India's southern most landmass. It is connected to the mainland via Pamban Bridge, used by the Indian Railways.

Image source: Knowledge of India

6. India has had its fair share of political disputes with its southern neighbours. However, in the second half of the 20th century, both the countries locked horns to claim an uninhibited island named Kachchatheevu around 30 kilometres North-East of Rameshwaram. In 1974, the sovereignty of the island was given to Sri Lanka.

7. International relations between Sri Lanka and India has always been collaborative. So much so that former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had once said, "India is our relation and all others are our friends".

Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section.
As the show nears its end, the house is becoming a war zone. Last night's episode had at least four major fights. Find out who all were involved.

By Vipra Shrivastava: These days, the two motor-mouths of the Bigg Boss house, Mandana Karimi and Priya Malik, spend their time making mountains out of molehills, and subsequently squabbling over petty issues.

Just this Sunday Mandana apologised to Tanishaa Mukerji for her volatile and abusive behaviour and come Monday she was back to square one. In her line of fire was once again Priya Malik.

Fight No. 1: Mandana vs Priya (with Rochelle joining in)

The first fight of day 85 started with Mandana confronting Priya about her comment on the former's boyfriend Gaurav. Priya said that when the others were gossiping about her boyfriend, she wasn't even there, and that it was Rochelle who told everybody that Gaurav told Mandana over the phone that he is 'not proud of her'. Soon, the verbal duel turned into a three-way fight with Rochelle joining in. Minutes later Keith was heard yelling at Mandana, "Who are you to tell me whether I can have an opinion or not". Also read: Contestants make startling confessions to Tanishaa



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Fight No. 2: Keith versus Rochelle

Priya and Mandana's argument led to a fight between lovebirds Keith and Rochelle as well. After her fight with Priya, Rochelle accused Keith of not supporting her in time of need. She pointed out to Keith that she was arguing with Priya for 10 minutes but he kept quiet and spoke only when his name was dragged into the argument. Keith tried to explain to her that he could not have spoken on her behalf as he had not heard the original conversation between her and Priya. When Rochelle reminded him that he was present during the conversation, he said he had got confused. Rochelle walked out saying, "You don't even remember when I am with you. It's better that I go home this week," she added. However, this lovers tiff didn't last too long as Keith apologised to Rochelle and they hugged in the sky lounge. Also read: This is what Suyyash Rai did after leaving Bigg Boss 9



Fight No. 3: Priya versus Prince

In the afternoon, the focus shifted back to Priya when she locked horns with Prince for no reason. Captain Prince had punished both Mandana and Priya for speaking in English. He made them stand in front of each other with their hands on each other's shoulders. While Mandana completed her punishment quietly, Priya amused herself taking the punishment lightly. When Prince objected, Priya started yelling at him and accused him of being biased. She refused to complete her punishment, packed her bags and kept it in front of the store room as a punishment to herself. Prince told her, "If you think I am biased, all your mistakes are forgiven from now on." Also read: Bigg Boss 9: Did Nora Fatehi really call Mandana Karimi 'chudail'?



Fight No. 4: Priya versus Mandana again

At the time of nominations Priya managed to irk not only Mandana but also the other housemates, thanks to her habit of interrupting others and making undesirable comments. It is getting dirtier between Mandana and Priya. From name calling to accusations of theft to taunting each other about their families to continuously yelling, the two contestants are going from bad to worse. If abusing Priya in the morning wasn't enough for Mandana, she taunted Priya by singing, "chhoti, chhoti, moti, moti, cycle," during the nominations. Also read: Why did Sunny Deol storm out of Salman Khan's Bigg Boss 9 sets?



In the evening, Priya and Mandana had another fight over Priya's scarf-that had been gifted to her by her husband-that Mandana had hidden in the bathroom. When it was revealed that Mandana was the culprit, Priya gave her another lecture. The housemates too told Mandana that she shouldn't have done that. Later when she went to apologise to Priya, the latter told her she doesn't want to speak to her. Within minutes Priya was heard telling the housemates that had they not told Mandana that she was wrong, she would not have apologised. Thus started another round of firing between the two, which ended with Mandana abusing Priya and saying, "I'm done." Also read: Salman Khan slams Mandana; tells housemates to give up herd mentality



Meanwhile, Priya Malik, Rochelle Rao, Rishabh Sinha, Kishwar Merchant and Keith Sequeira have been nominated for eviction this time. But the twist in the tale is that the voting lines are closed this week.

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: Touted as a strong contender to win Bigg Boss Nau, Suyyash Rai was taken by surprise when he got eliminated after spending 12 weeks in the house. In an interview post his elimination, he expressed his disappointment over getting ousted from the show, since he had expected Rishabh Sinha to be shown the door.

The popular TV actor of Kya Hua Tera Vaada and Kaisa Yeh Ishq Hai... fame was also hoping to celebrate his fifth anniversary with girlfriend Kishwar Merchant in the house on January 9. Here are five things he did after coming out of the Bigg Boss house.

Thanked haters for all the hatred

While the actor was grateful to the "Suyyashians" for all the love, he also thanked his haters, because it pushed him to work hard. After coming out of the house, he tweeted: "Back to unreal but real world...Haters thanks for all the hatred, it pushes me to work harder." Also read: This is what Suyyash Rai did after leaving Bigg Boss 9

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Expressed regret at not being able to spend 5th anniversary with Kishwar

The actor, in an interview to the Times of India, revealed how he felt after coming out of the house unexpectedly. "Frankly, speaking, I expected Rishabh to be eliminated. I am highly disappointed. I would have not felt so bad if I was evicted within the first three weeks of the show. It is disheartening to be out just three weeks before the finale. I just wish I could have stayed inside the house for a longer time and celebrated my fifth anniversary with Kishwar on January 9. Nevertheless, I will wait for Kishwar to come out victorious and am certainly going to miss every single moment spent inside the Bigg Boss house." Also read: Contestants make startling confessions to Tanishaa



Suggested that Bigg Boss 9 voting was rigged

Suyyash said in an interview to The Times of India that he got to know from his sister that he had received the second highest votes after Mandana, but was still eliminated. The actor added that he was probably evicted as the producers might have felt he had nothing more to offer to the show.

Partied with Salman Khan after his elimination

Though Suyyash suggested that the makers wanted him out of the show, he, however, says that Salman is "genuine" and doesn't feel "he has something to do with the eviction process". "After getting eliminated, I was with Salman Khan that night! We were partying. His family and friends had come over. There, the way he spoke to me and the way he told me about my journey and Kishwar's journey and whatever he likes/ doesn't like about the show, he seemed to be very, very genuine! Not even once I felt that he has something to do with the eviction process. The week in which I shouted at Mandana, when I confronted Salman that why did I do that thing about threatening Mandana and stuff, he spoke about that too and said ki "mujhe pata lag gaya tha ki agle hafte mere kaan mein bola jaayega (I'll be given a cue) ki Suyyash ki vaat lagao iss weekend. Aur mujhe karna padega kyuki mera vo kaam hai. But I also knew that I could handle the situation and make you understand in a better way." Now that's exactly how Salman sir does it with everyone he likes and genuinely scolds them for their good. But if he doesn't like someone, then he'll pass it as a joke because he barely cares about that whosoever. I truly respect him for everything he's said," he told Bollywood Life. Also read: Bigg Boss 9: After Nora Fatehi, Suyyash Rai eliminated from the show



Revealed details about his wedding to Kishwar

"We are planning to get married by February end (2016). It will be a close family affair. I think it is pointless in splurging on weddings. It's better we invest in buying a house or on our honeymoon. We will have a gurudwara wedding and Kishwar also likes the idea. It will be followed by a bash for family, friends and media," he told TOI. Also read: Salman Khan slams Mandana; tells housemates to give up herd mentality


By India Today Web Desk: BJP leader Yashwant Singh criticised the Modi government's policy on Pakistan and said on Tuesday that India should call off planned talks with the neighbouring state in wake of the Pathankot Terror attacks.

"From the beginning, I have been opposed to this kind of strategic dialogue with Pakistan as talks and terror cannot go together. The Government has changed its policy," Sinha, a former External Affairs Minister, said.

India and Pakistan are due to hold Foreign Secretary-level talks next week.

"What we are doing today is the same mistake as UPA government was doing. This is not the BJP policy. We are not in favour of any kind of talks and we should stop all talks with Pakistan," Sinha said.

Sinha noted that whenever the dialogue process is broken down, Pakistan has loudly demanded that the dialogue process be resumed.

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"By having dialogue with India lends respectability to Pakistan so that it can then tell its friends like China and US and they will come forward to help it," he said.

The BJP leader said Pakistan is in danger of isolation if India would go to the international community and tells the world that it is not acting against those fomenting terror activities from Pakistan.

"It is in Pakistan's own national interest to remain engaged with India," he said.

The BJP leader said India during the Vajpayee government had made it clear to Pakistan that talks will happen only after the neighbouring country acted against those in Pakistan promoting terror against India and both the UPA and present government have reversed the gains taken in 2004.

"There is also no action on the part of Pakistan and resuming the dialogue process is walking into Pakistan's trap," he added.

"We should tell Pakistan that we will watch your behaviour for some time and that you are on probation. We will watch your action on all the evidence that we have given to you on Mumbai and other attacks and see what action you take. Only then would there be a possibility of any talks further," he said.

Sinha said towards the end of his regime in 2004, Vajpayee also realised this and in the formulation adopted at the joint statement on January 6, 2004 in Islamabad on the margins of the SAARC Summit, it was made clear by India that Pakistan will first stop terror and then start the dialogue.

He said the statement mentioned that Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for violence and terror against India and then we will resume the dialogue process and thus Pakistan was supposed to stop export of terror to India and only then would talks with them start.

Also read: Anti-terror grid in deep freeze



"The UPA government did not follow this process and they resumed the dialogue with Pakistan. They completely reversed what we achieved in January 2004 and what we agreed upon with Pakistan that terror will be allowed to impede the peace process," he said, adding what has happened now is that we have resumed full scale dialogue with Pakistan for which we used to criticise Manmohan Singh regime.

Sinha said when External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj went to Pakistan, India agreed to hold a comprehensive dialogue where the entire range of issues are to be discussed.

"Earlier the issue of statement at Ufa reiterated the Vajpayee line. The statement at Pakistan was a clear departure from the earlier line. The Ufa line was rejected by Pakistan and they were interested in a composite dialogue and not just on terror.

"We should hold Pakistan to its earlier commitment which was redirected at Ufa and watch the situation for some time. If you are convinced that it has given up sponsoring terror, then we can consider starting the dialogue process," Sinha said.
The literary extravaganza will be held from January 8 to January 10, 2016, at Dilli Haat, New Delhi.

By India Today Web Desk: The fourth edition of the Delhi Literature Festival (DLF) is here to take care of your weekend. The 2016 leg of the literary extravaganza will see the light on January 8, 2016, and will go on till January 10, 2016.

Also Read: Shiv Sena smears Sudheendra Kulkarni's face with black ink for organising ex-Pak minister's book launch

The festival will have events like panel discussions on various issues concerning our nation, alongside book launches, workshops and live performances, among other events. Since its inception in 2013, the Delhi Literature Festival has played host to eminent public figures like Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Suhel Seth and Shashi Tharoor.

Also Read: Enjoy the company of your favourite authors at Jaipur Literature Festival

Being organised at Dilli Haat this year, DLF will see several interesting and thought-provoking sessions like Mythological & Historical Fiction in India, Literature in the Flash/Fast Age: Blogs vs Books, Bare it All: Voyeurism and Tell-alls etc. The string of sessions will be moderated by eminent media personalities like Madhu Trehan, Barkha Dutt, Saba Naqvi and Richa Anirudh among others.

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Also Read: Former BJP member Sudheendra Kulkarni speaks on BJP and Narendra Modi while attending the curtain raiser for JLF

As seen on its official website, the festival comes with the "aim of promoting Art, Culture & Literature and not only witnesses active participation from renowned award-winning authors, journalists, but also young, aspiring writers and as Delhi being India's political capital, the participation of the political class, government officials and diplomats with interest in books and literature."

So, in case you want to indulge in an intellect-laden weekend after those hectic New Year celebrations, you know where to head.




Katrina Kaif found this the hardest thing to do in Abhishek Kapoor's Fitoor, which stars Aditya Roy Kapur and Tabu alongside Kaif.

By India Today Web Desk: Katrina Kaif, Aditya Roy Kapur and Tabu's Fitoor has been through an incubation period of three years before hitting the screens this February. Directed by Abhishek Kapoor, the journey of Fitoor hasn't been quite smooth so far.

ALSO READ: Katrina Kaif is furious over lovemaking scenes in Fitoor now. Here's why

ALSO READ: B-Town calls Fitoor trailer 'painting in motion', 'simply stunning'

WATCH FITOOR TRAILER: Katrina Kaif and Aditya Roy Kapur walk you through love and heartbreak



As recently as a few days ago, there were reports in the media that Katrina Kaif was mighty upset with Abhishek Kapoor over some passionate lovemaking scenes in Fitoor. Some reports also pointed out how Katrina found it tough to re-shoot some intimate scenes with Aditya that the director had asked for.

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However, seems like that wasn't the hardest thing for Katrina Kaif to do in Fitoor.

The Phantom actor, who will be seen playing Tabu's daughter in the film, says that the hardest thing for her in the film was to pretend that Tabu is her mother.

"The hardest thing in this film was pretending that Tabu is my mother; she does not look like my mother from any angle, she is like a friend. I enjoyed the days we spent together in the film," she said in response to a query about the experience of working with Tabu in Fitoor at the trailer launch of the film.

Katrina Kaif and Tabu during the trailer launch of Fitoor. Photo: Yogen Shah

"She is one of the warmest people and is so down to earth. She is a phenomenal actor, so whenever you are in front of her, you should remember that you should not get lost in her performance but to contribute to it. We have been fortunate that she was gracious enough to step in," added Katrina.

Tabu stepped into Rekha's shoes after the latter decided to make an exit from the film, which is an adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, Great Expectations.

About her role in the film, Katrina said, "For me, the most important thing was to try and understand this girl's (her character) mind... she has always been a complicated character; is she manipulative, is she like that? ... for whatever reasons ... we spent a lot of time discussing trying to give life to our interpretation of this character."

The trailer of Fitoor was released yesterday (January 4), and ever since, people have been gushing about how beautiful it is. From 'the new colour of love' to 'Great expectations from Fitoor', the Aditya Roy Kapur-Katrina Kaif film has had showers of praise on it.

Fitoor is to hit the theatres on February 12, 2016, after much delay.
A team of NIA officials is likely to question Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh very soon.

By Rahul Kanwal: After the NIA took over the probe into the terror attack at Pathankot Air Force base today, NIA DG Sharad Kumar called Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh's actions murky.

Salwinder Singh has been constantly changing his statement on how he came in contact with the terrorists who attacked the Air Force base and what happened when he was with them.

Sharad Kumar has said that at present Singh is being looked at as an eyewitness by the agency, but the NIA does not rule out taking action against him depending on what emerges after questioning.

A team of NIA officials is likely to question Salwinder Singh very soon.

The agency has filed a separate FIR against the terrorists for abducting the SP and slitting the throat of one person.

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RELATEDS

Nawaz Sharif assures PM Modi of Pak support in Pathankot attack probe



How Pakistani media reported Pathankot terror attack



Pathankot attack: How security agencies failed to connect the dots
By India Today Web Desk: Madhya Pradesh has been a part of the traveller's map for a long time, thanks to a wide variety of destinations. Glorious monuments and wildlife destinations are the most popular among tourists visiting the state. In a move to promote water tourism in the state, the Madhya Pradesh government has developed Hanuwantiya Island, located in the reservoir of Indira Sagar Dam on river Narmada.

Investing an amount of Rs 8 crore, the Madhya Pradesh Tourist Development Corporation (MPTDC) has constructed a boat club that offers one cruise and two motorboat rides, a restaurant, and 10 cottages to accommodate tourists. For ensuring that the place has ample amounts of natural beauty, plantation has also been done.

Also on the cards is a 10-day Water Festival that will be organised by MPTDC at the island from February 12 to 21. A tent city with 120 tents will be set up in order to accommodate the tourists attending the festival. That's not all, other activities such as water sports, kite flying and volleyball will also be on offer. For those with a love fairs will be able to enjoy the Food and Craft Bazar that will be set up at the place.

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(With inputs from PTI)


Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor have put all the rumours of their breakup to rest, after the two attended the Christmas lunch together at Kapoor's residence.

By India Today Web Desk: Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor have put all the rumours of their breakup to rest, after the two attended the Christmas lunch together at Kapoor's residence. Ever since they have started dating each other, speculations of their marriage and alleged break-ups have always been doing the rounds.

Recently, they were spotted kissing each other at the balcony of the lavish bungalow which they have rented. And the picture went viral on the Internet. Katrina Kaif, who was asked about the picture at the trailer launch of her upcoming film Fitoor, said, "Where is this picture? Show me na."

On being further asked about the same picture, the Bang Bang actor said, "I was embraced... It's always wonderful to be embraced." The media even asked her if she was recreating her Fitoor poster in real life, to which Kat quipped, "Where is this photo? It's in newspapers... Gosh!"

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However, co-star Aditya interrupted her saying, "So, I was photo-shopped. They put me out and Ranbir in," to which Katrina joked, "I will never cut you out of a picture."

In 2013, Ranbir and Katrina were clicked holidaying in Ibiza, Spain. The picture had Katrina in a bikini on a beach with her beau and the picture went viral on the Internet and created a buzz all over the film industry. It took a while for this entire news to subside down. And Salman Khan also came in favour of his former girlfriend, and said, "If such a picture of yours, your mother's or sister's is out like this, how would you feel?"

Ranbir and Katrina's dating rumours started when the two were shooting for their 2009 film Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani. And since then they have always been in news for their relationship.

On the work front, Katrina Kaif will next be seen in Abhishek Kapoor's Fitoor and Ranbir Kapoor is currently busy shooting for his upcoming film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
As security forces continue the sanitisation operations inside the Pathankot air base, the big question is should India continue with peace process with Pakistan? Islamabad's role in Pathankot terror strike has been laid bare. India has handed over ample evidence to the Nawaz Sharif government regarding his country's involvement in the brazen terror attack.

By India Today Web Desk: As security forces continue the sanitisation operations inside the Pathankot air base, the big question is should India continue with peace process with Pakistan? Islamabad's role in Pathankot terror strike has been laid bare. India has handed over ample evidence to the Nawaz Sharif government regarding his country's involvement in the brazen terror attack.

But will PM Sharif take any action on evidence provided by India? The combined inputs of India's intelligence agencies suggest that the Pakistan army is not fully on board with Nawaz Sharif's efforts to forge peace with India.

The Indian political establishment has been informed at the highest levels that the Pathankot attack has been carried out with the full knowledge of the Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif.

Almost every Pakistani news website has been carrying the news of Pathankot attack with some of them questioning India's preparedness and its counter-terror abilities.

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An article titled - 'India scrambles to solve Pathankot riddle' - in Dawn noted that "the government scrambled to answer uncomfortable questions about how it all came this far."

"The main questions being asked were what did the intelligence agencies know 24 hours before the attack; what did the government do with the specific inputs; and if the intelligence agencies didn't get a firm grip on the facts, why not?" the report further added.

A separate article on Dawn's website said that the Pakistan "government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it."

"Cooperation with India was in accordance with its commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism," it quoted a statement issued by the Pakistan Foreign Office.

The article noted that the attack in Pathankot and the one on Indian consulate in Afghanistan may impact the upcoming Foreign Secretary-level talks between the two neighbouring nations.

"The fate of the meeting is getting increasingly unclear. The dialogue was in trouble after the Pathankot attack, but the terrorist strike near Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan) made the prospects look even further bleak," it said.

'India airbase attack threatens Pakistan talks' - the lead story's headline on Nation.com.pk read.

"The Pakistan-India relationship is in a tailspin, what with Modi's landing in Lahore and now the gun battle at Pathankot. The attack will cement the official India position: that it will not talk about another issue until that of terrorism is sorted- Pathankot is another case in point," an opinion piece titled - Two Steps Back - on The Nation said.

"India is mulling its options on whether to go ahead with foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan scheduled for later this month after militants attacked an Indian Air Force (IAF) base over the weekend," said an article on Daily Times.

Rustam Shah Mohmand, who has served as Pakistan's Ambassador to Afghanistan, in his opinion piece - Attack in Pathankot: Another derailment of relations? - in The Express Tribune said," The long journey to peace and normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan has been incredibly complex and painful.

"In the aftermath of the attack, if Indian authorities come to the conclusion after ascertaining facts that all or some its perpetrators had come from Pakistan or that they had been trained in Pakistan, bilateral relations would receive an irretrievable setback. Distrust would mount and suspicions would deepen," Mohmand highlighted.

Also Read

Pathankot attack Day 4: Shoes used by terrorists nail Pakistan link

Pathankot attack: How security agencies failed to connect the dots

Sharif vs Sharif: Did Pakistan army chief know about Pathankot attack?

Pathankot attack: India shares evidence with Pakistan

Pathankot terror attack: Govt says attempts to catch terrorists alive caused delay in the operation




Anita Hassanandani is equally good at carrying off both the simple as well as a glamourised look.

By India Today Web Desk: Anita Hassanandani loves to surprise her fans with her makeovers, and she's equally good at carrying off both the simple as well as a glamourised look. The actress who started her television career with Metro Gold's Kabhi Sautan Kabhi Saheli (2001)as a simpleton called Tanushree, surely knows how to strike the perfect balance between playing a homely bahu and a hottie. Recently, the actress Instagrammed her bikini pics while holidaying in Bali, with husband Rohit Reddy. We must say she has surprised us again, as she is looking fit and fabulous.



As far as one can recall, her first big makeover was of an item girl (remember the Ding Dong song) in her debut Bollywood movie Kucch To Hai. No prizes for guessing that her friend and mentor Ekta Kapoor envisioned the look for her. Also read: It's hot! TV beauties go glam for Indian Telly Calendar 2016



Anita also recently shot for the Indian Telly Calendar in Taipei, Taiwan, and she looked gorgeous to say the least. The actress is currently balancing a daily soap, Yeh Hai Mohabbatein, with a reality show, Comedy Nights Bachao. Pictures: Anita Hassanandani celebrates wedding anniversary in Kashmir



From chubby Tanu to a toned Shagun, there's no doubt that she has become fitter and hotter over the years. Also read: Yeh Hai Mohabbatein: Divyanka Tripathi, Anita Hassanandani to reprise Pinga song from Bajirao Mastani



Check out her bikini avatar here:

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???? A photo posted by Anita H Reddy (@anitahassanandani) on Dec 30, 2015 at 11:18pm PST



?????? A photo posted by Anita H Reddy (@anitahassanandani) on Dec 30, 2015 at 11:07pm PST

@the beach with the beach body ???? A photo posted by Anita H Reddy (@anitahassanandani) on Dec 30, 2015 at 11:05pm PST
The pop star's 15-year-old son, Rocco Ritchie, deleted his Instagram account after blocking Madonna from the site amid ongoing custody battle.

By India Today Web Desk: Madonna and Guy Ritchie's son, Rocco Ritchie, has reportedly deleted his Instagram account. According to RadarOnline, the teenager, who had 138,000 followers on the photo-sharing website, has reportedly taken down his page following reports that he "blocked" Madonna from his account.

The teenager, whose account was private, is currently living in London with his father, after following his mom around the world on her Rebel Heart tour.

Watch: Madonna grinds, dirty dances with Katy Perry



On Sunday, Rocco was said to have prevented his mother from seeing his Instagram posts, whilst continuing to allow Guy and his step-mother Jacqui Ainsley access, according to Daily Mail.

"It's not a great sign that Rocco is blocking his mum on social media, especially after all the rumours that she was embarrassing him with her posts about him," a source told The Sun.

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"It's even more of a blow because he allows Jacqui and Guy to still follow him and he follows them back. Hopefully this is just a teenage teething problem," the source added.

Also read: Madonna weeps on stage for Paris victims



Meanwhile, TMZ reports that Rocco--who has been ordered to return to New York City for a court hearing next month--told Guy he felt Madonna treated him more like a trophy than a son.

The teenager is even said to have claimed that he would have a more "stable and loving" home life with Guy, who lives with his wife Jacqui and their three children, Rafael, 4, Rivka, 3, and Levi, 18 months.

Because of Rocco's strong views, Guy is said to have hired a lawyer and is preparing for a legal battle to keep custody of his son, who left Madonna's tour a month ago and refused to return to her for Christmas.

Also read: Madonna goes to court to have her son home for Christmas


A traveller's guide to Mount Sinai of Egypt, the mountain that Prophet Moses had climbed to get the Ten Commandments from God.

By Samonway Duttagupta: What's the first thing that usually comes in your mind when you think of travelling to Egypt? Must be the pyramids and the tombs and the other ancient relics that speak volumes of the pharaohs and their glorious lives. But there's a lot more to see than just that. Mount Sinai, also known as Mount Horeb, is said to be the mountain which Moses had climbed to get the Ten Commandments from God.



Located in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, this mountain is popularly known as Mount Moses and climbs up to an altitude of about 7,500 feet. This place is usually visited by a lot of pilgrims as climbing this mountain has a lot of religious significance to it. But the beauty of this place attracts a lot of travellers who usually prefer to hike up the mountain in order to visit some amazing spots, and enjoy stunning views of sunrise from the top of the mountain. Tourists can also choose to climb to the top riding camels.

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Also see: Visual tour of Egypt's Mount Moses



Tourists and worshippers make their way down from the summit of Mount Moses. Picture courtesy: Reuters

The hike starts from the Monastery of St. Catherine, located at the foot of the mountain. It is a Greek Orthodox monastery, which was founded in the 6th century. Being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is visited by pilgrims and tourists alike. According to a report by UNESCO, this monastery is the oldest working Christian monastery in the world.

Tourists watch the sunrise and pray outside the Greek Orthodox church on the summit of Mount Moses. Picture courtesy: Reuters

After visiting this monastery, travellers climb up the Steps of Penitence. Aptly named, this actually refers to a set of 3,750 steps leading to the summit, which is said to have been carved out of the rocks by monks years ago. This route is known for being a steeper one as compared to the camel path, but is preferred more by travellers who like to enjoy some of the most stunning views of the valley from this place. Up on the summit there's a mosque, and a Greek Orthodox chapel that was built in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th century church.

A traveller rests next to a camel under the stars near the summit of Mount Moses. Picture courtesy: Reuters

The main tourist attractions of the place include the following:

Burning Bush: This is believed to be the place where God had spoken to Prophet Moses, as mentioned in the Bible as well. The bush is still alive and has been blooming since the time of Moses.

Chapel of the Burning Bush: Also known as the St Helen's Chapel, this chapel is said to have been ordered to built by Helena, the mother of Constantine I, with due regards to the fact that Moses had seen the burning bush at this site.

Moses' Well: One of the most sought after sites of this mountain, Moses' Well, as the name suggests, is believed to be the place where Moses had met his wife for the first time. This is also the spring that supplies water to the monastery.

Museum: This small museum houses some amazing collections of Byzantine icons, and tempera on wood. It is one of those places you just can't afford to miss out on.
By Soudhriti Bhabani: An uneasy calm prevailed in West Bengal's northern Malda district that flared up on Sunday following a massive protest rally by Muslim groups against the hate speech of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari.

Over two dozens police vehicles, including one belonging to India's border-guarding agency Border Security Force (BSF), were torched. Malda's Kaliachak police station was ransacked as an irate crowd went on a violent rampage at Muslim-dominated Sujapur area in the district. "The situation is now under control. Regular police arrangements are there in that area to take care of the law and order part," Malda district police superintendent Prasun Banerjee told Mail Today, refusing to divulge anything further on the situation and about the organisation which actually took out the protest rally.

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Asked about the number of arrests, the police official said that raids are on. "No one has been arrested so far," he added. Armed with tall green flags, thousands of sloganeering protesters took out the march on National Highway (NH)-34 on Sunday protesting self-proclaimed Hindu Kamlesh Tiwari's recent hate speech on Prophet Muhammad, though nobody knew what exactly did the Hindu fundamentalist leader said.

The violence broke out when the protesters came across a North Bengal State Transport Corporation (NBSTC) bus that was trying to cross the rally. They got into an argument with the driver of the bus and soon the situation went out of control. The passengers got off the bus as the protesters had set it on fire. Then the mob attacked the nearby Kaliachak police station, drove out all policemen and ransacked the police stations, including its barracks. They destroyed all the records that were stored on piled up files and computers.

The violent mob also attacked the BDO office at Kaliachak-I, they went to Khaltipur railway station and squatted on the railway tracks in protest. When police reached, a clash broke out injuring several cops on duty. As tension gripped the area, shops were shut down. The Muslim protesters also looted some nearby houses. Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel were called in to take control of the situation. Police sources said peace and normalcy were restored in the trouble area late last night. "The situation is under control now," Malda district magistrate Sharad Devidi told Mail Today.

Also read: Karnataka Muslims condemn Hindu Mahasabha leader's comment


PM Modi received a call this afternoon from Nawaz Sharif regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase.

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and promised prompt and decisive action against the terrorists behind the Pathankot Air Force base attack about which specific and actionable information has been provided.

Sharif, while conveying sorrow over the loss of lives in the terror attack, told Modi that terrorists always try to derail the process of peace between the two countries and that his country will fully cooperate and investigate the leads and information provided by India, Radio Pakistan reported.



During the telephonic call, Modi pressed for urgent action against those responsible for the attack that began on Saturday last with six terrorists sneaking into the Air Base, leading to an encounter in which seven security men, including a Lt Colonel, were killed.

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The United States too issued a statement on Tuesday, saying it 'expects' Pakistan to act against Indian air base attackers and target militant groups.

"The government of Pakistan has spoken very powerfully on this and it's our expectation that they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they would. We have been clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups," the state department's John Kirby said.



Modi received a call this afternoon from the Prime Minister of Pakistan regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase, the PMO said.

"The Prime Minister strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organizations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the PMO said in a statement, PTI reported.

The statement said specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan.

Sharif assured Prime Minister Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists, the PMO said.

Radio Pakistan reported that Sharif, who is in Sri Lanka on a three-day trip, told Modi that his country will fully cooperate with India in the probe.

"Pakistan will investigate in detail on the leads and information provided by the government of India," Sharif was quoted by Radio Pakistan as saying.

It said the two Prime Ministers expressed resolve to fight terrorism through mutual cooperation.

There was, however, no formal statement by the government of Pakistan about the telephonic conversation.

The phone call from Sharif came as the Pakistan link to the attack became clear. NIA chief Sharad Kumar today said there was little doubt that the attackers were from Pakistan.

Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar added that there are indications that some of equipment used by terrorists were made in Pakistan.



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Sharif vs Sharif: Did Pakistan army chief know about Pathankot attack?



Pathankot attack may not have any impact on India-Pak talks


Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah today said that talks must continue between India and Pakistan.

By India Today Web Desk: At a time when most political parties have suggested not to go ahead with foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan due to the fatal Pathankot Air Force base attack, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah today said that talks must continue between the two nations.

"Perhaps what is needed in the immediate instance is for the two NSA's to meet and work out what Pakistan plans to do about the evidence that has been presented to it," Abdullah said.

In a bid to improve relations between the two nations, Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif called PM Narendra Modi today and promised prompt and decisive action against the terrorists behind the attack. Omar Abdullah appeared on Rajdeep Sardesai's television show News Today and welcomed the gesture made by Nawaz Sharif.

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"I think it's a good thing that the Pakistan prime minister has initiated a conversation and spoken to the Indian prime minister. That may give some breathing space to the Indian prime minister to keep the process alive," he said.

Asked if the opposition will give Prime Minister Narendra Modi the breathing space to go ahead with India-Pakistan talks, Omar Abdullah said, "I can't speak for the opposition. I'm a very small constituent of what was the UPA and I am in no position whatsoever to speak for the Congress or any of the other opposition parties. I can only appeal to them."

Omar Abdullah criticised the BJP for it's "short sighted" approach towards India-Pakistan talks when the UPA government was at the Centre and said that talks with Pakistan should be separated from domestic political agendas.

"I have made this point before that you have to insulate things like the Indo-Pak dialogue from domestic political agendas. It's far too important a process to be held hostage to this sort of political give and take," he said.

WATCH THE FULL SHOW HERE

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The explanation offered by the government sources is that the heads on the ground were told by political leadership in New Delhi to avoid collateral damage and, if possible, catch any of the terrorists alive to gather evidence and those people behind the attack.

By Mail Today: Rising from the smoke and dust of buildings blown by explosives to bury the remaining terrorists in Pathankot are disconcerting questions about the unusually long time taken by the security forces to eliminate all the intruders who attacked the airbase in the early hours of Saturday. The explanation offered by the government sources is that the heads on the ground were told by political leadership in New Delhi to avoid collateral damage and, if possible, catch any of the terrorists alive to gather evidence and those people behind the attack. The directives had flown from an emergency meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to brainstorm over the Pathankot operation and the attack on Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan.

Opening of two fronts by the terrorists at the same time caught the government in a tight spot. While there were no casualties in Mazar-i-Sharif as the Indo-Tibet Police Force (ITBP) commandos, guarding the consulate, managed to keep suicide attackers away from the building, the toll of seven in Pathankot sapped spirits in New Delhi.

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By evening, it was claimed that the remaining two terrorists who were holding the fort in a Defence Security Corps (DSC) mess were killed. Sporadic gun shots were heard even late in the evening but it was claimed to be part of the mop up operation being carried out by the security forces. The National Security Guard (NSG), Indian Air Force (IAF) and army officers claimed there was no collateral damage to strategic air force assets. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that the security forces had succeeded in their mission to secure assets at the air base and most of the casualties were suffered only in the early hours of the attack.

The government faced flak for rushing to declare victory against the terrorists on Saturday itself when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Cabinet colleagues - Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Home Minister Rajnath Singh - dropped hints about the finality of the operation by commending the soldiers for killing all the four intruders.

But the emergence of two more terrorists led to another prolonged round of operation lasting more than 40 hours. Sources said there had been contact with the terrorists since 7.30 pm on Sunday.

In another interesting revelation, sources said the IAF had been tipped about the possible terrorist strike at one of its bases in Punjab resulting in tightening of security. Following the alert western air command chief SB Deo was in Pathankot. When the IAF helicopters captured thermal images of suspect movement in the airbase on Saturday, counter was immediately launched with DSC personnel coming in the line of fire, some of them falling in the first contact. IAF's inhouse commando unit, Garud, challenged the attackers. Corporal Gursewak Singh of Garud commando force was martyred in the gunfight. The NSG was flown to the base as reinforcements along with the army which deployed eight columns (around 300 personnel) armed with three BMP armoured personnel carriers. Six Casspir mine resistant vehicles were also deployed.

Sources said that the terrorists had entered the airbase as a single group and split later. The conversation between the terrorists was intercepted in which they were heard talking about some of them falling behind the other members.

The confusion about the exact number of terrorists was attributed to the fact one of the phones used by the terrorists was not found on the four killed in the first contact. The perimeter wall (10 feet high with two feet wire mesh above it) of the Pathankot airbase is around 25 kilometers long. It is a sprawling complex with a stream passing through a section.

Sources said terrorists could have used the stream to gain entry into the airbase and there have been cases of animals straying into the complex from this stream route. The technical area of the airbase, where the fighter jets, attack helicopters and missiles are kept, is fenced and segregated from the residential area and other establishments.

The terrorists were confined to the residential blocks targeting the DSC personnel mess. The base also has two schools - a Kendriya Vidyalaya and another run by the IAF. Around 1,500 are at the base at any given point of time.

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Raheel Sharif vs Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan army chief knew about Pathankot attack?


2016 Grand Ole Opry Photo By: Chris HolloBrad Paisley surprised this weekend's Opry audience, dropping by Saturday night to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Little Jimmy Dickens. The "Country Nation" hitmaker recalled the first time he went fishing with his friend and frequent comic sidekick, before finishing with a medley of the Country Music Hall of Famer's hits that included "Country Boy," "Out Behind the Barn," "May the Bird of Paradise Fly up Your Nose" and "Mountain Dew."

Brad kicks off the winter leg of his Crushin' It World Tour January 21 in Jonesboro, Arkansas with Cam and Eric Paslay.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Parrikar said that combing operations would continue till the time security forces ensure that each and every corner of the huge air base has been sanitised.

By India Today Web Desk: Combing operations inside the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot, which was attacked by Pakistani terrorists on January 2, entered the fourth day today. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar visited the air base to take stock of the ongoing mopping operations. Parrikar confirmed that a total of six terrorists have been killed. Parrikar said that combing operations would continue till the time security forces ensure that each and every corner of the huge air base has been sanitised.

Latest updates:

Encounter lasted for only 36-38 hours. Combing operations are on and it will continue for some time till security forces each and every corner inside the air base is secured: Parrikar.

I see some gaps in security, but NIA will probe the whole incident: Parrikar

I believe there were some gaps in security but it is a matter of investigation: Parrikar

We have some security information over how terrorists entered the air base. We can not share all security information. Probe is on: Parrikar

Security personnel killed in the attack will get 'battle casualty status' and all its benefits: Parrikar

Terrorists were carrying at least 40-50 kg of ammunition: Parrikar.

NIA is still investigating the case. Once the operation is called off then we will take the call on futture action: Parrikar.

NIA is still investigating the case. Once the operation is called off then we will take the call on futture action: Parrikar. I congratulate Jagdish Chand who grappled with the terrorists before he lost his life.



6 terrorists have been neutralised. Body parts have been found at two places inside the airbase. DNA tests will confirm the number of terrorists: Parrikar

I congratulate the defence forces for restricting highly motivated terrorists to a small area: Parrikar

Parrikar taken to spots where terrorists were engaged by security forces.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar reaches Pathankot air base. He is being briefed about the ongoing combing operations by security agencies.

Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) being defused as part of the combing operations inside Pathankot air base. Three bombs have been defused since morning.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Army Chief Dalbir Singh and IAF Chief Arup Raha to brief media shortly in Pathankot.

Phone calls intercepted by Indian agencies were made to Pakistan. Terrorists spoke to handlers in Pakistan: Sharat Kumar, DG NIA

Agencies will preserve DNA samples of terrorists. Will ask Pakistan to verify DNA from families of terrorist killed.



Home Ministry has asked the Punjab government to submit a report over the attack within 24 hours.

NIA will soon interrogate SP Salvinder Singh, his friend Rajesh Verma and cook. Intelligence agencies has also input of drugs and terror nexus.



NSA Ajit Doval has met Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the Pathankot attack and the current security scenario. IB chief was also present during the meeting.

NIA sources told India Today that one of the terrorists was wearing Epcot brand of shoes. Epcot is a popular brand in Pakistan. Shoes used by terrorists nail Pakistan link

Each of the terrorist was carrying 20-25 kg of explosives, hand grenades besides assault weapons.

A team of National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has been tasked to probe the brazen Pathankot attack, has reached the air base.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar along with Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag will on today visit the Pathankot Air Base. The three are scheduled to visit the strategic base in the afternoon to get a first hand assessment of the ground situation after six terrorists were killed by security forces.

The government has ordered a security audit of all vital defence installations in the country to find out the possible security loopholes.



Following the attack, the Border Security Force (BSF), which is responsible for manning the International Border (IB) in Jammu as well as Punjab has gone into a huddle.

BSF DG has reached Punjab to study loopholes in border security. He will be submitting a report to the Home Ministry by tomorrow.

Despite winter snow, Pak-based terrorists have repeatedly exploited the IB and with this attack have carried out seventh major attack in this region since September, 2013.

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Two critical deficiencies plaguing the BSF:

1. While the entire 648km IB is fully fenced, approximately 10km stretch remains unlit on account of which there is a gaping hole in set up. One can well imagine how terrorists can exploit a 10km long, dark patch in such a zone.

2. In many places, IB turns into a riverine zone and despite trials being carried out there is no concrete solution found yet to how to secure such areas from intrusion.



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Niranjan, who was with the National Security Guard (NSG), was killed while attempting to move the body of a terrorist, who had improvised an explosive device under his body.

By India Today Web Desk: Last rites of NSG Lt Col Niranjan Kumar who lost his life in Pathankot attack, was performed today in Palakkad, Kerala.

The body of Lt Col Niranjan Kumar was brought back to his hometown near Kerala yesterday.

Niranjan, who was with the National Security Guard (NSG), was killed while attempting to move the body of a terrorist, who had improvised an explosive device under his body.

Niranjan Kumar was settled in Bengaluru and his parents hail from Kerala. He is survived by his wife and a two-year-old daughter.

"He had called and said he was in some operation. He was always interested in Army. I am proud of his sacrifice. I have 4 children. Third is Niranjan. He did mechanical engineering and went to Army. He was in Army for 12 years and in NSG for 1 year and 10 months," said EK Sivarajan, father of Lt Col Niranjan Kumar.

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The officer's father left from Bengaluru for Delhi to receive his son's mortal remains, which were brought to Bengaluru on Sunday night. Locals recalled that the officer was a popular personality of the area and had a jovial nature.

Niranajan's sister said, "I look at him as Arjuna who fought for his karmabhoomi."

As per the reports, six terrorists have been killed so far. Government said it will take time before security agencies complete the mopping operations as they have to cover a huge area ensuring that no more terrorists are hiding inside the base.

Also read:



Pathankot attack: How security agencies failed to connect the dots

Sharif vs Sharif: Did Pakistan army chief know about Pathankot attack?

Pathankot attack Day 4: Shoes used by terrorists nail Pakistan link
In an exclusive telephonic interview with Mail Today, Salwinder said it was his job to inform them about his abduction by the terrorists and had the authorities acted immediately, the terror attack could have been averted.

Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, who was released unharmed by five Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists on the night of December 31, slammed the authorities for not taking him seriously.

In an exclusive telephonic interview with Mail Today, Salwinder said it was his job to inform them about his abduction by the terrorists and had the authorities acted immediately, the terror attack could have been averted. "My duty was to share the inputs and I did that. If they did not act on time, that was their fault. The results are in front of you," Salwinder said.

Salwinder Singh, Gurdaspur SP

The senior cop, in his complaint given to the Narot Jaimal Singh Police station, has said he was abducted around 11.30 pm on December 31 when he was on his way back to Gurdaspur, after offering prayers at a Talur shrine. He was signaled by some men for a lift at a curve near Kolian village. These men turned out to be the terrorists who later attacked the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

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"They were in army fatigues and were carrying backpacks. They forcibly got inside my vehicle. They first asked my friend Rajesh Kumar to sit at the back seat. They then blindfolded me, tied my hands and slapped me hard. My cook was also in the car," Salwinder said.

Sources said the terrorists had earlier taken an Innova car from taxi driver Ikagar Singh who they killed near the Kathlor bridge. But when tyres of that taxi got punctured, they abandoned it and waited at Kolian for a lift. That's when they spotted the SP's vehicle. When asked why he was released unharmed, Salwinder said the terrorists took him to be a commoner as he was in civil dress. "I was not in my uniform. They thought I am a commoner. When one of the terrorists accidentally pressed the hooter, they realised the vehicle was not an ordinary one.

Sensing trouble, they pushed me and my cook off the car at Gulpur Simbli village. I had lost consciousness. I later got to know they let Rajesh go after a while," Salwinder explained. Salwinder insisted he is not a suspect but a victim of circumstances. He clarified he was not under detention of any agency . He said he alerted the control room immediately after he gained consciousness.

Incidentally, Salwinder is facing five sexual harassment cases slapped by lady constables. Police officials have said the accusations will not come in the way of Salwinder being made the prime witness in the terror attack case.

The terrorists who had kidnapped Salwinder and his companions struck the Pathankot Air Force Station in the early hours of January 2. Five terrorists have been neutralised so far and the operation to neutralise the other terrorists hiding in the base is on.

Also read:

Pathankot attack: India shares evidence with Pakistan

Raheel Sharif vs Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan army chief knew about Pathankot attack?

United Jihad Council claims responsibility for Pathankot attack


The state police had lodged the case in October against 22-year-old Hardik and five of his close aides on the charge of sedition and waging war against the government.

By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Gujarat Police to file a chargesheet by Friday against quota war leader Hardik Patel in a trial court for allegedly instigating the Patel community to kill policemen and adopt violent means to "wage war against Gujarat government".

The apex court's order came when Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Gujarat, sought permission to file the chargesheet on the ground that if it is not filed, the accused will be entitled to get bail.

However, a bench of justices J S Khehar and C Nagappan refused to look into the draft chargesheet of the police.

"It would be inappropriate to look into it. Let the chargesheet be filed in the trial court on or before January 8, 2016. A copy of the chargesheet would be provided to the counsel for the accused in the trial court," it said. The court fixed January 14 for further hearing the matter.

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It will also hear another plea of Hardik challenging the High Court's decision declining to quash the sedition charge invoked against him and others in a case lodged for allegedly attacking places like police stations in the state.

The state police had lodged the case in October against 22-year-old Hardik and five of his close aides on the charge of sedition and waging war against the government.

Later, Hardik, Chirag Patel, Dinesh Bambhaniya and Ketan Patel were arrested and are currently behind bars.

Two other aides of Hardik, Amrish Patel and Alpesh Kathiriya, were not arrested as the high court had granted them interim protection.

The FIR against Hardik and five others under serious charges of sedition said that the young leader had allegedly instigated his community to kill policemen and adopt violent means to wage "war against Gujarat government".

The High Court ordered the removal of three IPC sections in the FIR - sections 121 (waging war against government), 153-A (promoting enmity between different communities) and 153-B (assertions prejudicial to national integrity) - against Hardik and five of his aides.

It, however, refused to drop IPC sections 124 (sedition) and 121-A (conspiracy to wage war against government), which attract punishment of life imprisonment or up to 10 years.

In his second plea, Hardik has challenged the High Court's decision declining to quash the sedition charge invoked against him and others in a case lodged for allegedly attacking places like police stations in the state. In his plea, Hardik has claimed that the charges have wrongly been invoked against him as there was no conspiracy to wage war against the government and, at best, it is the case of use of "intemperate language" which can be tried under some other penal provisions.
"There is no Pakistan policy... this government is simply aping the Congress' foreign policy," Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut told Mail Today.

By Mail Today: In a shocker for the BJP, its ally the Shiv Sena junked PM Modi's Pakistan policy even as Opposition parties picked holes in it in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

"There is no Pakistan policy... this government is simply aping the Congress' foreign policy," Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut told Mail Today.

The leader, who had criticised Modi's recent visit to Lahore, reminded the PM that he used to say before the Lok Sabha elections that terror and talks can't go together but had forgotten the same now.

Also read:

Pathankot attack: India shares evidence with Pakistan

Sharif vs Sharif: Did Pakistan army chief know about Pathankot attack?




In a study conducted by Womankind, it was found that issues like weight and lack of professional satisfaction attribute to women criticising themselves on an average of 8 times per day.

By India Today Web Desk: According to a new study, the phenomenon of social media is causing women to criticise their appearance at least 8 times a day. And no points for guessing that the number one topic of insecurity is--weight.

Daily Mail UK reports,"Selfies and social media platforms such as Instagram were blamed as being a driving force behind today's visual culture." The survey that was conducted over a sample size of 2,000 women, went on to reveal an alarming increase in the negativity women have about themselves. It was also found that one in seven women were not happy about the way they look.

Also Read: This Romanian photographer's take on women's beauty is a refreshing change

The study also attributes the trend of selfies to the growth of insecurities among women in the social-media universe. Being surrounded with picture-perfect individuals, who believe in portraying themselves in a certain way on social media, reportedly has a deteriorating effect on the confidence levels among women today.

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Also Read: Here are 3 ways that will help you shed those extra kilos

The other points women criticise themselves on are: not being professionally satisfied with their job and salary. The survey findings also indicated towards a whopping 46 per cent of women admitting to being critical about themselves at least once before 9.30 am; 42 per cent revealed that they never compliment themselves, with the remnant saying that they awarded themselves with appreciation just once a day. The report also highlights that the spurts of self-criticism generally surface while looking in the mirror or when on a shopping spree.

Also Read: New study reveals that lovemaking gets more passionate after child-birth

The study was conducted as part of WomanKind, a nationwide campaign that seeks to find the reasons behind women indulging in self-criticism, and the ways to curb it.

With women being surrounded with images of perfection, and being expected to juggle their professional and personal lives simultaneously, the survey results do not come as a surprise.




The special operations troops came under heavy mortar and small-arms fire in Afghanistan.

By Reuters: An unknown number of U.S. special forces were killed or wounded in Afghanistan and a medical helicopter went down while trying to help them, NBC reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified U.S. officials.

The special operations troops came under heavy mortar and small-arms fire in Afghanistan, NBC said.

A U.S. military spokesman told Reuters an American helicopter landed safely in Marjah in Helmand Province after mechanical malfunctions.

Army Colonel Michael Lawhorn, spokesman for the Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, said he could not yet comment on whether there were any troops killed or wounded.


The US has said it expects Pakistan to act in bringing to justice the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.

An army person guards during the operation against the militants at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on Monday. PTI Photo

By Press Trust of India: The US has said it expects Pakistan to act in bringing to justice the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack and asked Islamabad to live up to its pledge that it will not "discriminate" among terror groups.

"The government of Pakistan has spoken very powerfully to this and it's certainly our expectation that they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they would," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said Monday on the attack by Pakistani terrorists on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

Kirby's remarks came hours after Pakistan said it is working on the "leads" provided by India on this attack.

Kirby said the US has for a long time talked about the continued safe haven issues there between Afghanistan and Pakistan and certainly between India and Pakistan.

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"We're mindful that there remain some safe havens that we obviously want to see cleared out. And we continue to engage with the government of Pakistan to that end. And again, I would point you back to what the government of Pakistan itself has said and acknowledged that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups and it will continue to take the fight (to them)," Kirby said.

The Pakistani government, the Pakistani people very much understand the threat here, he observed.

"What we want and what we continue to say we want and will continue to work for is increased cooperation, communication, coordination, increased information-sharing and increased efforts against what we all believe is a shared challenge in the region," Kirby said.

"We want to see the government of Pakistan continue to press the fight against terrorists, all terrorists, and to meet their own expectations that they're not going to discriminate among groups. They've said that themselves, and our expectation is that they'll live up to that pledge," he said.

Describing terrorism as a "shared challenge" in South Asia, the US official also asked all countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and bring to justice the perpetrators of the Pathankot terrorist attack. "We urge all the countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and to bring to justice the perpetrators of this particular attack. I would note that the government of Pakistan, also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian air base.

Kirby said the US is encouraged by the government of Pakistan condemning this attack, and the statement that they have made about not discriminating among groups.

"As we've said before, this is an issue that, as are so many issues between India and Pakistan, we want to see them work out bilaterally," Kirby said, adding that normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan remains vital to the security and economic prosperity of the entire region.

"We strongly encourage the governments of both India and Pakistan to remain steadfast in their commitment to a more secure and prosperous future for both our countries and for their region," Kirby said.

"We have been clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups," he said.

The government of Pakistan has said publicly and privately that it is not going to discriminate among terrorist groups as part of its counter-terrorism operation, the US official said.

"So this is a shared challenge that we all face in the region and we in the United States want everybody to treat it as a shared challenge," Kirby said, adding that the US has strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Punjab's Pathankot.

"We extend our condolences to all the victims and their families," he said.

"We recognise there's more everybody can do, not just Pakistan but every nation can do because it is a shared challenge and it's a challenge, as you well know, that doesn't necessarily observe borders and boundaries. So it's something that everybody can attack more," Kirby added.

Also read: Sharif vs Sharif: Pakistan army chief knew about Pathankot attack?

Also read: United Jihad Council claims responsibility for Pathankot attack


Both of these features, which were part of the Galaxy S5, were missing in the Galaxy S6.

By Javed Anwer: In several weeks from now, most likely in February, Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge phones. But information about the new phones has already started trickling out. In an article at the VentureBeat, Evan Blass -- more popularly known by his Twitter handle @EvLeaks -- has said that the Galaxy phones would have a waterproof body and that they will come with features like microSD card slots.

Both of these features, which were part of the Galaxy S5, were missing in the Galaxy S6.

With the Galaxy S6, Samsung ditched the plastic-body design that it used for Galaxy phones and moved to a shell made of metal and frame. There is no doubt that the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge were one of the best looking phones ever made. However, some of the design changes that Samsung made, omitting the microSD card slot and going back on the water-proof feature, did not go down well with the Galaxy fans.

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Apart from the microSD card slot and a more rugged body, the Galaxy S7 is also likely to come with a bigger battery. The Galaxy S7 will reportedly sport a 3000 mAh battery while the Galaxy S7 Edge will come with 3600 mAh battery.

For now we don't know much about the internal hardware in Samsung's new phones. However, it is safe to assume that either they will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor or Samsung's own Exynos 8890 processor.

Last year, Samsung had used Exynos 7420 in its phones but that was probably because it didn't like -- for right reasons -- the Snapdragon 810. This year, the Qualcomm Snapdragon is supposed to be a different beast, in a good way, because it uses custom cores and it is possible that Samsung once again goes back to the plan it followed with the Galaxy S5 and the Galaxy S4, which were available in both Snapdragon and Exynos versions.

Both the high-end Galaxy phones are expected to use SuperAMOLED screens with WQHD resolution. They are also likely to have at least 4GB RAM and 32GB internal storage.


Investigative reporting from the inner city to Wall Street to the United Nations This is the blogspot version InnerCityPress.com
Insurance Back Vienna Insurance Group expands in Bulgaria: Bulstrad closes UBB-AIG acquisition

Following the signature of the agreement to fully acquire Bulgarian bancassurer UBB-AIG and regulatory approval of the acquisition, the transaction has now been completed.



Simultaneously with Bulstrad's - a well-established VIG Group company in Bulgaria - acquisition of UBB-AIG a cooperation agreement with United Bulgarian Bank (UBB) was signed. As a result, Vienna Insurance Group has expanded its portfolio in Bulgaria, enhancing sales potential in the country as part of the Group's multi-brand distribution strategy.



"Bulgaria is one of our core markets. By acquiring UBB-AIG, Bulstrad took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen its presence in the Bulgarian market and open up further customer segments", said Peter H

Author: Mihai CRACEA on 05.01.2016





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The Infrastructure Ministry of Ukraine has said that the thoughtless decision of Russia to restrict transit of Ukrainian goods and the uncoordinated quota for transportation permits for 2016 have resulted in the full stoppage of transportation by road between the two countries.

"The Infrastructure Ministry believes that the complication of transit via Russia is another attempt of Russian authorities to affect the economic situation in Ukraine. The thoughtless decision of Russia without the clear mechanism of its realization and the uncoordinated permits quota for 2016 today have resulted in the complete halt of transportation between the countries. Moreover, the sharp restriction of transit via Russia puts under threat the interests of third countries which would not be able to receive the goods," the press service of the ministry told Interfax-Ukraine.

The ministry said that now international transit cargo from Ukraine to Kazakhstan via Russia is transported via Belarus. This means that drivers have no rights to cross the Ukrainian-Russian border, but they can enter Russia via Belarus, if they have registration vouchers and special identification means (seals).

"At once after the publication of the document the Infrastructure Ministry asked representative of the Transport Ministry of Russia to settle the issue. However, Russia refused to give any explanations until the end of holidays," the press service said.

Until the situation is not resolved, Ukraine calls on haulers not to plan trips to Russia to avoid problems for drivers and additional expenses for business. The ministry will inform on any changes in the issue.

As reported, Russia has fully halted the transit of goods from Ukraine via its territory as of January 4, 2016, the Ukrainian Economic Development and Trade Ministry.

"This Russian ban is nontransparent, unjustified and discriminatory. Thus, the Russians have violated their commitments, which in particular had been assumed within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Free Trade Area Treaty as of October 18, 2011," the ministry said.
Time to reveal my first investment in a truly Japanese company (that is bought with Yen and only listed in Japan). What really triggered me to pull the gun...
[January 04, 2016] Copley Systems Announces V4.0 of Its Student Retention Management Software with Updated Analytics Engine and New UX/UI

Copley Retention Systems www.copleysystems.com has announced the release of its updated student success platform. "We thank all of the students, faculty, advisors, financial aid counselors, Provosts and Deans who have assisted us in developing the most advanced, data-driven retention management and advising workflow platform available today," said Keith Clougherty, CEO of Copley Retention. "We recognize that in order for student success stakeholders to identify those in need and deliver meaningful intervention, and to do it at scale, they need to have access to demographic, historic, and real-time student performance and non-cognitive data. We call this 'dynamic modeling' and have made the visualization of this data the cornerstone of this release." Copley Retention software uses advanced algorithms to assess risk based on detailed analysis and combination of the available data points to generate reports and alerts for advising and student success staff members. These alerts enable timely outreach to students in the medium they specify, facilitate real world and virtual meetings, and track all activity in centralized notes. The platform also provides meaningful analysis for department and institutional leadership to track and rport on retention and student engagement efforts.



Copley has streamlined both its user interface and user experience to better reflect the wants and needs of students and the higher ed student support professional. Dr. Phyllis Brooks Collins of Delaware State University notes, "Integrating with other campus data systems and generating reports are powerful tools which close the feedback loop of information generated on each student, this provides a complete picture of the students' progress through every semester. Combining key student data with the intuitive, collaborative, impactful tools and practices that Copley offers makes this solution meaningful. It takes utilization of all of these features and recommended practices to effectively develop an environment of support, care, and communication on campus." As a Canvas Certified Partner, The Copley Retention Platform integrates within the Canvas LMS to deliver efficacy diagnostics, reporting, alerts, interventions, and other Copley tools that work in both synchronous and asynchronous environments. Melissa Loble, VP of Partners and Programs at Instructure (Canvas) states, "We're excited to see the integrations between our client schools and Copley working to improve outcomes for both students and institutions." Chris Rodriguez, Technical Director at Copley states, "We always like to work with a Canvas school because we know they're utilizing a system we can quickly and easily integrate with to deliver a positive result. Our API's can actually generate reports using school data during a product demonstration - it's dramatic." In addition to Canvas, Copley Retention also works with all other LMS's and Student Information Systems.

About Copley Retention Systems Inc. The Copley Retention platform is a data driven retention management and advising workflow solution. Our platform aggregates multi-system data and provides remediation, collaboration, and analytics features to help keep students on path toward graduation. We offer tools, best practices, and institutional training that directly support objectives for student success, retention and persistence. Copley maintains offices in Boston, Washington DC, San Diego, New York, Pittsburgh, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Visit www.copleysystems.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160104006329/en/

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[January 04, 2016]

Marclick Announces Launch Offering Businesses Multiple Channels to Market Their Products Effectively

LEWES, Del., Jan. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- For many businesses the only thing standing between them and success is having the right platforms to sell their products on. Setting this up has recently become much easier, thanks to Marclick. Marclick is a multiple channel selling provider that delivers everything needed to build an online shop and successfully sell products across many online channels. Clients couldn't be more pleased.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/318971

"We know the challenges businesses face trying to offer their products online and on social media," commented Hosam Abdellah, President of Marclick Inc. "We're offering a package that delivers in this area in a way that's really remarkale. From web sales, to selling across social media, we have it covered. Customers get a custom shop and can literally sell anywhere."







According to the company, the Marclick package, features remarkably elegant and attractive web designs; an online shop; social media integration; access to an online marketplace; payment collection, without the need for a payment processor; a built in affiliate marketing system; high level encryption, backed by 256 bit encryption; and much more.

Both free and different levels of paid plans are available.

Early reviews from users have been very positive across the board.

Chris C., from Boston, recently said in a five star review, "Marclick was a real breakthrough for us. We have a great product, but on the internet end of things not much experience. Marclick made setting up that end simple, and now we're selling on our social media pages and from our online shop. Very highly recommended."

For more information be sure to visit https://www.marclick.com/en/lp5

This release was issued through WebWire(R). For more information, visit http://www.webwire.com.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marclick-announces-launch-offering-businesses-multiple-channels-to-market-their-products-effectively-300198862.html

SOURCE Marclick
[January 05, 2016] Ayla Networks to Highlight IoT Mobile App Advancements at CES 2016 in Las Vegas

CES (News - Alert) Show-Ayla Networks, a global Internet of Things (IoT) platform expert, will focus attention on the latest connected products, manufacturing customers and technology advancements related to IoT mobile apps and beacons at the annual CES show, to be held Jan. 6-9, 2016, in Las Vegas, Booth #71153 at the Sands Expo Center. "Mobile apps are the most high-profile aspect of connected products, but prior to the IoT, few manufacturers had reason to achieve in-house expertise in mobile app development," said David Friedman (News - Alert), CEO and co-founder of Ayla Networks. "As part of Ayla's comprehensive IoT platform, our Agile (News - Alert) Mobile Application Platform (AMAP) technology lets manufacturers begin their mobile app development with most of the work already done." New to AMAP since its launch in May 2015 is support for mobile beacon technology, which establishes direct communication between a mobile app developed using AMAP technology and beacon-equipped connected systems within a cross-manufacturer environment. AMAP supports leading mobile beacon technologies including Apple (News - Alert) iBeacon and Eddystone solutions. Also added to AMAP is Apple Watch support, enabling people to use mobile apps running on an Apple Watch to control their connected products. Ayla's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model means that new features such as mobile beacon and Apple Watch support are available immediately for both new and existing AMAP customers to integrate into their moile applications.



Demos of Mobile Beacon Technology Working with Connected Devices At its suite at CES, Ayla will demonstrate a number of beacon-equipped connected products-including the Wi-Fi-enabled Symphony and Signal ceiling fans from Hunter Fan; LockState RemotePlug smart plug; Hampton Products International's Brinks Home Security Digital Lock; and a connected thermostat for commercial and light-industrial buildings from United Technologies Electronic Controls-that will be located throughout the suite.

Using a smartphone running an AMAP application created by Ayla mobile app development partner Cardinal Peak, visitors can walk around the Ayla suite and experience interactions with multiple connected products from different vendors, without actively selecting menu items. As visitors approach each connected product, beacon support in the AMAP app will cause the user interface (UI) for that particular product to pop up automatically on the smartphone; as they walk away, the UI disappears automatically. Ayla's CES suite at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas will be open each day of the CES show, January 6 to 9. To make an appointment to visit the suite, please contact Justin Ruiz at [email protected] or stop by Ayla's CES Booth #71153 at the Sands Expo Center. At the booth, Ayla will use a connected kitchen and living room theme to display customers' products and to show elements of its IoT platform, which includes embedded device agents, cloud agents and mobile apps. About Ayla Networks Ayla Networks provides the industry's first Agile IoT platform, accelerating development, support and ongoing enhancements of connected products for the Internet of Things. Ayla's end-to-end platform runs across devices, cloud and apps to create secure connectivity, data analytics and feature-rich customer experiences. Delivered as a cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Ayla's Agile IoT platform provides the flexibility and modularity to enable rapid changes to practically any type of device, cloud or app environment. Ayla Networks was named a 2015 Cool Vendor in the Internet of Things by Gartner, Inc. Ayla's investors include Cisco (News - Alert), the International Finance Corporation, SAIF Partners, Crosslink Capital, Voyager Capital, Linear Venture and SJF Ventures. For more information, visit www.aylanetworks.com. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160105005079/en/

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Liza Featherstone in the Nation (an excerpt -- read the whole thing here):

Socialist feminism assumes that redistribution is the best way to begin improving life for the vast majority of women, both materially and socially. To take a none-too-radical example, in countries like Denmark and Swedenwhich offer a broad range of social benefits provided through the state rather than acquired in desperation, as they so often are here, through marriage or a jobwomen can live more comfortably; raise healthier, more secure children; and sleep with whomever they please. Throughout her long career, Clinton has demonstrated contempt for turning this project into policy.

As first lady of Arkansas, she led the efforts by her husbands administration to weaken teachers unions and scapegoat teachersmost of them women, large numbers of them blackfor problems in the education system, implementing performance measures and firings that set a punitive tone for education reform nationwide. Rather than trying to walk this back, Clinton recently said that as president, she would close any public school that wasnt doing a better than average job. Fuzzy math aside, this suggests a regime of pressure on Americas mostly female teaching force81 percent of elementary- and middle-school teachers are womenthat would make her predecessors look like presidents of a giant homeschooling hippie collective. Hillarys socialist-feminist boosters might want to ask themselves: What kind of socialist feminism supports undermining black women on the job while imposing austerity on the public sector? And lest you think Clintons financial hawkishness is reserved for K12, she also opposes free college tuition, though the United States is the only country where students57 percent of them womenare saddled with decades of debt as the price of attaining higher education. Defending this position, Clinton recently said that it was important for people seeking a college degree to have skin in this game.

...

In a normal election season, all of this would be reason to agitate, but not necessarily to work or vote against the candidateafter all, whats the alternative? This year, however, there is an inspiring reason to vote against Hillary: an actually existing socialist-feminist candidate in the Democratic primary. Im talking, of course, about Bernie Sanders. Hes no Marxist revolutionaryif youre waiting for someone who will expropriate the expropriators, youll have to wait a little longerbut he has spent his life fighting, consistently and without apology, for social-democratic policies that would improve the lives of a majority of American women. In contrast to Clintons devotion to imposing shame and austerity on poor women and their kids, Sanders helped lead the Senate opposition to Republican efforts to cut the WIC program, which provides nutrition assistance for mothers, babies, and pregnant womenand he has said that, as president, he would expand it. Other prominent planks in his platform that should be of interest to feminists include free college tuition, single-payer healthcare, high-quality childcare for all Americans, and a $15 minimum wage. In contrast to Clintons waffling on Planned Parenthood, Sanders has said that he would increase federal funding to the organization; and as part of his single-payer plan, he would expand support for womens reproductive-health services.
MATTOON (JG-TC) -- A man was arrested Thursday evening for allegedly confronting a police officer who was directing traffic near a fire scene.

The Mattoon Police Department reported that Lee A. Hearns, 26, a former Chicago resident who lists the Mattoon Area PADS homeless shelter as his home address, was arrested at 11:18 p.m. in the 300 block of South 21st Street on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting a peace officer.

Hearns allegedly approached an officer who was directing traffic around a nearby structure fire. For reasons unknown, he allegedly yelled vulgarities at the officer and claimed that the officer was racist, police reported. Hearns also allegedly challenged the officer, placed his hands into his pockets, and implied that he was armed.

Hearns then allegedly directed his attention to a bystander in the area and was subsequently arrested. He allegedly resisted arrest and claimed that the officer was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Hearns was then taken to the Coles County jail.

Mattoon Area PADS reports that Hearns was not a guest of this organization's homeless shelter at the time of his arrest Thursday evening. The police department reports that Hearns, who has been a PADS guest, continues to use a drivers license that lists the shelter, 2017 Broadway Ave., as his residence. Following his arrest, he gave 2017 Broadway as his address of residence when he was booked into the Coles County jail.

In other matters, Lea M. Jordan, 30, of Mattoon was arrested at 7:36 a.m. Friday in the 400 block of West Park Plaza on a warrant of arrest for aggravated criminal sexual abuse. The charge alleges that Jordan was having relations with a minor. Jordan was taken to jail in lieu of a $20,000 bond.

In a separate incident, Jonathan L. Jones, 33, of Mattoon was arrested at 11:36 a.m. Friday in the 1200 block of Marshall Avenue on charges of domestic battery and aggravated unlawful restraint.

Jones allegedly battered a female, and then prevented her from leaving their residence while threatening her with a crowbar. The victim was taken to Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center with minor injuries. Jones was taken to jail.

In a separate matter, Jacob A. Leber, 19, of Marshall was arrested at 11:06 a.m. Saturday in the 300 block of Broadway Avenue East on charges of obstructing a peace officer. He allegedly declined to provide his name and attempted to walk away from an officer who was conducting an investigation. Leber then allegedly resisted arrest.

The officer had been dispatched to speak with Leber after he was allegedly observed walking through a public park in boxer shorts, while shirtless, and allegedly carrying a bow and arrow. Leber was issued a notice to appear in Coles County Circuit Court.
100 years ago, Jan. 5, 1916

MATTOON -- The Standard Oil Company and the Indian Refining Company must place concrete floors in the buildings of their plants which house their big oil tanks. An ordinance amending the ordinance passed some time ago was adopted at Tuesday evening's Mattoon City Council meeting. The new ordinance requires the two companies to place concrete floors in their facilities so as to protect property owners and dwellers of that vicinity, it having been claimed that oil which leaks from the tanks seeps through the ground and into nearby wells... DECATUR -- Mayor S.W. Johnson of Sullivan and Chief of Police McCune , represented by Clarence Darrow, the famous Chicago lawyer and several local attorneys, appeared before Judge Whitfield of the Macon County Circuit Court to show why they should not be held in contempt of court for ignoring an injunction to stop them from preventing the Central Illinois Public Service Company from connecting its electric wires with Sullivan residences in conformity with a ruling by the Public Utilities Commission. The mayor's attorneys contended the company had no rights in Sullivan and that the utility's franchise had expired. After sparring between the attorneys all morning, the court upheld the contention of the defendants.. CHARLESTON -- Residents of Seven Hickory Township today began circulating a petition to vote on organizing a township high school. A recent petition filed by Charleston Township voters asked that a portion of the south end of both Seven Hickory and Morgan townships be included in the Charleston district. Now the voters in Seven Hickory want a high school of their own.

50 years ago, 1966

MATTOON -- A total of 209 major crimes were committed in Mattoon during 1965, according to an annual report issued by Police Chief Robert L. Plummer. The crime total is about 7 percent above the 196 major crimes reported in 1964. Larceny cases involving amounts of under $50 accounted for the increased number of crimes. In 1965, there were 56 such reports, compared with 43 in 1964. As in 1964, no homicides or manslaughter by negligence cases were reported... MATTOON -- Statistics released by the Dun & Bradstreet Co. reflect changes in the Coles County business community over the past year. Dun & Bradstreet figures show 731 manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers in Coles County in January. Mattoon had the largest number, 452, while Charleston had 229 and Oakland was listed with 25. The total is five more businesses than were listed in January 1965.

25 years ago, 1991

CHARLESTON -- A big jump in marriage licenses issued in Coles County in 1990 over the year before may be credited to a change in requirements. The county issued 511 marriage licenses in 1990, compared to 381 in 1989. The increase may be because the state no longer requires a blood test in order to acquire a license, according to Donna Murbarger at the Coles County clerks office. Officials at Fox Ridge State Park and at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site said attendance was up at both state facilities in 1990. Lincoln Log had an attendance of 124,748 last year, which was up by about 6,000 people over 1989s attendance of 118,745. At Fox Ridge, attendance increased by about 37,000 from 1989 to 1990s total of 229,381 CHARLESTON  Jim Edgar had to overcome a number of traditions to be elected governor of Illinois in November. The Charleston Republican, it has been noted, is the first non-lawyer since 1952, the first downstate governor since 1928 and the first-ever elected governor who graduated from one of Illinois public universities. But an article by Douglas Klemens, statehouse bureau chief for Illinois Issues magazine, said Edgar is the first governor to elected to succeed a governor of the same party since 1929 and is the first governor with legislative experience since 1929.

100 years ago, Jan. 6, 1916

TOLEDO -- In endeavoring to shoot a hog at his farm, seven miles west of Toledo, yesterday morning, Charles Adkins shot and killed his 5-year-old son, Alvin. Adkins, assisted by several neighbors, was butchering hogs for his winter's supply of meat. He was shooting the animals with a rifle. One of the hogs was singled out by Adkins and just as he pulled the trigger of the weapon, the child ran in front of the muzzle and received the bullet squarely in the forehead. The father is reported to be almost crazed with grief... MATTOON -- Residents of Mattoon and vicinity enjoyed a wide range of temperatures in about 18 hours as the mercury dropped from 55 degrees on Wednesday afternoon to 6 degrees above zero this morning. This makes a difference of 49 degrees... MATTOON -- The Loudon Packing Company, based in Terre Haute, is planning to do a much bigger business at its Mattoon plant in 1916 than it did in 1915. the company wants to induce farmers of Mattoon, Neoga and Arcola to raise a greater acreage of tomatoes than they have raised since the Loudon plant was erected on the north edge of Mattoon a few years ago. Seven and eight dollars per ton is the usual price paid by the company, but the coming season it will pay $9 a ton. The Loudon company desires that 1,000 acres grown to the tomato in Mattoon, Neoga and Arcola.

50 years ago, 1966

CHARLESTON -- Construction of Eastern Illinois University's new Telephone and Security Building will enable the addition of more than 1,000 new telephones by the start of classes in the fall. The new Centrex telephone system will more than triple the number of phones on campus and provide for unlimited future growth. At present, the campus is serviced by 479 telephones. The move to Centrex will give the campus 1,700 telephones by September... CHARLESTON -- The Charleston City Council has approved the appointment of four probationary firemen and one policeman. The four firemen are Richard Craig, Wayne Hampton, Delbert McDivitt and Russel Rogers. The probationary police officer is Jesse Walden Jr. The Charleston Fire Department now has 13 members and the police department has 12.

25 years ago, 1991

Sunday. No paper.




Job Description

Part of a small HR team. The purpose of the HR Intern post is to contribute towards the successful delivery of HR processes and procedures  with specific responsibility for the efficient delivery and maintenance of HR documentation and files. It is also to create opportunity for a young professional to develop in the HR career.

Job Requirements

Degree in a Management subject.



One to Two years work experience, ideally in human resource/personnel administration Able to follow required procedures and guidelines, give good attention to detail.



Numerate, able to make calculations to high degree of accuracy.



Excellent language skills (verbal and writing) in Amharic and English.



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Proficient computer skills  able to use Word, Excel, Outlook.

Contract Period: Initial contract period will be up to six month with a possibility of extension

This is an office-based post in Addis Ababa. Occasional travel to SNVs regional offices (SNNPR, Oromia, Amhara and Tigray) may be required.

Closing date: Jan 15, 2016









Your rating: none



Rating: 0  0 votes



How to Apply

Candidates should apply by sending:



i) A motivation letter; ii) An updated Curriculum Vitae with Names and contact details of at least two professional referees.

Only applicants who meet the above requirements are invited to send their applications and CVs to the HR Officer, SNV Ethiopia, P.O.Box 40675 Addis Ababa or e-mail at SNVEthiopiaRecruitment@snvworld.org not later than 15th January 2016. Only shortlisted candidates shall be contacted.

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Hello there! Here is a list of fabulous food, music, news, videos, graffitis, comments from the guestbook, and images of the world in pictures. Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible, the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing world. Kiss your Mom and Dad, tell them that you are loved. May you live forever in happiness and good health. LoL, Zalina and Mail
Millennials make up a bigger share of the Nebraska Legislature than any other state legislature in the U.S., according to a recent survey.

People born in 1980 or later who entered adulthood at the turn of the century are considered millennials, and Nebraska had eight such senators last year.

Nebraska's 16 percent millennial membership ranks higher than any other state, according to the survey done last year by Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Jeremy Nordquist of Omaha brought that number down to seven members when he resigned to become Congressman Brad Ashford's chief of staff, but Nebraska still leads the nation in a tie with Maine.

"Nobody's Snapchatted me yet," said 27-year-old Matt Hansen of Lincoln, Nebraska's youngest state senator.

(And if you don't know what Snapchat is, ask your kids, your kids' kids or Sen. Hansen.)

Age does factor into the way senators communicate and the experiences they bring to the job. Hansen, for example, was graduating from college and looking for work during the most recent economic downturn.

"I think it's really important to have diverse perspectives," he said.

Omaha Sen. Brett Lindstrom, a 34-year-old father of two, said he was surprised to be considered a millennial and shocked that Nebraska ranked atop the list.

"Nebraska's a pretty conservative state," he said. "Maybe we're a tight enough community that people who are younger feel engaged in the political process."

Young senators tend to be from near Lincoln and Omaha, where quicker drives to the Capitol make it easier for them to balance lawmaking with family and work. Lindstrom, a financial adviser, said sharing clients with his father helps free up time during the legislative session.

Former Lincoln Mayor Don Wesely, who went into the Legislature at 24 and spent two decades as a senator, said young senators "bring an energy to the body."

The youngest senator each session is traditionally subjected to a bit of legislative hazing: He or she is named enrollment and review chairman, responsible for taking procedural steps necessary for legislative revisers to adopt amendments into a bill and review it for technical and grammatical accuracy.

Wesely keeps a list of those past "E&R" chairmen, and said some went on to become lieutenant governors, congressmen, even governor. Wesely and Roland Luedtke stand out as former Lincoln mayors. Jon Bruning was E&R chairman in 1997 before becoming attorney general in 2003. Congressman Adrian Smith held the post after that.

That doesn't mean every young senator is chasing higher political aspirations, Wesely said.

"I don't think a lot of people see it as a stepping stone."

But that changes for some once they get a taste of public life.

"Now you've done that, and you think about other opportunities," Wesely said.

Lindstrom noted many younger senators already have taken leadership roles within the Legislature. Two standing committee chairmen were born after 1980, and Omaha Sen. Heath Mello, head of the budget-building Appropriations Committee, missed being called a millennial by just a few months.

"I feel like everybody's on the same playing field," Lindstrom said. "Everybody's treated with respect. It really doesn't matter what age you are."
An on-campus Dunkin' Donuts location will greet students and staff when classes resume at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Jan. 11.

UNL announced a partnership with the cafe and bakery chain on Tuesday, indicating Lincolns fourth Dunkin Donuts will be located within the 30,000-square-foot renovation of the first floor of Love Library.

This new space allows us to finally accommodate a long-standing student request to add a food vendor within the libraries, said Nancy Busch, UNLs dean of libraries. Its a necessary feature of an environment designed to allow people to come in and study or work on projects for long periods of time.

Known as the Learning Commons, the $10 million renovation of the 1970s-era library annex will be an around-the-clock space for students to study, collaborate or grab a coffee, according to a program statement approved by the NU Board of Regents last year.

It will include 18 private study rooms, a help station for information technology issues and a studio to record presentations. It can accommodate about 500 people with additional seating in an outdoor plaza.

The idea to recapture space once used to store volumes upon volumes of reference works and other books in declining circulation has spread across the country -- as well as NU itself.

The University of Nebraska at Kearney and the University of Nebraska at Omaha already utilize the learning commons approach to their libraries, and fundraising is underway on the $22.5 million C.Y. Thompson Learning Commons, a renovation of the library on East Campus.

The Dunkin Donuts within the City Campus learning commons will feature the chains entire beverage line as well as a limited bakery menu, said Bryce Bares, a partner in QSR Services, which owns the franchise.

We have a little kitchen space and will be making the bakery goods on site, Bares said in a news release.

The store will be open to the public during regular library hours, UNL spokesman Steve Smith said. Access to the library, however, is restricted to those with university-issued NCards during early-morning hours.

Access to the store will be through the south entrance of the Love North complex -- underneath the connecting walkway between the north annex and the main library. A second entrance on the north side of the building will open later this spring, Smith added.

The Dunkin Donuts at UNL will also be the first in Nebraska to use paper cups rather than Styrofoam after the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska voiced its wishes and the university agreed to remove the product from campus.

Bares said QSR is working on securing a steady supply of paper cups for the Dunkin Donuts location.

Green initiatives are really important to me personally and Im excited that we are the first location in Nebraska to go this route, he said.
The University of Nebraska-Lincolns Confucius Institute was named a model institute by the Chinese Ministry of Education at an international conference in Shanghai last month.

The honor given by the Office of Chinese Language Council International, also known as the Hanban, recognizes excellence in teaching and promoting Chinese language and culture.

Charles Wood, director of the UNL Confucius Institute, received the award alongside UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman and Ruiying Yang, a professor at UNL's partner, Xi'an Jiaotong University. Being named a model institute places the UNL center among the top 10 of more than 500 set up around the world, Wood said.

One of the goals is cultural exchange and teaching Chinese language, he said. We know that we have been doing well, but we didnt know how we are doing in comparison to other institutes.

UNLs Confucius Institute launched in 2007 and is the only Chinese language and culture center in the state.

Since then, the Confucius Institute in Nebraska Hall on the UNL City Campus has grown from two teachers to 10 who teach noncredit Chinese language courses to UNL students, staff and faculty members while also supporting a broad range of programs across the state.

Public schools in Lincoln, Omaha and Scottsbluff benefit from the center, which trains teachers to teach the Chinese language and culture. And Southeast Community College will launch its own program soon, joining Bellevue University as the Confucius Institute broadens its reach across higher education in Nebraska.

More programs are on the way as well, said Lei Shi, program coordinator at the UNL office. This year, UNLs Confucius Institute hopes to strengthen its network of resources for K-12 Chinese teachers by developing curriculum and distance learning courses, and hosting teaching competitions and training seminars as well as offering to monitor classroom instruction.

UNL also wants to expand the Confucius Institutes reach to the business community in Nebraska, Shi said.

Companies that do business with China want to learn basic Chinese language and culture, Shi said. We want to provide outreach to chambers of commerce in Lincoln and Omaha to see how we can adjust to their needs and serve the community better.

Activities to support the Family With Chinese Children program for families who have adopted children from China also will grow in the upcoming year, Shi added.

The Confucius Institute, funded through grants from Xi-an Jiaotong University in China and UNL, could receive additional funding from the Chinese Hanban for being named a model institute, Wood said.

We can propose additional activities we want to set up as a model institute so others can learn from our experiences and successes, he said. This enhances our chances of increasing our programs.
WASHINGTON  The old admonition about not messing with Texas (expand that to Texans) has become more a reality than ever. If you should happen to be visiting the Lone Star State be careful who you bump into  literally that is. He or she might take offense.

At the very time the nation is finally waking up to the dangers of unfettered gun distribution and President Barack Obama is looking for ways to take executive action, the wannabe Buckeroos of the Wild West (mainly Republican legislators) have overturned an 1871 state law prohibiting the open carry of firearms. Now, it seems, it takes less time to get through security at the state capitol if youre displaying your six shooters to 9 millimeter semi-automatics or whatever poison you choose. The unarmed greenhorns stand in long lines to go through the metal detectors.

When Obama revealed in a New Year radio broadcast that he was going to talk to his attorney general about what legal steps he could take without congressional interference to slow down American gun deaths now equal to those in auto accidents, the Texas governor issued a retaliatory tweet that sounded more like an offer for the president to meet him in the street  probably at sundown  than just a political taunt.

Obama wants to impose more gun control. My response? COME&TAKE IT, Republican Gov. Greg Abbot wrote in a draw, pardner demand that seems more than a little out of line.

However, there are those out there attempting to work in the middle of the current controversy with sensible compromises that preserve Second Amendment principles while taking steps to protect the rights and safety of all citizens, including those who dont want to bear arms, if there are any left. Believe it or not the groups for sane solutions include the American Firearms Retailers Association and Evolve whose aim is to reduce accidental loss of life by promoting gun safety including controversial gun locks and other procedures opposed by gun advocates. AFRA is made up of federally licensed gun dealers and Evolve is a privately funded group which counsels that while owning a gun may be a right, it doesnt give one a right to be a dumbass.

These groups and others represent the silent majority of Americans who believe background checks should be expanded to gun show and Internet sellers and require their licensing, a step Obama reportedly believes can be taken legally through his own order. Expanding background checks is favored by 89 percent of Americans, according to recent polls. Despite its popularity, Obamas efforts to accomplish broadening the background policy through legislation failed in the Senate, mainly because of four votes from members of his own Democratic Party.

The presidents efforts have been lagging since that vote until recently when the nation was shocked by a mass murder in San Bernardino, Calif. by those claiming allegiance to the terrorist organization, ISIS.

The so-called middle grounders are in sharp contrast to the fringe operators on the right and left of the gun debate; those who would ban all guns and lobbyists for no laws. The National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sport Foundation, both mouthpieces for the gun manufacturers, continue their unrelenting opposition to any effort on either state or national levels that restrict the distribution of weapons and ammunition. They argue that the Second Amendment comes without qualification and requires absolute fealty to uninhibited possession anywhere in any venue.

A spokesman for AFRA said it was dedicated to showing there is a middle ground that gets things accomplished by avoiding the extremes on both sides. Legitimate gun dealers, he argued, dont oppose sensible measures but are small business men who get jumped on from all directions when a disaster occurs.

The ATF targets them, the NSSF ignores them and gun manufacturers continually place them at risk with poorly marked serial numbers and so forth. Many are family owned business who work hard to prevent guns from landing in the wrong hands. They get little support.

The action in Texas shows that the safe and sane elements have an uphill fight. Surveys show that gun sales surged after San Bernardino and that 50 percent of Americans believe encouraging legal gun carrying is a better reaction to terrorists than new laws. As I said, dont mess with Texas.
A representative for a hobbyist gun club that hosts a semi-annual gun show in Lincoln said President Barack Obamas planned executive action to prevent gun deaths will have little effect on sales at the local show.

Ardis Moody, secretary and treasurer of the Rock Creek Renegades, said Tuesday she supports Obamas decision to broaden the definition of gun dealers subject to background checks to include those that sell at gun shows, websites and flea markets that are not federally licensed.

The Rock Creek Renegades, also known as the Lancaster County Muzzleloading Rifle Association, hosts the Modern and Black Powder Gun Show each January and September at the Lancaster Event Center. The next show, scheduled Jan. 23-24, features hundreds of firearms dealers and private collectors selling thousands of modern firearms, hunting and shooting supplies and ammunition.

While most of sellers at the gun show are licensed firearms dealers, some are private collectors, Moody said.

Rock Creek Renegades requires all of the sellers at its gun show to only sell to people who provide firearm purchase certificates, which the Lancaster County Sheriffs Office can provide to citizens upon completion of a successful background check.

Were not serving terrorists, she said. Were serving the sporting community who values their Second Amendment rights.

Jim Clark, owner of BigShots Gun Store, 399 Sun Valley Blvd., said Obamas plan wont affect gun shops like his, as he is already a federally licensed firearms dealer.

He said he had received numerous calls Tuesday from local gun owners concerned Obamas proposed executive action would inhibit their ability to buy weapons.

Any time theres a change in firearms laws, it gets people worked up, he said. If they enforce the laws that are on the books now, I dont think well see any difference for us brick-and-mortar dealers.

Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said the problem with background checks isnt which sellers are subject to them.

Instead, Wagner said, he's concerned the database law enforcement agencies use to conduct these checks excludes information on people police have taken into temporary emergency protective custody because they were deemed a danger to themselves or others.

In 2015, about 3,800 people in Lancaster County applied for handgun purchase permits, Wagner said. Only four had mental health disqualifiers, meaning they had been declared by a mental health board to be mentally unsuitable, Wagner said.

Sometimes people who are temporarily committed avoid a mental health board decision by seeking treatment themselves. They won't show up in background checks, the sheriff said.

In 2013, that meant his office had no choice but to issue a handgun permit to a man even though he had been taken into emergency protective custody 10 times in 11 years, Wagner said.

"If a guy has been EPC'd 10 times in 11 years, you would think he is not receiving the treatment that he is needing," the sheriff said.

He said he would support a provision where that man and others could apply for a permit after a waiting period of five years.

Meanwhile, Obama's proposed executive action drew swift opposition from Nebraska's congressional delegation Tuesday.

Republican politicians from Nebraska criticized the president's decision.

Gov. Pete Ricketts said in a news release that Obama is undermining the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.

Sens. Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse said Obama's executive actions bypass the legislative process and wouldn't have stopped any recent mass shootings. Republican Rep. Adrian Smith said the focus should be on enforcing existing laws, treating mental illness and fighting "radical Islamic terrorism."

At the state Capitol, state Sens. Tommy Garrett of Bellevue and Dave Bloomfield of Hoskins reviewed details of the president's plan in Garrett's first-floor office.

Garrett questioned how the plan would prevent violent gun crimes when most are committed with firearms that are stolen or purchased through the normal channels by a shooter or a friend or family member whose background is checked.

Bloomfield displayed his firearm purchase permit and quoted the cliche, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

"It's a wore-out old line, but it's still accurate," he said.
KEARNEY  In high school, Michael Heuertz told himself that he would never join the military.

In January, Heuertz will leave Kearney to embark on his third deployment since joining the U.S. Army Reserve in 2002.

"I learned to never say never," Heuertz said.

Heuertz said that he joined the military as a freshman at Hastings College because he hadn't had the experiences he wanted.

"I had never hardly even ran a mile; I had never fired a rifle. I just really wanted to take on a real challenge. So, I made that choice to go ahead and join the Army Reserve, and little did we realize how busy we would be with the war on terrorism after that," Heuertz said.

A music teacher at Horizon Middle School, Heuertz will be leaving Kearney Public Schools at the end of the year to begin his deployment.

But this deployment will be different for Heuertz and his wife, Cassandra. It's the first time he'll be leaving his children behind.

"They're sacrificing as well, and we're in this together," Heuertz said.

The father of 3-year-old Elsie and 1-year-old Isaac, Heuertz said he has given the children Daddy Dolls so that he can still be nearby in some form.

Heuertz said the dolls resemble him, are in uniform and have a voice feature that will allow him to record messages to his children for playback.

Heuertz also plans to keep in touch with family and friends via online video chats, phone calls, emails and handwritten letters.

"An old fashioned letter is still great," he said.

A sergeant first class and member of the 451st Expeditionary Sustainment Command based at Wichita, Kansas, Heuertz said he learned of the deployment when he reported for training in the fall. He said he's being deployed to the Middle East for a year, but can't reveal the exact location.

"The first thing (that) I thought of was: 'I have a great job at the middle school. I just love these students. I have a wonderful wife and children, and I didn't want to leave all of that.' But that's part of the sacrifice. If there's a need, and I meet that need, then I'll gladly go," Heuertz said.

A chaplain's assistant, Heuertz said his role is to support the living, care for the wounded and to honor the dead.

Before he leaves for the Middle East, Heuertz said it's important to slow down and to spend time with friends and family while he can.

No stranger to deployment, Heuertz said that it's an opportunity to make changes, break bad habits, and strengthen his relationship with God.

"For myself, that's a time that I really become close with God and see what it is that he's wanting me to do on that journey," Heuertz said.

He added that faith and family are what keeps him going when he's deployed overseas and away from his loved ones.

"The first thing that keeps me going in the morning is God, and the mission that I have to love others and to care for others," Heuertz said.

Even though his wife and kids will remain in Nebraska, Heuertz noted that the Army is a second family for him.

"It's really about the people. It's your brothers and sisters on your left and your right and those relationships that you build that make it really what it is," Heuertz said. "That brotherhood and sisterhood is real. It's unbelievable. It is a second family."

In his fourth year of teaching, but his first year at Horizon, Heuertz said that he's seen strong support from students and staff at the school.

"I'm so blessed to have a grateful nation that has supported veterans and supported current service members," Heuertz said.

Though he'll be gone for a year, Heuertz will return to Horizon thanks to the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act.

A federal law enacted in 1994, USERRA ensures that service members will be able to return to their positions after a tour of duty.

Heuertz described music as integral to his life and faith. He plays guitar and piano, and he joked that with a little effort, he can get some low notes out of a tuba.

Heuertz said that he was never a natural musician, but he always thought music gave back to him everything he put into it.

"I don't know that I had ever encountered something that was extremely challenging yet extremely rewarding," he said.

Heuertz said his music students don't want him to leave, but they are learning to accept it.

Horizon Principal Kipp Petersen is another person that said he's sad to see Heuertz leave.

"We're obviously supportive of him going, and we're really anxious for him to come back," Petersen said.

Petersen described Heuertz as trustworthy, hardworking and kind to students, parents, and fellow staff members.

"He's been a real pleasure to work with," Petersen said. "We really like him as a teacher, and he does amazing things with our students."

Petersen added that he knew deployment was always a possibility, and that he and the Horizon staff are proud of Heuertz for his service.

"We're proud of Michael for his service to our country and he will do a great job," Petersen said.

Monday, Heuertz was honored at the monthly Kearney Public Schools Board of Education meeting for his service.
NEW ORLEANS  A tourist who died after he was apparently hit by a vehicle in the French Quarter and dragged more than 6 miles was a Harvard University graduate from Nebraska who worked for a California-based company, his family said.

The New Orleans coroner's office identified the victim Tuesday as Omaha native Joshua Woodruff. It said his early morning death on New Year's Day was caused by blunt force trauma.

Woodruff, 28, was the director of customer strategy for Los Angeles-based Soylent.

Police said Woodruff was hit in the French Quarter about 3:15 a.m. Friday and that his disfigured body was found at about 3:45 a.m. on a roadway leading from a bridge that crosses the Mississippi River.

Police are seeking the driver of the black sedan that hit Woodruff. Witnesses told police he was trying to hail down an Uber vehicle when he was struck by the sedan.

Woodruff was in New Orleans with a friend to celebrate the New Year when he was hit, his sister Heather Grizzle said.

Grizzle said she hopes the hit-and-run driver is found.

"Not because justice will bring Josh back," she said. "Because we hope this person won't make another family suffer the way we are."

His mother, Caren Woodruff, said he texted these words before his death: "I just want you to know how thankful I am for you."

His sister said: "He was the best at getting people to talk about what was really on their heart ... He was just universally loved and likable."
Weekly Volunteer Opportunities  Jan. 4

City Impact

Contact: Donna Williams

402-430-5100

Read With a Child

City Impact provides reading tutors to four of Lincoln's low income schools: Elliott, Clinton, Hartley and McPhee. Tutors are given a scripted curriculum and a two hour training that enables them to provide one on one support to a child. Choose the school, day, time and grade level for which you want to volunteer.

Heartland Big Brothers Big Sisters

Contact: Andrea Sutherland

(402) 464-2227

Help Us Prepare for Orientations

Only have an hour of free time but still want to volunteer with HBBBS? You can help us get ready for volunteer group orientations.

Become a Big

Become a Big Brother and Big Sister mentor in the community-based mentoring program. Set your own schedule for mentoring activities and receive ongoing training and support.

Southeast Community College

Contact: Lynn Saffer

402-437-2719

Math Tutors for GED/Basic Skills Classes

Math tutors needed for basic skills and GED adult education classes. One or two hours a week will help adult students.

Girl Scouts of Nebraska

Contact: Danielle Smith

(402) 875-4358

Lincoln Hartley Group Director

Help lead an after-school Girl Scout group at Hartley Elementary on Thursdays for seven weeks. Curriculum and training provided.

After-School Group Leader

Help lead an after-school Girl Scout group at Belmont Elementary School. Curriculum and training provided. Group meets on Mondays for five weeks starting in January.

Boys Hope Girls Hope

Contact: Megan Rice

(818) 661-0087

Hope College Center Tutor

Boys Hope Girls Hope is launching the Hope College Center in partnership with North Star High School and Nebraska Wesleyan University. We need tutors for our sophomore North Star students who need help in math, science, and English. Training provided.

Committee Member

We need members to be a part of our Circle of Hope committee, a network of community volunteers who lend their skills, talents, and expertise to enhance the delivery of the Hope College Center program.

Foodnet, Inc.

Contact: Lois Wathen

(402) 416-6197

Donation Pick Up

Foodnet, Inc. needs volunteers to pick up donations, sort them and work during the distribution. We have 20 sites throughout the Lincoln area with at least 2 distributions every day of the week.

CenterPointe

ContactAbbi Swatsworth

(402) 475-8717 x133

Front Desk Greeter

Looking for several people to help greet at the front desk over the lunch hour, prefer at least a once a week, weekdays 11:20 a.m. to 12:20 p.m.

Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital

Contact: Marla Buresh

(402) 413-4500

Casino Club

Assist residents with playing different casino games Jan. 29 and July 20 from 1:30 - 3:30. This would be a great event for a fraternity/sorority, men's or women's club, church group. Need 10-15 volunteers.
Madison attorney Claude Covelli on Tuesday ended a two-month campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Covelli said in a statement that his campaign began too late to have a shot at being successful.

Citizens across the state confirmed with me their deep concern with the degree of politics in judicial elections, he said. The response to our campaign was great. But our grassroots campaign began too late and weve run out of time to effectively get our message out.

While Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, candidates are often backed by political parties. Covelli said the high courts elections have become nonpartisan in name only.

He said he hopes Wisconsin voters will choose a nonpartisan justice free from taint of political bias or influence.

Candidate Rebecca Bradley was appointed by Gov. Scott Walker to the high court earlier this year after Justice N. Patrick Crooks died in September. Bradley had already announced her candidacy for Crooks seat.

Next spring, Bradley will face Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joe Donald and state Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg in a primary. Other candidates could still emerge. The top two vote-getters will appear on the general election ballot.
The state Republican Party is seeking campaign signatures on behalf of a Supreme Court justice candidate in a race that is officially nonpartisan.

State party chairman Brad Courtney in an email Tuesday asked supporters to collect at least 20 signatures for Justice Rebecca Bradleys campaign by Dec. 21 in order to put her name on the spring election ballot. Courtney also directs supporters to send the signatures to the party or to Bradleys campaign.

In the email provided to the Wisconsin State Journal by the campaign of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Joe Donald, who is also running for the high court, Courtney said, we have the opportunity to elect a skilled and accomplished conservative jurist and true defender of the constitution.

Bradley was appointed by Gov. Scott Walker to the high court earlier this year after Justice N. Patrick Crooks died in September. Bradley had already announced her candidacy for Crooks seat.

Courtney also said in the email Bradley has already demonstrated herself to be a strong voice for conservatism on the court.

A spokesman for Donald said in a statement Wednesday it shows Bradleys coordination with a political party.

The Bradley Campaign and the Republican Party are essentially one and the same, said Donalds campaign manager, Andy Suchorski. Their goal is not to elect a fair, impartial justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Rather, their goal is to ensure the election of Scott Walkers handpicked candidate, Rebecca Bradley, so she can advance their conservative agenda.

Suchorski said Donalds campaign hasnt received help from either state political party.

We arent coordinating with any political party and we dont plan to, he said.

Pat Garrett, spokesman for the state GOP, said in a statement that the party is happy to support candidates, like Justice Rebecca Bradley, who are committed to upholding the rule of law and adhering to the Wisconsin constitution. The Donald campaign should be more concerned with following election law than pushing ticky-tack stories that just turn voters off.

Garretts statement refers to a complaint filed by the GOP with the Government Accountability Board against Donalds campaign for passing out campaign literature at a judicial conference that did not disclose who paid for it.

A spokeswoman for Bradleys campaign said the justice has bipartisan support statewide.

She has always maintained that it is essential to our legal system to have independent justices who will apply the law impartially and free of political agendas, spokeswoman Madison Wiberg said. Justice Bradley is committed to these principles and to running a positive campaign befitting the people of Wisconsin.

Bradley told the Associated Press earlier this year she will not coordinate with outside groups during the campaign to keep her seat on the court, but wouldnt ask them to stay out of her race, either.

Next spring, Bradley will face Donald, state appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg and Madison attorney Claude Covelli in a primary. Other candidates could still emerge. The top two vote-getters will appear on the general election ballot.

Kloppenburg said in a statement Wednesday that the people of Wisconsin deserve an independent Court and this kind of politicking undermines their confidence that the Court will act as a check and balance on the political branches of government.

Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said the campaign would not seek help collecting signatures from either state party.
RACINE  Three Racine teenagers are in custody on robbery charges after they were arrested for allegedly jumping two other teens on Sunday.

Racine police were dispatched to the intersection of Hamilton and Superior streets at about 12:45 p.m. Sunday for a report of a robbery, police said.

When an officer arrived, a teenage girl said she had been walking with her boyfriend in the 800 block of Hamilton Street when three teens confronted the couple, stealing her purse and taking a speaker from her boyfriend.

The girl and her boyfriend first encountered the suspects as they were leaving Nicks Mini Mart, 1407 Superior St. The suspects  Eric Espinoza, 17, of the 4400 block of Durand Avenue; Joshua Gonzalez-Osorio, 17, of the 700 block of Grand Avenue; and Davell Lee, 16, of the 900 block of Lasalle Street  allegedly shouted Whats up? according to criminal complaints.

Her boyfriend shouted back nothing, the girl reportedly told police, but later the couple turned around to find the teens following them as they walked southbound on Superior Street.

The group was right behind the couple when they turned onto Hamilton Street, at which point they reportedly asked her boyfriend what was in his pocket. One of the suspects reached into her boyfriends front coat pocket, retrieving a wireless speaker, she said. Then all three suspects allegedly began punching her boyfriend in the face, causing him to fall to the ground, the complaint states.

The girl tried to push one of the suspects away from her boyfriend, but he turned around and punched her in the face with a closed fit, the complaint states. She fell to the ground while the three continued to assault her boyfriend, she reportedly told police. After the suspects took off running she noticed that her purse was missing, as was her boyfriends hat and speaker. Her pants also were torn as a result of the incident and she had an abrasion, police said.

When police spoke with the boyfriend moments later, he gave a similar account, noting that he believed two of the suspects were gang members. Both said they recognized at least two of the suspects, and said they could name them.

The suspects were later found just blocks away, hiding in the basement of Lees home in 900 block of LaSalle Street, the complaint states. A search of the home reportedly turned up the speaker as well as contents from the girls purse.

All three suspects remained behind bars on Monday and face felony charges of robbery by use of force and misdemeanor assault.

Espinoza, who was out on bond on three separate felony cases when he was arrested, has a bail of $40,500, according to online jail records.
RACINE  Like many of his peers, Theo Leavell set out for his first year of college last August with a desire to experience the world beyond the environment in which he grew up, in Racine and Wisconsin.

But he went farther away than his peers  to spend his freshman year in Paris, France  with aspirations to be in the thick of major, international events that shape goings-on throughout the world.

After only one semester in Paris, Leavell, 18, has already seen his share of international events play out before his eyes  both as millions of refugees from the Middle East and Africa descended on Europe, and in the grief, fears and later resolve of Parisians in the wake of terrorists carrying out the deadliest attacks on French soil since World War II.

Its really made me realize how interconnected everything is in this world, he said of studying abroad. Its really easy to think just about the U.S., or about Racine or about Wisconsin, but its so much more than that, and things that you cant see affect your everyday life.

Beyond his comfort zone

Having grown up in North Bay, Leavell described thinking about world affairs from a young age as he began reading The New York Times at home. While he liked living in the Racine area, he wanted to play a part in major events that were shaping global affairs, especially the protests of the Arab Spring in 2010 and 2011.

I would see these things going on in the world and I would think I really want to be in the center of that, he said. I had been used to pretty much the same experiences my whole life. I wanted to be out of my comfort zone.

It didnt take him long to get out of his comfort zone. Graduating from The Prairie School, 4050 Lighthouse Drive in Wind Point, last spring, Leavell was accepted to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on the condition that he spend his first year of college at The American University of Paris, Leavell explained.

Jeff Leavell, an attorney in Racine and Theos father, acknowledged being a bit suspicious about the school. But, he researched The American University of Paris and agreed that it would be a valuable experience for Theo.

I think that is a really great opportunity for him to grow as a person in his first year of college that very few get, Jeff said. Were extremely proud of all the growth weve seen in him. Hes really grown up as a young man overnight, in a sense, living independently in a big city in an apartment with people he never met.

Theo eventually convinced his parents and arrived in Paris in August. Since then, he has been taking time to travel to as many places as he can, including London, Vienna and Istanbul in Turkey.

Paris attacks

Leavell was away in Oxford, England, for a model UN conference on Nov. 13 and 14, when a group of terrorists assaulted Paris with suicide bombings, grenade attacks and shootings that left more than 130 dead and 350 injured at cafes, restaurants, a theater and a stadium in two days.

He arrived back in Paris late the next evening and saw far fewer people in the streets than normal, and sirens seemed to blare every night for weeks. But, he said, people eventually began coming back out and enjoying their day-to-day lives. Although he worried about backlash in France against immigrants and refugees after the attacks, he commended Parisians for resuming their regular actions and not allowing themselves to be governed by fear.

Back home in North Bay for the holidays, Leavell said that he is happy to see his family and friends. But, he is excited to get back to Paris and the stimulation he finds in making his way independently in a new place, and seeing the perspectives of different kinds of people in the world. He recommended that every person take the opportunity to study abroad.

It should be an integral part of the modern citizens education to see a different culture or a different world, country, because it really is important to see it from someone elses perspectivebut also to just be immersed in something totally different, he said. Were so used to our same things, our same lives, but we should always be thinking of how someone else sees it or how someone else might live.
RACINE COUNTY  It was almost a year ago when President Barack Obama proposed making the first two years of a community or technical college free.

While the idea has failed to gain traction in Congress, officials at Gateway Technical College are moving forward with their own version.

Gateway officials are finalizing details of a new program that would allow some high school graduates to get a two-year education without any tuition or fees. The program would be open to students in the greatest financial need, said Zina Haywood, Gateway executive vice president and provost. Officials are still working out details on who would be eligible.

We are in the development stages of it, Haywood said.

The college wants to raise $1 million to get the program started and a total of $3 million to make the program sustainable long-term, Haywood said.

Officials hope to finalize plans by the end of January and begin the program in the 2017-18 school year, making this years high school juniors the first class eligible.

Haywood said the plan was inspired by Obamas proposal last year and follows a movement in several other states and communities to create free two-year college programs. Free two-year college plans are in place in Chicago, Tennessee and Oregon, with other states considering their own programs, according to an Associated Press report.

Obama, meanwhile, proposed a $60 billion plan providing two years of free community college to most anyone with a family income under $200,000 and who maintains a 2.5 grade-point average, according to the report.
In a rare public moment of camaraderie, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Pat Roggensack on Wednesday praised the remarkable efforts of former chief justice Shirley Abrahamson.

Roggensack asked attendees of a courts conference to give Abrahamson a standing ovation for her 19 years as chief justice, and ticked off plans Abrahamson successfully implemented during her tenure  including a task force aimed at mental health and creating online resources for defendants who represent themselves in court.

It was Roggensacks first state of the judiciary address as chief justice since replacing Abrahamson after voters approved a referendum that would allow the courts justices to pick the chief justice rather than rely on seniority.

Abrahamson, who is part of the courts liberal-leaning minority, filed a lawsuit soon after seeking to keep her title as chief justice until her term expires in 2019, but dropped it this week.

The dispute over who should be chief justice earlier this year was another chapter in a long history of public feuding on a divided court that now has a conservative majority. The dynamic on the court had been particularly dicey in recent months as Abrahamson sought to regain her title.

At the time of Abrahamsons lawsuit filing, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said the state court system was in a state of upheaval because of the debate. Justice N. Patrick Crooks, who died in September, asked a federal judge presiding over the suit to create a transitional plan for Roggensack to replace Abrahamson to address the chaotic situation that exists.

Gov. Scott Walker named Rebecca Bradley to fill Crooks seat. Bradley, backed by Republicans, gives the court a clear conservative majority. Crooks was considered a swing vote.

Bradley had announced her candidacy for Crooks seat before he died and after he announced he would be retiring. Next spring, Bradley will face Milwaukee County Judge Joe Donald, state appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg and Madison attorney Claude Covelli to keep the seat.

Roggensack also on Wednesday said she would ask legislators to increase the salaries of the states judges  a proposal Abrahamson also called for last year during the annual address.
The Racine Unified School District is raising your taxes and district officials have some explaining to do. They cant blame state lawmakers, changes to the state budget or the voluntary programs that allow students to go to different schools. Its time area taxpayers get the real story about school funding.

On May 6, Assembly Republicans held a press conference announcing education is our top priority when revising the governors budget proposal. We later directed an additional $200 million dollars to schools. The final two-year spending plan restored cuts to the first year of the budget and increased per pupil spending in the second year. In fact, the largest general revenue program in the state budget is K-12 education, which makes up roughly 33 percent of the entire state checkbook.

RUSD received additional aid from the state and federal governments for this school year. RUSD says that changes in state funding caused the levy to go up, but while certain categories of aid might have gone down, the total state aid amount increased. According to the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, RUSD received a combined increase of $3.5 million in government funding.

With more aid going to schools this state budget than the last one and a large increase in direct aid to RUSD, it is wrong for RUSD officials to try to blame their choice of increasing your taxes on a lack of state funding. In fact, Racine Unified has been receiving increases in state aid every year, despite having fewer students. Enrollment numbers dropped by 1,028 since 2012-13 and by 238 students this year alone, with another 1,589 expected to leave over the next five years. Despite the downward trend, since 2012-13, administrative staff positions increased by 17 percent and total RUSD expenditures are 20 percent higher.

RUSD also gets dollars for students that the district doesnt educate. Allow us to explain. When lower-income parents choose to participate in the voluntary school choice program, the RUSD receives state aid and property tax levy authority for those students who will not be attending the RUSD. In exchange, the RUSD is required to transfer aid payments to choice schools for each participating student. The transfer amounts are $7,214 for K-8 students and $7,860 for students grades 9-12. In comparison, it costs $10,161 to educate a student in the RUSD, which includes state aid and property taxes. While it is true that changes in the budget allow RUSD to raise property taxes to make up for the aid that they transfer to choice schools, the district is under NO obligation to raise property taxes for the student who isnt even enrolled in their district. By choosing to levy the maximum amount allowed, the RUSD will bring in $1.4 million more in property taxes than they will send out to choice schools.

The separate open enrollment program, which began in 1998, allows students to transfer to other public schools districts. According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, in 2014-2015 only 25 students open enrolled into RUSD while 1,262 open enrolled out. Under this program RUSD must pay other districts $6,639 per student that leaves, but gets to keep $3,000 per student in aid and taxes. It is yet another example of when the district makes money on students who dont attend RUSD.

So, RUSD officials cant blame the choice program for their decision to increase property taxes. Unfortunately, the district is attempting to mislead the taxpayers by using a number of distortions and omissions. However, the facts are clear: the Republican-led legislature is committed to funding schools, and K-12 education aid has increased this budget. RUSD officials must now abandon their false rhetoric, end the blame game and give taxpayers some real answers.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson said Monday she will stop trying to regain her former status as the courts chief.

Abrahamson was stripped of her chief justice title in April after voters approved a Republican-backed constitutional amendment that allows justices to pick the courts chief instead of relying on seniority.

Conservative-leaning members of the court removed the liberal-leaning Abrahamson after the election and named conservative-leaning Justice Patience Roggensack chief.

But Abrahamson contended the amendment was silent on when the switch could occur, and filed a federal lawsuit arguing she should be able to serve as chief justice until her term expired in 2019.

That lawsuit was dismissed in July, and Abrahamson appealed in September.

Roggensack did not return a phone call seeking comment.

I continue to believe that we have a strong case, said Abrahamson in a statement announcing she was dropping the appeal.

She said she would ordinarily vigorously pursue the case, but decided against doing so because the litigation could take years.

A ruling in my favor and that of the other plaintiffs may be a hollow victory, she said. Briefs, argument, a written judicial decision, and further federal review could take a very long time. By that time my 10-year term will be close to ending.

Abrahamson said she will not be a timid voice as she continues to serve on the states high court, and that she would remain independent, impartial, and nonpartisan, and help the court system improve.

Cullen Werwie, spokesman for the Department of Administration, said the agency did not yet have a verified amount of how much the state spent in legal costs related to the matter.

Abrahamson was removed as chief justice after years of conflict and public disagreements among the justices.

Her decision to drop the appeal also comes at a time of turnover on the court.

Justice Rebecca Bradley was tapped by Gov. Scott Walker in October to take N. Patrick Crooks seat on the bench to fill the rest of his 10-month term, after Crooks died in September at age 77.

Bradley, backed by Republicans, gives the court a clear conservative majority. Crooks was considered a swing vote.

Bradley had announced her candidacy for Crooks seat before he died and after he announced he would be retiring.

Next spring, Bradley will face Milwaukee County Judge Joe Donald and state appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg to keep the seat.
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printable version

PDF version The Saudi Execution Of Al-Nimr Was A Smart Tactical Move?

by Moon Of Alabama via cyd - ICH Monday, Jan 4 2016, 10:05pm

international / prose / post



The Saudis are in trouble over their war on Yemen. After nine month of bombing the hell out of the country there is no chance that the aim of their war, reinstalling their proxy government in Sanaa, will be reached anytime soon. Meanwhile Yemeni forces raid (vid) one Saudi town after another. The Saudi regime change projects via Salafi jihadists in Iraq and Syria are also faltering. The low oil price make it necessary for the Saudi government to introduce taxes on its people. New taxes are hardly ever popular.

To divert from these problems the Saudis decided to get rid of a bunch of prisoners and to use the event to regain some legitimacy. Many of the 47 killed were truly al-Qaida types who a decade ago had killed and blown up buildings in Saudi Arabia and wanted to violently overthrow the Saudi government. With the recent anti-Saudi calls of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda a jailbreak or some hostage taking to free the prisoners were a real possibility. Only four of the killed were of Shia believe. One of those was the prominent rabble rousing Shia preacher Nimr Baqr al-Nimr from the majority Shia eastern Saudi province Qatif.



Al-Nimr had called for the youth in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to raise up against the government. He called for the overthrow of all tyrants not only in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain but also of the Assad government in Syria. He was no Iranian stooge but defended its form of government. Al-Nimr said he was against violence but several of the demonstrations he called for ended with dead policemen and protesters. It was quite astonishing that the Saudi government let him preach for so long. A Sunni cleric in Saudi Arabia would have been put to jail or killed for much less revolutionary talk.



Some dumb people like Human Right Watch's Kenneth Roth say that al-Nimr wanted a democratic state:



Kenneth Roth @KenRoth

Sheikh Nimr's real offense: leading peaceful protests for Saudi democracy, equality for Shia



That is nonsense. A U.S. diplomat talked with al-Nimr in 2008. A cable available through Wikileaks summarizes:

Al-Nimr described his and al-Mudarrasi's attitude towards Islamic governance as being something between "wilayet al-faqih," in which a country is led by a single religious leader, and "shura al-fuqaha," in which a council of religious leaders should lead the state. Al-Nimr, who conducted religious studies for approximately ten years in Tehran and "a few" years in Syria, stated that all governance should be done through consultation, but the amount of official power vested in the hands of a single official should be determined based on the relative quality of the religious leaders and the political situation at the time. A system led solely by religious judges or clerics is not a democracy. From that interview it also seems that al-Nimr had no clear picture of what he really wanted. His point was to always "side with the people, never with the government" independent of who or what was right or wrong.



The Saudi government's patience ended when in June 2012 al-Nimr disparaged the death of the interior minister and crown prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud:

He stated that "people must rejoice at [Nayef's] death" and that "he will be eaten by worms and will suffer the torments of Hell in his grave" That did him in. Al-Nimr was imprisoned and sentenced to death.



There was concern that actually killing al-Nimr would increase Sunni-Shia tensions. Several governments and the United Nations had warned that doing so would increase sectarian strife.



Well, that is the point!



The Saudi government's legitimacy depends on financial largess and on being a sectarian Wahhabi "defender of the faith". Raising the sectarian bar by provoking a Shia reaction only helps the Saudis to rally the Wahhabi Sunni clerics and the people to their side. The killing of a prominent Shia also gives cover for executing the al-Qaeda types. These do have many sympathizers within Saudi Arabia and killing them without killing al-Nimr would have led to protests or worse by Sunni radicals. Even with this cover some al-Qaeda type entities outside of Saudi Arabia are threatening revenge.



The Iranian government and Shia organizations in Iraq fell for the trick and protest against al-Nimr's execution. It allowed some organized gangs in Tehran to storm the Saudi embassy and to set it on fire. In Saudi Arabia's eastern province young Shia protesters violently attacked police forces (vid).



This was exactly what the Saudis rulers wanted and need.



It may also have been what some conservative Iranian circles were looking forward to.



Author retains copyright. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43851.htm

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[JURIST] Three former members of the Bosnian Muslim armed forces were arrested on Monday in Tulza, a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for allegedly killing as many as 10 Serb civilians in Srebrenica in July 1992. The victims were killed [AFP report] near a police station after their village was attacked. Some of the civilians were driven away and were not seen again, but remains for several of the victims were later found in mass graves. One of the suspects is also accused of committing another killing [Balkan Insight report] in June 1992 in a nearby village.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] and the Balkan States continue to prosecute those accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity that left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s. Serbian prosecutors also charged [JURIST report] former Bosnian Army general Naser Oric in August with war crimes against prisoners of war in 1992 for crimes allegedly committed in the same village. He was accused of killing of killing of three Bosnian Serb prisoners of war. Oric has pleaded [JURIST report] not guilty. In April the prosecutors office indicted [JURIST report] 10 former Bosnian-Serb soldiers for war crimes committed during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s. Also in April Bosnian prosecutors indicted three men [JURIST report] for crimes committed against more than 300 Serb civilians between April 1992 and July 1993.
[JURIST] UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Makarim Wibisono [official profile], resigned from his position Monday, saying that Israel has not granted him access [press release] to the Occupied Palestinian Territory after repeated requests. In his resignation letter, Wibisono stated he regrets having to resign, but he does not believe Israel will grant him direct access to Palestinian victims and he remains concerned about human rights violations in the territory. He further said: It is my sincere hope that whoever succeeds me will manage to resolve the current impasse, and so reassure the Palestinian people that after nearly half a century of occupation the world has not forgotten their plight and that universal human rights are indeed universal. On the other hand, Wisibono states that Palestine has cooperated fully with his requests. Wibisonos resignation is effective March 31 after presenting a final report to the UN Human Rights Council.

The Israel-Palestine conflict [HRW backgrounder] continues to be a significant international legal issue. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] released a report [JURIST report] in July that points to evidence of war crimes committed by Israel in the August 2014 retaliation for the capture of an Israeli soldier by Hamas [BBC backgrounder]. The attacks led to 135 Palestinian civilian deaths, including 75 children. In August UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] and recently appointed UN special envoy in the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov condemned [JURIST report] the arson attacks in the West Bank that killed the Palestinian child and severely wounded the childs parents and sibling. In June Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said that he had presented documents [JURIST report] to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to assist in the investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes. Also in June a report released [JURIST report] by the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict found that both Israel and Hamas may have committed war crimes during the conflict. In May AI accused [JURIST report] Hamas forces of leading a series of abductions, torturous acts and unlawful killings against Palestinians. In April a UN independent board of inquiry announced [JURIST report] that it uncovered evidence that at least 44 Palestinians were killed by Israeli actions while sheltering at UN locations during the Gaza conflict.
The Philippines has lauded Iraq for the "positive steps" it took in the fight against human trafficking, and vowed to continue its collaboration with Iraqi authorities in dealing with the issue.

"The Philippines is encouraged by the positive steps that the Iraqi Government has taken during the past several years to address human trafficking issues," said Charge dAffaires Elmer Cato on December 30, 2015.

He cited in particular the support and cooperation extended by Iraqi authorities to the Philippine Embassy that resulted in the successful rescue and repatriation of 10 Filipino trafficking victims in the Kurdistan region two months ago.

"We would like to continue our collaboration with Iraqi authorities in combatting human trafficking," Cato said, adding the embassy is ready to share its experience in helping Iraq formulate more effective measures against syndicates.

Cato made the remarks during a reception the Philippine Embassy hosted to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Manila and Baghdad. It was attended by more than 100 Iraqi officials, foreign diplomats and other guests.

Cato also said the Philippines "is looking forward to assisting Baghdad in its efforts to strengthen its existing mechanisms to address this concern."

He said the Philippine Embassy will be working closely with the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the High Commission on Human Rights and other concerned agencies on this important concern in 2016.



Cato also said the embassy will also further strengthen its collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) so that it could better respond to trafficking cases involving Filipino nationals in Iraq.



The Philippine Embassy believes there are as many as 2,000 Filipinos working in Iraq, most of them in the Kurdistan region and some in Baghdad, Basra and other parts of the country. KBK, GMA News
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Pokhara intl airport loan negotiations: $216m loan agreed

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Anup Ojha is a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues and human interest stories. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
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Achyut Wagle holds PhD in economics and is currently a professor at the Kathmandu University School of Management. He is an econo-political analyst, writing for The Kathmandu Post for many years.
Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images(MANCHESTER, N.H.) -- While President Obama has earned the nickname No Drama Obama for his methodical and calculated style, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he would have no such nickname as president.

Instead, the Republican presidential candidate promised Monday that there would be a fair share of drama if he were elected.

Mr. No Drama Obama, well, that will not be the nickname of the Christie White House Administration, I can guarantee you, Christie said, prompting laughter from the audience at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Therell be some drama, because I believe you have an absolute right to know what Im thinking and what Im feeling, I work for you, he continued.

Christies drama guarantee came in response to a question about how he would increase transparency as president, to which the Republican presidential candidate explained that he defines transparency in terms of how open and frank he would be with the American people.

Youll never have to wonder and certainly by the time my presidency will be over, you wont say you wont know me, Christie said. Youll know me full well, and Ill have lots of opinions.

But with all that frankness, Christie warned, some are bound to disagree.

I will also warn you that Im not running from prom king Im not looking to be the most popular guy in the world, Im looking to be the most respected guy in the world," he said. "Im looking for this country to be respected again around the world and at home.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Mike Dunleavy the governor of the US state of Alaska is intending to introduce legislation that will repeal the two state boards which regu...
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We live in a world in which an authoritarian state, $-freeloader narcissistic U.S., controls the digital infrastructure, enjoys the dominant position in the world's technology platforms, controls the means of production for critical technologies, and harnesses a new wave of general purpose technologies, like biotech and new energy technologies, to transform the world society, economy and military, to continue feeding U.S.' parasitic needs. However, the really funny thing is that US smears China for exactly what US itself is.

Why didn't NATO (US) stop the real genocide and grave Human Rights violations (since 2014) in Ukraine?! And when Russia did, the NATO (US) attacked Russia. And what about the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's atrocities in Yemen - just to mention one from the Saudi pile?!





China is now not only outperforming the West technologically but also the capitalist country that has come the furthest in balancing greed for the good of the people. In contrast to communist dictatorships such as the Soviets, Mao's China, North Korea and others, modern China is more democratic than most Western countries. This is because, via a meritocratic system, political career is built from the bottom up, i.e. local politicians must show results in order to move forward, while together they later form a political communication link between Beijing and the people, which means that unlike dictatorships, it is the top that is most sensitive to grassroots dissatisfaction. And this is proven in several Western research projects which unilaterally show a popular support that is sky-high above, for example, the US. Peter Klevius art analysis: When kings possessed antidemocratic total power (as the Saudi islamofascist murderer and terrorist war criminal "king" still today), they could deliberately show off their personhood. However, when kingdom became art - not to say sign post - then a "good" king or queen became someone who like Elizabeth had to shut up and instead be filled with the content of "the eye of the beholder" - just like art, which is always excluded from its artist. My guess is that she could only really trust her husband - 'husband' is Swedish meaning 'hus' (house) and 'band' means ties like in 'bond'. However, her son Charles has an extremely poor record at that - which may be entertaining, especially for republicans.

US should be the "enemy" rather than modern China And when will Liz Truss declare the islamofascist "custodians of islam", the Saudi dictator family - who has murdered, tortured, terrorized and committed war crimes - an enemy? With the U.S. dollar as the world's main reserve currency - since 1971 criminally disconnected from its promised gold connection - and with the U.S. controlling global financial and monetary flow U.S. has raised massive debt while printing money - not "out of thin air" but out of the world. The U.S. economy hence rests on financial colonialism and imperialism, i.e. forcibly robbing its value from other countries. And when excess liquidity drives up global inflation, and the Fed raises interest rates and tightens monetary policy, it also widens its interest rate gap with other countries, while attracting international capital to the otherwise empty (and doomed) U.S. dollar. The Brits should blame US, the militant financial $-freeloader (since 1971) - not modern China, the peaceful tech and wealth building rescuer at home and around the world! Bank of England is a helpless pawn against the feds. At the very moment when especially UK but also the rest of the world needs China the most, then dangerous and militant (CIA steered?) Liz Truss declares China an "enemy". Hello! It's US that 2014 ignited the low scale Ukrainian civil war to a fullblown deadly genocide against Russians, and 2022 to a real proxy war via NATO threatening Russia for the ultimate purpose of attacking China. And it is the US' antidemokratic (decoupled from democratic institutions) Federal Reserve that is behind inflation and the fall of the pound and other financial problems outside US. US is the only country in the world that can survive heavy deficit by counterfeiting money. It's US that is the root of high inflation, energy costs, supply shortages etc. (because of modern China). The feds has since 1913 been the factual dictator of US, and when US became bankrupt after a costly Vietnam war and space (incl. military) program it 1971 unscrupulously cheated with the promised dollar connection to gold. US hence started a fullblown robbing of the world with the dollar as the world currency and now culminating in an untenable money printing that together with China's economic and tech rise threatens US criminal $-freeloading. US is a theocracy if measured by how much "in god we trust" is involved in policy and politics, and that the Supreme Court is 100% religious, in stark contrast to the huge number of Atheist people in US. This has also led to US using islamists against China.





How come that this US patriot shares Peter Klevius view on US?













Why trust Peter Klevius instead of BBC and other trolls? Because 1. Peter Klevius has a much higher IQ (beware of IQ-phobia) than most professors or world leaders 2. Peter Klevius has a long and clean life record when it comes to women, children, crimes, drugs etc. 3. Peter Klevius has no finacial or career ties to anything he writes about 3) Peter Klevius doesn't (sadly) know (20220326) a single Russian or Chinese, and has never visited the countries nor having any other connections 4) Peter Klevius groundbreaking scientific achievements (e.g. about evolution, consciousness, sex segregation, sociology, psychoanalysis etc.) can all be dated to publications, theses (and after 1998 also on the web) or correspondence with professors considered top of their game. Possibly all of them may also qualify as first of its kind - or at the very least certainly not copied from others - as others seem to do with Peter Klevius' works, without even giving him credit. 5. Peter Klevius had the most unprivileged start of life and adulthood - but also the most privileged when it comes to brain power, dopamin-serotonin balance and psychological stability - to an extent that he can't possibly believe in the psychological non sense excuse that "we're all a little mad".

US rape of the Maid of Finland



Peter Klevius to Boris Johnson: It was only half of the Brits who voted Brexit, and it was only half of the Ukrainians who voted for Ukrexit. However, in Ukraine it ended with civil war instigated by UK's ally $-freeloader rogue state US. You should really have kept your peaceful Huawei instead of being pushed to the militant F35!





US has already sunk below the surface but abuses the "West" as its snorkel. What most people don't realize is that by following US you step downwards in future development compared to China. Little Japan already showed the world how to beat the West in technology. China is more than ten times bigger. And when people - sooner or later - realize the difference, the backlash will be harsh. Peter Klevius asks: Which war (post WW2) has NOT been instigated by rogue state $-freeloader US? Korea, Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen, Syria etc.. US, which has also used nukes, biological wepons, and torture, tops by far the list of war criminals - and US allies are gravely complicit!

We're constantly told "not to incite hatred against muslims" when we're just criticizing sharia islam for its lack of Human Rights. However, when US/CIA not only incites hatred but also weaponizes it, no one in the West seems to care. Why?! How many more should suffer and die because of US senseless behavior when facing a future where its $-freeloading is coming home to roost because of China's success?





20220221: BBC main news hour at 13:00 today for the first time didn't mention Ukraine and Putin at all - while the worst shelling against Russian populated parts of Ukraine significantly escalated, leading to a peak of over 50,000 refugees fleeing to Russia to escape the genocide the $-freeloader (and now desperate because of China's growth and success) US iniitiated, agitated and assisted with weapons (together with its coerced, or just stupid/evil Western puppets) - while continuing spitting on Putin/Russia.





World economies (CIA World Factbook 2022): 1 China 2/3 US, EU 4 India 5 Japan 6 Germmany 7 Russia 8 Brazil 9 France 10 UK

Dear reader, stop supporting/aiding dangerous rogue state US! Otherwise US $-desperation (i.e. that it will lose its financial stealing hegemony because of China's growth) will lead to it deliberately starting a WW3. Except for human suffering and lower standard, it would be the great reset for $-freeloader US to stand in the ruins and continue being a stealing and ruling world dictator. No other country poses a similar threat.

Religion is segregation. Judaism: We are the chosen people! Christianity: Christ will forgive, you sinner! Islam: Everyone is born muslim, you infidel! Human Right is de-segregation, you human!

Peter Klevius wonders if you can spot the difference between the People's republic of China, the Congress' republic of US, and the Parliament's/government's "democracy" of UK. Hint, the clue is in the word 'people' and the fact that Chinese are more satisfied with their democracy than US and UK people. Moreover, can you spot the difference between modern China and Stalin's, Mao's, Castro's, Pol Pot's etc. Communist countries? And when it comes to unjust sentencing, spying, surveilling, detaining/torturing/killing people, US is definitely worse than China. Not to mention US global meddling, militarism and dictatorial fiat $-freeloading. A US that can't manufacture its own chips but tries to hinder China from it. And if you aren't on US sponsored IS-Uyghurs side - why spit on China?! And if you aren't on US sponsored IS-Uyghurs side - why spit on China?! Why is US calling anti-islamism "human rights violation"?! And when will US stop dealing with Saudi, NATO (e.g. Turkey) etc. Human Rights violators?!Btw, Peter Klevius suggests buying Chinese property stocks now. After all, there are more rural Chinese than the entire US population, waiting for getting urban after this temporary slow down.

Why doesn't Peter Klevius publish his groundbreaking science in Nature? Because he has no peers! Peer review, according to Google, is the evaluation of work by people with similar competence. Peter Klevius healthy mind and total lack of institutional/financial/political/career bias combined with extra high intelligence is unique in science - and it's precisely therefore his best scientific achievments can't be evaluated by peer-biased people but need a blog to be presented because 1) they would never be peer approved in Nature 2) they would never be produced in a "proper" form with painstaking efforts to squeeze in citations/references etc. that contribute nothing. Whom should Peter Klevius quote about EMAH/consciousness out-of SE Asia , or about hetersosexual attraction and sex segregation ? When I made my phd on sex segregated resistance against female football I was asked to quote feminists. I did, and after every quote I had to negate it. Alternatively it would have silenced the women's voices in my in-depth interviews re. thair experience about resistance. After all, it was feminists behind the 1921 ban against women's football in England, and it was the most powerful feminists in Sweden who for a decade opposed girls and women playing football after the Swedish FA had included it. So instead of me testing Nature, you test me - before "anti-feminism", "anti-out-of-Africa" and "anti-religion" are criminalized as "hate speech"! - In anthropology fossils usually get all kinds of nicknames before scientifically "baptized". However, precisely because Homo floresiensis (the definite proof that humans evolved in SE Asia) was the "missing link" that afropologists wanted to find in Africa (how could an allround mover and allround eater ever evolve on a continent?!) they needed to dismiss it at every level incl. continue calling it a "hobbit". And when it comes to EMAH/consciousness it's extremely simple - yet not "simplistic" at all. However, the culprit is what humans are most proud about, i.e. language. By giving something one doesn't comprehend but wants to put in a package, a name, will continue to contain its blurred definition. This is why EMAH only deals with 'now' and the body of past this now lands on. Of course this leads to everything having "consciousness". A brick "remembers" a stain of paint as long as it's there - and with some "therapeutical" investgation in a laboratory perhaps even longer. And a stain of paint on your skin is exactly the same. However, unlike the the brick you've also got a brain that may also be affected by the stain. This could be compared with a hollow brick where the paint has vanished from the outside but submerged so that when cutting the brick it "remembers" it and tells the cutting blade about it. And for more "sophistication" just add millions of differect colors unevenly spread. Our brain is no different from the rest of the body. If Frankenstein with tomorrow's tech had created an adult human body, then that body wouldn't be able to walk or talk etc. because it lacked the body program we've been programmed with by living.

The US-led climate hoax against China : $-freeloader US uses its hegemony to cover up the worst global threat, i.e. itself. And targets China which challenges its hegemony. A sustained and coordinated campaign aimed at undermining the credibility of China. China is already way more democratic than US - especially when considering that its infrastructure today is already where it inevitably will be tomorrow in a technologically lagging US. In other words, technology itself puts ever more distinction on our behavior - compare e.g. the shift from unmarked cash to marked card/online payments. And as an extra bonus China has extremely low criminality, better privacy law, and incredible record of improving poverty and welfare both home and abroad compared to US. Just consider how US has painted itself into a corner by the 1971 cheating that disconnected the dollar from US' own means, hence creating a situation with no other return than lowering its standard (i.e. stopping printing dollar that the rest of the world have had to pay for due to US' global financial empire tentacles) or a new war (which US is already brewing). Where US uses CIA meddling, sanctions and militarism, China has risen with honest manufacturing and trade.

Peter Klevius: Do note that my klevius.info is an experimental webmuseum made 2003 and deliberately hasn't been touched upon since 2007.

20211103: Why is BBC 4 news so silent about CIA's murder plot and ongoing extradition request against Julian Assange, but instead has plenty of news time to repeatedly tell listeners about some cricket player (muslim?) who 'was allegedly hurt' because of 'verbal abuse'?

$-freeloader US is the main driver of dangerous global militarism and state terror. It's also a many times bigger per capita polluter than China. Why is BBC repeating the lie that "China is the biggest polluter" when in fact it's one of the smallest?! And the only reason to not use per capita would be that China, unlike e.g. similar size Africa, has a single government. But even then China shines as the by far best led country. China is the technological future that we all have to walk - not led by the Chinese, but by technology. And because of US's desperation as its dollar-thieving (since 1971) is now threatened by China irresistibly passing them technologically and economically, China actually serves as a protected "soft landing model" for the future AI world (China's new privacy law, tech crackdown etc.) is exactly what most people want), while aggressive U.S. is a threat to peace and prosperity. Google is precisely the state link Chinese companies are accused of being, and US's "alliance" with "colored" and muslims is basically Sinophobia, i.e. the fear of losing control of those whom it has abused - it simply divides the world into good colored/religious and evil Chinese/Atheists (and evil whites who disagree). US-led "anti-communism" is not about communism or any belief that China would attack the rest of the world (as the US has done, after all). Almost everyone understands that today's China has nothing in common with Cuba, the Soviet Union, Pol Pot, and Mao's China.

Peter Klevius has collected US Google News China headlines for years and never seen them (algorithms) so extremely anti-China as now. US' (+its puppets) Taiwan lies in perspective: UN Resolution 2758 which was approved on October 25, 1971 states that "The representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations" and "decides to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (i.e. Taiwan) from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it." Again, U.S.-linked disinformation campaign against China is made up as it goes along. So how much of US' "anti-Communism" rant is actually Sinophobia spized with greed and fear of losing its parasitic world sucking position? Btw, the worst polluters on measure of culpability as weighted annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution taking relative per capita income into account include the Anglosphere countries US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. Isn't it shameful that these hypocrites point finger at China?! And why is BBC so silent about the volcanic catastrophe on La Palma that not only keeps continuing but also is getting more vicious by the day?! Volcanos can at any moment start an abrupt iceage - and we are anyway already overdue to the next statistical iceage.

20210926 UK became even more a totalitarian right wing militaristic one party state when Labour cut off its left wing. And unlike China, UK has no meritocracy demand on MPs, nor has it any people's democracy even close to that of China (just consider how the Western, US steered, media told you Xi ordered less gaming for kids when in fact it was a broad demand from parent). And China forces its companies to use less energy - and the Sinophobic West of course spits on this environmental effort when some energy companies break the limits and can't deliver.





The West, not China, is the biggest emitter of pollution. What's not to like about China?! Best privacy law: least crimes: best high tech: best tech control: best poverty extermination: best manufacturer: best meritocratic democracy happiness: best trust in leadership, applauded by OIC for treatment of muslims, etc. And badly behaving $-freeloader and financial (and militaristic) global dictator U.S. jailed Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in a foreign country for her normal business in an other foreign country (whose prsidential candidate was murdered by US in a third foreign country) that US didn't happen to like as it didn't like the success of Chinese Huawei.

How $-freeloader US has robbed the world since 1971

China hating bigoted and hypocritical West (i.e. US+puppets) - which strangly calls itself "the international community" - worries about Taliban sharia while West's close ally, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family (behind 9/11 and most other islamic terror) has the most medieval form of sharia of any muslim country! Btw, most feminists are sharia muslims - and feminism ticks most fascism boxes . Peter Klevius to his readers: Never forget that fascism emerged in the very midst of what is now in anti-China rhetoric called "the international community" or the West. And the roots of Western fascism has never been treated but live on. Ask yourself, what if China had behaved like the murderous terror rogue state $-freeloader U.S.?!













Islamism wants islamic "human rights". Feminism wants women's "human rights". Peter Klevius wants Human Rights. Together with their close ally Saudi Arabia, US and its puppet UK have among the worst Human Rights records - yet they blame China and Russia instead. Fact correcting BBC's lies: Rogue state $-freeloader U.S. is also the by far much worse per capita greenhouse gas polluter than China.

Peter Klevius serious questions to you "out of Africa" believer! Ask yourself: How come that the oldest primates came from outside Africa; that the oldest great ape divergence happened outside Africa; that the oldest bi-pedals are from outside Africa; that the only australopithecines with a Homo skull lived as far from Africa you can get; that the oldest truly modern looking skull is from eastern China (and to Chris Stringer - its slightly archaic bun fits a very old age); that the oldest Africans are mongoloid; that the latest genetic mix that shaped the modern human happened in northern Asia and is traced to SE Asia; that the earliest sophisticated art (e.g. a drilled and polished perfect shiny stone bracelet from Siberia, perfect paintings and figurines) and tools (e.g. a perfect sewing needle, flutes etc) are found from Iberia to Sulawesi - but not in Africa so far; that the oldest round skulled Homo sapiens in sub-Saharan Africa is much younger than similar skulls in Eurasia; that we lack ancient enough DNA from Africa to use as evidence (although afropologists happily do), etc. etc.? Peter Klevius theory answers all these questions - and more.

Peter Klevius (the only serious anthropologist?!) to afropologists: If you honestly and with simple words would explain the essence of the out-of-Africa myth/hoax to a child s/he wouldn't believe a word of your story: A cold adapted (mongoloid phenotype) population P1 (Homo sapiens), which eats everything and has almost infinite time and skills to move anywhere on land - lives all over a southern "island" (Africa) that has an easily accessible bridge (Sinai) to an other "island" (Eurasia), but somehow cannot get out for hundreds of thousands of years. And when they tried they couldn't survive on places where their primitive relatives (Homo erectus) for 2 million years had thrived all over the places from the tropics to the northern cold. Then the kid would probably ask why you keep telling things that make no sense. And when you answer by saying that this now living population P2 on the warm island - but with features seen in all cold adapted populations P3 far north of the bridge - has the oldest DNA, then the kid would probably ask you if you have ever considered the possibility that those genes were aquired in the cold north far on the other side of the bridge. And your last resort to convince the child concists of some bone fragments that fit in a shoe box together with a decent pair of shoes - and there is no agreement about what they really are - and are the only thing we have between the chimp-like Lucy and the human-like erectus. And what would you answer when the kid then asks how a tiny Lucy-like (poor bipedalism) population A4 could possibly make it out of Africa all the way over the Wallace line to Flores as well as to the Philippines, long before Homo sapiens managed to do so? Peter Klevius suggests you and your kids learn from the best: Peter Klevius theory Speciation needs isolation over time and the best evolutionary lab has been SE Asian archipelago. Like all primates, carnivores, ungulates etc. we also came out of SE Asia with a new brain setup (due to island shrinking and mainland enlargement of this new brain setup), got coldadapted in the north and then spread all over the world while mixing with other Homo sapiens in a pattern easily recognizable.

Peter Klevius evolution formula.



U.S. main brain asset is East Asians - same with China... East-Asians (mostly Chinese) also took most gold medals in Tokyo Olympics. China won shared gold in the gold-medal race (39 golds - why are some excluding Hong Kong's gold).

Peter Klevius suggests taking the knee for Human Rights instead of for certain "races" based on skin color, religion - or sex.

The main threat against Taiwan is U.S. starting a war. But China just has to wait until the Taiwanese anyway want to rejoin because of Cnina's fast growing superior R&D, high tech, infrastructure, privacy law, economy etc.. For U.S. it's just the opposite. And West's hollow rant about "liberty" and "party-democracy" echoes back against China's democracy where the Chinese vote for truly merited individuals and against corruption. And Chinese hightech will, after some political delay come near you anyway - while in the meantime being called "assertive threat from CCP". And there's no more "Communism" in China's progress than there is Christianity in U.S' militaristic war mongering, criminal sanctions, $-freeloading, extrajudicial murders, unfair justice, torture, spying on everyone, use of islamists etc.. U.S. "Americans"! Payback time! When Peter Klevius bought his Japan made Citizen Eco Drive chronograph watch it cost ~ $240 in US and ~ $340 in EU. Those ~ $100 is what "American" (i.e. U.S. people - not all Americans) $-freeloaders owe to the rest of the world because of benefitting locally by money printing and pricing the main global reserve currency - but the end is near. $100 trillions - or more?!

Apoorva Mandavilli (New York Times): "Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here." Peter Klevius wonders what made her later delete it?! Fiat-money-world-$-freeloader-US' intention is not at all to clarify anything but instead to keep up hate against China. Would Fiat-money-world-$-freeloader-US and its UK puppet let Chinese inspect Fort Detrick and over 200 US bio-labs all over the world and UK's notorious military research at Porton Down, Salisbury. So while Chinese and "Chinese" looking people now are the most harrassed, BBC gives it no real attention while filling its news with BLM and "worries about islamophobia". Btw, if you poke any s.c. "free speech debate" you'll always find islamic efforts for "blasphemy" laws - and never laws against real blasphemy against basic negative Human Rights of 1948. When should islam pay for 1400 years of genocides? The West has abandoned Human Rights for the sake of sharia islam and is again becoming what it fought against - itself. Communistphobia (an "autoimmune" reaction now boosted by US' collapse and due aggression) led to Fascism, Nazism and WW2. Why do the worst (per capita and consumption) militant polluters and hypocrites (Fiat $-freeloader US, UK, Australia etc.) lie about China. the world's best source for cleaner tech?! Fiat $-freeloader US' influence behind Sinophobic attacks against China, the world's by far largest economy and future of tech, privacy law and Human Rights, and with less assaults, rapes and murders etc. than e.g. US and EU, while the "democratic West" turns sharia theocratic and militant. And why is islamism called "religion" and Confuzianism "propaganda"?! Peter Klevius: Why would religious precepts and Human Rights denial be more worthy of protection than political ones? After all, Human Rights are there to guide legislators and the Chinese trust their politicians much more than Westerners trust theirs. So there's a case to be made against anti-China hate propaganda which harmfully affects Chinese and "Chinese" looking people. The senseless flaw of monotheism: The pompous self-delusion of oneself as "god's" chosen individual while projecting one's "beliefs" on "god's" chosen "community" - which in turn projects a collectivist "belief" on its individuals. Freedom of thought doesn't mean freedom from law - and freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from Human Rights. The only "ideology" that flawlessly fits negative Human Rights is Atheism (not believeing in any supremacist "god"). Lod/Lydda in Israel should be a warning that convinces anyone about the necessity to abandon racist and sexist monotheist religions and instead support the basic negative Human Rights of 1948 to guide legislation and behavior for a positive human future for all. https://negativehumanrights.blogspot.com/2021/05/negative-human-rights-for-positive.html









US declares Turkish murder and islamization of more than a million Armenians a genocide while UK declares China's de-islamization and education of backward Chinese Uyghurs a "genocide".



Joe Biden: "China will not become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world on my watch! And history proves US is the dangerous one that wants to dictate and bully the world to keep its $-freeloader hegemony.

Xi Jinping: "China will never seek hegemony, no matter how strong it becomes." And he has the longest civilization to back it up with.



Peter Klevius warns the Brits about the danger posed by spy master Jeremy Fleming's delusional, dangerous and Sinophobic China "analysis" which, if followed, may lead to stagnation and even US initiated war. It's all about UK either chosing a dangerous puppet status under US decline and stagnation by supported US' populist riding on pre-existing anti-Chinese (and anti-mongoloid racism, compare e.g. footballer Son Heung-Min and BBC lacking to report hate crimes against Chinese etc) sentiments - or simply benefitting from China's success through cooperation. The "danger" of new Chibese surveillance tech becomes ok later on in the West. However, China has now better privacy protection than the West, and China's meritocratic political representation combined with the world's toughest anti-corruption, makes West look bleak in comparison. And unlike UK, China has a real written constituion that gives women the same rights as men without exeption - someting US is still lacking, as are UK's sharia courts.



20210416: US' puppet sidekick UK cowardly runs away when it cannot hide in the master's shadow anymore - leaving Afghanistan's women without protection against islamic evil.



Don't respect islam as long as islam doesn't respect Human Rights! And if you don't trust Peter Klevius (2001-) on this, then trust Council of Europe's (2019) basically similar criticism of islam's main worldly (except Gabriel) representative, Saudi based and steered OIC's Human Rights violating sharia declaration CDHRI! Moreover, the most pious muslims seem to be the ones furthest distancing themselves from Human Rights.



Peter Klevius to the women of Greenham Common: Aren't the Saudi allied and posturing "in cheat and global nUKes we trust" right wing Sinophobic Brexiters a bigger threat than Iran?



BBC is the world's main spreader of anti-Sinoist hate speech and populist Sinophobic propaganda on an industrial scale and therefore guilty of inciting crimes against humanity!



First spitting on China and then using China's reaction as an excuse for more spitting.



The original (negative) Human Rights (1948) means the individual is not to be imposed an action of another individual, group, government, religion etc. Negative Human Rights hence function as the guidance and guardian against unneccessarily restricting legislation. Sharia islam, i.e. in praxis Saudi based and steered OIC's notorious* sharia declaration, is the very opposite. However, UK and BBC seem to approve of islam's Human Rights violations while calling China's efforts to stifle them "human rights abuse". The original (negative) Human Rights (1948) means the individual is not to be imposed an action of another individual, group, government, religion etc. Negative Human Rights hence function as the guidance and guardian against unneccessarily restricting legislation. Sharia islam, i.e. in praxis Saudi based and steered OIC's notorious* sharia declaration, is the very opposite. However, UK and BBC seem to approve of islam's Human Rights violations while calling China's efforts to stifle them "human rights abuse". * Similarly criticized by Peter Klevius and the Council of Europe. Are both "islamophobes"?!

Global China for peace and wealth vs. "global UK" for more hate incitement, lies, threats, nukes, warmonger and miltarism under the shield of the militaristic world dictator and $-freeloader US. Compare this to UN's Resident Coordinator in China, Siddharth Chatterjee, who says "we stand in a unique position to cooperate with the Government of China and apply its successes of lifting hundreds of million people out of poverty globally. China has shown its firm belief in the principles of multilateralism. As I witnessed in Kenya, China's donations of personal protective equipment and other supplies played a critical role during the disruption in global supply chains in March 2020. And every day I am in China, I am inspired by what I see around me, what China has achieved and can achieve as a country."

But US/UK do their utmost to stop "assertive Chinese influence". And a Sinophobic parliament shouts "genocide" when China protects women's Human Rights.

Without a fair reason UK declares Chinese a "threat" while Brits and other "infidels" are constantly threatened by Human Rights violating islamism.

20210320: The world's master fake news troll farm BBC today still uses conspiracy theorist, warmonger and China hater Pompeo to smear China and spread anti-Sinoism - but nothing about islamist Human Rights violating atrocities (e.g. 50 children beheaded by islamists in Mocambique etc.), !? Btw, UK abducts proportionally many more children than China - and expose them to islamist child abuse. Peter Klevius feels truly ashamed of looking like a Westerner. Btw, how can you excuse US criminal behavior: First benefitting from monopolizing global web tech and then using this monopoly as a weapon against competitors?!

$-freeloader US and its UK puppet don't care about the wellbeing of Chinese but want only to damage China's success. Sinophobic UK parliament should just shut up talking about China and democracy. People living legally in their own state EU were robbed of their democracy by UK! And even UK nationals are just subjects, not citizens.



BBC, the world's worst war mongering and hate spreading propaganda troll farm, uses Chinese "Guantanamo"* prisoner fotage out of context as "evidence" of how "truthful" BBC is! * US detained muslim terrorist suspects outside US! BBC stereotypes whatever to fit "genocide" in China but doesn't mind US-UK-Australian torture and murder of civilians. Where China stands for tech and wealth development $-freeloader US + UK-Australia stand for spreadinng lies and militarist tensions. And why so silent about UK torture of Assange while declaring an Iranian spy suspect as "innocent" simply because she says so (Iran, like US, doesn't approve of double citizenship).



Uncritical democracy with islam inevitably means the death of Human Rights. Peter Klevius probably has some half of muslims on his side in saying so.



BBC welcomes Jo Johnson when he now says "China is authoritarian, almost neo-totalitarian regime". Peter Klevius wonders how that fits with a country which leadership is much more approved of than Western ones?! Even an idiot (but not BBC) can see that China's modern Communism has nothing to do with Maoism or Soviet Communism. The only criticism left the West can come up with is name calling. The welfare, progress and out of poverty success for Chinese people has nothing in common with "conventional Communism". On the contrary, it delivers exactly where s.c. "democracies" (one might even argue that China is closer to democracy than the West) often fail. "Democracies" are anyway one party states supported by at the most some half of the population compared to China's qualified majority. So China's "authoritarian" Communist "dictatorship" is as far you can get from the West's beloved Sunni islamist theocracy, steered by the murderous and war crimes committing Saudi dictator family. So why is China declared an enemy while Saudi is an ally! Moreover, China's new privacy law will protect the individual much better than any similar laws in in the West. Why? Because China's leadership thinks the individual's privacy is too important to fiddle with (read the draft). Something the West has given up (to US). And who was it that started smearing, lying, spreading rumours and conspiracy theories, military threats etc. against China in the forst place? Sinophobic racism from the West for the purpose of aiding the US $-freeloader.



Peter Klevius: Every muslim is responsible for muslims racism and sexism. So stop shouting "you're not a muslim" to a muslim who believes and knows the Koran by heart! Immigration is ok - if you criminalize anti-Human Rights sharia muslims (and their accompllices)!

In cheat we trust: UK decreases aid to Yemen while increasing weapons sale to the muslim Saudi dictator family and spending more on militarism. And BBC is more concerned about Uyghurs than Yemenites. And worries more about Buddhists who don't like to be attacked, raped, murdered etc. than about their radicalized muslim attackers.





Lord Palmerston, UK PM who supported the Confederacy in the US civil war, hoping a dissolution of the Union would weaken the US: "The Chinese are uncivilized and the British must attack China to show up their superiority as well as to demonstrate what a civilized nation could do."



US is now the worst global threat that only cooperating with China could mitigate - instead of being US' puppets. Peter Klevius: Why is US ordering 600 new nukes - i.e. the double of China's total?

Why is China the only NPT state to give an unqualified negative security assurance with its "no first use"?

Why isn't UK's parliament more interested in the real genocide in Yemen than the made up "genocide" in Xinjiang?!

Why is UK applauding the conviction of Syrian soldiers while UK soldiers go free from similar crimes against humanity.

Why isn't the real genocide that muslim Uyghurs have committed against non-muslim Uyghurs talked about?! When Dominic Raab visited Saudi Arabia he failed to raise the question of Saudi Human Rights abuses.However, in UN he lied about "China's industrial scale Human Rights abuses". He deliberately conflated unchecked BBC "reports" by East Turkestan jihadis with China's out of poverty and de-radicalization programs. And of course forgot to say sterilization was offered after three (3) children and with economical and educational incentives for muslim women tied at home by sharia.

The militant $-freeloader US' spread of misinfo about China has made Chinese the most hated ethnicity while sharia muslims are the most protected - and US' puppet UK's Dominic Raab keeps spitting Sinophobia while supporting anti-Human Rights islamism.



UK, which illegally still colonizes Chagos (but complains about China), in a secret ballot 'arranged' (helped by OIC) a sharia islamist to become leader of the International Criminal Court - i.e. someone who doesn't respect basic Human Rights! Should ICC now change to ICT (In Cheat we Trust)?

Peter Klevius (like e.g. most really intelligent Jews is an Atheist, not confined with "faith", politics, career, finance etc.): While the West accepts OIC's Human Rights violating sharia islamism, China defends Human Rights against islamism. And unlike US' constitution, China's constitution is fully aligned with women's rights in the 1948 Human Rights declaration. So to avoid the West turning into a full muslim theocracy (OIC sharia) fractioned in infighting, we better become Sinophils instead of Sinophobes! "Anti-democratic ommunism" is now the only (empty - the only difference is that MPs in China are under harder scrutiny) argument the West still swings.



Peter Klevius: SE Asia was the evolutionary laboratory that made human evolution possible. Africa doesn't tick a single box

20210127, BBC (fake) News: "We are memorizing 6 million Jews in Holocaust." Peter Klevius: So why not include the more than 6 million non-Jews?! See BBC's diabolically wild lies about Uighurs!





Many Afgan women's dream is to be treated like Uighur women in China. However, the criminal militaristic war mongering rogue state U.S. abandons them and instead declares islamist Uighur terrorists not terrorists anymore and accuses China's emancipation efforts for "genocide" and "human rights violation".



However, the criminal militaristic war mongering rogue state U.S. abandons them and instead declares islamist Uighur terrorists not terrorists anymore and accuses China's emancipation efforts for "genocide" and "human rights violation". The biggest scandal in anthropology: Afropologist John Hawks and faith creationists dismiss the hereto most important "missing link" in human evolution. How many have they brainwashed and kept misinformed?!



1990 islam officially and globally (via UN) rejected Human Rights (the Saudi based and steered OIC's sharia declaration witch gravely violates the most basic of Human Rights)!



If Atheist Chinese had reproduced like muslims, there'd be more s.c. "Mongoloids" than the whole world population today.

BBC is the world's biggest lying and faking propaganda troll - BBC's agenda has absolutely nothing to do with journalistic principles but is a mix of US pressure spiced with the worst of "Britishness" (UK cuts foreign aid from 0.7-0.5% and adds the same money to militarism) meeting in Saudi/OIC islamofascist sharia against basic Human Rights. BBC: UK has to aid Saudi war crimes and genocides cause else Russia and China would do it. UK's future is as a militaristic puppet for US (compare BBC's campaign against Johnson and Corbyn). Peter Klevius to BBC's Sinophobic muslim presenters in their ivory minaret: How many muslim women are detained in UK's sharia camps?



US secretary of state, Pompeo declares Islamic State Uighur jihadi not terrorists - so they can attack China and get support from US (as in Syria).









It's an irony that China now seems to offer the only defense of those very Human Rights it's accused of not following - while the West supports islamism that violates those Human Rights (compare Saudi based and steered OIC's global sharia declaration against Human Rights). Moreover, apostasy (i.e. leaving islam, which is the worst crime in islam) and the fact that the muslim man determines the faith for the children no matter who is the mother, together have to be added to any estimation of muslim population growth.

US' and its puppets' Sinophobia campaign rooted in UK's appalling opium wars against Chinese people



Why do Sinophobic BBC and UK parliament call it "deradicalization" in UK, US and Saudi Arabia, but "genocide" in China?! And why wasn't one-child policy against Atheist Han Chinese called "genocide" while Uighur muslims were allowed to have many children?! Btw, e.g. Sweden abducts many more children than China does in Xinjiang - and for extremely questionable reasons (read Peter Klevius' thesis Pathological Symbiosis and ask yourself why Sweden gets away with its Human Rights violations). Answer: It's all about U.S. being a lousy loser and therefore behaving appalingly badly with smear, threats, illegal sanctions, militaristic aggression etc! Btw, China is already number one in economy and most technology - and accelerating compared to US. So you stupid US puppets - take note! Shame on everyone who blinks Saudi based and steered OIC's anti-human rights sharia for all the world's muslims while spitting on China!

Should BBC and some politicians be put on a Nurenberg trial after this relentless and demonizing Sinophobia campaign and deliberate lies?

US is rottening fast and should therefore go for peace and cooperation! Despite using $-freeloading, sanctions, breaking treaties, murdering officials and politicians in other countries during state visits etc., hindering the use of tech previously used to monopolize US companies globally etc., US now wants to destroy Huawei and other Chinese companies, not for security but because US is inevitably losing the tech race. And no, it isn't the Chinese state support any more than US uses state support for force-feeding Apple, Google etc. and backed up by US state militaristic interventions, spying, interference, threats etc. globally. And China was the first to recognize the danger of Covid-19 - not "delaying" anything" but quite the contrary (see below)! BBC News' deliberately misleading and dangerous anti-China rant 20200706: "China ought to be our enemy! We can't do any business with China because of Hong Kong, and the sterilization of Uyghur muslims which some people (BBC and its cherry picked guests?!) think amounts to genocide". Peter Kleius: That Chinese muslims should follow the same laws as other Chinese, and that China uses similar deradicalization programmes proposed in the West, BBC thinks is "suppression". And volontary sterilization in the West BBC calls "genocide" in China. And Hong Kong's security law is similar to those in the West - and not as bad as US - and are definitely neccessary to keep "one nation" together under the immense pressure from US and its puppet regimes. 2020 4th of July: Peter Klevius wonders when US women will get the same rights as Chinese women - ERA is still lacking from US constitution? Article 2, Chinese constitution: Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and family life. Peter Klevius also wonders why aggressive and assertive US attacks peaceful China (every schism has US fingerprints) while siding with the war crimes committing murdeous islamofascist Saudi dictator family whose OIC sharia clearly denies eqaulity for women?! China is doing more good to more people than any other country today. Is this the reason?!



20200618: Why is the most cemtral witness, Inge Morelius (later aka Marelius) in the Swedish PM Palme's murder case, deleted by Google's search engine from

deleted by Google's search engine from Peter Klevius revealing murder analysis ?! 20200616: When China discovers Covid-19 with a European DNA profile on a cutting board for Norwegian salmon, the BBC thinks it's the communist party.

Why is BBC so quiet about Churchill's secret (until 2018) pact with Stalin in 1939 which would have divided Scandinavia between Russia and UK?! And US' NATO puppet Jens Stoltenberg repeats like a parrot his master's voice against China - while a civil war is going on inside NATO between Greece and Turkey. African Pygmy lives matter! Colonized and enslaved for more than 3,500 years by the Eurasian Bantu etc. intruders we now call Africans. It's a senseless irony that "Africans" (Bantus etc. newcomers) who enslaved and mixed with original Africans (Khoisan and especially Pygmies from whom they got their phenotype) and later were enslaved by muslim Arabs and their "African" collaborators now get a brain drop at the West African ports where islam exported slaves. Any old African genes come from Khoisan and Pygmies - and ultimately out of Asia - not Africa. "Out-of-Africa" and BLM are created by white idiots and only feed supremacism. Read "out-of-Africa" more dangerous than the Piltdown hoax

Peter Klevius 20200604: What if Floyd had been white or Chinese?! And the officers members of Nation of Islam? And how do we even know that any racism was involved? And what about a fair trial?

20200603: UK's Sinophobic right wing anti-EU migration Brexiters now want to import 3 million Chinese from Hong Kong!?

20200529: In its everyday Sinophobia rant BBC today managed in one sentence to accuse Chinese, China and Xi separately - and even missing the stock smear, i.e. the "communist party". However in a very near future China will develop and export a world leading ecosystem of non-US software, hardware, fintech, social media, telecom infrastructure etc. that everyone will long for. Stubborn and dumb stiff lipped Sinophobes will become Neanderthals in no time. Sadly few politicians understand how powerful Chinese tech development is. Japan did the same but wasn't hampered by Maoist communism and was ten times smaller. High IQ and an Atheist culture they both have in common.

The pro-Saudi and anti-China "party-within" UK's governing party is committing long term criminal harm to UK. China is the future and US is rottening with accelerating speed (the desperate sanctions against China tell it all). Only tech cooperation with China will benefit Brits and Americans. So why are UK politicians and BBC so eager to shoot their own PM and the Brits in the foot by being dictated by Pompeo, Trump and the Saudi dictator family, and boosted by a general Sinophobia racism? The "communist" scare mongering has no relevance because in practice China behaves in no way different than US - but is under constant smear and subversion attacks. And China's surveillance has actually developed less fast than that of US. US is a rogue state that murders and surveils in other countries (e.g. murdered top politician in Iran and surveilled Merkel - and you). And who likes ISIS and al-Qaeda etc. Uyghur jihadi terrorists anyway? Pompeo, Erdogan and Saudi steered islamofascists.



20200522: BBC and some right wing MPs call it a "draconian move" when China wants to stop foreign interference and people using Molotov cocktails. Really! So what about in UK?!



20200518: BBC again repeated the anti-China lie about "a silenced doctor" by inviting the former right wing and pro-Saudi (anti-)EU Research Group - now (anti-)China Research Group. How bad a journalist isn't Sarah Montague then when she didn't even try to question it - or is she muffled?! Eye dr. Li Wenliang wrongly spread out it could be SARS. It wasn't and just one hour later - and long before any police etc. had contacted him - he corrected his mistake (see fact check below).

$-freeloader US provoking China with war ships while simultaneously "leaking" "classified" rumours. Why?! Its Sinophobia is all about trying to stop China's success as the foremost spreader of wealth and high tech both in China and the world. It's not the leadership but China's success that US can't stand.



BBC sides with whoever Sinophobes - and would probably even have used Goebbels against China if he was still around. UK universities etc. are littered with dangerous Saudi (OIC) anti-Human Rights sharia jihad propaganda (incl. supprt of IS Utghur jihadi) - yet China has always been aggressively smeared all the way since UK's opium war attacks on China when it was declared "inferior" and "uncivilized". Today the problem seems to be that China is too superior and too civilized - but thankfully they have a "communist" party to blame, although the leadership has behaved better than most in the West. And when BBC talks about the "West" against China it actually means US spy organization Five Eyes (with the puppet states Australia, UK, Canada and NZ) and whoever other Sinophobes it can find elsewhere - like the Israel supporting and anti-muslim right wing Axel Springer, Europe's largest media (practically a monpoly) which is accused of e.g. censorship and interference in other countries (just like state media BBC).



Should China sue BBC and UK (not to mention US) and the far-right, anti-China and anti-muslim UK "think tank" the Jackson Society (with associated Sinophobic MPs and lords) - whose Sinophobia (disguised as "against communism" etc.) complements leftist and pro-sharia jihad muslims BBC which now so eagerly gives it a platform, as well as the closely connected US spy organization Five Eyes which has demonized China for years long before Huawei or Covid-19? The lies about China they have spread are indistinguishable from those of Pompeo and Trump. Is this baseless (compared to US/UK) hate mongering really conducive to the welfare of UK? And when China reacts to this massive Sinophobia campaign then BBC calls it "aggressive Chinese propaganda".



US "warns" about China "stealing" vaccine info because US knows that China now produces much better research than US.



BBC anti-China fake 20200506: "Hundreds if not thousands of people were likely to have been infected in Wuhan, at a time when Chinese officials said there were only a few dozen cases." Peter Klevius fact check: BBC deliberately conflates real time confirmed knowledge with calculations in retrospect.



US has made all the mistakes it accuses China for. Here's one from the top of the iceberg: Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright, the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, pressed for urgent access to funding, personnel and clinical specimens, including viruses, which he emphasized were all critically necessary to begin development of lifesaving medicines needed in the likely event that the virus spread outside of SE Asia. He was then cut out of critical meetings for raising early alarm about the virus and ousted from his position.



Chinese 5G much more reliable than US' Five Eyes, the world's most dangerous misinfo and conspiracy spreading US spy and smear organization (together with its puppet states UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) which "leaked" a 15-page dossier alleging "probing the possibility" the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As Peter Klevius has said before, it didn't come from bats to humans but from some other host animal. Fake news and anti-China propaganda videos are making false and unfounded claims about "delays" and "late" human to human transmission report. Again, it was only in retrospect anyone could have known the nature of early cases. Many weren't even connectded to the wet market and many weren't affected at all despite intimate contact. Moreover, the wrong early SARS diagnosis was corrected the very same day but spread by a "whistleblower" eye doctor (see fact check below). And despite being first affected China acted better than US etc. countries. 5eyes equals Nazi Goebbels in propaganda misinfo. Every single accusation so far has built on deliberate distortion of facts. And possble improvements in retrospect would have been exactly the same in even the best of Western countroes.



Peter Klevius to Chinese people: I'm not a racist - although I certainly look like one.



Origin of Sinophobia: The 19th century Opium Wars were triggered by UK's imposition of the opium trade upon China. Lord Palmerston regarded the Chinese as uncivilized and suggested that the British must attack China to show up their superiority as well as to demonstrate what a "civilized" nation could do. The resulting concession of Hong Kong compromised China's territorial sovereignty. There's also the background to South China Sea.



"God", "Allah", or whichever "monotheistic" idol is a pathetic fallacy and "monotheism" is a ridiculous and dangerous self-delusion because your "god" is used to defend the undefendable. There are equally many "gods" as there are individuals - and the collective "god" only functions as cherry picked confirmation of the individual's "god". However, the collective "god" may combine individual evil - never individual good, because that can only be achieved by (negative) Human Rights. After all, as Peter Klevius always has said, the only way of being fully human is to allow others full humanhood (what else could possibly unite all humans) - without religious impositions/exclusions.

Pentagon, islam - and China?!



Also check out Peter Klevius theory (1992) on "consciousness"/Thalamus - the only one that fits empirical evidence. And don't miss And don't miss Anthropologist Peter Klevius vs. Afropologist John Hawks - and how the British Piltdown hoax moved to Africa .

Peter Klevius asks for an independent international inquiry on BBC's racist Sinophobia and its support of sharia islamism - incl. how many victims and suffering it has caused because of its worldwide propaganda influence.

In the early 1990's US accused Japan of selling superior cars in US without buying crappy cars from US. And a congress woman warned for tech theft if selling US planes to Japan - but was told that those planes wouldn't even fly without Japanese high tech. At the same time EU was created to build a trade wall against Japanese products. However, Japan is more than ten times smaller than China - and isn't at the hotbed of different coronaviruses in SE Asia.



Dear reader, if you think Peter Klevius has a problem with self-assertion you're very wrong. Apart from it being connected to Peter Klevius criticism of citation cartels (see Demand for Resources, 1992:40-44) Peter Klevius main problem is your self-assertion.







Is this MP a clown?

Sinophobic BBC working hard for a Coup d'etat together with Saudi loving and China hating MPs against PM Boris Johnson.



Peter Klevius wonders why Sinophobic state media BBC (with Tom Tugendhat etc.) goes against the state (PM, MI6 etc.) in being so extremely worried about unfounded claims about China while having no problem with the threats posed by the worst of the worst, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's influence over UK - and BBC?! goes against the state (PM, MI6 etc.) in being so extremely worried about unfounded claims about China while having no problem with the threats posed by the worst of the worst, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's influence over UK - and BBC?!

20200417: BBC's Sinophobic muslim Razia Iqbal together with Tom Tugendhat arrange a pathetic propaganda theatre of BBC's 22:00 news hour for the most senseless and even childish smearing of China. And how can this clown (just listen to his laughter etc.!) be a leader of UK's foreign affairs committee?! Moreover, Razia Iqbal even uses Trump as an expert! Desperate...! arrange a pathetic propaganda theatre of BBC's 22:00 news hour for the most senseless and even childish smearing of China. And how can this clown (just listen to his laughter etc.!) be a leader of UK's foreign affairs committee?! Moreover, Razia Iqbal even uses Trump as an expert! Desperate...

20200416: State media BBC's Sinophobic Uganda rooted muslim Razia Iqbal lies about Chinese "racism" against Ugandans without telling that it was a local matter that was caused by some Africans linked to a cluster of cases in the Nigerian community in Guangzhou at a time when China had already curbed Covid-19. At least eight people diagnosed with the illness had spent time in the city's Yuexiu district, known as "Little Africa". Five were Nigerian nationals who faced widespread anger - not for being Africans but because of reports that they had broken a mandatory quarantine and been to eight restaurants and other public places instead of staying home. As a result, nearly 2,000 people they came into contact with had to be tested for Covid-19 or undergo quarantine. Guangzhou had confirmed 114 imported coronavirus cases  16 of which were Africans. The rest were returning Chinese nationals.

20200407a.m.: UK's best PM, Boris Johnson, is much shorter (same as Einstein and Klevius dad) than Trump - but also much more intelligent. It's OK to say so when Trump is white - and loves to play on height, right? 20200412: The reason the Chinese government wanted extra control of DNA results was the previous failed report (see below) which wrongly indicated SARS. However, British media (BBC etc.) blatantly lie about it and first accused Shi Zhengli's lab for spreading infected bats, while some weeks later making her a hero and accusing the government. And no, it didn't spread from bats - but possibly from civet cats. Suspected animals are now forbidden from the market.





Anthropologist Peter Klevius vs. Afropologist John Hawks - and how the British Piltdown hoax moved to Africa. And why would antelopes evolve in the very opposite direction to humans - at the same time?

UK/Matt Hancock (20200402): "We will work (against Covid19) with our friends and allies." Peter Klevius: That excludes the best, i.e. China, which you, on order from US, have declared an "unfriendly enemy"!



SINOPHOBIA RACISM. US tries to pull you away from Chinese high tech superiority so US can keep feeding you with its outdated tech and influence - just as it used to do with cars and wars. Your pick: US militarism with Saudi led islamofascism - or highspeed Chinatech towards Chinese democracy and global wealth. China is the very opposite to Cuba - and already, in practise, almost identical to Western governments. Excluding China only prolongs the democratic process - and even speeds up China's high tech inside its 1.4 billion market.



Peter Klevius fact check: "COVID-19 has a natural origin and there is no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered" (Nature). China swiftly sequenced and shared the genome worldwide. China's remarkable response on all stages was praised by WHO (but not BBC) and is in line with its superior tech advances (Mao's China would never have made it). There isn't a trace of an alleged (by BBC etc. fakes) Chinese Covid19 reporting "delay" that wouldn't have been bigger in the West. And the reason is that

for China good reputation is all that matters - now when it has already won the tech competition. China's defense against West's smear campaign is called "propaganda" - in the West. Dear US, it's time to behave! You lost the tech war to little Japan long ago. Now you've lost it against big China. Get over it. So Peter Klevius advises: Do as Wall Street, shake hands instead of producing unfounded Sinophobic smear propaganda!

Covid19 timeline " (Nature). China swiftly sequenced and shared the genome worldwide. China's remarkable response on all stages was praised by WHO (but not BBC) and is in line with its superior tech advances (Mao's China would never have made it). There isn't a trace of an alleged (by BBC etc. fakes) Chinese Covid19 reporting "delay" that wouldn't have been bigger in the West. And the reason is thatfor China good reputation is all that matters - now when it has already won the tech competition. China's defense against West's smear campaign is called "propaganda" - in the West. Dear US, it's time to behave! You lost the tech war to little Japan long ago. Now you've lost it against big China. Get over it. So Peter Klevius advises: Do as Wall Street, shake hands instead of producing unfounded Sinophobic smear propaganda! 17 November 2019: A retrospectively confirmed case.

1 December 2019: The first known patient started experiencing symptoms but had not been to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. No epidemiological link could be found between this case and later cases.

818 December 2019: Seven cases later diagnosed as COVID19 were documented; only two of them were linked with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

18-29 December 2019: Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) that will eventually be used for viral genome sequencing is collected from patients.

25 December 2019: Wuhan Fifth Hospital gastroenterology director Lu Xiaohong reported suspected infection by hospital staff.

26 December 2019: Zhang Jixian identified a CT scan that showed a different pattern from other viral pneumonia.

27 December 2019: She reported to Jianghan district CCDC with four cases. During the following two days, the hospital received three similar cases, who all came from Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The hospital reported to the provincial and city CDC directly which initiated a field investigation with a retrospective search for pneumonia patients potentially linked to the market. They found additional such patients and on 30 December, health authorities from Hubei Province reported this cluster to CCDC who immediately sent experts to Wuhan to support the investigation. Samples from these patients were obtained for laboratory analyses.

30 December 2019: Wuhan Municipal Health Committee informed WHO, Weibo etc. about an "urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause". There had been "a successive series of patients with unexplained pneumonia recently." However, a DNA report inaccurately indicated SARS on one patient. Late same day (17:43) ophthalmologist Li Wenliang WeChatted "There were 7 confirmed cases of SARS at Huanan Seafood Market." He included a patient's CT scan. At 18:42, he admitted that it wasn't proven SARS.

31 December 2019: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were alerted by China of an unexplained "cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia in Wuhan.

US worst nightmare is a democratic China - which wouldn't change China but make it even more like one-party "democracies" in the West - because that would mean losing US only argument. US deliberately seeks Sinophobic confrontational aggression against China - which hampers the development and peace of the world.

US island puppets against China and EU. US, who used to treat Japan as it now treats China, is now parasitizing on former enemy Japan in an (in vane) effort to keep China high tech down, and on the much tinier UK ally to trouble EU.



Something sinister is behind when Sinophobic far right extremist politicians so desperately risk future development in UK with false accusations of "possible risks in the future", skewed presentations, and unfounded demonization of Chinese high tech. And while Klevius is posting this, all in his machine is spied on and sent to US. And why is BBC constantly only hosting Sinophobic guests who also happen to be supporters of the islamofascist Saudi dictator family and happy to allow US spying on you via US companies? The only risk Huawei poses is that the Chinese state gets fed up and makes it illegal to sell Chinese top tech to UK. China is the future of high tech, so stepping off the bus means retardation. Btw, the two main accusations against China could easily be made against US/UK as well. China wants to trade and therefore doesn't want to risk reputation. US doesn't bother about its reputation. And when it comes to clean up muslim "communities" from islamofascist extremists there's really no other difference than in numbers. Moreover, NATO/Turkey uses extremist Uyghurs against civilians in e.g. Idlib - and hypocritically accuse China when these jihadi return.



Klevius to women: NATO makes a deal with the Taliban to continue sharia oppression of women, and NATO+IS=true because NATO is the main culprit behind the suffering in Idlib. Without the support from NATO the worst muslim terrorist group would never have survived. Like IS, NATO ally Hayat Tahrir al-Sham wants to create an islamic state. Turkey/NATO backs SNA well knowing that it's together with HTS. I.e. a NATO member state invades its neighbor, sides with terrorists and gets full support from NATO when its soldiers get killed while helping the terrorists. And what about Yemen?! It's truly pathetic that muslims seem more worried about islamofascism than the West!







Peter Klevius to climatists: Sinophobia is a threat to the environment, because China has the slowest population growth and is the the least per capita polluter of main economies (see table below) and the main producer of alternative and conventional super high tech! Moreover, China lacks the same proportion of natural resources as e.g. Sweden, Norway etc. (e.g. hydropower) but instead has to deal with the dust smog blowing from the Gobi desert and the extreme cold from the north. And China bears the manufacturing pollution for products other countries then consume and profit on.



NATO (Turkey supported by US/UK) is siding with the worst muslim terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (some 10,000 IS jihadi) against the people of Idlib while BBC News spreads misinfo propaganda against Syria, Russia and Iran - and nothing about the Saudi dictator family.

BBC (20200217) wants to stop Chinese tech because China opposes islamofascist Uyghurs. Klevius suggests the world should stop dealing with US/UK because of involvement in war crimes and genoscides against Shia muslims.

Why is Wikipedia allowed to spread polemical, tendentious and deliberately misleading info about islam? And not a word about islam's original supremacist enslavement, booty and humiliation ideology?! This misinfo is the most harmful of all!

From a true (negative) Human Rights, as well as from a historical perspective, original islam may rather be seen as original fascism. The oldest Koranic texts and the historically verified beginning of islam both emphasize supremacism as the main tenet (blamed/excused on "Allah"). Islam conserves racism, sexism and supremacism as pointed out by true muslims (aka "fundamentalists") reinforced through sharia (e.g. by Saudi based and steered OIC's world sharia which is heavily criticized both by Klevius and the Council of Europe etc.). Islamic (and therefore muslim) supremacism is easily distinguished as it doesn't approve of Human Rights equality.

And why does Wikipedia deliberately conflate the history of islam with the fairy tales of believers in islam?!

Sinophobia is racism but "islamophobia" is criticism of an ideology. "Islamophobia" shouters are directly responsible for islamic hate crimes based on Koranic texts and hitting children of "infidels".



The Saudi-US-UK axis of evil



Chinese eyes less intrusive than Five Eyes (US and its puppets) - because China prioritizes trade and reputation while US prioritizes global spying, meddling and military control. The Saudi loving US puppets Duncan Smith, Davis, Paterson, Green, Ellwood and Seely etc. produce baseless "security" arguments for Sinophobic MPs.

U.S. flu this season Feb. 2020: 19 million illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and over 10,000 deaths (China has a third less common flu than US). 2019-nCoV, 6 Feb. 2020 (estim. total death rate 0.1-0.2%, i.e. same as common flu): 28,018 cases (not illnesses) and 563 deaths. Did the eye doctors SARS rant on social media delay response in China? It wasn't SARS but much closer to common flu - but without vaccine. Instead of assisting, US/UK/BBC did the utmost to smear China with it! Klevius warning to Finland (and the rest of the world): Don't be useful idiots in US' export of militarism! It will create tension and pull fire on you in a conflict. Four balancing power blocs is safer than one or two. Moreover, China will become the world's first true democracy thanks to AI. Don't let Sinophobia blind you. US is going down unless it starts cooperating instead of trying to rule the world. Non 5G iPhone sells well - in US - where there's no true 5G.

BBC's bigoted and hypocritical Pakistan rooted, Saudi raised and Cambridge schooled "muslim" (no veil, no Ramadan fasting, but yes to alcohol etc.) presenter Mishal Husain, like many Saudi/OIC supporters, represents the "security risk" between islam's "core" (OIC sharia) and "periphery" (e.g. "Euro-islam", "cultural islam" etc.).

Peter Klevius suggests cooperation instead of unfounded incl. religious) hate!

Klevius is ashamed over hateful, racist Western Sinophobia - and support of hateful sharia jihad. BBC's sharia supporting (?) muslim Mishal Husain now eagerly sides with Sinophobic extreme right wing politicians who support Saudi islamofascism but demonize China and Chinese (except if critcical of China). Sinophobes would treat China exactly the same if it copied US "democracy".



BBC today (20200129) forgot to tell about China already having isolated the virus for vaccine (and helped Australians to do so). However, BBC repeatedly lied that the death rate is 20%. Common flu and the new corona virus deaths (~2%) are extremely rare outside very vulnerable groups - who don't travel much.

BBC, who otherwise don't hesitate to spit on Trump, has no problem using his advisor when it comes to racist Sinophobia against Huawei. US is blackmailing UK so to hinder China's tech success and the "security issue" is actually US itself.

Niklas Arnberg, Swedish professor in virology: "Considerably higher mortality than ordinary flu." BBC: "Death toll rises as disease spreads from China."

Peter Klevius: Both are faking! Arnberg used overall death numbers although most (all?!) of these deaths have been people who could have died from ordinary flu as well. And do you really think BBC would ever have written similarly about the deadly camel flu from Saudi Arabia?!

Why is BBC spending so much more time on a 2019 flu from China than on the much deadlier 2019 camel flu from Saudi Arabia?!

Why is BBC only talking about Jewish victims - and why is BBC silent about the fact that most "anti-semites" (i.e. anti-Jews) are muslims? Holocaust: 6 million Jews and 11 million "others" were murdered by the German government for various discriminatory practices due to their ethnicity, Atheism, or LGBT+.

Hitler: "All character training must be derived from faith." Himmler: ""We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; he has created the earth, the Fatherland, and he has sent us the Fuhrer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid." Klevius (the Atheist "other"): That's a description of me by most Americans and muslims. Btw, why are muslim sex predators (compare Koran and sex slaves) from Pakistan called "Asians"?! And why have they been protected while Klevius has been muffled?!

Islam trumps LGBT rights in English schools - and hateful sexist and racist muslim supremacism defending BBC is silent as usual (e.g. about Parkfield Community School 2020). Klevius: Do you really support US/UK/BBC's disgusting racist Sinophobia madness - and their support and use of anti-Human Rights muslim islamism?! Wikipedia: In the Xinjiang riots Turkic speaking Uyghur muslims shouted/posted "kill the Han (Chinese) and Hui (Chinese speaking muslims)"!

Why is BBC so silent about Iran Air Flight 655 that was recklessly shot down by US over Iran territory killing 290 incl. 66 children?! Is it the new US puppet empire agenda? Did US aggression also cause the latest plane crash?



When BBC announces "the threats of 2020" the murders, terrorism and war crimes committing Saudi dictator family isn't included. As isn't US/UK militaristic meddling and proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq etc. However, China's peaceful trade and high tech manufacturing is!?



Saudi based and steered Human Rights violator OIC is the main legal guidance for the world's sharia muslims. BBC eagerly supports it by neglecting to criticize it while spitting on those who do. OIC's Cairo Declaration on "Human Rights" in Islam (CDHRI) is against freedom of religion - but abuses real Human Rights for the promotion of anti-Human Rights sharia islam. The CDHRI concludes in Articles 24 and 25 that all rights and freedoms mentioned are subject to the Islamic sharia, which is the declaration's sole source. OIC hence keeps the gate open for continued islamofascism in the "muslim world" - and as a convenient tool for meddling in "hostile states".



You believer in "islamophobia"! Doesn't it scare you that if Peter Klevius is right about islam but wouldn't say anything, then who would when you're doomed on the market if you do? If Marx had been called a "messenger" then Marxism would have been protected by freedom of religion, and critics called "Marxophobes". All "monotheist" religions make excuses not to fully accept Human Rights equality, but islam is by far the worst - not the least due to its origin and the fact that it's protected, unlike other threats to Human Rights. Whereas totalitarian Marxism used to be the enemy of the West, today US is on the totalitarian islamofascist side using it for Saudi gains against declared "enemies". It's truly a grim irony when BBC protects islamofascist terrorist groups by telling you that the suffering in Syria is due to the Syrian government and Russia. US could stop the muslim terrorist groups at any time - but doesn't because it wants the war and suffering to continue.





Peter Klevius fact/fake check: Why does Google (and BBC) lie and fake straight up your face about China ?! When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being one of the least polluting of major economies (47th on a reliable polluters list). Moreover, China is not only the world leader for alternative technologies, but its pollution number also includes the biggest production of products exported and consumed all over the world outside China. Source: EDGAR and incl. all human activities leading to climate relevant emissions, except biomass/biofuel combustion (short-cycle carbon). US/UK (NATO) don't accept muslims like Uighur islamists (other than as proxy soldiers) - but demand China to accept them. NATO's Sinophobia is a threat to world peace, environment and prosperity. NATO is all about US monopolizing space for its own militarism and to block China's success? In 1990s Russia was proposed as a member of NATO but is now demonized by US/UK (and BBC) as the "main enemy" together with "the challenge from China" (sic). But NATO members are guilty of offensive wars, occupations, annexations, use of chemical weapons, use of islamist terrorists, foreign interventions, extrajudicial murderings in other countries - and use of similar muslim "re-education" camps as China (why not just criminalize original evil islam?!). NATO (US) threatens the free flow of tech and wealth, and provokes hate and defensive attitudes among Chinese - hence forcing China (world leader in tech) using its financial muscles more for defense (China can't be starved like USSR in 1980s) than environment. Btw, Chinese per capita GDP is 1/3 of US, and total GDP much bigger than US - and faster growing. A fraction of the effort given to demonize "islamophobic" islam criticim, would do wonders to reduce Sinophobic racism against Chinese. And stop using the "Communist threat". China is now a capitalist country similar to Western powers - except technologically much better (and the West copies everything China does in surveillance). Do you really think much would change if China would be fully democratic - except chaos caused by NATO? NATO (US/UK) would be equally Sinophobic. In fact, what is called "democracy" in the West functions quite similarly as the leadership in China. Media propaganda, lying politicians and empty promises combined with silencing the real issues (compare BBC's fake "news") - and therefore a truly democratic vote. Moreover, the only reason capitalist China has a non-democratic leadership for the moment is precisely its justified fear for leaving it vulnerable for what happened in the past when UK and US meddled and attacked with great suffering for the Chinese people. NATO should turn against the real evil, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family.

Peter Klevius Christmas greeting to BBC and Tesco: Ever thought about the possibility that muslim islamists don't like making Christmas cards but are encouraged by US/UK/BBC etc. to smear China. "We are foreign prisoners (muslims?) in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will (islamic Christophobia?). Please help us and notify human rights (ultimate bigotry if sharia muslims ask for HR) organisation (Saudi based and steered OIC?!)."



"British" nationalist hypocrisy: Get back control - and meddle, influence, intervene, spy and control all over the world.



More than half of muslims in UK are "islamophobes" (against sharia) - just like Peter Klevius, Council of Europe etc. - but opposite to BBC and many UK politicians (source: A survey of UKs muslim communities by Martyn Frampton, David Goodhart and Khalid Mahmood MP). (source: A survey of UKs muslim communities by Martyn Frampton, David Goodhart and Khalid Mahmood MP). BBC awards a white man who plays an odd sport few are interested in the title of "sports personality of the year 2019". Why?! Because cricket is a "british" colonial sports and also fits BBC's special interest in "asians" - but couldn't find a "british asian" good enough.

England voted (for the second time) against Merkels islam import from Turkey. Can islam be rehabilitated from its evil origin and deeds - and can unrehabilitated islam be allowed in public and private spheres? Why is Saudi based and steered OIC's Islamic State of Gambia accusing Aung San Suu Kyi for the consequences of islamofascism OIC's sharia protects - and why isn't the murderous islamofascist war criminal and genocide committing Saudi dictator "prince" accused of anything? And why is BBC's leading muslim extremist propaganda presenter Mishal Husain allowed to "present" an absolutely one-sided pro islamist picture for BBC's compulsory fee paying listeners? Peter Klevius fact/fake check: Why does Google lie and fake straight up your face?! When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being one of the least polluting of major economies (47th on a reliable polluters list). Moreover, China is not only the world leader for alternative technologies, but its pollution number also includes the biggest production of products exported and consumed all over the world outside China. Source: EDGAR and incl. all human activities leading to climate relevant emissions, except biomass/biofuel combustion (short-cycle carbon). US/UK (NATO) don't accept muslims like Uighur islamists (other than as proxy soldiers) - but demand China to accept them. NATO's Sinophobia is a threat to world peace, environment and prosperity.

NATO is all about US monopolizing space for its own militarism and to block China's success? In 1990s Russia was proposed as a member of NATO but is now demonized by US/UK (and BBC) as the "main enemy" together with "the challenge from China" (sic). But NATO members are guilty of offensive wars, occupations, annexations, use of chemical weapons, use of islamist terrorists, foreign interventions, extrajudicial murderings in other countries - and use of similar muslim "re-education" camps as China (why not just criminalize original evil islam?!). NATO (US) threatens the free flow of tech and wealth, and provokes hate and defensive attitudes among Chinese - hence forcing China (world leader in tech) using its financial muscles more for defense (China can't be starved like USSR in 1980s) than environment. Btw, Chinese per capita GDP is 1/3 of US, and total GDP much bigger than US - and faster growing. A fraction of the effort given to demonize "islamophobic" islam criticim, would do wonders to reduce Sinophobic racism against Chinese. And stop using the "Communist threat". China is now a capitalist country similar to Western powers - except technologically much better (and the West copies everything China does in surveillance). Do you really think much would change if China would be fully democratic - except chaos caused by NATO? NATO (US/UK) would be equally Sinophobic. In fact, what is called "democracy" in the West functions quite similarly as the leadership in China. Media propaganda, lying politicians and empty promises combined with silencing the real issues (compare BBC's fake "news") - and therefore a truly democratic vote. Moreover, the only reason capitalist China has a non-democratic leadership for the moment is precisely its justified fear for leaving it vulnerable for what happened in the past when UK and US meddled and attacked with great suffering for the Chinese people. NATO should turn against the real evil, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family.



DEMOCRACY DENIED: WARNING TO UK VOTERS ABOUT BBC's HUMANRIGHTSPHOBIA! WHO's RIGHT ON ISLAM - BBC OR THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE?

BBC undermines your most basic Human Rights. BBC's "islamophobia" propaganda machine (incl. Sayeeda Warsi) boosts OIC islam while neglecting Council of Europe's sharp ("islamophobic") criticism of OIC's world sharia (Cairo declaration). SO HOW COME THAT BBC IS ALLOWED TO MEDDLE IN THE VOTING PROCESS BY ATTACKING AND SMEARING THOSE CANDIDATES WHO SHARE THE VIEW OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE - not to mention the anti-fascist Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948?! And how come that racism against e.g. Polish people in UK is of no interest for BBC while the "problem" of "islamophobia" fills all BBC "news"?

Is BBC killing UK democracy and paving the way for islamofascism?BBC undermines your most basic Human Rights. BBC's "islamophobia" propaganda machine (incl. Sayeeda Warsi) boosts OIC islam while neglecting Council of Europe's sharp ("islamophobic") criticism of OIC's world sharia (Cairo declaration). SO HOW COME THAT BBC IS ALLOWED TO MEDDLE IN THE VOTING PROCESS BY ATTACKING AND SMEARING THOSE CANDIDATES WHO SHARE THE VIEW OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE - not to mention the anti-fascist Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948?! And how come that racism against e.g. Polish people in UK is of no interest for BBC while the "problem" of "islamophobia" fills all BBC "news"?

How Merkel paved the way for Brexit (Erdogan deal) and aided jihad in EU. NATO (US) with former fascist state Germany now sides with islamofascism - especially Erdogan's Ottoman aspirations - and supports Uyghur jihadism in hope of placing NATO (i.e. US) nukes between Russia and China. Peter Klevius wonders whether this ill-directed jihad propaganda will promote peace and safety?

The world bully U.S. thinks it owns and rules the world after having colonized it via dollar manipulation, infiltration, spying, meddling, sanctions and the unscrupulous use of militants and militarism. Thanks to the global dollar scam, Americans have been freeloaders on the rest of the world, the biggest per capita polluters and the U.S. by far the biggest threat to world peace via weapons built with money it stole from the world. Said by Peter Klevius who has been an anti-socialist all his life. Btw. the world's industrial revolution didn's start in England but in Sweden already in the late 17th century by inventor Christopher Polhem and capitalist Gabriel Stierncrona. Without Polhem's automation to get the rich Swedish iron ore from the mains, England had no chance to start real industrial production.







A nun's gear doesn't sign other women as "whores". However, what about a woman in an islamic "chastity" gear?



K.S. Lal (a giant among historians): Mahmud of Ghazni had marched into Hindustan again and again to wage jihad and spread the Muhammadan religion, to lay hold of its wealth, to destroy its temples, to enslave its people, sell them abroad and thereby earn profit, and to add to muslim numbers by converting the captives.

Is BBC 100% steered by muslims? Not only can you ever hear anything critical about islam and muslims - but all main channels are also occupied by sharia (OIC) supporting (i.e. against basic Human Rights equality) muslims. Nazir Afzal ('Moral maze', news, culture etc.), Mishal Husain (news, culture etc.), Samira Ahmed (news, culture etc.), Razia Iqbal (news, culture etc.). And they all keep cheating the public about it and instead pointing finger to "dumb and hateful xenophobes". Not a word about e.g. Council of Europe's harsh critcism (see below) of muslims biggest sharia organization, the Saudi based and steered OIC. Foreigners isn't the peoblem - sharia islam is!



BBC's muslims and their PC supporters also meddle in UK election by demonizing "islamophobia", i.e. trying to stop critcs of islamofascism.



Muslim child/youth fascism induced by an islam interpretation from family and strengthened by PC media, politicians etc.



Peter Klevius: Everyone - incl. every muslim who respects Human Rights - ought to make sure to vote for an "islamophobe"! BBC and Sayeeda Warsi will make their utmost to stop critics of islamofascism in the election. Don't be robbed of your democratic right. And of course you know that the only real problem with migration is islamofascism.

BBC's "man in Hong Kong" asked street terror leader Joshua Wong if they could possibly escalate violence. And they could. One day later they put a Chinese on fire in a murder attempt.

While US/UK aim for militarism and war, China aims for health and wealth.



One Atheism and three "monotheisms"







The Saudi Aramco and OIC scams



Peter Klevius: The Saudi Aramco sale is the biggest ripoff in the world. If there's any future in oil and you don't care about environment, then why buy what's at its peak when Venezuela's PDVSA is bigger and as low it can get?!

Are you an "islamophobe" if you don't like islamist Human Rights violations? Islam has (via OIC's sharia declaration) abandoned the most basic anti-fascist Human Rights from 1948. Islam is hence the only religion in doing so - not even the Catholics have needed to replace Human Rights with "Catholic human rights".



The seed for world fascism is dormant in Saudi based and steered OIC's world sharia - opposed by ECHR and Peter Klevius, but supported by Sayeeda Warsi.





Breakit instead of Brexit because what's the point of leaving one EU while still staying in an other called UK? England voted leave.



However, unfortunately BBC demonizes China on behalf of UK's relying on militarist meddling, weapons sales and islamofascist sharia finance. So you see the solution: Cut off sharia etc. islamofascist ties and open up for prospering with China - not the over-selfish game of spying and dying of US.



BBC boosts stupid nationalist "Britishness" with peculiar "sports" like cricket and rugby because the world has already "colonized" football and the English language is a global property.

Nigel Farage is like BBC against "islamophobia" and pro-Saudi - but Boris Johnson doesn't like letter boxes and was criticized by Theresa May for being critical against the Saudis while serving as her foreign minister. However, unfortunately BBC demonizes China on behalf of UK's relying on militarist meddling, weapons sales and islamofascist sharia finance. So you see the solution: Cut off sharia etc. islamofascist ties and open up for prospering with China - not the over-selfish game of spying and dying of US.BBC boosts stupid nationalist "Britishness" with peculiar "sports" like cricket and rugby because the world has already "colonized" football and the English language is a global property.Nigel Farage is like BBC against "islamophobia" and pro-Saudi - but Boris Johnson doesn't like letter boxes and was criticized by Theresa May for being critical against the Saudis while serving as her foreign minister.

China (laws against sharia islamofascism) and EU (Human Rights against sharia islamofascism) are now the only ones protecting basic (negative*) Human Rights. * Religious people and socialists don't like negative Human Rights simply because they prefer collectives ("communities") rather than individuals. That's why the web is full of misinfo about these rights. Read Peter Klevius definition instead if you want a deep view - or listen to Lauren Chen starting from 7:11 if you want it light The Saudi "custodian of islam" has some 1.5 billion "citizens" in the muslim world Ummah nation - and demands the world to bow them no matter what (as long they aren't Shia or so, of course). China, on the other hand, keeps its citizens and laws within its own borders. IS islam IS fascism and islam (even the archbishop agrees). So why is sharia fascism not separated from an "islam" that submits to basic Human Rights? As it stands now Saudi based and steered OIC's sharia (the 1990 Cairo declaration) still stands as the basic Human Rights violation via sharia muslims all over the world. And whereas China actively tries to erase sharia islamofascism, EU keeps promoting import of it while judicially telling us it's not right, yet doing nothing to stop it. Unlike the West, China hasn't aggressively meddled militaristically in other countries around the world, but rather being the world's foremost spreader of new technology and wealth. And whereas the West has eagerly supported Mohammed's totalitarian aims, China has, in practise, implemented in law most of the Human Rights advices that The Council of Europe has directed against OIC. Against this background West's Saudi backing and China smearing is deeply bigoted and hypocritical.



John le Carre: I'm depressed and ashamed of British nationalism. Nationalism needs enemies but today we really have no identifiable enemies except among ourselves.



North Atlantic (sic) Treaty Organization invades a country in Mideast and attacks (with chemical weapons) a people without a country. UK's Brexit business model: Sharia finance, weapons sale and militaristic meddling?UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (sic) and Global Neo-Imperialist and Militarist Meddling, Jeremy Hunt, 15 Oct. 2019: It's wrong to accuse Donald Trump - it's Americans isolationism because American taxpayers don't want to pay between 1/2 and 2/3 of the defense of Europe. And Turkey is very skilled at finding wedges and gaps between allies. UK should be EU's bridge to US.

Peter Klevius: No, EU should take care of its own defense - against whom? The Saudi dictator family who is the world's no 1 spender on weapons and islamic terror incitement and who hates EU's anti-sharia legislation? And UK taxpayers should not have to pay more for dangerous militarism. Militaristic meddling is a bad and dangerous business idea.

Read K.S. Lal (free online) on islam's evil spread!



A Google (i.e. U.S. web monopoly) search (20191006) reports 'islamists Hong Kong' "missing". Really! No islamists in Hong Kong? Peter Klevius also wonders if EU citizens in UK are UKongers and can peacefully demand the same rights as Joshua Wong violently demands (and eagerly broadcasted by BBC) for Hong Kongers?



Really! No islamists in Hong Kong? Peter Klevius also wonders if EU citizens in UK are UKongers and can peacefully demand the same rights as Joshua Wong violently demands (and eagerly broadcasted by BBC) for Hong Kongers? Peter Klevius cong r atulates Savid Javid for abandoning the islamofascist "islamophobia" smear. BBC s bigoted hypocrite Mishal Husain and others ought to follow!

BBC's Mark Mardell couldn't get a visa to China because of his extreme and hateful Sinophobia - but that didn't stop him/BBC from producing a fake anti-China program series while pretending to be there. Is Sinophobia really better than cooperation?

Are EU citizens in UK included in Tom Tugenhadt's "British people"?



Sinophobe Tom Tugendhat, chair of UK's Foreign Affairs Committee (who has studied islam and Arabic in Mideast) suggests that English speaking universities should consider banning Chinese students because "they might be used as leverage like Huawei". Peter Klevius wonders if one could be any more racist than this, and if he doesn't see any islamofascist sharia supremacist "leverage" at all? Btw, there are more than 50,000 Chinese muslims in Hong Kong. Peter Klevius wonders how many of them are "radical" ones and participate in BBC's lengthy anti-China propaganda "news" - while the world doesn't suffer from Chinese but from muslim violence and Human Rights violations?

US/UK destroyed the lives of millions of Chinese during some hundred years of evil militaristic meddling. BBC is now busy smearing China all the time while supporting Saudi islamofascism and violent Hong Kong demonstrators - but neglecting the mass of peaceful pro-China demonstrators. BBC also "worries" about Chinese "surveillance state" while the truth is China's technological superiority. US is much more insidious in its surveillance policies but lacks the techno - can't even produce a working 5G so far. US/UK follow exactly China but utilize the meantime to smear it. And who is really behind the Hong Kong riots? Someone who can't take China's success? But the Syria tactics won't work. US (and its UK puppet) wants to be able to meddle militarily near China - therefore its interest in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Tibet, Myanmar, Uyghur extremist muslims etc.

As Greta Thunberg is allegedly reported to the Swedish social authorities, Peter Klevius suggests that her parents read his thesis Pathological Symbiosis in LVU, Relevance, and Sex Segregated Emergence. Keeping in mind that Peter Klevius daughter was only 15 when she entered university and at 16 made her graduate paper about women in ancient times, it shouldn't be considered too sensitive for Greta either. Also read the attached email correspondence which clearly shows how democracy is manipulated. And why not consider Keeping in mind that Peter Klevius daughter was only 15 when she entered university and at 16 made her graduate paper about women in ancient times, it shouldn't be considered too sensitive for Greta either. Also read the attached email correspondence which clearly shows how democracy is manipulated. And why not consider Angels of Antichrist, the Social State vs the People (P. Klevius 1996) . And last but not least, Peter Klevius 1981/1992 Demand for Resources (original titel Resursbegar)

Peter Klevius and the Council of Europe share exactly the same "islamophobia". Council of Europe. Resolution 2253 (2019), Sharia, Saudi based and steered OIC's Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights: Human Rights protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The right to manifest ones religion, however, is a qualified right whose exercise, under Article 17 of the Convention, may not aim at the destruction of other Convention rights or freedoms.

Human Rights protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. People in UK-land (especially women) will loose their Human Rights after Brexit - while sharia prevails in UK, and UK citizens in EU are protected by the European Court of Human Rights. Brexit was meant to protect UK from muslim invasion via Turkey's proposed visa free deal with Merkel. Even the possibility of temporary membership in ECHR (in case of a deal) isn't enough - especially considering UK will be out of reach of the European Court of Justice.

US loosing the tech war - and starting a real one?



A muslim wants to criminalize Peter Klevius islamophobia. Really!



West's indulgence of islamofascism (sharia) has made its boasting against China about "democratic values" empty. The risk of you being stabbed, raped etc. by a hateful jihadi is created by your political leaders, BBC etc. - who also have arranged so it's not even called a hate crime.

Peter Klevius stands for these "stops" and due huge implications - all shame on him if you can prove him wrong (click links if you need to educate yourself before saying something stupid): Stop using Stop using the misleading 'gender' instead of sex (sociology)! Stop islam's abuse of Human Rights (jurisprudence)! Stop saying humans came "out of Africa" (anthropology)! Stop talking about "consciousness" when you don't know what you're talking about (philosophy/ai).

Peter Klevius: BBC supports the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's strategic use of supremacist islam which has spred muslim hate all over the world's streets, institutions etc. (and usually not correctly, if at all, reported by BBC which instead doesn't hesitate to give long coverage of "alternative news" that better suits its propaganda) - while muslim terrorist organizations keep it within muslim territories. So if true Salafists became the "gurdians of islam's holy places" then that would mean less muslim terror elsewhere. And less to cover up for BBC. How big a contributor to the suffering of islamic supremacist hate crimes has BBC's fake (and lack of) info been? Will we in the future see BBC in an international court accused of crimes against humanity? As it stands now the spill over effect of BBC's cynical support of proxy evil is stained in blood and rape etc. over innocent p
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Showers early, then cloudy in the afternoon. High 43F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 31F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
AUBURN  Beginning his 17th year as Auburns mayor this month, Norm Yoder said Monday his goal for 2016 is to keep the city steered in the right direction.

As other DeKalb County communities made major news headlines in 2015, Yoder said the year in Auburn was not as eventful. He hopes to see some changes for the city in 2016, but he said there arent many big projects that come to mind.

Were on target for 2016, Yoder said. We dont have a wish list of projects.

Development and renovation

Yoder was glad to see renovations of various downtown buildings this year, he said. Developments by private investors spurred momentum and drive for government officials to boost downtown, he said. A new, form-based downtown zoning code, with an emphasis on aesthetics, is pending for the city.

With the Auburn Development Advisory Committee leading the process, the city has applied for a state grant to improve downtown streetscapes. Auburn could be awarded up to $400,000 for work on Main and 6th streets. Yoder said he is grateful for private investors making changes in the city.

Private developments are good for quality of life, Yoder said. (Investors) have stepped up downtown. We are very appreciative of that. The more of that takes place the better. We have a fairly intact downtown, and we want to keep it that way.

Yoder praised the renovations to the triangular lot across from the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum on Wayne Street. He said the project will have a lasting effect for the city for a long time. Museum officials are satisfied with the work, and the city has a beautiful new south entrance, so its a win-win situation, Yoder said.

He hopes to see more similar situations in Auburn in 2016, he said.

Where we can work together with people in the city is when I feel the best, when the city can assist and make a good situation better, Yoder said. (In 2016) we will spread that around the city.

New projects

Auburn is under an agreed order from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to separate its sewers into storm water and wastewater drains. That project is ongoing in southwest Auburn. Yoder said its scheduled to be completed in mid- to late summer this year.

City officials also will conduct a water rate study this year and consider raising rates. The water utility rate hasnt been raised since 1998, and now expenses are higher than the income for the citys water department, Yoder said. The department is selling less water, but costs still are going up, he said.

Yoder said the citys street department workers will aim to do as much road repair this spring as they did last spring. First Street between Jackson and Main streets is on the list to be repaired in the spring. The mayor said other roads would be examined after winter is over to determine if they need repairs.

Parks department officials this year will evaluate the swimming pool at Eckhart Park, Yoder said. The pool is aging and soon will need renovations. Eric Ditmars took over the department in July following Rick Howers retirement. Under Ditmars leadership, the department will expand some of its programming, Yoder said.

Yoder said Auburn Essential Services has been a success story since its inception 10 years ago. The department will continue to expand its fiber network to bring broadband Internet services to local businesses and other communities, he said. AES subscriber numbers are good and in line with what he hoped they would be when AES began, he said.

AES has done everything we expected it to, Yoder said. We were chastised for the decision (to start AES), but it turned out to be the right decision.

Police department controversy

In August, the Auburn Police Department was a subject of controversy after Chief Martin D. McCoy announced that evidence was missing from the police evidence locker. A total of $2,033 in cash was missing, as well as four knives, eight .22-caliber bullets and a 12-gauge shotgun.

As the result of an internal investigation, two police officers were handed suspensions for failing to follow portions of the police departments standard operating procedure. One officer has served that suspension, but the other still is considering to appeal his suspension, Yoder said.

Investigators couldnt prove that anyone had stolen the evidence. Yoder said once the officers serve their suspensions, the department will have as much closure as it can. More security has been implemented at the evidence room since the incident.

If we could prove (that someone stole the evidence), we would take action, Yoder said. But police are entitled to the same protections as the public.

People often like to demonize police officers, but most want to serve and help, Yoder said. They put themselves in personal jeopardy for the good of the public, he said. Even so, they have a high-profile job and are only human, he said.

The city has experimented with requiring officers to wear body cameras, and police department officials will continue to evaluate that, Yoder said. But he added that cameras cant capture everything happening around an officer during an incident.

The police department is set to open its new training facility this year on the citys southwest side, near the intersection of Auburn and Grandstaff drives. Law enforcement officers from Auburn and the region will use the facility for regular training. Yoder said he hopes the facility also will be used for firearm safety training courses for the public.

Looking ahead

Over his mayoral tenure, the community has evolved, Yoder said. He often learns more than he thinks he knows about a given subject from listening to his constituents, he said. This year, a new member, Todd Sanderson, will join the Auburn Common Council. Yoder said he is looking forward to seeing what ideas Sanderson will bring to the table.

New perspectives and change are healthy, Yoder said.

With so many Auburn citizens who are invested in the city and willing to give their time, money and other resources back to the community, Yoder said he feels very fortunate to be mayor. He recalled the philanthropic foundation that Charles Eckhart instilled in Auburn a century ago and said he is glad to see that philosophy continue.

Im blessed to live in a good community with people who care, Yoder said. The examples of that are all over.
The votes have been tallied, the accusations of cheating have been hurled on both sides, and the winner of the 2015 Curbed Cup for Los Angeles's Neighborhood of the Year is West Adams!! (The prize is a golden jpeg, glory, and the right to mention this in real estate listings for the rest of time.) West Adams had a well-coordinated campaign going from the very beginning, and slid through the tournament into the winner's spot, defeating North Hollywood, Frogtown, Inglewood, andin a 9,000-vote nailbiter of a finalPacoima along the way. The neighborhood is not just one of the classiest architectural areas in the city, it's also transit accessible, and now it's even getting a grocery store. A developer announced plans this year to build an enormous complex by the Expo Line's Jefferson/La Cienega stop; it's set to have the tallest tower around and an enormous supermarket, among lots of other stuff. The 'hood also has a nice little arts scene, with Gallery 38 opening this year and The Landing moving into a new space. West Adams also joined its nearby neighbors in University Park protesting oil drilling in the neighborhood. Let's just hope this honor doesn't drive up housing prices too much in 2016. Congratulations, West Adams!



 Curbed Cup 2015 [Curbed LA]
Known as both the Grossman Residence and El Paradiso (a nickname the architect himself gave the house), this Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in Studio City is the work of defining Mid-Century Modernist Raphael Soriano. The latter nickname, the LA Times reported back in the house's birth year of 1964, was at least partly because the aluminum, steel, and glass house was a veritable paradise "for people who hate to paint." "All I do is wash the windows," owner Albert Grossman reportedly told his guests.

The house"[b]elieved to be the last of Soriano's projects [still] occupied by the commissioning party"is laid out around a skylight-covered solarium and features a wealth of glass walls. The residence has predominantly terrazzo floors throughout its 3,886 square feet, which includes four bedrooms and three bathrooms. The master bedroom also benefits from giant walls of glass, and has a lovely view of the backyard pool. Outdoor spaces like the patio and poolside are accented by "perforated aluminum walls." The pricetag on this fabulous mid-century specimen? $2.895 million.



 El Paradiso / The Grossman House [Homes in LA]
From 3 p.m. Monday to 3 p.m. Tuesday

<h2>Police calls

<h3>LA CROSSE

5:13 p.m., Theft, first block of Copeland Ave.

7:16 p.m., Theft, first block of Copeland Ave.

8:56 p.m., Domestic disturbance, 1700 block of Weston St.

11:09 p.m., Battery to individual, 400 block of King St.

7:54 a.m., Property damage, 1000 block of Redbird Court

9:29 a.m., Fraud, 1200 block of Jackson St.

10:54 a.m., Entry to dwelling, 500 block of Seventh St.

11:47 a.m., Theft, 4600 block of Mormon Coulee Road

<h3>ONALASKA

3:03 p.m., Fraud, Theft, 1200 block of Crossing Meadows Drive

4:08 p.m., Domestic disturbance, 6600 block of Raptor Drive

6:31 p.m., Hit-and-run, Lauderdale Place

11:16 a.m., Theft, 9300 block of Hwy. 16

12:14 p.m., Animal bite, 300 block of Main St.

12:40 p.m., Theft, 9300 block of Hwy. 16

<h3>HOLMEN

<h3>WEST SALEM

1:41 p.m., Assault, 400 block of Mill St.

<h3>ROCKLAND

9:56 a.m., Property damage, 2700 block of Hwy. JB

<h2>Fire Calls

<h3>LA CROSSE

3:32 p.m., Accident with injury, Redfield and 21st sts.

4:14 p.m., First responders, 4400 block of Mormon Coulee Road

4:46 p.m., Hit-and-run with injury, West Ave. and Farnam St.

5:04 p.m., Natural gas odor, 1100 block of Liberty St.

5:22 p.m., Accident with injury, Jackson and Seventh sts.

8:07 p.m., First responders, 600 block of Monitor St.

5:49 a.m., Accident with injury, 7400 block of I-90

7:29 a.m., Accident with injury, 3600 block of Smith Valley Road

9:43 a.m., First responders, 1000 block of Liberty St.

9:53 a.m., Accident with injury, Bainbridge and Clinton sts.

10:05 a.m., First responders, Sunrise Drive and Calloway Lane

10:11 a.m., First responders, 200 block of 21st Place

10:16 a.m., Accident with injury, 2300 block of Commerce St.

12:57 p.m., Accident with injury, Gillette and George sts.

1:33 p.m., Accident with injury, 4400 block of Hwy. 33

1:58 p.m., First responders, 1800 block of Losey Blvd. S.

2:03 p.m., First responders, 2800 block of South Ave.

2:06 p.m., First responders, 400 block of Seventh St.

2:28 p.m., Accident with injury, 200 block of Lang Drive

<h3>ONALASKA

3:58 p.m., Accident with injury, 1800 block of Main St.

6:04 p.m., First responders, 3200 block of Hwy. 35

2:31 a.m., First responders, 3500 block of Kinney Coulee Road

7:21 a.m., First responders, 1200 block of Fairfield Place

9:24 a.m., First responders, 600 block of Winter St.

10:39 a.m., First responders, East Ave. N. and Riders Club Road

12:19 p.m., First responders, 1100 block of Main St.

2:25 p.m., First responders, 3100 block of Gundersen Drive

<h3>HOLMEN

6:24 a.m., First responders, 300 block of Kay St.

9:49 a.m., First responders, 6300 block of Hwy. T

2:03 p.m., First responders, 1300 block of Main St.

<h3>WEST SALEM

3:25 p.m., First responders, 400 block of Garland St.

7:04 p.m., First responders, 800 block of Mill St.

<h3>ROCKLAND

11:07 p.m., Accident with injury, Hwy. 33 and Korn Coulee Road
More than ever, serving students is a big priority at La Crosses colleges and universities.

As public funding for higher education falls, recruitment is becoming more and more important for Western Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. And with a new strategic vision for the campus, leaders at Viterbo University are looking to reach out to an increasingly important Catholic demographic  Hispanic students.

UW-L was able to meet a recruitment goal of 2,025 new students this past fall, but total enrollment was down 150, resulting in a shortfall of $1.2 million for the fiscal year. Enrollment goals are a tool administrators have used in recent years to offset state budget cuts.

A sharp decline in international student enrollment  almost 25 percent to 245 students  contributed to the overall decline. As a result, UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow said the university has doubled its recruiting efforts and will be hiring an additional recruiter this year to help bring in more students from overseas.

We need to reverse these declines in international student enrollment, Gow said. Its part of a broader conversation about attracting more of these students.

Enrollment at Western Technical College was up again this year by three percent after rising one percent in 2014. As part of the colleges Vision 2020 program of new construction and modernization of the campus, President Lee Rasch has also outlined a goal of having an enrollment of more than 10,000 students by 2020. This year will be a big one for the college as it works to bring those students in.

Implementing a trimester system two years ago has helped boost the number of students attending the college. Rasch said theres a lot of work going on to offer new online courses and programs to help entice more students to make Western their first choice for higher learning. The college is also looking at collaboration on high school academies and industry partnerships.

With the combination of these things, I predict we will be ahead on enrollment, Rasch said.

Viterbo University has been struggling with enrollment and this year, first-year student enrollment was down 41 with total enrollment down 46. In fall 2010, the university reported 349 first-year students and a headcount of 3,244. Numbers declined in 2011 and 2012, with a slight increase last year, but dropped again this year to 281 first-year students with a 2,766 headcount.

President Rick Artman is hopeful the university will be able to start turning the trend around in 2016. Interest in Viterbo is at a five-year high and leadership has adopted a new strategic framework that focuses, among other things, on serving students and improving recruitment of Hispanic students, one of the fastest growing demographics in America and a key Catholic demographic.

These are challenging times for both public and private institutions of higher education, Artman said of enrollment trends at the university. Similar to other private colleges in Wisconsin, we experienced a decline in freshmen this fall. ... Although it is early in the recruitment cycle, we are very encouraged by the number of applications we have received for fall 2016.

UW-L will also be working on a new strategic plan. Inspired by Viterbos work as well as the listening sessions held last year by UW System President Ray Cross, Gow said it was a good time for the university to take a look at long-range goals, the first time he has implemented strategic planning during his nine-year tenure at the university.

This will give students, staff and faculty a chance to talk about what the universitys priorities should be, Gow said, as well as plan for future state cuts. The first major strategic planning session should be held in the spring, Gow said. Along with enrollment, Gow said he would also focus on ways to promote more diversity and sustainability on campus.

And as always, he said he would keep a weather eye on the horizon. With incidents like the Confederate flag on campus or President Obama's visit to La Crosse, there are always things that can come as a surprise.

It never ceases to amaze me how there are some things we can never plan for in a given year, Gow said about 2016. There will be many unexpected things in 2016, good and bad. It should keep us on our toes.
MADISON  Wisconsin's railroad commissioner has resigned, weeks after it emerged that he softened letters of reprimand given to two workers found to be carrying on an affair at the office.

Gov. Scott Walker's office said in a news release Tuesday that Jeff Plale resigned Monday and that Walker appointed Yash Wadhwa to replace him. Wadhwa, who is a member of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and president of the Wisconsin Association of Consulting Engineers, will start his new role Monday.

The release didn't say why Plale resigned. Asked for a reason, Walker's spokeswoman supplied Plale's resignation letter, which says only that he and his family felt the "need to explore other opportunities." A spokeswoman for the state Public Service Commission, which handles administrative matters for the railroad commission, did not immediately respond to an email seeking further details. The railroad commission referred questions to Walker's office.

Walker has cited the 2011 affair as a reason why he thinks the state's civil service system needs to be overhauled, saying the existing rules kept managers from firing the two employees.

The Public Service Commission last month released records detailing the investigation into the affair that show that no one pushed to fire or discipline the workers beyond letters of reprimand.

State law says employees can be fired for just cause. Plale, who made the final disciplinary decision, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he limited their punishment to a reprimand as per state Office of Employment Relations recommendations.

The records also show that Plale revised the reprimand letters to remove allegations of ethics violations after the two workers argued that their transgressions were of a personal nature. He removed the letters from their files in 2014.

According to the records, the workers met for sex in the Public Service Commission's Madison headquarters after hours, in the building parking lot and behind the building in 2011. They also exchanged graphic messages on the state email system.

An investigation summary concluded that the pair misused state property and the state email system and made other employees uncomfortable. The summary noted that employees who commit such offenses would typically get a warning or reprimand.
JUNEAU, Wis.  A 22-year-old Horicon man is facing criminal charges for allegedly sexually assaulting a dog.

Nicholas Bradley is charged with one misdemeanor count of sexual gratification with an animal and disorderly conduct. If convicted he faces up to a year in jail and $11,000 in fines.

During his initial appearance in court, Dodge County Circuit Court Commissioner Steven Seim gave Bradley a $500 signature bond. Bradley requested that the case be heard before a jury. A trial is scheduled for March.

According to the criminal complaint, on Sept. 12 at 10:30 a.m., officers were dispatched to the 200 block of South Cedar Street in Horicon for a report of a person sodomizing a dog.

A woman reported that a person, identified as Bradley, had sodomized her dog that morning. She told officers that she could hear moaning and her dogs claws scratching the bathroom floor. She told officers that she took her dog to the vet where it showed signs of swelling and inflammation.

When questioned by officers, Bradley claimed to not remember what had happened. The complaint states that Bradley later admitted to sodomizing the dog, saying it was a stupid drunk decision.

Bradley will appear in court again on Feb. 1 at 1:30 p.m. A one-day jury trial is scheduled March 8 at 8:30 a.m.
The states railroad commissioner resigned Monday, a month after state records showed he took minimal disciplinary action against state workers who were having sex in public buildings.

Gov. Scott Walker announced Tuesday he has appointed Yash Wadhwa, an engineer with 44 years of civil, environmental and transportation consulting experience, to take the position effective Jan. 11. His appointment is subject to Senate confirmation. He replaces Jeff Plale, who resigned effective Monday.

Wadhwa, a Walker political supporter, has worked on infrastructure projects for various municipalities in the Milwaukee area, according to a statement Walkers office issued. He also served as a board member for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and as president of the Wisconsin Association of Consulting Engineers and the Wisconsin Society of Professional Engineers.

Wadhwa has a masters degree in civil engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and lives in Glendale with his wife, Usha. Wadhwa has given more than $10,000 to Republican state political candidates over the past 20 years, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. That includes nearly $5,000 for Walker during his three gubernatorial runs and recall election.

Plale, a former Democratic state lawmaker from South Milwaukee, was appointed railroad commissioner in 2011. He was unseated in the Senate by then-Milwaukee County Board member Chris Larson. Plale was one of two Democratic state senators who voted against the extension of state employee union contracts in December 2010 before Walker took office, blocking the contracts from taking effect.

Plales term as railroad commissioner was set to expire on March 1, 2017.

Last fall, Walker made the case to state lawmakers that proposed changes to the states century-old civil service system were necessary in order to streamline hiring and firing decisions.

He used an example of two state employees who were caught having sex in public buildings but werent fired.

In December, records revealed Plale had issued the two employees reprimand letters in November 2011. Then in 2014, Plale took the additional step of removing the reprimand letter from at least one of their personnel files.

The records showed no attempts at further discipline. State labor experts said Plale could have considered any discipline including termination, but he appeared to render the lightest possible discipline.

Walker offered no praise for Plales service in his announcement Tuesday. In Plales resignation letter, released by Walkers office, he thanked Walker for the opportunity to serve.

It has been a genuine pleasure serving the citizens of Wisconsin in this capacity, Plale, 47, wrote. However, at this point in my life, my family and I feel the need to explore other opportunities.
Searchers find 3rd body in lake; 1 remains missing  EAST TROY, Wis.  Search crews recovered a third body from a frigid lake in southern Wisconsin on Monday after four Illinois men went missing from a lake house where they were staying with friends. Crews have been scouring Mill Lake, which is part of the Lake Beulah chain about 35 miles southeast of Milwaukee, since the men were reported missing Sunday. Two bodies were recovered from the water shortly after the search began. Authorities have identified those victims as 20-year-old Lanny Patrick Sack and 21-year-old Christopher J. McQuillan. The body recovered Monday afternoon wasnt immediately identified.

Feds close investigation of Milwaukee school voucher program  MADISON, Wis.  Federal officials have closed a long-running investigation into whether Milwaukees school voucher program discriminates against disabled students. The American Civil Liberties Union and Disability Rights Wisconsin filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department in 2011 alleging that disabled students are deterred from participating in the Milwaukee voucher program, denied admission when they do apply and expelled or forced to leave as a result of policies that dont accommodate them. Justice Department trial attorney Colleen Phillips sent state education officials a letter on Dec. 23 saying the agency had closed the investigation. That letter ordered the state to ensure disabled students in the voucher program dont face discrimination and set up a complaint procedure.

Teens accused of spiking teachers drink set to stand trial  OCONTO, Wis.  A judge has ordered two Wisconsin teens to stand trial on charges they spiked their teachers drink with cleaning solution in October. A preliminary hearing was held Monday for 18-year-old Hailey Brock and 17-year-old Gavin Gilbertson, both of Gillett. A court clerk tells WLUK-TV that Judge Jay Conley ordered the pair to stand trial.

Lawmakers try again to raise drunken driving penalties  MADISON, Wis.  Two Republican lawmakers are trying again to increase penalties for repeat drunken driving. Rep. Jim Ott and Sen. Alberta Darling have introduced a bill that would make a fourth offense a felony punishable by up to three years in prison. Right now a fourth offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. The measure would increase the maximum prison sentence for fifth and sixth offenses from three years to five; the maximum prison sentence for seventh, eighth and ninth offenses from five years to seven-and-a-half years; and the maximum prison sentence for a tenth offense or more from seven-and-a-half years to a decade.

MNsure enrollment up as deadline at months end nears  ST. PAUL, Minn.  MNsure says its tracking well to meet registration projections for this open enrollment period. A fee on individual health plans helps fund Minnesotas health insurance exchange. But the state has repeatedly missed registration projections, leading to rounds of budget cuts. MNsure said Monday it had signed up nearly 68,000 by a late December deadline for coverage to kick in for the New Year. Its aiming to sign up 83,000 customers before open enrollment ends on Jan. 31.

Target taps HR executive as next chief stores officer  MINNEAPOLIS  Target has picked human resources executive Janna Potts to serve as its new chief stores officer and executive vice president, replacing Tina Tyler. The retail giant said Monday that Potts will start her new position immediately. It said in a separate regulatory filing that Tyler had left the company, but it offered no additional details about the reason for the departure.
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a website dedicated to express views on topical legal issues, thereby generating a cross current of ideas on emerging matters
Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Some day, I may tire of calling out courts (and others) that refer to limited liability companies (LLCs) as "limited liability corporations, but today is not that day. Looking back on 2015, I thought I'd take a quick look to see who the worst offenders were, starting with the state courts. I figured I'd start with Delaware.

As a state that is proud of its status as a leader as a key forum of choice for corporations, and Delaware has done well for uncorporations, as well, it seemed logical. The book Why Corporations Choose Delaware, written by Lewis S. Black, Jr., and printed and distributed by the Delaware Department of State, Division of Corporation, explains:

Delaware continues to be the favored state of incorporation for U.S. businesses. Delaware has been preeminent as the place for businesses to incorporate since the early 1900s, and its incorporation business, supplemented by the growth in numbers of such alternative entities as limited liability companies, limited partnerships and statutory trusts, continues to grow smartly.

And Delaware does have a generally well-informed and skilled judiciary. Still, even Delaware is not above calling an LLC a "limited liability corporation." Better than many jurisdictions, Westlaw reports that the state had just three cases in 2015 making that error, and no such mistakes were noted after March 2015. Not ideal, but not bad.

Here are some other states I reviewed for 2015 (again, using Westlaw):

Michigan: 0

Pennsylvania: 3

Ohio: 4

Florida: 5

Nevada: 6

California: 7

New York: 7

Texas: 8

Overall, state courts called LLCs "corporations" 105 times in 2015. Federal courts did the same 280 times in 2015. As such, it works out to just over once a day that some U.S. court is making this mistake.

Big picture, given the number of cases courts see each year, it may seem that these are small numbers. Not really. A search of federal courts for the term "limited liability company" turns up 2949 cases from 2015, which suggests that around 10% of cases (9.49%) referring to LLCs in some substantive manner made a reference to a "limited liability corporation." NOTE: If one searches for "LLC," the number of cases exceeds 10,000 for 2015, but I decided that a court taking the time to spell out "limited liability company" suggested that the entity choice had a heightened relevance to the case.

At the state level, the numbers are a little better. State courts referred to "limited liability companies" 1691 times in 2015. With 105 cases calling an LLC a corporation, that works out to just over 6% of the time. Not great, but a substantial improvement.

I admit this is not a scientific review of the data and I am making some assumptions, but the sheers number do, I think, support the notion that all our courts can do better on this issue. And give state courts credit -- although federal courts are often viewed the more prestigious courts, state courts are holding their own on this issue. Perhaps state courts are a little more careful because entities are generally (though not always) creatures of state law.

This is not, I am sure, just the courts. I suspect a lot of these errors come from attorneys who call LLCs corporations, then the court just take their lead. Still not okay, but I can imagine that some courts just follow the lead of those arguing the cases before them on such issues.

So, for 2016, I issue a challenge to all U.S. courts and the lawyers who practice in them: let's cut these numbers in half! (I'd like them to go to zero, but one needs to be somewhat realistic, right?)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2016/01/us-courts-called-llcs-corporations-about-once-a-day-in-2015.html
Monday, January 4, 2016

Aging populations is something faced in every country. The Wall Street Journal is examining demographics in 2050 as part of Demographic Destiny 2050. WSJ explains it

The year 2050 is right around the corner, and yet it is hard to imagine the sweeping changes the world will confront by then. In a multimedia series, The Wall Street Journal helps readers envision how we will work, how we will age and how we will live.

Graying Japan Tries to Embrace the Golden Years, an article focusing on Japan, is accompanied by 360 video as well as the ability to watch in virtual reality. Examining trends and past history of demographics leads some in Japan to be pessimistic about the graying of the population, while others take a different view,

Pessimists say the only way to keep Japan from inexorably drifting into bankruptcy is radical change, like a sudden, sharp influx of immigrantsan unlikely prospect given Japans history as one of the worlds most homogeneous cultures. But a growing number of Japanese executives, policy makers and academics challenge that proposition. They are exploring whether modest adaptations can ease the woes of an aging society, or even turn the burdens into benefits start[ing] with steering the growing number of healthy 60- and 70-year-olds from retirement into work point[ing] to new aging-related growth engines, including an automation spending boom to stretch Japans declining labor force, and a growing silver market of elderly consumers drawing down savings from a lifetime of hard work and thrift.

The article discusses the ups and downs of an elder workforce and the potential of technologies to help workers. It also covers how the increasing aging population impacts the consumer goods market. It's a fascinating read and I think it would be useful to assign to students.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/elder_law/2016/01/japans-aging-population.html
If your Amazon account is suspended, we know you must feel terrible. But why did they suspend your account, and how can you get it back? How much time do...

3 weeks ago
An armed group is occupying a federal building on a wildlife refuge in the western United States.

The anti-government militia broke into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service building in Oregon on Saturday. The groups leaders said they are ready to stay for years.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it is working to bring the occupation of the wildlife center to a peaceful resolution. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said its staffers are all safe. But it said on its website that the center is closed until further notice.

The group says it acted to protest prison sentences given to two cattle farmers. A court found Dwight and Steven Hammond guilty of setting fire on federal land in Oregon. The ranchers had used the land used for grazing by their cattle.

The group posted a sign at the occupied center that accused the government of abusing its power.

We will be here as long as it takes, said Ammon Bundy, a leader of the occupying group. He said the group has no plan to use force against anyone. But he said, If force is used against us, we would defend ourselves.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward said the groups claim of working to support local ranchers is false. He said it wants to overthrow the local and federal government to start a movement across the U.S.

Bundy and his family led a 2014 armed standoff over grazing rights on federal lands in Nevada. The government ended the standoff by permitting Bundy and his family to continue to use the federal land for grazing.

Cliven Bundy (father of Ammon) at first won Republican Party support for his 2014 battle. He described it as a case of people fighting over-regulation by the federal government.

But Republicans later criticized Cliven Bundy after he said in an interview that African-Americans were better when they were slaves.

The case that touched off the current protest centers on Dwight Hammond, who is 73 years old, and his son Steven Hammond, 46. The Hammonds were given short sentences after their arrests for setting fire to federal land.

The Hammonds said that they set the fire on their own property to kill off invasive species and that the fire spread to the federal land. But an Oregon jury convicted them of arson in 2012.

In October, a federal appeals court ruled the judge made an error in his sentencing. The appeals court said the Hammonds should have served five years each. The judge had given a one-year prison sentence to Dwight Hammond and a three-month sentence to Steven Hammond.

A statement from the Hammonds said the two men are ready to turn themselves in and serve out their longer prison terms. The family said no patriot group or individual has the right or authority to force an armed standoffagainst their wishes. (The two turned themselves in late Monday).

The U.S. governments ownership of land is a big issue, mostly in western states. Ranchers have used the land for grazing since the mass migration west following the War of 1812. But the U.S. Department of Land Management said some grazing hurts habitat and must be regulated.

Im Caty Weaver.

Chris Hannas reported on this story for VOANews.com. Bruce Alpert adapted this story for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

militiamen  n. a group of people who are not part of the armed forces of a country but are trained or act like soldiers

rancher  n. a person who lives or works on a ranch

occupation  n. a situation in which the military of a foreign government goes into an area or country and takes control of it

grazing  v. to eat grass or other plants that are growing in a field, pasture, etc.

recreation  n. something people do to relax or have fun : activities done for enjoyment

livestock  n. farm animals (such as cows, horses, and pigs) that are kept, raised, and used by people

environment  n. the conditions that surround someone or something

intention  n. the thing that you plan to do

alternative  adj. offering or expressing a choice

motive  n. a reason for doing something

standoff  n. an argument, contest, etc., in which there is no winner

regulation  n. an official rule or law

sentence  n. time in prison

authority  n. the power to make decisions

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or share your views on our Facebook Page.


Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan have cut off diplomatic relations with Iran.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia executed a well-known Shiite Muslim leader. The cleric had publicly criticized the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

In response, angry demonstrators in Tehran attacked the Saudi embassy Saturday.

The demonstrators set fire in the building, destroyed furniture and threw papers off the roof. At least 40 protesters were arrested.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the attack totally unjustifiable, but he criticized Saudi Arabia for executing the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Arabia executed 46 other prisoners on the same day as Nimr. It was the largest number of executions in one day in Saudi Arabia in 30 years.

Many countries protested the executions. Some critics threatened the Saudi royal family. Large protests have taken place since Saturday in many countries, including Bahrain, where police used tear gas on the protestors.

Demonstrations also took place in India and at the Saudi embassy in London.

Late Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir ordered all Iranian diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia. He said the continued attacks on diplomatic missions (are) a flagrant violation of all international treaties.

He said Saudi Arabia -- a Sunni-majority country -- would not let Shiite-led Iran weaken the security of Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. Sunnis and Shiites are Muslim groups.

We want to make it very clear that there is no space in the community of nations for a country that condones terrorism, that supports terrorism and that engages in terrorism, he said.

Late Sunday, the Iranian state news agency reported comments from Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister. It said he criticized Saudi Arabias decision to end diplomatic relations with his country. He said Saudi leaders were trying to move attention away from executing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

On Monday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Iran was helping its diplomats leave Saudi Arabia. But he said none had left the country yet. He criticized Saudi Arabia for ending diplomatic relations with his country. He said Saudi Arabia is causing tension in the Middle East.

On Monday, Bahrain also ended diplomatic relations with Iran. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are close allies. The state news service BNA reported Bahrains government had ordered Iranian diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours.

Sudan also ended diplomatic relations with Iran on Monday. And the United Arab Emirates said it was ordering some Iranian diplomats to leave the country.

Sudan called the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran barbaric. The UAE criticized what it called Irans continuous interference in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states, which has reached unprecedented levels.

Sunday, Iranian state television reported that Iran's Supreme Leader -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- said Nimr did not urge people into armed action, and did not plot against the Saudi government. He said the only thing he did was utter public criticism rising from his religious zeal.

In a statement on Sunday, Irans Revolutionary Guard said Nimrs execution would lead to the downfall of Saudi Arabia's monarchy. It called the execution a medieval act of savagery.

Iraqs Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called the execution an "injustice" and an act of "aggression.

Nimr was found guilty of plotting against the state, and other charges, in 2014. He was one of the leaders of Shiite protests in eastern Saudi Arabia in 2011.

Human rights groups have for many years criticized Islamic courts in Saudi Arabia for sentencing people to death even for non-violent crimes. The groups say trials in Saudi Arabia are secretive and unfair.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply dismayed by the execution of Nimr and called for calm and restraint in reaction to the killings.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department said the Obama administration will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions. It also said the administration believes diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential to ending the unrest.

The State Department said the execution of Nimr would add to the tensions between religious groups in the Middle East.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have been competing for leadership of Muslims since the 1979 revolution in Iran. Conservative Shi-ite Muslim religious leaders took power during that revolution.

Im Mario Ritter.

VOANews.com and VOA News Writer Chris Hannas reported this story from Washington. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted it into VOA Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

unjustifiable  adj. not able to be defended, excused or accepted; not justifiable

royal  adj. of or relating to a king or queen

tear gas  n. a gas that makes people unable to see by causing their eyes to be filled with tears and that is used especially by the police or military to separate large groups of people

mission  n. a place or building where diplomatic work is done; smaller than an embassy

flagrant  adj. very bad; too bad to be ignored

condone  v. to forgive or approve (something that is considered wrong); to allow (something that is considered wrong) to continue

barbaric  adj. very cruel

unprecedented  adj. not done or experienced before

befall  v. to happen to

utter  v. to say something

zeal  n. a strong feeling of interest and enthusiasm that makes someone very eager or determined to do something

downfall  n. a sudden loss of power, happiness, success, etc

monarchy  n. a form of government in which a country is ruled by a monarch

medieval  adj. informal or figurative very old; too old to be useful or acceptable; of or relating to the Middle Ages; of or relating to the period of European history from about A.D. 500 to about 1500

savagery  n. a cruel or violent act or action

dismayed  n. a strong feeling of being worried, disappointed or upset

region  n. a part of a country, of the world, etc., that is different or separate from other parts in some way

affirmative  adj. saying or showing that the answer is yes rather than no

engagement  n. the act or state of being involved with something; involvement

essential  adj. extremely important and necessary
This is What's Trending Today:

Over the weekend, protesters with guns took control of a U.S. wildlife refuge in the state of Oregon. They are protesting the sentencing of two ranchers in the state found guilty of arson.

The armed protesters say they are anti-government. They say the ranchers punishment is too harsh, and that the government is not respecting land rights.

One of the protest leaders is Ammon Bundy. He wrote on Facebook that the goal of the protest is to restore the rights to the people here so that they can use the land and resources. All of them.

In a press conference on Monday, the group named themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.

Ammon Bundy told the media, Our purpose, as we have shown, is to restore and defend the Constitution.

Government officials have not said how they planned to respond to the occupation of the wildlife refuge.

As the standoff continues, social media is mocking the protesters.

One viral hashtag is #YallQaeda, with Twitter users comparing the cowboy-hat wearing gunmen to Islamic terror organizations.

The hashtag combines the al Qaeda terrorist group name and the American English contraction yall. Yall is often used by rural Americans.

Twitter user PatOndabak wrote, whoever coined the hashtag #YallQaeda is brilliant. Redneck terrorism has descended on Oregon.

Twitter user Annie Post wrote, If your master plan is to overthrow the world's most powerful government and you attack a remote bird sanctuary you might be #YallQaeda.

Other hashtags like #VanillaISIS and #YeeHawd mocked the protesters in a similar way.

The hashtag #whiteprivilege also trended in connection to the protests in Oregon. White privilege is a term for social privileges that benefit people who are identified as white. The Oregon protesters are all white. Some Twitter users questioned why the response by the government to a large group of heavily armed people was not stronger.

Others questioned why the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom is considered protest group, not a terrorist group.

Twitter user Nia Girma wrote: Protesters carry signs. Terrorists carry guns.

And thats Whats Trending Today.

I'm Ashley Thompson.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

rancher - n. a person who lives and works on a large farm, known as a ranch

arson - n. the illegal burning of a building or other property : the crime of setting fire to something

redneck - adj. (informal) a white person who lives in a small town, especially in the southern U.S., who typically has a working-class job, and who is seen by others as being uneducated and having opinions and attitudes that are offensive

mock - v. to criticize and laugh at (someone or something) for being bad, worthless, or unimportant


More than 120 illegal immigrants have been arrested and detained by U.S. immigration officials in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.

The detainees are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Most are mothers or children traveling alone. They have entered the United States from Mexico since May 2014.

Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson said the detainees were placed in family detention centers in Texas.

Close to 100,000 Central Americans crossed into the U.S. in the last 20 months, according to VOA News.

Experts say the immigrants are fleeing gang violence in Central America. Also, they seek to reunite with family members in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned the threat of deportation. The ACLU said federal officials are using the detentions as a scare tactic to deter other families fleeing violence in Central America from coming to the United States.

Im Mario Ritter.

The staff at VOA News wrote this story for VOAnews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted it for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

detention  n. the act of keeping someone in a prison or similar place
Lenovo plans to launch two different versions of the ThinkPad 13 this year: one with Windows and the other with Chrome.

The basic specs for both are the same, including a 13.3 inch display and an Intel Core i5 processor. But I caught up with Lenovo this week and found that there are a few physical differences between the laptops.

The Windows model has a Lenovo TrackPoint system, for example, while the ThinkPad 13 Chromebook does not. And the Windows model has a single USB Type-C port and three full-sized USB ports. But the Chrome OS version has one full-sized USB port and two USB Type-C ports.

Sadly the Chrome model I saw wasnt working, so I couldnt really test it out. But both notebooks basically felt like entry-level devices with relatively cheap plastic cases which isnt surprising since they have entry-level prices. The Thinkpad 13 Windows laptop is coming in April for $449 and up, while the Chromebook 13 with Chrome OS should be available in June for $399 and up.

That makes it rather expensive by Chromebook standards, but there arent a lot of Chromebooks with Core i5 processors.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga is a notebook that becomes a tablet when you tilt the 14 inch touchscreen display back 360 degrees. It weighs 2.8 pounds, measures two thirds of an inch thick, features support for up to an Intel Core i7 Skylake processor, and supports up to 16GB of RAM.

But the most eye-catching feature of this laptop may be the screen at least on some models.

The ThinkPad Yoga will be available with three display options, including a 2560 x 1440 pixel OLED display with vibrant colors that look better in person than they do in the photos I managed to take under harsh lighting.

Lenovo says this is one of the first convertible Windows notebooks to be available with an OLED display, although it wont actually be available for at least a few months, and the OLED screen will add about $200 to the base price of the laptop.

If youre willing to settle for a model with a 1920 x 1080 pixel or 2560 x 1440 pixel OLED display you should be able to buy the convertible notebook later in January for $1449 and up.

Another feature that helps set this convertible apart from many other 360-degree laptops is that not only does the ThinkPad Yoga support digital pen input, it actually comes with an active stylus. It also has a slot in the case where you can store the pen when its not in use.

Thats something that used to be common for tablets that came with pens, but this day its so rare that when I asked a Lenovo representative whether I could borrow the pen to test, I was surprised when he pulled it out of the side of the notebook.

The notebook has three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and microSD card slots, support for optional wired and wireless docking stations, and the ThinkPad Yoga has Lenovos ThinkPad keyboard with a TrackPoint pointing stick in the center. Theres support for biometric authentication with a fingerprint sensor.
In the twenties, according to V.S. Pritchett, it was fashionable to disparage Charles Dickens, at least among the modernist set. Two disparate writers from that period, Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf, seem to bear Pritchett out. Waugh, famously, employed Dickens work as a tool of torture in Handful of Dust, when the hapless Tony Last is captured by an Amazonian eccentric and forced to read to him from Dickens collected works, an unhappy end if there ever was one. In Waughs one extended essay on Dickens, a review of the large Life of Dickens published by Edgar Johnson, he had a lot of fun shooting spitballs at the disgusting hypocrite. Dickens wishy washy liberalism and complete absense of a sense of original sin put him outside Waughs ultramontane disposition. No man is a hero to his letter readers  especially Dickens, whose hypocrisies can be tracked with cruel accuracy. Even in the 1870s, when the first collection of Dickens letters were published, an anonymous writer at the Spectator commented that Dickens vaunted radicalism never amounted to much, and certainly didnt prevent him from supporting the South over the North in the American Civil war, nor from sympathizing ardently with Governer Eyre, the crowns ruler in Jamaica, who put down a rebellion by randomly hanging black people. For his methods, John Stuart Mill tried ardently to have him imprisoned. He not only failed, but his outraged white constituents voted him out of office.

However, this is Dickens the public figure  and private man. Even Waugh admits that Dickens is a mesmerist as a writer  which had become, by the time, a great cliche of Dickens criticism. It is rooted in some fact: Dickens fancied himself a mesmerist, and even attempted a mesmeric cure on one Madame de la Rue, an acquaintance from Genoa. After Dickens took to spending the night with her, giving her the benefit of his visual ray, Dickens wife made him break off his cure  which Dickens held forever against her. He was a miserable husband. The list of things Dickens held against his wife could fill a three decker novel. Their domestic scene is not a pretty picture.

Virginia Woolf, who is, in most ways, a much more intelligent critic than Evelyn Waugh, was also uneasy with Dickens. Her family had extensive acquaintance with Thackeray, and this may have made set her tribally against Dickens  there was no love lost between the two Victorian novelists. However, one of the best essays about Dickens, Virginia Woolfs reflections on David Copperfield, is a critical lodestone for me  it so exactly describes my own varied reaction to Dickens writing. She begins the essay with references to seasonal occurences, to the ripening of fruit and to sunshine, as if Dickens were not a writer but a phenomenon of the same sort  which is just what he seems to be, Woolf implies, when read in childhood. But can a Dickens novel survive a second reading? Or are his characters  for Woolfs idea, ultimately, is that Dickens novels are crowds of characters, that he keeps going in his novels by throwing another character on the pyre  been attacked by the parching wind which blows about books and, without our reading them, remodelsm them and changes their features while we sleep? Again, we note the confusion of culture and nature  the kind of thing Roland Barthes loved to disentangle. That parching wind and our sleep are definitely social phenomena, although they do take on the authoritative, irresistable shape of natural forces at play. The closed book does seem to sleep  or we seem to close ourselves up like a book when we sleep. The parallel is inexhaustible, and rediscoveries aspects of both sleeping and books  or trivializes them.

The next two lines of the essay are often quoted as though they reflected Woolfs opinion, rather than the opinion of the fashion of her time, to which she is responding: The rumor about Dickens is to the effect that his sentiment is disgusting and his style commonplace; that in reading him every refinement must be hidden and every sensibility kept under glass; but that with these precaustions and reservations, he is of course Shakespearean; like Scott a born creator; like Balzac prodigious in his fecundity; but, rumor adds, it is strange that while one reads Shakespeare and one reads Scott, the precise moment for reading Dickens seldom comes our way.

I think we would substitute Austin for Scott now, but with this qualification, what rumor has whispered into Woolfs ear does not seem far fetched to me. It is against that rumor that Woolf makes  in an act of culture over nature  the choice to take up Dickens, to make this the precise moment for re-reading David Copperfield.

Woolf provides an interesting reading of the rumor  Dickens, in her version, has pre-eminently the virtues of the male writer, and also the vices. He has humor, but curiously fumbles the emotional; he has description, but is curiously unable or unwilling to plumb the interior. He is, Woolf thinks, a genius when it comes to movement, but a failure when we need to slow down and reflect. She puts her finger on something that exactly reproduces my experience of Dickens: Then, indeed, he fails grotesquely, and the pages in which he describes what, to our convention, are the peaks and pinnacles of human life, the explanation of Mrs. Strong, the despair of Mrs. Steerforth, or the anguish of Ham, are of an indescribable unreality  of that uncompfortable complexion which, if we heard Dickens talking so in real life, would either make us blush to the roots of our hair, or dash out of the room to conceal our laughter.

I think that one can be embarrassed by Dickens in exactly this way. It is why one resists the re-reading. Remembering the almost sickly sweetness of Esther Summerson in Bleak House makes me wary of reading the novel one more time. And Esther is probably his most developed female figure. There are, of course, self suppressing, virtuous women in Balzac, but they show themselves capable of robbery and murder if their passions are lit. They have a sexual life, even if it is on hold, and one feels that they like to have it.

However, what is strange, to me, about Woolfs assessment of Dickens is that she never comments on what must surely have struck her, especially in David Copperfield: the theme of extreme cruelty to children.

Im re-reading David Copperfield. It is a striking novel. Like those bridges that are supposedly alluded to in London Bridge is falling down, at the beginning of it we find a sacrificed child. Dickens was a master of the story of cruelty to children, but I think David Copperfields betrayal by his mother and his beating and expulsion by the Murdstones is the culminating episode in the series. The equation of the family and the cult is seen all too often in the news. Cults often seem to develop around an initial separation of the child from the family and his or her subjection to extreme violence of one type or another. These are not separate moments, or need not be. In Copperfields case, Mr. Murdstones control and humiliation of the child, leading up to the scene of David being beaten with a cane and retaliating by biting Murdstones hand, is doublesided: it is also a process in which Mrs. Copperfield, now Murdstones bride, is completely dominated. Mrs. Copperfield is one of those unfortunate Dickens women. In a conversation with Steerforth  Copperfields schoolmate and hero, with whom he accepts a relationship much like that of his mother to Murdstone  theres a perfect expression of all that is wrong, genderwise, with Dickens:

'Good night, young Copperfield,' said Steerforth. 'I'll take care of you.' 'You're very kind,' I gratefully returned. 'I am very much obliged to you.' 'Good night, young Copperfield,' said Steerforth. 'I'll take care of you.' 'You're very kind,' I gratefully returned. 'I am very much obliged to you.'

'You haven't got a sister, have you?' said Steerforth, yawning.

'No,' I answered.

'That's a pity,' said Steerforth. 'If you had had one, I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield.'

Although Dickens is warning us about Steerforths character, through his mouth we get Dickens own compulsively presented heroine. Unlike, say, Thackerays Becky Sharp, Dickens could never conceive of a woman with a real intellectual life,





Dickens is an artist of exaggeration, and this spirit even visits his restraint. The key to the first part of the book is David Copperfields feeling of betrayal by his mother  and the hatred that it generates. That hatred is not expressed in words, but instead, in a strained attempt to continue to love this woman.

TAKE CARE OF HIM. HE BITES . This is the end of the initiatory period in Copperfields life. But to continue with the cultic undertext: it is interesting that Copperfields expulsion from his house is accompanied by a comically treated fasting as the boy makes his way to London. Though he begins with a meal, he doesnt eat it  the waiter does, keeping up a standard kind of Dickens waiter patter. In fact, he doesnt eat until he reaches London, right before he is taken to Salem, the deserted school  which, as we will learn, is presided over by the sadistic Creakle  and fitted with a banner:. This is the end of the initiatory period in Copperfields life.





This violence and its suppression create such a profound disequilibrium in the story that it becomes political  Copperfields sense of Murdstone and Creakle as tyrants tells us something very dirty about the formation of the political father, or the boss. The child and the timid, bright woman are brought together as exemplary victims  their vulnerability is their attraction. But, of course, children are not women  in that neurotic equation, the chance to overthrow the political father is lost.




Shakespeare is known for his plays whose characters committed suicide or is killed within the play, ending with a speech from minor characters, tragedy they called it. William Shakespeare has been considered as one of the best English literature writers, along with Umberto Eco and Virginia Woolf Shakespeare has recreated plays in his time and his plays has been admired by many, including Queen Elizabeth, his name and works lived longer that him and would probably live longer than everyone.The story of Othello is about the relationship of Othello and Desdemona, and how theyve struggled to explain their relation at the beginning of the play, only to end in tragedy. The play shows how Othello would rather trust other people rather than his own wife and to be blind in front of everyone, including his wife.Analysis of relationshipsOthello and DesdemonaIn the beginning of the play, Shakespeare has immediately succeeded to show how quickly a person can be influenced by another, Brabanzios harsh actions was the making of Iago and Roderigo. Brabanzio has accused Othello of using enchantments to steal his daughter away from him. Othello, Brabanzio and Desdemona have brought their worries to court where Othello and Desdemona has explained their sides and so did Brabanzio Brabanzio did not want to believe Othello, pleaded the court to have them separated.Othellos relationship with his wife has caused a riot, being a daughter of Brabanzio, who is a senator, Othellos position in the military has caused Brabanzio to have doubts Brabanzio wanted his Desdemona to marry someone who is noble like Roderigo.Othello persuaded Brabanzio, the Duke and other senators that he has courted Desdemona with stories of his adventures and not by enchanting her. In the end the Duke and senators has decided to side with Othello and Desdemona because of Brabanzios lack of evidence that Othello enchanted his daughter Desdemona. The court has also granted Othello and Desdemona to go to Cyprus and be together. Othello battled the Turks while Desdemona waits for him patiently.When the Turks have drowned, Othello went home to Desdemona. The end of the Turks signals the end of Othellos battle, with that, he became hesitant about his future Iago saw Othellos hesitation as a weak spot and plotted his revenge. Iago used Cassio, a lieutenant of Othello and someone who Othello saw as a rival, a solider who could one day replace him. Iago persuaded Othello that Cassio and Desdemona committed infidelity that have lead Othello to kill Desdemona and ask Iago that to kill Cassio.After Desdemona died, Othello realized that it was all a mistake and that it was all created by Iago Othello not wanting to forgive himself for killing the person he loved, killed himself.Cassio and BiancaCassio and Biancas relationship isnt deep. Bianca is a prostitute who Cassio often goes to, being aroused by Cassios promise to marry her, she let him used her to do errands. It was too late when Bianca realized that Cassio never saw her as someone who he would marry in the future, claiming that he has just used her.ConclusionThe relationships in Othello has indicated that if a person do not trust hisher partner deeply or trust them to deeply that they become blind to their ill promises, the relationship could and in tragedy. The relationship of Othello and Desdemona has ended in tragic even though they have succeeded to persuade people in the beginning that a military man can lived happily with a noble person their lack of trust for each other has caused their relationship to fail, while in the relationship of Cassio and Bianca, Bianca has trusted Cassio to the point that she became blind to his ill promised.
Good question. I'm not sure it has a huge impact. This is clearly a policy she supports, and she's going to be asked whether she supports the method Obama use, which she likely will.

Will claims of executive overreach continue thanks to this? Of course. But I think there was already plenty for the GOP to work with there.
Another year has gone by, seemingly all too quickly, and I spend the first few minutes of this, the first podcast of 2016, talking about some of the cool things I was able to take part in in the 2nd half of 2015.





But the crux of this episode is in the 2nd half, where I talk about my friend Seth Greenwell. In fact, I'm issuing a challenge to everyone I know, whether they listen to this podcast or not. (By the way, you can stream or download the podcast episode at the bottom of this post.)





I'm turning 40 years old on February 6th. However, for my birthday this year, I don't want gifts or a huge party. I decided to make this milestone birthday a milestone for someone else. I'm asking my friends and family to commit to donating to Global Teen Challenge for my friend, Seth Greenwell, who is directing a Teen Challenge center in Fiji.





Seth's story is explained in the podcast episode, but let me give you the short version.

Seth and I led worship together at our church. He moved away to pursue a relationship, but it went south, and he moved back, but he fell in with the wrong crowd and fell into a life of alcoholism -- and he fell hard.





Eventually, he saw the damage is alcoholism was causing, and he entered a Teen Challenge program in Joplin, Missouri. He not only made it through the program and was delivered of his addiction, but he was asked to stay on as a staff member. Eventually, he was selected to be the director of a new Teen Challenge center in Fiji, which opened in early 2015.





Fiji has a major problem with people losing their livelihood to the black hole of substance abuse and addiction, and Seth, as a graduate of the Teen Challenge program and now a member of its staff, has been assigned the role of director over a center in Fiji that just started within the last 12 months. All the funding that Seth needs in order to operate that facility -- including his living expenses -- is received in the form of donations. My wife and I have been supporting his efforts since we heard about his new assignment, but there's only so much that we can do because of our finances, and we've wanted to do more.





This, I thought, would be a great way to do that.





This year, for my 40th birthday, instead of giving me a present, buying me a gift card, or even sending me a simple greeting card, I'm asking everyone to instead make a donation in Seth Greenwell's name to Global Teen Challenge.





Here's how you can help.





1. Make a donation straightaway.

You can go to the in the dropdown menu asking for gift designation, select "Specific Projects", and in the space provided, write in "Fiji - Seth Greenwell". They will make sure your donated funds are assigned to the Fiji center for its operation. You can go to the Donation page on Global Teen Challenge's website and make a donation right now. At the bottom of the form,asking for gift designation,, and in the space provided,They will make sure your donated funds are assigned to the Fiji center for its operation.





2. Commit to helping, then flood the coffers on Saturday, February 6th.

I think it would be a fantastic idea to give Seth a large number of donations from multiple donors all at once. So one thing you could do is commit to giving a certain amount on Saturday, February 6th. Just go to the event page I've set up on Facebook and leave a comment with how much you'd like to donate, or just say "general donation" if you don't want to disclose how much you're giving. I think it would be a fantastic idea to give Seth a large number of donations from multiple donors all at once. So one thing you could do is commit to giving a certain amount on Saturday, February 6th.and leave a comment with how much you'd like to donate, or just say "general donation" if you don't want to disclose how much you're giving.





3. Spread the word.

I can only do so much on my own, but if all of you help spread the word about this in your social media circles, or to people you know aren't connected with you online, there's no telling who among the people you know have a heart to help an organization like this. Like I said, any amount will help, so please spread the word on Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Twitter, your own personal blog, anything you feel will help get more people involved. Together, I believe we can do something miraculous.





Why am I not setting up a GoFundMe campaign or something similar?

Frankly, I don't want any of the money to come through my hands. This way, everyone donates directly to Global Teen Challenge, and nobody has to wonder if any of the money is going to be swallowed up by administrative fees or anything like that.





Now, as promised, here it is, Episode 3 of The Back Burner Podcast. Stream it or download it, however you like. Thanks!

There Is No Box.

Zach
The two major political parties of the country will hold separate rallies in different areas of Dhaka on Tuesday, marking the second anniversary of the 5 January elections.Awami League will arrange two rallies, one at Bangabandu Avenue around 2:30pm and another at Russell Square in Dhanmondi road 32.BNP on the other hand will hold a programme in front of its Naya Paltan central office around 2:00pm.Major traffic jams and public suffering is expected due to the three rallies of the two parties as all of the rallies will take place on the busy roads of Dhaka. The public suffered also in the capital on Monday due to the founding anniversary of Bangladesh Chhatra League.Other than the programmes of the two parties, HM Ershads Jatiya Party will hold a peace procession for democracy in Dholaipar area of the city around 11:30am.BNPs alliance member Jamaat-e-Islami urged all of its units to observe the day by processions, rallies, and discussions. However, the party did not mention any time or place.Both AL and BNP initially announced their respective rallies at Suhrawady Udyan.Pleas of both the parties were turned down. Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) mayor Sayeed Khokon in a press conference announced AL and BNP would be allowed to hold their respective rallies at Bangabandhu Avenue and Nayapaltan respectively.Earlier, AL also announced rallies at 18 spots in the capital, but later said will hold two rallies at Bangabandhu Avenue and Russell Square. AL joint general secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif on Monday told Prothom Alo that rallies at 18 places would have created a traffic jam. That is why the programme has been reduced to two places in consideration of the public. Other than that, AL will also hold rallies and meetings in all the cities, districts and upazilas of the country.BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia is expected to attend the rally. She also had a meeting with her partys senior leaders on Monday night to discuss the preparations for the 5 January rally. The partys acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir earlier on the day also had a joint meeting with the leaders of the party and concerned organisations to discuss the preparations for the partys 5 January rally.The senior AL leaders along with general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam will be divided into the two the party rallies. Dhaka city AL also had a meeting over the preparation of the programme.Since last year, Awami League showcases 5 January as 'Democracy Saving Day', while BNP observes the day as 'Democracy Killing Day'.DMP in a press release said it permitted BNP to hold their rallies on some conditions. Among the conditions, DMP said BNP should be allowed to hold their programme within the area designated by police and could not be crossed, the loudspeakers could not be used beyond the assigned area, no road blockade is allowed, no procession is allowed, and the rally must end by 5:00pm.There was nothing said about the AL rallies in the DMP press conference. Talking with DMP deputy commissioner (public relations) Maruf Hasan Sardar on Monday night, who said they were not informed about any restrictions on AL rallies. But later he called over phone and said the same restrictions will be also applied on AL rallies.BNPs press conference: BNPs acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir in Mondays press conference alleged that some persons and political leaders of the ruling party were trying to heat up the political arena unnecessarily following the BNPs rally.We would like to clearly say that the 5 January rally will be held peacefully as we dont do politics of conflict and we wont go for any conflicting programme. We hope that government will make an effort to restore democracy in the country and cooperate with us in ensuring the basic rights of arranging the rally, he said.
BNP workers join a rally in Naya Paltan of Dhaka on Tuesday

BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia approaching Tuesday called concerning the ruling Awami League to allocation talks once all stakeholders to make a congenial mood for holding legitimate general elections tersely.The Awami League should money talks subsequent to all for creating an appearance conducive to concrete elections, she said.The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief made the overture, though addressing a rally at Naya Paltan, marking the 2nd anniversary of the lopsided 10th parliament elections held approximately 5 January 2014.The BNP and its allies observe the hours of day as democracy killing hours of daylight while ruling AL and its allies celebrate the day as day for a talent of democracy.At least 20 people were killed occurring for the hours of day of the exploitation-marred 10th general elections boycotted by all of the major rival parties that paved the enhancement for landslide victory for the Awami League.The BNP chairperson said the ruling Awami League killed democracy in Bangladesh through the voter-less election in description to 5 January 2014.And that is why, we observe democracy killing day all year upon 5 January.Terming illegal the position as swiftly as 10th parliament formed through the 5 January elections, Khaleda called for talks to make an freshen for an sudden general election.Offering an olive branch to the ruling party, the former prime minister said her party wants to law together gone each and every one for the sake of democracy. We twinge a real to the tortured through dialogue.She said a fair election is not reachable out cold Awami League.Khaleda assumed name upon the running to retain an rapid general election and said, As they [AL leaders] are staying in power forcibly, they will have to reach this.Khaleda alleged that chat shows in private television channels are monster controlled by the handing out.Journalists and civil organization members are not bodily clever to speak their minds. Talk shows are beast controlled. Cases are filed adjoining the chat leisure outfit speakers. Some of the chat perform speakers fled the country for such cases, alleged Khaleda.Khaleda alleged that AL has links as soon as militants. That is why, she accessory, it presents startle of militancy in the back the foreign forces era and taking into account anew. Militancy is a launch of AL.Referring to incidents of attacks upon Udichi, Ramna Batamul and CPB rally, she said, Militancy rises whenever AL comes to knack.She furthermore gave a savings account of how common people are shown arrested as militants. Some people are arrested and kept in the headquarters of Rapid Action Battalion. They were not fed and not allowed to shave their beard and plus they were brought since the media and it is said, We have arrested militants.The BNP chairperson in addition to asked why the dealing out did not arrest the killers of Italian national as still.Khaleda urged the approach to scuff the length of the prices of fuel, expertise and agricultural inputs, and meet the demand of the demonstrating public academic circles teachers and rearrange their dignity.Khaleda held responsible the doling out for enforced desertion of the party leaders and activists.She asked the running to compensation to the passage of democracy renouncing the tactics of abduction, killing and enforced disappearances.Otherwise, you (AL) will not be dexterous to stay in facility. You never know into the future the people will rise going on and you will not be able to resist the people behind they will nihilist, she said.The former prime minister alleged that the ruling Awami League is irritating to establish monarchy in the country. It is enacting laws one after another unaccompanied to mute the challenger voice. It has tainted the constitution of the republic for its own seek, bringing no to your liking to the people.Khaleda cutting out that the 2008 general elections, too, were stage-managed, not to hint the 5 January ballot.The 2008 general elections were held by now an promise together in the middle of Awami League, the plus chief of army staff Moyeen U Ahmed and chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed.Earlier, BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia reached the meeting venue after the programme began vis--vis 2:15pm once BNP standing committee follower Gayeshawar Chandra Roy in the seat.Leaders from swing party levels addressed the rally, which was then attended by the partys senior leaders, including acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.The BNP chief has attended such a big political rally after greater than one year.
Ketto, Asias largest crowdfunding platform, won the Wharton India Startup Competition and took home $30,000 as prize money. In addition to the cash prize and 150 hrs of legal advice from Khaitan and Co., Ketto will get an opportunity to present and pitch to a significantly larger international audience in Philadelphia, USA planned for March 25, 2016.

Ketto, which stands for Key To Tomorrow, was founded in 2012 by Varun Sheth, Kunal Kapoor and Zaheer Adenwala. It helps non-profit organizations to raise funds for supported and listed causes by connecting them to companies and individuals.

With this award, we hope to get a marketing push, said Kunal Kapoor, Co-Founder. Added an excited and beaming Zaheer Adenwala, Co-Founder, "It feels gratifying to win the grand prize award. We look forward to going to Philadelphia which will give us a great platform to reach out to investors in America."

The winner of People choice went to Kheyti, an agri-tech startup, which got $5000. Kheyti provides greenhouses services to farmers. The only dhoti-clad entrepreneur to make a pitch at the finals of the Wharton India Startup Competition, Sathya Raghu, Co-Founder was passionate as he talked about the start-up. We have designed a technology -- low-cost modular and a hi tech greenhouse -- which uses just 10 percent water and increases farmers yield by seven times and incomes by 12 times.

Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Pratilipi, was muted about his victory. Pratilipi, Amazons kindle Direct Publishing for Indian languages, won the powerhouse award of $25,000. We havent participated in a competition in a long time. It is nice to be recognized. We are happy with the inputs we got from several experts at the event, said Singh.

Bushera Bashir -- the only lady entrepreneur finalist at the event, runs an ethnic label, Trebene (a Kashmiri word for three sisters). She won the Powerhouse award of $15,000. Bashir termed the award as a `good financial support, adding, We are at the next level of growth and it is a good forum to network.

The judges for the competition were Kirthiga Reddy - Managing Director, Facebook India, Sasha Mirchandani - Founder and Managing Director, KAE Capital, Ravi Gururaj from Nasscom, Sandeep Murthy - Partner, Lightbox Ventures, Pravan Malhotra - venture capital investor, International Finance Corporation, Rajan Mehra - Co-Founder and Managing Director, Nirvana Venture Advisors and Sri Peddu - Founder and Managing Director, Powerhouse Ventures.

Commenting on the contest, Reddy said, the diversity of start-ups presented was phenomenal. We had a lengthy debate on the start-ups and the beautiful thing that happened was that eventually we converged on a single set of winners that had both a strong business and social impact. This happened organically in our judge discussions.

The competition was held for the first time in India as part of the 20th Wharton India Economic Forum (WIFE). With more than 3,000 tech start-ups, India is the fourth largest base for young businesses in the world. It is expected that by 2020, the base will increase to 11,500 tech start-ups.

The aim of the Wharton India Startup Competition is to provide new-age companies a platform to showcase their idea.

The event, held in Mumbai, was packed with sector experts from the industry, investors and entrepreneurs. The atmosphere was crackling with expectation. The final round of the start-up competition for the 10 finalists were held interspersed with media sessions from established and well-known entrepreneurs and investors.

Some of the start-up entrepreneurs who pitched for the final round spoke with much confidence, while some seemed understated while outlining their plans. At least two founders were honest about admitting that their model was still being `perfected.

Industry heads threw light on various segments. Ronnie Screwvala, Founder, UTV discussed the current state of entrepreneurship in India, Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico spoke on wealth creation and social impact, while Neeraj Kakkar, Co-Founder and CEO, Hector Beverages, famous for its Paper Boat label of natural drinks, had a discussion with VT Bharadwaj, venture capitalist on the relationship between an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist.

The WIEF is an annual student-run India-focused conference hosted by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Vikram Arumuilli, one of the co-chairs of WIEF 2016 and a second year MBA student of the school, believes the competition will provide not just the required nudge in the right direction but also enable entrepreneurs to scale up businesses and reach their potential. "The world today looks at India as an innovation hub. By giving them a platform so rich, we hope that the winner and all applicants become inspiring examples for the global world of start-ups," he said.
Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa on Monday filed defamation cases against dailies Dinamalar (Tamil) and Times of India (English) for their reportage on the reasons for the Chennai floods.

The case was filed by the city public prosecutor on behalf of Jayalalithaa, said Jaya TV.

According to the petition, the two newspapers published news reports defamatory of the state government and Jayalalithaa even after a clarification issued by Chief Secretary K.Gnanadesikan on the process followed while opening the sluice gates of the Chembarambakkam lake and the reason for Chennai going under water last month.

The newspapers had reported that the opening of Chembarambakkam gates to let out the surplus water was delayed due to bureaucratic red tape.

Refuting the allegations, Gnanadesikan, in a statement on December 13, said the flooding of Chennai city was not due to official indecision or mismanagement of release of water from the Chembarambakkam lake into the Adyar river, and was caused primarily due to the very high rainfall in November, which was followed by more rain in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur districts on December 1.

Floods killed 470 people: Jaya

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Monday said the "unprecedented" northeast monsoon has killed 470 people and nearly a lakh livestock apart from damaging crops in over 3.83 lakh hectares in the state.

Detailing the large-scale destruction caused by heavy rains in four phases during October-December 2015, she recalled her demand for a central assistance of Rs 25,912.45 crore for the relief and restoration works.

Noting that the Central team of Inter-Ministerial officials, which earlier assessed the damage caused in the first three phases of rains, will visit the state again from Tuesday for a similar exercise, she expressed hope the Centre will release the "required" assistance based on its report.

Jayalalithaa said despite the state's preparedness, the damage was "huge" on account of the "unprecedented" rains that caused a deluge affecting Chennai, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallore, Cuddalore, Tuticorin and Tirunelveli districts.

In a detailed statement, she said 470 persons had been killed in various rain-related incidents, most of them between 28 October and 31 December, 2015.

"During the northeast monsoon period between 1 and 27 October, as many as 49 persons died. Four hundred and twenty one persons died of various reasons including drowning, electrocution, lightning strike and wall collapse between 28 October and 31 December, 2015," she said.

Although the northeast monsoon season stretches between 1 October to 31 December, it had set late on 28 October in 2015, she said.

The government had provided relief of Rs four lakh each to families of 245 victims and the rest will be covered in the coming days, she said.

The chief minister pegged the area of crop loss at 3,82,768 hectares.

Over 3.47 lakh hectares of agricultural crops and 35,471 hectares of horticultural crops have suffered damage, she said adding 68,350 farmers had been compensated with Rs 29.48 crore. The rest will be covered soon, she said.

A total of 30.42 lakh families had suffered partial or complete damage to their dwelling units, including huts, with the government completing the survey of 14 lakh families in this connection, she said.

She gave the relief amount to five persons on Monday to mark the launch of the efforts and the cash assistance for the identified 14 lakh families will be deposited on Mnday in their bank accounts, she said adding the rest will be covered by 11 January.

The government had announced measures like cash compensation for damage to houses, besides providing rice and kerosene, she recalled.

As far as livestock were concerned, about 98,000 cattle, poultry, goats and pigs had perished during the monsoon and a compensation of Rs 7.78 crore has been disbursed so far, she said adding Rs 12.82 crore has been provided for loss sustained by fishing community, which includes boats.

"My government is expediting the cash assistance to people affected by the unprecedented rains. Today (Monday), Rs 700 crore worth relief was distributed. The rest will be given by 11 January," she said.

The chief minister, facing Opposition flak over the handling of the rains and subsequent floods, reiterated that though her government was prepared to face the monsoon, the unprecedented downpour had resulted in large-scale damage, prompting the Centre to declare it as "Calamity of Severe Nature."

State and Central government agencies besides the armed forces were quickly pressed into service for relief and rehabilitation efforts and essentials and medical services were promptly delivered, she said.

IANS & PTI
A year and a half after two high-profile resignations in The Hindu, another senior editorial head quit the Chennai-based newspaper. Malini Parthasarathy, the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, has resigned from her position, according to a report in The NewsMinute.

National Editor Suresh Nambath will reportedly be taking care of the day-to-day affairs of the newspaper in the interim period till a new person is appointed. The website quoted sources as saying that Parthasarthy had differences with the board of the newspaper over the way the Mumbai edition of the paper was launched.

The Hindu's first woman Editor,Malini Parthasarathy quits She confirms it to @thenewsminute https://t.co/Gmzsy5tLop pic.twitter.com/PyUq1MadnF  Dhanya Rajendran (@dhanyarajendran) January 5, 2016

Soon after the news broke, Malini Parthasarathy started trending on Twitter and a few peers even tweeted to her:

In November last year, The Hindu launched its edition in Mumbai, even as a large number of major English-language dailies were already competing to dominate readership in the metropolis.

Malini Parthasarathy is the granddaughter of Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, who had taken over the newspaper in 1905, according to an article in the magazine Frontline. She had been named as the editor of The Hindu after the exit of Siddharth Varadarajan from the organisation. Varadarajan had quit the newspaper, reportedly after writing that its owners had decided to 'revert to being a family run and edited newspaper.'

Later, during Parthasarathy's tenure at the helm, the organisation saw two more resignations of senior editors - P Sainath and Praveen Swami. The latter had alleged dictatorial tendencies at the organisation, saying that it seemed 'like working for Pol Pot', according to an article on the website bestmediainfo.com.

With the resignation of the Editor of The Hindu close on the heels of the launch of a major edition, the organisation could well be headed for some upheaval.
By Seema Guha

There is no official word yet if the attack in Mazar-e-Sharif was directed at the Indian consulate, or the house next door, where most of the action took place. Luckily unlike in Pathankot the operations are over and all four gunmen have been killed.

There was a blast on Tuesday, 200 metres from the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad, but officials say that this was not aimed at the Indian mission. But the fact remains that all Indian interests in Afghanistan continue to be targeted by the Taliban. This is because the Pakistan Army and its spy agency the ISI, believe it is in their national interest to clip New Delhis wings in Afghanistan.

When Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to condemn the terrorist attack in Pathankot, the Indian PM thanked him and appreciated the courage of the Afghan army in ensuring the safety of the Indian Consulate and its personnel in Mazar.

It was an obvious attack on the Consulate but neither side has made it

official. "If you want to wear blinkers, you may do so. But Pakistans position has not changed on Indian presence in Afghanistan or the India-Pakistan peace process. It is ironic that Pakistan can continue to pull the wool over our eyes all the time," said Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary.

Pakistan keen to clip Indias wings in Afghanistan

India has been under attack in Afghanistan ever since New Delhi spread itself out in the country. During the Taliban regime, the Indian embassy in Kabul was closed. But India revived its past historical ties with Kabul since former president Hamid Karzai, disappointed with what he saw as Pakistans double game, turned more and more to India. Delhi was the first power with which Afghanistan signed a defence and strategic agreement. Pakistans army had watched with impotent rage India spreading its wings in its backyard. Opening of the four consulates in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad besides the embassy in Kabul was seen in GHQ in Rawalpindi as Indias listening posts in Afghanistan.

Charges India of involvement in Balochistan

Pakistan alleges that the diplomats manning these Consulates are from Indian intelligence. Pakistan charges India of using the Jalalabad and Kandahar Consulates to fund, provide arms and training to Baloch nationalists who want independence from Pakistan. Islamabad had in the past charged that India and Afghanistan under Karzai had together helped to ferment trouble in Balochistan.

The Baloch problem began in the 1970s because of the lack of development in the province, despite being rich in gas and minerals. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto crushed the movement by calling in the army and air force. For a long time afterwards the movement remained dormant, though there was anger that the Gwadar port and other development work in the province created no jobs for the locals.

In 2004, the Baloch movement was resurrected by Akbar Bugti but he was killed in 2006 in a firefight with the Pakistan Army. Indias Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement immediately afterwards: "The unfortunate killing of the veteran Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, is a tragic loss to the people of Balochistan and Pakistan.

This military attack in which reportedly two of his grandsons were also killed and the heavy casualties in the continuing military operations in Balochistan underline the need for peaceful dialogue to address the grievances and aspirations of people of Balochistan. Military force can never solve political problems."

This did not go down well with General Pervez Musharraf and the army, who said it was inevitable that India which supported the Baloch movement would say this.

Pakistan continues to make these allegations and had earlier complained to the US and Nato allies of Indias role in Balochistan.

However, proof supplied by Islamabad has never been convincing. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was torn apart by the opposition and his own Congress party, when Balochistan became a part of the joint statement released after his meeting with the then Pakistan prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, during a meeting in Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort town.

Manmohan Singh was accused of legitimising Pakistan's claims. The former PM had asked for proof, which Islamabad has not been able to substantiate with solid evidence. Whether India is actually involved in Balochistan is difficult to say as no government is ready to admit such covert operations. The important thing is that the Pakistan military believes this and want Indian presence in Afghanistan reduced to the embassy in Kabul.

So an attack on the Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, is very much in line with the ISI policy in Afghanistan. In 2008, the Indian embassy in Kabul was attacked, where the defence attache and a young diplomat were among those killed. Another attempt was made a few months later in 2009. In both cases the Haqqani network, a Afghan militant group close to Pakistan, was said to be behind the attack. The aim was to frighten India out of the country. In 2013, the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad was targeted, and several civilians were killed, though no Indian was affected.

After being isolated on Afghanistan during the latter part of the US and Nato campaign against the Taliban, Islamabad is back in the picture as the Americans turn to Pakistan to get the Taliban to the negotiating table. The first round of Taliban talks with the Afghan government representatives, was also attended by Pakistan, US and China.

The disclosure of Mullah Omars death and the infighting which followed led to a delay in holding the second round. It is now scheduled for sometime this month. In the meantime Taliban attack across Afghanistan has increased, with the hope of the Taliban negotiating from a position of strength. Pakistan is going all out to back the Taliban to ensure that its ally gets a major share in the new political set-up. Rawalpindi was to make sure that its enemies like India is cut to size in a new dispensation. But much will depend on what turn the talks take. India is watching from the sidelines.
Kabul/New Delhi: An explosion took place on Tuesday today 400 metres away from the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, two days after the country's mission was attacked by terrorists in Mazar-i-Sharif.

"The explosives were placed in a garbage can," said Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar province's governor, adding that a police convoy had been passing when the blast went off. A police spokesman said investigators were trying to determine the target.

However, official sources in New Delhi said the reports suggested that the mission was not the target of the blast. Further details about the explosion were awaited, they said.

"The Indian Consulate was not the target," a source said dismissing reports that the explosion was targeted at the Indian mission.

"Pakistan Consul General's house in Jalalabad was closer to the blast site than the Indian mission which was 400 metres away," the source said.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif came to end on Monday night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight earlier, the remaining were neutralised by the night.

A group of terrorists had attacked the consulate on Sunday night with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces.

With inputs from AFP and PTI
PRINCETON, Ore. The leaders of a group of self-styled militiamen who took over a remote U.S. wildlife refuge centre in Oregon over the weekend said on Monday they acted to protest the federal government's role in managing millions of acres of wild lands.

The anti-government occupation, which began on Saturday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 30 miles (50 km) south of the small town of Burns, was the latest skirmish over federal land management in large tracts of the West.

A protest leader, Ammon Bundy, told reporters outside the occupied facility on Monday that his group had named itself "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom" and was trying to restore individual rights. Bundy and law enforcement officials declined to say how many people were occupying the centre.

About half a dozen occupiers could be seen outside the facility on Monday, with some manning a watchtower and others standing around a vehicle they had used to block the road leading to the building. They chatted quietly among themselves. None was visibly armed.

The FBI said it was seeking a "peaceful resolution to the situation." It declined to give details on how the U.S. government would deal with the occupiers. No significant law enforcement presence could be seen at the site.

The occupation followed a demonstration in Burns over the imminent imprisonment of local ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond, who were found guilty of setting a series of fires. Through an attorney, they have dissociated themselves from the occupiers.

NBC News reported that the father and son turned themselves in as planned on Monday at a federal prison in California. Their lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The occupation is the latest wrinkle in decades of conflict between ranchers and the federal government over Washington's management of hundreds of thousands of acres of range land. Critics say the federal government often oversteps its authority and exercises arbitrary power without sufficient accountability.

Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose ranch was the scene of an armed demonstration against federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials in 2014 that ended with the authorities backing down, citing safety concerns.

That standoff had drawn hundreds of armed protesters after federal agents sought to seize Bundy's cattle because he refused to pay grazing fees.

Jon Ritzheimer, a Marine Corps veteran who travelled from Phoenix to take part in the occupation, said the Constitution was under attack from the U.S. government, and that he and his companions were "trying to restore this land to the people."

In Burns, home to 3,000 people, residents voiced sympathy for the Hammonds but also expressed frustration at the occupation, which some locals viewed as the work of outsiders.

"I agree they shouldn't have to go back to prison. I get why they're here," said Patrick Wright, a 33-year-old taxi driver, who said he knew the Hammonds. "Taking over the refuge and threatening gun violence is a little extreme, but it's getting them heard, that's for sure."

The takeover drew criticism on social media, with some users asking if the occupiers would have been treated differently if they had been black or Muslim.

SERIES OF FIRES

The Hammonds were found guilty in 2012 of setting a string of fires, including a 2001 blaze that federal prosecutors said was intended to cover up evidence of deer poaching, that wound up burning 139 acres (56 hectares) of public lands.

The younger Hammond was initially sentenced to 12 months in prison and the father three months, below the federal minimum for arson. But in October, a U.S. district judge increased the sentences to five years.

The Hammond ranch borders on the southern edge of the Malheur refuge, a bird sanctuary in eastern Oregon's arid high desert, about 305 miles (490 km) southeast of Portland.

Both father and son are members of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association (OCA). The group said on Monday that it would continue to assist and represent them "solely through avenues that are in accordance with the law."

"OCA does not support illegal activity taken against the government. This includes militia takeover of government property, such as the Malheur Wildlife Refuge," the association's president, John O'Keeffe, said in a statement.

"Obviously we're aware of the situation and concerned about it," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. He said President Barack Obama had been briefed on the situation, adding: "This ultimately is a ... local law enforcement matter."

Republican White House candidates Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida expressed sympathy for the protesters' concerns but urged the group to remain peaceful and follow the law, according to media reports.

The refuge, which encompasses 292 square miles (75,630 hectares), was established in 1908 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt as a breeding ground for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds.

(Reporting by Jim Urquhart; Editing by Jonathan Oatis; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Roberta Rampton in Washington, Daniel Wallis in Denver and Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: As Pakistan link to Pathankot attack became clear, its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today called up his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and vowed "prompt and decisive action" against the terrorists behind the strike about which "specific and actionable" information has been provided.

During the telephonic conversation, Modi strongly pressed for urgent steps against those responsible for the attack that began on Saturday last with six terrorists sneaking into the Air Base and leading to an encounter in which seven security personnel, including a Lt Colonel, were killed.

Modi received a call this afternoon from the prime minister of Pakistan regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase, the PMO said.

The prime minister "strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organizations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack", the PMO said in a statement.

The statement said "specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan".

Sharif "assured Prime Minister Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists", the PMO said.

The phone call from Sharif came as the Pakistan link to the attack became clear. NIA chief Sharad Kumar today said

there was little doubt that the attackers were from Pakistan.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar added that there are indications that some of equipment used by terrorists were

made in Pakistan.

The information and leads, like the Pakistani numbers which the attackers had called and their intercepts, are understood to have been passed on by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

The attackers had reportedly made several calls to Pakistan, some of them brief and some long. Pakistan Foreign Ministry on Monday night said it is working on the "leads" provided by India on the terror attack.

Extending Pakistan's deepest condolences to the Government and people of India on the "unfortunate terrorist incident" in Pathankot, a statement by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "We understand the pain of many families who have lost their dear ones in this tragedy, as Pakistan itself is a major victim of terrorism."

Noting that the terror attack has been categorically condemned by Pakistan, the spokesperson said, "In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it."

The statement, however, did not give details of the "leads" provided by India.

It also said that India and Pakistan should remain "committed" to a sustained dialogue process.

"Living in the same region and with a common history, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained dialogue process," it said, adding, "The challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to a cooperative approach."

PTI
United Nations: The United Nations moved quickly on Monday to shelter peace efforts in Syria and Yemen from the diplomatic storm unleashed by the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura traveled to Riyadh for urgent talks and was to head later this week to Tehran to seek assurances that hard-fought gains in the Syria peace process had not been derailed.

De Mistura is counting on broad support to launch peace talks between President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition in Geneva on 25 January  the culmination of a three-month effort involving all key players. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by phone with the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers to urge them to "avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation between two countries and in the region as a whole," said Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"A breakdown of relations between Riyadh and Tehran could have very serious consequences for the region," said Dujarric. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have a crucial role in the diplomatic push to end the nearly five-year war in Syria and to bring about a political settlement for Yemen. Relations between the two rivals have been testy, but the furor over the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, who had criticised the Sunni royal family, threatened to spill over.

After protesters set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran, giving diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.

In his conversation with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Ban expressed his "disappointment" over the execution of al-Nimr, whose case he had raised with Riyadh many times, said Dujarric. While the UN chief said the Iranian attack on the Saudi embassy was "deplorable," the Saudi decision to break off relations with Tehran was "deeply worrying," he told Jubeir. Ban spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif yesterday and urged him to protect diplomatic facilities after the attack on the Saudi embassy.

In a conciliatory sign, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, pledged in a letter to Ban today that "Iran will take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future." The Saudi-Iran rift was seen by UN diplomats as a potential setback to the peace effort in Syria, where Tehran is among Assad's strongest allies while Riyadh is backing

militias fighting Damascus.

AFP
United Arab Emirates: Allies of Saudi Arabia followed the kingdom's lead Monday and scaled back diplomatic ties to Iran after the ransacking of Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, violence sparked by the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late on Sunday. Within hours, the United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticising Iran.

The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a longtime regional rival.

"What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented... It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message," said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University. "This is the Saudis saying: 'There is no limit to how far we will go'."

The standoff began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges  the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Al-Nimr was a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, who long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. By late Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdom's cutting of diplomatic ties.

Iran expressed "regret" over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by AP, Iran's UN envoy Gholamali Khoshroo says more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the UN Security Council late Monday condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Masshad "in the strongest terms" and called on Iranian authorities to protect diplomats and their property. The council statement, agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in West Asia, with their rivalry deepening following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which allowed Iran to assert dominance there, and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

An early battleground was Bahrain, where the Shiite majority staged mass protests in 2011 demanding political reforms from the Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent in troops to help quash the revolt, viewing it as an Iranian bid to expand its influence.

Bahraini officials have since accused Iran of training militants and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. In October, Bahrain ordered the acting Iranian charge d'affaires to leave within 72 hours and recalled its own ambassador after alleging Iran sponsored "subversion" and "terrorism" and funneled arms to militants.

Sudan, which has been looking to Saudi for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011, on Monday announced an "immediate severing of ties" over the diplomatic mission attacks. Sudan once was closer to Iran, but in recent years has tilted toward Saudi Arabia, and has contributed forces to the Saudi-led coalition battling Shiite rebels in Yemen.

The UAE, a country of seven emirates, has a long trading history with Iran and is home to many ethnic Iranians. It said it would reduce the number of diplomats in Iran and recall its ambassador "in the light of Iran's continuous interference in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states, which has reached unprecedented levels."

Saudi Arabia previously severed ties with Iran from 1988 to 1991 over hajj rioting in 1987 and Iran's attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf. That diplomatic freeze saw Iran halt pilgrims from attending the hajj in Saudi Arabia, something required of all able Muslims once in their lives.

Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Ali Esfanani, spokesman of the Judicial and Legal Committee, said security issues and the fact that Iranian pilgrims wouldn't have consular protection inside the kingdom made halting the pilgrimage likely, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.

World powers have sought to calm the tensions, with Washington and the European Union reaching out. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran. Iran, a staunch supporter of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. De Mistura has set a 25 January target date for a fourth round of talks.

The White House on Monday urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.

"Hopefully they will continue to engage," press secretary Josh Earnest said. "It is so clearly in the interests of both countries to advance a political solution to the situation inside of Syria."

Saudi Arabia's UN Ambassador Abdallah al-Moualimi told reporters late Monday at U.N. headquarters that his country backs efforts to bring peace to Syria and Yemen and its break in diplomatic relations with Iran should have no effect on upcoming talks. He said Saudi Arabia will attend the 25 January talks on Syria in Geneva. Iran has not said whether it will attend.

Al-Moualimi blamed Iran's interference in the internal affairs of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries for the diplomatic rupture and said relations could be restored if Iran decided "to cease and desist" from such activities.

Meanwhile, al-Nimr's family is holding three days of mourning at a mosque in al-Awamiya village in the kingdom's al-Qatif region in predominantly Shiite eastern Saudi Arabia. Authorities have already buried the sheikh's body in an undisclosed cemetery, his family said.

Early Monday, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said a shooting targeting security forces in the village killed a man and wounded a child. It offered no motive for the attack, nor for another it said saw a mob beat and briefly kidnap a man who was driving through the area.

AP
Five booksellers, belonging to a single publication, disappear over a span of few months.

The government seems unable to guarantee safety and there is genuine fear of freedom of speech eroding in publishing circles. The disappearances themselves can possibly be traced to the ruling party of one of the most powerful nations in the world.

And no, this is not part of a movie script.

Lee Bo is the latest in a series of 'disappearances' of booksellers based in Hong Kong, all working for a publication critical of the Communist Party of China and its leadership.

On Monday, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said he was "very concerned" over the disappearance of five booksellers known for publications critical of the Chinese government after a prominent lawmaker accused mainland security officers of kidnapping the men. The booksellers all worked for the same Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current and its Causeway Bay Bookstore, and are feared to have been detained by Chinese authorities, adding to growing unease that freedoms in the semi-autonomous region are being eroded.

Under its mini-constitution, Hong Kong enjoys freedom of speech and Chinese law enforcers have no right to operate in the city. But the disappearances have raised fears that Beijing is tightening its grip on the region. "I and related government departments are very concerned. The government cares very much about Hong Kong residents' rights and safety," Leung told reporters, saying it would be 'unacceptable' if mainland law enforcers were operating in Hong Kong.

"Only legal enforcement agencies in Hong Kong have the legal authority to enforce laws in Hong Kong," Leung said. "If mainland law enforcement personnel enforce the law in Hong Kong, it is unacceptable because it is against the Basic Law (the city's constitution)."

Although he added there there's no evidence so far to support suspicions that mainland security agents were involved, he appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

Democratic legislator Albert Ho said Sunday he believed the men had been kidnapped by Chinese security officers.

At a regular briefing Monday, Beijing's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said: "I'm not aware of the situation; I have nothing to offer," when asked about the latest bookseller to disappear, Lee Bo, who went missing last week. But an editorial in the Global Times newspaper, close to China's Communist Party, accused the bookstore run by the missing men of selling publications containing "maliciously fabricated content". These books spread to the mainland by various means, becoming a source of political rumours, and creating negative effects, it said.

The editorial, signed by Shan Renping, a pen name for the newspaper's editor Hu Xijin, said a "handful" of Hong Kongers were launching "political attacks". "In the era of the internet, their impact is not limited to Hong Kong, but also leaks into the mainland, and becomes a genuine problem facing the country," it said.

Opponents also criticised unpopular Leung, who is considered close to Beijing and a hate figure for Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. "The Hong Kong government and Leung Chun-ying should express to the top level on the mainland Hong Kong people's concern, instead of awaiting a reply," said pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan. Acting secretary for security John Lee said Sunday that Hong Kong police had made enquiries to their mainland counterparts and were yet to hear back, according to local media. Lawmakers including Hong Kong's pro-Beijing former security chief Regina Ip have urged the government to investigate.

All missing five men worked for the same publishing firm, which is rumoured to have been on the verge of releasing a book on Chinese President Xi Jinping's former girlfriend.

The Mighty Current 'disappearances'

The latest employee to disappear was 65-year-old Lee, last seen in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

His wife said he had told her he was "assisting in an investigation" in a call made after he failed to come home for dinner Wednesday night. The number indicated the call came from Shenzhen, the mainland Chinese city next door to Hong Kong, reports USA Today.

She reported him missing to police on Friday. But late on Monday, the police issued a statement saying the missing person's report involving Lee had been withdrawn, but that police would continue to investigate.

Hong Kong Police is investigating the disappearance of Lee and of three of his co-workers who are believed to have gone missing in Shenzhen.

Meanwhile, the fifth, Gui Minhai  the high-profile publisher of the magazine and a China-born Swedish national  was reported to have 'disappeared' sometime between October and November, 2015. But unlike his colleagues, who were abducted in China, Gui vanished in Thailand, reports The Guardian.

Since his suspected abduction, Gui too has been in on-off contact with his family, although he never reveals his location and calls from phone lines are diverted through foreign countries.

Sweden's embassies in Bangkok and Beijing are reportedly investigating his disappearance.

Lee had previously said, in an interview with the BBC, that he suspected the four of his colleagues were detained by Chinese authorities.

Clampdown on publishers

Since 2014, the mainland Chinese authorities have been cracking down on publishers of banned books in Hong Kong.

In May 2014, another Hong Kong publisher Yiu Mantin (also spelled Yao Wentian) was sentenced to 10 years for smuggling. His publishing house was about to release a book critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Im pretty familiar with the Chinese legal system in China and how they produce fake criminal charges against political prisoners, Edmond Yiu, Yius son said in an interview with The New York Times. There is no question that they are trying to punish him for his publishing activities through normal criminal charges.

The ruling was also condemned by The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

In the same month, two Hong Kong Chinese political magazine publishers Wang Jianmin and Guo Zhongjiao were prosecuted for illegal distribution of Hong Kong publications, reports PRI.

Local publishers are increasingly concerned that the disappearances will loom large on publishing strategy and might rattle the citys tradition of publishing books critical of the Chinese Communist Party, reports South China Morning Post.

Hong Kong is semi-autonomous after being handed back to China by Britain in 1997 and enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland.

With inputs from agencies
WASHINGTON The United States had raised concerns with Saudi Arabia ahead of the recent execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric that worsened tensions between the Sunni kingdom and Iran and deepened the sectarian divide in the Middle East, the White House said on Monday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest also said the United States "certainly would condemn any country that's carrying out mass executions" and warned that the dispute between Tehran and Riyadh would make it more difficult to push warring sides in the Syrian conflict towards a political solution.

"There have been direct concerns raised by U.S. officials to Saudi officials about the potential damaging consequences of following through on the execution -- on mass executions, in particular, the execution of" the Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Earnest told a news briefing.

"This is a concern that we raised with the Saudis in advance, and unfortunately, the concerns that we expressed to the Saudis have precipitated the kinds of consequences that we were concerned about," he said.

Shi'ite communities around the world reacted furiously to the execution of Nimr, whom Earnest described as a political opposition figure and religious leader. Protesters in Tehran set fire to the Saudi Embassy and the kingdom cut diplomatic relations with Iran, its Shi'ite regional rival.

"We do continue to be concerned about the need for both the Iranians and the Saudis to de-escalate the situation. We are urging all sides to show some restraint and to not further inflame tensions that are on quite vivid display in the region," Earnest said.

He said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had been in touch with his Iranian counterpart and U.S. diplomatic officials had been in contact with Saudi officials to convey the message.

Earnest said the United States had regularly raised concerns about the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, including in conversations between President Barack Obama and Saudi King Salman.

The flare-up between Iran and Saudi Arabia threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's 5-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iranian-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

"It was very difficult to get everybody around the table. It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism between the two countries," Earnest said.

The White House spokesman also expressed concern about the Iranians' failure to protect the Saudi diplomatic facility.

Irans U.N. mission sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday defending its actions to protect Saudi diplomatic sites and officials and pledged to continue to take necessary measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Alistair Bell)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
A senior Muslim navy officer has been counselled and her Twitter account shut down after she tweeted controversial views concerning Islamic extremism and then prime minister Tony Abbott.

Captain Mona Shindy used the Twitter account @navyislamic as part of her outreach work to encourage Muslims to join the Defence Force, but ran into trouble after tweeting comments at odds with government policy.

Defence personnel are banned from expressing political views in an official capacity.

But the Twitter account, described as the "Official Royal Australian Navy Islamic Advisor Twitter account", published tweets critical of Mr Abbott during and after his prime ministership.
CHINA Rescuers have dropped provisions to four Chinese mine workers trapped for 10 days in a wrecked gypsum mine and are slowly drilling a route to save them, state media said. The men are trapped more than 200 meters below the surface, and state media has reported they are in good condition.

SOUTH KOREA will review safety at six low-cost airlines after a Jin Air flight made an emergency return to the Philippines. The transport ministry said the safety investigation comes as the ministry is looking into the Jin Air incident.

INDIA A strong earthquake hit Indias remote northeast region before dawn Monday, killing at least eight people, injuring more than 100 and causing damage to several buildings. The death and injuries were caused by falling debris. Manipur states home minister, G. Gaikhangam, said several parts of the state suffered extensive damage.

INDIA A military official says a fifth gunman has been killed in a more than two-day long siege at an air base near the border with Pakistan. At least one attacker remains and operations to comb and secure the base continue.

LIBYAs local Islamic State affiliate says it has detonated two car bombs at a checkpoint near the countrys oil fields and clashed with fighters allied with the internationally recognized government there. Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the forces that control the majority of Libyas oil fields, says six of their fighters were killed in yesterdays attacks, along with five IS fighters in the coastal port town of Siddra.

USA For months, former president Bill Clinton has largely stayed out of the 2016 race, mentioned mostly in passing by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Now, following days of attacks over his sexual history from Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Clinton is escalating his public involvement in his wifes campaign.

USA General Motors Co. and ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. are forming an unprecedented partnership that could help them beat their rivals to the self-driving future. Lyft said that GM invested $500 million in the company as part of a round of a USD1 billion round of fund-raising.

VENEZUELA An outspoken opposition leader known for embracing confrontation was chosen to head Venezuelas new congress when it opens as a counterweight to the socialist administration. The newly elected opposition majority voted to make Henry Ramos Allup (pictured, above right) the president of the National Assembly when it is seated today.

MEXICO Three people, including a minor, are being held for the killing of a newly inaugurated mayor just hours into her term in a gang-troubled central Mexican city.
A normative rule published in the Official Journal of the European Union establishes new rules for the gaming industry across the EU.

The directive seeks to address the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing. It amends a previous regulation of the European Parliament from 2012, in addition to various other directives from the EU Council and European Parliament, which date from 2005 and 2006. These measures force Casinos to identify the players that bet or win equal to or more than EUR2,000 (a little over MOP17,400).

According to the document, flows of illicit money can damage the integrity, stability and reputation of the financial sector, and threaten the internal market of the Union as well as international development. The money from such activities can easily flow to the funding of terrorism and organized crime.

All the member states must ratify this directive into their own legal systems by 2017.

On a related concern, the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias (DN) published an editorial yesterday that expressed concerns that the country could be in risk of financing terrorism through casinos. The same source cited a Portuguese government evaluation report named National Assessment of Money Laundering Risk and Terrorist Financing, which identifies casinos, lawyer firms, notaries, real estate companies, offshores and free commerce zones as easy targets for money laundering.

Three of Portugals most prominent casinos (Casino Estoril, Casino Lisboa and Casino da Povoa de Varzim) are managed by Estoril-Sol, a company chaired by Macaus gaming tycoon, Stanley Ho. His daughter, Pansy Ho, serves as chairman of the executive committee of Estoril-Sol.

The Portuguese casino business declined by 2 percent year-on-year in 2014. Pressure for the gaming sector to report illegal gambling, online gambling, and the countrys financial crisis, have been the primary reasons attributed to this decline. Mario Assis Ferreira, vice-chairman of the board of Estoril-Sol, previously told the Times that Portuguese casinos finance 62 percent of the national tourism industry.

In Macau, as of June 2015, Macau authorities had registered 910 cases of transactions suspected of being related to money laundering and financing terrorism.

In the territory, the casino industry is only required to report to the authorities any transaction equal to or more than MOP500,000. This requirement has led the US Department of State to push for law enforcement on this matter on several occasions, going so far as to suggest that the upper limit for this law should be set to USD3,000 (around MOP24,000) in order to comply with international standards.

The local government stated in the 2016 Policy Address that it has plans to review the Law for Prevention and Suppression of the Crime of Money Laundering, although no concrete proposals have been brought forth as of yet.
Hong Kongs leader said yesterday that he was highly concerned about the recent disappearances of five people associated with a publishing company in the city that specializes in titles critical of mainland Chinas leadership.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying also told reporters that theres no evidence so far to support suspicions that security agents from the mainland were involved in the disappearances.

Five people associated with Hong Kong publisher Mighty Current and its Causeway Bay Bookstore have vanished in recent months.

The disappearances have raised fears that Beijing is tightening its grip on Hong Kong, a region that enjoys civil liberties such as freedom of the press that dont exist on the mainland.

The latest and most startling case came last week, when the publishers chief editor, Lee Bo, failed to return home after paying a visit to a book storage warehouse.

Four other people linked to the company went missing in October, but they were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.

In Lees case, his wife told local media that he had called her from a number that indicated he was in Shenzhen, the mainland Chinese city next door to Hong Kong. That has led many to suspect that Chinese agents crossed over into Hong Kong, snatched Lee and spirited him to the mainland.

The government and I are highly concerned about the case of the missing booksellers, Leung said.

Hong Kongs leader also said theres no indication yet that Chinese agents are involved, and appealed for information from anyone who could help give a better idea of the missing peoples whereabouts or the reasons for the their disappearance.

If mainland Chinese law enforcement personnel are carrying out duties in Hong Kong, it would be unacceptable because it goes against the Basic Law, the mini-constitution under which Beijing agreed to uphold the one country, two systems principle after taking control of the city from Britain in 1997, Leung said.

The Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing said Monday that it had no information on the case.

Mighty Current specializes in sensationalistic books about Chinese political scandals and other sensitive issues that mainland publishers are forbidden from covering. The books are banned in China but are available in Hong Kong, where theyre sold at bookshops frequented by visiting tourists from the mainland.

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho said Sunday that there were rumors the publisher was preparing a book on an old girlfriend or mistress of Chinese President Xi Jinping and had faced pressure to scrap it. Kelvin Chan, Hong Kong, AP
Arnaldo Santos took office yesterday as the new president of the Housing Bureau (IH), replacing the former president Iong Kam Wa.

The Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo do Rosario presided over the ceremony at the IH headquarters and highlighted the responsibility and importance of the position. He added that he believes the new president will be able to stimulate a new dynamic within the Bureau.

The new president of the IH said that the nomination for the position is a great honor and a great responsibility. He expressed his awareness that the problems regarding housing have become of a great concern to society and said he will have challenging work ahead of him.

Arnaldo Santos described his purpose as to achieve the political goal of Housing for all, wellbeing for all that has been established by the government. He intends to achieve it by increasing the efficiency of the [bureau] works.

There are many topics that the new IH president aims to address in his mandate, namely the works concerned with the revision and amendment of the legal regime, as well as the evaluation and definition of a new public housing scheme.

This scheme follows the abandoned Macau property for Macau residents (MPMR) policy. It was first announced during the Policy Address presentation, when Chui Sai On recognized that many people are unable to buy residential properties in Macau and cannot apply for affordable housing (given that they have incomes above the cap to apply), and said that a new housing scheme may be established for them. Under that scheme, they would be able to rent flats at affordable prices and later buy them if they so wished.

Arnaldo Santos said that a study on the new scheme has been concluded and will be analysed before being announced to the public.

Another of the issues to be tackled by the IH is the concession of licensing for real estate mediation and real estate agency activities inspection.

Questioned about what his priorities will be, Santos highlighted affordable housing policies.

In response to questions regarding the fact that the previous president Iong Kam Wa has been replaced after only one year in the job, the Secretary Rosario clarified, the department heads are appointed and these appointments have a short duration (one or two years maximum) and since the tenure of the previous president ended, he was replaced in his functions by another person  it is a normal procedure. Rosario also added that the current nomination of Mr Santos is also for a period of one year, and concluded by saying, If I was not satisfied with the work of Mr Iong, he would not have been appointed now to the vice presidency.

Asked why he did choose Arnaldo Santos to be the new IH president, the Secretary pragmatically answered that it was a personal decision. Rosario added that he hopes that Santos can bring a new dynamic and refresh the leadership of the bureau.

rosario says building management is a private matter

Questioned on the sidelines of the new Housing Bureau presidents inauguration ceremony, the Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosario, classified the problems regarding the building management companies as a private matter for each building. He said that each building has its own general assembly that decides on which company they will hire to manage the building.

The Secretary concluded by saying: The government will only act if there are serious disagreements between the management companies and the owners that, for example, lead to the interruption of water supply or other essentials.

The Secretary reaffirmed that the management of the buildings is not the responsibility of the government but of each buildings general assembly.
President Barack Obama is making good on his pledge to politicize gun violence.

The package of gun-control executive actions Obama formally announced yesterday has pushed the contentious issue to the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, just weeks from the leadoff Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. While Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on the issue, both parties see Obamas actions as an opportunity to generate enthusiasm among primary voters.

But in a general election, the gun debate becomes a blurrier political proposition. Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws. The gun-control advocacy movement has gained wealthy backers, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but the National Rifle Association, which advocates gun owners rights, remains one of the most dominant forces in American politics.

Its an issue that both (sides) are really going to want to talk about for the next couple of months, but I dont know how much theyre going to want to talk about it in the fall, Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush, said of the eventual presidential nominees.

For now, Obamas gun actions are a central topic as candidates crisscross Iowa, New Hampshire and other early voting states.

Republican contenders promise that if they get elected, theyll swiftly repeal Obamas actions, which include steps to expand background checks for gun purchases. Republican front-runner Donald Trump vowed to unsign the presidents measures. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that on his first day in the White House, those orders are gone. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that while Obama may currently hold the power of the pen, my pen has got an eraser.

On the Democratic side, front-

runner Hillary Clinton has unveiled her own proposals for gun-control executive actions. At a rally in Iowa, she enthusiastically endorsed Obamas measures, but warned that a Republican president could easily undo his changes.

I wont wipe it away, Clinton said.

The cornerstone of Obamas executive actions is a background check requirement for guns purchased from dealers even if theyre bought online or at gun shows. The new federal guidance aims to narrow the so-called gun show loophole that allows some purchases to occur without a background check.

In announcing the actions in the early days of 2016, Obama is purposely thrusting the issue into the center of the presidential campaign. As he foreshadowed his executive orders last fall, Obama said addressing gun violence is something we should politicize.

The emphasis on gun issues marks a shift for Democrats, who have shied away from the subject in recent presidential elections, not only because of the NRA, but also due to competing views within the party. Clinton and Obama both treaded carefully on guns when they faced off in the 2008 Democratic primary, and the president didnt attempt to pass congressional legislation until the shooting of elementary school students in Newtown, Connecticut, which occurred about a month after his 2012 re-election.

Democratic losses throughout the South, however, have narrowed the number of elected officials in the party who oppose gun restrictions. Gun-control backers also point to shifts in public opinion and the rise of well-funded advocacy groups as reasons Democratic candidates can campaign on the topic with fewer electoral risks.

Actions to expand background checks, for example, have broad public support. A CBS/New York Times poll conducted in October found that more than 90 percent of Americans favor requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers.

Bloomberg has pumped millions of dollars into gun-control advocacy efforts, including donations to candidates who support more restrictive measures. An organization founded by former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was badly wounded in a 2011 shooting, also has raised millions to promote gun control measures.

Theres more organization, theres more capacity, theres more money, said Kristin Goss, a public policy professor at Duke University who has studied gun-control advocacy groups. But asked whether the new organizations can succeed in matching the energy and organizational power of the NRA in a general election, Goss said, Thats an open question.

Associated Press-GfK polls conducted in October and December found 58 percent of Americans favor stricter gun laws. Thats up slightly from 52 percent two years ago. Julie Pace, White House Correspondent, AP
(513) 556-1823



Photos by Emily Jennings and Joseph Fuqua II







Jan. 5, 2016



The sequencing of the first genome involving a cockroach species may one day serve as a model system comparable to how research on mice can apply to humans. In this case, the model could hold new revelations about how stress during pregnancy could affect both the mother and her offspring. Emily Jennings, a University of Cincinnati doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences, will present a study using RNA-sequencing analysis on a pregnant insect at the annual national meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. The meeting takes place Jan. 3-7, in Portland, Oregon.



The subject of the research does not involve the cockroach that sends us running for the bug spray when we find it in our home. The beetle mimic cockroach, Diploptera punctata, is much smaller and is not considered a pest around human habitats. Native to the Polynesian Islands, it primarily dwells in tropical forests. This is the first study of its kind to be performed on this particular insect.

The study involved extracting Ribonucleic acid or RNA  found in the cells of all living organisms  to develop a transcriptome, the gene readouts in a cell, to examine what occurs during the different developmental stages of the cockroach pregnancy and to explore if those changes hold wider applications for other mammals. The four stages of the reproductive cycle included mated but not pregnant; pre-lactation pregnancy; early lactation pregnancy and late lactation pregnancy, along with a male-female comparison that revealed unique expressed genes corresponding to each stage.




TWIN FALLS  2015 was a big year for water; 2016 promises to be bigger.

Surface water- and groundwater-users alike went to bat last year to stop the decline of the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer.

Now its the Idaho Legislatures turn.

The ESPA is over-allocated. That means more water is being drawn out of the aquifer than is going in.

But thats been the case since the 1960s. And now the ESPA now has reached its lowest level since 1912.

Water managers agree that stabilizing and eventually increasing water levels through managed recharge is key to preventing water shortages  and future water delivery calls  that could threaten Idahos economy.

We needed (managed recharge) 30 years ago, Rep. Steve Miller told the Times-News in September. The Republican from Fairfield is a vocal proponent of setting aside state money to build the infrastructure for recharge.

We only think about recharge when we have plentiful water supplies, but by then its too late, Miller told a group of Magic Valley dairymen two years ago in Jerome. The infrastructure has to be in place first before there can be recharge.

Brian Olmstead, general manager of Twin Falls Canal Co., a member of the Surface Water Coalition (SWC), will be watching legislators closely this session.

Stabilizing the aquifer will be painful and it will be expensive, Olmstead said. But, in our opinion, it is now or never.

Last year, groundwater users represented by Idaho Ground Water Appropriators (IGWA) settled a 10-year-old water delivery call by the SWC and agreed to give up a whopping 13 percent of their water allotment  250,000 acre-feet  per year to stabilize the ESPA.

Gary Spackman, director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources, said he doesnt remember a more monumental water contract.

House Speaker Scott Bedke, a Republican rancher from Oakley, bartered the deal, which has many moving parts.

It will take a commitment by the state of Idaho to take the steps necessary to bring the aquifer into balance, Bedke said. Its the Legislatures highest priority.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(HOOKSETT, N.H.) -- On Monday, Marco Rubio bashed candidates on both sides of the aisle for their stances on national security, calling Hillary Clinton incompetent and taking aim at isolationist candidates in his own party who are more passionate about weakening our military and intelligence capabilities than about destroying our enemies.

We have Republican candidates who propose that rulers like [Bashar al-] Assad and [Vladimir] Putin should be partners of the United States, and who have voted with Barack Obama and Harry Reid rather than with our men and women in uniform, Rubio said in Hooksett, New Hampshire, taking aim at Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul in one shot.

In late September, Trump said he supported Putins plan to partner with the United States in order to fight ISIS. The Assad reference, meanwhile, was a subtle dig at Cruz, who has argued that toppling a government and allowing radical Islamic terrorists to take over a nation is not benefiting our national security interests. Rubio believes that Assad has to go.

In another implicit dig at Trump, Rubio said the presidents job is not described in the Constitution as entertainer in chief or commentator in chief or even, frankly, economist in chief.

It is described as Commander in Chief, said Rubio. If you cant be bothered to offer specifics on how you will perform that job, then you dont deserve that job.

Rubio has previously called Trump out for not offering specifics on foreign policy.

He took further aim at Cruz and Paul for voting to cut the defense budget and bashed Cruz for saying hed make the sands of the Middle East glow in the dark."

My question is: with what? Because they certainly cant do it with the oldest and smallest Air Force in the history of this country, or with the smallest Army weve had since World War II, or with the smallest and oldest Navy weve had since 1915, Rubio said.

[These candidates] talk tough, yet they would strip us of the ability to keep our people safe, Rubio said. The attack has become a regular part of Rubios stump.

Cruz lashed out at Rubio in a statement.

"So Rubio's foreign policy and national security strategy is to invade Middle Eastern countries, create power vacuums for terrorist organizations, allow their people to come to America unvetted, give them legal status and citizenship, then impose a massive surveillance state to monitor the problem," said Alice Stewart, Cruz's national spokesperson. "I'm trying to figure out if it is more incoherent than dangerous or vice versa."

Rubio also bashed Obama's foreign policy and said Clinton "lied to our faces" during the Benghazi hearings.

"No one in the mainstream media has the courage to call her out for it," he said. "If I am our nominee, voters will be reminded of it time and time again."

This was Rubios first foreign-policy speech since November.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
EAGLE PASS, Texas  A Mexican citizen who pleaded guilty to rape nearly a decade ago in Twin Falls was arrested in Texas and charged with illegally reentering the country after being deported.

U.S. Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass arrested Antonio Beltran-Ayala, 34, near a ranch while on patrol Sunday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Spokesman Dennis Smith said in a statement. During processing, the agents discovered Beltran-Ayala served time in an Idaho prison for rape.

Beltran-Ayala pleaded guilty to rape in Twin Falls Feb. 6, 2006, and was sentenced to one to four years in prison, online court records said. He was released from state prison Aug. 26, 2009.

He was deported after his prison sentence was over, Smith said. He was also deported in both 2014 and 2015.

Apprehensions like this help keep our families and communities safe, Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodolfo Karisch said in a statement.

Beltran-Ayala now faces a federal charge of reentry after deportation, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, Smith said.
BURLEY  A Burley man accused of fracturing a 3-month-old girls eye socket causing her brain to bleed has made a plea deal with the Cassia County prosecutor.

Clayton Craig Garro, 37, was charged with felony injury to a child in March. He was released from jail in May after his $75,000 bond was reduced to $1,500.

Under the plea agreement, Garro will enter an Alford plea, which means he does not admit to all the elements of the charge but the state may have enough evidence to convict him.

A hearing for a change of plea in the case is set for 2:15 p.m. Tuesday in Cassia County Fifth District Court.

Prosecutor Doug Abenroth will recommend Garro enter a therapeutic and educational program directed by the Idaho Department of Correction with an underlying sentence of three to eight years in prison. That means if Garro does well in the program, he could be released on probation rather than face prison time.

Garros defense attorney may argue for a suspended sentence and probation or withheld judgment.

The maximum penalty for the crime is 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

Under the agreement, the state may also ask for restitution for the childs medical costs within 60 days of sentencing.

I am guilty, Garro wrote in the plea advisory form. I caused the injuries to the baby and failed to report in a timely manner.

A doctor at St. Lukes Medical Center in Twin Falls said the baby had a bi-lateral brain bleed and an orbital fracture above her left eye. Court records said the baby had large bruises under both of her eyes, her left ear was extremely purple and bruised substantially and there were bruises on her forehead and the right side of her face.

The mother of the child told detectives that Garro was sleeping on her couch in exchange for watching the baby while she worked.

Garro had been at her home for about 13 days when the baby was injured.

Garro admitted to using drugs at the home, including meth, marijuana and and prescription pain pills. He told police he was carrying the baby out to change her clothes when he saw someone sitting on the couch. He said he yelled at the man and tripped over a vacuum cleaner cord, causing him to fall on the baby.

He said the baby cried until noon and was very red. Garro later recanted the story and told police the babys face looked lopsided when he changed her that morning. He said he did not call for help because he didnt want police to see the drug needles in the home.

He changed his story again, telling the police that he saw the babys mother shaking her.

The doctor said the babys injuries were inconsistent with him falling on her and they were not caused by someone shaking the baby.
JEROME  A 55-year-old man who died outside a Jerome motel Sunday morning most likely died of a heart attack, the Jerome County coroner said.

Officers were dispatched to the Crest Motel, 2545 S. Lincoln Ave. for a report of a man on the ground outside the hotel having difficulty breathing just after 9 a.m. Sunday, Jerome Police Chief Dan Hall said. When officers arrived, the man had no vital signs.

He was identified Monday as David Lynn Mair, 55, of Jerome and his death was attributed to natural causes, Coroner Gerald Brant said. There was no indication of foul play.

Mair had some previous health problems, Brant said.

Hes been living in Jerome for a couple months, he listed his address as the motel, Brant said. But hes originally from California, from Alameda County.

Mairs daughter in California was notified of his death Monday, Brant said.

Before the results determined Mairs death to be from natural causes, Hall said there was nothing outwardly that led police to believe its a suspicious death or a homicide.

But detectives went to Boise for the autopsy Monday to make sure, Hall said.
Q: Are the majority of commercial orchards still in Melon Valley?

A: Most commercial orchards in Idaho are located in the Sunnyslope area of southern Idaho between Caldwell and Marsing and in the Fruitland-Weiser areas, said Leah Clark, Idaho Preferred program manager and trade specialist for the Idaho Department of Agriculture.

Melon Valley is between Buhl and Hagerman, from Clear Lake Dam to Box Canyon. According to the report The Catastrophic Late Pleistocene Bonneville Flood in the Snake River Plain, Idaho by Harold E. Malde, Melon Valley is about 2 miles wide and 3 miles long. The Melon Valley section is located between miles 155 to 162 on the Snake River.

Although, Clark said, there is at least one commercial orchard in that area, it was too far east of Maldes boundaries.

According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, the county data reports there are 482 orchards in Idaho. The Magic Valley produces 37 orchards with the majority in Twin Falls and Gooding Counties.

Blaine: 2

Camas: 0

Cassia: 2

Gooding: 15

Jerome: 1

Lincoln: 0

Minidoka: 0

Twin Falls: 17

Amanda Hatfield, at the Buhl Public Library, said Melon Valley is named after the melon gravel in the area. Apparently, geologists observed a patch of boulders as petrified watermelons.

The Melon Gravel consists of deposits of boulders and sand left by the Bonneville Flood during its passage down the Snake River, Malde wrote. The boulders are three to 10 feet in diameter. He reported the central part of Melon Valley is covered by a large bar of melon gravel 7,500 feet long that rises at midsection to a height of 160 feet above the river.

And, the area grows the best melons in the state, Hatfield said.
Climate Change Solutions Needed

The recent series on climate change confirms the consensus is clear among Idaho scientists that the climate of Idaho is changing. The speed of that change is part of the danger.

Yes, the climate on earth is always changing and has changed for other reasons besides human influence in the past. That doesnt change the fact that human burning of fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and deforestation are upsetting the relatively stable climate of the past 10,000 years in which we have built our civilization.

Idaho has much to gain from a rapid shift away from the fossil fuel area. We are the home of INL, the countrys premier lab doing research into the next generation of nuclear power. We are rich in solar, wind, and geothermal resources. We need the higher-paying jobs that could be found in energy conservation and developing our own energy resources. Currently, the price of fossil fuels does not include the price to society for their use, such as the costs of combating climate change and the health effects of air pollution.

Many conservative voices are speaking up for the idea of a revenue-neutral fee on fossil fuels as the best way to reduce their use. George Shultz, former secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, is promoting the Shultz-Becker plan, along with Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker. Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center and formerly of the Cato Institute has published a paper titled The Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax. The world needs U.S. leadership, and the U.S. needs Republican leadership on this issue.

Its time for Idaho conservatives to get off the sidelines and propose free market solutions that will build a safer and more prosperous future for us all.

Nancy Basinger

Boise Chapter, Citizens Climate Lobby
Given his position as a longtime board member with the National Rifle Association, former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig would do well by endorsing Hillary Clinton for the presidency.

NRA membership has exploded and gun sales have skyrocketed with President Obama in the White House, and the gun business likely would grow even more under a Clinton presidency. When a conservative Republican occupies the White House, NRA membership tends to drop.

Craig, a hardcore Republican, isnt going to change his party loyalty. But a smile comes to his face when he talks about what happens when the leading Democrats talk about gun control. This year, guns were flying off the shelves faster than Christmas toys. The presidents words after shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., did not have a calming influence.

On Black Friday, and that Saturday and Sunday, there were 355,000 background checks (required to purchase weapons) in this country, a record number, Craig said.

During his days in the Senate, Craig would jokingly encourage Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California  a longtime friend and political adversary  to sponsor a gun-control bill as a way to boost NRA membership. But Craig says that even Feinstein, for all her passion about gun control, could not write an air-tight bill that would put an end to mass shootings.

It cant be done, Craig says. People talk about denying guns to those on the no-fly list. But the list is faulty. A person might be on the list because of business ties with certain countries. People want to take away semi-automatic weapons, but some semi-automatic weapons are used in hunting. People want to control Saturday night specials  something that people can afford to protect themselves.

The bottom line is, theres no way to legislate against crazy.

Despite the attacks on the NRA from the left and much of the media, Craig says the organization is all for safeguards such as accurate and timely background checks and the establishment of greater school zone safety.

Just putting an officer in the school can make all the difference in the world, Craig said. What is the only organization that has spent tens upon thousands of dollars on school safety? It was the NRA. The government didnt do it; the justice department didnt do it. Their answer was to deny guns, or confiscate guns.

Craig does not fit the stereotype of an NRA enthusiast. He owns a few guns, but does not have a vault full of weapons and only occasionally visits the shooting range. But he has strong passion about protecting Second Amendment rights, which is fundamental to the Constitution.

There are some rights that are sacred, and one of them is the right to self-defense and protection of property, he said. The NRA is the most dynamic civil rights organization in the history of the United States.

During a time of emergency, he asks, do you call 911 and wait 40 minutes, or do you defend yourself?

For years, gun advocates have said that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Thats true, to an extent. But for someone such as myself, Id take my chances on calling 911. Im not trained to respond to a dangerous situation, and my one and only trip to a shooting range a few years ago was a disaster. I would not be the guy who could react quickly enough at a shooting scene.

But with training, which NRA instructors provide, I could give myself a better chance at protecting myself. Taking away guns is not the answer.

When Obama talks about gun control, Craig says, take him for what he is  a liberal Democrat who goes through a list of items he must cover as a liberal Democrat. Even he knows its impossible to do, but its a rhetorical thing he has to play, or thinks he has to play.

Craig, known for his expertise on gun issues during his three decades in Congress, has been in the middle of gun debates.

Much of it centers on how you paint the image, he said. I say dont let the government become the artist and define what people can and cannot do.

The NRA, as usual, will weigh in on the presidential election. Its a good bet that the organization will not side with Hillary Clinton  and the odds are even better that Craig wont either.
RUPERT | Lt. Col. Jordan Grant has lived his life in the cockpit, from the skies of Burley to the skies of Afghanistan.

The Rupert native and Air Force fighter pilot instructor logged more than 300 combat hours in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and 400 hours of combat flying time for Operation Enduring Freedom.

Now with the 549th Combat Training Squadron, based out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, hell prepare fighter pilots for combat training and support before future deployments.

Youd have rockets flying inside the base and blowing up, he said. After awhile you get used to it. You dont really think about it too much.

In 2006, Grant spent more than four months flying over Iraq. A few years later, in 2011, he flew in Afghanistan, doing close air support missions for the Army, special forces and Afghan allies. He was there to help out if they were in fire fights.

Missions aside, flying in Afghanistans rugged terrain was dangerous enough, Grant said. Bad weather and navigating mountain ranges higher than the Tetons made support missions risky.

Then there is the risk of making mistakes in the air. There are a lot of ways to mess up when deploying weapons, Grant said. This is especially critical when there are allies on the ground who pilots have to watch out for.

Still, for Grant, missing home was the most difficult part about being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The hardest part is just being away from home and being away from your family, he said. That gets old, being away from them.

Grant grew up flying all over the West in a Piper Comanche plane with his grandfather, a farmer on the north side of Rupert. While in high school at Minico, he took flight lessons at the Burley airport, earning his pilots license with Mark Cutler as his instructor.

Around that time, Grant made the decision to attend the Air Force Academy. From there, he embarked on a career that has taken him to Nellis Air Force Base, where hes trained fighter pilots in emergency procedures and enemy tactics as a mission commander, syllabus instructor and aggressor pilot.

Grant is now certified to fly F-16 fighter jets at the base with an aggressor unit, one in which instructors act as sparring partners for the fighter pilots at Nellis.

One of the training programs the Nellis aggressor pilots lead is called Red Flag. In this program, entire squads come to the base for two or three weeks to practice in a simulated war. The aggressor pilots have their planes painted in enemy colors.

Another program is Green Flag, which Grant called a graduate level of training. During Green Flag, Army units roll across the desert, simulating fighting on the ground. Theres also simulated naval battles. The fighter pilots have less of an air threat in the two scenarios, he said. Theyll focus on coordinating with land or sea components, something Grant takes satisfaction in teaching.

Its important to give them every opportunity to learn, he said, before they deploy.
About Me Mohd. Kamal bin Abdullah I am Mohd. Kamal bin Abdullah, who resides in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. I hold a post-graduate law degree from the United Kingdom. I blog to tell MALAYSIANS THE TRUTH. View my complete profile

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TCF9001 was N564RP according to FR24On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 10:23 AM, Dave Richardson < daveuk@cox.net > wrote:> Last week's movers> Victorville  KVCV> FDX9031 DC10 arr Jan 03 from Memphis = N570FE> FDX9049 DC10 arr Dec 31 from Memphis = N455FE> Marana  KMZJ> DAL9935 B752 arr Jan 02 from Atlanta = N658DL> DAL9931 B752 arr Dec 31 from Atlanta = N616DL> DAL9979 B752 dep Jan 03 to Cecil Field = N651DL> Kingman  KIGM> TCF9001 E145 arr Dec 30 from Louisville via Wichita> Goodyear  KGYR> CP2926 B738 dep Dec 30 to Tucson, con't to Cochamamba via> Panama City PTY Dec 31 as OB2926> Roswell  KROW> AAL9651 MD83 arr Dec 31 from Dallas DFW = N76202> Cecil Field  KVQQ/KNZC> SXA1269 B752 dep Dec 28 to Bangor, con't Dec 29 to Leipzig => N346DH> FlightAware uses VQQ and FR24 uses NZC> other bits> Mobile Downtown  KBFM> FDX9034 B752 made local test flight Jan 04 = N788FD> FDX9050 B752 made local test flight Jan 02 = N788FD> Bangor  KBGR> AAL9707 A321 arr Dec 30 from Hamburg XFW & dep to Dallas DFW => N152AA delivery flight> SAS9259 B712 arr Dec 29 from Keflavik via Goose Bay & dep to> Cecil Field = OH-BLP> Goose Bay  CYYR> N706FR A321 arr Dec 30 from Hamburg XFW & dep to Tampa> delivery flight> Any help with missing registrations is appreciated.> Those not on FlightAware I have try to trace using Libhomeradar & FR24, also> thanks to Chris Witt/Skyliner.> All the best,> Dave.> --> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups> "cactuswings" group.> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an> email to cactus-wings+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com > To post to this group, send email to cactus-wings@googlegroups.com > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/cactus-wings > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout --You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "cactuswings" group.To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cactus-wings+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com To post to this group, send email to cactus-wings@googlegroups.com Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/cactus-wings For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
The inauguration of the fifth is nigh so maybe things are far enough removed from the ruling of the Supreme Court in the presidential electi...
Militants of the Islamic State in Libya attacked the oil ports of Sidra and Ras Lanouf as they try to expand their control in the country towards the east and over oil infrastructures. Their attempt was unsuccessful with both sides registering casualties. Libyas oil facilities are believed to be the extremist groups next major target and analysts think that it is trying to implement similar strategies like it did in Iraq to assure a stable income from sales in the black market to finance its operations.

This is the second attempt by the Islamic state to take over Sidra with the first attack dating back to October. According to the group, the operation to take over oil ports was in honor of Abu Mughira al-Qathanis death after he was killed in a U.S airstrike in Derna, eastern Libya. A crude oil tank exploded during the attack at the Ras Lanuf oil facility.

Colonel Bashir Boudhfira of the army loyal to the Tobruk-based government said they were attacked by a convoy of a dozen vehicles belonging to IS. Explosives and suicide bomb attacks were reportedly used by the extremist militants to pass checkpoints and breach the entrance of the facilities before aerial support of government troops forced them to retreat.

IS seems to be using the town of Ben Jawad that it took over in June 2015 as a base to launch attacks on the oil ports. The rival Libyan governments consider the presence of the extremist group as a threat but have not united their forces against it. Earlier in December, France warned that the Islamic State group was planning to take control of Libyas oil fields as they have done in Iraq and Syria.
As tensions continue to rise in Iraq over the execution of Shia cleric sheikh al-Nimr by Saudi, the oil-rich diplomatic mission in Baghdad which opened its doors last week after 24years increased security around its premises as a precautionary measure to avoid a repeat of the incident in Tehran where the embassy office was shot with Molotov bombs and trespassed. Ambassador Thamir bin Sabhan Al-Sabhan said work at the mission is going on smoothly and they are collaborating with the Iraqi people to restore regional peace and security as well as fight against terrorism. He noted that the security measures around the embassy have been further enhanced with the help of the local authorities for work to continue as normal.

Relations between Baghdad and Riyadh have been strengthening since the arrival of Prime Minister Abadi following cold relations which started with the invasion of Kuwait in 1991. However, the execution of sheikh al-Nimr generated pressure on the Iraqi government as prominent religious and political leaders urge the government to cut ties with Saudi. Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a powerful Shia militia, demanded the expulsion of the Saudi ambassador or else the government will be responsible for the popular backlash as anti-Saudi protests increase. Protesters have not been able to reach the Saudi embassy located inside the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Earlier thousands of protesters marched in Baghdad and Shia cities in southern Iraq, heeding calls by prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to protest against Nimrs execution.

Two Sunni mosques in Hilla, 100km south of Baghdad, were set on fire and a Sunni cleric was killed in a separate incident in Iskandariya. Prime Minister compared the attackers to ISIS or those similar to them before labeling them as criminal gangs.
Hezbollahs newly baptized branch of its militant group known as the Martyr Samir al-Quntar Group detonated an explosive device targeting Israeli troops patrolling the disputed Shebaa farms area. Israeli reacted to the attack by shelling the towns of al-Wazzani, al-Majidiehh, al-Abbasieh, Bustra, Helta and Mari.

The attack was part of the plans by Hezbollah to revenge the death of al-Quntar who was killed in an airstrike in Damascus with the group accusing Israel of being behind it although the latter has neither denied nor confirmed the accusations but welcomed the news.

The attack which targeted two armored vehicles didnt result in any casualty according to a military spokesman but there were injuries. Hezbollah in a released statement claimed that a large explosive device had destroyed the vehicle. Injuries were also registered in the Israeli shelling of Lebanese villages.

Hezbollahs Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah warned after the killing of Quntar on December 19 that the group reserves the right to respond to this assassination at the time and place of our choosing. Qantar, a Lebanese Druze, spent almost 30 years in prison in Israel for a notorious attack in which four people were killed, but was released in 2008 in a prisoner exchange.

Calm has returned to the area but an Israeli military source told Haaretz that there are still believes that many explosives are still on the farm which covers a surface area of 35km square.

It is a disputed area monitored by U.N peacekeepers but the presence of Israel in the area has been used as an excuse by Hezbollah to continue holding on to its arms.
U.N special investigator into Israels human rights abuses in Palestine, Makarim Wibisono, has resigned and it will take effect on March 31 according to a released statement. Wibisono, Indonesias former ambassador to the U.N, said his decision was due to numerous unanswered requests to get approval from Israel to enter the West Bank. Tel Aviv alleged that he was sympathetic to Palestine with Israels foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon saying it was evident that his report would be in favor of Palestine.

With no reply from Israel to my latest request, in October, 2015, to have access by the end of 2015, it is with deep regret that I accept the premise upon which I took up the mandate, which is to have direct access to the victims in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, will not be fulfilled, Wibisono wrote. He added that his efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way by Israel while acknowledging the full cooperation of the Palestinian government. The special investigator lamented that I took up this mandate with the understanding that Israel would grant me access, as an impartial and objective observer.

Israel has been against his appointment since his appointment in 2014 due to Wibisonos pro-Palestinian views before and Nahshon said after his resignation that from the Israeli perspective the dice were loaded from the first day because he could not give an unbiased view. He added that he was giving importance to the Palestinian narrative and ignoring abuses against Israeli civilians.

It is unclear who will replace Wibisono as he becomes the second person to resign after succeeding Richard Falk last year who also stepped down.
Zimbabwe plans to import 700 000 tons of the staple maize grain to plug a deficit after bad weather affected the crop from the current farming season, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.

It quoted Agriculture Minister Joseph Made as saying the Government would import between 500 000 and 700 000 tonnes of maize to ensure the strategic grain reserve is maintained at the level they are supposed to be.

In the meantime we are moving grain to deficit areas and the number of vulnerable people is increasing. The most affected areas are Matabeleland South, parts of Midlands, Masvingo and southern parts of Manicaland,Made said.

Zimbabwe requires at least 1.8 million tons of maize annually and has over the years relied on imports from neighbouring countries, including Zambia and South Africa, to plug the gap from local production.

Agriculture contributes 17 percent to Zimbabwes gross domestic product and the decline in maize production is expected to impact on growth.

It is the governments responsibility to be the main supplier of food, Made was quoted as saying.

Even if the rains were to come, it will not benefit the crops to the level that we will be secure 100 percent on our own, Made said.

In his words, It is Governments responsibility to be the main supplier of food and that will put Government in the position to import grain.
The Algerian veteran, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who recently condemned the terrorist attacks across the world, on Monday said that terrorism has tarnished the image of Islam, noting that true Islam should be promoted to get in the way of extremism.

Cautious and disciplined, our society will succeed in countering all the dangers that can face its children, namely the attempts of indoctrination of youth,  said President Bouteflika in a message read on his behalf by his advisor, Mohamed Ali Boughazi, at the 17th National Week of s on Monday in the province of Constantine, 341 km east of Algiers.

According to him, terrorism misled Muslims and allowed non-Muslims to attack Quran and discredit Prophet Muhammad.

It is our duty, as Algerians, to defend the image of our peaceful religion, because we managed so far to make our moderate Islam a bulwark against extremism, and our country is a universal school of peace and reconciliation, strengthened by the maturity of our people and their commitment to high values of unity, selflessness and social cohesion, he said.

He urged scholars and sheikhs to pursue their efforts aiming at protecting children even against destructive ideas and religious extremism and dispel bad theses and references of terrorism which attempt to justify barbarity by a wrongful and misleading interpretation of Quran texts and Prophet Muhammad Sunnah.

President Bouteflika has paid homage to the scholars, who passed away, and who had devoted their life to serve Islam and transmit knowledge to the believers.
The U.S. State Department has issued a warning to its citizens about the risk of travelling to the North regions of Cameroon.

U.S. citizens should avoid all travel to the north regions because of the general threat of violent crime, terrorism and the targeting of Westerners for kidnappings and murder, it stated.

Since July 2015, the North parts of Cameroon have been under serious threats from the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram that has resorted to carrying out suicide bombing attacks. These have resulted to the dead of at least 100 people.

Kidnapping of foreigners

In the past years, Boko Haram has been getting funding partly from kidnapping ransoms. In 2013, German-based Baptist mission agency, EBM International (EBMI), evacuated all its missionaries and volunteers from the Far North region in Cameroon following a series of kidnaps by Boko Haram.

Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped a family of seven French tourists on vacation in Cameroon. Two months later, the kidnappers released the hostages along with 16 others in exchange for a ransom of $3.15 million.

Also, 10 Chinese workers and the wife of Cameroons Vice-Prime Minister Amadou Ali were kidnapped by the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram before been released after a ransom has been paid.

A special operation led by Cameroonian armed forces along with security services of friendly nations succeeded to free Nitsch Eberhard Robert; a German citizen abducted in Nigeria in July 2014 by the Boko Haram sect.

A military campaign launched last year by Cameroons government to crush Boko Haram has so far failed to prevent Islamist militants from carrying out surprise attacks. A desperate Cameroon recently sought the assistance of the U.S. in its war on terror and President Barack Obama obliged by deploying 300 military advisers to Cameroon.

Apart from its military, Cameroon is equally using vigilante groups to fight the Islamist militants, and recently fortified the groups with modern equipment.
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The Association for Cancer Physicians (ACP), which represents and supports medical oncologists in the UK, has published a new Strategy for improving cancer patient services and outcomes.

The Strategy has been published in the open-access journal ecancermedicalscience, where it is freely available to read.

"The ACP, with input from patients, has worked hard to produce this Strategy," says strategy author Prof Peter Selby, Professor of Cancer Medicine at the University of Leeds and Consultant Physician at St James's University Hospital.

"The Strategy focuses on improving the quality of life and survival of cancer patients towards the goal in two decades of over 70% of patients surviving for more than 10 years."

"Cancer is a common problem, directly affecting 1 in 2 people in their lifetime," notes author Dr Sarah Payne, an Honorary Consultant at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust, and Medical Affairs Manager of Pfizer UK.

She explains that advances in prevention and early detection, treatment options for patients, and understanding of the biology of the disease have led to over 50% of UK cancer patients surviving their disease for 10 years or more.

"Oncology as a specialty has contributed substantially to these improvements over the last 25 years," says Dr Payne.

The comprehensive Strategy is authored by influential medical oncologists from around the UK, who invited input from experts in each area, as well as patient perspectives. It reflects a significant evolution of medical oncology planning and practice in the United Kingdom.

In the UK, as in the rest of Europe, healthcare is under tremendous pressure, the strategy explains, with increasing service demands, an aging population and increasing costs generating pressure on NHS services.

The authors feel that medical oncology is in a place to provide leadership and support for colleagues in all of the healthcare professions in the management of the pressures in cancer care.

"Notably, the aims are to improve the delivery of excellent and safe medical oncology care for patients, contribute to the overall development of the NHS and provide a substantial contribution to the development of innovative approaches to cancer care," continues Dr Sarah Payne. "This is vital at a time of unprecedented acceleration of knowledge, rapid changes in the management of patients and the therapies available and the increased demand on cancer services and financial constraints on the NHS.

The aim is for the strategy to bring about the developments and changes through the actions of its members at all stages of their career and their involvement with policy makers at the local, national and international levels."

The strategy is "a living document" and will be reviewed annually, reflecting the changing landscape of cancer care in the UK.

The authors write, "We hope to be able to show steady progress in the outcomes for our patients and demonstrate the value of the ACP's increasing contributions, as the specialty of Medical Oncology continues to grow in coming years."

Explore further NHS pressures at risk of stifling cancer research, says report

More information: Richard Baird et al. An Association of Cancer Physicians' strategy for improving services and outcomes for cancer patients, ecancermedicalscience (2016). Richard Baird et al. An Association of Cancer Physicians' strategy for improving services and outcomes for cancer patients,(2016). DOI: 10.3332/ecancer.2016.608

Provided by ecancermedicalscience
Diagram of the brain of a person with Alzheimer's Disease. Credit: Wikipedia/public domain.

About half of all patients with Alzheimer's disease develop symptoms of psychosis, such as delusions or hallucinations.

But the pathological mechanisms that underlie psychotic symptoms are unclear, limiting the ability to manage and treat them. Some studies have suggested they are related to the underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease such as the protein deposits found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, but others found no correlation.

A study published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that cerebrovascular disease is a major determinant of psychosis in people with Alzheimer's disease. Cerebrovascular disease is a group of conditions that restrict the circulation of blood to the brain.

Using data from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Centre database collected from 29 Alzheimer's disease centres in the United States between 2005 and 2012, researchers led by Dr. Corinne Fischer, a psychiatrist and researcher at St. Michael's Hospital, analyzed autopsy data from 1,073 people.

Of the 890 people who had been clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's while they were alive, the people most likely to be psychotic were those whose autopsies showed they had more physical signs of Alzheimer's such as neuritic plaques (protein deposits) and neurofibrillary tangles (twisted fibers found inside brain cells).

But when they looked at the 728 people whose autopsies confirmed they had Alzheimer's, those with psychosis did not show increased physical evidence of Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's can only be confirmed through an autopsy, so some patients in the clinically diagnosed group had been misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's.

In both groups of patients, psychosis correlated significantly with Lewy bodies, abnormal protein aggregates found in nerve cells of patients with Parkinson's disease. This was not an unexpected finding since psychosis is prominent when dementia accompanies Parkinson's disease.

What was entirely unexpected was the prominent role in psychosis of vascular risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, age at quitting smoking) and cerebral injuries related to small vessel disease,

About 19 per cent of people with Alzheimer's who live in the community (rather than in institutions) are thought to have delusions and 14 per cent have hallucinations. Psychotic symptoms are significant in Alzheimer's patients because they have been shown to be associated with increased burden on caregivers, increased functional decline and more rapid progression of the disease.

Explore further Negative beliefs about aging predict Alzheimer's disease
(HealthDay)Children who survive cancer may face a higher risk of heart disease as adults, new research suggests.

The lingering effects of the treatments that saved their lives as children may trigger the development of heart abnormalities that might not cause apparent symptoms, the researchers explained.

The investigators found that heart disease appears to affect between 3 percent and 24 percent of pediatric cancer survivors by the time they reach their 30s. Those figures rose to between 10 and 37 percent among patients 40 and older, the study found.

However, while the study revealed a link between childhood cancer treatment and later heart disease, it didn't prove cause-and-effect.

"The prevalence of these cardiac findings might be expected in an older adult population, but not necessarily in this young a population," said study lead author Dr. Daniel Mulrooney.

"Survivors of childhood cancer exposed to cardio-toxic cancer therapies are at risk for premature cardiovascular disease, much of which may present asymptomatically (without symptoms), and require long-term surveillance," he said.

Mulrooney, who's with the department of oncology in the division of cancer survivorship at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and his colleagues released their findings online Jan. 4 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

As cancer therapies have improved, the chances of surviving childhood malignancies have increased markedly. In the United States, four in five young patients now survive at least five years following their initial diagnosis. Adult survivors of childhood cancer number nearly 390,000, according to the researchers. That figure is projected to grow to more than half a million by 2020, the study authors said.

The problem? In the past, a return of cancer was the biggest concern among pediatric patients. But today, experts believe that adult survivors may have to contend with cancer treatment side effects.

To explore the subject, the study authors focused on almost 1,900 men and women initially treated for childhood cancer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Participants ranged from 18 to 60 years old. All had been treated with various types of chemotherapy and/or radiation. All had survived a minimum of 10 years, according to the study.

The researchers found that although almost none of the patients showed any outward signs of heart disease, more than 7 percent had some form of heart muscle disease (cardiomyopathy), such as an enlarged, thickened, weakened, and/or rigid heart. This problem was more prevalent among those who had undergone chest radiation treatment than those who had not, the research showed.

Nearly 4 percent had coronary artery disease and 28 percent had narrowing of the blood vessel or heart valve leakage. Heart rhythm abnormalities were seen among more than 4 percent of the survivors, the study found.

"In our study, we only included childhood cancer survivors exposed to cardio-toxic cancer treatments, [such as] anthracyclines and/or cardiac radiation," Mulrooney explained.

There weren't any patients in the study who weren't given treatment for their pediatric cancer. So, "it is difficult to say if the cancer itself may also contribute to these cardiac outcomes," he added.

Dr. Nicholas Zaorsky, a resident physician in radiation oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, suggested that it's most likely childhood cancer treatment itself that raises the risk for adult heart disease.

"It is known that certain types of chemotherapy increase the risk of heart disease," Zaorsky said. In addition, radiation therapy directed toward the chest cavity region also increases heart disease odds, he said.

"Most likely, the increased risk of heart disease is from the treatment of the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, more so than the actual cancer," Zaorsky said.

That point was seconded by Dr. Stephen Freedland, a professor of surgery, chair of the department of prostate cancer, and director of the Center for Integrated Research on Cancer and Lifestyle at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

"This is basically a modern phenomenon. Because 20 to 40 years ago there were no survivors of childhood cancer. So we threw anything we had in the arsenal at it. And some of it worked," Freedland explained.

"But now we realize that those drugs can cause harm," he added. "So the question now is can we make cancer treatment kinder and gentler for the heart, without reducing its efficacy? That's where a lot of pediatric cancer research is now focused."

Explore further Preventable risk factors pose serious threat to heart health of childhood cancer survivors

Copyright  2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Credit: TheNorlo/Wikipedia

Heavy exposure to electronic cigarette vapor damages DNA in cell cultures, causing genetic instability that could lead to cancer, according to a study by VA San Diego Healthcare System and University of California, San Diego, researchers.

Moreover, even nicotine-free vapor induces this damage, indicating that other substances in e-cigarettes can damage cells, the study stated.

The study won't come close to scientifically settling whether e-cigarettes represent a great new danger, a harmless diversion or something in between. It does provide more grounds for suspicion that e-cigarettes are not entirely benign, and carry health risks of an unknown magnitude.

Worldwide attention has been focused on e-cigarettes as a possible means of weaning smokers off tobacco, or alternatively as a new public health menace. But since e-cigarettes became popular scarcely a decade ago, there hasn't been time to collect long-term evidence, such as the population studies that linked smoking to lung cancer.

The study was published Monday in the journal Oral Oncology. Weg M. Ongkeko was the senior author on the research team, and Vicky Yu was first author.

The new research doesn't prove that the damage takes place in people, because it was performed only in cell cultures, said Laura Crotty Alexander, one of the research team study authors. But it strongly suggests such an effect takes place. Further work is needed to confirm this damage, and at what levels of exposure to e-cigarette vapor the damage kicks in.

She has previously conducted e-cigarette research indicating that the vapor makes the "superbug" MRSA harder to kill.

An even bigger question, whether e-cigarettes are as bad for one's health as regular cigarettes, also isn't answered in the study, Crotty Alexander said. That question bedevils public health advocates who are wrestling with the issue of how to deal with e-cigarettes.

In a statement that made headlines around the world, Jessica Wang-Rodriguez, another study author, said e-cigarettes "are no better than smoking regular cigarettes."

That statement was made in a press release picked up by reporters who didn't cite from the study itself. These press release rewrites were strongly criticized by other researchers.

"To declare that smoking is no more hazardous than using e-cigarettes, a non-tobacco-containing product is a false and irresponsible claim," e-cigarette researcher Michael Siegel of Boston University told the Daily Caller. Siegel supports using e-cigarettes to get smokers to quit.

Crotty Alexander said the evidence simply isn't definitive, in any direction.

"The problem is that we really cannot say that the e-cigarettes are safer in humans," Crotty Alexander said. "I feel uncomfortable saying that e-cigarettes are equally bad or worse than conventional combustible cigarettes, but that is some people's opinion."

The paper itself notes that cigarette smoke extract kills cells at a lower concentration than does e-cigarette vapor, Crotty Alexander said. And it kills more rapidly.

"Because of the high toxicity of cigarette smoke extract, cigarette-treated samples of each cell line could only be treated for 24 h(ours)," the study stated.

Cells were exposed to extracts containing 1 percent e-cigarette vapors in a number of tests, one of which is called a "neutral comet assay" that measures DNA damage.

The e-cigarette extract was tested for eight weeks on a cell line representing normal epithelial tissue, and for one week on two cell lines representing cancers. The extract-containing liquid was replaced every three days.

Results showed a statistically significant increase of up to 1.5-fold in DNA strand breaks, as compared to an untreated control cell culture.

Whether e-cigarettes are harmful and should be avoided can't be answered with a simple yes or no. The evidence on harm is hotly disputed in the scientific literature. And that evidence is minuscule, compared to the copious evidence about the harm from tobacco.

If vaping is harmful, but less so than smoking cigarettes, then smokers who switch to e-cigarettes are making a healthy choice. But non-smokers who take up the habit would be harming their health.

While cigarettes were invented in the 19th century, e-cigarettes became popular only about 10 years ago. Prototypes were developed in the 1960s, but Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, is credited with developing the first modern e-cigarette, in 2003.

So long-term data on the risks or benefits of vaping simply doesn't exist. And the implications of using e-cigarettes depend on who is vaping, and one's personal values.

E-cigarettes come in innumerable configurations, including single-use models and more expensive reusable kinds with rechargeable batteries and refillable reservoirs. They can be bought in liquor stores or specialty vape shops dedicated to vast array of hardware used by aficionados. This hardware inspires a devotion not unlike hot rod or computer fans.

They all contain a reservoir for the flavored juices, an atomizer that vaporizes the liquid, a battery that powers the atomizer, and a mouthpiece for inhaling the vapors.

Some of the criticism takes aim at the vast and lightly regulated market for the liquids, which are made with nicotine in varying levels and no nicotine at all. They contain various flavoring agents which are not well understood.

"The specific substances in e-cig liquids are still under investigation, as many formulations are proprietary information. However, our findings are consistent with previous assessments of e-cig effects on pulmonary tissue and cell lines, which implicated flavoring compounds as primary toxicants within e-cigs," the study stated.

People who have quit smoking within the last year are four times more likely to use e-cigarettes daily than current smokers to use e-cigarettes daily, according to a study led by Rutgers University researchers released in November. The researchers say this is evidence that e-cigarettes help smokers quit.

And a study by Public Health England released in August found that e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than smoking and can help smokers quit.

However, a study released in August 2014 found that the number of middle- and high school student nonsmokers who used an electronic cigarette in the previous year tripled in two years. The number rose from 79,000 in 2011 to 263,000 in 2013, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The danger, say e-cigarette foes, is that adolescent nonsmokers who take up vaping will find it easier to start smoking-the supposed "gateway" effect marijuana is blamed for leading those who inhale to try narcotics.

Sometimes, the same study can be characterized in opposite ways about e-cigarette risks or benefits. That's the case with the National Institute of Health's 2015 Monitoring the Future survey, released Dec. 16.

Michael Siegel, the Boston University researcher, said the MTF study refuted the CDC's claims that vaping leads to smoking.

"First, the MTF survey revealed that despite the huge number of youth using electronic cigarettes and the dramatic increase in use of e-cigarettes by youth over the past four years, the rate of youth smoking has declined dramatically during the same time period. Moreover, the decline in smoking continued from 2014 to 2015," Siegel wrote on his blog.

Siegel was responding to a statement from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids that said the CDC study indicated e-cigarettes threaten progress against tobacco products.

"For the second year in a row, the survey finds that significantly more teens reported using e-cigarettes than regular cigarettes in the past 30 days," the campaign said. It also said e-cigarette makers irresponsibly market to children, by providing "kid-friendly flavors, such as gummy bear, cotton candy and watermelon."

Vaping supporters responded on Twitter to the VA-led study, saying that it's actually a benefit that e-cigarette liquids preferentially kills cancer cells.

They also pointed to the sentence in the study about the difficulty of comparing the effect of vaping liquids to that of cigarette smoke because of the latter's high toxicity.

Another limitation of the study, which Wang-Rodriguez said she plans to address in future research, is that it tested lab-grown cells, which may not give the same results as cells living inside a person.

Crotty Alexander said a new study on whole animals is under way. This should give results more representative of what would be seen in people.

While human testing would be ideal, it runs into moral problems, Wang-Rodriguez said. Exposing people to suspected carcinogens would be ethically wrong. That problem wouldn't apply if current e-cigarette users were recruited. But even a direct study in humans would be more limited than animal studies.

"It's harder to take a tissue sample of their lung," she said. "But I think a population or epidemiologic study is worth doing."

Explore further Health agency takes on advertising for electronic cigarettes (Update)

2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Within months of the start of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals in a sample of states that expanded eligibility for the program experienced a sharp decline in discharges of uninsured patients, and a less-steep rise in discharges of patients covered by any form of Medicaid. In a sample of states where Medicaid did not expand, no significant change occurred. Credit: Health Affairs/University of Michigan

Just six months after opening up health insurance to more low-income people, states saw a huge drop in the amount of care their hospitals provided to uninsured patients, and a rise in care for people with coverage, a new study finds.

The fast, sharp effect suggests one of the key parts of the Affordable Care Act works as intended, giving hospitals a chance to recoup more of the cost of care they provide instead of having to absorb it when a low-income patient can't pay.

The study looked at hospital discharges in a sample of states that expanded Medicaid, using data from a new national source. In all, hospital stays by uninsured patients went down 50 percent, and stays by people with Medicaid went up 20 percent, between the end of 2013 and the middle of 2014.

But the same study also shows the flip side of the situation, in a sample of states that didn't expand Medicaid after a Supreme Court decision made expansion optional.

There, hospitals continued to experience the same or even higher demand for care from people without insurance. The effect persisted even when the researchers, from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, took into account other differences between the two types of states.

"In expansion states, we see exactly what we would expect to happen after Medicaid became available to more people," says Sayeh Nikpay, Ph.D., MPH, lead author of the new study published in the January issue of Health Affairs. "Even in these early months, the shift from uninsured to Medicaid contrasts sharply with the steady demand for uninsured care in non-expansion states. This has implications for the financial status of hospitals."

Fuel for ongoing debate

The findings have immediate relevance for the four states that are now considering expanding Medicaid, the 16 others that have not done so, and those that are evaluating whether to continue offering their recently expanded program.

The stakes for hospitals in those states will soon get higher. A year from now, another provision of the Affordable Care Act is scheduled to ratchet back the federal funds that some hospitals get to make up for some of the cost of caring for the uninsured.

Nikpay and her colleagues, U-M health economists Thomas Buchmueller and Helen Levy, performed the study using freshly available hospital discharge payment source data from a timely new source: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's HCUP Fast Stats program.

Designed to give researchers and policymakers relatively rapid access to data from most states, it allowed the U-M team to study what happened in 15 states where full data from 2009 through mid-2014 were available. The expansion states were Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York, while the non-expansion states were Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

They zeroed in on the period from fall 2013, when enrollment began for expanded Medicaid in most states that opted to expand the program, to the end of June 2014. As more data become available, including from individual hospital Medicare cost reports, they'll continue to analyze the trend.

The researchers did not include data from Michigan, a state that expanded Medicaid but didn't begin enrolling and covering residents until April 2014. But they and their colleagues at IHPI are conducting an even more in-depth evaluation of Michigan's experience, under a state contract.

The findings also confirm what the three authors found in Connecticut, which expanded Medicaid in 2010. They reported those findings earlier this year in Health Affairs.

Other interesting findings

While the study found major changes in expansion states in uninsured and Medicaid hospital stays, it did not show significant changes in stays paid for by private insurance in early to mid-2014. That's also when the first private plans sold on the ACA's federal and state insurance marketplaces took effect, covering millions of people nationwide.

This is likely, they say, because those who were uninsured before 2014 and became sick enough to need hospital care in the first half of that year were likely to have been lower-income people who qualified for Medicaid under the new expanded criteria.

They also noticed some interesting effects in certain states in the study. For instance, Wisconsin hospitals experienced a jump in Medicaid discharges in the first half of 2014 - even though the state did not expand Medicaid to cover more residents under the ACA. The authors attribute this to a "welcome mat" effect, in which adults making less than the poverty level discovered that they were eligible for the state's program, which had already expanded beyond previous federal requirements.

Kentucky, where Medicaid enrollment has nearly doubled since expansion, showed a 13.5 percentage point drop in uninsured hospital stays in just the first six months after expansion. Meanwhile, Georgia, a non-expansion state, saw a seven-point rise in uninsured hospital stays in early 2014.

Explore further Expanding state Medicaid stems growth of uncompensated care
Once selective neurons for Bill Clinton and the lion are identified, a subject can be asked to imagine Bill Clinton holding the lion on his lap. The Mental Synthesis theory predicts that both the Clinton neuron and the lion neuron will increase their firing rate and that their activity will be synchronized. Credit: Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy

While there is general consensus that the ability to imagine a never-before-seen object or concept is a unique and distinctive human trait, there is little that we know about the neurological mechanism behind it. Neuroscientist Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy proposes a straightforward experiment that could test whether the ability to imagine a novel object involves the synchronization of groups of neurons, known as neuronal ensembles. Since the process involves mentally combining familiar images, scenes or concepts, Dr. Vyshedskiy proposes calling this process 'mental synthesis.' His research idea is published in the open-access Research Idea and Outcomes (RIO) Journal.

In the past scientists have managed to isolate and record from individual neurons that fire only when a particular object (e.g. an apple) is shown or imagined. Now, Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy, Boston University, USA, and Rita Dunn, ImagiRation, USA, suggest an experiment that utilizes currently available methods for isolating so-called "object neurons" in the human brain.

Dr. Vyshedskiy proposes extending this experimental paradigm by isolating any two object neurons and monitoring their neuronal activity when these two objects are imagined together for the very first time. If two object neurons that fire only when a particular object is imagined can be identified, then the current experiment would seek to measure the firing activity when these two objects are imagined together. For example, an apple on top of a dolphin.

According to this Mental Synthesis Theory, the subject's brain will trigger an increased firing rate in both object neurons and, more importantly, a synchronization of their activities would occur. "Understanding the basis of mental synthesis can shed light on the evolution of the brain in general and on the evolution of language in particular," the authors point out.

"Since researchers can often identify several object-selective neurons within a single patient, multiple novel pairings of objects can be studied," author Dr. Andrey Vyshedskiy explains. "Furthermore, morphing of more than two objects into one mental frame can also be investigated".

Explore further Neuroscientists find evidence that the brain's inferotemporal cortex can identify objects

More information: Andrey Vyshedskiy et al. Mental synthesis involves the synchronization of independent neuronal ensembles, Research Ideas and Outcomes (2015). Andrey Vyshedskiy et al. Mental synthesis involves the synchronization of independent neuronal ensembles,(2015). DOI: 10.3897/rio.1.e7642
Georgia continues its pragmatic policy with Russia

By Messenger Staff

As the candidate for the post of Prime Minister of Georgia, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, has declared, the pragmatic cooperation policy with Russia will continue.According to him, establishing trade relations with Russia plays an important role in terms of improving Georgia-Russia relationships.Our policy of pragmatic cooperation with Russia will continue. From our point of view, we have made good progress in this respect as the external risks have reduced. Our present trade relations also play a significant role. The Geneva format still remains the main issue but the Abashidze-Karasin (meetings between the Georgian and Russian envoys on trade-economic relations, a format which was initiated by Georgias ex-Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili) format is also important, Giorgi Kvirikashvili said.The opinion and attitude has never been shared by the parliamentary opposition, which claims that Russia will never change its aggressive attitudes towards neighboring countries.They also claim that the current Governments policy with Russia will decrease international support to Georgia as they - the partners - might think that Georgia deals with Russia alone without the need of the international support.Of course, Georgia must remain cautious with Russia, and this should result that the country will not be dependent on Russia in any way.Georgia must especially not rely on Russia in the economic sphere, as this will be definitely used by Russia for its own interests.We must not be cautious on Russia politically, as it has been revealed many times that the country is not a reliable partner.Perhaps the only outcome is that the country will become part of internally important projects and through this way its international image will be improved.Georgia should have relations with Russia, as the absence of relations never helps problems to be solved.It will never help to deliberately and repeatedly offend aggressors, especially when the aggressor is significantly more powerful.
The News in Brief

Supreme Court Head must resign  Head of Civil Court



As head of Tbilisi City Court Mamuka Akhvlediani has declared at the annual press-conference, Supreme Court Head Nino Gvenetadze must leave office.



According to Akhvlediani, he cannot understand the rule the council follows while appointing judges.



He maintains that he sees no development in the conditions of the existing Head and council and does not rule out the preparation of a complaint against the Supreme Council of Justice.



The incorrectly-selected council and improper appointments of judges have caused many problems that will have seriously negative effects on the country, Mamuka Akhvlediani says. (IPN)







Pentagon denies capture of IS commander from Pankisi



The Pentagon has denied the capture of Islamic State commander Omar Al-Shishani, a citizen of Georgia whose birth name is Tarkhan Batirashvili.



A spokesperson for the U.S. Defense Department told Ria Novosti that the information released by the Interior Ministry of Iraq about Batirashvili being captured is not true.



Russian media Monday reported the capture of Batirashvili along with two other commanders of the terrorist organization and alleged killing of several other militants. The source was given as a number of Arabic websites.



Tarkhan Batirashvili has been reported captured or dead several times, but the information has never been confirmed. (DF watch)







Georgian sailors to find jobs onboard 600 Turkish ships



The employment of Georgian sailors in the Turkish maritime industry is being simplified thanks to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Georgia and Turkey.



The agreement, which details the mutual recognition of certificates for sailors training and certification standards, was signed yesterday by Georgias Maritime Transport Agency and Turkeys Maritime and Inland Waters Regulation.



Georgias Ministry of Economics evaluated the signing of the MoU as "an important historical event in the relations of the two countries.



The signing of the MoU created a legal basis for Georgian sailors to find jobs onboard 600 Turkish ships engaged in international sailing.



The MoU was signed in Turkey during the Georgian delegations visit to the country.



Meanwhile, Georgia signed a similar Memorandum with Korea in March this year, which created conditions for Georgian sailors to be employed within the Korean maritime industry. (Agenda.ge)







Ramzan Kadyrov: I have a bone to pick with Tarkhan Batirashvili



As Chechnyas leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said, he has a personal enmity with ISIS member Tarkhan Batirashvili, now known as Omar al-Shishan. According to Russian media, Kadyrov said his people continue working with the aim to kill Batirashvili.



According to Kadyrov, he does not believe one of the ISIS leaders, Tarkhan Batirashvili was detained in Iraq.



We were sure he was killed. He was badly wounded and almost dead. My people took a photo of him lying there and sent it to me. It seems he survived. I think it was necessary for it to happen that way, but I cannot believe he is detained or dead until there not being any proof, Kadyrov said,



According to him, a bad end awaits Batirashvili.



Our man was in a hurry when he informed us of his death. But my people continue working. I have a bone to pick with Batirashvili, he said.



Yesterday, Russian media reported that the ISIS leader was detained in Iraq, but Pentagon did not confirm this information. (IPN)




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@PatriciaMazzei

Which Republican rival are Marco Rubio's allies worried about? Right now, it looks like Chris Christie.

Conservative Solutions PAC, which backs the Florida senator, said Monday it will start airing to TV ads attacking the New Jersey governor. The spots will run in New Hampshire, where Christie, who has focused solely on that state, has jumped ahead of Rubio in some polls.

"Chris Christie: High taxes. Weak economy. Scandals. Not what we need in the White House," one of the ads concludes. The other one kicks off with, "Chris Christie could well be Obama's favorite Republican governor."

Christie was asked about the ads on Bloomberg TV:

"Well, I guess, I just wonder what happened to the Marco who so indignantly looked at Jeb Bush and said, 'I guess someone must have convinced you that going negative against me helps you,'" Christie said. "I guess that same person now must have convinced Marco that going negative against Chris Christie is what he needs to do." (The super PAC is not legally allowed to coordinate with Rubio's campaign.)

"Fact is, listen, I stand by my record as governor of New Jersey - it's a good one," Christie continued. "We just had the greatest private sector job growth year New Jersey has had in 15 years. We have nearly cut unemployment in half and, let me just finish this, I think this is really important that, you know, if Senator Rubio would just show up for work every once in awhile, he's only got one job. He's got to cast votes in the United States Senate. If he thinks that's a worthless job, which he has basically said before, he should resign it; if he doesn't, then he should show up and go and vote. I work everyday for the people of New Jersey as governor, happy to have this conversation with Senator Rubio any time."
@PatriciaMazzei

The Miami-Dade County Republican Party official embroiled in an internecine feud over his endorsement of Ted Cruz for president is gearing up to fight his colleagues' push to oust him from his position.

Manny Roman, the party's vice-chairman, has drawn the support of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida, a libertarian-leaning group within the state party. Liberty Caucus Chairman Bob White said in a statement late Sunday that he wrote Republican Party of Florida Chairman Blaise Ingoglia urging him to put an end to a planned Miami-Dade vote Thursday to remove Roman from his post for publicly taking sides in the GOP presidential primary.

"The charge is that the vice chairman violated a rule that party leaders must remain neutral in primaries," White wrote. "We both know there is no such rule; certainly not an RPOF rule and I understand there is no Dade county rule either."

RPOF spokesman Wadi Gaitan did not comment.

Roman wrote in a letter to the Miami Herald editor last month that he would back Cruz, the Texas senator, over local favorites Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Angry local Republicans swiftly moved to schedule a vote against Roman, citing a loyalty oath required from party members that prohibits officers from endorsing one Republican over another.

That hasn't stopped party executive committee members across the state from getting involved in GOP presidential campaigns. White noted Donald Trump's Florida campaign chairman Joe Grueters also heads the Sarasota County GOP. Roman pointed out that Miami-Dade GOP recording secretary Corey Breier is one of Rubio's Miami-Dade campaign chairmen.
@PatriciaMazzei

The No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives told political donors he doesn't want two potential South Florida candidates to run for Congress because they would compete with the only person who has filed to run so far.

Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who backs Annette Taddeo to challenge Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, headlined a fundraiser Saturday at Taddeo's home. He appears to have been secretly recorded. The audio was obtained by America Rising, a conservative super PAC.

In his remarks, Hoyer made reference to former Rep. Joe Garcia and Andrew Korge, son of Democratic fundraiser Chris Korge. Both Garcia and the younger Korge have been mulling their own candidacies.

"I want you to tell Chris," Hoyer begins in the recording, apparently referring to Andrew Korge, "and I want you to tell Joe, 'Look, this is not about personalities. This is about our best opportunity. Annette Taddeo, I tell you, is our best opportunity to win a seat in South Florida... That's why I told you I contributed. Joe Garcia is my friend; I'm not down here against Joe Garcia. But I will tell you, I don't want him to run, because I want to maximize our opportunity."

America Rising posted the audio online, along with an introduction. "While Democratic leaders are struggling to recruit viable candidates across the country, they still find time to push their heavy-handed agenda in local politics," the super PAC wrote. "The Democratic voters in Floridas 26th District deserve the opportunity to support the candidate who suits them best, not the Washington establishment."

In a statement to the Herald, Korge took a swipe at establishment Democrats -- and Taddeo.

"Leave it to the Washington insiders to think that backing someone who has lost all three of her races is a winning strategy," he said.

In an interview with the Miami Herald, Garcia said Democrats "all want the same thing:someone who represents the interests of South Florida. Carlos has voted for Republicans and for Washington. Steny Hoyer, Annette Taddeo, Chris Korge and Andrew Korge are all good friends of mine, but this election shouldn't be decided by the leaders in Washington."

Garcia said he still hasn't made up his mind about the race: "I'm thinking, but I'm not deciding anything. There is no question that I loved representing the people of South Florida."
@PatriciaMazzei

The sprint toward the first presidential caucuses and primaries next month has brought a darker tone to political advertising, including from Miami Republicans Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

Rubio's latest ad, airing in early states, hits a number of issues that matter to conservative voters: military spending, Planned Parenthood, Israel, Iran, guns....

"Barack Obama released terrorists from Guantanamo, and now they are plotting to attack us," the ad begins. It ends with: "While ISIS is beheading people, burning them in cages, he says climate change is our greatest threat."

Bush's ad, airing in New Hampshire, is focused on defeating ISIS. "Serious times require serious leadership," Bush says.
The Florida Senate on Tuesday renumbered all 40 of its districts to comply with a judge's order, and in doing so keeps alive the goal of a Pasco senator, Republican Wilton Simpson, to be Senate president in 2020.

But the wealthy egg farmer's path to the the presidency got a lot more complicated. He'll have to either face a fellow GOP senator, John Legg, or move south and build a new political base in parts of two other counties.

The Senate called on the staff of the state auditor general's office to randomly sort the 40 districts into two groups of 20 even-numbered and 20 odd-numbered districts. The districts had been given temporary numbers on a map approved by Circuit Judge George Reynolds III that had been drawn by the League of Women Voters. Senate staff members then assigned new numbers to all 40 districts, and those are the numbers that will be used until the 2022 redistricting.

Purely by chance, the last of the 20 even-numbered districts given an even number was tentatively numbered District 18, which was renumbered as District 10 and could play an important role in Tampa Bay politics.

Legg, R-New Port Richey and a popular fixture in Pasco politics, immediately said he would run for the new District 10, which includes parts of Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties.

"It's kind of my old stomping grounds, where I grew up," Legg said.

Simpson would have to run against Legg in that district or move to the new District 20, which includes portions of Pasco, Hillsborough and Polk counties.

-- With reporting by Jeremy Wallace, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
@JeremySWallace

State Sen. Wilton Simpson is not moving under any circumstances, saying suggestions he might move to a new district to avoid facing another incumbent and preserve his status as a future Senate leader nonsense.

Simpson, R-Trilby, said he will run for re-election in a the new district where his present home and farm is located, but which also includes the home of Sen. John Legg, R-Trinity, who also plans to seek re-election. Legg said he's running for re-election and suggested Simpson could move south into a different district to avoid a primary fight that has been made possible because of the latest turn in the states years long redistricting saga.

"I've raised my family here," Simpson said. "I've spent a lof of my life here. My intention is to run where my seat has been drawn. This is a good seat."

A state court adopted new redistricting maps last week that put Legg and Simpson into the same district. On Tuesday, the Legislature assigned district numbers to the 40 districts adopted by the court, putting Simpson and Legg into what is the new 10th District. That district will include all of Citrus and Hernando counties, plus most of central and northeastern Pasco County.

A Simpson-Legg Republican primary battle could have a lot more riding on it than just who represents Trinity, Land OLakes and Trilby. Simpson is in line to become the Florida Senate President in 2021 - marking potentially the first time ever Pasco County would have a resident in that powerful position. But if Legg were to defeat Simpson in a primary, that possibility would be over.
Though I visited as many people as I could during my three days in Northern VA, the primary reason for going to Nova at all was actually t...
"The wonderful Middle East Institute blogger Michael Collins Dunn noted the other day

, the former Egyptian Defense Minister and Intelligence chief . . ."

 Marc Lynch,

Foreign Policy

"Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of

. He also blogs. His

summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly.

 Gary Sick,

Gary's Choices

"Since were not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does

, Ill just point you over

. Its a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well."

 alle,

Maghreb Politics Review

"And bookmark that blog! Good posts, long posts, fast pace."



again.

"Ive followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institutes

since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense.

 davidroberts at

The Gulf Blog

"Michael Collins Dunn over at the indefatigable and ever-informative

puts forward an

focusing on what he sees to be some level of distortion of coverage of the Yemani conflict. "

 davidroberts at

The Gulf Blog

"What's amazing about this blog is not just the range of subjects covered but the clear expertise of the blogger in discussing them."

 John T., commenting on

"Time Out for Something Completely Different: Punic and Berber Influences on Etruscan?"

"Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious

, wrote an interesting '

' on the Berriane violence at his

. It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . .

 kal,

Middle East JournalMiddle East Institute Editors Blog
To those who as yet fail to condemn the most corrupt Maltese government of all time: Malta 's institutions have collapsed, rule of law ...
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- If youre looking for the greatest hits of Donald Trumps presidential campaign, look no further: The Republican front-runners first television ad highlights the core positions that have thrust the real estate moguls unconventional 2016 bid into the spotlight.

The new 30-second spot unveiled this morning underscores his position to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, as well as his repeated calls to build a wall along the southern border to stop undocumented immigration.

"In terms of its content, if anyone had missed what Trump believed, this ad is telling them," explained Ken Goldstein, a professor at the University of San Francisco and an ABC News consultant. "Its not trying to tell people other stuff or introduce another face of Donald Trump...but its trying to introduce those people who still havent heard his messages amplified over the free media."

Trump told CBS' Face the Nation Sunday that he's "probably wasting money" with the ad. "I don't think I need the ads but I'm doing them," he said in the interview. "I almost feel guilty.

Ordinarily politicians use ads to say things they havent said in their speeches, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The ad is confirming things that hes said repeatedly in speeches. What he cant do in these speeches is attach the visuals.

Although the ad does contain a brief image of his main Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the spot avoids any major criticism of Clinton or other Republican candidates.

"The politicians can pretend its something else, but Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism," a voice reads in the ad. "Thats why hes calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out whats going on. Hell quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And hell stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for."

Republican primary voters across the country name national security and foreign policy as two of the most important issues of the 2016 election.

Jamieson says the national news coverage of the ad is more likely to make an impact than the actual ad buy itself. "Hes basically getting another news cycle out of this," she said.

Its going to link evocative visuals with a familiar message, she said. "Hes showing visuals of people presumably crossing the border to his claim about building a wall. If he now continues to say, 'Im going to build a wall,' he's already gotten all the news hes gotten. Now hes attached pictures to it."

Trump has spent very little of his own money on his campaign, although other campaigns and outside groups have spent tens of millions of dollars so far.

"The biggest story has been the dog that hasnt barked," said Goldstein. "Its Jan. 4 and this is the first time were talking about a Trump ad."

But Goldstein said the ad may shed more light on Trump's strategy than the content of the spot.

"Sometimes we think too much. I think he sort of figured, 'Its 30 days now [until the Iowa caucuses]. I should probably air an ad,'" Goldstein said. "Lets see what ad No. 2 is. That will be a big tell on how confident they are or whether they are nervous about other people."

Its not clear whether this $4 million TV ad was paid by Trump personally or from donors. Trump had raised roughly $4 million from donors since he announced his candidacy. Campaign fundraising numbers from the last three months havent yet been released.

The ad has drawn criticism from Democrats. Donald Trumps new ad is more of the same disgusting and offensive demagoguery weve come to expect from the GOP front-runner, said Justin Barasky, communications director at the pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA.

Trump leads most national polls by double-digit margins but remains locked in a close battle with Ted Cruz in the crucial state of Iowa. The real estate mogul plans to drop roughly $1 million per week for the next month for television ads in the Hawkeye State.

He will also drop similar money in New Hampshire, where a victory for his campaign is critical. A Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University poll in the Granite State in mid-December showed Trump with 26 percent support of state Republicans, compared to 12 percent Marco Rubio and Cruz.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
"The Hateful Eight" is not for the faint at heart. What Quentin Tarantino movie is? But while cinema's favorite cinephile is up to some of his old tricks in his eighth feature, this over three-hour-long drawing room thriller also feels like a step forward for the wayward enfant terrible  a step toward maturity.

That's not to say he's mellowed. You need only spend a minute with 87-year-old Ennio Morricone's throbbing, malicious score to know that to be true. Instead, Tarantino shows relaxed power with "The Hateful Eight." It's easy authority that's less manic than the cinematic language we've grown to expect from him. And it still packs a punch to the gut, or, in the spirit of Jennifer Jason Leigh's murderous prisoner, some repeated blows to the head.

This tale of eight unsavory creatures stranded in a one-room haberdashery in the middle of a nasty Wyoming blizzard is in no hurry to get where it's going, and the audience is better off for it.

It's a whodunit when no one has done anything yet  more like a who's gonna do it, and what exactly are they gonna do. Everyone is bad, everyone has a secret, and everyone is the hero of their own story.

There's Samuel L. Jackson as the hyper literate bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren who carries a personal letter from Abraham Lincoln in his coat pocket; Kurt Russell as the violently affable John Ruth who's transporting a prisoner to town to be hanged for a $10,000 bounty; Leigh as said prisoner; Daisy Domergue, whose bloody Cheshire grin says more than any monologue ever could. Walton Goggins plays Chris Mannix, the soon-to-be sheriff who may be a master manipulator or just plain dumb; Demian Bechir is Bob, who runs the Haberdashery; Michael Madsen as Joe Gage, the menacingly quiet one in the corner; Tim Roth as Oswaldo Mobray, a British hangman who seems like a Christoph Waltz stand-in before he finds his groove; and Bruce Dern as an ornery Confederate general, wondering what's become of his life now that the war is done.

It seems like a lot, but it's really not. That's the brilliance of Tarantino. Each of his characters is so distinctive, so rich, that they pop off the screen as soon as you meet them. It is refreshing when so many ensemble movies seem to confuse character development with something more akin to "here's a famous person who you'll remember." Vivid costuming work from Courtney Hoffman only adds to their uniqueness.

Tarantino also keeps you on the edge of your seat wondering who to trust, or, at the very least, side with. It changes every 15 minutes as the mystery unravels, and then explodes.

The conversations are as nimble as ever, whether they're talking coffee, war, or the benefits of transporting prisoners dead or alive.

A big deal has been made about the presentation of "The Hateful Eight." Tarantino and his cinematographer Robert Richardson shot the film in Ultra Panavision 70, a basically dead format that was used on only a few films, such as "Mutiny on the Bounty."

It's hard to see how that's not mostly posturing as most of the film is set in one room, but it does add a theatrical wonder to it all even if the "glorious 70mm" depends a great deal on the individual projectionist. In the screening I attended, the film was so blurry that they switched to digital at intermission. For what it's worth, the digital looked great.

Besides, we need Tarantino to go all out in whatever ways he deems necessary even if we don't always understand it. If he didn't he wouldn't be Tarantino and we'd be missing out.
POLSON  A teenager wanted in connection with a Dec. 14 shooting in Pablo, who eluded authorities for 11 days after the incident, will appear in District Court here Thursday.

Prosecutors will ask a judge to allow them to charge Isaac Fleming, 17, as an adult, and with four felonies, according to court documents.

Lake County Sheriff Don Bell said Fleming was arrested at a Pablo residence on Christmas Day by Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Police.

Two women have also been charged after one of them allegedly shot the mother of Flemings girlfriend.

The bullet struck Karen Finley in a bone, was deflected through Finleys lung and wound up lodged against her spine, according to an affidavit filed by Deputy Lake County Attorney Benjamin Anciaux. The victim survived.

Ashley Rae Hewankorn, 28, is charged with Finleys shooting.

Anciauxs affidavit alleges that Fleming fired two shots at a different resident of the same house, Matthew Hawkins, a day earlier. It also alleges that Fleming returned with the two women, and brought the gun, on Dec. 14.

The Lake County Attorneys Office accuses Fleming of entering the residence with the gun and aiming it at Hawkins. It alleges that Fleming gave the gun to Hewankorn when Hawkins attempted to take the weapon from him, and says Fleming then hit Hawkins in the head.

The affidavit says Hawkins pursued Fleming and Hewankorn outside to their vehicle, and broke out a window of the car with a hammer.

Thats when Hewankorn allegedly exited the car and aimed the gun at Hawkins, who took off running.

At that point, the affidavit says, Finley came to the door of the home and yelled at Hewankorn. Hewankorn, the affidavit says, turned, pointed the gun at Finley and fired.

***

Fleming is charged with two counts of assault with a weapon, one count of aggravated assault and one count of aggravated burglary.

The state hereby exercises its discretion to file in District Court prior to formal proceedings in youth court as the youth is more than 16 years old at the time of the conduct alleged to be unlawful and the unlawful acts would, if (they) had been committed by an adult, constitute two counts of assault with a weapon, aggravated assault and aggravated burglary, according to the document.

Both a transfer hearing and arraignment are scheduled before District Judge Kim Christopher on Thursday.

Hewankorn is scheduled to be arraigned before District Judge James Manley on Wednesday. She faces three felonies  assault with a weapon, aggravated assault and aggravated burglary  from the Dec. 14 incident, and already had seven other felony charges pending against her.

Five are burglary charges, one is for forgery, and one is for possession of dangerous drugs.

The third person charged in the shooting incident is Hewankorns sister, Charlene, who prosecutors say accompanied the other two to the residence on Dec. 14. Charlene Hewankorn is charged with assault with a weapon by accountability, aggravated assault by accountability and aggravated burglary by accountability.

She has posted bond and has been released from jail. Fleming and Ashley Hewankorn remain in custody.

Fleming is being held in the Missoula County Juvenile Detention Facility.
Each year, 900 people help the Missoula Food Bank distribute more than 1 million pounds of food to people in need.

"They lend their time and their hands and their help," said Jessica Allred, director of development and advocacy at the food bank.

On Monday, the nonprofit launched an initiative aimed at taking an already robust volunteer effort to another level. An estimated 20 people showed up at a kickoff meeting for the Volunteer Advocate Program to learn more about fixing the root causes of hunger.

The food bank already feeds people  an estimated 106 percent more in 2014 than in 2004. It is also interested in "moving the dial" on hunger, as other communities are doing, Allred said.

"So, this is just one step in developing a community that helps to bring together people around those causal issues," she said.

Another way to put it?

"We believe that food banking should not be a growth industry," said Liz Corey, who reviewed the new program with volunteers and potential advocates.

***

At the meeting, Corey said one in six people in Missoula use the food bank. The main reasons include low wages, lack of access, under- or unemployment, having a disability, eligibility requirements for safety net programs, and health care costs.

"Income is the biggest one," Corey said.

Corey is with AmeriCorps VISTA, a national service organization focused on fighting poverty.

Volunteers might advocate for transportation to combat the lack of access to grocery stores, especially in rural areas, she said. They might work on changing eligibility requirements for assistance programs that have strict policies.

One Montanan enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can't earn more than $981 a month, minus some expenses, she said.

"If you go even a dollar over that for one month, your benefits are lost completely," Corey said.

***

The food bank can help because it has the data that tell the story of hunger, Allred said. For instance, the food bank serves more children in July and August than it does in September, because kids get more food at school, including food from the food bank.

"This is our strength, in being able to bring these real-world stories to our representatives, to people in Washington, (D.C.)," Allred said.

A bill pending in committee in the U.S. House of Representatives could benefit people in Montana by offering $30 for food per child each month during the summer, she said. The bill is based on a pilot Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer program, she said, and advocates can talk with elected officials about it.

Toward the end of January, the food bank will host an orientation for volunteer advocates, and the opportunities are flexible, Allred said. The key is to have passionate people involved in the community.

"This is where we really are able to bring the voices of people who are most impacted by the issue of hunger forward," Allred said.

Watch the food bank's Facebook page for details on upcoming volunteer advocate program events.
Highway fatalities in Montana jumped 17 percent in 2015. While its too early to pin down the reason, state officials have their theories.

At least 224 people died on state roads last year, after 2014 ended with an encouraging count of 192. That was down 16 percent from 2013 and just the second time in 18 years fatalities dipped below 200.

Were definitely going the wrong direction, said Mike Tooley, director of the Montana Department of Transportation who launched MDTs Vision Zero in May 2014.

Increased travel in response to plummeting gas prices, earlier winter travel conditions, and an increase of the speed limit on most sections of the Montana's interstate highways from 75 mph to 80 mph in October are all potential factors.

But the climb to 224 isnt so severe when compared with the 2013 fatality count of 229, or the four-year average of 212, said Col. Tom Butler, chief of the Montana Highway Patrol.

Its very difficult to pin down a year-to-year change because there are so many factors that go into a fatal crash, Butler said. Saying one year we had an X increase because of this is just impossible to do.

The average price of a gallon of regular gas fell under $2 twice in 2015, in the spring and in late December. Travelers were paying as little as $1.88 in Polson during the past weekend. In Missoula, most gas stations were charging $1.95 as the year came to a close.

With fuel prices being down and the economy recovering, people are obviously taking to the highway more, which of course increased the exposure to (accidents), Tooley said. But none of that should be a problem if not for behavioral issues.

***

According to Tooley, the same three factors dominate the accident statistics every year: Speed, alcohol and lack of seat belt use.

Id actually put seat belt use at the top, he said.

The one thing that always stands out is a colossal lack of seat belt use, Butler agreed.

Itll be 30 days from the end of December before the official 2015 highway death toll is known, said Butler. But as the numbers stand today, 178 of the 224 deaths were not wearing seat belts. That means three-fourths of them could easily be still alive today.

The highway patrol breaks down factors in crashes and fatalities into a dozen categories. According to a preliminary report, only one of the 12 reflected a decrease from 2014 to 2015. Alcohol was a factor in 75 deaths, down from 77.

Speed played a part in 77 deaths as opposed to 49 in 2014. Other significant increases included deaths in daylight hours (a 49 percent rise, from 85 to 127) and deaths in one-vehicle crashes (up 18 percent from 130 to 153).

Folks are speeding, leaving the roadway and not wearing seat belts, Tooley said.

The report also includes data for five kinds of roadways  interstate, primary, rural, secondary and urban. The biggest statewide increase in both crashes and deaths occurred on secondary roads. Forty-three people died on Montana two-lane roads outside of towns that are neither U.S. or state highways. That compares with just 23 the previous year. It was a jump of a whopping 87 percent.

Meanwhile, crashes and deaths on urban streets showed declines of 33 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

Most of the increases in fatalities happened in the Havre and Billings districts, which accounted for 12 and 11 more deaths, respectively. The Kalispell district of northwestern Montana saw one more death in 2015: 23, compared with 22 in 2014 (and 40 in the deadly year of 2013.)

The Missoula district actually saw a drop  from 27 in 2014 to 26 last year.

***

MDTs Vision Zero campaign has the admittedly lofty goal of eliminating all traffic fatalities in a year. Tooley said the jury is out on a new law passed by the 2015 Legislature that increases the fine substantially for a first-time conviction of driving under the influence.

Were waiting to see what the effect of that is, but it really should improve the first-time DUI offense picture, he said. If you stop it at the first-offense level, you stop it at the seventh-offense level.

Ongoing attempts in the Legislature have failed to make lack of seat belt use a primary offense for which a vehicle can be stopped by law enforcement for no other reason. Tooley said he always goes to the Capitol to support such bills, and points to the success in other states that have passed a primary seat belt law. Studies show that a 10 percent increase in usage would equate to at least 12 lives saved in a year.

Tooley lauded Sen. Dick Barrett, a Democrat from Missoula, for trying a new tactic in 2015. His proposal kept seat belt violations as secondary offenses, but raised the fines from $20 to $100. It died on a 6-6 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Tooley called it the most promising Ive seen in years for adult seat belt use.

Among Montanas neighbors, Oregon had an even worse report card for highway fatalities, Tooley said. But Utah, Wyoming and a number of other states with similar attitudes to government as Montana are having greater success. He intends to research the reasons why.

Butler is waiting for a three-month view to see what effect, if any, the 80 mph interstate speed limit has had on crashes and fatalities.

Because of varying winter road conditions, its going to be at least into midsummer before we have some sort of trend on that," Butler said.

***

MDTs Tooley admitted the upturn of fatalities is kind of disheartening.

One of the things were planning on doing in 2016 is taking a broader look at this, he said. Not only is it a traffic-safety issue, but its a public-safety issue. Weve about engineered these highways to be as safe as possible, although theres always more you can do.

He plans to bring together top state and county officials from the areas of public health, education, enforcement and even the Department of Revenue to brainstorm.

Weve got to do something different, Tooley said. There are so many folks involved in the bigger picture but tied to this issue. They might have some ideas that we havent thought of yet.

Butler said he was reminded when crunching the numbers Monday that highway deaths are more than just statistics.

We become so numb to this, he said. Thats almost 1,000 people who are dead in the last four years (on Montana roads). We sometimes forget these are people with families, friends, cousins, aunts and uncles. ... Everything in their lives and a whole host of other lives comes to an end one day with a snap of the finger.
We were pleased to read in the Dec. 15 Missoulian that Montana now ranks third in the nation for the number of Peace Corps volunteers per capita, and that Missoula is second only to Ithaca, New York, in this regard. The article rightfully quotes the manager of the Peace Corps West Coast Region as saying she was thrilled to see so many of this regions best and brightest representing our nation abroad. What the article does not mention, however, is the important role played by the University of Montana in contributing to these impressive statistics.

According to the UM Peace Corps Fact Sheet, there are currently 27 alumni serving as volunteers throughout the world in countries ranging from Albania to Madagascar, Mongolia to Nicaragua, Ethiopia to Nepal, Togo to Peru, and many other developing countries. Historically, 832 UM alumni have served in the Peace Corps since its inception in 1961, and UM ranks 12th in the nation among mid-sized universities for the number of volunteers produced. In addition, numerous faculty members in diverse disciplines have served as Peace Corps volunteers, thus bringing important global perspectives to their teaching and to UMs curriculum.

UM faculty and administrators are justifiably proud of these statistics, and the recent addition of Peace Corps Prep undergraduate certificate programs is a good indication of the universitys commitment to continuing this pattern. UM was the first U.S. public university to offer such programs, which this year have recruited the highest number of students ever; two years ago, UMs Peace Corps Prep Program produced more certificate holders than all other PCPP campuses in the U.S. combined.

In addition, the International Development Studies interdisciplinary minor plays an important role in preparing students for service in the Peace Corps and other national/international equivalents, or for continued studies in various fields.

Several other programs at UM also deserve recognition for their important contributions to the goals and efforts of Peace Corps. For example, the graduate program in Global Youth Development in the Department of Counselor Education, also the first of its kind in the U.S., is recognized as a Peace Corps Masters International partner. A similar masters level program was established in the College of Forestry and Conservation in 1989 as one of the first Peace Corps Masters International programs in the country.

Over 50 graduate students have completed this International Conservation and Development M.S. degree option and are now working professionally with conservation and development organizations in the public and private sectors around the world. During their two years as Peace Corps volunteers, these students register for research credits and utilize some aspect of their service as the basis for thesis research or professional papers.

In both graduate degree programs, students receive internship credit for their Peace Corps service, as well as important applied intercultural field experiences that are crucial to their future careers.

One of the goals of the Global Youth Development program, for example, is to help students understand and practice the core values of social justice, respect for all peoples, and respect for human rights. At a time when the university is under close scrutiny for other reasons, we hope that members of the community will also appreciate that there are many innovative, impressive and interdisciplinary efforts on campus that are in fact providing valuable training for both undergraduate and graduate students who have international interests.

The co-signers of this opinion have all been involved as faculty and advisors in these Peace Corps-affiliated programs, and view our interactions with those students as some of the most gratifying experiences of our academic careers. As we now see the impressive contributions being made by many of these graduates, we find reason for hope not only for UM and for the Peace Corps, but for human and international relations in general.
I have the answer to President Obamas otherwise inexplicable behavior: Obama has been penetrated by hoards of devilishly programmed nanobots. (For the poop on nanobots  see Eric Drexlers Engines of Creation, the Coming Era of Nanotechnology.) Bear with me.

Havent you often sat in front of your TV and cried out as Obama made yet another decision: What! Is that guy nuts?

No, not nuts. Infected by nanobots. No doubt they were injected during one of the endless coffee and cookie festivals while he was still a community organizer in Chicago.

Yes! While organizer Obama was grinningly thanking disguised Mrs. Griffin for another of her ginger cookies, he had already ingested the knockout drops which seconds later placed him comatose on the carpet.

We dont have to stretch to imagine the scene as "Mr. Griffin," tall, smirking, emerges from the community center kitchen  we can recreate it.

Mr. Griffin: Hon, is he out?

Mrs. Griffin: Like a drunken seal on an icy slab.

Other troll-like helpers gather: Hillary, is this right?

Right, smite  dont use my name! Griff, the syringe.

Yes, the instrument to inject the snoozing Barack with millions of blood-cell-size nanobots, artificial intelligences which suck away his own, to leave the young would-be politician 

An over-baked potato just waiting for our sour cream and butter. Now hell do things that would even make us look like fools. Mrs. Griffin continues, And if ever he becomes our political rival, our control of the nanobots will render him a perpetual simpleton, ensuring our eventual victory.

Groan from the floor, wavering hand: Another cookie please

There it is. There is how a promising young pol became an international dinkhead.

And Donald Trump? Think about it.

Ed Chaberek,

Superior
J. L. Rader (Dec. 31 letters) tried to paint the citizen effort to ban traps and snares from Montana public lands with a series of untruths and misleading statements. Rader used all the typical buzzwords right out of the trappers handbook.

Out-of-state special interests? Hardly; this initiative has always been a Montana effort to end this archaic tradition practiced by a small group of people who kill wildlife for profit. On the contrary, the trappers themselves take in plenty of funding from outside interest groups.

Rader then goes on with the tired old lines of "if trapping is outlawed, then hunting and fishing are next" and "animal rights groups." What a bunch of baloney! First of all, members of Montanans for Trap-free Public Lands cover the whole spectrum of Montanans, including hunters and fishermen. Obviously, trappers have an interest in wanting to draw hunters and fishermen into their camp by tying hunting and fishing to trapping. But I have been involved with the initiative movement from the beginning, and have never heard talk of attempting to restrict hunting and fishing. Raders statement is simply self-serving and untrue.

Those of us representing the vast majority of outdoorsmen want our public lands back, instead of being held hostage by trappers, their snares and traps littering the landscape. Rader further exaggerates, claiming public lands represent nearly 50 percent of Montana, when in fact they are 37.5 percent, a substantial difference.

In the height of hypocrisy, Rader alleged that Footloose Montana is somehow abusing their 501(c)(3) status, overlooking that in 2015, the Montana Trappers Association was found to have failed to report $25,000 of campaign contributions.

Rather than initiative backers trying to, as Rader put it, impose their will on Montanans, an initiative simply allows a vote, which is hardly an authoritarian concept.

Mike Koeppen,

Florence
BUTTE  An Army veteran who lives in Anaconda is one of the leaders of the anti-government militia group that has occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural southeastern Oregon.

Several media outlets, including the New York Times, report that Ryan Payne, 30, is one of an undetermined number of armed men who have taken over the refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns, Oregon, indefinitely as part of an overall protest against government-owned lands and federal land management "overreach."

The latest armed protest is part of a long struggle between federal officials and local landowners and ranchers over property rights.

In addition to Payne, leaders of the occupation include three sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who engaged in a tense conflict with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights.

In 2014, Payne joined an armed anti-government group in Nevada that successfully kept the federal government from rounding up cattle Bundy had been grazing on federal land without a permit for some 20 years.

Bundy was later roundly criticized for making remarks that African-Americans whom he termed "the Negro"  were "better off as slaves" than as free citizens.

According to a June 2014 Missoula Independent story, Payne lives in a cabin south of Anaconda with his wife, two children and grandparents, although according to public records he also has a residence in downtown Anaconda.

He told the Independent that he founded Operation Mutual Aid, "a loose coalition of militias and sympathetic individuals from across the United States," in 2013 with Pennsylvania resident Jerry Bruckhart, "as a mechanism for using the power of the nation's hundreds of disparate militias to defend all oppressed Americans."

Bundy accepted OMA's offer of support.

Payne told the Independent he served five years in the military, including time in the 18th Airborne Corps' Long Range Surveillance Company. When a 2005 mission pursuing an unspecified intelligence target reportedly backfired, leaving his team unexpectedly in the line of fire and without planned backup, Payne said he soured on the military.

His suspicions eventually led him to anti-government actions, such as the Bundy standoff against federal officials that drew many armed supporters and media attention.

"I discovered that I was working for the wrong team if I were in the pursuit of liberty and freedom," he told the Independent in 2014, "because we're the great oppressors of the world right now, unfortunately. We're the ones who are pushing oppression upon a lot of the world. And I have found that out, especially once I got out and I can look in and I can see what we're doing. It just isn't right."

Over the weekend at the Oregon refuge, Payne told the New York Times, "We will be here for as long as it takes. ... People have talked about returning land to the people for a long time. Finally, someone is making an effort in that direction."

OregonLive.com reported Payne "claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents" in the Bundy standoff. "He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move."

***

A protest Saturday in the town of Burns preceded the occupation of the refuge. OregonLive reported that an estimated 300 marchers  militia and local citizens  paraded to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond.

The Hammonds returned to prison Monday after being convicted of arson on federal land adjacent to theirs in 2001 and 2006, reportedly to protect their property from wildfires and invasive plant species, according to the New York Times. The ranchers initially served prison terms, but a federal court recently ordered them back, saying the sentences were too short.

On social media, the protesters have been labeled everything from patriots to armed militia to terrorists.

Payne changed his Facebook profile over the weekend to indicate he is "Response Coordinator at Operation Mutual Defense" and that he now lives in "Burns, Oregon." An effort to reach him through Facebook on Monday was unsuccessful.

While he characterized the group as "not violent," Payne told the New York Times that the militia members had discussed the possibility of the standoff turning violent.

Referring to the federal government, Payne told the Times:

"If they think that's worth bringing their armies in here and harming or fouling that endeavor, we'll just have to read the Constitution and look at our Bibles and see who's on the right side."
BILLINGS  The woman who showed a nude photo of her son's 13-year-old rape victim to a co-worker was sentenced Tuesday.

Pamela Fink Coleman, 51, will serve seven days in jail and be supervised for the next five years after pleading no contest in August to a felony charge of sexual abuse of children.

As part of a plea deal, Judge Russell Fagg deferred Coleman's sentencing for five years, contingent on five years of supervision under the Montana Department of Corrections.

Fagg also ordered Coleman to pay restitution of about $1,500 to the victim for counseling services the girl's insurance does not cover.

Laurel Police Department Detective Jason Wells testified during the sentencing. He said Coleman showed a co-worker a photo of a nude 13-year-old girl while the two were at work together. The co-worker recognized the girl and reported the photo to police.

The girl in the photo was one of two victims who reported Colemans son, Jordan Todd Coleman, had raped them. Jordan Coleman, 20, was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl in early 2013.

In July 2013, Jordan Coleman raped the victim, also a 13-year-old girl, in the basement of his home after she refused to have sex with him, according to charging documents.

The girl told police Jordan Coleman asked her for a nude photo prior to raping her, and she sent one. When he requested another with her face in it, she refused. He told her if she didn't send the photo, he would send the previous photo to her friends and family.

The victim spoke at the sentencing and said the photo became public knowledge at her school anyway, in part due to Coleman's co-worker telling her daughter, who knew the victim. The victim said she felt disgusting and was taunted by kids at school.

"You made me believe I was something I'm not," the girl said. "You made me not want to live anymore ... You made me think this would never get better."

Coleman said she kept the photo to help her son's case, which at the time was still pending.

"Both what Jordan and you have done to me has changed me forever," the girl said. She asked that Coleman be sentenced to six months in prison.

After the victim finished speaking, Fagg told her she was a "bright, articulate" young lady. He added the seven days in jail, in addition to the recommended sentence from the county.

Jordan Coleman was sentenced in March to 30 years in the Montana State Prison, with 10 years suspended, for the sexual assaults of the two girls.

Jordan Coleman has attempted to contact the victim since his incarceration, Wells said.
Have you ever been the victim of a con? I have.

It happened when I was in college, traveling around Turkey with a friend. We were approached one night in Istanbul by a chatty young man who spoke good English. He was headed to a nightclub to meet some people. Would we like to join him? When we arrived at the place a few minutes later, it was empty. A couple of half-dressed women soon appeared at our table, as did a bottle of champagne that we hadnt ordered. (Come to think of it, we were never even given a menu.) Another few minutes passed, and the check came: Between the cover charge and the champagne, we had evidently rung up a bill of more than $500. We walked out of the nightclub not only broke but embarrassed by our own stupidity.

How could we have been such suckers? As I learned from Maria Konnikovas The Confidence Game, people are instinctively trusting: Why not assume that this stranger we met on the street was perfectly well intentioned? Whats more, con artists are experts at reading their victims. Size someone up well, and you can sell them anything, Konnikova writes. Its as true of the psychic who takes advantage of the brokenhearted or the cult leader who preys on lost souls as it is of that Turkish swindler who knew that nothing would sound more enticing to a couple of American college kids than the prospect of a night on the town with a local.

The Confidence Game belongs to the genre popularized by Malcolm Gladwell: social psychology designed for mass consumption. Typically, books of this sort are intended to be both useful and entertaining; their appeal is at least partly bound up in their potential to change your life, whether that means becoming more productive at work or turning your 8-year-old child into a Carnegie Hall-worthy violinist. Unless youre an aspiring hustler or serial mark, The Confidence Game doesnt have much to offer by way of practical advice. (In contrast to Konnikovas first book, Mastermind, which was tantalizingly subtitled: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.) But it turns out theres a lot to be learned about human nature from the cons enduring success. And Konnikova, a psychologist and a contributor to NewYorker.com, is an insightful analyst of the dark art of the scam.

Of course everyone has the capacity to deceive, but we are all constantly engaging in minor acts of deception. According to one study cited by Konnikova, we lie an average of three times during a routine 10-minute conversation with a stranger or acquaintance. Con artists, in some sense, merely take our regular white lies to the next level, she writes. Complimenting someones tie is not exactly the same thing as cleaning out his bank account with the promise of a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity, but the point is well taken: Because we already inhabit a universe of small, casual lies, its that much easier to buy into larger, preconceived ones.
Copyright  2022 HT Digital Streams Ltd All Right Reserved
So much is happening in our schools, we have to blog about it!
"When we started our business, Extension connected us with resources to get the answers we needed. Thats whats so amazing about Extension: they find a way to help you get to the next step."

- Scott Hicks

Cutting Edge Meat Company

In Green County
A Montana Army veteran who lives in Anaconda is one of the leaders of the anti-federal-government militia group that has seized and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural southeastern Oregon.

Several media outlets, including the New York Times, report that Ryan Payne, 30, is one of an undetermined number of armed men who commandeered the refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 30 miles southeast of Burns, Ore., indefinitely as part of an overall protest against government-owned lands and federal land-management overreach.

The latest armed protest is part of a long struggle between federal officials and local landowners and ranchers over property rights.

In addition to Payne, leaders of the occupation are three sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who engaged in a tense conflict with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights.

In 2014, Payne joined an armed anti-government group in Nevada that successfully kept the federal government from rounding up cattle Bundy had been grazing on federal land without a permit for some 20 years.

Bundy was later roundly criticized for making remarks that African Americans  whom he termed "the Negro"  were "better off as slaves" than as free citizens.

According to a June 2014 Missoula Independent story, Payne lives in a cabin south of Anaconda with his wife, two children and grandparents, although according to public records he also has a residence in downtown Anaconda.

He told The Independent that he founded Operation Mutual Aid, a loose coalition of militias and sympathetic individuals from across the United States, in 2013 with Pennsylvania resident Jerry Bruckhart, as a mechanism for using the power of the nations hundreds of disparate militias to defend all oppressed Americans."

Bundy accepted OMAs offer of support.

Payne told the Independent he served five years in the military, including time in the 18th Airborne Corps Long Range Surveillance Company. When a 2005 mission pursuing an unspecified intelligence target reportedly backfired, leaving his team unexpectedly in the line of fire and without planned backup, Payne said he soured on the military.

His suspicions eventually led him to anti-government actions, like the Bundy standoff against federal officials that drew many armed supporters and media attention.

"I discovered that I was working for the wrong team if I were in the pursuit of liberty and freedom," he told the Independent in 2014, "because we're the great oppressors of the world right now, unfortunately. We're the ones who are pushing oppression upon a lot of the world. And I have found that out, especially once I got out and I can look in and I can see what we're doing. It just isn't right."

Over the weekend at the Oregon refuge, Payne told The New York Times, We will be here for as long as it takes ... People have talked about returning land to the people for a long time. Finally, someone is making an effort in that direction.

Oregonlive.com reported Payne claimed to have helped organize militia snipers to target federal agents" in the Bundy standoff. "He told one news organization the federal agents would have been killed had they made the wrong move.

A protest on Saturday in the town of Burns preceded the occupation of the refuge. Oregonlive reported that an estimated 300 marchers  militia and local citizens  paraded to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond, Jr., and Steven Hammond.

The Hammonds were ordered to return to prison by Monday after being convicted of arson on federal land adjacent to theirs in 2001 and 2006, reportedly to protect their property from wildfires and invasive plant species, according to The New York Times. The ranchers initially served prison terms, but a federal court recently ordered them back to prison, saying the sentences were too short.

On social media, the protesters have been labeled everything from patriots to armed militia to terrorists.

Payne changed his Facebook profile over the weekend to indicate he is "Response Coordinator at Operation Mutual Defense" and that he now lives in "Burns, Oregon." An effort to reach him through Facebook Monday was unsuccessful.

While he characterized the group as not violent, Payne told The New York Times that the militia members had discussed the possibility of the standoff turning violent.

Referring to the federal government, Payne told the Times:

If they think thats worth bringing their armies in here and harming or fouling that endeavor, well just have to read the Constitution and look at our Bibles and see whos on the right side.
Evelyn Evie Niland peacefully passed away on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2015, surrounded by family at the Anaconda Community Nursing Home.

Evelyn was the matriarch of her large family, and spent most of her 87 years providing care and upbringing for her nine children, 18 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren. She was a pillar of strength and resilience for both her close, and extended family.

Evelyn was born on Oct. 13, 1928, to James and Loretta Burgess in Anaconda, Montana where she was raised, and lived her entire life. She was the second in line of four children. She attended St. Peters Catholic Elementary School, and graduated from St. Peters Catholic High School. Evie recalled fondly working at the Montana Standard office before marrying Bill Niland in 1949. Bill and Evelyn raised their family in the St. Pauls Catholic Church. She also was a member of the Daughters of Isabella, Fraternal Order of Eagles and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians. A very proud moment for her was when she was chosen to the Grand Marshal of the AOH St. Patricks Day Parade. As a woman of faith, she started every day with a prayer. As a mother, she led Cub Scout troops, Girl Scout troops and provided stability and direction for her lively crew. As a wife she always had a lunch bucket ready and hot dinner at the end of the day for Bill. When faced with lifes adversities, Evelyn projected strength and resolve. She always maintained a sense of hope and was known as a woman with a bright smile and a hug for those she met along the way.

Evelyn was preceded in death by her husband, Bill; daughters, Carolyn (Henderson), Mary Rita, and Leanne, and her sons, James and Thomas, as well as grandchildren, Billy Niland, Jacob Heard, Kaitryn Heard, and step-grandchild, Patrick Eckerson. In addition she was preceded by her parents, James and Loretta Burgess; brother, Henry (Hank) and his wife, Dorothy Burgess; brothers-in-law, Tony Radonich and Lyle Wilks; and her good friend, Jim Davison.

Surviving Evelyn are her sons, Ed Niland of Anaconda, Mike (Marilyn) Niland, Vancouver, Washington; daughters, Cathy Shackleford (Mike), Pineville, Louisiana, Ruth Anne Eckerson (Mike), Butte, Montana, Jackie Niland of Anaconda, LeRoy Henderson of Helena, and sisters, Ruth Radonich and her daughter, Anaconda, Rita Wilks and her children and families, California, and the children and families of her late brother, Hank Burgess, Helena. Additional survivors include 18 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren located in the states of Montana, Louisiana, New York, Tennessee and Washington. Evelyn also has numerous cousins, nephews and nieces.

The Niland family would like to give special thanks to Evelyns niece, Mary Carol Radonich who provided loving care to our mother at the nursing home, as well as the entire staff of the Anaconda Community Nursing Home for their kind and loving care.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Camp Mak-A-Dream, P.O. Box 1450, Missoula, Montana 59806.

Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 7, at St. Peters Catholic Church, Anaconda with the LAOH service at 10 a.m. There will be one hour of visitation prior to the services at the church.

Longfellow Finnegan Riddle Funeral & Cremation Service is entrusted with Evelyns funeral arrangements. You may pay your respects at www.longfellowfinneganriddle.com or go to www.mtstandard.com.
Lynn Marie (Cunningham) Pillman, 65, was born Aug. 3, 1950 in Hamilton, Montana to Charles and Shirley Cunningham, and passed away Dec. 22, 2015.

In 1955, her little sister and lifelong friend, Janet (Cunningham) Haar was born. Lynn and Janet spent their childhood in Cascade, Montana after Chuck and Shirley bought the B&Y Grocery Store in 1952. As with many family owned businesses, Lynn was expected to work in the store before and after school. She later said that many of her favorite memories were of her time working at the store with her sister Janet and her parents. Her father Chuck used the time with his girls to pass on his work ethic and business acumen. In addition to the life lessons Lynn learned from her father, she was a bright student in the classroom. She was always proud of being both an honors student and a cheerleader while in high school.

Every summer, Chuck would make time to take the family boating on Flathead Lake any chance he could. Lynn grew to love Flathead Lake; it was her favorite place on earth. She continued to return to Flathead every summer for the rest of her life. She made sure that her three children, Zane Sept, Janna (Sept) Allie, and Amanda Pillman were able to enjoy the beautiful Flathead Valley, and it made her happy that her children had grown to love it too. Time on the lake with family was sacred.

Lynn graduated from Cascade High School in 1968, she then attended college at the University of Montana in Missoula for three years. She eventually earned her master's degree in Social Welfare from Eastern Montana College in the spring of 1982. By then she had three wonderful children, and she was anxious to start her career. Lynn began her life's work as a therapist at the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch. She soon found that she loved working with people in need, especially children.

In 1986, when her husband Alan (Al) Pillman received a promotion, the family moved to Helena. Lynn spent a few years working for other therapists before starting her own private practice. She loved people, sometimes to a fault. She was a workaholic and never turned anyone away, no matter the time of day. She would often take phone calls from clients in the middle of night or on holidays. She cared so much for the people she was trying to help. She truly wanted to save the world. She especially loved her work with the Federal Probation office in Butte. For many years she traveled to Butte one day a week to see her probation clients. She loved them and came to have a deep love of the Butte community.

In 2000, she married Greg Daly. After a devastating car wreck in February 2009, she fought hard to return to her home in Helena to be with him after spending almost a year in St. Vincent Hospital in Billings. Lynn and Greg spent the last seven years of her life traveling and enjoying their children and grandchildren.

Her work afforded her many friends. She met many people over the years, it was a family joke that you could not take her anywhere for fear that she would meet at least one person she knew, thus inevitably spend an hour or more catching up. She truly would help anyone that would asked her. Lynn will be missed by so many. She lived her life for people. She loved hard, played hard, worked hard, and made those around her laugh hard. She loved, and was loved. Most of all she treasured her grandchildren.

She had a strong faith in Jesus her Savior until the very end, and theres no doubt she is by his side now. She would want those that knew her to carry on the way she would have, with a smile on her face, faith in her heart, and family by her side. Pay it forward and do something nice for someone who needs help today. That was her motto and the best way to remember Lynn Marie (Cunningham) Pillman.

Lynn is survived by her husband, Greg Daly; her son, Zane Sept; daughter, Janna Allie and her husband Nate; daughter, Amanda (Ali) Pillman and her fiance Tyler Cross; her sister, Janet Haar and her husband Jim; Christopher Daly and his wife, Jen; Caylin Daly and his wife, Jenny; grandchildren, Sydney Sept, Savannah Sept, Samantha Allie, Hayden Allie, Addison Allie, Veda Murphy, Jameson Daly, and Hawken Daly.

Memorials can be sent to Camp on the Boulder, P.O. Box 21636, Billings, Montana 59104. Cremation has taken place. There will be a Celebration of Life service at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 9, at St Pauls United Methodist Church in Helena, Montana.

Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com.
Sally Kondelis, 81, passed away in Cody, Wyoming, on Dec. 31, 2015.

She was born in Billings, Montana to Edwin and Mary Cook on Dec. 6, 1934. She attended school in Joliet, Montana and attended beauty school in Laurel. She met Frank Kondelis, the love of her life, and was married on Aug. 3, 1953. They enjoyed 50 years of marriage before Frank passed away in 2003.

Together they had three children who survive her. They are Mike (Ione) Kondelis, Joe (Diane) Kondelis, and Pauline (Eric) Tilman. Sally was blessed with four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her grandchildren are Joe (Autumn) Kondelis, Brianne (Todd) Lindquist, Paul (Stacey) Kondelis and Brandon Tilman. Step-grandchildren are Bob, Keri and Holly.

Sallys passions were fishing and camping on the Big Hole River and cooking. She spent many years cooking for others. She worked in the Butte school system for over 20 years and ended her career at Montana Tech. The highlight of her culinary career was catering the Mike Mansfield reception at Tech.

Cremation has taken place and a memorial mass will be held at a later date. Memorials in memory of Sally can be made to the Montana Tech Arch Maintenance Fund or the Business Scholarship Fund.

Sally was loved by many and will be greatly missed, but always in our hearts.

Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com.
Retired educators to gather Jan. 13

ANACONDA  The January meeting of the Anaconda Retired Educators will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 13, at the Copper Village Art Center. Guest speaker is Police Chief Tim Barkell who will inform us about scams and fraud.

A catered lunch will be served and the cost is $10. Reservations are needed by Jan. 11. There will be a free lunch drawing, 50/50 tickets, and a tip basket. Details: 406-563-5066.

Breakfast served Sunday at KC

Butte Knights of Columbus Butte Council 668 will have its monthly fundraiser breakfast from 8 a.m. to noon Sunday, Jan. 10, at 224 W. Park St. Proceeds will go to Our Lady of the Rockies.

The menu includes French toast, bacon, sausage, hash browns, eggs, coffee and juice. The cost is $8 per person or $20 per family. Details: 406-782-2891.

Grogan completes basic training

U.S. Army National Guard Pfc. Jesse J. Grogan recently graduated from basic infantry training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

Grogan, a 2015 Butte High School graduate, is the son of Shannon Abad, stepson of Louis Abad, and grandson of Joseph Dougherty and Cheryl "Red" Dougherty, all of Butte.
Republican state Rep. Jeff Welborn of Dillon is seeking the seat held by Senate President Debby Barrett, who is barred from a re-election bid because of term limits.

Welborn was first elected to the House in 2008 and cannot seek another term in that chamber because of term limits. The Senate District 36 seat hes running for covers all of Beaverhead and Madison counties and parts of Jefferson and Silver Bow counties.

Barrett, a Republican from Dillon, was elected to the Senate in 2008.

Welborn said he has focused his legislative time on jobs, the economy, building infrastructure and education. But he says hes as proud of his approach as he is accomplishments on particular issues or bills.

Im most proud of a willingness to reach out and make things happen and listen to my constituents, Welborn told The Montana Standard on Monday. The one thing nobody can ever take away is my willingness to listen to everyone and take information and make the best decisions I can.

Welborn has said he has enjoyed a good working relationship with many members of both parties, including Democrat lawmakers from Butte. They in turn say they have been able to work with him.

He cites among successes changes to workers compensation that was simply breaking the backs of small businesses before we tackled the problem. Wolf management changes he backed have buy in from ranchers, hunters and conservationists, he said.

We stopped school privatization being funded with your tax dollars, he said in a public statement and he has been a tireless advocate for the Virginia and Nevada city complex.

The 2016 legislative filing period opens Jan. 14 and runs through March 14.

In Butte, Democrat state Sen. Jim Keane cannot seek a third term but is running for the House District 73 seat held by Democrat Edie McClafferty. She cannot seek a fifth term in the House but is running for Keanes Senate seat.
Congress sent a 2,000-page budget bill to the presidents desk a week before Christmas and then adjourned till 2016.

Montanas two senators are often at odds on major issues, but Jon Tester and Steve Daines agreed that the bad outweighed the good in the year-end budget deal. They voted against the bill  for different reasons.

Meanwhile Montanas lone House member, Ryan Zinke, voted in favor. Zinke discusses his vote in a guest opinion elsewhere on todays Opinion page.

The budget bill also split Wyomings three Republicans: Sen. Mike Enzi and Rep. Cynthia Lummis voted no while Sen. John Barrasso voted yes.

None of the U.S. senators running for president voted for the bill. Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul voted no. Marco Rubio didnt vote.

The deal was reached by negotiators for GOP and Democratic leadership as well as President Obama. But in the House, the deal garnered more Democratic votes than Republican. In the Senate, 33 Democrats and 32 Republicans voted aye. It passed because of bipartisan support.

Montana riders

Zinke cites defense funding as the top reason he voted for the deal. Montana groups representing agriculture, outfitters and oil industry have thanked him because the legislation included riders that are their priorities.

Both Montana senators said the deal is a budget-buster they cannot support. According to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the tax changes packaged in the budget could reduce federal revenue by $700 billion over the next decade and add $4 trillion to the national debt in the coming 20 years. According to Maya MacGuineas, committee chairwoman, the extension of various tax breaks will increase annual deficits for every year to come.

The budget bill aims to improve services to U.S. veterans and even includes some provisions that Tester wrote. He also touted provisions from his Visa Waiver bill that he said will make it harder for terrorists to enter our country.

But when I look at the whole package, my biggest concern is the fact that this bill saddles our kids and grandkids with over $680 billion dollars in additional debt, Tester said.

Tester noted that the legislation doesnt fix the hole that wildfires burn annually in the U.S. Forest Service budget, nor did it come close to permanently authorizing and fully funding the Land Water Conservation Fund that all three members of the Montana delegation support.

Daines said in a written statement that he voted against the $1.1 trillion backroom spending bill that fails to rein in the national debt. He praised the passage of a three-year reauthorization of LWCF, a lifting of the oil export ban and permanent tax relief provisions for Montana families, farmers, tribes and small businesses.

Its irresponsible for Washington to continue increasing government spending and our national debt, while doing nothing to secure necessary savings and long-overdue reforms to Washingtons broken culture, Daines said.

Good, bad and bloated

The best thing we can say about this ugly, belated, bloated budget deal is that the government didnt shut down. But that is hardly praise for the Congress and the administration. Expectations for legislation have sunk so low that avoiding disaster is the best we hope for.

There must be better options than shutdown or cramming all sorts of riders and spending into a last-minute budget bill three months after the fiscal year started.

-- The Billings Gazette
I want to address an issue that hits close to home for me: Oil companies getting a sweetheart deal on Montanas public lands at the expense of our state coffers. Im a former state director of the Bureau of Land Management in Montana, so I know firsthand how important natural resources like oil and gas are to our state. In fact, $16.2 million in payments from federal oil and gas drilling came to the state in 2014. This money went to support our schoolchildren and rebuild roads, bridges, and other infrastructure.

But heres my beef: the amount that Montanans reap should be higher.

At issue are royalty rates, or the amount that companies are required to pay taxpayers for the right to produce and profit off of publicly owned oil. The royalty rate paid by oil companies on national public lands is a measly 12.5 percent. For comparison, Montana charges 16.67 percent to allow companies to drill on our state lands. And companies drilling offshore must pay 18.75 percent.

A study last year by the Center for Western Priorities showed that because federal rates do not mirror the royalty percentages charged by Montana and other Western states, Montanans lost out on between $5.7 million and $8.6 million in revenues. Its clear that Montana taxpayers, who share in the revenue generated on U.S. public lands, are getting shortchanged.

Its time for this to change. Luckily, theres a simple fix to this problem. The Bureau of Land Management is currently in the process of updating the nearly century old royalty rate and is planning to release new royalty rates in March, but have come under criticism from some politicians.

Congressman Ryan Zinke has elected to fight this square deal for Montanans by attempting to attach a rider to an unrelated spending bill. Its certainly my hope that Zinke has a change of heart because Montana taxpayers stand to gain from even a small increase to royalty rates.

When Montanans open our public lands to development and take on the risks of drilling  including spills, water contamination, wildlife impacts and reduced public access  we are entitled to receive a fair return to help mitigate these impacts.

-- Mike Penfold. Billings
PROJECT: LOUISA-MUSCATINE CSD 2016 ROOF REPLACEMENT

Louisa-Muscatine High School

14354 170th Street

Letts, Iowa 52754

BIDS DUE: 01-26-2016 at 2:00 PM

TO:

THE Owner (HEREINAFTER REFERRED TO AS Owner ):

Louisa-Muscatine CSD

14478 170th Street

Letts, Iowa 52754

Architect (hereinafter referred to as Architect/Engineer):

Shive-Hattery, Inc.

4125 Westown Parkway, Suite 100

West Des Moines, Iowa 50266

NON-MANDATORY PREBID MEETING: Tuesday, January 19, 2016

10:00 AM

High School, 14354 170th Street, Letts, Iowa 52754

TO: POTENTIAL BIDDERS

Sealed bids will be received by the Owner at 14478 170th Street until 2:00 PM, Central Time, on January 26, 2016.

Sealed bids will be opened and publicly read at the 14478 170th Street at 2:00 PM, Central Time, on January 26, 2016 or at such later time and place as may then be fixed.

Bids will be considered by the Owner at a public meeting to be held at 14478 170th Street at 2:00 PM, Central Time, on February 15, 2016 or at such later time and place as may then be fixed.

The general nature of the work is as follows:

Complete the roof replacement project at Louisa-Muscatine Elementary School and High School.

The work must commence on or about (June 01, 2016 and must be completed on August 19, 2016.

Bidding documents may be examined at the Architect/Engineer's office, at the Owner's office, and at:

Marshalltown Construction Bureau, 709 S. Center, Marshalltown, IA 50158

Master Builders of Iowa, 221 Park Street, Des Moines, IA 50309

Master Builders of Iowa, 24 North 9th Street, Fort Dodge, IA 50501

North Iowa Builders Exchange, 25 W. State Street, Mason City, IA 50401

Copies of the Bidding documents may be obtained by Bidders and Subbidders at Action Reprographics, 5037 NE 14th Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50313, 515-288-2146. There will be a charge of ($ 50.00) for each set of documents. A non-refundable handling fee of $15.00 made payable to Action Reprographics will apply to all sets shipped or delivered.

Each Bidder shall accompany the Bid with a Bid security, in a separate envelope, as security that the successful bidder will enter into a contract for the work bid upon and will furnish after the award of the contract corporate surety bond or bonds, acceptable to the Owner, for the faithful performance of the contract, in an amount equivalent to one hundred percent of the amount of the contract. The bidder's security shall be in an amount equivalent to 5% of the bid amount, and shall be in the form of a cashier's or certified check drawn on a bank in Iowa or a bank chartered under the laws of the United States of America, or a certified bank share draft drawn on a credit union in Iowa or chartered under the laws of the United States of America or a bid bond with corporate surety satisfactory to the Owner. The bid security will be held by the Owner until a contract is fully executed and bonds are approved by the Owner.

All Bidders are required to provide a statement regarding their residency status as required by 875 Iowa Administrative Code Capter 156.

Contractors using "materials, supplies, and equipment" on projects in designated "exempt entities" may purchase these items without liability for the sales tax. The contractor must have a purchasing agent authorization letter and an exemption certificate from the public entity to present to the retailer, which specifies the construction project and will be available for that project only.

Owner will issue an authorization letter and an exemption certificate to the contractor and/or subcontractors for the purchase or use of building materials, supplies, and equipment to be used on this project only. DO NOT include sales tax on your bid form.

No bid may be withdrawn for a period of 30 days after the date of the scheduled closing time for the receipt of bids.

The Owner seeks to provide opportunities for Targeted Small Businesses in the awarding of contracts and is authorized to award contracts to Targeted Small Businesses per the Iowa Acts of the 73rd General Assembly, 1989 Regular Session, Senate File 2274. For further information about the Targeted Small Business policies, contact the Owner. This project has a target for Targeted Small Business participation of ten percent (10%).

Bidders shall be prepared to submit a performance bond and payment bond and a two-year maintenance bond conditioned on the faithful performance of the contract. Out-of-state bidders shall be prepared to submit an Out-of-State Contractor Bond to the Iowa Division of Labor in accordance with Chapter 91C of the Code of Iowa.

By virtue of statutory authority, a preference will be given to products and provisions grown and coal produced within the State of Iowa, and to Iowa labor to the extent lawfully required under Iowa law.

It is the intent of the Owner to award a contract to the lowest responsible, responsive bidder provided the bid has been submitted in accordance with the bidding requirements. The Owner reserves the right to waive informalities or irregularities. The Owner reserves the right to reject any or all bids.

Published by order of the Board of Directors of the Louisa Muscatine School District, Letts, Iowa.

By: Mike Van Sickle

Title: Superintendent
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The city of Muscatine has congratulated China Windows Group Inc. on receiving the China Integrity Enterprise award at the Second National Credit Ceremony of the Chinese Enterprise Credit Transmission on Dec. 21, 2015, in Beijing.

Glad Cheng and Daniel Wang founded the China Windows Group with the intent of using it to strengthen the relationship between the city of Muscatine and the country of China by building personal relationships and creating opportunities to grow business relationships, a press release from the city stated. Since forming the company, Cheng and Wang became minority investors in the Merrill Hotel Project and purchased the former Marie Lindsay Building at 129 W. Second St. with initial thoughts of using the facility for tourism, historical and cultural displays; and 2911 Bonnie Drive was acquired and developed into the Sino-U.S. Friendship House.

The Sino-U.S. Friendship House serves as a symbol of the old and new friendships between China, the United States, and specifically Muscatine, according to the press release. Chinese President Xi Jin Ping stayed in the house in 1985 when he was part of a delegation learning about modern agricultural techniques. Cheng and Wang are strong supporters of Muscatines Sister City efforts and have provided support to local students in exchange programs to China.

Cheng and Wang were elated by the recognition of their efforts in Muscatine.

It is a great honor to us, Wang stated in the press release. We are pleased with the work we have accomplished and look forward to further development.

This years theme of the Chinese Enterprise Credit Transmission was The Value of Integrity. Representatives of enterprises participated in discussion and analysis regarding integrity, efficiency, platform and culture. Only 15 companies in all of China were honored for their accomplishments.

It was noted at the ceremony that China Windows Group Inc. is registered in Muscatine.

City Administrator Gregg Mandsager expressed his congratulations to Cheng and Wang and is optimistic about the future of the Muscatine-China relationship.

We look forward to building upon these new friendships and creating additional opportunities for cultural exchange, economic development, and tourism, Mandsager stated in the press release.

The Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GMCCI) is also enthusiastic about continuing to build relationships between Muscatine and China.

We at Greater Muscatine Chamber of Commerce and Industry would like to add our congratulations to the China Windows Group for receiving this prestigious award, said Greg Jenkins, president and CEO of GMCCI, stated in the press release. We appreciate all of their hard work and commitment to bring business to Muscatine. We look forward to working with them in the future.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  All homeowners in Muscatine County whose homes are served by a discharging septic system covered under a NPDES General Permit No. 4 are required by Federal EPA Regulations and Iowa Law to have the treated effluent discharging from their system sampled and tested twice a year, according to a notice from the Muscatine County Building, Zoning and Environmental Office.

Homeowners are also required to provide the results of the effluent test to the Building, Zoning & Environmental Office. Examples of systems that require testing include, but are not limited to, Sand Filters, Coco Filters, Peat Filters, Mechanical Aerobic Treatment Units, Constructed Wetlands, or other Bio Media Filters.

Collection of the effluent samples must be conducted only by a qualified sampler as defined by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Failure to comply violates coverage under the NPDES permitting system and may subject homeowners to penalties under Iowa Law.

Homeowners and those who are interested in becoming a qualified sampler to collect effluent samples may attend the Qualified Sampler Training Session. It will be at 1 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, at the Muscatine County Environmental Learning Center, Discovery Park, 3300 Cedar St. There will not be a fee but interested parties are asked to contact our office to register in advance. For more information, call 563-263-0482, email zoning@co.muscatine.ia.us or stop by the office at 3610 Park Ave. West.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Island United Methodist Church, 2598 Stewart Road, will host a community blood drive 3-7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26, in the Fellowship Hall.

To donate, contact Char Thompson at 563-263-8777 or visit www.bloodcenterimpact.org and use code 1882 to locate the drive.

Potential donors must be at least 17 years of old (16 with parental permission form available through www.bloodcenter.org) and weigh more than 110 pounds. A photo I.D. or MVRBC Donor Card is required to donate. For questions about eligibility, call the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center at 800-747-5401. Donors who last gave blood on or before Dec. 1, 2015, are eligible to give at this drive.

Blood donation is a safe, simple procedure that takes about 45 minutes to one hour. Individuals with diabetes or controlled high blood pressure may be accepted as eligible donors.

Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center is the provider of blood and blood components to more than 90 hospitals in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin. Locally, MVRBC is the exclusive provider to UnityPoint HealthMuscatine as well as hospitals in Burlington, Washington, Iowa City and the Quad Cities.
GRANDVIEW, Iowa  Louisa County Conservation will host a snowshoe adventure under a full moon at Langwood Education Center 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26.

Experience the beauty of an Iowa full moon in winter by strapping on some snowshoes and journeying along the trails. Dress in layers, as there will be periodic stops to discuss animals that may be active. Afterward, hot cocoa will be served by a fire in the lodge.

The cost is Cost is $2 per person or $5 per family and all level of skills are welcome to attend. Snow shoes of all sizes will be provided in addition to instruction for how to use them. The event will take place regardless whether there's snow.

To ensure snowshoe availability, register by Friday, Jan. 22, at LouisaCountyConservation.org, rgerard@lccb.org or 319-523-8381.

Langwood Education Center is located three miles southeast of Grandview. Follow the directional signs from the intersection of highways 61 and 92.
WAPELLO, Iowa  Unions that represent Louisa County Secondary Roads and Sheriffs Office employees were presented with an initial negotiation proposal by the Louisa County Board of Supervisors on Monday.

According to the supervisors, the proposal included a 1 percent salary hike for the employees and continuation of all other items under the current contract.

The union had presented its initial offer to the board at its Dec. 22 meeting.

That proposal called for an annual 5 percent salary hike for both unionized groups.

The secondary roads employees had also proposed an increase in sick leave from 120 to 150 days and an increase in the countys annual work boot allowance from $75 to $100. The employees should also be allowed to carry over the boot allowance for one year, the union proposed.

The sheriffs office employees and deputies had also proposed a modification of the countys vacation policy to allow 20 days after 10 years on the job and 25 days after 15 years. Currently an employee must work 15 years to earn 20 days of vacation and 20 years to earn 25 days.

The supervisors indicated they expected a final settlement soon, suggesting some negotiations had already been conducted.

Meanwhile, it may take some time before a proposed sharing of community service and mental health staff between Louisa and Washington counties will be finalized.

The proposed 28E sharing agreement was discussed by each countys board of supervisors last month, but neither board acted on the proposal. Under the proposal, Washington County Mental Health and Disability Services Director (MHDSD/CSD) Bobbi Wulf would be shared by each county when Louisa County MHDSD/CSD Pat Colthurst retires later this year.

Wulf would spend about 66 per cent of her time on Washington County duties and 34 per cent on Louisa County issues under the agreement. Her proposed salary of $82,595 would also be divided by the same percentages, which are based on the population counts of each county.

Louisa County Community Services Clerk Cyndi Mears would also assume some Washington County duties and be re-identified as an administrative assistant. The agreement is scheduled to go into effect on April 1.

Colthurst told the Louisa County Board of Supervisors on Monday that Wulfs proposed wage appeared to be the main stumbling block for the Washington County Supervisors.

Its not an issue with the plan, Colthurst said, explaining she and Wulf would individually sit down with each of the five Washington County supervisors and explain the additional duties and other responsibilities Wulf would be assuming under the agreement.

Louisa County Supervisor Randy Griffin said Washington County needed to act before Louisa County took action on the agreement.

They will be the employer of record, so they have to make the decision and then we agree with it, he said.

Colthurst said the meetings with the supervisors would be held this month.

In other action, the Louisa County Supervisors:

Held the 2016 organization meeting and appointed Paula Buckman as chair;

Met with IT director Chuck Borschel and assessor Greg Johnson for their monthly update meetings;

Approved several resolutions that are routinely approved at the start of each year;

Made several appointments to county boards, commissions and other agencies.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Muscatine County Fair Board has announced that the Muscatine County Fairgrounds in West Liberty has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. Listing the fair grounds on the register will qualify the fair board to apply for historic grants and historic tax credits to assist in the rehabilitation of the historic buildings on the fairgrounds, according to a press release.

In 2014, the Muscatine County Historic Preservation Commission received a grant from the State of Iowa to hire a historian to lead the project. Spark Consulting coordinated about 50 volunteers and hundreds of volunteer hours to collect historical data about the fair. Over the past 18 months, historic photographs, articles, and other research materials in private collections throughout Muscatine County and the surrounding area were collected, read, and documented in a comprehensive history of the fair. The historian spent approximately nine months documenting a complete history of the fair and answering questions for the state and federal governments in order to refine the nomination.

Several town halls were held throughout the project to keep the community education and a complete history of the Muscatine County Fair is now on file at the fair office. It will also be archived at other sites in the county.

Listing the fairgrounds as a historic district on the National Register is part of the complete rehabilitation of the fairgrounds. The site has more historic structures than most county fairs in Iowa, the press release from the fair board stated.

The first historic structure, the Swine Pavilion, was rehabilitated in 2015 and there are several more projects planned for spring 2016. The fair board will also be applying for historic grant money to help with the project now that the fairgrounds have been listed as a historical district.

To volunteer or donate money to the project, call Fair Board Manager Lori Gosenberg at 319-627-2414.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  On Monday afternoon, Jill Goldsberry of The Stanley Foundation awarded the Catherine Miller Explorer Award to two teachers in the Muscatine School District.

The Catherine Miller Award is given each year to two teachers selected through a detailed entry process. At the beginning of the school year, any full-time MCSD teacher was able to enter a drawing, where 10 names were randomly selected. The 10 finalists were then given extensive applications that included an essay, questions and the submission of a lesson plan.

"We are looking for people who show that they have an understanding of what the themes of global education are and people who have the contacts to share those things." Goldsberry explained.

A selection team, unaffiliated with Muscatine, then chose the top two applicants.

The two winners will receive expenses-paid study tours for international travel to be taken during summer 2016.

They will then select the country or region of the world that they wish to visit and the type of tour from various reputable programs for educators. These are group programs focused on cultural exploration, and are not tourist-centered.

The first teacher to receive the award was Jessica Jones, second grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary. Jones selected Tanzania on application as the tentative place she would like to travel to.

"Well, I had written and looked up a walking tour in Africa with a tribe that I found to be very interesting. Dont know if that is possible or not, but it was one that was actually living in with the tribe members and it was more of an off the beaten path thing. I find those very interesting. Ive lived with the Hopi Indians on the reservation for a while so I really like to immerse myself in that way," Jones explained about her choice.

To Jones, this means she will be able to travel to another culture and visit them, which she said would not have the opportunity to do otherwise.

"It allows me to further understand more culture and different things that could help my students. It allows me to see different places in the world, which would maybe help me better relate to a student because we are getting students from all over the world and sometimes its really hard for us as teachers to relate to them and this might give me that opportunity to know another culture that they came from or is somewhere thats theyve been," Jones said regarding what kind of an impact this could have on her teaching.

The second Explorer Award winner was Amy Skidmore, kindergarten teacher at Madison Elementary. Skidmore selected New Zealand on her application as the tentative place where she would like to travel to.

"I taught Reading Recovery for years and years, and I think it would be cool to see their system and what they do. And I hear it is a really cool place to visit," explained Skidmore.

Skidmore called it a great honor to be chosen as one of the two winners.

"I think I can learn a lot and bring back some great ideas and some great strategies and just some different perspectives, just from seeing way that people do things," Skidmore said on how these travels could impact her teaching.

The Stanley Foundation recognizes the value of international travel as professional development for educators, the change in perspective brought about by immersion in a culture, the knowledge gained through firsthand experience and intercultural communication, the contributions of global-minded teachers to their school district and local community and several other factors when giving out this award.

"We do this because we believe that teachers do need professional development and that if youre going to do professional development and global education there's lots of things you can do, but this is certainly one way for people to learn a lot in a short period of time. It also honors the legacy of Catherine Miller," Goldsberry explained.

Catherine Miller, the namesake of the award, was a longtime Muscatine resident who was very involved with organization pertaining to international relations, such as UNICEF. She was also a local Spanish teacher and would take her students on trips to immerse them in the language and culture.

"She really believed in thinking globally and acting locally, that's what she did. And that's what we hope these teachers will do think globally and act locally," Goldsberry added.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  The Iowa College Student Aid Commission (Iowa College Aid) announced this week that United Way of Muscatine was awarded a $10,000 Planning Grant to support efforts to increase the college attainment rate in Muscatine as part of the agencys College Changes Everything initiative.

This grant will enable United Way of Muscatine, working with a local Leadership Committee, to conduct strategic planning aimed at organizing and initiating a community-based local college access network (LCAN) dedicated to increasing college attainment among Muscatine students. The local Leadership Committee representatives are Jerry Riibe (MCSD Superintendent), Bret Olson (executive director of Muscatine Community YMCA), Krista Regennitter (Muscatine County Extension director), Christy Roby-Williams (Trinity Public Health manager), Jaimie Cruise (New Horizons Prevention coordinator), Kathie Anderson-Noel (Muscatine County Community Services Case Management coordinator), Shane J. Orr (executive director of United Way of Muscatine) and Naomi DeWinter (president of Muscatine Community College).

Muscatine was awarded the grant based on demonstrated need and a clear plan for working across private and public sectors to develop baseline measures for key educational indicators, a press release stated. At 25.5 percent, the adult population in Muscatine with an associates degree or higher is significantly lower than the states, which is 37 percent. By 2025, it is estimated that more than 68 percent of all jobs in Iowa will require educational degrees or credentials beyond high school, according to the press release.

We want to improve the percentage of people who attend and graduate from college and also get certified in many of the programs offered by our community colleges, Orr stated in the press release. Not only does the additional education and training increase earning power, it provides more opportunity for people to live and work in Muscatine.

Iowa College Aids "College Changes Everything" initiative supports the goal set by Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds to ensure that 70 percent of Iowans in the workforce have obtained education and training beyond high school by 2025.
WAPELLO, Iowa  A prescribed fire workshop will be 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, at the Port Louisa National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters, 10728 County Road X61. This workshop is geared toward landowners who are interested in using prescribed fire as a management tool for prairies and forests, although anyone 18 and older may attend. Volunteer firefighters are also encouraged to attend and may find this class helpful in responding to wildfires.

This one-day class is not a certification. It is a training to increase knowledge about using prescribed fire as a management tool. The class will cover a brief history of fire in Iowa, the benefits of prescribed fire, setting management goals and objectives, the use of burn plans, fire weather, safety and more.

Participants of this class will be allowed to check out a fire equipment cache stocked with wildland firefighting equipment such as bladder bags, drip torches, nomex suits, fire specific tools and personal protective equipment.

Pre-registration is required by contacting Louisa County Conservation at 319-523-8381 or by emailing lccb@lccb.org for a registration form. Registration forms can also be picked up at Louisa and Muscatine NRCS offices or Conservation Board offices. Space is limited, form and payment are required to secure a place in the class. The class is $15 and includes class materials, juice, rolls and a hot lunch.

This class is sponsored by the Lower Iowa & Cedar Valley Conservation Alliance. Partners include U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, The Nature Conservancy, Muscatine County Conservation, Louisa County Conservation, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
On the face of it, Iowa's online voter registration system, scheduled to launch next week, should make it easier to participate in elections.

But legitimate concerns have been raised over the system's potential impact on the rights of the disadvantaged, and so far the state has been slow to respond.

The new system will enable only those individuals who have a driver's license or non-operator identification card issued by the Iowa Department of Transportation to take advantage of online voter registration. That's a problem because, according to the DOT's own estimates, roughly 145,600 eligible Iowa voters don't have a license or ID card.

This new process is also inconsistent with state law, which doesn't require Iowans to be a licensed driver or to possess a DOT-issued ID card to exercise their right to register and vote in an election.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa argues that a system that excludes almost 7 percent of Iowa's eligible voters  many of whom are veterans, elderly or disabled  is inherently unfair and could violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The organization strongly supports online voter registration, but says the process needs to be open to all Iowans, and should be hosted on ADA-compliant websites.

The ACLU's position is shared by the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, the Iowa-Nebraska chapter of the NAACP, the League of Women Voters of Iowa and Disability Rights Iowa, which is a federally funded advocacy group for Iowans with disabilities and mental illness. Similar concerns have also been raised by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law.

The most disconcerting aspect of all this is that these organizations shared their concerns with the State Voter Registration Commission last year when the proposed rules for implementing the new system were first suggested. For whatever reason, the commission chose not to make the suggested changes in the rule-making process.

Deputy Secretary of State Carol Olson says she doesn't believe the new system will violate the ADA, and she points out that all Iowans will still be able to register using traditional paper forms.

Olson seems to have missed the point, which is one of equal access. The state cannot construct a "new and improved" process that is intended to facilitate the voting process but is accessible only to a certain segment of eligible voters. That is inherently unfair and very likely illegal.

Fortunately, Secretary of State Paul Pate can refine the online voter registration process without scuttling the DOT-connected process that for most Iowans will, indeed, provide an almost effortless means of registering to vote. All he needs to do is create a parallel path to registration for the 145,600 Iowans who lack a DOT-issued license or ID card. This process might require applicants to provide a digital signature  which Iowa law already recognizes as a valid alternative to a written signature  as well as a Social Security number, date of birth and address.

There's no reason such a system can't be implemented. Five states, including Minnesota and Missouri, have already rolled out online registration that's accessible to all eligible voters, and Disability Rights Iowa has offered to help Iowa's secretary of state with technical assistance to ensure compliance with federal disability laws.

Pate should be commended for attempting to make voter registration easier, but he needs to make it easier for all Iowans, not just some. Tying online voter registration to a subset of eligible voters  a subset that, by most estimates, excludes many minorities, as well as elderly veterans and the disabled  is, by definition, discriminatory.

The Des Moines Register
Here is a 2016 calendar to keep you up at night. Dont hold me to the dates, but if the next 12 months pass without witnessing these unsettling moments, then America will be truly blessed.

January

We know the date, for sure: Jan. 12. Thats when President Obama will deliver his last State of the Union Address. Whats not known is whether hell have anything new to say about Americas place in the world and how hell deal with ongoing challenges such as ISIS, Syria, Iran, Russia, North Korea and China.

Odds are we hear nothing new. This White House has shown great reluctance to changing course, even though its arguably losing ground on every front.

February

There is another Islamist terrorist attack on the United States. Of course, no one can predict exactly when the next attack will come. But this much we do know: the pace of terrorist plotting against the United States has quickened over the years. Were now uncovering at least one plot every couple of months. Given this months attack in San Bernardino, by February, well be due.

March

America once viewed Europe as a stable partner. But the fighting in Ukraine, the Euro Crisis and the massive influx of refugees has left the other half of the trans-Atlantic bridge looking pretty shaky. A Brexit vote, with Great Britain voting to exit the European Union, would put the whole one Europe project in jeopardy. With some British voices pushing for a referendum early in 2016, that body blow may come as soon as March.

April

As the weather warms up, the Taliban prepare for their annual spring offensive. Unfortunately, the White House has been ramping down U.S. support faster than the Afghan government can ramp up its own forces. The Taliban have been working the gap and making gains. In Iraq, the battle with ISIS will heat up as well. All this will build pressure to put more American boots back on the ground in both places.

May

Refugees also start moving as the weather warms. Europe has already taken in more than a million refugees fleeing the chaos in the Greater Middle East. As the Syrian war continues to rage, the human wave will crest again.

June

By this time, Iran will have pocketed the sanctions relief promised in the nuclear deal brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry. So look for the deal to be falling apart. Already there are signs of strain between the United States and Iran over the deal, with Iran complaining that new visa restrictions violate the agreement. Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus that the United States gave away the store. Expect pressure to build on Congress to walk back the deal.

July

Sooner or later, North Korea will manufacture a crisis. Thats how the rogue nation tries to leverage concessions from D.C. and its allies. Pyongyang is completing upgrades to its missile launch and digging another nuclear test tunnel. So you can pretty much count on a summer surprise from Dear Leader.

August

The world gathers in Rio for the Olympic Games. Everyone will hold their breath praying there is not another Munich or Atlanta. The most intense game will be the terrorists versus Brazilian security.

September

Though busy building artificial islands, China cant fail to notice another round of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan or the likely election of a less friendly government in Taipei. How many months before Chinese leaders decide to test the ties that bind the United States and Taiwanese?

October

With U.S. national elections approaching, its time for an October Surprise  an engineered event designed to swing the electorate left or right. Hold your breath. There could be several regimes swinging in different directions at the same time.

November

The scariest event could be the premier of Bad Santa 2. Its slated for release Nov. 23. Do we really need to see Billy Bob Thornton reprise Santa as a drunken, tasteless lout? And who knows what manner of mayhem might mar the last days of the race to the White House?

December

Last chance for a lame-duck president and Congress to put their stamp on world affairs. One possibility: a big dust-up over trade as the White House tries to sneak a major deal with Asia over the goal line before President Obama leaves for Hawaii.

Surely 2016 will bring its share of bad times. But, hey, happy New Year!

James Jay Carafano is a Heritage Foundation vice president and director of the think tanks Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy Studies. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
The Chilcot Inquiry shows that the British were far more aware of the deteriorating situation in Iraq than the Americans. From July 2004 to ...
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
Television in South Africa turns 40 years old today.

The SABC TV service marks its 40th anniversary since the very first nationwide broadcast on 5 January 1976 when Dorianne Berry and Heinrich Marnitz welcomed viewers to the opening night of TV in the country.

The past four decades saw the SABCs television offering going through various channel permutations with the South African public broadcaster currently providing 5 TV channels in the form of SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and then two channels  SABC News and the archive rerun channel SABC Encore  produced exclusively for MultiChoices DStv satellite pay-TV platform.

The past four decades in South Africa also saw the launch of pay-TV with pay-TV broadcaster M-Net (that will be turning 30 years old in October), together with MultiChoices DStv and StarTimes Media SAs StarSat as satellite pay-TV offerings.

Services like Platco Digitals OpenView HD free-to-air satellite service in addition to a growing plethora of video-on-demand (VoD) services like Naspers ShowMax, Times Medias VIDI, MTNs VU and PCCW Globals ONTAPtv.com are enhancing consumer choice in South Africas growing videosphere.

Meanwhile the global streaming giant Netflix told Channel24 that it will be launching in South Africa before the end of this year.

The milestone comes as the SABC that introduced television in South Africa continues to lurch from crisis to crisis four decades later.

The SABC isnt celebrating the 40th anniversary since its first national TV broadcast was done from Auckland Park  complete with studio curtains and in colour  but the milestone is highly significant as the South Africas television industry is hovering on the verge of the biggest sea change since the introduction of television.

In 2016 the long-delayed commercial switch from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting will simply have to start in South Africa after the country missed the internationally agreed to deadline for the switch-off of analogue TV signals by June 2015.

Channel24

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Eskom has confirmed the sale of electricity to Zimbabwe but denied that the power supply agreement with its Zimbabwean counterpart the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) is secret.

Eskom said the deal is part of an arrangement among southern African power utilities to sell surplus electricity to each other.

Media reports in Zimbabwe have alleged that Eskom has entered into a secret deal to sell 300 MW of electricity to the neighbouring country, which has been experiencing power shortages lately. The reports also quoted Zimbabwe Energy and Power Development Ministry Permanent Secretary Partson Mbiriri saying the deal has to be kept under wraps for security reasons.

In a statement on Monday evening, Eskom confirmed the sale of power to Zimbabwe but there is no secrecy about this, it said. Eskom is part of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), and so is Zesa, where member utilities sell surplus electricity to each other depending on the need, Eskom said.

South Africa, through Eskom, has been involved in the electricity sector in various countries in Africa for a long time and has utilised different forms of engagements. This has been done mainly through bilateral trading arrangements, using instruments such as power purchase and power sales agreements.

Eskom is also committed to ongoing participation in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region through SAPP as an institution. SAPP is made up of South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, connected through an integrated grid, Eskom said.

Load shedding fears linger

The sale of excess power to other countries is an emotive issue for most South Africans, given the countrys own recent power shortages. While Eskom has not implemented load shedding in the past few months, fears of power cuts still linger.

In the comprehensive statement, Eskom went into detail about its involvement in various power agreements in the rest of Africa.

Participation in East and West Africa (Uganda and Mali respectively) has been undertaken through long-term Operating and Maintenance Concession Agreements.

The flagship regional projects that Eskom has been involved in over the years include the Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB) hydro scheme in Mozambique, with the explicit objective of developing the HCB infrastructure to generate power and distribute to the territories of Mozambique and South Africa for the benefit of the people of the respective countries.

Eskom also plays a pivotal role in the transmission interconnection that connected Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa in 1995, which opened up a corridor for electricity to flow as far as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the north and Namibia in the far south-west, it said.

Eskoms regional development strategy involved creating the Southern African Energy Unit, through which South Africa imports electricity from Lesotho, Mozambique and Namibia, and sells electricity to Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, on either firm or unfirm agreements.

We are aware that our responsibilities to supply our neighbouring countries may create an apparent conflict when the domestic supply-demand balance is constrained. To reduce the impact of exports, we have ensured that power supply agreements with SAPP trading partners are sufficiently flexible to allow for the following controls during emergency situations in South Africa, Eskom said.

Fin24

More on Eskom

Eskoms new man to run Medupi power station
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has released the 2015 National Senior Certificate results, revealing a matric pass rate of 70.7%.

However, the official pass rate does not tell the full story. Equal Education highlighted that a large percentage of students drop out before they write the matric exams.

For broader perspective and context on the overall matric pass, one should use a cohort matric pass rate, said Equal Education.

The organisation defines the cohort matric pass rate as the percentage of learners in grade 2 who pass matric 11 years later.

Of the 1,118,690 grade 2 cohort class enrollment, only 667,925 students made it to the matric final exams. This is a dropout rate of 40%.

The 2015 cohort matric pass rate  sometimes referred to as the true pass rate  is therefore 42.2%.

The table below shows the cohort matric pass rate over the last five years using Equal Educations calculations.

Year Number who wrote matric Pass rate Cohort enrollment in grade 2 Cohort pass rate 2015 667,925 70.7% 1,118,690 42.2% 2014 532,860 75.8% 1,109,201 36.4% 2013 562,112 78.2% 1,111,858 39.6% 2012 511,152 73.9% 1,012,892 37.3% 2011 496,090 70.2% 944,977 36.8%

More on matric results

Matric results 2015  how to get them via SMS

Matric results 2015  where to get them online
I love sending and receiving postcard from all over the world. If you would like to send me a postcard or contact me, send an e-mail to ichabod.h (at) gmail.com
I heard from a friend of mine over the weekend who works as a civil servant in the Scottish Government. Apparently, I can expect my complaint about Humza Yousaf to be blown off because the standard response to objections of this kind is that this involves a personal Twitter account. In other words Humza's idiotic behaviour nothing to do with the Scottish Government. If so, I'll be astonished because Humza Yousaf promotes his profile on Twitter by drawing attention to his role as Scotland's Justice Minister. Not only that because Humza's attack on fellow MSPs was done during normal working hours (ie his employer's time) and presumably it is very easy to check if he used a mobile phone, or some other device, provided for him to use while at work by the Scottish Government. So I remain optimistic until I'm proved wrong - and let's hope I hear something soon. In the meantime, I plan to share this post with the various MSPs involved. Total Lack Of Respect, Hu
As owner of this blog, I bear no responsibility to what other contributors/bloggers may post. I encourage all to speak freely without indulging in libel or defamatory content. Anyone who feels offended by any posting can email me and I will remove the offending article if appropriate. Contact me at redbeansg@yahoo.com redbean
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CHICAGO  When Mindy Segal decided she wanted to work with marijuana, the James Beard award-winning pastry chef knew she could do so much better than that tired cliche  the brownie.

Instead, shell tap her understanding of transforming sugar into tempting treats to launch a line of chocolate brittles, granola bites, eventually even a hot chocolate  and all of them laced with butter infused with cannabis oil. In the process, shell become one of the first celebrity chefs to lend her name and brand to the budding edible marijuana industry.

Segal, who owns Chicagos Mindys Hot Chocolate restaurant and authored the cookbook Cookie Love, is partnering with Cresco Labs with hopes to produce the sweets for distribution in Illinois in February. The company also is in discussions to distribute the products in other states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational use, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Washington.

Medical marijuana became available for sale in Illinois last month and it is one of 23 states in the U.S. where it is now legal. Marijuana is legal for recreational use in Alaska, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

The goal with this new project, Segal said, is an extension of what she calls her core value as a chef: making people happy.

Were going to come up with recipes that are portioned and dosed properly, Segal said. So were healing, and thats the whole idea that were healing, making people have appetites, not have pain.

Segal wants the final product to have a no-taste taste. Shes experimenting with three different flavors of brittle, including one that blends salted toffee, smoked almonds with dark chocolate, and possibly graham crackers and caramelized marshmallows. She said she sees working with marijuana as a professional challenge.

Im trying to elevate the industry, she said. Im applying what I know against what I dont know and thats how Im approaching this. And thats how I approach my work as chef.

Heres how Segal explains her latest venture in an interview with The Associated Press:

___

AP: What attracted you to using medical marijuana as an ingredient? Where did you get your inspiration?

Segal: I wanted to do something that made a difference. I wanted to do something that would take me to sort of like this new frontier. I wanted to take the things Ive learned in the 30 years in this industry and go into an industry that would challenge me. When youre a chef or youre a person who is in constant pursuit of excellence, I want to constantly be challenged. I want to constantly pursue excellence.

AP: How are you legally able to make these items in Illinois?

Segal: I am working in a lab in Joliet that is licensed to cultivate and grow marijuana and to produce edibles. I am not doing it in my restaurant. Im not selling this product in my restaurant. Theyre going to be sold in licensed dispensaries all over Illinois. We plan on going to other states, as other states have medical marijuana legalized and legal for recreational, too. We would license the product to licensed operators in those states. Were designing a product line that can be licensed to other people.

AP: Who do you see as the customer for these items?

Segal: I make a great chocolate chip cookie and my customer for a chocolate chip cookie is anyone who likes a chocolate chip cookie. So obviously Im hoping my product will entice everybody and anybody who has the right to purchase the product or is interested in edibles. Im thinking that my product is going to attract people who are knowledgeable and enjoy food and want to enjoy the experience and not just the effects of it.

AP: Where do you see the future of the edible marijuana industry going?

Segal: I see this being a new frontier for chefs like me. There is no turning back. There are going to be more people more talented than me, as talented as me, who are going to get into this industry. Im excited to see where its going.
SACRAMENTO  A California farmer has avoided jail time for an armed confrontation with a federal agent that he says was the result of a mix-up.

The Sacramento Bee reports that prosecutors say 49-year-old Andrew Watkins threatened U.S. Fish and Wildlife Special Agent Sean Mann with a pistol and told him he was under citizen's arrest.

Watkins pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault on a federal officer. If the judge approves the deal, Watkins will have to pay a fine and spend four years on probation, during which he cannot carry a firearm outside.

Watkins' attorney William Portanova says the case is the result of a mix-up and that Watkins didn't realize Mann was an officer.

Watkins admitted in his plea that he either knew or should have known that Mann was an agent.
A new Oakville Cross Road Bridge over the Napa River, designed to be stronger, more environmentally sensitive and better looking than its predecessor, should soon be ready for traffic.

Workers in June demolished the previous, 1920s-era bridge, and since then they have been building its replacement. The bridge project closed Oakville Cross Road at the river, leaving Napa Valley temporarily without one of its links between Highway 29 and Silverado Trail.

Tentative opening day for the new, $5.2 million bridge is Jan. 12.

Napa County at the beginning of the project set Jan. 1 as its target opening day. Instead, it fell just short of ringing in the new year with a new bridge.

There was nothing magical about that date, other than we wanted to set a goal, Public Works Director Steven Lederer said.

Groth Vineyards & Winery is located along Oakville Cross Road. Having its nearest cross-valley connection severed at the bridge construction site hasnt proven to be a big hardship for the winery.

Groth is a by-appointment-only tasting room, so weve been able to effectively communicate with our visitors on how to get to us, said Suzanne Groth, winery vice president of sales and marketing, in an email.

Not having the bridge has made it harder to retrieve mail from the post office and caused a bit of an inconvenience for winery vendors and employees, Groth said. But she also found a bright side.

Ive told many of my friends and neighbors that Ive actually enjoyed the quieted, 1980s-like traffic along the Oakville Cross Road with the bridge closed, she said.

Once the new bridge is open to traffic, workers will still have some chores to complete. Among them is finishing habitat restoration work along the Napa River that is required by various state and federal agencies to help such creatures as the California freshwater shrimp.

Some post-opening-day chores might require closing the new bridge at some point for multiple hours during the day, Lederer said. The county will announce any closures to the public ahead of time, he said.

The county originally planned to replace the deteriorating, 1920s bridge in phases over two years, keeping one lane of Oakville Cross Road open for traffic at Napa River during construction. Then the May 21 earthquake east of Yountville fatally damaged the bridge and turned it into a tear-down.

Suddenly, the county had to change its plans, Lederer said. A phased, two-year project became a full-steam-ahead, finish-as-soon-as-possible project with Oakville Cross Road closed at the construction site.

Not every factor was in the countys control as contractors tried to finish the new bridge within the countys self-imposed deadline. Weather was a wild card.

The weather has actually been a blessing right up until the last three weeks or so, Lederer said. We essentially had no weather delays. As December hit and the rain began, that definitely slowed us down a little bit.

Napa County gained fame a century ago for its elegant stone bridges and had more than 300 of them. It was known as the County of the Stone Bridges, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Concrete bridges trumped stone bridges by the 1920s. Lederer called the 1920s-era Oakville Cross Road Bridge that was demolished a hunk of concrete. The replacement bridge is also concrete.

Its a cost-effective, easy way to build a bridge, Lederer said. They tend to last pretty long. They dont require a tremendous amount of maintenance.

But concrete bridges arent in the same aesthetic league as the stone bridges of yore. That left Napa County with the question of how to make its new bridge in scenic wine country more than a hunk of concrete.

Given that the bridge is rural, the county didnt have such design features as lighting and walkways to work with. It turned its attention to guardrails that the original state Department of Transportation designs show as being metal and nondescript.

We were hoping to come up with something that more fits the area, Lederer said.

Napa County settled on a guardrail that looks like wooden timbers to give a utilitarian structure a dash of style. At the same time, Lederer said, this guardrail meets Caltrans safety specifications.

The new Oakville Cross Road Bridge is part of Napa Countys bigger program to replace and repair aging bridges. Among those targeted for work in coming years is a bridge on Dry Creek Road over Dry Creek north of the city of Napa.

Bridge projects take several years to plan. Lederer said the next county bridge project is two to three years away from construction.

The state Department of Transportation oversees local highways and also does bridge replacement projects in Napa County. It is scheduled to begin work on a new Sarco Creek bridge on the Highway 121 section of Silverado Trail east of the city of Napa in 2017.
Ive done a lot of living during my 81 years plus, experiencing, and observing along the way.

Born and lived my childhood in the segregated triangle of southern Illinois. Attended substandard schools; Negro skin assigned me to countless hours of life seated in the back of the bus; the movie house in town, by law, relegated me to the balcony; public toilets were not public to me; and White and Negro water fountains, too numerous to mention.

During the Korean Conflict, as a USMC reservist, I was ordered to active duty, reporting to Parris Island, South Carolina. Arriving at Beaufort, just across the channel, at daybreak, famished, exhausted and troubled by concerns of an uncertain future. Though cognizant of existing mores, I absentmindedly entered the nearest restaurant, dressed in full military regalia, sea bag on my shoulder, in search of a quick bite to eat.

The proprietor met me at the door, saying We dont serve Colored People here.

Every day since, the memory of that moment has been an integral part of my being. That was the day my government, the United States of America, ordered me to sacrifice my very being for its own purposes if necessary. Yet, on that very day it deemed my skin tone legally unacceptable, as I sought a mere breakfast meal.

In recent years, Ive had the N-word vehemently hurled my way, twice on separate occasions, in one of this countrys most prestigious regions of its kind. Throughout the years, Ive been subjected to varied acts of bigotry, both obscure and overt. I also know how it feels to hold a bigoted opinion of another. As members of humankind, bigotry is indeed a mutual illness; admitted or not, it remains a malady suffered in some degree by all. The key I contend is acceptance of all people, and know tolerance in the process.

Mr. Trump, I believe, exemplifies bigotry as a political campaign expediency. Mastering its use, he has energized a feeling long latent. As a result a large percentage of his followers seem emboldened by his message of anxiety and fear, chanting We want to take our country back.

Analytical insight suggests to me a literal mindset reminiscent of that long-ago period of my childhood, where overt racism ruled the day.

While understanding Trumps male connection, I find it curious that he maintains an extensive following among women, despite an intense propensity to disparage the entire sex whenever convenient.

James B. Earley

Vallejo
On Jan. 31, the board of directors of Friends & Foundation, St. Helena Public Library, will host the first Bookmark Napa Valley, a signature literary event that promises to be unlike any other, according to board president Dan Whitehurst. The fundraiser will bring together well-known authors, local readers, community leaders and library supporters to benefit the St. Helena Public Library.

The event will be held at the historic Carriage House at Charles Krug Winery, and will showcase four notable fiction and nonfiction writers:

Hampton Sides is best-known for his gripping true adventures set in war or on expeditions of discovery. He is the author of The New York Times best-sellers In the Kingdom of Ice, Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder and Hellhound on His Trail.

Cara Black is The New York Times best-selling author of 14 books in the private investigator Aimee Leduc series, set in Paris. With more than 400,000 books in print, the series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew.

Laura McBride is a writer, onetime adventurer and community college teacher in Las Vegas. Her debut novel, We Are Called to Rise, was praised by Isabel Allende as an outstanding first novel with unforgettable characters.

Joel Selvin is a music critic known for his long-running weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle. His books include The New York Times best-seller Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, with Sammy Hagar, and Here Comes the Night.

The evening will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a wine and book-signing reception at which guests may purchase books and meet the authors.

A buffet dinner prepared by St. Helenas Oak Avenue Catering and accompanied by Napa Valley wines, will be highlighted by talks on writing and literature from each of the featured writers.

Its going to be a memorable night, said Whitehurst, who expects more than 200 people to attend. Proceeds will go to programs and materials for the St. Helena Public Library. The event is being underwritten by Epic sponsor Napa Valley Vintners and other supporters. Tickets are $150 per person or $1,200 for a table of eight. For information and to purchase tickets, visit SupportSHLibrary.org or call 307-3706.
Tuesday, Dec. 29

0753  Someone left graffiti in the mens bathroom at Lyman Park.

1124  A package was stolen from a porch on Grayson Avenue.

1150  An orange and black truck had been parked on Allison Avenue for a week.

1744  A car parked on Adams Street was damaged in a hit-and-run. A witness left a note describing the other car.

Wednesday, Dec. 30

0009  Medical aid on Edwards Street for a baby with a high fever.

1201  A local couple were the victims of identity theft and fraud. Due to a fraudulent telephone transfer between two of their accounts, followed by a forged personal check, they lost $74,500. The transfer occurred at a bank in Angwin, so St. Helena police worked with the sheriffs department on the report.

1345  Report of a drunken man in the middle of the street near Spring/Oak. Police arrested the 45-year-old Calistoga man on suspicion of possessing drug paraphernalia and violating probation.

1536  Car accident at Main/Fulton.

2307  St. Helena police stood by preparing for a high-speed pursuit of a stolen car on northbound Highway 29. The car reached speeds of 110-130 mph. The car finally stopped just north of Yountville, where police had placed spikes in the road.

Thursday, Dec. 31

0420  Report of a restraining order violation.

0849  Report of a reckless driver at Main/Pope. It had reportedly hit a concrete barrier somewhere between Yountville and St. Helena.

1102  Report of a car parked near Elmhurst/Main for a month.

1117  Report of a car weaving on the way from Angwin to St. Helena. It stopped in a Hunt Avenue parking lot. Police arrested the driver, a 62-year-old Angwin man, on suspicion of DUI.

1325  Non-injury collision on Spring Mountain Road.

1447  Noninjury three-car collision on Main Street.

1451  The CHP towed two parked cars in St. Helena for expired registration.

1543  Report of a group of people playing loud music and causing a verbal disturbance at the skate park.

1621  A purse was reported missing from a downtown store. An officer checked the area and found the purse.

1644  Medical aid for someone with seizures on Hunt Avenue.

2016  A 21-year-old man was reported missing.

2255  Report of an ongoing problem with apartment tenants jumping and being loud on College Avenue.

Friday, Jan. 1

0041  Report of loud people and loud music on Pratt Avenue.

0127  Report of loud music on College Avenue.

0144  The fire department helped clean up a fuel spill near Main/Spring.

0153  Report of a fight on Main Street.

0153  The signal light at Main/Adams was malfunctioning.

0235  Report of loud music on Monte Vista.

0651  Police responded to a disturbance on Hillview Place and arrested a 27-year-old St. Helena man for an outstanding warrant from Ventura County.

0930  Public Works was called to clean up broken glass on Spring Street just west of Oak Avenue.

1313  Medical aid for a person with a head injury at the skate park.

1725  Medical aid on Pope Street.

Saturday, Jan. 2

1438  A bike was stolen more than two weeks ago.

1605  A black trifold wallet containing a California drivers license and miscellaneous cards was reported lost.

1628  Report of a possible drunken driver on southbound Silverado Trail near Taplin Road.

2108  A Grayson Avenue resident said his roommate took his phone charger without permission and left about 30 minutes ago.

Sunday, Jan. 3

0908  Someone was parked in a red zone near Adams/Oak. It turned out the driver had run out of gas.

1216  Report of a small gray terrier running around Meadowcreek Circle.

1612  Police assisted an undercover unit with a felony vehicle stop at Main/Pope.

1721  Report of a possible drunken driver weaving and speeding up and slowing down on Highway 29 near Big Tree Road.

Monday, Jan. 4

0819  A Pratt Avenue resident said he and his family were awakened by a white woman with dark hair and heavy eye makeup who entered their house and went upstairs. She said her name was Shannon and she thought it was her house. She wasnt wearing shoes or a jacket. He told her to leave and she did.

1218  Medical aid for a woman who fainted inside a Main Street business.

1415  Medical aid for a man who fell out of a chair and lost consciousness on Main Street.

2140  A resident asked for help contacting a towing company to help him pull his van out of a vineyard on Zinfandel Lane.

2316  A house on Main Street was broken into recently. When the residents got home tonight, their dogs were acting strangely, so they were concerned about going upstairs. Police checked the house for them.
Heres a guide to a year of conflict and discord, through the words of some of the worlds leaders.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras: We have a great opportunity for a new beginning.

The leftist Greek politicians Syriza party won landmark elections in January. Tsipras preached a new way forward for Greece after years of crippling austerity and compounding debt. But a failure to reach an accord with European Union authorities in Brussels has led to a return to the grinding status quo, which saw Tsipras contest and once more win elections in September, though with a humbler mandate.

French President Francois Hollande: France is at war.

Thats what Frances president declared in the hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. The coordinated strikes by militants linked to the Islamic State group killed 130 people. France bolstered its efforts in hitting Islamic State targets in the Middle East and attempted to forge a grand coalition against the group. In the United States, meanwhile, the Paris attacks cast a long shadow, with Republican politicians, in particular, invoking the threat of Islamist infiltration to curb arrivals of refugees and Muslim immigrants.

Syrian President Bashar Assad: Wrong (policies) adopted by Western states, particularly France, toward events in the region and its ignorance of the support of a number of its allies to terrorists are reasons behind the expansion of terrorism.

The embattled Syrian leader seized upon the French tragedy to make his case that countries that backed his opponents  which include some militant factions  had made a huge mistake. France had long been calling for Assads ouster, and now one of his foes  the Islamic State  had struck one of Europes most hallowed centers. But Assads opportunistic statements came even as his regime continued to pound civilian areas in Syria, causing untold death and destruction. Its actions have spurred an epic humanitarian crisis that has seen roughly half the countrys population fleeing their homes and more than 4 million Syrians leave the country. As the year drew to a close, the U.N. Security Council reached an important agreement on a peace process to end the Syrian conflict, but it said little about Assads departure.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: We will cope.

Time magazine named the German leader its person of the year in 2015 in part because of her outspoken defense of desperate refugees, tens of thousands of whom arrived at Europes borders in a massive influx this year. Her summertime declaration that Germany could accommodate up to a million refugees and her repeated rhetoric about the Wests responsibility to those fleeing war won her the respect of many overseas. But Merkels stance is not popular at home and even led to a backlash from within her ruling center-right party.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban: The people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture.

The European leader perhaps most vocal in his opposition to welcoming refugees was the head of a nation situated along the route to Germany. Under Orbans right-wing government, Hungary built a fence along its border with Serbia to obstruct the flow of migrants making the trek from Greece and countries farther south and east. Orban cast the refugees  the vast majority of whom had no desire to remain in Hungary  as a civilizational threat and styled himself as a kind of defender of Christendom.

President Obama: Lets not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear.

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the U.S. president reiterated his administrations commitment to the fight against the Islamic State. But Obama also insisted that dealing with security threats would not mean abandoning our values. It was a gesture to the rather heated American conversation, fueled by statements from Republican presidential candidates grandstanding about the dangers of radical Islam, calling for a halt to arrivals of Syrian refugees and even suggesting that all Muslims be stopped from coming to the United States.

British Prime Minister David Cameron: You aint no Muslim, bruv.

The British leader echoed the words of a bystander-turned-viral-video-star who filmed himself berating a suspected Islamist militant after a foiled attack on Londons Underground. Despite calls for tolerance and calm from Western leaders, attitudes toward Muslims have hardened in Europe and the United States.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani: A new chapter has started in Irans relations with the world.

So said Irans president during his address to the U.N. General Assembly in September. He was heralding the accord forged in July between Iran and world powers over Tehrans nuclear program. The deal with Iran was hailed as a landmark piece of diplomacy, the result of many rounds of negotiations. As Iran complies with strict limits on its nuclear capacity under the terms of the agreement, it will receive relief from stifling international sanctions.

Editors Note: Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What a stunning, historic mistake!

Not all world leaders were impressed with the Iran deal, though. The most outraged figure was Netanyahu, who had campaigned for months against this opening to Irans regime  one that he cast in the same light as the murderous Islamic State. The day after the accord was announced in July, Netanyahu deemed it a historic mistake. He doubled down on his angry rhetoric a few months later at the U.N. General Assembly and glared in an awkward moment of silence at the seated dignitaries before him. But neither his efforts, nor those of Republicans and neoconservatives in Washington, could scupper the enterprise.

Russian President Vladimir Putin: Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by stripping it of its sanity.

One of the more dangerous geopolitical flare-ups in 2015 took place in the wake of the Russian intervention in Syria on behalf of the embattled Assad regime. Turkey, deeply unhappy with the Kremlins power play, brought down a Russian jet that had strayed into Turkish airspace. This precipitated a war of words between Moscow and Ankara and soured ties between the two historical regional power brokers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: I will not remain in this post.

Putins Turkish counterpart reacted angrily to Russian suggestions that his government was abetting the Islamic States illicit smuggling activities across the border in Syria and Iraq. Erdogan vowed that he would resign if the Russian allegations were proven true. It was an ironic declaration by the Turkish president, who had otherwise spent much of the year consolidating his grip on power.

The ruling Justice and Development Party, a center-right religious nationalist party Erdogan co-founded, lost its parliamentary majority in June elections. It was seen as a blow to Erdogan, who currently occupies what is supposed to be a ceremonial post and had hoped for a strong electoral mandate that would guarantee him greater executive powers. Undeterred, he pushed for new elections in November, which his party won handily  thus cementing his place as the most significant leader in the history of the Turkish republic since its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: I express my feelings of profound grief and my eternal, sincere condolences.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Japans nationalist leader delivered a much-anticipated speech on his countrys controversial role in the epochal conflict. He stopped short of a formal apology, though, much to the ire of China. The spats over history between Beijing and Tokyo underpin more immediate tensions in the region, where many nations are warily eyeing Chinas expansionist behavior in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at Time, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.
Theres only one lady who scares me more than country badass Miranda Lambert, and now that diva has decided that Blake Shelton is hers.

During a recent appearance on the Today Show, Miss Piggy, who had stopped by with Kermit to talk about their new movie Muppets Most Wanted, had a bit of a showdown with Hoda Kotb over Blake Shelton.

Pretty sure Miss Piggy could take Hoda in a street fight. Miranda? Well Miss Piggy might have more than she bargained for there.

Check out the video below.

[Broadway World]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
THE BLOG OF NEVILLE STEPHENS TO WARN PEOPLE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS COMING BACK TO EARTH SOON, AND THAT THE RAPTURE OF THE CHURCH TO HEAVEN IS VERY CLOSE AT HAND.YESHUA IS COMING SOON AND IS NOW SHAKING THE WORLD (HAGGAI 2:6) TO DRAW PEOPLE UNTO HIMSELF. IT IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD FOR ANY PERSON TO PERISH, SO NOW IS THE TIME TO TURN TO JESUS FOR SALVATION!
Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Through promotion of free debate on our website, New Age Islam encourages people to rethink Islam.
Luxembourg parliament speaker: Azerbaijan aggression is direct attack on Armenia sovereignty

Uruguay vice president: We express our solidarity with Armenian people

GeoProMining's ZCMC has tripled tax payments to the state budget of Armenia

Paul Krekorian unanimously elected as LA City Council President

ThePrint: Armenia eyes procuring Akash missiles, loitering munitions from India

Lenovo, Motorola show rollable smartphone, laptop concept

Armenia MP to international colleagues: Azerbaijan intends to carry out new aggression

Ukraine military hits Energodar city hall

Armenia PM: We hope Azerbaijan will cooperate in clarifying destiny of our compatriots

Apple news: iPad Pro becomes more powerful, iPad 10 gets USB-C port, but there are also problems

Rihanna records Black Panther 2 soundtrack

Newspaper: Where is 1991 declaration by which Armenia, Azerbaijan once recognized each other's territorial integrity?

Azerbaijan fires at Armenia positions at midnight

PACE lawmakers call for Azerbaijan militarys immediate withdrawal from Armenia

Australia reverses decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel capital

Paul Pogba will be back in action this month

Study: Women fake orgasm because of insecurity

Nouriel Roubini: In some sense, World War III has already started

Benzema says after Ronaldo left, he was motivated to get better

EU considers paying Elon Musk to provide Starlink Internet to Ukraine

U.S. will continue to take practical, aggressive steps to make it difficult for Iran to sell drones to Russia

German Prosecutor's Office searches Deutsche Bank headquarters

Hubble takes beautiful image of turbulent stellar nursery

Hair straighteners may increase risk of uterine cancer

Head of Germany's national cybersecurity agency fired amid reports of ties to Russia

Barcelona are considering return of Luis Enrique

Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies condemns Azerbaijan's invasion of Armenian territory

Spanish minister: EU is far from solution to energy crisis

Fake Azerbaijani names of Syunik province communities removed from Google Maps and Google Earth apps

Artsakh President presents details of meetings held in Yerevan to MPs

Lavrov: Russia sees no point in maintaining its previous presence in Western countries

UAE: OPEC+ decision has no political motive

Opposition to David Price: Right to self-determination is the right of people of Artsakh to survive

Under-23 World Championships: Malkhas Amoyan wins title of champion

Iran is ready to negotiate with Ukraine to resolve ambiguities

Deputy Speaker of Armenian National Assembly: 47 PACE deputies made written statement condemning Baku's aggression

Lapid will discuss Kiev request for Israeli systems with Kuleba

IBM expert on challenges of implementing AI: Provide right education, create impactful products

Morawiecki: Poland is not afraid of losing EU funds

Armenian President meets with Sofia Mayor

Speaker of Armenian National Assembly to Norway FM: Withdrawal of Azerbaijani Armed Forces from Armenia is a priority

Noah and Villarreal sign cooperation agreement

First posters of fifth season of 'The Crown' are available

Nikol Pashinyan receives delegation headed by Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt

Iran responds to Borrell's garden and jungle statement: EU needs to accept realities or it will continue to wither

Pashinyan: No one can accuse Armenia of evading its obligations

Congressman: U.S. was not active in terms of security in Armenia, but now situation is changing

Indian defense company Solar group says it has received orders from Armenia for 'Pinaka' missiles

Price: U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan will not be used for offensive purposes against Armenia

Bloodborne Kart: Racing arcade game based on cult game will take players to 'The Hunter's Dream'

Military expert assesses possibility of new hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Russian Embassy: Armenians' attitude towards Russians who moved to Armenia remains very friendly

Clarification by Price: What Could Armenian-American military cooperation look like?

Armenian Defense Minister visits DEFEXPO exhibition in India

President of Artsakh talks about results of discussions held in Armenia

Borrell angers UAE with his comparison of world outside Europe to 'jungle'

Public Council formed in Artsakh

China Daily: Party's anti-graft efforts generate fruitful outcomes

Price: We demand that Azerbaijan return to its initial positions

Aghajanyan: This visit should be seen as another stage in dynamic development of Armenian-American relations

Yerevan Open: Mamikon Gharibyan shares first place

Ukraine will officially ask Israel for transfer of air defense systems

Head of National Assembly Commission: 2023 state budget turned out to be biggest in Armenia's history

Turkey conducts test launch of its own ballistic missile over Black Sea

Google will do away with sub-screen fingerprint scanner: what technology will be used in future smartphones and tablets?

Students of Brusov State University hold protest outside building of Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia

Netflix delays release of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle documentary

Armenia MFA: Yerevan has always openly and publicly stated its position on dialogue with Turkey

Military exercises of IRGC Ground Forces on border with Azerbaijan continue for second day in Iran

Blinken accuses China of violating status quo on Taiwan

Armenian Foreign Minister: We see Azerbaijan's unconstructive behavior

Izvestia: European banks stop accepting SWIFT-transfers from Russia

Mirzoyan calls on Cavusoglu to speak for himself

BioNTech: Cancer vaccine may be available by 2030

Norwegian FM visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex and pays tribute to victims of Genocide

Mirzoyan: We need to understand to what extent CSTO recognizes this aggression against Armenia

Barcelona's transfer goals

MFA: Armenian authorities apply to OSCE to send observers to border with Azerbaijan

NYT: Conflict between Turkey and Greece may cause split of NATO

Ararat Mirzoyan Details of peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan were presented to Norwegian FM

Ezra Miller faces up to 26 years in prison

Price of gas in Europe drops to almost $1,200 per 1,000 cubic meters for first time since June

Samsung introduces world's fastest LPDDR5X DRAM memory

Armenian Defense Minister meets with his Indian counterpart

Why are children more likely to suffer from dry eye syndrome?

First images of damage to Nord Stream are published

BTS members drafted into army

Erdogan's spokesman: Meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is impossible now

Peskov redirects question of drone purchases from Iran to Russian Ministry of Defense

Secretary of Armenian Security Council presents consequences of recent Azerbaijani aggression to Brazilian ambassador

Cryptopay stops working with Russian clients: Which crypto-exchanges are still operating in Russia?

Trial of Robert Kocharyan and Armen Gevorgyan is held in Yerevan

IAEA chief says he wants to meet with Putin again

Pashinyan: Azerbaijan creates fake news on ceasefire violations by Armenia

Bella Hadid stars in new Swarovski campaign

Doctors create drug against sleep apnea

Zuckerberg's metaverse does not live up to expectations. Why is Horizon Worlds uninteresting to users?

Bono says he and his family received death, kidnapping threats during career

US House of Representatives members visit Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

Taliban, Iran border guards fire at each other
YEREVAN. - In early 2016 it will be possible to see the first Lithuanian production on Armenian grocery shelves. In an interview with Armenian News  NEWS.am, the Lithuanian Ambassador to Armenian Erikas Petrikas expressed his pleasure over the launch of a new stage of talks between Armenia and the EU. He also touched on the prospects of the Armenian-Lithuanian cooperation and wished optimism in Armenian.

In one of your interviews you noted that the European Union didnt leave Armenia, Why? How do you see the future relations between Armenia and EU?

I arrived in Armenia in 2013. This was a special year for my country, and, I think, for Armenia as well. Lithuania presided over the Council of the EU. And, of course, it was very pleasant for me, that after talks with the EU for 3,5 years, Armenia arranged on a new agreement. In Vilnius we looked forward to and hoped for the signing, and, of course, especially we, Lithuanians, were a little sorry that the situation changed in Fall 2013. But, on the other hand, we understand the geopolitical situation very well; we understand Armenia very well, and thus respect its decisions. And despite the fact that we didnt manage to sign the Association Agreement in Vilnius, we immediately began to look into the future and think what could be done. Im very happy and want to congratulate Armenia on that Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian and Federica Mogherini, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, opened a new page in our relations on December 7. Thats why saying that the EU was, is and will be here is perhaps correct. And now we are merely looking for opportunities where to cooperate - in which spheres and to what degree. Im very happy that the talks have been launched. Lithuania is one of the 28 countries of the European Union, and it, of course, supports the initiative, trying to help this cooperation.

Could you please highlight the key achievements of Armenia and Lithuania in 2015?

Your question is very relevant, since this was a special year for our bilateral relations. On November 27, the first session of the Intergovernmental Commission took place in Vilnius. It was chaired by Armenian Minister of Economy Karen Chshmaritian and his Lithuanian counterpart Evaldas Gustas. During two years of my stay in Armenia, I constantly heard pessimism on that we wouldnt be able to find common spheres and common interests, but we proved that there are interests and they are very wide. In the protocol signed in Vilnius, we even included 11 spheres which we will work on in 2016.

The Intergovernmental Commission has been set up. I want to congratulate both the Armenian and Lithuanian people on this, since this will first and foremost deepen our economic relations. The visits of the delegations of business representatives also contributed to my optimistic attitude. One of the most powerful delegations which visited Armenia was the delegation led by the President of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists Robertas Dargis. In March 2015, he visited Armenia along with 20 businessmen and saw a very big potential in our economic cooperation. I dont want to boast but I think in early 2016 you will see the first Lithuanian production on Armenian grocery shelves. This will be the greatest achievement in the sphere of economic contacts between Armenia and Lithuania in 2015.

Lithuania three agreements will be signed in 2016 at latest.

What makes the Lithuanian New Year different?

The most importat holiday we celebrate is the Christmas Eve. This is a very old holiday. It is the traditional union of families at the table. Special lenten fare is prepared. That evening we dont eat meat, only fish and Lenten fare may be served. The holiday on December 31 already fades into insignificance: its not celebrated the way it used to be in the Soviet times. The most important day of the year for us is December 25.

What would you wish to Armenians and the Armenian people?

I would like to wish Armenia faith, faith in the future and optimism. Sometimes I feel pessimism and disillusion when talking to ordinary citizens. Its necessary to encourage the people, saying they should believe, since the faith can move mountains. And I see very big potential especially in the face of the youth. This is a fantastic potential which Armenia has. Therefore, more faith in the future is my biggest wish.
17:52

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today admitted to "some gaps" that led to the terror attack on the Air Force base here in which all the six infiltrators, who used some "Pakistan- made" equipment, have been killed.



Addressing a news conference after a visit to the forward base, he said the terrorists were neutralised in an operation that lasted for more than 36 hours since 3.30 am on Saturday but combing operations are still on.



"There is no suspected terrorist inside right now. (still) I will not give a negative report till the combing operations are over. The combing operations may be over by tomorrow," he said in reply to questions.



Parrikar announced that all those seven security personnel killed during the attack will be treated as martyrs that will entitle them to all the benefits available to "battle casualty" like in war-like situation.



He said the terrorists were carrying 40-50 kgs of bullets, mortars, which were fired from modified Under-Barrel Grenade Launcher besides some magazines.



Replying to questions, he said "I see some gaps. But I do not think there is any compromise on security". Once the investigations are over, things will become clear, he said, adding every security detail cannot be discussed and keep something for investigation.



Parrikar said that he was worried as to how the terrorists had managed to come inside the base which has a perimeter of 24 kms and located in an area of about 2,000 acres.



Asked about the Pakistani connection, he said there are indications that some of these equipment are made in Pakistan. Parrikar said except the Garud commando, no one else was killed in direct operation.



"Five Defence Securiuty Corps personnel died because more of a bad luck. One of them Jagdish Chandra virtually grappled with the terrorist before killing him," he said hailing them as martyrs who made their supreme sacrifice.



Calling the counter-terror operation as "very difficult", Parrikar said that all assets--strategic and buildings--and the families, were secured. The only building that was damaged is the one in which the terrorists were holed up, he said.



He complimented the joint efforts of Army, Air Force, and the National Security Guards (NSG) and said that they should undertake joint training in future.



Brushing aside criticism over opting for NSG for the main role rather than the Special Forces of the Army, he said "50 per cent of the NSG is made up of the Army only. All assets were provided by the Army and they worked together smoothly".



The Minister said the initial focus was to secure all the assets at the base where 3,000 families were staying besides the foreign trainees from five to six countries.



Asked about the failure of Border Security Force (BSF) personnel in stopping the infiltration from Pakistan, Parrikar referred to media reports which said that "the BSF has already been asked to give details of areas from where terrorists could have entered".



He said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing the case and it will not be proper for him to divulge details as it was the matter of ongoing investigation. Parrikar said a security audit of all defence installations is being carried out. According to the details given by him, the encounter started at 3:30 am on Saturday and the last contact with the terrorists was made at about 7:30 pm on Sunday.



Parrikar said the operations after that was for combing purpose as there were a lot of live bombs and hence there was delay in retrieving the body. He added that the body of the sixth terrorist was yet to be retrieved as agencies apprehend it could be a booby-trap. "I have said there is no need to rush," he said adding that the forces should take its time to avoid any more casualty. "We cannot take a risk. We have already lost one personnel in a booby trap. We should not lose any more," the minister said.
Stanford biologists discover that flexible gene expression may regulate social status in male fish

Scientists show how the selective expression of genes through epigenetics can regulate the social status of African cichlid fish. The work sheds light on how our genetic code might affect social relations.

L.A. Cicero Stanford researchers have demonstrated how flexible gene expression can enable male cichlid fish to achieve higher social status.

For a small African fish species, a colorful dominant male does better in life, winning access to food and females. New research by Stanford biologists suggests that this lucky outcome is regulated at a genetic level, by turning genes on and off.

People generally think that our genetic code, and thus the expression patterns of our genes, is fixed throughout life. Indeed, this is true in some cases such as eye color, a characteristic that is determined by gene expression early in development. However, scientists have recently found that gene regulation can also happen in an ongoing fashion through epigenetic processes, with the potential to change behavior throughout a lifetime.

Through epigenetics, gene expression can be turned on and off like a light switch via several mechanisms. Through one of these mechanisms called DNA methylation, methyl molecules are added to genes, preventing them from being expressed.

In a study published in PLoS ONE, researchers from Stanford report that social status in cichlid fish may be regulated by DNA methylation.



"Status differences exist in all social organisms," said Russell Fernald, a biology professor at Stanford University and senior author of the study. "Our work reveals how social dominance status is possibly regulated through methylation, which is important because individuals higher in rank generally enjoy better health and quality of life."

A show of social dominance

In 2004, a study by researchers at McGill University showed that the nurturing behavior of mother rats affected their offspring. Pups that were nurtured more grew up to be less stressed as adults, while pups that received less nurturing grew up with more anxious tendencies. This difference was caused by methylation of a gene for a stress receptor, explained Fernald, the Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology. Subsequent research has revealed other examples through which epigenetics can alter our gene expression patterns by experiences during our lifetimes.

Fernald studies Astatotilapia burtoni, one of the hundreds of cichlid fish species inhabiting Lake Tanganyika in eastern Africa, because of the unique ways they have evolved over time. For male A. burtoni, dominance is everything. They battle frequently for territory, with the victor winning access to the two most important resources  food and females.

Sporting bright rainbow-colored scales, high-ranking males aggressively defend their foraging grounds and lure females into their territory to dine on decaying matter on the lakebed. In contrast, the low-ranking males, which are dull grey in color, comprise 80 percent of the population but cannot reproduce and must swim with the females to get access to food.

But even the dominant males must fool the females into mating. This is tricky, as A. burtoni are mouth-brooders. After laying eggs in the sand, the female scoops them up in her mouth to brood them until hatching, which poses a logistical challenge for fertilization. The ingenious evolutionary solution to this dilemma is a version of oral sex.

The dominant male flashes his anal fin, which is adorned with spots that look like enormous eggs, and which are laced with sperm. When the female sees those spots, she goes after the male's anal fin as if trying to collect some eggs she dropped, collecting sperm in the process and fertilizing the eggs in her mouth.

"In this species, only the macho males get to mate and non-dominant males cannot reproduce, so the stakes are enormously high," Fernald said.

Changing social status



But some social mobility is possible. Because the flashy dominant males are more vulnerable to predation, whenever a boss fish disappears, a major battle ensues as non-dominant males fight to take over the vacant territory. The winner then ascends to dominant status resulting in an astonishing series of physiological changes, including rewiring of parts of the brain as previously reported by Fernald's group.

Given the importance of status, Fernald wondered whether these dramatic changes were driven by gene expression.

"If we altered gene expression through changes in methylation, could we influence change in social dominance?" he asked.

With a graduate student, Kapa Lenkov, Fernald tested this directly in cichlids raised in his Stanford lab. Several pairs of non-dominant males matched in size were each placed in an aquarium that could support only one territory. In each pair, one male was injected with a methylating agent while the other received a methylation suppressor, and the two fish fought for dominance.

"We could see the behavioral change in a matter of minutes, as one animal began to dominate the other," Fernald said. "Videos of these confrontations showed that the fish injected with the methylating agent were much more likely to be the winners, while those receiving the methylation suppressor typically lost the fight for dominance.

"It was remarkable that we could determine which fish became dominant by changing the range of genes expressed in this context," he said.

Fernald's work suggests that epigenetic processes may cause, rather than simply reflect, changes in dominance status in hierarchically organized species, said Tom Boyce, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

"This has implications for humans and nonhuman primates, since hierarchical behavior and social dominance relations appear early in life and remain important throughout the lifespan," Boyce said.

"DNA methylation is potentially a way through which social dominance is regulated in many social organisms, including people," Fernald said. "The next step will be to identify which genes are responding to methylation in causing this change in dominance."

Media Contact

Bjorn Carey, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-1944; bccarey@stanford.edu

Russell Fernald, Biology: rfernald@stanford.edu
The statement came on Monday after Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Iran after angry protesters stormed its embassy in Tehran to protest at the execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Xinhua reported.

"We call for resolution of differences through peaceful means in the larger interest of Muslim unity in these challenging times," the Pakistan foreign ministry said.

A foreign ministry statement described the attack on the Saudi embassy against international norms, most unfortunate and deeply regrettable.

"It is the responsibility of states to provide full safety and security to all diplomatic Missions and their personnel."

The ministry said the dark forces of extremism and terrorism can take advantage of any disunity in the Muslim nations.

The Pakistani parliament also debated the issue and Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal told the house that Pakistan was fully alive to the happenings in the Middle East.

He assured the members that the country will play a positive role in defusing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Responding to a point raised by the opposition leader Syed Khurshid Shah, Iqbal said it has been the policy of the government to promote unity and solidarity amongst the Islamic countries.

--Indo-Asian News Service py/

( 236 Words)

2016-01-05-10:11:38 (IANS)
Muddying the waters further, a prominent Left leader here on Tuesday charged India with "bullying" Nepal using various Nepali political or underground outfits as military forces against the landlocked Himalayan nation. "India is playing a very dangerous game against Nepal that will have far-reaching ramifications," UCPN-Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' warned while addressing a gathering here of the party's journalist-wing. Prachanda, who led a 10-year-long Maoist insurgency in Nepal's western regions from 1996 to 2006, accused India of opening up political and military fronts against the Himalayan nation. The chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-Maoist), who has served less than nine months as the country's prime minister, has earlier criticised New Delhi's approach to Nepal and has more recently alleged India's hand in the ongoing political agitation in Nepal's southern plains where over 55 people have died during the last four months. He said agitating Madhesi leaders like Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party president Mahantha Thakur and Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party-Nepal chief Upendra Yadav were "working at the behest of India" as its (India's) political wing, and C.K. Raut and Jai Krishna Goit were working as the "military wing". C.K. Raut, PhD, is a computer scientist, author, and political activist who has been actively involved in demanding a separate state for the Madhesi people of Nepal. He has been placed under house-arrest by the Nepal government since April last year. Jai Krishna Goit is the founder of the Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha which advocates creation of a separate Madhes state for Madhesi peoples in Nepal's Terai region. "India is playing a very dangerous game against Nepal that will have far-reaching ramifications. Please do not be surprised that Thakur, Yadav, Raut and Goit are mobilised from the same power centre," said Prachanda without naming India. "But we will not let India's gameplan succeed in Nepal," said the Left leader, adding that the Nepal government was trying to seek a peaceful end to the more than four-month-old Madhesi agitation. Prachanda is prone to being a loose cannon and has been known for his often outlandish claims. On Monday too, he had alleged that attempts were underway to make Nepal "another Syria or East Pakistan" in the guise of the Madhesi movement. "People in Madhes have fought in many movements and many revolutions. But attempts are underway to snatch them from us," he alleged. Urging his party leaders to stay together against such attempts, Prachanda said: "Some people do not want to see Nepal as a unified nation." For more than four months, the plains of the Nepal Terai have been simmering with Morcha-led protests against the country's new Constitution that was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on September 20. The Morcha has expressed dissatisfaction over the content of the new Constitution, including demarcation of the federal units, and called for an inclusive Constitution and citizenship. The four major constituents of the Madhesi Morcha are: the Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party with Mahanta Thakur as president; the Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal headed by Upendra Yadav; the Sadbhawana Party with Rajendra Mahto as president; and the Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party-Nepal headed by Mahendra Yadav. Over 55 people, including agitators and police personnel, have been killed during the four months of the Madhesi agitation. Nepal's Terai region stretches from the Mechi river in the east to the Mahakali river in the west and comprises Madhes in its eastern part and the tribal-dominated Tharuhat in the western region. It has traditionally suffered immense discrimination from the Kathmandu-centric ruling elite that predominantly comprises the Brahmins (Bahuns) and Chhetris of the Nepal hills. The major agitation demand is for the formation of two provinces in the Nepali Terai -- the Madhes extending from the Mechi river in the east to the Narayani river in mid-western Nepal and Tharuhat pradesh from the Narayani to the Mahakali river in the west. The Madhesi protestors are demanding, among others, a redrawing of the boundaries of the provinces in the Himalayan nation as proposed in the new Constitution; and restoration of rights granted to Madhesis in the interim constitution of 2007 which the new charter has snatched away. They also want representation in Parliament on the basis of population -- the Nepal Terai has almost 51 percent of the country's population yet gets only one-third of seats in Parliament -- and proportional representation in government jobs. --Indo-Asian News Service giri/pm/dg ( 738 Words) 2016-01-05-19:43:36 (IANS)
Sri Lankan maritime forces allegedly detained eight Indian fishermen along with a mechanised fishing trawler on the alleged charges of violating the maritime boundary of the Island nation and indulged in illegal poaching. Preliminary reports reaching here tonight said,''all the eight the fishermen hailing from Akkaraipettai coastal village in Nagapattinam district were encircled by a group of Sri Lankan fishermen, while they were fishing in the high seas and were forcibly taken to Sri Lanka. Later, the Indian fishermen were handed over to Sri Lankan navy for interrogation.'' However, there was no official confirmation about the incarceration of Indian fishermen. UNI XR/GSM PY NS2322 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0298-521710.Xml
The Sensex rose 112.70 points trading at 25736.05 and the Nifty climbed 37.10 points trading at 7828.40.

Tata Steel, Hindalco Industries, Tata Motors, BHEL, Adani Ports, Cairn India, Idea Cellular, NTPC and Bajaj Auto were early gainers, rising around 1-1.5 percent.

The Indian rupee has opened higher by 11 paise at 66.50 per dollar versus 66.61 Monday.

Asian markets recovered from Monday's sharp selloff while Chinese markets tumbled at opening before quickly erasing early losses. The Shanghai Composite fell 3.1 percent before gaining 0.95 percent.

US stocks, meanwhile, closed lower on Monday, weighed by renewed concerns of global economic slowdown and increased tensions in the Middle East.

European markets too slumped to close sharply lower following a sell-off in Chinese stocks and heightened geopolitical tensions. (ANI)
Earlier, South Africa had suffered a humiliating 0-3 defeat in the four-match Test series against India.

Describing the tour against India as a `madness`, the 73-year-old revealed that his players' were not able to fully overcome the defeat, Sport24 reported.

Bacher, who believes that the Indian pitches were 'outrageous', insisted that his side were now tackling England in a tough series.

The former skipper further said that the current South African Test team could not fill the void left by star players like Shaun Pollock, Mark Boucher, Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis.

South Africa are currently trailing 0-1 in the four-match Test series against the visitors following their 241-run defeat in the opening match against England in Durban. (ANI)
In yet another vicious attack on Indian fisherfolk, the Sri Lankan maritime forces apprehended 12 Indian fishermen along with 3 boats, attacked several fishing trawlers and destroyed fishing nets worth several lakhs of rupees in mid-sea, at midnight last night. State fisheries department officials said here this morning that of the 12 incarcerated fishermen, eight hailed from Rameswaram in Ramanathapuram district and four others were the native of Jaghadapattinam fishing hamlet in Pudukottai district of Tamil Nadu. The Rameswaram fishermen had ventured into the sea for a fishing trip yesterday morning in 560 boats. While they were fishing near the controversial Katchatheevu Island, the Srilankan Naval Crafts encircled several fishing trawlers and attacked them with stones and soda bottles. The Lankan Naval men destroyed fishing nets in atleast 50 boats, seized marine catch from the boats and chased away the boats at Gun point. A mechanized boat was damaged after it was rammed by the fast patrol craft of Lankan Navy. The fishermen suffered huge loss due to the attack. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Navy in its official website today claimed that it had assisted its Coast Guard to arrest twelve Indian fishermen along with three fishing trawlers poaching in Sri Lankan waters North West of Thalaimannar and North of Delft Island. The arrested fishermen along with the trawlers were handed over to the officials of the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources of Thalaimannar and Kankasanthurai for onward action, the Navy said.UNI GSM CS 1016 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-521870.Xml
Gurupurab, the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh, was today celebrated with religious gaiety and fervour in the Kashmir valley. Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and leaders of political parties greeted people on the occasion. Members of the Sikh community, including women and children, in colourful dresses were visiting Gurdwaras and other religious places since this morning despite severe cold. The main congregations was held at Gurdwara Chatipadshahi on the foothill of Kohi-e-Maran hills, where the shrine of Hazrat Mehboob-ul-Aalam and a temple are located in Rainawari area of the downtown. However, devotees coming from different parts of the city, were facing difficulties as authorities had imposed restrictions in Rainwari area to prevent demonstrations by members of the Shia community against the execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia alongwith 47 others for anti government protests recently. Similar congregations were also organized at Jawahar Nagar, Bhagat Barzulla, Rangreth, Mehjoor Nagar, Tral, Baramulla and Uri. Members of other communities, including muslims, were seen greeting their sikh brethren on the occasion. In a message of felicitations, the Governor observed that Guru Gobind Singh ji was a warrior, poet and a philosopher who strived for building a society based on equality, brotherhood and respect for women. He said, ''that the values underlying the teachings of the great Guru should guide our endeavours to establish a just social order.'' The Governor expressed hope that this auspicious occasion would usher the State towards peace, progress and prosperity and further strengthen the bonds of communal harmony, brotherhood and re-invigorate the secular traditions which have been the hallmark of the glorious heritage and composite ethos of Jammu and Kashmir for centuries past. The Governor prayed for the well-being of the people of the State on this occasion. Mr Sayeed, admitted in AIIMS, New Delhi, also extended greetings to the people on the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh. In his message, Mr Sayeed observed that Guru Gobind Singh Ji was an apostle of peace, compassion and love. The teachings of great Guru will continue to inspire future generations. Let us take a pledge to embrace the path of service to mankind and work towards laying edifice of a just and equitable society, he added. The Chief Minister expressed hope that the auspicious occasion would be a harbinger of peace, progress and prosperity in the state and further strengthen the bonds of communal harmony and brotherhood. UNI BAS ASM RSA RAI1200 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-521874.Xml
The first project is for rehabilitation and upgradation of Goharganj to Bhopal Section of NH-12 from existing km 255/300 to km 301/200 including construction of Obedullaganj bypass from existing km 278/450 of NH-12 to existing Km 3/600 of NH-69 in the State of Madhya Pradesh to four-lanes with payed shoulders under NHDP- III through Engineering Procurement & Construction (EPC) Basis Contract for the contract price of Rs 583.50 crore from Ministry of Road Transport & Highways.

The project has been awarded to a consortium led by MBL Infrastructures and is to be executed over a period of 24 months from the appointed date.

The second project is for maintenance of Guwahati bypass on NH-37 (Km. 146.172 to 163.895) for the contract price of Rs 25.62 Crore from National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) in the State ofAssam. The execution period of the project is 12 months.

MBL Infrastructures is engaged in the construction and maintenance of roads and highways, industrial infrastructure projects and other civil engineering projects for various government bodies and other clients.UNI JS RB SM1158

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In a sharp attack on the Modi government on the terrorist attack on Pathankot airbase, the Congress today questioned the rationale behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's visit to Lahore. Addressing reporters, AICC spokesperson Anand Sharma demanded answers from Mr Modi on the terrorist attack. Questioning the rationale behind Mr Modi 's visit to Lahore, Mr Sharma said,''The government should take nation into confidence and consult leadership of principal Opposition parties.'' Mr Sharma said,'' We want to know after cancellation of NSA level talks in August, what was the understanding reached between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Pakistan counterpart in Bangkok ? '' Terming the Pathankot attack an assault on India, he said, ''It would be appropriate to call Pathankot attack an assault on India as the terrorists crossed the International border and attacked our airbase,'' Mr Anand Sharma said. Deploring the attack on the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan, he said,''It is a painful beginning of the new year for our country. Attack on Indian consulate in Afghanistan is also deplorable.''UNI AR RSA 1224 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0352-522021.Xml
Defence experts on Tuesday said that providing evidence of the perpetrators of Pathankot attack to Pakistan would be a futile exercise, adding that talks with Islamabad cannot be held in the present atmosphere. Strategic expert Ajay Sahni voiced his apprehension over the National Investigating Agency (NIA) affirming that it would provide evidence of the perpetrators of Pathankot attack to Pakistan, saying it was 'completely unproductive line to undertake'. "There is no dearth of evidence against Pakistan. What is the use of constantly presenting evidences to the criminal and asking him to punish himself, unless you are able to exert leverage and pressure on Pakistan to end this. Unless you are able to alter the equation of power between India and Pakistan, this will continue," Sahni told ANI. "They are fully aware of what they are doing and adding evidence to already existing vast quantity of evidence is completely fruitless enterprise, it is not going to change Pakistan's position," he added. When asked to respond on the proposed Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan, Sahni said the entire dialogue with Pakistan is misconceived. "It is not reality based and that it is betrayal of Mr. Modi's promise that there won't be any dialogue as long as terrorism continues," he added. Defence expert Qamar Agha on his part said that it would be better if the talks between the two Asian neighbours are postponed as of now. "I think we should reschedule these talks as these talks can't be held in these atmosphere, where operations are going on, militants are propping up in Punjab so it is not the right time to negotiate," Agha told ANI. "It would be better if they postpone it for some more time and find out the details of these operations and then go to the talks," he added. Meanwhile, the NIA has said that it expects cooperation from Pakistan for tracing the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack. The NIA team today reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack. The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab yesterday to probe the 'conspiracy' angle behind the attack. The Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan scheduled for January 14-15 in Islamabad looks in jeopardy in the wake of the Pathankot attack. (ANI)
While the Indian Government may be self congratulating itself for containing the terror attack in Pathankot and securing assets in the air base, it can be accused of glossing over intelligence failure. Authorities had prior information of such an attack. An alert had already been sounded. Then on Friday, the terrorists infiltrated into India before striking at two different places in Pathankot. They first killed a 40-year-old Sikh man before decamping with his Innova car. Later they seized an official car of Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police (headquarters) Salwinder Singh on the Pathankot highway before driving down from the border to the heavily fortified strategic air base, about 25 kilometres away. The terrorists were on the loose from Friday till early Saturday when the first contact with them was made at 3.30 a.m. at the air base. And mind you, they were heavily armed, had assault rifles and grenades. And still they could not be spotted. Two important questions arise here? Firstly, the security agencies had specific intelligence about the terror attack at least four to five days in advance. Secondly, the Gurdaspur SP had alerted Punjab Police about the incident and the presence of five terrorists on Friday itself after his car was waylaid. Still the security agencies could not locate them. In fact, there was a delay of full 12 hours before the agencies began probing the terror angle despite being told by Salwinder Singh. The terrorists themselves announced their arrival at the air base after they opened fire at security forces. If this is not intelligence failure, then what will you call it? Their main aim was to carry out a spectacular attack and they succeeded partly in their mission. If our security agencies could not track them despite having specific intelligence information, then something is wrong somewhere. But we won't own it. The government and security agencies are still unsure about the number of terrorists. It's four, perhaps six or more. We don't know yet. As the siege dragged on, it became clear that there were certainly more than four terrorists. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who was quick to announce the end of operation by commenting that all five terrorists were killed, was forced to delete his tweet after it became known that only four terrorists were neutralized and there were reports of fresh firing. Was the Home Minister in the dark or he jumped the gun? It clearly shows there is no coordination among various agencies. Nobody has answers yet as to how many vehicles did the terrorists use? Some reports suggest two teams may have entered the air base using two different vehicles. If it is true, then where is the second vehicle? Did somebody drop the second team of terrorists near the air base? It's all speculation. We don't know yet. And it is less said the better as far as monitoring of the international border with Pakistan is concerned. There are reports suggesting that the terrorists might have crossed the border from the same point from where terrorists from Pakistan had infiltrated before carrying out a daring attack on the Gurdaspur Police Station in July last year in which 10 people were killed. We were told that more troops were sent to the border after the Gurdaspur terror attack. But still they could not notice the movement of terrorists? How does one explain this? Clearly, the Border Security Force is inattentive and did shoddy work in guarding the international border. The fact of the matter is that we have not learnt any lessons from the previous attacks. Why is it that terrorists succeed in carrying out the attacks whenever they wish to? We just respond to the attacks by eliminating the terrorists and pay a heavy price by losing our brave hearts. There is something seriously amiss in our intelligence gathering and sharing. It is high time we strengthen our intelligence network so that the terrorists are either arrested or neutralized before they dare to attack our country. Hope, it is not a wishful thinking. [Vikas Khanna is a senior journalist and the views expressed by him are personal] (ANI)
Dr Venugopal, who is the Principal of the century oldVisvesvaraya College of Engineering, in the city is being recognisedfor his great contribution to tech education in the governmentsector and he is the first person to get this honour in Karnataka.

For nearly 35 years he provided the leadership to computerscience and electrical engineering education in the State.

Prof Venugopal is widely acclaimed for his pioneering textbooks,organising International Conferences, delivering Keynote addresses,planning and monitoring technical councils in India.

He is a World-renowned teacher, prolific researcher and ableadministrator with a record of eleven multi-interdisciplinarydegrees in Electronics, Computer Science, Communications, Economics,Business Finance, Law, Industrial Relations, Public Relations andJournalism, including a PhD in Computer Science from IIT Madras anda PhD in Economics.

Prof Venugopal is also a Post Doctoral Research Scholar andvisiting Professor at University of Southern California, USA.

He has served UVCE and Bangalore University for the last fourdecades. He has made exemplary contributions to books, researchpublications and Engineering-Education Worldwide, an officialrelease said here today.

He has successfully guided 21 PhD students, at present he isguiding nine students and is an informal guide to 60 plus research scholars.

Prof Venugopal has filed 102 patents. This year three Professorshave been elevated to IEEE fellow from India. The other two are ProfSanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Director, ISI and Prof Souvik Mahapatra,IIT, Bombay. UNI RS VV RSS1520

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Kapadia's funeral will be carried out here today at about at Tower of Silence at Walkeshwar in south Mumbai.

Mr Kapadia was born in Mumbai in 1947. He graduated from Government Law College, Mumbai which is the oldest law college in Asia. Kapadia started his career as a class IV employee. He later became a law clerk with a lawyer's office in Mumbai.

Kapadia joined a reputed law firm of Mumbai as a clerk and later went on to work with Feroze Damania who was a highly respected "firebrand" labour lawyer.

However his zeal to achieve something inspired him to join the legal profession and he joined as an advocate in the Bombay High Court on 10 September 1974.

He was appointed as an additional judge of the Bombay High Court on 8 October 1991 and on 23 March 1993 he was appointed as a permanent judge.

On 5 August 2003 he became the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court. On 18 December 2003 he was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court.

On 12 May 2010 he was sworn in as the Chief Justice of India by the then President Pratibha Patil. He retired on September 29, 2012.

During his tenure as Chief Justice, he was the Chairman of the General Council of the Gujarat National Law University and the Visitor of the National Law School of India University.UNI AAA RB AE AS1607

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In ferrrous metals, Copper utensils, Brass utensils and Aluminiumutensils remained unchanged on scattered demand.

Copper heavy rose by Rs 100 per quintal on good demand, whileBrass cuttings fell by Rs 200 per quintal due to low demand fromlocal dealers.

In Non-ferrous metals, No chnage was seen in Aluminium ingot,Zinc slab and Lead ingot on moderate demand.

Copper wire bars moved up by Rs 100 per quintal on better demand.

Tin slab and Nickel cathode dropped by Rs 5 per Kg each on weakdemand, they added.

Ferrous Metals (per quintal):

Copper heavy - Rs 37,600, Copper utensils - Rs 35,000, Brassutensils - Rs 27,500, Brass cuttings - Rs 28,000 and Aluminiumutensils - Rs 10,900.

Non-ferrous Metals (per quintal):

Copper wire bars - Rs 40,900, Aluminium ingots - Rs 13,000, Zincslab - Rs 14,100, Lead ingots - Rs 12,300, Tin slabs - Rs 1,140 andNickel cathode - Rs 710. UNI RB SM1552

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After the meeting, AISSF president Karnail Singh Peermohammed appreciated the role of Punjab Police and other securitymen.

He appreciated the role of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal by visiting the bereaved families and announcing a financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh each.

He also appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit all martyrs' families and provide an aid of Rs 1 crore to each.UNI XC GS SW CS1544

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The US consul general in Hyderabad on Tuesday said they were taking seriously the issue related to students being sent back to India. Terming it a "very serious issue", Michael Mullins said the US ambassador in India Richard Verma was working on it. "It is a big concern obviously for students, their parents, their families, and governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh although it's not just two states, there are students from other states as well who are involved in this and sent back that is why it is being looked at centrally by the ambassador and ministry of external affairs," he said. The consul general was replying to a query on the sidelines of an event. "We are limited in what we can say right now. We are looking very hard at this both here and in New Delhi and in Washington," he added. About 100 students from both the Telugu states have been sent back over the last few weeks after they landed in the US. They complained that the US authorities did not give any reason for their action but in some cases they were told that universities they selected are under scrutiny. The incidents have led to concern among students and their families in the two states. Meanwhile, the Telangana government on Tuesday conveyed its concern over the issue to the US consulate. Information Technology Minister K. Tarakarama Rao met Michael Mullins at the consulate. The minister later told reporters that it was not proper to send back students, who obtained visas and are trying to legitimately enter the US. He said this was causing severe hardships and huge financial loss to students and their parents. According to the minister, the consul general, while acknowledging that this happened in some cases, assured that they were trying to rectify it. The minister noted that in some cases such incidents were happening because of problems with the students' documents. Some students were using fake certificates and documents. Tarakarama Rao, who is the son of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, said the government would deal firmly with those involved in making fake documents. He suggested that the consulate check the authenticity of all documents here before issuing visas so that students don't suffer after landing in the US. The minister also brought to the consul general's notice some media reports about the ill treatment meted out to some students by the US authorities. The consul general, however, denied that any student was handcuffed. The minister said he was also writing to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to take up the students' issue with the US homeland security officials. He noted that Hyderabad was the further biggest embarkation point in the world for students going to the US. The city also ranks second in the country in terms of sending employees to the US. --Indo-Asian News Service ms/pm/ ( 490 Words) 2016-01-05-17:41:40 (IANS)
The Meghalaya High Court has directed Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi to appear before the court on January 7 to assist in deciding on the security cover to judges after retirement. During the hearing held here yesterday, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Uma Nath Singh and Justice T N K Singh expressed dissatisfaction with Union Home Ministry Director (North East-I) J N P Singh for being in the habit of not taking any decision on one pretext or other. The High Court said an order was passed for categorisation of security cover on December 10, 2015 but till date no step has been taken by the officer in this regard. In a letter on December 31, 2015, Mr Singh has sought three weeks time for filing thereat perception to judges of the court. According to Mr Singh, the security of the Chief Justice and other judges of the High Court falls under the purview of the state government. As per standard procedure, the Chief Justice and other judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts are provided statutory security cover by the respective state and union territory police based on threat assessment which is reviewed from time to time, Mr Singh had said. The High Court had in its order on November 2 said the Chief Justice and judges of the High Court were getting anonymous threats to their life.UNI RRK AD SW AS1659 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-522291.Xml
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has approved Rs 240 crore for acquiring land for rehabilitation of people affected due to the Gosekhurd irrigation project. After reviewing the progress of the work in a meeting here, Mr Fadnavis told newspersons that the scheme has to be completed in the next three years for which the government has already approved the funds. He said during the review meeting the authorities concerned were directed to execute the project as a mission and asked the officials to finish all other incomplete irrigation projects of Nagpur district. The Mukhabardi project would be over by December, he informed and said water would be used carefully for irrigation for which proper planning should be done. According to Mr Fadnavis, Rs 55.27 crore had been spent on 4,099 works in 313 villages under the Jalyukta Shivar programme in Nagpur district. Out of which, 3,386 works had been completed and 417 works were in progress, he said and added that these works had created 12,719 TCW water stock in the district and effectively the water level had gone up by 0.20 mm to 1.20 mm in wells and 9,585 protected irrigated land had been created. Meanwhile, district magistrate Sachin Kurve informed that Rs 12.50 crore out of Rs 13.67 crore received for Gosekhurd irrigation project had been disbursed. He further said that Rs 3.49 crore out of Rs 7.52 crore were spent on providing civic amenities. Mr Kurve said that Rs 753.61 crore had been given to 78,437 farmers for sowing of kharif crops under a loan scheme, while Rs 110 crore were given during the last rabi season, he added.UNI RS SS SW AN1804 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-522717.Xml
The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court (HC) today dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition seeking a direction to Thanjavur District Collector to detain Leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu Assembly and DMDK supremo Vijayakanth under the 'Goondas Act'. A Division Bench comprising Justices V.Ramasubramanian and N.Kirubakaran observed that the case had been filed for political gain, while dismissing the petition filed by a city-based advocate and Secretary of the Dr.Puratchi Thalaivi Amma Free Legal Aid Centre A.Jeyaram. Further, the Judges said the petition had been filed to attract public attention as assembly elections are set to happen in Tamil Nadu in a few months. If the PIL was allowed, then the court would have to deal with several such litigations, they said. The petitioner Mr Jeyaram alleged that Vijayakanth, who is the leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu, was committing various crimes and creating panic among people. It is necessary to prevent him from disturbing public peace in future. Taking action under the normal criminal law is not sufficient, Vijayakanth should be arrested and detained under the Goondas Act to maintain law and order in the state, he added. It may be recalled that Thanjavur police have registered a case under Sections 143, 147 and 504 of Indian Penal Code, besides 3 (1) of Tamilnadu Public Property (Prevention of Damage and Loss) Act 1992 against Vijayakanth and 58 others on December 28, last for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa during a demonstration. UNI GSM KVV KSR 1820 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-522793.Xml
Madhya Pradesh Congress president Arun Yadav today described the terrorist attack on Pathankaot airbase as a big intelligence failure of the Centre. The Centre and the Union Home Ministry slept over intelligence. Seven security personnel lost their lives. Counter-terror operations are still continuing, Mr Yadav told reporters here. It is unfortunate that while the encounter rages at the airbase the External Affairs Minister is attending a welcome ceremony in Bhopal and the Prime Minister is talking about Yoga elsewhere, he said. Mr Yadav said the premier, who once spoke about 56-inch chest, is not making any comment. Placing the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance Government at the Centre in the crosshairs over price rise, he said international crude prices are falling but the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh Government are imposing duties on petrol and diesel on a continuous basis depriving common man of its benefits. Mr Yadav claimed that several natural calamity-affected peasants in the state have not received compensation since the past three years. Besides, old age pension and subsidised ration are not being provided. He said a two-day meeting of the party organisation concluded in the presence of the partys state incharge general secretary Mohan Prakash today during which a vow was taken to throw the BJP out of power in the state in the 2018 assembly polls. Mr Yadav said recent by-poll victory in Ratalm Lok Sabha seat and triumphs in civic bodies election has boosted the morale of party workers. He claimed that the Congress would emerge victorious in coming Maihar assembly by-poll. Besides, seven resolutions were passed during the meeting. On the occasion, Congress MP and former Union minister Kantilal Bhuria alleged that the ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh is targeting its workers and booking false cases against them. Mr Yadav said the Congress is submitting a memorandum to the Director General of Police over registering of false cases against party workers.UNI PS DJK AS1854 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-522892.Xml
The process for elevation of the Hisar aerodrome in Haryana as international airport gets a leg-up next week when the formalities for engaging a consultant would be finalised. Disclosing this here today, an official spokesman said a five-member committee under the chairmanship of Managing Director, Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation, had been constituted for evaluation of the technical bids and appointment of a consultant. The primary task of the consultant would be to lay down detailed technical qualifications and parameters, assist the government in floating global tenders and ensure financial closure in the public-private partnership mode. The Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar , had announced that Hisar airport would be elevated to the status of international airport which would give major impetus to economic and industrial development of the state. The state government is already in possession of 194 acres of land at Hisar aerodrome and an additional 3,500 acres adjoining the airport have been identified for the development of international airport. Besides, land adjacent to the civil aerodrome which is in possession of various departments could also be transferred to the Civil Aviation Department for the purpose, the spokesman said. Under phase 1, a proposal has been sent for expansion of the runway from 4,000 feet to 7,000 feet, and renovation of the terminal building at a cost of Rs 45 crore. The National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, has already carried out the work of soil testing. UNI JS AJ RK1910 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-522843.Xml
Jammu and Kashmir police today claimed to have arrested a Hizbul Mujahideen militant involved in killing of man and his minor son in apple township of Sopore in north Kashmir district of Baramulla. A police spokesman said here this afternoon that police has cracked the mysterious killings of father -son duo by apprehending an HM militant Towheed Bashir Mir son of Bashir Mir resident of Younsoo. He said Towheed was the main accused who shot and killed one surrendered militant Bashir Ahmed Bhat and his three-year-old son Burhan Bashir Bhat at Sagipora. An FIR under section 302, 307, 34 RPC, 7/27 Indian Arms Act was registered in Police Station Bomai in this regard. Police has already arrested Tahir Bashir Sheikh alias Tahir Malla, the accomplice of Towheed soon after the incident occurred in the month of September 2015. Keeping a close track Sopore police received an information that Towheed was moving from Srinagar to Handwara. A naka along with security forces was laid and the party apprehended Towheed when he tried to escape towards the orchards as he saw the police checkpost. Last year soon after the incident, a SIT was constituted. The SIT was headed by SDPO Rafiaabad Shabir Khan. UNI BAS AE NS1845 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0331-522754.Xml
The Congress workers hurled eggs and tomatoes at the health minister's car at Kurada village while he was on his way to Deogarh after attending a programme in Sambalpur.

"The youth and students are protesting against the state government for failing to provide employment and irregularities in distribution of ration cards under the National Food Security Act (NFSA)," said Itish Pradhan, state unit president of the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), an affiliate of the Congress.

"Egg pelting will continue in the coming days against the ministers," said Pradhan.

Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Prasad Harichandan said the ministers are facing the anger of common people following their bungling in distribution of ration cards.

He said the ruling party workers and law makers have benefited from the NFSA in the state.

However, Biju Janata Dal legislator and the ruling party's students wing president Byomakesh Ray said the Congress workers are pelting eggs only to make their presence felt in the state after a disastrous defeat in several elections.

Earlier, the food supplies and consumer welfare minister faced egg and tomato attacks for two consecutive days in Ganjam and Puri districts.

Meanwhile, Chhatrapur police on Tuesday arrested three persons for allegedly pelting eggs and tomatoes at Dasburma's car near Chhatrapur College in Ganjam district on Monday.

--Indo-Asian News Service cd/pr/vt

( 258 Words)

2016-01-05-19:49:35 (IANS)
It has been a gloomy beginning of the New Year for India and its security forces. Seven soldiers and a civilian have been killed in terrorist initiated violence in Pathankot, Punjab, while four brave soldiers of the Indian army have died in a snow avalanche in Siachen. Sacrifice in the call of duty is not new to the Indian soldiers, but such incidents during a festive season do leave behind a feeling of melancholy and dejection. The terror attack on the Air Force station in Pathankot has gripped the nation in the first week of 2016. It is, however, not unexpected. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on his counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, Pakistan on December 25, many experts spoke of the possibility of a violent reaction by Pakistan based terrorist organisations functioning under the patronage of the Pakistan Army. It has not taken too long for the prediction to come true. Post the attack, the debate in India has centred on the lack of proper reaction to available intelligence inputs which led to loss of lives in the incident. While this is an important and sensitive issue that needs serious thought, what is more important is to take note of the repercussions on Indo-Pakistan relations. It is, therefore, vital to see the message that is emanating from Pakistan in the aftermath of this incident through its media. The main English newspapers of Pakistan like the Dawn and Express Tribune have been quick to emphasise that Pakistan has, "quickly and unequivocally condemned the terror attack and offered its cooperation to India." The Pakistan media is also throwing broad hints about India being too quick in blaming Islamabad even before the identity of the terrorists is established conclusively. "The hostile reaction by much of the Indian media to the alleged involvement of Pakistanis in the attack even before the barest facts could be established underlines just how difficult peacemaking will be," says Dawn. These are old tactics that have been used by Pakistan on many earlier occasions to fend off pressure. What is new, however, is the subtle manner in which the Pakistan media is trying to manage international perception. Broad hints are being thrown about Indian media advising the Prime Minister, through its editorials to "stay the course" and not stall or suspend talks with Pakistan after the attacks. Further, the Pakistan media is calling for strict action in case the attack can be conclusively linked to a Pakistan based group. This is a smoke screen since it is well known that Pakistan has not acknowledged involvement of its citizens in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack till date. So, there is little chance of acknowledging the involvement in this instant. In fact, Pakistan has gone a step further this time by attempting to give this attack a local sheen. It has prevailed upon the United Jihad Council (UJC) to take responsibility for the attack. The UJC is an umbrella organisation for Kashmir centric terror groups, the main constituent being the Hizbul Mujahedeen (HM) which recruits only local Kashmir youth in its fold. Syed Sallahuddin, the chairman of the UJC is the leader of HM. In its statement, the UJC has said the attack was a message to India that Kashmiri fighters could strike at any sensitive installation across the country. "Pakistan has nothing to do with the attack but ironically the Indian Government, media and their armed forces are suffering from Pakistan phobia," said the UJC spokesman. This is a brilliant move to take the heat off the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar, who is a favourite of the Pakistan Army and especially Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif. The terroristS were definitely not Kashmiris and as such, the claim is false. Two aspects are quite evident from the manner in which events have unfolded post the Pathankot incident. First, the Pakistan Army controls not only the government but also the Pakistan media, and of course, its loyalists in the India/Kashmir centric terrorists groups operating from Pakistani soil. It has brilliantly used its assets in the politico-strategic management of the incident. Secondly, India is today in a position of disadvantage having lost valuable time in dwelling on the tactics and modalities of the Pathankot attack rather than the politico-strategic aspects. Once again the unimaginative Indian bureaucracy has missed the woods for the trees and put the nation on the back foot. While contemplating the way ahead it would be practical for the Prime Ministers of both countries to decide whether they should keep meeting and thus give reason to the terrorists and mercenary elements to perpetrate violence or pursue a better option of keeping their friendship under wraps and leverage the same to give a behind the scene push to normalisation of relations between the two sides. The second moot point is -what more needs to be done to make Prime Minister Sharif stand up to his own Army Chief General Raheel Sharif? He has received encouragement from the United States including blunt missives to General Raheel Sharif to lay off India; he has also received unmitigated support from Prime Minster Narendra Modi. Yet, he has not been able to generate the guts to take on his Army Chief. It should be made clear to Sharif once and for all that he can no longer run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. In case he continues to pursue his play safe dual policy there is little hope of improvement in India-Pakistan relations. With the euphoria generated by the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Lahore having waned considerably, what is absolutely certain is that the time for letdown of guard in Jammu and Kashmir has definitely not arrived. It is, therefore, business as usual for the security forces deployed there. They can look forward to a hard winter with extensive patrolling under extreme weather conditions and constant vigil along the line of control. [The views expressed in the above article are that of Col. (Retired) Jaibans Singh. He is the editor of www.defenceinfo.com. ] (ANI)
Interacting with the mediapersons here today, Mr Arora said the intelligence wing of the state had informed the central security agency about the possible terror attack in the city before hand following which the NSG had rushed to the Pathankot Air Force Station even before terrorists attacked it.

The DGP claimed that a search operation was launched by the police immediately after receiving the information of kidnapping of Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh.

He said Pathankot had become an easy target of the Pakistan based militant outfits.

First the terrorists stormed the Dinanagar Police Station in July last year and this time they stormed the Pathankot Air Force Station, he added.UNI XC DB AJ AN2050

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On the occasion, retired Brigadier J.S. Sandhu said: "India needs to sharpen its action towards Pakistan".

"The government needs to let the army act against these terror groups... We have always been lenient and soft towards Pakistan, but in return we were only rewarded with attacks," Sandhu told IANS.

Among others who gathered to pay homage to the martyrs were students, families of ex-servicemen and activists.

Himangi, a 19-year-old law student, asked the nation to learn to pay homage and respect to the martyrs.

"Those army men fought for us to be safe. And we are not even bothered to pay them a homage or respect," she said.

"Why aren't the politicians or bureaucrats bothered?" she asked.

Later, a candle light vigil was also held by the ex-servicemen.

--Indo-Asian News Service team-sd/vt

( 169 Words)

2016-01-05-21:57:35 (IANS)
Elaborate security arrangement has been made in the area with the deployment of a special force of 12 commandos, a bomb disposal squad and Railway Police in the railway station area.

Trains coming from North India are being checked thoroughly by the police. Unofficial vendors on the station have been driven out.

Nashik Road Police too have been pressed into service to assist the Railway Police.

The Railway Police, led by assistant commissioner of police Ravindr Wadekar, have been monitoring the security arrangement at the station.UNI RDS SS CJ AJ AN2147

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Declaring that next Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh would be from BJP, Governor of Rajasthan Kalyan Singh, who turned 84 today, said he was no longer interested in returning to active politics.''I cannot speak much as I am on a constitutional post. But I believe there are enough leaders to lead BJP in 2017 elections. One thing is sure that next Chief Minister in UP will be from BJP, Mr Singh told mediapersons amid celebrations as BJP workers shouted Kalyan Singh 'zindabad'.His five days sojourn in Lucknow has raised questions about his return to active politics. A section of party leaders were vocal about his return to politics and leading the party in the next election. Kalyan Singh ji ka aashirwad Uttar Pradesh ko milna chahiye (UP should get Kalyan Singhs blessings), MP from Unnao Shakshi Maharaj said throwing a loud hint about leaders mood about Kalyan Singh. Shakshi Maharaj did not end here and said: People have seen Kalyan Singhs rule. The law and order was the best during his tenure and the state needs his active leadership now.Mr Singh who was listening to this conversation said that he was not supposed to comment on these issues. I am heading a constitutional post and am not supposed to give political statement, he said.When asked about Governor of Uttar Pradesh Ram Naiks statement on Ram Mandir, he said what Naik sahib has said is judicious. He has only said that people want Ram Mandir should be constructed at Ayodhya. Whats wrong in this statement? Everyone wants a Ram temple there (in Ayodhya), Mr Singh said.Mr Singh was Chief Minister when disputed Babri Masjid was demolished and he was forced to spend a night at Tihar Jail for violation of his commitment to Supreme Court that the structure would be protected during Kar Sewa.But he refused to discuss this issue now. Cake khaaiye (eat cake), he said.Party workers swarmed the Mall Avenue residence of Kalyan Singh since morning. They came armed with bouquet and good wishes. Mr Singh was also greeted on his birthday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Chief Minister Rajasthan Vasundhare Raje Scindhia.Earlier in the day, a holy ritual was held which was attended by the his family. In the afternoon he cut a cake as workers sang Happy Birthday for him.UNI MB CJ AJ 2249 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-523283.Xml
The winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir today celebrated Gurpurab, the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh with religious fervour and gaiety. Attired in colourful dresses, members of the Sikh community, including women and children this morning, thronged Gurudwaras, religious congregations and offered special prayers on the occasion. The main function here was held at Gurudwara Bibi Chand Kour Samadh, (Guru Nanak Dev Gurudwara) situated in the heart of the city. Thousands of Sikhs from different parts of the city and outskirts visited the Gurudwara to join the prayers. Meanwhile, special langar were also organised for the devotees in the Gurudwaras. Similar celebrations functions were also organised in other Gurdwaras in Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra had also extended Gurpurab greetings to people and wished peace and prosperity in the state. However, restrictions on traffic were imposed around the venue where main function was held while tight security arrangements were also made for incident free celebrations. Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister, Dr Nirmal Singh speaking at a function organized to celebrate Gurupurab at the Gurudwara said the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh are more relevant today and we should ensure that teachings are passed to the future generations. The Deputy Chief Minister while describing Guru Gobind Singh as a multidimensional personality said that sacrifices rendered by him would be remembered for times immemorial. He said we should all follow the teachings of the Guru for leading a peaceful life as these are more relevant in todays age of materialism. Dr Singh said that Guru Gobind Singh also laid the foundation of the code of ethics for Khalsa which is one of his most important contributions, besides he also wrote hymns of praising the virtues of Khalsa living which include his voluminous poetry. The Deputy Chief Minister said that the government is committed to ensure that the minorities get all the requisite opportunities in employment and other related things. UNI VBH CJ AJ 2324 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-523417.Xml
Former Governor of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh Aziz Qureshi, who is also a senior Congress leader, hailed Narendra Modi for his surprise visit to Pakistan.''Modi had made a masterstroke by making a surprise visit to Pakistan,'' claimed Qureshi without forgetting to say that it was his personal opinion and nothing to do with Congress.He said subversive forces who were against restoration of peace in Pakistan, only reacted in way of attacking air force centre in Pathankot but he said that Modi should continue with his efforts to maintain friendly relation with Pakistan. Interestingly, he also hailed Modi government in the context of `intolerance issue and said and said India was still the safest place for the Muslims and all other communities.``Go to Pakistan to see that how people were living under the shadow of terror just in the name of Islam. India is always known for it secular credentials and I can say that even when RSS supported government is in the Centre still Muslims are most secured and free in this country, he asserted. Mr Qureshi made these comments while talking to media persons here today.Attacking the state government for renaming Kashi Ram Urdu Arabi and Pharsi University and withdrawing the Urdu faculty from the College, former governor said that he would fight to restore the prestige of the Urdu Language, even if he had to come on road or sacrifice his life. ``Urdu is the popular language amongst the people of this country and majority of Muslims used it in comparison to Arabi or Pharsi so withdrawing Urdu from the above university is direct insult to one of the most respectable Language of the country and he would not tolerate it. He appealed to the state government to immediately restore it. When asked whether Governor Ram Naik is making politics and creating hindrance for the State government, Qureshi out-rightly denied it. ``Ram Naik is veteran and seasoned politician and he can never create hurdle for anyone, asserted Qureshi while hailing the stand taken by Naik on several issues. UNI MB CJ AJ 2302 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-523459.Xml
National Investigation Agency(NIA) today held that it is still working on identifying handlers and other people contacted by terrorists involved in the Pathankot air base attack and after that it might seek help from Pakistan in the case.Talking to mediapersons here NIA chief Sharad Kumar said "Once their identity is established the agency might seek help of Pakistan for solving the case".''The task before us is really challenging, hence, a timeline is not fixed for solving it, but we would try to solve it as soon as possible"."We have been working on leads secured by us on the basis of phone calls recorded across the border between the ultras and their handlers, as well as their family members,'' he added.Seven security personnel were martyred and around 20 injured in the January 2 fidayeen (suicide) attack on strategically vital Pathankot airbase, located barely 40 km away from the Indo-Pak border. Six terrorists were killed in the counter-offensive at the airbase.UNI SS AJ 2258 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-523477.Xml
Lauding the Uttar Pradesh Governments initiative to engage the Indian Diaspora for development, state minister Balwant Singh Rsmoowalia today said that there are over 25 million Indians staying in foreign land and many of them hold high positions in government and industries. It is important to engage the NRIs to bring in investments, create business opportunities and guide the workforce of India to pave the path towards a developed future. He was addressing the gathering at the UP Pravasi Diwas conference which is being organised in Agra in partnership with FICCI. Mr Ramoowalia also reinforced the imperative for the Government to draft attractive policies for doing business in Uttar Pradesh. Enhancing connectivity would prove beneficial for both the state and the Indian Diaspora, Speaking on the initiatives of state Government, Mr Sanjiv Sharan, Principal Secretary, NRI Department, Government of Uttar Pradesh, talked about the newly formed NRI department that would focus on solving grievances of NRIs and helping investors in UP. He said that the MOUs signed during the Uttar Pradesh Pravasi Diwas would facilitate creation of more business opportunities and investments in the state. A coffee table book is also being conceptualised for promoting the policies and familiarising NRIs with the progress and opportunities in the state he added. Mr Saran informed that department would launch a new portal for NRIs, to facilitate and resolve their issues.Speaking on how the state can connect to the Indian Diaspora, state chief secretary Alok Ranjan said that it was very important to promote the developments happening in the state. The state government needs to organise various business forums to showcase what Uttar Pradesh has got to offer to the world. Dr A Didar Singh, Secretary General, FICCI and the moderator for this session brought out the importance of connecting the Indian Diaspora both emotionally and through technology. Technology like creating forums for solving issues related to business establishments and showcasing the ease of doing business in the state would not only encourage investment opportunities but also connect the NRIs back to their roots.MORE MB CJ AJ AN2336 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0177-523143.Xml
On the complaint of the villager Prabhat Kumar, Vigilance Bureau laid a trap on the Medical Officer (in charge) of Primary Health Centre (PHC) at Sameli in Katihar district, Dr Jaybind Jha and caught him red handed while he was demanding a bribe of Rs 10,000 from him.

The doctor was demanding the amount from Prabhat for awarding him a contract for providing a vehicle to PHC on rent.

Mr Jha is being brought to Vigilance Bureau headquarters in the state capital for interrogation.UNI DH BM CJ AJ AN2340

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Punjab government and Punjabi Sahitya Academay (PSA) would work in tandem for the promotion of Punjabi and for the implementation of Language Act in all the schools of the state. This was stated by Education Minister Daljit Singh Cheema during a meeting with the PSA representatives here today. He also announced grant of Rs five lakh to the academy from his discretionary fund. The Minister said that the Education department is serious for strict implementation of the Language Act and has recently conducted surprise raids over all the private schools to check the implementation of Language act in true spirit. Dr Cheema informed that it has come to the notice that there are 40 such schools who did not implement the provisions of Language Act as yet. He said that he would personally call the management of these schools and ask them to abide by the Language act. The Minister asked the PSA representatives to bring forth the names of such schools who do not implement the Language act. Renowned Poet Surjit Patar and PSA President Sukhdev Singh Sirsa praised the efforts of the Minister for promotion of Punjabi language in the state. Dr Cheema also informed that during national level meeting on National Education Policy held at New Delhi, the state government has advocated the need for making Punjab Language a tool of employment generation. He said that it was also proposed that the medium of all the National level competitive examination must also be in vernacular languages. "To promote the vocational education and to facilitate the students opting for vocational education the state government has already got the syllabus translated into Punjab languages," Dr Cheema said.UNI DB CJ AJ AN2355 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-522966.Xml
British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday condemned a new execution video by Islamic State (IS), calling it a "desperate stuff" from an organisation that is "losing anybody's sympathy". In the video released on Sunday, a masked IS executioner with British accent threatened to invade the UK and called British Prime Minister David Cameron an "imbecile," before executing five men who appeared shackled and dressed in orange boiler suits. They were accused of spying against the IS for the UK. "It's desperate stuff from an organisation that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts and people can see that again today," Cameron said during a visit to east London on Monday. "But this is an organisation that's losing territory, it's losing ground, it's, I think, increasingly losing anybody's sympathy, and this again shows what an appalling organization we' re up against," he added. "They hate us not for what we do but for what we are - the fact that we are a successful, tolerant, democratic, multi-faith, multi-ethnic nation," the prime minister continued. Cameron also said that "Britain will never be cowed by this sort of terrorism". "Our values are so much stronger than theirs. It may take a very long time but they will be defeated." ---Indo-Asian News Service pku ( 222 Words) 2016-01-05-03:07:36 (IANS)
Asked at his daily briefing about the Pathankot attack, Ban's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: "I don't have anything in particular to say on that. I don't have enough details to speak to it."

"The operation is still ongoing."

"On the attack on Mazar-i-Sharif, obviously, it is an attack we condemn. Especially in light of what we've said, an attack on a diplomatic outpost... that needs to be protected," he said.

Commenting earlier on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Dujarrin said: "We have seen in the past years, recently in various places, attacks on diplomatic missions, which the Secretary General has spoken out against and which he did again this time."

--Indo-Asian News Service al/pku

( 161 Words)

2016-01-05-04:39:35 (IANS)
Following a preliminary assessment, United Kingdom's intelligence agencies have said that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have made false claims that the five hostages murdered in their new video were British spies. According to Guardian, Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed that the video was a 'desperate' attempt by the ISIS which was now losing ground following the pressure from allied airstrikes. "I watched a part of [the video] yesterday and I think it is absolutely desperate tactics from an organisation that is clearly now on the back foot. It's losing territory. It lost Ramadi, but what is so clear about it is that they continue to use the most disgusting and repulsive tactics and actions which demonstrate exactly who these people are and I think that's plain for everyone to see," Cameron told LBC radio. Britain's three intelligence agencies - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - have been analysing the recent video since its release and concluded that none of the hostages were working for Britain. However, the agencies did not rule out the possibility that the hostages were working for other allied countries. Hamoud al Mousa, who describes himself as the founder of the anti-Isis activist group Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered, told the Guardian that he did not know the identity of the victims and asserted that they were not part of the organisation. ISIS recently released a new 11-minute propaganda video which included a 'message for David Cameron' which was read by a man in a balaclava who threatens to attack UK. (ANI)
Florida police were trying to identify a man with a shaved head and wearing camouflage clothing who was caught on surveillance camera breaking windows, cameras and lights with a machete at a mosque and leaving bacon on the doorstep.The footage showed the man entering the carport of the Masjid Al-Munin mosque in Titusville near Cape Canaveral in central Florida late Friday night and vandalizing it, Titusville police spokeswoman Amy Matthews said.It was the third time in less than a month that vandals have left pork products at mosques in the United States, said the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has called for state and federal investigations.Muslims are prohibited from consuming pork products, and hate groups advocate using pigs or pork to try to desecrate mosques, according to CAIR.The man, who also had a tattoo on his arm, appeared from the video to be acting alone, said Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida which oversees that mosque and nine others.Musri said the incident was the first of its kind against Muslims in the 40 years they have been in Titusville.Vandalism against Muslims has risen since attacks by Islamist militants on civilians in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Musri said.He said the incidents have been further stoked by anti-Muslim sentiments expressed by Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson."These statements legitimize the thoughts of people who are radical," Musri said. "They feel these leaders are agreeing with them, so it's becoming more acceptable for them to say so, to do so."CAIR said cases of damage, destruction, and vandalism of mosques, and intimidation attempts reached a record high in 2015 since the organization began tallying incidents in 2009.At the end of December, vandals in Las Vegas wrapped bacon around door handles of the Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque, CAIR said.The FBI has opened an investigation into a pig's head thrown on Dec. 6 from a pickup truck at the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philadelphia. REUTERS GAU GC 0532 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0098-521803.Xml
Saudi Arabia's decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran will not affect its own efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen, the kingdom's ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, said ."From our side it should have no effect because we will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria, in Yemen," he told reporters. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter.""The Iranians, even before the break of diplomatic relations, have not been very supportive, have not been very positive in these peace efforts," he added. "I don't think the break in relations is going to dissuade them from such behavior."REUTERS GAU GC 0609 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0098-521808.Xml
China's first landing of a plane on one of its new island runways in the South China Sea shows Beijing's facilities in the disputed region are being completed on schedule and military flights will inevitably follow, foreign officials and analysts said.China's increasing military presence in the disputed sea could effectively lead to a Beijing-controlled air defence zone, they said, ratcheting up tensions with other claimants and with the United States in one of the world's most volatile areas.Chinese foreign ministry officials confirmed on Saturday that a test flight by a civilian plane landed on an artificial island built in the Spratlys, the first time Beijing has used a runway in the area.Vietnam launched a formal diplomatic protest while Philippines Foreign Ministry spokesman Charles Jose said Manila was planning to do the same. Both have claims to the area that overlap with China."That's the fear, that China will be able take control of the South China Sea and it will affect the freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight," Jose told reporters.In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said China's landing of the plane "raises tensions and threatens regional stability."Senator John McCain, the chairman of the influential U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, criticised the Obama administration for delaying further "freedom of navigation" patrols within 12 nautical miles of the islands built by China.China has been building runways on the artificial islands for over a year, and the plane's landing was not a surprise.The runway at the Fiery Cross Reef is (10,000 feet) long and is one of three China was constructing on artificial islands built up from seven reefs and atolls in the Spratlys archipelago.The runways would be long enough to handle long-range bombers and transport craft as well as China's best jet fighters, giving them a presence deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia that they have lacked until now.Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed that the new islands would be mostly for civilian use, such as coast guard activity and fishing research.Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at the weekend that the test flight was intended to check whether the runway met civilian aviation standards and fell "completely within China's sovereignty".However, military landings on the islands were now "inevitable", said Leszek Buszynski, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.An air defence zone, while unlikely soon, was feasible and possible in future once China's built up its air strength, he said."The next step will be, once they've tested it with several flights, they will bring down some of their fighter air power - SU-27s and SU-33's - and they will station them there permanently. That's what they're likely to do."DE FACTO DEFENCE ZONEIan Storey, a South China Sea expert at Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, said he expected tensions to worsen as China used its new facilities to project power deeper into the South China Sea.Even if China stopped short of formally declaring an Air Defence Identification Zone, known as an ADIZ, Beijing's need to protect its new airstrips and other facilities could see it effectively operating one.Work is well underway to complete a range of port, storage and personnel facilities on the new islands, U.S. and regional officials have said.Fiery Cross is also expected to house advanced early warning radars and military communications facilities, they said."As these facilities become operational, Chinese warnings to both military and civilian aircraft will become routine," Storey said."These events are a precursor to an ADIZ, or an undeclared but de facto ADIZ, and one has to expect tensions to rise."China sparked condemnation from the United States and Japan in late 2013 when it declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea, covering uninhabited islands disputed with Tokyo.Hua, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said yesterday that there were no immediate plans for an ADIZ in the South China Sea."The decision will be based on our judgment of the situation and our needs," she aid, adding that Beijing respected other nations' rights to international freedoms of navigation and overflight.However, regional military officials say they are logging increased warnings to aircraft from Chinese radio operators, including some from ground stations on Fiery Cross reef.China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of world trade ships every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims.The United States has no claim in the South China Sea, but has been highly critical of China's assertiveness and says it will protect freedom of navigation.In Washington, McCain said that the lack of US action after a navy patrol near the islands in October was allowing China to continue to "pursue its territorial ambitions" in the region.U.S. officials remain committed to carrying out further "freedom of navigation" patrols near the disputed islands, but are still debating the timing of another patrol, said one U.S. defense official, who was not authorised to speak publicly.REUTERS GAU GC 0746 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0098-521815.Xml
All the Indians were safe, Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan said on micro-blogging site Twitter while praising the Operation that was personally supervised by the Governor of Balkh province.

''Af Governor of Balkh-Ata Md Noor Wields Gun to Save Indian Mission in Mazar-e-Sharif,'' he tweeted.

A government spokesman said the operation to sanitise the building, close to the Indian Consulate from where the attack was launched, had been sanitised.

The operation left one policeman dead and 11 others injured. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Officials said the ITBP jawans posted at the Consulate foiled the attempt by gunmen to storm the building.UNI NAZ RSA 1104

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-521907.Xml
Saudi Arabia said today it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran yesterday following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi UN Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."He added, "If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh's example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.Jubeir blamed Iran's "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom's embassy in Tehran.The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.Shi'ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq's Shi'ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East's top Sunni and Shi'ite powers.But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones."The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.CALLS FOR RESTRAINTCrude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a U.S. senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves."It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the U.S. official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable."Brent jumped 4 percent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 percent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil.SYRIA, YEMENThe row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad."It was very difficult to get everybody around the table," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism."Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria's political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad's government.State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva.Saudi U.N. Ambassador Mouallimi said his country's severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations.U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh's decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling.The U.N. chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months.Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared with the size of their economies, but some business is routed through the United Arab Emirates; comprehensive figures are not available. Investment ties are also minimal, though Saudi food conglomerate Savola has major manufacturing operations in Iran.Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shi'ites on terrorism charges on Saturday, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shi'ite Iran hailed him as a "martyr" and warned Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family of "divine revenge".Shi'ite groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State.Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticised Saudi Arabia's judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies.REUTERS AY RAI1053 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0352-521871.Xml
Beneath this weekend's rupture in Iranian-Saudi relations lies a deeper fault line between the United States and Saudi Arabia that may hamper U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to end Syria's civil war, current and former US officials said.The Saudi government's decision to execute Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, despite US warnings, illustrated the limits of US influence over the kingdom.And the Saudi decision to cut diplomatic ties to Iran after outraged Iranian protesters entered, and set fire to, the Saudi embassy in Tehran, runs directly counter to US efforts to promote contact between the two nations, particularly on Syria.US Secretary of State John Kerry's longshot effort to bring the nearly five-year Syria civil war to an end may be the first casualty of the latest tensions.The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, on Monday said the Saudis will attend UN-sanctioned talks set to begin in Geneva Jan. 25, but held out little optimism for their success.U.S. officials acknowledged the Saudi-Iran diplomatic rift diminishes chances for the peace process. "It's going to make it a lot harder," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity."It's obviously very fragile," said a second senior U.S. official.ARMS SALES MOVING FORWARDCurrent and former US officials said they believed Riyadh and Washington have too many shared interests, from ensuring the flow of oil, to fighting al Qaeda and Islamic State militants and completing huge arms contracts, to permit a fundamental breach.US and Saudi officials are continuing to work on a $1.29-billion sale of U.S. precision munitions approved in November, according to military and industry sources. The deal, which seeks in part to replenish bombs and missiles used in the Saudi battle against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, should be finalized in coming months.A separate, $11.25-billion Saudi purchase of four Lockheed Martin Corp surface warships, approved in October, also is expected to move forward on its years-long schedule, the sources said."The Saudi-U.S. defense relationship is a juggernaut," said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. "It survives endless presidents and kings and it just keeps rolling and that's what's going to happen this time."LOOKING PAST OBAMA?Despite the Saudis' ultimate reliance on US security guarantees, the kingdom in the last year repeatedly has signaled a willingness to act independently of the US on national security matters. Saudi Arabia gave the US scant notice last March when, with Arab allies, it launched air strikes in Yemen against Houthi rebels it said are supported by Iran.And last month, the kingdom announced the formation of a 34-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism. The United States is not among the members.Riyadh has also made little secret of its opposition to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, a hallmark of the US president's foreign policy.With Obama in his last year as president, Saudi Arabia seems to be looking past Obama, toward the next US president, said one analyst with deep ties to Saudi officials."There are no expectations left with this administration," said Nawaf Obaid, a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "Things will start from zero once he (Obama) leaves." REUTERS AY RAI1058 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0352-521883.Xml
Lawmakers have to register their amendment proposals till Thursday afternoon.

The Speaker has a choice to form a committee to organise and manage the proposals before beginning clause-wise discussion on the bill and putting it to vote, reported The Himalayan Times.

The time provided for amendment proposal would be meaningful if the three major political parties and agitating Madhes-based parties could find ways to address the concerns of the agitating parties and register a proposal based on consensus by Thursday afternoon.

According to sources, Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Agni Prasad Kharel requested the agitating UDMF to utilise the 72 hours to find solutions and resolve the Tarai agitation through parliamentary process.

Earlier, the bill registered by Nepali Congress-led government was rejected by the agitating parties stating that their major concern related to changing the existing seven-province federal model was not mentioned in it.(ANI)
Lauding Pakistan for condemning terror attack on Pathankot airbase in India, the US has asked Islamabad to target all militant groups and their safe havens without any discrimination."I would note that the Government of Pakistan also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian airbase. And weve been clear with the highest levels of the Government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups, and the Government of Pakistan has said publicly and privately that its not going to discriminate among terrorist groups as part of its counter-terrorism operations," Department of State Spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing yesterday."Were encouraged by the Government of Pakistan condemning this attack, and again, the statements that theyve made about not discriminating among groups. But this is, as weve said before, this is an issue between India and Pakistan, we want to see them work out bilaterally," Mr Kirby said, adding, "We urge all the countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and to bring justice to the perpetrators of this particular attack."Observing that the terrorism in the region was "a shared challenge" and the Government of Pakistan has "spoken very powerfully" on this, Mr Kirby said Islamabad itself was the target of terrorism and has paid a high price."Pakistan too has suffered from terrorism. Thousands and thousands of Pakistani soldiers have been killed. Thousands of Pakistani citizens innocent Pakistani citizens have been killed or injured by terrorist attacks. The Pakistani Government, the Pakistani people very much understand the threat here. And what we want and what we continue to say we want and will continue to work for is increased cooperation, communication, coordination; increased information sharing and increased efforts against what we all believe is a shared challenge in the region," Mr Kirby said.MORE UNI PRA SW AE 1531 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0384-522335.Xml
Turkey's gendarmerie said it found the bodies of 21 migrants, three of them children, at two separate locations on the Aegean coast today after their boat apparently capsized as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos. Eleven of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalik, while ten others were found in the district of Dikili, a gendarmerie official in the local headquarters told Reuters.A coast guard official said three boats and a helicopter were searching for any survivors. REUTERS SA CS1520 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-522304.Xml
China's first landing of a plane on one of its new island runways in the South China Sea shows Beijing's facilities in the disputed region are being completed on schedule and military flights will inevitably follow, foreign officials and analysts said. China's increasing military presence in the disputed sea could effectively lead to a Beijing-controlled air defence zone, they said, ratcheting up tensions with other claimants and with the United States in one of the world's most volatile areas. China has confirmed that a test flight by a civilian plane landed on an artificial island built in the Spratlys, the first time Beijing has used a runway in the area. Vietnam said the plane landed on January 2 and launched a formal diplomatic protest, while Philippines Foreign Ministry spokesman Charles Jose said Manila was planning to do the same. Both have claims to the area that overlap with China. "That's the fear, that China will be able take control of the South China Sea and it will affect the freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight," Jose told reporters. In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said China's landing of the plane "raises tensions and threatens regional stability." Senator John McCain, the chairman of the influential US Senate Armed Services Committee, criticised the Obama administration for delaying further "freedom of navigation" patrols within 12 nautical miles of the islands built by China. China has been building runways on the artificial islands for over a year, and the plane's landing was not a surprise. The runway at the Fiery Cross Reef is 3,000 metres long and is one of three China was constructing on artificial islands built up from seven reefs and atolls in the Spratlys archipelago. The runways would be long enough to handle long-range bombers and transport craft as well as China's best jet fighters, giving them a presence deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia that they have lacked until now. Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed that the new islands would be mostly for civilian use, such as coast guard activity and fishing research. The airfield on Fiery Cross Reef will serve to "significantly" cut travel time between the Spratly islands and mainland China, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a top engineer from the transport ministry. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at the weekend that the test flight was intended to check whether the runway met civilian aviation standards and fell "completely within China's sovereignty". Asked about McCain's remarks today, she said: "We hope the US can take an objective and fair attitude, and not make statements that confuse the situation and are harmful to regional peace and stability," she said. DE FACTO DEFENCE ZONE However, military landings on the islands were now "inevitable", said Leszek Buszynski, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. "The next step will be, once they've tested it with several flights, they will bring down some of their fighter air power - SU-27s and SU-33's - and they will station them there permanently. That's what they're likely to do." Ian Storey, a South China Sea expert at Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, said he expected tensions to worsen as China used its new facilities to project power deeper into the South China Sea. Even if China stopped short of formally declaring an Air Defence Identification Zone, known as an ADIZ, Beijing's need to protect its new airstrips and other facilities could see it effectively operating one. Work is well underway to complete a range of port, storage and personnel facilities on the new islands, U.S. and regional officials have said. Fiery Cross is also expected to house advanced early warning radars and military communications facilities, they said. "As these facilities become operational, Chinese warnings to both military and civilian aircraft will become routine," Storey said. "These events are a precursor to an ADIZ, or an undeclared but de facto ADIZ, and one has to expect tensions to rise." China sparked condemnation from the United States and Japan in late 2013 when it declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea, covering uninhabited islands disputed with Tokyo. Hua, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said yesterday that there were no immediate plans for an ADIZ in the South China Sea. However, regional military officials say they are logging increased warnings to aircraft from Chinese radio operators, including some from ground stations on Fiery Cross reef. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than 5 trillion dollars of world trade ships every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims. The United States has no claim in the South China Sea, but has been highly critical of China's assertiveness and says it will protect freedom of navigation. In Washington, McCain said that the lack of US action after a navy patrol near the islands in October was allowing China to continue to "pursue its territorial ambitions" in the region. US officials remain committed to carrying out further "freedom of navigation" patrols near the disputed islands, but are still debating the timing of another patrol, said one US defense official, who was not authorised to speak publicly.Reuters SA CS1645 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-522441.Xml
British Prime Minister David Cameron has delayed a trip to Saudi Arabia, the Times newspaper reported today, but cited senior officials as saying this was unconnected to regional tensions sparked by the execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric. Saudi Arabia's execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr has angered Shi'ites across the Middle East and caused a major diplomatic row between revolutionary, mainly Shi'ite Iran and Saudi Arabia's conservative Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations yesterday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran today. The Times reported Cameron had been due to visit Riyadh in the coming weeks as part of a tour of Gulf states, but that the trip would not go ahead until March at the earliest. A spokeswoman for Cameron would not confirm that a trip to Saudi Arabia had been planned or delayed due to Nimr's execution. Instead she said he was focused on his plan to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union ahead of a membership referendum due by the end of next year. "We don't confirm the prime minister's travel plans in advance. Securing reforms to the UK's relationship with the EU is a government priority and we would expect the prime minister to continue engaging with European leaders over the coming weeks," she said. The British government has previously come under pressure over human rights issues in Saudi Arabia, considered one of its closest military allies in the Middle East. Cameron's spokeswoman said on yesterday that Britain opposed the death penalty under any circumstances.REUTERS SA BD1642 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-522522.Xml
The US-led coalition on Monday staged 20 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in its latest daily attacks on the militant group, the coalition leading the operations said. In a statement released today, the Combined Joint Task Force said 19 strikes near six Iraqi cities hit seven Islamic State tactical units. The strikes, centered near Mosul, Kisik and Sinjar, also struck numerous fighting positions, vehicles, weaponry and other targets, the statement said. In Syria, one strike near Ayn Isa hit three of the militant group's fighting positions, according to the coalition.REUTERS SA BD1812 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0386-522809.Xml
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of Gulf Arab states announced today it will hold an extraordinary meeting in Riyadh on Saturday to discuss tensions with Iran after the attack on Saudi missions there. "Foreign ministers of the GCC States will hold an extraordinary meeting in Riyadh on Saturday ... to discuss the repercussions of the attack on the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad," GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said in an emailed statement.REUTERS MI SA NS1947 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-523145.Xml
Burundi's government will not take part in peace talks with the opposition scheduled for tomorrow because it holds some of the participants responsible for recent months of violence, a senior official said. The talks in neighbouring Tanzania were announced last month as part of regional efforts to resolve a crisis triggered by President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term in office - a move opponents said broke the constitution. International monitors say they fear Burundi could be headed for civil war. The government refused to join the talks due to the inclusion of "those who are supporting violence", Joseph Bangurambona, the permanent secretary in Burundi's foreign affairs ministry, said. "No dialogue tomorrow, neither on January 16 as many may think, because there has been no consensus on that date," Bangurambona told Reuters today. He said the government was particularly opposed to the inclusion of Carine Kaneza, representing Burundian women, adding the government did not recognise her role or the organisation she represents. He said Kaneza was fired from her job as secretary at the Burundian embassy to the United States last October due to "her mistakes". Kaneza was not immediately available to comment. "The dialogue will resume on condition that the mediators iron out the irregularities and set another agreed-upon date," Bangurambona said. Uganda, whose President Yoweri Museveni is mediating in the Burundi crisis, confirmed: "The Burundi peace negotiations will not resume tomorrow and at this moment we can't tell when they will." Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the Ugandan military, added: "What is going on is that all the parties involved are still making consultations; talks of this nature are never easy." Thacien Sibomana, the spokesman for the opposition UPRONA party, said they had not received an invitation for the talks on Wednesday, and accused the government of railroading. "This is a government strategy to drag on this dialogue while people are continuously being killed. That is why we ask an urgent deployment of troops," Sibomana said. Two people were injured in a grenade attack in the capital Bujumbura on Monday, the latest in the conflict. Police said they were investigating. The United Nations estimates 400 people have already been killed. More than 220,000 people have fled Burundi since April, and Rwanda, which has similar ethnic faultlines, says more than 73,000 Burundians are now on its soil.REUTERS MI BD2043 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-523321.Xml
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of Gulf Arab states announced today it will hold an extraordinary meeting in Riyadh on Saturday to discuss tensions with Iran after attacks on Saudi missions there. Saudi-Iranian tensions threaten to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war in which Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies back rebel groups against Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They also cast doubts over chances for a peaceful solution in Yemen, where a Saudi-led military coalition has been bombing the Iran-allied Houthi movement for nine months. "Foreign ministers of the GCC States will hold an extraordinary meeting in Riyadh on Saturday ... to discuss the repercussions of the attack on the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad," GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said in an emailed statement. Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric on terrorism charges. This led to attacks by Iranian protesters on Riyadh's embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad. The kingdom responded by severing ties with Iran. Close allies Bahrain and Sudan followed suit, while the United Arab Emirates downgraded relations and Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Tehran in a diplomatic crisis that could deepen sectarian tension in the war-torn Arab world.REUTERS MI AN2150 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-523389.Xml
Saudi Arabia has voiced its determination that tensions with Iran will not hamper talks on Syria's political process, scheduled for Geneva this month, the UN special envoy for Syria said today. Staffan de Mistura, in a statement issued after talks in Riyadh with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir and the Syrian opposition, said: "There is a clear determination on the Saudi side that the current regional tensions will not have any negative impact on the Vienna momentum and on the continuation of the political process that the UN, together with the International Syria Support Group, intend to start in Geneva soon." De Mistura did not characterise the position of the Syrian opposition at the meeting, but said: "We cannot afford to lose this momentum despite what is going on in the region." Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on Monday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran today.REUTERS MI NS2305 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-523461.Xml
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Six years after the Affordable Care Act altered health care forever, and two years after the roll out of the exchanges, the way that Americans consume health care continues to evolve. The changes reflect new regulations, changing demographics and rapid technological advancement.

Heres how your health care is going to change this year:

Related: 10 Worst Places to Live for Obamacare

1. Youll be paying more. Even as the pace of increases in the cost of health care has eased, prices continue to rise. Consumers who get health care through work will pay 5 percent this year for premiums, an average of $6,251 ($17,545 for a family), with workers contributing an average $1,071 ($4,955 for a family). Health care costs are also increasing, along with deductibles.

The high cost of health care is having an impact on whether consumers access treatment at all. One in three Americans say they have put off medical treatment for themselves or a family member because of the cost.

2. Its becoming easier to shop around. In addition to higher-priced plans, more consumers are enrolling in high-deductible health plans, hoping that they wont need medical care. Cost concerns are prompting consumers to compare pricing and outcomes at various providers.

Related: 7 Obamacare Predictions That Havent Come True

Insurers are increasingly offering tools that allow consumers to do so through their sites, and there are also several third-party apps and web sites offering similar services. Consumers obviously want more transparency around pricing, now that theyre dealing with these huge deductibles, says Trine Tsouderos, a director of PwCs Health Research Institute.

3. Care goes retail. Time-crunched, cost-conscious consumers are skipping scheduled appointments with their family doctor in favor of a stop at a walk-in clinic located in a pharmacy, retail chain or supermarket. Those models are actually letting consumers access care more quickly and at a lower cost, says Joel White, president of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage.

Story continues

The retail health industry is surging to accommodate the growing demand, with the number of clinics expected to grow 12 percent next year from around 2,150 clinics this year to about 2,400 by the end of 2016.

4. Telemedicine continues to rise. More insurers are covering telemedicine services in 2016, which also allow consumers to access health care 24/7 from home, without the inconvenience of visiting a doctor and at a fraction of the price. The cost of a telemedicine call is usually around $25 to $30 and can be covered with FSA or HSA dollars if its not covered by insurance.

Related: Employees Are Paying More  Much More  for Health Care

Telemedicine is expected to grow around 40 percent per year over the next five years, from its current $645 million to more than $3.5 billion in 2020, according to a report from IBISWorld.

5. Medical-grade wearables come to market. FitBit and Apple Watch are great for the casual health enthusiast to keep track of his vitals, but the potential for so-called medical-grade wearables, devices designed to aid in the prevention or treatment of a specific disease is just starting to be realized. Were starting to see more and more devices going through the FDA approval process, says Robin Farmanfarmaian, author of The Patient as CEO: How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Consumer.

Some products in this space include the Modus Health Watch, which the VA is using to help monitor patients with prosthetics, and the Empatica Embrace Watch, which can detect seizures in patients with epilepsy. A Soreon Research report expects the market for wearables, which is still in its infancy, to reach $41 billion by 2020, driven by growth in devices aimed at combating diabetes, sleep disorders, and cardiovascular disease.

6. Drug prices come under pressure. Lawmakers and regulators (and presidential hopefuls) have been ramping up their scrutiny of drug pricing practices amid several flagrant instances of alleged price gouging (see Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant), and consumer advocates are becoming more vocal about the price of even generic pharmaceuticals. Both companies have since rolled back their price increases, and experts say that while drug prices will continue to rise the practice of hiking prices purely for profit may be on the wane.

Related: 8 Ways Your Health Care and Retirement Benefits May Change in 2016

7. Medical ID theft is an even bigger problem. While technology is creating amazing gains for medical care, its also creating serious weak spots. A recent Accenture report projects that 1 in 13 patients (about 25 million people) will be a victim of medical ID theft due to provider data breaches. Victims of medical ID theft, in which thieves steal your Social Security number and health insurance info in order to fraudulently obtain medical services or treatment, spend thousands to restore their credit and correct inaccuracies in their medical records. Unlike banks and credit card issuers, most healthcare organizations offer no protection services for victims.

8. Your doctor may no longer be in network. As companies and insurers look for additional ways to reduce healthcare costs, theyre increasingly narrowing the networks of doctors and medical providers with whom they offer preferred rates. That means that even if you havent changed your insurance plan, your doctor may no longer be in-network.

9. Private exchanges will continue to grow. A growing number of businesses are opting out of providing traditional insurance for workers in favor of private exchanges, which allow consumers to search for health insurance in much the same way theyd search for a vacation package on Travelocity.com. The companies are providing workers with a set dollar amount they can spend on the exchangesand employees who want a more robust plan can make up the difference out of pocket. The number of workers who buy health care on private exchanges doubled from 3 million to 6 million in 2015, and is expected to double again in 2016 to 12 million.

10. House calls make a comeback. Several start-ups around the country are now promising to deliver a doctor to your door within an hour or two. Apps like Heal in California, Curbside Care in Philadelphia, and Mend in Dallas are all aiming to bring back the old-fashioned house call. Silicon Valley isnt the only one who sees value in bringing care to the patient. Since 2012, Medicare has been testing a home-based primary care program to see whether it can improve quality of care and stave off the need for a patient to move to a nursing home.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
By Nadia Saleem DUBAI (Reuters) - Around 150 direct flights between Iran and Saudi Arabia carrying thousands of pilgrims every month have been halted as diplomatic ties between the two countries were severed, aviation sources said on Tuesday. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters in an interview on Monday that it had halted trade and flights with Iran as part of a diplomatic response to Iranian protesters storming the kingdom's embassy in Tehran after the execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric. Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared to the size of their economies, but tens of thousands of Iranians travel to the kingdom every year to complete the haj and umrah pilgrimages -- essential tenets of Islam. While Jubeir said these pilgrimages would be not be impacted by the severing of ties, separate sources have said Saudi has closed Iran's haj office in the kingdom. Haj, the annual pilgrimage which Muslims must complete once in their lifetime, is not until September this year, but umrah refers to pilgrimages made outside of haj season. For this, pilgrims often arrive on unscheduled special flights or charter flights, and these are likely to see the most impact from the ban. Several airlines, including Iran's Mahan Air, use aircraft like the Airbus A330 and A320 for pilgrim flights and total to about 150 flights each month between the two countries, aviation sources said. The A330 and A320 have a capacity of up to 335 and 220 passengers respectively in a two-class configuration. Jahan Destinations, the general sales agent for Mahan Air said there were no direct flights anymore from Iran to Saudi Arabia but pilgrim or other passengers could take connecting flights with carriers such as Emirates and Qatar Airways. Saudi's General Authority for Civil Aviation said on Monday on Twitter that national carriers will take the necessary measures so as not to adversely impact passengers with advanced bookings. GACA did not clarify which national carriers would be included or what these measures would entail. The national carriers for the two countries are Saudi Arabian Airlines and Iran Air. (Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Riyadh and Parisa Hafezi in Ankara; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
The Africanews channel launched Monday with coverage of the continent in English and French that is only available online for now, but which its backers hope to expand to TV broadcasts soon.

The start-up aims to cover news from a purely African perspective and transmit on TV networks "within weeks", following the model of its sister operation Euronews in Lyon, France, said Michael Peters, who heads the two news operations.

Africanews (www.africanews.com), headquartered in the Republic of Congo, will offer general, sports, business and culture news services that can be tailored to the strength of the user's internet connection.

The channel's newsroom employs 85 people from 15 nationalities and is temporarily based in Pointe-Noire while waiting for Congo's government to build its headquarters in the capital Brazzaville.

In several weeks Africanews will launch news bulletins in Swahili and is looking for partners to expand its coverage to other African languages.
Cape Town (AFP) - Hashim Amla hit a double century but it was Temba Bavuma who lit up Newlands with a maiden hundred as South Africa batted their way to safety on the fourth day of the second Test against England on Tuesday.

Bavuma, the first black African batsman to play Test cricket for South Africa, struck 16 fours in a superb exhibition of clean striking as South Africa made 627 for seven before declaring two runs short of England's first innings total of 629 for six declared.

England reached 16 for no wicket at the close. They will go into the last day with an overall lead of 18 runs.

Amla made 201 and Bavuma 102 not out in a South African innings which lasted for 211 overs and more than two days.

Bavuma, 25, said he accepted that his race added significance to his achievement and that he had the potential to inspire many young black Africans, not least those from Langa, the township near Cape Town where he grew up.

"It's a whole lot of pressure to be honest," he said. "I understand the significance. It's not just me walking on the field.

"I looked today at the kids playing mini cricket at lunchtime. Half those kids come from Langa and a lot of those kids know my name.

"When I go back to Langa I know I'll have those kids running around me."

Bavuma said, though, that the pressure of being a role model was not necessarily exceptional.

"There is a lot of pressure but it is international cricket and it comes with a lot of pressure. Everyone faces different pressures -- you've just got to find a way to deal with it."

South Africa's innings featured three partnerships of more than 150.

Amla was involved in the first two big stands, 183 for the third wicket with AB de Villiers (88) and 171 for the fourth with Faf du Plessis (86).

But there was still some alarm for South Africa when three wickets, including those of Amla and Du Plessis, fell to the third new ball soon after lunch.

Story continues

Bavuma and new cap Chris Morris came together with their side still 180 runs behind with five wickets remaining and England still hoping to secure a good first innings lead.

But the pair played fearless cricket and added 167 runs, a South African seventh wicket partnership record against England.

"I've played a lot with Chris and he is a naturally attacking player with a lot of flair," said Bavuma.

"From my point of view I just tried to play the ball as it comes and to take scoring opportunities if they were there."

- 'Kept nagging' -

Bavuma raced to 50 off 52 balls with 11 fours. He was made to work harder for his second fifty, reaching his hundred off 140 deliveries with a thick edge off Steven Finn which went to the boundary for his 16th four.

"I got to 80 and I felt I was on nought," he said. "Stuart Broad was bowling and I found him quite tough. I tried to do a few different things to unsettle him but he kept nagging on that good length.

"I thought to myself, if I don't get to that milestone (100) maybe it's not meant to be. I just tried to take it ball by ball and luckily things came through."

Bavuma was on the receiving end of some harsh words from England all-rounder Ben Stokes, but he was the first England player to congratulate the batsman when he left the field.

"He's a tough competitor. His words just fired me a bit more to knuckle down and concentrate more. Afterwards he came up to me to say, well done, so I respect him for that," said Bavuma of his rival.

England's bowlers toiled with minimal reward on a pitch which offered no assistance. Their cause was not helped by a rash of missed chances, with nine catches going down in the innings.

"We're extremely disappointed that we missed chances," said England assistant coach Paul Farbrace. "But the upside is that we created chances on a flat pitch."

Amla benefited from four dropped or missed catches, while De Villiers, Du Plessis, Bavuma and Morris (two) all gave chances.
By Rory Carroll SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Alaska Governor Bill Walker said on Tuesday the lowering of the state's credit ratings by Standard and Poor's was "premature" since the legislature has not yet had time to act on his ambitious plan to address the state's large budget deficit. Standard and Poor's on Tuesday lowered Alaska's general obligation (GO) debt to AA+ from AAA due to its belief that the oil-producing states credit quality has continued to slide amid sustained low oil prices. S&P also lowered its rating to A+ from AA on some bonds that were issued by the Alaska Energy Authority and are backed by a moral obligation pledge from the state, among others. More than any other U.S. state, Alaska has been hit by the downturn in oil prices that began in mid-2014. In recent years it has relied on oil and gas production-related taxes to provide it with nearly 90 percent of its general fund revenues. But with a supply glut pushing crude oil prices to near 11-year lows, Moody's expects a 68 percent gap between Alaska's revenues and expenditures this year. "This is the most imbalanced budget of any state," John Lombardi, associate analyst at Moody's Investors Service, told Reuters this week. To close the gap, Walker last month proposed taking a portion of the revenue generated by the state's $47 billion permanent fund, which is paid out to residents annually via a dividend, and diverting it to help pay for services. He has also called from imposing an income tax on residents, the first in 35 years. Moody's on Tuesday called Walker's proposal a "fundamental shift" in how the state derives revenues but said it will be politically difficult to implement since residents would take a hit from both the new income tax and a reduced dividend. Lombardi said that without major fiscal changes, the state could face a downgrade from his ratings agency as well. Moody's assigned Alaska a negative outlook in December 2014 and the state is currently rated AAA negative. While Walker called Standard & Poor's downgrades "concerning and premature," he said he hopes they will serve as a wake-up call to lawmakers that action is needed, and encouraged them to read the agency memos in their entirety. "This further solidifies the need to address our state's fiscal challenges in the immediate future," Walker said. (Reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by Dan Grebler)
As the terrorist group ISIS is pushed out of northern Iraq, archaeologists are resuming work in the region, making new discoveries and figuring out how to conserve archaeological sites and reclaim looted antiquities.

Several discoveries, including new Neanderthal skeletal remains, have been made at Shanidar Cave, a site in Iraqi Kurdistan that was inhabited by Neanderthals more than 40,000 years ago.

Additionally, though ISIS did destroy and loot a great number of sites, there are several ways for archaeologists, scientific institutions, governments and law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe to help save the region's heritage, said Dlshad Marf Zamua, a Kurdish archaeologist and doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands. [Photos: Restoring Life to Iraq's Ruined Artifacts]

He criticized antiquity dealers who are benefiting financially from ISIS' looting and destruction, calling on authorities in North America and Europe to prevent those dealers from selling northern Iraq's heritage. "It was said that war was created for selling weapons, but in the situation of our area, the war was created for selling weapons, oil and antiquity objects," Marf Zamua said.

New research

Before ISIS moved into Iraq in the summer of 2014, scientists with 45 foreign missions from 16 countries were conducting archaeological excavations and surveys in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, said Marf Zamua.

Over the past few months, Kurdish forces have gone on the offensive and, with support from allied air strikes, are pushing ISIS out of the region. And archaeologists are returning to the area, including at Shanidar Cave. This cave was originally excavated between 1952 and 1960 by a team led by archaeologist Ralph Solecki from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The archaeologists at that time found several Neanderthal skeletons and pollen remains suggesting that the Neanderthals placed flowers in graves before burial.

Story continues

In an article recently published in the journal Antiquity, a team that has recently returned to Shanidar Cave reported finding additional Neanderthal bones, "including a hamate [a wrist bone], the distal ends of the right tibia and fibula, and some articulated ankle bones, scattered fragments of two vertebrae, a rib and long bone fragments."

The newfound bones are likely from one of the Neanderthals that archaeologists dug up in the 1950s, said University of Cambridge archaeologist Graeme Barker, who is part of the research team. He said that as excavations continue, new Neanderthal skeletons may be found.

Additionally the team's research is shedding light on the environment in the cave where the Neanderthals lived.

For instance, scientists reporting in another paper published in the journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology found that bees were transporting pollen into the cave. This complicates the idea that Neanderthals in the cave buried their dead with flowers, suggesting instead that pollen remains from flowers could have entered the cave through natural means.

Protecting heritage

When ISIS took over parts of northern Iraq, the group began looting and destroying archaeological sites such as ancient Assyrian cities like Nimrud. After bulldozing these cities, but before blasting them, ISIS looted thousands of artifacts from the sites, Marf Zamua said. "Thousands of objects reached the black markets over the world."

Additionally, many unexcavated "Tell" (mound) sites were also bulldozed, looted and blasted. Those sites contained artifacts that have not yet been excavated. There "are hidden treasure [within these mounds], and by losing any of them, we lose an important part of history and civilization of Mesopotamia," Marf Zamua said.

In addition to curtailing the black market, scientific organizations in the West can help train Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian archaeologists in conservation techniques, Marf Zamua said. "Institutes can offer local archaeologists scholarships in restoration, protecting heritage and museum studies," he said.

Additionally, in Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), the Iraqi Institute for the conservation of Antiquities and Heritage offers "courses taught by specialists in conservation of all types of objects, materials and architecture," said Marf Zamua. Volunteer guest lecturers from universities and museums in the West help teach the courses.

Those with professional expertise who are willing to travel to Erbil could contact the institute and offer to volunteer, Marf Zamua said, noting that the institute provides accommodations and food free of charge.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina will return to the World Economic Forum in Davos this month under its new conservative president Mauricio Macri after more than a decade away, the government said Tuesday.

Macri said he would attend the top-level gathering along with one of his major political rivals, Sergio Massa.

They hope that show of solidarity at the forum in Switzerland from January 20 to 23 will restore investor confidence in Latin America's third-biggest economy.

"It seemed to us an important gesture to go together with an opposition leader who is working in a responsible way," Macri's chief of staff Marcos Pena told a news conference.

Massa, a center-right member of the populist Peronist movement, ran against Macri in the first round of last year's election.

Macri eventually won in a runoff against leftist Daniel Scioli, ending 12 years of Peronist rule under former president Cristina Kirchner and her late husband Nestor.

Since taking office last month, Macri has launched a series of economic reforms.

He vows to roll back Cristina Kirchner's trade and currency restrictions to open Argentina up to international markets.

His leftist opponents warn his reforms will hurt ordinary Argentines' spending power.

Travelling to Davos with Massa is part of a policy of "confidence-building," Pena said.

"We have to work in the world to be able to generate more investment and more jobs on our way to achieving zero poverty," Pena said.

Massa said in a radio interview that he accepted Massa's invitation to go with him to Davos "to show the world that we are ready to make a qualitative jump."

The Kirchners stayed away from the Davos forum during their time in power, saying it only served the big economically liberal powers.
A record 1.72 million people visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2015, 70 years after the Soviets liberated the former Nazi German death camp, according to the museum at the site in southern Poland.

Museum director Piotr Cywinski said in a statement Monday that a visit to the camp was not just "a history lesson" but also a moment of reflection "on our own responsibility for the state of our world nowadays."

In 2014, the site drew 1.53 million visitors.

Some 1.1 million people, including a million Jews from across Europe, were killed by Nazi Germany at the camp from 1940 to 1945. The other victims were mostly non-Jewish Poles, gypsies and Soviet prisoners.

Last year, some 425,000 Poles toured the complex, while foreign visitors included 220,000 Britons, 141,000 Americans and 93,000 Germans as well as tens of thousands of others from Italy, Spain, Israel, France and elsewhere.

There was also a marked increase in the number of visitors from South America and North America against 2014.

The museum website www.auschwitz.org saw 25 million visits last year, while its Facebook page topped 200,000 likes.
NextShark

Multiple Asian women have reportedly come forward to accuse a Chinese American cosplayer and her boyfriend of luring them into sexual relations through supposed opportunities for collaborative work. Cosplayer and influencer Kat Wong, who describes herself as just an Asian girl making silly content, came under fire on Twitter last week after actor, director and host Gina Darling revealed that multiple women have reached out to her with such allegations. Multiple women in the Asian community have reached out to me about @katkwo4tweets and her BF allegedly trying to trick them into having sexual relations with them under the guise of collaborating on cosplays, OF (OnlyFans) and modeling, Darling tweeted.
New Delhi (AFP) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his Pakistani counterpart Tuesday to take "firm and immediate action" against those behind an attack on an Indian air force base that left seven soldiers dead.

Modi's office said New Delhi had given Islamabad "specific and actionable information" on the audacious attack, which came just days after a landmark visit to Pakistan by the Indian premier raised hopes of improved relations.

Security officials suspect the gunmen belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group that staged a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament which brought the two countries to the brink of war.

In a statement, Modi's office said Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had telephoned him to discuss the attack on the Pathankot base in the northern state of Punjab near the border with Pakistan.

Modi "strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack", said the statement.

"Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan."

It said Sharif had given assurances that his government would take "prompt and decisive action".

Pakistan had already condemned the attack, which began on Saturday with a dawn raid on the vast air base that triggered a 14-hour gunbattle.

A statement Tuesday from Sharif's office said his government was "working on the leads and information provided by the Indian government".

Sharif also expressed his condolences for the loss of life and said he appreciated the "maturity" shown by the Indian government in the wake of the attack.

- Derail peace process -

Some analysts have suggested the rare targeting of an Indian military installation outside disputed Kashmir may have been aimed at derailing talks between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

Story continues

It coincided with a 25-hour siege near an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that left at least one policeman dead and 11 others wounded.

Analysts in Pakistan believe it is nearly impossible that the prime minister would have been allowed to hold a breakthrough meeting with his Indian counterpart last month without the consent of the army, widely understood to dictate foreign and security policy.

But analyst Khadim Hussain said the attack on the air base along with a Taliban surge in Afghanistan indicated that elements of the Pakistani military were not on board with the negotiations.

"The immediate result is they would like to derail the peace process," he told AFP, clarifying that it was unclear whether such decisions were sanctioned at the highest levels.

Sharif's statement Tuesday noted that whenever a "serious effort" for peace between the India and Pakistan was launched, "terrorists try to derail the process".

Modi's comments came as India's defence minister said the Pathankot attack had exposed "some gaps" in security following media criticism of how the incident was handled.

Gunshots could still be heard from the base on Monday - more than 48 hours after the raid - leading some to question why it took so long to neutralise the six assailants, all of whom were finally killed.

"I do see some gaps (in security), which will be clear after investigations," minister Manohar Parrikar told journalists.

He stressed that the base was a "complicated area" spread over nearly 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) and housing 3,000 families.

The Pathankot attack was claimed Monday by the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group for jihadist outfits fighting in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir.

Jaish-e-Mohammed is not part of the United Jihad Council.
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was summoned to testify as a witness for a lobbyist accused of paying bribes to alter legislation in favor of businesses, local media reported on Monday. Lula and other former and current officials including Deputy Finance Minister Dyogo de Oliveira will testify on Jan. 25 at the request of the defense for jailed lobbyist Alexandre Paes dos Santos, media reported. Reuters could not immediately confirm the reports. A spokesman for Lula did not immediately respond to emails seeking comments. In December, Lula was called in for questioning by federal police in the same bribery investigation, which also involves his son Luis Claudio. Lula is not under investigation in the case known as "Operacao Zelotes." Paes dos Santos is accused of charging businesses to change legislation in their favor during the Lula administration between 2003 and 2011. Many lawmakers from Lula's ruling Workers' Party are under investigation for possible links to a separate bribery scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras <. Senator Delcidio do Amaral, the government's leader in the Senate, was arrested in November and charged with obstructing the Petrobras investigation. (Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Peter Cooney)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has raised its concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia with authorities there following the execution of 47 men including a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric, a Foreign Office minister said on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia's execution of Nimr al-Nimr has angered Shi'ites across the Middle East and caused a major diplomatic row between mainly Shi'ite Iran and Saudi Arabia's conservative Sunni monarchy. "The UKs close relationship with Saudi Arabia does not mean that we shy away from raising legitimate human rights concerns," Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Foreign Office, Tobias Ellwood, told parliament. "We make this point very clearly in public and in private. The Saudi authorities are well aware of our views, and I have raised them most recently myself with the Saudi authorities yesterday following the execution of 47 people over the weekend." Ellwood said escalating tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, one of Britain's closest military allies in the Middle East with which it does billions of dollars worth of business every year, were "deeply concerning". The Times newspaper reported on Tuesday that British Prime Minister David Cameron had delayed a trip to Saudi Arabia. A spokeswoman for Cameron would not confirm that a trip had been planned or delayed due to Nimr's execution. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Louise Ireland)
By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Britain should take in 3,000 refugee children who are traveling through Europe alone and are at risk of falling prey to human traffickers, a parliamentary committee said on Tuesday. Resettling unaccompanied children should be on top of the current commitment to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees, said the International Development Committee, which monitors the performance of Britain's development aid ministry (DFID). "Children are clearly some of the most vulnerable refugees this crisis has created," Stephen Twigg, chair of the committee, said in a statement. "Having survived the treacherous journey, there is a grave possibility that unaccompanied children become the victims of people traffickers who force them into prostitution, child labor and the drugs trade. This is an issue of utmost urgency." More than 1 million refugees and migrants, half of them Syrians fleeing the war, came to the European Union this year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In September, British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to take in up to 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years, responding to public clamor for his government to help those fleeing civil war in the country. "...We are looking again at the issue of bringing Syrian children to the UK, both from the region and from within the EU," a government spokesperson said in a statement. "In any consideration we must ensure that our proposals are in the best interests of those children affected and do not inadvertently put children at additional risk." The committee said the government should come to a "quick decision" on the proposal initially made by charity Save the Children, which launched an online petition in September. The committee also called on the British government to ensure that refugees from vulnerable groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), Christians and the disabled have access to the resettlement process. It said the government should look into how to better use offers of support for Syrian refugees from local communities within Britain, among other recommendations. Since 2011, millions of Syrians have been displaced by civil war, with more than 4 million ending up in refugee camps in surrounding countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. (Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
LONDON (Reuters) - Six weeks after a prominent militant who is suspected of killing for Islamic State slipped out of Britain, police sent a letter to him demanding that he surrender his passport, a British opposition lawmaker said on Tuesday. Though no link has been officially confirmed, the masked militant who was shown killing five men in an Islamic State propaganda video is believed to be Siddhartha Dhar, a Londoner who once sold inflatable bouncers. Britain's interior minister, Theresa May, faced questioning on Tuesday in parliament over how Dhar could have slipped away in 2014 while on police bail after his arrest on suspicion of belonging to a banned group and encouraging terrorism. "Even if the correct procedures were followed, I have evidence that they were far too weak," Andy Burnham, the home affairs spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, said in parliament. Burnham said he had a copy of a letter to Dhar setting out the bail conditions - including surrendering his travel documents - that was sent six weeks after the militant had left the country. In one letter, Dhar was urged to contact the police by telephone to explain his changed circumstances, Burnham said. "It is clear that Mr Dhar had left this country long before that letter was sent. As I have said, regardless of which individuals might be in the video, this particular individual has absconded and the Home Secretary (interior minister) needs to provide answers," Burnham said. "Does that in any way sound like an adequate response to the seriousness of the charges?" Burnham said in parliament. May, who refused to comment on speculation about the identity of the English-accented militant in the Islamic State video, said Britain had tightened exit controls and that the decision on whether to place a suspect on police bail was an operational matter. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Gareth Jones)
By Kylie MacLellan and Kate Holton LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday bowed to pressure to allow government ministers to campaign to leave the European Union in an upcoming referendum, heading off the prospect of multiple resignations from his top team. Cameron wants to keep Britain in the bloc if he can persuade other EU leaders to agree to his demands for reform before a vote expected to take place later this year, though he has cautioned he could campaign to leave if he doesn't get a deal. His move to prevent cabinet-level resignations over Europe means ministers will take opposing sides in the referendum campaign over an issue that has divided Cameron's Conservative Party for more than three decades. "There will be a clear government position but it will be open to individual ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the government," Cameron told parliament during an update on his renegotiation. Cameron said he hoped to reach a deal with other EU leaders at a Feb 17-18 summit. Ministers would be expected to stick to the government's existing position until a deal was reached. A referendum could follow about four months after a deal. A British exit would rock the Union - already shaken by differences over migration and the future of the euro zone - by ripping away its second-largest economy, one of its top two military powers and by far its richest city, London. Pressed by lawmakers over his own future, Cameron - who has said he will not lead his party into the next parliamentary election due in 2020 - said he would not resign in the event of a 'no' vote in the EU referendum. "This is the choice of the British people ... they can either choose to stay in a reformed European Union or to leave the European Union and come what may I will continue to lead the government in the way I have," he said. "PRETTY EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION" Europe played a major part in the downfall of two previous Conservative prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Around a third of Cameron's lawmakers may be at least toying with the idea of a British exit while up to a third of the cabinet - including Home Secretary Theresa May, Business Secretary Sajid Javid and Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith - have expressed Eurosceptic sentiments. Ken Clarke, a former Conservative minister and leading supporter of the EU, said Cameron's decision was "unfortunate" and said ministers who disagreed with the official government line should resign. "To stay in office, free to actually attack the government on a fundamental question about Britain's role in the world is a pretty extraordinary situation," he said. Cameron's former coalition partners the Liberal Democrats accused him of putting "internal party strife" above the national interest in letting ministers campaign for either side. Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain's anti-EU UK Independence Party, said Cameron had been forced into the move to hold his party together in the short term. "He has stopped an explosion but longer term it is going to be very split by this issue," Farage told the BBC. (Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Gareth Jones)
Bangui (Central African Republic) (AFP) - Two former premiers were neck-and-neck Tuesday in vote-counting for the Central African Republic's presidency as the government dismissed a call for the two-round election to be stopped.

With 53 percent of the votes in the first round counted, Anicet Georges Dologuele was narrowly ahead of fellow ex-prime minister Faustin Archange Touadera, the National Election Authority (ANE) said.

The December 30 elections for the presidency and 105-seat parliament are seen as key to stabilising the country after three years of fierce sectarian conflict.

Partial results from the first round began to be published on Saturday, and a runoff ballot is scheduled for January 31.

Earlier Tuesday, the government brushed aside demands to stop the election process after a communique, issued in the name of 20 out of the 30 presidential candidates, lashed the first round as a "masquerade" stained by irregularities and intimidation.

"There is no question... of halting the electoral process under way," Minister of Territorial Administration Modibo Bachir Walidou told reporters in the capital, Bangui.

Prime Minister Mahamat Kamoun also called on candidates to "respect (their) commitment to the higher interests of the nation."

"The transitional authority and the European Union, the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African States, France, the United States and China have all made considerable efforts to make sure these elections are free, democratic and credible," Kamoun said.

He called on Central Africans to show "calm, restraint, vigilance and not to give way to manipulation."

"For the moment, what we can say is that these elections went well," he added.

- Dissenters backtrack -

On Tuesday, some of the signatories broke rank to say they had been wrongly included in the list of dissenters.

"I was neither present at the press conference nor did I sign the document calling for a halt to the electoral process," said Jean Willybiro Sacko, whose name appeared on Monday's statement.

Story continues

Karim Meckassoua, a co-signatory to the text and seen as a front-runner before the polls, also backtracked, saying he did not want the process scrapped but wanted cases of fraud to be filed in the constitutional court.

Meckassoua said votes attributed to him in constituencies which he considered his strongholds were very low.

Early counting had put Touadera -- a 58-year-old former maths professor who was prime minister under longtime president Francois Bozize -- in the lead. He had been considered an outsider in the field.

The new partial results, published on Tuesday, give Dologuele, who is backed by Bozize's party, with 179,236 votes, and Touadara, running as an independent, with 178,483 votes.

In third place was Desire Kolingba, the son of a former president, with 76,109.

Ex-premier Martin Ziguele, who had been considered a frontrunner and the favourite of former colonial power France, was trailing in fourth with 70,883 votes.

Fifth-placed Jean-Serge Bokassa, the 43-year-old son of the self-proclaimed emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who ruled the country from 1966 to 1979, had 70,687 votes.

One of the world's poorest countries, with a history of coups and rebellions since its 1960 independence from France, Central African Republic was plunged into sectarian bloodshed in 2013 after Bozize was ousted by a mainly Muslim rebel alliance, bringing Michel Djotodia to power -- the country's first Muslim president.

Thousands of people were killed and around one in 10 fled their homes in attacks by rogue rebels on remote villages and brutal reprisals by Christian militia against Muslim communities.

UN and French peacekeepers helped restore a degree of calm in January 2014, when a transitional government took over, but large parts of the country remain lawless.
By Alana Wise EXETER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Former U. S. President Bill Clinton hit the campaign trail on Monday in support of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who seeks the nomination in the Democratic contest, touting her record in public office and dodging discussion of his own. Speaking to a crowd of supporters in the early-voting state of New Hampshire, a soft-spoken Bill Clinton made his first solo stump for his wife in the 2016 election cycle, declining to respond to criticism over infidelities during his time in the Oval Office, and praising his wife's career both in and out of politics. "I think she's proved she knows how to get things done, he told a group of supporters at a town hall in Exeter. "Everywhere she went, she made something good happen. Monday's stops were the first of what are expected to be many Clinton will make for his wife, with just four weeks until the first votes are cast in the nominating process for the November 2016 election. His late-comer introduction to the campaign trail could be a strategically significant move for the former secretary of state who, despite leading in many national surveys, still trails Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire opinion polls. But, while Bill Clintons lasting popularity among Democrats makes his support a sterling endorsement for any candidate, scrutiny of his past infidelities raised by Republican pack leader Donald Trump have reintroduced a sore point in his legacy to a new generation of voters too young to remember the scandal. In the 1990's, Clinton, while still in office, admitted to a sexual relationship with a White House intern, which Trump has said demonstrates a penchant for sexism by the husband of the woman hoping to be the nations first female president. Clinton shied away from addressing the controversy directly during his stump, instead admonishing "communities of collective resentment" across party aisles, and in a thinly veiled criticism of Trump, bashed Republicans for attempting to make a caricature of wifes career. "Shes got the proven ability to get the best out of a difficult situation, he said to a group of volunteers in Dover. "But the main thing is, at a time when we have been driven apart by the communities of collective resentment, she has never stepped into a room where she didnt make something good. New Hampshire voters will cast their ballots for the primary nominating contest on Feb. 9. (In Jan. 4 item, corrects in second paragraph to make clear it was Bill Clinton's first solo appearance at a campaign event for his wife) (Reporting by Alana Wise; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Paris (AFP) - The company which operates the Channel Tunnel said on Tuesday Britain's decision to grant asylum to a Sudanese man who walked the passage between France and England was "unfortunate".

Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, was granted asylum on December 24, after being arrested on suspicion of walking through the 31-mile (50 kilometre) tunnel in August.

"It is unfortunate because it can give bad ideas to certain migrants and encourage them to risk their lives," a spokesman for Eurotunnel told AFP.

The Channel operator has struggled for months with migrants storming their premises to get into the tunnel and attempt to make their way to Britain.

Stepped-up security has significantly slowed the attempts to get through, but in mid-December between 800 and 1,000 migrants made a desperate bid to storm the tunnel, resulting in clashes with security forces.

Local government estimates up to 4,500 people fleeing war and poverty in Asia, the Middle East and Africa are living in notoriously squalid conditions in a makeshift camp in Calais known as the "Jungle".

Many of the refugees and migrants want to reach Britain because they speak English, or because they have relatives there, others simply believe their chances of a better life are higher in Britain.

At least 18 have died since last June trying to get across the Channel, but Haroun was one of the few make it through alive.

He was arrested in Kent, in southeast England, and charged under an 1861 law on malicious damage with causing an obstruction to an engine or carriage using the railway.

His case was on Monday postponed for two weeks while prosecutors weigh whether to proceed with it.

With security tight around the Calais Jungle, authorities in Belgium said this week that a growing number of migrants are seeking to leave for Britain from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, located some 130 kilometres (80 miles) north of Calais.
By Mary Wisniewski and Fiona Ortiz

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Nearly 60 people tortured by Chicago police decades ago have begun receiving $5.5 million in reparations from the city, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on Tuesday.

The news comes as Chicago faces renewed criticism for police treatment of minority suspects. Most recently, the family of a black woman who police admit was fatally shot by accident last month has sued the city.

Last May, aldermen in the nation's third-largest city approved the payments to 57 people tortured by police in the 1970s and 1980s and agreed to make other reparations such as a memorial.

The torture, mostly of blacks, took place under former Commander Jon Burge, who was fired in 1983 and later convicted of lying about police torture in testimony he gave in civil lawsuits.

"We stand together as a city to try and right those wrongs, and to bring this dark chapter of Chicago's history to a close," Emanuel said in a statement on Tuesday.

The payments were announced amid almost daily protests over police treatment of minority suspects, following the release of a video in late November showing a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times.

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with murder for the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, 17. The protests have included calls for Emanuel's resignation.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the city police department over its use of deadly force, especially against minorities. The shooting deaths of two black people - college student Quintonio LeGrier, 19, and Bettie Jones, 55, a grandmother of 10 - by a police officer late last month have increased tensions.

The use of force by law enforcement against minorities has become the focus of national debate in the last 18 months due to high-profile killings by mainly white officers.

The Jones' wrongful death lawsuit, filed on Monday, follows similar litigation by LeGrier's family.

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The latest lawsuit said Jones was shot when she answered the door at the request of her upstairs neighbor, who had called the police because LeGrier, his son, had threatened him with a baseball bat.

LeGrier also was shot and killed, and his body fell on top of Jones', the lawsuit said. It said Jones was still alive after she was shot, but the officer who shot her did not check her condition. Jones' funeral is on Wednesday.

The city had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski and Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
By Fiona Ortiz CHICAGO (Reuters) - The new chief of the discredited watchdog agency that oversees Chicago's 12,000-strong police force on Monday announced a shakeup aimed at improving investigations into police shootings, allegations of misconduct and use of excessive force. Sharon Fairley, a former federal prosecutor, was named acting head of the Independent Police Review Authority, or IPRA, after the former director was fired in December by Mayor Rahm Emanuel because of public outcry over police killings in the city. Emanuel in early December also fired the city's police chief. The agency was formed in 2007 to investigate problems at Chicago's police force, which has a long history of complaints of abuse. IPRA has been plagued by budget and staffing shortages. It has been criticized for taking a long time to investigate police shootings and finding almost all of them justified. Fairley said she hired a new chief of staff and chief investigator and was recruiting four lawyers to improve investigations. She said she would increase IPRA's contact with Chicagoans over the changes needed in the police department. However, she said she has been given no budget increase for the body. Emanuel has faced calls for his resignation after the city released a video of a white police officer fatally shooting a black teenager in October 2014, one of a number of U.S. police killings that has sparked a national movement about policing and race. In Chicago, prosecutors took more than a year to bring murder charges against police officer Jason Van Dyke in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, who was shown in the video walking away from police while holding a knife. The furor over the shooting cast fresh attention on IPRA and police accountability issues. Critics say IPRA has been too willing to accept police officers' justifications for shootings. Fairley said she would change that. Also on Monday, city attorney Jordan Marsh resigned after U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang ruled that Marsh had withheld evidence in a trial over a fatal police shooting and then lied about it, the Chicago Tribune reported. A spokesman for Chicago's Law Department could not be reached for comment. Chang ordered a new trial in reversing a federal jury's decision in favor of Officers Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra. The jury had concluded that they were justified in killing a black motorist during a 2011 traffic stop. (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz and Ian Simpson; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Leslie Adler)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese regulators leapt to support stock markets early Tuesday, the day after a major crash, with the central bank pouring cash into the money market system and the securities regulator suggesting it might restrict share sales by major shareholders.

The unexpected 130 billion yuan ($19.94 billion) injection by the central bank during open market operations - the largest such injection since September - appeared timed to reassure Chinese retail investors, who are always sensitive to liquidity signals, that the bank would support the market with cash.

China's securities regulator said it is studying rules to regulate share sales by major shareholders and senior executives in listed companies.

This would indirectly address concerns that the end of a 6-month lockup on share sales by major institutional investors - scheduled to free up an estimated 1.2 trillion yuan worth of shares for sale next Monday - would result in a massive institutional evacuation from stocks.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission also defended the functioning of the new "circuit breaker" policy that caused Chinese stock markets to suspend trade on Monday after markets fell 7 percent, triggering the mechanism on the very first day it came into effect.

While some analysts criticized the design of the circuit breaker, saying it inadvertently encouraged bearish sentiment, the CSRC said the mechanism had helped calm markets and protect investors - although it said the mechanism needs to be further improved.

The measures appeared to have had some effect by mid-morning. While major indexes opened more than 2.5 percent lower, they quickly recovered into positive territory.

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Adam Jourdan; Editing by John Ruwitch and Sam Holmes)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's industry and commerce regulator has asked Microsoft Corp to explain "major issues" that it says have come to light from digital data obtained as part of an anti-trust investigation. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce, or SAIC, did not say exactly what issues it was querying but the request appeared to be part of an investigation into the U.S. software titan over its Windows operating system launched in mid-2014. The company must submit a complete explanation following the inquiry, the SAIC said in a statement posted on its website. SAIC was not immediately available to comment. The SAIC move, coming more than a year after the investigations were first launched, could signal new uncertainties for Microsoft in China as it attempts to boost business in the world's second-largest economy. "We're serious about complying with China's laws and committed to addressing SAIC's questions and concerns," a Microsoft spokesman said. Microsoft is one of the biggest U.S. companies to fall under the eye of Chinese regulators as they intensify their oversight in an attempt interpreted by some as an effort to protect local companies and customers. When the case was launched, the SAIC said Microsoft had not fully disclosed information about Windows and its Office software suite. The SAIC was also investigating a Microsoft vice president and senior managers. In raids on company sites in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu the SAIC collected a trove of documents, emails and other data, it said at the time. (Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Shanghai (AFP) - The Chinese government has asked US technology giant Microsoft to clarify "major issues" regarding a monopoly case, officials said Tuesday, confirming that it was still pursuing a probe which emerged in 2014.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), one of the government bodies that enforces the country's anti-monopoly law, first said in July of that year that it had built a case against Microsoft over its Windows operating system and the Office suite of programs, after it raided the US tech giants offices in China.

The SAIC expanded the probe into Microsoft's media player and browser the following month.

China has launched probes against a number of high-profile foreign firms in recent years.

Last February, US mobile chip titan Qualcomm said it would pay nearly a billion dollars to end a long-running antitrust probe in China, in perhaps the biggest fine ever levied by Beijing in such a case.

State media have previously blasted Microsoft for its share of the operating system market in China, saying it forms a "de facto monopoly".

A SAIC statement Tuesday said its taskforce had asked Microsoft to explain issues found in electronic data obtained by the agency from the company, but gave no details.

Microsoft could not be immediately reached for comment.

The SAIC also said it had requested Microsoft to submit additional materials to clarify the situation, without giving specifics.

In August, the Chinese government levied a combined 1.24 billion yuan fine on 12 Japanese auto parts firms for price-fixing.
CEBU CITY, PHILIPPINESThe dealers hands move quickly as he dispenses small vials from the waistband of his shorts, his front pockets bulging from the weight of coins and small bills. From his back pocket, he hands out syringes or collects them. Occasionally, he uses the t-shirt slung over his shoulder to wipe away the beads of sweat that made his goatee glisten.

The shanty where he worksa small room full to bursting with peopleis home to one of Cebus many shooting galleries, a place where people gather to purchase and inject the narcotic pain reliever Nubain. At this particular gallery, a small glass capsule containing 1 mL goes for Php 150, or around $3. For individuals on a tighter budget, the dealer can squeeze out a single squirt for Php 20 ($0.50). Those who bring their own supply of the drug only have to pay a fee to use the shooting gallery, a charge of Php5-Php10 ($0.10 - $0.20).

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An unused needle sells for another Php20 ($0.50), but few people who came through the shooting gallery chose to purchase onethe dealer also supplies free service needles, new and slightly used syringes on rotation that any customer can use. Its common for groups of customers to split the cost of a vial of Nubain between them, and share a service needle as they use it. The Philippine Department of Health (DOH) says that the typical shooting gallery has three to five service needles on rotation at a time, each of which can be used four to six times before it gets too blunt. According to Genesis Samonte, the head of the departments HIV surveillance unit, one shared needle can infect four to six people with HIV or hepatitis C.

Veejay Villafranca

Public-health experts say shooting galleries like this one are to blame for the high rate of HIV in Cebu City, one of the highest in a country thats already struggling to combat the viruseven as new infections have declined worldwide, theyre on the rise in the Philippines. (In most other parts of the country, the primary means of transmission is sexual contact rather than drug use). In October, the DOH reported a total of 29,079 HIV infections in the country. More than 24,000 of those cases were detected in just the last five years. At this current rate, the DOH predicts that the number of HIV infections in the Philippines could reach 133,000 by 2022.

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But HIV prevention is a difficult undertaking in Cebu City, which has plenty of places to go shoot up on Nubain or milkshake (an injectable combination of Nubain and crack cocaine) but few places to access a clean needle.

In 2014, the Cebu HIV/ AIDS Registry reported that 74 percent of the citys 1,366 recorded HIV infections were due to needle-sharing. The DOH estimates that more than 50 percent of the roughly 6,000 intravenous-drug users in Cebu and its neighboring cities are positive for HIV. Needle disposal has become a public-health problem: In some areas, used syringes dot the streets.

* * *

Since the Philippiness first reported case of HIV in 1984, the country has remained low-incidence, meaning less than 1 percent of the population is infected with HIV. Even with low condom use and a sizable population of citizens who work overseasboth factors that typically contribute to a higher rate of HIVthe health department recorded only 2,410 new HIV infections between 1984 and 2005.

As a result, HIV was low on the Philippiness list of public-health priorities during the earliest years of the virus, as the government focused its efforts and funding on other infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria. It wasnt until 1998 that the country passed the Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act, creating educational programs about the disease and funding prevention efforts.

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The disease continued to spread slowly in the following years, with the rate of new infections increasing by about 10 percent each year. But in 2009, public-health authorities saw a spike: Infection rates jumped 58 percent from the previous year. There was a similarly dramatic increase the next year, and again the year after that. In October 2015, the DOHs HIV/AIDS registry counted just over 29,000 cases in the country since 1984with more than 24,000 of them reported after 2010.

Veejay Villafranca

The rate of infection in the last five years has eclipsed the rate of infection over of the last 30 years of the virus, says Zimmbodilion Mosende, the strategic information adviser for the UNAIDS office in the Philippines.

The registry also reported a total of 1,359 deaths since 1984, but because of the stigma of HIV, many public-health workers believe the true figure is much higher.

Although most of the countrys new infections come from sexual contact, current policies can make it difficult for health workers to promote safe sex: Testing and contraceptives are off-limits to minors, for example, unless they have parental consent.

And in Cebu City, where the primary mode of transmission is intravenous drug use, other laws have made it just as difficult to develop prevention programs targeted towards users. The Dangerous Drugs Act was amended in 2009 to criminalize the possession and distribution of drug paraphernalia like syringes. As a result, Cebus local public-health organizations had to discontinue their needle-exchange programs; the city also passed an ordinance limiting the sales of needles and syringes without a prescription.

The following year, HIV cases among injecting drug users in Cebu jumped from less than 1 percent to 53 percent.

The United Nations defines a concentrated epidemic as an area where infection rates are higher than 5 percent of the population. Surveillance data released by the health department last November showed that Cebu was one of eight Philippine cities that breached this percent threshold.

The 5-percent prevalence rate is like a tipping point, Samonte explains. The moment you reach 5 percent, you reach a critical mass of people who can infect others and the epidemic will rapidly spread.

Veejay Villafranca

But as public-health officials call for aggressive needle-exchange programs in Cebu, some local government officials continue to fiercely oppose them.

The answer to this problem is not distributing clean needles, says Alice Utlang, the executive director of the Cebu City Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (COSAP). The answer is rehabilitation.

But advocates say rehabilitation isnt enough to combat whats becoming an urgent problem. Cebu only has two public drug-rehabilitation centers, both of which are already crowded, and the cost of treatment puts their services out of reach for many people at risk for HIV.

Our objective is harm reduction. While we are weaning them off the drugs, we can stop the spread of the virus through a needle exchange program, says Ilya Tac-An, the head of the Cebu Citys STI/HIV Detection Unit.

In the meantime, Tac-An and her team make do with their current limitations. Theyve enlisted former drug users to lead education programs that discourage needle sharing, and teach both users and dealers how to clean used needles using bleach and water.

* * *

In the meantime, the citys drug problem is creating a sort of ripple effect, increasing the risk of infection for non-IV-drug users as well.

Over at Cebu Citys Vicente Sotto Hospital, which offers free HIV testing and treatment, Chamberlain Agtuca is worried: In recent years, hes seen a growing number of women come into his clinic for treatment, most of them pregnant.

Before, we had maybe one case per yearif any at all, Agtuca says. But since the start of the year, we have had 10 pregnant women test positive for HIV.

Many of these (pregnant) women do not have an HIV risk profile. They are not engaged in sex work nor do they inject drugs, he adds. But many of them received the virus from sexual partners who were infected via needle-sharing. (UNAIDS estimates that 50 million women in Asia who are in long-term monogamous relationships are at risk for HIV infection through intimate-partner transmission.)

We did not see this coming. But when more male injecting-drug users get infected, they will infect their female partners, Samonte says. The [drug use]-HIV issue does not end with the users.

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Bernie Sanders presidential campaign raised $33 million in the last quarter of 2015, providing him the resources to remain a formidable challenger to Hillary Clinton with less than a month left until the first ballots are cast in Iowa.

This people-powered campaign is revolutionizing American politics, Sanders campaign chief said Saturday in a statement.

Related: Hillary Clinton Gets a Taste of What Could Be a Painful 2016

The self-proclaimed democratic socialist took in $73 million on the year, a figure most thought unimaginable when Sanders launched his dark horse candidacy in April. His campaign says it has about $28 million cash on hand.

Meanwhile, Clinton reported $37 million raised in the final quarter, bringing her total haul for the year to $112 million, with $38 million still in the bank.

Despite the apparent money edge Clinton has over her rival, Sanders fundraising haul assures that she wont be able to deliver the knockout blow she has sought.

Related: Al Qaeda Is Using Donald Trumps Comments to Recruit Terrorists ... and Hes Ok with That

After a turbulent summer where questions about Clintons use of a private email server while acting as Secretary of State washed away her veneer of inevitability and allowed Sanders to narrow the gap in the polls, the former First Lady has regained control of the race.

As a result, Clinton has increasingly turned her focus to the general election. She refused to be drawn into contentious arguments with Sanders during last months Democratic debate and has begun saving her best campaign barbs for Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who has accused her of exploiting women while calling former President Bill Clinton one of the great women abusers of all time.

Sanders fundraising means he will be able to maintain his elaborate ground operation in Iowa. The New York Times reports that he has organizers sprinkled liberally throughout the Hawkeye State who will work to turn out the vote on Feb. 1.

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Related: In & Out: Heres Where the GOP Presidential Candidates Stand Now

Clinton leads in the most recent Iowa polls, but a surprise win or better-than-expected showing by Sanders could spark a fresh round of donations from liberal Democrats ahead of the Feb. 20 New Hampshire primary, where Sanders has the edge in the polls.

A win in the Granite State would keep the river of fundraising flowing and threaten to drag the Democratic primary well into the spring, an outcome Clinton desperately hopes to avoid.

She wants to pivot her high-tech organization into a general election machine capable of overcoming the apparent enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans.

For example, the latest CNN/ORC International poll found 36 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they were very enthusiastic about voting for president next year, compared to just 19 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

The more cash Sanders receives, the longer he can hang around and potentially distract Clinton. A protracted battle could become hostile and further taint liberals opinion of Clinton, perhaps causing them to stay at home on Election Day in November.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
By Babak Dehghanpisheh and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin BEIRUT/DUBAI (Reuters) - Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was quick to condemn the execution of Saudi cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, stating: "Without a doubt, the hated Saudi regime will pay a price for this shameful act." For an organization deeply involved in wars in Syria and Iraq this looks no idle threat, at least in the eyes of Sunni Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia who say Shi'ite rival Tehran is bent on undermining their security. The Guard's furious comment is not a call for direct conflict with Riyadh, something neither country wants. But it is a reminder to Gulf Arabs that the IRGC, with connections in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region, has many ways to wage the long cold war between Tehran and its Arab foes. Tehran denies interfering in Arab lands. But the Quds Force, the arm of the Guards that operates abroad, has contributed fighters, weapons and military supplies to back Irans interests and policies across the region. That prospect is worrying for a region where conflicts or political crises from Lebanon and Syria to Yemen, Iraq and Bahrain involve proxies of both powers who are at daggers drawn. A day after the IRGC issued its statement, which described Saudi rulers as "terrorist fostering, hated and anti-Islam", Riyadh broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran, escalating a contest for power that underpins the region's turmoil. There is no firm indication that Iran's factionalized leadership has agreed how far it should go to avenge the death of Nimr -- who was one of 47 people executed by Saudi Arabia on Saturday -- and what methods should be used. But whatever steps are authorized, the Guards are likely to be involved, although as orchestrators more than direct participants, experts say. "The Guard will not respond directly," said Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. RIVALRY "They have their operatives, their people, their connections everywhere in the region who will answer what the Saudis did and actually escalate. Iran is in a very strong position to respond in the Saudi Arabian eastern province. And they can do a lot in Bahrain." Moderate voices on both sides do not have an interest in seeing the situation escalate into a full conflict, experts say. And yet the rivals often compete indirectly through allies, which lends the contest an element of unpredictability: Some Iranian proxies may be encouraged by the tough rhetoric coming from Tehran to carry out attacks not sanctioned by the Guard. "Both sides are loath to see tensions spiral out of control. They are more likely than not to prevent this cold conflict from deteriorating into a hot one, while stepping up their proxy wars across the region," said Ali Vaez, the senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group. "But with tensions reaching new heights, now more than ever, they run the risk of unintended direct confrontation." The Quds Force has gained valuable military experience in recent years and now plays a dominant role within the IRGC, experts say. In some cases, Guard fighters and their Shiite proxies have fought against Sunni groups directly supported by Saudi Arabia in Syria and Iraq. The IRGC has also established intelligence networks among the Shi'ite populations in the Gulf states. It has the potential to undermine Saudi Arabia and its allies' interests using sympathetic Shi'ites to stir political unrest or engage in violent attacks, experts say. Saudi Arabia has a sizable Shiite community in the east of the country, while the majority of Bahrains citizens are Shiites who live under a Sunni monarchy. A failed uprising which began in Bahrain in 2011 was largely focused on gaining more democratic rights for the countrys Shiites. In the Guards' statement, they warned that the youth and Muslims of Saudi Arabia would take "tough revenge" which would lead to the fall of the Saudi government. The Iranians could also revive the resentment that drove the Bahrain uprising. RED LINE "I think the Iranians think they can actually have a victory in Bahrain which would be a red line for the Saudis, said a Western diplomat in Beirut who asked not to be identified. "A key part of the Iranian narrative is that Bahrain is a majority Shiite nation that is being oppressed and not allowed democracy." The bulk of Iran's tough rhetoric has come from hardline groups like the Guards, some of whom have also criticized the nuclear deal agreed with world powers last year aimed at lifting most sanctions against the country. More diplomatic isolation is not good news for pragmatic Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who, with the blessing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pushed for the deal in order to expand Iran's ties with the international community. Rouhani managed to normalize ties with the West somewhat through the deal and started the new year with an optimistic tweet hoping that in 2016 countries can "look for reasons to make peace, not excuses for hostility". But now facing the biggest diplomatic crisis of his government, Rouhani might not be able to persuade the Guards to dial down their paramilitary activism in favor of diplomacy. That could lead the Guards to push their allies within Saudi Arabia to carry out violent attacks. "Should the IRGC desire to use terrorism on Saudi soil to retaliate against the House of Saud, the IRGC is likely to find it easier to find recruits among the Shia in Saudi Arabia," said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert on the Revolutionary Guards. It is unlikely the Guards would do much to hit Saudi interests in Syria or Iraq. But harsh anti-Saudi rhetoric from Iran may spur some of the militias trained and armed by Tehran to act on their own, experts say. ANGRY MILITIAMEN "Iran has created a Frankenstein with the Shiite militias in Iraq," said the Western diplomat in Beirut. "When you keep emphasizing this notion of Saudi Arabia and its proxies oppressing Shia -- and youve got these angry militiamen -- at some point theyre going to be out of Irans control. Theres always the risk of that kind of escalation." For their part, the Saudis could boost their financial and military support to Sunni militant groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to counter the Iranian threat, experts say. Still, it would be difficult for the Saudis to prevail in a political and diplomatic showdown with Iran, experts say. "The fact that the Saudis have decided to sever their diplomatic relations with Iran means that they are, in their own minds, ready for an all-out confrontation with Iran," Khashan said. "There is nothing the Saudis can do to destabilize Iran whereas the Iranians on the other hand have every means conceivable to destabilize Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, namely Bahrain." (Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh in Beirut and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in Dubai; Editing by William Maclean and Giles Elgood)
With the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) due to open this week, connected devices and Ultra High Definition (UHD) displays are hotly awaited at the show, which runs from January 6-9 in Las Vegas (USA).

Stars of the show: connected devices

It's no real surprise that the Internet of Things is likely to see a wealth of new arrivals at this year's Las Vegas consumer tech show. Smartwatches should, for example, be set to make headlines once again, as manufacturers like Pebble, LG and Samsung could be set to present new generation models. FitBit and other fitness-tracker makers may showcase new devices too.

As well as all kinds of smart objects (all with varying degrees of "smartness"), Virtual Reality (VR) is likely to be a hot topic at this year's CES, notably embodied by the first VR headsets. Oculus, HTC, Samsung, and Sony may all be poised to unveil their latest innovations in the field. Microsoft could even give a new demo of its HoloLens headset, as seen at an October 2015 press conference with a hologram-based fighting game.

UHD & flexible displays

After seeing the first curved OLED displays presented in 2013 and 8K TVs demoed in 2014, spectacular developments are once again awaited in the TV sector. This year, 8K technology is expected to be present in a bigger way, with more manufacturers set to preview models at CES 2016, even though no content is yet available in this format.

Given the string of new devices released in autumn and winter 2015, and with the Mobile World Congress due to be held in Barcelona, Spain at the end of February 2016, there's little chance that any major new smartphones will be unveiled at CES. However, some major innovations could still be showcased, such as the first entirely foldable smartphone, currently under development at Samsung. Although theoretically destined for the Asian market, it might be presented at the Las Vegas event if finished in time.

Like every year, CES 2016 has a busy conference schedule, featuring prominent guests such as Won Pyo Hong (Samsung), Brian Krzanich (Intel), Ginni Rometty (IBM), Reed Hastings (Netflix), and Robert Kyncl (YouTube). The future of the connected car will be presented by guests including Mary Barra (General Motors) and Herbert Diess (Volkswagen).

A total of over 3,600 exhibitors from all over the world will be heading to Las Vegas for CES 2016.

(CES 2016 runs from January 6-9, 2016 in Las Vegas, USA. Website: cesweb.org)
New York (AFP) - Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, following archrival Donald Trump in fanning fears about illegal immigration, released a TV ad Tuesday denouncing an "invasion" of migrants from across the Mexican border.

The surging White House hopeful released a hard-hitting, minute-long commercial decrying the influx of undocumented immigrants from across the Rio Grande dividing Mexico from the United States.

Filmed like the trailer of a Hollywood movie, the ad portrays the migrants as bankers, lawyers and journalists dressed in suits and carrying briefcases as they run through scrubland and water.

"When the mainstream media covers immigration it doesn't often see it as an economic issue," says Cruz.

"The politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande, or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press.

"Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation," he added.

The 45-year-old conservative senator from Texas promised to triple border patrols if elected president in November 2016.

"We will build a wall that works, we will secure the border," he said.

His campaign said the ad was airing in New Hampshire, which hosts the nation's first presidential primary on February 9.

The first-term senator is in second place to Trump in nationwide Republican polls, buoyed by support from the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement and evangelical Christians.

Trump, the brash real estate tycoon from New York, has promised to end illegal immigration by building a wall along the Mexican border.

His first TV ad, which was unveiled on Monday, uses footage that shows migrants fleeing Morocco to the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla in 2014.

The Mexican-US border stretches more than 3,100 kilometers (1,950 miles), but only around a third is marked by high-security fencing.

Story continues

The latest national poll of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters has Trump leading with 39 percent and Cruz on 18 percent.

But Cruz leads in Iowa with 31 percent to Trump's 21 percent.

On February 1, the heartland state votes first in the nomination race, using the caucus method, followed by New Hampshire eight days later.
The massive and ongoing methane gas leak 25 miles northwest of Los Angeles may have been avoidable. As public outrage grows over one of the worst environmental catastrophes since the BP oil spill, the southern California gas company responsible for the breach acknowledged over the weekend that it decided nearly 40 years ago against replacing an underground safety valve that could have cut off the gas leak when the storage tank first erupted in late October.

Executives of Southern California Gas apparently concluded it was too hard to find replacement parts for the valve and that the underground storage tank wasnt close enough to homes to warrant the time and expense. Instead, they gambled that the cutoff valve would never be needed. Now they are struggling to contain runaway greenhouse gas emissions that could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and greatly contribute to climate change.

Related: Why the Gas Leak in California No One Is Talking About Is Such a Disaster

The crisis began Oct. 23 in the suburban community of Porter Ranch with the rupture of an underground containment system more than 8,000 feet below the surface that can hold as much as 86 billion cubic feet of methane-laden natural gas. The leak forced the evacuation of 1,700 homes in nearby neighborhoods, the shuttering of two schools and widespread incidents of residents being sickened by the putrid smell of the escaping gas.

Lawyers representing some of the families in a class action suit charged that the Southern California Gas Company, which manages the storage tank, failed to replace a leaky and defective safety valve in 1979, and instead simply removed it. While a new safety valve may not have prevented the leak from occurring, attorney Brian Panish told The Los Angeles Times that it would have enabled a work crew to have stopped the continued release of the noxious gas.

"Had we had [the safety valve], this whole problem would have been prevented," Panish said. "There would have been a small runoff of some gas and it would have been over. All these people wouldn't have had to leave and they wouldn't be sick. It's critical to the whole case."

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A spokesperson for SoCal Gas, Melissa Bailey, confirmed to the newspaper that the ruptured well did not have a deep subsurface valve, but she insisted it was not required by state law. "Until the facts are determined and this assessment is completed, it is premature to comment further on the well or the cause of the incident," Bailey said, citing the pending class-action law suit. "In the interim, SoCal Gas will continue to focus its efforts on stopping the leak as soon as possible."

Related: Obamas Climate Summit Missed a Big Chance to Reduce Global Warming

The allegations by residents and their lawyers of gross corporate neglect or corner-cutting by SoCal Gas is the latest wrinkle in an unfolding drama over what many officials, scientists and environmentalists are calling a staggering environmental catastrophe that could seriously undercut efforts to reduce global warming.

As The Fiscal Times reported Sunday, scientists and environmental experts say the Aliso Canyon leak became the biggest single source of methane emissions in all of California practically overnight when it began. Methane gas constitutes a potent form of greenhouse gas emissions. Environmentalists say that the impact of the gases released since then, when projected out over 20 years, is equal to the emissions from six coal-fired power plants or 7 million cars, according to a recent analysis by The Washington Post.

Southern California utility officials have said there is no way to contain the rupture for at least another few months. Meanwhile, the gas has been escaping into the air at a rate of nearly 1,300 metric tons per day. The underground tanks hold billions of cubic feet of natural gas that is stored under high pressure to supply the utility companys 20 million customers.

Related: Where The Top Six GOP Presidential Candidates Come Down on Climate Change

As of last week, the California leak has spewed over 73,000 metric tons of methane gas into the atmosphere, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

The controversy over the safety of the natural gas storage facility dates back nearly 40 years, when Southern California Gas told state regulators that it had replaced the safety valve on the well, according to attorneys for the residents.

However, in a Dec. 15 interview with the LA Weekly, Southern California Gas executive Rodger Schwecke, who is helping to coordinate the response to the leak, confirmed that the company removed  but didnt replace  the safety valve in 1979. Schwecke told the publication that it was difficult to find a new part to replace the valve and that the well itself wasnt deemed critical under state law  meaning it wasnt located within 100 feet of a road or a park or within 300 feet of a home. Instead, it was located about a mile away from the nearest homes.

Related: Californias Latest Nightmare: San Joaquin Valley Is Sinking

The result of SoCalGass indifference to public safety is the massive gas well failure that forced thousands of Porter Ranch residents from their homes, Patricia Oliver, another lawyer involved in the class-action suit, said in a statement issued yesterday.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
This year, paleontologists made headlines with news of incredible dinosaur findings the world over, and they expect 2016 will hold just as many surprises, scientists told Live Science.

For instance, researchers rocked headlines in 2015 with the discoveries of fossils showing a feathered batlike dinosaur (likely a failed attempt at early dinosaur flight, scientists told Live Science), a mysterious herbivorous cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex and a herd of duck-billed dinosaurs living in the chilly reaches of ancient Alaska.

"Part of the fun of paleontology is that you can't really predict what's coming down the road," said Andrew Farke, a paleontologist at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California. [Photos: Oldest Known Horned Dinosaur in North America]

Here are five hot trends that paleontologists expect to see in 2016 and the years ahead.

1. Fossils galore

Just as in years past, paleontologists will continue to scour ancient rock for dinosaur fossils.

"We're still in a discovery phase of the science, and I don't see that ending anytime soon," said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. "People are still finding a new dinosaur once every week or two, on average."

Each finding helps scientists piece together the puzzle of dinosaur evolution and distribution, he said.

Researchers are also re-examining known fossils. Some specimens haven't been described in detail, making it difficult for experts to learn about anatomical features and how they relate to those of other animals, Farke said.

For instance, a study published in December in the journal PeerJ described an in-depth reexamination of an ankylosaur fossil discovered in Australia in 1989. The researchers' new analysis determined that the specimen belonged to a new genus and species of ankylosaur, prompting the name Kunbarrasaurus ieversi.

Re-examining known fossils isn't "ridiculously glamorous," Farke said, but "when you get a long paper published that has all the detailed figures, text and comparisons, that's what can really move the field forward."

Story continues

2. Downloadable dinosaurs

Scanning technology is nothing new. Paleontologists have used computer tomography (CT) scanners since the 1980s. But back then, they had to visit hospitals, as the scanners were expensive and, for the most part, only available at medical centers, Brusatte said.

"Now it's become so standard that a lot of paleontologists have their own scanners in their lab," Brusatte said. "That would have been unheard of a decade ago."

However, these CT images used to remain on individual hard drives, inaccessible to other scientists. Now, with the advent of 3D printing, researchers can share the printing instructions online with their colleagues, educators and the public, who can print and study whatever specimen catches their eye.

"For a scientist, [3D printing] makes it easy to check things in the figures and determine what are these features, what does it look like, how does it compare with these other things?" Farke said told Live Science. [Photos: Incredible Near-Complete Stegosaurus Skeleton]

3. Legal responsibility

It's not always "finders keepers" when it comes to dinosaur discoveries. In the United States, private landowners can keep fossils discovered on their property, but not if the bones are dug up on public land. In other countries, depending on the laws, fossils belong to the government or to the person who uncovered them.

These laws aren't new, but authorities are starting to enforce them more than ever before, especially in countries such as Mongolia, China and Brazil, the experts said.

"Most countries have fairly discreet regulations on what can or can't be exported," Farke said. "It's the enforcement and ways that people try to work around it that gets a little dicey."

For instance, Eric Prokopi, a self-proclaimed commercial paleontologist, received a three-month jail sentence last year after he was convicted of smuggling fossils out of Mongolia and into the United States, Live Science reported. And in December, actor Nicolas Cage agreed to return a 70-million-year-old skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar  one that had been purchased at an auction  to the Mongolian government.

Going forward, it's crucial that researchers know the provenance of each fossil, including who collected the fossils and whether all the laws were followed, Brusatte said.

"In the past, I think fossils slipped through the cracks," he said. "But now because fossils can be so high-profile, museums and governments are taking them much more seriously."

4. Screen fling

Computer modeling and quantitative techniques are advancing the field, allowing researchers the ability to determine how dinosaurs moved and used their senses, but it's also changing the daily lives of paleontologists.

"You have a lot of paleontologists now who just specialize in these things," Brusatte said. "Now you have people who never go out into the field to collect fossils or never describe fossils. And, of course, that's perfectly fine, it's just that the field is diversifying and there's different niches for different scientists."

In fact, Farke said he expects to see a wave of scientists modeling living animals, and then transferring that virtual knowledge to how dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic era, which includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

5. Diversity in the field

Dinosaurs are a diverse bunch, but those who study them tend to be a little more uniform. In the coming years, Farke expects to see a more diverse crowd studying the beasts. [Gallery: The Diversity of Dino Ancestors]

"Even 20 or 30 years ago, you'd have a cool fossil from a country where maybe there wasn't a big scientific infrastructure," Farke said. "So paleontologists from the United States or United Kingdom would come in and describe the fossil, maybe without any participation from people in the infrastructure there."

Now, diversity is growing, he said.

"It's been really exciting to see the growth of the paleontology in Argentina, China, South Africa and Kenya  places where's there's always been a lot of paleontological resources, but now there's some awesome scientists there," Farke said. "It's an international field and it's good to see that actually coming to fruition."

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


A still from the movie "Singapore GaGa".



5 Jan  Singaporean filmmaker Tan Pin Pin has decided to pull her movie "Singapore GaGa" from the upcoming Singapore Film Festival in Kuala Lumpur organised by Titian Budaya.



The 2005 movie has been deemed a "security threat" by Malaysia's Film Censorship Board, according to a post on Tan's Facebook.



The movie could "create doubts and restlessness" among citizens, all due to its inclusion of the word "animals" in the Malay language in one of its scenes.



It was revealed by Tan that the organisers' appeal to the Chief Censor was rejected last week.



Tan posted a translated quote from the censor's report: "Erase (Victor Khoo) saying "animals" in Malay and delete the subtitles of "animals" which has a double meaning.



This goes against the film Censorship guidelines Ministry of home affairs Part II:2.1.1 (v) Dialogue can create doubt and restlessness among citizens and finally may cause a security threat, disturbance of public peace and national defense."



The scene in question depicts the late Singaporean entertainer Victor Khoo and his ventriloquist act Charlee, where he teased the kids by calling them animals in Malay.



Tan has decided to keep the movie intact instead of editing it, and has withdrawn the movie from the event.



Her decision to keep the movie as it is has been lauded by many, including the late entertainer's own son, Brandon Khoo, who commented on her Facebook post, thanking her for not removing the section.



This was not the first time for the movie to be aired in Malaysia, as it was also previously screened in 2006, though there were no censorships applied to it at the time.



"Singapore GaGa" was supposed to screen for the Singapore Film Festival by Titian Budaya taking place this 14 to 17 January at selected GSC cinemas.



The festival is part of the Titian Budaya programme, which is held since 21 November 2015 to 17 January 2016 in celebration of 50 years of friendship between Singapore and Malaysia.
Its difficult to define the cloud. Even more difficult, perhaps, is photographing it. But thats precisely what Peter Garritano set out to do with his photo essay The Internet.

Taken over the course of the past year, Garritano visited five of New York Citys most interconnected spaces, colloquially called carrier hotels. Inside these buildings, like 60 Hudson and 111 8th Avenue, hundreds of fiber-optic cables, fans, servers, and machinery connect to form the Internet.

The privacy and high security at these buildings has historically kept their inner-workings out of the public eye, Garritano said, noting that a few of the locations he visited had never been photographed before. The cloud is in fact a very physical space, expanding and evolving; full of real machines and real people, he said.

But Garritanos images are starkcold colors to evoke cold spacesand remind one just how elusive the Internet is. Even when were looking at it, its unrecognizable.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
TrumpEmbed

Photo: Ida Mae Astute/ABC/ Getty Images.

Update, 12:25 p.m.: The Democratic National Committee has released an official response to Trump's ad. "GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's offensive ad is the latest Republican demonstration of xenophobia and fear mongering. His proposals represent Republican Party values that would only serve to make America less safe," DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach said in a statement provided to Refinery29. Paustenbach also noted that other GOP presidential candidates, including Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie, have also supported discriminatory practices.



This post was originally published on January 4, 2016.



Donald Trump has been the subject of a lot of bad press in recent weeks. The 2016 GOP presidential hopeful proposed a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States, and he's received a lot of well-deserved backlash.



Instead of trying to divert the media's attention to more positive aspects of his campaign, Trump's first TV ad tackles his statements head-on. And he's not backing away from them.



The ad claims that Trump's proposed ban on Muslims would prevent "radical Islamic terrorism" in the United States. And, it says, Trump will "cut the head off of ISIS" if he's elected president. (Because ISIS beheads people, get it?)



And to top it all off, the ad mentions Trump's proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border  funded by Mexico. Rather than straying away from his most controversial statements, Trump's ad celebrates them. Many people have been quick to criticize the new campaign spot. Greg Sargent of The Washington Post compared the ad to a '90s spot by California Governor Pete Wilson, who supported measures to ban illegal immigrants from access to state services. Trump's ad portrays immigrants as invaders (see the dark masses featured in the video), as did one of Wilson's ads in 1994.



Check out Trump's campaign ad in all its wildly offensive glory, below. It will air in Iowa and New Hampshire starting Tuesday.





Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?



8 Things You Need To Know This AM



People Use Twitter To Call Out The Oregon Militiamen



8 Things You Need To Know This AM
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jan 5, 2016) - Eurocontrol Technics Group Inc. (TSX VENTURE:EUO) ("Eurocontrol" or the "Company"), a Canadian public company specializing in the acquisition, development and commercialization of innovative authentication, verification and certification technologies, is pleased to announce that its sale of Global Fluids International (GFI) S.A. ("GFI"), to SICPA Finance SA ("SICPA"), a subsidiary of SICPA SA, each a privately owned company based in Switzerland in exchange for cash and post-closing earn-out payments closed effective January 4, 2016. At closing, the Company received $16 million less the $250,000 deposit received by the Company on signing of the Letter of Intent in August 2015, less $395,595 in transaction payments, less $984,128 in settlement of loan amounts owing by Eurocontrol to certain former shareholders of GFI and a working capital adjustment of $47,489. Going forward, Eurocontrol will also receive 5% earn-out payments on all future GFI contracts, inclusive of both marker and logistics, for a period of six years with contracts signed during the fourth through sixth years being paid until the third anniversary of such contracts with a minimum guarantee of $1.5 million per year for six years, being $9 million in the aggregate. The Company will receive the minimum earn-out payments of $1.5 million on a semi-annual basis and additional earn-out payments calculated on 5% of the gross revenue of future GFI contracts, net of the minimum earn-out payments made annually.

The Company also announces the resignations of Mr. Eli Zahavi, Mr. Gadi Gonen and Sir Michael Rose as directors of the Company. Doron Reinis, the current Chief Executive Officer of Xenemetrix, has been appointed Chief Operating Officer of Eurocontrol to replace Gadi Gonen who pursuant to the sale of GFI has resigned from all positions with the Company.

Bruce Rowlands, Chairman and CEO of Eurocontrol stated: "The closing of this sale transaction with SICPA is a very important milestone in Eurocontrol's evolution and I would personally like to thank Gadi Gonen, Michael Rose and Eli Zahavi for their commitment and important contributions to Eurocontrol over the past ten years. We all look forward to supporting the new SICPA/GFI combination in the future as new fuel marking programs are rolled out around the world."

Story continues

Gilles Leraille, Executive Vice President, Business Development of SICPA, stated: "We are very pleased to have finalized the purchase of GFI. This acquisition extends the range of the SICPA Group's product marking and 'track and trace' portfolio. It complements and completes the scope of SICPA's unique offering to Government clients worldwide: comprehensive solutions aimed at enhancing excise tax collection capability, tools to protect local economies and support health and environmental control policies. GFI's cutting-edge capability to mark oil products at the molecular level effectively works as an "in-product tax stamp" that cannot be altered or copied providing Governments with a sophisticated tool to tackle fraud in the oil sector. SICPA/GFI's oil marking activity will be managed from SICPA HQ in Lausanne where GFI will benefit from the strong R&D and organizational support of the SICPA Group in Switzerland and globally - something we view as essential to maintaining and further developing Petromark technological lead and international offering."

About SICPA

SICPA is a leading global provider of secured authentication, identification and traceability solutions and services. Founded in 1927 and headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, SICPA is a long-trusted advisor to governments, central banks, high-security printers, and industry. With high-technology security inks at the core of its expertise, the company protects the majority of the world's banknotes, security and value documents from the threats of counterfeiting and fraud. SICPA also integrates ink-based covert features and sophisticated traceability technologies to offer solutions and services to governments and industry, ensuring product authentication, traceability and protection as well as tax reconciliation. Operating on five continents, SICPA is a global company providing technologies and services to most nations worldwide - www.sicpa.com.

About Eurocontrol Technics Group Inc.

Eurocontrol through its two wholly owned subsidiaries, Xenemetrix Ltd. ("Xenemetrix") and XwinSys Technology Development Ltd. ("XwinSys"). Xenemetrix is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence ("ED-XRF") systems, a technology that is the most accurate and economic method for determining the chemical composition of many types of materials, including the analysis of petroleum oils and fuel. Xenemetrix has an exclusive long-term supply, maintenance and support agreement with SICPA/GFI to supply SICPA/GFI with Xenemetrix products and services related to the oil and gas marking and monitoring field. XwinSys is developing technology and intellectual property that will combine 2D and 3D image processing technology from Brossh Inspection Systems Ltd. of Israel with Xenemetrix's ED-XRF technology for application in the semi-conductor manufacturing process.

Forward-looking statements:

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Statements containing the words: 'believes', 'intends', 'expects', 'plans', 'seeks' and 'anticipates' and any other words of similar meaning are forward-looking. All forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to future events and circumstances beyond the Company's control. As a result, the Company's actual financial condition, performance and results may differ materially from the plans, goals and expectations set out in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release and, other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. A description of assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information and a description of risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information can be found in the Company's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website 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. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.
For students like Kelly Dyer, who classifies himself as an introvert, taking online courses could be a great choice. The May 2015 graduate from the security studies master's degree program at Kansas State University enrolled in online courses as he pursued a graduate certificate in public administration.

Dyer immediately recognized the contrast between the in-person and online learning environments: In the former, he had to respond to questions on the fly, but in the latter, he could really prepare what he wanted to say. Introverts like Dyer tend to be more reflective and really think through their ideas or answers to questions, especially when it comes to learning, experts say.

"During my first online class, I found out that I could take the time to construct my thoughts, craft an argument and then present it -- post it -- to the rest of the class for that week," the 24-year-old said via email. "That was really beneficial for me."

Experts agree that online education certainly has its benefits for introverts, particularly when it comes to partaking in group discussions and thriving in more personal settings. Introverts are also usually good listeners and can better express themselves through their writing rather than verbally.

Still, online education has its drawbacks for introverts as well. Experts say it's important for introverted prospective online students to examine both the positives and negatives of distance learning when deciding whether to pursue a fully online, blended or in-person program.

[Learn to decide between online, blended courses.]

Introversion, which experts say appears on a spectrum, is different from shyness, which tends to have negative connotations, says Heidi Kasevich, who leads education-related efforts for Quiet Revolution, an organization that aims to unlock the power of introverts in society.

"Introversion has to do with the amount of stimulation an individual enjoys and thrives on," says Kasevich. "Introverts prefer much less stimulating environments than extroverts."

Story continues

The most obvious benefit of online learning for introverts centers on class participation, experts say, because in many online courses, students have more time to answer questions.

"You don't have this notion of a 10-second wait time from a teacher to have to respond to; you can respond an hour later or a day later -- whenever you feel you have contemplated on the idea enough," says Curt Bonk, professor of education at Indiana University--Bloomington and author of "The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education."

In many online classes, discussions involve more than just speaking -- a variety that introverts usually prefer, Kasevich says. This was the case for Dyer, who says that in the face-to-face classroom, his grades would occasionally dip because of a lack of oral participation.

[Discover how to ace discussion board assignments in an online class.]

"As long as I met the expectation for posting and I put together a somewhat coherent argument, I always got A's," he says of his online class experience.

Among introverts, Kasevich says, "solitude is a catalyst for innovation." This is another reason why online learning could be an excellent choice: Students can choose to attend class in a quiet location.

Bonk, of Indiana University, says the fact that online classes generally present information in multiple formats makes introverts feel more confident in what they have learned, as they are generally more comfortable absorbing content expressed in various fashions.

Still, when it comes to online learning, introverts should still be cautious. George Veletsianos, an associate professor at Royal Roads University in Canada who researches digital learning environments, says students shouldn't assume that just because the class is online, it definitely won't have a live discussion component.

[Explore how to choose between live, self-paced online courses.]

"It's also possible that the course is designed in such a way that it is built as a three-hour, virtual real-time class where one is engaged in discussions throughout that time, which can be draining to people," he says.

Even in an online environment, there are some disadvantages for introverts. Because an introvert is likely depending more on writing than speaking, there's always the chance of being misinterpreted, and in those cases, it may be easier to interact on the phone or in person, says Jennifer Kahnweiler, author of "The Genius of Opposites" and other books about introverts.

There's also the danger of depending too much on online learning, experts say. It's important for introverts to put themselves in social situations and get out of their comfort zones, especially as they transition into workplace settings.

In terms of whether the benefits of online learning outweigh the drawbacks for introverts or vice versa, many experts say blended learning or a combination of in-person and online classes might be the best path.

"You want to also tap into learning through that magic of live conversation," Kahnweiler says.

Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center.

Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.


Kuwait has recalled its envoy from Iran, a day after Bahrain and Sudantwo other allies of Saudi Arabiasevered diplomatic relations with Tehran, and a third, the United Arab Emirates, downgraded them.

The steps, each following the kingdoms own cutting off diplomatic relations with the Islamic republic, follow the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and an attack on its consulate in Mashhad in an apparent response to the execution by Saudi Arabia of a prominent Shia cleric over the weekend.

Iran fired back on Tuesday, saying Saudi Arabia cant cover its crime by severing diplomatic ties, further raising tensions in the region, and prompting fears of a wider sectarian conflict between Sunnis, who represent the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world, and Shiites, who are a majority in Iran and a significant minority in other places. The U.S. and its allies, as well as Russia, Turkey, and China, meanwhile, appealed for calm.

Recommended: The Fallout From the Reports of Sexual Assaults in Cologne

A statement from the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry said its ambassador to Tehran was being recalled because of the torching and sabotage of the Saudi facilities in Iran.

Such action constitutes a flagrant breach of international conventions and violation of Irans international commitment over security and safety of diplomatic missions on its lands, the Foreign Ministry said.

Iran, meanwhile, sought to draw a distinction between Saudi Arabias execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the Shia cleric, and the protests that followed.

Of course, the Saudi government, in order to cover up its crime of beheading a religious leader has resorted to a strange measure and has severed its ties with the Islamic Republic, President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday.

But Kazem Jalali, a prominent Iranian lawmaker, criticized the actions of the protesters as, in the words of the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, wrong and impulsive. Iran even arrested some of the protesters who stormed the Saudi facilities.

Story continues

In Washington on Monday, John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, urged calm.

We continue to believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations are essential to work through differences, he said.

The U.S. and others criticized Nimrs execution, but also condemned the nature of the protests in Iran. The UN condemned the protests, but made no mention of the execution.

Nimr, a Shia cleric, was a critic of the Saudi monarchy and had led protests in the eastern part of the country, where many Saudi Shiites live. His execution sparked protests by Shiites across the world, including in Iraq, Bahrain, Pakistan, and Iran. And, as we pointed out on Monday:

Although relations between Saudi Arabia, which is mostly Sunni, and Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, have never been warm, the tensions mark the worst deterioration in ties in recent years. Its been some time coming: The two countries are on opposite sides of the civil war in Yemen, where the Saudis support the government and the Iranians the Houthi rebels; and in Syria, where Riyadh supports some rebel groups and Iran the government of President Bashar al-Assad. They have also parried in Bahrain, where a Sunni ruler governs a mostly Shiite population, and in Iraq, where Iran holds considerable influence over the predominantly Shiite government; and traded barbs over the death toll of the stampede at the Hajj last September.

The sometimes-violent tensions between Sunnis and Shiites are almost as old as Islam itself. Indeed, the latest tensions have prompted fears of a region-wide sectarian conflict, but they also complicate U.S. efforts to forge a global coalition against the Islamic State group in the region.

ISIS, as the Islamic State is also known, controls territory across Iraq and Syria, and Western nations see the groups defeat as a pivotal step toward bringing about a semblance of stability to the Middle East. Worsening relations between the regions two most powerful Muslim nations are likely to make that more difficult, though both countries ostensibly oppose ISIS.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, outlining steps to tighten rules on guns on Tuesday, tearfully recalled a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school in 2012 in which 20 children were murdered. The Newtown, Connecticut, killings, were among the more recent of a series of mass shootings dating back to at least the mid-1990s. Below are some of the worst such incidents in recent years, ranked by the number of dead, including the gunman: Virginia Tech April 16, 2007 - A gunman slaughters 32 people and kills himself at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia. Sandy Hook Dec. 14, 2012 - A gunman shoots his mother to death, then kills 20 children, six adults and himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. San Bernardino Dec. 2, 2015 - A husband and wife kill 14 people at a workplace holiday party in San Bernardino in Southern California before being killed in a shootout with police. Columbine April 20, 1999 - Two heavily armed teenagers go on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, shooting 12 students and a teacher to death and wounding more than 20 others before taking their own lives. Immigration center April 3, 2009 - A Vietnamese immigrant opens fire at an immigrant services center in Binghamton, New York, killing 13 people and wounding four. He then kills himself. Fort Hood Nov. 5, 2009 - A gunman opens fire at Fort Hood, a U.S. Army base in Texas, killing 13 people. The gunman, an Army major and psychiatrist, was sentenced to death for the rampage. Washington Navy Yard Sept. 16, 2013 - A former Navy reservist working as a government contractor kills 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. The gunman was killed by police. Colorado movie theater July 20, 2012 - A masked gunman kills 12 people and wounds 70 when he opens fire on moviegoers at a midnight premiere of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, a Denver suburb. A former graduate student is sentenced to life in prison for the rampage. Washington, D.C., snipers October 2002 - Two men ambush 13 people, killing 10 of them, in a string of sniper-style shootings that terrorize the Washington area. Oregon College Oct. 1, 2015 - A gunman storms onto the campus of Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon and opens fire, killing nine people before police shoot him to death. Charleston church June 17, 2015 - A white supremacist gunman kills nine black churchgoers during a Bible study session at a historic, predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The suspect is awaiting trial. Waco bikers May 17, 2015 - Rival motorcycle gangs kill nine at a restaurant in Waco, Texas. More than 170 people are arrested. Grandfather kills family Sept. 18, 2014 - Man kills his daughter and six grandchildren in Bell, Florida, and then kills himself. Oikos University April 2, 2012 - A former student kills seven students at Oikos University, a small Christian school in Oakland, California. The suspect is awaiting trial. Sikh temple Aug. 5, 2012 - A white supremacist walks into a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six worshippers. The gunman kills himself after being shot by a police officer. Florida apartment July 26, 2013 - A man goes on a shooting spree at an apartment complex in Hialeah, Florida, killing six people. The shooter is killed by police. Congresswoman assassination attempt Jan. 8, 2011 - Then-U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords is the target of an assassination attempt by a gunman in Tucson, Arizona, in which six people are killed and 13, including Giffords, are wounded. Amish school Oct. 2, 2006 - A gunman kills five girls in a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, before killing himself. Planned Parenthood Nov. 27, 2015 - A gunman storms a Planned Parenthood health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three people and wounding nine. Police arrest the gunman. Television journalists Aug. 26, 2015 - A reporter and a cameraman are fatally ambushed by a former employee of their Roanoke, Virginia, television station while they are interviewing a woman on live TV. The woman is wounded. The gunman later kills himself as police pursue him on a highway hours after the shooting. (Compiled by Jonathan Oatis; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Allison Lampert MONTREAL (Reuters) - Automakers sold fewer light vehicles in Canada during the month of December, but reported record-breaking sales of trucks and cars for 2015, automotive consultant Dennis DesRosiers said Tuesday. Driven by demand for SUVs, light vehicle sales in Canada set a new record for the third year in a row, with sales of 1,898,485 units in 2015, compared with 1,851,373 in 2014, DesRosiers wrote in a note to clients. However, monthly new vehicle sales declined 1.9 percent to 128,874 units in December, "the first month to break a 32-month streak of consecutive year over year increases," he wrote. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said its December sales rose 2 percent to 21,961 vehicles from the same month a year earlier and announced full-year sales for 2015 of 293,061 vehicles, compared with 290,004 in 2014. In a statement, David Buckingham, FCA Canada's chief operating officer, said 2015 marked our best sales volume in our 90-year history. General Motors Co said in a statement that it delivered 263,335 vehicles in Canada in 2015, up 5.4 percent from 2014 despite a 3.4 percent decline in December sales. Ford Motor Co said Canadian sales of cars and trucks in December dropped 13.3 percent from the same month a year earlier to 19,623 vehicles. Ford's sales declined almost 5 percent to 278,531 vehicles in 2015, the company said. In the United States, automakers set a new sales record for 2015 even as December sales fell short of expectations, and most forecasters said sales should rise to another record this year. In Canada, DesRosiers attributed the higher sales in 2015 to low interest rates and cheaper gasoline, while increased demand in the country's largest two provinces, Quebec and Ontario, offset weakness in Alberta caused by sinking oil prices. DesRosiers did not address 2016 sales on Tuesday, but in an email on Monday he wrote "there is an excellent chance of sales growth in 2016." (Reporting by Allison Lampert; editing by Alistair Bell, Lisa Shumaker and David Gregorio)
Montreal (AFP) - More than 40 horses were killed in a fire that destroyed a barn at a training center for racehorses in the Canadian province of Ontario, local media reported.

The fire erupted overnight Monday to Tuesday at the Classy Lanes Stables Training Centre in Puslinch, Ontario, bringing down the barn's roof and walls on the horses inside.

Some 50 firefighters were dispatched to the scene, but intense cold froze water hoses, hampering their efforts, Puslinch fire chief Steve Goode told the CBC television network.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

The stable's owners were on vacation in Florida at the time of the blaze.
Tegucigalpa (AFP) - The first 115 Hondurans to be deported from the United States this year arrived home on Monday, a group that looks after them said.

The expulsion on a flight to the northern city of San Pedro Sula is a relatively common occurrence. In 2014, a total 36,416 Hondurans were deported from America, and last year around 19,000 were sent back.

But the United States is reportedly to step up the deportations of Central Americans starting this month, with planned raids of homes to seize any who have outstanding deportation orders against them.

The US Department of Homeland Security has not disputed anonymously sourced reports to this effect that were published by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, but no official confirmation has been forthcoming.

The issue of immigration is extremely sensitive in the United States, even more so as candidates jostle for the 2016 US presidential elections.

The Honduran group that looks after deportees, the Center for Returned Migrants, has expressed concern about the US plan.

On Monday, one of its coordinators, Aracely Romero, noted that "the greatest number of deportations has happened during the administration of President (Barack) Obama."

She estimated that one in three of those deported would leave again in search of "the American dream."
A desperate decision made by Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle causes a rift with their son in The Hollywood Reporter's first look at Little Men.

The new film from Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange) explores a life-defining friendship in the midst of familial turmoil, as the bond between a new pair of best friends is tested by their parents' battle over a dress-shop lease in New York City.

Thirteen-year-old Jake (Theo Taplitz) and his parents -- Brian, a struggling actor (Kinnear) and Kathy (Ehle), a psychotherapist -- find themselves moving back into their old Brooklyn home, just above the dress shop of single mother Leonor (Gloria's Paulina Garcia in her first major English-language role) and her charismatic son Tony (Michael Barbieri). When the couple decide to raise the rent on Leonor, a feud ignites between the adults and strains the formative kinship between Jake and Tony, who dream of attending the same prestigious arts high school together.

Read more: 40 of 2016's Most Anticipated Movies

"Inspired by some of my favorite films -- movies like Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol, Jean Eustache's My Little Loves, and George Roy Hill's ode to New York City childhood, The World of Henry Orient -- I set out to make a kids' film for both kids and adults," Sachs tells THR. "With this great ensemble, I was also able to make a film about the fragility of all of us who try our best to navigate the small moral decisions that end up resonating in very big ways in our lives."

The film is produced by Sachs and Lucas Joaquin, Christos Konstantakopoulos, Jim Lande and Laura Teodosio in association with Faliro House, Parts & Labor, Race Point Films, Raptor Films, RT Features, Water's End Productions and Buffalo 8 Productions. It will make its world premiere on Jan. 25 at Sundance Film Festival, where it will be seeking a distributor.

See more exclusive photos from Little Men below.

Tony (Michael Barbieri) and Jake (Theo Taplitz)

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Brian (Greg Kinnear) and Leonor (Paulina Garcia)

Tony (Michael Barbieri)

Leonor (Paulina Garcia)

Jake (Theo Taplitz)

Twitter: @cashleelee
The Supreme Court is entereing a busy New Year, with cases in front of the nine Justices during a presidential election season. Here is a quick look at five major cases youll be hearing about a lot.

January is the last month in which the Court can accept new cases for its current term, which should end in late June. Indeed, at their private conference on January 15, the Justices will consider taking a case about President Obamas executive action on immigration, before he leaves office.

Evenwel v. Abbott (One Person, One Vote)

Status: Arguments heard on Dec. 8, 2015

In this case, the Court will decide if eligible voting population numbers can be substituted for total population numbers when voting districts are determined.

Back in 2013, the Texas legislature drafted new districts for electing the 31 members of the state senate. The lawmakers proceeded on a theory of equal representation by actual population, with just an 8.04 percent difference between the largest and the smallest districts. But the Texas legislature based its headcount on the total population of each district and not the numbers of people eligible to vote in each district. Due to an imbalance in the voting age population in the districts, the difference between the largest and the smallest districts rose to as much as 49 percent, when it came to who could actually cast votes.

The question before the Court is if the one-person, one-vote doctrine requires a legislature to use voting population numbers when there is evidence that using total population numbers would cause serious disparities in the strength of the votes cast.

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (Affirmative Action)

Status: Argued on Dec. 9, 2015

In December. the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a landmark challenge to affirmative action at Texas flagship public university. The University of Texas is required to admit all high school seniors who rank in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. Candidates for any remaining spots undergo a holistic evaluation process in which race is among the considered factors.

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The Court has heard this case before. In 2013, the Court indeed issued a decision, but it sent the case back to the lower courts to be reviewed under a tougher constitutional standard.

Former University of Texas applicant Abigail Fisher contends that the schools discriminatory admission policies led to her rejection, even though her qualifications surpassed those of many admitted minority students. The university maintains a program by which the top 10 percent of students in each public graduating class are granted automatic admission; Fisher argues that this is enough to ensure diversity. (She narrowly missed the cut at Stephen F. Austin High School, finishing 82nd out of 674.)

Fisher argues the 14th Amendments the Equal Protection Clause prohibits the school from considering race in any manner as part of the admissions process.

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (Public Union Dues)

Status: Arguments on Jan. 11, 2016

Friedrichs is a challenge to the practices of public unions. The Court will determine whether requiring public school teachers to pay mandatory dues for union activities violates the First Amendment.

California teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, supported by the Center for Individual Rights, argues that she should have no obligation to pay any union dues whatsoever, since any payment is still a violation of her First Amendment right to free speech.

A defeat for the Teachers Association could affect public-employee unions in about half the states that have fair share requirements.

Whole Womens Health v. Cole (Abortion)

Status: Arguments on March 2, 2016

The petitioners in Whole Womans Health v. Cole claim a Texas law enacted in 2013 would force about 75 percent of the states abortion services to close. Two provisions in the law require that doctors at clinics have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinics, and that clinics have facilities equal to those of an outpatient surgical center. Texas officials believe the laws protect the health of the women seeking abortions by guaranteeing better care.

The Supreme Court will decide two issues. First, it will look at if the appeals court properly handled a question about if the new restrictions would actually work to protect the health of women. The appeals court said it needed to defer to the Texas state legislature on that issue.

The second question is a broader one. The Court must decide it the law imposes an undue burden on women who seek abortions. The Court last ruled on this question in a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which reaffirmed the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.

Zubik vs. Burwell (Obamacare)

Status: Granted on Nov. 6, 2015, arguments to be scheduled

The United States Supreme Court in November consolidated seven cases challenging Obamacares birth-control mandate into one: Zubik v. Burwell. The current legal challenge, the fourth to be accepted by the Court since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, involves religious-sponsored non-profit corporations.

These institutions object on moral grounds to an Obamacare provision that allows their employees to obtain contraceptive coverage through their health insurance, even if those contraceptive products are provided by insurance companies and the government, instead of the institutions.

The groups argue that even indirect participation in such a plan is offensive, and they want to be included in a broader Obamacare exception extended to churches, synagogues and worship-based employers.

The federal government believes that religiously oriented non-profit institutions such as hospitals and universities have numerous employees who dont share the beliefs of religious groups that sponsor the non-profits, and these workers would be harmed by the exclusions.

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In some corners of Washington, D.C., cryptography is becoming a dirty word. Since the rise of the Islamic State, hardly a day goes by that politicians dont raise the specter of a terrorist attack planned on encrypted messaging platforms. In Decembers Democratic debate, viewers heard Hillary Clinton call for a Manhattan-like project to ensure that law enforcement would always be able to implement a wiretap. For more and more lawmakers, encryption is that perfect, pitch-black night in which radicalized things go bump.

But according to security experts, that attitude attributes much too much power to computer scientists. I appreciate their faith in my field, the researcher Matt Blaze recently told Politico, but I dont share it. In fact, as a new paper on the secure-messaging application Telegram reminds readers, its easier to market impenetrable encryption than it is to implement it.

Recommended: What the Internet Actually Looks Like

Backed by Pavel Durov, the Russian founder of the social network VK, Telegram allows its users to exchange messages one-on-one, in groups, or on large public forums called channels. The platform is best known in policy circles for its popularity with the Islamic State, though it moved recently to disband a number of channels hosting jihadist material.

Telegram is also known for its security. The apps encrypted Secret Chat functionmeant for people who want more secrecy than the average fella, according to the organizations websiteearned a seven out of seven on the Electronic Frontier Foundations Secure Messaging Scorecard. And in February, Telegram announced that a $300,000 competition to decipher the Secret Chats would end without a winner.

For years now, though, cryptographers have been warning that the application has strange guts. Telegram uses a custom protocol, MTProto, to secure its messages, a decision that breaks a cardinal rule of cryptography: Dont try to design your own, not if you can use an established approach instead. In 2014, for example, when Telegrams more popular competitor WhatsApp decided to upgrade its security, it did so by working with Open Whisper Systems to implement that organizations well-regarded TextSecure protocol.

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In that light, Telegrams choice to pursue an original design stands out. They came up with something totally new, and a little weird, and mysterious, the Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew Green said. Its like coming up and finding a submarine where the doors are made out of Saran Wrap. I guess if you use enough Saran Wrap you could build a pretty secure submarine; it doesnt mean that its going to sink. But it does mean its not something I would want to trust with my life.

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The more novel an approach to encryption is, the less time researchers have had to spot vulnerabilities; older algorithms wear the scars of past decryption attempts like armor. Whats more, the more unusual or non-standard an encryption scheme is, the more difficult it can be to identify points of failure that are hidden in a tangle of unconventional choices. As a result, Telegrams decision to roll its own crypto had long drawn scrutiny. Now, findings published in December give critics fresh reason for suspicion.

Claudio Orlandi is an associate professor at Denmarks Aarhus University, where, along with the graduate student Jakob Jakobsen, he recently audited Telegrams source code. While the application claims on its website that MTProto helps achieve reliability on weak mobile connections as well as speed when dealing with large files, Jakobsen was skeptical that the security tradeoff made any sense. There should be lots of provably secure approaches that work just as nicely on a smartphone, he said in a phone interview. And when the pair went looking for a flaw in the protocol, they found one.

That debate over Telegram highlights how differently security researchers and law enforcement view the cryptographic balance of power.

In particular, Orlandi and Jakobsen found that MTProto lacks a property called indistinguishability under chosen ciphertext attack, or IND-CCA. That standard is meant to imply that an attacker trying to decipher a message cant wring information out of the encrypted version. Formally, it can be tested against a sort of game. If an adversary asks Telegram to encrypt one of two messages, and receives the encrypted version in return, it shouldnt be possible to guess which message was enciphered, at least not with better odds than chanceeven if you give the adversary access to a decryption oracle that can crack any message secured by the same algorithm.

By design its a heavy burden of proof, and on a narrow, technical level, Telegram fails the test. In MTProto, it turns out that an attacker could fiddle with the encrypted message to create a new version, one that would look different on its face but that would still decrypt to the same underlying text. Under the somewhat literal-minded rules of the IND-CCA game, the adversary could then feed this doctored message to its handy oracle, since it isnt technically the encrypted text that it was originally challenged to identify. That probably sounds like a groan-worthy loophole, and it doesnt map onto a real-life vulnerability. At least, not yet. Most attacks start as theoretical, Orlandi noted, and are dismissed by developers as irrelevant.

Recommended: What the Left Gets Wrong About the Oregon Standoff

The Telegram team told me that they were aware of the IND-CCA issue before this paper, but that the question was academic. A postal worker can write Haha (using invisible ink!) on the outside of a sealed package that he delivers to you, the apps FAQs currently read. It doesnt stop the package from being delivered, it doesnt allow them to change the contents of the package, and it doesn't allow them to see what was inside. Jakobsen acknowledged that this was a fair analogy for the flaw he and Orlandi found. This October, a little over a month after the two first alerted Telegram to their finding, the organization answered that a future patch would address the concern they had raised.

The dispute has less to do with this specific attack than what cryptographers say it signals, a deeper shakiness in Telegrams home-brewed approach to encryption. Its a theoretical flaw, Nicholas Weaver, a senior researcher at the University of California, Berkeleys International Computer Science Institute, said in an email, but its a huge red flag. In other words, because custom crypto is presumptively insecure, the odds of MTProto having exactly one flaw are slim. Whats more, this insecurity is as much a signal for attackers as it is for users, an invitation to try widening a known theoretical hole into a practical vulnerability.

Everyone agrees on a simple principle, Orlandi said. Attacks only get better.

That debate over Telegram highlights just how differently security researchers and law-enforcement officials view the cryptographic balance of power. As the rules of the IND-CCA game highlight, cryptographers often test their protocols against what they assume will be a nearly-omnipotent adversary, one with what amounts to a Magic 8-Ball. They do so because they know who theyre up against. A finite number of men and women are trying to guard sprawling mathematical terrain against the predation of nation-states. Their opponents have immense financial and intellectual capital; one high-profile paper this fall alleged that the NSA may well have spent hundreds of millions of dollarsand an entire yearcracking a single prime number.

The impenetrable encryption that lawmakers fear? Privacy advocates should be so lucky.

Setting aside Telegrams own speed and reliability explanation, then, none of the experts I spoke to could guess why the organization chose MTProto instead of an established protocol. Green wondered, Why would somebody spend a lot of effort building something thats mediocre? Effort is a scarce resource, and dont roll your own crypto is a heuristic that conserves it. By the same token, exercises like Orlandi and Jakobsens might be theoretical, but they help speed the discovery of the next fatal flaw. Even the smartest cryptographers are not good at finding these attacks just by poking at something. Proofs are a rigorous structure that helps us to avoid outsmarting ourselves, Green said.

Because what looks like steel could be, from another angle, Saran Wrap.

Meanwhile, Telegrams Markus Ra said in an email, This matter will be addressed, among other things, in a future revision of the protocolfor aesthetic reasons. With an appropriate overhaul, its imaginable that Telegram could become the digital fortress that many policymakers, many in the media, and many of its users seem to think it already is.

The Islamic State, for its part, is moving away from the application. Their preference? In some cases, custom crypto. Green laughed when I questioned the wisdom of the move. I have to say that that doesnt fill me with confidence, he said. But they seem to like it.

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By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - A 35-year-old Florida man was being held on Tuesday after being accused of vandalizing a mosque and desecrating it with a bacon, whose consumption is forbidden by the Muslim religion, police said.

Michael Wolfe was arrested on a charge of criminal mischief against a house of worship on Monday after surveillance video showed a man using a machete to break windows, lights and cameras at the Masjid Al-Munin mosque and leaving raw bacon at the front door, Titusville police said in a brief statement.

Anti-Muslim sentiment has swelled in the United States after a young Muslim couple inspired by Islamic State massacred 14 people on Dec. 2 in San Bernardino, California, and after comments by some Republican presidential candidates, according to Muslim leaders.

"While we welcome the prompt arrest made by Titusville police department, we urge that this case be prosecuted as a hate crime," Rasha Mubarak of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national civil rights group, said on Tuesday.

The use of pork in the vandalism qualifies as a hate crime because the consumption of pork is forbidden by the religion and is frequently used as a means of intimidation, according to Muslim leaders.

Police in Titusville, about 14 miles (22.53 km) north of the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida, released no further details on Wolfes background or the arrest.

Wolfe was being held on $2,000 bond. He has not entered a plea and could not be reached immediately for comment.

This was at least the third report in less than a month of vandals leaving pork products at U.S. mosques.

Last month, wrapped bacon was left on the door handle of the Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque in Las Vegas, and a pig's head was thrown from a pickup truck near the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philadelphia on Dec. 6, according to CAIR.

CAIR said cases of damage, destruction, and vandalism of mosques, and intimidation attempts reached a record high in 2015 since the organization began tallying incidents in 2009.

(Editing by Curtis Skinner and Jeffrey Benkoe)
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic said on Tuesday it was investigating new allegations of sexual abuse of minors by peacekeepers in the conflict-torn African nation. Last month, an independent review panel accused the United Nations and its agencies of grossly mishandling allegations of child sexual abuse in 2013 and 2014 by international peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. While those allegations did not involve U.N. troops or police wearing blue helmets or berets, charges later emerged of misconduct by U.N. peacekeepers in Central African Republic (CAR). The mission in CAR, known as MINUSCA, said in a statement it was "investigating fresh allegations concerning both sexual exploitation and abuse and other misconduct by U.N. Peacekeepers and international forces in Bangui." It said that staff of the U.N. Children's Fund based in Bangui have had four visits with four alleged child victims. The statement said the head of MINUSCA, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, was discussing with the U.N. human rights office in Geneva ways of combating sexual abuse, including through the formation of a police brigade that would identify perpetrators and deter such abuse. It was not clear how many peacekeepers were involved in the alleged abuse or what countries they were from. "The mission continues to investigate each and every allegation of a misconduct," MINUSCA said. "A fact finding mission is currently underway in this regard." New Zealand's U.N. ambassador, Gerard van Bohemen, told reporters he was "really sick and tired" that such allegations keep surfacing. Uruguay's ambassador, Elbio Rosselli, president of the Security Council this month, said that as a troop contributor, his country expected "zero tolerance" of sexual abuse. Onanga-Anyanga said: "There is no place in U.N. peacekeeping for those who betray the trust of the people we are here to help." In its report last month, the independent review panel harshly criticized how the United Nations and its agencies dealt with alleged abuse charges in CAR, calling it "seriously flawed" and a "gross institutional failure." It said three senior U.N. officials had abused their authority by failing to take action on the charges of abuse by international troops from France, Equatorial Guinea and Chad. France intervened in Central African Republic, a former colony, over two years ago to stem violence between Christian militias and largely Muslim Seleka rebels who had seized power. It started withdrawing some of its 2,000 troops last year, handing over to U.N. peacekeepers. (Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Peter Cooney)
The candidate: Jeb Bush

The gaffe: As Andrew Kaczynski notes, Bush has boasted on multiple occasions that he won the NRAs statesman of the year award, having received the honor from then-NRA President Charlton Heston. Small detail: The NRA does not, and never has, given out such an award. What a blunder(buss)!

The defense: In recounting the story, Jeb was mistaken and conflated multiple events unintentionally, a spokesman said. Jeb has a lifetime A+ rating from the NRA. The spokesman also noted that the NRA branded legislation Bush signed as Florida governor the Six Pack of Freedom. For the record: We recommend restraint when mixing six-packs and firearms. The campaign bit the bullet and removed social-media posts referring to the award.

Why it matters (or doesnt): Candidates (and news anchors) have, uh, taken flak for such misrememberings. Pundits and rivals may snipe at him, but does anyone really doubt Bushs support for gun rights? He still has that A+ rating, plus the fancy ceremonial rifle in the photo above, which he received at a 2003 NRA banquet.

The moral: Jebs campaign is under the gun, but he still needs to keep his powder dry and avoid going off half-cocked.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and Iran owe it to the international community to put aside their differences in the Middle East and focus on opposing Islamic State, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told newspaper Bild. Saudi Arabia cut its ties with Iran on Sunday in response to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row between the rival Middle East powers over Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric. Steinmeier urged both countries to show responsibility and focus on calming the region and opposing the radical Islamist movement he referred to by the acronym ISIS. "I hope that the turbulence will soon end, reason prevails and Riyadh and Tehran focus on what's really important - defusing the military conflicts, fostering political solutions in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere and thus pulling the rug out from under ISIS," he told Bild in an interview published on Tuesday. "The whole Middle East, and especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, are somewhat indebted to us," he said. "The international community has worked extensively for years to bring peace to the interrelated conflicts in the region." "Now we need responsible actors in the region who act responsibly, in Riyadh as well as in Tehran," he said. (Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
Berlin (AFP) - German leaders expressed shock over dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women on New Year's Eve in the western city of Cologne blamed on "Arab-looking men," but warned against anti-migrant scapegoating.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a thorough investigation of the "repugnant" attacks, ranging from groping to at least one reported rape, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities outside the city's main train station and its famed Gothic cathedral.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said she had called Cologne's mayor, Henriette Reker, to express her "outrage" over the violence, which she said required "a tough response from the state".

"Everything must be done to find as many of the perpetrators as possible as quickly as possible and bring them to justice, regardless of their origin or background," Seibert quoted Merkel as saying.

Police in Cologne said they had received 90 criminal complaints by Tuesday and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men "who appeared to be of Arab or North African origin" had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.

Germany took in around one million asylum seekers in 2015, many of them fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

A plain-clothes policewoman was reportedly among those attacked.

"We assume more people will come forward," police chief Wolfgang Albers told reporters.

The northern port city of Hamburg also reported around 10 similar attacks.

On Tuesday evening 200-300 people, according to police estimates, gathered in front of Cologne cathedral calling for more respect for women.

One female demonstrator held a sign reading: "Mrs. Merkel, what are you doing? This is scary".

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere lashed out at Cologne police for failing to stop the assaults.

"The police cannot work in this way," de Maiziere told public TV channel ARD.

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Police said they evacuated the area because of fears people could be injured by fireworks -- and admitted the assaults then began without them realising what was happening.

"It is not acceptable that the square could be evacuated and then (the attacks) take place" in the same location, with officers "waiting for complaints" from victims before taking action, de Maiziere said.

"I am urgently demanding clarification."

- 'Exploitation' of refugee issue -

Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the assaults represented "a new dimension of crime that we will have to get to grips with," adding that they had appeared to be "coordinated".

Asked by a journalist whether refugees were behind the rampage, Maas said police were still working to identify the attackers.

"This is not about where someone is from but what they did," he said.

"Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences."

Meanwhile the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which hopes to gain seats in three regional elections in March, seized on the attacks as "a result of unchecked immigration".

"Here we see the appalling consequences of catastrophic asylum and migration policies on Germany's everyday reality," party leader Frauke Petry said.

The Cologne daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger said many of the suspects were already known to police due to a rash of pickpocketing and muggings near the railway station.

- 'It was terrible' -

Victims described terrifying scenes in the marauding mob.

Katja L., 28, said she was with three friends outside the station when they encountered a group of "foreign-looking men".

"Suddenly I felt a hand on my bottom, then on my breasts, then I was groped everywhere," she told Cologne tabloid Express.

"It was horrible. Although we screamed and flailed about, the guys didn't stop. I was beside myself and think that I was touched about 100 times across around 200 metres (yards)."

A woman in her 30s interviewed on rolling news channel N24 said she was groped by a group of "Arab-looking men".

"They didn't look at me aggressively, they seemed more curious than anything, and a little drunk," she said.

"I was furious."

Cologne mayor Reker, who was stabbed in the neck in October in an attack apparently over her welcoming stance toward refugees, called a crisis meeting with political officials and police Tuesday after the case made national headlines.

She pledged to step up security and violence-prevention measures ahead of next month's raucous Carnival, which draws hundreds of thousands to party in the city's streets.

Albers said security cameras and better lighting would be installed for the February 4-10 event, including around the main rail station.

Merkel in her televised New Year's address called on Germans to continue to welcome refugees despite mounting criticism and to reject far-right ideologues whipping up anti-migrant sentiment.
Beijing (AFP) - A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong has been erected in open countryside by a group of capitalists at a cost of 3 million yuan ($460,000), reports said.

The statue towers some 37 metres (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan and shows the man who ruled China with an iron grip for nearly three decades seated in thoughtful repose, his hands crossed.

Its construction was reportedly funded by several local entrepreneurs and finished in December after nine months of labour, the HMR.cn portal said on Monday.

Despite being blamed for millions of deaths, Mao is still widely revered in China, where the Communist leadership tightly controls public discussion of history and seeks to use his legacy to shore up its support.

China's current President Xi Jinping has praised Mao as a "great figure" and revived some of his rhetoric and centralisation of power, while following the party's 1980s conclusion that he also made "mistakes".

Some Internet users criticised the statue, pointing out its location in Henan, the centre of a famine in the late 1950s resulting from Mao's economic policies estimated to have killed as many as 40 million people.

"Have you forgotten about the Great Famine, building that?" asked one poster on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Others questioned the statue's resemblance to the Great Helmsman, who also launched the decade-long Cultural Revolution that saw violence and destruction nationwide.

But many heaped praise on the statue, with one Weibo user simply saying: "Badass".
Hospital Street in Siem Reap, Cambodia, has all the usual stenches of the old quarters well-trodden backpacker lanes: booze, garbage and diesel fumes. But theres also a curious odor combined with a popular fast food: weed pizza. Pizza joints in the area are serving up thin-crust pies topped with mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, pepperoni and the not-so-secret ingredient of cannabis  adorably known as happy pizzas.

And theyre pretty popular. Marijuana pizza shops also dot the busy thoroughfares of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. In Siem Reap, Happy Herb Pizza, Ecstatic Pizza and Happy Special Pizza all sit on the same block, drawing hungry crowds on a Sunday night. Whats it like to munch on some happy pizza? Its a mix between floating on clouds and being extremely hungry, Laura Hayward, a red-eyed tourist from Sydney, told me when we were both visiting in September. Weed pizza is weird in that it satiates your hunger and then, a few hours later, you get the munchies all over again. A full stomach (at first), cottonmouth and a nice floaty buzz? Check, check and check. And the taste? About as good as you would expect, says Eric Kropp of West Virgina, who visited in July  in other words, a bit crappy.

But you can have too much of a good thing  even if its so-called happiness.

Happy special pizza handout

The interior of Happy Special Pizza.

Source: Kalwina Karunanithy

Depending on how much pizza you devour, the woozy effects take only an hour to kick in. Waiters also walk by with tall pepper grinders chock-full of fresh, pungent weed. Need more carbs (and, subsequently, more buzz)? Some spots have weed-infused bread on the menu, too, which can be washed down with pot-spiked happy fruit shakes.

But be warned: Recreational weed isnt legal in Cambodia, and the fine is a whopping $700 if youre caught consuming these happy pizzas. Here, marijuana is used mostly for traditional herb therapy, but back in the late 1990s, some half-baked pizza pioneers decided that sprinkling bud onto a big ol slice of greasy pizza was also fair game. With a small bribe, most authorities turn a blind eye to tourists and locals chowing down and getting high on weekend nights. For obvious reasons, the restaurant owners we spoke to all declined to dish out their specific strategies for navigating the cops.

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Tourists should be careful, also, of overindulging. You can have too much of a good thing  even if its so-called happiness, says Kalwina Karunanithy from Melbourne, Australia, who ate her weed-laced slice at a joint in Siem Reap while visiting in June 2014. With a cheap price tag of $10 or less for a large-size pizza, many tourists eat well past their limits while downing bottles of tepid Angkor beer. And it doesnt cost extra to make your pizza extra happy. The aftereffect was also not fun, Karunanithy explains. The next morning she felt extra sleepy, extra lazy [and] extra slow, and with a headache. But after a bowl of Khmer porridge she was good to go.



Still, hangovers aside, its a culinary experience worth trying once. After all, as Olivia Simms, a teacher from Long Beach, California, said to me, How many people can say they are eating a happy pizza and getting super stoned with their dad in Cambodia?



Related Articles
After stepping back into the shoes of Han Solo for the latest "Star Wars" movie, American actor Harrison Ford could revive more of his past roles with a fifth Indiana Jones movie expected in 2018 and a sequel to "Blade Runner" filmed this summer.

It's official: everyone's favorite archeologist-turned-adventurer will be back for a fifth installment. After years of rumors, Disney - who owns the franchise after buying LucasFilm - has confirmed that a new Indiana Jones movie is in the pipeline.

The Walt Disney Company CEO, Robert Iger, didn't give much away in an interview with Bloomberg, saying merely that: "With George Lucas's 'Star Wars' - and 'Indiana Jones', by the way, which will be coming, we have more great stories." It only seems logical that Steven Spielberg, director of the four previous films, should step back behind the camera to accompany Harrison Ford in his emblematic role as Indiana Jones, a part he has played since 1981.

It's as yet unclear whether the actor - who is 73 years old - will take part in this new adventure, which will no doubt prove physically challenging. However, the star did recently take up another one of his legendary roles as Han Solo in the new "Star Wars" trilogy. Rumors abound on the web, with several possibilities already being debated. Much speculation surrounds the arrival of a new actor (Chris Pratt is often mentioned), who could take over the role from Harrison Ford. Disney should be able to confirm the name of its lead actor soon, as the movie is apparently scheduled for 2018.

Currently filming the eighth "Star Wars" movie, Harrison Ford is set to grace screens once again in a "Blade Runner" sequel, due out this summer from Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. Here, he steps back into the role of Rick Deckard, a former police officer who returns to service to hunt replicant' androids, first seen in Ridley Scott's 1982 original. That's two major roles rebooted to revive a Hollywood career that has been rather quiet before "The Force Awakens" blasted Harrison Ford back onto the big screen.
By Dave McKinney

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner expressed disappointment Monday in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook Countys top prosecutor for their handling of police-involved shootings and embraced pending state legislation to allow Chicago residents to recall future mayors.

Rauner also vowed to block funding for Chicagos severely cash-strapped public schools, which have warned of massive layoffs in the months ahead without a state rescue, unless Emanuels administration backs the Republican governors efforts to pass business-friendly legislation making it harder for injured workers to collect damages and to weaken public-sector labor unions.

Rauners aggressive stance toward Emanuel added to the mounting public criticism against the mayor and Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez for their response to the 2014 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, an African-American, by white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with murder.

While immersed in a tight re-election battle earlier this year, Emanuel fought unsuccessfully to block the release of a police dash-cam video that showed Van Dyke as he fired his weapon at McDonald 16 times while the teen, armed with a pocket knife, walked away from police. Alvarez waited nearly 400 days to charge Van Dyke with murder.

Resulting protests have roiled the nations third-largest city with calls for both Emanuel and Alvarez, who is running for re-election this year, to step down as the U.S. Justice Department conducts a civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department.

Im very disappointed in the mayor and in the states attorney for Cook County, Rauner told reporters after being asked to assess Emanuels job performance. Im not going to say more than that right now.

Emanuels office delivered a measured response to the governors criticism.

The mayors focus is not on his own personal politics, mayoral spokesman Adam Collins said. His focus is on taking the action necessary to finally and fully address an issue that has challenged Chicago for decades and reform the system and culture of policing in Chicago.

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A spokeswoman for Alvarezs office said she did not know why the governor was disappointed, noting the office enlisted the help of the FBI and charged the officer with murder.

Rauner also lent his support to a push in the Illinois statehouse to allow Chicago voters to recall their mayor, a step that has gained bipartisan traction in the Illinois House of Representatives but faces opposition from the leading Democrat in the state Senate, Senate President John Cullerton, an ally of the mayors.

(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
By Rupam Jain Nair and Krista Mahr NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian security forces have killed six militants who launched an assault on a military air base in northern India that killed seven security personnel and injured 22, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Tuesday. Speaking at the air base, Parrikar declined to say definitively that no more militants were at large until the four-day-old operation to clear the facility was over. He said those efforts could end as soon as Wednesday. While praising Indian security forces for eliminating the attackers, Parrikar also alluded to "some gaps" in security that allowed the attackers to reach the base in the northwestern state of Punjab. It has emerged that the militants hijacked a police officer's car but that his call to a colleague, after he was dumped by the roadside, was not taken seriously. The National Investigation Agency, a central body set up to probe such cross-border attacks, is investigating. The apparently well-planned assault on a strategic military target just 25 km (16 miles) from the border has put pressure on an attempt by prime ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif to improve historically fraught relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The Indian leader paid a surprise birthday visit to his Pakistani counterpart in late December. In a sign that both want the incipient dialogue to continue, Sharif called Modi on Tuesday to convey his "sorrow and grief" at the losses from the air base attack. Pakistan will investigate leads and information provided by the government of India, Sharif's office said in a readout of the call. Both premiers are resolved to fight terrorism together, an aide also said. According to a statement issued by the Indian government, Modi called for "firm and immediate action against those responsible for the air base attack", based on specific and actionable information provided to Pakistan. A round of talks between the two countries' foreign secretaries has been tentatively scheduled for Jan. 15. ENGULFING INDIA The United Jihad Council (UJC), an alliance of pro-Pakistan militant groups based in the Pakistani-administered part of the divided Kashmir region, has claimed responsibility for the assault. The group's leader warned that their attacks "can engulf all of India" if the issue of Kashmir's divided rule is not resolved. "Whenever they want, wherever they want, they can target the enemy," UJC leader Syed Salahuddin said in a voice recording released by a group spokesman on Tuesday. Salahuddin's voice was recognized by a Reuters reporter from previous messages and public appearances. The claim of responsibility has, however, met a skeptical response among India's security establishment, which blames another group called Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed). That group was founded by Masood Azhar after he was released by India in 1999 in exchange for passengers on an Indian airliner that was hijacked. The head of India's National Investigation Agency, Sharad Kumar, told reporters in New Delhi that the attackers came from Pakistan but did not elaborate. "I REALISED THAT THEY WERE TERRORISTS" The day before the assault, a police officer returning from a temple was abducted by a group of heavily armed men speaking Urdu, among other languages, he said on Tuesday. "The minute I saw them I realized that they were terrorists," Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh told media. "One of the gunmen snatched my phone and made calls to Pakistan," Singh said. Urdu, widely spoken in Pakistan, can be mostly understood by Hindi speakers. Phone records indicate the perpetrators used Singh's phone inside the air base by mid-afternoon on Jan. 1, according to the Indian Express, 12 hours before they were detected through aerial surveillance. It remains unclear exactly how the attackers infiltrated the fortified base, which has a 24-km (15-mile) perimeter surrounded by a 3-metre (10-foot) wall topped with concertina wire. (Additional reporting by Asad Hashim in Islamabad and Mukesh Gupta in Pathankot, India; Editing by Douglas Busvine, Robert Birsel)
Britain confirmed Tuesday that one of five missing Hong Kong booksellers feared detained by Chinese authorities is a UK citizen, saying it was "deeply concerned" over the disappearances.

The case has sparked fury from lawmakers and activists in semi-autonomous Hong Kong, adding to growing unease that freedoms in the city are being eroded.

Lee Bo, 65, disappeared last week and was last seen in Hong Kong, where he is a resident.

All five missing men worked for the same Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current, known for books critical of the Chinese government.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, visiting Beijing, told reporters: "We have urgently inquired with both Hong Kong and mainland authorities."

Hammond added that if Lee were charged with any offences, he should be tried in Hong Kong.

Foreign minister Wang Yi did not reply directly when asked whether China had detained the booksellers, but said policy towards Hong Kong remained "unchanged".

"We will continue to uphold the principles of 'one country, two systems', Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong, and a high degree of autonomy," he said.

He was also asked whether China would recognise Lee's British passport.

"Based on the basic law of Hong Kong and China's nationality law, this person in question is first and foremost a Chinese citizen," he said.

China does not recognise dual nationality of its own citizens.

An earlier statement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed Lee was a British citizen, saying it was "deeply concerned by reports" about the disappearances.

The FCO urged the Hong Kong government to "honour its commitment" to press freedom.

It added that it hoped Chinese authorities would ensure the environment for media and publishers in Hong Kong supported "full and frank reporting".

- 'I feel unsafe' -

Hong Kong was handed back to Beijing by Britain in 1997 and enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland. Chinese law enforcers have no right to operate in the city.

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Police confirmed Tuesday Lee's wife, Sophie Choi, had retracted a report on her husband's disappearance, a move Amnesty said smacked of "intimidation".

"I believe he did it voluntarily, so I cancelled the report," Choi told reporters.

A friend of Lee who volunteers at the book store and did not want to be identified said: "His wife is on the brink of collapse."

He added he too was now afraid.

"I feel unsafe -- I don't know whether the next one will be me," he told reporters.

Amnesty said it was common for Chinese authorities to put pressure on those close to detainees.

"One wonders whether the same sort of intimidation is being used against associates and friends (of the publishers)," said Amnesty International's China researcher William Nee.

Rights groups also questioned the validity of a letter, published by Taiwan's Central News Agency, purportedly faxed to a colleague by Lee on Monday, saying he was well and had reached the mainland using his own means on an "urgent matter".

He said he was "assisting an investigation" but did not elaborate.

Lee's wife has previously said he called her from a number in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen after he went missing.

Police are also probing the disappearances of three other missing employees who were Hong Kong residents.

One is a Swedish national, and embassies in Beijing and Bangkok are investigating his case.

In comments to a lawmakers Tuesday, pro-Beijing legislator Ng Leung-sing accused the five men of smuggling themselves to the mainland to visit prostitutes.

Ng said he had received the information in a message from "a good friend".
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot on Tuesday with state television showing Emad precision-guided missiles in store which the United States says can take a nuclear warhead and violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution. The defiant move to publicise Iran's missile programme seemed certain to irk the United States as it plans to dismantle nearly all sanctions on Iran under a breakthrough nuclear agreement. Tasnim news agency and state television video said the underground facility, situated in mountains and run by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was inaugurated by the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani. Release of one-minute video followed footage of another underground missile depot last October. The United States says the Emad, which Iran tested in October, would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and U.S. officials say Washington will respond to the Emad tests with fresh sanctions against Iranian individuals and businesses linked to the programme. Iran's boasting about its missile capabilities are a challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama's administration as the United States and European Union plan to dismantle nearly all international sanctions against Tehran under the nuclear deal reached in July. Iran has abided by the main terms of the nuclear deal, which require it to give up material that world powers feared could be used to make an atomic weapon and accept other restrictions on its nuclear programme. But President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defence minister last week to expand the missile programme. The Iranian missiles under development boast much improved accuracy over the current generation, which experts say is likely to improve their effectiveness with conventional warheads. The Revolutionary Guards' second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said last Friday that Iran's depots and underground facilities are so full that they do not know how to store their new missiles. (Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
A Jennifer Lawrence/Amy Schumer film is one step closer to hitting the big screen after Lawrence confirmed in a British interview that the BFFs have finished writing the script.

In a BBC 6 Music interview Monday, Lawrence told host Lauren Laverne that the pair have put the finishing touches on the first draft of a film she's confident will be a "pretty funny, good movie."

"It was hilarious, because when you're writing a comedy it's not good enough unless you're laughing out loud," she said.

"So I'm laughing at my pages and I'm laughing at her pages and thinking that the whole process is hilarious. I'm thinking we've got a pretty funny, good movie."

Lawrence reached out to Schumer after watching her comedy "Trainwreck." The pair have since become one of Hollywood's most popular BFFs.

In addition to writing the screenplay, the actresses will also star in the film.
By Joseph Akwiri MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan police arrested a suspected al Shabaab fighter in Mombasa on Tuesday and recovered weapons that had been intended for use in aborted New Year's Eve attacks on the coastal city, a senior government official said. Mombasa county commissioner Nelson Marwa told a news conference that four other suspects had escaped the raid, including two militants from the Somali-based Islamist group wanted for major attacks on Kenya since 2013. "These men are behind major plots for attacks in the country and are linked to the Garissa University and Lamu attacks," Marwa said. "They had planned to attack public beaches in Mombasa during the New Year when there were many people, but they were deterred by the level of security we had mounted there." Al Shabaab killed 148 students in the attack on Garissa University last April. In June 2014, the group killed 65 people over a 24-hour period in and around Mpeketoni in Lamu county, also in Kenya's east. It was also responsible for a raid on Nairobi's Westgate Mall in 2013 that killed 67 people. Kenyan authorities have circulated pictures of suspected al Shabaab militants and offered a 2 million shilling ($19,569.47) reward for information leading to arrests. Al Shabaab seeks to overthrow the Western-backed Somali government and impose its strict interpretation of Islamic law. It has frequently attacked neighbouring Kenya in recent years, saying it is retaliating for Kenya's participation in an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. Marwa said the weapons seized on Tuesday included a Colt M4 rifle which had the same serial number as one stolen from a military base in Mombasa during an attack in early 2015. Police also recovered a G3 rifle, 345 bullets, a hand grenade, explosive detonator switches, passports, driving licences, bank documents and cash during the early morning raid. "The man we arrested is ... giving us vital information that will be useful in combating terrorism especially in Mombasa. We are going to arrest many more," Marwa said. ($1 = 102.2000 Kenyan shillings) (Editing by George Obulutsa and Catherine Evans)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has spoken repeatedly in the last day to Saudi and Iranian officials to encourage dialogue and plans to call other officials in the region, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran one day after the Saudi execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric and 46 others on terrorism charges. The estrangement between Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite-majority Iran, regional rivals, threatens to undermine Kerry's efforts to broker a peace agreement to end the nearly five-year Syrian civil war. In his calls, which include conversations with the Saudi deputy crown prince and the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers in the last 24 hours, Kerry has stressed the importance of pushing forward on a peace deal for Syria, his spokesman John Kirby told reporters. "One of the key things on his mind is deescalate the tensions, restore some sense of calm, encourage dialogue and engagement between these countries, but also to make the point there are other pressing issues in the region," Kirby said. "Not letting the Vienna process stall or fall backward is clearly top on his list," he said, referring to talks in the Austrian capital that brought Saudi and Iranian officials together to try to end the Syrian war. Iran backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against rebels while Saudi Arabia has pushed for his ouster in a civil war in which at least 250,000 people have died and more than 10 million have been displaced internally or driven abroad as refugees. The United Nations hopes to bring Syrian government and opposition officials into direct talks in Geneva on Jan. 25. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Latvian man was spared further prison time on Tuesday for what U.S. prosecutors said was his crucial role in a conspiracy to distribute a computer virus that infected more than a million computers worldwide.

Deniss Calovskis, 30, spent 21 months in prison before he pleaded guilty in September and admitted to having written some of the computer code for the so-called Gozi virus. At the time, prosecutors sought additional time in custody.

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan called Calovskis' conduct serious but said "the goal of punishment has been served already."

David Bertan, Calovskis' lawyer, said the sentence, which also includes an order that he forfeit $1,000, could mean his client could be returned to Latvia within weeks.

The Gozi virus, used to steal personal bank account information of computer users while remaining virtually undetectable, was discovered by computer security experts in 2007.

The indictment of Calovskis was unsealed in January 2013, as prosecutors announced charges against Nikita Kuzmin, the virus' Russian creator, and Mihai Ionut Paunescu, a Romanian accused of running a service that enabled its distribution.

By that time, prosecutors said, more than a million computers worldwide had been infected, including at least 17,000 in the United States, and tens of millions of dollars in losses had been caused.

Prosecutors said Kuzmin was the operation's mastermind, conceiving of the virus in 2005 and running a business that rented out the virus to other cyber criminals intent on stealing money from banks.

Calovskis, who was known online as "Miami," helped develop code that increased the virus' effectiveness by altering the appearance of banks' websites, tricking victims into divulging their information, prosecutors said.

The Riga, Latvia resident spent 11 months in U.S. custody following his extradition in February 2015 from his home country, where he was arrested in 2012 and previously spent 10 months in jail.

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Calovskis, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit computer intrusion, had been a freelance programmer at the time of the offense. Bertan said Calovskis at the time was seeking money amid an economic crisis and his father developing cancer.

"I must say it was the biggest mistake," Calovskis said in court.

Kuzmin, who was originally arrested in 2010, secretly pleaded guilty in May 2011 as part of a cooperation agreement.

Paunescu was arrested in Romania in December 2012. The United States has been seeking his extradition.

The case is U.S. v. Calovskis, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-cr-00487.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York)
TAIPEI (Reuters) - The leader of Taiwan's independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), an organization loathed by rulers in giant neighbor China, was top of the last opinion poll on Tuesday before a polling blackout begins ahead of the Jan. 16 elections. The poll by Taiwan's Cross-Strait Policy Association showed 45.2 percent of 1,052 people surveyed supported Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the DPP, while 16.3 percent backed Eric Chu, chairman and candidate for the ruling Nationalists (KMT). The margin of Tsai's expected victory is important in terms of how fiercely democratic Taiwan gets on with Communist-ruled China, which considers the island a breakaway province. The DPP has been supported by youthful voters angered by a perceived economic dependence on the mainland. The links between Beijing and the DPP will be crucial to managing one of the world's most potentially dangerous relationships, with Taiwan facing a China that aims hundreds of missiles at the island and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Beijing's control. The DPP is detested by Beijing because the party believes the future of Taiwan is for its 23 million people to decide, which Beijing takes to mean independence. China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province ever since Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Nationalists fled to the island in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists. The association's poll showed 59-year-old Tsai's approval rating over 54 percent for respondents aged between 20 and 34. However, it also showed that 22.4 percent of all respondents were undecided about their presidential pick. Tsai's support rating rose by one percentage point from the last poll in late December by the association, made up of prominent scholars and bipartisan figures. In comparison, Chu's rating was down by 5.8 percentage points. Surveys in recent months have shown Tsai holding on average a double-digit lead against her rivals, which include a third presidential candidate from a minority party. The island's 113-seat parliament will also be up for grabs in the elections. TVBS, a cable television channel in Taiwan, put Tsai's support at 44 percent, or 20 percentage points ahead of Chu, in a poll conducted on Saturday. A poll sponsored by the Nationalists and issued on Monday put Tsai's support at 39.2 percent, ahead of 31.2 percent support for Chu. (Reporting by J.R. Wu; Editing by Nick Macfie)
By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Court of Federal Claims will hear arguments on Jan. 20 in Lockheed Martin Corp's motion to halt Oshkosh Corp's work on 17,000 armored Humvee truck replacements for the U.S. Army while Lockheed challenges the $6.75 billion contract.

Lockheed last month filed a federal complaint over the U.S. Army's handling of the contract, as well as a motion seeking a preliminary injunction against any work on the trucks by Oshkosh until the matter is settled in court.

Lockheed contends that the Army's evaluation of the competing proposals was flawed because it assessed the reliability of Lockheed and Oshkosh vehicles using different standards, according to redacted version of the filings now available. Lockheed also says the Army held "misleading" discussions with the company.

Lockheed filed the lawsuit last month, effectively halting a separate protest review by the Government Accountability Office. It said it filed the lawsuit because the GAO refused to review thousands of documents, or about 9 GB of data produced by the Army just two weeks before GAO was due to rule on the case.

GAO said it would not rule on cases pending in a federal court, but said Lockheed could have filed a supplemental protest to allow a review of the additional materials.

Lockheed said it did not file a supplemental protest because that would have allowed a stop-work order to expire, allowing Oshkosh to keep working on the truck which Lockheed said would give Oshkosh an advantage in a future competition.

The federal claims court set Feb. 1 as the deadline for the parties to produce the full record of documents for this case, according to a clerk with the court.

Lockheed said documents showed there "were material inaccuracies and inconsistencies" in information provided by the Army to the GAO about its evaluation of the bids.

For instance, Lockheed said the documents showed Army evaluators had taken notes while assessing the rival bids, despite testifying during a GAO hearing that no notes were taken.

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Lockheed said Army officials also treated its bid differently when assessing the reliability of the new trucks, resulting in a "potentially massive downward adjustment to the cost/price evaluation" of Oshkosh's vehicle.

"The prejudice to Lockheed Martin from the flawed evaluation was pervasive," Lockheed said in its motion for an injunction.

Lockheed said it also was forced to submit additional data to explain changes in design from initial vehicles tested, but Oshkosh was not, even though it also changed its design.

The Army had no comment on the litigation. It lifted a stop-work order on the Oshkosh contract last month after Lockheed took the case to federal court.

Oshkosh had no immediate comment.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by David Gregorio)
KABUL (Reuters) - A magnetic bomb attached to a car exploded in Kabul on Tuesday, in the latest of a series of attacks in the Afghan capital, police officials said. Police said there were no known casualties from the blast in the Wazir Akbar Khan district of the city, an area with many foreign embassies and government buildings. The explosion came a day after two suicide attacks hit Kabul, including a truck bomb that blew up on Monday evening outside a compound for foreign contractors near the city's airport, causing dozens of casualties. Since the start of the new year, Kabul has seen four bomb attacks. A group of unidentified insurgents also targeted the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Sunday. The attacks have coincided with renewed efforts to revive the peace process with the Taliban which broke down in July. A meeting of Afghan, Pakistani, Chinese and U.S. officials is planned in Islamabad next week to lay the ground. (Reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Mirwais Harooni and James Mackenzie; Editing by Andrew Roche)
A new study from Italy's National Institute of Health has confirmed what many have long suspected: Toxic waste illegally dumped by the Camorra mob is responsible for the unusually high death and cancer rates among Naples residents.

According to the Associated Press, the startlingly high rates can be traced back to "ascertained or suspected exposure to a combination of environmental contaminants that can be emitted or released from illegal hazardous waste dump sites and/or the uncontrolled burning of both urban and hazardous waste."

The culprit, the report said, is the notorious Camorra crime syndicate, which makes billions of dollars by improperly disposing of millions of tons of the toxic waste. The money comes in part from wealthy industrial companies in northern Italy, who "ask no questions about where the garbage goes as long as it is taken off their hands  for a small fraction of the cost of legal disposal," the AP reported. According to Legambiente, an Italian environmental group, nearly 11.6 million tons of waste has been buried since the 1990s.

The study, which was ordered by the Italian Parliament, found that babies born in Naples and nearby Caserta are being hospitalized at high rates due to "excessive" cases of tumors, deeming the issue "critical."

Source: YouTube

The "Triangle of Death": As the AP notes, the findings are no surprise for locals, whose vegetables are irrigated by the contaminated water wells.

In 2014, the Italian government ordered its National Institute of Health to study and report on the death, cancer and hospitalization rates in the "Land of Fires"  the nickname given to the region in and around Naples. The term stems from the illegal burning of toxic waste, which, in addition to the dumping, has produced one of the most noxious areas in Europe. The area is also known as the "Land of Poison" and the "Triangle of Death."

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According to the New York Times, the waste comes from European manufacturers who don't want to pay the price for proper waste disposal. Chemicals such as dioxin, asbestos and tetrachloroethylene have been found in water sources.

The Italian government was reportedly made aware of the dumping in 1997, when it received secret testimony from a member of the Camorra syndicate. The information was deemed classified, and didn't become public knowledge until 2013. The dumping, according to the New York Times, continued during the intervening years.

"Just the public didn't know, and the government did nothing for the people who were affected," photographer Massimo Berruti, who has documented the lives of those affected, told the Times.

The Mafia Is Dumping Toxic Waste in Italy and It's Giving People Cancer

An Italian woman protests the deaths of victims of the illegal dumping. Source: Mario Laporta/Getty Images

Last June, authorities discovered what environmental activist Stefano Ciafani described as "Italy's Chernobyl"  a sprawling area in Calvi Risorta, a region north of Naples. The land was choked with 2 million cubic meters of toxic waste, and it took three days of digging with bulldozers to judge the scope of the environmental disaster.

Sergio Costa, the regional leader of Italy's Forestry Police, noted that the Camorra's technique for dumping and burying the waste was an "almost scientific system."

According to the Independent, research has suggested that Neopolitan women have about a 50% higher chance of developing breast cancer than women who live outside the area. Two Italian doctors, Antonio Giordano and Giulio Tarro, told the Independent that some towns had cancer rates of up to 80% higher than the national average. Now, the latest batch of research from Italy's National Institute of Health appears to have confirmed prior findings.

Yet it's still unclear what will happen next, and what steps, if any, the government will take to confront the Camorra syndicate's toxic practices.

"The environment here is poisoned. It's impossible to clean it all up. The area is too vast," Alfredo Mazza, a cardiologist who has studied the jump in cancer rates, told the New York Times in 2014. "We're living on top of a bomb."

h/t Associated Press
5 Jan  Michael Bay confirms that he will return for the upcoming "Transformers 5" movie that's slated for a summer 2017 release.

The 50-year-old is currently promoting his latest action thriller, "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" where he confirmed his involvement in the fifth installment to Rolling Stone magazine.



Paramount apparently held a meeting with writers to create a new story for the franchise, which involved Art Marcum & Matt Holloway ("Iron Man") and Ken Nolan ("Black Hawk Down").

This new movie is expected to take a twist as it attempts to create a greater cinematic universe for "Transformers".

2014's "Transformers: Age of Extinction" was a reboot of the previous trilogy that starred Shia LaBeouf as the lead. Now, Mark Wahlberg will be the only actor from "Age of Extinction" to continue his role in the upcoming fifth movie with other details yet to be revealed.

Despite losing LaBeouf, "Transformers: Age of Extinction" grossed more than US$1 billion worldwide.

"Transformers, I still have a great time. It's fun to do a movie that 100 million people will see. But this is the last one. I have to pass the reins to someone else," Bay tells Rolling Stone.

His latest film, "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" will hit cinemas in Malaysia on 17 January, Singapore on 18 February, and Cambodia on 25 January of this year.

(Photo Source: Collider.com)
New York (AFP) - Netflix and DreamWorks Animation announced Tuesday they are expanding a partnership to distribute original TV series, old and new, in markets around the world, except China.

The two companies first struck a deal in 2011 covering the distribution of DreamWorks Animation features, which was then expanded in 2013 to include original programs inspired by some of the studio's most popular animated creations.

The latest extension gives Netflix rights to a number of new original series for kids from DreamWorks Animation in all markets in which it currently operates, with the exception of China.

It also gives Netflix streaming rights to the studio's feature film library.

Netflix currently operates in more than 60 countries, up from about 40 in June 2013 when the original deal was first expanded.

Netflix has about 69 million subscribers around the world.

Among the original programming that DreamWorks is to produce for Netflix is "Trollhunters" by Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro.

That series is to revolve around two characters never seen before in a DreamWorks production.
Niamey (AFP) - Niger is "in the process of winning the war" against Boko Haram jihadists who have staged attacks from neighbouring Nigeria since February last year, the army chief, General Seini Garba, said Tuesday.

Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in March, has stepped up attacks on areas of Niger, Chad and Cameroon that border Nigeria while also continuing a devastating campaign of suicide and shooting attacks on home soil.

The group's six-year campaign for a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria has killed at least 17,000 people and made more than 2.6 million others homeless.

"We feel we are in the process of winning the war even though the terrorist group still has the capacity to harm," state radio quoted Garba as saying.

"We have made tremendous efforts and we have had great results in the fight against Boko Haram," Garba said, adding that he wanted "more success in 2016."

Garba however did not expand on the results obtained in the Boko Haram fightback, but a humanitarian source said direct clashes between the group and Niger soldiers had "almost ceased."

The military was using planes and had established a network around major cities and towns, making infiltration difficult, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In November, a resident of the flashpoint border region of Diffa said the group appeared to have "lost its aggressiveness, giving one the impression that they were staging raids merely to stock up on food.

"Before they used to attack day and night," the source added.

Niger's Interior Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou had said in October that the main problem for the army was securing the border with Nigeria, where according to the UN, there were 74 Boko Haram attacks between February 6 and December 18 last year.

The Niger army has struggled to stop these raids.
Abuja (AFP) - The acting head of Nigeria's main opposition party who led Goodluck Jonathan's failed presidential re-election bid last year has been charged with corruption, the country's anti-graft body said Tuesday.

Bello Haliru Mohammed and his son Bello Abba Mohammed appeared before the Federal High Court in Abuja both charged with four counts of criminal breach of trust and money-laundering.

The pair are being prosecuted for their alleged role in the diversion of funds meant to procure weapons for soldiers fighting Boko Haram Islamists, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said.

The case is linked to a wider probe into disputed arms deals under Jonathan and his then national security advisor, Sambo Dasuki, that has already snared several major political figures.

Bello -- defence minister under Jonathan from 2011 to 2012 and currently acting chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) -- and his son are alleged to have received 300 million naira ($1.5 million, 1.4 million euros) from Dasuki's office.

Both men pleaded not guilty and the case was adjourned until Thursday for bail applications.

Dasuki, who is facing similar charges, has denied claims he awarded some $2 billion in bogus deals for fighter jets, helicopters, weapons and ammunition that never materialised.

The 60-year-old former army colonel has said all contracts and payments were sanctioned by Jonathan as president and commander-in-chief, who was defeated by Muhammadu Buhari in March.

Buhari, a former military ruler and army general, has since embarked on a wide-ranging anti-corruption crackdown.

The EFCC probe into Dasuki has also seen a former minister of state for finance under Jonathan and the former governor of the northwestern state of Sokoto hauled in for questioning.

The founder of Nigeria's first private radio and television stations, Raymond Dokpesi, has been charged with fraud and money laundering for allegedly collecting some 2.1 billion naira from Dasuki.

The money is said to have gone towards "the funding of media activities for the 2015 presidential election campaign" of Jonathan's PDP, of which Dokpesi is a prominent backer.
North Korea will send a delegation to the World Economic Forum for the first time in 18 years, with Foreign Minister Ri Su-Yong scheduled to attend this month's meeting in Davos, an official said Tuesday.

"He's coming," North Korea's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, So Se-Pyong, told AFP when asked to confirm reports circulating in South Korean media about Ri's trip.

So, who gave the confirmation at the UN's European headquarters, made no comment about the motivation for the trip to the high-profile meet.

The World Economic Forum's annual meet, which was inaugurated in 1974, groups leading government, business and civil society leaders for talks at a Swiss alpine resort.

This year's forum runs from January 20 to 23.
By Michelle Nichols and Sam Wilkin UNITED NATIONS/DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat. Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution. When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own." He added, "If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran." On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh's example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers. Jubeir blamed Iran's "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom's embassy in Tehran. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray. Shi'ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions. A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq's Shi'ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East's top Sunni and Shi'ite powers. But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones. "The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. CALLS FOR RESTRAINT Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint. Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a U.S. senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves. "It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the U.S. official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable." Brent jumped 4 percent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately. Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 percent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil. SYRIA, YEMEN The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad. "It was very difficult to get everybody around the table," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism." Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria's political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad's government. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva. Saudi U.N. Ambassador Mouallimi said his country's severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh's decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling. The U.N. chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months. Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared with the size of their economies, but some business is routed through the United Arab Emirates; comprehensive figures are not available. Investment ties are also minimal, though Saudi food conglomerate Savola <2050.SE> has major manufacturing operations in Iran. Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shi'ites on terrorism charges on Saturday, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shi'ite Iran hailed him as a "martyr" and warned Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family of "divine revenge". Shi'ite groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State. Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticized Saudi Arabia's judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies. (Additional reporting by Katie Paul, Noah Browning, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations, Tom Perry in Beirut and Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Editing by William Maclean, Howard Goller and Lisa Shumaker)
As the diplomatic showdown between the Persian Gulf powers Iran and Saudi Arabia continues to spread to other nations in the Middle East, Marco Rubio, the Republican presidential candidate with the strongest foreign policy resume, took the opportunity to pen a blistering op-ed in the conservative magazine National Review attacking President Obamas handling of Iran. In it, the first-term Florida senator suggests that the deal that the U.S. and other world powers reached with Iran earlier this year to scale down its nuclear program somehow led to the current crisis.

Like much of the overheated rhetoric at this stage of the presidential campaign, the Rubio piece is at times a bit over the top.

Related: Saudi Arabia May Have Picked a Fight It Cant Win

Last week, Iran surrendered tons of radioactive material that could have been enriched to weapons grade, handing it off to Russia, one of the partners in the negotiation. At the time, Rubio notes, Secretary of State John Kerry called the move one of the most significant steps Iran has taken toward implementation of the deal.

Thats really not arguable. Surrendering the stockpile of nuclear material was a non-negotiable element of the agreement. But in Rubios world, thats not a simple acknowledgment of fact, but an example of how the Obama administration heaped praise on the mullahs in Tehran.

He also draws a more or less straight line between the agreement and the current flare-up of animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia that took place after the Saudis executed a prominent Shiite cleric. Saudi Arabians are mostly Sunni Muslim, while Iranians mostly belong to the Shia sect. After the execution, Iranian security forces allowed a mob in Tehran to sack the Saudi embassy, leading the Saudis and several of their allies to cut diplomatic ties with Iran and to impose sanctions.

Though it might seem tenuous to most people, to Rubio the connection to the Iran nuclear deal is clear.

Story continues

Related: From Mideast to Moscow, These 3 Crises Could Wreck Obamas Foreign Policy

Among other things, the deal has greatly harmed relations between the United States and its traditional allies in the Middle East, Israel first and foremost. It has also emboldened Iran, which will receive important financial assistance to fund its regional aggression in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Syria. In recent days, Iran even allowed the Saudi embassy in Tehran to be ransacked, leading Saudi Arabia to rightfully sever diplomatic relations with Iran.

When Rubio isnt trying to score cheap rhetorical points, he raises serious concerns about the attachment the Obama administration and its international partners have to the deal.

Since it was concluded, Rubio notes, the administration has essentially ignored violations of United Nations travel ban by the head of Irans Revolutionary Guard, done little to address large sale human rights violations within Iran including the imprisonment of Americans like journalist Jason Rezaian, and has reportedly delayed sanctions on Iran over its illegal missile testing program.

That is why as president I will scrap this fundamentally flawed deal, Rubio wrote. Instead, I will reimpose the sanctions that President Obama waives and will impose crushing new measures targeting all of Irans illicit behavior. Rather than cutting deals with a regime with American blood on its hands, I will pressure Iran on all fronts across the Middle East. I will increase support to our allies in the region that are on the frontline of Irans nefarious activities. The mullahs will no longer have an American president to push around.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
barack obama joe biden

President Barack Obama teared up Tuesday during an emotional speech at the White House on gun control.

Surrounded by gun-control advocates and family members of victims of gun violence, Obama laid out the rationale behind his recently announced slate of executive actions on guns.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Obama said, referring to the 2013 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

As the audience applauded, the president raised his voice, rattling off a list of high-profile shootings.

"Our unalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness  those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara," Obama said. "And from high schoolers at Columbine. And from first graders in Newtown. First graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken by a bullet from a gun."

The president unveiled the specifics of his plan, explaining the newly clarified rules that narrow the types of individual "private" gun sellers that can sell guns without subjecting their buyers to a background checks. He also noted that the FBI would hire 230 new agents to help process background checks.

"Anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license ... or be subject to criminal prosecutions," Obama said. "It doesn't matter whether you're doing it over the internet or a gun show."

Obama also slammed critics of his push for gun-control measures.

The president said states loosening gun-control restrictions, specifically Missouri, had, according to some studies, seen an increased likelihood of gun violence.

Obama also blasted some Republican presidential candidates who had criticized the president's plan.

"Contrary to claims of some presidential candidates apparently before this meeting, this is not a plot to take away everybody's guns," he said. "You pass a background check, you can purchase a firearm."

Story continues

He later added, to raucous applause: "The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they cannot hold America hostage."

"We do have to feel a sense of urgency about it," Obama added. "Because people are dying and the constant excuses for inaction no longer suffice. That's why we're here today. Not to debate the last mass shooting, but to do something to try and prevent the next one."

NOW WATCH: President Obama breaks down during an emotional speech on gun violence





More From Business Insider


By Roberta Rampton and Ayesha Rascoe WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wiping back tears as he remembered children killed in a mass shooting, President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered stricter gun rules that he can impose without Congress and urged American voters to reject pro-gun candidates. Obama made it clear he does not expect gun laws to change during his remaining year in office, but pledged to do what he can to make gun control a theme in the months leading up to the November election to replace him. In a powerful address in the White House, surrounded by family members of people killed in shootings, Obama's voice rose to a yell as he said the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms needed to be balanced by the right to worship, gather peacefully and live their lives. Obama has often said his toughest time in office was grappling with the December 2012 massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Obama said, tears rolling down his cheek. "That changed me, that day," he said, after being introduced by Mark Barden, whose 7-year-old son was killed in the shooting. "My hope earnestly has been that it would change the country." After that tragedy, the Democratic president failed to persuade Congress to toughen U.S. gun laws. He has blamed lawmakers for being in the thrall of the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby group. Obama, comparing the issue to the great civil rights causes of his time, is set to discuss gun violence again during a live televised town hall on CNN on Thursday, and during his State of the Union address next Tuesday. Vice President Joe Biden is slated to do a series of television interviews on the topic on Wednesday. LEGAL CHALLENGES EXPECTED The U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to have arms, a right that is fiercely defended. Obama laid out executive action he is taking to require more gun sellers to get licenses and more gun buyers to undergo background checks. Under the changes, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is issuing guidelines intended to narrow exceptions to a system that requires sellers to check with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether buyers have criminal records, are charged with crimes or have mental health conditions that would bar them from owning a gun. The proposal is "ripe for abuse" by the government, said Chris Cox, an official with the NRA, in a statement, adding that the group will continue to fight to protect Americans' constitutional rights. Legal challenges to the changes, which are contained in guidance from the ATF, are expected. The crucial question in any direct legal challenge will be whether the ATF guidance creates new obligations, or merely clarifies existing law. The more the Obama administration acts as though the guidance has created a new legal requirement, the more legal trouble it might invite, said Lisa Heinzerling, administrative law professor at Georgetown University. The stocks of gunmakers Smith & Wesson Holding Corp and Sturm Ruger & Co Inc have climbed since the announcement. On Tuesday, Smith & Wesson ended up 11.1 percent to $25.86 a share and Sturm Ruger closed up 6.8 percent at $65.54. REPUBLICANS VOW TO FIGHT Republican leaders were quick to denounce Obama's gun changes, with most Republican candidates for the 2016 presidential race promising to reverse his actions if they win the White House. Democratic candidates praised the moves. Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, said the changes were "all about burnishing the presidents legacy and boosting Democrat enthusiasm in a presidential election year." Republicans who control Congress made it clear that they oppose the changes, although some downplayed their significance. "Ultimately, this executive 'guidance' is only a weak gesture - a shell of what the president actually wants," said Kevin McCarthy, leader of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia appeared to be in a minority in his party in voicing opposition to Obama's actions. "Instead of taking unilateral executive action, the President should work with Congress and the American people, just as Ive always done, to pass the proposals he announced today. "Like all law-abiding Americans and gun owners, I want to prevent future incidents of gun violence and keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, but legislation and consensus is the correct approach, Manchin said in a statement. (Additional reporting by Robert Iafolla, Julia Edwards, Steve Holland, Richard Cowan, Susan Cornwall, Susan Heavey and Megan Cassella; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Jonathan Oatis, James Dalgleish, Toni Reinhold)
Women in Oregon no longer need a doctor's prescription to get birth control pills, according to a new state law. Instead, they can fill out a health questionnaire and receive oral contraceptives from a licensed pharmacist.

The law removes barriers to birth control  typically, women get a prescription during an annual checkup, which costs both time and money, said Dr. Jill Rabin, co-chief in the division of ambulatory care, Women's Health Programs at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York.

But it's still important for women to visit the doctor annually for preventative care, she said. [7 Surprising Facts About the Pill]

"In other words, we don't have to hold women hostage for their birth control  we don't have to make it contingent on the annual visit," Rabin told Live Science. However, the new law does put "the onus on the patient to come in for the annual visit rather than saying, 'We're not going to give you the pill unless you come in for [an] annual visit,'" she said.

Oregon's law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, allows pharmacists to prescribe oral contraceptives to women 18 years or older. However, minors still need a doctor's prescription, according to KEZI, an ABC station in Oregon.

Pharmacists in the state are required to attend training so they can learn how to prescribe birth control and match patients with the best options based on the answers to the patient's health questionnaire, KEZI reported.

Moreover, Oregon requires insurers to cover the cost of a 12-month supply of birth control pills at once, according to OregonLive.com. This could help women with family planning, as women who receive a one-year supply of oral contraceptives have lower rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions compared with women who receive a supply for just one to three months, a 2011 study in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology found.

However, doctors are concerned that women may begin skipping their annual doctor's visit  and the other health benefits that come with it  if they can get birth control at the pharmacy, Rabin said.

Story continues

For instance, doctors recommend that women ages 21 to 65 get a Pap test to screen for cervical cancer every three years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If women undergo both a human papillomavirus (HPV) test and a Pap smear at once  a combination known as co-testing  and have normal results, they can be tested every five years, the CDC says.

"This [new law] does not obviate the need to come into your doctor," Rabin said. "You need to establish a relationship with a gynecologist you trust, and you also need to come in for urgent visits."

A minority of women have complications, such as blood clots, after taking birth control. But the risk of getting a blood clot from oral contraception is less than it is for getting a blood clot during pregnancy or right after pregnancy, according to a 2012 report from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

"No drug or intervention is completely without risk of harm," that 2012 report said. "For example, common nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as aspirin, have documented adverse effects, including gastrointestinal bleeding. Overall, the consensus is that oral contraceptive use is safe."

So far, Oregon is the only state in the U.S. that has implemented the law. California passed a similar law but has yet to implement it, and state senators in Colorado and Washington have introduced versions of the law in their state legislatures, according to WKRN-TV, a Nashville ABC station.

However, the new law still leaves a barrier for women in need of contraception, ACOG said in a statement released today (Jan. 4).

"Pharmacist prescribing laws are not the same thing as over-the-counter access," ACOG said. "Requiring a pharmacist to prescribe and dispense oral contraceptives only replaces one barrier  a physicians prescription  with another. This is not going to allow us to reach women who remained underserved by the current prescribing requirements."

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The standoff in Oregon between armed militias and federal law-enforcement provides a great moment for reflecting on some of the lessons of Black Lives Matter and the criminal-justice-reform movement that grew over the last year.

The antigovernment protesters took over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in support of two ranchers convicted of committing arson on public lands and have vowed to stay as long as it takes. The standoffand the reaction to ithas implications far beyond Oregon: It touches on law enforcements reaction to protests nationwide, mandatory-minimum sentences, and even the terms we use to label protesters.

One obviousand consequently widely remarked-uponpoint is about double standards: Given how individual African Americans or groups of people of color have been labeled, why is a group of armed men who have forcibly occupied a government building being referred to simply as a militia? (The frontrunner for alternative proposal is the clever Yallqaeda.) If they were black, argued Salon, the crew led by Ammon Bundy would have been killed. These points were also made after Cliven Bundy, Ammons father, mounted a stand in Nevada in 2014, and they are worthwhile.

Recommended: President Obama's Emotional Speech on Gun Control

They shouldnt necessarily dictate policy, though. One of the more striking reactions to the Bundy occupation has been the demand that law-enforcement officers go in with guns blazing to remove the occupiers. People across the globe have marveled that federal authorities didn't move to take back the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the AP reports, though politicians from Senator Harry Reid to Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, called for a peaceful resolution.

Related Story

What We Know About the Standoff in Oregon

Even if one finds the double standard on media descriptions galling, that doesnt mean the answer is to apply excessive force equally to white and black people. One major argument posed by police reformers is that more police presence and action isnt always better. Activists have accused authorities of overpolicing or being far too quick to resort to lethal force in New York, Ferguson, Cleveland, Chicago, and Baltimore. Critics have also complained that police arent trained adequately in how to defuse tense situations and are too quick to resort to force, whether lethal or not.

Story continues

In Oregon, the FBI seems to be taking that lesson to heart. While the bureau has been intentionally minimal in giving out details, it says its working with local law enforcement to end the standoff peacefully. This is not an armed takeover of school, which demands a dramatic response, said Steve Ijames, a retired police officer and expert on use of force, who said officers have to balance the importance of setting an example to lawbreakers with common sense. There are all kinds of discussions about the end game. Do we save face? Do we avoid appearing heavy-handed? Do we want to get in a shootout with a bunch of ranchers from Nevada, on principle?  How do we cause this to be resolved with the least damage?

Recommended: What the Left Gets Wrong About the Oregon Standoff

The point here is not to let the Bundy gang off the hook. Its to ensure effective prosecution without loss of life. Ijames said federal law-enforcement officials learned some tough lessons about how to deal with tense standoffs like this. Even if the federal government has seen some roughly similar situations, theres still no single playbook for a case like Oregon. Police deal with people who have barricaded themselves all the time, but most of those cases are people involved in minor crimes who are acting in self-destructive ways. There are few out-and-out standoffs like a bank robber holed up, and even fewer liked the armed band at Malheur, Ijames said. Even the 1993 Waco siege began when ATF agents tried to serve search warrants at the Branch Davidian compound for suspected weapons violationsnot with the seizure of a federal building, as is the case with the Bundys.

The demand the Bundy crew be labeled as terrorists or an insurrection is closely intertwined with these questions about how to resolve the standoff. Using the label implies that police ought to use whatever violence necessary to end the takeover. Isnt that how terrorist attacks are handled?

There are often immediate demands to label all sorts of violence and criminality as terrorism, but there are good reasons to use the term sparingly. The words that describe crimes matter. This is as true of the Oregon showdown as it was in the early days after the San Bernardino shooting, when the facts were not yet clear. Introducing terrorism as a label creates certain demands and pressures on how the state reacts, how the legal system handles a case, and how the general population respondsgenerally verging toward hysteria, in the latter case. The Bundy militia is clearly in violation of the law in seizing the building. Like a terrorist group, it has political goalsa vague set of grievances about federal management of lands and accusations that the government is pushing ranchers out. (The AP reported that the Bundys say they sent specifics to authorities, but have not released them publicly.) But its not clear what material danger they posedespite their posturing about willingness to die. After all, the 2014 Nevada Bundy demonstrations were resolved peacefully, and theres no active gunfire here.

Recommended: When Do You Become an Adult?

You have basically a protest manifesting as the takeover of public property, Ijames said. Theyre obviously doing this on principle, whatever that principle might be. In this way, theres another similarity with protests in Ferguson and elsewhere, he added: To some degree its not dissimilar from the concept of Black Lives Matter: its pushing back on government, its pushing back on people in power.

The occupiers may not have the same goal of peaceful resolution that the feds do: Ryan Bundy told an Oregonian reporter they are willing to kill and be killed if necessary. On the other hand, his brother Ammon Bundy told NBC, The only violence that, if it comes our way, will be because government is wanting their building back. Were putting nobody in harms way. We are not threatening anybody. Were 30 miles out of the closest town.

Just as protestors sometimes seek to provoke police overreaction, thus damaging police credibility, this looks like a ploy for federal overreaction. As the deadly 1990s standoffs in Waco and Ruby Ridge showed, that doesnt always redound to the benefit of law enforcement. Thats another reason not to play into the militias hands.

Finally, there might be a measure of sympathy among liberal criminal-justice reformers for Dwight and Steven Hammond, whose legal battle inspired the standoff, if not for the methods of their self-appointed supporters. As Marina Koren explained, the Hammonds were tried for lighting fires on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management, which they had leased for cattle grazing. They were convicted of arson on federal lands, but argued the five-year mandatory minimum sentence was unconstitutional. The trial court agreed, but on appeal the mandatory minimum was upheld.

Theres a growing, bipartisan movement to reform mandatory minimums. Designed to avoid judicial discretion, theyve ended up simply shifting influence to prosecutor. Thats resulted in often outlandish sentences, which tend to fall disproportionately on people of color. In July of last year, President Obama called for Congress to overhaul mandatory minimums. As my colleague Garrett Epps has pointed out in a series of blistering tweets, a conversation about mandatory minimums and excessive incarceration has to include cases like the Hammonds.

Many progressives have become fluent in the arguments for police restraint, restraint about labeling terrorism, and reforming sentencing laws. The challenge now is for them to translate those arguments into a case where the subjects are not so sympathetic and dont agree with them.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli security forces on Tuesday shot and killed a Palestinian who stabbed an Israeli soldier in the West Bank, the Israeli military said, as a surge in violence entered its fourth month. The attack occurred at Gush Etzion Junction, where many recent incidents have taken place. The army said in a statement that "forces at the scene responded to the attack and shot the assailant, resulting in his death". A hospital spokeswoman said the soldier was lightly hurt with stab wounds to his face. Almost daily stabbings, car-rammings and shooting attacks by Palestinians have killed 21 Israelis and a U.S. citizen since the start of October, raising fears of a wider escalation a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. Israeli forces or armed civilians have killed at least 133 Palestinians in the same period, 83 of whom authorities described as assailants. Most of the others have been killed in clashes with security forces. The surge in violence has been fueled by Palestinians' frustration over Israel's 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state, and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinian leaders say a younger generation sees no hope for the future living under Israeli security restrictions and with a stifled economy. The latest round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014. Violence has also been triggered by Muslim anger over stepped-up Israeli visits to Jerusalem's al Aqsa mosque complex, including by ultranationalist politicians. The site, Islam's holiest outside Saudi Arabia, is also revered by many Jews as a vestige of their biblical temples. Israeli leaders says Islamist groups who call for the destruction of Israel have played a major role in inciting the recent violence. (Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Jerusalem (AFP) - A Palestinian stabbed and wounded a soldier in the southern West Bank on Tuesday before being shot dead, the army said, the latest in a three-month wave of attacks.

"An assailant stabbed a soldier at the Gush Etzion junction," a statement said.

"Forces at the scene responded to the attack and shot the assailant, resulting in his death. The victim is receiving emergency medical treatment."

A spokesman for Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service said a 34-year-old man was taken to hospital with stab wounds to his face and hand.

A military spokeswoman told AFP he was a reserve soldier.

The Palestinian health ministry named the stabber as Ahmed Kawazbeh, 18, from Sair, a village northeast of Hebron.

Twenty-two Israelis, an American and an Eritrean have been killed in Palestinian attacks including stabbings, car rammings and gunfire targeting security forces and civilians since October 1.

At the same time, 139 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks.

Also Tuesday, Israeli forces apprehended a young Palestinian in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, who had been feared to be on his way to attack Israelis, police said.

Ahmad Khatib, 20, from the village of Sur Baher near Jerusalem, had stormed out of his home Tuesday morning after an argument with his father, threatening to commit an attack.

His car and cellphone were found in Herzliya and, after being spotted in the centre of the coastal city, police arrested him for questioning.
Washington (AFP) - Nearly 200,000 people have signed petitions seeking a presidential pardon for two men featured in a murder mystery documentary on Netflix.

One of the petitions, on the White House website, had gathered more than 20,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon.

One of the men featured in "Making a Murderer", Steven Avery, was freed from prison in 2003 after serving 18 years for rape. He was exonerated through DNA evidence.

But while he was suing Manitowoc County in Wisconsin over that wrongful imprisonment, he was arrested over the death in 2005 of a 25-year-old photographer named Teresa Halbach.

Avery was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. He insists he is innocent.

His nephew Brendan Dassey, who was 16 at the time, was sentenced to life in prison with parole possible starting in 2048.

"Based on the evidence in the Netflix documentary series 'Making a Murderer,' the justice system embarrassingly failed both men, completely ruining their entire lives," reads the appeal in the open petition section of the White House website.

It said there is clear evidence that the Manitowoc County sheriff's department used "improper methods" to convict Avery and Dassey.

If 100,000 people sign that petition by January 19 the White House is required to respond to it.

The petition was opened up on December 20, two days after the streaming launch of the highly popular 10-episode Netflix series.

Other petitions seeking a pardon for the two men are featured on the web site www.change.org.
By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - A white police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man after a South Carolina traffic stop was released from jail on $500,000 bail on Monday.

Michael Slager, a North Charleston police officer who was fired after the incident, was jailed since his April arrest in the death of Walter Scott, 50. The fatal shooting was caught on video by a bystander and intensified a national debate on police treatment of minorities.

Judge Clifton Newman set bail for Slager, 34, at $500,000 on Monday, and the Charleston County Sheriff's Office said he was released from jail. Newman scheduled Slager's trial for Oct. 31.

Newman granted bail after noting that Slager's trial would not begin until late this year. The delay was caused by prosecutors preparing for the trial of Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine people in a church shooting in Charleston in June, the Post and Courier newspaper reported.

Slager will be under house arrest, said Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the Scott family who reached a wrongful death and civil rights settlement with North Charleston and its police department late last year.

Bamberg said Scott's family was not happy that Slager had gotten bond.

"As far as him being out (of jail), it does hurt. It hurts a mother and father who have to go visit their child in a cemetery, he said. "Everybody is just looking forward to and preparing for the trial."

The judge had denied Slager bail in September, saying that releasing him "would constitute an unreasonable danger to the community."

Defense attorneys argued that Slager was not a flight risk and had been violently attacked by Scott in a confrontation after Scott fled a routine traffic stop and Slager chased him.

Prosecutors said Scott was trying to get away from Slager, not attack him. They accused the officer of tampering with evidence by retrieving his stun gun from where it had fallen and placing it near Scott's body.

(Reporting by Harriet McLeod; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Peter Cooney and Cynthia Osterman)
By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Florida police were trying on Monday to identify a man with a shaved head and wearing camouflage clothing who was caught on surveillance camera breaking windows, cameras and lights with a machete at a mosque and leaving bacon on the doorstep.

The footage showed the man entering the carport of the Masjid Al-Munin mosque in Titusville near Cape Canaveral in central Florida late Friday night and vandalizing it, Titusville police spokeswoman Amy Matthews said.

It was the third time in less than a month that vandals have left pork products at mosques in the United States, said the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has called for state and federal investigations.

Muslims are prohibited from consuming pork products, and hate groups advocate using pigs or pork to try to desecrate mosques, according to CAIR.

The man, who also had a tattoo on his arm, appeared from the video to be acting alone, said Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida which oversees that mosque and nine others.

Musri said the incident was the first of its kind against Muslims in the 40 years they have been in Titusville.

Vandalism against Muslims has risen since attacks by Islamist militants on civilians in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Musri said.

He said the incidents have been further stoked by anti-Muslim sentiments expressed by Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

"These statements legitimize the thoughts of people who are radical," Musri said. "They feel these leaders are agreeing with them, so it's becoming more acceptable for them to say so, to do so."

CAIR said cases of damage, destruction, and vandalism of mosques, and intimidation attempts reached a record high in 2015 since the organization began tallying incidents in 2009.

At the end of December, vandals in Las Vegas wrapped bacon around door handles of the Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque, CAIR said.

The FBI has opened an investigation into a pig's head thrown on Dec. 6 from a pickup truck at the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philadelphia.

(Editing by Karen Brooks and Grant McCool)
Tripoli (AFP) - Fighting raged between the Islamic State group and Libyan forces Tuesday as the jihadists pushed on the country's crucial coastal oil terminals.

For the second day running, IS jihadists -- an increasingly powerful force in strife-torn Libya -- attacked oil facilities in the so-called "oil crescent" along Libya's northern coast.

IS has for several weeks been trying to push east from its coastal stronghold of Sirte and officials have warned of crippling consequences if the jihadists manage to seize control of Libya's oil resources.

"Fighting continued today between Daesh and oil facility guards backed by the air force," said Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the unit tasked with guarding oil installations, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"The fighting is happening in an area 20 kilometres (12 miles) southwest of Al-Sidra and we have lost seven men," he said.

The key Al-Sidra and Ras Lanouf oil terminals were both targeted in IS attacks on Monday, prompting the National Oil Company to call on Libya's internationally recognised government to "fully assume its responsibilities" and support guards with weapons, ammunition and equipment.

"If Daesh took control of oil terminals and fields around Al-Sidra, it would greatly paralyse the foundations of the Libyan state," it said, adding that many guards had not been paid for several months.

IS fighters on Monday launched attacks, including a suicide car bombing, near Al-Sidra and Ras Lanouf, an army official said.

The pro-IS Amaq news agency released video footage allegedly showing IS fighters entering Al-Sidra on Monday, but the army official said they had been repulsed.

A Libyan oil official told AFP that a 420,000-barrel oil storage tank in Ras Lanouf caught fire during Monday's clashes.

The jihadist group said the attack came after it took control of Ben Jawad town, 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of Sirte.

Story continues

- Calls to resist IS -

Air strikes were carried out "from dawn until dusk" on jihadist targets between Al-Sidra and Ben Jawad, an air force colonel in Misrata said.

The jihadists have taken advantage of chaos in Libya since the 2011 revolt that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi to extend their influence there.

Monday's attack was the first of its kind since IS seized Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte in June 2015.

Ludovico Carlino, a senior analyst at IHS Country Risk said the attacks were part of IS's "declared strategy of isolating and controlling energy assets in Libya."

The taking of Ben Jawad was a major step for IS, he said, that would help the group "increase its forces and reach the critical mass necessary to launch an offensive aimed at controlling the Sirte Basin," home to most of Libya's oil reserves.

Mattia Toaldo, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said attacks were also "armed propaganda".

"They want to show their potential. They want to attract new recruits from the region," he said.

But he said that even if the jihadists were able to seize any facilities "it's not sure they would be able to sell the oil" due to the country's geography and competition with local smugglers.

Oil is Libya's main natural resource, with a pre-revolt output capacity of about 1.6 million barrels per day, accounting for more than 95 percent of exports and 75 percent of the budget.

But unrest has forced a major slump in production.

The country sits on reserves estimated at 48 billion barrels, the largest in Africa.

Libya has had rival administrations since August 2014, when an Islamist-backed militia alliance overran Tripoli, forcing the government to take refuge in the east.

The United Nations is pressing both sides to accept a power-sharing agreement it hopes will tackle help to reverse IS's territorial gains.

On December 17, under UN guidance, envoys from both sides and a number of independent political figures signed a deal for a unity government.

This Government of National Accord's presidential council on Tuesday rejected the attack on Libyan's "oil resources in Al-Sidra and the oil crescent".

"The council calls on all Libyans to resist elements of this terrorist organisation," it said in a statement.

UN envoy to Libya Martin Kobler called on Twitter for Libyans to rally around the GNA.

"Fully support presidency council statement about attack on oil crescent. Libyans must unite behind GNA & fight Daesh," he wrote.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Puerto Rico's infrastructure authority PRIFA did not transfer funds to its bond trustee in order to pay debt due Jan. 1, according to a regulatory filing on Monday, confirming a warning that the U.S. territory gave last week of a pending default. The embattled Caribbean island said last week that it would pay the bulk of $1 billion debt due Jan. 1 but some bond issues would not be met. The debt due was postponed to Jan. 4 due to the holiday. The trustee for PRIFA's series 2005 C bonds did not receive funds from PRIFA to pay debt service, although it did receive funds from bond insurer Ambac, the filing said. Puerto Rico said last week that PRIFA would not have sufficient funds to make the full payment on its special tax revenue bonds, Series 2005AC and Series 2006, and $36 million was expected not to be paid. Ambac last week warned Puerto Rico over what it called an illegal plan to take rum tax revenue pledged to PRIFA and use it to meet other financial obligations. Puerto Rico's Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla told CNBC earlier on Monday that the island's Department of Justice is trying to anticipate any lawsuits on the island following news of the default. (Reporting by Megan Davies; Editing by Chris Reese, Bernard Orr)
By Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several Republican presidential hopefuls responded on Monday with a careful balance of defense and condemnation to news that armed militia members had taken over a remote wildlife refuge center in Oregon. Saturday's seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, 30 miles (50 km) south of the small town of Burns, Oregon, poses a tricky balance for Republican candidates, who do not want to upset voters who may hold sympathetic views toward the anti-federal government arguments of the militia members. The occupation is led by Ammon Bundy, whose father, Clive Bundy, gained conservative praise in 2014 after a stand-off with the federal government over a Nevada land dispute. The Oregon group was protesting the prison sentences of two ranchers who were convicted of arson for setting fires that spread to federally owned lands, as well as government control of Western lands. Why in fact do these ranchers feel that way? Let's hear their grievances. I don't condone them taking over a federal building. We have better ways of expressing our displeasure than that," retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said in an appearance on CNN. "But the fact of the matter is there are legitimate grievances." Carson said more federal lands should be turned over to states for transfer to average citizens. "There's absolutely no reason that the federal government should lay claim to so much land," Carson said. "We need to respect them, we need to use the regular channels for dealing with problems that are occurring. Florida Senator Marco Rubio agreed that the federal government controls too much land in western states. "There is too much federal control over land especially out in the western part of the United States," Rubio told KBUR, an Iowa radio station. "There are states for example like Nevada that are dominated by the federal government in terms of land holding and we should fix it." Rubio, however, added: "Youve got to follow the law. You cant be lawless. We live in a republic." Texas Senator Ted Cruz also sought to balance condemning violence with not being too critical of the protesters. "Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds, but we dont have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others," Cruz said at an event in Iowa, according to The Washington Post. "And so it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation," he said. (Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian-born music mogul Robert Stigwood, who managed the Bee Gees at the height of their fame and guided musician Eric Clapton's successful solo career while producing musicals for the stage, has died aged 81, friends said on Tuesday. The announcement of his death was made on Facebook by Spencer Gibb, a son of Bee Gees' band member Robin Gibb. Further details about his death were not immediately available. "I would like to share the sad news with you all, that my godfather, and the longtime manager of my family, Robert Stigwood, has passed away," Gibb wrote. Stigwood, who was born in South Australia state, worked with a staggering number of groundbreaking acts, both on the Broadway stage and on the pop charts, producing counterculture stage hits "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar". He produced the groundbreaking film of The Who's rock opera "Tommy" and "Saturday Night Fever", which introduced disco music and a young John Travolta to audiences around the world, while propelling the Bee Gees to global stardom. But he was most closely associated with his work with fellow Australians the Bee Gees, whom he guided at the height of their fame in the 1970s. Tributes for the towering industry figure poured in on Tuesday. Broadway musical producer Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom Stigwood worked on multiple projects, praised him on Twitter. "Farewell beloved Robert, the great showman who taught me so much. With love, ALW," he wrote. (Reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - When child protective services receives a report of neglect of a child with a disability, even when the report is unsubstantiated, that child is more likely than others to experience maltreatment later, according to a new study. Children with disabilities are more likely to be referred to child protective services (CPS) than children without disabilities, the researchers say. What we found was that the high-risk cohort of children with disabilities experienced future maltreatment sooner and more often than other children, said lead author Dr. Caroline J. Kistin of the pediatrics department at Boston Medical Center. This is a high risk population that we can identify in a fairly straightforward way so we can provide additional support, she added. The researchers analyzed data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System on more than 489,000 children from 33 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia who had first-time unsubstantiated referrals for neglect in 2008. While the vast majority did not have disabilities, nearly 12,600 of the children did have conditions included in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, like autism, deafness or blindness. By 2012, 45 percent of children with disabilities had been referred again to CPS, compared to 36 percent of those without disabilities. Sixteen percent of those with disabilities had experienced substantiated maltreatment and seven percent had been placed in foster care. Maltreatment and foster care were both more common for kids with disabilities, the authors reported in JAMA. There might have been more reports of maltreatment among kids with disabilities because these kids interact more with healthcare providers and specialists who are mandated reporters, but in any case this seems to be a vulnerable population, the authors wrote. One issue is that kids with disabilities are at increased risk for being abused or neglected and at increased risk of being identified as abused or neglected, said Howard Dubowitz, head of the Division of Child Protection and director of the Center for Families at The University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. We need to be really mindful that these often are particularly vulnerable kids that need extra care, Dubowitz, who was not part of the new research, told Reuters Health by phone. Some states now approach CPS investigations focusing on what families need, rather than finding someone at fault, which is a better conceptual approach, he said. There clearly are many parents with kids who have disabilities who do a fabulous job, Dubowitz said. Children commonly had multiple disabilities, including physical, behavioral and learning issues, that made it hard to tell which types of disabilities were the biggest risk factors, Kistin told Reuters Health by phone. Given limited funds this might be a high yield population, she said. Most reports to CPS are of neglect and are unsubstantiated, meaning theres not enough legal evidence to prove maltreatment, she said. Instead of expecting CPS to expand services, I think we need to really look at other ways that other institutions can partner with CPS, which would include notifying pediatricians and schools of an unsubstantiated report of neglect, Kistin said. As a pediatrician if theres a report from the school system, I might not know, she said. If we could recognize the fact that (just because its unsubstantiated) doesnt mean that theres no risk going forward, we would see this not as the end of the referral but as opportunity for more help. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1ZM2Syy JAMA, online January 5, 2016.
Paris (AFP) - The deepening crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran could threaten fragile efforts to negotiate an end to the Syrian war, which has claimed more than a quarter of a million lives, analysts say.

"The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia will definitely have a negative impact" on the peace process, said Samir Nashar, a member of the Syrian opposition-in-exile.

"The negotiations were already difficult, if not impossible, and this conflict is only going to lead to positions becoming more entrenched," he told AFP.

On opposite sides of the Sunni-Shiite faultline in Islam, Iran and Saudi Arabia are also key players in the Syrian conflict, respectively backing or opposing the regime in Damascus.

Tensions surged on Saturday when Saudi Arabia executed a leading Shiite cleric and activist, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, prompting furious crowds in Iran to set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

In response, Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran on Sunday, giving Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.

This was followed on Monday by Bahrain and Sudan cutting ties with Tehran, while the United Arab Emirates downgraded its links with Iran, recalling its envoy.

The row is the result of years of seething hostility between the Persian and Arab rivals, who have fought for leadership of the region through proxy wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, where Riyadh is directly involved militarily in the fight against Shiite Huthi rebels.

Both countries are also deeply involved in the war in Syria, where Iran supports President Bashar al-Assad and has supplied "military advisers" to his regime.

The Saudis have called for Assad to go and are giving financial and military support to rebel organisations that include fundamentalist groups.

In Syria, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry "has been one of the driving factors from the start", said Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Story continues

As 2015 came to a close, tentative efforts to broker peace in Syria appeared to have had a glimmer of success.

But this latest crisis threatens to derail the process, commentators said.

- 'Low expectations' -

Noah Bonsey, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the deterioration in relations "will further diminish already low expectations" for talks expected to take place in late January.

"Ultimately, reaching a political resolution in Syria would require key states backing each side to make reciprocal concessions, and pressure their Syrian allies to do the same. For now, things are moving in the opposite direction," said Bonsey.

At talks in Vienna in October and November, all the players in the conflict gathered around the same table for the first time.

Western diplomats noted the barely-concealed animosity between the Saudis and the Iranians at those discussions.

But, one diplomat said brightly, "at least they are talking to each other".

That, however, was before diplomatic ties were severed.

The Vienna parlay broke ground by drawing up an international roadmap, which was unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council on December 19.

It foresees talks between the different sides in January, the establishment of a transitional government within six months and elections within 18 months in a plan supported by Iran and Russia, which also backs Assad.

"We made progress by getting all the protagonists back to the negotiating table, and the UN resolution showed the commitment of the international community. It is essential we keep up the negotiations, but the process has just been weakened," said a source deeply involved in the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Karim Bitar, a researcher at the IRIS think-tank in Paris, pointed out that the conflict between Riyadh and Tehran only adds to tensions that had already mounted with the death of influential Syrian rebel chief Zahran Alloush, killed in a regime air strike in late December.

"This escalation is going to make any chance of progress on Syria more complicated," Bitar said.

Realising that the peace process now hangs in the balance, the United States, France, Germany and Italy have all called for calm.
By Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Beneath this weekend's rupture in Iranian-Saudi relations lies a deeper fault line between the United States and Saudi Arabia that may hamper U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to end Syria's civil war, current and former U.S. officials said. The Saudi government's decision to execute Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, despite U.S. warnings, illustrated the limits of U.S. influence over the kingdom. And the Saudi decision to cut diplomatic ties to Iran after outraged Iranian protesters entered, and set fire to, the Saudi embassy in Tehran, runs directly counter to U.S. efforts to promote contact between the two nations, particularly on Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's longshot effort to bring the nearly five-year Syria civil war to an end may be the first casualty of the latest tensions. The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, on Monday said the Saudis will attend UN-sanctioned talks set to begin in Geneva Jan. 25, but held out little optimism for their success. U.S. officials acknowledged the Saudi-Iran diplomatic rift diminishes chances for the peace process. "It's going to make it a lot harder," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's obviously very fragile," said a second senior U.S. official. ARMS SALES MOVING FORWARD Current and former U.S. officials said they believed Riyadh and Washington have too many shared interests, from ensuring the flow of oil, to fighting al Qaeda and Islamic State militants and completing huge arms contracts, to permit a fundamental breach. U.S. and Saudi officials are continuing to work on a $1.29-billion sale of U.S. precision munitions approved in November, according to military and industry sources. The deal, which seeks in part to replenish bombs and missiles used in the Saudi battle against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, should be finalized in coming months. A separate, $11.25-billion Saudi purchase of four Lockheed Martin Corp surface warships, approved in October, also is expected to move forward on its years-long schedule, the sources said. "The Saudi-U.S. defense relationship is a juggernaut," said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. "It survives endless presidents and kings and it just keeps rolling and that's what's going to happen this time." LOOKING PAST OBAMA? Despite the Saudis' ultimate reliance on U.S. security guarantees, the kingdom in the last year repeatedly has signaled a willingness to act independently of the U.S. on national security matters. Saudi Arabia gave the U.S. scant notice last March when, with Arab allies, it launched air strikes in Yemen against Houthi rebels it said are supported by Iran. And last month, the kingdom announced the formation of a 34-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism. The United States is not among the members. Riyadh has also made little secret of its opposition to Obamas nuclear deal with Iran, a hallmark of the U.S. president's foreign policy. With Obama in his last year as president, Saudi Arabia seems to be looking past Obama, toward the next U.S. president, said one analyst with deep ties to Saudi officials. "There are no expectations left with this administration," said Nawaf Obaid, a visiting fellow at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "Things will start from zero once he (Obama) leaves." (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Andrea Shalal, Matt Spetalnick, Warren Strobel, Yeganeh Torbati, Lesley Wroughton and Mohammad Zargham; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Another study, one of the most rigorous yet, has shown that the improved nutrition requirements for school lunches brought about by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2012 is leading to healthier meals for students. The question remains, however, if public school students are actually eating those meals.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, looked at more than 1.7 million school meals served at three middle schools and three high schools in Washington state. More than half of the students at the schools, located in urban districts, were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Over the course of more than a year and a half of documenting the lunch selections of students, with the implementation of the new standards coming at the halfway point, the researchers observed a marked increase in the nutritional quality of the meals. Not only were the foods selected more energy dense, but they included higher levels of a number of nutrients, including calcium, vitamin C, vitamin A, iron, fiber, and protein.

This shows that the policy is working, Donna B. Johnson, a professor at the University of Washington and the studys lead author, told The New York Times. Its improved the quality of meals served to millions of children every day. Districts can do it, and children stay with it. Kids are healthier because of it.

Other research, however, has suggested that serving a healthier lunch doesnt necessarily mean kids are going to be healthier. Whats left on the lunch traysand eventually makes its way into the garbageshows that changing nutritional standards hasnt changed what kids want to eat, because much of that new, healthy food is being thrown away. A study of 240 schools published last August found that while the percentage of kids selecting fruits and vegetables increased from 84.3 percent to 97.5 percent, consumption dropped by 13 percent, and waste spiked by 56 percent.

JAMA also published an editorial on the new study by Erin Hager of the University of Maryland and Lindsey Turner of Boise State University. Because the National School Lunch Program reaches more than 31 million students each day in 99% of U.S. public schools and 83% of private schools, the two wrote, the new standards have the potential to significantly and consistently affect the nutritional health of children.

Story continues

That may be the case, but to bring that influence to bear, we need to look beyond what kids are picking out to eat and address whats being consumed.

Related stories on TakePart:





 Kids Are Boycotting School Lunches They Say Are Worse Than Prison Food

 The Truth Behind Those Photos of School Lunches Around the World

 Want Kids to Eat Healthier School Lunches? Give Them Time

Original article from TakePart
(Reuters) - World number one Serena Williams retired from her Hopman Cup match against Australian Jarmila Wolfe on Tuesday with a knee injury barely two weeks before launching her bid for a seventh Australian Open title. Williams was trailing 7-5 2-1 when she decided not to continue after receiving medical treatment. After pulling out of Monday's tie against Ukraine with inflammation in her knee, the 34-year-old American hobbled through the match before deciding she could not go on. Playing for Australia Gold, Wolfe took the first set as Williams struggled to move to her left. "I have some knee inflammation that's going away very slowly. It's going, it just needs a little more time," Serena told reporters, refusing to rule out playing in the Americans' Hopman Cup match against Czech Republic on Thursday. "I'm not making any decisions. I'm just taking it one day at a time," the 21-times grand slam singles champion said. (Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Ed Osmond)
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Seattle artist has settled her intellectual property lawsuit against pet products maker Hartz Mountain Corp in which she claimed she was cheated out of millions of dollars from the sale of "Angry Birds" pet toys she designed, her attorney said on Tuesday.

A settlement notice filed in U.S. District Court in Washington state in December said all claims against all parties in the lawsuit had been resolved, though it did not provide details of the settlement agreement.

Seattle artist Juli Adams sued New Jersey-based Hartz Mountain Corp in August 2014 seeking monetary damages.

"Juli is very happy with the result," said Tony Shapiro, her attorney. He declined to disclose the terms of the settlement, saying they were confidential.

According to court documents, Hartz said a company representative asked Adams in the summer of 2006 to design a line of plush pet toys, and Adams and the company reached a five-year licensing agreement in November of that year.

Adams argued that Hartz violated that licensing agreement when it entered into a side deal with mobile games maker Rovio to begin selling a line of pet toys based on characters from the Finnish company's hugely popular "Angry Birds" video game that came out in 2009.

In her complaint, Adams argues that she designed the "Angry Birds" pet toy line and at some point between December 2009 and November 2011, Hartz illegally used Adams' intellectual property and "Angry Birds" trademark.

The company argued it had ownership of the "Angry Birds" trademark and that the license covered Adams' drawings or illustrations of animals.

Attorneys for Hartz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In December 2014, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik denied Hartz's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. A jury trial had been scheduled to begin on Jan. 4, 2016.

Hartz "unfairly and deceptively garnered millions of dollars in profits from the work of Plaintiff," Adams' initial complaint said. It added that a corporation "must not make lucrative side deals that cut-out the artist for its own benefit."

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Alan Crosby)
Stockholm (AFP) - The number of migrants arriving in southern Sweden from Denmark dropped sharply on the first day that Sweden imposed systematic ID checks on travellers, police said Tuesday.

Police in the southern Swedish region of Skane said they had registered just 48 migrants arriving in Sweden on Monday. Excluding New Year's Day, there had been at least 200 per day since December 29.

"One can say that it's a sharp drop. But it's only been one day (since the controls were introduced), and we can't exclude that refugees will find other ways of entering Sweden," police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford said.

Sweden -- which has taken in more asylum seekers per capita than any other EU nation -- recently said it could no longer cope with the unregulated flow of arrivals.

In a bid to stem the influx, it has since Monday required all travellers to show photo identification when entering from Denmark, the main entry point for migrants hoping to start a new life in Sweden.

The Swedish coast guard said it was prepared for the possibility that migrants may now try to clandestinely cross the Oresund strait that divides Denmark and Sweden.

"We have to be prepared for the fact that people may seek other routes than the (Oresund) bridge or ferries, regardless of whether it is a Danish network behind this or individual initiatives," coast guard spokesman Mattias Lindholm told news agency TT.

Sweden has yet to officially register any migrants arriving on clandestine boats across the Baltic.

- 'A second Mediterranean' -

But Eliot Wieslander, executive director of the Swedish branch of Medecins du Monde, said that clandestine boat crossings and illegal entries were very real worries.

"The thing that we fear most is that the Oresund will become a second Mediterranean," she said.

"It's not the same amount of people as the Mediterranean. But we've already had reports that people are going to try to cross in unregistered boats," she said.

Story continues

The worry, according to her, and also to Sanna Vestin, the director of the Swedish Network of Refugee Support Groups, is that if Europe does not adequately address the problems of conflict and flight, then people will continue to risk their lives to seek asylum in Europe.

"They don't want to die and they don't want to watch their families die. If you tell them no, then they will take illegal routes," said Vestin.

Illegal entry, Vestin and Wieslander agreed, also creates other problems.

"There will be a whole new market for smugglers and traffickers in Sweden and Scandinavia -- because people, at the end of the day, want to be with their families in a safe country," said Wieslander.

In early December, an inflatable dinghy was discovered on the shores of the southern town of Skillinge and it raised suspicions of clandestine crossings, but border police said it was "very unlikely" the boat had been used for that purpose.

The introduction of systematic identity checks by Sweden on Monday prompted Denmark to introduce random checks on its border with Germany, causing concern in Berlin.

On Tuesday, the European Commission responded by inviting ministers responsible for immigration in the three countries to a meeting Wednesday in Brussels.
Temixco (Mexico) (AFP) - When gunmen burst into her home, the freshly-installed mayor of Temixco, south of Mexico City, told them to leave her family alone and surrendered to them, witnesses recalled.

Gisela Mota, who lived with her parents, was still in her pajamas on Saturday morning when the masked commando jumped a wall and stormed the house.

The 33-year-old single woman's parents were home along with her newborn nephew, whose grandmother was preparing to give him a bottle.

The assailants beat up her relatives until Mota "gave herself up so that they would let the others go," said the mayor's mother, Juanita Ocampo.

"I told them that if they wanted to kill me, they should kill me first," Ocampo told reporters. "But she told them, 'I am Gisela.' They took her because she was very brave."

But the triggermen pulled Mota from her bedroom, took her to the living room and killed her in front of her parents. Her desperate father ran after the killers.

Mota's murder has become a tragic symbol of the threats mayors face across Mexico and the violence that has engulfed Morelos, where drug cartels fight turf wars while kidnapping and extorting citizens.

Mota was killed just one day after taking the oath of office amid hopes among supporters that she would fulfill her promise to curb crime in the city of 100,000, known for resorts and water slides, just two hours from Mexico City.

But the left-of-center mayor became one of the victims of the gangland violence that has plagued the city, as authorities blamed Los Rojos drug gang for her murder.

Her home stands out among the other houses in the humble neighborhood. It has a rustic wooden door and a brick oven on the patio.

Neighbors recalled that on the eve of her murder, Mota had celebrated her new job with music and dancing.

"The next morning, six shots were heard. We thought it was firecrackers. But we heard them scream that they killed Gisela," said Pablo Ortega, a 48-year-old neighbor, who said seven armed men had arrived in a car.

Story continues

Shortly after the murder, the police killed two suspects in a shootout and arrested three others, including a 17-year-old boy and a 32-year-old woman.

- Gangland strife -

Morelos Governor Graco Ramirez said Los Rojos killed Mota as a warning to other mayors who back his controversial plan to place state and municipal police under a "unified command."

Ramirez praised his late colleague from the Democratic Revolution Party as "independent and combative."

Los Rojos are engaged in brutal conflicts with the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel in Morelos and the neighboring state of Guerrero.

The Guerreros Unidos became notorious when they were identified as the suspected killers of 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in September 2014, with prosecutors saying the gang had confused them with Los Rojos.

In Morelos, authorities say Los Rojos are the main gang in Temixco while the Guerreros Unidos dominate in the neighboring city of Cuernavaca, a famous weekend getaway for Mexico City residents that is also infested with crime.

It was in Temixco that the 24-year-old son of renowned poet Javier Sicilia was found dead along with four friends in 2011.

- 100 mayors attacked -

Now the city and the state are mourning Mota, with the nation's flag flying at half-staff outside the municipal office, whose walls were adorned with two large black ribbons and two wreaths.

At the dusty cemetery, some 20 large wreaths, some with the words "you were my hope," and an assortment of flowers were placed on Mota's tomb.

"She was very determined to make things different" in Temixco, said Miriam Martinez, the Workers Union secretary general.

Martinez said that Mota's predecessor, Miguel Angel Colin, had left the municipality in disarray, with debts and unpaid wages.

The governor said that Colin is under investigation, but he did specify for what.

Mota didn't have time to do much, as she was killed just hours after taking office.

Nearly 100 mayors and more than 1,000 municipal workers have been victims of attacks across Mexico in the past decade, according to the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico.

"It is dangerous to work as a politician when you want to do things right and you face people who don't share the same ideas," Martinez said.
On Monday afternoon, rumors surfaced that Hedi Slimane was departing Saint Laurent after three impactful years at the brand. With the pattern of high-profile designers leaving their respective posts in the past few months, several in labels have been shaken up  but don't worry, Saint Laurent has confirmed that Slimane, who may be credited with the tiara revival of 2016, is not going anywhere. [Pret-a-Reporter Inbox]

Like a few of his supermodel muses, Marc Jacobs spent the holidays relaxing beachside with friends and having a little fun in front of the camera. Part of their St. Barths shenanigans included the re-creation of everyone's favorite Zoolander scene, in which Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and his gang of male models head out for an afternoon of orange mocha frappuccinos and a joy ride. (Fortunately, Jacobs' crew skipped the gas station.) [Instagram]

Read more Anne Hathaway Debuts Her Growing Baby Bump

We already knew that Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter and former executive chairman of the company before its merger with Yoox, was an impressive woman. But now her status as ultimate boss lady has been confirmed by the British Monarchy. During the annual New Year's Honors, Massenet was given the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to the country's economy. [WWD]

Bar Refaeli has made headlines for the second time in the past month  but this time with a happier report than the news of her arrest for tax evasion in her home country of Israel. The 30-year-old supermodel announced via Instagram that she and husband Adi Ezra are expecting their first child together. Mazel tov! [Instagram]
Once upon a time, Republican leaders said the United States should push the Middle East toward democracy because Arab dictators were breeding Arab terrorists. Not anymore. In the party George W. Bush once ran, his fight-terrorism-with-democratization thesis has been largely orphaned. The new buzzword is stability. Donald Trump publicly bemoans the fall of Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Qaddafi. Ted Cruz attacks the Obama administration for not doing more to keep Hosni Mubarak in power and urges it to emulate Egypts current dictator, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Bushs former vice president, Dick Cheney, insists that, The Egyptian people are delighted that the military stepped in, in a brutal coup detat. And W.s own brother, Jeb, whose Super PAC has received donations from at least two lobbyists for Saudi Arabia, says the next president must restore trust and work more closely with Americas important partner in Riyadh.

Recommended: Sexual Assaults in Germany and the Debate Over Refugees

Its easy to see why GOP candidates have rediscovered the virtues of Arab dictatorships. Americas toppling of Saddam and Qaddafi has left failed states that are now partially controlled by ISIS. Much of the territory Bashar al-Assad has lost in Syria is under ISIS control too. After Mubarak stepped down, Egyptians voted for the Muslim Brotherhood. Whats more, the most powerful Arab autocrats still standingSisi and Saudi King Salmanloathe and fear Iran, which wins them points among Republican presidential contenders seeking to appeal to hawkish American Jews.

But theres a problem: George W. Bush wasnt entirely wrong. The very autocrats whom Republicans now praise for maintaining stability are actually breeding the opposite.

Look at the events of the last few days. Last Saturday, the Saudi regime executed Nimr al-Nimr, an activist for the rights of Saudi Arabias Shiites, who have long been oppressed in the kingdom. Saudi officials claimed Nimr had advocated violence against the state, but released no evidence. More likely, his real offense was disparaging the late Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, whose son, Muhammad bin Nayef, now runs the Saudi Interior Ministry, which oversaw Nimrs execution.

Story continues

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of Irans Shia theocracy, responded with typically overblown rhetoric. (Gods hand of retaliation will grip the neck of Saudi politicians.) And enraged Iranians ransacked Saudi Arabias embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. But after that, according to The New York Times, Irans leaders began taking steps to prevent the dispute from escalating further. They arrested 40 anti-Saudi demonstrators. Irans president, Hassan Rouhani, called the attacks on Saudi facilities not acceptable and demanded that his governments interior, judiciary, and intelligence ministries, which he does not entirely control, protect Saudi officials.

Recommended: Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and the Forgotten Shiites of Saudi Arabia

But the Saudis refused to deescalate. They cut diplomatic and trade ties with Iran and appear to have influenced some of their Sunni allies to follow suit. In so doing, they have likely prolonged the monstrous civil war in Syria, since without an understanding between Tehran and Riyadh on the future of Assad, a peace deal is virtually impossible.

This kind of recklessness has become a feature of Saudi foreign policy since King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef took power a year ago. Last March, Saudi Arabia went to war against the Houthi rebels challenging President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in neighboring Yemen. Declaring the Shia Houthis to be proxies of Iran, which few experts believe, the Saudis launched a bombing campaign and a naval blockade that tipped Yemens already grim humanitarian situation into a catastrophe. According to U.S. officials, Riyadhs war in Yemen has also strengthened al-Qaeda, some of whose legions have reportedly fought alongside Saudi-led forces.

Then theres Saudi Arabias close ally in Egypt, President Sisi, a man often praised by GOP presidential candidates. Sisi has brought stability to his country via horrific violence. On a single day in 2013, his forces killed more than 800 protesters, including women and children, in what Vox has called one of the deadliest single-day mass killings in modern history. Hes also banned the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the party that won the free election he overturned in a coup.

Recommended: What ISIS Really Wants

The result has been a rebirth of jihadist terrorism against the Egyptian state. In the words of the Egyptian democracy activist Ahmed Maher, Sisis mass imprisonment of his political critics is turning the people arrested by mistake who dont belong to any movement into jihadists. Moreover, Muslim Brotherhood members are gradually becoming radicalized, since they suffer from inhumane treatment in the prisons.  Extremism found a foothold in Egypt because of Sisis brutality and authoritarianism.

What the Middle East needs is not an intensified cold war between the forces of light and darkness, but compromises that help end civil wars.

Recognizing that Bush identified a genuine problemdictatorship can breed jihadist terrorism by leaving oppressed people no peaceful avenue to express their discontentdoes not mean he responded to it well. After Americas experiences in Iraq and Libya, GOP candidates are right to be skeptical of regime change.

But its one thing to overthrow an authoritarian regime and another to egg it on. In their fervor to appear tougher than Barack Obama against Iran, Republican candidates have given Saudi Arabia a blank check to act as recklessly as it wants. Asked about Nimrs execution, Chris Christie declared that he had no sympathy for the Iranians. Marco Rubio said our response should be to stand with our allies. For the Florida senator, standing with the royals in Riyadh even means sending U.S. special forces to help fight their disastrous, immoral war in Yemen, something he proposed doing last May.

And in their fervor to appear tougher than Obama against radical Islam, GOP contenders have conflated violent jihadists like ISIS with the Muslim Brotherhood. Cruz and Ben Carson have even proposed following Sisis lead and designating the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, thus ensuring that the only way Egyptian Islamists can compete for power is at the point of a gun.

The Democracy Report

While abandoning George W. Bushs focus on democratization, todays GOP candidates have retained his Manichaean thinking. Radical Islam now serves the same purpose axis of evil did more than a decade go. As in 2003, hawkish politicians have constructed a category based less on Middle Eastern realities than on their own political preconceptions and needs. Everyone who falls inside it (Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood) is evil and must be shunned, if not crushed. Everyone who falls outside it (King Salman, General Sisi, Benjamin Netanyahu) is virtuous and deserves unreserved support, no matter how destructive their actions.

The reality is that while the United States should certainly combat ISIS and al-Qaeda, what the Middle East needs is not an intensified cold war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, as imagined by Ted Cruz, but a series of political compromises that help end the civil wars that are traumatizing the region. The more Americas allies impede those compromises, the less they should be considered allies at all.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Madrid (AFP) - In a major drugs bust, Spanish police said Tuesday they had seized three tonnes of Colombian cocaine and arrested 12 suspected drug smugglers from Spain, Britain and the Netherlands.

The narcotics were seized in the northwestern region of Galicia but were bound for the south, where they were awaited by a gang of British smugglers in the Costa del Sol, police said in a statement.

Police detained seven Britons, three Dutch nationals and two Spaniards in the swoop, which was carried out on December 14 in cooperation with British and US drug enforcement agencies.

The British nationals are suspected of being the buyers of the drugs, the Dutch are believed to be the sellers while the Spaniards were detained for transporting the cocaine.

"It was a very powerful organisation. Few organisations in Europe have the capacity today to transport three tonnes of cocaine," Eloy Quiros, head of Udyco, Spain's national Drug and Organised Crime unit, told a news conference.

The cocaine arrived from South America by boat.

Police seized 700 kilos (1,500 pounds) of the drugs hidden in a false bottom of a van which collided with a police vehicle in the middle of the chase to catch the traffickers.

The rest of the drugs were found disguised in the form of wooden pallets in an industrial warehouse in Pontevedra, in Galicia.

The authorities suspect the cocaine was to have been shipped to the beach resort of Marbella.

There, it would be stored until border checks at Spain's border with France -- boosted after the Paris terrorist attacks in November -- were eased, they believe.

It was the biggest cocaine haul on land in Galicia since 1999, the police statement said. As is usual practice in Spain, the estimated street value of the drugs was not given.

Police also seized 1.2 million euros ($1.3 million) in cash and a handgun.

- 'Costa del Crime' -

Spain's proximity to North Africa, a key source of hashish, and its close ties with former colonies in Latin America, the world's main cocaine-producing region, have made it a gateway into Europe for drug consignments.

Story continues

Police seized over 22 tonnes of cocaine in Spain in 2015, a 43-percent increase over the previous year, Cosido said.

In November, police announced they had arrested Michael "Dodge" Roden, a suspected drug boss listed among Britain's 10 most wanted fugitives.

That same month, police also detained fellow Briton Robert Dawes, one of Europe's most wanted drug lords.

He was arrested at his luxury villa on the Costa del Sol after an eight-year probe into his alleged links to the Italian mafia and South American cartels.

He has since been extradited to France, where he is wanted in connection with the discovery of 1.3 tonnes of cocaine in a Paris airport in 2013.

The Costa del Sol -- once dubbed the "Costa del Crime" -- has been known as a hideaway for British criminals in the past, especially in the late 1970s and 80s when there were no extradition agreements with Britain.

But the situation changed in 2004 with the introduction of European arrest warrants, making it easier to bring British criminals home to face justice.
Paris (AFP) - The latest crisis between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia deepened Tuesday, four days after it erupted with the execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

A snapshot of events so far:

- January 2 -

Riyadh announces the execution of Nimr, 56, who had voiced bitter opposition to the Saudi royal family, and 46 other "terrorists".

Demonstrators rally in Qatif, eastern Saudi Arabia, where most of the Shiite minority live. Nimr was arrested in 2012, three years after calling for Eastern Province's Qatif and Al-Ihsaa governorates to be separated from Saudi Arabia and unite with Bahrain.

Tehran warns that Riyadh would "pay a high price" for the execution, but the Saudis call Iran "a state that sponsors terror".

Diplomatic envoys from both countries are recalled.

Gulf monarchies express support for Saudi Arabia, in particular Bahrain which faces chronic unrest among its Shiite minority, and where police use tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

Indignation floods the Shiite world. In Iraq, hundreds demonstrate in the holy Shiite city of Karbala and prominent Shiite lawmaker Khalaf Abdelsamad calls for the closure of Riyadh's newly reopened embassy in Baghdad after a 25-year hiatus.

In Tehran, hundreds of demonstrators set fire to the Saudi embassy and police make 40 arrests. In Mashhad, northeastern Iran, four are arrested after a crowd torches a Saudi consulate.

- January 3 -

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns that Saudi Arabia will face "divine revenge" for executing Nimr. President Hassan Rouhani denounces attacks on the Saudi embassy and consulate as "totally unjustifiable".

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah slams the Riyadh government as "criminal and terrorist". "This is not something we can ignore," he warns.

Thousands of Shiites demonstrate in Pakistan and violence breaks out in Bahrain and Indian Kashmir.

Saudi Arabia announces the rupture of diplomatic relations with Iran and gives Tehran's diplomats 48 hours to leave.

Story continues

- January 4 -

Iran accuses Riyadh of seeking to stoke regional tensions.

Thousands of supporters of prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr protest to demand that Baghdad sever ties with Riyadh. Blasts rock two Sunni mosques in central Iraq killing one man, while a muezzin is gunned down south of Baghdad.

Bahrain and Sudan cut diplomatic ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgrades its relations.

In Tehran, 3,000 people protest against the Saudi royal family, and burn Israeli and US flags.

Saudi Arabia cuts all air links with Iran.

Russia offers to mediate and US Secretary of State John Kerry calls both countries' foreign ministers to urge calm.

- January 5 -

Riyadh says the crisis should not affect peace efforts in Syria and Yemen.

A UN Security Council statement strongly condemns the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran but makes no mention of Nimr's execution.

Iran says Saudi Arabia's severance of diplomatic relations will not hurt it or damage its development.

Iranian President Rouhani says Saudi Arabia should not respond to criticism of its regime by beheading people.

Kuwait recalls its ambassador to Tehran, the fifth Arab country to cut or downgrade relations with Iran.

UN Syria peace envoy Staffan de Mistura holds talks in Saudi Arabia before a visit to Iran.

Turkey says it is ready to help calm tensions.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, of which only Oman has not yet reacted, calls a foreign ministers' meeting for Saturday, a day before an Arab League meeting in Cairo.
Donald Trump on Monday derided House Speaker Paul Ryan for the role he and other Republican leaders played in crafting a two-year budget agreement to fund the government, a potential sign of lingering conservative resentment over the agreement just as Congress reconvenes for 2016.

Speaking at a rally in Lowell, Mass., the GOP presidential frontrunner chided Ryan for agreeing to a deal that funds the Affordable Care Act, Planned Parenthood, global warming research and President Obamas Syrian refugee program.

Related: Why Congress Will Get Even Less Done in 2016

Where are the Republicans? Where are the leadership? Trump asked the audience on the eve of lawmakers returning to Capitol Hill. Theres no leadership.

He said the stupid deal would increase the countrys deficit by trillions and trillions.

Everything that you dont want is in that budget, the former reality TV star later told the audience. And I say where was Paul Ryan? Where are all of these people that are supposed to be representing our interests? Where were they? Where are they? Where are they? Nobodys representing our interests.

"We have people representing us that are not good, theyre not doing us any services," Trump added.

The remarks marked the latest skirmish in the running war of words between Trump and Ryan.

Related: With Early Test Out of the Way, Paul Ryan Eyes 2016

It began last month when the Wisconsin Republican come out strongly against Trumps call for a shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

This is not conservatism, Ryan said during a weekly news conference. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and, more importantly, its not what this country stands for.

Ryan, who had made it a policy not to weigh in on the race for the White House, prefaced his comments as an exception. Sure enough, he has since declined to elaborate on his criticism of Trump, though Ryan has rejected the frontrunners proposal to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.

Story continues

Related: Paul Ryan Rejects Trumps Plan to Deport 12 Million Illegal Immigrants

Ryan, who was elected to the speakership in September, was largely given a pass on the budget deal by far-right conservatives, laying the blame for the agreement that will see $1.1 trillion in federal spending through September at the feet of Ryans predecessor, John Boehner (OH). The former speaker negotiated the compacts topline numbers before giving up the gavel and retiring from Congress.

Ryan and other leaders have defended the deal as a win for conservative priorities, noting provisions like the one that lifted the 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports.

But before adjourning for the holiday break, many on the far right said they expected things to be different when lawmakers reconvened in 2016.

While not popular with many who serve on Capitol Hill, Trumps comments are another indicator that many within the GOP are watching the new speaker closely, something Ryan himself seems aware of.

The House this week will kick off 2016 with a nod to social conservatives, scheduling a floor vote on a Senate-passed bill to replace Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood. The president is expected to veto the bill, but the theatre surrounding the vote may prove enough to mollify hardliners for a while and give Ryan breathing room on other legislation, such as the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government.

More than anything, Ryan wants to avoid the kind of repeated clashes Boehner had with the die-hards of the GOP conference, notably the House Freedom Caucus. The public bouts eventually grew too frequent for the Ohio Republican to withstand and he was driven from office.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Diyarbakir (Turkey) (AFP) - The authorities in southeast Turkey on Tuesday freed on bail an Iraqi translator working for US-based news site Vice News after more than four months in detention but he still faces trial, judicial sources and the media outlet said.

Mohammed Ismael Rasool was detained on August 27 in the centre of the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir along with two British reporters from Vice News, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury.

The three were remanded in custody on terror charges but the two British journalists were released on September 3 and deported.

Rasool was held for a total of 131 days without any date for a trial being fixed, adding to concerns over press freedom in Turkey under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Judicial sources told AFP in Diyarbakir that Rasool still faced trial and was not allowed to leave Turkish territory until the process has been completed.

"Vice News is pleased to confirm its reporter, Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail having been held in a Turkish prison for 131 days," the media outlet added in a statement.

"Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time," it added.

Vice News had condemned the charges against its journalists as "baseless" and "alarmingly false", and leading rights groups had called for their immediate release.

The case of the Vice News reporters has amplified concerns over the difficulties in reporting on southeast Turkey, where the government is waging a relentless campaign against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants.
Ankara (AFP) - The Islamic-rooted government of Turkey will give civil servants time off work to attend the weekly Friday prayers in mosques, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday.

"We are working on a regulation that will allow the Friday lunch breaks to be used in a way that will not hinder the freedom of worship," Davutoglu told lawmakers of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

"After that, every Friday will be a (religious) celebration" he said.

Friday mosque prayers are obligatory for devout Muslim males.

But unlike several other mainly Muslim countries in the Middle East, officially Turkey uses the standard Monday-Friday working week employed in the West.

In power since 2002, the AKP of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accused by critics of imposing a creeping Islamisation on the country and eroding the secular values laid by modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Over the past two years, the government has lifted bans on women and girls wearing headscarves in schools and civil service, moves denounced by opponents as undermining the basis of Turkey's secular state.

It also limited alcohol sales and made efforts to ban mixed-sex dorms at state universities.

The past decade has seen a substantial increase in the number of mosques built in Turkey.

According to a report issued by Turkey's top religious body Diyanet last year, the number of mosques in Turkey rose by estimated 11 between 2004 and 2014.

Erdogan, a devout Muslim, came under fire last year for building a huge mosque inside his controversial presidential palace in the outskirts of Ankara.
By Mark Hosenball and Julia Harte WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal authorities in a stand-off with armed, self-styled militiamen in eastern Oregon have been told to avoid a violent confrontation, in line with official U.S. policy after deadly clashes in the 1990s, said three Obama administration officials. The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which began on Saturday, is the latest showdown between federal law enforcement officers and gun-toting militants protesting laws they oppose, from taxes and weapons to land-use fees. Clashes in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Texas, in 1993 turned violent and dozens of people were killed. Since then, the FBI and other agencies have adopted more patient, flexible tactics, stressing negotiation over confrontation. The FBI said in a statement issued on Sunday it is taking the lead in working to bring a peaceful solution to the situation at the Oregon refuge but declined to release specific information due to safety considerations. The Oregon occupation differs from previous standoffs because the militants have occupied a public building, a tactic more commonly used by left-wing extremists, said Mark Pitcavage, who monitors extremist groups for the Anti-Defamation League. A 2009 report on right-wing extremism by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security cited the recession and President Barack Obama's election as possible drivers of extremist activity by white supremacist and militia movements. The DHS employee who wrote that report, Daryl Johnson, applauded what he called federal authorities' "wait them out" strategy in Oregon but said that the longer such standoffs continue, the greater the chance of violence. "The longer this goes on, the greater the risk becomes because you have more and more people who come," said Johnson, who is now a law enforcement consultant. The occupation's leaders have issued recruiting calls on social media for more supporters, though it is unclear how many have joined so far. The Malheur occupation began as a march in Burns, Oregon about 30 miles (48 km) north of the wildlife refuge to protest Monday's scheduled imprisonment of two ranchers convicted in 2012 of setting fires that inadvertently spread to public land. Two administration officials cited the peaceful resolution of a 2014 confrontation with members of the Bundy family as a successful precedent for a non-confrontational approach. Ammon Bundy, a leader of the Malheur occupiers, said his group was trying to restore individual rights. Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher whose family staged a 2014 armed protest against federal officials who sought to seize Bundy's cattle over what they said were more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. Federal agents ultimately backed down and did not collect the fees. (Additional reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)
By Karl Plume CHICAGO (Reuters) - The clear Midwestern skies that El Nino cycles typically bring could be a boon to the U.S. heartland this spring, after recent record rain levels soaked the region, swamping farmland and disrupting grain export shipments on swollen rivers. Farm fields across the Midwest are saturated, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But with fairly limited snow cover, and a history of El Nino bringing drier- and milder-than-normal conditions to the Mississippi River's watershed in the upper Midwest, grain shippers could see a less severe spring flood season in 2016, said federal and state climatologists. Grain and livestock farmers, too, could benefit from a reprieve from the woes of spring flooding, which can sour crop production with delayed plantings and increased fungal or pest problems. El Nino refers to a series of climatic changes linked to warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which in turn affects weather patterns around the globe. The current event is one of the three strongest in the past 50 years, but appears to have peaked, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said Tuesday. "Should we see the more typical (El Nino) pattern take hold over the next couple of months, that would probably bode well for a quieter spring flood season," said Mike Halpert, deputy director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. NOAA will release its official spring flood outlook in the third week of March. GRAIN SHIPMENTS SLOWED The Mississippi River and its tributaries, key shipping waterways used to transport grain from Midwest farm states to the Gulf Coast for export, typically swell to their highest levels between March and July. Yearly low water levels normally occur in January and December. So some grain shippers were caught off guard by last week's river surge that forced the closure of the busy Port of St. Louis and sidelined fleets on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. One large exporter was forced to divert several soybean trains that were slated for loading onto barges at St. Louis to another river elevator further downriver, traders said. Spot cash premiums for soybeans delivered by barge to Gulf Coast elevators spiked to a 2-1/2 month high and corn premiums hit a 2-1/2 week high before easing this week amid light export demand. "The lack of a big export program really softened the blow. If we'd had a normal export program on the books, we could have been hanging around those highs for weeks," said one grain exporter who asked not to be named. Barge freight rates and cash premiums for springtime barge shipments were steady with pre-flood levels, indicating little concern that the shipping problems would persist, traders said. RIVER SECTION CLOSED A 50-mile (80-km) section of the Illinois River remained closed on Tuesday due to high water but the Port of St. Louis has been reopened to navigation, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The Mississippi River at St. Louis was at 31.9 feet (9.7 meters) at midday on Tuesday, well below last Friday's crest of nearly 42.6 feet that was just 7 feet below its historical high in August 1993, according to the National Weather Service. As Mississippi River floodwaters stream south toward the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard has restricted barge tows on southern sections of the river to just 30 barges, down from 45 or more normally, due to strong currents from Missouri to Louisiana, said Operations Specialist First Class Jonathan Hood. Southbound barge tows are also restricted to daytime hours only around cities like Memphis, Tennessee, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, where bridge underpasses are more difficult to navigate in high water, Hood said. (Editing by P.J. Huffstutter and Lisa Shumaker)
By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two female inmates at New York City's Rikers Island jail who claimed they were raped repeatedly by a guard cannot sue on behalf of other inmates, a U.S. judge ruled on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the women can only pursue their lawsuit against the city individually, rejecting their effort to bring the case as a class action.

The women filed the federal lawsuit in May, accusing the city of ignoring a "pervasive culture" of sexual abuse at the women's jail at the complex. They had sought to certify a class of all inmates who have been or will be assaulted by guards.

The women have maintained their anonymity and are referred to as Jane Doe 1 and 2 in the complaint.

A lawyer for the female inmates did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. A spokesman for the city's law department did not immediately comment on the decision.

Rikers Island is one of the world's largest jail complexes, with 10 separate facilities housing about 10,000 inmates.

It has drawn intense scrutiny in recent years over safety and security issues, including allegations of corruption, inmate abuse and unchecked violence.

In June, the city agreed to implement reforms at the complex to resolve a separate class action brought by inmates and backed by the U.S. Justice Department claiming that guards routinely used excessive force.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has said fixing Rikers is a top priority, installing a new correction commissioner and increasing training for officers.

Dozens of guards have been charged in recent years with various crimes, including smuggling contraband and assaulting inmates.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Richard Chang)
By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. magistrate judge on Tuesday agreed to delay the deposition of Bill Cosby's wife by lawyers for women who have accused the comedian of sexual assault and sued him for defamation for calling them liars. Cosby lawyers on Monday asked Magistrate Judge David Hennessy to delay the deposition, which was scheduled for Wednesday, saying there was a risk to her reputation if intimate details of the couple's relationship were revealed. Hennessy agreed to delay the deposition while lawyers for each side argue over whether Camille Cosby, the entertainer's spouse of almost 52 years and business manager, can be compelled to give evidence against her husband. The deposition was intended to gather evidence in Massachusetts civil suit, one of a series of legal actions Cosby, 78, is facing over claims by more than 50 women that the actor sexually assaulted them after plying them with drugs and alcohol, in alleged instances that played out over decades. Cosby's lawyers had argued that Camille Cosby could be embarrassed if her responses to questions about "the most intimate details of her marital life" were released publicly. Lawyers for the seven women argued that the same judge's order on Monday to seal the deposition eliminated any need to delay it. "It would not serve (and in fact would offend) the 'interest of justice' for this court to deny the motion for a stay, and thereby effectively deny Mrs. Cosby any right to appeal," Hennessy wrote in his order. People magazine on Tuesday reported Camille remained firm in her support of her husband, citing an unnamed source close to the family. "They remain steadfast and resolute about working through this together," People quoted the source as saying. A spokesman for Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. Prosecutors in Pennsylvania last week charged Cosby, best known for his role as the father character in the 1980s television hit "The Cosby Show," with sexually assaulting a women in 2004. That is the only criminal case filed against Cosby, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Cosby is free on $1 million bail and his lawyer has said the entertainer is not guilty and will not consider a plea bargain. The Massachusetts lawsuit was filed in December 2014 by Tamara Green, later joined by six other women, who contend Cosby sexually assaulted or abused and defamed them by calling them liars. (Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott and Cynthia Osterman)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States expects meetings planned for this month to bring together warring parties in Syria to go forward despite a flare-up in tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran triggered by the execution of a Shi'ite cleric in the kingdom, the U.S. State Department said on Monday. "We still hope and expect that meetings between opposition groups and regime can happen this month," State Department spokesman John Kirby said at a briefing when asked about the effect of the Iran-Saudi tensions on the efforts to bring an end to the nearly 5-year-old conflict in Syria. The United Nations said last month it aimed to bring together the warring parties on Jan. 25 in Geneva to begin talks aimed at ending the Syrian war that has killed an estimated 250,000 people. The United States wants Iran and Saudi Arabia to resolve tensions bilaterally, Kirby said, adding: "We're not in the market for a mediator." (Reporting by Arshad Mohammaed and Lesley Wroughton; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by David Alexander)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States expressed concern on Monday that the Venezuelan government is trying to obstruct the actions of the country's National Assembly, which convenes on Tuesday for its first session with an opposition majority in more than 16 years. "We are concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to interfere with the newly elected National Assembly exercising its constitutionally mandated duties," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, without giving details. President Nicolas Maduro responded saying that Venezuela would "not accept imperialism." "Why does the State Department and the U.S. government care about the installation of the National Assembly?" Maduro said during a television address on Monday evening. In a letter to President Barack Obama on Monday, Senator Robert Menendez, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he was deeply troubled by attempts by Maduro's government to "reverse the results" of the National Assembly elections. Menendez, who sponsored a bill that imposed sanctions against Venezuela in 2014 after a crackdown on political opponents, urged the White House to take further measures to stop Maduro's government from trying to undermine a meaningful political transition in Venezuela. "I write to urge you and your administration to take immediate steps to ensure that Mr Maduro's regime is denied the space to obstruct Venezuela's path to democratic order," Menendez wrote. "I believe you can accomplish this with a combination of close monitoring of key international organizations and meaningful, internationally imposed penalties." Venezuela's opposition coalition on Sunday chose Henry Ramos, 72, who is secretary of the Democratic Action party, to lead the new National Assembly. The new Congress is likely to get off to a conflictive start on Tuesday when it formally chooses the body's president. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Girish Gupta in Caracas; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Leslie Adler)
By Mike Segar WEST POINT, N.Y. (Reuters) - The first female commandant of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy was sworn in on Tuesday, the latest milestone for American women who now are allowed to serve all military combat roles. Brigadier General Diana Holland, 47, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, assumed the leadership post after being honoured in packed ceremony at the academy 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City, whose graduates typically serve as Army officers. "I'm very grateful for this opportunity," said Holland, a 1990 West Point graduate who thanked her husband and father for their support and said she looked forward to working with the cadets. "They ask for so little, only to be well led." Holland assumes the historic leadership position a month after the U.S. military struck down gender barriers in the armed forces, announcing it would accept women in all combat jobs previously open only to men, from leading infantry soldiers into battle to serving as Navy SEALS. At the ceremony, West Point superintendent Lieutenant General Robert Caslen gave a nod to other female alumni who recently made military history, including the first two women to receive the coveted U.S. Army Ranger title, Army Captain Kristen Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver, who completed their training in August 2015. Holland's resume includes barrier-breaking accomplishments such as becoming the first female general of the U.S. Army Fort Drum & 10th Mountain Division. Holland, whose hometown is Santa Barbara, California, served in Germany as well as in deployments to Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2010 and 2013. As the 76th Commandant of Cadets, she replaces Major General John Thomson III. The new post marks a return to West Point for Holland, who taught history at the academy after earning a master's degree at Duke University. West Point, founded in 1802, accepted its first female cadets in 1976. (Writing by Barbara Goldberg; editing by David Gregorio)
London (AFP) - Britain's parliament will this month debate whether to ban outspoken US politician Donald Trump from entering the country, the legislative body's petitions committee said on Tuesday.

Almost 570,000 Britons signed an online petition calling for Republican presidential candidate Trump to be barred from Britain for "hate speech" after his controversial comments targeting Muslims, Mexicans and others.

Some 40,000 people have signed an opposing petition calling for him not to be banned, saying comments made on the US election trail do not concern Britain and citing possible complications to future US-British ties.

Parliament's 11-member petitions committee said both petitions will be debated on January 18.

British lawmakers are obliged to consider for debate any petition on the government's official petitions website that reaches 100,000 signatures.

No decisions are taken at the end of the debate.

The government has blocked some controversial figures from entering Britain due to concerns about hate speech.

Trump is the frontrunner in the race to win the Republican nomination for the US 2016 presidential election, and has suggested banning Muslims from entering the United States and labelled Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers.
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron has delayed a trip to Saudi Arabia, the Times newspaper reported on Tuesday, but cited senior officials as saying this was unconnected to regional tensions sparked by the execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric. Saudi Arabia's execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr has angered Shi'ites across the Middle East and caused a major diplomatic row between revolutionary, mainly Shi'ite Iran and Saudi Arabia's conservative Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on Monday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday. The Times reported Cameron had been due to visit Riyadh in the coming weeks as part of a tour of Gulf states, but that the trip would not go ahead until March at the earliest. A spokeswoman for Cameron would not confirm that a trip to Saudi Arabia had been planned or delayed due to Nimr's execution. Instead she said he was focused on his plan to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union ahead of a membership referendum due by the end of next year. "We don't confirm the prime minister's travel plans in advance. Securing reforms to the UK's relationship with the EU is a government priority and we would expect the prime minister to continue engaging with European leaders over the coming weeks," she said. The British government has previously come under pressure over human rights issues in Saudi Arabia, considered one of its closest military allies in the Middle East. Cameron's spokeswoman said on Monday that Britain opposed the death penalty under any circumstances. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council on Monday strongly condemned an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran by protesters angered by Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

The statement by the 15-member council, which called on Iran to protect diplomatic personnel and property, made no mention of the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad.

"The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the attacks against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, and its Consulate General in Mashhad in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which resulted in intrusions into the diplomatic and consular premises, causing serious damage," said the council statement.

Expressing "deep concern" over the attacks, the council "called on the Iranian authorities to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel, and to respect fully their international obligations in this regard."

Council members urged the sides to "maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region."

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi had earlier urged the council to "take all appropriate measures to ensure the inviolability of diplomatic facilities and the protection of all Saudi diplomats in Iran."

Iran, for its part, expressed "regret" after the attacks on Saudi posts.

In a letter to the UN Security Council, Iran's mission at the United Nations vowed to "take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future."

Riyadh also defended the execution of 47 men including Nimr, saying in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that they were "granted fair and just trials without any consideration to their intellectual, racial or sectarian affiliation."

Concern is growing that the Saudi-Iranian rift could derail peace efforts in Syria and Yemen. Two UN envoys were dispatched to Riyadh to safeguard the gains made in the peace talks.

At Russia's request, the council on Tuesday will discuss the conflict in Yemen after the Saudi-led coalition ended a ceasefire with Iran-backed rebels in the country.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - A fact-finding mission by the UN chemical weapons watchdog has found that some people in Syria may have been exposed to sarin or a sarin-like gas, according to a report released Monday.

The mission by the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it was investigating 11 incidents of the use of toxic chemicals reported by the Syrian government.

The report did not say when the 11 incidents took place or specify any location.

"In one instance, the analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance," said the OPCW report sent to the Security Council last week.

"Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred," said the report.

Previous fact-finding missions by the OPCW in Syria have pointed to the use of chlorine and mustard gas.

The UN Security Council is due to discuss Syria's chemical weapons use during a meeting on Tuesday.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime and rebel forces have accused each other of using chemical agents in the nearly five-year war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

After an August 2013 sarin attack outside Damascus that much of the international community blamed on Assad's government, the regime agreed to turn over its chemical arsenal.

The report said that 99.6 percent of all declared chemical weapons in Syria had been destroyed.
A US soldier has become the first American killed in Afghanistan in 2016 while two more were wounded in an operation in Helmand province, where Afghan troops are battling Taliban insurgents, US and NATO officials said.

The troops had come under fire while conducting a mission Tuesday with Afghan special operations counterparts in Marjah, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said.

"This is an ongoing situation, there is still a fight going on in the immediate surroundings," Cook said.

Brigadier General Wilson Shoffner, a spokesman for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, added: "We are deeply saddened by this loss."

An unspecified number of Afghan troops were also wounded in the mission, officials said.

"We can confirm the wounded have been evacuated," Colonel Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan, told AFP. It was unclear if he meant Afghan wounded as well as the US soldiers.

Afghan forces are currently fighting to repel Taliban militants who in recent weeks have seized large swathes of the key opium-rich district of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand, a traditional stronghold of the insurgents.

In December, the Taliban offensive prompted the first British deployment to the volatile province in 14 months.

The deployment, in addition to a recent arrival of US special forces in the region, comes a year after NATO forces formally ended their combat operations in the country.

"There are dangerous parts of Afghanistan where the fight is still under way, and Helmand province is one of those places," Cook said.

"This is an ongoing fight, and I think the events of the last few hours highlight that."

- US helicopter down -

Two HH-60 Pave Hawk medical evacuation helicopters were scrambled after the attack.

One of these turned back after taking fire, and returned safely to its base. The second landed at the scene but its rotor blades were damaged after it apparently struck a wall, Cook said.

Story continues

Initial reports were that a mortar had exploded near the helicopter.

Local residents told AFP that the helicopter caught fire. "The chopper fell to the ground and began to burn. I don't know if it was shot down by the Taliban or if it crashed," said Marjah resident Haji Mohammad, who added he was about a kilometre away from the site when the helicopter came down.

Another resident also said the helicopter had caught fire.

A Taliban source claimed to AFP that the insurgents had shot the helicopter down, with all those on board killed.

The Taliban, who regularly exaggerate battlefield claims, have in the past shot down several military helicopters with small-arms fire.

In October, a US F-16 was struck by enemy fire in eastern Afghanistan, in a rare case of an advanced jet fighter coming under a Taliban-claimed attack.

In November, the insurgents attacked a helicopter chartered by the Afghan army that crash landed in the north, killing at least three of those on board -- including a Moldovan crew member -- and taking others hostage.

The unrest in Helmand, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency, comes after the Taliban briefly captured Kunduz city in September -- their biggest victory in 14 years of war.

US President Barack Obama in October announced that thousands of US troops would remain in Afghanistan past 2016, backpedalling on previous plans to reduce the force and acknowledging that Afghan forces are not ready to stand alone.
Frankfurt (AFP) - The decision by the US government to sue Volkswagen over the massive pollution-cheating scandal turned up the heat on the former paragon of German industry on Tuesday and fuelled speculation about how much the affair will finally cost the embattled auto giant.

The lawsuit comes three and a half months after VW was plunged into its biggest-ever crisis when it was revealed to have installed software in 11 million diesel engines worldwide that intentionally subverted clean-air regulations.

The civil penalties could run well above $20 billion (18.6 billion euros) according to the suit, filed by the US Justice Department on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency.

"The fact that the US Justice Department is getting involved is a surprise. And it is a sign that the US authorities are highly dissatisfied" with the way VW has handled the affair so far, said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, expert at the Center for Automotive Research at the university of Duisburg and Essen, Germany.

"The anger in the United States is tangible," he said.

"VW can no longer play for time."

The development sparked fears that the US authorities could slap much bigger fines on VW than have previously been expected, with figures of as much as $90 billion circulating in media reports.

That has spooked investors, with VW shares -- which in recent weeks have managed to regain some of the ground lost since the scandal broke in September -- the biggest loser on the Frankfurt stock exchange Tuesday with losses of 4.0 percent.

But Equinet analyst Holger Schmidt suggested the fines could be exaggerated and would actually come out much lower in the end.

- 'Unrealistic' -

Dudenhoeffer agreed.

"These numbers are completely unrealistic," he argued.

Until now, most observers had suggested that VW could face fines of up to $18 billion in the US.

"The US authorities clearly want to set an example," said another auto industry expert, Stefan Bratzel of the Center of Automotive Management in Bergisch Gladbach, western Germany.

Story continues

But it was unlikely that VW would be fined the maximum amount, he said.

The final amount was "highly speculative, but it will probably come out in the single-digit billions," or not more than nine billion dollars, Bratzel predicted.

Nevertheless, VW is being sued by private customers in the US who are seeking many more billions in possible compensation.

In December, VW announced it has hired US lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to handle the complaints.

Feinberg is known for handling large consumer compensation cases such as the deadly ignition switches used in some General Motors cars.

In Europe, VW is scheduled to start recalling some 8.5 million affected vehicles in Europe this month, which is expected to cost a relatively modest 500 million euros.

But the company is still a long way from reaching an agreement with the US authorities who exposed the scam in the first place.

"The anti-pollution regulations in the US are a great deal stricter than in Europe, and the easy and inexpensive technical solutions agreed in Europe won't be sufficient on the other side of the Atlantic," said Bratzel.

- 'Simple buy-back' -

"In the extreme case, VW won't be able to find a technical solution for the United States. That means that a re-fit would not be viable" and VW would simply have to buy back all the vehicles affected, Bratzel said.

US authorities could even impose a deadline for VW to find a solution and if it fails, it would have to withdraw all 600,000 affected vehicles from the roads in the US, the expert suggested.

VW itself did not respond directly to the news of the US lawsuit, saying simply that it was examining the complaint. And it stressed that it would continue to cooperate closely with US authorities.

VW's new chief executive Matthias Mueller is scheduled to travel to the United States next week where he will meet "political leaders", the group said, without revealing any details.

The so-called "diesel-gate" affair has hit VW's sales and in a magazine interview last month, Mueller said the carmaker was abandoning its ambition to become the world's biggest carmaker ahead of Japanese rival Toyota.

The company said Tuesday its sales in the US fell by nine percent in December, and by five percent in 2015 overall.
Caracas (AFP) - A tense struggle for control of Venezuela's legislature threatens to come to a head at a swearing-in ceremony Tuesday as opposition lawmakers defy government efforts to weaken their majority.

Opponents and loyalists alike of the country's Socialist leadership have called on their supporters to rally at the National Assembly as an opposition majority takes over for the first time in 17 years.

Facing the toughest challenge yet to his authority from the new assembly, President Nicolas Maduro moved to calm tensions late Monday by saying he had ordered the security forces to ensure the investiture goes ahead peacefully.

He said authorities and the opposition discussed safety measures so that demonstrators "can go out, sing their songs and chant their slogans with enough space so that access to the National Assembly is not obstructed."

The call for rallies raised fears of fresh unrest in the oil-rich, crisis-hit country, where street violence sparked by anti-government protests left 43 people dead in 2014.

The tension around Tuesday's proceedings "underlines the climate of political confrontation and government instability," wrote Diego Moya-Ocampos, a Venezuelan analyst at research group IHS.

"The armed forces will play a key role behind the scenes."

Maduro also said he would try to get the assembly to support a new economic emergency plan. That could set the stage for yet another serious political clash.

- 'No coups or violence' -

The opposition coalition MUD won a majority in the assembly in elections on December 6, for the first time since 1999, when late socialist president Hugo Chavez came to power.

His successor Maduro has taken judicial steps to reduce the opposition's two-thirds supermajority.

It has appointed new judges to the 32-member Supreme Court, which has granted his request to suspend the swearing-in of three incoming lawmakers over alleged voting fraud.

Story continues

Losing those three deputies would take away the opposition's supermajority of 112 of the 167 seats in the assembly.

The opposition wants to take constitutional steps to get rid of Maduro, but would be much less likely to succeed without a supermajority.

The MUD insisted its legislators would all turn up to be sworn in on Tuesday, setting up a tense standoff.

Hardline grassroots pro-government groups vowed to take to the streets.

The new opposition lawmakers voted in one of their senior figureheads, Henry Ramos Allup, as the new assembly speaker on Sunday.

He said his side had received assurances from the military that they would prevent "violent groups" from carrying out "acts of intimidation" around the assembly on Tuesday.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino responded that the military should not be drawn into the controversy by those with "political" interests.

"The armed forces are not an institution for subverting constitutional order or disregarding democratic institutions, let alone for launching coups d'etat," he wrote on Twitter.

- Oil-rich and unstable -

Workers at the congressional television channel were being prevented from broadcasting Tuesday's proceedings, said one of the channel's journalists, Betzaida Amaro.

Ramos Allup insisted: "That doesn't matter because we will guarantee that private media can broadcast an event that belongs to all of Venezuela."

The MUD has called for international support to resist what it called a "judicial coup" against its deputies.

Venezuela has the world's biggest known oil reserves but has suffered from a fall in the price of the crude on which its government relies.

It is in deep recession and citizens are suffering shortages of basic goods.

Now its troubles are heightened by political instability.

"The government is not used to having a counterweight to its power and is trying to avoid that at all costs," said analyst Luis Vicente Leon, president of pollster Datanalisis.

"But it is also true that the opposition, after so many years without having power, has forgotten how to use it -- and strike a balance."
(Reuters) - A supplier to Wal-Mart Stores Inc , the world's largest retailer, has recalled about 90,000 pounds of beef products that may be "contaminated with extraneous wood materials", the U.S. Agriculture Department said in a release on its website. The recall involves Sam's Choice Black Angus Vidalia Onion brand beef patties supplied by the Minnesota-based Huisken Meat Company, according to the release dated Monday. Sam's Choice products are sold exclusively in Wal-Mart stores. There have been no confirmed reports of illness from consuming the product, according to the release. Wal-Mart has told its stores to pull and destroy the product, a company spokesman said, adding that customers who had purchased the item could return it for a refund. No one at Huisken Meat could be immediately reached for comment. The recalled items were produced between Nov. 19, 2015 and Dec. 9, 2015 with use-by dates in May and June of 2016. (Reporting by Nathan Layne in Chicago; Editing by Alan Crosby)
Obama to outline actions on gun control: The executive actions will expand background checks for some purchases and increase enforcement of gun regulations. The president will outline the actions today and address them Thursday at a town hall-style meeting in Fairfax, Virginia.

Kuwait recalls its envoy from Iran: The move comes a day after two other allies of Saudi ArabiaBahrain and Sudansevered diplomatic relations with Tehran, and a third, the United Arab Emirates, downgraded them. The rising tensions come after Iranians stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in an apparent demonstration against the execution by Saudi Arabia of a Shiite cleric. Saudi Arabia has also cut ties with Iran.

Oregon standoff continues: The takeover by an armed militia of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge continues this morning. David Ward, the sheriff of Harney County, read a message to the group on Monday afternoon: Go home. Update: More here

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Montreal (AFP) - A group of prominent women on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fill vacancies in the Canada's Senate exclusively with women until a 50-50 gender split has been achieved.

More than 80 women -- among then former prime minister Kim Campbell, Vancouver's deputy mayor Andrea Reimer and renowned journalist Jane O'Hara -- signed a letter delivered to the Canadian leader, who took office last November vowing sweeping change, including on social justice issues.

At present, 30 of the 105 seats in Canada's unelected Senate are held by women.

Trudeau already has made good on his vow of gender parity in his cabinet, which has 15 men and 15 women.

"This is a historic moment to complete the parity process," Donna Dasko, co-founder of the feminist group Equal Voice and a signatory of the latter, told AFP.

The letter also urged the Canadian leader to appoint women from diverse backgrounds, including indigenous or "First Nations" communities and other racial and ethnic minorities.

Dasko said that if Trudeau were to appoint women to all existing vacancies -- and made 22 additional appointments as seats open up in the future -- a perfect male-female balance can be achieved.
By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - One third of working-age cancer survivors go into debt, and 3 percent file for bankruptcy, according to a new study. Cancer care costs have increased two to three times faster than other healthcare expenses in recent years in the U.S., the authors wrote. The average monthly cost of a new cancer therapy agent is now $10,000 and can be as high as $60,000. Using 2012 survey data from 4,719 cancer survivors ages 18 to 64, Dr. Matthew P. Banegas at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon and colleagues found that one-third had gone into debt because of cancer, and in more than half of those cases, the debt was above $10,000. Three percent had filed for bankruptcy. Younger age, lower income and public health insurance increased the risk of debt or bankruptcy, the researchers reported in Health Affairs. A previous study found that bankruptcy rates are more than two times higher for people with a history of cancer than for others. Multiple studies have shown that cancer patients and survivors are at risk for facing treatment-related financial burden, with a small minority at risk for extreme burden in the form of personal bankruptcy, said Dr. Yousuf Zafar of Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina, who was not part of the new study. The greatest immediate cost for those treated outside of the hospital is, most frequently, drugs, but surgeries, hospitalizations, and other medical fees can also result in large bills for patients, Zafar told Reuters Health by email. Zafar conducted an earlier study that found that family members of cancer patients sometimes had to work longer hours to make up for the loss in household income. It was interesting really for us to find out that a third of our study population reported that they incurred debt or had to borrow money, Banegas said in a phone interview. Cancer can impact time at work and also work related tasks if patients are able to go to work, he said. If they have to take time off, they may have to use extended time or extended leave which could impact insurance coverage and impact how cost affects them, Banegas said. Its not clear what types of cancer tend to result in the most financial hardship, he said. Professional societies in oncology are working toward generating this kind of information, Banegas said. A lot of the newer cancer drugs are coming at a higher price tag. Some resources, including LIVESTRONG, which conducted the survey generating this studys data, can help cancer survivors struggling financially, he noted. LIVESTRONG can help connect survivors with cancer assistance resources and most healthcare agencies have medical financial assistance programs. We want to be able to provide patients with as much information as we can so that when they are (considering) which treatments to take or what it will cost them, they have this information, Banegas said. Cancer patients should seek out financial counselors or social workers at the treatment facility when they are diagnosed, Zafar said. Next, patients can check with foundations like the American Cancer Society to see what local resources are available. As oncologists, we spend a great deal of time talking to patients about the long-term physical side effects of treatment, he said. We could do a better job of talking about the potential for financial harm. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1lx2GBv Health Affairs, released January 5, 2016.
By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The year's top-performing U.S.-listed global equities fund as rated by Morningstar sees Asian and emerging market stocks as undervalued and primed to outperform in 2016.

Kristian Heugh, whose $641 million Morgan Stanley Global Opportunity fund gained 20 percent for the year through Dec. 29, said his fund has been adding positions in South Korean companies such as Hotel Shilla Co Ltd and database company NAVER Corp that have attractive valuations, while trimming some positions in technology companies that have rallied this year.

"With the U.S. and developed markets in general outperforming over recent years, it makes sense that some of the other markets might represent better value now," he said.

The move is a slight shift for Heugh, whose strong performance in 2015 was largely due to his position in U.S. companies. His three largest holdings this year - Facebook Inc, software company EPAM Systems Inc, and Amazon.com Inc - rose at least 37 percent over the year to date. His largest non-U.S.-based stock, Danish transport logistics company DSV A/S, gained 45 percent for the year to date.

Overall, Heugh, who is based in Hong Kong, has approximately 48 percent of his portfolio in U.S. stocks, 40 percent in international stocks, and 10 percent in cash. He is looking for companies with "strong barriers to entry" and high levels of cash, he said.

Heugh tends to own more companies in the technology and consumer discretionary sectors because they often have higher returns on invested capital and lower leverage, while shying away from higher-levered financials and materials companies, he said.

Over the last five years, Heugh's fund has gained an average 13.8 percent a year, a performance that puts it among the top 1 percent of the 773 U.S.-listed global stock funds tracked by Morningstar.

(This story corrects "cash" to "cash flow" in the fifth paragraph)

(Reporting by David Randall; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By Mohammed Mukhashaf ADEN (Reuters) - Air strikes led by Saudi Arabia targeting Iran-allied Houthi forces intensified in Yemen on Tuesday, residents said, ending weeks of a relative lull in the war after a major diplomatic row erupted between the kingdom and arch foe Tehran. Large air strikes targeted military positions linked to Yemen's ascendant Houthis in the capital Sanaa, the port city of Hodaida and the disputed southwestern city of Taiz. Residents reported that the air raids hit a care center for the blind and Yemen's chamber of commerce headquarters, in which there were no casualties. Heavy shelling resumed on battle fronts which had been largely static during a truce which began on Dec. 15 in tandem with United Nations-backed peace talks. Houthi fighters launched Katyusha rockets at the city of Marib, residents said, their first attack on the area since Gulf Arab troops and armed loyalists of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi seized it from the group over the summer. Houthi forces also advanced against government militiamen in the northwestern province of Hajja and the far southern province of Lahj, reversing recent gains made the coalition. Local medics in Hajja reported that around 20 Houthi fighters were killed in the clashes. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies has been fighting Yemen's Shi'ite Houthi movement to repel what it sees as creeping influence by the group's ally, Iran. The kingdom on Saturday announced the end of the truce, which had reduced fighting but had been repeatedly violated by both sides. Earlier the same day, Saudi Arabia executed a dissident Shi'ite cleric convicted of "terrorism". This led to attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi missions and the severing of ties with Iran by the kingdom. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since the Saudi coalition entered the Yemeni conflict in March, almost half of them civilians. The war has exacerbated hunger and disease in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country. ADEN ATTACK Three senior southern Yemeni officials survived a suicide car bomb attack on their convoy in Aden and a subsequent gun battle that killed three of their guards on Tuesday, a government spokesman and security sources said. The southern port city is suffering from a security vacuum as loyalists of Yemen's embattled government, which has its temporary seat in Aden, seek to wrest the capital Sanaa from the Houthis. "A suicide bomber in a car detonated as the convoy of the governors of Aden and Lahj provinces along with the Aden security director passed through the area of Inma," Nizar Anwar, a government spokesman said. The assailants retreated into the desert, he said. Aidaroos al-Zubairi was appointed governor of Aden after his predecessor was killed in a car bomb attack on Dec. 6 claimed by Islamic State's new Yemen branch. Security officials have launched a crackdown on suspected militants, imposing a curfew and arresting at least 70 suspects overnight, according to security sources. Alliance and anti-Houthi forced seized Aden from the Houthis over the summer but have yet to impose their writ on the city, where militants and other gunmen have a prominent presence. (Additional reporting By Mohammed Ghobari and Noah Browning; Editing by William Maclean and Raissa Kasolowsky)
Mount Maunganui (New Zealand) (AFP) - New Zealand sealed the one-day series against Sri Lanka on Tuesday with Martin Guptill's century spearheading a 36-run victory in the fifth and final one-dayer at Mount Maunganui.

Matt Henry's five-wicket bag helped ensure the hosts took a 3-1 series win to go with their 2-0 Test domination last month.

New Zealand posted 294 for 5 batting first at the popular beachside resort venue with Guptill making 102, before Sri Lanka were all out for 258 with 17 balls remaining.

Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews, with a brave knock of 95, had set the scene for a cliff-hanger finish when he led his side to 223 for 5 before the tail folded in six overs for the addition of only 35 runs.

The last three wickets fell for six runs in the space of 10 deliveries.

Along with Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Milinda Siriwardana played their part in keeping Sri Lanka in with a chance for most of the their innings.

Mathews and Chandimal produced a 93-run stand for the fourth wicket before Trent Boult, making his first appearance in the series, dismissed Chandimal for 50.

After Thisara Perera (15) made a brief appearance at the crease Siriwardana and Mathews cracked 62 off 40 to have Sri Lanka at 223 for 5 with nine overs and five wickets to get the remaining 72 runs.

But when Siriwardana fell to Mitchell Santner for 39, New Zealand rammed home their advantage.

At the start of the day Guptill capped a remarkable home season with his 10th ODI century, reaching 102 in 109 deliveries to go with his 79, 93 not out, 30 and 27 earlier in the series.

When Mathews won the toss and put New Zealand into bat he had an immediate result with Tom Latham out in the first over without scoring.

But Guptill and Kane Williamson then established New Zealand's dominance with 122 for the second wicket.

Any loose ball was despatched towards the boundary with a Guptill four bringing up their century partnership in 115 balls.

But a lapse in timing by Williamson on 61 led to his undoing when he gloved an attempt to sweep a leg-side delivery from Tillakaratne Dilshan and wicketkeeper Dinesh Chandimal snared the catch.

Story continues

Ross Taylor put on 81 for the third wicket with Guptill who was caught by Thisara Perera off Nuwan Kulasekara.

Taylor brought up his half-century with a six to mid-wicket before also falling to Kulasekara.

Sri Lanka in reply were on the back foot in the third over when Dilshan, marking his 300th ODI, was removed by Boult for five.

Henry bowled Lahiru Thirimanne for two and had Danushka Gunathilaka caught for 15 as Sri Lanka slumped to 33 for 3 after nine overs before Mathews put some respectability into their innings.

Henry, who was only required by New Zealand for three of the five matches, finished with five for 50 to give him 13 wickets in the series, while Boult took three for 43.
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe plans to import up to 700,000 tonnes of the staple maize this year to avert hunger as the El Nino weather pattern brings poor rains and affects crops in the Southern African nation, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday. Last year the government imported only 100,000 tonnes as of November, but Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told the Herald that Zimbabwe had received less than three quarters of its rainfall needs in November and December, the first two months of the agricultural season, which will worsen food shortages. The government would allocate $260 million to import between 500,000 and 700,000 tonnes of maize, he said. The El Nino weather pattern follows last year's drought in Southern Africa and will add misery to the world's poorest continent, already hit by a collapse in commodity prices triggered by China's slowing economic growth. Agriculture is critical to Zimbabwe's economy, generating 30 percent of export earnings and contributing 19 percent to GDP, while 70 percent of the population still survives on farming. "It is the government's responsibility to be the main supplier of food," Made was quoted as saying. "Even if the rains were to come, it will not benefit the crops to the level that we will be secure 100 percent on our own," said Made. He declined to comment further when contacted by Reuters. It was not immediately clear how the government would raise money for maize imports as it struggles to pay salaries for public sector workers. The finance minister did not provide funds for maize imports in his 2016 budget, presented on Nov. 26. Made said the number of people in need of food aid was rising in the western and southern parts of the country. "We have allowed millers to import grain. Millers have been given permits to import 1.2 million tonnes of maize in the past 12 months but they have only imported 450,000 tonnes," he said. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Susan Fenton)
Laventille honours its own

Greenidge was honoured with an Award of Excellence for his dedication, service and contribution to the steelband movement by the Music Makers School of Laventille.

Run by Merle Albino DeCoteau, Music Makers dedicated their 2015 Graduation and Awards Ceremony held at City Hall on Sunday afternoon to Greenidge.

Greenidge is extremely happy with the award he received; he said it was very nice of DeCoteau put it all together. Actually we grew up across the street from each other in Laventille and I will do anything I can to help the Music School.

I like what I am seeing coming from that school, it is a well-rounded programme where the youths learn music, sing, as well as play an instrument and they are all very enthusiastic about the music.
HEARTBREAK

So much so, that when Dinnse was awakened on Sunday night, to be told her brother had just collapsed and died of a heart attack, she screamed, ran out of the house and collapsed a short distance away, dying also of a heart attack.

The double tragedy rocked the sleepy village in Penal Rock Road and put a damper on New Years celebrations for the Jaikaran family. Junior, 49, and his sister Dinnse, 51, lived in the same house at Aquart Village, and their deaths occurred within minutes of each other.

When Newsday visited the house of mourning, family and villagers were making preparations to hold a wake.

Two tents were pitched in front the house and members of the village consoled relatives. Carmen Cedeno, 68, sat on a couch in the living room and wept bitterly, cursing her bad luck at losing her son and daughter on the same night. The mother of four recalled the horrible moments of Sunday night just as she had retired to bed.

Cedeno said her son Junior, a father of three, lived on the upstairs floor of the house and earlier left home to ply his taxi along the Penal Rock Road to Penal Junction. She said at about 11 pm, she was awakened from sleep by a fellow villager who came into their yard shouting, Junior dead allyuh! Junior dead! By that time, Cedenos daughter Dinnse who lived downstairs the familys home with her son, also awoke to the villagers shouts and opened the front door. On hearing the news of her brothers demise, Dinnse  Cedeno related  ran out of the house screaming, Oh gosh, oh gosh, dont tell me that.

Not tonight! By that time, Dinnses son Kieno Chandler, 24, also woke up and ran past his mother who was screaming in the yard and headed towards Tommys Bar which is about 75 feet away.

Cedeno told Newsday Dinnse collapsed in the yard. By the time I ran downstairs, I saw her vomit and that was it.

I kept calling her but she did not respond, Cedeno said. Dinnses son Chandler, returned from the bar where his uncle Junior was lying dead, to see his mother on the ground in the yard. An ambulance arrived and took Dinnse to the Siparia District Health Facility where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

As the ambulance sped past Tommys Bar en route to the health centre, crowds had gathered inside the bar where a doctor was pronouncing Junior dead at the scene.

Autopsies done yesterday at the mortuary of the San Fernando General Hospital revealed that both brother and sister died from heart failure. Police investigating the deaths, said Junior went to the bar to purchase a drink and while sitting on a stool in the bar, he collapsed.

Cedeno said Junior and Dinnse were very close, recalling that on Sunday, they all sat down for lunch. At 7 pm, Dinnse came upstairs and she too ate food before returning downstairs.

Junior and I had lunch together yesterday (Sunday). He was watching me and I told my other daughter that Junior was not looking nice.

I did not like the look he gave and I knew something was going to happen but I did not expect him to dead, Cedeno said.

Almost a year ago - January 17, 2014 - Dinnses son Sean Jaikaran, 29, was shot and killed. His bullet- riddled body was found at the Trinidad Cement Ltd (TCL) Recreation Ground in Claxton Bay.
Fiery La Brea protests

The blockade caused a virtual standstill in the south western peninsula leaving hundreds of students and commuters stranded as buses, maxis and taxis were unable to pass as burning debris blocked the roadway. Workers on their way to work at Lake Asphalt, Atlantic LNG, Trinmar, Petrotrin, Area Hospital in Point Fortin and other establishments arrived late or simple gave up and went back home after failing to get transport.

The blockade which was spread over several key areas lasted for hours as residents played a cat and mouse game with the police, as soon as police cleared one area and left residents would again place old trees trunks, tyres and old appliances across the very road cutting off access to vehicular traffic. Shortly after 1 pm, a government team led by Local Government Minister Franklyn Khan and including Point Fortin MP and National Security Minister Edmund Dillon, La Brea MP and Energy Minister Nicole Olivierre and La Horquetta/ Talparo MP and Communications Minister Maxie Cuffie travelled via helicopter to Point Fortin and then journeyed to La Brea.

Khan explained that the ministerial team was despatched by Ag Prime Minister Colm Imbert to address concerns of disgruntled La Brea residents. He also sought to assure La Brea residents that they had not been forgotten. There is a future for La Brea, we just have to retool it because of the present gas shortage. I think La Brea should feel fortunate that the Minister of Energy is Member of Parliament for La Brea...she is watching your back, Khan assured.

So the people of La Brea she is watching your back and just have some patience as we continue the planning process and good things will come to La Brea in this year, Khan continued.

Olivierre said the Ministry of Works and Transport is working on long term and short term solutions.

I came down with the Minister of Works and Transport (last week) with a technical team and did some evaluation of conditions.

The long term resolution involves some soil testing and studies so we can come up with a properly engineered solution to alleviate this perennial problem, Olivierre said.

Short term is supposed to have resumed this morning but because word of the protest started, workers did not mobilise. They are expected to continue that work from tomorrow, she added. From as early as 4.30 am, residents blocked off the Southern Main Road in La Brea at Point DOr junction, as well as at other strategic positions leading to the LABIDCO Industrial Estate to highlight their frustration.

Residents placed debris and old furniture in the roads and then set them on fire. The protest lasted for most of the morning and caused a traffic pile-up as drivers were forced to take alternative routes to reach their various destinations in and out of La Brea. Dillon later disputed claims of excessive force by army personnel saying soldiers involved belonged to the engineering battalion and used heavy equipment to clear roads of debris.

While residents said the protests were over deplorable road conditions, a media release from the La Brea General Council stated the Amalgamated Contractors of La Brea together with the Council were responsible for the protest action in light of Caribbean Gas Company Limited (CGCL) failing to fulfil promises made to the La Brea Community for their support of the Methanol to Di-Methyl- Ether (DME) plant.
I paid for my sons studies

Garcia issued this denial hours after Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge wrote the Integrity Commission calling for a review of hundreds of millions worth of contracts awarded at the HDC/National Housing Authority under Garcias tenure and claimed that payments were made via HDC officials into accounts benefitting Garcias son.

There are three allegations he made, Garcia said. The first is that Pace Construction financed the education of my son. I can state categorically that my son and my wife financed the education of my son. To suggest any contractor, or any other person other than myself, did so is absolutely absurd. Garcia continued, The second allegation alleges that because the contractor financed my sons education, I arranged to award contracts in return.

But Noel Garcia does not have the power to award contracts the tenders committee awards contracts.

There is a process and procedure. To say I arranged the award is ridiculous and outright untrue. Garcia also said he did not give any instructions for legal opinions to be commissioned by the firms of Alexander Jeremie and Company, or MD Daly and Partners in relation to the award of contracts. That is, again, taking conspiracy theories to the ridiculous, the Udecott chairman said. I have referred the matter to my attorneys, and they will take it from there. Earlier, at a press conference held at his legal offices on Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain, Sturge said payments were made in 2002 by Pace Construction Services in 2002 for US$4,537; US$8,540 and US$7,500. (In total about TT$130,000).

Sturge said the funds were for, financing the schooling of the son of Garcia, and were made via an official named Junior Joseph. He called on the Integrity Commission to probe, and said the matter had also been copied to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and Police Service.

Saying Garcia now oversees billions in projects at Udecott, Sturge called on Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley to remove Garcia. He said lingering questions over contracts previously awarded at the HDC cast a pall over the recent announcement by Rowley that the HDC will partner with private firms to seek to bolster the housing stock.

I am very concerned that they have chosen this way forward to ramp up the housing sector, Sturge said.

We have seen in the past that a certain, select few persons received contracts. Sturge asked questions over millions worth of contracts allocated to a firm called Pace Construction Services Limited for homes at Corinth and La Fortune Estate ($7.7 million and $11.3 million respectively). He also said a contract (the Corinth contract) for the construction of houses in Point Fortin escalated from $85 million to $225 million, while the Corinth contract moved from $165.1 million to $286.8 million.

He said Rowley was Housing Minister.

He said contracts were awarded in the absence of tender rules, and asked the Integrity Commission to, investigate whether the actions of Mr Garcia were in breach of provisions of relevant laws.

I trust that the commission will share my view that the matters that are raised by this complaint are most serious and troubling, especially in light of the fact that Mr Garcia presently holds the portfolio of chairman of Udecott under whose portfolio falls the Governments development programme for the country, Sturge said.

Sturge presented copies of his letter to the Commission to the media. The document bore yesterdays date, but appeared to be stamped Jan 01 2016 by an official at the Commission. However, a notation bore the date 2016/01/04.

Sturge described this discrepancy as an obvious mistake.
Probe into CDA

Due diligence refers to a general exercising of care, or to a specific analysis of the state of an asset, investment or company ahead of a business transaction. Members of the new Board, chaired by Anthony P Pierre, received their instruments of appointment on December 2, and the Board first met on December 7.

The new Board immediately set about to ascertain the state of affairs of the Authority, said the statement.

This initial review unveiled several issues of concern. In a unanimous resolution, the board at a special meeting on December 29, agreed to the conduct of a due diligence exercise, including a review of the CDAs governance, transactions, operations and administration from 2010 to 2015.

The due diligence and review exercise will be done by Ernst and Young over an initial period of 10 to 12 weeks, said the statement. The statement said due to the nature of this exercise, the Board was advised that it is best practice that certain officers of the Authority should not report for duty for the duration of the exercise, but be available to assist with any enquiries arising. The Board assures the public that it will ensure best practices in the exercise of its duties and will provide further updates when appropriate
POLITICS F.B.I. Evidence Is Often Mishandled, an Internal Inquiry Finds By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT DEC. 19, 2014 Photo The J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. building in Washington. Auditors have found many problems with how the bureau handles evidence. Credit Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Share This Page Email Share Tweet Save More Continue reading the main story F.B.I. agents in every region of the country have mishandled, mislabeled and lost evidence, according to a highly critical internal investigation that discovered errors with nearly half the pieces of evidence it reviewed. The evidence collection and retention system is the backbone of the F.B.I. s investigative process, and the report said it is beset by problems. It also found that the F.B.I. was storing more weapons, less money and valuables, and two tons more drugs than its records had indicated. The report
What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames

news
Guest Post By Joseph Friedlander

Acknowledgement: Dr. Bruce Cordells 21stcenturywaves.com for extensive quotesthis is a summary of many threads of his put in one place for reader convenience and to facilitate the discussion of ideas. This serves as a

One line summary: War does not lead to prosperity and only marginally to new tech a debunkingthe tech advances gained by war can be obtained in peace by careful incubating of tech seeds and the adroit management and exploitation of those tech seeds that do sproutyet usually the opposite policies, ruinous in economic effect, are the default setting of many powerful bureaucractic forces.

War during Maslow Window is a particular disaster.

30 Second version:

Typically near the opening of Maslow Windows over the last 200+ years, conflicts, or even wars, can ignite or appear potentially devastating (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962); Empirically, no Maslow Window of the last 200 years has ever been delayed or diminished in any observable way by an early or pre-Maslow Window military conflict. But this does not mean it cant happen.

Dr. Bruce Cordell in his writings and the site 21stcenturywaves.com has brought to the attention of space and political enthusiasts the possible recurrence of long wave cycles and SOC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality in human behavior and history.

We start with some defining questions: What is A Maslow Window?

Dr. Bruce Cordell:

Cordell (2006) introduced the concept of a Maslow Window, triggered by rhythmic, twice-per century economic booms. Affluence-induced ebullience propels many to higher states in the Maslow hierarchy, where their momentarily expanded worldviews make great explorations and MEPs seem not only intriguing, but almost irresistible. As ebullience decays  due to widespread perceptions of budget stresses, a war, etc.  the Maslow Window closes.

An ebullient, fractal (high SOC (self-organized-criticality) international environment (i.e., a Maslow Window) where almost anything is possible. About twice per century over the last 200+ years there are extraordinary pulses of great explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark) and macro-engineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal) that resonate around the world. These Maslow Windows are times of extraordinary affluence-induced ebullience similar to animal spirits theorized to drive business cycles by British economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. In response to ebullience, many in society ascend Maslows Hierarchy and, as their world view expands, find that great explorations and MEPs are not only intriguing, but seem momentarily irresistible. This captivating, but short-lived ebullience is triggered by major, twice-per-century economic booms over the last 200+ years that were first described by Kondratieff in the 1920s.

Joseph Friedlander: A Maslow Window is named after the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs (which though was stated for the individual, would analogously apply to society as a whole) where for a brief period each long wave cycle (by your reckoning as understood by me) society feels secure enough, not grappling with problems of bare survival, to reach for higher aspirations ordinarily neglected during more pressing times. In Jerry Pournelles phrase, not just survival, but survival with style. During a Depression equivalent, space travel can be an imaginary escape, but during a Maslow Window, it is an exciting actual prospect.

Dr. Cordell: A spacecraft launch window involves the energy state of a rocket while a Maslow Window involves the psychological state of a population. And it is true that outside a launch window the performance penalties become prohibitive, while outside a Maslow Window the economic and political requirements preclude, or at least delay program success. The edge of a Maslow Window is fuzzier than for a launch window because its apparently governed by complexity theory.

Dr. Cordell :  I think of societys Maslow state as a statistical ensemble of each individuals position (or level) in the Maslow hierarchy. An individuals ascent up the hierarchy usually results from a decrease in perceived physical, emotional, and/or financial stresses. In this ebullient state  usually triggered by a major economic boom  many in society, due to expanded worldviews, momentarily find great explorations and major technology projects not only intriguing, but almost irresistible.

During a major economic boom (e.g., the 1960s Kennedy Boom) essentially everyone experiences animal spirits  to use a popular Keynesian term  but not everyone experiences ebullience (i.e., rapid ascent up the Maslow hierarchy). Some of those excited, but frustrated animal spirits-only folks may trigger negative events (e.g., wars). As the ratio of ebullient actors to animal spirits-only folks declines, the Maslow Window begins to close and political support for Apollo-style programs decays. For example, by 1966 the Vietnam war was already weakening societal ebullience during the Apollo Maslow Window (~1958 to 1969), which ultimately resulted in President Nixons cancellation of the last three Apollo missions to the Moon.

What is SOC (Self-Organized Criticality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality

Dr. Bruce Cordell: The brainchild of Danish physicist Per Bak (1948-2002)  one of the most original people in science  SOC is an emergent property of complex systems whereby they organize themselves into a critical state such that rapid changes, including catastrophes, can occur. You can see the famous Bak sandpile conceptual model of SOC in Aschwanden (2010) as well as in Bak (1996),How Nature Works.

The captivating assertion of social scientist and SOC enthusiast Gregory Brunk (2002) that,

Virtually all aggregate-level, monumental events are somehow caused by the process of self-organized criticality,

Is there evidence for SOC catalyzed Wars?

Dr. Bruce Cordell:

Wars and the Evidence for Complexity serious conflicts or wars are typical features of the years just before a Maslow Window or early in the Window itself.

The classic example of such a pre- or early Maslow Window conflict is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962  early in the Apollo Maslow Window (1959-69)  when conflict over Soviet offensive missiles emplaced in Cuba almost led to a major nuclear exchange with the U.S. Other examples include the Napoleonic Wars (Lewis and Clark Maslow Window), the Mexican war (Dr. Livingstone/Suez Maslow Window), and the Spanish-American War (Peary/Panama Maslow Window).

This model suggests the current Korean tensions  including their potential for nuclear war involving N and S Korea and possibly other nearby states (e.g., Japan)  are a harbinger of the next Maslow Window expected by 2015. Plus the seemingly irrational provocations by North Korea resulting in a tinderbox, complex, and sensitive situation, are actually the types of interactions wed expect as we approach a critical Maslow state.

Dynamics of SOC  The Gap Equation

Baks Gap Equation governs the systems evolution from weak SOC to the fractal, self organized critical state.

The model is so general that it can also be thought of as a model for macroeconomics. The individual sites represent economic agents, and the random numbers f1 represent their utility functions. Agents modify their behavior to increase their wealth. The agents with lowest utility functions disappear and are replaced by others. This, in turn, affects other agents and changes their utility functions.

Baks quote above could apply just as well to agents of particular space projects modifying their behavior and vying for funding at NASA (or elsewhere) and/or Macro-Engineering Projects likewise seeking support of all types. Agents and projects with the lowest utility functions soon disappear (a Darwinian principle), no matter how big they are  just ask Constellation advocates!

The Bottomline is: This compatibility with Baks law indicates that space projects and MEPsand wars are most likely governed by SOC. The Space Project/MEP System is most fractal just before and during a Maslow Window. As in Baks computer simulations, transitions into and out of the strong SOC state are abrupt just before (e.g., in 1901; in 1958) or just after the Maslow Windows (e.g., in 1914 and in 1970). While in the critical state, large changes (i.e., great explorations, MEPs, major wars) can occur in response to even a minor stimulus. (My emphasis, JF)

Bak also hints at predictability (by analogy with his sandpile model, he refers to major changes during the critical SOC state as avalanches)

While its tempting to dismiss this model as just another scary fantasy, please be reminded that medium-size wars have already been identified as SOC phenomena by National Aademy of Sciences member Donald Turcotte and his colleagues as early as 1998. According to Bak, a complex system exhibits SOC only if it has some form of power-law scaling, called fractal by Mandelbrot (1963). Based on their size-frequency plots for wars, Roberts and Turcotte (1998) conclude that,

The results we have shown indicate that world order behaves as a self-organized critical system independent of the efforts made to control and stabilize interactions between people and countries; and wars, like forest fires, are SOC processes.

Although Roberts and Turcotte (1998) only had data up to 150,000 deaths per war, the fact that medium-size wars are almost pure SOC indicates that the major wars of Maslow Windows are also fractal, as suggested recently for World War I  historian Niall Ferguson suggested recently that WW I was a product of self organized criticality.

 Major hot wars (e.g., W. W. I) line up with each peak in the 56 year energy cycle, over the last 200 years. Its an empirical fact that they do

Its important to keep in mind that the long wave is not always exactly 56 years; it typically varies between 55 and 60. So expecting major wars to occur exactly at the peak in 1969 is unrealistic, although major wars over the last 200 years are quite close. Please see Joshua Goldstein and others for an in-depth discussion of the relation of long waves and wars.

Thus far Dr. Cordell.

What Do Long Wave cycles look like charted over long stretches of time?

A sample long wave chart by Charles Hugh Smith at his site oftwominds.com, used with permission (Thanks, Charles!) This chart is annotated if you have never seen the concept of this once in a lifetime cycle charted against history

http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2011/Kcycle.png

You will notice the peaks and wars that can frame, and even terminate great Maslow Window booms (Jeffersonian Polk Taylor Fillmore Pierce-Buchanan(~1847-60), TR-Taft (1903-13), JFK-LBJ-Nixon (1960-72) eras)

Usually these have been at least involving maneuvers between great powers even if conducted in the Third World, i.e. the TR era cycles interventions in Latin American, (in a way conducted with one eye on Germany), the LBJ era Vietnam intervention (one eye on Russia and China)but in this upcoming cycle a unique feature now is the danger that EMP weapons can give vast leverage to a Third World combatant (the equivalent of successful barbarian raids vs. an Imperial capital).

Dr. Cordell has written:

In fact, the most important Wild Card of the 2015 Maslow Window is the date of the major war expected in the 2020s. If it comes in the late 2020s, human civilization may expand to the Moon and possibly even Mars. If it starts closer to 2020  in addition to the tragic loss of life and property  human expansion into the cosmos may be postponed until near 2071, when the late 21st Century Maslow Window is expected to open.

Joseph Friedlander: A thesis of this article is that rebooting the economy is necessary and contrary to popular belief war is not only unnecessary to do that, it is destructive and a danger to future progress

War per se does not help progress contrary to popular belief: what it can do BETWEEN MAJOR POWERS (fighting for their national lives so they take it seriously enough that anyone offering a bureaucratic excuse is eventually told theres a war on! as a self explanatory excuse to get with the program) is accelerate approval processes, and financing processes. It takes the brakes off. It cannot gun the engine of innovation itself other than through catalytic effect (A previously successful effort to develop the Internet, for example, may catalyze further developments more quickly than otherwise possible. But this, to paraphrase Eric K. Drexler, is an old story of old tools helping to build newer more productive tools).

If the tech pipeline of prospective innovations cannot be kept filled, despite any funding level within reason, only a trickle can come out.

FDR asked Congress to declare war against the Japanese Empire, and the relevant tech developments being in the pipeline, four years later two mushroom clouds rose over Japan, and an Empire fell. Nixon asked Congress to declare war against cancer, and (the prospective developments not being in the pipeline) many of the original Congressmen voting the funds have themselves died of cancer.

Note that the amount of prospective innovation in the pipeline could presumably be increased by increasing the scientifically literate and tinkering populationif a determined national effort was made using tool kits (see von Hippel, below.)(A tool kit is a prepackaged tech aid package to greatly ease small user groups experience in producing a limited range of much easier than normal and acceptable quality output in proper format for a manufacturer to take their design and produce it. An analogy familiar to all Windows users would be the equivalent of Microsoft wizards that enable you to click next, next, next and input parametric data to produce a result that might take (gasp) skilled manual programming or at least command line skills.

By reducing the skill input presumably we could go from 1% of the population being tech innovators to as much as 10% as long as the incentives were there (both motivational and financial). X Prizes again could be a huge motivator, i.e. large prizes available to the first (self-financed) group able to produce a given result (within parameters) and the second (a lesser prize, but to encourage many entrants for a richer field of entry).

In the press of wartime heat, Funds (with a capital F) suddenly become available to deploy innovations thought of in private sector heads for many years beforehand. An example not commonly known: No fighter not on the drawing boards by Pearl Harbor saw combat before V-J day in the USA. And those innovations in waiting had often been debugged by their private inventors by decades of nickel and dime tinkering (see von Hippel, below). Their successful deployment is of course chalked up to a flawless government program rather than individual and small group genius taking pains over time. Those who know the story of Barnes Wallis appreciate to quote Wikipedia,  the difficulties Wallis often faced in persuading those in authority or who controlled funding sources to support his ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Wallis

Indeed, the more offices to visit to ask for permission, the larger the units of business academic or government to navigate, the less time and effort is left to actually innovate (leaving entirely aside the modern tangle of IP issues where it can be literally forbidden for everyone on the team to study the topic togetheryeah, that helps a team/sarcasm)

In the end, government innovation usually involves picking the best brains from the private sector and financing their creativity together (as in the Manhattan Project) to fill a tech pipeline with a new nascent technology or subsidizing deployment by private sector actors (massive government financing through various tricks of industrial plant or kit) of privately developed tech ALREADY IN THE PIPELINE.

This is not written to depreciate government per se but strictly with an eye to determining what really works in what circumstances to generate maximal national growth and tech power for use in a Maslow Window context.

We know that during a Maslow Window things can move quickly. I am searching for an explanation as to how that happens.

There may be the equivalent of government cloisters of gifted minds (national laboratories, great university labs) but these come from the private sector (recruitment) and return there (at least for collaborative purposes). Their output is often good but expensive relative to what it would be in the private sector. (Not that waste is not possible in the private sectorit particularly is a problem in massive favored government contractorsbut in a way this is a perversion of government spending itself, as influential firms are a part of the government in all but name. (If you doubt this, try cutting favored corporations allocations, or yearly tax credits, or see how many former government people land as if by golden parachute to lucrative private jobs) For many years the great aerospace companies kept the government product sections walled off from the private product sections lest bad habits of over documentation (mil-spec disease) and overspending spread. That itself is proof that the cost structure in government is higher.

So during wartime a sudden flood of wealth from the government enables deployment of long deferred (thus many-iteration debugged) private worker or user developed innovations (including, surprisingly, hobbyistswho was the Frenchman who allegedly said that A hobby is the most intensive form of study?)

This is literally unbelievable to most people, who see the impressive facade of NASA or the NSA (National Security Agency) and leave shaking in their boots at how cool they are, but you dont suppose they raise their personnel in Matrix-like incubators do they? If a person does sufficiently good work outside, or shows sufficient academic or hobby (hacker) progress, he is hired. If an innovation shows enough promise, it is duplicated, or even contracted for from the sea of privately nurtured expertise (The giant tracked crawler transporter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter for the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle was not the result of an internal NASA program but a contracted-for (by Marion Power Shovel) adaptation of best mining practice with some NASA-added tweaks.) NASA itself never claimed sole ownership of many developments but always referred to the government industry team of 300,000 people.

But the private companies themselves are often as inefficient as government because they too are (too often) large bureaucratic organizations. My claim is, contrary to Eisenhowers famous Farewell Address,

=====================================================

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html

the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nations scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present  and is gravely to be regarded.

What President Eisenhower understandably believed (after industry tours) to be task forces of scientists were really, in my understanding, working groups assembled from smaller cells of individuals who had developed the facility of working together productively. But there is no doubt what is more impressive to a distinguished visitorthe lone inventor or the buzzing corporate laboratory workshop. Corporate management would have wanted him impressed that the Federal dollars keep flowing..

To defeat any claim that I am making mystical claims for the efficiencies of large government contractorsobserve independent testimony from

a wonderful work: DEMOCRATIZING INNOVATION- by Eric Von Hippel

freely downloadable at, http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books/DI/DemocInn.pdf Von Hippel makes this point:

an early study of innovation in scientific instruments documented that

nearly 80 percent of the major improvements commercialized by instru-

ment manufacturers had been developed by users (von Hippel 1976). When

I later discussed this finding with managers in instrument firms, most of

them were astonished. They insisted that all the innovations in the study

sample had been developed within manufacturing firms. They could be

convinced otherwise only when supplied with actual publications by user-

scientists describing user-built prototypes of those instrument improve-

mentsprototypes developed from 5 to 7 years before any instrument firm

had sold a functionally equivalent commercial product.

In retrospect it should be obvious that a small focused team can move quicker.

Even Rudyard Kipling could have told us that:

===============================================

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/winners.html

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

=======================================

(So now we reconsider the World War 2 tech boom: The 1940s deployment of dreams now fully mature that sprang from the 1910s to the 1930s) This only works during major wars between major powers, threatening enough that the bureaucracy is panicked into partial withdrawal: The bureaucratic institutional default of Lets see is temporarily switched for DO SOMETHINGNOW! But suppose you have a lopsided struggle like the US and (fill in the blank, what one cynic called our Asian enemy of the week, (really decade) Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans) on a dramatically lower tech level, then only minor developments (better hot weather or thermal cold weather gear) are deployed, but not transformative cycle-stretching inventions (nuclear power, jet engines) deployed in struggles between major powers. Indeed, wars between major and minor powers may dissipate capital on both sides, enabling effective tech deployment rates LESS than otherwise possible

One way to think of this is that a backlog of as yet undeployed inventions exists in the tech pipeline. (first read a concept very similar to this in an essay on predicting futures in the SF magazine Analog, in the 1990s, wish I could give proper attribution, readers please chime in if you know that author) to be deployed during key boom times (this was before the concept of the Maslow Window was developed and publicized) OR if the deployment rush does not happen for whatever historical reasonto lie dormant for decades as each dribbled out into a much narrower tech deployment channel.

But between 1953 and 1963 for example, we went from Mach 2 aircraft being invented to Mach 25 orbital spacecraft being deployedin 1968 to Mach 35 escape velocity spacecraftand since then nothing fundamentally new in manned aerospace. (Note that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty removed by agreement with the Russians the prospect of a lunar land rush/arms race that had driven previous Maslow Windows) The urgency went out, and the wind went out of the tech sails.

As Arthur C. Clarke had previously noted in Profiles Of The Future (1962) this tech curve of increased speed from the early 50s, to the early 60s would if continued till the year 2010, have placed the speed of light itself within mans grasp. (Clarke called it a discontinuity in the speed curve, but I wonder). (I remember reading at least 2 cold war science fiction novels that postulated the US-SU (Soviet Union) contest going to the stage of interstellar spacecraft (and presumably rival star empires). Certainly that kind of extended deployment technology race would have been feasible, even if not the literally stellar results obtained. But if they had been

In the book The Year 2000 by Herman Kahn (Freely downloadable) http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/kahn_yr2000.pdf (WARNING 88 megabyte file, dont download without knowing what youre getting into)

He advanced in one spot the thesis (greatly condensed here) that every 5 years since 1945 a complete generational technology transformation had occurred as complete as that between 1919 (end of first World War) and 1939 (beginning of second World War). Summarizing greatly with the bomber sequence B-29, B-36, B-47, B-52, B-58, B-70 (That last never actually deployed, but woulda coulda shoulda) From 1945 to 1970and then the feeling of urgency and crisis went away, and so did the rapid tech deployment boom.

So the idea of a narrow range of years, a window to deploy tech or have it remain theoretical, is not merely a supposition but in some areas may be demonstratable fact. Yes, after the fact we can play woulda coulda shoulda gamesbut others have pointed out how, for example, a technology like fuel cells may be developed and if not taking off in the next say 10 years or so, gets its industrial niche occupied by another development and sits on the shelf for over a hundred years after that as a laboratory demonstration. There is a time and tide to tech as well as the lives of men.

Another way in which the Maslow Window cycle has been uniquely abused this time around (ie the natural state of affairs messed with to the point where aberrations not seen in previous cycles may appear this time) is the extraordinary educational decay in sub-college public education in the USA(and through academic adminstration gamesmanship, analogous but different distorting effects in the quality output of still functional higher institutions of learning)

Historically, to be fair, there have always been functional illiterates in the USA. But usually these were acknowledged dropouts, not those who actually had done the time in the system. Usually those could read at least at a functional level.

(In an old jail closed in the 1980s, for example, the oldest surviving etched graffiti, by accounts I have read, was stunning in its penmanship and even featured original poems. The newer graffiti, in effortless perfect marker, was illiterate, coarse and left the impression on the reader of societal decline. Anecdotal, for sure. But indicative?)

Today, however, for example half the population of Detroit is thought to be functionally illiteratethe vast majority having been through school at high funding rates. This would simply not have been believed in the post 1957 Sputnik educational funding rush. It is not merely that American urban schools are not globally competitivebut rather that their graduates are apparently unable to even maintain the economy of their local area at the same level. Once those a step above functional illiteracy had practical job training and apprenticeship pathways that worked to get a good factory jobenabling a family supporting income at a reasonable rate of effort and outputnow such a prospect for someone growing up in a urban school system is rare indeed. More common of the flavor of today (few actually do this) is to study industrial theory for a while in some university courses, find that there is no actual market outside teaching for industrial theory, work in some low-paying retail job for which your university time was non-relevant and when the economy contracts be forced to public support.

But this very decline in educational quality and career training result (coupled with the decline in the industrial sector which sharply limits hiring for those who do succeed) can bring people to a tipping point ready to accept otherwise unacceptable whole system package changes.

Is it possible this is a manifestation of self organized criticality (SOC); emergence of a critical state in the US national education system. During the fractal Maslow Window, when system agents (e.g., corporations needing workers, agencies, competing countries, individuals personally squeezed by the collapse of hiring who thus need to upgrade their skill base to reemerge competitive ) interact and evolve most intensely, the system is vulnerable to rapid, major transitions such as (for example) massive training pulses or spreads of new techniques. Also coming with this is the confidence to try new things as a result of previous career steps up. Outside the Maslow Window the system is less fractal (low SOC index), counter-ebullient, and requires several decades to self organize again into a critical state.

Another self-organized criticality possibility might be simply this: We are used to old industries dying and new ones being born to take their place. In this latest, truly messed with cycle, (characterized by unprecedented control of the economy by the government and its contractors) old industries have been dying (Chrysler, GM) but new industries have not been born. We are even used to old cities based on old industries dying (Detroit, East St. Louis) but the new cities and their new industries in many cases have been built (sometimes literally in the case of Las Vegas) on foundations of sandthe so called FIRE (Finance, insurance and real estate) economy, taken as an abstraction for a transaction economy which does not create wealth in terms of needed product but transfers wealth around because of direct or indirect government mandates for services AT A NON MARKET PRICE. (ie if schools were better all over and taxes were hugely lower so would be the effective cost of real estatemedical care would be cheaper if allowed to import generic drugs from overseas at 1/20th the price and the emergency clinics not mandated to serve anyone who walks in the doorpeople might choose to self insure rather than facing a legal requirement forcing you to do business with a car insurance company.) In all these cases, the FIRE economy relies on legal mandates (often literally written by their lobbies and sent to lawmakers as model legislation) to force you to do business with them at their price. If you could refuse, the prices would have to decline to be attractive. Ah, but you cant refuse full price, please

Inflexibility in an economy is like inflexibility in a personal working styleit makes it hard to adapt to changing circumstances education where you do not have the right to opt out of local taxes if you wish to send your kids to private schoolinvestments where you cannot put IRA money into a friends new tech business informally but must send it through Wall Street tollbooths first in each case, rents are extracted and inferior (non custom) quality of service built in. And worse, it eats up funds available for real tech and real change. This is no more a real base for a real economy with good paying, competitive world class output than Detroit is an example of healthy world class auto industry.

Politically connected and good enough industries protected for example by arranged government purchases of cop cars or fleet sales cannot compete against world-class auto exporters whose products are greatly preferred by private buyers (and break down less often)

In terms of SOC self organized criticality, this loss of competition also is reaching a critical state and MUST be dealt with soon if the US is to reap the benefits of the Maslow Window (rather than its overseas competitors)

This is not the first time that the US has had powerful rivals during a Maslow WindowFrance and Britain in the early 1800s, the same in the mid 1800s, Germany in the early 1900s, Russia in the 1960s. But this IS the first time since the 19th century that a rival of the relative size of China is emerging to compete with the USA, and with such an opposite ascending trajectory vs the declining US one

The US must reverse its descent or other nations will reap the primary benefits of the Maslow window.

We will be passed by China unless we get a move on

New York Times (8/15/10) concurs.

After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the worlds second-largest economy behind the United States.

Brian Wang of Next Big Future projects China passing in PPP terms (purchasing equivalent) if current trends continue, between 2016-18. The IMF computes 2016. Wiki uses those stats here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_future_GDP_(PPP)_estimates People who have problems with this mostly concede its possible a decade later. But by then it could be in absolute dollar vs yuan terms. The point is, there is a huge momentum to getting an economy moving forwardor backward, terribly hard to change, and even more wrenching to attempt going from deceleration to acceleration. President Obamas call to double exports http://www.soundmoneyproject.org/?p=3913

http://www.nlc.org/news-center/nations-cities-weekly/articles/2011/may/columnist-foot-dragging-on-exports-a-metro-focus-to-the-rescue

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-16/politics/obama.exports_1_export-promotion-cabinet-initiative-report-american-goods-and-services?_s=PM:POLITICS

was as laudable as it was patheticit is like the principal of a failing school calling on the students to top the district next year with no real changes in curriculums, study habits, parental support, etc. There is an entire ecosystem of support systems behind every systemic success or failure and we are doing nothing sufficient to change thisanother SOC opportunity (ie incipient crisis) in the near future.

In a guest post for Brian Wangs blog https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/setting-up-industrial-village-on-moon.html I commented on the kinds of transactions Jane Jacobs once noted: Transactions of decline and of ascent that can tear down the industrial vibrancy of an area (USA) or build it up. (China.) There I said,

how Chinese quality has gone from toylike (older readers will remember when Made In Japan was a cheap-shoddy-goods joke) to masterful in 20-25 years. Much of that was achieved by talent diffusion throughout a growing, learning and cross-hiring economy. Notice that they recently unveiled something like 10 new models of small airplanes. There are more car companies in China than US companies have models of cars. You learn by doing. You forget by not doing. Transactions of ascent. Transactions of decline. Which works for a group, a people, a nation?

Bruce Cordells articles on Asias ascent:

http://21stcenturywaves.com/2011/03/05/standard-chartered-banks-new-super-cycle-points-to-the-new-apollo-style-space-age/

http://21stcenturywaves.com/2010/08/21/china-surges-to-2-and-contemplates-more-freedom-the-implications-for-space/

http://21stcenturywaves.com/2008/06/22/10-reasons-why-china-is-good-for-space/

http://21stcenturywaves.com/2011/01/23/state-of-the-wave-10-space-trends-for-2011/

If the USA does not use the Maslow Window, others may do the hard work to become the next tech leading power and the US will be in the position of Great Britain after the Second World Warwith a struggling economy, dependent on foreign cash flows, with huge restrictions on what you can buy and import, (including foreign fuels) and in general be a bad place to do business. If people of ability, not wanting to spend their hoped for brilliant careers in a place with no opportunity, decide to leave and work elsewhere, that can only accelerate the path of national decline.

Or, we can choose to fix what needs fixing, clear the decks of what needs clearing, and face the upcoming futureand its Maslow Windowwith the determination to make the USA the tech leader till the next tech window around 2071. We cannot control the winds of the zeitgeist. But we can control how we choose to angle our sails. I say set course for national success.

In conclusion the USA had better get its act together and change on a national level or face the fact that a Maslow Window comes to the world but once a lifetime, use it or lose it. If so AND we can keep out of a major war we can benefit from the full potential 10 years of the Maslow Window.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks
The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company, now majority owned by Toshiba. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety.

The final module  the containment water tank  has been installed at the second AP1000 unit under construction at Sanmen in Chinas Zhejiang province.

Sanmen unit 1 is expected to be the first AP1000 to begin operating, in September 2016. Haiyang 1 is expected to start up by the end of 2016. Containment tests have already been successfully conducted at both units. All four Chinese AP1000s are scheduled to be in operation by the end of 2017.

Four AP1000 reactors are being built in the USA  two each at Vogtle and Summer  while three AP1000s are also proposed for the Moorside site in the UK.

Four AP1000 reactors are being built in the United States: two at Vogtle (units 3&4) and two at VC Summer (units 2&3). All four reactors are identical and the two projects run in parallel, with the first two reactors (Vogtle 3 and Summer 2) planned to be commissioned in 2018 and the remaining two (Vogtle 4 and Summer 3) one year later in 2019. Both projects are running approximately 3 years behind schedule.

The AP1000 is a two-loop pressurized water reactor planned to produce a net power output of 1,117 MWe. It is an evolutionary improvement on the AP600, essentially a more powerful model with roughly the same footprint.

A design objective was to be less expensive to build than other Generation III designs, by both using existing technology, and needing less equipment than competing three or four cooling loop designs. However, recent AP1000 construction projects in the US, such as Vogtle, and in China, are currently more expensive and are taking longer to build when compared to some other Generation III designs. The AP1000 design is considerably more compact in land usage than most existing PWRs, and uses under a fifth of the concrete and rebar reinforcing of older designs

The CB20 module is lowered on to Sanmen 2s containment (Image: CNEC)
Saudi Arabia has become the focus of a lot of potential bad scenarios.

Hot and cold war conflicts with Iran could get worse.

Saudi Arabia could splinter.

Executions in Saudi Arabia was  Saudi Arabia saying, The gloves are off,'

There is now no hope of diplomatic solution in Syria or Yemen.

Saudi Arabia put together a coalition to fight in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has put together an anti-terrorism (aka anti Iran and anti-Syria) group

Saudi Arabia is the fifth of Eurasiagroup Top Ten 2016 Risks

The Saudi kingdom will face growing and destabilizing discord within the royal family this year, and will be increasingly isolated internationally. This will lead Saudi rulers to act more aggressively in their near-abroad and will further heighten instability in the Middle East.

The threat of intra-royal family strife is on the rise. A scenario of open conflict, unimaginable prior to King Salmans January 2015 ascension, has now become realistic. The core problem is that Salman has moved boldly to empower his 30-year old son, Mohammed bin Salman, almost certainly in preparation to make him heir apparent, fueling frustration among competitors within the royal family. This rivalry is unlikely to lead to near-term Saudi collapse, but the credibility of this scenarioand the general trend of growing instabilityin a nation critical to the global economy make it a top risk.

Salmans radical reshaping of power within the family is happening in a Saudi Arabia grappling with $40 oil, negative demographics, and an undiversified economy. The era of power-sharing among a small number of brothers has been replaced with one in which a shrinking pie is divvied up among hundreds of cousins. The risk is that a group of princes could strike back by attempting to oust bin Salman from his position as deputy crown prince, or by publicly opposing the king. Political instability in a country that produces roughly 10.5% of global oil production would pose significant risk to every market participant.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is more geopolitically isolated than at any other point in the last several decades. The announcement of a Sunni Islamic military alliance is mostly window dressing. Members of this diverse group dont have the political will or mutual trust to develop a military arm to confront the Islamic State, and several of them, including Pakistan, apparently didnt know theyd joined when the alliance was first announced. That aside, even the most deafening declaration of political collaboration cant obscure the fact that Saudi Arabia is losing influence over its historic Sunni allies

Riyadhs Egyptian and Pakistani partners dodged requests to support the kingdoms military intervention in Yemen. Key Gulf Cooperation Council states (and ostensible Saudi allies) are hedging their positions in relation to an ever more influential Iran. OPEC is in shambles. Egypt has backed Moscows pro-Assad intervention in Syria, directly opposing the kingdom. Turkey hews to a position closer to Riyadhs, but is also an increasingly infuriating competitor for leadership of the Sunni world. The Iran deal and US response to the Arab Spring leave Saudi leaders questioning the depth of Americas commitment to their security

The key source of Saudi anxiety is Iran. Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, views escalating tensions against the Saudi kingdom as a particularly useful way to whip up political support at home. The threat will intensify because, soon to be free of sanctions, Irans economy will strengthen, and its government will have more money to spend in support of regional clients. And unlike Saudi Arabias, Tehrans alliances are consolidating: Iraq is drawing closer, and it is likely Assad will be around a good while longer.

A more isolated Saudi Arabia will double down on protecting its interests, and will be sorely tempted to act upon the saying that offense is the best defense in 2016. Riyadh will continue to support anti-Assad rebels in Syria, and ramp up that aid, despite the oppositions inability to effectively challenge the Syrian president. Even a shooting war with Iran is possible in extremis; the kingdom will push back wherever it views Tehran to be gaining an advantage. More generally, expect an isolated and domestically weaker kingdom to lash out in new ways.
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" ... How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public... "

[From George Washington's farewell address.]

Other Quotes:

"Don't worry about genius and don't worry about not being clever. Trust rather to hard work, perseverance and determination. The best motto for a long march is ' Don't grumble. Plug on.'....Be honest. Be loyal. Be kind. Remember that the hardest thing to acquire is the faculty of being unselfish. As a quality it is one of the finest attributes of manliness." Sir Frederick Treves

"...To be clear, the Constitution of the United States of America is the United States of America. They are one and the same. Any individual or agency which seeks to subvert the Constitution and wage political and/or rhetorical war on it, are self-declared enemies of the United States of America, as they are subverting and waging war on the United States of America." - Pat Dollard

The truth to the matter is that Obama lies but he does it with such finess that the easily fooled are easily fooled. ~ Norman E. Hooben

"Going for the grandest illusion of all, [Obama] ... told the New York Times: 'We've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles.' Excuse me while I pick my jaw off the ground. Everyone knows -- or should know -- that putting more and more of the government in charge of more and more of the economy is entirely inconsistent with free-market principles. This means that the president's statement to the contrary is what is known as a big lie." --columnist Diana West



When you trust a stranger more so than your friend, you become stranger than the stranger; Barrack Husein Obama is a stranger. - Norman E. Hooben

We the peopleWe the people now have a New World Order that we the people did not order. Norman E. Hooben

"We are now in a great civil war of words and you have the honor of participating as a true patriot. The battle has not been won but you will be there when we are victorious. The pen is mightier than the sword and you will inscribe your name in the book of freedomand that, my friend is an honor

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves ." -

Winston Churchill

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

-

Ronald Reagan

Thomas Sowell

For those who promote a race they are called, "racists". For those that promote American they are called "American". For 'American' is a 'concept' and no racial tones are tolerated either in shades or sounds. -Norman E. Hooben

(In reference to Lourdes Galvan of San Antonio, Texas racial bigotry regarding American military heroes.)

Note to NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA (

Hola! I know you are watching):

Will Rogers never met Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. -

N. E. Hooben, July 2008

Harvard University was once an all boys school...today they have no balls at all. - N. E. Hooben

I will stand with the Constitution For The United States of America should the political winds shift in an ugly direction

Politicians are like vampires...

Whether its blood or money they want to suck it out of you till you die. ~ N. E. Hooben

(Norman E. Hooben in response to a writer who complained of not having the honor of serving in the U.S. Military)Back in the days of "The Lone Ranger" program, someone would ask, "Who is that masked man?" People need to start asking that question about Barack Obama. -N.E. HoobenThe Police State of Massachusetts is now imposing laws against nature. Massachusetts is by far the most un-Constitutional government of the State, by the State, and for the State than any among the the fifty that hold a star on the banner of freedom. It is run by Socialists and hypocritical so-called Christiansthe worst among them are the Catholics who go to Church on Sunday and forget what they Prayed for on Monday. - Norman E. Hooben - "A proud Catholic proud of my Faith. A proud Catholic NOT so proud of my Church!" - July 16th 2008 N. E. Hooben

When a people are satisfied with receiving gifts paid with their own taxes as a way of life Anarchy is sure to follow. - Fred Boutin 2008

From the first time I heard about the boogey-man as a child to the first time I got shot at in Vietnam, nothing in my entire lifetime, THAT'S NOTHING! has put more fear into me than this man Obama. - Norman E. Hooben - July 2008

We are here for only a mini-second in the sands of time. Then we become the dust that makes the sand; and the Hand of God molds us anew. Take care my friend and may God Bless... - Norman E. Hooben on the death of our dearly beloved pet dog, Stirling

The evidence is overwhelming!

In order to save America we must destroy the Socialst Marxist Party... - N. E. Hooben

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." -- Josef Stalin --

When it comes to lying, prudent people are guided by a Higher Authority driven by thou shall not written in stone. Whereas Bill Clinton has no Higher Authority to guide him, thou shall not has no conscious objections; for without a conscience there is no guilt. - Norman Hooben

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. - Adolph Hitler

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. - James Madison, the Federalists Papers

There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some Exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back And stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked,'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly, the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America.

The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time.

One should always remember 'There is no such thing as a free Lunch!' Also, 'You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

You apparently don't share a sense of patriotism, Americanism, freedomism, or whatever kind of 'ism' that true Americans believe in... You do however, display a bit of socialism, communism, marxism or whatever kind of 'ism' that you make excuses for... ~ Norman E. Hooben (in response to an Obama supporter's views about the ACS census)

A nation that knows not from where it came, knows not where it is going! Today, Americans know too little about the foundations of our nation. The result is a nation now in chaos, its people unable to discern what is wrong with the transformation (paradigm shift) of our society and form of government that, if left unchecked, will destroy every facet of freedom, liberty and justice. The price of freedom is vigilance; the price of vigilance is knowledge. Many of America's founding documents are now available on the web. ~

Learn USA
Hi! My name is Boy. I'm a male bi-coloured tabby cat. Ever since I discovered that Malcolm Turnbull's dogs were allowed to blog, I have been pestering Clarencegirl to allow me a small space on North Coast Voices.

A false flag musing: I have noticed one particular voice on Facebook which is Pollyanna-positive on the subject of the Port of Yamba becoming a designated cruise ship destination. What this gentleman doesnt disclose is that, as a principal of Middle Star Pty Ltd, he could be thought to have a potential pecuniary interest due to the fact that this corporation (which has had an office in Grafton since 2012) provides consultancy services and tourism business development services.

A religion & local government musing: On 11 October 2017 Clarence Valley Council has the Church of Jesus Christ Development Fund Inc in Sutherland Local Court No. 6 for a small claims hearing. It would appear that there may be a little issue in rendering unto Caesar. On 19 September 2017 an ordained minister of a religion (which was named by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in relation to 40 instances of historical child sexual abuse on the NSW North Coast) read the Opening Prayer at Councils ordinary monthly meeting. Earlier in the year an ordained minister (from a church network alleged to have supported an overseas orphanage closed because of child abuse claims in 2013) read the Opening Prayer and an ordained minister (belonging to yet another church network accused of ignoring child sexual abuse in the US and racism in South Africa) read the Opening Prayer at yet another ordinary monthly meeting. Nice one councillors - you are covering yourselves with glory!

An investigative musing: Newcastle Herald, 12 August 2017: The states corruption watchdog has been asked to investigate the finances of the Awabakal Aboriginal Local Land Council, less than 12 months after the troubled organisation was placed into administration by the state government. The Newcastle Herald understands accounting firm PKF Lawler made the decision to refer the land council to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after discovering a number of irregularities during an audit of its financial statements. The results of the audit were recently presented to a meeting of Awabakal members. Administrator Terry Lawler did not respond when contacted by the Herald and a PKF Lawler spokesperson said it was unable to comment on the matter. Given the intricate web of company relationships that existed with at least one former board member it is not outside the realms of possibility that, if ICAC accepts this referral, then United Land Councils Limited (registered New Zealand) and United First Peoples Syndications Pty Ltd(registered Australia) might be interviewed. North Coast Voices readers will remember that on 15 August 2015 representatives of these two companied gave evidence before NSW Legislative Council General Purpose Standing Committee No. 6 INQUIRY INTO CROWN LAND. This evidence included advocating for a Yamba mega port.

A Nationals musing: Word around the traps is that NSW Nats MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis has been talking up the notion of cruise ships visiting the Clarence River estuary. Fair dinkum! That man can be guaranteed to run with any bad idea put to him. I'm sure one or more cruise ships moored in the main navigation channel on a regular basis for one, two or three days is something other regular river users will really welcome. *pause for appreciation of irony* The draft of the smallest of the smaller cruise vessels is 3 metres and it would only stay safely afloat in that channel. Even the Yamba-Iluka ferry has been known to get momentarily stuck in silt/sand from time to time in Yamba Bay and even a very small cruise ship wouldn't be able to safely enter and exit Iluka Bay. You can bet your bottom dollar operators of cruise lines would soon be calling for dredging at the approach to the river mouth - and you know how well that goes down with the local residents.

A local councils musing: Which Northern Rivers council is on a low-key NSW Office of Local Government watch list courtesy of feet dragging by a past general manager?

A serial pest musing: I'm sure the Clarence Valley was thrilled to find that a well-known fantasist is active once again in the wee small hours of the morning treading a well-worn path of accusations involving police, local business owners and others.

An investigative musing: Which NSW North Coast council is batting to have the longest running code of conduct complaint investigation on record?

A fun fact musing: An estimated 24,000 whales migrated along the NSW coastline in 2016 according to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the migration period is getting longer.

A which bank? musing: Despite a net profit last year of $9,227 million the Commonwealth Bank still insists on paying below Centrelink deeming rates interest on money held in Pensioner Security Accounts. One local wag says hes waiting for the first bill from the bank charging him for the privilege of keeping his pension dollars at that bank.

A Daily Examiner musing: Just when you thought this newspaper could sink no lower under News Corp management, it continues to give column space to Andrew Bolt.

A thought to ponder musing: In case of bushfire or flood - do you have an emergency evacuation plan for the family pet?

An adoption musing: Every week on the NSW North Coast a number of cats and dogs find themselves without a home. If you want to do your bit and give one bundle of joy a new family, contact Happy Paws on 0419 404 766 or your local council pound.
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The owners of an over 50-year-old church in Williamsburg are opposing a proposal to landmark the building, and part of the local community board is now in agreement with them, DNAinfo reports. Historic preservationists recommended landmarking the Ukrainian Church in Exile's Beaux-Arts style building located at 177 South 5th Street, but leaders of the church say that such a move would only add to the church's costs.

Members of Brooklyn Community Board One's land use committee supported this decision and voted against landmarking the property.

The Church purchased the building in the 1960s, and in the intervening years has raised over $2 million to maintain the historic character of the building. The Church administration argues that landmarking the building will increase maintenance costs. Furthermore they say the fact that the Church has maintained the building so far means they no intention of selling the building either.

Historic preservationists who work with the New York Landmark Conservancy, who recommended the building be landmarked, told DNAinfo that such a move will actually allow the Church to apply for grants set aside for such religious buildings and that the city itself has grants for upkeep of the facade on landmarked buildings.

The full board still has to vote on the landmarks petition this month, even though their decision isn't binding and acts more as a recommendation to the city's Landmarks Commission. Prior to it being a church, the building on South 5th Street was formerly home to a courthouse and a Williamsburg Trust Company bank.

The development in Williamsburg follows a similar ongoing disagreement on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, where the owners of the historic Provident Loan Bank building are opposed to the building being landmarked.



Don't Landmark Historic Ukrainian Church, Community Board Recommends [DNAinfo]

 Provident Loan's LES Building Gets Support For Landmarking [Curbed]
Michael Slager is led into court on September 10, 2015. Photo: Pool/2015 Getty Images

Michael Slager, the former South Carolina police officer charged with murder in the April shooting of Walter Scott, was released from prison on Monday after posting bail. Slager, 34, has been in jail since three days after the shooting, when video surfaced of the white North Charleston officer shooting the 50-year-old black man in the back as he ran away. Judge Clifton Newman set bond at $500,000 and set October 31 as his trial date. Slager must remain under house arrest until then.

Slagers trial will be delayed because Ninth Circuit solicitor Scarlett Wilson is also the lead prosecutor in the trial of alleged Emanuel AME Church shooter Dylann Roof, which is scheduled to take place this summer. According to the Post and Courier, Judge Newman said holding Slager for so many months would amount to pretrial punishment, but Wilson argued nothing has changed since the former officer was deemed a flight risk. She also argued its dangerous to free a suspect who feels wronged by his arrest, and Its been clear from the start that he claims the role of the victim.

Slager spoke during the hearing, saying, I look forward to going to court and clearing my name. Members of Scotts family gasped in court when the decision was announced. The family is pleased at how the Charleston community has responded throughout this situation and asks again for calm following this decision, they said in a statement. They will now anxiously await Michael Slagers criminal trial and continue to thank the community for their prayers and support.
President Barack Obama delivers remarks about his efforts to increase federal gun control in the East Room. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama has delivered some version of this speech so many times that even his disclaimers that this has all become routine have themselves become routine. The fact that none of the changes Obama has called for in the many addresses he has given after shootings is clearly getting to him, which became obvious as he began crying while explaining his new executive actions on guns this Tuesday.

The 27 deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary weighed particularly heavily on him. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad, he said, tears visible on his face. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

So all of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobbys lies, Obama added, speaking in the East Room before gun-violence-prevention activists and the families of those killed in shootings. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors and legislatures and businesses do their part to make our communities safer. We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented to join with us to demand something better.

Earlier in the day, news broke that the White House was unveiling a set of regulations governing who can sell firearms without a federal license. These are not new laws; they clarify existing ones, reducing the number of for-profit dealers who can evade background checks, with a special focus on internet retailers. Much of Obamas address focused on summing up his plans  and laying out the emotional and political reasons for why he is making them, despite resistance from conservative legislators.

Obama also revealed plans to improve the efficiency and response times of the existing background-check system, expand access to mental-health coverage so as to reduce the incidence of gun suicides, and devote new federal funds to the development of gun-safety technology.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

If you cant unlock your phone unless you have the right fingerprint, why cant we do the same for our guns? Obama asked. If theres an app to help us find a missing tablet  which happens to me often now that Im getting older  theres no reason we cant do it with a stolen gun. Significantly, before he announced these unilateral actions, the president spent nearly a half-hour stressing their limitations. The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they cant hold America hostage, he said. I want to be clear. Congress still needs to act.

Although the executive orders were the occasion for Obamas address, the need for legislative action on gun reform was his real emphasis. The president reiterated the broad popularity of universal background checks, noting majority support for them even among Republicans and NRA members. He also reaffirmed his belief in the constitutional right to gun ownership. Acknowledging the alarmist rhetoric used by some presidential candidates, Obama assured the public that he had no interest in confiscating their firearms.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

But in the most impassioned section of his remarks, the president defended the need to balance the right of gun ownership against other competing rights. Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that are protected as well. Because the right to worship freely and safely was denied to Christians in Charleston, to Jews in Kansas City, to Muslims in Chapel Hill, and Sikhs in Oak Creek, Obama said, his voice growing louder with the invocation of each mass shooting. The inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was robbed from college students in Blacksburg  and from first-graders in Newtown.

He concluded by suggesting that the reforms necessary to protect those fundamental rights would not be achieved by executive actions in the present, but by legislative changes in the future. It will be hard, and it wont happen overnight. It wont happen during this Congress. It wont happen during my presidency. But a lot of things dont happen overnight. A womans right to vote didnt happen overnight, Obama said. So just because its hard, thats no excuse not to try.

Immediately after Obama concluded his remarks, GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan told the Associated Press that the presidents words amounted to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.
Photo: Rick Friedman/Corbis

Raising money and dodging questions may be the two core duties of any presidential candidate  after all, in a two-party system, you cant assemble winning coalitions in both the primary and general elections without tiptoeing around those subjects that divide your supporters. But Donald Trump may be the first politician to ever make question-dodging an official plank in a presidential platform.

On Monday night, Bill OReilly asked the billionaire mogul turned GOP front-runner, If youre elected president, and you dont like the [Iranian nuclear] deal, are you gonna bomb their nuclear facilities?

Bill, Im gonna do whats right, Trump said. I want to be unpredictable.

This response was itself fairly predictable, and OReilly had a follow-up prepared: Dont the voters have a right to know how far youre gonna go?

No, they dont, Trump replied. The voters want unpredictability.

At first impression, Trump might appear simply a less graceful dodger than the career politicians hes up against. After all, the stock response to the Iran question, given at various points by everyone from Barack Obama to Ted Cruz, is simply All options are on the table. But while Trumps appeal to the virtues of unpredictability may have begun as a clumsy means of ducking questions, it has evolved into a pillar of his platform. At a recent rally in New Hampshire, Trump promised his supporters a foreign policy that neither they nor Americas enemies could ever anticipate. I want to be unpredictable, Trump declared. We want to go in, we dont want them to know what the hell were doing. We have to go in, and people love it when I say that.

Unpredictability isnt just a pillar of Trumps foreign-policy doctrine, though  its also key to his domestic strategy. The former reality star has vowed to never let voters know whether he would veto legislation that raises the debt ceiling. He has assured the American people that he will never tell them whether he would be willing to shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood. Hes even promised that if hes elected, Americans wont ever be able to tell when their president is carrying a gun.

One of the popular explanations for Trumps polling strength is that, in a moment of economic and cultural anxiety, many Americans are grateful for the candidates often-impolitic straight talk. As one Trump supporter memorably put it in an interview with the Associated Press, At least we know where he stands.

It may seem like theres a tension between that assessment and Trumps refusal to take a stand on a variety of pressing policy questions. But in a way, Trumps refusal to take such stances is his boldest stance of all. Every politician dodges questions, but only Trump will actually brag about doing so.

And while voters may doubt the campaign pledges of other politicians, Trumps vow to pursue unpredictable policies is a truly novel political innovation  the self-fulfilling campaign promise.
Picture of me writing emails Photo: Hero Images/Corbis

Perhaps youve caught wind of the Just Not Sorry Google Chrome plug-in. Designed by Tami Reiss, CEO of Cyrus Innovation, Just Not Sorry highlights apologetic words like sorry and just in emails to teach women to stop softening their speech. With the help of little red squiggles beneath their words, female emailers will become more direct, truthful, and empowered.



We wondered, though: What would happen if a mans emails were run through this plug-in? After all, mens gendered speech patterns and behaviors tend not to receive such rigorous critical attention. Surely, this mans email could use a little finessing as well?

Dear Female Boss, I was reading today on the internet while I was supposed to be working that there is a new Google plug-in for women to stop saying sorry. They should make a plug-in for how many nachos I could house right now. Boom. UP TOP. Oh and lets meet tomorrow. I need a raise. -A man

Apologetic words counted: zero. Nope, everything seems fine here.
Marco Bootie-o. Photo: Mary Schwalm/Corbis

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio and One Direction bandmember Harry Styles have something in common. Well, two things, actually: an appreciation for the 1D song What Makes You Beautiful, and a love of heeled booties.

At a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday, Rubio appeared wearing incredibly fashionable, incredibly well-heeled black leather ankle boots that are sure to feed those rumors about his extravagant spending habits. The boots  which we think are either these Giorgio Brutini boots or these Margiela ones  look a lot like a pair favored by Styles, albeit with slightly less pilgrim flair.

Marco Rubio is rocking some seriously fashionable black boots today in New Hampshire. pic.twitter.com/lwiSWuuCUt  Michael Barbaro (@mikiebarb) January 4, 2016

Conveniently, that style is called a Cuban heel, because Marco Rubio is on-brand from head to toe.
I love those Rooney shots.

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me too, i'm in love

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lol @ Alicia Vikander's portrait looking almost exactly like the cover.

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i didn't know they were still trying w/carey and suffragette

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They try every year with Dulligan

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For real. Like this bitch is regular af and doesn't inspire one ounce of feeling in me besides confusion and I feel like Hollywood is constantly trying to convince me that she's talented and pretty. Why her wth

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lol using that name from now on

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same

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these pictures look boring compared to last year's bright and fun ones



Saoirse's cover is the best one, she looks great

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not with that wig bb

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i think she looks good! her eyes don't look as blank stare-y as everyone else

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ha, i just did a post about these terrible covers as well



Alicia just doesn't photograph well

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It's weird because she looks so beautiful in motion. In pictures she looks like she just woke up from a life-changing nap.

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yeah she looks much better in motion

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she kind of looks like she's about to throw up in her cover pic tbh...

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alicia looks strung out or sick or something, idgi. she's really pretty in all her films but all her covers/photoshoots this year have been tragic.

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She's legit fug to me

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The Thinking Man's Blake Lively deserves better

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love the first two <3

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michael should be on one of these covers (he should replace carey imo). he was amazing in Creed and it was a hugely successful film. it's so infuriating bc even where there are successful films starring POC they still don't tend to get the covers.

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yess @ your choices

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ia with your choices! I can see them ignoring star wars for not being ~prestige enough, but there's no excuse for creed/mbj

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Daaaamn at Domhnall

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This is a very well put together post, OP.



Some subjects photograph better than others, but I like the concept overall. Remember when W would make this annual issue of all the actors wearing no makeup? Dumb.

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Now maybe people will go and see Savage Grace



bless queen julianne, but i wouldn't wish that on anyone.





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that movie - along with eddie's "acting" - has scarred me for life

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usually this time around i'm always so excited about the leaked screeners but idk this time i feel like i'm not that interested in any of the movies? i downloaded a bunch but nothing really makes me want to watch them. tell me they're good pretty please so i can just get some motivation

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I loved Carol and also really liked Room, Love & Mercy, Spotlight. I still need to see Brooklyn



(the screener quality for Carol is awful tho, so I'd wait for a better one)



Edited at 2016-01-05 04:30 pm (UTC)

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I just watched The Big Short so I'm very much like: FUCK ECONOMY, FUCK WALL STREET. and I can't watch another movie for a couple of hours.

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Lol I literally just finished watching it like 10 min ago and feel he exact same thing. I really liked the film though.

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I saw that on Sunday and left the theatre so angry

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Carol is boring and the screener is shit, don't bother.





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Spotlight is really good, I was surprised at how much I liked The Big Short, Macbeth is the best movie I've seen this year but idk if it's leaked yet

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aw I love that Rooney cover <3



I really can't stand Eddie's face

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Aw, Carey. She was so good in Suffragette, but the movie was so underwhelming.



I'm glad to see that they included Bel Powley, who gave one of my favorite performances this year.

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Judging by your icon I'd guess you're referring to The Diary of a Teenage Girl? I saw that film for the first time recently and I loved it so much. You've got great taste! <3

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Did u find a screener for that? I've been looking for weeks!

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I was tempted to go to the front of the cabin and look over my shoulder to the people watching her. I thought it would shock them to find Ava on their plane. There might have been screams.



this would've been amazing lol

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as if they would've recognised her without the movie make up, lbr here

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mte

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seriously, what an odd thing to say

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lmaooo

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tbh i remember seeing the trailer and not thinking much of it. it doesn't seem like the kind of film to be recognized for any major awards. maybe the trailer was just bad. i should probably watch it.

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someone doesn't like Alicia. that cover.

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I'm blinded by the white

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I always do think it's annoying when they can't even bother to find ONE poc just to pay lip service to the idea that they're being fair

Not that I'm ok with just throwing in on POC for diversity but to not even acknowledge that people will give a fuck when they see only white actors and actresses represented is very confusing to me

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As 2016 starts on a volatile note, energy investors will want to keep an eye on a few different stocks. The energy sector is one of the largest and most diverse in global markets today and it is not uncommon for some parts of the sector to be moving up while others are moving down. To get a feel for how the sector overall is doing, its useful to keep track of a bellwether high profile company in each area of the U.S. energy markets.

Exxon Mobil (XOM)

First up, investors need to understand how established blue chip oil companies are dealing with the continuing catastrophe of U.S. oil markets. Virtually all companies across the entire energy space are reeling after the punches they took in 2015. 2016 MIGHT be different. One can hope at least. Investors looking to gauge the health of the sector need only look to Exxon Mobil. The bluest of blue chips, when investors see XOMs stock stabilize it should indicate that better times are coming for the rest of the sector. XOM probably wont have as much upside as many of the riskier energy companies out there, but as long as Exxons business is suffering, one can be sure that financially weaker companies are in even more distress. Related: Leaving 2015 Behind, Will 2016 See Oil Rebound?

Devon Energy (DVN)

Among the new breed of shale companies that have come to dominate U.S. oil production over the last decade, Devon has been among the best at weathering the current downturn. The company is still one of Wall Streets favorite names, and its management has been very diligent in focusing on supply chain efficiencies for the firm. Nonetheless, Devons stock has still had a rough year and that is unlikely to change in the next quarter. Longer term though, Devon should be one of the shale companies that emerges from the current downturn well positioned to capitalize on weakness among competitors.

Transocean (RIG)

With all of the ink spilled over oil majors and shale companies, its easy to forget that many months before most energy companies started feeling the pain of the current slump, the deep water drilling group was sinking fast. Every deep water driller out there has seen their stock cut in half or more over the last 18 months, and in many cases, stock prices today are 25 percent or less of what they were at their peak a few years ago. Industry giant Transocean is no exception. The Street is widely pessimistic on RIG with short interest at roughly a third of outstanding shares suggesting that many investors are piling into an old trade expecting more downside. With the stock trading around $12 a share its unclear how much more downside there can be short of an eventual bankruptcy filing which looks very unlikely based on the firms financials. Deep water will likely be one of the last groups to recover when oil prices start to rise, so investors should keep an eye on RIGs stock for a possible late inning recovery opportunity. Related: Peak Oil Production Is Still Years Away

Kinder Morgan (KMI)

Finally, many investors had thought that while oil companies would suffer during the downturn, pipeline firms with their utility-like structures would find their stocks more immune. That has not happened in most cases. The bellwether in the group, Kinder Morgan exemplifies this with a stock that has fallen from almost $45 in May to around $15 today. There have been too many developments for KMI to go into in depth, but managements recent dividend cut and the previous reorganization of the Kinder Morgan family of companies under a single corporate umbrella both suggest that KMIs management team thinks the company needs to adapt to a permanently different set of capital market conditions. Less dependence by KMI on capital markets may be good for the stock in the long run, but the process of getting to that long run has been painful. Investors should keep an eye on KMIs stock during 2016 to assess when this group becomes investible again.

The energy sector looks set to continue with a rough first quarter in 2016. Notwithstanding platitudes about buying when blood is running in the streets, investors would still be wise to keep an eye on the energy sector in the hope that the situation improves or at least stops deteriorating.

By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com

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Oil prices jumped on the first trading day of 2016 as Middle East tension outweighed a selloff in financial markets around the world.

Oil markets remain oversupplied and depressed, but geopolitical flashpoints have a historical tendency to disrupt market trends. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite cleric Nemer al-Nemer. The executions prompted condemnations from around the world, but in Iran protestors threw Molotov cocktails at Saudi Arabias embassy, setting fire to the building. Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Saudi Arabia would face divine retribution for executing the Shiite cleric.

In response, Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran, and kicked out its diplomats. Saudi allies in the Persian Gulf also downgraded diplomatic relations with Iran.

The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia has simmered for months, with the wars in Yemen and Syria playing out as proxy fights between the two rivals. Now the conflict has erupted into a more direct standoff. The execution of al-Nemer risks to be really explosive in the broader region a senior Western diplomat told The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. government, which has sought to lower the temperature between the two countries in 2015 and bring Saudi Arabia on board with the nuclear agreement it brokered with Iran, called on both sides to take affirmative steps to calm tensions following this weekends events. Related: $10 Trillion Investment Needed To Avoid Massive Oil Price Spike Says OPEC

Oil prices briefly jumped on Monday, with WTI up more than 3 percent and Brent up more than 4 percent in early trading hours. Both benchmarks spiked above $38 per barrel. That is a long way from the $100 per barrel routinely seen in years past when Middle East tension spooked oil markets, but prices were up from the 11-year lows seen in December.

The significant price increase came even as global financial markets saw turmoil on the first trading day of the New Year. U.S. stock indices plunged 2 percent on January 4, following negative economic news coming out of China. New data showed that Chinas factory activity slowed in December, sending the Shanghai Composite down by 7 percent. Trading came to a halt to prevent a further selloff.

The episode conjured up bad memories of the summer of 2015, when China suffered several weeks of a stock market meltdown. The economic fissures have not healed in the meantime, and the factory data from December points to ongoing sluggishness in China. The slowing economy could force a further depreciation of the yuan, which in turn will depress Chinas oil demand. This stands out as a bearish black swan for crude markets in the coming months. Related: Oil Companies Shun South China Sea As Geopolitical Tensions Rise

In fact, global economic forces, along with oil supply and demand fundamentals, are much more important than the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Unless the conflict escalates in a significant way, the supply overhang will continue to be much more influential on the price of oil than the war of words between Tehran and Riyadh. After spiking early on January 4, crude fell back by the afternoon as the markets digested the bearish news from China.

Moreover, the Saudi-Iran conflict could merely play out in the oil markets. OPEC was already unlikely to agree to a common strategy that would see production cuts, but now everyone can essentially rule out any cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both countries may try to ramp up production (Iran plans on doing that anyway when sanctions are lifted) and discount their oil in an effort to claw away market share from each other. Related: Is 2016 The Year Of Wind And Solar?

Meanwhile, the first shipment of U.S. oil left American shores this week. ConocoPhillips and NuStar Energy were the first to export oil from the Eagle Ford. The large oil-trader Vitol Group purchased the shipment. Oil exports from the U.S. wont come in large volumes since WTI and Brent are trading at parity. But the capacity to export will put some downward pressure on the internationally-oriented Brent benchmark.

In other words, global economic weakness and the glut in oil supplies will continue to weigh on crude. At this point, only tension in the Middle East is providing a bit of a lift to oil markets, but even that wont be enough to push up prices in any lasting way.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

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Mine sales are continuing to accelerate around the world. With names emerging this week in one of the biggest sales going in the copper industry right now.

Thats the Lomas Bayas mine in Chile. Which was put on the block by owner Glencore in October.

Local press reported Monday that Chilean firm Copec has officially revealed its intent to purchase Lomas Bayas. With the company submitting an offer to Glencore ahead of a possible decision from the major miner this month. Related: 4 Big Energy Stocks To Watch In 2016

The buy would be Copecs first large-scale move into the mining space  with the Chilean conglomerate currently focused on energy and forestry operations. The firm had bid last year for a 50 percent interest in the Zaldivar copper mine in Chile being sold by Barrick Gold, but was beaten in the auction by Antofagasta.

But it looks like the potential purchase of Lomas Bayas could be an even more opportune move for Copec.

Thats because the mine appears to be selling cheap. With sources telling Chilean papers that the purchase price for Lomas Bayas could be under $1 billion  significantly less than previous estimates for the sale, which had ranged from $1.1 to $1.5 billion. Related: Saudi-Iran Dispute Wont Cause Lasting Oil Price Rally

But the deal isnt a lock for Copec. With Glencore saying late in December that it has received interest in Lomas Bayas from companies in Australia and Asia  in addition to buyers in South America.

We may never know the identifies of all the bidding parties in this case. But it will be very interesting to see who emerges as the winner for the mine.

At the very least, the fact that new players like Copec are being drawn into the market is a positive sign for the industry. Suggesting that outside businesspeople are seeing value in the sector, even amid the current downturn in metals.

Watch for more details soon on the sale, with sources suggesting that a deal could be done by January 15.

Heres to new blood

By Dave Forest

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Raising oil production during a supply glut and low prices can be like refusing to stop scratching a persistent itch: Instead of alleviating the condition, it can just make it worse.

Thats already become evident in the case of OPEC and, specifically, Saudi Arabia, the groups largest producer, which not only has refused to lower production in an effort to stabilize prices, but also has abandoned a self-imposed output ceilings altogether, at least for the foreseeable future. The pain is shared by all and even the Saudis are being forced to tighten their belts.

Now another prodigious producer, non-OPEC Russia, appears to be following the cartels lead. The Energy Ministry said Saturday that the countrys oil output reached record post-Soviet levels in December, in part because a devaluation of the ruble has made production more affordable, and in part to defy OPECs demand that all producers, both in and outside the cartel, work together to cut yield.



Related: Leaving 2015 Behind, Will 2016 See Oil Rebound?

Russian production of oil and gas condensate increased to an average of 10.83 million barrels per day in December, compared with 10.78 million barrels per day in November, the ministry reported. For all of 2015, output was up to 10.73 million barrels today, compared with average 2014 production levels of 10.58 million barrels per day.

Many observers had expected Russia to reduce energy production during the past year to help rally prices in the midst of its current economic problems. For one thing, Moscows budget has been strained because oil revenues account for about 40 percent of its revenue.

And the countrys economy as a whole has been hurt by sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union because of Moscows long involvement in the conflict in neighboring Ukraine. These sanctions have deprived Russia of the Western financing and technology it needs to streamline energy extraction.



Related: Peak Oil Production Is Still Years Away

Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview published Dec. 22 in the Russian daily business newspaper Kommersant that the countrys investments made in recent years have been contributing to 2015s increased production and are likely to continue to do so in the coming year. But he said output could begin to wane if Moscow needs to raise money by increasing taxes on its energy industry.

Russias rise in oil production evidently has come as a surprise to the Energy Ministry, which had expected a decline in output during 2015 as the amount of recoverable fuel in older oilfields in western Siberia began to deplete. These fields account for more than half of Russias overall oil production, and output from the countrys largest oil companies did indeed decline. Related: Russia To Help Iran Reboot Oil Industry

That drop, though, was offset by increased production from smaller oil companies, including Bashneft, which ramped up production. And the state gas company Gazprom also raised output of oil, mostly in the form of gas condensate, by 5.3 percent in 2015.

Yet as oil production continued to grow, Russian gas output began to decline. Russias overall gas production was down by 1 percent to 635 billion cubic meters, its lowest level since 2009, Energy Ministry data showed.

Gazprom has been confronting growing competition from Russian rivals, as well as lower sales to former Soviet states. They once got virtually all their gas from Gazprom, but lately have looked for alternative sources, at least in part because of interrupted service to Ukraine during the past decade.

By Andy Tully of Oilprice.com

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"The Saudis are preparing for Irans return," said Mohamed Sadegh Memarian, who recently retired as the head of petroleum market analysis at Irans oil ministry, as they sharply cut the prices they charge for crude oil in Europe (to the biggest discount since Feb 2009). The move that will likely undercut Iran happens as sectarian tensions escalate between the rival Middle Eastern nations. As WSJ reports, the Saudi move appears to pave the way for a competition over European oil markets later this year when Iran is expected to increase its exports after the expected end of western sanctions over its nuclear program.

Saudis have slashed prices with the biggest discount to Europe since Feb 2009...

Which has sent crude prices lower...



Related: What Comes After The Commodities Bust?

As The Wall Street Journal reports,

Italy and Spain relied on Iran for 13% and 16% of their oil imports before the European Union banned such purchases under sanctions related to its nuclear program in 2012. Although the country was replaced in the market by Saudi Arabia and other countries such as Russia, Tehran is counting on rekindling those ties when it resumes exports.

Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Saudi Aramco, the kingdoms state-owned oil company, didnt mention the conflict in its news release about the price cuts.



Related: TAPI Pipeline Inches Forward

Aramco prices are set every month at a discount or premium to various regional benchmark prices, which go up and down based on supply, demand and other factors considered by the market. On Tuesday, Aramco said it was deepening the discount for its light crude by $0.60 a barrel to Northwest Europe and by $0.20 a barrel in the Mediterranean for February delivery.

Iranian oil professionals interpreted the move as a way to compete with Iran returning to the oil markets. The European Union is set to lift an embargo on Tehran as soon as next month.

...Hamid Hosseini, the president of Irans oil exporters union, said he expected more competition from Saudi Arabia after the recent political tensions. But Mr. Hosseini, who is himself involved in talks with Iran oil buyers, said, Iran will come back to Europe, possibly by offering better credit terms and by bartering oil for goods.

Though it is still unable to sell in the EU, Iran has cut its nominal prices for North Western Europe by 27 percent in the past year.

By Zerohedge

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Our "boat" turned out to be a 4WD SUV.





Four foreigners who had all arranged to buy boat tickets ended up in a car together to Mrauk U. Of course. Because that's how things roll in Myanmar.



At the Sittwe airport, I befriended an American traveling alone who told me he already had a private boat lined up to Mrauk U. I had been planning to spend the night in Sittwe and then take the public ferry up the river the next morning, but I'm always open to changing my plans when the opportunity arises.

It turned out there was a German couple who had also hired the same private boat. So next thing you know we all piled into a car, which I thought was going to take us to the jetty where we would catch the boat. It turned out that we were actually driving to Mrauk U. No apologies or explanations by the driver, we just were going by car. Maybe they figure it shouldn't really matter much how, as long as you get there.

By car, we still did get a view of river life. But I was actually really disappointed about not being on the boat, until I met a Canadian family on the same flight who went by boat and said it was cold and miserable. By the time they arrived in Mrauk U, I was already fast asleep. Even though t



Mrauk U has been really magical, especially during sunrise and sunset when the fog (probably combined with smoke and pollution from the burning trash) sits in between the little hills. On top of almost every hill is a little paya or pagoda.

I hadn't seen any photos because I had decided to come only a week and a half before. But a lot of the other travelers had seen professional photos and came specifically to capture the same scenes. I saw one guy looking a at a professional photo online over breakfast, comparing to see whether or not he had the same shot.

One of the unique things about Mrauk U is that people live and farm amongst the ruins and pagodas. Women are carrying their water from the well, people are threshing (?) and drying their rice, women are washing their clothes, men are herding their grazing cows. So in addition to visiting the religious sites, it makes for interesting small town people watching.

Throughout town, there has been either Buddhist chanting blaring or this song that is getting played constantly here to commemorate the defeat of the last Rakhine King by the Burmese Army on December 31st. In the Rakhine State, there is never a New Year's Eve celebration because it is a sad day for the people. So New Year's Eve was marked with prayers and a candlelight vigil of sorts with speeches about the defeat of the King and exhortations for the people to regain their past glory. Definitely didn't pick a party town for New Year's Eve...





Not having a fixed plan is my favorite way to travel. That's when the most unexpected and best things happen.he road is 22 miles short of being finished, it took us three hours by car instead of seven by boat. I guess some things work out.
For more "Making a Murderer" coverage, including the case's unanswered questions and other potential suspects, click here

Almost a quarter of a million people have signed a Change.org petition urging that Steven Avery be freed from prison or granted a new trial on his conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc.

The 10-part Netflix mini-series "Making a Murderer" has captured immense public attention, but gaining any kind of exoneration for Avery would be a very difficult and complex process. However, there are paths he could follow.

The Change.org petition is addressed to both President Barack Obama and Gov. Scott Walker. Obama couldnt pardon Avery because a president can only pardon those convicted of federal crimes. And Walker wouldnt issue any kind of order if and until all legal remedies were exhausted.

Heres the situation now.

Avery is in prison, serving a life sentence, and he doesnt have a lawyer. His nephew, Brendan Dassey, is also serving a life sentence for his role in the murder.

Currently there is a writ of habeas corpus for Dassey sitting in the court of U.S. Magistrate, Judge William E. Duffin, in Milwaukee. Duffin has not ruled on the request.

A writ of habeas corpus is a petition to the court that claims the petitioner (Dassey) has been wrongfully convicted.

The Dassey appeal, which is being handled by Laura Nirider, project director for the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University Law School, is based primarily on the lengthy interviews conducted of Dassey by investigators in the case.

The film shows those interviews, and the claim in the writ is that the investigators did not act legally by questioning Dassey without an adult present and with Dassey, who has cognitive difficulties, being led by the investigators.

"Something wrong happened here," said Nirider in several interviews. "His confession was fictitious."

Some experts think that the path for Averys exoneration could start with Dassey, and that would take a long time.

No matter how Duffin rules on the Dassey petition, it will be appealed to the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee. Whichever way that federal judge rules, it will likely also go to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

Should Dassey prevail, which is chancy at best, it could have a bearing on a petition filed by Avery under Wisconsin Statute 904.06. Murder is a state crime, and his petition would be in state court.

The Wisconsin statute is the states version of a federal habeas corpus writ and says, in part, "... a prisoner in custody ... claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the U.S. constitution or the constitution or laws of this state"

Avery could make an argument that Dasseys confession was found to be illegal, and since that confession played a role in his conviction and it should not have been admissible, he deserves a new trial. The state might argue that Dasseys confession wasnt critical to the Avery conviction.

But Michael Griesbach, an Assistant District Attorney in Manitowoc County, thought it was very important. He wrote a book, "The Innocent Killer," about the first Avery conviction, for which Avery was later exonerated, and the second conviction. Griesbach is also the brother of William Griesbach, the Chief Judge for the Eastern District.

In the book, Griesbach, who was involved with both Avery cases, wrote, "As for me, I felt much better about the prospects for a conviction (of Avery) after Dasseys confession."

That confession sparks a lot of ifs, all of which stand in the way of Avery getting a new trial.

If the confession is ruled illegal and if Avery gets a good lawyer and if he can convince a state court judge and the state appeals court and maybe even the Wisconsin Supreme Court that the confession tainted his conviction, then maybe, just maybe, those quarter million petitioners might get some satisfaction.
If your visits to Greendale never take you beyond Broad Street in the heart of the villages quaint, welcoming and historic downtown, you might miss the old grounds building and hose tower.

Built in 1939, the attached structures served the villages public works department and fire department, which was stationed in another red brick building just to the south. Unlike most hose towers you see, this little art deco gem isnt actually attached to the fire house.

The United States government built the fire house (pictured below) for the villages volunteer fire department in 1938 as part of the planned Greendale community and added the hose tower and the grounds building the following year.

When a new firehouse was built a bit farther from downtown, the police department  which shared the building, along with the municipal court  remained there for another 21 years, before it, too, got a new building. The hose tower fell into disuse and its windows were bricked up.

The attached grounds building continued to serve as a public works garage and storage and also served at one time as a youth center.

Now, the tower and grounds building have been given new life as a community gathering place thanks to the work of the Greendale Historical Society, the Village Board and a host of donors and volunteers.

"We just finished it in October," says Ted Mainella, president of the historical society. "This configuration that you see right now (see photo) was set up for a group of about 75 or 80. It can be reconfigured for an auditorium style seating for just under 100 people.

"This (1,500-square foot meeting room) area was for trucks, storage, vehicles of all kinds and description. There was some storage over here, and offices and bathrooms."

The five-year, $553,620 project  the result of private and public partnership  not only created the multipurpose community room, but also unbricked the windows in the tower, installed a kitchen area and modern bathrooms.



The meeting room space before. (PHOTO: Greendale Historical Society)

The best part for me was stepping into the base of the hose tower, where you can gaze up and, uniquely in the area, see actual hoses hanging, as if to dry. This immediately make the towers use clear to visitors.

"I came in here for years and I'm waving my arms and telling people its a hose tower and they're like, What are you talking about?," says Mainella. "The Fire Department was kind enough to come out here and scramble up there and hang some hoses for us."

The tower also has its original radiator, which wouldve been kept as decoration, regardless of whether or not it remained functional. But contractors tested it, found it solid, and now it again serves its original purpose.

The community space has been in almost constant use since it opened a couple months ago, says Mainella. And, adds Village President Jim Birmingham, the project is a testament to the Greendale community.

"It really worked out nice," says Birmingham. "To me it really showed how government and groups like the historical society could work together and get stuff done. We really had a great number of groups come out of the woodwork and say, We'll help you out here."

Mainella agrees.

"I would say it was a definite partnership," he says. "The village owned the building throughout the whole process. What the historical society said is, We'll raise the money and work in partnership with everybody to make it happen. The village retained ownership and saw that this was a good plan for the community and contributed significantly in money and support. The historical society raised an equal amount of money, plus we had public grants, private grants and made it happen."

After visiting the site, along with Village Manager Todd Michaels, the four of us drove over to the villages current public works facility, to check out the 1938 Diamond T Model 509s that was used by the Greendale Volunteer Fire Dept. beginning in 1938.

Whats amazing about this old gem, which still has "Greendale" painted on the hood, is that it had long ago been sold and over the years had found homes in places as far flung as Utah. The most recent owner had it out in New Jersey and donated it to the village, which raised the funds to have the 27-foot truck shipped back.

The Greendale Historical Society is now working to get the engine in working order and gussy it up a bit for use in parades and other events throughout the year, says Mainella.

Its a homecoming that coincides nicely with the re-opening of the hose tower, where hoses from this very trucks wouldve been hung up to dry after Greendale residents stepped up to fight a fire, just as their descendants have stepped up to preserve their towns history.
This week, Marcus Hotels & Resorts announced that Peggy Williams-Smith, long-time Marcus employee and former corporate vice president of food and beverage, has been promoted to senior vice president, SafeHouse Restaurants.

The promotion puts Williams-Smith at the helm of the SafeHouse brand, which was acquired by The Marcus Corporation in summer 2014.

Williams-Smith joined Marcus Hotels & Resorts in 1997 as a catering manager with the Hilton Milwaukee. During her career with the company, she served in a variety of positions, including director of catering for the Hilton Milwaukee and The Pfister Hotel, general manager of Brynwood Country Club, senior director of catering sales and event operations and corporate director of catering.

Today, Williams-Smith serves as chairwoman of the board of directors of the American Heart Association of Southeastern Wisconsin and sits on boards for the MATC Foundation and the Vince Lombardi Charitable Foundation. She is a steering committee member of Milwaukee Women Inc. and past president of TEMPO Milwaukee. She is currently co-chairing the UPAF (United Performing Arts Fund) 2016 city-wide campaign.

Under Williams-Smiths leadership, Marcus plans to unveil numerous enhancements to the SafeHouse, the iconic spy-themed restaurant and bar.

Watch OnMilwaukee for updates as they develop.
For more "Making a Murderer" coverage, including the case's unanswered questions and other potential suspects, click here

Peter Linton-Smith was a general assignment reporter for FOX-6 Milwaukee from 1999 to 2007, and with a heavy emphasis on state courts, he covered the Steven Avery murder trial extensively.

Now a freelance reporter in Denver, we caught up with the UW-Milwaukee grad about his reflections on the Netflix documentary sensation, "Making a Murderer."

OnMilwaukee: Did you see the Netflix docu-series yet?

Peter Linton-Smith: Yes. My plan was to watch as time allowed. I ended up watching all 10 segments back-to-back. I have since started to re-watch it to compare my own recollection with what is shown in the documentary. I knew there were documentary film makers covering the case. I had no idea they'd spent the last 10 years working to complete the project. I was eager to see the finished product.

OnMilwaukee: What do you remember about covering it at the time?

Linton-Smith: It was an intense assignment. The entire state was watching. Steven Avery had become a household name. His wrongful conviction, the civil suit, legislative task force, and then his arrest made him one of the most unusual criminal defendants in Wisconsin, possibly the nation. The massive pre-trial publicity resulted in dividing the state into camps, the pro and anti-Avery camps. It was one of the most unusual environments in which to cover a case.

OnMilwaukee: Did anything seem fishy about the trial or those involved?

Linton-Smith: Absolutely, from top to bottom. Despite the conviction, this case should be Exhibit A as to how NOT to conduct a criminal investigation. It is exclusively because of the behavior of law enforcement that the "Making a Murderer" was made. I have covered courts in Florida, Tennessee, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I have never covered a trial that raised so many disturbing questions about the behavior of law enforcement.

OnMilwaukee: Was it a normal trial to cover, compared to past trials?

Linton-Smith: No. Procedurally, this case was like many others. The cast of characters was what made this so unique.

OnMilwaukee: In retrospect did the media do its job?

Linton-Smith: I don't know if it was possible for the daily television, radio and print media to fully cover the Avery story. Avery was about much more than murder, guilt or innocence. The case exposed the fundamental fact that criminal defendants are NOT presumed innocent. Even more troubling, the Avery case clearly demonstrates that the burden of proof is NOT on the state. It may not be possible, with the exception of a documentary, to fully explore the inexplicable conduct of law enforcement. It is absolutely unprecedented.
WELCOME TO THE ORDER

Purely frivolous and perfectly harmless snark and admiration for all things stylish and royal.



Have any requests? Email me at orderofsplendor at hotmail dot com.


Earth Day NOT well attended in Wichita this year From Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner; This years Earth Day events were kind of disappointingnot because the events werent ...

Communist Party India (Maoist)- shimmering torch of Revolution against all odds C.P.I. (Maoist) shimmering torch of Revolution against all odds  By Harsh Thakor The Communist Party India (Maoist) formed in 2004 with...

Bourgeois press admits there are still communists in the world today A few articles in the US mainstream press have dared to venture into the questions "Why would anyone today want to be a commun...

Philippines-NPA launches offensives in Samar From http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/MAOIST_REVOLUTION NPA Eastern Visayas (Efren Martires Command) August 12, 2011 The Efren Martires C...
A few months ago it was the directive that nurses had to declare their white privilege before attending to their patients. NOW The Medical Board of Australia draft code of conduct that will apply to all Australian doctors requires doctors to be culturally safe and comply with a patients beliefs about gender identity and sexuality, with no provision given for a doctor to differ in their professional judgements. .We are concerned with the possible interpretation of culturally safe, that it should not impact on good health outcomes and good medical practice, the group has stated. We are concerned that respectful practice is significantly different to respectful of the beliefs and cultures of others and that this change also could impact on good health outcomes. Respect for a patient does not equal respecting cultural beliefs and practices that may be antithetical to good medical practice. Other possible areas of conflict rel
42 IS militants arrested in Punjab: Rana Sanaullah

LAHORE: Officials arrested 42 suspected militants with alleged links to the militant Islamic State (IS) group, Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Monday.



The arrests were the result of raids in four Punjab cities over the weekend, the minister said. Those arrested had been tasked with setting up sleeper cells for the IS, he said, and added that those arrested include the purported IS Islamabad chief Amir Mansoor, his deputy Abdullah Mansoori and the groups chief for Sindh province, Umer Kathio.



The minister said the raids also yielded IS literature and weapons. Sanaullah said the operation against alleged IS militants was launched after a raid last week in Daska district, when 13 other IS suspects were arrested.



Sanaullah said that less than 100 Pakistanis had left the country to join the militant group in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of people from different countries have fled to Iraq and Syria to join IS. However, only a very few Pakistanis have left the country in hopes of joining the militant organisation, he said. The ministers statement comes nearly a week after the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) claimed busting an IS terror cell in Sialkot. The CTD said it arrested eight suspects and seized weapons, explosives and laptops, as well as a large number of compact discs containing publicity material, during the raid. An IS recruiter was also arrested in Karachi earlier this week.



In December 2015, four well-educated men held on terrorism charges were arrested in Karachi for their involvement in the Safoora attacks, while their wives and their accomplices were accused of brainwashing educated and rich women through sermons and videos about the IS and other terrorist outfits.


Bahrain Sudan also decided to cut ties with Iran

Bahrain on Monday decided to cut ties with Iran, a day after Saudi Arabia severed relations with the Islamic republic, the state-run Bahrain News Agency (BNA) reported.



Bahrain gave Iranian envoys 48 hours to leave the kingdom, expressing similar sentiments to that of Saudi Arabia when it accused Tehran of interfering in the affairs of regional countries and giving safe haven to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.



BNA said in an Arabic statement that after the cowardly acts inflicted on our brethren at the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad - which represent a flagrant violation of intentional treaties and grave sectarian policies - we cannot be silent about nor accept it [an Iranian diplomatic presence].



It added: Instead, this needs to be immediately counteracted decisively with full force, to prevent widespread unrest and to ensure stability of the region.



On late Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would ties with Iran after two of its diplomatic posts were attacked in the capital Tehran and the northeastern city of Mashhad.



Before Saudi Arabia and Bahrain cut ties, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Arab League on Sunday expressed support for Riyadhs ongoing fight against terrorism.



The six-member regional blocs secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani said that the GCC, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi, stands side by side with Riyadh, holding Iran as responsible.



The Gulf states - especially Bahrain - have long-accused Tehran of meddling in their affairs.



Sudan has decided to expel Irans ambassador from Khartoum after Saudi Arabia and Bahrain severed ties with the Islamic republic, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.



Sudan also denounced Irans interference in the region.



The UAE on Monday downgraded Irans diplomatic representation and cut the number of envoys allowed on its soil, soon after two Gulf allies cut ties with the Islamic republic. The UAEs foreign ministry said the decision was taken on the backdrop of Irans continuous interference in the Gulf and Arab affairs, and added that Tehrans meddling had reached an unprecedented level.
India having second thoughts about foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan

NEW DELHI: India is thinking its options on whether to go ahead with foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan scheduled for later this month after militants attacked an Indian Air Force (IAF) base over the weekend, a government official said on Monday.



A final decision on the talks, scheduled for January 15, is expected to be taken after security forces have completed their operation at the Pathankot air base, near the Pakistan border, the source said, requesting anonymity. The move comes after a brazen militant attack on the Pathankot air base, a sprawling compound that lies 25km from the border with Pakistan, on January 2.



The attack, a rare targeting of an Indian military installation outside the disputed region of Kashmir, threatens to undermine a tentative thaw in relations with Pakistan.



A fresh gun battle commenced on January 3 and fresh firing was reported on Monday. Pakistan strongly condemned the attack. An alliance of Kashmiri fighter groups on Monday claimed the deadly attack on the Indian Air Forces Pathankot airbase.



The United Jihad Council (UJC) said in a statement released that the attack was a message to India that Kashmiri fighters could strike at any sensitive installation across India.



Pathankot air base attack has been carried out by the mujahideen associated with National Highway Squad, said Syed Sadaqat Hussain, a spokesman for the UJC. Pakistan has nothing to do with the attack but ironically the Indian government, media and their armed forces are suffering from Pakistanphobia, added the UJC spokesman .
KPK dovt decided to convene MPC

ISLAMABAD: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to convene a multi-party conference (MPC) to chalk out a strategy against what it terms non-provision of basic infrastructure along the proposed western route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.



We will soon call a meeting of all stakeholders and opposition parties to decide how to resist the centres move against smaller provinces, especially KP, Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak told a press conference at the KP House on Monday.



He said that all the benefits of the corridor were being transferred to Punjab, while the western route would have nothing like in terms of utility services such as gas, electricity, telecommunication and rail links.



It is not a western route but merely a road, because it has no such infrastructure that would improve the condition of neglected provinces such as KP, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, he added.



Asked whether the KP government would block the CPEC if its demands were not met, the CM said: We will go by whatever decision is taken at the MPC.



He said that neither the KP government nor the PTI was against the eastern route, but rather, demanded that both routes have equal facilities. If there will be no infrastructure for the western route, how can economic zones be established there, he said.



Mr Khattak said that the chief ministers of Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan had also not been taken on board with regards to the CPEC. We believe that there is something fishy that the centre is trying to hide, he said.



The KP chief minister demanded that the federal government should convene the Council of Common Interests (CCI) to discuss the CPEC and address the concerns of neglected provinces and asked for the nitty-gritty of the CPEC to be discussed in parliament.



Mr Khattak accused the centre of not allocating a single penny for the western route of the CPEC in the federal budget for 2015-16.



When asked whether PTIs MPC would be separate from a similar conference called by Baloch leader Akhtar Mengal on Jan 10, the KP chief minister said PTI would also take part in Mr Mengals MPC.



Speaking at the press conference, PTI leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that if economic zones were not established along the western route, no one would invest in KP, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.



Asked why the PTI had not raised these concerns in a meeting of a parliamentary committee specially formed for the CPEC, Mr Qureshi said PTI leaders Asad Umar and Shiblee Faraz represented the party on the committee and had always raised their concerns before the committee.



GOVT RESPONSE: Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, speaking on the floor of the National Assembly, responded to some of the points raised by the KP chief minister, saying that he would meet Mr Khattak on Wednesday and try to address his concerns.



Instead of pleading its case before the media, the KP government should raise its concerns at the appropriate forum. The minister dispelled the impression that China had given $48 billion in cash to Pakistan for the CPEC. Rather, this was the value of projects being initiated or launched under the CPEC.



He claimed that the KP government had been misled by an NGO, which had led to a resolution being passed by the KP assembly.
Nawaz Sharif presented a book,Majestic Pakistan to Ranil Wickremesinghe

COLOMBO: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presented a book, Majestic Pakistan, to his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe at its launching ceremony here on Monday.



A Pakistan-Sri Lanka friendship anthem prepared by the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo was also launched on the occasion.



The event, organised by the Pakistan High Commission, was attended by Begum Kalsoom Nawaz, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir Khan, Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer Hussain, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi, National Security Advisor retired Lt Gen Nasir Khan Janjua and Pakistans High Commissioner retired Maj Gen Syed Shakil Hussain.



Majestic Pakistan launched in English, Sinhalese and Tamil languages is a compilation of photographs depicting the beautiful scenery of different areas of Pakistan and is aimed at promoting the countrys tourism abroad. The book also highlights Pakistan being home to old Buddhist civilisation, which is held in high esteem in Sri Lankas socio-religious culture.



Later, Prime Minister Sharif and Mr Wickremesinghe, along with other dignitaries, attended a dinner reception hosted by the Pakistan High Commission.



Earlier, Mr Wickremesinghe received Mr Sharif on his arrival at the Bandranaike International Airport. A red carpet was rolled out for Prime Minister Sharif and a contingent of Sri Lankan forces presented a static guard of honour to him. Two children clad in traditional dresses presented bouquets to Mr Sharif and Begum Kalsoom.



The prime minister is undertaking the visit on the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. He will hold meetings with the Sri Lankan leadership on issues of mutual interest.



During his stay in Colombo, the prime minister will lead bilateral and delegation-level talks with the Sri Lankan president, prime minister and ministers.



The two countries will sign several agreements and memoranda of understanding in the areas of health, science and technology, trade, statistics, gem and jewellery, money laundering and terrorism financing and culture.



Prime Minister Sharif will deliver a special lecture to parliamentarians, ministers and members of diplomatic corps on the invitation of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies.



He will visit the Sacred Temple of the Tooth Relic, International Buddhist Museum and Jinnah Hall in the historic city of Kandy.



The two governments have maintained high-level bilateral interactions, including President Maithripalas visit to Pakistan from April 5-7 last year. Prime Minister Sharif and President Maithripala also met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York in September and the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta in November last year.



The two countries enjoy friendly and cordial relations. Their diplomatic relations were established in 1948.



Being members of Saarc and Commonwealth, Pakistan and Sri Lanka cooperate closely and coordinate with each other on issues of common interest and regional and international concern.
One gunmen remain at loose at Pathanakot Airbase

PATHANKOT: A fifth gunman was killed Monday on the third day of a siege at the heavily fortified Pathankot Indian air base and at least one attacker remained as troops worked to secure the sprawling compound, a military official said. Seven troops have been killed.



The search operations at Pathankot air force base will continue until all areas have been completely secured, Maj Gen Dushyant Singh, from India's elite National Security Guard, told reporters.



The attack has dragged on since early Saturday morning as government troops struggle to contain the heavily armed attackers.



At least twice over the weekend it appeared that the attack had ended but fresh gunfire and explosions erupted both times.



Four attackers were reported killed by Saturday evening, and at least two were said to have been exchanging gunfire with troops as of Monday morning. By evening one had been shot dead, Singh said.



Defence officials have said authorities had been alerted about a potential attack in the area on Friday, and that aerial surveillance at the base spotted the gunmen as they entered the compound, leading to criticism of the handling of the situation.



Singh told reporters in Pathankot that it will take a "long time" to declare the base completely secure because of its size and geography. It is spread over more than 2,000 acres, including forests and tall grass.



The commanding officer of the base, Lt Col J.S. Dhamoon, described it as a "mini-city" with homes and a school for the children of the personnel stationed there.



An army statement said the last gunmen were firing from a building that is part of the living quarters on the base.



The base has a fleet of India's Russian-origin MiG-21 fighter jets and Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, along with other military hardware. Officials have said no military hardware has been damaged in the fighting.



Military funerals were held Monday for the soldiers who were killed in the attack. Their killings inside a military base despite intelligence alerts have angered many in India.



"The biggest problem is the multiplicity of command and control. Nobody knows who is really in charge," said Rahul Bedi, an analyst for Jane's Information Group.



The Pathankot base and the northern state of Punjab, where it is located, has "probably the highest concentration of military personnel in India because it's so close to the border with Pakistan," Bedi said. "It's a huge embarrassment," he said. "It's a major goof-up for everybody."



Since Saturday morning, the base has been swarming with air force commandos, army soldiers, National Security Guard troops and local police.



Officials, however, have refused to say how many security personnel were involved in the engagement.



The base is on the highway that connects India-held Kashmir (IHK) with the rest of the country. It is also very close to the shared border with Pakistan.



An alliance of Kashmiri militant groups, the United Jihad Council (UJC) on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.



The UJC in a statement said that the attack was a message to India that Kashmiri fighters could strike at any sensitive installation across India.



"Pathankot air base attack has been carried out by the mujahideen associated with National Highway Squad," said Syed Sadaqat Hussain, a spokesman for UJC.



"Pakistan has nothing to do with the attack but ironically the Indian government, media and their armed forces are suffering from Pakistan phobia," added the UJC spokesman.
Opposition parties rejected tax amnesty scheme

ISLAMABAD: Opposition parties in the National Assembly rejected on Monday the governments tax amnesty scheme and termed it discriminatory and useless.



The decision was taken at a joint meeting of opposition parties presided over by Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Shah.



In a statement issued by the opposition leaders office, Mr Shah said that in the past too such amnesty schemes had been announced, but to no avail.



He asked the government to inform the opposition about the results and fate of the previous five such schemes.



Soon after announcement of the amnesty scheme in the form of a bill in the National Assembly on Friday, the PTI had constituted a committee to review it and to contact other opposition parties to develop a consensus on the issue.



The bill sought a four-year tax amnesty scheme that proposes to allow traders to whiten their undeclared profits and gains by paying a nominal tax. The bill aimed at ending a deadlock over the issue of withholding tax on banking transactions between the Federal Board of Revenue.



Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Dr Shireen Mazari, Dr Arif Alvi and Asad Umar of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Rashid Godil of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Sahibzada Tariqullah of the Jamaat-i-Islami attended the meeting at the Parliament House.



The meeting decided that the opposition would ask the government for a briefing in parliament on the current tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
PPP will not allow fanatics to usurp power in the name of religion: Zardari

ISLAMABAD: President of PPP-Parliamentarians Asif Ali Zardari has said that his party will not allow fanatics, any individual or any institution, to usurp power in the name of religion or on any pretext whatsoever.



He said this in a message issued by the partys media office on Monday on the eve of the 88th birth anniversary of the former prime minister and founder of PPP, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.



Mr Zardari said Mr Bhutto had given the country a unanimous constitution, which envisages that the power to make or amend the Constitution and the laws on behalf of the people rests with the parliament and parliament alone.



The judiciary, he said, had the powers to review the laws made by the parliament on the touchstone of the Constitution but it could not make laws on its own. And the executive has to implement those laws without interference, he added.



Mr Zardari said PPP believed that corruption was a scourge that must be eliminated. However, for far too long only the representatives of the people have been painted black in the name of corruption, he said.



Selective accountability, sacred cow syndrome, double standards and using corruption for political re-engineering are the worst forms of corruption. It must be resisted. It will be, he added.



He called for addressing issues in intellectual corruption, saying that those who upheld the constitutional deviations under PCO, validated take-over by dictators and undermined national security through non-state actors must also be held accountable.



On the birth anniversary of Mr Bhutto the party reiterated its pledge to stoutly protect the constitutional scheme of things, Mr Zardari said.
United Jihad Council claimed attack on Pathankot airbase

MUZAFFARABAD: An alliance of Kashmiri militant groups on Monday claimed the deadly attack on the Indian Air Forces Pathankot airbase.



The United Jihad Council (UJC) said in a statement released that the attack was a message to India that Kashmiri fighters could strike at any sensitive installation across India.



"Pathankot air base attack has been carried out by the mujahideen associated with National Highway Squad," said Syed Sadaqat Hussain, a spokesman for UJC. The UJC comprises over a dozen militant groups fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.



It is headed by Syed Salahuddin. This is the first report of the existence of the National Highway Squad. "Pakistan has nothing to do with the attack but ironically the Indian government, media and their armed forces are suffering from Pakistan phobia," added the UJC spokesman.



The spokesman added that by hurling allegations at Pakistan, India could neither sabotage the struggle of Kashmiri people in the past nor can it do so now.



"It would be better for the Indian leadership to read the writing on the wall and let the Kashmiri people decide thier fate on their own free accord, without further waste of time," elaborated the statement from the UJC .



The attack on the Pathankot airbase started before dawn on Saturday and a gunbattle between the militants and Indian forces is continuing into the third day, with the facility still not declared secure.



At least seven Indian troops and five attackers have been killed in the three days.Indian Air Force's Pathankot airbase is a mere 50 km from the Pakistan border, and is a major forward operational airbase of the IAF.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
By Paul Shalala Dr. Grace Mukupa She grew up in a poor family in Mwanamangala Village in what is now Shibuyunji District of Central Zambia...
A woman wears a face mask on a heavily polluted day in Beijing on December 26, 2015

Beijingers spent nearly half of 2015 breathing air that did not meet national standards, Chinese media reported Tuesday, as the city struggles to address a smog problem that has provoked widespread public anger.

The Chinese capital faced 179 polluted days last year, with 46 of them considered heavily polluted, according to the Global Times, citing figures from the city's environmental protection bureau.

Levels of PM2.5harmful microscopic particles that penetrate deep into the lungsaveraged 80.6 micrograms per cubic metre over the year, the newspaper said, more than eight times the World Health Organization's recommended maximum annual average exposure of 10.

The figures represented a 6.2 percent decrease year-on-year, but still left citizens breathing air that was 1.3 times the country's own standard, which is not as strict as the WHO's.

After a comparatively mild year for pollution, Beijing in December declared its first ever red alert for smog, the highest level of a four-tier system, prompting authorities to order thousands of factories to close or curb their activities and pull half of all private cars off the streets, among other measures.

The decision came in response to public anger after the city failed to put the system, established in 2013, into action after heavy smog hit the city earlier the same month.

The move set off a domino effect, with cities across China's polluted east and north declaring their own alerts, with PM2.5 levels climbing to over 700 in some areas. The entire eastern province of Shandong, home to almost 96 million people, issued its first ever alert.

Beijing followed up with a second alert later in December, but then ignored successive waves of smog that struck the city around Christmas.

Explore further More Chinese cities issue red alerts for heavy smog

 2016 AFP
The principle of action of a cow's digestive system served as a model to create a container that receives organic waste, mostly livestock manure, where it is mixed with millions of bacteria to obtain natural gas consisting mostly of methane, called biogas, as well as a high-quality bio-fertilizer.

The biodigester, commercially called Biobolsa, transform the waste in a container made of a high-density geomembrane where polyethylene components and bacteria generate gas that is used as fuel for stoves or heaters, and even in the form of electricity.

Alex Eaton, one of the creators, said in an interview that technologies such as the anaerobic Biobolsa have been used for decades in industrialized farms, and researchers now seek to bring its benefits to small and medium producers, which generate 99 percent of the country's food and 80 percent globally.

"We have visited families who have small farms for subsistence, or less than a hundred dairy cows. Those families are without access to credit or financing. They also make up the social fabric of rural areas, as the caretakers of watersheds, land and soil. This is a way of empowering them in climate change, soil management, food safety, water pollution and more."

Eaton explains that his technology consists of a bag of 15 meters, which can contain up to 40,000 liters of liquid and treat one ton waste per day.

The researchers have adapted it to specific needs and created smaller bio-bags of two by two meters, working with 20 kilos of manure. "The system is modular and can interface, it also is deployable and adjustable. On average, the return on investment is seen in a year and a half, and if you consider that the material used for the Biobolsa lasts longer than 20 years, there is much room for profit," he says.

He adds that there are many small producers who are not aware that there are economic and environmental options to leverage what usually is wastein this case, that manure can generate revenue.

Biobolsa technological transfer includes training and implementation, as well as monitoring its operation and efficiency.

The Mexican anaerobic technology has had support from various foundations and government institutions for its development and implementation, which have provided partial subsidies to stakeholders. "Today we manage a credit fund with zero rate for small producers to participate," says the ecologist.

Biobolsa has received several international awards, both scientific as for social entrepreneurship, among others, the Network Business in Development (BiD Network), of Holland, which gave an award for 10,000 euros which served to give a major boost to the company.

"We have improved the process and have a number of engines for generating electricity. We already have a contract to produce light for the electrical network of the Federal Electricity Commission in Cuernavaca (south of Mexico City), through interconnection with biodigesters to produce five, 10 or 15 kilowatts.

"We want to impact four million homes that, we estimate, could use Biobolsa today in Mexico" says Eaton.
The 1997 El Nino seen by TOPEX/Poseidon. Credit: NASA

(Phys.org)A small team of researchers from the U.S., Australia and Germany has found evidence that suggests cloud formation may have a much bigger impact on weather patterns associated with El Nino events than has been thought. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the team describes they differences they found when they input cloud data into computer models that simulated weather patterns associated with El Nino' events and why they now believe that all such models should include such data going forward.

Scientists predicted that El Nino' weather events would be more severe this winter compared to recent events, and thus far, their predictions have proved to be truetemperatures have fluctuated wildly in parts of Europe and the U.S. along with associated rain events, leading to serious flooding. In this new effort, the researchers have found that cloud formation may have more influence on such weather events than has been thought.

The El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) as it is known formally, causes the most weather variability on a small time scale, and attracts an enormous amount of attention due to associated changes in rain patternsthe western parts of the U.S. and the northern parts of South America, for example, typically see more than normal amounts of rainfall, while parts of Africa experience droughts. As scientists struggle to truly understand global weather patterns associated with ENSO, they debate the degree of impact of oceanic process versus those that occur in the atmosphere. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that the atmosphere may exert much more of an impact on ENSO events than has been thought, due in large part, to cloud formations which can serve as a blanket of sorts, preventing warm air from escaping from lower elevations, which can lead to more rainfall.

To better understand the impact of cloud formations on ENOS weather events, the researchers input cloud data into standard climate models and compared the results with models running under the same conditions without cloud data. They report that they were surprised to find that the cloud formation data caused large changes to atmospheric circulation patterns and accounted for more than half of the strength of ENOS events. They suggest their findings indicate that all future climate models include cloud data so that they can offer a better representation of real events, and thus, give better predictions.

Explore further Researchers construct a model of impact for El Nino / La Nina events

More information: Gaby Radel et al. Amplification of El Nino by cloud longwave coupling to atmospheric circulation, Nature Geoscience (2016). Gaby Radel et al. Amplification of El Nino by cloud longwave coupling to atmospheric circulation,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2630 Abstract

The El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of inter-annual variability, with major impacts on social and ecological systems through its influence on extreme weather, droughts and floods. The ability to forecast El Nino, as well as anticipate how it may change with warming, requires an understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms that drive it. Among these, the role of atmospheric processes remains poorly understood. Here we present numerical experiments with an Earth system model, with and without coupling of cloud radiative effects to the circulation, suggesting that clouds enhance ENSO variability by a factor of two or more. Clouds induce heating in the mid and upper troposphere associated with enhanced high-level cloudiness over the El Nino region, and low-level clouds cool the lower troposphere in the surrounding regions. Together, these effects enhance the coupling of the atmospheric circulation to El Nino surface temperature anomalies, and thus strengthen the positive Bjerknes feedback mechanism14 between west Pacific zonal wind stress and sea surface temperature gradients. Behaviour consistent with the proposed mechanism is robustly represented in other global climate models and in satellite observations. The mechanism suggests that the response of ENSO amplitude to climate change will in part be determined by a balance between increasing cloud longwave feedback and a possible reduction in the area covered by upper-level clouds. Journal information: Nature Geoscience

 2016 Phys.org
(A) Willow tree pattern of different C60 isomers, with the lower points of each vertical bar representing the calculated formation enthalpy relative to Ih-C60, and bar heights representing the calculated barrier to transformation. This shows that Ih-C60 is significantly more stable than other isomers and lies at the center of an energetic funnel. Adapted from ref. 7, with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd.: Nature, copyright 1998. (B) Calculated formation enthalpies of B40, showing the D2d cage structure is significantly more stable than alternative isomers. Reproduced from ref. 12, with permission from Macmillan Publishers: Nature Chemistry, copyright 2014. Credit: (c) 2015 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1520402112

(Phys.org)A group of researchers from France, the U.K. and Florida proposes criteria to determine whether an allotrope is experimentally feasible. They use theoretical carbon allotropes, penta-graphene and Haeckelites, as examples and demonstrate why penta-graphene, contrary to recent research, is not experimentally practical while Haeckelites could be isolated in the presence of charge transfer ions. Their study appears in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Christopher P. Ewels, Xavier Rocquefelte, Harold W. Kroto, Mark J. Rayson, Patrick R. Briddon, and Malcolm I. Heggie's work responds to Zhang, et al.'s February 2015 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reporting that penta-graphene is a new allotrope of carbon based on calculations that confirm its dynamical, thermal, and mechanical stability. Ewels, et al. disagree that this is an experimentally possible allotrope and believe that, while penta-graphene may exhibit properties that place it within a local energy minimum, it will tend toward spontaneous formation of graphene.

Graphene is made of a network of hexagonal carbon rings, characterized by carbon atoms that are sp2 hybridized. Fullerenes, C 60 , are a network of hexagonal and pentagonal carbons and are a mixture of sp2 and sp3 hybridized carbons. Zhang, et al. conducted molecular studies to demonstrate that carbon should also be able to form a network of pentagonal carbon rings in the form of Cairo pentagonal tiling. This structure consists of out-of-plane distorted ethylene units connected via sp3carbon linkers.

However, Ewels, et al. show that while Cairo pentagonal tiling is geometrically enticing, it is not experimentally feasible to form a carbon allotrope due to several criteria that are based largely on the potential energy landscape of possible carbon allotropes. They summarize their criteria as: Stable allotropes must reside in a potential energy minimum; surrounding "wells" must be higher in energy such that a kind of "funneling" toward an energy minimum can occur; and theoretical carbon allotropes must have some kind of energy barrier to keep them from readily converting into a more stable structure. Penta-graphene, while it may sit in a relative energy minimum, is a high-energy structure. It is significantly less stable than graphene, amorphous carbon, most nanotubes, and C 60 .

First, rather than being the center of a "funnel" in an energy landscape of isomers, penta-graphene is part of the "funnel" that leads to graphene as the most stable structure. Their studies showed that transformation from penta-graphene to graphene via bond rotations is thermodynamically favored at each step. Importantly, their studies of the energy landscapes for crystalline carbon allotropes predict these structures will "funnel" toward fully sp2 or sp3 hybridized carbons.

Secondly, penta-graphene is not kinetically or chemically stable. Upon heating, notably in the presence of structural defects, penta-graphene does not maintain its structure for an appreciable timeframe. And, theoretical studies with O 2 indicate that penta-graphene would likely undergo exothermic spontaneous oxidation upon exposure to air.

Ewels, et al. then subjected another theoretical carbon structure, called Haeckelites, to their model. These carbon allotropes were proposed fifteen years ago, and while much research has been done on Haeckelites, they have never been experimentally isolated. They were proposed as a type of graphite-like planar sp2-carbon structure made predominantly of pentagonal and heptagonal carbons.

Using their criteria for determining feasible carbon allotropes, Ewels, et al. found that three theoretical Haeckelite structures that would be less stable than graphene become more stable when doped with a metal cation. This is based on experimentally isolated structural analogs of metal borocarbides, and indicates that Haeckelites containing a charge transfer ion are experimentally feasible.

This theoretical work calls into question some conclusions on whether penta-graphene is a viable candidate as a stable carbon allotrope and proposes criteria that could be generally applied to evaluate future isomeric structures.

More information: Christopher P. Ewels et al. Predicting experimentally stable allotropes: Instability of penta-graphene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2015). Christopher P. Ewels et al. Predicting experimentally stable allotropes: Instability of penta-graphene,(2015). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1520402112 Abstract

In recent years, a plethora of theoretical carbon allotropes have been proposed, none of which has been experimentally isolated. We discuss here criteria that should be met for a new phase to be potentially experimentally viable. We take as examples Haeckelites, 2D networks of sp2-carboncontaining pentagons and heptagons, and "penta-graphene," consisting of a layer of pentagons constructed from a mixture of sp2- and sp3-coordinated carbon atoms. In 2D projection appearing as the "Cairo pattern," penta-graphene is elegant and aesthetically pleasing. However, we dispute the author's claims of its potential stability and experimental relevance. Journal information: Nature , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Nature Chemistry

 2016 Phys.org
University of Bristol Cabot Institute researchers and their colleagues today published research that further documents the unprecedented rate of environmental change occurring today, compared to that which occurred during natural events in Earth's history.

The research, published online on 4 January in Nature Geosciences reconstructs the changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (pCO2) during a global environmental change event that occurred about 120 Million years ago. New geochemical data provide evidence that pCO2 increased in response to volcanic outgassing and remained high for around 1.5-2 million years, until enhanced organic matter burial in an oxygen-poor ocean caused areturn to original levels.

Lead author Dr David Naafs explained: 'Past records of climate change must be well characterised if we want to understand how it affected or will affect ecosystems. It has been suggested that the event we studied is a suitable analogue to what is happening today due to human activity and that a rapid increase in pCO2 caused ocean acidification and a biological crisis amongst a group of calcifying marine algae. Our work confirms that there was a large increase in pCO2. The change, however, appears to have been far slower than that of today, taking place over hundreds of thousands of years, rather than the centuries over which human activity is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. So despite earlier claims, our research indicates that it is extremely unlikely that widespread surface ocean acidification occurred during this event.'

The observation that yet another putative 'rapid' geological event is occurring perhaps a thousand times slower than today and not associated with widespread surface ocean acidification has been the focus of much recent research at the University of Bristol. Co-author Professor Daniela Schmidt, who was also a Lead Author on the IPCC WGII report on Ocean systems, emphasised that today's finding builds on one of the IPCC's key conclusions: that the rate of environmental change occurring today is largely unprecedented in Earth history. She said, 'This is another example that the current rate of environmental change has few if any precedents in Earth history, and this has big implications for thinking about both past and future change.'

The research was possible due to the exceptional Spanish section that the team analysed. Co-author Professor Jose Manuel Castro of the University of Jaen adds, 'The sediments at Cau accumulated very rapidly resulting in an expanded section. This allowed the high resolution multidisciplinary analysis that are the basis for this important study.'

Senior Author and Director of the University's Cabot Institute, Professor Rich Pancost, added, 'We often use the geological record to help us test or expand our understanding of climate change, for example, determining the sensitivity of Earth's temperature to higher CO2 levels. But testing the risks associated with the pace of modern environmental change is proving problematic, due to a lack of similar rapid changes in the geological past. Consequently, these risks, in this case to the marine ecosystems on which so many of us depend, remain associated with profound uncertainty. Decreasing CO2 emissions, as recently agreed in Paris, will be necessary to avoid these risks.'

Explore further Speed of ocean acidification concerns scientists

More information: B. D. A. Naafs et al. Gradual and sustained carbon dioxide release during Aptian Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a, Nature Geoscience (2016). Journal information: Nature Geoscience B. D. A. Naafs et al. Gradual and sustained carbon dioxide release during Aptian Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2627
Small pale spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus discolor) with a meal worm. The animal adapts its echolocation calls to the surrounding noise level. Credit: MPI f. Ornithology

Bats find their way acoustically when they are flying by using echolocation calls, often also employing them when hunting for food. A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich has now discovered how these animals handle interference in the form of environmental noise. They analyzed thousands of echolocation calls under various natural ambient noise conditions and showed that bats adapt both the amplitude of their calls and their duration to the noise level. Although every individual reacted slightly differently in the process, all the mechanisms used improve the detectability of the signal.

All bats perceive their environment through ultrasonic sounds which they emit and by evaluating the echoes they receive from them. Many bats use these calls when looking for food, for example those that hunt insects in flight. Animals such as bats that rely heavily on acoustics therefore need mechanisms for adapting their vocalizations to environmental noise. One form of well-researched noise-dependent adaptation of acoustic signals is the so-called Lombard effect: in response to increased environmental noise, the amplitude of the signal is amplified accordingly. This basic effect for maintaining communication is known in birds and mammals, including humans.

A team of scientists from Seewiesen headed by Lutz Wiegrebe from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich has now, for the first time, evaluated the amplitude and duration of signals emitted by bats, as well as how often they are repeated, under various, controlled noise conditions. The scientists played environmental noise to pale spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus discolor) in three frequency ranges at different volumes (28, 40 and 52 dB SPL), and in the process recorded their echolocation signals. They then evaluated them mathematically in order to understand the animals' acoustic perception.

The scientists discovered that for bats too, the most important and strongest mechanism for compensating noise is the amplitude of the signal: all the animals called more loudly in noisy environments, doing so by as much as 8 dB. Additionally, the duration of the calls increased by between 13 and 85 percent and, according to the scientists, this also helps to make the signal more detectable, but only by a maximum of 5 dB. A further mechanism for compensating noise which the scientists found under certain noise conditions is the formation of call groups. This enhances the probability to detect a signal through listening to it several times in quick succession. The scientists calculated that this can make a difference of up to 4 dB.

"We found variances in the signal amplitude between individuals of almost two to eight dB under the same noise conditions. The duration of the calls was subject to equally significant variations," noted Holger Goerlitz, Research Group Leader in Seewiesen, registering his surprise at these results. The crucial factor, however, was that the total of these different individual responses led to the same result: "The ear evaluates different signal parameters such as the amplitude and duration of the sound, in order to detect signals", says Lutz Wiegrebe from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich. Although the parameters vary, in summation they all enhance the detectability of the signals, and thereby support signal perception amidst environmental noise.

Explore further Bats found to produce longer and more intense calls when crowded by other bats

More information: Jinhong Luo et al. Linking the sender to the receiver: vocal adjustments by bats to maintain signal detection in noise, Scientific Reports (2015). Journal information: Scientific Reports Jinhong Luo et al. Linking the sender to the receiver: vocal adjustments by bats to maintain signal detection in noise,(2015). DOI: 10.1038/srep18556
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State Sen. Elizabeth Little, R-Queensbury, recently visited the set of Fox televsision detective drama Gotham.

She wasnt there to solve a crime, but to witness how state tax credits have facilitated the conversion of the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard into Steiners Studios.

They have the largest number of sets and studios east of Los Angeles. So they do make movies there and TV programs, she said, discussing her Dec. 10 visit in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

The tax credit is not on the movie stars or any of that stuff. It is on the employees that they hire to do the lighting and the staging and the painting, she said.

Little visited the studios in her role as chairwoman of the Senate Tourism Committee.

Doug Steiner led a tour of the studios.

The first Navy hospital is on that base, and hes starting a restoration of that as well. she said.

Little said Steiner wants to develop an underwater studio too.
NorthCountryARTS will celebrate the closing of its exhibit at Rare Earth Gallery, 176 Glen St. in downtown Glens Falls, with a party and reception from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday. The community is invited to view the art, meet the artists and enjoy light refreshments.

This reception will be NorthCountryARTS' last exhibit at Rare Earth Gallery. The organization is searching for a new location to continue exhibiting talented artists from the North Country, preferably in a downtown Glens Falls location.

NorthCountryARTS will continue to hold exhibitions at its longtime location at the 2nd Floor Gallery in Glens Falls City Hall and will hold artist's receptions the first Friday of each month. This month, the reception for the opening of Darlene Van Sickle's show will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday.
GLENS FALLS  Glens Falls Police are seeking the publics help in locating a man who is wanted on felony arrest warrants for an alleged knifepoint home invasion last month.

Police issued a wanted poster for Jashawn J. Rotella, a 25-year-old New York City man. He is being sought for felony counts of first-degree burglary and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and misdemeanor menacing.

The charges stem from a Dec. 14 incident at a home on McDonald Street, in which he allegedly forced his way in and threatened people with a knife before he fought with someone inside.

Glens Falls Police Detective Lt. Peter Casertino said the motivation for the incident was unclear, but police believe it may be drug-related.

Rotella was believed to have knocked on the door, and when someone inside answered, pushed his way inside.

He asked for a resident there, left briefly when he was told he wasnt there, and then came back with a knife, Casertino said. He came in and continued to ask where the person was, and struggled with a male occupant.

No injuries were reported.

Police believe he had been staying in Glens Falls for at least a few weeks before the incident, and may still be in the region.

He is from Jamaica, Queens, and also has ties to Florida, where he has a criminal record that includes a battery conviction in 2010, police records show.

Anyone with information in the case was asked to call Glens Falls Police at 761-3840.
LAKE GEORGE  A state audit of the Lake George Fire Company found the volunteer organization in need of better internal controls over collections and deposits and shines a light on a disagreement between the company and a former craft fair coordinator.

The audit report, released last month, covers January 2013 to April 2015. It was meant to examine whether collections were properly accounted for and deposited in a timely manner and intact.

The largest discrepancy found was $7,300 auditors said was unaccounted for from 2013s annual craft fair fundraisers, which were organized by a coordinator outside the fire company.

For years, two annual craft shows  Fire Company Family Festival and Summerfest  have been the fire companys top fundraising events.

In 2013, the craft show coordinator who organized the fairs collected 63 fair applications with checks totaling $13,800, the audit report states.

However, the company only received $6,500 from the coordinator, Gayle Nelson, who took over the fair from her grandmother, longtime organizer Virginia Henry, in 2010.

The coordinator did not report expenses to the board or provide an accounting or any other documentation of collections for the 2013 fairs, the audit report states.

Nelson on Monday contended she did supply documentation to a former company president that accounted for those funds. She said the $7,300 included vendor refunds for vendors who couldnt make it to the shows as well as the costs of a website and marketing. She said all of that had to be modernized in 2013.

She said she was not contacted for the audit.

Lake George Fire Company President Robert Hickey referred all comments on the audit to the companys attorney.

Weve put together quite a bit of information we think spells out a pretty clear case that the department was the victim of a crime. There is still more information we hope to get to law enforcement that would complete the picture, said the John Wright, the attorney representing the Lake George Fire Company on the craft fair issue.

The fire company filed a civil suit against Nelson in September 2013 requesting a judgment of $69,000 for revenue from fairs from 2010 to 2013 plus interest, plus another $10,000 in punitive damages as well as all records pertaining to the festivals from 2011, 2012 and 2013, which Nelson organized.

The lawsuit contends that the number of vendors did not vary greatly from previous years and, up to 2011, checks from vendors were written payable to the fire company and deposited by the coordinator into a company account.

According to the lawsuit, Henry, an auxiliary volunteer, organized the festivals as part of her job as the comptroller of the village. When she retired from that in the 1990s, she did it for $800 per show, the lawsuit states. It states when Nelson took over, her stipend was $1,200.

It also states that Nelson was never given permission by the company to create the website and expenses for the event have remained essentially the same throughout the years.

I was wrongfully accused, and my feelings were deeply hurt, Nelson said.

Wright said the civil lawsuit, filed by a previous attorney, is pending. The last action on it was Nelsons answer to it in October 2013, which denied all counts.

The matter was investigated by State Police and the Warren County District Attorneys Office. Authorities said Monday that no criminal charges are forthcoming, and that the craft fair operator was not a part of the fire company, nor did she have a contract that required her to provide all or a specified portion of the money to the fire company.

State Comptrollers Office spokesman Brian Butry said in an email to The Post-Star that the office does not comment on conversations with law enforcement.

The audit report also states the revenue realized from the craft fairs in 2013 was significantly less than the years before and after. In 2012, revenues were $12,175 and the 2014 craft show fairs brought in $21,965.

The audit report also noted that two applications stated the checks for the fair could be made out to the company or the coordinator personally. Vendors were informed later by the companys president at the time that checks were to be made out to the company.

The lawsuit contends Nelson in 2011 began depositing checks into an account in her name and in some cases changed the name on the check to hers.

According to the audit report, the company officers told Nelson to pay herself for her expenses associated with managing the fairs from the collections and give the remaining collections to the treasurer.

However, because the board did not enter into an agreement with the coordinator, the amount of expenses to be reimbursed was not stipulated and the coordinator was not required to submit an accounting to the board, the audit report states.

In January 2014, before the next craft fairs, the fire company board established stronger internal controls, including instructing vendors to make checks payable to the company and requiring the secretary to receive payments from vendors by mail and make a copy of all the checks before placing them in a lock box for the coordinator to retrieve.

The coordinator is required to make a copy of all the checks and deposit slips before making the deposits and give them to the company with the validated bank deposit slips. The company board also is now requiring the coordinator to submit an annual report of all vendors and collections.

Also, in September 2013, the former president appointed a fair committee for 2014 to increase the companys oversight.

Other findings

Auditors also found instances in which the company treasurer did not follow the bylaws and maintain adequate documentation of collections or properly account for all collections or deposit all of them timely and intact.

For example, during seven months, the treasurer received 813 collections totaling $145,244, of which 802 collections totaling $144,460 were deposited, according to the audit.

A member who sold company apparel maintained a log of money collected and given to the treasurer. The auditor found three times where the log indicated money collected was given to the treasurer, but they couldnt trace $273 of it to a deposit record.

Auditors also found eight times where members collected cash for fundraising events and prepared cash count sheets, but the amount documented on the sheets was not equal to what was deposited, which left a discrepancy of $511.

In November, company President Robert Hickey submitted a response thanking the Comptrollers Office for the audit and specifying changes made based on the audit recommendations.

For example, a dated receipt is now issued for all collections remitted by the company members, and the counting of money by company members is now verified by two members and submitted to the treasurer for documentation and depositing. Deposits must receive a valid banking slip and have attached supporting documentation.

Staff writer Don Lehman contributed to this report.
Local homeless advocates and police officials said Monday that Gov. Andrew Cuomos executive order on dealing with homeless persons is a restatement of what they have been doing for years.

Kim Cook, director of Open Door Ministries, which runs the Code Blue emergency homeless shelter on Gurney Lane in Queensbury, said she is glad the governor is addressing the issue.

We appreciate the fact that the governor is highlighting the needs of the homeless, she said.

Police chiefs in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward said their standard procedure has been to help homeless people find a place to stay on cold nights.

Every agency I know does that now, said Hudson Falls Chief Randy Diamond. We contact social service agencies and find them a place to stay. Thats no different from how we operate.

Fort Edward Chief Justin Derway said his department rarely runs into that situation during the winter.

But if we do, we arrange for the person to have shelter, he said. During the summer, we have people camping, but during the winter we just do not see it very often.

The governors order, which goes into effect on Wednesday, says state law allows the involuntary placement of individuals to protect them from harming themselves or others.

The order requires police and social service agencies to move homeless people into shelters, against their will if necessary, when the temperature or the wind chill is below 32 degrees.

Reaching out

Cook said that after reading the governors executive order, she contacted other local agencies.

I have been in touch with both Warren and Washington County social services today and we will be working together on this, Cook said. Code Blue has already been called into the beginning of next week. We are working with the county to determine if we will be open at the higher temperature going forward.

Cook has also contacted the governors office.

We are awaiting clarification, because we cannot keep people against their will. If a guest wants to leave and we feel they are in danger, we will notify the police.

The potential expansion of the program will call for more funding. Everything Open Door does is by donation.

Standard procedure for emergency homeless shelters over the last several years, including the local operation, has been to use 20 degrees as the forecast that would open the doors.

The increased needs and expanded hours will increase our costs and our need for volunteers to serve in various roles, Cook said. Well continue to collaborate with other agencies to help those who are in danger. 

Cook said the Open Door is moving forward on plans to have a year-round shelter.

The Gurney Lane shelter, which is open now, had already been scheduled to be open through Jan. 11 prior to the governors announcement.

NYC mayor critical

In New York City, Mayor William de Blasio has questioned whether the order is legal.

His spokeswoman, Karen Hinton, released a statement saying the order is not legal.

We support the intent of the executive order, but to forcibly remove all homeless individuals in freezing weather, as the governor has ordered, will require him to pass state law, she said in a statement posted on the mayors website. This executive order adds no legal or financial resources to New York Citys programs to assist the homeless and merely requires all New York state localities follow many of the same requirements as New York City to shelter families and individuals in need in freezing temperatures, she said.
"The charm of mortal life, since her arrival has been joy, thoughts and longing of togetherness...a wish to be always behind her and protect her...maybe life after all gives us a second chance. And with your arrival, I now indeed believe that it sincerely does for our heavenly father cannot be heartless, as he instilled us with hearts of love, trust, faith, compassion and joy! .....

......Time tickles in joy and passes with a melancholic song. The hollow cry of penetrable sounds from the wild beasts underneath the moonlight alerts me of your hopeful

presence...and I am waiting..."

(extracted from: Stars Fall Down)
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Identifying the Roots and the Resolve of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Sam Rohrer explores the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict in this discussion with Bill Salus. Topics discussed include: When and Why It Started. Gods Response: Past and Present. Resolving the Conflict, (Psalm 83)

Biden calls for a 2-State solution and Hurricane Ian bites back In this prophecy update Tom Hughes and Bill Salus look at the Hurricanes that hit Canada and Florida in possible relation to Lapid's, Biden's and Trudeau's push for a 2-State solution. Also discussed are the topics of the Obadiah fatal Palestinian Prophecies, the Destruction of Damascus and much more.

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UFO Update! Bill Salus UFO Encounter! LA Marzulli shares the Bill Salus seeming encounter with UFO's

The IDF in Bible Prophecies In this teaching video, Bill Salus identifies several unfulfilled Bible prophecies that involve today's Israeli Defense Forces.

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Prophecies that can occur between Now and Eternity This message was given by Bill Salus at the Harvest Christian Centre Prophecy Conference 2022 in Park Hills, Missouri on 9/9/2022. He presents a Last Days 12-Stage Timeline of Prophecies that could occur between Now and Eternity which he has written about in his 5-book series, the NOW, NEXT, LAST, FINAL and MILLENNIUM Prophecies. He focuses this presentation on the Pre-Tribulation prophecies; prophecies that could find fulfillment before the Rapture.

The Wars Leading to Armageddon Join Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales on this Prophecy Watchers TV show as they explore some of the unfulfilled biblical wars.

The Road to Armageddon: The Pre-Tribulational Prophecies Trailer ...This is the official trailer for a new 4-disc DVD from Prophecy Watchers TV that features Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales.

Emergence of the Exceedingly Great Israeli Army in Bible Prophecy ...In this 5-minute video, Bill Salus and Tom Hughes explore how the Israeli Defense Forces exist in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. This video is an excerpt from the Pre-Tribulation Prophecies DVD.

The Terrorization of Egypt by the Israeli Defense Forces in Isaiah 19:16-18 ...In this short 4-minute video, Bill Salus and Tom Hughes discuss the future prophecies about Egypt in Isaiah 19:1-18. Egypt's peace pact with Israel ends when Isaiah's prophecies begin. This video is an excerpt from the Pre-Tribulation Prophecies DVD.

Does Psalm 83 Describe Israels War BEFORE Gog & Magog? ...On today's Watchman Newscast, host Erick Stakelbeck is joined by author Bill Salus of Prophecy Depot Ministries to break down the Bibles mysterious Psalm 83 passage and whether it describes a future war between Israel and its enemies, led by Iran and its proxies. Some say this passage was already fulfilled in 1967 or 1948. However, Salus believes these events have yet to take place and will transpire before the war of Gog and Magog. Could Psalm 83 set the stage for Gog/Magog showdown as described in the Book of Ezekiel?

Future Prophecies Revealed | Tom Hughes and Bill Salus ...For the last 10 years Bible prophecy experts, Bill Salus and Pastor Tom Hughes have opened Gods Word and discovered a series of little-known future prophecies that have escaped the notice of most Christians. This TV show explores some of them.

The Spiritual Survival Kit for Those Left Behind ...If the Rapture happened today, would you or someone you love, be left behind to face the travails of the Seven-Year Tribulation Period? This treacherous period is when God pours out His wrath through a series of twenty-one judgments on Christ-rejecting humanity. Its undoubtedly the worst time to be alive in the history of the planet and the signs of the times point out that this time draws frightfully near! PREPARE YOUR LOVED ONES WITH THE SPIRITUAL SURVIVAL KIT FOR THOSE LEFT BEHIND.

Disaster in Iran: Iran has Double Trouble in the End Times Pastor Tom Hughes and Bill Salus explain the Jeremiah 49:34-39 prophecy of Elam. It seems ready to happen and it appears to be a nuclear disaster by the Persian Gulf. (This is an excerpt from their Pre-Tribulation Prophecies DVD).

The Destruction of Damascus is a Pre-Tribulational Bible Prophecy Bill Salus and Tom Hughes explain the Isaiah 17 prophecy about the destruction of Damascus. This is an excerpt from their Pre-Tribulation Prophecies 2-Disc DVD.

NEW 3-DISC DVD - EZEKIEL 38: WHEN GOD DEFENDS ISRAEL



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Will Ancient Prophecies be Fulfilled in Our Lifetime? On this Prophecy Watchers show, Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales reveal some ancient biblical prophecies that could happen in this generation.

Iran's Double Trouble in the End Times In this interview with Kurt Hudspeth and co-host Dr. Larry Miller of the God Family and Radio Show, Bill gives his insight, based on years of study, into the future biblical battles that are now stage setting. These end times epic events will have a global impact and our world will be shaken. Bill sees Prophecy as a witnessing tool that authenticates the sovereignty of God, Who told us the end from the beginning and wants to inform us because He loves us. Bill hopes that as Christians learn about these things in the Word of God that they will evangelize to the lost.

RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE: What Are The Prophetic Implications For Israel? ... Tom Hughes and Bill Salus give a timely update on Ukraine, Russia, USA and Israel in prophecy.

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The Coming Ezekiel 38 Invasion TV Show ...Bill Salus explains why Ezekiel 38 is the marquee event of the end times.

What Happens in the Aftermath of Ezekiel 38 and 39? In this Prophecy Watchers TV show Bill Salus and Mondo Gonzales explore the important details about what happens in the aftermath of the Lord's supernatural defeat of Russia, Turkey, Iran and their hordes in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

The MIDEAST WAR is COMMING! Tom Hughes and Bill Salus start with a Mideast update. Then Bill addresses Daniel 11:37, (will the Antichrist be a homosexual)? Also explored is whether or not the 144,000 Jewish evangelist are virgins as per Revelation 14:4. Several other prophetic topics are discussed.

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The Global Government in the Millennium - Christ Rules with a Rod of Iron In this short video Bill Salus teaches about the global government in the MILLENNIUM. This message explains how and why Jesus Christ rules with a rod of iron. Discover the Jewish and Gentile branches of government during this 1000 year Messianic Age.

Psalm 83: Is it an unfulfilled prophecy? In this 8-minute video below, Bill Salus responds to his critics about the Psalm 83 prophetic war





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The Destruction and Restoration of Planet Earth ...This short 2 1/2 minute video is taken from the Bill Salus DVD entitled, The MILLENNIUM Prophecies and the NEW JERUSALEM. At the end of the Seven-Year Tribulation Period the present planet will be destroyed, but the good news is that Jesus Christ will restore the earth to its former glories for the MILLENNIUM.

...In this short video, Bill Salus peers into the prophetic future and shares what he foresees coming in the Middle East. The stage is clearly set for, not one, but several last days biblical wars to happen. These epic foretold events could turn 2022 into an apocalyptic year. This video excerpt was taken from the timely Prophecy Watchers TV show entitled, Prophecy Update: Israel's Nuclear Showdown with Iran. This Prophecy Watchers show can be seen below.

Prophecy Update: Israel's Nuclear Showdown with Iran Join Mondo Gonzales and Bill Salus as they discuss and analyze the momentous events that are happening in Israel currently. The Nuclear talks in Vienna are going nowhere. Israel passed a $1.5 billion dollar legislative packet in October authorizing the training and preparation for a direct attack on Iran's nuclear sites. Iran's brigadier general openly acknowledges recently their desire to wipe Israel off the map. This isn't just the typical saber-rattling. There are new red lines that are being crossed and Israel is now being forced to take decisive action as Iran poses an existential threat.

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The Eternal Order and The New Jerusalem On this Prophecy Watchers TV show, Bill Salus explains the highlights of the Millennium and the Eternal Order that follows. He also covers the events in the Aftermath Age, which is a time period between the Millennium and Eternal Order.

Bill Salus and Tom Hughes are together again. This timely video explores several Pre-Tribulation Prophecies. This show ends with a live Q and A.

The MILLENNIUM Prophecies: the 75-Day Interval ...On this Prophecy Watchers TV show Bill Salus explains what happens in the 75-Day Interval that sets up the Millennial Kingdom.





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Bill Salus & Tom Hughes Reveal The Pre-Tribulation Prophecies WATCH THIS RECENT PROPHECY WATCHER TV SHOW...

Salus and Marzulli discuss groundbreaking Bible prophecies ... This video received over 150,000 views, but was recently censored. So we have reposted it. Watch it before it gets removed again.

Mideast Update: The 3 Hamas Prophecies (11:25 minute video) Did you know that the Hamas and Palestinians appear to be identified in Bible prophecy? In this Mideast Update, Bill Salus discusses the current Hamas vs. Israeli conflict and reveals the 3 prophecies that appear to allude to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza.

Vintage Video: The Post-Rapture Pre-Tribulation Gap Period ...Bill Salus explains the gap of unspecified time between the Rapture and the Seven-Year Tribulation Period....We are building our YouTube channel by posting NEW and OLD videos into a library for our viewers. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE by clicking the YouTube button at the bottom right of this video. It will take you to our channel and then click on the SUBSCRIBE BUTTON.

2021 Update: Why America Will Fall From Superpower Status (Part 1) ...In this 24-minute video Bill Salus points out that America is morally and spiritually bankrupt. He identifies when the USA said "GOODBYE GOD," and how that provoked GOD to abandon America.

Why America will Fall from Superpower Status (Part 2) ...In this video, Bill Salus provides a summary of the Ezekiel 38 prophecy. Bill also presents the biblical, historical, archaeological, geographical and geo-political arguments that America is a cowardly young lion of Tarshish in Ezekiel 38:13. This means that America is a sideline protestor during the end times Magog Invasion into Israel. As such, America is pictured in a less than super-power status. Bill presents the possible scenarios that could cause America to decline between now and the fulfillment of Ezekiel 38.

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The LAST Prophecies on Prophecy Watchers TV Bill Salus has another information packed visit with Gary Stearman of Prophecy Watchers. They highlighted some key content of Bills new book, The LAST Prophecies. What is meant by the Final/Terminal Generation? What is the end times timeline? What starts the 7-year Tribulation and what is its purpose? They also discussed that there will be a final worldwide revival amidst the judgments of the Trib-Period and also pondered, what are the end time technologies that the ancient apostles and prophets tried to describe?

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The Catholic Church in the Tribulation ... Bill Salus explains the future of the Catholic Church in Bible prophecy.

Revealing the Mystery of End Times Babylon Dr. David Reagan and Nathan Jones interview Bill Salus on Christ in Prophecy TV. The topic that is discussed is the true identity of the GREAT CITY called Mystery, Babylon. Is it New York City, Jerusalem, Mecca, Rebuilt Babylon, Iraq, or is it Rome, the city that sits on seven-hills? Watch this TV show to hear the arguments that strongly suggest that the Harlot world religion is the Catholic Church and that the GREAT CITY that it's headquartered in is ROME!

BILL SALUS EXPLAINS WHY PSALM 83 IS A NOW PROPHECY ON PROPHECY WATCHERS TV ... Many prophecy buffs believe that Ezekiel 38 is the prophecy that could happen Now, but Bill Salus explains why that is not likely. He says Psalm 83 is a Now Prophecy, but certain preconditions exist today that suggest Ezekiel 38 is a Next Prophecy.
PROUT, The Progressive Utilization Theory

Profounded by Indian scientest P R Sarkar 1959.

Prout if for the welfare of all!


This means people who deal with such companies risk losing their capital.

Read more: Bank of Ghana to clamp down on illegal financial NGOs

Pursuant to the above, applicants are granted approval in principle for a defined period usually six months and are required to meet conditions stated under the approval in principle letter.

It says the companies despite several reminders including a notice on 15th July 2015, failed to meet the conditions precedent to the issuance of a final license.

Read more: BOG tips on how to spot fraudulent microfinance companies

Some micro-finance and money lending companies despite several reminders including our Notice No BG/GOV/SEC/2015/10 of 15th July, 2015 have failed to meet the conditions precedent to the issuance of a final license the Bank said.

Below is the list of micro-finance companies whose licenses have been revoked.

1 Cedar House Microfinance Services Ltd

2 Ezi Access Microfinance Limited

3 KB Star Microfinance Company Limited

4 Money Link Microfinance Ltd

5 Xpress Link Microfinance Company Limited

6 Quick Loans Microfinance Limited

7 Vanliz Microfinance Services Limited

8 Glow Microfinance Limited

9 Sufficiency Microfinance Ltd

10 Apex Microfinance Limited

11 Atwiman Microfinance Company Limited

12 Genesis Seed Microfinance Ltd

13 Look-Ahead Microfinance Ltd

14 Silison Microfinance Limited

15 Softbiz Microfinance Ltd

16 Growth Champions Microfinance Limited

17 Money Home Microfinance Limited

18 Reach Microfinance Limited

19 Sika Dwa Microfinance Limited

20 TTS Microfinance Services Ltd

21 Fast Money Microfinance Ltd

22 Ideal Way Microfinance Services Ltd

23 Skii Credit Microfinance Limited

24 Royal Kingdom Microfinance Ltd

25 Silver Microfinance Limited

26 Time-First Microfinance Limited

27 Agapet Microfinance Limited

28 Citiville Microfinance Limited

29 City Trust Microfinance Limited

30 Coastal Link Microfinance Limited

31 First Unity Microfinance Limited

32 Golden Life Microfinance Limited

33 Mothers Microfinance Limited

34 My Hope Microfinance Limited

35 Paxman Microfinance Limited

36 Pendy-Glo Microfinance Limited

37 Promise Microfinance Limited

38 Stegenor Microfinance Limited

39 Ultimate Focus Microfinance Limited

40 Bees Microfinance Limited

41 Ego Vision Microfinance Limited

42 Jcobs Microfinance Limited

43 Mckeown Microfinance Limited

44 Opportunity Global Links Microfinance Limited

45 Rimda Microfinance Limited

46 Spark Trust Microfinance Limited

47 Swift Trust Microfinance Limited

48 Topnet Microfinance Limited

49 Kab Microfinance Limited

50 Kwabef Microfinance Limited

51 Medlorm Microfinance Limited

52 Western Microfinance Limited

53 Ganyo Microfinance Ltd

54 Kinsban Captial Microfinance Limited

55 Medal Credit Microfinance Limited

56 Rejoice Microfinance Limited

57 Trust Jesus Microfinance Ltd

58 Images Microfinance Limited

59 Central Capital Microfinance Limited

60 Sab Trust Microfinance Limited

61 Antcave Microfinance Limited

62 F.H&C Microfinance Limited

63 Pryme Hedge Microfinance Ltd

64 Safe Credit Microfinance Limited

65 Seab Microfinance Ltd

66 The Lord is Peace Microfinance Ltd

67 Protege Microfinance Limited

68 Uni Cash Microfinance Limited

69 Reemalex Microfinace Services Limited
Economically, if you dont impose taxes at the time that you should impose, then there will be more challenges than solutions so in as much as we need the resources to pay back or construct our roads and improve facilities, I think the timing is also important, he said on Radio Ghanas Behind the News programme on Monday.

He indicated that by way of timing, the population of a country must be prepared for what is ahead of them.

According to him, all economies have taxation as its major source of revenue for governments, but he insisted that timing is key.

Government has introduced new taxes as well as increased petroleum prices from between 18 to 27 per cent. Last year, prices of electricity and water went up by 59.2 per cent and 67.2 per cent respectively.

Ghanaians have lashed out at the government for being insensitive to the plight of citizens.

Ali Abdullah is of the view that Ghanaians should begin interrogating the uses of the tax revenue government generates saying, if you look at the economy, we are faced with budgets being read in November; come January, disbursements start rolling out, the next we will hear will be is another budget reading. In between, where is the accountability processes because what we will get will be the Auditor Generals report to Parliament, Public Account Committees report and the question is, what next?

He complained that even the audit reports that are released are for previous years thereby making it difficult for citizens to effectively track the uses of revenue.
Dip in cocoa and gold prices last year culminated in the free fall of the cedi.

An ounce of gold fell from US$1,200 in January last year to US$1,061 on January this year.

According him, the free fall of the cedi last year was a global phenomenom, adding countries such as South Africa, Angola and others had similar challenges.

He said, "Fortunately, prices of cocoa and gold are stable and we do not expect the depreciation to continue."

He further said data from the central bank showed that the currency had seen less pressures during the festive season compared to previous years.

To consolidate the gains made, he said what needs to be done now is to manage traditional shocks,in reference to the stability in commodity prices and the impact on revenues.

See more:
Head of Banking and Finance Department, Dr. Godfred Bokpin described the circumstances surrounding the passage of the Emergency Energy Sector Levy which has led to an increase in fuel prices as extremely fishy.

Documentary evidence from parliament has revealed that the house approved a 5 percent increase in prices of fuel at the pumps after imposing the levies. However, Oil Marketing Companies are charging as high as 27 percent.

When asked about what he makes of what is being suspected to be a rip off by OMCs, Dr. Bokpin said,

"Honestly, government has not been truthful in the calculation of petroleum prices. It appears it only works when the prices skyrocket on the international market. But when prices fall then they find a way to impose all kinds of taxes."

To Dr. Bokpin it is unclear who is at fault, "whether it is the Ministry of Finance who misled parliament or it is the OMCs who are ripping us off."

Meanwhile, Finance lecturer Dr. Lord Mensah has described new taxes imposed on returns of foreign investments as ill-timed and counterproductive to the country's drive for Foreign Direct Investment.

" The 8 % taxes imposed on returns of foreign investors smucks of poor thinking on the part of government" he says.
There is uneasy calm at the Ridge Hospital as some senior staff have petitioned the Ghana Health Service demanding a probe into the appointment of the new Medical Director of the facility, Dr Thomas Anaba.

The staff argue that the selection process for Dr Anaba's position has been breached.

They also argue that Dr Anaba is not qualified to be a Medical Director, adding that the hospital should not be left in the care of inexperienced people.

In an interview with Pulse.com.gh, Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Appiah Denkyira said the petition is currently being discussed.
Of course, coupled with the resignation of the Transport Minister Dzifa Ativor which many thought was honourable.

Read More : Smarttys ordered to refund 1.9 million cedis in the bus branding scandal

But the question is, is the Chief of Staffs directive meant to silence critics and make the government look good in the eyes of the public?

First of all, isn't it pretty astonishing how such an amount expended from the national kitty went unnoticed by government and the transport ministry only for action to be taken on it when the media brought it up? When will government ever be proactive? But that is another matter for different discussion.

The story broke mid December 2015. The Chief of Staff decided to get the Attorney General to look into the matter, so the Attorney General presented a report and then a directive was issued to retrieve some of the money. A DIRECTIVE is all it is going to be if government is not pushed to make public all receipts of the payment of the money and if there is a payment plan.

Precedence

When the Gyeeda Scandal broke the president ordered for the retrieval of monies wrongfully paid to the companies executing the modules under GYEEDA. In 2014 the Deputy Attorney General and Minister for Justice Dominic Ayene said 14 million was recovered but failed to show evidence of payment. So Ghanaians had to just trust the words of the honest politician and minister.

Questions have also been raised about the retrieval of the 51 million cedi Woyome judgment debt ordered by the court. To date it still remains unclear if government has been able to retrieve every single amount from Mr. Woyome.

The above incidents make it very difficult to state confidently that government is not paying lip service in in 3.6 million BRT buses branding saga.

When Pulse.com.gh contacted Smarttys on the 4 of January 2015 to find out if the Attorney General has contacted the company with regards to the payment of the 1.9 million cedis, the PRO of the company Kleff Maxwell Justice said he could not speak on that subject.

We are not speaking on anything yet, he said. When asked if the company had been contacted by the Attorney Generals office his response was I dont have any information with respect to that I am sorry.

But Anti-corruption campaigner Vitus Azeem says Ghanaians should not settle for less when it comes to the retrieval of monies paid unlawfully. The Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative says it should not be enough for us to just accept both media and civil society to just accept the announcement that they have ordered that the money should be paid.
It has emerged that a pro-forma invoice dated 17th July 2015, and signed by the Accounts Officer of Smarttys Management and Productions and copied to the Ministry of Transport, put the total cost of branding for each bus at Ghc30,420.00.

The Ministry of Transport has been the centre of controversy in parliament as debated the 2016 budget.

The minority leader drew the speaker's attention to an item in the accounts of expenditures made from the petroleum revenues fund by the Ministry of Transport in 2015 which had to do with the amounts spent on branding 116 Metro Mass Transit buses.

Referring to the 2015 Annual Report on the Petroleum Revenues Fund, the Ministry spent GHC31,000 on branding the images of eight former presidents on each Metro Mass Transit bus.

Dzifa Attivor resigned following her Ministrys decision to spend GHC 3.6 million on the buses.

She tendered in her resignation to the president.

Following public backlash over the matter, the Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah ordered the Attorney General to thoroughly investigate the contract and recover GH1.9 million from Smarttys.

According to Leila Djansi, who is frustrated by the numerous scandals involving government officials, she has regretted campaigning for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) President John Mahama in the 2012 general elections.

Read more: Leila Djansi regrets campaigning for Mahama

The multiple award-winning filmmaker said the "incompetence" of the NDC government has caused hardship in Ghana.

In a Facebook post, she said "I so regret campaigning for NDC although I have no vote in Ghana. I lost friends, someone threatened to burn down my office in Ghana because I was NDC."

Read below her Facebook post:

"Good morning from John Mahama's Ghana!! Multiple days without water. Last week we had to call the company head to have taps opened.

I so regret campaigning for NDC although I have no vote in Ghana. I lost friends, someone threatened to burn down my office in Ghana cos I was NDC.

After all the sacrifices made to campaign and have faith in this party, Ghana has been faced with so much incompetence from this team! Even not living in Ghana, you feel the hardship. But they have money to give to a less qualified individual to brand buses.

Buses we brand at no less than 5000ghc per bus were branded for 30,000. That money could have been used to improve the water-flow system in the country. Beds for hospitals... This is the Ghana you get when selfish people thrive.

When they give only to their family members. Clothe themselves in material things so they can [be] worshiped.
Addressing the media, the Deputy Accra Regional Police Commander, ACP Timothy Bonga said on December 29, 2015, the suspects, Lance Copororal Fiaku Micheal, 24, and Baffoe Archer, 24, hired the taxi from Tudu in Accra to the Osu castle.

On reaching the CEPS traffic light, the military officer requested to use the washroom and directed the complainant to drive to the independence square.

On arrival the military officer visited the washroom as requested leaving suspect Baffoe Archer in the taxi cab together with the driver, ACP Timothy Bonga added.

He said the military officer returned minutes later from the washroom with a pistol which he pointed at the driver ordering him to hand over the taxi.

The taxi driver reported the case to the police.

The suspects were later arrested at the point of selling the vehicle.
Internet Fraud and Sakawa are not the same!

No they are not the same.

Internet fraud is simply that act of deceiving some bored, rich white people in Europe or the States or some part of the world that you are some pretty girl who wants love, or some hunk with six packs running away from some political nonsense or that you own gold mines and can produce more gold than Obuasi has ever seen - and then they believe you and send you some money. Sometimes you make a lot, other times you make little, and sometimes you make nothing. Your success depends on how dumb the folks on the other side of the world are.

So that's Internet fraud. That's what you find young men and women in cafes in 2016 doing. That's not Sakawa.

Sakawa is a ritual. Sakawa involves spiritual matters. People that indulge in Sakawa sacrifice one thing or another to gain the limitless wealth they crave for. The sacrifices may involve you killing your parents, boyfriend or girlfriend, brother, sister, or simply a dear one.

Other sacrifices may involve the young people foregoing the use of their manhood for the rest of their lives. Let me rephrase that - with Sakawa, the spiritualist may ask that you sacrifice your manhood so that you can either never have sex or you are unable to have children. It could also be that you get the blood of virgin or the spermatozoa of certain kinds of people. Others must have sex with fellow men or fellow women. Some must never bath. Some must sleep in coffins. Some must never eat some specific foods or meat.

Now, what's Kwame Gyan on about?

I overheard a group of young people having a chat. I got interested in what I overheard and they politely indulged me. Now, I am in my 30s (yea don't be deceived by the photos, I am an old man), and having a chat with 19 and 20 and 21 and 22 year olds felt refreshing and i was awed at what I learnt.

And that includes all that i have typed above.

There are a few things I struggle to grapple my 30-something year old mind around:

What could drive a 21 year old boy to drive to Togo or Benin, sit before some fetish priest, is told to go murder his mum and dad, and then he actually does so, just so that at the age of 21, he gets so much money that he is able to buy all the things his dad and uncles and mum and aunts spent 40 or 50 years to get? I don't get that. May be I am too old to wrap my mind around this.

And to the girls that hang around these boys there are a few things I don't understand as well:

Are they aware that these boys actually may have killed people to get their riches? And again, are they aware that these boys are required to 'replenish' the sacrifices and this could mean using bodily fluids from them or some sort of thing they benefit from them?

Does it not intrigue you that a 21 or 22 year old is able to spend 3,000 cedis in in a night club when he is yet to get get a degree and does not own able my companies? Or that you ask this 20 year old boy for the latest Samsung or iPhone and he gives you cash there and then to buy it?

Seriously think about it...I also learned from my thirty three minute interaction that, Sakawa, also known as money ritual, is also very heavily practiced by girls. Yup, girls. Young girls.

Not every young woman driving a top of the range vehicle got it from her dad or a willing sugar daddy. Some of them got them through Sakawa. Some get all sorts of ritual stuff that they apply on their faces to confuse rich men to spend on them, what they wouldn't spend on their ailing children or octogenarian parents.

Others are okay to serve spiritual fathers by tattooing themselves and drinking shit you and I cannot imagine. Some in just themselves with all sorts of things and must sit on pots and collect the sperms of men to complete their ritual.

All of these so they can travel to Las Vegas and take selfies, visit Dubai and its awesome sights, shop in London and Paris and go holidaying in South Africa and the Bahamas. They want to live the life. The life of the rich and famous. They forget though that rich and famous of Hollywood that they seek to copy make their millions starring in movies, recording music, training to do a sport or doing some serious business.

The Struggle

Nothing comes for free. And for these people, sacrificing their parents and loved ones and destroying their manhood and others is just the initial pain before the superficial gain. Apparently a lot of them later realise the money is not as sweet as they thought. They start having regrets and nightmares. The reality of sleeping with animals against your will now comes home. Being a forced gay and paedophile now begins to stink. The memories of your dead boy and girlfriend and mum and dad and dear one now hits them.

Yes, they may drive all the big cars and have the fabulously furnished apartment but sleep eludes them; peace of mind does not exist, and after all the friends they 'spread' have gone home they become as lonely as the dead bodies they caused to be buried. These boys and girls struggle in life. Imagine, at 22 you struggle to sleep and enjoy your 'wealth'. Just 22. Until some powerful Man of God breaks the chain, they get lucky to live beyond a few years especially as they are unable to meet the demands of their rituals.

This is just me ranting away after spending some time with some young people. I got frightened listening to the tales. They didn't call them tales. They know people that were in these situations. These were eye witness accounts. They are worried about their friends. Their friends are worried about themselves. They fear they may have to attend one too many funerals before they turn 30 or may ne 25 or even 23.

So why are young people chasing money at 18 and 19 and 20 and 21 and 22 and 23 years?

Why have they lost absolute interest in schooling so they can work and earn and buy what they want to?

Why has the desire to live the high live so consumed young people that whatever it takes to appear rich is what they will do?

I can simply just ask these questions. If you have answers hit me up via email at kwame@kwamegyan.com or Twitter at @KwameGyan or through Facebook.
But already Republicans and gun advocates are getting red in the face and yelling about their rights as Americans to bear arms.

On Monday January 4, the White House revealed its plans to curb gun deaths, stating over the past decade in America, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence.

The following day, Obama spoke about the plan from the White House, surrounded by advocates for better gun control.

At parts of the speech he gave, Obama was visibly crying.

Talking about the 2012 Sandy Hook primary school shooting in which 20 children and six adults were killed Obama said every time I think about those kids it gets me mad.

He also reeled off the long list of other mass shootings in the USA in recent years.

He said the USA was the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close. And as I've said before, somehow we've become numb to it and we start thinking that this is normal.

And instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarized, partisan debates -- despite the fact that there's a general consensus in America about what needs to be done.

Obama has insisted that the order falls within his legal powers, and is bypassing Congress to enact it.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesnt matter where you conduct your businessfrom a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If youre in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks, a White House fact sheet said.

However, Obama will need Congress for some of the measures he is proposing.

Some of the gaps in our countrys gun laws can only be fixed through legislation, which is why the President continues to call on Congress to pass the kind of commonsense gun safety reforms supported by a majority of the American people, the White House said in its statement.

These measures include proposing funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce the gun laws.

Mental health is sometimes attributed to mass shootings, and the Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care.

The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons.

Obama was greeted by a standing ovation when he began explaining his new orders, CNN reported.

Mark Barden, a father of one of the children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, introduced Obama and spoke of how Obama's administration made a commitment to fight widespread gun violence.

Former Congresswoman and gun control advocate Gabby Giffords was also in attendance and was greeted with a standing ovation from the White House audience.

White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett defended Obama's plans Tuesday, saying the President's actions are "well within the existing statute CNN reported.

The measures come after a series of horrifying mass shootings and unnecessary gun deaths through the USA in recent years.

Each time there has been a mass shooting in the USA, Obamas frustration at the situation has grown - leading to this weeks announcement, in Obamas final year as president.

After an October 2015 Oregon shooting, Obama set out a challenge to news media - find out how many people were killed by guns in the USA, and compare that to those killed by terrorists.

News media accepted that challenge and the results were striking.

CNN found that from 2001 to 2013, 406,496 people died by firearms on U.S. soil. (2013 is the most recent year CDC data for deaths by firearms is available.) This data covered all manners of death, including homicide, accident and suicide.

According to the U.S. State Department, the number of U.S. citizens killed overseas as a result of incidents of terrorism from 2001 to 2013 was 350.

Including all terrorism incidents inside the U.S. CNN and found that between 2001 and 2013, there were 3,030 people killed in domestic acts of terrorism, bringing the total to 3,380.

For the whole of 2015, US NGO The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) found there were 13,338 deaths in the USA caused by guns.

In a time when it seems the terrorists are winning, where people are too scared to leave their homes or get on planes and their fear and ignorance turns to hatred and prejudice, Obamas challenge showed that guns in the USA were far more deadly than backwards and bloodthirsty ideologies terrorists lived off.

In his October speech Obama said : "We spend over $1 trillion and pass countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil  and rightfully so  and yet we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?"

"When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer. When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities. We have seatbelt laws because we know it saves lives.

"So the notion that gun violence is somehow different, that our freedom and our Constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon ... doesn't make sense."

He said mass shootings have become "routine" and Americans are "numb" to their impact.

As he delivered that October speech, he said he could image the press releases gun advocates would be churning out calling for more guns and fewer gun safety laws.

"There is a gun for roughly every man, woman and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer?

"We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths.

Associated Press reporter Julie Pace wrote gun control will be pushed to the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, and though Republicans and Democrats are divided on the issue, both parties see Obamas actions as an opportunity to generate enthusiasm among primary voters.

US polls have shown Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws.

The gun-control advocacy movement has gained wealthy backers, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but the National Rifle Association remains one of the most dominant forces in American politics, Pace reported.

However, Republicans are combating Obamas wishes to crackdown on gun rules, with fear monger Donald Trump telling CNN pretty soon you won't be able to get guns".

If elected he said he would reverse the measures.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, criticized the President's plans for choosing executive action over working with Congress.

He accused Obama of subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will....His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected. No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally."

The BBC reported the the largest gun lobby group, the National Rifle Association (NRA), said Obama's steps would not have prevented any recent mass killings in the US.

There have also been the usual arguments about the US second amendment splashed around by gun advocates - the right to bear arms - and with Obama pushing the issue, things will get more heated.

What Obama is proposing is light. He has constantly been thwarted by Congress each time he has called for a crackdown on guns in the USA.

He is right to call for change. But so much of that lies in the hands of the Republican dominated Congress.
Onion seller Iddi said his product, imported from Niger,last year sold for 20 cedis a basket, this year it is 40 cedis.While pepper seller Esi said 1 kilo of pepper last year was 10 cedis, it had doubled to 20 cedis this year.

Grace, a cucumber seller, said six months ago her product sold three for 2 cedis, whereas now they sold three for 10 cedis, more than doubling in price.

The price has shot up because there is no rain. The farmers are forced to use pumping machines to water the crops.

Tomato seller Rita said tomatoes had doubled over the year from 15 cedis to 30 cedis now.

Rita said the tomatoes came from Burkina Faso, and believed the distance the produce travelled attributed to the increase.

However, secretary of Food Sovereignty Ghana Kofi Agyei said the increase ran deeper than weather and fuel costs.

Prices have increased due to the fact that some multi international agri business organisations have wrongly and negatively influenced governmental policies.

There was too much imported produce allowed in Ghana, which had a negative effect on local farmers. He believed multinational agriculture organisations were to blame and the government needed to do more to fix the situation.

Instead of empowering and establishing policies that will elevate local production, they are not doing it, they are rather bringing in foods produced outside.

It is a two way affair, they are destroying the local production while they are making the few who produce in the country compete with foreign crops.

Local farmers were not able to match the masses of crops coming from outside Ghana, he said.

He feared the multinationals will hijack the production system.

They are creating an atmosphere where production is low [in Ghana] and prices are increasing.

Agyei called for the power to be put back in the hands of the growers here, instead of Ghana relying on imported produce.

He said the solution was supporting farmers to produce more, and did not think the weather was the main reason prices were increasing.

More dams and better use of water bodies in Ghana would help local farmers, Agyei said.
The information was captured in the report by the Committee on the Energy Sector Levies Bill 2015.

According to the report, the Finance Minister Seth Terkper told Parliament that the Bill sought to realign petroleum related taxes by implications on the ex-pump price of petroleum products which would be announced Wednesday December 23, 2015.

However, prices have gone by 28% at the pump much to the dissatisfaction of some Members of Parliament on the minority side as well as sections of the general public who feel ripped off by the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies.

Reacting to the situation on Accra based Citi Fm, the head of the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributing Companies, there seems to be a disparity between what the minister of finance want BDCs to charge as the increment and what the actual price build up plus the tax comes to.

" I cannot speak for the ministry of finance and for parliament, but the price at the pumps right now just reflect the increment in taxes. That is the difference. "

Senyo Hosi then suggested that the Ministry of Finance may not have done their calculations to reflect the situation on the ground and as stipulated by the petroleum pricing formula under the Petroleum Downstream Deregulation Policy.

" I do not know what went into the Ministry of Finance' calculation of high the fuel prices must go. The petroleum pricing formula is clear on how prices are calculated and we OMCs follow this to the latter. Every Ghanaian can calculate the prices for themselves using the components. We have been very transparent in the pricing."

It is therefore unclear whether the ministry of finance misled parliament into passing what is believed to b a lesser increment in fuel prices, or the Oil Marketing Companies are reaping Ghanaians off.

Meanwhile, Minority MP for the Adanse Asokwa Constituency, K.T Hammond has charged the National Petroleum Authority to curb what he describes as rip off by the the Oil Marketing Companies or he heads to court.
The NPP has repeated their claims of a bloated democratic roll.

They had alleged the names of over 13,000 Burkinabes in the countrys voter record.

This is in accumulation to the over 78,000 Togolese residents it had previously suspected were confined in the record.

The EC in a statement said the Panel set up to look into concerns surrounding the call for a new voter register "finds the arguments for a new register unconvincing and therefore does not recommend the replacement of the current voters register."

But in the view of Dr Charles Wereko Brobby, "They [NPP] should stop wasting our ears."

"Let the NPP decide from today that we want to offer Ghanaians an alternative and tell all the noisemakers to shut up because those going to court, what are they going to argue about?" he asked.
In a statement, the EC said the Panel set up to look into concerns surrounding the call for a new voter register "finds the arguments for a new register unconvincing and therefore does not recommend the replacement of the current voters register."

"The Commission further wishes to inform the public that it has examined all the allegations and complaints made by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) on the voters register and has responded appropriately to the party.

This is what the EC wrote to the NPP over the new voters' register.

December 30, 2015The General-SecretaryThe New Patriotic PartyHead office, Accra.

Dear Sir,

REQUESTS FROM THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY FOR A NEW REGISTER

Please find below a recap of the main points made in your letters and submissions; the chronology of relevant events since the receipt of the first letter; and the responses of the Electoral Commission to each of the issues raised by your Party. On the 25th of July, 2015 your Party supported her request for a new voters register with the following allegations:

1. That the case of Abu Ramadan and Another vs Electoral Commission and Attorney General disallowed the use of National HealthInsurance Authority (NHIA) Identification Cards as proof of qualification to register, making the use of same for that purpose unconstitutional, void and of no effect.2. That the EC has refused to undertake proper auditing and comprehensive de-duplication of the 2012 biometric register with the required transparency which stakeholders demanded.

3. That there is disparity in the total number of registered voters provided by the EC at different times during the 2012 election cycle.4. That analysis of the 2010 population census and the 2012 biometric registration reveal several districts where the number of registered voters is in excess of the total population census figure for those districts.

5. That the 2012 register has a voter population that is 56.2% of the total population of Ghana, which is exceedingly high and unrealistic compared to other African countries.6. That there are several calls by CSOs and FBOs raising doubts about the credibility of the register used for the 2012 national polls.A further Petition received on August 18, 2015 contained thefollowing additional allegations:

1. That there are 76,000 Togolese nationals onGhanas voters register.2. That the Register contains pictures that have been edited.3. That about 900 names on an entire polling station contain pictures scanned into system as evidenced by staple marks.At an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held on August 21, 2015, it was agreed by all parties that due to District Level Elections scheduled for September 1, 2015 and the need to hear all stakeholders on the voters Register, all interested Parties were to submit their position on the Register by September 22, 2015. Petitions were received from thirty-four stakeholders (including sixteen political parties and many CSOs and citizens of Ghana) and were duly considered and circulated subsequently at the Forum.

On the September 22, 2015 another petition was received from your Party with the following further and additionalallegations:1. That there are 2096 multiple registrations on the Register, involving:a. cases of double and multiple registrations with multiple photographs;b. double and multiple registrations with multiple voter ID numbers;c. same registration details and photographs in different Polling Stations. On September 22, 2015 the EC announced the setting up of an Independent Panel of Eminent Ghanaians to evaluate all submissions received and examine all allegations arisingtherefrom.

On September 30, 2015 the IPAC meeting agreed to hold a public forum on the 29th and 30th October, 2015 in order topublicly address the issues concerning the Register. The Public Forum, held in the form of a public hearing, was successfully undertaken on those dates.At the Forum, and on October 29, 2015, your Party made the following additional allegations:1. That there are Minors, with age zero on the Register; and2. That there are no residential addresses provided on the Register.In addition, on October 3, 2015, with donor support, the Electoral Commission procured the services of an independent consultant to examine the Biometric Voters Register. October 19, 2015 the Commission wrote to the NPP to request for a copy of the Togolese register and the Shikakope Register used in the analysis contained in their petition of August 18,2015.

Again, on 6 November 2015, the Commission received a response from the NPP submitting a soft copy of the Togo register and the Shikakope register dated September 1, 2015. The Commission again wrote to the Togolese EC on November 10, 2015, requesting a copy of the Togolese register for examination.

The Commission again on November 11, 2015 wrote to the NPP seeking clarification from the NPP on the Shikakope Register dated September 1, 2015 which was the basis for the petition of 18 August, 2015 and further requested for an update on the analysis of Cote dIvoire and Burkina Faso registers as stated in the NPP petition of August 18, 2015. In a meeting on November 18, 2015 with officials of the NPP, the party clarified the register used for the Shikakope analysis and further confirmed that there was no further update on the analysis on the Burkina Faso and Cote dIvoire registers.

On November 21, 2015, a second version of the Shikakope register was submitted by the NPP. The EC on November 24, 2015 submitted another request to the Togolese EC for verification of the Togolese register provided by the NPP.

On November 27, 2015, the EC received a response from the Togo EC stating that they were unable to confirm the authenticity of the register submitted by the NPP as the Togolese register is a security document containing the private information of Togolese citizens. Finally, on December 15, 2015, the EC received the final report from the Consultant on the Independent Review of the Biometric Voters Register and on December 21, 2015, the final report from the independent panel of Eminent Ghanaians set up to look into the issue.

Following the receipt of the report of the Panel, the EC informed IPAC on December 22, 2015 of the receipt of thereport and requested time to study the report and revert to IPAC and the general public on the Commissions position and the contents of the Panels report.

EC RESPONSE AND OUTCOME OF INVESTIGATIONS INTO CLAIMS AND ALLEGATIONS MADE BY THE NPP

Allegation 1: Abu Ramadan and Anor vs Electoral Commission & Attorney General disallowed the use of NHIA cards as proof of qualification to register making the use of same for that purpose unconstitutional, void and of no effect.

EC position:In the Abu Ramadan case, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of NHIA cards, in their current form, was insufficient as proof of citizenship and consequently, the Electoral Commission (EC) was directed to stop accepting same as proof of citizenship for voter registration exercises. Nowhere in the ruling did the Supreme court nullify all registrations by voters who presented NHIA cards as proof of citizenship.

The Court in the course of the proceedings, declined the plaintiffs request to cancel all such registrations. The EC shares the view of the SC that it would be fair and proper for all such persons to also be heard prior to the invalidation of their registration.

The view of the EC is therefore that the Abu Ramadan ruling cannot be the basis for the creation of a new register. The current challenge procedures under CI 72 are sufficient to deal with all registered voters who presented NHIA cards as proof of citizenship. Such voters must also be given the opportunity to present additional proof of citizenship if available, beforethey are struck off the register.

Allegation 2: EC has refused to undertake proper auditing and comprehensive de-duplication of the 2012 biometric register with the required transparency which stakeholders demanded.

EC position:Guided by the need for stakeholder cooperation and support, the EC compiled the Biometric Register with extensive interactions with the political parties. Discussions covered issues of procurement, field operations and the exhibition of the register throughout 2011 and 2012.

Political parties provided representation on the technical and legal committees that considered and drafted the appropriate laws for the registration and the verification of voters. The EC displayed the Provisional Voters Register (PVR) in all registration centers after the mass registration in 2012 and in 2014 after the limited registration, to offer voters and persons qualified to be registered the opportunity to: Verify particulars Object to ineligible names in the PVR.Additional to the verification of voters, Stakeholders (Politica lParties) participated in adjudication of registration challenges through the district registration review committee participated in adjudication of suspected cases of multiple registrations after de-duplication objected against inclusion of names in the register during exhibition of the PVR.After the 2012 elections, the software has also been upgraded to ensure de-duplication using the biometric data as well as biographic data of voters. Accordingly, it is the view of the EC, that working with the political parties, the register has been progressively updated and de-duplicated since 2012. Over 150,000 names have been removed and the EC will continue to work with the political parties and all stakeholders to clean the register and undertake further de-duplication. The allegation by the NPP is therefore inaccurate.

Allegation 3: Disparity in the total number of registered voters provided by the EC at different times during the 2012 election cycle.EC position:

The process of compiling the voters register is divided into 4 stages; Stage 1: Collection of biographic data (using polling stations as registration centers) Stage 2: Compilation of the Provisional Voters Register (PVR) from collected data Stage 3: Exhibition of the PVR (for scrutiny, correction of personal details, inclusions and objections) Stage 4: Production of the Final Voters Register (after corrections arising from the exhibition). This clearly means that until all the stages have been completed, all figures related to the register are provisional. In many cases the stages overlap due to the duration of adjudication of challenges and objections after registration (stage 1) and Exhibition (stage3). Indeed in a few cases requests are made for inclusion just before the production of the PVR and being mindful of the ruling of the Tehn Addy case, the Commission usually takes action on requests when possible. The practice is to provide information on the voter numbers, as the EC goes through the various stages, to the political parties. In the case of the compilation of the 2012 Biometric Voter Register the process was as follows;Stage 1:In a briefing to Parliament after collecting the biographic data of applicants in the mass registration, the Chairman of the EC reported the results of the registration as follows;i) Mass registration (4 phases) 24th March  5thMay 2012PHASE TOTAL1 4,817,5612 3,710,0763 2,871,5304 2,229,650Total 13,628,817ii) Registration of PrisonersREGION # of INMATES REGISTEREDWestern 1,268 28Central 1,687 35Greater Accra 352 36Volta 879 2Eastern 4415 201Ashanti 2612 88Brong Ahafo 1093 24Northern 497 30Upper East 229 28Upper West 199 4Total 13,231476

iii) Mop up RegistrationREGION CENTERS VOTERSWestern 4,660Greater Accra 1,555Volta 237Eastern 149Ashanti 1,185Northern 6,178Upper East 2,506Upper West 342Total 16,812

He further stated that he expected the total figures to go up because of wrongly coded entries and planned lateregistrations that was to cover: Ghanaians abroad who were eligible for registration (Security Personnel on peace-keeping duties, diplomats and students on government scholarship) Persons whose registrations were challenged and were under review

Stages 2 and 3

Following de-duplication and correction of the several wrongly coded entries recorded during registration, a PVR with total registered Voters of14,060,573 was displayed at allregistration centers. During the Exhibition 8,955,882 voters representing63.7% visited their centers to check their personal details in the register. The addition of late registrations and receipt of substantial returns from the adjudication of registration challenges and exhibition objections increased the number of registered voters on the PVR to 14,158,890.

Stage 4;The total number of registered Voters for the FVR was 14,031,793. This outcome was as a result of the final decisions to recommend inclusions/deletions from the various adjudication committees across the country. Consequently, only one register was used by the EC for the 2012 elections and the EC did not present different registers to political parties during the election cycle.

Allegation 4: Analysis of the 2010 population census and the 2012 biometric registration reveal several districts where number of registered voters are in excess of the total population census figure for those districts.

EC position:The general connection of a Population Census to Biometric Voters Registration is the usefulness of the census results in providing a basis for the planning decisions in a voter registration exercise.Questions such as: Where to locate registration centers? What are the number of applicants to expect at the various centers? What quantity of materials to distribute to the various centers? are usually answered by checking with the latest Housing and Population census figures. The projections calculated from these base figures help in the planning effort. A simple comparison of registration numbers and census figures at the district and constituency level even in the same year may not result in the same outcomes. In the case of the 2010 Census and the 2012 Biometric Registration, the difference in figures in all the districts in Ghana may be on account of the following; Population growth (estimated annual growth rate for Ghana is 2.5%) Tendency of voters and candidates to go to their home towns and districts to register Draw of new economic activities Non-comprehensive nature of census (based on estimates) Transfers and postings of Public Officers, teachers, security personnel, etc.

The EC is therefore of the view that this allegation cannot be the basis for the creation of a new register.

Allegation 5: 2012 register has a voter population that is 56.2% of the total population of Ghana, which is exceedingly high and unrealistic compared to other African countries

EC position:The measure of Voter Population of a country depends usually on the following factors; voting age, demography of country,political environment and coverage, laws guiding Voter registration exercises and other socio-economic factors. These determinants differ from country to country and as such simply comparing voter populations without situating the figures properly within context, does not provide a clear picture of the situation.In comparing 2015 figures from Ghana, South Africa and Kenya, the voter populations of the countries were measuredas follows:

The reasons for Ghanas relatively high score are: Processes for challenging registration of prospective voters in other jurisdictions are more effective. The voter ID card is the de-facto national ID card in Ghana, hence the higher numbers due to enhanced demand for it as a means of identification. The existence of a compulsory national ID system in most comparative countries. No automatic linkages of voter registration to the births and deaths registry in Ghana, hence a high number of deceased persons still on the register. Consequently, an alleged high percentage of voters on Ghanas register simpliciter cannot be the basis for the creation of a new register.

Allegation 6: Calls by CSOs and FBOs for a new Register raising doubts about the credibility of the Register used for the 2012 polls.

EC position:CSOs and FBOs who raised doubts about the register, based their calls largely on the submissions and allegations made in the media by the NPP and other affiliate groups. Indeed at the Voters Register Forum, most of the political parties and CSOs were inclined towards a cleaning of the current register rather than the creation of a new register. Further, whilst acknowledging the immense contribution of CSOs and FBOs to our national governance, the Commission is of the view that critical decisions to be made by the Commission should be based on the national interest and sound bases and not merely public calls by CSOs and FBOsfor particular outcomes, however well intentioned they may be. It is the considered view of the Commission, that allegations made by all stakeholders must be examined and subjected to requisite analysis, and so mere allegations and doubts on the credibility of the Register should not be the basis for the creation of a new register.

Allegation 7: 76,000 Togolese on Ghanas voter register

EC position:In examining the identity and status of the 76,000 Togolese alleged to be on Ghanas Register, the EC found that they were all duly registered during the mass registration period in 2012. Most of the voters were registered in districts in the Volta and Northern Regions. These districts include Keta, Ketu South, Ketu North, Akatsi South, Akatsi North, Adaklu, Agotime Ziope, Ho Municipality, Kpando Municipality and Tatale/Sanguli. Our conclusion from this examination is that the voters are duly qualified under the laws of Ghana to be on Ghanas Register. The NPP did not provide any proof of the citizenship status of these persons and did not show any proof that they were not entitled to be registered in Ghana. Registration on the register of another country, under the current laws of Ghana, does not take away ones eligibility to be on the Ghanaian Register.

The Commission was also unable to confirm the authenticity of the Togolese Register used by the NPP in their analysis as the Electoral Commission of Togo declined to provide the EC with a copy of its register or confirm the authenticity of the soft copy of the register used by the NPP. It is important to observe that in the petition of the NPP dated August 18, 2015, the party claimed to have based its analysis on copies of the register displayed in Togo prior to their elections. However, upon request from the EC for the register used in the analysis, the NPP presented a soft copy of the Togo Register which the Togolese Electoral Commission says it had not given out to any third parties.Finally, Ghanas Constitution permits dual nationality and admits the possibility of acquiring citizenship through many modes such as naturalization, adoption, and marriage. It would therefore be improper and unconstitutional to simply remove the names of persons on the register on the mere allegation that they appear on the register of another country without giving them the opportunity to provide proof of their citizenship of Ghana. Seeking to remove names of persons who appear on the registers of Togo, Burkina Faso and Cote dIvoire in our view, would be an arbitrary and discriminatory application of the law. Would the Commission therefore be required to obtain the registers of all countries of the world and remove the names of persons who appear on such registers as well as Ghanas? Further, at a subsequent meeting between the Commission and the NPP on November 18 2015, the NPP stated that it could not provide an update on the analysis of the Togolese register (which in the partys petition of August 18, 2015 the party claimed only ten percent of the analysis had been completed). At the said meeting, the NPP also informed the Commission that it had discontinued the analyses of the Burkinabe and Ivorian Voter Registers. It is the view of the EC that the allegation by the NPP regarding the presence of 76,000 Togolese on Ghanas Register is therefore unsubstantiated and not supported by the citizenship laws of Ghana.

Allegation 8: Edited pictures on register

EC position:The Biometric Register has multiple layers of data protection and integrity assurance and does not permit the possibility of pictures on the register being edited. The consultants report on the Independent Review of the Biometric Voters Register also supports the position that this is not possible and that the system has adequate integrity and has not been compromised. We would be happy to share the Consultants report with the NPP.

Allegation 9: About 900 names on an entire polling station with pictures scanned into system as evidenced by staple marks .

EC position:It is untrue that all the registrations at the Shikakope- Apekuitome Polling Station are fictitious. It is further untrue that there are staple marks on the pictures and that these pictures were scanned into the system.

Two holes in the Red background cloth used for capturing photos during the mass registration period in 2012 have been mistaken or alleged by the NPP to be staple pin marks observed in the register of Shikakope- Apekuitome Polling Station(D020902) in the Ketu South district. An enlargement of the pictures clearly shows the holes in the red cloth used as background for the photos during the registration exercise.

Further checks in the voter registration database confirm the voters were properly and legally registered. Their forms 1A and 1C are available for inspection.

The NPP also had agents at the registration centres during the registration exercise. Further, their full biometric and biographic information are available on the system, as well as the dates and times of registration. A few samples from the register are inserted below (names have been removed to protect privacy of voters).In addition, the independent BVR expert brought in by theCommission has confirmed the validity of these registrations, the integrity of the BVR system and that further, photos cannot be scanned into the system to create a voter registration. All registrations must be generated via the BVR kits, with live pictures.

Voter ID: 9592014428REGISTRATION DATE: 05-05-2012 7:49:17 AMFull Name: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014477REGISTRATION DATE: 05-05-2012 8:26:25 AMFull Name: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014485

Voter ID: 9592014493REGISTRATION DATE: 05-05-2012 8:35:21 AMFull Name: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014527REGISTRATION DATE: 05-05-2012 9:16:22 AMFull Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014550REGISTRATION DATE : 05-05-2012 9:41:06 AMFull Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014634REGISTRATION DATE: 05-05-2012 12:11:58 PMFull Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014642REGISTRATION DATE : 05-05-2012 12:59:59 PMFull Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Voter ID: 9592014667REGISTRATION DATE: 05-05-2012 1:47:02 PMFull Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPolling Station Code : D020902

Allegation 10: Cases of double and multiple registrations with multiple photographs.

EC position:It has been demonstrated that the system was capable of removing over 150,000 multiple registrations from the register. It was further demonstrated that there is a clear, multi-level transparent procedure of Adjudication when humans check the machines findings. It was also demonstrated that there are very few cases of multiple registrations which resulted from either: Human error, system allowed error margin or insufficient biometric data (no fingerprints were captured or low quality fingerprints). The magnitude of multiple registrations in the current Register is very acceptable by any standard (estimated at hundreds in the entire register of 14.8 million people). The register does not have the multiple registration challenge that is being alleged. As stated in several fora by the Commission, there are a few cases of multiple registrations still in the register. These duplicates are in the register for the following reasons: Accuracy level of AFIS (the biometric software) engine is 99.98% (as per specifications) Insufficient Biometric data (Voters who registered with less than 6 fingers) Low quality fingerprints Human error during Adjudication processes The EC has introduced programmes to eliminate these multiple registrations. These include: Installation of a De-duplication system that matches biometric and biographic data. This ensures that duplicates of Voters with no (or insufficient) biometric data are detected during exhibition of the register. Upgrading of AFIS (software) and Voter Registration systems Establishing a better adjudication process with the assistance of political parties at IPAC. In our view, 2,096 alleged multiple registrations out of over 14 million entries are in line with duplicates expected to pass through the system. A percentage of less than 0.02% should not be the basis for the replacement of the entire Register.

Allegation 11: Double and multiple registrations with multiple voter ID numbers;

EC position:This is a false allegation as shown below. And cases of multiple registrations, have been explained in the preceding Allegation.

Allegation 12: Same registration details and photographs in different Polling Stations.

EC position:This is a clear case of multiple registration with systems in place and appropriate facilities to detect and expunge

.Allegation 13: Minors with age zero on register

EC position:A software bug in the voter registration program caused the system to produce these incorrect entries. The error affected 120 entries. The bug has been found and fixed. A software bug affecting 120 entries in a register with over 14 million entries cannot in our view be the basis for the creation of a new register.

Allegation 14: No residential addresses on register

EC position:The EC collects residential addresses of all applicants during registration. The aim for collecting this data is to make it available to political parties and the public for purposes of campaigning and cleaning of the roll. Concerns about handing over addresses of every adult Ghanaian to third parties have stalled its publication. The Commission is studying the issues of privacy as against its desire to have it published as expressed in law to make a

determination that will be satisfactory to all parties.

CONCLUSIONIt is the considered view of the Electoral Commission that a good case for the need for a new Register has not been madeby the NPP. The Commission further wishes to point out that the 2012 Register was created with the active collaboration of all political stakeholders in Ghana.

Indeed, the NPP contested the 2012 general elections on the basis of the same register and filed a Supreme Court petition against the outcome of the presidential election as declared by the EC.

In that petition, the NPP sought for its candidate be declared the winner of the 2012 presidential elections contested on the very same Register.

The NPP as well as other political parties collaborated with the EC in the process of updating the Register during the 2014 limited registration and exhibition process.

That process essentially updated the 2012 Biometric register which the NPP now alleges to be flawed. In addition, the NPP and other political parties contested the recent Talensi and Amenfi-West by-elections and expressed confidence in the outcomes of both elections, based on the current Register. Further, 19,527 citizens of Ghana contested the 2015 district assembly elections, and 39,682 candidates contested the 2015 unit committee elections based on the current register. The Commission received no complaints on the quality of the Register during these by-elections and the District Assembly Elections.

Finally, the request for a new Register makes no recommendations on the process to be adopted in creating a new Register to ensure that the results to be produced would be different from the current Register.

In addition, preparing a new register implies that the existing Voters ID and the attestation of new registers by existing voters would be unacceptable as this would essentially import the alleged flaws of the existing register on to the new Register.

It would therefore be important to ensure that citizens who intend to register and do not have valid Ghanaian passports, drivers licenses and National Identity cards have a means of identifying themselves.

The NPP has not made any recommendations that would ensure that many citizens of Ghana are not unduly disenfranchised in the process of creating a new Register. From all the foregoing, the Electoral Commission is of the view that the current Biometric cannot therefore by any measure be said to be incurably flawed and not fit for purpose.

The Commission posits further that a case for the need for a new Register has not been convincingly made. The Commission welcomes the opportunity to work with all stakeholders, including the NPP, to ensure that an even more credible Register is available for the 2016 elections andtowards a peaceful, transparent and inclusive electoral process in 2016.
This comes on the back of the latest decision by the EC to reject calls for a new voters' register, adding that the pro-NPP group has not provided enough and convincing evidence to suggest that the current register is not credible.

But, speaking to Pulse.com.gh, Convener of LMVCA, David Asante said they will stage countless demonstrations until the register is changed.

"How well are we prepared to accept the cleaning of the voters' register...The further confusion that will emerge from this cleaning exercise, we will not be able to contain it.

"We believe the fight has not ended. we will stage millions of demonstrations in this country. We may also have to go to the supreme court to offer support to Abu Ramadan

"We believe the EC has been very slow, and very lazy, and very inconsistent and inconsiderate about the issue of the voters' register," David Asante added.

The pressure group held a huge protest last year to drum home the need for a new voters' register.

A five-member panel was later set up by the Electoral Commission to conduct public hearings over the demands for a new voter register.
The Australian carrier was praised for its "extraordinary fatality-free record in the jet era, while Virgin Atlantic was the only UK airline to make it into the top 20.

The website's star ratings take multiple factors into account, including whether an airline has been certified by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), if it is on the EU's airline blacklist, its crash record and whether the fleet has been grounded over safety concerns. A star is removed if the airline operates only Russian-made aircraft.

British Airways was one of the 148 airlines awarded the maximum seven-star safety rating, something only given to non-budget carriers, although it did not make it into AirlineRatings.com'sk of the 20 safest airlines. In deciding which make the top 20, judges at AirlineRatings.com also compared each airline's history of incidents and operational excellence.

"Our top 20 safest airlines are always at the forefront of safety innovation, operational excellence and the launching of new more advanced aircraft," said Geoffrey Thomas, AirlineRatings.com editor. "These airlines are always at the forefront for excellence in the safety space," he added. "However there is no question amongst the editors that Qantas remains a standout in safety enhancements and best practice."

Despite some high profile aviation disasters in 2015, the total of 16 major accidents with 560 fatalities was below the 10-year average of 31 accidents and 714 fatalities. It was also an improvement on 2014, when there were 21 serious accidents with 986 fatalities.

The world's 20 safest airlines (in alphabetical order)

Qantas

Air New Zealand

Alaska Airlines

All Nippon Airlines (ANA)

American Airlines

Cathay Pacific Airways

Emirates

Etihad Airways

EVA Air

Finnair

Hawaiian Airlines

Japan Airlines

KLM

Lufthansa

Scandinavian Airline System (SAS)

Singapore Airlines

Swiss

United Airlines

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Australia
The order, entered by Magistrate Judge David Hennessy late on Monday in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, follows a request by Cosby family attorneys to delay the interview of Camille Cosby, the entertainer's spouse of almost 52 years and business manager.

The judge ordered all evidence related to the case, including the deposition, to be held under seal, which would allow lawyers involved in the case to view it but prohibit public disclosure.

The Massachusetts civil suit is one of a series of legal actions Cosby, 78, is facing over claims by more than 50 women that the actor sexually assaulted them after plying them with drugs and alcohol, in alleged instances that played out over decades.

Cosby's lawyers had argued that, given the potentially intimate nature of the questions, Camille Cosby could be embarrassed if her responses were released publicly.

People magazine on Tuesday reported that Camille remained firm in her support of her husband, citing an unnamed source the magazine said was close to the family.

"They remain steadfast and resolute about working through this together," People quoted the source as saying.

A spokesman for Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania last week charged Cosby, best known for his role as the father character in the 1980s television hit "The Cosby Show," with sexually assaulting a women in 2004. That is the only criminal case filed against Cosby, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

The Massachusetts civil lawsuit against Cosby was filed in December 2014 by Tamara Green, later joined by six other women, who contend that Cosby sexually assaulted or abused and then defamed them by calling each a liar, court documents said.
Entries for the 2016 edition opened on October 10, 2015 and will be open till January 7th, 2016, according to the Director of Administration, Mr. Tony Anih. He enjoined film makers and their representatives across Africa to submit their works for the 2016 awards. We have given a three-month window to enable entries to come from all parts of Africa and from the Diaspora" he said. This, he further explained, will give Film Makers the room to accommodate for the logistics involved in sending to our Regional Offices in Ghana, Nairobi , Johannesburg, Lagos , as well as via the Pan African Film Festival Los Angeles.

Film makers are expected to send in their works produced and or released between 1 December, 2014 and December 2015 for consideration for the awards. Such works, including full length feature films which should not exceed 120 minutes, must also not carry any commercial of any product or service.
According to the girls mother, it was not the first time that her husband has raped one of his daughters as h has been taking delight in sleeping with his own daughters.

The woman told police that another of her daughters now stay with a relative after being raped by the father in 2014.

The latest victim narrated that on the day her father took her pride, she and her siblings were busy with some domestic chores assigned to them by their mother who was away.

But the randy father cleverly separated her from the other siblings by sending them to a nearby stream, instructing them to wash their clothes and take their bath before coming back.

When the other kids left, the man then called his target into the room and forcefully raped her, warning her not to tell anyone or he would kill her.
The Chief Magistrate, Mr Tajudeen Elias, ordered that the accused be remanded at Kirikiri Prisons, till Feb. 3, pending the hearing of his bail application.

The accused, who lives at 12, Shonola St., Aguda, Ogba, a suburb in Lagos, is facing a four-count charge bordering on defilement.

He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The prosecutor, Cpl. Zainab Amedu had told the court that the offences were committed in October 2015 at the accused residence.

Amedu said the accused, who resides in the same compound with the victims, who are 8 and 11 years, defiled them in his room.

"He usually calls them with the pretence of sending them on errands and then carries out his evil act.
Hounga who insisted that he and the deceased were attacked by a three-man gang on the day, also told the police that the armed men stabbed Joseph to death and also ripped open his stomach before he managed to escape.

He narrated that after he was rejected by four hospitals in Nigeria, a relative got a cab which took him to Porto Novo, Benin, where he underwent a life-saving operation and had to go against medical advice to come back to Nigria to submit himself to the police after he learnt that he had been declared wanted for murder.

The police in its statement while declaring Hounga wanted over the murder, had reported that the suspect and the victim had had a disagreement on Christmas day which culminated in a bloody fight during which the victim was stabbed to death.

The Lagos State Police Command had then contacted Interpol to assist with the arrest of the suspect, after he was said to have escaped to Benin Republic.

The police later released a statement saying it had arrested a woman, Taiye Ganiyu, and one Sodjinou Singbo, for aiding Hounga's escape. However, the suspect surrendered himself to the police in Benin Republic on January 1, 2016, and was transferred to the FESTAC Police Division the next day while the matter was immediately transferred to the State Department of Criminal Investigation (SDCI), Panti, Yaba.

Hounga, an iron bender, told the police that he had never engaged in a fight with the deceased while they were living together.

We have known each other for more than 10 years now. We met while in the primary school. Although we attended different primary schools, we usually met during inter-house competitions and that was when we started dating.

I rented the apartment where we lived and we had been living together for more than one year. We would have been married, but her parents said she should get pregnant for me first.

On December 25, around 12.30am, while we were both asleep, she (Cecelia) suddenly shouted, Monday, help me.

As I opened my eyes, I woke up to see a gun pointed at my head. The intruders were three, but only one carried a gun. He said if I shouted, he would blast my head off.

They stabbed me in the hand and in the wrist when I tried to struggle with them. They later stabbed me in the stomach. I forced myself to pull out the knife from my stomach. When I checked Cecelia, she was dead.

He further said the landlord of the house and a few other people later arrived and put him in a tricycle which took him to a nearby hospital where he was rejected. He said he was also taken to the FESTAC Police Station, where he was issued a police report to enable him get quick treatment.

However, around 4am, after being rejected at a general hospital and two other places, a relative was said to have suggested that he should be taken to the Porto Novo Hospital in Benin. The doctors at the hospital were said to have operated on him, before placing him on admission.

I was on admission when I heard in the news that I killed Cecelia. Here was somebody I loved so much and would many times kneel to beg whenever we had issues. Why would I kill her?

She once left me after she was impregnated by another man, whom she claimed her family supported. After a few years with the man, she returned to me after two stillbirths for the said man.

She came back in 2014 and because of the love I had for her, I accepted her. Despite what happened, I have not stopped loving her and if I get out of this case, I dont think I will ever love any woman like I loved her.

But the late woman's elder sister, Titilayo Joseph, denied that Hounga and Cecelia lived together, saying that her sister was staying with her in Mazamaza.

Cece (Cecelia) lived with me and not him. She would go to work in the morning and return home at evening.

I called her on December 24 to know why she was not at home and she said the Yuletide season had kept her busy at work.

On December 25, she came home to pick something and my neighbours said they saw her. I was sick and couldnt go out.

I was at home on December 26 when I received a call that she had a fight with her boyfriend and he had stabbed her to death.

He claimed they were attacked by robbers; were they the only one living in that compound? Why was she the only one that was stabbed to death? Why didnt he raise the alarm?
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This was disclosed by the group via a statement released by its coordinators, Aisha Yesufu, Oby Ezekwesili, and Hadiza Bala Usman.

The statement reads:

The Bring Back Our Girls Group, families of our Chibok girls, the Chibok community, and all sympathisers to the cause will be marching to re-engage with the president on Thursday 14 January 2016 at the State House. This date will be exactly 21 months since their abduction, and three months short of two full years in captivity.

We have already dispatched a letter to the president, duly acknowledged by State House officials. We have often said that our Chibok girls are the symbol for all the abducted, oppressed, repressed, abused, violated, disadvantaged, hurting people not only in Nigeria but around the world.

It was utterly shocking when the president declared in a BBC interview on 24 December that the terrorists had being technically defeated without referencing the rescue of our Chibok girls whom he had set as the benchmark for measuring such success. We however, waited for the December deadline to elapse.

We are extremely disappointed that seven months after his strong promise at inauguration and six months after his pledge to the parents, Chibok community and our movement that he would rescue the 219 daughters of Nigeria, his statement was lacking in urgency and assurance of strategy for result.

Furthermore that the President gave the impression of a reactive approach of waiting for credible Boko Haram leadership to tell us whether our girls are alive or not, falls disappointingly short of the proactive feedback we expected.
The demand was made via a statement released by the groups spokesperson, Ibrahim Musa on Monday, January 4, 2015.

It reads:

The Islamic Movement as well as the general public are now seriously anxious. Where is Sheikh Zakzaky and why has he been denied his constitutional rights to an attorney, bail and visitation

If the government is truly interested in finding a peaceful way out of this crisis the army initiated and executed, as the government wants the public to believe, it should by now have allowed an unimpeded access to Sheikh Zakzaky.

First and foremost, his first family members and leading brothers of the Islamic Movement and his doctor should have met him by now, since he was shot by the soldiers when they attacked his residence.

We are highly agitated by this seeming needless incommunicado the Sheikh has been placed in. The Federal Government should tell the public where Sheikh Zakzaky is, because rumours of various degrees are flying about his health.

 To our bewilderment, when a committee of National Supreme Council for Islamic affairs (NSCIA) met the Inspector General of police and demanded to see the Sheikh, he flatly refused.

Surprisingly while the Nigerian authorities had announced that he was detained and arraigned in Kaduna prison, the Controller of Kaduna Prisons, Abubakar Argungu, denied he was in their custody. So whom should we believe? This smacks of deceit, conspiracy and outright manipulation of the publics view of the armys massacre in Zaria.

We believe it is only when the Sheikhs health condition is made public by the relevant authorities that the tension brewing among the populace will be doused.

This comes after Iran said via its Foreign Ministry that it had taken necessary steps to warn Nigeria on the continued detention of El-Zakzaky.

Soldiers engaged the Shiites in a battle after the group allegedly attempted to assassinate Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai on Saturday, December 12, 2015.

The conflict escalated after soldiers surrounded El-Zakzakyhome and arrested him. The Shiites have claimed that about 1000 members of the group died during the confrontation.

------------------------------------------------------
The NNPC had in December 2015 fixed new pump prices of N86 and N86.50 per litre for its retail outlets and independent marketers respectively from Jan. 1.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports on Tuesday in Pankshin that only one out of the 10 filling stations in Pankshin has fuel being dispensing at the rate.

"We cant answer you on this matter sir; only our boss, the station manager, that can answer you; presently he is not around to speak to you,  one of them said.

A motorist, Mr Daniel Bako, lamented the manner independent and major marketers exploited motorists over the exercise.

"I think, DPR or the Federal Government should issue a directive to all the security agencies to help in enforcing the prices of fuel in this country.

"This is because once officials of DPR visit and leve a filling station, the operators of the stations will change the pump price to whichever price of their choice, leaving us at the receiving end,  Bako lamented.

"If this directive is issued, I assure you, no filling station will dare to default because the police, the soldiers and the civil defence officers will always be there to arrest defaulters.
The Catholic Bishop of Jalingo, Most Rev. Charles Hammawa, made the appeal on Monday in Jalingo at the 2016 interdenominational church service organised by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

According to him, Taraba like Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states were badly affected by the Boko Haram crisis between 2013 and 2015, leading to loss of lives and properties worth millions of naira.

The cleric said that killings were still going on in Bali and Gassol Local Government Areas of the state.

"The Catholic Church has been badly affected, seven of our parishes were destroyed and over 3,000 out stations burnt during the crisis.

"The church has reached out to the people affected by the crisis, by providing food stuffs, shelters and other things to alleviate their suffering.

"But the church and the state government cannot do it alone, Hammawa said.

The bishop, therefore, appealed to the Federal Governments Committee on Rehabilitation of the North East affected by Boko Haram insurgency to include the state in the rehabilitation programme.

Hammawa urged the state government to focus on peaceful coexistence, noting that Wukari, Ibi, Donga, Gassol, Bali, Takum and Gashaka local governments of the state were badly affected by the three-year-old crisis.

He also called on traditional rulers of Gassol and Bali to put in more efforts in ending killings in their domains.
The call is contained in a statement issued by the President of the union, Mr Ibrahim Khaleel in Kano on Tuesday.

The statement quoted Khaleel as saying "the anti-corruption war cannot be complete without a searchlight on the management of the local government joint account system in the country.

"In the area of corruption, a lot of breakthrough are being recorded as some culprits are being brought to book.

"I, therefore, call on President Muhammadu Buhari to extend the fight on anti-graft to the management of states and local government joint accounts across the 36 states of the federation.
Umoru took over from Maj.-Gen. Yushau Abubakar at a colourful ceremony.

"I assure you that we will do our very best to make sure that the war against insurgency is ended.

"Since most of us are not new to this operation, there is no time to waste, rather we will start hitting the ground running and carry on with our activities, Umoru said.

He commended Abubakar for his numerous achievements in office.

"I want to thank my predecessor for laying a solid foundation; in fact he had done very well.

"I am so happy that I have a team that is not new at all in this operation, I have a very knowledgeable set of senior officers to work with, Umoru said.

He said he had been working with some of the officers in the theatre for a while.

"In fact, the two GOCs have been communicating with me throughout in the operation at some level, and they have assisted me greatly before.

"This is another opportunity for them to sit down and assist me the more, Umoru said.

He solicited media support to ensure the success of the command.

"I believe with what is on ground, we are going to work as a team to coordinate our activities with all the stakeholders.

"This include the media because this war is not for the military alone, it is for generality of Nigerians and with your cooperation and assistance, by the grace of God we shall succeed, Umoru said.
Metuh was arrested today, January 5, 2016, in his home at the Prince and Princess Estate in Abuja, according to Sahara Reporters.

Earlier reports had it that the EFCC had traced the sum of N1.4 billion to a company linked with the PDP spokesperson.

Metuh was also alleged to have received the sum of N400 million from former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki who is being tried for looting public funds.

The PDP spokesman however reacted to the reports by criticizing the EFCC for trying him in the media instead of inviting him to its office for questioning.

Dasuki is at the center of the massive money laundering investigation and is alleged to have supervised the looting of the funds which were meant for the procurement of arms for Nigeria's military.

He was arrested by the Department of State Services (DSS) on December 1, 2015 and handed over to the EFCC the day after.

The former NSA is reported to have implicated several prominent persons in the deal including former governors, ex-ministers and members of the PDP.

Dasukis lawyer however denied the report that his client had become an informant while the former NSA said that ex-President, Goodluck Jonathan was aware of the transactions he had made.

Jonathan has however denied authorizing the release of the stated funds despite the former NSAs claim that he got the necessary presidential approval for the transactions.

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Punch Newspapers reports that the current Commissioner for Information and Communications, Dr. Austin Tam-George accused Semenitari of borrowing the said amount, on behalf of the states Information and Communications ministry.

In a swift reaction, the NDDC boss said No Commissioner can do that (borrow money on behalf of a ministry). I did not.

Adding that It is against financial guidelines and service rules. Only a state government can borrow and there was no project in the ministry of information requiring government to borrow.

She also dared Tam-George to present his evidence to the public.

Rivers state has been in bloodied with allegations of fraud and subsequent denials, since the inception of Nyesom Wikes administration.
This is contained in a bulletin issued by CSP Abayomi Shogunle, the office in-charge, Compliant Response Unit (CRU), Force Headquarters, on Tuesday in Abuja.

The bulletin stated that the warning was contained in police circular dispatched to all state commands and formations nationwide.

It said Arase directed that severe disciplinary actions should be taken against any officer found culpable.It further directed state commissioners of police and formation commanders to make the full content of the circular known to all officers attached to their respective commands.

The bulletin said the circular was sequel to several reports made to the CRU by Nigerians from Lagos, Oyo, Ekiti, Delta, Rivers and Edo states over alleged indiscriminate checking of personal information.
The Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) is the latest group to also condemn the legislators.

Vanguard Newspapers reports that a statement signed by the Unions President and Secretary General, Bobboi Kaigama and Musa Lawa said For over two months running the country has been experiencing chronic fuel scarcity such that has never been heard of before. The free-fall of the naira, poor health facilities, glorified primary schools as universities, closure of manufacturing companies, insecurity of lives and properties, which essentially is caused by unemployment, etc.

Our case has become so deplorable that we have now become a laughing stock among the comity of nations.

Where is the conscience of the so-called lawmakers? Where are the good roads to drive cars? Why is it that the privileged in this country do not consider the less-privileged? Lawmakers ride in public transportation in most developed countries to attend to state matters, despite the affluence of their country. The reason our leaders do ridiculous things beats our imagination, the statement said.
The Fund said on Monday its managing director Christine Lagarde would meet Buhari and his Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun.

"I look forward to productive meetings ... as they address important economic challenges, most importantly the impact of low oil prices," said Lagarde in a statement.

He was elected in March after a campaign in which he promised to clamp down on the endemic corruption that has left many Nigerians mired in poverty despite the country's enormous energy wealth.

He then announced a record budget for 2016, forecasting a doubling of the deficit to 2.2 trillion naira ($11 billion) and a tripling of capital expenditure intended to help the country adjust to the downturn in oil, which has lost around two-thirds of its value since mid-2014.

It has foreign currency reserves worth around $30 billion, and plans to borrow as much as 900 billion naira abroad to fund the deficit, which is equivalent to 2.16 percent of gross domestic product, Buhari said. Some 984 billion naira would be borrowed at home.

Nigeria relies on crude exports for more than half of state revenues and is Africa's top oil producer.

It is also facing an insurgency by Islamist group Boko Haram, which has killed thousands and displaced more than two million people in the remote northeast and raised concern among potential investors.

Lagarde is due to arrive in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, on Monday. She is due to give a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday and will also meet business leaders during her visit, the IMF said.

Lagarde will also visit neighbouring Cameroon, where she will meet President Paul Biya and his economic team.

The government of the central African country that exports coffee, cocoa and oil tabled a 2016 budget of 4,200 billion CFA francs ($6.9 billion) in December.

Cameroon is part of an 8,700-strong task force including troops from Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin that has pledged to destroy Boko Haram, which though based mainly in Nigeria has become a major threat to regional security.

Lagarde will also meet Finance Ministers from the six member countries of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), delivering a speech to the group on Jan. 8.
Fani-Kayode expressed more of his thoughts on Buharis recent media chat via the article titled President Buhari, the media chat & the words of a Tyrant.

Read full text below:

Mr. President, you will recall that I wrote you an open letter on December 28th, 2015 which I sincerely hope that you found most gratifying, illuminating and helpful.

That was two days before your Presidential media chat which took place on December 30th. I hereby humbly crave your indulgence to add an addendum to that open letter.

That is what this contribution represents. I hope and pray that this second letter, which will be the last, will further enlighten you and impart a little more wise counsel to you that will result in assisting you to properly appreciate the complexities of our times. Mr. President it is pertinent to note that approximately two hundred and sixty five years ago one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, Mr. Benjamin Franklin, said "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God".

I am sure that you will agree with me when I say that he was absolutely right. Just in case you do not know who Benjamin Franklin was permit me to point out the fact that he is a man that is revered by the American people and much of the civilised world up until today and he is the individual whose face appears on the one hundred U.S. dollar bills that are used till today.

He was a great statesman, diplomat, politician and intellectual and most important of all he was a deeply courageous man who was motivated by his deepest convictions and his Christian values and who was prepared to risk life and liberty and stand up to tyranny.

I guess most Nigerian leaders have much to learn from him especially at times like this. Yet thankfully all is not lost and at least a few of our politicians are beginning to find their voice and speak out against the evil in the land.

Permit me to share one example with you. A few days ago Chief Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of our great party the PDP, exposed the fact that there was an orchestrated attempt by your government to intimidate, silence and utterly decimate and crush the opposition.

In open defiance to what can best be described as this insidious and sinister agenda he told the world that ''President Buhari is not God and we will not worship him".

Whether he knows it or not Metuh has not only spoken for the PDP but also for the overwhelming majority of the Nigerian people. Permit me to add the following words to his timely contribution.

Woe unto those that tremble before men of power and that worship false gods. Destruction and perdition awaits those who bow before Baal, who exalt the servants of Belial, who kiss the ring of the Baphomet, who say ''Buhari is God'' and who crawl at the feet of the Lord of the Flies.

Mr. President the point is simple and clear: you are not God and even though we respect your office we will never bow before you, we will never worship you, we will not relent in our efforts to oppose you and, regardless of your constant threats and wicked intentions, we have absolutely no fear of you.

This is because our fate and destiny and the future of our beloved country lies in the hands of the Living God and not in the hands of a misguided and tyrannical dictator like your good self. Injustice, persecution and tyranny last only for a season.

At the appointed time the Lord will step in and He will deliver and vindicate the falsely accused and the righteous captive. He will also avenge the spilling of innocent blood and He will fight the cause of the martyrs.

With this in mind and regardless of the dangerous counsel of the hardliners and extremists that surround you, I urge you to please take note of the following: Sheik Ibrahim El Zakzaky, Colonel Sambo Dasuki and Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, who are all political prisoners, must NOT die under mysterious circumstances whilst they are in your custody.

No matter what your advisers and those in your inner circle tell you if, God forbid, this were to happen the fall-out and consequences for your reputation and your administration would be too much to bear. This brings me to another issue which is a cause for grave concern.

Your stated resolve not to obey court orders and to deny Nigerians their right to bail after the courts have given it to them is not only an affront and gratuitous insult to the Judiciary but it is also a violation of the constitution. I say this because, unlike military dictatorships, democracy enjoys and derives its power and legitimacy from the inviolable and sacred principle of ''separation of powers''.

What this means is that the Executive arm of Government, which by the grace of God you head today, is distinct and separate from the Legislature and the Judiciary. As head of the Executive and President of the Federal Republic, you have absolutely no power or right to interfere in the processes of the Legislature (which is the National Assembly) or the Judiciary.

Both have their own rules, regulations and leadership and the constitution guides them and guarantees them total and complete independence from you. As a matter of fact they are charged by the laws of our land and the constitution to act as a check and balance on you as President and to ensure that you do not abuse your power or subject your people to tyranny.

Mr. President I watched you on your media chat the other day and I am constrained to tell you that you not only abused your power but that you also crossed the line with some of the things that you said. For example you have no right to tell the courts how to administer justice and who and who not to grant bail.

Again you have no business to tell the legislature which laws to pass and how to run their affairs. Again you have no right and neither do you have the power to pronounce any Nigerian citizen guilty of any crime unless and until a duly constituted court of law has done so. You cannot be the prosecutor, judge and jury in any criminal proceeding and this is especially so when you initiated those proceedings and you are the accuser

To attempt to do so is not only unacceptable and irresponsible but it is also heartless and unkind. The fact that most of our senior and respected lawyers have refused to tell you this simply because they are scared of you or because they are looking for patronage from your government does not mean that what you are doing is lawful or acceptable.

What you are doing is morally and legally reprehensible and it is unacceptable in any democratic and civilized society. In the same vein you have no right to try to stop members of the opposition or the general public from criticizing you or condemning your obvious failings. Mr. President, criticism, opposition and dissent are the lifeblood of democracy and without accommodating and tolerating them you cannot claim to be a democrat.

You have no right to attempt to cower or intimidate the fourth estate of the realm, which is the media, or attempt to pervert and corrupt the Nigerian public with daily doses of lies, falsehood, deceit and propaganda which is being duly and dutifully administered by your Minister of Information and your numerous media aides.

All these things give me and millions of your other subjects concern yet it doesn't stop there. Perhaps the most disturbing example of your sheer insensitivity was your reaction to the question about Igbo marginalization during the media chat. In response to that question you asked "who is marginalizing who" and went further to ask "what do the Igbo want?"

Mr. President I wish to remind you that it is an incontrovertible fact that in just seven months your government has succeeded in marginalizing the Igbo more than any other Federal Government in living memory and certainly since the civil war. This is a record that you ought not to be proud of. What the Igbo want is fairness, equal rights, equal representation, equity and respect.

They also believe that they have the right to determine their own future and make their own choices. Mr. President I do not believe that this Is this too much for them to ask given the fact that they have contributed, perhaps more than most, to national development and integration in the last forty five years?

It is not too much to ask given the fact that no less than three million of their people, including one million innocent children, were slaughtered during our civil war in the name of keeping Nigeria one? I have no doubt that you will remember this very well Mr. President given the fact that you were one of those that prosecuted that war and fought in it.

You will also remember the brutal mass murder and the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were perpetrated against the unarmed and defenseless Igbo civilian population of Asaba in 1968 when over one thousand of them were rounded up, taken to the town square and shot to death for no just cause.

The soldiers that carried out that unspeakable act of cowardice, brutality and barbarity were under the command of your professional colleague, the late Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed.

Mr. President that was a dark, shameful and ignoble chapter in our history which still cries out for justice and reparations. Needless to say the pain of such horrendous events and numerous others that the Igbo have been subjected to by the Nigerian state and those that control it over the last fifty five years still haunts them.

The truth is that regardless of the obvious contempt that you have for them the Igbo will continue to insist on justice, fairness and on having their rights respected in our country.

If you refuse to address their numerous and legitimate grievances and you refuse to treat them with the understanding, sensitivity and compassion that they deserve, the agitation for self-determination, secession and the yearning for the establishment of a new nation called Biafra will wax stronger and stronger until it reaches dangerous and irresistible proportions.

That is what you are toying with Mr. President and if that were to happen be rest assured that the Yoruba would take a cue from it and so would the people of the Niger Delta. It would effectively signify the beginning of the balkanisation of Nigeria.

Whether you and those with your world view like to hear it or not, that is the bitter truth. May the Ancient of Days grant you the wisdom, knowledge and understanding to accept it and to do something about it.

May the Lord of the Universe give you the foresight and the insight to appreciate the fact that Nigeria cannot survive a second civil war. Mr. President I sincerely hope that you do not take offence at my admonitions and counsel. I speak only out of concern for the fortunes of your administration, your reputation and out of love for my country.

God bless Nigeria.

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The former president made the comments on Monday, January 4, 2016, via Facebook in reaction to The African Sun Times naming him the International Person of the Year 2015.

I thank The African Sun Times for naming me as its International Person of the year, 2015. I am indeed humbled by this honour, Jonathan said.

When I think about it, I understand why this medium may have thought me worthy of such an honour. However, I believe that my people, the Nigerian people, are more deserving of this honour.

We, the Nigerian people put to shame naysayers and prophets of doom and in 2015, we held a most transparent, violence free and credible elections that transferred power from one political party to another and from an incumbent to the opposition, without rancour, bitterness or strife.

In the process, we proved that nobodys political ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian or any national of any country for that matter.

That to me, is a most worthy testimonial of the character of the Nigerian nation and the resilience of our people which is why I dedicate this honour to them. May God continue to bless Nigeria and Nigerians, he added.

The African Sun Times had earlier revealed that Jonathan was chosen due to his role in ensuring a peaceful transition of government in Nigeria.

The former president conceded defeat to opponent and incumbent, Muhammadu Buhari after losing the March 28 elections.

-----------------------------------------
According to the African Sun Times, Jonathan was chosen due to his role in ensuring a peaceful transition of government in Nigeria.

"The award was given to Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who shocked the whole world by swiftly calling current Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and conceding his defeat in the March 29 Nigerian presidential election, thereby stopping the predictions of violent bloodshed in Nigeria, and keeping his words that he would not allow the blood of a Nigerian to be shed to further his political ambitions, the publication said.

President Jonathan must be applauded for creating a solid foundation for the growth of democracy in Africa. The world has started to recognize President Jonathans courageous act, it added.

Jonathan earned worldwide accolade to President Muhammadu Buhari after the March 28 elections, thus preventing Nigeria from erupting into massive waves of electoral violence which many around the world had predicted would occur.

He was recently chosen to head a Commonwealth observer mission for the Tanzania elections and was also called upon to intervene in Zanzibars political stalemate.

--------------------------------------
The spokesman for the EFCC, Mr Wilson Uwujaren, disclosed to newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday, that Metuh is being investigated over the N1.4 billion traced to the account of a company, Destra Investment Limited, linked to him in the arms contract scam.

It is true that Metuh is being investigated by the EFCC but I do not have further details on the matter. I am not aware of his arrest by the EFCC but will get back to you as soon as it is confirmed, Uwujaren.

Earlier, the PDP had released a statement signed by Metuh's Special Assistant, Mr Richard Ihediwa, claiming that EFCC operatives visited his boss' Abuja today and asked him to follow them to the commissions headquarters.

They also said he was not being arrested but on a friendly invitation. The operatives, four in number, came in a white unmarked Toyota Hiace bus, the statement said.
According to Vanguard, This threat is in response to Rev Fr. Mbaka's 2016 prophesy which revealed that there is an ongoing plot to end the life of the president.

BSEYM advised anyone who has any plans to assassinate the Nigerian president to have a rethink because such will spell doom for not just the country.

The group leader, Mr. Nwabueze Onwuneme, in a statement, expressed his support for the president and lauded his attempts at battling corruption in the country.

Onwuneme added that if anyone has any knowledge of plans to hurt or kill the president, they should immediately report to the authorities.

According to the group, Mbakas prediction should not be dismissed with a wave of hands because corruption really fights back dirty when attacked.
According to Punch, Mr. Chris Ezike, lamented over this menace during the disbursement of scholarship to six pupils of the Police Childrens School I and II, Benin.

While expressing his pain over this development, Ezike urged parents and guardians to pay adequate attention to the actions of their children and wards, especially when it comes to the kind of friendship they keep.

Ezike said, There is cultism all over the place; cultism has permeated even the walls of primary schools, not secondary, not universities. In any case, even artisans engage in . It is, therefore, a wake up call for all parents to tie their loin cloth and be able to moderate the behaviour of their children. We cannot just get too busy and leave the children to peer group influence; that is not appropriate and that will not be applicable.

Having said that, I want to ask all DPOs, whose jurisdiction cover our police primary and secondary schools or police institutions, to do their best to offer the necessary security and safety that the children need. If you have problems doing so, get back to the DC, Ops, who will reinforce you to ensure their safety and security are not compromised, he added.
Speaking in Warri, the OFC secretary, Mr Ernest Bebenimibo, appealed to the Federal Government to continue with the project started by the ex-President Goodluck Jonathans administration.

According to him, the fears of the community arose from the alleged directive by the Minister of Transport, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, that works on the project should be stopped due to the ongoing probes.

"The stoppage of the ongoing project at the University permanent site is a pointer that work on the project had been cut short.

"The University is the answer to our quick development; it is the only visible gain of our Niger Delta struggle.

"To put an end to it will be damaging and inimical to our development, so we are pleading with the government to reverse its decision so that the project can go on.

"We are main contributors to the national wealth, the school is the only thing we have to show for the exploitation of our God-given resources, he said.
This was made known by the Officer in Charge of the Complaint Response Unit of the Nigerian Police Force, Mr. Yomi Shogunle, in a tweet shared via his Twitter handle.

According to the tweet, the IG has directed that a ban be placed on illegal accessing of mobile phones by men of the Nigerian Police Force in a bid to protect rights to privacy and family life.

Officers of the Nigerian Police Force have been found to access peoples mobile phones under the guise of their search of Yahoo boys also known as Internet fraudsters.
Michael Slager, a North Charleston police officer who was fired after the incident, was jailed since his April arrest in the death of Walter Scott, 50. The fatal shooting was caught on video by a bystander and intensified a national debate on police treatment of minorities.

Judge Clifton Newman set bail for Slager, 34, at $500,000 on Monday, and the Charleston County Sheriff's Office said he was released from jail. Newman scheduled Slager's trial for Oct. 31.

Newman granted bail after noting that Slager's trial would not begin until late this year. The delay was caused by prosecutors preparing for the trial of Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine people in a church shooting in Charleston in June, the Post and Courier newspaper reported.

Slager will be under house arrest, said Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the Scott family who reached a wrongful death and civil rights settlement with North Charleston and its police department late last year.

Bamberg said Scott's family was not happy that Slager had gotten bond.

The judge had denied Slager bail in September, saying that releasing him "would constitute an unreasonable danger to the community."

Defense attorneys argued that Slager was not a flight risk and had been violently attacked by Scott in a confrontation after Scott fled a routine traffic stop and Slager chased him.
The guard told Reuters that Islamic State suicide car bombers had attacked Es Sider, after which the insurgents retreated, and that the tank at Ras Lanuf, about 20 km (13 miles) from Es Sider, had been hit by a rocket.

A spokesman for Libya's National Oil Company (NOC) said the tank was holding about 400,000 barrels of oil. The NOC was still trying to put out the fire late on Monday evening.

Libya descended into chaos after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and rival governments and the militias that support them are fighting for control of the North African state and its energy reserves. Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, its biggest oil ports lie between Sirte and Benghazi and have been shut for a year.

The group said it had attacked Es Sider after taking the nearby town of Ben Jawad. However, there was no independent confirmation of its capture.

Es Sider is protected by Ibrahim al-Jathran's Petrol Facilities Guard, which has backed the government based in the city of Bayda in the east, but is also fighting other forces supporting that government.

Libya's crude oil production has dropped to less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day.

The United Nations has been trying to win support for a deal brokered in Morocco last month to create a national unity government for Libya.

Separately on Monday, a plane targeting militant groups in the eastern city of Benghazi was shot down, though the pilot ejected, senior army commander Fadel al-Hassi told Reuters.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Monday that North Korea's participation at the event in the town of Davos, which attracts heavyweights from the worlds of business and politics, would be its first in 18 years.

Impoverished North Korea is under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and missile programmes, and struggles to attract investment. It last sent a delegation to the forum in 1998, Yonhap said.

Yonhap said the North Korean delegation would be led by Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, who spent two decades in Switzerland as ambassador and representative at the United Nations in Geneva.

Ri acted as surrogate father to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when Kim was a student at a Swiss school.

Kim, believed to be in his early 30s, focused on development of the economy during a New Year's Day speech.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
ALEDO, Ill.  An Aledo man is facing three felony charges in a child abuse case.

Testimony at a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Mercer County Circuit Court indicated a 4-month-old infant suffered more than 20 fractures, including injuries to his leg, arm and ribs, between October and November of last year. The boy was treated at Genesis Medical Center in Aledo and later airlifted to St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

Justin Kidd, 33, has been charged in the case. He is facing two Class 3 felonies of aggravated battery to a child under 13 and a Class 4 felony of domestic battery. Kidd is in custody at the Mercer County Jail on $100,000 bond.

A bond review hearing and pretrial conference has been scheduled for Feb. 2 in Mercer County Circuit Court. Kidd has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The child is now in protective custody with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Scott County's former chief prosecutor, Bill Davis, is "stunned" the Iowa Court of Appeals has reversed Stanley Liggins' second conviction for killing 9-year-old Jennifer Ann Lewis 23 years ago.

Davis also denied the claims the appeals court based its ruling on, that he withheld evidence in the form of 77 police records from Liggins' defense and that he didn't disclose one of his key witnesses was a paid police informant. He said he didn't know at the time the witness was a paid informant.

"We did not hide anything," Davis said Thursday.

The appeals court ruling on Wednesday referred to a review of Liggins' second trial in Dubuque, when a special investigator discovered 77 police reports that were not shared with the defense.

"At least five years after I gave the reports up, the defense lawyer gives up his files and I give up mine, and they find the defense doesn't have a number of the reports," Davis said. "How the hell do I know what happened to them? I have no idea whether they got them or not. It certainly was not intentional."

He said the Liggins case was one of the hardest he had to prosecute because of the volume of records and lack of forensic evidence.

Lewis' body was found in a garbage bag in the schoolyard at Jefferson Elementary, Davenport, in 1990. The Rock Island girl had been sexually assaulted and strangled and her remains burned.

Liggins is the only suspect brought to trial for her death.

The Iowa Supreme Court threw out his first conviction on grounds that the evidence of his drug dealing was irrelevant and could have prejudiced jurors against him.

J.E. "Mike" Tobey III, who defended Liggins at the second trial in 1995, said he was disappointed he wasn't given all the police reports.

"In spite of being a defense lawyer, I like to be able to have trust in law enforcement even though you are adversaries," Tobey, now a retired Magistrate, said.

Davis, who served more than 20 years as Scott County Attorney, said he always had an "open files policy" with defense attorneys.

"I'm convinced we gave it all to them," he said.

Regarding the paid informant, Davis said he would have disclosed that had he known.

"If I had known it, I would have told them," he said. "I didn't know, and I'm convinced the detectives who worked on the case didn't know it. So we didn't tell them."

The appeals court ruling said prosecutors have "a duty to discover anything, and everything" that concerns a witness's credibility.

Kevin Murphy, a former high-ranking Davenport police officer who was the lead investigator on the Liggins case, remembered interviewing the witness, a woman whose name wasn't disclosed in the ruling and he didn't disclose.

"It came in as an anonymous call," Murphy said. "She was one of the leads we were following."

Murphy didn't recall she was a paid informant with the Davenport Police Department.

"As far as paying her anything, not from me," Murphy said. "At that point in my career, I didn't have access to any funds."

Liggins' defense has said the informant participated in as many as 88 drug buys for law enforcement groups or officers affiliated with the Davenport Police Department, the appeals court ruling states.

The ruling further states that Liggins' defense attempted to establish that some of the payments were made by the "supervising detective" in the Liggins investigation.

Murphy said he is not the detective referred to in Wednesday's appeals court ruling. The ruling didn't name the detective.

The Iowa Attorney General's office will appeal the latest decision to the Iowa Supreme Court, a spokesman said Wednesday.

If the Supreme Court doesn't accept further review, the case will be retried at the district court.

Scott County Attorney Mike Walton said his office will look at all the evidence before deciding how to proceed. He declined further comment on the case until after the Supreme Court's decision.

Murphy said prosecutors likely will have a challenging time calling up witnesses again after more than two decades.

"I hope to God they're still alive," he said. "It'll be very challenging to run all those people down."

Murphy said that although details of the case have faded some, images of Lewis' remains are scarred in his memory.

"Certain cases you can't get out of your mind," he said. "It's one of those things that eats on you. It doesn't go away.

"When you go into a homicide, there are no winners. It's nothing but loss of life and a lot of heartbreak."

Looking back, Davis said he would not have prosecuted the Liggins case any differently.
A three-week retrial for Davenport murder defendant Stanley C. Liggins will begin July 5, a Scott County judge has ordered.

Chief District Judge Marlita Greve in a written order filed Tuesday also scheduled a three-day hearing on pretrial motions, including one to move the trial out of Scott County, to begin April 27.

Liggins, 54, is charged with first-degree murder, willful injury causing serious injury, first-degree sexual abuse, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree arson.

Prosecutors say Liggins strangled Jennifer Ann Lewis, 9, of Rock Island and burned her remains on a Davenport school playground in 1990.

Liggins was tried in the girl's death twice in the 1990s, once in Scott County and the second in Dubuque after he was granted a change of venue.

He was convicted in both trials and sentenced to life in prison. The Iowa Supreme Court overturned the first conviction on a technicality. On Nov. 6, 2013, the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed the second conviction, and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case.
That a lawyer for twice-convicted killer Stanley Liggins represented a state witness in an unrelated case may pose a conflict of interest at Liggins' upcoming retrial, but a Scott County judge has yet to rule on the issue.

Scott County Attorney Mike Walton argued in court Wednesday that public defender Phil Ramirez is holding "confidential information" regarding a state witness identified only as "M.L." because Ramirez and others in the public defender's office represented M.L. in another case as recently as Friday.

"The attorney she confided in will now sit across the table and cross-examine her," Walton said. "That's an appearance that I don't think is good for the justice system."

Ramirez said he performed only an "intake interview" on M.L. and was not her primary counsel.

This week, Ramirez "walled" any public defenders representing Liggins from M.L.'s files except himself because of his position as chief attorney in the local public defender's office, he said.

Liggins' other public defender in court Wednesday, Derek Jones, said he didn't recall ever representing M.L.

Liggins expressed no concern about a possible conflict.

"Keep my attorneys my attorneys," the 51-year-old told Scott County District Chief Judge Marlita Greve.

Greve said she will rule on a motion to determine conflict after receiving written arguments from both sides by June 30. She seemed to suggest Wednesday, however, there may not be a conflict with this particular issue.

"I'm wavering whether an actual conflict of interest exists," Greve said.

Liggins has twice been convicted of strangling 9-year-old Jennifer Ann Lewis of Rock Island and burning her remains on a Davenport school playground in 1990.

A jury is expected to hear testimony in the nearly 24-year-old case the week of Oct. 27 after the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed Liggins' second conviction last year.
DES MOINES  A 1-cent sales tax earmarked for school infrastructure would be extended 20 years, but the revenue would be shared with water quality programs under an ambitious proposal unveiled Tuesday by Gov. Terry Branstad.

Under Branstads plan, which requires legislative approval, the school infrastructure sales tax, which is set to expire in 2029, would be extended to 2049, and annual revenue increases would be divided: The first $10 million in new revenue each year would go to schools, and the remaining would go to water quality programs.

Branstads office estimates the proposal would generate $7.5 million for water quality programs in the first year and $4.7 billion over the next 32 years.

Branstad called his plan a win-win situation, saying it creates revenue for water quality programs without raising taxes and still provides reliable funding for school infrastructure projects.

This is probably the biggest and boldest proposal Ive put together in all my years as governor, Branstad, the longest-serving governor in the nations history, said Tuesday during his meeting with Statehouse media to preview the upcoming legislative session.

The Republican governors plan was endorsed Tuesday by former Democratic Iowa governor and current U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack sat next to Branstad at Tuesdays meeting and called the governors plan a solid framework that promptly addresses an issue that needs immediate attention.

Iowa is one of the leading contributors of nutrients that have flowed down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a so-called dead zone where oxygen is insufficient to sustain fish and marine life. The federal government has required Mississippi River states, including Iowa, to develop solutions to reduce the amount of nutrients flowing into the river.

There is a limited period of time to work on this water quality issue, Vilsack said. "The reality is we need to work on it now."

Branstad and legislative leaders said they support funding water quality programs but are hesitant to fund them with tax increases.

Branstads proposal was met with hesitation from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who criticized the plan for using future school infrastructure funding to pay for water quality programs.

Sacrificing that (future school infrastructure funding) for the sake of another priority, for water, I dont think makes a lot of sense, Gronstal said. It is a solution, an effort that undercuts local schools.

Iowa State Education Association President Tammy Wawro echoed Gronstals sentiment that Branstads plan equates to robbing Peter to pay Paul. Wawro expressed exasperation that Branstads plan includes reducing future school infrastructure funding after years of what she and many schools think has been inadequate state funding for school districts.

Im really at a loss, to be honest, that were even having a discussion about this, Wawro said. The fact that were even having a conversation about this, taking even part of the pie meant for kids to take care of another important priority, its just very disturbing right now for us.

Sioux City School District Superintendent Paul Gausman appeared at Tuesdays news conference at the Capitol and expressed support for the governors proposal. Gausman said he approves the plan because it ensures the school infrastructure sales tax will be extended, which would allow schools to use long-term loans to fund infrastructure projects.

The way I look at this is in 2029 that number goes to zero, Gausman said. "With this extension, that number continues for us, with $10 million in annual growth."

Branstad declined to say whether he would approve extending the school infrastructure sales tax without the provision for water quality programs.

House Speaker-select Linda Upmeyer said House Republicans have been divided on whether to extend the school infrastructure sales tax beyond 2029.
DES MOINES  Gov. Terry Branstad said Tuesday he hopes to be able to maintain his request to boost state supplemental aid to K-12 public schools by 2.45 percent when he presents his fiscal 2017 budget blueprint to state lawmakers next week.

Its going to be a real big challenge, Branstad told reporters attending a legislative forum sponsored by The Associated Press. When I make my budget recommendation next Tuesday, my hope is that we can get to 2.45 (percent).

Its not going to be easy. Its going to be a real stretch. We have some real issues with the growing costs of Medicaid. Even with managed care for Medicaid, its still growing significantly. We have other budget needs as well, but that is a very big priority and one that I hope we can achieve.

Branstad proposed that state aid to schools be boosted by 1.25 percent for the current school year and 2.45 percent for the fiscal year that begins July 1 when he submitted his biennial budget request last January. But since then, state revenue estimates have been scaled back because of weakness in the farm economy and other factors that caused the governor to hedge his school-funding expectations.

The six-term Republican said he continues to work on the recommendations he will make when he addresses a joint session of the 86th Iowa General Assembly next week, but he was hopeful the state could afford a $100 million boost in school funding in fiscal 2017 with each percentage increase equaling $41 million.

During a separate 2016 session discussion involving four leaders from the House and Senate  two Republicans and two Democrats  House Speaker-select Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, noted the House approved a 2 percent boost in K-12 funding that is awaiting Senate approval. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said his caucus prefers the 4 percent increase that senators sent to the House for consideration once the Legislature convenes on Monday.
Democrat Hillary Clinton applauded President Barack Obamas impending executive actions to tighten controls on guns Monday, but she warned people at a Davenport campaign appearance that if a Republican wins the White House those steps could be jeopardized.

The president was meeting with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday to prepare for new actions to tighten gun controls in the aftermath of recent shootings.

Congressional Republicans and the GOP presidential field already have criticized the pending actions. But Clinton, in roughly 40 minutes of remarks that all but ignored the fact shes in a primary race, warned those and other executive actions could be swept away if a Republican becomes the next president.

Theres a lot at stake. You know, the president may sign these executive orders on guns. They could be undone the first day by a Republican president, she said.

She added the presidents actions to fight climate change also could be in danger. She also criticized Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Clintons Davenport appearance was the first in a two-day swing through Iowa.

Most of her remarks were aimed at the GOP presidential field and conjuring up the image of a Republican winning the presidency, which she told audience members would give them nightmares."

At one point, she noted efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and added, We need to understand, if they get in its gone."

Clinton is in a three-way race for the Democratic Partys presidential nomination. Her nearest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is trailing her in Iowa by 9 points, according to the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll.

The two are in a much tighter race in New Hampshire, the first primary state. And Clinton suggested a convincing win in Iowa would give her big momentum going into New Hampshire.

If I get off to a good start in Iowa, were halfway home, she said.

Clinton drew about 400 people to the Starlite Ballroom at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, according to fair officials.

Marsha Voigt-Zemo, of Riverdale, was one of them. She was wearing a Clinton campaign button from the 2008 race, and she praised the former secretary of states international experience and concern for the middle class.

Ive been excited about her candidacy since 08, she said.

Another person, who described himself as leaning toward supporting Sanders, nonetheless said he could enthusiastically get behind a Clinton candidacy if shes the nominee.

Ive still got a lot of faith in her, said Dan Garrett, of Blue Grass.

Much of the Democratic race has been marked by debate over domestic issues, and the bulk of Clintons remarks centered on those.

Still, she told the audience she wants to make the U.S. safe at home and strong abroad, but rejected sending combat troops into Iraq and Syria.

"I think that would be a grave mistake and I will not  will not  approve of that, she said.

Sanders frequently reminds Iowa audiences that he voted against the congressional measure authorizing the Iraq War, which Clinton supported.

Clinton did not bring up her recent feuding with Republican candidate Donald Trump. But Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor who now heads the U.S. Agriculture Department, did allude to him while calling Clinton tough enough to take on challengers.

She can withstand the trumped up charges, he said, a phrase that drew applause.

Vilsack also contrasted Clintons national security credentials with those of the Republicans, who he said are willing to send troops here, there and everywhere.

Hillary Clinton is not going to be a person who is going to send men and women into harms way unless she knows all of the facts, he said.
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa  Ohio Gov. John Kasich told a group of Iowans on Monday that if they like Sen. Chuck Grassley, they'll probably like him because he is similarly independent minded and would not be bossed by rich donors or powerful special interests if he succeeds in becoming America's next president.

"Frankly, you've never met anybody like me before in politics," Kasich told nearly 100 people who jammed a suburban coffee house for a lunch-hour town meeting with the Republican presidential candidate. The Ohio governor then recast that caricature by pointing up similarities between himself and Iowa's long-serving and popular U.S. senator.

"Grassley's nothing but a trouble maker. He goes and he stirs everything up. He has no fear and nobody tells him what to do," said Kasich. "Nobody tells me what to do. We have our differences, Chuck and I would, but I respect and admire the fact that he's an independent guy. He doesn't report to the Republican Party or anybody, and that's what I do. So we're unusual in this business."

That approach enabled him to work with former President Bill Clinton and congressional Democrats to balance the federal budget in the 1990s and to stand against defense contractors in scaling back military projects to meet the nation's needs rather than theirs, Kasich said.

But it has not endeared him to deep-pocket special interests that bankroll political campaign, he noted, so he has struggled to raise money and elevate his name recognition in a 2016 presidential race that has attracted a large array of candidates who have funded larger early-state organizations.

"If you like me, tell everyone you know," joked the Ohio governor who spent nearly an hour fielding questions and spelling out his plans to create jobs and train workers, reduce the national debt, make college more affordable and meet security threats posed by terrorist groups like ISIS.

Kasich said destroying ISIS would send a "huge, significant message" to the world, but America cannot stop there without also engaging in "a war of ideas" to combat some backwards notions about the fabric of societies and the worth of human beings.

Once ISIS has been shut down, he said, he would favor the use of special U.S. forces to meet other potential threats but not try to be the world's police force.

"I think the reason ISIS happened is because we went to Iraq in the first place. We should not go into places where there is a civil war and disrupt things," Kasich said.

"I think we need to intervene directly whenever it affects us directly and I think ISIS does," he said. "I don't want to be involved in nation-building. That's not where I would put the resources. I don't want to be there for 100 years. It drains us and wears us out."
Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley will be in Davenport on Friday, part of a five-day swing through the state.

The former Maryland governor's campaign says the tour, dubbed "O'Malley Unplugged," is aimed at encouraging interaction with O'Malley, who has been a frequent visitor to the state.

The event in Davenport will be at 5:15 p.m. Friday at the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 431, 2411 W. Central Park Ave.

The five-day tour begins on Thursday and ends Monday with attendance at the Black and Brown Forum in Des Moines.

In addition to Davenport, O'Malley will be making campaign stops in Des Moines, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Waukee, Iowa Falls, Hampton, Mason City and Newton.
The Midwest Writing Center, Bucktown Center for the Arts, 225 E. 2nd St., Ste. 303, Davenport, offers a new young writers studio program from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. the second and fourth Saturdays of each month through April. The first event is Saturday.

The program is a new casual writing workshop/critique group for young writers ages 15-19 in the Quad-City area. Pre-registration is not required.

Writers are welcome to share their work  poetry, stories, essays, plays, or any other kind of writing they are pursuing, with the group and receive constructive feedback.

In addition to Saturday, other sessions are scheduled for Jan. 23, Feb. 13 and 27, March 12 and 26, and April 9 and 23

For more information, contact Ryan Collins at 563-324-1410 or by email at mwc@midwestwritingcenter.org. This workshop series is made possible from the support of the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
What if they were brown?

I'm referring, of course, to the self-styled "patriots" who, under arms, seized a federal building over the weekend after a beef with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The media has predictably struggled with the labels. "Occupiers." "Milita." "Armed activists." All have been tapped by some of the major news outlets. Even Fox News used the phrase "right-wing" in its coverage.

But, in some cases, the media is using the terms spoon-fed to them by whatever we're calling these dudes who, according to leader Ammon Bundy, are prepared to die for their cause.

Let's get into that cause for a bit.

A couple of Oregon ranchers started a fire, which spread to federal land. They were tried and convicted of arson, and ordered to report Monday to federal prison. The protests, amid decades-long angst over federal ownership of Western lands, splintered and some headed to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The same "militia" types flocked to aid of Bundy's father, Cliven, last year after federal officials started rounding up his cattle that was illegally grazing on taxpayer-owned land. They didn't think twice before aiming rifles at federal officials.

Holed up, they have said they're prepared to stay there for months, even years. The wannabe martyrs are posting "goodbye" videos on the Internet now. These "constitutional scholars" took an "oath."

In a nutshell, a bunch of gun-toting, anti-government men, itching for a fight, occupied a federal building because they oppose public land. That alone is troubling enough for a guy like me. I hunt. I fish. Public land is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to enjoy the outdoors. Access would be all but unavailable if not for public lands.

But let's set that aside.

Protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, were labeled "thugs" and "criminals" last year after taking to the streets when a police officer wasn't charged with the death of a black man. Many in white America held our noses and scoffed at the rage-fueled destruction of property. "Don't break the law and you won't get killed," too many parroted on social media, as if misdemeanor shoplifting warranted a death sentence.

But a few dozen guys pointing guns at state, local and federal police: Freedom fighters.

An apparently radicalized Muslim couple were rightly labeled "terrorists" and "Islamic extremists" late last year after shooting up an office in San Bernardino, Calif. But the white guy who slaughtered three at Planned Parenthood Clinic was just another "madman," even after he said his twisted version of Christianity was at the heart of his killing spree.

The anti-government rage seen in Oregon is the life-blood of Donald Trump's Republican presidential bid. These guys blame BLM, a federal agency that spends a huge amount of time grooming public land for the express purpose of extremely cheap cattle grazing.

The jobs are gone. The country isn't "what it used to be." And we need someone to blame. The Mexicans. The Muslims. The secular humanists. The government itself. The object of the populist anger is largely irrelevant, except for the scapegoats on the blunt end of the rhetorical stick.

Words have meaning. Words do more than frame the discussion. Words frame perception.

Society's struggle with labeling the armed white anger speaks volumes about our blind spots. The terms would be different if a horde of Muslims marched through town and seized a public building. The story would be something entirely less balanced, if enraged African-Americans grabbed semi-automatics and threatened a shootout. Fire and brimstone would rain from the pulpits of presidential candidates in both cases.

But these felonious vigilantes are apparently different. They're white. They're primarily Christian. They're "real Americans." And, so, they're exempt from the disdain heaped upon everyone else.
To the Editor:

Iowans understand the responsibility of hosting the Iowa Caucuses. Its a privilege to ask those who run for the presidency hard questions about their vision for America.

With less than a month to go, the conversation between candidates and Iowans is beginning to broaden. We agree the economy, national security and healthcare play significant roles in our lives every day. Still unclear are other issues that directly impact the future of our state. Lets talk about wind and solar energy and conservation and land stewardship and preserving our natural resources.

Iowans feed the world. We do not stop there. With the advent of new technologies, were helping to power the world as well.

Iowa is a national leader in wind production. Today, more than 25 percent of all electricity generated in the state comes from wind turbines. The economic impact of wind energy benefits land owners, energy companies, consumers and the workforce. More than 6,000 Iowa jobs are tied to wind energy, and wind yields more than $16 million annually in lease payments to landowners. Whats more, wind energy cuts water waste, saving an estimated 3.2 billion gallons of Iowans water annually. Now, we are poised to see growth in Iowas solar power industry, bringing even greater energy security, job opportunities and savings.

It is important presidential candidates understand the significance these energy sources play in powering Iowas lights and economy, while conserving our water, our soil and the air we breathe. We encourage you to help share the positive things happening in Iowa, and ask the candidates if they share our vision.

Adam Pitts

Cherokee

Editor's note: Pitts is a member of the Iowa Stewardship Alliance.
To the Editor:

In 1978, I was a reporter at a Quad-City broadcast station covering, among other things, Davenport City Hall and the regular Wednesday night City Council meetings. Until Iowa adopted the Open Meetings laws in January of 1979, it was difficult to report comprehensively, what, when, and why decisions affecting citizens were being made by city fathers. Except for the routine, many dicey matters of possible controversy and diverse public interest were discussed and decided privately and secretly by officials prior to public meetings. In these back room meetings, decisions were made without messy public debate, without controversy, without opposing views presented by concerned citizens. It was slick. When council meetings were called to order, no mess, no fuss, just a wave of the hand and it was done.

As I read the recent editorial "End Gluba's assault on transparency," I realized it has apparently been "Back to the 70's" all over again at Davenport City Hall. Back then, as might be the case now, the news media was out front in calling for an end to back room government. After all, the news reporters are in the best position to "smell a rat" if there is one.

Iowa law assumes meetings and records are open. Iowans do not have to make a case to attend a governmental meeting or see a public record. In fact, the Iowa Supreme Court has been adamant on this, saying records and meetings must be open "even though this might cause inconvenience or embarrassment to public officials or others." When a citizen believes a governmental agency has improperly failed to provide such access, provisions are in place to press the issue.

As the editorial board correctly noted, "embarrassing" public debate drives better policy. Shame on Mr. Gluba and any City Council pals for thinking otherwise.

Jim Orr

Bettendorf
SPEARFISH  Black Hills State University students completing small business management courses put their classroom knowledge to use to help local charities in the Black Hills. And with the help of a new donation from BHSU alum Jim Moravec, students will be able to continue the hands-on project at a larger scale in the years to come.

Nine student groups built their own small business companies. Run by a student CEO, the students handled everything from creative development, marketing and accounting. The company proceeds, which were more than $2,000, were given to local charities. Jeff Wehrung, assistant professor of management at BHSU, had more than 50 students enrolled in the courses held in Spearfish and at BHSU  Rapid City.

This gives them a hands-on opportunity to experiment and see what they need to know to start and run a business, Wehrung said. We just throw them in.

This is the second year Wehrung has used this curriculum in his small business management courses. Students have had to raise their own funds to start the business, but thanks to a new donation from Moravec, 79, and his wife Laura, students will be able to petition for funds to start their businesses in the future. The Moravecs established the Jim and Laura Moravec Entrepreneurial Activities Fund to help students increase business knowledge and complete these projects on a larger scale.

The businesses included Touch of Relief, Wildlife Warriors, Turkey Warrior Obstacle Course, Bottles of Wishes, RackStar, LiveWire Survival, FitCal and Club MMXV.

Wehrung noted all the businesses had exceptional business strategies, noting the success of Touch of Relief, which raised more than $700 for breast cancer research. Touch of Relief offered massages during midterm week at BHSU. They group also partnered with other small businesses during their event to increase profits.

Club MMXV was a night club that opened in downtown Rapid City for one night. Wehrung was impressed with the groups marketing technique, which included filming their own commercial. The advertisement was to be aired in the Rapid City area, but ended up being broadcast across the state.

All these projects were awesome, Wehrung said. Its really neat because its such a mix of students.

Wehrung credits the mix of students in his small business management class for the great success.

You have business students who help with accounting and money management and corporate communication students who are just unbelievable with the advertising and marketing, he said.

Wehrung said he enjoyed watching the students pull concepts from the class and applying them to their business strategy.

This course is not only teaching them how to successfully open a business, but also learn the small mistakes you can make, he said. Its not always going to work perfectly, but this is how I can help them learn how to not make those mistakes when they enter the field.
SPEARFISH  Black Hills State University student, Ellen Pustejovsky, mass communication major from Rapid City, has been awarded an internship with HH Brown Footwear in Boston. HH Brown is the parent company for Born Footwear, Browning, Double H Boots, Sofft, Dexter, Carolina Boots, and Kork-Ease Shoes. Pustejovsky will be working both on location and in the studio on their upcoming advertising campaigns.

This is such a fantastic opportunity for Ellen to expand upon her education while being immersed within the world of big time advertising campaigns, said Jerry Rawlings, assistant professor of photography at BHSU. This internship will be a huge step in realizing her goals of someday becoming a commercial and fashion photographer.

Pustejovsky will begin her internship Feb. 1, where she will work on location shoots with the chief photographer at HH Brown. The internship will last through June.

Its shocking and just great, Pustejovsky said of her internship opportunity. Im so thankful for this opportunity. Its right in the field I want to pursue.

Pustejovsky has always had an interest in photography and fashion, but after enrolling in the studio photography course at BHSU, she knew she wanted to pursue a career in commercial photography. She added the course taught her skills from lighting patterns to how to run the equipment.

The courses offered at BHSU under Jerry Rawlings and all the photography professors have set me apart from other photographers, Pustejovsky said. The professors in the photography department care for the students and their encouragement has made this opportunity possible and definitely prepared me.

Rawlings added Born Footwear is known for its highly innovative advertising campaigns and Pustejovsky will gain excellent professional skills from the internship.

This opportunity will allow me to gain invaluable experience and knowledge, as well as build relationships for future career opportunities, Pustejovsky said.
The Rapid City Council voted unanimously Monday night to hire an independent investigator to investigate the code of conduct complaints against Alderman Jerry Wright.

Wright acknowledged at the meeting he would not vote on his own alleged violations, something he had previously refused to say.

The council decided not to go into executive session and instead voted for the investigator at the start of the meeting.

Mayor Steve Allender said he conducted an informal poll with council members this past week, giving them three options for who could lead the investigation: City Attorney Joel Landeen, local attorney and former lawmaker David Lust, or retired FBI investigator Mark Pecora.

Allender polled all of the council members excluding Wright. Eight of the council wanted Pecora, while one wanted Lust. Landeen received no votes.

The investigation will be paid for by the Professional Services line item in the City Attorney's budget. Allender will appoint Pecora today and expects a report on his findings by the end of this month.

The city council members voted for an outside investigator in order to provide a fair review of the facts. "In my opinion, the other two people are too close to it. I'm OK with someone from the outside coming in," said Alderman Ritchie Nordstrom.

"We just want to get a fresh set of independent eyes on it, I think that's the only way to be fair," said Alderman John Roberts.

Pecora operates Integrity International Investigations, a private investigation firm in Rapid City. According to a press release from the city, Pecora has 35 years of law enforcement investigation experience, including 28 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The complaint against Wright was submitted by Ron Sasso, a former alderman. Sasso claimed that Wright tried to get him fired from his job at Black Hills Works after Sasso wrote a critical opinion article in about Wright in the Journal on June 17.

Sasso was fired from Black Hills Works, a nonprofit that works with disabled adults, and which receives funding from the city, three weeks after they spoke with Wright. Sasso chose not to pursue legal suit against Wright after documents were revealed showing Black Hills Works was considering letting him go before Wright's involvement.

Sasso submitted the complaint on Dec. 23.

According to the Code of Conduct for Elected Officials, the City Attorney is in charge of investigating any complaints. He also has to power to appoint a designee to lead the investigation.

But in an email written in November, obtained later by the Journal, Landeen advised the city council not to pursue a formal complaint against Wright. He argued the investigation into a complaint could weaken the city's defense against a lawsuit from Sasso.

In response to the leaked email, Landeen said that he did not believe there was a conflict of interest in him investigating the claim.

Now the investigation is officially out of Landeen's control.

In other action Monday:

The council voted to move forward with an affordable housing development project with Hagg Development, Inc. The council's vote authorizes the mayor to release $120,722 in Community Development Block Grant Funds for initial planning of the development.

The facility will be mixed-use housing and will house a community center and local Head Start program. The development would be located on 128 acres north of Rushmore Mall.
PIERRE | Registration is open for the 19th Annual Mickelson Trail Trek, and bicyclists can sign up online at mickelsontrail.com.

South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks officials encourage bicyclists to register early to ensure spots in the Trek, which will be held Sept. 16-18, 2016. The ride is limited to 600 participants.

The annual supported ride highlights the George S. Mickelson Trail as it winds through the heart of the Black Hills, from Edgemont to Lead/Deadwood. More bicyclists are drawn to the Trek each year. The ride is open to everyone 14-years-old or older.

Riders on the Trail Trek will cover the entire 109 miles of the trail over three days, from Friday, Sept. 16, through Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016.

Registration before July 1, with merchandise, is $190, without merchandise, $160. Registration after July 1 is $190, but merchandise is not available. The registration fee for the three-day ride includes a trail pass, shuttle service, refreshments, one meal and snacks during each day's ride. Riders are responsible for accommodations and mechanical support.

Pre-registration is required and may be completed online by visiting mickelsontrail.com and following the Trail Trek link. The registration cutoff is Sept. 1, 2016. For more information on the Mickelson Trail or the three-day Mickelson Trail Trek, visit mickelsontrail.com or contact the Black Hills Trails office at 605-584-3896.
October 15, 1960  January 1, 2016

Andrew Bowman Donnell, age 55, of Hot Springs, passed away on January 1, 2016, at the Rapid City Regional Hospital in Rapid City.

Andy was born on October 15, 1960, in Hot Springs, to Arthur and Beulah Gail (Pritchett) Donnell. After graduation from Hot Springs High School he attended the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. He also attended Missouri Institute of Technology in Kansas City and graduated with a Masters of Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology . He used his Masters Degree in Computer Science for developing software at AT&T in Chicago. Andy married Cindy Watkins on June 18, 1983, together they enjoyed raising two children, Chandra and David. After moving to Hot Springs, he owned and Operated Blue Bison (Donnells Store), worked and redesigned lighting for Wind Cave.

Andy Gumper was unique in many ways. His many talents include: analytical and mechanical aptitude, visual spatial intelligence, construction, electrical, and plumbing abilities. Andys fun adventurous personality touched everyone he met. Hot air ballooning, four-wheeling, dirt biking and go-carting were only a few of his loves. Leadership skills were evident in his Boy Scout involvement. His level of commitment in every aspect of his life is shown in all of his accomplishments. Andy enjoyed challenges and the creative aspect of renovating and building. This is shown by his work on Donnells store and the Wind Cave electrical system, as two examples. He was a caring, loving son, brother, husband, father and grandfather. His family was primary in his life.

He is survived by his wife, Cindy Donnell of Hot Springs; son, David Arthur (Mia) Donnell of Denver, Colo.; daughter, Chandra Lee Donnell, and her children Aurora, Kaladin, formerly of Hot Springs; brothers, Joseph Arthur (Joyce) Donnell of Fall Creek, Ore.; James David (Lettie) of Bentonville, Ark.; sisters, Jennie May (Menno) Kraai of Cave Junction, Ore.; Charlene Marie (Mike) Hotchkiss of Lampasas, Texas; Barbara Ann (Jack) Highstreet of Lincoln, Neb.; aunts, Violet Inman and Jean Donnell.

Memorial services will be held 4 p.m., Tuesday, January 5, 2016, at Chamberlain McColleys Funeral Home in Hot Springs.

A memorial has been established to in Andrews name to benefit the Centennial Park Pavilion.

Arrangements have been placed in the care of Chamberlain McColleys Funeral Home in Hot Springs. Written condolences can be made at www.chamberlainmccolleys.com.

October 15, 1960 - January 1, 2016

Andrew Bowman Donnell, age 55, of Hot Springs, passed away on January 1, 2016, at the Rapid City Regional Hospital in Rapid City.

Memorial services will be held 4 p.m., Tuesday, January 5, 2016, at Chamberlain-McColleys Funeral Home in Hot Springs.

Arrangements have been placed in the care of Chamberlain-McColleys Funeral Home in Hot Springs. Written condolences can be made at www.chamberlainmccolleys.com.
Theres something so energizing about flipping the calendar from December to January. Its a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate. Im heading back to Congress this year with a renewed optimism as well. We have a lot of work to do, but Im hopeful we have momentum moving in our direction.

Truth be told, were going to need every bit of that momentum we can get. 2015 concluded with a heightened sense of unease about our national security  and rightfully so. As we return, this is an issue that will need to be addressed. I firmly believe the President, as Commander in Chief, has a responsibility to put forth a comprehensive plan to defeat and destroy ISIL. Doing so is the most effective way to keep terrorism off U.S. soil. Congress also must continue to ensure our military has the tools and resources it needs to be successful, while closing any security loopholes that may exist in federal law. That is going to be at the top of my agenda in 2016.

Addressing the Presidents health care law will be another area of focus during the first part of 2016. Speaker Paul Ryan has already announced that the House, in coordination with the Senate, plans to place legislation on the Presidents desk in the coming weeks that repeals the core tenants of Obamacare, including the individual and employer mandates. This last December, thousands of South Dakotans saw their health care costs skyrocket. I have supported and will continue to support the repeal of Obamacare, but until we can achieve a full repeal, I will do what I can to incrementally lift the burden for South Dakota families.

We are also working very hard on efforts to keep the Hot Springs VA Hospital open and fully staffed and operational. In late-2015, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) released an Environmental Impact Statement on a plan to close the VA facility in Hot Springs. From now until February 5, the VA will be accepting public comments. I encourage everyone impacted by this proposal to let their voice be heard. For my part, I have reached out to the VA Secretary directly, urging him not only to settle on a solution that will work for all involved  especially our veterans  but also to visit Hot Springs before making a determination about the hospitals future. Those who have served deserve nothing less.

The reality is that these topics are just the tip of the iceberg. We have a lot of work to do because our country is facing a lot of big issues today. Im determined to find real solutions and produce the milestones that you seek and deserve.
Commissioners also discuss property messes, road plan costs

HOT SPRINGS -- Fall River County will again serve as Oglala Lakota Countys vehicle for governmental services.

Fall River County commissioners Mike Ortner, Joe Allen, Ann Abbott, Deb Russell and Joe Falkenburg approved a contract for Fall River County to continue to serve as Oglala Lakota Countys governmental services at their Dec. 29 meeting. This includes serving as Oglala Lakota Countys treasurer, auditor and register of deeds.

Oglala Lakota County will pay Fall River County the following fees to handle its affairs: Auditor $15,800 plus a clerk for $20,000; Director of Equalization, $10,000 and a clerk $5,400; Register of Deeds, $15,800 and a clerk, $5,400; Treasurer, $15,800 and a clerk $20,000; $7,500 for emergency management; plus up to $12,485 per department for various supplies, expenses and travel, and another $5,000 contributed to the countys States Attorney Victim Assistance Program, to do that countys business.

All together, having Fall River County handle Oglala Lakota Countys business will cost the neighboring county almost $200,000.

In other business, Emergency Manager Frank Maynard asked the commissioners to consider some sort of nuisance resolution that would allow the county to clean up what Maynard called messes located at various properties across the county.

Maynard sees these messes as having a potential to hurt emergency responders and create larger problems for the community, not just owners of that particular property.

The need for this came about following a recent fire in Oelrichs, he said.

At this fire, Maynard described how  after firefighters thought the fire was extinguished  debris, tires, wooden pallets and other items, what Maynard described as a mess, reignited several times between Dec. 23 and Dec. 25. Only the Dec. 25 afternoon snowfall finally suffocated the flames, he said. Plus, there were numerous hazardous chemicals  like Freon in refrigerators, battery acid and other items in the Oelrichs fire that could have posed a much more serious problem under different conditions.

Had this same fire taken place during a dry summer, the damage might have been magnified many times over, extending beyond the property into surrounding homes or range lands outside town, he told the commissioners.

Ortner told Maynard that several years ago, the county tried to enforce a nuisance resolution against the very owner of the property where the Oelrichs fire took place for having a mess on the property. This went to court, and resulted in a poor decision by the judge who saw the property owners mess as the remains of someone simply trying to get by in life. As a result, the county was thwarted in its effort to clean up the property.

Also, Edgemont resident Susan Henderson questioned where the countys five-year road plan stood, what roads the county prioritized, and if there was some liability involved in not having a plan to repair the roads.

The commissioners agreed that their immediate priorities were first and foremost old Route 79  what they called Quivey Road  then East Oral Road, which Falkenburg described as the worst road in the county more dangerous than gravel, but this might be another two to three years out.

Ortner told Henderson that the county would get bids for the projects outlined in the five year plan, but Highway Superintendent Randy Seiler emphasized that nothing was carved in stone about the project priorities.

When pressed on how much the road plan priorities would cost the county, Seiler said the Quivey Road and East Oral Road projects, would cost about $20,000 per mile, plus the cost of gravel. The projects involved laying several inches of gravel on top of the existing roadway, then using a special machine to grind up both the existing roadway and the gravel to form a new road.

Ortner estimated the total cost at about $50,000 per mile.

Abbott suggested holding a meeting for landowners along Quivey Road, to explain the project, sometime in February or early March, so as not to interfere with calving season.

During the public comment segment Henderson again raised several environmental issues for the commissioners.

She shared a Dec. 2015 Popular Science magazine article with the commissioners and talked about how injecting oilfield fracking wastes into the earth has been documented to result in earthquakes and other problems, according to the article, since the 1950s.

If uranium mining near Edgemont gets approved, she said, miners are requesting to inject 9,600 gallons per minute of industrial wastewater back into the ground, and this is more wastewater being injected than when an oil well is fracked.

Henderson also noted how Edgemont uranium mining test drilling sites, four of which are a mile across, could become EPA Superfund clean-up sites or they might end up as the countys responsibility.

A dispute arose between Henderson and Falkenburg on where EPA personnel can go, with Falkenburg claiming that EPA, with the full weight of the federal government behind them, can go anywhere they darn well please, despite the landowners wishes; and Henderson saying that some landowners have kept EPA off their properties. At this point, Russell closed the public comment section, much to Hendersons consternation.

In other business, the commissioners:

Discussed going to a South Dakota Pipeline Association (SDPA) coordinated response exercise meeting in mid- January, where a free dinner and prizes like GPS systems and other items would be shared. The county, Falkenburg noted, has one pipeline that is monitored by plane. Falkenburg noted that while the countys federal land oil wells have been shuttered, others are pumping like crazy. Pipeline association members include energy companies, utilities, and pipeline companies, including TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, the company that wishes to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. SDPA is hosting a series of 15 similar exercises across the state between Jan. 19 and Feb. 4.

Denied a geographic information system (GIS) user agreement with the Sioux Falls-based Southeastern Council of Government, until the county can gather more information on what that organization wants.

Approved an agreement to share radio frequencies with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and will allow USFS to use the countys repeaters to communicate with the county during fires and other emergencies. Maynard said the agreement was the result of a new supervisor, who wanted to keep things up to date.
John Robertson, noted fruit man of South Dakota and vie president of the state horticultural society, left Monday for Sioux Falls to attend the thirty-seventh annual meeting of that body. No meeting is considered complete without a contribution from Mr. Robertson. This year hs is to tell, Why I Raised a Big Crop of Apples in 1925 at an Elevation of 4,200 Feet.

One of the other interesting features of the three-day program will be the address of Prof. N.E. Hansen of State College, who will tell of his search for hardy pears in the mountains of north China, during 1924. Professor Hansen devotes a great part of his time to the seeking out of varieties which will prove suitable for the climate and other conditions of this state, and the adventures of these expeditions are said to be as thrilling as any work of fiction.

Robin Hood put on under the auspices of the Kiwanis club at the Black Hills theatre Wednesday and Thursday nights was everything that could be hoped for in the way of excellence and patronage. The incidental music furnished by Laymons orchestra was a great addition to the production, the overture consisting of the beautiful and familiar airs of the Robin Hood light opera. The educational fund of the Kiwanis club will have a substantial contribution from the receipts of the picture.

OralEd Wilson helped Bob Bledsoe saw wood Saturday. Jim Cole made a business trip to Hot Springs Saturday. H. A. Yocam and wife left Saturday for their new home in Chadron. Elma Morgareidge went to Chadron Saturday for a few days visit in the Leon Williams home. Mr. Hacket of Long Pine, Neb. is acting as relief agent here until our new depot agent arrives. Floyd Weldon and wife attended the show Robin Hood at Hot Springs Wednesday night. Wilbur Emick of Buffalo Gap is spending his vacation at the Thompson home on Plum Creek. Art Hacker of Waster, SD. was loading a tractor for the Peppard-Burrill company to be shipped to Wasta.
Pennington County residents will be voting today on a wheel tax that supporters say is necessary to pay for road and bridge projects, and opponents say simply adds to people's tax burden.

About 20 percent of the county's registered voters are expected to go to the polls.

The tax is the only item on the ballot, and voters have the choice of either "yes" to enact the tax, or "no" to reject it.

If approved, the tax will immediately take effect. Vehicle owners will be required to pay $3, $4, or $5 per wheel, per vehicle, at registration or renewal, with the heavier vehicles paying the higher amounts. The maximum tax that can be collected is $60 per vehicle.

All funds collected through the wheel tax must go toward highway and bridge improvement projects.

Pennington County commissioners on Oct. 6 voted 4-1 in favor of the wheel tax. If enacted, the wheel tax would qualify the county for bridge improvement grant funds from a state-run program called BIG.

In its 2015 session, the South Dakota Legislature passed a series of increases in fuel taxes and other transportation-related fees. A portion of those increases goes into the BIG program. The Pennington County Auditor's office estimates residents annually contribute $1.6 million into the BIG fund.

The Legislature also included a requirement: Only counties with a wheel tax may apply for BIG grants.

Commissioners also voted in favor of the wheel tax to avoid raising property taxes to fill the Highway Department budget, which was slashed by $2.2 million.

Commissioner George Ferebee was the only commissioner to vote against the tax. During deliberations on the wheel tax ordinance he called the tax discriminatory toward residents  such as farmers, ranchers and construction workers  who have multiple vehicles but may not drive all of them.

The tax was placed on the ballot by the group Citizens for Liberty after they organized a petition and collected the necessary signatures. Part of that group's argument is that the state should not be allowed to coerce counties into adopting taxes.

According to the county, this is what will happen if the wheel tax passes:

 An estimated $2.5 million annually will be available for the Highway Department budget, to be used only on local highway projects and bridge maintenance.

 Pennington County will be eligible for an estimated $1.3 million from BIG funds.

 Aging bridges and roads in the county will be repaired more quickly.

According to the county, this is what will happen if the wheel tax is rejected:

 The Pennington County Highway Department will have to adjust its 5-year plan to account for nearly $2.2 million in funds cut from the 2016 budget.

 Pennington County will not be eligible for funds from the state's BIG program, which will allocate millions of dollars for bridge projects.

 The Commission may raise property taxes in the future to replenish Highway Department budget.

Polling stations are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The auditor's office asks voters who have questions on where to vote to call 394-2153.
Patriots do not take over federal buildings

Ammon Bundy, son of self-professed "patriot" Cliven Bundy, is leading an armed takeover of a federal building located on a wildlife refuge in Oregon. He is calling on other "patriots" to join him in his effort to free two brothers who were convicted of arson on federal property  their futile attempt to conceal poaching activities.

I am tired of so-called patriots wrapping themselves in our flag to steal from us taxpayers. They are not patriots by any sense of the word. They are simply thieves and traitors to the established law. This is not a Harper's Ferry moment by any stretch of any imagination. Call them out for what they are and then deal with them to the fullest extent of the law. I pay my taxes every year.

Like most citizens, I think the federal government should use my tax dollars much more efficiently than they do now. I will make my stand by voting to choose my representation through the legal constitutional method. These thieves are circumventing the law to achieve financial gain for themselves. They are unequivocally not "patriots.

 Steven Thomas, Spearfish

Religious freedom applies to every religion

The teacher asked Johnnie, "Why did the Pilgrims come to America?" Johnnie replied, "To worship God as they pleased and make everybody else do the same." The survey results in the Journals Religion page on Saturday indicate that Johnnie's answer still holds sway. Too many of us believe in religious freedom for ourselves, but nobody else. Sadly, it has been ever thus.

Religion as an excuse for extremism has bred horrible human suffering - violence against Buddhists, Hindus, Christians (Catholics and Protestants, by turn), Jews and Muslims. That's just the alphabetized short list. And throughout history when we run out of "other religions" to attack, we blood lust among ourselves: Catholics killing Catholics, Muslims killing Muslims, Protestants killing Baptists, Dissenters, Mormons and Quakers. Again, the short list.

"When will we ever learn" that not protecting others' religious freedom puts our own at risk; that our religious freedom ends where others' space begins; that what is commonly known as The Golden Rule is, indeed, common to most religions; and that religious violence against others is always a perversion of that principle.

 Doris Marie Strom, Rapid City
MOSCOW, January 5 (RAPSI) - The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Russia to pay 32,000 euros in compensation to opposition activist Yevgeny Frumkin who took part in the riots on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

Frumkin filed an application with the ECHR on November 9, 2012. He complained of violating Article 3 (Prohibition on torture, and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment), Article 5 (Right to liberty and security of person), Article 6 (Right to a fair trial) and Article 11 (Freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The court held that there was violation of Article 5, Article 6 and Article 11.

Over 400 people were arrested and scores were injured in the authorized Bolotnaya Square protest that turned violent in May 2012. Dozens were later charged with inciting mass riots and battery against law enforcement officers.

Riot organizers Leonid Razvozzhayev and Sergei Udaltsov were sentenced to 4.5 years in prison each.

Other defendants in the case received prison terms ranging from suspended sentences to four years. Several defendants were pardoned; one is undergoing compulsory mental treatment.

In September, the ECHR ordered Russia to pay a total of 7,000 euros to Artem Savelov, Leonid Kovyazin, and Ilya Gushchin, three opposition activists who complained of their detention over mass protests in 2012 in central Moscow. That was the first ECHR ruling in the t in the Bolotnaya Square riots case.
DEER LODGE  A local handyman has been charged in the deaths of a Deer Lodge mother and son whose bodies were found late Nov. 29 in rural Powell County.

Powell County Attorney Lewis Smith filed charges Tuesday afternoon in Deer Lodge District Court against David Wayne Nelson, 53, accusing him of two counts of deliberate homicide in the deaths of Beverly Giannonatti, 79, and her son Gregory Giannonatti, 57; one count of felony theft; and two counts of obstructing justice.

Nelson could be sentenced to life in prison, or a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 100 years for each homicide, in addition to sentences on the other charges.

According to court documents, Nelson is charged with felony theft for taking 17 100-ounce silver bars from the Giannonatti home at 86 Larkspur Road, north of Deer Lodge, on Oct. 21. He allegedly sold the silver bars on Oct. 23 at Grizzly Gold & Silver Inc. in Missoula for $26,265.

The documents state that on or about Oct. 24 or 25, Nelson hit Gregory Giannonatti on the head several times with a hammer at the Larkspur Road home, causing his death. Nelson is accused of attacking Beverly Giannonatti the same day, causing her death by strangling her with a length of electrical wire.

Nelson then allegedly removed the bodies, carpeting, baseboards, hammer and other evidence and disposed of them at remote locations in Powell and Deer Lodge counties with the purpose of concealing the Giannonattis deaths. That is the basis for the obstruction of justice charges.

Montana Division of Criminal Investigation agents and FBI agents from Helena joined city and county law enforcement in investigating the Giannonattis disappearance. During the investigation, Nelson allegedly confessed to the killings and led law enforcement to the two dump sites  one that contained the bodies and the other evidence of the crime.

The Giannonattis allegedly were last seen at different times on Oct. 28, but Smith said Nelson told law enforcement the deaths occurred before then  a day or two after he sold the silver bars.

We have many unsubstantiated recollections regarding when the Gianonnattis were last seen, Smith said. At this point we dont have an exact time of death, and are going with the dates Nelson told Sheriff Scott Howard.

On Oct. 31, officials were asked to do welfare checks on the Gianonnattis. It appeared they left their homes with the intent to return soon  with beloved dogs left unattended and, in Greg's case, food in a slow cooker.

During the investigation, law enforcement was told that Beverly Gianonnatti was observed Oct. 28 having lunch at Muriahs Restaurant in Deer Lodge with an unknown man who appeared to be about 60.

Gregory Gianonnatti was allegedly last seen at 10 p.m. Oct. 28 speeding away from his home in a white 1995 Toyota Camry, heading east toward downtown Deer Lodge. His car was located Nov. 1 at his late fathers home on Larkspur Road.

Beverly Gianonnatti amicably separated from her former husband, Bill, who died in August and was remodeling the Larkspur Road home she occupied with him when they were married with plans to move back in.

Officers entered the home to do a welfare check, but nothing appeared out of place, Howard said at the time, and neighbors did not report anything unusual.

Howard said that on Oct. 19 a cleaning woman found a gold bar at the Larkspur Road home and immediately called Beverly. Friends said she immediately went to the house to get it. The location of the 25-pound ingot, worth about $480,000, is unknown.

Beverly Gianonnatti was well liked by many and worked for years as a court reporter when Ted Mizner was district judge. She also was a businesswoman with rental properties that a property manager took care of for her.

Gregory Gianonnatti was severely injured in an accident several years ago and moved back to Deer Lodge about four years ago.

Earlier this month, Nelson made an initial appearance in Deer Lodge District Court on an unrelated a probation violation charge out of Ravalli County. Last week, he appeared in Ravalli County District Court, where he pleaded not guilty to probation violation and denied killing the Giannonattis.

Nelson was on probation after being sentenced in 2000 for a robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault in Ravalli County two years earlier. For those crimes, he received two consecutive 10-year terms in the Montana State Prison with five years suspended.

His criminal record also shows a conviction for burglary in Beaverhead County in 1981.

Nelson is being held in the Powell County jail without bail and is scheduled to appear in District Court next Tuesday.




Contributions to the Turner Report/Inside Joplin can be sent to: Randy Turner, 2306 E. 8th, Apt. G, Joplin, MO 64801.





Send information, news tips, documents, or comments you prefer not to share on the blog or on Facebook to rturner229@hotmail.com.
Contact:

Mostly, the Rude Pundit doesn't give a shit what you have to say, but, if you have to say it, you can write to Lee Papa here: rudepundit(at)yahoo(dot)com
Dhaka Tribune, january 4, 2016

Democracy in Arunachal Pradesh?

by Garga Chatterjee

The Indian government has a long history of manipulating state politics

Not all is right in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in the Indian Union. Some old British-rule era habits die hard, or may be they never die for some imperial habits are essential for maintaining undemocratic dominance over democratically-elected undesirables. Thus New Delhi struck again, this time through the office of the governor of Arunachal Pradesh.

Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa, the Delhi School of Economics-educated former Indian Administrative Service officer, was appointed as the governor of Arunachal Pradesh by the present BJP-led NDA government at New Delhi. This New Delhi-appointed unelected character toppled the democratically-elected government of Arunachal Pradesh, led by Chief Minister Nabam Tuki of the Congress.

This was accomplished by convening the assembly without consulting the speaker or the chief minister and using that aassemblya to aimpeacha the speaker of the Arunachal Pradesh assembly, Nabam Rebia. This governor-convened aassemblya was not actually held inside the Arunachal Pradesh legislative assembly building but in a random community hall in Itanagar. The Gauhati High Court has stayed these actions by the governor for the time being. Thus, this attempt at aregime changea has been stalled. What does one call the toppling of an elected government by an unelected office-holder like the governor?

The New Delhi-appointed governor Rajkhowa chose to act as he did based on his reading of the constitution. It is amazing that there exists no method available beforehand to a state government, and hence to the people of the state, to stop a New Delhi deputed governor from doing what he did. This is a disease common to all over-centralised multi-ethnic rashtras. Theses entities show who is sovereign by choosing which of its own made-up rules it can violate and when. Unfortunate are the people of the lands that are called Arunachal Pradesh.

Even the name of the state, aArunachal Pradesh,a is an imposition, for those two words mean nothing in any language native to the peopleas homelands that constitute the area. It is distant  not from people of the area, who should ideally matter, but from the real decision-makers of Arunachal Pradesh  folks who decide its fate sitting in or consulting with New Delhi, in short, the folks who really matter. Their plight may not even have made it to the so-called anationala radar but for the fact that the ousted government was led by a anational partya and that party now needs to score brownie points against another anational partya that is in power in New Delhi.

Let me state certain things in a question and answer form: Who is the governor of a state? That character is New Delhias agent in a state/province. This character even has discretionary powers  which do not flow from wishes of the stateas people but typically from the wishes of New Delhi.

What is the origin of this position? When the British acquired one sovereign area of the sub-continent after another, after having amassed some serious amount of territory (which would go on to become the Indian Union and Pakistan in 1947), they appointed some loyal and trusted dalal of centralised imperial rule, to keep the acquired areas and provinces ain check.a These positions had various names in various British-acquired and controlled territories in the sub-continent.

The 1935 Government of India Act had provincial governors with huge discretionary powers  natural for a colonial centre when dealing with limited but representative native provincial government. The post-partition position of the governor is, in a long-range sense, the continuation of that office. What change did governorship undergo from Union Jack to Tricolour? How similar were the pre-partition dalals of British imperialism and post-partition agents of New Delhi?

Firstly, post-partition, they were non-white. Also, they answered to New Delhi and not finally to London. But, as before, they were almost never from the area which they were appointed to agovern.a They also have often done what their pre-partition counterparts did  carry out central rule as per wishes of New Delhi, typically when the democratically-elected governmentas of states does things that New Delhias sarkar bahadur doesnat like. Did Indian Unionas founding fathers want to change or abolish this imperialism-inspired position? Yes and no.

If one follows the debates of the constituent assembly, one sees a pattern. The debates started before 1947, and ended much after that. The same Congressites who made many speeches in such debates in support of state rights made an about-turn after partition. With their super-majority control of New Delhi, centralising power was the way to check any opposition. This was reflected in the governor issue.

There were the anti-imperialist calls for doing away with the position altogether. There was a democratic sentiment of having a governor elected by the stateas people. After all, how can the constitutional head-of-the-state government be so unrepresentative. True to their character, most of the Indian Unionas founding fathers sitting in New Delhi not only wanted the governor position to continue, but also made in an unelected position, directly controlled by the centre. They also gave this position the power to recommend the dissolution of elected state governments, often elected by many crores of people. There has been Presidentas Rule in the states nearly 100 times, with the governor playing a shameful role most of the times.

Twenty-two of these instances saw the governor rule the states for a year or more. And presidentas rule is just one among the many other ways in which New Delhi parks its unwanted nose in state politics through its governor. Such an undemocratic system has no place in a representative federal democracy. It is only after the rise of ethno-national parties in the states that the governors have lost some teeth. But they have not become toothless, as the events of Itanagar show.

The office of the governor is an example of an anti-people, undemocratic relic from the British rule. Must we remind ourselves so explicitly that what happened on August 15, 1947 was transfer of power, its repackaging as aindependencea notwithstanding? People of a state, Arunachal Pradesh included, are neither stupid or nor apprentice-citizens. They are adults with inalienable rights of democratic representation. aSwaraja is a process  not an event. Abolishing the post of governor will be a step in that direction. Its not a abad applea issue but a poison tree issue.

Why should unelected governors exist at all?
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Dr. Saumitra Mohan is a member of the Indian Administrative Service of 2002 batch and belongs to the West Bengal Cadre. He is presently posted as the Secretary, Department of Tourism, West Bengal. Before entering the IAS, he had worked as Assistant Regional Director with Indira Gandhi National Open University, as a Lecturer in Political Science with Meerut University and as a Journalist with the Press Trust of India. The views expressed here are personal and not of the Government.
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First, note that this is NOT a blog....it's a collection of essays similar in nature to what the Greek Plutarch attempted to write.





Second: NO, there will be no Facebook connection to the essay collection. Besides the negativity with FB, there is just too much potential in the future for censorship with FB.





Third, this log of essays is written by an American (not a German). If you are a German seeking commentary written by a German, on Germans....look elsewhere.





Fourth, I will offer wit and sarcasm on Germany, Germans, Germanology, German political figures, German TV, German beer, German food, German humor (or lack of), German habits, German weirdness, German news, German autos, German brilliance, German stupidity, German customs, German Nazis, German history, and German stubbornness.





Fifth (new), the essays are not about ethnic pathways to your grandfather or great-grandmother who was German. It relates present day Germans. If you are trying to get some understanding to your ancestor who packed up and left sixty years ago from the old 'homeland', then this blog is probably not for you.





Final note: I generally only delete comments that are spam-related, or hype over pure Nationalist Socialist agendas. I generally won't support one-sided arguments/agendas. I also don't think accusations of racism or nationalism are generally proven, and can reflect poorly upon the person making the accusations.

I was one of those Americans who did over twenty years of military time....married a German....and eventually returned as a retiree.I'm one of the few who stood under the German umbrella.....paid German taxes for some years.....German social security.....and felt the various pains like Germans.So, this is my all-purpose commentary essay, designed for non-Germans mostly (and those Germans who accidentally discover it). I tend to put German culture into the spotlight of sarcasm, wit and humor. I'm simply pointing out the richness and craziness of life in Germany, which even some Germans can't understand.The amusing thing is that I'm merely repeating the exercise that Mark Twain performed in 1880, when he published "A Tramp Abroad". Various comments were dished out on the Germans....which apparently did not trigger any wars, chaos, climate change, or ill feelings.
He may have been born in Brooklyn, but Carl Sagan was gunning for the stars as soon as he arrived in this world. Get to know the scientist whose infectious delight in the universe still holds us spellbound.

By Marianne Spoon
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 "Continued Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment? The Rosenthal Era" | Main | Could I be (and should I want to be) federal prisoner Keith Judd's DNC delegate from West Virginia? 

May 9, 2012

Former federal prosecutor urges "Mandatory minimums for kingpins only"

This recent National Law Journal commentary by Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor in EDNY, voices support for US District Judge John Gleeson's recent recommendation in US v. Dossie, No. 11-CR-237 (EDNY Mar. 30, 2012) (discussed here), that federal prosecutors show much more restraint in their use of federal drug statutes that carry mandatory minimum sentencing terms. Here are excerpts:

I support the war on drugs. Indeed, I can fairly be called a hawk. I spent most of my nearly nine-year career as a federal prosecutor attacking (largely white and Asian) drug-trafficking organizations and putting their members behind bars for long stretches. For every wide-eyed, liberal, young lawyer I meet who naively criticizes the wisdom and resources this "war" has entailed, I issue the same challenge: Read the daily papers and keep track of drug-related murders, assaults, robberies, break-ins and general violence for six months  and then explain to me why drug enforcement should not be one of our top enforcement priorities. Cracking down on the street-level organizations, and stopping the collateral damage they inflict, is a laudable goal, an essential one. Doing so at the expense of fairness and equity is not, and street-level traffickers should not face the same consequences Congress intended for kingpins. No one would describe Judge John Gleeson of the Eastern District of New York as "soft" on drug crime, and some might describe him as fairly "hawkish" himself. His prestigious career as a federal prosecutor, spanning almost two decades, bears this out.... In a recent case, U.S. v. Dossie, Gleeson called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to reform DOJ's inconsistent and irrational use of mandatory-minimum sentences in drug cases, reserving them for drug kingpins, as Congress intended. In clear and terse prose, Gleeson described a system that works to "strip criminal defendants of the due-process rights we consider fundamental to our justice system." The specific case concerned  of course  a young, black, street-level dealer, who turned to drug distribution to support his habit. This did not stop DOJ from seeking to enforce a harsh mandatory-minimum sentence. Gleeson's conclusion is clear: "This case illustrates how mandatory minimum sentences in drug cases distort the sentencing process and mandate unjust sentences." He respectfully urged the attorney general to reform DOJ's policy, reserving the use of mandatory-minimum penalties for the managers and leaders of drug enterprises whom Congress intended to target. Eric Holder should listen to John Gleeson.

May 9, 2012 at 09:14 AM | Permalink

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When the mandatory minimums were adopted in the early 1980's, the Department of Justice and the DEA assured Congress that the drug weights that triggered the minimums would be limited to those who were most responsible for drug trafficking. Although no one apparently used the word "kingpin", the intent was clear: the people who possessed enough drugs to be subject to a mandatory minimum would be those higher up the chain, the leaders and organizers (to use Guideline terms). Instead, most of the people subject to the minimums are truck drivers, housewives, students, home car providers, small time criminals. Very few people serving mandatory minimum sentences are what anyone would call "kingpins."

Posted by: C.A. | May 9, 2012 10:14:10 AM

what is suprising is that we are SUPRISED! The govt did the same thing decades before with RICO that was to be used to break up the MOB but shortly after passage was used for pretty much everyone BUT the mob!

face it 200 year of govt actions proves one thing. How can you tell they are lieing! Their Mouths are MOVING!

Posted by: rodsmith | May 9, 2012 10:36:11 AM

Money laundering has also progressed the same way. It was meant to punish those who were obviously helping drug kingpins and mobsters clean their copious dirty cash through complex transactions. Their sole role was as THE money launderer who helped make these criminal enterprises worthwhile for the perpetrators.

Early decisions where the DOJ charged money laundering for mundane, non-complex spending such as buying a car with drug proceeds were frowned on by judges who stating "the money laundering statutes are not "money spending statutes". But other judges allowed the DOJ to successfully bring multiple successful money laundering charges for low level, easily traceable SPENDING. Precedent has prevailed to the point where perfectly innocent people can be easily prosecuted under the money laundering statutes for the unknowing receipt and spending of criminal funds. I should know---in 2011 I underwent a three week federal trial for doing such common acts as buying a boat, and lending my sister money. While I was acquitted by the jury of all counts, it is NO CONSOLATION to me to find myself in the position to be prosecuted in the first place. The ease with which prosecutors may bring money laundering charges has gotten completely out of control, and bears no relationship to what Congress intended when it originally set them into place. The DOJ also uses money laundering charges to TACK ON (piling on of "points" in the sentencing structure) that subject defendants to even more pressure to plead guilty to whatever other charges the DOJ might bring, making the decision to go to trial to fight charges even MORE fraught with peril than it already is.

Posted by: folly | May 9, 2012 12:53:42 PM

Chairman Leahy could hold a hearing anytime he wants. Oddly, I don't see one scheduled.

Posted by: Bill Otis | May 10, 2012 9:16:45 AM

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January 29, 2013

US District Judge Gleeson assails drug guidelines in another potent opinon

Last year in United States v. Dossie, I wrote about how the mandatory minimum sentences in drug trafficking cases distort the sentencing process and mandate unjust sentences. This case illustrates a separate but related defect in our federal sentencing regime.... Diaz will be sentenced in a few weeks, and when that happens I will carefully consider all the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C.  3553(a) except one  the length of imprisonment recommended by the United States Sentencing Commissions Guidelines Manual. Though I will not ignore Diazs Guidelines range, I will place almost no weight on it because of my fundamental policy disagreement with the offense guideline that produces it. In fairness to the government, I write here to explain my belief that the offense guideline for heroin, cocaine, and crack offenses (drug trafficking offenses) is deeply and structurally flawed. As a result, it produces ranges that are excessively severe across a broad range of cases, including this one. The flaw is simply stated: the Guidelines ranges for drug trafficking offenses are not based on empirical data, Commission expertise, or the actual culpability of defendants. If they were, they would be much less severe, and judges would respect them more. Instead, they are driven by drug type and quantity, which are poor proxies for culpability.

If the Commission wants greater adherence to the Guidelines, as it should, it needs to get better at fixing broken offense guidelines. The drug trafficking offense guideline was born broken. Many judges will not respect it because as long as the sentences it produces are linked to the ADAAs mandatory minimums, they will be too severe. Indeed, as discussed further below, for almost two decades the nations judges have been telling the Commission to de-link the drug trafficking offense guideline from those harsh mandatory minimums and to reduce the sentencing ranges. The Commission should listen and act. It should use its resources, knowledge, and expertise to fashion fair sentencing ranges for drug trafficking offenses. That process will take time. In the meantime, because real people, families, and communities are harmed by the current ranges, it should immediately lower them by a third.... Let those who advocate for longer prison terms, and even a return to the dark days of mandatory Guidelines, go ahead and make their case. The debate is good for the health of our federal criminal justice system. But the suggestion that federal sentences should become more severe in the name of racial equality is preposterous. That case has emphatically not been made, and the Commissions repeated suggestion that it has insults the entire judiciary and demeans the Commission itself. If it does nothing else, the Commission should take affirmative steps to remove the race issue, which it unwisely inserted into the discussion of federal sentencing policy, from the debate.... The Commission should use its resources, knowledge, and expertise to fashion fair sentencing ranges for drug trafficking offenses. If it does, those ranges will be substantially lower than the ranges produced by the current offense guideline. The deep, easily traceable structural flaw in the current drug trafficking offense guideline produces advisory ranges that are greater than necessary to comply with the purposes of sentencing. We must never lose sight of the fact that real people are at the receiving end of these sentences. Incarceration is often necessary, but the unnecessarily punitive extra months and years the drug trafficking offense guideline advises us to dish out matter: children grow up; loved ones drift away; employment opportunities fade; parents die.

A number of helpful readers made sure I did not miss the latest doozy of an opinion issued by US District Judge John Gleeson in United States v. Diaz, No. 11-CR-00821-2 (E.D.N.Y. Jan. 28, 2013) (available for download below). The opinion is a must-read for various reasons  one reader described it to me as an "instant classic"  and these opening points hint at the opinion's coverage:These passages from the body of the lengthy Diaz opinion reveal just some of its many flourishes:

Download United States v. Ysidro Diaz

January 29, 2013 at 11:14 PM | Permalink

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Congress wears its neckties too tightly which reduces blood circulation to the brain .

Posted by: Anon. #2.71828 | Jan 29, 2013 11:22:43 PM

Superb opinion! Kudos to Judge Gleeson

Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Jan 29, 2013 11:42:45 PM

How many times does the Supreme Court have to say that the guidelines are "advisory only"?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 30, 2013 2:35:36 AM

Bill there is a difference between saying the guidelines are advisory and need not be followed and the guidelines are advisory and "should not" be followed. I understand Judge Gleeson to say the latter, at least in drug cases.



Posted by: Dave from Texas | Jan 30, 2013 2:59:00 AM

Dave from Texas --

But each district judge in the country knows the Guidelines need not be followed, and each knows, from Gall and Kimbrough, that he is free to disagree with not just the Sentencing Commission but Congress itself. Accordingly, those judges who agree with Gleeson that drugs are not that big a deal are already on his ship, and those who disagree, which is quite a few of them, are unlikely to be moved by Gleeson's repeating a view he is well known to have voiced before.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 30, 2013 3:22:09 AM

Otis ..using your logic you should stop posting on this blog at once!!!!!

Posted by: SteveProf | Jan 30, 2013 8:23:00 AM

Love it! Gleeson as well as Mark Bennett in Iowa.

Posted by: PDB | Jan 30, 2013 9:04:49 AM

Anonymous and the judge are both on the right track in targeting the Sentencing Commission.

Posted by: Steve Jensen | Jan 30, 2013 10:58:42 AM

Bennett,Gertner(now gone),Adelman,Weinstein,Gleeson..its sad how few have the energy and care enough to try and speak out

Posted by: scott tilsen | Jan 30, 2013 11:10:40 AM

Judge Gleeson (a former federal prosecutor and far from a known soft sentencer) is hardly of the view that drugs are "not that big a deal." Instead, he has explained in detail why the drug sentencing guideline is conceptually and methodologically flawed, and has been since its inception. And he has identified the ways in which it should be fixed, to refocus the harshest punishment on those who run drug distribution rings, rather than to let it fall haphazardly on ignorant and addicted lookouts and mules.

Bravo for a rigorous and scholarly look at how the Commission has actually performed (or not) its job, and how it might do the job better, in a way that lives up to its mission.

Boo for reflexive dismissal based on a superficial perception of whether the opinion's bottom line favors defendants or the government. Actually reading and engaging with the opinion might produce more informed commentary.

Posted by: Def. Atty. | Jan 30, 2013 11:14:52 AM

Prof --

Using your logic, so should you.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 30, 2013 12:47:31 PM

Def. Atty. --

"Boo for reflexive dismissal based on a superficial perception of whether the opinion's bottom line favors defendants or the government."

Really? If the bottom line had favored the government, would you be posting about how insightful it is?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 30, 2013 12:51:50 PM

I don't do federal criminal work, but I continue to be perplexed at why federal judges don't use the Eighth Amendment as a foundation for a finding that the sentence sought by the government or set forth in the guidelines is grossly disproportionate and therefore unconstitutional.

I know at least four NC judges who have taken that approach to vacate lengthy habitual felon sentences for possessing a tiny amount of cocaine.

bruce

Posted by: bruce cunningham | Jan 30, 2013 1:18:23 PM

Federal sentencing guidelines are guidelines for INTUITIVE decision-making. Intuitive decisions can be manipulated easily by heuristics of various kinds, just as the federal guidelines. Obviously the federal guidelines that apply in this case are are not based on reason, but were intuitive.

What is needed is a paradigm shift, from intuition to reason. Cognitive scientists call these two modes of thought System I and System II. For more information, take a look at Daniel Kahneman's recent book entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow.

The Feds should keep up with science. Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work in this area.

Posted by: Tom McGee | Jan 30, 2013 3:00:01 PM

SteveProf: your sardonic ad hominem attacks on Mr. Otis are out of place and are unwanted. Please be respectful of all who post here and respectfully debate the ideas.

Posted by: onlooker1 | Jan 30, 2013 3:13:42 PM

Here are some other excerpts from this well-reasoned and important opinion:

Though I will not ignore Diazs Guidelines range, I will place almost no weight on it because of my fundamental policy disagreement with the offense guideline that produces it my belief [is that] that the offense guideline for heroin, cocaine, and crack offenses (drug trafficking offenses) is deeply and structurally flawed. As a result, it produces ranges that are excessively severe across a broad range of cases, including this one. The flaw is simply stated: the Guidelines ranges for drug trafficking offenses are not based on empirical data, Commission expertise, or the actual culpability of defendants. If they were, they would be much less severe, and judges would respect them more. Instead, they are driven by drug type and quantity, which are poor proxies for culpability.

The genesis of the structural flaw is easily traced. It is rooted directly in the fateful choice by the original Commission to link the Guidelines ranges for all drug trafficking defendants to the onerous mandatory minimum penalties in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (ADAA) that were expressly intended for only a few. Incarceration is often necessary, but the unnecessarily punitive extra months and years the drug trafficking offense guideline advises us to dish out matter: children grow up; loved ones drift away; employment opportunities fade; parents die. Until the Commission does the job right, which should take considerable time, it should lower the ranges in drug trafficking cases by a third for the reasons set forth above. In the meantime, the current ranges will be given very little weight by this Court."

Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Jan 30, 2013 3:24:44 PM

bruce --

Nailed it. Judge Gleeson should have the courage of his convictions and hold the mandatory minimum to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment. We will then see what the Second Circuit, and perhaps the Supreme Court, have to say about it.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 30, 2013 3:31:47 PM

I am fully convinced that almost all drug charges should be dropped by 1/3... But in as much as its Federal, one can expect "high level conceptual vague" outcomes on everything.. Dropped by 1/3 after all MM have been tossed...

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Jan 30, 2013 3:40:55 PM

It's a good opinion but in an effort to seem comprehensive it's too long to be usefully recommended to someone not already fascinated with the topic. I don't think Gleeson needs to go where Bill Otis suggests. The point is that the mandatory minimum statutes (in their current formulation) might perfectly reasonably be considered constitutional but dumb. Congress passes constitutional but dumb laws all the time. It's one of their major activities. The judge's role, one could at least fairly contend, is to respect and enforce the outcomes actually mandated by constitutional but dumb laws (subject to suggesting that, e.g., prosecutors might wish to exercise their legitimate discretion in ways that avoid mandating those outcomes in particular cases) but not unnecessarily build on and extend the dumb rationale of dumb laws to create additional and unnecessary dumb outcomes in situations where the statute does not by its terms require that outcome. 80% of the opinion is explaining that that last thing (taking a dumb idea arguably implicit in a statute and running with it beyond the point the statute actually required be done) is the highly foolish thing the USSC did a quarter-century ago, and that it keeps on doing despite being told repetitively by the primary consumers of its output that it should stop being dumber than Congress requires it to be.

It is of course particularly ironic for Gleeson to be talking here about the mandatory minimum for a kilogram of heroin (and the defendant's good fortune in qualifying for the safety-valve and thus ducking the mandatory minimum) in a case that apparently involved zero actual grams of heroin. Whatever else one might say by way of criticism of the Guidelines' weight-obsessiveness in drug cases, I would put somewhere toward the top of the list the failure to focus on the sort of common-sense distinctions any lay person would draw (in gauging the relative severity of different offenses and thus the relative gravity of appropriate punishment) between a) a gram of actual heroin; b) a gram of an inert and legal substance supplied by the government that some foolish defendant might have mistakenly believed was heroin; and c) a phantom gram of hypothetical heroin that perhaps might ultimately have actually been obtained and delivered if a conspiracy had, contrary to what actually happened, matured into a completed substantive offense.

Posted by: JWB | Jan 30, 2013 6:19:35 PM

Did it ever dawn on you Otis that before criticizing Judge Gleeson for lacking the courage of his convictions a defendant would have to actually make the constructional challenge to the MM or are you suggesting Judge Gleeson should do that on his own so you could be the first online to criticize him for that? If any defendat had made such a challenge I think we would know about it - either because Judge Gleeson gave you father fodder to crtisize him for granting the challenge or the issues was appealed to the 2nd circuit by a loosing defendant.

Posted by: SteveProf | Jan 31, 2013 1:22:01 PM

Prof --

Your manners could use improvement, but, amazingly, not as much as your typing. There is a "Preview" panel, you know.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 31, 2013 1:57:53 PM

You are right on my typing, Bill, it is harder for me with just one usable arm and hand. How about reponding to my point?

Posted by: SteveProf | Jan 31, 2013 3:27:54 PM

Bill, the irony is you blast me for making ad hominem attacks on you - which is fair and accurate - but when you do the same to Judge Gleeson you don't have the integrity to acknowledge it.

Posted by: SteveProf | Feb 1, 2013 12:46:18 PM

Steve Prof --

Congratulations on the much improved typing, notwithstanding your one-handed status. Must have been a miraculous recovery.

Do you find it curious that I have no interest in your opinion of me? Why should I? You have no status in the profession that I ever heard of, and have never even claimed to have a creditable, much less a distinguished, litigation record. If perchance you do, good for you. Could you provide some citations?

But I'll humor you anyway. Bruce cunningham, one of the more thoughtful and innovative defense lawyers on this blog, initially suggested the usefulness of invoking the Eighth Amendement when a judge is confronted with a mandatory minimum he thinks is grossly out of line. Gleeson could do the same thing, couldn't he? Would he get reversed? You bet, but at least he would have put his money where is mouth is.

Jack Weinstein is willing to, see U.S. v. c. r., and Gleeson could follow suit.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Feb 2, 2013 3:16:46 AM

Thanks for your compassion, Otis. You still miss the point. Perhaps Judge Gleeson, I note you have such little respect for the federal judiciary, or is it just Democratic appointments, that you refer to the by their last name, hasn't ruled on the 8th -amendment issue because no party has raised it. You continue to critisize him for not ruling on issues not before him, and if he did rule on them you would be the first to flap your mouth about why it was wrongly decided. Get a life.

Posted by: Steve Prof | Feb 2, 2013 2:40:12 PM

Prof --

"Bill, the irony is you blast me for making ad hominem attacks on you - which is fair and accurate..."

But now you want my compassion???

Far out! Been smokin' a joint or two?

"Perhaps Judge Gleeson, I note you have such little respect for the federal judiciary, or is it just Democratic appointments, that you refer to the by their last name..."

PDB, scott tilsen and JWB also referred to him as "Gleeson," not "Judge Gleeson." But you lodge not a word of complaint about that. Aren't we a bit selective?

This is not to mention that Scalia, Alito and other conservative Supreme Court Justices are repeatedly referred to on this site simply by their last names. Not one time have you objected to this. Maybe you're more than a bit selective, ya think?

"...hasn't ruled on the 8th -amendment issue because no party has raised it."

Of course the sentencing hearing hasn't occurred yet, either, and won't for weeks. Try to keep up.

"You continue to critisize him for not ruling on issues not before him, and if he did rule on them you would be the first to flap your mouth about why it was wrongly decided. Get a life."

Is this how you talk in court? If so, I can see why you whistle past my request that you furnish citations to some of your cases (if you actually have any). If you continue to refuse, why should I regard you as having any more professional standing than some belligerent, smart-mouthed and rude middle schooler -- which, to be honest, is what you most closely resemble.





Posted by: Bill Otis | Feb 2, 2013 3:49:58 PM

Good personal attacks, Bill. Bravo. If you actually took the time to read his opinion before you spout off about it you would have learned there is no MM issues in the case. The defendant is safety valve eligible. So there is and will be no MM issue for him to rule on in the upcoming sentencing. Bill, if you are so sure of your credentials i am willing to bet 10.000 dollars and we will each give the money to a Prof. Berman to hold in trust and I I will put my number of federal jury trials, appeals in 6 Circuits and cases in the Supremes and number of sentencings up against your recorded in a heart beat. Put your money where your mouth is .

Posted by: Steve Prof | Feb 2, 2013 6:58:56 PM

Prof --

1. I didn't need anyone's bet to be forthcoming about who I am and what my background and litigating record are. If you don't have what it takes to be forthcoming on your own, I can't supply it for you, and won't. If you had any victories you were proud of, you'd put the citations up here in a New York minute. Feel free.

2. I see that you don't answer a single question I asked in my last post, but just keep right on keepin' on with your rudeness and evasion. Do you have any answers? What are they?

3. "If you actually took the time to read his opinion before you spout off about it you would have learned there is no MM issues in the case. The defendant is safety valve eligible."

You contradict yourself in record time. There is no such thing as safety valve eligibility UNLESS there is a mandatory minimum issue in the case. Wake up.

4. Onlooker1 asked you to get over your obssession with ad homiem attacks on me, but of course you ignored him. I suppose I should be flattered to be the object of such single-minded attention, but it would be better for the blog -- and frankly, for you -- if you got over the obssession and discussed, instead of me, actual issues, e.g., the death penalty, drug legalization, the effectiveness vel non of incarceration, appeal waivers, legal ethics, or any of a dozen other things that I discuss with the many mature people here like Doug, Kent, bruce, Michael R. Levine and numerous others who, unlike you, aren't mezmerized by what you take to be my Bad Evil Prosecutor's Mind.

Will you please grow up?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Feb 2, 2013 8:53:14 PM

Because the defendant is safety valve eligible the MM does not apply and there is no 8th Amendment MM issue for Judge Gleeson to rule on....so why do you insult Judge Gleeson about not having the courage to decide an issue that cannot possibly be before him in this case? Try for a change and answer that. You won't becuase you lack the ability to admit you are wrong. I don't think you are evil but you certainly lack balance to your positions and seemingly have never met a federal DOJ issue on a position you ever disagree with even when the courts point out they are clearly wrong.

Posted by: SteveProf | Feb 3, 2013 7:46:52 AM

Mr. Prof --

"Because the defendant is safety valve eligible the MM does not apply..."

That is simply false. The MM most certainly does apply. If it didn't, there would be no need to consider safety valve eligibility AT ALL. If what you mean to say is that the MM sentence staring the defendant in the face is very likely to be avoided because Gleeson will use the safety valve, sure, obviously. But that is a very different thing from saying it "does not apply."

"...there is no 8th Amendment MM issue for Judge Gleeson to rule on."

There isn't ANY issue requiring Gleeson's ruling right at the moment. But, since sentencing is weeks away (something you know but decline to acknowledge), the Eighth Amendment argument remains available to the defendant. Indeed, any defense lawyer worth his salt will file a memo arguing that the safety valve applies, but that even if the government asserts or the court finds otherwise, the MM in these circumstances violates the Eighth Amendment.

Gleeson could anticipate (or hold, if it comes to that) that such a defense argument has merit. As I noted (and you also continue to refuse to acknowldege), bruce cunningham has said he successfully used exactly this strategy, employing the Eighth Amendment argument to good effect for his clients in analogous circumstances.

"...so why do you insult Judge Gleeson about not having the courage to decide an issue that cannot possibly be before him in this case?"

Your premise -- that it "cannot possibly be before him in this case" -- is erroneous for the reasons noted. Nor is it insulting for me to suggest that Gleeson build on the logic of everything he said in the excerpts Doug put up.

You, however, are repeatedly insulting and rude to me. Do you have some reason for that?

"Try for a change and answer that."

I answered before and have answered again now. This puts me two answers ahead of anything you have written.

"You won't because you lack the ability to admit you are wrong."

That too is flat-out false. You just like to toss out ad hominem insults. Indeed, as onlooker1 noted, it seems to be the main thing you want to do here. Why is that?

"I don't think you are evil but you certainly lack balance to your positions and seemingly have never met a federal DOJ issue on a position you ever disagree with even when the courts point out they are clearly wrong."

I am more pro-prosecution than the great majority of the commenters here, sure. But far from lacking balance, I PROVIDE balance -- at least a modicum of balance -- to a site that is overwhelmingly pro-defense (as you are).

If a point be made of it, however, I have conspicuously disagreed with a number of things DOJ has done recently, inculding (1) its politically motivated about-face on the retroactivity of the FSA, (2) is foot-dragging, obfuscaiton and double-talk in conveying information to Congress about the Fast and Furious scandal, and (3) again for political reasons, its dropping of the Philadelphia voter intimidation case.

Mr. Prof (if that's your name), it is clear that your participation here is either exclusively or almost exclusively simply undertaken to insult me. You made this clear right from the getgo, when you address me as "Otis" rather than "Bill Otis" or "Bill" or "Prof. Otis," as virtually everyone else on this forum does, whether they agree with me or not (most don't). I don't appreciate your rudeness. There is no reason for it. An adult on a board like this should do better, and you could, but you don't want to, which is the real reason you keep at it.

Unless I am given a sound and respectfully stated reason to do otherwise, I am just going to disengage from you. Sooner or later, I will be tempted to retaliate by also being rude. That is not how I wish to present myself on this board. To an extent, I have, in some previous posts, already started down that unhealthy path, for which I apologize.

The wholesome thing to do is have a respectful, substantive conversation or none at all. And that's where I'll be headed. If you wish to go there too, fine. If not, that's your choice. But I have come to doubt the prudence of my continuing to respond to intentionally rude comments, nor is it the way I choose to spend my time.





Posted by: Bill Otis | Feb 3, 2013 1:45:45 PM

Judge Gleeson has already ruled in his opinion that: "His eligibility for safety valve relief also renders him eligible for a corresponding safety valve adjustment under the Guidelines, resulting in an adjusted offense level of 30, which corresponds to a sentencing range of 97-121 months (8 to 10 years)" This his opinion already reflect application of the SV to the defendnat's guideline range - thus there is no MM issue left. Of course, if that gets reconsidered the 8th Amendment issue could creep back in but there is ni inkling of that so why wereyou critical of the Judge for not reaching an issue where there is simply not a shred of evidence it is still in the case. Why do you do that, Mr. Otis? ALos you keep promising not to take the bait but you always do and by the way you have counter-attacked me quite well so you are hardly above the personal attacks just incredibly self-righteous about it. Typical former prosecutor ...can't get past their self-righteousness now that they have one to bully.



Posted by: SteveProf | Feb 3, 2013 5:17:19 PM

"This his opinion already reflect application of the SV to the defendnat's guideline range - thus there is no MM issue left."

That's what you say now. What you said before is that the MM didn't "apply." But it was precisely because it DID apply that Gleeson had to rule on the applicability of the safety valve.

"Why do you do that, Mr. Otis?"

Why do you keep repeating questions I have answered?

"ALos you keep promising not to take the bait..."

What makes you believe ad hominem baiting is more produtive than just laying out a substantive argument?

Posted by: Bill Otis | Feb 3, 2013 5:43:13 PM

The MM DOES NOT APPLY in the case because the Judge found him SV eligile so I was right and you were dead wrong.YOu took a very cheap shot at Judge Gleeson knowing the MM was not in play. Just admit that but you cant because you are so self-righteous. Bright, articulate, limited one side expereince but self-righteous.

Posted by: SteveProf | Feb 3, 2013 6:54:20 PM

Steve Prof --

It's obvious by now that continuing to go back and forth with you is unproductive, not to mention unpleasant, since you insist on using locutions like "did it ever dawn on you Otis..." and "you would be the first to flap your mouth" and "If you actually took the time to read his opinion before you spout off...," etc., etc.

This was a good one, too: "Typical former prosecutor ...can't get past their self-righteousness now that they have [no] one to bully."

Just to illustrate to you that there is still justice in the world, even for defense bar heroes like Bernie Madoff and Jerry Sandusky (they are heroes, right?) -- and to show you that there are no hard feelings -- I want to leave you tonight with a story of one decidedly "former" prosecutor whose self-righteous bullying would appear to have gotten him what, in your view, he and the rest of us so richly deserve.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-prosecutor-killed-shot-times-courthouse-article-1.1252117

Don't hurt your sides giggling!





Posted by: Bill Otis | Feb 4, 2013 1:43:22 AM

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July 28, 2014

US District Judge Gleeson prods prosecutors to undo stacked gun counts and then praises effort to do justice

Regular readers are likely familiar with the remarkable series of opinions issued by US District Judge John Gleeson in which he has forcefully expressed deep concerns with how federal prosecutors sometimes exercise their charging and bargaining powers in the application of mandatory minimum sentencing provisions. But, as reported in this New York Times piece, headlined "Citing Fairness, U.S. Judge Acts to Undo a Sentence He Was Forced to Impose," Judge Gleeson's latest opinion discusses how federal prosecutors ultimately aided his efforts to undo an extreme mandatory minimum sentence. Here are the basics:

Francois Holloway has spent nearly two decades of a 57-year sentence in a federal prison, for serious crimes that no one disputes he committed. There were armed carjackings, and his participation in an illegal chop shop, where stolen cars would be dismantled and sold for parts. But the fairness of the mandatory sentence has been a matter of dispute, not only for Mr. Holloway, but also for a surprising and most effective advocate: the trial judge, John Gleeson. As Mr. Holloway filed one motion after another trying to get his sentence and his case re-evaluated, Judge Gleeson, of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, began to speak out against those mandatory sentences that he believed were unduly harsh. Mr. Holloways 57-year term was more than twice the average sentence in the district for murder in 1996, the year he was sentenced. More recently, Judge Gleeson began his own campaign on Mr. Holloways behalf, writing to Loretta E. Lynch, who is the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to request that she vacate two of Mr. Holloways convictions. The payoff from Judge Gleesons efforts will be apparent on Tuesday in a highly unusual hearing, when the judge is expected to resentence Mr. Holloway, who is 57, to time served. Prosecutors also use their power to remedy injustices, Judge Gleeson wrote in a memorandum released on Monday. Even people who are indisputably guilty of violent crimes deserve justice, and now Holloway will get it.... Mr. Holloway was charged in 1995 with three counts of carjacking and using a gun during a violent crime (even though it was an accomplice, and not Mr. Holloway, who carried the gun), along with participating in the chop shop. The government offered him a plea deal of about 11 years. He turned it down after his lawyer assured him he could win at trial. Mr. Holloway did not win. For the first conviction on the gun count, the law required Mr. Holloway to receive five years. But for the second and third convictions, the law required 20 years for each one, served consecutively, a requirement known as stacking, which some judges and lawyers argue sounds like a recidivism provision, although it can be applied for crimes, like Mr. Holloways, committed hours apart that are part of the same trial. None of Mr. Holloways co-defendants, who all pleaded guilty, received more than six years. At Mr. Holloways sentencing in 1996, Judge Gleeson said that by stripping me of discretion, the stacked gun charges require the imposition of a sentence that is, in essence, a life sentence. (The remainder of the 57 years was the 12 years required for the three carjackings.)... At a hearing on the Holloway case this month, an assistant United States attorney, Sam Nitze, said that this is both a unique case and a unique defendant, citing his extraordinary disciplinary record and his work in prison. Also, he said, three of Mr. Holloways carjacking victims have said that the 20 years that Mr. Holloway had served in prison was an awfully long time, and people deserve another chance. Mr. Nitze agreed to vacate the two convictions, while emphasizing that this should not be taken as indicative of Ms. Lynchs view on the stacking provision in other cases. In his opinion issued last week, Judge Gleeson said that Mr. Holloways sentence illustrated a trial penalty, where those willing to risk trial could be hit with mandatory minimum sentences that would be laughable if only there werent real people on the receiving end of them.

Judge Gleeson's full 11-page opinion in Holloway v. US, No. 01-CV-1017 (E.D.N.Y. July 28, 2014)(available for download below), is a must-read for lots of reasons. The opinion is not be easily summarized, but this part of its conclusion provide a flavor of what comes before:

It is easy to be a tough prosecutor. Prosecutors are almost never criticized for being aggressive, or for fighting hard to obtain the maximum sentence, or for saying theres nothing we can do about an excessive sentence after all avenues of judicial relief have been exhausted. Doing justice can be much harder. It takes time and involves work, including careful consideration of the circumstances of particular crimes, defendants, and victims  and often the relevant events occurred in the distant past. It requires a willingness to make hard decisions, including some that will be criticized. This case is a perfect example. Holloway was convicted of three armed robberies. He deserved serious punishment. The judgment of conviction in his case was affirmed on direct review by the Supreme Court, and his collateral attack on that judgment failed long ago. His sentence was far more severe than necessary to reflect the seriousness of his crimes and to adequately protect the community from him, but no one would criticize the United States Attorney if she allowed it to stand by doing nothing. By contrast, the decision she has made required considerable work. Assistant United States Attorney Nitze had to retrieve and examine a very old case file. He had to track down and interview the victims of Holloways crimes, which were committed 20 years ago. His office no doubt considered the racial disparity in the use of  924(c), and especially in the stacking of  924(c) counts. He requested and obtained an adjournment so his office could have the time necessary to make an extremely important decision.... This is a significant case, and not just for Francois Holloway. It demonstrates the difference between a Department of Prosecutions and a Department of Justice. It shows how the Department of Justice, as the governments representative in every federal criminal case, has the power to walk into courtrooms and ask judges to remedy injustices.... A prosecutor who says nothing can be done about an unjust sentence because all appeals and collateral challenges have been exhausted is actually choosing to do nothing about the unjust sentence. Some will make a different choice, as Ms. Lynch did here. Numerous lawyers have been joining pro bono movements to prepare clemency petitions for federal prisoners, and indeed the Department of Justice has encouraged the bar to locate and try to help deserving inmates. Those lawyers will find many inmates even more deserving of belated justice than Holloway. Some will satisfy the criteria for Department of Justice support, while others will not. In any event, theres no good reason why all of them must end up in the clemency bottleneck. Some inmates will ask United States Attorneys for the kind of justice made possible in this case, that is, justice administered not by the President but by a judge, on the consent of the Department of Justice, in the same courtroom in which the inmate was sentenced. Whatever the outcome of those requests, I respectfully suggest that they should get the same careful consideration that Ms. Lynch and her assistants gave to Francois Holloway. Download Holloway Memo FILED 7-28-14

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I read Judge Gleeson's order which resulted in the Government's acquiescence. It is a breathtaking example of bullying. The threat is clear: agree to allow the Court to vacate now (the easy way), or the Court will vacate after forcing the Government to bust their hump with litigation and appeals.

The suggestion that other judges adopt similar strategies is unconscionable.

Posted by: Wayne-O | Jul 28, 2014 11:50:05 PM

Wayne-O

What is unconscionable about it? It seems to me exactly correct...everyone else got six years and he got 57, for what? For going to trial, that's what. The real bullies here are the prosecutors who don't like being bullied back. Who can dish it out but can't take it.

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 29, 2014 1:20:33 AM

Good on the Prosecution here. There's no doubt a significant sentence is appropriate, but the mandatory time just pushes it into the absurd.

I know a case recently where a man sent solicitous (presumably obscene) texts to a 14 or 15 year old. Over a period of one night, he racked up something like 30 texts. He pled guilty to eight. The problem is there's a mandatory 5 years. In fairness to the law, the Judge could have ran them concurrently. However, he did not and sentenced the defendant to 40 years mandatory. The same Judge then encountered a man who hired someone to commit a murder and sentenced that man to 25 years.

Posted by: Erik M | Jul 29, 2014 6:46:55 AM

Holloway's lawyer admitted that Holloway committed the violent crime of carjacking. Nonetheless, Holloway rolled the dice at trial to try to be found not guilty of the crime THAT HE COMMITTED, and was made aware of the consequences. He lost his gamble, and felt the full brunt of his true acts and we are to have sympathy and compassion for this and give him the benefit of a lower sentence that he could have received for just admitting THE CRIME THAT HE COMMITTED from the beginning?

Posted by: Kelly | Jul 29, 2014 12:23:43 PM

"give him the benefit of a lower sentence that he could have received for just admitting THE CRIME THAT HE COMMITTED from the beginning?"

Yes. Why is that such a shocking proposition? The burden of proof is supposed to be on the prosecution not on the defendant. If a person has right to the trial that right is inherently undermined when there is a penalty for exercising that right.

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 29, 2014 12:45:55 PM

Wayne-O, I don't think you read the order. If you did, you would have seen that Holloway's appeal was over (conviction and sentence affirmed by the Second Circuit and the Supreme Court), his post-conviction habeas (2255) motion was DENIED by Judge Gleeson, and the Second Circuit refused to allow that denial to be appealed. (page 11). The case was over.

If the Government had done nothing, Holloway would have simply done his 57 years. There would not have been any further litigation and appeals to "bust a hump" over.

Judge Gleeson did not have the power to vacate, or to do anything. Except ask. (Not bully, not threaten, just ask.) The whole point made throughout his order is that when he did ask, the prosecutor--who didn't have to do anything-- undertook the effort to re-examine the case and do the right thing.

Posted by: Def. Atty | Jul 29, 2014 4:06:56 PM

So, Kelly, your position on charge stacking, absurdly punitive MMs and draconian trial penalties is what...rules are rules?

You think these spectacularly coercive techniques are only applied to those who clearly committed the crimes as charged? (of course we don't know if they are or not because all but a scant few defendants end up caving under the onslaught...regardless of whether they are guilty, wrongly accused or innocent)

Posted by: John K | Jul 29, 2014 5:26:39 PM

Def. Atty:

Of course I read it. Carefully. From page 5:

"In the absence of a government agreement to reopen the sentencing, I will

address the pending application to reopen Holloways collateral challenge to his conviction.

The extraordinary trial penalty in this case may warrant further briefing on the constitutional

issues raised by such a use of prosecutorial power. In addition, though I long ago rejected a

claim of ineffective assistance of counsel based on trial counsels admission in his opening

statement that Holloway in fact robbed the three victims of their cars,

I may direct a closer inspection of that issue as well. "

I can respect that you may have a different characterization of this language. I stick by mine.





Posted by: Wayne-O | Jul 29, 2014 7:44:52 PM

John K.

I wouldn't even consider this classic charge stacking as I understand that the sentence resulted from charging multiple discrete offenses, not numerous violations stemming from a single act.

The only real injustice I see is that his cohorts got such short terms, not that Holloway got 57 years.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jul 30, 2014 12:46:19 AM

Soronel.

Maybe that's right. Maybe it is an injustice that the others got such short sentences. But you cannot be blind to the reasons why that happened. The people who got short sentences were people who played ball with the prosecutor and the person who got the long sentence was the one who exercised their constitutional right to a trial. Doesn't that bother you at all? It seems to me that not only must a just result be achieved it must be achieved by a just process. Otherwise it all collapses into the ends justify the means and then all rules and laws are just a trick and a sham on the powerful on the powerless.

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 30, 2014 2:30:03 AM

Daniel,

Given that I have repeatedly stated I believe that execution is generally the appropriate outcome for crimes like theft of $250 and that execution would only bother me for thefts in the low tens of dollars I am not at all bothered by the guy who chose to go to trial getting a significantly longer term. By the time you are talking about armed robbery as compared with simple theft society should be able to protect itself by expelling the guilty. To me, all of them are so worthy of execution that the difference in actual sentences is of only mild curiosity.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jul 30, 2014 10:57:33 AM

What's the opposite of a great humanitarian?

Setting aside the notions of mercy and compassion (which should be easy for Soronel since he apparently has none of either) how about the question of competence. The significant number of innocence-project exonerations of death-row inmates suggests at the very least the system simply isn't to be trusted to kill the right people.

Or does that not matter either?

Posted by: JohnK | Jul 31, 2014 12:14:46 PM

I wish somebody who actually values liberty and loves his own life would explain to me how 11 years in prison is a light sentence? Before reacting too quickly, keep in mind Holloway wasn't the one carrying the gun.

In fact it appears Holloway was actually crushed by the system for committing two police-state crimes not mentioned publicly or included in the charging documents: 1. being the guy who wasn't among the first to take a plea deal and 2. putting the state to the annoyance of a trial.

Posted by: JohnK | Jul 31, 2014 12:29:01 PM

Wayne-O,

You found and read that earlier order with more care than I read the first sentence of your post. We're talking about different orders.

I assumed you were speaking of the order linked with this blog post, which doesn't contain the language you cite. With further digging, I found and read the earlier order you've quoted.

I agree that we disagree on characterization. But now at least I see the order of which you spoke, and the point you were making. I take back my first sentence and its tone.

Posted by: Def. Atty | Jul 31, 2014 12:41:36 PM

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 "Reducing Crime Through Expungements" | Main | Making the case for a "20-Year Maximum for Prison Sentences" 

Amnesty International (AI) is a human rights organization that has long called for abolition of the death penalty worldwide. Via this New York Times article, headlined "Death Sentences Surge, Even as More Countries Drop Capital Punishment," I see that AI has released its latest accounting on global capital punishment practives in this lengthy report titled "Death Sentences and Executions in 2014." Here is the report's executive summary:

Amnesty International recorded executions in 22 countries in 2014, the same number as in 2013. At least 607 executions were carried out worldwide, a decrease of almost 22% compared with 2013. As in previous years, this figure does not include the number of people executed in China, where data on the death penalty is treated as a state secret. At least 2,466 people are known to have been sentenced to death in 2014, an increase of 28% compared with 2013. This increase was largely due to sharp spikes in death sentences in Egypt and Nigeria, where courts imposed mass sentences against scores of people in some cases.

An alarming number of countries that used the death penalty in 2014 did so in response to real or perceived threats to state security and public safety posed by terrorism, crime or internal instability. For example, Pakistan lifted a six-year-long moratorium on the execution of civilians in the wake of the horrific Peshawar school attack. The government also pledged to execute hundreds of people on death row who had been convicted on terrorism-related charges. China made use of the death penalty as a tool in the Strike Hard campaign, which the authorities characterized as a response to terrorism and violent crime in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

There is no evidence that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect on crime than terms of imprisonment. Where governments present the death penalty as a solution to crime or insecurity they are not only misleading the public but  in many cases  failing to take steps to realize the goal of abolition recognized in international law.

Many of those states that retain the death penalty continued to use it in contravention of international law and standards. Unfair trials, confessions extracted through torture or other ill-treatment, the use of the death penalty against juveniles and people with mental or intellectual disabilities, and for crimes other than intentional killing continued to be concerning features of the use of the death penalty in 2014.

Despite these concerns, the world continues to make progress towards abolition.

With the exception of Europe and Central Asia region, where Belarus  the only country in the region that executes  resumed executions after a 24-month hiatus, Amnesty International documented positive developments in all regions of the world. The Sub-Saharan Africa region saw particular progress, with 46 executions recorded in three countries, compared to 64 executions in five countries in 2013  a 28% reduction. The number of executions recorded in the Middle East and North Africa region decreased by approximately 23%  from 638 in 2013 to 491 in 2014. In the Americas, the USA is the only country that executes, but executions dropped from 39 in 2013 to 35 in 2014, reflecting a steady decline in executions over recent years. The state of Washington imposed a moratorium on executions.

Fewer executions were recorded in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding China, and debates on abolition began in Fiji, South Korea and Thailand.
This well-established Blog is worth visiting on a regular basis for a wealth of information of interest to Armenian nationals and to the Armenian Diaspora world-wide. Although it has a particular role in promoting international recognition of the Genocide, the Blog encompasses much more and includes many articles of general appeal to all those concerned with Armenian affairs. Much of the content is difficult or impossible to find elsewhere and the long list of links provided gives easy access to a plethora of material on social, political, religious, educational and cultural matters, and many news items from around the world.




What do the fries at AL's Place, the spiced squab at the Progress, and the deviled egg at Octavia all have in common? They're uncommonly good, according to Chronicle food schmoozer Michael Bauer, who selected those three dishes among others to represent his best restaurants of last year.

In his complete top ten listing, the critic praises chef/owner Gabriela Camara Cala most highly. "If theres better Mexican food in the United States, I havent found it," he says of the new restaurant.

Speaking of which, Josh Sens for San Francisco magazine had more praise for Cala along with a healthy sprinkling of criticism. It's got dramatic range, he says, and "[even] preparations commonly found around San Francisco make room for welcome twists." But some dishes, like squid and lingcod frito mixto, disappoint. Still, others like the delicata squash-and-goat cheese salad and the tamal de cazuela, are delights.

Back to the head of the critics table, Mr. Bauer went off on how 2010 was the year that SF sowed the seeds of our current culinary harvest. "In a piece I wrote five years ago about the years top 10 new restaurants I predicted: 'When we look back in a couple of years, I think well realize that 2010 was pivotal. The statement turned out to be true." According, of course, to the man who made it.

Meanwhile, Anna Roth spent $40 under the auspices of the Chronicle on a Royal Dorian which is shaped like and appears to in fact be a hamburger. It's topped with crab, real truffle, and "presented on a silver tray with a cloche, accompanied by truffle fries and a bit of tongue-in-cheek pomp and circumstance." At the Dorian, which is the Marina restaurant in question, "Executive chef Chris Ricketts, formerly of the Palm House and Tipsy Pig, heads up a menu that doesnt take many chances but offers solid renditions on modern San Francisco standards." Overall, though Roth considers it "tempting to use a $40 hamburger as a metaphor for the worst of San Francisco 2015," she's far more forgiving. "The truth is that I kind of liked everything about the Dorian, even if I may not find myself there with any regularity," she concludes.

Peter Kane swung by Hamlet for the Weekly, a new bar and restaurant which "from the perspective of the hamlet that is Noe Valley... is an undiscovered country." The burger sounds to be a winner, though "among the dishes, there were early misses and later hits, with most of the sins being errors of seasoning and proportion." Lamb sirloin and gnocchi also strike Kane as good orders.

Last and back to Michael Bauer, his return to Sam Wo is a happy one. Summarizing its importance, Bauer writes that "Sam Wo is where the two worlds meet. The restaurant is a city institution that survived more than 100 years on Washington Street, a popular hangout during the Beat Generation, and is perhaps best known for its most famous employee, Edsel Ford Fong, who was repeatedly proclaimed 'the rudest waiter in the world.'" It's a two-star review, but full of history, like the place itself, closed since 2012 and now back in action. "Those who wander into Sam Wo not knowing the history will marvel at the unique space, the narrow stairway leading to the low-ceiling dining room and the low, backless stools. It feels like its been there for decades, but those in the know can see this is a sanitized, spruced-up version."
General Motors knows that, in the future, not everyone is going to own their own car. Lyft knows that, in the future, not everyone is even going to drive a car. So, as if awakening from a shared futurist dream, the companies are joining forces and seeking to complement one another.

GM is investing $500 million in the ride-summoning startup, representing half of Lyft's current $1 billion funding round. The move also marks the first time a major auto company has provided a small startup with funding, forming a new kind of alliance that might have been unforeseen just years ago.

Lyft may represent but a fraction of the ride-hailing economy dominated by Uber, and so far it hasn't expressed an interest in autonomous vehicles. But for its part, General Motors is the largest American automaker, and Wired writes that the company has collaborated with Carnegie Mellon since 2007 with hopes to introduce semi-autonomous features in vehicles next year. More immediately, the two companies hope to create car rental hubs, providing some Lyft contract drivers with their vehicles.

"We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous, the Business Times quotes GM President Dan Ammann as saying. Meanwhile, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer shared with BuzzFeed that [GM and Lyft] both believe that autonomous vehicles will be introduced through a service like Lyft rather than through individuals owning autonomous vehicles."

When will all this come to pass? Within a 10 year time frame, according to Zimmer.

Lyft's shiny new $5.5 billion valuation comes with further investments from the likes of Janus Capital Management, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten Inc., and Saudi Arabias Kingdom Holding Co. Over at General Motors, further change is afoot: the Associated Press reports in the LA Times that the company's chief executive Mary Barra will also serve as its company's chairwoman.

Previously: Sidecar Hails A Ride To Nowhere, Announces It Will Cease Operations By Year's End
On Sunday morning, up in Yuba County, tragedy struck after a nine-year-old boy was left alone with a trio of pit bulls  a mother and her two one-and-a-half-year-old offspring  and was later found dead from a brutal mauling by the dogs. As the Sacramento Bee reports, Tyler Griffin-Huston, a small blond boy who had recently been bouncing around the foster care system following the death of his mother, was in the care of his 24-year-old sister, Alexandria Griffin-Heady, when the attack occurred, and he had been left alone for several hours in Griffin-Heady's trailer in the town of Linda, near Marysville.

The boy was found dead by his sister at 10 a.m. Sunday, three hours after she had left the trailer for a short shift at her security guard job. One dog, the four-year-old mother, had been loose when Griffin-Heady left the trailer, and the other two dogs were kenneled. It's unclear how the two younger dogs got loose, but it's possible the boy let them out. The family's attorney Roberto Marquez tells KCRA that Griffin-Heady "had no reason to believe that these dogs would pose any threat at all to her younger brother."

The Yuba County Sheriff's Department continues to investigate, and Griffin-Heady could potentially face charges of negligence or child endangerment.

The dogs have been seized by Animal Control and had no local history of violence, but according to the Bee, Griffin-Heady had only recently relocated to the area with the dogs from a hotel in Florida where she had been living. In a message on Facebook several months ago she said she was committed to adopting and raising her young brother, and "shape him into an amazing man."

She was also very in love with her animals as over a dozen YouTube videos attest, including the two below.

Tyler and his sister's mother, Natalie Griffin-Trammell, had a history of drug abuse and died at the age of 44 on the streets of Sacramento in 2011. They have three other siblings ranging in age from 17 to 27, two of whom live on the property where Griffin-Heady's trailer sat, in a home with two adoptive parents.

Tyler's aunt, Laura Badeker, places some of the blame on Child Protective Services, insisting that she had warned them that Griffin-Heady was not capable of caring for the child. "She was trying to rescue him from the system, Badeker said. But I told everyone on the team that was supposed to be protecting Tyler that Ali was not prepared to take care of him on any level. They were warned, over and over again."

It's been a long time since we've heard of a story this gruesome and tragic involving a dog mauling. Back in 2010 a two-year-old boy in Concord was killed by the family pit bull when he wandered into a garage on his own. In 2005, a 12-year-old boy was mauled and killed in his family's Sunset district apartment by their two pitbulls, a young male and young female. And of course there was the famous case of Diane Whipple over a decade ago, killed by two Presa Canario dogs in San Francisco, which just came up again recently via the ongoing appeals of convicted dog owner Marjorie Knoller. But as SFist has cautioned before, we don't want to be in the business of vilifying the pit bull breed. All dogs can be unpredictable in the wrong circumstances, and without proper training.

Previously: Woman Attacked By Pit Bull After Rejecting Pawing Dog Owner
A Berkeley elementary school teacher remains in critical condition after she was shot in the neck Saturday, struck by a stray bullet as she drove down the Richmond street on her way to pick up her teenage son.

The teacher, 52-year-old Claire Dugan, instructs fourth graders at Berkeley's Cragmont Elementary. She was driving on the 2200 block of Cutting Boulevard when she was hit and subsequently crashed her vehicle, reports ABC 7.

I hear the boom, boom, boom, then I went outside, and they were shooting, one witness told CBS 5.

The bullet that struck Dugan was the second Richmond area shooting of the day. The previous gunfire led to a crash on Interstate 580 near Regatta Boulevard. According to authorities, the victim in the day's first shooting is also in critical condition.

A spokesman with the Berkeley Unified School District, Mark Coplan, spoke with ABC 7 about the incident.

"The whole school community is in pain over such a senseless shooting of a dedicated career teacher," said Copland. "It's really unfortunate when this happens in any community and it could have happened to any one of us. Hopefully all of the energy by the authorities is going out to find whoever was responsible for this," he continued.



Dugan has students as young as nine years old, and parents and school administrators are in the position of attempting to explain to the children why their teacher had been hurt.

A mother whose twin daughters are in Dugan's class, Kinchasa Taylor, shared her approach with ABC 7, saying she intended to "just help them with whatever emotion they're feeling."

No arrests have been made in connection to the shooting.

Related: SFPD's Gang Task Force Investigating 'Bizarre' Shooting On 280/101 Split
Welcome to my corner of the world! Glad you dropped by. Browse around and discover a collection of QSL cards from international broadcasters, old and new. Read an article or two about radios and the hobby of radio listening. Happy DXing!!!
SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | Iowa Lakes Community College will host two events in the Okoboji area to inform the community about a proposed bond referendum ahead of the Feb. 2 vote.

The Spirit Lake campus will host the first on Wednesday, from 5 to 7 p.m., and the Spencer campus will host the second on Thursday during the same hours.

The Spirit Lake event will be held at the north section of the campus and the event in Spencer will be at the science lab.

Key information about the $16 million bond referendum will be shared. Drawings and proposed improvements on each campus, as well as brochures and fliers explaining the purpose of the upgrades, will be available.

Information provided by Iowa Lakes Community College said the bond referendum comes on the heels of the colleges 50th anniversary. The bond will be used for improvements, additions and renovations.

The Iowa Lakes Community College District includes parts of Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Hancock, Humboldt, Kossuth, OBrien, Osceola, Palo Alto, Pocahontas and Winnebago counties.
SIOUX CITY | A ruptured gas line shut down a portion of Nebraska Street between Fifth and Sixth streets in downtown Sioux City Tuesday.

Firefighters were called out to the area around 1:05 p.m. when construction workers reported the gas leak, which occurred in an alley between two structures on the 500 block of Nebraska Street.

All businesses on that portion of Nebraska were evacuated as a precautionary measure, said Capt. Brian Thiele of Sioux City Fire Rescue. Officials taped off the area, which smelled like natural gas, while they investigated.

"For precautionary reasons we've had our monitors in the area looking for higher levels of natural gas," Thiele said.

Crews from MidAmerican Energy Co. shut off the gas flow, Thiele said.

The incident occurred just a block away from the Orpheum Theatre where Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was scheduled to speak later in the afternoon. Thiele said the gas leak didn't affect her visit.
He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Sioux City on May 16, 1959. He served many parishes within the Sioux City Diocese. He also served as chaplain at Mercy Hospital. He enjoyed working as chaplain at the North Central Correction Center in Rockwell City, Iowa, as well as at Harvest Acres (a teen rehab facility). He loved teaching at many schools during his years of service. He served as chancellor of Sioux City Diocese from October 1971 to July 1981. Monsignor Ziegmann wrote a column, Daily Reflections, for The Globe newspaper for more than 20 years. He also revised the book, "Life in Christ." Monsignor Ziegmann served as chaplain for Trinity Heights in Sioux City from 2000 to 2007. After serving as a priest for more than 40 years, Monsignor Ziegmann retired to Texas to help take care of his brother, Edward. Following Edward's death, Monsignor Ziegmann moved to Omaha to be near family.
SIOUX CITY | In something of a youth movement, the two newest members of the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors will hold the top two executive positions in 2016.

In his second year as a county supervisor, Jeremy Taylor will lead county board members in meetings, after being selected as chairman during a Monday vote. He succeeds Mark Monson, who served as chair in 2015.

Matthew Ung was tapped to be vice chairman for 2016.

Taylor and Ung, both Republicans from Sioux City, were elected for the first time in November 2014.

It's the first time in recent memory that a Republican has chaired the Woodbury board, in which Democrats have long held the majority. Democrats still hold three of the five seats. But in January 2015, Taylor and Ung quickly began voting in concert with Monson on a series of 3-2 votes, with Democratic Supervisors Jackie Smith and Clausen dissenting.

On the first weekday of each year, the supervisors hold an organizational meeting to pick a chairman, who typically holds a large degree of power on the direction of county government and priorities.

Taylor, a former teacher and Iowa House representative, was selected as chairman on a 4-1 vote. Clausen, the longest-tenured supervisor, voted against Taylor, saying the working relationship of the board members had bottomed out when a series of changes took place last year.

Taylor said he will continue to advocate for a lean government without property tax hikes and to make it easy for county residents to follow how decisions are made.

"Transparency was never better," Taylor said.

Smith questioned Taylor on his goals for 2016 during the Monday meeting, then voted for him to become chairman.

Monson said he didn't want to serve as chairman for a second straight year. Typically, for the last many years, a supervisor serves one year as chairman, then another rotates into the position, as picked by fellow supervisors on a majority vote.

Monson said he enjoyed leading a year of change toward having a more transparent county government, but health concerns (he has a broken hand) and confidence in Taylor moved him to not seek the chairmanship again.

"2015 was a great year. We pulled the county business out of the back room and moved it into the board room," Monson said.

As the vice chairman for 2015, Taylor served as chairman during Monson's recent absences away from the courthouse. The new vice chairman is Ung.

"Supervisor Ung has dug into many, many issues...He works his tail off," Taylor said, as he nominated Ung for the position. The vote was 5-0.

Additionally, the supervisors took a second stab at finalizing department spending levels during Monday's meeting toward the goal of setting a fiscal year 2016-17 budget with no property tax increases.

The developing budget is estimated to be $52.5 million. The current $51.6 million budget marked the first time in 15 years the tax bill for county services dropped.

In the first budget look in December, the five supervisors agreed to the concept of using the county's share of the Local Option Sales Tax, rather than property taxes, to fund two small departments, Economic Development and Planning and Zoning.

On Monday, the supervisors discussed expenses in the $1.7 million Treasurer's Office budget, and proposed spending of $2 million by the Woodbury County Juvenile Detention Center and $1.8 million by the Conservation Department that oversees parks and nature areas.

Iowa counties must set budgets, for the year running from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017, by a March 15 deadline.
Todays top picks from our online calendar. Find more events at siouxcityjournal.com/calendar.

From the Store Window to the Gallery: The Legacy of T.S. Martin is captured in this exhibit at Sioux City Art Center, 225 Nebraska St., through Jan. 31. Visit www.siouxcityartcenter.org or call 712-279-6272 for more information. This is a free event.

Vietnam: Service With Honor Exhibit: A photo exhibit honoring veterans of a conflict that deeply divided our nation is on display at Betty Strong Encounter Center, 900 Larsen Park Road, through Jan. 31. Call 712-224-5242 for more information.

Library Storytime: A half-hour shared storytime experience for children not yet in school and their parent/grandparent or caregiver 11 a.m. at Perry Creek Branch Library, 2912 Hamilton Blvd., Lower B Plaza. Experience the magic of stories, songs and rhymes while developing social skills, building vocabulary, and developing early literacy skills for future reading success. Visit www.siouxcitylibrary.org or call 712-255-2933 for more information.
SIOUX CITY | The City Council on Monday postponed a decision over whether to close three city pools.

The council tabled action on a series of recommendations from a city committee after Councilman Dan Moore asked to wait until the city has more information about its capital budget for the 2017 fiscal year.

The pool committee's plan calls for closing Leeds and Cook pools after the end of the 2016 swim season, and the Lewis pool once it's replaced with a proposed regional aquatic center in Morningside.

Leeds and Cook pools would be replaced them with splash pads by summer 2017, under the committee recommendations. However, the city currently only has enough funds budgeted for one splash pad.

City officials will begin budget discussion at 9 a.m. Jan. 23. Budget meetings also will be held at 8 a.m. Feb. 10, 5 p.m. Feb. 18 and a public hearing 4 p.m. March 7.

The decision to delay the pool vote came after discussion about providing more support to the Leeds neighborhood with the proposed closure of its pool.

William Burrows, a Leeds resident who has spoken at other pool meetings, said he did not support the committee's recommendation. He said if the pool is closed, the city should explore adding amenities to Leeds Park.

Matt Salvatore, the city's parks and recreation director, said his department will explore possibly adding amenities to Leeds Park.

"We definitely want to put together a plan for the Leeds neighborhood," Salvatore said.

Mayor Bob Scott, who also lives in Leeds, said the neighborhood deserves more attention.

"There's a reason people feel disassociated from a community -- when you take their amenities away," Scott said.

In other action Monday, the council voted 5-0 to approve site preparations for Cone Park, an all-seasons park envisioned next to the IBP Ice Center.

Project bids will be received on Jan. 12. Initial work will include utilities, tree clearing, fence removal, traffic controls and other ground work. City officials said the work is scheduled to be completed March 31.

The site preparation will be largely funded with private contributions, with the largest source represented by a gift from the late Ruth Cone, a local philanthropist, died in 1981. With interest, her bequest has grown to nearly $2.9 million.
AMES, Iowa | Despite what seems to be 24/7 coverage, Iowas first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses remain a mystery to many people  including Iowans, according to Steffen Schmidt, an Iowa State University political science professor who fields caucus questions from media outlets around the globe.

So beginning Tuesday, Schmidt will be offering answers to anyone curious about the caucuses that kick off the presidential nomination process for both Democrats and Republicans. Its all part of ISUs first MOOC -- massive open online course  that runs through Feb. 2 at www.iowacaucusesmooc.org.

Schmidt will present the history of the Iowa caucuses, which began to play a significant role in the nomination process in the 1970s. Hell discuss famous events that propelled Iowa to the forefront and share caucus anecdotes.

Its a four-week, self-paced course where participants can chose any topic of their choice and explore it, said Ritushree Chatterjee, instructional development specialist, who works with Schmidt. There are interactive discussion forums for them engage with fellow participants and voice their thoughts on the caucuses.

Typical of the comments, Schmidt said, was this from a Spanish network correspondent who said that in 45 minutes he got insights that improved his coverage of the American presidential candidate selection process and with great humor and interesting anecdotes.

More than 400 people have participated in the previous session. The basic content in each session is the same, Chatterjee said, But infused with the latest happenings in the caucus and political scene with analysis by Dr. Schmidt.

Schmidt also will explain how the GOP and Democratic caucuses actually work on caucus night. Each party has its own format for measuring candidate support.

Participants can spend just as much time as they want and not a minute more in the course, Schmidt said, and they can engage in discussions with him and other participants. So far, more than 400 people have taken the online class, Schmidt said.

He also invites participants to share Iowa caucus stories, images, audio, movies and text that will be added to the Iowa Caucuses MOOC Museum.
For some of us at least, to be a Calvinist today also means that we will have to work at keeping alive the memories of older sayings and teachings in the hope that there will soon come a day when many others will want to learn such things again.







Richard Mouw. Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport.








Welcome to SLA-NY's JobLog for special librarians in the Northeast Corridor. If you're considering a career move, want to know who's hiring whom, or just to need to daydream a little, you've come to the right place.



Unless otherwise noted, all positions are in the New York City area.





Posting Jobs on Joblog:

Are you an employer, who needs to target 15,000 potential new hires? Post your opening today by sending your job description to our Joblog Coordinator. Your position will be posted on our site for two months.





Joblog Coordinator:

Susan Hoover
















The Federal Trade Commission filed legal action in December 2015 against a company it claims bilked millions from small businesses and non-profits in what it termed an office supply scam.

The company is Liberty Supply Co., doing business as Omni Services, based out of Gainesville, Texas.

Liberty Supply representatives allegedly called churches, schools, and small businesses, stating it was going out of business. Liberty offered pens, paper clips and other office supplies at low prices. The FTCs complaint alleges the following as part of the scam:

Liberty misrepresented prices and quantities. Buyers were led to believe the quoted price applied to a package of items, when in reality it applied to an individual item.

The final price, quantity, and shipping cost were not disclosed.

Unordered merchandise was shipped to victims. Instead of sending a purchase order when the business or non-profit requested one, Liberty just went ahead and shipped items along with an invoice. Then Liberty aggressively sought payment for the unordered items.

Liberty also tried to intimidate any buyer that contested an invoice. According to the lawsuit, Liberty would claim it had recorded the conversation and had a transcript of the victim supposedly authorizing the order. When demanded, it wouldnt produce the alleged transcript.

On top of everything else, Liberty Supply demanded a 15 percent restocking fee to return merchandise. Some victims paid the fee, even though prices already were higher than what Liberty quoted in the sales call.

According to the FTC, Libertys actions violated the FTC Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and the Unordered Merchandise Statute.

In addition to Liberty Supply, the lawsuit names Mia McCrary and John B. Hart. McCrary and Hart are the owner and officer, respectively, of Liberty Supply Co. The FTC also claims Nor Jay Enterprises, Inc., of Gainesville, Texas, profited from the scheme.

A U.S. District Court in Texas issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Liberty Supply from continuing to do business, and froze assets pending a final outcome.

The complaint also seeks to get money returned to the victims.

According the Better Business Bureau, Liberty Supply has a rating of F. The company had 146 complaints filed with the BBB against it, some dating back to 2013.

If You Are a Victim of a Small Business Scam

If your business suffered from this office supply scam or any other suspected small business scam, you can file a complaint online with the Federal Trade Commission. Or lodge a complaint with the Attorney General in your state.

Filing a complaint doesnt necessarily mean youll get your money back. In fact, the likelihood of being made whole is low.

But by filing a complaint you can at least help put a stop to scammers.

The best protection for your business is to learn to recognize scams and avoid falling victim in the first place. For examples of common small business scams, visit the FTCs small business scam page.

Below is the complaint filed by the FTC against Liberty / Omni.
Googles latest change in the way it looks for URLs on the Web may give small business owners one more reason to switch to HTTPS. In an effort to secure users from man-in-the-middle attacks or data modification while browsing the Web, Google has recently announced its adjusting its indexing system to look for more HTTPs pages.

In a recent announcement, Googles Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zineb Ait Bahajji said that the company is now going to index HTTPS pages first before the equivalent HTTP page. This means that even if you have an HTTP URL, Google will make indexing an equivalent HTTPS URL a priority.

In the same announcement, Bahajji explained that:

Specifically, well start crawling HTTPS equivalents of HTTP pages, even when the former are not linked to from any page, She further shared,When two URLs from the same domain appear to have the same content but are served over different protocol schemes, well typically choose to index the HTTPS URL if: It doesnt contain insecure dependencies.

It isnt blocked from crawling by robots.txt.

It doesnt redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page.

It doesnt have a rel=canonical link to the HTTP page.

It doesnt contain a noindex robots meta tag.

It doesnt have on-host outlinks to HTTP URLs.

The sitemaps lists the HTTPS URL, or doesnt list the HTTP version of the URL

The server has a valid TLS certificate

HTTP or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, has, up until now, been the primary method for moving data around the Web. Of primary interest here is how data is transferred from a website to a browser requesting that data.

The trouble is that currently there are too many ways to hack into data being transferred in this way.

Thats not a problem if youre streaming a video or looking at other Web content. But its a different story if the data being transferred is personal or financial information, for example in an online transaction on an eCommerce site.

Enter HTTPS or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. First used primarily to safeguard eCommerce, banking and login pages, HTTPS encrypts data being sent either from a server to a website or vice versa to insure that data is secure.

Of course, there have been concerns that some HTTPS encryption may still be vulnerable to attack. But with fixes underway for most o these problems, HTTPS is still being touted as a safer option.

Googles decision to index HTTPS URLs essentially by default gives small business owners with a Web presence one more reason t make the change.

Bahajji says that by making the change to show more HTTPS pages in search results, Google hopes reduce the risk of serchers browsing websites over insecure data connections.
There are many fitness goals out there that we desire. Some of us want to be leaner and others wish to put on muscle mass. The thing is, for you to achieve your fitness goals, you need to
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
LA PLATA, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(Jan. 4, 2016)The Charles County Sheriff's Office released the following incident and arrest reports.BURGLARY/SEXUAL ASSAULT: On December 29 at 10:02 p.m., officers responded to the 3400 block of Port Tobacco Road in Nanjemoy for the report of a burglary. An investigation revealed that a suspect forced entry into the residence and sexually assaulted the victim before fleeing. The suspect, who is unknown to the victim, is described as a black male. No further description available at this time. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Detective G. Higgs at (301) 609-6498. Tipsters wishing to remain anonymous may contact Charles County Crime Solvers by calling 1-866-411-TIPS, texting CHARLES + the tip to CRIMES (274637) or submitting tips online at tipsubmit.com. The investigation is on-going.BURGLARY: Sometime between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. on December 28, unknown suspect(s) broke through a window to gain entry to a residence in the 2000 block of Rosewood Drive in Waldorf. Once inside, the suspect(s) stole several electronic items. Pfc. E. Scuderi is investigating.BURGLARY: On December 28 at 10:04 p.m., officers responded to the 1000 block of Stoddert Avenue in Waldorf for the report of a breaking and entering in progress. Upon arrival, officers observed that a rear door had been broken, allowing the suspect(s) to gain entry to the home. Several electronic items were stolen. Officer J. Zachmeier is investigating.BURGLARY: Sometime between 9:30 a.m. and 5:40 p.m. on December 28, unknown suspect(s) entered a residence in the 6400 block of Bear Court in Waldorf by unknown means. A piece of jewelry was stolen. Pfc. J. Hornickel is investigating.POSSESSION WITH INTENT TO DISTRIBUTE: On January 3 at 10:26 p.m., POII C. Chamblee initiated a traffic stop for a speed violation in the area of Hawthorne Road at Lower Wharf Road in Indian Head. Upon making contact with the driver, Officer Chamblee observed drug paraphernalia in the driver's door handle and located Oxycodone Hydrochloride pills along with other drugs inside the car. Mark Anthony Burnette, 45 of Washington D.C., was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession with intent to distribute.CCSO APPREHENDS ARMED ROBBERY SUSPECT: On December 31 at 9:43 a.m., officers responded to a business in the 4400 block of Crain Highway in White Plains for the report of an armed robbery. Upon their arrival, officers learned that a masked male entered the business, displayed a handgun, and demanded money. The employee complied and the suspect fled. CCSO K9 teams set up a track which led to a church next to the business. Investigators from the Criminal Investigations Division responded and assumed the investigation. While conducting interviews with individuals that were in the church at the time, the suspect was identified. A search was conducted and items related to the robbery were located. The suspect, a 17 year old male, was arrested and charged with armed robbery and first and second-degree assault.
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme.

(Jan. 4, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of December 28, 2015 through January 3, 2016, deputies responded to 1,329 calls for service throughout the community.BURGLARY CASE #15-69982: On December 30, Deputy W. Rector responded to Simpson Farm Drive, Owings, for the report of a burglary from an unsecured shed. Sometime on December 27, 2015, two Poulan chain saws and a gas powered power washer were stolen.BURGLARY CASE #15-69976: On December 30, Deputy D. Denton responded to Mill Bridge Road, Lusby, for the report of a burglary from an unlocked shed. Sometime between December 2229, someone entered the shed and removed a Honda dirt bike. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Sheriff's Office.BURGLARY CASE #15-69961: On December 30, at approximately 6:00am, deputies were called to a residence on Rudolph Lane in Lusby for the report of a burglary in progress. A male had entered the victim's home and fled upon setting off an audible alarm. The occupants were able to relay information so that Deputies were able to identify the suspect, Michael Swearingen, age 24. Deputies responded to his home on Alamo Trail and observed him in his home. After multiple attempts to make contact with him were ignored, the Special Operations Team was called in for a barricade situation at 6:15am. He was taken into custody and charged with 4th degree burglary and was also served an outstanding warrant for resisting arrest.BURGLARY CASE #15-69873: On December 29, Deputy B. Robinson was dispatched to an apartment on West Dares Beach Road, in Prince Frederick, for the report of a burglary. Sometime on December 25, between 4:00pm9:00pm, someone entered the unlocked apartment and stole a VCR and DVD player.BURGLARY CASE #15-69639: On December 28, Deputy G. Gott responded to Asbury Circle, in Solomons, for the report of a burglary. Sometime between October and mid-November money and jewelry were removed from a victim's locked apartment.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-419: On January 2, Deputy C. Ward conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle driving at a high rate of speed on Rt. 260 near Brickhouse Road in Dunkirk. He arrested Laura Puffenbarger, 35, of Chesapeake Beach for CDS Possession with intent to Distribute (Xanax, Marijuana), Possession of Marijuana, CDS Possession-not Marijuana (Xanax, Dexedrine) and Paraphernalia Possession (metal grinder and digital scale).DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #15-69773: On December 29, Deputy M. Velasquez responded to Grays Road, in Port Republic, for a report of a destruction of property. An unknown person scratched a vehicle, which was parked in the victim's driveway. This crime took place sometime between 9:30pm on December 28 and 3:00am on December 29. If anyone observed any suspicious behavior during this time frame, they are asked to report it to the sheriff's office.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-538: On January 3, Deputy R. Evans responded to a destruction of property call located on Huntingtown Road, in Huntingtown. The victim's sliding glass door was shattered by an unknown object sometime overnight.DISORDERLY CONDUCT CASE #16-00002: On January 1, units from the Maryland State Police and Calvert deputies were called to the Brick Wood Bistro Restaurant, located on Sherry Lane, Prince Frederick, for a fight in progress. Deputy M. Trigg arrested 64-year old, Paul Kramer, of Huntingtown for Affray, Disorderly Conduct and Alcohol Beverage/Retail Area Drink.DISORDERLY CONDUCT CASE #16-561: On January 3, Deputy J. Migliaccio arrived at the Huntingtown United Methodist Church located on Hunting Creek Road, Huntingtown, in response to a disorderly person at the location. Sherman Stepney, 53, of Lusby, was intoxicated and arrested for Disorderly Conduct. He was transported to the detention center for booking and processing.ROBBERY CASE #15-69771: On December 29, at approximately 2:00am, Calvert deputies were dispatched to the BP Gas Station located on West Chesapeake Beach Road in Dunkirk for the report of a robbery. A lone suspect jumped over the counter, removed money from the cash register and was able to flee on foot. A canvas of the area was conducted with the assistance of the Maryland State Police, Anne Arundel County Police and Deputy T. Smith and his K-9 partner, Loki. 34-year old Brett Lott, of Friendship, Md., was later identified as the person responsible for the robbery. With the swift action by all agencies involved, Detective N. DeFelice apprehended the suspect and he was taken to the detention center where he was charged with strong armed robbery and theft less than $1000.00.THEFT CASE #16-303: On January 2, Deputy B. Robinson was dispatched to a business located on Central Square Drive, Prince Frederick, for the report of a theft. Sometime between January 12, a registration plate was removed from a vehicle.THEFT CASE #16-101: On January 1, Deputy A. Ostazeski responded to Perry Lane, Lusby, for the report of a theft. A package which contained make-up was stolen from a mailbox sometime during the day. If anyone has information, they are asked to contact the sheriff's office.PEDESTRIAN-INVOLVED CRASH: On December 15, 2015 at approximately 2:58 p.m., members of the Patrol Bureau and Crash Reconstruction Team responded to the area of Radio Drive and South Solomons Island Road, Prince Frederick, for the report of a serious motor vehicle crash involving a pedestrian. Preliminary investigation revealed a 2013 Chevy Sonic was traveling southbound on Solomons Island Road in the area of Radio Drive. The vehicle was in the right turn lane for West Dares Beach Road. Traffic in lanes 1 and 2 were both stopped when a 14-year-old female juvenile attempted to cross all lanes of traffic from the North Side of Solomons Island Road. The juvenile was struck by the Chevy Sonic when she entered the turn lane. The juvenile impacted the 2013 Chevy Sonic on the driver's side front panel. The juvenile sustained critical injuries and was transported to Johns Hopkins Medical Center by the Maryland State Police Aviation Unit. The 2013 Chevy Sonic was operated by Tami M. McDowell, a 39-year-old female of Prince Frederick. McDowell was uninjured and remained on the scene to be interviewed by sheriff's office personnel. There is no indication that speed or driver error contributed to this crash.
ANNAPOLIS (Jan. 4, 2016)This year's 90-day legislative session is set to get off to a faster start when it begins Jan. 13 with over 1,200 bills already being drafted for introduction.



The opening will also be more contentious as the Maryland Constitution requires the lawmakers to take up bills the governor has vetoed as the first order of business.



According to the legislature's bill drafting office, there are over 1200 requests for legislation from members of the House and Senate. Already 179 bills have been pre-filed (113 in the Senate, 66 in the House).



The legislature's staff also expects the Hogan administration to request a couple hundred bills of its own, most of which are fine tuning of existing laws by various departments, now under the full control of Gov. Larry Hogan's appointees.



This is not necessarily a record number, but it does reflect that the office holders are in the second year of a four-year term.



"We have a lot of freshmen ready to spread their wings," Senate Minority Leader J.B. Jennings told county officials last month. A third of the legislature was new to their jobs, but they now know how a bill gets passed. "They're going to come out fighting for the issues they care about," Jennings says.



Typically, there are 2,500 to 2,600 bills introduced. More than half die in committee, and about 700 are eventually enacted, many of those on routine matters that receive overwhelming majorities in both houses.



Veto overridees



At the top of the veto override list is the bill to tax Internet travel sites and travel agents based on the full price of hotel rooms, rather than the discounted price they pay the hotels.



Pressured from businesses on both sides, Hogan said he vetoed the measure because there is a pending lawsuit by Comptroller Peter Franchot to collect the tax from the Internet sites based on the full price. Senate President Mike Miller believes he has the three-fifths majority needed to override the governor's veto. But the vote was much closer in the House of Delegates. Hogan also vetoed a Howard County version of the bill affecting the local hotel tax.



Hogan also vetoed three pieces of legislation related to criminal justice. One allowed felons to vote after they are released even if they are still on probation, and another would have decriminalized possession of marijuana paraphernalia; the legislature had already eliminated criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.



Another bill blocked by Hogan made it harder for police to seize assets from people who have been arrested or accused of drug trafficking. The governor sided with prosecutors and police who objected to the bill, but lawmakers said the powers to confiscate had been abused by police. The bill passed both houses with veto-proof majorities.
A few autumns ago, I took the students in my Chesapeake Bay class at Salisbury University to Smith Island to discuss how rising seas, accelerated by a warming climate, will threaten such low-lying communities before the end of this century.



I didn't have to teach much that day. An unforecast nor'easter had covered most of Tylerton (one of three towns there) in tide several inches to 2 feet deep.



The students took away two views of their soggy day on Maryland's only inhabited offshore island:



Smith Island was exquisitely vulnerable to sea level rise, not a place to plan to live.



Smith Island was the coolest place to live they'd ever been to, from the fresh-out-of-the-Bay crab cakes and home-baked eight-layer chocolate cakes, to the abundant wildlife, gorgeous panoramas and fascinating and friendly islanders who live in a close-knit community shaped by surviving in the middle of the Chesapeake through four centuries.



Smith Island and Tangier Island, Va., a similarly unique and charming offshore community 6 miles south, have proven irresistible to those who publicize and research climate change. They are highly photogenic canaries in the coal mine, the "ground zeroes" where we'll soonest encounter the forces that will threaten many of the world's coastlines.



Scientists, academics and journalists like me tend to focus on the inevitability of it all, to take the longer view, which points to Smith and Tangier being inundated by century's end.



A recent study led by David M. Schulte of the Norfolk Army Corps of Engineers concludes that Tangier Island could be abandoned by 2070, perhaps much sooner if sea level rise continues to accelerate.



But there's another side, a lesson we might have taken long ago from places of conflict like Vietnam and Palestine, that people will fight against overwhelming odds to defend the places they call home.



Maryland officials were surprised at the negative reaction when, after Super Storm Sandy in 2012, they offered to buy out Smith Islanders who wanted to move. What they saw as a lifeline, islanders saw as government wanting to put another nail in their way of life.



Cultural roots in our region just don't go any deeper than among the descendants of centuries-old families on the Bay islands. It's infectious. My family spent three of the best years of our lives on Smith Island. I'd move back in a minute if I could work it out with the rest of my too-busy existence.



Some islanders deny climate change and sea level rise, though they'll often say "erosion," which is driven partly by rising seas, does seem worse nowadays.



Others accept it, but feel that to dwell on something that will happen in the run of the century is counterproductive to their striving desperately to keep their shrinking communities viable in the here and now.



Smith Islanders, where the population (low hundreds) is about half of what it was when I moved there in 1987, have put together a thoughtful and possible set of plans for staying put awhile longer. (Google "Smith Island United" and click on "Visioning Process.")



Their plans range from a subsidized ferry servicecurrent ferries have gotten so unreliable as to affect tourismto walkways across the marshes to facilitate local travel and visiting birdwatchers.



They suggest tying increasingly regulated and hard-to-get licenses to fish and crab the Chesapeake to ownership of a home on the island. Because there are no other offshore islands in Maryland, it wouldn't set a precedent leading to unlimited licenses.



In a similar vein, they envision a local housing trust that might take over abandoned properties and make them available at low cost to families who'd move for the quality of lifethe local school, with nine students, could use an infusion of students.



Some important things have already happened, like a recent $9 million federal erosion control project on the island's north and west sides that protects a federal wildlife refuge and the rest of the island. It's no dike that would repeal sea level rise; but it will buy time.



Buying time for the islands is a purchase worth makingnot billions for dikes, but no one's asking that. Tangier Island might make it through the century with $25 million to $40 million for an erosion control project, the Corps-funded report says.



Nationally, we spend more than that on recovering any number of endangered species. That's a good thing. And buying another few-to-several decades of Smith and Tangier Islands' unique cultural, historic and environmental resources seems just as worthwhile.



Tom Horton has written about Chesapeake Bay for more than 40 years, including eight books. He lives in Salisbury, where he is also a professor of Environmental Studies at Salisbury University.




It is good news for some understudies trying for advanced education at remote grounds!





There are a few nations that offer free training, even to the understudies from different nations. Free training here implies that the colleges wave off the educational cost charge and other instruction charges however the understudies are required to bring home the bacon all alone and pay off their costs of business in a remote area.





Here, we are enrolling the most conspicuous nations that top the cards with regards to offering free instruction





Norway  Free Education And Many Prospects





The oil rich Scandinavian country of Norway is one of the conspicuous names with regards to offering successful training opportunities, to local and remote understudies too. However, the instruction is not totally free, understudies are required and prepared to deal with their own particular everyday costs. Notwithstanding this, Norway has demonstrated an alluring destination for global understudies, with 12,000 outside understudies rushing to the nation consistently. Be that as it may, in the event that you are an undergrad understudy with little information of Norwegian society and dialect, you might need to clean your abilities before you enter the area. For an extra data, we should let you know that The nation has more than 200 graduate degree programs taught in English.





Germany  No Tuition Fee And Free College Credits





In the year 2014, in a recorded step towards training, even the remainder of seven German states waved off the educational cost expense at all of their open schools and colleges. At the built up establishments like the University of Heidelberg and the University of Munchen, understudies pay nothing notwithstanding for the school credits, paying little mind to their country of starting point. Be that as it may, the German training framework is somewhat abnormal, wherein understudies are required to apply to particular majors, as opposed to the colleges. For instance, an understudy trying for a free degree in writing, will be required to apply specifically to the writing office at a specific organization. This style of instruction may show up somewhat unbending yet it is a great deal reasonable for outside understudies to who go to the nation searching for strong training.





South America  Superpower Offering Free Tuition





A not very many understudies who gain the coveted evaluations can win a word class degree program at Brazil, the South American Nation, that too without paying a solitary penny. Try not to be shocked! This free educational cost tenet is connected to numerous graduate projects and numerous subjects, particularly which are taught in English and are inferable from Brazil's advancement. Only for information, Sao Paolo's Universidade Estadual Paulista, offers Master's Degree Programs in Alternative Energy and Agricultural Sciences.





Slovenia  Unidentified European Territory For Free Education





Being a repressed nation, Slovenia doesn't pull in the same number of sightseers as its partners like Italy and Austria. Yet, it remains an extraordinary destination for understudies of all school grades. The liberal Slovenian colleges offer more than 900 degree programs which are particularly taught in English, and they, most liberally, don't charge educational cost for any of them. Universal understudies are required to pay just an ostensible enrollment expense to begin. Slovenia is likewise one of the less expensive spots to live in Europe, which is a reward for understudies who need to make their own particular living and meet the costs. In this manner, it postures to be a superior training destination than Norway or Germany.
The first LGBT couples to get married in the state are celebrating their first anniversaries.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Miami-Dade County on January 5, with the rest of the state following on January 6.

In the last year, they've had children, bought homes and in many cases, been surprised that something so extraordinary can lead to a life so ordinary. And where else to begin a look back at Florida's first year of same-sex marriage than with the first couple married in the state?

Cathy Pareto and Karla Arguello

"It's been a banner year for us," said Cathy Pareto, who married Karla Arguello just after noon Jan. 5 in a Miami-Dade courtroom. "Since we got married, we had a big church wedding, which was really special. And in August, we welcomed our twins, who are now four months old."

Pareto and Arguello spent months in the spotlight as one of six couples involved in a lawsuit in Miami-Dade County to overturn the state's gay marriage ban. But few knew Arguello was expecting.

"When the whole court case took place, we were pregnant  very, very quietly pregnant," Pareto said.

In a state as large as Florida, it normally would be difficult to pick out which couple were married first after the ban against gay marriage fell. But Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Sarah Zabel lifted the ban a day earlier than the rest of the state. And immediately after her decision, she presided over Pareto and Arguello's wedding.

The big church wedding came a few months later, giving friends and family the opportunity to share the moment.

"We've been together 16 years," Pareto said. "We felt married already, but something definitely shifted when things became legal for us. There was something very reassuring about being recognized as a family unit."

Todd and Jeff Delmay

"When you participate in something as historic as we did, you really get excited about the idea that one or two voices can make a difference," said Todd Delmay. He and his partner Jeff Delmay followed Pareto and Arguello in getting married the day the ban fell in Miami-Dade County, which makes them the first gay men married in the state.

The Hollywood residents later attended last year's State of the Union speech at the invitation of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. But since then, Todd reports feeling eerily normal.

"We had an experience with a bank recently. We went to open a new account at the bank, and when I said, 'This is my husband,' the banker never batted an eye," Delmay said. "When you fight for equality, you get this very mundane everyday experience and you have to remind yourself that it's an extraordinary experience that made it happen."

After the impulse wedding last year, the Delmays are finally having a reception with friends and family this Jan. 16, just in time to celebrate their anniversary.

"We wanted to set an example for our son. He's sort of understanding it now that we're married and having this celebration," Delmay said. "It's an exciting time, with our lives changing and business growing. We're just like everybody else now."

Vanessa and Melanie Alenier

For Vanessa and Melanie Alenier, that sense of "What's next?" that haunts Todd Delmay hangs even heavier in the air.

Prior to being part of the Miami-Dade gay marriage lawsuit with Pareto and Arguello, the Aleniers were plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits fighting Florida's gay adoption ban. Between trying to adopt their son and trying to get married, the Hollywood couple have spent about half of their 10 years together litigating.

"It's great not to be in the spotlight," Vanessa said. "For the first three to six months, when I would say 'wife,' I'd be like, 'whoa.'"

For their one-year anniversary, the Aleniers plan to go to dinner. They've saved a slice of wedding cake to eat. Their wedding album finally arrived after a long delay. And they have all the usual hoops to jump through that come with getting married.

"Once we got married, I was able to go on [Vanessa's] company insurance policy," Melanie said.

"When they call me and ask about benefits they're also asking about my wife," Vanessa said. "There's this warm, incredible feeling when the insurance company says, 'And your wife, Melanie Alenier, anything to change about her?'"

"For us, it was so exciting to be able to go on insurance," Melanie said.

Irene and Dana Murphy

While the Delmays and the Aleniers had changed their names before the ban on same-sex marriage ending, it was only after they got married that Irene Kalinowski became Irene Murphy. The two had had a marriage ceremony in 2008, one not recognized by the state, but they recoiled at the idea of getting married in another state only to have their marriage ignored in their home state.

When they came to a courthouse in Delray Beach on Jan. 6, they had planned to have a friend who is a notary marry them. They'd just get the marriage license and be on their way.

"We just kind of got caught up in the celebration. It didn't seem right to wait at that point," Irene Murphy said. "We've been together 16 years, we've been married since 2008, so Florida's very late to our party. However, we're very glad they showed up."

The Jupiter couple intend to keep celebrating their anniversary on Oct. 11, the date of their unrecognized 2008 marriage ceremony, which took place in Florida. But they have more cause to celebrate.

"We just purchased a home together," Murphy said. "On one of the forms my title agent sent to me, it asks for husband and wife. So, I took the opportunity to share with her that the form was outdated and needed to be updated and she happily complied. So I feel like we got to make a little bit of a change for other couples purchasing a home, at least with that title agent."

The marriage has also meant that all the complicated paperwork that she and Dana Murphy had to have previously  the health care proxy, the power of attorney  is a thing of the past.

"Now, I don't have to worry about whether or not our relationship is going to be recognized legally," Murphy said. "I've been able to update all my medical records to reflect that I'm married and I can't tell you how refreshing it is to fill out any form since Jan. 6 and check the correct box."
Jebel Uweinat NASA

Jebel Uweinat (1,934 meters, mountain of sourcelets) is a mountain range in the area of the Egyptian-Sudanese-Libyan border.

In general, the west slope constitutes an oasis, with wells, bushes and grass. The area is notable for its prehistoric petroglyphs. Engraved in sandstone, petroglyphs of Bushmen style are visible, representing giraffes, lions, ostriches, gazelles, and human figures. The western part of the massive consists of intrusive granite, arranged in a ring shape of some 25 km diameter.

Its eastern part consists of sandstone; four plateaus emerge from the level of the surrounding desert. One of the driest places on earth, it reportedly hasnt rained since 1998 (Wikipedia). The image was acquired March 17, 2012, covers an area of 40 x 43 km, and is located at 22 degrees north latitude, 24.9 degrees east longitude.

The U.S. science team is located at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASAs Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

More information about ASTER is available at http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ Larger image

Wikipedia:

Jebel Uweinat (1,934 m;   gabal al-uwainat mountain of sourcelets; also spelled Jabal, Djebel Al Awaynat, Auenat, Ouenat, Ouinat, Owainat, Oweinat, Uwaynat, Uweinat, Uwenat, Uweynat etc.) is a mountain range in the area of the Egyptian-Libyan-Sudanese border. The mountain lies about 40 km S-SE of Jabal Arkanu. The main spring called Ain Dua lies at the foot of the mountain, on the Libyan side. The W foot (located at 215229N 245416E according to Hassanein) is 618 m high, and overcast with giant boulders fallen because of erosion. In general, the W slope constitutes an oasis, with wells, bushes and grass. The area is notable for its prehistoric petroglyphs first reported by the Egyptian explorer Ahmed Pasha Hassaneinthe discoverer of Uweinat, who in 1923 traversed the first 40 km of the mountain towards E, without reaching the end. Engraved in sandstone, petroglyphs of Bushmen style are visible, representing lions, giraffes, ostrichs, gazelles, cows and little human figures.

The western part of the massif consists of intrusive granite, arranged in a ring shape of some 25 km diameter, ending in three valleys (wadis) towards the west, named Karkur Hamid, Karkur Idriss and Karkur Ibrahim. Its eastern part consists of sandstone, ending in Karkur Talh. In Karkur Murr there is a permanent oasis (Guelta), Ain al-Brins (Bir Murr). In the sandstone part four plateaus emerge from the level of the surrounding desert: the Hassanein plateau, connected to an unnamed plateau through a narrow neck, the Italia plateau and another unnamed plateau. The highest point of Uweinat is on top of the Italia plateau. There are two cairns on the top, the first was erected by R.A.Bagnold and the second by captain Marchesi, both in the 1930s.
But students are not as interested as expected

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It should have been one of the biggest education reforms passed by the current government, but the number of pupils that participate in the dual education is not as high as it was originally expected. The Education Ministry and also schools however expect that the interest will be higher next year, after they will see the first results.

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More information about the Slovak business environment Please see our Investment Advisory Guide. This years edition was published also thanks to cooperation with the Investment Support Association (ISA). The general partner of the guide was the law firm Noerr.

The dual education scheme, which the Education Ministry modelled on programmes from German-speaking countries, allows students to study theoretical knowledge at vocational schools while combining that with work experience.

The reform of the vocational education with the aim to achieve better placement of graduates has not ended, it is a continual process with tasks and aims until 2020, Education Minister Juraj Draxler said after the new law on dual education passed in March.

A total of 89 companies and 422 students have joined the programme during the first year. The Trencin, Nitra and Kosice regions have the highest interest, and most employers are based in those places as well. The fewest students joined the scheme in Presov Region, according to Education Ministry statistics. Meanwhile, the professional organisations registered the applications to participate in the scheme from another 261 companies.

The dual education scheme was to be the ministrys flagship, but it seems that this ship has sunk or, better said, it has not even sailed, Robert Chovanculiak, analyst with the Institute for Economic and Social Studies (INESS), wrote in his blog.

He referred especially to low student interest in joining the scheme, as just one-third of the expected number of participants took part the school year 2015/2016. The ministry points to insufficient promotional campaigns by employers at schools and expects the numbers will be higher in the future.

Employers are, however, satisfied and say that additional changes to the programme will lure more students in the future.

Both practice and rewards

Under the new rules, theoretical education takes place at schools, while practical training is entrusted to companies. Employers who join the project will enter into learning contracts with secondary school students. The time spent in the company may range from 60 to 80 percent of the total number of lessons.

Moreover, companies can reward students attending practical training with payment for one hour of productive work is 50 and 100 percent of the minimum wage (1.09-2.18 per hour). Students can receive a scholarship from the state budget of between 25 and 65 percent of the subsistence level (22.61-58.77) per month depending on their results in the school, plus a monthly scholarship from the company, up to four-fold the subsistence level, 361.68 per month.

Participating companies are also entitled to tax relief of up to 3,200 per student that they provide practical training of more than 400 hours annually.

The German-Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SNOPK) welcomes the changes. Though its members say that the current version of the law is not perfect, they consider it a good start for companies, Zeljka Senkovic of SNOPK told The Slovak Spectator.

Lacking promotion

The Education Ministry was however surprised by the low number of students who applied for the jobs offered by the companies. It originally expected some 1,500 pupils to sign up.

We explain the lower interest of pupils with the shorter time the employers had for appropriate PR in the regions, Education Ministry spokeswoman Beata Dupalova Ksenzsighova told The Slovak Spectator. Employers, however, claim they have done everything to promote the new system.

We obtained exact instructions how and when to become involved in PR activities since these projects are co-financed by European funds and the activities are strictly controlled, Roman Conorto, an expert in education in the Federation of Employers Associations (AZZZ), told The Slovak Spectator. The National Union of Employers (RUZ) considers it a success that despite such a short time for administrating the launch of the dual education scheme, 400 pupils have joined, its secretary Martin Hostak told The Slovak Spectator. Also Senkovic of SNOPK regards the interest as surprisingly high since there was not much time to launch a proper information campaign. Despite the lower interest, the ministry expects it will be higher next year, not only for more time, but also for the initial real results of the systems operation.

Not enough motivation for schools

Martin Matak of the school trade unions, who is responsible for secondary schools, however says that there may be other reasons for low interest of students. Pupils may not accept the fact they need to sign agreements with companies as they are afraid of a certain type of limitation, he said. Also parents lack information about the benefits of the dual education scheme.

Moreover, both schools and companies may be distracted to join. The former receive less money for students joining the scheme, as they will receive money directly from employers, while the latter may be discouraged by the low contribution from the state, which amounts only to 70 per student per month, Matak added.

Also Chovanculiak points to some deficiencies in the system. Regarding the agreements signed between the companies and the pupils, the latter promise to work at least three years after graduating in the company. Otherwise they will have to pay for part of the costs the companies had contributed to their studies, he pointed out.

It is probably useless to stress that not all pupils want to give up the possibility to continue in their studies, travel abroad to obtain some experience, or to launch their own business, Chovanculiak wrote.

Uniformity considered a problem

Another problem is that the self-governing regions decide on what private secondary schools will be able to open the classes, which means they decide about their own rivals, and professional organisations representing employers also check the capability of participating companies, Chovanculiak continued.

He also criticised the fact that the law unifies the rules for everybody, making it unable to adapt to diverse needs of schools, pupils and employers. There is also a question whether all parties discussing the dual education scheme had their points of view taken with the same weight when the final version was created. The rules are a result of various pressures where different interests have different power and the result does not have to offer the optimal cooperation model, Chovanculiak wrote.

The long-term cooperation however requires the comprehensive agreement which will reflect the time and place particularities, he continued, adding that dual education should not only be about training people for the automotive sector.

Employers complain too

Though Conorto of AZZZ considers the dual education system the first fundamental step in the transformation of vocational education and the education sector as a whole, he says that the new law has not fulfilled the expectations.

We are convinced that the interest of employers is big, though this agenda is accompanied with further financial and administrative duties, not to mention responsibility for the whole process, Conorto added.

He suggests reducing the administrative burden for employers joining the scheme and increasing the financial participation of the state in the whole process.

Moreover, Klub 500, which unites companies with more than 500 employees, proposes to introduce the central model of process management, with clear rules, competences and responsibility. Currently, there are 13 professional associations that are responsible for the scheme, which may result in chaos, said Tibor Gregor, executive director of Klub 500, as reported by the TASR newswire.

The minister did not accept the proposal of employers associations to operate the vocational education system centrally, by the State Institute of Vocational Education, with full participation of employers, he continued.

It is also necessary to reduce the administrative burden and introduce some kind of motivation for schools and employers, Gregor said, as reported by TASR.

Other ways to help

Senkovic of SNOPK says it is necessary to promote the advantages of the system. Moreover, parents are not interested in vocational education as they want their children to continue in studies. The pupils, however, often graduate from specialisations that are not needed in the labour market, according to Senkovic.

There was really a very short time to do some information campaign for children and parents, she continued, adding that they will start with informing eighth- and ninth-grade pupils about the dual education and its benefits in late October with an eye on next school year.

It will be also important to focus on educational and career counselling, which has many defects, according to Matak. Career counsellors lack the space and motivation to do their job properly.

It is necessary to link them more with PR activities of the companies in regions, Matak said, adding it is also necessary to promote the technical specialisations in sixth and seventh grade of elementary schools.
SLOVAKS do not know the Fairtrade mark, which seeks to sell products and other goods at a price that offers farmers in developing and poor countries a chance to make a living from their production.

Coffee is one of the goods sold within the Fairtrade scheme. (Source: Sme)

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This stems from the poll published by the Fairtrade International organisation, the SITA newswire reported.

Just 14 percent of Slovaks came across the sign last year, which most frequently marks coffee, tea, chocolate, cosmetics and clothes. In the neighbouring Czech Republic the familiarity was wider, 33 percent.

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As the head of Fairtrade Czech and Slovak Republics, Hana Chorvathova, informed the revenues from products certified Fairtrade last year represented 1.1 million in Slovakia. This is significantly less than in the Czech Republic, where Fairtrade products worth 8.5 million were sold.

In total about 1.5 million farmers and producers from 75 countries are registered within the global Fairtrade scheme. They produce about 30,000 products under Fairtrade conditions.
SLOVAKS living abroad willing to participate in the March 5 general election can now use a simpler way to register for the absentee ballot.

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The election law states that voters who will not be present in Slovakia on the day of the election and who wish to cast a ballot must provide notification of that fact at least 50 days before the vote, which falls on January 15 this year.

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Under the current rules, voters can send a letter or an email application to the municipal authority (if they have a permanent residence in Slovakia) or to the Interior Ministry (in case they do not have a permanent residence in Slovakia).

To make it easier for them, a group of people from the Slovensko.digital initiative launched the Volby.digital website which helps voters to register for the vote quickly and in only a few steps. The Slovak Spectator spoke with programmer Jan Suchal about the project and its aims.

The Slovak Spectator (TSS): What was the main reason for launching the Volby.digital project?

Jan Suchal (JS): The idea originated at our platform. We liked it as an idea since we know that people dont like reading the instructions on ministries and authorities websites, but need to be led by the hand.

TSS: Where did you get the inspiration for such a project?

JS: I think no big inspiration was needed. It is quite a straightforward way from idea to realisation.

TSS: How does the system work? How is the connection with authorities secured?

JS: The application will ask you for necessary information (either you are asking for voting by mail or the absentee ballot) and then generate the necessary application which you then send to the authority. You also have a pre-prepared template email. All information is processed only within a users web browser and no personal data is sent via any third party. The source file is freely accessible, so if somebody doesnt believe us, he/she can check it on their own. We have a database of emails to necessary authorities, with some being checked and the others not. Thus we call on people to ask the authorities to confirm they received the application. It is an ordinary practice.

TSS: What is the main aim of this initiative?

JS: We, the Slovensko.digital initiative, liked the idea because it connects several things we want to point at. First, that the state IT should be focused more on citizens and that neither rocket science nor millions of euros are needed to do so. The officials do not understand this as they do not see any added value in it. We have the numbers and we can see it is the other way round. People, who did not want to vote, now want to and it is thanks to this application. Second, it becomes apparent there is a group of people who want to help the state and its people. Third, the way this project was created could serve as an example of how the state IT can work: agilely, transparently and absolutely openly.

TSS: How many people have already used the system and from which countries?

JS: The statistics show only a few thousand, which is a great number regarding the fact that about 8,000 people from abroad use to attend the elections. Most come from the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

TSS: What do you think about the claims of the Slovak Interior Ministry that it would be difficult to launch online elections?

JS: This discussion is going on around the globe, and also at our platform. It is really not as easy as it seems and the claim that Estonians are doing it does not mean that also we should do it. The opinions are different, but we also want it as our aim. The questions about security and abuse do not seem to be sufficiently technologically solved.
The planned construction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline is clearly out of accord with European policy towards Ukraine, said Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajcak.

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Its realisation and the subsequent elimination of Ukraine as a transit country for Russian gas transport would significantly affect Ukraines geopolitical and economic position in a negative way, as it earns 2 billion a year from gas transit, said Lajcak as cited by the TASR newswire, adding that Kiev itself views the project as hostile against it.

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Lajcak pointed out that the European Union has to respect its own rules. Regarding gas supplies, this concerns the European Energy Charter and the principle of the European Unions Third Energy Package. The rules featured there focus on the liberalisation of electricity and gas markets and the separation of production and supply, thereby enabling small companies to enter the energy market and extend consumer choice.

So, were only saying that each project has to be assessed from the viewpoint of its compatibility with European standards, said Lajcak. We are convinced that the Nord Stream II project does not comply with European standards, and we were expecting a statement from the European Commission on the matter.

Russian energy giant Gazprom signed an agreement on expanding the current Nord Stream gas pipeline with a consortium of five European companies  E.ON, BASF/Wintershall, OMV, ENGIE and Royal Dutch Shell  in September 2015. Its critics point out that the current Nord Stream pipeline can only operate at 50 percent of its capacity due to EU rules on economic competition, meaning that its expansion does not make sense. According to them, this simply points to Russias only goal  to bypass Ukraine, which would lose its position as a key transit country.

Slovakia would also suffer from this, as according to the Economy Ministry, it would lose yearly earnings of 400 million in gas transit that comes from Russia via Ukraine and is directed further west. It would affect Slovakias position as an important player in energy.

It was decided at the EU summit in December that the project is to be assessed by the European Commission in order to check whether it complies with Energy Union principles. Apart from the Visegrad Four countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Greece, Latvia and Lithuania have also asked for this.

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has spoken against expanding the current capacity of Nord Stream too. According to him, it would be unfair if the EC approved this project, as it previously blocked the proposed South Stream gas pipeline, which was set to pass through Italy.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak has said that the criticism of the project has been politicised in the EU.
PROTESTING teachers and nurses are reportedly planning joint protest actions to draw attention to the poor conditions in both sectors.

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They agreed on joint meetings and joint public presentations, to point to under-financing and low salaries in health care and education where we are in the last places regarding tariff salaries, corruption scandals and non-transparent use of money which also cause the draining of finances, Vladimir Crmoman of the Initiative of Bratislava Teachers told the Dennik N daily.

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The representatives of teachers have meanwhile created a strike committee to prepare the general strike. Though it is not clear when the strike may begin and how many schools may attend it, it will surely happen before the March 5 general election.

This situation follows the series of teachers protests that took place in the end of 2015, including the Rally of Long Noses held in front of the Government Office, the Health Day during which teachers either donated blood or went to medical checks to their doctors, and the Babysitting Day. Neither of these protests persuaded the government that it is necessary to accept teachers demands for salary hikes as well as finances for the sector.

Unfortunately, the government has been ignoring teachers demands as well as the recommendations of Slovak and foreign experts in education, Crmoman told Dennik N, adding that many teachers think that the situation may be changed only by striking.

Read also:

Read also: 2015: Health, judicial controversies Read more

Education Minister Juraj Draxler admits that teachers should earn more, but adds that this will be the task of the new government. Their salaries will increase by 4 percent this year, though in previous years it was 5 percent, Dennik N wrote.

Similarly to teachers, also nurses are calling for higher salaries. The law however does not allow them to protest, thus they started handing in notices. More than 900 nurses currently are in notice period, though many of them have already withdrawn their resignations, Dennik N reported.

The notice period of most nurses will end in January.
THE BATTLEGROUP of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries started its half-year standby within the European Union on January 1.

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This means that based on the decision of the EU member states it may be deployed in any area within 6,000 kilometres from Brussels for a 30-day mission. It may be extended to 120 days if necessary, the Pravda daily reported.

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The problem, according to a security analyst, is that the EU Battlegroup has not been deployed yet.

The V4 battlegroup is composed of nearly 3,000 soldiers. Poland provides 1,800 soldiers, while Slovakia contributes with 560 soldiers, the Czech Republic 728 and Hungary 640, as reported by Pravda.

Part of the battlegroup is also the headquarters in Krakow, Poland, which will be activated if the soldiers are deployed on a mission. During the standby the troops will fulfil ordinary training tasks. After the standby is over, they will return to their standard tasks within the Slovak army, said Stefan Zemanovic, spokesperson for the Slovak Armed Forces, as reported by the SITA newswire.

Security analyst Jaroslav Nad of the Slovak Security Policy Institute considers the EU Battlegroup project excellent. The only problem is that it has not yet been actively utilised.

The costs of the deployment amount to 150-200 million, Nad told Pravda, adding that every participating country would have to pay one quarter, which would be a big sum for the Slovak Defence Ministry.

The EU Battlegroups could have been sent to Georgia, Mali or Sudan in the past, but in the end the EU member states dealt with the situation on their own. France, for example, deployed its soldiers in Mali. If such a battlegroup is not used, it is useless, Nad added.

The V4 Battlegroup will be on standby again in 2019, SITA wrote.
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At the southern tip of the great continent of Africa is a city known for its natural wonder, sandy beaches, and friendly, beautiful people. Cape Town should be on everyones list of a dream holiday destination, but the citys residents have also quietly helped to spearhead an exciting and progressive coffee culture in South Africa. From humble beginnings of burnt Lavazza and Aussie-inspired flat whites to eventually respecting the origins of each bean, the Mother City has been on a mission of coffee discovery. Slightly alternative Haas Coffee entered the picture on the movements heels, with a perfectly added kink.

Haas, meaning rabbit in Afrikaans, is part of Haas Collective, which comprises an art space, an advertising agency (opened under the umbrella by best friend and co-owner Glynn Venter), and of course the coffee shop now in the city center. Before this alchemy came together, they were based across town in an up-and-coming neighborhood, Bo-Kaap. But to really understand and appreciate the warm fuzzy appeal of the word Haasplaying on many Afrikaans colloquialismsone needs to spend a few weeks all over town.

Vanessa Berlein and myself opened a little art and design shop on Rose Street in the Bo-Kaap in the beginning of 2010, but pretty soon we realized the need for a coffee shop where our clients could meet with like-minded people, says Francois Irvine, co-founder and Managing Director of Haas Collective. Enter Haas Coffee, where Venter and Irvine then expanded their offering, but soon the space just wasnt big enough to house all their dreams, fantasies, and endless cups of coffee. Now we have three delightful businesses that run side by side and beautifully complement each other, says Irvine.

Our new location was informed by the actual building which was clearly just too gorgeous not to buy. But then came the realization of where we were and a brief period of panic, says Irvine. However, all doubt soon dwindled once they completed renovations and realized that they were in the heart of what is now the thriving, developing East City Precinct area, surrounded by artists, designers, courtroom buildings, universities, and offbeat eateries. The best a city can offer.

We saw the need for coffee and desserts, so we approached a friend who had his own roaster, Hanno Schwartz of the legendary brand Strictly Coffee, says Irvine. Soon, he was teaching us how to roast, make coffee, and tell the difference between a flat white and a cappuccino. Today, they get coffees from all over the globe: Guatemala, Ethiopia, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Jamaica. We even import the worlds strongest coffee from New York State, called Death Wish, smiles Irvine.

The city has responded with gleefinally a place where the art all around was mesmerizing, and could actually be purchased. People were interesting, and interested. And best of all the space and its citizenry spoke directly to the inclusive hearts of the ever-present owners. The brand fits in completely because it doesnt fit in at all, says Irvine. Our design sensibility is quirky, authentic, and unexpected, with a passion for local talent and the slightly marginalized. And the gang that keeps it all full speed aheadWe employ staff primarily for their kind and gentle nature, says Irvine. For us this is extremely important in an environment where people work side by side under pressure seven days a week.

Coffee culture has changed radically over the last 10 years in Cape Town and South Africa, and Haas is riding on the new exciting wave. Before, an average cup of coffee was either instant coffee or a watery, bitter extraction from a paper filter which had been stewing on a hot plate for a day or more, says Irvine. But the arrival of micro-roasters and designer equipment in town meant there was suddenly an appreciation for the art of coffee making and its multiple nuances.

At Haas they serve mostly espresso-style coffees and also plunger or French press, but the pour-over method is finally taking hold with their captive audience. The response to our coffee has been overwhelmingly positive, we have repeatedly been voted as one of Cape Towns top five coffee destinations, says Irvine. And so the rabbit smiles.

But of course, the team just cant stand still. They are already planning new exhibitions, underground dinners, a range of healthy snacks, a tremendously exciting but secret cake project, and a new Haas-inspired lounge eatery as part of a boutique hotel. There are even discussions underway for an AirBnB type project and dare I say it, says Irvine, Haas New York.

Daniel Scheffler is an international freelance journalist whose work has appeared in T Magazine, Travel And Leisure, Monocle, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Butt. Read more Daniel Scheffler on Sprudge.
Michael Elleman, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a UK-based leading global security think-tank, said that the growing split between the two regional hegemons will only deepen the chasm between Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

But he stressed that the diplomatic breakdown between Saudis and Iranians was "more reflection rather than a driver of the souring situation."

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, chair of the political science department at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, agreed that Riyadh had been in favor of cutting ties with Iran prior to the embassy attack.

"The attack on the Saudi Embassy provided a good justification for the Saudis to sever all ties," he said. "Saudis will coordinate with any other Arab states to cut or downgrade diplomatic relations with Iran."

He also predicted more attacks both on Shiite and Sunni communities in the region in the coming months as other countries line up along sectarian lines.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are respectively the main Shiite and Sunni powers in the Middle East. Sudan and Bahrain, a tiny Sunni-led monarchy with a majority Shiite population, broke off ties with Iran hours after Saudi Arabia, while the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait downgraded theirs.
The last main reason why Saudi Arabia chose this specific time to exacerbate tensions with Iran was to strengthen the role of the Defense Ministry and counter any fears of a royal coup. To explain a bit more, King Salman is largely seen as a ceremonial figurehead that's physically incapable of governing the country, with the real power resting in the hands of the Minister of Interior and his son, the Minister of Defense. Respectively, these are the Crown Prince and the Deputy Crown Prince, both of which are only in their current positions because of a surprise shake-up in the royal succession a few months after King Abdullah's death.

Many Saudi royals were unhappy about this decision, and 30-year-old Mohammad bin Salman's reckless War on Yemen angered them even more. Rumors began to swirl that some of the royals were serious in plotting a coup, and they reached such a fever pitch that The Guardian even reported in late September on a mysterious unnamed prince that was at the forefront of the regime change movement. However thought-out the plot may have been, it's probably largely sidelined now that tensions have been purposefully ratcheted up with Iran. In the interests of 'national security', the pervasive mood is such that no 'patriotic' Saudi royal would dare rock the country's stability at a time when ties with Tehran have never been worse, essentially quelling the internal revolt for as long as the crisis carries on for (and which probably won't dissipate for quite some time anyhow).

Global Perspective

Wrapping everything up, the tactics of staged provocations and multilateral 'isolation' being played against Iran at the moment closely mirror those that were earlier used against Russia. To remind everyone, the US-organized Color Revolution in Ukraine and subsequent nationalist violence created the conditions where Crimea's residents felt unsafe and opted to reunify with the Russian Federation.

The patriotic uprising in Donbass sprung up almost concurrent with that, and the following Civil War (all of which was American-provoked) was used as the excuse for the West to sanction Russia.

Worse still, NATO exploited this 'opportunity' to illegally deepen its presence in Eastern Europe in contravention to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Multilaterally and in conjunction with the EU sanctioning Russia and NATO marching ever more determined to the east, the entirety of Central and Eastern Europe aside from Belarus, Serbia, and the Republic of Macedonia united in presenting a singular front against Russia.

At the beginning of 2016, almost the exact same thing is now happening to Iran. Saudi Arabia chose to savagely behead Sheikh al-Nimr in order to create the 'Ukrainian-like' chain of destabilizing excuses to 'justify' a preplanned multilateral response against Iran. Just as NATO and the EU teamed up against Russia, it now looks like the Saudis' "anti-terrorist" coalition and other Riyadh-dominated Mideast institutions will do the same against Iran. Altogether, the general strategy is to create 'containment' coalitions across Eurasia in a desperate bit to hem in the most active multipolar forces in the supercontinent, be it Russia in Eastern Europe or Iran in the Mideast.

Accordingly, it follows that China will be next, and the preconditioning necessary for the next preplanned provocative action is already being practiced in the South China Sea. If some members of ASEAN such as Vietnam and the Philippines formally team up with the US and Japan to 'contain' China, then the three multipolar Great Powers will only have the shared space of Central Asia between them to exercise strategic maneuverability. As a result, the Eurasian Heartland would become ground zero for the next regional destabilization, be it a 'Central Asian Spring' or an ISIl-like terrorist invasion, albeit one which has the potential to offset all three multipolar leaders in one fell swoop.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
The gratuitous killing of Sheikh Nimr came after months of appeals for clemency. The appeals were made not only by the government of Iran  the main Shiite power in the Middle East  but also from several international rights groups, owing to the dubious judicial process in Saudi Arabia and the abundant evidence attesting to Sheikh Nimr's innocence. That the House of Saud went ahead with his execution thus points to a deliberate act to provoke regional passions and in particular those of Iran.

The torching of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, the war of words, and the severance of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran strongly suggest that the explosive reaction was premeditated. Now Arab allies of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, among others, are following suite by cutting diplomatic channels with Tehran. Some commentators are even wondering if an all-out war will erupt in the region.

Significantly, the mayhem unleashed by the Saudi execution of Sheikh Nimr appears to have irked Washington and other Western powers who patronize the Saudi rulers. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration was "caught by surprise" and "expressed anger at the Saudis for negligent disregard for how it would inflame the region".

So why did the Saudi rulers decide to plunge the region into turmoil? Because Russia's military intervention in Syria has seriously spoiled the foreign conspiracy for regime change in that country. Furthermore, Russia's defeats against the array of illegally armed groups, such as Daesh and Nusra and their various offshoots, has exposed the sponsor links of these terror groups to foreign governments, in particular those in Ankara and Riyadh.

American political analyst Randy Martin says: "What seems to be emerging now is the repercussion from Russia blowing the cover off the conflict in Syria. Russia's military operations against the terror networks have dramatically exposed the Wahhabi Saudi rulers for what they are."

The analyst added: "Now that the House of Saud is exposed in its criminal machinations in Syria and its association with known terror groups, the Saudis have decided that their next best option is to incite a full-on war with Shiite Iran, and possibly even the Russians."

Martin pointed to the Russian airstrike on December 25 that eliminated the leadership of the jihadist militia, Jaish al-Islam, also known as Army of Islam. The strike in the militia's stronghold of East Ghouta, near the Syrian capital Damascus, killed its leader Zahran Alloush and other commanders.
There is already a clash within Europe, as many Eastern European nations openly disapprove of Merkel's policies of mass migration. They want to keep their national identities and refuse to "become Berlin's lackey in this demise" of the European continent, Robin said.

"It's time for Angela Merkel to redefine [her policies], it's time for her to return to a reason for the salvation of our continent, which is already very weak and now it's been put in danger by this lady," Robin wrote for Boulevard Voltaire.

According to the International Organization for Migration, (IOM) 990,671 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe since the beginning of the year. At the same time, 3,695 people died at sea while attempting to reach European shores. Since October 16, seven people per day have died on average.

Greece and Italy remain the key points of entry for refugees seeking asylum in the European Union. More than 800,000 people have arrived in Greece since the beginning of the year; approximately 57,000 of them arrived in December alone.
The journalists say the "fundamental and drastic" changes proposed were put before parliament to be voted on without the necessary inclusive public debate and in spite of strong objections by the KRRiT and many concerned bodies in Poland and abroad. They say the Polish government's plans directly contradict the commitments made by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in its 2012 Declaration on Public Service Media Governance.

I call on President of #Poland not to sign law on public service media governance and to uphold independence of public service TV and radio  Nils Muiznieks (@CommissionerHR) January 5, 2016

Media Manipulation

In a further letter to the Polish Government, the AEJ said: "The AEJ is deeply concerned that that the proposed reforms, if implemented, would effectively bring public service television and radio under the direct control of the government, involve the dismissal of respected journalists for political reasons, and lead to a systematic editorial bias in the content of PBS broadcasts in favor of the present government."

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has also written to the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, and to Members of the Polish Senate expressing its dismay at the media bill which would immediately "oust the supervisory and management bodies of TVP and Polish Radio and transfer the power of nomination and dismissal of their Board Members to a government minister."

"To preserve the integrity and independence of public service media as a symbol of a free and democratic country, we ask you in the strongest possible terms not to sign this measure into law, and certainly not without having first undertaken a careful analysis of its compatibility with the Polish constitution and the freedom and pluralism of the media, guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights," said Ingrid Deltenre, EBU Director General, in her letter.

So Poland's NEW Govt has begun to define the means by which it can seriously erode freedom of speech & the written word!!  Cliff Hagen (@tweethead) January 4, 2016

"The haste with which this new law has been rushed through Parliament strikes a discordant note about Poland and its respect for the rule of law and the democratic process."
If Europe fails to solve all of its problems in the near future the number of EU-sceptic Britons is likely to rise. And many experts say the problems are far from being resolved.

"Given that by any objective measure the EU is in a terrible mess, Im shocked that the 'in' campaign is still getting half," Charles Grant, director of the London-based Center for European Reform, told The Washington Post.

If Britain finally leaves the bloc this would have no precedents in the history of the EU. This will reverse what had been seen as the inexorable expansion of the union to bring peace and stability to the "historically bloody lands of Europe."

"A British exit could hasten a broader EU breakup, with continental leaders despairing that an already strained union may struggle to survive without one of its cornerstone members," the author underscored.

As a result, the United Kingdom is likely to fall apart, especially if Scotland revives its demand for independence. Washington, too, has much to lose if Britain votes for leaving.

"But all of that may not be enough to outweigh the anxieties of British voters who gaze across the English Channel and see nothing but trouble," the author wrote.

The cabinet of David Cameron is also in doubts on whether to stay or leave. According to the article, after the referendum Cameron may resign.

If Britain, the worlds fifth-largest economy and military, leaves the EU the bloc would be greatly diminished. It would also take Europes focus away from its other problems, which continue to demand urgent attention, the author concluded.
Should the Kurdish cantons win recognition as part of a political settlement in Syria, the Kurdish problem in Turkey  home to the largest Kurdish population in the Middle East  will stick out even more prominently as it dies after decades of non-solution, stressed the columnist.

On Dec. 26, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), an authority organization for Kurdish civic society groups, assembled an emergency meeting in Diyarbakir.

Speaking at the gathering, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples Democratic Party, said, This resistance will lead to victory. The Kurds from now on will hold the political will in their lands. The Kurds will perhaps have an independent state, a federal state, cantons or autonomous regions.

Although the DTK decision seems hardly applicable today, it is important for demonstrating that autonomy will be the minimal condition the Kurdish movement will implement in any future settlements.

So far, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sworn that the PKK militants will choke in the ditches they have dug in residential areas to keep the security forces away.

The co-chair of the PKK-dominated Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), Cemil Bayik responded in kind last week. No reason exists currently to end the armed struggle. Rather, the civil war in Turkey will intensify in the coming months, he said, Al-Monitor reported.

As the columnist pointed out, sustaining the war between the PKK and the government forces threatens to get spiral out of control for both sides. As a result, whatever the consequences of the grave developments that would take place, Turkeys real red lines, its borders, might be opened up for discussion, noted Gursel.
Last Sunday, Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran after protesters attacked its embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad. The protests occurred following the execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Riyadh.

Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia have been longtime rivals in the region. Fearing the rise of Iran's influence in the Middle East, Riyadh has consistently supported the enemies of Iran and repressed Shiite and any pro-Iranian demonstrations, La Tribune said.

"[The rivalry] is some 30 years old and is Cold War which doesn't have its name," said Thierry Coville, a researcher from the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS), according to the French newspaper.
"Iran boosts its defense capabilities in accordance with its objectives and its national interests," he said, according to IRNA News. He also added that the current situation in the Middle East required peace and security that can only be provided by the existence of strong military forces.

While Tehran has stressed that the program is in no way meant to provoke Washington, US officials have nonetheless expressed outrage. Military analysts say that the Emad missiles could, in theory, carry a nuclear warhead.

Last Wednesday, US officials speaking on condition of anonymity indicated that the US Treasury Department was preparing a new round of sanctions against companies and individuals associated with Irans test-firing of two ballistic missiles. Washington called these launches a violation of international law, though Tehran maintains that the tests were conducted in accordance with UN regulations and to be used for defensive purposes.

The threat of new penalties came as the international community is working to lift sanctions related to Tehrans nuclear program. Following the nuclear deal agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 nations  China, Russia, the US, the UK, France, and Germany  the Iranian government has worked steadily to eliminate its uranium supplies.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Poland has been a member of NATO since 1997.

"[Poland is planning] to create three additional units of the territorial defense on our eastern border, along with a simultaneous shift in the direction of the acting armed forces. We do not want the servicemen to be concentrated on the western border, as it was in 1989," Antoni Macierewicz told the Polska Zbrojna magazine on Monday.

Macierewicz also supported the idea of significantly increasing the number of Polish armed forces, from the current 80,000 servicemen to some 150,000.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  On Sunday, US Department of State spokesperson John Kirby said the United States was concerned about Saudi Arabia executing Shiite cleric and political activist Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others over the weekend on charges of terrorism.

"The [US] statement from the other day was fairly mild," Human Rights Watch Middle East researcher Adam Coogle told Sputnik on Monday. "Considering some of the rhetoric you would see about the crimes of the [Bashar] Assad regime in Syria or the Iranian human rights abuses, you dont see the same level of condemnation."

The United States, Coogle noted, should take a stronger moral stand in public statements against the executions and call on Saudi Arabia to clean up its justice system.
Erdogan had also been waging "amounts to a full-on war against Kurds" and had refused to remove its troops from Iraq as Baghdad demands; his government continues to benefit from its role in the illicit trade of oil that the Islamic State steals from Syria," Smyth pointed out.

It was ironic. Smyth added, that Turkey resorts to the World Trade Organization after shooting down a Russian jet at the end of last year  probably in Syrian air space.

Moreover, Erdogans plea was also farcical because the WTO itself had been reduced to little more than a hollow shell, Smyth explained.

"The footnote here is that the WTO is now almost officially meaningless  the Doha Round having been pronounced a failure."

The latest Turkish initiative revealed Erdogans political bankruptcy and loss of credibility on the international stage, Smyth pointed out.

"At this point, I seriously question whether anyone on any side takes Erdogans Turkey the least bit seriously other than whatever extent they can make use of it."

Erdogans plea to the WTO was a tacit admission that Turkey was being hit hard by the Russian economic sanctions, which were imposed after Turkish Air Force shot down the Russian Sukhoi bomber jet on November 24, US author and Middle East affairs expert Dan Lazare told Sputnik.

"I think it's clear that Russian trade sanctions are proving painful. But I don't see how the WTO can decide in Turkey's favor while saying nothing about US trade sanctions against Russia."

Although Turkey, a key US ally in the Middle East, was reeling from the effects of the Russian sanctions, the economies of Crimea in Russia and of Central Asian nations with close ties to Moscow looked to benefit rapidly from the move, Lazare pointed out.

"The effects of such trade wars are never entirely negative. It's not the worst thing if Russians vacation in the Crimea or import fruits and vegetables from central Asia. Turkey's loss will be their gain  and Russia's as well."

The shooting down of the Sukhoi aircraft, costing the life of one of its crew, had forced the Russian government to take serious action in response, Lazare observed.

"Such measures are less than ideal, economically speaking. But how Russia can avoid retaliating against such outrageous behavior?" he asked.
For instance, reporter Serena Shim, who had exposed the links between Ankara and Daesh, was murdered two days after receiving threats from the Turkish government, according to Maupin.

However, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed and nothing concealed that will not be known. Daesh fighters have confessed on video that they received military training in Turkey, the political analyst underscores.

"The only reason that Turkey's role in funding and strengthening ISIS [Daesh] is not known is the obedience of the Western mainstream press. The US media is determined to demonize and discredit the Syrian Arab Republic, Russia, Iran, and all the countries that are actively defeating ISIS. While following Wall Street's script, Western analysts and commentators refuse to acknowledge what is very obvious: in Turkey, a pro-western regime and member of NATO is facilitating and actively supporting ISIS terrorism," Maupin narrates.
At the same, Iran's aggressive response and its attempts to "arm its henchmen throughout the Middle East, so that they could fight the Sunni Saudis proteges even more desperately" would be also an unreasonable move because it would disappoint the world powers which only recently brought the state out of the isolation, the author argued.

And yet, all these reactions, as well as Nimrah's execution fit in the logic of the absurd, prevailing in the Middle East, where the parties to the conflict used to increasingly sacrifice long-term prospects for short-term benefits, Bohmer concluded.

Another German journalist Andreas Zumach argued that the world is currently witnessing the start of the fourth war in the Persian Gulf.

In his article for the German newspaper Tagesanzeiger, the author wrote that the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia undermines the chances of ending the war in Syria.

"In the middle-term perspective, the conflict between Riyadh and Tehran may even turn into a fourth war in the Gulf that can surpass all the previous three since 1980 in the number of victims, the amount of damage and negative consequences for the entire region, the journalist wrote.

The author also argued that in this situation, Germany, the United States and other allies of Riyadh should stop all weapons supplies and other forms of military, economic or political support for Saudi Arabia as the country may perceive them as a motivation or assistance in its further struggle against Iran.
The bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) clinic in the Afghan city of Kunduz on October 3 and the killing of Iraqi soldiers near Fallujah on December 18 by the US Air Force has predictably remained unpunished.

"I hope Iraqis will understand that this is a reflection of things that happen in combat," US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said with no trace of compassion, concluding that "there are faults on both sides."

According to Cloughley, Carter's statement is a "shocking evidence" of "his indifference to other nations' pride and dignity," let alone "his complete lack of human feeling."

"Therefore, he [Ashton Carter] is ideally suited to direct the aggressive activities of the United States around the world. While the (admitted) recent hits and misses of US airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the death of only a few dozen people  ten allied soldiers along with forty doctors and patients (but only three children, that time)  the confrontational antics of other of his combat aircraft are of wider international significance," Cloughley emphasizes.
Intended as the replacement for Bazalt missiles, introduced in the early 1970s, the Vulkan features improved supersonic speed of Mach 2.8, an estimated range of 700 kilometers and may be equipped with a 350-kiloton nuclear warhead.

The purpose of this dreadful missile system is to allow Russian submarines and missile cruisers to engage aircraft carrier strike groups from safe ranges.

Just like its predecessor, the Vulkan covers much of the distance to its target at a high altitude and swoops down to just over 10 meters during the final stage of the flight which makes it virtually invisible to enemy radar.

Boasting a cruising speed of over 600 meters a second and in excess of 1,000 meters when nearing the target, the Vulkan remains steps ahead of the subsonic Harpoons and Tomahawks. Its 500 kg warhead carries enough punch to severely damage a destroyer, a cruiser or even an aircraft carrier.

The guidance system combines midcourse autopilot, terminal radar seeker, digital computer and improved performance against electronic countermeasures with the ability to select a target in the terminal phase of the flight.

Experts say that even though the Vulkan missile came along in the late 1980s, it still remains a top gun no one has yet been able to beat.
The poll considered responses from 2,500 working-age American citizens, both with and without health insurance. They were asked whether they had problems paying for medical bills, and the results released on Tuesday are quite disappointing.

More than half  53%  of those uninsured admitted that they struggled trying to cover expenses from medical treatment. One woman confessed she had no money to pay for a $636 ultrasound that she had before miscarrying her baby, the Guardian reported.

"I was eligible for pregnancy-related Medicaid, but it wasn't billed right and a year and a half later I got the bill," her testimony read. "I am still trying to get it straightened out."
The second potential conflict could be caused by the rise of revolutionary sentiments in the Islamic world. In many Muslim countries  from Afghanistan to Algeria  there has been the rise of radical Islamic movements that are seeking to return to the times when the armies of Muslim nations conquered the world, imposing Islam and Sharia Law to the whole world, including the West. According to the Italian journalist, the second military conflict could be caused by the rise of one of murderous groups, raging in the Philippines, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya and other countries.

And the last conflict is taking place within the Islamic world itself, a clash between Shiites and Sunnis. Major Sunni states  Saudi Arabia and Turkey  are in violent opposition against Iran and Shiites in Iraq and Syria. The current Sunni-Shiite conflict is currently being waged across Iraq, Syria and Yemen, Il Giornale said.

Where does Europe fit in this world? It's simple: Europe follows Washington's orders. If the United States says impose sanctions against Russia, the EU does it; when Washington orders the EU to take in all the refugees arriving from the Middle East and Africa  Europeans follow orders, Alberoni said.
Basically, a home security system and a home alarm system are the same, but the difference between the two lies in the way these are ins...
A barn fire at Classy Lane Training Centre in Puslinch, Ont. started at roughly 11 p.m. on Monday, January 4 and claimed the lives of more than 40 horses. Trot Insider can confirm the names of the 39 Standardbred racehorses, 1 Thoroughbred, and 3 Miniatures, that perished. The list includes millionaire pacer Apprentice Hanover.

An article by the CBC states that firefighters from five departments  including Hamilton, Guelph and Cambridge  were called to the blaze and that there is no word at this point as to what caused the deadly fire.

Trot Insider has learned that the fire destroyed Barn 1, which housed horses trained by Ben Wallace, Roger Mayotte, Chantal Mitchell, Kris Di Cenzo, Dan Lagace and Floyd Amos.

On Wednesday, the names of all 43 horses that perished in the blaze were confirmed, including 39 Standardbreds. The list of the names of horses that lost their lives in the blaze appears below.

Floyd Amos Stable

Hasty Heart (Owned by Floyd H. Amos [Bright, Ont.])

Big Bang Ballykeel (Owned by Floyd H. Amos [Bright, Ont.])

Kris Di Cenzo Stable

Beautiful Vista, owned by Kris & Anthony Di Cenzo, Hamilton; John Baldasty, Oakville, Ont.

Distant Cam, owned by Madith Peterson, Oakville, Ont.

Lost Glory, owned by Madith Peterson, Oakville, Ont.

No Serious Matter, owned by Kris Di Cenzo, Hamilton; John Baldasty, Oakville, Ont.

Dan Lagace Stable

Roger Mayotte Stable

Dreamliner (Owned by Just In Time Stable [Mississauga, Ont.] and The Fine Whine Stable [Toronto, Ont.])

Georges Legacy (Ross Warriner, Doug Millard, Louis Liebenau, Ben Mudry and Roger Mayotte)

Vintage Rose (Owned by Gary G. Smith [Burlington, Ont.])

Weight Time (Owned by Just In Time Stable [Mississauga, Ont.])

Chantal Mitchell Stable

Mitchell also lost three miniature horses: Daisy, Marguerita and Sammy (owned by Mel Tilley)

Ben Wallace Stable

Everybody in the horse racing industry is encouraged to donate funds to the affected horsepeople via an official GoFundMe page that has been set up by the Central Ontario Standardbred Association. For more on the COSA initiative, or to contact COSA, click here.

Classy Lanes co-owner, Barb Millier, who is currently in Florida, has been cited as saying that her husband, co-owner Jamie Millier, is now trying to get back from Florida after having received the horrible news. Barb was cited as saying that it is too early to speculate as to what started the blaze.

Its a sad occasion, Puslinch Fire and Rescue Services chief fire prevention officer, Jason Benn, said Tuesday morning. The article states that the preliminary cost of the damage is estimated to be between $4 and $6 million, and that the fire is not considered suspicious at this time.

An emotional Ben Wallace took time out of his hectic Tuesday morning to discuss the tragedy. In terms of his training business, Wallace was quoted as saying, Its gone. I have nothing. I have nothing. I dont even have a stopwatch. Nothing. Anything I owned going forward, as far as my profession, is gone. The OBrien Award winning trainer went on to say, Its the horses that we lost which is the tough thing to stomach. Buildings you can build, but these athletes that we have, we love and we cherish. We work with them every day, and theyre gone. To listen to Wallaces interview, click here.

It took less than 24 hours for some of the major players in North American harness racing to step up and call for the industry to help support those affected by the blaze. Jeff Gural, Ron Burke, Mark Weaver, Michael Bruscemi and Tony OSullivan have all announced that they are doing what they can to help, and they want others to follow their lead. For complete information, click here.

The Toronto Star caught up with affected trainers Dan Lagace and Kris Di Cenzo, as well as owners Barb and Jamie Millier for comment.

As trainers, you lost everything. You lose all your equipment, so its hard to know what youre going to do next, said Lagace, who had seven horses in his care. The financial loss, you can build to get over. But knowing that theyre lying there, its heartbreaking.

I dont really have a clear head right now, said Di Cenzo. Just a bad day, bad night. I dont know what to say.

Additional details will be posted when more information becomes available.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to everyone affected by this tragedy.

(With files from CBC and 680 News)
Its gone. I have nothing. I have nothing. I dont even have a stopwatch. Nothing. Anything I owned going forward, as far as my profession, is gone.

An emotional Ben Wallace took time out of his hectic Tuesday morning (January 5) to discuss the tragic barn fire that took place the night before at Classy Lane Training Centre in Puslinch, Ont. (To view a video report on the fire, click here.)

The deadly blaze was contained to Barn 1, which housed horses trained by Ben Wallace, Roger Mayotte, Chantal Mitchell, Kris Di Cenzo, Dan Lagace and Floyd Amos. It is estimated that 43 Standardbred racehorses lost their lives in the fire. Wallace has stated that he lost all 17 of his horses in the blaze, including millionaire Somebeachsomewhere bay Apprentice Hanover, Whiskey N Pie, Proven Effective and Whistle Jimmy K.

Its devastating. These are (the horses), by and large, family members to us, Wallace told Moore in the Morning on NewsTalk 1010.

It (the fire) occurred around 11 (p.m.) and there were people coming back from racing at Woodbine, but the smoke was so dense that you couldnt go near it, Wallace explained. They (the horses) probably all suffocated before they perished. I think there are probably 42 or 43 (horses that lost their lives), because the barn holds 46, but I think there were a couple of empty stalls, but most of the other ones were full.

Wallace wanted to point out that he is not the only conditioner to be decimated by the blaze, as fellow trainers Roger Mayotte, Chantal Mitchell, Kris Di Cenzo, Dan Lagace and Floyd Amos also had horses in the barn. Wallace states that the other trainers in the barn are all in the same situation. Its hard to imagine where we are going forward, he said. Itll just have to be a day-to-day process to see if we can regroup, I guess.

Standardbred horsepeople have shown absolutely resiliency when faced with tough odds. When asked, Wallace chose to not look to far down the road, but did state that the horsepeople and owners affected by the tragedy will have to deal with some tough days ahead.

Youd have to regroup and start over again somehow, Wallace said, in terms of trainers rebuilding their businesses. Its a tough road to hoe, but, again, its too difficult to think down the road, its just a current thing that we have to deal with right now.

Its the horses that we lost which is the tough thing to stomach. Buildings you can build, but these athletes that we have, we love and we cherish. We work with them every day, and theyre gone.

Everybody in the horse racing industry is encouraged to donate funds to the affected horsepeople via an official GoFundMe page that has been set up by the Central Ontario Standardbred Association. For more on the COSA initiative, or to contact COSA, click here.

(With files from NewsTalk 1010)
People wishing to make donations to the victims of the tragic barn fire at Classy Lane Training Centre are being asked to do so through an official GoFundMe page which has been set up by the Central Ontario Standardbred Association.

COSA has set up the official GoFundMe page, which can be accessed by clicking here. COSA has asked that all online donations be made via the page.

Donations can also be mailed to:

Central Ontario Standardbred Association.

PO Box 297

Campbellville, ON L0P 1B0

Cheques should be made out to "Classy Lane Barn Fire."

The fire destroyed Barn 1 which housed horses trained by Ben Wallace, Roger Mayotte, Chantal Mitchell, Kris Di Cenzo, Dan Lagace and Floyd Amos.

The preliminary cost of the damage is estimated to be between $4 and $6 million, and the fire is not considered suspicious at this time.

For further details, please contact COSA by calling 905-854-2672 or by visiting the organizations website.

For more information on the fire, click here.

Officials with the Standardbred Race Track Chaplaincy have announced that they would like to respectfully express the organizations deepest sympathies to the owners, trainers, and grooms that were affected by the fire.

In light of the tragic events, Pat Harding of the Standardbred Race Track Chaplaincy of Canada has initiated a project to contact trainers who are in need of grooms and grooms from the affected stables that will now need to find new employment.

Trainers in need of a groom can contact Pat Harding at 905-876-8543, or any groom in need can contact Harding at the same number.

An equipment/stable supplies drive has also been established for the fire victims. Anyone wishing to donate items can do so at Woodbine on Thursday and Friday evening. Arrangements can also be made to have items picked up from other tracks and/or training centres or farms by contacting Jackie Panko: [email protected] or call 226-343-1925.
Er is iets heel griezeligs aan de gang in Nederland. Dat wij geleidelijk aan in een totalitaire 'democratie' wegzinken wordt steeds ...
These are the bits and pieces that make up my life.
LABELLE, FL. -- A young male was an apparent murder victim at the Port LaBelle Inn this morning, presumably from a handgun bullet. On scene ...












Or to give it its full title, Domaine Boissezon-Guiraud.





Pomplia Guiraud explained that they had had problems with Chateau Guiraud in Sauternes, even though Guiraud is her husbands family name and the family have been in Roquebrun for 200 years. And as well as vineyards in Roquebrun, they also have vineyards in the nearby village of Causse-et-Veyran, and that is where Boissezon comes in, with a wedding some fifty years ago. Altogether they have 58 hectares, one third in Roquebrun and two thirds in Causse-et-Veyran. Pomplia comes from Romania; she met Michel Guiraud when he was there on holiday. He took over the family estate thirty years ago, and began bottling his wine about twenty years ago. And they make a diverse range of wines, which we tasted in the old cellar.













2014 Les Hirondelles, Pays de lHerault - 7.00 - 7.00

A pure Sauvignon. Classic fermentation. Fresh pithy fruit on the nose and rounded Sauvignon fruit on the palate, with some varietal character. A pleasant glass of wine, without any great depth.













2014 Les Petits Cailloux, Pays de lHerault  5.50  5.50

White blossom on the nose. Rounded ripe palate, with some texture and mouth feel. Fresh fruit. Medium weight and easy drinking.

And with this 2015 harvest they will make a St. Chinian Blanc for the first time from Marsanne, Roussanne and Grenache blanc.





2014 Rose, La Dame Rose, Pays de lHerault  5.50  5.50

A blend of Mourvedre and Cinsaut that could equally well be a St. Chinian. Light colour. Light fruit on the nose and quite a rounded palate, with some ripe fruit, dry raspberries. All saigne. The Mourvedre gives it some structure making it a food rose. From vineyards in Roquebrun. From vineyards in Roquebrun.





2013 Grenache Noir, Sans Pareil, Pays de lHerault  5.50  5.50

Not made in 2014 as there was not enough Grenache, as the vines suffered from drought in Causse-et-Veyran. Nor are all the vines in Causse-et-Veyran are classified as St Chinian. Medium young colour. Soft ripe fruit on both the nose and palate. Quite ripe and spicy, soft and fleshy and a slightly jammy note on the finish. Easy drinking.













2014 Les Cerises, St. Chinian  7.00  7.00

From Roquebrun, but it doesnt say so on the label. 55% Syrah with Grenache Noir, Carignan and Cinsaut. Medium colour. Quite soft ripe fruit on the nose. Quite rounded and spicy; easy drinking.

lutte raisonnee rather than organic viticulture. They have just three employees and would need several more if they were to be organic. They practicerather than organic viticulture. They have just three employees and would need several more if they were to be organic.





2014 St Chinian. Comme a Cayenne  9.50  9.50

Each wine always comes from the same plot each year, and this plot, called Brusse Noir, is particularly difficult to work, with very stony soil. Hence the reference to French Guyana where convicts were sent for forced labour. This is a blend of 85% Grenache Noir and 15% Carignan, picked together and fermented together. Medium colour; quite ripe spicy nose. Medium weight palate. A touch of rustic tannin from the Carignan. Aged in vat . Refreshing drinking.





2011 Chateau Boissezon-Guiraud, St. Chinian  7.00  7.00

Elevage in vat. Medium colour. Lightly smoky and a bit stalky on the nose. Better palate with some appealing peppery fruit. A touch confit on the finish. From the clay and limestone soil of Causse-et-Veyran. A blend of Syrah, Grenache Noir, Carignan and Cinsaut.in vat. Medium colour. Lightly smoky and a bit stalky on the nose. Better palate with some appealing peppery fruit. A touchon the finish.





2012 La Suite dans les Idees, St. Chinian  11.00  11.00

Mainly Mourvedre, with some Grenache and Carignan. Aged in vat. They seem to have a slightly ambivalent attitude to oak barrels, using them up to 2006 and then trying again in 2012. Quite solid ripe fruit. Quite concentrated, with a sweet note, and also a slightly green note. Like virtually everyone else in Roquebrun, they dont mention Roquebrun on the label, observing that it is not very well known, so doesnt really add anything  though Pomplia did now admit that they were beginning to have second thoughts.













2012 Cap Negre, Pays de lHerault  10.00  10.00

This is the name of plot. A pure Alicante Bouschet, from 30 year old vines. Quite solid and sturdy with black fruit on the nose. Quite tannic and dense. Aged in vat. An amusing back label written in medical terms , suggesting a moderate consumption and that it would go well with black chocolate.





2010 Terre Promise, St. Chinian  15.00  15.00

Aged in vat. For some reason I did not find this very harmonious. There was sturdy fruit and some peppery spice, but with an awkward edge on the finish. Maybe it needs a bit more bottle age. 85% Syrah, 15% Carignan.





rose, as well as a white St. Chinian. And maybe a new red cuvee. They are full of ideas. And then we went to see some of the vineyards on the outskirts of the village. And projects for the future? Maybe another, as well as a white St. Chinian. And maybe a new red. They are full of ideas. And then we went to see some of the vineyards on the outskirts of the village.












Wavy nails, thick nails, no nails  Tchi Lynn Ho Le has seen it all. In her 15 years in the industry, Le has developed a knack for dealing with damaged nails.

Although she does not treat nail diseases or infections (youll have to see a doctor for that), Le often sees people who have healed from ingrown nails or other abnormalities but were left with a less-than-pretty outcomes.

I solve nail problems, said Le, 50, adding that she enjoys making people feel proud of their nails.

Les new Kelso nail salon, ManiPedis, had a soft opening in mid-December plans a grand opening Jan. 15. The salon, located at 611 West Cowlitz Way, offers full set fake nails, gel, fill-ins, manicure, pedicure and silk wraps.

Le also specializes in nail art  the shop has a shelf of colorful fake nails with intricate designs  such as flowers, polka dots, leaves and sunset scenes  that she painted herself. Eventually, she hopes to offer waxing and hair services as well, but she needs to find a hair stylist to rent a booth first.

Le said she previously owned a nail shop in Kansas, but she sold it to attend cosmetology school in 2011. She moved to Washington in 2013 to be closer to family. She worked at a couple nail salons in Longview briefly before striking out on her own, she said.

Le has spent six months setting up ManiPedis, which formerly housed a foot massage parlor. She estimates she has invested $50,000 into remodeling the shop and purchasing new equipment, such as manicure spa chairs with MP3 player hook-ups.

One of her loyal clients, Debbie Renner, said she met Le while she was working at another salon last year and was immediately impressed.

Shes got great attention to detail  and its more of a personalized experience, Renner said.

Le added that what will make ManiPedis special is my skills, my personal touch and going out of my way to take care of my clients.

The business can be reached at 360-703-3730. The shop is open 9:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and on Sunday afternoons by appointment.

AT&T opens remodeled retail store

AT&T has opened an expanded retail store at at 1015 Ocean Beach Highway in Longview. The 2,700-square-foot store offers options for phone devices, accessories, and services.

In the past three years, AT&T says it has invested $1.7 billion in its network in Washington. AT&T has 39 company-owned retail locations throughout Washington and employs about 4,500 people across the state.

The new Longview store is open Monday through Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. To find the nearest AT&T store or device support center, visit att.com/find-a-store or att.com/dsc. You can also make an appointment first at att.com/storeappointment. The Longview phone number is 360-501-6737.

Bottom lines

KapStone Paper & Packaging has announced the following retirements, all effective Jan. 1: Dennis C. Higgins, PM superintendent, after 28 years; Robert Sudar, maintenance supervisor, 34 years; LeAndra Rogers, accounts payable III, 25 years; Robert E. Sorensen, chip screen op-convey tender, 42 years; Ronald M. Pihl, reliability engineer, 38 years; Steven E. Leach, planner III, 36 years; Richard L. Longbons, reliability engineer, 35 years; and Lawrence A. Chambers, maintenance supervisor, 39 years.
Feel the Bern!

Socialism is all over America. Public schools, post offices, police and firemen services, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare and other things your taxes pay for. Demark and other countries are clean (a green way to rid themselves of trash) and people have quality lives. In Germany they work 35 hours a week, have mandatory paid leaves, and are more productive than we are. I do not like seeing people allowed to fall through the cracks or worked to death with little time to enjoy life. It makes our country a sad place to live. Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the greediest motives will somehow work for the benefit of all. We all know that doesnt work well. The top 1 percent gets wealthier and our middle class shrinks. We all do well when we all do well. When only the top percent do well the rest of us suffer. I have listened to Bernie Sanders and I feel the Bern!

Sherry Davis

Longview

Year of fear

Fr. Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest based in NYC. In his most recent newsletter, he writes: I call 2015 the Year of Fear. It was the year when frightened people, especially frightened white men and women, became the go-to-constituency for demagogues hoping to seize power, (knowing that many) have given up on freedom because fear had vanquished their courage.

Fear of dark skin, fear of immigrants, fear of Islam, fear of terrorists, fear of being forcibly disarmed, fear of science, fear of knowledge, fear of truth, fear of the Gospel, and, at bottom, fear of life itselfso many fearful people, so many exploiters of fear.

And the ones of whom these constituencies should be (most) afraid of...(are) the oligarchs trying for takeover of the nation.

But still we hope...Still we believe that common sense will prevail... Still we make plans for the future, (even though) some will do everything possible to deny that future. Still we try to heed the words of Jesus, Dont be afraid!

Rev. John Steppert

Longview

Religious rights

I have read in the newspaper that some Somali workers were fired because of a dispute over the time for Muslim prayers. If that is so, should not all religions be given the same consideration under equal freedom rights where no one can deny a person from praying at a time they choose? I worked and retired from a paper mill in Longview. and I am sure that If I told them that I wanted time set aside for me to walk off my job to go and pray I would have been told to keep on walking. I beleive that when a person comes into the USA to live and work they should abide by our laws and rules. No one should have special religious rights over what another religion believes.

Dan Moorehead

Rainier, Ore.

Save our community

Ive lived in Longview for 40 years. I raised a family and am a retired elementary school teacher. Longview is not as environmentally clean/safe as it was then.

Im sure that we want to live in a safe, healthy community. Im sharing my information about how our community could be devastated (Recall BPs Gulf 2010 oil spill).

The Tesoro-Savage Oil Refinery proposes building the largest oil terminal in North America on the Columbia River in Vancouver. In the event of an oil spill it would destroy the fish, flora, other wildlife, environment and recreation. Oil trains will overload our unsafe rail tracks and impede traffic; including emergency vehicles. Remember Canadas train oil spill accident, that burned many victims?

On Tuesday, Jan. 5, there is a hearing/rally at the fairgrounds in Vancouver from 1 to 11 p.m. The rally starts at 5 p.m. I am inviting each Cowlitz County Citizen to attend to help save our community.

Rebecca Myhre

Longview
Between January 2003 and September 2006, out of 138 letters to the editor that I sent to the Financial Times before I placed them on this blog they published these 15 . Not bad! Thank you FT!Unfortunately, since then and until the very last day of the decade, out of some 1.000 letters that you can find here, FT published none, zero, zilch. Of course FT is under no obligation whatsoever to publish any of my letters and of course one should not exclude the possibilities that my letters might have quite dramatically gone from bad to worse yet one wonders.My usual suspects are:1. Someone in FT with a delicate ego feels his or her importance diminished by giving voice to a lowly non PhD from a developing country daring to opine on many issues of developed countries.2. That FT has some sort of conflict of interest with the credit rating agencies that makes it hard for them to give too much relevance to someone who considers they have been given too much powers.3. The FT establishment had perhaps decided there were only macro economic problems and not any financial regulation problems, and wanted to hear no monothematic contradictions on that.4. That FT feels slightly embarrassed when someone repeatedly asks the emperor-is-naked type question of what is the purpose of the banks and realizing this was something FT should have itself asked a long time ago.5. It is way too much oversight for FT to handle.6. Or am I just supposed to be a living example of one half of the Financial Times motto, namely that of "without favour"Which one do you believe is closest to the truth?
tech2 News Staff

Asus has released a press statement comfirming to launch its Zenfone Zoom in India this month. The device made its debut at CES last year, and the last couple of months Asus has been hinting at its launch. Now, the company released a statement, "Scheduled to hit the Indian market later this month, the new addition to ASUS expanding smartphone range, the imaging-masterpiece will truly enable the users to See The World Up Close!"

The highlight of the device is the 13MP rear snapper that supports 3X optical zoom, Laser Auto Focus and 10 lens elements with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). The device also features Asus' Pixelmaster technology that helps capture better images in low light conditions sans flash.

There are two variants of the device - one with an Intel Atom Quad Core Z3580 processor clocked at 2.3GHz and another with an Intel Atom Quad Core Z3590 (up to 2 cores running at 2.5GHz). It is still unclear, which variant wil make it to the Indian market.

Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, 4G LTE (Cat 4) and microUSB 2.0. The Android Lollipop based smartphone comes with ZenUI on top.

Besides, the specs sheet also includes a 5.5-inch 1080p display covered with Gorilla Glass 4, 4GB RAM, a 3000mAh battery and storage options from 64GB to 128GB. It also packs in a microSD card slot with support for cards up to 128GB. The device is slated for a US release in February at $399, and the company will reportedly disclose further details by 20 January.

There is no word on India pricing or launch date yet.
hidden

By Arihant Panagariya

In all the hoopla over Free Basics, the consumers wish-list has already been pre-ordained by self-proclaimed saviours of the internet. Why? Because, currently, about a quarter of Indias population is estimated to have access to internet and the number is set to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years and decades. Everyone, of course, wants a share of the pie and has huge stakes involved.

Thankfully, much has changed since April last year. Then, it was more or less a one-sided debate on net neutrality with Flipkart and Airtel forced to abort their zero-rating plans. This time, Facebook is at least putting up a fight. It has published advertisements, asked people to give missed calls, send in letters to TRAI informing it of their opinion.

Zuckerberg himself has reached out by penning a piece for an influential daily. True, those clamouring for Zuckerbergs head may have legitimate concerns and fears. What was the need to change the name from Internet.Org to Free Basics? Why did Facebook change its privacy terms now and not then? Why is Facebook not giving free data instead? Why does it still have the option to reject websites and apps to be available on its platform unless they meet its terms and conditions? What is in it for Facebook to become altruistic and provide access to internet to millions? Why does Facebook not want to explore other alternatives?

There may be much to be cynical about Facebook and its ambition, but then it is a corporation whose sole motive, in all probability, is profit making.

But then what do we expect from the current discourse?

That such a complex issue has been broken down for the majority by a bunch of comedians and musicians is nothing but ridiculous. That most of us are sharing these videos is even more comical. That policymakers in Delhi could be influenced by such means is dangerous and worrying.

That such an important debate remained one-sided for so long says more about us than about those who are preaching us morality and teaching us economics. In their own language, all of us just got roasted.

It is hardly surprising then, that someone as respected as Nandan Nilekani has proposed an alternative to the Free Basics plan in the form of a government-backed Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme for consumers.

He feels the government should offer a free data pack of 120MB annually by linking peoples SIM cards to their Aadhaar numbers. While it is true that the government may be able to afford the scheme, the larger question is why involve the government at all when private entrepreneurs are willing to do it themselves?

Someone needs to urgently remind Nilekani of the telecom revolution in India, which was brought about by private companies and not by the government. The fact that about 800 million people in India own a mobile phone with one of the lowest calling rates in the world is a testimony to what entrepreneurs can do, provided the government provides a competitive, balanced and a stable ecosystem.

Of course, issues such as call drops or internet speeds do bother us on a daily basis. And these problems exist primarily because of the limited spectrum that the government offers up for auction and the fact that we havent further opened up the sector to greater competition. Our demands should revolve around this and not on more government intervention.

Nilekani accuses Free Basics of going against the spirit of openness of Internet in the guise of being pro-poor.

Free Basics, first, is an option and not a compulsion on any consumer.

Second, there is no threat, at least for now, that it will block, throttle or create fast/slow lanes. If and when there are competition issues, any individual or a company is free to approach the Competition Commission. Nilekani is, in fact, undermining the role of CCI, which has full authority to decide on any anti-trust issues. But, to not allow any legitimate business model to operate just because we fear consumer interests might be harmed, is doing a great disservice to the consumer himself.

Nilekani further asks the government to enact laws protecting Net Neutrality. Fortunately, he stops short of pushing for a Constitutional amendment to include the Right to Internet as a Fundamental Right.

Nilekani is behaving like a true soldier of the Congress. In all seriousness, the Internet is dynamic and constantly changing. Nobody, least of all the regulators, can foresee what business models or circumstances might come up in the future, and such laws may only end up harming those it seeks to protect, namely, the consumers. History is a decent source of information where restrictions and regulations have only been detrimental to the industry at large.

Nilekani, himself an immensely successful entrepreneur and now one of the top angel investors in start-ups, should allow the market to play its role. There are choices that consumers may make that can surprise each and everyone. And consumers will have more choices at their disposal through the market and not through the government.

This objective of equal and open Internet should be replaced by a policy whose sole aim is consumer welfare. And such zero-rating or differentiated pricing plans, as long as they are not anti-competitive, deserve a chance.

But we have been bought out and brought down by so much fear that it has become fashionable, noble and even patriotic to stand up against Facebook.

Of course Zuckerberg is no saint, and is behaving just as any pragmatic businessman would. He is doing it for his own company and not for his love of India. As long as its competitive and legally contractual, Facebook will only help connect low-income consumers to internet, even if it does end up making substantial money.

But we have bowed down to online activism, which has allowed us to overestimate what Facebook can do, and underestimate what our own domestic start-ups/companies can do. That Facebook will be able to capture the entire market without any stiff competition is undermining our own entrepreneurial capabilities and strength.

So, in essence, you do not trust the private industry because you feel they will divide and fragment the Internet only for their pursuit of profit.

You do not trust credible institutions (CCI) because you feel it may not be able to prevent the creation of a monopoly on Internet services.

You do not trust the consumer because you feel he/she may be duped by various commercial interests.

You do not trust domestic entrepreneurs or start ups because how can you compete with a global giant? Your only hope is the government which may come out with another set of restrictive rules that limits competition and retards innovation. This is nothing but populism at its worst.

But then, in a country where majority of its politicians, administrators and even voters are either on the left or the right of Mao, it is exactly the kind of direction our debates around policies would take. And in that respect, it is not difficult to pick who the winner will be in this debate.
tech2 News Staff

As of now there are those who hate the idea of Facebook's Free Basics and those who do stand for it. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is fed up of the comments as well. It recently asked all those who were supporting Facebook's Free Basics to be specific and not go with set template that social network has been automating for its users to support its initiative. But now there seems to be other ideas emanating from the whole Free Basics discussion.

Nandan Nilekani, Indian entrepreneur, bureaucrat and politician, is now the newest to oppose the Facebook Free Basics campaign. And he doesn't just stop at complaints, but provides some valuable solutions as well.

In a recent post in the Times of India blog, Nilekani pointed out a simpler and leaner idea that will not just get a few million on board the internet, but give them the freedom to choose what they want to access. The idea works perfectly with the net neutrality debate and according to his calculation, will benefit the millions who are currently offline and at the end of it all keep everyone including the Government happy.

Penned down in his article along with Viral Shah, the gent claims that his idea is " based on the success of LPG DBT or Pahal, where over 100 million families receive LPG subsidy in their bank accounts.".

He went on to explain how the government could offer a similar Data Pack Direct Benefit Transfer(DBT) scheme wherein that offers 120MB of data annually to every subscriber with the first 10MB free every month.

He goes on to show that how it makes every bit of sense as well, "Even with all existing 400 million data users plus 400 million new data users being offered a free Data Pack DBT, the cost to the government would be 30/user x 800 million users = 2,400 crore a year. People may buy multiple SIMs for free data, but this problem is easily solved by linking mobile numbers to Aadhaar numbers (now held by 950 million people) so that one person can get access to only one Data Pack DBT."

A fool-proof plan indeed, but certainly sounds a lot better than what Facebook is rooting for. Clearly, the biggest problem with Free Basics is not what its up to, but what it disguises in its promotions that seems to be annoying everyone. That would essentially be a closed internet with plenty of filters and boundaries. Indeed, everybody needs to read between the lines before they stand for or against it.
tech2 News Staff

At an event held in New Delhi today, Lenovo introduced the heavily anticipated Lenovo K4 Note smartphone at a price of Rs 11,999. First launched in India, the company says that plans to manufacture more and more smartphones in India. In addition, the company is also offering five different wood designs as well. The device will be available via Amazon India starting January 19, for which registrations open at 3PM today.

The company has also launched a VR headset for the K4 Note in partnership with ANT VR, which can be purchased separately at Rs 1,299, or with the device itself for Rs 12,499 respectively. It's predecessor, the K3 Note was one of the most successful devices for the company and sales crossed 1.2 million in six months.

In terms of specifications, the smartphone features a 5.5-inch FHD display at 401ppi along with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. The device is aimed primarily for multimedia consumption. It comes with a curved back and is 3.8mm in thickness. It is powered by a octa-core 64-bit Mediatek MT6753 processor paired with 3GB RAM. It comes equipped with dual front firing speaker by Dolby along with Dolby Atmos surround sound. One will also find a fingerprint scanner on the smartphone.

The Lenovo K4 Note includes an internal storage of 16GB which can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card. One will find a 13MP rear camera with dual-LED flash and a 5MP front facing camera. The K4 Note runs Android 5.1 Lollipop layered with Vibe UI. Connectivity features include dual-SIM slots, 4G LTE support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, USB OTG and A-GPS. A 3,300mAh battery completes the package.
hidden

Finland's Nokia said it has gained control of French counterpart Alcatel-Lucent following its 15.6-billion-euro ($17 billion) all-share offer and the two telecom equipment makers would start to combine their operations next week.

The Alcatel acquisition will put Nokia into a stronger position to compete with Sweden's Ericsson and China's Huawei in a market for telecom network gear where limited growth and tough competition are pressuring prices.

The French stock market authority said interim results from the offer showed Nokia would hold around 79 percent of Alcatel shares.

The offers in France and the United States will be reopened this month, and the final results will be published in February.

Nokia said it will move quickly to press on with integration ahead of the formal closure of the deal, expected during the first quarter.

"As of January 14, 2016, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent will offer a combined end-to-end portfolio of the scope and scale to meet the needs of our global customers," Nokia Chief Executive Rajeev Suri said.

Shares in the company rose 0.6 percent by 1410 GMT on the Helsinki bourse which was down 2.1 percent.

The stock is still down about 10 percent since the announcement of the deal in April as investors have worried about the integration process and special terms negotiated by the French government.

But in October, Nokia brought forward the deal's 900 million euro cost-saving target by a year to 2018.

"They are well on track with this deal, it seems they have calculated the deal's 'margins of safety' rather carefully. Now, they can keep up a positive news flow," said Jukka Oksaharju, strategist at Nordnet brokerage.

The deal, set to become the biggest transaction in Finland's corporate history, follows a string of M&A moves that have restructured former mobile phone giant Nokia in recent years.

In 2013, it took control of its network business by buying out Siemens from a joint venture, and in 2014 it sold the ailing mobile phone business to Microsoft. Last year it also sold navigation business HERE.

Reuters
hidden

Yahoo Inc was ordered by a Chicago federal judge on Monday to face a class action lawsuit accusing the Internet company of sending unsolicited text messages to Sprint Corp cellphone users in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. U.S. District Judge Manish Shah said the users could sue as a group over messages sent in March 2013 because their claims had enough in common.

Shah rejected Yahoo's arguments that a class action could subject it to damages that were disproportionate to the alleged harm, promote "piecemeal" litigation covering other time periods and phone carriers, and thwart Congress' desire that claims be brought individually in small claims court. More than 500,000 cellphone users could be part of the class, court papers show. The plaintiffs accused Yahoo of sending them automated "welcome" messages when other users sent them separate messages via the Yahoo Messenger service. They said the welcome messages constituted unauthorized advertising for Yahoo services, violating the federal TCPA and subjecting the Sunnyvale, California-based company to damages of up to $1,500 per message if the violations were willful.

The case was brought by Rachel Johnson, an Illinois resident who claimed to receive a welcome message from Yahoo after being sent a spam text message from another user advertising a means to reduce high-cost debt. Shah declined to certify a separate class of T-Mobile US Inc cellphone users for welcome messages sent in April 2014. He said the proposed plaintiff in that part of the case had consented to receiving welcome messages.

Yahoo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Keith Keogh, a lawyer for Johnson, said: "We appreciate the court's thorough analysis."

The case is Johnson et al v. Yahoo Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Nos. 14-02028, 14-02753.

Reuters




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Seven young, healthy, well-shod Muslim migrant men. Ignoring one barefoot woman carrying two babies and a bag. pic.twitter.com/Fp2Vgxvm6Z January 3, 2016

pic.twitter.com/P3vCLAosTH Migrant Tried To Sell His Wife To Rapists To Pay People Smugglers https://t.co/0ZfsJULIET January 5, 2016

The Europe migrant crisis is visiting yet another horror upon the hundreds of thousands duped by people smugglers to make the perilous journey to Europe  the rape of countless immigrant women by their own travelling companions.



Enjoying a literal captive market and possessing the facility of no morals or scruples, human traffickers have found themselves at liberty to abuse their customers and charge them exorbitant rates.



One way in which families being smuggled into Europe can pay the enormous amounts of money demanded by the traffickers is to sell their women into sex work or to give in to direct demands from the smugglers themselves for the use of wives or daughters.



The fact that the migrants coming to Europe are predominantly young men make the journeys of the small number of women even more dangerous, as they are left helpless among their fellow countrymen. One 30-year-old woman who experienced this abuse at the hands of other migrants has come forward to speak of her experience.



Susanne Hohne, a psychotherapist specialising in treating traumatised female migrants arriving in Germany and with patients ranging in age from barely adult to pensionable age said the family of the woman had run out of money in Bulgaria while on their way to Germany from Syria, reports the New York Times. Unable to make payments to continue their travels, her husband offered his wife as payment instead.



The woman was then raped daily for three months in lieu of payment  abuse in which her husband started to join in. The woman is now in hiding in Berlin with her children, the husband living elsewhere in Germany with a restraining order. She fears that should her exact whereabouts be revealed her husband or other relatives would kill her for dishonouring the family, even though she was forced into the acts.



Another woman identified as Samar spoke out of the abuse she received at the hands of a smuggler, and the fear she and others felt for the safety of their daughters. Travelling from Syria to Germany with her three daughters aged 2, 8, and 13, she said she and other mothers slept in shifts to keep the young girls under watch at all times. I did not leave them out of my sight for one minute, she said.



Like other women finding themselves in a tiny minority of migrants and easily taken advantage of, she was robbed of all her money and left unable to pay her smuggler while in Turkey. A man offered to take her to Europe with him for free in return for sex; but she refused, working in Turkey for a year to save 4,000 instead.



Samar said: Everybody knows there are two ways of paying the smugglers. With money or with your body almost all men in the world are bad.

pic.twitter.com/37narauze9 Soft Touch Tories Hand Asylum To Migrant Who Walked Through Channel Tunnel https://t.co/CmQog75irl January 5, 2016

Danish officials say 18 people without proper ID have been refused entry from Germany in the first 12 hours of increased border crossing checks, a move to make sure that migrants headed for Sweden and turned down there don't get stuck in Denmark.



National Police spokesman Richard Oesterlund la Cour says three people have been arrested suspected of human smuggling. No details were available.



Oesterlund la Cour said in Tuesday's statement police had checked 1,100 people and focused on the three main crossings with Germany.



He said checks "obviously have been a nuisance" but didn't cause any significant traffic problems.



Hours after Sweden demanded that all arriving passengers show ID, Denmark said Monday said it was tightening border checks to stem the flow of migrants coming in from Germany.

Top officials from Denmark, Sweden and Germany will hold talks in Brussels on Wednesday amid concern about new border control measures aimed at stopping migrants entering northern Europe.



The meeting was called after Sweden introduced ID checks on all people traveling to Denmark, and Denmark tightened border controls on its border with Germany.



European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said Tuesday that the meeting's aim "is to improve coordination between the countries concerned to ensure better management of migratory pressures."



Denmark on Monday introduced border checks for at least 10 days, citing concerns about public security because of migrant movements and border measures taken by other EU member states.

Slovakia's prime minister says his country is ready to deploy 25 police officers requested by Macedonia to help the Balkan country cope with the influx of migrants.



Robert Fico said on Tuesday that the officers will be deployed Feb 1.



Macedonia, which is not a member of the European Union, is part of the so-called Balkans route that refugees have used on their way to rich Western countries.



Slovakia previously sent dozens of police officers to EU member states Hungary and Slovenia to help with the migrant crisis there.



Fico says "radical measures" are necessary to be taken to protect the external border of the EU's Schengen borderless zone.

Swedish police say there has been a sharp drop in asylum-seekers since new ID checks were introduced for travelers entering the country by train from Denmark.



Police spokeswoman Ewa-Gun Westford said Tuesday that 48 asylum-seekers arrived in southern Sweden during the first day of the ID checks, down from 227 the day before.



She said most of the 48 arrived on ferries from Germany. Only two arrived by train from Denmark, which previously was the most common way for migrants to enter southern Sweden.



As of midnight Sunday, people crossing the Oresund bridge from Denmark to Sweden have to show a picture IDs to be able to get on board.



The move was meant to discourage migrants, many of whom don't carry passports or other forms of ID, to try to enter Sweden, which received a record 160,000 asylum-seekers in 2015.

pic.twitter.com/gQa9Jd1oys Third stadium attacker identified as refugee, arrived through Greece. #ParisAttacks  Jani (@yueyuea) January 5, 2016

We see a woman. They see a vessel to be used as necessary to accommodate their needs. Which brings us to this next story:
Police - dacoit trade fire in Laksmipur: 5 hurt

Staff Reporter :

Four policemen and a dacoit received bullet while exchanging gunfire for over an hour in Char Jaforpur area in Laksmipur district early Monday.

The injured police constables are: Main Uddin, Sultan Mahmud, Bahar Uddin, and Abdul Momin.

The police team also detained Mehraj Uddin, an accused of different cases under various police stations. He is also a local top terror and leader of inter-district dacoits gang.

Police also recovered a gun, a LG rifle, four rounds of bullets from their possession, police said.

Abul Bashar, Officer-in-Charge, Detective Branch (DB) of Sadar Police Station, said that the dacoits were preparing to commit dacoity in the area at around 4:45am. Sensing the presence of policemen the dacoits opened fire on them, prompting the policemen to retaliate, triggering a gunfight, which left Mehraj critically injured."

Later he was rushed to the Sadar Hospital. The injured policemen were also taken to the same hospital for treatment, the DB official said. Some dacoits, however managed to flee.
UN condemns attack on Saudi embassy in Iran

Protests against the execution of Nimr al-Nimr have continued in Tehran

BBC Online: The UN Security Council has strongly condemned an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran by protesters angered by the execution of a Shia cleric. The statement made no mention of the execution of the cleric, Nimr al-Nimr. Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after its embassy was ransacked and set alight. On Monday, Turkey's Deputy PM Numan Kurtulmus urged both countries to calm the row, saying the Middle East was "already a powder keg". The UN Security Council, in response to a Saudi letter, condemned the attack on the embassy in Tehran and another attack on a Saudi consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad. The council called on Iranian authorities "to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel, and to respect fully their international obligations in this regard". It urged both sides to "maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region". However, it made no reference to Saudi Arabia's execution on Saturday of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others after they were convicted of terror-related offences. Speaking in New York, Saudi UN ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi said the dispute between the two countries could be resolved if Iran stopped "interfering in the affairs of other countries, including our own". Riyadh has previously accused Iran of interfering in Arab affairs. Saudi Arabia and Iran are respectively the key Sunni Muslim and Shia powers in the region and back opposing sides in Syria and Yemen. Mr Mouallimi said peace efforts in those countries should not be affected by the spat but criticised Iran's contribution to the process. "The Iranians even before the break of diplomatic relations have not been very supportive, not very positive in these peace efforts," he said. "They have been taking provocative and negative positions... and I don't think the break in relations is going to dissuade them from such behaviour." Saudi Arabia had earlier criticised UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who had spoken of his "dismay" at the executions. Mr Mouallimi described Mr Ban's comments as "misinformed". Following the attacks on the missions, Saudi authorities announced late on Sunday that they were severing diplomatic relations with Iran. They said that all commercial and air traffic links were being cut and that Saudi citizens were banned from travelling to Iran. On Monday, some of Riyadh's allies joined diplomatic action against Iran. Bahrain and Sudan severed relations with Iran and the UAE has downgraded its diplomatic team. Bahrain, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy but has a majority Shia population, gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country. The Sudanese foreign ministry said its action was on response to "the barbaric attacks on the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad". Mr Kurtulmus criticised the attacks on the Saudi missions but also Saudi Arabia's execution of Nimr al-Nimr. He called on Iran to protect all diplomatic missions and said that Turkey was against "all instances of capital punishment especially when it is politically motivated". "For us it is not possible to support capital punishment by any country," he was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. "We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East. The region is already a powder keg. Enough is enough. We need peace in the region." On Monday, a White House spokesman also called on both countries to "show some restraint and to not further inflame tensions that are on quite vivid display in the region". But Iran's foreign ministry accused the Saudis of "continuing the policy of increasing tension and clashes in the region". The row also affected global markets, sending oil and gold prices higher on Monday.
Khaleda seeks dialogue to restore democracy

UNB, Dhaka: BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia on Tuesday urged the government to engage in talks to find out a solution to the countrys political problem and restore democracy. Lets bring a solution through talks and restore democracy. We dont have any grievance, complaint and anguish against anybody we had suffered and also forgotten it. So, I would like to tell all theres no reason to be afraid of. You [govt] made mistakes and its enough to realise that, she told a public rally in front of her partys Nayapaltan central office. She also renewed her partys demand for holding a national election immediately. Khaleda, also former Prime Minister, urged the people from all walks of life to get united for raising their voice peacefully against the current repressive regime and for restoring democracy and getting rid of repressive acts and misrule. BNP arranged the rally to observe January 5 as the Democracy Killing Day, showing the partys disapproval to 10th parliamentary polls held on this day in 2014. Referring to December-30 municipal polls, she said the government and the Election Commission once again proved that no fair and acceptable election is possible under them. The BNP chief said the ruling party has resorted to vote rigging and irregularities in the polls to show people it has vast popularity. If you want to show your popularity then hold a fair election under a non-party administration, she asked the government. Appreciating the government for finally allowing her party to hold the rally, she urged the government to restore peoples all other democratic rights. Or else, it cant say when people will arise and put up a strong resistance. Khaleda demanded the release of all political prisoners, including Nagorik Oiky convener Mahmudur Rahman Manna, her partys arrested leaders and activists, and withdraw the false cases filed against them. She called upon all the law enforcers not to carry out the government unjustified orders and repress people. The BNP chief also assured officials and administration and law enforcers that her party will not sack any one if her party returns to power. Chaired by BNP Standing Committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy the rally was addressed, among others, by other party senior leaders.
DCCI donates warm clothes

Economic Reporter :

Dhaka Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI) under the supervision of Dhaka Shilpo Malik Samity donates warm clothes to the cold hit students of Mugar Chor Fozlul Ulum Madrasa and Orphanage and Shahpur Darul Ulum Madrasa and Lillah Boarding of Rohitpur Union under Keranigonj Upazila on Tuesday.

DCCI's Vice- President K Atique-e-Rabbani, FCA handed over the warm cloths to the students. Former DCCI Vice President and President of BSCIC Shilpo Malik Samity Hossain A Sikder and Secretary General, DCCI AHM Rezaul Kabir were present on the occasion.

As an initiative of reducing sufferings of cold-hit people of the country and CSR activities, DCCI every year donates warm clothes to different social organizations and trade bodies for distributing those to the people of different areas.

K Atique-e-Rabbani, FCA called upon all well-to-do people of the society to stay beside the distressed people across the country in this winter season. This year DCCI also donated warm cloths to Dinajpur Chamber of Commerce, Kurigram Chamber of Commerce, Dhaka Mohanogor Samity, Anjuman Mofidul Islam, Nilphamari Chamber of Commerce to distribute among the cold hit people.
FIs asked to work for boosting economy

Economic Reporter :

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr. Atiur Rahman on Tuesday called upon the financial institutions for working the economic development of the country from the beginning of the new year 2016.

"2015 brought a milestone for us: Bangladesh attained the lower middle income status. We want 2016 be the year of growth and investment", said the governor while addressing the bankers meeting at Bangladesh Bank conference room in the city.

The economy and the financial system made good progress in the last year. "Despite some initial challenges, we achieved a respectable growth of 6.5 percent and macro-financial stability", said the governor.

We can easily transform Bangladesh from a 200 billion dollar economy to over 500 billion -- half a trillion -- dollar economy before 2025. In terms of macro- strategy and given our growth aspirations, we need to upgrade our export performance. At the same time, we can and should add an extra engine to our export-led growth model. Chief Executive Officers and Managing Directors of the financial institutions were present on the occasion.
Nawshaba under Rokeya Prachis direction

Sheikh Arif Bulbon :Rokeya Prachi is little bit seen to give direction. But those plays and documentaries which were made by her were highly appreciated by the viewers. On the basis of a true story Rokeya Prachi has made another faction play titled Overtrump. Mehedi Hasan Pial wrote story of the play. In this play, for the first time Quazi Nawshaba worked under Rokeya Prachis direction. While talking about the play Rokeya Prachi told this correspondent, A couple starts to blackmail rich people. Story of the play goes on with this concept. Basically based on a true story written by Pial has inspired me to make this play. Though Nawshaba worked for the first time under my direction but I was really impressed to observe her acting. She is very much cooperative actress. I believe viewers will enjoy the play.Nawshaba shared her feelings by this way, I am really grateful to Prachi Apu to give me an opportunity to work under her direction. I have learned something from her which will help me in the long run in my acting career.Rokeya Prachi informed that the play will go on air in any satellite channel soon. Meanwhile, Rokeya Prachi made a new serial titled Tobuo Manush Swapno Dekhey will be aired on Ekushey Television (ETV) soon. Prachi acted a serial Porompora is being aired on SA TV now. On the other hand, Nawshaba has already started to take part in shooting of Dipankar Dipons a movie titled Dhaka Attack. Shatabdi Wadud is acting against her in the movie, she said.
Higher fuel price no more justified





THE Finance Minister again bypassed his assurance to reduce the price of fuel oil ignoring the call by economists, business leaders and users who say such reduction would reduce cost of doing business and accelerate growth. It is natural that when the cost of oil has phenomenally slammed in the global market to all time low there is no justification to continue the higher price. Many fear that the Finance Minister is almost mocking with the nation often saying that he would reduce the price and then skipping over the public assurances.

The Cabinet on Monday was scheduled to take a decision on the matter but to the surprise of many it did not. Meanwhile, oil is selling at US$ 35 now at global spot markets per barrel compared to 120 dollar earlier. The fact is that the government was always quick to raise the oil price when it surged in the global market. It blamed the World Bank and IMF for upward adjusting the domestic selling price. But now the government is defying their prescription to downward adjust it to the benefit of common users.

We have seen that the government has so far tried to justify the higher price saying it was essential to recover the previous losses incurred by Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), which imports fuel oil, and distributes through state-owned marketing companies. But BPC statistics now show its losses from Tk 11371.31 crore in 2011-12 has slowed down over the past few years to turn it into profiteering. It made a profit of Tk 5268 crore in 2014-15 leaving no scope to justify the continuation of exorbitant fuel price.

We wonder how the Finance Minister would shun experts opinion who said a 10 percent reduction in fuel price would spur GDP growth by 0.3 percent, export by 0.4 percent and household consumption by 0.6 percent. More reduction will bring more benefits to the economy. It will see fresh investment to lead to new industrial and business expansion and related income generation activities. Banks will overcome sluggish businesses as more borrowers will feel encouraged by the upward cycle in the economy.

But many doubt that the Finance Minister may be bent upon continuing the higher fuel price as long as possible to save money to pay the new pay scale to bureaucrats. He wants to reduce pressure of revenue shortfall estimated to be Tk 40,000 this year when the new pay scale will need huge money to keep the administrative cadre officers happy. But in our view he can't continue to exploit the people this way.

People believe that the Finance Minister must understand fair business logic and market practice that people deserve lower fuel price now by their own right. He can't ignore it any more.
Tk 28 lakh snatched in N'ganj

Staff Reporter :

Muggers snatched Tk 28.47 lakh after shooting a driver of private car on the Narayanganj-Munshiganj road in Kashipur area of Fatullah in Narayanganj district on Tuesday afternoon.

The muggers also stabbed two other persons during the attack on the day.

The injured men are Razab Ali, 48, a driver of private car of Premier Cement Company, Abul Bashar, 45, guard of the company and Ramiz Uddin, accountant officer of the same company. They were admitted at Narayanganj Sadar Hospital, police said.Asaduzzaman, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Fatullah Model Police Station, said, "The injured men withdrew Tk 28.47 lakh from Fatullah branch of Social Islami Bank in the afternoon. When they were going to their factory in Munshiganj a group of muggers riding on two motorcycles intercepted the car carrying them and tried to snatch the bag containing the money from them. Being resisted, the muggers shot Razab Ali in his neck and stabbed two others indiscriminately, leaving them critically injured. Later, the muggers fled the scene hurriedly with the bag." A case was filed with the police station in this connection, the police official said. "We are trying to arrest the muggers," he said.


China fears regional conflict

Channel NewsAsia, Beijing :

China said on Monday it was concerned about the prospect of an intensification of conflict in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with rival regional power Iran.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday, responding to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row over Riyadh's execution of a Shi'ite Muslim cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr,an outspoken opponent of the ruling Al Saudi family.

Tension between revolutionary, mainly Shi'ite Iran and Saudi Arabia's conservative Sunni monarchy has run high for years as they backed opposing forces in conflicts across the Middle East.

"Like the international community, China is highly concerned about the developments and expresses concern that the relevant event may intensify conflict in the region," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing, referring to the escalation in tension.
Overseas job markets shrinking

Shah Alam Nur :Country's manpower market is shrinking abroad, because of ongoing economic and political turmoil across the world."Besides, our government inability to maintain channel is also a major cause," said Dr Tasneem Siddiqui, Chairperson of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) a research organisation on Tuesday.She said if Qatar and Oman stop recruitment of Bangladeshi workers, then there will be a major diplomatic setback in the sector.According to Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), more than 5.5 lakh Bangladeshis had gone abroad for jobs in 2015. Of the total, nearly 80 per cent of total workers travelled to the Gulf and other Middle Eastern countries in 2015. The highest number of workers (23 per cent) got jobs in Oman, followed by Qatar (22 per cent).Insiders said the world has long been passing a bad time due to economic crisis and political turmoil. Yet, Qatar and Oman continue to recruit Bangladeshis.The main market for Bangladesh manpower export is the Middle-East country, but countries like Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq have recruited lesser number of workers in the last few years.At the same time, Bangladesh manpower demand in Malaysia also has dropped radically. Malaysia was the second largest market for Bangladeshi manpower.President of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) Abul Bashar said, "Lion share of Bangladeshi workers were recruited by Qatar and Oman, We need to search for new markets immediately for further growth and for avoiding any unwanted setback."Director General Begum Shamsun Nahar termed the situation normal. "History of Bangladeshi manpower export shows that the country have always depended on some selected countries. In view of different situation, the export destination may shift from one country to another. It is quite natural."Besides, Bangladeshis have been going to other Middle East countries though the number is not significant, she addedShe expressed optimism that the government has been trying to strengthen bilateral ties with other countries, which are now recruiting Bangladeshi workers.The data showed, more than nine million Bangladeshis are working in 143 countries, most of them in the Middle East. According to the data, KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Malaysia, Singapore, S. Korea, Brunei and Iraq recruited 58278, 25271, 17472, 129859, 123965, 20720, 19112, 22093, 30483, 55573, 2358, 8354 and 13982 Bangladeshi labourers respectively in 2015.
War criminal among 2 inmates die in Kashimpur Jail

UNB, Gazipur :

Two inmates, including a war crimes accused, have died in Kashimpur High Security Central jail here. The deceased were identified as Mohammad Zinnat Ali alias Zinnat, a war crimes accused of Maheshkhali upazila in Cox's Bazar district, and Abdul Gafur, a condemned convict in a women repression case filed with Banshkhali Police Station in Chittagong.

Jailer Bikash Raihan of the central jail said Zinnat Ali complained of chest pain on Monday night. He was admitted to Shaheed Tajuddin Medical College Hospital where he died around 1am on Tuesday.Meanwhile, Gafur complained of chest pain on Monday afternoon. He was taken to the hospital where doctors declared him dead around 7am yesterday.
ATN News staff drowns in city lake

Staff Reporter :

A body was recovered from the city's Hatirjheel area on Tuesday afternoon.

The body was identified as Towhidur Rahman, 40, a Computer Operator of ATN News.

He was the son of Belayet Hossain Chowdhury, lived at the Dilu Road, Eskaton of the capital.

Quoting the divers of Fire Service and Civil Defense (FSCD), Ramna Police Station Sub-Inspector Abdus Sattar said, "The FSCD divers recovered Towhidur near a railing of the water body around 3:30pm after receiving information.

He was rushed to the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital where the on-duty doctors declared him dead around 4:15pm."

The body has been kept at the DMCH morgue for an autopsy, the SI said.

Police could not be known the cause behind of the dead, he said.


Looking for the vulture assist with Neolithic burials

2 years ago
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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT



"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with

power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams


The Gay Courier has been established to provide news, information and info on, from and about the gay community, and other social events and happenings from around the world, from all sorts of sources, to all who are interested in this news, information and info! The postings are as is, and all copyrights and or ownerships are and remain with the original copyright-holder and or owner!
According to our sources

Prime Minister Enda Kenny of the Fine Gael political party is seated at the old oak desk in his office just down the hall from the parliamentary chamber. The camera pulls back. He is wearing a yellow plastic raincoat, a thong, and rubber boots. This outfit lends him about as much gravitas as everything else he ever wears. He stands and begins to dance. Very catchy music kicks in as he sings thusly:There is an elegiac wistfulness to this song which appeals to me, gentle travellers of the internet.All you have to do, regarding the real political, economic, abortionist, euthanasist, culture of death, neo feudalist IRA, mafia, criminal, and Islamist in-migratory challenges engulfing our country is... ignore them and worry about the rain.Regarding the actual problems confronting us, you needn't give a dam.I wish I were a Fine Gaeler.My gosh, perhaps I am.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson

The March elections for the Democratic State Central Committee and the subsequent vote, if needed, for the next chairman, arent necessarily being guided by Gov.-elect John Bel Edwards, the first Democratic governor elected in Louisiana in 12 years.

By most accounts, Edwards is not going to be a shot-caller for the Louisiana Democratic Party nor will he be any kind of figurehead, according to those close to the party and the next governor. This matches up with the approaches of previous Democratic governors; Edwin Edwards was never a party infrastructure man and Kathleen Blanco was involved with the party apparatus only from a distance.

The central committee is the guiding body for the Louisiana Democratic Party and its members are elected from districts around the state. Qualifying was conducted in December.

State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson of New Orleans is the incumbent chairwoman who will seek re-election in April after the new DSCC is elected in March. She faces no organized opposition yet, but there are factions of the party still unhappy that she unseated former chairman Buddy Leach in 2012 by 10 votes.

If opposition does surface, itll come from that area, sitting DSCC members believe, with all of those interviewed noting theyve not been contacted about voting for anyone else. Gov.-elect Edwards has not taken a stance on Petersons re-election as chair, but he also doesnt seem to be personally working against her, either.

Edwards, of course, cannot completely ignore party politics, which means hell need a political director of sorts  someone who can focus on politics as the governor-elect moves his policy agenda.

The closest thing he has had to that comes in a pair, starting with state Rep. Sam Jones of Franklin, who is returning to the House and to the DSCC, and Mary-Patricia Wray, who is leaving the transition team to turn her attention back to her lobbying and consulting firm Top Drawer Strategies.

In an interview Jones said Edwards wouldnt burden himself with politics as governor and would likely seek advice when needed from several different sources.

The party needs to get back to the center, from wherever it is, Jones said. It needs to reflect a governor who is center to right on most issues, center to left on others.

In the House, Edwards not only leaves his seat behind but also the chairmanship of the Democratic Caucus. Right now the leading contender appears to be Rep. Gene Reynolds of Minden.
Monet rahapelien ystavat ovat viime vuosina loytaneet netticasinot ja olleet ihmeissaan. Verrattuna kotimaisen Veikkauksen kivijalkarahapeleihin puhutaan aivan eri tason palautusprosenteista ja lisaksi pelaaminen on aarimmaisen helppoa ja turvallista. Netticasinoiden maara on tana paivana todella suuri ja niita loytyy jokaiseen lahtoon, suurin ongelma aloittelevalla pelaajalla onkin tehda valinta siita, minka netticasinon valitsee. Kaikkien netticasinoiden mainospuheet naet lupaavat kauniita asioita ja niiden lapinakeminen on tietysti tarkeaa. Nyrkkisaantona voidaan kuitenkin jo kattelyssa todeta, etta jos valitsemasi netticasino on lisensoitu ETA-alueella, sen kanssa ei tule olemaan ongelmia, ellei niita itse jarjesta. Kay tutustumassa parhaisiin netticasinoihin osoitteessa www.ilmaiskierroksia.info!

Ensimmainen nyrkkisaanto on siis varmistaa, etta valitsemallasi netticasinolla on ETA-alueen lisenssi. Suurimmassa osassa tapauksista se on Maltan eli MGA:n lisenssi. Myos Viron, Englannin ja Gibraltarin lisensseja nakyy ja naissa valvonta on jopa Maltaa tiukempaa. Lopputulema on kuitenkin se, etta ETA-alueen lisenssi takaa suomalaisille verovapaat voitot seka sen, etta niita valvotaan kontrolloidusti. Maailmalla on iso nippu Curacaon lisenssilla toimivia netticasinoita ja niistakin suurin osa on laadukkaita. Ne eivat kuitenkaan ole suomalaisille asiakkaille verovapaita, joten emme suosittele niita.

Tana paivana markkinoille on ilmaantunut paljon ETA-alueella toimiva netticasinoita ilman rekisteroitymista. Jos tarkoitus on vain pelata yksittaisia pelikertoja, on varsin helppo suositella naita. Netticasinot ilman rekisteroitymista tarjoavat palvelun tunnistautumisen verkkopankin avainlukulistan avulla ja saman palvelun kautta tapahtuvat talletukset ja mahdolliset voittojen nostot silmanrapayksessa. Normaaleihin netticasinoihin pitaa asiakkaan rekisteroitya, tehda talletukset ja tunnistautua dokumenttien avulla. Tama on lisenssiehtojen mukainen kaytanto, eika kovinkaan monimutkainen, mutta silti monet asiakkaat haluavat yksinkertaista ja nopeaa palvelua. Toki normaalit netticasinot tarjoavat usein asiakkailleen laadukkaita talletusbonuksia ja erilaisia kampanjoita, joten kannattaa tarkkaan punnita, kumman ratkaisun valitsee. Kannattaa myos muistaa, etta tunnistautuminen tehdaan vain kerran, joten mikaan jatkuva riippakivi se ei ole.

Suomalaiset asiakkaat ovat netticasinoille tarkeita, joten kaikilla vahankin laadukkailla netticasinoilla on suomenkieliset sivut seka suomenkielinen asiakaspalvelu  suomenkielisyys kannattaakin ottaa netticasinoa valittaessa nyrkkisaannoksi. Vaikka tana paivana englanninkielisyys on harvoille ongelma, on suomenkielisten netticasinoiden maara niin valtava, etta suosittelemme niiden kayttoa. Rahansiirrot ovat tana paivana niin hyvassa mallissa, etta niiden kanssa tuskin tulee mitaan ongelmia. Kolme tarkeinta segmenttia: Suomalaiset verkkopankit, luottokortit (Visa, Mastercard) seka nettilompakot (Skrill, Neteller) loytyvat jokaisesta laadukkaasta netticasinosta. Viime vuosien trendiksi noussut verkkokauppa on kehittanyt rahansiirrot niin laadukkaiksi ja nopeiksi, etta niiden suhteen ei ole enaa vuosiin ollut ongelmia. Luonnollisesti netticasinot kayttavat naita samoja palveluita ja hyotyvat kehityksesta.

Naiden isojen linjojen jalkeen netticasinon valintaan vaikuttavat luonnollisesti tarjottavat tervetuliaisbonukset  uudet asiakkaat saavat tana paivana kovan kilpailun myota merkittavia etuja netticasinoilta ja niita kannattaa luonnollisesti vertailla. Erilaiset talletusbonukset, ilmaiskierrokset seka ilmaiset pelirahat tuovat suuriakin rahanarvoisia etuja ja niiden vertailu on ehdottomasti kannattavaa. Myoskaan useampien tilien avaaminen ja tervetuliaistarjousten kayttaminen ei missaan nimessa ole huono idea.

Kun edella mainitut asiat ovat mieleisia ja vaihtoehtoja on vielakin jaljella, mennaan jo nyansseihin. Toki pelivalikoima on yksi kriteeri, mutta taman paivan netticasinoissa tamakin asia on paasaantoisesti varsin samanlainen. Toki useamman samantasoisen netticasinon vertailussa kannattaa yleensa valita se, jossa on eniten peleja tarjolla. Vaikka omat suosikit loytyisivatkin useammasta, voi tulevaisuudessa mielenkiinto nousta joihinkin muihin peleihin ja silloin on tietysti mukavampaa, etta ne loytyvat valikoimista. Viimeisena voidaan nostaa esiin kaytettavyys  joidenkin netticasinoiden sivut ovat vilkkuvia, valkkyvia ja epakaytannollisia. Omaan silmaan ja kaytettavyyteen sopiva sivusto on luonnollisesti aina se paras valinta. Tarjonta netticasinoissa on tana paivana valtava ja jokaiselle loytyy varmasti se oma netticasino  onnea matkaan!
Read on for my reviews of movies I am watching lately, generally a random assortment, and most of them viewed streaming, because that's how I roll these days.
By AM Tuesday, January 5, 2016 Share Tweet Share Share Email

Ed Moloney opens his New Year blogging with a presentation of four different views of the 1916 Rising. Ed Moloney blogs @ opens his New Year blogging with a presentation of four different views of the 1916 Rising.blogs @ The Broken Elbow.







The first piece, taken from an excellent newish history blog which specialises in the Northern IRA, pre-Troubles,

Not being anything to anyone: Ballagh on 1916



Robert Ballagh speaking about the governments plans to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising this year at a



Equating the sacrifices of the British soldiers who died when they did so in the very act of destroying the republic we are supposed to be commemorating They had intended displaying the names Pearse and Connolly along with many others from the opposite side in alphabetical order on a wall. Can you imagine that happening in London, with those from the Luftwaffe given the same prominence as their own soldiers, or in Arlington Cemetery in the USA? This is national self-abasement  trying to be all things to all people but in the end not being anything to anyone



Worth bearing in mind as we get the first instalment of Rebellion, RTEs fictionalised reading of 1916, giving an insight into what official Ireland probably wants us to make of events one hundred years ago.



Robert Ballagh speaking about the governments plans to commemorate the centenary of the Easter Rising this year at a recent book launch in Gorey:Equating the sacrifices of the British soldiers who died when they did so in the very act of destroying the republic we are supposed to be commemorating They had intended displaying the names Pearse and Connolly along with many others from the opposite side in alphabetical order on a wall. Can you imagine that happening in London, with those from the Luftwaffe given the same prominence as their own soldiers, or in Arlington Cemetery in the USA? This is national self-abasement  trying to be all things to all people but in the end not being anything to anyoneWorth bearing in mind as we get the first instalment of Rebellion, RTEs fictionalised reading of 1916, giving an insight into what official Ireland probably wants us to make of events one hundred years ago. Four quite differing analyses of the 1916 centenary which show that on one point, at least, there is agreement in Ireland about the origins of the 26 county state, and that is that there is no agreement.The first piece, taken from an excellent newish history blog which specialises in the Northern IRA, pre-Troubles, The Treason Felony Blog, presents, courtesy of Robert Ballagh, the traditional republican perspective. The second is a perceptive and well-researched article in the Irish Marxist Review by Kieran Allen; the third is from last weekends Irish Times, a conventional piece by historian Dairmaid Ferriter and finally, from The Sunday Independent in February last year, a typically raging polemic from Eoghan Harris. The four pieces more or less cover the gamut of 1916 and embrace all that is Ireland. Enjoy!

Why 1916 Relatives should shun Sinn Fein











Last week, I suggested the defence forces be given the dominant role in the 2016 celebrations. To be honest, I did not expect an enthusiastic response. A country under the financial cosh is entitled to a lack of enthusiasm for military pomp and ceremony.



But even with their backs against the wall, the Irish people are patriots. To my surprise, I got overwhelmingly positive responses. And not just by email and text.



Because I spent last week teaching an intensive writing course at the National Digital Skills Centre in Tralee, I could canvass opinion face to face. And the consensus was clear: people want to see a prominent public profile by our armed forces all through Easter Week 2016.



Lets be clear about what that means. All states, including the Republic of Ireland, are founded on force. In the last ditch, they have to be maintained in arms against all enemies, foreign and domestic.



So, when people say they want to see the armed forces of the State to the front, they do not mean they should have flowers in their helmets. They want to see rifles and bayonets.



That being so, I wonder if the disgruntled 1916 Relative know what they are doing when they say they are boycotting the Government celebrations and turn up at the launch of the rival Sinn Fein plan?



Let me lay my cards on the table: I have no time for the notion that 1916 Relatives should have any special place, or certainly any special say, in how the Easter Rising is celebrated.



Thats because this is a republic not a monarchy, a democracy not a tribal dynasty. The bravery of the men and women of 1916 cannot be passed down in a bloodline.



My grandfather and his two brothers were out in 1916. Credit or criticism belongs to them. Why should I brazenly bandwagon on their bravery?



But that is not the only complaint I have about the carping campaign of some spokespeople for the 1916 Relatives Association. My other complaint is about the company some of them keep.



Last Friday, Sinn Fein launched a plan to celebrate 2016 as a rival to the plans of the Irish Government. Apart from the plans lacking imagination, the launch was clearly a political stunt.



Furthermore, as I shall show later, Sinn Fein has the least claim to a clear lineage to 1916. Adding it all up, the bad politics and mediocre plans, surely sensible 1916 relatives should be avoiding Sinn Feins shoddy shaping.



Alas, James Connolly Heron, the great grandson of James Connolly, was there. In an earlier statement, he endorsed the Sinn Fein launch. We welcome events by anybody, given the lack of Government organisation, he said.



Can it be true that all the 1916 relatives welcome events by anybody, especially by Sinn Fein, which for over 25 years was the political wing of the Provisional IRA? Does the memory of the Disappeared cast no shadow over their readiness to share platforms with Sinn Fein?



By rejecting the Irish Governments plans for 2016 and turning up at a rival Sinn Fein launch, the 1916 Relatives group is showing a serious ignorance of modern Irish history. Because Sinn Fein is the only party in Dail Eireann that cannot claim to be the direct political descendants of t he leaders of the Easter Rising.



Let me give the 1916 Relatives a reality check. The 1916 Rising was run by the IRB. The same IRB, led by Michael Collins, voted overwhelmingly for the Treaty.



Michael Collinss IRB also formed the core of the officer corps in the National Army and the Provisional Government. Many officers in that army had fought in 1916  and were proud of that pedigree.



So, there is literally a straight line of descent from the IRB in 1916, through Michael Collins and the National Army, the Free State and Cumann na nGaedheal. Accordingly, Fine Gael is the primary party which can claim lineal descent from 1916 leaders.

Now, this is not academic hair-splitting. In 1922, most people saw Michael Collins and the National Army as the true heirs of the heroes of Easter Week. If you doubt this, read the papers of the time.



But while Fine Gael has first claim on 1916, Fianna Fail can also claim a clear lineage through De Valera, for long, the only surviving leader of the 1916 Rising.



Finally, there is a direct link between the Labour Party and 1916 through James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army. So far, the Labour Partys role has been sidelined by republican propagandists.



So where does that leave Sinn Fein? Out in the cold. Because the only republican grouping on the island that can lay little claim to 1916 is Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Provos.



Sinn Fein, today, can only trace its bloody line back to the carnage in Northern Ireland. It has no credible claim to 1916. In sum, it is muscling its way into the Republic of Irelands celebrations, waving its Northern tribal credentials. What a pity it is being helped stake a false claim by 1916 Relatives, who should be showing more sense.



The fact that the three main political parties can trace a purer path back to 1916 than Sinn Fein strengthens my conviction that the State should put the Army at the centre of 2016 celebrations.



But that means taking 1916 on board, warts and all. By which I mean, there are two sides to the 1916 coin. An upside and a downside. Both sides need to be reflected in the 2016 celebrations.



Let me start with the downside: 1916 was the first step to setting up a separate Irish state. It led to the pragmatic acceptance that partition was here to stay as long as one million Irish unionists were unwilling to join the Republic of Ireland.



But 1916 was also a victory for extremists. It played a major part in alienating Irish unionists to turn away from us. And it allowed the British to quietly set up the Northern state. From which it follows that unionists, rather than British royals, should be invited to the 2016 shindig on the basis that 1916 led to the formation of their state as well as ours.



But there is also a more carefree side to the coin. Back in 1922, the National Army and the Irish people shared a sense of euphoria and enormous pride in the fact that we had beaten the British out of 26 counties.



We forget that this feeling was widely shared, even by Harry Boland, until De Valera began his belated mad backlash.



Todays Irish Army, as the successor of the National Army, must reclaim that sense of euphoria. It has made a fine beginning. The Bureau of Military History and Military Pensions projects were gargantuan efforts, especially given the meagre resources.



All of which reinforces my belief that the defence forces must be beefed up to play the leading role in the 2016 remembrance of the Easter Rising.







Sunday Independent




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It is important to note that, while the Moderator serves as Faculty Regent for Eastern Kentucky University, all comments offered by the Moderator on KSN&C are his own opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of the Board of Regents, the university administration, faculty, or any members of the university community.

On KSN&C, all authors are responsible for their own comments. See full disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

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What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

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They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

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Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

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The Chester Bridge is open, according to Larry Willis, public information officer for Randolph County Emergency Management Agency. Missouri Department of Transportation engineers completed the process of inspecting the Chester Bridge and Missouri Highway 51, and the bridge reopened early Monday evening.

Randolph County levees have held during high water levels on the Mississippi River. Willis said they had some mudslides and sand boils, along with water pooling and flash flooding due to heavy rain in December.

I dont think they had any problems at historic sites around Prairie du Rocher or Kaskaskia Island. The island itself stayed dry, Willis said.

Slides and sand boils were controlled with sand bags. Levee commissioners will continue to monitor those areas as the river recedes. As of Monday afternoon, there were no active sand bag operations in the county.

We used approximately 32,000 sand bags. We do have some empty sand bags on hand, if we need them, Willis said. We are focusing now on the damage assessment. It has to be done and sent by Friday, so the deadline is set for 8 p.m. Thursday.

Randolph County EMA is gathering initial damage assessments for homes and businesses impacted by the flooding, which began Dec. 23. The damage assessment is specific to structural damage to homes or businesses from the storms, including wind damage, flash flooding from creeks, rivers or streams, and from sustained flooding.

Those whose homes and businesses have sustained structural damage are asked to report that damage to Randolph County authorities by calling 618-826-5007, ext. 118 or 129, or complete the survey form at www.randolphco.org. All forms must be completed and returned no later than 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016.

The reports do not apply to outbuildings. Renters should have the property owners complete the form.

Damage assessment teams could begin canvassing the area as early as Tuesday, Jan. 5.

The boil-water order for Evansville continues.

Illinois 3 between Ellis Grove and Evansville has reopened. County Farm Road at the Marys River Bridge also has reopened.

In Jackson County, Mudline and Indian Ridge roads are now open. Oakwood Bottoms, Howardton Road and Outer Slough are open for walk-in hunting. No vehicles are allowed beyond the barricades.

Officials continue to monitor water levels and levee conditions on the Mississippi and Big Muddy Rivers. Water in both rivers is receding, and levees appear to be holding. However, the voluntary evacuation will remain in place until river levels recede even further, taking pressure off stressed levees.

One spot on the Big Muddy River levee that was undergoing construction prior to flooding remains a particular concern. Other points on the Big Muddy River levee have experienced slides, areas where saturated soils have slid off the face of the levee. Access to levees remains restricted to credentialed individuals on official business.

Officials anticipate lifting the evacuation recommendation Wednesday or Thursday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is predicting the Mississippi River will fall to 34.9 feet Thursday at Chester and the Big Muddy will fall to 29.3 feet at Murphysboro, permitting safe return to low-lying areas.

The American Red Cross shelter, located at the Murphysboro American Legion, continues to operate for those displaced by floods.

Residents who notified Jackson County Sheriffs Office that they were evacuating should notify the Sheriffs Office at 618-684-2773 upon returning home.

Once the evacuation recommendation has been lifted, Jackson County will continue to provide volunteer support while residents move back into their homes. Volunteers wishing to help in this effort or those seeking volunteer assistance are asked to call the volunteer support center at 618-534-9212.

For current road closures in Jackson County, visit www.JacksonCountyEMA.com.
OLIVE BRANCH  Chalen Tatum removed his ball cap and rubbed his forehead Monday, likely exhausted, certainly frustrated.

That was CBS, again, the Alexander County Board chairman said of one of many local, state and national media calls he has received since a Friday night levee breach sent water from the Mississippi River into homes, businesses and across tens of thousands of acres in the county.

There was good news Monday in the county. Although water remained high, it has stabilized enough to convince Tatum to lift the countys evacuation notice for many communities protected by the 18-mile long Len Small Levee.

The order to lift the evacuation goes in effect at 8 this morning. Towns where people can return home include East Cape Girardeau, McClure, Hodges Park, Olive Branch, Sandusky and Unity.

Floods destroy homes, farms in Alexander County as levees overtopped OLIVE BRANCH  The fast-rising waters of the Mississippi River broke records Friday in Alexa

Some towns, such as Miller City and Willard, remain inaccessible by road because of standing water. Also, the Ohio River Cairo Bridge between Illinois and Kentucky remains closed.

The levee breach, now just less than a mile wide, remains flooded. A second breach occurred Sunday, and water had flowed over the levee in other locations, Tatum said.

But if the flooding wasnt bad enough, its what happened months before that upsets many officials and home and business owners, Tatum said.

It was July when Gov. Bruce Rauners administration directed county officials by email to halt its flood buyout program, Tatum said.

The reason? Because the state was without a budget, Tatum said, referring to the email notice.

But the funds, $4 million from the state and $8 million from the federal government, were already appropriated, were already in the bank and were already being used to buy flood prone property from their owners and allow them to relocate, Tatum said.

That money has nothing to do with the state budget. People like that, we could have already bought their home out, Tatum said, pointing to a home surrounded by floodwater off Illinois 3 in Olive Branch.

The program slated 169 homes and businesses. To date, 42 have been purchased, Tatum said. The buyouts started about a year ago but had picked up pace with eight or nine purchases a month by the summer.

Tatum estimated another 50 properties would have been purchased since July without the state cease order.

A lot of people wouldnt have to go through this if they let us continue buying out, County Board member Bruce Sims said. They would have been moved.

Sims has been keeping an eye on his mothers home, another on the Illinois 3 highway encased by frigid water. His mother and her husband, Betty, 86, and Neal McCormick, 91, have been staying at a church on higher ground.

The couple had not signed up for the buyout program, though each had experienced floods in 1993 and 2011. Sims said they are committed to staying in their home.

Theyre pretty well stressed out, he said. It never gets any easier.

At this point, it is unclear how many homes and businesses have been flooded, or how much damages will cost, Tatum said. In 2011, about 300 structures were damaged in the 100-year flood plain.

The winter flood  Rauner has declared 12 counties as disaster areas  forced the Egyptian School District in Tamms closed this week, school board President and County Board Vice Chairman Lamar Houston said. The district serves much of the county.

Two-thirds of our population has been displaced, Houston said. A teacher in-service was to be held Monday but was rescheduled for Friday. School is expected to resume Monday next week, he said.

Among calls Tatum has been receiving are from church disaster relief groups across the country offering the bring help.

Some help from Olive Branch has already arrived, with a group donating, preparing and serving meals to about 500 people a day since Saturday at the Horseshoe Lake Community Center in Olive Branch.

Were just local women. We live in the area and are fortunate enough to not be flooded, so were happy to come down and serve those who need to be helped, said Jo Ann Sissom, one of the organizers.
Southern Illinois Community Foundation has established a Flood Relief Regional Disaster Fund to help those affected by flooding on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. SICF will make sure donations are used to help the people who need help the most.

Contributions can be made online, or at many bank branches throughout Southern Illinois or mailed to Southern Illinois Community Foundation, 3000 W. DeYoung St., Suite 800-B, Marion, IL 62959. Make checks payable to: Southern Illinois Community Foundation (or SICF) and put Flood Relief Regional Disaster Fund in the memo. Donations also can be made through the groups web site.

All contributions to SICF are tax deductible and will receive a tax receipt.

The mission of the Southern Illinois Community Foundation is to serve the Southern Illinois community through philanthropy by providing leadership in meeting charitable needs, and to be a responsible steward to its donors and of its endowments.

For more information, call SICF at 618-997-3700 or visit www.sicf.org.
CHICAGO  A watchdog agency that investigates Chicago police officers said Monday it will implement reforms in the wake of protests over several fatal shootings of African-Americans.

The head of the Independent Police Review Authority planned to detail those reforms later in the day. They include hiring of new staff and creating a community outreach position, according to a statement.

Also Monday, a federal judge blasted the city's law department that defends accused police as he ordered a new trial in a civil case focused on a fatal police shooting, concluding a city lawyer sought to conceal evidence. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang added that the lawyer's actions were exacerbated by shoddy recording keeping by the department.

Scrutiny of IPRA intensified after the Nov. 24 release of video showing a white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times as he walked away from police. McDonald was carrying a folded 3-inch knife.

The video led to protests, some directed at IPRA, which was created in 2007 ostensibly to give it the independence it needed to hold officers accountable. But in practice, it rarely ruled against officers.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed former federal prosecutor Sharon Fairley to head IPRA last month after her predecessor resigned amid growing protests over the McDonald shooting.

Critics argue IPRA has too many vested interests and is beyond salvaging, saying it should be scrapped altogether and replaced with a new body run by civilians with no links to city power structures.

Suspicion about police reform runs deep in Chicago, where the perception is that past much-ballyhooed police reforms changed little.

Past claims by the mayor's office that IPRA is uniquely independent were questioned with the release last week of 3,000 pages of city emails relating to McDonald's 2014 shooting.

In a March 11, 2015, email from the then-head of IPRA, Scott Ando, he asks about forwarding witness interview transcripts to the city's law department "for their use in (lawsuit) settlement negotiations with" the McDonald family. Other emails show Emanuel advisers and IPRA seeking to coordinate their response to the video, which officials recognized could spark outrage.

The emails came days after police fatally shot two other people: 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, who police said was being "combative;" and 55-year-old Bettie Jones, who authorities said was killed accidentally. Both were black.

Chang's ruling Monday throws out an April jury decision that two officers were justified in killing Darius Pinex during a 2011 traffic stop.

The officers had said they stopped Pinex because his car matched a description they heard on their police radio of a car suspected of involvement in an earlier shooting. But records emerged after the trial began that officers weren't listening to the channel broadcasting the radio traffic about the suspect's car. The judge said a city lawyer "intentionally concealed" that evidence.

The city's law department did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
CARBONDALE  In Southern Illinois, elected officials from both sides of the aisle roundly criticized the presidents executive actions to tighten regulations on gun sales, calling them unconstitutional, ineffective and a betrayal of long-held cultural tradition.

Touting his A rating from the National Rifle Association, U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, called Obamas proposal a purely political announcement designed to punish and scare the millions of law-abiding gun owners the Obama Administration despises.

These actions will not hold up in court, he said in a news release. They will not stop gun violence. And they will be met with a legislative response because we, conservative Republicans in Congress, do not take kindly to people touching the Bill of Rights.

Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, called the move legally dubious and said Obama instead should more rigorously enforce existing laws rather than sidestepping Congressional authority and trying to make the laws himself.

Even local democrats derided the announcement, referencing a deep-seeded tradition of gun ownership in Southern Illinois.

Party leaders up in Chicago and Springfield may shake their heads at me, but Ive said all along this issue isnt about party politics but about protecting the traditions and culture of Southern Illinois, and mostly importantly, our Constitution, said State Rep. Brandon Phelps, a Harrisburg democrat.

State Senator Gary Forby, also a democrat, said Southern Illinois is a far cry from hot spots of urban crime.

Look around, he said in a news release. The only gun problem we have in Southern Illinois is people trying to take away our rights. If theres a problem in Chicago or Washington, D.C., fix it. But dont take it out on the responsible gun owners of this region.

Still, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin hailed the move, noting the 2,939 people shot in Chicago this past year and decrying a lack of legislative action in Washington, D.C.

The president has a list of things he can do, he said in a statement. It wont solve all these problems by a long shot, but it moves us in the right direction. I appreciate his efforts to do more to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people while ensuring that Second Amendment rights are protected.
HERRIN  Taffie Helleny, who died at the age of 92 at his Herrin home on New Years Day, mentored countless business owners in Southern Illinois over the years from his impromptu office, a window booth at Quatros Pizza.

For 35 years or more, Helleny had lunch at Quatros, sometimes three or four days a week. On occasion, Helleny had plans to meet with business associates or friends there, but just as often he showed up alone. But he never ate alone.

It was his regular booth from which he dispensed business advice, and anybody in need of encouragement knew they could usually find him there, said Quatros Pizza owner Steve Payne.

Taffie would hold court there, as they say, three or four days a week, Payne said. Hed come in for lunch and meet people coming and going. He did that forever. His last time there was a week ago Monday.

'My second dad'

Payne said he is one of the many who has benefited from years of Hellenys friendship, counsel and generosity. Hes like my second dad, Payne said. And yet, Helleny was technically just his landlord as co-owner of the Campus Shopping Center in downtown Carbondale where Quatros is located.

What is typically just a cold business transaction was so much more for Helleny, whom Payne described as a benevolent man. He wanted to do all he could to make sure new business owners were given every chance to succeed, Payne said. As an example of his involvement, he fronted the cost for new window blinds for Quatros when Payne bought the joint in May 1976. For many others, he offered small loans, helped furnish a place, or offered flexibility on rent due dates.

His business philosophies were simple, some of them so much so they are cliches, but he truly believed in them, Panye said. That included his deeply held belief that people will remember the quality of a product long after theyve forgotten the price.

He helped many in business

In business, he helped many, many, many folks, Payne said. The list was long as far as that goes.

Helleny was generous, Payne said, but wouldnt be taken advantage of and didnt have much patience for those just wanting a handout. The harder you worked, the more he wanted to help, Payne said. If you were a deadbeat he might throw you a couple of bones but he didnt waste a lot of time.

In addition to his co-ownership of the shopping center, he also was a partner in Hellenys Furniture in Herrin, a business that his father began more than 100 years ago. In the 1960s, Helleny opened a branch of Hellenys Furniture at the Murdale Shopping Center in Carbondale, which remained at that location for a number of years, said his son Joey Helleny, a senior lecturer in the department of radio television and digital media at SIU. Helleny also had been chairman of the board of Home Federal Savings and Loan in Carbondale.

If anything my dad is remembered for, its that advice giving that he gave very freely and trying to help people out who were trying to put together their own business ventures, Joey said.

Helleny legacy long in Herrin

There are few family names as synonymous with Herrin as Helleny. Helleny was born in 1923 in Herrin, the son of Katie and Joseph Helleny. His father migrated from Syria to Herrin in his early 20s, and sold household items door-to-door. In 1911, he opened a dry good and hardware store that eventually morphed into the furniture store, Joey said. Helleny had four brothers, and they have all been very active in the region, lending to the status of the family name.

Joey said his father was proud of his Syrian roots, and was very troubled by the recent Syrian civil war affecting relatives and friends living there.

Among his memberships in Herrin he belonged to the Prairie Masonic Lodge 693, the Herrin Elks Lodge 1146, where he was the longest serving member, and the First Presbyterian Church in Herrin. He was certainly a pillar of the community, a very civic minded individual that will be dearly missed and practically impossible to replace, said Herrin Mayor Steve Frattini.

Benefactors of Helleny's philanthropic giving included Southern Illinois University, specifically Morris Library, the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and WSIU. The family requests memorials in his name be made to First Presbyterian Church of Herrin, Hospice of Southern Illinois or a charity of the donor's choice.

In addition to one brother, survivors include his wife, E.J. (Craver) Helleny, originally of Murphysboro, whom he married 65 years ago on June 18, 1950, two sons, a daughter and three grandchildren. Services for Helleny are scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at Meredith-Waddell Funeral Home. Burial will be in Herrin City Cemetery. The visitation will be held from 5-8 p.m. Wednesday at the funeral home and Masonic Rites will be immediately following at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday.

Payne said he will soon erect a photograph of Helleny above his regular booth at Quatros as a reminder of his many contributions to the region.
ISSUE: More controversy about flag

OUR VIEW: Lawmakers have obligation to spend wisely  but also to meet demands of resolution

It wont be at the top of the agenda when lawmakers return to Columbia on Jan. 12, but the people of South Carolina will be watching for reaction to the latest developments regarding the Confederate flag.

Amid national attention, lawmakers over the summer returned to Columbia for historic votes to remove the banner from Statehouse grounds. The action came in response to calls by the governor and so many others to furl the flag as a show of unity in response to the killing of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney and eight others in a racially motivated attack at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Lawmakers did the right thing in removing the flag from official display, but in the process they also decided the banner would have a special place in a historical setting. That place is to be the Confederate Relic Room at the State Museum.

But even in the move to a museum, the flag cannot avoid controversy.

When the headlines came regarding an estimated cost of $5.3 million for renovations to expand the museum to accommodate the flag, reaction from lawmakers and the public was swift.

The proposal by a consultant hired by the S.C. Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia came after Octobers flooding and the renewed clamor for something to be done immediately to improve the states roads and bridges.

The question: How can South Carolina even consider spending $5.3 million to house a flag when there are so many other needs?

In response, the cost of the planned renovation has been reduced by the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum Commission to $3.6 million, but even that seems to be an extraordinary amount.

But is it really?

The resolution that produced the flags removal from the Statehouse calls for more than just display. It mandates that the Confederate Relic Room establish and maintain an appropriate, permanent, and public display honoring South Carolina soldiers killed during the Civil War to include (the flag removed from Statehouse grounds). This flag must be displayed alongside other distinguished military exhibits covering the Civil War.

As reported by The State newspaper, commission Chairman George Dorn of Lexington said, We dont have room to do an adequate and appropriate display according to the resolution.

Confederate Relic Room Director Allen Robertson, also as reported by The State, elaborated by saying that without an expansion, a display meeting the resolutions criteria would take up the relic rooms only programming space. That would threaten the income and accreditation of the relic room, which has an annual budget of $860,000 and a staff of four full-time employees, Robertson said.

So the plan is to use a vacant 4,600-squre-foot second-story room, an expansion that would increase the size of the Confederate Relic Room by a third.

So the question becomes just what is a reasonable amount to spend on an adequate and appropriate display for the flag?

That will be up to lawmakers as they would have to appropriate the money being requested by the commission.

In making the decision, they should weigh the present plan and its projected cost against potential alternatives, realizing that if a truly unique and permanent display for the flag which tells its story and memorializes its place in the states political history is the mandate, there is going to a cost.

What would be unwelcome is more contentious debate in reaching a decision. Consuming more time -- and money in the process  would indeed by a misappropriation of funds.
In the documentary about the making of Star Wars, the venerable Walter Cronkite lauded the first movie for lifting the United States out of our depression of the 70s, the mood induced by the trauma of Vietnam and the skullduggery of Watergate. We were ready to believe in heroes again, and to affirm an intergalactic morality tale wrapped in dazzling special effects. Since we knew not our preternatural need for Star Wars, it hit us with the force of The Force.

We cant reasonably expect J.J. Abrams to deliver the same kind of experience that George Lucas did back then, nailing the zeitgeist with a product we couldnt ask for because we didnt know we needed it. We have asked and asked; finally hes delivered an engaging flick. But  spoiler alert  he has also created a female character that couldnt be more in tune with the times. My benchmark: my 10-year-old daughter.

Natalie Portmans Padme Amidala opened my eyes to how strong women frequently end up in Hollywood movies: portrayed within the confines of a traditional role (in this case, fussy royalty in fussy dresses) and then, dead. When she showed up for a fight in a skin-tight white suit, and then had her midriff exposed by the sharp claws of a flailing monster, I laughed out loud in the theater.

Still, the Star Wars franchise gave us more persuasive female badasses, the most obvious being Leia, who used a blaster, mercilessly razzed her rescuers and came out of the imperial torture chamber in a lot better shape than does her frequent foil, Han Solo. Shes not quite Katniss Everdeen, whom Hollywood allows to grow into her role as an emotional and physical toughie, but crossing Leia is generally a bad idea. Just ask Jabba the Hutt.

Rey, the standout of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is a character who happens to be a woman rather than being a woman whos in the script to demonstrate empowerment. My daughter, Lucinda, twigged to this intuitively.

Bursting through the door at home and bubbling about the new movie, Lucinda launched into a monologue about Rey, rattling off the characters assorted attributes and accomplishments  fights with a staff, flies the Millennium Falcon, has Jedi power  to my bemused wife. After a few run-on sentences, Lucinda caught a breath and said: Shes a girl, when she realized my wife hadnt seen the movie. But the tone was not, Shes a girl and so am I. Rather: You might think its Ray, Id better clarify.

For dense theatergoers, Abrams includes an early action sequence that fences Rey off from the damsel-in-distress trope that often emerges when things start blowing up. She dispatches a few bad guys with her staff, to the amazement of Finn, the turncoat Storm Trooper who needs more rescuing than Rey. I know how to run without you holding my hand, she tells Finn.

In another moment, Rey works under the hood of the Millennium Falcon, parts flying everywhere while she barks out orders to Finn about what tools she needs to get it moving again. Its a bit like Leia lecturing Han back in the day, except that Finn is too overwhelmed by the situation to zing Rey back the way Han would have. Leia was asserting her authority. Rey is the only plausible leader on hand.

At one point, when the Falcon almost comes loose at the seams, Rey roots around under a control panel and the ship suddenly stabilizes, to the amazement of Han Solo. Dangling a wire from between her fingers, Rey exults: I bypassed the condenser! Any science teacher these days would have recognized the look on Reys face at that moment. The student knows the theory, but the delight comes when the experiment pans out in practice as well.

Rey will resonate with girls not because they aspire to be her, but because they are already. When Lucinda whips out a sword, its to be a musketeer for Halloween. When Lucinda gets her hands on the iPhone to shoot video, shes the movies director, calling the shots. When Lucinda executes an art project, its her vision being realized.

The Force Awakens didnt create the first strong female character, but the movie did  and presumably will some more  let Reys arc take shape in a way that other Star Wars women didnt experience. This evolution has been a delight to watch, from Leia, to Katniss, to Rey. And, of course, Lucinda.
WASHINGTON -- You probably noticed that 2015 was pretty weird. But hey, it's a brand new year -- a fresh start, a blank slate, an unwritten script. In 2016, what could possibly go wrong?

Uh, where to begin?

My fingers balk at typing the words "President-elect Trump" because I don't think such a thing will actually happen. But at this point I'm wondering how to justify ruling ANYTHING out.

A year ago, was there anyone on earth who predicted that Donald Trump would utterly dominate the Republican presidential race? That the boastful billionaire would be setting the nation's political agenda? That Jeb Bush, armed with more campaign money than he could possibly spend, would be drifting helplessly toward the single-digit wings of the crowded debate stage?

Nobody saw this coming, least of all the GOP establishment grandees who, as I wrote in August, are working their way through Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief. First there was denial ("What a weird dream; maybe it was something we ate"), then anger ("He's a clown, he's a jerk, he should be drawn and quartered"), then bargaining ("OK, OK, we give up on immigration reform"). Now party elders seem to be sinking into the fourth stage, depression.

I have no idea whether they'll have to reach the final stage, acceptance. Trump's legions turn out for his revivalist-style rallies, but will they actually vote? If they do -- and if the establishment-approved candidates keep pulling one another down like crabs in a barrel -- then Trump is the likely GOP nominee. There, I said it.

That doesn't make him our likely next president, though. Most Americans are appalled by notions such as forcibly deporting 11 million undocumented migrants or hanging a "No Muslims Allowed" sign on the Statue of Liberty. Quite a few dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, asked to support a candidate whose platform amounts to ethnic cleansing, surely would sit this one out -- or even vote for the Democratic nominee, probably Hillary Clinton.

Trump vs. Clinton could be a wipeout defeat for the Republican Party on the scale of the 1964 Barry Goldwater debacle. The only caveat? See above re: absolutely ruling anything out.

What else could go wrong in 2016? Well, politics isn't the only realm in which we have to shift our thinking from "no way" to "please make it stop." Climate is another. Scientists confidently predict that 2015 will prove to have been the hottest year on record, perhaps by a considerable margin. And this week, temperatures at the North Pole may have reached the melting point -- roughly 50 degrees above normal for this time of year.

Also this week we've had deadly tornadoes in Texas, bad flooding in the Mississippi Valley, worse flooding across South America and hurricane-force winds in the North Atlantic. On the bright side, there's been no plague of locusts, far as I can tell.

It is true that the proximate cause of most of this anomalous weather is believed to be an unusually strong El Nino phenomenon in the Equatorial Pacific. I am obliged to include the disclaimer that no one weather event can be definitively blamed on climate change -- not even the fact that I saw people in Washington wearing shorts and sandals on Christmas Eve.

That said, let's be real. At this point, anyone who rejects the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming is either a blinkered ideologue, a Republican presidential candidate or both.

Climate scientists have long predicted that one impact of higher global temperatures will be to make extreme weather more common and unpredictable -- and more extreme. With that monster El Nino on the loose, weather in 2016 could be even wilder and woolier.

In other news, what could go wrong in Congress is obvious; the same things go wrong every year. What could go wrong in foreign affairs is too depressing to contemplate.

So maybe it's better to think about what could go right.

The economy continues to grow -- slowly, perhaps, but steadily. Crime is at or near historical lows. About 90 percent of Americans have health insurance, which is closer to universal coverage than we've ever been. Budget-busting medical costs have slowed their rise. These and other positive trends should continue, as meanwhile the nation lives through an election campaign that will not be able to dodge issues of fundamental importance.

In 2016, we're likely to see an exercise in democracy that is passionate, messy, at times ugly -- but vitally important. Happy new year, and note that the seat-belt light will be on through November.
I make it a point of not missing the annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, and this year was/is no different as it's a street pho...
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Azerbaijan increased the production of tank gas in 2015, Rahman Gurbanov, the vice-president for oil and gas production and transportation of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), said in an interview with Natural Gas Europe.

The production of tank gas exceeded 18.9 b c m in Azerbaijan for the first time, which is 0.2 billion more than in 2014, he said.

"The production of tank gas increased at both Shah Deniz gas condensate field and the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields due to the associated gas, he said. Some 9.9 b c m of gas were produced at Shah Deniz field in 2015. However, the total volume of gas production in Azerbaijan amounted to 29.4 b c m in 2015, which is 0.2 b c m less than in 2014."

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) produced 6.33 b c m of gas from January-November 2015 compared to 6.65 b c m in the same period in 2014.

SOCAR produced 7.22 b c m of gas in 2014, compared to 7.31 b c m in 2013.

/By Trend/
/By AzerNews/

By Aynur Karimova

Bulgaria has voiced intention to become main gas transit country for South Eastern and Central Europe.

The country's Prime Minister, Boyko Borissov, said in an interview to Deutsche Welle that this could be possible by constructing Balkan gas hub near the Varna coastal - Bulgarian Black Sea Coast.

It is expected that the gas for this project will be supplied from Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, as well as from Romanian and Bulgarian fields.

Borissov noted that the project and its financial plan are being developed by the Bulgarian government jointly with the European Commission.

In December, 2015, Bulgaria and the European Commission agreed to establish a joint working group to support the development of a gas hub in Bulgaria designed to serve the whole Balkan region.

It will focus on creating a "stable regulatory framework and business environment to facilitate the connection between Bulgaria and the rest of southeast Europe," the Bulgarian cabinet said in a statement.

Currently, Turkey and Bulgaria plan to construct a connecting pipeline for importing Azerbaijani gas to Bulgaria.

Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece have decided in 2015 to construct an interconnector that alongside with the Balkan gas hub will facilitate diversification and transportation of natural gas in any direction.

The diversification of natural gas resources and the routes delivering natural gas to Bulgaria is vital for the country. In this regard, Azerbaijan could become an important partner for Bulgaria. The country continues to put in all efforts to aid in the construction of the Greece-Bulgaria Interconnector for the supply of Azerbaijani gas.

The IGB is a gas pipeline that will allow Bulgaria to receive Azerbaijani gas, mostly from the second stage of development of Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field. The IGB will connect to the Trans-Adriatic pipeline, providing a steady flow of natural gas from Shah Deniz in the Caspian to European markets.

In January 2014, TAP and the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria Company  which is in charge of the development, financing, and construction of the IGB  signed a memorandum of understanding and cooperation.

The MoU will allow cooperation between the two companies that will work together on finding a possible connection point in the vicinity of Komotini, Greece. This will enable new gas supplies to flow into the Bulgarian gas network and further into South Eastern Europe.
/By AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

Russia, being one of the three co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group created to mediate for solving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has voiced concern over the aggravation of situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

"In recent months we have witnessed the intensification of the armed conflict with the use of heavy artillery, heavy machine guns, multiple rocket launchers, which resulted in an increase in the number of casualties, including among the civilian population. This situation cannot but worry us, Interfax quoted Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as saying.

Moscow has recently activated efforts to contribute to the settlement of the long-standing conflict, however, no noticeable progress was observed in the negotiation process.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far. Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.

Intensifying tension on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces highlights the need for undertaking real actions for destabilizing situation in the region.

Karasin believes that the parties to the conflict should redouble their efforts to achieve sustainable peace.

This firm position of the international mediators clearly expressed in the statement of Russia, U.S. and France during the meeting of the OSCE foreign ministers held last December, said Karasin.

He added that the parties must also comply with existing agreements, aimed at observing the ceasefire.

The ceasefire regime is being violated along the Armenia - Azerbaijan border on a daily basis. Azerbaijans positions come under intensive fire of the Armenian armed forces.

Regular violations of the ceasefire, armed attacks on civilians, show that Armenia is not interested in resolving the conflict through peaceful means. Baku believes Armenias true aim is to continue the occupation of Azerbaijani lands and maintain the status quo by all means.

Karasin also touched upon the meeting of the of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents held in December 19. We hope that the discussion will have a stabilizing effect on the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact, he said.

Russia, as one of three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group makes active efforts to help the parties to the conflict to reach a compromise, Karasin said.

Moscow has recently made certain suggestions for the peaceful resolution of the problem. Currently, the new proposals put forward by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on solving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict are under consideration.

Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said these proposals reflect the agreements reached during the meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in Sochi, Newport and Paris and have been worked out based on the renewed Madrid principles.

The sides to the conflict currently hold talks based on the renewed Madrid principles, which envisage return of occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, ensure the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence, future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh and etc.

However, the peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group have been largely fruitless so far.
The Chinese government has decided to swap currency with Iran, Deputy Chairman of Iran-China Chamber of Commerce Majid Reza Hariri said.

This comes after China recently succeeded in making yuan stand as an internationally credible currency.

However, Hariri said, it must be seen what method china will use for swapping currencies and when the intention turns practical, Mehr news agency reported January 3.

He went on to comment on Iran-China trade relations, asserting that China is expected to remain Irans top partner in 2016.

China is partner to 25 percent of Irans foreign trade.

In 2015, Iran-China trade fell by 34 percent after key goods such as oil, gas condensates, and iron ore lost much value.

Hariri also said Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to Iran has been made certain and will be paid in late January or early February.

/By Trend/
Head of Iran's Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mine and Agriculture Mohsen Jalalpour announced that Russia will lift tariff on Iran dairy imports as of January 15, 2016, IRNAreported.

He made the remarks in a joint meeting with heads of three chambers of Commerce, shopkeepers and co-operative here on Monday.

Jalalpour said about his meeting with Russian ambassador to Tehran, and added that tariff on dairy imports to Russia will be lifted on January 15 and tariff on other goods from mid- February.

He added that Russian market has a potential capacity, which should not be ignored.

Referring to the tensions in Turkey and Russia relations, Jalalpour said that Iran can take advantage from this situation and increase its presence in regional markets.

/By Trend/
Filippo Grandi of Italy began his five-year term as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN Center of News reported. He succeeded Antonio Guterres (Portugal) who was in office more than 10 years.

High Commissioner Grandi, who arrived at UNHCR's headquarters office in Geneva earlier on Monday (January 4), takes up the position at a time of unprecedented displacement challenges. Record numbers of people globally are forced to flee war and persecution, including more than one million refugees and migrants who crossed the Mediterranean to Europe during the past year.

Grandi, 58, who is from Italy, has worked in international affairs for over 30 years, 27 of them with the United Nations. Formerly head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), he worked prior to that for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) as Deputy Special Representative, following a long career first with NGOs and later with UNHCR in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and at the organization's Geneva headquarters.

Filippo Grandi has been elected for the five-year period that begins on January 1, 2016 to come an end on December 31, 2020.

UNHCR works worldwide to protect, assist and find solutions for refugees, internally displaced people and stateless populations. It has some 9,700 staff across 126 countries, many of them working in humanitarian emergencies and in close proximity to regions of conflict. In June 2015 it reported that worldwide forced displacement had reached a new post-World War II high of 59.5 million people. Displacement levels have continued to rise since, most visibly with the situation of more than one million refugees and migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe during 2015.

/By AzerTac/
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran are at their worst for nearly 30 years.

Tensions have spiralled following the execution of Saudi cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the subsequent setting ablaze of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and Riyadh's expulsion of Iranian diplomats.

The struggle between Riyadh and Tehran for political and religious influence has geopolitical implications that extend far beyond the placid waters of the Gulf and encompass nearly every major conflict zone in the Middle East.

Most notably, perhaps, the crisis means prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough in Syria and Yemen now look much more remote, just as international momentum for negotiations seemed to be on the verge of delivering results.

Years of turbulence

The current standoff is as dangerous as its 1980s predecessor, which first saw diplomatic ties suspended between 1988 and 1991.

This occurred at the end of the turbulent opening decade after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the grinding eight-year Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states backed Iraq's Saddam Hussein during the war and suffered Iranian attacks on their shipping, while in 1984 the Saudi air force shot down an Iranian fighter jet that it claimed had entered Saudi airspace.

Saudi and other Arab Gulf governments also linked Iran's post-revolutionary government with a rise in Shia militancy, an aborted coup in Bahrain in 1981, and a failed attempt to assassinate the emir of Kuwait four years later.

Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah al-Hejaz was formed in May 1987 as a cleric-based organisation modelled on Lebanese Hezbollah intent on carrying out military operations inside Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah al-Hejaz issued a number of inflammatory statements threatening the Saudi royal family and carried out several deadly attacks in the late 1980s as tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia rose sharply.

Deep distrust

While the current crisis lacks as yet equivalent instances of direct confrontation, tensions are as dangerous as in the 1980s for three reasons.

The first is the legacy of years of sectarian politics that have done so much to divide the Middle East along Sunni-Shia lines and foster an atmosphere of deep distrust between Iran and its neighbours across the Gulf.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Iran and Saudi Arabia support opposing sides in conflicts in Yemen and Syria

In such a supercharged atmosphere, the moderate middle ground has been sorely weakened and advocates of a hardline approach to regional affairs now hold sway.

Second, the Gulf states have followed increasingly assertive foreign policies over the past four years, partly in response to what they see as perennial Iranian "meddling" in regional conflicts, and also because of growing scepticism about the Obama administration's intentions in the Middle East.

For many in the Gulf, the primary threat from Iran lies not in Tehran's nuclear programme but in Iran's support for militant non-state actors such as Hezbollah and, more recently, the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Both the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and the multinational coalition against terrorism announced last month by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman show Saudi officials in no mood to compromise on regional security matters.

'Death knell'

Finally, the breakdown in diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran probably sounds the death-knell, at least for now, for regional efforts to end the wars in Yemen and Syria.

Lost in the furore over the execution of Nimr al-Nimr was an announcement that the fragile ceasefire agreed in Yemen on 15 December had broken down.

Neither the ceasefire nor the UN-brokered talks that started at the same time had made much headway, and while the UN talks were due to resume on 14 January that is unlikely if the Saudi-led coalition and Iran intensify their involvement in Yemen.

A similar outcome may now await the Syrian peace talks due to begin in Geneva in late January, as weeks of patient behind-the-scenes outreach to align the warring parties will come to nothing if the two most influential external parties to the conflict instead double down and dig in.

/By BBC/
/By AzerNews/

By Laman Sadigova

Uzbekistans First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Rustam Azimov and Kuwaiti Ambassador Ahmed Khaled Abdullah Al-Dzhiyran discussed a wide range of issues related to the bilateral relations and cooperation.

They reviewed issues of expanding the trade and economic relations between them and stressed that the development of economic cooperation follows the interests of both countries.

The Uzbek side also urged Kuwaiti businessmen to invest various sectors of the Uzbek economy. He said that Tashkent is seeking to enhance mutual cooperation with Kuwait to the level aspired by the two countries leaders.

Earlier, the two countries signed the bilateral intergovernmental agreements in the field of economy during Uzbek President Islam Karimovs official visit to Kuwait in January 2004.



In particular, the sides signed a memorandum on cooperation between the governments of Uzbekistan and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), envisaging the financial assistance worth $ 215 million to implement nine projects in Uzbekistan in the fields of health protection, energy supply, land reclamation and water supply.



One more intergovernmental document, envisaging KFAEDs financial assistance in the implementation of 10 projects totaling $375.2 million, was signed as part of the official visit of Kuwaits Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabahs to Uzbekistan in July 2008.



At present, the total amount of funds, allocated by the KFAED to implement the investment projects in Uzbekistan, is $135 million.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has called for Iran and Saudi Arabia to be careful and use the language of diplomacy rather than threats, amid rising tension between Tehran and Riyadh Hurriyet Daily News reported

In a written statement on Jan. 5, the ministry expressed concern about attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, stressing that those premises should be protected by host countries in line with the Vienna Accord.

Saudi embassy and consular offices were attacked by angry crowds in Tehran and Mashhad in recent days, protesting Saudi Arabias execution of prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry described these attacks as unacceptable, adding that strains between the two countries should not negatively influence the security, stability and peace of the region.

/By Trend/
Aggravation of relations between Tehran and Riyadh threatens the security of the region, said Saleh Zeitoun, Jordanian Middle East expert.

After the aggravation of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, undoubtedly, the situation in Iraq, Syria and Yemen will greatly worsen, due to a clash of interests of Iran and Saudi Arabia in these countries, Zeitoun told Trend on Jan.5.

The expert did not rule out the possibility that the deterioration of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia could also affect the number of countries of the Gulf region.

One of those countries may become Bahrain, where the majority of population is Shiite Muslims, he said.

He believes that the current crisis can be resolved only through negotiations by the two countries.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran soured after the execution of a prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr in the Kingdom.

Iran strongly condemned the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, there were mass protests in the country, in particular, Saudi embassy in the capital Tehran and the consulate in the city of Mashhad were attacked.

Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on Jan 3.

Saudi Arabia's permanent representative to the United Nations Abdullah al-Moallem before said that relations with Iran will be restored only when Tehran stops "interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including Saudi Arabia".

Kuwait has recalled its ambassador to Iran today.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has criticized Saudi Arabia for severing ties with the Islamic Republic and beheading Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric.

Saudi Arabia cant cover up the crime of beheading a religious leader by cutting the diplomatic ties, IRNA quoted Rouhani as saying at a meeting with Denmarks Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen in Tehran Jan. 5.

Earlier on Jan. 2, Saudi Arabia executed Nimr al-Nimr on terrorism charges, followed by a strong protest from Iran, which said the execution was unjustified. Reacting to al-Nimrs execution, angry Iranians stormed on Jan. 3 the Saudi embassy in Tehran, smashing furniture and setting fire to the building before being dispersed by police.

Following the protests, Saudi Arabia said it severed diplomatic ties with Iran and urged the Islamic Republics diplomatic mission and related entities to leave the country within 48 hours.

Rouhani, further saying that al-Nimrs beheading is not a response to criticism, called on human rights activists and Europeans to condemn Saudi Arabias execution of the cleric.

Iran understands that negotiation and diplomacy are the best ways for resolving tensions between the regional countries, he added.

The Danish FM too criticized Saudi Arabias execution of the cleric and said Islam is against terrorism.

During the meeting, President Rouhani also said that under the current situation in the region, all states should cooperate to fight terrorism, adding that Iran believes the regional countries can clear the region from terrorists through unity.

Rouhani also called on the EU to cooperate in the fight against terrorism and said that as a first step the world should impose restrictions against the countries that back terrorists.

This is not a secret anymore and everyone knows which countries provide the terrorists with funds and arms or purchase oil from them, Rouhani added.

During the meeting, Rouhani also called for expansion of economic ties between Iran and Denmark.

/By Trend/
Everton vs Manchester City

, 5 January,



Capital One Cup SF 1st Leg Preview



Did Muhamed Besic play his way into a rare start with his performance against Spurs on Sunday? Did Muhamed Besic play his way into a rare start with his performance against Spurs on Sunday?

Everton begin their two-legged League Cup semi-final tomorrow against Manchester City hoping to build the platform from which they can progress to the club's first Wembley final in seven years.

Having overcome Middlesbrough in the previous round, the Blues were handed arguably the most difficult scenario possible in the last four when they drew the highest-placed team left in the competition, with the home tie first. That puts the onus on Roberto Martinez's side to jump out to an early aggregate lead with a strong performance at Goodison Park where they haven't won since 21st November.

With Martinez expressing his satisfaction with his side's performance against Tottenham, it would not a surprise to see him play this one safe to a degree in the first half and again set the team out to be more defensive. The formation will probably be the same regardless but Muhamed Besic's transformative appearance as a substitute on Sunday made a strong case for his inclusion from the start, either in the left sided role in which he was deployed against Chelsea in September (before he succumbed to injury) or alongside Gareth Barry with Tom Cleverley moved over to the left. That would edge Arouna Kone onto the bench which is probably overdue  the Ivorian has become increasingly ineffective in recent matches.

Given the choice, many Evertonians would prefer to see Kevin Mirallas handed a start over using another player out of position on the left but if, as expected, Gerard Deulofeu or Aaron Lennon are named on the team sheet, Martinez is unlikely to go with two wingers. The Belgian has been given playing time in the earlier rounds of the Capital One Cup this season but with the pressure mounting on the manager's shoulders in the wake of some poor results in the Premier League, caution could well win the day, at least at the beginning of the match.

Article continues below video content

At the back, Phil Jagielka's influence has been sorely missed but Martinez has already confirmed that he won't be fit enough to return, so it will be John Stones and Ramiro Funes Mori at centre half, with Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines as the fullbacks, assuming the latter doesn't need to rest after playing the full 90 minutes on Sunday. Joel Robles should get the nod as the designated "cup keeper" in goal.

Ordinarily, a straight do-or-die knockout cup tie where anything can happen would make for a much more level the playing field but the two-legged format complicates Everton's task here. As the stronger side, City surely have the luxury of just needing to avoid defeat in the first leg and then getting the Toffees back to Etihad where an Everton side hasn't won in six years.

The reverse is true for the Toffees  you've got to believe we have to take some sort of lead into the second leg to stand a chance of making the final, so unless we make a fast start and get Manuel Pellegrini's side on the rack early on, it will probably be a case of biding our time, keeping it tight and then hoping to score in the second half. Regardless, the long dormant Goodison bear pit atmosphere would be a useful ally if the crowd can get onside.

Whatever happens, the keys to success for Martinez and his man will be to shackle the likes of David Silva and Yaya Toure, two players who have picked us apart in previous meetings, and then deny the deadly Sergio Aguero the space he thrives on to score goals. With the form Lukaku is in this season, Everton always know they've got a great chance of scoring goals  in that respect Vincent Kompany's absence is probably the best news we could have hoped for  so if they can keep it tight at the back, the Blues know they can score against anyone when they're in the mood.



Everton fans have been doing their best to try and put Martinez's record at Wigan out of their minds as the goals have flowed in at the wrong end in recent weeks but it's the Catalan's history with City in an important Cup clash that can provide some comfort. His last act with the Latics was to mastermind victory at Wembley over the Citizens in the 2013 FA Cup Final. If he can repeat the feat over two legs in the League Cup semi-final, he will have taken the Toffees one step further to ending a trophy drought that is now into its third decade.

Kick-off: 8pm

Predicted line-up: Robles, Coleman, Stones, Funes Mori, Baines, Barry, Besic, Cleverley, Barkley, Deulofeu, Lukaku

Full details: ToffeeWeb Match Report

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I was elected in March 2008, the Member of Parliament for Petaling Jaya Utara under the Democratic Action Party (DAP). I'm also the DAP National Publicity Secretary, as well as the investment liaison officer for the Penang Chief Minister based in the Klang Valley.Before joining politics full-time in January 2007, I was the CEO and founder of a Malaysian IT company, publicly listed in Singapore. I divested all my shares in the company to be able to serve the community and take part in socio-political affairs of Malaysia.I've always had faith that there has been a guardian angel looking after me all these while - my personal well-being, my education, my career. Some will call it "God's will", some "fate" while some others, "destiny". I strongly believe that it is time for me to repay the kindness and fortune showered on me by my family, the society and of course, not forgetting, my guardian angel. :-)Also, don't forget to visit my other blog at Education in Malaysia and my Chinese blog 
As part of the research for my Tudor trilogy, I decided to follow the journey of Jasper Tudor and his young nephew Henry from Tenby in ...
With Qatars ongoing infrastructure projects and new city developments offering plenty of potential for growth, virtually all sectors of the economy are ripe for private sector investment, said a senior official while speaking to the global publishing, research and consultancy firm Oxford Business Group (OBG).



"Significant initiatives, including the expected opening of the new sea port, the continuing development of designated economic zones and the ongoing metropolitan expansion of Doha and other cities, are all driving a positive investment environment," remarked Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani, the chairman of Al Faisal Holding.



A major player in Qatar and abroad, Al Faisal Holding has interests in a broad range of business activities, including hospitality, real estate, commerce and industry.



OBGs wide-ranging interview with Sheikh Faisal took place against a changing economic backdrop which will see Qatars private sector playing a bigger part in the countrys development and a shift away from government support.



He pointed out that a growing population looking for a wider range of goods and services was creating 'ample business opportunities' for Qatari entrepreneurs across the board.



According to him, the current year has brought solid operational growth across Al Faisal Holdings business divisions with the companys hospitality segment, led by Al Rayyan Tourism Investment Company (Artic), delivering a particularly strong performance.



Sheikh Faisal, also told OBG that Artic had acquired three hotels this year - the St Regis Washington DC, the Manhattan at Times Square, New York, and the Aleph in Rome, while two key local projects are nearing completion.



The Shangri-La Hotel Doha and the Rotana Hotel City Centre are both expected to be operational soon, with other projects moving forward, Sheikh Faisal told OBG.



"We also have a strong pipeline comprising several additional projects that are currently at an early stage of development," he stated.



The other initiatives include the $100-million Phase Two redevelopment of the City Centre Mall, he added.



On the low oil impact, Sheikh Faisal said: "Qatar has not been much affected by the drop in oil prices and the economy has continued to grow as expected. The government is nevertheless keen to continue diversifying revenue streams as the economy grows, and the private sector is a major component of that process."



"So, in the years to come, Im positive that the performance of the private sector will have a bigger influence on the economys overall performance," he added.



The business leader is keen to see more local firms follow in the footsteps of Aamal Company and list on the Qatar Stock Exchange, particularly family outfits.



"Listing not only supports Qatars development, but will also guarantee the future of family businesses by encouraging corporate governance, thus ensuring the continuation of locally-grown businesses from one generation to the next," he explained.



He regards family firms as a key component of a healthy economy that complements the public sector, adding that the valuable role they play has been recognised at the highest level.



Our government has undertaken several initiatives in recent years aimed at supporting and strengthening the role of private businesses, said Sheikh Faisal.



"Now it is the turn of business leaders in Qatar to utilise the variety of opportunities arising from the diversification of the economy and to take advantage of its healthy investment environment," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Banks in the United Arab Emirates have been told to get dividends approved by the central bank before announcing the details of payments to markets and shareholders, four banking sources said on Tuesday.



The demand for clearance from the regulator was aimed at safeguarding lenders' capital base and ensuring they did not over-extend themselves as liquidity becomes scarcer, the sources said.



Shareholders have become used to enjoying healthy dividend payouts in recent years as bank earnings surged in line with a strengthening local economy.



But banks' profits have begun to suffer from the impact of lower oil prices in recent months as liquidity has tightened, government deposits have fallen and some small businesses have defaulted on their debt.



Banks often announce proposed dividends in public, before they have been given final approval by the regulator. In some cases, the lenders make clear that the dividends are subject to regulatory approval, but others do not.



Now, the regulator wants banks to stop disclosing dividends until it has approved them.



Nobody was available to comment from the central bank.



One of the sources said in the past some banks had announced a proposed dividend, only for the final amount to be changed after the central bank rejected it.



Banks in the UAE had a capital adequacy ratio of 18.3 percent at the end of September, according to central bank data. That's above the 12 percent required by the regulator. -Reuters
British Prime Minister David Cameron has delayed a trip to Saudi Arabia, the Times newspaper reported on Tuesday, but cited senior officials as saying this was unconnected to regional tensions.



Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on Monday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday.



The Times reported Cameron had been due to visit Riyadh in the coming weeks as part of a tour of Gulf states, but that the trip would not go ahead until March at the earliest.



"We don't confirm the prime minister's travel plans in advance. Securing reforms to the UK's relationship with the EU is a government priority and we would expect the prime minister to continue engaging with European leaders over the coming weeks," a spokeswoman said.  Reuters
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced on Tuesday it will hold an extraordinary meeting in Riyadh on Saturday to discuss tensions with Iran after attacks on Saudi missions there.



Saudi-Iranian tensions threaten to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war in which Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies back rebel groups against Iranian-backed President Bashar Al Assad.



They also cast doubts over chances for a peaceful solution in Yemen, where a Saudi-led military coalition has been bombing the Iran-allied Houthi movement for nine months.



"Foreign ministers of the GCC States will hold an extraordinary meeting in Riyadh on Saturday ... to discuss the repercussions of the attack on the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad," GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said in an emailed statement.



Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric on terrorism charges. This led to attacks by Iranian protesters on Riyadh's embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad.



The kingdom responded by severing ties with Iran. Close allies Bahrain and Sudan followed suit, while the UAE downgraded relations and Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Tehran in a diplomatic crisis that could deepen sectarian tension in the war-torn Arab world.-Reuters


Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.



Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.



When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."



"If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran," he said. "We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."



On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh's example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.



Jubeir blamed Iran's "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension.



The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.



CALLS FOR RESTRAINT



Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.



Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a US senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.



"It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the US official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long lasting and sustainable."



Brent jumped 4 per cent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.



Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 per cent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil.



SYRIA, YEMEN



The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad.



Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria's political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad's government.



State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva.



Saudi UN Ambassador Mouallimi said his country's severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations.  Reuters
Syria's political opposition in exile urged all Arab countries on Monday to sever diplomatic ties with Iran after Saudi Arabia, a strong supporter of the Syrian opposition, cut relations with Tehran.



Saudi Arabia has been rallying Sunni allies to its side in a growing diplomatic row with Iran, deepening a sectarian split across the Middle East following its execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric.



The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition declared its support for Riyadh's move, calling on "all Arab and Islamic countries to take a similar step" and criticised what it said was Iran's support for militias in Syria and Iraq.  Reuters
India confirmed on Wednesday that it was on track to seal a deal in 2016 with Westinghouse Electric Co to build six nuclear reactors, in a sign the country's $150 billion nuclear power programme is getting off the ground.



India also said that it had a deal to build at least 12 other reactor units with Russian collaboration, and that the federal cabinet had approved a civil nuclear deal with Australia for fuel supply.



A senior government source had told Reuters earlier this month that the contract with Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba Corp, to build the reactors in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat could be finalised in the first half of next year.



India plans to build roughly 60 reactors, which would make it the world's second-biggest nuclear energy market after China.



It wants to increase its nuclear capacity to 63,000 megawatts (MW) by 2032, from 5,780 MW, as part of a broader push to move away from fossil fuels, cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the dangerous effects of climate change. - Reuters
Beneath this weekend's rupture in Saudi- Iranian relations lies a deeper fault line between the United States and Saudi Arabia that may hamper US President Barack Obama's efforts to end Syria's civil war, current and former US officials said.



The Saudi decision to cut diplomatic ties to Iran after outraged Iranian protesters entered, and set fire to, the Saudi embassy in Tehran, runs directly counter to US efforts to promote contact between the two nations, particularly on Syria.



US Secretary of State John Kerry's longshot effort to bring the nearly five-year Syria civil war to an end may be the first casualty of the latest tensions.



The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, on Monday said the Saudis will attend UN-sanctioned talks set to begin in Geneva January 25, but held out little optimism for their success.



US officials acknowledged the Saudi-Iran diplomatic rift diminishes chances for the peace process. "It's going to make it a lot harder," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.



"It's obviously very fragile," said a second senior US official.



ARMS SALES



Current and former US officials said they believed Riyadh and Washington have too many shared interests, from ensuring the flow of oil, to fighting Al Qaeda and Islamic State militants and completing huge arms contracts, to permit a fundamental breach.



US and Saudi officials are continuing to work on a $1.29-billion sale of US precision munitions approved in November, according to military and industry sources. The deal, which seeks in part to replenish bombs and missiles used in the Saudi battle against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, should be finalised in coming months.



A separate, $11.25-billion Saudi purchase of four Lockheed Martin Corp surface warships, approved in October, also is expected to move forward on its years-long schedule, the sources said.



"The Saudi-US defence relationship is a juggernaut," said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. "It survives endless presidents and kings and it just keeps rolling and that's what's going to happen this time."



LOOKING PAST OBAMA?



Despite the Saudis' ultimate reliance on US security guarantees, the kingdom in the last year repeatedly has signaled a willingness to act independently of the US on national security matters. Saudi Arabia gave the US scant notice last March when, with Arab allies, it launched air strikes in Yemen against Houthi rebels it said are supported by Iran.



And last month, the kingdom announced the formation of a 34-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism. The US is not among the members.



Riyadh has also made little secret of its opposition to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, a hallmark of the US president's foreign policy.



With Obama in his last year as president, Saudi Arabia seems to be looking past Obama, toward the next US president, said one analyst with deep ties to Saudi officials.



"There are no expectations left with this administration," said Nawaf Obaid, a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "Things will start from zero once he (Obama) leaves." - Reuters
Qatar Airways, the launch customer of the A350, has become the first airline to offer regularly-scheduled A350 services to the US, launching flights from Dohas Hamad International Airport to Philadelphia on January 1.

The A350 partnership marks Qatar Airways strong investment in technology, superior travel experience and its commitment to maintaining one of the youngest, most advanced fleet in the sky.

Among the many advancements of the Airbus A350, the aircraft features a host of eco-efficiency tools, which combine for a 25 per cent reduction in emissions versus the current generation of airliners. The aircraft has an overall capacity of 283 passengers, including 36 Business Class seats, placed in a spacious 1-2-1 configuration.

Perhaps most welcome of all, the new aircraft boasts an extensive set of features proven to reduce jet lag. The A350 is equipped with a dynamic LED lighting system, with cycles, tones and colours to suit the time of day and destination. A high precision air management system filters the air every few minutes and is combined with lower cabin pressure and optimal humidity to counter the effects of international travel and refresh passengers on arrival.

The A350 has transcended modern aviation standards and our only challenge has been choosing which of our over 150 destinations would be among the first to enjoy it, said Qatar Airways group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker. The city of Philadelphia has been an outstanding partner since we launched in 2014 and it is our pleasure to reward regional travellers with the chance to experience the future of global aviation, today.  TradeArabia News Service
Oman Tourism Development Company (Omran) has welcomed James Wilson as its new CEO.



With more than 25 years of experience in the tourism, real estate and hotel development sectors, Wilsons career has seen him work across Europe, the GCC and Africa including the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, Pine Cliffs & Quinta Do Lago in Portugal and The V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa.



The appointment comes as Omran enters a new phase of development with a renewed mandate on the delivery of unique tourism destinations and innovative urban projects across the Sultanate, Omrans board of directors said.



Omran board members stated that Wilsons appointment comes at a new phase of development for Omran, with new tourism destinations and urban projects both in the pipeline for the company.



In his new role, Wilson will lead the company on its mission to contribute to Omans growing tourism industry, a sector that has seen an increasing focus by the government as part of its economic diversification efforts.  TradeArabia News Service
So when they butt-stroked me to the head from an AK-47 and I was bleeding down the side of my face and they threw me back in the cell I could
Today's Highlights

Fun stuff to do today.

Wednesday support group meetings

Alcoholics Anonymous: 6:30 a.m., 917 N. Beech; 10 a.m., 328 E. A St.; noon, 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 5:09 p.m., 917 N. Beech; 7 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 7 p.m., Glenrock, 615 W. Deer St. (downstairs); 7:30 p.m., 837 E. C St.; 8 p.m., Douglas, 628 S. Richards No. 5; 8 p.m., 328 1/2 E. A (upstairs); 8:23 p.m., Evansville, 719 3rd, Evansville Christian Church. Unless otherwise noted, all meetings are open. Casper info: 266-9578; Douglas info: 307-351-1576.

Al-Anon: 7-8 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200, 12-24 Club. For grades 6 and up. Info: 377-7260 or 258-1444; 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 302 E. 2nd. Use east entrance, meet downstairs in Room 12.

Narcotics Anonymous: Noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 8 p.m., 302 E. 2nd St., Methodist Church, enter east side. Web site: http://www.urmrna.org.

Nicotine Anonymous: Noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club. Info: Pam M., 577-0518; Troy Y., 267-6326.

Cancer Support Group: 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., 6501 E. Second St., Rocky Mountain Oncology. Open to any cancer patient/survivor, free of charge. Info: 235-5433.

NAMI: 7:30 p.m., 133 W. Sixth St. Info: 234-0440.

OIF/OEF Support Group: 6:30-8 p.m., Casper Vet Center, 1030 N. Poplar St., Ste. B. All OIF/OEF Veterans are invited to attend. No need to pre-register. Info: 261-5355.

Teen Addiction Anonymous: 7-8 p.m., 12-24 Club Teton Room. Info: 258-7439.

TOPS No. 35 Weight Loss: 6:45 a.m., First Presbyterian Church, 804 S. Wolcott. Weight Loss Support Group, Weigh-in is from 6:45 a.m.-7:10 a.m. Info: 258-2603 or 234-5644.

TOPS No. 0162: 8:30 a.m., United Methodist Church, 1880 Poplar. Anyone interested is invited to join. Info: 472-4926.

Open house at Mount Hope

Mount Hope invites you to come and tour our school, observe classes and visit with our headmaster. Please join us any time between 8 a.m. and 3:15 p.m.

Mount Hope Lutheran School offers preschool through eighth grade and follows a classical curriculum. Registration for the 2016-17 school year is now open. For more information, please call us at 234-6865.

Women in the Word

Women In The Word, a nondenominational, communitywide Bible study for women of every age, will begin again at 9:15 a.m. at Highland Park Community Church, 5725 Highland Drive. We will be starting a study of the Book of Mark. Come join us to learn more about the Bible and for fellowship. For more information, call Angela at 267-8061 or Joyce at 234-2922.

Wednesday Writers

Would you like to leave a legacy by sharing your memories with the world? Practice writing, share your work and receive constructive feedback from fellow writers at 10 a.m. at Natrona County Public Library. Call 577-READ, ext. 2, for more information.

Selling Online

The Natrona County Public Library will offer a Selling Online computer class at 10 a.m. in the Tech Center. Come learn the basics of selling using Craigslist, eBay, Amazon and Etsy. Learn tips on shipping, feedback and how to handle transactions effectively and safely. Call 577-READ, ext. 2, for more information.

Veterans help available

Alisa Cochrane, a state of Wyoming veteran service officer, is available to meet with veterans and their families to discuss state and federal veterans benefits, Department of Veteran Affairs claims or VA health care at the following places and times:

Casper: 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. VA Clinic, 4140 S. Poplar St.

If there is inclement weather, please check with the staff at the outreach locations to ensure Cochrane will be available.

In addition to the scheduled outreach, she is available at other times by calling 472-0212.

What is my business worth?

Casper Business Roundtable presents What is my business worth? from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Interstate Bank, 104 S. Wolcott St., second floor.

The presenter is Leonard Holler, regional director, for Wyoming Entrepreneur, Small Business Development Center. In addition to being an active CPA, he is a CVA, Certified Valuation Analyst and member of National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts.

What is my business worth? is a question eventually asked by most small business owners and business success is usually associated with the value of their business.

In this presentation, we will look at how does one value a business? What information is needed to determine its value? And, what are some things that impact the value of your business? How do I compute the value of the business?

After School at the Library: 'Lego City'

Elementary-age students are invited to attend our weekly After School at the Library program at 4 p.m. in the Natrona County Public Library's Crawford Room. Block by block, piece together a city out of Legos! Call 577-READ, ext. 122, for more information.

Community impact at Pizza Ranch

Pizza Ranch, 5011 E. Second St., hosts Community Impact nights from 5 to 9 p.m. normally on Mondays and Wednesdays. Members of nonprofit groups bus tables for tips, and 20 percent of meal tickets from diners who mention the group are donated as well. Dine-in, delivery or pickup orders qualify. Today's nonprofit is Central Wyoming Slammers Softball.

Family hosts final holiday support

The family of J.R. Hunter who died from suicide in June 2015 is offering free holiday support gatherings this season. Anyone who is grieving a suicide, death or considering suicide is welcome and encouraged to attend. All attending this meeting, as well as the content, will be strictly confidential.

The gathering will be at the 12-24 Club, 500 S. Wolcott St., Suite 200. It will be from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

The Fresh Start Cafe will be open and you can eat during the meetings. This meeting place was graciously offered by Dan Cantine of the 12-24 Club; you need not be a member to attend our meetings.

Taco bar at Elks

Wednesday Night Special at the Casper Elks Lodge is taco bar with all the fixings. All you can eat for $7. Build your own tacos, nachos, taco salad or any combination you desire with green chili and refried beans. Children 5 to 12 are $3. Also enjoy a dessert for $1. Serving from 6 to 7 p.m. or until gone. Members, significant other and guest accompanied by a member. For more information, call 234-4839.
Laurie Nichols, the next president of the University of Wyoming, will assume office May 16, the school announced Monday.

The terms of Nichols three-year contract have also been finalized.

She will be paid a base salary of $350,000 with additional perks, including a vehicle, a $48,000 housing allowance, $35,000 annually for deferred compensation and a $25,000 retention payment paid at the end of each year.

In addition to her presidency, Nichols will be a tenured, full professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Services in the universitys College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The University Board of Trustees chose Nichols, the first woman president in the schools history, out of three finalists Dec. 18. Nichols will succeed Dick McGinity, who has served as president since January 2014.

Many are hoping Nichols will begin a new era for the states only four-year university, observers say. The last president chosen in a national search, Bob Sternberg, served only 137 days as president. He stepped down after high turnover in top positions at the school, including an outspoken resignation from the dean of the UW College of Law.

Nichols has served as the provost and executive vice president of academic affairs at South Dakota State University since 2009. She has expressed a passion for land-grant universities such as UW.
CHEYENNE  An Australian man who insisted on representing himself at trial won't get his bank robbery conviction overturned by claiming he didn't have an adequate defense, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne dismissed a legal challenge on Dec. 30 filed by Corey Donaldson that sought to set aside his conviction and 70-month prison sentence.

Donaldson was convicted of taking more than $140,000 from a U.S. Bank in Jackson on New Year's Eve 2012. According to trial testimony, Donaldson took the money after telling the bank manager that the building had been rigged with explosives.

Law enforcement officers arrested Donaldson a few weeks later while he was staying at an upscale hotel in Utah. Officers testified they recovered more than $30,000, including $11,000 stuffed into envelopes addressed to Donaldson's relatives.

Donaldson represented himself at trial, telling the jury that he was a modern-day Robin Hood and had used much of the money to help the homeless.

"Even if the death penalty were available to you, I would still have done what I did to alleviate human suffering," Donaldson told the jury.

In sentencing Donaldson in mid-2013, Johnson said the bank robbery was "fueled by deceit." He cited a pre-sentencing report that stated Donaldson had written to publishers to drum up interest in a book about the crime.

From a federal prison in North Carolina, Donaldson has keep up a steady stream of court filings, including repeated efforts to get a federal appeals court in Denver to order Johnson to act on his case faster or overturn his conviction altogether.

In his Dec. 30 order, Johnson noted the courts have ruled that people who insist on representing themselves can't argue later that they received ineffective assistance of counsel.

Jim Barrett, a veteran assistant federal public defender, served as standby counsel for Donaldson at trial. Barrett's office said Monday he was unavailable for comment.

In an interview last month, Barrett said, Donaldson "has a different point of view of his place in life, his treatment by life and society in general."
A bill before the Wyoming Legislature would help cover a revenue shortfall by depositing into state checking accounts a portion of severance tax that currently flows into permanent savings.

Senate File 13 offers an alternative approach to addressing the massive budget shortfall facing Wyoming. Gov. Matt Mead has proposed dipping into the state's rainy day fund. But the bill, sponsored by Sen. Bruce Burns, would address the fiscal gap without touching that account.

I think it would put less burden on the rainy day fund because were taking money directly from the severance tax, and thats going directly to the General Fund," said Burns, a Republican from Sheridan. "That puts less pressure for us to spend money from the rainy day account.

Beginning Feb. 8, lawmakers will meet in Cheyenne to adopt a state budget for the two years beginning July 1. The state is facing an estimated a $210 million revenue shortfall over that period, due to declining prices of oil, gas and coal. The commodities provide 70 percent of state revenue.

When minerals are removed or severed from the ground, producers pay a tax. State law requires 1 percent of that tax be swept into the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund. The $6.9 billion fund cannot be touched, except for interest, dividends and capital gains.

The 1 percent is known as the statutory diversion.

Burns' bill would halt the statutory diversion into the permanent trust fund from July 1 through June 30, 2022.

Instead, the money would go into the states two checking accounts: one-third to the General Fund and two-thirds to the Budget Reserve Account, according to the bill.

The measure is similar to a proposal Gov. Matt Mead announced in December. However, Mead proposed the state borrow from the $1.8 billion rainy day fund and repay the fund with the statutory diversion. Burns' legislation doesnt involve the rainy day fund.

A spokesman for Mead said he would have a statement late Monday afternoon, but he did not send one by the Star-Tribune's deadline.

Burns said he intended his bill to end in 2022. By then, the state will have a different economic reality, with mineral prices returning to higher levels or a long-term revenue decline.

Well leave it up to future legislatures to decide what to do, he said.

Over the next three years, the value of the statutory diversion is projected to range between $101 million and $103 million, according to a brief report on the financial implications of the bill.

Halting the statutory diversion will reduce the growth rate of the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund, the report states. Investment income from the fund is transferred to the General Fund.

Future investment returns from the (fund) will be correspondingly reduced, the report states.
Call-center operator Afni says it will hire more than 500 customer-service representatives in Tucson during the first three months of 2016.

New employees will work from two of the companys three Tucson contact center locations, at 5320 N. La Cholla Boulevard and 5451 E. Williams Boulevard, Afni said in a news release.

Afni will host an open career fair for candidates interested in the customer service position from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 13, at the two centers.

People can apply online at

AfniCareers.com/Tucson, or on-site the day of the event.

At the event, candidates can meet Afni managers, take a compatibility assessment, interview and take a tour, the company said.

The company said sales and bilingual positions also are available at the companys other local center, at 7810 E. Escalante Road.

Based in Bloomington, Ill., Afni is Southern Arizonas 20th-largest employer, with more than 2,200 workers at its Tucson locations as of a year ago, the Star 200 survey shows.

In September, the company announced it was raising starting pay in Tucson to $11.25 per hour, from $10 perviously.
SEEL, James "Jim" H., Tucson laundromat and carwash owner for over 25 years passed away December 29, 2015. Known for his great sense of humor and love of life, he will be truly missed. Jim is survived by his wife, Micki; his son, John Seel and his family, Emily; his daughter, Joan Haakonstad and her family, Eric and Ryan. Funeral Services will be held on Saturday, January 9, 2016 in New London, PA. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the AZ Children's Association, Tucson Penny pitch or the Diabetes Foundation. Arrangements by ADAIR FUNERAL HOMES, Dodge Chapel.
DALLAS  A Marine stationed in Arizona was arrested Tuesday in the early New Year's Day fatal shooting of a North Texas college student, authorities said.

The U.S. Marine Corps said in a statement that Cpl. Eric Johnson was taken into custody at the north gate of the Marine Corps air station in Yuma. Police in Denton, Texas, said he was arrested on a murder warrant in the death of 20-year-old Sara Mutschlechner.

Mutschlechner, a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, 40 miles northwest of Dallas, was fatally shot in the head after an exchange of words between people in the vehicle she was driving and a group of five or six men in a sport utility vehicle, according to police.

"Apparently it was an amicable conversation to begin with that quickly went downhill and some derogatory statements were made toward the female occupants of that vehicle," said Officer Shane Kizer, Denton police spokesman.

Mutschlechner was the designated driver after attending a New Year's Eve party that at least two people in the SUV had also attended, according to police. Kizer has said police aren't aware of any interactions between the two groups at the party, which was attended by about 60 people.

Police have said that as the vehicles crossed an intersection, someone in the SUV fired multiple rounds. Kizer has said that after Mutschlechner was struck by a bullet, her vehicle hit another vehicle and crashed into an electrical pole.

Kizer said Johnson, 20, "was seen with a handgun in the vehicle right before the shots were fired." Kizer said the other people in the SUV are considered "persons of interest and witnesses."

He said Johnson, who is from Texas, had family ties to the Denton area. Authorities do not yet know when Johnson might be returned to Texas.

Thomas Smith, a U.S. Marshals Service official in Yuma, did not know whether Johnson had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

The Marine Corps said Johnson is assigned to the Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1. Capt. Justin Smith, spokesman for the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command in California, said Johnson joined the Marines in August 2013. He said Johnson is an administrative specialist and has never been deployed.

Kizer has said Mutschlechner was from Martindale, about 40 miles south of Austin.

Associated Press writer Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed to this report.
The trial of a Border Patrol agent charged with murder in the cross-border shooting of a Nogales teen was rescheduled Monday for March 22 before Chief Judge Raner Collins.

As is common in such cases, the agents attorney requested a continuance.

On Oct. 10, 2012, Agent Lonnie Swartz fired through the border fence into Nogales, Sonora, striking Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, about 10 times, mostly in the back.

A federal grand jury indicted Swartz in September on second-degree murder. The indictment states Swartz did with malice aforethought, and while armed with a P2000 semi-automatic pistol, unlawfully kill J.A.E.R.

Swartz is the first Border Patrol agent federally indicted in a use-of-force death. There are at least two videos of the incident, but they havent been released and until recently no one had commented publicly on them.

However, in a December interview with the TV station Telemundo, former Customs and Border Protection internal affairs chief James Tomsheck gave details of the footage he reviewed.

Tomsheck said a Border Patrol agent and two Nogales police officers who had a canine with them watched two marijuana smugglers climb the border fence and return to Mexico.

They did not appear in any way to display any concern for their (the onlookers) safety, Tomsheck told journalist Jose Diaz-Balart. A second Border Patrol agent arrives on scene, gets out of the vehicle, walks to the border fence, draws his firearm and begins firing through the fence into Mexico.

The shooting happened about 11:30 p.m. when Nogales police officers and Border Patrol agents responded to a call of suspected smuggling at the border fence that separates the downtown area of the Ambos Nogales.

The agents were barraged by rocks thrown from the Mexican side of the border after two people dropped a load of drugs and fled to Mexico, the Border Patrol has said.

A witness later told the Arizona Daily Star that Elena Rodriguez was not throwing rocks but walking on the sidewalk of Calle Internacional, which runs parallel to the border fence.

After visiting the site, Tomsheck told Diaz-Baart that he determined Elena Rodriguez couldnt have been a real threat to the agents because the boy was so far from them.

The distance from where he was, was such that no projectile he might throw could possibly clear the border fence, he said.

Swartz shot from the top of a cliff through a gap in the fencing thats less than four inches wide.

The Border Patrol has come under increasing scrutiny for its use of deadly force and what many call a lack of transparency and accountability.

More than two dozen people have died as a result of encounters with the Border Patrol since 2010. None of the agents involved has been convicted or publicly disciplined.

Tomsheck, who first told the Center for Investigative Reporting that at least a quarter of the shootings were highly suspect, said there was a cover-up culture in the agency.

They frequently attempted to put forth information in the initial briefings that was false and in some cases completely fabricated in an effort to give the initial impression that it was a legitimate use of force, he told Telemundo.

CBPs Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske has pledged to make the agency more transparent and accountable.
Two members of Arizona's congressional delegation are at odds over President Barack Obama's plans to require background checks on firearms sold at gun shows.

Republican Senator John McCain is opposed to a series of planned executive orders outlined by the White House on Monday, labeling them an overreach of the president's authority.

Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, who could face McCain in this year's senate race, says she believes President Obama is doing what is necessary to help close what has been called the gun show loophole.

All gun purchases should be subject to a background check and believes Obama's actions will help achieve that goal, says Representative Raul Grijalva.

Congresswoman Martha McSally said the president's executive action will do little to protect the average American and believes the White House should focus on mental health reform.

The White House outlined plans to extend the background checks required at traditional stores to businesses that operate at gun shows. The new requirements, however, would not extend to all sales at gun shows, specifically exempting hobbyists and gun collectors.

McCain criticized what he called unilateral action on gun control by the president.

"President Obama has once again ignored the separation of powers and disregarded the rule of law. These issues must be debated and decided by the representatives of the people  not by executive fiat," he said. "I will continue to uphold my obligation as elected official in Congress to push back on all of President Obamas unconstitutional actions."

Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, said the actions are necessary, noting Congress has repeatedly failed to act on measures to curb gun violence.

Gun violence has torn apart too many communities here in Arizona and across our nation, so we need to close dangerous loopholes and strengthen the enforcement of background checks and laws already on the books," Kirkpatrick said.

"In an ideal world, these are problems Congress would come together and solve, but this Congress has abandoned every common-sense effort to address gun violence -- it can't even close the Terror Gap loophole," she added. "House leadership is paralyzed by its fear of the gun lobby and continues to sit idly by and do nothing to keep us safe."

"While we can all agree we want to keep our communities safe from terrorism and gun violence, todays orders from the President, which hes unilaterally forcing on the American people, would do little to improve our safety," McSally said. "If he really wanted to improve security, hed get serious about addressing the very real, very capable ISIS threat. His Administrations feeble response has allowed radical Islamists to grow and spread their terror globally."

She also faulted Obama for not working with Congress on mental health reform.

He should be working with Congress, not going around us. Ive introduced a bipartisan bill to help our communities better identify and treat mental illness and help prevent the mentally ill from obtaining firearms," McSally said. "It has widespread support from the mental health community, social workers, law enforcement, and Second Amendment advocates, to name a few."

Grijalva blamed Republicans for being unwilling to pass substantive gun control reform.

The American people have been consistent in their demands that Congress stem the bloodshed brought on by our lax gun laws, but the Republicans in charge have turned a deaf ear to all but one constituency: the NRAs leadership. These politicians are pawns for an industry that breeds violence, and the results are tragic, unacceptable, and completely preventable," Grijalva said.

Obamas executive order comes just days before the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 8e shooting in Tucson that targeted Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and claimed six innocent lives.

Gabbys attack made this issue personal for every single Member of Congress. If not then, then when? If not after Newtown, when 26 children and adults were massacred, then when? If not after terrorists opened fire at a facility for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, then when? The answer is never for Congressional Republicans, because theyre already bought and sold by the gun industry," he said.

Giffords and her husband, retired NASA astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly, applauded plans by Obama to issue executive orders.

The co-founders of Americans for Responsible Solutions said his planned actions will dramatically reduce the number of firearms sold without a background check.

We thank the President for standing up to the gun lobby and announcing the most significant national achievement for gun safety since the Brady Bill 22 years ago. About 33 Americans are murdered with a gun every single day, and Congress has done something truly amazing: nothing at all," the pair wrote.

Senator Jeff Flake criticized Obama, saying he was again taking action without consulting Congress.
PHOENIX  Saying theres no longer any need for a ruling, Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Monday urged the states high court to dismiss his claim that Susan Bitter Smith was serving illegally on the Arizona Corporation Commission.

But two former commissioners, one Republican and one Democrat, disagree.

Hanging in the balance is what the justices are set to decide Tuesday, Jan. 5, about whether they want to get involved in what Brnovich claims is an effort by Bitter Smith to force the Arizona Supreme Court to issue an advisory opinion on the extent of state conflict-of-interest laws. The attorney general says the law is more than clear.

And in any event, Brnovich said it really doesnt matter what the court decides. He said nothing in what the court rules  assuming it takes the case over his objections  could legally affect his ability to file future actions like the one he did against Bitter Smith, accusing her of holding office illegally.

But attorney Hugh Hallman, in his own petition, told the justices they have an obligation to weigh in to decide what is and is not legal. More to the point, he contends that what the justices decide will affect future actions by Brnovich and those who follow him.

Sitting and future commissioners deserve to have established clearly by this court what is legally acceptable and what will be challenged by the attorney general, Hallman wrote.

At least one of his clients has a definite interest in knowing where the line is between whats legal and whats not.

Bill Mundell was elected to the commission as a Republican in 1998 and served for a decade as a Republican. He now is weighing a new bid for the panel.

And Hallman said that Mundell and Democrat Renz Jennings, who served slightly more than 14 years, believe the law on conflicts is not quite as clear as Brnovich makes it out to be. Hallman said thats particularly true when the dispute involves not working directly for or with companies regulated by the commission but instead their unregulated affiliates.

That experience uniquely positions them to ask this court to proceed to clarify the interpretation of (the law) so that current sitting commissioners and those who fill the position in the future ... understand the ground rules governing their private affairs, Hallman wrote. And he said that includes Andy Tobin, appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey to replace Bitter Smith.

The law Brnovich used to challenge Bitter Smith prohibits commissioners from being in the employ of, or holding an official relation to a corporation or person subject to regulation by the commission. It also has a similar prohibition against those who are pecuniarily interested in such a company.

Brnovich said Bitter Smiths position as a lobbyist for Cox Communications qualified because an affiliate offers phone service. And he said her $156,000-a-year job as head of the Arizona Cable Communications Association was a pecuniary interest because some of the organizations members also provide commission-regulated phone service.

Bitter Smith denied the allegations, but resigned Monday. Brnovich said that should end the case.

He also rebuffed a contention by Ed Novak, her lawyer, who said she was effectively forced from office, a move that denied voters their choice for utility regulator.

No one deprived Ms. Bitter Smith of office, the attorney generals legal brief reads. She voluntarily resigned and mooted this case.

Hallman told Capitol Media Services that Jennings, Mundell and Barbara Sherman, an unsuccessful commission candidate from years ago, are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Bitter Smith about whether she broke the law. But he said the law is not as clear as either Brnovich or Bitter Smith contend.

Weve got some significant uncertainty regarding now how the statute in play should be read, Hallman said.

He said its clear that commissioners cannot work for regulated utilities. But what is not clear, said Hallman, is how many degrees of separation are necessary from a regulated company before doing work for an affiliate is no longer a conflict.
WASHINGTON  The latest on President Barack Obama's executive actions to tighten gun control in the United States (all times EST):

12:25 p.m.:

President Barack Obama was moved to tears in an unusually emotional display during his announcement of new executive actions on guns.

Obama said "it gets me mad" every time he thinks about the 20 first-graders who were killed in the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school in December 2012.

But his emotions had already begun to overtake him by the time he said that.

Obama spoke at the White House on Tuesday about rights that had been denied victims of other mass shootings. He mentioned freedom of religion taken from parishioners killed at a South Carolina church and freedom of assembly taken from movie-goers killed at cinemas in Colorado and Louisiana. He also mentioned the violence in his Chicago hometown.

Obama paused and wiped a tear from the corner of his left eye. Tears flowed freely down both cheeks.

___

12:20 p.m.:

House Speaker Paul Ryan says no matter what unilateral action President Barack Obama takes on gun control, "his word does not trump the Second Amendment."

The Wisconsin Republican says in a statement that the president's steps to expand background checks to cover more firearms are certain to be challenged in the courts. Ryan also is stressing that whatever the president does can be overturned if a Republican is elected president in November.

Ryan said Obama has never respected the right to safe and legal gun ownership that the country has valued since its inception.

He says Obama "knows full well that the law already says that people who make their living selling firearms must be licensed, regardless of venue. Still, rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens."

Ryan said Obama's words and actions "amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty."

___

12:15 p.m.:

President Barack Obama says that contrary to the claims of some GOP presidential candidates, he's not plotting to take away everyone's guns.

Speaking in the East Room at the White House, Obama is defending his executive actions to tighten criminal background checks.

The president said Tuesday his actions are consistent with the constitutional right to right to bear arms. The president noted that he taught constitutional law, and added: "I know a little about this."

Obama says some constraints on freedom are necessary to protect innocent people. He notes that the right to free speech also comes with the limitation that you can't yell "fire" in a theater.

___

12 p.m.:

President Barack Obama opened his announcement on new gun actions by remembering former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Giffords was a member of Congress when she was gravely wounded five years ago this week in a shooting at a supermarket in Tucson on Jan. 8, 2011. Six people were killed and 13 people, including Giffords, were wounded.

Obama later spoke at a memorial service in Tucson for those who didn't survive. He says that wasn't the first time he had to talk to the nation following a mass shooting, nor would it be the last.

John and Roxanna Green were also guests at the White House for today's announcement.

The president went on to name cities around the country that have mourned the loss of life in other mass shootings. They include Fort Hood, Texas; Aurora, Colorado; Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Newtown, Connecticut and, most recently, San Bernardino, California.

Obama punctuated his list by saying "Too many." The audience gathered in the White House East Room followed him by softly echoing "too many."___

11:50 a.m.:

The White House usually does the tweeting when President Barack Obama speaks.

But the president of a leading gun violence prevention group joined the action Tuesday for Obama's announcement of new executive actions on guns.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign, live tweeted as Obama spoke from the White House East Room.

An early tweet quoted the president as saying "Need to do something not to debate the last shooting but to prevent the next one!"

Gross became involved in gun violence prevention after his brother was shot on the observation deck of the Empire State Building in 1997.

Before arriving at the White House, Gross tweeted that he was "gonna tell Prez Jim & Sarah give huge thumbs up!"

Gross was referring to Jim Brady and his wife, Sarah, the organization's founders. Jim Brady, who was press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, was shot in the head during the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. Jim Brady died in 2014. Sarah Brady died last year.

___

11:45 a.m.:

The father of a first-grader killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School is introducing President Barack Obama's speech on gun regulation.

Mark Barden's son, Daniel, was one of 20 students killed at the school three years ago.

Barden now helps lead a program called Sandy Hook Promise. The group seeks to prevent gun-related deaths through the enactment of what it calls "sensible gun violence prevention laws, policy and regulations." Several other parents of Sandy Hook children also participate in the group.

In the three years since the Sandy Hook shootings, Barden says, far too many lives have been lost to gun tragedies. He says that "as a nation, we have to do better."

Barden's group is particularly appreciative of Obama's focus on getting people more access to mental health care.

___

11:30 a.m.

More GOP candidates are chiming in with criticism of President Barack Obama's executive actions to tighten gun regulation in the U.S.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says Obama is "obsessed" with undermining the Second Amendment.

During a town hall-style meeting in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Rubio told reporters Tuesday that the president's new executive actions on guns undermine Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.

Rubio says he opposes gun violence but that the president's plans won't help prevent it. The GOP presidential candidate says he'll work to overturn the executive actions.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, for his part, is labeling Obama's actions "a blatant, belligerent abuse of power."

___

11 a.m.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says President Barack Obama is acting unlawfully and showing disregard for the Second Amendment with his actions on gun control.

Bush is panning Obama's set of measures in an op-ed in Iowa's Cedar Rapids Gazette. He's comparing the gun actions to Obama's executive action on immigration and says Obama is flouting the proper constitutional process for lawmaking.

Bush says it's even more important to defend gun rights because of Islamic State-linked attacks and mass shootings in Paris and California.

Obama is unveiling the new actions at the White House on Tuesday. He's aiming to expand background checks to cover more firearms by requiring more people to register as federally licensed gun dealers.
While rain fell in Tucson on Monday, the first flakes of what is expected to be 2 feet of snow landed on Mount Lemmon.

The snowy conditions led the Pima County Sheriffs Department to close Catalina Highway at the base to all travelers except Mount Lemmon residents and employees of businesses on the mountain. Even then, they were required to put chains on their tires or use four-wheel drive.

The Mount Lemmon Cookie Cabin in Summerhaven closed Monday morning as the snow began to fall, said manager Samantha Beal.

With an eye toward reopening Tuesday, the Cookie Cabin hired a snowplow to clear the way for the many tourists Beal expects to drive up the mountain this week to enjoy the white stuff.

You know us Arizonans, we love to go out and play in the snow, she said.

Although no snow is forecast for the metro area, Tucsonans should see about an inch of rain and lower temperatures in the next four days, the National Weather Service in Tucson said.

The snow and rain are the result of three different weather systems sweeping through Tucson this week, the weather service said.

A low-pressure system centered on the northern Gulf of California hit Tucson on Monday afternoon. A second system blowing in from the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles should arrive Tuesday evening, followed by a third system, one originating in the Gulf of Alaska, on Friday.

The heaviest accumulation of snowfall, 17 inches, is expected for Mount Lemmon Ski Valley between Tuesday and Thursday night, with slightly lower amounts at Summerhaven and other locales in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The third weather system should bring another 5 to 10 inches Friday and Saturday, the weather service said.

Temperatures in Tucson are expected to decline steadily through the week. Mondays high temperature of 60 degrees will dip to 52 degrees by Saturday. The lows will drop from 47 degrees on Monday to 33 on Saturday.

Rainfall in Tucson will vary depending on location, the weather service said. The chance of rain Tuesday stands at 30 percent during the day and 60 percent at night, the weather service said.

Wednesday should see a 60 percent chance of rain during the day and a 40 percent chance at night, followed by a 50 percent chance during the day Thursday and a 30 percent chance at night. Friday should see a 50 percent chance of rain during the day and a 30 percent chance at night.

The weather service forecasts a zero percent chance of rain Saturday.
Jeremy Joseph Brown has been named national dog trainer of the year.

Brown, the volunteer coordinator with nonprofit, pet-therapy organization Gabriels Angels, had just opened his own training facility, The Complete Canine, when he learned hed been nominated for the 2015 Greatmats National Dog Trainer of the Year Award, sponsored by Wisconsin-based specialty flooring company Greatmats.

The award aims to recognize dog trainers who have made a positive impact on the lives of dogs and their owners through integrity, quality training and exemplary customer service. The social-media contest featured six trainers, and took place in November.
Intolerance is rampant at every level and in all age groups of the society, but it is more visible amongst the younger generation as our youth can be seen losing their altitude of patience over petty issues. We seriously need to think over it as what we are going to inculcate in them, which may help them seek success in future. Will it be tolerance or intolerance?
Help India!

By Afroz Alam Sahil, TwoCircles.net

Delhi: Senior Congress leader and AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh on Monday shared dais with RSS functionary Indresh Kumar, VHP spokesman Vijay Shankar Tiwari, All India Hindu Mahasabha President Chandar Prakash Kaushik and other right-wing leaders at a function organised at the Indian Womens Press Corps in Delhi to launch a book: Sri Ram Mandir : Archaeology, Architecture and Politics written by Anuradha Dutt.



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However Digvijay Singh didnt refrain from making his position clear, although he was interrupted a few times by members of the audience.



Singh said that while he is a practicing Hindu, he also believes that India, like any other multi-ethnic country in the world, has immense problems to deal with such as unemployment and poverty and suggested that the country should wait for the Supreme Court verdict on the issue.









According to Digvijay Singh, former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao was very keen to see the issue resolved and had tried to de-politicise the same.

This issue can only be resolved by amicable discussion, rather than creating a conflict. we are fighting against poverty, unemployment and we have now a battle in Pathankot today I would urge all the right-thinking people to await the SC decision, he said.



He said, I personally feel that this issue of Ram Janmabhumi, it has been debated, discussed so many times. And now it is pending in the Supreme Court. Let the SC look into all facts, hear all parties and then take the decision. But unfortunately, some people will again like to politicise the issue.









Senior RSS leader and Rashtriya Muslim Manch Patron Indresh Kumar said I pledge the temple will be built. It will happen, no one can stop. But if you ask me the date one never knows the date of his death.









He also said, I firmly believe that lakhs of Muslims, along with Christians will come on the streets to support the claim of a temple in Ayodhya. Leaders cutting across various parties will also come in support; I have nearly spoken to leaders from all political parties in this regard.









The other BJP functionaries present in the panel too supported the claim for Ram Mandir.

Since the BJP Government has come to power, right-wing Hindutva forces who were responsible for the demolition of Babri Mosque, are once again pitching for the mobilisation to construct Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,

Pune : Well-known Marathi author Dr. Shripal Sabnis has lodged a complaint with the Maharashtra Police, alleging that he received death threats for his controversial remarks made against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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Sabnis, who is also the President of the upcoming 89th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan 2016, filed a FIR at the Umaraga police station in Osmanabad district against two people from right-wing outfits for allegedly giving him death threats over the phone after he received much flak from local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members for a speech this week in which he condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The duo spoke to me in a very indecent manner and threatened me for speaking against Modi. They told me, Have you become bigger than Modi? and also warned me that I should apologise or face consequences, Sabnis told reporters.

He said he received calls from two people at 11.30 in the morning of Saturday, identified as Hiraman Gavali and Anup Agrawal, both residents of Dhule. He then registered a case at Umarga police station.

In a speech at college of Akurdi Pimpri-Chinchwad on Thursday, Sabnis had lambasted Modi as a man forever smeared with the taint of the 2002 Gujarat riots and a Prime Minister that he would not endorse.

I do not accept Modi under whose tenure Gujarat carnage happenedbut I have no problem with this Modi who talks of Buddha and Gandhi and goes to Pakistan for establishing peace despite threats to his life, he had said.

These comments from Sabnis triggered protests from BJP which has threatened to stop him from descending on the dias of the Marathi literary meet which is going to take place in Pimpri-Chinchwad from January 15.

Pimpri-Chinchwad BJP unit has asked him to resign over his anti-Modi comments whereas the programme at Latur, where Sabnis was one of the chief guests, was disrupted by BJP workers on Saturday evening.

Amar Sable, BJPs Rajya Sabha MP from Pimpri- Chinchwad termed the ranting of Sabnis regarding the PM as intolerant and warned that unless and until Sabnis apologises for his remarks, the BJP unit will not allow him to enter the literary meet scheduled later this month at Pimpri.

However, Sabnis is defiant while asserting that he will not apologise even if BJP members hang him.

The Indian constitution has given me freedom of speech and nobody has the right to take away that right from me. I will speak against what is wrong and speak in favour of what is right. I have constitutional right for doing this, he said.
Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

Leh: The execution of the Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia on January 2 has ensued days of unrest and protest from Shia community members in different parts of Jammu and Kashmir.

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The Leh District of Ladakh region, however, proved to be different, with people from different communities-Buddhist, Christian, Sunni, and Shia-coming together to take out a joint candle light march against the execution on Monday. The march started from Leh gate and culminated in the main market.

The executed cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, was found guilty by a court in Saudi Arabia in 2014 of seeking foreign meddling in the kingdom, disobeying its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces.

The cleric was a vocal supporter of the mass anti-government protests that erupted in eastern province of the Kingdom in 2011.

The Saudi regime has drenched its hands with the blood by executing the innocent cleric Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. It is highly condemnable. We organised this joint protest march to give a message to Saudi regime that we are not going to be divided on sectarian lines. In our protest, members of Sunni, Shia, Buddhist and Christian community members took part, Ashraf Barcha, President Anjuman Imamia, Leh told TwoCircles.net.

In Kargil district, days after the execution of cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr have been occupied with protests and shutdowns. Almost every day a protest rally is being organised by the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust and Anjuman-e-Jamiat-ul-Ulama Asna Asharya, Kargil.

Saudi is simply looping nonviolent activists with terrorists with an intention to dupe the international community, President Islamia School, Aga Syed Jammaluddin Mussavi told protesters.

The Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust, Kargil, had called for three-day mourning which culminated peacefully on Tuesday, January 5.

On the last day of three-day mourning, we offered Fateh Khwani in Jamia Masjid Kargil. In last three days we organised a series of protests in which Buddhist, Sunni and Shia community members participated, Abbas Karrari, Vice Chairman, Imam Khomieni Memorial Trust told TwoCircles.net.

In the Shia-dominated areas of Srinagar, a complete shutdown was observed on Tuesday besides authorities had already placed restrictions to avoid incidents of stone pelting.

Areas in Alamgari Bazaar and Hawal in Srinagar witnessed fierce stone throwing protests on Tuesday morning, following which police had to impose restrictions of public movement.

(All Photos By : Sajjad Kargili)
Emulating the legendary Michael Jackson isnt something that Kendrick Lamar expects to do during his career. Yet the American hip-hop star went tantalisingly close to matching the King of Pop recently in one regard. His 11 Grammy award nominations for this years awards was just one shy of the record set by Jackson.

58th Grammy Awards

The 28-year-old Californian has set himself lofty targets though and is looking to dominate the competition with his album entitled To Pimp a Butterfly, when this years ceremony takes place on February 15th in Los Angeles.

It will be the 58th time that the prestigious awards will have been handed out, as the Staples Center plays host to the top musical talent of the current day.

Jacksons magical evening in 1984

Jackson won 13 Grammy Awards during his star-studded time at the top of the Music industry, although he lags some way behind the record total of 31 held by the conductor Sir Georg Salti. Jacksons 12 nominations in one year alone remains the record, although he was probably more proud of the 8 Grammys that he won on the night in 1984.

Lamar praised Jackson

Lamar recognised as much upon hearing the news ahead of this years awards, commenting that he was still soaking that all in. He was also glad that it was at 11 as for him Michael will forever be the greatest.

Hip-hop culture

His motivation to sweep the board at the Grammy Awards is very much rooted in the culture of his hip-hop community and background.

With that clearly on his mind, he stated that he would love for us to win them all.

Paid tribute to Nas

In acknowledgement of the foundations set by those that went before him, Lamar (previously known as K-Dot) paid particular tribute to Nas who didnt get a chance to be in that position. Nas has previously been denoted as one of Lamars top five favourite rappers, although it is believed that Tupac Shakur has actually been the biggest influence on his music so far.

Topped US and UK album charts

To Pimp a Butterfly was released last year as the artists third studio album and has sold more than 750,000 copies in the US alone. Topping both the US and UK charts, the album incorporates a variety of musical elements including funk, jazz and the spoken word.

Among the 11 nominations bestowed on Lamar are those in the categories of Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Rap Album.
In February 2015,SenatorCorker of TN introduced bi-partisan legislation The End Modern Slavery Initiative Act of 2015 aimed at reducing the more than 27 million people currently trapped in the slave industry, working in themining, fishing, timber, textiles, and sex industries.

The proposal callsefforts to eliminate sexual and labor human slavery worldwide.

Numerous Non-Profits have been created to help free slaves both overseas and in America.

Covenant House has been operating more than 20 locations in the Americas since the 1970s. In 2015, the New Orleans facility had 80-100 victims of modern day slavery seek help.

Many worldwide organizations exist such as Anti-Slavery, Free the Slave, End Slavery Now, the CNN Freedom Project, and Heart for Justice.

New Orleans monuments offer lessonson how to transition from slavery

Education is a common thread. Leadership and a transition plan are essential. Engraved onthe Liberty Placemonument are the words: A conflict of the past that should teach us lessons for the future.

Amonument is to Jefferson Davis, who co-owned Hurricane plantation with his brother Joseph Davis, offers this message.

Joseph Davis met with a newly acquired slave named Benjamin Montgomery andimplemented policies for slaves to become educated, experienced,accumulate wealth by retaining money earned commercially.

Montgomery was first assigned to run the general store of the plantation, then his duties were expanded to purchasing, shipping, land surveying, flood control, architecture, machine repair, and steamboat navigation.

He worked as an inventor and applied for a patent for his design steam-operated propeller for shallow water. However the US Patent office denied the patent, because Montgomery was a slave.

When Jefferson Davis became President of the Confederacy, he signed into law legislation that would allow slaves to receive patents.

In 1866, the Davises sold Hurricane Plantation to Montgomery for $300,000.00 and carried the note.

In 1867, Montgomery became the first African-American elected official in Mississippi. In 1870, his cotton was judged to be the best in the world.

The Battle of Liberty Place Monument is to a battle in which eleven New Orleans Metro Police Officers were killed defending an African-American Lt. Governor, C.C. Antoine, in 1874. Antoine served as Interim Governor in 1876.

His grandfather was a tribal chief, captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies.

He was privately educated in New Orleans and relocated to Shreveport after the Civil War.

He was an entrepreneur, property owner, human rights advocate, and newspaper publishers.

P.G.T. Beauregards monument was erected after a twenty-two year fund raising campaign, following his death. His monument turned 100 years old in November 2015.

Beauregard was born in 1818 in New Orleans. In 1838, he graduated second in his class at West Point with English as a second language.

From 1865-1875, he worked as superintendent of two railroads.

In 1873, he was the Primary Spokesman for the Unification Movement. He organized 100citizens of New Orleans to design a plan for desegregation of schools and transportation.

Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife in 1858: In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country."

In 1955 the US Congress described Lee with these words: ...(he) fervently devoted himself to the reuniting of the nation and the advancement of youth education and the welfare and progress of mankind, becoming president of the Washington and Lee University

Lees stated: We have but one rule here, and that is that every student be a gentleman.

The leadership of these men and theNew Orleans Police provide lessons for ending slavery with education.
22-Year-Old Fedor Holz Wins Triton Super High Roller $200,000 Cali Cup for $3,463,000

January 05 2016 Donnie Peters

After winning the World Poker Tour $100,000 Alpha8 Las Vegas for $1.589 million in December to close out 2015, Fedor Holz continued his momentum into 2016 with a huge win in the Triton Super High Roller Series $200,000 Cali Cup at WPT Philippines from Solaire Resort and Casino in Manila. Holz's win at Bellagio in Las Vegas saw him top a field of 45 entries, and this time around he defeated a field of 52. Holz scored $3.463 million for this victory.

Triton Super High Roller Series $200,000 Cali Cup Results

Place Player Prize 1 Fedor Holz $3,463,000 2 David Peters $2,309,000 3 Devan Tang $1,405,500 4 Steve O'Dwyer $953,700 5 Phil Ivey $656,500 6 Daniel Colman $502,000 7 Paul Phua $401,600 8 Mike McDonald $351,320

Coming into this event, Holz had built up a total of over $3.8 million in live tournament earnings. This win nearly doubles his total to over $7.3 million. The young German superstar is certainly making a name for himself in poker, as he pushed past a very tough field at the final table.

With 40 unique players and 12 reentries, the event generated a prize pool of over $10 million. Thirty-three players returned for Day 2 action, and it was Stanley Choi who was eliminated on the bubble in ninth place. Following his exit, Mike McDonald hit the rail in eighth, and then Steve O'Dwyer took out Paul Phua in seventh.

It was at this point that O'Dwyer had the lead and it looked as though another big buy-in title was going to come his way, but he then bluffed off some chips before Devan Tang assumed the lead.

Tang then busted Daniel Colman in sixth place to land Colman a payout of $502,000. That score was Colman's 11th six-figure cash in under a two-year period, and his eighth in an event with a buy-in of $50,000 or higher over the same time period.

A handful of hands after Colman's bust, Holz got a big break when he spiked a lucky double against Phil Ivey. It was reported that Holz had opened with a raise from under the gun to 90,000 with the blinds at 20,000/40,000/5,000, and Ivey reraised from the small blind to 270,000. Holz opted to move all in for 1.15 million, and Ivey instantly called with the . He had Holz's in a world of hurt, but the flop changed all of that. Holz had vaulted into the lead and held after the turn and river.

Shortly after Holz doubled through him, Ivey was eliminated in fifth place when his fell to the of Holz.

During four-handed play, Holz doubled up David Peters, but fought his way back up the leaderboard and back into the lead. He then took out O'Dwyer in fourth place to get even more chips, and O'Dwyer earned $953,700 for the result. For O'Dwyer, he was also coming off a highly impressive month of December to close out 2015. He had three cashes that month for $874,440, which included a big win in the European Poker Tour Prague 50,000 Super High Roller for 746,543 ($809,752).

On Twitter, O'Dwyer said that he has plans to go from the Philippines to the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and play all of those big buy-in events before he jets off to Australia for the Aussie Millions, so we will likely be hearing much more from him in the first month of the new year. O'Dwyer will be looking to defend his title after he topped a record field in the 2015 PCA $100,000 Super High Roller to win $1.873 million.

Holz extended his lead over Tang and Peters in three-handed play, but Peters was able to double through him once and then knock out Tang in third place so that he wasn't totally crushed going into heads-up play. Despite that, though, Holz did have a 2-1 lead when the duel began  6.88 million to 3.525 million.

After a short break, the two players opted to shorten the blind levels to 20 minutes and jump from 40,000/80,000/10,000 to 75,000/150,000/25,000. That sped things up, and the match only took four hands from there.

On the final hand, Peters opened to 350,000 from the button, Holz made it 1 million to go, and then Peters jammed. Holz called with the , and Peters was flipped for his tournament life with the .

The board kept the sevens in the lead for Holz and sealed the deal.

For Peters, who finished off 2015 with a $426,240 win on Dec. 20 in the last ARIA $25,000 High Roller of the year, banked $2.309 million and pushed his total live tournament earnings over $9.56 million. This result also proved to be the largest of his career.

With $3.463 million in his bank account and another prestigious poker title in his trophy case, Holz is the early frontrunner for player of the year and top money earner for 2016. We can certainly expect to see many more results from him this year, and those should all start with the PCA and Aussie Millions up next.

*Photo courtesy of the WPT.

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Sharelines Fedor Holz wins the Triton Super High Roller Series Cali Cup at WPT Philippines for $3.463 million.
UNCW to Welcome Bernice A. King to Campus Jan. 22 for Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

Bernice A. King, the chief executive officer of the King Center, will be the keynote speaker for the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. The event will be held at 7 p.m. on Jan. 22 in Kenan Auditorium.

Born the youngest daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Bernice King began her oratorical journey when she spoke in her mothers stead at the United Nations at age 17. Through her work at the King Center, she has continued to educate youth and others about the Kingian nonviolence principles, a philosophy and methodology that provides the knowledge, skills and motivation necessary for people to pursue peaceful strategies for solving personal and community problems.

We are so fortunate to have the distinguished Dr. Bernice King to speak at the universitys annual Martin Luther King event honoring the incredible legacy of her father, said Kent Guion, UNCW chief diversity officer. She shares the critical messages of community, mentorship and remaining steadfast to advancing the rights of humankind. It's through the work of several community partners that we are able to share her talents and timely messages.

The university is partnering with the City of Wilmington to host the event.

It is an awesome opportunity for the City of Wilmington, especially our youth, said Atiba Johnson, chairman of the citys Commission on African American History. The commission is very appreciative of the opportunity to work with UNCW and hope all will support this event and the many events planned in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.

All tickets for the event have been claimed.
Church of Ireland Bishops Issue Pastoral Letter on Same Sex Marriages

Local Parish Caught Up in Oregon Protest

Kentucky Priest Resigns Parish Rather than follow Vestry's Wishes to Allow Same Sex Marriages

Scottish Episcopal Church Voices More Dismay Over Agreement Between Churches of England and Scotland

Tensions On the Rise As Meeting of Primates Nears

Sign of the Times in Texas

The Church of Ireland includes both the Republic of Ireland where civil marriage for same sex couples is legal and Northern Ireland where it is not. The Bishops of the Church created a common pastoral letter to be issued by each individual bishop. The letter notes that the church has no authorized liturgies for blessing same sex unions or for same sex marriage and thus clergy may not preside at marriages. It notes, that priests can certainly attend weddings or offer a couple blessings in a pastoral setting. Clergy thinking of seeking a civil marriage with their same sex partner are urged to discuss the matter with their bishop and consider forbearance in the interests of unity. The letter is not likely to settle issues for the church.Burns, Oregon, currently in the news because an armed group has occupied a building at the nearby National Park is home to a joint Episcopal/Lutheran parish. (Thehas a good background piece on the situation in Burns.) Parishioners were very uneasy when a member of the occupying group attending Sunday services walked out in the middle of the sermon. The priest had just criticized the use of guns against other humans. Episcopal Cafe became aware of the situation when Provisional Bishop Nedi Rivera passed along an "urgent" prayer request to the "Daily Office" Blog from the parish pastor.The rector of Calvary Church, Louisville, Kentucky resigned December 23 because of pressure from his vestry to allow same sex marriages at the church. The rector, Jonathan Erdman, directed same-sex couples to the cathedral in Louisville if they wished to marry. This did not satisfy the vestry. Erdman's resignation letter also criticizes Bishop Terry White for not supporting him. Conservative blogs and the Living Church are using the incident to suggest that the statements in the General Convention legislation passed this summer ensuring no one would be punished or forced to resign because of their position on same sex marriage were a sham. What is clear is that there was an irreconcilable difference between a vestry and a rector.Last week's Pittsburgh Update carried a story on an agreement between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), and concern voiced by the Episcopal Church of Scotland which was blindsided by the announcement of the agreement. Now the Episcopal Church of Scotland has articulated its concerns more fully. They feel that the Church of England over-reached its authority in making an agreement in Scotland. You can read their full statement here As the January 16 date nears for the meeting of primates called by Archbishop of Canterbury, posturing and speculation about what will happen has grown. This last week the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom carried a piece highlighting threats of the primates associated with GAFCON to walk out if the meeting does not denounce same sex marriage and throw out the Episcopal Church and the Anglican church of Canada. They have rejected Archbishop Welby's idea of an Anglican Communion with much looser ties between members. Christopher Brittain, a Scottish professor, weighed in with a piece on the ABC network using game theory to suggest that the outcome of the meeting will probably result in a minor stop-gap type proposal, and Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, has published a piece in the Modern Church suggesting the GAFCON position commits a semi- Pelagian heresy. This is just a sampling of what has been published already. Expect more in the coming week.In wake of the Texas laws approving both open and concealed carrying of weapons, the break-away diocese in fort Worth headed by bishop Iker has issued a policy on open carrying of weapons. All Churches are to ban open carrying and post a sign forbidding it. The policy does not address concealed weapons except to say that people with concealed weapons permits should not be considered a private security force for churches.
PLA Rocket Force quick off the mark with drills Updated: 2016-01-05 07:57 By Zhao Lei(China Daily)

A series of drills has been held since the start of the new year to hone the combat readiness of the newly established People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, according to a report by China Central Television.

Several ballistic missile units under the new force conducted war games with an "enemy force" in snow-covered Northeast China over the weekend, footage from the broadcaster showed.

The PLA Rocket Force was formed on Thursday to replace the PLA Second Artillery Corps and to manage the country's strategic missiles.

The footage featured the DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile being operated by soldiers, with units carrying out more than 10 maneuvers.

At the same time, another missile brigade staged a drill in Northwest China that involved simulated target-setting and multiple launches of short-range ballistic missiles, according to CCTV.

At a ceremony at the Central Military Commission in Beijing on Thursday, President Xi Jinping, who is also the commission's chairman, announced the establishment of the PLA Rocket Force.

Military enthusiasts were attracted by what appeared to be a minor detail in the CCTV report on the ceremony.

Their attention focused on three white, small-scale models of missiles, together with another three models of launch vehicles, which were placed on a shelf in the hall where the event was staged.

The enthusiasts said the missiles in the footage were DF-5 and DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missiles and DF-21, showcasing the new force's capability of reaching short-, medium- and long-range targets worldwide.

According to PLADaily, the PLA Rocket Force has at least nine missiles in active service. They include the DF-5B, the intermediate-range DF-26 and the CJ-10A ground-launched cruise missile.

Seven of the nine types were displayed during the Sept 3 parade in Tian'anmen Square marking the 70th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and the end of World War II.

Their appearance caused a global surprise, as it confirmed the existence of the DF-21D and DF-26. According to experts, they are the only two ballistic missiles capable of sinking aircraft carriers.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/05/2016 page3)
Newest standards aided crackdown on illegal emissions Updated: 2016-01-05 07:58 By Wang Yanfei(China Daily)

China's environmental watchdog has investigated 1.41 million companies suspected of polluting the environment since the new environmental protection law was implemented at the beginning of last year.

Environmental authorities found 46,800 companies with illegal waste-discharging activities and 63,700 with illegal construction projects. A total of 47,000 were fined and 17,000 were shut down, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

"The newly revised law has imposed strict controls on various polluting sources, and clear emission limits for different pollutants provide the ministry with solid legal support to take harsh enforcement measures," said Vice-Minister Pan Yue.

In the last year, local environmental protection bureaus in 17 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have cooperated with public security organs, people's courts and people's procuratorates to enhance law enforcement, according to the ministry.

While many heavily polluting enterprises have upgraded facilities for production, efforts made by ministries "are helpful to further tackle pollution problems", according to Pan.

In early August, 56 illegal coal mines without permits in Hohhot, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, were forced to shut down.

A law enforcement team of more than 100 investigators from various agencies facilitated the process, which set an example for other places, according to the ministry.

Cooperation among top ministries will be enhanced in the future, according to Pan.

On Dec 24, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Public Security and the Supreme People's Procuratorate launcheda joint investigation in an environmental case in which a petrochemical factory in Jingjiang, Jiangsu province, is suspected of illegally burying hazardous waste underground.

The local government was subsequently urged by the Ministry of Environmental Protection to investigate the issue and start ecological restoration of the area.

The case marked the first time the top ministries worked together on an investigation.

wangyanfei@chinadaily.com.cn

The owner of a furniture plant signs a notice as her business is closed down for discharging untreated pollutants in Beijing's Daxing district in April. Deng Jia / for China Daily

(China Daily USA 01/05/2016 page5)
Surrogacy not just a reproductive rights issue Updated: 2016-01-05 07:53 By Qiao Xinsheng(China Daily)

The footage run by CCTV shows a client (L) talking with an ovum provider (C). [Photo/IC]

Reproductive rights include the right to have or not to have children. Reproductive rights are protected by national laws and national legal restrictions, which is actually a legal issue.

The comprehensive two-child policy that came into effect on Jan 1 also allows couples in their late 30s and 40s to have a second child. But some these eligible but relatively aged couples may have to turn to special reproductive technology to realize their dream. So whether China will allow surrogacy has become a vital question.

Citizens in exercising reproductive rights must be "consistent with conditions determined by the law and regulations". Chinese people using reproductive technology to have children must comply with the relevant provision of the People's Republic of China Population and Family Planning Law. Plus, the regulations "prohibit the use of ultrasound technology and other technical means to identify the gender of fetuses for non-medical needs and prohibit sex selection for non-medical needs of pregnancy termination". In other words, China is implementing a natural fertility law, which does not encourage human or technology intervention in reproduction.

Although China has approved in vitro fertilization, it has always been cautious on non-labor fertility issues. Therefore, some media reports' assumption that China does not prohibit surrogacy is not true.

The fact is China does not encourage or promote surrogacy. First, China's regulations on medical practitioners clearly says that qualified medical practitioners should not engage in such activities. If they are found overtly or covertly performing surrogacy surgery, their certificates could be revoked.

Second, China's health and family planning administration department issued a series of regulations aimed at eradicating illegal trading activities including those related to surrogacy. And if medical institutions help carry out such surgeries, their business licenses could be can celled.

Third, China's legal system does not protect surrogate motherhood. For women who engage in illegal reproductive activities, their personal rights are not protected by any law.
Calm down Mideast feud Updated: 2016-01-05 08:01 (China Daily)

A man reads the newspaper showing the photo of the prominent Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Sanaa, Yemen, Jan 3, 2016. Saudi Interior Ministry announced on Saturday the execution of 47 people on terrorist charges, including the dissident Shi'ite leader. [Photo/Xinhua]

The escalation in tensions between two Middle East powers has put the region under severe strain.

The surging feud between Saudi Arabia and Iran was sparked by the former's conviction and execution of 47 individuals, including the prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, on terrorism charges. Angry Iranian protesters then raided and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Teheran on Saturday. Saudi Arabia has responded by cutting its diplomatic ties with Iran.

With the Middle East already afflicted with too many woes - the civil war in Syria, social unrest in Libya and the rampancy of the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, the region obviously cannot afford to have a new source of tension.

Saudi Arabia and Iran should look to the bigger picture of regional peace and stability and exercise the utmost restraint, because further deterioration in the region's security outlook will cater to the interests of neither.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are members of the international campaign against the IS group. The abrupt deterioration in relations between Riyadh and Teheran will not help build unity in the anti-terror campaign but rather add new uncertainties to it.

The latest tension between Riyadh and Teheran once again shows the sectarian rifts in the Middle East are time bombs that can go off at any time.

The international community has just built an unprecedented consensus against terrorism, as well as political resolution to the Syrian crisis. Either task looks daunting without the cooperation of Riyadh and Teheran, as both are key players in the region.

Hence, countries such as the United States, which are influential in the region's political landscape, should step up mediation so that Saudi Arabia and Iran can resolve their differences through diplomatic means.
Stocks' circuit breaker triggers call for changes Updated: 2016-01-05 08:01 (China Daily)

A stock indicator shows the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index on Jan 4, 2016. [Photo/IC]

The 7-percent dive in the value of Chinese stocks on Monday, the first trading day of the year, triggered the new circuit breaker mechanism that also came into effect that day.

The fall may be largely a result of knee-jerk worries about the imminent end of a ban on sales of shares by listed companies' major shareholders, which was imposed during the market crash last summer.

But, more importantly, by reflecting domestic investors' growing fears about weak factory activity across the country, it also represents an urgent call for greater efforts to speed up structural reforms and improve the overall profitability of Chinese enterprises.

If the health of China's economy is indeed an overriding concern for the global recovery this year, international investors should keep a close eye on the country's endeavors to tackle its overcapacity.

As Chinese policymakers go all out to address the problem of inefficient and unprofitable "zombie enterprises", it is expected that the world's second-largest economy will make some real progress this year on the painful but necessary transition from investment-and export-led growth to more self-sustaining growth driven by consumption and innovation.

For about three decades, China has based its rapid development on being the global manufacturing powerhouse. However, since the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis the growth prospects of the world economy have been significantly dampened. It has become increasingly obvious that China can no longer rely on exports for growth and the problem of too much capacity built to meet external demand will deteriorate unless the number of "zombie enterprises" is substantially slashed.

That is why Chinese authorities have made addressing overcapacity one of the five top economic tasks in 2016.

The government eliminated some of the production overcapacity in the iron and steel, aluminum, cement and plate glass industries last year. But far more needs to be done this year.

Eliminating outdated industrial production will definitely cause a lot of short-term pains for local economies as factories close or cut output and employees. But the cost will be much dearer for the country if funds and resources are allocated to keep uncompetitive enterprises on life support.

Chinese policymakers have ample tools to ease domestic investors' concerns over a possible glut of share sales. But their long-term confidence hinges on the country's progress in reducing overcapacity and thus improving the overall quality of economic growth and the profitability of listed companies.
This holiday season was a little hectic for me as I was hosting three family friends from China. Entrepreneurs, scholars and physicians, no matter what the parents do for a living, they share something in common: They've sent their teenagers to boarding schools in the US.

It seems to be a decision that both the parents and children could not be happier about. Emily Chen, a 17-year-old who is a senior at the Grier School in central Pennsylvania, said she has benefited much from her three years boarding away.

"I used to hate schools and homework in China," said Emily, who added that she didn't get as much attention from teachers because she struggled in class. "But here at Grier I have all these fond memories about learning and motivation."

Although China in recent years started gradually transforming its education system, its framework and foundational concepts are chronically criticized - they are narrowly focused on students' academic performance instead of wholesome character-building and leadership development.

"I still can't forget the nightmare-like years when we had to shuffle Emily back and forth between school and afterschool training institutions," said Hong Chen, her dad. "My wife kept pushing Emily to study harder and would lose her temper" at her progress. "None of us was happy," Hong Chen said.

When Emily decided to go to the US to start middle school and finally enrolled in Grier in 2013, the entire family breathed a long sigh of relief.

Different teaching methods, different learning approaches and expectations from the school have prompted Emily to be independent and self-advocating.

"My experiences at the school lead me to take leaps of faith in myself and encourage me to believe I could make great things happen," Emily said.

The Chen family story is not exceptional. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the number of Chinese K-12 students soared to 34,578 this year and accounts for almost half of foreign students attending American high schools and primary schools. The youngest, as indicated in records, is only 10.

In 2010, there were 8,857 Chinese students attending US K-12 schools, according to data collected by the Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVP).

Eva Liu, a marketing professional in Silicon Valley, along with several of her entrepreneurial friends, designed a website and app that help Chinese parents locate the best public and private K-12 schools in the United States.

"We feel that sending young children to American boarding schools will continue," said Liu. "The increase shows no sign of abating in the near future."

After regularly answering inquiries from China about good schools, homes located in good school districts, and other resources in the US, Liu launched her website and app, which focus on high-quality K-12 school systems and services.

"They are gaining popularity among parents of interest," said Liu. "Chinese parents understand what values the American education will generate, and they are getting it."

For example, some Chinese families will buy houses in upscale towns with strong public schools.

"Our website collects all this information for Chinese families," said Liu, adding that her clients are mostly affluent Chinese with only one child.

At Grier, Chen and other Chinese students make up almost half of the school population. The school administration set up a publicity office in China several years ago to welcome Chinese students in order to offset declining domestic enrollment and funding.

"Fifty thousand a year including tuition and boarding fees is not a small number," Emily said. "I understand my parents pin high hopes on me."

Emily completed her college applications, including several for prestigious Ivy League schools, before Christmas.

Contact the writer at junechang@chinadailyusa.com
China looks to wow at CES Updated: 2016-01-05 10:31 By Hezi Jiang in New York(China Daily USA)

A worker sets up a display on Sunday in the TCL booth in preparation for the 2016 International CES trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week. Steve Marcus / Reuters / Las Vegas Sun

More than 1,100 Chinese companies making up more than a quarter of the 3,600 exhibitors will represent at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week.

Chinese companies have taken out sprawling booths on the show floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Major TV makers Hisense Co Ltd and Sichuan Changhong Electric Co Ltd will set up next to Intel Corp, the US semiconductor giant, occupying prime locations in the main hall at the convention center.

The growing presence of Chinese companies is palpable.

The Chinese lineup includes makers of home appliances, computers and smartphones, such as Lenovo Group Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, ZTE Corp, Haier Group, TCL Corp, Skyworth Digital Holdings Co Ltd and Konka Group Co Ltd.

Starting Wednesday, some exhibitors will unveil new products while others hope to use the extravaganza as a springboard to capture bigger slices of their markets.

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Chinese website Baidu Inc and LeTV, the "Netflix of China", also will attend the show.

Beyond the traditional markets, Chinese companies also will have a presence in the emerging categories of drones and autonomous cars.

Shenzhen-based DJI is the world's largest maker of consumer drones and is again expected to dominate the unmanned-systems marketplace this year.

Faraday Future Inc, a California-based electric-car company funded by LeTV Chairman Jia Yueting, has received a lot of attention due to some leaked photos of its much anticipated concept car.

The details state that it has more than 1,000 horsepower and can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than three seconds. The car will be unveiled at the show.

China-based automaker BAIC BJEV announced it will present a new intelligent network system at CES.

Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc, said the increased presence of Chinese companies resembles how Japanese players embraced CES in the early 1990s.

"Make no mistake, the Chinese have arrived," Bajarin wrote on Time.com. "They plan to disrupt the traditional CE players as much as possible."

The world's largest electronics show takes place every January in Las Vegas. Last year, more than 170,000 attendees from over 150 countries gathered across 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space. The event will expand again this year, to 2.4 million square feet.

According to various news outlets, people are expecting to see more 4K TVs, virtual reality headsets, robots and drones, smarter homes, fashionable wearables, connected cars and plenty of quirky stuff such as robotic bartenders, connected toothbrushes and smart bras.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
Deer heads, brains found in restaurant Updated: 2016-01-05 10:31 By Amy He in New York(China Daily USA)

A Chinese restaurant in Pennsylvania has been issued more than a dozen health violations for having deer heads and brains on its premises in addition to failing to comply with other health and safety requirements.

Health inspectors were back at the restaurant, New China House, on Monday to follow up on a mid-December check, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture told China Daily.

The restaurant, located in Lititz, Lancaster County, in eastern Pennsylvania, has been open for business.

The owner of the New China House told PennLive that the deer meat was not for sale.

"They took the deer bones we need for soup for my wife and for me," said the owner, who was identified only as Chun.

A Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman said that edible game parts are not allowed to be sold. Only deer farm-raised for human consumption is permitted for sale, according to PennLive.

"No one is permitted to sell the meat or other edible parts from harvested game," the spokesman said. "When hunters pay at the processor, they're paying for their deer or a deer they've been given to be butchered and/or turned into some processed product."

New China House was handed 18 violations when it was initially inspected on Dec 16. The Pennsylvania Game Commission had received a tip about potential health violations at the restaurant.

Health inspectors found deer brains, deer heads, skinned and whole tails, legs, muscle meat, spines and "other unidentifiable parts both raw and cooked," according to an inspection log.

The deer parts were found in a walk-in cooler and freezer, the Agriculture Department said.

"We look at every facility individually, and when we go in [for an inspection], we take nothing else into account except what the food sanitary is at that time, at that facility. As far as how [New China House compares with others], we have restaurants on all points on the spectrum.

"This was on the high-violation side, and actually, we closed them for a period of time, so it's on one side of the spectrum," said Lydia Johnson, director of food safety at the Department of Agriculture.

The restaurant was closed for part of Dec 16 after the inspection and later reopened. It was reinspected again on Dec 17 and had 14 violations.

Some of the violations were taken care of immediately on site - unsanitary areas were cleaned, unidentified meat was discarded - and the restaurant was given various amounts of time to address the remaining violations.

Results from Monday's inspection will be made available in the next several days, Johnson said, and if the restaurant gets more violations, it will again be given "correct by" compliance dates.

A restaurant is only shut down if it is deemed to pose an "imminent health hazard", Johnson said, which New China House currently does not.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com
China Southern, Virgin America to code-share Updated: 2016-01-05 10:31 By Heng Weili in New York(China Daily USA)

China Southern Airlines and Virgin America have signed a code-sharing agreement to ease travel for passengers flying the two airlines.

Under the agreement, announced in a statement on Dec 29, China Southern will place its two-digit airline code (CZ) and flight numbers on Virgin America routes operating from Los Angeles and San Francisco - including West Coast flights to and from Boston, Chicago and Washington.

The code-share arrangement allows a one-stop booking process, a single ticket and one-stop check-in, including baggage handling, for the trip.

Virgin America, based in Burlingame, California, said the agreement was unique in that China Southern is the only airline offering non-stop service between Guangzhou and Wuhan, Hubei province, and the US.

"We are thrilled to expand our network further into the United States with Virgin America," said Zhao Xiaosong, China Southern senior vice-president of international affairs and alliances. "The United States is a substantial market for us, and through this partnership, we could offer our passengers more travel destinations via Guangzhou."

China Southern, headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, has daily flights from Guangzhou to San Francisco (three flights a week with one stop in Wuhan); 10 flights per week from Guangzhou to Los Angeles; and daily flights from Guangzhou to New York.

China Southern, established in 1991, is one of the "Big Four" mainland carriers (along with Air China, China Eastern and Hainan Airlines) with more than 100,000 employees worldwide. China Southern was ranked first in Asia and third in the world in traffic volume in 2014.

"China is a significant inbound and outbound tourism market, and we are extremely pleased to partner with China Southern, Asia's largest carrier by fleet size, and an airline that shares Virgin America's commitment to providing excellent, guest-focused service," said Adam Green, Virgin America's director of network planning.
China looks to wow at CES Updated: 2016-01-05 10:31 By Hezi Jiang in New York(China Daily USA)

More than 1,100 Chinese companies making up more than a quarter of the 3,600 exhibitors will represent at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week.

Chinese companies have taken out sprawling booths on the show floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Major TV makers Hisense Co Ltd and Sichuan Changhong Electric Co Ltd will set up next to Intel Corp, the US semiconductor giant, occupying prime locations in the main hall at the convention center.

The growing presence of Chinese companies is palpable.

The Chinese lineup includes makers of home appliances, computers and smartphones, such as Lenovo Group Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, ZTE Corp, Haier Group, TCL Corp, Skyworth Digital Holdings Co Ltd and Konka Group Co Ltd.

Starting Wednesday, some exhibitors will unveil new products while others hope to use the extravaganza as a springboard to capture bigger slices of their markets.

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Chinese website Baidu Inc and LeTV, the "Netflix of China", also will attend the show.

Beyond the traditional markets, Chinese companies also will have a presence in the emerging categories of drones and autonomous cars.

Shenzhen-based DJI is the world's largest maker of consumer drones and is again expected to dominate the unmanned-systems marketplace this year.

Faraday Future Inc, a California-based electric-car company funded by LeTV Chairman Jia Yueting, has received a lot of attention due to some leaked photos of its much anticipated concept car.

The details state that it has more than 1,000 horsepower and can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than three seconds. The car will be unveiled at the show.

China-based automaker BAIC BJEV announced it will present a new intelligent network system at CES.

Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc, said the increased presence of Chinese companies resembles how Japanese players embraced CES in the early 1990s.

"Make no mistake, the Chinese have arrived," Bajarin wrote on Time.com. "They plan to disrupt the traditional CE players as much as possible."

The world's largest electronics show takes place every January in Las Vegas. Last year, more than 170,000 attendees from over 150 countries gathered across 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space. The event will expand again this year, to 2.4 million square feet.

According to various news outlets, people are expecting to see more 4K TVs, virtual reality headsets, robots and drones, smarter homes, fashionable wearables, connected cars and plenty of quirky stuff such as robotic bartenders, connected toothbrushes and smart bras.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com

A worker sets up a display on Sunday in the TCL booth in preparation for the 2016 International CES trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week. Steve Marcus / Reuters / Las Vegas Sun

(China Daily USA 01/05/2016 page1)
This is a webpage written by high school teachers for those who teach US history who want to find online content as well as technology that you can use in the classroom.
Henichesk is a port town on the southern tip of Ukraine, just a few kilometers from the Crimean penninsula. The town's 25,000 residents have been freezing their asses off for the past couple of weeks after their fearless leaders in Kiev decided they don't want to buy any more gas from Russia. Henichesk Mayor Alexander Tulupov took the unusual step of appealing to Russia directly and received a positive response. Additional Russian gas is now flowing to Henichesk as humanitarian aid of sorts.



Not as huge of a deal as presented by the Russian media, still the situation is a massive embarrassment for the Ukrainian government. Henichesk is not a "pro-Russian" town and, so far, it has been spared the frontline excitement of Ukraine's civil war. Barely a week ago Ukraine's bombastic Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has been bragging about the 25-percent reduction in gas consumption in Ukraine. Higher "energy efficiency", the PM said, is the result of his wise and balanced policy.



By far, Ukraine's largest gas consumer is heavy industry. Yatsenyuk's 25% reduction in gas consumption is chiefly a result of the massive collapse in the country's industrial sector. Really, nothing to be particularly proud of. Ukrainian "government" says it stored enough gas to last the winter, but, as we see with Henichesk, this assertion may be more wishful thinking than fact.



Government bosses in Kiev know they don't have enough gas to last the heating season, but unlike previous years, now their reputations are on the line and they cannot resort to the usual siphoning of gas destined for the EU consumers. So their solution is to cut supplies to peripheral towns of little political significance - like

Henichesk, for example. This strategy may backfire.

So far, a firm handshake and a pat on the back has been the extent of Washington's support for Ukraine
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A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.  St. Antony the Great
The United Nations moved quickly today to shelter peace efforts in Syria and Yemen from the diplomatic storm unleashed by the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura travelled to Riyadh for urgent talks and was to head later this week to Tehran to seek assurances that hard-fought gains in the Syria peace process had not been derailed.

De Mistura is counting on broad support to launch peace talks between President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition in Geneva on January 25 -- the culmination of a three-month effort involving all key players.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by phone with the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers to urge them to "avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation between two countries and in the region as a whole," said Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"A breakdown of relations between Riyadh and Tehran could have very serious consequences for the region," said Dujarric.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have a crucial role in the diplomatic push to end the nearly five-year war in Syria and to bring about a political settlement for Yemen.

Relations between the two rivals have been testy, but the furor over the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, who had criticised the Sunni royal family, threatened to spill over.

After protesters set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran, giving diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.

In his conversation with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Ban expressed his "disappointment" over the execution of al-Nimr, whose case he had raised with Riyadh many times, said Dujarric.

While the UN chief said the Iranian attack on the Saudi embassy was "deplorable," the Saudi decision to break off relations with Tehran was "deeply worrying," he told Jubeir.

Ban spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif yesterday and urged him to protect diplomatic facilities after the attack on the Saudi embassy.

In a conciliatory sign, Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, pledged in a letter to Ban today that "Iran will take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future."



The Saudi-Iran rift was seen by UN diplomats as a potential setback to the peace effort in Syria, where Tehran is among Assad's strongest allies while Riyadh is backing militias fighting Damascus.
Terrorist group praises Australias Israel position The Albanese Governments decision to no longer recognise West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has been welcomed by listed terrorist organisation Hamas.

Major announcement on Marinus Link Anthony Albanese was with Jeremy Rockliff in Tasmania on Wednesday to make a major announcement on new under-sea transmission cables to connect the Apple Isle with Victoria.

Loud bang: Earthquake rattles town in Victorias north An earthquake has shaken a small Victorian town and is the latest blow for residents facing the threat of further flash flooding in the state's north.

Coatsworth slams AMAs response to Medicare scandal Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth says the survival of Medicare depends on "us cleaning up our own act" following allegations of the public system wasting billions of dollars.
1. You only need 3 players to have the WASPA status and get ranking points;2. It is always better to play under the banner of an international association instead of playing only friendly games;3. The WASPA will help you to make new friends and meet more different players;4. You can slightly change some of the official rules when you organize a tournament (for instance you can play games of 20 minutes);5. Tournaments are easy to organize and you just need to announce the tournaments a few days in advance to get the WASPA status.For more details, contact us at vincent.cop@rsca.com
Cameron: New 'Jihadi John

video is desperate stuff

LONDON (WP)  Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday dismissed as desperate stuff a new video by the Islamic State that seemed to again put a fellow Briton at the forefront of the militant groups propaganda efforts.

The video, which depicts the execution of five men who the group claims were spying for Britain, features a masked man with a British accent who wields a pistol as he threatens to invade the United Kingdom and implement Islamic law.

With its grisly content and blood-curdling message, the clip appears to self-consciously emulate slickly produced videos in which a British citizen who came to be known as Jihadi John is shown killing American, British, Japanese and Syrian hostages.

But the masked executioner in the new video does not appear to be the same as the one in the video series released in late 2014 and early 2015, adding to the evidence that Jihadi John was killed in a U.S. drone strike on the Syrian city of Raqqa in November.

Unusual shooting sets off

panic in Israeli heartland

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)  For all its years of strife, Israel has rarely seen anything quite like this: an armed, wanted Arab killer on the loose, spreading fear across the land.

Even the most stoic are keeping children home from school following the deadly daytime shooting at a popular bar on a busy Tel Aviv street that has become among the most unsettling attacks in a three-month wave of violence.

Israelis are used to quickly resuming their daily routines following attacks because assailants are typically captured or killed. But the frantic search for this gunman, whose attack Friday was caught on security cameras, has sent jitters across this seaside city.

The unusual escape of the accused gunman, Nashat Milhem, an Arab from northern Israel who is considered to be armed and dangerous, is one of many elements of a case that has left Israelis on edge.

Kyrgyzstan deports Briton

who insulted country

MOSCOW (AP)  Kyrgyzstans Interior Ministry says a British citizen who made rude remarks about the country on social media will be deported within a day.

The statement Monday on the ministrys website did not specify what Michael McFeat said, but local media reports say his offending post likened a Kyrgyz sausage called chukchuk to the genitals of a horse.

According to the ministry, McFeats comment sparked labor unrest at the Kumitor gold mine, where he is an employee, and in the wake of the scandal he tried to leave the country but was detained at the capitals international airport.

He was taken to court, charged with insulting the national dignity and then found to be lacking necessary papers for legal residence in Kyrgyzstan, the ministry said.

London zookeepers begin

annual animal census

LONDON (AP)  Animals stood up to be counted  or in some cases swam, crawled or flew  as London Zoo began its annual census.

Zookeepers with cameras, calculators and clipboards counted critters Monday, the start of a weeklong campaign to record every resident mammal, bird, fish, invertebrate, reptile and amphibian.

The zoo is home to 17,500 animals of more than 750 species, from silverback gorillas to tiny leaf-cutter ants. New arrivals in the past year include a baby Western lowland gorilla and a litter of African hunting dog pups.
WATERLOO | A Waterloo man who served time for shooting at a store clerk following a 1991 argument has been arrested for allegedly shooting at his neighbors apartment following a Saturday argument.

Waterloo police arrested Ricky Slim Iceburg William Peeples, also known as Ricky Ernest Peeples, 54, of 216 1/2 Randolph St., on Saturday for felon in possession of a firearm and intimidation with a weapon. His bond was set at $75,000.

Peeples downstairs neighbors were having problems with him around 1 a.m., court records state. He allegedly yelled at them and attempted to break down their door.

Police were called, and while officers were on their way, witnesses reported hearing gunshots coming from a stairwell leading to Peeples apartment.

Officers found holes in the wall to the neighbors bedroom, and they discovered a .22-caliber H&R handgun hidden in a sink in Peeples apartment, records state. Authorities also found ammo and spent casings.

No injuries were reported, according to police.

Witnesses said Peeples had threatened them with a gun in the past, and they had seen him with a .22-caliber weapon on prior occasions, records state.

Authorities said Peeples is barred from possessing firearms because of several prior convictions, most notably a conviction for attempted murder and burglary for shooting at a convenience store clerk in 1991.

According to Courier archives, the employee had called police for a fight outside the former Pistol Petes on Franklin Street on Jan. 26, 1991. Peeples was detained and later punched the employee while at the police station.

The following day, Peeples returned to the store with two children. When the clerk told Peeples to leave, Peeples began arguing and struggling with the employee, who retreated to another room. The clerk later ran from the building, and Peeples fired a shot at him and missed.

At trial, Peeples argued he was intoxicated at the time, and he was found guilty. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ultimately finished parole in 2004.

That same year, he was indicted in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids on a charge of being a felon in possession of ammunition after police found him with six .32-caliber bullets. He was again sentenced to prison and released in March 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Search on for inmate who left city facility

WATERLOO -- Police are searching for a 20-year-old man who escaped from the Waterloo Residential Facility.

Donielle Dushawn Neely Jr., 20, of 902 Mulberry St., walked out of the downtown Waterloo facility just after 7:30 p.m. Jan. 1, according to the Waterloo Police Department.

Neely Jr. is described as a 20-year-old black male wearing a gray and blue winter coat. Further descriptive information was not available.

Neely Jr. was sentenced to serve time at the residential facility after being convicted on a third-degree burglary charge in 2014.

Man arrested for gun carried on party bus

WATERLOO -- A man awaiting trial for gun and drug charges was allegedly found with a gun and drugs on a party bus on New Years Eve, police said.

Dalevon Henriyante Allen, 24, of 405 Sunnyside Ave., was arrested Jan. 1 for being a felon in possession of a firearm, carrying weapons and possession of marijuana. His bond is currently set at $90,000.

According to authorities, Allen was apparently ringing in 2016 as a passenger on a Dollys Party Bus when someone noticed the gun at about 3:40 a.m. The driver pulled over at East Sixth and Franklin streets and waited for police.

When officers approached, Allen attempted to flee through a back door. He was detained, and police found a .25-caliber handgun with the serial number filed off about two feet from Allen. Officers also found a small amount of marijuana on his person, records state.

Allen is prohibited from handling firearms because of convictions in Florida for theft of a firearm in 2010 and dealing in stolen property in 2012, authorities said.

At the time of the party bus incident, Allen was out on bond for marijuana, firearm and child endangerment charges stemming from a September search of a Nicholas Street home where he lived and a property on Riehl Street. Officer with the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force found a Taurus handgun.
LA CONCEPCION, Nicaragua | Businessmen Frank Huezo and Jim Kite first got to know each other about 15 years ago because of a mutual desire to help Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Huezo is a native of Nicaragua but a U.S. citizen, and both men lived in Humble, Texas. Kite, a member of a Rotary Club, got Huezo interested in the service organization as well.

Kite and Huezo wound up working on more than relief efforts together. They started an import company, first shipping dried beans and other goods out of Nicaragua, Mexico and Costa Rica, according to Kite.

Besides being a business venture, the men hoped the economic activity would aid people frequently mired in poverty in those countries -- farmers.

In 2013, Huezo and Kite landed on another opportunity. They purchased a plantation that had fallen into disrepair in a mountainous rural region of Nicaragua. The men now own about 400 acres that top out at an elevation of about 2,500 feet.

The farm was planted with cactus that produce pitaya, variously spelled as pitahaya, but better known around the world as dragon fruit.

The cactus species that produce dragon fruit are indigenous to Central America but are now also grown in Southeast Asia in places like Thailand and Vietnam.

Others describe the fruit's outer appearance as "an explosion of fire" equipped with overlapping spines. Interiors can be white or, as on Huezo's and Kite's farm, a deep magenta sprinkled with soft seeds. Those are black and edible, too.

The Nicaraguan dragon fruit offers a sweet, soft flesh reminiscent in flavor and texture of a kiwi or soft, ripe pear. A cactus can produce up to 30 fruits to a plant sometimes, according to Kite.

Kite and Huezo spent thousands of dollars on the land and on necessary rehabilitation efforts, including replanting many acres. They expect to have at least 75 acres in full production within four years.

Planting the cactus is relatively straightforward: Workers cut a branch off an existing cactus and stick the piece in the ground. Posts support the plants, which are 8 to 10 feet apart on the steep slopes. A parcel covering about 2 acres requires more than 800 posts, according to Kite.

Kite and Huezo, though, also faced expenses not directly tied to dragon fruit production. The men built their own road across the ridge to accommodate trucks, constructed a school for the rural community's children and installed a 500,000-gallon reservoir for water.

The region has a distinct wet and dry season. During the wet season, the slopes pick up 60-some inches of rain in about six months, according to Kite.

"It's quite rainy about the end of October," Kite said.

"In September and October, you can get 3 to 4 inches in an hour. I'm talking torrential," he added.

Rain that falls on nearby roofs flows into a 70,000-gallon cistern. Overflow goes down the hill in pipes to the reservoir, which is lined with plastic and protected by a fine mesh. The cover protects the water from contamination and blocks the sun to inhibit algae.

A delivery man using a horse and cart makes sure 55-gallon drums are always full at participating families' homes.

"They have good, clean water up here year round," Kite said.

The residents set up a cooperative to manage their water system, which will supply money for eventual repairs and potential upgrades.

"If any project is not sustainable, it's not worth doing," Kite said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture certified the farm for export, and an inspector provides ongoing reviews, according to Kite. Workers finished their third harvest this year, and in 2015 the farm exported more than 20, 40-foot shipping containers filled with dragon fruit.

"I don't know how many millions of fruits that is, but it's a lot of them," Kite added.

Of that yield, 70 percent were exported. Many wound up in Miami, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Toronto, Canada. Next year, Kite and Huezo expect to ship to Italy.

Buyers are enthusiastic, according to Kite.

"Every one of them would take the whole lot," he said. "We could easily sell 20 times that much."

The farm offers another precious commodity in Nicaragua: jobs. Huezo and Kite initially hired 12 people. They now have 50 full-time employees and take on a large number of seasonal workers as well.

"We've created a lot of jobs in three years," Kite said.
CEDAR FALLS | A Cedar Falls couple has been sentenced to prison in connection with child pornography charges.

Judge Linda Reade sentenced 50-year-old Frank Martinez to 10 years and one month in prison in U.S. District Court on Dec. 31. His spouse, 51-year-old Donald Wall, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison.

Both men will have to serve 10 years of supervised release following their prison time, and they were ordered to pay $10,000 fines and $100 special assessments.

Martinez was ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution.

The money will go to victims that investigators were able to identify in some of the images.

Authorities allege they used peer-to-peer network to download child porn from others, and in September 2014 an investigator downloaded images they possessed, court records state. Peer-to-peer networks are decentralized file sharing systems that allow users to access information stored on other members computers.

Wall and Martinez were indicted in June 2015 and pleaded guilty in August.

The case was investigated by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Tremmel as part of Project Safe Childhood.

Walls attorney argued for a lower sentence, saying Wall discovered Martinez had stored child porn on their computer when they were living in Kansas City. Martinez deleted the porn, but Wall again found child porn on the computer after they moved to Cedar Falls, records state. Martinez had told Wall the images were legal, and Wall later downloaded images for Martinez, Walls attorney argued in court records.
WATERLOO | A Waterloo man who served time for shooting at a store clerk following a 1991 argument has been arrested for allegedly shooting at his neighbors apartment following a Saturday argument.

Waterloo police arrested Ricky Slim Iceburg William Peeples, also known as Ricky Ernest Peeples, 54, of 216 1/2 Randolph St., on Saturday for felon in possession of a firearm and intimidation with a weapon. His bond was set at $75,000.

Peeples's downstairs neighbors were having problems with him around 1 a.m., court records state. He allegedly yelled at them and attempted to break down their door.

Police were called, and while officers were on their way, witnesses reported hearing gunshots coming from a stairwell leading to Peeples's apartment. Officers found holes in the wall to the neighbor's bedroom, and they discovered a .22-caliber H&R handgun hidden in a sink in Peeples's apartment, records state. Authorities also found ammo and spent casings.

No injuries were reported, according to police.

Witnesses said Peeples had threatened them with a gun in the past, and they had seen him with a .22-caliber weapon on prior occasions, records state.

Authorities said Peeples is barred from possessing firearms because of several prior convictions, most notably a conviction for attempted murder and burglary for shooting at a convenience store clerk in 1991.

According to Courier archives, the employee had called police for a fight outside the former Pistol Pete's on Franklin Street on Jan. 26, 1991. Peeples was detained and later punched the employee while at the police station.

The following day, Peeples returned to the store with two children. When the clerk told Peeples to leave, Peeples began arguing and struggling with the employee, who retreated to another room. The clerk later ran from the building, and Peeples fired a shot at him and missed.

At trial, Peeples argued he was intoxicated at the time, and he was found guilty. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ultimately finished parole in 2004.

That same year, he was indicted in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids on a charge of being a felon in possession of ammunition after police found him with six .32-caliber bullets. He was again sentenced to prison and released in March 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
WATERLOO | Roderick Earl Ward Jr. wasnt supposed to be handling guns in August 2014.

A local felony drunk driving conviction and an earlier Chicago-area drug charge meant he had forfeited his firearm rights.

But on Aug. 1, 2014, Ward and two friends went to Scheels sporting goods in Cedar Falls where they held shotguns and talked about the weapons before one of the friends tried to buy one and was turned down.

Back at Wards Jackson Street home, he and others shot off a 12-gauge Montgomery Ward shotgun -- which he had apparently acquired earlier -- in his backyard. And later that night, as one of the friends, Gary Lee Wilson, became drunk and argumentative outside, Ward approached him with the weapon. Shots rang out, and Wilson collapsed and later died of a blast to the abdomen.

On Monday, Ward, 28, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for second-degree murder. Assistant County Attorney Brad Walz successfully argued for an additional five years for felon in possession of a firearm charge, bringing the total to 55 years.

The defendant, at that time, wasnt even supposed to be possessing a firearm, Walz said. One of the bases behind the provision against felons having firearms is this very type of act ... Mr. Wilson has relatives in Illinois. Hes a son, hes a father, and this defendant took his life in the middle of the street.

Ward, who declined to comment to the court during sentencing, will have to serve at least 70 percent of the murder sentence -- 35 years -- before he can be considered for parole. He also was ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to Wilsons estate.

You could have just as easily remained in your house, shut the door, locked it and called police if anything escalated beyond that. You opted on the course of action that lead to the demise of the victim, Judge Joel Dalrymple told Ward.

At trial in October, Wards defense attorneys had argued Ward had merely fired shots into the street to scare off Wilson, and Wilson was shot when a struggle broke out over the weapon.

Ward had been charged with first-degree murder, but jurors found him guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. He entered an Alford plea to the firearm charge -- not admitting guilt but contending he would likely be convicted if the matter went to trial -- Monday, and he pleaded guilty to an unrelated assault charge for allegedly attacking another inmate in the jail in September 2014 while awaiting trial.
DES MOINES  A 1 percent sales tax earmarked for school infrastructure would be extended 20 years, but the revenue would be shared with water quality programs under an ambitious proposal unveiled Tuesday by Gov. Terry Branstad.

Under Branstads plan, which requires legislative approval, the school infrastructure sales tax, which is set to expire in 2029, would be extended to 2049, and annual revenue increases would be divided. The first $10 million in new revenue each year would go to schools, and the remainder would go to water quality programs.

Branstads office estimates the proposal would generate $7.5 million for water quality programs in the first year and $4.7 billion over the next 32 years.

Branstad called his plan a win-win situation, saying it creates revenue for water quality programs without raising taxes and still provides reliable funding for school infrastructure projects.

This is probably the biggest and boldest proposal Ive put together in all my years as governor, Branstad, the longest-serving governor in the nations history, said Tuesday during his meeting with Statehouse media to preview the upcoming legislative session.

The Republican governors plan was endorsed Tuesday by former Democratic Iowa governor and current U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack sat next to Branstad at Tuesdays meeting and called the governors plan a solid framework that promptly addresses an issue that needs immediate attention.

Iowa is one of the leading contributors of nutrients that have flowed down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a so-called dead zone where oxygen is insufficient to sustain fish and marine life. The federal government has required Mississippi River states, including Iowa, to develop solutions to reduce the amount of nutrients flowing into the river.

There is a limited period of time to work on this water quality issue, Vilsack said. The reality is we need to work on it now.

Superintendents of the Cedar Valleys largest school districts expressed hesitancy or outright opposition toward the proposal.

I did meet with the governor before Christmas, said Jane Lindaman, superintendent of Waterloo Community Schools. I do appreciate that he has worked really hard to get first-hand opinions and explain his thinking.

However, she noted the sales tax was originally approved by voters in countywide referendums and suggested Branstad should not only rely on the views of school superintendents in modifying its purpose.

I just dont think that I would say water quality is the next biggest priority, said Lindaman. I think it would be wise for other opinions to be sought before a decision is made.

Cedar Falls Superintendent Andy Pattee supported extending the sales tax another 20 years, but noted many school districts were already counting on projected revenues between now and 2029.

Were pleased that this is becoming a discussion point about extending out the 1 percent sales tax, he said. Our belief is that (those revenues) should be used for the intended purpose.

Ed Klamfoth, superintendent of the Waverly-Shell Rock Community Schools, supported the water quality projects, but not at the expense of a funding stream expressly created for districts that they continue to need.

Those sales tax dollars were created for school infrastructure, he said. Im opposed to it just because it was not the intent of the law.

Branstad and legislative leaders said they support funding water quality programs but are hesitant to fund them with tax increases.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal criticized the plan for using future school infrastructure funding to pay for water quality programs.

It is a solution, an effort that undercuts local schools, Gronstal said.

Iowa State Education Association President Tammy Wawro echoed Gronstals sentiment that Branstads plan equates to robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The fact that were even having a conversation about this, taking even part of the pie meant for kids to take care of another important priority, its just very disturbing right now for us, Wawro said.

Branstad declined to say whether he would approve extending the school infrastructure sales tax without the provision for water quality programs.

House Speaker-select Linda Upmeyer said House Republicans have been divided on whether to extend the school infrastructure sales tax beyond 2029.

Branstad also said Tuesday he hopes to be able to maintain his request to boost state supplemental aid to K-12 public schools by 2.45 percent when he presents his fiscal 2017 budget blueprint to state lawmakers next week.

A year ago, Branstad proposed state aid to schools be boosted by 1.25 percent for the current school year and 2.45 percent for the fiscal year that begins July 1. But since then, state revenue estimates have been scaled back due to weakness in the farm economy.

Staff writer Andrew Wind contributed to this story.
WATERLOO | Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, isnt worried the election year will hamper Congress ability to enact legislation in 2016. At least not at first.

I think its going to be pretty normal until both the Republican and Democrat nominees are decided, Grassley said Monday following a meeting at the downtown Waterloo Rotary meeting.

During that window, however long it lasts -- presidential voting begins Feb. 1 with the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses -- Grassley sees hope to pass some major reforms that have topped his priorities as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley said he sees the possibility to pass a juvenile justice reform bill, a criminal justice bill that focuses on sentencing reforms and patent reform. Each of the three bills passed his Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support.

Very bipartisan, Grassley said, particularly of the sentencing reform bill. Give you an example, youve got Rand Paul (a Republican senator from Kentucky running for president) at one end and (Assistant Democratic Leader U.S. Sen. Dick) Durbin at the other end, and thats how widespread the support is.

Grassley has long advocated returning the Senate to regular order, where bills are passed in committees, brought to the floor, debated and amended. To that end, he told the Rotarians, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 15 bills out of committee last year, all with broad bipartisan support.

He also commended a 2015 legislative year, under a Republican majority, where the Senate adopted a budget, the guiding principles to enact appropriations bills.

Though the budget process didnt lead to the passage of the 12 appropriations bills -- they were instead adopted as one in an omnibus spending bill Grassley opposed at the end of the year -- Grassley has hopes for appropriations bills in 2016.

He said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he is going to allow the appropriations bills to come up in 2016 rather than using a procedural rule known as the filibuster to stop them from coming up, as happened in several cases in 2015.

If he keeps his word, well have 12 different appropriations bills, and 12 different debates and get very deeply into it and have a lot of amendments on each bill, as opposed to we had one vote just before Christmas, Grassley said.

He said because the appropriations bills finance all of the federal government, they ought to have more serious consideration than just one day of debate and vote.

Grassleys stop at the Rotary was his first of the year. He officially kicks off his annual 99-county tour Wednesday, starting in Grundy Center and continuing around northeast Iowa before the Senate session begins in Washington, D.C.
WATERLOO | Residents packed the City Hall meeting room Monday to witness a piece of history.

Newly elected Mayor Quentin Hart took the oath of office from City Clerk Suzy Schares, setting off loud applause and a standing ovation from a crowd that stretched into the hallways.

"We have been allowed to see an African-American become the mayor of this city," said the Rev. Michael Coleman, of Antioch Baptist Church, who delivered the event's invocation.

Hart then delivered the oaths of office to new council members Bruce Jacobs, who will represent Ward 2, and Jerome Amos Jr., who takes over Hart's Ward 4 seat, and at-large Councilman Steve Schmitt, who was elected to his third term.

The mostly ceremonial meeting, which saw Councilman Ron Welper appointed as mayor pro tem and all of the current department heads reappointed, drew a long line of speakers who showed up to offer congratulations and express their desire for the city to move forward progressively in the coming year.

"We are exceedingly proud of you," said the Rev. Michael Muhammed, Hart's longtime friend. "We pray that God will be with you, brother, strengthening you in your leadership.

"We pray that this community will back you, that the criticism will be worthy and constructive criticism to aid you so that we can unify this community," he added. "That all of the members of this society will realize the importance of unity and what that looks like in actuality so we can heal this community."

State Rep. Deborah Berry also vowed to help Hart achieve his goal of "getting rid of that dividing line, the river, and making our city one city that we can be proud of."

Betty Andrews, president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, visited from Des Moines to witness the historic event.

"We are looking for great things and we're also looking for a lot of good work from you," Andrews said. "We know that Waterloo has two stories to tell  a lot of great stories to tell, but we also know there are some tough stories that we have to address."

Longtime civil rights activist Anna Mae Weems presented Hart with certificates from several organizations who recognized his achievement, including the Coalition to Build a Better Community and the Waterloo Community School District.

"There's a lot of people who laid the groundwork for you to get here," Weems said. " The Waterloo schools wanted everybody to know East High produces mayors."

Hart also offered a "clean slate" to those who hoped the meeting dialogue and tone of city government would improve.

"I'm going to expect civility when our department heads approach to speak at the podium  as well as the council and myself as well," Hart said. "But I'm also going to ask for civility of those that approach the podium to speak.

"I wholeheartedly look forward to conversation in 2016. We have a new mayor. I'm not going to do things the same way. The level of expectation and participation that I expect, not just from you but of myself, is going to be different.

"My children watch council meetings," he added. "All of our children and family watch council meetings. People that want to bring business to the city of Waterloo are watching these shows as well."
Letters response

JANICE NOLTING

CEDAR FALLS -- In response to Susan Fuhrman's letter of Dec 29: All is well in interpreting the spirituality of Christmas through the Bible and the church. However some individuals have the right to interpret their spirituality as they see fit.

Like the woman from Evansdale serving Christmas dinner for the poor every Christmas day. Or a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan risking his life for others on Christmas Eve. People have different ways to express their spirituality on Christmas. Continually bashing Scott Cawelti for his, I'll admit sometimes unorthodox beliefs, however, makes no sense at all. Especially when he has donated thousands of dollars in building a recreational facility for the nursing home residents at the NewAldaya Lifescapes nursing home in Cedar Falls.

Those of us who have different ways of expressing our spirituality, especially around the holidays, should have respect. Not be bullied as if we don't matter.

Another response

HELEN LOGAN

CEDAR FALLS -- Thank you, Susan Fuhrman, for your letter in Tuesday's Courier. It is refreshing to consider the real meaning of our Christmas celebration, that Jesus was a holy and sinless God in human flesh who had to come to earth to die for the sins of us humans.

We need to repent or ask Jesus to take our sins from us in order to become "children of God."

But dear Scott is so close, like the rich young ruler in the Bible, who asked Jesus what he needed to do to be one of his.

The end of Scott's story has not been written. I hope he will be one of us!

Coats and scarves

JULIE EHLERS

WATERLOO -- Our community children enjoyed receiving the gift of fleece scarves along with their new coat, hat and gloves. We did not have enough scarves for every child to get one, so if you enjoy making things please consider making scarves for next years project. This could be a great winter time project.

We purchased 637 coats and 261 boots, which were shared with children attending Becker, Poyner, Lou Henry, Kittrell, Kingsley, Orange, North Cedar, Cedar Heights, Lincoln, Orchard, Hansen, Southdale, La Porte City, Hudson, Dunkerton, Elk Run, Kittrell and Freeburg preschools. When they walk to school, wait for the bus and play outside for recess they will be warm because of your generous spirit.

One little girls thank-you note reflects the spirit of our project well: Dear coat giver, I would like to take the time and tell you all I love my coat. I'm very glad that there are people out there that care about kids in this world. I hope God blesses all of you that had a part in giving the coats to kids. I hope I'm like this when I grow up.

For more information on our fleece scarf project needs, contact me at 232-3795, juliea58@mchsi.com, www.facebook.com/koats4kidswaterloo.
Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, is home to 7 million people and renowned for its spicy local cuisine. For most tourists its a jumping point to head onwards to Zhangjiajie, Fenghuang, Wulingyuan, or Shaoshan and the birthplace of Mao Zedong. Thats a shame as Changsha offers quite a rich mix of history and cuisine.

The Top Ten things to Eat in Changsha

1. Steamed Nesting Birds (San Ceng Tao Ji )

2. Spicy Chicken Cubes (Mala Zi Ji )

3. Crisp Sesame Duck (Maren Xiangsu Ji  )

4. Deyuan Steamed Bun ()

5. Non-Yolk Eggs with Mushroom (Huagu Wu Danhuang)

6. Kouwei Shrimp (Kou Wei Xia)

7. Dumpling in Soup (Liu Defang Tangyuan)

8. Changsha-style stinky tofu (Changsha Chou Doufu )

9. Maos braised pork (Mao shi hongshao rou )

10. Beer duck (piji u ya )

The Top Ten Attractions and Things to do in Changsha

1.Yuelu Academy 

Address: 273 Lu Shan Lu, Yuelu Qu, Changsha

Admission: 50 yuan

2. Juzi Island 

Address: Xiangjiang River

Admission: Free

3. Mawangdui 

Address: 89 Guhan Rd, Furong Qu, Changsha

Admission: 2 yuan

4. Jinggang Ancient Town 

Address: Baojian St, Wangcheng, Changsha

Admission: Free

5. Tianxin Pavilion Park 

Address: 3 Tianxin Rd, WuYi ShangQuan, Tianxin Qu, Changsha

Admission: Free

6. Changsha Window of the World

Address: No.485 Sanyi Avenue, Kaifu District, Changsha

Admission: 130 yuan

7. Shiyan Lake 

Address: Shiyan Village, Tiaoma Country, Changsha

Admission: 100 yuan

8. Kaifu Temple 

Address: 136 Kaifusi Rd, WuJiaLing ShangQuan, Kaifu Qu, Changsha

Admission: 15 yuan

9. Changsha Ecological Zoo 

Address: Xihu Village Muyun Town, Changsha

Admission: 80 yuan

10. Daweishan Forest Park 

Address: Liuyang City, 148 kilometers (91.96 miles) from Changsha

Admission: 50 yuan

Map: Top Ten attractions and places to stay in Changsha

Center map Traffic Bicycling Transit Get Directions

The Top Ten Places to Stay in Changsha

These Changsha hotels are chosen based on their reviews by fellow travelers, proximity to the city center and suitability for foreign travelers.

Wanda Vista Changsha 5-star hotel Area: Kai Fu, Changsha A 5-minute walk from Wanda Plaza, Wanda Vista Changsha provides an artful oasis of pure comfort. It boasts an indoor pool, a fitness centre, and majestic meeting rooms.





Crowne Plaza Changsha City Centre 5-star hotel Area: Kai Fu, Changsha Located in Wuyi Square, Crowne Plaza Changsha City Centre offers luxurious rooms with internet access and a flat-screen TV. Providing free parking, it has 3 restaurants and 2 bars.





Sheraton Changsha Hotel 5-star hotel Area: Kai Fu, Changsha Located in the Yunda Business District, a 10-minute drive from Changsha Railway Station. It offers a spa, a fitness centre and an indoor pool.





Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Furongguo Changsha 5-star hotel Area: Fu Rong, Changsha Located in the business center of Changsha. It features a heated outdoor pool, a yoga room and 24-hour room service.

InterContinental Changsha 5-star hotel Area: Kai Fu, Changsha Located in the heart of the North Star Delta, serves as the nearest international five-star accommodation to and from Changsha Huanghua International Airport.





Empark Grand Hotel Changsha 5-star hotel Area: Kai Fu, Changsha A 10-minute drive from the middle of Changsha, Empark Grand Hotels & Resort offers 5-star rooms with flat-screen TVs. Featuring a pool and gym, it provides free internet and parking.





White Swan Hotel Changsha 5-star hotel Area: Tian Xin, Changsha Located in the heart of Tianxin District. It features contemporary decoration, an indoor swimming pool, and a hot tub.





Changsha Hopesky Hotel 5-star hotel Area: Tian Xin, Changsha Featuring European-style accommodation, the 5-star Hopesky Hotel was elaborately designed and offers collections at the property.





Longchamp Garden Hotel Changsha 5-star hotel Area: Yu Hua, Changsha Located 15 km from Wuhan-Guangzhou Highspeed Railway Station, Longchamp Garden Hotel Changsha features an indoor pool and fitness centre. Soundproofed rooms offer free wired internet.





Transport in Changsha

Flights

Changsha Huanghua International Airport serves domestic and international destinations. It is located 25 KM from the city center and transfers to the city are available via shuttle buses and maglev train (20 CNY) that connects to South Railway Station and Line 2 of the metro system.

Trains

There are two railway stations being the original Changsha Railway Station and the newer South Railway Station that services High Speed Rail services. You can get to South Railway Station via metro line 2 and major destinations include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Guilin, Tianjin, Xian, and Zhangjiajie.

Bus

There are three dedicated tourist bus lines as follows

Tourist Bus No.1

Operation Hours: 06:0022:00

Stops: Main Railway Station  Changdao Lukou  Wuyi Square  No.4 Hospital  Hunan Normal University  Mount Yuelu Scenic Area  Kejiao Xincun

Tourist Bus No.2

Operation Hours: 06:0021:00

Stops: Lijun Community  Beichong Reservoir  Xiangzhang Road  Central Hospital  Anzhen Hospital  Shahe Street  Wuyi Square  Jiayi Former Residence  Juzi Zhou Bridge  Ferry Terminal  Hunan Chinese Medicine Hospital  Xiangya Hospital  Kaifu Temple  Hua Xia

Tourist Bus No.3

Operation Hours: 07:0018:00

Stops: Railway Station  Liucheng Bridge  Tianxin Pavilion  Museum of Bamboo and Wooden Slips  Bixiang Street  Lingguandu  Xihu Bridge  Martyr Park (South Gate)  Yuanjialing  Railway Station

Taxi

The flag fall is CNY8 and includes the first 2 km (1.2 mi). CNY2 is charged for each 1 km (0.6 mi) thereafter. Over 13 km (8 mi) and the rate increases to CNY3 per 1 km.

Metro

Useful Resources

Changsha Government site (English)  http://en.changsha.gov.cn

WikiTravel Changsha  https://wikitravel.org/en/Changsha

TravelChinaGuide Changsha  https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/hunan/changsha/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.
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Vote Tuesday, November 8



MI Supreme Court: Brian Zahra, Paul Hudson

8th District: Lana Escamilla

9th Circuit: Rebecca D'Angelo, Julie Jensen

Vote NO on proposals 2 and 3
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The blog where Demand Studios Sucks zombies are analyzed.
Youve got a decent hand. Youre sure of it, but you dont want to bet everything on it because you know the game and know that youll lose. What do you do? That depends in part upon how strong your hand is (or isnt). For example, if you have an ace low flush, you might be tempted to fold, knowing you probably wont make money betting with it. On the other hand, if you hold a pocket pair, you may have enough confidence in the strength of your hand to bet all-in, hoping for a full house or better. In order to get the most from your hand, you need to understand what the odds are against each possible outcome. Heres how you can figure out whether or not you should push your luck with a particular hand.

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The Value of A Pair

Lets assume weve just dealt two cards and one player has three suited cards and another has four. If the first player bets, then hes going to win about half the time (assuming everyone else folds), so his expected return is 50 percent. The second player has a much tougher time. Hell have a good chance of winning only when he gets three of a kind, which happens 1/4th of the time. So he has a 25 percent chance of winning. When he makes the call, the third player has a 55 percent chance of winning. His expected return is 45 percent. Of course, if the first player loses, then the chances of the third player winning go way up  about 80 percent. All of these percentages are based on the assumption that all players will fold.

The value of the hand is calculated by taking the probability of winning times the amount you would win if you did win. This gives us a number between zero and 100. Well use $5 as our basic unit for calculating the value of the hands. If you had 10 chips and could choose any five, what would you pick? Well, wed obviously take the top hand, which is worth $50. The second best hand is a little bit worse  $45  since youre giving up some equity for the opportunity to win more. So now lets calculate the value of the remaining hands.

If the second player chooses a third card, his expected gain is $25, which represents the difference between the two hands. A fourth card increases the expectation to $30, while adding a fifth card drops it back down to $20. Since there are no sixth cards, the value of the hand is equal to the average of the five cards, which is $24.60.

The value of a suit

We can also figure out the value of a suit by looking at the value of each individual card within that suit. Lets say were dealing a standard deck of 52 cards. One person holds a KQ; the next person has a 7D; and the third has a 2S. Each person has a 20% chance of winning. What is the expected return of having this group of cards? Well, the KQ has a 5% chance of winning, the 7D has a 4% chance, and the 2S has a 3% chance. So the total expected return is 25%. The same logic applies to the other suits, where the probability of winning goes up as the value of the card decreases. For instance, the Aces have a 9% chance of winning, Kings have 8%, Queens have 7%, Jacks have 6%, and Tens have 5%. So the expected returns add up to 36%.

Now lets add all of these numbers together to get an estimate of the value of a hand. Assuming that each hand was equally likely to come up, our total would be 60 percent. But we know thats wrong! Not every hand is created equal. It turns out that a royal flush beats the rest of the pack pretty consistently. So were going to adjust our calculations to reflect this fact.

Royal Flushes

So far, weve assumed that all of the cards were equally likely to come up. Actually, most poker players believe that Royal Flushes are extremely unlikely. In fact, many experts estimate their frequency at less than 0.1 percent. To account for this, lets increase the probability of winning for each card in a Royal Flush by 10 percent. Now when we calculate the value of a Royal Flush, well find that its actually worth 62.5 percent of what it used to be. The value of the cards in each rank will still add up to 100, but theyre now weighted differently.

So what does this mean for you? Well, if you hold a Royal Flush, youre probably going to win about 75 percent of the time. And if you hold a hand like QJT, youll win about 75 percent of the time too. And if you hold a straight, youll win nearly 70 percent of the time. In short, the bigger your hand, the more likely you are to win. Of course, even though youre getting a higher hit rate, youll also tend to lose more often. So if you hold a straight, youre almost guaranteed to lose. But if you hold a Royal Flush, youre going to win about one-quarter of the time, and youll win about twice as much money. So youre almost certain to profit from such a hand, but youll also take a lot of losses.

Now, I mentioned that youll lose money on any hand. In fact, youll lose money roughly half the time. So if you hold a straight, youll lose about 25 percent of the time. If you hold a flush, youll lose about 40 percent of the time. And if you hold a pair, youll lose 35 percent of the time. In addition, if you hold a set  one of the two highest ranks  youll lose 35 percent of the time. Finally, if you hold a high card in the lowest rank, youll lose 30 percent of the time.

But the interesting thing is that youll lose less money on those losing hands than you do on winning hands. Why is that? Well, suppose you hold a straight. Theres a 65 percent chance youll win. But suppose you hold a pair instead. Theres a 65 percent chance youll win. But you lost on your last hand. So theres now a 75 percent chance that youll lose again. On the other hand, if you hold a straight and lose, theres still a 65 percent chance youll win again. So youre only losing about 15 percent of the time.

This means that you can minimize your losses by playing only hands that are reasonably likely to win. So if you hold a straight, youll probably lose around 25 percent of the time. But if you hold a flush, youll probably lose around 40 percent of the time. And if you hold a pair, youll probably lose around 35 percent of the time. And if you hold a set, youll probably lose around 35 percent of the time. But if you hold a high card in the lowest rank, youll probably lose around 30 percent of the time.

In summary, the higher the probability that youll win, the lower your loss percentage will be. And the lower the probability youll win, the higher your loss percentage will be. So the optimal strategy is to play only hands whose probability of winning exceeds your expected return. If you hold a straight, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 25 percent of the time. If you hold a flush, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 40 percent of the time. And if you hold a pair, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 35 percent of the time. But if you hold a set, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 35 percent of the time. And if you hold a high card in the lowest rank, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 30 percent of the time.

Of course, you shouldnt ignore your opponents actions entirely. You should always give them credit for being smart, making decisions, and doing whatever it takes to beat you. But just remember that youre being punished for having a decent hand.
More than 13,000 rape evidence kits have gone untested or unprocessed in Florida, and clearing the backlog could cost the state tens of millions of dollars, according to study results released Monday.

The study, conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement from August to December 2015, found that 13,435 sexual assault evidence kits across the state have not been tested (PDF). That means that forensic evidence was collected from possible rape victims but has not been processed in order to match DNA evidence with possible suspects.

Authorities said in the report that 9,484 of those tests should have been processed. The states law enforcement agency recommends testing all kits in the interest of public safety.

The most common reason the kits werent tested  cited for 41 percent of the untested kits  was that the alleged victim decided not to proceed with the investigation, according to the report, which surveyed 279 local law enforcement agencies responsible for districts accounting for 89 percent of Floridas population. In 31 percent of the kits, the state attorneys office declined to prosecute. Other reasons included a suspects guilty plea, an alleged victims death or an alleged victim who declined to file a police report.

The report said that the state has been processing an average of about 2,400 sexual assault evidence kits per year in the last five years but that the volume is expected to grow by an estimated 3,500 kits per year.

Backlogs of untested rape kits have been an issue across the United States. In September federal officials said an estimated 70,000 kits sitting in laboratories and evidence collection rooms across the country would be tested with $79 million in federal and New York City funds. Detroit reported in 2014 that it had 10,995 untested kits collected from 1993 to 2006, according to U.S. Department of Justice documents.

There are 12,000 untested kits in Memphis, Tennessee, and 4,000 in Cleveland, according to statistics gathered by the Rape Kit Action Project, a collaboration between the National Center for Victims of Crime, the advocacy group Natashas Justice Project and the Rape Abuse Incest National Network (RAINN).

In New York City, which accumulated a 17,000-case backlog from 2000 to 2003, processing the kits and completing DNA matches to suspects resulted in 200 prosecutions, according to the city district attorneys office. The arrest rate for rapes in the city, which now tests every rape kit for DNA evidence, jumped to 70 percent in 2003, from 40 percent in 2000, after the policy was adopted. Thats compared with a national average arrest rate for rapes of about 1 in 4, according to RAINN.

Experts say it costs $1,200 to $1,500 to complete tests on each kit. The Florida report said any proposals to test the thousands of kits are dependent upon additional funding for outsourcing, technology, overtime and a stabilized workforce of crime laboratory analysts.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced in November that he will seek $8.5 million to help process the backlog. But that may not be enough; estimates for the funding required to test all the kits range from about $9 million to $32 million over three to nine years, according to the report.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release that she is troubled by the report. While it is clear it will take more resources to address these problems, testing these unprocessed kits is a public safety issue that deserves our immediate attention, she said. Processing these untested kits will allow key DNA evidence to be entered into state and federal crime databases. These entries can produce matches that could link criminals to unsolved crimes in Florida and beyond.

Three states  Colorado, Illinois and Texas  have passed laws that mandate statewide accounting of untested kits.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press
A Charleston County sheriff's spokesman confirmed Monday evening that Michael Slager, the former South Carolina police officer charged with murder in the shooting of a black motorist has posted bond and has been released from custody.

Slager will remain under house arrest until his trial later this year. A state judge on Monday ordered that jury selection in the case will begin on Halloween.

Sheriff's Department spokesman Eric Watson says Slager, a former North Charleston police officer, was released about 7 p.m. He released a statement saying the county detention center staff has prematurely posted on its website earlier that Slager has been released when in fact he was still in jail custody.

An attorney for the family of the slain motorist urged the Charleston community to remain calm after a judge set bond for the ex-police officer charged with killing the man.

Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the family of Walter Scott, said damaging property or hurting innocent people would do nothing to help Scott's family or affect the trial process, but would only get the perpetrators arrested.

Slager was charged with murder in April in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man who was running away from the officer after a traffic stop.

The shooting April 4 was captured on video by a bystander and showed Slager firing eight times as 50-year-old Scott ran away. The shooting rekindled an ongoing national debate about the treatment of black people at the hands of white officers.

The 33-year-old Slager faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted. He had been jailed without bond since his arrest.

Confirmation of Slagers release ended hours of confusion. A judge granted Slager a $500,000 surety bond at a hearing Monday afternoon and let him out out jail. Then, said Slager was released at 5:23 p.m. Monday. The website was later updated to say he was booked back in the jail at 5:51 p.m.

Al Jazeera with The Associated Press
President Barack Obama will meet with the United States top prosecutor Monday to discuss new firearm control measures, with the White House eyeing executive action as a way to push through ways to curb Americas gun violence.

The president will meet Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey to discuss the administration's options for tightening gun rules without going through the Republican-controlled Congress, which does not support the wide-ranging legislative changes that Obama prefers.

At the top of the list is an effort to expand background checks on gun sales by forcing more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers. The changes would be aimed at some unregistered sellers who skirt the background check laws by selling at gun shows, online or informal settings.

Other moves being considered include improving reporting of lost and stolen weapons and beefing up inspections of licensed dealers, according to a person familiar with the plans who would not be named discussing proposals before they are finalized.

Guns are a potent issue in U.S. politics. The right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution, and the National Rifle Association, the top U.S. gun rights group, is feared and respected in Washington for its ability to mobilize gun owners. Congress has not approved major gun-control legislation since the 1990s.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has already proposed an executive action to close the gun show loophole, cheered Obama's plans. "I am absolutely convinced we can have gun safety measures consistent with the Constitution," she said during a campaign event in Concord, New Hampshire.

"I will take on that fight. I'm very hopeful and excited that the president is going to take some action with executive action in the next week or two," she said. "But if it's a Republican who walks into the White House, within the first day, the executive orders will be reversed."

Republicans have roundly criticized the president's plans, calling them an overreach of executive authority.

"This president wants to act as if he's a king, as if he's a dictator," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican presidential candidate, said on Fox News Sunday. The governor, who was criticized by fellow Republicans for embracing Obama in an appeal for aid after Superstorm Sandy struck New Jersey in 2012, called the president a "petulant child."

"This is going to be another illegal executive action, which I'm sure will be rejected by the courts," Christie added.

Obama will take part in a one-hour town-hall-style forum on gun control broadcast on CNN at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, the White House said.

The event, moderated by anchor Anderson Cooper, will give Obama a chance to respond to criticism and raise public support for the measures before his State of the Union address on Jan. 12.

Obama launched a push to tighten U.S. gun laws after the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, in which a young man armed with a semiautomatic weapon took the lives of 20 children and six educators.

But the push stalled in Congress. Last month's fatal shootings in San Bernardino, California, by a couple who authorities suspect were inspired by ISIL, gave further impetus to the White House to try again through executive actions.

"It would be better for our security if it was harder for terrorists to purchase very powerful weapons," Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Saturday in Hawaii, where Obama was concluding a two-week vacation. The president returned to Washington on Sunday.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed 65 percent of respondents saying it was important that gun control be addressed in the United States, while 29 percent said it was unimportant.

Al Jazeera and wire services
Shares in gun makers Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. and Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc. rose against a falling stock market on Monday in anticipation of increased gun sales, as has happened before when the White House mulled weapon sales reform.

Stymied by Congress' inaction on gun control, the president asked his advisers in recent months to examine new ways he could use his executive authority to tighten gun rules unilaterally without needing congressional approval after multiple mass shootings generated outrage nationwide.

One option was a regulatory change to require more dealers to get a license to sell guns, a move that would trigger more background checks on buyers.

The White House had drafted a proposal on that issue previously but was concerned it could be challenged in court and would be hard to enforce.

Guns are a potent issue in U.S. politics. The right to bear arms is protected by the U.S. Constitution, and the National Rifle Association (NRA), the top U.S. gun rights group, is feared and respected in Washington for its ability to mobilize gun owners. Congress has not approved major gun-control legislation since the 1990s.

Obama said he was confident his new measures were constitutionally sound and would save lives.

This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, Obama said. Still, he added, It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers, but many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or in other informal settings don't register as dealers. Gun control advocates say that loophole is exploited to skirt the background check requirement.

Now, the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will issue updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone in the business of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns. To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells and how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.

Obama's executive actions on gun control will fall short of what some gun control advocates have called for, but are nevertheless sure to spark a confrontation with Republicans and gun rights groups that oppose new impediments to buying guns.

Obama's announcement was hailed by gun control advocates and Democratic lawmakers, who praised the president for refusing to cow to the National Rifle Association and similar groups. Dan Gross of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said Obama was making history with bold and meaningful action that would make all Americans safer.

Congress, which is controlled by Republicans, rejected Obama's proposals for legislation to tighten gun rules in 2013.

While we dont yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan said in a statement.

This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., however, welcomed news of the president's executive actions.

The repeated obstruction in Congress of commonsense measures that seem reasonable to almost all Americans has led to the Presidents strong and necessary action on gun safety, Schumer said. The vast majority of Americans will welcome Presidential action to break the unnatural vice grip that the NRA has over safety in America.

U.S. states have taken their own approaches to addressing gun violence. Texas legalized openly carrying handguns, while New York and Connecticut have banned high-capacity magazines.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of individual Americans to keep and bear arms. But the court also recognized that laws imposing conditions on commercial guns sale could be consistent with the Second Amendment.

Al Jazeera and wire services
The office building in San Bernardino, California, where 14 people were massacred last month, reopened on Monday.

Security would be heightened for the facility, which was closed in the aftermath of the Dec. 2 shooting, said Inland Regional Center Executive Director Lavinia Johnson.

The property would remain fenced off, and guards at each entrance would continue to monitor security, Johnson said. The San Bernardino attack was the worst incident of gun violence in the U.S. since the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, stormed into a holiday party attended by his co-workers from a San Bernardino County social services agency and opened fire on Dec. 2, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Authorities have said the couple was radicalized over several years.

The couple attacked the California holiday party just weeks after gunmen and suicide bombers linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

The San Bernardino attackers had not targeted any of the center's roughly 600 staff members, but rather employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, Johnson told reporters Monday.

None of the people with developmental disabilities that the center serves would visit this week, the Los Angeles Times reported. Many of the center's employees have continued to work and visited their clients' homes over the past month. But they hadn't been together in the place since law enforcement officers whisked them away after the gunfire.

A former neighbor of Farook's, Enrique Marquez, who allegedly bought the assault rifles used by the couple in the San Bernardino massacre has been charged with terrorism-related counts including conspiring with Farook to commit terrorist attacks in 2011 and 2012 that they never carried out. Marquez was Farook's next-door neighbor and longtime friend who converted to Islam and was radicalized by Farook, federal prosecutors said.

Al Jazeera with wire services
"In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance," Uzumcu said. "Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred."

The Syrian government has long accused opposition fighters, who have been seeking for nearly five years to oust the country's president, of using chemical weapons. Western-backed rebels in Syria have repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.

Western officials say it is unlikely rebels would have the capability to deploy sarin gas.

Uzumcu said the source of the sarin or sarin-like compound was unclear, adding that the OPCW fact-finding mission "did not come across evidence that would shed more light on the specific nature or source of the exposure."

Syria agreed in September 2013 to destroy its entire chemical weapons program under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

At the time, Washington was threatening the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with air strikes.

The OPCW had previously determined that mustard gas was used in a Syrian town where Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters were battling another group.

The last of 1,300 tons of chemical weapons declared to the OPCW were handed over in June 2014, but several Western governments have expressed doubt that Assad's government declared its entire arsenal.

The OPCW has reported previously that chlorine has also been used illegally in systematic attacks against civilians in Syria.

Several international investigations have determined that chemical weapons have been used in Syria, though none has so far assigned blame. A U.N.-OPCW joint investigative mission has been given the task of determining who was behind those attacks.

Reuters
Syriac Church Leaders Angered By Islamic State Attack in Syria

Beirut -- Syriac [Assyrian] church leaders denounced the year-end terrorist attack that targeted Christian-owned restaurants in Qamishli, Syria. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Dec. 30 attack, which killed 20 people, 13 of them Christian, and injured more than 40. "Most victims were young people willing to welcome the New Year with hope and joy," Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan told Catholic News Service from the patriarchate in Beirut. Instead, he said, "In tears and gloomy hope, Christians of Qamishli welcomed 2016." "It was a sinister message the terrorists wanted to send to the Christians of this city, sowing death and tears," the patriarch said of the "unprecedented terrorist massacre ... a message of horror so far to the entire Christian community in this war-torn country for the past five years." Prior to the conflict that is tearing apart Syria, Christians in Qamishli, located in northeast Syria near the Turkish border, numbered about 40,000. "Now they surely are less than half," Patriarch Younan said of the continuing exodus and fatalities. "Now, after this massacre, our fear is that the emigration of Christians will go further and in larger numbers." Christians in the patriarch's hometown of Hassakeh, 52 miles away, previously numbered about 35,000. He said probably only about half remain. The patriarch added that hundreds of families from the countryside had been headed to cities like Qamishli and Hassakeh. "It is really frightening development of the situation. The young generation seem to have no more hope in the future," he said. In a statement from the patriarchate in Damascus, Syria, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, who was born in Qamishli, denounced the attack, saying: "The old people weep, the young are losing hope and the children's joy is wiped away." "The enemy of humanity is spreading its power everywhere in our beloved Middle East, seeking to destroy the homes of the children of God and to lead them astray," Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem said. "What god do these suicide bombers worship? What religion do they follow?" the patriarch asked, emphasizing that "they use blood, slaughter, and killing as a way to please their god." "Where are the people of good conscience to act against these attacks? Is it not time to wake up from their deep sleep and to do all that is possible to protect the remaining people in this region, whose sole concern is to live in peace in their homeland? Is it not the fit time to unite and collectively fight all forms of terrorism and extremism?" he asked. The funerals of the 13 Christian Qamishli victims Dec. 31 were an ecumenical ceremony concelebrated by Syriac Catholic Archbishops Gregorios Elias Tabe of Damascus and Jacque Behnan Hindo of Hassakeh, a Syriac Orthodox bishop and several members of Armenian Catholic and Orthodox clergy, which Patriarch Younan referred to as "a witness of communion that Christians of the Middle East continue to give, living 'the ecumenism of blood,' as Pope Francis has repeatedly said." In Beirut Dec. 31, the Syriac and Armenian Catholic patriarchs, bishops and priests of different denominations, including Orthodox, gathered to offer prayers for the victims. "We pray to the Lord to end this tragedy: Enough of this terrorism, enough is enough," Patriarch Younan said at the ceremony. "We invite and urge decision-makers in the world to work on security and restoring peace and tranquility in the world, especially in our East, especially in Syria and Iraq."
The mother of a Texas teenager derided for his affluenza defense in a deadly drunken-driving case on Tuesday waived her right to fight extradition to Texas during a brief court hearing in California.

Prosecutors asked that Tonya Couch, 38, be extradited after she was deported from Mexico and flown to Los Angeles last week. It's unclear when she will be sent to Texas, where she's charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon. Her bond there was set at $1 million.

Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan Couch, were taken into custody last week in Mexico, where authorities believe the pair fled in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

Her son was being held at a detention facility in Mexico City after winning a court reprieve that could lead to a weeks- or even months-long legal process in Mexico, according to a Mexican immigration official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he or she was not authorized to be quoted by name.

Her attorneys released a statement saying she had done nothing illegal and wanted to get back to Texas as soon as possible.

While the public may not like what she did, may not agree with what she did, or may have strong feelings against what she did, make no mistake  Tonya did not violate any law of the State of Texas and she is eager to have her day in court, lawyers Stephanie K. Patten and Steve Gordon said in the statement.

Ethan Couch was driving drunk and speeding near Fort Worth in June 2013 when he crashed into a disabled SUV, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in his pickup truck. He was sentenced to probation.

During the sentencing phase of his trial, a defense expert argued that his wealthy parents coddled him into a sense of irresponsibility  a condition the expert termed affluenza. The condition is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its invocation during the legal proceedings drew ridicule.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press
The leak began when a pipe leading to a natural gas reservoir more than 8,000 feet below the surface of the So. Cal. Gasoperated Aliso Canyon site ruptured. That leak has released more than 77,000 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere so far, enough to increase the states overall greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent last year, according to the California Air Resources Board . The amount released by the ruptured pipe each day is equivalent to adding 7 million cars to the road, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Especially when the country and particularly California are trying really hard to ratchet down our greenhouse gas emissions, things like this should just not be happening, said Seth Shonkoff, the director of energy consulting nonprofit PSE Energy and a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeleys environmental science department. We need to kick up the enforcement and the regulations of these facilities quite a bit.

Meanwhile, the disaster has placed under scrutiny the patchwork of agencies and laws that cover methane emissions in California and nationally, at a time when the state and the country are attempting to clamp down on the key greenhouse gas, which is far more powerful in trapping atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide . The leak has led to calls for a better regulatory regime on methane storage and transportation and warnings that similar disasters could easily happen elsewhere.

The Southern California Gas Co., the local gas utility that owns the site, says it has finally figured out how to stop the leak, though the process could take several more weeks or longer.

Since Oct. 23, 2015, plumes of methane have been spewing out of a storage facility 25 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles in a section of town called Porter Ranch. The disaster has been compared by environmental groups to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Especially when the country and particularly California are trying really hard to ratchet down our greenhouse gas emissions, things like this should just not be happening.

Methane is 84 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, though it lasts for less time in the atmosphere. As natural gas production, mostly via fracking, has increased in the U.S. over the last decade, so have methane emissions. Methane now accounts for about 25 percent of global warming, according to the EDF.

While President Barack Obama has supported the steep increase in natural gas production, he has also promised to curb methane emissions. Last summer, under his direction, the Environmental Protection Agency released new regulations that would require natural gas drillers to clamp down on leaks. The EPA hopes to reduce methane emissions by about 40 percent by 2025.

But activists warn that the EPAs leakage calculations are significant underestimates. If enough methane leaks out of natural gas infrastructure, the leaks negate any climate benefit gained as the U.S. becomes less reliant on oil and coal while using more natural gas.

Keeping those leak rates down will be nearly impossible, environmentalists say, unless all oil and gas infrastructure, not just new drilling wells, is more regulated.

But as of now, wells like the ones at the storage facility in Porter Ranch are virtually unregulated by the federal government. Methane storage facilities that feed local utilities  which, like the one at Porter Ranch, most often consist of old, depleted oil wells that have been repurposed to hold methane  are most often overseen only at the state level, leading to a patchwork of rules across the nation. There are more than 400 of those storage fields across the country. The So. Cal. Gasowned field near Los Angeles is the fifth largest in the country, according to the EDF.

California has one regulatory regime. Texas, Michigan  everywhere has their own, said Tim OConnor, the director of the EDFs California oil and gas program. There are 400 facilities dotted across our landscape and 50 regulatory regimes supposedly keeping track of them, and nobody really pays attention to them until theres a major catastrophe.

The EPA, which ceded regulatory control over methane storage in the state to California in 1983, said it was responding to the Porter Ranch incident by launching an investigation into the company, but it did not respond to questions about its regulatory authority over methane storage.

OConnor and others said the argument could be made that because states have different geographies and infrastructure for gas, it would make sense for each state to regulate methane storage fields, but as of now, it seems, those state regulations are inadequate.

EPA should be doing a lot more to regulate, but they gave regulatory authority to California, said Maya Golden-Krasner, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. But over the past couple of years, its come to light that California hasnt really been regulating anything at all.

A recent internal audit found that the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources wasnt performing frequent enough or adequate inspections of underground storage wells and had a shortage of division staff, inadequate well and data management systems and a lack of uniform staff training with regard to file handling and data entry.

The agency did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

While environmentalists have used the Porter Ranch incident as a call for tougher regulations, its not clear whether the federal or state government is listening.

Obamas methane regulations dont even cover this. Statewide oversight has been totally absent, said Alexandra Nagy, a California-based organizer for Food and Water Watch. The regulators arent really willing to hold the industry accountable, but they need to if were serious about climate change.
A man accused of vandalizing a mosque along Florida's Space Coast  with lights and windows smashed by a machete and bacon left at the scene  has been arrested.

Officers in the city of Titusville say the man, Michael Scott Wolfe, 35, was taken into custody Monday. Online jail records show he is charged with criminal mischief of a religious building.

Authorities say the suspect went to the Islamic Society of Central Florida's Masjid al-Mumin on Jan. 1, and surveillance video shows him entering the mosque's carport late at night with no one else around and using a machete to smash cameras, lights and windows.

Police say the bacon was left on and around the mosque's front door. Consumption of pork and products made from pork is forbidden in Islam.

Wolfe remains behind bars. It isn't clear if he has an attorney.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, anti-Muslim sentiment has spiked in the U.S. since the Paris attacks in November and after a San Bernardino, California, couple shot and killed 14 people at an office party in December.

Wire services
The diplomatic row that has seen Saudi Arabia and the kingdoms Sunni allies cut ties with Iran widened Tuesday as Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Tehran in the face of growing international concern.

Joining Riyadh and others in taking diplomatic action, Kuwait said it was downgrading ties with Iran over a weekend attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Kuwait's move came after the UN Security Council strongly condemned the attack, carried out by protesters angry over Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shia cleric.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power, and Shia-dominated Iran have erupted this week into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, sparking widespread worries of regional instability.

Washington and other Western powers have called for calm amid fears the dispute could raise sectarian tensions across the Middle East and derail efforts to resolve conflicts from Syria to Yemen.

The Security Council joined those calls late on Monday, issuing a statement urging all sides to take steps to reduce tensions in the region.

The statement by the 15-member council condemned in the strongest terms the attacks, which saw protesters firebomb the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Iran's second-biggest city Masshad.

But the council made no mention of the event that set off the crisis  Saudi Arabia's execution on Saturday of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a cleric and activist whose death sparked widespread protests among Shias in Iran, Iraq and across the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran in protest at the attacks on Sunday and has severed air links with Iran.

Some of its allies among Sunni Arab states followed suit, with Bahrain and Sudan breaking off ties and the United Arab Emirates downgrading relations on Monday.

Kuwait said Tuesday the embassy attacks represent a flagrant breach of international agreements and norms and a grave violation of Iran's international commitments.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has condemned the attacks and Tehran's mission to the UN vowed in a letter to the Security Council to take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future.

But on Tuesday he doubled down on criticism of Saudi Arabias execution on Nimr, stating that the kingdom cannot cover its crime by severing ties with Iran.

US Secretary of State John Kerry called his Iranian and Saudi counterparts on Monday to urge calm as European leaders raised concerns and Moscow offered to act as an intermediary.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also spoke by phone with the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers to urge them to avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation, Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

A breakdown of relations between Riyadh and Tehran could have very serious consequences for the region, Dujarric said.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, headed to Riyadh and Tehran to defuse tensions, worried that the row would undermine growing efforts to resolve that country's conflict.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are on opposing ends of a range of crucial Middle East issues, including the war in Syria  where Tehran backs President Bashar al-Assad's regime and Riyadh supports rebel forces  and Yemen where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Shiite insurgents.

Despite the fears, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the UN, Abdallah al-Mouallimi, insisted the row would not have an impact on efforts to resolve regional conflicts.

From our side, it should have no effect because we will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria and Yemen, Mouallimi told reporters.

He said Riyadh would attend upcoming talks on Syria, but took a swipe at Iran's role in the nearly five-year war there, saying: They have been taking provocative and negative positions and I don't think the break in relations is going to dissuade them from such behavior.

Still, the crisis will further diminish already low expectations, in particular for the talks on Syria expected to take place this month, according to Noah Bonsey, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Ultimately, reaching a political resolution in Syria would require key states backing each side to make reciprocal concessions, and pressure their Syrian allies to do the same, he said. For now, things are moving in the opposite direction.

The spike in tensions comes after Iran last year secured a historic nuclear deal with world powers led by the United States, sparking major concern in longtime US ally Riyadh.

The diplomatic row saw shares on Gulf exchanges drop and oil prices rebound amid fears instability could affect supplies from Saudi Arabia and Iran, both members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Nimr, one of 47 men executed on Saturday, was a driving force behind 2011 anti-government protests in eastern Saudi Arabia.

He was arrested in 2012 after calling for two Saudi governorates to be separated from the kingdom. Riyadh's interior ministry at the time described him as an instigator of sedition.

Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse
Canl Bahis siteleri sektoru son derece onu ack ve farkl ozelliklere sahip bir sektordur. Elbette bahis secenekleri arasnda yuksek kazanc getiren alan kuskusuz canl bahistir. Peki, canl bahis nedir?

Canl Bahis Nedir?

Canl bahis adndan da anlaslacag gibi devam eden musabakaya bahis yapmaktr. Bu bahis musabaka devam ederken de yaplabilir olmasdr. Basta futbol olmak uzere voleybol, tenis, hentbol, basketbol, buz hokeyi ve masa tenisi gibi spor organizasyonlarna canl bahisler yaplabilmektedir. Canl bahis siteleri bu oyunlarn hepsine yuksek oranlara bahis yapmanza imkan tanr. En fazla tercih edilen futbol canl bahisleri diger alanlara gore daha fazla on plandadr. Siteden siteye degisen sartlar ve uygulama esaslar soz konusu olsa da kurallar sabittir.

Canl bahisi populer klan ve heyecan katan en onemli ozellikle musabakann basladg ana dek bahis yapabilmedir. Canl bahis icerisinde yer alan secenekler kazanma sansnz da dogrudan arttrmaktadr. Ilk korneri kim kullanr, ilk tac, gol, sar kart, krmz kart gibi futbol musabakas icerisinde olabilecek hemen hemen her seye bahis yaplabilmektedir. Normal bahisegore de son derece yuksek oranda olmas avantajl yonlerini ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim dogru secenek ksa surede kazancl ckmanza etki edecektir.

Strateji ve dogru analizle 90 dakika gibi bir surede anaparanzkatlayabilirsiniz. Tabi bunu basarabilmek icin mutlaka musabakaya dair ayrntlar iyi degerlendirmek gerekir. Soz konusu musabakann detaylarn inceleyip, cezal, sakat oyuncu veya performans dusen takm oyunu gibi detaylar bilmek canl bahiste kazanc belirleyen onemli unsurdur. Guvenilir Canl bahis hem heyecanl zaman gecirmeyi hem de musabakalar takip ederken para kazanmay saglamaktadr.

Canl Bahis Nasl Oynanr?

Bahislerinizi guvenilir sitelerden gerceklestirdiginiz zaman herhangi bir sekilde para cekme de sorun yasamazsnz. Guvenilir bahis siteleri tespit edip sonrasnda da uyelik islemlerini tamamlamanz gerekmektedir. Belirlenen uyelik sartlarn yerine getirip hesabnza da paray aktardktan sonra bahis islemlerini sorunsuz yapabilirsiniz. Peki, canl bahis nasl oynanr?

Oncelikle bahis konusunda mutlaka dogru site arastrmas yapmalsnz. Yapacagnz arastrma neticesinde buldugunuz site uzerinden canl bahisislemlerini gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Bunun icin uye olup, hesaba para atp, canl bahis bolumune girmelisiniz. Sonrasnda dahil olmak istediginiz musabakann saatini ogrenip, gerekli analizleri yapmalsnz. Tahminlerinizi belirledikten sonra karsnza ckacak olan bahis sayfasndan istediginiz hamleyi yapmalsnz. Bahis tutarn belirledikten sonra musabaka baslayacaktr.

Canl bahis diger normal bahis esaslarna gore farkllklar icermektedir. Bunlardan en onemlisi musabakann gidisatna gore islem yapabilir olmaktr.Ayrca musabakann 2. Yarsna gore hamle yapp ayr bir bahisin soz konusu olmas da ciddi avantajdr. Dogru hamle ile sizde istediginiz bahisi yapp kazanc elde edebilirsiniz. Nitekim canl olarak yapacagnz bahis icin mac oncesi raporlara gore hareket etmek onemlidir. Cunku takmlarn durumlarn analiz etmek tahmin gucunu arttracaktr. Misal tamnn en iyi oyuncusu sakat ya da kart cezals ise takmn performansnda dusus yasanacaktr. Buna ek olarak takmn deplasman performans ile evinde ki performans ayr olacaktr. Burada da takmn musabakay nerede yaptgna bakmak gerekir. Bu ayrntlar da iyice analiz ettikten sonra bahsinizi yapp kazanmann keyfini yasayabilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri

Son derece yuksek getiriye sahip bahis sektoru uzun zamandr faaliyet gostermektedir. Cok ciddi rakamlarn soz konusu oldugu bu sektor zamanla sanal ortamlara donusmustur. Elbette guvenli ve bir o kadar da avantajl olan bu siteler cok yonlu frsatlar sunmaktadrlar. Canl iddaa siteleri gerek yeni uyelere gerekse de hali hazrdaki uyelerine bolca bonus frsatlar vermektedir. Yatracagnz tutara gore belirlenen bonuslar site icerisinde rahat hareket etmenizi de saglayacaktr.

Canl bahis sitelerini kullanmadan once mutlaka guvenli olup olmadgna goz atmalsnz. Zira baz kullanclar guvenli olmayan sitelerden yaptklar islemlerden dolay magdur olmaktadrlar. Nitekim guvenli ve sorunsuz hizmet sunan yurt ds site tercih etmek en dogru secenektir. Sektorde uzun yllar faaliyet gosteren siteleri tercih edebilirsiniz. Bu alanda yer alan yabanc siteler musteri memnuniyetine onem vermektedir. Oncelik site kullanclarn sorunsuz sekilde bahislerini yapabilir olmasn saglamaktr. Bahis sitelerinde amac hem daha fazla kullancya hizmet vermek hem de sektorde emin admlarla ilerlemek onceliklidir. Dogru site tercihi ile sizde canl bahislerinizi sorun yasamadan gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Sizler icin hazrlams oldugumuz canl bahis siteleri listesi su sekildedir;

Mobilbahis Tempobet Bets10 Bahigo 1xbahis Betboo Youwin Superbahis

Sralams oldugumuz bu siteler sektorde basarl islere imza atms sitelerdedir. Canl bahis konusunda beklentileri karslayacak olan bu siteler sizlere kolaylk sunmaktadrlar. Bol bonuslu secenekle de sizlere farkl bahis yonlerini sunacaklardr. Sistemsel etki icerisinde her zaman etkin sonuc alabilmek icin surekli olarak faaliyet icerisindedirler.

Canl Bahis Taktikleri

Bahis sektorunun en fazla dikkat edilmesi gereken hususu dogru taktik ve dogru tahmindir. Elbette dogru tahmini yapabilmek icin analizi cok iyi yapmak gerekir. Canl bahis taktikleri arasnda ilk sra analiz gelmektedir. Analiz yapamadgnz zaman basarl tahminlerde bulunmanz pek de mumkun degildir. Cunku bahiste onemli olan konu musabakann analizini cok iyi yaplmas gerektigidir. Canl bahisin ozelliklerini iyi bilmek ve nasl bir hamle yapacagnz bilmek gerekir. Ozellikle riskli maclarda yaplacak degerlendirmeler cok daha onemlidir.

Canl bahis yapacaklarn takip edecegi degerler takmlarn durumlar ile alakal olmaldr. Performans uzerine kurulu bahis sisteminde takm degerlendirmesine iyi bakmak gerekir. Iki takmn son 5 macta nasl bir sonuc ortaya koyduguna bakarak hareket etmek onemlidir. Ayrca hangi takm evinde daha iyi performans sergiliyor diye de ayrca bakmak gerekir.

Analizlerle alakal puan durumlarna da goz atmak cok onemlidir. Puan degerlendirmesinde oncelikle takmlarn ihtiyaclar ile dogru orantl hareket etmek gerekir. Cunku olusturulan performans takmn da durumunu ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim istenilen sonucu elde edebilmek icin tum ayrntlar bilmek gerekir. Takm ici duzenden tutunda da takmn son durumuna kadar her ayrnt onemlidir. Iki takmn birbirleri arasnda ki sonuclar da incelemek gerekir. Burada dikkat edilecek detaylarn basnda maclarda kac gol oldugu ve gollerin hangi dakikalarda atldgdr. Cekismeli gecen musabakalarda bazen goller ilk yarda daha fazla olurken baz maclarda da ikinci yarda daha cok gol olmustur. Iki takm arasnda ki maclarda gollerin cogunlugu ilk yarda geliyorsa buna gore bahis yapabilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Bonuslar ve Kampanyalar

Bahis yapanlar veya yapmay dusununler sitelerin sunmus olduklar frsatlar merak etmektedirler. Cunku siteler daha fazla kullancya erismek icin her donem kampanyalar duzenleyerek kullanc odakl hamleler yapmaktadrlar. Canl bahis bonuslar ve kampanyalar oldukca populer olup, siteler bu konuda adeta birbirleri ile yarsmaktadrlar. Birbirinden farkl ozelliklere sahip olan kampanyalar size frsatlar sunmaktadr. Daha cok kazanma ihtimalinizi arttran bu bonuslar daha cesur olmanza da dogrudan etki edecektir. Nitekim bonuslar sitelerin cekiciligini ve avantajlarn arttrmaktadr. En cok kazandran canl bahis siteleri bedava bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin http://www.milano2018.com/canli-bahis-siteleri-2022/ linkinden yardm alabilirsiniz.

Hos geldin bonusu ile baslayan ve sonrasnda para yatrdkca bonus veren cok sayda site bulunmaktadr. Canl bahis bonusu veren siteler yeni uyelere sunduklar frsatlar farkl kampanyalarla mevcut uyelerine de sunmaktadrlar. Hali hazrda siteyi kullananlarn da bonus frsatlarndan yararlanmalar icin donemsel kampanyalar olusturmaktadrlar. Boylece baska sitelere gidisler olmayacag gibi site de daha keyifli zaman gecirmek mumkun klnmaktadr. Bu tur eklentiler yapan sitelerde musteri memnuniyeti daha fazladr.

Bahis siteleri ozellik ve uygulama bakmndan farkllklar bunyelerinde bulundurmaktadrlar. Verilen bonuslarn olusturulmas ve kullanclar aktarlmasnda yatrlan para miktarlar belirleyici olmaktadr. 1.000 TL yatran bir kullanc yuzde 20 bonus frsat olan bir kampanyadan 200 TL bonus kazanabilmektedir. Yatracag tutar 10.000 TL oldugunda bu bonustutar 2.000 TL olabilmektedir. Gerceklesen ve uygulanan esaslar tamamen donemsel olarak yaplan kampanyalarla alakaldr. Iyi Canl bahis siteleri bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin sitelerin vermis oldugu oranlar takip edebilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Yatrma

Online Canl bahis yapacaklarn merak ettigi konulardan bir digeri de para yatrma islemleridir. Oldukca onemli olan bu konuda hata yapmamak cok onemlidir. Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemi sanlann aksine son derece basittir. Oldukca basit ve uygulama esas dogru etki olusturan bu yapda sizde islemi rahatca tamamlayabilirsiniz. Para yatrma konusunda su yolu izleyebilirsiniz.

Guvendiginiz ve herhangi bir sekilde aklnzda soru isareti kalmayan bahis sitesine uye olmanz gerekmektedir. Uyelik islemini sorunsuz sekilde tamamladktan sonra para yatrma islemine gecebilirsiniz.

Kullanacagnz siteye uye olduktan sonra karsnza kullanc ad ve sifresini gireceginiz yer gelecektir. Buraya giris yaptktan sonra site icerisine islemlere devam edebilirsiniz.

Sitede yer alan para yatrma sekmesine tklayp sonrasnda karsnza gelen sayfay inceleyebilirsiniz. Para yatrma bolumunde yer alan ksma ne kadar para yatracagnz yazp devam tusuna basmalsnz.

Yatrmak istediginiz tutar girip sonrasnda da devam tusuna bastktan sonra karsnza kart bilgilerinizi gireceginiz sayfa gelecektir. Kredi kart kullanarak para gondermek isteyenlerin tercih ettigi bu sayfa tum bilgiler girilip islem onaylanmaldr.

Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemini gerceklestirmek icin hesaba havale secenegini de kullanabilirsiniz. Site icerisinde musteri hizmetleri ile iletisime gecerek banka hesap numaralarn ogrenebilirsiniz. Belirtilen IBAN numarasna istediginiz tutar havale edebilirsiniz. Havale ederken acklama ksmna yazlacak bilgilere dikkat etmelisiniz.

Kredi kart veya banka havalesi ile gerceklesen para yatrma islemi sonucunda site hesabnzdan bakiyenize bakabilirsiniz. Bakiyenize gore dilediginiz sekilde bahislerinizi gerceklestirebilirsiniz.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Cekme

Canl bahiste dogru hamleler ve dogru tahminler sonucunda kazandgnz bedeli geri almak isteyebilirsiniz. Kazanclarnz istediginiz banka hesabnza cekebilmek icin uymanz gereken kurallar soz konusudur. Oncelikle bahis sitelerinden para cekebilmeniz icin uye olurken dogru bilgi paylasmnda bulunmanz gerektigidir. Cunku canl bahis sitelerinden para cekme islemi icin kullanc hesab ile talep edilen banka hesap bilgilerinin ortusmesi gerekir. Yani uye olurken verilen bilgi ile banka hesab kime ait ise o bilgiler ayn olmaldr. Bu uygulama sitenin hem kullancsn hem de kendisini guvene alma politikasdr. Ayrca frsatclarn onune gecerek yeni bir uye olusumunun da onune gecmek amac gutmektedir. Uye olan kisi farkl para cekilme talebi verilen hesap farkl oldugunda para cekme islemi gerceklesmeyecektir.

Bahisleriniz sonucunda kazanc elde edebilir ve bu kazancnz da hakknz olarak almak isteyebilirsiniz. Burada son derece basit uygulama soz konusu olurken siteler aras farkl gorunumler soz konusu olabilir. Fakat yine de tum sitelerde uyenin site icerisinde para cekme bolumune girmesi yeterlidir. Burada cekilecek olan tutarn belirlenmesi ve hesap numarasnn girilmesi ile birlikte islem onay gerekecektir. Para cekme taleplerinde sizden gerekli bilgiler istenmekte ve havale islemi istenilen bilgiler esliginde yurutulmektedir. Dogru bilgi paylasmak sorunsuz para cekebilmeniz en onemli kuraldr. Istenilen bilgiler girildikten sonra site sorumlular gerekli kontrolleri yapp herhangi bir sorun yoksa ksa surede hesabnza gerekli paray aktaracaklardr.

Canl Bahis Sitelerinden Para Cekmek Icin Istenen Belgeler

Bahis sitelerine uye olduktan sonra baz kullanclar para cekme taleplerinin karslanmadg konusunda sikayetlerde bulunmuslardr. Bu sikayetlersektorde uzun zamandr bulunan guvenilir bahis siteleri de yer almaktadr. Fakat sikayetlerin dayanaklarna bakldgnda ise islerin tamamen farkl oldugu gorulmektedir. Yasanan bu durum kullanclarn hatal bilgi girmesi ve uyelik bilgileri ile banka bilgilerinin uyusmamas ile dogru orantldr. Birde canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler eksik ya da hatal olarak sunulmus olabilir. Ortaya ckan karsklar neticesinde para cekme talebinde bulunan kisi istedigini alamadg icin sikayetci olmaktadr. Oysa ki istenilen bilgiler dogru ve istenilen evraklar eksiksiz sunulsa para cekme islemi sorunsuz olacak.

Sitelerin para cekme konusunda dikkatli hareket etmesi hilelerin ve illegal faaliyetlerin onune gecmek adnadr. Cunku baz kullanclar farkl bilgiler vererek ikinci hesap acabilmektedirler. Bazen de bilincsizce hatal bilgi girilebilmektedir. Hatal islemlerin cozumu konusunda islem yaptgnz sitenin musteri temsilcileri ile gorusebilirsiniz. Talepleriniz dogrultusunda para cekme islemlerinde ki sorunlar giderilecektir. Canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler listesi su sekildedir;

Kullanc bilgileri ile banka bilgilerini karslastrmak icin kimlik fotokopisi

Banka hesap bilgileri

Ikametgah ve kisiye ait herhangi bir fatura.

Kacak Iddaa

Turkiyede dogrudan bahis yapmak icin resmi kanallar kullanlabilmektedir. Fakat tercih edilen ve oran olarak cok daha fazla frsatlar sunan kacar iddaasiteleri bulunmaktadr. Bu siteler kanunlara aykr sekilde yaplmakta olup, yasal bir dayanag yoktur. Elbette bu sitelerin kurulus merkezi Turkiye olmayp, ds ulkelerdedir ve faaliyetler belirlenen siteler uzerinden yaplmaktadr. Kacak Iddaa oldukca riskli olup, cok dikkatli olunmas gerekir.

Kacak Bahis

Kanunlar cercevesinde istediginiz gibi bahis yapamayabilirsiniz. Bahis yapabilmek icin ya kanuni olarak sorun olmayan ulke dsnda ki kumarhanelere gitmeniz veya kacak bahis sitelerinden islem yapabilirsiniz. Zira bu durum tehlikeli olsa da cok sayda site guvenli sekilde bu alanda hizmet vermektedir. Kacak bahiste oldukca fazla secenek bulunurken yuksek oranda kazanc sunuyor olmas da ragbeti arttryor.

Illegal Bahis

Bahisin bircok alanda yasak oldugu Turkiyede bu alanda cok sayda yabanc merkezli siteler hizmet vermektedir. Illegal bahis sektorunde faaliyet gosteren siteler guvenli hizmet anlays ile kullanclarna frsatlar sunmaktadr. Yurt ds merkezli bu siteler sorunsuz sekilde hizmetlerini surdururken bulunduklar ulkelerde kanunlara uygun sekildedir. Elbette faaliyet noktasnda bulunduklar ulkelerde sorun teskil etmese de Turkiyede faaliyet gostermeleri kanunin yasaklanmstr.

Yasads Bahis

Gerek olusturulan etkenler gerekse de ortaya konulan riskler yasads bahis de oldukca tehlikelidir. Kanunlarn mudahil olduklar bu alanlar da hem kullanclar hem de populer bahis yaptranlar tum riskleri goze almaktadrlar. Fakat yasaklardan uzak sekilde guvenli hizmet sunan siteler de bulunmaktadr. Takipler neticesinde kapatlan sitelerin muhakkak alternatifleri kurularak yollarna devam etmektedirler.

Canl Iddaa Siteleri Nelerdir?

Dunya genelinde kabul gormus cok sayda guvenli hizmet veren populer bahis siteleri bulunmaktadr. Elbette bu siteler dunyann bircok ulkesinde faaliyet gosterse de Turkiyede yasaktr. Sektorde yer alan cok sayda legal iddaa siteleri bulunmaktadr. Herhangi bir kanunsuzlugun olmadg bu sitelerden hzl ve guvenli islem yaplabilmektedir. Tabi bu sitelerde uygulanan oranlar yasal olmayan sitelere gore daha dusuktur. Illegal sitelerin tercih edilme sebeplerinin en onemli etkeni de olusturulan oranlardr. Peki, Iddaa siteleri nelerdir? Faaliyetleri ve uygulama esaslar nelerdir?

Turkiyede faaliyet gosteren yasal iddaa siteleri listesi su sekildedir;

Iddaa

Bilyoner

Tuttur

Birebin

Oley

Nesine

Misli

Iddaa

2004 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslayan Iddaa Spor toto tarafndan kurulmus olup, ilk etapta bayilik seklinde calsmaya baslamstr. Elbette zamanla gelisen teknolojiye ayak uydurarak internet uzerinde de populer bahis severlerin hizmetine sunulmustur. Kuruldugu donemde devletin resmi kurumu olarak faaliyet gosterirken gelinen yeni donemde ozellestirilmistir.

Bilyoner

Turkiyede faaliyetine 2006 ylnda baslayan Bilyoner ilk ozel yasal bahis sitesi olma ozelligine sahiptir. Guvenilir bahis siteleri Turkiyede bunlardr. Ksa surede populer olan site halen faaliyetlerini sorunsuz sekilde surdurmektedir.

Tuttur

Ksa surede adndan bahsettirmeyi basaran Tuttur 2009 ylnda faaliyetlere baslamstr. Guvenilir bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almstr. Gunumuze dek bircok alanda populer bahis yapanlara frsatlar sunarken avantajlar ile de begeni toplamstr.

Birebin

Kullanc odakl calsmalar surdurse de 2011 ylnda sektore giren Birebindiger sitelere gore daha az ragbet gormektedir. Bahis oynamak ise bu sitede oldukca kolaydr. Elbette farkl yaklasmlara sahip olmasndan dolay ilerleyen sureclerde adndan sklkla bahsettirecek gibi gorunuyor.

Oley

2009 ylnda Dogus yayn gruplarnn istiraki olarak kurulmus olup yasal olarak herhangi bir sorunu olmayan sitelerdendir. Bahis siteleri arasnda hzl cks yapms bir sitedir. Oley yapms oldugu yenilikler ile kullanclarn da dikkatini ksa surede cekmeyi basarmstr.

Nesine

Birbirini takip eden surecte Nesine de yine 2006 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslamstr. Yasal bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almay basaran firma ksa surede sevilen ve ragbet goren bir site olmustur.

Misli

2009 ylnda sektore cok hzl giris yapan Misli cok sayda reklam filmi ile on plana ckmay basarmstr. Internet uzerinden hem yasal hem de sorunsuz hizmet veren bahis sitelerinden bir tanesi olmustur.

Canl Bahis Siteleri Kayt ve Uyelik Islemleri

Her zaman populerligini koruyan ve surekli gelisim gosteren canl bahis gun gectikce daha da gucleniyor. Bahis oynamak icin ise sitelere uye olunmas gerekir. Yuksek getirisi ve begeni toplayan faaliyetleri ile cok sayda site bu alanda faaliyet gostermektedir. Elbette sorunsuz sekilde uye olmanz ve faaliyetler gostermeniz de oldukca kolaydr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri dakikalar icerisinde gerceklestirilecek yapya sahiptir.

Uye olacagnz siteyi belirledikten sonra siteye girmeniz gerekmektedir. Girdiginiz sitenin ana sayfasnda uye ol ya da kayt ol bolumu bulunacaktr. Siteler arasnda degiskenlik gosteren bu alanda temel unsurlar bulunmaktadr. Elbette farkllklar olsa da temelinde benzer bilgiler uye olmak isteyen kisilerden talep edilmektedir.

Uye ol bolumune tkladktan sonra karsnza uyelik bilgi formu ckacaktr. Bu formda sizin kim oldugunuzu ogrenmek ve sitenin guvenligini saglamak adna islemler yaplmaktadr. Uyelik formunda yer alan ad soyad bolumunu eksiksiz ve dogru sekilde doldurmalsnz. Sizden bu formda istenen bilgilerin tamamn girmeniz istenecektir. Istenen bilgiler mutlaka dogru ve eksiksiz sekilde olmaldr. Eksik veya hatal bilgi uyelik islemlerinde sorun teskil edebilir. Yine de yanls bilgi girisine ragmen uyelik islemleri tamamlanabilir. Fakat boyle bir yol izleyenler sonrasnda buyuk skntlarla karslasabilirler. Bu skntlarn basnda da para cekme islemlerinde yasanan sorunlardr.

Uyelik islemleri dikkatli ve ozenle doldurulmas gereken yapdadr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri gerceklestirilirken verilen bilgiler site yonetimi tarafndan muhafaza edilmektedir. Herhangi bir sekilde 3. Sahslarla paylaslmas gibi bir durum soz konusu degildir. Bu faaliyetleri surduren sitelerin guven unsurlar arasnda bu nokta onceliklidir.

Bahis sitelerine uye olurken hatal bilgi paylasmnda bulunmak size faydadan cok zarar verecektir. Diyelim ki bilgileri hatal girdiniz ve uyelik onayland. Uyelik tamamlandktan sonra siteye para yatrdnz ve kazanc elde ettiniz. Kazancnz sonrasnda hesabnza almak istediginizde karsnza banka bilgileri bolumu gelecektir. Para cekme talebi gerceklestikten sonra site uyelik bilgileri ile banka hesap bilgileri ortusmez ise paranz alamazsnz. Boyle bir durumla karslasmamak adna bu hususa ayrca dikkat etmelisiniz.
The United Nations on Tuesday said it was investigating new allegations that U.N. peacekeepers sexually abused four underage girls in the Central African Republic.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said the probe was looking into how many peacekeepers were involved in the alleged abuse.

Officials have refrained from naming the countries to which the alleged perpetrators belong. Few other details have been released, as U.N. officials are still investigating. In the meantime, all four girls have received medical treatment.

The new charges follow a series of sexual abuse allegations that French and African troops in Central African Republic forced children to perform sexual acts in exchange for food and other aid from December 2013 to June 2014.

An independent panel last month found that a report detailing the allegations sat on U.N. desks for months until a newspaper article in April sparked outrage over the case.

The Central African Republic is struggling to recover from sectarian violence that exploded after a 2013 coup, pitting mainly Muslim rebels against Christian militias.

Wire services
Jan 4, 2016 | By Tess

Though 3D printing is a new and quickly growing technology that seems, even now, quite futuristic, it has also helped designers in various fields to connect to the past in certain ways. For the Czech home goods retailer Lauriger, 3D printing technology has allowed them to reach into their national past to resuscitate the Czech Cubist art movement through their most recent table set collection, Lilia.

Czech Cubism, most vital between the years 1912 and 1914, was an art movement inspired by Cubists the likes of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, which translated the angular and abstract lines of their paintings into sculptural and architectural pieces, such as the famous House of the Black Madonna in Prague.

In an effort to revive the artistic movement and pay homage to it, Lauriger commissioned Czech architect Svetlana Kozenova to design a table set reminiscent of the Cubist style, which she did by combining contemporary processes such as digital design and 3D printing with more traditional porcelain making techniques.

In order to realize the project, Kozenova designed the pieces using digital design processes and used 3D printing to create the molds for each of the table set pieces. For the porcelain making, she collaborated with a local porcelain manufacturer located in Dubi u Teplic, a city that has specialized in porcelain making for over three centuries.

Im very proud of our heritage in the Czech Republic. It seems poetic that Czech porcelain is so well known for its quality - it was such a perfect fit, says Kozenova. I think that we only reached such high standards with a spirit of innovation and self-improvement. I hope, through combining tradition and technology, my work reflects that.

The collection consists of geometric and angular teacups, saucers, bowls, plates and liquor vessels, whose designs were also inspired by the shape of the lily flower. As Kozenova explains, Ive always been inspired by geometry. When I created the Lilia collection, I wanted to take the important elements of Cubism - beautiful geometric patterns and complex shapes - and fuse them with the natural beauty of the lily flower. Achieving that contract was very important.

Quite fittingly, the Lilia collection is only available in the color white because Kozenova felt that having a neutral and minimalist color would help to emphasize the form and geometry of the individual pieces, which are undeniably striking.

As a designer, it isnt the individual design of each piece that makes the collection unique, she explains. Its how each bowl, cup or plate connects together seamlessly, creating an infinite amount of unique patterns and compositions. That, to me, is the beauty of Czech Cubism, and geometry in general, and it was vital that I capture that beauty.

For Kozenova, the opportunity to collaborate with Lauriger to create such beautiful and nationally significant pieces was cherished as she was able to not only be inspired by Czech Cubism but to successfully combine 21st century technologies like additive manufacturing with more traditional porcelain making processes.

The Lilia collection can be seen and purchased through Laurigers website here. Another project, Geometric Landscapes, a collection of serving boards also inspired by Czech Cubism, is also underway and is coming soon.

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Jan 5, 2016 | By Kira

In a move to help prepare the next generation of researchers, engineers and innovators, Pasadena, CA-based New Matter, maker of the $399 MOD-t desktop 3D printer, has today announced that it will be donating more than $200,000 in 3D printers and 3D printing supplies to teachers and educators across America via its Educate and Inspire Grant.

Each grant, of which 100 will be awarded in the first quarter of 2016, will include three MOD-t 3D printers, 15 spools of filament, and 15 additional build plate surfacesan excellent startup package for a classroom-based 3D printing ecosystem that will ignite students interest in the possibilities of 3D printing technology and related STEM areas.

Launched in 2014, New Matter set out to bring 3D printing to every home, school, and office and to create the first truly easy-to-use at-home 3D printing experience at an affordable price. That vision led the young company to develop the MOD-t, a WiFi-connected consumer 3D printer available for the almost unbelievably low price of $399 (during its initial and successful crowndfunding campaign, it was priced even lower, at $249). In addition to the MOD-t 3D printer, the company introduced the New Matter Online Store, which offers a variety of free 3D printable designs, optimized to get MOD-t users started with 3D printing as quickly and easily as possible. New Matter raised more than $6.5 million in Series A funding to officially launch its 3D printing ecosystem in 2015.

Designed to be as easy on the eyes as it is easy-to-use, the MOD-t is WiFi-enabled, quiet and safe to use, and works with classroom-safe, off-the-shelf PLA filament. Its marketed as an ideal entry-level desktop 3D printer, and of course, ideal for educators and classroom settings.

"Since our launch, we have been eager and excited to launch meaningful education programs and partnerships to give students access to 3D printing at school," said Steve Schell, CEO and Co-Founder of New Matter. "New Matter's ecosystem was designed to be simple and efficient. We are working with educators to ensure that the MOD-t is the easiest and most intuitive 3D printer for the classroom."

Despite some unflattering initial reviews, including one by Mashable writer Lance Ulanoff that described the MOD-t as the best-looking and least useful 3D printer on the market, the MOD-t was awarded the Best In Show Award in 3D Printing by CE Week in New York, and generally fits in with the growing trend of ultra-affordable and accessible 3D printers designed specifically for educatorsTaiwans XYZPrinting and MakerBot have made similar commitments to promoting 3D printing education from K-12 right through to college and university levels, and Chinese QingDao Unique has also unveiled its MagiCube 3D printer for use in classrooms.

Our 3D printing ecosystem gives educators a unique opportunity to integrate science, technology, art and engineering in the classroom," said Schell. "Many teachers who use 3D printers in their classrooms say they often run into a bottleneck from having too many student projects to print, but not enough printers to print them all. Because of the affordability of the MOD-t, it is now possible for schools to have multiple printers in their classroom to print more student work, faster."

Alongside introducing its Educate and Inspire Grant, New Matter also announced that, following its successful crowdfunding campaign (which saw the fulfillment of over 2,600 3D printer units) and its $6.5 million capital increase, the New Matter plug-and-play 3D printing ecosystem, including the New Matter Online Store and MOD-t 3D printer is now available to the general public.

Given that the sales of low-cost desktop 3D printersand in particular, B2B sales in the educational, engineering, and small business sectors are currently driving the entire global 3D printer market, New Matters decision to provide its 3D printers to as many classrooms as possible seems like a definite step in the right direction, and a surefire way to tap into the hottest and most sought-after 3D printing consumer market: teachers, their students, and the future generation of 3D innovators.

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Jan 5, 2016 | By Kira

Taiwans Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC), known for advanced knowledge in EBM (electron beam melting) additive manufacturing technology, has signed a cooperative agreement with the Institute for Materials Research (IMR) of Tohoku University of Japan in order to develop and advance metal 3D printing technology and related metallic 3D printing materials.

From left: Dr. K. Takanashi, director of IMR; H.C. Fu, MIRDC CEO; and C.N. Lin, director-general of Bureau of Energy under Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs at the siging ceremony

Metal 3D printing seems to be the manufacturing industrys new best friend, with market research company CONTEXT reporting not only that sales of metal 3D printers grew 45% in Q3 2015, but that metal 3D printing was the only profitable sector within the industrial/professional 3D printer market during the same period. Global industry players from the aerospace, defense, automobile, medical industries and more have been increasingly turning to metal additive manufacturing as it has the unique ability to produce high-volume and high-quality end-use parts while significantly reducing cost, lead time and material waste.

As far as both Japan and Taiwans highly advanced R&D sectors go, there are perhaps no two institutes that are better qualified to work on metal 3D printing technology and metallic 3D printing materials than MIRDC and IMR.

Taiwans MIRDC, a government-funded R&D body on the island, is known for succeeding in developing a nickel-titanium alloy powder for additive manufacturing, and for setting up Taiwans first EBM additive manufacturing laboratory, which has helped Taiwanese medical equipment makers move up market.

As for Japans contribution, the MIRDC reports that Tohoku University is the worlds most renowned university in terms of metallic materials research, with the IMR being the longest established among the prestigious universitys institutes (not to mention that it has two Nobel Prize winners currently among its faculty members). The IMR is globally recognized for its achievements in research and theoretical postulations on material science and technology, particularly in the fields of 3D printing, magnetic materials, biocompatible materials and functional materials.

The new partnership, signed in mid-December between CEO H.C. Fu of MIRDC and Dr. K. Takanashi, director of IMR in Sendai, northeaster Japan, will see both institutes work together to develop new additive manufacturing equipment, related processes and melting technology, as well as the setting-up of a joint laboratory to share R&D resources. Along with upgrading both Taiwan and Japans metal 3D printing industries, longer term plans for the agreement are to enhance the exchange of researchers and eventually to work on key technologies for the energy industry.

Recently, Taiwan has made several advances in metal 3D printing, having revealed its first locally developed metal 3D printing system for use in the aerospace and defense industries, as well as another metal 3D printer specifically designed for jewelry production. In terms of research innovation, the Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) developed a laser optical engine that can actually regulate the hardness of metal parts during 3D printing.

As for Japan, Tokyo-based imaging and printing giant Ricoh recently unveiled the first ever Ricoh-brand industrial 3D printer, and, in a surprising announcement, home electronics manufacturer Toshiba showed off its own metal 3D printer that is said to be 10 times faster than competitors.

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Kathy Griffin, two-time Emmy winner and Grammy-winning comedian, will host AARP's 15th Annual Movies for Grownups Awards in Beverly Hills Feb. 8, presiding over an evening that will include honors for Spotlight as the best movie of 2015, and Bryan Cranston and Lily Tomlin as the best actors in starring roles.

"I'm so honored to be hosting the Movies for Grownups Awards again," says Griffin, who also did the honors in 2014. "For one thing, it's one of the few nights of the year anyone refers to me as a grownup."

The 2015 Movies for Grownups Awards  chosen by the editors of AARP The Magazine and announced today  go to an array of actors, films and filmmakers whose work has particular relevance to a 50-plus audience.

The best picture award goes to Spotlight  a thrilling story of how a team of Boston Globe reporters in 2001 uncovered systemic crimes by pedophile Catholic priests in the Boston archdiocese  for its sophisticated approach to telling what could have been a sensational account.
Police departments in New York on Tuesday began implementing an executive order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that gives officers across the state the power to take homeless people off the streets and place them in shelters when temperatures dip below freezing  in some cases whether the homeless want to go or not.

The statewide effort, signed into law on Sunday, mirrors a policy already in place in New York City. Under the citys Code Blue policy, homeless people that are deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, or mentally unwell, can be forced by police into a hospital or shelter.

New York State law is clear and well-established that the State can take appropriate steps, including involuntary placement, to protect individuals from harming themselves or others, Cuomos order states.

But the move has raised concerns among homeless advocates. They fear the measure, if enacted incorrectly, could lead to the criminalization of extreme poverty. Homeless people across the country have reported that theft, violence and the temptation to use illegal drugs present in shelters keep them away from the facilities.

Theyre horrible, said Rafael Bonilla, 21, as he sat near Pennsylvania Station in New York City. Im scared of the shelters. There are too many drugs. Too much heroin. People there will steal my stuff.

Leroy Rubin Williams, 55, who has been homeless or in prison for drug offenses over the last three decades, said he stays out of shelters because of the crime. Aggression from other homeless residents also keeps him away, he said.

The shelter system is so bad, Williams said. Thats why I stay on the street.

Cuomo, however, said the order's purpose is to save lives and limbs from hypothermia or frostbite. It mandates that shelters "are safe, clean, well maintained and supervised," although the text offers few details on how to achieve that.

Im not going to argue an individuals right to freeze to death, Cuomo said on WCBS radio on Sunday, as quoted by the New York Daily News. I want to argue an individuals human right to housing and services and shelter. The days when were going to argue civil rights for people to sleep on the street, we learned that lesson the hard way, and lets not go backward.

But taking the homeless off the streets could prove complicated, advocates warn. Police officers in smaller cities, they say, might not have the experience that police in New York City have in interacting with the homeless.

Jeff Foreman, policy director at the New York City-based Care for the Homeless, said that his organization welcomes the push for further outreach. But he said authorities must show respect for homeless peoples rights.

It's important that [the executive order] be applied in a helpful, compassionate way designed to maximize assistance and positive outcomes and avoid violations of individual rights or damage or loss to an individual's property, Foreman said.

Cuomo has said that he will defend the measures legality in court if necessary. Foreman said that challenges could come from people brought off the street who later contend in court that they were not a danger to themselves or others. Foreman said that the criteria of danger to self could apply when someone demands to stay outside when weather hits sub-zero lows.

Foreman said that social workers should accompany police when possible, or go out and do their own patrols, looking for homeless people sleeping out in dangerous temperatures. The executive order says that the state will help local authorities when they lack resources.

The more substantive effort to help the homeless, says Foreman, includes building supportive housing, places where people struggling with mental disorders or drug addiction can live. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio intends to build fifteen thousand new supportive housing units over the next fifteen years. Foreman says that is a good start.

Supportive housing units have a very high success rate, he added. We know that they work.
Obama accused the gun lobby of taking Congress hostage, but said: they cannot hold America hostage. He insisted it was possible to uphold the Second Amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in the U.S. that he said had become the new normal.

This is not a plot to take away everybody's guns, Obama said in a ceremony in the East Room. You pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules.

But the National Rifle Association (NRA) responded to the president's comments by tweeting: President Obama's executive orders will do nothing to improve public safety.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says no matter what unilateral action President Barack Obama takes on gun control, his word does not trump the Second Amendment.

At the centerpiece of Obama's plan is a broader definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of gun sales subject to background checks.

At firearm shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers, but officials said new federal guidance would clarify that it applies to anyone in the business of selling firearms.

They put sellers on notice that the government planned to beef up enforcement including with 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

The impact of Obama's plan on gun violence remains a major question, and one not easily answered. Had the rules been in place in the past, the steps wouldn't likely have prevented any of the recent mass shootings that have garnered national attention. The Obama administration acknowledged it couldn't quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a license.

Pushing back on that critique, Obama said every time the issue is debated, gun rights groups argue the steps wouldn't necessarily have stopped the last massacre, so why bother trying?

More recent gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, have spurred the administration to give the issue another look, as Obama seeks to make good on a policy issue that he's elevated time and again but has failed until now to advance.

Instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our more polarizing, partisan debates, Obama said, adding that the nation should come together not to debate the last mass shooting, but to try to prevent the next one.

The measures, however, fall far short of what Obama had hoped to accomplish through legislation after a massacre at a Connecticut elementary school shook the country in 2012. Yet even the more modest steps the president will announce rely on murky interpretations of existing law that could be easily reversed by his successor.

Obama's actions ensure that gun rights  one of the most bitterly divisive issues in America  will be at the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, which begins in earnest next month with the first primary contests.
An occupation of a remote U.S. wildlife center in Oregon by anti-government militiamen entered a fourth day Tuesday despite a local county sheriff and judge demanding that protesters peacefully end the siege, telling them: It's time for you to leave our community.

The flashpoint for Saturday's takeover of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Oregon, was the imminent incarceration of two ranchers convicted of arson and re-sentenced to longer prison terms.

But the occupation marked the latest flare-up of anger against the U.S. government over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by political conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual freedom and property rights.

Federal authorities have so far kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which remained closed to visitors.

The FBI said in a statement it was seeking a peaceful resolution to the situation, while Obama administration officials said U.S. law enforcement officers had been told to avoid a violent confrontation with the occupiers.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy, whose father's ranch in Nevada was the scene of an armed standoff against federal land managers in 2014, told reporters on Monday his group had named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and was making a stand for personal liberty.

They (the federal government) are coming down into the states and taking over the land and the resources, putting the people into duress, putting the people into poverty, he said.

Flanked by supporters, Bundy declined to say how many were participating in the takeover. But about a half-dozen occupiers were visible to reporters, some in a watchtower on the property and others standing around a vehicle used to block an access road.

The two ranchers whose cause Bundy's group has embraced, Dwight Hammond Jr., and his son, Steven, turned themselves over to federal authorities in California earlier on Monday.

Some residents in Burns, a town of some 3,000 people about 280 miles southeast of Portland, voiced sympathy with the militia group's cause, if not its methods.

But many said they viewed the occupation as mostly, if not entirely, the work of outside agitators, a sentiment echoed by Harney County Sheriff David Ward.

You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County, Ward said at a news conference in Burns, addressing Bundy's group in a statement he read on behalf of himself and county Judge Steven Grasty. It is time for you to leave our community, go home to your families, and end this peacefully.

The sheriff said the takeover had significantly impacted the local community, where authorities have closed public schools and some government offices as a precaution.

Three Obama administration officials said that federal authorities were following U.S. policy guidelines instituted to prevent such standoffs from turning violent in the wake of deadly clashes at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, in the early 1990s.

Reuters
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An employee who worked in the IRSs Taxpayer Advocate Service at a job assisting identity theft victims has instead been charged with running a $1 million identity theft tax fraud scheme.

Federal officials announced arrests and charges last month against four people accused of participating in the scheme, including Nakeisha Hall, 39, an IRS employee who worked in the Taxpayer Advocate Service office in Birmingham, Ala., from July 2007 to November 2011. She has since worked in Taxpayer Advocate Service offices in Omaha, Neb., New Orleans, La., and Salt Lake City, Utah. Federal agents arrested her on December 22 in Holly Springs, Miss.

Federal agents also arrested another participant in the scheme, Jimmie Goodman, 37, of Birmingham. A third participant, Abdulla Coleman, 37, formerly of Birmingham, was already in state custody in Wisconsin on unrelated charges. All three were indicted by a grand jury earlier in December.

In conjunction with the arrests of Hall and Goodman, federal officials also unsealed charges relating to another participant in the scheme, Lashon Roberson. Prosecutors filed a five-count information in October charging Roberson, 36, of Pelham, Ala., with conspiracy to commit mail fraud affecting a financial institution and four counts of mail fraud affecting a financial institution.

According to the indictment, Hall obtained individuals names, birth dates and Social Security numbers through unauthorized access to IRS computers. She then used the information to prepare fraudulent income tax returns and submitted them electronically to the IRS. Hall asked the IRS to pay the refunds to debit cards and directed that the cards be mailed to addresses that she controlled, according to prosecutors. Hall solicited and received the drop addresses from Goodman, Coleman and the other co-conspirators, who also collected the refund cards from the mail.

Hall then activated the cards by using stolen identity information, according to the indictment. She, Goodman, Coleman and others involved in the scheme took the money off the debit cards at ATMs or used the cards for purchases. If the fraudulent returns generated U.S. Treasury checks rather than the requested debit cards, Hall and the others used fraudulent endorsements in order to cash the checks. Hall allegedly compensated Goodman, Coleman and other co-conspirators by giving them a portion of the refund money, or by giving them refund cards for their own use.

According to the indictment, Hall, Goodman, Coleman and others conspired to defraud both the IRS and financial institutions, including Bancorp Bank, between January 2008 and November 2011, and used the U.S. mail to execute the fraud. Hall, Goodman, Coleman and others also conspired to obtain money from Bancorp Bank and other financial institutions. Bancorp Bank and other financial institutions issue stand-alone debit cards for the purpose of accepting tax refunds.

Taxpayers trust, and expect, that IRS employees, as a whole, will safeguard their most sensitive personal information, said Joyce White Vance, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, in a statement. Taxpayers also must trust that IRS employees in the Taxpayer Advocate Service will not only protect their sensitive information but will actively assist them when it has been compromised by others. An IRS taxpayer advocate who exploits that trust, and with full knowledge of the significant impacts of identity theft, uses her IRS access to compromise taxpayers identities and steal a million dollars from the U.S. Treasury is committing a particularly egregious crime that will not go unpunished. I thank the TIGTA and IRS-CI investigators who worked diligently with my office to bring this case forward.

The December indictment charges Hall, Goodman and Coleman with conspiring with others known and unknown to the grand jury to commit bank fraud and mail fraud affecting a financial institution. The indictment also charges Hall with one count each of theft of government funds, aggravated identity theft and unauthorized access to a protected computer.

The theft, aggravated identity and unauthorized access counts relate to two specific taxpayers information that Hall accessed and used in 2010.

The conspiracy charge carries up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. The maximum prison penalty for theft of government funds is 10 years in prison. Aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory two-year prison term, and unauthorized access to a protected computer carries a maximum five-year prison term. All three charges carry a maximum $250,000 penalty.
A number of analysts have suggested that the execution of Nimr was a provocation designed to escalate tensions and rally support. Trita Parsi, of the National Iranian American Council, even suggested that the goal of such an escalation would be to force the U.S. back onside with its longstanding ally, Saudi Arabia, and limit rapprochement with Iran.

According to Lynch, There seems little question that this was an intentional escalation by the Saudi leadership, which could not have been surprised by the regional and international backlash. He summarized Riyadhs calculations as such: the new sectarian escalation is driven by Riyadhs curious, and dangerous, mixture of perceived threat and opportunity, strength and weakness. On the one hand, he argued, Saudi Arabia is uniquely strong within Arab politics at the moment, as evidenced by its strengthened partnerships with fellow Sunni powers that have joined Riyadh in the Yemen campaign and a new, Islamic anti-ISIL coalition that was announced last month.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia clearly feels vulnerable as well, Lynch said, both domestically and regionally. In the backdrop of its proxy wars against Iran, the historic nuclear deal brokered by Western powers to curtail Irans nuclear program has shaken Saudi confidence in Washington, its traditional ally against Tehran. Saudi Arabia and Israel, key U.S. allies in the region, have protested the deal, arguing it will make it easier for Iran to develop a bomb  though most analysts say their objection stems more from existential fears the deal will lead to a wider rapprochement with their virulent enemy.

Its floundering wars in Syria and Yemen, the rise of the Islamic State and the Iran nuclear deal have left it feeling profoundly vulnerable, Lynch wrote. This combination of strength and vulnerability has made for erratic foreign policy  especially with an aggressive new leadership eager to make its mark.

Many regional observers had expected Saudi-Iran tensions to boil over sooner or later.

The question, now, is whether this escalation can be tamped down by urgent diplomacy. If not, the implications of a widening rift between Riyadh and Tehran could be far-reaching for the Middle East. Already, there are signs the crisis could disrupt the fragile peace in Yemen. On Saturday, the same day Nimrs execution was announced, Saudi Arabia formally declared an end to the ceasefire in Yemen, citing Houthi violations of its terms.

But the timing is particularly unfortunate for Syria: Saudi Arabia and Iran only recently agreed to sit at the same table in Vienna to kick-start the stalled peace process  for the first time in Syrias nearly five-year war. Western officials moderating those talks have raised the alarm about the burgeoning tensions, with Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon telling Foreign Policy that the UN would work to keep this crisis as separated as possible from harming the planned Syrian political process.

Saudi officials on Tuesday said the diplomatic crisis would not affect the Kingdoms peace efforts in Syria or Yemen, although the statement also blamed Irans positions for the lack of progress in those efforts. The real impact of the latest diplomatic spat remains to be seen, but many around the region and internationally continue to brace for the worst.
Bombardier Commercial Aircraft and Addis Ababa-based Ethiopian Airlines Enterprise (Ethiopian Airlines) have signed a firm purchase agreement for two additional Q400 turboprop airliners that will bring Ethiopian Airlines' Q400 aircraft fleet to a total of 19 aircraft, the largest total fleet in Africa.

Based on the list price of the Q400 aircraft, the transaction is valued at approximately $63 million.



We are continuously working to have the right fleet with agility, optimal range, load and passenger comfort which is critical for us to keep our leadership position in the market. The Q400 aircraft continues to be an integral part of our expansion strategy in Africa. Through our strategic partnerships with ASKY Airlines in Togo and Malawian Airlines in Malawi, the Q400 airliner has played a vital role in availing convenient connections, as well as increasing frequencies to support air travel growth in Africa and successfully create a missing link, said Tewolde Gebremariam, Group Chief Executive Officer, Ethiopian Airlines. The Q400 aircraft is also our core fleet to our domestic and regional destinations, thereby ensuring excellent passenger experience, operational flexibility and economics.



We continue to work with Bombardier to support and maintain the aircraft through our approved Q400 Authorized Service Facility and our Q400 aircraft simulator, added Mr. Gebremariam.



The Q400 turboprop continues to make impressive headway in Africa and has proven its ruggedness and reliability in challenging operational environments where its hot and high capability, jet-like speed and high rate of climb are significant assets, said Fred Cromer, President, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. Some 69 Q400 aircraft are now in service with more than 20 operators on the continent, and we are delighted with Ethiopian Airlines continuing growth and impressive use of the aircraft to satisfy a wide variety of market requirements.



Our commitment to help Africa continue to expand its regional airline network with modern, economical, fuel-efficient and environmentally sensitive aircraft remains a very high priority at Bombardier, said John Kassis, Vice President, Sales, Africa and the Middle East, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. Our collaboration with operators in Africa encompasses the Dash 8 / Q Series turboprops (the Dash 8 renamed the Q Series in 1996) and the pioneering CRJ Series family of regional jets. Now, we are witnessing the unprecedented growth in Africa being undertaken by Ethiopian Airlines, ASKY and Malawian and the Q400 turboprop airliner continues to be a key contributor to this strategy.



In 2013, Ethiopian Airlines joined Bombardiers global network of Authorized Service Facilities (ASFs) for commercial aircraft and performs line and heavy maintenance on Q400 aircraft at its facilities at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. The ASF works in close collaboration with Bombardiers maintenance network of wholly owned service centres and ASFs, as well as with Bombardiers network of parts hubs and depots, including the Johannesburg Parts Depot. A full-service Bombardier Regional Support Office is also located in Johannesburg.



Ethiopian Airlines has won Airline Reliability Performance Awards from Bombardier for five years in a row.
Military pharmacies and TRICARE Pharmacy Home Delivery will remain the lowest cost pharmacy option for TRICARE beneficiaries when some TRICARE pharmacy copays change Feb. 1. Most copays for prescription drugs in the home delivery program and retail network pharmacies will increase slightly.The 2016 National Defense Authorization Act requires TRICARE to change its prescription copays. All drugs at military pharmacies and generic drugs through home delivery are still available at no cost to beneficiaries. Copays for brand name drugs through home delivery increase from $16 to $20, for up to a 90-day supply. At retail pharmacies, generic drug copays go from $8 to $10, and brand name drug copays go from $20 to $24, for up to a 30-day supply. Copays for non-formulary drugs and for drugs at non-network pharmacies will also change.Beneficiaries can save up to $208 in 2016 for each brand name prescription drug they switch from retail pharmacy to home delivery. Home delivery offers safe and convenient delivery of your prescription drugs right to your mailbox.To see the new TRICARE pharmacy copays, learn more about the TRICARE pharmacy benefit, or move your prescription to home delivery, click here
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An explosion took place on Tuesday 400 metres away from the Indian Consulate in Afghanistans Jalalabad city, two days after the countrys mission was attacked by terrorists in Mazar-e-Sharif.

However, official sources in New Delhi said the reports suggested that the mission was not the target of the blast. Further details about the explosion were awaited, they said.

The Indian Consulate was not the target, a source said dismissing reports that the explosion was targeted at the Indian mission.

Pakistan Consul Generals house in Jalalabad was closer to the blast site than the Indian mission which was 400 metres away, the source said.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end last night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight earlier, the remaining were neutralised by the night. A group of terrorists had attacked the Consulate on Sunday night with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces.
Unfortunately, after losing seven Defence Security Corps personnel, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar admitted to some gaps that led to the terror attack on the Air Force base in Pathankot in which all the six infiltrators, who used some Pakistan-made equipment, have been killed. Addressing a news conference after a visit to the forward base, he said the terrorists were neutralised in an operation that lasted for more than 36 hours since 3.30 a.m. on Saturday but combing operations are still on. Parrikar announced that all the seven security personnel killed during the attack will be treated as martyrs that will entitle them to all the benefits available to battle casualty like in war-like situations. We are losing one after another army men but government is yet to understand the importance of lives.

The terrorists were carrying 40-50 kg of bullets, mortars, which were fired from modified Under-Barrel Grenade Launcher besides some magazines. No one knows from where these terrorists entered such a sensitive area; however Parrikar still doesnt feel that there is any compromise on security. Anyway, investigations are still on and things will clear after probe gets over. Government should honestly put forward the fact which will come out in the probe. People are confused, how the terrorists managed to come inside the base which has a perimeter of 24 km and located in an area of about 2,000 acres. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister received a call from his Pakistani counterpart on the offensive. Nawaz Sharif promised that prompt and decisive action against the terrorists behind the Pathankot attack will be taken. The Indian leader pressed for immediate steps on specific and actionable information provided to them.

When PM Modis party BJP was in opposition, he used to be aggressive on Pakistan to teach them lesson. Now he is attending and wishing Pakistani PMs Birthday party having dinner with them on their land and uttering deep silence on terror attack. This attack didnt come as an earthquake, but was alerted in advance by the intelligence agency earlier. A SPs car was hijacked (SUV with a blue beacon light, not an ordinary cab), in the middle of the night. Dont forget about the letter that was sent by the ADGP to the police circles about the intelligence information regarding the entry of terrorists in the state. These terrorists could kill soldiers trained in DSC, NSG and IAF.

Enemy is not outside India they are within the country. Drugs, corruption, material pleasures, alcohol, pleasing with prostitutes, money laundering, betting, political ambition, greed of power etc gives way to terror in our country. The security forces must be on high alert on all important days. Multilayer security cordon is vital for all installations. High-tech gadgets must be used to check the movements. Under emergency, a signal must alert all concerned. All vital areas must be inspected by experts from IITs/IIMs/IISc/TIFR for their suggestions. I can say, we lack technology and patriotism to conquer such attacks. As there was intelligence report stating possible terror attack, wonder that terrorist could sneak in. Inspite of having all intimations and reports on attack, what must have prevented our security personnel and government to prevent or prepare for such attacks? The command and control over the entire operation should have been exercised by the major general in charge of the division which is responsible for the defence and security of the area that includes the air force helicopter base. The Army and its units having been deployed locally are familiar with the terrain, its advantages and its problems. Pushing in an NSG contingent that was totally unfamiliar with the situation and the terrain is an incomprehensible step which cannot be explained.

Medals or salutes for the martyrs are not enough. We should take steps to avert such incidents. We need advanced Defence Technology like electric fencing walls on borders, juggernaut suits, Ballistic Shields, and foremost robotic soldiers which can reduce casualty in such attacks. We dont have to put huge amount in research for these technologies as these are already available, but do we own them? There is something seriously wrong in the whole matter. It is surprising that the overall command and control of the operation was assumed by the NSA and operated through the NSG. It is not surprising that this proved ineffective.

Need of the hour is that, the Government should educate every citizen of the country to keep a watch on strangers in their vicinity and bring it to the notice of police force. The police also needs to be directed to act swiftly. Government hereafter shall introduce CCTV Cameras at every nook and corner of the country and also an agency to monitor and report to the home ministry or police so that the untoward incidents like this could be avoided. We are seeing different patterns of terrorism each time and the Government failed to restrict that.

Its high time, country needs to be secured and save from these anti national elements. Our countrys soldiers need more than salute and tribute. They should be secured first when they are securing us. One needs to understand how these terrorists enter India breaching the security line.
Actress Saoirse Ronan sang praises of Ryan Gosling to make people understand the correct pronunciation of her Irish name (Ser-sha). While presenting Ronan with an award during Hollywood Film Awards in November, Gosling said, Its Ser-sha, like inertia, and suddenly, people started pronouncing her name correctly, reported a leading magazine.

Someone sent me a photo two weeks later of a cinema in Minnesota, and on the sign in the front it said Brooklyn and then underneath it said, Ser-sha, Like Inertia. I couldnt believe it! They actually put it on the front of the cinema, so the power of Ryan Gosling is stronger than anything else, Ronan said. Hes like, Jesus or something, like a blond Canadian Jesus, she added.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2015 - A congressional commission charged with finding ways to combat hunger and improve nutrition recommends barring the use of food stamps for some sugary beverages and instead providing incentives for buying healthful foods.

The report by the National Commission on Hunger also suggests Congress and the Agriculture Department take steps that encourage recipients to find jobs or to increase their earnings.

The bipartisan commission, composed of nine experts selected by House and Senate leaders, resulted from a provision in the fiscal 2014 spending bill. The commission members started meeting monthly in May 2014, visited eight cities and held hearings in seven of them. The report said the recommendations reflected ideas on which the members could find consensus despite their differences.

Because our own backgrounds and disciplines are diverse, we often saw and learned the same things but reached different conclusions. We have sought to set those differences aside in favor of reporting on what we did agree upon, and we have synthesized it to present an overall picture of hunger in America today.

One of the most controversial recommendations is likely to be the proposal to restrict beverage purchases through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as food stamps are now known. The commission said Congress should consult with the National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Sciences and others in deciding what sugar-sweetened beverages to limit.

SNAP benefits should help families meet their nutritional needs, not contribute to negative health outcomes through poor nutrition choices, the report said.

Meanwhile, the commission said USDA should continue to develop ways for incentivizing purchases of healthier foods and to promote cost-sharing with states, local governments and non-profit groups.

Other recommendations:

-Congress and the USDA should put more focus on job placement, job training, and career development for SNAP recipients who are able to work.

-It should be easier for households to transition from SNAP benefits as their income rises. There is evidence that some former recipients experience hunger when their benfits end, but an extension of benefits could help them navigate pay lags and adjust household food budgeting, the report says.

-Congress should allow USDA to streamline the application process for child nutrition programs, including school meals and summer feeding programs.

-President Obama should create a White House Leadership Council to End Hunger to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to eliminate hunger.

USDA released a statement that officials would review the recommendations. There is no question that federal nutrition assistance is a critical lifeline for millions of eligible children, low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities, and we appreciate the commission's focus on ways to expand access to healthy, nutritious foods.

Do you find the information on Agri-Pulse helpful? See even more ag and rural policy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the report underscores how fundamentally important and effective our federal nutrition programs are to reducing hunger.

But McGovern, in a statement, cautioned against linking SNAP to efforts to promote work. SNAP is first and foremost a food program, not a jobs program. SNAP cannot be expected to solve the broader economic challenges or barriers faced by people ready and willing to work so they can provide for their families, McGovern said.

#30
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2016 -- The Food and Drug Administration will consider whether to ban the use of seven food additives based on their potential to cause cancer in humans or other animals.

In a Federal Register notice published Monday, Jan. 4, FDA said it will consider the request made in a petition submitted by the Natural Resources Defense Council and others.

If we determine new data are available that establish these food additives induce cancer, then FDA will amend (its regulations) to no longer provide for their use, the agency said in the Federal Register notice.

FDA approved the additives in 1964 but set no numerical limit on how much may be used in food, the petition said, adding that the only limit is Good Manufacturing Practices as defined in FDA regulations.

In 1965, the Flavor and Extracts Manufacturers Association (FEMA), which tests flavorings for the industry, added the substances to their GRAS (generally recognized as safe) list. FEMA also describ(ed) average maximum use level in various foods considered by the trade association to be safe, the petition said.

But federal law since 1958 has said that no additive shall be deemed to be safe if it is found to induce cancer in man or animal. In evaluations by organizations such as the National Toxicology Program (NTP) or the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), as well as by the state of California, the substances have been classified as, at the least, possibly carcinogenic to humans.

NTP coordinates toxicology research and testing across the Department of Health and Human Services. IARC is part of the World Health Organization.

A table listing the additives, their uses, and the classifications they have received is included in the petition. They are: Benzophenone (also known as diphenyl ketone) (CAS No. 119-61-9); ethyl acrylate (CAS No. 140-88-5); eugenyl methyl ether (also known as 4-allylveratrole or methyl eugenol) (CAS No. 93- 15-2); myrcene (also known as 7-methyl-3-methylene-1,6-octadiene) (CAS No. 123-35-3); pulegone (also known as p-menth-4(8)-en-3-one) (CAS No. 89-82-7); pyridine (CAS No. 110-86-1); and styrene (CAS No. 100-42-5).

By law, FDA is supposed to make a decision on the petition within 60 days of publication in the Federal Register, but in practice, that rarely happens, said Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, who helped prepare the petition.

FEMA recently removed styrene  one of the substances targeted in the petition  from its GRAS list.

Read about other FDA and ag and rural policy news. Sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





In a report issued earlier this year, FEMA said styrene should be taken off the GRAS list because there is little evidence that (it is) used for the technical effect of flavoring.

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.

Besides NRDC, the other petitioners were Center for Science in the Public Interest, Center for Food Safety, Consumers Union, Improving Kids Environment, the Center for Environmental Health, the Environmental Working Group, and Dr. James Huff, the former associate director for chemical carcinogenesis at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

FDA says interested parties may submit comments on the petition through March 4.

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Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is giving some of the most divisive proposals of his campaign a starring role in his first television ad  with the billionaire developer facing questions about the footage he chose to illustrate his arguments.

With the opening 2016 primary contest four weeks away, he is spotlighting his plan to bar Muslims from entering the United States  temporarily and with exceptions, he says  and to build a wall along the southern border. His campaign says he plans to spend $2 million a week on the ad, set to begin airing Tuesday across Iowa and New Hampshire.

The new ad features dark images of the San Bernardino, California, shooters, who were Muslim, as well as body bags and explosions.

"The politicians can pretend it's something else. But Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism. That's why he's calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims' entering the United States until we can figure out what's going on," a narrator says.

The ad later shows video footage of people apparently streaming freely across a border as the narrator says Trump will "stop illegal immigrants by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for."

Facing questions from news outlets, the Trump campaign acknowledged in a statement Monday that the border images were of a Spanish exclave in Morocco, not the U.S.-Mexico border.

"I think it's irrelevant," Trump said in an interview on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night. "So you can just take it any way you want, but it's really merely a display of what a dumping ground is going to look like. And that's what our country's becoming very rapidly."

His campaign elaborated in a statement, saying the selection of footage was intended "to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration."

The ad, posted on Trump's website Monday, is a departure from the typical introductory campaign spot because he was well known before he began campaigning.

"We're not the typical campaign," Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said of the ad. Instead, he said, Trump chose to focus on the issue that has been the centerpiece of his campaign: illegal immigration.

His proposal on Muslims has been condemned by Republicans and Democrats as un-American and counterproductive, yet the hard-line approach to immigration has fueled his popularity among the overwhelmingly white GOP primary electorate.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, at times a Trump critic, predicted the new ad would help Trump among the slice of Republican voters who participate in early voting contests.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in December found that 6 in 10 Americans said they think barring Muslims from entering the United States is the wrong thing to do. Among Republicans, however, 6 in 10 say they would support such a policy.

The ad is Trump's first foray into campaign television advertising, after spending much of 2015 dominating polls without spending significant resources, at least compared with his rivals.

On Monday, the campaign put almost $2 million into broadcast and cable television ads to run this week in Iowa and New Hampshire, advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG shows. He previously spent about $300,000 on radio commercials, mostly in Iowa, over three weeks in November.

The Associated Press
Turkish authorities said they found the bodies of 27 refugees, at least three of them children, at two separate locations on the Aegean coast on Tuesday after a boat apparently capsized as it tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

Seventeen of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalik, while ten others were found in the district of Dikili, according to a gendarmerie official. The nationalities of those drowned were not immediately clear.

We heard a boat sank and hit the rocks. I surmise these people died when they were trying to swim from the rocks. We came here to help as citizens, an unnamed eyewitness told Reuters.

The news comes as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced that 3,771 refugees and migrants died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015.

The IOM said last year was the deadliest on record for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, with the number of deaths rising from 3,279 in 2014.

The flow of mostly Syrian refugees and migrants braving the seas to seek sanctuary in Europe dipped toward the end of last year, coinciding with colder weather. But the figure still reached 1 million in 2015, nearly five times more than in the previous year.

Increased policing on Turkey's shores and colder weather conditions have not deterred refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa from embarking on the perilous journey in small, flimsy boats.

The Turkish coast guard and gendarmerie on Tuesday rescued 12 people from the sea and the rocks on the Ayvalik coastline. A coast guard official said three boats and a helicopter were searching for any survivors.

In a deal struck at the end of November, Turkey promised to help stem the flow of migrants to Europe in return for cash, visas and renewed talks on joining the European Union.

Turkey is host to 2.2 million Syrians and has spent around $8.5 billion on feeding and housing them since the start of the civil war nearly five years ago, but it has been criticized for lacking a longer term integration strategy to give Syrians a future there.

Almost all of the refugees have no legal work status and the majority of children do not go to school.

Wire services
MUD has dubbed the Supreme Court ruling a "judicial coup" meant to strip it of its two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

"We've come because Venezuela is celebrating. Today democracy returns to our country," Milagros Hernandez, 58, a housewife who joined an opposition rally in downtown Caracas, told Reuters.

Police and National Guard troops were deployed in the area around the National Assembly to prevent violence between opposition sympathizers and Maduro supporters, who have in the past clashed amid political tensions.

MUD leaders accuse the government of undermining the incoming assembly with last-minute appointments of Supreme Court justices and by changing a central bank law to eliminate congressional control over the bank's leadership.

A portrait of late President Hugo Chavez that hung prominently in the main congressional chamber, a symbol of what critics call illegal politicization of public institutions, was removed.

Television images showed smiling opposition deputies chatting in the company of reporters, who for years have been blocked from the floor of Congress by the Socialist Party leadership.

Maduro has recognized the results of the election, but has dismissed the new assembly as "right-wing" and "bourgeois." He has accused MUD of preparing to privatize state-run companies and roll back social programs.

"Chavez leads in heaven and Nicolas leads on earth," chanted Maduro supporters who gathered in a plaza adjacent to the National Assembly.

The main item on the agenda is the election of the assembly's speaker. The opposition has tapped veteran legislator Henry Ramos for that post. On Tuesday, a group of pro-government lawmakers walked out in protest as the new congressional leadership laid out its legislative agenda.

On Monday, Ramos said Maduro should consider resigning to save Venezuela from a political crisis, echoing the call hard-liners made in 2014 when they launched street protests that resulted in dozens of deaths.

The Supreme Court granted injunctions last month that blocked four deputies  three from the opposition and one allied with the government  from taking office after losing Socialist Party candidates filed legal challenges to the results.
December 31, 2015

Half a year ago, the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) spearheaded by Selahattin Demirtas, its young, charismatic leader, was the rising star in Turkish politics. The party, with its roots in the violent Kurdish political movement dominated by the armed and illegal Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), had recast itself as a left-liberal, inclusive peacenik movement and a bulwark against President Recep Tayyip Erdogans growing authoritarianism. As a result, it emerged from the June 7 general elections with some 13.1% of the vote, doubling its usual mandate. Since then, however, the HDPs meteoric rise has been reversed by a meteoric fall.

In the Nov. 1 snap elections, the HDP vote declined to 10.8%, resulting in the party losing 21 of the 80 parliamentary seats it had won just five months earlier. More recently, prominent voices in the mainstream, secular-liberal media who had supported Demirtas, or at least seemed sympathetic to his cause, began to oppose him and his party. Many political commentators believe the HDP squandered the opportunity it had created earlier in the year and will never regain it.

There is a clear and simple reason for this: In the wake of the June elections, the sluggish, yet still effective peace process remained ongoing between the government and the PKK. In June, however, the process collapsed, and the three-decade-old armed conflict resumed, with PKK attacks on security forces and counterterrorism responses by the government. Soon thereafter, the PKK initiated a strategy of creating autonomous zones in certain Kurdish towns, leading to urban warfare between its forces and government troops. The result has been a mini civil war in which more than 150 Turkish soldiers and 180 PKK fighters have died. Civilians caught in the crossfire have suffered the worst, sustaining more than 260 casualties and 750 injured, according to the Human Rights Association.

Why did the peace process fail and Turkey descend into bloodshed? Naturally, the PKK blames the government, and the government blames the PKK. I have argued mutual responsibility in addition to the toxic effects of the Syrian civil war spilling into Turkey. The conflict is not a war between Turkey and the Kurds  as often incorrectly asserted in Western media  but between Turkey and the PKK. In fact, Iraqi Kurdistan and its traditionalist leader, Massoud Barzani, find themselves closer to Ankara in this conflict than to the Marxist and arrogant PKK.

In any case, the collapse of the peace process has been a major calamity for Turkey, and the HDP could have played a helpful role by calling for peace and criticizing the violence on both sides. Instead, the party chose to fully ally itself with the PKK, legitimize its violence and even advocate its maximalist goal of an independent Kurdistan. That is why the HDP quickly lost its charm beyond its traditional ethno-political base.

Demirtas had orchestrated the HDPs rise, and he also captained its fall through a series of blunders. First, he visited Moscow on Dec. 23 to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and backed the Kremlin's position surrounding the Nov. 24 downing of a Russian warplane in Turkish airspace. At a time when Turkish-Russian relations were extremely tense, this love affair in Moscow was naturally perceived and slammed by the Turkish government as treason.

Meanwhile, also in December, Demirtas had defended the trenches dug by PKK militants in Kurdish areas and the organization's strategy of establishing autonomy by force. Kurds, of course, have the political right to campaign for autonomy, but fighting for it unilaterally with arms and booby-trapped barricades is something else. As noted by none other than the maverick HDP deputy Altan Tan, most Kurds do not approve of the violent campaign to establish autonomy in their name, which simply means PKK rule.

Demirtas spoke again, in Diyarbakir on Dec. 27, at the Democratic Society Congress, a Kurdish nationalist platform. He further defended the PKK trenches and called on our people, i.e., the Kurds, to support them. This resistance will end with victory, he vowed, adding that victory could well mean Kurds having their own independent state. His remarks, which seemed to herald an endless armed struggle until the carving of an independent Kurdistan from Turkey, sent shock waves not only through government supporters, but some liberals as well who had viewed the HDP as a political bulwark against the government. One such voice, Ahmet Hakan Coskun, a popular pundit from the daily Hurriyet, wrote of having been fooled by the HDP.

The official reaction from the government condemned Demirtas for treason, and the judiciary launched an investigation into the terrorist and separatist remarks by the Kurdish politician. It will be a total disaster if the investigation ends in stripping Demirtas of legal immunity and jailing him, as happened to several Kurdish deputies in the 1990s. It would mean Turkey forgetting about reforms on the Kurdish front and reverting to Old Turkey's authoritarianism, which will only intensify the armed conflict.

Demirtas and other HDP politicians should be able to voice their views without being threatened by the judiciary. Otherwise, the already dim hope for dragging the Kurdish question from armed violence into peaceful politics will be further diminished. Demirtas and his comrades must recognize the harm they have inflicted on their own political project by proving to be nothing more than the political mouthpiece of the PKK. It is likely that they will pay for this in the next elections by losing the votes of many liberal, left-wing Turks along with war-weary Kurds who just want a peaceful life, free from guns, bombs and barricades.
January 4, 2016

Two whole days passed between when a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to Tel Avivs Dolphinarium club in June 2001 until then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued his first statement about the incident. That attack has been etched into Israels collective memory as one of the most brutal events of the second intifada. The victims were young people who had gone out to party on a Friday night. The incident left 21 dead and many dozens injured. Meanwhile, people across the country felt a deep sense of vulnerability. They were starting to think that the government was helpless in the face of this terrorist threat.

Sharon was elected prime minister in February 2001, less than half a year after the second intifada erupted. Until then, he made a point of not visiting the sites of terror attacks, not responding off the cuff with aggressive language and not getting dragged into rash military operations. As the wave of attacks continued, the public grew increasingly critical of the prime minister. This was especially apparent among Sharons base of supporters on the right.

Nevertheless, as was the case of the Dolphinarium attack, Sharon refused to be distracted or break habit. He remained restrained, even as criticism of him and his policies soared to new heights and his popularity plummeted in the polls.

"I dont believe in talk," he said at a press conference after visiting the wounded in Ichilov Hospital. I dont believe in public statements. I believe in action. In response to the criticism he was drawing from the right, he made do with a very simple statement that has since come to exemplify his particular leadership style: Restraint is also part of being strong. Many months would pass. There would be more deadly suicide attacks, culminating in the March 2002 attack on families celebrating the Passover eve Seder meal at the Park Hotel in Tel Aviv, where 30 Israelis were killed, before Sharon sent the Israel Defense Forces into the territories in Operation Defensive Shield.

The current wave of terrorism sweeping over Israel is unlike the second intifada. It is much more limited in scope, and tends to be centered around Jerusalem and across the Green Line. Though there have been dozens of attacks, Arab citizens of Israel were responsible for only three of them, while the local Arab leadership is working hard to maintain calm. Over the last weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was updated regularly about the security forces hunt for Neshat Melhem, who allegedly murdered two young people and wounded seven others on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv on Jan. 1. Netanyahu was also informed of the panic that had spread across a city that has come to reflect the sanity level of normal life in Israel. For several days now, people have been living in terror after the perpetrator managed to escape.

The prime minister needed to muster all his rhetorical skills and his adeptness with the media to face the swell of criticism  from both the right and the left  over the ongoing wave of violence and the citizens' overriding sense that they are no longer safe. Arriving at the scene of the incident on Jan. 2 accompanied by Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Police Chief Roni Alsheikh, Netanyahu delivered a divisive speech that drew criticism not only from his political rivals, but also from some media commentators.

Netanyahus comments were not intended to strengthen and unite the public in these difficult times of confusion and fear. He preferred to secure his standing among the Jewish population by maligning all of the countrys Arab citizens. With his words, he portrayed an entire sector as a group infatuated with illegal weapons, as a ticking time bomb. Though the prime minister did not blame the Arab sector for the attack  even praising those leaders who condemned it  his comments focused on how the law is not enforced in the Arab sector. His rhetoric was, in fact, rather sophisticated. Concerned and confused citizens who read between the lines would come to blame the violence on the current situation in the Arab sector.

Netanyahu was not moved by this criticism. He responded the exact same way as he did to the criticism after his statement on election day that Arabs were heading to the polling stations in droves. All he cares about is the immediate benefit. In this case, he managed to divert the discussion away from all of the security failings, which allowed the murderer to act and then escape, from the ongoing wave of violence and from the many decades of discrimination faced by Israels Arab community to focus on the number of illegal weapons kept by Israels Arab citizens.

Netanyahu then continued with his standard rhetoric, promising to take action to change the situation. In this case, he made a commitment to expand law enforcement in the Arab sector, saying, We will enter all their settlements and demand that everyone show loyalty to the states laws. But even this promise is both meaningless and infuriating. Its main purpose was to cast aspersions on Israels Arab citizens, even if only indirectly. Netanyahu has been prime minister for almost seven years now, and during that time, the Arab leadership has pleaded with him again and again to increase the police presence and law enforcement in their towns and villages and reduce the number of guns.

Another typical element in all of Netanyahus speeches is a display of leadership through his use of firm, declarative statements. In his Jan. 2 speech, he said, Everybody knows that radical Islam is engaged in wild incitement against the State of Israel within the Arab sector. This can be found in the mosques, the schools, the social networks.  I refuse to accept two states in Israel. A state of law for most citizens, and a state within a state with Islamist incitement and illegal arms that are often used in weddings, celebrations and criminal incidents.  That period is over.

Finally, Netanyahu took a page from his old playbook to make sure that the public was left hopeless and worried about its safety, believing that as long as the terror continues, there is no one better suited than him to be at the forefront of Israels leadership. The lack of hope that is a key element in the prime ministers intimidating rhetoric is essential to maintaining his political power. It is, effectively, a kind of brainwashing, and the prime minister makes a point of using it on the people of Israel at fairly regular intervals. What he is effectively doing is ensuring that the public remains his mental hostages.

Once again, the speech achieved its objectives, at least as far as Netanyahu is concerned. He is unlike Ariel Sharon. Political survival is the be-all and end-all for Netanyahu. In other words, restraint in matters pertaining to defense and hope in matters pertaining to diplomacy are hardly the tools of choice in his public toolbox.
January 4, 2016

After protesters who were angered at the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric stormed the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran, setting fire to it, a number of Iranian officials have condemned the attack. Many Iranian media outlets also questioned the motives of the embassy attackers, who have once again caused a diplomatic crisis between Iran and a foreign country.

Iranian officials condemned the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, who had advocated for more rights of Saudi Arabias Shiite minorities. However, many were quick to also condemn the attack on the Saudi Embassy.

President Hassan Rouhani referred to the embassy attackers as extremists, saying that Iran had a legal and religious duty to protect both the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the consulate in the city of Mashhad. He called their actions unjustifiable and asked the judiciary and intelligence ministry to apprehend the attackers so that this type of ugly act will be put to an end forever. More than 40 of the attackers have already been arrested.

Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani condemned the attack, saying that it increases regional tensions and makes finding paths to solutions more difficult. Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of Irans judiciary, said that the attack violates Irans legal commitments and diminishes attention on the larger issue of Nimrs execution. Hamid Baeidinejad, director general for political affairs at Irans Foreign Ministry, said that there was no doubt that the attack on the embassy was a mistake.

A number of officials, in an attempt to distance the Iranian government from the act, even suggested that the actions could be the act of infiltrators, a term recently being used to signify domestic agents of foreign powers. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi suggested that infiltrators within the protesters intentionally attacked the embassy to create discord between Shiites and Sunnis. Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said that given the number of warnings by the supreme leader against infiltrators, its possible the latest action against the Saudi Embassy could be planned and supported by agents of infiltration. Hard-line cleric Alireza Panahian also joined the chorus of those questioning the motives of the attackers, saying, There are suspicions that there are hands that tried to create a sedition.

It is doubtful that any group will take responsibility for the attack. Many officials simply refer to them as rogue elements. The 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran was carried out by leftist students who are mostly Reformists today. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution, gave his blessing after the fact. The 2011 attack on the British Embassy in Tehran resulted in its closure for four years. Nine months after that attack, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a group of university students, The feelings of the youth were correct, but their behavior was not correct. That attack was supposedly carried out by Basij students, though no official took responsibility and no one was arrested.

Khamenei has so far condemned the execution of Nimr but has not commented on the embassy attack. Some media outlets quoted a 1989 Friday prayers sermon by Khamenei when he was president and a number of protesters had gathered in front of the British Embassy in response to Salman Rushdies novel about Islam. At the time, Khamenei had said, I am communicating this to you as an official of the government, as a Friday prayer leader, as a cleric: Do not get close to embassies. If you do not like the policies of the British or Americans or anyone else, this is not the path for some people to climb over embassy walls and approach embassies. He added that attacking embassies, climbing over their walls, destroying their property or setting them on fire is certainly bad and a crime, and if someone intentionally does this it is treason.
January 4, 2016

TEHRAN, Iran  Official figures released by Iran's Interior Ministry show that the number of registered candidates for the countrys parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections next month has surged compared with previous polls, increasing by 100% and 60%, respectively. Although the Guardian Council is unlikely to approve all candidacies, the public is impatiently waiting to see whether prominent figures will get the green light. Key among these faces are Seyyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republics founder; Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Expediency Council chairman; and President Hassan Rouhani.

The dominant conviction in political circles in Tehran, based on considerations of the political alignment of the Guardian Council and previous experiences, is that the most prominent Reformist and Nationalist candidates are likely to be disqualified. The fact that 12,123 people have signed up for the parliamentary elections  1,434 of whom are women  and that 801 people have registered for the Assembly of Experts elections, has been of great interest to observers of Iran. This is especially the case considering the characteristics of Irans political parties as well as the political developments that Iran is likely to undergo in the next 10 years.

Indeed, conservatives are aware of the outcomes of a power shift in Iran. Therefore, they are quite concerned about the upcoming elections. Speculation is that if the Guardian Council approves the candidacies of Khomeini, Rafsanjani and Rouhani, this trio will be able to change the conservative face of the Assembly of Experts. Meanwhile, in the case of parliament, it appears certain that its current conservative face is about to change.

Mindful of the above, the surge in the number of registered candidates can be traced to five main motivating factors.

First is the absence of institutionalized political parties in Iran. The main and most important reason for the surge in the number of candidate registrations is that there are no real political parties in Iran. Although various political societies and factions are active and officially registered, they have been unable, for a variety of reasons, to assume an active role in society similar to that of political parties in Western Europe or North America. As long as political parties are not institutionalized in the political system of a country, each individual can be considered competent on his own. Moreover, since the norm of having political parties does not exist in Iran, some only put forth candidacies because they like the idea of going to the Ministry of Interior to register and getting the related media attention. In addition, considering the rate of unemployment and economic decline in Iran, certain educated but jobless individuals believe that becoming a member of parliament is an opportunity to gain access to better economic and political opportunities.

Second is the Reformists strategy. Supporters of the Rouhani administration, including Reformists, have adopted the strategy of introducing a lot of candidates in the hopes that if their leading figures are disqualified, lesser-known Reformists will be given the chance to run for parliament and pursue the Reformist agenda. This strategy is useful for mobilizing people in order to change the political makeup of parliament and the Assembly of Experts, both of which are currently dominated by non-Reformists. Prominent Reformists can of course wield more influence and be more effective compared to second- or third-rate colleagues. However, the Reformists are not going to give up easily. They are hoping to at least increase the political cost for the conservatives if the Guardian Council engages in mass disqualifications of registered candidates.

Third is the most important political turning point of Iran in the next 10 years. There is speculation that in the next decade, considering the age of Irans 76-year-old, ailing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country will have a new leader. Considering the authority enjoyed by the supreme leader within Irans political system, various groups are looking to secure their positions in the Assembly of Experts, which is tasked with selecting the next supreme leader. Rafsanjanis proposal to establish a leadership council instead of a single supreme leader has been criticized by the conservatives but welcomed by the Reformists and alternative political thinkers. On the other hand, if Reformists and supporters of the Rouhani administration manage to win a majority of seats in parliament, sidelined Reformists can return to politics, and thus the atmosphere of moderation and reform long promised by Rouhani can finally be institutionalized.

Fourth is womens rights campaigns. The surge in registered candidacies for the parliamentary elections is directly related to the rise in the number of social media campaigns. The most prominent of these online initiatives is the Campaign to Change the Male Face of Parliament. According to prominent political scientist Francis Fukuyama, all political parties are bound to capitalize on women. Iran is no exception to this. The level of education among Iranian women has steadily increased, as has their participation in society. As a result, their political and social awareness has expanded. Today, many Iranian women are aware that being politically passive is not beneficial, and that no change will occur through passivity.

Last but certainly not least is that the outcome of the latest presidential elections continues to impact Iranian politics. The 2013 presidential vote proved that by participating in elections and supporting a certain candidate, people can overcome some of their economic and political problems. Indeed, Iranians realized that by taking part in polls and electing Rouhani, they could help solve the nuclear crisis, which had been ongoing since 2003. It should not be overlooked that a majority of people believe that they can influence the politics of their country by casting their ballots.
January 4, 2016

Israels Arab citizens had been hoping that the countrys Jewish population would not rush to blame their entire sector for the attack on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv Jan. 1, by saying that all Arabs supported this murder and terrorism. That was what they had hoped, at least, until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on Jan. 2 at the scene of the incident, which left two dead and seven injured.

Soon after it was reported that the terrorist behind the attack was Neshat Melhem, a resident of the Arab village of Arara in Wadi Ara, northern Israel, Al-Monitor spoke with residents of his village and with people who knew him from the nearby town of Umm al-Fahm. They all tried to dispel efforts by what they called irresponsible politicians to use the murders to incite Israeli Jews against the Arab population. They had hoped that the very fact that it was Melhems father who called the police of his own accord to identify the murderer as his son, or the claim that Melhem had a history of mental illness and violence against his own family, would convince Israelis that he acted alone and on behalf of no one but himself.

Akl Khader, the principal of the school in Wadi Ara that the shooter attended, told Al-Monitor that the Melhem family is an "ordinary" Arab family and that the father is an exemplary figure in the village, who volunteers with the community police force. Even if his son was responsible for this horrible act, there is still no reason to blame the family and certainly not the village or the entire Arab population of Israel for what happened, Khader said.

When journalists showed up at the Melhem familys doorstep, the father told them, I did not teach my son to act that way, and I am sorry for what he did. When I heard about what happened, I went straight to the police and helped all of the security forces from every possible angle. According to the suspected assailants father, he also appealed to acquaintances in the neighboring villages to help the security forces catch his son before he kills again.

Meanwhile, Melhems brother Juadat was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the attack, but no details have been released yet about how he is allegedly linked to the incident.

A resident of the village told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, We dont blame the Jews for the murder of the Dawabsha family [whose home in the village of Douma was set on fire on July 31, 2015] or other incidents worthy of condemnation, so there is no reason to blame all of us for the acts of this particular individual. But then Netanyahu arrived at the scene, and the one thing that they feared most of all became their dreaded reality.

I am not willing for there to be two states in Israel  a state of law for most citizens and a state within a state with Islamist incitement and illegal arms that are often used in weddings, celebrations and criminal incidents, Netanyahu said. With that, the prime minister labeled the entire Arab sector as dangerous and inciting. What he forgot to mention was that the Arabs themselves have been warning for years that too many weapons are hoarded within their communities, and that they have been begging the state to do something about the problem. They are suffering from crime-related murders almost on a daily basis, but until the violence struck in Tel Aviv, the problem had been ignored. No one has reacted or offered a solution yet.

Knesset member Issawi Frej of the Meretz Party, who resides in Kfar Kassem, said as much in an interview with Al-Monitor in January 2014: If you dont have a gun, you dont exist. He said that many Israeli Arabs are arming themselves essentially because of the predominant sense of decline in their personal security, due to the fact that the Israeli police do not enforce the law in their towns and villages. For years, the heads of Arab municipalities pleaded with the police and the Knesset to do something to address the problem, but so far nothing has come of it. Local residents, who have suffered from crime and violence, claim that the Israeli police consider it less urgent when Arabs kill each other, so they are slower to respond.

In a discussion that took place in the Knesset on Nov. 17, 2014, the heads of the Arab local councils warned about the proliferation of weapons in the Arab sector. Mazen Ghnaim, the mayor of Sakhnin, who also serves as deputy head of the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, said at the meeting, Violence is a cancer.  We all want to do our part to eradicate the problem of illegal weapons. Knesset member Masud Ghnaim of the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties said, There is a rift with the Arab public, because we are still treated as a security threat. But if the police were to show determination and adopt a serious attitude toward resolving these problems, we will stand alongside them. Despite those warnings, nothing happened.

But there is one other detail that makes what Netanyahu said even more detached from reality. Melhem committed the attack with a weapon that he stole from his father. He used an Italian-made Spectre submachine gun that his father has a license for because he works for a security firm. Hence, no matter how serious the issue of the proliferation of guns in the Arab sector, it has nothing to do with the attack in Tel Aviv. In that sense, Netanyahus recent statement is reminiscent of what he said on the day of the last election on March 17, 2015: Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out." Once again, the prime ministers incitement has nothing to do with the facts. He has made every Israeli Arab a suspect, if not for terrorism per se, then for supporting or encouraging it. And if not that, then for possessing an illegal weapon.

There have been dozens of knife attacks, vehicular attacks and shootings since early October 2015, but to date, the terrorists behind just three of those attacks were Israeli Arabs, and they supposedly went through a process of religious radicalization, leaving them with a worldview similar to that of the Islamic State (IS). The two previous Israeli Arab assailants were Alaa Ziwad from Umm al-Fahm, who was responsible for a stabbing and car-ramming attack near Kibbutz Gan Shmuel on Oct. 11, in which a female soldier was seriously injured, and Mohannad Khalil Salam al-Okbi from an unrecognized Bedouin village near the locality of Hura, who was behind the Oct. 18 attack in Beersheba, in which a soldier and an Eritrean asylum seeker were killed, the latter by Israelis who apparently either out of panic or anger shot him, mistakenly identifying him as the attacker.

The numbers show that this is a marginal phenomenon, limited to a few individuals, with few to no ties to their communities. The truth is that most Israeli Arabs are worried about the problem. They see it as a genuine threat that must be fought  the sooner the better.

In general, Israels Arab sector, which makes up about one-fifth of the countrys entire population, is in the midst of a process of secularization, much of which can be attributed to the influence of Israels secular Jewish population. More people in Israels Arab villages are leaving religion than returning to Islam. The war against the hoarding of guns, violence, the infiltration of messages from IS, poverty, discrimination and the sense of alienation that young people feel toward the Israeli establishment are all important issues for the Arab population.

Day after day, their leaders plead with the state to help them in their struggle. Instead of building bridges to the Israeli Arab community and offering them the sense of belonging that they yearn for, Netanyahu is staying true to form and doing the exact opposite.
January 4, 2016

In light of Israels increasing military incursions in the West Bank in response to the ongoing uprising, there has been growing talk since the end of November about the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Israel Dec. 6 that the alternative to President Mahmoud Abbas "could be the black flag of [the Islamic State].

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat surprised observers by warning Dec. 12 that IS will gain further support in the Arab world should Israel continue to obstruct the establishment of a Palestinian state. According to Erekat, should the PA dissolve, IS will take the place of moderate Palestinians and start killing Israelis.

Mohammed Shtayyeh, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, stressed Dec. 10 that there are no cells affiliated with al-Qaeda or IS in Palestinian territories so far, but any attempt on the part of Israel to attack the PA could change the current equation. Some consider his words a threat that IS will attack Israel should the PA collapse.

Hafez Barghouti, the editor-in-chief of al-Hayat al-Jadida who has close ties with the PA leadership, said Sept. 11 that IS will be the alternative should the PA collapse and Palestinians would be left alone to fight the Israeli forces. He added that IS could attack Israel in an attempt to gain popularity among Palestinians.

These statements are striking, coming from prominent officials in the PA. Some suspect that they were coordinated with Abbas in person to try to pressure Israel to return to the negotiating table after a hiatus of several years and to warn Israel that any alternative to the PA could lead to IS  a risk Israel is not willing to take.

A Palestinian security source wishing to remain anonymous was quoted by Yedioth Ahranoth as saying Dec. 25 that 22 IS activists had been arrested in the West Bank and held under administrative detention. The individuals came from the towns of Qalqilya and Bethlehem, the report stated.

But this talk of IS being the only alternative to the PA may not be accurate. Other Palestinian factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad may also be alternatives, despite Israels clear rejection of these factions. On Dec. 16, analysts speaking to Israel Today expressed fears about Hamas potential control over the West Bank should the PA collapse.

On Dec. 26, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made an unprecedented threat against Israel, saying that Palestine will be the graveyard rather than the state of the Jews. Perhaps this belligerence lent a little more credibility to the PAs warnings.

Najat Abu Bakr, a member of Fatahs Palestinian Legislative Council in Jenin in the northern West Bank, told Al-Monitor that the ideas of IS are spreading among Palestinian women in the West Bank. She said she has noticed in her daily encounters during lectures and seminars in rural areas that these women have adopted religious ideas promoted by IS.

At the same time, however, the PAs warnings about an imminent danger from IS are not true and might have been orchestrated by some Palestinian officials to pressure Israel to make further concessions in future negotiations, she said.

On Dec. 27, the Hebrew-language news site Reshet Bet revealed that Israel had rejected a proposition by the PA in July 2015 to enter secret negotiations on the demarcation of the Palestinian states borders.

A survey conducted by the Arab World for Research & Development in July 2015 showed that 93% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank believe IS does not represent true Islam and that its practices as portrayed in the media are not justifiable and not grounds for building a true Islamic state. Nevertheless, some Palestinians may be inclined toward IS, especially uneducated women living in rural areas, where polls cannot reach.

In light of the expansion of Islamic organizations in general, and IS in particular, there is a chance of a large-scale armed operation against Israel. However, should this scenario play out, Israel is likely to point the gun at West Bank Palestinians who are not remotely associated with IS.

Others on the Palestinian scene are unmoved by the talk about the potential emergence of IS in the West Bank.

Nayef Rajoub, a senior Hamas leader in the city of Hebron, told Al-Monitor, The PAs warning about IS cells in Palestinian territories are not serious. They aim to accentuate the PAs tutelage and control of the Palestinian people. This was the case of Afghan President [Hamid] Karzai, who called on Jan. 4, 2012, for the support of the international community for fear of the Talibans rise in his country in light of the failure of the Afghan states political and military efforts. This is not to mention the warnings of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about the return of the advocates of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Iraqs political arena. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not mentally or ideologically inclined to accept the ideas promoted and espoused by IS  although some Palestinians individually support IS ideas. However, the PA is circulating such warnings to pressure Israel not to sever ties with it.

The PA may believe that IS does not pose an actual threat to Israel, for IS militants have been deployed since 2011 on Israel's southern border in the Sinai Peninsula and in the north in the Syrian Golan Heights for years, and have conducted no armed attacks on the Israeli forces.

Israel, on the other hand, considers the real threat to be the armed Palestinian factions, particularly Hamas. Over the past few weeks, the Israeli security forces have been making concerted efforts to contain Hamas. Israel announced the arrest of a Hamas-affiliated armed cell in Jerusalem on Dec. 26.

Abdel Sattar Qassem, a political science professor at An-Najah National University in Nablus, told Al-Monitor, The PAs warnings about the emergence of IS are empty threats. Israels intelligence and security apparatuses and sources are far greater and more advanced than the PAs. In fact, Israel should be the party to sound the alarm and warn the PA about any imminent threats by IS, not the other way around. Therefore, it shrugged off all warnings to this effect. With these claims, the PA is trying to present itself as part of the international and Islamic coalitions against IS.

The West Bank is under the control of three powerful security forces: Israel, the PA (through coordination with Israel) and Jordan. For IS to emerge and grow in the Palestinian territories does not seem plausible in light of the tight security grip and the security coordination between the three parties. This is true despite the emergence of a few cells, such as the one that was dismantled in the West Bank in March 2015, or the arrests of individuals espousing the group's ideology. But these militants have not been able to take action on the ground in the absence of a supporting organizational structure.

Palestinian and Israeli decision-makers may not have a unified stance about the IS risk in the West Bank. The PA warns Israel about IS potential rise should it collapse, while Israel does not show any sign of concern. However, it is in the interest of both parties not to allow IS' emergence in the West Bank despite their political differences.
January 4, 2016

WASHINGTON  With long-sought UN Syria peace talks set for later this month at stake as well as the wider fight against the Islamic State, Washington and its allies were scrambling Jan. 4 to try to stem the fallout from Saudi Arabias abrupt decision to sever diplomatic relations with Iran following attacks on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in the wake of the Saudis execution of a dissident Shiite cleric.

The State Department, responding to Riyadhs Jan. 3 announcement that it was severing diplomatic relations with Iran and giving Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country, urged maintaining diplomatic engagement and avoiding actions that could further inflame regional sectarian tensions.

What we want to see is tensions caused by these executions reduced, diplomatic relations restored, so that the leadership in the region can focus on other pressing issues, State Department spokesman John Kirby told journalists at the State Department on Jan. 4. We have consistently urged everyone to deescalate tensions

Secretary of State John Kerry worked the phones as he returned to Washington from a brief New Years vacation in Idaho, during which much of the painstaking diplomatic work he and allies had done the past five months to try to get both Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the Syria peace table looked at risk of being destroyed. Kerry spoke with Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Jan. 3 and with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir on Jan. 4, diplomatic sources said. He also spoke with UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, who recently announced renewed talks between the Syrian regime and opposition would be held in Geneva on Jan. 25.

De Mistura, who was traveling to Riyadh on Jan. 4 to meet with Syrian opposition representatives before heading to Iran later this week, expressed alarm that the newly emerged diplomatic crisis could set back his efforts.

The sudden and acute crisis in Saudi-Iranian relations is a very worrisome development, he told The New York Times in an email Jan. 4. We must at all costs avoid that it produces a chain of violent consequences in the region.

While condemning the attacks on diplomatic facilities, former senior US officials who worked on the Middle East expressed puzzlement and dismay at the Saudi decision to carry out the execution of Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, which was certain to stoke sectarian reactions across the region at such a sensitive moment.

It is very unclear why the Saudis decided to do this now, former Obama administration Middle East official Ilan Goldenberg told Al-Monitor by email Jan. 4. A complete puzzle.

The US definitely thinks that Saudi-Iranian competition is one of the most destabilizing trends right now in the region and is making it very difficult to deescalate, Goldenberg, now director of the Middle East security program at the Center for New American Security, said. They view it as a major impediment and challenge. And it is not clear if there is much we can do about reducing these tensions."

He added, It remains to be seen if this kills the Syria process. But it is hard to imagine the Saudis and Iranians continuing to sit in the same room.

We are kind of back to square one, Philip Gordon, the former Obama White House top Middle East adviser, told Al-Monitor on Jan. 4. To the degree that people hopefully wanted to see the Vienna process succeed, it required that Iran and Saudi Arabia be willing to sit at the same table and talk about a cease-fire and political process.  Our approach to the region has depended on a Saudi-Iran modus vivendi. That is all blown out of the water, at least for now.

Saudi Arabia, in carrying out the execution and severing relations with Iran, may have been trying to send messages to both domestic and international audiences about its resolve against what Riyadh perceives as Iranian expansionism in the region, but it may have miscalculated how the messages would be received, he said.

It is a sign of insecurity, Gordon, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. I do worry that it is a miscalculation.

One of the things the Saudis worry about is that people [including in the US administration] come to the conclusion that Iran, while we have problems with it, could be a partner  [and] we should start working with them, he said. With this, the Saudis are saying, that wont work  choose sides.

I dont think the Obama administration is  going to decide, lets double down on Saudi, pull the plug on the Iran nuclear deal and militarily intervene in Syria, he said. The administration feels like they have already been trying to reassure the Saudis. So how much do you need to do?  At what point does it work?

Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said the latest rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations puts a damper on already low prospects for success at the forthcoming Syria peace talks.

Chances for success at peace talks in January/February 2016 are pretty low to begin with, Ford, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said by email Jan. 4. Neither the Russians/Iranians on one side, and [the] Turks/Saudis/Qataris on the other side appear prepared to exert serious pressure on their clients in Syria to make hard concessions that would be necessary to reach a deal this year.

The latest tension between the Saudis and Iranians will likely further entrench these two actors in their current policies, Ford said. Indeed, I would anticipate that the Saudis/Turks will boost aid to the Syrian rebels in the days ahead if they have not already done so.

Finally, it is also important to note that American leverage with the Saudis appears limited now, Ford added. If the Americans were informed in advance about Sheikh Nimr's impending execution and despite Washington remonstrations the Saudis went ahead with the execution, then we have the latest example. Similarly, Washington appears to have little to no leverage with the Russians and the Iranians.

Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute said that Saudi decision-making had always been somewhat opaque to the United States, but that the government under King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud seemed to be more in the grip of groupthink and lacks the moderating voices such as that of the late former Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.

Now [decision-making in Saudi Arabia] is even more opaque and restricted to a very small group of people, Slim told Al-Monitor. There is more of a groupthink process going on.  And we do not have the balancing voices within that leadership group.

Nevertheless, the United States should do what it can to step up engagement with Riyadh and Iran to try to prevent the situation from escalating, Slim advised.

I think across the board we need to use whatever leverage we [United States] have with the Saudis, with the Iranians  [and] to try to push leaders in the region who have access and who are respected by Saudi decision-makers  to use their good offices to send strong messages to the Saudis and [the] Iranians  to stop this escalation spiral in its tracks, Slim said.
January 4, 2016

Red lines have been a fixture in Ankaras policies toward the Kurds for decades. Blurring or shifting, thinning or thickening, decreasing or increasing, myriad red lines were drawn as Ankara grappled with the painful consequences of the Kurdish problem and sought to keep it under control instead of resolving it. The more the problem became regionalized, the more the red lines crossed borders.

Another such red line was drawn in June 2015 after the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), seized the town of Tell Abyad on the Turkish border, which allowed it to link the Kurdish cantons of Kobani and Jazira. Ankaras red line began from the Syrian town of Jarablus, on the western bank of the Euphrates right at the point where the river enters Syrian territory from Turkey, and runs southward along the same bank. The western side of the red line was held by the Islamic State (IS), with the 90-kilometer (56-mile) border stretch from Jarablus westward as the groups only remaining land link with the outside world.

On the eastern side of the red line, i.e., the Euphrates eastern bank, the Kurdish canton of Kobani was controlled by the PYD, the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey is battling on its own territory.

Ankaras red line was meant to hold back the PYD, not IS. Conversely, if IS had managed to capture Kobani, Ankara would have hardly been annoyed, as evidenced by the partial IS invasion of the city in 2014 when the Turkish leadership showed no sign of discontent. But if the PYD was to advance to the western bank of the river to oust IS from Jarablus  thus crossing the red line  Ankara would have been very much annoyed, for Turkish decision-makers opined that the PYD was there to stay and was thus more dangerous than IS, which they saw as a temporary force in the area.

The rest of the world, however, drew the opposite conclusion from the IS-PYD comparison. In a first since World War II, all major powers were in consensus in diagnosing an urgent and immediate threat to global security, with the threat being IS. In a similar consensus, they saw the secular PYD as the only force that could successfully counter and push back this threat in northern Syria.

As a result, the red line Ankara drew in June managed to survive the worlds realities only until Dec. 25, when the Syrian Democratic Forces, a YPG-dominated coalition including Arab and other local ethnic forces, accomplished their first objective only two days after mounting an offensive against IS south of Kobani on Dec. 23, backed by US air power. The coalition took the strategically important Tishreen Dam, only 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) from the Turkish border, and then got a foothold on the Euphrates western bank.

The dams capture broke a key link on the route connecting the jihadi capital, Raqqa, to Turkey, which had gained crucial importance for IS after its loss of Tell Abyad. The alternative link for IS now  a route arching from the west of the dam lakes to the southeast  is both longer and risky. If the offensive advances to capture Manbij, a town 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Turkish border, the territorial link between Raqqa and Turkey will be practically broken, and IS will be isolated along the 90-kilometer border stretch.

With Ankaras red line breached, the first reaction of Turkish officials was to claim that not the PYD but Arab forces had crossed to the western bank of the Euphrates. Watching how its red lines  the product of misguided policies  lose their meaning in the face of regional realities is certainly not easy for Ankara to stomach.

For the rest of the world, meanwhile, the problem is an Ankara that constantly postpones to do its part in the struggle against IS due to its long-standing Kurdish policy, which has now become a stumbling block for everyone.

One key reason why Ankara saw the PYD as a threat greater than IS was its fear of the geopolitical risks bound to arise if a long stretch of Syrian territory along the border, running westward from Iraq, fell under the control of a Kurdish organization affiliated with the PKK, which is considered a threat to Turkeys unity. The war against the PKK inside Turkey further magnified these risks for Ankara. Second, Ankara worried that the Kurdish cantons the PYD established would strengthen its own Kurds drive for autonomy. Should the Kurdish cantons win recognition as part of a political settlement in Syria, the Kurdish problem in Turkey  home to the largest Kurdish population in the Middle East  will stick out even more prominently as it dies after decades of nonsolution. In short, it was Turkeys own Kurdish problem that forced it to draw a red line along the Euphrates western bank.

The Euphrates represents a separating line not only in Syria but in Turkey as well, marking the historical and geographical epicenter of the Kurdish problem, which stretches eastward from the river. Beyond the massive destruction and civilian deaths in urban areas, Ankaras war on the PKK since July has also been destroying the emotional bridges over the Euphrates connecting the Kurdish-majority east to western Turkey.

One signal of the breaking bonds came from Diyarbakir, whose ancient Sur district has for weeks been the theater of curfews and clashes, with the security forces battling PKK militants with heavy weapons. On Dec. 26, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), an umbrella organization for Kurdish civic society groups, convened an emergency meeting in Diyarbakir. Speaking at the gathering, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples Democratic Party, said, This resistance will lead to victory. The Kurds from now on will hold the political will in their lands. The Kurds will perhaps have an independent state, a federal state, cantons or autonomous regions. True to style, the Turkish media highlighted Demirtas emphasis on an independent state.

The DTK stirred even more indignation in western Turkey the following day with a final declaration that announced a decision for autonomy for the Kurds. The 14-point declaration called for the creation of democratic autonomous regions across Turkey, to be governed by elected autonomous organs, running the realm of education among others. The other fields it listed for autonomous governance included health services, the courts and justice affairs, transport, energy, public order and budget management.

Though the DTK decision is hardly applicable today, it is significant for showing that autonomy will be the minimal condition the Kurdish movement will impose on any future negotiations for a settlement.

At present, however, even a cease-fire seems a distant prospect. The war will go on. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed that the PKK militants will "choke in the ditches" they have dug in residential areas to keep the security forces away. Cemil Bayik, the co-chair of the PKK-dominated Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), responded in kind last week. No reason exists currently to end the armed struggle. Rather, the civil war in Turkey will intensify in the coming months, he said.

The Dec. 22 mortar attack on the tarmac of Istanbuls Sabiha Gokcen International Airport raises the specter of terrorist threats in Turkeys big cities, emanating from the Kurdish conflict. The attack, which killed a cleaner and slightly damaged five passenger planes, was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), which has claimed deadly attacks on civilians, including foreign tourists, in previous years. Though the Kurdish movement rejects any links with it, TAK is believed to be nonexistent as a group, being merely a name the PKK uses as a front for terrorist attacks in urban centers. TAKs claim of responsibility came in a statement, which described the mortar attack as a response to the fascist assaults devastating Kurdish cities and the beginning of our operations in the new period.

Turkey was ushered into 2016 with pledges of more bloodshed by both sides. In his New Years message, Erdogan said 3,100 terrorists were rendered ineffective in 2015, and the security forces will continue to purge both mountains and cities from terrorists, inch by inch. In its own message, the KCK vowed to keep up the war in the metropolises  i.e., the big cities in western Turkey  and mount a fedayeen resistance unprecedented in the world.

Sustaining the war between the PKK and the government forces threatens to spiral it out of control for both sides. As a result, whatever the consequences of the grave developments that would take place, Turkeys real red lines  its borders  might be opened up for discussion.
January 5, 2016

During the Arbaeen celebrations between the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, I came across a commander with a wound on his arm. Sabih al Hajj Abu Yahia from Basra is a founder of the Zeinab Akile Brigades, a part of the Popular Mobilization Units. Telling me why he joined the war, he said, We couldnt allow Sistanis wishes to go unheeded.

After issuing a fatwa, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani mobilized the militias after the fall of Mosul in June 2014 and stopped the advance of the Islamic State (IS) to Baghdad.

The Popular Mobilization Units, with the strength of 120,000 fighters belonging to different organizations, most notably Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Badr Brigade, Ali al-Akbar Brigade, Saraya al-Salam, Iraqi Hezbollah, Saraya al-Jihad and the Iraqi Islamic Movement, was accorded legal status and attached to the Prime Ministry. It is Shiite dominated but also has Sunni and Christian fighters. Abu Yahia, who was in the clashes with IS at Ramadi, has been spending his convalescence in a tent set up on the occasion of Arbaeen to assist Shiite visitors. Frequent sightings of the Popular Mobilization Units vehicles at Karbala, Najaf, Baghdad, Samarra, Tikrit and Baiji give a good idea about the size of the units.

Militiamen are annoyed when asked if they are getting assistance from Iran and the involvement of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Quds Force. Abu Yahia, who fought in Ramadi with 1,500 fighters he recruited from Basra and Hille, said, We get nothing from Iran. They invited us to Iran and we went, held discussions. Soleimani was an adviser, but not anymore. Our weapons and expenses of our fighters are met by the Iraqi government.

Kassem Mosleh, the commander of the Ali al-Akbar Brigade that I visited at Karbala, had just come back from the front. A former commando, Mosleh was also unhappy with my questions about Iran. Qasem Soleimani served as an adviser, expressed his views but had nothing to do in the field. I didnt take a penny of assistance from Iran. Iraq is buying its own weapons. Iraqi businessmen contribute also. After the victories at Jurf al-Sakhar and Balad, the government began helping us. Our expenses now are met by the state and the Imam Hussein shrine. Of 5,000 soldiers under my command, 3,200 of them get a monthly salary of $800. Mosleh refused to distinguish between Sunni and Shiite fighters. He said 1,200 of his soldiers are Sunnis. He added, We are not an extension of any party. Thousands of Sunnis are fighting alongside us. Some Sunni tribes wanted to join [the Popular Mobilization Units], but the United States discouraged them by promising them weapons. At the end, the US did not deliver as many weapons as expected. Those who received the US weapons did not succeed. Jubur, Shammar and Azze tribes said they would march to Mosul with us, but the US wasnt allowing them. The US will give them weapons only if they dont join [the Popular Mobilization Units].

The Iraqis have a deep distrust of the United States struggle against IS. They generally feel the United States is stalling the Iraqis. Mosleh is among those who think the United States is playing both sides. He said they wanted to ask for Russian help instead of help from the Americans, but Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi couldnt stand up against the Americans.

Like many Iraqis, Mosleh was furious with Turkey. Turkey is helping IS. One day they will regret it. Look, your people handed over their Mosul consulate to IS to conceal their support of IS. That was a ploy. Iraq is suffering because of its neighbors, of America and Israel. Also, it is a lie that Massoud Barzani is fighting [IS], he said.

Curiously, traveling north from Baghdad in Sunni areas you frequently see Shiite Yaa Hussain banners hanging on electric poles.

Shiite commander: Mosul decision will be made by Iraqis, not the United States

Balad was destroyed by clashes. The Sunni town of Qadisiyah was badly damaged. In Awja, where Saddam Hussein is buried, the flag of the Popular Mobilization Units is flying. Maysem Juburi of the University of Tikrit said, We were closed for a year. We continued our education at Kirkuk. We have 20,000 students. Now security is assured and our university is open. Today, Tikrit tribes are with the government. [The Popular Mobilization Units] supported the people of Tikrit, opened the schools and enabled people to return to their homes.

The mosque of the martyrs in Tikrit that IS had turned into a military post is rubble. Mazraat paid heavily for the war. At Baiji, the Fettah Mosque used by IS is also destroyed.

At Baiji, I found Col. Ali Hamdani, the front commander of the Ali al-Akbar Brigade, meeting some Sunni visitors. Hamdani fled abroad after the coup attempt against Saddam in 1991 and returned in 2003 and rejoined the army. He said, After [IS] captured Salahuddin, Ramadi and Mosul, their dirty hands were reaching for Baghdad. With Sistanis fatwa, their spine was broken. It was a good lesson for people here as well as the Americans and the British. Sistanis fatwa was not only for Shiites. He said, Sunnis are not our brothers, but are our blood. That was a fatwa for the defense of the country. According to Hamdani, IS has lost most of its support among Sunni tribes, but some still support it under pressure. Hamdani said he found Turkeys fear of Shiites entering Mosul as baseless.

First of all, it is not factual. [The Popular Mobilization Units] is not a Shiite militia, but a force defending Iraq. Turkey is the No. 1 country supporting IS. Our Sunni brothers are fighting on the front lines together with us. Neither Turkey nor the US can stop [the Popular Mobilization Units], because we are the ones who make the decisions. We own this country. When the time comes, the operation will be launched. They told us we couldnt recover Salahuddin, but here we are. When the government decides, we will take action.

Sunni commander: We united for Iraq

Hussein Ali Abdullah, who leads the Jubur tribe at al-Alem, fully approved Hamdanis words about Sunnis. Abdullah, who now commands the Sunni force, told his story: After Sistanis fatwa, I joined the Ali al-Akbar Brigade with four of my sons. There are 500 Sunnis in my unit. We had people also from Shammar and Kaysi tribes who joined us. Together with Ali al-Akbar Brigade we attacked the center of Salahuddin. Sunnis, Shiites and Christians of Iraq are united. God willing, we will crush [IS].

Abdullah denied allegations that there was ethnic cleansing of Sunnis. No, [the Popular Mobilization Units] is highly ethical. They protect families, help people, protect their properties. With [Ali al-Akbar Brigades] efforts, electricity and water systems were repaired. Schools opened. You talk of looting. Look at this building we are using. Before we moved in, we found its owner and asked for his permission. There may have been some looting, but those people dont represent us. We dont keep them among us, he said.

According to Abdullah, there are 500 Sunnis each in the Badr Brigade and Asaib Ahl al-Haq Brigade attached to the Popular Mobilization Units. In the Salahuddin Brigade, made up mostly of Sunnis, there are 2,500 Sunni fighters. In Anbar, some tribes are assisting the Popular Mobilization Units.

I asked Abdullah what happened to those who were expecting IS to be a just organization. He replied, True, there are some tribes that gave spiritual support to [IS] because they wanted to topple the Nouri al-Maliki government. They thought that would have ended their misery and oppression. But they realized that [IS] was confiscating their property, blowing up houses and prayer halls, making life miserable. They have woken up.

At the end of the interview Abdullah had a message for Turkish people. He said, They must not buy the oil [IS] is selling, even if it is cheap. When Iraq stabilizes, we will give you free oil. They extract oil for $10 a barrel and carry it to Turkey in tankers. When Turks were going to hajj pilgrimage, before they used to pass through here. We used to host them. We are one nation. For the sake of those glorious days, we have to support each other.

Christian commander: We are fighting shoulder to shoulder with Shiites

Another factor easing the prejudice against the Popular Mobilization Units is the Christians. Of the 1.5 million Christians in Iraq in 2003, today there are 400,000 left. With the fall of Mosul, they evacuated that region. Now they formed their own Babylon Brigade. Capt. Johnny, one of their commanders, was actually a truck driver. He didnt want to give his real name. Capt. Johnny, who is based at Camp Speicher with his troops, met me at the entrance of a military base near Samarra. He started by saying, I came from Tel Keppe, which is attached to Mosul. Following Sistanis fatwa, we met with our leader Rayan al-Kildani and decided to set up our own force; 1,200 people signed up. We have bases at Hamrin Mountain and at Speicher. We get our weapons from [the Popular Mobilization Units].

When asked if Soleimani had met them when he was in this area, he said, Yes, we met him, but I cant tell you what we discussed. I trust you, but dont look for Iran behind everything. We didnt get any help from Iran. Iraq is buying weapons from many countries with its own money and distributes them. People are with us, and we get most assistance from Haram [Imam Ali Shrine]. If Iran helps, we will be honored.

About their relations with other groups, Capt. Johnny said, We fight shoulder to shoulder with Shiites. Shiites dont live in Tikrit and Baiji, but they gave their lives to save those towns from [IS]. We dont distinguish between Sunni-Shiite or Muslim-Christian. We are one Iraq.

Iraq is fragmented politically and socially. The IS threat was instrumental in uniting some elements, but it wont be easy for sectarian enmities to end.
January 4, 2016

Reports that the Turkish government plans to destroy the Kurdish movement in Turkey, similar to Sri Lankas crackdown on the Tamil Tigers, seem credible to Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), who also cautions that any such operation is doomed to fail. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Demirtas also said Ankaras security clampdown on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and increasing pressure on the HDP go hand in hand with efforts to suppress Kurdish self-rule in Syria, including the use of the Islamic State (IS) as a proxy. Demirtas asserted that Kurdish empowerment in the Middle East has reached a point of no return and that the international powers involved in the region should seek to develop strategic ties with the Kurds.

The HDP leader defended his recent visit to Russia, which Ankara condemned as treason, and said the Kurds had no intention of becoming a Russian tool in the ongoing crisis between Ankara and Moscow. Commenting on a visit to the United States in early December, he said the HDP has credibility in Washington, although he believes the United States would be bound to side with Turkey if it had to choose between Ankara and the Kurds.

A graduate of Ankara Universitys law faculty, Demirtas began his career as a lawyer and served as head of the Human Rights Associations Diyarbakir branch before entering politics. In 2010, he was elected chairman of the Peace and Democracy Party and retained this post when the HDP succeeded the party in June 2014. He quickly gained popularity beyond the Kurdish electorate in southeastern Turkey and ran in the 2014 presidential elections, winning 9.7% of the vote. In parliamentary elections held in June 2015, his popularity and charisma were instrumental in helping the HDP garner a historic 13.1% of votes. In the snap elections conducted in November, however, the HDP dropped to 10.7% amid renewed clashes between Turkish security forces and the PKK.

The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: After your visit to Russia, you were openly targeted by the government, including Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. You were accused of treason. Is Russia trying to use the Kurdish card against Turkey? What do you think is Moscows game plan, and where do you stand on this issue?

Demirtas: I had also visited Russia last year and met with the deputy foreign minister. No doubt, Russia has certain calculations and policies regarding the Middle East, Syria and Turkey. Yet, we do not have any outlook that would make us a tool of those policies, nor has Russia exhibited an approach to that effect. During our meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov specifically indicated that they did not see us as a Kurdish card in Syria, Iraq and Turkey. In any case, its out of the question for the HDP to enter into any relationship against Turkey. The prime minister and the government are criticizing the HDPs diplomatic activities in a very emotional and childish manner through a policy aimed for domestic consumption. The government itself is eager to establish contact with Russia. It drives them crazy to see the HDP held in high regard at this time. In reality, they know very well that this is not and cannot be treason.

Al-Monitor: Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says ties with Russia are going to improve, but Russia keeps imposing sanctions. How are these bilateral tensions influencing Kurdish politics?

Demirtas: Turkey wants to mend fences with Russia. The AKP [Justice and Development Party] is, so to speak, eager to be a traitor, but Russia seems not to be in a hurry. [Moscow] wants to make the most of the grave mistake the AKP government committed. It doesnt want to make do only with retaliation. They will pursue a process of sanctions extending over time to increase Russias influence in the Middle East and curb Turkeys. Therefore, a cooling of tensions is not something that Russia really desires at the moment.

Al-Monitor: And what were the visits benefits for Kurdish politics?

Demirtas: Anywhere I go, I say the HDP is a party spearheading change in Turkey. Thats the basis on which we try to develop our relations. I also say it should be recognized that unlike in the previous century, the Kurds have become a political power and a political actor in the broader Middle East, and they will increasingly use this power toward liberation and sovereignty building. I say this in Turkey as well. In other words, developing strategic relations with the Kurds should become a goal for regional and international powers, because the Kurds and Kurdistan will be realities of the Middle East in the coming century.

The Kurds did not have a state in the preceding century. They failed to acquire any kind of sovereignty when the Middle East was carved up 100 years ago. Yet they didnt fiddle the century away. They got organized, gained strength and raised their awareness, preparing well for the new century. States around the world have only recently begun to realize this. The United States began to notice the Kurds after the [2003] invasion of Iraq, Russia with the Syrian war and Europe, especially Britain and Germany, only recently. The well-organized, impressive power of a people fighting IS effectively has gotten everyones attention, and everyone realizes that this power cannot be subjected to subjugation through a ploy like the Sykes-Picot agreement in the last century. No issue in Syria and Iraq is debated without Kurdistan today, and everybody is compelled to take this into account.

Al-Monitor: Some say the United States will opt for Turkey if it is forced to make a choice between Turkey and the Kurds. Is the Kurdish movement taking precautions against such a possibility?

Demirtas: That US-Turkish relations are very durable and cannot be easily broken is a fact. Everyone should bear this in mind when making their moves. The United States will definitely choose Turkey if it has to make a clear choice between Turkey and the Kurds. What matters here is to what extent the Kurds can stay on their feet through self-power [i.e., self-confidence]. There is no other way of taking precautions. The international coalition has actively supported the Kurdish forces in Syria, but a clear position is yet to emerge on whether or not this support will lead to [some sort of] status for the Kurds. The sensitivities of Turkey and Iran, in particular, are being taken into account by the United States and Russia. The only power balance that could break this is Kurdish self-power in Iraq and Syria. It would be naive to expect that the Kurds will acquire status by relying on international balances only. I do not see the Kurds as being naive and taking confidence from that  I say that for the Kurds nothing will be the same again.

Al-Monitor: What did you discuss with Russia at the height of tensions between Turkey and Russia?

Demirtas: The tensions between the two countries were caused not by the HDP, but the AKPs madness. The Russian plane was not shot down under some parliamentary decision also approved by the HDP. The AKP made this decision alone, and the president and the prime minister even said they regretted it. They made some statements aimed at backpedaling. The HDP would be equally declared a traitor today if it went to Greece, Armenia or Iran or makes contact with Damascus or Baghdad. There is no neighboring country left with which Turkey remains on good terms. The Erdogan-Davutoglu team itself brought these relations to their current state. And we are not supposed to pursue a diplomatic policy dependent on or confined to the disarray they have caused in foreign relations. Yes, Turkey has been brought almost to a state of war with Russia, but we are not going to be a hostage of this misguided policy while the government itself is pleading [behind the scenes] to mend fences. With Lavrov, we discussed developments in the Middle East and Syria and the way the Kurds should be approached. There are many [Turkish] employees, employers and students in Russia, and we conveyed our views on their current situation and future. We expressed readiness to do our part to decrease the tensions between Turkey and Russia. It was a fruitful and positive meeting.

Al-Monitor: Was your trip to the United States similarly fruitful?

Demirtas: The United States wields influence in the Middle East, and our policies should have a perspective acknowledging this reality. It was neither the Kurds nor the HDP that invited the United States to the Middle East, but they are here. So, we cannot bury our heads in the sand. While in the United States, we tried to understand what the United States is trying to do [in the Middle East]. We conveyed the HDPs proposed solutions concerning Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan and our policies on a democratic settlement in Turkey. We saw the Americans give credence to the HDPs word in cases where there was a discrepancy between what we said and information they had received from the field. They now acknowledge the Kurds as an undeniable reality and power, developing their policies accordingly. The Kurds are not being steered by the United States; rather, the Kurdish struggle is shaping the United States Kurdish policy in the Middle East.

Al-Monitor: The Syrian Democratic Forces have crossed to the west of the Euphrates, which Turkey had declared a red line. Do you think Turkey can step back from this red line?

Demirtas: The Syrian Democratic Forces are conducting operations to the west of the Euphrates, and there are Kurdish forces among them. Turkeys sensitivities on this issue have been expressed at the official level. It is pointless to stir this issue too much. The situation on the ground is what matters. In my opinion, this should not be turned into an issue of irritation in Turkey anymore. If Turkey doesnt see this as the advance of the [Kurdish] Peoples Protection Units [YPG], its pointless for us to insist on describing it as a YPG advance. Ousting IS from the region is what matters.

Al-Monitor: Why do you think IS has come to haunt the Kurds?

Demirtas: Erdogan describes IS as an international hit man and subcontractor, which is true. What Erdogan conceals, however, is that Turkey has an arm or a wing in this hit man-subcontractor organization,  a group waging a proxy war on Turkeys behalf. Im sure [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, too, has occasionally used this organization. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, everyone, has waged a proxy war [in Syria]. Previously, it was Jabhat al-Nusra. These groups emerged from the Free Syrian Army [FSA], which all Western countries, and especially Turkey, have backed as a so-called moderate opposition. The FSA after a while shed the radical elements in its ranks, and they evolved into the current organizations  entirely with the support of myriad countries with schemes for Syria. Everyone has gotten IS to conduct attacks and operations that serve their own interests. Turkey has done this, too. Turkey has considerably supported and used IS. The IS assaults on the Kurds have served both Turkey and Assads interests, so Ankara and Damascus have remained silent on the issue.

Al-Monitor: Some claim the extensive operations currently targeting the Kurdish movement in Turkey are linked to developments in Rojava [term Kurds use to refer to western Kurdistan in Syria]. Do you agree?

Demirtas: These are processes that directly affect each other. The freedom drive and the victories against IS under the leadership of the [Kurdish] Democratic Union Party [in Syria] are making Turkey anxious. Turkey sees the existence of a Kurdish entity there [in Syria] as a future threat. Kurdish empowerment in Turkey is similarly perceived as a threat. So, a campaign of obstruction and repression is being waged against the Kurds in both Rojava and Turkey as part of the same plan. They used IS as a military force against the Kurds, but when they saw this was not very efficient, they put the army and the police directly into action in Turkey. A direct Turkish military intervention in Rojava is not possible at present, but they are seeking to keep the Kurdish movement busy inside Turkey and prevent the Kurds from focusing their attention and force on Rojava. We cannot say, however, that the war in Turkey is being waged only because of Rojava and the war in Rojava only because of Turkey. The two are mutually related.

Al-Monitor: There is talk of a plan of destruction  inspired by Sri Lankas annihilation plan against the Tamil Tigers  which allegedly seeks the total elimination of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. Is this just a rumor?

Demirtas: This has been reported in the press, and the government has not disputed it. The existence of such a plan seems quite credible, given that whats going on at present is the implementation of pre-planned scenarios. The claims, I think, are very serious.

Al-Monitor: Comparing Sri Lanka and Turkey, what might be the outcome of such an operation?

Demirtas: In Sri Lanka, a grievous massacre was committed against the Tamil guerrillas and the people supporting them. In Turkey, the AKP would not hesitate to do the same if it had the power to do so. But Kurdistan is not Sri Lanka, and the PKK is not the Tamil Tigers. The AKP has neither the power nor the means to do the same, even if it wants to.
Iraqi Kurdish journalist Mohammed Rasool has been released after 131 days in a Turkish prison, the organization he was working for said Tuesday. Rasool's arrest on charges of assisting a terrorist organization had been widely criticized by international media organizations.

Rasool, who was arrested in August while covering the conflict in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast, will be required to report to a police station twice a week and is barred from leaving the country.

"Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time," Vice News said.

Rasool, 25, was working as a news assistant and translator when he was detained along with two Vice News journalists  Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury  in the city of Diyarbakir on Aug. 27. The two British journalists were released after 11 days and deported, while Rasool was sent to a high-security prison.

The three journalists had traveled to towns along Turkey's border with Iraq, the center of renewed violence between Kurdish fighters and government forces.

Rasool's detention came amid a spike in prosecutions of journalists in Turkey, many charged with anti-terrorism offenses and under laws against insulting the president. Media advocacy groups had criticized his detention and called for his immediate release.

Rasool, an Iraqi citizen, has previously worked as a news assistant for The Associated Press and other media organizations.

The Associated Press
January 4, 2016

Real estate mogul Donald Trump promises to bomb the shit out of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) and keep Muslims out if hes elected president.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has vowed to drop so much ordnance on Iraq and Syria that the world will find out if sand can glow in the dark.

And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says even Syrian refugees who are orphans under age 5 shouldnt be admitted into the country unless the FBI can vet them fully.

So far, the US presidential campaign has been dominated by bellicose sound bites as these and other Republican hopefuls make their case that President Barack Obama has made the country less safe. The harsh rhetoric serves both to appeal to an anxious electorate while undermining Obamas former secretary of state, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

With the first primary contests just around the corner, however, all the candidates have been offering up more details as they seek to establish their national security credentials. Al-Monitor unpacks the rhetoric to get to the meat of the positions staked out by the top six Republicans and top two Democrats, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average for Dec. 10-Dec. 21.

Another US war in the Middle East?

Over the past few months, the US military presence has steadily increased to about 3,500 troops in Iraq and several dozen special operations forces in Syria. While none of the remaining candidates have echoed calls by withdrawn contender Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to send 20,000 US troops to Iraq and Syria, most support a more robust US presence.

We have around 3,500 soldiers and Marines in Iraq, and more may well be needed, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in an August IS policy speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. We do not need, and our friends do not ask for, a major commitment of American combat forces. But we do need to convey that we are serious.

Bush, who is currently tied for fifth place with Christie, went on to urge deploying forward air controllers to help guide precision airstrikes and embedding US troops with Iraqi combat units. These views mirror those of the other Republican running as a traditional GOP hawk, third-place candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Christie urged France to invoke the NATO treatys Article 5 on collective defense after the attack in Paris. He said he would work with NATO alliance to bring the full effect that we could have  militarily against IS during a November speech at the Council on Foreign Relations but offered few other details.

Trump, Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson  respectively in first, second and fourth place in national polls  have urged ramped-up airstrikes but said little else about a US military role.

On the Democratic side, Clinton sounds much like Bush and Rubio even as she defends Obamas overall strategy.

A more effective coalition air campaign is necessary, but not sufficient, and we should be honest about the fact that to be successful, airstrikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS [IS], she said at the Council on Foreign Relations in November. As part of that process, we may have to give our own troops advising and training the Iraqis greater freedom of movement and flexibility, including embedding in local units and helping target airstrikes.

In contrast, her main rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has repeatedly warned against repeating the 2003 intervention in Iraq, which he  unlike Clinton  voted against.

This is a war for the soul of Islam, he says on his campaign website, and the Muslim nations must become more heavily engaged.

Bypassing Baghdad

While all the candidates sing the Kurds praises, some have been more explicit about their plans to bypass Baghdad if they win the presidency.

Cruz regularly refers to the Kurds as Americas troops on the ground. And Clinton, Bush and Rubio have explicitly called for directly arming not only the Kurds but Sunni tribal forces as well.

Defeating IS will require a larger number of American troops on the ground, working with the Kurds, Sunni tribes, and other partners, Rubio writes on his campaign website. He vows to provide arms directly to Sunni tribal and Kurdish forces if Baghdad fails to support them.

Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that one thing that I believe we havent done yet is make it clear to Baghdad that we are going to be arming Sunni tribes and Kurds if they dont. The Iraqi Embassy in Washington lambasted a House-passed bill to arm the Kurds in December and Shiite hard-liners threatened to attack US interests in Iraq when the House Armed Services panel in May proposed to deem Kurds and Sunni tribes as countries eligible for US military assistance.

Carson has proposed the creation of a US-defended safe zone inside Iraq. Christian groups have long advocated for the creation of a semi-autonomous safe zone for religious minorities in Iraqs Ninevah plain, an idea that has stalled in the Iraqi parliament.

We should encourage the establishment of sanctuary zones in the contested areas of Iraq and Syria, Carson says in a Washington Post column. These zones would be administered and controlled by local moderate forces, with financial support and military coordination provided by Western countries.

Bridging the Sunni-Shiite divide

Another fault line among the candidates lies in their willingness to engage the US diplomatic corps in efforts to reconcile Iraqs warring factions.

Here again, Clinton, Rubio and Bush appear to have given the most thought to the issue  and come to quite similar conclusions. All three agree that the next president will have to continue working with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad to create a more inclusive nation that encourages more Sunni tribes to rise up against IS.

Our strategy in Iraq has to restart the serious diplomatic efforts that can help that country move in the right direction, Bush said in his Reagan Library speech.

Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that we need to lay the foundation for a second Sunni awakening. We need to put sustained pressure on the government in Iraq to get its political house in order, move forward with national reconciliation, and finally stand up a national guard.

The other candidates have said little on the subject  expect for Cruz, who has dismissed it as a fools errand.

We must reject the notion that any U.S. action be contingent on political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad, he wrote in a September 2014 commentary for CNN.com. The Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632. While we all wish the Iraqis success in their most recent attempt to form a government, it is the height of hubris and ignorance to make American national security contingent on the resolution of a 1,500-year-old religious conflict.

Middle East experts, however, contend that the bloody sectarian feud between the two main strains of Islam is a mostly modern phenomenon fueled by Saudi-Iranian rivalry.

The Assad conundrum: Should he stay or should he go?

When it comes to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, most of the candidates agree with US foreign policy dogma that hes a key catalyst of the sectarian fire that has engulfed Syria over the past five years.

Trump and Cruz, however, have steadfastly opposed efforts to unseat the sitting president or arm his opponents, revealing a deep fault line within the Republican Party on the limits of US interventionism in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Libya.

Just because Assad is a murderous thug does not mean that the rebels opposing him are necessarily better, Cruz declared way back in September 2013 in explaining his decision to vote against airstrikes in retaliation for Assads use of chemical weapons.

Two years later, hes still saying the same thing.

In my view, we have no dog in the fight of the Syrian civil war, Cruz told Bloomberg Politics in a November interview. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. If the Obama administration and the Washington neo-cons succeed in toppling Assad, Syria will be handed over to radical Islamic terrorists. ISIS will rule Syria.

Trump for his part echoes those sentiments.

Assad is bad, Trump told The Guardian in an October interview. Maybe these people could be worse.

The other candidates largely agree that the US should continue to support so-called moderate rebels  while acknowledging that there may not be very many around anymore, if there ever were.

Defeating ISIS requires defeating Assad, Bush said in his Reagan Library speech, but we have to make sure that his regime is not replaced by something as bad or worse. He called for a coordinated, international effort to to give Syrias moderate forces the upper hand.

Clinton has said there is no alternative to a political transition that allows Syrians to end Assads rule, while Christie has said, I dont think that there is a coherent opposition at the moment.

Time for a no-fly zone in Syria?

Of all the major candidates, only Cruz and Sanders agree with Obama that creating a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians isnt worth the risk of dragging the United States deeper into a protracted sectarian civil war.

The other candidates all favor the establishment of some kind of safe zone in Syria, albeit with different levels of US involvement. For the Republicans, that support has the added benefit of providing some political cover for their unanimous rejection of plans to allow Muslim Syrian refugees into the United States.

Trump has called for the creation of a big, beautiful safe zone in Syria, largely paid for by the Gulf states with the United States giving a little bit. Exactly who would be tasked with keeping the zone safe remains unclear.

Christie, by contrast, has advocated shooting down Assad-allied Russian warplanes if they were to violate a putative no-fly zone.

We would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if in fact they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now, Christie said at Republican presidential debate in December.

Rubio said much the same thing in a CNBC interview in October 2015.

Clinton, meanwhile, has been pushing the idea since the summer of 2012, when she was still the nations top diplomat.

Reining in Iran

Finally, several of the candidates have made Iran a key plank of their anti-IS strategy.

Bush and Rubio agree that weakening Irans influence over Baghdad was crucial to easing sectarian tensions and getting more Iraqis to join in the fight.

Iran, its ally Assad, its terrorist proxy Hezbollah and the sectarian militias it sponsors have fueled the conflicts in Syria and Iraq that have helped give rise to ISIS, Bush said at the Reagan Library. We need to broaden and expedite our efforts to help ensure Iraqis rebuild their security sector  not only to win against ISIS, but to break free of Iranian influence.

Meanwhile, Clinton and Christie have both explicitly argued that Saudi Arabia and other key Sunni powers are currently more focused on fighting the Houthis in Yemen than IS in Iraq and Syria in part because they feel threatened by Tehran. The hard line on Iran is particularly important for Clinton, whom the Republicans have pegged to Obamas controversial nuclear deal.

We cannot view Iran and ISIS as separate challenges. Regional politics are too interwoven, she told the council in November. Raising the confidence of our Arab partners and raising the costs to Iran for bad behavior will contribute to a more effective fight against ISIS.

Correction: This article was updated Jan. 6 to clarify that Sen. Marco Rubio has also advocated shooting down Russian aircraft if they were to violate a US-backed no-fly zone in Syria.
Alaska Aerospace (AAC) hopes to better serve customers by opening its first location in north Alabama.

The state-owned corporation announced Monday it is now operating on 7027 Old Madison Pike N.W., Suite 108, in Huntsville. The office is led by AAC Huntsville Representative Barry King, who has experience with the city's strong aerospace and government sectors.

The expansion to Huntsville is AAC's first permanent presence outside of Alaska.

"Alaska Aerospace has supported a number of missions for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) and by opening an office in Huntsville, we will be well positioned to be more responsive to our customers' future needs," said AAC President and CEO Craig E. Campbell.

Campbell said King is AAC's only Huntsville-based employee right now, but the company plans to expand the office as it generates work with other businesses.

"We believe that the potential growth in Huntsville, especially in the government activities at Redstone Arsenal, provides us a good opportunity to develop our market share and we look forward to expanding our operations here in future years," he told AL.com.

Created in 1991 as a public corporation, AAC is based in Anchorage under the direction of a nine-member board of directors appointed by Gov. Bill Walker. AAC's mission is to "develop aerospace related economic growth within the State of Alaska," according to its website.

The Associated Press reports officials want to privatize the aerospace corporation, a move that would require changes to Alaska law.

AAC, which has worked with multiple commercial companies in the Huntsville area, said it conducted nine MDA launches in support of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. SMDC has also used AAC's Alaskan facilities for test operations.

"As we work with MDA and SMDC to advance our nations capabilities, the establishment of our new office in Huntsville demonstrates AAC's long term commitment to both the commercial and government programs being advanced in Madison County," King said.

This story will be updated as information becomes available.
Cahaba Brewing's new tasting room doesn't just have a lot more room to sit - it has a lot more room to make beer.

Head Brewer and Partner Eric Meyer said the staff likes to joke, with its bigger tanks, louder air compressor and brand new quality control lab, that they're finally in real manufacturing now.

The brewery will make a lot more beer in its new space in the historic Continental Gin factory in Avondale - its capacity will increase to about 8.5 times what it has been. It's a fitting tribute, Meyer said, to the building's original use as a foundry used to make parts for cotton gins. Once the move is complete, Cahaba will be running on a 30-barrel system.

"People always ask me, 'What do you dream of?', and at the beginning, I said 'I want a tap at the J. Clyde,'" Meyer said. "My tap would be up there with Avery, I'd be up there with Good People, with Sweetwater, up there with all those guys in the beer world that I admire.

"Now? I dream of being Good People's size. If we could be their size - even their size a couple of years ago, we'd be happy campers," Meyer said.

The building at 4500 Fifth Ave. S. was built in 1925 and was converted for other industrial uses in the 1960s. The main entrance to Cahaba's new space houses a massive 1920s elevator used to carry metal to dump into the furnace, and the building's cranes still hang from the ceiling. The bar and tables are made from refurbished wood from a Kentucky distillery.

"We tried to keep everything we could," Meyer said.

Investment in the project start to finish will be about $2.6 million, Meyer said.

The public area is around 6,000 square feet, but Cahaba has additional space that doesn't yet have a use. There's certainly room to expand, but the brewing area has room for about nine more tanks before they'd need to. Cahaba is considering leasing out some of the space to complimentary businesses, but hasn't really explored that option because the partners have been concentrating on the move.

Cahaba launched its first cans early 2015 with its American Blonde Ale. Before the end of 2016, Cahaba plans to expand its can offerings to include the Liquidambar, the Ryezome Rye Stout, the Oka Uba IPA and the White IPA.

Cahaba currently subcontracts its canning to a company in Virginia, but will move all its canning to its new location. The company doesn't have its own canning line yet, and the machines can easily run for more than $100,000. Instead, Cahaba will work with Toucan Mobile Canning, a company that brings in canning lines on a truck, and can the beer straight from the tanks.

The current tasting room at 2616 3rd Ave. S. will stay open until Cahaba is ready to welcome customers at its new spot, which should be before the end of January. The brewery is waiting on some signage approval, which it needs before it can ask the state to transfer its license. The brewery will hold a larger grand opening in the spring.

The brewery will bring its equipment from its current spot to the new location and use it for small batch beers. That will have the side effect of raising capacity for small batch Fridays from 10 gallons to 100 gallons.

Dog Days of Birmingham will open a second location in Cahaba's current building.

Southpace Properties served as the leasing agent. Rives Construction is the general contractor and Williams Blackstock Architect is the architect. Bessemer Glass, BDI Electrical Contractors, RJ Mechanical Inc., Recreated Cabinets and C&H Constructors are also working on the project.
Some of Walter Energy's coal mining retirees will get their benefits after all - but not by Walter Energy.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a U.S. government agency, announced it would assume the benefits for more than 2,700 current and future retirees.

This does not affect union employees, only salaried retirees. The Birmingham-based metallurgical coal producer was granted permission to end healthcare and other benefits for its union retirees last week.

The Walter Energy plan is about 70 percent funded, according to estimates from the PBGC. The agency plans to cover the $96 million shortfall.

After the coal company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July, it entered into an agreement to sell its assets to a company composed of its biggest lenders. It has since asked the court to be allowed to eliminate its contracts with the unions, arguing that the potential buyer wouldn't purchase the company with those obligations intact.

The PBGC will pay all pension benefits up to the legal maximum of $60,136 for a 65-year-old.

"The agency is stepping in because Walter Energy plans to sell the majority of its assets in bankruptcy proceedings and the potential buyers have signaled they will not assume the pension plan," The agency said in a press release.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 created the PBGC, which protects benefits in private-sector defined benefit plans.

In December, Walter was given permission to end its non-union retiree benefits.

Last week, Walter Energy announced it would temporarily lay off 319 people, leaving 24 mine workers at its No. 4 mine in Brookwood.

Update Jan. 6.: This story has been updated to clarify exactly who is affected by this action.
Wray_Press_HiRes_By2ThreeFive.jpg

Birmingham's WRAY. (Photo courtesy of Dan King of 2ThreeFive)

I meet WRAY on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon in December, and the up-and-coming Birmingham band is initially a bit subdued and quiet - a bit opposite of the loud, raucous live show they put on.

We sit on the Satellite patio in Avondale and chat a few minutes before the interview, and drummer Blake Wimberly - who is roommates with guitarist David Swatzell -- admits that he just woke up (it was a long night - and morning, he explains), hence the low energy.

But the band - which also includes bassist/vocalist David Brown - perks up when I mention their Jan. 7 collaboration with composer William Brittelle and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra (at 7:30 p.m. at Jemison Concert Hall in the Alys Stephens Center).

Yep, you read that right. It may be the strangest musical pairing of the year (I know it's early 2016, but I'm just going to go ahead and call it). WRAY cite dreampop, post-punk and Kraut as their influences. Brooklyn's Brittelle, per his biography, specializes in "post-genre electro-acoustic music." And the ASO is - well, a symphony orchestra.

And they're working together.

Kinda cool, right?

The WRAY guys definitely think so.

"It's amazing," Wimberly says. "It's like a high water mark. I don't think we'll ever get to do anything that cool."

The performance is part of the "Classical Edge" series that remakes modern songs as intense orchestral numbers. And the band has firsthand experience with the series: When deciding if they wanted to participate, they attended indie rockers Wye Oak's "Classical Edge" performance with Brittelle, which was in March 2015 at Alys Stephens Center.

Here's how WRAY's collaboration with ASO and Brittelle will work, according to Wimberly: "We're going to do two of our songs, one off the last album (the self-titled WRAY) and one off the new one (Hypatia, set to release Jan. 15), where (Brittelle's) going to put the symphony in the song," Wimberly says. "But what's different is he actually wrote a piece for this particular performance. And we're adding our touch to it. And we did the opposite where we started a piece and he's coming in afterwards and adding his touch to it. ... So we'll do those songs and then he chose some songs that the symphony will (perform) by themselves."

But it's not just the music that'll be a draw. There will be a lot going on visually, too.

The piece that Brittelle wrote for the performance - called "Color Drones" - will be, uh, very colorful. "It involves the colors of the lighting of the stage changing throughout the song to go along with the mood of each part," Wimberly explains.

Also on tap: An audio installation and art installation out in the foyer, and ambient mixes of WRAY's music (put together by Daniel Farris, who mixed the band's two albums) piped throughout the house.

Another selling point? The ticket prices. One ticket to the unusual show will only set you back $16.

Buy tickets here.
Growing up in New Market, Alabama, Bethany Dean passed by Winchester Manor every day. Years later she saw that the property, which includes its guest home, was for sale.

She and her husband, fellow photographer Whitney Dean, snatched the property up with the intention of making it into a wedding venue (they're both professional wedding photographers and own Glass Jar Photography). And they did this for a couple of years -- renting the grounds out for weddings and the cottage out as a honeymoon suite -- until it got too overwhelming.

"We didn't cut back on anything, because we were still traveling (to take photos) for weddings, doing 30 weddings a year, from California to New York to Las Vegas, to Georgia to Mexico, and on top of that we had added a whole other business of doing this wedding venue," Bethany said.

But after a friend suggested they list the cottage on Airbnb, the mega-popular website devoted to helping people list and find rental properties, they decided to try it out. "(We said,) 'Well, we'll test the waters and see if we get any bites,'" she said.

And they got plenty of bites. The response to the listing (found here) was, in fact, overwhelming.

"We're rented at least 15 nights a month. Sometimes more than that, depending on the time of year," Bethany said. And it's not just locals looking for a quiet getaway in the bucolic town, she said.

"We host people from all over the world. People even come in for Bonnaroo stay with us. We had a couple who came all the way from China to stay with us."

Why how has a place located in rural Madison County become such a popular destination? Here's are a five reasons:

Darling decor + awesome amenities

Just look at the photos. The decor in the romantic cottage is simply adorable, plus it has all of the amenities you'd get at a hotel room.

"You get soaps and towels and satellite TV and a Keurig (coffeemaker) and Wi-Fi and more," said Whitney, who also performs in the up-and-coming music duo The Sweeplings.

Location, location, location

New Market's a tiny town of almost 1,600 people, according to the 2010 Census, so you can get plenty of peace and quiet there. And if you want to stay in town, it's within easy walking distance of two restaurants: meat-and-three New Market Family Restaurant and the much-lauded New Market BBQ.

But if you want to get out of town, it's only 15 minutes to Huntsville.

"You can come to Huntsville and see the Space & Rocket Center and go to Bridge Street, but you can also see the countryside and stay in a historic location that's one-of-a-kind," Whitney says.

Full of history

The cottage at Winchester Manor has held a prominent place in local history.

"The cottage itself is pretty old," Bethany says. "From what we've been told, it's 100 years old. It's been pretty hard to find history on such a small town, and a lot of the history is just hearsay so it's hard to verify the accuracy, but we've been told it's the first doctor's office ..."

"And post office," Whitney adds.

National attention

MSN recently listed the cottage as one of the coolest tiny home rentals in the country.

A one-of-a-kind experience



"The most sellable aspect is that it's so unique," Whitney says. "It's a quirky, interesting Deep South experience you can't find in many other places."

To rent the cottage, go here.

Alabama Airbnb Getaways is an occasional series that looks at unique Airbnb listings across the state. Got a suggestion? Email hlaurence@al.com.
Cherokee County Sheriff Jeff Shaver is warning drivers about "a very dangerous situation" that some seem to be ignoring.

Shaver said motorists are ignoring barricades along the westbound lane of Alabama 68 between Leesburg and Sand Rock, which was "significantly damaged" during flooding. Shaver said the lane is closed to all, including local, traffic.

He is asking those traveling through the area to be patient with the current traffic situation by allowing time to detour.

"Despite the road closure signage and widespread media notification, numerous motorists are driving around the barricades into oncoming traffic," he said. "Many motorists have stated they simply did not want to drive 'the long way around.'"

Transportation officials say a shoulder slide on the westbound lane has compromised the road shoulder and guardrails. The eastbound lane is open but the roadway is too narrow to accommodate traffic traveling in both directions.

Shaver said local law enforcement have cited several drivers in an effort to prevent accidents, and he has requested state troopers to warn drivers not to ignore the barricade.

"According to the Alabama Department of Transportation, repairs to this section of roadway will be extensive and could take a month or longer," Shaver said.
Attorneys for Alabama Death Row inmate Christopher Brooks, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection in less than three weeks, filed a brief Monday telling the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals why it should stop his execution.

Brooks is scheduled to be executed Jan. 21. It would be the first Alabama execution since July 2013 and the first use of the state's new three-drug lethal injection protocol.

An attorney for Brooks filed a notice of appeal to the 11th Circuit on Dec. 28 after U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins declined to stop the execution. The appeals court gave Brooks until 4 p.m. today to file a brief explaining why it should block the execution.

Brooks in November joined a lawsuit by five other death row inmates challenging the state's new three-drug protocol as being a violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit is specifically aimed at the first drug to be administered - midazolam - this is to sedate the inmates before the other two drugs aimed at stopping the breathing and the heart are given.

A hearing has been set for April in that lawsuit and Brooks argues that his execution should be delayed until after the issue is resolved.

"Brooks is an intervening plaintiff in the litigation that is scheduled to go to a hearing on the merits in April," according to today's 40-page brief. "Without a stay of execution, he will be put to death using a constitutionally suspect method of execution that has never been used in Alabama, and before any court will adjudicate the constitutionality of this method of execution."

The brief asks the 11th Circuit to vacate the district court's order denying Brook's motion for a stay of execution and stay his execution, or, in the alternative, remand the case for an evidentiary hearing on the feasibility of the alternative methods of execution Brooks alleged in his complaint.

One of Brooks' attorneys, John Palombi, Assistant Federal Defender for the Federal Defenders Office of the Middle District of Alabama, issued a statement after filing today's brief.

"The United States Supreme Court deals with challenges to methods of execution based on a belief that the States have, over time, taken steps to ensure that methods of execution become more and more humane," Palombi stated. "The District Court's opinion in this case takes a step back and has the potential to reward states that take no efforts to make their method of execution more humane. It allows the Alabama Department of Corrections to control the meaning of the Eighth Amendment in Alabama merely by what efforts they choose to take to obtain drugs that would allow for a more humane execution."

"This will encourage states to look for the easiest way to carry out the most solemn duty that a State can undertake," Palombi stated, citing part of the brief. "The most used method of execution in the last two years in the United States is a single dose of pentobarbital. This indicates that it is feasible for the Alabama Department of Corrections to obtain pentobarbital, and this case should not be decided merely on their declaration that they cannot get it."

Alabama has stated that it can no longer get pentobarbital.

Lawyers for the Alabama Attorney General's Office, which represents the state, have until Friday to respond to Brooks' brief.

Brooks was convicted in 1993 of murder during the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary for killing Jo Deann Campbell at the Ski Lodge Apartments in Homewood. A jury recommended Brooks receive the death penalty and a judge sentenced him to death.

Brooks and Campbell, 23, met in 1991 when they worked at different summer camps on a lake in New York, where Brooks and his parents then lived.

Brooks and a friend, Robert Leeper, came to Homewood on Dec. 30, 1992, to visit Campbell and stay the night.

The next evening, police found Campbell's body stuffed under her bed, her badly beaten head wrapped in her sweat pants. Police testified they found one of Brooks' palm prints on Campbell's ankle and his thumbprint in her blood on her bedroom doorknob. A state forensic scientist testified that DNA tests matched semen from Campbell's body to Brooks.

Police arrested Brooks and Leeper in Columbus, Ga., on charges that they bought beer, soda, gas and other items the day before with Campbell's credit card.

Leeper was sentenced to 5 years after pleading guilty to credit card theft and was released on probation with time served awaiting trial in jail. Leeper denied any knowledge of Campbell's murder and forensic evidence did not link him to the crime, prosecutors said.

Note: AL.com is participating in "The Next to Die" with The Marshall Project to track and provide information on scheduled executions. Although Alabama has none scheduled at this time the state is currently seeking an execution date for inmate Christopher Brooks
Bessemer police are searching for a missing man who suffers from several illnesses.

James Andrew Morrison, 75, was reported missing on Sunday, police said today. When his daughter last spoke with him, he was at the Deer Springs Grocery on Highway 11 in Pelham.

He was last seen about 8 p.m. near Pelham High School He was wearing blue jeans, a plaid shirt and hat that says, "Jesus Loves Me."

Morrison was driving a black 2014 Kia Sedona minivan with license number Alabama 4C9F4.

He suffers from dementia and diabetes, and does not have his medication with him.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call the nearest police agency, Bessemer police at 205-425-2411, the tip line at 205-428-3541 or Detective Stephen Talley at 205-481-4358.
As South Korean and Japanese politicians shook hands behind closed doors in late December to resolve a long-standing dispute over Japans abuse of comfort women during the 1930s and 40s, the figure of a young girl sat in steely serenity facing the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, waiting with infinite patience for the answer to an unspoken question. The bronze statue commemorates the women and girls who were dragged into sexual slavery under Japanese imperial rule. And standing in the background of a diplomatic deal that many deem inadequate, she serves as a reminder to the people of both nations that some war wounds were never allowed to heal.

The latest attempt by South Korea and Japan to resolve the comfort women issue has been announced as the final word on the long-standing diplomatic dispute. But for survivors, Japans official reconciliation deal  the full details of which have not yet been revealed  may inadvertently tear open old wounds.

Under the agreement, Japan will issue an expression of heartfelt apology and remorse, backed by an official donation of 1 billion Japanese yen ($8.3 million) to support survivors  a token offering in lieu of actual reparations and one that falls short of admitting culpability. In exchange, South Korea has agreed essentially to stop official discussion about comfort women forever, effectively submitting to a permanent gag order. The diplomatic finality of the deal has incensed the 46 remaining survivors (out of an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 victims across Asia, including many in China) who hoped for real justice in their final years.

Advocates for the victims worldwide have denounced the settlement as a calculated sham. They are disgusted by the opaque bilateral process leading to the arrangement, which was struck without consulting survivors. The deal between two right-wing leaders, South Koreas Park Geun-hye and Japans Shinzo Abe, essentially presumes the consent of the women at the heart of the dispute. And attaching $8.3 million to the deal smacks more of an attempt at purchasing silence than of genuine recompense.

In the absence of honest historical reckoning, survivors will keep retelling the painful story that began 80 years ago, with the first comfort stations established across Japanese-occupied territories in East and Southeast Asia. The term is a euphemism for a network of coercive brothels where women were repeatedly raped by Japanese troops. Over the years, tens of thousands of women were lured into the system with promises of jobs or snatched away through raids in invaded territories. The isolated captives were systematically tortured and raped on a militarized scale, serving sometimes dozens of men daily. After the war, the women were isolated once again, by their own communities, stigmatized as shameful ravages of imperial conquest. The silence finally lifted in the early 1990s, as some survivors began speaking out about their trauma.
On Dec. 28, a grand jury in Ohios Cuyahoga County declined to indict two white police officers involved in the shooting death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy. The decision capped a year of mounting frustration and outrage over the disproportionate use of lethal force by police officers against black people.

Nearly every aspect of the case is deeply troubling. The police dispatcher, who sent officers to the recreation center where Rice was fatally shot, failed to inform them that the 911 caller noted he was probably a juvenile with a probably fake gun. Rice was alone in a park, with no one in imminent danger. Yet the officers shot him within two seconds of arriving at the scene. He was not given any aid for nearly four minutes, and officers prevented Rices distraught 14-year old sister from comforting him, pinning and handcuffing her.

Rices death is not the sad outcome of a perfect storm of tragic mistakes as District Attorney Tim McGinty characterized it, nor is it Rices fault or that of his community. His untimely death reflects the brutal reality of racism and impunity that permeates policing, evincing a shocking indifference to the lives of Clevelands black residents.

McGinty, who recommended no indictments in this case, has been long criticized by the Rice family and activists for dragging the case out, releasing exculpatory information and sabotaging the process to ensure that the officers were exonerated. In November he accused members of the Rice family, who are pursuing a civil suit, of having economic motives for seeking justice for their dead son.

The numbers on police violence in Cleveland and nationwide should disturb. Since 2012, Cleveland police have killed 10 people. All were black, and seven were unarmed. Nationwide, 1,134 people were killed by law enforcement officers in 2015. They were disproportionately black. From 2010 to 2012, black teens  ages 15 to 19  were 21 times as likely to be killed by police as their white counterparts.

By contrast, despite the rhetoric about a war on police, 2015 was the second-least-deadly year for police officers in decades. Assaults are declining as well. The effect of the dangerously false narrative is pernicious, contributing to a siege mentality among officers that influences their perceptions and reactions, at times to lethal effect. Crime rates are dropping as well, despite public perceptions to the contrary.

Police accountability is key to ending unjustified killings but remains elusive. Prosecutors who work closely with police departments have repeatedly demonstrated their reluctance to hold officers to account. Many district attorneys are elected, giving them perverse incentives for overcharging defendants and undercharging officers. And as with McGinty, many rely on the secret grand jury system to bring charges, allowing them to obscure their strategic presentation of evidence, which can skew the result in favor of the officers.

The result is impunity. Since 2005, only 54 officers have been charged in the thousands of fatal shootings. And the vast majority of those officers were exonerated or acquitted. Civil suits offer little solace. Even when plaintiffs prevail, the cost is typically borne by taxpayers, not the officers involved or departmental coffers.
The continued contraction of the power, legitimacy and reach of many states in the region creates a vacuum to be filled by powers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and the United States. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, Libya and Yemen are all vulnerable. Beyond the major powers, these weak states play host to a variety of nonstate actors  militias, ethnosectarian parties and social movements, tribal forces and anti-government rebel groups. Iran and Saudi Arabia are usually the most active external supporters of such groups across the region. Riyadh and Tehran often fight each other through local proxies, such as the Saudi-backed Hariri group and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and or the Iranian-backed government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Saudi-backed Sunni rebels seeking to unseat him.

The ambitions of strong regional powers Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey hasten the slow collapse of traditional forms of statehood and sovereignty in other, weaker countries where more durable institutions have yet to emerge. Half a dozen Arab countries have become proxy battlefields for Riyadh and Tehran.

But the Saudi-Iranian face-off is not just a leading example of these regional troubles; it directly influences localized conflicts in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere.

Dangerous as it is, the Saudi-Iranian confrontation is only the latest manifestation of a convergence of disruptive forces that promise to keep the region destabilized for years to come. These include military actions by regional and foreign powers, alongside indigenous ailments such as militias, tribal warfare, terrorism, aggressive ethnonationalism, frail and fragmenting states, sectarian tensions and religious politics and violence.

Beyond the severing of diplomatic ties, the Saudi-Iranian confrontation has already led to a cessation of air travel, mosque bombings, mutual accusations and social media warfare between thousands of partisans on both sides.

Just days into 2016, the world is witnessing a new stage in the unraveling of the Middle East. The enmity between Iran and Saudi Arabia exploded last weekend, after the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric along with dozens of other citizens accused of terrorism. In response, Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, and Saudi Arabia has cut off diplomatic relations with its rival across the Persian Gulf.

The reality is that all state and nonstate parties across the Middle East  Arab and non-Arab, regional and foreign  use violence at will, totally ignoring sovereign borders, international humanitarian law and notions of legitimacy and accountability. This leads to state fragmentation, criminalized economies and huge refugee flows. All of these and other ailments will be exacerbated by the current Saudi-Iranian crisis.

Saudi and Iranian actions have contributed to transforming political violence and turmoil that once occurred within countries into confrontations among two or more countries. Very few violent ideological battles within individual countries are confined to domestic actors. They almost always include active external instigation, funding, arming or other forms of support.

Even smaller countries that previously played low-key regional roles such as Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates now sometimes send their armed forces into action across the region or support local parties that do the fighting, as in Syria, Yemen and Libya. World powers such as the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom and France do not hesitate to directly jump into these local wars or to provide arms, funds and diplomatic cover for local proxies.

As some Arab central governments weaken or collapse into civil war, new states or quasi-states pop up across the region. This trend started with Somaliland in the 1990s, the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq a decade later and the independence of South Sudan in 2011.

But the most frightening entity to emerge in the region in recent years has been the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which occupies a large territory straddling the Iraq-Syria border. It has developed political and military links with small local emirates in other Arab countries that pledge allegiance to it. Al-Qaeda likewise now controls some territory in Yemen, where it shares in local governance with indigenous tribes, further fragmenting the once unified Yemeni state. Iranian- and Saudi-stoked warfare that weakens some Arab governments clearly contributes to the spread of chaos and ungoverned areas, which are the most fertile terrain for the birth of groups like ISIL and Al-Qaeda.

If these trends continue unabated, it is possible that more of these mini-states could take shape in Yemen, Syria, Libya and Iraq in the years ahead. Already, millions of civilians despair of living decent, secure lives under the existing states in the region. The six-month-old Saudi-led war in Yemen  which Riyadh says is mainly aimed to push back Iranian influence  points to southern Yemens seeking independence from a unified Yemeni state, perhaps with portions of that battered country falling under ISIL or Al-Qaeda rule.

In todays fluid and dangerous Middle East, global and regional powers make war at will. Their largely unachieved aims continue to generate chaos and state fragmentation. This will not stop until a new regional order emerges. Regional powers must learn to live with one another in nonthreatening ways. Global powers must adjust to the new roles of emboldened regional powers. Nonstate actors and militias must integrate their identities and capabilities into new structures of statehood that are more stable and legitimate. All this will require a genuinely negotiated social contract that is more participatory, equitable and accountable than anything the Middle East has experienced in recent history.
A bumbling group of patriot movement and anti-federal-government torch bearers takes over a remote and empty public building with a gift shop, vowing to defend the space with their lives. Some post rambling, earnest goodbye videos to YouTube; one such message, published on Jan. 3 warns that Daddy is off defending the Constitution and may not be home for Christmas. Speaking to the press, an organizer wearing a camouflage jacket said, Theres nobody in camouflage, before correcting himself, adding, well, other than my jacket. They run low on snacks the first day.

Those right-wing extremists took over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, near Burns, Oregon, on Saturday night. By Sunday morning, the comedy was crystallized on Twitter with a trending hashtag, #YallQaeda. #Yeehawd followed suit, then #VanillaISIS.

Redneck terrorism makes for easy comedic material. Oregon militiamen are willing to be martyred for their cause. And if they die, they will receive 72 cousins in the afterlife, read one popular tweet. Next thing you know, Shania Law, another said. Mocking the laughable is well and good. But too often, the liberal and left response to conservative extremism is confined to derision, as if it were enough to be on the right side of the joke to be on the right side of politics and history.

The presidency of George W. Bush should have been an unforgettable lesson in the limits of laughing. He needed no comedic skewering because he was a walking punchline and a reliable buffoon. A cottage industry of comedy detritus, not to mention Jon Stewarts and Stephen Colberts careers, was sustained by mocking Bush. And for good reason. Liberals could come together in a vast act of identity affirmation, lacking all force or content beyond deriding that moron in the White House.

Now we have entered a year in which Donald Trump will pin the political fulcrum with his rabid racism and rampant misinformation  meme-worthy face and hair be damned. Clowns such as Bush and Trump are certainly worthy of ridicule, but laughing at them doesnt undermine their political influence.

The idea that satire from the left can serve as a bulwark against far-right ideas is provably false. #YallQaeda tweets might be some harmless fun, but liberal laughing along deserves no great celebration on its own merits.

For one thing, occupying government property, armed or otherwise, is not a risible political act per se. The Oregon protesters demand that federal ownership of land be relinquished to the public wouldnt seem too reprehensible if we didnt know the patriot movement to be informed by racism and conspiracy-theory-drenched paranoia that believes welfare provisions to be the utmost tyranny. However, given the current state of deadly racism in this country, its clear that the well-worn political tactic of armed occupation is reserved for the white man. Black children get shot for holding toy guns; white men can stage an armed siege without intervention. And thats not funny. In 1967 a group of 30 Black Panthers garnered crucial national media attention by entering the California Capitol with shotguns pointed skyward. When Native American activists occupied Alcatraz Island in 1969, they were eventually forcibly removed by the government, after a series of suspicious fires and having their electricity cut off, but they held the island for 19 months. I cant help thinking that today that would mean certain death by police bullet for a black or brown person.
Climate change, population increase set off water shortages in what was once the wettest place on earth.

Meghalaya state, India  For those recently debating climate change at the global summit in Paris, the coinciding deluge in Indias southern city of Chennai seemed a powerful illustration that the gathering urgently needed to succeed in its aims.





While flooding hit the south, an increasing lack of water in Cherrapunji, a northeastern town which was once the worlds wettest place, is causing growing concern among residents.

Both Indian examples point to the vicissitudes of climate change on our planet in a country where a rising population always creates huge pressures on the environment.

In 1861, Cherrapunji, known to locals as Sohra, created a world record with 22,987mm of rainfall in a year.

More than 150 years later, and experiencing an average annual rainfall of 11,430mm, it is still the second wettest place in the world.

Mawsynram, a village just six kilometres away and boasting an average annual rainfall of 11,887km, is now considered the dampest place on the globe.

However, the current rainfall in Cherrapunji, located in Meghalaya state, is just one third of what it was in the 1970s.

Deforestation

The reasons for the dramatic decline in rainfall are disputed.

Residents blame events beyond their control for the problems they face  the place is hotter, drier and shorter of water than even before.

We never had very large forests around Cherrapunji. Those that were there were sacred to us and we did not cut a branch, says Millergrace Symlieh, a senior member of the Sohra Science Society.

We are affected by whats happening all over the world, he told Al Jazeera.

This hot weather and less rain here is not due to huge deforestation or massive industrialisation. We only have a cement plant near here.

However, Amarjyoti Borah of the Centre of Environment and Social Policy Research, based in Indias northeastern city of Guwahati, says deforestation by illegal logging groups enjoying political patronage has badly damaged the forests around Cherrapunji, and that has adversely affected the local ecology.

The place still gets much rain, but with very few trees still standing, all the water just washes away downhill, says Borah.

There is no culture of rain harvesting here, as residents never felt it was necessary.

So Cherrapunji suffers acute water scarcity when the rainfall starts to drop sharply from November until March.

Population growth

The past 10 years have seen a major drop in the average annual rainfall in Cherrapunji.

It is basically since 2005 that we are often getting 8,000mm to 9,000mm of rain in Cherrapunji annually  against the normal average of 11,000mm, says Amit Chaudhuri in the Cherrapunji weather office.

Even Chadhuris normal average of 11,000mm of annual rain is a far cry from the 1970s, when Cherrapunji got almost double that amount of annual rainfall.

In 1974, Cherrapunji experienced 24,555mm of annual rain, a world record.

So at about 8,000mm to 9,000mm, the present average is only about a third of the towns annual rainfall compared with only 40 years ago.

That was when Cherrapunji had far fewer people living in the town.

In 1961, it had 7,000 residents  now it has 10 times more.

Our water supply was meant to cater to a small population, but now it cannot cater to a much bigger population, says Symlieh.

Water supply system

Such is the shortage of water in the months between November and March that Cherrapunjis residents have to walk down the hill for several hours to fetch water from the springs.

It is hard work, with buckets placed in wooden carts which are dragged uphill with some effort.

The other option is to buy water, says Mary Pariat, a housewife in Cherrapunji.

Tankers loaded with water go up the hill to Cherrapunji every day in the lean months  from November to March  and sell water for anything between 10 to 15 Indian rupees (about 20 cents) for a big bucket.

That is our last option, says Pariat, as she gestures towards a unique water point near her home  a leak in the towns water pipeline.

We put our buckets under the leak and collect the water, she says. But often that is not enough.

The water supply in the town provided by the states public health engineering department is active only for a few hours.

People rush to the taps in the localities and fill up as many buckets as possible, says community elder William Shalong. For washing and bathing, we go down to the springs.

But even the discharge in the springs drops sharply in the lean months  so the Public Health Engineering (PHE) would not be able to improve water supply in the town even if they wanted to.

Officials of the department, unwilling to be quoted because they are not authorised to speak to the media, say the water supply system was built for 15,000 to 20,000 people.

How can that hold for 70,000 people, says a PHE official, pointing to the rising populations pressure on resources, a familiar story all over heavily populated India.

Rainfall

Reminiscing about Cherrapunji s decades-old claim to fame, local teacher Ila Manora Nongbri said: That seems like history. We cant expect that anymore.

Earlier, we got rains here even during the winters and that is not happening now. We have to purchase water here in the winter where before there was so much rain. We never learnt water harvesting, but we dont have a choice now.

Meanwhile, her sister Mimi complains that rainfall is now very erratic.

We suddenly get rains when they are not expected and we dont get them when we expect them, she tells Al Jazeera.

Also rains have got very localised here and it does not rain all over the place anymore. Often one locality gets rain, while the other doesnt.

Meghalaya is not alone in experiencing major changes in its climate.

The neighbouring state of Assam was once, and perhaps still is ,famous for its destructive floods caused by rivers like the Brahmaputra.

But for the past two years, during the late winter and summer months, half of its 28 districts have suffered drought.

Drought

India named Meghalaya  home of the clouds in Hindi  when a new separate hill state was created from the Khasi, Garo and Jaintia Hills of the large imperial province of Assam in 1972.

But the kind of relentless downpour for 14 days that the Khasi tribespeople here called khadsaw-miat is clearly a thing of the past.

Now the Khasi say slaup for rain, but they also have a new word in their vocabulary, picked up from English  drought. And when they talk of drought in Meghalaya, there is little doubt the world is changing  as is its climate.

Delhi begins car restriction plan to tackle pollution
New Delhi, India  An estimated 10 million vendors sell goods and services on the streets of India.

A Street Vendors Act aimed at regulating these vendors and to protect their rights has been passed by parliament, but the New Delhi High Court says the local government has failed to implement the law.

The court ordered it to present a clear policy on Tuesday to regulate the number of vendors and help others find new jobs.

READ MORE: Delhi street vendors fearful for the future

The sooner the street vendors get licenses, they can freely carry on their trade without harassment from the policemen or authorities. This process will regularise the street vendors, besides eliminating the middlemen and brokers who exploit the vendors, says Anurag Shankar from the National Association of Street Vendors of India.

But vendors say they have little hope for the acts implementation. Most come from rural areas where declining agriculture production forced them to move to the Indian capital to earn their livelihoods.

Their lives are insecure as they are routinely harassed for weekly bribes called hafta in Indian parlance.

Its always painful to pay a weekly bribe out of my hard-earned money. We are made to act like criminals as we have to grease their palm to seek protection and carry on trade without harassment, said Rajesh Kumar, 53, selling mobile phone accessories.

Another vendor selling clothes said he regularly pays bribes to police and local authorities. For so many years I have been hearing about this act, but frankly speaking nothing seems to move on, said Vinod Kumar, 69.

With the license, at least my hard-earned money will go to the government treasury. I have reasons to believe that the ring of brokers will never let this happen because they have strong contacts.

Prabhu Shah, 35, who sells candy from a bicycle, was also sceptical.

I have been carrying on the trade for the past 10 years and I am always on the move to avoid getting caught The well-off people will get the licenses  and then they will sell it to us to earn big money, said Shah.
The militiamen were neither Muslims nor Arabs  they were white.

Khaled A Beydoun is a law professor, and author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear.

One hundred armed militants marched into a federal building in Oregon and took it over. Led by Ammon Bundy, son of noted militant Cliven Bundy, the militia seized and occupied Malheur Wildlife Refuge Headquarters in Burns, Oregon, protesting against the prosecution of two local ranchers.

Although heavily armed, bent on a standoff with police, and organised by militiamen with prior criminal convictions, the police did not resist. No tear gas was sprayed, not a single shot was fired, nor a single arrest made. Rather, the seizure of federal property went unchallenged by police.

The events in Oregon unfolded during a broader impasse of social unrest, police brutality and intensifying Islamophobia in the United States. An impasse when the racial identity of protesters and citizens either creates suspicion of violence or terrorism or, in the case of the militiamen in Oregon, not only negates that suspicion, but equips them with the privilege and power to march across state lines, brandish heavy weaponry, and squat in a federal building without meeting resistance.





The militia march and takeover stands as lurid a demonstration of white privilege as any, illustrating the broad protest rights, privileges and deference denied to Black Lives Matter rallies; and a refusal to brand the white militiamen as terrorists in the midst of imagined and embellished Muslim terror in the US.

Oregon militia and privilege

Less than a week before the Oregon takeover, an Ohio grand jury cleared the Cleveland policeman who shot Tamir Rice of any wrongdoing. Rice, a 12-year old black child playing with a toy gun near a recreation centre, was shot and killed on November 22, 2014. The grand jury ruling followed national actions by Black Lives Matter protesters condemning disproportionate violence against black men, women, and even children such as Rice, whose very blackness was associated with criminal threat.

ALSO READ: The ethnicity of San Bernardino shooters doesnt matter

The largest protests took place in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, and more recently, Chicago and Detroit. Early Black Lives Matter protests were met with militarised police and their familiar fixings  tanks, tear gas, and indiscriminate mass arrests. Indeed, the images of police aggression against the protesters served as a lurid metaphor for the violent law enforcement inflicted on Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and the string of victims that gave rise to the protests.

The Bundy-led militia toted heavy weaponry, promised to respond with force if needed, and even enlisted the mastermind behind the wave of anti-Muslim protests that swept through the United States in 2015... by

Black Lives Matters protesters were unarmed, spearheaded largely by students and young adults, and organised in public forums. Most importantly, they seized no government property nor adversely occupied any federal buildings. Their exercise of free speech, however, was met with repeated opposition, and more often than not, violent suppression.

Juxtapose this with recent events in Oregon. The Bundy-led militia toted heavy weaponry, promised to respond with force if needed, and even enlisted the mastermind behind the wave of anti-Muslim protests that swept through the United States in 2015, John Ritzheimer.

No police were on site. Enabling the militia to march into town, meddle in a purely local matter, and accomplish their mission. Instead of being met with police opposition, the white militiamen were extended full-scale police cooperation.

A response that would never be extended to black protesters in the US, who convene in public streets and spaces brandishing no weaponry but only their blackness, which for law enforcement, appears to be far more threatening than the military-fatigued, rifled, kill-or-be-killed menace posed by the Oregon militants.

The Oregon militiamen show how Oregons open carry laws enable them to carry armed weapons. Ohio has an identical law in place. But Tamir Rice was still shot dead and his toy gun, unlike the arms carried by the Oregon militants, did not shoot.

Oregon militiamen and their whiteness

Beyond its exonerating marching orders, whiteness also extends a presumption of innocence with regard to a threat to national security  even when evidence suggests otherwise. Mobilised by an overzealous defence of the 2nd Amendment gun rights, racism, and a make America great again vision steeped in xenophobia, the armed militiamen capitalised on a private land dispute as a political opportunity.

The militia convened along a clear political ideology. Brandished weaponry. Promised violence against the federal government if their demands were not met. In addition, several of the ringleaders, most notably Bundy, had criminal records.

Therefore, all of the elements of a terror threat were patently established. However, the legal construction of terror was less important than its prevailing racial and religious complexion.

The militiamen were neither Muslims nor Arabs. But white. A racial identity that disarms them of threat even while brandishing rifles, spewing subversive rhetoric, and promising violence if confronted with government opposition.

ALSO READ: Oregon militia mocked in the name of #YallQaeda

While Muslim identity is both legally and popularly linked to a threat to national security, on account of skin alone, whiteness benefits its most menacing elements by negating the perception of threat and disconnecting their association with terrorism.

Muslims are suspected of terrorism by merely being Muslims. While white militants, like the militiamen in Oregon, are seldom identified as terrorists when carrying forward a terrorist conspiracy. But also, seldom prosecuted as terrorists when driven to execute schoolchildren, churchgoers, or minorities to carry forward a hateful ideology.

Oregon militants and presumption of innocence

In the US, terrorism is more identity than it is activity. Whiteness not only arms the militiamen in Oregon with the presumption of innocence that systematically negates threat, but also emboldens their extremism by the lack of serious police opposition.

This invites and abets more armed anti-Muslim protests and illegal immigrant round-ups, federal building takeovers and mass shootings, some 62 percent of which, since 1982, were committed by the very demographic marching in Burns, Oregon.

Founded as a racist utopia in the American northwest in 1859, Oregon was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there.

The brazen exercise of white privilege and terror displayed by the militiamen, combined with the passive cooperation of law enforcement, 157 years later, would make that legacy proud.

Khaled A Beydoun is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Barry University Dwayne O Andreas School of Law. He is a native of Detroit.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
It is US retrenchment from the region that has been the cause of regional competition in the first place.

The decision by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to recall its diplomats from Tehran and expel all Iranian diplomats is a deeply worrying development in a troubled relationship between the Middle Easts pre-eminent regional powers.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has developed a habit of disregarding the 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations when it sees fit. This is not the first time that angry mobs have stormed embassies, a recent example being the United Kingdoms embassy in Tehran in November 2011.

In response to the attack, the UK closed its embassy and ordered the Iranian embassy in London closed. As such, there is nothing altogether unusual in the Saudi response, which is certainly not unprecedented and outside the usual norms of inter-state relations.





Make no mistake though, the diplomatic furore surrounding Saudi Arabias decision to execute Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr  a Shia Saudi religious leader who had long opposed the Saudi regime  is about tensions that have been simmering between the two sides for years.

Saudi and Iran in a greater game

Nimr has become a pawn in a much greater game  a game which he himself would have resisted being part of were he still alive. His now infamous speech of October 7, 2011 in which he rejected all external interference in his community was directed as much at Irans leader Ayatollah Khamenei as it was the Al Saud.

That the regions two most powerful countries have ended their diplomatic ties because of his death is ironic to say the least.

ALSO READ: Iran and Saudi Arabia: The art of Islamic tolerance

Nimrs friendship circles were certainly not comprised of peace-loving pacifists. His clerical inspiration came from the hard-line, politically active Iraqi Ayatollah Muhammad al Hussaini al-Shirazi, who held deep longstanding ties to unpalatable elements in Iran.

The tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have reached the point where nuances are quickly abandoned and all actions are interpreted as political. by

Moreover, Nimrs notable supporters included Abd al-Raouf al-Shayeb, a Bahraini recently convicted in Britain for possession of materials and information that could aid terrorist activities.

By executing him alongside a number of infamous al-Qaeda terrorists, Saudi Arabia sought to draw equivalence between Nimr and al-Qaeda, arguing that terrorism is terrorism, regardless of creed.

But in todays Middle East that was never going to be enough to calm the waves of anger that erupted across the Shia world in response.

The tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have reached the point where nuances are quickly abandoned and all actions are interpreted as political.

Understanding why Nimrs death has so quickly escalated into a diplomatic rift requires understanding why Saudi-Iranian relations have become so tense in recent years.

It is fashionable for people to hark back to the martyrdom of the Prophets Grandson Hussain at Karbala on the 10th Muharram as a sign that this split between Sunni and Shia has always existed.

But that is not quite true  sectarianism is a phenomenon that waxes and wanes over time. This current period of tensions stretches back to about 1978, when the first uprisings in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia began against the Al Saud, which were then capitalised upon by the Iranian Ayatollahs after they swept to power in 1979.

Saudi Arabia, Iran and sectarianism

The drivers of sectarianism are rarely only religious, and usually come packaged with cultural disputes, and reams of political analysis about the other sides brutality and oppressive behaviour.

ALSO READ: Iran: Friend or foe of Arab regimes?

The most recent phenomenon, of course, has been for media personalities on both sides to accuse the other of being the patron of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). A cheap political tactic wrapped in conspiracy and with little basis in fact, but which nevertheless resonates deeply across the region, and serves only to deepen the sectarian divide.

As bilateral ties between the two sides are now broken, the only avenue for them to sit and discuss their points of view are via multilateral initiatives. by

The spat, therefore, has wider regional implications. As bilateral ties between the two sides are now broken, the only avenue for them to sit and discuss their points of view are via multilateral initiatives.

The Vienna Process and resulting peace talks over Syria and discussions concerning the ongoing conflict in Yemen are now the only places where the two nations can sit together.

However, it is unlikely that any serious rapprochement can be made through these channels. Iran and Saudi Arabia are deeply at odds with each other over both conflicts and the future does not bode well for the already stunted and stumbling diplomatic processes.

Those wishing to bring an end to years of war across the region will have their work cut out for them.

While insecurity across the region is likely to continue and even increase, security in the Gulf itself can be managed. US, British and French military power ensures that direct war will not break out, and these countries will not quickly abandon their Gulf allies.

Notwithstanding this, quite how they will manage a larger rapprochement with Iran following the Iranian nuclear deal is going to be difficult in the coming months. The five smaller Gulf states will have to watch the situation very closely.

Saudi Arabia and its allies

For three decades, they have managed to balance their identity as Gulf Cooperation Council members with their vital economic interests and historical trade relationships to Iran. But the Iran-Saudi break is a real test.

While Bahrain associates itself closely with Saudi foreign policy initiatives and very quickly severed its ties with Tehran, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait did not follow suit.

The UAE has downgraded its relationship with Iran but will not sever it, and it is likely that Qatar will consider something similar. While on Tuesday Kuwait recalled its ambassador, permanently severing relations with Tehran is too damaging for the Gulf states to consider at the current time.

Oman on the other hand faces an even greater conundrum. Often seen as Irans only true ally on the Arabian Peninsula, Muscat cannot afford to upset its ties with either Riyadh or Tehran, and it is likely that the Omanis will remain silent for the time being, remaining in full diplomatic contact with Iran while saying nothing against any other Gulf states decision to cut ties.

Moving forward, the United States and Britain in particular will show a far more visible presence in the Gulf in support of the GCC.

Military exercises are the modus operandi at times of regional tension, and if the Americans want tensions to cool they will need to remind both sides of the Gulf who the real boss is. The problem is that it is US retrenchment from the region that has been the cause of regional competition in the first place, and the Obama administration appears unwilling to do what is necessary to keep the peace.

This is deeply troubling for the region, because without a true security actor to keep Tehran and Riyadh from quarrelling further, the only result will be more insecurity, more competition, and yes, more sectarianism. 2016 looks to set to be another bumpy ride.

Michael Stephens is a research fellow for Middle East studies and head of the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Senior official says no agreement reached on a date for talks in Tanzania, casting doubts on efforts to end violence.

Burundis government will not take part in peace talks with the opposition scheduled for Wednesday, a senior official said, casting doubts on efforts to end months of violence.

No dialogue tomorrow neither on January 16 as many may think, because there has been no consensus on that date, Joseph Bangurambona, the permanent secretary in Burundis foreign affairs ministry, told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

The talks in neighbouring Tanzania were announced last month as part of regional efforts to resolve a crisis triggered by President Pierre Nkurunzizas decision to run for a third term in office  a move opponents described as violating the constitution.

RELATED: Escaping Burundi  Life in refuge

On Monday, explosions hit the capital Bujumbura, injuring at least two people, police and civil society representatives said.

Two devices were thrown by people riding motorcycles, police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye said.

One of them hit the compound of a Catholic convent, causing a woman who had taken shelter there to lose a leg.

The other blast happened near a bank, wounding another woman in the arm.

Civil society representative Vital Nshimirimana reported a total of four explosions and blasts of gunfire, saying it was not known how many people had been injured or killed.

Opponents accuse Nkurunziza of responding to any criticism with murder and intimidation.

Rachel Nicholson, a researcher with Amnesty International, told The Guardian there was an atmosphere of fear and impunity in the neighbourhoods where protests against the president has been at its most intense.

Arbitrary arrests, disappearances and cordon-and-search operations accompanied by the killing of civilians have become routine at a time when many independent human rights organisations have been forced out of the country and people do not know who to turn to for redress, she said.
One special operations soldiers killed and two wounded in restive Helmand province.

A US special operations soldier has been killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, the US military said.

The battle against the Taliban took place in the district of Marjah in Helmand province, where the armed group has made significant recent gains.

One American soldier was killed and two others were wounded while conducting a train advise and assist mission with their Afghan special operations counterparts, the Pentagon said.

We are deeply saddened by this loss, said Brigadier General Wilson A Shoffner, an American military spokesman. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved.

A number of Afghan soldiers were also injured.

Rival Taliban factions agree on ceasefire

The Pentagon said one of two helicopters sent to provide assistance came under fire, with one taking damage to its rotor blade and remaining on the ground.

Helmand is a traditional stronghold of the Taliban, which controls several districts.

Marjah is a strategic district in the south of the province. It is used as one of the main supply routes for Sangin district  situated in the north of Helmand  and has been the scene of heavy fighting between government forces and Taliban in the last few weeks.

Losing control of Marjah would deprive the Taliban of a vital supply route.

Afghan forces are battling to push out Taliban fighters who seized large swaths of the key, opium-rich district of Sangin in December.

Helmands deputy governor in a post on Facebook asked President Ashraf Ghani for urgent intervention to save the province that British and US forces struggled for years to defend against the Taliban.
With tears in his eyes, US president vows the powerful gun lobby will not hold America hostage.

A visibly emotional President Barack Obama  at one point wiping tears from his cheek  unveiled his plan to tighten control and enforcement of firearms in the US, using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he implored Congress to pass.

Obama on Tuesday accused the gun lobby of taking Congress hostage, but said they cannot hold America hostage.

He insisted it was possible to uphold the second amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in the US that he said had become the new normal.

Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. by President Obama, referring to the Sandy Hook shooting

The much-debated second amendment of the constitution guarantees the right of citizens to own firearms. More than 100,000 Americans have been killed by firearms over the past 10 years.

This is not a plot to take away everybodys guns, Obama said. You pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules.

Obamas actions ensure that gun rights  one of the most bitterly divisive issues in America  will be at the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, which begins in earnest next month with the first primary contests.

Accusing Obama of gross overreach, many of the Republican presidential candidates have vowed to rip up the new gun restrictions upon taking office.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton said she was proud of Obamas efforts and promised she would safeguard them, the AP news agency reported.

Obama thrusts gun control debate into forefront of 2016

Obama wiped tears away as he recalled the 20 young children killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

He paid tribute to the parents, some of whom gathered for the ceremony, who he said had never imagined their childs life would be cut short by a bullet.

Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad, Obama said.

At the centerpiece of Obamas plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks.





Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers.

But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.

Aiming to narrow that loophole, the Justice Departments Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is issuing updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone in the business of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns.

To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.

The White House also put sellers on notice that the administration planned to strengthen enforcement  including deploying 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws.

About one-third of Americans live in a household where at least one person owns a gun.

Particularly in rural areas where firearms are a way of life, many citizens do not believe gun laws should be made stricter.

The reverse is true in urban areas, where majorities want tighter firearm regulations.
Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran began with the kingdoms execution of 47 people convicted of terrorism charges  including a prominent Shia cleric  and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic.

Some nations have followed the Saudis lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution aimed at cooling the war of words before it escalates further.

Here is a look at where countries stand:

THE MAIN ACTORS:

Saudi Arabia  The kingdom severed ties to Iran after attacks on two of its diplomatic missions following its execution of a Shia cleric last weekend; it also later cancelled all flights between the two nations.

Iran  Since the attack on the diplomatic posts, Iran says it has made arrests and has criticised the violent protesters. However on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani took a slightly harder line, saying Saudi Arabias move to sever ties with his country could not cover its crime of executing Nimr.

COUNTRIES BACKING SAUDI ARABIA:



Allies back Saudi Arabia in showdown with Iran

Bahrain  The tiny, Shia-majority island kingdom off the Saudi coast  which long has relied on Saudi Arabia for support of its Sunni rulers  was the first to cut ties with Iran. Bahraini officials repeatedly have accused Iran of training fighters and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the US Navys 5th Fleet.

Sudan  The African nation cut its diplomatic ties to Iran and gave Iranian diplomats two weeks to leave the country. Sudan once tilted towards Iran, but has been looking to Saudi Arabia for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011.

United Arab Emirates  The oil-rich country of seven emirates says it will reduce the number of diplomats in Iran, recall its ambassador and focus only on business relations. While backing Saudi Arabia, it may have chosen to reduce  rather than completely sever ties  because of a long trading history with Iran.

Kuwait  The oil-rich country is recalling its ambassador from Tehran, but it is not immediately clear how Kuwaiti-Iranian diplomatic ties will be affected. Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shia and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

THE MEDIATOR:

OMAN  The sultanate has long historical ties to Iran and served as the base for secret talks between Iranian and US officials that jump-started the deal reached between Iran and world powers over the Islamic Republics contested nuclear programme.

THOSE BACKING IRAN:

Lebanese Hezbollah Movement  Hezbollah was founded in 1982 with the help of Irans Revolutionary Guards after Israel invaded Lebanon. The group is one the main Iran-backed factions in the region.

Syrias embattled President Bashar al-Assad  Iran has been one of the biggest supporters of Syria since the 1980s and has stood by Assads government in his countrys grinding civil war. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest benefactors of those trying to overthrow him.

OTHER REGIONAL ACTORS:

Israel  Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear programme, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel armed groups, and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia either, the countries have come closer because of a shared concern over Irans growing influence.

The Palestinians The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of Nimr saying it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against terrorism. The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The Palestinian Authority, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.



Analysis: Saudi Arabia and Iran relations at its lowest point

Yemen  The Arab worlds poorest country is torn by a civil war pitting its internationally recognised government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shia rebels known as Houthis, who are supported by Iran.

THOSE URGING CAUTION:

The United Nations  UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to support peace efforts in Syria and Yemen and avoid escalating tensions.

European Union  The 28-nation bloc, which opposes the death penalty, criticised Saudi Arabias mass executions and said Nimrs case undermined freedom of expression and basic political rights in the kingdom. Since tensions flared between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the EU foreign policy chief has had phone contact with both sides, fearing an escalation would further destabilise the whole region.

The United States  The White House has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war, while President Barack Obamas administration also hopes to see the Iranian nuclear deal through.

United Kingdom  Britain and Iran reopened their respective embassies in 2015, four years after hard-line protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia is a key diplomatic and economic ally of Britain, though Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood said Britain told the kingdom about its disappointment at the mass executions.
Riyadhs severing of diplomatic ties with Tehran raises concerns of further regional conflict and economic instability.

The verbal tit-for-tat between regional powerhouses Saudi Arabia and Iran continued on Tuesday after Riyadhs diplomatic missions were attacked following the kingdoms execution of 47 people, including a Shia cleric.

Irans President Hassan Rouhani called Saudi Arabias decision to cut diplomatic ties with Tehran an attempt to cover its crime after prominent religious leader Nimr al-Nimr was among those put to death last week.

Rouhanis comments were the latest in the diplomatic spat between regional heavyweights that has raised international concerns over peace efforts to end the wars in Syria and Yemen, with both nations supporting opposite sides.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabian Prince Waleed Bin Talal  a renowned billionaire businessman  said on Twitter he is putting a halt to business projects and investments in Iran.

Riyadh severed relations with Iran on Sunday after its embassy in Tehran was set ablaze during protests against the executions.

But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday the dispute will not hinder political negotiations over the Syrian conflict expected later this month.

READ MORE: Saudi-Iran standoff  War or a grand bargain?

The recent tensions .. will not affect  the operations that United Nations carries out alongside the international community to achieve a political solution in Geneva soon, Saudi news agency SPA quoted Jubeir as saying, after talks with UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.

John Sfakianakis, an economist and former adviser to the Saudi government, told Al Jazeera that Riyadh and Tehran must take the necessary precautions to avoid a further escalation.

Both sides are aware of each others red lines, he said.

Protests continued in Bahrain, which is among a number of states in the region that severed ties with Iran in solidarity with Saudi Arabia.

Kuwait recalled its ambassador from Iran on Tuesday and Bahrain announced a ban on flights to and from the country.

Sfakianakis also warned against the potential economic impact that the dispute could inflict.

For both sides, dropping [oil] prices are not good news as well as for other oil-producing countries, he said.

Market forces do determine prices but  in the eyes of Riyadh  Iran is not helping to increase the prices when they announce they will flood the market with one million barrels whenever the [international] sanctionsare lifted.
President Hassan Rouhanis comments come as Kuwait recalls ambassador to Iran over attack on Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Irans President Hassan Rouhani has said Saudi Arabias decision to cut diplomatic ties with Tehran cannot cover its crime of executing prominent Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr.

Riyadh on Sunday severed relations with Iran after its embassy in Tehran was set ablaze during protests against Saudi Arabias execution of Nimr, who was put to death along with 46 other mostly Sunni convicts on terrorism charges.

The Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes, Rouhani said on Tuesday in a meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen, reported by Irans official IRNA news agency.





Undoubtedly, such actions cant cover up that big crime, he added.

Regional concerns

Rouhanis comments are the latest in an escalating diplomatic row between regional heavyweights Iran and Saudi Arabia that has raised international concerns over peace efforts to end the wars in Syria and Yemen  the nations support opposite sides in the two conflicts.

The Saudi ambassador to the UN said on Monday, though, that the severing of the ties should have no effect on attempts to end the wars.

We will continue to work very hard towards supporting the peace efforts in Syria, in Yemen, wherever there might be a need for that, Abdullah al-Mouallimi told reporters in New York.

READ MORE: Iran row will not hurt Syria and Yemen talks, says Riyadh

How is that going to affect the behaviour of Iran, we do not know, you will need to ask the Iranians for that, added al-Mouallimi, accusing Tehran of not being supportive of attempts to find peace before this latest falling out between the two nations.

They have been taking provocative and negative positions and lines, and as such I dont think that the breaking of relations is going to dissuade them from such behaviour.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kuwait became the latest country in the region to back Riyadh, recalling its ambassador to Iran over the attacks on the Saudi diplomatic mission.

Bahrain, Sudan and the UAE have also rallied to Saudi Arabias side, breaking off or downgrading relations with Iran in recent days.

Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as a pretext to fuel tensions.

Calls for restraint

On Sunday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement criticising both the executions and the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

The US government also expressed public fears over the escalating war of words.

We do continue to be concerned about the need for both the Iranians and the Saudis to de-escalate the situation, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

We are urging all sides to show some restraint and to not further inflame tensions that are on quite vivid display in the region.

OPINION: Iran and Saudi Arabia  The art of Islamic tolerance

Turkey said that it hoped the tension would diminish as soon as possible.

The region is already engulfed by a circle of fire, it can no longer bear bigger crises, said Numan Kurtulmus, Turkeys deputy prime minister.

As a country which has friendly relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia, we believe that both countries should show restraint.
Tribal forces say they have killed at least 250 ISIL fighters in the strategic city after three days under siege.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has launched a major offensive against the strategic Iraqi city of Haditha with hundreds killed during three days of heavy fighting, a tribal source said on Tuesday.

ISILs offensive against Haditha came less than 10 days after the Iraqi military took over most of Anbar provinces capital of Ramadi  forcing its fighters to withdraw in one of the biggest advances for the army since the armed group took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Naeem Alqaod  a prominent member of Albu Nimr, one of two tribes in Haditha resisting ISILs assault  told Al Jazeera that dozens of Iraqi security forces and tribal fighters were killed and wounded after attacks on security posts.

Alqaod said tribal-led forces have killed at least 250 ISIL fighters. More than 100 of ISILs cars have also been destroyed, he added.

Reports have also emerged of civilians being taken hostage by the armed group.

Alqaod described the foreign coalitions air strikes as ineffective and weak.

ISIL managed to continue the unrelenting offensive because of reinforcements from neighbouring Syria and weapons seized from military installations in towns and villages around Haditha, he said.

Strategic city

Mabruk Hamid, the mayor of Haditha, called on the Baghdad government to immediately intervene and send reinforcements to back the resistance.

Hamid said barriers erected by tribal fighters around Haditha had been destroyed by ISILs attacks, which included dozens of suicide bombings.

Iraq: 80 percent of Ramadi in ruins after fighting

Al Jazeeras Iraq editor Hamed Hadeed said Haditha plays a major role in the countrys conflict because of its strategic location and unparalleled resistance to ISIL.

Haditha serves as a significant transportation route between the western regions of Anbar, the central province of Salahuddin, and northern governorate of Nineveh. It is also the only city in Anbar province that has been able to block ISILs repeated attempts to control it.

One of ISILs ultimate ambitions is to avenge the tribal forces, Hadeed reported.
UK media reports Siddhartha Dhar, who once sold inflatable bouncy castles, is in ISIL video showing killing of five men.

The masked man in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) video showing the killing of five men accused of being Western spies is believed to be a Londoner known as Sid who was associated with hard-line groups.

Siddhartha Dhar  who left Britain for Syria while on police bail after his arrest on suspicion of belonging to a banned group and encouraging terrorism  has been identified by UK media as the spokesman in ISILs latest death film.

The video also featured a young boy wearing a black bandanna around his head and camouflage clothing, threatening in English to kill the kaffir [unbelievers] over there.

Sunday Dare, a Londoner of Nigerian origin, identified the child as his four-year-old grandson, Isa. Dare told British media his daughter  who grew up a devout Christian named Grace before converting to Islam and changing her name to Khadijah  had taken London-born Isa to Syria with her to join ISIL.



Media outlets identify Jihadi John

The latest execution video revived memories of Jihadi John, another British ISIL member who appeared in several videos in which hostages were killed. He was believed to have been killed in a US air strike late last year.

A convert from Hinduism who lived in east London, Dhar regularly attended protests staged by the now-banned organisation al-Muhajiroun, and had often spoken to the media in support of radical causes.

Since leaving Britain, Dhar  who once sold inflatable bouncy castles  gained further attention through online videos in which he extolled life under ISIL.

Khadijah Dare is also a keen propagandist for the group who has posted images of herself and her toddler son pointing rifles on social media.

How Iraq recaptured Ramadi and why it matters

Meanwhile, a spokesman of the US-led coalition said on Tuesday that ISILs territory shrank by 40 percent from its maximum expansion in Iraq and by 20 percent in Syria in 2015, as international forces pushed its fighters out of several cities.

ISIL in 2014 swept through one-third of Iraq seizing Mosul, the largest city in the north, and reaching the vicinity of the capital Baghdad. But in recent weeks Iraqi troops have made gains.

In Syria, ISIL is fighting the army of President Bashar al-Assad and other rebel groups opposed to his rule. It is facing air strikes by the US-led coalition and by Russia, which has sent warplanes to support the Syrian government.
The move comes after several regional allies step up diplomatic pressure on Tehran in its row with Saudi Arabia.

Kuwait has recalled its ambassador to Iran in the latest episode of a regional diplomatic crisis following the execution of a prominent religious leader in Saudi Arabia, the official Kuwait News Agency reported.

READ MORE: Iran row will not hurt Syria, Yemen talks

Tuesdays decision came after Saudi Arabia severed relations with Iran on Sunday after an attack on its embassy in Tehran following the kingdoms execution of Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr, who was put to death along with 46 other mostly Sunni convicts on terrorism charges.

Bahrain, Sudan and the UAE have rallied to Saudi Arabias side, breaking off or downgrading relations with Iran in recent days.

Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as a pretext to fuel tensions.
Late last year, Mohammed Faisal Abu Sakha was stopped by Israeli security forces and arrested while on his way to work. For reasons that have not been made public, the 23-year-old Palestinian Circus School trainer and performer was swiftly sentenced to administrative detention  a controversial practice that allows Israel to hold Palestinian prisoners without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods.

Abu Sakhas administrative detention officially begins on Tuesday. In the meantime, his friends and colleagues have been working behind the scenes to help secure his release, with an online petition garnering thousands of signatures. Asked why Abu Sakha was being held, a spokesperson for the Israeli army told Al Jazeera that he was arrested due to the danger he posed to the security of the region, noting the case was based on confidential information.

A manager of the circus school, who agreed to an interview on condition of anonymity for fear of possible repercussions, spoke with Al Jazeera about Abu Sakhas case.

INTERACTIVE: Freedom denied

Al Jazeera: What were the circumstances of Mohammed Faisal Abu Sakhas detention, and on what grounds is he being held?

Palestinian Circus School: Mohammed was detained on December 14 at Zaatara checkpoint, close to Nablus. It was in the afternoon, while he was on his way from his parents home in Jenin to Birzeit, where he works.

The local public transportation van in which he was travelling was stopped by Israeli soldiers. He was asked to present his ID to the soldiers, and was then asked to step out of the van. We were informed of his detention by the driver of the van immediately after his arrest.

One of his students, who suffers from cerebral palsy and is taught privately by Mohammed, is devastated, and now risks losing out on his circus classes. by

Through a lawyer with the Palestinian prisoners affairs ministry, we learned that he was taken to a military detention centre and then transferred to another one.

He is being held for no reason. At the end of December, we found out that he was being held under administrative detention based on a secret file.

Al Jazeera: Have you been able to communicate with him from jail, and has he said anything about the conditions hes facing?

PCS: No, nobody has been able to have direct contact with him  not even his parents.

Administrative detainees are in many cases deprived of their rights to communicate with anybody and to receive family visits.

Al Jazeera: Considering that hundreds of Palestinians are currently being held in administrative detention, are you optimistic that Israel will be responsive to your pleas in this case?

PCS: Many Palestinians are detained arbitrarily in administrative detention and many international institutions have demanded the release of all administrative detainees, but little to no response has been given to this.

We do believe it is important to keep the pressure on Israel to publicly raise awareness about the illegal use of administrative detention, and we are convinced that we are 100 percent right in Mohammeds case.

We want the Israelis to know that we wont let this happen with our consent. We do believe pressure is our ultimate tool to change the current state of affairs.

We also show our deep solidarity with Mohammed this way, and show that people around the world care about him and about all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Al Jazeera: What kind of response have you been getting to your petition?

PCS: So far, more than 8,000 people have signed the petition on Avaaz.

Many people are sending direct letters to the spokesperson for the Israeli occupation forces. People all around the world are appalled by the detention of Mohammed.

Many people support us and have started campaigns in their own cities and countries.

Al Jazeera: How has the circus been coping in Mohammeds absence, and how have members responded to his detention?

PCS: The entire team and many students of the circus school are outraged and sad at the arbitrary detention of Mohammed. He was supposed to deliver an intensive circus workshop at the end of December. One of his students, who suffers from cerebral palsy and is taught privately by Mohammed, is devastated, and now risks losing out on his circus classes, which are a very important factor in his mental and physical improvement.

The entire team is doing what is in its reach to free Mohammed. The circus has a show in which he is a main performer; we have performed it already 40 times for around 15,000 children, and we plan to perform it again. But the show is now under a lot of pressure.

Mohammed teaches an average of 150 students on a weekly basis, but these classes will now have to start without their trainer.
At least 20 presidential candidates demand counting of ballots stops in election that brought hopes of stability.

Some 20 of 30 presidential candidates in the Central African Republics election have called on authorities to stop counting the votes, alleging fraud.

They made the demand at a news conference on Monday, after nearly 40 percent of the ballots had been counted.

Central African Republic citizens voted on December 30 in much-delayed national elections that it was hoped would bring stability after two years of ruinous communal violence.

The candidates said the electoral process was marred by fraud, and that the population would question the results. Signatories include heavyweight candidate Karim Meckassoua , a former foreign minister from the minority Muslim community, who had been seen as a pre-election frontrunner.

Souleymane Ndiaye, the former Prime Minister of Senegal and the Head of the African Unions (AU) Election Observer Mission, told Al Jazeera that the polls went ahead without incident.

Those candidates who are complaining, received votes of between zero and one 1 percent, this is why they are [protesting], he said from Dakar, Senegal, shortly after returning from the CAR capital, Bangui.

RELATED: Everything you need to know about the elections in CAR

According to provisional results, Faustin Archange Touadera, prime minister from 2008-2013, had 30,999 votes followed by another former prime minister in second place, Anicet Georges Dologuele, with 28,162.

More than 1.8 million people were registered to vote at more than 500 polling stations nationwide that were secured by UN peacekeepers and national security forces.

Rebels from a mainly Muslim group called the Seleka seized power in the Christian-majority nation in early 2013, forcing former President Francois Bozize to flee and provoking reprisals from Christian militias known as the anti-Balaka.

Militia leaders have since fuelled a cycle of religious and inter-communal violence that has killed thousands and forced a fifth of the countrys five million people to flee their homes.

Authorities repeatedly delayed Wednesdays election and the new president will face the challenge of disarming militias and convincing their leaders to give up territory.
At least 34 bodies have washed up on shore on countrys Aegean coast after boats apparently capsized.

At least 34 people, including three children, have drowned off Turkeys Aegean coast after their boat capsized in rough seas.

Twenty-four of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalik, while ten others were found in the district of Dikili, officials told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

Twelve people were rescued from the sea and the rocks on the Ayvalik coastline. A coastguard official said three boats and a helicopter were searching for any survivors.

There was no immediate information on the nationalities of the dead.

Refugees are known to set off from the resort town of Ayvalik on boats to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

READ MORE: Greek anarchists cook in solidarity for refugees

On Sunday, a two-year-old boy became the first known refugee to drown in 2016 after the dinghy he was travelling in crashed on to rocks, the Greek coastguard said.

The other 39 passengers onboard were rescued after fishermen alerted the coastguard, but at least 10 were taken to hospital to be treated for hypothermia after the boat got into trouble near the island of Agathonisi.

About 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in often frail boats.

In a deal struck at the end of November, Turkey promised to help stem the flow of refugees to Europe in return for cash, visas and renewed talks on joining the EU.

Turkey is host to 2.2 million Syrians and has spent around $8.5bn on feeding and housing them since the start of the civil war nearly five years ago.
The armed group has staged a series of assaults in Afghanistan since foreign troops ended combat operations last year.

The Taliban have claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a compound for foreign contractors that killed at least one civilian and wounded 34 others.

Officials said there did not appear to be any casualties inside the compound.

The attack on Monday came hours after another suicide bomber blew himself up in the latest in a series of attacks in the Afghan capital.

Analysis: The Talibans resurgence in Afghanistan

We live in constant fear and have nowhere to escape to, Ibrahimi, a Kabul resident who witnessed the attack, told Al Jazeera.

The government needs to step up their game and prove themselves stronger than the Taliban.

The bomber who targeted the residential compound was wearing a suicide vest and driving a lorry packed with explosives, police said, adding that he detonated the vest when seen by police as he approached.

According to a Kabul hospital, nine children were among the wounded in the attack.

The attacks are merciless. We are the most affected by these attacks. Our children die and no one is here to ask about them or us, Massoud, another Kabul resident, told Al Jazeera.

Its violence everywhere and this is the kind of enviornment our children are growing up in. Either the Taliban should take over completely or the government has to prevent these attacks and create a better environment for us.

The Taliban has stepped up attacks since foreign troops ended combat operations last year and has claimed a series of assaults on foreign targets in and around Kabul.

Most of the casualties, though, have been Afghan civilians.

READ MORE: Rival Afghan Taliban factions agree on ceasefire

On Friday, three people including a child were killed and at least 15 others injured when a suicide car bombing targeted a Kabul restaurant popular with Afghan officials and foreign diplomats.

Earlier on Monday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint without causing any other casualties.

Mondays attacks happened as special forces in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif fought to suppress a small group of fighters holding out after an attack on the Indian consulate on Sunday night.

There has not yet been any claim of responsibility for that incident.

President Ashraf Ghani has announced that officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China will gather in Pakistan on January 11 for a meeting aimed at laying the ground for talks with the Taliban.
Riyadh says breaking of diplomatic ties with Tehran will not hamper efforts to resolve two of worlds most ruinous wars.

Saudi Arabia has said its decision to break diplomatic ties with Iran will not affect efforts to negotiate peace in Syria and Yemen  where the two regional heavyweights support opposite sides.

Riyadh on Sunday severed relations with Iran after its embassy in Tehran was set ablaze during protests against Saudi Arabias execution of prominent Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr, who was put to death along with 46 other mostly Sunni convicts on terrorism charges.

Abdullah al-Mouallimi, the Saudi Ambassador to the UN, said on Monday that the row with Tehran should have no effect on attempts to end the wars.

We will continue to work very hard towards supporting the peace efforts in Syria, in Yemen, wherever there might be a need for that, he said.

READ MORE: Iran and Saudi Arabia  The art of Islamic tolerance

How is that going to affect the behaviour of Iran, we do not know, you will need to ask the Iranians for that, al-Mouallimi told reporters in New York, accusing Tehran of not being supportive of attempts to find peace before this latest falling out between the two nations.

They have been taking provocative and negative positions and lines, and as such I dont think that the breaking of relations is going to dissuade them from such behaviour.





Earlier, Irans foreign ministry said Saudi Arabia was using the attack on its embassy in Tehran as a pretext to fuel tensions.

Iran  is committed to providing diplomatic security based on international conventions. But Saudi Arabia, which thrives on tensions, has used this incident as an excuse to fuel the tensions, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Irans foreign ministry spokesman, said in televised remarks on Monday.

Key players

Saudi Arabia is leading a military intervention in Yemen against the Houthis  Shia rebels who it says are backed by Iran.

The kingdom is also part of the US-led coalition bombing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.

Al Jazeeras diplomatic editor James Bays, reporting from New York, said diplomats at the UN were concerned about the impact the fallout could have on the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Despite those comments [by al-Mouallimi], the United Nations knows that both Iran and Saudi Arabia are key players in both these conflicts, Bays said.

And thats why the UN envoy for Syria is now in Riyadh. Hell be going on to Tehran and then, in the next few days, the UN envoy for Yemen will also be visiting the region.

On Sunday, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon issued a statement criticising both the executions and the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Calls for restraint

The US government also expressed public fears over the escalating war of words.

We do continue to be concerned about the need for both the Iranians and the Saudis to de-escalate the situation, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

We are urging all sides to show some restraint and to not further inflame tensions that are on quite vivid display in the region.

READ MORE: Bahrain, UAE and Sudan rally to Saudi side in Iran row

Turkey said that it hoped the tension would diminish as soon as possible.

The region is already engulfed by a circle of fire, it can no longer bear bigger crises, said Numan Kurtulmus, Turkeys deputy prime minister.

As a country which has friendly relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia, we believe that both countries should show restraint.

Regional reaction

Some 3,000 people took to the streets of Tehran on Monday for a third day, chanting slogans against Saudi Arabias ruling royal family.

In Iraq, where the Iraqi Foreign Ministry has condemned Nimrs execution, thousands of Shia protesters in Baghdad demanded their government cuts ties with Saudi Arabia. Demonstrators also called on officials to reconsider the recent re-opening of the Saudi embassy.

But Bahrain, Sudan and the UAE have rallied to Saudi Arabias side, breaking off or downgrading relations with Iran in recent days.

On Tuesday, Egypt also backed the kingdom, denouncing the attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran as unacceptable.

During a visit to Riyadh, Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that Iranian behaviour following the execution of Nimr was tantamount to intervening in the kingdoms internal affairs.
Hacker group Anonymous says 14 websites were attacked in protest of sentencing of two migrant workers from Myanmar.

Anonymous hackers attacked more than a dozen Thai police websites in protest against death sentences handed down to two Myanmar migrant workers for allegedly killing two British tourists.

Fourteen Thai police websites were attacked and of those listed nine were inaccessible on Tuesday, according to Anonymous Facebook page.

Thai police confirmed the cyber-attacks on Tuesday but said there was no confidential data on the public websites.

They are not good enough to hack into our system and steal any of our data, police spokesman Dechnarong Suthicharnbancha said.

I received an initial report that the hackers are from another country, Dejnarong said. When asked if he meant they were from Myanmar and whether the hack was in response to the Koh Tao verdict, he said, It is possible. We are investigating.



Prayuth Chan-ocha: No one else could do the job

In a 37-minute video posted on the Anonymous Facebook page, a masked person questioned the competency of the Thai police force and its handling of this and other cases.

Torture allegations

On December 24, a Thai court found Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Htun, both 22, guilty of killing Hannah Witheridge, 23, and David Miller, 24, whose battered bodies were found on a beach on the southern Thai holiday island of Koh Tao in 2014.

The investigation into the killings drew allegations of police incompetence, torture and mishandling of evidence. A judge dismissed the allegations of torture, saying there was no evidence it took place.

The verdicts sparked anger in Myanmar where hundreds held protests outside the Thai embassy in the commercial capital of Yangon, calling for the two to be released.

The words Failed Law, We Want Justice, and a hashtag #BoycottThailand were displayed on some of the hacked sites, along with the name of Myanmar-based Blink Hacker Group.

Al Jazeera was unable to verify who carried out the attack on the police websites.
Mohammed Rasool and his two colleagues were arrested after filming clashes between the army and PKK youth members.

Vice News announced on Tuesday that its reporter Mohammed Rasool was released on bail after being held in a Turkish jail for more than four months.

Two UK journalists, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, along with Rasool and a driver were arrested in front of their hotel in the province Diyarbakir after filming clashes between security forces and youth members of the armed and outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Vice News said Rasool, an Iraqi citizen, was released after spending 131 days in prison. He was charged with assisting a terrorist organisation, while his two British colleagues were released after 11 days without any charges.

Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time, a Vice News statement said.

Rasools detention came amid a spike in prosecutions of journalists in Turkey, many charged with anti-terrorism offenses and under laws against insulting the president.

The PKK and the Turkish state were engaged in a war for almost 30 years until a 2013 ceasefire was declared and the two sides began to hold peace talks.

Peace negotiations collapsed last summer and clashes have resumed between security forces and the PKK in different parts of Turkey since then.
Ellen Chiweshe was given the third-highest position in the countrys air force.

A woman has been given one of the most prominent positions in Zimbabwes air force as she became the southern African countrys first female Air Commodore.

Ellen Chiweshe was promoted to the third-highest post in Zimbabwes air force.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported Chiweshes new rank in Tuesdays edition, which included a photograph of Air Force Commander Perrance Shiri fitting a hat onto her head as part of a promotion ceremony.

The newspaper quoted Chiweshe as saying: It was a mens world and it was difficult to break in.

Chiweshe was promoted not because of bias or favour but because of her competency, the Herald quoted Shiri as saying.

The sky is the limit. There is nothing that can stop women from attaining high posts, he said.

Zimbabwes army has a female brigadier general, noted Shiri.

The countrys constitution, adopted in 2013, requires gender parity in all state institutions, but men remain dominant in top government and military jobs.
On the same day that Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 47 convicts on terrorism charges, including the prominent Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr, Riyadh unilaterally declared its withdrawal from the ceasefire agreement in Yemen.

While Saudi diplomats were quick to stress that Riyadhs decision to break diplomatic ties with Iran will not affect efforts to negotiate peace in Syria and Yemen  where the two regional heavyweights support opposite sides  fears are growing that the Saudi-Iran rift may complicate efforts to reach a settlement in these regional hotspots.

Arab Analysts, speaking to Al Jazeera, ruled out the possibility of a military showdown between the two countries but warned that the worsening relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran will most likely exacerbate Sunni-Shia tension in the region and most importantly complicate efforts to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL).

The popular narrative that the diplomatic rift between the two states will negatively affect negotiations to end the Syrian conflict assumes that the negotiations had any possibility of success.

as a mechanism to end the conflict. That does not mean that Saudi Arabia and Iran will not go through the motions of the peace talks.

What the diplomatic rift does, then, is force both countries into openly hostile and confrontational positions that need to be reconciled before any serious negotiations can take place.

This is simply not the case, as there is no reason to believe that either country takes seriously negotiations

They certainly will. Yet, declarations by Saudi and Iranian officials suggesting that the rift is merely a bilateral issue unrelated to the Syrian talks should tell us how serious both countries are about the peace process.

Both will attend and participate in the talks, but this will be purely cosmetic, as it is implausible under the current circumstances that either country would be willing to concede any ground, figuratively and literally, on Syria.

With the negotiations already unlikely to be successful, the larger question is what the rift may mean for the trajectory of the Syrian conflict and future peace talks. The rift will further delegitimise negotiations as a means of ending the conflict as neither side accepts giving up concessions to the other.

This will give greater impetus to the military solution already proffered by both regimes. Sectarian posturing of the kind we have seen this week will continue and thus make concessions on regional issues, such as the Syrian conflict, even more difficult.

What the diplomatic rift does, then, is force both countries into openly hostile and confrontational positions that need to be reconciled before any serious negotiations can take place.

This is extremely unlikely in the short term. The expectation then can be more of the same  a military stalemate and an emasculated peace process. Sadly, this will occur at the continued expense of the Syrian people.

Riad Kahwaji, Director, Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, Dubai



The worsening of the Iranian-Saudi relations is likely to affect other regional conflicts where the two states have a strong influence on the domestic players.

The animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran is about many regional issues and not confined to the execution of al- Nimr or the burning of an embassy. So mending of relations will have to be part of a grand bargain.

Although the Saudi decision to execute 47 people on charges related to terrorism  including Sheikh al-Nimr  was a sovereign issue it, nevertheless, had a wide-reaching effect on various players, foes and friends alike.

Western observers saw the Saudi action as yet another unilateral move by the Saudi-led Arab Gulf states to contain growing Iranian influence in the region. Riyadh has been very suspicious of steps taken by its Western allies, especially the United States, in improving relations with Tehran regardless of continued Iranian meddling in Arab affairs.

Irans nuclear agreement is expected to go into effect this month, relieving Tehran of decades of international sanctions and isolation.

The Saudis have led moves on several fronts in the region, starting with Bahrain and going through Syria and Iraq and lately in Yemen. Most of these moves were not coordinated with Washington and were  sometimes  made without its consent.

Riyadh has shown willingness to implement its own policies to serve its interests against Iranian expansionist schemes.

The severance of ties between Riyadh and Tehran will certainly increase pressure on Washington and its European allies, who are trying to manage their relations with their old Arab allies without affecting their new more friendly policies towards Iran.

They are also trying to deal with a growing terrorist threat that is fuelled by sectarianism.The worsening of Saudi-Iranian relations is likely to exacerbate the Sunni-Shia tension in the region and complicate efforts to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL).

The Saudi-Iranian divide will affect the impending peace talks between the warring Syrian factions and will further delay a political settlement in Lebanon to bring a 20-month-old power vacuum to an end. It will also take its toll on the Yemen war where the collapse of the truce coincided with the break-up of Saudi-Iranian relations.

The animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran is about many regional issues and not confined to the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr or the burning of an embassy. So the mending of relations will have to be part of a grand bargain. The international community will find itself now under mounting pressure to broker a settlement between Riyadh and Tehran, that will most probably have a positive impact on many of the conflicts in the region, especially the war on terrorism.

Otherwise, the situation in the region will escalate to unprecedented levels and ignite more wars.

Abdullah Al-Beraidi, academic, Al-Qasim University, Saudi Arabia



Irans reaction to the execution of several terrorists in Saudi Arabia was uncalled for and in violation of international agreements, such as Article 22 of the Vienna Convention, which states that a host country must

It is unwise [for Iran] to continue to behave in such a way and attempt to divide the Islamic world. It is harmful for us ,for the region and for the entire world.

protect foreign embassies on its soil.

This official reaction not only resulted in driving the mob to attack the embassy of Saudi Arabia in Tehran, but also pushed and encouraged them to do just that. This is not unusual or new for Iran, in fact it has been violating international laws and intervening in other countries affairs in so many ways that makes it look more like an outlawed state

Iran, moreover, claims that it is the protector of Shia around the world, which is not true. Iran is an ultra-nationalistic state that pursues sectarian-motivated policies and treat Arab Shia as tools through which it can accomplish certain immediate and strategic objectives in the region.

It is certain that the solid positions of the Kingdom  backed by its brotherly Arab and Islamic states in the region has enraged Iran, given its failure in Syria in light of the rise of the Russian influence at the expense of Tehrans influence. These factors have pushed Iran to behave in an unruly manner both military and politically in the region.

On top of that, the Iranian regime is squandering the wealth of the Iranian people and it is bargaining with its present and future in exchange of sectarian benefits.

This is something we realise and it is important to understand that it is unwise for Iran to continue to behave in such a way and attempt to divide the Islamic world. It is harmful for us ,for the region and for the entire world.

Hamad Althunayyan, researcher, Department of Government and Politics, Maryland University, Kuwait



This is not the first time Saudi Arabia and Iran have cut diplomatic relations, and it is highly unlikely that this incident will lead to a direct Saudi-Iranian military confrontation in the foreseeable future.

The de-escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia seems to be the most rationale choice.

But this will certainly complicate and lengthen the conflict in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Interestingly, the unfolding events explain both the power struggle within Iran itself and the high level of Saudi frustration towards the Iranian government. This will definitely have serious implications for the region.

Embassy attacks sponsored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are not so uncommon in Tehran: the US embassy was attacked in 1979, and United Kingdom embassy in 2011. But the recent attack on the Saudi embassy revealed two competing perspectives within Iran.

While conservative Iranian newspapers were condemning the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr, however, the reformists newspapers deemed vandalising the Saudi Embassy unacceptable.

The Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wrote two tweets criticising the death of al-Nimr, but he also described the attack on Saudi embassy as unjustifiable in five tweets. It also comes to a surprise that Ahmad Khatami, Irans Friday prayer leader, said: We do not achieve anything by attacking embassies and setting them on fire.

Such statements give insight into the domestic power struggle in Tehran. Nevertheless, the Iranian government is fully responsible for protecting the safety of foreign diplomatic missions.

The Gulf Cooperation Council states denounced the attack on Saudi embassy and consulate in Iran as barbaric, and they held the Iranian government responsible for these terrorist acts.

While Bahrain cut diplomatic relations with Iran, it is not clear whether some of the other GCC states will follow suit.

With falling oil prices and increased regional militarisation, the de-escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia seems to be the most rationale choice.

I believe the two governments are capable of overcoming this episode.

Mahjoob Zweiri, Associate Professor in Contemporary History of the Middle East, Qatar University



It is important to highlight that Iran was surprised by the Saudi decision to cut diplomatic relations. Iran views Saudi Arabia as pursuing a reluctant foreign policy in the past 20 years. That approach has helped Iran to expand its presence in the Arab world.

The internal debate has already started inside Iran about the ramifications of the Saudi decision. This is likely to increase the fragmentation among Iranian political forces.

After the decisive storm campaign in Yemen, the ongoing attempt to build strong relations with Turkey, the decision to execute the Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr, and the cutting of diplomatic relations with Tehran, Riyadh has moved fast to change the dynamics of the relations with Tehran.

The Saudi decision may have little impact on the conflict in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. It appears that Riyadh will work with Turkey and other regional players to drain Iran politically. This would include complicating the domestic politics in Iran as the country is preparing for parliamentary and expert council elections in the last week of February.

The internal debate has already started in Iran about the ramifications of the Saudi decision. This is likely to increase the fragmentation among Iranian political forces.

In response, Iran will exert all efforts to put more obstacles before any future attempts to solve the crisis in three countries; Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

But given the economical drain the country is facing, it does not seem that these efforts will have a serious impact since Iran is not the only player. Any delay of a solution in Syria will be tied to the role played by Russia as well.
The main place of worship and a communal canteen are both a stronghold and refuge for a community facing extinction.

Kabul, Afghanistan  On December 16, Mukesh woke just before 5am. He smoothed down his shirt, slipped on leather sandals, and shuffled out into the dark courtyard of the Karte Parwan Gurdwara, the main place of worship for Kabuls Sikh community.

Mukesh, 40, who only goes by one name, walked quietly to the cold kitchen, flicked on the lights and began preparing the morning langar.

Like all Sikh gurdwaras, the Karte Parwan Gurdwara has a langar  a free kitchen serving daily vegetarian meals to visitors. Langar is one of the Sikhs most sacred traditions, with simple rules: everyone is welcome, whether or not they are Sikh, and people eat the same meal, shared together.

Sivender Singh, another gurdwara resident, arrived to help. Together they poured canola oil into an enormous iron cauldron, and waited for it to heat, warming their hands holding steaming cups of sweet green tea.

In the past there would have been dozens of people here helping, many cauldrons, Mukesh said, motioning to the expansive empty kitchen space behind him. Not any more.

Not so long ago, Kabuls largest gurdwara prepared food for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of worshippers. These days, on average, there are only a few dozen mouths to feed.

Thats because Afghanistans once thriving Sikh community is facing extinction.

Shrinking community

Official census figures do not exist, but according Rawali Singh, deputy head of the Afghanistan Sikh and Hindu Community Council, about 40 years ago, an estimated 50,000 Sikh and Hindu families lived in Afghanistan.

That number has shrunk to around 363 families, the vast majority of whom are Sikhs, and has steadily declined in recent years, largely due to persistent social discrimination and prejudice.

In Kabul, only 102 Sikh families remained, said Rawali, and in the past year alone, more than 150 families have left Afghanistan.

In other areas of the country, such as Jalalabad and Kandahar, where Afghan Sikhs once lived in large numbers, at most only a few dozen families remain.

Afghanistans constitution formally enshrines Islam as the countrys official religion. But it also protects the rights of Sikhs, and members of other faiths, to practise their religion freely.

On paper we have equal rights, but I cant go out at night, said Kuljeet Singh, a shopkeeper. Like many of the men who live at the gurdwara, Kuljeet sent his family to live in India a few years ago, remaining behind only to take care of his business.

In line with his beliefs, Kuljeet always wears his distinctive turban and other Sikh religious articles of faith, known as kakkar, which in Afghanistan, he said, makes him vulnerable to beatings and harassment.

With these I cannot hide, he said, pointing to some of the kakkar: a metal bangle, uncut beard and a small curved sword worn strapped to his body.

Sikh exodus

The most significant Sikh exodus from Afghanistan occurred during the civil war (1989-1996) and during the subsequent Taliban rule (1996-2001), during which thousands, like many other Afghans, sought refuge in neighbouring countries.

Life under the Taliban was a particularly dark time. Officially, Taliban commanders were ordered by their leadership to respect Sikh and Hindu communities, on the condition they didnt proselytise and paid jizya, a religious tax imposed on non-Muslims.

But they also required Sikhs to publicly identify themselves, by wearing yellow patches on their breast pocket or armbands, and to mark their homes and businesses with yellow flags.

They were allowed to continue daily prayers at the gurdwaras so long as they couldnt be heard from the street, but it also wasnt uncommon for errant Taliban to harass or beat them, Kuljeet said.

Even after the fall of the Taliban, however, and promises by both the Karzai and Ghani governments to do more to protect their communities, each year the number of Sikh families continues to shrink.

Before the wars we were integrated in local communities, said Sivender. But with the passing of time the prejudice against us has increased. People were really radicalised by the civil wars and the Taliban.

Some in Afghanistan have been particularly intolerant of Sikhs cremating their dead, a practice forbidden in Islam. Protesters have interrupted funeral processions by throwing stones and shouting insults, forcing the Sikh community to request police protection so they can mourn in peace.

During the civil war, local commanders from different sides illegally confiscated housing and land from many Sikhs, and Muslims were also discouraged from doing business with them, impoverishing the minority.

I would have left if I could afford it, said Surjeet Kaur, a widow who lives in another Sikh shrine in Kabul.

Surjeet had also arrived before dawn to the Karte Parwan Gurdwara, and sat in the tandoor room, to prepare fresh bread for the langar. She worked quickly, slapping the dough into shape before firing it in the open oven.

One by one, Surjeets extended family left Afghanistan during the civil war. After her husband was killed in a car accident, her home was illegally seized, giving her no choice but to move into the shrine.

I miss them a lot; family is like part of your body, she said.

But, she emphasised, proudly showing her own kakkar, a small curved sword, she took comfort in the remaining Sikh community, and said volunteering for the langar gave her a sense of purpose.

Im here to serve God and my community, she said. These people have been my brothers for the past 30 years.

In the kitchen, Mukesh watched Sivender drop dough into the hot cauldron oil to make pakora, a deep-fried appetiser common in Indian cuisine. But this one had a special Afghan touch: in addition to the usual flour, oil, ginger, garlic, spices and coriander, the batter was studded with fresh pomegranate seeds.

The first batch was ready by 5:10am. I am the guru of food here, laughed Mukesh as he was complimented on the hot, delicious food.

Mukesh isnt himself a Sikh, nor is he Afghan. Hes a Hindu, from India, and his Sikh wife and three young children live in New Delhi. He was working in Dubai when his uncle, who prepares food in a langar for a gurdwara in Pakistan, told him the Karte Parwan Gurdwara needed a new cook.

I miss my children, of course, said Mukesh, as he began to cook a large pot of chole, a chickpea curry, stirring rapidly as steam filled the room.

But his uncles message was Gods intervention for me, he said. To him, cooking for the langar is a spiritual pursuit  a type of worship.

A small, tight-knit community

Despite dwindling in size, Kabuls Sikh community has retained a strong sense of community.

The gurdwara rooms, which once stored hundreds of bags of flour and rice to feed thousands of worshippers, are now simple bedrooms for dozens of Sikhs with nowhere else to go.

The residents rarely eat outside the gurdwara. While leaders say anyone is welcome, they rarely see visitors from outside their community, apart from the occasional official or foreigner.

Some of the community members are vegetarian and concerned about the use of animal products in food, Surjeet explained.

Meat is not allowed to be consumed at the gurdwara, but some still do eat it, but only if it is slaughtered according to Sikh custom.

With all meat sold in butchers and served in restaurants in Afghanistan prepared according to Islamic principles, the Sikh community will only eat meat they prepare themselves.

We live together, we help each other and we prepare the food together, said Mukesh. And we eat together, here in Gods house.

That day was particularly special for Kabuls Sikh community. It was the first day of their calendar month, when almost all the remaining Sikhs traditionally come from across Kabul for morning prayer and the langar, but it was also the anniversary of the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth of the 10 Sikh gurus.

In the late 17th century, Guru Tegh Bahadur, a Sikh from Amritsar in Indias Punjab state, was sought out by a Hindu community to intervene in the Mughal Emperor Aurangzebs efforts to forcibly convert them to Islam.

When the guru appealed to the emperor, he was asked to convert or perform a miracle. He refused, and was arrested and publicly executed in 1675 in Delhi on the emperors orders.

Guru Tegh Bahadur was an exceptional man, said Mukesh as he handed out milky, sweet cups of masala chai, with crushed spices floating on the surface. He saw all people as equal, everyone as a human being.

The message of today is tolerance, added Kuljeet. Even if their community faced discrimination, he said, if we retaliate when they attack us, we become just like them.

Upstairs in the brightly lit shrine, with mirrored walls and carpeted ceilings, the priest had been sitting since 4.30am, cross-legged and barefoot, knees covered in a thick blanket, reading the mornings prayer over a loudspeaker.

The first handful of worshippers arrived just after 7am. Men sat on one side, women, wearing colourful, jewelled skirts and fringed head scarves sat opposite, huddled around a bukhari, a traditional Afghan wood heater.

The priest began to sing and play the harmonium while the worshippers listened or quietly read aloud to themselves from palm-sized prayer books.

Numbers began to swell at 8am, as members from the Sikh community around Kabul arrived at the gurdwara for their special celebration.

Suddenly, from the usual group of fewer than 40 worshippers, there were a couple of hundred men, women and children, probably almost the entire Kabul Sikh community, gathered together in the one room.

As the praying continued upstairs, Mukesh made the final langar preparations, carrying piles of Surjeets freshly made bread into the eating hall on the ground floor.

Bored and hungry, a few dozen young boys filtered down to the hall and practised their kung fu moves on each other as they waited for breakfast.

We eat so our hearts heal

Sikh children commonly face taunts and discrimination in Afghan schools, resulting in many of the remaining families to send them to be educated abroad.

Kuljeet, who can trace his Afghan lineage back four generations and served in the Afghan army for seven years, said that while he feels Afghan in [his] heart, his children are much happier living in India.

One day, Kuljeet said, his nephew returned from school devastated. The school had organised an official ceremony for Teachers Day, and the school principal decided his nephew would not be allowed to participate.

The boy wasnt a real Afghan, the principal said, and he would have to wait outside, by himself, until the party was over.

He was humiliated, said Kuljeet. He said that was enough; he wasnt going back to school again. The entire family then decided we had to send all our children to India.

As the prayers finished, the families flooded the eating hall, laughing and smiling. They sat, men on one side, women on the other, in long rows on the floor.

The young boys sprang into action, placing metal plates and chai glasses between the rows, while the men quickly served the hot bread, chole and pakora on the communal plates.

The younger children buzzed excitedly around the room, and women admired the few babies  the newest additions to their small community. Old friends stood up to cross the room and greet each other.

Guljeet Kaur, 33, looking around the room, said it was clear the numbers of Afghan Sikhs shrank each year. So many have left, and they arent willing to come back, she said.

For her, this meant the large monthly langar meals, like todays, had become increasingly important to the community.

Its an opportunity to honour our religion together but its also social, she said, as a handful of pakora was dropped on her plate.

We pray upstairs to clean our heart. Then we come downstairs here to eat together. Thats when our hearts heal.

After hours of preparation, the eating was over in less than 20 minutes, and the room emptied as quickly as it had filled.

Mukesh stood watching as the young boys dutifully gathered the discarded plates and returned them to the kitchen. Smiling broadly, Mukesh said it filled him with joy to see the small community come together.

Look at all the cleaning we have to do, he laughed, as the dirty plates piled up. But Im very happy.

You can follow Danielle on Twitter at @danielle_jenni.
US president issues executive orders to bypass Congress and try to reduce deadly mass shootings.

US President Barack Obama starts his final year in office focussing on gun control.

His efforts to press Congress to address the controversial issue of gun control have failed.

Republicans are sharply critical of Obamas proposed restrictions following more mass shootings across the US.

The powerful National Rifle Association is also gunning for Obamas plan

The president says his plan will not prevent mass shootings but will save many lives.

On Inside Story, an in-depth discussion on whether the new gun control measures can curb gun-related violence.

Presenter: Richelle Carey

Guests:

Jerry Henry, a gun lobbyist and Executive Director of Georgia Carry dot org, an organization aimed at protecting the rights of people in Georgia to own and carry firearms.

John Rosenthal, founder and Chairman of Stop Handgun Violence.

Nils Duquet, researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute.
It's been a good year for New York-based, Japanese violinist/composer Tomoko Omura, whose second CD as leader, Roots (Inner Circle Music), has earned high praise from critics and peers alike. The roots of the title refer to Omura's heritage as she reimagines popular Japanese tunes through the prism of jazz. The ten tracks draw inspiration from film themes, folk tunes and even the national anthemmaterial familiar to and beloved of successive generations of Japanese. Yet Omura's idiom is pure jazz, and with the backing of her regular New York band she has crafted what violin maestrohas described as "one of the most beautiful, important, creative and relevant works of jazz violinists in the recent past."Clearly Howe isn't the only one impressed by Omura's musicianship and skills as an arranger, as she was voted as a Rising Star in Downbeat Magazine in July. It might seem like 2015 is a breakthrough year for Omura but that's not how the unassuming musican sees it: "Maybe it looks that way but I don't really feel that way," she says. "I've been doing the same thing -working on music, playing with my band and playing with other bands. My life is not really different."After ten years in America, Omura's life is undoubtedly a whole lot different to when she was a student in Japan, dreaming of a passage to America to pursue her love of jazz. That Omura didn't go down the classical music path may seem odd, given that she began the violin aged just four and given her family background. "The strongest memory I have was when I was eleven or so, in Vienna, Austria," Omura recalls. "My mother was in the Shizuoka Symphony and they travelled there to play a Tchaikovsky violin concerto. I remember thinking 'Oh wow! This is great!' It was one of the most impressive concerts I've ever been to. It was beautiful, though I never particularly wanted to play that music."Though Omura and jazz were star-crossed lovers destined to meet eventually, her introduction to this universe came close to home while she was still in junior high school.: "My older brother, Hiroyuki, started playingandandand all that music with his friends. He played drums and sometimes bass. One day I heard this great music from his room so I ran and knocked his door and asked "What's that music?" It was Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959) by Miles Davis. That was the first time I ever listened to jazz and I just fell in love."From there, Omura's path towards jazz followed a logicalthough by no means easyroute when she later went to Yokohama National University. "I knew about the student organisation called the Modern Jazz Society, where students gather together and play jazz, but there's no teacher. In Japan it's pretty famous because some of the students become professional jazz musicians, so I wanted to be in that scene," Omura explains. "That's part of the reason I chose that university."Early inspiration for Omura came from various sources: "I knew aboutfirst and that gave me the encouragement -it's okay to play jazz with violin. I respect him though I wasn't so much into his musical style. Then I discoveredand I was really into his music."Closer to home, Omura found a style of jazz violin more on her wavelength in violinist Naoko Terai, who has collaborated withand. "She had just released her first album [Thinking of You, 1998] when I started playing jazz," relates Omura, "and I thought, 'Oh, there is modern jazz violin!' I was into that scene."Omura's ambitions, however, didn't rest in Yokohama's Modern Jazz Society. Her eyes were on the Berklee College of Music, Bostona seemingly impossible dream. "I was hoping to get a scholarship," Omura explains, "because if I didn't get one I couldn't afford to go, so I'm glad that it happened."The young violinist made her way to Berklee in 2004, full of excitement and hope. Within no time at all she had made her mark, winning BCM'sAward for outstanding improvisational skillsthe first time this honor had been given to a violinist. At Berklee, Omura studied with, Hal Crook,andGlaser, a versatile jazz and bluegrass violinist and currently Artistic Director of Berklee's American Roots Music Program, would introduce Omura to one of her most important influences when he played her a recording of Polish violinist. "That changed my world," says Omura. "I didn't know about Zbigniew when I was in Japan. Matt Glaser played this solo violin album [Solo Violin EMI, 1976] and he said, 'OK, try transcribing this.'"Like any good student, Omura dutifully made the transcription of Seifert's music. The rewards were significant. "I fell in love musically. I had never heard that intensity and such modern language on the violin." Having graduated cum laude from Berklee in 2007, Omura wasted little time in recording her debut CD, Visions (Self Produced, 2008). A personal homage to jazz violin greats, Omura's original compositions acknowledged Grappelli,, Ponty,, and, with the simply titled "Zbigniew"Seifert.Born in Krakow in 1946, Seifert played withfrom the mid-1960s, recording several albums with the trumpeter. Seifert would make a handful of outstanding recordings of his own that featured the likes ofand. Those who played with him declare him to have been something of a musical geniusa one-off.Tragically, Seifert died of cancer in 1978, aged thirty two, and only recently with the release of his old recordings on CD is he beginning to reach a new generation of musicians, such as Omura. "There's a strong message in Seifert's music," she says. "I was blown away."Fast forward half a dozen years to 2014 when Omura made a pilgrimage of sorts to Poland to participate in the inaugural Zbigniew Seifert International Jazz Violin Competition : "I don't think that playing music should be competitive and I would never enter another competition," Omura says, laughing. "I did this one because the competition was in Zbigniew Seifert's name. I had wanted to go to Poland for a long time to see where he was from."Though Omura didn't win the competition she took away many positives from her participation: "I met many great people there, great violinists, supporters of jazz violin and fans of Zbigniew. I even met Zbigniew's wife, who was very supportive."Musically, Omura also benefitted from the competition: "The experience challenged me and helped me find out what I want to say in music."If on her critically acclaimed debut Visions Omura's drew from and expressed herself in a familiar yet striking jazz idiom, her follow-up is perhaps more of a personal statement, drawing as it does from her own cultural heritageher deepest roots.The origin of Roots goes back to a Japanese tour Omura was undertaking back in 2009 to promote Visions: "When I played in my hometown of Shizuoka, though, I arranged a Shizuoka folk song for that particular performance," Omura relates. "The audience knew the melody and reacted with such feeling. It was a great experience and I couldn't forget about it. I started to think it would be nice to do an album of all Japanese folk songs."The playing on Roots is tight yet flowing, disciplined and exploratory. Much of the music's success music lies in the chemistry between Omura and guitarist, pianist/keyboardist, double bassist Noah Garabardian and drummer. The band had already been together several years and it shows in the collective energy and brio with which they address Omura's arrangements."Everyone is a strong individual. I don't tell them what to do," says Omura. "They just do what they do. I bring the music and the charts and everything but they can get imaginative and bring their own thing, so that's the best part."The song selection on Roots reflects melodies popular to several generations of Japanese, including, perhaps surprisingly, a lyrical take on the national anthem: "I had an idea to open and close the album with the Japanese national anthem as a tribute to Japanese people," explains Omura. "It didn't happen but I knew I was going to use it, in a little bit more stretched way."It's a an approach Omura has taken with all the tunes, for with the exception of the sound of the tea-pouring ceremony that introduces the traditional "Cha Tsu Mi" (Green Tea Picking), there is little to suggestto the unfamiliar Western ear at leastthat these are famous Japanese tunes reimagined. The one tune that may ring a bell with jazz buffs is "Kojo No Tsuki (Castle in the Moonlight"), whichrecorded on Straight No Chaser (Columbia, 1967). Omura's arrangement, however, was not intended as a tribute to the great pianist: "I actually hadn't heard it [Monk's version], though when I started playing it with people they told me 'have you checked out...?' "Early in 2015, Omura toured Japan with Roots in a quartet consisting of Zaleski, bassistand drummer Ryo Shibata. Audience's reactions to Omura's jazz reworking of Japanese tunes were very positive: "When I was introducing the songs we were going to play people were like, 'Wow! You're going to play that? In a jazz club?' From the beginning they were very interested," relates Omura. "Some of them were not jazz fans so it was a good way to connect to different generations."The Shizuoka gig, was needless to say, a special occasion: "It was great," says Omura. "Of course, in my hometown some people have known me since I was very little so it's like family. Some of them come every year to my concerts at home and I try to be a better musician."In striving to be a better musican Omura uses her time to the best advantage: "Nowadays I practise a lot, whenever I can find the time. Sometimes I only practise in my head, while I'm walking outside," explains Omura. "I practise the improvisation in my headhow I want to make the phrases or a certain patterns that I want to learnI'll practise in the head first and then I'll play it on my instrument. I like doing that walking outside; I feel freer than in a room. When you take the subway you can practise. It's helpful."Like many musicians, Omura also teaches to help meet the rent, taking the same care with teaching as she does with making music. "I try to make the lessons as creative as possible which is the way I approach music in general," the violinist explains."I think it's very important to be creative and flexible, playing-wise and teaching-wise," Omura expands. "I myself wasn't solidly classically trained in Japan. I didn't go to the conservatory. I learned from my Momwho is a classical violinistbut our lessons were basic and she wasn't training me to become a classical soloist. So, I think that kind of looseness made me really get into jazz and rock when I was a teenager. I liked that openness. It's very important to be open-minded."On Roots the strands of rock and classical music in Omura's DNA are woven subtly into the mix but in New York the violinist also plays in a broad range of settings, from a one-off gig with's Mahavishnu Project at The Stone to the old-style jazz of Carte Blanche, an events band that plays the jazz of the 1920's to the 1950s. "I enjoy it," says Omura of Carte Blanche. "I try to approach it the same way I do with my music. I try to stay in the same mind-set. Sometimes playing at the parties it's difficult because maybe no-one is listening. But that's challenging too."Then there's String Bop Trio: "That plays more bebop repertoire, with violin, guitar and bass. I like that instrumentation but I want to stretch that project a little more, compose original music and record at some point. That one is still developing."More definitely Omura is already working on a follow-up to Roots: "The Roots project is still on-going. There are so many good songs in Japan that I couldn't include everything on the first album. I've been composing more music and I have about half an album -maybe five songs already. I'd like to record that when I'm ready."When the time comes, Omura will more than likely once again release the next chapter in the Roots project on's label Inner Circle Music. The label's dedication to encouraging original, creative music chimes with Omura: "There are no restrictions, no limitations. I really like that part of the label. You can do pretty much whatever you want."In spite of the Downbeat recognition and the glowing reviews for Roots it has proved hard getting gigs for the Roots quintet in New York and beyond: "It's very difficult," Omura acknowledges. "I'm having a tough time, budgeting and so on. It takes patience and a lot of time and effort. I'm still learning how to do that in this society."Nobody said that making it as a jazz musician in New York would be easy, but Omura, more than a decade into her American adventure and with two excellent recordings under her belt, is not only making a good go of it but, importantly, has no fear: "Sometimes hardships work as fuel," Omura says philosophically. "I don't want to go the easier way because I know I would be bored. I like challenges."Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anna Chana Demidova
A new grant will allow UFs HealthStreet to help residents in lower income counties.

HealthStreet received a 3-year grant for $300,000 from Florida Blue on Dec. 9, said Catherine Striley, an assistant professor of epidemiology. The grant will allow the program to send health workers to Putnam and Union counties to evaluate residents health. Currently, HealthStreet only does this in Alachua and Duval counties.

In Putnam and Union counties, the grant will also allow them to transport residents to doctors as far away as Gainesville or Jacksonville when necessary, she said.

HealthStreet wanted to expand to Putnam and Union counties to determine what their health care system needs, Striley said.

It wont be until were actually on the street and talking to people that well find where the holes are, she said. This is kind of an opening for us but not at all an ending.

Florida Blue will continue to give the grant annually, said Velma Monteiro-Tribble, Florida Blues director of grants and programs. She said more nonprofits will apply in coming years. This year, about 20 organizations applied.

A total of $1.5 million was divided between the six organizations that received the grant across the state, Monteiro-Tribble said.

She said Florida Blue gave HealthStreet the grant to help them reach out to underserved communities.

I think this was a well-deserved grant, she said.

Contact Caitlin Ostroff at costroff@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @ceostroff.

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Gainesvilles City Auditor recently began reviewing whether Mayor Ed Braddy and a city employee followed city guidelines in their interactions with a police officer charged with larceny in November.

The audit will review whether Braddy and former Human Resources employee Tiffany Dorsey followed city policies and procedures when they accepted gifts from Jeffery McAdams.

McAdams, a former Gainesville Police officer and president of the Gainesville Fraternal Order of Police Gator Lodge No. 67, was charged with larceny after an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

FDLE found that McAdams stole more than $56,000 from Gator Lodge.

Obviously if we had policies not being followed for a long period of time, what didnt we do? said City Auditor Carlos Holt. If all policies and procedures were followed, do we need any more?

McAdams used lodge funds to cover hotel stays, travel expenses and gifts for Braddy and Dorsey without their knowledge, according to FDLE.

The investigation also found tht McAdams used lodge funds to pay for hotel stays in Gainesville and Ocala for Braddy while he faced relationship issues.

Braddy apologized for his lapse in judgment during a November press conference.

In December, he addressed the investigation in an email to media where he wrote both the questions and answers.

Braddy said he presumed McAdams personally paid for the hotel rooms in Gainesville and Ocala. He later made a $515.46 payment to Gator Lodge, according to the email.

Braddy said he went on a trip to Daytona Beach in 2013 with McAdams, during which McAdams used lodge funds to cover expenses, to meet an unnamed person to discuss Gainesville Regional Utilities.

McAdams accompanied him to facilitate the meeting, Braddy said.

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Braddy self-reported himself to the Florida Commission on Ethics, acknowledging a potential conflict of interest, according to the email.

Holt said the audit, supported by Braddy, is anticipated to be finished next month.

Contact Hunter Williamson at hwilliamson@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @hunterewilliam.
Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)




AR's Editor Joe Shea Talks About Elections On Iranian TV Bear Stearns Saved By Fed As Lehman Bros. Falters; Major Bank

Failure Looms Over Wall Street, Sends Markets Into 200-Pt. Dive Lie Upon Lie Five Years Into the Iraq War

The Administration Still Churns Out Lies by Randolph Holhut A Small Tragedy Even at 90, As Friends Turn Cool

She Knows the Show Must Go On by Joyce Marcel I'll Take Me Imagine John Wayne or Arnold

In Heels, Silk and a Girdle by Elizabeth Andrews Sen. Nelson Calls For New Fla. Primary; Gov Crist Backs 'Do-Over' Who'll Win? Ask Spock Spock.com Engine Predicts Winners

By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him

But I Think He's a Non-Believer by Constance Daley Death of a Thug The Life and Horrors of Suharto by Andreas Harsono ___________________________ This Just In Sierra Club: McCain Ducked All 15 Key Votes On Green Laws (AR) A Work By AR's T.S. Kerrigan Is Chosen As 'Best Poem' By Wordpress Site Murder At Mile 63

The Deadly Assault and

Bush Administration Cover-Up

by S. Eben Kirkesby

and Andreas Harsono 5427 14th St. West, Bradenton, FL 34207 $6.99 Fish Fridays! Manatee Co.'s Only 24-Hr.

FREE Wi-Fi Paid Advertisement On Native Ground

AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World

COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I'm not sure but I think I may be socially incorrect. [MORE] On Native Ground

ENOUGH FOR A WAR, NOT FOR A PEOPLE by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Last week, the National Governors Assn. met in Washington, D.C. One of the tasks the NGA had on its agenda was to ask President Bush to increase federal spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects as a way to stimulate the economy. He rejected their pleas out of hand, claiming that infrastructure projects wouldn't offer any short-term economic boost. [MORE] Brasch Words

BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance

A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum

OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008

HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground

BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum

WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground

FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat

THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World

POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day

FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance

YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum

THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground

OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies:

WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World

DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama

PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words

TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day

THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum

THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies

AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance

CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida

SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World

PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground

VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day

REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies

FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum

SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies

ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008

AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World

STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special

SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum

TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt.  Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground

IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008

CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies

WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto

DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance

I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE]
Anecdotal:

They are very likeable, Sergio & Lucia, but reserved. You sense life in the old country stamped them hard, so they keep their cards close to their vest. Any topic that might reveal a political or social orientation is met with silence.

Anyhow, when I returned home yesterday there was beautifully wrapped holiday cake & candy on the porch, with the card signed Lucia. Quite unexpected and without explanation.

A few minutes ago I dropped by to thank them. Lucia opens the door with a mouthful of food  over her shoulder I see they are eating with guests  and I decline her invitation to step in, so she steps out, closing the door behind her.

After expressing my thanks, she looks at me real hard, like shes trying to read my soul, and a torrent of Romanian-accented English bursts out:

Weve got to stick together in these times. Its crazy. Neighbor must support neighbor. She meshes her fingers together. I dont know how youre voting but Trump is speaking the truth.

She looks at me hard again to see how I react. And Im thinking I interrupted an impassioned dinner conversation and shes continuing it here on the stoop.

The appearance of Trump has revealed that the other guys are not conservative. They are attacking him. They are showing their true colors. They are not conservatives. Theyve been revealed. We know who they are now.

I nodded.

The future of this country is at stake. We have to stick together. Come visit Sergio & me later this week. From Anecdotal @ HappyAcres
I am using this blog to record my genealogy research progress. My research at this point is concentrated in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania records. Since many of my ancestors ended up in the Midwest and West my research sometimes takes me in that direction. I also research Irish records.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 5, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan sent a congratulatory message to Peoples Artist of Armenia Norayr Mehrabyan on the occasion of his 75th birth anniversary, wishing him long creative career and new achievements.

As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of Republic of Armenia Presidents Staff, Serzh Sargsyans congratulatory message reads as follows,

You have made a weighty contribution in the Armenian art of dancing. The ensembles you established in the Diaspora have successfully performed in many countries, while Barekamutyun (Friendship) Dance Ensemble created by you is one of the most original dance groups.

Disseminating the Armenian national culture throughout the world, you revive dancing by folk music and works of Armenian composers.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 5, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan received Remy Makinadjian, the president of the French company Realease. The interlocutors discussed urban investment programs, including issues about construction of residential buildings and development of service infrastructures. As Armenpress was informed from Information and Public Relations Department of the Government of Armenia, the sides also touched upon the issue of the opportunities to represent a number of prominent French brands in Armenia.

PM Hovik Abrahamyan hailed the projects and initiatives of the president of the French company, Makinadjian, and expressed the assistance of the Government for their implementation.
The Business Side of Green Blog is where Peter Arpin gets to interact with the community on an ongoing basis. Here, Peter will share his thoughts and ideas when it comes to helping our community move towards a more sustainable future. Peter is also looking for your ideas and thoughts to promote and share through the Arpin Broadcast Network and its affiliates, Arpin Group, Arpin Van Lines and Arpin International Group.
People like Fidel Castro, Che Ernesto Guevara, Nelson Mandela, Hugo Chavez and other revolutionaries were hailed and used as examples of the approach needed in the crisis.

Fearing intimidation, they refrained from school work and sat at Forum Square listening to the student leaders talking about Tiananmen Square and the liberation movements in Latin America and Africa.

Some dissenting students who claimed that the leaders were using the crisis for their own means were harassed. So were students who didnt get involved in the protest and tried to attend normal classes.

Over the next two or three days the student leaders used rhetoric and demagogy to maintain the momentum of the protest.

A couple of government vehicles were stolen and driven into Forum Square and burnt as a warning to the Chan-Haiveta government about what to expect if they sent the mercenaries to Bougainville.

Civilians living in the various settlements in Port Moresby inundated the Waigani campus to show their support for the students and soldiers.

That was the first time I had heard and seen Namah, albeit from a distance. At the time I didnt realise he would end up where he is now.

He could truly talk and had the students, the soldiers and everyone standing on their toes with their adrenaline soaring.

Every time Namah took the podium in his full military regalia to deliver a speech he looked like the Napoleon Bonaparte that we had read about in history books.

These soldiers played a crucial role in stopping the mercenaries from going to Bougainville to kill and murder the BRA fighters.

There were five defence force officers heading the protest: Major Walter Enuma; Captain Bola Renagi; Captain Belden Namah; Lieutenant Michael David; and Second Lieutenant Linus Osaba.

At the beginning of their protest, the students and the soldiers shared food from the university mess. This show of solidarity and camaraderie was consistent with the traditional PNG way of preparing for tribal warfare.

The police force was true to its constitutional duty and tried its best to protect the lives of civilians as well as public property and assets. But there were a couple of instances where the police and the defence force soldiers came close to firing shots at each other.

The PNGDF soldiers made a new home at the universitys Forum Square. The university students and the soldiers unanimously opposed Sir Julius hiring the mercenaries to flush out the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.

All these events unfolded when I was a first year student at the University of Papua New Guinea.

But the PNG Defence Force refused to cooperate with his replacement. Brigadier-General Singirok retained the support of the 4,700 members of PNGs army.

Brigadier-General Jerry Singirok, the army chief, denounced the Sandline deal and called on Sir Julius Chan to resign. So Sir Julius sacked him.

Few of the civilians, students and soldiers had an understanding of the nature and rationale of the deal signed by the Chan-Haiveta government with Tim Spicer of Sandline International. They only had the opportunity to hear the side of the story espoused at the UPNG Forum Square.

The two daily newspapers were burnt or destroyed if they reported on the advantages of the deal to have the mercenaries eliminate the BRA.

The organisation Melanesian Solidarity (MelSol) was part and parcel of the protest and was very vocal. Jonathan Baure, Peti Lafanama and Powes Parkop were some of the leaders of MelSol and made names for themselves during the crisis. Some student leaders like Tom Olga and David Arore also became well known because of the crisis.

In the 1997 national general election many of the MelSol and student leaders stood for election in their various provinces. They thought that they had made themselves popular enough during the crisis to get elected.

But in the end only one of them, Peti Lafanama, was successful and joined the other new faces, like the late Fr Robert Lak, in parliament.

During the protest, students, soldiers and the general public, and various opportunists, slept outside both the northern and southern gates of National Parliament demanding that the Chan-Haiveta government tear up the deal with Sandline International.

Eventually the 40 Sandline mercenaries were sent packing from Port Moresby and never set foot in Bougainville nor fired a shot there.

Sir Julius Chan resigned on 26 March 1997 taking with him his deputy, Haiveta, and defence minister.

After the crisis, the law took its course. Namah was tried for mutiny, convicted and gaoled in late 1997 with all his fellow officers except Major Walter Enuma. Namah was locked away, nobody heard of him again and he seemed to have faded into the abyss of history.

Around 11 September 2001 when the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, I was granted permission by the then CIS Commissioner Richard Sikani to carry out a 10-week research program looking into prison rehabilitation at Bomana gaol.

I entered the main Bomana compound and met Namah at the entrance to the European area. He was clean shaven and wore short dark sportswear without a shirt.

He introduced himself and it quickly dawned on me that he was one of the soldiers that had led the Sandline protest. He was living in the European compound with a couple of the other officers implicated in the mutiny.

There were also a couple of policemen, a Fijian and two Chinese who had been involved in various crimes ranging from murder to felony. Namah was very obviously the leader among the prisoners in the European compound and he had secured a freezer, decent beds and a TV for his fellow inmates.

For the next 10 weeks, Namah and I met at the Bomana main compound library for lunch. Whilst munching on our brown rice and tinned fish we discussed socio-economic and political issues affecting Papua New Guinea.

Through our discussions, I came to realise that he knew all the factions in the PNG Defence Force and which politicians they were affiliated with. He was also aware of all the major white collar crimes and embezzlement taking place from the public coffers and would strenuously condemn these crimes.

This country is a land of milk and honey and I want to become the prime minister one day and save this country from both illegal and legal exploitation of our wealth and diversity.

We are too polite to foreigners and that in itself is setting ourselves up for ambush by greedy foreign corporate organizations who are obsessed with profits, cheap labour and compliant markets. PNGs interest is the last thing on their priority list, Namah said.

I listened attentively but at the back of my mind I was wondering how a helpless prisoner could get out of prison and give birth to his dreams and aspirations.

We became well acquainted and every time I went to the main compound he greeted me as Angra.

I tell you, Namah can talk and talk on any issue with vigour and conviction.

Every week when I entered the Bomana CIS I brought the two daily newspapers for Namah to read. He would read through them making comments on all the political rhetoric and grandstanding by politicians and corporate organisations.

He had an opinion on how it could all be done better with less cost, or no cost, to catalyse hugely successful results and impacts.

I was impressed with his ideas but deep down in the bottom of my heart I was underestimating him and was sure that he would die without realising his dreams, not least because of his prisoner status.

Then in 2003 the news was splashed on the front page of both dailies that Namah had been granted parole for his part in the Sandline Crisis. He quietly returned to his Bewani Forest like Robin Hood did to Sherwood Forest in English folklore.

I dont know what he did between 2003 and the eve of the 2007 national general elections.

In 2007 he stood for the Vanimo Green River Open seat and won. He returned to tackle his arch enemies at the Waigani Haus Tambaran (Parliament) and the Galleries of Justice.

From that point on, all is familiar and we all know he helped oust Sir Michael Somares nine-year old government and install Peter ONeill as prime minister. He landed in the deputy prime ministers seat.

With the connections he had, he cooled and contained the mutiny by Defence Force soldiers supporting Somare. He also combed the Supreme Court building looking for the chief justice.

If Namah is still the same guy that I became acquainted with at the Bomana prison in 2001 then I feel that one day he will climb the remaining couple of stairs to reach the apex.

I also believe that his prison dream of becoming prime minister one day will also unfold.

You and I know that PNG is the land of the unexpected. Let us wait and see if this prophecy of mine becomes reality.

We all know the adage, Where there is the will, there is the way. It is also useful to remember that other adage, All great visions are reached in stages. Caveat!
Yet Australia has, regrettably, deserted the goal of promoting good governance in two of its closest neighbours, Papua New Guinea and Nauru, at a cost to the local populations as well as Australia's international reputation.

To speak of responsibility to the backyard implies a patronising attitude towards what are proudly independent and sovereign nations, but there is no doubting that Australia, as a significant power in the region, has a special obligation to promote ethical standards.

Both nations are hosts to Australian-funded "regional processing centres" and are presently home to almost 1,500 asylum seekers and refugees. The Coalition and Labor are joined in the embrace of this so-called "Pacific solution", with the aim of preventing refugee boats arriving on Australia's shores.

Despite spending more than $1 billion in the past year on offshore processing, in addition to significant foreign aid, Australia's influence in Papua New Guinea and Nauru has actually diminished.

Australia has become so dependent on borrowing the sovereign jurisdiction of these two countries to escape its own responsibility towards asylum seekers that the government is now complicit in supporting anti-democratic practices.

Nauru has adopted an ever more draconian approach to local governance since Julia Gillard turned to it in 2012 with a request to host an asylum-seeker detention camp. The judiciary has been denuded, local media censored, access to the internet restricted (including a ban on Facebook), and foreign reporters effectively barred by the imposition of onerous visa fees.

Nauru is due for an election in 2016, yet there is little reason to be confident of a fair contest. Opposition MPs have been suspended from parliament for daring to criticise the government. One, Roland Kun, has been stripped of his passport and prevented from seeing his Australian partner and family for more than six months because of a criminal investigation that appears to be political payback.

Once, Nauru's dictatorial drift would have been met with alarm in Canberra. New Zealand has suspended its financial support for Nauru's judiciary as a signal of concern over the government's interference in the courts. Australia has remained silent.

Nauru has just 10,000 people. Papua New Guinea, with almost 8million, presents a far greater challenge.

Its prime minister, Peter O'Neill, has a long history of reckless conduct, most recently with questions over his role in Port Moresby's acquisition of a $1.2 billion stake in the Australian-listed company Oil Search. Instead of explaining his actions, Mr O'Neill has responded with bluster, seeking to intimidate independent officials and traducing institutions.

He acted with similar disdain last year when a warrant was issued for his arrest over claims of corruption. Mr O'Neill certainly has no fear of pressure from Australia. Canberra's response to the political upheaval in PNG has been timid, fearful of putting at risk Mr O'Neill's support for the Manus Island detention centre.

PNG is expected to receive more than $550 million in aid from Australia this year, yet at the same time it is demanding Australia withdraw technical advisers from within the local bureaucracy, who would otherwise ensure the money is well spent. Australia cannot direct PNG policy but it is responsible for its own policies, and the logical consequences that flow from them.

Our government's desperation to stop asylum seekers has sown a further set of problems for which it is no less responsible.
The proximate cause for the losses to fraud and corruption are perhaps best described by the former Treasury and Finance Minister, now Prime Minister Peter ONeill, when in May 2011 he was quoted as speaking of the systematic breakdown in the public service.

EXACTLY why Papua New Guinea is suffering such high levels of corruption is difficult to explain.

With thanks to PNG Exposed. Download the complete paper at the end of this chapter

Extracted from Applied Forensic Accounting  Experiences from the Papua New Guinea Financial Intelligence Unit by John Chevis & Bernard Barrum, 2012

The ultimate cause however may be far more complex and possibly due to cultural and historical influences upon which Donald R Cresseys Fraud Triangle potentially sheds some light.

The average wage for a public servant in PNG, including police officers, is approximately K23,000 per annum with many private sector employees such as bank employees earning not much more.

This disparity between the cost of living and salaries, coupled with family or wantok obligations, appears to place many public servants in a situation where the temptation to engage in corrupt behavior to supplement income is likely to far outweigh any individual considerations of integrity.

The Fraud Triangle suggests there are three factors likely to be present in every situation of fraud:

 Motive (or pressure)  the need for committing fraud (need for money, etc.);

 Rationalisation  the mindset of the fraudster that justifies them to commit fraud; and

 Opportunity  the situation that enables fraud to occur (often when internal controls are weak or non-existent).

Wolfe and Hermanson (2004) add to the triangle a fourth element, that being Capability  the necessary traits and abilities to commit the fraud.

An examination of the circumstances of many Papua New Guinean public servants shows that many of them are in situations where at least the first three factors are present - low relative wages and family pressures providing the motive for fraud.

A rationalisation that everyone else is doing it or if I dont take it someone else will, and lax governance, poor oversight and a less than diligent banking sector providing ample opportunity.

The lens of the fraud triangle/diamond undoubtedly provides useful insights into individual instances of fraud which is certainly useful when applied on an organizational level to prevent fraud.

The application of such insights, on a macro or country level, to provide effective methods of countering widespread corruption however appear less certain.

In formulating methods for the PNG Financial Intelligence Unit to counter corruption the authors observed that there was little that they could achieve in the terms altering the environment to reduce motive, or capability.

Reducing motive would most likely require an increase in public service salary, a reduction in the cost of living and alteration of cultural norms to reduce wantok obligations  all unfortunately outside the capacity of the authors.

Reducing capability as regards and individuals personal abilities would appear to be an impossibility and/or counter- productive, as those capable of engaging in corruption are also likely to be the most capable workers.

The theoretical basis for the actions taken by the authors over the past two years have, as a consequence, focused on altering the rationalisation of fraud by reducing the perception that corruption is going unnoticed and increasing the deterrent through increasing the perceived risk of being detected.

With this went a focus on reducing opportunity through a restriction of the avenues to place the proceeds into the banking system.

Opportunity certainly presents itself regularly to public servants in terms of poor legislative control, lax governance and poor management oversight.

There is little on this side of the equation, however, that offered an apparent, viable solution in the short term.

Download the complete paper here
Location of comet C/2013 X1 (PANSTARRS) as seen looking north-west from Adelaide at astronomical twilight, and hour and a half after sunset. The comet is just below Chi and Gamma Peg (indicated). Click to embiggen. Location of comet C/2013 X1 (PANSTARRS) as seen looking north-west from Brisbane at astronomical twilight, and hour and a half after sunset. Ignore the time on the image, it is a Stellarium bug. Click to embiggen. Location of comet C/2013 X1 (PANSTARRS) as seen looking north-west from Darwin at astronomical twilight, and hour and a half after sunset. Ignore the time on the image, it is a Stellarium bug. Click to embiggen.

Comet P/2013 X1 (PANSTARRS) is reported to be in outburst at magnitude 8.1 or brighter (there have been reports in the high 7's but I haven't seen them directly). This makes the comet potentially visible in binoculars, and rather obvious in telescopes.Unfortunately for Australians the comet is currently in the Great Square of Pegasus, forming a triangle with Gamma and Chi Pegasi. This means that it is very low to the horizon, and can only be seen for a short time after astronomical twilight in the evening before it becomes too low.Black and white printable map suitable for use with binoculars or a telescope. The stars Gamma nd Chi Pegasi (indicated on the chart above) are shown for orientation. The large circle is the filed of view of 10x50 binoculars, ad the small circle the FOV of a 24 mm eyepiece on a 114mm Newtonian reflector. Click to embiggen and print.Southern Australia has the worst view, with the comet only 10 degrees or a little bit more above the horizon, where horizon murk will make it harder to see.Northern Australia has the best views with the comet 20 degrees above the north-west horizon at the latitude of Brisbane at astronomical twilight, and 41 degrees above the north-west horizon at the latitude of Darwin at astronomical twilight.My image of C/2013 X1 taken with the iTelescope remote scope T20 in New Mexico on the 4th.

Labels: C/2013 X1, comet
Warning: May contain traces of soy, wheat, lecithin and tree nuts. That you are here

strongly suggests that you are either omnivorous, or a glutton.

And that you might like cheese-doodles.

Please form a caseophilic line to the right. Thank you.
When Tara Olmstead Dennee started Stand Against Suicide in 2011, she hosted group meetings and housed merchandise out of her home.

To help ease the growing pains of a quickly emerging group, Olmstead rented a storage unit, invested in a trailer and held support groups at a local church.

"It all started overtaking my house," she said.

Five years later, the organization has secured a more permanent home in Jordan. The group will celebrate its opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at noon Saturday, Jan. 9.

Olmstead Dennee started Stand Against Suicide after her father, Wayne Olmstead, took his own life in 2008. She started experiencing her own bouts of depression and anxiety, and wanted to be able to do something in light of her father's death.

"I decided to take my dad's tragedy and make it into something positive," she said.

While more people are talking more about mental illness and suicide, there is still more work to be done, she said. More than 36,000 people in the United States die by suicide each year, according to recent statistics from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

The organization has held several community outreach events and had a booth at the New York State Fair this past summer.

"We're just looking to get the word out there that there are people that know how you feel," she said.

One of the biggest reasons why Olmstead Dennee wanted to find a more permanent space was to ensure Stand Against Suicide had a safe and comfortable space for its attendees. The organization is also looking to expand its presence in the community. Right now, it hosts two meetings a week, but eventually would like to have a group meeting every night.

That requires more trained volunteers, Olmstead Dennee said, which she is hoping to accomplish over the next several months. The group currently has four board members and 20 regular volunteers.

It has also started a youth group from 6 to 8 Thursday evenings, something it was not able to do before finding a permanent location. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among those 15-24 years old, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

The adult support group meetings are held from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays.

Olmstead Dennee said she has a unique opportunity to be able to help people on both sides of the spectrum  those experiencing suicidal thoughts or depression, and family members of those who have  because of what she has gone through.

"I think as much of a struggle as it's all been, I'm well-versed on both sides of it and I think that it makes me understanding to a lot of different people," she said.

Olmstead Dennee said her continued work in helping those who come to the organization has been extremely rewarding, and she hopes to continue to make a difference in the lives of others.

"We help people every single day with mental illness and suicidal thoughts, and it just feels good to know that I may be saving someone from what I've gone through," she said.
AUBURN | Police are investigating a burglary at an Auburn church over the weekend.

Suspects broke into the Roosevelt Memorial Baptist Church at some point Sunday night, according to the Auburn Police Department. Officers investigated the church, at 101 Fitch Ave. on Monday afternoon.

Police said they were also investigating a break-in at the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ across the street. The investigation is ongoing.

The Rev. Robert E. Wilson, pastor, said a member of the church's board of trustees stopped by to drop off a bank deposit receipt when he noticed a light was on in the kitchen.

The board member then went up to the finance office and saw someone tried to break open the church's safe but was unsuccessful.

After speaking with police, Wilson said he believed the perpetrators broke into the church through a side window on the lower level.

The finance office and Wilson's office sustained the most damage. Police found communion candles, office supplies, towels and remnants of feces strewn across the pastor's office. Both office doors were also cut open and kicked in.

For Wilson, the pastor said, what was perplexing was not much of value was taken. Wilson believed the only items removed from the church were a few keys and a pair of Bluetooth speakers.

"It pretty much tells me, 'Well we can't find what we want, so we'll just tear everything up before we leave,'" Wilson said, speaking from the church stairwell Monday.

Wilson, a pastor for nearly 11 years, said he hasn't had any issues in the past with break-ins or thefts. He moved to Auburn from Alabama in 1960 when he was six years old, and has been involved in the church since he was eight.

Wilson took on his current position after the former pastor and his brother-in-law, John Humphrey, died in 1995.

He said the break in is "ridiculous" given the financial state of churches around this time of year, his included.

Wilson said he still plans to still hold a service on Sunday. He expects to have everything cleaned up over the next few days.

"I just wanted to let them know that you can tear all the doors down, kick all the windows out but God's house will be restored and things will go on," he said.
AUBURN | Mrs. Nancy Smith Bergan, 84, of Auburn, passed away Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016 with her sons by her side.

She was born in Auburn to Henry and Veronica Vail Smith. A graduate of Central High School, she worked for many years at New York State Electric and Gas. Nancy was married to Peter D. Bergan on Oct. 25, 1958, until his passing on May 1, 2012. While being a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother, Nancy faced her long battle with cancer and C.O.P.D. with courage and grace.

She is survived by her sons, Douglas, and Patrick and his wife, Amy; her beloved grandchildren, Rachel, Grace, and Matthew Max, all of Auburn; her sister, Joan Heffernan, of Baldwinsville; several nieces and nephews.

A Mass of Christian burial was held in Sacred Heart Church, Auburn, with interment in St. Josephs Cemetery.

Memorials may be made to the Fleming Volunteer Fire Department No. 1, or the E. John Gavras Center.

Her family wishes to thank the Auburn Police Department, Auburn EMTs, and the Auburn Fire Department for their professionalism, kindness, and dignity at a time when it was deeply appreciated.

Farrells Funeral Service Inc., 84 South St., Auburn.
SYRACUSE | Skaneateles resident Eric Allyn is among the new slate of officers selected at the Gifford Foundation's annual meeting in December, as he was selected to serve as the organization's treasurer.

The new officers also include President Ben Walsh, of Syracuse, Vice President Jaime Alicea, of Syracuse, and Secretary Merike Treier, of Cazenovia. The board welcomed Ron Tascarella, of Oswego, and bid farewell to Kathy OConnell, who retired from the board after 12 years of service.

The Gifford Foundation is a private foundation supporting community needs in central New York since 1954. Through its grantmaking, it fund organizations based on a belief that change at the individual or organizational level holds the potential to institute change at broader community levels.
The City of Flagstaff may have a new roundabout in its future, but it won't be cheap. The total cost, including a federal grant, is nearly $2.4 million.

Flagstaff City Council will consider giving staff the authority Tuesday night to negotiate for property rights of way around the intersection of Switzer Canyon and Turquoise drives to install a roundabout.

The intersection has had a number of serious accidents in the past. Staff believe installing a roundabout will decrease the number of T-bone style accidents at the intersection. The project will be partially funded through a grant from the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program.

Because it will be funded through a federal grant program, the city will have to hire a rights of way consultant to purchase property in the area. Staff is estimating that the cost to hire the consultant, purchase the property for the rights of way and handle the title paperwork will be about $177,000.

That money will come from the citys 2015/2016 Transportation Tax, Traffic Signal program.

According to staff, the design for the roundabout is about 60 percent complete and construction should start in spring 2017. The estimated total cost of the project is $2,390,852. The federal grant will cover $1,795,000 and the city will pay for $595,852. The citys share will come from the Transportation Tax, Traffic Signal program.

Council will also consider eliminating specialty appointments to four city commissions  the Beautification and Public Art Commission, Heritage Preservation Commission, Open Spaces Commission, and Tourism Commission.

The specialty appointments required that four of the seven commissioners on the Tourism Commission to be from the hospitality industry. The Tourism Commission requires five of its nine members to be from the hospitality industry.

The Beautification Commission was required to have one member from the hospitality industry, one voting member from the arts community and one voting member who was a professional landscape, architect or graphic designer. The remaining four members of the commission were made up of residents who volunteered to serve on the committee.

The Heritage Preservation Commission is currently required to have two members with a professional background in architecture, history, planning or archeology, two members who own locally designated historic properties or properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places and three members from the general community.

The Open Spaces Commission calls for four members from the natural and cultural sciences, one member from the citys Planning and Zoning Commission, one member from the real estate industry, and six at-large members.

Members of both the Open Spaces Commission and the hospitality/hotel industry have objected to removing the requirements from the commissions. Both believe the specialty appointments add a depth and breadth of knowledge to the commissions that an average lay person may not have.

Council will discuss the roundabout at its 6 p.m. session and the commission appointments at its 4 p.m. session Tuesday at City Hall, 211 W. Aspen Ave.
DEAR ABBY: My husband went to Florida three months ago to care for an ailing former lover. He told me she will be leaving him a sizable inheritance and he needs to protect her from "vultures." I think there may be more going on than what he's telling me, but he has been painting a pretty picture of how rosy our future will be with her gift.

He has now suggested that we get a temporary divorce so he can marry her in order to get her entire estate! He claims it will be nothing more than a business arrangement. Even though our marriage has been rocky at times, I have never seen this side of him. I don't know whether to believe him and be simply disappointed at his callous behavior, or not believe him and conclude that he really wants a divorce so he can marry her. Any thoughts? -- HEARTSICK IN SOUTH CAROLINA

DEAR HEARTSICK: Your husband appears to still be carrying a torch for his old flame. Are you sure she is really sick? If it's the truth, then the "vulture" I see on the horizon may be him.

I hope you appreciate how extremely manipulative your husband appears to be. Because of it, and since he has spoken the "D" word, consult a lawyer to ensure that your interests will be protected regardless of his motives. I'm saying that in case the woman turns out to be healthier than both of you.

DEAR ABBY: My adult son, "Greg," who lives with me, is slowly drinking himself to death. He was laid off two years ago, and I know he is depressed and has given up on life.

It has reached the point where he is showing signs of cirrhosis, but he refuses to do anything about it. The last time he saw a doctor was three years ago. The doctor said Greg's liver functions were not normal and he needed to stop drinking. I've tried to make my son listen to reason, to no avail.

My sister tells me if I don't get Greg some help, I could be charged with adult neglect. What can I do? -- MOM WITH A PROBLEM

DEAR MOM: If the inability to convince a substance-addicted adult relative to get help were against the law, there wouldn't be enough prisons to hold all the "offenders."

As much as you love your son, you can't "fix" his alcohol addiction. You should, however, find the nearest Al-Anon group and attend some meetings. And while you are at it, bring your sister with you because she has a lot to learn. Chief among the lessons is that someone else's drinking is not another person's fault or responsibility to control. I am sorry for your pain, because I'm sure it is considerable.
School arson

Unknown suspects set fire to a stack of textbooks inside a Flagstaff school over the winter break.

According to the police report, one of the teachers left Pine Forest Charter School, located at 1120 W. Kaibab Lane, at about 2 p.m. Thursday. When she returned the next day at about 2 p.m., she found the window to her classroom wide open. The screen was lying on the ground outside.

The teacher also noticed a burning smell. She found burned manuals and paper supplies inside a supply cabinet in her classroom where someone appeared to have attempted to start a fire. Officers determined the suspect or suspects went into another classroom, burned papers in two desks and set fire to three textbooks that were sitting on the teacher's desk.

Police also saw signs that someone had opened miscellaneous drawers in a third classroom but caused no damage. The case has been closed due to a lack of leads.

Charged with DUI

 Michael Macri, 26, of Australia was arrested and charged with DUI at 1:55 a.m. Thursday.

 Omar Robert Baxter, 39, of West Riordan Road was arrested and charged with DUI at 10:28 a.m. Thursday.

 Renee Rae Yazzie, 43, of West Kaibab Lane was arrested and charged with DUI at 2:08 a.m. Saturday.

 Sean Michael Tsinijinnie, 30, of Tucson was arrested and charged with DUI at 2:19 a.m. Saturday.

 Quinton Lamar Stingley, 37, of Glendale was arrested and charged with extreme DUI at 1:55 a.m. Sunday.

 Jay Barrett Hornung, 44, of Destin, Fla. was arrested and charged with extreme DUI at 6:31 p.m. Sunday.

 Sean Patrick Chenault, 40, of South Dory Trail was arrested and charged with extreme DUI at 10:09 p.m. Sunday.

City and county residents who want to report a crime but wish to remain anonymous may call Silent Witness at 774-6111 or (877) 29-CRIME. Rewards of up to $2,000 are given for information that leads to an arrest.
Flagstaff water users legitimately want dependability at low cost. The best way to reduce costs is to reduce the number of new wells required, and to delay high-cost pipelines that would import water from other areas.

Reclaimed wastewater use has helped reduce potable water demand. Once viewed as trash to be disposed of, we have learned that it is valuable water. For instance, NAU uses reclaimed water for landscape watering and toilet flushing.

Tiered rates charge heavy users more per gallon than other users. Tiered rates for residential customers have substantially reduced our potable water consumption. It makes sense that we should implement a similar program for non-residential customers.

There are huge water conservation opportunities among non-residential users. For instance, Flagstaff Medical Center reduced water use by over 30 percent during the past decade, even with operational growth. Following a water use audit, Panda Express restaurants in Tucson reduced consumption by 1,000 gallons per day, per store. These examples show that non-residential water use reductions are possible without operational impacts.

Institutions that reduce water demand reduce the need for expensive new wells. They should be rewarded because it is good economics and it is the right thing to do. Institutions that ignore water conservation should help pay for the required new infrastructure.

A tiered rate structure should be revenue neutral with respect to the flat rate structure. With a properly designed, revenue neutral, tier structure for Flagstaff, most non-residential users would receive reduced water bills relative to flat rates. Only the highest users would pay more.

Tiered rates achieve their conservation incentive by raising the cost of the last gallon purchased for most customers, even when the customers overall bill is lower. This higher-cost water provides the financial justification for businesses to implement new ways to save water. Because of this payback, they will logically change behaviors, change processes, or make investments in water-efficient equipment. A lower tier rewards those already doing a good job; a higher tier provides an incentive to save water.

The city hired a consultant to study our water rate structure. For non-residential users, they recommended an extreme tiered rate structure with water bill savings of 57 percent for low users and increases of 37 percent for large users. Their proposal was unacceptable to everyone and was rightfully rejected by the city council. Even though the specific proposal was flawed, the underlying concept is valid and proven  two-thirds of Arizona cities use such a system to encourage conservation among non-residential customers.

I call for the council to study alternative plans, especially a plan with smartly designed tiers. I trust that with open minds, a non-residential tiered rate structure can be developed that will significantly increase conservation, and will burden no one. We proved it to be pragmatic and productive for residential; we can do the same for non-residential.
Cairo Post

Visually Impaired Khaled Hanafy, Right, Appointed By President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi As Member Of Parliament - YOUM7 Archive

CAIRO: The National Council for Disability Affairs (NCDA) lauded President Abdel Fatah al-Sisis appointment of a blind man as Member of Parliament, according to a Monday statement.

The decision indicates keenness on representing this segment in all walks of life in commensurately with their achievements and giving, the council said.

Eight people, each with different disabilities have secured seats in the parliament through electoral lists; eight is the minimum number of seats allocated to handicapped people per the law.

With Sisis appointment of Khaled Hanafy among the 28 he is legally entitled to designate in the parliament is the ninth handicapped person in the 2015 Peoples Assembly.

The decision also reflects the political leaderships prioritization the issue of disabilities in all its forms, head of NCDA Ashraf Marei said in the statement.
News coverage from Israel is often distorted if measured against the 'Code of Ethics' guidelines of journalism. The origins of bad news about a country thus lie with numerous foreign media. This project exposes one of many methods used.Bad News from the Netherlands has raised major international interest since it appeared on the web in October 2007. Many thanks are due to all those who have contributed news, ideas and financing. Support us to expand this project.Act against the biased media: start a bad news blog about another country. If you want to use this layout, please contact us at the e-mail address below.

Do It Yourself

The "Bad News Movement" is not a franchise, but consists of

independent initiatives of which Bad News from the Netherlands is the first. Yet as the initiator of the movement, we would like to make a few suggestions to those who want to establish similar projects:



1. Always keep in mind the target of the blog: showing only negative items about a country makes its society aware of how some of their media distort the image of Israel.

2. Focus on items from leading sources such as the government, major media, well-known institutions.

3. Do not concentrate on one or a few areas. Deal with as many major aspects of the country as possible: government, politics, justice, media, culture, civil society, etc.

4. Do not exaggerate issues beyond what is mentioned. A collection of bad news is bad enough without blowing up the facts. Let the facts speak for themselves.

5. While one can draw part of the information from the more sensational papers, let them not dominate the blog.

6. Do not emphasize ethnicity of people where it is irrelevant to the issue.

7. When necessary, provide comments on issues which require it, but try to present the majority of issues without comment.


Born in Montreal in 1949, Guy Badeaux (Bado) has been the editorial cartoonist at the French language daily "Le Droit" in Ottawa since May 1981. Winner of the National Newspaper Award in 1991, he is a member of the group "Cartooning for Peace" as well as treasurer of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists.

Since 2002, he has served as president of the jury of the cartoon contest of the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom in Ottawa. He was also editor of the 22 first issues of "Portfoolio: The Years Best Canadian Editorial Cartoons".
Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle: The Obama Administration Abandons Longstanding U.S. Positions on Puerto Rico's Legal Status

Rick Pildes
President Barack Obama is making good on his pledge to politicize gun violence.

The package of gun-control executive actions Obama will formally announce Tuesday has pushed the contentious issue to the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, just weeks from the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. While Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on the issue, both parties see Obama's actions as an opportunity to generate enthusiasm among primary voters.

But in a general election, the gun debate becomes a blurrier political proposition. Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws. The gun-control advocacy movement has gained wealthy backers, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but the National Rifle Association remains one of the most dominant forces in American politics.

"It's an issue that both (sides) are really going to want to talk about for the next couple of months, but I don't know how much they're going to want to talk about it in the fall," Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush, said of the eventual presidential nominees.

For now, Obama's gun actions are a central topic as candidates crisscross Iowa, New Hampshire and other early voting states.

GOP contenders promise that if they get elected, they'll swiftly repeal Obama's actions, which include steps to expand background checks for gun purchases. GOP front-runner Donald Trump vowed to "un-sign" the president's measures. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that on his first day in the Oval Office, "those orders are gone." Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that while Obama may currently hold the power of the pen, "my pen has got an eraser."

On the Democratic side, front-runner Hillary Clinton has unveiled her own proposals for gun-control executive actions and enthusiastically endorsed Obama's measures even before the president's official announcement.

"I know that a Republican president would delight in the very first day, reversing executive orders that President Obama has made," Clinton told voters in New Hampshire.

The cornerstone of Obama's executive actions is a background check requirement for guns purchased from dealers even if they're bought online or at gun shows. The new federal guidance aims to narrow the so-called gun show loophole that allows some purchases to occur without a background check.

In announcing the actions in the early days of 2016, Obama is purposely thrusting the issue into the center of the presidential campaign. As he foreshadowed his executive orders last fall, Obama said addressing gun violence is "something we should politicize."

The emphasis on gun issues marks a shift for Democrats, who have shied away from the subject in recent presidential elections, not only because of the NRA, but also due to competing views within the party. Clinton and Obama both treaded carefully on guns when they faced off in the 2008 Democratic primary, and the president didn't attempt to pass congressional legislation until the shooting of elementary school students in Newtown, Connecticut, which occurred about a month after his 2012 re-election.

Democratic losses throughout the South, however, have narrowed the number of elected officials in the party who oppose gun restrictions. Gun-control backers also point to shifts in public opinion and the rise of well-funded advocacy groups as reasons Democratic candidates can campaign on the topic with fewer electoral risks.

Actions to expand background checks, for example, have broad public support. A CBS/New York Times poll conducted in October found that more than 90 percent of Americans favor requiring background checks on all potential gun buyers.

Bloomberg has pumped millions of dollars into gun-control advocacy efforts, including donations to candidates who support more restrictive measures. An organization founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was badly wounded in a 2011 shooting, also has raised millions to promote gun control measures.

"There's more organization, there's more capacity, there's more money," said Kristin Goss, a public policy professor at Duke University who has studied gun-control advocacy groups. But asked whether the new organizations can succeed in matching the energy and organizational power of the NRA in a general election, Goss said, "That's an open question."

Surveys have shown that gun-control supporters lag those who favor fewer restrictions on most measures of political activism. During the failed legislative efforts in 2013, the NRA mobilized its members to flood Capitol Hill with phone calls and letters urging lawmakers to oppose the White House-backed measures.

Still, Republicans know that while opposing nearly all restrictions on gun laws may be the only acceptable position for many GOP primary voters, it could be less attractive in a general election. Associated Press-GfK polls conducted in October and December found 58 percent of Americans favor stricter gun laws. That's up slightly from 52 percent two years ago.

Highlights of executive actions addressing gun violence

The Obama administration is announcing a series of executive steps aimed at curbing gun violence, including broader background checks and the hiring of additional specialists to process those checks.

Here are some of the highlights:

EXPANDED BACKGROUND CHECKS

The president's actions will make clear that anyone who's in the business of selling guns must obtain a license, regardless of whether they sell firearms online or at gun shows, and must conduct background checks on their customers. Currently, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers.

The White House says there's no threshold number of sales that will trigger the licensure requirement, and that even a few transactions may be enough to establish that a person is engaged in the business of selling guns.

The federal government is also finalizing a rule to require background checks for those who try to buy sawed-off shotguns, machine guns and similar weapons through a trust, corporation or other legal entity.

---

MORE FBI EXAMINERS

The FBI will hire more than an additional 230 examiners and other staff to help process background checks. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System in 2015 received more than 22.2 million background check requests, or an average of more than 63,000 per day.

The FBI is also working to modernize NICS, which dates to the 1990s, and to improve the response time for alerting local law enforcement authorities that someone who is disqualified from buying a gun attempted to do so.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has written to states emphasizing the need to submit complete criminal history records so that the background check system has as much information at its disposal as possible.

---

LOST AND STOLEN WEAPONS

A rule issued by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will clarify that a dealer shipping a gun is responsible for notifying law enforcement once it determines it was lost or stolen in transit. The rule is aimed at clarifying regulations on lost or stolen weapons that the White House says are ambiguous about who precisely bears that responsibility.

---

SMART GUN TECHNOLOGY

A presidential memorandum to the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice directs the agencies to conduct or sponsor research into smart gun technology. That technology is aimed at reducing the risk of accidental gun discharges and improving the tracing of lost or stolen firearms.

The memorandum also instructs the agencies to regularly review the availability of smart gun technology and to promote its use.

---

MENTAL HEALTH

The White House is proposing a $500 million investment to improve mental health care.

Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Boone, Iowa, and AP News Survey Specialist Emily Swanson in Washington contributed to this report.
The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!
Birthday wishes

Call 281-422-8302 or email sunnews@baytownsun.com to wish someone a happy birthday. We will print your birthday wish on Page 2 of The Sun.

Happy Birthday Wishes
Titi Cole, CEO of Legacy Franchises at Citigroup, joins the Most Powerful Women in Banking list this year after taking on a wide range of responsibilities for the New York bank. Check out the full list to see all of the women and where they rank.
I had a friend in elementary school who liked to proclaim, mock-ominously and out of the blue, "When you least expect it, expect it."

No one can declare with certainty which cybersecurity threats will rise to the fore in 2016, except leaders of cybercriminal rings. And even they may not have a concrete plan.

Nevertheless, Ill venture a few predictions, mostly safe ones, about cybersecurity in financial services in 2016, with the help of some top experts.

Cybersecurity rules for banks will get tougher. New York regulators have been aggressively pushing stronger security requirements for banks under its jurisdiction. If the New York Department of Financial Services gets its way, two-factor authentication will be mandatory for customers access to online banking and for employees access to certain databases and external networks. Every bank will have to appoint a Chief Information Security Officer. And so on. It remains to be seen whether national regulators like the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will give up their generally looser approach of recommending rather than mandating such practices, but they are certainly being pushed to take a harder line.

The problem with this is that bankers will concentrate on fighting the last war.

"This will distract from the real focus, which needs to be on cyber resilience measures that are forward looking and anticipatory in scope rather than defensive and reactive," said Steve Durbin, managing director of the Information Security Forum, a cybersecurity research firm. "But such is the nature of regulation  legislators occasionally wake up and issue historically focused edicts whilst cyber never sleeps and continues to innovate."

The crypto wars will heat up. The battle between governments and tech companies over access to customer data is sure to continue, with resolutions possible but unlikely in 2016. The issue: governments want large tech companies to provide a so-called "back door" to their systems, so that they may mine their databases for information about criminals and terrorists. As a practical matter, such back doors are the equivalent of a user name and password government officials can use to look up information they would normally need a search warrant to obtain. Apple and other tech companies have been resisting, arguing that the same back doors that give the government access to private information could be used by cybercriminals and bad actors.

In financial services, in 2015 we saw messaging provider Symphony stand up to this pressure. The company worked out a compromise with regulators under which it will archive copies of its clients messages for seven years. Four banks (Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Bank of New York Mellon) that are customers of and investors in Symphony agreed to turn over copies of their encryption keys to an independent custodian that could provide regulators with the access they seek.

Expect to see "more use of encryption by cybercriminals, cyberspies and other disaffected parties, with law enforcement unable to decrypt data messaging communications even if they have back doors into hardware operating systems and encryption software," said Avivah Litan, vice president at Gartner. However, she said, voice communications will continue to be open to law enforcement agencies because of their relationships with telecom carriers.

Password resets will become more disciplined. The security blogger Brian Krebs wrote in late December about how his PayPal account was hacked by cybercriminals linked to ISIS, through PayPal's "lazy authentication." An attacker called PayPals customer service call center and managed to impersonate Krebs and reset his password by providing the last four digits of his Social Security number and the last four numbers of an old credit card account. PayPal had given Krebs a key fob that generates security passcodes for two-factor authentication, but did not require the passcode for a password reset.

PayPal said in a statement that its standard procedures were not followed in this case. "While the funds remained secure, we are sorry that this unacceptable situation arose and we are reviewing the matter in order to prevent it from happening again," the company wrote.

The story illustrates one of the many places where the balance between convenience and security is delicate.

"The way to solve that problem is to take a very harsh stance  for instance, 'if we've issued you a multifactor token and you lose it, we can't help you get access to your account,'" said Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer at U.S. Bank. "That wouldn't go over well in the banking industry. So as a result, you've got to balance that carefully."

Consumers are starting to be aware of and demand two-factor authentication, and bank regulators are starting to demand it too (especially in New York). Challenge questions (such as your first pet's name) are no longer enough to provide that second factor, because the answers are too easy to find on the Internet. In 2016, well see more banks adopt mobile authentication, sending a passcode to the users smartphone via text message or email.

The insider threat will escalate. In late December, it came out that two private bankers at JPMorgan had been using ATM cards they issued to steal up to $400,000 from 15 accounts over the course of a year. Most of the accounts reportedly were dormant ones belonging to dead people who were still receiving Social Security deposits because of a reporting error.

Litan predicts more insider theft and collusion in the coming year, sometimes motivated by financial gain, sometimes by the employees radicalization or spite.

"Many of these inside jobs will be committed by lone wolves, or actors who are disgruntled, and who are able to commit serious damage just by using system access rights they already have," she said.

Part of the problem is third parties such as vendors and contractors that fit in the "insider" category. In the 2013 Target breach, for instance, it was an HVAC vendor that inadvertently allowed access to the network running the store's point-of-sale terminals, whereby card data was scraped.

"This is one of the most complex areas to guard against and it will require continued investment in state-of-the-art security monitoring and resource management systems," Durbin said.

The Internet of Things will introduce new security and privacy risks. This goes in the "duh" category. How could quickly connecting billions of new items to the internet (6.4 billion "things" will be linked to the web in 2016, according to Gartner, with 5.5 million added every day) not bring risks to privacy and security?

The particular problem for banks here is they may not have the IT and security talent to deal with the odd new security threats that arise as customers smartphones are pinged with messages, alerts and whatnot from wireless sensors and other new connected devices.

"I see the Internet of Things adding privacy, supply chain and data management and data integrity issues whilst we are still no closer to shrinking the skills gap between those cyber skills that we need and those that are actually available," Durbin said. Banks' chief information security officers "should prepare to build information security capabilities across the organization and position the executive team to recognize and retain talent, both those who have come up through the ranks and newer employees who have worked in a digital environment and business roles."

Banks and payment companies will remain popular targets. "Adversaries will continue to target the financial services industry to steal funds, obtain sensitive information, disrupt operations, destroy data and equipment, or harm the reputation of financial institutions," said Bill Nelson, president and CEO of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (the industrys cybersecurity data-sharing hub).

Litan said she expects to see "a continued escalation of massive, low and slow, distributed, under-the-radar attacks against consumer services with websites that host digital wallets or stored value, such as coffee cards, gift cards, wallets with credit card numbers stored for fast check out, airline point programs, and hotel point programs." Companies mobile application programming interfaces are a likely target for hackers, she said.

Identity theft and impersonation will continue to plague consumers and their financial institutions. Litan also said she anticipates more theft of U.S. consumers personally identifiable information in 2016. "Some government agencies have told us that over half of their citizens PII data has been compromised," she said. Next year, 65% of all Americans will have had some personal or financial data compromised, but not necessarily used, she forecasted.

Once again, humans are liable to be the weak link.

"Adversaries will continue to abuse the trust individuals have with others and each other with trusted assets by impersonating a trusted individual or entity in order to deceive, destroy, disrupt, or steal," Nelson said. "Social engineering will continue to play a major role in combination with technical capabilities."

Email will remain a primary vehicle for injecting malware and conducting reconnaissance. It will also be a vehicle for phishing, including targeted attacks on senior executives. "However, as security teams improve email filtering and examination capabilities and users become more aware of email tactics, the delivery of malware may migrate to delivering malware through web pages or online advertising," Nelson said.

Card-not-present fraud will rise. Many experts, including Litan, anticipate that the adoption of EMV chip cards in the U.S. will lead to a notable increase in fraud with online shopping and phone orders, as happened in the U.K.

Sharing of information about cybersecurity breaches will increase. Banks share information about cybersecurity incidents with each other (the FS-ISAC, which brokers this information, has 7,000 member companies, 2,000 of which signed up in 2015). But communication with government agencies has been less frequent.

That will change now that the Cybersecurity Sharing Information Act of 2015, which Congress slipped into its eleventh-hour omnibus spending bill, gives safe harbor to those who share.

"In the past, the lawyers normally put a stop to meaningful information sharing because of liability concerns that should be eliminated now under the new legislation," Litan said.

Unfortunately, the law provides little privacy protection for consumers whose personal data gets mixed in with incident reports. Hopefully the agencies that receive this data have better security practices than the Office of Personnel Management.

Editor at Large Penny Crosman welcomes feedback at penny.crosman@sourcemedia.com.
In an interview with President Obama on November 12, 2015, ABC This Week host George Stephanopoulos suggested that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was gaining strength. The president pushed back against the notion and remarked that ISIS had been "contained." The full response:

Well, no, I don't think they're gaining strength. What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.

Since the president's comments, the Iraqi Army has undertaken the task of retaking Ramadi in Anbar Province from ISIS, capturing about seventy percent of the city. The BBC has reported that, as of January 1, 2016, ISIS has begun an effort to halt the Iraqi offense in the still contested city.

The following regions are where ISIS is known to operate.

Let's look at Libya first. After all the jubilation at the fall of Moammar Gaddafi, the country has descended into utter chaos. There are two opposing governments vying for control, as well as multiple militant groups and tribes. Who else is there? ISIS. As the U.S.-backed Libyan Parliament and the Islamist New General National Congress work to come to terms with each other, the Islamic State is busy growing its state in the North African nation. From its Libyan coastal base at Sirte, ISIS, with nearly 3,000 fighters, has carved out a territory in north central Libya and has gained the allegiance of the militant group Ansar al-Sharia.

The United States is currently engaged in combat operations against the least known instance of ISIS expansion, the Philippines. As many as six thousand United States soldiers, including a large contingent of Special Forces, are assisting the Filipino government in pushing back against a revitalized militant insurgency. Isnilon Totoni Hapilon, the leader of Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group that had been fighting the Filipino government since the '90s, has sworn allegiance to ISIS. ISIS continues to fight U.S. and Filipino forces. Reuters has reported that just this past New Year's Eve 2015, U.S.-backed Filipino troops engaged in a battle on Jolo Island with nearly 300 ISIS militants, leading to 25 militant casualties and eight Filipino casualties.

We all remember the first lady and numerous officials and celebrities holding signs with the logo #BringBackOurGirls and the subsequent Twitter phenomenon that called for the return of the nearly three hundred Nigerian schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram in April of 2014. Twenty-one months later, more than 200 girls remain captives. For some reason, Boko Haram wasn't persuaded by our social media pleas. Meanwhile, it was reported by CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali and Steve Almasy that on March 7, 2015, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. Boko Haram is now the Islamic State West Africa Province and is currently engaged in combat operations with U.S. and African Union supported nations such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad, and Benin.

In 2014, militants from the Sinai-based terrorist group Ansar Bait al Maqdis sent representatives to ISIS in Syria requesting weapons, fighters, and money in exchange for their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In July of 2015, nearly 300 militants attacked several Egyptian Army checkpoints, leading to the deaths of 21 Egyptian soldiers and more than 200 militants. ISIS also took responsibility for the downing of Russian Flight 9268 on October 31, 2015, killing all 224 passengers and crew onboard. Time Magazine's Jared Malsin reported that Egypt has struggled to deal with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula, and sporadic bombings and clashes between militants and security forces continue.

In September of 2014, ISIS sent a group of fighters to Afghanistan and Pakistan and began recruiting militants from factions aligned with the Taliban, forming the Islamic State Khorasan Province. Nearly two thousand militants have pledged their allegiance to al-Baghdadi. ISIS now operates in Western Pakistan and numerous regions in Afghanistan, most notably in Nangarhar Province. Priyanka Boghani of PBS has reported that many young children are being recruited by ISIS militants in Afghanistan and trained in schools to fight coalition forces. Ms. Boghani also reported that ISIS is actually collecting taxes and providing basic services in many villages in Afghanistan. Additionally, ISIS in Afghanistan has received the support and allegiance of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, leading to potentially greater chaos.

The Islamic State has taken advantage of the nine-month-old civil war in Yemen, challenging al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for hegemony. Ever since the Iranian-backed Revolutionary Committee, along with the Houthi faction, overthrew the U.S.- and Saudi-backed Hadi government, ISIS has begun recruiting militants from Ansar al Sharia in Yemen, who were originally aligned with AQAP. CNN's Brian Todd reported, back in January 2015, that Yemen has been a major source of militant fighters who have fought in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. The Saudi-led intervention is now bogged down in a stalemate with the Houthis and the Islamic State.

ISIS is known to operate, at differing capacities, in three other countries/regions: Algeria, Somalia, and the Caucasus. The Algerian militant group Jund al-Khalifah fi Ard al-Jazayer swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014, and in September of 2014, its members beheaded French tourist Herve Gourdel, his body being discovered four months later by Algerian security forces, as reported by the BBC. In Somalia, ISIS has called on Al-Shabaab to switch their allegiance from al-Qaeda to al-Baghdadi, and the Islamic State is beginning to have a strong base of support among many militants in the country. The Caucasus Emirate, a militant group in southwestern Russia, has now seen many commanders begin swearing allegiance to al-Baghdadi.

New Jersey Governor and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie was correct when he said during an interview on CBS's This Morning on December 16, 2015 that we are already engaged in a third world war:

You see, the problem for folks like Sen. Paul is that they don't realize we're already in World War III. The fact is this is a new world war and one that won't look like the last two. And this is one where it's radical Islamic jihadists every day are trying to kill Americans and disrupt and destroy our way of life.

It might be fair to say that the world has never seen such a multi-front war since Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo tried to take over the world. Governor Christie is on point. This is a world war. A new one.

The Islamic State is very adept at manipulating political instability, almost Machiavellian. They know that civil wars, tribal rivalries, and weak central governments (Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc.) are the perfect opportunities to expand their caliphate. And make no mistake: they are succeeding in expanding.

In hindsight, was it a good idea to get rid of secular dictators? I would say no. As horrible and undemocratic as they were, Moammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak maintained the fight against extremism. Now Libya and Iraq are in turmoil and fragmented. We lucked out that General Abdel el-Sisi was able to overthrow Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood regime, but Egypt still faces uncertainty.

Let's be careful about who will replace Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

The simple fact remains: ISIS is not contained. ISIS is constantly looking for new regions to conquer. Chaotic situations, like those we see in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia, prove too tempting for ISIS to turn a blind eye.

The United States and its allies must not turn a blind eye, because ISIS is not contained.
In 1940, on the eve of America's entry into World War 2 but after Britain's, when the English Parliament finally grasped the full disaster of appeasement, those were the words M.P. Leo Amery spoke to Neville Chamberlain. The full quote, from Oliver Cromwell, is:

"Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

A crucial moment came in 1940, before general war broke out, when the British establishment finally saw through its own years of wishful denial. Hitler used those years to build overwhelming arms superiority, threatening and invading one country after another, spreading terror and fear through Europe while promising peace, peace, and more peace. After the "Norway debate" of 1940, Neville Chamberlain took public responsibility for his failures and resigned. Churchill was quickly asked to form the next government. He was ready, and the political establishment finally flipped on the very edge of disaster.

We are now living through an eerily similar moment. Jihadists use Nazi methods to terrify people long before they have the power to impose sharia tyranny. They work to win the psychological war long before they take over. Today, jihad is buying politicians in Europe and the U.S., with the constant promise of peace. We are seeing a sophisticated propaganda war against us, full of smiling agents of influence like CAIR, paving the way for jihad by the sword. These tactics were worked out long ago, when the early Mohammedan jihadists conquered the Persian and Byzantine Empires, the greatest powers of the time.

It is impossible to exaggerate how close Europe came to extinction in the Hitler war. Peaceful peoples have a hard time even imagining deadly danger, and most European countries just collapsed from the terror and intimidation that Hitler spread. French resistance to the Blitzkrieg lasted only a few weeks before the government surrendered and fled to Vichy.

Aggressors like the Nazis and jihadists try to win long before open battle breaks out. They win by terror. That is the goal of jihad today. Before Hitler grabbed Czechoslovakia and its arms factories, the Nazis actually had smaller military forces than Europe's democratic countries combined. If France, Britain, Czechoslovakia, and Poland had found the courage to stand together, Hitler would have been too weak to attack. He psyched out his victims one by one, snatching the closest ones while telling the rest about his peaceful intentions. The suckers believed him. They fell for it every single time, until 1940 or so.

Winston Churchill watched it happen with open eyes, but helpless to act. Today millions of people can see it but feel helpless to act.

That is where we are in the jihad war today. Serious people like Admiral James Lyons are publicly warning about jihadist infiltration of our intelligence establishment. We can see it with our own eyes in the Obama crowd and with Hillary's personal aide, Huma Abedin. The evidence is at your fingertips if you have the courage to see it.

Jihad infiltration is not hard to see. But for ignorant and avoidant people, it is hard to believe. Jihad strategy is based on peaceful peoples being stuck in deep denial until it is too late.

Donald Trump may be a figure of fun for the U.S. political class, but his message is Winston Churchill's, and the danger he warns about is just as real. Trump is the only person in recent memory who can pierce the wall of lies put up by the cartel media  which is deeply infiltrated by jihadist money and propaganda. Trump may look like a pop culture icon, but in fact he may signal a major turning point in the jihad war.

The media-power class are deeply invested in the Big Lie, which is why they fear the truth. They will be the last to admit what we all know.

"War is deception," said Sun Tzu. If that is true, the truth-tellers are the most important people today. Even if the corrupt media greet the truth with ridicule. The media class are not on our side. The Donald Trumps and the truth-tellers are. That's the secret to Trump's popularity.

This is the time for Americans to tell mentally stuck politicians to go home. We don't have the parliamentary tradition of politicians resigning when they turn into visible disasters. The American equivalent is: "Throw the bums out!"

But the meaning is Oliver Cromwell's:
The Wall Street Journal reports that "Residents Want Action on Gas Leak" from a well owned by Southern California Gas that is spewing methane into the California sky! Erin Brockovich is aghast! Experts agree that this is the worst U.S. environmental disaster since the BP oil spill. The leak is equal to one quarter of all the other methane emissions in California. So where is the president? He asserts that "climate change" is the biggest threat to Americans. Methane is a greenhouse gas. Doesn't he feel a need to act?

As the WSJ notes:

Christine Katz, a Porter Ranch resident whose family left the area in December after her 2-year-old daughter was hospitalized for respiratory issues, began a petition calling on Mr. Brown, a Democrat, to declare a state of emergency to provide residents financial help. So far, it has 671 supporters. You cant see it [the gas], so theres denial. Its not a fire, its not a flood. I feel like [political leaders] are ignoring it, said Ms. Katz, 41. The gas company relocated her family to a five-bedroom house costing $8,000 a month, she said. Some residents including Ms. Katz have suggested that Mr. Brown has yet to be more engaged because his sister, former California Treasurer Kathleen Brown, sits on Sempra Energys board.

Maybe Obamas reticence is due to "professional courtesy" among the Ruling Class. Highlighting the problem would embarrass Democrat Governor Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) and his sister, former treasurer Kathleen Brown (D-Calif.). It's one thing to attack a corporation, such as BP. It's another to attack Gov. Jerry Brown, a fellow Democrat.

So are there any lessons to learn from the BP oil spill? One such lesson might be that Obama has no technical expertise in well control. The public doubtless remembers that his response to the BP spill was to order the drilling of not just one, but two relief wells. Did that work? No!

Who says the relief well did not stop the leak in the BP spill event? Tom Hunter says so. He was then the president of the Sandia National Lab and was later appointed as the chairman of the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee. He was the federal government's top scientific expert during the BP spill. Let us read from his December 4, 2010 email to Jed Borghei of the Presidents Oil Spill Commission from Exhibit 9908 from the BP oil spill trial.

ps I noticed in the Cspan coverage of the Commissions last meeting that two points were made that are not consistent with my views. The first is that the relief well was the critical feature in the sealing of the well. My view is that the capping stack, mud injection, and top cementing were the dominant sealing method. The relief well was an important demonstration of technology. The discussion was about requiring a relief well as a containment feature. I am sure everyone realizes that cement went into the well almost six weeks before the relief well intercept.

So how are they trying to stop the Porter Ranch leak  by drilling a relief well? Yes, indeed, they are. And they expect it to take until March to complete that relief well. Maybe President Obama needs some public outcry  perhaps a reminder of what he told the public back then: "This is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill."

From my perspective, there may be viable alternatives. I would note that I did make an argument for what became known as the "static kill" operation, which resulted in utilizing the capping stack to inject mud and then apply top cement to BP's Macondo 252 well. I did it in real time, at 0648 CDT on July 20, 2010 on the now defunct "Peak Oil" website The Oil Drum. Note that at that time, the federal government's insistence was that the relief well was the answer. Tom Hunter agrees that the procedure worked.

Christine Katz is now echoing the question President Obama's daughter Malia posed then: "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?" Perhaps he ought to think about that. I did. I even wrote about it on my blog. Without much more detail, not yet released to the public, I can't be sure if it will work. But the procedure I named in her honor, Malia's Marbles, might do the trick.
The decision by the Obama administration to "indefinitely" delay slapping sanctions on Iran for their clearly illegal missile tests is a direct response to Iranian threats to scuttle the nuclear deal if any additional sanctions are levied.

In other words, the administration was only bluffing when it declared that sanctions will "snap back" into place if Iran is caught cheating. And the sad truth is that even the miniscule pinprick sanctions the administration was talking about imposing for the illegal missile tests are now being held in abeyance lest the Iranians walk out of the nuclear agreement.

Washington Examiner:

The reason for the delay is that Iran is threatening to back out of the deal if Obama enforces it. Iran's defiance and Obama's havering demonstrate that the mullahs feel less bound by the deal than he does. He's worried that it will collapse, but they aren't. Obama seems willing to sacrifice enforcement to preserve the illusion that a two-sided deal really exists. Because the president wants this deal more than the Iranians do, the only truly binding part is the bit that imposes obligations on Washington, such as $100-150 billion in sanctions relief. The deal ties the hands of U.S. leaders, current and future, whenever they try to deal with sectarian conflict in the Muslim world. It may not be inconvenient when soliciting Shiite Iranian help against the Sunni Islamic State, but it it is grossly inconvenient when, for example, dealing with mounting tension between Riyadh and Tehran. (Iranian threats about incinerating Israel are, of course, entirely overlooked.) The provision on ballistic missiles is perhaps the most straightforward and non-controversial element in the entire deal. No one in Congress objected to its inclusion. On the contrary, it was used to persuade skeptical Democrats that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had not been outmaneuvered in negotiations. After all, unlike nuclear materials and centrifuges, ballistic missiles do not have a peaceful application. Iran's regime, which insisted throughout the talks that its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, appears to have called Obama's bluff. If even obvious violations like this one cannot be punished, how will any other element of the deal be enforceable?

With every piece of evidence that emerges proving how truly bad this deal is, the mantra from treaty supporters remains unchanged; no matter how bad it is, it's better than no deal at all. The inanity of this argument is self-evident. There is no deal if one side gets to violate the terms of the agreement with impunity while the other side lives up to its negotiated obligations.

The Iranians say they "won't accept" the part of the deal that allows the West to sanction them for bad behavior or for other violations of the accord. If that's true, there's no hope that any of the terms of the agreement will be fulfilled by Iran, who will simply claim an interpretation of the deal favorable to them and dare Obama to risk blowing up the deal by sanctioning them.

The Iranians have, indeed, called Obama's bluff. The president's hope is that no one is noticing and he can ride off into the sunset, guaranteed a hero for preventing war.

At least for a year or so.
Beatrice Fire and Rescue recognized two firefighters during a badge ceremony Monday morning.

The ceremony was held to recognize Jeremy Seggerman for reaching the level of captain and Kristoffer Law for becoming a firefighter and paramedic.

Fire and Rescue Chief Brain Daake said the ceremony served as a chance to recognize the two for their hard work and dedication to the department.

This is about the symbolism of the fire and medical services commitment to making a difference every day, he said. The badge that each of them will receive today will remain a constant reminder representing the promise by which we live: integrity, empathy, courage and a commitment to the service of human kind.

Seggerman has been with the department for more than 11 years. As captain, he oversees the departments B shift, one of three shifts that rotate at the department.

After the ceremony, Seggerman commended his fellow firefighters for their dedication.

Its great to be able to take the next step in my career and serve with everybody that I do, he said. We have a group thats really committed to their community. Its just great to be a part of it.

Law began at Beatrice Fire and Rescue in May 2015.

He started firefighting school toward the end of 2007 and worked for a private ambulance service before joining Beatrice Fire and Rescue.

Its very rewarding and everybodys been great, Law said of his time with the department. Ive learned more here in eight months than I could have ever thought. Its just been such a long time coming that I think it might take a while to sink in.

The two received their badges from Beatrice Mayor Stan Wirth, who said both men, and the department as a whole, provide a great service to the community.

I wish more people in the community could see the response and their dedication here  Our community should be really, really thankful for what they do, Wirth said.

Among changes at the department over the years, Daake said one of the biggest was the addition of an ambulance service in 1994.

Today, we are part of the forefront of the state of Nebraska in providing paramedic service which is beyond compare within the state, he said. Our first year of the ambulance service, we were on 1,733 calls. Average that out to 4.7 calls per day or a call for service every five hours.

Daake said that compares to unofficial numbers in 2015 of 2,597 calls, averaging one every three hours, with a similar size staff.

I take my hat off, I commend our responders for the ability to do that, he said. I know a lot of them come in off duty to be able to make our system work the way it is.
The American mainstream media are ignoring a horrifying example of sexual violence on the part of Muslims in Germany. The little darlings Europe is importing couldnt contain themselves on New Years Eve. As Breitbart and RT report, Europes newest group of residents rang in 2016 by launching fireworks into crowds, molesting, raping, assaulting, and robbing as fights also broke out among groups of invaders, who numbered in the thousands. And that was just in and around one railway station in one city (Cologne, Germany). Extrapolate to the rest of Germany, the rest of Europe, and here is the not too distant future.

Barbarians shouted ficki ficki (f***y f***y), called women sluts, yanked their hair, and stripped women bare as they sexually assaulted them and laughed through it all. In many cases, women were attacked by large gangs, making it difficult for victims to positively identify the perpetrators to the police.

 up to 1,000 heavily intoxicated men of Arab or North African origin flooded the citys famous square between its central train station and Gothic cathedral. Aged between 15 and 35, the crowd began throwing firecrackers and shooting fireworks as the new year arrived.

As of this writing, at least 80 victims have been identified, 35 of whom were sexually assaulted.

Law enforcement believes there are many more victims out there and are appealing to them to come forward. The police union described the New Years Eve war zone at the Cologne railway station as a new dimension of violence on a scale not seen before, while the chief of police confirmed that the attackers were migrants, calling the situation intolerable.

Intolerable is an understatement. But okay, lets start with that. Just how intolerable? Apparently not very, given the fact that there were thousands of assailants, dozens of victims, and comprehensive video monitoring of the area. And yet the police have made only five arrests.

Five.

Meanwhile, it has come to light that only ten police officers were dispatched to the station after receiving an initial report of a sexual assault by a gang. There are also unverified accusations that some officers ridiculed a victim for not being vigilant enough. In other words, it was her fault because she didnt pay close attention to the fact that these migrants have a penchant for rape. And although the ridicule has not been corroborated, the reality is that in Germany and elsewhere throughout Europe, authority figures have ignored and castigated women and girls who have been victims of rape by Muslims. In addition, the fairer sex have been told to dress modestly lest they entice Muslim men to rape them because of cultural misunderstandings. So there is a pattern of indulging Muslim savagery while expecting civilized European women to enforce sharia law by adapting to Islamic cultural norms and mandates.

Police in Cologne finally realized what had happened:

The mass attack on women that happened in the middle of the city around Cologne Central Station on New Year's Eve was an intolerable situation, Chief of Police Wolfgang Albers told reporters. (snip) The crowd of around 1,000 men attacked people in the city center in what Albers described as a crime of a whole new dimension.

Speaking of which, prior to New Years Eve, some German towns canceled fireworks lest they upset the frail sensibilities of their new friends from Islamic hellholes. The rationale? Heaven forbid the loud noises trigger horrific reminders of the war zone the colonizers fled.

Upside-down and backwards, as usual.

It is Europe that imported a war zone. And war it is.

Hat tip: Jerome Schmitt
Yesterday, CNN announced that it would be airing a live town hall meeting on gun control, hosted by President Obama. The town hall will be one hour long, beginning at 7pm eastern time. As described by CNN itself:

President Barack Obama is mounting a final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy despite Republican opposition and is expected to announce unilateral action early this week. He will join CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday for an exclusive one-hour live town hall on gun control at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in hopes of mounting a final pitch to the public.

In other words, CNN will give President Obama a full hour of prime-time television to pitch his policy proposals, with no opportunity for his opponents to respond. This town hall meeting will be a mainstream media perfect storm involving both Obama and gun control, the two things CNN loves most.

Barack Obama is the chosen candidate of the Democratic Party's wine track, the ideal candidate for higher-income white liberals. Harvard-educated, pro-gay marriage, feminist, and militantly pro-choice, Obama is a black politician without the rough edges of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.

Similarly, gun control is the ideal issue for the wine track. It doesn't involve raising taxes, and you can look down on rednecks. Gun control is also European, which makes it more sophisticated. The wine track doesn't love gun control as much as it loves Obama, but it still loves gun control.

As much complaining as goes on about Fox News, nobody believes that Fox is either apolitical or non-partisan. CNN, on the other hand, positions itself as a news outfit and not opinion journalism. There is nothing wrong with opinion journalism  after all, the American Thinker is opinion journalism  but there is something wrong with opinion journalism masquerading as news. If CNN wants to be seen as a news network, then it should act like a news network and not the People's Daily.
Tick, tick, tickthe highly suspicious deal that gave Bill Clintons billionaire buddy Jeffrey Epstein a slap on the wrist for paying underage girls for sex may finally be subjected to pubic scrutiny and even overturned, bringing with it the possibility of bargaining against real punishment in exchange for testimony against a bigger fish. This development is thanks to a court filing on the last day of 2015 that received only limited local publicity. More on that in a moment.

Shockingly, the deal that handed out token punishment to the statutory rapist has been hidden from the public and from the victims themselves:

Federal prosecutors in Florida intentionally kept underage victims of billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein in the dark about his plea deal, newly unsealed court papers reveal. The documents also show prosecutors wanted to keep the extent of Epsteins alleged sex crimes away from a judge reviewing the deal. I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention co-conspirators, but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana wrote to one Epstein lawyer in September 2007. Another email shows she agreed to stop sending notifications about the non-prosecution deal to 34 underage girls Epstein allegedly sexually preyed upon after his lawyers complained. The feds say they struck the deal in return for Epstein pleading to state charges involving a single victim.

Slap on the wrist does not begin to describe the leniency. Ace summarizes:

This plea involved the slap on the wrist sentence of 13 months -- and he got to spend his waking hours at his Palm Beach mansion. That is, he only had to check into his "jail" eight hours a day.

Note: Epstein slept in a vacant wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, so he was spared the ordeal of interaction with other prisoners.

So this friend of Bill committed statutory rape on multiple victims and had to check into the Graybar Hotel to sleep in solitude, but once he got up, he was free to go to his lavish Palm Beach mansion for 13 months, and thats it? And the mainstream media is not at all interested in this? Ann Coulter saw the problem a year ago, speaking to Sean Hannity:

This is a really important story. And I so love that you're pitching it just as a Clinton sex scandal, but it is so much more than that. And it's appalling that the only place that covered it last night -- I watched TV, every station -- was Megyn Kelly. God bless her. At least we got it out there. This is not just a Clinton sex scandal; this is the elites getting cozy and covering up and protecting one another. It also involves the Bush administration, it involves Ken Starr, the lawyers for Epstein. There are some facts that are absolutely known, there are some that are only allegations right now. But the basic story is that Jeffrey Epstein -- there's a major Palm Beach police investigation, a young girl, 15-year-old girl's mother went to Palm Beach police back in 2006 and said my daughter is being paid to have sex with this rich man in Palm Beach. Palm Beach police staged a very detailed investigation without Epstein's knowledge. They went through his garbage, they get sworn statements from about a half-dozen of the victims as well as this slightly older girl who was procuring them. The evidence was quite strong and the same prosecutor that was going after Rush Limbaugh for back pain medication for two years wants to just give him a little ticket, just pay ten dollars and that's enough for having sex with these underage girls, that's of course statutory rape in Florida. The Palm Beach police went mental after they staged this investigation and put all the evidence together. So they went to the federal government. That's where this case comes involved. The U.S. Attorney who actually was a good guy but he is described in a letter to whom it may concern that showed up in The Daily Beast just these astonishing attacks that his office came under from Jeffrey Epstein's defense team including Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, Roy black, all of the legal dream team. The prosecutors private's lives were investigated and according to the U.S. Attorney they were just pressured, jerked around, everything was appealed. Eventually they get Epstein to agree to plead guilty to a state charge, allegedly sentenced to 18 months, in fact it was 13 months and for 16 hours a day he was allowed to go to his mansion in Palm Beach. So he got basically no jail time. He is a registered sex offender. There is a federal law sponsored by, among others, [Former] Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and it says victims are asking for, could we please just have the rights of criminals. They want to be notified as a case is going forward. None of that happened in this case. A secret agreement was struck. The documents are under seal. A no prosecution agreement against not only Epstein but his lawyers and all these other friends of his. They are suing under that, they can open this case again. They could breach the no prosecution. That case has been going on since 2008. That's Jane Doe One, Jane Doe Two. Now, Friday, the new news that brings your favorite topic into this, Bill Clinton, is Jane Doe Three and Jane Doe Four come forward and their allegations involve Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz. One of them, Jane Doe Three, Alan Dershowitz the lawyer and Bill Clinton, of course. So, that is how their names have come into this. What I do want to say is this is not just -- I mean, who knows about the specific allegations, of course I'm saying nothing about that. All you can do is read the legal findings. The lawyer bringing this case, one of the main ones, Paul Cassell, is probably the most impressive lawyer in the country. And he's up there with Miguel Estrada. This is not a frivolous case. So keep following this case. And the fact that thus far this has only been covered on Fox News is shocking. This is not a political thing. This is what MSNBC and the rest of the networks have been describing what they thought these fraternities, what they thought the [Duke] lacrosse rape [case was]. This is the elites circling the wagon and protecting a pederast. It's a shocking case and that's just the known facts.

But now, the prosecutors who handed out the sham punsihemnet may be forced to testify. Michelle Dargan of the Palm Beach Daily News reported into the news vacuum on New Years Day:

Two teenage victimes of Palm Beach billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have filed court papers asking to depose top federal officials who were involved in inking the secret deal that saved Epstein from serious federal charges. FBI agents, current and former federal prosecutors, and Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, are named in the motion filed by attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell on behalf of Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2. The girls were 14 and 13, respectively, at the time of the sex abuse. The victims filed the motion, in part, because of a new argument Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee made during a routine status check hearing in November. Lee said the girls arent really victims because they procured other minor girls for Epstein and received money for it so theyre not protected under the federal Crime Victims Rights Act. Apparently, the government believes that because Epstein pressured some of his young victims into performing sexual acts, those victims themselves were complicit in Epsteins crimes and, therefore, are barred from seeking relief under the CVRA, the motion says. There has never been any public document (or other private document that we have seen) in this or any related case that has accused Epsteins young victims of committing the crime that Epstein committed. The six witnesses they want to depose are: Acosta, FBI Special Agent E. Nesbitt Kuyrkendall, FBI Special Agent Jason Richards, former First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Sloman, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Menchel and Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana. Filed in 2008, the lawsuit says the U.S. Attorneys Office violated the federal Crime Victims Rights Act by failing to confer with the victims before signing a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in September 2007. The agreement saved Epstein from serious federal charges and extensive prison time. Edwards and Cassell are fighting to overturn the agreement.

If the agreement is overturned and Epstein faces real punishment, he just might be the type of guy who would sing like a bird to get lenient treatment in exchange for implicating bigger fish with his testimony. No wonder Bill Clinton is stammering when asked about whether his past is a relevant issue in his wifes campaign.

Hat tips: Instapundit iOTW Report
When it comes to gun control, you can trust the government to act not only stupidly, but vengefully as well.

How else can you characterize the requirement being proposed in the president's end run around Congress on guns that if someone sells even only "one or two" guns, he will need a license?

Washington Free Beacon:

The Obama administration announced during a conference call with reporters Monday evening that the presidents upcoming executive order may require somebody selling even a single firearm to obtain a Federal Firearms License. During the call White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch explained the details of the order, which will be announced publicly by President Obama Tuesday at 11:40 a.m. The action, officials explained, would include guidance on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives will now determine who is engaged in the business of selling firearms under federal law and, therefore, who is required to obtain a license to sell firearms. ATF will make clear that whether you are engaged in the business depends on the facts and circumstances, Jarrett said. On factors such as: whether you represent yourself as a dealer, such as making business cards or taking credit card statements. Whether you sell firearms shortly after theyre acquired or whether you buy or sell in the original packaging. Numbers are relevant. The ATF and DOJ did not identify a magic number of weapons that makes you engaged in the business because that would limit their ability to bring prosecution. Jarret then said that selling as few as two firearms could require somebody to obtain a federal firearms license. However, later in the call, Attorney General Lynch revised that number down further. It can be as few as one or two depending upon the circumstances under which the person sells the gun, Lynch said. The federal firearms license application process takes several months to complete and costs a significant amount of money, according to the ATF website.

You get the feeling the Obama administration doesn't much care for law-abiding gun owners. In fact, it despise them. What all of this amounts to is the administration punishing its political opponents by curtailing legal commerce in firearms. Gun collectors who might sell a firearm every couple of years are also in the cross hairs. Even if two collectors want to trade firearms, the ATF has the right to determine if a license is necessary.

The idea that this would somehow make our "children and communities" safer is a cynical joke, and the administration knows it. Gang-bangers are laughing at the notion that it will do anything to prevent violence, while the real illegal gun dealers who sell to them don't give a lick. They will continue their illegal business safe in the knowledge that the ATF will be going after law-abiding citizens rather than looking to bring them down.
I was watching the generally excellent Trump ad where he talks about stopping Muslim immigration until we can "figure out what is going on," and I hit the pause button. What does that mean  "until we can figure out what is going on"?

Is there a single person reading this article who does not understand what is going on?

1) An unidentifiable minority of Muslims who enter our country want to kill Americans. There is no way to figure out reliably who they are.

2) A larger subset of Muslims coming from the Middle East want, when their numbers get large enough, to impose sharia law; to execute women with "honor killings"; to beat their wives; to cut off their daughters' clitorises; and to hunt and kill Jews, cartoonists, and anyone one else they don't like.

In Norway, they are actually giving the Muslims classes on how not to rape women. Saudis who come to America are often arrested for abusing women, like this man who claimed he "accidentally fell into" a woman rather than purposefully raping her. In Germany, a mob of more than a thousand Muslims stole from, raped, and attacked people in a train station. Many refugees come here with photos of ISIS flags on their cell phones.

Many Muslims from the Middle East don't have the same respect for others that we do. So what really is there to figure out? I can think of only two possibilities:

1) Trump knows the truth that we shouldn't be letting any Muslims into this country until they make some serious changes to their culture, but he is afraid to say so, so he calls it "temporary" and describes it as a problem to figure out. If that's the case, it's a shame that Trump, who always claims he says what he thinks, is afraid to come out and say the whole truth.

2) Trump is speaking the truth and is actually clueless, thinking in fact that there is a way to weed out terrorists, criminals, and sharia law fans especially from countries where vetting is not possible. It's shocking for a man running for president to run an ad saying "until we can figure out what is going on." If Trump truly doesn't know what is going on for such an important issue, then he really is clueless and shouldn't be running for president.

I admire intellectual honesty; saying "we have to figure it out" is a coward's way of avoiding the truth.

So which is it: that Trump is afraid to speak the truth, or is he really clueless?

Exit question: Let us know in the comments section if you too are confused like Donald Trump and "need to figure out what is going on."

This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.
Back at IFA in Berlin, Lenovo announced a number of new devices which were joining the ranks of the VIBE family. One of those announced was the Lenovo VIBE P1. This was a device designed to offer those who prefer a greater level of battery life a viable smartphone, thanks to the inclusion of a 5,000 mAh battery. Another member of the VIBE family which was announced at the event was the Lenovo VIBE S1. The emphasis on this one was its camera abilities, with a 13-megapixel rear camera combined with a dual (8MP + 2MP) front-facing camera.

Fast forward to CES and Lenovo has now announced a new device which is joining the VIBE family and specifically designed to follow in the footsteps of the VIBE S1. The latest device to be announced is the Lenovo VIBE S1 Lite. Once again, the focus with this Lite version is the camera abilities, with the new version coming touting an 8-megapixel front facing camera which looks to make better use of light capture thanks to the inclusion of a built-in selfie flash. A device which Lenovo state is deigned to take selfies in the dark. Likewise, the front facing camera also looks to make use of better groupie images thanks to its panorama feature. The rear camera once again consists of a 13-megapixel PDAF camera.

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Much of the rest of the specs are generally in line with the previous VIBE S1 model and offers a 5-inch screen along with a 1920 x 1080 resolution. Although the processor has seen a slight upgrade from the 64-bit MediaTek MT6752 up to the current MediaTek MT6753 (clocking at 1.3 GHz). The battery has also seen a slight increase up from 2,500 to 2,700 mAh. While the internal storage has dropped down to 16GB from the standard VIBE S1s 32GB internal storage capacity. Although, the VIBE S1 Lite does come equipped with a microSD card slot for further expansion if needed (up to 32GB). Other notable features include 2GB RAM, dual-SIM support and the device comes running on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) out of the box.

Like the VIBE S1, the Lite version will once again be available in either a white or blue color variant, although unlike the VIBE S1, the Lite version will arrive to the consumer at a more affordable $199 price point. Lenovo has not provided exact details on when the Vibe S1 will be released, although they have stated that it will be in the early part of this year. Although, for those based in the U.S., Lenovo has also confirmed the Vibe S1 Lite will not be available in the U.S.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is ongoing, and weve already seen some exciting tech being shown off by various OEMs. A ton of tech companies are participating this year, and the usual tech giants are also showcasing their stuff. LG is definitely one of the biggest tech companies in the world at the moment, and this Korea-based company has introduced two smartphones yesterday, the K7 and K10.

Both of these smartphones can be considered to be entry-level or mid-range, depending on which variant you get. The K10 has been announced in three variants (1, 1.5 and 2GB of RAM), while the K7 will be available in two different models (1 and 1.5GB of RAM). That being said, it seems like Boost Mobile will be selling the LG K7, but the device will be called LG Tribute 5 instead. Boost Mobile is a US-based pre-paid carrier, and according to the source, the LG Tribute 5 will be available soon, but we still dont know when exactly, and the pricing hasnt been mentioned either.

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The LG K7 features a 5-inch FWVGA display along with 1 or 1.5GB of RAM, and 8 or 16GB of internal storage. The 1GB of RAM variant will ship with 8GB of internal storage, and the 1.5GB RAM model will come with 16GB of native storage. The LG K7 (aka LG Tribute 5) is powered by a quad-core SoC, and a 2,125mAh battery is included on the inside. Android 5.1 Lollipop comes pre-installed here with LGs custom UI available on top of it. The 5 or 8-megapixel shooter is available on the back of this phone (depending on the version), and a 5-megapixel camera can be found up front. The phone will also going to be available in both 3G and 4G LTE variants, and the two units are basically identical in terms of size, except for thickness, the 3G model is actually thicker at 9.05mm, while the 4G LTE model comes in at 8.9mm. Both devices are 143.6mm tall, and 72.5mm wide, in case you were wondering. LG has said that the 4G LTE variant of the device will be available in a Titan color, while the 3G model will come in Black, White and Gold color options.

Thats pretty much it. We still dont know which exact variants will be available through Boost Mobile, but the carrier is expected to announce the LG Tribute 5 availability in the near future. Either way, well report back as soon as more info surfaces, stay tuned.
WASHINGTON -- The nation's capital is experiencing something of a thaw in polarization and partisanship. And the largest iceberg that that has broken free is the Every Student Succeeds Act, the most consequential education reform in the last 15 years.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Senate Education Committee, called it a "Christmas present" to American children. President Obama proclaimed it a "Christmas miracle." The president of the American Federation of Teachers said the law marks "a new day in public education."

What does this mean for students? Let's start, as educators are wont to say, with a review. In 2001, No Child Left Behind, the last major federal education reform, mandated yearly testing in the basics of reading and math for children in third through eighth grade. Schools were required to show yearly progress for students of every background (including every racial background). If a school consistently failed, it was required to implement reforms and, in the worst cases, hire new teachers and reorganize. The law set the utopian goal that every child should be "proficient" in reading and math by 2014.

The whole thing was a mess from the start. Failing schools didn't like to be labeled failures, which made administrators feel like they were, like, you know, failing or something. Many teachers didn't like the relentless emphasis on testing, which ate into their time for the unmeasurable joys of learning. Gov. Jerry Brown of California spoke for many when he recalled the formative prep school experience of an exam that consisted entirely of one question, asking students to give their impressions of a green leaf. That question, he said, has "haunted me for 50 years." "You can't put that on a standardized test," he explained.

The Every Student Succeeds Act ends the backseat driving of the federal government in education policy. State and local officials will now be free to set academic goals and to determine if schools are meeting them. While the law still mandates consequences for the worst-performing schools, states will determine what those consequences actually are. Student testing will still take place, but it won't mean as much. This, according to Obama, will relieve "undue stress for educators and students."

California, for example, is so happy to be free from the tyranny of testing that it has suspended the California High School Exit Examination and ordered schools to retroactively reward diplomas to students who failed the test during the last decade. It has also suspended its Academic Performance Index, which allowed parents to see how the test scores achieved by their local school compares to other schools. In California, accountability will now be imposed according to "multiple measures" in eight "priority areas," leaving parents entirely mystified about the actual performance of their local school.

The Every Student Succeeds Act is a win-win-win for everyone who counts. Most Republicans are pleased that the federal role in enforcing educational standards has been effectively abolished. Many teachers are pleased to see lower stakes on standardized tests. States and localities are pleased that they can declare all their schools successful, or at least to make accountability a fuzzy, gentle, toothless friend.

The problem? We actually have some experience in how education systems operate in the absence of accountability enforced from above. Before No Child Left Behind, only 29 states had real accountability systems; 11 states did not disaggregate by race at all; only 22 states reported graduation rates by high school. What will happen with the end of federal nagging? "We'll continue to see some high-flying states doing really creative, good things for students," concludes education researcher Chad Aldeman. "But we'll see a lot more just kind of getting by and doing the bare minimum, particularly when local politics and inertia prevent state leaders from pursuing bold changes on behalf of disadvantaged students."

This is the group that loses in the Every Student Succeeds Act -- disadvantaged students, particularly African-American students. Their betrayal by our educational system can now be more effectively hidden in the proliferation of priorities.

We live in a nation in which gaps in academic achievement between black and white students are large, continuing and disturbing. This is a national scandal -- a systemic failure resulting in racial injustice. A retreat from educational accountability is the measure of our complacency. And what does it say that the one thing everyone in Washington can agree on effectively devalues the educational needs of black children?
ZTE is one of the largest China-based smartphone manufacturers. This company is primarily focused on the Chinese smartphone market, though they are shipping their devices in various markets all around the world. Pretty much everyone has heard of ZTE by now, and the company is looking to expand their brand even further. A couple of days ago, the company has teased the arrival of nubia.com website considering that theyve purchased the domain name not long before that. ZTEs Nubia brand is the companys flagship Android sub-brand (and sort of a separate entity from ZTE, their subsidiary if you will), and has been available outside of Asia, but it seems like ZTE is looking to push this brand to even more markets soon.

This China-based company has announced that theyre aiming to push Nubia brand to a ton of markets all around the world. Nubia is currently attending CES, and thats where the announcement was shared with the public. Nubia is currently active in China, North America, South America, Northern Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia and India. Nubia is planning to enter the Latin American countries, Mexico and Argentina, in 2016, and some European markets like UK, France, Germany and Spain are also in their eyesight. The company has also said that they plan to expand their availability to Malaysia and Thailand.

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Along with this news, Nubia has also announced the launch of their global website, the aforementioned nubia.com site. The website is now available in Chinese, English and Spanish, and the company also plans to announce their official online store in the coming months, and it seems like the customers in Europe will be the first to get the chance to purchase Nubias devices online. With at least eight new countries on the horizon, we will continue to build strong local partnerships to maximize our global efficiency. Although nubia entered the market three years ago, the amount of success gathered in such a short time has already set up a number of highly competitive benchmarks in the industry. Inspiring loyalty among customers, our novel technologies have not only elevated the user experience but has made positive impacts to everyday life. 2016 will be a very exciting year for nubia. We look forward to launching more never before seen technologies in our highly anticipated smartphone models soon, said Felix Fu, Senior Vice President of Nubia Technology and co-founder of the Nubia brand.

It is also worth mentioning that weve seen three Nubia handsets released this year, the Nubia Z9, Z9 Mini and Z9 Max. The Nubia Z9 is quite probably the most interesting ones out of the bunch, it offers high-end specifications and no side bezels whatsoever. The handset also offers a number of software features, like FiT (Frame Interactive Technology) and TiO (Three-in-One) fingerprint recognition. Nubia is showcasing their latest handsets from Z9 and My Prague series at CES, in case youre attending.
This week is the Consumer Electronics Show, set at Las Vegas, Nevada. The CES is where many manufacturers announce, showcase and launch new products and services, including smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, laptops and desktop computers. We also see a number of accessories being launched and today we are covering Panasonics latest high quality headphones: the RP-HD10C. Before we take a look at the new Panasonic headphones, one of the distinguishing differences between many premium smartphones and those that are perhaps built down to a price is in the sound quality. This can include the call audio quality as well as the sound quality through the headphone socket. Google acknowledged that sound quality was important and implemented a number of improvements to (potential) audio quality as part of Android 5.0 Lollipop, plus we have seen a number of manufacturers incorporating premium quality sound components into their smartphones. Furthermore, if you enjoy your music crisp and clear, you will understand the difference between standard headphones and higher definition headphones. Panasonics description of the RP-HD10C headphones describes these as Over-the-Ear High Resolution Premium Headphones, and the product benefits from Panasonics sound expertise.

Under the black exterior, the RP-HD10Cs are based around 50 mm high definition drivers designed to produce powerful low bass sounds as well as delivering extraordinary clear treble. The frequency response of these headphones runs from 4 Hz to 50 kHz for a thorough, premium listening experience. Panasonic have build the diaphragm from multi layer film, or MLF: it consists of hundreds of individual layers designed to reduce distortion to the minimum. And on a similar note, Panasonics engineers used a PLA driver chassis designed to suppress resonance from the driver, so as to further enhance the sound quality.

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The designers did not leave out wearer comfort and the company boasts that the cans use ear pads designed to both reduce external noise and be comfortable for long periods. The HD10s use an horizontal slide adjustment system that allows the wearer to adjust the headphones without moving the earpads. Panasonic are including a detachable microphone and remote control cord for use with a cell phone. If you are interested in the Panasonic RP-HD10C headphones, these are now up for pre-order on their website at $269.99 but we do not yet have a release date.
Since this years CES is about to begin, we are already hearing from a few companies which will showcase their products at the event this week. Pioneer, which sold their audio and video division to Onkyo in 2014, is planning to announce three high-end audio products at CES 2016. We already knew about these products, but the company is now ready to demonstrate their functionality. The brand is often associated with home-audio equipment, so they wont disappoint users who like these kind of products. They will introduce the Elite SX-N30 Network Stereo Receiver, featuring a wide range of wireless connectivity options such as WiFi and Bluetooth. This receiver supports DLNA and it plays many formats including WAV, FLAC and MP3, among others. There are some streaming services available and internet radio built right in. The receiver has four digital inputs and six analog inputs, all of them plated in gold and this device can emit 80 watts from each channel.

The SE-Master1 headphones feature 50 mm drives with Parker Ceramic Coating over the aluminum diaphragm that could produce up to 85,000 Hz, which is more than double of what most high-end headphones can produce. The headphones are designed to reduce distortion as their build minimizes vibrations, they also create better separation between left and right channels. They might be used by regular consumers and professionals alike, as they would be good for recording, mixing and mastering audio.

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Of course, much of the audio experiences have gone mobile, so the company is releasing a portable audio player running Android Lollipop. This isnt the first time the company has used Android in their products, as they have a a few Android Auto-powered Systems which allow cars to connect with smartphones. The XDP-100R Digital Audio Player features a 4.7-inch display and it is the first one in the market to support MQA lossless format. It comes packed with 32GB of internal storage, and in addition Pioneer added two memory card slots for expandable storage, and each one supports Micro SD cards up to 200GB. This digital player can download songs directly from OnkyoMusic, so theres no need to plug it into a PC. Theres support for 24bit/192kHz high-res audio from the headphone jacks. Other devices can benefit from this music player as it can be connected with WiFi, Bluetooth or a line-out jack. The digital player features an aluminum build and an integrated speaker, its battery is said to last up to 10 hours. All of these products will be available in North America, the receiver costs $600, the headphones are priced at $2,500 and the music player will be $700.
Qualcomm has big plans for the technological world moving forward, having announced today at CES 2016 a new reference platform for the smart home and the Internet of Things. To help launch themselves and their customers into the future of a more seamlessly connected world, Qualcomm has also introduced a new Bluetooth smart System on Chip range which they envision powering everything from smartwatches to remotes to automated home products like appliances and more. Utilizing both this new family of chips and the reference platform which Qualcomm states is based on the Snapdragon 212 processor, Qualcomm is making attempts to solidify themselves in this still new technological area of the market.

Qualcomms reference platform is meant to power control hubs and smart speakers for the smart, connected home, using the power of the Snapdragon 212 to bring in a multitude of different capabilities including voice recognition, camera, computing, audio, display and more. Manufacturers are now able to get their hands on the reference platform which supports Hi-Fi smart audio for streaming music up to 24 bit, keyword voice wakeup, two-way VoIP calling and a range of voice-powered commands. All voice recognition functions are powered by Fluence pro voice input technology which includes sound focus to assist in capturing voice from targeted locations, position tracking, and sound position tracking. The reference platform also support high-level operating systems so it can be tailored to the specifications of the OEM to meet their needs.

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Qualcomms other endeavors into the Internet of Things revolve around a wide array of connected products that can be powered by their brand new smart Bluetooth System on Chips as part of the CRS102x range, which Qualcomm states is designed to help engineers meet the needs of todays always-on world. This new family of chips will help to bring in a more balanced end product for consumers so they dont have to compromise on any important key factors like battery life, cost of the product, or performance, because OEMs themselves will not have to be compromising in these areas. Qualcomm plans to have development kits ready for high-volume consumers in the second quarter of 2016, and they will be offering the full development kit at a price of $99 as well as extra extension kits for $49.
CES 2016 has finally gotten itself underway this week, and while Samsungs big press event isnt until later today on the 5th, theyve already made a couple of announcements. Big names like Samsung, Sony and LG all have press events later this week, and while they might not all have something mobile to announce, like LG, theres going to be plenty to talk about this week. Samsung is announcing a new sort of partner platform for the future this week during CES, dubbed Made for Samsung and itll no doubt seem familiar to a lot of technology lovers, and for good reason.

Samsung has become such a big brand these days that theyre in no shortage of people looking to partner with them. Let us not forget that Samsung is not only flying high where smartphones are concerned, but theyve been pushing the humble television forward with their Smart TVs as well as their attention to detail with 4K Ultra HD sets. Samsung has partnered with luxury brands like Mont Blanc with their Galaxy Note line of products and even Illy, the illustrious Italian Coffee name. The Made for Samsung initiative is, as Samsung describes it is a partnership framework with industry-leading brands and innovators, meant to deliver an exclusive line of products for Samsung customers. As such, if you were hoping for something that would benefit all Android users, well youd be out of luck.

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For Samsung, and the brands that join the partnership network this will extend their reach into parts of the market that they might not be all that well-represented in. For instance, The Weather Channel could presumably ensure more eyeballs from Samsung users if they cut a deal with Samsung, and with such a platform, the playing field becomes a little more level for a lot of brands, all given a fair chance with a larger, more public platform. Regardless, were already starting to see some products be released exclusively for Samsung platforms, with the new controller from Mad Catz and were sure to see even more people join the fray later this year.
Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 820 late last year. And announced that they had over 80 devices that would be powered by the Snapdragon 820, coming out in 2016. Weve heard plenty of rumors that Samsung was going to get an exclusive on the Snapdragon 820, for a month or so. But Qualcomm, today, at their press conference at CES confirmed that rumor was false. And stated that the first smartphone with the Snapdragon 820 would be the Letv Le Max Pro. Letv is a Chinese manufacturer that is actually looking to launch their portfolio of smartphones here in the States at CES. So far theyve made no announcements, however CES doesnt officially start until tomorrow.

The Letv Le Max Pro is not official, but should be announced shortly. Its looking to be a pretty high-end smartphone from Letv. Qualcomm also confirmed that it will sport an Ultrasonic Fingerprint Sensor, using Qualcomms Sense ID. Which Qualcomm demoed at Mobile World Congress last March in Barcelona. Its a more secure fingerprint sensor, as you can still unlock your phone when you have dirt on your hands, or they are wet. It can also be done without adding in another button. Like Huawei, and Samsung have had to do with their smartphones. With Sense ID, you cant quite put the sensor under the screen, but Qualcomm did confirm to us that they are working on that. Which would be a very cool addition.

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Currently, Qualcomm is still in the middle of their press conference. However they have announced two new processors, which will be making their way into automobiles  so far their partner is just Audi  as early as the 2017 model year. Cars seem to be the big theme this year at CES. NVIDIAs press conference last night was all about cars, Ford had a pretty big event this morning and now Qualcomm producing system-on-a-chip for cars. Its been a pretty exciting few days at CES already, and the show floor hasnt even opened up just yet. Stay tuned, as well be bringing you much more from Qualcomms keynote as well as the rest of the press conferences today at CES. Which include Samsung, Sony and Intel.
Yahoo hasnt always been in the black, as far as their quarterly earnings go. Only recently, did they start to make a comeback and bring in new users for their services. As well as buying one of the more popular social media platforms in Tumblr. Yahoo had been sending unwanted text messages to non-Yahoo customers before, these messages were sent when someone messaged them on Yahoo Messenger, these were Welcome messages. The lawsuit came up after a resident in Illinois stated that she received this unwanted message after being sent a spam text message from a financial service. In 2013, Yahoo texted at least 500,000 Sprint customers, which is why the internet company is now facing a class action lawsuit. A federal judge in Chicago is allowing the suit to continue. After having rejected Yahoos arguments against the class action lawsuit. The company could be looking at up to $1,500 in damages for each message sent in 2013 to non-Yahoo customers. So in total, Yahoo could be on the hook for around $750 million in damages.

Yahoo Messenger used to be one of the companys most popular services. And this Welcome message was a good way to get users to use the service, especially as they were losing customers to competitors. Text messages like this have been a thorn in the back of many customers. Back in 2013, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint all made an agreement with 45 of the 50 US states to discontinue charging customers for premium SMS messages that they receive. Verizon wasnt part of this settlement, but did also agree to stop billing customers for these premium SMS messages.

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Lately, Yahoo has been in the news quite a bit. Between looking to sell their internet business, selling off land they own and now this class action lawsuit. Its still not looking good for the once thriving company. Yahoo will likely look to settle this class action lawsuit, but it will likely be months before the lawsuit is finalized. And those that are part of the class action lawsuit likely wont see much in terms of compensation from these unwanted text messages sent back in 2013. As is typical with class action lawsuits, most times.
Julian Fellowes

received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Gosford Park (2002), his first produced film. His work was also honoured by the Writers Guild of America, The New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics for Best Screenplay.

As creator, sole writer and executive producer of the smash hit series Downton Abbey, Fellowes has been nominated for eight Emmy Awards. He received Emmy Awards for writing and Outstanding Miniseries or Movie in the first season and a Special International Emmy after the last was shown in the UK. Downton Abbey, the highest rated drama in PBSs history, is produced by Carnival Films & Television, a division of NBC Universal. Masterpiece is a co-producer of the series. Season 6 is the final season of the worldwide hit TV drama.

Other writing credits for film include Piccadilly Jim (2004), Vanity Fair (2004), The Young Victoria (2009), The Tourist (2010), Romeo & Juliet (2013), and for television the four-hour mini-series Titanic (2012), and the upcoming three-part drama Doctor Thorn. Fellowes has also entered into a deal with NBC and Universal Television to create, write and produce the dramatic television series The Gilded Age.

Fellowes has authored two novels: the international bestsellers Snobs (2005) and Past Imperfect (2008/2009), and the childrens book The Curious Adventures of the Abandoned Toys (2007). Scripts of the first three seasons of Downton Abbey that include notes by Fellowes have also been published.

In January 2011, Fellowes was given a peerage and entered the House of Lords as the Lord Fellowes of West Stafford.
British man arrested in Krygyzstan for sausage horse penis gag

Michael McFeat, 39, of Abernethy, is in Krygyzstan, where he works at the Kumtor gold mine.

As part of the Hogmanay celebrations, McFeat is served a sausage horse meat dish called the chuchuk. He considers the hideous lump of meat and thinks it looks like a horses penis, opining:

The Kyrgyz people queuing out the door for their special delicacy the horse penis!!!

Colleagues are outraged.

McFeat is contrite, posting on Facebook:

I would like to take the opportunity to sincerely apologise for the comment I made on here about the kygyz people and horses penis. I truly never meant to offened anyone and im truly sorry as it was never my intension. I would also like to say the people in the picture had absolutely nothing to do with it. again im very very sorry.

Too late!

Mr McFeat is under arrest. And you just know whats for breakfast, lunch, Tiffin and din-dins in the local choky, dont you. Pass the horse penis, Jock. Easy on the mayo

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2016 | In: Reviews, Strange But True Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
Is Siddartha Dhar A British spy?

Snuff TVs Jihadi John 2  the replacement for the first Jihadi John who left the planet in series 1  is Siddartha Dhar. The Star says Dhar fled Britain with his wife and child after police missed a chance to confiscate his passport when he was arrested.

Either that or they let him through to infiltrate IS and spy for the British.

Spying is part of Dhars resume. In his recent TV debut, Dhar can be seen by five men ebing executed as alleged British spies. How was Dhar able to breeze through Europe thanks to Britains shoddy security? Bow does he know who and who is not a spy?

Dhar, 32, we learn, hails from London E17. Thats Walthamstow, north-east London. Thats staunch Spurs and West Ham territory. But the Sun says Dhars an Arsenal fan.

You need more to distrust Dhar?

He used to work as bouncy castle operative!

His sister Konika Dhar said the terrorists voice sounded a bit like her brother. But she did not believe it was him. Ms Dhar said: If it is him, bloody hell am I shocked? I am going to kill him myself. He is going to come back and I am going to kill him if he has done this.

If he comes back?

I cant believe it. This is just so shocking for me. I dont know what the authorities are doing to confirm the identity. But I need to know if it is.

Most likely theyll kill him with a drone and then rake over the remains for his teeth.

Dhar, 32, a member of banned group al-Muhajiroun, appeared on the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera and told a CBS News 60 Minutes programme on radicalisation in the UK he could not love his mother because she was not a Muslim.

Dhars mum Sobita says:

I really have to get confirmation within myself thats its him before I confirm it. I heard the voice, yes, but I dont know. Im not sure of the voice. I just cannot say He was sensitive, very sensitive. He was shy, very shy.

So thats why he wears a balaclava.

The Sun says Dhar is now known as Abu Rumaysah. Thats an anagram of Arab Ya Humus.

Oh, and he converted to Islam from Hinduism.

You need more?

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2016 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Simon Danczuk: Oral sex, rape and Rochdale lab rats

Danczuk: a look at Labour MP in the media.

The Sun: Karen Danczuk probed by police over oral sex claim against sex-text MPs ex

Probed. Eu!

EXCLUSIVE: Selfie queen claimed love rival romped with married MP

Its tight sportswear fan Karen Danczuk, the woman for whom the internet is but a virtual mirror.

SIMON Danczuks former wife Karen faces a police probe after accusing his ex-girlfriend of sleeping with another Labour MP. The selfie queen hit out at Claire Hamilton, who had said shamed Danczuk was unfit to be a politician.

Two things in reverse order: we get the MPs we deserve. Is Danczuk a good constituency MP? Dunno. Is a media hound? Yep.

Karen, 32, who has been supporting her ex-husband since his split from Claire last month, tweeted: You forgot to say which married Labour MP gave you oral sex 24 hours before getting with SD.

STD? Ooops! Sorry. Our mistake. Its SD. And which married Labour MP is being hinted at?

Claire, who last night denied the allegation, demanded Karen remove it from Twitter.

Great, isnt it, this story of sex, sex, selfies, sex, sex, tweets, sex and uniforms.

Karen refused so Claire called cops, who are investigating.

The police? A tweet is police matter. In our country a tweet is a potential crime. The politicians made that happen. See, you get the politicians you deserve.

Claire, 32, said: Im prepared to take legal action because I cant have that. Shes just trying to slander me because I revealed that Simon was texting a 17-year-old girl.

Which he was.

When The Sun approached the married Labour MP Karen was referring to, who we are choosing not to name, he also denied it. He said: Thats absolutely outrageous. Ive never had a relationship with Claire Hamilton.

Who mentioned a relationship? What about sex?

In other news

The Indy: Labour MP Simon Danczuk facing police inquiry over rape allegation

Lancashire Police have confirmed that a complaint has been made against Mr Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale, regarding an alleged incident that occurred in 2006, according to the Manchester Evening News.

Go on

A spokesman for the force told the paper said: We can confirm that we have today received a report of a rape against a 49-year-old man relating to an historic offence from 2006. Enquiries are in the very early stages and are ongoing.

This is getting dark.

The Mail: Simon Danczuk is being investigated for RAPE say police, as he is heckled outside his own office by ex-wife Karens brother  who is also facing rape charges.

And darker.

Responding to the investigation, the Rochdale MP described the rape allegation made against him as malicious, untrue and upsetting. He added: The police have not been in touch with me but I will co-operate fully with any inquiries and am confident my name will be promptly cleared.

Lets hope he doesnt drop dead. Given the frenzy over dead celebs, the star paedo-hunter could have all manner of mud lobbed in the hole.

A spokesman for the Rochdale MP said he could not comment further on the police investigation. However, speaking to reporters earlier today, Mr Danczuk said: I would always cooperate with the police in any regard in any investigation in relation to any issue.

MP supports police! Read all about it!

Around 20 protesters gathered outside Mr Danczuks constituency office in Rochdale this morning calling for him to resign, including Karens Danczuks brother. Michael Burke, who is accused of a string of historic sex offences against three alleged victims, was photographed heckling the embattled MP as he left his constituency office to face the crowd of protestors.

And then get this:

The 38-year-old security guard, who is Mr Danczuks former step-brother, was charged in October with 11 counts of rape, five counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape.

Rochdales not a town  its a Petri dish.

The last words are with Simon:

I dont think I will be expelled from the Labour party, I think when they carry out the internal investigation  which I will cooperate fully with  they will conclude that, whilst I made one or two foolish mistakes, it doesnt warrant me being expelled from the party. So Im quietly confident that they will conclude Ill remain a Labour member of parliament I do think there is an interesting dichotomy between people like Boris Johnson, who make a lot of money as a member of Parliament and indeed as Mayor of London, whilst writing for the Daily Telegraph and the right-wing media and who has a very colourful personal life.

Name Boriss wife. Go on. Can you?

And yet a working class lad like me in Rochdale, who writes for some of the national newspapers and has a working class colourful personal life, I get lambasted, whilst Boris, playing it out with debutantes and all the rest of it in this upper-class world, doesnt get lambasted. And I think there is still very much an establishment, class issue going on in terms of, you know its a sociological issue is this, about how some of this stuff plays out, I think its quite interesting.

Nah. Stick to the shagging. Thats got us hooked

Anorak

Posted: 5th, January 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Emma Busbee (left), played by Emily Watson, has a quiet morning with her little boy (right), played by Jakob Salvati: Above. Little Boy (left) receiving counsel from Friar Crispin (right), played by Eduardo Verastegui: Below. Click images to expand.

A father's embrace by the sea side - Little Boy (left), and father, James Busbee, played by Michael Rapaport: Above. Click image to expand.

At the epicenter of the community's xenophobia is an elderly Japanese naturalized American Hashimoto, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa: Above. The brother to the good Little Boy is the spiritually failing London Busbee, played by David Henrie, a xenophobe searching for redemption: Below. Click images to expand.

With the 'faith of a mustard seed', one may lose all vestiges of xenophobia. With the will to conquer adversity, a civilization may continue. Two competing precepts of essential truths provided within the simple film "Little Boy", and ... it worked.Yes, the film worked, and it worked well in its 106 minutes, and now, I recommend it to you as a fantastic and heartwarming vignette of the real emotions of war laid bare on the table of the surreal. And what is war, if not the fertile soil of the surreal. "Little Boy" , merely, a tale set in that very time, in a place very much affected by the devastation of Pearl Harbor; a time that expresses this conundrum of how to treat the perceived enemy among these early 1940's northern Californians, real or imagined, and what is discovered as the tonic to recovery is the grown goodness of a little boy.Essentially, at the core of this film is not so much the horror of World War II, or even the xenophobia inflicted upon an elderly Japanese naturalized American at the height of the conflict an ocean away; but, the love of a little boy for his good father sent to war, and the goodness that grows in his heart for the acceptance of others that deserve kindness ... and some that might not. In the end, when the tale is told, all is revealed of what is learned and what is lost, and in that, the film works as an uplifting vehicle of art.Little Boy is actually Pepper Flynt Busbee, played by Jakob Salvati, who is a small boy not growing, who has settled at about 39 inches in height, making him the cruel mockery of the town's bullies. They call him Midget; the rest of the town uses the far more kind vernacular of 'Little Boy'. His doting father, James Busbee, played by Michael Rapaport, has formed a strong, irrevocable bond , lovingly referring to the little fella as "Partner". When the father joins the Army, he is sent to fight in the Philippines, where America suffered its largest defeat of World War II, and is summarily captured by the Japanese Imperial Army. From that fateful day in 1942 until after the war's end in late 1945, the Busbee family suffers a desperate time of loss, which is well encapsulated in the essence of Little Boy, who expresses it the only way he knows how as protege of the comic book magician Ben Eagle, who he meets at a Saturday morning live show at his hometown theater.There on that local stage, Ben Eagle, played by Ben Chaplin, makes quiet an impression on the vulnerable Little Boy, and from that moment on, the little fella is given the first of a series of principles of hope to believe in, and belief is something little Boy takes very seriously. The Priest of the town Catholic Church, Father Oliver, played by venerable character actor Tom Wilkinson, senses this virtue in the distraught boy, and gives him a special list of kindnesses to complete as a penance to become deserving of a Christian miracle, chief among them is to befriend Hashimoto, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, known unceremoniously around the seaside town as "Jap".When asked of Mr. Hashimoto by Little Boy:Mr. Hashimoto replied,implying that his persecution would be local. And so it was, and so it might end, for the film was one built on hope and goodness of a community of people, who were essentially good; even Rockwellian as presented by filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde, who in one scene payed explicit homage to the great American illustrator, Norman Rockwell. Along with Pepe Portillo, Director Monteverde aided in this story's creation and fine screenplay.Not only was the film well written, and well presented in direction, but the film was well acted by an ensemble cast, including those that I have failed to mention, they being: Kevin James as Dr. Fox, Te Levine as the malevolent Sam and Abraham Benrubi as the innocent Teacup. They: the players, the creators, the makers of images and all that the work that entails brought it all home, in a tight little package, to deliver an uplifting message of spiritual goodness triumphing over a world too often cold and unredemptive.Rated PG-13. Released on DVD August 18, 2015.
(ANSA) - Rome, January 5 - Almost half, or 45% of Italian families will hang an Epiphany stocking this year, an Ixe' survey for Coldiretti farmers' association showed Tuesday.

The Epiphany is a national holiday occurring on January 6 inspired by the story of the arrival of the Three Wise Men in Bethlehem with gifts for the newborn Jesus.

In pre-Christian Antiquity, worshipers celebrated the rebirth of Nature after the winter solstice at the end of December.

Legend had it that Mother Nature, exhausted by all her work in the year just past, transformed herself into a little old woman who distributed gifts as a symbol of the sowing season to come. She then burned herself, so that her younger version could rise from ashes. In Italy, this legendary old woman who delivers gifts on her broomstick is known as La Befana.

She is said to visit children on the eve of January 6 to fill their stockings with candy and presents if they have been good or a lump of coal or dark candy if they have been bad.

This year health-conscious consumers in a country where one third of children are obese will place dried fruits and nuts in the stocking along with homemade cookies in the stocking, according to Coldiretti.


(ANSA) - Lampedusa, January 5 - About 200 Eritrean migrants who reached the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa on December 24 staged a protest on Tuesday against the obligation to provide digital fingerprint identification.

The European Commission has urged Italy to ensure that migrants' fingerprints are taken, by force if necessary, and to hold anyone who resists attempts at identification.

Eritreans are among the migrants most likely to refuse to be identified upon arrival, forensic police chief Daniela Stradiotto told a parliamentary commission in September last year. The protesting Eritreans marched on Tuesday from a Lampedusa reception centre to a central square where police officers are monitoring the rally.

EU regulation requires immigrants' asylum applications to be handled by the country they first reach. But many migrants do not wish to stay in Italy, rather they are hoping to reach countries such as Germany, Sweden and Britain.


(ANSA) - Rome, January 5 - Gynecologists and obstetricians from three different associations called on Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin to take on the fact that Italy's maternity wards are chronically understaffed.

"Lorenzin must intervene personally, taking on the structural and staffing problems that torment Italy's maternity wards," the chiefs of the Association of Italian University Gynecologists, the Italian Gynecology and Obstetrics Association, and the Association of Hospital Gynecologists and Obstetricians said.

The statement came in the wake of the deaths of five women in childbirth in seven days - four of them in hospitals, one of them in a home birth.

The chronic lack of qualified staff makes it impossible in some cases to provide women with appropriate interdisciplinary teams made up of a gynecologist, an obstetrician, and an anesthetist, the doctors' associations said.

Such teams are "a prerequisite for optimal care in obstetrical emergencies," the statement said.

The doctors also called for "university-educated gynecological and obstetrics staff... and respect for behavioural norms or guidelines that are truly shared by the entire obstetrics and gynecology community".

Having said that, the associations added that "there exists and always will exist a quota of maternal mortality in pregnancy...mortality in childbirth is significantly influenced by risk factors such as carrying twins, advanced age, and obesity".

Italy, however, has one of the lowest maternal childbirth mortality rates in the West, the associations concluded.


(ANSA) - Naples, January 5 - A mobster was gunned down in a bar at Melito just north of Naples Tuesday.

Luigi Di Rupo, 24, was the victim of the local Camorra mafia in a turf war, police said.

Two hitmen followed him into the bar and hit him with at least two shots as customers cowered for cover.

Di Rupo was close to the Amato-Pagano clan, based in the northern Naples suburb of Secondigliano, police said.

He had a record for weapons possession and not, as originally reported, drugs offences.


(ANSA) - Rome, January 5 - The government has allocated 300 million euros for culture over the next three years, and sites all over Italy will get a revamp.

"After the 360 million for the South, another 300 million are on the way for the safeguarding of our cultural heritage," Culture Minister Dario Franceschini while approving a three-year cultural investment plan featuring 241 interventions nationwide.

Among these, 50 million will go to ensure security at museums throughout the country, 13 million will go to the Domus Aurea in Rome, and six million to Venice. "Culture has returned to the center of national policymaking," Franceschini said. The funds, said the minister, have been approved and will be immediately available. "They take into account the needs and the requests that came from local territories, and will contribute to relaunching the economy," Franceschini said. The three-year plan also includes 45 million euros to co-finance projects benefiting from the government's so-called Art Bonus 65% tax credit, and 1.5 million to salvage Rome's historic Teatro Valle theater. The program also allocates 5.4 million euros to open a cafe and possibly a restaurant in Rome's Palazzo Venezia, which became a papal residence in 1469 and a residence to ambassadors from Venice in 1564, and which currently houses a museum. Also on the list of nationwide interventions over the next three years are the Florence national library (over 3.5 million euros) and 1.2 million for the 19th-century Miramare Castle near Trieste.

Built between 1856-1860 for Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian and his wife Charlotte of Belgium based on a design by Carl Junker, the castle's grounds include a 22-hectare cliff and seashore park designed by the archduke.

The government also intends to spend three million euros on restoring the star-shaped late Renaissance fortified walls of the town of Palmanova in northeastern Italy, and one million euros to secure the buttress of the medieval St. Peter's Church in the mountain village of Roccascalegna in L'Aquila province.

As well, the program allocates 1.5 million to Mantua's Palazzo Ducale and just under one million euros to install air-conditioning in the National Painting Gallery of Ferrara, which is housed in a Renaissance palace from the 1490s.

The central Lazio region will be getting the lion's share, with 68 million euros for 59 projects, followed by Tuscany (20.6 million), Emilia Romagna (14.5 million), Sardinia (13.3 million), Veneto (13.1 million), and Piedmont (11.5 million).


(ANSA) - Brussels, January 5 - Italy protested Tuesday after losing its only component of the cabinet of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, legal expert Carlo Zadra.

Zadra quit and was replaced by a Briton after clashing with Cabinet Chief Martin Selmayr.

"This is unacceptable," European Affairs Undersecretary Sandro Gozi told ANSA.

He said Italy was pressing for the slot to stay Italian.

"Starting 2016 without an Italian would certainly not facilitate relations with Italy," Gozi said.


(ANSA) - Genoa, January 5 - The so-called ideologue of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) announced Monday he is quitting what is Italy's second-largest party after the ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD) of Premier Matteo Renzi. "The M5S is changing into a hybrid party and has made a new pact with the PD," law professor Paolo Becchi told Formiche.net online daily in an interview.

"It is acting as a crutch to the Renzi government," said Becchi as he announced his "official goodbye to the M5S".

Becchi added that M5S leader Beppe Grillo "has become a hologram". The professor added that he canceled his M5S membership on December 31, because the party is no longer truly anti-establishment but rather is working with Renzi's majority party.

This was seen, he said, in the December election of three new Constitutional Court judges.

That election proved "a new pact between the PD and the M5S has been born and it is being kept top secret, so much so that anyone who mentions it gets covered with online insults," Becchi charged.

Another nail in the coffin, said Becchi, came when Deputy House Speaker Luigi Di Maio (M5S) told The Financial Times in an interview that the caucus is against Italy leaving NATO.

Bringing Italy out of the eurozone as well as NATO are major planks of the M5S stated program.


Tunisia protests Egypt denying visa to writer Amel Grami Author was due to attend conference on terrorism

(ANSAmed) - Tunis, January 5 - Tunisia has asked Egypt to clarify why Cairo refused to grant a visa to Tunisian writer Amel Grami to attend a conference on terrorism at the Alexandria Library, the writer disclosed Tuesday.



The writer described her treatment as "humiliating for all Tunisian intellectuals".



The Tunisian Ambassador in Cairo said he is taking all measures necessary to clarify the affair.



According to Grami she may have been refused a visa because of her recent criticism of Egyptian security forces for using disproportionate force.



The Tunisian writers' union and the Yahadha association in a statement expressed solidarity with the writer, condemning her treatment by Cairo.




(ANSAmed) - Tunis, January 5 - Tunisia has asked Egypt to clarify why Cairo refused to grant a visa to Tunisian writer Amel Grami to attend a conference on terrorism at the Alexandria Library, the writer disclosed Tuesday.



The writer described her treatment as "humiliating for all Tunisian intellectuals".



The Tunisian Ambassador in Cairo said he is taking all measures necessary to clarify the affair.



According to Grami she may have been refused a visa because of her recent criticism of Egyptian security forces for using disproportionate force.



The Tunisian writers' union and the Yahadha association in a statement expressed solidarity with the writer, condemning her treatment by Cairo.
The previous poll on Eastern NC NOW showcased what are many of OUR Constitutional Republic's certain obstacles to remain viable, where the top encumbrance to that continuance as a functioning Republic was the Biden /Harris Wide Open Southern Border. Understanding this overwhelming concern to real America citizens: Do you believe it important to challenge the veracity of those legislated concerns of Democratic Socialists by transporting Illegal Migrants to their Sanctuary cities, counties and states for their direct care?

Yes; test the depth of their sense of well being by giving Democratic Socialists an opportunity to enact all Sanctuary provisions in their communities to test how much they truly do care.

No; the Biden /Harris Wide Open Southern Border Project is designed to only inundate "Red States" to begin their Demographic Upheaval for the benefit of we Democratic Socialists, our politics.
(ANSAmed) - Rome, January 5 - Kidnappers in Syria have released a Franciscan priest, Fra Dhiyn Azziz, after abducting him December 23, the Franciscan order's custody of the Holy Land said Tuesday.



Fr. Azziz, aged 41, the parish priest of Yacoubieh, vanished last month while returning by taxi from visiting his family in Turkey where they have taken refuge.



The custody of the Holy Land said they believe it "legitimate to believe that he was taken by some group".



Last July Fr. Azziz was kidnapped by Jihadists and apparently managed to escape his abductors.
(ANSAmed) - Tel Aviv, January 5 - A Palestinian stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier near Bethlehem before being shot and killed while in Herzlya, north of Tel Aviv, Israeli police were searching Tuesday for a suspected Palestinian attacker who drove a car through a roadblock on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Israeli military radio said.



The solder was attacked at a crossroads at Gush Etzion, an area of Israeli settlement some 10 km south of Bethlehem. His condition was not serious and the dead Palestinian was not identified.



The police at Herzyla were in a state of alert after the car that drove through the roadblock near Jerusalem was found abandoned after the driver, suspected of planning an attack, fled on foot.



In Tel Aviv a separate search continued for an Arab Israeli who killed two people in a pub and then killed an Arab taxi driver while on the run. Israeli police arrested the assailant's father and two brothers.


While treating wealthy tax evaders lightly, the Internal Revenue Authority is going to hunt down more than three million Romanians who haven't declared their incomes. Secretary of state Gabriel Biris claims that the respective people cannot live off, we quote, "hunting or digging for roots".



Consequently, they must pay income tax, same as any other Romanian. The Taxation Authority's method of exposing tax dodgers would be the health insurance minimum contribution.



Those who refuse to pay it, will not benefit from any medical assistance.



The only exceptions to this rule will be the students up to 26 years of age, the husband, wife or parents without any incomes supported by a social security contributor, pregnant or postpartum women and disabled persons.


Shortly after Commissioner Richardson's bold move to make Democrat Jerry Langley chairman of the Beaufort County Board of County Commissioners, he discussed three agenda items; all topical, two most important, one very important ... at least for this writer.So the commissioner had three items to discuss, which is about 8 shy of the number that he spoke extemporaneously of years ago, when I served with the commissioner, but what makes this special is two fold: This meeting lasted about two hours (extremely short for my days serving , when there was a greater deliberative process), plus Hood was the only commissioner to present any issues; and Hood presented the issue of beginning the process of removing "Gun Free Zones".All three issues failed by, and, remarkably,by wide margins. First, let's deal with the issues below:, where the vote was 1 (Hood Richardson) to 6 against (Ron Buzeo,, Frankie Waters, Ed Booth, Jerry Langley, Robert Belcher, Gary Brinn). Commissioner Richardson made the argument that Recall Elections were good tool to correct unpopular election results, once the public discovers that the elected representative either was incompetent or mislead the electorate to get elected. Furthermore, all representatives were elected by limited voting, since Beaufort County is under DOJ edict to elect by a method prescribed by the Untied States Department of Justice. No substantial argument was given to the contrary, but the vote was a route in opposition.with commissioner consultation, when the vacant position is primarily due to retirement failed by a vote of 2 in favor (Hood Richardson, Robert Belcher) to 5 against (Ron Buzeo, Frankie Waters, Ed Booth, Jerry Langley, Gary Brinn). The argument for the measure was voiced by Richardson, who reminded the commissioners that they had made many hires in the last year, many of them unnecessary, and, in the interest of commissioner oversight, these sitting to commissioners should advise the manager in a manner to keep the workforce as low as can be achieved. The commissioners in the majority, literary, argued against commissioner oversight as they believed that this was managers job, and they could make corrections at budget time. Good luck with that Commissioners. Reduction of the county property footprint ofalso failed by a vote of 2 in favor (Hood Richardson, Frankie Waters) to 5 against (Ron Buzeo, Ed Booth, Jerry Langley, Gary Brinn, Robert Belcher). This issue is not only a 2nd Amendment issue, it is a protection issue as well as a liability issue. The liability issue, could be argued to now have swung in favor of 2nd Amendment advocates , where the county could be perceived to have liability should there be a mass shooting on county property, and with the proclivity for mass shootings (including that of terrorists), as advocated by Richardson, the county would remiss to not allow for the possibility of protection from the public or county employees, who may be packing. Commissioners in the negative majority argued that they did not trust the public or county employees to carry protective firearms on county property, but Commissioner Ron Buzeo did remark that he, himself, was in the process of buying a permitted firearm now that he lived in North Carolina.Remarkably, the two county commissioners, Ron Buzeo and Gary Brinn, who argued for, and voted in the negative against limiting the county footprint of Gun Free Zones both agreed that they were staunch advocates for the Second Amendment, but believed that they possess the representative right as an Authoritarian to limit the 2nd Amendment rights of others, even though mass shootings and terrorist attacks are on the rise here within our shores. Commissioner Richardson put forth an associative motion to limiton county property toposition on the Gun Free Zone, which failed 2 (Hood Richardson, Gary Brinn) to 5 (Ron Buzeo, Ed Booth, Jerry Langley, Gary Brinn, Robert Belcher).
Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet...
I am always interested in hearing from artists who would like to be listed. Email me at oldenbroke@gmail.com.



It is generally recognised that reviewers may make use of material that is copyright for the purposes of review. I operate under that principle. It is not always possible to request permission of artists to use an image of their work in this blog, especially if the artist is not anglophone. I hope that all artists understand that posting an example typique of their work is essential to the generation of interest in their oeuvre.









The stated purpose of this blog is to list and review the websites of artists who work in pastel. For the artists featured there is the added benefit of having more traffic directed to their site.
A faxed handwritten letter, ostensibly by the missing man, suggests he is in the mainland working with police on issues that outsiders should not know. Meanwhile, his wife withdraws her call for police help. Communist paper claims Bo is helping in a low profile manner after the damage he has caused. For lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan, This is what Hongkongers worry about the most, i.e. being arrested by mainland agents in Hong Kong and taken across the border.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews)  The saga of Hong Kongs missing bookseller took an odd turn on Monday.

Lee Bo disappeared on 30 December 2015 and is probably held in mainland China.

A news agency reported that on Monday, he faxed a handwritten note to a colleague in which he says that he was working with police on an important issue.

One results has been that his wife has withdrawn her request for police help.

However, in Hong Kong, pro-democracy lawmakers still blame Beijing for his disappearance, and want the local government to investigate the matter.

Lee Bo was the fifth person involved with the Causeway Bay Bookshop to disappear. The store and an associated publishing house are known for releasing works on Chinas ongoing power struggle and on the private lives of its Communist leaders.

Lees wife earlier had said that her husband had called her three times from Shenzhen (southern China) the night he disappeared. For this reason, she went to police.

However today, she withdrew her request for police help, claiming she had been in touch with her husband after he vanished.

Deepening the mystery, a news agency published what it said was a handwritten letter faxed by Lee to a bookstore colleague.

The letter stated that Lee had to handle the issue concerned urgently and cannot let outsiders know. He also said he returned to mainland my own way.

However, two Hong Kong lawmakers  Democratic Partys James To Kun-sun and the New Peoples Partys Michael Tien Puk-sun  on Tuesday voiced doubts over whether Lee really went to the mainland in his own way.

He has resisted going to the mainland the whole time. Why would he suddenly go to the mainland in his own way? To said on a radio programme. And why didnt he just use his home return permit to do so? Both want Hong Kong authorities to elucidate the matter.

One answer has come from The Global Times, an English-language newspaper that acts as a mouthpiece for the Chinese government.

Although Causeway Bay Books was opened in Hong Kong, the harm it has done against the country has already entered the mainland, it said in an editorial. Lee Bo knows it well. He was probably willing to cooperate with the investigation in a low profile way.

Lee Cheuk-yan, secretary of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said the faxed note suggests that mainland agents have placed Lee under investigation.

It all the more showed what actually happened was that Lee was under investigation because his bookstore made insults about the mainland, Lee said on a radio programme.

This is what Hongkongers worry about the most, i.e. being arrested by mainland agents in Hong Kong and taken across the border, he added.
The dissident is known for his online criticism of the Communist Party and for his skill in use of law to defend the vulnerable. Today first day of three years of confinement to his home, but for his friends "punishment is even more subtle. They have silenced him".

Beijing (AsiaNews) - Pu Zhiqiang, one of the leading human rights lawyers in all of China, today begun his first day under house arrest. The man, sentenced to three years of suspended prison sentence, has not submitted an appeal. After ten days of " designated residential surveillance ", a kind of preventive detention, he was released by authorities and taken home. His friends maintain it is a most subtle form of punishment as he has been silenced".

The sentence against the dissident was issued by a court in the capital on 22 December 2015. He was found guilty of "inciting ethnic hatred", "causing public disorder" and "causing disturbance to social peace". In reality his conviction is the result of his stinging criticism of the repressive policies of the central government in Xinjiang Province. And, according to many, his ability to defend the rights of the weaker sections of the population.

The lawyer graduated from the University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. In 1989 he took part in the Tiananmen Square movement, and was one of 13 students to start a hunger strike to protest the corruption of the government.
Announced by the Custody of the Holy Land, with gratitude for positive outcome. So far no further details about the kidnapping, for "reasons of confidentiality". Thanks to "all those who have helped to secure his release." The hope for the other priests and religious who have been kidnapped.

Damascus (AsiaNews) - Fr Dhiya Azziz, a Franciscan of Iraqi origins, pastor of Yacoubieh (in Syria), abducted in Syria the day before Christmas Eve, "has been released" and "is doing well." The announcement, with a brief statement released late Monday evening was made by the Custody of the Holy Land which had given the news of his abduction on St. Stephens day. "For reasons of confidentiality - the statement continues - we cannot give more details," but "we wish thanked those who helped us to secure his release."



Interviewed by AsiaNews, sources of the Custody express "gratitude" for the release of kidnapped priest but, currently, can make no further official comment on the matter. The caution is necessary, in order not to disclose details on the kidnapping and compromise ongoing negotiations for the liberation of other priests and religious in the hands of terrorist groups or common criminal gangs.

The last official contact dates back to the morning of December 23, at about 9. Then from that point, the statement adds, there has been no news, and "no one knows where he is." All traces have also been lost of the other passengers on board the taxi.

In all probability there are extremist groups or criminal gangs behind the kidnappings, who use ransom moneys to fuel their terrorist network. Moreover, the "very chaotic" situation in the country - at war for five years  gives little hope for an imminent release.

Fr. Dhya Azziz was born in Mosul, ancient Nineveh, Iraq, on 10 January 1974. After studies at the the medical Institute in his city, he embraced the religious life and after his novitiate at Ain Karem, makes the first profession of religious vows on April 1, 2002. In 2003 he moved to Egypt, where he remained for several years.

In 2010, he joined the Custody and was sent to Amman. He was then transferred to Syria, Lattakia. He them volunteered to assist the c Yacoubiehommunity, in the Orontes region (province of Idlib, district of Jisr al-Chougour), despite the very serious danger as it was under the control of Jabhat al Nusra militias.

As early as last July he was the victim of a flash kidnapping, which ended a few days later with his release. At first the suspicions turned to militants of al-Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. However, the movement's leaders denied any involvement. In all probability he had been taken by another jihadi group that hoped to obtain a large ransom.

Since the start of the Syrian conflict, militia groups and jihadi fighters have seized several prominent Christian leaders, including two bishops, Metropolitan Boulos Yazigi (of the Orthodox Church of Antioch), and Metropolitan Mar Gregorios Youhanna Ibrahim (of the Syriac Orthodox Church), both abducted on 22 April 2013.

On 9 July 2013, Fr Paolo Dall'Oglio, a Jesuit priest from Italy, was also kidnapped, along with two other priests and some lay volunteers.

Last year, Jihadis also abducted 13 nuns, north of Damascus, eventually releasing them after a few months in a prisoner exchange.
by Giovanni Zimbaldi

Jesus Christ intrigues mountain communities. Some 20,000 catechumens are preparing for baptism. Ordinary people bear witness to their stories, like the first nun and the first priest among ethnic Akha. Young Christian families offer love and forgiveness, inducing entire villages to convert.

Fang (AsiaNews)  The first posting of 2016 brings good tidings to readers. As the missio ad gentes continues, more people come to know Jesus Christ, feel the joyous wonder of loving him, join the Church and go out to make him known.

Father Gianni Zimbaldi is one of my recruits. Born in 1929, he went out as a missionary first to Burma (1957-1966), then to northern Thailand (1972 to the present). His story simple and full of facts, and is more convincing than many a discourse.

We often hear people say that the missio ad agentes is over, that the task now belongs to local Churches. That is not yet the case. The missio with foreign missionaries continues (sometimes under some limitations), not only in Africa, but also in several countries in Asia and Oceania; at least, that is so for us at PIME, in Bangladesh, India, Burma, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Japan, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere in Asia.

Enjoy reading this joyful flash of light from todays Acts of the Apostles, from where the Church is born anew.

Piero Gheddo

Dear Father Piero,

Best wishes for the New Year 2016 give me the opportunity to send you good tidings from the Fang missionary district in northern Thailand, which I started in 1972 from scratch.

Now we have a new parish priest, Father Marco Milanese Ribolini, 42, who has been Thailand since 2004, and a black assistant pastor from Mato Grosso (Brazil). Father Lorenzo Braz de Oliveira, who has been in Thailand for the past four years is in charge of the childrens hostel in Fang.

I am here to help them. My health is good and, thank God, I can still visit the villages. When I started the missionary ministry among tribal animists in the diocese of Chiang Mai, there were at best 20,000 baptised Christians. Now there are more than 60,000 and 20,000 catechumens in Catholic villages preparing for baptism. Back then, there was a single diocesan priest; now there are about 30.

The bishop is not only pleased with us, but has asked us to care for other areas. The diocese of Chiang Mai covers eight large provinces with a population of 5,685,000. Catholics number 71,694, with only 30 diocesan priests and 67 religious priests (30 Thai-born) in a vast mountainous and forested area the size of Lombardy and Piedmont.*

The bishop has welcomed religious congregations to the diocese. The Fang missionary district is getting ready for a new subdivision when the new district of Ban Thai Theut is created. We are building the necessary facilities, praying to the Lord for benefactors to help us.

Like every year, hundreds of adults in the district are preparing to receive the baptism. They have lived in Catholic villages for several years as catechumens, attended religious services and applied to receive the sacraments. A catechist follows them. When they are ready, they will be baptised.

Thanks to the Lord Jesus, we are gratified by a Catholic community that grows each year. Last year, in the diocese of Chiang Mai, we carried out more than a thousand adult baptisms, almost all of the people were tribal animists.

The mission has two hostels in Fang and Ban Thai Theut (100 km from Fang). This year, we have 170 boys and girls, who are the future of the Christian community.

Fr Lorenzo de Oliveira and three nuns from India and Pakistan run the Fang hostel. The future district centre in Ban Theut Thai does not have any priest or nuns. Various former students from our hostels are village chiefs and so they lead religious services in chapels. They are responsible for the families that have been created.

People understand the importance of education, both civic and Christian. For this, reason, they send their children to the hostel, even though this requires a certain financial effort.

At the Fang mission, children do not get bored. Despite some hiccups, life includes pleasant moments rooted in a love for life and in childrens smiles.

Last April, a new, raised wooden chapel was blessed in an Akha village. Under the main platform, people can gather. In another Akha village in June I blessed and celebrated the first Mass in the new chapel, built in bricks, which can comfortably accommodate more than 130 people.

People wanted these permanent chapels. They raised money among themselves to cover the cost. In 43 years in Fang, the Lord has helped me build permanent chapels (in wood or bricks) in 32 villages.

Experience has taught me that the permanent chapels is faith building in Christians, who are proud to have a decent place to gather for religious services, catechetical education, and other meetings.

Last week, 48 men (catechists responsible for village liturgy) came from various villages for a two-day meeting. They are a missionarys right arm. They lead festive prayers in chapels, and go to pray in homes when people are sick. They keep the faith alive in villages where priests can only visit every two or three months.

On 9 December, we celebrated solemnly the profession of faith of a young woman in an Akha village. She is the first ethnic Akha nun in Thailand who is giving her life to serve the Lord. For the festival, hundreds of Christians took part in the event to thank God for the gift made to the Akha tribe by calling one of their own to serve.

Last June, the bishop of Chiang Mai consecrated Thailands first ethnic Akha priest. This is a source of joy for us missionaries because Gods word is taking root among these people, and, gradually, they will be able to continue the religious ministry on their own, without the help of foreign staff.

The most comforting thing about adult conversions is when newly baptised adults (beginners) join the Church with a great love for Jesus Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit in the heart.

Spontaneously, they speak about Jesus and pass on their faith in Christ talking about the example and the story of how beautiful it is to love Jesus. If one looks for him, he shall be found, and one will not let go because it is beautiful to be with Him.

Two months ago, a non-Christian village chief came to visit me. He told me, "Father, three Christian families from Burma came to live in our village. They do not partake in our pagan practices, but on Sunday they gather in a home to pray. Their life in the village is an example for us. We too have decided to become Christian. For this reason, I ask you for a catechist, so that we too can learn the teachings of Jesus."

A young orphan whom I had taken in at the mission when he was a boy, one day came and told me that he wanted to go back to his pagan folks with the family he had established. I tried to dissuade him, saying that the village was far away, that his relatives were pagan and that they knew nothing about Jesus. "If you go to live among pagan, you and your loved ones will become pagan."

Yet, he wanted to go back. A year later, three men came to the mission and said, "The young man that you educated at the mission is back among us with his family and his children. That young man is an example to all of us. He is a friend to everyone. He knows how to forgive offenses and when people get sick or get in trouble, he is always helping them.

In his house he put a holy image and prays with his family in front of it. When we talk, he tells about Jesus and Christians. We have come to realise that Jesus teachings can help us be good, so we want to become Christians like him, and we ask you to send us a catechist to live with us."

* Lombardy and Piedmont are two regions in northern Italy, covering respectively about 25,000 and 23,000 square kilometres.
Shares recover early losses by midday. But those of Hong Kong and Shezhen are still slightly negative. Slight recovery also in Seoul and Tokyo. Yesterday's losses of more than 7% forces end of trading, leading to sell-off on other exchanges. Analysts believe there will be many other similar shocks on the stock markets in China this year.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - The Shanghai Stock Exchange closed the morning session recovering some losses after yesterdays sudden trade suspension due to huge losses.

The Shanghai Composite Index opened down 3%, but at the end of the morning session was up 0.41%.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange closed with a slight loss of 0.02%; the Shenzhen market was less than 0.53%.

Yesterday the Chinese stock exchanges were closed at 13:33 because the market slid by 7%. The suspension of trading is due to a new rules system put in place by China following the huge losses suffered by its market over the past summer months. The market was suspended when the composite index lost up to 5%.

Fears of a new period of volatility, has led to a global equities sell-off. In New York, on the first day of trading in the new year, the indices lost up to 2%.

Today Seoul is also now active up by 0.8%. The Tokyo Stock Exchange, after yesterday's losses, has so far recovered 0.4%.

The various signals coming from the Chinese economy push analysts to think that trade will be frequently suspended on the Chinese stock market this year.
by Paul N. Hung

In 2015 tens of thousands of fishermen have been victims of the "red empire". Beijings navy threaten and sink vessels. Hanoi slams an "inhuman and aggressive" attitude. The last incident occurred on January 1. Beijing pursues "imperialist" policy in spite of the protests of Vietnam and the Philippines.

Hanoi (AsiaNews) - "In 2015, in a single year, tens of thousands of fishing families have been victim 'red empire' attacked by para-military vessels flying the flag of China. They have threatened and used violence against Vietnamese fishermen. They have an inhuman and aggressive attitude within the territorial waters of Vietnam", denounce associations and groups of fishermen to AsiaNews. They complain of ongoing violence and abuse at the hands of ships, boats and vessels registered to Beijing, which ply the waters of the South China Sea.

The Chinese government wants to control this disputed territory, - to the detriment of Vietnam, the Philippines and other nations in the region  for its exclusive economic and commercial use.

The last case dates back to the first day of 2016, when the Vietnamese vessel NGQ TS 98459, based in Quang Ngai province was hit and sunk by a vessel flying the Chinese flag. The incident occurred near the CO Island, less than 40 miles (70 km) from the Vietnamese coast.

Mr. Huynh Thach, captain and owner of the boat, said that "suddenly my vessel was struck and flanked by a ship flying Chinas colors. The collision injured several fishermen who were swept into the sea. The captain added that the Chinese ship "hit our vessel a second time, to ensure that it would sink".

After the impact  he concludes- two people aboard the Chinese vessel we have looked at us and pointed to our boat as it sank.

Some local fishermen adding that today" people are afraid to sail the waters of the central provinces of Vietnam, "for fear of attacks from China. This is why we are appealing to the government in Hanoi, to protect our workers who operate across national borders.

At the center of the dispute is control of the Fiery Corss Reef, in the Spratly Islands, where last July China built an artificial atoll; an area of 2.74 km2, the result of a project that has cost the coffers of Beijing at least $ 12 billion.

China also built on the atoll 9 port bridges, two helipads, 10 antennas for satellite communications and military radar stations. Finally, Beijing built an airstrip over 3 km long and 60 meters wide, which allows take-off and landing for strategic bombers over the Spratly, from which Beijing can control the airspace of the western Pacific.

This test landing has infuriated Vietnam and the Philippines who have both lodged formal complaints. However, the grievances of Hanoi and Manila have had no practical effect to China, which pursues its "imperialist" policy in the region.

The Chinese government claims most of the sea (almost 85 per cent), including sovereignty over the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands, in opposition to Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. The Philippines  which is seeking a non-binding international ruling at the UN court  together with Vietnam, is increasingly worried about Beijing's imperialism in the South China and East China seas.

For the United States, which backs the claims of Southeast Asia nations, Beijing's so-called 'cow tongue' line  which covers 80% of the 3.5 km2 - is both "illegal" and "irrational".
Khaled Khoja, elected a year ago president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, follows Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Beijing, a sign of Chinas growing interest in settling conflicts in the region.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Khaled Khoja (pictured), president of the Istanbul-based National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces starts a visit to China today, a sign that China is taking a greater interest in the Syrian conflict.

China has so far followed Russia in its action at the United Nations.

Last month, it blocked a measure to ask the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in the country, consistently calling for a "political solution" to the conflict.

"We believe that at the current stage we need to seek a ceasefire and a political settlement in parallel," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

China hosted members of the Syrian regime on an official visit in December, when Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem declared that Damascus was ready to participate in peace talks with opposition groups.

Conversely, in his first speech after being elected, Mr Khoja ruled out negotiations with "the Assad regime" unless "they bring about real and complete political transition".
The 25,000-barrel cap is a regulation on a microbrewery owner's "inalienable right to earn a living" that is not "rationally related to a substantial governmental purpose," and therefore violates Article 1 Section 1 of the North Carolina Constitution. The 25,000-barrel cap artificially transfers wealth from microbrewery operators to distributors and larger-scale competitors in such a away as to violate the "law of the land" and equal protection clauses of Article 1 Section 19 of the North Carolina Constitution. The state's malt beverage regulatory scheme favors distributors and large-scale breweries to such an extent that it creates an impermissible monopoly in favor of entrenched interests, and therefore violates Article 1 Section 34 of the North Carolina Constitution. The aforementioned constitutional provisions are all intended to "safeguard the liberty and security of the citizen in regard to both person and property," and therefore must all "receive a liberal interpretation in favor of" citizens and against the State.

Since the days of Nebbia and West Coast Hotel, challenges to economic regulation have almost universally failed. Particularly in the realm of alcohol, where the State historically plays a role in regulating the distribution and consumption of an intoxicating product, it would be difficult to challenge any type of regulation as unconstitutionally "arbitrary" or "discriminatory." Add to this the fact that state regulation of alcohol is explicitly authorized in the 21st Amendment, and it becomes clear that a challenge under the federal Constitution would fall flat.But there is another fundamental document that North Carolinians often forget  our state Constitution. Originally authored in 1776 and then reorganized in 1868 and 1971, the state Constitution provides North Carolinians with many protections that are non-existent in federal law. And while the U.S. Constitution provides a rights "floor," state courts are free to interpret their state constitutions as providing more protections than are conferred by federal law.For example, take Article 1 Section 1:This provision was intended to echo the United States Declaration of Independence. While it does not create a constitutionally protected interest in any particular job, theclause mandates that state regulation of business must be rationally related to a substantial government purpose  a higher standard than exists under federal law.Article 1 Section 19 provides thatand thatThese are state guarantees of due process and equal protection. While decisions of the United States Supreme Court construing the federal due process clause are persuasive, they are not binding upon the North Carolina Supreme Court in interpreting the state Constitution's "law of the land" clause. So, while North Carolina courts have historically interpreted the due process provisions of the state and federal constitutions in the same way, they are not required to do so. The equal protection clause is also interpretted in the same way as its federal counterpart.Article I Section 34 declares thatIn interpreting this provision, our state courts have conceded that the legislature has the power toState v. Balance, 229 N.C. 764, 769 (1949). However, when it is clear thatFreeman v. Bd. of Comm'rs of Madison Cty., 217 N.C. 209 (1940). This provision seeks to preventwhichAm. Motors Sales Corp. v. Peters, 311 N.C. 311, 318 (1984).And finally, there is the capstone to our state Constitution's Declaration of Rights  Article I Section 35. This provision states:Far from being mere fluff language, these words have been interpreted to have meaning and significance of their own. They require other constitutional provisions toCorum v. Univ. of N. Carolina Through Bd. of Governors, 330 N.C. 761, 783 (1992). The section further requires thatUnder this section and others,State v. Harris, 216, N.C. 746 (1940).Does any of this mean that, as of right now, the state's regulation of microbreweries is unconstitutional? No. But it does provide potential for microbreweries to make a principled, constitutionally-rooted argument that the state's current three-tier system favors distributors and large-scale producers in such a way as to violate the rights of microbreweries and their operators. What might such an argument look like?It would begin with the propositions that North Carolinians have anas well as rights to equal protection and due process of law. Any regulations implicating these rights must pass constitutional muster. On this basis, microbrewery operators might offer three primary arguments, and a fourth reinforcing the other three:Despite the potential for such arguments, a betting man would still expect such a lawsuit to fail. That is because economic regulations, and particularly those of traditionally dangerous substances like alcohol, have historically been upheld. Further, North Carolina courts have followed their federal and state counterparts in allowing almost any economic regulation to survive rational-basis review.That being said, more can be learned from the Nebbia and West Coast Hotel sagas than simply that courts have scaled back their power of judicial review. That episode also demonstrates that American courts are open to change. Perhaps, if microbreweries advance a legitimate argument under the North Carolina Constitution that they are being deprived of their rights, courts will listen, and develop a legal test that maintains deferrence to the legislature while increasing protections for economic liberties. After all, constitutions exist to protect our most fundamental freedoms from our own government. When entrenched business interests with the capacity to lobby are using the law to protect their profits at the expense of emerging small businesses, it would seem that there must be a constitutional remedy. Perhaps in the future our state courts will have the opportunity to decide whether, and how, our state's constitution can protect a flourishing new industry from the influence of economic incumbents in Raleigh.
A reader writes:

I recently purchased an essential oil diffuser for my house, and I love it. I would like to purchase one for my office too but am concerned it might be perceived as weird or new-agey. What do you think?

I dont have anything else unusual in my office. If it helps, I am in a medium-sized city in the Midwest and recently noticed that my sons kindergarten teacher was using one in the classroom.

I think itll come across as eccentric to some people (but not lets never work with her again eccentric), neutral to others, charming to a small few, and annoying/problematic for others (more on that in a minute).

And it depends on what the scent is. If its, say, patchouli or anything else that proclaims Im fermenting tofu in the mini-fridge under my desk, and tomorrow I will be adding a beaded curtain to my office doorway, the number of people perceiving it as eccentric will rise considerably. If its something like citrus, youll probably raise fewer eyebrows.

But totally aside from how people will perceive it, I think you probably should stay away from it. Unlike, say, a piece of artwork that you hang on your wall, scents waft and impact other people. An increasing number of people have fragrance sensitivities, and you could end up causing a coworker migraines, respiratory issues, or other physical discomfort. Or you might just annoy people who dont enjoy the scent.

Im all for making your work space more homey, but when youre talking about modifying the air other people breathe, I think youve got to err on the side of caution.

That said, if youre really dying to do it, you could ask around among your coworkers and see if anyone objects (as well as consider how often you have outside visitors in your space). But Id rather see you keep it at home.
Hi all,I read a lot on internet about that but there is no easy and clear answer to my situation so this is why I would like to explain my case and see what you think about it.My 457 was granted 2 months ago and I obviously couldn't put my partner on it at that time. I would like to bring her here now and the best situation would be to add her on my visa before she quits her job and everything in Brazil. The goal is to have the right to work full-time here.So we are in a relationship since 19 months but we never "lived" together. I met her in Brazil and lived with her 1 week. We then spent 1 week together in Paris the month after. She came here in Australia more than 3 weeks in December 2014 to spend her holiday with me and I went last November-December 3 weeks in Brazil to meet her again. This is basically the only time we have been physically together but we tchat or call everyday on internet since we have met. Also a few people know all about this (they can say it is true).So this is the picture, we have no solid proof like lease, joint bank account, bills or whatever. We only have pictures, daily chat on internet and we could proof that we spent our holidays together due to her job and my travelling in Australia followed by my job.I thought about different options :- is it possible to add her on my visa as my de facto partner with only this?- is her coming here with a tourist visa on her next holiday, we get married and then I ask to add her on my visa possible? Does it seems acceptable? What about the time frame before asking?- or with a student visa for a few months, getting married and ask to add her on my visa when her visa expires?The things is, I know we can start to build everything for a de facto relationship now, but it will take a lot of time before she can get the right to work full-time. She has a good level of English and she has 15 years of experience in her job.Thank you for your time.
Some might think that the moment when the first human will set foot on Mars belongs to a distant future, but NASA and ESA beg to differ. In fact, the first manned mission to Mars is expected around the year 2030, and when we're talking in space terms, this is more of an "around the corner" affair.In preparation of the Mars missions, NASA has become interested in the studies Dainese has been carrying out to better understand the movements of the human body. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts funded Dainese's undertaking to engineer the Biosuit, the world's most advanced compression suit to date.The Biosuit has nothing to do with the Half-Life universe; it is the most technologically-advanced compression suit ever made. Through their studies, Dainese learned that certain areas of the human body neither extend, nor are compressed during movement.They are represented by the lines that cross the Biosuit. They can be mechanically compressed without hindering the wearer of the suit, yet remaining a fully-functional technical garment.One of the drawbacks of spending longer periods of time in space is that the absence of gravity will tend to elongate the body, and the spinal cord makes no exception. The problem is that this can lead to herniating discs and this is one of the things that nobody wants.ESA asked Dainese to come up with a solution, so the Italians delivered the Skinsuit. Made from special four-way elastic materials, nylon straps and a rigid upper section, the Skinsuit re-creates the effects gravity has on the human body.That is, it keeps the astronauts' bodies "packed" together, preventing the unwanted spinal elongation. Each Skinsuit is tailor-made for the wearer, as the forces acting on the body must be carefully managed for each individual.It looks like Dainese is once more one step ahead of other manufacturers of safety products. According to Jalopnik , Dainese adds these new suits to a longer list of premieres in the business, such as the initial motocross pants (1972), the first back protector (1978), knee sliders for leathers (1980), the first aerodynamic hump on leather suits (1988), toe sliders (1993), carbon fiber/kevlar gloves (1995), and recently, the D-Air airbag technology, whose development started in 2000.
In this regard, the Detroit-based company invites people to participate in the DJI Developer Challenge to create drone-to-vehicle communications using FordSYNC AppLink or OpenXC. The winner of this challenge will receive $100,000.Although future applications might include other domains such as agriculture, forestry, construction or bridge inspection, for the moment, the primary goal of this project is for the United Nations Development Program to inspect emergency zones that not even the most versatile vehicle could reach.This technology will allow the UN to quickly respond to natural calamities, such as earthquakes or tsunamis, and deploy drones able to survey and map hardest-hit areas. Oh, I forgot to mention: all from the cab of a Ford F-150.Ken Washington, Fords Research and Advanced Engineering vice president, said that Working with DJI and the United Nations, there is an opportunity to make a big difference with vehicles and drones working together for a common good.The base principle of this project is very simple: in case of a disaster, a Ford F-150 would drive as far as possible into an emergency zone. Using the cars touch screen, the driver could identify the area and launch a drone that would then follow a flight path over the affected region, capturing video and creating a map of survivors with associated close-up pictures of each.The car would establish a real-time connection between the drone, the truck and the cloud, and then it would store the data, all with the help of the drivers smartphone. The data would be relayed to the drone so the driver can continue to a new destination while the drone would catch up and safely land on the trucks pad.Although its quite hard to achieve something like this, lets not forget that we live in the era of technology, and if this system gets up and running, a lot of lives would be saved.
TDI

Why are they being sued, you ask? Well, the US Department of Justice is accusing Volkswagen of violating the Clean Air Act , the Wall Street Journal reports. They are seeking billions of dollars in penalties over alleged cheating in emissions test for around 500,000 cars equipped with the 2.0-literengine of the EA189 series, fitted with what VW engineers called a defeat device. The plaintiff didnt forget to mention the V6 TDI engined vehicles featuring their own custom software made to trick emission tests.The civil lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of Michigan and transferred to Northern California. Volkswagen is charged with four counts of breaching the U.S. Clean Air Act, including failing to report the violations to the authorities and, naturally, willfully modifying the emission control systems on the cars it sold.Since the American branch of the German company sold almost 600,000 vehicles in the States with the plagued Defeat Device, the penalty could rise to a hefty sum. The maximum fine is of $32,500 for each car that violated the Clean Air Act before January 12, 2009, and can rise up to $37,500 for every dirty car sold after that date. Back in September 2015, the EPA estimated that Volkswagen could pay a fine of over $18 billion, but things could take a turn for the worse for the Wolfsburg brand.According to ING analysts, the lawsuit might not get to court and could be settled behind closed doors. After all, Volkswagen will fix all affected vehicles and will reimburse their owners for the damage caused and will probably pay a tax difference on the emission levels recorded above the stated numbers in the specific timeframe in which the Dieselgate-affected vehicles didnt comply with US regulations.But even if Volkswagen settles this lawsuit, other legal actions may follow. For example, the subject of this article refers to a civil suit, but there are also criminal charges involved for some people working for the American branch of the German company. The company itself could be investigated by federal prosecutors on potential criminal charges as well. All thats left for us is to hope things will eventually be sorted out.
A dynamo from the word go, the 2016 Audi TTS Coupe 2.0T Quattro S-tronic is a proverbial wolf in sheeps clothing. But that wasnt always the case.

MQB

Power comes via an uprated version of the 2.0 TFSI direct-injection turbocharged four-cylinder engine, which in this case produces 292 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque.

MMI

TDI

As it stands now, the TTS plays the part of a young girl who has not quite fully matured into a woman.

HVAC

A quick jab of the accelerator snaps an unsuspecting passengers head safely back into the S-embossed head restraint.

With gawky looking first-generation body panels originally stamped and painted at Ingolstadt, the car had German origins that crossed a few borders before the final assembly at the Audi factory in Gyor, Hungary. Now into its third generation, the Audi TTS Coupe continues to improve on its lineage with refinements in horsepower, handling, and ergonomics.Break it down.Introduced Stateside in mid-2015 as a 2016 model, the 2016 Audi TTS Coupe is the high-zoot version of the less powerful TT. Built on VW Groups globalplatform, it shares underpinnings with corporate cousins from SEAT, Volkswagen, and Skoda, not to mention its own A3 brother.This direct-injected mill is a transverse front-mounted affair that feeds into a dual-clutch six-speed S-tronic automatic transmission. From there, its power is diverted in varying degrees from the front to the rear axle, through a new-generation Audi Quattro all-wheel-drive system.Sensors at all four wheels measure traction up to 150 times per 10-milliseconds and can be varied via the Audi Drive Select system. Placing the Quattro system in dynamic mode equips the TTS with a natural rear wheel bias. Combining that with the Audi magnetic ride system that is standard on the TTS, allows the driver to choose a suitable drive mode based on conditions and his or her personal preferences, or in some cases, mood.The Audi TTS arrives at a dealer already very well-equipped. Included in the general mix are such Audi standards as S exterior fitments, which include fascias, side sills, special mirrors, and chromed exhaust tips, theTouch with voice control, the virtual cockpit TFT screen display, full LED head- and taillights, automatic climate control, Bluetooth, and parking sensors.For those without the need for such power, the standard TT is equipped with a 2.0-liter TFSI engine that produces 220 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque. Its plenty stout, still. Regardless of which powerplant is selected, all US-destined TT and TTS models are Quattro all-wheel-drive equipped. On the old continent, the TT is also available with aDiesel four-cylinder, in a front-wheel-drive configuration.The TTS faces a spry set of competitors. Ranging from the domestic to the international, the list includes the Porsche Cayman S, BMWs M235i coupe, and what some may consider a stretch, the Chevrolet Corvette. A second-tier set could include the Nissan 370Z and perhaps even the baseline Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustangs, which could be considered 2+2 models because of their rather sparse rear seat practicalities.Compared to the first-generation TT with its hausfrau sensibilities (read: zaftig looks), not to mention bulging fender flares, the new Gen-3 Audi TTS Coupe is positively Victorias Secret, and then some. On the other hand, it has not quite realized its full potential, either.The Coupe-only TTS channels the looks and feel of a not quite grown up Audi R8. With its matte-grey singleframe grille, S-style bodywork, lowered suspension and functional rear deck spoiler, there are key giveaways that the sum of this TTS is more than its lesser-equipped little brother. For those who desire their driving al-fresco, the standard TT is available in both coupe and roadster models.From a drivers standpoint, Audis reputation for building state-of-the-art interiors remains intact. All controls seemingly fall into place just where we like them. Most will be operated without the driver even having to remove his hands from the flat-bottomed steering wheel. Voice controls are just a pushbutton away, as is the ability to reconfigure the gauge binnacle through a touchpad-style entry device.We like the novelty of the infotainment system located within the gauge binnacle, but our co-drivers were having none of it. As great an idea it is to have a 12.3-inch high-definition screen flashing everything from gauges, recent calls, SiriusXM Satellite radio and Google maps, its as though the TTS was ordered without any sort of visual stimulation for the person riding shotgun.Though the MMI controller takes up real estate on the center console, it is largely irrelevant to the passenger, who cant see the screen anyway. With operation of the display beyond their control, why bother? Instead, passengers can take over the role of climate control engineers, responsible for directing cool airflow from the precision-designedvents and their concentric controls.The front seats are covered in form-fitting multi-adjustable heated leathers with adjustable side bolsters and thigh extensions. If you cant find a good seating position here, you havent tried hard enough. The rear seats? Thats another story entirely.But tease they will. Equipped with a 50:50 split arrangement, they can fold forward to expand the cargo capacity of the TTS from 12 cubic feet to, um, slightly more.A quick button-push cranked what sounds like a rather docile example of the 2.0-liter turbo used in the V-Dub Turbo Beetle. Lacking the quirky sound of the five-cylinder engine that appeared in the last-gen TTR-S and rooted in the Audi Sport Quattro S1 rally car from 1985, we are not quite sure what to think as we motor away.An interior with chairs that fit like gloves are first noticed followed by a rather tall tip-in from the start. Chalk it up to turbo-lag but once into third gear, everything is whirling along at a rather brisk clip.Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrapp, pffffft, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrapp, pffffft, goes the increasing revs of the four-cylinders as they compress faster and faster before the automated manual transmission urges the TTS into the next gear.Speaking of gears, Audi has given drivers the choice of setting and forgetting or paddling ones self via the steering wheel-mounted paddle shift levers. Either option, combined with the tenacious grip from the suspension and the Quattro-equipped drivetrain will channel thoughts of rounding the Mulsanne Curve at the Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans--in a go-kart.The Audi Drive Select control allowed for Comfort, Sport and Dynamic settings, which softened, firmed or varied the ride, as we desired. Still there were times we felt the magnetic ride control a bit too harsh, while negotiating less than ideal road surfaces and rolling over sleeping policemen in shopping center parking lots.By the numbers, the EPA says to expect 23 city/27 highway, 25 combined in fuel economy from this 3,230 pounder that achieves 0-60 mph in 4.6-seconds. Top speed is governed to 155 mph, compared to 0-60 mph in 5.3-seconds and a top speed of 130 mph from its lesser-equipped little brother.
Chart 1: UNC Faculty Average Salary (All Ranks) and U.S. Median Household Income



Sources: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and Federal Reserve Bank

Individual meritorious performance, including teaching, service, publications, and/or research productivity for faculty;

Documented high-impact contributions to the work unit and/or the University as a whole;

Retention of key or hard-to-recruit personnel;

Secondary criteria such as equity and labor markets.

UNC-Pembroke received $94,000 from the state and contributed an additional $450,000;

Western Carolina University added additional funding to raise all salaries $1,000;

UNC-Chapel Hill increased all faculty salaries by $1,000 in addition to the state-funded raises;

North Carolina State University allocated a 3 percent pool for merit-based increases;

UNC-Greensboro used its share of the $5 million to grant 182 increases averaged at $1,699 each.

UNC-Chapel Hill provided a 2 percent pool to all Deans and Vice Chancellors to distribute to faculty. So far, the university has awarded over 79 salary increases, totaling more than $2 million with an additional 50 rank promotions (presumably carrying a salary increase).

North Carolina State University allocated a 2 percent pool for merit-based increases.

UNC-Charlotte, which has undergone eight faculty raise processes since 2006, has directed $6 million in funds to raise all faculty salaries to at least the average of all doctoral granting institutions.

Appalachian State University faculty will receive an increase of between 1.66 and 2.56 percent based on the average amount needed to reach the 79th percentile for assistant and associate professors and the 50th percentile for full professors.

Nearly 90 percent of faculty members at East Carolina University will receive a merit-based increase averaging 2.4 percent.

Western Carolina University plans to increase all faculty pay up to 77.5 percent of market value, with a $25,000 base salary for all positions.

Chart 2. Average Faulty Salaries, All Ranks 2012-2015



Source: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System

Chart 3. Average Salary, Instructor Rank Faculty



Source: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System

Table 1. Total Faculty Hired, All Ranks 2012-2015

Source: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System

Some University of North Carolina system faculty members are outraged . They have been given only one across-the-board raise since 2011. They, and their supporters, claim that salaries have been stagnating for years, that this stagnation is a slap in the face , and that the system is subjecting faculty to barely livable wages . Raises given to top administrators especially stoked their ire.Yet they are leaving a great many facts out of their argument in order to strengthen their case. The absence of a state-mandated across-the-board salary increase does not mean that faculty members are not receiving increases. There are quite a few programs and procedures for raising UNC system faculty wages. One thing that may be angering the more strident faculty voices is that many of the means for raising salaries are merit-based rather than automatic.And it would appear that few full-time faculty are eating at the soup-kitchen when their wages are compared to salaries at their peer institutions across the country and to the prevailing wages in North Carolina. Furthermore, just looking at average faculty salaries for UNC's 16 public universities alone can be misleading, as these numbers don't show how retirement, promotion, and targeted increases affect wages.Indeed, as can be seen in Chart 1, the lack of wage increases is not a problem unique to UNC faculty and is not a sign of unfair treatment: in the post-recession economy, the median American household is struggling not to fall behind. Median household income for the entire United States has held constant or fallen since 2000. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, which measures such statistics for the Federal Reserve System, median household income reached a peak in 2000 at $57,843, and was only $53,657 at the start of 2014.And the great gain by faculty members in the years preceding the 2008 collapse, especially in relation to other wage-earners, should not be ignored.To get a more comprehensive understanding of what's happening with UNC faculty salaries, we must look at previous state-funded pools for salary increases, campus-funded annual raise processes, state allocations to the Faculty Recruitment and Retention Fund, and the wages of faculty at comparable schools across the country. For 2012-2013, the General Assembly approved a 1.2 percent across-the-board salary increase for all faculty and staff. Universities were also given permission to provide an additional 1.8 percent in merit-based and discretionary salary increases, which UNC-Chapel Hill and Appalachian State University did. A state-funded one-time $750 bonus, approved in September , will soon be distributed to both faculty and staff on campus.For the 2014-2015 school year, the General Assembly appropriated $5 million for merit-based increases for faculty. The money was allocated proportionately to all campuses but came with guidelines from the Board of Governors that across-the-board increases would not be accepted. The following criteria were given to campuses when appropriating annual raises:The board left specific processes and additional criteria to the individual campuses, granting a great deal of autonomy to the universities. These funds supported over 19,000 increases to faculty and senior administrators across the UNC system, averaging $3,478, according to Matthew Brody, the vice president of human resources in the UNC General Administration.In addition to the 2014-2015 state appropriations, many universities used campus-generated revenue to increase faculty salaries further:There have been multiple permanent merit-based increases in the 2015-2016 year as well:The system appears to be undergoing a transition from across-the-board wage increases to individual merit-based raises. In many ways, this is a welcome change. It grants universities flexibility to strategically invest in faculty members and departments that are emerging or vital to the mission of the university. Consider that, had the $5 million allocated to increases in 2013 been distributed to all faculty employees evenly, each member would have seen an increase of about 0.2 percent, a mere drop in the bucket. Instead, it was used in such a way to make some departments stronger.The North Carolina General Assembly created the Faculty Recruitment and Retention Fund (FRRF) in 2006 with the direction that universities could use the funds for "recruiting and retaining faculty members as necessary." The state allocations to this fund are separate and in addition to the money authorized for the annual raise process. To date, the fund has enabled the UNC system to pay for 238 recruitment awards and over 318 retention awards, totaling more than $17,293,649.Between 2012 and 2015, the FRRF saw a 76 percent increase for retention purposes (the Board of Governors has since restricted the fund to only retention requests). In 2014-2015, the average FRRF pay increase was $13,731. However, that amount understates the actual raises given to professors. For the past several years, the Board of Governors has asked the universities to provide matching support for such retention raises. When counting total increases, the average increase in salaries for newly granted FRRF awards in 2014-2015 was $20,050. The FRRF has apparently worked quite well, as indicated by its 92 percent overall success rate.Although UNC faculty salaries have remained relatively constant, they have stayed above the national average. Looking at the chart below, ten of UNC's 16 schools are above the national average for public, degree-granting, four-year universities. At a time when the supply of faculty labor far exceeds demand, it doesn't seem likely that salaries will, or should, rise significantly.Additionally, employees of the UNC system continue to stay ahead of the average North Carolina public sector employee, who averages $46,620 a year. For non-tenure-track "instructors," the system-wide average is $58,735, and the individual averages remain above the public employee average at all but Western Carolina University and UNC-Greensboro.One claim that faculty advocates often make is that universities are reducing costs by replacing well-paid tenure-track professors with non-tenured lecturers or adjunct teachers. Non-tenured faculty members generally have less job stability, smaller salaries, and are often passed over for merit-based increases. While there is some evidence of this as a national trend, in North Carolina the numbers do not support this pattern. From 2012 to 2015, there were a total of 1,829 faculty members hired. Of this total, 977, or 53 percent, were hired as tenure or tenure-track; this is far above the 34 percent national average. Additionally, less than 8 percent of new faculty members were given a less-than-one-year contract.Given all the raises previously mentioned in this article, it is not as if the legislature and Governors are ignoring faculty raises, as the issue is sometimes presented. Another move toward a more responsive pay system happened at the October 2015 meeting of the Board of Governors, when a system to streamline compensation decisions was proposed. The new process would raise the current 10 percent threshold that triggers a necessary pre-approval from the board itself. Under the new guidelines, the Board of Trustees and the Chancellor of the institution would have full control to raise faculty salary up to 20 percent in most cases and 30 percent for select actions, without pre-approval. This streamlined process would grant the universities greater autonomy in deciding faculty salary increases and FRRF allocations.While it's obvious that faculty member's think they're being treated unfairly, the fact is there are limited funds at the state and university level. Using this money for across-the-board increases would, at best, fail to make a meaningful impact and at worst, seriously threaten the system's ability to attract and retain talented academics. Merit-based increases are the most efficient system of compensation for the UNC system.Furthermore, there is nothing special about the academic professions that require pay raises when others aren't getting them. In the current economic climate, we should expect some understanding on their part-they are, after all, supposed to be reasoned scholars-that the entire country is going through the same trouble or worse.
Cox Automotive Canada with its Manheim Canada operations has partnered with XLane to provide a digital solution for dealers with InstantAuction. This dealer-to-dealer online multi-platform is designed to enhance the remarketing experience, making the process of buying and selling vehicles easier, quicker, and more transparent. The dealer has control of the entire remarketing process deciding when and where to create a live auction, anytime, anywhere, according to the company.

"We are delighted to have partnered with XLane to introduce InstantAuction, one of several tools which we are in the process of launching together," said Maria Soklis, President of Cox Automotive Canada. "The attributes of this platform align with Cox Automotive's mission to simplify the trusted exchange of vehicles and maximize value for our customers and, based on early results, InstantAuction is doing just that."

Manheim is a provider of vehicle remarketing services, connecting buyers and sellers of used vehicles to the wholesale and used vehicle marketplace. Manheim offers physical and digital auction channels, data analysis, financing and transportation, and mobile products and solutions.

XLane provides cloud-based mobile solutions for the automotive remarketing industry from its headquarters in Montreal, Quebec. InstantAuction allows users to have bidding activity and vehicle interest at their fingertips with full transparency where buyers and sellers can see who is viewing the listed vehicle and who is bidding. In addition, a buy now option is also included in the platform.

"This partnership provides Manheim with a fully transparent virtual auction solution to support their physical locations across Canada," said Tave Della Porta, CEO and founder XLane Holdings Inc. "Dealers are already excited about this tool because of its functionality and ease of use."

All transactions with InstantAuction are supported by Manheim's auction services across Canada and are open to all Manheim customer segments, including non-franchise dealers, commercial customers and fleet and lease companies, according to the company.

The InstantAuction app is available for iOS on the App Store or customers can visit the InstantAuction web site and sign in using their existing Manheim Canada credentials.
Photo: Nissan

Nissan has announced that the brand will produce a new crossover that will be sold globally, starting with Latin American markets, from 2016.

The new model was inspired by the Kicks Concept car presented at the 2014 Sao Paulo Motor Show, and it will retain the Kicks name for the production version, according to the automaker.

Following an investment of R$ 750 million (US$192 million), the Nissan Kicks will be produced at Nissan's Resende Industrial Complex in Rio de Janeiro State. The facility was inaugurated in 2014 and currently produces compact vehicles March and Versa. After the start of production, Nissan said it expects to hire 600 new employees and start a second shift in Resende facility.

The Nissan Kicks Concept debuted at the 2014 Sao Paulo Motor Show, followed by a showing at the 2015 Buenos Aires Motor Show. The Kicks prototype marked the evolution of the Extrem concept vehicle originally presented in Sao Paulo in 2012. Since then, Nissan said it has continued to explore Brazilian and Latin American cultures, styles and colors within the vehicle design and development process.

Led by Nissan's Global Design Center in Japan, the Kicks Concept was conceived through a collaboration between Nissan Design America (NDA) in San Diego and Nissan Design America - Rio (NDA-R), the company's local satellite design studio. The teams currently are engaged in the design and development of the production model, according to the automaker.

As well as its introduction in Latin American markets, Nissan said continues to study the business case for launching Kicks in other regions.
6 January 2016 00:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Sadigova

An activist of the opposition movement New Armenia, Gevorg Safaryan, was arrested on January 10 for two months and charged in using violence against a government representative.

Safarian was detained after clashes with police in Yerevan on New Year's Eve. In particular, several dozens of protesters were trying to place a Christmas tree at Freedom Square without coordination of the Yerevan Municipality, and the police did not allow them to do so.

After clashes five activists were taken to the police, but were freed later, except Safaryan.

His lawyer suggests that Safaryan first accused police in violence; however, his words were left unanswered.

He said that as a result of the aggressive actions of the police six activists were seriously injured, while two of them were hospitalized.

Activist Gagik Yeghiazaryan, who witnessed the incident, in turn, argues that the police without any ground tried to interfere with the peaceful rally.

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Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
5 January 2016 18:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Deteriorating relations between Middle Eastern rivals - Saudi Arabia and Iran - are likely to make oil prices further jump, which are down by two-thirds since mid-2014.

Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr sent crude prices sharply higher in early trading in Asia, Europe, and the United States on Monday, thus, showing geopolitics as the biggest price drivers in oil market.

Global oil benchmark Brent climbed over 2.5 percent and more than a dollar to a morning high of $38.50 per barrel on Monday, before easing back to $38.28 at 0136 GMT - still up $1. U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate futures were up 76 cents, or 2.05 percent, at $37.80 a barrel.

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran early on Sunday and Shiite Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted "divine vengeance" for the execution of al-Nimr. Responding to the storming of its embassy in Tehran, Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on January 3. The kingdom also rallied its Sunni allies to cut diplomatic ties with Tehran.

The Obama administration, which is keen on a closer relationship with Iran and enjoys a long-standing alliance with Saudi Arabia, has expressed hope that Tehran and Riyadh would retreat the hostile rhetoric that has fueled the worst crisis between them. China, the European Union and Russia also called on Tehran and Riyadh to take steps to settle their differences peacefully.

Iran has also expressed regrets for an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Tehran said it has arrested demonstrators responsible for the assault and has pledged to deter future attacks against all diplomatic facilities in Iran.

However, Iran's regret has not stabilized the worsening relations with Saudi Arabia as the petrol factor played a crucial role in worsening relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, OPECs two biggest powers.

It is obvious that Riyadh knew that its decision to execute al-Nimr would cause uproar in the region and would put additional strains on its already tense relations with Tehran.

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has taken advantage of Irans global isolation in recent years to increase its own role in the region and in global oil markets, while Iran, which has some of the biggest proven reserves, hopes to ramp up exports following an expected lifting of sanctions against it after reaching a deal over its nuclear weapons development program.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni neighbors worry that the deal, by freeing Iran to export more oil and earn more money, will allow a rejuvenated Iran to expand its regional influence at their expense.

Oil is just a part of the broader rivalry between the two countries, both of which rely heavily on income from exporting oil, and both of which have suffered as crude prices plunged over the last year and a half. Crude prices have fallen from about $110 a barrel in the summer of 2014 to the mid-$30s a barrel today. Annually, that costs Iran about $25 billion in foregone revenues and costs Saudi Arabia almost $200 billion.

But Saudi Arabia has been able to withstand the price decline better. As the biggest oil producer and dominant voice inside OPEC, Riyadh has ignored calls from other OPEC members, including Iran, to throttle back its oil production to prop up falling prices.

Some analysts claim that if the escalations between Iran and Saudi Arabia increases further, it could increase potential threat of failure of supply of Iran's strategically important raw materials to the world market via the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-third of the world's maritime oil supplies are delivered to the consumers. The northern coast of the strait belongs to Iran, while the southern - to the United Arab Emirates, which has already recalled its ambassador from Tehran as a result of the recent conflict.

In this regard, Iran will likely seek for new alternative routes. Iran could potentially start transporting oil through Azerbaijan as the country enjoys an extensive network of pipelines, as well as a good relationship with its southern neighbor.

Technically, Iran can deliver its oil to Baku on the Caspian Sea and/or via the railway transport for subsequent export via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and further via the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. However, the economy of such deliveries should be seriously studied, especially against the background of low world oil prices.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
5 January 2016 10:55 (UTC+04:00)

Spokesperson for Azerbaijan`s Foreign Ministry Hikmat Hajiyev stated that a list of the diplomatic missions to be allegedly closed, which was spread by the Internet media and some blogs, is beyond objectivity and unfounded.

"The spread of such unverified information may spoil the diplomatic relations with other countries that Azerbaijan has been building for years, he said.

Earlier, Hajiyev said the government considers closure of embassies in several countries against the background of the trends observed on the global energy market. Currently there are nearly 70 Azerbaijani diplomatic missions abroad.

He said the final decision on the issue had not yet been made. "Making decisions on this kind of issues requires serious and thorough consideration, including the mutuality in diplomatic relations and political approaches. This issue is now being seriously considered by the government."

Hajiyev said the matter is not directly about the closure of embassies. What is being considered is how to adjust the activities of the diplomatic missions in accordance with the reality and make some cuts in the number of personnel with the aim of cutting down on expenses and rationalizing the work.

As far as the honorary consulates are concerned, it is ridiculous. Everybody, who is aware of foreign policy and diplomacy, knows that honorary consulates pay their expenses themselves, and no government funding is allocated for their maintenance," Hajiyev added.

Earlier, MP Samad Seyidov urged the diplomats and the diplomatic corps of Azerbaijan in foreign countries to shift to economy regime.

While discussing amendments to the law "On diplomatic service" at the parliament on December 29, Seyidov noted that the diplomats like others should be more economical due to the current crisis.

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Tom Campbell

In recollecting 2015, I remember legendary CBS Newsman Walter Cronkite, who closed each evening's newscast by saying, "And that's the way it is..,".Two weeks into the year the UNC Board of Governors shocked us, and many of their own board, by ineptly firing President Tom Ross. Dissension within the 32-member board resulted in controversy and a mutiny against chair John Fennebresque immediately after naming new president Margaret Spellings, who takes the reigns amidst distrust and unrest.The academic scandal at UNC Chapel Hill continues, with no ending in sight.The legislature convened January 28th, naming Tim Moore the new House Speaker, perhaps the most harmonious day of a session that didn't adjourn until September 30th. The animus between the House, Senate and Governor was palpable at times. Their most notable action didn't receive much press, the further cut of personal and corporate income tax rates and the intentional shift of our tax policy from a system dependent on income taxes to sales taxes. Legislators stockpiled almost one billion in savings and reserves. Grudgingly, the Assembly restored some of the historic preservation and film tax credits they had cut and gave economic developers more incentive dollars to lure industry into our state.Wanting North Carolina to be a player in the presidential beauty pageant and, in an attempt to save the costs of multiple primaries, lawmakers chose March 15th of 2016 for all primary elections. This frantic and abbreviated filing season that began December 1 and just ended this week was essentially an incumbent re-election plan, since challengers had little time to put together campaigns and raise money.More than 20 veteran legislators chose not to run for re-election. Almost one-third will run unopposed, demonstrating our broken system for redistricting that takes choices away from voters.Governor McCrory strong-armed lawmakers into putting a public infrastructure bond campaign on the ballot in March, even as legislators refused to include a transportation bond referendum. Supporters are struggling to get organized, raise money and stage an effective education message by the Ides of March.A compromise Medicaid Reform bill passed but the final result satisfied few. DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos resigned; as usual the department received incoming salvos (some deserved) from most all directions.The courts once again demonstrated an increased voice in public policy and we end the year awaiting verdicts on Voter ID, separation of powers and other substantive cases. We saw ethics charges over prison contracts, employment contracts and improper expenditures by elected officials.The State's economy continued its slow recovery. We had a strange weather year, the result of El Nino, but were blessed to avoid hurricanes.In education, test scores, textbooks, vouchers and teacher pay were widely discussed, even as starting teacher pay was increased. The commission formed to revamp Common Core punted on trying to recommend changes on math curriculum. Individual student and school grades were disappointing; those scoring the worst had the highest concentration of low-income students. We witnessed more of the intent to move children from public to charter or private schools.2015 was a year of disagreement, disillusionment and distrust. We were not a happy people and come to year's end wanting peace and rest. To paraphrase Walter Conkite, that's the way it is in 2015.
5 January 2016 14:12 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Rajabova

Russia, being one of the three co-chairing countries of the OSCE Minsk Group created to mediate for solving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has voiced concern over the aggravation of situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

"In recent months we have witnessed the intensification of the armed conflict with the use of heavy artillery, heavy machine guns, multiple rocket launchers, which resulted in an increase in the number of casualties, including among the civilian population. This situation cannot but worry us, Interfax quoted Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as saying.

Moscow has recently activated efforts to contribute to the settlement of the long-standing conflict, however, no noticeable progress was observed in the negotiation process.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far. Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.

Intensifying tension on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces highlights the need for undertaking real actions for destabilizing situation in the region.

Karasin believes that the parties to the conflict should redouble their efforts to achieve sustainable peace.

This firm position of the international mediators clearly expressed in the statement of Russia, U.S. and France during the meeting of the OSCE foreign ministers held last December, said Karasin.

He added that the parties must also comply with existing agreements, aimed at observing the ceasefire.

The ceasefire regime is being violated along the Armenia - Azerbaijan border on a daily basis. Azerbaijans positions come under intensive fire of the Armenian armed forces.

Regular violations of the ceasefire, armed attacks on civilians, show that Armenia is not interested in resolving the conflict through peaceful means. Baku believes Armenias true aim is to continue the occupation of Azerbaijani lands and maintain the status quo by all means.

Karasin also touched upon the meeting of the of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents held in December 19. We hope that the discussion will have a stabilizing effect on the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact, he said.

Russia, as one of three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group makes active efforts to help the parties to the conflict to reach a compromise, Karasin said.

Moscow has recently made certain suggestions for the peaceful resolution of the problem. Currently, the new proposals put forward by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on solving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict are under consideration.

Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said these proposals reflect the agreements reached during the meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in Sochi, Newport and Paris and have been worked out based on the renewed Madrid principles.

The sides to the conflict currently hold talks based on the renewed Madrid principles, which envisage return of occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, ensure the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence, future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh and etc.

However, the peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group have been largely fruitless so far.

--

Sara Rajabova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova



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5 January 2016 17:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Sadigova

Twelve people arrested after the events in Nardaran settlement of Baku have been released on January 5, Nardaran resident Natig Karimov told Trend.

Karimov said that the period of the administrative detention has expired. Atamali Nur, who calls himself an akhoond (cleric who leads prayers) of the Juma mosque in Nardaran, is also among the released.

The criminal group, so-called "Muslim unity" movement, openly began to engage in activities against the constitutional order of the country in Nardaran village, as well as in Ganja and Lankaran. The aim of the movement was to seize power by unconstitutional means under the guise of religion and the establishment of a political system controlled by the Shari'a.

Five members of a criminal group that were operating under the guise of religion were killed during a police operation in Nardaran in late November. Two police officers were murdered in the standoff. Fourteen members of the criminal group were arrested along with the groups ringleader, Taleh Baghirov.

All the detainees were arrested for four months as Azerbaijani Prosecutor Generals Office has initiated criminal cases.

In total, 57 people were administratively arrested in connection with the Nardaran events have been recently released.

Now, life is returning back to its normal routine there. The government forces are now keeping the situation under control.

To maintain safety measures in the village the law enforcement bodies have installed surveillance cameras at the streets, squares and public buildings in the area. Also, a police station was opened there to keep an eye on compliance with the order

Azerigas is now involved in installing new gas meters in the village with about 2,000 subscribers. So far, 300 apartments have been supplied with new gas meters. Residents reported that the government repaired roads and streets.

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5 January 2016 19:03 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Orujova

The government of Azerbaijan is now working to adjust the medicine prices to the current economic situation and prevent the sale of illegal drugs.

After depreciation of the national currency in late December, the prices for imported products started to rise. The most part of the medicines on sale in Azerbaijan is produced in Europe, the CIS countries, with a little amount of medicines from Asian countries. Given this, the Tariff Council has revised prices of 3,540 items of medicines with the new exchange rate of the manat.

The government began to pay a special attention to sale of medicines in its pharmacies by starting regulation of the prices from September 2015. The country permits the sale of only registered medicines, the number of which reaches about 4,500 brands of more than 20,000 types of medicine.

Despite the second devaluation of the manat, the prices of 21 percent of medicines regulated by the state fell by more than half compared with their current value, prices of nine percent of medicines decreased thrice.

In general, the price of over 60 percent of different types of medicines decreased, while prices of 40 percent of drugs rose by 30 percent taking into account the exchange rate.

Along with controlling the price for medicines, the country also concerned with the quality of the drugs.

The Health Ministry has recently banned 844 kinds of medicines, the majority of which were produced in Russian and Turkey.

The Center for Analytic Examination of Medicines of the Ministry has identified about 850 kinds of series of medicines on sale without a special permit.

The ban applies only to a specific series of medicines from the list, which means that population will not face the shortage of these medicines.

Moreover, Azerbaijan, that imports all medicines from abroad, plans to develop this sector in the country, by networking with reputable foreign pharmaceutical companies and establishing of the respective companies.

Earlier, Russia and Iran have already offered to produce medicines in Azerbaijan.

__

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5 January 2016 19:18 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Rajabova

The OSCE Minsk Group, an international framework established to settle the long-standing Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has voiced determination to continue work on a new meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents.

Though the Bern meeting of the two presidents last December hasnt yielded the desirable results, some officials believe that holding of such a meeting was itself a positive sign for the resolution of the conflict, a source of major instability in the South Caucasus region.

James Warlick, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group is sure that after more than a year without a meeting, it was important for the presidents to talk face-to-face and clarify their positions in Bern.

The meeting between Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia took place on December 19 under the auspices of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Warlick told Trend that although the sides didnt achieve any breakthrough in Bern, the co-chairs will aim to bring the presidents together again in 2016.

He added that the sides discussed a range of issues, including violence along the contact line and Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and proposals regarding a settlement of the conflict.

Though the Bern meeting was expected to hush the intensive ceasefire breaches on the contact line, the situation indeed has worsened even more. Azerbaijans positions come under intensive fire of the Armenian armed forces on a daily basis.

Warlick said the co-chairs will continue their work with the foreign ministers on proposals regarding a settlement, measures to reduce the risk of violence, and programs to promote dialogue between the communities of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The world community, as well as OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, who were tasked to mediate for the peaceful resolution of the conflict, has repeatedly called for establishing a dialogue between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh to accelerate the negotiations.

However, efforts in this direction havent yielded results as the Armenian side with all possible means tries to prevent such a dialogue supporting the current status quo that is unacceptable.

Warlick went on to add that the position of the OSCE MG regarding the conflict hasnt changed.

He called on the sides to approach the upcoming summit constructively and use the opportunity to make progress towards a settlement.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

The peace talks have been largely fruitless so far despite the efforts of the co-chair countries over 20 years.

The sides to the conflict currently hold talks based on the renewed Madrid principles, which envisage return of occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, ensure the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence, future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh and etc.

--

Sara Rajabova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova



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4 January 2016 16:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Amid a decreasing oil prices and divergent monetary policies globally, the national economies are forced to develop new economic scenarios.

To minimize the impact of the ongoing economic crisis to the nation, not only oil producing, but also oil-free economies are keen on diversifying the economy and reducing their dependence on petrodollars.

In this regard, the Azerbaijani government sees the transport sector as a central direction in a bid to diversify the national economy. Azerbaijan, with its advantageous geographical position at a crossroads between East and West, enjoys good conditions to develop transport sector.

First of all, the South Caucasus nation has established good partner relations with regional countries - Iran, Russia and Turkey. Secondly, Azerbaijan has developed transport infrastructure, which paves the way for the country to become a regional transport hub.

Thirdly, Azerbaijan has traditionally paid significant attention to the development of railway transport and the implementation of major projects of international importance.

In this regard, development of the western segment of the North-South transport corridor is of significant importance. The North-South railway, which is a part of the North-South corridor, railway is expected to serve as a bridge to connect the railways of Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia as well.

The North-South corridor, originating in India and stretching to Helsinki, is one of the most important routes for the region. It is a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russian St. Petersburg to the Mumbai (Bombay) port. It is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and further - to Northern and Western Europe.

The importance and capabilities of the North-South corridor is believed to be significant. Forecasts show that the capacity of this corridor is estimated at more than 20 million tons per year. The North-South route suggests three routes - the trans-Caspian (in fact, the sea route between Russia and Iran with an access to the railway), the eastern (a railway link to the east of the Caspian Sea) and the western (via Azerbaijan).

The year of 2015 was a quite productive year in terms of promotion of the North-South project. Meetings, negotiations and intensive discussions held last year once again show the willingness of the sides to develop the railway transport.

Also, Baku will host a meeting of the authorities of Iranian railway, Iran's ports and representatives of shipping companies engaged in transportation operations in the Caspian Sea as part of the North-South project on January 12.

Azerbaijans transit role is increasing by the day in view of the expected lifting of international sanctions from the Islamic Republic. Also, it is expected that the complete removal of international sanctions against Iran after the final settlement of issues related to Tehran's nuclear energy program will unveil new opportunities for economic development for countries in the region.

Earlier, Javid Gurbanov, the Head of the Azerbaijani Railways, told local media that in 2016, Azerbaijan and Iran will be engaged in the construction of the railway bridge over the Astara River on the border between the two countries.

"We continue negotiations with our Iranian partners, and the next meeting will be held on January 12. The purpose of the meeting is to provide the transportation of Iranian goods to Russia, Europe (Helsinki and via the Georgian ports - in the Black Sea) and to renew our work in this direction," said Gurbanov.

Azerbaijan does not have a railway link with Iran. Currently, the vast majority of cargo traffic between the two countries is implemented by road transport, which greatly limits the possibilities of development of trade and economic relations between them and their transit potential.

In this regard, Azerbaijan and Iran are working over the project of joining their railway systems with an aim to develop the North-South corridor. It will be possible after the Iranian side completes construction of the Gazvin-Rasht-Astara (Iran) rail, with a total length of over 350 kilometers. Work in the Iranian territory is expected to be completed in 2016.

Azerbaijan also takes decisive steps in this regard. In particular, it is planned to complete the first stage of construction works in 2016, which envisages laying 8-kilometer railway from the Azerbaijani Astara to the Iranian border, where a bridge across the river of Astara will be built. Along with this, a terminal and a broad road will be built in the territory of Iran, which will simplify the transportation of goods arriving from Iran via the Azerbaijani territory.

Gurbanov believes that by expanding cooperation with Azerbaijan, Iran intends to import grain from Ukraine through Georgia and Azerbaijan, sending oil products in return. The Iranian side has already shouldered the construction of the missing two-kilometer section of the railway to the port of Amirabad on the Caspian Sea.

"We, together with the Iranian and Georgian sides, agreed to coordinate efforts for the construction of railway tracks of two standards (1,520 and 1,435 millimeters), which will allow us to carry cargo from the port of Amirabad to Baku international port not only via the sea but also by railway," he noted, adding that Ukraine is extremely interested in the development of cargo traffic with Iran.

Iran does not harvest grain, but purchases it from Kazakhstan and Ukraine. In the first stage, Iran intends to purchase 2-3 million tons of grain a year from Ukrainian ports of Odessa and Ilyichevsk, delivering it through Georgia and Azerbaijan via the North-South corridor and on the Caspian Sea. In return, Tehran plans to supply fuel oil, bitumen and other petroleum products.

Thus, the establishment of railway communication between Azerbaijan and Iran and the development of the North-South transport corridor will open significant prospects for the development of cargo and passenger traffic between Europe and Asia.

Azerbaijan, in turn, will be able to increase its transit potential: it will bring great benefits not only to the country, but also to the region as a whole. The corridor will make greater contribution to the diversification of Azerbaijan's economy and make the country even more efficient and more resistant to any potentially possible global crisis.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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5 January 2016 17:51 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Moscows Tretyakov Gallery will for the first time feature the paintings by the famous Azerbaijani artist, Tahir Salahov.



The opening of the exhibition dedicated to the 160th anniversary of the Gallery is scheduled for January 22 and will last until March 20.

The event will put on display the artists works from the funds of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Museum, National Art Museum of Azerbaijan named after Rustam Mustafayev, Azerbaijan National Art Gallery, Tahir Salahovs house-museum and private collections.

The exhibition will show how the masters bright and expressive style has been changed for almost 60 years of his creativity. Salahov's early works showed the life and work of the Baku oil workers and portraits of famous composers, using contrasting red, black, light and dark-grey shades. Later, his paintings became more peaceful and lyrically contemplative, lines became smoother and more melodious, and the palette more sophisticated.

Born in Baku and living in Moscow artist Tahir Salahov is one of the most prominent representatives of the Azerbaijani art. He also has a studio at the Moscow Art Institute.

Salahov is the world-renowned artist, who sensitively catches the rhythms of life and able to listen and hear the time. He is the master of portraits, landscape pictures, still-life paintings and large many-figured paintings.

The artist is the vice-president and honorary president of the International Association of Plastic Arts of UNESCO, the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, People's Artist of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Russia, and is the winner of a number of high awards, including the State Prize of the USSR and Azerbaijan.

The artist became one of the leading representatives of the so-called "severe style", a trend in Soviet art of the 1960s that aimed to set off a hard, publicist, and realist view against the ceremonial "polished reality" of the Joseph Stalin era.

Portraits occupy a special place in Tahir's creative activity. He has painted the portraits of Azerbaijan's foremost composers - Gara Garayev and Fikrat Amirov along with Azerbaijani poet Rasul Rza and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, to name a few. Each portrait reflects Tahir's efforts to draw out the inner worlds of his subjects.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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5 January 2016 10:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Gulgiz Dadashova

Energy-rich Azerbaijan, aiming to bring the Caspian gas to Europe, has increased commercial gas production level in 2015.

Vice-President of Azerbaijans energy giant SOCAR Rahman Gurbanov made the remark while talking to Natural Gas Europe.

Gurbanov said that for first time, the countrys commercial gas production hit 18.9 billion cubic meters in 2015, some 0.2 bcm more than in 2014. He added that commercial gas production was raised from both Shah Deniz and Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields associated gas. All of these fields are operated by BP.

Almost all of Azerbaijan's natural gas is produced in two offshore fieldsthe Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli complex and Shah Deniz. The Shah Deniz natural gas and condensate field started producing in late 2006, making Azerbaijan a net gas exporter.

The country produced 9.9 bcm of commercial gas from Shah Deniz Stage 1 in 2015. However, the total gas production in Azerbaijan (including flared and re-injected gas to oil wells) reached 29.4 bcm in 2015, some 0.2 bcm less than 2014.

SOCAR produced 7.223 bcm of commercial gas in 2014 and 2.776 bcm of associated gas, produced from the ACG was delivered to SOCAR as well.

The countrys total gas consumption during 2014 was 11.654 bcm, while about 943 mcm of gas was lost, mostly in cross-country gas network due to aging pipelines and equipments.

Earlier, Tamam Bayatli, spokesman for BP Azerbaijan reported that the production level from Shah Deniz Stage 1 (SD1) is expected to increase in 2015 despite suspending operations for three weeks in August.

She said that currently some 29 mcm/d of gas is produced from SD1.

During 11 months of 2015 Azerbaijan exported 6 bcm of SD1's gas, about 1.6 percent more that the same period in 2014. Total gas export from this field in 2014 was 6.5 bcm.

"The current figures indicate that SD1's output level to surpass 2014," she said. SD1 output last year reached 9.8 bcm.

Azerbaijan's proven natural gas reserves were roughly 35 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) as of January 2014, according to OGJ. The vast majority of these reserves are associated with the Shah Deniz field. Discoveries of the Absheron and Umid formations between 2010-11 added a further 15 Tcf of resources estimated in place.

Most of Azerbaijan's natural gas is destined for Turkey, but the country supplies a small volume to Greece via the Turkey-Greece interconnector. Under a previous arrangement, Turkey was re-exporting Azerbaijani natural gas to Greece, but a new agreement allows Azerbaijan to directly export volumes to Europe. The Shah Deniz Stage 2 will result in increased exports to Europe once the needed infrastructure is completed.

The Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) will transport the Shah Deniz natural gas through Turkey. This pipeline will run from the Georgia-Turkey border to the Turkey-Greece border. The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) will link to TANAP and transport Azerbaijan's natural gas exports through Greece and Albania to Italy.

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5 January 2016 13:16 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Bulgaria has voiced intention to become main gas transit country for South Eastern and Central Europe.

The country's Prime Minister, Boyko Borissov, said in an interview to Deutsche Welle that this could be possible by constructing Balkan gas hub near the Varna coastal - Bulgarian Black Sea Coast.

It is expected that the gas for this project will be supplied from Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, as well as from Romanian and Bulgarian fields.

Borissov noted that the project and its financial plan are being developed by the Bulgarian government jointly with the European Commission.

In December, 2015, Bulgaria and the European Commission agreed to establish a joint working group to support the development of a gas hub in Bulgaria designed to serve the whole Balkan region.

It will focus on creating a "stable regulatory framework and business environment to facilitate the connection between Bulgaria and the rest of southeast Europe," the Bulgarian cabinet said in a statement.

Currently, Turkey and Bulgaria plan to construct a connecting pipeline for importing Azerbaijani gas to Bulgaria.

Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece have decided in 2015 to construct an interconnector that alongside with the Balkan gas hub will facilitate diversification and transportation of natural gas in any direction.

The diversification of natural gas resources and the routes delivering natural gas to Bulgaria is vital for the country. In this regard, Azerbaijan could become an important partner for Bulgaria. The country continues to put in all efforts to aid in the construction of the Greece-Bulgaria Interconnector for the supply of Azerbaijani gas.

The IGB is a gas pipeline that will allow Bulgaria to receive Azerbaijani gas, mostly from the second stage of development of Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field. The IGB will connect to the Trans-Adriatic pipeline, providing a steady flow of natural gas from Shah Deniz in the Caspian to European markets.

In January 2014, TAP and the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria Company  which is in charge of the development, financing, and construction of the IGB  signed a memorandum of understanding and cooperation.

The MoU will allow cooperation between the two companies that will work together on finding a possible connection point in the vicinity of Komotini, Greece. This will enable new gas supplies to flow into the Bulgarian gas network and further into South Eastern Europe.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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5 January 2016 18:27 (UTC+04:00)

By Gulgiz Dadashova

For Iran, the gas market of the neighboring countries, especially Georgia can be a good start to gain relief from sanctions that have crippling effect on its energy-dependent economy and further supply gas in the direction of West.

The Islamic Republic announced on January 4 that it plans to export its natural gas to Georgia through a pipeline, potentially viewing Armenia as a transit country.

Alireza Kameli, the managing director of the National Iranian Gas Export Company said Tehran will supply 8.5-14 million cubic meters of gas a day to Georgia, adding that a contract will not be signed unless the project becomes economically justified.

So far, Azerbaijan has been the main supplier of gas to Georgia. The energy-rich Azerbaijan exports its excess hydrocarbons (oil and gas) through Georgia, while helping the country solve its need for them. Armenia, which is in economic blockade due to its aggressive policy against Azerbaijan, receives gas from Iran and Russia. The Russian gas is being delivered to Georgia only as a payment in exchange for gas transit to Armenia, for which Georgia gets 10 percent of the total deliveries.

Energy security has always been among the top priorities of any nation and Georgia is not alone in its desire to enhance its energy security. Recently, the country started talks with Russias Gazprom over increasing gas supplies up to 200-300 million cubic meters.

However, Tbilisi has repeatedly announced that it is considering all options in economic matters, but while making decisions it tends not to harm relations with strategic partners  Azerbaijan being one of them.

As for Tehrans plans, the country does not seem much interested in the financial side of the case. It probably just needs to enter the Georgian market, perhaps with a long run aim to supply its gas further.

However, Kameli refuted Tehrans plans to export gas to Europe through pipelines, saying that Iran thinks of exporting LNG to Europe. Kameli stressed that the planned gas exports to Georgia were intended for domestic use and not for Europe.

Nevertheless, the question is can Iran really enter the Georgian energy market and challenge Azerbaijan energy dominance?

SOCAR Energy Georgia announced that Iran's gas will not be a serious threat to Azerbaijan's supplies.

We have an agreement with the Georgian government till 2025, under which SOCAR Energy Georgia will supply all social sectors with natural gas. If we can not supply anytime due to any reasons, Georgian side has opportunity to import gas from other sources, SOCAR Energy Georgia Director General Mahir Mammadov told APA-Economics.

Demand of Georgian market for natural gas increased 8-9% every year, he said adding that SOCAR Energy Georgia meets demand of other consumers in Georgia. Moreover, we offer reasonable price, Mammadov added.

He says the natural gas to be transported by Iran to Georgia through Armenia will not create a competition: Georgian market is too small to create a competition. There are not mechanisms of gas transportation from Iranian side to Georgia. Negotiations are underway. If the price will be lower than Azerbaijans, that will lead to a competition. However, Georgian market is too small and our agreement allows us to operate conveniently.

Azerbaijan ensures supply of more than 80 percent of the gas consumed by Georgia. To date, the gas supply level of Georgia is 65-67 percent for real customers and 73-74 percent for prospective customers. SOCAR Gas Georgias operating activities cover 90 percent of Georgias territory, albeit it is only 45-48 percent on the customer base.

The Georgian Energy Ministry said that no agreement exists with Iran on natural gas transportation to Georgia for the present.

Iran is the largest gas producer of the world and holds talks with all potential customers in the region. The aim is to supply Georgia with stable gas for long-term perspective, the statement says.

Meanwhile, expert Levan Kalandadze believes that Georgia technically will not be able to import gas from Iran. And if in the future rehabilitation of the pipeline will be realized, Iran will be included in short list of countries that supply gas to Georgia," Kalandadze told local media

Considering the issue, Iran's aging infrastructure and lack of capital investments cannot be ignored. The country lacks modern equipment, facilities and investments; also it will take time to increase Iranian gas output even if the sanctions are lifted any time soon.

Iran's enriched and sweet gas production capacity stands at about 700 mcm/d and 550 mcm/d, but actual production level is lower than the mentioned figures. Irans average daily gas consumption in the current fiscal year (starting March 21) surpassed 456 million cubic meters, whereas the number was 431 million cubic meters for the last fiscal year.

BP statistical review of 2014 shows that in 2013 Iran exported gas almost solely to Turkey, with 8.7 billion cubic metres, with 0.7 billion cu m going to former Soviet republics. Iran has even been importing gas from Turkmenistan for more than a decade (4.7 billion cu m in 2013), which actually makes it possible for Tehran to export gas to Turkey because Iran consumes about 97 percent of its own gas.

Thus, Iran faces major obstacles to it becoming a large gas exporter to Georgia and the European market in the foreseeable future, while the Azerbaijan enjoys great economic advantage over its northern and southern neighbors and that makes its market share safe for today.

--

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5 January 2016 10:24 (UTC+04:00)

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the Dutch-British company Shell have agreed on the terms of paying off the giants outstanding debt of $2.3 billion to Iran, an Iranian oil official said.

Director of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Company, Mohsen Qamsari, has said that Iran will resume exporting oil to Shell in case the company pays back all of its outstanding debt after the removal of international sanctions against Tehran, Mehr news agency reported Jan. 4.

Earlier Iranian Deputy Minister of Economy Mohammad Khazaei said that the UKs Exchequer had agreed to settle Shells debt to Iran as soon as the sanctions are lifted.

He noted that Irans entire debt to international monetary institutes is less than the amount that Shell owes to the country.

The Iranian crude oil has turned into one of the cheapest available as it experienced the greatest decline among all oils in market in the past week to hit about $28 per barrel.

By holding 157 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves, Iran possesses the world's fourth largest oil reserves.

Irans current oil production is estimated to be around 2.8 million barrels per day of which about one million barrels are exported.

Iran expects international sanctions imposed by the West over its nuclear program to be lifted in early 2016.

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Stalwart Establishment Republican Nelson Rockefeller

What IS a Republican? Is it merely someone who marks an 'R' on their voter registration card? Is it someone who seeks to protect the common people from the excesses of government bureaucracy?THAT is a question that has been debated ferociously for decades on end. In 1856 and 1860, at its formation, the GOP offered itself to the voters as a party of property rights, individual freedom, and states' rights (except for secession).In the 1930s and 40s, Republicans led by senator Robert Taft (R-OH) knocked heads with those led by NY Gov. Thomas Dewey (R) over charting the ideological course of the GOP. Taft was the leading opponent of FDR's New Deal in Washington and was a key player in efforts to limit the power of labor unions in the wake of FDR's death. Dewey and his group supported a lot of The New Deal, the formation of the United Nations, and all kinds of military interventions in the early days of The Cold War.In the 50s and 60s, you had Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater - both from out west - battling the GOP forces of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. In the 1964 presidential race, things came to a head between Rockefeller and Goldwater in the GOP primary. Goldwater edged out Rockefeller in a vicious primary fight. In the end, instead of showing that "party unity" that regularly is demanded of conservatives, the GOP forces supporting Rockefeller started forming "Republicans for Johnson" groups and endorsing the reelection of the appointed Democrat incumbent.In the 1960s and 70s, you had former actor and California governor Ronald Reagan slugging it out with establishment types like Gerald Ford and Bob Dole and Richard Nixon. Reagan lost a primary fight in 1968. Nixon slipped into office in 1968 campaigning as a conservative, but took a good hard left turn once sworn in. In 1972, Nixon was saved by the rise of the hippies and George McGovern. In 1974, thanks to VP Spiro Agnew's corruption and subsequent resignation, and a little thing called Watergate, moderate Michigan congressman Gerald Ford found himself to be the first appointed VP and president in American history.Down South, the 1964 Goldwater-Johnson race was having an impact. South Carolina's Strom Thurmond switched to the GOP. In 1972, a North Carolina TV commentator named Jesse Helms registered Republican and became the state's first GOP senator since Reconstruction. That same year, a little-known state legislator named Jim Holshouser - offered up as a sacrificial lamb in a then-diehard Democrat state - slipped into the governor's mansion thanks to Nixon's overwhelming victory against McGovern and a vicious Democrat Party gubernatorial primary.The Holshouser and Helms forces slugged it out on the state level in a micro- version of the events going on nationally with the Republicans. In 1976, Holshouser supported Gerald Ford's reelection. The Helms forces backed Ronald Reagan's primary challenge to Ford that year - even helping to deliver North Carolina to Reagan in that year's GOP primary. (The Helms team also succeeded in achieving a rarity -denying a sitting governor (Holshouser) a role at the national party convention.)In 1980, the old GOP vs. New Right clash heated up again. Ronald Reagan was the GOP frontrunner, with establishment types lining up behind George H.W. Bush and liberal Republican congressman John Anderson of Illinois. Reagan got the party nod, and took on Bush as his running mate in a gesture of party unity. Anderson decided to make an - in the end - inconsequential third party run in the general election.The meaning of "Republican" has been shaped and molded in different directions over the years. However, the party is in danger of making a mistake that kills many a product on store shelves - a lack of differentiation from the competition. THAT is what killed off the Whig Party. Prior to the formation of the GOP, the two main national parties were the Democrats and The Whigs. The ideological lines were so muddled that there were very few differences between the two - except for slavery. Democrats were generally supportive, while Whigs were split on the issue. That split caused the Whigs to suffer at the ballot box. Pro-slavery Whigs left to form something called The American Party, while anti-slavery Whigs formed the Republican Party.The main point here? Parties - like products on the store shelf - succeed when they offer a clear, concise, positive difference to their target audiences. In North Carolina US Senate races, from 1972 through 1996, Jesse Helms won in overwhelmingly Democratic North Carolina by offering up a stark ideological difference between himself and his opponents. People were - and still are - looking for more than the R and the D. John East won in 1980 by painting a stark contrast with his opponent. In 1986, Jim Broyhill lost a Senate race by thumbing his nose at conservatives and offering little toward making those Eastern Democrats cast their ballot for the R. In 1992, while George H.W. Bush was going down in flames, Democrat-turned-Republican offered the national GOP a rare win by painting himself as starkly more conservative than Terry Sanford.In 2002, Elizabeth Dole campaigned as starkly more conservative than Erskine Bowles. In 2004, so did Richard Burr. In 2008, there was very little differentiation and Kay Hagan sent Dole back to her condo in The Watergate. In 2014, Thom Tillis succeeded by championing a lot of conservative successes he fought to water down and kill while he was speaker of the state House.Nationally, the GOP has lost two straight presidential races against Obama by offering up candidates who did not offer that much of a difference. We've got three great choices in Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson - three outsiders adequately preaching the anti-government gospel. Of course, we have folks like Bob Dole and Bill Kristol pouting about staying home and not voting if any of those three get the party nod. Isn't it funny how we're bad when WE talk like that, but it's apparently A-OK for them?I've recently had some NCGOP celebs scold me for tossing the RINO term around. "I don't know how a newcomer can dare to describe someone who built the Republican Party in this state as a RINO." - sniffed one.Until the early 1990s, the GOP was pretty much quarantined to small pockets around Greensboro, Charlotte, and Asheville. It was quite the exclusive club. The party grew - and started seeing a lot of its success - by convincing those conservatives who had been with the Democrat Party for decades and generations that their party had left them in the dust. For some people, the R is all that matters. But history confirms that a message of limited government and low taxes reaps the biggest and longest-lasting rewards for us all.It's more than R vs D. It's statism vs. freedom. And it's your choice.
5 January 2016 11:37 (UTC+04:00)

The United States does not plan to mediate in the latest diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Riyadhs execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other Shiite Muslims, US Department of State spokesperson John Kirby said during a press briefing on January 4.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia announced it executed 47 people convicted on charges of terrorism. The Saudi state news agency said most of the individuals were members of al-Qaeda.

The executed included a prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. His execution prompted attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Saudi consulate in Mashhad.

Human Rights Watch condemned Saudi mass executions calling it a shameful start to 2016.

On Saturday, demonstrators in Iran protesting al-Nimrs execution attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran, as well as the Saudi consulate in Mashhad. Following the incident, Saudi Arabia announced it cut diplomatic ties and air transportation links with Iran.

"If you're asking if we're trying to become a mediator of this the answer is no," Kirby stated.

Kirby noted that the United States would like to see "tensions decreased" and "engagement continue," but that those would be issues that "these countries have got to work out for themselves."

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5 January 2016 11:42 (UTC+04:00)

Managing-Director of Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) Mohammad Saeedi said the company is seeking to open bureaus across Europe, IRNA reported.

Once the arbitrary sanctions on Iran are lifted, Iranian-flagged ships can travel between Iranian and European ports, Saeedi said speaking to reporters after a meeting with representatives from Danish shipping lines.

He said that imposition of anti-Iran sanctions banned Iranian ships from travelling to Europe and vessels owned by international companies from travelling to Iran as well.

Launching shipping bureaus across Europe is aimed at facilitating exports of Iranian oil and non-oil products to European ports, the official said.

He also said that after the lifting of sanctions the Iranian ships can receive insurance services from European insurers.

Referring to Iran's failure to renovate its shipping fleet for seven years due to the tough sanctions imposed on the country, Saeedi said that Iran has plans to renovate its fleet after the sanctions.

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5 January 2016 12:11 (UTC+04:00)

Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaged in a Cold War via proxy, in its most recent manifestation, since the Arab Spring, in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and in other countries around the world through humanitarian aid and dawa (outreach), Theodore Karasik, the Middle East analyst and senior advisor to Risk Insurance Management in Dubai, told Trend Jan. 4.

"This Cold War entered a dangerous, highly confrontational phase in the past few days. The Kingdom, in mid December, prepared the steps for today, with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announcing a Sunni Muslim Alliance. With the Saudi execution of the "terrorist extremist" Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was the spiritual leader of Saudi Shiites in the Kingdom's Eastern Province, the sectarian divide grew immediate into a deep chasm"- he said.

The expert also said that Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslim Alliance is now fully activated with the al-Nimr execution.

"The Kingdom is throwing down the gauntlet on Iran's behavior and Riyadh seeks to expose the Islamic Republic's perfidy in Arab lands. More importantly, Saudi Arabia, as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, is now seeing who will rush to Riyadh's side under the mantra of Sunni Islam. Immediately, the GCC states-- except Oman-- came to the Kingdom's side, as did Sudan and several other countries. The coming days, and perhaps weeks, will see whether all 30 plus members of the Sunni Military Alliance will declare a so-called bayat to the Saudi Kingdom as the face off continues with Iran" - he said.

The expert also said that Saudi Arabia is angry with Iran; so angry that Riyadh seeks to not only tear down the Islamic Republic's ability to re-emerge on the global economic arena with the lifting of sanctions but also wants to guarantee that the February 2016 parliamentary elections swing 100 percent to the principalists and the IRGC. "From Riyadh's thinking, Iran's true colors need to be shown to the world. This aggressive Saudi policy is likely to affect the region for some time to come"- he said.

"Thus, in the Middle East, the Saudi action, in one stunning move, reset the geopolitical chessboard on a host of negotiations, especially the future of Syria, as well as set the possibility for higher oil prices if the Cold War becomes a Hot War. A Hot War, whether asymmetric or through enhanced proxy actions up to and including bombing campaigns or targeted assassinations, will boost the price of oil in order to help Saudi Arabia's partners earn necessary income into their state coffers"- he said.

"But there is also a serious loss. Gone is any hope for coordination on fighting the Islamic State not only in the Levant but in other arenas. Iran is a necessary part of that fight but for Gulf Arabs, Tehran is seen as a bigger threat. That fact may be a strategic and tactical error that will give Daesh a free pass until the group is dealt with in an accurate kinetic and counter-narrative approach. Russia and Iran were on the right path while Saudi Arabia and others were supporting extremists and terrorists who bastardized their own Wahhabist creed. Thus, Saudi's aggressive stance against Iran masks the radical disturbances within the Sunni ummah itself" - Karasik said.

Expert also said that Its clear that Russia may benefit the most from the sectarian eruption. The Kremlin is already offering to negotiate between the two sides. That approach by Moscow is all well and good.

"But there is a bigger question here: the future of the Saudi Kingdom. Unlike Iran, whose cohesion is, for the most part guaranteed, the Al-Saud's Arabia is under great political and economic stress up to including internal dissent at various levels of Saudi society in various corners of the country (the south, the Hijaz, the Nejd, and the Eastern Province) up to intra-princely disputes that may now break into the open. Russia sees that Saudi Arabia is in trouble, and President Putin is known to have threaten the Kingdom during various high-level meetings with Saudi rulers.

Overall, patience will be a key here for Moscow, and given the Kremlin propensity to side more with Shiites because of their patient virtues, a Saudi over-extension of its Sunni alliance may backfire in a black hole that forces the Al-Saud from power and sees the Kingdom evaporate"- he said.

Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric led to violent protests at the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which led to a breakdown of relations between the two countries.

Saudi Arabia previously cut air traffic with Iran, and said that it intends to cut all commercial ties.

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5 January 2016 12:56 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Sadigova

Uzbekistans First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Rustam Azimov and Kuwaiti Ambassador Ahmed Khaled Abdullah Al-Dzhiyran discussed a wide range of issues related to the bilateral relations and cooperation.

They reviewed issues of expanding the trade and economic relations between them and stressed that the development of economic cooperation follows the interests of both countries.

The Uzbek side also urged Kuwaiti businessmen to invest various sectors of the Uzbek economy. He said that Tashkent is seeking to enhance mutual cooperation with Kuwait to the level aspired by the two countries leaders.

Earlier, the two countries signed the bilateral intergovernmental agreements in the field of economy during Uzbek President Islam Karimovs official visit to Kuwait in January 2004.



In particular, the sides signed a memorandum on cooperation between the governments of Uzbekistan and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), envisaging the financial assistance worth $ 215 million to implement nine projects in Uzbekistan in the fields of health protection, energy supply, land reclamation and water supply.



One more intergovernmental document, envisaging KFAEDs financial assistance in the implementation of 10 projects totaling $375.2 million, was signed as part of the official visit of Kuwaits Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabahs to Uzbekistan in July 2008.



At present, the total amount of funds, allocated by the KFAED to implement the investment projects in Uzbekistan, is $135 million.

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Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93

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5 January 2016 14:00 (UTC+04:00)

Kuwait says it has recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, Associated Press reported.

The move comes after Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties to Iran over the storming of two diplomatic posts in the country following the kingdom's execution of a top Shiite cleric who was also an opposition figure.

Several Saudi allies followed the Kingdom's lead and Jan.4 scaled back or cut diplomatic ties to Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr Jan.2 along with 46 others convicted on terror charges, including three other Shiite dissidents and a number of al-Qaida militants.

Al-Nimr was an outspoken critic of Saudi Arabia's Sunni monarchy but denied ever calling for violence. His execution has sparked outrage among Shiites across the region.

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5 January 2016 17:34 (UTC+04:00)

Turkish airlines Pegasus and Onur Hava Yollar have temporarily suspended flights to Russia, the Milliyet newspaper reported.

The temporary suspension of the flights is linked with a crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara.

The airlines expect to resume flights to Russia starting from January 13, 2016, according to the report.

Relations between Moscow and Ankara deteriorated greatly after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber in Turkeys airspace Nov. 24, 2015. Ankara stated that Su-24 entered its airspace, while Moscow said the plane didnt violate Turkeys airspace.

Earlier, Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrey Karlov said Turkey must meet three conditions for normalization of relations with Russia.

Turkey must apologize to Russia over the incident involving the downed aircraft, he said.

He added that the other two conditions are to find and punish the perpetrators of the incident involving the plane and to compensate for the damage to the Russian side.

After the incident, Turkish foreign ministry said Ankara wont pay a compensation for the downed Russian plane.

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Anti-gay activist Scott Lively has had a long and bigoted career ranging from re-writing history and claiming that the Nazis were really vicious gays to going all the way to Uganda to preach his evil hate about the LGBT community and prodding them to put its LGBT citizens to death. But now Lively is beginning to pay for his evil sins he has been found writing money-begs to other anti-gay groups urging them to join him in pushing to the passage of Russian-style anti-gay laws in America and elsewhere  and of course, send cash.

Lively hysterically bragged that he is being targeted by gay activists because his Abiding Truth Ministries is one of the most feared and hated pro-family organizations in the world and the downside of being oh so feared and hated is that he is now facing a lawsuit stemming from his anti-gay activism in Uganda, which is why Lively was begging for money in the first place since his feared hate group grifts bring in pennies and his legal bills are mounting

My friends, SMUG v Lively is truly a David v Goliath battle. Im running a one-man office on a shoestring budget of less than $120,000 per year, provided almost entirely by donations of $50 and $100 from average people. Our donor base is small, mostly elderly, and very difficult to expand due to the success of the anti-Lively propaganda. While Liberty Counsel has been funding our legal defense, this lawsuit has nevertheless caused us major financial hardship and seriously threatens our future.

Frankly, I question whether ATM will survive the decade without greater support from the individuals scattered across the society who recognize the danger of the LGBT agenda and are willing to stand with us financially against it. That can only happen if the people who already support us encourage their like-minded friends and allies to donate to us.

In a separate email to hate groups abroad Lively declared that the Leaders and Activists of the LGBT movement are malicious deceivers and evil-doers, deliberately subverting civilized society and viciously attacking all opponents to advance their selfish and self-destructive interests and called for anti-gay activists to focus on preventing the passage of antidiscrimination ordinances that protect sexual orientation in places where they dont already exist and repealing them where they do. :

We need to build international pro-family solidarity on a foundation of genuine moral authority, meaning it must rest on the premise that homosexuality itself is personally and socially harmful, and not pretend that our only social and political interests are the welfare of children or the definition of marriage. That pretense is a product of the same diseased pro-family leadership that marched the American pro-family movement from one disastrous defeat to the next for the past three decades, and it is now being exported to the rest of the world by the same men.

The beauty of the Russian law is it cuts right to the heart of the real problem of LGBT advocacy: the recruitment of children. What I mean by recruitment of children is not primarily the sexual exploitation of young people by adult homosexuals, though that represents a dark current within the larger gay culture, especially among the men. What I mean is the normalization of homosexual conduct and culture to children and youths, leading them to engage in homosexual experimentation among themselves and subsequently self-identify as gay. An entire generation of American, British and Canadian children has been enslaved to this corrupt culture and ideology through the very propaganda that Russia has now banned.

While numerous countries of the African continent have chosen a much stricter approach, seeking to deter all homosexual conduct through harsh criminal sanctions, the Russian law balances the privacy rights of adult homosexuals (who choose to live discretely outside the mainstream of society) with the need of the nation to protect its children from the ravages of sexual perversion. It deters the LGBT lobby from attempting to mainstream the gay lifestyle, while granting the individual members of its community the right to be left alone that was the original stated goal of their movement in its early years, before it adopted the militant fascist tactics it is known for today
by Larry Smith Prime Minister Perry Christie says climate change threatens the existence of the Bahamas as we know it. So what does the recent Paris agreement to tackle climate issues mean for the Bahamas - and the rest of the world?



In case you didnt know, almost 200 countries spent two weeks at the end of last year crafting the worlds first universal agreement - one that signals the end of the fossil fuel era.



The goal is to peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.



Christie was among those in Paris pushing for more - arguing that warming should be kept below 1.5 degrees. "The Bahamas and other small developing island states are seeinglife-threatening impacts, and the science tells us we can only expect more over time, he said.



UNPRECEDENTED RECOGNITION



Politically, the Paris agreement marks an unprecedented global recognition of the risks of climate change. Economically, it will push investment towards adaptation measures and clean energy. Beginning in 2020, industrialised countries will spend at least $100 billion a year to help developing nations fund their transition to green technology.



The good news is that the agreement was unanimous - and the most significant effort to address climate change ever. However, it is also mostly aspirational. As the Economist magazine explained in generally favourable terms: It requires countries to act on climate change, and to increase their actions over time, but it says nothing concrete about how much anyone has to do."



The editors of the Economist acknowledged that public opinion and international pressure had produced the Paris pledges. "The hope is that similar bottom-up processes, rather than unenforceable UN mandates, will drive up the level of action in decades to come."



As part of the conference process, the Bahamas submitted its plan to address climate issues in November. The plan says we will adapt to climate impacts while pursuing "a low-carbon pathway in conformity to growing international and public pressure for environmentally friendly development.



ENERGY POLICY



But most of what it outlines is as vague and nonspecific as that airy summation. For example, the government says it will "promote the use of less carbon-intensive fuels by "meeting the National Energy Policy's target of 30 per cent renewables in the energy mix by 2030.



Unfortunately, we have no 'energy mix' (being 100 per cent dependent on fossil fuels), and there is no discernible strategy to achieve such a goal. This is despite the fact that successive governments have been working on 'energy reform' for a decade or more. Statements have been made about clean energy, but there are no concrete results.



On his return from Paris in December, Environment Minister Ken Dorsett gave us an idea of the governments muddled thinking in this regard: "The debate so far has been about fossil fuels, he confided to ZNS, "but there is evidence that we have natural gas in the Bahamas.



Just to be clear, oil, gas and coal are all fossil fuels - and burning any of them makes a huge contribution to global warming. Dorsett was commenting on the governments ongoing legislative efforts to promote oil drilling in Bahamian waters, which ironically came hard on the heels of the Paris agreement.



TWO-FACED



So we are in the decidedly two-faced position of not having made any concrete move towards clean energy, while Dorsett and Christie run around the world worrying about environmental threats. And to cap it all off, we are now promoting the development of fossil fuels in our own territory.



The Paris conference and the passage of the petroleum bills - both of which happened in December 2015 - mark out a definite fork in the road for the islands of the Bahamas. The legislation sets rules for hydrocarbon exploration and production and creates an investment fund for anticipated revenues.



As opposition leader Dr Hubert Minnis pointed out in parliament, "Our primary industry relies on the ocean, (which) is a direct source of livelihood and recreation for many. Petroleum drilling gone wrong could seriously impair (our) quality of life.



Minnis argued that instead of oil, the Bahamas should focus on the environment: We should seek to establish a UN-sponsored marine research and monitoring centre for the protection of regional fisheries - as many migratory fish pass through our waters.



He believes such a proposal could produce hundreds of high-paying jobs and help address poaching, illegal immigration and other issues.



Long Island MP Loretta Butler Turner painted an even more contrasting picture: "In the aftermath of Joaquin and with scientists predicting more severe hurricanes as a result of climate change, we have a grave moral responsibility to protect our people from the dire effects of rising sea levels and other challenges of climate change."



She said Bahamian reefs and fisheries risked major damage from oil pollution and the chemicals used to clean up spills, including genetic damage to marine life as was the case with the 2010 Gulf of Mexico catastrophe.



"We risk doing great harm to our tourism industry. We risk destroying our very way of life. We need a full public debate about how the oil industry can fundamentally change our country.



REVENUE STRATEGY



And the Bahamas Petroleum Company made the point even stronger - calling the legislation "a clear expression of support for our industry.



A publicly traded company, BPC has invested millions prospecting for oil here, and it currently has licenses to drill in several areas (along with other foreign companies). Pulling the rug from under these investors would no doubt have some undesirable consequences.



Revenue benefits may accrue from a hydrocarbon industry in the Bahamas many years down the road. But the costs must also be weighed - in the context of climate change risks. And remember that during this period, the world will increasingly be turning away from fossil fuels.



Some argue that if drilling proceeds, as expected, our biggest challenge is to agree on a strategy to use the money to fund a transition to a low-carbon economy and adapt to climate change impacts - in line with the commitments made in Paris.



This could be presented as a valid reason to drill. But the gross lack of transparency and accountability displayed by this government in particular - and all Bahamian governments to one degree or another - does not inspire confidence that such a course could ever be implemented.



Recent revelations at the majority government-owned Bank of the Bahamas are clear evidence of the level of financial irresponsibility our system tolerates. The sovereign wealth fund formed to manage oil revenues will be run by a five-member board consisting solely of representatives from government agencies, who are all appointed by the prime minister.



Meanwhile, Christie talks airily about making "the necessary shifts in investments, and business models toward sustainable development and renewable energy.



Butler-Turners response is: they talk clean energy overseas, while pushing unclean energy here at home. The prime minister jets around the world pretending to be a committed environmentalist, while at home hes pressing the case for oil drilling.



ENERGY TRANSITION



But lets leave local politics aside for the moment and look at the broader issue of switching to a clean energy economy. In 2014, the world was getting 14 per cent of its energy supply from carbon-free sources. By 2050, that figure will have to be 90 per cent if we are to achieve the climate goals set out in Paris last month, experts say.



Technologies are available now to achieve this (and new technologies will continue to be developed), but the biggest drawback to a transition is the magnitude of global subsidies underpinning fossil fuel use. Current energy prices are well below levels that reflect their true costs, according to recent estimates by the International Monetary Fund.



Fossil fuels benefit from global subsidies of more than $5 trillion a year, the IMF says, representing more than 6 per cent of global GDP. Most of these subsidies arise from the failure to charge for the cost of environmental damageand about one-quarter of the total is from climate change impacts. Tax concessions for producers and consumers, and other local factors, account for the rest.



Unfortunately, many of the subsidies the IMF highlights go toward finding new reserves of oil, gas and coal - which we know must be left in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change. Experts say that if we get the pricing of fossil fuels right, the argument for subsidies on clean energy will disappear.



OIL SUBSIDIES



The United Kingdom, for example, supports its coal, oil and gas industries to the tune of $4.2 billion a year. And in the United States, the total annual value of state and federal fossil fuel exploration, production, and consumption subsidies is $32.8 billion.



In fact, governments across the G20 countries are providing $452 billion a year in subsidies for the production of fossil fuels, according to Oil Change International, a research and advocacy group focused on facilitating the transition toward clean energy.



The subsidies include direct spending and tax breaks, investments by state enterprises, and public finance from state-owned institutions.



In the Bahamas, we have the ongoing environmental disaster at the Clifton power station, which the government is currently spending $20 million to address. And who knows how much has been spent over decades to clean up spills and avert disasters around the country?



The government exempts BEC from taxes, guarantees its debt, and allows cronies (including the former BEC chairman himself) to ignore bills. These are all subsidies. And the problem is compounded by the lack of any strategy to facilitate clean energy or any plan to promote energy efficiency.



POLICY GOALS



What we do have is a still secret - and likely to remain secret - agreement with a US company to manage BEC, and a national energy policy that sets out four goals.



The first is for Bahamians to become "well aware of the importance of energy conservation, use energy wisely and continuously pursue opportunities for improving energy efficiencies, with key economic sectors embracing eco-efficiency. I can think of no initiatives or benchmarking to achieve this goal.



The second is to modernise energy infrastructure. The third goal is for the Bahamas to become a world leader in sustainable energy. And the fourth is to achieve high levels of consultation, citizen participation and public-private sector partnerships in the advancement of energy sector reform.



These last two objectives defy reality to such a degree that we have to wonder if the policys authors were on crack when they wrote it.



The bottom line here is that the world - and the Bahamas - must transition to a clean energy economy within the next few decades or we and our children will be in big trouble. The good news is that such a transition is not an impossible dream.



Microsoft used to have close to a 100 per cent share of the worldwide personal computing market. Now, in terms of total devices shipped, Microsofts share is about 14 per cent and it no longer rules over the tech world.



The same will be true of fossil fuels. As climatologist and former NASA director James Hansen points out: Either we will change our ways or they will be changed for us.
A string of winter storms are lining up to wet down Bakersfield and throw a blanket of snow across the mountains of Kern County over the next 
Earl of Sandwich, the American sandwich chain, has announced it will relaunch in the UK two years after the closure of its only UK outlet.

According to M&C Allegra Foodservice, Earl of Sandwich has acquired a 551sq ft site at the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent and will serve a range of food-to-go options including made-to-order hot sandwiches, salads, wraps and pasta dishes.

The company closed its Ludgate Hill branch in April 2014, which had been open since 2011, blaming a lack of sales outside of the lunch period. It said it would use the lessons from running the store in the new outlet.

Alex Garland, managing director at Earl Enterprises, told M&C: We have been seeking a launch site in the UK for some time and Bluewater really stood out. Its reputation is unrivalled, both in the UK and in the wider European context, which is why it is so popular with expanding international brands.

Earl of Sandwich currently runs 27 sites in the USA and has been described as a posh Subway due to the use of premium ingredients such as topside of beef in its sandwiches.
Finsbury Food Group has become a UK licensee for this years Ghostbusters film.

Set to be one of the biggest releases of 2016 when it hits our screens in July, the reboot of the 1980s cult classic has 23 brands signed up to date.

Rob Wijeratna, joint managing director of Rocket Licensing, manager of the films licensing programme, said this showed the extraordinary momentum behind a brand that is as popular today as it was over 30 years ago.

Finsbury Food Group has a long-standing relationship with the licensed brand sector, manufacturing quality cakes for brands including Disney. It has had particular success with its Minions- and Frozen-themed party cakes.

Profit

As a result, the group posted a 76% rise in profit before tax last year to 11.4m. The company, which was named Bakery Manufacturer of the Year at last years Baking Industry Awards, also saw revenue grow by 45.8% to 256.2m. Finsbury spent 7m in capital expenditure last year and said it would spend 11m over the next 12 months.

The UK is the worlds third-largest market for licensed merchandise, with a total spend of 8bn.
Village Bakery, the Wrexham-based craft business, has applied for planning permission to build a new 16m plant.

The facility would create 100 jobs and cover 215,000sq ft. It is intended to be built on the Wrexham Industrial Estate, next to the companys two pre-existing bakeries.

The application has been made to Wrexham County Borough Council and Village Bakery said the site was needed to accommodate the companys rapid growth.

Village Bakery recently saw its contract with The Co-operative expand from supplying 63 to 116 stores across Wales and it was named Wales fastest-growing manufacturer in 2014 at the Fast Growth 50 Awards. It currently employs around 400 staff.
Scotlands biscuit brand Tunnocks has decided to drop the Scottish Lion Rampant from its logo as it moves forward to brand its teacakes as British.

A new advertising campaign, as seen on the London Underground, is missing the image of the lion from next to the slogan. It also describes the marshmallow treat as Tunnocks Great British Teacake in an advertising first for the product.

The companys managing director Boyd Tunnock conceded that the branding had been changed for its newest campaign.

He told The Daily Record: It was the idea of my son-in-law, Fergus Loudon, who is the sales manager and looks after advertising. We could have said Scottish, but youre then promoting Scotland. Were British.

Tunnock, 82, who campaigned for a No vote in the Scottish referendum, has seen the company begin to sell its products abroad, in Canada, Australia and Germany.

Record profits

Tunnocks saw sales rapidly increase in 2014, after the appearance of the famous teacake in the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony and the company last year enjoyed record profits.

However, the decision to drop the lion and the word Scottish has prompted the ire of Scottish nationalists. On the Expats for Scotland Independence Facebook page, one poster said: Tunnocks are no longer (and never were) Scottish. They campaigned for a No vote. Dont buy them ever again.
Should America accept Syrian refugees right now, as prescribed by the Obama Administration, or should Congress legislate to pause the process until a more proven vetting apparatus is in place to inhibit possible ISIS infiltrators? 10.84% Yes, Obama is right, we should show the refugees compassion, and admit them as soon as is possible. 79.52% No, Congress is right, we should pause the process to be more certain that terrorists aren't among them. 9.64% It does not matter. 83 total vote(s) Voting has Ended!

Considering the fact that the Democrat Mainstream media has taken a "hands-off" policy in regards to Democrat scandals for the purpose of providing cover to a Democrat Department of Justice's choices to not pursue criminal indictments on proved Democrat criminal behavior: Is there a double standard for the Democrat Mainstream media? 88.41% Yes, what is the practice for the Republicans should be proper for Democrats. 7.25% No, Democrats should be immune from serious investigation and prosecution because they care so much more. 4.35% I don't care, I prefer the low-information approach to life. 69 total vote(s) Voting has Ended!

If you could vote today for one of the Republican front runners for the GOP primary nomination: Who would it be? 11.07% Donald Trump 26.64% Ben Carson 13.52% Carly Fiorina 2.87% Jeb Bush 33.61% Ted Cruz 12.3% Marco Rubio 244 total vote(s) Voting has Ended!

Obama, the reluctant leader of the Free World, weeps because of the 2nd Amendment's power to arm law abiding citizens. And we were there.He did not weep for those left to die at Benghazi, but lied to the World instead.He does not weep for the soldier's sacrifice surrendered by his action to cut and run in the Middle East.He does not weep for the economic depression of Kentucky and West Virginia that he alone caused.He does not weep for all the officers murdered by lawless gun toting thugs.He does not weep for all the lawless murders in Chicago, from whence he hails, long a bastion of Democrat politics.He does not weep for ISIS advancing throughout the world, and other Muslim Terrorists, murdering Christians abroad, and, now, here within America's shores.He does not weep for those that have sacrificed all, so that he might chip away pieces of their selfless patriotism and sacrifice, so that he may sell their labors to future Democrat voters, who will not contribute or are here illegally.He does not weep when he tramples the constitution, and is now losing very badly in the Supreme Court, and will continue to lose long after he, thankfully, leaves office.But, he passionately weeps now as he plays politics to use executive action to endeavor skirting around congress to weaken the 2nd Amendment, a right that he is not empowered to understand.These are the actions of a false president, a non patriot, and, he will never be forgiven by the vast majority of true patriots.And that is a significant, and sustaining truth.
Managing Debt

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Bradley Foundations Radical Education Privatization Campaign Rolls On

Updated Research Finds Over 130 Organizations Part of $108 Million-Plus Propaganda Campaign

MADISON, Wis.  In recent years, the unaccountable private school voucher program dramatically expanded in Wisconsin while state public schools suffered the 4th largest budget cuts in the nation. Whats the explanation for the shift in priorities when, according to independent studies, vouchers fail to produce any significant increase in student achievement? Updated research from One Wisconsin Institute exposing the right-wing Bradley Foundation s spending over $108 million in support of education privatization from 2005 to 2014 provides some answers.

The Bradley Foundation supports the radical privatization of public schools in Wisconsin and across the nation, commented One Wisconsin Institute Executive Director Scot Ross. And it seems theres no limit to how much they will pay to try to get their way, spending over $108 million between 2005 and 2014 to buy the help of over 130 organizations.

Bradley Foundation head Michael Grebe, a political insider who chaired Gov. Walkers presidential and gubernatorial campaigns, continues to orchestrate a massive propaganda campaign to advance the privatization of public education;

An analysis of IRS Form 990 records and Bradley Foundation reports reveals over 130 organizations supportive of their education privatization agenda and working to advance their cause have received over $108 million from 2005 through 2014;

Bradleys tactics have continued to evolve, now featuring litigation to advance their privatization agenda and intimidate opponents. Leading the effort is the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty which since its inception in 2011 has been larded with over $2 million from Bradley;

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the voucher program will cost Wisconsin taxpayers over $1.1 billion from 2011 through the end of the 2015-17 budget cycle. Meanwhile, a new report found that Wisconsin schools have suffered the 4th biggest cuts in in the nation through 2014.

Original research by One Wisconsin Institute in 2013 first exposed the Bradley Foundation as a leading player in the campaign to gut public education and promote the unaccountable, radical privatization of K-12 education. The Milwaukee-based group spent millions to support organizations, think tanks, journalists and right-wing academics. They engaged in a campaign that manufactured a crisis, singled out their enemies, generated a cure, justified their scheme with pseudo-science, broadcast their message through the media, helped elect politicians to advance their agenda and kept them in line with high-powered lobbyists and well-funded pressure campaigns.

Ross concluded, Wisconsin families and public schools are left paying the price as billions of dollars that could have been used for public education are siphoned off for the Bradley Foundations ideologically driven experiment. Until a majority of policy makers are willing to stand up to the Bradley Foundations millions, Wisconsins tradition of great public schools will remain under assault.
Ive been gone a while from the blogging scene. Some of my more regular readers no doubt noticed but did not hassle me about it. Thank you for that. Sinc...

6 years ago
Marco Restani has been named the new director of conservation for Montana Audubon.

Hired in November, Restani began his tenure in the Helena office on Dec. 28. He replaces Amy Cilimburg.

Restani was a professor of wildlife ecology at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota since 2002. His primary teaching duties included ornithology and wildlife management.

His conservation-oriented research has occurred primarily in Eastern Montana and North Dakota, although he has also worked in Greenland and Australia. He recently spent the past four winters guiding ecotourists to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and Antarctica.

Restani has lived and worked throughout Montana since 1983 and attended the University of Montana and Montana State University.

The primary duties of Restanis new job include overseeing Montana Audubons priority conservation programs, developing and implementing the Important Bird Area Program, establishing and overseeing citizen science efforts, working collaboratively with partners to advance habitat conservation and integrating science into public policy.

Restani already collaborates with Yellowstone Valley Audubon in Billings as the chapter monitors the reproductive success of ospreys along the Yellowstone River from Gardiner to Sidney.
KALISPELL  A Whitefish man who shot at two motorcyclists during a road rage incident near Columbia Falls in 2014, and who later skipped his own sentencing hearing, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Christopher Showen was sentenced Dec. 28 on charges of bail jumping and assault with a weapon.

It was not Showen's first run-in with the law. He was 19 when he stood trial for the 1998 shooting death of Carl John Storkson, a childhood friend. Showen was acquitted.

Five years later, he spent a year in prison following a drive-by shooting in Alaska. In 2006, he was given a five-year suspended sentence for conspiracy to commit assault with a weapon following a shooting at the Eureka Police Station.
A Tampa man is now facing upgraded charges after his 2-month-old son died at a local hospital.

Kent Hawkins Johnson Sr., 24, was originally facing two counts of aggravated child abuse after his infant son, Kent Jr., was taken to a hospital on Dec. 28. The baby had suffered fractures to his skull, ribs and femur.

According to the affidavit from the original arrest, Johnson was caring for the boy on Dec. 19 when the boy suffered fractures of his ribs and femur. On Dec. 27, investigators say Johnson hit the baby's head with his hand.

A doctor examined the baby on Dec. 28 and noted he had suffered a skull fracture within the past 24 hours, and that the fractured ribs and femur had happened between 7 and 10 days prior.

Detectives said Johnson admitted to holding the baby over his head and on his shoulders and spun him in circles. Johnson said he fell, and the boy landed on the tile floor. Hawkins said he then picked up by the baby by the leg, and that the earlier injuries were likely a result of that.

Johnson also said he intentionally struck the boy on his head because the boy was crying, the affidavit said.

Johnson was booked into the Hillsborough County Jail, while the baby was taken to a hospital in extremely critical condition.

On Dec. 31, the baby died from his injuries while receiving medical care. On Jan. 2, the baby's cause of death was listed as homicide.

Charge against Johnson were upgraded to first-degree felony murder and aggravated child neglect. He remains in the Hillsborough County Jail without bond.


The woman who showed a nude photo of her son's 13-year-old rape victim to a co-worker was sentenced Tuesday.

Pamela Fink Coleman, 51, will serve seven days in jail and be supervised for the next five years after pleading no contest in August to a felony charge of sexual abuse of children.

As part of a plea deal, Judge Russell Fagg deferred Coleman's sentencing for five years, contingent on five years of supervision under the Montana Department of Corrections.

Fagg also ordered Coleman to pay restitution of about $1,500 to the victim for counseling services the girl's insurance does not cover.

Laurel Police Department Detective Jason Wells testified during the sentencing. He said Coleman showed a co-worker a photo of a nude 13-year-old girl while the two were at work together. The co-worker recognized the girl and reported the photo to police.

The girl in the photo was one of two victims who reported Colemans son, Jordan Todd Coleman, had raped them. Jordan Coleman, 20, was convicted of having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl in early 2013.

In July 2013, Jordan Coleman raped the victim, also a 13-year-old girl, in the basement of his home after she refused to have sex with him, according to charging documents.

The girl told police Jordan Coleman asked her for a nude photo prior to raping her, and she sent one. When he requested another with her face in it, she refused. He told her if she didn't send the photo, he would send the previous photo to her friends and family.

The victim spoke at the sentencing and said the photo became public knowledge at her school anyway, in part due to Coleman's co-worker telling her daughter, who knew the victim. The victim said she felt disgusting and was taunted by kids at school.

"You made me believe I was something I'm not," the girl said. "You made me not want to live anymore. ... You made me think this would never get better."

Coleman said she kept the photo to help her son's case, which at the time was still pending.

"Both what Jordan and you have done to me has changed me forever," the girl said. She asked that Coleman be sentenced to six months in prison.

After the victim finished speaking, Fagg told her she was a "bright, articulate" young lady. He added the seven days in jail, in addition to the recommended sentence from the county.

Jordan Coleman was sentenced in March to 30 years in the Montana State Prison, with 10 years suspended, for the sexual assaults of the two girls.

Jordan Coleman has attempted to contact the victim since his incarceration, Wells said.
Tears streaking his cheeks, President Barack Obama launched a final-year push Tuesday to tighten sales of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of tougher gun restrictions that Congress has refused to pass.

The president struck a combative tone as he came out with plans for expanded background checks and other modest measures that have drawn consternation from gun rights groups, which Obama accused of making Congress their hostage. Palpable, too, was Obama's extreme frustration at having made such little progress on gun control since the killing of 20 first-graders in Connecticut confronted the nation more than three years ago.

"First-graders," Obama said woefully, resting his chin on his hand and wiping away tears as he recalled the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad."

Obama's 10-point plan to keep guns from those who shouldn't have them marked a concession by the president: He'll leave office without securing the new gun control laws he's repeatedly and desperately implored Congress to pass.

The National Rifle Association, the largest gun group, panned Obama's plan and said it was "ripe for abuse," although the group didn't specify what steps, if any, it will take to oppose or try to block it. Even Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat and gun-owner who co-wrote the bipartisan bill Obama supported in 2013, took issue with the president's move.

"Instead of taking unilateral executive action, the president should work with Congress and the American people, just as I've always done, to pass the proposals he announced today," Manchin said.

The centerpiece of Obama's plan is an attempt to narrow the loophole that exempts gun sales from background checks if the seller isn't a federal registered dealer. With new federal "guidance," the administration is clarifying that even those who sell just a few weapons at gun shows, flea markets or online can be deemed dealers and required to conduct checks on prospective buyers.

Whether that step can make a significant dent in unregulated gun sales is an open question, and one not easily answered.

Millions of guns are sold annually in informal settings outside of gun shops, including many through private sales arranged online. But the Obama administration acknowledged it couldn't quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a license.

Easily reversible by a future president, the government's guidance to gun sellers lacks the legal oomph of a new law, such as the one Obama and likeminded lawmakers tried but failed to pass in 2013. The Justice Department said online the guidance "has no regulatory effect and is not intended to create or confer any rights, privileges, or benefits in any matter, case, or proceeding."

What's more, none of the steps would have probably prevented any of the recent mass shootings that Obama invoked in the East Room: Aurora, Oak Creek, Charleston, Newtown, to name some. But Obama defiantly rejected that critique, dismissing it as the tired trope of gun lobbyists who question "why bother trying?"

"I reject that thinking," Obama said. "We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some."

AP Review of recent mass shootings

The gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have prevented the slaughters of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, or 14 county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.

Obama's executive action expands mandatory background checks to gun shows, flea markets and online sales, adds more than 230 examiners and staff to help process them and calls on states to submit accurate and updated criminal history data.

In Aurora, Colorado, and at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., men undergoing mental health treatment were cleared to buy weapons because federal background checks looked to criminal histories and court-ordered commitments for signs of mental illness. The Obama administration is making changes in that realm by seeking to plug certain Social Security Administration data into the background check system and by helping states report more information about people barred from gun possession for mental health reasons.

The suspect in a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, should have been flagged at the time, but errors and delays cleared the way for his purchase.

Though the moves probably wouldn't have prevented recent mass shootings, Obama rejected the idea that undermines the changes.

"We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some," Obama said.

A look at how some recent mass shooting suspects got their weapons:

Dec. 2, 2015, San Bernardino, California, 14 killed

Syed Farook and his wife used weapons that the FBI says his neighbor, Enrique Marquez, purchased legally from a federally licensed dealer in 2011 and 2012. Marquez, now facing conspiracy and other charges, told investigators that Farook asked him to purchase the weapons because he would draw less attention. At the time, the FBI says, the men were plotting to shoot up a community college and a highway.

___

Oct. 1, 2015, Roseburg, Oregon, 10 killed

Christopher Harper-Mercer and his family members legally purchased the handguns and rifle he used in the Umpqua Community College shooting from a federally licensed gun dealer, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

___

July 16, 2015, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 5 killed

The FBI says some of the weapons Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez used in his attack on a pair of military facilities were purchased legally and some were not. It is unclear when the purchases were made and whether he was subject to a background check. Relatives say Abdulazeez had a history of mental illness, made a series of overseas trips and was arrested in April on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. In May 2013, he failed a background check for an engineering job at a nuclear power plant in Ohio.

___

June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina, 9 killed

A February drug arrest should have prevented Dylann Roof from purchasing the pistol authorities say he used at Emanuel AME Church, but a record-keeping error and background check delay allowed the transaction to go through. The FBI says a background check examiner never saw the arrest report because the wrong arresting agency was listed in state criminal history records. After three days passed, the gun dealer was legally permitted to complete the transaction.

___

Sept. 16, 2013, Washington, D.C., 12 killed

Aaron Alexis, a former reservist turned civilian contractor, passed state and federal background checks and legally purchased the pump-action shotgun used in the Washington Navy Yard shooting despite a history of violent outbursts and recent mental health treatment. Alexis was accused of firing a gun in anger in Texas in 2004 and Seattle in 2010, but was not prosecuted in either case. In 2011, he received an honorable discharge despite bouts of insubordination, disorderly conduct and unauthorized absences. None of that would have disqualified him from purchasing a weapon.

___

Dec. 14, 2012, Newtown, Connecticut, 26 killed

Adam Lanza used his mother's weapons, including a .223-caliber semi-automatic rifle, in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Investigators say Lanza's mother, whom he fatally shot before going to the school, also purchased the ammunition.

___

July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colorado, 12 killed

James Holmes was receiving psychiatric treatment when he passed required federal background checks and legally purchased the weapons he used in the movie theater assault. As in the Navy Yard case, Holmes' treatment alone would not have disqualified his purchases. They would have been blocked if had he been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution.

U.S. Gun Sales in 4 charts
A homicide trial with no eyewitnesses and no identified weapon began Monday and is scheduled to last at least nine days.

Patrick O. Neiss, 44, is charged with two felonies  deliberate homicide and tampering with evidence  after the March 8, 2013, killing of Frank Trey Greene III.

His trial began Monday before Judge Gregory Todd, with jury selection taking up the first day.

Neiss was arrested in August 2014, more than a year after the death, and has been held in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on a $500,000 bond. Neiss and Greene had a history of conflict stemming from Neiss belief that Greene had stolen a motor from him in 2007 while Neiss was in prison, according to court documents.

According to court documents, Greene and Neiss had several run-ins during 2012 that led to Greene seeking a temporary order of restraint in June and November of 2012. Both orders were dismissed, and a third restraining order attempt by Greene in November 2012 was denied in Yellowstone County Justice Court.

Greene and Neiss owned adjacent properties in Yellowstone County, west of Billings. Greene lived at 800 Homewood Park Drive, and Neiss lived about two thirds of a mile south on Homewood Park Drive, at 7200 Central Avenue.

Neiss would drive south on Homewood Park Drive past Greene's residence to get to his land, according to court documents.

In 2012, Neiss and his mother, Darlene Durand, told Greene's cousin, Ricky Beckerly, that Neiss believed Greene had stolen a motor from his property.

A water tower on Neiss' property had the word 'motor' spray painted on it and faced in the direction of Greene's property, according to court documents.

Three witnesses, including Neiss' girlfriend at the time, told Yellowstone County Sheriff's investigators that Neiss had talked about hurting Greene in the past for taking the motor, according to court documents.

On March 8, 2012, Greene's girlfriend, Manda Lynn Schaible, told investigators she was at his house that night when Greene went to work on his truck at about 7:30 p.m.

A neighbor saw Greene lying face down next to his truck at about 10:30 p.m. that evening and called 911.

Five .40-caliber shell casings were found around Greene's body as well as two spent bullets. The casings matched casings found on Neiss' property, which were all fired by the same weapon, according to a report by the Montana State Crime Lab.

No .40 caliber handgun has been found at either man's residence.

Greene had three bullet wounds, all in his back with one penetrating the upper left part of his head. The head wound was ruled as Greene's cause of death, according to court documents.

Neiss and his girlfriend Amy Glen were arrested that evening around 11 p.m. Investigators said Neiss was found to have gun shot residue on his body. He was released, however, due to lack of evidence.

Glen told investigators Neiss called her around 8:30 p.m. that evening, sounding panicked and out of breath, like he'd been running, according to court documents.

Neiss has previous convictions for possession of marijuana and a machine gun. He was sentenced in 2002 to a little less than four years in prison and ultimately released in 2008.

Darlene Durand was charged with perjury in 2014 after she spoke to law enforcement about her son. Her case is pending. Durand is to be granted immunity for her testimony in the homicide case, meaning her testimony cannot be used against her in her own case. It does not mean charges will be dropped against her.

The trial will continue Tuesday with opening statements from Chief Deputy County Attorney Juli Pierce and Deputy County Attorney Paul Chaon.
CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Jasper Memorial and the CHRISTUS LiveWell Women's Network proudly announce registration opening today for the third annual Jasper Women's Expo featuring keynote speaker Lisa Whelchel on February 5. CHRISTUS invites women across East Texas to register early and join the Expo to learn about and celebrate ways to achieve a lifetime of wellness with heart, soul and mind.

As the keynote speaker, Whelchel will expand upon the importance of living a well-balanced life, as well as discuss her theme-related book "Friendship For Grown-Ups: What I Missed and Learned Along the Way." A Texas native, Whelchel's first professional acting experience was on Walt Disney's "The New Mickey Mouse Club" as a Mouseketeer. However, she is best known for her starring role as Blair Warner on NBC's "The Facts of Life," which aired for nine years.

The Jasper Women's Expo, themed "Sowing seeds of friendship," is one of three LiveWell events presented by the CHRISTUS LiveWell Women's Network. This event, as well as GirlTalk and the 2016 LiveWell Women's Conference, is emceed by Editor-in-Chief of VIP Magazine of Southeast Texas and the Southeast Texas EventsBook, Shelly Vitanza.

"We're excited to announce registration opening for the third annual Women's Expo to continue to educate, share and celebrate health and wellness among women in East Texas," said Women's Expo Lead Becky Howard. "Women are encouraged to register early for early bird admission rates and to save their spot for a day filled with shopping, free health screenings, catered lunch, a keynote speaker series and more to help them live well."

Women can register for the Expo one of two ways: 1) online at www.christussetx.org/livewell- womens-expo (credit card only); 2) by mail, complete a registration form and send to CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Health System, Attn: Becky Howard, 2900 North Street, Suite 103, Beaumont, Texas 77702.

Women who register for the Expo between Jan. 5 and Jan. 22 pay an Early Bird rate of $25 for single admission. Group rates are available upon request. Regular single admission rates, after Jan. 22 through the event day, are $35.

Registration includes admission to personal enrichment, medical, food and fitness and DIY and hobby sessions, free health screenings, shopping, door prizes and a special luncheon with keynote speaker, Lisa Whelchel. The cost for attending the Women's Expo is the same whether you attend all day or for part of the event. Also, registration for the 2016 Women's Expo also registers you for a free membership with the CHRISTUS LiveWell Women's Network, where you'll be in the know about all CHRISTUS women's events throughout the year.

This year's Women's Expo takes place at Harvest Church. Event doors open at 8:30 a.m. for registration, health screenings and shopping. The first educational session begins at 9:30 a.m. with presentations and activities to follow. In addition to lunch, shopping and free health screenings, the day features 20, 50-minute breakout sessions with a wide range of enlightening health and lifestyle workshops with topics than span health, fitness, and spirituality.

Seating is limited and early registration is encouraged. For more information or to register, call 409.899.7700 or visit CHRISTUS LiveWell Women's Network at www.christuslivewell.org. For special assistance, please email r.howard@christushealth.org.
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A brightly lit, table-sized Christmas tree sat perched in the window of the cozy dining room in Alice and Leroy Savoy's new home on East Gill Street, which sits on a newly elevated lot just a few yards away from a thicket leading to the Neches River.

On that North End lot, a new home was built, thanks to hurricane recovery funds.

It took seven years to get there, but the Savoys are safe, snug and happy.

"This is the most blessed gift I could ever have - to have a roof over my head," said Alice Savoy, 70.

What Hurricane Rita started in 2005, Hurricane Ike finished in 2008. In the 2005 storm, a tree crashed through the Savoys' roof. In the 2008 storm, wind-driven rain soaked the old home.

The Savoys said they could hear rain dripping inside the walls in each successive storm. The result was dry rot.

The couple applied for a recovery grant available through the South East Texas Regional Planning Commission.

They were accepted, but it was a long wait. They lived in a motel room from August through early November of this year after the contractor demolished their rotting hulk.

Alice Savoy has lived in her neighborhood for 37 years. She and Leroy married 20 years ago. It's the second marriage for both.

"Twenty-two years ago, I think," said Leroy, 72.

"Probably so," she replied.

The Savoys showed off their new home last month with the excitement of newlyweds. They were still moving in, but they have two bedrooms, two bathrooms - purpose-built to accommodate a person who might be disabled - a laundry room, a kitchen that Alice said she loves, a living room with ultra-modern looking sofa, chair and chaise, and that cozy dining area.

And windows that let in lots of light.

"That's a thrill for me all by itself," Alice said. "I can drink coffee and look out the window."

Hurricane recovery is a slow and painstaking process.

The Savoys applied in October 2008, just a month after Ike.

The single-family, owner-occupied regulations for the reconstruction grant allows up to $135,000 to build a new house if the hurricane-damaged house cannot be repaired.

The Jefferson County Appraisal District value on the Savoy home was $24,000 before it was rebuilt. The home was built in 1962.

Demand for the housing rehabilitation or reconstruction program was high, and applicants had to be screened before being accepted.

The regional planning commission received more than 6,300 applications for help in its first and second rounds of grants. Some were duplicates from people who applied in the first round and reapplied in the second.

The regional planning commission had $235.8 million available for "non-rental" housing.

To date, 1,420 homes have been rebuilt. The total forecast to be rebuilt is 1,606, according to regional planning commission figures.

The planning commission's Housing Opportunity Program allows homeowners who live in areas of concentrated poverty-minority populations or flood-environmental hazards the option to build or choose an existing home in an area of higher opportunity as opposed to rebuilding in place. Low income applicants who are elderly or disabled are considered a priority.

The Savoys chose to remain in their neighborhood.

"I'm happy with my neighborhood," Alice Savoy said. "I've got everything I could ask for."

DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/dwallach
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The criminal case against the executive director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments for wire fraud, theft and money laundering is so complex that a judge will give defense attorneys more time to review the government's evidence.

Walter Diggles, who also is the pastor of the Lighthouse Church in Jasper, is accused of scheming with his wife and daughter to illegally divert more than $1.3 million in federal grant money intended for hurricane assistance.

His attorneys said evidence could include more than seven years of bank transactions from multiple accounts, with numerous purchases and work orders.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Schneider, based in Lufkin, granted the defense's request to declare the case "complex" on Dec. 29. That will permit the court to set a trial date later than 70 days after the indictment was filed, on Dec. 21.

Federal prosecutors gathered information in a series of raids in February 2014 and spent 22 months preparing a case, which is based on the theory that Diggles and his family used a foundation to funnel federal grants to Lighthouse for their own personal use, according to the indictment.

Walter Diggles, 62, is charged individually with 11 counts of wire fraud, two counts of theft from a program that receives federal funding, and three counts of money laundering.

Rosie Diggles, 61, his wife, is charged individually with 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of money laundering. Their daughter Anita Diggles, 39, faces one conspiracy charge.

The government also seeks the forfeiture of $1.3 million, the total amount the indictment alleges the Diggles misappropriated.

'Too complex' for a DETCOG audit

Although the Diggles indictment lays out several illegal schemes, prosecutors point out that some programs run by the Deep East Texas Foundation were legitimate.

Diggles, who has been touted as a community leader, won the NARC's prestigious leadership award in 2008 and was appointed by former Gov. Rick Perry as chairman of OneStar National Service Commission  a group Perry established in 2003 to replace the Texas Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service.

Ryan Gertz, lead attorney for Walter Diggles, has called the allegations a "fundamental misunderstanding of how federal and state block grants work."

Gertz said DETCOG has undergone "countless" audits of its finances, both before and after the federal government raided its Jasper headquarters. He also noted that reimbursement rates set by the federal government can differ from the actual money spent on disaster relief programs.

But prosecutors believe the conspiracy was too complex for an audit to detect without digging into DETCOG's connection to the Deep East Texas Foundation, which registered its address at the Diggles' home in Jasper, according to the indictment.

"This goes beyond what an auditor would typically find," U.S. Attorney John M. Bales said. "That's why it's very clever."

Bales said the accounting firm is not a target in the investigation.

The foundation continued operations even though the Texas Secretary of State forfeited its charter around 2007, according to the indictment.

Walter Diggles had single-signature authority over the foundation's bank account at First National Bank in Jasper, where he also received monthly payments for his service on the bank's board, according to the indictment.

DETCOG awarded the Deep East Texas Foundation about $4.4 million in Social Service Block Grant funding from 2007 to 2012, the indictment states.

It would disburse the funds from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to the foundation, which would either write a check to the Lighthouse Church Youth Department or pay for other expenses on behalf of the church or foundation.

Made-up expenses alleged

Diggles deposited $25,000 of federal funds into the Lighthouse Church bank account in December 2010 by falsifying documentation of volunteer hours to hurricane victims and cashing in on the reimbursement, the indictment alleges.

The foundation already had received grant funds for a church conference held in July 2009. Sign-in sheets for conference attendees were provided as information to support grant funds payment, but prosecutors say Diggles used the event to pay himself twice.

The $8,928 grant was awarded for the conference even though Diggles wrote a $12,000 check from the Deep East Texas Foundation to sponsor the event, according to the indictment.

The following year, Diggles recycled copies of the conference attendance sheets to support payment for volunteer hours with hurricane victims, prosecutors allege.

The indictment alleges more cases of Diggles exaggerating expenses for conferences, transportation and education programs.

Prosecutors say Diggles used the disaster relief money to pay college tuition for a DETCOG employee's family member. The employee is one of four unnamed co-conspirators in the indictment.

Prosecutors also allege Diggles used federal money to pay for the funeral of another employee's family member in Dallas County, outside the Deep East Texas region served by DETCOG. The employee is another unnamed co-conspirator in the indictment.

Prosecutors say the money was wired from DETCOG to the foundation and then Lighthouse Church to pay the expenses.

Read the complete story in the Beaumont Enterprise.

To see 10 things you should know about the Diggles indictment, click through the gallery above.

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
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It's not every day Southeast Texas cities crack the top 10 in statewide rankings, and when they do, it's not always flattering.

Orange and Nederland, however, were named to a career website's list of the top 10 smartest cities in Texas.

The site, Zippia.com, used data obtained from AreaVibes and Yelp to gather statistics from Texas cities with populations higher than 10,000 for the four factors they deemed worthy of assessing a town's intelligence:

percentage of adults with at least a high school education

public schools per capita

private schools per capita

ratio of libraries to bars

The Zippia team then ranked each city for the factors and took the average score. The city with the highest average, Katy, was named to the top of the list.

Orange was recognized for its presence of "only six bars in the city limits," and Nederland's inclusion on the list was "a close call" since it's "a town with almost as many bars are there are schools."

How the presence of bars in a town correlates to the intelligence of a population could have used some extra explaining from Zippia, though they do imply that the absence of them gives people more time to visit a library and delve into intellectual pursuits.

It also begs the question: How can that ratio be used alongside figures for the number of schools in the area when most of the kids who attend them are not old enough to legally drink?

Meanwhile, the library-to-bar ratio was left out of Zippia's ranking of the 10 dumbest cities in Texas.

Still, the nod to two Southeast Texas towns is nice, and certainly better than the time that Beaumont was named the saddest city in America.

See where Orange and Nederland ranked in Zippia's list of top 10 smartest cities as well as the site's ranking of the dumbest cities in Texas in the gallery above.
A new study, published in JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, examines different screening methods for colorectal cancer.

Here are five insights:

1. Researchers studied data from 16,087 subjects in a single-center randomized controlled screening trial.

2. The trial included four parallel groups  biennial fecal immunochemical test for three rounds; reduced and full cathartic preparation CT colonography; and optical colonoscopy.

3. The researchers found that participation was different across the four screening methods.

4. However, detection rates of advanced neoplasia were different only between CT colonography and biennial fecal immunochemical the groups.

5. The researchers concluded that "the combination of lower attendance and higher detection rates of screening CTC as compared with FIT are key factors for the optimization of its role in population screening of CRC."
How does one prioritize when everything is important? It's a familiar feeling for most hospital and health system executives. To simplify and focus, we spoke to experts who helped us identify 10 of the most pressing issues for healthcare leadership and financial teams in 2016.

1. Insurer mega-mergers

The surge of deal-making between some of the nation's largest health insurers is top of mind for many hospital and health system leaders in 2016.

Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna entered a definitive agreement in July to acquire Louisville, Ky.-based Humana in a deal valued at $37 billion. That same month, Indianapolis-based Anthem announced plans to take over Bloomfield, Conn.-based Cigna  a buyout that would create the nation's largest health insurer by enrollment. That cash and stock transaction is valued at $54.2 billion.

Insurers merging and getting larger may empower them to leverage lower prices from providers. Control over reimbursement rates will rest with fewer insurers, constraining hospital profitability. In fact, Moody's said the spate of proposed health insurer mega-mergers is credit negative for U.S. nonprofit hospitals since the consolidation shrinks the pool of insurers and intensifies control on an increasing source of hospital revenue.

Arguing the deals are likely to reduce competition, especially in the Medicare Advantage market, hospital CEOs and CFOs are skeptical of the mergers. Several health system CEOs shared their thoughts on the potential consolidation in the health insurance sector with Becker's Hospital Review, with the vast majority of leaders saying payer consolidation is negative for the industry. They voiced worries about payers monopolizing certain regions, which would make it more difficult to negotiate fair reimbursement rates.

The American Hospital Association submitted letters to the Department of Justice requesting vigorous review of both the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna deals. "Viewed in tandem the two deals would reduce the number of major health insurers from five to three and adversely impact millions of consumers," Melinda Reid Hatton, senior vice president and general counsel for AHA, wrote to the DOJ's antitrust division and HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell in a September letter.

The AHA also teamed up with the American Medical Association and other provider groups as well as consumer and labor groups to form the Coalition to Protect Patient Choice. The coalition is urging the DOJ to block the mergers.

2. 2016 presidential election

The economy, terrorism and the way government operates in Washington, D.C., are three issues trumping healthcare leading up to the 2016 presidential election, according to Gallup. Matters of national security began to dominate the agenda in November, and as of mid-December, no presidential candidate from right or left had yet shared a particularly articulate healthcare policy plan. Nonetheless, the 2016 race is certainly something for hospital and health system CEOs and CFOs to watch in the coming months.

Every healthcare organization has something at stake and political priorities differ. Health systems like Chicago-based Cook County Health and Hospitals System, which saw Medicaid expansion as a huge stabilizing influence for both the system's finances and the health of the community, will certainly need to keep one eye on the political sphere next year. The concerns are two-fold, according to Jay Shannon, MD, president and CEO of CCHHS.

First, the county's public system is concerned with preserving Medicaid expansion and the benefits associated with it  at all costs.

"[Medicaid expansion] is being attacked by various factions on Capitol Hill," Dr. Shannon said. He said he is not supportive of a state block grant approach to Medicaid funding and sees the constructive relationship the system has built with CMS and Illinois' Medicaid agency of critical importance.

Second, Dr. Shannon named protection of the 340B Drug Pricing Program as a critical issue on the political chopping block. The program allows safety-net hospitals to buy discounted outpatient drugs, which critics argue are often abused for monetary gain.

Though the program and its surrounding controversy are not new, growing participation and drug sales are causing its costs to balloon. The Berkeley Research Group found drug sales in the program increased nearly seven-fold between 1997 and 2013. The group forecasts total drug purchases at the 340B price to grow to $16 billion by 2019. Additionally, an audit last July by the Government Accountability Office suggested the program may lead to the prescription of more drugs or more expensive drugs, leading to greater scrutiny.

"That program has been under assault  perhaps for good reason," Dr. Shannon said. "There is no question there has been some abuse of the 340B program, but for urban safety-net organizations like mine, 340B is a lifeline that allows us to get medications to the people who need, but cannot afford them."

In the background, Dr. Shannon notes, immigration reform has the potential to reach healthcare. As states accept Medicaid expansion, large proportions of individuals are still uninsured, including undocumented residents. These people still need access to care. "We think the solution for that has to come at a federal level," Dr. Shannon said.

3. Acceleration of provider-sponsored health plans

Upwards of 120 providers operate their own health plans today, according to Valence Health, and experts forecast that figure to increase for a few reasons.

The insurer mega-mergers between Anthem and Cigna and Aetna and Humana are posing a threat and creating concern of diminished competition in the insurance marketplace. With even greater command of the insurance market, the combined payer giants could negatively impact reimbursement rates paid to hospitals.

Second, Medicare and commercial insurers alike are shifting greater financial risk to the providers through bundled payments, shared risk arrangements and accountable care organizations. These trends are causing many executives to ask themselves, "If [our system] has to manage clinical and financial risk, as well as coordinate care and manage costs and outcomes, what value does the insurance company bring?" says Paul Keckley, PhD, managing director of Navigant's Healthcare Practice.

By creating their own health plans, health systems can leverage the myriad of patient clinical and cost data traditionally kept under wraps by insurers. This information can be a huge asset for supporting population health management and better coordinating care across disparate providers. Also, since a health system has a long-standing relationship with its physician community, provider-sponsored plans are often more successful in changing provider behavior.

However, launching a provider-sponsored health plan comes with risks and questions.. One major threat could be retaliation from competing health plans. Aiming to maintain contracts with those plans while simultaneously competing with them could increase tension, and insurers may direct patients elsewhere or leave a competing system out of certain networks, according to Dr. Keckley. Whether an organization can function without those contracts is question No. 1 for many healthcare providers mulling creation of their own plan. There is also the question of whether to build or buy and the risk of scale. Unless a health system acquires a plan that already has a substantial membership, it will have to invest capital in such things as claims management and infrastructure.

4. High prescription drug prices

Prescription drug spending and prices garnered attention in 2015. U.S. spending on drugs grew by 12.2 percent in 2014 to $297.7 billion compared the 2.4 percent growth rate recorded in 2013. Certain medications and drugs also attracted scrutiny from members of Congress and policymakers. The country's high drug spending was driven by greater spending on new medications, particularly for specialty drugs such as hepatitis C, and brand-name drug price increases, according to CMS. In November, the Senate Special Committee on Aging requested information about pricing practices from several drugmakers.

High prescription drug prices and spending pose significant challenges to healthcare providers and consumers alike. For example, the director of the Drug Information Service at the University of Utah Health Care told U.S. News & World Report about the price for isoproterenol hydrochloride, which went up to $2,700 a vial from $50 two years prior. The academic medical center had to remove the drug from its emergency medicine crash cart, as the price increase would add up to a $1.6 million total network cost for the drug. University of Utah Health Care couldn't recoup that amount from the managed care plans that cover most of its patients, according to the report.

Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of San Diego-based Scripps Health, said his biggest worry is if prescription drug costs are too high, patients won't take them, increasing the likelihood of returning to the hospital. This is especially pertinent for patients with high-deductible health plans who shoulder much of prescription costs before their insurance plans kick in.

Historically, Scripps had different formularies across its hospitals for prescription ordering practices. Today, as prescription drug costs are of growing concern, Mr. Van Gorder says physicians are beginning to work across the system to monitor utilization and standardize formularies.

"We have to work with our physicians on prescribing the drugs that are most appropriate," says Mr. Van Gorder. "If there is a lower cost drug that is equally effective as a higher cost drug, we guide our physicians through formulary controls to choose the less expensive option."

According to David Friend, MD, chief transformation officer and managing director of BDO's Center for Healthcare Excellence & Innovation, the rising cost of pharmaceutical drugs will have a direct impact on hospitals' ability to succeed under valued-based care and bundled payments.

"Hospitals have to worry about how they can get drug costs aligned with reimbursement," says Dr. Friend. "[Hospitals] have to link up with pharmaceutical companies, skilled nursing facilities and other providers to put together a coherent offering."

5. Community partnerships and health beyond hospital walls

Many of last year's buzzwords like "population health", "value-based care" and "improved outcomes" will echo into the new year as hospitals and health systems work toward goals set in 2015 to transition significant portions of their business to alternative payment models.

To be successful in this transition, hospitals need to address health more broadly and seek partnerships with retail care entities, churches, nutrition support, community organizations, transportation services and others.

"When you are on the hook for the outcome, there are things you can't influence directly and you need to depend on partners in the community to help get you there," said Igor Belokrinitsky, healthcare strategist and principal with PwC Strategy&.

Community organizations have been a critical force for Cook County Health & Hospitals System, according to Dr. Shannon. The system relied on grassroot efforts to early-enroll people in Medicaid under an 1115 waiver after Illinois approved expansion and was able to reach out to almost half of the individuals newly-eligible for Medicaid under the ACA in Cook County, Dr. Shannon said.

CCHHS faces concerns about Medicaid redetermination next year. The patients least motivated to redetermine are the healthiest, Dr. Shannon said.

"We look at [the community] as being a critical venue for us to get the word out about the whole process of redetermination and of annual re-upping of Medicaid," Dr. Shannon said. "It's also the place we think we have the opportunity to start to educate people, and if you will start to change the culture of what it means to have insurance, or what it means to have a medical home, you build up a sense of attainment and maintenance of a better health status in the communities we serve."

Even more directly, CCHHS is working with community-based services like the Greater Chicago Food Depository to connect families with healthier food, and the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago to expand access to behavioral health care for CountyCare members.

CCHHS is also piloting a 24/7/365 crisis stabilization center on the South Side of Chicago. The behavioral health center will help intervene and stabilize individuals exhibiting public, nonviolent manifestations of behavioral health or substance use issues. "Being in the community is a much more useful place to do that than in the jail or at the mothership hospital," he said.

Each of these partnerships creates a greater link between the health system and existing community resources, Dr. Shannon said. Ultimately, the partnerships will help both sides become more aware of each other.

6. Cadillac tax

The Affordable Care Act's looming "Cadillac tax"  a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost employer-based health plans  will take effect in 2020 after a two-year delay granted in the FY 2016 spending bill. Despite the implementation delay, the tax remains a hot-button issue to watch in this year.

Named for the luxury automobile, the Cadillac tax is designed to reign in unusually expensive employer health plans and make them more cost-effective. "What it's doing is making it more and more expensive for employers to provide insurance," said Mr. Belokrinitsky of PwC's Strategy&. The tax may lead to increased deductibles as employers shift the cost burden of health benefits onto payers and employees.

The tax has been anything less than agreed-upon, as the two-year delay indicates. As of last October, roughly 7 in 10 Americans wanted the tax repealed or delayed, and the issue made the speaking agenda of some presidential hopefuls. Fierce opponents and supporters of the Cadillac tax emerged this past fall as a tax debate ensued in Congress, and some lawmakers attempted to repeal or postpone the levy. President Barack Obama indicated he would veto legislation that would weaken his signature health law, but by November, even other Democrats' support of the tax began to erode as The Hill reported Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) were lobbying against it with their eyes on the 2016 elections.

The tax drew great support from economists and other health policy experts on the other hand, 101 of whom signed a letter arguing that the tax is an essential, albeit blunt, tool to control healthcare costs. In an op-ed in The New York Times, Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, and Bob Kocher, MD, wrote the tax could help raise an estimated $91 billion in its first eight years and repealing it would be a "big mistake."

Many employers have not yet acted on the possibility of the tax, according to information from the Kaiser Family Foundation. They are waiting on more information from the Internal Revenue Service, which is expected in 2016. But if employers start to proactively reduce employee benefits to avoid the tax, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs will increase, increasing pressure on hospitals to collect payment from patients.

"That's a direct hit," Mr. Belokrinitsky added. "If deductibles go up, the hospital bad debt expense jumps."

7. New philanthropists

Philanthropy is being hacked.

At least Sean Parker sure thinks so.

Mr. Parker, cofounder of Napster, founding president of Facebook, board member of Spotify and chairman of the Parker Foundation, wrote in The Wall Street Journal last summer that today's philanthropists are born from hacker culture: They are relatively young, idealistic individuals from the tech community.

This emerging class of geek-elite is shaking up traditional notions and expectations of giving. They are more interested in ideas than wealth, according to Mr. Parker, who considers himself one of these giving hackers.

Mr. Parker's words were echoed in part by Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner, who pledged 99 percent of her wealth last June to the Giving Pledge, a platform for donors who want to dedicate at least half of their wealth to charity. "The work of my life has been to develop software that would help keep people well and help sick people get better," Ms. Faulkner wrote in her pledge letter. She said Epic needs to remain financially secure, "But I never had any personal desire to be a wealthy billionaire living lavishly."

Tech leaders like Ms. Faulkner are funneling their wealth into healthcare-related causes. For example, Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff donated a second $100 million gift in 2014 to UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, MD, donated $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital last February. Mr. Zuckerberg also joined The Giving Pledge in December, committing 99 percent of his Facebook shares to charity.

Why should hospital and health system leaders care? This new class of givers wants to measure and track the impact of their dollars. Like any other metric, the challenge for hospitals and health systems will be to produce digestible information for philanthropists from the mountains of data they collect.

"Philanthropists are expecting not just to see their name on the hospital, but the outcomes of care... the return on the investment of the money they are giving," Mr. Belokrinitsky of PwC's Strategy& said. "When they give money, it's less about the name on a hospital wing, and it's more 'I want a dashboard that shows how my contributions are helping outcomes,' and that's pretty hard to do," Mr. Belokrinitsky added.

8. Productization of healthcare through bundled payments

Bundled payments are effectively the "productization" of healthcare. This payment methodology approaches care from a more holistic perspective, in which the entire episode is considered the product versus each individual service and treatment.

CMS' Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model takes effect April 1, 2016. The five-year model requires approximately 800 hospitals in 67 designated geographic areas to participate. These hospitals will continue to be paid under existing Medicare fee-for-service rules. However, the hospital where the hip or knee replacement surgery takes place is held accountable for the quality and costs of care from the time of the surgery through 90 days after the patient is discharged. The CCJR is a retrospective payment model, meaning once the episode of care is complete, hospitals are eligible to receive an additional payment or required to repay Medicare for a portion of the episode costs, depending on the quality of care and cost performance.

"I think [the CCJR] will work because [bundled payments] work in every other part of the economy," says Dr. Friend of BDO's Center for Healthcare Excellence & Innovation. Dr. Friend gave the example of buying a ticket for a flight. "You don't pay the pilot one price, the co-pilot another price and the flight attendants another. You're not charged for the gas. All of those costs are included in the price of your ticket."

He believes once people see this working in the mandated regions, consumers in other areas will demand it.

The productization of healthcare through bundled payments poses a challenge to hospitals because it forces all parties across the care continuum to work together, according to Dr. Friend. For instance, the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management predicts medical supplies will outpace labor as the biggest expense for hospitals and health system by 2020. The high cost of supplies across disparate manufacturers and distributors immediately threatens the success of a bundle.

In 2016, suppliers, hospital administrators, employed physicians, community physicians and post-acute care providers will need to make a concerted effort to control costs and provide the best and most highly coordinated care possible  particularly if they are operating under a bundled payment model.

9. Consumer-driven competition

With the increasing popularity of high-deductible health plans and more readily available information on outcomes and prices, healthcare is becoming an industry in which consumers shop for care. This makes it critical for hospitals and health systems to become more competitive to maintain market share.

Consumerism creates opportunities and challenges for healthcare provider organizations. Survey findings from McKinsey & Company suggests that, for hospitals, just performing better than their current healthcare competitors will not suffice. Customer expectations are being set by non-healthcare businesses, and meeting those expectations is likely to be critical to ensure satisfaction and loyalty.

Consumerism could create a fluid marketplace where hospitals can more easily win or lose market share, says Rob Lazerow, practice manager for The Advisory Board Company. In the context of a more competitive marketplace, hospitals are also vulnerable, as "more disruptive innovatorsare building new business models around experience or service and offering products where there are gaps in the market," says Mr. Lazerow.

Success in a consumer-driven market challenges hospital leaders' conventional wisdom. "Competing effectively on consumer experience means being able to think from consumers' perspective and understand what they expect from the delivery system," says Mr. Lazerow.

Hospital and health system CFOs play an integral role in the change, specifically in preparing their organizations' revenue cycle.

"As more and more patients have a financial stake in what they owe for their care, organizations have to reorient the way they operate toward those patients who have questions about, 'How much will I owe, when will I owe it and are you the best balance of cost with value for my care?'" says Jim Lazarus, managing director of strategy and innovation with The Advisory Board Company's revenue cycle division. This is sometimes expressed as the emergence of "the patient revenue cycle," he says.

10. Sealing the revenue cycle

Research from The Advisory Board Company shows healthcare organizations leave 2 to 5 percent of their net patient revenue on the table because of inefficiencies such as operational silos between their revenue cycle functions and the inability to gather actionable insights from the large quantity of financial data.

Patients experience revenue cycle inefficiency firsthand when they are asked for the same information multiple times from the time they schedule care through the final payment of their bill. On many occasions, patient information is not shared from one arm of the enterprise to the other, or older, inefficient tools don't make the information readily available or actionable for hospital staff, says Mr. Lazarus of The Advisory Board Company's revenue cycle solutions division.

In addition to frustrating patients, these inefficiencies have a significant financial toll for the average 300-bed hospital, that's over $10 million a year in lost revenue at minimum, according to Mr. Lazarus. That money could instead go toward clinical operations or population health initiatives.

"Everyone recognizes that they're leaving money on the table due to inefficiency," he says. "But 2016 is the year we have to close this revenue gap. Otherwise organizations will really struggle to find the funds they need to take on their pressing long-term challenges [of population health and value-based care]."



New technology solutions can take data from the back-end, or their business office, about how patients interact with the organization and how much patients are able to afford, and bring it to the front so hospital staff know this information before the patient comes in. This allows organizations to be strategic in how they deploy staff to work with patients on their financial obligations, and ultimately improve financial performance while allowing patients to stay focused on their clinical care rather than administrative tasks.

Ultimately, organizational changes in how health systems handle their revenue cycle will improve patient care, Mr. Lazarus contends. By connecting patient intake services with the back end, hospitals will create seamless flow of data that will improve the patient care experience, such as reducing  and ideally eliminating  the number of times a patient is asked the same question.
CMS has approved California's Medicaid waiver request, allowing the state to continue modification plans to the Medi-Cal system, according to a CIV source report.

Included in the waiver are various federal funding approvals, including $3.7 billion in performance incentives for public hospitals; $1.5 billion over five years for a Whole Person Care pilot program; $1.4 billion for the Global Payment program, and unspecified funding for dental care reform.

Under the waiver, California becomes one of a handful of states with access to federal funding for the care of uninsured individuals who cannot pay their hospital bills.

Altogether, the federal government will provide some $6.2 billion in program support to the state.

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Missouri hospital to close this month as BJC consolidates services
St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare will close Parkland Health Center-Weber Road in Farmington, Mo., which was formerly named Mineral Area Regional Medical Center, later this month, according to the Daily Journal.

BJC previously said it planned to close the hospital no later than Jan. 31, and now BJC has decided to cease operations at the facility effective Jan. 19 at 7 a.m. The hospital will not admit patients after Friday.

Most clinical services have already been relocated to another Parkland Health hospital on Liberty Street in Farmington. Parkland Health President Tom Karl said a space adjacent to the emergency department at the Liberty Street location is being renovated to accommodate additional patients, according to the report.

"It is important for us to acknowledge the emotion that some may experience around the closure of the hospital," said Mr. Karl, according to the report. "We sincerely recognize the many lives that were touched by the dedicated care givers and we fully intend to honor the heritage of the former Mineral Area Regional Medical Center."

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President Obama has taken executive action on gun control. On Monday, the White House released a fact sheet laying out the plan to reduce gun violence in the United States. Amongst the many actions to be taken is an update to how HIPAA regulates covered entities and the reporting of mental health issues.

A part of the executive plan on gun control focuses on removing legal barriers preventing states from reporting information to National Instant Criminal Background Check System. This element of the plan specifically addresses information on individuals prohibited by federal law from owning firearms due to mental health reasons.

Some officials raised concerns related to HIPAA and the possibility the privacy law would prohibit reporting on mental health issues, according to the fact sheet. HHS addressed this concern and released a final rule "permitting certain HIPAA covered entities to provide to the NICS limited demographic and other necessary information about these individuals."

The final rule will go into effect next month.

Click here to view HHS' final rule.
David Koontz has been named CEO of St. Francis Hospital in Columbus, Ga., the 376-bed facility recently acquired by Brentwood, Tenn.-based LifePoint Health, according to a Ledger-Enquirer report.

Here are five things to know about Mr. Koontz.

1. He has been working as a transition executive for LifePoint since September.

2. In his new role, he will help hospital employees focus on the hospital's bright future rather than its troubled financial past, Mr. Koontz told the Ledger-Enquirer.

3. Mr. Koontz previously was a healthcare consultant for various community health systems, national hospital corporations and international clients, according to the report. Before that, he was senior vice president of strategy and business development at Houston-based CHI St. Luke's Health.

4. Mr. Koontz earned a master's degree in business administration and a master's degree in public health and health system management from New Orleans-based Tulane University.

5. He is a certified management accountant.
By their own admission, physicians and nurses drink more coffee than engineers, teachers, scientists, machine operators and government workers. Nearly half of Americans admit to feeling less productive without it, and existing literature reflects that clinicians aren't drinking coffee for the taste, but for its stimulant properties. Some hospitals around the world, such as Queensland Health in Australia, suggest staff use coffee as a tool to stay alert on the job. Queensland even suggests a recommended dosage: 400 mg per day  equivalent to about six cups of coffee. But are most healthcare workers drinking that much?

Researchers attempted to answer this question by looking at one full year's worth of purchasing habits at a large teaching hospital in Switzerland. They analyzed the coffee purchasing habits of 766 medical professionals and found that 84 percent of them purchased coffee in a hospital cafeteria at least one time in 2014, and overall they consumed 70,772 cups. The study, aptly titled "Black Medicine," is published in the British Medical Journal.

Orthopedic surgeons drank the most coffee, followed by radiologists, general surgeons, neurosurgeons, neurologists, internists, gynecologists and anesthetists, according to the paper. Other findings included men drink more coffee than women and older clinicians were more likely to consume more than younger clinicians. The study also looked at generosity when it came to purchasing coffee and found older coffee buyers were more likely to buy a round for their colleagues.

The paper notes the health effects of coffee are up for debate and the results may not be applicable to all institutions and countries. According to 2014 data, the U.S. comes in at No. 16 on a list of nations that consume the most coffee and Switzerland comes in at No. 14, only two notches apart.

This post was updated Jan. 4, 2016 at 1:00 p.m.
Western New York launched a collaborative Jan. 1 to support Alzheimer's caregivers. Dubbed the Alzheimer's Disease Caregiver Support Initiative, the collaborative is funded by a five year, $7.5 million state grant and will be led by Catholic Charities of Buffalo (N.Y.), according to Buffalo Business First.

The program  which will provide education resources, support groups, respite services, care consultations and family consultations  is meant to help ease the emotional and financial burdens of family members who provide billions of hours of unpaid care to those with Alzheimer's and dementia, according to the report.

Catholic Charities is partnering with the Alzheimer's Association, Western New York chapter on the initiative, which also includes the following agencies:

Erie County Department of Senior Services

Allegany County Office for the Aging

Cattaraugus County Department of Aging

Chautauqua County Office for the Aging

Genesee County Office for the Aging

Niagara County Office for the Aging

Wyoming County Office for the Aging

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Neptune, N.J.-based Meridian Health has completed its merger with Raritan Bay Medical Center  a two-hospital system based in Perth Amboy, N.J.

Here are five things to know about the transaction.

1. The merger has received regulatory approval, and the boards of trustees of the two organizations approved the deal in April.

2. With the addition of Raritan Bay's 338-bed hospital in Perth Amboy, and its 113-bed hospital in Old Bridge, N.J., Meridian's network now includes eight hospitals.

3. Meridian will now serve a population of about 1.5 million residents, and the system will employ about 15,000 workers.

4. Through the merger, Meridian and Raritan Bay hope to improve clinical quality, decrease costs through shared efficiencies and purchasing opportunities and provide new academic and research opportunities for physicians, nurses and clinicians.

5. "We are very excited to welcome the trustees, physicians, nurses, team members and volunteers of Raritan Bay Medical Center to the Meridian team," said John K. Lloyd, president of Meridian Health. "The merger of Raritan Bay with Meridian will better position our organizations for the future, with continued growth of outstanding care throughout Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Middlesex counties."

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Baylor Scott & White Health and Tenet Healthcare, both based in Dallas, have completed a joint venture to own five Texas hospitals  a deal aimed at improving population health.

Through the joint venture, the organizations will co-own the following five hospitals:

Centennial Medical Center (Frisco)

Doctors Hospital at White Rock Lake (Dallas)

Lake Pointe Medical Center (Rowlett)

Texas Regional Medical Center at Sunnyvale (Texas)

Baylor Scott & White Medical Center  Garland (Texas)

All of the hospitals will have Baylor Scott & White Health branding as early as this spring. Additionally, physicians, advanced practice providers and other employees of Tenet's North Texas physician group will transition to Baylor Scott & White Health's physician group HealthTexas Provider Network.

"We have already made meaningful progress in advancing population health through our physicians' participation in the Baylor Scott & White Quality Alliance, a leading local accountable care organization, and the completion of this joint venture is an important next step in coordinating top-quality, value-based care in North Texas," said Tenet Chairman and CEO Trevor Fetter.

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Hovik Simitian, the former owner and operator of three medical clinics in Los Angeles, has been sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for his involvement in a massive kickback scheme, according to the Department of Justice.

Mr. Simitian owned and operated the following clinics in Los Angeles: Columbia Medical Group, Life Care Medical Clinic and Safe Health Medical Clinic.

In August, Mr. Simitian pleaded guilty to submitting more than $4.5 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare. He admitted that from February 2010 through June 2014, he and his co-conspirators paid cash kickbacks to patient recruiters who brought Medicare beneficiaries to the clinics. In addition, Mr. Simitian admitted he and his co-conspirators billed Medicare for lab tests and other services that either were not medically necessary or were not actually provided to the Medicare beneficiaries.

Along with his prison sentence, Mr. Simitian was ordered to pay nearly $1.7 million in restitution to Medicare  the amount the government insurer paid out on the fraudulent claims he submitted.

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Singing River Health System has agreed to pay $156 million to settle multiple lawsuits alleging the Pascagoula, Miss.-based health system failed to make annual required contributions into a retirement fund, according to a gulflive.com report.

The legal battle over the health system's failed pension plan began in 2014 after health system officials announced the pension plan would be frozen and eventually liquidated. One class-action lawsuit, filed by five current and former SRHS employees, alleged the health system breached its contract with pension plan members because alternatives existed to shore up the plan. SRHS retirees also sued the health system in federal court. The class-action complaint alleged SRHS, current and former members of its board of trustees and administrators breached their contracts with pension plan members and their fiduciary duties and committed fraud.

Under the agreement, SRHS will pay $149 million into the pension fund over the next 35 years. Jim Reeves, a lawyer who represents a group of the retirees in their litigation against SRHS, said the agreement ensures retirees will receive 100 percent of the pension payments owed, according to the report.

In addition to the pension fund payment, SRHS agreed to pay attorneys fees up to $6.45 million and $125,000 in legal expenses.

The agreement will settle the federal class-action lawsuits, as well as some state court cases that were filed concerning the pension plan.

Kelly Sessoms, a lawyer for SRHS, said the health system believes the settlement is "fair and reasonable for all concerned," according to the report.

The agreement has been submitted to U.S. Magistrate Louis Guirola Jr. for approval.

More articles on healthcare finance:

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Film crews captured the first birth of the year at New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Long Island Jewish Medical Center, and the footage is being used for a TV spot as part of "Look North," the first branding campaign for Great Neck, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, according to an AdWeek report.

Here are four things to know about the TV spot.

1. Moments between Austin Joseph, a boy born less than one minute after midnight on New Year's Day, and his mother were "captured in real time, inserted into the TV ad and broadcast within hours of the birth," according to J. Walter Thompson, the New York City-based international advertising agency that filmed the hospital's first birth.

2. The TV spot not only announces the arrival of Austin Joseph, but also announces the rebranding of the former North Shore-LIJ Health System as Northwell Health, according to AdWeek. The rebranding became official Jan. 1.

3. According to the report, the "Happy Birthday" ad will air on the following New York area broadcast stations including: WABC, WNBC, WCBS and WPIX. A print version of the ad will also run this week in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications.

4. While Long Island Jewish Medical Center allowed film crews to capture the hospital's first birth of the year, many other hospitals and health systems  including Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems  have scrapped the tradition of publicizing their first baby of the New Year due to patient safety and privacy concerns.

5. Click here to view the ad featuring Austin Joseph.

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Authorities are investigating an incident that occurred Jan. 4 at Kindred Hospital South Florida-Coral Gables (Fla.) in which an elderly man shot a woman and then killed himself, according to a Miami Herald report.

Detective Dan Ferrin of the Miami-Dade Police Department told the Miami Herald the man, who was in his late 80s, called a woman on his phone early Jan. 4, telling her to come to Kindred Hospital South Florida-Coral Gables. The man and woman talked calmly, according to the report, and as the woman walked away, the man took out a gun and shot the woman "several times" before then shooting himself.

According to WPLG, the woman is related to the man's girlfriend, who detectives said died at the hospital Jan. 3. Detectives said the man apparently was upset over the woman's family changing the status of her will, and asked the woman to come to the hospital.

The woman, whose name was not released, was taken to Miami-based Jackson Memorial Hospital and is expected to survive, Detective Ferrin told the Miami Herald. The man died.

Charles Doten, CEO of Kindred Hospital South Florida-Coral Gables, released a statement following the incident, calling the situation "very sad and unfortunate," according to the Miami Herald.

"A family dispute occurred in our lobby away from patient rooms," Mr. Doten said, according to the Miami Herald. "Patient care was not impacted at any time. Upon learning of the altercation, we immediately contacted the police. We are fully cooperating with the authorities in the ongoing investigation."

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Bowie Memorial board signs off on hospital sale: 5 things to know

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Police violence and police-related deaths have dominated news reports in the U.S. over the last year. Now, researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are arguing data on these deaths should be made as available as data on other public health issues.

The researchers laid out their case in an essay published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

"Although deaths of police officers are well-documented, no reliable official U.S. data exist on the number of persons killed by the police, in part because of long-standing and well-documented resistance of police departments to making these data public," wrote the researchers.

They make the argument that because these events result in deaths and affect the well-being of families and communities, the data regarding law enforcement-related deaths constitute public health, not just criminal justice.

"We propose that law enforcement-related deaths be treated as a notifiable condition, which would allow public health departments to report these data in real-time, at the local as well as national level, thereby providing data needed to understand and prevent the problem," concluded the researchers.

Already, some healthcare organizations are using this kind of data as part of their population health efforts. For instance, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago created Strengthening Chicago's Youth to address the violence that plagues the community. SCY promotes data-driven approaches to prevent violence through multi-sector collaboration, modeled on the approach Lurie Children's takes to issues such as childhood obesity and injury prevention.

"Law enforcement involvement is critical in preventing violence, but pervasive mistrust between police and community residents limits their ability to be effective collaborators," Rebecca Levin, director of SCY, told Becker's Hospital Review. "SCY recommends that police-related deaths be addressed using the same public health approach we apply to all forms of violence  use data to better understand the problem, examine the underlying factors that contribute to the problem, develop and test interventions, and assure widespread adoption through policy and systems change."

This story was updated at 2:00 p.m. CST to include Ms. Levin's comment on police-related deaths and SCY.

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A 70-year-old man who contracted a fungal infection after he underwent a double lung transplant at UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh is suing the hospital for negligence, claiming the infection was tied to a mold outbreak at the facility, according to a Tribune-Review report.

The patient, Che DuVall, underwent the procedure at UPMC Presbyterian Aug. 1 and was diagnosed with a fungal infection Sept. 3, just days before the hospital closed its cardiothoracic intensive care unit, the Tribune-Review reports.

Mr. DuVall and his wife have since filed a lawsuit in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. Mr. DuVall's lawyers argue hospital employees "carelessly and recklessly housed him in a room in the hospital's cardiothoracic intensive care unit that made him more susceptible to a mold infection," according to the report. They claim Mr. DuVall's room had a negative pressure air flow system that endangered his health because he was immunosuppressed.

Federal investigators trying to identify the source of mold have yet to produce any leads, according to a statement from the CDC in late December.

To read Mr. DuVall's full lawsuit, click here.

More articles on hospital mold and patient safety:

Top 10 infection control stories of 2015

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Artists impression of Stargimes proposal for the former First Trust building

A 20m building earmarked to attract a major financial firm with 350 new jobs is now in serious doubt, after an independent report has suggested it should not go ahead.

French firm Stargime is planning to build a modern extension on to the former First Trust Bank building - designed by Queen's University architect Sir Charles Lanyon - at Queen's Square in the heart of the city.

That could involve adding a major 80,000 sq ft office building to the existing structure - much of which is listed and dates back to the 1850s. But a third-party report commissioned for Belfast City Council raises serious concerns over the "considerable disadvantages of the impact on both the listed building and the setting in the square".

And it suggests the development should not be put forward for approval. It's raised concerns over the impact it could have on the original 1850s building.

That could mean the city potentially losing out on a multi-million pound investment from a major international business, with which the site's owner Stargime has said it is in "an advanced stage of negotiations".

In its design statement, planners say that could be worth over 400m to the Northern Ireland economy over a 15-year period.

It could also add more than 150 construction jobs during its build.

The office development received a number of letters of objection and concerns.

Those voicing concerns included the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Ulster Architectural Heritage Society and the Belfast Civic Trust.

It comes after a report from Invest NI warned Northern Ireland could lose out on attracting crucial foreign direct investment due to a lack of prime office space.

And aside from Invest NI concerns, a number of reports from commercial property firms have cited a severe lack of top-end office space as a major concern.

Richard Bowman of Strategic Planning - the planners behind the proposed Queen's Square development - remains positive about the office building.

"Officials are generally favourable of a scheme of this nature on the site," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

"The council have to weigh up what they are hearing from us, consultations and the strong economic argument."

The next step will see Belfast City Council planners decide whether to put forward the development for approval.

But the report's comments "don't send a good message" for developers, said Eamonn Murphy of Murphy Chartered Surveyors.

"I don't see why it would be refused ... it doesn't send out a good message for developers," he said.

The developer of the Queen's Square building, which sits near the Albert Clock, said Belfast has "no other significant sites" with "potential to provide 70,000 sq ft of Grade A office space by 2017".

And it said the development is "consistent with the Northern Ireland Executive's economic and regional development strategies" as it offers "the potential to attract significant inward investment".

It said the new extension would "sit beside and above the existing bank building, creating a bold statement of a modern office grounded with historic character".

It would be higher than most other developments in the area, at around 30m tall at its highest point.
Man who jumped through glass door while on acid, meth sentenced to treatment program

Court sentences man to treatment program for downtown stabbing

Woman ordered to alcohol treatment after 4th DUI

Seeing those three headlines in the Dec. 30 Billings Gazette gave readers an indication of how commonly criminal offenders are drug addicts. What really happens after a felony offender is "sentenced" to treatment?

First of all, in most cases, including the three reported on Dec. 30, the judge doesn't actually sentence the convicted to a particular program. Judge Gregory Todd sentenced these three individuals to a certain number of years under the supervision of the Montana Department of Corrections and recommended particular programs.

Generally, the DOC will assess the offenders to determine what placement (i.e prison, treatment or community corrections) is most appropriate for their crime and potential rehabilitation. The assessment includes evaluation for mental illness and chemical dependency.

The DOC has increased availability of chemical dependency treatment for offenders over the past decade. The department now has seven treatment programs, all privately contracted. However, the capacity is still lower than the needs of several thousand chemically dependent people in the system.

NEXUS in Lewistown

When DOC determines that an offender would benefit from one of its treatment programs, there's usually a wait to get in. The wait is often 2 to 3 months for NEXUS, the program Todd recommended for the stabber and the glass-crashing burglar. NEXUS is a 9-month treatment program for up to 82 men in Lewistown. A similar program called Elkhorn serves up to 42 women in Boulder.

NEXUS and Elkhorn are geared toward offenders addicted to methamphetamine, cocaine or other stimulants.

After completing intensive treatment, graduates usually are placed in a prerelease center for 200 days. Even 15 months of staying clean doesn't necessarily mean the addict is "cured." Staying in recovery requires a lifelong commitment to maintain a drug-free lifestyle.

In Montana, all felony DUI and vehicular homicide offenders are supposed to complete the six-month WATCh treatment, although some offenders have managed to avoid the treatment with trial delays and extended jail time. Once designated for the program, offenders typically have a four to six-week wait for admission.

The first three DUI offenses are misdemeanors under Montana law, so those sent to WATCh already have four or more.

WATCh for felony DUI

WATCh West at Warm Springs has a capacity of 115 men, while WATCh East in Glendive serves 50 offenders, including men and women. Both take six months and (like other DOC treatment programs) keep the participants locked up. WATCh has reported that the majority of its graduates don't reoffend. That's remarkable, considering they all were repeat offenders.

Some WATCh graduates are referred for further supervision to DUI treatment courts, such as those led by Yellowstone County District Judge Mary Jane Knisely and Billings Municipal Judge Sheila Kolar.

Graduates of WATCh and other DOC treatment programs are supervised by the probation and parole division after they return to the community. The state has a very limited number of probation and parole officers, so each usually must supervise 80 or more offenders.

A November report to the Legislature's Commission on Sentencing stated that Montanas prison population exceeds the states facilities capacity. The commission must address the all-too-common connection between crime and addiction in recommendations to the 2017 session.

DOC treatment programs are based on a therapeutic community model that the National Institute on Drug Abuse has found to be effective in reducing recidivism. In treatment, offenders are assigned to groups in which the conduct of one member affects all. A DOC description of the programs says they emphasize to offenders that "there are others who are also suffering consequences of their individual actions  their families who are now living without a father, son, mother, daughter, etc.; the employer who is having to fill a position, and the taxpayers who are helping to pay for their treatment."

When more offenders learn that lesson, fewer will be in Montana's corrections system.
Stephen McCully, president of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Improved political and economic conditions mean the time is now right for economic growth in Northern Ireland, it has been claimed.

The Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry said there was "real belief" that there was reason to be positive about 2016.

President Stephen McCully said November's Fresh Start political agreement provided "the prospect for the kind of political stability required to foster economic growth". And he said the "date and rate" for corporation would help attract "new high-end foreign investment".

But he said corporation tax alone was not enough to attract investment and said Invest NI should be funded so that it could fully market Northern Ireland's enhanced prospects following devolution of corporation tax.

And he insisted infrastructure must not be overlooked.

"Demand for Grade A office and industrial space is likely to intensify and infrastructure investment in transport hubs, airport access and better and faster links to Dublin must also become a priority," he said.

"Also, given the competition for labour in certain key sectors and occupations like ICT and engineering, shortages are likely to appear relatively quickly in Northern Ireland."

Investment in roads and public transport was crucial as currently much infrastructure was "sub-optimal".

Priorities for members included sorting out the bottleneck of the York Street interchange, as well as projects such as the A5 and A6.

"We hope 2016 is the year that such developments progress," Mr McCully said.

He said the Chamber looked forward to working with a new Department of the Economy, which would incorporate the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) as well as the Department for Employment and Learning (DEL).

But he warned that student numbers must not be cut.

"We need to increase the size of our workforce to meet the demands of many industries and that means that 2016 is certainly not the time to reduce the number of students in our universities. To attract quality overseas investment we have to be able to offer quality employees in the right quantity."

And he said the Chamber was "cautiously optimistic".

He added: "Our series of quarterly economic surveys in 2015 showed that our members had a determination to grow and succeed but were frustrated by the stalled political process.

"These conditions will be better in 2016 and that allows for a better context for growth."

The president praised the leadership of Chamber chief executive Ann McGregor and said it would "continue to drive forward Northern Ireland plc".
Ryanair looks set to announce its return to Belfast this week  five years after the budget carrier pulled out of the city.

It ceased flights from Belfast City Airport in 2010 following delays to a planned runway extension. It wanted a longer runway so that it could operate flights to a number of European destinations.

Speculation about the move has been growing since new take-off and landing slots became available at London's Gatwick Airport.

But on Thursday the airline is expected it will announce it's setting up a new hub at Belfast International Airport.

It comes after the Belfast Telegraph revealed the airline was making grand return to the city, after five years away.

Ryanair looks set to begin flying to London's Gatwick airport, with around half a dozen other destinations understood to be on the cards.

In November, industry sources said there's a "strong likelihood" that Ryanair will secure at least some of the Aer Lingus slots and will run a Gatwick service from Belfast International, in competition with easyJet on that route.

A Ryanair spokesman said: "As we have stated, should we secure workable Belfast-Gatwick slots, then we will launch a high frequency service, but we have had no confirmation to date."

British Airways owner, IAG, has been forced to give up the lucrative slots following its takeover of Aer Lingus, and Ryanair has been trying to acquire them, bidding against other airlines.
Our first ever Year of Food and Drink is now up and running. And it's going to be an immensely exciting and significant 12 months in Northern Ireland, and indeed further afield as we celebrate our fantastic food and drink and the people and companies behind the products. They are increasingly being recognised here and abroad as being outstandingly tasty, wholesome and, of course, safe.

The year will showcase the best of local food and drink and should have significant benefits in consumer awareness and sales. Showcasing the breadth and quality of what's readily available in Northern Ireland is what our Year of Food and Drink is all about.

We want to tell people here and abroad about the products, the enterprising and creative people behind them, and also to encourage and challenge consumers to opt for local food and drink. Retailers will be running promotions highlighting local products. There will be a host of other initiatives designed to engage consumers.

We are working with our cadre of talented chefs to harness the products to develop Northern Ireland's growing reputation as a global centre of original dishes that will also increase our appeal to tourists and other visitors.

As well as boosting sales of artisan food and drink in Northern Ireland, the campaign will seek to assist smaller businesses in particular to explore sales abroad and especially in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, which are still our most important export markets.

A substantial rise in business to these two huge markets could have a profound impact on the local economy and especially in rural communities.

Each month has a dedicated theme - breakfast is the theme for January. In addition, there will be several major events announced over the next few weeks. For instance, the Great Taste judging panel will be here in May to sample the best that we have to offer.

We are already working on our hugely popular Food and Drink Pavilion at the RUAS show at Balmoral Park, which is going to bigger and better than ever. Meanwhile, the unique Taste of Ulster artisan shop is open at Belfast International Airport and doing great business.
Premium

Margaret Canning Opinion Conservatives have gone back to traditional territory with a mini-budget that just might cost the party the next election

Many of the measures in Kwasi Kwartengs first big statement as Chancellor had been trailed in advance  changes to stamp duty, the cancellation of both the rise in National Insurance and the rise in corporation tax, and bringing forward a cut in the basic rate of income tax to 19 pence.
Some four million people watched Downton Abbey's Christmas special in the week following its broadcast - the biggest "catch-up" audience for any UK TV programme on record.

The figure means Downton's festive farewell was enjoyed by a total of 10.92 million people, enough to make it one of the top 40 most-watched programmes of 2015.

It is also the second-highest audience for any Downton Abbey Christmas special, and a big jump on last year's figure of 7.66 million.

Other programmes did less well, however, with both EastEnders and Coronation Street failing to get enough of a boost from catch-up audiences to jump up the Christmas Day chart. The new figures have been published by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (Barb).

They show that while ITV's Downton Abbey was the most-watched show on Christmas Day, BBC1 dominated the rest of the top 10. Mrs Brown's Boys came second with 9.49 million viewers, down a little from 9.69 million in 2014, when it took first place.

Call The Midwife was third with 9.30 million, Stick Man was fourth with 9.28 million and Strictly Come Dancing fifth with 8.54 million.

The Queen's Christmas message was broadcast simultaneously on BBC1 and ITV and had a combined audience of 7.76 million. The rest of the top 10 was made up of Doctor Who, EastEnders, Coronation Street and the film Brave.

Doctor Who's ratings were 7.69 million: the lowest for any Christmas special to date.

Soaps underperformed by historical standards, with EastEnders managing just 7.67 million - a far cry from the 16.97 million it won on Christmas Day 2002.

Coronation Street attracted 7.28 million viewers, roughly half the number it had in 2002 (14.18 million). The figures also suggest that Christmas Day audiences overall are in long-term decline. Between 2000 and 2005, 23 programmes broadcast on December 25 were watched by at least 10 million people.

In 2006-2010, this slipped slightly to 21.

But between 2011 and 2015, the number fell to just eight programmes.
Barry Humphries - seen in character as Dame Edna Everage - criticised a "new puritanism" in television

Barry Humphries, the Australian comedian best known for playing Dame Edna Everage, has criticised the "puritanism" in television today.

Talking to the Radio Times, the 81-year-old revealed he had wanted to joke about Jeremy Corbyn during his appearance on BBC One's Michael McIntyre's Big Christmas Show.

However, he said he was told by "a nameless, faceless person at the BBC" that he would also have to say something about David Cameron.

Humphries said. "Imagine if the BBC tried to do Till Death Us Do Part again today, with Alf Garnett ranting against black people?

"It couldn't be done. There is a new puritanism that we are experiencing, a nervousness."

The award-winning star also suggested the popularity of Downton Abbey in the US is "because there are no black people in it", but it is not clear whether Humphries was joking or not.

"There's a fear of treading on people's toes and I don't like it," he said.

When asked if causing offence is important to him, the Australian admitted: "Quite important."

He added: "It's very easy to become a safe figure and tempting, too, to want to be all things to all people."

His characters, including insufferable Australian diplomat Sir Les Patterson, have become renowned for pushing the satirical envelope at times.

In 2003, Humphries lost his Vanity Fair agony aunt column for a remark made in the February issue.

He blamed it on political correctness.

As Dame Edna, he responded to a question asking if learning Spanish was a good idea with: "Why Spanish, who would you talk to - your maid?"

Many took offence, including Mexican actress Salma Hayek who penned a critical letter in response.

The popular comedian will be on more genial ground presenting Barry Humphries: Barry's Forgotten Musical Masterpieces, a new three-part series of his musical memories for BBC Radio 2.

As a boy growing up in Melbourne during the 1930s and 1940s, Humphries was captivated by the sounds and music on the family wireless.

Early musical memories include Fred Astaire, Flanagan And Allen and Judy Garland, to name a few.

In a stellar career, Humphries has enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic.

His first major break in Britain came on the stage in the role of undertaker Mr Sowerberry in the original 1960 London production of Oliver!

He recorded Sowerberry's feature number That's Your Funeral for the original London cast soundtrack album, and went on to reprise the role on Broadway in 1963.

In 1967, Humphries starred as Fagin in the Piccadilly Theatre's revival, and subsequently reprised the role in Cameron Mackintosh's award-winning staging at the London Palladium.

Mainstream television success followed in the 1970s.

"I still have a soft spot for radio," he said. "It's an intimate and flexible medium, you have to listen. Whereas the telly is kind of wallpaper."

:: Barry Humphries: Barry's Forgotten Musical Masterpieces is broadcast on January 13 at 10pm on BBC Radio 2.
John Boyega is one of the five nominees for the EE Rising Star Award

Star Wars actor John Boyega will battle it out against Fifty Shades Of Grey actress Dakota Johnson at next month's Bafta awards in the hopes of being named the next major star of the future.

Boyega, who plays one of the leads in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Johnson are two of the five nominees for the EE Rising Star Award which is presented at the ceremony.

Also in the running are Welsh actor Taron Egerton, who recently starred opposite Colin Firth in Kingsman: The Secret Service, and Brie Larson, who received critical praise for her 2015 role in Room, the film adaptation of the Emma Donoghue book. Larson also starred alongside comedian Amy Schumer in Trainwreck.

Completing the list is Hammersmith-born Bel Powley, who starred in coming-of-age drama The Diary Of A Teenage Girl in 2015.

Boyega, 23, who grew up in Peckham, made one of his early TV appearances in the BBC series Becoming Human. In 2011 he starred in cult sci-fi film Attack The Block. He is working on a new film, The Circle, alongside Hollywood A-lister Tom Hanks and Harry Potter actress Emma Watson.

He said of his nomination: "T hank you to Bafta and the jury. I'm honoured to be considered for the EE Rising Star Award in this company. What a great way to start the new year."

Johnson is the daughter of Hollywood star Melanie Griffith and Miami Vice's Don Johnson. The 26-year-old made headlines when it was announced she had landed the role of Anastasia Steele in the film adaptation of EL James's erotic book, Fifty Shades Of Grey.

She has also starred alongside Johnny Depp in Black Mass, the biopic of violent crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger.

She said: "I am thoroughly stunned and honoured to be acknowledged with an EE Rising Star Award nomination. Thank you, I am truly grateful."

Previous winners of the award include James McAvoy, Kristen Stewart, Tom Hardy and last year's winner, Jack O'Connell.

The nominees for the EE Rising Star Award - which recognises five stars who demonstrate exceptional talent and are destined to have a promising future in film - were chosen by a panel that included Broadchurch's Olivia Colman and TV personality Jonathan Ross.

It is the only award at the EE British Academy Film Awards ceremony that is voted for by the public. The winner is announced at the star-studded ceremony on February 14. Voting opens on January 6 at ee.co.uk/bafta.
Sian Blake, 43, who went missing from Erith, Kent, with her children, Zachary, eight, and Amon, four.

Murder squad detectives are searching for the boyfriend of an ex-EastEnders actress after three bodies were found by police looking for the performer and her two children.

Shocked neighbours of Sian Blake, 43, who played Frankie Pierre in the hit soap, broke down in tears after the discovery in the garden of her home in Erith, Kent, on Tuesday.

She vanished with her sons Zachary, eight, and Amon, four, in east London on December 13, and Scotland Yard is facing questions over why it took three weeks for a homicide team to be called in and the bodies found. The force's professional standards team is looking at the way the investigation was handled.

Three days after Ms Blake and her sons disappeared, police interviewed her partner, the children's father Arthur Simpson-Kent, 48, at the family home, before he also vanished.

Detective Superintendent Paul Monk said: "Sadly today we found three bodies in the back garden of their home address and as such, this is now a murder investigation.

"Formal identification has yet to take place, it's too early to speculate but of course the family has been told and this is obviously a very difficult time for them.

"Our efforts are continuing to find Arthur Simpson-Kent. Our appeal is to anyone who may know his current whereabouts or can assist us in finding him - we do need to speak to him as a matter of urgency."

Post-mortem examinations will be carried out on Wednesday on the bodies, which have yet to be formally identified.

Next-door neighbour Sam Sanni-Alashe was in tears over the discovery. He said: "I am in shock, I can't talk. It is really hurtful. I know the lady. I see the children playing at the back. I say hello all the time. We are not close but she was a very happy woman.

"This is a disaster and it is awful for the community. I can see everything in the garden but these last few days I have chosen not to look. When my son finds out, he will be terrified."

Ms Blake had motor neurone disease - a fatal, rapidly progressing disease that affects the brain and spinal cord - and was reportedly looking "very frail" before she vanished.

She and her children were last seen in Waltham Forest, east London, on December 13, and her silver-beige Renault Scenic was found in Calvert Avenue in Bethnal Green, east London, on January 3, but it is not known who parked it there.

Another neighbour, Hannah Cutting, 18, said: "I would see the kids playing at the window, then we were worried when police were there 24/7.

"It's awful just to think that something can happen on your doorstep and you see people and you have no idea what's going on."

A 30-year-old woman living nearby who knew Ms Blake tearfully said: "She was a lovely, caring lady and we didn't know anything about her being in EastEnders. She was just the sign-language tutor with her two boys.

"I just feel really upset because I imagine that house and I just see those boys playing about and getting in the car. I was hoping she was just hiding away to have her last Christmas.

"I knew she was ill but we didn't know with what. I wish I had been a better neighbour. I'm devastated."

A family member reported Ms Blake and her children missing on December 16, and two days later a missing persons inquiry was launched, but not classed as high risk.

The same day, December 18, officers went back to the Erith home, and forced their way in when there was no answer at the property. Scotland Yard could not provide details of how many other times police had searched or visited the house.

The investigation was classed as high risk at some point after Christmas, and on Monday the murder squad took over the inquiry and the Met's professional standards team was brought in.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The Directorate of Professional Standards was informed on January 4 and is working with the investigation team to fully understand the timeline of police interaction with the family."

Previously an unknown actress, Ms Blake's big break came when she was introduced as soul singer Frankie in EastEnders in June 1996 by series producer Jane Harris.

Her storylines saw her character frequently pursuing attached men and breaking up the marriage of Alan and Carol Jackson, played by Howard Antony and Lindsey Coulson.

According to IMDB, Ms Blake was on the show for 56 episodes, reportedly quitting in 1997 because of hostility from viewers towards her manipulative character.

Her contemporaries on the BBC soap included Patsy Palmer and Dean Gaffney - who played Alan's stepchildren Bianca and Robbie - as well as Michael French (David Wicks) and Sylvester Williams (Mick McFarlane).

Ms Blake also appeared in episodes of The Bill, Casualty, Doctors and Skins, and was the voice of Yugiri in 2015 video game Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward.
CHEYENNE  State lawmakers have not received a pay raise in more than a decade.

And it likely will stay that way for at least another year.

Top lawmakers on the Legislatures Management Council decided Monday not to sponsor a bill for the upcoming session that would have hiked pay for legislators and other state officials.

The decision came after a legislative study found that earnings for lawmakers, governors and other statewide officials varied widely among states.

But Wyomings pay for the elected positions generally ranks on the lower end when compared nationally, the report stated.

Legislators now are paid a $150 salary for each day of the session and for each day of interim committee meetings that they attend. That hasnt changed since 2005.

Legislators also get up to $109 for food and lodging for each day of work and a quarterly $750 constituent service allowance.

Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, co-chairs the Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee that was tasked with studying the issue over the past year.

Zwonitzer said the constituent service allowance, which is intended to defray the costs of attending added legislative meetings or other government functions, was one of the main sources of debate.

He said this is because legislative districts vary widely in size, from 1.68 square miles for a House district in Laramie to 12,200 square miles for a Senate district that covers much of Albany, Carbon and Sweetwater counties.

We heard a lot of discussions from legislators saying we need to do something about this, that it was unfair and that certain legislators just cant meet the financial need, he said.

Rep. John Freeman, D-Green River, is one of the 13 members of the Management Council.

He said his goal has been to not lose money as member of the citizen Legislature. But he said he is worried that others, particularly younger residents, wont seek public office because of the low pay.

If the state has such a low per diem to where you actually lose money, a person early in their career probably cant do that, he said.

But after hearing Zwonitzers report, no one on the council made a motion to sponsor legislation for the upcoming session.

The Legislature considered a proposal to hike its pay last year. A bill to raise legislators salaries from $150 to $175 per day passed the Senate but was defeated in the House.

The proposal wouldnt have gone into effect until 2019 since the state Constitution prohibits lawmakers from raising their own salaries until current members terms expire.

But this would have meant that their total pay  not counting their per diem  for 2015s 37-day session would have gone up from $5,500 to $6,475.

This wouldve cost the state $230,000 per year.

It is still possible for an individual lawmaker to sponsor a bill for this years session, which begins Feb. 8.

But controversial proposals that dont have the backing of a committee typically face steep odds during budget sessions. Thats because non-budget bills must pass a two-thirds majority vote just to be introduced.
A hospital patient who flung chairs about and ripped out a computer mouse has avoided being sent to jail.

Gary Byrne was told his behaviour in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast "crossed the custody threshold".

But based on the 29-year-old's troubled background a judge instead imposed a probation order and community service.

Byrne, of Hawtree Park in Lisburn, Co Antrim, pleaded guilty to criminal damage and disorderly behaviour charges.

Belfast Magistrates' Court heard he attended the Royal on October 2 last year to seek medical attention for his knee.

After asking to see the mental health team he started shouting abuse at staff and throwing chairs about.

Prosecutors said Byrne continued to be aggressive, ripping out a computer mouse and damaging a usb port.

Defence counsel Michael Boyd accepted his client's actions put him at risk of being sent to jail.

"He's totally ashamed of his behaviour, it's utterly unacceptable and he wants to apologise to hospital staff and the court," the barrister said.

Mr Boyd described how a "troubled, chaotic" childhood had contributed to Byrne's mental health issues.

Deciding against a prison sentence, Judge King told the defendant: "It's quite clear there are issues in your background that trigger your behaviour."

He ordered him to serve 75 hours community service alongside 12 months probation.
A man has appeared in court charged with kidnapping a woman and trespassing with intent to commit rape.

Gareth Robert McClurg, 23, allegedly took or carried away a woman from a location in Belfast against her will.

A second charge against him involves trespassing on premises in the city with the intention of committing a sexual offence, namely rape.

Both alleged offences were committed in August last year.

McClurg, previously of of Tower Street in Belfast, made no comment as the charges were put to him at Belfast Magistrates' Court today.

No further details were disclosed during his brief appearance.

Defence counsel Richard McConkey confirmed his client was not seeking bail.

District Judge Peter King remanded McClurg back into custody to appear again by video-link next month.
Pastor James McConnell outside court with his wife Margaret during his trial in December

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 5th January 2016 Pastor James McConnell arrives at Langanside courts in Belfast to hear the judgement on the case which was taken against him regarding comments he made in one of his sermons. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 5th January 2016 Pastor James McConnell arrives at Langanside courts in Belfast to hear the judgement on the case which was taken against him regarding comments he made in one of his sermons. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 5th January 2016 Pastor James McConnell arrives at Langanside courts in Belfast to hear the judgement on the case which was taken against him regarding comments he made in one of his sermons. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye

Pastor James McConnell today declared that justice had been done after he was cleared of charges linked to an anti-Islamic sermon.

The evangelical preacher walked free from court after being acquitted of both counts by a judge in Belfast.

Outside court he said: I am very happy that there is liberty to preach the gospel.

<< Scroll down for PPS statement on the verdict>>

The 78-year-old had been accused of two offences linked to an address delivered at Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in May 2014.

A judge said that while he considered the remarks offensive, he did not consider them "grossly" offensive under the law.

District judge Liam McNally said: "The courts need to be very careful not to criticise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive.

"It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances.

"Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges."

There was applause at Belfast Magistrates Court as the verdict was delivered.

Pastor McConnell smiled before walking over to shake hands with his defence lawyers.

Outside court, a large crowd sang hymns as he emerged.

Pastor McConnell said justice had been done.

His solicitor Joe Rice added: You can only expect justice in the next world  on this occasion the law and justice have come together.

Pastor McConnell said that while he would repeat his message in the future, he would word his comments differently because he was conscious he might hurt ordinary Muslims.

He said his only regret was the response from the Muslim community that he was "out to hurt them".

"There was no way I was out to hurt them - I wouldn't hurt a hair on their head", he said.

"But what I am against is their theology and what they believe in.

"If there are Muslims out there, I want to assure them I love them and, if they need help, I am there to help them, but their theology and their beliefs I am totally against them."

He added: "I would do it again but I would word it differently because I would be conscious I was hurting innocent Muslims, I would be conscious I was hurting Muslims who have come here to work hard and are doing their best - there's no way I would hurt those people, but I would do it again, yes."

The pastor said he did not realise how far his sermon would travel.

"As far as I was concerned I was preaching to my own people, I was preaching in my own church - I didn't realise it would go out there and so forth," he said.

Pastor McConnell also said he believed he had said "worse things" in other sermons that had been streamed online.

A spokeswoman for the Public Prosecution Service said the case was brought because of the "characterisation by Pastor McConnell of all Muslims as potential terrorists by virtue of their faith".

In a statement it said: "The court has decided that while offensive this comment, in the context in which it was made, did not reach the grossly offensive threshold required by law for a criminal conviction.

It is clear from the judgement that the court considered Pastor McConnell had a case to answer and that the decision on whether the comment was offensive or grossly offensive was not only finely balanced but one for the court and the court alone to take.

It is not the role of the public prosecutor to usurp the function of the court. The decision to bring this prosecution was entirely consistent with the duty of the PPS to put before the court those cases in which it is considered there is a reasonable prospect of a conviction.

Pastor McConnell, from Shore Road in Newtownabbey, had faced two charges linked to the sermon delivered from the pulpit of his North Belfast church on May 18 2014.

He was charged under the Communications Act 2003.

Pastor McConnell was accused of improper use of a public electronic communications network, and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network.

In the internet-broadcast sermon the preacher described Islam as "heathen" and "satanic" and "a doctrine spawned in hell.

He also said he did not trust Muslims.

Pastor McConnell later apologised following a public outcry.

He was questioned by police at the time, however, last June it emerged he would be prosecuted.

The three-day trial took place last month.

A prosecution lawyer had argued Pastor McConnells comments were not "a slip of the tongue.

He said the pastor was "not on trial for his beliefs", but for what he said and using words that were allegedly grossly offensive.

However, a defence lawyer said the case essentially revolved around five words in an hour-long religious service.

He said the pastor was a man with an unblemished record who should be recognised for his good work in society, not convicted in court.

Judgement had been reserved until today.

REACTION

Ulster Unionist Party

Part of the price we all pay for living in a democracy is that we will hear things that we may judge offensive and that is the case in this instance, as the judge has made clear in his ruling.

People must be free to express themselves robustly, particularly in matters of faith, but we would urge the avoidance of unnecessary offence. Northern Ireland needs to be able to respect diversity whilst allowing those who hold deep religious convictions to express them within the law.

Presbyterian Church 'The right to express a point of view in a public setting, or in the public square, including the liberty to express strongly held beliefs, is one of the marks of a healthy democracy'

Dr. Norman Hamilton, Convenor of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland said: "As a church we are increasingly troubled that the state is seeking to limit freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of conscience in the interests of political correctness. It is essential that the Christian church and all Christian people are at the forefront of promoting such freedoms for the benefit of every citizen, as far as they are consistent with the building of a genuinely free and pluralist society.

At the same time, whether our outlook on life is shaped by a faith-based perspective, or none at all, for us all to live in a peaceful and cohesive democratic society, there will always be self-imposed parameters that support important freedoms such as the rights of free speech and of free assembly.

In this there is a profound tension, especially in a global and social media-driven age. The law must properly value and protect a citizens right to freedom of speech and expression, while at the same time protecting each of us from unacceptable abuse.

Pastor McConnell vows he won't pay any court fine if convicted

By Suzanne Breen

Pastor James McConnell has vowed that he won't pay any court fine if he is convicted today over controversial comments he made about Islam - a stance that could see him sent to jail.

The firebrand preacher said he remained optimistic that he would be acquitted but pledged that should he be found guilty he would refuse to pay any fine imposed by the judge.

The public gallery of Belfast Magistrates Court will be packed as Judge Liam McNally delivers his verdict today.

The pastor is charged with grossly offending Islam after branding the religion "heathen" and "Satanic" at a sermon in his Belfast Metropolitan Tabernacle church in 2014.

Last night, a defiant Pastor McConnell told the Belfast Telegraph: "If the judge imposes a fine, then I won't be paying it and I don't want anybody else to pay it on my behalf either.

"It's a matter of principle. Paying a fine would be an admission of guilt and I have said from the beginning that I am an innocent man. I know that not paying a fine means that people eventually end up in jail and I am prepared to accept that."

The 78-year-old Christian preacher said that while he didn't want to go to prison, he wouldn't be backing down. "I have said from the beginning of all this that I am willing to go to jail for my beliefs and that is still the case. I'm not going to start running scared at this late stage.

"I don't want to sit in a prison cell but I'd rather do time than pay a fine for something that I don't believe is a crime."

Pastor McConnell said that he "felt sorry" for Judge McNally.

"He is in a very tricky position. This case is a hot potato. If he finds me guilty, he will have all the evangelicals in the country against him," he said.

"If he acquits me, people will say that the case was a terrible waste of taxpayers' money. They'd be right to say that. My prosecution took 18 months and this is my seventh time in court.

"The public funds that have been used to pursue me would have been put to far better use in hospitals or schools."

The pastor said he would bear "no ill-will" towards the judge if he convicted him. "He treated me very well in the court and made many witty remarks. When I was being questioned about the Devil, he jokingly asked me if I was looking towards the prosecution as I was answering," he said.

While Pastor McConnell denounced the Public Prosecution Service's decision to charge him, he said that prosecuting counsel had treated him with "professionalism, courtesy and fairness" throughout the trial.

"The best bit for me was when they played my sermon in court," he said. "The clip with the controversial comments was only 35 seconds long but they played the full hour-and-a-half sermon. I was delighted. I don't think I converted anybody in court but at least they all had to listen to the gospel."

The pastor said he wasn't nervous as he awaited the verdict. "I am in the Lord's hands now. Those who made the decision to prosecute me may have thought I'd buckle under the pressure but I haven't, though the trial has been hard on my wife Margaret. She tries to keep it from me but I know she has found it stressful."

DUP MP Sammy Wilson, who will accompany Pastor McConnell to court today, said: "I hope the judgment will reflect common sense. There are preachers, politicians, comedians, and journalists who say things which some people may object to but that's part of a free society.

"If we start eroding people's ability to do that you will have a chill factor with individuals frightened to air their views in case they end up in the dock. I hope that is foremost in the judge's mind when he delivers his verdict."
The scene of the collision on the A2 in which 75-year-old Norma Diffley died

Norma Diffley (75) died in collision on the A2 at the Devil's Elbow

Northern Ireland's roads have claimed their first victim of 2016 after a well-known businesswoman died in a horror crash on the main Belfast-Bangor road.

The woman - named locally as fashion store co-owner Norma Diffley (75) - died in a two-vehicle collision on the A2 at the Devil's Elbow.

Three ambulances were immediately scrambled to the location, halfway between the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and Ballyrobert junction.

Mrs Diffley could not be saved, and was declared dead at the scene.

The driver of the other car involved in the crash was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast for treatment.

His injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

On Tuesday officers investigating the fatal road traffic collision arrested a 33-year-old man on suspicion of dangerous driving causing death.

He was Wednesday morning on bail pending further enquiries.

Senior investigating officer, Inspector Collins, has appealed for anyone who was travelling in the area yesterday and who witnessed the collision or who has any information to contact the Collision Investigation Unit in Sprucefield on 101.

Mrs Diffley ran a Donaghadee boutique called Re-Creations. She is survived by her two daughters Lisa Bell and Lynn Stevenson.

The second-hand designer fashion store opened in 2007 and was featured in the Belfast Telegraph in 2014.

Mrs Diffley had lived in London for 16 years and had also worked in the House of Lords as a secretary to the Clerk of Sound Archives.

She was also involved in Groomsport's Remembrance Sunday parade.

Parade organiser William Hay knew her well: "She was an extremely well-liked, well-loved lady, devoted to her family - and a strong member of Groomsport Church of Ireland.

"Both myself and the rector, Duncan Pollock, will miss 'Nornie' as we all called her, immensely."

Councillor Alan Chambers was a personal friend.

"Norma was a lovely, energetic woman who lived for her family - they were her whole life," he said.

North Down DUP MLA Gordon Dunne said: "I am deeply saddened at this tragic event which has taken place on the very busy A2 dual-carriageway between Bangor and Belfast.

"This is a real tragedy for the local area and my thoughts and prayers are with the family of this lady who has sadly passed away.

"This terrible accident is a stark reminder to all of us about the constant dangers of travelling on our roads."

The MLA said the Devil's Elbow had a long-standing reputation as a dangerous section of road.

Describing the bend as "notorious", the MLA revealed that he had made representations to the Department for Regional Development about safety on that stretch of the arterial route - and vowed to do so again.

A senior police officer last night appealed for witnesses to the crash.

The A2 was closed in both directions following the crash as police investigated the incident, bringing traffic chaos to one of Northern Ireland's busiest routes.

In 2015, 74 people died on Northern Ireland's roads - five fewer than the previous year's total of 79.
A top consultant at the Mater Hospital's Emergency Department has resigned, reigniting serious concerns over the unit's future, it can be revealed.

Dr John Gray, the clinical lead at the Mater Hospital Emergency Department, tendered his resignation by letter to the Belfast Trust before Christmas.

The Belfast Trust confirmed that it is currently advertising internally to replace the consultant's role.

Dr Gray, who had dedicated his career to the Mater, is set to leave in mid-March to work as a consultant at the Ulster Hospital A&E department for the South Eastern Trust.

It is understood the move will result in there being no full-time A&E consultant at the Mater. One part-time consultant along with locums will be employed.

A senior source at the Belfast Trust said Dr Gray had "worked tirelessly" to improve the A&E over almost a decade but had concerns over maintaining standards of care and safe levels of staffing.

"He was also frustrated at the lack of investment in the service as a whole," the source said.

"Most of the support services were being pulled away gradually. There are no paediatrics on site, or surgical cover, so they have to go to the RVH. He believed it was taking it away piece by piece."

Concerns have been voiced over the future of the Mater A&E department since November 13 last year.

Health bosses stopped children being treated at the hospital after concerns were raised over a lack of middle grade doctors and the impact on safety.

A decision was also taken to temporarily stop ambulances attending the ED from 6pm to 8am.

"I think they are trying to close the Mater A&E by stealth and I know that is what John feared. He tried his best but has had to admit defeat and walk away," the source said.

"After dedicating his career to the Belfast Mater he has to admit defeat and walk away which is very sad for the other consultants in the trust."

Last year Dr John Maxwell, clinical director of emergency medicine in Belfast, said senior doctors were being sought from Australia and across Europe to work in a Belfast emergency department as part of plans to solve the staffing crisis.

In a statement a spokeswoman for the Belfast Trust said: "Belfast Health and Social Care Trust is currently advertising internally to replace the Clinical Lead of the Emergency Department of the Mater Hospital.

"The closing date is 2pm on Friday, January 8, 2016.

"The Trust is continuously seeking to secure senior medical staff that will enhance the patient care service offered and is currently out to advert to recruit a number of doctors for the Emergency Departments in the Mater and Royal Victoria Hospitals."
The scene of the house fire at Silverhill Park, Enniskillen

A Fermanagh community has been plunged into sadness after a fire at a family home claimed a second victim.

Franklin Reid, who was in his 70s, died in hospital yesterday morning just days after his 66-year-old wife Daphne was buried following the blaze at their bungalow in Enniskillen.

Mr Reid was rushed to hospital following the inferno last Sunday.

His wife died in the fire before paramedics arrived.

Mr Reid remained in critical condition over the last week with friends and neighbours praying for his recovery. However, he died yesterday morning.

The couple, who didn't have any children, had lived in the area for 20 years and were well-known throughout the town.

DUP councillor Keith Elliott, who is a part-time firefighter, said the retired couple were popular in the Fermanagh area and the double death had left many people shocked.

He said: "Their friends and neighbours are devastated. It's a very close-knit neighbourhood.

"Daphne used to work in the local library while Franklin worked in Cathcart, a builder's merchants in the town.

"I know him from working in the yard where he used to drive a lorry. And although I knew him only through work, he was a very happy-go-lucky man.

"Every day that went past the whole community were hoping that he would make a recovery, and as the time went on we were positive, but it's terrible news.

"It's a tragic end to an awful incident. As the days went by and people talked it was like every day was a bonus and we hoped for a full recovery, but unfortunately that has not happened.

"Everyone was hopeful at Daphne's funeral, too."

Mr Reid's death came two days after the funeral of his wife at St John's Parish, Florencecourt, on Saturday, where there was a large attendance.

It is the second house fire tragedy to hit Enniskillen within a month.

On December 3 John Brazil (57) died after a blaze at his Drumbay Close home.

It is understood the fire took hold in an upstairs bedroom where his body was discovered.

SDLP councillor Patricia Rogers said: "It's not that long ago that there was another house fire and again it's going to rock the local community. It's very traumatic at this time of year." A PSNI spokeswoman said: "Police can confirm that a man aged in his 70s has died in hospital this morning. The man was admitted to hospital following a fire at a house in the Silverhill Park area in Enniskillen on Sunday, December 27.

"The fire is not being treated as suspicious."

The tragedy follows the death of a mother-of-three in south Belfast whose body was found alongside her beloved dogs on Sunday night.

Wilma Potts (51) lived in an end-of-terrace bungalow at Archdale Drive in the Belvoir estate, where her remains were found beside her Bichon Frise dogs Daisy and Bo.

It is understood the fire may have started in the kitchen. An investigation is being carried out into the cause of the tragedy.
The scene at Gilliland's farm on the Culmore Road. Picture Martin McKeown

The scene at Gilliland's farm on the Culmore Road. Picture Martin McKeown

A fire at a farmyard in Londonderry has now been fully extinguished after a three-day operation involving 45 firefighters.

By the time the Fire Service arrived at the Gilliland farm in Culmore in the early hours of Saturday morning, they were met with a blaze that was already well established.

Inside two huge sheds was around 600 tonnes of wood pellets destined to be used as fuel in eco-friendly heating systems in businesses, schools and homes across Northern Ireland.

The entire stock has been lost and a third shed containing machinery was also destroyed.

The owner, John Gilliland, who has long been hailed as a pioneer of green energy, planted 180 hectares of willow trees over a decade ago which are harvested every three years and converted to wood pellets stored inside the sheds.

Over the weekend thick smoke hung over the Lough Foyle valley making driving extremely difficult due to severely reduced visibility.

Police had also advised people living in the Culmore area to keep their windows and doors shut.

At its peak, 45 firefighters were at the scene along with six appliances, although as the weekend progressed this was reduced until the incident was finally declared over late on Monday afternoon.

Fire Commander Kevin Lynch described the three-day call-out as long and arduous.

He said: This has been a big operation for the Fire Service which began in the early hours of Saturday and continued into Monday.

During the weekend we managed to excavate 400 tonnes of burning material out of the sheds, which we then extinguished and made safe.

On Monday the remaining 200 tonnes were excavated and extinguished.

This was a dangerous operation because of the amount of material in the shed.

Although there was nothing explosive contained in the sheds, the sheds became very unstable because of the fire and we had a structural engineer on site to assist us.

We were helped greatly by the owner who brought in contractors with diggers to assist us in removing the material from the buildings.

A team of Fire Service investigators moved on to the site yesterday afternoon as soon as it was declared safe to establish the exact cause. Early indications show it was not started maliciously.
The chairman of the BMA in Northern Ireland has warned health spending is not keeping up with demand.

Dr John Woods highlighted recruitment problems in emergency medicine and emigration of doctors to other countries, partly due to working conditions.

He told public policy magazine Agenda NI: "The public want the best possible care available. Trying to deliver that with limited budgets is a big challenge.

"The health budget has not been increasing at the rate that demand has been rising, in particular increasing to meet the needs of an ageing population," he said.
A serving soldier admitted abusing a boy from a residential home run by Anglican missionaries in Northern Ireland but was never prosecuted, a public inquiry lawyer said.

The serviceman first came to Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles in 1969 and visited Manor House Children's Home near Belfast to take children on day trips and play football, his testimony to police said.

Stormont's power-sharing administration has established an independent probe which has received allegations of physical and sexual wrongdoing at the institution run by the Society for the Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics.

Christine Smith QC, counsel for the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry, said one alleged perpetrator was later interviewed by police.

"He took children on day trips, played football, and admitted having feelings for MH41 (one of the residents).

"He admitted abusing MH41 at his own home."

The alleged victim also claimed the accused's wife had sex with him.

The soldier later joined the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) in 1977.

In 2004 no prosecution was directed for the alleged early 1970s abuse, Ms Smith said.

The Society for the Irish Church Missions to the Roman Catholics was established to convert Catholics to Protestantism.

It ran Manor House Children's Home in Lisburn, Co Down, from 1927 to 1984 and had links to the Church of Ireland.

There was also claims of "sexual touching" among children at Manor House and in one case a girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by another child. He was moved to a different home.

In another case one offender was on bail for an offence at a home run by Barnardo's, when he was accused of another assault involving a Manor House resident.

Six people have made allegations to the inquiry of physical and sexual abuse.

Two of the witnesses have already given public evidence during an earlier module of the investigation concerning the transfer of child migrants to Australia.

Testimony is due to be taken from three people who resided at Manor House in the mid to late 1960s, while another was there for a year in the early 1970s.

The inquiry began hearing evidence of alleged wrongdoing at the home during public sessions in Banbridge, Co Down, on Monday.

The missionaries included Anglican evangelical clergy and laity in Ireland, Ms Smith told the inquiry panel.

Founded in the mid-1800s, bishops and archbishops were constant patrons but more recently growing ecumenism left many in the church feeling outreach to Catholics was "politically incorrect", the lawyer added. The organisation has had no involvement in provision of residential child care in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years.

The module of evidence is expected to last one week.

The HIA is considering harrowing claims of emotional, physical and sexual abuse at 22 institutions in Northern Ireland from 1922, when the state was founded, to 1995. It is chaired by retired judge Sir Anthony Hart and is also probing actions at homes run by the Catholic church and the state.

The inquiry was established by Northern Ireland's power-sharing ministerial Executive and is expected to make recommendations on how to compensate victims.

It is due to submit its report to ministers in a year's time.
Finnebrogue owner Denis Lynn with his sports car at home in Downpatrick, Co Down

The founder of a leading artisan food manufacturer has attributed his company's multi-million-pound success to the death of his father.

Denis Lynn was just 15 years old when his father, Hugh, lost his battle with cancer aged just 57 - a year younger than Mr Lynn is now.

The father-of-two has described the loss of his father at such a young age as a pivotal moment in his life, which has helped him achieve incredible success.

"My dad was my hero," he said.

Mr Lynn, who owns and runs Downpatrick-based Finnebrogue, was a pupil at Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, Co Down, when his father became ill.

"I was expelled about five months after my dad died," he said.

"Basically, I think when you go through a bereavement like that, you lose the ability to listen to people talking absolute rubbish.

"I think when the teachers started talking complete and utter nonsense, I just felt like I couldn't take it.

"It is an understatement to say it was devastating for our family when my dad became ill."

Mr Lynn subsequently moved to London where he hoped to make a living.

"I think I wanted to get away from all that Catholic and Protestant thing that was going on," he explained.

"I was going to make my fortune but I only lasted six months and then I came back, London was a lot tougher than I imagined."

Mr Lynn returned to Northern Ireland and started up his own food business in 1985.

It would go on to become Finnebrogue, which produces high quality venison and other meat products, and counts chefs Paul Rankin and Heston Blumenthal among its customers.

Its turnover this year was 55m and Mr Lynn said he hopes this will increase to more than 100m in the next three years.

The inspirational success has come despite the fact that Mr Lynn had no farming experience before he bought Finnebrogue Estate.

"I never had any cunning business plan," he continued.

"I went over to the place and it was a total and emotional decision to buy it.

"There were pheasants and rabbits running around and it was an absolutely amazing place, that was it, but buying it has done me no harm in the last 25 years.

"In fact, it was the best thing I have ever done.

"To be honest, I don't feel like I turned my life around.

"I feel like anyone who is successful in life generally didn't fit in to school, history is full of examples, look at Churchill for example.

"I feel like if I had gone on with school and gone to university, I really have no idea how my life would have turned out.

"I think university would have taught me how impossible some things are and that's something I have never learnt.

"I think that university can put you between the straight lines and sometimes you have to be outside the straight lines in order to succeed.

"One of my faults, which is also a strength, is the fact I have no idea when I am actually beaten."
Alan Black was hit 18 times and left for dead alongside the lifeless bodies of his friends near the South Armagh village of Kingsmill in 1976

The slaughter of 10 Protestant workmen in Northern Ireland exactly 40 years ago should never be forgotten, the sole survivor of the IRA attack has said.

Alan Black was hit 18 times and left for dead alongside the lifeless bodies of his friends near the South Armagh village of Kingsmill in 1976.

A new inquest has been scheduled for the spring and Mr Black, now 72, hopes it will unearth some of the uncomfortable truths surrounding the massacre which still haunts him.

He said: "It should never be allowed to be forgotten.

"I want to know is why was it done; who did it; and what did they think it would do for their cause?

"It just baffles me."

The textile factory workers were ambushed as they travelled along the Whitecross to Bessbrook road in rural south Armagh on January 5 1976 -- one of the worst years of the Troubles.

Their minibus was stopped and those on board were asked their religion.

The only Catholic on board was ordered to flee as the gunmen, who had been hidden in the hedges, opened fire on his 11 colleagues.

The 10 men who died were John Bryans, Robert Chambers, Reginald Chapman, Walter Chapman, Robert Freeburn, Joseph Lemmon, John McConville, James McWhirter, Robert Samuel Walker and Kenneth Worton.

Mr Black, a 32-year-old father of three was seriously wounded and spent months recovering in hospital.

Forty years on, he is still tormented by the cries of his workmates and a sense of survivors' guilt but is driven by a desire to get to the truth.

"It was brutal what was inflicted on us," he said. "Ten completely innocent men taken out and brutally murdered.

"This time of year, I go into countdown mode -- I look at the calendar and at the clock and think to myself 'the boys have only five days or five hours or five minutes to live', right up to the time of the ambush.

"On a nice summer's day it is like it happened to someone else in a different life but when the winter sets in and the dark nights come round it feels like it just happened yesterday.

"But, I want to see a bit of truth and justice. For the boys, but mostly for the families who are still searching for the truth."

The Kingsmill shootings happened a day after the Glenanne Gang, a notorious loyalist murder squad, gunned down six Catholics from two families during a killing spree in Co Armagh.

The IRA, which was supposed to be on ceasefire, never admitted involvement and the murders were claimed by the little-known South Armagh Republican Action Force.

However, in June 2011, the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) found that the IRA was responsible and said the workmen were targeted because of their religion.

No one has ever been convicted for the Kingsmill attack leaving relatives of those killed feeling robbed of justice and "shunned" by the authorities.

The original inquest held in 1978 lasted just 30 minutes and recorded an open verdict, adding to their distress.

In 2013 Northern Ireland's Attorney General John Larkin ordered a fresh probe. Preliminary proceedings have already begun and at least three weeks have been set aside for a new hearing in April.

Mr Black has claimed information that could come to light will show how efforts to catch the culprits were missed.

"It is my opinion that there was a cover up," he said.

"I really hope the cover up started after it happened but I am beginning to suspect they knew it was going to happen and they allowed it to happen.

"I have had a lot of time to think and it's the only thing that makes any sense.

"No one was ever convicted and they are not looking for anybody."

Meanwhile, Karen Armstrong, whose brother John McConville was among those killed, said it was time for the full truth to be told.

She said: "I always thought the worst about Kingsmill for all these years and nobody has come along to disprove that.

"A lot of people were being protected back then and they still are.

"The injustice that was inflicted on all the families was really, really awful.

"It is time that we were told what happened and who was involved. We have waited 40 years."

Mr McConville, a Christian, had hoped to become a missionary in Africa and confirmation that he had been accepted into Bible college came through a day after his murder.

Mrs Armstrong, who was 18 at the time, also hopes the 40th anniversary may prick someone's conscience.

"John was just such a good lad; a gentle fella who just brought good to people," she added. " We have all got a conscience and I have often thought how have the people who carried out the attack gone through life, looking at their own children or grandchildren, knowing what they have done?"

Ulster Unionist MLA Danny Kennedy, a longstanding supporter of the Kingsmill families, has paid tribute to their ongoing campaign for justice.

"We reach the milestone of 40 years with the hope that a fresh coroner's inquest will take place in the early part of 2016, perhaps offering a glimmer of hope to the sole survivor and remaining relatives and campaigners who have yearned for the truth to finally emerge.

"I pay tribute to the quiet dignity of Alan Black and the families - seeking justice, not revenge.

"To many, this is a time of painful memory, as indeed each day of these long 40 years has been.

"We owe it to the memory of those who were so cruelly murdered, and to those who have had to continue to live with the terrible consequences of that night, never to forget the story of Kingsmill."
Farmers' leaders are organising a series of crisis meetings across Northern Ireland to try and tackle the poor prices being paid for their produce.

The area summits, beginning next week and hosted by Ulster Farmers' Union president Ian Marshall, include Enniskillen, Armagh, Ballymena and Coleraine.

The UFU chief said as well as focusing on the supply chain, profitability and market volatility, the gatherings will discuss ideas to develop new markets.

The initiaitive comes after the Belfast Telegraph revealed the scandal of one producer being paid 8p for turnips, which then turned up in supermarkets at almost 10 times that price.

The plight of producers led to an investigation by the Assembly's agriculture committee whose chairman William Irwin has blamed intense competition between the major supermarkets for the record low prices being paid.

Mr Marshall said that while there was widespread recognition of the importance of farming and food to the local economy, there remained an urgent need to put ways to tackle price volatility at the top of the agenda.

He added the meetings will be an opportunity for the UFU leadership team to highlight a number of proposals. Mr Marshall said: "As well as focusing on the supply chain, profitability and market volatility, we also intend to take forward ideas to develop new markets, particularly outside the EU.

"We will look at alternative finance sources and the continuation of training and new capital investment.

"The meetings really are an excellent opportunity for members to speak directly with the UFU leadership team - the people who are at the forefront of discussions on agriculture at local, national and EU levels." The first meeting is in Enniskillen at the Killyhevlin Hotel next Monday, followed by Armagh in the City Hotel on Wednesday, Januay 13; Monday, January 18 at the Tullyglass Hotel, Ballymena; Wednesday, January 20 at the Silverbirch Hotel, Omagh; Monday, January 25 at the Roe Park Resort, Limavady; and Wednesday, January 27 at the La Mon Hotel, Castlereagh. All meetings start at 8pm.

As the farm prices crisis escalates, Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill accused EU Commissioner Phil Hogan of "burying his head in the sand" - and warned he may have to resign.

The Sinn Fein minister also said it was "shocking" and "disgusting" that farmers were being paid so little for produce like turnips.

"Farmers need to be paid a fair price for what they produce. Somebody getting that kind of price for what they are producing is absolutely disgusting and it should not be acceptable.

"I do not agree with the approach that the commissioner has taken. I have been critical of him and to him in person."

Responding to an Assembly question from Ulster Unionist MLA Robin Swann, she said: "I think that if the dairy industry continues with the low prices and the glut that it has, there will come a time when his position of burying his head in the sand and saying that there is no crisis will no longer be sustainable."
A park bench surrounded by floodwater as a heron preys on passing fish after Six Mile Water River burst its banks

A motorist drives through floodwater near Moneyrea, Co Down

More heavy rain is set to deluge Northern Ireland as the Met Office issued another severe weather warning for later this week.

Up to 40mm could fall within a six to nine-hour period, with a risk of flooding and disruption to transport, forecasters say.

Yellow warnings of rain - meaning 'be aware' - are in place for tomorrow evening and Thursday morning.

"An active frontal system is expected to cross Northern Ireland from the west on Wednesday night accompanied by a band of heavy rain," a Met Office spokesman said.

"There remains uncertainty in the exact timing of this frontal system, hence this warning is likely to be updated in coming days as later information becomes available."

"A band of heavy rain is likely to move across Northern Ireland from the west on Wednesday night, clearing away eastwards on Thursday morning - 15-30mm of rain is likely to fall quite widely within a six to nine-hour period, perhaps with as much as 40mm on high ground.

"With the ground already being saturated, please be aware of the risk of local flooding and possible disruption to transport."

Parts of counties Antrim and Down saw close to 20mm of rain yesterday as another front brought slow-moving downpours.

Last night Goragh Road, Newry, was closed and diversions put in place after flooding at three locations along the road.

And the A1's southbound carriageway was closed at Gowdystown between Dromore and Banbridge. A contraflow system was in place last night.

Meanwhile, Killylane near Ballyclare saw 16mm of rainfall between 6am yesterday and midday, forecasters MeteoGroup said. MeteoGroup's Andy Ratcliffe said more heavy and persistent rain is expected to arrive over the province tomorrow.

Yesterday the banks of the Six Mile Water River burst in Ballyclare and Belfast City Council warned that Roselawn Cemetery had closed because of flooding at the entrance.

Further Reading

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A number of roads remained closed across Northern Ireland due to floodwater, including many in Co Fermanagh and Co Armagh.

Water level at Belleisle in Upper Lough Erne yesterday was 157ft 7ins, which is three inches below this winter's peak and nine inches below its 2009 peak.

Drumanure Road near Derrygonnelly will remain closed for at least another week as a culvert has collapsed, while New Line Road, Rathfriland, was also closed because of collapse.

The A20 Portaferry Road near Newtownards remains closed between Finlays Road and Mount Stewart Road through undermining of the carriageway by seawater, but repairs are ongoing.

Roads round Loughgall were closed because of high water levels in the Callan River.

The Rivers Agency has warned that water levels in the River Blackwater to the west of the Callan River are expected to rise.

The Weather Channel predicted next week's temperatures would be below normal and there would be overnight frosts, ice and snow showers.
An ambulance at the Ulster Hospitals emergency department, which saw the biggest increase in cases at the weekend

If emergency departments in Northern Ireland's hospitals continue to be swamped, it could "push the health service over the edge", it has been claimed.

A spike in demand for treatment over the weekend led to an appeal for people to stay away from A&E departments if they could. The figures provided by the Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) showed the biggest increase was at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald where there was a 25% rise in emergency department patients.

At Antrim Area Hospital there was a 17% rise, while Craigavon Area Hospital faced a 15% hike.

The board said delayed discharges from wards, due to difficulty getting nursing home places or care packages, was also a factor in the high level of pressure on emergency departments at the weekend, according to senior clinicians.

In the 14-day period between December 21 to January 3, there was an increase of around 3% in the number of people attending emergency departments compared to the same period last year and around a 10% increase compared to two years ago.

Ray Rafferty, joint Unison branch secretary at the Royal Victoria Hospital, said: "It appears that the Belfast Trust has done as much as it can to oil the machine and it is just about coping.

"But our concern is that if other trusts begin to divert patients to Belfast, that puts even more pressure on the doctors and nurses on this site. That could push us over the edge. Doctors and nurses are coping incredibly well given how busy it has been."

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Calls have been made for urgent action to address the major problem of 'bed blocking' after it emerged more than 100 patients cannot be discharged as care packages cannot be organised.

It has emerged that by the end of November, 229 patients across Northern Ireland spent more than eight weeks waiting to be discharged. The Northern Trust had the highest number, with 160 people waiting over two months to be discharged and care packages implemented.

SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone, who met representatives of the Northern Trust yesterday, said he had been contacted by a number of people over the Christmas period unable to get the support they needed.

He said: "This is terrible for the patient and their family if they are fit to be discharged but aren't. The money is there but the people aren't."

A spokeswoman for the Northern Trust said the issue lies in "recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of staff to meet the increased demand.

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"The Trust has embarked on a structured programme of work in partnership with the independent providers and the regional board to address this shortfall through identifying areas of higher demand and actions which may be required to address these," she said.

Former Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said the situation was evidence of serious problems within the whole system.

"This is very poor management in play here. We do not have a severe flu circulating, or a cold, icy winter with queues at the fracture clinic. But the A&E departments in trusts cannot cope. That is bad management," he said.

"And patients unable to be discharged because care plans can't be organised is purely a revenue issue".

Janice Smyth from the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) said strong leadership is now needed.

"It is clear that workforce planning has been a disaster. There needs to be more investment in nurses and leadership to implement decisions," she said.

The RCN warned staffing problems were a issue after a survey showed that in July 2015 the private sector had 374 vacancies for full-time registered nurse posts.

"The lack of nurses right across the system is clearly affecting the flow of patients from the emergency department through to residential care and I have no doubt that the lack of community care investment is leading to patients going to A&E for treatment which is contributing to the problem now," said Ms Smyth.

A spokesperson for the Health and Social Care Board said: "The board is aware of the current challenges of providing a number of community services including domiciliary, residential and nursing care.

"In the short-term funding has been provided to ensure that sufficient capacity can be purchased, but the longer term issues of staff availability, sector stability and development require more detailed examination and resolution which the board is working closely with trusts and the department to resolve."
Evangelical preacher Pastor James McConnell was charged over a controversial sermon in which he branded Islam 'satanic'

A born again Christian preacher accused of making grossly offensive remarks about Muslims has been cleared by a court in Northern Ireland.

Pastor James McConnell, 78, from Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim, walked free from Belfast Magistrates' Court where he had faced a prosecution under the 2003 Communications Act.

Delivering his reserved judgment, District Judge Liam McNally said: "The courts need to be very careful not to criminalise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances.

"Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges."

The high profile evangelical pastor had been charged with two alleged offences - improper use of a public electronic communications network and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network - after the sermon delivered from the pulpit of his Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on May 18 2014 was streamed online.

In it he described Islam as a "doctrine spawned in hell" and said he did not trust Muslims.

Although the words upon which the charges were based were offensive, they did not reach the high threshold of being "grossly offensive".

The judge added: "He is a man with strong, passionate and sincerely held beliefs. In my view Pastor McConnell's mindset was that he was preaching to the converted in the form of his own congregation and like-minded people who were listening to his service rather than preaching to the worldwide internet.

"His passion and enthusiasm for his subject caused him to, so to speak, 'lose the run of himself'."

The comments about Islam being "heathen" and "satanic" were protected under human rights legislation.

And when considering the remarks about mistrusting Muslims, Judge McNally said he was satisfied the pastor had not set out to intentionally cause offence.

If the preacher had qualified his remarks, as he did in subsequent media interviews, he could have been spared the legal battle, the court was told.

Judge McNally said: "If he had clarified this in his sermon and set out in a clear and precise way why Sharia law was repugnant to him he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.

"In the manner in which he did express this he has, in my view characterised the followers of an entire religion in a stereotypical way.

"Indeed when he uses the word 'may' in the context of whether there are any good Muslims it leaves open the inference that that might not be exactly right and there may not be any good Muslims in Britain. Either way, he is making it crystal clear that he does not trust any Muslim."

The judgment was delivered to a packed courtroom in just over half an hour.

The distinction between offensive and grossly offensive was an important one and not easily made, the court heard.

"Context and circumstances are highly relevant and as the European Court of Human Rights observed... the right to freedom of expression includes the right to say things or express opinions that offend, shock or disturb the state or any section of the population," said Judge McNally.

As the judge concluded a crowd of about 50 Christian supporters erupted into spontaneous applause.

Throughout proceedings Mr McConnell, who was dressed in a dark grey suit with grey shirt and pink and purple coloured tie, sat alongside his wife Margaret and other families members.

He was not required to sit in the dock.

During the three day trial in December, Mr McConnell spent more than an hour in the witness box giving evidence in his defence. He said he had not intended to provoke, hurt or offend anyone but was unrepentant for preaching the Christian gospel.

He also claimed he had refused the lesser punishment of an informed warning because it would be an insult to Jesus and he did not want to be "gagged" in the future.

The prosecution had claimed it was a "straightforward" case because the words were delivered in a rehearsed sermon to an audience of 2,000 and watched by 700 online, and had been carefully chosen.

Outside court hundreds of supporters cheered as Mr McConnell emerged.

Some sang hymns as the preacher gave his reaction to the judgement.

"I am very happy," he said.

He said he would do the sermon again, though word it differently.

"The only regret I have is the response from the Muslim community - that I was out to hurt them," he said.

"There was no way I was out to hurt them - I wouldn't hurt a hair on their head.

"But what I am against is their theology and what they believe in.

"If there are Muslims out there I want to assure them I love them and, if they need help, I am there to help them, but their theology and their beliefs I am totally against them."

He added: "I would do it again but I would word it differently because I would be conscious I was hurting innocent Muslims, I would be conscious I was hurting Muslims who have come here to work hard and are doing their best - there's no way I would hurt those people, but I would do it again - yes."

The pastor said he did not realise how far his sermon would travel.

"As far as I was concerned I was preaching to my own people, I was preaching in my own church - I didn't realise it would go out there and so forth," he said.

Mr McConnell also said he believed he had said "worse things" in other sermons that had been streamed on-line.

The acquittal has been hailed as a victory for common sense by some religious and political leaders.

Peter Lynas, national director of the Evangelical Alliance Northern Ireland, said: "Until the law is changed or clear guidance is issued, there will still be concern about further prosecution. The PPS (Public Prosecution Service) need to explain why this case was brought and assure everyone that this will not happen again.

"This case contains challenges to both the state and the church. It is vital that the state does not stray into the censorship of church sermons or unwittingly create a right not to be offended. Meanwhile, the church must steward its freedom of speech responsibly, so as to present Jesus in a gracious and appealing way to everyone."

Dr Norman Hamilton, convenor of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland's Council for Church in Society, said: "The right to express a point of view in a public setting, or in the public square, including the liberty to express strongly held beliefs, is one of the marks of a healthy democracy."

Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister, who attended some of the court hearings to support Pastor McConnell, described the prosecution as "vindictive and unnecessary" while the Ulster Unionist Party said people must be free to express themselves robustly, particularly in matters of faith.

In a statement, the PPS defended its decision to take the case to court.

A spokeswoman said: "It is clear from the judgement that the court considered Pastor McConnell had a case to answer and that the decision on whether the comment was offensive or grossly offensive was not only finely balanced but one for the court and the court alone to take.

"It is not the role of the public prosecutor to usurp the function of the court. The decision to bring this prosecution was entirely consistent with the duty of the PPS to put before the court those cases in which it is considered there is a reasonable prospect of a conviction."
As filming begins for series three of The Fall - the BBC's award-winning cult thriller set in Belfast - the author is already hinting that a fourth series is on the cards.

At the climax of the last series audiences were left reeling as Jamie Dornan's sexy psychopath Paul Spector, critically injured in an ambush, lay bleeding in the arms of Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, played by former X-Files star Gillian Anderson.

Anderson and Northern Ireland hunk Dornan reprise their roles as icy policewoman and twisted strangler when series three picks up at the moment where the series two cliffhanger ended.

But already writer/director Allan Cubitt is dropping the broadest of hints that there will be a fourth outing for the popular drama.

"I've been on a very exciting journey over the last five years with Stella Gibson and Paul Spector - the central characters of The Fall - and I'm thrilled to have recently started filming the third instalment of their macabre, obsessive dance of death," the crime writer said.

"Gillian and Jamie have lived and breathed those characters during that time and I've been incredibly well-served as both writer and director by their stellar performances.

"Obviously, I don't want to give anything away about how the third series will end, but I can say that I am looking forward to working with both Gillian and Jamie again in the near future."

It's a prospect that will thrill fans of the tense thriller - but could easily undermine the element of suspense necessary to keep dramatic tension at fever pitch.

Filmed in Belfast, The Fall was one of the BBC's most-watched drama series of 2014, attracting an average of 3.3 million riveted viewers.

It has been sold to 200 countries across the world.

Both Anderson and Dornan have been honoured by the television industry for their performances in the intense, ultra-noir award-winning show.

Created, written and directed by Cubitt, and produced by Fables in association with Artist Studio for BBC Two, the five-part series is currently in production in Northern Ireland.

Some critics have slammed the crime drama, accusing it of glamorising violence against women.

However, Anderson - now appearing in the BBC's lavish adaptation of Tolstoy's War And Peace - rejected these accusations. She's already stressed that the role of Stella Gibson is a career highlight

"It's unfounded. It's not gratuitous in any way. Rather, it points to the fact that there is still so much violence against women in the world," said Anderson.

Series three will see several new cast members join the roster, including Krister Henriksson (Wallander), Aidan McArdle (Mr Selfridge), Ruth Bradley (Humans), Aisling Bea (Trollied) and Richard Coyle (Crossbones).

Colin Morgan will feature as Detective Sergeant Tom Anderson, while series regulars John Lynch, Valene Kane, Stuart Graham, Bronagh Waugh and Aisling Franciosi are all set to return to the programme.
Jeremy Hunt has been accused by Labour of playing a game of "brinkmanship" over planned changes to the contracts of junior doctors as strike action looms.

The British Medical Association announced on Monday there will be three spells of industrial action in the coming weeks over the contract dispute.

And today the shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander launched a House of Commons assault on the Government's handling of negotiations.

She also suggested the proposed changes could be a precursor for a further NHS pay shake up in the future.

"It is a sad state of affairs when a New Year starts with the prospect of industrial action in the NHS," she said.

"Nobody wants strikes, not least the junior doctors, but they feel badly let down by a Health Secretary who seems to think contract negotiations are a game of brinkmanship.

"When will the Health Secretary admit that changing the definition of unsocial hours and associated rates of pay for junior doctors is a forerunner to changing a whole load of other NHS staffing contracts to save on the NHS pay bill?

"That's what all of this is really about, isn't it?"

Mr Hunt replied that that is not the case before jokingly wishing Ms Alexander "every success in retaining her post in the shadow cabinet".

"This is a difficult issue to solve but at least the country knows what the Government is trying to do," he said.

"You, on the other hand, have spent the last six months avoiding telling the country what you would do about these flawed contracts."

Ms Alexander said junior doctors do not need her "warm words", what they need is "action from the Secretary of State to stop the strikes and give patients the care they deserve".

Junior doctors are due to provide emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday January 12.

This will be followed by a 48-hour stoppage and the provision of emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday January 26.

Then on Wednesday February 10 there will be a full withdrawal of labour from 8am to 5pm.

The basis for the current round of negotiations has been the Government's offer from early November which included an 11% rise in basic pay for junior doctors.

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Tax from big business and cash from the sale of shares in rescued banks have been credited with helping the Government to balance its books.

The state collected 45.6 billion euro in tax last year - 3.3 billion euro more than the forecast at the start of the year, the Department of Finance said.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan, in his first public appearance since undergoing hospital treatment over Christmas, said the priority was now to cement recovery and avoid boom and bust cycles of the past.

"In terms of performance against profile, while corporation tax accounts for the bulk of the increase, it is encouraging that there were also strong performances from income tax and VAT. This is further evidence of the economic recovery we have witnessed in 2015," he said.

"The next step in our recovery is to put in place our medium-term strategy which will spread the recovery to all sectors of the economy and all regions throughout the country.

"We are determined to avoid the boom and bust cycles of the past."

The Exchequer report for the year revealed the books were 62 million euro in the red.

This compared with a deficit of 8.1 billion euro for 2014, with the numbers buoyed by the sale of preference shares in Allied Irish Banks and a stake in Permanent TSB.

The department said that when these one-off bonuses are taken out, the underlying deficit for last year was about 3.4 billion euro.

On the tax take, big business paid in 6.8 billion euro in corporation taxes, VAT soared to just short of 12 billion euro and income taxes to 18.3 billion euro.

The department said the total tax take was 3.3 billion euro ahead of forecasts and in December alone the take was 11% ahead.

Officials noted the overall numbers are being driven by more people at work and increasing wages combined with more consumer spending, while corporation tax is 49% up on 2014.

Brendan Howlin, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, said: "Against a background of strong growth in tax revenue, we were in a position to make additional funding available by way of supplementary estimate to support key services, social supports and increased capital investment."
European chiefs have flatly rejected claims that its conservation rules are partly to blame for record floods in Ireland.

On the back of unprecedented rainfall - as much in December as would normally fall all winter - officials in Brussels insist environmental rules do not ban dredging of rivers.

And they warned that digging mud and silt out of rivers is not always the answer to flooding.

"Any suggestion that EU environmental rules are somehow to blame for the recent severe flooding in Ireland is completely without foundation," the European Commission in Dublin said.

The staunch defence was issued as Met Eireann confirmed rainfall totals in December were double or triple what would normally be recorded in nearly all parts or the country.

Eighteen of its 23 of stations reported record amounts for the month with Cork's Roche's Point hit by 340.6 mm, Malin Head in Donegal recording 273.0 mm and Valentia Observatory, Co Kerry with 339mm.

The Commission statement was made as levels on the Shannon are at a peak last seen in the devastating floods of 2009.

It said European Union law does not ban dredging or dictate how countries manage rivers and neither does the Government need to tell authorities in Brussels if it plans to dredge watercourses.

"That is decided by Member States themselves," the commission said.

Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice had hit out at the EU Habitats Directive which he said enforced "daft rules" over the clearance of rivers and drains.

The Commission warned that those rules do not take precedence over measures to protect lives and property.

"In particular they provide for situations of over-riding public interest to permit activities that might damage a Natura 2000 site but which are necessary for human welfare," it said.

"The Directives do however require an assessment of the options available before a conclusion is reached that such damage is unavoidable."

On dredging, the Commission said it may help ease problems in a local area but it may also transport the flood further downstream from a rural to an urban area with the added risk of damage to more homes and businesses.

"Therefore the basin-wide approach included in EU policies is essential to find effective and long-term solutions," it said.

The Commission also said 705 million euro (517m) was being made available to Ireland from 2014-2020 for investments in schemes to mitigate against and prevent issues from climate change.

The lengthy response also set out how the EU Water Framework Directive promotes sustainable management of water to improve ecology but gives exceptions for flood protection.

It also said exemptions to rules on protecting animals and bird species are allowed if there is a public safety issue and so long as no satisfactory alternative is provided.

"EU environmental legislation does not prevent taking action to address the problems of flooding but rather provides a framework to help ensure the environment sustainability of any such measures," the Commission said.
Anthony Constantinou is on trial at the Old Bailey

A City boss molested a string of women in an atmosphere likened to the hit Hollywood film Wolf Of Wall Street, a court has heard.

Anthony Constantinou, 34, is chief executive of corporate business and solutions company CWM, based at the Heron Tower in the heart of the Square Mile.

He is on trial at the Old Bailey for allegedly groping three women during after-work drinks.

On one occasion, a contract manager described how he thrust his tongue into her mouth, treating her "like a piece of meat", jurors were told.

Prosecutor Eloise Marshall said the allegations came to light when one of the women went to Grays police station in Essex to make a complaint .

She described three incidents during drinks at the office on October 29 2014, a couple of days earlier.

She said Constantinou had followed her into the ladies' lavatory, grabbed her face and kissed her, the court heard.

He then pushed her up against the frosted glass of the reception area before taking her into a company stockroom where he pulled her pants down and sexually assaulted her, jurors were told.

She never returned to the office block after that night, jurors were told.

Investigators later uncovered more complaints against Constantinou involving two other women.

The second woman recalled being molested on October 6 2014, three weeks before the first alleged victim said she was attacked.

She told police that the defendant dragged her into a utility room at the office and kissed her until she pushed him off and left, the court heard.

At the time she "just shrugged it off" but later that night, when they went on to a nearby bar, he touched her bottom and squeezed it, jurors were told.

The last alleged assault came to police attention when they searched the offices of CWM and uncovered a letter from a company terminating its contract, citing Constantinou's "behaviour".

The third woman described how she was sexually assaulted during drinks after a business meeting on February 20 last year.

During the meeting, he had allegedly thrown her mobile phone against a wall and told her: "Don't answer phones in my meeting."

Later that night, he picked up a big chunk of hot wasabi paste and shoved it in her mouth, remarking to colleagues that she had a "cracking arse and tits", the court heard.

The woman immediately left the room but was followed by Constantinou, who pinned her against a partition and assaulted her in what she described as a "disgusting" manner.

She told police that he "shoved his tongue in her mouth as if she was a piece of meat", Ms Marshall said.

The woman likened the atmosphere in the office to the Hollywood film Wolf Of Wall Street about New York traders.

She left the offices immediately and never returned, Ms Marshall.

Constantinou, of Wildwood Road, Barnet, north London, denies six counts of sexual assault against the three women.
Michaella McCollum, right, and Melissa Reid, left, were jailed in Peru last year after they admitted trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5 million pounds from Peru to Spain (AP)

Belfast solicitor Peter Madden said Michaella McCollum and co-accused Melissa Reid have been well treated by the authorities

Lawyer Peter Madden, who represents Michaella McCollum, has claimed his client has suffered from a lack of food.

Michaella McCollum, centre, and Melissa Reid leave the court after being sentenced in Peru.

CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru

SECRET STASH: The drugs found in food packs in the girls luggage

Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event

Michaella McCollum Connolly (left) and friend Melissa Reid in the airport after they were arrested

Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid from the National Police anti-drug headquarters in Peru (AP)

Michaella McCollum, left, and Melissa Reid listen to a translator during a hearing at court in Callao, Peru (AP)

Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum, both handcuffed, arrive for a court hearing in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

Michaella McCollum Connolly pictured during an interview with RTE in 2016 after being released on parole from a Peruvian prison

Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits

Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer

Jailed drugs mule Michaela McCollum Connolly spent Christmas in a prison hospital after being struck down with a tropical disease.

The Tyrone woman wanted to spend Christmas back in Northern Ireland after being cleared to leave prison in November  but red tape has delayed her release.

Under Peruvian law, McCollum Connolly and her fellow smuggler Melissa Reid are free to walk free from the Ancon 2 prison, having served a third of their sentence.

Now the Irish Mirror reports she has been struck by a tropical illness.

"Michaela has been brought to hospital in the prison. She has a tropical illness but we dont know what it is," said an inmate.

We really hope she is OK. This [illness] is pretty regular in here, especially with the foreigners.

McCollum Connolly is said to be able to speak Spanish now and is reportedly popular among the other inmates.

Reid and McCollum were working in Ibiza when they claim they were forced to board a flight with 24lb of cocaine in food packets hidden inside their luggage.

They were caught on August 6 2013 and later pleaded guilty to drug smuggling, each receiving a jail term of six years and eight months.

The repatriation of McCollum to Northern Ireland was approved by Stormont's justice minister in January this year but, like Reid, she remains in jail in Lima for now.

The pair had previously been held at Virgen de Fatima prison but were later moved to the Ancon 2 jail, where conditions are said to be cramped, with poor sanitation and toilet facilities.

Reid's father Billy said recently that the impact of his daughter's crime on his family had been "horrendous".

He said: ''It's horrendous to see your daughter in handcuffs and the living conditions that she has to put up with. Melissa has spent her own 20th and 21st birthdays in prison in Peru.

''She missed the significant event of her only brother's wedding. Events such as Christmas are non-existent for us. There'll be no celebrations in our house, there'll be no Christmas tree until we get her back home.''

Mr Reid spoke out in a video warning of the consequences of drug offences abroad.

More than 700 British nationals were arrested for drug-related crimes in 2013-2014, according to the Foreign Office.
Laura Davies, 21, who died after being found with several stab wounds near the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society Base

The trial of a man accused of murdering a horse sanctuary worker is expected to begin.

Laura Davies, 21, died after being found with several stab wounds near the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society Base in Basildon, Essex, on July 3 last year.

Jordan Taylor, 22, of Basildon, who she had been in a relationship with, has been charged with murder and is due to stand trial after pleading not guilty.

Jurors have been selected to hear the trial at Chelmsford Crown Court and prosecutors are expected to open their case this morning.

Ms Davies' mother Dyanne Lambert previously paid tribute to her daughter, saying: "She was a very loving child who lived for her horses.

"She had been riding since she was three years old when she had her first pony.

"She had worked at the horse sanctuary for two and half years and it was her life. We miss her dreadfully and are struggling to come to terms with what happened."
HSBC is said to be "close to losing patience" over the increasing amount of banking regulations

HSBC's internet banking service is broken, leaving many people unable to check their balance or make payments.

The bank has said that its site is experiencing issues. It told users to instead try the mobile app, which is reportedly working.

The problems have been ongoing for days, with service temporarily being restored before breaking again.

Users who head to the website find themselves unable to log on. Other serivces are running much more slowly than normal, the bank said.

The bank announced last night that service had been restored. But then it posted an update saying that there were in fact continuing issues, and that it would look to restore service soon.

The account has spent much of the time since the outage repying to angered customers, who are unable to access their accounts. Affected users are being advised to call HSBC's phone number to get access to services, though some have complained that they are unable to get through.

HSBC was hit by problems in August, when issues with payments meant that many people didn't receive their pay.
Huawei has unveiled two new versions of its smartwatch that are aimed at women.

The Huawei Watch was launched last year, but the Chinese company used a press conference ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to unveil Jewel and Elegant versions of the wearable.

The Jewel comes with Swarovski crystals on the watch face, and both have rose gold finishes.

Smartwatches are increasingly being marketed as fashion items as much as pieces of technology, and Huawei says these new versions "truly embody the space where fashion meets technology".

The new versions of the Watch have bespoke watch faces, but the technical features remain the same.

Huawei remains a disruptor in the technology industry, with the Chinese firm having only come to prominence outside its homeland in the last two years. However, in a business summary at the start of its event, the company said it had the third largest market share in smartphones, behind only Samsung and Apple.

One of the firm's flagship phones, the Mate, was also updated during the event as the Mate 8 was announced.

The new device has a 6in screen and fast-charging capabilities that mean it will last a full day after just 30 minutes of plug-in time, Huawei claims, adding that with normal use the Mate 8 will also last for more than two days on a single charge.

The firm also said that an overhaul of the processors inside the Mate mean that GPU performance was up 125%, vastly improving graphics and gaming performance. The UK was not listed as a launch country for the device, which will become one of the first not in the high-end premium price range to include a fingerprint scanner.

Completing a clean sweep of product launches, the Chinese firm also announced a tablet, the MediaPad M2, which has been given enhanced speakers built by audio firm Harman/Kardon.
Talks between the Government and the British Medical Association (BMA) lasted less than an hour yesterday before doctors announced they would strike, the Health Secretary has said.

Jeremy Hunt said the Government thought it was " making very good progress" in talks and he was disappointed the BMA had called strikes, but added that "the door is open".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There were 16 areas the BMA wanted to talk about.

"On Christmas Eve, they sent a message to their members saying there were two outstanding ones.

"Yesterday we met and we thought we had a solution to one of them and we were prepared to negotiate on the final one but the talks lasted less than an hour and they walked out and started the strikes going."

Mr Hunt said he would "like to know" from the BMA's chairman, Dr Mark Porter, what the other areas of contention were.

"The thing is though, when you've got something where you don't think you're making good progress you all should sit down and talk about it," he said.

"The pay thing is important, I did think we'd make some progress there.

"We want to bring down weekend pay rates and make up for it with an increase in basic pay of around 11% and we've offered protection for 99% of doctors, so 99% will either see their pay protected or go up."

Mr Hunt said that "no government" wanted to cut doctors' pay but changes must be made to increase weekend staffing levels.

"Pay is one of the issues and another is safety. It's in no one's interest to have doctors who are too tired.

"We have 200 avoidable deaths every week in the NHS and doctors are as committed as I am to bringing that down in the wake of Mid Staffs.

"In this new contract, we're saying doctors can't work more than four nights in a row, which is very important in terms of sleep patterns."

Mr Hunt told BBC Breakfast the planned walkouts "could be very damaging for patients".

But he said: "The current contract means we have three times less medical cover on weekends because hospitals can't afford to roster enough people on Saturdays and Sundays. And that is what we want to change."

He added: "We have a situation where every weekend in the NHS we have lapses in care, that we are not able to promise NHS patients the same high-quality care every day of the week. And you can't choose which day of the week you get ill on."

Dr Porter said it "remains possible" that action could be called off but insisted the Government would have to go "further" than it has so far.

He told the Today programme: "The Government is, understandably, putting round the fact that agreement is almost there.

"It's almost there in their mind but not in the minds of junior doctors."

He added: "An 11% pay increase doesn't compensate when you take away a 31% average payment for working the unsocial hours. Anybody can do the maths on that."

The BMA announced on Monday that there will be three spells of strike action, with junior doctors providing emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday January 12.

This will be followed by a 48-hour stoppage and the provision of emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday January 26.

On Wednesday February 10, there will be a full withdrawal of labour from 8am to 5pm.

The basis for the current round of negotiations is the Government's offer from early November, including an 11% rise in basic pay for junior doctors.

This is offset by plans to cut the number of hours on a weekend for which junior doctors can claim extra pay for unsocial hours.

Currently, 7pm to 7am Monday to Friday and the whole of Saturday and Sunday attract a premium rate of pay.

Under the Government's offer, junior doctors would receive time-and-a-half for any hours worked Monday to Sunday between 10pm and 7am, and time-and-a-third for any hours worked between 7pm and 10pm on Saturdays and 7am and 10pm on Sundays.

Junior doctors would also receive on-call availability allowances, ranging from 2% to 6% of basic pay, as well as payment for work undertaken as a result of being on-call.

The strikes would lead to disruption for thousands of NHS patients. Suspended strike action in November led to the cancellation of thousands of operations, procedures and appointments.

Dr Porter said junior doctors already worked a seven-day service, including nights and weekends.

"I really don't think many listeners will understand what the Government is going on about in trying to imply that there is not a seven-day service for emergencies already," he told the Today programme.

He said the BMA thought it was "really necessary" to invest more resources in seven-day working.

"The Government has simply come along and said they want to reduce the pay of junior doctors who do take part in seven-day services."

Dr Porter said the doctors who did most of the out-of-hours work would "not see" a pay uplift as set out by the Government.

He said the Government's claim that only 1% of doctors would be paid less under the new deal was part of "Government propaganda" and was not a figure junior doctors recognised.

Dr Porter said doctors regretted the disruption to patients caused by strikes.
Labour MP Simon Danczuk is facing a police probe after being accused of a historical rape.

A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: "We can confirm that we have received a report of a historic rape dating back to 2006.

"We are in the very early stages of an investigation and inquiries are ongoing. The complaint relates to a 49-year-old man."

Responding to the claims, the MP for Rochdale said: "These claims are malicious, untrue and extremely upsetting.

"The police have not been in touch with me but I will co-operate fully with any inquiries and am confident my name will be promptly cleared."

The claims come as embattled Mr Danczuk faces criticism over lewd texts he sent to Sophena Houlihan when she was 17. He blamed a "drink problem" for the sexually explicit messages.

He has been suspended from the Labour Party while an investigation takes place into his conduct, for which he has apologised "unreservedly".

The father-of-five's personal life has repeatedly made the headlines over the past year following the collapse of his marriage to wife Karen, who was dubbed the selfie queen after posting numerous photographs of herself in low-cut tops.

Yesterday at his office, around 20 protesters gathered calling for him to resign.

Mr Danczuk said: "I don't believe for one second the people of Rochdale have any intention of listening to such a rag tag bunch of political opponents".

And he claimed the protesters were political "malcontents" and did not represent the views of constituents he had met on the doorstep who gave him the "benefit of the doubt".

Mr Danczuk's comments came after his former partner, Claire Hamilton, said his admission of sending texts to Miss Houlihan led her to end their relationship shortly after Christmas.

She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "Simon hasn't got a stop button when he starts to drink. He will just keep consuming. If it's there, he'll drink it.

"It was getting harder and harder to be in the relationship, to the point that when he did confess to texting a teenage girl, it was definitely over. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and I knew there was no going back to him."

Miss Houlihan, now 18, said Mr Danczuk sent her numerous messages, including one asking if she wanted a "spanking", after she contacted him about a job.

Mr Danczuk said he would "always co-operate" if further allegations made by his first wife, Sonia Rossington, were investigated by police.
LG have unveiled a new washing machine at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Smarter fridges and washing machines that interact with users were at the centre of LG's press conference ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The technology firm was one of the first global brands to unveil its plans for 2016, which it confirmed will revolve around a new premium range called Signature.

The new washing machine has two separate load areas, enabling users to wash two different sets of laundry at once. It can also be linked to a smartphone which notifies you when your washes are complete.

LG's Brian Na said: "Our driving principle is to ensure that the essence of our products is preserved from idea generation to the user experience.

"LG Signature is the embodiment of everything that is important to LG, and we hope to convey that philosophy to consumers who appreciate great products from strong brands."

The new Signature fridge includes a door-in-door that becomes transparent when you knock on it, as well as a sensor to automatically open when someone approaches.

Televisions traditionally feature heavily at CES, and this year appears to be no exception as LG announced a new line of 4K ultra high definition units.

Again part of the LG Signature range, two of the OLED TV units, the G6 and E6 are only 2.57mm thick, LG says. "The same as four stacked credit cards" was the comparison made on-stage during the press conference.

The Signature TV line-up is all 4K - four times the definition of HD, and LG says they can display one billion colours.

A "super UHD" 8K television was also announced, boasting a 98-inch (249cm) screen, and will be on display at the company's booth.

Although no prices have yet been confirmed, the Korean firm said a global rollout of products would begin in March.

Fellow televisions manufacturers Samsung and Panasonic are both also holding press conferences today, with new TVs expected to be announced.
A man has died in a fire after a reported explosion at a house in the Midlands.

Six members of the public dialled 999 to report a blast at the home in Wolverhampton.

Flames could be seen billowing from an upstairs bedroom window when fire crews arrived, a fire service spokesman said.

The man, who has not been named, was pronounced dead at the scene.

A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said: "Wearing personal protective clothing and using breathing apparatus, the Hazardous Area Response Team entered the building with the fire service where they found the body of a man."

More than 20 firefighters were sent to the property in Rylands Drive at 3.15pm today.

"When they arrived there was a severe fire on the first floor and some of the loft space of the two-storey house," a spokesman for the service said.

"Sadly, one man died in the incident."

Residents were evacuated from the street amid fears of a gas leak, although the fire service later said the blast had not been a gas explosion.

The spokesman added: "The National Grid have been around to test the property and nearby area.

"As a precaution we had a cordon in place which has been removed."

He added: "There were six 999 calls reporting an explosion of some sort.

"Until our investigation team has had a closer look at the scene it is not possible to definitely say."

West Midlands Police also attended the incident and put a cordon in place, a spokesman said.
A British mine worker has reportedly been expelled from Kyrgyzstan after comparing a local delicacy to a horse's penis on Facebook.

Scotsman Michael McFeat was held after posting a picture of Kyrgyz co-workers queuing for a ''chuchuk'' horsemeat sausage, with a caption that angered his colleagues.

He will now be deported after it emerged he does not possess the necessary paperwork to remain in Kyrgyzstan, AFP news agency reported.

The decision was taken by a court in the eastern town of Karakol on the basis of his staying in the country illegally, it said.

It is understood that Mr McFeat's Facebook post upset his co-workers to such an extent that they called a brief strike at the Kumtor goldmine where they are employed.

He deleted the post and wrote an apology, saying: '' I truly never meant to offened (sic) anyone and im truly sorry as it was never my intension (sic)."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ''We are in contact with the local authorities after a British national was detained in Kyrgyzstan and are ready to provide consular assistance.''

It was suggested that Mr McFeat could have faced up to five years in prison if convicted under race hate laws.

The Kumtor open pit mine, operated by Canadian firm Centerra Gold, is the largest gold mine in Central Asia and its output accounts for more than one-third of the country's export of goods and services, according to its website.

Mr McFeat was working as a contractor at the Kumtor mine.

A statement from Toronto-based Centerra said: " The company is investigating the incident.

"Centerra and Kumtor does not tolerate behaviour by any employee or contractor that is insensitive to any cultural or national group."
David Cameron has been under mounting pressure to suspend cabinet "collective responsibility" over the EU referendum

Government ministers are to be free to campaign o n either side of the referendum on Britain's continued membership of the EU, Prime Minister David Cameron has confirmed.

Mr Cameron told the House of Commons that the Government will make a "clear recommendation" on whether the UK should stay in the 28-nation bloc or leave, following the conclusion of the renegotiation of the terms of its membership.

But he told MPs that it would be open for individual ministers to oppose this recommendation without quitting their Government posts, in a significant departure from the usual principle of collective responsibility.

The move will throw a spotlight on senior Tories such as Home Secretary Theresa May, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, Leader of the Commons Chris Grayling and London Mayor Boris Johnson, who will face increased pressure to declare which way they will vote.

In a statement to the Commons on last month's European Council summit, Mr Cameron said: "My intention is that at the conclusion of the renegotiation, the Government should reach a clear recommendation and then the referendum will be held.

"But it is in the nature of a referendum that it is the people, not the politicians, who decide.

"As I indicated before Christmas, there will be a clear Government position, but it will be open to individual ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the Government.

"Ultimately, it will be for the British people to decide this country's future by voting In or Out of a reformed European Union in the referendum that only we promised and that only a Conservative-majority Government was able to deliver."

Mr Cameron said that last month's summit set out a "pathway" for agreement among EU national leaders meeting in Brussels in February on a package of reforms to satisfy UK concerns. He has previously indicated that this could set the scene for a referendum later this year, with many observers speculating on a date in June or July.

The Prime Minister has made clear that he will campaign for continued UK membership if his renegotiation is successful. But he repeated his insistence that, if a satisfactory package cannot be agreed, he "rules nothing out".

Mr Cameron had come under mounting pressure to suspend collective Cabinet responsibility, with several senior eurosceptic figures thought to be ready to quit if they were forced to back an "in" vote.

His party remains deeply divided, with MP Steve Baker, of the Conservatives For Britain group, recently suggesting more than half of his colleagues were "strongly leaning to leave".

But former prime minister Sir John Major had previously urged the PM to maintain collective responsibility throughout the campaign, while ex-deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine warned a free vote would make Mr Cameron a "laughing stock".

Former chancellor Kenneth Clarke said frontbenchers should resign if they disagree with the Government, and "firm ground rules" were needed to ensure Cabinet ministers campaign "moderately" and "don't get carried away".

Mr Clarke, a staunch pro-European, told BBC Radio 4's World At One that the PM faced a "very difficult task" if he was to "avoid splitting the party" and claimed he had been "forced into" his announcement by ministers briefing the media that they could quit.

Alan Johnson, the chair of Labour In for Britain campaign, told the BBC: "It's a strange way to run a country. The Conservatives have a number of extremists in their party on Europe - they always have had - and I think this is the latest manifestation of that.

"The Prime Minister will go and negotiate an agreement and come back and put in to the Cabinet - where in my 11 years in cabinet collective responsibility held - and whoever wins in that debate, that will be Government policy. And yet Government ministers will be able to go off and argue in a different way.

"This is not an issue like abortion or euthanasia which is traditionally a free vote. This is very fundamental to running the country."

Mr Johnson, who insisted Labour was "united on the issue of Europe", added: "Whatever view you take on (leaving) Europe, it's a very dangerous and precarious step to take and not to have a Government united behind the Prime Minister on that seems to me strange."

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "The Prime Minister is failing to lead his own Government, let alone the country, putting his own internal party strife above what's best for Britain.

"Now is not the time to back down. The Government should take a collective position on this issue, and if ministers disagree with the Prime Minister they should resign."

But Brian Monteith of the Leave.EU campaign, said: "We welcome the news that ministers will be allowed to campaign with their conscience in the referendum.

"However, this is not about them. It will be ordinary people such as nurses, taxi drivers and small business owners that need to have their voices heard in this debate."
Simon Danczuk said he is confident he can clear his name, insisting he will co-operate with the police investigation

Simon Danczuk has described an accusation against him of historical rape as "malicious, untrue and extremely upsetting".

The embattled Labour MP said he is confident he can clear his name, insisting he will co-operate with the police investigation.

The claim comes as the 49-year-old faces criticism for sending lewd texts to Sophena Houlihan when she was 17.

Mr Danczuk, MP for Rochdale, has been suspended from the Labour Party while an investigation takes place into his conduct regarding the sexually explicit messages, which he has apologised "unreservedly" for.

Commenting on the rape allegation, Mr Danczuk said: "These claims are malicious, untrue and extremely upsetting.

"The police have not been in touch with me but I will co-operate fully with any inquiries and am confident my name will be promptly cleared."

The father of five's personal life has repeatedly made the headlines over the past year following the collapse of his marriage to his second wife Karen.

His ex-girlfriend Claire Hamilton said she broke up with the MP shortly after Christmas after he admitted sending texts to Miss Houlihan.

Around 20 protesters gathered on Monday at his constituency office calling for him to resign following revelations he had sent saucy messages to the teenager.

The MP told ITV's Good Morning Britain he had displayed "inappropriate behaviour and I have apologised unreservedly for it", but said the texts should be seen "in context".

He said: "I was having an online friendship with somebody over social media for several months and just, as you have pointed (out), at a low point in my life in September, on just two occasions I responded to some messages that were sent to me.

"I shouldn't have responded to those messages and that's why I apologised.

"So I do regret that, there is no doubt about it, but I think we can put it behind us."

Mr Danczuk has blamed a "drink problem" for his tangled personal life and insisted the people of Rochdale want him to continue to be their MP.

He said: "What the public want are ordinary people to be Members of Parliament and that is exactly what I am - I am an ordinary guy that happens to do politics.

"And it is fair to say, there is no denying it, that I have a relatively colourful personal life. But I am not the only politician that has such a life - you could say that Boris Johnson has a similar life. I shouldn't be condemned for that necessarily; I don't think the people of Rochdale condemn me for that. They judge me on my performance."

He admitted his credibility as a campaigner against child sexual exploitation has been "dented", but said the lewd texts he sent are a "far cry" from the abuse he has campaigned against.

He added: "The Labour Party is carrying out an investigation into these allegations, quite rightly and understandably, and I am quietly confident that they will conclude that I should remain a member of the Labour Party."

A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: "We can confirm that we have received a report of a historic rape dating back to 2006.

"We are in the very early stages of an investigation and inquiries are ongoing. The complaint relates to a 49-year-old man."

Meanwhile Mr Danczuk has admitted being paid to tip off a photo agency about opportunities to take photographs of him that could be sold to the media, receiving at least 1,115 from one.

Responding to Mr Danczuk's comments, Mr Johnson told LBC radio: "I really don't know what he is talking about. All I can say is I have no desire whatever to intervene or superimpose my own judgment on the judgments that Jeremy Corbyn has to make.

"I think the best thing we can do with the Labour Party at the moment is leave them to their own delectable disputations about whatever Mr Danczuk is talking about."
Lancashire Police said the complaint against Simon Danczuk dates back to 2006

Labour MP Simon Danczuk is facing a police probe after being accused of a historical rape.

A spokesman for Lancashire Police said : "We can confirm that we have received a report of a historic rape dating back to 2006.

"We are in the very early stages of an investigation and inquiries are ongoing. The complaint relates to a 49-year-old man."

Responding to the claims, the MP for Rochdale said: "These claims are malicious, untrue and extremely upsetting.

"The police have not been in touch with me but I will co-operate fully with any inquiries and am confident my name will be promptly cleared."

The claims come as embattled Mr Danczuk faces criticism over lewd texts he sent to Sophena Houlihan when she was 17. He blamed a "drink problem" for the sexually explicit messages

He has been suspended from the Labour Party while an investigation takes place into his conduct, for which he has apologised "unreservedly".

The father-of-five's personal life has repeatedly made the headlines over the past year following the collapse of his marriage to wife Karen, who was dubbed the selfie queen after posting numerous photographs of herself in low-cut tops.
Police reunited the ewes with their rightful owners using identity parades

Two members of a sheep farming family whose rustling caused police to hold identity parades for stolen ewes have each been jailed for three years.

Former Swaledale champion breeder Charles "Neville" Raine, 66, and his nephew Phillip, 47, were found to have 116 sheep which did not belong to them at their farms.

They belonged to 14 farmers from County Durham, Cumbria and North Yorkshire.

The Nevilles, who farm near Bowes, County Durham, were convicted last month at Teesside Crown Court of conspiracy to use criminal property.

Police held identity parades for the rightful owners to claim their livestock after the sheep discovered at the farms were found to have had their markers removed.

That included horn brands, ear tags and the markings farmers paint on their animals' wool.

The animals had gone missing between 2010 and 2013.

Judge Tony Briggs said: "It is not just about the money, it was an attack on people's hard work, people who have gone to a lot of trouble to develop their bloodlines.

"It is entirely and utterly inexcusable."

The court heard the value of the stolen sheep at auction would have been around 25,000, but the loss to the individual farmers was more as they missed out on the lambs that would have been born.

The bloodlines of their flocks, improved over many years, were also weakened by the thefts, and some ewes required veterinary treatment after their stay with the Raines.

John Addison, a neighbour who had 50 sheep stolen, said in a victim statement he felt "betrayed" by the Raines, whom he had helped on many occasions.

He estimated his personal loss to be up to 20,000.

Another farmer said his wife felt uneasy about being left alone on their Pennine property following the thefts, while another said: "They have been prepared to see their neighbours suffer from hardship for which they have been the cause."

Victim Robert Hutchinson said in a statement to the court: "As a Swaledale sheep farmer I don't make a great deal of money. We work seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year, often in difficult circumstances such as bad weather conditions."

He said the way to make extra money in the business was to pursue pedigree bloodlines, and this had been spoiled by the Raines, potentially causing harm to his business for years.

Sam Faulks, prosecuting, said: "Everyone who is involved in sheep farming accepts it is a difficult job, they are not in competition with one another.

"Therefore to use your neighbours' sheep, full in the knowledge that your neighbour has as difficult job as you, fully in the knowledge what effect that will have on your neighbour, makes this a low crime."

The hill farmers kept their flocks hefted on common moorland and it was accepted practice for sheep that did not belong to them to be returned to their rightful owner.

The court heard that the Raines, who have since been ostracised, betrayed the trust their community relied on.

Denise Breen-Lawton, for the nephew, said it was clear he was not the "brains of the operation".

He was paid 300 a month from the family business and his family might lose their home as a result of him being jailed, the court heard.

She said: "It is going to hang over him for the rest of his life."

Andrew Haslam, for the uncle, said Neville Raine had won trophies for his Swaledale sheep, and examples of his flock appeared in books.

He said the older defendant had been a man of positive good character who now had diabetes and osteoarthritis in his hip. He walked into court with a stick.

Neville Raine had married and now lived in York, away from the family business, the court heard.

Judge Briggs said the Raines's claim that the sheep turned up at their farms by accident, without their knowledge, was dismissed by the jury.

He said it was not clear how the sheep ended up at their farms, whether they were stolen deliberately or just not returned, and it did not "matter a jot" to the sentence.

"They were other people's sheep, you knew it, and you decided to keep them," he said.

The stealing had a corrosive effect on the community, he said, describing both men as cynical.

Phillip Raine, he said, had a predatory attitude towards his victims, and the judge told him: "This is a dreadful business, you preyed upon neighbours, effectively."

A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing to recover the defendants' gains from the thefts will take place later.
Tunnock's tea cakes are associated with Scotland to such an extent that they featured in the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony

Tunnock's has been accused of ditching its Scottish heritage with a new campaign promoting its famous treat as "the Great British Tea Cake" in England.

Managing director Boyd Tunnock said the London Underground advert is simply a nod to the hit BBC show the Great British Bake Off, but the move has angered some Scots who say it is a rejection of the Lanarkshire-based firm's Scottish roots.

On Twitter, one SNP member said: " Re-branding is one thing - what Tunnocks did was a brazen rejection of Scotland."

Another independence supporter said: "Imagine if Guinness had said they wouldn't promote Ireland or Toblerone saying they wouldn't promote Switzerland."

Conservative voter Mr Tunnock, who spoke out in favour of the Union during the 2014 referendum debate, said the furore was a "storm in tea cake".

He told Radio Scotland: "The advert we put in London was a sort of spoof of the British Bake Off. It was my son-in-law who suggested this and I thought it was okay."

But he later told Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show: "We're in Britain, that's what we say.

"We are advertising the Great British Tea Cake because we had a referendum here and 55% of Scottish people wanted to be in Britain and that's why we're calling it the British tea cake."

Mr Tunnock said the lion rampant image has not been removed from the packaging, as some people had suggested.

He said he sent a box of the treats to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as well as to Prime Minister David Cameron for Christmas, and a packet is also making its way to "the Labour man".

The family firm established in 1890 and based in Uddingston sells around 3.5 million tea cakes a week.

Asked about the effect of his comments during Scotland's independence debate, Mr Tunnock said: " I did get a few letters from folk saying 'our extended family of 11 will never buy another tea cake', but since then we've sold even more and more, because they are nice - they are good."
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron called for the UK to harbour unaccompanied children from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea who are displaced by conflict

Britain should welcome thousands of lone children from Europe on top of the Syrian refugee resettlement programme, a committee of MPs has said.

The International Development Committee called on the Government to accept proposals to take 3,000 unaccompanied children from within the EU.

This would be in addition to the 20,000 Syrian refugees set to be brought to the UK from camps in the region around the war-ravaged country over five years.

Meanwhile, Press Association analysis of the most recent UK asylum figures has found that the number of applications from unaccompanied children is at its highest level for almost seven years.

Charity Save the Children has led calls for 3,000 refugee children living alone in Europe to be resettled in the UK.

The campaign has also been backed by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, who called on the Government to to offer save haven to unaccompanied children from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea who are displaced by conflict.

In a report published today the committee said it would welcome a decision in favour of the plan.

It said: "We are very concerned about the plight of unaccompanied refugee children in Europe, particularly as reports suggest they are falling prey to people traffickers."

Britain is not taking part in major EU-wide resettlement schemes for refugees who have already arrived in Europe.

In relation to Save the Children's proposals, Minister for Syrian Refugees Richard Harrington told the committee in November that it was "under discussion".

He added: "At the moment, I cannot report any further progress on it, but we are very aware."

Thousands of under-18s are thought to have reached Europe alone last year as the world was gripped by a migration crisis.

Figures published in November showed that around one in five of the 800,000 people who had arrived by sea were children.

Labour MP Stephen Twigg, chairman of the committee, said: " Having survived the treacherous journey, there is a grave possibility that unaccompanied children become the victims of people traffickers who force them into prostitution, child labour and the drugs trade.

"This is an issue of utmost urgency."

The report also:

:: Commends the Government for its response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, with the UK providing the second highest level of bilateral funding at 1.1 billion.

:: Raises concerns about a lack of financial support from other donors and calls for the Government to insist that fellow wealthy countries meet their funding commitments.

:: Says evidence suggests that it is more cost-effective to support refugees in the region than it is to direct resources towards resettling them in the UK.

It comes after the Government's response to the migrant crisis faced fresh criticism from charities and aid agencies.

In a letter a group of 27 organisations said the commitment to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees said the UK's offer to rehome refugees was "too slow, too low and too narrow".

Mr Farron said: "It is good to see the International Development Committee endorsing our call on the Government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children from Europe.

"There are many thousands of orphaned children fleeing war and persecution in Syria. Britain has always been a beacon of hope for people in their darkest hour. It is time for Britain to do the right thing.

"The Government must now act to save these vulnerable children by offering them safety and sanctuary in the UK."

David Cameron's official spokeswoman pointed out that the Prime Minister announced last month a review of the issue of vulnerable children, particularly orphans, who have arrived in Europe.

Work on the review is under way and it is expected to conclude "shortly", she said.

The spokeswoman said: "We are already playing our part, both in terms of the Syrians that have been resettled so far, who include vulnerable children, and in terms of the life-saving aid we are providing to the region, with the 1.12 billion we have put into the Syrian humanitarian crisis.

"What we are doing is looking at the issue of whether or not countries such as the United Kingdom should do more to help vulnerable children, particularly orphans, that arrive in Europe, as opposed to all the work we are doing to help vulnerable children in camps."
The bodies were discovered in the resort of Ayvalik, from where migrants set off on boats to reach the Greek island of Lesbos (AP)

Authorities have recovered the bodies of at least 36 migrants who drowned off Turkey after their boats overturned in rough waters as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, officials said.

Nine bodies, including those of children, washed up on a beach in the resort town of Ayvalik early on Tuesday morning, prompting authorities to dispatch coast guard boats and gendarmerie officials to search the area by sea and by land for possible survivors. Twelve others were rescued.

Seven other bodies were washed up on a shore at Dikili, a resort about 30 miles south of Ayvalik, the victims of a second migrant tragedy, the private Dogan news agency reported. The dead included women and children, the agency said.

By late afternoon, the gendarmerie forces had recovered a total of 29 bodies in the area while seven others were found by the coast guards, a Coast Guard statement said.

Around 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in frail boats.

Undeterred by the bitter cold and the rough winter seas, migrants are continuing to risk the journey to Greece in the hope of a better future in Europe. Most of them are Syrian refugees escaping the civil war.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates that 3,771 migrants overall died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe last year. It says that makes it the deadliest year on record for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, with the number of deaths rising from 3,279 in 2014.

The IOM said 2,892, or 77%, of the deaths last year were on the central Mediterranean route, mainly involving people crossing from Libya. However, there were 805 deaths in the eastern Mediterranean, accounting for 21% of the total. That is 1% more than the previous year, reflecting the increasing popularity of that route.

Top officials from Denmark, Sweden and Germany, meanwhile, were scheduled to hold talks in Brussels on Wednesday amid concern about new border control measures aimed at stopping migrants entering northern Europe, EU officials said on Tuesday.

Sweden introduced ID checks on all people entering from Denmark, and Denmark tightened border controls on its border with Germany on Monday for at least 10 days, citing concerns about public security because of migrant movements and border measures taken by other EU member states.

Danish officials said 18 people without proper ID were refused entry from Germany in the first 12 hours of the increased border crossing checks. Three people were also arrested, suspected of human smuggling.

In Turkey, Namik Kemal Nazli, the local administrator for Ayvalik, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the victims of the first incident are believed to be from Iraq, Algeria and Syria. There was no information on the nationalities of those drowned in the second incident.

A body with a lifejacket was pulled from the sea on to the beach at Ayvalik by a fisherman and a military police official, Dogan news agency video footage showed. Other bodies, also in lifejackets, were seen lying nearby.
Bismarck's public schools will fulfill the new graduation requirement that students pass the civics test given to candidates for U.S. citizenship by offering the exam to high school juniors and eighth-graders in the spring.

Students who do not pass the 100-question test will be given additional opportunities to take it, said Ryan Townsend, director of curriculum, instruction, assessment and teacher development for Bismarck Public Schools.

The graduation requirement takes effect during the 2016-17 school year and requires that students answer at least 60 questions correctly. In subsequent years, students must correctly answer 70 questions.

Townsend said eighth-graders study U.S. and North Dakota history, and high school juniors study U.S. history.

"We felt like those were two grade levels where that content was pretty well covered," he said.

School district leaders and teacher representatives from Bismarck's middle and high schools have met several times to discuss implementing the new graduation requirement.

They have not yet set dates for the test, though Townsend said juniors will take it before eighth-graders.

In future years, the test will be offered only to Bismarck's eighth-grade students, Townsend said. Those who fail to pass it the first time will be given additional instruction and will schedule a time to take it again, likely during a study period.

School districts throughout the state are making plans to implement the new graduation requirement established in January 2015 when Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed House Bill 1087 into law.

Mandan High School Principal Mark Andresen told his district's school board in December that students will have eight opportunities during their senior year to pass the test.
An eight-year-old boy left severely disfigured after a group of chimpanzees attacked him and two other boys as they played in their native Democratic Republic of Congo is to undergo surgery in the US.

Dunia Sibomana , unlike the other boys, survived. However, his lips were ripped off and one cheek was torn apart, leaving him with muscle damage that makes it hard for him to eat, swallow and communicate.

Now, Dunia will have surgery at a Long Island hospital that will use tissue and muscle from his forearm to recreate both lips.

Dr Leon Klempner, an associate professor of dentistry at Stony Brook Children's Hospital, where Dunia will undergo the operation, said: "As you can imagine, not having any lips, the food can just come right out.

"He drools all the time and can't pronounce different words."

The planned eight-hour procedure will be the first of three major operations for Dunia, who was brought from the Congo in November with the help of the non-profit foundation Smile Rescue For Kids.

Dr Alexander Dagum, the hospital's chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery, said he believes there are only three other documented cases where the same surgery has been performed. The hospital is covering the cost of the surgery and the doctors have all donated their time.

Since the attack, which killed Dunia's four-year-old brother and a young cousin, Dunia has been the target of bullies and become shy and withdrawn. In his short time in the United States, he has been living with a host family on Long Island, attending elementary school and learning English in addition to his native Swahili.

Appearing for an interview with this doctors on Monday, Dunia buried himself in video games on a tablet and colored with markers. He occasionally stuck his tongue out at the doctors as they explained the procedure.

"We're feeling very optimistic," Dr Klempner said. "We're hoping after the surgery he'll reintegrate into society and perhaps go back to school or have some semblance of a normal life."
A teenage boy shot himself while trying to take a 'selfie' of himself with his father's gun. (Posed photograph)

Barack Obama at a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House to discuss ways to curb gun violence (AP.

US president Barack Obama was in tears as he unveiled plans to tighten gun control in America, using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he had implored Congress to pass.

Mr Obama accused the gun lobby of having taken Congress hostage, but declared: "They cannot hold America hostage."

He insisted it is possible to uphold the US Second Amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in America that he said had become "the new normal".

The much-debated Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right of US citizens to own firearms.

Mr Obama insisted: "This is not a plot to take away everybody's guns.

"You pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is, some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules."

Mr Obama's actions ensure that gun rights - one of the most bitterly divisive issues in America - will be at the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, which begins in earnest next month with the first primary contests.

Accusing Mr Obama of overreaching his responsibilities, many of the Republican presidential candidates have vowed to rip up the new gun restrictions upon taking office.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said she was proud of Mr Obama's efforts and promised she would safeguard them.

The US president wiped tears away as he recalled the 20 young children killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

He paid tribute to the parents - some of whom were present for the announcement - who he said had never imagined their child's life would be cut short by a bullet.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Mr Obama said.

At the centrepiece of Mr Obama's plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks.

Under current law, only federally-licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.

Aiming to close that loophole, the US Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is issuing updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone "in the business" of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns.

The government will also consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those weapons are sold for a profit.

The White House also put sellers on notice that the administration planned to strengthen enforcement - including deploying 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws.

About a third of Americans live in a household where at least one person owns a gun. Particularly in rural areas where firearms are a way of life, many citizens do not believe gun laws should be tightened.

The reverse is true in urban areas, where majorities want more thorough firearm regulations.

Had the rules been in place in the past, the steps would not likely have prevented any of the recent mass shootings that have garnered national attention. The Obama administration acknowledged it could not quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a licence.

Responding to that critique, Mr Obama said every time the issue is debated, gun rights groups argue the steps would not necessarily have stopped the last massacre, "so why bother trying?"

"I reject that thinking," he said, arguing it would be worth it if the measures prevented even a single gun death.

"We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some."

To lend a personal face to the issue, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans whose lives were altered by recent gun tragedies, including former representative Gabrielle Giffords and relatives of victims from Charleston, South Carolina and Virginia Tech.

Mark Barden, whose son was shot dead at Sandy Hook, introduced the president with a declaration that "we are better than this".

After Newtown, Mr Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks.

When that effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president's powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

But a more recent spate of gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, have spurred the administration to give the issue another look, as Mr Obama seeks to make good on a policy issue he has pushed time and again but has not advanced - until now.
The crowd of men outside the cathedral and main train station in Cologne, with firecrackers being let off YouTube, Report24

Police are investigating reports of a group of 1,000 men carrying out a mass sexual assault on dozens of women in the middle of a German city on New Year's Eve.

German police has received numerous complaints from women who said they were groped and attacked in Cologne city centre. One woman has claimed she was raped.

Wolfgang Albers, the Cologne police chief, says witnesses described the assaults as coming from a group of up to 1,000 men whose appearance indicated they were of "Arab or North African origin."

He said the incidents were "a completely new dimension of crime".

An MP in Angela Merkel's party has claimed the events are proof Germany needs to tighten its borders.

But the police also said many of the men had been known to them for some time and were not newly-arrived refugees, according to The Local.

The crowd, believed to be men between 15 and 35 who were possibly intoxicated, reportedly flooded the city's famous square and began to throw firecrackers and shoot fireworks.

As the festivities took place outside the famous Cologne cathedral, some of the men allegedly began sexually assaulting women and pickpocketing others, according to Reuters.

Local media reported that at least 80 people fell victim to the assaults, 35 of whom were sexually assaulted.

One of the victims, named only as Katja L, told Der Express her buttocks and breasts were grabbed.

I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and beat them, the guys did not stop. I was desperate and think I was touched around 100 times in the 200 meters, she said.

Fortunately I wore a jacket and trousers. A skirt would probably have been torn away from me.

Some 60 criminal complaints have so far been filed, including the allegation of rape.

MP Steffan Bilger from Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union has claimed the events in Cologne were proof Germany needed to reduce its intake of refugees.

It cant go on like this, he tweeted. Urgently needed: reduction of influx, secure borders, intensifying of deportations and meaningful justice.

But others urged Germans not to jump to conclusions, with one user tweeting "it makes me sad that the refugees who really need protection will bear the brunt of the hatred because of Cologne.

"We need to be able to tell the difference.

Police sent 143 local officers and 70 federal officers into the area in a large-scale operation to clear the area.

But due to the dark and sheer scale of people, Mr Albers said that this operation was not effective.
A man removes the covering on a plaque earlier unveiled by French president Francois Hollande outside satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo's former office (AP)

French president Francois Hollande has honoured 17 victims killed in Islamic extremist attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher supermarket and police a year ago this week, unveiling plaques around Paris marking violence that ushered in a tumultuous year.

Victims' families joined Mr Hollande and other dignitaries near the building where Charlie Hebdo staff were holding an editorial meeting when two heavily armed brothers stormed in on January 7, 2015, killing 11 people. The plaque begins: "To the memory of victims of the terrorist attack against freedom of expression."

They then paid homage to a police officer killed as he tried to chase down the fleeing gunmen. Spray painted on the pavement was a message of support for the Muslim officer, reading "Je suis Ahmed," or "I am Ahmed," in the red, white and blue of the French flag.

After the attacks, people around the world embraced the expression "Je suis Charlie" to express solidarity with the slain journalists, targeted for the paper's caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Mr Hollande then paid homage to four people killed at a kosher supermarket in an attack that revived concerns about anti-Semitism in the country with Europe's largest Jewish community.

The French president briefly met with some of the survivors of the attack inside the supermarket.

The Charlie Hebdo memorial plaque was hastily covered up after authorities discovered a spelling error in the name of slain cartoonist Georges Wolinski. The black covering was later removed, and a new plaque is being prepared after the embarrassing incident.

Mr Hollande will unveil another plaque on Saturday to honour police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who was killed in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge by one of the attackers on January 8.

The widow of a bodyguard killed at Charlie Hebdo said on RTL radio that she wants an investigation into security measures at the paper. Ingrid Brinsolaro said her husband "saw dysfunctions" and a lack of security in the office and "it was impossible to do his job correctly in these conditions."

Mr Wolinski's widow told France Info radio she "gets more and more angry" at security gaps. Marise Wolinski said the entrance of the office should have been "bunkerised".

Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he was open to the idea of an investigation, but also defended the government's efforts to ensure security. Also speaking on RTL radio, he said authorities have dismantled 18 recruitment networks and arrested 11 groups planning attacks, and thwarted six attacks since last spring.

The country remains under a state of emergency after the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, and extra security was on hand for Tuesday's commemorations.
German police say dozens of women reported being assaulted and robbed

City officials and police in Cologne are holding a crisis meeting following a series of reported sex assaults in the western German city on New Year's Eve.

Mayor Henriette Reker called Tuesday's meeting to discuss the police response to the assaults that occurred around Cologne's main train station, next to the city's famous cathedral, during the night.

Police say dozens of women have reported being sexually assaulted and robbed. At least 60 criminal complaints have been filed, including one allegation of rape.

German justice minister Heiko Maas called for the perpetrators to be held to account, saying the attacks were "cowardly and vile".

Green Party's Claudia Roth warned against blaming refugees for the assaults, which police say witnesses described as being committed by men of "Arab or North African origin".
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said Saudi Arabia 'cannot cover its crime' by severing ties with the Islamic Republic (AP)

Iran's president has said that Saudi Arabia cannot "cover up" its crime of executing a leading Shiite cleric by severing diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic.

President Hassan Rouhani's comments came as Kuwait announced it had recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic.

The execution last weekend of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric and opposition figure in Saudi Arabia, has heightened the Saudi-Iran regional rivalry, threatening to derail already shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

A statement posted on his official website said Mr Rouhani discussed the current diplomatic dispute with visiting Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen.

"The Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes of beheading a religious leader in its country," Mr Rouhani said. "Undoubtedly, such actions can't cover up that big crime."

Iran's vice president Mohammad Bagher Nobakht said the country's intelligence services were investigating the diplomatic mission attacks and that police officers who failed to take action to stop the assaults would be prosecuted. Iranian police say at least 50 people already have been arrested over the attack.

The diplomatic stand-off between Iran and the kingdom began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges - the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Mr al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, was executed after being convicted of sedition and of other crimes, though he long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. Late on Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced it was severing relations with Iran because of the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said on Monday they would sever ties with Iran. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticising Iran.

On Tuesday, Kuwait announced the recalling of its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency. However, Kuwait did not say it would sever its ties to Iran over the tensions.

Meanwhile on Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of Shiite protesters marched in Sitra, south of Bahrain's capital, Manama, over Mr al-Nimr's execution.

Iran expressed "regret" over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Iran's UN envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the UN Security Council strongly condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi diplomatic posts. The council statement, agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

World powers have sought to calm the tensions. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. De Mistura has set a January 25 target date for a fourth round of talks.

The White House urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.
A flight from Athens to Tel Aviv has been delayed for almost two hours after a group of Israeli Jewish passengers refused to fly with Palestinians on board, reportedly accusing them of being terrorists.

Aegean Airlines flight 928 was stuck on the tarmac on Sunday night as the altercation continued, with the Jewish passengers preventing the plane taking off by standing up until the two passengers they complained about were removed.

The Greek crew did not initially understand the cause of the dispute, Maariv newspaper reported, and continued with preparations as the two passengers from East Jerusalem were bombarded with accusations.

The complainants claimed the Israeli Arab citizens could be terrorists, according to Israel Radio, and demanded to search their luggage even after they had left the aircraft, but were refused by stewards.

Tracking website Flight Aware shows the plane was due to take off at 10.30pm local time but did not leave for Tel Aviv until 00.24am.

A spokesperson for Aegean Airlines confirmed the incident, telling The Independent a small group of passengers had very vocally and persistently asked for two other Israeli passengers to be checked for security issues.

While it is indeed unfortunate that they were possibly racially profiling the customers, indeed their fellow Israelis, because safety must be first, the pilot did feel compelled to delay the flight call the police so to check again the two Israeli passengers documents and identities, she added.

The documents were found to be in order but the spokesperson said the delay had caused further unrest as a larger group of passengers reacted, despite assurances given by the crew.

The Palestinian passengers were offered a free hotel and flight the following day, which they accepted, and their luggage was taken out of the hold.

We also offered any other passenger of course the possibility to disembark in case they did not feel secure, the Aegean representative said, although those choosing to do so would not have been compensated.

The whole episode, which did indeed delay the flight for more than 1 hour and 30 minutes, is very unfortunate and we are grateful that the two Israeli passengers affected did agree to fly the next day.

We thank again the two passengers that agreed to disembark for their understanding and collaboration and we apologise for the whole episode.

The incident came as a wave of violence continues in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories, where 23 Israelis have been killed and 132 Palestinians shot dead by security forces since the start of October.
Iraqi Shiite protesters chant slogans against the Saudi government as they hold posters showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week (AP)

Kuwait has recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic.

It is the latest Arab ally of Saudi Arabia to line up behind the kingdom amid rising regional tensions following its execution of a leading Shiite cleric and opposition figure.

The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr last weekend also heightened the Saudi-Iran rivalry, threatening to derail already-shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said on Monday that they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late on Sunday. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticising Iran.

The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a longtime regional rival.

"What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented ... It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message," said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University. "This is the Saudis saying 'There is no limit to how far we will go'."

On Tuesday, Kuwait announced it was recalling its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency, without elaborating. It was not immediately clear how Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be affected by the move.

Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

The diplomatic stand-off began on Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges - the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Sheikh al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

Late on Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced that the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdom's cutting of diplomatic ties.

Iran expressed "regret" over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible.

In the letter, obtained by the Associated Press, Iran's UN envoy, Gholamali Khoshroo, said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the UN Security Council strongly condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi diplomatic posts. The council statement late on Monday , agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in the Middle East. Their rivalry deepened following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

World powers have sought to calm the tensions. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran. Iran, a staunch supporter of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. Mr De Mistura has set a target date of January 25 for a fourth round of talks.

The White House urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.
US authorities are keeping their distance after armed anti-government protesters seized a remote wildlife refuge in Oregon as part of a decades-long fight over public land in the West.

The group came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to protest over the prison sentences of two ranchers who set fire to federal land, but their ultimate goal is to turn over the property to local authorities so people can use it free of US oversight.

Federal authorities have so far not moved to take back Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Residents say they have not seen a large presence of officers, and the government's tactic generally is to monitor the situation from afar and leave the protesters as long as they do not show signs of violence.

That is how federal officials defused a high-profile 2014 stand-off with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy over grazing rights. Now Mr Bundy's two sons are leading the push in Oregon.

Ammon Bundy told reporters that the group wants authorities to look into claims that local ranchers have been intimidated by the federal government.

Mr Bundy, speaking at the refuge in Oregon, said the group calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and has sent a "demand for redress" to local, state and federal officials.

They want a response within five days. Mr Bundy did not say what the group would do if they get no response.

Reporters have seen about 20 people at the remote national facility.

The latest dispute traces its roots to the 1970s and the "Sagebrush Rebellion", a move by Western states like Nevada to increase local control over federal land. While ranchers and others complain of onerous federal rules, critics of the push for more local control have said the federal government should administer the public lands for the widest possible uses, including environmental and recreation.

Residents of the tiny town of Burns are concerned about the potential for violence.

If the situation turns violent, Mr Bundy contends that it will be because of the federal government's actions.

"I mean, we're here to restore order. We're here to restore rights, and that can go peacefully and easily," he said.

The ranchers whose cause has been the rallying cry are Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, who were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. They served their original sentences - three months for Dwight and one year for Steven - but a judge ruled that the terms were too short under federal minimum sentencing laws.

Both men were ordered back to prison for about four years each. They have said they plan to turn themselves in.

Kendra M Matthews, a lawyer for the men, said they will seek clemency from President Barack Obama.
US President Barack Obama has insisted he can take action to tighten gun controls - without congressional approval.

He said his administration's recommendations are within his legal authority and consistent with the Second Amendment.

Mr Obama addressed reporters in the Oval Office following a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and other top law enforcement officials.

The officials presented the president with options for measures he can take which do not require congressional approval.

The president did not specify what actions he plans to take.

The steps are expected to include expanding background checks on gun sales by forcing more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers.

The president said the measures won't solve every violent crime in the US, but will potentially "save lives and spare families the pain".
Thurman Stanley, 39, was charged in South Central District Court Monday with two counts of sexual servitude after a local hotel manager reported suspicions of prostitution.

The hotel manager contacted Bismarck police at 8:40 a.m. Dec. 31. Stanley was there with two women, ages 34 and 18.

Police searched two hotel rooms and a vehicle and found marijuana, as well as condoms, lube and other evidence of prostitution.

They were able to connect the two women to online prostitution ads and, according to an affidavit, the women allegedly admitted to being prostitutes working for Stanley. One of the women had two previous arrests for prostitution in other states.

Stanley also gave a false name to police and allegedly attempted to chew off his finger pads to conceal his identity.

Police were able to connect Stanley to another case in Pennsylvania, where he was wanted on involuntary servitude charges.

Sexual servitude is a Class A felony. Stanley also faces several misdemeanor charges.

South Central District Judge Bruce Romanick set bail at $100,000 cash.
Spanish police have seized 3,000kg of cocaine and arrested 11 people, including Spaniards, Britons and Dutch citizens, they said.

A police statement said 700kg of the drug were found in a truck bound for the southern coastal city of Malaga and the rest in a warehouse in Spain's north-western city of Pontevedra.

The drug was destined for a British drug trafficking gang based in Malaga. The statement said those arrested included two Spaniards, two Dutch traffickers and seven Britons.

The operation was wrapped up on December 14. The police statement said police also seized more than one million euro (730,000) and a handgun.

The statement said it was the biggest drug haul on land in the region in nearly 20 years.
Mohammed Rasool has been freed on bail by Turkey

Vice News journalist Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail after 131 days in a Turkish prison.

Rasool's arrest on charges of assisting a terrorist organisation has been widely criticised by the international media.

The 25-year-old, who was arrested in August while covering the conflict in Turkey's mostly Kurdish south-east, will be required to report to a police station twice a week and is barred from leaving the country.

Vice News said: "Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time."

The Iraqi Kurd was working as a news assistant and translator when he was detained along with two other Vice News journalists - Britons Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury - in the city of Diyarbakir on August 27.

The two UK journalists were released after 11 days and deported, while Rasool was sent to a high-security prison.

The three journalists had travelled to towns along Turkey's border with Iraq, the centre of renewed violence between Kurdish militants and government forces.

Rasool's detention came amid a rise in prosecutions of journalists in Turkey, many charged with anti-terrorism offences and under laws against insulting the president.

Media advocacy groups had criticised his detention and called for his immediate release.

Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: "We are relieved that Mohammed Ismael Rasool is free on bail after spending 131 days in a high-security prison on trumped-up terrorism charges.

"We urge Turkish authorities to drop all charges against him and allow him to travel and work freely."

Rasool has previously worked as a news assistant for the Associated Press and other media organisations.
HSBC has apologised to customers after it suffered online banking glitches for two days running.

Personal customers struggled to log in, while business customers had problems online as well as with the bank's mobile app.

HSBC said the problems were due to a "complex technical issue" with its internet banking systems. It said that any fees customers rack up as a result of the problems will be waived.

The bank said the hitches were not caused by a cyber attack or any other malicious act.

John Hackett, HSBC's UK chief operating officer, said: "I'm pleased to say that we have seen a steady return of service to internet banking in the past few hours for our personal and business customers.

"We will be monitoring the service very closely, ready to respond should any new issues arise.

"It is encouraging that more and more customers have been able to log on this afternoon, and all customers should feel free to try.

"I'd like to apologise once more for any inconvenience that this technical issue has caused. We will be waiving any fees incurred as a result of this incident, and we will be happy to help all our customers with any issues that have arisen.

"Thank you for your patience."

Earlier, Mr Hackett said: "We profoundly apologise for any inconvenience this has caused."

HSBC has 17 million personal and business banking customers across the UK. It is not known how many of them have been affected by the problems.

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Committee, said he will be asking for an explanation.

He said: "The frequency of these failures across the financial services sector suggests a systemic weakness in IT infrastructure. This is concerning.

"I will be asking the chief executive of HSBC, and the regulators, for an explanation of these failures, and action taken to sort them out. They just keep coming."

HSBC said earlier in a message on Twitter: "Good morning, unfortunately we are experiencing further service issues with personal online banking, however our Mobile App is available."

On Monday, HSBC said business and retail customers were unable to access online and mobile banking, due to problems which started at 8am.

It later posted a message on Twitter to say that its online service was back up and running - to which one Twitter user replied: "Oh no it isn't!"

Other Twitter users vented their frustration, with one saying: "Still unable to access online banking today, not great when you need to check bills have been paid after a long weekend!"

Another Twitter user wrote: "Seriously. It's beyond pathetic."
The number of people killed by firearms a year continues to impact cities nationwide. An estimated 153,144 people have been killed by guns between 2001 and 2003, MSNBC reported.

Over 24,000 people were injured from firearms in 2015. When rapper King Louie was shot at after leaving a friends home in Chicago, which left several wounded and two killed, before Christmas 2015and the 27-year-old spoke up. During an interview with CNN Louie shared how he was hit seven times after 20 shots rang off.

Three of the slugs are with him today, he tells CNNs Don Lemon. One slug remains in his head and two are in his chest.

I dont think Id be here today if it wasnt for prayer so I deeply appreciate all the prayers people had made for me, my family, cause they kept me strong and got me through my situation, he offers.

Gun-related crime is up in Chicago and the city leads New York City and Lose Angeles. The devils working overtime, referring to the evil and prominent gun violence. I think theres hope for Chicago, the Chicago native says.

The rapper, who name is Louis Johnson Jr,. also adds that he' s not giving up hope for peace in the city saying I think there's hope for Chicago.

But he criticized the citys police force and said they are just as bad as some gangs. So hes working on a campaign in the city called Music vs. Gun Violence to urge people to put the guns down.

The aim is to use music to help people refrain from gun violence and to use music to empower others to look for other ways to work out differences.

"Chicago Ideas is a unique nonprofit platform designed to inspire action through accessible events, grassroots initiatives and thought-provoking content. As a part of our mission to spark ideas into tangible social action, CIW is bringing together musicians, activists, and social and community leaders to take a stand against one of our citys greatest challenges: gun violence."

King Louis is not the only celebrity making a stand against gun violence. Kevin Bacon, Sofia Vergara, Jennifer Aniston and Amy Schumer made a video after the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and in San Bernardino, California. Stating: We can end gun violence.
Professionals looking to change careers to educate North Dakota's K-12 students can soon make use of another path to obtaining a teaching license.

Three colleges plan to offer a Master of Arts in teaching degree for people with a bachelor's degree in a field outside education.

The programs at Dickinson State University, Valley City State University and Mayville State University will provide graduate-level courses in teaching to people looking to make the switch.

The new programs aim to curtail North Dakota's teacher shortage. Halfway through the school year, 204 teaching positions remain open statewide, according to the Department of Public Instruction.

The degrees are ideal for professionals, such as field biologists, looking to become science teachers, said Richard Rothaus, interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs for the North Dakota University System.

"You know lots of biology, but you don't have the appropriate education courses," he said.

Classes to fill that void will be available on-site at the three colleges and online through DSU and VCSU, he said. The programs can be completed in two years.

Rothaus said each school anticipates enrolling 10 to 15 students during the first year the program is offered.

The State Board of Higher Education gave the green light to the programs in November. Rothaus said they must be approved by an accrediting institution, which he anticipates will happen this year.

Existing options for professionals looking to change to a teaching career are limited in North Dakota.

A school district that cannot fill a teaching slot in a designated shortage area can hire somebody with a bachelor's degree in a field related to the subject they plan to teach.

That person must obtain an "alternate access license" from the state teacher licensing board. The board requires that the new teacher complete college coursework over the next three years to obtain an education degree.

Seventy-five of North Dakota's current teachers entered the profession through that route, said Janet Welk, executive director of the Education Standards and Practices Board.

The only other way someone in the workforce can switch to teaching is to independently obtain another bachelor's, she said.

"The idea of going back to school to get a bachelor's degree in education is not appealing to someone already established in a career," Rothaus said. "It's such a hurdle to go through."
Just over 1 percent of marriage licenses issued last year in North Dakota were issued to same-sex couples, prompting lawmakers to question the impact of last years court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage and whether existing language should remain in the statute.

The interim Judiciary Committee met Tuesday in the Harvest Room of the state Capitol to begin a study on the impact of the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case. The case legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Doug Bahr, director of the Civil Litigation Division of the North Dakota attorney generals office, commented on whether the Legislature is obligated to make constitutional or statutory changes.

Its a policy decision of the Legislature, Bahr said.

Rep. Kim Koppelman, R-West Fargo, compared the choice over language changes to some states having not removed language from their statutes following the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion in 1973.

Some states kept language in statute as a statement of their principles on the abortion issue, said Bahr, who added that leaving the old marriage language on the books could create confusion.

We have the luxury of waiting a year, Sen. David Hogue, R-Minot, committee chairman, said in reference to seeing what other states do in response.

Gail Wischmann, a Cass County employee from Fargo, told committee members the language should be updated next session.

Wischmann, who married her partner Dec. 26, said Cass County is working to make changes to reflect the courts decision.

If you dont change the statute  its almost like were thumbing our nose at the Supreme Court decision, Wischmann said.

Donnell Preskey Hushka, of the North Dakota Association of Counties, said potential changes that should be considered if lawmakers decide to go that route include language that defines spouses as one man and one wife.

The ruling has had minimal impact on our county offices who issue licenses and conduct marriages. In 2015, there were 66 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in North Dakota  thats out of 4,797 total, Preskey Hushka said.

Preskey Hushka said this amounts to about 1.3 percent of all marriage licenses. She said county recorders across the state estimate that an additional 10 couples received licenses in the weeks after Junes decision, which werent tracked because new forms werent immediately developed.

The 66 licenses were split among 16 counties. Cass County topped the list with 20 of the licenses, followed by 12 in Grand Forks County and 11 in Ward County.

A total of six have been issued in Burleigh County and three in Morton County.

In counties where an employee has had a conflict with issuing same-sex marriage licenses, the county commission has appointed someone else or transferred the responsibility to another staff member. Preskey Hushka said three counties have done so to date: Morton, Stark and Walsh.

Jonathan Alm, an attorney with the North Dakota Department of Human Services, said the day-to-day impact of the decision has been minimal.

The department is currently in the process of reviewing and updating its applications, forms and policies, including the marriage policy for the sex offender treatment and evaluation program, Alm said. The department will also need to address edits to our automated systems.
Officials from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) pledged Tuesday to abandon violent tactics used in the past and engage the ruling Awami League in talks.

Most BNP officials have come to regret the decision to stage hartals (strikes), transportation blockades and other protests in 2013, 2014 and 2015, because they turned violent and led to the deaths of scores of Bangladeshis, a party leader said.

The violence has not brought our desired result. So, we are now pragmatic in our approach. The violent street protests and strikes are no longer an option for us, Mahbubur Rahman, a member of the BNPs Standing Committee, told BenarNews.

The violence revolved around the controversial 2014 general election, which the Awami League won and the BNP boycotted. The two parties feuded bitterly in the run-up to and aftermath of polls held on Jan. 5, 2014, with bipartisan tensions spilling over into violence in the streets.

Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, an MP and organizing secretary of the Awami League, praised the move by the rival party.

Democracy means accommodation, discussion, participation, not violence and exclusion. Now they have come to understand that the people do not like violence. We welcome such an approach, Chowdhury told BenarNews.

On Tuesday, the two parties held peaceful rallies in Dhaka to commemorate the second anniversary of the vote. Both sides called on one another to end political violence and strive toward putting democracy in Bangladesh back on track.

We want a solution through discussion. We have to work together for democracy, BNP leader Khaleda Zia told a gathering in the capital. She also called on the ruling party to set a date for the next general election earlier than the one that is now expected in 2019.

Not far away, the Awami League staged a celebration of the January 2014 polls.

People have not forgotten the destruction you have caused. Stop your destructive politics; return to the path of democracy, Syed Ashraful Islam, general secretary of the Awami League, said of the BNP as he addressed his partys faithful in front of the Baitul Mukarram, Bangladeshs national mosque.

A dreadful day

Ataur Rahman, a political science professor at the Dhaka University, described Tuesdays political developments as a new beginning in Bangladeshs confrontational democracy.

To the common people, January 5 has become a dreadful day. But this year, people have heaved a sigh of relief as the two major parties have not resorted to violent political action programs, he told BenarNews.

We can expect that the two parties can bid farewell to the old political culture of street violence to settle their political differences, Rahman added.

The BNPs anti-governmental protests over the previous three years led to nationwide shutdowns. Last years BNP-led protests, which lasted about three months in early 2015, led to the deaths of more than 120 people, who were killed in incidents such as the petrol-bombings of buses.

According the World Bank, Bangladesh lost U.S. $2.2 billion in potential economic growth, and its gross domestic product shrank by 1 percent as a result of the strikes and protests in 2015.

The BNP and its ally in the opposition, Jamaat-e-Islami, launched the protests because they did not recognize the January 2014 election as legitimate.

The opposition parties accused the Awami League of rigging the election by dropping a constitutional provision that had guaranteed a caretaker government would rule Bangladesh during a transition period before and after a general election.

During three previous general elections, the party in power stepped aside and allowed a caretaker administration to govern the country in the interim.

Olive branch

Both parties have blamed the other for fanning tensions and political violence that gripped the country during the previous three years.

We do not want to give the government a chance to commit street violence and put the blame on us, said Mahbubur Rahman of the BNP.

What we strongly believe is that violence brings no good to anyone. People do not like street action programs. From now on, we will mobilize the people to restore our democratic rights [that] the ruling Awami League continues to violate, he added.

Abu Hena, a former lawmaker affiliated with the BNP, told BenarNews that its failure to achieve political goals through violence had prompted party leaders to rethink the policy of organizing hartals and transportation blockades.

The BNP secretary-general now offers an olive branch to the government, saying his party wants peace. Street violence and strikes have brought no result , Hena told BenarNews.

If the government extends its support, I think we will see a new beginning in our political culture.


For Immediate Release, January 5, 2016 Contact: Larry Edwards, (907) 747-7557, larry.edwards@greenpeace.org

Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org Endangered Species Protection Denied to Alaska's Alexander Archipelago Wolf Threatened by Hunting and Logging, Alaska's Rare Wolf Remains Unprotected

Despite 75 Percent Decline on Prince of Wales Island ANCHORAGE, Alaska In response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today denied Endangered Species Act protection to Alaska's rare Alexander Archipelago wolf. The finding acknowledges that wolves on Prince of Wales and surrounding islands have declined by 75 percent to just 89 wolves, primarily as a result of logging and hunting, but denied protection anyway. We are deeply disappointed by this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision, which will allow the Tongass National Forest timber program to continue to liquidate the magnificent old-growth forests of southeast Alaska, needed by the wolf and its prey, said Larry Edwards, Greenpeace forest campaigner and longtime resident of the region. Theres no question that the continued existence of Alexander Archipelago wolf populations in southeast Alaska is threatened. Alexander Archipelago wolves den in the root systems of very large trees and hunt mostly Sitka black-tailed deer, which are also dependent on high-quality old forests, especially for winter survival. A long history of clearcut logging on the Tongass National Forest, private and state-owned lands has devastated much of the wolfs habitat on the islands of southeast Alaska. In particular, the Tongass is currently logging 6,000 acres of old-growth forest in the Big Thorne timber sale, the biggest old-growth sale in more than 20 years. For too long, the old-growth forests of southeast Alaska have been a sacrifice zone for the timber industry, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the Center for Biological Diversity. This is harming the Alexander Archipelago wolf, Queen Charlotte goshawk, Sitka black-tailed deer and a host of other plants and animals unique to the old-growth forest of southeast Alaska. Logging on the Tongass brings new roads, making wolves vulnerable to hunting and trapping. As many as half the wolves killed on the Tongass are killed illegally, and hunting and trapping are occurring at unsustainable levels in some areas. Despite scientific evidence showing that Alexander Archipelago wolf populations will not survive in areas with high road density, the Forest Service continues to build new logging roads in the Tongass. Road density is particularly an urgent concern on heavily fragmented Prince of Wales Island and neighboring islands. Despite a 75 percent decline of wolves on Prince of Wales since the 1990s and the present small size of the population, the state of Alaska allowed a wolf hunt on the island during the fall of 2015. The hunt allowed the killing of nine wolves out of the estimated population of just 89  which could actually be as low as 50 individuals. This was in addition to the demonstrated high level of poaching. The Prince of Wales population of Alexander Archipelago wolves is obviously very fragile and should have been protected by the Federal Government, said Edwards. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 900,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Greenpeace is the leading independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
COOPERSTOWN -- Southeast District Judge Jerod Tufte denied Griggs Countys request to terminate its lease with the Griggs County Building Authority last month.

The two groups are locked in a dispute over which one is responsible for the failure to complete construction of the $2.2 million courthouse portion of a $3.5 million building project, which remains unfinished.

No further additional hearings have been scheduled in the case. Tufte delivered his order on Dec. 30.

Griggs County filed a civil suit in September, claiming breach of contract, alleging the Building Authority has failed and refused to complete the courthouse facility. The county is seeking a judgment of nearly $300,000, the amount it had paid to the Building Authority in lease payments since 2013, plus additional legal costs.

The central dispute is not whether the required payments have been made or whether the courthouse has been completed. These basic facts are undisputed, Tufte wrote in his decision.

The Building Authority disputes that it had sole responsibility for failure of the project, contending that the County failed in certain of its obligations to bring the courthouse project to completion, and that the County wrongfully interfered with the Building Authoritys efforts to complete the project, which may make this attempt to enforce the lease subject to an unclean hands defense.

An unclean hands defense refers to an argument made by a defendant that a plaintiff should not receive damages because the plaintiff has acted in an unethical manner or in bad faith in regards to the legal complaint filed.

In brief summary, there are disputed material facts and disputed inferences from undisputed facts regarding whether the County bears responsibility for failure of the project, Tufte continued. Those disputed facts and inferences include but are not limited to:

Whether the Griggs County failed fulfilling funding obligations for the project, including reimbursing the Building Authority for grant funds associated with the project.

Whether the county failed to reimburse the Building Authority for payments it made to cover for the county.

Whether these and other action and inaction by the county resulted in the failure to complete construction on the courthouse.

Two projects

The Griggs County sheriff and states attorneys offices moved into the Emergency Operations Center half of the new building in early November, although Sheriff Robert Hook said Monday his office still is not fully settled into its new quarters.

The courthouse half, which is estimated at least 95 percent completed, remains empty. Southeast District Court and other county offices likely will remain in the old courthouse or in rented space in Cooperstown, until the legal case is resolved.

The Griggs County project is unique in that it involves two separate projects -- the $2.2 million courthouse and the $1.3 million Emergency Operations Center -- rolled into one contract, with each controlled by a different group.

The courthouse was financed through a $2.2 million, 20-year bond.

The EOC half of the building was financed by a $1.3 million federal Department of Homeland Security grant, which was administered by the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services. The grant included a 25-percent local match, which the county already has met.

Construction stopped in May 2014, after contractors walked off the job over payment delays and contract language disputes. At the time, the project was considered to be 90 to 95 percent complete.

Construction on the EOC portion of the building resumed this spring, after that legal dispute with contractors was settled through mediation.


For Immediate Release, January 5, 2016 Contacts: Andrea Santarsiere, Center for Biological Diversity, (303) 854-7748, asantarsiere@biologicaldiversity.org

Ken Cole, Western Watersheds Project, (208) 429-1679

Gary Macfarlane, Friends of the Clearwater, (208) 882-9755

Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, (314) 482-3746

Matthew Koehler, WildWest Institute, (406) 396-0321 Legal Petition Seeks Extension of Federal Monitoring for Northern Rockies Wolves New Study: Hunting Likely Spurring Harmful Declines in Northern Rocky Wolves VICTOR, Idaho Five conservation groups filed a petition today requesting that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continue monitoring northern Rocky Mountains gray wolves for another five years. The existing monitoring program, which is required by the Endangered Species Act after protections are removed for a species, is set to expire in May. The monitoring is crucial to ensure that the wolf population doesnt slip to levels at which Endangered Species Act protections are again needed. The groups based todays request in part on a new study in the journal Science that found the Fish and Wildlife Service and states of Montana and Idaho have underestimated the impacts and risks of aggressive hunting policies for gray wolves instituted since protections were lifted. Since federal safeguards were first stripped in 2009, more than 2,300 wolves have been killed by hunters or trappers in the two states. This research confirms what many scientists have been saying all along, said Andrea Santarsiere, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. Aggressive hunting of wolves is harming the gray wolf population in the northern Rockies. Left unchecked, the numbers will continue to decline  a sad fact for an animal that we fought so hard to bring back from the brink of extinction. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service clearly needs to continue to keep an eye on this situation. In first removing Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in 2009, the Fish and Wildlife Service said that the required post-delisting monitoring period would be extended for an additional five years if any one of three criteria are met. One criterion requires an extension if a significant change in state law or management would significantly increase threats to the wolf population. Both Idaho and Montana have repeatedly increased hunting and trapping quotas in an effort to substantially reduce wolf populations, which according to the new study are almost certainly resulting in population declines. Antagonism towards wolves is one of the main threats that put them on the endangered species list in the first place. This has hardly changed, and the states have further demonstrated their continued aggression towards wolves by increasing killing efforts and liberalizing hunting and trapping of wolves said Ken Cole, Idaho director for Western Watersheds Project. The Fish and Wildlife Service should extend their oversight of wolf management by the states to ensure stable and viable wolf populations As a backcountry elk and deer hunter myself, I find it appalling that in Montana hunters and trappers can legally kill up to five wolves annually, including deep within our Wilderness areas, said Matthew Koehler, director of the Montana-based WildWest Institute. Essentially this allows hunters or trappers to legally wipe out an entire wolf pack. Idaho has been especially aggressive in trying to reduce the wolf population. In 2014 the Idaho Legislature created the Idaho Wolf Control Board, allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars to killing wolves. Idaho has also contracted with the federal Wildlife Services to hunt, trap and aerially gun down wolves in the Lolo Zone and hired a professional trapper to eliminate two wolf packs in the Frank-Church-River-of-No Return Wilderness last winter. The agency has also turned a blind eye to an annual predator derby contest, in which participants win cash and prizes for killing wolves and coyotes, despite an agency policy condemning predator hunting contests as unethical. Idaho has been waging a war against wolves in the Lochsa and North Fork Clearwater basins, one of the wildest areas in the lower 48 states, said Gary MacFarlane, ecosystem defense director of Friends of the Clearwater. Further monitoring of this ill-advised program is needed. The primary threat to wolves is active eradication efforts occurring throughout the Rocky Mountain distinct population segment, said Nick Cady, legal director of Cascadia Wildlands. Continued monitoring of this still-fragile population is without question necessary and critical to the wolfs recovery in the United States. The Fish and Wildlife Service has argued that the wolf population has stayed relatively constant despite hunting, but according to the new study this conclusion is questionable. Among other problems, Montana has changed its counting methodology after delisting, and Idaho continues to rely on a convoluted mathematical equation that is likely to overestimate the wolf population, making it difficult to accurately determine population trends. Idaho and Montana arent safe places for wolves right now, Santarsiere said. This is no time for the Fish and Wildlife Service to walk away from its duty to ensure this population survives and thrives. We know these wolves have been hammered by hunting and aggressive state policies and still need help. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 900,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Cascadia Wildlands educates, agitates, and inspires a movement to protect and restore Cascadia's wild ecosystems. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion. Friends of the Clearwater is an Idaho-based nonprofit conservation organization that works to protect the wildness and biodiversity of the public wildlands, wildlife, and waters of Idahos Clearwater Basin. Western Watersheds Project is a nonprofit conservation group founded in 1993 with 1,500 members whose mission is to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through education, public policy initiatives and litigation. The WildWest Institutes mission is to protect and restore forests, wildlands, watersheds and wildlife in the Northern Rockies.
LYON, FRANCE: The Africanews channel launched Monday with coverage of the continent in English and French that is only available online for now, but which its backers hope to expand to TV broadcasts soon.

The start-up aims to cover news from a purely African perspective and transmit on TV networks "within weeks", following the model of its sister operation Euronews in Lyon, France, said Michael Peters, who heads the two news operations.

Africanews (www.africanews.com), headquartered in the Republic of Congo, will offer general, sports, business and culture news services that can be tailored to the strength of the user's internet connection.

The channel's newsroom employs 85 people from 15 nationalities and is temporarily based in Pointe-Noire while waiting for Congo's government to build its headquarters in the capital Brazzaville.

In several weeks Africanews will launch news bulletins in Swahili and is looking for partners to expand its coverage to other African languages.

Source: AFP
BLACK REPUBLICAN BLOG - The Republican Party is the party of civil rights and the four Fs: faith, family, freedom and fairness. The Democratic Party is the party of the four Ss: slavery, secession, segregation and socialism (Quote By Author Michael Scheuer).
Burma Army Battalion No. 278 attacked Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South (RCSS/SSA-S) troops in Mong Peng Township in eastern Shan States Kengtung District at about 1pm on 31 December in a clash that lasted about an hour, said an RCSS/SSA-S spokesperson.

Col. Sai La of the RCSS/SSA-S said: They [the Burma Army] attacked us. We lost one soldier and another one was injured, but no casualties have been reported from the Burmese side.

A source close to the Burma Army in Kengtung, who spoke to SHAN on the condition of anonymity, alleged that Batallion No. 278 got the command to attack when RCSS/SSA-S troops entered territory claimed by government forces.

Sai La responded by saying that the RCSS/SSA-S has been active in the disputed area in Mong Peng Township since the days of the Mong Tai Army (MTA), the Shan State force led by Khun Sa who later surrendered to the Burmese military government in 1996.

He also pointed out that the groups long-time presence in the area could be vouched for by the regions locals.

He said: We do not understand why they attacked us.

Sai Khuensai, an advisor to the RCSS/SSA-S and the managing director of the Pyidaungsu Institute, told SHAN that the Burma Armys actions in Mong Peng might dissuade EAOs who have not yet signed the NCA from from signing it and taking an active role in the peace process.

The RCSS/SSA-S was one of eight EAOs who signed the NCA with the government on 15 October, more than 12 EAOs did not sign the NCA. The next step in the countrys peace process is national political dialogue, which is scheduled to begin on 12 January.

In September, SHAN reported that U Hla Maung Shwe, a senior advisor at the Myanmar Peace Center, said that the NCA might only reduce fighting. In the same article, Sai La, of the RCSS/SSA-S, worried that clashes could continue as long as the territories of government and ethnic armed groups are not clearly defined.

By SAI AW / Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N)

Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
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It's not entirely clear what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is trying to say here, but it appears he's saying the separation of church and state was just a suggestion or a myth.

Scalia spoke at Archbishop Rummel High School in Louisana on Saturday where he said the Constitution doesn't say the government cannot favor religion.

That was never the case historically, he said. It didn't become the law of the land until the 60s, Scalia said, when he said activist judges attempted to resolve the question of government support of religion by imposing their own abstract rule rather than simply observing common practice. If people want strict prohibition against government endorsement of religion, let them vote on it, he said. "Don't cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it." Citing a quotation attributed to former French President Charles de Gaulle, Scalia said "'God takes care of little children, drunkards and the United States of America.'" Scalia then added, "I think that's true. God has been very good to us. One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor."

Who the what now?

"God" was explicitly omitted from our nation's founding and the First Amendment is quite clear. Scalia is apparently saying the intent of our founders and the Constitution should be ignored because of tradition.

Imagine if that standard was applied to every law. If that were the case, we'd still have "traditional marriage."

There's no doubt in my mind that a majority right wing Supreme Court nominated by the likes of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would be a nightmare for America. A nightmare with a lifetime appointment.
(Cartoonist - Nick Anderson)

In other news, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley is diverting money from the 2010 BP oil spill recovery fund to renovate a governor's mansion that hasn't been occupied for 20 years. Isn't this wasteful spending?

Meanwhile, sitting Tennessee state Rep. Andy Holt (R) would like to know how he can support the anti-government Bundy militia. Isn't providing material support to terrorists a crime?

Finally, Select Solnydra IRS Committee to Investigate the Benghazi ACORN Birth Certificate Email Account Chairman Trey Gowdy says he'll vote for the GOP nominee no matter what, even if it's Donald Trump.

Im going to vote for the Republican nominee because anyone on our side is better than anyone on their side." I am so tired of having [Democrats] control the executive branch that I am going to vote for whoever is the Republican nominee.

I'm so tired of Democrats, I'll hand the nuclear codes to any screeching nutball who wanders in off the street. Good plan.

Programming note... Yes, we're back. I hope everyone had a good rest over the long holiday because 2016 is going to be a very long year.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against Volkswagen on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for using software designed to cheat on emissions testing in 600,000 diesel cars sold inside the United States.

"Car manufacturers that fail to properly certify their cars and that defeat emission control systems breach the public trust, endanger public health and disadvantage competitors," said John C. Cruden, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. [...] "With today's filing, we take an important step to protect public health by seeking to hold Volkswagen accountable for any unlawful air pollution, setting us on a path to resolution," said Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles for EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "So far, recall discussions with the company have not produced an acceptable way forward. These discussions will continue in parallel with the federal court action."

Judging by the statements made by agency officials, it appears the lawsuit was filed because Volkswagen has not voluntarily complied with demands for a settlement. Filing a lawsuit may persuade the company to cooperate.

Volkswagan could face as much as $18 billion in fines related to their cheating, but I doubt the final amount will be anywhere that much although it could be if they don't cooperate.
 Media Reports Iranian Anger at Saudi Executions But Ignores Iranian Executions | Main | Washington Post Claims Staged Photo is News 

January 05, 2016

Palestinian Officials Continue to Promote Antisemitic Blood Libel



Officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling Fatah party are falsely claiming that Israel steals body parts from dead terrorists.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, several PA officials and Fatah movement members have recently put forward the modern-day incarnation of an age-old libel. Fatah is the major component of the authority.

The blood libel was the medieval-era false accusation that Jews murdered Gentile children to use their blood for religious purposes. This slander has taken many forms and its dissemination has historically been followed by murders of Jews, sometimes in large numbers.

CAMERA has noted (Palestinian T.V. Favorite Accuses Israel of Harvesting Terrorists Organs,? Nov. 11, 2015) that PA officials have been promoting the libel. These have included Riyad Mansour, the PAs Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations. Mansour is frequently treated by news media as a reliable source. He sent a letter to the president of the U.N. Security Council, claiming that bodies of Palestinian terrorists killed were returned without corneas and other organs.?

More recently, other Palestinian Arab officials have joined Mansour to claim that Israel harvests organs.

On Nov. 17, 2015, the PA ambassador to Bahrain, Khaled Aref, claimed in Al-Hayat Al-Hadid (the PAs official daily newspaper) that Israel steals the Marytrs organs, and sells them.?

According to PMW, on December 24, members of the dormant Palestinian Legislative Council further disseminated the blood libel by calling for autopsies on terrorists killed in order to know if the Martyrs organs have been stolen [by Israel] and to legally prosecute the occupation.?

The last elections for the PLC took place on Jan. 25, 2006. Subsequent elections have been indefinitely postponed by PA leadership.

PMW reports that Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen claimed on official PA T.V. on December 27:

There are Israeli testimonies acknowledging that organs are being taken from the bodies of young Martyrs. While the body is with the Israelis, organs are taken according to Israels needs, and afterwards they hand over the body [to the PA].?

Muhaisen appeared along with Mukeimar Abu Saada, a political science lecturer?, on a T.V. program called Topic of the Day.? Like Mansour, he also has been a media source.

Saada previously has been a guest on KCRW, a National Public Radio member station that broadcasts in the greater Los Angeles Area. According to KCRWs Web site, Saada appeared as a guest for two episodes (The High Price of Saving a Single Soldier,? Dec. 23, 2009 and Israel, Gaza and the Prospects for Peace,? Jan. 7, 2009). On KCRWs tax-payer subsidized program, Saada implied that Israeli soldiers intentionally targeted children during Israels 2008-09 war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Seeking to imply undue legitimacy, he also referred to members of Hamas, a U.S.-listed terrorist group, as resistance fighters.?

Adding to its recent promotion of antisemitic canards like those that have encouraged violence against Jews, PMW notes that Fatah celebrated its 51st anniversary by broadcasting a documentary? on official PA TV that connects official PA propaganda with that of Nazi Germany. The program opens with:

[Europe] suffered a tragedy by providing refuge for the JewsFaced with the Jews schemes, Europe could not bear their character traits, monopolies, corruption, and their control and climbing up positions in government.?

In his Jan. 30, 1939 speech to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler flogged similar claims of secret Jewish conspiracies and influence, declaring:

During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not bethe victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.?

When it comes to antisemitism, whats old is new or newly used againfrom leaders of the Third Reich to leaders of the Palestinian Authority.

Posted by SD at January 5, 2016 03:40 PM

Today I read on the net that Hamas was having essentially a hate rally in Jerusalem. Apparently you can hold parades in Jerusalem and hating Jews is a great idea. And the world just sort of shrugs. Erdogan in the same week announces he wants to model his presidency after Adolf Hitler's dictatorship and Obama and Kerry are as useless as ever. They just don;t see how that helps Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Posted by: jeb at January 8, 2016 02:48 PM

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BRADENTON, Fla. - Jefferson County, Ala., has appealed a judge's ruling that struck down a state law that would have allowed the county to issue debt for the first time since emerging from bankruptcy.

Opponents of the law, despite winning the case, said they also planned to file an appeal because the judge did not address three of the four grounds they said proved that the law was unconstitutional.

The appeals center on Jefferson County's request to have the court validate $595.5 million of limited obligation refunding warrants that the county had hoped to issue in a private placement before the end of 2015.

The refunding warrants could have maturities up to 40 years, according to the validation complaint.

The county planned to use the refunding proceeds to defease $595.5 million of outstanding limited obligation school warrants for which the final maturity is in 2027.

On Dec. 16, Circuit Judge Michael G. Graffeo ruled that the warrants could not be validated because House Bill 573, a local act authorizing the county's refunding plan, violated the state constitution.

Graffeo said that the bill failed to pass by three-fifths of a quorum, a voting procedure required by the constitution because the Legislature had not passed a budget.

Graffeo said that because he determined that a voting violation occurred, he "need not reach nor discuss the other three contentions" about the bill's constitutionality that were raised by the defendants.

The county's appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court was filed shortly after ruling was handed down, county commissioner David Carrington said Monday.

Carrington had previously said that if left standing, the judge's decision could have far-reaching impacts.

"Hundreds of other local acts affecting cities and counties throughout the state have been adopted using the same procedure," he said last month.

The suggestion that the ruling could upend other legislation is "hyperbole," said attorney Calvin Grigsby, a former broker-dealer representing county tax assessor Andrew Bennett, state Reps. John Rogers and Mary Moore, and county resident William Muhammad.

"No one has cited to you what far reaching effects there will be," Grigsby said. "They've not cited any other bill that will be overturned."

Grigsby said he planned to file an appeal of Graffeo's ruling because other constitutional issues his clients cited in the case are just as strong as the "more technical issue of whether there was a quorum."

Those issues include supplanting a general law with a local law such as HB 573; using a local law to regulate the assessment or collection of taxes; and approving a local law that authorizes bonds to be issued without the approval of voters.

Carrington said he believed that the Alabama Supreme Court would only address the issue cited in Graffeo's ruling.

The county sought the refunding legislation in the 2015 annual session of the Legislature as part of a strategy to provide new income to partially replace an occupational tax that was struck down by the courts shortly before the county filed for bankruptcy in November 2011.

That strategy involved sunsetting a one-cent sales tax securing the school warrants, and enacting a new sales tax to secure the refunding warrants.

The new sales tax would also provide additional revenue for the county's general fund and other specific uses.

The county is struggling to find new sources of revenue since emerging from bankruptcy on Dec. 3, 2013 after issuing $1.8 billion in sewer refunding warrants to write down $1.4 billion in related sewer debt.

The bankruptcy plan is being appealed by the same group that challenged HB 573.
WASHINGTON  States on the whole will see a slight increase in their new capacity to issue private-activity bonds in 2015.

The 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico will have a total of about $35.23 billion of new capacity in 2015, up 0.97% from roughly $34.89 billion in 2014. The increase is based on the latest population figures released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau and a revised PAB cap formula published by the Internal Revenue Service in October.

Private-activity bonds are issued by public entities to provide low-cost financing for the projects of nonprofit organizations or companies that serve a public purpose. Most types of PABs - including certain types of exempt-facility bonds, mortgage-revenue bonds, industrial development bonds, student-loan bonds and first-time farmer bonds - are subject to state volume caps.

States receive annual PAB volume caps and also can carry over any unused cap for up to three years. Volume caps for 2015 are the greater of $100 per capita or $301.52 million, according to the IRS. For 2014, the per capita rate was the same, and the minimum amount was $296.83 million. States use the minimum cap rather than the per capita amount when they have small populations.

Between July 1, 2013 and July 1, 2014, the population of the 50 states and D.C. increased by 0.75% to 318.86 million in 2014, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates. The U.S. population as of July 1, 2013 was 316.50 million, up from the estimate released last year of 316.13 million. The 2014 state volume caps are based on the 2013 population estimates that were released last December.

Nearly all states will see increases in their new capacity to issue PABs in 2015, but none will see an increase of more than 2%. Texas, the nation's second most populous state, will see the greatest increase in new volume cap, with a 1.92% gain. Florida, which overtook New York to become the third most populous state in 2014, will see a 1.74% rise in new cap, the second greatest increase.

California, the most populous state, will have its new capacity increase by 1.23% to $3.88 billion in 2015.

Nineteen states and D.C. used the minimum amount in 2014 and will use it again in 2015. These jurisdictions will see a 1.58% increase in new cap. Mississippi, whose population falls in between the 2014 and 2015 minimum caps, will use the minimum amount in 2015 but did not do so in 2014.

Illinois and Puerto Rico both saw population declines and will have a smaller amount of new capacity to issue PABs in 2015 than in 2014. Illinois' cap will decrease 0.01% to $1.29 billion, while Puerto Rico's cap will fall by 1.84% to $354.84 million. Five other states also saw population declines in 2014, according to the Census Bureau, but they will not see declines in new cap, in most cases because they use the minimum amount.

States rarely issue the maximum amount of PABs that they can issue under their caps in any year. In 2013, states only used about 10% of their total capacity, according to a survey by the Council of Development Finance Agencies.

The PAB volume cap figures for 2015 do not include American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands because they are not included in the Census Bureau's population estimates.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/01/2016 (2479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandons medical community is reeling following the sudden passing Dec. 27 of Dr. Robert Tang-Wai, Manitobas first neurologist to practise outside of Winnipeg.

He was 75.

At a memorial service held in Brandon on Saturday, Tang-Wai was remembered as an eccentric who was a brilliant clinician and staunch advocate for medical excellence in the Wheat City.

Tang-Wai is survived by his wife Eileen and four children  Robert Jr., Karen, Peter, and Raymond, who himself became a doctor and practises as a psychiatrist in Calgary.

Born in 1940 to a shopkeeper in Mauritius, Tang-Wai was the youngest of four children. He went to medical school in Galway, Ireland  an attempt to be different from his father  before crossing the Atlantic with Eileen for a residency in Saskatoon. Following that, he completed specialty training in Ottawa.

Dr. Lawrence Groves, a local family physician, called his friend a pioneer in neurology and said Tang-Wais is a typical Canadian story.

You have somebody who comes from another country and really contributes a lot to an area like Brandon and western Manitoba, he said.

In 1976, Tang-Wai moved to Brandon.

He thought that the people in the Prairies were pretty nice people to deal with, and so he looked around for a place where there might be a need for a neurologist, where he wouldnt have overwhelming competition when he set up his practice, Groves said.

Tang-Wai established the department of clinical neurophysiology at the then Brandon General Hospital, where services such as EEGs were made available and provided electromyography and nerve conduction studies in Brandon, keeping Westman residents off the highway to Winnipeg.

That created quite a scene with people from Winnipeg at the time because in their opinion, a neurophysiology department should never be established outside Winnipeg, said Dr. Arturo Tamayo, currently Brandons only other neurologist.

He provided a full neurological service that hadnt been provided before, ever, in Brandon. He saw patients from all over Westman and Manitoba, Groves said.

In the summer of 1983, Tang-Wai appeared in a story in The Brandon Sun, advising hed leave town if Brandon General Hospital didnt obtain a CT scanner  at the time an expensive piece of technology.

We were dependent on government funding for it, and it did come. He was one of the strong voices to advocate for it, said Dr. Michael Taylor.

Tang-Wai, widely known for his intelligence, expected a lot out of his colleagues  especially those in neurology.

I came to Brandon 11 years ago  to be honest with you, I was scared of the guy, Tamayo said.

(To my) surprise, he received me with his arms open, it was a respectful relationship and quite collaborative, he added.

Tang-Wais work ethic didnt falter as he aged. He kept up-to-date in his field and worked an on-call shift right until the end of his life.

Its the same thing Im doing right now and for me this is difficult  imagine at the age of 75, said Tamayo, 23 years his junior.

Karen Sutton, Tang-Wais only daughter, said Brandons medical community became family to him.

Blood relatives were important to him but its all random  theres no choosing. He truly believed that your family could be made, and so the people here that were kind to him and liked him, those became his family, she said.

She echoed Dr. Brian Bookatz, who called Tang-Wai a true eccentric at his memorial  which could lead to misunderstandings with his patients.

Sutton also recalled her fathers reputation as a walking encyclopedia.

My father used to like fish and he was an expert at goldfish and Japanese koi. People used to ask him about fish  Whats wrong with my fish? and he would make calls. We would have people asking, Oh, I know youre a human doctor but my dog is doing this weird thing, she said.

His calling in life was to help people and teach people. He had been given a great gift, which was his intellect and he was an incredible clinical doctor, and as long as he could do that, he felt he had a responsibility and a duty to work and still do his best.

Groves also called Tang-Wai a brilliant clinician.

He was a very skilled, conscientious, smart and diligent physician who basically always did his best to ensure that the patients were well served, said Groves, who sent members of his family to Tang-Wai.

He was almost always right in his diagnosis, he was known for that. He was known for being extremely knowledgeable and really excellent at what he did.

He left this place in better shape  from a medical perspective  than it was before he arrived.

Tamayo said he has already started the search for a suitable replacement for Tang-Wai.

We are not going to let him down, Tamayo said. We have to continue his legacy because he deserves it. Brandon deserves it.

 tbateman@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @tombatemann

Correction: This article, which appeared on A1 of the The Brandon Sun on Jan. 5, has been updated after misidentifying Dr. Raymond Tang-Wai as a psychologist. He is in fact a psychiatrist.
The Tanaiste says people who try and prevent politicians from engaging with voters are doing a disservice to democracy.

Joan Burton's comments come after a number of protests against Government Ministers at public events, and last month the Spanish Prime Minister was punched in the face while on the election campaign trail.
A verdict is due to be delivered in the case against a born-again Christian preacher accused of making grossly offensive remarks about Islam.

Pastor James McConnell from Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim, has been prosecuted under the 2003 Communications Act after he said Islam was heathen, satanic and a doctrine spawned in hell.

The 78-year-old faced two charges  improper use of a public electronic communications network and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network  after the comments made from the pulpit of his Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on May 18 2014 were streamed online.

He denied both alleged offences.

District Judge Liam McNally heard the high profile trial over three days at Belfast Magistrates Court last month but reserved his judgment.

During the case, the judge was shown a DVD recording of the entire religious service during which the controversial sermon was made, including gospel singing, scripture reading and prayer.

In it McConnell also said he did not trust Muslims.

Prosecutors said the pastor was not on trial for his beliefs but alleged the straightforward case centred on his carefully chosen words which they claimed were grossly offensive.

Giving evidence in his defence, McConnell said he had not intended to provoke, hurt or offend Muslims but was unrepentant for preaching the gospel.

He also revealed that he had turned down a lesser punishment of an informed warning because he did not want to be gagged.

Several hundred evangelical Christian supporters attended each day of the hearing to show solidarity with McConnell.

Several high profile politicians, including Northern Irelands First Minister Peter Robinson, Democratic Unionist Party deputy leader Nigel Dodds and former Finance Minister Sammy Wilson, have also pledged support for the pastor.
Nine drowned migrants, including children, have washed up on a beach on Turkeys Aegean coast after their boat capsized in rough seas.

The Dogan news agency said the bodies were discovered early on Tuesday in the resort of Ayvalik, from where migrants set off on boats to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.
Kuwait has recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic.

It is the latest Arab ally of Saudi Arabia to line up behind the kingdom amid rising regional tensions following its execution of a leading Shiite cleric and opposition figure.

The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr last weekend also heightened the Saudi-Iran rivalry, threatening to derail already-shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said on Monday that they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late on Sunday. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge daffaires, while other nations issued statements criticising Iran.

The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a longtime regional rival.

What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented ... It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message, said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University. This is the Saudis saying There is no limit to how far we will go.

On Tuesday, Kuwait announced it was recalling its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency, without elaborating. It was not immediately clear how Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be affected by the move.

Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

The diplomatic stand-off began on Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges  the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Sheikh al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabias Shiite minority, long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

Late on Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced that the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

On Monday, Saudi Arabias civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdoms cutting of diplomatic ties.

Iran expressed regret over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible.

In the letter, obtained by the Associated Press, Irans UN envoy, Gholamali Khoshroo, said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the UN Security Council strongly condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi diplomatic posts. The council statement late on Monday, agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in the Middle East. Their rivalry deepened following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

World powers have sought to calm the tensions. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran. Iran, a staunch supporter of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. Mr De Mistura has set a target date of January 25 for a fourth round of talks.

The White House urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.
Six gunmen who attacked an air force base near Indias border with Pakistan have been killed, an official said.

Seven Indian troops were also killed in the attack, while an operation is under way to secure the compound.
Vice News journalist Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail after 131 days in a Turkish prison.

Rasools arrest on charges of assisting a terrorist organisation has been widely criticised by the international media.

The 25-year-old, who was arrested in August while covering the conflict in Turkeys mostly Kurdish south-east, will be required to report to a police station twice a week and is barred from leaving the country.

Vice News said: Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time.

The Iraqi Kurd was working as a news assistant and translator when he was detained along with two other Vice News journalists  Britons Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury  in the city of Diyarbakir on August 27.

The two UK journalists were released after 11 days and deported, while Rasool was sent to a high-security prison.

The three journalists had travelled to towns along Turkeys border with Iraq, the centre of renewed violence between Kurdish militants and government forces.

Rasools detention came amid a rise in prosecutions of journalists in Turkey, many charged with anti-terrorism offences and under laws against insulting the president.

VICE News is pleased to confirm its reporter, Mohammed Rasool, has been released having been held in a Turkish prison for 131 days.  VICE News (@VICENews) January 5, 2016

Media advocacy groups had criticised his detention and called for his immediate release.

Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: We are relieved that Mohammed Ismael Rasool is free on bail after spending 131 days in a high-security prison on trumped-up terrorism charges.

We urge Turkish authorities to drop all charges against him and allow him to travel and work freely.

Rasool has previously worked as a news assistant for the Associated Press and other media organisations.
PARIS: A fancy restaurant on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower may not be the obvious setting for environmental...
LONDON: Eight out of 10 people in Britain now disapprove of the government, a YouGov poll showed on Tuesday, as the...
MOSCOW: The Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine was hit by strikes on Sunday, leaving at least four people...
TEHRAN: Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons "to be used in the war in...
Australia's oldest electronics retailer Dick Smith has conceded its desperate pre-Christmas sale has failed to save it from the clutches of nervous bankers, who have forced it in to receivership owing roughly $150 million.

The embattled business revealed on Tuesday morning that it had called in advisory firm McGrath Nicol as voluntary administrator overnight and that its banking syndicate, led by National Australia Bank and HSBC, had subsequently appointed Ferrier Hodgson as receiver.

This followed the company requesting a two-day share trading halt on Monday pending an announcement about its "funding position and debt financing covenants".

Dick Smith chairman Rob Murray said a go-for-broke December discount sale, previously labelled "suicidal" by rival retailer Harvey Norman chairman Gerry Harvey, had not generated as much cash as management had expected, leaving the board with no option but voluntary administration.
The Australian Public Service has rejected claims that it routinely abuses and exploits its contractors, saying its new standard-issue contract contains no unfair provisions.

Small business advocates said on Monday that the Commonwealth will have to end decades of unfair treatment of contractors with new "Unfair Contract" legislation due to come into force in November.

ICA's executive director Ken Phillips is lobbying for change.

Experts believe that many of the Commonwealth's standard contracts, usually offered on a "take it or leave it" basis will fail the new fairness tests and have to be re-written.
An elderly Canberra woman has won reduced aged care fees after a tribunal ruled her assets had been incorrectly calculated by Centrelink.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal senior member Dr James Popple ordered Centrelink to reassess the woman's financials taking into account an outstanding loan.

The decision means the woman will receive a higher subsidy and have to pay lower fees. Credit:Louie Douvis

In March, the woman was admitted to an aged care service provider after paying a $300,000 refundable accommodation deposit.

She and her husband borrowed $120,000  to be repaid with interest by 2025  from their children in order to cover the cost.
Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation rose to its highest value ever after raising its forecast for gun sales as President Barack Obama announced new restrictions on arms sales.

The maker of handguns said revenue for the quarter ending January 31 may be as high as $180 million, a 16 per cent increase from its forecast given in December. Gun sales surged last month as discussion of weapons restrictions heated up after a terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, California, left 14 dead.

Concern over more gun regulation isn't the only thing driving sales. People also are buying weapons for personal safety after two shooters opened fire at an employee holiday gathering last month at a San Bernardino public health facility, said Chris Krueger, an analyst with Lake Street Capital Markets. The last large increase in demand occurred after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults were killed.

"Three years ago after Newtown, it was primarily the gun-control factor," Krueger said. "This time it's a combination of personal protection and gun control."
A lack of gumption, maturity, and composure are not bars to high elected office, alas. If they were, voters would have been spared the spectacle of Jamie Briggs and Peter Dutton behaving inappropriately  and badly  towards women, making public fools of themselves, and creating brush fires for the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to extinguish. For want of a vestige of discretion, the concept of federal ministerial standards has been left torn and frayed, Mr Briggs' ministerial career is over (with his future in Parliament also said to be in doubt) and Mr Dutton's reputation has again been tarnished.

The circumstances surrounding Mr Briggs' undoing remain sketchy, in part because of privacy concerns. What's known is that Mr Briggs made a suggestive remark about a young DFAT staffer's physical appearance on an informal evening out during a ministerial visit in November, and that he later kissed her on the cheek or neck. The junior diplomat later filed a formal sexual harassment complaint against Mr Briggs.

Asked by the Prime Minister to reconsider his future on or about December 5, Mr Briggs is believed to have resigned shortly after, but not before supporters, including apparently his wife, sought to characterise the complaint as an exaggeration, releasing an apparently unremarkable mobile phone image of the minster together with the staffer on the evening in question.

One of those supporters, it transpires, was Mr Dutton, who was so incensed at a newspaper article headlined "Briggs booted for being fool" that he described the female columnist who wrote it as a "mad f---ing witch". The SMS text message was meant for Mr Briggs, but was mistakenly sent to the journalist concerned, for which the Immigration and Border Protection Minister quickly apologised.
The concept of "community interest" was new to the industrial relations scene, but pivotal to the way Fitzgibbon viewed work practices. It will, he wrote, "require a broader extension and acceptance of the concept of community interest than we have achieved to date." Consistent with the priority he accorded "community interest", he suggested that " the ACTU also has an obligation to promote the best interests of its members as a whole (consistent with community welfare generally) rather than the special interests of any constituent members ...The solutions to contemporary problems are unlikely to be found in directly improving the position of individual groups but rather in considering the interests of the whole."

He warned that protection was not the answer to unemployment problems. His core message was that factor markets operate like product markets, an enormous advance on the then thinking about IR policy and light years ahead of the union responses when Productivity Commission chairman Gary Banks offered the same message.

Charlie set off to the EPAC meeting with his paper, but was denied an opportunity to present it when his peers in EPAC realised what he intended to say. He was told to "can it", presumably because it might have implications for the Accord between the government and the ACTU. He was unsettled by being gagged in that way, but determined to voice the risk he saw for workers in the outcome of negotiations between unions and employers in the metal industries.

In subsequent speeches he argued for arrangements that aligned the interests of employees and employers at the enterprise level, perhaps through some form of sharing the rewards from improved efficiency and profitability. This would reduce the scope for further outcomes of the type negotiated in the metal industries  where unions were locked in adversarial positions, with no winners and a lost opportunity to improve industry competitiveness and job security.

His subsequent speeches carried two significant messages about industrial relations : that rigid adherence to comparative wage justice may not be in the interests of employees when industries come under severe pressure to adjust to changing market realities; and that appropriating the gains from removing uncompetitive work practices, as the metals unions had done, may also place the interests of their members in jeopardy. While each could be represented as promoting the immediate interests of employees, both posed a threat to their job security.
For more than a year we've watched Bill Cosby's slide in slow motion, as dozens of women have come forth to say he sexually assaulted them. Now we're watching in hyperdrive. The comedian, pitchman and United States icon was charged last week with felony aggravated indecent assault stemming from allegations that he drugged and abused a woman in 2004 in his suburban Philadelphia home.

Since then, we've had the Cosby perp walk and mug shot, timelines, deconstructions and details. Other accusers have celebrated, and social media is debating legal strategies and karma. Spectacle has begun.

Bill Cosby's wife, Camille, will be forced to testify against her husband. Credit:AP

But for some, myself included, there is an extra line to Cosby's fall from grace. It is gray, twisted and largely travelled by black women, many of a certain age. It both fully recognises and supports the justice needed for survivors, yet is the opposite of guilty/not guilty binaries. It is full of sadness and reflection on an American double jeopardy others might not know about.

Cultural critic Michaela Angela Davis calls it "a complex horror story ... Particularly to black women feminists, this has so many layers, and almost every one of them is painful."
When psychiatrist Robert Spitzer first began analysing homosexuality, it was listed as a mental disorder. However, after meeting with gay advocates, he began re-examining the subject in terms of measurable distress. The issue was extremely contentious but in 1973 Spitzer managed to have the official diagnosis changed to "sexual orientation disturbance", describing people whose sexual orientation  homosexual or heterosexual  caused them distress.

Gay groups immediately recognized the change as a historic one and Spitzer's skill in orchestrating it helped him take charge of the third update of the psychiatry's diagnostic manual, known as DSM3. "The fact that gay marriage is allowed today is in part owed to Bob Spitzer," said New York psychoanalyst Jack Drescher.

To some extent, the central question he applied to homosexuality  does it cause distress?  was the same one he used to conduct a broad re-examination of all behaviors listed as disorders.

Spitzer, who has died in Seattle aged 83, gave psychiatry its first set of rigorous standards to describe mental conditions, providing a framework for diagnosis, research, and legal judgments, as well as a lingua franca for the endless social debate over where to draw the line between normal and abnormal behaviour.

Spitzer's remaking of psychiatry began with an early interest in one of the least glamorous and, historically, most ignored corners of the field: measurement. In the early 1960s, psychiatry was losing credibility, chiefly because diagnoses varied widely from doctor to doctor. For instance, a patient who was told he was depressed by one doctor might be called anxious or neurotic by another.
Canberra scientists are set to be at the heart of a global project that aims to bolster the role of women in leadership positions and help tackle climate change.

Nine scientists from the ACT are among 78 women from throughout the world chosen to take part in Homeward Bound, an initiative that aims to bring together 1000 women in science in the next decade.

ANU science student Nina McLean and CSIRO scientist Deborah O'Connell will be among nine ACT women to take part in the first all-female trip to Antarctica. Credit:Jay Cronan

The aim of the project is two-fold: to elevate the role of women in leadership globally and to explore how those scientists can contribute to a more sustainable future for the planet.

It will culminate in the first women-only scientific expedition to Antarctica leaving from South America in December this year.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has ruled out chasing down who leaked a photo of the public servant at the centre of the Jamie Briggs saga, but condemned the former minister who initially distributed the image.

Four days after Mr Briggs resigned as cities minister for inappropriate behaviour towards a female diplomat in Hong Kong, a pixelated photograph of her was published in weekend newspapers, alongside private text messages to Mr Briggs' chief of staff Stuart Eaton and her age and job description.

The leak - seen as an attempt to discredit the woman - prompted calls for Mr Turnbull to launch an inquiry.
Sydney residents away on holidays are in for a shock when they return over the next fortnight to discover scores of trees have been chopped down on the edge of Centennial Park.

Chainsaws are set to roar into action on Thursday when the felling of about 50 trees begins along stretches of Anzac Parade and Alison Road to make way for the $2.1 billion light rail line connecting Randwick and Kensington with Sydney's CBD. Trees along the two major roadways will also be pruned for the project.

Local resident Peter Tzannes says the trees on the edge of Centennial Park could easily be saved if the government allowed for an alternative route for the light rail line. Credit:Ben Rushton

In a last-ditch effort to save the trees, residents, environmental groups and politicians will hold a rally near Randwick Racecourse at 10am on Wednesday.

Centennial Park Residents Association co-chair Peter Tzannes said the trees  some as old as 100 years  could easily be saved if the government allowed for an alternative route for the light rail line.
A former Queensland police officer has appeared briefly in court after she was allegedly caught with drugs at a music festival.

Tara Jane Radford, 26, resigned from the Queensland Police Service after being charged with possessing dangerous drugs at the Stereosonic festival in Brisbane last month.

Stereosonic Brisbane saw 16 attendees hospitalised but thankfully no deaths.

The former Townsville-based constable will return to Brisbane Magistrates Court on February 3 after her case was adjourned on Tuesday.

Ms Radford was one of 139 people arrested in and around the event for drug-related offences on December 6.
The Lorne Pier to Pub swimming event has been given the all-clear by authorities to go ahead after surf coast bushfires threatened the iconic event.

Race director Mark Williamson said organisers on Tuesday afternoon made the decision to go ahead with Saturday's race as planned.

The iconic Pier to Pub ocean swim has been given the all-clear after recent fires in nearby communities. Credit:Luis Ascui

"Over the last weeks we have been working closely with authorities to ensure that the GMHBA Pier to Pub and Mountain to Surf can go ahead safely," Mr Williamson said.

"Our thanks to all the authorities that we have worked with to assist us in getting the events to this stage."
Belgrade, Serbia: Serbian nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj, who is wanted for war crimes by an international tribunal in the Hague, has called on Serbs in the US to support business magnate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Mr Seselj, once an ally of the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic during the wars that split apart the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, was temporarily released from detention in the Netherlands in 2014 after an inconclusive 11-year trial. He has ignored an order by the tribunal in March for him to return to custody. He appealed to the hundreds of thousands of US citizens who claim Serb ethnicity via Twitter to support the Republican frontrunner.

"I invite brothers who live in the US to strongly support Republican candidate Donald Trump in forthcoming presidential election," Mr Seselj said in a January 3 tweet. He didn't elaborate.

Mr Seselj isn't the first foreign figure to voice support for Mr Trump, who is leading in opinion polls ahead of state primary elections that will decide who will lead the Republican ticket in the November presidential election. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the real-estate tycoon "a very colourful candidate and talented", to which Mr Trump responded the Russian leader was a "powerful leader", blaming poor US-Russian relations on President Barack Obama.
With KooKoo APIs, I could transform my idea into a Real App says Yadunandan Batchu, Winner of 1 st KooKoo Mashup Challenge

Yadunandan

Bitcoin

To reduce the huge financial divide between the online and the offline regions of the world, I have tried to fill the gap through the KooKoo IVR system along with

bitcoin

platform (network probably). Using the app, you can interact with the

bitcoin

network offline with the Pubkey- Privkey pair stored in the database (which will be encrypted using the authcode ).

I have used:

1. Toshi API (for

bitcoin

blockchain data)

2. NodeJS for development (ExpressJS & JSON-to-XML parsing library from npm )

3. Heroku to host the development files (there may be some sleep timings since it is a developer account) 4. GoogleSpreadsheet API with service account (for temporary database)

5. Direct use of KooKoo REST API through XML responses





The hack is still a limited prototype. Need a lot of fixes (Currently can send transactions only if there is a unspent_output with value greater than the amount to be sent). Future steps: 1. Encrypting the data base with the Users authcode (can also use Voice encryption). 2. Leveraging the secure database for off-chain transactions for immediate confirmations and spending. 3. Integration of Outbound_SMS services for each confirmation step. 4. Integration of Inbound_SMS services for registration of

bitcoin

public keys out of the system through One-Time-IDs. 5. Optimizing the use of unspent_outputs for efficient network fees."

Here is what he says about his experience with KooKoo APIs

Why did you choose this problem?

I am very passionate about the Bitcoin concept and I had this idea for a while but did not know how to approach it and build on it. When I came across the KooKoo Mashup challenge and got access to the Kookoo APIs, it took me couple of days of work to crack the problem. I just wanted to grow the reach of bitcoin to offline users. Most population is not connected on the internet so the idea was to reach out to the offline users. I have given a provision to transfer Bitcoins over phone numbers.

How did you find the KooKoo APIs?

It was very easy to adapt. Initially, I found that there was documentation only for Java and php so I had to use bare xml to interact with KooKoo. It would be very helpful if there would be more documentation and library for all languages. I also suggest that developers be given free outbound SMS service for developer accounts. This could be provided with some limit for developer accounts. This facility would have allowed me to integrate the app with sms . I did not explore it because it was a paid service.

How much impact do you think Bitcoin will have in the payment industry?

It is surely going to become a mandatory payment option very soon and might replace some of the traditional methods like paypal , western union and money bookers. It is also being called as an asset class if not a transaction instrument. It is expected to surpass gold investment and will be considered more reliable investment . Some of the countries like Lithuania, Argentina are pressing it to be a reserve currency by the government.

Will you continue this project to build a Startup?

Yes definitely . But, I need to put in a lot more work to create a business model with a viable revenue model. In the long run, the centralised model for Bitcoin will not work. It will not work with centralised servers and nodes, it has to be decentralised . But for initial take off, centralised servers are ok. It is a fascinating model and can be implemented in any industry. I am also interested in Shared Immutable Ledger concept, which does allow one to tamper with the data in the database. Microsoft is aggressively working on this with Block chain as a service on Azure.

Any other comments, for young hackers in the country?
You are currently working on a new studio album. Would you say that project continues the jammy, Grateful Dead feel of your recent work?

I would say it is a continuation of that groovy shit. The songs maintain that Dead influence. What I love about the Dead--you see it on their early posters. They were "Grateful Dead Dance Concert." That's built in into what they're trying to do. Even on the slowest tunes, like "Stella Blue" or whatever, people are still dancing. You know, you take your shoes off, and you fucking get your rocks off. Whether it's slow or fast, you can dance to it, find the groove. That's what I learned.
photo: Sheer Terror at Black Bear Bar (photo via Bad Ground Records)



NYHC vets Sheer Terror celebrated the holidays with a post-Xmas show on 12/26 at Black Bear Bar in Brooklyn. It looked like a wild show, were you there? Check out a full-set video and the setlist below.

The band have a few other things coming up too. There's a joint birthday party for Sheer Terror frontman Paul Bearer and the defunct British indie label Chiswick Records on January 12 at HiFi Bar. Paul will be paying tribute to Chiswick artists like Motorhead, The Damned, Skrewdriver and more, with help from his Sheer Terror bandmates Jason Carter & Anthony Corallo, plus Ted Leo, Jesse Malin, members of The Templars, 45 Adapters, Turbo A.C.'s and more. It's free, but they'll "probably pass the bucket around during the show if you wish to kick in for the band's fun(d)s." More info HERE.

Sheer Terror are also playing a cancer benefit in Brooklyn on February 20 at Saint Vitus with fellow hardcore vets Indecision, black metal band Black Anvil, and Enrage. Tickets are on sale now. Flyer below.

There's also that previously-mentioned Long Island show with Poison Idea, and a Chicago show. All dates are listed below.

In related news, NJ thrashers Whiplash are now reunited with original drummer Tony Scaglione, who's also a former member of Sheer Terror. They have three area shows coming up, including Brooklyn's Saint Vitus on January 23 with more Northeast veteran representation from NJ's Blood Feast, NYC's Magus Beast and Philly's Anvil Bitch, plus newer NYC band Hellshot (tickets). Then they play Clifton, NJ's Dingbatz on January 24 (tickets) and Queens' Blackthorn 51 on February 5 (tickets). And finally they'll go to Osaka, Japan for True Thrash Fest in February. Stream the band's 1985 debut album Power and Pain below.

For more old school hardcore news, earlier today we posted that Burn have new music on the way and MDC are touring.



---

I got a #SheerTerror setlist for my collection #NYHC A photo posted by Novembers Fire 75  (@novembersfire75) on Dec 27, 2015 at 12:38am PST

Sheer Terror -- 2016 Tour Dates

1/12 HiFi Bar New York, NY (Paul Bearer's birthday show)

1/23 Cobra Lounge Chicago, IL

2/15 Amityville Music Hall Amityville, NY w/ Poison Idea

2/20 Saint Vitus Brooklyn, NY w/ Indecision, Black Anvil, Enrage
photo: Bridget Everett @ Joe's Pub 2014 (more by Chris La Putt)



You can browse our full NYC show calendar for all of tonight's shows, but here are some highlights...

"Feel the Bern" @ Baby's All Right

A cavalcade of talent comes out to support Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential bid at the two-night event. Tonight's lineup features Jana Hunter, Frankie Cosmos, Kevin Devine, Jamie Kilstein, Will Sheff, Dead Heavens, Spirit Family Reunion, Kat Wright & Brett Hughes, DJ Hiro Kone....and maybe Bernie himself will show up? We shall see.

Bridget Everett @ Joe's Pub

Bridget Everett's acclaimed (and highly irreverent) show "Rock Bottom" returns to Joe's Pub for four shows this week.

Hinds @ Other Music

Spanish garage rock band Hinds release their debut album this week and celebrate at this in-store tonight. Free, but Other Music is tiny...get there early.

So Hideous, A Film in Color, Nightcrawler, Sonrot @ Saint Vitus

So Hideous returned in 2015 with the very good album Laurestine, which combines atmospheric black metal with serious orchestral arrangements. They're saying this may be their only NYC show of 2016, so catch 'em while you can.

Enforcer, Warbringer, Cauldron, Exmortus, Surgical Strike @ Gramercy Theatre

Sweden's trad-style speed metallers are over on our shores on a co-headlining tour with California thrashers Warbringer. They make their way to NYC tonight.

'2 Dope Queens' w/ Jessica Williams, Phoebe Robinson, Roy Wood Jr., Jean Grae, Dave Hill @ Union Hall

The Daily Show's Jessica Williams and Broad City's Phoebe Robinson's show '2 Dope Queens' is "a monthly stand-up and storytelling show," and this month guests include The Daily Show's Roy Wood Jr, rapper Jean Grae, and comedian/rocker Dave Hill.

Cake Shop Comedy @ Cake Shop

If you miss Big Terrific and Hannibal Buress' Sunday night show at Knit, and are looking for a new free, weekly comedy show that happens in a rock club and sometimes has big name talent stop by unexpectedly, "Cake Shop Comedy" might do the trick. Tonight begins Jo Firestone's January residency and will also feature Wendi Starling, Chris Thayer, Jermaine Fowler, Kevin Avery and Sasheer Zamata.

Ronnie Spector @ City Winery

The onetime Ronette had to postpone her annual holiday shows in December and are b eing made up now . Her hits (holiday or otherwise) sound great any time of year. UPDATE: Tonight's show was just canceled.

Tim Kuhl's 1982, Aaron Roche, Kyle Forester @ Union Pool

You may know Kyle Forester as keyboardist in Crystal Stilts and The Ladybug Transistor, but he makes music on his own, too, and will release his solo debut in April.

For all of tonight's shows, and tomorrow's, check out our NYC concert calendar.

For laughs, check out the NYC Comedy calendar too.

-------------

---

Follow @BrooklynVegan on Twitter.

Follow @bvChicago for just Chicago stuff.

Also follow @bvAustin for just Austin stuff.
So here's one from The Big Book of Unintended Consequences.

When Gov. Tom Wolf signed an 11-month-stopgap budget into law last month, he freed up some badly needed cash for school districts and nonprofits that had been struggling to keep the lights on and the programs running.

That's the good news.

Now the bad news.

With the stroke of the First Pen, the York Democrat may also have guaranteed that, come spring, the administration and Republicans who control the General Assembly will be squabbling over not one, but two, spending plans.

For that, you can thank a messy collision between the political and policy calendars.

Here's why.

With a final agreement on his 2015-16 spending plan still elusive, Wolf will roll out his second budget to a joint session of the state House and Senate on Feb. 9.

It's almost certain to include a renewed push for a severance tax on natural gas drillers and the suite of tax increases that the York Democrat wanted included in his rookie year budget.

Awesome, right?

Wait ... it gets better.

The Feb. 9 date is kind of a big deal. But there's another day on the calendar looming even larger for lawmakers: Jan. 26.

That's the first day that candidates can start circulating petitions for the April 26 primary.

That's also when legislative Republicans who might be inclined to vote for tax increases will start finding out if they'll get a challenge from their right flank.

And that means things will come screeching to a halt.

"There will be extreme caution on any major discussion or action on taxes," Chris Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said Tuesday. "Any big action won't come until May."

That's well after the primary - when victorious Republicans, especially southeastern moderates who might have faced a conservative challenge during the primary, will be in the safe zone until November or beyond.

"I can't imagine any Republican - or a substantial number of Democrats - voting for a massive tax increase just before an election" - primary or general, veteran Republican consultant Charlie Gerow of Harrisburg said.

Thanks to Pennsylvania's ridiculously gerrymandered legislative maps, there's a good chance that Republicans lawmakers who do cast their lots for taxes will face only token resistance - or none at all in November's general election.

It might be a different story for Democrats facing Republican general election opposition, however, Gerow noted.

Still, as last month's scuttled debate over the so-called "budget framework" showed, there is a critical mass of about two-dozen Republicans who'd be willing to put up votes for some kind of tax increase in order to end the stalemate.

That window slammed shut with the turn of the New Year and the start of petitioning season, thus delaying any action until spring or summer.

"Everyone's looking at where to go from here," one senior House Republican staffer said this week. "Truly, I think it all comes down to the election."

Senate Republicans say they're convinced Wolf dropped his demand for a severance tax so he could use it to run against the General Assembly this year.

Wolf made that clear in one thorny negotiating session: "He said 'Do what you want, I'm just going to hammer you with it,'" two Senate GOP sources with direct knowledge of the conversation said.

Wolf's confidence wasn't without foundation: More Pennsylvanians (54 percent) blamed the Legislature than Wolf (29 percent) for the budget impasse in a Franklin & Marshall poll conducted last October.

Wolf, meanwhile, had a 41 percent disapproval rating in an Oct. 26 Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll -- so it's hardly all good news for the Guv.

As a result, both sides are hoping to maximize their respective advantages.

Republicans will be looking to increase their already sizable majorities in the state House and Senate, while Democrats will be looking to staunch any losses, observers said.

First, the 50-member Senate:

Republicans will be looking for pick-ups in at least three Democratic seats this year. The GOP has a 30-19 advantage, with one vacancy.

They are the Cambria County-based 35th District, now held by long-serving Sen. John Wozniak; the Dauphin County-based 15th District now held by Sen. Rob Teplitz, and the Chester County-based 19th District seat held by Sen. Andy Dinniman.

Republicans are also likely to hold onto the 9th Senate District seat, also in Chester County, recently vacated by Dominic Pileggi, who just became a county Common Pleas Court judge. Ditto for the Cumberland County-based 31st District, where long-serving Sen. Patricia Vance is calling it a career at year's end.

Democrats, meanwhile, will mostly likely hold onto a Philadelphia-seat now held by Sen. Shirley Kitchen, who is retiring.

Meanwhile, the 203-member House, where Republicans currently have a 118-82 advantage (with one Republican and two Democratic vacancies) is far less volatile.

Democrats are looking to perhaps two pick-ups in the chamber, but have otherwise conceded that substantial progress is impossible a veteran consultant with knowledge of the chamber's topography said Tuesday.

Last week, long-serving House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, announced his retirement. That suburban Philadelphia seat could now be in play.

But even if Wolf can parlay voter disillusionment over the budget (coupled with a strong Democratic showing in November, when the presidential election will top the ballot), it still might not be enough to make significant inroads.

"The math simply doesn't work for him," Gerow said.
FAKRO has confirmed its headline sponsorship of the BMF All-Industry Conference in 2017.

The roof window manufacturer has been the events headline sponsor since the BMFs new-style All-Industry Conference began in 2013.

John Newcomb, managing director of the BMF, said: We are delighted that FAKRO is to sponsor the BMF All-Industry Conference for a third time. The last two have both been hugely successful, with delegate numbers increasing each year. We have already started planning for 2017 and it promises to be the best event yet, so watch out for details of dates and venue later in the year.

Noel Shanahan, managing director of FAKRO, added: We are pleased to continue our association with the BMF All-Industry Conference. It is a great event that brings the whole industry together to benefit from new ideas, fresh thinking, meeting old friends and developing new relationships.

FAKRO is also looking forward to a busy year in 2016, starting with a conference and gala dinner in January at its head office in Poland to celebrate the companys 25th anniversary. This will be followed by a UK nationwide roadshow programme and a series of one-day events at merchants to demonstrate products and meet customers.

Mr Shanahan continued: We will be improving and increasing the insulation performance of all FAKRO windows, while also enhancing aesthetics and ensuring faster and easier installation. New products such as a new walk on flat roof window with a wide range of colour options will be available from early 2016. All new product activity will be supported with an extensive marketing and sales programme designed to support the merchant and bring customers to the trade counter requesting FAKRO products. This includes major exhibition stands at the National Home Building & Renovating Show and, for the first time, at Grand Designs Live London.
Independent hardware distributor Sealco has added appointed Norman Berrill as business development manager.

Mr Berrill heads up technical sales in England and Wales as the business continues to grow south of the border. Over recent years, Sealco has seen an increase in the number of customers throughout the UK looking for the level of technical expertise offered by the Scottish-based company.

With more than 30 years experience in the window and door hardware industry, Sealco believes that Mr Berrill is a perfect addition to the team. Starting as a toolmaker, he moved into product development and technical sales, and reached board director level with a national hardware distributor before his move to Sealco. Mr Berrill also contributed to writing European and UK hardware standards for the industry.

Mr Berrill, said: I like the way Sealco does business. Im attracted to the independence of the company structure, which sets them apart from others. In my book customer service always comes first, and I believe Sealco is the ideal company to support joiners and fabricators who have to offer more specialist products than ever before. Its not enough to just have an exemplary track record for delivering on time and in full, customers also need a distributor to support them with new products, and expert advice that offers quick, easy and cost effective solutions.

Sealco has the infrastructure to be the biggest independent hardware distributor in the UK, and my role is to support customers switching over. I cant wait to get started, especially at such an exciting time in the run-up to the FIT Show 2016, where Sealco will be exhibiting.
Wipro, Indias third-largest information technology services company, will soon announce a new organisational structure to provide the new chief executive, Abidali Neemuchwala, enough ammunition to execute his strategy. The new structure, which might also see upheaval of certain roles including the creation or merger of a few verticals, is expected to be unveiled before Neemuchwala takes charge in February this year.

In an internal mail sent to employees on Monday after the companys announcement about the new chief executive, Wipro chairman Azim Premji has said an announcement on a new structure was on the cards. T K (Kurien) and Abid will make a separate announcement on the new organisational structure of Wipro, he wrote to the employees.

Neemuchwala is currently serving as the group president and chief operating officer (COO). T K Kurien, the incumbent chief executive officer (CEO), will become executive vice-chairman with effect from February, a position which he would hold until March next year, the company said.

CHANGE OF GUARD: WHAT TO EXPECT Company may not continue with the COO model



Creation of newer verticals, business lines



New reporting structure



Greater focus on emerging businesses, newer technologies



New strategy road map by the CEO

Industry watchers are of the view that the company is unlikely to make any radical changes in its organisational structure that might trigger any negative repercussion including senior exits.

According to sources in the know, the company is unlikely to stick to the CEO-COO model, which was as a short-term arrangement to facilitate the succession planning. In the new scheme of things, if the company decides to continue with that model, the COO would be seen as a the number two in the organisational structure, and a natural choice for the post of CEO in future.

Wipro cant afford to do it at this juncture as there are many senior leaders at the top who are vying for that post. Weighing one above the others might destabilise the top management layer resulting in senior attrition, said a senior industry source aware of Wipros structure and business.

Besides, there is no urgency before the company to create a clear number two position as Kurien would be around for another 18 months and the new CEO has at least four to five years time to prove himself.



In run-up to the selection of the new CEO, Wipro has already made a few key changes including elevating a couple of senior leaders as presidents. The impact of that is said to have already been felt, with a couple of recent exits including Ayan Mukerji (head of media, telecom and product engineering services) and Sangita Singh (head of healthcare & life sciences business).

Wipro has had more than its fair share of churn in key personnel in recent years with the last bout being after Kurien took over as CEO. There have been a couple of senior resignations recently as well from Wipro, wrote Credit Suisse analysts Anantha Narayan and Nitin Jain in a note published on Monday. Abidali has been around for a few months and was widely considered as Kurien's successor. So the risk of further churn could be lower, they added.

Under the current structure, Wipro has four presidents including Anand Padmanabhan, Bhanumurthy B M, G K Prasanna and Shaji Farooq, who are heading different lines of business and verticals at the company. Under the new structure, Neemuchwala would report to T K Kurien. All presidents and chief executives including chief strategy officer and board member Rishad Premji would report to Neemuchwala, sources added.

Apart from CEO-COO structure, one more thing that would be keenly watched out for at Wipro is its larger succession planning and the role of Rishad. Chairman Azim Premji already made it clear that his elder son Rishad would eventually succeed him in the company to protect his interests as a share-holder. Given this, any further expansion of roles for Rishad in Wipros board would happen only in 2017 when both Premji and Kurien are expected to retire.
BLOG OLHC

Fourth-graders from Our Lady Help of Christians show off some of the new pajamas they collected.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Our Lady Help of Christians in Tottenville section of Staten Island participated in Scholastic's "The Great Bedtime Story Pajama Drive".

It was part of the school's "Twelve Days of Christmas" charity drive for the month of December.

Mrs. Mincher's 4th grade class represented the school and brought the school's over 150 pairs of pajama donations to the "Scholastic Pajama Drop Off Party" that the company hosted at the SoHo, NYC site.

The students got to meet the founder of the Pajama Program, Genevieve Piturro, have cookies and milk and a story read to them. The students also received many wonder gifts from Scholastic such as books, erasers and stickers.

Great job OLHC!
While the recent Supreme Court ruling has discouraged car makers from making new investments in diesel capacity and technology, it has also now put the fate of new launches in limbo. Vehicle manufacturers, who had lined up new model launches with large diesel engines, might now be revisiting their plans with voices against the emission of the cheaper fuel gaining traction.

Toyota Kirloskar Motor, for instance, which had promised to bring the large multi-seater vehicle HiAce to India, did not meet its launch deadline of 2015. The 10-seater HiAce, which is sold in around 140 countries, is a luxury van developed to complement Toyotas highest-selling model Innova. The model, which was set to debut in India in the second half of 2015, is powered by a 3,000-cc diesel engine, higher than the stipulated limit allowed to sell in Delhi.

While an e-mail questionnaire sent to Toyota went unanswered, a company source said there were no immediate plans to launch the HiAce in India. Toyota Innova, Indias largest-selling premium utility vehicle, is at the receiving end of the SC ban, which manufacturers and market experts believe could get extended to the rest of the country. Swedish car brand Volvo has decided to phase out the existing S80 premium sedan in India, though the model had got a new engine globally in mid-2015. Volvo will now replace the S80 model with S90.

The sudden change in policies has taken the auto manufacturing fraternity off-guard. In addition to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam), companies have also approached the Supreme Court individually seeking a review of the decision. Rakesh Srivastava, senior vice-president (sales and marketing) at Hyundai Motor India, said, A product introduction is capital-intensive and needs a minimum threshold time of two to three years for the full development cycle.



Manufacturers are even exploring the idea of downsizing the engine capacity to below 2,000 cc to suit the new norms. However, that will be capital-intensive and time-consuming as manufacturers will have to ensure performance of the vehicle does not get impacted in the process.

CRACKING DOWN TO CLEAN UP
The CEOs of major retail chains are coming to attend the 3-day CII Partnership Summit being held from January 10-12 at Visakhapatnam .

The list of names mentioned by AP government on Tuesday include Walmart CEO Krish Iyer, Future Group chairman Kishore Biyani, Shoppers Stop chairman Neil Raheja, Reliance Retail CEO Damodar Mall, Aditya Birla group CEO Visakh Kumar besides Essel Group chairman Subhash Chandra, Indigo president Aditya Ghosh, Spicejet Managing director Ajay Singh.

Godrej Group chairman Adi Godrej was also expected to attend the summit, according to a government release.

About six Central Ministers including Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be taking part in the three-day event, according to the official information.

In all, AP officials have invited 976 delegates including 224 delegates from 37 countries for the summit.

Apart from Jaitley, Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Nirmala Sitharaman, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar will also be attending the event, according the release.

Among the other invitees, CISCO president Anil Menon, WTO Director Shishir Priyadarshi, Rolls Royce(India) president Kishore Jayaraman, RBI Deputy Governor R Gandhi are expected to take part in the event.

During the three day period AP government is planning to sign a large number of MoUs with from a host of sectors with investments totalling around Rs 4 lakh crore.
Eyeing a billion-dollar cyber security market in India in the next five years, Israel - the leader in the sector  is trying to tap the opportunity. Organisations such as CyberSpark from Israel have started holding preliminary talks with Indian including Reliance and Tata groups, educational institutions like Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Techonology-Mumbai and even start-up incubators to start collaborations between the two countries.

CyberSpark is the central coordinating body for joint cyber security activities with government agencies, the Israel Defense Forces, the public and academia. It is formulating a multi-year business plan, leveraging the region's significant strengths and maximising its potential in the field of cyber technology.

According to Roni Zehavi, co-founder and chief executive of CyberSpark Industry Initiative, the governments in the two countries are keen to evolve a joint start-up ecosystem. We want bigger and better collaborations in India. We are collaborating not just with the companies, but with India. What we have here is a blessing of government from both the countries. We have a number of events lined up where from both the countries would be there this year, said Zehavi. By working together, Indias cyber-security can easily be around a billion dollars in the next five years.



According to experts, the Indian cyber security market is worth $218 million at present. While the country has made enormous progress in sectors such as information technology and e-commerce, the cyber-security in India is at a nascent stage. Israel, the biggest player in the sector after the US, had exported $6 billion worth of cyber-related products in 2014.

According to sources in the Ministry Telecom and Information Technology, talks are on to form a mechanism under which start-ups from both the countries can work together on cyber security solutions and a fund pooled in from the two countries would be used to bankroll certain projects. Cyber security is going to be one of the major topics of discussions between the two countries during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Israel. The two government plans to work on various solutions together, said a senior official in the ministry.

Zehavi said he also held meetings with representatives from various sectors. All the qualities we are looking for a successful collaboration are here.



CyberSpark, which is working on a cyber test range for autonomous vehicles (basically cars that will drive on their own), met representatives from Tata Motors. We are interested to collaborate with a couple of major players in the domain to establish a range to check whether those cars can work in hostile environment. Tata Motors is a fantastic candidate for the project. However, the talks are at a preliminary stage, said Zehavi.
Incessant rains and flooding brought Chennai to its knees last month, with several parts of the city being cut off as both power and telecom services broke down. While the calamity touched hearts, as was evident from the aid that flowed in, it also exposed faults in India's disaster management system.

As in the flash floods that hit Jammu and Kashmir in 2014 and Uttarakhand in 2013, when rescue efforts were hindered because telecommunication services were severely hit, people in Chennai too could not call for help or reach out to relatives and friends.

Airtel, Aircel,Vodafone and other services were disrupted and BSNL's landlines were the only saviour in many places. Telecommunication say network services suffered due to disruption in mobile towers and failure of back-up gensets to operate due to shortage of fuel and flooding of the premises.

Both Airtel and Vodafone claim they did everything possible to resume services at the earliest and extended all help, including deploying their staff with mobile phones on the streets to help people get in touch with their families.

Even so several people were stuck for two-three days in their homes with no contact with the world outside and the disruption in mobile services during critical hours left them distraught. Now, an online petition filed at Change.org, a platform that allows anyone, anywhere to build public opinion on any issue, has sought compensation from telecom operators for the disruption in service during the flood.

Experts, however, feel the Chennai flood experience also calls for a rethink of the way telecom build their infrastructure.

"There are no standards in India to specify areas prone to earthquake or flooding. Only if there is a standard can telecom be mandated to follow them while installing the tower or laying optical fibre," says R K Dave, a spectrum management expert who is actively involved in disaster management programmes.

Dave says while the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or Trai, has come out with regulation on call drops, it has not yet created any policy on what it expects from telecom companies in disaster situations.

Currently, telecom companies construct and manage towers the same way throughout the country, irrespective of where the towers are located. "Trai should come up with different guidelines for telecom infrastructure for laying, operating and managing these towers," he adds.

Once regulations are formulated for specific areas, the authority should make it mandatory for the industry to follow those guidelines by linking the renewal of licences to fulfilment of the criteria.

Dave also suggests a separate communication system for emergency alerts. "In the US, there is the 'integrated public alert and warning system' that allows the president to address the country and the information reaches every nook and corner of the country as long as some communication gadget is available," he says.

Experts feel the telecom industry should aim for setting up a priority-based system where emergency calls can override other calls and reach their destination - irrespective of network congestion.

"This would help disaster management experts to communicate and coordinate better with the authorities," says Dave.

In addition to this, simple measures like placing gensets and electronic equipment at a height to safeguard them during flooding, as was done in Sikkim after the flash floods in 2012, can go a long way.

"It is time for the government to ensure speedy deployment of integrated disaster management systems, which can help people during disaster," says Saleem Ahmed, programme head, IAFI Consulting Group which is part of the ITU-APT Foundation of India, a non- profit organisation that works for the development of the telecom sector.

But, he adds, "The question is who will pay for higher investment in fortifying the infrastructure."



Dave recommends that telecom companies be allowed to use their corporate social responsibility fund to create adequate infrastructure in disaster prone areas.
State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation may be pressing the government for premium gas pricing to make its Rs 40,000-crore investment plan in the Krishna Godavari basin viable. Its recent history, however, is overburdened with massive capital expenditures to upgrade ageing fields to overcome the natural decline in production.

India's largest oil exploration firm, according to a Business Standard analysis, has pumped in more than Rs 1.94 lakh crore on such projects over the past eight years - with expenditure increasing 37 per cent from Rs 21,820 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 29,997 crore in 2014-15.

Despite the mammoth spending, however, ONGC's annual crude production fell 12 per cent to 22.2 million tonnes (mt) over the period. Natural gas output also dipped 2 per cent to 22,022 million standard cubic meters (mmscm).

There are only a few signs of these huge outlays having much of an impact on production so far: ONGC managed to arrest the decline in output last financial year, reporting a flat output at 25.9 mt on the back of a 4.3 per cent jump in production from the western offshore fields, and plans to report a marginal rise in output this financial year.

With private explorers like Cairn India, a Vedanta Resources subsidiary, and Reliance Industries, clawing their way into ONGC's market share, the company's contribution to India's total crude oil output has fallen from 76 per cent to 59 per cent over the same period (2008-2015). ONGC's hold over natural gas market has also dipped from 68 per cent to 65 per cent.

The past eight years have also seen ONGC slipping on its investment commitments. In 2008-09, its actual expenditure stood at Rs 21,820 crore - Rs 2,483 crore more than the Rs 19,337 crore budgeted for the year. This extra spending was slashed to Rs 1,752 crore in 2010-11, and fell short of the budgeted target by Rs 3,558 crore in 2012-13 and Rs 6,062 crore last financial year. The gap between committed and achieved investment, therefore, has been widening.

What then justifies the investment of Rs 30,000 crore annually over the past eight years by ONGC? Chairman D K Sarraf explains this by drawing an analogy between upstream business and running on a treadmill. "You may continue to run at 8-10 Km per hour on the treadmill only to find you are at the same place after an hour. So, to maintain the production itself, you have to run. Otherwise, production will fall 6-8 per cent per annum," he told Business Standard.

ONGC has managed to limit the fall in production to 2.5 per cent per annum over the past decade, and this year it is expecting a marginal increase. In addition, the drop in onshore production so far this year has been less than expected and offshore production has shown an increase.

"Globally, too, the production from old fields is declining at 8-10 per cent per annum and India is no exception. Most of ONGC's fields are quite old," says Sarraf. He says ONGC's future output will mostly come from the western offshore fields.

Analysts give a thumbs up to ONGC' future outlook. Their optimism is based on four counts - the company's massive reserve base, improved reserve replacement ratio, a conservative balance sheet and the recent fall in crude prices that has significantly reduced its subsidy sharing burden, leading to improved net realisations. However, the lack of clarity over the government's subsidy sharing formula could derail ONGC's plans.

ONGC had proven reserves of 6.8 billion barrel of oil equivalent at the end of March 2015. "At current production levels and based on its reserves, ONGC has a long reserve life of 16 years. In addition, its exploratory success and reserve replacement rates have gradually improved. The reserve replacement ratio for ONGC-operated domestic oil fields has remained above 100 per cent for the past nine years, achieving 138 per cent for FY2015," ratings agency Moody's said in a report earlier this month.

The reserve replacement ratio is a measure of the amount of proven reserves added to a company's existing reserves during a year relative to the amount of oil and gas produced. Under stable demand conditions, this ratio must be at least 100 per cent to ensure sustained long term operations for an oil exploration company.

According to ratings agency ICRA, the expected marginal rise in India's hydrocarbon production over the medium term will be driven by ONGC commercialising its marginal fields in addition to its initiatives to improve oil recovery from its existing fields.

To lead the way in oil exploration and discovery, ONGC has drawn up a strong capex plan which includes six major projects in the western offshore fields at an investment of around Rs 28,000 crore. These projects when completed will produce 20.5 mt of oil and 57.5 bcm of gas annually. In the current financial year, projects worth Rs 10,000 crore were approved till September and nine projects valued at Rs 21,500 crore were completed.
Education start-ups arent in good shape. Two education start-ups are finding it difficult to scale up and meet their targets. One of them is on the verge of handing out pink slips to its employees after investors pulled the plug on funding. The start-ups, sources said, have been asked to show results to get any more capital. These start-ups did not wish to be identified.

Funds are hard to come by. We were to raise our next round of funding by November-December but investors are not forthcoming. They want us to scale up the business but we are finding it difficult to reach our sales target, said the founder of an education venture. The founder added that he might have to slash salaries and lay off a few employees if he is unable to raise funds in a couple of months.

Zishaan Hayath co-founder Toppr.com, which raised Rs 64 crore last June said, Education is a tough sector to raise funds as it is more fragmented and large. Availability of funds depends on a case to case basis.



Though sources said Toppr.com was finding it difficult to raise funds, Hayath denied the same. We are not in the market to raise funds. We are comfortable with our financial position.



Toppr.com had last June raised $10 million (around Rs 64 crore) from Fidelity Growth Partners India and existing investors, SAIF Partners India and Helion Ventures.

Hayath's firm is a start-up using technology and content to disrupt the online test prep market. It is a subject learning platform for middle school and high school, the fifth to 12th grade. There are no language subjects. The platform offers courses in IIT-JEE, pre-medical and foundation.

An investor at one of the start-ups said one of the problems these had was valuing themselves like e-commerce companies, which creates funding problems. Edu-tech are not like e-commerce firms where the user returns. He buys once and goes away. There is no loyalty. Education is a huge market but it is a long hard slog to crack it. There are no easy answers because the way of thinking of these customers needs to change, the investor said.

Other investors, however, said the dream for edu-tech start-ups could be over as there is a fundamental fault in the .
With all the 18 procurers of the 4,000-megawatt (Mw) Tilaiya ultra mega power project (UMPP) agreeing to accept termination of the project, the lead procurer - Jharkhand - would buy 100 per cent shares from Reliance Power.

Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Power announced in April 2015 that its special purpose vehicle, Jharkhand Integrated Power Limited, which runs the UMPP, had terminated power purchase agreements (PPAs) with 18 buyers in 10 states over delayed land acquisition.

Reliance Power was awarded the Tilaiya UMPP in February 2009 at a levelised tariff of Rs 1.77 a unit. The project was allocated the Kerandari BC captive coal mine block for fuel. Besides Jharkhand, Gujarat, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana were among the places with which the company had signed 25-year contracts for power supply.

S K G Rahate, principal secretary (energy), government of Jharkhand, told Business Standard that all 18 procurers have taken in-principle decision to accept the termination issued by Reliance Power. "We are more concerned with the future of the project. So as per the terms of the power purchase agreement, Jharkhand as the lead procurer would buy 100 per cent shares and pay for the essential expenditures which is land and other cost of clearances etc," said Rahate.

He, however, declined to disclose the final cost. Reliance Power had in it earlier calculations pegged the compensation at Rs 800 crore.

Company officials said the termination of the PPA would reduce Reliance Power's future capex pipeline by Rs 36,000 crore and also avoid any additional debt burden of Rs 27,000 crore and an equity commitment of Rs 9,000 crore.

The firm had planned capital expenditure of Rs 36,000 crore for the project, which comes along with the Kerandari coal block in the North Karanpura coal fields in Jharkhand.

After a delay of five years, the Jharkhand government had allotted 470 acres of forest land to the company and was in the process of allotting another 1,220 acres by mid-May, a state government official said. Reliance Power has moved the Delhi High Court in May 2014 for a stay on encashment of its Rs 800-crore bank guarantee for the Tilaiya UMPP in Jharkhand.

The case, company officials said, would be withdrawn once the payment the termination is through.

The land required for the coal mine and power project is 17,000 acres. Based on current estimates of the land handover process, the company said the project could not have been completed before 2023-24.

Of the 16 UMPPs the United Progressive Alliance government had planned, only four were awarded. Three of these at Sasan, Tilaiya and Krishnapatnam were to be set up by Reliance Power and the one at Mundra by Tata Power.

Reliance Power's Sasan UMPP achieved completion earlier this year. The Krishnapatnam project in Tamil Nadu, which will run on imported coal, is delayed by clearances. Reliance Power had bid aggressively at Rs 1.29 a unit and Rs 2.33 a unit for these two UMPPs.
The research and development (R&D) head of a top car maker sat through the three-hour Supreme Court hearing on the fate of diesel passenger vehicles. The veteran, whose company is not impacted by the courts registration ban on diesel vehicles (2,000 cc and above) in Delhi national capital region (NCR) was seen interacting closely with other industry colleagues and industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) during the lunch break.

The crisis has brought players together in an industry where companies indulge in aggressive competition to defend and increase market share. The automobile sector has a major challenge at hand: to convince the apex court that diesel passenger cars are not the main culprit behind Delhis pollution. The uphill task comes at a time when the world over diesel technology is coming under the scanner.

At Tuesdays hearing, where players such as Mahindra & Mahindra and Toyota argued in favour of diesel vehicles and sought a relief to sell diesel vehicles of 2,000 cc and above in NCR, the court maintained status quo and asked if diesel vehicles were polluting oxygen. The registration ban, imposed on December 16, is in place till March 31, 2016. The ban saddles companies with idle capacity and puts a question mark on the future of investments done in diesel manufacturing.

Siam, through its lawyer Sandeep Narain, has put forth a series of arguments in a written submission to the court for consideration before the next hearing on January 20. The industry body has cited a draft report of Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, according to which diesel cars account for two per cent of particulate matter (PM) 2.5, an air pollutant. Of this two per cent, at least 1.5 per cent of PM2.5 is attributable to BS-I, II and III cars. The BS-IV-compliant cars, registration of which is banned, contribute to a minuscule 0.5 per cent to total PM2.5 emission in Delhi, Narain said in the submission.

The R&D executive who attended the hearing on Tuesday said, The IIT-Kanpur report clearly states the contribution of road dust to PM2.5 in Delhi is the largest at 38 per cent, followed by vehicles (20 per cent), domestic fuel burning (12 per cent) and industry (11 per cent). The rest comes from diesel generator sets, construction, etc. Of the 20 per cent contribution from vehicles, trucks account for 46 per cent, two-wheelers 33 per cent and passenger cars 10 per cent. The finding makes is clear that passenger vehicles are not the culprit.



Siam also said the argument that diesel cars emit seven times more PM compared to petrol is based on a 2007 study with diesel cars that followed BS-III norms. With diesel cars now complying with BS-IV norms, the PM emission has come down by 50 per cent, it added. Banning the registration of latest technology BS-IV cars shall not result in improving the air quality of Delhi, but would instead allow old technology cars to ply, Siam stated.

WIN DIESEL?
Malini Parthasarathy, the first woman editor of The Hindu, published by Kasturi and Sons Ltd (KSL), resigned on Tuesday.

While Parthasarathy and KSL board chairman N Ram couldn't be reached for comment, sources told Business Standard that KSL board would meet on January 20 to appoint the new editor. Suresh Nambath, national editor of the Chennai-based daily, has been appointed interim head of all editorial operations.

Last month, The Hindu launched an edition in Mumbai, with Sachin Kalbag as the resident editor. According to sources, some members of the KSL board objected the way Mumbai edition was launched and the amount of money spent on it at a time when the paper was making losses.

Parthasarathy took charge as editor-in-chief of one of India's oldest dailies in February 2015. When she became editor, KSL had restored control of the newspaper to the Kasturi family that owns it. Earlier, in 2011, it had departed from this tradition when Siddharth Varadarajan was appointed the editor. He resigned from the post in 2013.

K Venugopal, the oldest member of Kasturi family with journalistic background, is being seen as a strong contender for the job. Venugopal was the editor of The Hindu Business Line for many years.*



Other journalists in the family are much younger. While Vidya Ram, daughter of N Ram, is the Europe correspondent for Business Line, Narayan Lakshman is the US correspondent for The Hindu. Ananth Krishnan, China correspondent for India Today, used to write for The Hindu till mid-2014. KSL publishes of The Hindu, The Hindu Business Line, Frontline, Sportstar, and The Hindu (Tamil).

*Business Standard competes with The Hindu Business Line in some markets


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If you have an immediate prayer need, please call our 24-hour prayer line at 800-700-7000. CBN's ministry is made possible by the support of our CBN Partners.
Hyderabad-based Tata Projects Limited today announced that it was commencing work on Rs 4,328 crore project to build the 320-km stretch of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), a freight line connecting Delhi and Mumbai.

The company, along with IRCON International Limited, is a part of the Express Freight Consortium, which is led by Mitsui and Company Limited of Japan.

Segregating freight traffic from passenger traffic is aimed at facilitating a high speed movement of freight between the important economic centers. Tata Projects operates through its business units across EPC, transmission, transportation, construction and environment, urban infrastructure among other areas.

The consortium plans to complete the work in scheduled time of 48 months using latest technology of Automated Track Laying Machines. The machine lays the sleepers, special rails imported from Japan, and clamps all together in an automated manner simultaneously.

The DFC is an ambitious programme of the Ministry of Railways involving construction of two corridors: The Eastern DFC from Ludhiana to Dankuni, and the Western DFC from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Mumbai. The project is being implemented by DFC Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL).

The project will eventually link the four hubs of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata at the corners of India's Golden Quadrilateral. The Japanese government has provided loans for Western DFC project under the Special Terms for Economic Partnership (STEP).

"We are delighted to be a part of this ambitious Dedicated Freight Corridor Project for the second time, as we are already constructing a section of the Eastern Freight Corridor. The early commencement of work, within a short period of the award of contract, is testimony to our proven execution excellence and capabilities in this area. Tata Projects, along with the other consortium partners, aims to bring the best of the technological advancements for this project in line with global standards. This project is an important milestone towards modernisation of India's rail freight transportation, and we at Tata Projects are committed to the development of India," Vinayak Deshpande, managing director of Tata Projects Limited said in a statement.
Telecom operators have been aggressively upgrading their networks, even as the Delhi High Court is likely to pronounce its order on compensation for call drops on Wednesday.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has asked operators to pay a compensation of Re one for every call drop, maximum three calls per day per mobile user, starting January 1. But, this was challenged by operators in the high court, which refused to stay the directive but posted the hearing for Wednesday.

If government sources are to be believed, there is significant improvement in the networks of telecom players and the call drops rate has come down significantly over the last few months.

TOWERING NUMBERS Telcos added about 29,000 new towers across the country



BSNL set up 4,500 mobile towers in the country



MTNL, operating in Delhi and Mumbai, installed 28 towers in Delhi

Telecom players, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, have added about 29,000 new towers across the country. Out of this, state-run player BSNL set up 4,500 mobile towers in the country, while MTNL, which operates in Delhi and Mumbai, installed 28 towers in Delhi.

Minister for Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad has been constantly monitoring the situation, with the department of telecommunication and Trai working in tandem to resolve the situation.

Telcos have said Trai regulation is unfair as laws of physics make it impossible to provide a 100 per cent call drop-free network and it is beyond the powers of the telecom regulator to impose such a penalty. However, Trai has claimed the order is well within its powers and it is the responsibility of the operators to provide quality services.

In the past few months, operators have taken many steps to improve the situation. India's largest telecom player Bharti Airtel says call drops are only affecting one per cent of sites and the situation is difficult in select pockets.

"The total number of towers has increased by 30 per cent in the past few months to improve connectivity. Capex has also been stepped up in FY16 compared to last year. The issue, however, is difficult to address is the lack of sites in select pockets. The situation has improved in Delhi as NDMC has allocated 35-40 sites to but the company constrained by quantum of spectrum," an Airtel spokesperson said.

"Apart from adding new sites, we are also using smart technology tools to optimise network, which makes process dynamic depending on the nature of the traffic on 2G, 3G and 4G," the spokesperson added.

According to data, there are about 425,000 towers across the country but experts say the needs at least 100,000-200,000 more towers. Also, according to a report by consultancy firm Deloitte, the tenancy ratio per tower is expected to grow to 2.48 by 2020 from 1.77 in 2014-15 because of growth in data.

However, the annual growth in towers would be only three per cent over the next four to five years with total number of towers reaching 511,000 by 2020.

Vodafone has set up a war room, consisting of senior leaders from the company to monitor the call drop situation in the country with special focus on key zones such as Lutyens Delhi.

The situation got aggravated by a recent sealing drive by various municipal corporations, and in many cases, telcos are not able to install towers due to radiation fears among the residents despite India having strict radiation norms.

Till now, there has been no conclusive study on harmful impact of radiation from towers. The telecom ministry has given permission to telcos to install towers on government buildings and post offices.
Textile mills in north and south India are crying foul over increased adulteration in cotton procured from Gujarat.

Cotton farmers are holding on to raw cotton waiting for better prices. This has resulted in a price disparity between raw cotton made available to ginners and finished cotton produced by ginners. Ginners are mixing lower quality cotton with higher quality cotton to reduce their losses.

Mills and traders buying cotton from Gujarat said the usual rate of adulteration of 10-15 per cent had climbed to 40 per cent this year. Increased adulteration is also being reported in Maharashtra.

Ginners are losing Rs 500-700 per bale of raw cotton. Many ginners are mixing lower quality cotton to reduce their loss. Yet their returns are not good, said Arvind Pan, vice-president of the Saurashtra Ginners Association (SGA).

A bale of 170 kg raw cotton contains 32 per cent lint, 63 per cent seed and another 5 per cent goes waste. The cost to ginners is Rs 8,500 per bale and Rs 500 for production. Ginners are being offered Rs 8,000-8,200 per bale for ginned cotton. After adulteration, the loss is being reduced to Rs 200-300 per bale.

Textile mills are forced to import more cotton. Good quality cotton, especially from Gujarat, such as Shankar 6, is being mixed with lower quality cotton, said members of the Northern India Textile Mills' Association (NITMA).

Confirming that mills in south India had begun booking imports from Africa, K Selvaraju, secretary-general of the Southern India Mills Association (SIMA), said, There have been rampant quality issues, especially from Gujarat. A large number of ginners are mixing waste cotton with virgin raw cotton. Mills have begun booking import contracts and this could increase if the adulteration does not stop.



Selvaraju added adulteration had increased from 15 per cent of total arrivals in south India to almost 50 per cent this year.

Raw cotton prices have risen from Rs 800 to Rs 980 per 20 kg during the current season. Generally prices decrease for a few months after the new arrivals. But this year the crop is damaged by pests and raw cotton prices are on the rise.

A Mumbai-based industry expert said, Raw cotton prices have gained so far for want of good quality cotton. Moreover, the government has declared a bonus, which increased the expectation of farmers, and they are not selling cotton at lower rates. The Centre has increased the minimum support price (MSP) for raw cotton to Rs 810 per 20 kg.

Last month, the Gujarat government declared a Rs 110 bonus on the MSP, which set the price of cotton at Rs 920 per 20 kg. Farmers are not willing to sell cotton below Rs 950 and have been demanding Rs 1,100 per 20 kg.

Moreover, ginned cotton prices have not increased because of weak export demand and they rule at Rs 34,000 per candy of 355 kg. Bharat Boghara, who owns a ginning unit in Jasdan, said, "Ginners will be able to earn profits only if cotton prices rise over Rs 35,000 per candy."
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to assure him that Islamabad would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists and their organisations who had mounted the operation in Pathankot. The Pakistan PM apparently did not attempt to prevaricate or dissemble as to the nationality of the attackers, especially after proof was provided to him.

A press release put out by the ministry of external affairs said the Indian PM strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack. Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan, the release said. The evidence, in the form of a Letter Rogatory (LR), would be sent containing all possible information about the attackers: Phone data, the phone numbers of their handlers whom they called from India and DNA data.

Indian security agencies hope that through the call details, Pakistani authorities would be able to reach the mother of one of the terrorists who had telephoned her saying he was on a suicide mission. The DNA samples would also help to establish that one of the terrorists was her son. Besides, the terrorists have made multiple calls to their handlers, believed to be based in Bahawalpur in Pakistans Punjab, which is the headquarters of terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad. The terror group is suspected to be behind the attack on the Pathankot airbase.

The Pakistani foreign office had a slightly different version of the conversation Sharif had with Modi. According to them, it was to convey his grief and sorrow that Sharif called Modi. He told Modi that terrorists would not be allowed to derail the peace process between the two countries and said Islamabad would investigate all leads or information provided by New Delhi.

Security Advisor A K Doval and his Pakistani counterpart, General Nasir Khan Janjua, also spoke on the phone. It is not known who took the initiative.

At the same time, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the actual operation to hunt down the gunmen had ended with the discovery of six badly burnt bodies of terrorists, who carried proof of being from Pakistan. He said combing operations to destroy and defuse explosives would continue. The defence minister conceded that there had been lapses in the operation but blamed the size and terrain of the Pathankot airbase for this. He was clear that he was speaking only on behalf of the defence services and would not comment either on the role of the state government or the Security Guard (NSG), amid criticism that absence of command and control systems had led to a botched operation. He said the NSG continued to direct operations.

On why the Indian Army had not taken a lead role in the operation, Parrikar said the army had no mandate to operate in civilian areas. A part of the airbase was in civilian areas. Several foreigners, who were undergoing training, were also present at the base, as were 3,000 civilian families. Parrikar said the NSG had worked out how the infiltrators entered, and what route they took, and would take steps to block them. There is no suspected terrorist inside right now. (Still,) I will not give a negative report till the combing operations are over. The combing operations may be over by tomorrow, he said in reply to questions. Also, the operation was on only for 36 hours, and not 60-plus hours, as claimed by many, he said.

Parrikar said the seven security personnel killed during the attack would be treated as martyrs, which would entitle their families to all the benefits available to a battle casualty in war-like situations. He said the terrorists were carrying 40-50 kg of bullets and mortars, which were fired from modified under-barrel grenade launchers, besides some magazines.

Replying to questions, he said, I see some gaps. But I do not think there is any compromise on security. Once the investigations are over, things would become clearer, he said, adding every security detail couldnt be discussed. Parrikar said he was worried as to how the terrorists had managed to come inside the 2,000-acre base, which has a perimeter of 24 km.

Asked about the Pakistani connection, he said there were indications that some of the equipment was made in Pakistan. Parrikar said except the Garud commando, no one else was killed in the direct operation. Five Defence Security Corps personnel died more because of bad luck. One of them, Jagdish Chandra, virtually grappled with the terrorist before killing him, he said. Calling the counter-terror operation as very difficult, Parrikar said all assets  strategic and buildings and the families, were secured. The only building that was damaged was the one in which the terrorists were holed up, he said.

He complimented the joint efforts of the Army, Air Force, and the NSG and said they should undertake joint training in future. Brushing aside criticism over opting for the NSG for the main role rather than the special forces of the army, he said, Fifty per cent of the NSG is made up of the Army only. All assets were provided by the Army and they worked together smoothly.
The automobile manufacturers, who had moved Supreme Court seeking modification of the courts December order banning registration of diesel vehicles in the Capital, did not get any immediate relief. On December 16, the apex court had ordered a temporary ban on registration of diesel vehicles with engine capacity of 2,000 cc and above till March 2016.

The court, meanwhile, took its anti-pollution drive in the Capital ahead by closing three more entry points for heavy commercial vehicles that are passing through Delhi. It also set in motion measures to penalise overloaded commercial vehicles that enter the city. Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Aryama Sundaram, appearing for the auto manufacturers body, contested the premise that diesel vehicles are polluting by nature and argued that it depended on the technology of the vehicle.

Sibal and Singhvi appearing for Mercedes-Benz and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), respectively, also argued that the larger vehicles account for just 0.2 per cent pollution and smaller vehicles contribute more. They suggested that the courts move could prove counter-productive as it would encourage usage of smaller vehicles, which are more polluting.

He went on to ask, Which is the class that owns SUVs? To this Sibal said, Taxi drivers use them. A lot of BPOs use these for their staff, he added. The judge shot back, Taxi drivers? Bring one taxi driver who owns an SUV. While the lawyers sought an early date somewhere in the next week, the court said it would be listed for hearing at an appropriate date. Lawyers later said the matter is expected to be taken up on January 20.

M&M, whose top-selling models such as Scorpio, XUV 500, Xylo and Bolero are hit by the ban, saw its stock price rise about two per cent to Rs 1,270.35 before the hearing. It, however, slipped to Rs 1,238.60 after the court decided to maintain status quo and closed in green at Rs 1,248.05.

Earlier, amicus curiae Harish Salve submitted a status report on the impact of the measures ordered by the court on December 16. The green levy of Rs 1,300 on trucks entering Delhi at two major entry points has resulted in decline of vehicular traffic by some 11,000 trucks.

This, in turn, has resulted in a reduction in pollution levels of around 30-35 per cent, Salve told the court, citing reports by NGO Centre for Science and Environment.

The court then decided to extend the diversion of non-Delhi bound vehicles on more points in Palwal on the NH-2, which would cut down traffic coming into Badarpur border, Ghaziabad on NH-58 and the Mohan NagarShahdara stretch on the SH-57. The court also mentioned NH-10, but Ranjit Kumar, the Solicitor-General said this stretch had been already covered by the earlier move. The measures are likely to ease the congestion and pollution levels by providing alternative routes for the pass through traffic moving from South towards East and from Meerut (East) to South and North. In the earlier order, the apex court had restricted the entry of trucks not bound for Delhi through NH-1 and NH-8.

No heavy commercial vehicles, except those bound for Delhi, shall be allowed to enter through these routes, the court said. The court also asked the central government to lend a helping hand to the National Highways Authority of India and the state government to ensure that people using the alternative routes are not put to any inconvenience.

The court has also directed the Environment Pollution Control Authority to convene meetings and to explore the modalities for implementation of further measures such as equipping the entry points with weighbridges to detect and penalise overloaded vehicles entering the city and radio-frequency identification or other such tech-based advanced system for collection of the green levy from truckers.

After the government said, it had received complaints from private owners that they were facing difficulties in getting no-objection certificates (NoC) for sale of older vehicles outside the NCR, the court said there was no bar on Delhi Government from issuing NoC for sale of 10/15-year old vehicles to purchasers outside NCR.

The court refused to get dragged into the commercial dispute that has arisen between the toll collecting agency and the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC). SDMC alleged that the contractor has been dishonest in reporting the fall in traffic and has defaulted on bank guarantee. The court said it was for the civic body to ensure that collection of green levy continues unhindered.

SC ATTACKS CAPITAL POLLUTION 2.0
Even as it becomes clearer that the attack at Pathankot air-base could have been handled better, there remain several questions that need answering, particularly those regarding the role of Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, who claimed to have been carjacked and later dumped by the terrorists.

The SPs role

The Superintendent of Police for Gurdaspur disctrict, Singh was reportedly abducted last Thursday by terrorists who went on to attack the Pathankot Air Force base. According to media reports, Singh has claimed that his attackers dumped him and his cook in a dense forest and hijacked his SUV, equipped with a blue beacon, using it to enter Pathankot. The vehicle was found on Friday morning about 1.5 km from the air base. What is puzzling is that while the terrorists had killed the driver of another car they hijacked, they spared Singh, who apparently convinced them that he was an ordinary citizen and not a cop.

There are several inconsistencies in Singhs statements, including him frequently changing his account on how many people abducted him, NDTV reported.

While Singh has maintained that he was on his way back to Gurdaspur from Pathankot where he had gone to pray at a local temple, his movements so close to the Indo-Pak border late on Thurday night, especially after the Punjab Police alerted its officials the same day against a possible terror attack on key defence installations and asked top officials to be vigilant at night.

How did the terrorists enter?

A Reuters report quoted a home ministry source saying that Punjab has long been used as a corridor for drug smuggling and several sleeper cells of the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad have been activated in Punjab through it. With the Pathankot attackers being linked to Jaish-e-Mohammad, this link cannot be ruled out. It has also been speculated that the arms and ammunition used by the terrorists were sent much before the attackers crossed the border.

The NSAs role

Finally, the NSAs handling of the entire operation has also been questioned by several political leaders and former defence personnels. While the Opposition has categorically asked Ajit Doval to confine himself to advisory role, several other leaders, including Omar Abdullah, have criticised Doval for deploying NSG and Garud commandoes, instead of sending in the Army from the start.
The launch of the 'Start Up India' initiative later this month will see participation from founders of top global brands including Softbank, Uber and WeWork, besides 40 chief executive officers (CEOs) and venture capitalists, to encourage India's young entrepreneurs. Google will provide on-the-spot equity funding to start-ups.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the initiative on January 16 and unveil the Start-Up action plan, which will highlight initiatives and schemes being undertaken by the government to address various aspects relating to the development of a conducive ecosystem for start-ups in the country.

"About 40 leading CEOs, venture capitalist, angel investors from Silicon Valley will come down along with the participation of 2000 new age ventures," said Amitabh Kant, secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).

DIPP, the nodal agency for the initiative has organised interactive talks with global leaders and venture capitalists, including Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of SoftBank, Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber and Adam Nuemann, founder, WeWork during the launch.

"We want start-ups to flourish. There are too many issues on compliance. The intention is that the government keeps itself away. Start-ups cut across the entire ecosystem," said Kant.

The government's action plan would help start-ups penetrate tier-II and tier-III cities in sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday the government would continue the thrust on public spending in the upcoming Budget. The government would do this in spite of the additional expenditure burden of nearly Rs 1 lakh crore due to One Rank, One Pension (OROP) and the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations for the next financial year.

Public investment has been stepped up in the past year and it will continue to remain stepped up. When you fight a global slowdown, public investment has to lead the way, Jaitley said at the foundation day of India Infrastructure Finance Company in New Delhi.

For 2015-16, the government had committed to increasing public spending in infrastructure to boost demand for the private sector battling stressed balance sheets. It is a promise which the Centre came good on. Capital spending for April-November was Rs 1.59 lakh crore, a good 31 per cent over the same period last year. In fact, spending comfortably crossed Rs 1 lakh crore the first time for the first six months of the financial year.

Jaitleys commitment to spend next year comes at a time when the government has cut its own gross domestic product (GDP) growth estimates for the year to 7-7.5 per cent from 8.1-8.5 per cent. The government may also take a re-look at the medium-term fiscal consolidation road map.

In his mid-year economic analysis in December, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian had said there was a need to re-assess the fiscal deficit target of 3.5 per cent for 2016-17 due to additional expenditure for OROP and pay commission.

The additional burden due to the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations is expected to be around Rs 74,000 crore.

While defence ministry estimates say additional spending impact due to OROP is expected to be around Rs 8,000 crore, finance ministry officials claim it could be as much as Rs 15,000 crore.

Speaking at the event, Jaitley said investment in rural infrastructure was the "need of the hour". As reported earlier, the Narendra Modi-led government is looking to boost rural consumption. It may give an allocation push in Budget 2016-17 to programmes on irrigation infrastructure and rural roads, among others.

Jaitley said that the finance ministry was in touch with a large number of international sovereign and pension funds to become partners in the newly set-up National Investment and Infrastructure Fund for funding projects.

"The years and months to come will be those where we will be seriously investing in infrastructure. We should be able to show much more positive results, as far as Indian economy is concerned, making it a stable force, which we have become even in the midst of a crisis like situation across the world," he said.

Jaitley said the government is considering allowing the private sector to manage smaller airports. The proposal for allowing management participation to the private sector in some mid-sized and smaller airports is aimed at improving their managerial efficiency, Jaitley said. He added that the railway has now come on to directionally the right track. We are inviting the private sector, including foreign investment into infrastructure... very shortly, the railways is going to come up with its proposed bids for development of 400 railway stations in the country".

Jaitley also said the ministry of civil aviation has worked on improving management in the mid and lower levels. "They probably need managerial efficiency and, therefore, management participation of the private sector in some of these airports is a proposal, which they have been considering. I think the government is very clear with regard to the direction in which it wants to move," he said.

There is no easy day. And, therefore, the trends that global economy is going to throw up, will be challenging," he said, adding lower oil, commodity and mineral prices was an opportunity for India. "I find the opportunity provided by the low oil prices has enabled the government to channelise a large part of our savings in central areas of infrastructure," he said.
Students struggling with reading fluency should be asked a simple question, says educational therapist Diana Black Kennedy : What do you want to read about today?

In a recent piece for Language Magazine, Kennedy writes that searching the Web for information on topics of interest can give students a reason to read.

As is often the case for me, I learned this Googling for content technique with another studenta bright, curious, dyslexic middle schooler whom well call Steve, she explains. Steves explanation [was] that he would pretty much prefer reading anything to fiction because if I have to read, I can at least learn something transformed our work together.

Another studenta high school sophomore named Sophiawas motivated by reading about nail painting. As trivial and nonacademic as this sounds, Sophia had to work through sentences like Greasiness from lotion prevents polish from adhering and Polish remover thats pure acetone will get rid of residue faster, but if thats too drying, try a nonacetone remover, writes Kennedy. And yes, she was able to work out acetone. And from there, we got to analyze nonacetone. We also looked at greasiness and its link to grease and greasy.



Offline vs. Online Reading

Kennedy isnt explicit in her piece about who actually does the Googling"whether its her or the student or a collaborative effort. But isnt that critical to the task?

Researcher Donald J. Leu of the University of Connecticut describes the difference between offline and online reading . Offline reading can occur on a computer or e-reader, but its really not much different from print reading. The text is read from top to bottom without much interaction. If Kennedy is printing the article or simply having students read it on-screen without much clicking, thats offline reading.

But online reading, as Leu explains, requires a whole new set of skills. Its the process of reading to find information onlinefor instance, using a search engine, evaluating a websites credibility, clicking on hyperlinks, and comparing information from different sites. If Kennedys students are doing the Googling themselves, then they are doing online reading.

Whether reading practice is done offline or online should likely depend on both the students ability level and the instructional goal. If the instructional aim is simply to improve fluency using an engaging topic, its probably fine for the teacher to select the text. But if the goal is to teach students to find material that theyll enjoy reading, and to encourage them to do that on their own, then perhaps letting them do the Googling is a better way to go.

Would love to hear from teachers: Is using a search engine a good way to find engaging texts? And how do you decide who does the Googling?
Maharashtra Governor C Vidyasagar Rao will meet industry leaders on Friday to discuss ways to align corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of both public and private sector companies with the development priorities of the state.



Whos Who of the Indian corporate sector, including top bosses of Reliance, Tata, Aditya Birla Group, M&M, Bajaj, Godrej, Essar, Hindustan Unilever, Cadbury, HDFC, Hindustan Construction, IRB are likely to attend the meeting with the Governor. State finance and planning minister Sudhir Mungantiwar would be presenting the list of areas where the state government needs help of the corporations. Public sector majors like IOC and BPCL would also attend the meeting.



Education, tribal development, forest conservation, skill development, renewable energy and internet penetration in rural areas are likely to some of the focus areas.



The interactive session has been organised on January 8 at the Raj Bhavan. Maharashtra state planning and finance department is expecting 32 corporate honchos to attend the meeting at the Raj Bhavan.

The meeting with the industry leaders is an attempt to combine the efforts of the government and the corporate world to achieve the desired results in helping the corporate entities to judiciously use their CSR funds while addressing the development needs of the state. The government would act as an enabler by identifying the relevant areas of development and help the organisations to invest in not only causes they believe in but also to the growth of Maharashtra" Mungantiwar told Business Standard.



He informed that the state finance department along with the governor have decided nine priority areas such as Swachh Bharat, skill development, forests and renewable energy.

Mungantiwar said the state government wants the CSR money to be spent efficiently. It will also form a team to facilitate the companies in their CSR initiatives. This will help corporate firms get a better understanding of the larger and deeper programmes by the state government, he added.



The minister added the objective of the event is to put in place a joint strategy to optimise CSR expenditure in the state. An official from the state finance and planning department said the interactive session is supported by KPMG which is also the knowledge partner.
In order to boost industrialisation and attract big-ticket private investments, the Uttar Pradesh government is drafting a new policy in defence manufacturing, a top state industrial department official said today.

Besides, the government is working on a policy to encourage startups for balanced industrial development in the state.

UP infrastructure and industrial development principal secretary, Mahesh Kumar Gupta, said both policies were already on the anvil and would soon be introduced.

Infrastructure growth, an industry-enabling environment, financing of business and viability of projects are fundamental to industrial development, he said addressing the ongoing three-day UP Pravasi Diwas at Agra.

Over the last three years, the state government had been focusing on all critical factors that catalyse industrial development, especially after ushering in the Industrial and Infrastructure Development Policy in 2012, he noted.

Maximum attention is being directed to improving the ease of doing business in the state. For this, the single window for investment and business facilitation at Udyog Bandhu is being upgraded, Gupta informed.

He further said the government was working on ensuring self-sufficiency in power by December 2017. The government is not only developing virgin growth centres, but is taking key steps to revive traditional industrial clusters.



Gupta said that while investors were keen to investing in cities like Lucknow, Noida and Greater Noida, there was now growing interest among investors to enter the eastern, central and Bundelkhand regions of UP after the Mumbai investment summit.

He said industry-focused skill development initiatives, a network of incubation labs and packaging/design support to MSMEs would contribute to balanced industrial development in the state.

UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had yesterday inaugurated the event aimed at networking with the UP diaspora settled globally and excelling in their fields of business, industry, trade, and research, among other areas.

Later, Yadav had feted select non-resident Indians (NRI) of UP origin with the UP Ratna award, while the state government also signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with over a dozen private organisations and banks to cooperate in trade and social sector.
companies are now taking a slew of steps to promote the concept of among the public. These include awareness campaigns, social media promotions, road-shows and customer meets. The focus here is not brand promotion or advertising, but purely for awareness.

For instance, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance has carried out an insurance awareness roadshow called Jan Jagruti across different rural locations of Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat. Subrat Mohanty, head of marketing, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, said this was a campaign wherein a vehicle equipped with service support materials and representatives goes out to places and a group of artistes perform a street play in the local language. Mohanty said they would soon take this roadshow to parts of Tripura in the Northeast and Haryana.

In the last one-and-a-half years, the company has conducted customer meets in small towns across different parts of the country. Mohanty said the event is called Pehle Aap and our chief executive officer along with sales officers interact directly with select customers and tell them about importance of having adequate life insurance.

Insurers are also using their mobile applications for creating awareness not only basic policies but also helping prospective policyholders calculate how much cover of insurance do they need for the various life stages. These tools are integrated in the mobile app, which can then also be used to buy a policy.

Companies with bank partnerships are also utilising the branch networks to educate customers.

Niraj Shah, director marketing, strategy and products, PNB MetLife Insurance, explained they have reached out to schools and colleges to organise sessions on insurance awareness for students. The programme enables the young generation to understand the basics of money management and thereby incorporating the importance of financial planning.

We have developed a film and a jingle on the importance of life insurance for rural and semi urban India. We are starting with workshops in Haryana and plan to reach out to thousands of people in over 10 villages and taluks, he added. Shah said an important point to note is they do not promote their products or services through this programme.

Sanjeev Mantri, executive director, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, said they have been conducting insurance familiarisation workshops across the country, including rural markets to help consumers understand and appreciate the need for insurance across health, motor, travel and home segments.

We have been focusing on specific days, for example, World Heart Day, for health insurance to spread the insurance awareness message and thus make it more relevant for consumers, he said.

Social media also plays a crucial role in awareness, since smart-phones have made access to internet more convenient and in several rural pockets, introduction to the internet is usually via the phone.

Mukesh Kumar, executive director, HDFC ERGO General Insurance, said on macro level, they leverage social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to reach out to the digital natives who constitute a large part of the younger generation and can be educated regarding the benefits of insurance thereby ensuring that the future generations are well protected.

The campaigns are also organised at micro level like road shows, seminars etc across villages as well as through village level entrepreneurs under the Common Service Centre (CSC) programme that enables the rural population to appreciate the benefits of the insurance, he said,



Sasikumar Adidamu, chief technical officer, non-motor, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, said the company hosts regular sessions on Google+ which is aimed at demystifying insurance. These hangouts aimed at building awareness about insurance and invited healthy discussions directly between the customers/audience and the top management of Bajaj Allianz. It has held 8 Google+ Hangouts thus far, with the theme of explaining the finer points of various insurance policies and ways to manage them for steady protection, he said.

Further, he added that the company runs contests and campaigns to educate users about insurance products such as health, travel, home and motor insurance through social media handles like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The company has also made many one-minute films with the objective of increasing insurance awareness.

Insurance penetration, measured as a percentage of premiums to a country's gross domestic product(GDP), has been on a constant drop in India. According to the sigma study from global reinsurer Swiss Re, India's insurance penetration fell to 3.3% in FY15, compared to 3.9% in FY14. This has been the lowest since 2005-06, when the penetration was at 3.14%.
Dr Jitendra Singh releases MDoNER Calender-2016 with theme Rising North East" . . Festival Destination North East-2016" during 12-14 February, 2016 in Delhi. . Northeast to have an exclusive Road Construction agency: Dr Jitendra Singh. .

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh released Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDoNER) Calender-2016 here today. The theme of the Calendar released this year is Rising North East" which is depicting developing modern North East. The Minister also briefed about the festival DESTINATION NORTH EAST-2016" which is being organised by the Ministry during 12-14 February, 2016 in New Delhi to showcase the inherent economic, social and cultural strength of the North East Region at National Level. .

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Briefing about the festival DESTINATION NORTH EAST - 2016", he said that the main focus of the festival is to bring mainstream India closer to the north east, so that rest of India gets to know about the north east. He said that the Ministry is committed to change the face of north east by the end of this year. The Minister said that the MDoNER is also working for promoting Public Private partnership in north east. He said that the Ministry is also liasoning with other ministries to coordinate the development work in the north east region. He also informed that the north east will be taken in the first phase of skill development programme. Sikkim will soon be declared the first Organic state in the country, he added. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh today announced the introduction of an exclusive road construction agency for Northeast which would be known as North-East Road Sector Development Scheme" (NERSDS) and would primarily focus on inter-State roads, popularly referred to as orphan" roads connecting one State with the other and often found to be neglected.Elaborating on the new initiative of DoNER Ministry to develop the road sector, Dr Jitendra Singh said that NERSDS is unique of its kind and perhaps the first of its kind introduced with the primary objective of promoting inter-State roads in the region which were earlier being maintained randomly by different agencies including the North-Eastern Council (NEC). He said, the first meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for this scheme was held recently in which five neglected inter-State roads were recommended for funding, which include Daimukh-Harmuti Road in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, Tura-Mankachar Road in Assam, Assam portion of Sherkhan-Bagha Bazar Road, Wokha-Merapani-Golaghat Road in Nagaland and Assam and Jamai-Taning Road in Manipu. The National Highway Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd. (NHIDCL) will be the project implementing agency for the road projects undertaken by NERSDS, he informed. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh said thathe has himself been travelling to Northeast whenever there was a sudden adverse situation or calamity like floods, violence or earthquake. He also mentioned that he visited Manipur yesterday, within hours of an earthquake having struck the region. He said that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi is keeping a personal track of the development activities in North-Eastern region. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh said that the MDoNER is responsible for the matters relating to the Planning, Execution and Monitoring of development schemes and projects in the North Eastern Region. Its vision is to accelerate the pace of socio-economic development of the region. He said that the Ministry owns the north east in entirety, going beyond its defined mandate and is ready to contribute in the development of north east in each possible manner. .

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Shri Naveen Verma, Secretary, MDoNER said that the focus of Ministry is on development of North east. He also said that the upcoming festival will focus on various sectors including tourism, food processing, skill development and variety of culture and cuisines of North East region. .

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This Festival DESTINATION NORTH EAST - 2016" will display various facets of North East in its myriad forms and colours through events as the proposed mega events.The event will include theme specific Business Summit consisting of sectors like, Tourism, Agriculture, Food Processing, Skill Development &Entrepreneurship, IT, Handloom & Handicrafts,Livelihood, Micro-Finance and Start ups. The aim of business summit is to attract investment in all Sectors and economic activities. .

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Stalls are proposed to be set up which shall showcase the best features of North Eastern States/Government Programmes/Scheme operational in the NE Region; andalso gives an opportunity to different sectors to deliver their achievements, issues, constraints and challenges.There will be Cultural Programmes (Music, Dance etc.) and Fashion Show showcasing fabrics of North East in the evening.Food stalls presenting North Eastern cuisines" would also be set upto make people relish the North Eastern Cuisines. .

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The Calender-2016, released today, is projecting various buildings and other developmental works carried out in each state of North Eastern Region, with the assistance of Ministry of DoNER. There are 12 photographs showing some of the infrastructure development activities in North Eastern Region under the various schemes of MDoNER. Out of these 12 pictures, 2 each are from Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and 1 each from Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Delhi. .

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Shri Ram Muivah, Secretary, North East Council and senior officers of the Ministry were also present on the occasion. .

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First Company of Ganga Task Force deployed Ganga Gram Yojana launched . .

As a major initiative towards fast track implementation of Namami Gange Programme the first company of Ganga Task force Battalion was deployed at Garhmukteshwar yesterday. Speaking on the occasion Union Minister of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sushri Uma Bharti said that three such companies will be deployed soon at Kanpur, Varanasi and Allahabad. The Minister said the Jawans of the Ganga Task force will be deployed on the banks of the river Ganga to ensure that industry and civilians do not pollute the river. She said that keeping Ganga clean is not the responsibility of our Jawans only but it is the duty of every Indian living near the river to keep it clean. She said, unless every citizen of the country keep this reasonability in mind the clean Ganga programme which is the dream project of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi will not be successful. .

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Sushri Bharti also launched Ganga Gram Yojana at Village Puth in Hapur district of U.P. 1600 villages situated along the banks of river Ganga will be developed under this scheme. In the first phase of the progamme 200 villages have been selected. In these villages open drains falling into river Ganga will be diverted and alternative arrangements for sewage treatment will be made. The villages will have toilets in every house hold. It is proposed to incur and expenditure of Rs. One crore on every village.These villages will be developed under the Sichewal model. It may be noted that Sichewal is situated in Punjab, where cooperation of the villagers has been solicited for the water management and waste disposal in a meticulous way. .

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Later in a function , Sushri Bharti gave away prizes to the students who took part in Namami Gange arts competition at Bhagirathi Inter college. Speaking on the occasion the Minister exhorted the students to contribute significantly into the success of Namami Gange progamme. .

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Earlier the Minister inspected two under construction sewage treatment plants at Garhmukteshwar. These STPs are expected to be operational by June this year. The Minister also inaugurated Namami Gange Photo exhibition at Garhmukteshwar and administered the pledge to the people to keep Ganga clean. The Minister also reviewed the progress of Namami Gange progamme at Garhmukteshwar with local officials. .

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Samir/jk
INDIA PHARMA 2016 & INDIA MEDICAL EXPO 2016 to promote India as a quality manufacturing hub in the Pharmaceuticals & Medical Electronics and Device sector . .

Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India in association with Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) is organizing INDIA PHARMA 2016 & INDIA MEDICAL EXPO 2016 at the Bangalore International Exhibition & Convention Centre (BIEC), Bangalore from 7-9 January, 2016. The objective of the twin events is to promote India as a quality manufacturing hub in the Pharmaceuticals & Medical Electronics and Device sector. .

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Shri Ananth Kumar, Minister of Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India will be inaugurating the program on 7th January, 2016 in presence of Shri Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, Minister of State for Chemicals & Fertilizers, Government of India, Shri R.V Deshpande, Minister of Industries, Govt. of Karnataka, Dr. Sharan Prakash Rudrappa Patil, Minister for Medical Education, Govt. of Karnataka, and Shri U. T. Khader, Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of Karnataka. The state of Karnataka will be participating at the Event as a Host State Partner. .

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India Pharma & India Medical Expo 2016 will have exhibitors from the Pharma Formulation, Bulk Drugs, Machinery and Technology, Medical Electronics, Medical Devices and Surgical Instruments. The event will provide a unique platform to Industry to meet the prospective partners and connect with the desired business stakeholders. The latest products and services from the above mentioned sectors will be showcased during the 3 day exhibition. Concurrent activities like the CEOs Forum, Buyer & Seller Meet, Structured B2B meetings and the International Conference will also be organized to provide an excellent platform to the participants to promote their products and services and enter into potential business tie-ups. .

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EEPC & Pharmexcil with the support from Ministry of Commerce will host buyers from Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Vietnam, Nepal, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malavi, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Ukraine, Kyrgyz Republic, Iraq and Tanzania. .

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The highlights of the event will be as follows: .

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Mega Inauguration of the Event on 7th January, 2016 in presence of Ministers from Govt. of India & Govt. of Karnataka, Leading CEOs of the Sector and Industry Stalwarts .

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Participation of over 200 companies in the exhibition .

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DIPP Pavilion Showcasing Make in India Campaign .

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Department of Science & Technology INNOVATORS PAVILION .

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DeitY pavilion along with participation from CDAC & SAMEER showcasing the latest technological developments in the Medical Device & Electronics sector .

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Karnataka UdyogMitra participating as Host State .

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Karnataka Drug & Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Pavilion .

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Over 50 CEOs attended the CEOs Forum .

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Reverse Buyer Seller meet by EEPC & Pharmexcil - Over 100 Hosted Buyers are attending from over 25 Countries .

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Start Up Pavilion with 6 Start-Up units .

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Over 3000 Registered Online Business Visitors .

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Prefix B2B meetings being arranged through the B2B portal .

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YB
PM receives telephone call from Pak PM

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a call this afternoon from Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Nawaz Sharif regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase. .

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Prime Minister Modi strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organizations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack. Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan. .

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Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif assured Prime Minister Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists. .

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The government has floated the idea of a gold board to ensure coordinated policy action.

The finance ministry held a round of discussions last month with stakeholders and sought their views on a National Gold Board, a body on the lines of the Financial Stability and Development Council. A government official said discussions were on and no decision had been taken yet. Sources said a final decision was likely to be announced in the Budget.

The Financial Stability and Development Council comprises all financial market regulators for coordinated oversight. A similar model is being proposed for gold because bullion-related decisions are taken by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, the Reserve Bank of India and the customs department. Their lack of coordination was felt a couple of years ago when the government restricted gold imports. Two months after the a gold monetisation scheme was launched, it is yet to take off for the want of several clarifications. According to industry executives, banks, hallmarking centres and gold refiners are set to start signing tripartite agreements. Last months meeting called by the finance ministry had two major items on the agenda. The first was creation of the National Gold Board and the second was setting up a gold exchange, which the India Bullion and Jewellers Association and BSE have proposed to do.

The meeting was attended by MMTC, the India Bullion and Jewellers Association, the Gems and Jewellery Federation, the World Gold Council, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad).

FICCI-WGC in their report on a gold policy two years ago had proposed setting up of a gold board or bullion corporation to manage imports, encourage exports and drive development of infrastructure.

Sanjeev Agrawal, a core member of the FICCI gems and jewellery committee and chief executive officer of Gitanjali Export Corporation, said, The gold board can help streamline implementation of policies and coordination among various decision-making bodies. There is also the need to make gold imports and sale of domestically refined gold transparent.



He suggested banks importing gold should sell it on the gold exchange and locally refined bullion should also be sold on the bourse within six days of refining.

This will reduce unwanted imports as idle gold can be lent.




Criminal Penalties for Murder Threats

We all know you can't threaten to kill the president. But what about a normal person? Or a whole race of people? Does it matter if it was on social media? And do emojis count?

While the First Amendment protects our freedom of speech, certain speech, like threatening to kill someone, can be a step too far. Here are the penalties you could face for murder threats.

True Threats

Federal law prohibits transmitting "any threat to injure the person of another" and penalizes such threats with five years in prison. But not all threats are created equally, and the Supreme Court has determined that only "true threats" can be punished. This generally means that the threat must be credible and specific enough that a reasonable person would be threatened.

But the Court will also look at the mentality of the person making the threat. Recently, the Court held that a man could not be convicted for violent Facebook posts unless he specifically intended them as threats. Anthony Douglas Elonis wrote "Theres one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you" to his ex-wife pointed out that there are "Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined," but argued that these were merely similar to rap lyrics and weren't intended as threats.

Credible Threats

State laws also prohibit threats in specific circumstances. For instance one girl in Colorado was arrested for posting a gun emoji to social media with the caption, "I have a gun in my backpack." Two other Colorado girls face felony charges of conspiracy to commit murder over an unspecified threat to a school. Under Colorado law, knowingly conveying a threat to cause death to a student, school official, or any employee of an educational institution is a class 1 misdemeanor and could mean 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Most states have similar statutes regarding murder threats, though the specifics may vary. If you've been accused, arrested, or charged with making death threats, you should talk to an experienced criminal defense attorney as soon as possible.

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Hangover from the New Years celebrations had barely receded when Chinese dropped the next headache. China bourses were forcefully shutdown when they hit the 7% circuit-breaker limit on the first day of trading. An immediate reaction to the fall was that it is a structural problem of the Chinese .

Commentators were quoted as saying that the ceiling limits introduced by Chinese regulators were much too close as compared to those of other . For example, US markets have a ceiling of 20% before the exchange is officially shut down as compared to only 7% in China.



Other reasons being quoted was that the ban imposed on selling by large investors in August is coming to an end. Lifting of the ban could free up more than 1.1 trillion yuan worth of holdings, or around 5.8% of total A-share free float, to be sold, Goldman Sachs estimated in a note on Tuesday.

But there are more fundamental reasons at play than the structural market issues. Market experts are jittery over how the Chinese economy is unfolding. Madhusudhan Kela, chief investment strategist with Reliance Capital, had said in an interview there would be a lot of uncertainty in global markets this year, with the biggest being how the Chinese slowdown story plays out.

Its the slowdown numbers that actually triggered the fall in the Chinese market. Though government numbers continued to show bullishness, a survey conducted by Chinese media group Caixin showed that PMI fell to 48.2 in December from 48.6 the previous month. Any number below 50 represents a deceleration in the factory sector. The government's official manufacturing gauge presented a rosier picture; it is heavily weighted toward large enterprises. The Caixin survey taps a smaller sample size and places greater emphasis on smaller firms.

Apart from the slowdown, the other number weighing on investor sentiment is the Chinese currency. A drop in the yuan makes repayment of foreign debt held by Chinese companies costlier. Further, the well-to-do Chinese are sending their money out of the country as yuan continues to fall. It is now trading near a five-year-low level. Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) decision to push more yuan into the markets is also be related to the continued flow of capital out of China. In the third quarter, total net capital outflows continued for a sixth straight quarter, reaching a record of $221 billion, according to data from Societe Generale.

After giving up on domestic growth, China is now trying to control its currency in order to help its exporters. Craig Stephen an expert on China points out that some $500 trillion of foreign reserves were used up last year to support the yuan and money mobilised to buy stocks has been estimated at 5 trillion yuan or 105 of gross domestic product.

China is increasingly placing its bets on the financial markets. President Xi Jinping of China has been quoted in the mainland press as saying that China will face increasing challenges over the next five years for which strong stimulus to boost development is no longer the solution. This is being read as the Chinese government will have to go back to pushing its economy forward by rejuvenating its loss-making heavy industries, cleaning up its banking system and laying off excess labour.

Irrespective of the path that the government chooses what is coming out clearly from China is that it will be some time before good starts flowing from the country. Markets will continue to remain volatile till the Chinese economy shows some signs of stability.
The worst-performing stocks in India last year are about to make a comeback in 2016. So, say Ashburton Investments and Birla Sunlife Asset Management Co, who favour large-cap shares over smaller peers due to attractive valuations and expectations foreign inflows will pick up. The S&P BSE Sensex of the nation's biggest companies fell five per cent in 2015, compared with gains of at least six per cent for gauges of mid and small-cap shares. "Looking at relative valuations, the large-cap space is where we are focused on," said Jonathan Schiessl, UK-based head of equities at ...
A blast stormed out at Jalalabad, Nangarhar in Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon and the target was the Pakistani Guest House.

The blast occurred in 400 metres from of Indian Consulate in Jalalabad, Nangarhar, reports the Tolo News.

Pakistan consulate is also in the vicinity to the site of blast.

One Afghan policeman has been injured but no casualties have been reported at the latest.

The explosion occurred after a 24-hour gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif city.
Former South Africa skipper Ali Bacher believes that his side's recently-concluded tour against India has played a part in the team's current struggle.

Earlier, South Africa had suffered a humiliating 0-3 defeat in the four-match Test series against India.

Describing the tour against India as a 'madness', the 73-year-old revealed that his players' were not able to fully overcome the defeat, Sport24 reported.

Bacher, who believes that the Indian pitches were 'outrageous', insisted that his side were now tackling England in a tough series.

The former skipper further said that the current South African Test team could not fill the void left by star players like Shaun Pollock, Mark Boucher, Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis.

South Africa are currently trailing 0-1 in the four-match Test series against the visitors following their 241-run defeat in the opening match against England in Durban.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday slammed the Congress Party for criticising the ruling dispensation on the terror attack at Pathankot air base, saying the age old party needs to stop politicising terror.

"I think there are certain issues primarily issues like security is a matter of concern to the whole country, so we feel that the Congress Party needs to stop politicising terror," BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said.

Rao further said that any party trying to derive political mileage by making such untimely comments was condemnable.

"They are making such comments even when an operation is going on the field and our security forces are fighting bravely and have given their life. It shows the Congress Party in utterly poor light," he added.

Launching a frontal attack on the Congress party, Rao said the former under its regime had completely emasculated the Prime Minister's office, as Dr. Manmohan Singh remained only a figure head Prime Minister as the entire government ran from 10, Janpath.

"It would be better for the Congress Party to keep mum on such issues. For the BJP and for Prime Minister Modi it is the nation that comes first and for the Congress it is the family that comes first," he added.

The Congress Party have come down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for engaging in talks with Pakistan amid the ongoing attack of the IAF base in Pathankot, saying the Foreign Secretary level talks needs to be called off.

The Investigation Agency (NIA) team also reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot today to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

Meanwhile, Pakistan condemned the terrorist attack in Pathankot and said that they were working on the 'leads' provided by India as a sign of their 'commitment'.

"We have extended our deepest condolences to the Government and people of India. In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it," Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in statement.
The Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday said that it expects cooperation from Pakistan for tracing the perpetrators of the Pathankot Air Base attack, saying it was clear that they were from Pakistan on the basis of the calls they made.

"We will provide Pakistan with the evidence and we expect cooperation from them. The terrorists were from Pakistan and it can be said on basis of phone calls that were made," NIA DG Sharad Kumar told ANI.

"Three FIRs have been registered. The first one being for kidnapping the taxi driver, second for kidnapping the SP and the third one for attacking the Air Force station," he added.

The NIA team today reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

Array

The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab yesterday to probe the 'conspiracy' angle behind the attack.

The first case which was filed under Sections 364, 365, 367,368, 397, 398, 419 and 171 of the IPC and Section 25 of the Arms Act, pertains to the abduction of Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh.

The second and the third cases are related to the killing of the Innova taxi driver and the attack on the air base respectively.

An SP-ranked officer has been made the Chief Investigating Officer of the case.

Meanwhile, Pakistan condemned the terrorist attack in Pathankot and said that they were working on the 'leads' provided by India as a sign of their 'commitment'.

"We have extended our deepest condolences to the Government and people of India. In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it," Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in statement.
France and Japan have condemned the terrorist attack on the Air Force station in Pathankot, saying that terrorism cannot be justified for any reason.

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Vikas Swarup shared this information on his official Twitter handle.

"French Press release on #PathankotAttack 'France condemns attack on Indian military base; stands alongside India in fight against terrorism'," he tweeted.

"'We condemn the terrorist attack. Terrorism cannot be justified for any reason. Japan expresses solidarity with gov & people of India'," he said in another tweet.

Meanwhile, the combing operations are still underway at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

The operation against the terrorists at the air base entered its fourth day today as security forces continue to carry out combing operations to smoke out any remaining terrorist.

Six terrorists have been neutralised so far in the combing operation.
Pakistan Navy has been making strenuous efforts to ensure comprehensive security by raising special marine battalion for surveillance at Gwadar Port with the commencement of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

Being the point of origin, Gwadar is the backbone of CPEC, which will be linked to China's western region through a rail and road network.

As reported by Dawn, CPEC intends to revive the ancient Silk Route with a focus on infrastructure and constituting the strategic framework of bilateral cooperation.

The project is a 3,000-kilometer network of roads, railways and pipelines to transport oil and gas from Gwadar Port to Kashgar city in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur region.

CPEC would help Pakistan in boosting its economy and will reduce China's routes of oil and gas imports from Africa and the Middle East by thousands of kilometers.
Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police Salvinder Singh, who was abducted by the terrorists involved in the attack on Pathankot's air base, on Tuesday rubbished allegations that the claims made by him were not given credence by the Punjab Police for hours.

"I informed the police as soon as I could. I completed my responsibility. They believed me completely. If you expect that I must have fought against them, then they would have killed me. They were five armed men," he said.

Narrating the incident, Singh said, "When we stopped the car, five persons rushed towards me. Those people had AK 47 with them. They did not ask us the way. They had GPRS with them."

Singh further said the terrorists took his mobile phone and spoke in Urdu.

"One of them said 'Salam alaikum' and hung up. They were talking to their commander, I think," he added.

The Investigating Agency (NIA) yesterday registered three cases to probe the conspiracy behind the Pathankot terror attack. The first of the three cases pertains to the Gurdaspur SP's abduction.

Security forces continued search and combing operation inside the Pathankot airbase on Tuesday - the fourth day after the attack on the frontline Air Force Station (AFS) by terrorists.

A military official said a fifth terrorist was killed on the third day of a siege and at least one attacker remained in the complex, as troops worked to secure the sprawling compound.
Equality Coast to Coast: Fair Pay Laws in 2016

Two new equal pay laws, enacted in New York and California, go into effect this month. They aim to make 2016 and beyond better for women workers, who are consistently paid less than men for the same work.

The California law went into effect on January 1 and has been called the nation's toughest fair pay legislation yet by the Los Angeles Times. The New York law passed with 7 others as part of the Women's Equality Agenda and will come into effect on January 19, according to Newsday. Both laws prohibit wage differentials between men and women. They also change how unequal pay claims are proven and defended.

Substantially Similar Standard

Governor Jerry Brown signed the California law, which requires employers to show that male and female employees are paid equally for "substantially similar" work. This may prompt employers to review compensation practices, with some experts saying it could lead to standardized pay packages.

Martha West, a law professor emerita at UC Davis, told the LA Times that what is exciting about the new law is the "substantially similar" standard. Rather than demanding that men and women get equal pay for equal work and then compare details like job titles, the new law compares roles more expansively.

West warns, however, that there is still a drawback to the new standard. "But the big limitation, as I read it, is the same old limitation under the prior law, which is there must be both men and women doing the work. So if it's a single-sex job like, let's take secretary, most secretaries are still women. So if you're in a big firm and you're a secretary, if there are no men secretaries, you can't use the statute to complain about low pay."

Women's Equality Agenda

In New York, it was Governor Andrew Cuomo who approved the new legislation in October as part of a set of laws called the Women's Equality Agenda, which addresses a wide range of issues from human trafficking to domestic violence to paid breaks for breast-feeding mothers, and more.

The Rest of the US

These equal pay laws in New York and California will likely prompt other states to pass similar legislation. As for complaints that such initiatives drive employers away, Professor West does not sound worried.

She says this complaint is raised whenever labor laws change. "I don't think this will have much of an impact at all on employers in California or employers wanting to come to California. Hollywood is not going to move away."

Talk to a Lawyer

If you are concerned about how new laws impact your business, or have any other questions about employment or business operation generally, speak to a lawyer. Get informed guidance.

Follow FindLaw for Consumers on Google+.

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Expressing grave concern over the Pathankot terror attack, the Shiv Sena on Tuesday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'chai' (tea) with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif cost the nation seven martyrs.

Launching a frontal attack on Prime Minister Modi, the Shiv Sena asked the former to introspect the security situation in the country post the Pathankot attack.

"Having tea with Nawaz Sharif is Prime Minister Modi's personal prerogative, but for that tea we have given seven of our brave soldiers. Why these soldiers were martyred and why the nation is not fighting? We need an answer," said the Shiv Sena editorial.

"The terrorists attacked the air base at Pathankot and even after 72 hours, the war hasn't ended. This is a matter of grave concern, as the borders of the country are no more secured as the internal security has failed completely; this is the clear proof of that," it said.

Array

The BJP ally in its mouthpiece said Pakistan has destroyed India's credibility by sending the terrorists to Pathankot.

"Home Secretary can't confirm as to how many terrorists are there in the air base. It clearly shows that the government is completely in dark regarding this attack," it added.

Array

The Shiv Sena further said Pakistan has betrayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Eight days ago the Prime Minister visited Lahore and met his counterpart Nawaz Sharif. We had warned him at that time that Pakistan can never be believed and you would be betrayed and now you see we have been betrayed," the editorial said.

"Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked the air base just after Prime Minister Modi's return from Pakistan," it added.

Criticising Pakistan for condemning the Pathankot attack, the editorial said Islamabad is 'faking by doing so'.

"If you really want to improve the relations between India then hand over Maulana Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot air base attack. Prime Minister himself went to Pakistan and cut the birthday cake of Nawaz Sharif, now he should hand over Masood to Modi," it added.

The Investigation Agency (NIA) team also reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot today to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

Array

The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab yesterday to probe the 'conspiracy' angle behind the attack.

Security forces continued search and combing operation inside the Pathankot airbase on Tuesday, the fourth day after the attack on the frontline Air Force Station by terrorists.
Lauding the valour efforts of the security forces for defending the Pathankot air base from the ulterior motive of the fidayeen, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday said six terrorists have been neutralised so far in the combing operation, which is still on for safety purpose.

Congratulating the defence forces for containing the 'highly motivated' terrorists, who were on a suicide mission, Parrikar emphasised that no strategic asset was compromised during the combing operation.

"I have practically visited all the spots where the gun battle took place. I want to thank and congratulate the NSG, armed forces, Garud unit of Air Force and Defence Security Corps. They have done an excellent job of containing these highly motivated terrorists on a suicide mission within practically 250 metre-area," Parrikar told the media here.

"It's a highly commendable job as the area has many blind spots," he added.

The Defence Minister, who assessed the ground situation at Pathankot along with Army Chief General Dalbir Singh and Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshall Arup Raha, said the combing operation that is presently on might end tomorrow.

"In this operation, six terrorists have been neutralised.

Two bodies that have been recovered today were in a very bad condition and their confirmation would be done after the DNA tests. The combing operation is still going on. And this combing operation is only for safety purpose," he said.

Parrikar informed that 40-50 kg bullets have been found from the terrorists and the material that has been recovered so far indicates that some of it was made in Pakistan.

"One terrorist still has body vest with a grenade, I've ordered it be destroyed where he's lying, we've lost one life due to booby trap," he said.

The Defence Minister further said it was a matter of concern as to find out how the terrorists managed to enter India.

Meanwhile, the NIA has said that it expects cooperation from Pakistan for tracing the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.

The NIA team today reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab yesterday to probe the 'conspiracy' angle behind the attack.

The Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan scheduled for January 14-15 in Islamabad looks in jeopardy in the wake of the Pathankot attack.
Lauding the valour efforts of the security forces for defending the Pathankot air base from the ulterior motive of the fidayeen, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday said six terrorists have been neutralised so far in the combing operation, which is still on for safety purpose.

Congratulating the defence forces for containing the 'highly motivated' terrorists, who were on a suicide mission, Parrikar emphasised that no strategic asset was compromised during the combing operation.

"I have practically visited all the spots where the gun battle took place. I want to thank and congratulate the NSG, armed forces, Garud unit of Air Force and Defence Security Corps. They have done an excellent job of containing these highly motivated terrorists on a suicide mission within practically 250 metre-area," Parrikar told the media here.

"It's a highly commendable job as the area has many blind spots," he added.

The Defence Minister, who assessed the ground situation at Pathankot along with Army Chief General Dalbir Singh and Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshall Arup Raha, said the combing operation that is presently on might end tomorrow.

"In this operation, six terrorists have been neutralised. Two bodies that have been recovered today were in a very bad condition and their confirmation would be done after the DNA tests. The combing operation is still going on. And this combing operation is only for safety purpose," he said.

Parrikar informed that 40-50 kg bullets have been found from the terrorists and the material that has been recovered so far indicates that some of it was made in Pakistan.

"One terrorist still has body vest with a grenade, I've ordered it be destroyed where he's lying, we've lost one life due to booby trap," he said.

The Defence Minister further said it was a matter of concern as to find out how the terrorists managed to enter India.

Meanwhile, the NIA has said that it expects cooperation from Pakistan for tracing the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.

The NIA team today reached the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot to begin its investigation of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab yesterday to probe the 'conspiracy' angle behind the attack.

The Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan scheduled for January 14-15 in Islamabad looks in jeopardy in the wake of the Pathankot attack.
A new discovery that majority of stars have strong magnetic fields, stumbled upon by a team of scientists from the University of Sydney, can change the way astronomers look at how stars evolve.

Previously, it was thought to be quite rare. The reason for its importance is that a magnetic field can affect a star's internal rotation rate and can dictate how it grows. It can even help them to predict changes to the sun, reports News.com.au.

Researcher concludes that only five to 10 per cent of stars were previously thought to host strong magnetic fields, current models of how stars evolve lack magnetic fields as a fundamental ingredient. The findings were published in the journal Nature.
In the wake of the ongoing attack by assailants on the Indian Air Force Base in Pathankot, Pakistan said that it is working on the 'latest leads' provided by the Indian Government to 'effectively' counter and eradicate terrorism from the region.

According to the Dawn, the Foreign Office said in a statement that Pakistan remains committed and is in touch with the Indian government.

The statement came as sections of the Indian media reported that New Delhi had contacted and shared information with Islamabad about the ongoing attack on the Pathankot IAF Base.

"We understand the pain of many families who have lost their dear ones in this tragedy, as Pakistan itself is a major victim of terrorism. We have extended our deepest condolences to the government and people of India," the spokesman said condemning the attack.

He added that the two nations needed to remain committed to a 'sustained dialogue process' in the light of the challenge of terrorism.

At least seven defence personnel have been killed so far in the deadly attack on the airbase which continued into its third day on Monday and search operations continue to smoke out the remaining terrorist who is reportedly still active.
Australian share market finished the session steeply lower on Tuesday, 05 January 2016, on rekindled concerns about the global fallout of Chinese economic slowdown. All sectors traded in the red with energy, materials, and financials leading declines.

At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index ended 86.10 points, or 1.63%, down at 514.40 points, while the broader All Ordinaries index lost 83.60 points, or 1.57%, to 5239.20 points. The S&P/ASX 200 VIX, which measures the implied volatility of S&P/ASX 200 options, rose 7.6% at 18.94, suggesting 5.4% swing in the equity benchmark index in the next 30 days.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News
JSW Steel rose 1.04% to Rs 1,057.90 at 9:56 IST on BSE after the company said it received a partial relief from the Karnataka High Court in the Forest Development Tax case.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 4 January 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 26.65 points, or 0.10%, to 25,596.70.

On BSE, so far 28,000 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 1.20 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 1,069 and a low of Rs 1,055 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,087 on 5 January 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 801 on 28 July 2015. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 4 January 2016, rising 7.71% compared with 0.06% decline in the Sensex. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 19.60% as against Sensex's 2.28% fall.

The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 241.72 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

JSW Steel announced that the Karnataka high court on 3 December 2015 provided a partial relief on the payment of Forest Development Tax (FDT) while hearing a petition filed by mine owners and the purchasers of iron ore, including JSW Steel on the levy of FDT by the Karnataka state government. The parties are entitled to appeal to the high court within the stipulated period of 90 days. JSW Steel said that the company is closely monitoring the developments in this regard.

On a consolidated basis, net profit of JSW Steel declined 84.38% to Rs 116.95 crore on 21.54% decline in net sales to Rs 10742.73 crore in Q2 September 2015 over Q2 September 2014.

JSW Steel is India's leading private sector steel producer. Its footprint extends to the US, South America and Africa.

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Held on 05 January 2016

Gokaldas Exports announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 05 January 2016, have decided to Transfer/Sale of Land, Building and related assets pertaining to its properties:-

1. Global Garments Unit-III, No. 40/1-1 (old No. 17/D), Industrial Suburb, Ward No. 10,1st and 2nd stage, Mahalakshmipura, Yeshwanthpur.

2. No. A-7/1, I.D.A, Nacharam Industrial Area, Sy No. 56, Rangareddy District, Hyderabad - 500 076.

3. Plot No. 28D & 28E in Sy No. 318 & 51 in Belavadi Industrial Area, Belavadi Village, Kasaba Hobli, Mysore Taluk, Mysore District.

4. Balaji Fashion House, No.61, 1st Main, Industrial Suburb, lInd Stage, Yeshwanthpur, Bangalore.

Further, the Board has decided to seek the consent of shareholders by way of Postal Ballot to this effect.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News
Park wardens have seized 30 kg of ivory tusks from poachers in Minkebe park in northern Gabon, an official said on Monday.

The park wardens who were on patrol, discovered a camp of poachers near the Gabonese border with Cameroon, Xinhua reported.

Fearing arrest, six of the suspected poachers fled and only one was apprehended. He was identified as Jean Claude Aboule Minkoume of Cameroonian nationality, just like his compatriots.

After a thorough search, the park wardens discovered in the camp 30 kg of ivory tusks, suggesting at least 14 elephants had been killed. Besides this discovery, they also found some weapons.

Elephants are some of the protected animals in Gabon. The country's forest code stipulates that killing, holding, transporting and selling products from protected animal species are prohibited and could be punished with six months' imprisonment or a maximum fine of 10 million CFA Francs (over $16,000).

Environmental NGOs have termed the penalty as very lenient. They have been calling for harsher penalties to discourage poaching.
Pakistan must cooperate with India in nabbing the masterminds of the terror attack on the IAF base in Punjab if they happen to be Pakistanis, a columnist said in remarks published on Tuesday.

"Pakistan must cooperate in nabbing the planners if they're proven to be in Pakistan," Islamabad-based Marvi Sirmed wrote in The Nation newspaper.

"Both the states should make sure that the dialogue must go on. Come what may," she added.

Terrorists believed to be from Pakistan attacked the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in Punjab before dawn on Saturday, leaving seven security personnel dead. Security forces killed five terrorists.

Calling the attack "dastardly", she noted that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condoled the deaths while strongly condemning the attack.

Sirmed said most Pakistan-India observers were anticipating such a terror attack, ever since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised the world by flying into Lahore to meet Sharif on Christmas.

"Just like the method in madness, there has been a long sustaining pattern of things between Pakistan and India.

"Every advance in the peace process has followed an incidence like this. When the recent thaw happened, many suggested that both the countries must devise a contingency for the apprehended obstacles and obstructions."

She said Pakistan must stop being seen on the side of the alleged attackers.

"When we scream to the world that we are the biggest victims of terror, we must be seen doing something against the scourge.

"Not allowing these elements taking our image in their hands, as a starter."
Liberal Politics from the Heart of Bluegrass Country
After Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare minister Sanjay Dasburma, Odisha Health Minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak faced egg and tomato attack from Congress workers in Deogarh district on Tuesday.

The Congress workers hurled eggs and tomatoes at the health minister's car at Kurada village while he was on his way to Deogarh after attending a programme in Sambalpur.

"The youth and students are protesting against the state government for failing to provide employment and irregularities in distribution of ration cards under the National Food Security Act (NFSA)," said Itish Pradhan, state unit president of the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), an affiliate of the Congress.

"Egg pelting will continue in the coming days against the ministers," said Pradhan.

Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Prasad Harichandan said the ministers are facing the anger of common people following their bungling in distribution of ration cards.

He said the ruling party workers and law makers have benefited from the NFSA in the state.

However, Biju Janata Dal legislator and the ruling party's students wing president Byomakesh Ray said the Congress workers are pelting eggs only to make their presence felt in the state after a disastrous defeat in several elections.

Earlier, the food supplies and consumer welfare minister faced egg and tomato attacks for two consecutive days in Ganjam and Puri districts.

Meanwhile, Chhatrapur police on Tuesday arrested three persons for allegedly pelting eggs and tomatoes at Dasburma's car near Chhatrapur College in Ganjam district on Monday.
The West Bengal tourism department will launch a revamped promotion campaign at airports in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata to draw more tourists, an official said here on Tuesday.

Christened "Experience Bengal", the campaign entails putting up hoardings and posters and other details at the airports.

"It will start in a couple of days and we will gradually branch out to other cities," a top official of the state tourism department told the media here.

In addition, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who is also the brand ambassador of the state, will be shooting a TV commercial here soon as part of the state's promotional campaign.
Tension gripped schools in Chennai on Tuesday after an anonymous caller threatened bomb blasts in the premises, forcing scores of parents to rush to schools. Police declared it to be a hoax.

With the telephonic threat spreading like wild fire through mobile phones, anxious parents gathered at schools to take home their children.

Police combed the schools that received the threats and found them to be fake. Around 10 schools allowed parents to take home their children.
An eight-member central government team to assess the extent of flood damage in Tamil Nadu met Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa here on Tuesday.

In a statement here, the government said the central team will tour the flood affected areas on Tuesday and Wednesday and make their assessment.

Jayalalithaa told the central team that the requirement of funds for relief and restoration of infrastructure are well beyond the resources available with the State.

"I therefore request the central team to make an in-depth assessment of the damages suffered by the state and to submit its report to the Ministry of Home Affairs expeditiously," she told the central team.

The state government had asked a total sum of Rs.25,912.45 crore towards flood relief and restoration works.

Heavy rains -- the worst in a century -- battered Chennai and adjoining Kanchipuram, Cuddalore and Thiruvallur districts in October-December 2015, resulting in unprecedented floods. A total of 421 people lost their lives in incidents caused by the rains.
China's commerce regulator on Tuesday launched a further probe into Microsoft's alleged anti-monopoly case, in a display of the country's latest effort to enforce its Anti-Monopoly Law.

State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) task force launched an inquiry for Microsoft to clarify major problems found in electronic data during the probe, Xinhua reported.

The company needs to submit a complete explanation after the inquiry, the SAIC said in a statement.

In 2014, Microsoft was suspected of not fully disclosing information of its Windows operating system and Microsoft Office application, causing incompatibility problems.

According to Chinese law, incompatibility without advance warning to customers could be regarded anti-competitive.
There is a dearth of women in the semiconductors industry in India, top women entrepreneurs and experts said here on Tuesday, stressing on interventions by employers to prevent "drop-offs".

A part of the electronics industry, semiconductors in India is considered niche and the presence of women is even less, according to Rituparna Mandal of Mediatek.

While at the entry level, percentage of women is 18, at the managerial level women comprise only 8 percent of the work force, according to statistics, Mandal said.

"There are practical problems which have to be addressed for women to stay relevant.

"The hub of semiconductors is really outside India... in the US. One has to travel like crazy and sometimes it is difficult to leave young kids behind," Mandal said at the 29th international VLSI Design conference here on 'Women in the semiconductors business'.

Sumeet Aggarwal of Intel said the challenge was to sustain and prevent drop-offs, especially for women who take a break from work.

"It's difficult to get back once you take a break because the industry is fast moving. We have to respect the life changing events that women go through," Aggarwal said.

He said interventions by companies must be put in place to get women back in the mainstream.

As a solution, Swapna Gupta of Qualcomm Ventures encouraged women to be driven and "take it to the next level and do your own thing".

"If they want to start their own ventures, women must take a leap of faith. They are equally competent as men," Gupta said.

Equally important are success stories, said Swapna Banerjee of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur.

"Women are doing well in semiconductors and that should be highlighted. They are very much needed," Banerjee said.
The government-certified stickers for four-wheeled gas-powered vehicles to enable their plying during the implementation of the odd-even scheme will be available only at one place in the city, the Delhi government announced on Tuesday.

"From Wednesday, these stickers will be available only at CGO complex on Lodhi Road," Transport Minister Gopal Rai said at a press conference.

Till Tuesday, the stickers for low-emission cars run on compressed natural gas - exempted from the odd-even scheme - were available at 95 CNG filling stations in Delhi and 19 such stations in the national capital region.

So far, 95 lakh stickers have been sold. These stickers have a special logo that can be detected with the help of an instrument.

The move came after reports that the CNG stickers were pasted on petrol vehicles by charging some money.

The transport minister told reporters that in a sting operation by a news channel it was found that a person identified as Deepak Sen -- a staff at Vivek Vihar CNG station in east Delhi -- had taken Rs.2,800 and pasted the sticker on a petrol car.

"As soon as we came to know about this, we organised a meeting with the Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL) officials and informed them about the matter."

"Deepak has been suspended. A First Information Report has been registered by IGL against him under the section of breach of trust at Vivek Vihar police station," Rai said.

Briefing about the fourth day of odd-even scheme, Rai said that Delhiites by and large complied with the rules by driving odd-numbered cars which resulted in smooth traffic movement on Tuesday.

Rai said that till 3 p.m. as many as 303 violators were fined by the traffic police, whereas in the entire day 207 cars were challaned by the enforcement teams of the transport department.

A liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) operated car which was plying with a CNG sticker pasted on its windshield, was impounded by the authorities.

Rai said he also visited Rajiv Chowk Metro Station in the afternoon to take stock of the situation there.

"Not even a single commuter at the Metro station complained me about any problem. The crowd there was not unmanageable," Rai said.

According to figures released by the Delhi Metro, ridership on January 4 was less than the average ridership of the last five Mondays - excluding January 4. On January 4, the ridership was 28.19 lakh whereas average ridership of last five Mondays was 28.25 lakh.

He said the Delhi government's odd-even formula brought down the pollution levels in inner Delhi. However, there had not been much effect in the outer Delhi for various reasons, such as movement of trucks in these parts.

He said the ambient air data was being collected by teams of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) at 20 locations in peripheral areas of Delhi.

"Data given by DPCC shows that in inner Delhi areas like Lajpat Nagar and Pragati Maidan, PM 2.5 levels were 221 and 248 respectively whereas in bordering areas like Chhatarpur and Sangam Vihar it was 436 and 415 respectively," Rai added.
DMK activists held a protest demonstration here on Tuesday and demanded a judicial inquiry into the release of surplus water from Chembarambakkam lake here and subsequent flooding in the city.

DMK president M. Karunanidhi led the protestors.

Heavy rains - the worst in a century - battered Chennai and adjoining Kanchipuram, Cuddalore and Thiruvallur districts between October-December 2015, leading to the death of 421 people.

Chief Secretary K. Gnanadesikan said on December 13 that the Chennai flooding was not due to official indecision or mismanagement of water release from Chembarambakkam lake into the Adyar river.

He said it was caused primarily by very high rainfall in November, followed by more rain in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur districts on December 1.
The Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) on Tuesday urged the West Bengal government to promote the state and its capital's links to Mother Teresa for tourism opportunities.

"I would request the Bengal tourism department to promote Mother Teresa. In Europe, shrines built in memory of saints, who are not much popular worldwide, are promoted. Although Bengal is doing its bit to promote, it can do more," IATO president Subash Goyal told the media here at the 'Travel India 2016' meet.

Mother Teresa will be canonised as saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 2016, the Vatican and the Missionaries of Charity announced recently.

However, when quizzed by the media on any plans to promote Kolkata as a tourism destination for followers of Mother Teresa, a top official of the Bengal tourism department said there were no such discussions at the moment.

Born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in Macedonia in 1910, she started serving the poor with the Sisters of Loreto in 1928 and arrived in India in 1929. After working with the Sisters of Loreto till 1948, she founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1949.

She dedicated her life to caring for the impoverished and sick people in Kolkata (then Calcutta) and this earned her a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Asked about whether the Pathankot attack would hit potential tourism opportunities, Goyal said all countries bear the brunt of terrorism but it doesn't affect tourism.
Element 113, discovered by Japan-based RIKEN group and led by scientist Kosuke Morita, has become the first element on the periodic table found in Asia.

RIKEN is Japan's largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines.

For Morita, 2016 will be devoted to thinking of and proposing a formal name for element 113.

"Now that we have conclusively demonstrated the existence of element 113, we plan to look to the uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond, aiming to discover the island of stability," Morita said in a statement.

The search at RIKEN for element 113 started in September 2003 when Morita's group began bombarding a thin layer of bismuth with zinc ions travelling at about 10 prcent the speed of light.

Theoretically, they would occasionally fuse, forming an atom of element 113.

The team achieved its first success on July 23, 2004, less than a year after starting the experiment.

Following the initial success, however, the team's luck seemed to run dry.

"For over seven years," says Morita, "we continued to search for data conclusively identifying element 113, but we just never saw another event. I was not prepared to give up, however, as I believed that one day, if we persevered, luck would fall upon us again."

Then, on August 12, 2012, the group observed the crucial event.

As the chain had been clearly characterised, it demonstrated clearly that element 113 was the source of the decay chain.

In response to the new event, coupled with the group's demonstration of the decay chain, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has announced that Morita's group will be given priority for the discovery of the new element, a privilege that includes the right to propose a name for it.
Brian David Johnson (previously) is the futurist and theorist who used design fiction to help the company think about how its products would work in the future (I wrote him a story about the painful death of passwords).

Now, Johnson has gone to Arizona State University to serve as "Futurist in Residence for spring 2016 at the Center for Science and the Imagination (CSI) and as a Professor of Practice in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society."

These are the programs that (among other things) midwifed the Hieroglyph Project and anthology, Neal Stephenson's brainchild to encourage visions of optimistic technological solutions to our future and present problems.

Johnson and ASU are well-matched, and I believe I actually introduced them to one another, so this is something that I'm awfully tickled about. Congrats to both!

Johnson will use his appointment at ASU to lead two exciting projects of great public interest designed to ignite new conversations about the future we're building together:  The Future of the American Dream Project takes the methods and perspectives Johnson has honed as a technological futurist and applies them to an issue that everyone has a strong opinion about. He asks: What's the future of the American Dream? How are our definitions of the American Dream changing? How do diverse groups of people imagine the American Dream, and how can we reimagine it as a more inclusive concept? How will changes in economics, education and technology lead to new American Dreams? Johnson will tap into ASU's expansive global network, deep community connections, talented student population and interdisciplinary research enterprise to explore these and other questions through interviews, field trips, town halls, videos, podcasts and more.  21st Century Robot aspires to get a programmable, humanoid, 3-D-printed, custom-built robot into the hands of every kid. Based on Johnson's 2014 book "21st Century Robot," the project is built on open-source hardware and software and features an easy-to-use app system, so kids and less experienced users can create robots who sing, tell jokes and run away from loud noises  in short, robots with personalities, and robots who reflect the personalities of their creators.

Futurist Brian David Johnson leaves Intel, joins ASU

[ASU]
Emotional expression affects the brain's creativity network, says a new brain-scanning study of jazz pianists, adding that "happy" and "sad" music evoked different neural patterns in their brains.

The workings of neural circuits associated with creativity are significantly altered when artists are actively attempting to express emotions, the researchers report.

"The bottom line is that emotion matters. It can't just be a binary situation in which your brain is one way when you're being creative and another way when you're not," said senior author Charles Limb from University of California-San Francisco.

"Instead, there are greater and lesser degrees of creative states, and different versions. And emotion plays a crucially important role in these differences," he explained.

The team focused in a brain region known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is involved in planning and monitoring behaviour.

The researchers found that DLPFC deactivation was significantly greater when the jazz musicians improvised melodies intended to convey the emotion expressed in a "positive" image (a photograph of a woman smiling) than a "negative" image (photo of the same woman in a mildly distressed state).

On the other hand, improvisations targeted at expressing the emotion in the negative image were associated with greater activation of the brain's reward regions.

"This indicates there may be different mechanisms for why it's pleasurable to create happy versus sad music," added first study author Malinda McPherson.

For each musician, any brain activity data generated during these passive viewing periods, including emotional responses, were subtracted from that elicited during their musical performances.

This allowed the researchers to determine which components of brain activity in emotional regions were strongly associated with creating the improvisations.

Moreover, Limb said, the research team avoided biasing the musicians' performances with words like "sad" or "happy" when instructing the musicians before the experiments.

The paper appeared in the journal Scientific Reports.
Hundreds of former servicemen at India Gate here on Tuesday paid homage to the soldiers martyred during Pathankot air base terrorist attack.

On the occasion, retired Brigadier J.S. Sandhu said: "India needs to sharpen its action towards Pakistan".

"The government needs to let the army act against these terror groups... We have always been lenient and soft towards Pakistan, but in return we were only rewarded with attacks," Sandhu told IANS.

Among others who gathered to pay homage to the martyrs were students, families of ex-servicemen and activists.

Himangi, a 19-year-old law student, asked the nation to learn to pay homage and respect to the martyrs.

"Those army men fought for us to be safe. And we are not even bothered to pay them a homage or respect," she said.

"Why aren't the politicians or bureaucrats bothered?" she asked.

Later, a candle light vigil was also held by the ex-servicemen.
Facebook is ready with a contingency plan should Google ever pull its Android app from the Play Store, according to a media report.

Facebook and Google are at odds with each other given their competing ad and search interests, but according to sources, the world's largest social network is ready if things ever really go down the tubes, engadget.com reported on Tuesday.

To begin with, Facebook would replicate many of the services that one gets through Google Play-enabled apps, like in-app purchases and updates.

It has also explored ways to help people download its app outside of a store, and considered alternatives to Google Maps for location info, the report said, adding that Facebook may have even gone so far as to test Android users' dependence on its app.

It's not known if Google was aware of this fallback before now, but it wouldn't be surprising if the search giant had at least considered the possibility.

The report added that it's doubtful that Zuckerberg and crew would give up a competitive tool like Facebook app any time soon, as this would mean shooting itself in the foot given the social network is a big draw to the Play Store and a source of in-app revenue.

Facebook did not comment on the apparent leak.
France and Japan on Tuesday condemned the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot that claimed the lives of seven security personnel.

"France condemns attack on Indian military base; stands alongside India in fight against terrorism," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted quoting a statement issued by the French government.

"We condemn the terrorist attack. Terrorism cannot be justified for any reason. Japan expresses solidarity with gov & people of India," he stated in another tweet quoting the Japanese statement.

At least seven security personnel lost their lives and six terrorists were killed following Saturday's audacious attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

The United Jehad Council, an umbrella grouping of Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan, on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.
Fresh petitions were filed on Tuesday in the Delhi High Court challenging the Aam Aadmi Party government's decision to only allow even and odd numbered vehicles to ply in Delhi on alternative dates from January 1 for 15 days.

A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath would hear other bunch of public interest litigations on Wednesday.

The fresh PIL filed by the president of Delhi High Court Bar Association, Rajiv Khosla, sought quashing of the December 28 administration notification on the issue.

"It is submitted that the said scheme has been brought out and been made applicable to public without carrying out any feasibility study and is hampering the legal fraternity in carrying out their professional responsibility of practising as an advocate in different courts and tribunal in Delhi," Khosla said in his PIL.

Another plea filed by B. Badrinath said the Delhi government's scheme violates his fundamental rights - equality, freedom of movement and right to practise any profession or occupation, guaranteed under the Constitution.

The court had earlier refused to put on hold the odd-even schme for plying four-wheelers on the national capital roads but asked the state government to take into consideration the issues of physically challenged commuters while formulating the scheme.

To curb the alarming air pollution, the Delhi government as a temporary measure came out with odd-even scheme for vehicles. Private vehicles with odd- and even-numbered licence plates were effective from January 1 allowed to ply on alternate dates.

The restrictions apply Monday to Saturday daily between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and none on Sunday. The Delhi government, however, exempted any car carrying a patient or being driven by single women, CNG-certified vehicles, VIPs, two-wheelers, ambulances, defence vehicles and embassy vehicles from the new regulation.
The government on Tuesday slammed the Congress for its comments over the Pathankot terrorist attack, saying the main opposition party has become irresponsible on the sensitive issue of national security.

Earlier in the day, Congress spokesman Anand Sharma questioned Prime Minister Narndra Modi's talks with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore last month.

"What assurance was given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that made him visit Lahore last month? What was the understanding that convinced Modi that the entire establishment of Pakistan was supporting and endorsing resumption of dialogue process between the two countries," he asked.

Seven security personnel and six terrorists were killed in Saturday's attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in Punjab.

Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters here that "at a time when the whole country was speaking in one voice against terrorism, the Congress misled the country through its irresponsible and condemnable statements".

"This reflects the irresponsible behaviour of Congress towards the country," he added.

"The Congress questioned the supreme sacrifice of our brave soldiers," the senior BJP leader said, urging the Congress to keep the country's security issues away from political rivalry.

He also said that all the questions raised by the opposition party on Modi's talks with Sharif have already been answered by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in parliament.
Muddying the waters further, a prominent Left leader here on Tuesday charged India with "bullying" Nepal using various Nepali political or underground outfits as military forces against the landlocked Himalayan nation.

"India is playing a very dangerous game against Nepal that will have far-reaching ramifications," UCPN-Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal 'Prachanda' warned while addressing a gathering here of the party's journalist-wing.

Prachanda, who led a 10-year-long Maoist insurgency in Nepal's western regions from 1996 to 2006, accused India of opening up political and military fronts against the Himalayan nation.

The chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-Maoist), who has served less than nine months as the country's prime minister, has earlier criticised New Delhi's approach to Nepal and has more recently alleged India's hand in the ongoing political agitation in Nepal's southern plains where over 55 people have died during the last four months.

He said agitating Madhesi leaders like Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party president Mahantha Thakur and Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party-Nepal chief Upendra Yadav were "working at the behest of India" as its (India's) political wing, and C.K. Raut and Jai Krishna Goit were working as the "military wing".

C.K. Raut, PhD, is a computer scientist, author, and political activist who has been actively involved in demanding a separate state for the Madhesi people of Nepal. He has been placed under house-arrest by the Nepal government since April last year.

Jai Krishna Goit is the founder of the Janatantrik Terai Mukti Morcha which advocates creation of a separate Madhes state for Madhesi peoples in Nepal's Terai region.

"India is playing a very dangerous game against Nepal that will have far-reaching ramifications. Please do not be surprised that Thakur, Yadav, Raut and Goit are mobilised from the same power centre," said Prachanda without naming India.

"But we will not let India's gameplan succeed in Nepal," said the Left leader, adding that the Nepal government was trying to seek a peaceful end to the more than four-month-old Madhesi agitation.

Prachanda is prone to being a loose cannon and has been known for his often outlandish claims.

On Monday too, he had alleged that attempts were underway to make Nepal "another Syria or East Pakistan" in the guise of the Madhesi movement.

"People in Madhes have fought in many movements and many revolutions. But attempts are underway to snatch them from us," he alleged.

Urging his party leaders to stay together against such attempts, Prachanda said: "Some people do not want to see Nepal as a unified nation."

For more than four months, the plains of the Nepal Terai have been simmering with Morcha-led protests against the country's new Constitution that was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on September 20.

The Morcha has expressed dissatisfaction over the content of the new Constitution, including demarcation of the federal units, and called for an inclusive Constitution and citizenship.

The four major constituents of the Madhesi Morcha are: the Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party with Mahanta Thakur as president; the Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal headed by Upendra Yadav; the Sadbhawana Party with Rajendra Mahto as president; and the Terai Madhes Loktantrik Party-Nepal headed by Mahendra Yadav.

Over 55 people, including agitators and police personnel, have been killed during the four months of the Madhesi agitation.

Nepal's Terai region stretches from the Mechi river in the east to the Mahakali river in the west and comprises Madhes in its eastern part and the tribal-dominated Tharuhat in the western region. It has traditionally suffered immense discrimination from the Kathmandu-centric ruling elite that predominantly comprises the Brahmins (Bahuns) and Chhetris of the Nepal hills.

The major agitation demand is for the formation of two provinces in the Nepali Terai -- the Madhes extending from the Mechi river in the east to the Narayani river in mid-western Nepal and Tharuhat pradesh from the Narayani to the Mahakali river in the west.

The Madhesi protestors are demanding, among others, a redrawing of the boundaries of the provinces in the Himalayan nation as proposed in the new Constitution; and restoration of rights granted to Madhesis in the interim constitution of 2007 which the new charter has snatched away.

They also want representation in Parliament on the basis of population -- the Nepal Terai has almost 51 percent of the country's population yet gets only one-third of seats in Parliament -- and proportional representation in government jobs.
Islamabad will be the sister city of Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the media reported on Tuesday.

During Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Belarus, both the governments agreed that Islamabad and Minsk should be made sister cities.

"Under the agreement, there will be active cooperation between the two capitals in different fields, including municipal administration and youth development," Dawn online quoted an official as saying.

Islamabad already has many sister cities including Amman, Ankara, Beijing, Seoul, Madrid and Jakarta.

Other cities in Pakistan have over three dozen sister cities all over the world. Istanbul was the first to be declared a sister city of Lahore in 1975.
The Afghan government should include female negotiators in the upcoming multistate meeting on the Afghan peace process, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

Representatives of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China are scheduled to meet on January 11 in Islamabad to revive peace negotiations that stalled in July after disclosure of the death of the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

"Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's promises to include women in peace talks have so far amounted to nothing," said Heather Barr, senior women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"The January 11 meeting is a key opportunity for him to show that his government is genuinely committed to women's full participation in future talks."

Afghan women's rights activists have for years raised concerns that the government will trade away women's rights in an effort to reach an accommodation with the Taliban.

These fears have been exacerbated by the routine exclusion of women from the process.

A 2014 study by Oxfam found that in 23 rounds of informal peace talks involving the Afghan government and the Taliban between 2005 and 2014, women were present on only two occasions. No women were ever included in discussions between international negotiators and the Taliban.
Actor Tarun Arora, who is making his Tamil debut as the antagonist in upcoming action-thriller "Kanithan", says the film has all the elements to appeal audiences across industries, and it also has the potential for a Bollywood remake.

"This project has a lot of potential. If it does well, it could easily be remade in Bollywood. This is a gripping thriller where the hero and the villain are involved in a cat-and-mouse game, and the outcome will be breathtaking," Tarun, who has also worked in films such as "Jab We Met" and "Hawas", told IANS.

Directed by T.N. Santhosh and also starring Atharvaa and Catherina Tresa, the film is produced by S. Thanu.

Tarun's character is quite different from how villains in southern cinema are usually portrayed.

"I play a stylish villain. Although there's some action, the hero and I are mostly involved in a battle of wits. It was a wonderful experience playing this character and I can't wait to know how the audience will receive it," he said.

He underwent a lot of physical transformation for the role.

"When I met the director, he looked at me and said, 'You look like a hero. You need to put on weight to look like a villain'. He told me I need to look like a man with two children. I had to look older than my usual self, so I started working out and even gained some weight," he said.

Having started his career in Bollywood, Tarun says he never aspired to work in the southern film industry. He says it was "destiny" that landed him the opportunity to work in "Kanithan".

"I never tried to market myself in the south. But when this project came my way and I heard its script, I decided I should do it," he said.

The actor, though a newcomer to the industry, has decent knowledge about Tamil, for he had studied in the city's Triveni Academy.

Tarun hasn't signed any new projects so far as he's very selective about the kind of films he wants to do.
What did you think about on New Year's day? I sat in my home in Washington, DC, and dreamed the dream of a middle-aged Jew.

Not of wealth.

Not of fame.

Not of my wife and daughter or other assorted family members and friends.

Not of travel to a foreign land.

And not even of my grandmother's chicken soup. As a person she was a monster, but boy she made good chicken soup.

NO! I was dreaming of a pastrami sandwich.

I was craving a pastrami sandwich.

Every store was closed here, of course, being New Year's Day, but it wouldn't matterthere's no pastrami worth a damn in this town.

At that moment my body needed to be magically transported to New York City or Los Angeles, the only two places I've ever had a really a fabulous pastrami sandwich. (Maybe there's one in Chicago, who knows?)

In New York, I go to the 2nd Ave. Deli; in LA, I go to Art's on Ventura Blvd. The 2nd Ave Deli has a long history, and plenty of tragedy (the original owner was robbed and shot to death bringing the day's cash to the bank in 1996). Then the landlord got greedy and forced them out. His nephews reopened the restaurant on 33rd Street just west of Third Ave. They did a good job: tiled floor, pressed tin ceiling, "A" rating from the Health Department. And the aroma is what I want to smell in heaven when I die. Your tush hasn't been in the chair for five seconds before Health Salad and sour pickles are on the table.

Art's is in Los Angeles ("where every sandwich is a work of Art"  Art being the late owner) has food of equal quality. Smells right, too. (I know that some folks prefer Jerry's, but you can't convince a Jew about his sandwich.)

You should know that brisket, corned beef, and pastrami are all the exact same cut of beef, merely prepared differently. People who eat corned beef usually do so on rye bread with mustard. Some folks like a "Reuben," which is the same thing but with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut on it. They should live and be well, but I wouldn't let that thing near my mouth.

Here's what I was craving: a sandwich of beautiful moist warm pastrami, smothered in coleslaw and dripping with Russian dressing, between two pieces of fresh rye bread. And don't order lean pastrami, just don't bother. Eat something else.

Silly, isn't it? If you offered me $1,000 or a pastrami sandwich from Art's or the 2nd Ave Deli, I would take the sandwich. You'd have to add sour pickles and potato salad.

Art's Deli is located at 12224 Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, California. Click here for the website (warning: the website is lousy but the food is good). And if you don't believe me, read Trip Advisor.

The 2nd Ave Deli is located on 33rd Street between Third and Lex in Manhattan. Click here for the website. Click here to read the menu: You might want to put on a bib first. Ditto for Trip Advisor!

The 2nd Ave Deli's website tantalizingly offers "Ordering Online (Coming Soon)." How's that gonna work? I know! The first worthwhile use of a drone could deliver me a pastrami sandwich in about two hours. Can it be? I'd order the night before and the drone flies from New York City and lands the next day at noon and heaven hits my doorstep.

Yeah, I know  I'm dreaming. Oy, but what a dream!
Hours after the last rites of NSG officer Lt. Col. E.K. Niranjan, who was killed in the operation against terrorists at the Pathankot air base, Kerala's labour department renamed the industrial training institute (ITI) in his hometown in his honour.

Labour Minister Shibu Baby John, in a press release issued here, said the ITI in Elumbulsherry village, from where Niranjan hails, will now be known as Lt. Col. Niranjan Memorial Government ITI.

"This ITI opened in September last year and was called Elumbulsherry Government ITI and we decided to honour Niranjan who laid down his life to rename it in his memory," the minister said.
Kuwait on Tuesday summoned its ambassador to Iran following attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad during protests against the Saudi execution of a Shia cleric.

"Such action constitutes a flagrant breach of international conventions and violation of Iran's commitment to security and safety of diplomatic missions on its lands," Xinhua cited official with Kuwaiti foreign ministry as saying.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia announced the execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 other men over terror charges.

Later on the day, angry mobs in Shia-dominated Iran stormed and set ablaze Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran and consulate in Iran's religious city of Mashhad to protest al-Nimr's execution.

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Iran over the attacks and for what it said was an Iranian interference in its affairs.

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan announced severing of relations with Iran citing Tehran's intervention in Arab affairs.

Also, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday downgraded its diplomatic relations with Iran and reduce the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.
The newly-constructed building of the Manipur assembly at Chingmeirong here was partially damaged due to Monday's earthquake, an official said here.

An engineer who visited the complex along with Works Minister T. Ratankumar on Tuesday morning said on condition of anonymity that the building might not withstand another earthquake of high magnitude.

Officials said once an expert committee submits a report, a decision will be taken on whether a new assembly secretariat should be constructed or the present one repaired and

strengthened.

Earlier, accompanied by engineers and high officials, Ratankumar visited the assembly complex on Tuesday morning to assess the damage to partially damaged buildings.

A temblor had jolted Manipur and other north-eastern states apart from West Bengal and adjoining countries of Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan at 4.35 a.m. on Monday. The quake's epicentre was in Manipur's Tamenglong district.

Lok Sabha MP T. Meinya said he had sanctioned Rs.10 lakh from his MPLAD (Member of Parliament Local Area Development) funds for undertaking relief in his Inner Manipur constituency. "This is the first instalment. If necessary, more fund will be released," he said.
A Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) militant allegedly involved in the murder of a former militant and his three-year old son was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district on Tuesday, police said.

"Sopore police have cracked the mysterious killings of father-son duo by apprehending a Hizbul Mujahideen militant, Towheed Bashir Mir," a police officer here told IANS.

Towheed Bashir Mir is the son of Bashir Mir, a resident of Younsoo in Sopore.

"Towheed was the main accused who shot and killed surrendered militant Bashir Ahmed Bhat and his three years old son," the officer said.

Police have already arrested Tahir Bashir Sheikh alias Tahir Malla, an accomplice of Towheed, soon after the killings in September 2015.

Towheed was apprehended while he was travelling from Srinagar to Handwara. A special investigating team (SIT) was constituted to crack the double murder.

The motive behind Bashir Ahmed Bhat's killing appeared to be the fact that he was an ex-militant who had surrendered.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met here with global oil and gas experts to discuss ways of boosting investments in exploration and skill development at a time of low oil prices.

"The interaction which lasted over two hours also included union ministers Arun Jaitley, Piyush Goyal and Dharmendra Pradhan, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagariya, besides top officials from the government and NITI Aayog," the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in a release here.

Among the foreign invitees to the meeting were British oil major BP's chief executive Bob Dudley, International Energy Agency (IEA) executive director Fatih Birol and Royal Dutch Shell's director (Projects) Harry Brekelmans.

"The prime minister emphasized his vision for a fresh look at the sector, to bring in investment, technological upgradation, and development of human resource," the PMO said.

The discussions focused, among others, on subjects such as increasing the share of gas in India's energy mix, fresh investments in oil and gas exploration in India, regulatory frameworks and international acquisition of oil and gas assets, it added.

"Had a constructive interaction with global experts on Oil & Gas and CEOs of Oil Majors in the presence of Hon'ble Prime Minister," tweeted Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

"Received CEO of @BP_plc Mr. Bob Dudley. BP already has presence in upstream & downstream sectors in India," he said.

Meanwhile, urging the government to allow natural gas pricing freedom to existing fields like KG-D6 in the eastern offshore, the Petroleum Federation Of India (PetroFed) has said a capped price equivalent to the imported cost should also be allowed to existing fields.

"The existing Production Sharing Contract provisions regarding gas pricing should be followed in letter and spirit and the gas pricing should be determined on arm's length basis by competitive market forces," PetroFed, whose members include state-run ONGC and private players like Reliance Industries, said in their comments on ministry's consultation paper on a new contractual regime for gas produced from fields awarded in future.

"Such pricing is reflective and responsive to demand-supply dynamics," PetroFed said in their comments.

"To put a cap on gas price it may be considered permissible up to the maximum of import parity price of LNG in the country," it added.

In November, the government circulated a consultation paper inviting comments, about easing doing business in exploration that proposed to free domestic natural gas pricing and replace the existing production sharing contract by the revenue-sharing model for all future hydrocarbon acreage auctions.
Disgruntled BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha has lamented the entry of "Johnnies-come-lately" and those who lost the Lok Sabha polls in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government while seniors were ignored.

But the actor-turned-politician made it clear in his biography "Anything But Khamosh" (Om Books International) that the Bharatiya Janata Party would perhaps be his last political party.

The book is critical of both Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, particularly in the context of the BJP's defeats in Delhi and Bihar after the sweeping 2014 Lok Sabha election.

"Not only Johnnies-come-lately but also some who had lost the Lok Sabha elections, perhaps humiliatingly, were rewarded with not one but two and three ministerial posts, marginalising those who'd won with a record margin," Sinha said in the book, written by renowned journalist Bharathi S. Pradhan.

The book takes no names but two prominent BJP leaders who got into the Modi cabinet despite losing the Lok Sabha battle were Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani.

The book will be launched here on Wednesday in the presence of BJP veterans L.K. Advani and Yashwant Sinha as well as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Shatrughan Sinha also reacted to Amit Shah's reported hints that the BJP might take act against him.

"I didn't know my people were so helpless that they had to wait for an election to take action. That too against a man who had won with a vote share percentage of more than 55 percent which even our prime minister and Kejriwal didn't reach."

He said he could contest as an independent and had the support of many, ranging from Nitish Kumar to Lalu Prasad to Rahul Gandhi. "I have friends everywhere.

"That's why I had made the statement: 'Those who want to take action against me must remember Newton's third law: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction'."

He said Amit Shah had boasted that the BJP would win with two-third majority in Bihar. "Perhaps it had become a habit with him because he had said the same thing in Delhi also. But ultimately we got only two or three seats (out of 70) there instead of two-third."

Sinha also took on Bihar BJP leaders.

"Right from state president Mangal Pandey to Sushil Kumar Modi to Rajiv Pratap Rudy to Shahnawaz Hussain, anybody and everybody, repeated his words like parrots with full zeal, enthusiasm and over confidence."

"The party was hijacked by some people in Bihar who conveniently played deaf-mute. They were not ready to listen to me or to speak to me. That's how they created an impression which the opposition seized an opportunity and the 'Bihari versus Bahari' slogan was coined."

But Sinha said he was unlikely to join any other party.

"I've always said, BJP is my first and perhaps my last party. Once a friend, always a friend. 'Ladte jhagadte hain' (we fight) but we remain family."

"A member's equation with the party is like the relationship between a husband and wife."

Shatrughan said of the BJP: "From being called a party with a difference, we began to be called a party with differences."
At least 36 Sri Lankans have reportedly left for Syria to join the Islamic State (IS) terror group, a senior official has said.

Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi said that, according to reports, the Sri Lankans had left with their families, including women and children.

"They had said they were going on pilgrimage but I believe that some of them have joined the ISIS," Xinhua quoted Hettiarachchi as saying on Monday.

The first Sri Lankan, known as Abhu Shuraih Sailani who allegedly joined the IS, was reportedly killed in an air strike in July in Syria.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had ordered an immediate probe to find out if Sailani was alone in deciding to head for Syria to join the terrorist group.

Sri Lanka's intelligence recently handed over a confidential report to President Maithripala Sirisena and Wickremesinghe regarding the Sri Lankans leaving for Syria.

Sri Lanka's Muslim organisations and leaders of the community have condemned the IS and accused its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of violating the tenets of Islam.
Footprints and dead prey from wild Siberian tigers were found at a tree farm in China's Jilin province, suggesting the expansion of the tiger's population and range of activities in China, authorities said on Tuesday.

According to officials with the Baishishan Forestry Bureau, which administers the farm, it was the first time traces of wild Siberian tigers were found within its administration, Xinhua reported.

A ranger patrolling the farm on December 11 found several footprints and traces of a big animal lying in the snow.

The forestry bureau launched a thorough search with more than 1,000 people from December 14 to 19 and found the remains of two wild boars.

The larger boar was missing its internal organs, while the smaller boar, lying more than 10 metres away, was half-eaten.

Wu Zhigang, a research fellow with the Jilin provincial institute of forestry sciences, noted that the population of wild Siberian tigers is on the rise and their range of activities is expanding. The latest survey found 27 Siberian tigers in Jilin.

There is an ecological corridor from the Sino-Russian border to the Huangnihe nature reserve near the area administered by the Baishishan Forestry Bureau en route to the Tianqiaoling area, he said.

Infrared cameras showed footprints and pictures of the tigers in the Tianqiaoling area last December, where the tigers became extinct in the mid-1980s.

Siberian tigers are among the world's most endangered species. They mostly live in northeast China and eastern Russia.

Jilin has banned commercial logging in key state-owned tree farms on April 1 last year, which has improved the living environment for the Siberian tigers.
At least nine refugees drowned early on Tuesday when a migrant boat sank off Turkey's Aegean coast, the media reported.

The bodies of at least nine refugees washed up in Balikesir province, Xinhua cited the report as saying.

A total of 22 migrants had attempted to cross to Greece's Lesbos Island, the report said.

Turkish coast guards were conducting a search and rescue mission for the other migrants, according to the report.

Over 3,000 refugees fleeing war-torn Syria have died on their way to Greek islands via Turkey, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Over 600,000 refugees have reportedly reached Greek islands in 2015, in a crisis that has alarmed the European Union.

The EU and Turkish leaders reached a deal in November for curbing the refugee influx from the Middle East to Europe.
Deflecting all accusations of delayed response by Punjab Police to the presence of heavily armed terrorists and the impending attack on a defence establishment, police chief Suresh Arora on Tuesday said the deployment of NSG commandos hours before the actual attack showed that the force had sounded the alert.

"This is the only case where the NSG (National Security Guard) was deployed even before the incident. The alert (on the presence of terrorists) was shared (with concerned agencies). We made all arrangements," Director General of Police Arora told the media here after it was announced on Tuesday that six terrorists were killed in the Pathankot Air Force Station (AFS) counter offensive.

Asked if all terrorists had been accounted for, he said: "We do not have any information on any more terrorists."

Senior officers of Punjab Police have been criticised for not taking the first information, provided by their own Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh early on Friday, regarding the presence of the terrorists and initiating counter measures to nab them.

"After listening to what SP had to say, although they (senior officers) wanted further corroboration, they started searching for the vehicle which was taken away. The ADGP, IG, DIG were also rushed to Pathankot.

"While corroboration was going on, at the same time, we went for combing operations and search for the vehicle," Arora said.

Asked if there was a delay in acting on the police superintendent's information, Arora said: "Absolutely not."

He said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the probe into the terror attack. The NIA and Punjab Police will investigate jointly.

Three cases have been registered following the attack. One relates to the gun battle inside the air base, the second relates to the abduction of the police superintendent and two others and the third relates to the murder of taxi driver Ikagar Singh.

Arora said information regarding the terrorists was also shared with other concerned agencies in Pathankot.

"When it was thought that further resources were required from Delhi, the information was shared," Arora said, justifying the actions of Punjab Police.

Unwilling to admit if there was an intelligence failure on the part of police, Arora said: "The investigation will prove this."

Arora said police would take corrective measures on the weak points seen in the incident and would strengthen the force in the Pathankot-Gurdaspur belt, adjoining Pakistan.
Do not compare sausages to horse penises in Kyrgyzstan, or you could end up spending five years in prison. One man who learned this the hard way is Michael Mcfeat, a Brit who works at a gold mine in Kyrgyzstan. Mcfeat recently posted to Facebook that a traditional Kyrgyzstanian horse sausage known as chuchuk, which was being served to his co-workers at a holiday party, was actually a "special delicacy, the horse's penis." His co-workers complained to authorities and he was arrested.

Mcfeat, who is currently being held by police, could face racial hatred charges punishable by a jail term of up to five years, it said. A British embassy representative confirmed that officials were in touch with both Centerra and the local authorities over the matter.

Following the uproar, the Briton deleted his remarks and posted an apology on Facebook, saying he had not meant to offend anyone.
Oxygen is crucial for the existence of animals on the Earth. But an increase in oxygen levels did not apparently lead to the rise of the first animals on our planet, according to researchers.

New research shows that 1.4 billion years ago there was enough oxygen for animals -- and yet over 800 million years went by before the first animals appeared on Earth, said a team of researchers from the University of Southern Denmark, China's National Petroleum Corporation and the University of Copenhagen, Hammarlund and Canfield.

"Sufficient oxygen in itself does not seem to be enough for animals to rise. This is indicated by our studies", Emma Hammarlund and professor Don Canfield of Nordic Centre for Earth Evolution, University of Southern Denmark, were quoted as saying in a statement.

The researchers reached this conclusion after analysing sediment samples from the Xiamaling Formation in China. Their analyses revealed that a deep ocean 1.4 billion years ago contained at least 4 percent of modern oxygen concentrations.

The study used trace metal distributions to show that the bottom waters where the Xiamaling Formation sediments deposited contained oxygen.

The distribution of biomarkers, molecules derived from ancient organisms, demonstrated that waters of intermediate depth contained no oxygen. Therefore, the Xiamaling Formation deposited in an ancient oxygen-minimum zone, similar to (but also different) from those found off the present coasts of Chile and Peru.

With this backdrop, the researchers used a simple ocean model to estimate the minimum concentrations to atmospheric oxygen required to reproduce the distribution of water-column oxygen in the Xiamaling Formation.

"The water column had an oxygen concentration at least four percent of present atmospheric levels (PAL). That should be sufficient for animals to exist and evolve," Canfield said.

"Researchers know of simple animals, such as sponges and worms, that today are capable of managing with less than 4 percent PAL, even much less," Hammarlund added.

"Sponges probably resemble some of the first animals on Earth. If they manage with less than 4 percent today's oxygen levels, it is likely that the first animals could do with these concentrations or less," Canfield noted.

The sudden diversification of animals probably was a result of many factors. Maybe the oxygen rise had less to do with the animal revolution than we previously assumed, according to the study authors.

The new study was published in the latest issue of journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.
Pakistan showed concerns over the escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran and criticised the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

The statement came on Monday after Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Iran after angry protesters stormed its embassy in Tehran to protest at the execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Xinhua reported.

"We call for resolution of differences through peaceful means in the larger interest of Muslim unity in these challenging times," the Pakistan foreign ministry said.

A foreign ministry statement described the attack on the Saudi embassy against international norms, most unfortunate and deeply regrettable.

"It is the responsibility of states to provide full safety and security to all diplomatic Missions and their personnel."

The ministry said the dark forces of extremism and terrorism can take advantage of any disunity in the Muslim nations.

The Pakistani parliament also debated the issue and Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal told the house that Pakistan was fully alive to the happenings in the Middle East.

He assured the members that the country will play a positive role in defusing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Responding to a point raised by the opposition leader Syed Khurshid Shah, Iqbal said it has been the policy of the government to promote unity and solidarity amongst the Islamic countries.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka on Tuesday signed eight memoranda of understanding (MoU) on the sidelines of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Sri Lanka.

The MoUs and agreements for cooperation in the fields of health, education, trade, science and technology, tourism, and gems and jewellery were signed during delegation-level talks between the two countries, Dawn online reported.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena warmly received Sharif and his wife Kulsoom Nawaz.

Sharif said his visit to Sri lanka "is a testimony to strong bonds of friendship between our two countries".

He said Pakistan was keen to follow its goal of increasing bilateral trade volume with Sri Lanka to $1 billion. Both the countries will jointly work to curb money laundering, he said.

Sirisena for his part said political disturbances in Pakistan were being eliminated under Sharif's leadership.
Four days after suspected Pakistani terrorists raided the IAF base in Pathakot, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday admitted to "security lapses" that led to the terror attack that left seven security personnel and all six terrorists dead.

Parrikar said the battle against the terrorists who sneaked into the sprawling base before dawn on Saturday effectively ended after around 36 hours (at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday) and that combing operations going on since then were "for safety purposes".

"It started at 3.30 a.m. when (IAF) Garud force engaged the terrorists... At 7.30 p.m. (on Sunday), they (terrorists) were finished. So it is about 36 hours," Parrikar said when asked how effective the counter offensive of the security forces was.

Parrikar told the media after visiting the base that combing operations were still going on but "this is only for safety purposes" and that no more terrorists were believed hidden in the Indian Air Force complex.

Some gaps led to security lapses, the minister said. He did not elaborate. "What is worrying is how they (terrorists) entered the base."

"The things that we have found so far, there are some indications some of the material is made in Pakistan.

"Let the NIA (National Investigation Agency) investigate it, everything about whom they were linked to and who sent them will emerge," he said of the suspected links of the terrorists to Pakistan.

The NIA, he said, had "initial leads, where they (terrorists) have come from, how they have come".

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday promised his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Islamabad will take "prompt and decisive action" against the terrorists linked to the attack.

Sharif, who telephoned Modi from Sri Lanka, gave the assurance after New Delhi provided "specific and actionable information" to Islamabad regarding the terrorists. Modi underlined the need for Pakistan to take "firm and immediate action" against organisations and individuals responsible for the audacious attack.

The Sharif-Modi conversation followed the killing of all six terrorists in Pathankot, which is home to one of the biggest IAF bases.

Parrikar said body parts of the last two terrorists killed were found at two places. He said these would go for DNA tests.

Parrikar visited the Pathankot base on Tuesday along with the chiefs of the army and air force. The head of the NIA also visited it separately.

"Combing operations are (still) going on," he said. "This is only for safety purposes."

The minister said the body of one of the terrorists still had a suicide vest, with a grenade sticking out.

"I am very, very clear that they (our officers) should not take any risk," he said, recalling how a National Security Guard (NSG) officer lost his life earlier while trying to reportedly shift a similar body.

Parrikar said the entire operation was "a very difficult" one but it had been accomplished without compromising not just the strategic assets but also even the buildings.

He said barring one building where the terrorists took shelter, no other building was even damaged because the security personnel cornered the raiders in a corner of the base.

The Pathankot Air Force Station, where a MIG-21 Bison squadron and MI-35 attack helicopters are based, is spread over 1,900 acres. Over 1,500 families live inside the campus which also has a school, a hospital and a market.

He said the terrorists had AK-47 rifles, pistols, Swiss knives, commando knives besides 40-50 kg of bullets. They also had improvised mortars. "They had high quality explosives."

The Pathankot attack came after Modi and Sharif met on Christmas Day in Lahore when the Indian leader, while flying home from Kabul, dramatically made a two-hour halt.

In Kerala, NSG commando Lt. Col. E.K. Niranjan, killed during mopping up operations at the air base on Sunday, was cremated in Elumbulsherry village in Palakkad district.

Hundreds of people stayed awake through the night after his body was brought here on Monday evening.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar as well as the heads of the army, air force and the NIA will on Tuesday visit the IAF base in Pathankot in Punjab that was attacked by terrorists.

The minister will be accompanied by army chief General Dalbir Singh and Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, informed sources said.

National Investigation Agency chief Sharad Kumar will also visit the base as it has been asked to probe the Saturday terror attack that left seven security personnel dead. Five terrorists were also killed.

The visits come even as combing operations are on at the base.

The defence ministry and the National Security Guard have confirmed the killing of five terrorists by security forces at the IAF base. The sources said a sixth body that had been found was yet to be identified.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday promised his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Islamabad will take "prompt and decisive action" against terrorists linked to the attack on the IAF base in Pathankot.

Sharif gave the assurance after New Delhi provided "specific and actionable information" to Islamabad regarding the terrorists, and Modi underlined the need for Pakistan to take "firm and immediate action" against organisations and individuals responsible for the attack.

The Sharif-Modi telephonic conversation followed the killing of all six terrorists believed to be from Pakistan after they attacked the Indian Air Force base early on Saturday, leaving seven security personnel dead.

An official statement said Modi received a call on Tuesday afternoon from Sharif "regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base".

"Modi strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the statement said.

It said specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan.

"Sharif assured Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists," it added.

Modi and Sharif met on Christmas Day when the Indian leader, while flying home from Kabul, dramatically made a two-hour halt in Lahore.

The Lahore visit came after a series of diplomatic engagements between New Delhi and Islamabad after the two leaders had a seemingly impromptu meeting on November 30 at the Paris climate summit.

Following this, on December 6, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua met in Bangkok which was also attended by Foreign Secretaries S. Jaishankar and Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry.

Two days later, Sushma Swaraj landed in Islamabad to attend the Heart of Asia conference which engages "heart of Asia" countries for a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

On December 9, Sushma Swaraj told the media there that Modi would visit Islamabad in 2016 to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit.

Then, after a courtesy call on Sharif, she held a bilateral with his Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz.

The two then came out with a joint statement in which Pakistan assured India that all steps were being taken to expedite the early conclusion of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack trial.

"Both sides, accordingly, agreed to a comprehensive bilateral dialogue and directed the the foreign secretaries to work out the modalities and schedule of the meetings under the dialogue, including peace and security, CBMs (confidence buildins measures), Jammu and Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek, Wullar Barrage/Tulbul Navigation Project, economic and commercial cooperation, counter-terrorism, narcotics control, humanitarian issues, people-to-people exchanges and religious tourism," the statement said.

Even as the stage was being set for the foreign secretary-level meeting in the middle of this month between the two sides came the Pathankot attack that is being deemed as an attack on the softening of ties between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Indian Raliways will soon invite bids from private players for the modernisation of 400 railway stations across the country, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday.

"Very shortly, the railways is going to come up with its proposed bids for the development of 400 stations in the country," he said at a foundation day function of India Infrastructure Finance Company.

"The railways have now come on to the right track. They are inviting the private sector, including foreign investments, in infrastructure. GE and Alstom have agreed to make major investments in Bihar," the minister said.

"The railways have issued tax free bonds, have recently managed big financing from LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India), besides foreign investments," he said regarding the railways efforts in attracting infrastructure investment.

Jaitley stressed that public investment has to lead the way in tackling global slowdown's impact, and added that a lot of resources were put into national highways, rural roads and railways during 2015.

"The result is visible now, that the stalled highway projects have got moving. As a result of increased public investment, even private sector players who got bogged down in their disputes have re-entered the field," he said.

The minister also said state-run ports sector needs to be overhauled and moved towards privatisation.

"The structure of state sector ports needs a rethink, moving towards privatisation of state-run trust ports," Jaitley said.

"If major ports don't overhaul their structures, they will seriously fall behind in competition with minor ports," the minister said.

He said the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) was already in place, and it was in touch with many sovereign and pension funds that had shown interest in investing in the sector.

Following the first meeting of the NIIF here last week, Jaitley, who heads the NIIF Governing Council, told reporters that the progress with regard to the proposals of sovereign funds from the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Russia and Singapore were particularly discussed.

While the government will contribute Rs.20,000 crore to the fund, another amount of Rs.20,000 crore is expected to come from private investors.

The union cabinet in July approved the creation of the NIIF with a corpus of Rs.20,000 crore for development of infrastructure projects, including the stalled ones.
Zhang Lebin, former deputy head of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, was expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) for "disciplinary violations".

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the CPC said on its website that after investigation it found that Zhang had formed cliques in violation of the party's rules.

Zhang took advantage of his position and influence to seek benefits for others and accepted cash and gifts, perhaps in breach of the Criminal Law, Xinhua reported.

The decision to expel Zhang from the CPC and his removal was approved by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council.

His illicit earnings will be confiscated and his case passed on to the the judicial organs, the statement said.
The US is concerned over the need for Saudi Arabia and Iran to de-escalate the situation in the Middle East following diplomatic tensions between the two countries, the White House said.

"We are urging all sides to show restraint and to not further inflame tensions that are on quite vivid display in the region," Xinhua cited White House spokesman Josh Earnest as saying on Monday.

Earnest said US Secretary of State John Kerry had been in touch with his Iranian counterpart. He will also talk with his Saudi counterpart soon.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi diplomat mission to protest the execution of 47 people on terrorism charges, including Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

"We have seen a lot of volatility, and instability in the Middle East has a tendency to break down along sectarian lines," Earnest said. "It is not a coincidence."

The spokesman called on people on all sides to try to bridge the divides "in a way that advances the interests of countries all across the region".

On Monday, three Sunni-led countries -- Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates -- joined Saudi Arabia in severing or downgrading diplomatic ties with Iran, adding to the fraught atmosphere in the region.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced on Monday that his country will cut air traffic with Iran and ban citizens from travelling there.
The scenario in the Middle East is changing fast and at the centre of it is neither the United States or the coalition of countries it leads nor Russia but Saudi Arabia, the Wahabbi country which had so long acted as the source and ultimate prop of many Islamist activities in the Arab world. Continuous crash of oil prices and the rise of the Islamic States (IS) have forced Riyadh to move away from the US sphere of influence and start charting out its own course.

Notwithstanding the recent execution of Sheikh Nimr-al-Nimr, the opposition Shiite cleric, it can be said with a fair amount of certainty that Riyadh is now trying to come out of its self-created cocoon.

Two recent developments point out that Saudi Arabia is prepared to give Russia a space in Middle Eastern affairs. First, preparations are on for Saudi King Salman's visit to Russia later this year. Secondly, the Saudi deputy crown prince and defence minister, Mohammed Bin Salman, visited Russia last June. Following closely on this, Turki-al-Faisal, the former intelligence chief, stated that Russian actions in Syria were more effective than those of the US and that Russia's views merit attention and respect.

But it would be wrong to presume that Saudi Arabia is aligning with Russia on the Syrian question. Riyadh is worried about Iranian expansion in the Middle East and the US taking a soft line on the country after the nuclear agreement with Tehran. Saudi Arabia will now try to dominate the Middle East scenario on its own and in keeping with this line, Turkish President Recep Erdogan visited Saudi Arabia on December 30, 2015. Riyadh has also built up a strong coalition comprising the oil rich Arab countries.

But, will Saudi Arabia be really able to dominate the Middle Eastern scenario? Objective conditions preclude such a possibility. There are unmistakable signs that willy-nilly it is tilting towards Russia although that may not be the wish of the Saudi Royal household. Two principal reasons for it are the military fatigue in Yemen and a resource crunch due to Syria. There will be a $100 billion deficit in Saudi Arabia's budget for 2016. Last year, the budget deficit was 21.6 percent of the GDP and the country barely managed to survive by earlier petro dollar savings.

What will, however, affect the Middle East scenario the most is the decision by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency to withdraw $70 billion from foreign investment fund assets last summer. This will certainly cut down on siphoning of money to terror related organizations through official channels. Moreover, the financial health of Saudi Arabia's friends in the region are also not good. Reliable estimates put the budget deficits of Middle Eastern oil exporting countries in the next five years around $1 trillion.

It is difficult to predict how long Saudi Arabia can keep up pressure in Yemen or Syria with such a shaky financial condition. It may not go bankrupt in the near future but the Saudi royal family must look for avenues to push up prices of oil, which came down to less than $50 a barrel last September, a sharp nose-dive from $103 in September 2014.

Here lies the raison d' etre for Saudi overtures to Russia for cooperation. Riyadh is now looking for an "alliance for oil" partnership with Russia which will also give it a foothold in the Eurasian Economic Union. With this end in view Prince Salman had talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Sochi Olympics in 2014. This was followed by the Russian energy minister's talks with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Three consecutive IS attacks on Saudi mosques have reportedly convinced King Salman about the need for fashioning a new security strategy that puts a premium on choosing an independent course of action, away from US tutelage. Even on Yemen, Saudi Arabia is now open to negotiations. Although Riyadh still demands removal of Bashr-al-Assad as a precondition for ushering in of peace in Syria, yet Brigadier General Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian National Security Bureau, was hosted in Riyadh by no less than the deputy crown prince last July.

Russian military intervention in the Middle East has induced a new type of assessment among all the stakeholders. The US led coalition's attack on the IS has undergone a qualitative change. The US attacks are now hitting the IS really hard. Meanwhile, to establish its credibility with international powers King Salman has fired Prince Bandar, a former intelligence chief, who had his fingers in many CIA-orchestrated operations. Now, a secret Saudi Arabian document has surfaced which shows that the King Salman-led administration has instructed its Middle Eastern embassies not to fund Syrian rebels any more.

Does this really portend a fundamental shift in terror-related Middle Eastern politics?

(Amitava Mukherjee is an Indian journalist and commentator. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amukherjee57@yahoo.com)
In a huge victory for press freedom, New Zealand's High Court has ruled decisively in favor of independent journalist Nicky Hager in his case against the New Zealand government for raiding his house and seizing his family's possessions in 2014.

The court's decision, which was released on December 17, 2015 just before the holidays, is not only a vindication for Hager and his work, but an important win for all journalists and whistleblowers in New Zealand.

You might recall that in October of 2014, Freedom of the Press Foundation crowd-funded over $23,000 for Hager's legal defense, given the outrageous raid on his house was for nothing more than doing a job as his journalist. Here's how we described the background of the case then:

Hager recently wrote an explosive book entitled Dirty Politics based on an anonymous source in the lead-up to New Zealand's most recent election. The book showed how Prime Minister John Key's administration was feeding information to a far right-wing blog in an attempt to smear its opponents. The New Zealand Herald called the book "an election bombshell" and its revelations led to the resignation of New Zealand's Justice Minister at the end of August. But just days after recent Key's re-election, Hager's home was raided by New Zealand police for ten hours. "Soon after the police arrived, the lead detective stated that I was not a suspect in their case, merely a witness," Hager said in a statement on October 6th. Yet the police "seized a large collection of papers and electronic equipment belonging to my family, including computers, drives, phones, CDs, an IPOD and a camera."

At the time, Hager was also working on stories based on the Snowden documents and in partnership with the Intercept about the relationship between the NSA and New Zealand's intelligence services. As Intercept journalist (and one of our founding board members) Glenn Greenwald wrote, "While there is no evidence that Hager's work on NSA documents was a factor in the raid, it is possible that authorities knew or suspected that he had been given access to some of those documents." Greenwald continued:

Whether or not Hager's work with The Intercept may have partially motivated the raid, the situation underscores the dangers of using invasive law enforcement tactics against reportersthey impede the reporting process, render source relationships very difficult to protect, and offer the very authorities that reporters are attempting to hold accountable a window into their ongoing reporting.

We couldn't agree more. Nicky sent us this statement on his court victory and reminded everyone that the court battle is not over yet:

I am very grateful to everyone who gave money, and with it moral support, in the biggest fight of my life to protect sources. I am pleased to report it is going well. We have just won the most important court case, on the police search of my home, and are now challenging the police efforts to identify my sources by non-warranted searches of my bank, on-line and travel data. Thank you for joining me in this fight.

We'd like to join Nicky in thanking all of the people who donated to support his legal defense. Often, press freedom does not come easy, and he has showed why it's important to always continue the fight.
The escalation of tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran against the backdrop of the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric could negatively rebound on the efforts for establishing a peace process in Syria, analysts here said.

The tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran has hit a new high after the Saudi authorities executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shia cleric, who was arrested two years ago and sentenced to death for fomenting dissent against the Sunni royal family in Saudi Arabia.

After the execution last week, Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, bringing down the Saudi flag, Xinhua reported.

Al-Nimr's execution also sparked waves of condemnation and support between Sunni and Shia communities in the Middle East, something analysts said could enflame an all-out Sunni-Shia conflict in the region.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saudi Arabia will face "divine revenge" for al-Nimr's execution, calling it a "huge crime" and "a wrong deed".

Also, the leader of the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah group, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, slammed Saudi Arabia for the execution, saying "Better than any other time, Saudi Arabia is showing its real face to the world. The dictatorial face, the criminal face, the terrorist face, and it's doing this every day."

The tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia was not only confined to the accusatory rhetoric.

After the assault on its embassy, Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday that it had cut diplomatic ties with Iran, a move seen by Tehran as a Saudi pretext to sever ties in a diplomatic crisis that could prolong the tension between both regional powerhouses.

The Saudi-backed Bahrain, which has seen an uprising by its majority Shia population and was largely crushed with the help of Riyadh, also followed Saudi Arabia, announcing on Monday severing diplomatic relations with Iran, in another step seen by observers as deepening the sectarian tension in the region.

Sudan, another ally of Riyadh, also cut ties with Iran, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) downgraded its diplomatic representation in the Shia republic.

This tension, which is largely based on old grudges between both powers on the regional sway, could negatively impact the situation in Syria, where the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is hugely supported by Iran, while almost all of the rebel factions were supported by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.

Syria's Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi on Saturday said the execution of al-Nimr is "a crime and an assassination of the freedom of speech and human rights."

Meanwhile, the rebels' Free Syrian Army (FSA) said in a statement on Monday that it supports the Saudi move in severing ties with Iran.

"With the threats of the Iranian regime to the security and stability in the region by supporting Shia groups in the Arab region including the killing and criminal thugs of Assad and finally fomenting sedition in Saudi Arabia, the decision to cut the ties is a normal and clear response to the aforementioned actions," it said.

"We in the armed revolutionary forces fully support the decision by the Saudi kingdom and back any future step Saudi Arabia may find suitable to preserve its peace and security," said the statement, urging all Arab countries to follow the Saudi lead to cut ties with Iran.

Syrian analysts expressed pessimism about the new development in the region, particularly after blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq on Monday, sparking fears of renewed sectarian strife in Iraq, which has for long been suffering from tension and tit-for-tat attacks between Sunni and Shia people.

Maher Ihsan, a Syrian political analyst, said the new tension was "worrying".

"It's extremely worrying what happened on the political arena in terms of the severing of the Iranian-Saudi relations, because those powers could seek revenge from one another, and surely they will not engage into a direct war, so where will they settle their score? I am afraid they will avenge one another in other arenas, including Syria," he said.

"Again, this country could be dragged back to the conflict zone, from which it hasn't even been pulled. I am afraid the poor people of Syria will keep paying the bills of others' wars on the Syrian soil," he lamented.

The fear of pulling Syria back was due to the new hope, which was given during recent meetings in Vienna and New York, during which superpowers and regional ones, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, agreed on roadmap to end the Syrian conflict politically.

The roadmap, which will be first implemented with a meeting this month in Geneva between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition, is designed to establish dialogue, a cease fire and a new government in Syria as a prelude to broader and more inclusive solution.

While the details of the roadmap are yet to be crystalised with proper mechanism, the new regional tension is feared it could affect the renewed efforts to end the long-lasting crisis, which killed over 250,000 people and forced half of the country's 23 million population out of their homes.

For his part, Ahmad al-Ashqar, another analyst, said the negative impact could happen in countries where there is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, such as in Yemen and Syria.

"Unfortunately, I think the repercussions of the Iranian-Saudi tension will increase, which will reflect on the Syrian crisis, because Syria has become a stage for regional conflicts. Such countries don't need to open new fronts, while already-opened fronts already exist, meaning Syria will surely be affected by the conflict of such countries," he said.

"Despite our conviction that international efforts to establish a political solution was close, but after the recent events, the political efforts could be delayed, which means more exhaustion to the Syrian people."
India needs to change its security policy towards Pakistan, Indian Army chief General Dalbir Singh said here on Tuesday, referring to the terrorist attack on the IAF base at Pathankot that left seven security personnel and six terrorists killed.

"As a security personnel, I can say that India needs to change its security policy towards Pakistan," General Singh told IANS.

"Every time Pakistan bleeds us to the thousands of cuts... We just talk about it for a few days and after that we let it go as usual business," he added.

General Singh along with hundreds of former servicemen at the India Gate here paid homage to the soldiers martyred during Pathankot air base attack.

Retired Brigadier J.S. Sandhu also echoed the voice of the army chief, saying that, "India needs to sharpen its action towards Pakistan".

"The government needs to let the army act against these terror groups... We have always been lenient and soft towards Pakistan, but in return we were only rewarded with attacks," Sandhu told IANS.

Among others who gathered to pay homage to the martyrs were students, families of ex-servicemen and activists.

Himangi, a 19-year-old law student, asked the nation to learn to pay homage and respect to the martyrs.

"Those army men fought for us to be safe. And we are not even bothered to pay them a homage or respect," she said.

"Why aren't the politicians or bureaucrats bothered?" she asked.

Later, a candle light vigil was also held by the ex-servicemen.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday called up his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi regarding the terror attack on the Pathankot Indian Air Force base and assured that prompt and decisive action will be taken against the terrorists involved, an official statement here said.

Sharif phoned up Modi from Sri Lanka, where he is on a three-day official visit.



The terrorists launched the assault on Indian air base in Pathankot that killed 7 Indian security personnel and injured 22.



In a latest statement, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said six militants who attacked Pathankot air base have been confirmed killed, adding that a four-day-old operation to secure the compound was still under way.
Dialling Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Sri Lanka, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday promised "prompt and decisive action" against terrorist groups linked to the attack on the air base at Pathankot in Punjab.

Sharif gave the assurance after New Delhi provided "specific and actionable information" to Islamabad regarding the terrorists who mounted the attack, and Modi underlined the need for Pakistan to take "firm and immediate action" against organisations and individuals responsible for it.

The Sharif-Modi telephonic conversation followed the killing of all six terrorists believed to be from Pakistan after they sneaked into and attacked the Indian Air Force base early on Saturday, leaving seven security personnel dead.

The United Jehad Council (UJC), an umbrella grouping of Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan headed by Syed Salahuddin, on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.

An official statement said Modi got a call Tuesday afternoon from Sharif "regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base".

"Modi strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the statement said.

It said specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan.

"Sharif assured Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists," it added.

This was their first known conversation since Modi dramatically flew into Lahore on Christmas Day while returning home from Kabul and spent some two hours with Sharif.

Radio Pakistan reported that Sharif telephoned Modi "and conveyed sorrow and grief on the losses in (the) Pathankot terror attack".

It quoted Sharif as saying that terrorists always tried to derail the process of peace between the two countries.

"Pakistan will investigate in detail on the leads and information provided by the government of India," it said.

The two prime ministers also showed a resolve to battle terrorism together through mutual cooperation, Radio Pakistan added.

The Nation, a Pakistani newspaper, quoted Sharif as saying: "We are with India in this hard time and will assist in any way possible... We will investigate according to information given by India."

Sharif and Modi also discussed other strategic issues, it added.

Modi's Lahore visit came after a series of diplomatic engagements between New Delhi and Islamabad.

The two leaders had a seemingly impromptu meeting on November 30 on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit.

On December 6, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua met in Bangkok.

Two days later, Sushma Swaraj landed in Islamabad to attend the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan.

On December 9, Sushma Swaraj announced that Modi would visit Islamabad in 2016 to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit.

India and Pakistan have since agreed to start a comprehensive bilateral dialogue.

It was when the stage was being set for the foreign secretaries to meet this month in Islamabad that the terrorists mounted the attack on the IAF base at Pathankot.
Dialling Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Sri Lanka, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday promised "prompt and decision action" against terrorists linked to the attack on the IAF base in Pathankot in Punjab.

Sharif gave the assurance after New Delhi provided "specific and actionable information" to Islamabad regarding the terrorists, and Modi underlined the need for Pakistan to take "firm and immediate action" against organisations and individuals responsible for the attack.

The Sharif-Modi telephonic conversation followed the killing of all six terrorists believed to be from Pakistan after they attacked the Indian Air Force base early on Saturday, leaving seven security personnel dead.

An official statement said Modi got a call in the afternoon from Sharif "regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base".

"Modi strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the statement said.

It said specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan.

"Sharif assured Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists," it added.

This was their first known conversation since Modi dramatically flew into Lahore on Christmas Day while returning home from Kabul and spent some two hours with Sharif.

Radio Pakistan reported that Sharif telephoned Modi "and conveyed sorrow and grief on the losses in (the) Pathankot terror attack".

It quoted Sharif as saying that terrorists always tried to derail the process of peace between the two countries.

"Pakistan will investigate in detail on the leads and information provided by the government of India," it said.

The two prime ministers also showed a resolve to battle terrorism together through mutual cooperation, Radio Pakistan added.

The Nation, a Pakistani newspaper, quoted Sharif as saying: "We are with India in this hard time and will assist in any way possible... We will investigate according to information given by India."

Sharif and Modi also discussed other strategic issues, it added.

Modi's Lahore visit came after a series of diplomatic engagements between New Delhi and Islamabad.

The two leaders had a seemingly impromptu meeting on November 30 at the Paris climate summit.

On December 6, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua met in Bangkok.

Two days later, Sushma Swaraj landed in Islamabad to attend the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan.

On December 9, Sushma Swaraj announced that Modi would visit Islamabad in 2016 to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit.

India and Pakistan have since agreed to start a comprehensive bilateral dialogue.

It was when the stage was being set for the foreign secretaries to meet this month in Islamabad that the terrorists raided the IAF base in Pathankot.
Budget passenger carrier SpiceJet on Tuesday announced that it will increase flight frequency on the Delhi-Kabul route from February 8.

According to the company, it will increase its operations from three days a week to five days a week on the Delhi-Kabul route.

The increase in flight frequencies between New Delhi and Kabul is a part of the airline's larger plans to augment capacity to meet growing demand.

"Our current enhanced schedule comes in time to add considerable depth to our existing network, thereby helping us better serve the increased demand in growing markets," said Shilpa Bhatia, senior vice president, commercial, SpiceJet.

The budget passenger carrier disclosed that it will operate a renewed winter schedule by adding 10 new daily frequencies on its domestic network encompassing popular routes.

The airline pointed-out that it will increase frequencies on routes such as Chennai-Kochi, Bangalore-Vijayawada, Kochi-Chennai and Hyderabad-Vijayawada among others.

In addition, the airline increased capacity on select domestic routes by undertaking aircraft upgradation from Bombardier Q400 which has a seating capacity of 78 seats to Boeing 737 which can accommodate 186 passengers.

The airline added that the aircraft upgradation would be operational for six days a week on routes such as Delhi-Varanasi and Delhi-Dehradun among others.

Currently, SpiceJet operates 293 daily flights to 40 destinations, including 34 domestic and six international ones.

It connects its network destinations with a fleet of 25 Boeing 737NG and two Airbus A320 family of aircraft along with 14 Bombardier Q-400s.
At least 12 Indian fishermen were arrested by Sri Lankan Navy on Tuesday for poaching in its waters, the navy's media unit said.

The fishermen were arrested in waters northwest of Thalai-mannar and north of Delft Island. Three fishing trawlers were also taken into custody, Xinhua reported.

The arrested were handed over to the officials of fisheries and aquatic resources department, the navy said.

This is the second arrest in a week as 29 Indian fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy on December 31 for poaching in the island's eastern waters.

Sri Lanka and India have been trying to resolve the long-standing fishermen issue with both sides having to face arrests and boats being detained when they stray into each other's waters.

Recently, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, voicing concerns at recurring instances of such arrests.

The Sri Lankan government however has maintained that it will not allow any Indian fishermen to cross into Sri Lankan waters.
Sudan has urged members of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Khartoum to leave within two weeks after the north-east African country's earlier decision to cut off its diplomatic ties with Tehran.

Sudan's foreign ministry on Monday summoned the acting Iranian Charge d'Affaires in Khartoum and conveyed the decision to sever diplomatic ties, Xinhua reported.

"Ambassador Dafalla Al-Haj Ali, acting Foreign Ministry undersecretary, conveyed to the Iranian Charge d'Affaires in Khartoum that Sudan avails the members of the Iranian diplomatic mission a period of maximum two weeks to leave the country," the ministry said.

Earlier on Monday, Sudan officially declared severing of its diplomatic ties with Iran in solidarity with Saudi Arabia.

"In solidarity with the brotherly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the face of the Iranian plots, Sudan declares immediate severing of diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran," the ministry said.

"The decision came in the wake of the heinous attack against the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Tehran and its Consulate in Mashhad town," it added.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem will pay a three-day official visit to India from January 9 to brief the Indian leadership about the latest situation in his country.

He will also aprise the Indian government about the ongoing military operation launched by Russia to eliminate the Islamic State terrorist group.

Muallem will meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, besides other government functionaries.

The visit assumes importance in view of fresh initiatives taken by the UN to bring about peace in war-torn Syria, where more than 300,000 people have been killed in the past four years and seven million have fled to other countries.

European nations have also witnessed a huge influx of Syrian refugees.

Muallam is also expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi, during his visit to Moscow last month, held detailed talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the growing threat of Islamic State and the Syrian crisis.

Since the Paris terror attack, many western nations have directly or indirectly established contact with the Syrian government on activities of the Islamic State.

Special advisor to the Syrian president Buthina Shaban had visited India in March 2013. She met Indian ministers and apprised them on the situation in her country.
The US consul general in Hyderabad on Tuesday said they were taking seriously the issue related to students being sent back to India.

Terming it a "very serious issue", Michael Mullins said the US ambassador in India Richard Verma was working on it.

"It is a big concern obviously for students, their parents, their families, and governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh although it's not just two states, there are students from other states as well who are involved in this and sent back that is why it is being looked at centrally by the ambassador and ministry of external affairs," he said.

The consul general was replying to a query on the sidelines of an event.

"We are limited in what we can say right now. We are looking very hard at this both here and in New Delhi and in Washington," he added.

About 100 students from both the Telugu states have been sent back over the last few weeks after they landed in the US. They complained that the US authorities did not give any reason for their action but in some cases they were told that universities they selected are under scrutiny.

The incidents have led to concern among students and their families in the two states.

Meanwhile, the Telangana government on Tuesday conveyed its concern over the issue to the US consulate.

Information Technology Minister K. Tarakarama Rao met Michael Mullins at the consulate.

The minister later told reporters that it was not proper to send back students, who obtained visas and are trying to legitimately enter the US.

He said this was causing severe hardships and huge financial loss to students and their parents.

According to the minister, the consul general, while acknowledging that this happened in some cases, assured that they were trying to rectify it.

The minister noted that in some cases such incidents were happening because of problems with the students' documents. Some students were using fake certificates and documents.

Tarakarama Rao, who is the son of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, said the government would deal firmly with those involved in making fake documents.

He suggested that the consulate check the authenticity of all documents here before issuing visas so that students don't suffer after landing in the US.

The minister also brought to the consul general's notice some media reports about the ill treatment meted out to some students by the US authorities.

The consul general, however, denied that any student was handcuffed.

The minister said he was also writing to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to take up the students' issue with the US homeland security officials.

He noted that Hyderabad was the further biggest embarkation point in the world for students going to the US. The city also ranks second in the country in terms of sending employees to the US.
President Obama wept today as he spoke today about the ever-increasing waves of gun violence throughout America. He announced new executive actions to reduce the frequency of mass shootings, suicides and other gun killings, which have become a common part of life in our country.

You can read the full speech here.

From the New York Times:

Speaking in the East Room of the White House surrounded by gun control activists and the families of gun victims, Mr. Obama broke down as he spoke about the young children shot to death in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. "First graders," he said, his eyes drifting to a distant place and becoming red with tears. The president wiped his eye and paused to regain his composure. "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," he said.

Obama repeated the same call to action he has proposed before: universal background checks, and an overhaul of gun laws.

"It won't happen overnight, it won't happen during this Congress, it won't happen during my presidency."

"The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they can't hold America hostage," Mr. Obama said. "Congress still needs to act. The folks in this room will not rest until Congress does."

More at the New York Times.



PHOTO: Members of the North Florida Survival Group wait with their rifles before heading out to perform enemy contact drills during a field training exercise in Old Town, Florida, December 8, 2012. The group trains children and adults alike to handle weapons and survive in the wild. The group passionately supports the right of U.S. citizens to bear arms and its website states that it aims to teach "patriots to survive in order to protect and defend our Constitution against all enemy threats". Picture taken December 8, 2012. REUTERS/Brian Blanco
No one wants to knowingly buy products made with child labour or those that harm the environment, but we also don't want to work too hard to find out whether our favourite products were made ethically, according to a new study.

We really don't like those good people who make the effort to seek out ethically-made goods when we choose not to. In fact, we denigrate consumers who act more ethically than we do, seeing them as less fashionable and more boring, said Rebecca Walker Reczek, co-author of the study and associate professor of marketing at the Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

"You choose not to find out if a product is made ethically. Then you harshly judge people who do consider ethical values when buying products. Then that makes you less ethical in the future," Reczek added.

Walker conducted the study with Daniel Zane, a graduate student at Ohio State's Fisher College, and Julie Irwin, a professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Austin.

In earlier research, Irwin had found that consumers often choose to be 'willfully ignorant' when it comes to how their favourite consumer goods were made.

They will consider ethical information, such as whether a product was made using fair labour practices and in an environmentally friendly way, if it is readily available, such as on product packaging. But they won't go through the trouble of looking on a website or asking a salesperson.

For the new research, Reczek and her colleagues conducted several experiments to determine the consequences of this wilful ignorance.

In the first study, 147 undergraduates were told they would be evaluating four brands of blue jeans that differed on only four attributes: style, wash, price and a fourth attribute, which pertained either to an ethical issue (whether the company used child labour) or a control issue (delivery time for the jeans).

Participants were told that due to time constraints, they could choose only two of the four attributes to make their evaluations.

As expected, most of the participants who were given the opportunity to know whether the jeans were made with child labour chose to remain 'wilfully ignorant'.

That was key to the next part of the study, in which the same participants provided their opinions about different types of consumers, purportedly for market segmentation purposes.

Those who were wilfully ignorant about child labour use on the jeans they evaluated were asked to rate consumers who would choose to research clothing manufacturers' labour practices before making a purchase.

These participants were more likely to denigrate these ethical consumers as odd, boring and less fashionable, among other negative traits.

"They judged ethical consumers less positively on positive traits and more negatively on negative traits," Reczek said.

However, participants who didn't choose to find out about delivery times on the jeans they evaluated didn't judge those who did investigate delivery times more harshly. It all had to do with the ethics.

"Wilfully ignorant consumers put ethical shoppers down because of the threat they feel for not having done the right thing themselves," she said. "They feel bad and striking back at the ethical consumers makes themselves feel better."

The study results appeared online in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
The UN Security Council "condemned in the strongest terms" the attacks against Saudi embassy in Tehran, and its Consulate General in Mashhad city, which resulted in serious damage and intrusions into the diplomatic and consular premises.

The council members expressed "their deep concern at such attacks," and UN called on the Iranian authorities to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel, Xinhua reported.

Iran should respect fully their international obligations in this regard, said the 15-nation UN body in a statement on Monday.

"The members of the Security Council called on all parties to maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region," the statement said.

On late Saturday, angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi diplomatic mission to protest the execution of 47 individuals on terrorism charges, including a Saudi Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, a member of Saudi Shia community.
The Uttar Pradesh government would soon announce new policies for defence manufacturing and startups, an official said on Tuesday.

At a session in the Taj city on the second day of the 'UP Pravasi Diwas', principal secretary for infrastructure and industrial development Mahesh Gupta said the state government had over the last three years maintained sharp focus on all critical factors that catalyse industrial development.

He said the government would shortly introduce new policies on defence manufacturing and startups.

Among other key initiatives, the government is working to ensure total self-sufficiency in power by December 2017, he said.

"The UP government is not only developing new growth centres but has also taken key steps to revive traditional industrial centres like development of the Trans-Ganga City, Saraswati Hi-tech City, and Plastic City in Auriya and IT City in Lucknow," he told the gathering of PIOs and NRIs.

The official also said that while investors have always expressed keen interest in cities like Lucknow and Noida, there was growing interest among investors to also foray into the eastern, central and Bundelkhand regions of the state after the Mumbai Investment Conclave last year.

P.K. Gupta, chairman of Cafe Buddy Foods Pvt. Ltd., said food processing holds immense potential in Uttar Pradesh and investors would increasingly view the state as a major hub for food processing business.

Hari Om Rai, chairman and managing director of Lava International Ltd., said India was emerging as a key destination for low-end manufacturing, and within the country, Uttar Pradesh could be one of the preferred destinations.

Ashok K. Chauhan, founder president of the Amity Group, spoke about the need for greater awareness and efforts for skill development.

He said vocational training must be customised to serve the real needs of the industry and that industry must pro-actively participate in the development of appropriate training modules and courses.

He urged the industry to create more opportunities for apprenticeship, and added that lab facilities in engineering colleges could also be better utilised after college hours to train unskilled people.
While it believes warmer relations between India and Pakistan would be in the interest of both countries, the US says it was for them to resolve issues bilaterally after the terrorist attack on an Indian Air Force base.

Washington has also "made clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups" - including those targeting India - without discrimination.

"Obviously the leaders of both countries are going to have to decide for themselves what they believe is in the interests of their citizens," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday when asked if India should continue the peace initiative.

"The United States certainly believes that warmer relations and more cooperation between the government of India and the government of Pakistan would in the interests of both countries," he said.

"But ultimately the leaders of those countries will have to decide for themselves."

Asked if the US sees Pakistan taking action against terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taeba as promised in a US-Pakistan joint statement, Earnest suggested Islamabad has its own interest in fighting against terrorist groups operating inside their own country.

The US has offered its support to the Pakistani government, he said, "particularly in light of that terrible terrorist incident where we saw an extremist organization carry out an attack against an elementary school inside of Pakistan" a little over a year ago.

That was a rather "vivid illustration" for people "that citizens in Pakistan and the Pakistani government has their own vested interest in trying to deal with terrorist organizations that are attempting to operate inside their country."

Asked about a report that President Barack Obama has invited the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in March, Earnest said he was "not aware of any upcoming meetings between the President and the leaders of India and Pakistan."

At the State Department, again strongly condemning the terrorist attack on an IAF base airbase, spokesperson John Kirby said the US remained "committed to a strong partnership with the Indian Government to combat terrorism."

Noting that Pakistan "also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian airbase, he said, "we've been clear with the highest levels of the Government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups."

"The Government of Pakistan has said publicly and privately that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups as part of its counterterrorism operations," Kirby said.

"And the Government of Pakistan has spoken to this, has spoken very powerfully to this, and it's certainly our expectation that they'll do exactly what - they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they will."

The US was mindful that there remain some safe havens between Afghanistan and Pakistan and certainly between India and Pakistan "that we obviously want to see cleared out," he said.

"And we continue to engage with the Government of Pakistan to that end," he said adding "Pakistan itself has said and acknowledged, that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups and it will continue to take the fight."

Asked if Pakistan was taking enough steps against terrorist networks like Lashkar-e-Taeba and Jaish-e-Mohammad which are targeting India, Kirby said the US wants to see Pakistan continue to press the fight against all terrorists without discrimination.

But "this is an issue that - as are so many issues between India and Pakistan - we want to see them work out bilaterally."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Visiting Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe met Cuban Foreign Trade and Investments Minister Rodrigo Malmierca to seek new business opportunities between the island and the US state.

During Monday's meeting, McAuliffe said his trip to Havana was aimed at boosting agricultural exports from Virginia to Cuba and promote closer links in maritime transportation, higher education and the arts, Xinhua reported.

He noted that his state had sold around $400 million worth of agricultural products to the island in the past decade, including the $25 million in 2015.

However, McAuliffe said bilateral trade was afflicted by disadvantageous conditions of Cuba since the advance payment was made in cash through bank branches in third countries, without the possibility of loans and due to the prohibition on the use of the US dollars in such transactions.

He called for the lifting of the economic blockade on the island. Speaking at a business forum, he said the move was also in the interest of the US.

"We must work quickly to lay down the groundwork to eliminate restrictions for bank loans, as we have with other partners in the world," said McAuliffe, adding not doing so would see Cuba find other suppliers.

Since his election in November 2013, the governor has worked to expand Virginia's relations with Cuba and has regularly called on Congress to lift the economic, trade and financial blockade against Havana.

For his part, Malmierca highlighted how the blockade impairs normal relations and that, while President Barack Obama has taken steps in the right direction, this remains unresolved.

According to Malmierca, Cuba cannot gain credits from American banks and cannot export any products to the US, two areas which would anchor a normal business relationship.

McAuliffe arrived in Cuba on Sunday for a three-day visit, heading a political and trade mission seeking new areas of economic and social exchange with the Caribbean island.
The Congress on Tuesday sought to know from Prime Minister Narendra Modi what assurances were given to him by Pakistan that paved the way for a comprehensive dialogue with that neighbour.

The party's remark came after Saturday's pre-dawn terrorist attack at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in Punjab, in which seven security personnel and six terrorists suspected to be Pakistanis were killed.

"In August, the National Security Advisor (NSA)-level talks were cancelled. After that, the NSAs (of India and Pakistan) met in Bangkok. We want to know what was discussed in the meeting and what agreement was made between the two countries with regard to responding to such attacks," said Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma.

"What assurances were made to the prime minister by Pakistan that he made a sudden and surprise visit to Lahore. We need to know whether the entire establishment of Pakistan - the army and the ISI - approved of this visit or not," he added.

Sharma said that when Modi landed in Lahore on December 25, the NSA of Pakistan, Naseer Khan Janjua, was not present. "Shouldn't we get a message from it that the entire establishment of Pakistan is not in support of rapprochement between two countries?"

Post Mumbai terror attack, he said a dialogue should begin only after Pakistan keeps its promises.

"But they couldn't keep their promises. The first assurance was that the handlers of Mumbai attack would be tried and punished and only after that a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan should start," he added.

He urged Modi to take the nation into confidence and "consult the leadership of the principal opposition parties on these matters".

The Congress also termed as the offensive the terrorist attack on the country.

"Pathankot attack is not only a terror attack or an attack on humanity. It is an attack on India. It is an attack on the nation. We sense it as a conspiracy theory because along with Pathankot, the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, was also attacked," said Sharma.

"Seventeen days after the Ufa agremment between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, there was an attack in Gurdaspur (Punjab), breaching the international border. This (Pathankot) attack is also similar to that. Therefore, it should be termed as an attack on India," he said.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday promised his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Islamabad will take "prompt and decisive action" against terrorists linked to the attack on the IAF base in Pathankot.

Sharif gave the assurance after New Delhi provided "specific and actionable information" to Islamabad regarding the terrorists, and Modi underlined the need for Pakistan to take "firm and immediate action" against organisations and individuals responsible for the attack.

The Sharif-Modi telephonic conversation followed the killing of all six terrorists believed to be from Pakistan after they attacked the Indian Air Force base early on Saturday, leaving seven security personnel dead.

An official statement said Modi received a call on Tuesday afternoon from Sharif "regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base".

"Modi strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the statement said.

It said specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan.

"Sharif assured Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists," it added.

Modi and Sharif met on Christmas Day when the Indian leader, while flying home from Kabul, dramatically made a two-hour halt in Lahore.
Discussion about West Bengal, happily, has moved from how and why it deindustrialised to how to industrialise. With the global trend of premature deindustrialisation, it is not going to be easy. Today's developed countries typically grew first by industrialising, and then by moving into services. In 2013, Dani Rodrik pointed out how in recent times, developing countries are not attaining industrialisation levels reached by the early industrialisers.

Mr Rodrik noted how in Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing's share of employment peaked at around 45 per cent before World War I and then only fell to reach less than 10 per cent. In contrast, in India, manufacturing employment's share peaked at a meagre 13 per cent in 2002.

Among Indian states, West Bengal led the pack, only behind Bihar, in deindustrialising at a very low level of income. In this newspaper, on May 9, 2014, Amrit Amirapu and Arvind Subramanian provided the data. Except for Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan, in all the others the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product or GDP (old series) peaked before 2000. In West Bengal, like in Assam, Maharashtra and Kerala, it peaked as early as the 1980s. In Bengal it peaked in 1982, after five years of communist rule under Jyoti Basu, and the state's per capita income was only Rs 9,348 at 2005 prices. Only in Bihar did it peak at a lower per capita income.

Recently, there has been progress in industrialising West Bengal, as illustrated by the commissioning of the cement plant at Godapiasal and progress on the proposed offshore floating storage facility for eight million tonnes per annum (mtpa) liquefied natural gas near Digha. But a policy-related problem that urgently needs to be redressed is the "miniaturisation" of projects. Take, for example, the state government's proposal to set up six new theme-based township projects at Siliguri (education and health), Bolpur (culture), Asansol (industry), Kalyani (information technology), Howrah (sports) and Baruipur (senior citizen). They vary from 50 to 127 acres, and miniaturisation is evident when comparison with the 886-acre Gujarat International Finance Tec-City or GIFT city being built near Ahmedabad and the 337-acre Mysore campus of Infosys.

In Kolkata, a 30-metre replica of the 96-metre Big Ben in London has already been built, and a 55-metre replica of the 324-metre Eiffel Tower in Paris is under construction. These are good ideas for their amusement and aesthetic value. But miniaturisation will not work for industry and infrastructure. Even 20 50-acre townships will not generate benefits equivalent to a 1,000-acre township.

Miniaturisation of projects, most probably, has resulted from the problems of land acquisition. All the six theme-based townships are on government land, and such land is limited. Acquiring land has proved to be the major bottleneck for growth of infrastructure and industry. The story of Tata's proposed Nano project in Singur is too well-known for repetition. Now, the state government is trying to promote industry and even infrastructure only in land vested with the government, such as in West Midnapore. This will not work.

The development of Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata Industrial Corridor (ADKIC) is proposed to be taken up in a band of 150-200 km on either side of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, in a phased manner. In the first phase, every state is expected to promote at least one integrated manufacturing cluster of about 2,470 acres, where 40 per cent area is permanently earmarked for manufacturing and processing activities. The AKDIC will pass through the cities of Asansol, Durgapur and Kolkata in Bengal. How will the state promote an integrated manufacturing cluster of 2,470 acres with only government land?



Bengal has sought Rs 2,000 crore from the central government for improving infrastructure at Petrapole. bordering Bangladesh. Does the government have enough land at Petrapole to develop a world-class cross-border trade facilitation facility? Similarly, will the path of a national or state highway always pass through government land alone?



West Bengal suffers from too many people and too little land. With 1,029 people per sq km, it is the second most densely populated state in India, after Bihar. Decadal population growth of the state at 17.77 per cent and 13.93 per cent during 1991-2000 and 2001-2011 were below the corresponding all-India total of 21.54 per cent and 17.64 per cent. The relatively lower growth compared to the national level as well as its deceleration over time are positive developments overall. But the population is still growing, and so is pressure on land.

Urbanisation concentrates economic activity, enhances productivity and creates jobs in manufacturing and services. "Reviving Kolkata: The City that Got Left Behind," the title of an article in The Economist on January 9, 2012, captures the challenge appropriately. Between 2001 and 2011, the population of Kolkata shrunk by 1.9 per cent to 4.48 million.

In 1971, West Bengal had 24.7 per cent of its population in urban areas compared to the national figure of 20.2 per cent. By 2011, the national urbanisation rate of 31.2 per cent was within striking distance of Bengal's 31.9 per cent. "Slow, messy and hidden" is how a World Bank report describes urbanisation in South Asia. It applies to urbanisation in Bengal particularly well. West Bengal needs to urbanise fast and handle urbanisation well to reap significant benefits from urbanisation.

Agriculture cannot gainfully provide employment for much of West Bengal's working age population from a total of over 91 million. Land is scarce, and net sown area constitutes 62.89 per cent of the reported area, with area under non-agricultural use and forests covering 13.48 per cent and 18.52 per cent. The residual of about 5.5 per cent is accounted by categories such as fallows and waste land. To assume that urban centres and industrial areas will come up only in fallows and waste land is an unrealistic expectation. Carefully planned land-utilisation will necessarily



The writer is an economist
INDIAN FAMILY BUSINESS MANTRAS

Peter Leach and Tatwamasi Dixit

Rupa Publications

280 pages; Rs 595



The authors of Indian Family Business Mantras have impeccable credentials - Peter Leach is a well-known family business expert and a partner at Deloitte UK, and Tatwamasi Dixit is a Vedic scholar and one of India's foremost family business advisors. Management guru Ram Charan raises hopes further by writing on the cover of the book that it takes you "behind closed doors of what actually happens in family businesses."



The 280 pages that follow do open the door, but scarcely offer readers a glimpse of what's happening inside. No one was expecting a "how-to" book for family businesses. Indeed, one agrees with the authors that there can be no such thing because each family business is different, and there are really no standard rules that can be applied across firms.

Where the book disappoints is in its liberal use of banal homilies. For instance, it provides a case study of a well-known business group and then concludes that the group has survived because of "real-life family values" such as care and respect for each family member, candour and transparency, fairness and mutual trust, and so on. Did we need to read this book to know all this?



Or, who would care to know that the "key benefits of harmony" are that it promotes calm and creativity, encourages togetherness and stops unhealthy competition? This is almost like reading a be-a-good-soul kind of sermon, which takes pains to tell you that families that live harmoniously pray together, stay together and eat together.

The book also gives pride of place to anecdotes from Indian epics, scriptures and history, ostensibly to draw parallels with modern-day family business issues. This should have been a novelty, but it isn't because the relevance of most of them is hard to understand. For example, in the chapter "The home-work balance: Striving for harmony" there is a long tale from the Ramayana of how Rama's family members unanimously respected their father, and all his brothers looked up to Rama as the eldest son. It goes on to say how Lakshmana stood by his brother in his exile, and so on. It also talks about how Ravana was respected by his siblings but he never paid heed to their suggestions.

Good story, but the "so what" part is missing and it is not clear what the authors are suggesting - is it that a family enterprise can survive only if everybody looks up to the family patriarch who should choose the elder son as the natural heir, who in turn should take everybody along? No answer has been provided, but it sounds like too simplistic a solution to a complex problem. Family businesses have seen some of the most bitter splits that have cracked Indian industry apart over the past several decades, many of which have seen son against father, mother against daughter, brother against brother and nephew against uncle.

The book refers to the problems and a few recent business spats, but one would have expected more insight. For example, in the chapter on succession planning, interesting issues are raised but the authors seem to be unwilling to ruffle any feathers, so they hurry into the comfort of boring generalisations such as, start planning early on retirement, involve family and colleagues, make retirement timely and unequivocal and other such maxims.

It is obvious that very few family businesses would be interested in such sermons to tackle complex situations. For example, in a recent survey, when chief executive officers of such businesses were asked when they plan to retire or turn over the leadership of their companies, an astonishing 52.2 per cent said they planned to work in their current position till death. In the US, the corresponding figure was 15 per cent.

On professionalising family businesses, the authors recommend: "The decision to professionalise should be clearly explained to everyone in the organisation. It should not be enforced or implemented in a top-down fashion - rather it should gradually become part of the work culture of the organisation." Are readers any wiser?



Some parts of the book are interesting, especially the sections on father-son conflict (so common in Indian family businesses) - how fathers still think the son is ungrateful and treacherous and the latter often sees himself as the victim of emotional blackmail by his father. Also, as the authors say, in India, next-gen family members are often expected to join the family business and commit their working lives to it regardless of their aptitude, talent or inclination.

Some of the real-life examples do offer interesting insights into how business families manage themselves effectively, dealing with conflicts and challenges as a family and the strategic value of staying together as its member. Unfortunately, these insights are few and far between.

The biggest failing of the book is that it does not provide any overarching framework for building a sustainable theme on managing family businesses. This is a pity, considering that even today such businesses contribute 60-70 per cent of the country's gross domestic product and 40-50 per cent of employment. A book on their distinctive strengths and inbuilt seeds of destruction (at least in some cases) should have been a far more interesting read.

The reviewer is author of Business Battles: Family Feuds that Changed Indian Industry (Bloomsbury/BS Books, 2014)
With reference to the editorial, "Time for Pak to give answers on Pathankot" (January 5), there is little doubt that "once the counter-terror operation at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot is well and truly over, questions will and must be asked and answered about how it was handled". The question is: Despite the fact that we had specific intelligence input, how did such a large group of terrorists sneak into the heavily-guarded Pathankot air base? More so, when the elite Special Protection Group, too, had been deployed by the government? This calls for taking a holistic view of our operational preparedness in such situations. Could the multiplicity of security agencies involved in countering the attack have delayed the taking of action against the terrorists?



However, the most important aspect of the Indian operation was the inept handling of news, both by the government and the news channels. Several TV channels made a mockery of themselves by flashing "breaking news" of the number of terrorists who had supposedly been killed in the operation, only to report a lower figure minutes later. Almost every channel was reporting a different information, according to their "different sources". Wasn't the over-enthusiasm of the electronic media without verification of the facts unwarranted?



After the November 26, 2008, terror attacks in Mumbai and the recent anti-terror military operations in Jammu and Kashmir, Indian news channels had been advised not to telecast such incidents live. But "on-field" reporters of several news channels indeed reported live the key positions of our security personnel during the Pathankot attack. When will the Indian media learn the ethics of journalism?



The National Investigation Agency must look into the matter of news channels violating the government's guidelines. Their motto seems to be: Sabse pehle hum (We are the first). Why do they forget that the country's security always comes first?



Now the lapse by the government: Home Minister Rajnath Singh declared that the operation was over on Saturday after all the terrorists had been killed. In reality, the operation continued till Monday. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had to brief the nation even though this was an internal security matter. Was the home minister not available? Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi listening?





S Kumar New Delhi

can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
The Opposition Congress on Tuesday rejected PM Narendra Modis description of the Pathankot terrorist strike as an attack on humanity and categorically termed it as an attack on India. Congress spokesperson and Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Anand Sharma, accused the PM of being caught up in optics rather than outcomes and demanded to know what assurances, if any, were made by Pakistan, which led to PM making a surprise trip to Lahore.

The Congress has demanded the PM engage with Opposition leaders and clear the air on all that has transpired in peace talks with Pakistan. Sharma said this was vital as any concession made or agreement reached with Pakistan will have far-reaching consequences.

The former Union minister said, The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government and its then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, preferred outcomes over optics. PM Modi believes in the opposite. Optics have taken place in Lahore.



Sharma said as a responsible opposition party, it has the right to demand answers from the government. The prime minister should now tell us what the outcomes are. While we support dialogue, we want to make it clear that our security and integrity are non-negotiable.



After cancellation of Security Advisor (NSA)-level talks in August, what was the understanding reached between NSA Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart in Bangkok? What were the reasons for the PM to make a surprise trip to Lahore? What assurances were given to merit this dramatic gesture? Was PM suspicious when the Pakistan NSA was absent in Lahore, during his surprise visit, was that message not correctly read?



The Congress wanted to know whether the proposal for resumption of peace process has the full support and endorsement of the entire Pakistani establishment. Recalling how the Congress-led UPA reacted after the deadly 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he said, The comprehensive bilateral dialogue with Pakistan was suspended after the Mumbai terror strike and could not be restored because India had laid some conditions. We wanted 26/11 conspirators to be charged and tried. We wanted speedy trial of the Mumbai terror accused.



Sharma pointed out that Manmohan Singh wished to visit Pakistan but did not do so because Pakistan did not honour its promises.
About 100 Pakistanis, including women, have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State since the rise of the dreaded terror group in the Middle East, a minister in the provincial Punjab government said here.

"Some 100 Pakistanis including women have left the country for Syria and Iraq to join the ISIS since the rise of the militant group in the Middle East," Punjab province Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said.

"The government is doing its best to stop the recruitment for the ISIS," the minister said, adding that eight activists of the group were arrested from Sialkot district of Punjab and they are still associated with the Jamaat-ud-Dawah.

He said the government would not let the ISIS to have their foothold in Pakistan.

Earlier, the law enforcement agencies arrested over 40 people, including women, over their alleged linkage to ISIS.

The arrests were made during a series of raids by counter-terrorism officials to nab the alleged supporters and activists of the Middle Eastern terrorist group in Pakistan.

Rana Sanaullah said top ISIS operatives were among those arrested, including Islamabad chief Amir Mansoor, his deputy Abdullah Mansoori and chief for Sindh province Umer Kathio.

Pakistan has officially denied the presence of ISIS in the country, but secretly it has been neutralising militants who have either shifted their allegiance from the Taliban to the ISIS or have shown inclination to support the group.

Meanwhile, Lahore police arrested three recruiters of ISIS from Sham Nagar.

A police source said the law enforcement agencies raided a house in Sham Nagar and arrested Dr Usman Malik, Ahsan Siddique and one unidentified man and recoveredhate literature, propaganda material and a laptop.

He said the three 'ISIS members' were recruiting people for Jihad in Syria.

They have been shifted to undisclosed location for interrogation.
Twelve Tamil Nadu fishermen were today arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy when they were fishing near Katchatheevu.

Assistant Director of Fisheries Gopinath said while eight fishermen were from Rameswaram, the rest were from Jegadappatinam in Pudukottai district.

He said the fishermen and their three boats have been taken to Talaimannar where they would be produced before a magistrate.

The Lankan naval men allegedly rammed a boat and damaged it, but the occupants managed to reach Indian waters with their vessel. They also allegedly snapped the fishing nets of several boats.

Fishermen in 550 boats had ventured into the sea from this island, officials said, adding, other fishermen have returned to the shore.

On December 31, 29 fishermen from Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu were detained by the Lankan navy when they were fishing off Trincomallee coast in Sri Lanka.

Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, voicing concern over recurring instances of such arrests besides seeking his intervention for release of over 80 Indian fishermen languishing in Sri Lankan prisons.
At least 14 people were killed and 32 injured today when a passenger bus was set ablaze in a suspected arson attack during morning rush hour in northwest China.

The Ningxia regional department of public security has launched a manhunt for Ma Yongping, the suspected arsonist behind the incident in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The accident happened at around 7 a.m (local time) when the bus went up in flames near a furniture mall in Helan County's Yinchuan city.

14 people were killed and 32 injured in the incident, officials said.

The site was cordoned off and the injured were receiving treatment in hospitals.

Such arson attacks have been carried out by disgruntled persons in China in the past.

According to police, Ma owns three cars. Police in Ningxia localities were checking for the suspect and the car plate numbers on various road and highway entrances and exits.

The bus, which belongs to state-owned Yinchuan Public Transport Co Ltd, was bound for the Yinchuan Railway Station.

Pictures on microblog Sina Weibo show the entire bus engulfed by fire and smoke.
A 17-year-old boy died after he came in contact with high tension wires above the railway track along Mathura Road in southeast Delhi's Okhla area today.

The boy, identified as Anwar Alam had allegedly climbed the roof of a train which had halted at a crossing in the area and came in contact with the overhead high tension wires, a police officer said.

He got entangled in the wires and his body was brought down by fire officials and emergency teams after 45-minutes, the officer said.

Anwar lived with his family in a nearby locality.
The Madras High court today grantedtwo more months time to CB-CID to crack the case relating to the murder of the brother of former minister and DMK leader K N Nehru in 2012.

Justice M Venugopal granted the extension after hearing the CB-CID submission today, seeking more time as the probe was in the final stages and they were zeroing in on the assailants.

CB-CID ADSP Aravindan, who appeared in court today, said they had come to a decisive conclusion as to who were the accused in the murder of Ramajeyam and action was being taken to arrest them.

The agency sought three months time but the judge granted them two months and asked them to complete the probe in that period.

Ramajeyam was found dead on the banks of Cauvery river in Tiruchirappalli on March 29, 2012.

The Judge passed the order on the petition by Ramajeyam's wife Latha to transfer the case to CBI for investigation.

On December 18 last year, Tamil Nady police had filed a report in the Court here on the progress of the probe into the murder and sought three more months to complete it.

CB-CID, which had been asked to speed up the investigation, had submitted the interim report in a sealed cover, complying with the October 28 order of the court.

The Judge had said he would have to read the report before granting then posted the case to this date.
Two Naxals, including a commander rank cadre, were today gunned down and another rebel arrested after a fierce encounter between Maoists and security forces in Chhattisgarh's Kondagaon district, police said.

The skirmish took place between a team of District Reserve Group (DRG) and rebels in the dense forests of Kudhur village under Mardapal police station limits, Inspector General of Police, Bastar Range, S R P Kalluri told PTI.

The security forces in Bastar division were directed to plan strategy to take on the ultras, who usually start their Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC) in January during which they step up their activities, he said.

"As per the operational plan, a DRG team of 35 personnel set off from Kondagaon towards interior of Mardapal on January 3. While the party was returning, the Maoists laid an ambush and fired upon the DRG in Kudhur jungles prompting security forces to retaliate," he said.

On finding security personnel zeroing in on them, the ultras fled from thespot.

Later, during a search of the place, bodies of two rebels clad in 'uniform' were recovered, he said.

Meanwhile a rebel, Jai Singh, member of Kudhur LOS (local operation squad), was also arrested after a short chase while he was trying to flee from the spot, he said.

The killed Maoists were identified as Jati Ram, commander of Kudhur LOS of Maoists, and Holdhar Kashyap, a member of the outfit, he said.

Two muzzle loading guns and a country-made gun were also recovered from the spot, he added.
At least 25 Iraqi fighters have been killed repelling a major three-day offensive by the Islamic State group in the region of Haditha in Anbar province, security sources said today.

"We have given 25 martyrs in 72 hours," a tribal commander, Sheikh Abdallah Atallah, told AFP by phone from Haditha, an area that includes a key dam and has held off IS since 2014.

"It was one of the biggest offensives we have seen. It came from three directions," he said, adding that dozens were also wounded.

The mayor of Haditha, located about 200 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, confirmed the casualty toll.

"We have more than 20 martyrs and more than 50 wounded. They are from the army, CTS (the counter-terrorism service), the police and the tribal fighters," Mabrouk Hamid said.
About 300 'black cat' commandos of the elite counter-terror force, NSG, deployed an assortment of most sophisticated assault weapons and "buster" ammunition tools to neutralise the terrorists who had sneaked into the Air Force base in the border town of Pathankot.

In one of the longest running counter-terror operations in the country, the National Security Guard (NSG) suffered minor and major injuries to its 21 personnel, besides the death of its bomb squad Commanding Officer Lt Col E K Niranjan, since the first detachment of about 160 commandos flew out from the Palam military airbase on January 1 on an IAF transport aircraft.

Sources privy to the operation said two more similar special strike units, with a strength of about 80 'black cats' each, were airlifted to Pathankot from Delhi on January 2 and 3. They joined their 'buddies' thick in operations at the sprawling airbase, house to the fighter Squadrons of the IAF.

They said it was a "New Year call" to the 24x7 'on alert' counter-terrorist unit based at its garrison in Manesar sometime in the afternoon on January 1 and the commandos of the Special Action Group (SAG) were airborne by 1500 hours.

The call to air-dash to Pathankot was made by the Union Home Ministry to the NSG headquarters, which quickly asked its Force Commander in Manesar to prepare the commando team for assault.

The first team were led by NSG Inspector General (Operations) Major General Dushyant Singh even as Director General R C Tayal camped in Pathankot from Sunday.

The sources said the NSG commandos made extensive use of their special weapons like MP-5 assault rifles, Glock pistols, corner-shot guns and a heavy cache of door and wall-busting explosive charges to corner and eliminate the holed-up terrorists.

They said the 'buster' tools, as they are called, were also used during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks when NSG used them to blow off locked rooms and passages of five-star hotels but some of them used this time were the enhanced variants which the force has procured post the Mumbai operation.

Two terrorists, the sources said, were killed by the NSG men when they were hiding and launching continuous fire and lobbing grenades from a room where the family quarters of the Defence Security Corps (DSC) is located in the airbase. The room was later demolished by the use of heavy fire.

They said the NSG commandos and other security forces,



for the last few hours, have been undertaking the "render safe" procedure which entails sanitising the area from hidden improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and booby traps, and hence the operation is taking time.

"Such thing is done after every operation. The area of the IAF base is large and complex hence it is taking time," one of the sources said.

Half-a-dozen sniffer dogs from the canine (K 9) squad along with their handlers have also been pressed into service by the NSG.

While the elite counter-terror and counter-hijack force has not given a name to the operation till now like 'Op Black Tornado' for the 26/11 Mumbai task, the force for the first time lost an officer from its bomb disposal squad.

Thirty-four-year-old Lt Col and Group Captain Niranjan was heading the unit, they said, and was trying to clear and sanitise the body of a terrorist and the surrounding area when a cleverly concealed grenade blew up fatally injuring the officer and five others.

The highly decorated officer was immediately taken to hospital where he breathed his last. He is the 19th martyr of the force which was raised in 1984 for special operations and as a federal contingency force for India.

"He was part of the first team that went to Pathankot on Friday as there were inputs that the terrorists are carrying huge explosives. Niranjan and his bomb disposal men were tasked to aid the fighting units.

"He joined NSG in May, 2014 on deputation from the Engineers Regiment of the Army which he joined in 2004. He was a dare-devil officer and had been part of a special training with the FBI in the US in combating IEDs and deadly explosives a few months ago," one of Niranjan's commando course colleague said, while refusing to be identified.

The NSG had called the officer's martyrdom as an act bearing "exemplary courage and utmost devotion to duty".

Seven security personnel and six terrorists have been killed in the attack.
Five dissidents freed as Havana launched a high-profile diplomatic rapprochement with the US are back in custody in Cuba, a human rights group has said.

The five were among 53 political prisoners released in 2014 and early 2015 as the Washington and Havana moved to restore ties after a half-century break.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights, an officially outlawed but tolerated group, yesterday said the five "were confined in high-security prisons in the second half of 2015."



They include Vladimir Morera, who had been hospitalised since launching a hunger strike on October 9. The United States last week called on the government to release him.

Yesterday, Morera's son, Vladier Morera, said his father started eating again on December 31.

The son said he did not know if this was voluntary on his father's part. "All I know is that he is eating again, and that he is speaking incoherently because the doctors say he was very weak," Morera said.

The others back in custody are Wilfredo Parada Milian, Jorge Ramirez Calderon, Carlos Manuel Figueroa and Aracelio Ribeaux Noa, according to the rights group.

All five were jailed "as a result of rigged trials and without due process," it said.

Cuban authorities did not comment. But the Americas' only communist government routinely denies it is holding political prisoners and says those jailed are in for common crimes.

The rights group reported that 8,616 people were detained for political reasons in 2015, most of whom were released after several hours. That was down from 2014, when 8,889 Cubans were detained for political reasons, according to the group.

It said "political repression" continued in 2015 "despite the well-known expectations awakened by the announcement of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations" between Havana and Washington.

On December 29, Roberta Jacobson, the US State Department's pointwoman for Latin America, called on the government of President Raul Castro to free Morera, who she said had been jailed for dissenting peacefully.

Morera, 44, was sentenced to four years in prison in April for allegedly causing bodily harm during a scuffle with pro- government militants in which a woman was injured. His family denies the charges.
An honest essay has numerous characteristics: original thinking, a good structure, balanced arguments, and plenty more.

But one aspect often overlooked is that an honest essay should be interesting. It should spark the readers curiosity, keep them absorbed, make them want to stay reading and learn more. An uneventful article risks losing the readers attention; whether or not the points you create are excellent, a flat style, or poor handling of a dry subject material can undermine the positive aspects of the essay. The matter is that a lot of students think that essays should be like this: they believe that a flat, dry style is suited to the needs of educational writing and dont even consider that the teacher reading their essay wants to search out the essay interesting. You might want to have online essay editor service to boost your confidence in writing with an error-free output. Academic writing doesnt need to be  and shouldnt be  bland. The excellent news is that there is much stuff you can do to create your essay more attractive, while youll be able only to do such a lot while remaining within the formal confines of educational writing. Lets study what theyre.

Have an interest in what youre writing about

Dont go overboard, but youll be able to let your passion for your subject show.

If theres one thing bound to inject interest into your writing, its being fascinated by what youre writing about. Passion for a subject matter comes across naturally in your essay, typically making it more lively and fascinating and infusing an infectious enthusiasm into your words  within the same way that its easy to talk knowledgeably to someone about something you discover fascinating.

Include fascinating details

Another factor that may make an essay boring maybe a dry material. Some topic areas are naturally dry, and it falls to you to form the article more interesting through your written style and by trying to seek out fascinating snippets of knowledge to incorporate, which will liven it up a small amount and make the data easier to relate to. A way of doing this with a dry subject is to create what youre talking about that seems relevant to the critical world, as this is often easier for the reader to relate to.

Emulate the fashion of writers you discover interesting

When you read lots, you subconsciously start emulating the fashion of the writers you have read. Reading benefits you a lot, as this exposes you to a spread of designs, and youll start to require the characteristics of these you discover interesting to read.

Borrow some creative writing techniques

Theres a limit to the quantity of actual story-telling youll do when youre writing an essay; in the end, essays should be objective, factual and balanced, which doesnt, initially glance, feel considerably like story-telling. However, youll apply a number of the principles of story-telling to create your writing more interesting.

consider your own opinion

Take the time to figure out what its that you think instead of regurgitating the opinions of others.

Cut the waffle

Rambling on and on is dull and almost bound to lose the interest of your reader. Youre in danger of waffling if youre not completely clear about what you wish to mention or havent thought carefully about how youre visiting structure your argument. Doing all your research correctly and writing an essay plan before you begin will help prevent this problem.

Editing is a vital part of the essay-writing process, so edit the waffle once youve done a primary draft. Read through your essay objectively and eliminate the bits that arent relevant to the argument or labor the purpose.

employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing

Avoid using unfamiliar words in an essay; theres too great a likelihood that youre misusing them.

You may think that employing a thesaurus to seek out more complicated words will make your writing more exciting or sound more academic, but using overly high-brow language can have the incorrect effect.

Avoid repetitive phrasing

Please avoid using the identical phrase structure again and again: its a recipe for dullness! Instead, use a variety of syntax that demonstrates your writing capabilities and makes your writing more interesting. Mix simple, compound, and complicated sentences to avoid your paper becoming predictable.

Use some figurative language

Using analogies with nature can often make concepts more accessible for readers to know.

As weve already seen, its easy to finish up rambling when youre explaining complex concepts  mainly after you dont know it yourself. One way of forcing yourself to think about a couple of pictures, present it more simply and engagingly is to form figurative language. This implies explaining something by comparing it with something else, as in an analogy.

Employ rhetorical questions

Anticipate the questions your reader might ask.

One of the ways ancient orators held the eye of their audiences and increased the dramatic effect of their speeches was by using the statement. A decent place to use a statement is at the top of a paragraph, to steer into the following one, or at the start of a replacement section to introduce a brand new area for exploration.

Proofread

Finally, you may write the top interesting essay an instructor has ever read. Still, youll undermine your good work if its plagued by errors, which distract the reader from the particular content and can probably annoy them.
British lender Standard Chartered today said even though investments resumed in the December quarter, driven by a one-off increase in private-sector investment following resumption of some stalled projects, the investment cycle is likely to slow in the March quarter.

However, the report written by its economists Saurav Anand and Anubhuti Sahay, said the investment cycle is likely to improve gradually in next fiscal year as the spike in Q3 was primarily driven by the telecom sector.

"Incremental investments, which track projects under implementation across all sectors, improved in Q3 due to a one-off increase in private sector investment," they said citing CMIE data.

They noted that the four-quarter moving average of incremental projects under implementation rose to Rs 1.7 trillion in Q3 from Rs 1.4 trillion in Q2, giving an impetus to the overall investment cycle.

But this was mostly because of just one investment into the telecom space worth around Rs 1 trillion by Reliance Jio. The report did not name Jio, though.

But the report said the spurt in Q3 is not sustainable. "We expect investment to slow in Q4, as private sector investment on the same scale is unlikely and the government is likely to trim capex to meet its FY16 fiscal deficit target. Stalled projects increased for the second consecutive quarter, albeit at a gradual pace," they said.

Noting that now such large investment is on the way, they said, "We expect incremental projects under implementation to moderate in Q4 once the effects of this one-off investment fade. Private investment on a similar scale looks unlikely in other sectors, which face headwinds from high corporate leverage, a weak banking sector, and excess capacity in some sectors."



There are still Rs 10.8 trillion worth of projects stalled, posing a major headwind to investment revival.

Stalled projects rose again in Q3 after declining since end-2012. With an additional Rs 20,000 crore worth of projects stalled in Q3 (as against Rs 1.1 trillion in Q2), the total stock of stalled projects rose to an all-time high of Rs 10.8 trillion.

"We, however, expect the investment cycle to improve in FY17, especially in the second half led by private sector, coupled with fresh government capital expenditure," they said.

However, they are quick to warn that "the pace of investment is likely to be slower than in FY16 as the government balances the competing objectives of narrowing the fiscal deficit, raising salaries for public-sector employees, and increasing capex to support the nascent investment recovery.

Private sector investment is likely to improve mildly in H2 of FY17, even though signs from investment data are not encouraging.

The report attributed the increase in investments in the December quarter to the uptrend in incremental projects under implementation. In Q2, there was a temporary dip.

The government has been the main driver of the investment recovery since mid-2014, with a focus on roads, railways and energy. Stalled projects rose for a second successive quarter, but at a slower pace.

They also noted that the increase in Q3 was concentrated primarily in government-led power projects. In contrast, private sector drove the increase in Q2. Still, 80 per cent of the stalled projects are in the private sector.

Similarly, new investment announcements also slowed in Q3, pulling down the four-quarter moving average to Rs 2 trillion from Rs 2.8 trillion in Q2.

The slowdown was led by the private sector, which announced a lower value of projects in Q3. The government sector also announced fewer projects during the quarter. A continuation of this trend would point to a slowdown in project under implementation given the positive correlation between implementation and new project announcements.

States have invested mostly in irrigation and electricity, taking their investments to Rs 1.8 trillion in the first nine months of FY16, exceeding FY15 full-year investment of Rs 1.5 trillion. But the surge was mostly in Q1 and was driven by just Telangana and Gujarat.
Mitchell Johnson have called time on his international career and Mitchell Starc is injured, but India's star batsman Ajinkya Rahane today said it is always a challenge to play against Australia.

If Johnson called time on his international career late last year, Starc suffered a stress fracture on his ankle during the Day-Night Adelaide Test against New Zealand.

Rahane, though, still believed that Australia have wicket-takers like James Pattinson to trouble the Indian batsmen in their upcoming tour.

"It's a challenge always to play against Australia. Yes, they will miss Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc, but they have got other bowlers like (James) Pattinson. We are going to focus first on ODIs and then think about T20 series. By then we would have got used to the conditions. I am confident we will do well on tour," Rahane said in a media interaction here.

"They (Johsnson and Starc) have been top performers for Australia. Australia will definitely miss them. But they have Pattinson and other good bowlers. As a batting unit we have to play on the merit of the ball," he added.

India will play Australia in five ODIs and three T20s starting January 12 and Rahane is focussed on his game.

"I always try to improve my game (when asked about rotating the strike in ODIs). I am confident about myself. I am a team man and would be happy to do whatever team management wants me to do," he said.

Rahane is in red hot form after the Mumbai batsman struck two centuries in the final Test against South AFrica in Delhi and he is ready to face the bouncy Australian pitches.

"Two Test hundreds againt South Africa in last Test were very special as they were made at the place where I made my debut and we won the series too. For this tour have made normal preparations to face bouncy conditions in Australia. We will play in challenging conditions but we want to return with a win," said the confident batsman.

Meanwhile, Indian pacer Umesh Yadav stressed on "confidence" and "attitude" when taking on the Australians.

"It's all about your attitude and confidence. They need to be high to play well against Australia. I am here because of my pace. I am trying to get more pace. I try to swing with a good wrist position. But I also focus on line and length while aiming at the off stump," Umesh said.
Breaking yet another proverbial glass ceiling, country's largest paramilitary force CRPF will soon deploy about 300 women commandos for undertaking anti- Naxal operations in select Left-wing Extremism-affected states.

Recently, border-guarding force Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) had declared that it will post its women personnel in full combat role at its units along the Sino-Indian border.

Director General of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Prakash Mishra said few chosen companies drawn from its four 'mahila' battalions will be soon sent for pre-induction training and after about six weeks of regimen in various types of combats and special tasks, the women contingents will be sent for final deployment.

"We are going to give more operational duties to our women personnel. We are sending our women personnel to some of the most difficult areas," Mishra said while announcing the hosting of the 7th National Conference of Women in Police beginning tomorrow.

The two-day conference, organised by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD), will be inaugurated by Home Minister Rajnath Singh at a CRPF camp in Gurgaon near here.

Officials said the women squad, comprising about three companies (300 personnel) will be based in areas of West Bengal and Jharkhand where the anti-Naxal offensive is not as tricky and challenging as may be in Chhattisgarh and Bihar.

"The opportunity for the women personnel is challenging as the LWE operations are one of the most challenging duties in the country's internal security domain," an official said.

The force had initiated a plan in this regard last year when two small teams of these women personnel were sent for familiarisation exercises and based in CRPF camps in the worst-affected Bastar region of Chhattisgarh and some sensitive LWE areas of Jharkhand.

Officials said the women personnel, once deployed, will be operating from active CRPF bases and will carry arms and undertake patrols like their male counterparts.

The nearly three lakh-personnel-strong CRPF is the lead anti-Naxal operations force of the country.

Officials said there are specific reasons and operational benefits for deploying women combatants in LWE areas.

While they can interact with the local women folk which not only helps in gathering good intelligence, it also helps in bringing forces closer to the locals and villagers.
The Kerala Council of Historical Research's (KCHR) 'Pattanam excavations' near here to identify ancient Indo-Roman port of Muziris on the state's coast has been hit by a controversy with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) initiating a probe into alleged unscientific approaches adopted by the Council.

The probe is being conducted on the basis of a complaint made by Sangh outfit Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram (BVK) to the Union Cultural Affairs Minister Mahesh Sharma about "lapses" in the excavation, which is part of Rs 200 crore Muziris heritage project, a letter from ASI sent to BVK director (academic) K M Madhusudanan Pillai, said.

In its complaint, the BVK has alleged that the excavators have been giving contradictory statements on archaeological finds in media and quite different versions in articles published in journals and KCHR reports.

BVK officials said Superintendent Archaeologist K Amarnath of the ASI, Bengaluru centre, has started investigation into the Pattanam excavations, which were the first ever multi-disciplinary excavations undertaken in Kerala.

On the instruction of ASI, BVK's C I Isac deposed before the investigation team and gave a statement, they said.

BVK, headed by P Parameswaran, says archaeologists and historians had come forward against "the collective conspiracy and propaganda to claim that Pattanam was the ancient Muziris". They have also pointed out lapses in protecting the monuments excavated and scientifically analysing the details, BVK said.

"They have complained against the illegal intervention of foreigners in the excavation project and efforts at linking Pattanam excavation and Muziris heritage project," it said.

Based on the complaints, a meeting of the central advisory panel of the ASI held on September 12 and 13 last year asked the KCHR to temporarily stop the excavation.

There was no immediate reaction from the KCHR.

The site of Pattanam is located at Paravur in Ernakulam district.
At least 81 civilians were killed in Yemen last month, most of them in Saudi-led airstrikes, despite a short-lived and repeatedly violated ceasefire, the United Nations said today.

"During the month of December, at least 62 civilians were reported to have been killed by airstrikes attributed to the coalition forces," Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN human rights agency, told reporters.

That number, he pointed out, was more than double the 29 civilians reported killed in such strikes a month earlier.

The number of civilians killed by the Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies was meanwhile cut by two thirds to at least 11 in December from 32 a month earlier, Colville said.

The remaining eight civilian deaths last month have not yet been conclusively attributed to either side, he told AFP.

The dramatic increase in the number of civilians killed in airstrikes came despite a ceasefire declared on December 15, at the same time as UN-backed peace talks between the warring sides began in Switzerland.

But the talks ended five days later with no major breakthrough, and the ceasefire collapsed on January 2 after being violated on a daily basis.

Colville pointed out that UN rights agency staff had begun receiving reports of violations "within minutes of the ceasefire beginning."



The ceasefire certainly did little to shield civilians.

On December 18, he pointed out, 18 civilians were allegedly killed when two airstrikes hit a civilian house in Wadi Kena, in Saada, and two days later, six civilians, including three children, were killed in strikes on a residential neighbourhood in Al Hudayhda City.

The airstrikes have continued into the new year, with some 11 strikes taking place in Sanaa on Sunday and Monday alone, with reports of further airstrikes today morning, Colville said, pointing to reports indicating that civilian buildings had been hit in densely populated areas of Sanaa.

Colville also decried "alarming information" that coalition forces used cluster bombs in Hajjah governorate, saying that a field visit by UN rights office staff last month had found remnants of 29 cluster submunitions near banana plantations in the village of al-Odair in Haradh district.

He said other villages and other districts also appeared to have been affected.

Colville also voiced particular concern at the humanitarian situation in violence-wracked Taez, lamenting that "strict control of all entry points into the city by the popular committees affiliated with the Huthis has resulted in limited access to essential items, including food.
Craft beer company B9 Beverages today said it has raised USD 6 million (about Rs 37 crore) in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and other investors for its handcrafted beer brand Bira91.

Other investors include Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal), Ashish Dhawan of Chrys Capital and Deepinder Goyal of Zomato.

The beer brand has been able to achieve a penetration of 70 per cent in all its markets within a year of its launch, the company said in a statement.

Growing at an exponential rate, it has achieved a market share of 30 per cent in the premium segment without any extensive marketing strategies, it added.

"Bira91 is a great product with a dynamic team managing an innovative supply chain to capture the large on premise opportunity. We are excited about backing the challenger in a large category with nice customer cohorts on basket size, retention and frequency," Sequoia Capital Managing Director Abhay Pandey said.

The brand is present in seven cities -- Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Goa, Pune and Chandigarh.

"In 2016, we will focus on laying the ground-work in terms of process, team and an effective execution strategy that will require an unstoppable hustle so that we are able to expand our geographical footprint in 2017 and capitalise on the large opportunities ahead of us," B9 Beverages Chief Executive Officer Ankur Jain said.
The Supreme Court today asked auto giants -- Mercedes-Benz India, Toyota and Mahindra and Mahindra -- whether their heavy diesel vehicles were less polluting than those run on petrol even as it agreed to hear their pleas seeking lifting of the ban on registration of diesel automobiles of 2000 CC and above.

"How will you dispute the basic fact that diesel vehicles are not polluting the environment? Are you trying to say that diesel vehicles are non-polluting and only petrol vehicles are polluting?



"First, we have to ascertain whether diesel vehicles are polluting or not. The fundamental point which we have to go into is which is most polluting -- diesel, petrol or CNG. You have to satisfy us on that aspect," the bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A K Sikri and R Banumathi said.

It directed the car manufacturers to produce documentary evidence suggesting that the diesel cars and SUVs polluted less than petrol cars.

A battery of lawyers appearing for the automobile manufacturers said that diesel-propelled cars and SUVs did not cause pollution as they use advanced technology and adhere to the emission norms.

The counsel appearing for the auto majors also claimed that vehicles like Boleros and Sumos are used by the common man in rural areas and the prohibition has had a tremendous impact on the middle class.

To this, the bench said, "which class of people are using 2000 cc vehicles? It is used by the rich people only... You are saying diesel vehicles cause less pollution. So are your vehicles emitting oxygen?"



Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, counsel for Toyota, said in lighter vein, "only this court emits oxygen".

The apex court also slammed the government for using



diesel vehicles which were older than five years and said it should not contribute to the growing pollution and asked it refrain from using them.

"How can the government be a polluter," asked the bench.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae in the 1984 PIL filed by emvironmentalist M C Mehta, opposed the contention of auto majors that it would be difficult for them to leapfrog to stricter emission norms under Bharat Stage BS-VI, saying they are selling Euro-VI compliant vehicles in Europe.

The car manufacturers had moved the apex court seeking modification of December 15 order banning registration of diesel-run SUVs and cars having engine capacity beyond 2000 cc in Delhi and National Capital Region till March 31.
Robert Stigwood, the impresario who managed the Bee Gees and produced 1970s blockbusters "Grease" and "Saturday Night Fever," has died.

He was 81.

Stigwood's office said he died yesterday. The cause of death was not announced.

Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1934, Stigwood moved to Britain in the 1950s and soon became an astute player in Britain's embryonic rock music industry.

In the 1960s he managed rock super group Cream and its guitarist Eric Clapton before signing brothers Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb, collectively known as the Bee Gees, whose melodic folk-rock achieved late-'60s success before a career slump.

Stigwood moved into theater bringing Broadway hit "Hair" to the London stage and film, producing cinema versions of Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" and The Who's rock opera "Tommy."



He also produced the 1977 dancefloor drama "Saturday Night Fever," with a soundtrack that brought the Bee Gees mega-stardom that reached a pitch as high as Barry Gibb's signature falsetto.

That film and the Stigwood-produced "Grease," released in 1978, also made John Travolta into one of the decade's biggest stars.

Stigwood's golden touch failed him with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," a Beatles-based movie musical which was a critical and box-office flop in 1978.

Sequels to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease" also underperformed, but Stigwood found success again in 1996 with movie musical "Evita," starring Madonna as Argentine first lady Eva Peron.

Lloyd Webber paid tribute to Stigwood on Twitter, calling him a "great showman who taught me so much."



Spencer Gibb, son of the late Robin Gibb and Stigwood's godson described him as "a creative genius with a very quick and dry wit."



"I would like to thank Robert for his kindness to me over the years as well as his mentorship to my family," Gibb wrote on Facebook. "'Stiggy,' you will be missed."



Funeral details were not immediately available.
China's capital was shrouded by air pollution nearly half of 2015 during which Beijing also issued its first-ever red alert against heavy smog that lead to closure of schools and restricted traffic.

Despite Beijing's attempts to limit air pollution, the capital saw only 186 days with air quality that met the national standard in 2015.

The city of over 22 million people was also shrouded with heavy air pollution for 46 days, or 13 per cent of the year, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said.

The annual average concentration of PM2.5, the smallest and deadliest form of airborne particulate matter in the capital was 80.6 micrograms per cubic meter, 1.3 times higher than the national standard, despite a 6.2 per cent year-on-year decrease.

The average densities of other pollutants also fell compared with 2014 figures.

Sulfur dioxide density dropped 38.1 per cent, that of nitrogen dioxide dropped 11.8 per cent, and that of PM10 dropped 12.3 per cent, state-run Global Times reported today.

Beijing city issued its first-ever red alert for smog on December 6 during which schools were closed and traffic was restricted with odd and even numbers.

The second red alert was issued on December 23 as Beijing along with several other cities were shrouded in thick smog.

Noting the severity of air pollution in Beijing and its neighbouring provinces, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli called for natural gas and electricity to replace coal, China Central Television reported.

A total of 206 local regulations hindering environmental supervision and environmental authorities' enforcement efforts had been abolished as of October, following the central government's release of a related circular at the end of 2014, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said yesterday.

A one-month environmental protection inspection of North China's Hebei province began yesterday at the behest of central authorities, who are ready to embrace tips about pollution violations from the public, the ministry said.

The provincial government of East China's Shandong province recently issued a notice saying that local governments will be fined 400,000 yuan (USD 61,200) for each microgram of pollutants per cubic meter in excess of the national air quality standard.

In contrast, a bonus of the same amount will be issued to local governments for each microgram below the standard, the TV report said.
West Bengal tourism department will start a new outdoor campaign 'Experience Bengal', at the airports of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata to attract more tourists to the state.

"Our outdoor campaign is starting in the next few days from the airports of Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. This is just the beginning and more outdoor campaigns will be gradually launched," tourism department officials said.

Besides, television commercials will also be launched featuring state brand ambassador Shahrukh Khan.

The official said the commercial, whose shooting would soon take place in Kolkata, will showcase all the tourist spots of the state.

"SRK will feature only in the TVC. We will also have campaign in print media as well as FM channels," an official said.
Bhutan Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay will arrive in Kolkata tomorrow for a four-day visit to West Bengal where he will be attending Bengal Global Business Summit, officials said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had visited Bhutan in October last year and had invited the country's prime minister.

Tobgay had developed a good rapport with Banerjee and even drove her once to the hotel in Thimphu.

Among other programmes, he is scheduled to visit the business summit which will be held on January 8 and 9.
BJP today attacked the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal over the "rampaging communalism" in Malda, alleging that the accused behind it are indulging in violence under its protection.

"Communalism is on a rampage in Malda. Police station has been burnt down, innocents are being attacked and there is mayhem... Those who are doing it are doing so under the protection of West Bengal government. It is not taking any substantial action," Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said at a press conference.

A mob protesting against the alleged blasphemous comments by a right wing Hindutva leader had recently resorted to violence in the district.

Naqvi said it was a "very serious" issue as the violence had been going on for hours.

"People who have gone out of control and stoking communal tension must be dealt with severely to restore a sense of security," he said, adding the government was soft on them.

Ghosh, who time and again has courted controversies for



his comments, claimed anti-national elements have chosen JNU, Jadavpur University and Hyderabad University to flare up anti-national sentiments across the country.

"These three universities have the same character - you will see anti-national slogans are being raised, slogans shouted in favour of Afzal Guru. You won't find any controversy in other universities...

"We won't allow such activities in university campus which is against the culture and heritage of our country. These are nothing but indecency and shameless act," he said.

The BJP, which had lost some steam after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, put up a spirited show in the West Bengal Assembly elections this time and played spoilsport for the opposition Left Front-Congress alliance in more than 70 seats.

Although BJP's vote share in West Bengal dipped since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from 17.5 per cent to 10.2 per cent in the recently concluded Assembly polls, yet for the first time the party won three seats fighting on its own in the state.

Earlier, BJP had won twice in by-polls and had polled around 4.06 per cent votes in 2011.

In this assembly polls, BJP garnered around 56 lakh votes, up from 19.5 lakh in 2011, and polled more than 10,000 votes in 262 out of 294 Assembly segments.

Ghosh said BJP will oppose anti-people policies of the TMC government and will emerge as the main opposition in the days to come.

Apart from Ghosh, who defeated veteran Congress leader Gyan Singh Sohanpal, BJP won Malda's Baishnabnagar seat and Madarihat seat in North Bengal.

"In 2014, we had secured 17 per cent votes because of the Narendra Modi wave across the country. We didn't have any organisational base in Bengal. This time there was no such wave. What we have got is because of the organisational strength of our party," he said.
BJP will gift Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray a fibre-made replica of a tiger, the symbol of his party, as a token of friendship with its long-term ally despite the occasional tension in their ties.

Senior BJP leader and state Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar is likely to present the tiger replica to Thackeray, who is known to be an avid animal lover, at his residence next week.

The replica is about 7ft long and 3.5ft wide and weighs around 55kg.

While declaring that he will be gifting the replica to Uddhav, Mungantiwar, however, asserted that it was a friendly gesture and no political meaning should be read into it.

"The gift will be a symbol of our friendship. In addition to that, it will also be part of our 'Save Tiger' campaign. Uddhavji is an avid animal lover. I hope he will like the gift," Mungantiwar said.

Thackeray's party has been repeatedly targeting the senior ally over its policies and decisions.

Uddhav had also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his unscheduled Pakistan visit late last month.

A senior Sena leader, meanwhile, said that Mungantiwar had gifted a similar replica to megastar Amitabh Bachchan after he was made brand ambassador of the state's 'Save Tiger Mission'.

"The BJP needs to improve its behaviour with the allies instead of indulging in tokenism," the Sena leader said requesting anonymity.

"Uddhavji was never against their (BJP's) ideology. He only questioned their intentions on certain issues. If his concerns are addressed in a right way, he will be pleased without any gift," the leader added.
A small bomb exploded near the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad today, authorities said, after a series of attacks on Indian installations in the region.

The blast, which happened the morning after a gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in a northern Afghan city, was some 200 metres from the consulate in Jalalabad, an Indian diplomatic source there told AFP.

The source and Afghan authorities said no one had been injured.

The explosion also follows a bloody weekend assault on an air base in India near the Pakistan border.

But Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for India's ministry of external affairs, told AFP the Jalalabad consulate "was not the target".

The area also houses the consulates for Pakistan and Iran.

Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar province's governor, said authorities were unsure what the target was but a police convoy had been passing at the time.

"The explosives were placed in a garbage can," he added.

The attack was not immediately claimed. Indian interests have been targeted twice since Saturday in spectacular assaults: an attack on its consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, and a raid by Islamist insurgents on an air force base in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

The spike in violence came roughly a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise peacemaking visit to Pakistan following a whirlwind tour of Kabul.

India has been a key supporter of Kabul's post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan.

The Taliban have also stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan, including a series of assaults in Kabul over the weekend, underscoring a worsening security situation.

The volatile province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, also faces an emerging threat from loyalists of the Islamic State group which is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan, challenging the Taliban on their own turf.
An explosion took place today 400 metres away from the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, two days after the country's mission was attacked by terrorists in Mazar-e-Sharif.

However, official sources in New Delhi said the reports suggested that the mission was not the target of the blast. Further details about the explosion were awaited, they said.

"The Indian Consulate was not the target," a source said dismissing reports that the explosion was targeted at the Indian mission.

"Pakistan Consul General's house in Jalalabad was closer to the blast site than the Indian mission which was 400 metres away," the source said.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end last night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight earlier, the remaining were neutralised by the night.

A group of terrorists had attacked the Consulate on Sunday night with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces.
Security agencies went into a tizzy after the police control room received a call about a bomb at the Parliament premises this evening but it turned to be hoax and the caller was tracked down at a northeast Delhi area.

"It was a hoax call and we have tracked down the caller, who is a resident of Jyoti Nagar area. The motive behind the act hasn't been ascertained yet.

"The caller is being brought to the Parliament Street police station, where he will be questioned," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal said, adding that the caller may have to face legal action too.

A senior official said that once the caller is brought to the police station, he is likely to be taken to RML hospital for a mental check up.

The police did not reveal the caller's identity citing security concerns.

Several police teams, along with bomb disposal squads, were rushed near Parliament and it was at 6.12 PM that the fire department was alerted, following which fire tenders were rushed there too, said police and fire officials.

The national capital is on a high alert and security was already stepped up following the terror attack at Pathankot and then inputs received by the police about the presence of two suspected Jaish-e-Mohammad key members here.

Delhi Police Commissioner held a meeting with all deputy commissioners and discussed security concerns in details earlier today, a police source said.

(Reopens DEL95)



According to a senior police official, the caller is suspected to be mentally unstable.

He is believed to have told the police that he has been undergoing treatment at Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) in north east Delhi, he said.
Security was heightened at two railway stations in Goa today following a bomb scare in two Express trains passing through this route this morning, police said, however the bomb threat turned out be a hoax.

Policemen began checking Vasco and Margao railway stations after South Central Railway passed on a message to local police today about the possibility of a bomb being planted in Amravati Express or Goa Express.

"We checked the entire (Margao) railway station. There was nothing incriminating found. A close watch was kept on all the passengers. There was an information that bomb is planted on Amravati Express or Goa Express," Police Inspector Santosh Desai attached to Konkan Railway Police told PTI.

He said all trains were on time and there was no inconvenience caused to passengers.

Goa Express which was supposed to leave to Delhi was also thoroughly checked at Vasco railway station, a police spokesman said.
The attack at the Pathankot Air Force Base has made residents of the border areas in Jammu region apprehensive, as the area is said to bear maximum brunt of any skirmishes between the guarding forces of India and Pakistan.

Every time there is hostility on the borders, the residents of several villages situated on the International Border (IB) get directly affected as they have to leave their houses and take shelter in makeshift arrangements in other parts of the region.

People in the borders areas of Jammu have become apprehensive and praying the Pathankot Air Force Station attack does not affect their lives, even as combing operations continued at the IAF base in Punjab today.

"We have kept our fingers crossed and are praying that the terror attack in Pathankot does not have any effect on the border areas in Jammu region, otherwise the common residents of these areas will have to bear the brunt of of the heightened tension between the two nations", said Joginder Kumar, a resident of Abdullian village in R S Pura Sector.

As per Jammu and Kashmir government's record, 38 persons, including ten security personnel, lost their lives in border skirmishes in 2014-15 (upto September 2015). 162 civilians and 30 security force personnel were also injured in the incidents of border firing in the state during the period.

"Whenever there is firing from across the border, it is the common villager who is at the receiving end. In the past we had to leave our houses on several occasions and take shelter at safer locations.

We have not only suffered damage to our houses, crops but also lost a large number of our cattle", said Bishan Chand, another resident of R S Pura.

The border residents say that they have experienced the worst in the past and were expecting to harvest the fruits of renewed bonhomie between the two neighbouring countries after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to Pakistan in December last.

Even the Union Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh had said that the state of Jammu and Kashmir which has suffered due to 25 years of turmoil would be the biggest beneficiary of peace between the two nations.

The border residents say that they want an end to the fear



that they have to face every day as with the renewed tension it becomes difficult for them to lead a normal life.

"We want a permanent solution for our everyday woes, we no longer want to be the sitting ducks on fire. We were the happiest lot after Prime Minister Modi visited Lahore as the renewed peace would have directly benefited us, but after the Pathankot terrorist attack we fear that things might turn from bad to worse for the border residents", claims Babu Ram, a resident of Suchetgarh.

During the periods of heightened tension between the two nations, the border residents not only have to leave their houses but also their farm land which is their source of livelihood.

During 'Operation Vijay' in 1999 and 'Operation Parakram' in 2001, a large portion of farm land was taken from the border residents to lay minefields, while after 14 years some of the land has been returned but still a large chunk remains under these minefields.

As per the Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Simrandeep Singh, more than 30,000 acres of farm land in Jammu district alone continues to be under the active minefield.

"We want peace to prevail as we also desire to lead a peaceful life like the residents of other parts of the country do", said one Manjit Singh, a farmer in Suchetgarh.
California-based artist Laura Owens has been named the winner of an annual award named for Robert De Niro's late father.

The USD 25,000 Robert De Niro Sr Prize is presented to a mid-career American artist in the field of painting.

It was announced yesterday by actor Robert De Niro, who created the prize in 2011 to honor his father, a celebrated abstract expressionist painter.

He says Owens is creating her own legacy through her artwork.

Owens is known for her very large paintings with a variety of art historical references.

In 2003, she became the youngest artist to have a retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She teaches at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

The prize is administered by the Tribeca Film Institute.
Criticising the Modi government's foreign policy on Pakistan, BJP veteran Yashwant Sinha today said India should call off planned talks with the neighbouring country in the wake of the Pathankot terror attack.

"From the beginning, I have been opposed to this kind of strategic dialogue with Pakistan as talks and terror cannot go together. The Government has changed its policy," Sinha, a former External Affairs Minister, said. India and Pakistan are due to hold Foreign Secretary-level talks next week.

"What we are doing today is the same mistake as UPA government was doing. This is not the BJP policy. We are not in favour of any kind of talks and we should stop all talks with Pakistan," Sinha told PTI.

The veteran BJP leader said India during the Vajpayee government had made it clear to Pakistan that talks will happen only after the neighbouring country acted against those in Pakistan promoting terror against India and both the UPA and present government have reversed the gains taken in 2004.

"There is also no action on the part of Pakistan and resuming the dialogue process is walking into Pakistan's trap.

"We should tell Pakistan that we will watch your behaviour for sometime. That you are on probation. We will watch your action on all the evidence that we have given to you on Mumbai and other attacks and see what action you take. Only then would there be a possibility of any talks further," he said.

Sinha said towards the end of his regime in 2004, Vajpayee also realised this and in the formulation adopted at the joint statement on January 6, 2004 in Islamabad on the margins of the SAARC Summit, it was made clear by India that Pakistan will first stop terror and then start the dialogue.

He said the statement mentioned that Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for violence and terror against India and then we will resume the dialogue process and thus Pakistan was supposed to stop export of terror to India and only then would talks with them start.

"The UPA government did not follow this process and they resumed the dialogue with Pakistan. They completely reversed what we achieved in January 2004 and what we agreed upon with Pakistan that terror will be allowed to impede the peace process," he said, adding what has happened now is that we have resumed full scale dialogue with Pakistan for which we used to criticise Manmohan Singh regime.

Sinha said when External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj went to Pakistan, India agreed to holding a comprehensive dialogue where the entire range of issues are to be discussed.

"Earlier the issue of statement at Ufa reiterated the Vajpayee line. The statement at Pakistan was a clear departure from the earlier line. The Ufa line was rejected by Pakistan and they were interested in a composite dialogue and not just on terror.

"We should hold Pakistan to its earlier commitment which was redirected at Ufa and watch the situation for sometime. If you are convinced that it has given up sponsoring terror, then we can consider to start the dialogue process.
The National Green Tribunal today took strong exception to "flagrant violation" of its order banning camping activities in the entire belt of Kaudiyala to Rishikesh on the banks of river Ganga in Uttarakhand.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson justice Swatanter Kumar directed the Uttarakhand government to file an affidavit as to whether any camps were operating within 100 metres from the middle of Ganga or its tributaries.

"It has been brought to our notice... That the directions in relation to keeping the prohibited area of activity has been flagrantly violated and authorities of the state have not complied with the directions...," the bench noted.

The green panel also directed the district magistrates and Superintendent of Police of Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar along with the public authorities to ensure closure of eight industries and three hotels for causing pollution and file a compliance report in this regard.

Uttarakhand Pollution Control Board told the bench that they had issued a letter to the administration and other public authorities requesting that polluting industries and hotels be closed and their essential supply of electricity and water also be disconnected.

The counsel appearing for state pollution control board submitted that till date they have not received any reply.

During the hearing, the Uttarakhand advocate general informed the bench that the state government is taking steps to comply with the directions contained in the judgement dated December 10, 2015.

The matter is listed for next hearing on January 18.

The direction came after the tribunal took note of a newspaper report which had claimed that some resorts have have put up beach camping tents in Havel valley in Yamkeshwar block of Pauri district on the banks of the tributary of Ganga, Havel river, for New Year's eve celebrations.

On December 10 last year, the tribunal had banned camping activities in the entire belt of Kaudiyala to Rishikesh till the regulatory regime comes into force but permitted the adventure sport rafting with immediate effect.

The panel had constituted a committee of officials from various departments of central and Uttarakhand government to prepare a regulatory regime which should be submitted to the tribunal within three weeks.
Catalonia's outgoing separatist leader Artur Mas said today he was reluctantly "ready" to call fresh parliamentary elections as the Spanish region's secessionist faction that won September polls failed to agree on who should lead a new government.

"I'm ready -- against my will, this is not what we wanted and it is not what I want -- but I'm ready to sign the decree to convene elections," he told reporters in Barcelona as a January 9 deadline to form a new government approached dangerously close.

Calling fresh elections -- which would be the fourth since 2010 in Catalonia -- would be a setback for the region's secessionist drive, which has been a major thorn in the side of Madrid.

Mas's "Together for Yes" secessionist alliance -- helped by the small, far-left separatist CUP party -- won a majority of seats in the 135-seat Catalan parliament in September elections in the wealthy, 7.5-million-strong northeastern region.

But the honeymoon was short-lived as "Together for Yes", which won 62 seats, battled with the CUP to form a government.

Despite more than three months of intense negotiations, the small party that got 10 seats refused to give Mas the backing he needs to head up Catalonia again, resenting the austerity measures he implemented and the corruption scandals linked to his party.

"I don't know if they realise the magnitude of the mistake they are making," Mas told reporters.
CBI has arrested an Assistant Engineer of Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Central Zone, for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 30,000 for not demolising building of a person.

"A case was registered U/s 7 of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, on the allegations that the Assistant Engineer of South Delhi Municipal Corporation, Central Zone, Jal Vihar, Delhi, was demanding a bribe of Rs 30,000 from the complainant for not demolishing his building," CBI Press Information Officer R K Gaur said.

Sources said Assistant Engineer Manish Goyal had allegedly issued demolition notices to the complainant to threaten him and to pay alleged bribe.

"CBI laid a trap and the Assistant Engineer was caught red handed while accepting the bribe of Rs 30,000 from the complainant," Gaur said, adding that searches are being conducted today at the office and residential premises of the accused.

In a separate case, a Senior Section Engineer (TRD/Electrical) S D Sharma working in the office of DRM, Agra (UP), has been arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 35,000 for showing official favour.

"CBI laid a trap and the accused was caught red handed while demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 35,000 from the complainant," Gaur said.
CBI has refused to disclose an FIR registered against gangster Chhota Rajan for adopting alleged corrupt practices to obtain a passport by providing fake details, saying it is exempt from the Right to Information Act.

The transparency law, however, makes it clear that even exempt organisations are covered under the RTI Act when the information sought (any material in any form held by or under the control of an authority) pertains to allegations of corruption.

It does not make any distinction whether the allegations are against an authority, its staff or not. According to law, the only condition to be seen is whether the authority has the information in its control.

But CBI, after being inducted in the list of exempted organisations, is citing Section 24 of the RTI Act to deny any kind of information even if it is related to allegations of corruption.

Activist Venkatesh Nayak said that when he approached CBI seeking the details of the FIR against Rajan in which allegations related to corruption have been levelled, the agency cited Section 24 of RTI Act to reject the application after 49 days.

"As such, the RTI Act is not applicable to CBI," the agency said.

Nayak said that the proviso under Section 24 makes it clear that even exempt organisations must provide information about allegations of corruption.

"According to the media report attached to the RTI application, the FIR is said to have been registered under Prevention of Corruption Act (PoCA).

"Clearly, no FIR would have been registered suo motu under the provisions of PoCA if the CBI were not investigating a case of corruption involving issuance of the allegedly fake passport by officials of the Indian Mission in Sydney. By CBI's own admission, there is an allegation of corruption," he said.

Underworld don Rajan was brought to India in November last year from the Indonesian tourist city of Bali by a joint team headed by CBI officials to face trial in over 70 cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling in Delhi and Mumbai.

The 55-year-old gangster, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, was deported after being on the run for 27 years following his arrest in Bali on October 25, 2015.

Ahead of his arrival in India, Maharashtra government, in a surprise announcement, had said it was handing over all the cases related to the underworld don to CBI as the agency had expertise in handling such cases.
CBI has taken over investigations in the four-year old murder case of senior journalist J Dey in Mumbai, making it first of the 71 cases, referred to it by Maharashtra Government against gangster Chhota Rajan, to be probed by it.

The FIR registered by CBI does not name Chhota Rajan as a suspect because according to the rules, CBI re-registers FIR filed by local police.

Since Mumbai Police did not name Chhota Rajan in its FIR and included his role as an accused only at charge sheet stage, CBI also re-registered the FIR to initiate its probe.

After Chhota Rajan was nabbed in Bali on Interpol Red Notice in November last year and was brought to Delhi by CBI on December 6, 2015, Maharashtra Government had transferred all the 71 cases against him to the Central agency.

The murder of Mid-Day crime and investigation editor 56-year old Jyotirmoy Dey was one of the prominent cases in which Rajan's had was suspected. Dey was shot dead by motorcycle-borne shooters on June 11, 2011 at 15.30 hours, allegedly at the behest of Rajan.

Four persons on two mobikes fired at least four to five rounds at Dey, who was also riding a bike, from behind near Spectra Building at D Mart in Hiranandani area of Powai.

After the attack, he was rushed to nearby Hiranandani hospital where he was declared brought dead. Police had claimed the shooters fled the spot after firing.

Mumbai Police had filed charge sheet against Chhota Rajan and his aide Nayan Singh Bisht, shown as absconding, Rohee Thangappan Joseph alias Satish Kalya, Abhijeet Shinde, Arun Dake, Sachin Gaikwad, Anil Waghmode, Nilesh Shendge, Mangesh Agawane, Vinod Asrani, Paulson Joseph and Deepak Sisodia under MCOCA charges in 2011.

The police had also charge sheeted another journalist Jigna Vora and another accused Deepak Sisodia in 2012.

According to the 3,055-page charge sheet, Vora allegedly instigated Rajan to execute Dey owing to professional rivalry.

Police said Chhota Rajan, who was upset with two articles written by Dey that purportedly portrayed him in bad light, is suepected to have ordered his elimination.

(Reopens DEL 67)



In a statement, CBI Press Information Officer R K Gaur said the agency took up the investigation of the case which was earlier registered at Powai Police Station in Mumbai (FIR No. 256/2011 dated 11.6.2011).

"The Maharashtra Police has filed charge sheet against ten accused persons on December 03, 2011 and also showing two persons as 'wanted accused' and further filed supplementary charge sheet against one accused on February 21, 2012 in the designated court at Mumbai," Gaur said.
An eight-member inter-ministerial team deputed by the Centre to assess the flood damage in Tamil Nadu today met Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa who asked them to make an "in-depth assessment" and submit its report to the Union Home Ministry "expeditiously."



The team, led by T V S N Prasad, Joint Secretary in the Union Home Ministry, also praised the state government for the rescue, relief and restoration work.

Jayalalithaa, who has demanded a Central assistance of Rs 25,912 crore, told the visiting team of officials that the requirement of funds for relief and restoration of infrastructure "are well beyond the resources available with the state."



She requested the Central team "to make an in-depth assessment of the damage suffered by the state and to submit its report to the Ministry of Home Affairs expeditiously."



Jayalalithaa's address to the Central team was released by the government to the media.

The Chief Minister detailed the damage suffered by the state in December following which it had submitted a demand for Rs 25,912 crore, and also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for deputing the Central team once again which will be visiting affected areas today and tomorrow.

Besides Chennai, Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur, Cuddalore, Tirunelveli and Tuticorin districts had bore the brunt of the torrential rains during the North East monsoon last year.

The team, led by Prasad, had earlier also visited the state and made an assessment of damage.

During the meeting with Jayalalithaa, Prasad said the state government was "successful in preventing outbreak of any epidemic by timely measures such as chlorination and health camps."



"There was widespread appreciation in the Ministries of Government of India about the prompt manner in which the state government machinery rose to the occasion and attended to rescue, relief and restoration work," he was quoted as saying.
Expressing concern over China's landing of a plane on an artificial island in the strategic South China Sea, the US has said the latest Chinese effort is not "helpful to security and stability in the region."



"We did not find this particular flight activity to be helpful to security and stability in the region; that it runs counter to our belief that the reclamation process needs to stop; that the militarisation of facilities, whether they are reclaimed or not, in the region should stop, because it's just increasing tension," State Department Spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

"Our concern is that to begin flight operations at a new airfield in a disputed area is only going to raise tensions and threaten regional stability," he said.

"That's our concern about this particular activity, that it's brand new and that it's in an area that is disputed. And that's our view of it; it's a disputed area," he added when asked about the Chinese decision to land its aircraft on Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea.

"To begin flight operations at this new airfield in a disputed area raises tensions and threatens regional stability. We again call for all claimants to halt land reclamation, further development of new facilities, and the militarisation on their outposts, and instead focus on reaching agreement on acceptable behaviour in disputed areas. We have made this case clear repeatedly, and we will continue to make it," Kirby added.

China for the first time landed a plane on an artificial island it has built in a contested part of the strategic South China Sea, prompting Vietnam to accuse Beijing of "serious infringement" of its sovereignty.

On Sunday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China conducted a "test flight" to check whether the newly-built airfield facilities met the standards for civil aviation. There were, however, no details given about when it was conducted.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today charged Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh with "playing politics" by visiting the Indo-Bangladesh border in Assam without taking him or any state government official along with him.

"He did not ask me or the state's chief secretary, the director general of police or any other official to go along with him to the border. I was waiting and expecting a call, but he (Singh) did not", Gogoi told reporters here.

"He took AASU (All Assam Students Union) leaders, but refused to take the Government of Assam officials. Only after criticism came out in the media, the next day he took some officials.

"It is a ploy to take full political benefit on the eve of the upcoming Assembly elections. Who is playing politics?", Gogoi asked.

He did not even take the MPs and MLAs from that area along with him, the chief minister alleged.

"He came here as the country's Home minister but he did not think it fit to discuss with me, the chief secretary or any official the law and order situation in Assam, the insurgency problem here, the NRC (National Register of Citizens) going on here currently", Gogoi said.

"Coming at the government cost, he has to do government job. He has not come here for poll campaigning," the chief minister said.

"At a time of the Pathankot attack by Pakistani terrorists, the Union Home minister instead of going there came to Assam for just one programme," he said.

Stating that the Union government talk about 'cooperative federalism' and 'team India', Gogoi said "We don't want any confrontation. We want to cooperate. Are we (Assam) not a part of India. We also have a role in the border fencing work. Only at the time of election, they remember".

Stating that his government has completed 97.32 per cent of the border fencing work, Gogoi wondered how Singh could say the fencing work would be completed by December 2017 when only less than three per cent of the work was left.

He said the whole of the North East sharing borders with Bangladesh has to be sealed to prevent cross border infiltration.
Around 1,600 motorists were today penalised for violating odd-even norms even as Delhi government claimed the cut in vehicular emission due to the scheme has resulted in "definitive decline" in levels of pollutants in the air across the city.

Cracking down on illegal sale of CNG stickers, necessary for getting CNG vehicles exempted from the restrictions, government has decided to limit its sale to only one station of Indraprastha Gas Ltd as against 114 places across Delhi and NCR.

Transport Minister Gopal Rai said the decision to limit number of CNG station selling stickers to one was taken after reports of unscrupulous elements selling stickers to owners of non-CNG vehicles.

He said one Dipak Sen from Vivek Vihar CNG station was "caught" selling CNG stickers to non-CNG vehicles and he had "admitted" to the crime. He was selling the sticker for Rs 2,800. The Indraprastha Gas Ltd has registered a case against him at Vivek Vihar police station, Rai said.

So far, CNG stickers were available at 95 CNG stations in Delhi and another 19 stations in NCR. One LPG car owner was also caught today for driving around pasting a CNG sticker.

Rai said data of pollutants collected from over 55 locations showed a clear trend of improving air quality in city and that there has been a "positive impact" of the odd-even scheme.

Police said it penalised 401 motorists for violating the odd-even restrictions as against yesterday's figure of 1,040. The teams of Delhi Government fined around 1,200 motorists. Yesterday, over 1900 motorists were fined.

A total of around Rs 60 lakh were collected from violators. For each violation, a motorist is fined Rs 2,000.

The Metro said its ridership till 8 PM rose by nearly 2 lakh to 21,26,515 lakh as compared to Tuesday last. However, today's figure was less than that of yesterday when it stood at 28,19,657.

On the fifth day of the scheme, when odd-numbered cars were allowed, volume of traffic swelled during evening hours as morning was considerably congestion free. Though odd-numbered cars dominated the roads, even-numbered cars were seen plying in various areas.

The government said data of pollutants collected from over



55 locations showed a clear trend of improving air quality in several areas across the city and that there has been a "positive impact" of the odd-even scheme.

"According to the scientists of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), 80 per cent of PM2.5 air pollution is caused by vehicular traffic and reduction in its levels, even in outer areas of Delhi shows that reduction of four wheeled vehicles on roads since the New Year Day is having a positive impact," the government said in a statement.

However, a report by IIT Kanpur had said vehicular pollutions contribute to around 25 per cent of PM2.5 concentrations during winters which comes down to 9 per cent during summers.

It said the ambient air data collected by DPCC through mobile dust samplers using Light Scattering Technique at 20 locations in peripheral areas of Delhi on January 4 showed a clear declining trend in the levels of PM2.5.

The major source of PM2.5 pollutant is vehicular pollution.

"In 13 of these 20 locations, the PM2.5 level has been recorded at less than 300, which proves reduction in comparison to previous years at the same time by at least 100 units," it said.

Rai had asked for data collection from peripheral areas of Delhi to ascertain the impact of NCR towns on air pollution of Delhi.

Government said since January 1, the DPCC mobile teams have recorded ambient air data from 55 locations, and the trend is that air quality is improving in central parts and other areas which are not on the borders of the national capital.

"The PM10 data for the latest 20 locations from peripheral areas of Delhi shows an adverse impact of NCR towns. PM10, the major cause of which is dust arising from construction waste and wind blown dust, is on the higher side in bordering areas," it added.
Andre Turcat, Concorde's chief test pilot who was the first to break the sound barrier in the supersonic jet, has died aged 94, his family said today.

Turcat was the first person to ease the 001 prototype off the Toulouse runway on March 2, 1969 and took the jet through the sound barrier on October 1.

He died yesterday at home in Aix-en-Provence in the French Alps, after a glamorous life that saw the rise and fall of the legendary Concorde aircraft.

He remained a staunch defender of the jet even after an Air France Concorde bound for New York crashed on July 25, 2000 while taking off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 people and sounding the death knell for commercial supersonic travel.

Born in 1921 in the southern French city of Marseille to a family of car manufacturers, Turcat was briefly deployed in 1947 as an air force pilot in what was then known as Indochina, where colonial power France was fighting a war.

In 1952 he was named director of the air force's school of test pilots, and soon afterwards became chief test pilot for France's specialised aviation centre.

He was chief test pilot for Concorde from 1964 to 1976.

After turning in his wings, he was Toulouse deputy mayor from 1971 to 1977 and a member of the European parliament from 1980 to 1981.

Married with three children, Turcat published a memoir entitled "Test Pilot".
A special CBI court here today directed the central probe agency to file its reply on the bail application filed by former media baron Peter Mukerjea, arrested in the Sheena Bora murder case, by January 16.

Special Judge H S Mahajan adjourned the bail hearing till January 16 after CBI informed the court that they will file their reply by that date.

"We will file our reply by January 16," special public prosecutor Kavita Patil told the court.

In his bail application, filed yesterday through his lawyer Kushal Mor, Peter had said that CBI had found no evidence to justify his arrest, though it had his custody for 11 days and even subjected him to psycho-analysis and polygraph tests.

Peter also dismissed the charge that he misled his son Rahul (with whom Sheena was in a relationship) about her whereabouts after her disappearance.

The bail application also said that Peter was in UK from April 23-26, 2012, with Vidhie (Indrani's daughter from marriage with former husband Sanjeev Khanna), the application says, adding that mere phone calls between him and Indrani in this period do not suggest conspiracy.

Sheena Bora (24), Indrani Mukerjea's daughter from an earlier relationship, was murdered allegedly by her, Sanjeev Khanna and her ex-driver Shyam Rai on April 24, 2012.

Peter, 59, husband of Indrani, was arrested on November 19 for his alleged role in the murder case and was in CBI custody for around two weeks before he was granted judicial remand.

He has been kept at the high-security Arthur Road Jail here, where other two accused in the case -- Sanjeev Khanna and Shyamvar Rai -- are also lodged.

CBI, while maintaining that financial transaction was the motive behind the murder of Sheena, had earlier said that Peter, during his interrogation, disclosed investments of crores of rupees made by him and Indrani. CBI is expecting information from Interpol on the details of an account opened by Indrani in a bank in Hong Kong.
The Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) today took stock of the ongoing relief operations in Manipur where eight people have died and 88 others were injured after an earthquake hit the region on Monday morning.

As per the reports received from Manipur government, 8 people lost their lives and 88 were injured due to earthquake, an official statement said.

One of the two NDRF teams that arrived in Imphal yesterday has been deployed in Noney (42km from Imphal) and Nungba (120km from Imphal) in Tamenglong district, the epicenter of the quake measuring 6.7 in the Richter scale.

Another team of NDRF is on standby at Silchar in Assam.

Power supply has been restored in the affected areas except in some parts of Senapati and Tamenglong districts.

A three-member team from Power Grid is in Manipur to assist the restoration of power supply.

A central medical team comprising orthopaedics, surgeons, anesthesiologist and other technicians has also been deputedto Manipur to assist with the treatment of injured people.

In order to assess the safety of partially-damaged public buildings and advise the state government on issues related to repair and retrofitting of these buildings, NDMA is deploying a team of experts.

The telecom services are fully operational.

A senior official from BSNL has reached Imphal to take stock of partial damage to the BSNL building and to advise on steps that need to be taken to ensure safety and continuity of the telecom services.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is coordinating with the NDMA, state government and related central government departments and agencies for providing all necessary help.

NDMA toll free disaster Helpline No 011-1078 can be contacted 24x7 for any help.

The NCMC meeting was chaired by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha while Chief Secretary of Manipur participated in it through video conferencing.
Delhi Police today argued in a court here that testimonies of 52-year-old Danish woman and an eye witness along with medical evidence established that nine accused including three juveniles had raped the foreign national here last year.

Commencing final arguments in the case, the prosecutor said the woman's deposition in the court strengthened the case of prosecution and she has stood by her statement given to the police earlier.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava argued before Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja that the woman had identified three of the six adult accused, facing trial before the court, as the offenders and the involvement of others were proved by testimony of the eye witness and medical evidence.

"The eye witness Shivji Singh has identified all the accused as the ones who had gangraped and robbed the woman in January 2014. Even the case property, including the woman's articles, were recovered from these accused and their DNA has also matched," Shrivastava said.

He added that though the woman had identified three accused in the court, she did not say that the others were not involved in the case. Regarding others, she has said she was not 100 per cent sure.

Shrivastava's arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow.

The police charge sheet has said the nine accused, all vagabonds, had allegedly robbed and gangraped the Danish tourist at knife-point on the night of January 14, 2015, after leading her to a secluded spot close to the Divisional Railway Officers' Club near New Delhi Railway Station.

All the nine accused were arrested.

While the three juveniles are facing an inquiry before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), the six adult accused - Mahendra alias Ganja (26), Mohd Raja (22), Raju (23), Arjun (21), Raju Chakka (22) and Shyam Lal (55) - are in judicial custody and facing trial.

The nine accused have been booked on charges of gangrape and robbery or dacoity, with an attempt to cause death or grievous hurt.

During recording of their testimonies, the six adult accused had claimed innocence and alleged that the police had falsely implicated them in the case. They had also said they do not want to examine any witness in their defence.
Delhi will remain on high alert, sounded after the Pathankot attack, till the Republic Day as the Centre has asked the Delhi Police to be prepared to foil any attempt by terrorists to carry out strikes in the city.

The directive has come after intelligence inputs suggested that there could be 6 to 10 Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists who had crossed over to India from Pakistan through Punjab in recent past.

Sources said six suspected JeM terrorists were killed in the Pathankot air base after three days of fierce gun battle, but there is a possibility of a few remaining at large.

Besides, according to a Punjab Police input, there could 15 terrorists who have breached the International Border and had entered India from Pakistan.

"Based on all these inputs, the Delhi Police has been asked to remain on high alert till the Republic Day as its main function will be held in the national capital. We don't want to take any chance on any input," a source said.

French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest at the January 26 event to be held on capital's majestic Rajpath.

Security has been beefed up in Delhi's IGI airport after another input suggested that terrorists may try to create a hostage-like situation.

Both domestic and international flights have been asked to upgrade the scale of security, with some passengers being made to undergo 'secondary ladder checking' in some flights.

A 'secondary ladder checking' is conducted just when the passenger is about to enter the aircraft with an aim to ensure that he is not carrying any weapon or chemical.

Staff of several airlines have been sensitised about the alert, asking them to report any suspicious movement or object.

The CISF, which guards the high-valued installation, has been asked to maintain extra vigil with the deployment of additional personnel.

It October 2015, security forces went into a tizzy after they spotted a flying object, an UAV, on the outer periphery of the airport.

In December 2015, Delhi was put on high alert after Delhi Police registered an FIR regarding a possible terror strike by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group.
There were more airline deaths worldwide due to deliberate acts in 2015 than to accidental air crashes for the second year in a row, according to an industry tally.

There were only eight accidental airline crashes last year accounting for 161 passenger and crew deaths -- the fewest crashes and deaths since at least 1946.

The tally by Flightglobal, an aviation and industry data company, excludes a German airliner that was deliberately flown into a mountainside in the French Alps last March, and a Russian airliner packed with tourist that exploded over Egypt in October. The toll for those two incidents was 374 killed.

In 2014, the toll from a Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared and another that was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 was 537 deaths compared to 436 accident deaths that year.

"In recent years, airline safety has improved very considerably to the point where, typically, there are now very few fatal accidents and fatalities in a year," said Paul Hayes, Flightglobal's director of air safety and insurance.

"However, flight security remains a concern."



Although some years are better than others, the fatal accident rate has been improving for many years. The global fatal accident rate for all types of airline operations in 2015 was one per 5 million flights, the best year ever.

The previous best year was 2014, with a fatal accident rate of 1 per 2.5 million flights. Airline operations are now about four or five times safer than they were 20 years ago.

Those tallies are for all types of airline flights, including cargo, positioning, training, and maintenance flights. There were just 98 paying passengers killed last year in accidental crashes compared to 790 in 2007. A far cry from the 1970s, when the annual average of passengers killed in accidental crashes was 1,289.

A big reason for the improving record is better engineering: Today's airliners and aircraft engines are far safer than earlier generations of planes. They are more highly automated, which has reduced many common pilot errors.

They have better satellite-based navigation systems. They are made of stronger, lighter weight, less corrosive materials. And they're equipped with safety systems introduced in recent decades, and repeatedly improved over time, that have nearly eliminated mid-air collisions between airliners and what the industry calls "controlled flight into terrain" -- pilots who lose situational awareness and fly their planes into a mountainside or into the ground.

The aircraft improvements are due primarily to lessons learned from crash investigations that are taken into account when new planes are designed, said John Goglia, a former US National Transportation Safety Board member.

As older planes are replaced with newer planes, aviation becomes safer, he said.
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal set up by the Centre will hear the case of NSCN(K) having been declared an unlawful association later this month at Delhi High Court, the state government has said.

The registrar of the tribunal has asked NSCN(K) to appear before it through a duly-authorised person on January 14 at 3 PM in Delhi High Court for further proceedings, the release informed here last night.

The Centre had set up the tribunal -- comprising Justice Najmi Waziri, a judge of Delhi High Court, for adjudicating whether or not there is sufficient cause for declaring NSCN(K) an unlawful association under sub-section (1) of Section 3 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

The Centre on September 16 last had declared the outfit as an unlawful organisation for a period of five years under Unlawful Activities (Prevention), Act, 1967.

NSCN(K) had abrogated the 14-year-old ceasefire with the Centre on March 27 last year and carried out several attacks on security forces within Nagaland and outside, leading to the death of more than 25 personnel since May, 2015.

A split took place within NSCN(K) after the faction led by SS Khaplang abrogated the 14-year-old truce. That led to the creation of a new faction, NSCN-Reformation, by expelled senior NSCN(K) leaders P Tikhak and Wangtin Naga.

The signing of a peace accord in 2015 between the Centre and the NSCN-IM brought a ray of hope for an early resolution to the decades-old Naga political issue.
: Madras High court today quashed the detention of 'Attack' Pandi', allegedly involved in the murder of Pottu Suresh, a close associate of former Union Minister M K Alagiri, under the Goondas Act.

Justices P R Sivakumar and V S Ravi said the order had been issued without properly analysing the case records. There were differences in the translation of documents from English to Tamil, they said.

"The detention order ought to be quashed on the sole ground that even the main case (Pottu Suresh murder) and the adverse case was registered in 2013," they said.

Pandi's plea to engage a lawyer for representing to the advisory committee had been rejected, the judges said.

On December 17, police had filed before a local court the chargesheet in the nearly two-year-old murder case.

Suresh was hacked to death here by a gang on January 31 2013. Seventeen persons, including 'Attack' Pandi, the main accused, were arrested.

The case was transferred to CB-CID on the orders of the DGP.
Punjab Congress Chief Amarinder Singh today defended the state police for "any lapses" in the Pathankot terror attack, saying it was difficult to completely seal off vulnerable points along the international border.

"It is not proper to put blame on the Punjab Police for any lapse as they had already sounded the alert in relevant quarters after learning about the infiltration by the militants," he said.

The Congress leader was reacting to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's statements today that "some gaps" had led to the terror attack on the Air Force base in Pathankot on Saturday in which all the six infiltrators, who used some "Pakistan- made" equipment, were killed.

Amarinder maintained that there were certain vulnerable points along the international border whichwould be difficult to seal completely.

He, however, said the talks between India and Pakistan should continue while the neighbouring country must act against the rogue elements like the Jaish Mohammad and United Jihad Council which have owned up the responsibility for the attack on Pathankot airbase.

On being asked whether Prime Minister Modi was right in going toLahore recently, which was immediately followed by the attack on Pathankot airbase, theformer Chief Minister said there was "no alternative to peace and the talks must continue".

Moreover, peace between India and Pakistan is not only in the interest of both the countries, but much more in the interest of Punjab which will stand benefited more than any other state, he said.

The Lok Sabha MP said since the United Jihad Council (UJC) had owned up the responsibility for the attacks, it became the responsibility of Pakistan to act against them.

"Both UJC and Jaish Mohammad are based out of Pakistan and the authorities there know everything about these organisations," he said.

The PCC president and a former army man also opined that instead of putting the National Security Guard (NSG) in charge of theoperations in Pathankot, the operation should have been handled by the Army which hadbetter expertise in counter-insurgency operations.

"The combing and clearing operation should have been handed over to the Army which has a lot of expertise in counter-insurgency operations as in Kashmir. Here also, it was a jungle area where counter insurgency experts from the Army could have been put on job," he said.

He added that senior party leaders, including general secretary in charge Shakeel Ahmad, Campaign Committee chairperson Ambika Soni, CLP leader Charanjit Singh Channi, AICC secretary Harish Chaudhary and former PCC president Partap Singh Bajwa will be attending the bhog ceremony of those martyred in the Gurdaspur terror attack last year.
DMK President M Karunanidhi today slammed arch rival AIADMK over its handling of the recent rains and subsequent deluge and warned that his party would soon "respond" to the ruling party "legally and through parliamentary democracy."



Karunanidhi's statement comes months ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, even as he said that the Jayalalithaa government "must be removed immediately."



Leading a DMK agitation on the issue of rains and floods, he once again trained his guns against the ruling party over the issue of discharge of excess water from Chembarambakkam reservoir here, which the opposition parties have been claiming had resulted in the deluge in Chennai.

He also claimed that the state was now witnessing many "atrocities" not seen in other government tenures.

In an apparent reference to the defence of the government as well as that of Jayalalithaa that there was no wrongdoing on the issue of water release, Karunanidhi said the Chief Minister even "defended" such a serious charge and that her party was hopeful of retaining power in the elections.

"There is a coterie which is prostrating before her and making idiotic claims... It can claim that despite the atrocities and the Chembarambakkam issue it can come back to power. The day to give them a reply is not far off. Very soon, we are going to respond to them legally and through parliamentary democracy," he said in his address.

He charged the government with not handling the flood situation properly, although Jayalalithaa had repeatedly stated that Tamil Nadu had faced unprecedented rain which made matters worse despite her government's preparedness.

Party Treasurer MK Stalin also accused the ruling AIADMK of failure over handling of the northeast monsoon, adding it will soon pay the price for its alleged failure.

Earlier, several resolutions were passed during the protest, including the party's reiteration of its demand for a judicial probe into the release of excess water from Chembarambakkam.

DMK had earlier petitioned Governor K Rosaiah on the same issue.
Some 7,000 refugees arriving from war-torn South Sudan were registered in the Democratic Republic of Congo today, a local official said.

"Seven thousand people have crossed the South Sudanese border at Dungu towards the Democratic Republic of Congo," Ismael Arama Ziama, senior official in Haut-Uele province, told AFP, adding that they had been registered in the northeastern border region.

Arama Ziama said the refugees, who have arrived over the last month, were "fleeing the climate of insecurity in the (South Sudanese) provinces bordering the DRC."



He added that most of the refugees were South Sudanese, but the group also includes some Congolese and other nationals.

The town of Dungu in Haut-Uele province lies some 80 kilometres from the South Sudanese frontier.

South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the poverty-stricken country along ethnic lines.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.2 million forced to flee their homes in a conflict that has seen both sides accused of ethnic massacres, the use of child soldiers and widespread rape and torture.

A peace deal was signed last August, but the bloodshed continues.

The UN Security Council decided last month to boost its peacekeeping mission in South Sudan with extra troops and surveillance drones, hoping to shore up the peace deal.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set to present the Security Council with an action plan to bring peace to South Sudan by January 15.
Delhi University's decision to allow a seminar in the varsity by a VHP-affiliated organisation on Ram Janmabhoomi temple has drawn flak from students and teachers who termed it as an "attempt to vitiate and communalise the campus".

The university, however, has clarified that it has nothing to do with the subject of the seminar and the organisation had booked the venue for the event which is available to outsiders for hiring.

The two-day seminar titled "Shri Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple: Emerging Scenario" and beginning January 9 is being organised at DU's Arts Faculty by Arundhati Vashishtha Anusandhan Peeth (AVAP), a research organisation founded by late VHP leader Ashok Singhal.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who is chairman of AVAP, is scheduled to deliver the inaugural address at the seminar which will see historians, archaeologists and law experts discussing various topics including "Lord Ram's character and values, and their impact on Indian culture", "History of the Ram temple and related archaeological findings", "Legal issues around Ram temple" and "Experience and future of Ram temple".

AVAP Convenor Chandra Prakash said the seminar is being organised to "make students aware of the verdict of the Allahabad High Court on the Ayodhya issue as many don't know the details".

Prakash maintained that the seminar is being independently organised by AVAP and DU has no role in it.

According to a senior DU official, "the seminar is not being organised by any of the DU departments. Anyone can book the venue through the office of the Assistant Registrar if there is availability".

Various student groups and teachers have opposed DU's decision to offer its campus for the non-academic event.

"The question is what have these kind of events to do with academic sphere. DU administration giving permission to organise it is an indication of letting the government push its saffron agenda in the field of education," said a statement by All India Students Association.

Students Federation of India said, "DU administration must withdraw the permission for the seminar as it is a clear attempt to vitiate and communalise the campus. We demand that the permission to conduct this programme be withdrawn."



Delhi University's Teachers Association (DUTA) said that events that are communal in nature should not get any space in educational institutions.

"A centrally-funded institution offering its platform for such an event speaks volumes about the agenda being pursued by the government as well as the administration," a DUTA statement said.
A duo, who had allegedly molested two teenaged sisters in a street in south Delhi's and assaulted the girls' father when he objected to the harassment, have been arrested, police said today.

The accused have been identified as Muvin Azad Saifi (22) and Pintu Singh (20). The incident had taken place in Vasant Kunj area.

They were tracked by the police with the help of the phrase "villain is back", they had inscribed at the mudguard of the "stolen motorbike" which they were riding on December 29, when the incident took place, police said.

"Based on the information developed on the basis of the phrase, the police arrested the duo from south Delhi's Mehrauli area on Saturday," DCP (South) Prem Nath said.

Police have also recovered the stolen motorcycle and fake number plates from the duo's possession and lodged a case against them, police said.
A Dutch forensics expert who worked on the MH17 air disaster demanded a ministerial apology today saying a police probe has cleared him of any wrong-doing in showing medical students photos of the dead.

University professor George Maat was reportedly fired from the Dutch national forensics team after he gave a lecture in Maastricht in April last year about the 2014 Malaysia Airlines disaster.

Organised by a medical students association, Maat, a professor at Leiden University, showed photos of victims' body parts and explained elements of the identification process to help teach the students.

Justice Minister Ard Van der Steur said at the time that it had been "completely inappropriate and in bad taste."



But Maat says a police investigation, which he was given access to, has exonerated him, agreeing with his view that he did not break any confidentiality and privacy laws.

All 298 passengers and crew onboard the Malaysia Airlines jetliner -- most of them Dutch -- died when it was shot down en route to Kuala Lumpur at high altitude by a BUK Russian-made missile over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

The police investigation into Maat's lecture to about 150 people "showed nothing unusual had happened," he told AFP.

Similar lectures have been held in the past and the fact that it was in a lecture hall "on a university campus should have guaranteed that this was only meant for medical students" and for educational purposes.

The furor erupted when two reporters from the private television channel RTL Nieuws "had sneaked in pretending to be students and had been publishing" out of context his words.

"It was presented by the broadcasting company as if I was releasing criminal investigation data, which was not the fact at all."



Maat has now called on Van de Steur to apologise and to publicly acknowledge that he remains a member of the national forensics team -- saying he was never fired as had been reported but merely sidelined.

"Never has any apology been made, nor has my honour been restored," Maat added.

Officials at the justice ministry could not immediately be contacted by AFP for a comment, but Dutch media reported Van der Steur planned to respond later.

The police investigation has not been published, and Maat said he spent six hours copying it with a paper and pencil when he was allowed to read it under police surveillance.
Prime Minister David Cameron today allowed his ministers to campaign for or against Britain's membership of the European Union when it comes up for a referendum.

"It will be open to individual ministers to take a different, personal decision while remaining part of the government," the British Prime Minister told MPs in the House of Commons today.

His government has pledged to hold a referendum on whether the UK stays in the EU before 2018.

Anumber of British Cabinet ministers are thought to favour an out vote, leading to a British exit dubbed "Brexit", with Cameron expected to campaign for Britain to remain in the EU.

If the Prime Minister had decided to insist on collective Cabinet responsibility, he would have been forced to sack ministers who disagreed with him.

"It is the nature of a referendum that it is the people not the politicians who decide. Ultimately, it will be for the British people to decide this country's future by voting In or Out of a reformed European Union in the referendum that only we promised and that only a Conservative-majority government was able to deliver," Cameron told Parliament.

The British PM is hoping to complete negotiations with Brussels at a summit in February, at which he wants to win concessions on national sovereignty and migrant benefits.

But some strongly Eurosceptic ministers are unlikely to believe that is enough to persuade them to want to stay in the EU when Cameron calls his referendum on Britain's membership, expected by the end of 2017.

Ken Clarke, a pro-Europe Conservative MP, has warned that the decision to allow a free vote to the Cabinet on the issue could split the party.

"You resign, you step down. You don't stay in office and campaign against the government in which you serve," he warned.

Former deputy prime minister and another senior party leader Lord Heseltine, who last month warned of a Tory "civil war" if ministers were allowed to openly defy the Prime Minister and suggested Cameron would be seen as a global "laughing stock" if he allowed it, declined to comment on the Cameron's decision.

But the move was welcomed by those campaigning to get Britain out of the EU.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said: "The referendum could be as little as 170 days away, so ministers should be allowed to campaign openly as soon as the renegotiation is complete - and certainly no later than the end of the European Council in February.

"The British people deserve to hear where their elected representatives stand on this vitally important issue. We've had lots of useful meetings with government ministers and look forward to working with them much more closely now.
A former president of Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandakh Committee (PSGPC), who is facing a blasphemy charge for attacking a Gurdwara in Nankana Sahib, was today granted bail by a Pakistani court in the case.

A division bench of Lahore High Court headed by Justice Mazhar Iqbal Sidhu accepted the application of Mastan Singh and granted him bail.

The court dismissed the plea of the prosecution department that bail should not be granted to him till completion of the investigation.

Mastan's counsel advocate Anwar Zahid said sitting president of the PSGPC Sardar Sham Singh had got a 'fake' blasphemy case registered against his client and 25 others.

"Both Evacuee Trust Property Board head Siddiqul Farooq and Sham Singh joined hands with land mafia and illegally sold hundreds of canal land belonged to Gurdwara Janam Asthan, Nankana Sahib (the birth place of Baba Guru Nanak) to a housing scheme," he said.

Nankana police last month registered a blasphemy case against Singh and his 25 accomplices for allegedly attacking a Gurdwara in Nankana Sahib and chanting anti-sate slogans.

They were protesting after being denied permission to take out a rally in Nankana Sahib, some 80 kilometers from Lahore.
Flagging serious concern over government's proposal on auctioning of additional aircraft seats other than those covered under various air services agreements, Indian carriers fear that the move would further increase the monopoly of the Gulf carriers.

Besides, the move could also hike international air fares as the additional seats would come with a "price tag" and foreign airlines winning the bids will seek to recover the costs by passing it on to the customers, a member of the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) said.

While the number of destinations, routes and seats are decided at government-level talks and the air services agreements between India and various countries, the latest proposal in the draft civil aviation policy provides for auctioning of the seats to meet the additional demand on various international sectors.

FIA comprises four domestic airlines--Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir.

"The auctioning of seats on the international routes other than those covered under the various air services agreements will only provide a greater foothold to the foreign airlines, particularly the Gulf carriers who already have an undeclared monopoly in the Indian market," the FIA member said on condition of anonymity.

Stating that government needs to think in the larger national interests, the FIA member said, adding "the move could also lead to a hike in airfares on the international routes".

The Civil Aviation Ministry is likely to move the draft note for Union Cabinet's approval in the third week of January.

At present Etihad, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Air Arabia and Flydubai are among the major Gulf carriers having operations in India. Of these, while Doha-based Qatar Airways flies to 13 Indian cities, Emirates and Etihad connect Dubai and Abu Dhabi, their respective hubs, with 10 cities each.

At the same time, the FIA is also opposed to the proposal



of hiking FDI limit for overseas carriers to over 50 per cent as it "apprehends that these carriers will then set up a subsidiary airline here to the detriment of Indian carriers."



"We have already seen how a foreign airline with 49 per cent stake is controlling the Indian joint venture from the backdoor. The government should envision the situation when it allows more than 50 per cent holding to an overseas player," the FIA member said.

"Even mature aviation markets do not permit more than 25 per cent equity to a foreign airline to protect their own carriers," they added.

Pointing out that the government needs to put "safe guards" to protect the local airlines, the member said, "it could be done so by continuing with the 5/20 norms too."



According to the norm, which is under review, only local carriers having five years of operational experience and a fleet of 20 aircraft are allowed to fly overseas.
Expressing its disappointment over the Civil Aviation ministry going ahead with a meeting with startup carriers Vistara and AirAsia India on draft aviation policy without its representation, FIA today requested the ministry to share with it the details of discussions.

The Federation of Indian Airlines(FIA), in a letter to Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey today, also said it was yet to hear from the ministry on its earlier request for a meeting with him on the policy issue post-January 6.

"It is learnt that the ministry went ahead with the meeting on December 30, 2015 despite the fact that FIA members, which constitute about 95 per cent of the industry excluding Air India were unable to attend for several reasons detailed in several earlier communications. It is understood that the draft national aviation policy was discussed with Air Asia and Vistara, who constitute only 5 per cent of the total Indian airline industry," FIA said in the letter.

FIA comprises four domestic airlines--Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir.

The Civil Aviation Ministry is likely to move the draft note for Union Cabinet's approval in the third week of January.

The FIA understands that even the national carrier Air India has opposed any change in the 5/20 and Route Dispersal Guidelines policies, it said, alleging that "views of Vistara and AirAsia India with regard to the scrapping of 5/20 norm and the RDG is that of a minuscule minority.

"We are therefore disappointed and surprised that the ministry continues to give credence to the two Tata start up airlines."



"The FIA, would therefore, request the Civil Aviation Ministry to kindly share the minutes of the meeting of December 30, 2015 with FIA and also fix a meeting any time convenient post January 6.

Tata Sons hold 41 per cent stake in domestic budget airline AirAsia India, which is a three-way joint venture. Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia and Telestra TradePlace of Arun Bhatia have 49 per cent and 10 per cent stake respectively.

On the other hand, Vistara is a 51:49 per cent joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.

Under the 5/20, which are under review, only local carriers having five years of operational experience and a fleet of 20 aircraft are allowed to fly overseas.

Significantly, both AirAsia India and Vistara, which are allegedly lobbying for scrapping of the 5/20 norm, started operations only in June 2014 and January 2015 respectively.
More than 40 horses were killed in a fire that destroyed a barn at a training center for racehorses in the Canadian province of Ontario, local media reported.

The fire erupted overnight yesterday to today at the Classy Lanes Stables Training Centre in Puslinch, Ontario, bringing down the barn's roof and walls on the horses inside.

Some 50 firefighters were dispatched to the scene, but intense cold froze water hoses, hampering their efforts, Puslinch fire chief Steve Goode told the CBC television network.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

The stable's owners were on vacation in Florida at the time of the blaze.
Five persons, including two women, have been arrested from Miao-Kharsang area for circulating fake Indian currency note at Miao market on January 1 last.

The accused have been identified as Ali Ahammad (52 years), Habel Ud Din (36 years), Amin Ul Islam (19 years) and two women.

All the arrested had come from Satarakanara viilage in Barpeta district of Assam, an official statement said today.

The police recovered and seized 21 high quality fake bank note of Rs 500 denomination from the market and two mobile handsets, Indian currency and other goods from the possession of the accused.

A criminal case has been registered at Miao police station, the statement said.
Former Chief Justice of India Sarosh Homi Kapadia, who delivered some landmark judgements, passed away here last night following a cardiac arrest, Bombay High Court sources said today.

He was 68 and is survived by wife, son, who is a Chartered Accountant, and daughter.

Justice Kapadia's funeral was held as per Parsi tradition this evening at 'Tower of Silence' at Kemps Corner, South Mumbai.

The judges and staff of the High Court were among those who attended the last rites.

Born in 1947 in Mumbai (then Bombay), Justice Kapadia graduated from the city-based Government Law College, the oldest law institute in Asia.

Justice Kapadia started his career as a Class IV employee. He later joined Gagrat & Co, a law firm, as a clerk and went on to work with Feroze Damania, a popular 'firebrand' labour lawyer. He became an advocate in the Bombay High Court on September 10, 1974.

Justice Kapadia was appointed as additional judge of the Bombay High Court on October 8, 1991, and on March 23, 1993, he was appointed a permanent judge.

On August 5, 2003, he became the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court. On December 18, 2003 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court.

In May 12, 2010, he was sworn in as the 38th Chief Justice of India and served at the top post till retirement on September 29, 2012.

Notable among the judgements he delivered were the quashing of appointment of the Chief Vigilance Commissioner P J Thomas in 2011. He also gave a dissenting judgement in Lalu Prasad Yadav's bail cancellation case.

During his tenure as CJI, he was the Chairman of the General Council of the Gujarat Law University and Visitor of the Law School of India University.

Justice Kapadia was married to Shernaaz. He held interest in economics, public finance, theoretical physics, and Hindu and Buddhist philosophies.

The High Court staff paid homage to Justice Kapadia, whom they described as a nice and affectionate person.
French President Francois Hollande has honored 17 victims killed in Islamic extremist attacks on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher market and police a year ago this week, unveiling plaques around Paris marking violence that ushered in a tumultuous year.

Today's ceremonies come as Charlie Hebdo is releasing a special anniversary issue laced with obscene and offensive cartoons, its surviving artists and columnists vaunting their freedom to lampoon everyone from Muslim fundamentalists to children, politicians and Catholic priests.

Victims' families joined Hollande and other dignitaries near the building where Charlie Hebdo staff were holding an editorial meeting when two heavily armed brothers stormed in on January 7, 2015, killing 11 people.

The plaque begins: "To the memory of victims of the terrorist attack against freedom of expression."



They then paid homage to a police officer killed as he tried to chase down the fleeing gunmen. Spray painted on the sidewalk was a message of support for the Muslim officer, reading "Je suis Ahmed," or "I am Ahmed," in the red, white and blue of the French flag.

After the attacks, people around the world embraced the expression "Je suis Charlie" to express solidarity with the slain journalists, targeted for the paper's caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Hollande then paid homage to four people killed at a kosher supermarket in an attack that revived concerns about anti-Semitism in the country with Europe's largest Jewish community.

The French president briefly met with some of the survivors of the attack inside the supermarket.

The Charlie Hebdo memorial plaque was hastily covered up after authorities discovered a spelling error in the name of slain cartoonist Georges Wolinski. The black covering was later removed, and a new plaque is being prepared after the embarrassing incident.

Hollande will unveil another plaque on Saturday to honor police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who was killed in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge by one of the attackers on January 8.

The country remains under a state of emergency after the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, and extra security was on hand for today's commemorations.
The automotive industry is placing its biggest bet yet that using a device to hail a ride with or without a driver is the future of transportation.

General Motors Co said yesterday it is investing USD 500 million in ride-hailing company Lyft Inc and forming an unprecedented partnership that could eventually lead to on-demand, self-driving cars. It's the largest investment yet by a traditional automaker in a new mobility company, and is an acknowledgement by GM that the transportation landscape is changing fast.

"We see the world of mobility changing more in the next five years than it has in the last 50," GM President Dan Ammann told The Associated Press.

GM made the investment as part of a USD 1 billion round of fundraising by Lyft.

Together, the companies plan to open a network of U.S. hubs where Lyft drivers can rent GM vehicles at discounted rates. That could expand Lyft's business by giving people who don't own cars a way to drive and earn money through Lyft. It also gives GM a leg up on competitors like Daimler AG and Ford Motor Co, who are developing their own ride-sharing services.

And it would put more young drivers behind the wheel of a Chevrolet, Buick, GMC or Cadillac.

Longer term, GM and Lyft will work together to develop a fleet of autonomous vehicles that city dwellers could summon using Lyft's mobile app. Partnering with GM could give Lyft a boost over its archrival, Uber Technologies Inc, which is working on its own driverless cars.

Karl Brauer, an industry analyst with Kelley Blue Book, expects to see automakers and tech companies form more partnerships over the next few months.

"Each one has an area of specialization to make both of them stronger," he said.

GM isn't the only automaker with an eye on Lyft. Fontinalis Partners a venture capital firm co-founded by Ford Motor Co's Executive Chairman Bill Ford invested in Lyft last May. The amount invested wasn't disclosed.

GM gets a seat on Lyft's board and access to the three-year-old company's software, which matches riders with drivers and automates payments. The partnership also better positions the automaker for a future in which customers don't buy cars every five or six years but share rides or hail drivers when they need to get somewhere.

San Francisco-based Lyft gets the expertise of a 108-year-old automaker with decades of experience in making connected and autonomous vehicles. Detroit-based GM also has an enviable global reach; it sells almost 10 million cars each year in more than 100 countries. Lyft operates in 190 U.S. cities, although it recently formed partnerships with ride-sharing services in China and India.

Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer and Ammann say the two companies began serious discussions about three months ago. Both executives see big changes coming in the traditional model of car ownership, and they had similar ideas about how to address it.
General Motors India today announced appointment of Markus Sternberg as Vice President, Aftersales with effect from January 1.

GM India President and MD Kaher Kazem said: "... His understanding of the business and international experience will be invaluable as we look to grow our presence in India."



Sternberg will be responsible for leading the aftersales organisation. He will be reporting to Kazem and will be based at the company's headquarters in Gurgaon.

An automotive industry veteran with over 26 years of global experience and engineering industries, had recently moved to India from Germany where he held the position of Director Customer Services and Executive Director Customer Experience Europe at Opel/Vauxhall.

Commenting on his new role Sternberg said, "I feel confident that my past experience of working in the automotive space will support GM's growth strategy and long-term commitment to India.
The Goa Congress today opposed the holding of 'AeroIndia' show in the state this year claiming that infrastructure and land for the event were already available in Bengaluru.

"Devenahalli airport at Bengaluru is home to 'AeroIndia', the defence and civilian air show," Goa Congress chief Luizinho Faleiro told reporters after chairing a meeting of party's state executive.

Leader of opposition Pratapsingh Rane also attended it.

"Since Bengaluru already has the required infrastructure in place, the Defence Ministry must explain why it is insisting on setting up yet more unnecessary infrastructure at the cost of the limited land resources in India's tiniest state," Faleiro said.

He said he was disappointed that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, a Goan himself, was instrumental in allotting 150 acres of land for an event which would not advance interests of the state or create jobs for locals.

The state Congress today also condoled the deaths of security personnels in operations against the terrorists at Pathaknkot air base.
Questioning NDA government's "inconsistent" Pakistan policy, AAP today attacked the Narendra Modi-led dispensation over the Pathankot attack and asked why the government could not avert loss of soldiers' lives when it had "pinpointed" information about the plot.

The party also launched an attack on National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, asking what his role was with respect to foreign policy.

"Inconsistency is the consistent norm of the government policy towards Pakistan. First Narendra Modi invites the Pakistan PM for his swearing in ceremony. Then he cancels the secretary level talks.

"Then he visits Lahore to meet (Pakistan PM) Nawaz Sharif and hugs him like a long lost friend. The nation wants to know what were the compelling reasons which made him go to Lahore," senior AAP leader Ashutosh asked.

He claimed that the Pathankot attack was also government's failure as it had information about a possible attack on its defence assets.

"The Punjab Police had informed the Centre about a possible attack on the air assets. The government also claims very proudly that it had information about this. Despite this, seven valuable lives of our soldiers have been lost.

"Nearly 80 hours have passed and we have learnt that the operation is still on. This has lasted more than the counter- strike carried out during 26/11 attack," Ashutosh said.

Posing five questions, AAP's Delhi unit convenor Sanjay Singh asked whether Modi, during his visit to Lahore, raised the issue of Gurdaspur attack last year.

"The PM should tell the country what transpired in his talks with Pakistan PM at Lahore on December 25. After calling off the NSA level talks on the issue that Pakistan High Commission had invited Hurriyat Conference, what was the change that resulted in announcement of Foreign Secretary level talks?



"On what basis did the Union Home Minister announce on Saturday evening that the Pathankot operation is over? What is the role of the NSA and who is handling country's foreign policy?" Pandey asked.
Government has initiated a probe into alleged dumping of an automobile component - Axle for Trailers - by China in the domestic market.

The move is aimed at protecting domestic players in the automobile sector against cheap imports.

The Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD), an arm of the Commerce Ministry, has begun investigations into the matter.

In a notification, the DGAD has said it has found a sufficient prima facie evidence of dumping of the product from China.

"...The authority (DGAD) hereby initiates an investigation into the alleged dumping, and consequent injury to the domestic industry...To determine the existence, degree and effect of alleged dumping and to recommend the amount of antidumping duty, which if levied, would be adequate to remove the injury to the domestic industry," it said.

The period of investigation is from April 2014 to June 2015 (15 months).

After the probe, DGAD, if needed, will recommend an anti-dumping duty and the Finance Ministry will impose it.

York Transport Equipment (India) has filed the application before the DGAD alleging dumping of the product on behalf of the domestic industry.

An 'Axle for Trailer' is essentially an assemblage of a beam/bar and other components such as brake drum, brake shoes, bearings which connect two wheels of a trailer and renders the functions as axle for the trailer.

Countries initiate an anti-dumping probe to determine whether their domestic industries have been hurt because of surge in cheap import of any product. As a counter measure, they impose duties under the multilateral regime of the WTO.

The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters resorting to dumping of goods at below-cost rates.
With pulses prices still ruling high on likely production concerns, the government has issued a tender to import 5,000 tonnes of pigeon peas (tur) to boost domestic supply from next month.

State-run MMTC has invited bids for supply of 5,000 tonnes of pigeon peas and the quantity of shipment can be increased depending on the price bids. Fearing pulses prices might flare up again in 2016 due to little improvement in domestic output as compared to 2015, the government has directed MMTC to import more pulses to improve domestic availability and check prices, which are still ruling high at around Rs 180 per kg. According to the tender document, MMTC has invited global bids for import of 5,000 tonnes of pigeon peas of the latest crop from Myanmar, Malawi, Mozambique or any other origin.

Both technical and price bids should be submitted by January 18 and the tenders will remain valid till January 22. MMTC said bids should be for a minimum quantity of 2,000 tonnes and the shipment should reach Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and Chennai port between February 7 and March 15. The trading firm had last year imported 5,000 tonnes of tur dal to check prices. It however did not get response for an import tender for urad.

Expecting a second consecutive year of low production, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had recently asked the commerce ministry to direct trading firms to speed up the process of imports in order to overcome any output shortfall.

Pulses production in the 2015-16 crop year (July-June) is expected to be much below the earlier estimate of around 18 million tonnes because of poor sowing of rabi crops. Production in 2014-15 was at 17.38 million tonnes.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has set a 2019 deadline to make the state free from open defecation, minister for rural development Abdul Haq said here today.

"The priority of the government is to make Jammu and Kashmir state free from open defecation by 2019", Haq said while inaugurating a two-day state level workshop on sanitation being organized by the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj in collaboration with Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India.

While elaborating on the significance of clean and hygienic environment for leading a healthy life, Haq stressed on the need for an attitudinal change among the people who are the major stakeholders in this "noble task".

He further said that the coordinated efforts on the part of government agencies, non-governmental organisations and government involving general masses are keys to achieving the mission of a "clean India" envisioned by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Minister said that persistent information, education and communication activities are required to spread awareness among all stakeholders about the personal hygiene besides cleanliness in surroundings.

"The objective of Swachh Bharat Mission is to improve quality of life by promoting hygiene and eliminating open defecation," he added.

Haq noted that the construction of Individual Household Latrines (IHHLs), Community Sanitary Complexes (CSCs), Solid and Liquid Waste Management (SLWM) System besides other sanitation initiatives on accelerated basis are key features of the mission.

He also spoke about the state-wide mission 'Gaon Jahaan Hamara' launched by the department to supplement the efforts regarding sanitation and planned development of the villages.

Its main objective is to prevent haphazard construction in low lying and landslide prone areas, he added.
: Puthiya Tamizhakam today charged the Tamil Nadu Government with totally neglecting the rain and flood-hit districts of Tuticorin, Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli in providing relief and financial aid.

PT president and MLA, Dr K Krishnasamy alleged at a press coeference here that the government was fully concentrating on only the northern districts of Chennai, Cuddalore,Thiruvallur, and Kancheepuram. Even the Central Team was not not sent to the Southern Districts to assess the loss, he said.

Representing Ottapidram constituency in Thoothukudi, Krishnasamy said crops like paddy, banana, vegetable and flowers cultivated in five lakh acre were totally damaged in the flood-ravaged districts. Not a single government official had visited the area, at least to console the victims there.

Claiming that the loss of property, including thousands of goats and heads of cattle, would amount to Rs 1,000 crore, he said that at least 75 per cent of the houses, including those built by Government, were damaged in the heavy rains.

He faulted the Government for not lending any helping hand for the rescue, relief and rehabilitation of the people in these districts. It would be very difficult for farmers, traders and small businessmen to get back to their normal lives, he said, adding that the Government, considering their plight, should concentrate on these districts.
Martin Guptill continued his golden summer with a century today as New Zealand posted 294 for 5 batting first against Sri Lanka in the fifth and final one-day international at Mount Maunganui.

The right-handed opener was out for 102 as he top scored in a New Zealand innings which left Sri Lanka with a challenging target at the beach resort town.

Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor both made 61 while Luke Ronchi was not out 37.

Williamson, again leading New Zealand with Brendon McCullum still sidelined by a back injury, had looked in good touch until he was undone by a poor ball from Tillakaratne Dilshan going down the leg side.

Williamson tried to help the ball on its way but only succeeded in propelling it to wicketkeeper Dinesh Chandimal.

Guptill was also dismissed by a poor shot when he lobbed Nuwan Kulasekara, Sri Lanka's most successful bowler, straight to Thisara Perera at long on.

New Zealand were 206 for 3 after 38 overs when Guptill was removed and added 82 off the last 10 overs.

Guptill had been out of form when New Zealand toured Australia in November but has found his touch since returning home.

His 102, which included nine fours and three sixes off 109 deliveries, elevated him into an elite group with Nathan Astle and Taylor as the only New Zealanders to score 10 or more ODI centuries.

The milestone comes after innings of 79, 93, 30 and 27 in the previous ODI matches and a century in the first Test against Sri Lanka.

New Zealand won the Test series 2-0 and lead the ODI series 2-1 with one match washed out.

Sri Lanka, looking to square the series, won the toss and put New Zealand into bat with immediate success when Tom Latham was out in the first over without scoring.

But Guptill and Williamson then put on 122 for the second wicket. For Sri Lanka, Kulasekara took three for 53.
The state government has spent almost Rs 12 crore on the 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' scheme since it was launched at Panipat in January last year, according to official reply to an RTI query.

Replying to an RTI query filed by INLD MLA Naina Chautala the state government said a sum of Rs 11,79,09,288 has been spent by the Centre and the state on government and private events related to 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' scheme till now in Haryana.

The government report said that Centre had released a sum of Rs 2 crore for the two-day inaugural workshop on 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' scheme in Panipat on Janury 21 and 22 last year.

The inaugural function and the two-ay workshop was attended by representatives of 27 states.

Later in the year the Centre released Rs 2.23 crore to the state for the implementation of the scheme, the report said.

The government has chosen the Ministry of Women and Child Development as the nodal ministry for the implementation of the scheme with the Health and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry assisting it.

According to the report the Ministry of Women and Child Development spent Rs 3.55 Crore in the first phase of the inaugural programme.

In the same programme the department of education spent Rs 44.25 lakh whereas Rs 2.74 crore were spent on the publicity of the scheme by the department concerned. The department of health spent nearly Rs 15 lakh, the report said.

Also in 'call for action' programme held on July 21, 2015 to popularise the scheme, by Population Services International with the help of the government, different government departments spent nearly Rs 66.5 lakh, the report said.

Bollywood actor Parineeti Chopra was also invited for the 'call for action' programme at Gurgaon.
Taking serious note of a foreign national obtaining a PAN card by claiming to be an Indian citizen and using it to open two bank accounts, the Bombay High Court has summoned three senior Central government officials to appear before it on January 8 to show what action had been taken in the matter.

"This petition shows shocking inaction on the part of relevant departments of the Union of India...What is pointed out by this petition is that the 1st Respondent, who is a foreign national, has obtained a PAN card. Further he has opened accounts with two banks, namely, HSBC Bank and Bombay Mercantile Bank. He has also acquired properties in India," noted a division bench in a recent order.

Sanjay Punmiya had filed a petition alleging that Faisal Essa Yosuf obtained a PAN card in his name and bank accounts were opened by him.

The HC, on earlier occasions, had asked respondents to hold an inquiry on how the PAN card was issued and take action but no steps were adopted, the bench noted and warned to issue contempt notices against the concerned officers if stern measures were not enforced.

The bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka, in a written order, directed a representative of Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Mumbai, a senior officer nominated by Joint Secretary (CPV), Ministry of External Affairs, and a senior officer nominated by Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Mumbai, to remain present in court on January 8 with the relevant documents to show action taken, pursuant to the order passed by the High Court on earlier occasions.

The bench also ordered that a report about an inquiry made on the issue shall also be submitted before the next date of hearing.

During a previous hearing on September 28 last year, government's senior counsel had pointed out that visa was been granted to the first respondent which is valid till December 16, 2018.

"Various allegations have been levelled against the first respondent. It is stated that he has obtained a PAN card claiming to be an Indian national...All this calls for a very serious inquiry by the concerned department of the Union of India," the HC noted in its order.

"The petitioner has done his job by pointing out the



alleged illegality committed by the first respondent. He is not expected to know the details of the departments which are obliged to look into the illegality," the HC noted.

"It is the responsibility of the law department of the Union of India to ascertain which departments can look into the allegations made by petitioner and initiate appropriate legal action, if necessary," the court observed.

The HC noted that under clause 3 of its order dated September 28, 2015, it had asked the appropriate department of the Centre to initiate an inquiry and submit a report to it. However, no such report has been filed. Besides, the HC order dated October 29, 2015, notes that the Central government has not taken any steps, said the bench.

The court also noted that the counsel appearing for the Union government had made a statement on October 1 that though he has addressed letters to various officers of the Central government, no response is received.

The HC had directed on October 1 that the concerned government departments shall hold an enquiry for ascertaining whether the first respondent has committed illegalities as alleged.

"If such illegalities are found, it is obvious that prompt action will have to be taken by the Union of India. If the court finds that the Union of India has not taken any action, serious view will have to be taken on the said default," the HC had observed in the October 1 order.

During the hearing on December 17, the government counsel produced a letter written by the Centre to the respondents to take action as per the earlier orders of the HC. "Inspite of the letter, none of the respondents had any instructions on the compliance," the HC further noted.

"In view of clause 6 of the order dated 29th October 2015, this is a fit case where contempt notices are required to be issued to the Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, the Joint Secretary (CPV) and FRRO, Mumbai," observed the bench.

"Senior counsel Beni Chatterjee, appearing for the Union of India, states he will ensure that necessary action will be taken. Only in view of this assurance, we are not issuing any notice of contempt as of today," the bench said.

However, the High Court asked the respondents to remain present on the next date of hearing on January 8.
In a relief to former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, the Karnataka High Court today quashed 15 FIRs filed against the senior BJP leader for alleged illegal denotification of lands based on a CAG report.

"All the FIRs against Yeddyurappa stand quashed," Justice Rathnakala said in her order.

The order comes as yet another breather for Yeddyurappa, close on the heels of the High Court recently quashing former Governor H R Bhardwaj's sanction for prosecuting him when he was Chief Minister and also the Lokayukta court striking down four FIRs against him for alleged illegal land denotification.

The FIRs were registered following a complaint filed by one Jayakumar Hiremath based on CAG report in 2012 - on denotification of land by government and allotment of sites by Bangalore Development Authority.

The complaint was filed with the Lokayukta by Hiremath in 2014.

During the hearing, Yeddyurappa's counsel C V Nagesh had submitted that the Lokayukta police, who are investigating the illegal land notification cases against Yeddyurappa, does not enjoy the authority to file FIRs just on the basis of CAG report, which is the property of the legislature.

"The Lokayukta police does not have any right to register FIRs based on CAG report because it is the property of the legislature," Nagesh had contended.

Moreover, the legislature also had not discussed the CAG report implicating Yeddyurappa for allegedly notifying certain lands and not arrived at any decision whether to investigate the allegations or not, Nagesh had submitted.

"The legislature has not taken up the matter for discussion and as a result haven't even arrived at any decision to initiate investigation into the allegations made by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). On this ground, the Lokayukta police cannot register FIRs," he had submitted.

Further, Nagesh had said that as per Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act, the mere issuing of order to denotify land is not an act of offence, and moreover, the Yeddyurappa government had withdrawn the order later.

Also, the laws say that a competent authority, including a person of stature of a minister or a Chief Minister is the competent authority to issue land denotification orders, Nagesh had argued.

Karnataka government had approached the Supreme Court in the matter, to which the apex court had asked the High Court to 'expeditiously' decide pleas relating to registration of FIRs.
Coming to the aid of a man who sought protection from upper caste villagers opposed to him taking a pathway to bury his deceased grandfather, the Madras High Court today directed police in Nagapattinam district to give adequate protection to see no untoward incident takes place in completing the last rites.

Justice M M Sundresh, before whom the petition in this regard came up today, was informed by the Special Government Pleader that the Nagapattinam District Collector had stated there was no difficulty in laying a thoroughfare to reach the burial ground and also that appropriate protection would be given to the petitioner in the event of any objection.

The judge, after recording the statement, in his order reiterated that it is the duty of all district authorities to see that the petitioner, along with the body of his deceased centanarian grandfather, was in a position to reach the burial ground without any hindrance and disposed of the petition.

Petitioner M Sankar had submitted that though his grandfather died on January 3, he could not be buried for two days as upper caste people prevented him from using the path leading to the burial ground.

Sankar said his grandfather diedat his native place in Vazhuvur where they were prevented from using the common burial ground.

They were using a portion of the land on the bund of Makimaiaru river from time immemorial. But there was no pucca road to the burial ground.

The local upper class people (Vanniars) prevented them from using this path, the petitioner had contended.

Admitting the petition yesterday, the court had observed that equality eludes a person till death starting from birth, and directed the Nagaipattinam district administration and police to swiftly act on the man's plea.
The Gauhati High Court today stayed the disqualification of 14 dissident Congress MLAs from Arunachal Pradesh assembly by Speaker Nabam Rebia during the state's political crisis in December.

Justice B K Sharma, hearing a writ petition stayed the speaker's order disqualifying the MLAs on December 15 and issued notice to the respondents.

He fixed January 7 as the next date of hearing.

The writ was filed by dissident Congress MLAs Pema Khandu and 13 of his colleagues, who were disqualified by Rebia under 10th Schedule of Constitution.

They contended that the order of disqualification was passed by the speaker in violation of natural justice without giving them an opportunity of hearing.

A political crisis was triggered in Arunachal Pradesh in December with 21 of the 47 Congress MLAs in the 60-member house, along with 11 BJP and two Independent MLAs, extending support to dissident Congress leader Kalikho Pul.

Pul was elected the 'chief minister' in a session, advanced by Governor J P Rajkhowa to December 16 from January 14, and held in makeshift premises.

Rebia had then filed a petition challenging the governor's notification of December 9 advancing the assembly session and also the notification issued by Deputy Speaker T Norbu Thondok revoking the suspension of 14 MLAs.

The writ petition had also challenged the order of the Deputy Speaker for holding of the session at a new place and the decision(s) of the December 16 session.

Justice Hrishikesh Roy after hearing the case on December 17 had issued notice and in the interim kept in abeyance the impugned decisions of the assembly passed in the session on December 16 and had fixed the case for hearing on February 1.

A batch of Interlocutory Applications has also been filed in the high court by Deputy Speaker and some MLAs to vacate or modify the court's earlier order of keeping the assembly's December 16 proceedings in abeyance.
Accusing the Modi government of neglecting education and health care, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Tuesday said the bias is much more evident than during the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime including on issues related to religion.

Education and health care were neglected by the UPA government and it is more neglected by the present government, the noted economist said at an event here.

... It was not that the previous government was not biased in terms of its own views... but biaseness is much more evident now, Sen said, while also referring to the issues related to religion.

India has survived... There was Shah Bano case, Babri Masjid case..., he said.

Sen further said India's nuclear power plant poses danger and cautioned, I am worried our environmental sensitivities are confined to carbon and referred to the recent agreement between India and Russia on expanding cooperation in atomic energy space.

What if instead of 26/11 type attack killing 170, (the) terrorists bombed Tarapur killing a million, Sen added.

He was speaking at the release function of economist Bina Agarwals three-volume compendium Gender Challenges.
Bill Clinton has said his wife Hillary Clinton is better prepared to be the US president than anyone else, as the former American president returned to the campaign trail for the Democratic frontrunner's 2016 White House bid.

"I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job in a moment of great importance who is better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done," 69-year-old Clinton said at his first solo campaign event yesterday.

"In my adult lifetime, there has never been anyone better prepared for the job that awaits the next president than Hillary. Never," he said at an election campaign event in New Hampshire.

The two-term president said he is "really proud of Hillary" for being the first candidate to propose a comprehensive plan to help all those coal communities make a transition into a new economy.

"Those folks haven't been voting for us much lately... And she basically said I don't care, you're Americans. You deserve a chance. So when there is discrimination against African- Americans or Hispanics or Muslims just because of who they are, I don't like that."



"But what we never can forget that what we have to do is unite the police and the community, unite business and labour, unite this country. That's when things happen. When you have inclusive economics and inclusive societies and in order to do that, you have to have more inclusive politics," Clinton said.

So the big job of the next president is to give Americans inclusive economics, inclusive societies, inclusive and to defend the national security of the country in a way that preserves US values, that keeps big, bad things from happeningand wages the battle.

"If you decide that, then you have to ask, well, who's the best person to do that job?," Clinton asked the audience.

"Hillary" responded the crowd with great applause.

"She has spent a lot of time travelling this country and listening to people, just like she did when she was a senator from New York or travelling the world when she was secretary of State. And she has a good economic plan."



"She says OK, we've got to cut our greenhouse gas emissions because we don't want to burn up the planet for our kids and grandkids, how in the wide work could you create more new businesses and more good jobs than by changing the way you produce and consume energy and other local resources? It's the greatest opportunity our country has ever had," Clinton said.

He said Hillary is pretty much still the same girl he fell in love with in law school.

"She really is. And that's why she's still really close friends with her best friend from grade school and why all these people she went to high school with are coming to New Hampshire or Iowa and why people she met more than 30 years ago in Arkansas keep coming to New Hampshire every time she's on the ballot," Clinton added.
AAP MLA Alka Lamba today alleged that Home and Finance Secretary S N Sahai was working to "weaken the elected government" of the national capital.

In a letter to Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, Lamba said that Sahai was unhappy with Delhi government's decision to scrap Rs 800 crore project under Shahjanabad Redevelopment Corporation (SRDC).

"In a meeting of SRDC held on September 23, 2015, whose members are Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, PWD Minister Satyendar Jain, Finance and Home Secretary S N Sahai and SMDC's MD Faiz Hasmi, were present. The meeting lasted for around one hour following which the Deputy CM and PWD Minister left and directed to continue with the meeting.

"The moment meeting commenced, S N Sahai started questioning the decisions of government and convince others to do the same. He was upset over Delhi government reversing the decision of scrapping Rs 800 crore projects," Lamba claimed.

Despite repeated attempts, Sahai was not available for comment.

Incidentally, last week the Delhi government and DANICS were at loggerheads over suspension of two officials, following which the DANICS officers association had taken a decision to go on one-day mass casual leave as a mark of protest. The AGMUT-cadre IAS officers association too extended support to the DANICS officers association.

Lamba, who is a Parliamentary Secretary to the Delhi government, further stated in her letter that she had said that the tram project in the Old Delhi would cost Rs 800 crore and take 3 to 4 years whereas starting an electric tram service would incur only Rs 20 crore and take only 6 months to a year to implement.

"Since this (the option of electric tram) would cost less time and money, all members gave their consent. But Sahai said that he is Finance Secretary and it is only he who will decide whether to spent Rs 800 crore or Rs 20 crore.

"I was surprised. How could an officer of the Delhi government talk like about his own government," Lamba alleged in the letter.
Hollywood superstar Tom Hanks believes his "Inferno" co-star Irrfan Khan has a physicality which is very endearing.

Hanks is returning in the shoes of Symbologist Robert Langdon for another adventure in director Ron Howard's big screen adaptation of Dan Brown's "Inferno" where the Indian star, 48, will play the role of Harry "The Provost" Sims, the head of a mysterious organisation, the Consortium.

"I'm just beguiled by his magic eyes. He has a physicality to him that is so specific and endearing," Hanks said about Irrfan at Sony's press event in Cancun, Mexico.

The 59-year-old actor was yet to shoot his scenes with Irrfan while promoting the movie in Mexico last June but he was all praise for the Indian star.

"We're a bit frustrated because I have a number of very huge scenes to work with Irrfan, but we haven't gotten to them yet and, as it is now, we've done, I don't know, six or seven scenes with him and he's only had one line to say. So, I wonder if he can actually string together more than a few phrases. I'm confident that he can, but that will remain to be seen," Hanks said.

The director, however, assured fans that Irrfan has important scenes in the movie.

"We've done a few scenes where he does nothing but talk. Tom just hasn't been in those yet," he said, to which Hanks quipped, "Yeah, I call those, 'days off'."



Howard said Irrfan had specifically asked about Sims role when he first spoke to him.

"His value is his artistry. He's a tremendous actor and I've been a fan for a long time. And when I spoke to him about the movie, he specifically asked about the role of Sims.

"Now, Irrfan does not fit the description of the character as written in the book, but his case for himself, his creative ideas about playing Sims completely won me over and he's an absolute pleasure to work with and incredibly intelligent," said Howard.

The movie will release on October 14 this year.

Sony Pictures India recently released a picture of Irrfan and Hanks together.

Hanks and Howard have previously worked together on "The Da Vinci Code" as well as Brown's "Angels and Demons".

"Inferno", as the name suggests, revolves around Italian poet Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy". In the film, Langdon is racing against time to solve the mystery hidden in Dante's poetry to save the world from a deadly artificial plague.

The movie also stars British actress Felicity Jones, Ben Foster, Omar Sy and Sidsey Babett Knudsen.
Oxygen is crucial for the existence of animals on Earth, but an increase in the gas did not lead to the rise of the first animals on our planet, a new study has found.

Researchers showed that 1.4 billion years ago there was enough oxygen for animals - and yet over 800 million years went by before the first animals appeared on Earth.

Animals evolved by about 600 million years ago, which was late in Earth's history. The late evolution of animals, and the fact that oxygen is central for animal respiration, has led to the widely promoted idea that animal evolution corresponded with a late rise in atmospheric oxygen concentrations.

"But sufficient oxygen in itself does not seem to be enough for animals to rise. This is indicated by our studies," said Emma Hammarlund and Don Canfield from the University of Southern Denmark.

The researchers analysed sediment samples from the Xiamaling Formation in China. Their analysis shows that a deep ocean 1.4 billion years ago contained at least 4 per cent of modern oxygen concentrations.

The research uses trace metal distributions to show that the bottom waters where the Xiamaling Formation sediments deposited contain oxygen.

The distribution of biomarkers, molecules derived from ancient organisms, demonstrate that waters of intermediate depth contain no oxygen.

Therefore, the Xiamaling Formation deposited in an ancient oxygen-minimum zone, similar to (but also different) from those found off the present coasts of Chile and Peru.

The scientists used a simple ocean model to estimate the minimum concentrations to atmospheric oxygen required to reproduce the distribution of water-column oxygen in the Xiamaling Formation.

"The water column had an oxygen concentration at least 4 per cent of present atmospheric levels (PAL). That should be sufficient for animals to exist and evolve," said Canfield.

"Researchers know of simple animals, such as sponges and worms, that today are capable of managing with less than 4 per cent PAL, even much less," said Hammarlund.

"Sponges probably resemble some of the first animals on Earth. If they manage with less than 4 per cent today's oxygen levels, it is likely that the first animals could do with these concentrations or less," Canfield added.

The sudden diversification of animals might have been a result of many factors and the oxygen rise may have had less to do with the animal revolution than previously assumed, researchers said.

The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) is working with Union Tourism Ministry to promote 'Incredible Himalayas' to ensure round-the-year tourism in the country.

IATO is working with the Union Tourism Ministry on this campaign which will help tourists footfall throughout the year and not just the peak season, Subhash Goyal, president of Indian Association of Tour Operators said today.

Rs 3.5 crore to Rs 4 crore have been earmarked for this campaign, he said at an Indian Chamber of Commerce conference on tourism.

"A map will be released soon which will have all important destinations in the Himalayas for trekking and adventure routes, northeastern states, valley of flowers and others," Goyal said.

A 20-30 per cent growth in the number of tourist arrivals is expected in 2016. Roughly 7.8 million foreign tourists visit India each year of which 25 per cent go to the mountains, he said.

"Countries in southeast Asia and Middle East do not have mountains. For them Himalayas is very attractive," he said.

Goyal said that tourist guides are being trained in Chinese languages, and added "We already have 400 such guides, but by next year we want to have 4,000.

On the impact of the unrest in Jammu and Kashmir on the



tourism sector, Sharma said in spite of the problems in the Valley, India has witnessed growth in the tourist flow.

"Kashmir is an important part of India. There have been problems due to militancy..., but most of the people want peace there. Tourism projects worth Rs 500 crore have been approved for Kashmir. In spite of problems there, India has witnessed a growth in tourist flow," he said.

On the delay in announcing Tourism Policy, Sharma said it is "almost ready" and the ministry wanted to unveil to after the announcement of the Aviation Policy.

Tourism Secretary Vinod Zutshi said the summit is a "platform" for both domestic and international investors to meet project owners from across the states and Union territories and private sector.

There will be participation from major stakeholders, including states and UTs with their ready to invest projects, banks and financial institutions, cruise liners, entertainment companies, helicopter services, hoteliers, restauranteurs, and spa and yoga centres among others, he said.

To make the summit a success, the Tourism Ministry had organised road shows in countries such as the US, the UAE, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Joint Secretary, Tourism, Suman Billa said this is the best time to invest in tourism sector in India with increased ease of doing business, creation of new infrastructure, opening up of the economy and paradigm shift of government from "being a regulator to partner".

Billa said the CII and Tourism Finance Corporation of India Ltd are principal partners for the summit which has four knowledge partners, namely Ernst and Young, KPMG, Yes Bank and Invest India to assist states and UTs for identifying projects that have investment potential.
India must remain engaged with Pakistan to the extent that the country develops a "vested" interest in the Indian economy which would then mean heavy economic costs for brazen militant attacks, Assocham said today.

"At times, the instrumentalities of economic costs work quite well. But since the commercial engagement between India and Pakistan have remained so low that there is no option for any such recourse," Assocham President Sunil Kanoria said.

India's total trade with Pakistan in fiscal 2014-15 was less than USD 2.5 billion with balance of trade loaded heavily in favour of New Delhi, the chamber pointed out.

Against exports of USD 1.85 billion, imports from Pakistan were less than USD half a billion, meaning thereby that "Pakistan does not depend on India, either for seeking markets for its exports, nor meeting its crucial requirements of imports. So, there is no possibility of any economic costs which can be inflicted on them in situations like this," Assocham said.

Kanoria said that while the basic principle of building commercial relations cannot be to inflict economic costs on the trading partner at a later stage, "a deep and well-entrenched commercial relation has dissuaded countries from taking extreme steps. To that extent, the economic ties have been used for strategic purposes as well."



While Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal remain the top commercial partners for India in South Asia, the total size of the engagement in the region is far less than the desired level, Assocham noted.

"Here too, a vast Indian market has not been really converted into a strategic resource for the partners in south Asia since India's total imports from South Asia are less than USD 3 billion, against exports of USD 20 billion," it said.

India needs to use its vast market for the South Asian partners as a "strategic resource" for them by giving them liberal access and even hand holding them, the chamber said.

The comments come against the backdrop of a terrorist attack at Pathankot air base that claimed lives of seven security personnels.

Political parties such as the Congress has slammed the government's handling of ties with Pakistan in the wake of the Pathankot terror attack which came within days of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lahore visit.
The country's sugar output rose by 6.5% to 7.98 million tonnes in the first three months of the 2015-16 season while exports were 3,00,000 tonnes in the same period, industry body ISMA said today.

Ex-mill sugar prices have improved in the past fortnight by 1-2 per kg but prices still remained below cost of production during October-November period of this season.

As per the latest production data released by Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), the country's overall output has increased to 7.98 million tonnes in the October-December period of this year, up by 6.5% from 7.49 million tonnes in the year-ago period.

Sugar output in Maharashtra, the leading sugar producing state, rose to 3.37 million tonnes from 3.26 million tonnes in the review period. The average sugar recovery in the state was 10.36% this year as against 10.44% last year.

Sugar production in Uttar Pradesh, the second largest sugar producing state, increased marginally to 1.83 million tonnes in October-December of this season as against 1.69 million tonnes in the year-ago period. The average sugar recovery in the state was 9.2%.

Sugar production in Karnataka rose to 1.55 million tonnes from 1.24 million tonnes, while the output in Gujarat increased to 4,40,000 tonnes from 3,88,000 tonnes in the period under the review, ISMA said in a statement.

The sugar production in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana was lower by 41,000 tonnes to 2,15,000 tonnes so far this year, while the output was almost similar to the year-ago period at 80,000 tonnes in Tamil Nadu.

Sugar production in other states especially, Bihar (1,40,000 tonnes), Haryana (1,00,000 tonnes), Punjab (95,000 tonnes), Uttarakhand (70,000 tonnes) and Madhya Pradesh (75,000 tonnes) remained almost at the same level.

On exports, ISMA said mills have contracted for export of around 8 lakh tons of sugar till date and have physically dispatched around 3,00,000 tonnes of sugar.

"Since there is no parity on export of raw sugar due to high cost of sugarcane in India and depressed global price, sugar mills in India have produced almost negligible quantum of raw sugar and are mainly exporting white sugar," it said.

On sugar prices, ISMA said though domestic ex-mill sugar prices have improved in the past fortnight by Rs 1-2 per kg, the all India average ex-mill price of sugar for October to November, 2015 was around Rs 27-28 per kg, which was still Rs 4-5 per kg below the cost of production.

India is all set to produce surplus sugar for the sixth straight year at 26-27 million tonnes in 2015-16 (October- September). To liquidate surplus stock, the Centre has made it mandatory for millers to export four million tonnes this season.
An Indian-origin British national who was a former partner at consulting firm McKinsey & Co has been arrested in New York on allegations of fraud amounting to nearly $890,000, federal prosecutors said today.

Navdeep Arora, a former partner in the Chicago office of McKinsey & Company, was arrested on Sunday at JFK Airport in New York.

Arora, 51, of London, is charged with eight counts of wire fraud in an indictment filed in US District Court in Chicago.

Arora made an initial appearance yesterday in District Court in New York and was ordered detained pending further proceedings, the Department of Justice said.

The indictment, which was returned in August and unsealed yesterday, also charges Matthew Sorensen, a former internal consultant for State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, with five counts of wire fraud.

Sorensen, 49, of Bloomington, Illinois, is scheduled to appear for arraignment on January 11 in Chicago.

According to the federal charges, Arora oversaw various consulting services provided by McKinsey to State Farm.

The indictment contends that Arora and Sorensen used two companies - "Gabriel Solutions" and "Andy's BCB" - to defraud their employers out of phony consulting fees.

Sorensen billed McKinsey for the bogus work purportedly performed by the companies, and Arora allocated the fees to the State Farm projects to which he was assigned, according to the indictment.

As a result of the scheme, McKinsey and State Farm paid $38,265 for consulting services purportedly performed by "Andy's BCB", and $452,710 in fees billed by "Gabriel Solutions," the indictment states.

Sorensen pocketed nearly all of the fees paid to "Andy's BCB," and he took approximately $370,000 of the amount paid to "Gabriel Solutions", according to the indictment.

In addition to the phony consulting services, the indictment contends that Arora fraudulently obtained over $400,000 from McKinsey, State Farm and other McKinsey clients in the form of travel and expense reimbursements.

Arora claimed that the costs had been incurred for legitimate business purposes, when in reality the expenses pertained to Arora's personal travel.

The indictment alleges that Arora falsely expensed personal trips to Scottsdale, Napa, Vail, Miami, Las Vegas, New York, London, Prague and Munich, among .

Arora also obtained reimbursement for personal expenditures he incurred in Chicago while residing there, the indictment states.

The Chicago expenses included hotel, dining and theater costs, according to the indictment, it said.
An 11-member highly-organised pickpocket gang, majority of which were of Indian-origin, have been jailed for a total of 30 years for amassing more than five million pounds by stealing smartphones on London's Underground tube network.

British Transport Police (BTP) discovered that Nawid Moshfiq was the ringleader of the gang which included Olia Moshiq, Paramijit Singh Kalra, 42, Harmet Bhatia, 24, Pritbal Bhatia, 55, Nirmohan Bhatia, 20, Ranjit Banger, 31, Mubarak Korasi, 41, Ahmed Raza, 28, Ariji Singh Sethi, 43, and Nirmohan Singh, 38.

More than 100 officers raided private properties and businesses in south-west London where more than a thousand smartphones and 143,000 pounds were seized as part of BTP's Operation Park.

The operation began almost two-and-a-half years ago, resulting in the 11 being sentenced at Blackfriars Crown Court in London last month over two trials with conspiracy to handle stolen goods and money laundering offences.

"This was a long and complex investigation into a highly organised criminal gang who used stolen property from the rail network for their personal gain," said BTP Detective Chief Inspector John Justice.

"To truly tackle theft, we can't just catch pickpockets and petty thieves; we have to also dismantle the criminal networks behind them, who profit from this type of crime. Phones are often stolen out of view of CCTV in crowded carriages or busy stations without the owner even realising.

"This makes it hard for us to catch thieves in the act and even when we do, we often find they are only small players in much bigger criminal organisations."



The court heard how the gang worked strict "office hours" between 2pm and 10pm, earning almost 10,000 pounds a day nabbing mobile phones from commuters on the London Underground, known as Tube.

At one address, officers seized more than 23,000 pounds which had been hidden in different rooms of the house, including inside a child's jacket.
The Islamic State group has lost around a third of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, according to figures provided today by the US-led coalition.

"In Iraq, it's about 40 per cent," said Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the international coalition which carries out daily air raids against IS and also provides training and weapons to local forces fighting the group.

"In Syria... We think it's around 20" per cent, he said.

When the size of the so-called caliphate IS proclaimed 18 months ago was at its largest, Iraq accounted for a slightly bigger part of it than Syria.

"Taking together Iraq and Syria... They lost 30 per cent of the territory they once held," Warren told reporters in Baghdad.

Since taking control of Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria in May 2015, IS has been on the back foot most of the time.

A variety of Iraqi forces -- including the Kurdish peshmerga, the Shiite-dominated Popular Mobilisation paramilitary force and the federal forces -- have reclaimed major urban centres, including Ramadi last week.

Warren's estimate appear to differ significantly from a figure of 14 per cent provided by the IHS Jane's think-tank, albeit predating the retaking of Ramadi.
Fighting raged between the Islamic State group and Libyan forces today as the jihadists pushed on the country's crucial coastal oil terminals.

For the second day running, IS jihadists -- an increasingly powerful force in strife-torn Libya -- attacked oil facilities in the so-called "oil crescent" along Libya's northern coast.

IS has for several weeks been trying to push east from its coastal stronghold of Sirte and officials have warned of crippling consequences if the jihadists manage to seize control of Libya's oil resources.

"Fighting continued today between Daesh and oil facility guards backed by the air force," said Ali al-Hassi, a spokesman for the unit tasked with guarding oil installations, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"The fighting is happening in an area 20 kilometres southwest of Al-Sidra and we have lost seven men," he said.

The key Al-Sidra and Ras Lanouf oil terminals were both targeted in IS attacks yesterday, prompting the National Oil Company to call on Libya's internationally recognised government to "fully assume its responsibilities" and support guards with weapons, ammunition and equipment.

"If Daesh took control of oil terminals and fields around Al-Sidra, it would greatly paralyse the foundations of the Libyan state," it said, adding that many guards had not been paid for several months.

IS fighters yesterday launched attacks, including a suicide car bombing, near Al-Sidra and Ras Lanouf, an army official said.

The pro-IS Amaq news agency released video footage allegedly showing IS fighters entering Al-Sidra yesterday, but the army official said they had been repulsed.

A Libyan oil official said that a 420,000-barrel oil storage tank in Ras Lanouf caught fire during yesterday's clashes.

The jihadist group said the attack came after it took control of Ben Jawad town, 150 kilometres east of Sirte.

Air strikes were carried out "from dawn until dusk" on jihadist targets between Al-Sidra and Ben Jawad, an air force colonel in Misrata said.

The jihadists have taken advantage of chaos in Libya since the 2011 revolt that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi to extend their influence there.

Yesterday's attack was the first of its kind since IS seized Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte in June 2015.

Ludovico Carlino, a senior analyst at IHS Country Risk said the attacks were part of IS' declared strategy of isolating and controlling energy assets in Libya.
A power failure that plunged parts of western Ukraine into the dark last month was caused by a cyberattack, IT experts said today, and one source called it a world first.

The blackout, which hit a large part of the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk on December 23, was due to a computer virus, they said.

The local electricity company, Prikarpattiaoblenergo, said at the time that the breakdown was caused by "the intervention of unauthorised persons ... In the remote access system" and its technicians had had to restore power manually.

But Ukraine's SBU security service later said it found malware -- programmes designed to take over or damage systems -- on the networks of several regional electricity companies.

"A virus which we've never seen before was detected... It causes damage. The automated systems stopped functioning and computers shut down," said a Ukrainian source familiar with the incident on condition of anonymity.

A spokeswoman for the Ivano-Frankivsk SBU office Maria Rymar, said the agency was still working on the case.

"For the moment, we can't say who did it and for what purpose," she said.

The IT security firm ESET pinned the blame on a programme called KillDisk that was introduced onto the electricity company's computers on an infected Excel spreading document via "phishing" -- tempting an employee to open an inocuous-looking file.

The company, which has been monitoring the spread of KillDisk and a companion programme, said the virus deleted files in the computer systems, making them inoperable, and also contained code to sabotage industrial systems.

"It was a world first" in bringing down civilian infrastructure, ESET's French subsidiary said in a statement.

"This attack can only confirm what professionals have been fearing -- cyber-criminals are more and more powerful and cyber-attacks will be more and more numerous in 2016."



IT experts have been warning for years about cyber-security in vital civilian infrastructure such as power grids and transport.

Iran's nuclear refining facilities were hobbled in 2010 by a virus called Stuxnet, which is suspected to have been developed by the United States and Israel.

That was believed to the first virus designed not just to steal information or hijack computers, but to damage equipment.
Italy has launched a tender to find a buyer for the Ilva steel works, one of the most polluting industrial sites in Europe, giving national and international shoppers a month to make their offers.

The government's call for bidders was published in several Italian and foreign dailies today, notably in the United States and Britain. Would-be buyers have from January 10 to February 10 to submit offers, individually or in an alliance.

Italy's Marcegaglia, Arvedi and Amenduni, Switzerland-based Duferco, and ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel producer, are all potentially interested in the plant in the southern city of Taranto, according to Italian media reports.

Economic Development Minister Federica Guidi gave the green light yesterday to the sale of the debt-plagued steelworks, which has been under special administration since 2013.

Any deal would have to ensure production continues, jobs are largely protected and environmental rules are respected.

A government decree in December set the deadline for completing the sale at June 30 and stipulated that 300 million euros would be loaned to the mammoth plant from the state's coffers to "facilitate the transition phase".

"The government is banking on an Italian alliance to counter the foreseeable offer from the Franco-Indian multinational ArcelorMittal," La Repubblica said.

The plant used to churn out an estimated nine million tonnes of steel per year -- about a third of the country's total production.

But experts fear a sale is far from certain in light of the currently depressed state of a global steel industry blighted by chronic over-capacity.

"Who will take on a company which loses millions each month -- some 16 million today but 50 million a month in the past -- which has very strict rules concerning pollution and which still has one furnace impounded?" La Repubblica asked.

The site, which provides work for some 14,000 people, was placed under special administration after the Riva family which owns it was accused of failing to prevent toxic emissions from spewing out across the town.

A mega-trial opened in October of industrialists, politicians and officials blamed for pollution from the plant that caused at least 400 premature deaths.

But many locals want the plant to remain open for fear of the consequences of closure in an area with an already towering unemployment level.
Ivory Coast's justice minister has given details of President Alassane Ouattara's pledge to show leniency to 3,100 inmates, saying only a small portion of those selected were behind bars for deadly post- election unrest.

The president's act applied to just 100 people awaiting trial in connection with the violence, which left some 3,000 dead in the west African nation over five months in 2010-2011, Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly told AFP yesterday.

The move, announced in Ouattara's New Year's address to the nation on Thursday, affects "3,000 people, and another 100 who received provisional release, which is not a pardon," said Coulibaly.

"This measure (provisional release) concerns people covered by the post-election crisis cases. Most of them have not yet been judged."



Coulibaly said the move "can be considered an effort for social cohesion" as the country seeks to return to stability after years of turbulence.

Ouattara told the nation on Thursday that he had decided to use his right of "clemency to grant full and partial sentence reductions."



He added it would allow 3,100 people to "get their freedom back and for others to see their terms shortened", but did not give a breakdown of how many prisoners would go free immediately and how many would remain behind bars.

Ouattara, a former economist, won a second five-year term by a landslide in October in the nation's first peaceful vote in more than a decade.

He has been credited with reviving the economy of the war- scarred country, the world's leading cocoa producer, investing in huge infrastructure projects that have helped raise annual growth to around nine percent.

The post-election violence in 2010-11 came after former strongman leader Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat to Ouattara.

Gbagbo was eventually defeated by pro-Ouattara forces backed by the UN and France, is now awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

The 2010-2011 crisis was a bloody epilogue to a decade of upheaval, splitting west Africa's economic powerhouse between a rebel-held north and a loyalist south.
A huge crowd, raising of slogans and a minor scuffle between photographers and security personnel marked the presence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at the court here where he came to substantiate the charge of criminal defamation against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and five AAP leaders.

As soon as Jaitley's car zoomed into the Patiala House Court complex at 1.56 PM amidst a tight security cover, onlookers, lawyers and police officials surrounded the vehicle.

The security presonnel were on their toes to prevent any untoward incident. As Jaitley came out of his vehicle, a large number of photo journalists rushed towards him to click his picture, leading to a minor scuffle between them and the policemen.

The policemen, who insisted that photography was not permitted inside the court premises, were seen pushing the photo journalists due to which some of them fell down.

Before Jaitley arrived at the court premises, the security officials had asked everyone to vacate the courtroom of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal, before whom the matter was listed.

Only the concerned lawyers were allowed to enter the courtroom along with some BJP leaders.

As Jaitley entered the court, the police officials formed a human chain to prevent the onlookers from entering.

As Jaitley came out of the courtroom at around 4.25 PM after recording his statement, some lawyers and BJP supporters started shouting slogans in his favour.

However, the security officials escorted the minister to his vehicle during which several onlookers, who were trying to come close to Jaitley, were pushed off.
Filmmaker James Gunn is all praise for Tom Holland, calling the him "off the charts" amazing in his new role as Spider-Man.

The 45-year-old "Guardians of the Galaxy" helmer, who has already seen "Captain America: Civil War," says Holland is treat for the fans, reported Digital Spy.

"Tom Holland is off-the-charts awesome. Off the charts. Truly. Hand to my heart, he's amazing," Gunn said.

"It's one of the best Marvel movies ever, and I can't believe what a wonderful job (directors Joe and Anthony Russo) did. It's an amazing film, and people are going to be really excited to see that come summertime,"? he added.

Holland will make his debut as the wallcrawler with the Marvel film set to release this year.

His solo Spider-Man film debut is scheduled for July 2017.
Japan and France today joined other countries in condemning the attack at the Pathankot air base in which seven securitymen were killed.

The US, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan have already condemned the attack with America asserting that it expects Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators of the terror strike.

"We condemn the terrorist attack. Terrorism cannot be justified for any reason. Japan expresses solidarity with government and people of India," Japan said.

The French government said, "France condemns attack on Indian military base; stands alongside India in fight against terrorism."



During a media briefing yesterday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, "We condemn this attack... At this juncture this attack might have been launched intentionally to disrupt this momentum (in Indo-Pak ties). Many media reports have such doubts."



Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have also condemned the attack. While Islamabad issued a statement immediately after the attack on January 2, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday to condemn the strike.

Significantly, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called up Modi today and vowed "prompt and decisive action" against the terrorists behind the strike.

In a pre-dawn attack, a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected to be belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed outfit, struck at the Air Force base in Punjab on January 2.
Japan will send a huge cache of plutonium -- enough to produce 50 nuclear bombs -- to the United States as part of a deal to return the material that was used for research, reports and officials said today.

The plutonium stockpile, provided by the US, Britain and France decades ago, has caused some disquiet given that Japan has said it has the ability to produce a nuclear weapon even if it chooses not to.

Some 331 kilograms of the highly fissionable material will be sent by ship to a nuclear facility in South Carolina by the end of March, Kyodo News reported yesterday in a dispatch from Washington that cited unnamed Japanese government sources.

The shipment, which comes ahead of a nuclear security summit in Washington in March, is meant to underscore both countries' commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and is part of a deal they made in 2014.

It will be one of Japan's most significant overseas movements of plutonium since it transported one tonne from France in 1993 to be used in nuclear reactor experiments.

That shipment triggered an outcry at the time from countries citing environmental and security concerns.

A Japanese official confirmed the amount of plutonium to be sent to the US and said that preparations for the shipment are under way.

"But we can't comment on further details, including the departure date and route, for security reasons," the official in the nuclear technology section at the education ministry told AFP today.

The material has been stored at the Nuclear Science Research Institute northeast of Tokyo, he added.

Japan relies heavily on nuclear technology for its energy needs.

In 2006, then foreign minister Taro Aso sparked panic in neighbouring countries by saying Japan, a scientific superpower with numerous Nobel prizes to its credit, had the know-how to produce nuclear arms but opts not to.

Japan is the only country to ever have been attacked with nuclear weapons, and under a 1967 policy it refuses to produce, possess or allow nuclear weapons on its soil.

But in 2010 Tokyo admitted to previous secret agreements with the United States to allow American warships to carry nuclear weapons across Japanese territory and to take the arms to US bases on Okinawa island in an emergency.
In the wake of the latest instance of arrest of 12 Indian fishermen by Sri Lankan navy, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today shot off another letter to the Centre, seeking Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in the matter.

Jayalalithaa said people of the state were "unhappy with the lack of any concrete measures on behalf of the Government of India on the vexed fishermen issue."



In the letter to the PM seeking his intervention for release of 104 fishermen and 66 boats from Sri Lanka, she said it was "very regrettable" that many of these fishermen remained under Lankan custody for long period, unable to spend the festive season with their families.

She wrote to Modi following the arrest of 12 Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy when they were fishing near Katchatheevu today.

"The continued incarceration of the fishermen and their boats for extended periods and the apparent lack of any serious effort on behalf of the Government of India to obtain their early release has contributed in no small measure to the sense of despondency amongst the coastal fishermen community," she said.

While her government was committed in restoring and upholding the 'historic rights' of the state's fishermen to fish in their traditional fishing waters of Palk Bay, the repeated attempts by Lankan Navy to 'infringe' on these rights needed to be ended through concerted efforts by the Centre.

People in Tamil Nadu were also "increasingly unhappy" over the lack of any concrete measures by the Centre, she said.

She said it was imperative to proactively initiate an appropriate set of actions for permanent solution to this "sensitive issue that plagues the livelihood of thousands of Tamil Nadu fishermen."



Seeking Modi's personal intervention, she urged him to ensure that the matter "is effectively taken up at the highest level with the Sri Lankan Government to secure the immediate release of 104 fishermen and 66 fishing boats currently in Sri Lankan custody."



While reiterating her demand for a Rs 1520 crore deep-sea fishing package from Centre, Jayalalithaa also recalled her government's opposition to the Indo-Lankan agreements of 1974 and 1976 ceding Katchatheevu islet to Sri Lanka.

Jayalalithaa had earlier written to Modi, voicing concern over recurring instances of such arrests.
Reaching out to investors, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today claimed that there is no dearth of land for projects in the state, including those for coal mining.

"There is no problem with regard to land in Jharkhand. Yesterday, we issued land bank in which 23 lakh hectares are available," Das said, in response to a query whether there are any issues of land acquisition in the state for new investments.

He was present at the signing of an MoU among Jharkhand, JBVNL and the Power Ministry marking the state joining the UDAY scheme for revival of its power distribution company.

This comes at a time when the state-owned Coal India is eyeing 1 billion tonnes of coal production by 2020.

Das spoke of the progress in Tilaiya power project, adding that the work has started in the North Karanpura thermal power plant. He was hopeful that the project will be completed by 2017.

Jharkhand's Energy Principal Secretary S K G Rahate said the re-bidding of 3,960-MW Tilaiya ultra mega power project is expected in mid-February as 18 power procurers have decided to accept the termination notice for the plant given by Anil Ambani-led Reliance Power.

Reliance Power, in August 2009, had won rights to set up the ultra mega power project at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand after bidding a levellised tariff of Rs 1.77 per unit, but couldn't start work as the state government had not provided the required land even after more than five years.

Explaining the reasons for termination of the contract, Reliance Power had said, "There has been a delay of over five years in land acquisition by the state government for the power plant, captive coal blocks and related infrastructure."



The PPA required procurers to hand over land and other clearances by February 2010.
Jharkhand today signed an agreement with the Power Ministry to join UDAY, a central scheme for the revival of debt-stressed power distribution companies, which will offer the state a net benefit of approximately Rs 5,300 crore.

The central and state governments and JBVNL (Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd) signed a memorandum of understanding under the scheme -- Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojna -- here today for operation and financial turnaround of JBVNL.

The signing ceremony was held in the presence of the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Raghubar Das.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister said that "in coming years, we want to make Jharkhand a power and IT hub and our government is working in this direction".

Terming UDAY to be "a win-win scheme for all", Power Secretary Pradeep Kumar Pujari said most of the MoUs will be signed in the next few weeks.

The signing of today's MoU will lead to significant benefits for JBVNL, with Jharkhand taking over 100 per cent liabilities of outstanding dues with central public sector undertakings (CPSUs) and 75 per cent of the outstanding debt of JBVNL as on September 30, 2015.

JBVNL will have annual savings of almost Rs 115 crore in annual interest cost through reduction of debt to Rs 291 crore, from Rs 1,165 crore.

The balance debt will be repaid with fresh state-guaranteed discom bonds to be issued at coupon rates of around 3 per cent less than the average existing rate.

As a special dispensation, JBVNL will also be able to wipe out its outstanding dues amounting to Rs 6,000 crore.

"This would help the discom save more than Rs 1,000 crore annually by way of surcharge on outstanding dues to power generators," the ministry said.

Sustainability of operational and financial performance forms the core of UDAY.

The reduction in AT&C losses itself is likely to result in additional revenues of around Rs 2,000 crore for JBVNL till 2018-19.
Dutch carrier KLM today said a "disturbed passenger" injured himself and a co-pilot on a flight to China before being overpowered by crew and other passengers.

KLM issued a brief statement saying the incident happened Sunday on flight KL897 from Amsterdam to Beijing. The carrier said the flight was never at risk and landed as planned in Beijing.

KLM said the co-pilot was treated for a minor injury in Beijing and has since returned to the Netherlands. The passenger injured himself in a toilet.

A KLM spokesman declined to give more details.
Kuwait became today the latest Gulf Arab state to recall its ambassador from Iran to protest attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic republic.

It did not, however, expel Tehran's ambassador or downgrade the level of diplomatic relationship with Iran.

The announcement comes after Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Bahrain severed ties with predominantly Shiite Iran this week.

And the United Arab Emirates has recalled its ambassador and downgraded ties with the Islamic republic.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, along with Oman and Qatar.

The attacks "represent a flagrant breach of international agreements and norms and a grave violation of Iran's international commitments for the security of diplomatic missions and the safety of diplomats," the official KUNA agency cited the foreign ministry as saying.

Kuwait has maintained good relations with Tehran despite busting in August a cell allegedly spying for Iran.

Around a third of Kuwait's native population of 1.3 million is Shiite.

Relations between Riyadh and Tehran were already strained over their support for opposite sides in conflicts in Syrian and Yemen, and were exacerbated over Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Professional networking platform LinkedIn today appointed Akshay Kothari as Country Manager for India, with immediate effect.

India has one of the largest userbase for LinkedIn, which has more than 400 million members globally.

Kothari replaces Nishant Rao, who quit the company in October last year to join cloud-based customer support software firm Freshdesk as its Chief Operating Officer.

Kothari will report to Olivier Legrand, LinkedIn's Managing Director for the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, and join the company's APAC senior management team, LinkedIn said in a statement.

He joined LinkedIn in 2013 when Pulse, the company he co-founded and was CEO for almost 3 years, was acquired by LinkedIn.

Since then, based out of LinkedIn's global headquarters in Mountain View, California, he has led several major product and content initiatives, including Pulse.

Kothari also played an important role in boosting the number of members publishing on LinkedIn from 1,000 to nearly 2 million in the last two years.

"This new role also brings me back 'full-circle' to India, a high-growth market where there are opportunities abound to create even more value for our members and clients. Ultimately, my dream for LinkedIn is to play an even more significant role in helping to transform professionals and businesses in India, and showcase their success to the rest of the world," Kothari said.

India has the second largest base of LinkedIn members globally, after the US. Over the past six years, the member base in India saw a ten-fold increase (which translates to a compound annual growth rate of 46 per cent) to more than 33 million.

"India continues to be a strategic market for LinkedIn. While we have come a long way over the past six years in the country, we still have a long runway of opportunities," Legrand said.
A trader was left seriously injured after being attacked by a group of unidentified youth over an alleged parking tussle at Mission Compound area here.

The incident took place last night when trade leader Anurag Malik was returning home after shutting down his shop. Malik had a bitter quarrel with some youth over moving a car, SP Mahendra Yadav said.

The group then reached Malik's house and attacked him with sticks, he said, adding that the attackers fled from the spot after the crime.

Malik, who was seriously injured in the attack was shifted to the district hospital where his condition is stated to be critical, police said.

An FIR in this connection has been lodged at Sadar Bazar police station and further investigation is underway, they added.
The BJP-led Maharashtra government has barred former directors of Maharashtra State Cooperative (MSC) Bank, who were superseded by the RBI for alleged financial irregularities, from contesting the bank elections for ten years.

The decision, announced by Cooperation Minister Chandrakant Patil, has drawn criticism from the opposition which said it violated provisions of the Cooperatives Act.

RBI, in 2011, had superseded the board of directors of the MSC Bank and appointed administrators.

"There was a corruption of Rs 450 crore. RBI had to supersede the board. I want to ask the opposition: should we allow those who indulged in such corruption to become the bank directors again?" the minister said here today.

"This is a decision taken on merit," Patil, a BJP leader who hails from Kolhapur district, said.

"The RBI's logic was that how will the bank be able to recover its money if those who indulged in corruption become directors again," the minister said.

Patil had, during the winter session of state legislature, announced that action will be taken against former directors of MSC Bank including the former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and his fellow NCP leader Jayant Patil for alleged involvement in a multi-crore scam.

The procedure to fix responsibility for recovery of amount will be completed before May 22, 2016, Patil had said.

BJP legislator Anil Gote had demanded to know what action will be taken against directors involved in corruption.
Maharashtra government will hold medical camps in the drought-hit regions of the state, where farmers, labourers and people under the BPL category will be treated free of cost.

These camps will be conducted under the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana.

Maharashtra Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan said that in the first phase of the medical camp, called 'Maha Arogya Shibir' starting January 9, will cover 14 talukas in Jalgaon district.

"The first phase of this medical camp will last for a week and consist of doctors from various state-run hospitals and specialists from private hospitals as well. In the course of this camp, there will not only be diagnoses, but people will be treated for their illnesses," Mahajan said.

"If required, cataract operations, cardiac surgeries and neuro surgeries will be performed on patients," he said, adding that those who need advanced treatment, would be referred to hospitals in Mumbai.

Mahajan said a team of Tata Memorial Centre will also be a part of the medical camp, where doctors would test people showing signs of cancer, who would then be referred to a super-speciality hospitals in Mumbai.

He added that around 35,000 people are expected to benefit from the medical camp in Jalgaon and that there would be a blood donation camp held on a large-scale as well.
Malaysia Airlines today announced immediate restrictions on check-in luggage for some Europe-bound flights, citing strong headwinds, a move that left aviation analysts puzzled.

In a statement on its website, the carrier said "unseasonably strong headwinds" were limiting the amount of baggage its flights could handle.

"This longer flight path consumes more jet fuel and for safety reasons, Malaysia Airlines has had to impose temporary limitation on checked-in baggage allowance," it said.

"Passengers who wish to check in their luggage will be able to do so, however their baggage will only arrive later."



The airline advised economy passengers only to carry 7kg of hand luggage and first-class and business-class customers to limit themselves to 14kg of hand luggage.

Aviation analysts said they were baffled by the move.

"It's highly unusual and bizarre but that's what we've got used to from Malaysia Airlines. By their reasoning all other carriers in Southeast Asia heading to Europe would not be able to check in luggage, too, if indeed what they claim is true," Shukor Yusof, analyst with Malaysia-based Endau Analytics, told AFP.

"I've never heard anything more ludicrous in my 20 years in the industry."



Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at Flightglobal, described the airline's reasoning as strange.

"It doesn't make sense... And it's probably going to cause a lot of passenger frustration," he said.

The airline had no immediate comment.

The trouble-plagued company last month said it was investigating a Christmas Day mix-up that sent one of its planes flying in the wrong direction after it left Auckland.

The airline is also still reeling from the loss of two planes in 2014, including Flight MH370 which disappeared in March that year after inexplicably deviating from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight path with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

In July 2014 Flight MH17 was blown out of the sky by a ground-to-air missile over Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard.

In June last year the loss-making flag carrier's new CEO Christoph Mueller outlined plans to stabilise it including 6,000 job cuts.
A 25-year-old man, who was allegedly involved in supply of arms, has been arrested from east Delhi's Mayur Vihar area and 15 pistols were recovered from his possession, police said today.

Vir Pal, a resident of Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh, allegedly used to supply illegal arms to the criminals of Delhi-NCR, police said.

Acting on a tip-off that the arms dealer was spotted in Mayur Vihar yesterday, a special team of Delhi police laid a trap and apprehended him, DCP (Special Cell) P S Kushwah said.

According to police, the accused was also involved in a murder case in Gonda police station of Aligarh district.

Police have lodged an FIR against him and further investigations are on to find his associates, police said.
A man accused of vandalising a mosque along Florida's Space Coast, with lights and windows smashed by a machete and bacon left at the scene, has been arrested.

Officers in the city of Titusville say 35-year-old Michael Scott Wolfe was taken into custody yesterday. Online jail records show he's charged with criminal mischief.

Authorities say the suspect went to the Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque January 1.

Surveillance video shows the suspect entering the mosque's carport late at night when no one was there and using a machete to smash cameras, lights and windows.

Police say the bacon was left by the front door. Consumption of pork and products made from pork is forbidden in Islam.

Wolfe remains behind bars. It isn't clear if he has an attorney.
The legacy of Chairman Mao Zedong continues to inspire his supporters four decades after his death, with a giant gold-painted statue of China's Communist Party founder at the cost of a whopping USD 4.6 lakh.

The 36 metre-high statute made up of concrete and steel has been installed in an open countryside in Tongxu county near Kaifeng in the central Henan province by farmers and local entrepreneurs who funded its construction.

Villagers said many tourists had come to have their photographs taken with the landmark, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported today.

The Post also carried an image of the gold-painted statue that has the man who ruled China with an iron grip for nearly three decades seated with his hands crossed.

The statue was erected even though China moved away from his hardline Marxist ideology opting for market reforms.

It came up amid reports of disquiet in the Communist Party of China (CPC) about efforts by die-hard Mao supporters to revive his controversial legacy which left millions of dead in various campaigns specially the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) aimed at purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements to establish a social order based on Marxist ideology.

While China during his period struggled with high rates of poverty, it moved away from his hardline ideology with a broad range of economic reforms, carried out by his successor Deng Xiaoping, which were largely credited for achieving record economic growth, catapulting it to become the world's second largest economy.

The leaders of the CPC in the last three decades including the present President Xi Jinping are the supporters of Deng's reform and opening up policy while revering Mao as founder of the party and modern China.

Thousands had gathered last month at Mao's hometown Shaoshan county in Hunan to celebrate his 122nd birthday during which several people criticised the reversal of his ideology.

Yuan Yuhua, a Maoist and self-educated scholar, said supporters of Mao's political ideas were increasingly viewed with suspicion by the authorities.

"Most Maoist gatherings in other places are suppressed, causing more leftists to come here," he said.

"In the past two years, leftist gatherings to commemorate Mao have dwindled, in part due to official interference," the Post quoted him as saying.

Mao died on September 9, 1976 at the age of 82.
A final year student of Kakatiya Medical College, Warangal, committed suicide by hanging herself from a fan at her college hostel room this morning, police said.

Matawada police said that M S Mounika, the girl, hailed from Old Boinapally area of Secunderabad.

She had joined the MBBS course in 2011 and was going to appear for final year exams from January 22.

Police commissioner G Sudheer Babu visited the spot and took review of the probe.

No suicide note was recovered from her room, police said, adding that stress of the studies may have prompted her to take the extreme step. Further probe is on.
One of five missing Hong Kong booksellers feared detained by Chinese authorities is a British citizen, the UK's foreign office confirmed today, saying it was "deeply concerned" over the disappearances.

The case has sparked fury from lawmakers and activists in semi-autonomous Hong Kong, adding to growing unease that freedoms in the city are being eroded.

The statement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office did not specify which of the missing men is British, but it is believed to be Lee Bo, 65, the latest bookseller to go missing.

Lee disappeared last week and was last seen in Hong Kong.

The five missing men all work for Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current, known for books critical of China.

"We are deeply concerned by reports about the disappearance and detention of individuals associated with the Causeway Bay Books bookstore in Hong Kong," the statement said, referring to the firm's affiliated shop.

"We can confirm that one of the individuals is a British citizen and we have urgently requested the Hong Kong and mainland authorities' assistance in ascertaining this individual's welfare and whereabouts."



The FCO urged the Hong Kong government to "honour its commitment" to press freedom.

It added that it hoped Chinese authorities would "continue to make every effort to ensure that the environment in which the media and publishers operate in the Hong Kong... supports full and frank reporting".

The statement was released as British foreign secretary Philip Hammond is in Beijing on a two-day official visit.

Hong Kong was handed back to Beijing by Britain in 1997 and enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland, and Chinese law enforcers have no right to operate in the city.
The mystery surrounding five missing Hong Kong booksellers known for titles banned in mainland China deepened after one purportedly wrote to say he was fine and helping with an investigation, prompting his wife to drop a missing person's report.

Hong Kong police said late yesterday that Lee Bo's wife canceled the report, but that they would continue investigating the other cases. They didn't say whether Lee had been located.

Lee and four other people associated with publisher Mighty Current, which specializes in books critical of China's Communist Party leaders, have vanished in recent months.

Their disappearances have prompted fears that Beijing is eroding the "one country, two systems principle" that's been in place since Britain ceded control in 1997 and that grants Hong Kong civil liberties nonexistent on the mainland, including freedom of the press.

Lee's disappearance has triggered speculation that Chinese security agents entered Hong Kong to abduct and spirit him to the mainland.

Four other people linked to the company went missing in October, but they were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.

Taiwan's Central Agency first reported late yesterday on Lee's handwritten faxed letter, which was then circulated by Chinese-language media in Hong Kong.

The letter, addressed to an employee at the publishing company's Causeway Bay Bookstore, said: "Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren't to be revealed to the public, I have made way own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties."



"It might take a bit of time," it said. "My current situation is very well. All is normal."



The letter gave no details about what the investigation was related to.

Local media reported that Lee's wife, Choi Ka-ping, asked police to drop the missing person's report after learning of the letter, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed. Choi's phone number was written on the fax, but calls to her went unanswered.

However, Hong Kong lawmakers and human rights activists were skeptical that the letter proved Lee was safe.
With 11-year low oil price forcing oil and gas producers to cut spending, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today brainstormed with global experts on ways to attract investments into India and raise domestic production.

Modi, in a two-hour long meeting with experts including BP Group chief executive Bob Dudley and International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol, discussed steps needed to give fillip to domestic oil and gas sector where no major discovery has been brought to production in the last five years.

The underlying theme was how to attract investment in oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) and raise domestic production, sources privy to the deliberations said.

The experts, who also included Royal Dutch Shell Director (Projects & Technology) Harry Brekelmans and Pulitzer award- winning American author Daniel Yergin, detailed regulatory faultlines as well as need for steps like freeing of natural gas prices to boost domestic investments.

At around USD 37 a barrel, crude oil prices are well below the cost of production, forcing oil companies to cut spending, sell assets, shed jobs and delay projects.

Sources said Modi also discussed ways of raising share of natural gas in the energy basket from 11 per cent to at least 20 per cent by end of the decade so as to cut carbon emission and provide a cleaner fuel to power the economy.

The government's move to give market-linked price for gas produced from fields auctioned in future also figured at the meeting with a demand being made that the same dispensation should be extended to current discoveries as well, they said.

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and BP along with its partner Reliance Industries are sitting on about two dozen gas discoveries as the current rate of USD 4.24 per million British thermal unit is economically unviable for them to produce.

The price arrived at using a formula based on rates prevalent in gas-surplus economies like the US, Canada and Russia, is about half the rate at which India imports gas (LNG).

"The interaction also included Union Ministers (for Finance) Arun Jaitley, (Power & Coal) Piyush Goyal and (Oil) Dharmendra Pradhan, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagariya, besides top officials from the Government and NITI Aayog," an official statement said here.

The discussions focused on "subjects such as increasing the share of gas in India's energy mix, fresh investment in oil and gas exploration in India, regulatory frameworks, international acquisition of oil and gas assets, emerging areas such as shale gas and coal-bed methane, and the oil and gas sector related possibilities of Make in India", it said.

Modi emphasised on the need for taking a fresh look at



the sector, to bring in investment, technological upgradation, and development of human resource.

He sought expert opinion to revive country's oil and gas sector that has seen a rapid decline since 2009.

Former oil secretaries Vijay Kelkar and Vivek Rae were also present at the meeting.

Dudley, in his previous meeting with Modi in July last year, pitched for "appropriate pricing" of gas for complex and capital intensive deep sea projects like KG-D6.

BP, which had in 2011 bought 30 per cent stake in RIL's 21 oil and gas blocks including KG-D6 for USD 7.2 billion, is working on reviving the sagging output from eastern offshore KG-D6 fields.

But most companies have been unhappy at the new gas pricing formula fixed by the BJP-government in October 2014.

The industry has also been seeking an early decision on the premium that the government promised to give for future gas discoveries.

Also discussed at today's meeting were opportunities and challenges facing the sector, the source said.
NATO is flatly dismissing a claim by Russia that its actions and expansion constitute a menace for Russia's security.

Alliance spokesperson Oana Lungescu said today that NATO is still studying Russia's new security doctrine, approved last week.

"That said," Lungescu added, "we categorically reject totally unfounded claims that NATO and its policies constitute a security threat" for Moscow.

The new Russian document, signed last Thursday by President Vladimir Putin, accuses NATO of violating international law and moving its military infrastructure closer to Russia's borders.

Last month, NATO invited Montenegro to begin accession talks to become its 29th member. Lungescu said "NATO's enlargement is not directed against anyone" and that each sovereign nation "has the right to choose for itself whether it joins any treaty or alliance.
Nepal's agitating Madhesi Front and the three major parties today formed a taskforce to find a common ground and narrow their differences over the new Constitution in a bid to end the political crisis and the shortage of essential goods due to prologed protests.

Hridayesh Tripathi of Terai Madhes Democratic Party, Rajendra Shrestha of Federal Democratic Forum Nepal and Ram Naresh Raya, senior leader of Terai Madhes Sadhbhawana Party, are the members of the taskforce.

However, Rajendra Mahato-led Sadbhawana Party, one of the constituents of the four-party United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF), has not been included in the panel.

Mahato was injured in a baton charge by police in Biratnagar last week; his party has announced fresh protest programmes, demanding apology for the attack on its chairman.

The major political parties -- Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist) -- had on Sunday proposed to the UDMF a taskforce to find a common ground on demands put forth by the Madhesi leaders.

Madhesis, who share strong cultural and family bonds with Indians, demand a re-demarcation of provinces, fixing of electoral constituencies on the basis of population and proportional representation.

The major parties have appointed Mahesh Acharya of the Nepali Congress (NC), Bhim Rawal of the CPN-UML and Krishna Bahadur Mahara of the UCPN (Maoist) to the panel.

The Sunday talks were attended by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, NC president Sushil Koirala and UCPN-Maoist chairman Prachanda.

Life in the southern Nepal plains have been seriously hit for the past four months due to Madhesi protests against Nepal's new Constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly on September 20.

So far, over 50 people have died in the Madhesi-Tharu agitation, seeking changes in the constitution.

The Speaker of Nepal's Parliament, Onsari Ghartimagar, yesterday gave a 72-hour deadline to lawmakers to register their amendment proposal on the Bill on First Amendment to the new Constitution, after the discussion on the proposed Constitution Amendment Bill concluded on Sunday.

Speaking at a parliament meeting, Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Agni Prasad Kharel requested the UDMF to utilise the 72 hours to find a solution and resolve the problems related to the Madhesi community.
German leaders expressed shock over dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women on New Year's Eve in the western city of Cologne blamed on "Arab-looking men," but warned against anti-migrant scapegoating.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a thorough investigation of the "repugnant" attacks, ranging from groping to at least one reported rape, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities outside the city's main train station and its famed Gothic cathedral.

Her spokesman Steffen Seibert said she had called Cologne's mayor, Henriette Reker, to express her "outrage" over the violence, which she said required "a tough response from the state".

"Everything must be done to find as many of the perpetrators as possible as quickly as possible and bring them to justice, regardless of their origin or background," Seibert quoted Merkel as saying.

Police in Cologne said they had received 90 criminal complaints by today and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men "who appeared to be of Arab or North African origin" had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.

A plain-clothed policewoman was reportedly among those attacked.

"We assume more people will come forward," police chief Wolfgang Albers told reporters.

The northern port city of Hamburg also reported around 10 similar attacks against women on New Year's Eve.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the assaults represented "a new dimension of crime that we will have to get to grips with," adding that they had appeared to be "coordinated".

Asked by a journalist whether refugees were behind the rampage, Maas said police were still working to identify the attackers.

"This is not about where someone is from but what they did," he said.

"Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences."



Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he was stunned by the "despicable" assaults.

"However this must not lead to refugees of whatever origin, who are seeking our protection from persecution, being placed under general suspicion.
Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley would deliver the opposition Republican party's response to US President Barack Obama's last State of the Union address next week, Congressional leaders have said.

Obama is scheduled to deliver his last annual State of the Union address to a joint session of the US Congress on January 12. Incidentally, GOP's response to Obama's first State of the Union address was also by an Indian-American Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor whose second term ends on January 11.

In a move that has the potential of propelling 43-year-old Haley to the national scene and make her a formidable vice presidential candidate, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday announced that she will deliver the Republican address to the nation following the State of the Union on January 12.

"Nikki Haley has led an economic turnaround and set a bold agenda for her state, getting things done and becoming one of the most popular governors in America. In a year when the country is crying out for a positive vision and alternative to the status quo, Governor Haley is the exact right choice to deliver the Republican Address to the Nation," Ryan said.

"Nikki Haley is a proven leader and committed reformer who believes deeply in the promise of the country we all share. Not only has Governor Haley fought to bring opportunity and prosperity to the people of her state, but she's also demonstrated how bringing people together can bring real results," Senator McConnell said.

"Governor Haley knows the American Dream and wants to see every American share in it, and we're pleased that she will be delivering this year's Republican Address," McConnell said.

Haley said she is honoured to be asked by party leadership to deliver the Republican address to the nation.

"This is a time of great challenges for our country, but also of great opportunities. I intend to speak about both," Haley said.

Haley, the 116th Governor of South Carolina, is the first female and the first minority governor in the state's history and currently the youngest governor in the country. She was re-elected to a second term in November last year. She is also only the second Indian-American Governor after Bobby Jindal.

In a statement, the Republican Party said Haley has delivered results to the people of South Carolina.

Under Haley's leadership, South Carolina's jobless rate



hit record lows, the state announced more than 73,000 jobs in 45 of 46 counties, more than 25,000 South Carolinians moved from welfare to work, and the state made its largest infrastructure investment in a generation without raising taxes, the Republican party's statement said.

She brought together leaders of both political parties, educators and the business community to pass landmark education reforms. She has also increased transparency and accountability in state government and delivered tax relief for small businesses, pension reform and Medicaid reform, it said.

Born in Bamberg, the daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley's first job was keeping the books for her family's clothing store at the age of 13.

She went on to graduate from Clemson University with a BS degree in accounting. Haley and her husband Michael, a Captain in the Army National Guard and combat veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand Province, attend Mt Horeb United Methodist Church in South Carolina.

According to the American laws, the President "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.
There was not a single insurgency- related incident in Tripura last year, a top police official said today while noting that international terrorism was an area which needed a sharp vigil to be maintained.

"There was not a single incident related to insurgency last year (in Tripura). The insurgency which devastated the state for the past three decades has largely been contained. We are not complacent and keeping a close vigil on the situation," Director General of Police K Nagraj told reporters here.

He said many of the state's insurgents were still using Bangladeshi soil and currently had 16 camps running there.

"Last November, security forces in Bangladesh had dismantled many camps of state insurgents, mainly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of the country, but the ultras again managed to erect some makeshift camps there," said Nagraj.

"International terrorism is another area which needs a sharp watch and the state police are gearing up to meet the new challenge," he said.

Asked if there was any chance of a terror attack launched using Bangladeshi soil, the DGP said, "The state has an 856-km -long border with the neighbouring country. We cannot rule out any such possibility and are alert to meet any eventuality."



Nagraj said that 1,761 Bangladeshi nationals had illegally sneaked into the state last year and police had deported them.

The DGP said that the overall law and order situation in the state has improved and the crime graph is down.
Norway's foreign minister will visit Sri Lanka this week in a bid to re-establish political contact, his office said today, almost 10 years after Oslo failed in a bid to mediate in the island's civil war.

Borge Brende's visit, which begins Thursday, will be the first by a Norwegian minister to Sri Lanka since 2006, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The aim of the visit to Colombo is to re-establish political contact with Sri Lanka," Brende said, adding: "The recent political developments in the country in the past year have made this possible."



In the early 2000s, Norway mediated between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but a 2002 ceasefire didn't last.

Authoritarian president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was in power from 2005 to 2015, had questioned Norway's neutrality and quashed the guerrilla in 2009 during a major military offensive that brought an end to 37 years of fighting.

Rajapaksa last year failed to win a third term and handed over power to Maithripala Sirisena, who has vowed to work toward reconciliation and investigate crimes committed by the army during the military campaign run by his predecessor.

During his visit, Brende is scheduled to meet with Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and the new opposition leader, Tamil lawmaker Rajavarothiam Sampanthan.
US President Barack Obama today wept in public as he announced a slew of executive measures to tackle the gun violence that claims thousands of lives in the country each year, amid stiff resistance from Republican- controlled Congress to steps for tightening control on firearms.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Obama said as tears streamed down his cheeks in the East Room of the White House in the presence of a large number of victims of mass shootings.

He summoned the memory of the 20 elementary school children killed three years ago in Newtown, Connecticut.

Obama warned that the US gun lobby cannot be allowed to block government action.

"The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they can't hold America hostage," he said.

"All of us should be able to work together to find a balance that declares the rest of our rights are also important. Second Amendment rights are important, but there are other rights that we care about as well. And we have to be able to balance them, because our right to worship freely and safely -- that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina," he said.

"That was denied Jews in Kansas City, and that was denied Muslims in Chapel Hill and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights too. Our right to peaceful assembly, that right was robbed from moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette.

Our inalienable right to life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high- schoolers in Columbine, and from first graders in Newtown," he said.

"First graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun. Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day," said the US president as he paused for a moment to control his emotions.

Obama said the gun lobby is taking "Congress hostage, but they cannot hold America hostage."



"So, all of us need to demand that Congress be brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors, and legislators and businesses do their part to make our communities safer," he said.

"We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners, who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented, to join with us to demand something better," he added.

Announcing his executive measures, Obama said anybody in



the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecutions.

"We're also taking steps to make the background check system more efficient," he said.

"We're going to do more to help those suffering from mental illness get the help that they need," he said, adding that the government is going to boost gun safety technology.

Noting that the US is not the only country on Earth with violent or dangerous people, Obama said the US is only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency.

"It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close," he said.

"Instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarised, partisan debates," he said.

"I am not on the ballot again, I am not looking to score points. I think we can disagree without impugning other people's motives or without being disagreeable. We don't need to be talking past one another, but we do have to feel a sense of urgency about it," Obama said.

He called for a united front by the people in support of his gun control laws.

"We have to be just as organised in the defence of our kids. This is not that complicated. The reason Congress blocks laws is because they want to win elections. If you make it hard for them to win an election if they block those laws, they'll change course, I promise," he asserted amidst applause.

However, he acknowledged that it is a tough call.

"It will be hard and it won't happen overnight. It won't happen during this Congress; it won't happen during my presidency. But a lot of things don't happen overnight. A woman's right to vote didn't happen overnight, the liberation of African-Americans didn't happen overnight. LGBT rights, that was decades' worth of work. So just because it's hard that's no excuse not to try," he said.

According to a White House fact sheet, over the past decade in America, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence-and millions more have been the victim of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun.
Vehicles which have to cross the Delhi border and take a U-turn at Rajokri flyover to go back to Gurgaon, have been exempted from penalty under the odd-even scheme, police here said today.

The decision was taken by Delhi police after a discussion with Gurgaon police, as residents here complained that they were being made to adhere to the odd-even scheme without actually traveling to Delhi, City police commissioner Navdeep Singh Virk said.

Many of the commuters are residents of Ambience Island township on NH8, who have to enter Delhi and take a U-turn at the Rajokri flyover, after the earlier turning from Gurgaon expressway to their residence was sealed in March 2014.

Residents complained to Gurgaon police commissioner yesterday that they were being asked to pay the penalty under odd-even scheme by Delhi traffic police despite having stickers stating they are residents of the township.
Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai said CNG stickers would only be available from the IGL gas station at CGO Complex here from tomorrow and claimed that the odd-even scheme was smoothly implemented on its fourth day today.

The CNG stickers were distributed from 95 CNG stations in Delhi and another 19 stations in NCR. These will stop distribution from 6 am tomorrow and only the CNG station at CGO Complex on Lodhi Road will distribute the stickers round the clock till January 15, he said.

IGL director V Nagarajan said that proper arrangements will be made at CGO Complex CNG station so that people do not face any problem in getting the stickers.

The Delhi Transport minister said that there are about 3.50 lakh registered CNG vehicles and so far 3.90 lakh CNG stickers have been distributed in view of the implementation of the odd-even formula.

Rai said that after reports of sale of CNG sticker to non CNG vehicles, one person named Dipak Sen from Vivek Vihar CNG station was caught who has "admitted" selling a sticker to a petrol vehicle for Rs 2800. The IGL has registered a case against him at Vivek Vihar police station.

The enforcement teams of Transport department has also started random checking of vehicles wih CNG stickers, he said.

Mentioning car pooling by the Chief Justice of India, Rai thanked him for supporting the odd even campaign of Delhi government.

"I extend my thanks to the CJI and his colleague for car pooling and supporting the campaign. This is a welcome step which will encourage others to follow the odd-even formula," he said.

Saying that the odd-even formula was "smoothly" implemented on its fourth day, Rai said that the level of PM (Particulate Matter) 2.5 was not going down in peripheral (border) areas while it has lessened inside Delhi.

The data from monitoring of PM 2.5 at 20 locations showed that as one moved from border areas inside Delhi it has decreased.

"The reading of PM 2.5 at Sangam Vihar was 415 while it was 221 in Jangpura. The 13 locations gave readings of 200-300 of PM 2.5 while seven locations showed readings in the range of 300-400. These seven locations are on border areas," he said.

Rai said that a "permanent solution" of pollution due to PM 2.5 caused by vehicles could be solved by construction of Eastern and Western peripheral highways.

"The proposal has been revived by the Central Government. Delhi had given its share of Rs 653 crore to the Centre in 2006. Haryana and UP have also contribute to it. We will take up this issue with the Central government.
A day after eggs and tomatoes were hurled at the car of Odisha Minister Sanjay Das Burma at Chhatrapur, Health Minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak faced similar protests in Deogarh today.

Nayak was proceeding from Sambalpur when some miscreants hurled eggs and tomatoes at his vehicle at Korad near Deogarh this afternoon. The minister, however, escaped unhurt, police said.

Meanwhile, three Congress supporters, including a student leader of Science College, Chhatrapur, were arrested during the day in connection with the attack on Das Burma at Chhatrapur in Ganjam district yesterday.

Arun Nayak (19), dramatic secretary of Science College, Chhatrapur along with N Hadu Reddy (34) and Kalia Roul (33), a contractor were arrested for their involvement in the incident, said Inspector in-charge of Chhatrapur police station, B P Patra.

The trio was booked under different sections of the IPC, Prevention of Damage to Public Property (PDPP) Act and Criminal Law Amendment (CLA) Act, he said.

The case was registered against them on the basis of FIR lodged by the minister's piloting officer, Ram Chandra Behera.

Ganjam district Congress Committee president Bhagaban Gantayat condemned the police action and said they were demonstrating in a democratic manner to protest against "massive irregularities" in National Food Security Act (NFSA) in the district.

"In a democratic set up, they (the youths) have the right to protest. We demand release of the arrested persons and withdrawal of cases registered against them," he said.

Eggs and tomatoes were hurled at the vehicle of Das Burma near Chhatrapur Science College when he on way to attend the golden jubilee function of Berhampur University.

The demonstrators also showed black flags to the Minister in protest against the alleged massive irregularities in the selection of beneficiaries under NFSA.
Pakistan which has close ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran today voiced concern over the deteriorating relations between the two countries after the execution of a top Shiite scholar, cautioning that terrorists can use the diplomatic crisis to their advantage.

"The Muslim world faces grave dangers in the situation that has risen in wake of the Saudi-Iran conflict," said Sartaj Aziz, adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Foreign Affairs, while giving a policy statement in the National Assembly.

Aziz also expressed concern that terrorists can use the diplomatic crisis in Middle East to their advantage, the Dawn reported.

Aziz maintained that Pakistan will continue to play its role in easing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and it advocates unity among the Muslim countries.

Aziz said the National Assembly would be given an in- camera briefing on the Saudi-Iran tensions.

"National interest will be given priority in the context of the diplomatic row in Middle East," he said.

Earlier, Foreign Office yesterday regretted the attack at the Saudi embassy in Iran.

Saudi Arabia's execution of Shiite scholar Nimr al-Nimr sparked widespread protests in Shiite-majority countries in the Middle East, with a mob attacking the Saudi diplomatic mission in Tehran, following which Riyadh, Bahrain and Sudan severed diplomatic relations with Tehran, the main Shiite power.

Pakistan has been in the tight situation due to its close ties with both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The two countries exercise influence in Pakistan through their links with Sunni and Shiite groups.

Already protests have been held in Pakistan in support of Iran and Saudi Arabia by different clerics.
Pakistan Navy has raised a special marine battalion to provide security to Chinese engineers and workers at the strategic Gwadar Port being developed by China under the USD 46 billion economic corridor project that will give the Communist giant access to the Arabian Sea.

The ambitious 3,000-kilometre China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project was launched last year to link western China to southern Pakistan through a network of roads, railways and pipelines.

Under this, oil and gas would be sent from Gwadar Port to Kashgar city in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, using the shortest route for oil imports from the Middle East.

A spokesman of Pakistan Navy told media that security of Chinese and the CPEC was focus of the newly-raised force.

"Pakistan Navy has increased all-round surveillance at Gwadar Port with the commencement of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project," he said.

He said a special Marine Battalion had been raised to provide security to Chinese engineers and experts visiting the strategic Gwadar port.

He said the Gwadar Port is the 'backbone' of the CPEC and the Pakistan Navy was making strenuous efforts for ensuring comprehensive security for foreigners as well as local people.

The CPEC terminates at Gwadar port on the mouth of the Arabian Sea. Pakistan had handed over the operational control of the port to the Chinese.

Beijing has said the Gwadar port is crucial to its economic interests as it gives western China access to the Arabian Sea to access oil supplies from the Gulf.

Gwadar Port is situated at the apex of the Arabian Sea and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and only about 400 km away from the Strait of Hormuz, a key global oil supply route.

Pakistan had assured China that it would raise special force for the protection of the Chinese nationals working in the restive Baluchistan province and elsewhere along the CPEC.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last month inaugurated the western corridor of the CPEC.

An official agreement on the corridor was signed between the two countries in May this year during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Pakistan.

Apart from the Marine Battalion, Pakistan army is also working to set up additional special force to provide security to the CPEC and workers and experts from China.
Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain today condemned the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot, saying the country is against all forms of terrorism.

"Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations including the incident at Pathankot," he was quoted as saying in an official statement.

Hussain was talking to a delegation from Pakistan- occupied Kashmir (PoK), who called on him at the President House here.

The President said that Pakistan is against all kinds of terrorism.

He, however, said that Pakistan would continue to adhere to the "principled stand of the right of self-determination of Kashmiri people which is the basis of its foreign policy."



"Pakistan would continue supporting the right of self-determination of Kashmiris because Pakistan considers Kashmir as an unfinished agenda of the partition of the subcontinent," he said.

He said that "the support for the right of self- determination for Kashmiri people is the basic principle of Pakistan's foreign policy" and the country has raised the voice in support of Kashmiris on every political and diplomatic forum and it would continue playing this role in future as well.

The Pathankot terror attack began on Saturday last with six terrorists sneaking into the Air Base, leading to an encounter in which seven securitymen, including a Lt Colonel, were killed.

Six terrorists were eliminated during the encounter with the security forces.

The terrorists were believed to owe allegiance to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).
Pakistan has set up a special Marine Battalion to provide security to Chinese workers and experts at Gwadar deep seaport after start of work on USD 46 billion economic corridor project, an official said today.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project was launched last year to link western China to southern Pakistan through a network of roads and investment projects.

A spokesman of Pakistan Navy told media that security of Chinese and the CPEC was focus of the new force.

"Pakistan Navy has increased all-round surveillance at Gwadar Port with the commencement of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project," he said.

He said a special Marine Battalion had been raised to provide security to Chinese engineers and delegates visiting the strategic Gwadar port.

The CPEC terminates at Gwadar port on the mouth of the Arabian Sea. The operational control of the port has also been given to the Chinese.

Pakistan had announced to raise special force for the protection of the Chinese which was one of the key concerns.

Apart from the Marine Battalion, Pakistan army is also working to set up additional special force to provide security to the CPEC and workers and experts from China.
The Pakistani Taliban has released its first annual report, claiming it killed hundreds of people in 2015, with analysts suggesting its "inflated" figures illustrate the jihadists' struggle to demonstrate their capability as security improves.

The report, written in Urdu, is a detailed list of attacks carried out on security forces, police and politicians in several Pakistani cities and the northwestern tribal areas between January 3 and December 26.

Released on December 29, it says that in 2015 the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) carried out 73 target killings, 12 ambush attacks, 10 raids, 19 IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blasts, five suicide attacks, 17 missile attacks and shot down two helicopters, and claims it killed some 686 people in 2015.

Claims by the TTP are often exaggerated. In the report, for example, it claims that it killed 247 people in an attack on Peshawar's Badaber airforce base in September. The official death toll was 29.

"This report mostly carries big claims, but there is no evidence to support these claims which are often inflated," said Pakistani analyst Rahimullah Yousafzai.

"They have realised that this kind of report is necessary to show people that they are still active and potent," Yousafzai told AFP.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Islamist insurgency for over a decade, with more than 27,000 civilians and security personnel dying in extremist attacks, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a monitoring site.

But overall levels of extremist-linked violence dropped dramatically last year, with 2015 seeing the fewest deaths since 2007 - the year the Pakistani Taliban umbrella group was formed.

Analysts have credited the fall to military offensives against the Taliban in the tribal areas of North Waziristan and Khyber where they are headquartered, as well as operations in the country's largest city of Karachi.

Authorities have also taken steps to shut down insurgents' sources of funding and arrested thousands for inciting hatred under a National Action Plan to curb militancy.

Yousafzai suggested the TTP had issued the annual report because "people are saying that their campaign has weakened".

Amir Rana, the director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), said despite the setbacks the TTP remained operational in Pakistan.

"Its real operational strengths are its affiliates and support networks, which still exist inside Pakistan and... will take time to break," Rana told AFP.
Pakistan today sealed a landmark deal to sell JF-17 Thunder fighter jets to Sri Lanka as the two countries signed eight agreements to boost cooperation in areas like trade promotion, and science and technology besides combating money laundering and terror financing.

On the second day of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Colombo, Pakistan agreed to sell eight aircraft to Sri Lanka, in the first successful deal to sell the jets which Pakistan has been trying to sell for some time.

JF-17 Thunder is already part of Pakistan Air Force and has been successfully used to strike terrorist hideouts in northwestern tribal region.

Initially, the jets were manufactured with Chinese technical assistance but now it is solely done in Pakistan, according to a Geo TV report that claimed the deal has been finalised despite pressure from India which was forcing Colombo to buy Indian aircraft.

The deal was reached during the three-day trip of Sharif to Colombo that also saw the two sides signing eight agreements in the fields of education, science and technology, healthcare, agriculture, tourism, sporting contacts, cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts.

Sharif said both sides expressed their satisfaction at the existing bilateral cooperation in the field of defence.

He conveyed his desire for more frequent port calls, participation in military exercises and fence seminars and training of military personnel.

"We have also signed a number of Agreements and MoUs today, which would help promote cooperation between our two countries in the fields Trade promotion, Culture, Health, Gem and Jewellery, Science & Technology and Combating Money Laundering and Terror Financing," Sharif said at the official ceremony to welcome him by Sirisena.

His trip comes eight months after President Sirisena's visit to Pakistan in April last year.

Sharif also invited Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena to make a return visit to Pakistan at an early date so that the relations of mutual trust and confidence can be further enhanced.

Islamabad and Colombo grew closer during Lanka's civil war by supplying arms to fight the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who sought an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils.

Describing Sri Lanka as a "strong and steadfast friend" of Pakistan that has "stood by us in our most difficult moments", Sharif said: "We remain eternally grateful to the people and government of this beautiful Island State."



The two countries also agreed to re-invigorate efforts to realise the goal of achieving USD 1 billion bilateral trade target at the earliest from the present USD 325 million that "does not reflect true potential".

(Reopens FGN24)



Sharif also conveyed Pakistan's readiness to welcome Sri Lankan investment in his country.

"We have also expressed satisfaction on the work of Pakistan-Sri Lanka Joint Economic Commission in promoting bilateral trade," he said.

Sharif noted that Pakistan and Sri Lanka enjoy excellent relations, based on mutual respect and shared interests.

"They are marked by cordiality and commonality of views on major regional and global issues and close cooperation in the multilateral forums. Both sides wish to further deepen and broaden these ties through regular high-level contacts and exchange of visits.

"We have agreed to hold frequent summit-level meetings, promote parliamentary exchanges and enhance the process of consultations, cooperation and coordination between our respective institutions," he said.

Highlighting that Sri Lanka enjoys exceptional position of being the first country with which Pakistan entered into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Sharif added: "We also discussed the issues related to the implementation of the Pakistan-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement.

"The two countries have agreed on the inclusion of Services and Investments chapters in the bilateral FTA. This would enable our companies to form joint ventures for export to third countries."



Sharif said that he reiterated Pakistan's offer to set up cement and sugar plants in Sri Lanka on mutually agreed terms for the long-term benefit of Lankan economy.

The Pakistani leader visited the holy Buddhist shrine, the Temple of the Tooth in the central town of Kandy.
"We were blindfolded, our hands tied behind our backs and the terrorists numbering four-five threatened to kill us if we tried to look up," Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh, whose vehicle was forcibly taken away by the heavily-armed militants, said today.

Armed with AK 47 rifles, the terrorists initially had no clue that he was a police officer. It was only when his gunman called him and the terrorists picked up his mobile that they realised the person they had caught was a senior officer, Salwinder said.

After they were blindfolded, the terrorists took two of his three mobiles and fled with his vehicle.

The hooter in his vehicle also made it clear to the terrorist that the vehicle belonged to a police officer.

"They came back to kill me but by then I had freed my hands and moved from the spot," he said.

Asked why he was in civilian clothes and did not have his gunman with him, Salwinder said he was returning after offering prayers at the 'Pir Baba' and that was the reason he chose not to take the police escort.

"Light band karo," ordered one of the terrorist while another asked us to kneel down.

"If your look up we will shoot you on the spot," Salwinder recounted and added that the terrorists spoke in Urdu, Punjabi and also Hindi.

Since it was dark we could not make out the exact number of terrorists but it looked like about four to five, he said.

Salwinder said the terrorists had stopped his vehicle when he along with his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and cook Madan Gopal were returning after paying obeisance at Narot Jaimal Singh in the wee hours of Friday.

"They were carrying AK 47 and GPS," he said, adding, "We were dumped along with my cook," he said.

"When they came to know that I was a SP then they told Rajesh that you have deceived us and you will have to face consequences," Salwinder said.

Rajesh was attacked by the militants who later dumped him. He is recuperating at a hospital.

Soon after the SP's abduction, the terrorists had attacked the air base.

Security forces had yesterday killed two more Pakistani terrorists inside the Pathankot air base with the government saying that six attackers had been neutralised. However, it was not clear whether all the intruders who attacked the base have been eliminated.

Asked why he did not show resistance, the SP said they (militants) were carrying weapons. "What could I have done against 4 to 5 people who were armed," he said.

The SP, who was under transfer, said he had immediately informed his seniors about his abduction by militants.

"I immediately informed (my seniors) about the incident. After that DGP, ADGP and other senior officers reached Pathankot," he said, adding "police swung into action and laid nakas (check posts) at various points."



Asked if police was initially not believing his story, Singh said, "There is no such thing...I was speaking the truth only. I have got a new life. I know what I have gone through and how I returned."



On investigating agencies questioning him, he said, "Truth has come out. Whatever information I gave was completely right. Had I engaged into a fight with militants they would have killed me. Five persons, who were armed, would have killed me. What could we have done when they were heavily armed. I was not carrying any weapon.

"If my gunman was with me I could have thought about taking on them," he said.
BSF Director General D K Pathak, flanked by a battery of his top commanders, today visited some sensitive border locations along the Punjab frontier in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack on the Pathankot IAF base.

Senior officials said the Border Security Force chief and other top officers of the paramilitary visited Bamiyal, a village located in Pathankot, and a nearby border post to understand the possible routes that could have been exploited by the six terrorists who laid a daunting seige at the forward air base begining January 2.

The DG, they said, was briefed about the security paraphernalia deployed by the force to plug gaps along the India-Pakistan International Border and the gadgets put in place by it to check infiltrators.

Pathak, it is understood, was told by the field commanders that there was no possibility of any infiltration from the area and its adjoining border locations as the force has pressed in additional manpower and mounted an effective vigil to secure the area, marred by riverine and dense forest areas.

Pathak also visited a 134-metre long 'nullah' and few other riverine that runs along the border and is unfenced.

The DG is expected to submit a report with regard to this tour to the Union Home Ministry tomorrow.

The border guarding force had yesterday submitted a report to the Centre after analysing the possible route taken by the attackers of the Pathankot IAF base, stating it had found no breach in the fence but added there were some gapping holes along the IB and malfunctioning of some of the electronic surveillance equipments it uses.

Senior BSF officials have been camping in Bamiyal and adjoining areas to take stock of the unfenced and riverine areas.

The Home Ministry had earlier asked the BSF to submit a report on the breach by terrorists who sneaked into India and carried out terror strike at the Indian Air Force base.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had also said in Pathankot today that the BSF has already been asked to give details of areas from where terrorists could have entered.
The terrorist attacks on the IAF base in Pathankot and the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Mazar-e-Sharif city are stark reminder of the challenges posed by terrorism in the region, an top American lawmaker has said.

"I strongly condemn the terrorist attacks on India's Pathankot military base as well as on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan," Congressman Brad Sherman, 61, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said yesterday.

"There is speculation that these attacks might be in reaction to positive outcomes from Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's recent visits (to) Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.

Sherman strongly encouraged the governments in the region to make every effort to find the terrorists who carried out these attacks and bring them to justice.

"These attacks are a stark reminder of the ongoing danger terrorism poses throughout much of the world. The United States should continue to assist these governments and ensure they can combat this scourge," Sherman added.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end last night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

Heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists on Saturday attempted to storm the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The attackers were believed to have infiltrated from Pakistan and there was speculation that they may belong to Jaish-e-Mohammad headed by Maulana Masood Azhar of the Kandahar hijack episode.
Delhi BJP today paid homage to the security personnel who died in the terror attack at the Pathankot Air Force Base, saying the nation was grateful for the supreme sacrifices made by them for the protection of the country.

"The terror attack at Pathankot Air Force Base is nothing less than a Mumbai terror attack and once again our security personnel put up their best risking lives to protect the crucial air base. The country is grateful to the martyrs for their supreme sacrifice," Delhi BJP Chief Satish Upadhyay said.

"Cross-border terrorism is a new form of war and it is really sad that our armed forces have to sacrifice fighting against these hidden enemies," Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta said.

Operation against terrorists entered its fourth day in Pathankot with security personnel engaged in search and combing operations to sanitise the IAF installation.
Unidentified men today hurled a petrol bomb at GMR Group's office here amid the ongoing Madhesi stir in Nepal despite India's earlier request to enhance security at facilities of the Indian infrastructure major, developing key hydropower projects in the country.

Window panes of the building were shattered but there was no further damage or casualty, police said.

The attack on the Chakupat-based office came amid a tense situation in Nepal where Madhesis, largely of Indian-origin, are agitating over the country's new Constitution.

Major Indian firms in Nepal have been hit by the ongoing blockade of key border trade points with India by Madhesis and the firms are struggling to export their products.

With the prolonged Madhesi agitation, subsidiaries of Indian companies such as Dabur, Unilever and ITC India have been operating below their capacity and are facing hurdles in exporting their products.

Madhesis, who have strong cultural and family bonds with India, have been protesting in the southern plains over their demands including re-demarcation of provinces, fixing of electoral constituencies on the basis of population and proportional representation.

Over 50 people have died in the four month-long agitation.

The GMR Group is developing the Upper Karnali (900 MW) and Upper Marshyangdi (600 MW) hydropower projects in Nepal.

The Indian firm has already started preparatory works to develop Upper Karnali Hydropower Project after signing a Project Development Agreement with Investment Board Nepal.

Earlier, the Embassy of India, Kathmandu had asked the Nepal government to conduct proper investigation into attacks against Indian entities in the country since last few months, saying that such incidents can severely dampen the confidence of the investors.

There were attempts to vandalise the Upper Karnali Hydropower Project office of the GMR situated in Surkhet using a petrol bomb on December 21. On September 29 also, a group of unidentified people had tried to vandalise the GMR office, company officials said.

They had also blamed a Maoist faction of carrying out the previous attacks.

GMR was also receiving such threats from time to time in the past, though no investigation was carried out so far in the matter, they said.

In a letter addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the embassy had requested the government to enhance the security at the GMR offices but it was not immediately known if more personnel were deployed.
City police has decided to undertake a pilot project for students to avert situations wherein they get involved in police cases and also counsel them for a trouble-free career.

Kanpur SSP Sulabh Mathur said that the programme will start next week at a Polytechnic institute here where frequent quarrels were an area of concern for the college administration as well as the police.

To counter the menace, the district police administration will now conduct classes to counsel students to avoid career self-destruction by getting mired into legal cases.

Keeping in view the future of students, police have been avoiding to file any cases as it could ruin their career, he said.

Mathur said that they have appointed two officers under proactive policing initiative to counsel the students through power point presentations.

The focus will be to make them understand their objective of building a career and not ruining it by getting into tussles, he said.

If the programme succeeds, the initiative will be introduced at other colleges as well.
A policeman was killed today after some unknown bike-borne militants opened fire on him in Egypt's central Beni Suef governorate.

The incident took place early this morning. The militants shot the policeman and fled the scene, police said.

The body of the victim was taken to a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, security forces cordoned off the area to search for the attackers.

Egypt has witnessed many violent attacks by militants since the January 2011 revolution that toppled ex-president Hosni Mubarak.

The attacks targeting police and military increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by military following massive protests against his rule.

Over 600 security personnel have been reported killed since then.
Yemeni security forces have arrested a local Al-Qaeda leader during a sweep targeting jihadists in the southern city of Aden, security officials said today.

The capture of Mohammed al-Lahji, the Al-Qaeda chief in the city's Tawahi district, along with two of his bodyguards sparked a gunfight overnight in which a policeman was wounded, they said.

The government imposed a night-time curfew in Aden for one month after clashes on Sunday blamed on jihadists killed at least 22 people, including 10 members of the security forces.

An official at the Aden governor's office said that "homes in Tawahi and Mualla districts are being searched one by one to hunt down terrorists."



Life came to a near halt in Aden as the curfew took effect with shops closed and streets empty, residents and security officials said.

Pro-government forces trained by a Saudi-led coalition supporting President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi set up checkpoints across the city, they added.

Sunday's clashes erupted when forces loyal to Hadi came up against resistance while trying to secure the Aden port, security sources said.

Pro-Hadi forces eventually managed to take control of the facility after hours of fighting.

Aden, declared by the government to be the temporary capital, has seen a growing jihadist presence with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, long active in Yemen, and the Islamic State group apparently vying for influence.

The extremists are occupying government buildings and are frequently seen patrolling several districts of the city.

"We will work on forcing the armed groups out of government buildings. We will cleanse all neighbourhoods from terrorists" Aden police chief General Shallal Ali Shayae told reporters late yesterday.

The city was rocked by months of fighting last year between pro-government forces and Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa in September 2014 before expanding south.

Loyalists have regained control of Aden and four other southern provinces since July, but the rebels still hold Sanaa and have besieged the third city of Taez for months.

Peace talks held in Switzerland last month ended without any breakthrough after a ceasefire aimed at calming tensions was widely violated.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and briefed him about various developmental projects undertaken by his government in the past one year.

Das whose meeting with Modi lasted for around half an hour also invited the Prime Minister to lay the foundation stone of a bridge at Sahebganj.

The bridge is proposed to be constructed over the Ganga River between Sahibganj and Nanihari (Katihar-Siliguri).

Apart from establishing smooth and easy road connectivity to the northeastern states with the rest of the country, the proposed 2.5 km bridge will be a gateway to India for south-east Asian countries like Thailand, Malayasia and Singapore, according to reports.

Jharkhand government officials said that the Prime Minister is learnt to have assured Das about visiting the state to lay the foundation stone.

An official statement said that during the meeting, Modi asserted that there was a need to further accelerate the various developmental works that have started in the state.

Jharkhand government officials said that the Prime Minister also heard in detail about 'Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana' (UDAY) scheme.

The Centre, Jharkhand and Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited) signed a MoU for operational and financial turnaround of discoms under UDAY earlier today where Das was also present.

Jharkhand would derive an overall net benefit of approximately Rs 5,300 crore through UDAY and signing of the MoU heralds the onset of major distribution reforms in the country, an official statement said.

Earlier in the day, Das also met Road Transport minister Nitin Gadkari and held detailed discussions about various projects in the state.

A Jharkhand government statement said that after the meeting, approval was granted to nine projects involving 616 km of road worth Rs 8,727 crores including works for four laning of Barhi Hazaribagh, Ranchi-Rargaon-Jamshedpur-Mahulia amongst others.

During the meeting, it was also decided to develop Sahebganj district in the state as growth centre or logistic hub.
A delegation of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat (RSS), led by its President Jaswant Singh, today met Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra and discussed various issues related to the Sikh community in the state.

The delegation presented its demands related to the extension of National Commission of Minorities jurisdiction to J&K, expeditious distribution of relief under PM's package for displaced persons of 1947, 1965 and 1971 and Chhamb sector, an official spokesman said.

He said that the delegation also demanded representation of Sikhs in political posts, appointment of a Sikh Judge and grant of relief for a Jammu-based Sikh family whose two members died in the Nepal Earthquake last year.

They also demanded facilities for Jammu migrants and relief for Sikh victims of 1984 and 1989 riots, the spokesman said.

The Governor observed that their demands would be taken up with the authorities concerned, he said.
A reward of Rs 10,000 has been announced against an undertrial prisoner who had escaped from the Ambah Sub Jail here, a police official said today.

The prisoner identified as Vijay Tomar of Devhans Ka Pura village escaped from the jail by scaling its wall with a help of a rope last week.

Morena SP Vineet Khanna has announced a reward of Rs 10,000 against him as all efforts to nab him have proved futile so far.

He was facing trial in a case of murder and attempt to murder case. A fresh case of escaping from the jail is also registered against him, the SP said.
Maharashtra government will immediately release Rs 240 crore for land acquisition and rehabilitation of those displaced due to Gosikhurd irrigation project, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said.

He has also directed officials to stick to time schedule for completing the project.

"The state government wants the project to be completed expeditiously and will release Rs 240 crore immediately for the remaining land acquisition and rehabilitation of persons affected by the inter-district Gosikhurd irrigation project," Fadnavis said here yesterday.

Taking stock of various irrigation and other development project works of Nagpur district, Fadnavis yesterday set a time-frame of three years for completion of the Gosikhurd project.

He exhorted the officers to work with a missionary zeal and giving importance to complete the project within the given time limit.

The CM presided over a review meeting at his official residence Ramgiri here which was attended by Nagpur Guardian Minister and state Energy Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, MP Krupal Tumane, along with local legislators, other elected representatives and high-ranking divisional and district revenue and police officials, apart from officers of irrigation and agricultural department, an official release said last night.

Funds to the tune of Rs 12.5 crore have been distributed from (previous) allocation of Rs 13.67 crore for the project-affected persons (PAPs), the meeting was informed, as per the release.

The Gosikhurd irrigation project is coming up on river Vainganga which flows across Bhandara district in Maharashtra. The project was conceived way back in 1983. But it was actually launched on April 22, 1988, by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at Gosikhurd village in Bhandara which was part of then Chimur Lok Sabha constituency.

The project was expected to irrigate about 2,50,800 hectares of land in three districts of eastern Vidarbha (Nagpur, Bhandara and Chandrapur).

The project on Vainganga river which flows from Balaghat (MP) to Pranhita river (Gadchiroli), was marred by several alleged irregularities, violation of norms, sub-standard work, breach in canals and charges of corruption.
The head of Russia's secretive military intelligence service, Igor Sergun, has died of unspecified causes at age 58, the Kremlin said.

Igor Sergun, who headed Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) since 2011, landed on the US and EU sanctions lists over Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.

President Vladimir Putin said in a statement yesterday that Sergun was "a true officer, an experienced and competent commander, a person of great courage and a true patriot."



Sergun died on Sunday, the defence ministry said without disclosing the cause of his death. His successor has yet to be announced.

The EU said the Sergun was "responsible for the activity of GRU officers in eastern Ukraine."



The West has accused Russia of supporting an armed insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has left more than 9,000 people dead since April 2014.

Moscow denies that regular Russian troops are stationed in eastern Ukraine but has admitted that some Russian volunteers could have accomplished military tasks in the region.

The GRU - Russia's most secretive government agency - traces its history back to 1918 in the early months of the Bolshevik revolution, and unlike other Russian secret services did not change its name after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It reputedly runs vastly more agents abroad than the KGB's successor, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and is also active in space through a network of military intelligence satellites.
Actor Ryan Phillippe has reportedly found his soulmate in fiancee Paulina Slagter.

The 40-year-old "Cruel Intentions" star is going head over heels for the law student, reported People magazine.

"Ryan and Paulina are very much in love. She is changing him. He is a better man," a source said.

Phillippe spent the New Year's weekend with his 24-year-old fiance at eco-friendly One Hotel & Homes South Beach. The actor is mesmerised by Slagter's intelligence and desire to make life better for everyone around her.

"Ryan feels Paulina is very intelligent and has opened his mind to equality and civil rights, areas he has never really focused on that intently.

"Being a student at Stanford law is impressive to him, and he is very proud of her. He feels that she has the ability to change the world and make it a better place," the source adds.

According to the insider, another thing that attracted Phillippe was the girl's fondness and affection for the children he has with ex-wife Reese Witherspoon, Ava, 16, and Deacon, 12 and daughter Kai, 4, with former girlfriend Alexis Knapp.

"Paulina loves Ryan's children, and they love her. Ryan is madly in love and wants to spend the rest of his life with Paulina. And the feeling is mutual. They had eyes only for each other during the South Beach weekend. They are a wonderful couple.
South Africa's ruling ANC party today launched legal action over a white realtor's Facebook comments that compared black beachgoers to monkeys in a growing row about post-apartheid racism.

The African National Congress, which led the struggle against white-minority rule, said it was pursuing a case against Penny Sparrow and a recent spate of other allegedly racist online postings.

Sparrow's comments sparked a storm of protest and renewed debate about racism among white people in the country 22 years since Nelson Mandela came to power vowing national reconciliation.

The ANC said in a statement that it was laying "charges of crimen injuria (intentionally impairing the dignity of others) against a number of South Africans who have made racist remarks on a number of social media."



Sparrow, a real estate agent from Park Rynie in the southern province of KwaZulu-Natal, complained on Facebook about black people littering beaches during New Year's celebrations.

"From now I shall address the blacks of South Africa as monkeys as I see the cute little wild monkeys do the same - pick and drop litter," she said in the posting on Saturday.

The ANC said it would also lodge a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) because such comments "belittled" and "insulted" black South Africans.

"It is troubling that bigots who once kept their views to themselves now seem emboldened," party spokesman Zizi Kodwa said.

Sparrow later deleted the post and apologised, saying she did not "mean it to be a personal insult to anyone".

Several other white South Africans have also been subject to fierce criticism over tweets with allegedly racial connotations.

Prominent economic analyst Chris Hart was suspended by Standard Bank after tweeting about a growing "hatred towards minorities".

Prominent economic analyst Chris Hart was suspended by Standard Bank for what it said were "racist undertones" in a tweet suggesting there was a a growing "hatred towards minorities", seen as referring to the treatment of whites.

The furore has highlighted racial divisions and sensitivities in South Africa, which faces a dire economic outlook as growth slows sharply and mass unemployment persists.

A survey in December by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation concluded that most South Africans felt "race relations have either stayed the same or deteriorated" since the first democratic elections in 1994.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance party, of which Sparrow is a member, stressed it abhorred racism and laid criminal charges against her for "dehumanising black South Africans".
Saudi Arabia should not respond to criticism of its regime by beheading people, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said today following Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

He was referring to the execution for "terrorism" Saturday of Nimr al-Nimr, who had been behind anti-government protests among Saudi Arabia's Shiite Muslim minority.

Officials have not said how Nimr was put to death, but beheading is common in the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom, which has since cut diplomatic ties with predominantly Shiite Iran.

"One does not respond to criticism by cutting off heads," Rouhani said as he welcomed visiting Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen to Tehran.

"I hope that European countries who always react on human rights matters will meet their duties."



Human rights groups frequently criticise use of the death penalty in Iran, where hanging is employed.

Rouhani also accused the Middle East's top Sunni Arab power of using the row over Nimr, which led a mob to ransack and set fire to the kingdom's embassy in Tehran, as an excuse to sever ties.

Saudi Arabia's consulate in second city Mashhad was also torched.

"Saudi Arabia cannot cover its crime of having cut off the head of a cleric by cutting relations," he said.

The violence was condemned by Rouhani, and Iran's judiciary has said 50 people involved in the incidents, including ringleaders, have been arrested and will face legal action.

Iran's mission at the United Nations also expressed "regret" at the fireraising and disobedience in a letter to the UN Security Council.

Before Rouhani spoke, a government spokesman, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, said cutting diplomatic relations would not hurt Iran or damage its development.

Bahrain and Sudan also broke ties with Iran, and a number of other Arab countries have recalled their envoys, in sympathy with Riyadh.

Commerce between Iran and the countries that have severed relations is low, according to official figures released today by economic daily Donaye Eghtesad.

Bilateral trade between Iran and Saudi Arabia reached USD 172.5 million during the first eight months of the Iranian year that began on March 20, 2015.

It comprised USD 132.2 million of Iranian exports, particularly fruit and steel, and USD 40.2 million of imports from Saudi Arabia, mainly fabrics and packaging products.
Restrictions in parts of Srinagar continued for the second consecutive day today to thwart any protests by members of Shia community against the execution of prominent cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia.

Officials said restrictions in the police station areas of Rainawari and Zadibal in the summer capital will continue today.

The decision to continue restrictions in these areas was taken as a precautionary measure as there was apprehension of protests by Shia community members, they said.

Meanwhile, normal activities resumed in Budgam district after two days of shutdown against the execution of the Shia cleric, the officials said.

Nimr al-Nimr, a Saudi national, had participated in the Arab Spring protests in 2011.

The execution of al-Nimr along with 46 other men, including Shia activists and Sunnis accused of involvement in deadly Al-Qaeda attacks, was announced by the Saudi interior ministry and triggered a full-blown diplomatic crisis.
Amid mounting tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran over execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, a top US Senator has expressed concern that Riyadh could purchase nuclear weapons from Pakistan thus further destabilise the Middle East.

"Saudi has good relationships with Pakistan. They could just buy a weapon and again further destabilise the Middle East," Senator Ron Johnson told the CNN in an interview.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power, and Shiite-dominated Iran over Riyadh's execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr have erupted this week into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, sparking widespread worries of regional instability.

The crisis has raised fears of an increase in sectarian violence in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia's severance of diplomatic relations with Tehran will not hurt Iran or damage its development, the government spokesman said today.

Mohammad Bagher Nobakht was speaking after Riyadh cut ties to protest the attack on its embassy and a consulate by Iranian demonstrators angered over the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain and Sudan also broke diplomatic relations with Iran, and a number of other Arab countries have recalled their envoys, in sympathy with Riyadh.

The deterioration of relations with Saudi Arabia "will have no impact on Iran's national development," Nobakht said, without elaborating.

Instead, "it is Saudi Arabia that will suffer", Nobakht said.

The spokesman also reiterated Tehran's harsh criticism of the execution on Saturday of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

"We condemn the inhumane, barbaric and Daesh-like execution of the cleric Sheikh Nimr," said Nobakht, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

Riyadh is trying to compensate for its political failures in regional conflicts, according to Nobakht.

"This is a reaction to their failures in Iraq, Syria, and... Yemen, which Saudi Arabia wants to compensate for", he said, without elaborating.

Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni Muslim power in the Middle East, and Shiite power Iran have long competed for influence in the region. Even before Nimr's execution, relations were strained over the two nations' backing opposing factions in those three countries.

Nobakht also criticised the attacks on the Saudi diplomatic missions, saying they were unbecoming of Iranians.

They "had no justification in accordance with religious teachings or the point of view of rules", and were "beneath the Iranian people", he said.

Iranian officials of all stripes condemned the attacks, and over 40 people have been arrested in connection with them.

Nobakht also compared Riyadh's "immature reaction" to the attacks with Iran's "restraint" after 464 of the country's pilgrims were killed in a stampede at the annual hajj near Mecca in September.
The diplomatic crisis surrounding Saudi Arabia and Iran widened today as Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Tehran in the face of growing international concern.

Joining Riyadh and its Sunni Arab allies in taking diplomatic action, Kuwait said it was withdrawing its envoy over a weekend attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Kuwait's move came after the UN Security Council strongly condemned the attack, carried out by protesters angry over Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Tensions between Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power, and Shiite-dominated Iran have erupted this week into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, sparking widespread worries of regional instability.

Iran lashed out again at Saudi Arabia for the execution today, with President Hassan Rouhani accusing Riyadh of seeking to "cover its crime" by severing ties.

"One does not respond to criticism by cutting off heads," Rouhani said, referring to the usual Saudi practice of carrying out executions with beheading by the sword.

Washington and other Western powers have called for calm amid fears the dispute could raise sectarian tensions across the Middle East and derail efforts to resolve conflicts from Syria to Yemen.

The Security Council joined those calls late on Monday, issuing a statement urging all sides to "take steps to reduce tensions in the region".

The statement by the 15-member council condemned "in the strongest terms" the attacks which saw protesters firebomb the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Iran's second-biggest city Masshad.

But the council made no mention of the event that set off the crisis -- Saudi Arabia's execution on Saturday of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a cleric and activist whose death sparked widespread protests among Shiites.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran in protest at the attacks on Sunday and has severed air links with Iran.

Some of its allies among Sunni Arab states followed suit, with Bahrain and Sudan breaking off ties and the United Arab Emirates downgrading relations on Monday.

Kuwait said today the embassy attacks "represent a flagrant breach of international agreements and norms and a grave violation of Iran's international commitments".

Rouhani has condemned the attacks and Tehran's mission to the UN vowed in a letter to the Security Council to "take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future".
The Supreme Court today set aside the verdict of the Orissa High Court holding that the judicial process to remove trustees of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust can continue on account of their alleged failures to take steps for banning a book, critical of the spiritual guru.

"The question is whether the mild reaction is perverse or could in any way be held to be a breach of trust or an absence of effective administration of the Trust warranting the removal of the trustees. We do not think so.

"Failure to take steps to ban a book that is critical of the philosophical and spiritual guru of a Trust would not fall within the compass of administration of the Trust. It might be an omission of the exercise of proper discretion on the part of the trustees, but certainly not an omission touching upon the administration of the Trust," a bench of Justices M B Lokur and S A Bobde said.

The bench did not agree with the findings of the High Court that the proceedings under the Civil Procedure Code can go on for removal of the trustees of the Ashram on the ground that they did not take effective steps to get a controversial biography, 'The Lives of Sri Aurobindo', banned.

The book, written by Peter Heehs, was published in May 2008 by Columbia University Press in the United States and allegedly contained some objectionable content against the spiritual guru.

"We are not in agreement with the High Court that the failure of the appellants to take the initiative in banning the objectionable book gives rise to a cause of action for the removal of the trustees of the Trust and settling a scheme for its administration," it said.

It was alleged that the trustees failed to take any positive action to prohibit availability of the objectionable book or dissociate themselves from the objectionable book.

The other allegation was that instead of taking some coercive action against Peter Heehs, like removing him from the Ashram, the trustees assisted him in getting a visa for his continued stay in India by standing guarantee for him.
Security has been beefed up in the temple city of Mathura in the wake of the terrorist attack in Pathankot.

Strategy has been chalked out with the coordination of Army at a meeting which was attended by District Magistrate Rajesh Kumar, SSP Rakesh Singh and a senior Army officer.

"For better liason and to avoid any such situation, it has been decided that the administration will take precautionary measures and conduct joint checkings in the district," SSP Rakesh Singh said.

Stringent security measures have been taken at railway station, bus station, Bankey Behari temple, Dwarkadhish temple and Isckon temple, he said.

Intensive frisking in Mathura Refinery has also been initiated and the checking in the Cantonment area has been increased.

People have been advised to remain alert in the backdrop of the attack, the SSP said.

"The people of Mathura as well as pilgrims are expected to cooperate with the administration and remain alert," the DM said.

An army officer of the Captain rank today made a round of crowded areas such as temples and market places falling under Kotwali police station.

"No untoward incident has been reported from anywhere," SSP Singh said.
Unidentified gunmen today shot dead a senior doctor in front of a hospital where he worked in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber Pakthunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

Dr Yousuf was on his way to clinic when unidentified gunmen opened indiscriminate firing on his car near DHQ Hospital Bannu of Khyber Pakthunkhwa.

As a result of firing Yousuf died on the spot.

Police has cordoned off the area and started collecting evidence from the crime scene.

Separately, law enforcement agencies arrested three terrorists during raids in Dera Ismail Khan District bordering South Waziristan Agency.

Police spokesman said that all the suspects were hiding in Shaheed Abad, Dera Ismail Khan, to carryout some terrorist activity as all of them were affiliated to a banned outfit.

It said that five kilograms of explosive material was also recovered from their possession in the raid.

The accused were involved in terror activities and extortion collection, the spokesman added.
Seven primary school children and their van driver were injured when the vehicle overturned on the outskirts of a village near here today, police said.

The accident took place when driver of the mini-van, carrying 20 children of a primary school, lost control over the wheels on the outskirts of Surayya Palli village under Manthani police stations limits, about 70 kms from here, at around 9.30 AM today, police sub-inspector Shaik Mastan said.

Out of the seven injured children, aged between 8 and 12, six were shifted to government hospital in Manthani and discharged after first aid, he said.

However, one child has been shifted to the government headquarters hospital in Karimnagar, where his condition is reported to be stable, the SI said.

The injured driver of the van is also undergoing treatment at government hospital in Manthani, he said.

A case has been registered, he said adding that a probe is on into the mishap.
BJP President Amit Shah will interact with the Ministers of Raje government for the first time here tomorrow with Opposition Congress claiming it as an indication of "change of guard" in the state.

Shah will arrive in the afternoon, and hold an interactive meeting with all ministers, including cabinet and MoS, of Rajasthan government at a hotel, state BJP President Ashok Parnami told PTI today.

This would be the first time that all the Ministers would be introduced to BJP president, Parnami said.

On a query whether it would be a review of Rajasthan Ministers' performance in the last two years, Paranmi said, "The meeting between Ministers and Party president will take its own course. It's difficult to predict. Of course, the central and state governments' development schemes could be on focal points".

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, party's Joint General Secretary V Satish, Avinash Khanna, state's party in charge and



president Parnami will also be attending the meeting.

According to Parnami, no party MLAs have been invited for the meeting.

Shah will return on the morning of January 7, as per his schedule.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition (Congress) Rameshwar Dudi took a jibe at BJP President over his visit here and meeting with Rajasthan Ministers, saying that it showed the Chief Minister has lost the trust of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a statement yesterday, Dudi said, "Shah interacting with ministers is an indication of change of guard in the state."



It is for the first time in the state, ruling BJP was compelled to organise an interactive meeting with the party head, he said.

He also alleged that BJP's Central leadership was probably aware of Raje government's mis-governance in last two years in Rajasthan.

(REOPENS NRG15)



Later in the day, Parliamentary Affairs Minister R S



Rathore said at a press conference after the state Cabinet meeting that BJP president Shah's interaction with ministers would be a "new process (navachar)".

"He is not coming to take our class... It would be an open discussion with the party president," Rathore said.

The BJP president would talk on the party's traditions and policies (riti-niti), he added.
Volatility shook Chinese stock markets today, as the Shanghai index dropped more than three percent on concerns over slowing growth before erasing most of the losses, a day after authorities halted trading to arrest falling prices.

The Shanghai market slumped 6.86 per cent yesterday after the release of weak manufacturing data heightened worries about the health of the world's second-largest economy, sparking a wave of selling of global equities.

A new "circuit breaker" mechanism aimed at curbing sharp swings went into effect on Monday, closing markets early, but analysts said its introduction added to traders' nervousness, prompting them to sell rather than risk being caught with holdings they could not liquidate.

"The main reason for yesterday's fall was concern that China's economy won't steadily pick up. The circuit breaker was more of an accelerant for the fall," Northeast Securities analyst Shen Zhengyang told AFP.

"Today's (Tuesday's) low should be the lowest point for the short term."



The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended down only 0.26 per cent at 3,287.71, after tumbling as much as 3.24 per cent during the day.

State-controlled funds bought stocks on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported, quoting people familiar with the matter, mirroring moves last year when the government waded into the market to halt a rout.

The People's Bank of China, the central bank, also pumped 130 billion yuan (USD 20 billion) into the money market, according to a statement.

"Liquidity is tight in the market and the PBoC has to react to that," Frances Cheung, Hong Kong-based head of rates strategy for Asia ex-Japan at Societe Generale, told Bloomberg.

The Shanghai index soared 150 per cent in the 12 months to mid-June and then plummeted nearly 30 percent in three weeks, prompting a government rescue package, before ending the year up 9.4 per cent.

On Tuesday, the Shenzhen Composite Index, which tracks stocks on China's second exchange, dropped 1.86 per cent to 2,079.77, after plunging 5.37 per cent earlier.
With Pakistan link becoming clear in Pathankot attack, its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today called up his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and promised "prompt and decisive action" against the terrorists behind the strike about which "specific and actionable" information has been provided.

Sharif, while conveying sorrow over the loss of lives in the terror attack, told Modi that terrorists "always try to derail the process of peace" between the two countries and that his country will fully cooperate and investigate the "leads" and "information" provided by India, Radio Pakistan reported.

During the telephonic call, Modi pressed for urgent action against those responsible for the attack that began on Saturday last with six terrorists sneaking into the Air Base, leading to an encounter in which seven securitymen, including a Lt Colonel, were killed.

Modi received a call this afternoon from the Prime Minister of Pakistan regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase, the PMO said.

The Prime Minister "strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organizations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the PMO said in a statement.

The statement said "specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan".

Sharif "assured Prime Minister Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists," the PMO said.

Radio Pakistan reported that Sharif, who is in Sri Lanka on a three-day trip, told Modi that his country will fully cooperate with India in the probe.

"Pakistan will investigate in detail on the leads and information provided by the government of India," Sharif was quoted by Radio Pakistan as saying.

It said the two Prime Ministers expressed resolve to fight terrorism through mutual cooperation.

There was, however, no formal statement by the government of Pakistan about the telephonic conversation.

The phone call from Sharif came as the Pakistan link to the attack became clear. NIA chief Sharad Kumar today said there was little doubt that the attackers were from Pakistan.

Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar added that there are indications that some of equipment used by terrorists were made in Pakistan.
With India-China relations showing improvement in the past year, a leading official Chinese daily today said that the ties between the two neighbours should not be distracted by "third parties" such as Pakistan or Japan.

An article in the state-run Global Times cited several high-level visits between the two countries in the past two years, such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's hometown diplomacy toward Chinese President Xi Jinping, or Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Northern Army Commander Lieutenant General DS Hooda's visits to China to underline the improvement in bilateral ties.

However, the article called on the two countries to overcome any possible distraction from "third parties."



"India is now worried that China's development plans in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and with other South Asian countries are aimed at India," it said.

"In China, many also believe that New Delhi's military and defence collaboration with Washington and Tokyo might counter Beijing. If there is no communication and attempt to resolve the issues, these factors might easily jeopardise the big picture of the bilateral cooperation," it said.

The article, referring to China's Silk Road projects - also called the Belt and Road - and India's Spice Route, said China and India should join each other's initiatives of connectivity and trilateral projects, "seeking answers from practical actions."



On the mounting trade deficit which climbed to $49 billion in the overall bilateral trade of $70.59 billion in 2014, raising concerns in India, it said Sino-Indian economic and trade cooperation is not merged with shared interests.

"The trade imbalance has become a new issue in the bilateral economic relations. Resolving it requires the two nations to fully exploit their potential as emerging markets, while making decisions from the perspective of each country's national rejuvenation, in order to promote a shared concept, resource complementarities, connection of the two's development strategies, and a closer partnership," it said.

"In addition, the basis of Sino-Indian security mutual trust is still not solid. Beijing and New Delhi should properly manage and control their divergences, and accumulate strategic mutual trust step by step," it said.

For development a peaceful and stable neighbourhood is needed, it said.

"In this process, maintaining strategic composure as well as promoting bilateral understanding is very significant. Neither side should wreck the current foundation over a single incident."
Public sector State Bank of Hyderabad today donated Rs 1.34 lakh towards the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund.

State Bank of Hyderabad Managing Director, Santanu Mukherjee, accompanied by General Manager, Rajendra Kumar handed over to Goveror K Rosaiah a cheque of Rs 1.34 crore towards the Relief Fund, a Raj Bhavan release said.
Three youths from Pune, who were kidnapped by Naxals last month in Chhattisgarh and released after five days, today said they were not ill-treated in any way by their abductors.

The students shared their experience during captivity when they also came to know about the harsh life in Naxal-dominated areas at a press conference here, in which Superintendent of Police of Gadchiroli, Sandeep Patil, was also present.

The trio - Aadarsh Patil, Vilas Valake and Shrikirhna Shevale - was abducted from Basaguda village of Bijapur district on December 29 and freed on January 2.

They said the Naxals did not harm or ill-treat them during captivity.

The youths had on December 20 launched a cycle rally from Pune under their "Bharat Jodo" (Link India) campaign to propagate the message of peace in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, the states worst affected by Naxalism.

"We had gone to study the life of people in remote and Naxal-affected tribal areas as part of our mission and did not expect to be kidnapped by the Naxals, though we fully knew about their presence," they said.

"On December 29, we halted at Basaguda village in Chhattisgarh but some people in civil clothes approached us and tied our hands upon which we realised we have been kidnapped. However, the villagers offered us food.

"The next day a man in Naxal uniform came to us and enquired about the motive of our tour. We had some money in our wallets but that was not touched by villagers or Naxals. They checked our cameras, mobiles, bags etc. On January 2, we were released," the Pune students said.

"We saw an entirely different world where people still lived in deprivation. They had no access to electricity, nutritious food or good clothes."



Patil said the IG of Chhattisgarh (Bastar Range), the SP of Sukma district and some social organisations played an important role in the release of the students.

From Sukma, where they were freed, the students were brought to Jagdalpur, from where we brought them to Gadchiroli last evening, he added.
Manturam Pawar, the Congress candidate in Antagarh by-election in Chhattisgarh who pulled out of the fray at the last moment, today denied that Chief Minister Raman Singh, BJP or the Congress leader Ajit Jogi had any role in his withdrawal.

Pawar is now at the centre of a controversy over an audio-tape which reportedly suggests that his withdrawal was at the behest of BJP and was facilitated by Jogi.

"I had lost Antagarh Assembly poll three times -- 2003, 2008 and 2013 -- due to infighting in state Congress and differences among key leaders. Therefore I was not willing to become the party nominee in 2014 bypoll."



"I had even asked state Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel to give the chance to some other leader, but he ignored my advice," Pawar said at a press conference here.

Pawar, considered to be close to Jogi, withdrew from the fray a day before the last date for withdrawal and was expelled from Congress. He later joined BJP.

"Few days before the withdrawal of nomination, I had asked Baghel to unite all the party leaders for the election, but he asked me to keep Ajit Jogi, Charandas Mahant and supporters of AICC treasurer Motilal Vora away from campaign so that he could take credit if Congress won," Pawar said.

"Baghel also said that winning Antagarh would certainly boost his image in Delhi and help him become candidate for the Chief Minister's post in the next Assembly polls. He had also promised me a cabinet berth if Congress came to power. All this prompted me to withdraw from the fray," Pawar said.

Pawar called the audio tape "fake" and "baseless" and



said that Chief Minister Raman Singh, BJP or Ajit Jogi had no role in his withdrawal.

To a question whether he supported Congress's demand of probe by an SIT or by the Election Commission, he said, "I am open to all kind of investigations, whatever Congress wants to bring out the truth."



Pawar also alleged he was offered bribe by two unnamed persons to rejoin Congress in November last year. "They said they had approached me on Baghel's direction," he said.

"Those two persons said I will be taken to New Delhi to meet AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi and I have to speak against Ajit Jogi before him. They also said they wanted to make some audio tape regarding the Antagarh by-poll. For all this I was offered money, a red-beacon vehicle and other things. But I paid no heed," he claimed.

The audio tape released by a national daily contains conversations purportedly featuring Ajit Jogi, his son Amit and Chief Minister Raman Singh's son-in-law Puneet Gupta, Pawar himself, Firoz Siddiqui and Ameen Memon.

Congress, however, dismissed Pawar's allegations.

"Pawar betrayed the trust of Congress by withdrawing from the election then, and now he is levelling false charges against our leaders," state Congressspokesperson Sailesh Nitin Trivedi said.

"He has become spokesperson of BJP and is saying whatever is being fed to him by the ruling party leaders," he added.
Tata Capital Innovations Fund (TCIF), a private equity fund managed by Tata Capital, has invested around USD 5 million in Alef Mobitech Solutions.

The investment by TCIF will help Alef Mobitech Solutions strengthen its business development, marketing, research and development initiatives to establish a leadership position in the mobile internet space, TCIF said in a statement.

Alef Mobitech Solutions is a fully owned subsidiary of US-based Alef Mobitech.

"The consumption of data in general and videos in particular is increasing exponentially. While smart phones have become ubiquitous, the current mobile technologies available are unable to handle the enormous growth in mobile data," Tata Capital Innovations Fund Partner Vineet Chadha said.

"Alef's solution enhances customer experience on mobile networks by providing rich, high quality mobile content along with superior quality interactions. The Fund liked the strong product domain knowledge of the team and is pleased to participate in Alef Mobitech's growth journey," he added.

Alef Mobitech, which has offices in New Jersey, Mumbai and Pune, has pioneered a mobility-cloud interconnect platform and solution suite which enhances user engagement by increasing relevance and responsiveness of mobile internet applications.

"Alef is committed and driven to create an enabling ecosystem to bring about transformative changes, and poised to significantly impact the trillion dollar mobile internet market.

"The Fund's leadership, global vision, and focus on innovation will provide us tremendous momentum towards acquiring a leadership position in the mobile internet space," Alef Mobitech Founder Ganesh Sundaram said.
The Bombay High Court today admitted an appeal filed by Chandrabhan Sanap, convicted in the rape and murder case of a Hyderabad techie, challenging the death penalty awarded to him by a special court last year.

A special court had on October 30 last year convicted Sanap for raping and murdering a 23-year-old TCS techie, after picking her up from suburban Lokmanya Tilak Terminus under the false promise of dropping her at her hostel in Andheri.

The trial court had observed that the case falls under the category of 'rarest of rare'.

According to the prosecution, the victim who hails from Andhra Pradesh, had returned to the city on January 5 last year after visiting her family in Machilipatnam. Arriving at the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in suburban Kurla, she met Sanap, who offered to drop her home in Andheri for Rs 300.

Sanap then raped and murdered her and tried to get rid of the body in the bushes along the Eastern Express Highway in Bhandup.

After a search, her family found the body on January 16. Sanap was arrested in March. Subsequently, he was charged with murder, rape, kidnapping and other charges.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice V K Tahilramani and Justice Sadhana Jadhav today admitted Sanap's appeal. It will come up for final hearing in due course.

The state government has also filed a petition seeking confirmation of the death sentence which will be heard along with Sanap's appeal.
Telangana Minister K T Rama Rao today met US Consulate General Michael Mullins here and discussed the issue of Telugu students facing problems with regard to their admission in American educational institutes.

Rao, who holds IT and Panchayat Raj portfolios, met the Consulate General as per the directive of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, according an official release here.

The meeting came in the wake of several students, seeking admission in American universities, from Hyderabad having been sent back from the US though they had valid visas.

The Minister was told that the problem arose not just with students from Hyderabad but from different cities across the country, the release said.

The Consulate officials assured the Minister that efforts are being made to rectify the problem.

Mullins informed Rama Rao that problems are cropping up in view of reported defects in documents submitted for obtaining visa, it said.

He said the US India Education Fair would be expanded to see that the students do not fall prey to private agents, the release said.

The Minister told the Consulate General that it is not correct to send back the students who have secured valid visas after spending time and money.

Rama Rao said he would write a letter to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on the issue, the release added.
Hackers took over several police websites in Thailand, replacing the home pages with a message saying, "Failed Law. We want Justice!"



Police today said they were investigating if the hack was in response to a Thai court decision that has been widely protested in neighboring Myanmar.

The December 24 ruling resulted in death sentences for two Myanmar men convicted of murdering two British backpackers.

Protesters believe the men were scapegoats and have threatened to boycott Thai goods after a trial that raised many unanswered questions about police and judicial conduct in Thailand.

Several police websites were either offline or still displayed the hackers' message today evening, hours after the online attack was staged late Monday.

A black screen showed a white mask and blanked-out eyes and a hashtag Boycott Thailand. It also mentioned a group calling itself the "Blink Hacker Group" and made reference to Myanmar with a line in tiny print that said, "Greetz Myanmar Black Hats."



Thai police spokesman Dejnarong Suthicharnbuncha said about "two or three" websites were affected but Thai media listed more than 12.

"I received an initial report that the hackers are from another country," Dejnarong said. When asked if he meant they were from Myanmar and whether the hack was in response to the Koh Tao verdict, he said, "It's possible. We are investigating."



Protesters have rallied in Yangon outside the Thai Embassy and at border crossings demanding a review of the evidence in the case.

The men, Win Zaw Htun and Zaw Lin, were convicted of murdering David Miller, 24, and Hannah Witheridge, 23 whose bodies were found on the island of Koh Tao on September 14, 2014. Witheridge had also been raped.

Police rushed to solve the crime, under intense pressure to limit negative publicity to the tourism industry, but the investigation and trial drew widespread criticism.

Police were criticized for not properly securing the crime scene, conducting more than 200 random DNA tests, releasing names and pictures of suspects who turned out to be innocent, mishandling crucial DNA evidence from the victims and allegedly torturing their prime suspects.
Three city-based youths, who were arrested last month for allegedly planning to join jihadi terror groups such as ISIS, were taken into police custody today.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Hyderabad Police took custody of the trio -- Mohd Abdulla Basith, Maaz Hasan Farooq and Syed Omer Farooq Hussaini -- all cousins, from the Chanchalguda Central Prison where they are currently kept as part of their judicial custody.

A local court had yesterday granted city police a seven-day custody of the three students, who were picked up from Nagpur airport last week and arrested by Hyderabad police on December 27.

"They were handed over to police this afternoon," a senior jail official said.

As part of further investigation into the case, the police said they want to interrogate the trio, recover certain documents and also want to take them to Nagpur for probe.

According to the police, the accused had planned to meet Kashmiri separatist leader Asiya Andrabi and seek her help in crossing the border and travel to Afghanistan and Syria to join terror groups such as ISIS.

The three have been booked under IPC section 121 (waging war against the government) and relevant sections of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Three children were today charred to death at Gingni village in the district as their grass hut caught fire while their parents were away, said police.

The incident took place at Gingni in Jamjodhpur tehsil this afternoon.

Suresh Solanki, a native of Madhya Pradesh, and his wife had gone to work at a nearby farm after leaving their three children in the small hut where they lived, sub-inspector of Jamjodhpur police station L C Jesadiya said.

"Solanki and his wife work as farm labourers. The couple had two daughters -- Laxmi(4), Ghani(3) -- and 4-month-old son Shivam. The children were charred to death before anyone could rescue them," he said.

"It is possible that the children might have been playing with smoulderig firewood in the stove. A spark may have started fire," the police officer said. Further probe is on.
About 40 leading business leaders, venture capitalists and around 2,000 start-ups would offer key inputs to the action plan to be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 16 for encouraging budding entrepreneurs.

The government on January 16 is holding a day-long session on start-ups in which around 2,000 new age ventures, 40 CEOs, and venture capitalists would participate, DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant told reporters here.

"The Prime Minister will unveil the action plan of the Startup India. About 40 leading CEOs, venture capitalist, angel investors from Silicon Valley will come down," he said.

He said that by nature, start-up action plan cannot be a one policy.

The plan would highlight initiatives and schemes being undertaken by the government to address various aspects relating to developing a conducive start-up ecosystem in the country, he said.

"Start-ups cut across the entire ecosystem. Everybody needs to create an ecosystem for start-ups. We are working together to create a unique ecosystem for them," he said.

"We want the start-ups to grow and flourish. There are too many issues on compliance. The intention is that government will keep itself away," he added.

He said that the action plan would help the sector in penetrating tier-2 and tier-3 cities in sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare.

Speaking about the programme, he said the event will feature interactive talks with global leaders such as Founder and CEO of SoftBank Masayoshi Son; Founder of WeWork Adam Nuemann, Uber Founder Travis Kalanick.

Google will be conducting an innovative session titled 'Laucnhpad Accelerator' which will involve live pitches being made by early state start-ups to potential investors.

"Whosoever is able to get into the 'Launchpad Accelerator' will get a cheque of USD 50,000 from Google...Equity funding into their start-ups," Kant said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would inaugurate the event at 'Vigyan Bhawan' here.

A question and answer session titled 'Face-to-face with Policy makers' is also being organised wherein Secretaries of key departments will answer questions on how government will be creating an enabling ecosystem for start-ups.

"The objective is to reinforce commitment of the government towards creating an ecosystem that is conducive for growth of start-ups," he said.

The panel shall comprise of Secretaries from departments



including Revenue, Human Resources and Development, Corporate Affairs and Financial Services, Economic Affairs besides representatives from Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

The event would be a non-stop day long global workshop on start-up entrepreneurship and shall include panel discussions on topics such as 'Unleashing Entrepreneurship and Innovation: What do Indian Startups Need to Grow and Prosper'; 'Celebrating Women: Stories of Innovative Women Entrepreneurs', 'How digitisation will change India's future'; 'Making Indian Healthcare Leapfrog' and 'Financial inclusion is within reach'.

The panel discussion on 'Show Me the Money: How do we Capitalize Entrepreneurship?' shall be chaired by Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha.

Nikesh Arora, President & Chief Operating Officer, SoftBank shall be interacting with participants on aspects relating to Start-up funding.

A virtual exhibition is also being organised as part of the event to showcase some of the unique and innovative work done by Start-ups in the country.

The event will be telecast live in IITs, IIMs, NITs, IIITs and Central Universities and to youth groups in over 350 districts of India.

DIPP is organising the event along with Invest India and Start-up ecosystem players iSpirt, YourStory, NASSCOM, SheThePeople.Tv and Kairos Society and youth wings of FICCI and CII.

Kant said that India should become a nation of job creators rather than job seekers.

"We would like all the youth of India to get connected with this unique movement on start-ups," he added.
Enforcement Directorate (ED) today told a special court that the Rs 200 crore transaction between DMK-run Kalaignar TV and DB Group firms was "illegal gratification" in lieu of grant of 2G spectrum to Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd by former Telecom Minister A Raja.

Continuing the final arguments in a 2G scam-related money laundering case lodged by the ED, the agency said that money transactions between Dynamix Realty to Kusegaon fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd was "not genuine" and was a "sham transaction".

"This stands proved that money travelled from Dynamix Realty to Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd. It was not a genuine transaction," Special Public Prosecutor Anand Grover argued before Special CBI Judge O P Saini.

"Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd was not doing any business and it was engaged in agriculture purpose while Dynamix Realty was involved in real estate business.

"It was a sham transaction and no business transaction was there at all," he added.

The prosecutor said Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd and Dynamix Realty had "totally unrelated business activities" and there was no reason for them to conduct business together.

He also claimed that no security was created for giving so much of money to another company and it also showed that it was not a genuine transaction.

"As it was not a genuine transaction, therefore, we come to the conclusion that it was an illegal gratification and the money was tainted," he contended.

ED's arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow.

ED had earlier alleged that Rs 200 crore "illegal gratification" was transferred to DMK-run Kalaignar TV by DB group firm through a "circuitous route" in return for grant of spectrum to Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd by Raja.

It had alleged that a conspiracy was hatched by Raja, Kanimozhi, DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's wife Dayalu Ammal and others and Rs 200 crore was "proceeds of crime".

Raja, Kanimozhi, Ammal and 16 others, including nine



firms, are facing trial in the case in which ED had on April 25 last year filed a charge sheet under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The court had on October 31, 2014, framed charges against the accused claiming that Raja had allegedly connived with Kanimozhi, Ammal and others in the "parking" of illegal gratification in Kalaignar TV.

The other accused are Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd (STPL) promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka, Kalaignar TV MD Sharad Kumar, Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd, Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Bollywood producer Karim Morani and P Amirtham. All of them are out on bail.

In the CBI case, besides Raja and Kanimozhi, ex-Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura, Raja's erstwhile private secretary R K Chandolia, Unitech Ltd MD Sanjay Chandra, STPL promoters Shahid Usman Balwa and Vinod Goenka and three top executives of Reliance ADAG -- Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair -- are facing trial.

Directors of Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables Pvt Ltd Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal, Kalaignar TV Director Sharad Kumar and Bollywood producer Karim Morani are also accused in the case, besides three telecom companies -- Reliance Telecom Ltd, STPL and Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu) Ltd.

All the accused, who are out on bail, have denied the allegations against them.
Turkish authorities today found the bodies of at least 36 migrants, including several children, washed up on beaches and floating off its western coast after their boats sank while crossing the Aegean Sea to EU member Greece.

The tragedies, the deadliest so far reported in the Aegean in 2016, come as the EU seeks to push Turkey to halt the flow of migrants across its borders in exchange for financial help.

A spokesman for the Turkish coastguard told AFP that the bodies of 36 migrants had been found, including 29 recovered by the Turkish gendarmerie and seven by the coastguard.

It was not immediately clear how many boats had sunk in the high seasonal winds although the Dogan agency said at least two separate incidents were involved.

Two dozen migrants seeking to reach the Greek island of Lesbos set out before dawn aboard a rubber boat but it capsized in bad weather and high seas, the Dogan reported.

The bodies were found either washed up on the beach near the resort of Ayvalik or in the sea nearby, Dogan said. Eight more migrants had been rescued.

Among those found dead was a woman who was six months pregnant, Dogan said.

Images published by Dogan showed the corpses of children, fully dressed and wearing shoes, lying on the beach with their life jackets still on.

Video footage showed Turkish security forces lifting other bodies from the waves in the shallows on the shore.

The deaths are the latest involving migrants fleeing war and misery in the hope of finding a new life in Europe.

The images of the small lifeless bodies on the sand echo those of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, pictures of whose corpse lying face-down on a Turkish beach in September 2015 spurred Europe into greater action on the migrant crisis.

A drowned two-year-old boy became the first known migrant casualty of the year on Saturday after the crowded dinghy he was travelling in slammed into rocks off Greece's Agathonisi island, the coastguard said.

Turkey, which is home to some 2.2 million refugees from Syria's civil war, has become a hub for migrants seeking to reach Europe, many of whom pay people smugglers thousands of dollars for the risky crossing.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 1,004,356 migrants and refugees reached Europe in 2015, almost five times the previous year's total of 219,000.
Turkey has asked Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

"We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in Ankara's first reaction to the crisis yesterday.

"The region is already a powder keg," Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting, quoted by the Anatolia news agency. "Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region."



The crisis began at the weekend when Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as well as 46 other convicts, prompting a furious reaction from Tehran and anti-Saudi protests.

Riyadh and then Bahrain and Sudan have now severed relations with Tehran, the main Shiite power.

Turkey's relations with Saudi Arabia have warmed considerably in recent months and in December President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Riyadh for talks with King Salman and the entire Saudi elite.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim powers, share the same vision over the conflict in Syria where they believe only the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad can bring an end to almost five years of civil war.

But in a rare public criticism of Ankara's ally, Kurtulmus emphasised that Turkey, which abolished the death penalty as part of its bid to join the EU, was opposed to capital punishment.

"We are a country that abolished the death penalty. Death penalties, especially ones that are politically-motivated, are of no help to making peace in the region," he said.

As Turkish ties with Riyadh have warmed, Ankara's relations with Tehran have grown more tense in recent months, notably over Iran's role in Syria - where the Islamic republic supports Assad's regime - and over its burgeoning relations with Russia.

But Kurtulmus said: "These are two major Islamic countries for Turkey. We have good relations with each of them."
The Islamic-rooted government of Turkey will give civil servants time off work to attend the weekly Friday prayers in mosques, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said today.

"We are working on a regulation that will allow the Friday lunch breaks to be used in a way that will not hinder the freedom of worship," Davutoglu told lawmakers of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

"After that, every Friday will be a (religious) celebration" he said.

Friday mosque prayers are obligatory for devout Muslim males.

But unlike several other mainly Muslim countries in the Middle East, officially Turkey uses the standard Monday-Friday working week employed in the West.

In power since 2002, the AKP of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accused by critics of imposing a creeping Islamisation on the country and eroding the secular values laid by modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Over the past two years, the government has lifted bans on women and girls wearing headscarves in schools and civil service, moves denounced by opponents as undermining the basis of Turkey's secular state.

It also limited alcohol sales and made efforts to ban mixed-sex dorms at state universities.

The past decade has seen a substantial increase in the number of mosques built in Turkey.

According to a report issued by Turkey's top religious body Diyanet last year, the number of mosques in Turkey rose by estimated 11 between 2004 and 2014.

Erdogan, a devout Muslim, came under fire last year for building a huge mosque inside his controversial presidential palace in the outskirts of Ankara.
One all-female NCC contingent comprising 148 cadets along with a band of 45 female cadets will participate in the Republic Day Parade this year, an official said.

Addressing the annual conference, Lt Gen Aniruddha Chakravarty, who is the Director General of the National Cadet Corps, said 2,069 cadets, including 695 girls have participated in the NCC camp this year.

"Of this, one all-male contingent and all-female contingent with a strength of 148 each will participate in the Republic Day Parade. Plus, one all-male band of 90 cadets and all-female band of 45 cadets will also participate in the Republic Day Parade," Chakravarty said.

With an aim of increasing the strength of women in the force to 33 per cent, the NCC has also planned an initiative to send its female cadets to conquer Mt Everest peak this year while a group of 91 international cadets from seven countries will also visit India as a part of the Youth Exchange Programme.

The government is already in the process of raising new NCC units in the coastal areas in the west along with in areas affected by left-wing extremism and insurgency besides those bordering Pakistan and China in a five-phase programme.

"Two phases are over and nearly 40,000 cadets were enrolled in NCC in these two phases. In the third phase, we plan to add 40,000 cadets. The plan is to enroll 2 lakh cadets under the programme and increase the strength from existing 13 lakh cadets.

We also intend to increase the strength of women cadets into the force to 33 per cent under the programme," Lt Col Pratik Saxena said.

Last year, the Cabinet had also come up with a decision to have 33 per cent of women in police force in all Union Territories.

Elaborating on the training NCC camps, Chakravarty said



the training helps in inculcating leadership qualities in life ahead and has been attended by several eminent personalities in the past, who have now scaled heights in different fields.

"The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), Raksha Mantri (Manohar Parrikar), the Raksha Rajya Mantri (Rao Inderjit Singh), industrialist Adi Godrej, medico Dr Madhu Trehan, film personalities Vinod Khanna and Jaya Bachchan, and many chief of service staffs have been NCC cadets.

The aim of the Republic Day camp is to provide the cadets an exposure to the rich and cultural traditions of our nation and the important events that take place in the national capital during the run to the Republic Day Parade. The camp portrays a refection of Mini India, Chakarvarty said.

The cadets will also hold parade for the Vice President, Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Minister of State for Defence, Delhi Chief Minister, all three service chiefs and interact with the President over the month.

Speaking on the female cadets participating in the Mt Everest trekking, some 15 cadets will be trained at the Army Mountaineering Institute at the Siachen Base Camp in May-June this year before mission.

"Under the Youth Exchange Programme, 91 cadets from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Russia will visit India.
Two terrorists involved in killing of a police officer in 2014 were arrested today during a search operation in Pakistan's restive northwestern province.

The terrorists were arrested after an exchange of fire with police in Mattni area of Peshawar district in Khyber Pakthunkhwa close to Khyber tribal belt, police said.

The police carried out a search operation after receiving information from secret agencies about the presence of terrorists in the area, said SSP operation Mian Saeed.

The terrorists opened fire on police when they were asked to surrender and were arrested after the exchange of fire, he said.

The arrested terrorists were involved in killing of SHO Badaber police station in 2014, Main said, adding that police also recovered 5 kilogrammes of explosives and hand grenades from their possession.

The arrested terrorists were shifted to an undisclosed location for further interrogation.
Power Minister Piyush Goyal today exuded confidence that all states will join UDAY after Jharkhand became the first state to sign an MoU to avail benefits of the scheme meant for revival of debt-laden discoms.

"All states will come on board. It's an optional scheme. Therefore, they get the confidence that we are not trying to impose anything," Goyal told PTI in an interview.

"Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojna (UDAY) is not decided in this (ministry) office. UDAY scheme has been created or crafted with great deal of consultations and collaborations of all the stakeholders. I think it is a living example Team India Prime Minister Narendra Modi has envisaged."



Jharkhand today signed an agreement with the Power Ministry to join UDAY, which is seen to offer the state a net benefit of approximately Rs 5,300 crore.

The central and state governments and JBVNL (Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd) signed the memorandum of understanding under the scheme -- Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojna -- here today for operation and financial turnaround of JBVNL.

The signing ceremony was held in the presence of the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Raghubar Das.

Goyal said that as many as 15 states have agreed to join the scheme covering 90 per cent of total power distribution companies' debt (Rs 4.37 lakh crore).

Earlier in the day, terming UDAY as "a win-win scheme for all", Power Secretary Pradeep Kumar Pujari said most of the MoUs will be signed in the next few weeks.

Asked whether UDAY will resolve all issues related to the power sector, Goyal said, "There is never a one-size-fits-all solution. Therefore, within UDAY, we will innovate when it comes to each state."



Explaining further, he said, "The beauty of UDAY is it allows that kind of flexibility to work together with states for better solutions. But the end objective is 100 per cent affordable energy access 24x7 to every citizen of India."



Goyal put a premium on transparency, saying "I am holding myself and all of us responsible and you will be monitoring our performance".

"I am going to put MoUs in the public (domain). The entire ministry is working on transparency. I am quite confident that it will be a big solution to most of the problems," the minister added.

He also threw open the scheme to those states that have not unbundled their transmission, generation and distribution business and find it difficult to join the scheme.

"They can go for UDAY. The element of transferring debt from discoms to states will not apply to them. But they will enjoy all other benefits," he clarified.

There are some 12 states and UTs which are facing this issue.

Goyal underlined the need for a dialogue with the states and have a separate dispensation. "We will bring them on board hopefully this fiscal or maybe, in the next six months. They are smaller states or UTs and the pressure is not so immediate also," he noted.
Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed today that his ministers will be allowed to campaign for either side in a referendum on whether or not Britain should stay in the European Union.

"There will be a clear government position but it will be open to individual ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the government," he told the House of Commons.

The move, likely to be seen as a concession to eurosceptics, means that Cameron will not have to sack ministers who want to campaign to leave the EU for breaching the convention of collective cabinet responsibility.

Britain must by law hold the referendum by the end of 2017 but analysts say the vote could be held as early as mid-2016 if Britain's renegotiation of its relationship with the EU is completed in time.

Officials are hopeful that the terms of the renegotiation can be agreed at a summit in Brussels next month.

Cameron himself says he will campaign to stay in the EU as long as he can secure reforms to Britain's relationship with the bloc.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has asked Saudi Arabia and Iran to avoid actions that could further exacerbate tensions, as he expressed disappointment at the execution of cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr and said the break in Saudi diplomatic ties with Iran was deeply worrying.

Secretary-General Ban phoned Saudi Foreign Minister Abel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir andIranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to urge them to "avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

In his call to the Saudi Foreign Minister yesterday, Ban reiterated his views on capital punishment, which he strongly opposes, and his disappointment at the execution of al-Nimr, whose case he raised with the Saudi authorities several times.

He also reiterated that the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was deplorable, but added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic ties with Iran was deeply worrying.

Regarding Yemen, he urged Saudi Arabia to renew its commitment to a ceasefire, according to a readout provided by his office of the two phone calls.

Speaking to the Iranian Foreign Minister, the UN chief recalled his earlier statement voicing dismay at Saturday's execution of al-Nimr and 46 other prisoners by Saudi Arabia, as well as his condemnation of the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and he urged the minister to take the necessary measures to protect diplomatic facilities.

In a statement by his spokesman on Saturday, Ban had said al-Nimr and a number of the others executed "had been convicted following trials that raised serious concerns over the nature of the charges and the fairness of the process."



UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein had stressed the strict requirements for carrying out the death sentence in those countries that still permitted it, including only for the most serious crimes, with a fair trial, full transparency, and the exclusion of confessions obtained under torture, when application of the death penalty is "unconscionable."



"Generally, I remain very concerned over whether strict due process guarantees, including the right to an effective defence, were met in all cases," he said, urging the Saudi government to impose a moratorium on all executions and to work with the UN and other partners on alternative strategies to combat terrorism.
Trade unions today opposed the government's move to bring a model law, which seeks to provide greater flexibility to retailers as well as malls on various issues such as timings of opening and closing of shops.

The Labour Ministry today held tripartite consultations to discuss the Model Shops and Establishments (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Bill, 2015, which was opposed by the unions, including BJP-backed Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS).

"Trade unions opposed this Model Act. They said there is no need to frame such a law. Already all states have laws on running shops and establishments ... If the Centre wants it can crate model guidelines," All Indian Trade Union Congress Secretary D L Sachdev told PTI after the meeting.

Today, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya clarified that the government will not approach Parliament for this model act, he added.

"After opposition by the unions, the Minister said that the Ministry will take suggestions and bring a new draft. This will be brought out as guidelines," Sachdev said.

According to the draft bill, the Model Act would bring uniformity in the legislative provisions, making it easier for all the states to adopt it and thereby ensuring uniform working conditions across the country.

At present, states have their own legislations which regulate shops and establishments like their closing and opening times, holidays and working shifts of women.

The bill says that women should be permitted during night shift and there should be no discrimination against women in the matter of recruitment, training, transfer or promotions.

It will be applicable to shops and establishments having 10 or more workers except manufacturing units.

BMS Zonal Organisation Secretary Pawan Kumar said: "BMS has said that the draft should be rejected and a new one should be made and then discuss it with unions. The definition of wages is not right as per us. Overtime, bonus issues have not been dealt properly."



The government's model act is not in the interest of the workers. The Act deals with shops and establishments with more than 10 workers, while in 95 per cent of the shops in India there workers are less than 10. So what about them?, he added.

"Another drawback is that if a worker is fired, that worker cannot approach the court under this law. This law has also not talked about social security," Kumar said.

However, as per the background note of the model law, the state laws are inadequate to deal with the issues related to shops and establishment.

Central government has found that there is rigidity in opening and closing of shops. Issues like discouraging women in employment, difficulties in registration & annual renewal (of shop permits or licenses) and maintenance of statutory records are also there, sources said.
The US has launched nationwide enforcement operations to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who entered the country with children and have lost asylum cases.

Most of those arrests are of those entering the US from its southern border.

This past weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) engaged in concerted, nationwide enforcement operations to take into custody and return at a greater rate adults who entered this country illegally with children, the US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said.

"This should come as no surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed," he said.

Johnson said the focus of this weekend's operations were on adults and their children who were apprehended after May 1, 2014 when they were crossing the southern border illegally. They have been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court and have exhausted appropriate legal remedies and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under US laws.

"As part of these operations, 121 individuals were taken into custody, primarily from Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, and they are now in the process of being repatriated," Johnson said.

To effect removal, most families are first being transported to one of ICE's family residential centres for temporary processing before being issued travel documents and boarding a return flight to their home countries, he said.

Over 11 million immigrants are living in the US illegally, according to estimates.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum said these arrests and deportation is not safe or sustainable.

"Deportation raids instill fear in immigrant communities, and deportation is not an acceptable substitute for well-functioning refugee and asylum processes for families with credible fear of persecution," he said.

"The approach DHS has outlined is not safe or sustainable. It is faulty logic for DHS to believe that if they deport people fleeing violence back to violence, will never come to the US," Noorani said.

The Homeland Security Secretary defended the action.

"As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration; if you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values," Johnson said.
US authorities have taken 121 people, who entered the country mostly from the southern border and lost asylum cases, into custody as part of nationwide enforcement operations to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.

This past weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) engaged in concerted, nationwide enforcement operations to take into custody and return at a greater rate adults who entered this country illegally with children, the US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said.

"This should come as no surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed," he said.

Most of those arrested are the ones who entered the US from the southern border it shares Mexico.

Johnson said the focus of this weekend's operations were on adults and their children who were apprehended after May 1, 2014 when they were crossing the southern border illegally.

They have been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court and have exhausted appropriate legal remedies and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under US laws.

"As part of these operations, 121 individuals were taken into custody, primarily from Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, and they are now in the process of being repatriated," Johnson said.

To effect removal, most families are first being transported to one of ICE's family residential centres for temporary processing before being issued travel documents and boarding a return flight to their home countries, he said.

Over 11 million immigrants are living in the US illegally, according to estimates.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum said these arrests and deportation is not safe or sustainable.

"Deportation raids instill fear in immigrant communities, and deportation is not an acceptable substitute for well-functioning refugee and asylum processes for families with credible fear of persecution," he said.

"The approach DHS has outlined is not safe or sustainable. It is faulty logic for DHS to believe that if they deport people fleeing violence back to violence, others will never come to the US," Noorani said.

The Homeland Security Secretary defended the action.

"As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration; if you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values," Johnson said.
The US expects Pakistan will take actions against the perpetrators of the terror attack on IAF base in Pathankot, a top American official said, hours after Islamabad said it is working on the "leads" provided by India.

"The government of Pakistan has spoken very powerfully to this and it's certainly our expectation that they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they would," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said yesterday.

Pakistan has said it is working on the "leads" provided by India on this attack.

ALSO READ: 4 terrorists killed in gunbattle at Air Force base in Punjab

Describing terrorism as a "shared challenge" in South Asia, the US also asked all countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and bring justice to the perpetrators of the Pathankot terrorist attack.

"We urge all the countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and to bring justice to the perpetrators of this particular attack. I would note that the government of Pakistan, also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian air base.

"We have been clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups," Kirby said.

ALSO READ: Time for Pak to give answers on Pathankot

The government of Pakistan has said publicly and privately that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups as part of its counter-terrorism operation, he said.

"So this is a shared challenge that we all face in the region and we in the United States want everybody to treat it as a shared challenge," Kirby said, adding that the US has strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Punjab's Pathankot.

"We extend our condolences to all the victims and their families," he said.

He said the US has for a long time talked about the continued safe haven issues there in between Afghanistan and Pakistan and certainly between India and Pakistan.

"We're mindful that there remain some safe havens that we obviously want to see cleared out. And we continue to engage with the government of Pakistan to that end. And again, I would point you back to what the government of Pakistan itself has said and acknowledged that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups and it will continue to take the fight," Kirby said.

The Pakistani government, the Pakistani people very much understand the threat here, Kirby said.

"What we want and what we continue to say we want and will continue to work for is increased cooperation, communication, coordination, increased information-sharing and increased efforts against what we all believe is a shared challenge in the region.

"We want to see the government of Pakistan continue to press the fight against terrorists, all terrorists, and to meet their own expectations that they're not going to discriminate among groups. They've said themselves and our expectation is that they'll live up to that pledge," he said.

"We recognise there's more everybody can do, not just Pakistan but every nation can do because it is a shared challenge and it's a challenge, as you well know, that doesn't necessarily observe borders and boundaries. So it's something that everybody can attack more," Kirby said.

Kirby said the US is encouraged by the government of Pakistan condemning this attack, and the statement that they've made about not discriminating among groups.

"As we've said before, this is an issue that, as are so many issues between India and Pakistan and we want to see them work out bilaterally," Kirby said, adding that normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan remains vital to the security and economic prosperity of the entire region.

"We strongly encourage the governments of both India and Pakistan to remain steadfast in their commitment to a more secure and prosperous future for both our countries and for their region," Kirby added.

Pakistan yesterday said it is working on the "leads" provided by India on the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot, according to the Foreign Office.

Extending Pakistan's deepest condolences to the Government and people of India on the "unfortunate terrorist incident" in Pathankot, a statement by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it."



The statement, however, did not give details of the "leads" provided by India.
The US has expressed concern over Saudi Arabia's human rights records, saying the recent mass execution of political and religious leaders shows that the Kingdom is not doing enough to address the international community's legitimate concerns.

"Carrying out mass executions I think is a prime example of a government that is not doing enough to address the legitimate concerns that have been expressed by the international community about the human rights situation inside their own country," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said yesterday.

The US has raised significant concerns about the human rights environment in Saudi Arabia, he said.

"The State Department put out a report detailing the long list of concerns that the US has with Saudi Arabia's human rights record, and certainly mass executions would rate highly in that list of concerns and we certainly would condemn," he said.

Observing that there is no denying the US has a much stronger and more effective relationship with Saudi Arabia than with Iran, Earnest said but there's also no denying that Saudi Arabia's human rights record is something that has been the source of significant concern on the part of the Obama administration and previous administrations as well.

"Those are concerns that have been relayed directly by President (Barack) Obama to the two Saudi Arabian leaders - the two Saudi leaders that he has dealt with in his tenure as President, but these are also concerns that have been relayed to Saudi Arabia through a variety of channels," he noted.

"I would say that our concerns about Saudi Arabia's actions in this regard are related both to concerns that we have about the impact that these actions have on Saudi Arabia's national security but we also have concerns about the impact that this has on US interests in the region," he said.

Kirby said the US has been very clear about its concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia.

"It's something that we have talked to Saudi officials about before. We will continue to do so. We continue to call on the Government of Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights and to permit the peaceful expression of dissent and to work together with all community leaders to defuse tensions.

"What we want to see is for Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights and to ensure a fair and transparent judicial process," Kirby added.
Uttarakhand Congress today accused the Centre of not allocating funds for organising the Ardhkumabh mela in Haridwar and said that it was another proof of its "attitude of neglect" towards the state.

A delegation led by the party's Uttarakhand chief Kishore Upadhyay met Governor Krishna Kant Paul and handed him a memorandum addressed to President Pranab Mukherjee, expressing strong resentment over the "indifference" with which the Congress-ruled state was being treated by the Centre.

"Budgetary allocations to the state under different heads have been substantially curtailed ever since BJP came to power at the Centre," the memorandum stated.

"Moreover, an assistance of Rs 1,000 crore sought from the Centre for organising the Ardhakumabh mela which formally begins this month is still awaited. It reflects the Centre's attitude of neglect towards Uttarakhand," it said.

The party also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his surprise visit to Lahore recently without taking the Parliament and the people of the country into confidence.

"Patronisation of terrorists by Pakistan is a well-known fact. Their troops are firing relentlessly on Indian posts from across the border while innocent Indians are falling to their bullets," the memorandum stated.

"Under such circumstances, the Prime Minister's surprise visit to Lahore,without taking the Parliament and the people of the country into confidence was by no means justified," it said.

Condemning the terror attack in Pathankot, the state Congress chief said, it gives rise to fresh security concerns for a border state like Uttarakhand.

Upadhyay also blamed the Centre for failing to reduce petrol and diesel prices despite the drop in crude oil prices in the international market and said it was a great injustice to the common man.
Venezuela's opposition was sworn in today as the majority in the National Assembly. It's the first time in 17 years that opponents of the socialist revolution begun by the late Hugo Chavez have controlled the legislature.

Voting to approve the legislature's new leadership followed debate over whether to take the oath of 163 or 167 lawmakers following a Supreme Court ruling barring four elected representatives from taking their seats over allegations of fraud, depriving the opposition of a two-thirds majority.

Those four ultimately were not sworn in.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of opposition supporters accompanied the incoming lawmakers past a heavy military barricade to the legislature downtown. A few blocks away, a larger crowd of government supporters gathered outside the presidential palace to lament the inauguration of what they called the "bourgeois parliament."



Reflecting the changing political winds, journalists for the first time in years were granted access to the legislature and state TV broadcast interviews with the opposition political leaders.

Conspicuously absent inside the dome-roofed legislative building were the oversized portraits of Chavez and independence hero Simon Bolivar that had been a fixture for years.

Instead, from the public gallery, the wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez held up a sign reading "Amnesty Now," referring to what could be one of the legislature's first orders of business: a law freeing dozens of activists jailed during anti-government unrest in 2014.

"Keep a strong hand!" 65-year-old Mary Mujica shouted as the incoming parliamentary president, Henry Ramos, wiggled his way through the heavy crowd. "There's a criminal conspiracy running the country and you can't negotiate with criminals."



Incoming opposition lawmakers are promising to use their new muscle to make sweeping changes, while the socialist party of current President Nicolas Maduro has been equally adamant that the legislature not back Chavez's revolution.

The Supreme Court last week barred four lawmakers, including three from the opposition, from taking their seats.

The move was in response to a challenge by supporters of the socialists who accuse the opposition of stealing the Dec. 6 legislative election, and could effectively snatch away the opposition's two-thirds majority.

Yesterday, Ramos reiterated his promise to swear in all lawmakers. He said Maduro should consider resigning to save Venezuela from a political crisis, echoing the call hard-liners made in 2014 when they launched street protests that resulted in dozens of deaths.
The US has sued Volkswagen alleging that nearly 600,000 diesel vehicles, including all its brands, had illegal defeat devices installed resulting in excess harmful emissions and the German automobile giant faces penalties well above $20 billion.

In a the lawsuit filed yesterday, the Department of Justice alleged that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by selling, introducing into commerce, or importing into the US motor vehicles that are designed differently from what Volkswagen had stated in applications for certification to EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

The complaint alleges that nearly 600,000 diesel engine vehicles had illegal defeat devices installed that impair their emission control systems and cause emissions to exceed EPA's standards, resulting in harmful air pollution.

"Car manufacturers that fail to properly certify their cars and that defeat emission control systems, breach the public trust, endanger public health and disadvantage competitors," said Assistant Attorney General John C Cruden for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.

The complaint has been filed against all the Volkswagen brands including Audi and Porsche.

The Justice Department has not specified the overall penalty it was seeking. However, it laid out per-car penalties of up to $37,500, and up to $2,750 per defeat device, which could take the fines for the automobile giant to well past $20 billion.

Filing a complaint on behalf of EPA, the Department of Justice alleged that Volkswagen equipped certain 2.0 liter vehicles with software that detects when the car is being tested for compliance with EPA emissions standards and turns on full emissions controls only during that testing process.

During normal driving situations, the effectiveness of the emissions control devices is greatly reduced.

This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory and at the test site but during normal on-road driving emit oxides of nitrogen (NOx) at levels up to 40 times the EPA compliance level.

In total, the complaint covers approximately 499,000 2.0 litre diesel vehicles sold in the United States since the 2009 model year, the Justice Department said.

EPA further alleges that Volkswagen also equipped certain 3.0 litre vehicles with software that senses when the vehicle is undergoing federal emissions testing. The complaint covers approximately 85,000 3.0 litre diesel vehicles sold in the US since the 2009 model year, it said.

When the vehicle senses the test procedure, it operates in a "temperature conditioning" mode and meets emissions standards.

At all other times, including during normal vehicle operation, the vehicles operate in a "normal mode" that permits NOx emissions of up to nine times the federal standard.

"With today's filing, we take an important step to protect public health by seeking to hold Volkswagen accountable for any unlawful air pollution, setting us on a path to resolution," said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance at EPA.

"So far, recall discussions with the company have not produced an acceptable way forward. These discussions will continue in parallel with the federal court action," Giles said.

"VW's illegal defeat devices have resulted in thousands of tonnes of excess NOx emissions in California, a state where more than 12 million people live in areas that exceed air quality standards set to protect public health," said CARB Chair Mary D Nichols.

"The California Air Resources Board is fully coordinating its investigation with the federal EPA and DOJ to address the environmental harm VW has caused," Nichols said.

The German car-maker has conceded that the emissions cheating technology was employed on some 11 million diesel engines worldwide, in vehicles of the model years 2009 through 2015.
Amid uncertainty over Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks, the US has said it believes warmer ties and increased cooperation between India and Pakistan would be in their interest but it is for the leaders of the two countries to decide on the way forward.

"The United States certainly believes that warmer relations and more cooperation between the government of India and the government of Pakistan would be in the interest of both countries. But ultimately, the leaders of those countries will have to decide for themselves," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday.

Earnest was responding to questions on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Lahore and the terror strike by Pakistani terrorists at the Pathankot air base.

The remarks came as an element of uncertainty prevailed over next week's Foreign Secretary-level talks amid indications that these may be deferred in the wake of the terror attack.

"Obviously the leaders of both countries are gonna have to decide for themselves what they believe is in the interests of their citizens," Earnest said.

Jaishankar is scheduled to hold discussions with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry to chalk out a roadmap to carry forward the engagement under the newly- announced "Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue".

Responding to another question, Earnest said it is in the interest of Pakistan to take actions against terror groups.

"The government of Pakistan has their own interest in trying to fight extremism and fight terrorist organisations that are operating inside their own country," he said, adding that the US has offered its support to the Pakistani government.

"We obviously want to help them particularly in light of that terrible terrorist incident where we saw an extremist organisation carry out an attack against an elementary school inside Pakistan. That was a little over a year ago, I believe," he said, referring to horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar school in which over 150 people, mostly school children, were killed.

"That was I think was a rather vivid illustration for people who don't closely follow this issue that citizens in Pakistan and the Pakistani government have their own vested interest in trying to deal with terrorist organisations that are attempting to operate inside the country, and the United States obviously strongly supports the Pakistan government as they do that," he said.
He may be playing a wheelchair bound character in his upcoming film "Wazir", but megastar Amitabh Bachchan says he never felt that his role was physically limiting in the movie as he was too excited to tackle it in the first place.

The Bejoy Nambiar-directed thriller is about the unusual friendship between a paralysed chess grandmaster named Pandit Omkarnath Dhar, played by the 73-year-old actor and Farhan Akhtar's Danish, who is an ATS officer.

Bachchan depended on Nambiar and says his approach to the role in the movie was assisted by the director.

"I do not think it was limiting... It was exciting to be doing a role that I had not done before... The approach to the character was dictated by the director," Bachchan told PTI in an email interview.

The actor feels "Wazir" has the potential to be a great thriller, thanks to its unique storyline, which will keep the audience hooked to their seats.

"Its story is unique and the way it has been presented is also intense and intriguing. It is a thriller with drama and emotion."



"Wazir", which will hit theatres this Friday, has been produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who had initially planned to make the film in Hollywood.

Bachchan, who made his Hollywood debut in 2013 with a special appearance in Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby", said he would love to do the Hollywood version of "Wazir" if approached.

Besides being busy with the promotions of "Wazir", the actor is also shooting Sujoy Ghosh-produced "Te3n" in Kolkata, which is again a thriller.

But Bachchan attributed the back-to-back thrillers as a mere co-incidence and not a conscious choice.

"I have not found a liking for thrillers .. Thrillers have found a liking for me," he joked.
A 35-year-old woman train passenger was allegedly gang-raped by three persons near Itarsi railway station, Government Railway Police (GRP) said here today.

Three accused, identified as Laxman Ahirwar (28), Mohammad Azhar (24) and Chotu Patel (28) were today arrested for the incident that took place last night, police said.

"The woman hailing from Satna district in Madhya Pradesh and her male relative had boarded a wrong train at Nagpur in Maharashtra to return home," GRP Havaldar Darshan Singh said.

Before the train entered Itarsi station, the man accompanying the victim got down when it slowed down in the outer section, although the woman could not disembark with him, he said.

"When the train stopped at Itarsi station, the three accused snatched a gold chain that the woman was wearing and took her to a nearby place and gang-raped her," Singh said.

The victim lodged a complaint with GRP yesterday, following which the arrests were made.

Further investigation into the case is on, he said.
A 31-year-old woman allegedly immolated herself today along with her two minor children over some domestic dispute at Dera Salimpur village in this district, police said.

Seema Rani allegedly poured kerosene oil on herself, her son Harman (4) and daughter Heman Pari (1) and later set herself and the duo ablaze, they said.

"All three succumbed to their burn injuries," a police official said, adding that there appears to be some domestic dispute behind the incident.

Police said her husband Ram Singh works as a labourer and it was not immediately known if he was at home when the incident took place.

Investigation is underway, they said.
Women will soon account for 33 per cent of constable-rank personnel in paramilitary CRPF and CISF and 15 per cent in the border guarding forces BSF, SSB and ITBP.

These forces together comprise of around nine lakh personnel of whom only around 20,000 are women now.

The 33 per cent reservation in constable level posts in Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and 14-15 per cent posts in border guarding forces of Border Security Force (BSF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) will start immediately.

"With a view to enhance representation of women in Central Armed Police Forces, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has approved 33 per cent posts at constable level for being filled up by women," a Home Ministry statement said.

This reservation would be horizontal, it said.

The move came following the recommendation of the Committee on Empowerment of Women in its sixth report which had suggested urgent need to provide due representation to women in paramilitary forces.

The CRPF, considered to be world's largest paramilitary force mostly deployed in law and order duties and the anti-Naxal operations, has just around 6,300 women in its rank.

The parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has recently found that women personnel constitute only a little over nine per cent of the Delhi Police force and asked the Home Ministry to ensure that their numbers are enhanced up to 33 per cent.

"The committee notes that as on date, the representation of women in Delhi Police is 9.27 per cent only.

"However, on March 20, 2015, Government of India has approved reservation of 33 per cent for women horizontally and in each category (SC, ST, OBC and others) in direct recruitment in non-gazetted posts from constable to sub- inspector in the police forces of all Union Territories, including Delhi Police," the Committee observed.
Yemen's internationally recognized government has declared a nighttime curfew, starting Monday, in the key southern port city of Aden in a bid to push back against recent incursions by al-Qaida and other Islamic militant groups, the city's governor said.

According to the Aden governor, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the curfew will be in place every night from 8 p.M. To 5 a.M. For an unspecified period.

The measure came after government forces retook Aden's strategic port after heavy clashes with militants who had seized it earlier over the weekend. Al-Qaida and other militants have been using the port for lucrative smuggling operations.

However, it remained unclear how well the curfew can be enforced since the Yemeni forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states that is supported by the United States, are stretched thin as they battle the Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

Yemen's al-Qaida branch has long been seen by Washington as the most potent affiliate of the extremist network and has been linked to a number of attempted attacks on the US.

The group, known as the Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has captured much of Yemen's sprawling Hadramawt province and its capital, Mukalla, as well as the capital of southern Abyan province, Zinjibar and the town of Jaar.

The group and Islamic State-linked militants have exploited the chaos of the country's civil war to stage significant land grabs and expand its footprint in southern Yemen.

According to UN figures, the war in Yemen has killed at least 5,884 people since March, when fighting escalated after the Saudi-led coalition began launching airstrikes targeting the rebels.

The conflict pits the internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition against the Shiite Houthi rebels, allied with a former president.

The two sides launched peace negotiations in December in Switzerland, and a truce was declared on the ground, which never really took hold as both the government forces and the rebels ignored it. That truce formally ended over the weekend.

UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed is heading back to the region on Wednesday "in order to secure commitments for a new cessation of hostilities and in order to advance the upcoming talks," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.

Saudi Arabia's UN Ambassador Abdallah al-Moualimi said his country's ruptured diplomatic ties with Iran will have no effect on its efforts to promote peace in Yemen.

"We hope that the talks will be productive," he told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

"That pretty much depends to a great extent on the behavior of the Houthis."



Al-Moualimi said the "critical element" is whether the Houthis implement a Security Council resolution adopted in April 2015 demanding that they withdraw from areas they have seized including the capital of Sanaa, relinquish arms and missiles seized from military and security institutions, and release all political prisoners.
Zydus Cadila has expanded its animal health business with the acquisition of some select brands and a Haridwar-based manufacturing facility of Zoetis, a global animal health company, for an undisclosed amount.

"The Ahmedabad-based group has acquired select brands and the manufacturing operations in Haridwar of Zoetis," Zydus Cadila today said in a statement.

The acquisition will help Zydus expand its animal health business in India and gain access to manufacturing operations which have also been catering to global markets, it said.

"We believe that this strategic acquisition will strengthen our portfolio of brands and add new dimensions to our growth in the animal health business. We see this as an opportunity to catapult our business to higher levels of excellence," Zydus Cadila Chairman and Managing Director Pankaj R Patel said.

ALSO READ: Zydus Cadila launches diabetic drug teneligliptin

The companies, however, did not share financial details of the deal.

As a result of the acquisition, Zydus gains access to a wide range of nutrition as as well as therapeutic products which have strong brand equity and a combine turnover of Rs 171 crore.

A major boost to Zydus's portfolio would be the addition of livestock farmcare products which are well accepted in the market, the company said.

Besides, the company's access to WHO GMP approved manufacturing facility is expected to boost its exports and institutional business.

The plant spread over 10,000 square meters manufactures tablets, liquid orals and injectables among others.

Zydus Animal Health is the country's leading animal healthcare player and market leader in various therapeutic segments including antibacterials, antimastitis, tonics and poultry vaccines.

Cadila Healthcare shares were trading at Rs 313.35 apiece on the BSE, down 2.37% from previous close.
The British bank's latest cost cuts as part of its global restructuring will include corporate finance and advisory staff in South Korea and Taiwan, as well as equities sales and research staff among a total of at least 50 job losses throughout the region.

In common with other European lenders, Barclays is facing up to a harsh environment for investment banks in Asia after the region's economies and markets failed to deliver sustained growth after the 2008 financial crisis.

reported on Monday that Barclays will close its Indian equities business as part of the wider pullback in Asia.

"We are constantly monitoring our opportunities in different geographies and businesses over the cycle. If any firm decisions are made, we will provide an update," a Hong Kong-based Barclays' spokeswoman said in an email.

The latest job losses will include staff from countries in which the bank's business is not a leading player, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject.

The closure of the Korean and Taiwan businesses reflect Chief Executive Jes Staley's desire to trim in countries where the bank's corporate relationships are weaker to focus on core centres, including Hong Kong, the sources added.

One source said that Staley had told staff last month that the pace of restructuring had been too slow and the bank needed further job cuts.

The bank has pushed back staff bonus payments to March, two people said.

Barclays is not alone in reducing its exposure in the region, with Asia-focused Standard Chartered announcing a year ago that it would close the equities franchise it had launched in November 2008 and rival Societe Generale saying more recently that it would close its equities research desk in India.

Asia is expected to bear the brunt of cuts under Staley's three-year cost-reduction plan, which involves shedding 19,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of Barclays' global workforce, as he seeks to improve profitability.

Barclays is also weighing up the sale of its Asian private wealth business, for which Singapore's DBS Group Holdings and Julius Baer are seen as potential bidders, sources told last month.

(Additional reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee in MUMBAI and Anjuli Davies in LONDON, editing by Rachel Armstrong, Louise Heavens and David Goodman)
BERLIN (Reuters) - A U.S. lawsuit against Volkswagen has sparked concern among German politicians that a multi-billion-dollar fine could endanger jobs at the country's biggest carmaker.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday it has sued VW for allegedly violating environmental laws by installing devices to cheat emissions tests in several 2.0 litre diesel vehicle models.

While any fine is likely to be well short of the theoretical maximum of $48 billion, the claim has shone the spotlight back on the German company's problems just as Volkswagen (VW) had hoped it was starting to make progress in tackling the scandal.

"Of course the from the United States is worrying to those who are concerned about securing jobs in the German automotive industry," said Hubertus Heil, deputy head of the Social Democrats (SPD) in the German lower house of parliament. The SPD is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.

Heil said he still hoped "dramatic consequences" could be avoided by clearing up the scandal swiftly and comprehensively. He added VW's workers should not be made to bear the responsibility for the misconduct of those who carried out the emissions test cheating.

Germany has largely rallied around VW since the scandal was uncovered by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a bid to try to limit the damage to a company that employs some 270,000 people in Germany.

Michael Fuchs, deputy parliamentary leader for Merkel's conservatives, said the hard line taken by U.S. authorities could bolster U.S. automakers at the expense of German rivals.

But Kerstin Andreae, deputy head of the opposition Green Party in parliament, which has criticised the coalition government's handling of the scandal, said the U.S. government's actions were to be expected.

"It's in nobody's interests that VW is crushed by this - but there can't be a legal vacuum for companies, even if they are firms which are of great significance to the economy like VW," she told Reuters, adding she also feared an impact on jobs.

In contrast to a crackdown in the United States against VW, German politicians and regulators have handled the company with kid gloves, critics say.

German regulators have rubber-stamped an inexpensive and simple fix for the majority of the 8.5 million affected vehicles sold in Europe and VW's top executives have not faced interrogation from lawmakers in Germany.

(Reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Mark Potter)
Goldman Sachs has invested 4.4 billion rupees ($66 million) for a significant minority stake in Indian hotel investment and development firm Samhi Hotels, the said in a statement on Tuesday.

Samhi, which operates 10 hotels and is developing 16 more, will use the money to grow its portfolio to about 30 to 35 properties, the company's CEO Ashish Jakhanwala told Reuters.

Its portfolio is leased to operators such as Marriott International , Starwood Hotels , Accor SA and Hyatt .

A gradual recovery in Asia's third-largest economy is boosting demand for hotel rooms.

Hotel occupancy in India in the year to March 31, 2015 rose to 60.3 per cent, the highest in four years. Revenue per available room, a measure of profitability, grew for the first time since 2010-2011, showed a report by consultant HVS.

Jakhanwala said: "There will be continued opportunities for acquisitions, given several hotels need fresh capital to relieve them of financial stress of past few years."

Samhi has raised $240 million in equity since 2011 and has focussed on acquiring economy and mid-scale hotels and refurbishing or rebranding them.

Samhi declined to specify the exact stake that the Goldman Sachs investment had bought. Samhi's biggest investor remains Equity International, founded by billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell, which has invested $90 million in Samhi.

Goldman Sachs has invested more than $2.5 billion in the country since 2006, mainly in the infrastructure and energy sectors.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has scrapped a 5 percent duty on exports of iron ore pellets to make overseas shipments competitive amid a sharp fall in the world price of the steelmaking raw material, a government order showed on Tuesday.

"This would improve capacity utilization of pellet plants and give necessary boost to (the) sector," Steel and Mines Minister Narendra Singh Tomar tweeted.

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Anand Basu)
By Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Iran could moderate oil output and exports once Western sanctions are lifted to avoid putting prices under further pressure, a senior Iranian oil official said on Tuesday.

Iranian officials have repeatedly called on OPEC to make room for a supply jump from the Islamic Republic while pledging to ramp up exports as soon as sanctions on its oil industry are lifted in the next few months under a nuclear deal with world powers.

A pledge to moderate exports would be a major shift in Iran's policies in an environment when most OPEC and non-OPEC producers are fighting for market share despite a growing global oil glut.

"We don't want to start a sort of a price war," Mohsen Qamsari, director general for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), told in a telephone interview.

"We will be more subtle in our approach and may gradually increase output," Qamsari said. "I have to say that there is no room to push prices down any further, given the level where they are".

He did not give detail or the scale of how much Iran would be prepared to moderate its shipments.

Iran has repeatedly said it plans to raise oil output by 500,000 barrels per day post-sanctions, and another 500,000 bpd shortly after that, to reclaim its position as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' second-largest producer.

Iran's most senior oil official, oil minister Bijan Zanganeh, said over the weekend Iran would not seek to distort the markets but will make sure it regains its market share.

Global oil prices are trading at about two-thirds below their mid-2014 highs due to a supply glut and waning demand, depriving oil producers of billions of dollars in revenues. Qamsari said he expected oil prices to remain at current levels this year.

To sell additional barrels on the world market, NIOC is looking at buying stakes in existing and new refineries overseas, Qamsari said, without specifying countries or companies.

The strategy is somewhat similar to other Gulf producers like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait although the challenge for Iran would be to raise financing for acquisitions.

Western sanctions against Iran's disputed nuclear programme halved Tehran's oil export to about 1.1-1.2 million bpd and froze its oil revenue in overseas markets.

Qamsari, who last month visited India, said Indian refiners, including Reliance Industries are interested in lifting higher volumes from NIOC.

Under pressures from Western sanctions, Reliance, which operates the world's biggest refining complex in India, halted imports of Iranian oil in 2010.

He also said Iran would not be offering discounts to lure customers. Currently, Iran offers 90-day credit, free shipping and some discounts on crude prices to buyers in India.

Qamsari said Indian refiners are interested in buying West Karun grade, a blend of oil from 4-5 reservoirs.

Refiners in India, Iran's second biggest oil client after China, owe a little less than $6 billion to Tehran.

Qamsari said Iran wants to recover its dues in foreign currency, preferably euros, although a mechanism has yet to be worked out.

Sanctions have crippled Iran's economy and forced it to resort to gasoline imports. Last year, Iran imported about 5 million litres of high octane gasoline a day to blend with the locally produced fuel.

Tehran has made investments in its refining sector and hopes to halt gasoline imports within a year, Qamsari said.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; editing by Susan Thomas and Adrian Croft)
By Karolin Schaps

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about the pace of economic growth in China and a stronger U.S. dollar, handing back some of the gains triggered by an escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

Global benchmark Brent crude prices were down 61 cents at $36.61 a barrel at 1503 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped 40 cents to $36.36.

"It is the Chinese stock market sell-off and the strong dollar that are pressuring oil," said Tamas Varga, oil analyst at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates.

Chinese stock markets fell again on Tuesday after a 7 percent dive on Monday, rattling markets worldwide and prompting action from the central bank and stock market regulator.

Concerns about the economy in China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, were worsened by that national rail freight volumes logged their biggest ever annual decline in 2015.

"Last year we talked about supply and demand even surprised on the upside. But with this flow from China, demand fears have come back," said Frank Klumpp, oil analyst at Stuttgart-based Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.

The U.S. dollar hit a one-month high against a basket of currencies, weighing on oil prices as it made holding dollar-denominated commodities more expensive.

The oil market largely shrugged off rising political tensions in the Middle East. On Tuesday Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran after attacks on Saudi missions by Iranian protesters, state agency KUNA reported.

Analysts said that as long as the conflict did not affect oil production in the region it would not have a consequence for oil prices.

ANZ bank said the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran will "reduce the likelihood of any collaboration between the two oil majors regarding oil output as Iran re-enters the international market once sanctions are lifted".

A survey found that OPEC oil output fell in December, led by lower supply from Iraq after a record-breaking November. Exports from Iraq's southern terminals, its main outlets, fell in December but are likely to reach new highs again in the coming months.

In Libya, Islamic State militants resumed attacks on oil infrastructure, hitting a storage tank in the port of Es Sider.

This followed clashes on Monday, during which a storage tank holding about 400,000 barrels of crude exploded.

The ports are not operating, but analysts said that Islamic State's growing presence in oil-rich Libya means the country is unlikely to regain pre-crisis production levels any time soon.

In Algeria, an explosion and fire at the Skikda oil refinery injured 18 people, but production was unaffected because the incident occurred in a unit used to fill butane bottles.

Data from U.S. industry group American Petroleum Institute, expected at 2130 GMT, will give an indication of U.S. crude inventory levels.

Genscape data published on Monday showed crude inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, had reached a record high in the week to Jan. 1, though a poll indicated that stocks had fallen by 500,000 barrels.

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo Editing by David Evans and David Goodman)
Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about the pace of economic growth in China and a stronger the dollar, handing back some of the gains triggered by an escalation of tensions in the West Asia.

Global benchmark Brent crude prices were down 17 cents at $37.05 a barrel at 1314 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped 7 cents to $36.69 a barrel. It is the Chinese stock market sell-off and the strong dollar that are pressuring oil, said Tamas Varga, oil analyst at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates. Chinese stock markets fell again on Tuesday after a seven per cent dive on Monday, rattling markets worldwide and prompting action from the central bank and stock market regulator.

Concerns about the economy in China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, were worsened by news that national rail freight volumes logged their biggest ever annual decline in 2015.

Last year we talked about supply and demand even surprised on the upside. But, with this news flow from China, demand fears have come back, said Frank Klumpp, oil analyst at Stuttgart-based Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.

The dollar hit a one-month high against a basket of other currencies, weighing on oil prices as it made holding dollar-denominated commodities more expensive.

The oil market largely shrugged off rising political tensions in the Middle East. On Tuesday, Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran following attacks on Saudi missions by Iranian protesters, state news agency KUNA reported.

Analysts said as long as the conflict did not impact oil production in the region it would not have a consequence for oil prices. ANZ bank said the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran will reduce the likelihood of any collaboration between the two oil majors regarding oil output as Iran re-enters the international market once sanctions are lifted.
By Karolin Schaps

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about the pace of economic growth in China and a stronger U.S. dollar, handing back some of the gains triggered by an escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

Global benchmark Brent crude prices were down 17 cents at $37.05 a barrel at 1314 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped 7 cents to $36.69 a barrel.

"It is the Chinese stock market sell-off and the strong dollar that are pressuring oil," said Tamas Varga, oil analyst at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates.

Chinese stock markets fell again on Tuesday after a 7 percent dive on Monday, rattling markets worldwide and prompting action from the central bank and stock market regulator.

Concerns about the economy in China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, were worsened by that national rail freight volumes logged their biggest ever annual decline in 2015.

"Last year we talked about supply and demand even surprised on the upside. But with this flow from China, demand fears have come back," said Frank Klumpp, oil analyst at Stuttgart-based Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.

The U.S. dollar hit a one-month high against a basket of other currencies, weighing on oil prices as it made holding dollar-denominated commodities more expensive.

The oil market largely shrugged off rising political tensions in the Middle East. On Tuesday, Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran following attacks on Saudi missions by Iranian protesters, state agency KUNA reported.

Analysts said as long as the conflict did not impact oil production in the region it would not have a consequence for oil prices.

ANZ bank said the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran will "reduce the likelihood of any collaboration between the two oil majors regarding oil output as Iran re-enters the international market once sanctions are lifted".

In Libya, Islamic State militants resumed attacks on oil infrastructure, hitting an oil storage tank in the port of Es Sider.

This followed clashes on Monday during which an oil storage tank holding around 400,000 barrels of crude exploded.

The ports are not currently operating, but analysts said Islamic State's growing presence in oil-rich Libya means the country will unlikely regain pre-crisis production levels any time soon.

In Algeria, an explosion and fire at its Skikda oil refinery injured 18 people, but production was unaffected as the incident occurred in a unit used to fill butane bottles.

Data from U.S. industry group American Petroleum Institute expected at 4:30 p.m. ET (2130 GMT) will give an indication of U.S. crude inventory levels.

Genscape data published on Monday said crude inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, had reached an all-time high in the week ending Jan. 1.

A poll indicated stocks had fallen 500,000 barrels in the week.

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo, editing by Louise Heavens and David Evans)
By Catherine Ngai

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices dropped over 2 percent towards its 11-year low on Tuesday, as traders shrugged off growing tensions between two of the world's biggest oil producers and focused instead on a stronger U.S. dollar and swelling U.S. crude inventories.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran collapsed in acrimony this week after the Kingdom's execution of a Shi'ite cleric set off a storm of protests in Tehran. On Tuesday, Saudi state agency reported that four armed men set on fire a bus transporting workers in the nation's oil-producing Eastern Province.

Instead of fanning fears of a disruption in supplies, however, some Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries delegates said the rift could exacerbate oversupply concerns by quashing already faint hope on a cut in output.

The oil market fell under additional pressure from a firmer U.S. dollar , which gained 0.5 percent to hit a one-month high as traders sought safer havens, and signs of a further swell in already record U.S. inventories.

Brent crude prices fell 80 cents to settle at $36.42 a barrel. Prices hit an 11-year low of $35.98 a barrel just before Christmas, capping a year where the benchmark's value dropped by more than a third.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped 79 cents to settle at $35.97 a barrel.

The discount for U.S. WTI crude versus Brent widened by some 25 cents after a report that BP Plc was planning work at a large crude unit at the 413,5000 bpd Whiting, Indiana, refinery, effectively backing more crude into the Cushing, Oklahoma hub.

U.S. crude inventories fell 5.6 million barrels last week, American Petroleum Institute data showed. At Cushing, stocks rose 1.4 million barrels.

Prices pared losses by around 30 cents afterwards, but slipped again afterwards.

With so much production globally and healthy inventories, rising geopolitical risks appear muted, according to Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData.

"These two elements are serving as not one, but two security blankets for the market, assuaging any potential supply fears."

A survey found that OPEC oil output fell in December. Yet, OPEC production was pumping close to record amounts, signalling few signs that producing members were choosing to reign in output that has pushed prices to 11-year lows.

Iran said it was prepared to moderate its output and exports, once sanctions are lifted, to avoid pressuring prices, a senior National Iranian Oil Co official said.

(Additional reporting by Karolin Schaps in London; Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian stock markets swung between small gains and small losses on Tuesday as some blue chips recovered from steep falls in the previous session, but overall market sentiment remained cautious due to continued worries about China's markets.

Indian shares fell more than 2 percent on Monday, with the broader NSE Nifty posting its biggest single-day percentage fall in over four months, after Chinese shares posted steep falls on the back of weak economic data.

The caution over global markets comes at a time when domestic investors are concerned about the weak state of India's corporate earnings.

UBS said corporate earnings consensus for FY16, FY17 and FY18 still looked optimistic, and expected about an 8 percent cut to earnings forecasts this year.

Tata Consultancy Services will kick start the earning season on Jan. 12.

"After the fall yesterday there is some amount of caution that traders are exercising," said Deven Choksey, managing director at KR Choksey Securities.

The Nifty was up 0.13 percent at 0734 GMT while the benchmark BSE index was trading 0.07 percent higher.

Gains were led by blue-chips stocks that fell on Monday. Reliance Industries rose 1.3 percent after falling 2 percent in the previous session.

Larsen & Toubro rose 0.76 percent after losing 2.6 percent on Monday.

But Mahindra and Mahindra trimmed gains to trade 0.6 percent lower after the Supreme Court upheld a December ruling that temporarily banned the sale of large diesel cars in New Delhi. The stock rose as much as 2.37 percent earlier.

Shares in Apollo Hospitals fell as much as 1.22 percent on media reports that income tax officials had conducted raids on some of its offices.

(Reporting by Karen Rebelo in Mumbai; Editing by Anand Basu)
COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka and Pakistan have agreed to include services in a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Tuesday.

India has been in discussion with Sri Lanka to liberalise the service sector under a trade pact for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) since early 2000.

But Sri Lankan entrepreneurs have strongly opposed the such an agreement with India saying they would be at a disadvantage and could be forced out of businesses.

"The two countries have agreed on the inclusion of services and investments chapters in the bilateral FTA," Sharif, who is visiting Sri Lanka, said after overseeing the signing of eight bilateral agreements. They signed their FTA in 2005.

"This would enable our companies to form joint ventures for export to third countries."

The volume of trade between Sri Lanka and Pakistan has been estimated at about $325 million a year. Sharif said both South Asian countries had agreed to re-invigorate efforts to reach a target of $1 billion "at the earliest".

Trade between Sri Lanka and India is an annual $4.7 billion, but a CEPA could boost that much higher with Indian investment coming into Sri Lanka's service sector, economists say.

Successive Sri Lankan governments have rejected India's request to sign a CEPA, but Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe last month promised to sign an economic and technology cooperation agreement with India and China.

Political analysts say any move to liberalise service to Pakistan ahead of India could put a strain on relations between Sri Lanka and its big neighbour, which could have costs for Sri Lanka.

"India is more important for Sri Lanka diplomatically and security wise than Pakistan," said Terrene Purasinghe, senior lecturer in Political Science at the Sri Jayewardenepura University.

Subashini Abeyasinghe, senior researcher at Verite Research, said she saw limited business opportunities for Sri Lanka and Pakistan because of political and security problems in Pakistan.

"The current political security concerns makes Pakistan less attractive," Abeyasinghe said.

Many Indian and Pakistan companies such as India's oil giant Indian Oil Corporation and Pakistan's Thatta Cement Company have invested in Sri Lanka.

(Reporting by Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Robert Birsel)
MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a temporary ban on the sale of large diesel cars in New Delhi to combat toxic smog in India's capital, but postponed hearing an industry appeal on an environmental tax that carmakers say will hit investment.

Delhi's block on new diesel cars has unsettled the industry, its salesmen and investors, who warn the ban and uncertainty surrounding it could derail a tentative recovery in auto sales.

Green groups want to extend the ban to smaller diesel cars and other smog-choked cities in India.

The presiding Supreme Court judge said on Tuesday that the court was considering expanding the ban to diesel cars with engine capacity of less than 2,000 cc - currently not covered - but would first seek industry input on the matter.

The Supreme Court had also been expected to rule on Tuesday on a separate green tax on all diesel cars in the city, but has yet to announce its decision on that levy.

The decision on the tax, critical for automakers such as Mahindra & Mahindra , Tata Motors and Toyota Motor Corp that have invested heavily in making cars for diesel-loving Indian consumers, may now be heard next week.

Delhi is one of the world's most polluted cities, with its residents often struggling to breathe in air quality that is worse than in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

India's automakers say they want a comprehensive plan - rather than court-led initiatives - to determine the regulatory structure.

(Reporting by Aditi Shah; Editing by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Tom Hogue)
Yum Brands, the owner of Pizza Hut and KFC restaurant chains, said executive chairman and former CEO David Novak plans to retire in May.

The company, which is spinning off its dominant China business, said it plans to appoint a non-executive chairman from its board.

Yum said it will announce the appointment at its annual shareholder meeting.

Novak, 63, will also step down from Yum's board, but will remain a shareholder at both Yum and Yum China.

"As we target the separation of our China business by the end of 2016 and transition to two powerful, independent companies, it is a perfect time for me to complete my retirement," Novak said in a statement on Tuesday.

He was named CEO in 1999 and became chairman in 2000, transitioning to executive chairman in January last year.

Yum said in October it would spin off its dominant China business amid activist shareholder pressure.
India Inc will ask the government to continue with higher public spending and push reforms and allocations to boost rural consumption and demand, heads of various industry bodies said a day before their pre-Budget meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his team of policymakers.

"We would like to see the government continue with higher public investment. We would like to see capital investment from the Centre carry on a little longer. There is a rural sector slowdown and hence it needs big investment as well, which would give growth a boost," Sumit Mazumder, president of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), told Business Standard..

Read our full coverage on Union Budget



Besides CII, industry bodies FICCI and Assocham, too, will meet finance ministry officials for pre-Budget consultations on Wednesday evening. Assocham said in an official statement that it would request the government to keep all services provided for agricultural produce outside service tax ambit. "Services like warehouse management, security, laboratory testing and others that are essential to secure storage of agri-produce should be included in the negative list or in the list of exempted services," said D S Rawat, secretary-general of Assocham.

Assocham also demanded service tax exemption for leasing of land and agricultural equipment; agri-extension services provided in rural areas; and marketing of agricultural products. "The government should partner with the private sector for developing market infrastructure in rural areas by providing appropriate incentives and exemption from service tax in respect of input services that are used for strengthening infrastructure in rural markets," said Rawat. The Narendra Modi government is looking to boost rural consumption and alleviate distress in the hinterland, and might give an allocation push in Budget 2016-17 to programmes on irrigation infra and rural roads.

A BIG ASK
The CSR spending of the BSE 100 companies have gone up by almost 75 per cent to Rs 5,240 crore in 2014/15 compared to Rs 3,000 crore in the previous year.

However, in a report released by corporate governance advisory firm Institutional Investor Advisory Services India Limited (IiAS), the total spending in 2014/15 is still 26 per cent below the prescribed limit of 2 per cent spending of the three-year average pre-tax profits of the companies.

Under the companies Act 2013, it is mandatory for companies above a certain financial threshold have to spend at least 2 per cent of their average net profits of the preceding three years on corporate social responsibilities.

In a study of the pattern of spending by these companies, IiAS found that most of the money is being spent in projects related to hunger, poverty and health care (Rs 1,497 crore) and education (Rs 1,466 crore). Environmental sustainability and rural development-related projects attracted funds to the tune of Rs 540 crore and Rs 470 crore, respectively.

Many companies chose to contribute towards Prime Minister's relief fund (Rs 61 crore) and some also contributed towards Swachh Bharat Kosh (Rs 47 crore).

Though the companies are supposed to spend 2 per cent of their average three-year net profit on CSR activities, the government has decided not to take any action against those which fail to do so. Instead, they have asked the companies to explain why they have failed to spend the stipulated amount.

According to IiAS report, public sector companies have been the worst performers with only 63 per cent (Rs 17,000 crore out of the stipulated Rs 27,000 crore) of the stipulated amount being spent on CSR activities.

Promoter-owned companies were the best performers with 85 per cent of the stipulated amount being spent on CSR activities.

The most common reason for failing to meet the mandated spending limit is "Funds committed but not spent". As many as 22 companies cited this as the reason for their inability to comply with spending limit norms. As many as 18 companies have cited delays (in implementation, project identification, etc) as the reason for not meeting with the spending limit.

IiAS noted that "the regulatory framework for CSR is a step in the right direction as it encourages companies to broaden their remit beyond their immediate stakeholders. However, CSR needs to be sustainable for it to continue to enthuse corporates and to have meaningful long-term impact".
The Indian space agency is soon opening a 100-acre Space Park in Bengaluru where private industry players would be allowed to set up facilities to make subsystems and components for satellites, a top official said on Tuesday.

"The Space Park is coming up near Whitefield for the private industry. It is over 100 acres. It is likely to be inaugurated this month," Indian Space Research Centre's (ISRO) satellite centre director M. Annadurai told IANS at the science congress in Mysuru.

With the space agency launching more satellites for various communication and earth observation services like remote sensing and navigation, the park will enable the industry to manufacture and supply their subsystems and vital components faster for spacecraft assembled at its satellite centre in the tech hub.

"We have told them (private firms) to increase their capacity building or join us at the Space Park and make components and other parts for our satellites, as they have been already using our own facilities," Annadurai said

As India plans to launch at least 10-12 satellites a year using heavy rockets to deploy them in the earth's lower or geo-stationary orbits for various applications and services, demand for subsystems and vital components for spacecraft to carry scientific instruments or transponders as payloads has shot up manifold.

"The space industry has to invest and build modular capacity to enable the country to launch as many satellites to meet the growing demand of the user industry, including the government, private organizations and overseas users," said Annadurai.

The satellite centre also plans to allow the private industry to make satellites end-to-end, including integration and testing for launching them from its spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.

"The Space Park will also contribute to the government's 'Make in India' initiative, as the private industry and (state-run) firms like HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd) have been helping us in making rockets and satellites over the years," Annadurai added.

The senior space scientist, who involved in the country's maiden lunar and Mars missions, addressed delegates and students on 'Space Science, Technology and Applications' at the plenary session of the five-day science congress in the campus of the University of Mysore.

The space agency outsources about 80 percent of its requirements for rockets and satellites to the private industry comprising about 500 small, medium and large units across the country for supplying structures, subsystems, components and parts.

(IANS)


Toyota Kirloskar Motor, Toyota's India unit plans to bring in the petrol version of its popular models Innova and Fortuner, considering the Supreme Court order on banning the sale of diesel cars and SUVs with engine capacity over 2000cc in Delhi-NCR region till March 31, 2016.

According to a report in The Economic Times, the company also plans to start manufacturing petrol versions of its future products, in case the ban is extended on vehciles with diffrent engine capacity.

TS Jaishankar, deputy managing director-commercial at Toyota Kirloskar Motor told ET that the company is exploring options to bring the diesel versions of Innova and Fortuner.

Enquiries in Delhi have fallen since the ban was enforced. The NCR region accounts for 14 per cent of the company's sales.

The Supreme Court will hear a plea on Tuesday by Mahindra & Mahindra, Mercedes and Toyota seeking modification of its order prohibiting the sale and registration of diesel vehicles with an engine capacity of 2000 cc and above.
The Minister for Steel and Mines, Narendra Singh Tomar, is bullish in his outlook for the country's steel and mines sector going ahead into 2016.

"India became the third largest steel producer in the world in 2015, relegating the US to the fourth spot. In 2016, we will try to minimise the gap between India and the second largest steel producer, and thus move closer to becoming the second largest steel producer in coming years," Tomar told MAIL TODAY.

"In the mining sector, which was moribund in 2014, we have brought in policy and regulatory changes including MMDR Amendment Act 2015. As a result, mineral production has shown an upward trend in most of the minerals in 2015," he added.

Tomar said that India has emerged as the only country among the major steel producing nations of the world to record a positive trend in steel production and consumption in 2015.

During the first 11 months of 2015, India's steel output recorded a growth of 2.8 per cent compared to the same period of the previous year, while world steel production registered a decrease of 2.8 per cent.

India's steel production capacity has increased by 6 per cent in 2015. And consumption has increased by Govt bullish on country's mining sector around 5 per cent. Public sector enterprises under the Ministry of Steel completed modernisation and expansion projects to enhance their crude steel capacity. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had dedicated two of these projects to the nation, the projects being SAIL's Rourkela Steel Plant in Odisha and IISCO Steel Plant at Burnpur, West Bengal.

These two plants added a steel production capacity of nearly five million tonne to the country.

Listing the government's achievements, Tomar said the MDR Amendment Act, 2015 introduced transparent and competitive e-auctions.

This will lead to higher returns from mineral resources. Around 35 mines/blocks have been notified for auction in the first phase.

Elaborating on the steps taken to give the states a better deal, the minister said that the Union government has increased the rates of royalty for major minerals and state governments now receive 100 per cent of the royalty.

The Union government has also notified 31 minerals as 'minor' minerals to delegate entire regulation for these minerals to the states. This has increased the number of minerals notified as 'minor' minerals from 24 to 55.

The requirement of approval from the Union government has also been done away with to let the states have a bigger say in their mineral resources, Tomar added.

(In association with Mail Today Bureau)
Infrastructure major Punj Lloyd today said it has won four highway projects worth Rs 1,555 crore in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Punjab from the central government.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha have been awarded to Punj Lloyd by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) while the order in Punjab has been won from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), the company said in a statement.

The company said the Bihar project worth Rs 567 crore entails four-laning of 60 km of the Simaria-Khagaria section of NH31. Punj Lloyd was the developer for 140 km of the Khagaria-Purnea section on the same highway.

"The Chhattisgarh package, worth Rs 513 crore, comprises the four/six laning of 48 km of the Raipur-Simga section of NH200 in Chhattisgarh. This contract includes the bypass and 22 supporting structures like flyover, vehicular underpass (VUP) and bridges," it said.

This section of NH200 is the major power hub of India connecting the state capital, Raipur to Bilaspur through various industrial and commercial establishments.

"In Odisha, Punj Lloyd has been entrusted with the rehabilitation and upgradation of four laning with paved shoulders of 50 km of the Talebani to Sambalpur section of NH6 in the state of Odisha. The contract is worth Rs 392 crore," the company said.

The fourth contract in Punjab, won in joint venture with VRC Constructions (I) Pvt Ltd, has been awarded to Punj Lloyd by MORTH for four laning of 35 km of the Tallewal-Barnala section of the NH 71.

The construction of the Barnala bypass and 13 other supporting infrastructure including flyovers, passenger underpass (PUP), road over bridge (ROB) & bridges, also fall under Punj Lloyd's scope of work, the company said.

Shantanu Karkun President and CEO, Buildings and Infrastructure Punj Lloyd said" "2016 will be exciting and will unfold multiple opportunities for Punj Lloyd in the infrastructure segment, both in India and abroad. These orders, won pan-India, are a strong attestation of Punj Lloyd's delivery in infrastructure".

The projects fall under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), Phase IV to widen major highways in India to a higher standard.

With these four contracts, the group's order backlog stands at Rs 21,838 crore. The order backlog is the value of unexecuted orders on September 30, plus new orders received after that date.

The shares of the company were trading at Rs 29.90 on BSE, up 4 per cent at about 1340 hrs.
It was announced yesterday that Bank of Ireland has redeemed the remaining 1.3bn of 10.15% 2009 preference shares. This formalises what the Bank said it would do in November 2015.

Commentators claim the move highlights the improving capital position of the bank.



Source: www.businessworld.ie
Enterprise Ireland has today reported the creation of 21,118 new jobs by client companies in 2015.



Almost two thirds of the new jobs created were outside Dublin and all of the regions recorded increases in full-time employment over the period.



This translates into a net increase of 10,169 jobs for 2015 (taking account of job losses) in Enterprise Ireland supported businesses and brings total employment in these companies to 192,223 - a record high for the agency.



Enterprise Ireland attributes this strong performance by Irish businesses to an improving entrepreneurial climate for start-ups, dynamic Irish companies innovating and scaling up in key sectors such as food, fintech and business process outsourcing and improving international economic conditions.



The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton today welcomed the news, "Todays results, the best in several decades, show that more than 10,000 extra people are at work in Irish exporting companies today compared to one year ago. They also show that almost two thirds of the new jobs were created outside Dublin and that jobs grew in every region in 2015.

"This did not happen by accident  it happened as the result of a carefully designed and implemented plan. I wish to pay tribute to Julie and all the team at Enterprise Ireland on this excellent achievement. If we continue to implement our plan we can have confidence that we can keep the recovery going in every part of the country in the coming years."



Enterprise Ireland Chief Executive, Julie Sinnamon added, "Irish businesses are making a huge contribution to the recovery in the economy and 2015 was a great year for job creation in the companies Enterprise Ireland supports.

"Our focus on helping businesses to start, innovate and scale is paying dividends with the highest level of full time jobs created and the lowest level of jobs lost in businesses that are competing globally from Ireland."

Source: www.businessworld.ie


Ireland expects to have cut its budget deficit for 2015 to close to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and to balance the budget a year ahead of schedule in 2017 thanks to a booming economy and surging tax revenues.

The government last month trimmed its forecast for the 2015 deficit last month to 1.7 percent of GDP from 2.1 percent but cut it again on Tuesday after 3.3 billion euros, or 7.8 percent, more tax was collected than expected in 2015.

"The figures today are truly remarkable and underscoring of the incredible journey we've taken over the last five years," spending minister Brendan Howlin told a news conference in a pitch to voters ahead of a parliamentary election expected next month.

Including one-off items, primarily the unwinding of a costly bank bailout, the government cut its budget gap in cash terms to 62 million euros at year-end from 8.2 billion in 2014.

Without items such as December's recouping of 1.6 billion euros from state-owned Allied Irish Banks, the deficit would have been around 3 billion euros, the finance department said.

However, with Ireland's economy set to be the fastest growing in the EU for a third straight year in 2016, Goodbody Stockbrokers forecast that the deficit might be eliminated this year.

While income tax and excise duty rose sharply in December, corporation tax accounted for 70 percent of the year's surplus and at 6.9 billion euros, exceeded the annual peak of 6.7 billion collected in 2006 before Ireland's financial crisis led the state into a three-year international bailout in 2010.

Tax collectors say the rise in corporate tax is sustainable but after collecting 50 percent more from firms than expected in 2015, the finance department said it had conservatively forecast a fall back to 6.6 billion euros this year.

"Corporation tax is not a big tax head, it's about 15 percent of the tax take so if there's a slight variation, it's not a make-or-break situation," Noonan said, adding that he would not be surprised if the overall tax-take trumped expectations again this year.

Government spending for the year was 2.8 percent, or 1.2 billion euros, higher than expected. Spending was under budget for the first 11 months, but the government committed in October to divert 1.5 billion euros of the tax windfall into additional spending before the end of the year. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
It was announced today that Irish homebuilding company, Cairn Homes, has contracted to acquire a site in Hanover Quay, Dublin 2 from a sub-fund of Targeted Investment Opportunities ICAV in which NAMA, Bennett Construction and Oaktree have an economic interest.



At a cost of 18m and with a footprint that will allow for the development of in excess of 100 apartments, the Hanover Quay site represents another milestone purchase for the Company.



This acquisition is Cairns first in the South Dublin docklands Strategic Development Zone (SDZ), which is in close proximity to both the Dublin 2 business centre and the Dublin Silicon Docks area, home to many of the leading US technology firms, which are based in Dublin.



Davy Stockbrokers report the South Dublin Docklands SDZ will likely be a very attractive location on which to build in the coming years, with high demand driven by proximity to the city centre and the Silicon Docks and ease of planning provided by the nature of the SDZ structure.

Cairn CEO, Michael Stanley today commented, "We are delighted to announce the acquisition of this exceptionally located site in Hanover Quay, Dublin 2, part of the South Dublin docklands Strategic Development Zone.

"The acquisition represents another key achievement for the Company and provides Cairn with the opportunity to provide much-needed quality homes in the Dublin business centre and Silicon Docks area of the city, which has a particularly acute demand for new homes. The site has the benefit of an existing planning permission, thus enabling us to commence construction during 2016."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
It was announced today that Irelands inaugural Business Strategy Conference will take place on Thursday 28 January 2016 in Limerick with the keynote address from a leading US economist.



The event marks the final signatory event of Limerick Chambers 200th Anniversary celebration programme which commenced in January 2015.



Carl Tannenbaum, Chief Economist of Northern Trust and former Vice President of Federal Reserve, will deliver the keynote address entitled Searching for the New Normal: Europes Attempts to Sustain Economic Growth and Cooperation.



Irish broadcaster, newspaper columnist and best-selling author, Matt Cooper will be the MC for the day-long event and he will be joined by Professor John McHale of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Board, Hugh ODonnell, Chairman of MACX3 Investments, Kieran Harte from Uber, FAI CEO John Delaney, Virgin Medias newly appointed CEO Tony Hanway and many more leading experts.



Some 200 delegates are expected at the one day event which will bring together business leaders, financiers, economists and small/medium business owners to the state of the art conference venue Thomond Park, Limerick City.



A panel of experts will share their insights and expertise on how to ; scale a business to international success, prepare against future economic storms, achieve balanced regional development, drive Europes economic performance and Irelands role within it, as well as focusing on innovation and change within an economic and business setting.



Limerick Chamber CEO, James Ring spoke at today's launch, he said, "We are absolutely thrilled to be putting together Irelands Business Strategy Conference and bringing the top experts in business and economics together in one of the most creative cities for business in Ireland.

"The themes of the conference are very much focused on how Ireland and businesses can manage valuable assets to fuel business growth. We want our delegates to come away from the conference with actionable insights and knowledge that can help them seize the opportunities to maximise their company or indeed Irelands growth potential."



Source: www.businessworld.ie
Irish start-up, Zeeko, which is based at NovaUCD, is planning to raise 5,000 to distribute a digital copy of its Internet Safety Guide for parents and educators, to all 3,300 schools in Ireland in 2016.



The Zeeko Internet Safety Guide provides tangible and specific advice on how parents, teachers, and others can protect children online. The guide advocates an open communication between parents and children, and provides specific suggestions on how to manage this.



In 2015, Zeeko visited over 45 schools across Ireland providing training for children, parents and teachers and surveyed 2,200 children about their online activities. The results of this work form the basis of the Digital Trend Report which is also released today. It highlights that 17% of children in 1st class report interacting with strangers online.



Zeeko was set-up in 2013 by Joe Kenny, an entrepreneur and a parent, concerned about the lack of attention being given to the growing dominance of the internet in childrens lives. With backing from Enterprise Ireland and personal funding, Joe established Zeeko to provide training and education to parents and educators in schools to help protect children as they explore the digital world.



Joe Kenny says, "As mobile devices and powerful hand held computers become more available and less expensive it is becoming more difficult for parents to restrict access. Many parents tell us that their children have apps or are using social media sites without their consent.

"Our advice to parents is that the best thing they can do is teach children how to navigate the internet safely. The feedback from parents attending our seminars is very positive. Parents are looking for information and guidance in this area."

Source: www.businessworld.ie


British shares edged higher on Tuesday after beginning the year in negative territory, with Royal Mail and grocer Tesco both benefiting from upgrades on their stock.

Royal Mail was the top riser on the blue-chip FTSE 100 index, up 2.5 percent after Cantor Fitzgerald upgraded its rating on the stock, citing in-line earnings in November and good progress on cost savings.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.3 percent at 6,111.09 points by 0939 GMT, having fallen more than 2 percent in the previous session, its worst first trading day of the year since 2000.

The index outperformed the broader European market on Tuesday.

Tesco was up 1.2 percent on the back of an upgrade to "buy" from "hold" from Deutsche Bank.

Shares in rival supermarket operator Morrison, which advanced 0.2 percent, were likewise supported by an upgrade from Deutsche Bank, which increased its rating on the stock to "hold" from "sell".

After a sell-off in the previous session following weak Chinese manufacturing data, the UK FTSE 350 Mining index recovered some of its losses to trade up 0.3 percent.

Metals prices rebounded after Chinese shares stabilised following a highly volatile session on Monday.

Miners Glencore, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto all rose between 0.2 and 2.2 percent. Mid-cap natural resources company Vedanta Resources gained 3.2 percent.

"The general feeling is that they might be approaching the bottom of their current trend, but it's a brave investor who tries to call (it at) this particular moment in time," Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargeaves Lansdown, said.

Among the retailers, however, Next dropped 5.2 percent after the company reported disappointing sales in the run-up to Christmas, blaming poor stock availability, increased online competition and unusually warm weather in November and December for a slowdown that could hit the wider sector.

"Holders will be happy to receive another 60p special dividend ... thanks to good cashflow, but sceptics might not like a worse net debt position and what amounts to a challenging environment in which to be a retailer," Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said in a note.

Fellow grocer Marks and Spencer, which is due to report on Thursday, also declined, by 1.3 percent. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Utah officials commemorated the state Capitols 100th anniversary by unveiling a giant state seal laid in the tile floor.

KSL-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1RphwZv ) that the mosaic seal in the Hall of Governors was revealed Monday. In addition to being the buildings 100th anniversary, Monday marked 120 years of statehood for Utah.

The state seal was adopted during the first session of the Legislature in 1896. It includes a bald eagle, beehive, sego lilies, two American flags, the word industry and arrows representing the six Native American tribes that lived in Utah before the Mormon pioneers arrived.

The new seal was made from terrazzo with some granite, marble, limestone, brass, bronze and aluminum pieces.
Michael Anthony, 58, accused of raping a 20-year old girl and faces one count of sodomy, a first-degree felony.

LOGAN  Attorneys have received DNA test results that could interrupt the scheduled trial for Michael Anthony. The 58-year-old Logan man is accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman in 2013.

State attorney Barbara Lachmar told Judge Brian Cannell, Tuesday morning in 1st District Court, that she had received the test results back but needed time to discuss the new evidence with the victim. She did not disclose whether Anthonys DNA was found in the test.

Judge Cannell said he would allow the attorneys a week to review the results and determine whether a bench trial will still proceed later this month.

During a preliminary hearing in March, the victim claimed Anthony sexually assaulted her in a bathroom during a 2013 Halloween party. The victim described how she felt herself being assaulted and could hear Anthonys voice saying how beautiful she was.

Anthony was later arrested and charged with forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony. He faces up to life in prison if found guilty.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Cade Austin, 30, arrested and charged with attempted murder and other charges. Police claim Austin crashed his vehicle and then brandished a handgun and shot at paramedics before being shot himself.

LOGAN  A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for 30-year-old Cade M. Austin. The Preston, Idaho, man was arrested in December, accused of getting into a shootout with paramedics after crashing his car near Lewiston.

Austin appeared in 1st District Court Monday afternoon. His public defender, Bryan Galloway requested the preliminary hearing, where prosecutors will present their evidence in the case.

Austin has been held in the Cache County Jail without bail, after allegedly threatening paramedics and passerbys with a gun, during the traffic accident along US-91. Police report he exchanged gunfire with one of the paramedics, Jeremy Hunt who is also a reserve officer with the North Park Police Department.

Austin was hit in the chest and left shoulder. He continued to make threats and wave the gun from inside his car. He was later pulled from his vehicle by SWAT team members after losing consciousness and transported to a hospital by ambulance.

Austin faces two charges of attempted murder, both first-degree felonies and four misdemeanors including driving under the influence, interfering with an arresting officer, reckless driving and having an open container inside a vehicle.

Judge Kevin Allen set a preliminary hearing date for February 2.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Jeena Nilson, 58, arrested and charged with six counts of failing to register as a sex offender, a third-degree felony.

LOGAN  A judge has scheduled a preliminary hearing for a 58-year-old Providence woman who was arrested back in June and charged with six counts of failing to register as a sex offender, a third-degree felony.

Jeena Nilson appeared in 1st District Court Monday afternoon with her attorneys. They asked the court for a two-hour hearing when prosecutors will present their evidence in the case.

Judge Kevin Allen set a hearing date for February 16 and will then determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bind Nilson over for trial.

In November 2002, Nilson was sentenced to one-to-15 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of sex abuse of a child, a second-degree felony.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Image courtesy Utah State University.

LOGAN  Since 2003, the Autism Support Services: Education, Research, and Training (ASSERT) program at Utah State University has helped provide early intervention to children with autism, giving the children the best chance possible at overcoming some of the disorders obstacles. Now, a new Russian program opening this month will apply the same techniques. It will be the countrys first early-intervention public autism program and will be based on the USU ASSERT program.

ASSERT director Thomas Higbee has been working in Russia for almost six years helping train teachers who work with kids with special needs. A non-government organization sponsoring Higbees work became interested in starting a true intensive preschool program. Teachers and psychologists came to USU to train at ASSERT, then returned to build their own program based on that model.

They know about our history here and our record of success, Higbee said. So they thought Lets start with something that works. So thats why they came here.

The new center will be located in Nizhny Novgorod and will be funded by local government and Russian charity called the Naked Heart Foundation. Higbee said there is a huge need for the program.

There are some private programs, Higbee said. But this will be the first public program where the families are not going to be responsible for all the costs associated with the program, so thats really unique.

Higbee said autism affects communication, social behavior and causes behavior problems. The program is designed to address all three areas.

Its more than just like going and seeing the doctor once a week or going to see a speech therapist once a week, he said. Its 20-25 hours a week of intensive intervention where were teaching you how to do the things you havent learned to do on your own, where were specifically working to decrease the behavior problems that go along with autism and teach you other ways of getting your wants and needs met.

According to Higbee, research shows that when it comes to autism, the earlier the intervention, the better the outcome. The earliest age most children go to school in Russia is seven. This new system would put kids into a program at three or four. Higbee said it will also help prepare the children to possibly enter into a normal school, instead of being kept at home.

(In Russia), they are really just kind of learning about the idea of the importance of providing education to kids with severe disabilities, he said. They were hidden for a long time or sent to institutions and didnt receive education like kids do now over here.

Higbee said he will be going back in Russia in the spring to provide consultation, but one of his graduate students is in Russia providing training. He said he hopes the new program will be a demonstration program that will prove its worth so similar programs can be established through the country.
FILE PHOTO

Members of the Utah State University Extension 4-H Cache County Makers Club will have the chance to participate in a class learning video production skills taught by a commercial videographer. The weekly class begins Thursday, Jan. 7, and runs through Feb. 11. Class size will be limited to 15 high-school aged students with previous video production experience.

Students will have the opportunity to take a commercial project from concept to completion. They will create a commercial or marketing video for either the club itself or a fictional company of the students choosing. Students will shoot, direct and fill nearly all rolls involved with creating a commercial production.

Matthew Ackerman, owner, founder and primary videographer of Ackerman Pictures, will lead the class. Ackerman has worked with businesses in Cache Valley and throughout Utah to produce marketing videos. His commercial photography and videography training from Jay P. Morgan Pictures in Los Angeles has earned him jobs shooting for organizations such as University of Utah Health Care, CampSaver.com, Box Elder County Credit Union, Box Elder Business Resource Center at USU Brigham City, Nucor and Fiber Fix, a national brand featured on ABCs Shark Tank.

The Cache Makers 4-H Club is an after-school program dedicated to sparking student interest in STEM fields through fun and imaginative hands-on activities.

To sign up for the class, visit http://tinyurl.com/cachemakers.

For more information about USU Extension 4-H youth programs, visit http://utah4h.org.
Predictions and Reality - 2015 in Review

Published on January 5, 2016

Story by Gergely Karoly

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2015 was an extremely eventful year. No matter if we think of war, politics, science, art or scandals, we had them all. In this article I try to give a short essence of these events and contradict my assumptions with the reality, focusing on the most important stories happening in Europe and specifically in Hungary.

The year kicked off with the terrible events in Paris, concentrated around the journal Charlie Hebdo. The immediate effect of the murders was outrage and massive protests. All the speeches held by politicians and civil organisations concentrated on one issue: the freedom of press. But if we assume that the terrorists action was not against some abstract idea, such as the freedom of press  as Cafebabel did  we could reach an interesting conclusion. As we have seen in November in Paris, terrorists have much more subtle motives aimed at the promotion of their own radicalism among peaceful masses, than to fight with some abstract concept. Creating a situation, where the topic of not just the entire public sphere, but also the private homes is an aggressive Muslim community generates a sub-conscious anti-Muslim atmosphere alongside with the significant rise of the far-right.

And radicalization on the one side brings about radicalization on the other side. The press - Cafebabel as well - predicted that labeling the peaceful communities will result in the growing number of foreign ISIS members, which turned out to be accurate. We also warned everyone not to become obsessed with ideas and most importantly do not let them overcome the individual.

The next month brought us one of the most entertaining events of Hungarian public life. Shortly after the Hungarian Prime Minister announced that they would introduce a new advertising tax, six top executives of a media group, controlled by former friend and ally of Viktor Orban, Lajos Simicska, resigned. Their actions resulted in the so-called G-day, where Simicska announced a total media war on the government and called the Prime Minister a 'scum' The media mogul, one of the richest people in Hungary then gave outraged interviews to anyone and in the style of Donald Trump basically sent everyone to hell, who supported the government.

The reason why this new tax was a huge shock for the Hungarian Les Grossman was that his financial help was crucial for the current government in order to win the elections. This happy alliance continued to work until Prime Minister Orban decided to shift the emphasis of the governmental media campaign to the state media company, MTVA. Of course, this meant a huge loss for Simicska, but as he decided to enforce his anti-governmental rhetoric on his media companies, his editors had quit for reasons of consciousness. We predicted that this was going to be a final break-up rightly because they still havent reconciled. In spite of the possible political role, which Simicska seemed to take up, there was no such and it turned out that his personality is not one of the politicians. Although his companies shifted to a more anti-governmental rhetoric they are still rather on the right side of the political spectrum, not joining the existing opposition.

This month was also famous for the visit of Putin in Budapest, and back then it seemed like that Orban might get even more familiar with the East. It became clear since then that the Prime Minister is not willing to team-up with Putin and he would rather be in the EU as the bad boy than be the good boy of mother Russia.

In May, the slap of Juncker became the emblematic event of the month. Cafebabel was surprised that the EU given its close relationship with diplomacy can allow herself to have a leader like Juncker, whose actions are everything but diplomatic. Calling a Prime Minister of a member state (Prime Minister Orban) a dictator and slapping him is intolerable. I said that Juncker as a symbolic figure is unacceptable and he should either learn how to behave as a serious statesman and diplomat or resign immediately. In spite of his similar actions he is still in position and, in my opinion, he is still a ridiculous element of the EU. We have seen during the Greek crisis that he is not able to maintain his professional visage even in the gravest hour. And it is also important to note that despite his woes in his early days as the President of the European Commission, honestly, we havent heard of his work in the last six months.

The summer of 2015 came and so did the refugees. With the formerly unforeseen amount of refugees fleeing into the EU, the idea of a wall built on the southern border of Hungary became a reality. We stated that this question is the most important question of the present and also the most significant crisis of the EU as a whole. Although it is unquestionable that the European morale urges us to help anyone and everyone in need, we warned that this is a question of utmost seriousness, which we need to tackle as a Union. My article called for thoughtful debate which would be wise enough to consider every possible solution (even the wall) without being trapped by the demagogue radicalism of one side or another. The time passed by and showed us that in spite of the loud voices calling for unity there is still none within the EU, and the beggaring-thy neighbourhood policy is the most prevailing. It is becoming more and more evident to everyone that this is the most important question of Europe today, so a constructive debate is inevitable. And yes, even the wall is a solution as the figures show us, even if it is not a possibility in a continental scale.

2015 have seen everything which can be seen in a terrible year. Natural disaster, war, terrorism, the death of innocents, corruption, racism. But behind these horrors, there were good bits and pieces as well. Let us look behind the headlines, read between the lines and be more cautious in the new year as we were in the last one. Happy New Year to everyone!

Story by Gergely Karoly Hungarian freelance reporter (Magyar Nemzet, Magyar Hang and Cafebabel Budapest). He works as a reporter for The International Cybersecurity Dialogue and is currently enrolled at the Univerity of Oxford, reading Russian and East European Studies.
The haunting aftermath: How Europe recovers from attacks

Published on January 5, 2016

Story by Matthieu Amare Translation by: Monica Biberson

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The aftermath of the Paris attacks have begun to give way to the slow return to normal life, but that hasn't dispelled all the doubts, fears and questions. Answers, no doubt, are to be found in places where terror caused others to slowly return to their daily lives. Young people remember their experiences in Madrid, Brussels, London and Tunis.

Sarah in Brussels after the shutdown of the city that was ordered on 21 November 2015.

"In Brussels we didn't really have time to digest what had happened in Paris. Just like everywhere else in the week following the attacks  and the wave of incomprehension and stupor that travelled all the way to Belgium  much stronger feelings surfaced: a zest for life, a desire to remind our friends that we loved them, to take advantage of our freedoms, to go for drinks. It was as though we had forgotten how important all these things were.

"But, when the terror alert was raised to level 4, all that was taken away and a different feeling was imposed on us: the feeling of fear. Fear when they closed our schools, our metro, our restaurants, our pubs, our cinemas, our nightclubs. For us Belgians  who have a bit of a don't-give-a-damn attitude  that was quite a blow. We were perfectly aware of the fact that we might one day have to live under the threat of terrorism because the attacks could happen here just like anywhere else, just like they did in Paris. But we didn't know it would be like this; that roads would be closed, soldiers would be on patrol as we smoked, that we would be searched before entering a building. Nobody had experienced anything like it.

"Fear had been imposed on us and we had the feeling that we had lost. We couldn't hold it against the CUTA (Co-ordination Unit for Threat Assessment) or the government because, after all, we didn't know whether it was for the better or not. We started to laugh about it, telling ourselves that life would soon get back to normal. The real shock was on Wednesday when everything opened again, when everything and yet nothing was the same. My flatmates were sent back home by their boss, kids asked their parents if there would always be soldiers outside their schools. On my way to work I heard a woman saying she no longer wanted to take the metro, she was too scared.

"#BrusselsLockDown made us realise that this hadn't been just a hiccup, that we really had to get used to bumping into soldiers on every street corner. And for us  with our don't-give-a-damn attitudes  this put a question mark over everything."

Sherif in Tunis after the attacks of 24 November 2015.

"That moment is fixed in my mind. I was about to settle down comfortably in my little office at home in order to start my end-of-year project report. I wanted to take one last peek at Facebook as I often do before going offline and beginning to work in the evening. It was at that very moment that the news broke and my feed caught fire  a bus had exploded on Mohammed V Avenue. My first reaction was to go and check if my sister was at home as I knew that she took the bus practically every day. A long winter night then followed.

"Soon after that I asked myself: how does one start again after losing a battle? There are plenty of patriotic songs on the airwaves, heated debates on the television that often border on Soviet-like propaganda, or mobile ringtones ranging from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to the national anthem. But, in spite of all this, the answer, for me, and millions of my compatriots, lies somewhere else: love. The terrorists want to spread hatred but we will cultivate love. Today I wanted to embrace my compatriot police officers for the first time in my life, after having been to the movies and had a coffee with my friends. What better way to annoy the hell out of those monsters?"

Manu in Madrid after the 11 March 2004 attacks.

"I suppose the rich who go about town in their cars and don't expose themselves to the morning smell of coffee and sweat didn't live it in the same way. For me, someone from the suburbs, this attack meant messing with the fastest way to get to the centre of Madrid. I remember I wore the Palestinian keffiyeh every day. At moments like these, fascist discourse must not take hold.

"I remember that, two days after the disaster, I took one of those trains again. There was absolute silence. People's eyes met and nobody looked like they wanted to be there. Suddenly, the train stopped inside a tunnel. Panic. Everybody was smiling nervously and thinking: 'Fuck, it's not going to happen again, is it?' Then nothing happened. We should have taken that train every day. Got on it as a sign of protest. Looked into the other passengers' eyes and smiled."

Viral in London after the attacks of 7 July 2005.

"Like most big cities, London has always been a good example of multiculturalism working. There was a good feeling after the city won the right to host the 2012 Olympics just a few days earlier. In the days after the attacks, there was an understandable air of fear. Living in a South London suburb, as a then 14-year-old, The War on Terror always felt like a distant reality  far away in Afghanistan, Iraq and of course, America, due to 9/11.

"After 7/7, there was a sense of mistrust. If you were brown-skinned, youd definitely feel more self-aware. It was in the little things, like when the seat next to you on a packed bus would remain empty. But city life didnt (and couldnt) stop. Londoners  like Parisians this year  rallied together. It was, and remains to be, the only thing to do."

Story by Matthieu Amare Je viens du sud de la France. J'aime les traditions. Mon pere a ete traumatise par Seville 82 contre les Allemands au foot. J'ai du mal avec les Anglais au rugby. J'adore le jambon-beurre. Je n'ai jamais fait Erasmus. Autant vous dire que c'etait mal barre. Et pourtant, je suis redacteur en chef du meilleur magazine sur l'Europe du monde.

Translated from Attentats : les lendemains qui hantent
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By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

A man accused of illegally entering the U.S. pleaded guilty Monday to possessing pornography of children as young as infants, according to a U.S. attorney's office news release.

Jesus Hernandez-Ramos, of Mexico, faces as much as 20 years in federal prison and a fine of as much as $250,000. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 17 in Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack's court.

Prosecutors said forensic analysts found more than 980 photos and 35 videos of child pornography on a cellphone taken from Ramos when he was apprehended in April 2014 with a group of people being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, the release states.

Ramos has been in federal custody since he was arrested in November.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
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By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times

An 89-year-old man died Monday after being injured in a fire at his Westside home Sunday, fire officials said.

About 9:15 a.m. Corpus Christi firefighters responded to the 4400 block of Elvira Drive and found smoke coming out of Martin Enriquez's three bedroom home, Capt. James Brown said.

Angelita Enriquez, 86, told firefighters her husband was inside. Firefighters rescued Enriquez, who had severe burns on the majority of his body, Brown said.

The couple were taken to Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial on Sunday and then transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where Martin Enriquez died Monday, Brown said.

Firefighters determined the fire started in a bedroom at the rear of the one-story home, where they found and electric heater surrounded by items and an electric heating pad. Brown said the home did not have a smoke alarm and it is unclear if the couple were in the bedroom when the fire started. There were no pets or other people in the house.

Brown did not have immediate information on the woman's condition Tuesday.

Twitter: @CallerNatalia
JULIE GARCIA/CALLER-TIMES Cathy Jones, great granddaughter of Tom Mrazek, takes a picture Monday of the grubbing plow monument at the dedication ceremony at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds in Robstown. The Mrazeks were one of the first families to settle in Robstown in 1907.

SHARE JULIE GARCIA/CALLER-TIMES Several members of the Mrazek family gather in front of the grubbing plow monument Monday at the dedication ceremony at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds in Robstown. The Mrazeks were one of the first families to settle in Robstown in 1907.

By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times

ROBSTOWN  "Jak se mas," said Annette Keliehor Starr as she took the podium in the ballroom at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds.

It means "how are you" in Czech, the native language of Starr's great grandparents, Tom and Johanna Mrazek. The Mrazeks were one of the first families to settle in Robstown in 1907, a year after the town was officially established.

"'Mrazek' means 'little frost.' It's associated with blacksmithing and Christianity," Starr said. "They moved here looking for a better way to make a living, and they were looking for land. They were looking for a better future for their family."

Though the event became a reunion with an array of black-and-white photographs, an extensive family tree and dessert kolaches with coffee, the actual purpose of Monday's gathering at the fairgrounds was to memorialize one of Robstown's founding families and an invention that helped make Nueces County a major agricultural force before World War I.

At the turn of the 20th century, Tom Mrazek bought land near where the fairgrounds are now for $15 an acre, Starr said. The town now boasts nearly 13,000 people and has a rich agricultural history largely in part to a Mrazek's invention: the grubbing plow.

Tom Mrazek, who moved from the Czech Republic to Granger, in the 1880s, invented the grubbing plow as a solution to the Coastal Bend's tenacious mesquite tree groves. The grubbing plow changed farming in the Coastal Bend by "grubbing" up the roots of mesquite trees, which tended to grow fast and become matted under the surface of the dirt. The machine, which was a combination of a root grubber and regular plow, contributed to Nueces County being the most mechanized county in Texas in 1920, said Tyner Little, Nueces County governmental affairs.

"The economic impact of this instrument is in the millions," Little said. "Sixty-one to 70 percent of the county was prime farmland."

Between 1911 and 1917, Tom Mrazek and Sons blacksmith shop made 300 grubbing plows before steel became hard to find because of the war. The family continued the blacksmith tradition, including Joe C. Mrazek Jr. who moved to Agua Dulce in 1910 and remained a blacksmith into his 80s.

The Mrazeks had 11 children, and their legacy continues in Nueces County and other parts of Texas.

"Engineers, farmers, builders, nurses, teachers  all with the 'Mrazek mind,'" Starr said. "We were instilled with a strong work ethic and professionalism. My aunt is still living and she still says 'When you say you're going to do something, you do it,' and 'If you start something, you finish it.'"

Cathy Jones, great granddaughter of Tom and Johanna and granddaughter of Joe C. Mrazek Jr., hopped on the highway at 6 a.m. Monday to travel about 200 miles from Hye to Robstown for the dedication. She remembers riding a tricycle through her grandfather's blacksmith shop in Agua Dulce with her two sisters, Susan and Vicki. She said there were hours spent in that shop where they were surrounded by sledgehammers and coals.

"I'm a school nurse, so I asked if someone could work for me," Jones said after she took a picture of the plaque in front of the monument. "I wouldn't miss this."

Twitter: @Caller_Jules
This will be Ng's second stint with McCann; his first tenure was 13 years ago when he was executive creative director of the agency's Singapore office.

Ng left DDB Guoan after just 10 months for "a better opportunity" to work with a "seemingly more like-minded team" at McCann. Jimmy Lam also exited DDB's top creative ranks in December 2015. While at DDB, Ng serviced clients such as Qualcomm and Volkswagen.

When Campaign Asia-Pacific reached out to Richard Tan, president and CEO at DDB China Group, he said Ng was instrumental in setting up the Volkswagen team in Beijing, and worked hard until the very last week of his employment. Ng's family preferred Shanghai to Beijing, but unfortunately DDB did not have viable options in that office.

"Tian It left on amicable terms, in good standing with DDB management. I'm now casting for his replacement, though may not be at Tian It's level. Tim Cheng, our Shanghai CCO, will hold the fort in the interim," said Tan.

Singapore-born Ng will now lead McCann's China creative teams while relocating from Beijing to be based in Shanghai. He will report to Jesse Lin, APAC vice chairman and Greater China CEO.

There are three things that have drawn me to McCann," Ng said. "Being 'home', being in Shanghai and being with the right team. The phenomenal turnaround [of the agency by Lin] is no fluke as it merely attests to the fact that anything is possible with the right people. I have a niggling feeling that the latest Campaign Asia Agency of the Year accolade is only the beginning. (McCann won silver in the Greater China Creative Agency of the Year category.)

Another reason for Ng's return to McCann is his romantic notion of sharing a name card with his TV idol Don Draper. A graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration from Otis/Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, Ng moved to China in 2007 and led the creative departments of Lowe Shanghai and BBDO Beijing before his most-recent position at DDB Beijing.

Mui was with McCann for two years before his departure at the end of November.
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Three college students who first met while attending a Catholic high school in Florida have launched a scholarship fund to help others experience faithful Catholic education at a Newman Guide college. As we went off to different colleges, we kept in touch and found time to catch up whenever we returned []
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Renault Group sales of private cars and light commercial vehicles increased by 3.2 percent to 2,712,432 vehicles last year, with the Dacia budget brand accounting for 511,465 sales.



Its the first time the Romanian brand has exceeded the 500,000 annual sales mark, and much of it was due to the Duster SUV, Renault Groups best-selling vehicle in 2014 with 395,350 units (including Renault-branded versions). As a matter of fact, Dacia had three models in Renault Groups best-selling five vehicles: Duster (No.1), Logan (No.3) and Sandero (No.4).

Renault Group increased its market share in Europe to 10 percent by 0.6 percentage points. The company sold 1,464,611 vehicles in Europe, up 12.5 percent, which was double the market growth (5.9 percent). The biggest growth rates were recorded in the United Kingdom (+41.9 percent), Portugal (+42.1 percent), Spain (+30.2 percent) and Italy (+28.9 percent).

Renault also increased its market share in Brazil (7.1 percent, 237,187 vehicles sold) and Russia (7.9 percent, 194,531 sales), its second and third largest markets. However, overall car registrations outside Europe dropped 5.9 percent to 1,247,821 units.

For 2015, the Renault Group expects a growth of 2 percent in global sales compared with 2014, while its European sales are expected to increase by 1 to 2 percent.

PHOTOS
Renault and Bob Sinclar have joined forces in order to appeal to the masses, as the French celebrity is helping the automaker sell vehicles.



The record producer and DJ didnt become Renaults brand ambassador because that title is still held by Nicolas Carpentier, but he stars in two TV ads, featuring his newest single called Touche, released on January 1, which has a French touch about it, as the firm states.

Bob Sinclar can be seen composing a musical metaphor to highlight the strengths of the Clio, Captur and Scenic, which slightly details their potential for personalization, their styling, engine range and some goodies, that include the rearview camera, Bose audio system and Stop/Start system.

The two spots have already been released and are part of Renaults new campaign that will feature on social media, on the radio, online, in printed media and on billboards.

The Renault French Touch campaign celebrates its third anniversary and the collaboration with different French celebrities will go even further, with other names, which havent been disclosed so far.

PHOTO GALLERY

VIDEO
Theres no denying that Volkswagens emission-cheating stunt had a negative impact on the automotive industry, but their repercussions could be more serious than initially estimated.



For example, Continentals CEO, Elmar Degenhart, fears that the future of diesel cars could be in jeopardy in some regions.

According to Reuters, Degenhart told a German newspaper that Volkswagens Dieselgate could kill nascent markets for diesel cars in North America, Japan, and China.

The diesel passenger car could sooner or later disappear from these markets., he commented. Which, given that diesels have only a 1-3 percent stake there, could be possible.

Regarding Dieselgate, Degenhart said that Continental hadnt supplied any software to manipulate emission tests to any of its clients. He also made clear that the German automotive manufacturing company wasnt aware of any legal investigations against it in the scandal: We developed and supplied the engine controllers in line with VWs specifications. The installation and tuning of the software, the so-called calibration, was done by VW.

In contrast, staff from Bosch, the biggest automotive supplier, are being investigated by public prosecutors to find out whether they were involved in the diesel scandal.

PHOTO GALLERY
Lexus confirmed today that it will have a world premiere at the upcoming 2016 Detroit Motor Show on January 11 through a teaser on its public website.



The unidentified car is described as an unprecedented Lexus world premiere with the picture showing burnt rubber on the asphalt, which in our mind, points to a performance model.

Those are the only visible clues we get, but digging behind the headline, we found that the image was named fcv-world-20001100-lex, while the pages metadata uses the words lexus concept car, lexus concept cars, lexus concept vehicles, which could mean something i.e. that Lexus is readying a new Fuel Cell Vehicle for Detroit, or perhaps nothing.

For what its worth, Lexus presented a fuel-cell concept car named the LF-FC at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show at the end of October.

The only persisting rumor weve heard so far is that the Japanese brand might show the production version of their LF LC Concept as the BMW 6-Series-rivaling LC500 Coupe  which would explain the drift marks in the picture.

Guess well have to wait and see what Toyotas luxury marque is planning for Detroit, but in the meantime, feel free to speculate in the comments.

Photo Gallery
Last October, 10 per cent of Ferrari was listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $52 a share. Now, the remaining 80 per cent has been distributed across investors and the Italian stock exchange, the Mercato Telematico Azionario (MTA). This means that for the first time since 1969, Ferrari is no longer under the control of Fiat.



The Agnelli family the biggest shareholder, with a 24 per cent stake. Meanwhile, Enzo Ferraris son, Piero, holds a 10 per cent. In the deal, Piero Ferrari and the Agnelli family have signed an agreement preventing any hostile takeovers of the company.

Since Ferrari entered the NYSE, prices have dropped by about $4 per share to around $48. During initial trading on the MTA in Italy, shares fell by around five percent.

The main reason Fiat Chrysler Automobiles decided to spin off Ferrari was to raise money for the massive model expansion its planning.

PHOTO GALLERY
On New Years Day, a 2014 Tesla Model S was destroyed by fire in Norway while charging at a Supercharger station.



The incident occurred about 130 miles from Oslo and is believed to be the very first fire involving a Tesla supercharger and comes on the back of a small handful of Model S fires in 2013 and 2014, although they didnt relate to superchargers.

As reported by local TV station NRK, nobody was injured in the blaze and the electric automaker is investigating the incident.

Local fire crews had to douse the electric sedan with foam due to the risk of using water on the burning lithium-ion battery.

As shown, the Model S was completely destroyed by the fire. The only recognizable parts left are the B-pillars, wheels, elements of the floor and the frames of the two front seats.

Image via Elisabeth Grosvold/NRK



PHOTO GALLERY
Developed alongside Ford, Toyota is looking to establish an industry development and operations framework in order to deploy Livios SmartDeviceLink (SDL).



While commercializing their own telematics system using SDL, the Japanese manufacturer is welcoming other automakers and app developers to join them in this collaboration. SDL is an open source platform for smartphone apps and car connectivity, which allows customers to use apps when behind the wheel, through voice recognition.

Toyotas Executive VP Shigeki Terashi said that Developing a safer and more secure in-car smartphone connectivity service which better matches individual vehicle features is exactly the value and advantage an automaker can offer customers. We expect that many companies share our view and will participate in the industry SDL collaboration.

Their initial deal with Ford goes back to 2011, and since then Toyota has completed their investigation and consideration of SDL, and found it suitable for its in-car app connectivity. Thanks to SDL, car manufacturers can offer smartphone apps which match each companys in-car system interface, enabling customers to use specific apps more safely and comfortably.

Another bonus is that if more car manufacturers use SDL, app developers can make sure that more and more apps are compatible with multiple automakers telematics systems  which results in more apps being available in a shorter amount of time.

At CES 2016, Toyota will demonstrate an SDL integration in the Livio exhibit, as officials from Ford and Livio will also participate.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Google Street View 4358 Hobson Rd., Kelowna - assessed at $9,510,000.

B.C.'s most expensive home has been assessed at $64 million.

That makes the Okanagan's priciest residential property a comparative bargain at just $9.5 million.

The richest home in the province is located at 3085 Point Grey Rd. in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood. It's assessed at $63,870,000 and boasts more than 15,000 square feet of living space. The owner is Lululemon founder Chip Wilson.

The Thompson-Okanagan champ is located on the Kelowna waterfront, at at 4358 Hobson Rd. It's home to Rock House Style and is assessed at $9,510,000, with almost 10,000 square feet of living space.

But with a massive price tag, comes a massive tax bill. Property taxes are calculated off assessment value, and homeowners will find out exactly how much they'll be paying in coming days.

Owners of more than 222,000 properties throughout the Okanagan can expect to receive their 2016 assessment notices in the mail. The notices reflect market value as of July 1, 2015, and can be checked out online now.

The majority of residential home owners within the region can expect a modest increase in value, compared to last years assessment, says deputy assessor Tracy Wall. The Central Okanagans urban areas will see the greatest increases in assessed values along with Penticton, Salmon Arm, Spallumcheen and Lumby.

BC Assessment collects, monitors and analyzes property data throughout the year.

According to its findings, non-strata residential properties went up, on average, 9.63 per cent in Kelowna, 7.25 per cent in West Kelowna, 5.43 per cent in Vernon, 7.93 per cent in Penticton and a whopping 10.23 per cent in Salmon Arm.

Residential properties lost value in Princeton and Sicamous.

The average cost of a non-strata home in Kelowna now sits at $567,600, up from the 2015 assessed average value of $517,700.

Overall, the Okanagans total assessments increased from $88 billion in 2015 to $94 billion this year.

Almost $1.7 billion of that is from new construction, subdivisions and rezoning of properties.

According to BC Assessment, the 100 most expensive homes in the province are all valued at more than $16 million. Meanwhile, the priciest 100 Okanagan homes all have an assessed value greater than $3.5 million.

This year, BC Assessment launched a new website that includes more details about assessments, property information and trends. The updated site also provides self-service access that allows anyone to search, check and compare 2016 property assessments anywhere in the province.

Property owners can find a lot of information on our website, including answers to many assessment-related questions. But, those who feel their property assessment does not reflect market value as of July 1, 2015, or see incorrect information on their notice, should contact BC Assessment as indicated on their notice as soon as possible in January, says Wall.

If, after speaking to an appraiser, a homeowner still disagrees with their assessment, they may submit an appeal by Feb. 1, for independent review.

To check out the current assessed value of your home click here.

To check out the list of the priciest 500 properties in the province click here, and for further details about trends region by region, you can click here.

Join the discussion

The summary below provides estimates of typical 2016 versus 2015 assessed values of residential homes throughout the Okanagan. These examples demonstrate market trends for single-family residential properties by geographic area:
Photo: Contributed

Update: Jan. 6

Aman Dosanj contacted Castanet to clarify why the popular family restaurant is closing.

She said after a stressful summer in the industry and a lack of staff, her mother suffered a heart attack in August.

While her mother is recovering and doing well, the family decided working six days a week is no longer something they're interested in.

"Mum is doing something more manageable, as it's just her. And it's time for her to take it easy because she is hands down the hardest-working lady in the restaurant industry."

Aman said she and her siblings are moving on to exciting new opportunities.

After six years in the restaurant industry, popular Kelowna restaurant Poppadoms is closing its doors.

The Dosanj family took to Facebook over the weekend to explain they have sold the business.

Its not a failure to decide to sell the business. Its only a failure if we didnt learn anything from this experience. We have all made a difference, changing perspectives of Indian food and family business, even if its been in a small way, wrote chef Aman Dosanj.

The closing of the restaurant is not for financial reasons, but the family feels it's time to look ahead.

After moving to Kelowna from Southampton, England, they decided to build a restaurant that would emulate their own philosophy of using local, seasonal produce and ethically-sourced food.

Our six years in the restaurant industry has all been about education, wrote Aman. This is something that you dont find in every Indian restaurant. We tried to cook from different states in India. Weve taught and learned from some of the best chefs in the Okanagan, collaborating on Indian-inspired food that we can truly call Indo-Okanagan.

In 2015, Castanet did a feature on Aman after she was listed as one of ten winners of Western Living Magazines 2015 Foodies of the Year award, beating out competition from across the country.

She later appeared on a top-12 female chefs feature for Food Network Canadas website.

Over the years, her brother Harry won multiple cocktail competitions, including the Okanagan Spirits Winetenders Mix-Off and Devour.

Now, the family is moving on to other things, with Harry and sister Jasmi working in Vancouver and Aman opting to travel and pursue pop-up restaurants. Their mother hopes to continue work in Kelowna, setting up a stall at the farmer's market in the spring.

The restaurants last service will be this Saturday, featuring a five-course meal created by chefs Jas and Aman Dosanj. Click here for more information.
Photo: CTV

A trial date is expected to be set later this month for a man charged with the attempted murder of a Mountie in Kamloops.

Courtroom scheduling matters have delayed the case of 37-year-old Kenneth Knutson, who is set to return to court on Jan. 18.

He was ordered to stand trial after a one-hour preliminary hearing on Dec. 7.

Knutson is facing five charges stemming from the December 2014 shooting of RCMP Cpl. Jean-Rene Michaud during a traffic stop.

The officer was struck by two bullets  one in the elbow and another in the torso.

Michaud has had multiple surgeries and may be back at work later this year.
Photo: Contributed

The fro-yo thief may have struck again, but this time he hit up a pizza joint.

Police in Kelowna believe the suspect described in robbery at a pizza restaurant, may be the same individual who allegedly committed an armed robbery at Menchies frozen yogurt shop.

According to Const. Jesse ODonaghey a lone man walked into the pizza restaurant in the 1900 block of Kane road about 11:30 a.m. on Sunday.

He displayed what appeared to be a handgun and demanded the cashier hand over money.

"The cashier, a 17-year-old Kelowna youth, was not injured during the confrontation," said Cst. Jesse O'Donaghey. "However she was understandably emotionally disturbed as a result of this senseless and extremely traumatic incident."



The suspect fled the store with an undisclosed amount of cash. A police service dog was brought in to track the suspect; however the track ended a short time later where police believe a vehicle was waiting for the thief.

Investigators recognize the circumstances of this robbery to be similar in nature to those of the incident reported on Dec. 29. Police have not yet ruled out that the two robberies may be linked, but cannot confirm, said ODonaghey.

Police are continuing to investigate both robberies and will be reviewing the video surveillance footage related to both incidents.



The suspect in this latest incident is described as:

Caucasian male;

Six-foot-three-inches tall;

Slender;

Light brown hair;

Wearing a black jacket with fur-trimmed hood, a black mask, and black jeans.

Anyone with any information is asked to contact the Kelowna RCMP, Cst. Shaun Keyes, at 250-762-3300.

Join the discussion
Photo: Contributed - Skylar noe-vack

An apartment building in Penticton was evacuated around 7 p.m. Monday night after a report of a dryer fire in a fourth floor unit.

Capt. Dennis Smith of the Penticton Fire Department says two engines with nine firefighters attended the blaze at 320 Brunswick Street which was contained to the one unit.

There was a lot smoke in the unit and some spread down the hallway, says Smith.

The building was evacuated until fire crews could ascertain the damage.

The lone occupant of the damaged apartment was placed in a motel by Emergency Services but all other occupants were allowed back into the building after about one hour, says Smith.
Photo: The Canadian Press - All rights reserved. Shiite rebels in Yemen show support for Houthi movement. (file photo)

Yemen's internationally recognized government has declared a nighttime curfew, starting Monday, in the key southern port city of Aden in a bid to push back against recent incursions by al-Qaida and other Islamic militant groups, the city's governor said.

According to the Aden governor, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the curfew will be in place every night from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. for an unspecified period.

The measure came after government forces retook Aden's strategic port after heavy clashes with militants who had seized it earlier over the weekend. Al-Qaida and other militants have been using the port for lucrative smuggling operations.

However, it remained unclear how well the curfew can be enforced since the Yemeni forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states that is supported by the United States, are stretched thin as they battle the Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

Yemen's al-Qaida branch has long been seen by Washington as the most potent affiliate of the extremist network and has been linked to a number of attempted attacks on the U.S. The group, known as the Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has captured much of Yemen's sprawling Hadramawt province and its capital, Mukalla, as well as the capital of southern Abyan province, Zinjibar and the town of Jaar.

The group and Islamic State-linked militants have exploited the chaos of the country's civil war to stage significant land grabs and expand its footprint in southern Yemen.

According to U.N. figures, the war in Yemen has killed at least 5,884 people since March, when fighting escalated after the Saudi-led coalition began launching airstrikes targeting the rebels

The conflict pits the internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition against the Shiite Houthi rebels, allied with a former president.

The two sides launched peace negotiations in December in Switzerland, and a truce was declared on the ground, which never really took hold as both the government forces and the rebels ignored it. That truce formally ended over the weekend.

U.N. special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed is heading back to the region on Wednesday "in order to secure commitments for a new cessation of hostilities and in order to advance the upcoming talks," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
Photo: Contributed - City of Penticton.

The City of Penticton and the Penticton Indian Band (PIB) have reached an historic agreement that will see the band allow some industrial use on its land in exchange for casino revenue.

Both sides hope the joint economic development and tourism initiatives will boost the economy and create more jobs in the South Okanagan region.

Under the agreement, the band will zone a portion of its land for much-needed commercial and light industrial uses.

In return, Penticton has agreed to share 10 per cent of the Host Local Government (HLG) casino revenue with band. It's the second such deal in the province.

It has always been our vision to establish a true economic development partnership with the Penticton Indian Band that allows our region to move forward together to attract jobs and investment. This agreement supports that goal, said Mayor Andrew Jakubeit.

The mayor called it a milestone deal that will foster greater social and economic prosperity for both our communities.

By sharing a portion of the casino revenues, this agreement allows mutually beneficial economic development projects, said Chief Jonathan Kruger, pointing to the Satik Crossing project that would see a bridge built across the Okanagan River Parkway channel to PIB lands.

Kruger said the deal meets the need for more residential, commercial and light industrial land in the region.

Under the agreement, PIB provided a letter of unconditional support to the B.C. Lottery Corporation for the casino relocation onto the South Okanagan Events Centre complex.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Former President Bill Clinton made his debut solo appearance on behalf of his wife's 2016 presidential campaign in New Hampshire Monday  a lot greyer, a bit trimmer and far more subdued than nearly a quarter-century ago, when he rescued his flagging 1992 campaign in this key early voting state.

While Bill Clinton was keen to keep the focus on Hillary Clinton's key campaign platforms, the passing time hasn't shielded him from the ghosts that haunted his own presidency. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has gone on the offensive in recent days with attacks over his impeachment and decades-old sex scandal.

Both Clintons aimed for higher ground, even on policy. Asked in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about Trump's remark that Hillary Clinton helped create the Islamic State group, she replied: "I've adopted a New Year's resolution. I'm going to let him live in his alternative reality and I'm not going to respond."

In Manchester, N.H., meanwhile, Bill Clinton mingled with a lunchtime crowd at a popular eatery while a news station playing above his head ran captioned video questioning whether he could avoid Trump's flagrant attacks  and that's just what he did.

"They have to choose a nominee and we have a primary to win," he said when asked about Trump and the broader Republican field. "One of my many rules in politics is don't look past the next election."

In a wide-ranging address that took voters through Hillary Clinton's work as a young lawyer in Arkansas, ways to combat heroin addiction, the political achievements of President Barack Obama and the failings of America's fourteenth president, Franklin Pierce, Bill Clinton argued that the Democratic front-runner offers the best plan to restore "broadly shared prosperity."

The two-term president seemed in his element making small talk and posing for dozens of photos.

"He practically sat in my lap," said Denise McMann, who was having lunch with her three sisters. "I'm not supporting his wife. But he was the former president, so it's exciting."

The event marked the former president's debut solo appearance for his wife, part of a broader strategy to boost her campaign in the run-up to early voting next month. Clinton's campaign later announced that the ex-president would make campaign stops in Iowa on Thursday.

"I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done now," he told several hundred New Hampshire voters gathered in a college auditorium.

Trump was on the offensive ahead of Bill Clinton's campaign debut, raising concern over the former president's scandals and the role his wife played.

"I don't really care about Monica Lewinsky other than I think that Hillary was an enabler and a lot of things happened that were obviously very seedy," Trump said in an interview with CNN Monday. "I mean, he was impeached, for heaven's sake. He was impeached over this stuff."

In 1998, the House voted to impeach, or formally accuse, then-President Clinton of perjury and obstruction. In February 1999, the Senate acquitted him.

Trump steered clear of attacking the former president at a rally in Lowell, Massachusetts, Monday evening, although he did mock Hillary Clinton for using "the biggest teleprompters I've ever seen."

So far, Bill Clinton has remained silent on Trump's slams  following the lead of his wife's campaign, which believes its candidate comes across as more presidential by rising above what they see as the Republican's crass political tactics.

The former president spoke calmly and quietly in New Hampshire, methodically describing the issues he sees as motivating voters in the next election. Clinton warned voters that the next president could appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices and reverse the health care law and environmental programs of the Obama administration.

Hillary Clinton, her husband said, offers the best path to economic prosperity, dealing with social problems like heroin addiction and promising a foreign policy that doesn't undermine the American character.

Still, some of Trump's attacks seem to have struck a nerve.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire on Sunday, Katherine Prudhomme O'Brien heckled Clinton about her husband's sexual history, accusing her of enabling him to mistreat women.

"You are very rude and I'm not going to ever call on you," Clinton snapped at O'Brien, after repeated shouted interruptions by the New Hampshire state representative.

The Clintons' schedules Monday showed the degree to which the ubiquitous political couple will be able to blanket the early primary states in the next two months as Democrats hold contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

While the former president was drumming up support for his wife in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton was starting a two-day "river-to-river" tour of Iowa, holding town hall meetings and organizing events across the state.

Bill Clinton's longstanding ability to raise money will also be an asset in the weeks ahead, with fundraisers on the calendar in New York, Seattle, Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., Cleveland and Fairfield, Conn. The couple's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, is also getting into the act, headlining fundraisers of her own in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago next week.
Photo: Facebook - Carmela Nicole DeCicco

UPDATED: 12:35 P.M.

The woman who died in a vehicle accident in Kamloops Monday has been identified as Carmela Nicole Decicco, a 32-year-old Kamloops woman.

Decicco was the sole occupant in her vehicle when she collided with an SUV on Westsyde Road at 8 p.m.

She died at the scene.

ORIGINAL: 8:12 A.M.

A 32-year-old Kamloops woman has died following a two-vehicle crash Monday evening.

Kamloops RCMP responded to the collision in the 1700 block of Westsyde Road at approximately 8 p.m. on January 4.

The preliminary investigation determined that a southbound vehicle lost control on a curve and crossed into the northbound lane where it collided with a northbound vehicle, explains Cpl. Cheryl Bush.

The driver of the southbound vehicle was transported to Royal Inland Hospital in critical condition and has since died as a result of the injuries suffered during the crash, while the driver of the northbound vehicle did not suffer any serious injuries.

A Collision Reconstructionist attended the scene to assist with the investigation and Westsyde Road was closed for a period of time while investigators examined the site.

The roads were extremely slippery at the time and it was snowing, adds Bush.

Motorists are reminded to adjust their driving, as the Southern Interior is currently experiencing winter driving conditions on all city roads and area highways.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdom's execution of a Shiite cleric and escalated with attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have countries around the world responding by choosing sides or urging calm.

Some nations have followed the Saudis' lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution aimed at calming the situation.

Here's a look at where countries and other regional actors stand at this point:

THE MAIN ACTORS:

SAUDI ARABIA  The kingdom severed ties to Iran after attacks on two of its diplomatic posts following its execution of a Shiite cleric last weekend. It also later cancelled all flights between the two nations.

IRAN  Since the attack on the diplomatic posts, Iran says it has made arrests and has criticized the violent protesters. However on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani took a slightly harder line, saying Saudi Arabia's move to sever ties with his country couldn't "cover its crime" of executing Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

COUNTRIES BACKING SAUDI ARABIA:

BAHRAIN  The tiny, Shiite-majority island kingdom off the Saudi coast, which long has relied on Riyadh for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran and has also halted flights. Bahraini officials repeatedly have accused Iran of training militants and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

SUDAN  The African nation cut diplomatic ties to Iran and gave Iranian diplomats two weeks to leave the country. Sudan once tilted toward Iran, but has been looking to Saudi Arabia for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES  The oil-rich country of seven emirates says it will reduce the number of diplomats in Iran, recall its ambassador and focus only on business relations. While backing Saudi Arabia, it may have chosen to reduce  rather than completely sever ties  because of a long trading history with Iran.

KUWAIT  The oil-rich country is recalling of its ambassador from Tehran, but it isn't immediately clear how Kuwaiti-Iranian diplomatic ties will be affected. Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

JORDAN: Overwhelmingly Sunni Jordan is a close ally of Saudi Arabia in the region and a beneficiary of Gulf aid. Jordan's government spokesman, Mohammed Momani, has condemned the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Iran.

EGYPT: Visiting Riyadh on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry denounced the attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran and said Iran's behaviour after al-Nimr's execution amounts to "intervening in the kingdom's internal affairs." Cairo has been closely allied with Riyadh since the Egyptian military overthrew an Islamist president in 2013. Riyadh has provided billions in aid to Egypt since then.

THE ARAB LEAGUE: The body denounced the attacks on the diplomatic missions and reminded Iran of the importance of "not interfering in the internal affairs of an Arab nation," according to a statement carried by Egypt's official MENA news agency.

THE MEDIATOR:

OMAN  The sultanate has long historical ties to Iran and served as the base for secret talks between Iranian and U.S. officials that jump-started the international deal reached on Iran's contested nuclear program.

THOSE BACKING IRAN:

LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH MOVEMENT  Hezbollah was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran's Revolutionary Guard after Israel invaded Lebanon. The group is one the main Iran-backed factions in the region.

SYRIAN PRESIDENT BASHAR ASSAD  Iran has been one of the biggest supporters of Syria since the 1980s and has stood by Assad's government in his country's grinding civil war. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest backers of those trying to overthrow him.

IRAQ'S SHIITE-LED GOVERNMENT  Al-Nimr's execution sparked outrage among the country's majority Shiites who have taken to the streets in Baghdad and the south, calling for an end to ties with Saudi Arabia. The Shiite-led government has warmed Riyadh that such executions "would lead to nothing but more destruction."

OTHER REGIONAL ACTORS:

ISRAEL  Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear program, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel militant groups and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia, the countries have a shared concern over Iran's growing influence.

THE PALESTINIANS  The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of al-Nimr saying that it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against "terrorism." The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The PA, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.

YEMEN  The Arab world's poorest country is torn by a civil war pitting its internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are supported by Iran.

THOSE URGING CAUTION:

THE UNITED NATIONS  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to support peace efforts in Syria and Yemen and avoid escalating tensions.

EUROPEAN UNION: The 28-nation bloc, which opposes the death penalty, criticized Saudi Arabia's mass executions and said al-Nimr's case undermined freedom of expression and basic political rights in the kingdom. Since tensions flared between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the EU foreign policy chief has had phone contact with both sides, fearing an escalation would further destabilize the whole region.

THE UNITED STATES  The White House has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war. President Barack Obama's administration also hopes to see the Iranian nuclear deal through.

UNITED KINGDOM  Britain and Iran reopened their respective embassies in 2015, four years after hard-line protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia is a key diplomatic and economic ally of Britain, though Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood said Britain told the kingdom about its "disappointment at the mass executions."

TURKEY  Turkey has urged both Saudi Arabia and Iran to ease tensions, saying the Middle East region is "already like a powder keg" and cannot withstand a new crisis.

GERMANY  Berlin has called on Saudi Arabia and Iran to work to mend their diplomatic ties, while condemning both the mass executions in the kingdom and the storming of the Saudi missions in Iran.

RUSSIA  State news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It's unclear whether Russian officials have made a formal offer to work with the two nations.
Photo: Contributed

Details of a new, low-cost travel alternative with a base in Kelowna are expected to be unveiled Wednesday.

News conferences are scheduled for Kelowna, Winnipeg and Hamilton to unveil details of NewLeaf Travel.

According to its website, "NewLeaf is Canada's newest, ultra-low cost travel company, which means Canadians can travel more often for less. Spending time, not money. It's what we're all about."

Flights would be operated by Kelowna-based Flair Airlines.

The venture has been talked about for about a year.

NewLeaf shuttled skiers to the Okanagan from Hamilton and Calgary late last winter.

In June, NewLeaf chief commercial officer Bob Jones indicated the company hoped to begin offering the new service in the summer. That did not materialize.

At the time, Jones said the new service and partnership with Flair Airlines would bring new jobs to Kelowna.
Photo: Contributed

As if life was not challenging enough for Kris Zacharuk, having someone break into her home and steal irreplaceable items made it even worse.

The single mother shares her Vernon home with another single mom and Tuesday morning she posted someone had smashed their way into the residence.

To the people who broke into my home last night with my girls upstairs....you stole from two single moms trying to make it work for our kids, posted Zacharuk.

The laptop you took is not replaceable. It has my son's make a wish trip pictures on it. It also has all his medical info and paperwork and info I need for his care while we hope for a transplant.

We can't afford to replace the other stuff. We have three very traumatized girls and two moms who didn't sleep at all last night. You broke in while we were getting picked up from the airport coming home from BC Children's Hospital!

Zacharuk's 19-year-old son is on dialysis needing a kidney transplant. The girls, who were in the house at the time of the break in, range in age from 12 to 17.

Her heartfelt post prompted dozens of responses ranging from anger to sympathy.

Wow that is awful. I hope you find some justice! posted Vickie Veira who was among the 40 plus posts offering support.

I'm so sorry you and your family had to go through this!! It's disgusting how brazen people are, added Stefanie Boon.

Also stolen from the home was aTV and PS3, IPOD dock, clothing, hair salon supplies and even frozen food they had prepared for their children.

A Go Fund Me page has been set up to help the family.

We are barely able to tread water, we have no hope of replacing this. The girls are so scared and feel violated, we have to wash all their clothing and bedding, said Zacharuk.

Police were called and spent two hours at the house investigating.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
This is becoming a bit of theme for us, but the Scandanavians just seem to have it right when it comes to quality of life.

Take this story we came across entitled 'Why Finnish Babies Sleep In Cardboard Boxes'.

Sounds a little cruel at first, but here's the deal. The box is actually a gift from the government for every soon-to-be mother in Finland.

It's a tradition that goes back 75 years to the 1930s, and it's pretty sweet.

The box has everything you can think of - clothes, jumpers, sheets, diapers, bath products for the baby, toys, a picture book, a sleeping bag, and outdoor gear.

There's even a small mattress, because the box can be converted into a baby's first bed - similar to a bassinet so babies can get used to sleeping on their own.

Another bonus: everything comes in gender neutral colours so parents can use it for a girl or a boy and save the stuff if they have another child.

If a woman doesn't want the box, she gets a cash grant worth about $185. But most women (95%) go for the maternity box.

Back in the 30s, Finland was a poor country with a high infant mortality rate - 65 out of 1,000 babies died.

But over the years things improved, and now Finland has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world.

Some say the government maternity gift has played a role in that, and helped unite women and families of different generations.

The idea, the BBC reports, is to "give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life."

Some families couldn't afford to buy everything provided in the box, while for others it's a huge time saver and stress reliever.

As Titta Vayrynen, a mother with two young boys, told the BBC...

"There was a recent report saying that Finnish mums are the happiest in the world, and the box was one thing that came to my mind. We are very well taken care of, even now when some public services have been cut down a little."

Along the way, baby bottles and soothers were removed to encourage breastfeeding.

"One of the main goals of the whole system was to get women to breastfeed more," said Panu Pulma, a professor in Finnish and Nordic History at the University of Helsinki.

And, he says, "It's happened."

Not only that, but Pulma believes the box is a symbol of equality and of the importance of children.

via the BBC

Related stories

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Japan's Crying Baby Contest: A 400 Year Old Cultural Tradition
India: two new cement plant sites could go to auction

ICR Newsroom By 05 January 2016

Two proposed cement plants at Gumma, Chaupal, in the Shimla district and at Nauradhar in the Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, India, could be sold via public auction.



The mining wing of the Industry Department is planning to seek cabinet acceptance before bids can be invited for the two sites, but any cement plant allotment can be open for auction, according to the amended Mineral Regulation Development Act (MRDA).



The limestone deposits at Nauradhar have a high level of purity and are therefore suited for production of white cement, but their location in the interior part of the country represents specific issues for potential owners. Some companies, including one based in Jaipur, have expressed interest in setting up a white cement plant at the site but because of the site being in an interior part, providing power and road connectivity is an issue, admitted Rajinder Singh, director of industries.



On 5 August 2015 the state government decided to cancel its agreement with India Cement Ltd for setting up a plant at Gumma. Sources said India Cement had failed to start work and had been issued a notice. The company later conveyed to the Industry Department its unwillingness to set up the cement plant.



As a result, the Industry Department can now hold open auctions. Had the issue of the cancellation of the proposed [2Mta] cement plant in Chamba, earlier allotted to Jaiprakash Associates Ltd (JAL), been decided by the court, we would have put up this site as well for auction, said an official.



Meanwhile, the committee headed by the chief secretary has decided to provide time to Lafarge India Pvt Ltd to set up its plant at Alsindi in Karsog, Himachal Pradesh, and Harish Cements its works at Sundernagar in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, until March 2016.

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The pore size is directly related to the efficiency of the fuel cell. The selective permeability of these pores, which resemble the aperture of a camera, determines how efficiently ions are screened, and consequently how efficiently energy is converted in a fuel cell.

An international group of scientists from Russia, France, and Germany have developed ion-exchange synthetic membranes based on amphiphilic compounds that are able to convert the energy of chemical reactions into electrical current. The new development could potentially be used in fuel cells, and in separation and purification processes. The study was conducted by MIPT's Laboratory of Functional Organic and Hybrid Materials, which was opened in 2014.

Fuel cells consist of separate galvanic cells and their closest relatives are batteries (primary cells) and accumulators (secondary cells). Batteries convert the energy of the reaction between an oxidizing agent and a reducing agent, and stop working when these agents are used up. An accumulator is able to store electrical energy applied to it from an external source, convert it to chemical energy, and release it again, thus reversing the process. A fuel cell on the other hand, which is also an electrochemical generator, gets the materials that it needs to function from an external source. These materials are a reducing agent (usually hydrogen, methanol or methane) and an oxidizing agent, oxygen. Providing these materials from an external source means that electricity can be obtained from a fuel cell continuously without having to stop to recharge for as long as the parts of the cell are in working order.

The main elements of this generator are a cathode and an anode, separated by an ion-exchange membrane.

At the cathode, the reducing agent is dissociated - an electron is separated from a hydrogen molecule (or another fuel) and thus a positively charged hydrogen ion, a proton, is formed. The membrane allows protons to pass through, but retains the electrons - these particles are forced to take the "long route" through an external circuit. Only once they have passed through this circuit (the device that the fuel cell is powering) can they reach the anode where they find oxygen and the protons that passed through the membrane to combine and form water. The electrons, which are forced to go around the membrane, create a current in the external circuit that can be utilized.

Why do we need fuel cells and why are they not used more widely?

Fuel cells use the same fuel that can be burned in conventional internal combustion engines producing the same basic products - water vapour in the case of hydrogen and water vapour with carbon dioxide in the case of organic fuel. However, compared to a traditional engine, a fuel cell has at least two advantages: first, the process takes place at a lower temperature without a number of harmful emissions such as nitrogen oxides; secondly, fuel cells can have a much higher level of efficiency. Petrol and diesel generators are limited by thermodynamic laws (they do not allow an efficiency coefficient of more than 80% for example), but such laws do not apply to fuel cells.

In a number of technological applications, fuel cells stand a good chance of replacing internal combustion engines at least. Before this happens however, special infrastructure will need to be put in place (the hydrogen needs to be stored somewhere, it will require special filling stations, pipes designed for high pressures, fuel tanks) and a number of improvements will need to be made to fuel cells themselves.

Choosing the correct membrane will play a very important, if not essential, role in improving fuel cells - the material that the membrane is made from must be as inexpensive as possible, chemically stable, technologically advanced, and its pores must provide adequate selectivity. Chemists and physicists are not simply going through materials at random, but conducting targeted experiments to create nanostructures with predetermined properties.

Molecular engineering

Scientists from MIPT, the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics, Moscow State University, Institut de Sciences des Materiaux de Mulhouse, and DWI - Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials of RWTH Aachen University have learned how to form pores from certain molecules for membranes of a fuel cell so that the opening is exactly the diameter required for the optimum functioning of the cell.

The molecules in question with the working names A-Na and Azo-Na are promising substances that are classified as benzenesulfonates. They are wedge-shaped (see image above) and can independently assemble themselves into supramolecular structures - complex organized groups of multiple molecules. Depending on the conditions set by the scientists, the molecules form discs, which, in turn, form columns with ion channels inside.

This self-assembly of complex structures of individual molecules is possible due to their electrical properties. At one end of these molecules is a polar chemical group, i.e. a group with an electric charge, and in a solution it naturally turns towards charged water molecules. At the other end of these molecules there are non-polar hydrocarbon "tails" that again due to their electrical properties try to stay as far away from water molecules as possible - this mechanism is what causes the formation of soap film, a cell membrane, and a fat droplet on the surface of cooking stock.

Scientists were able to predict the formation of these discs with pores and cylinders based on information on the structure of the benzenesulfonates being investigated, their geometry and physical and chemical properties. Using this information, the scientists first made a mathematical model based on the properties of complex supramolecular structures formed by A-Na and Azo-Na and only then did they begin their experiments. During these experiments, they obtained various different forms of ion channels maintaining the substances at a certain humidity and temperature, and then irradiating them with UV light for polymerization.

The polymers created with this method were tested for selective permeability of ions and this enabled the scientists to identify which conditions of the synthesis of polymer membranes are best suited for making potential fuel cells.

From catalyst to molecules

The modern approach to producing structures that are ordered at a molecular level does not only involve computer models and logically choosing conditions to synthesize the required polymers. Researchers are now able to control the results of their work by directly observing the shape of the molecules or supramolecular structures they produce.

The structure of the complexes obtained was confirmed by X-ray scattering analysis of a synchrotron radiation source. This method is used when scientists need to find out the structure of something at a scale that cannot be seen with an optical microscope: the nanopores created by the researchers in their study were only a few nanometres wide; this is more than ten times smaller than a visible light wave.

At the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble (France) polymers were studied using X-ray analysis. X-rays were scattered over the samples and the analysis of the resulting diffraction pattern enabled the researchers to establish the exact size of the pores in the new polymers.

The pore size is directly related to the efficiency of the fuel cell. The selective permeability of these pores, which resemble the aperture of a camera, determines how efficiently ions are screened, and consequently how efficiently energy is converted in a fuel cell.

Global warming and molecular engineering

The new study, which MIPT specialists were actively involved in, does not only show how a promising material can be obtained from certain molecules and the methods that are used to do this. It allows us to look from an unexpected angle at a problem that at first glance may seem entirely unrelated to organic chemistry or X-ray analysis - the problem of global warming, a subject that came up once again in the news recently after an international agreement was signed in Paris on the reduction of carbon emissions.

Today, it is almost unanimously recognized by the scientific community that the average temperature on the planet is rising and this is happening because of the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This gas, which traps heat, is mainly released by burning organic fuels - therefore an effective measure to prevent a further rise in temperature would be to switch to technologies that do not use oil, coal, and gas. However, radically redesigning virtually all technological infrastructure is not possible without an acceptable alternative to internal combustion engines: either electric accumulators and electric motors, or fuel cells with electric motors.

Fuel cells themselves of course will not solve the problem of rising temperatures on the planet. But they are part of a possible solution: and this means that self-organization of supramolecular structures from two promising substances codenamed A-Na and Azo-Na can also be considered part of a global task. Even if it is not stated explicitly by the authors of a particular study, many scientific results can often influence people's lives in rather unexpected ways.
For over three decades, Chevron chose profit over people in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The cold and calculated decision to save $3 per barrel and yet poison entire communities is compounded daily as Chevron continues its PR campaign to suppress the truth and barrage the media with lies about its actions and responsibility. This blog is part of an ever-growing campaign to counter Chevron's misinformation tactics and speak frankly about their attempts to hide their role in the world's worst oil-related disaster.
Gloria Pinex in March after a jury sided with Chicago police Officers Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra involved in the 2011 fatal shooting of her son Darius. A judge Monday threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial in the civil case, saying a top city attorney intentionally concealed evidence. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

Just how far up in City Hall does the code of silence reach?

In the hours after Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke emptied his 9 mm handgun into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, five other officers at the scene gave statements saying Van Dyke fired in self-defense. The Police Department's official finding was the same.

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After a police dash-cam video soundly contradicted that story, Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that an unspoken compact shields rogue police officers from accountability.

That culture extends beyond the rank-and-file, however, to a disciplinary system that can take years to run its course and almost never sustains a complaint against an officer.

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And it has extended all the way to the city's Law Department, according to a federal judge's scathing ruling Monday.

U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang said a top city attorney "intentionally concealed" critical evidence in a 2015 civil trial in which a jury found two officers were justified in killing Darius Pinex during a January 2011 traffic stop.

Officers Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra both testified that they'd pulled over Pinex's Oldsmobile because they'd heard a radio dispatch about a car matching that description that was involved in an earlier shooting.

An actual recording of the dispatch that conflicted with their testimony became available shortly before the trial began. But Senior Corporation Counsel Jordan Marsh didn't produce it until midway through the trial, "despite there being numerous times when the circumstances dictated he say something about it," the judge wrote.

Chang added that it was "unlikely to the extreme" that Marsh didn't understand the impact the evidence would have on his case, and faulted another city lawyer for not trying hard enough to find the recording in the first place.

The judge threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial. He also ordered the city  the taxpayers, that is  to pay the plaintiffs' attorneys fees, likely hundreds of thousands of dollars. Marsh resigned Monday. The other attorney had already gone.

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"There's just a total disregard for the truth, and it runs to the highest levels," said Steve Greenberg, the attorney representing Pinex's family. "There is a culture to cover up and win at all costs."

For decades, attorneys who squared off against the city in cases alleging police brutality, corruption and other abuses complained that a code of silence shields those officers from consequences. The city insisted there was no such thing.

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Then in 2012, a federal jury explicitly found that the department had a systemic problem. That was after Officer Anthony Abbate, drunk and off duty, beat up a female bartender half his size. In the days after the attack, his fellow officers came to the bar to pressure the victim not to press charges. The Independent Police Review Authority recommended a misdemeanor charge. Then the security video surfaced. He was convicted of aggravated battery and fired.

The civil jury awarded the bartender $850,000. To do so, it had to find that the code of silence existed, a potentially costly precedent that the city's lawyers tried desperately to erase. They asked U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve to vacate the finding, but she refused.

Emanuel argued at the time that the code of silence was a relic of the Daley era, a thing of the past. The McDonald case forced him to acknowledge that no, it isn't.

From the Police Department to the review authorities to the Law Department. Where next?

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President Barack Obama delivers remarks to reporters following a meeting on executive actions he can take to curb gun violence with members of his national security team, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Jan. 4, 2016. (Michael Reynolds, EPA)

Getting gun-related legislation through Congress is nearly impossible, as President Barack Obama knows from bitter experience. After the 2012 slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the Senate rejected his proposal to require federal background checks on all firearm purchases  not just those handled by licensed dealers.

He failed to get the measure through despite 91 percent public support for the idea. More mass shootings since then have not made lawmakers any more open to sensible reforms. Gun control, the president acknowledged last summer, is "the one area where I feel that I have been most frustrated and most stymied."

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If you can't get Congress to change the laws, you can do nothing  or you can look for how to apply those laws in ways that are more sensible but within the letter and spirit of their text. Obama has elected to do the latter.

On Tuesday, he is expected to unveil a package of executive actions to combat gun violence. The most notable and clearly sensible is a regulatory change to prevent people who operate as gun dealers from flouting the rules that gun dealers are supposed to follow.

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Federal law requires a dealer's license for anyone "who devotes time, attention and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms." The idea behind that language was to exempt individuals who make only occasional sales, as many ordinary gun owners do.

But some people use the exclusion to evade the clear intent of the law. A study by Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that "high-volume sellers posted 29 percent of the gun ads listed by private sellers." On one popular online site, it found, 1 out of every 30 potential purchasers had criminal records.

One man who sold an average of more than 100 guns a year was prosecuted for "engaging in the business" without a license. He was acquitted after his attorney argued that the law was too vague to implicate him: "It would be easy if we had a law that says you can sell 50 firearms a year, or 10 firearms, or 100, but that's not what it is."

So Obama thinks it should be. He wants to stipulate in the regulations that anyone selling a certain number of weapons each year  say, 50  must get a license and accept the obligation of conducting background checks on buyers and keeping records on sales. Hillary Clinton proposed this sort of step in October.

The change would fall short of the universal requirement Obama urged Congress to enact, but it would expand the number of sales triggering background checks, creating a new hurdle for felons seeking guns. It would also curb a clear abuse of the law by unscrupulous or careless sellers.

Republican presidential candidates accuse the president of overstepping his legal authority. "This is going to be another illegal executive action, which I'm sure will be rejected by the courts," said Chris Christie. Jeb Bush said Obama would be using "executive powers that he doesn't have."

But the charge doesn't stick. This step appears to be a reasonable adjustment of regulations in order to fulfill the purpose of an existing statute. In November, a group of 23 law professors signed a letter saying, "Executive action to ensure robust enforcement of the law  including issuing clarifying guidance and directing comprehensive enforcement of federal gun laws  is entirely compatible with the will of Congress and the president's constitutional authority."

It's not a cure-all  just a rational attempt to make it harder for people who are barred from owning guns to buy guns. And it's long overdue.

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A task force named by Gov. Bruce Rauner presented recommendations in Oak Brook, Ill., Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, to reduce Illinois' roughly 7,000 units of government and to save local taxpayers money. (M. Spencer Green / AP)

"Obliging the government to control itself is what we are called upon to do today."

Illinois Supreme Court, striking down an attempt to curtail public employee pension benefits, May 8, 2015.

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The official moniker of Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti's study group is descriptive, accurate and wordy: "Task Force on Local Government Consolidation and Unfunded Mandates." The efficient title would be: "Because of the Pensions."

There's no news in the observation of Sanguinetti's group that Illinois, with more units of government than any other state, collects enormous amounts of property tax to fund all those often redundant and otherwise useless bureaucracies. Now, though, there's unarguable urgency for the recommendations that the lieutenant governor's task force delivered Monday to Gov. Bruce Rauner:

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The Illinois Supreme Court has all but declared that these governments, school districts included, are stuck with the spoiled fruit of state pension laws and their own giveaways to their employees. Because of their foolishness, local governments from Zion to Cairo are devolving into retirement benefits providers that sprinkle whatever money is left over on their shrinking services to taxpayers.

So while the task force proposals  some of which will infuriate public employee unions  are the news here, don't miss the story behind that story: Illinois governments and their pension funds risk insolvency because of the benefits politicians awarded to those unions' members in return for campaign support. Not only does Illinois have too much government. This state's taxpayers can't perpetually meet the rising retirement obligations that those governments created for themselves. Something will give, and it won't be the retiree benefits.

Hence the state Supreme Court's admonition in a major pension ruling last May: The fact that Illinois governments recklessly awarded retirement benefits doesn't give lawmakers the right to now curtail those constitutionally guaranteed benefits. We wish lawmakers could make trims, but thus far the justices haven't allowed any such scheme. Thus until Illinois shrinks this massive industry of government, taxpayers will pay for its ruinous obligations.

The new report synthesizes why this overgrown industry must keep taxation so onerous in Illinois: the "extraordinarily high number of local governments coupled with financially burdensome unfunded mandates. The recommendations in this report are designed to help reduce property taxes as well as modernize the delivery of local public services."

In other words, Sanguinetti's group wants to diminish the tax grab of Illinois governments by eliminating many of them, and by cutting the Springfield-driven costs of those that remain.

It isn't only the unions' oxen that the report gores. People in our industry won't like a proposal that could let local governments post online, presumably at lower cost, some information they now must publish in newspapers. Other proposals:

Let citizens consolidate or dissolve local governments by referendum.

Let townships merge with coterminus municipalities by referendum.

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Remove the 126-square-mile cap on township size (Who knew?) so townships can consolidate. (Better idea: Kill townships altogether in the counties that have them, and shift their meager duties to county governments.)

Let schools hire private-sector companies to teach driver education, and give schools greater freedom to contract out their noninstructional services.

Pass a constitutional amendment requiring the state to reimburse local governments, school districts included, for the costs of future mandates. The report says Springfield has imposed 266 new unfunded mandates on local governments since 1982, and 145 mandates on schools since 1992. Guess who pays the cost of meeting all those mandates.

The consolidation proposals will get pushback from local officials who draw paychecks, and eventually pensions, from these governments. They tend to be active politically, and to have the ears of their legislators  many of whom cut their teeth in these lesser offices.

Just as noisy will be union pushback against a proposal to give local governments more control over contracting by repealing or reforming prevailing wage restrictions. Same with a proposal to let the locals decide whether various employment issues should be mandatory subjects of collective bargaining.

We're having a big state budget battle over issues such as those. But as the costly weight of the court decisions crushes governments here, the arguments against those Rauner-favored reforms weaken.

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Pols who helped create the pension giveaways now starving local governments (House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, how were your holidays?) left taxpayers to pay these rising costs. Enough.

Sure, other plans to limit taxation by consolidating governments or killing state mandates have come and gone. But this time might have to be different. Not because the pols admit what they've wrought, but because more of them see the folly of asking taxpayers to prop up Illinois, The Government State.

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Senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is holding hostage the crucial post of ambassador to Mexico in protest of the Obama Administration's Cuba policy. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

It's fine for Sen. Marco Rubio to oppose the Obama administration's diplomatic detente with Cuba. But Rubio's doing so in odd fashion, particularly for someone who wants to be president.

Rubio is holding a hostage: President Barack Obama's nominee for ambassador to Mexico.

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Obama has nominated Roberta Jacobson, a diplomat with deep experience in Latin American affairs, for the post. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee signed off on her in November on a 12-7 vote, sending it to the Senate floor for confirmation. Several Republicans, including the committee chairman, supported the nomination.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, in July, in Washington. A confirmation vote on Jacobson's nomination as ambassador to Mexico has been stalled in the Senate. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Rubio, though, has blocked a floor vote.

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Rubio's main beef with Jacobson is that, as an assistant secretary of state, she helped negotiate Obama's opening to Cuba. "We need an ambassador in Mexico City that has the trust of Congress for this important post," Rubio said in November. "I do not believe that Ms. Jacobson is that person and will oppose her confirmation."

You find out if she has the trust of Congress by putting the nomination to a confirmation vote. The use of Senate power to prevent that vote just affirms the sense that Rubio's first priority is perpetuating gridlock. This is a petulant and consequential act by Rubio. Mexico is the third-largest trading partner of the U.S. and a vital partner in steps to curtail drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Obama nominated Jacobson six months ago. It is against U.S. interests to let the vacancy linger.

Rubio may think he has to do some grandstanding to get noticed in the race for the Republican nomination for president. The grandstander-in-chief, Donald Trump, has set a high bar.

But you'd think Rubio would recognize the inevitable outcome of a successful campaign for the presidency is that you become ... president. Then it's your turn to nominate your candidates for critical positions in government and ask the Senate to give them favorable consideration. Sen. Rubio has forgotten what President Rubio would rudely discover: people have long memories.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
An Aurora teenager is facing seven felony and multiple misdemeanor charges after police said a handgun fell out of the waistband of his pants as he ran from police.

Aurora Police Department spokesman Dan Ferrelli said that members of the department's Special Operations Group were near Spring Street and East Avenue around 6:08 p.m. Dec. 26 when they noticed a group of men, who they knew to be gang members, walking in the area.

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Knowing that some of the men were on probation, which prohibited them from hanging out with other gang members, officers decided to stop and question the group.

Ferrelli said that as they observed the men from afar, officers said they noticed two of the men reach for their waistbands, as if trying to conceal weapons.

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When the officers got out of their vehicle to confront the men, a 17-year-old Aurora boy and a 20-year-old Aurora man began to run, Ferrelli said.

Police said the 20-year-old, Gaudencio Garcia, 200 block of North Ohio Street, also attempted to block one officer from chasing after the 17-year-old as he ran away.

According to Ferrelli, as the 17-year-old ran from police, a handgun fell from the waistband of his pants and onto the ground. The gun was recovered, and the teen was taken into custody.

Garcia, who briefly evaded police, was located several minutes later in an alley in the 700 block of East New York Street.

Garcia was charged with two counts of misdemeanor obstructing a peace officer and improper walking in the roadway.

Ferrelli said the 17-year-old was charged with four counts of felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, two counts of felony unlawful use of a weapon, and a single count of felony possession of ammunition. He was also charged with misdemeanor unlawful contact with a street gang member, obstructing a peace officer and improper walking in the roadway.

ewurst@tribpub.com
Westmont residents might see a small increase in their tax bills this year. (Joseph Ruzich / Chicago Tribune)

A property tax increase by the village might be in the works for Westmont residents this year.

At a board meeting Dec. 10, trustees approved a 4.29 percent levy increase; however, the final amount might be less because of the tax cap law. Village officials said the initial levy amount is set artificially high to capture new growth and final equalized assessed valuation.

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The proposed aggregate levy is $8,395,840, which shows an increase compared to the previous year of $8,050,507, according to documents. The village, on the other hand, is expecting to receive about $8,156,077 when the tax cap is taken into consideration.

"A large portion of the increase, as always, is funding the police pension," said finance director Spencer Parker to the board. Documents indicate that the levied amount to pay for the police pension will likely increase from $2,018,160 to $2,060,000.

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The village expects those with a home value of $300,000 to pay about $11 extra in property taxes a year to the village.

The village is expected to vote on the final levy in March.

Village officials also presented information about the new 2014-15 comprehensive annual financial report. Financial highlights from the document include:

The total assets of the village for fiscal year 2015 were about $84.3 million, an increase of 0.6 percent over the 2014 fiscal year of $83.8 million. The total assets exceeded liabilities by $59.4 million as of April 30, 2015, representing a 0.7 percent increase from $59 million in fiscal year 2014.

The governmental net position increased 0.5 percent to $44.2 million from $44 million in fiscal year 2014, and the business-type activities net position increased 1.3 percent from $15 million in fiscal year 2014 to $15.2 million.

The governmental activities revenue, transfers and special items were $28 million, a 3.7 percent increase over fiscal year 2014 revenues of about $27 million. The fiscal year 2015 governmental expenses were $27.8 million, a 20.3 percent increase from the fiscal year 2014 expenses of $23.1 million.

The business-type activities revenue, transfers and special items for fiscal year 2015 were $6.5 million compared to $6.1 million in fiscal year 2014. Business-type expenses were $6.4 million in fiscal year 2015. This was an increase of 1.6 percent from fiscal year 2014 expenses of $6.3 million.

The total cost of all village programs was $34.1 million, an increase of 16.3 percent ($4.8 million) from fiscal year 2014.

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The entire Westmont comprehensive annual financial report can be found at westmont.illinois.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/3240?fileID=3486.

Joseph Ruzich is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

triblocaltips@tribune.com

Twitter: @TribLocal
College financial aid program, preschool screenings, and more.

Mundelein

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Aid night: The Mundelein High School Guidance Department will present its annual free College Financial Aid Night at 7 p.m. Thursday at 1350 W. Hawley St. Students and parents of college-bound students are encouraged to attend. It will take place in both English and Spanish. The program will provide information about the application process for college financial aid, where to find scholarship opportunities, important time frames and other helpful tips. Scheduled speakers include Adriana Rodriguez, assistant director of Financial Aid at Lake Forest College; and Courtney Wallace, director of admissions at Augustana College. Also available to answer questions will be Ivonne Uquillas of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. MHS counselors George Kaider and Andrea Rusk will facilitate the event. Details, 847-949-2200 ext. 1552.

Lincolnshire

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Screenings: Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 is offering winter preschool screenings for district residents for 3- and 4-year-old children for whom there may be concerns in the areas of gross or fine motor skills, speech/language, or conceptual development. Vision/hearing screenings will also be offered. This screening is for preschoolers with developmental concerns and not for determining a child's kindergarten readiness. The screening will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Jan. 15 at Laura B. Sprague School, 2425 Riverwoods Road. Residents of District 103 who would like to have a child participate in this screening call Mary Burks at 847-457-9313 no later than Friday.

Gurnee

Nominations: Woodland School District 50 seeks nominations for its next Gurnee Teacher of the Year. The award is given to a teacher from Woodland, Gurnee District 56 and Warren Township High School. The teacher will receive a plaque, be given a check for $1,000 and will be formally recognized at a Village Board meeting at 7:30 p.m. April 4. Forms may be completed online at www.dist50.net/gt/Site%20Pages/default.aspx. Paper forms are also available at the schools and the Educational Support Center, 1105 N. Hunt Club Road. Nominations must include no more than 500 words for each of the criterion listed below: Is highly proactive in serving students and inspires students of all backgrounds and abilities to learn; regularly contributes to and leads events that positively affect school life; demonstrates a commitment to creating a climate of caring and respect, ownership, acceptance and responsibility in children's lives; and engages families/community members in instructional programs and the learning community. Nomination forms are due by Jan. 22. The 2016 Gurnee Teacher of the Year will be announced March 9. Details, 847-596-5604.

Twitter @newssun
Stay on top of the news all day with the Tribunes web notifications. Well let you know  right in your web browser  when theres big breaking news happening, and also share our editors top picks so you see the best of what the Tribune has to offer.
Two longtime members of the Park Ridge Police Department were recognized recently upon receiving promotions within the department.

Duane Mellema, a 25-year member of the police department, was promoted to deputy police chief, taking over for David Keller, who recently retired. Michael Luehr, a Park Ridge police officer for 16 years, was promoted to sergeant.

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The officers took the oath of office and recited the department's oath of honor, vowing to never betray the public trust, during a City Council meeting on Dec. 20.

Police Chief Frank Kaminski called Mellema and Luehr two of the next leaders of the department.

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"I'm excited about the legacy that is going to be established in this department and they are going to bring the department forward in many ways," Kaminski said.

Mellema most recently served as a police commander. In recent years, he has taken part in many police outreach efforts, like the Polar Plunge and Plane Pull benefitting Special Olympics Illinois, and the annual dodgeball tournament hosted by the police and fire departments and the Park Ridge Youth Commission. He's also worked with the Maine Community Youth Assistance Foundation, which works to encourage teens to avoid drugs and alcohol.

Luehr, with Fire Chief Jeff Sorensen, is credited with starting the Park Ridge Community Emergency Response Team, which provides volunteer assistance during emergency situations. He was awarded the Cook County Sheriff's Law Enforcement Award of Valor for assisting in life-saving efforts when a man suffered a heart attack behind the wheel of his car and crashed into a light pole in 2014.

Luehr most recently served as school resource officer at Maine South High School.

Both Mellema and Luehr have served on the police department's Honor Guard and are residents of Park Ridge.

jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @Jen_Pioneer
Merrillville man sues TV maker Vizio

A Merrillville man wants to bring a class action lawsuit against Vizio for allegedly using equipment in its Internet-connected TVs to monitor viewing histories.

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Stanley W. Pagorek says in his lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Hammond, that he bought a so-called Smart TV made by Vizio in February. The lawsuit claims that Vizio has admitted in filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to using the technology, which allows it to track what people watch and then share that information with other companies to tailor ads to the viewers.

Pagorek claims in the lawsuit that this violates a federal law that prohibits companies from sharing someone's viewing history unless given authorization. The lawsuit argues that the TVs are automatically set to allow for this tracking and that, although there is a way to turn it off, it is difficult to do so.

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Pagorek asks in the lawsuit to be granted class-action status.

Casino patron sues Hammond officers

A man is suing two Hammond police officers for excessive use of force against him after an incident at the Horseshoe Casino in February.

Clinton Hunter Jr., who lives in Indiana, says in the lawsuit that he was at the casino on Feb. 19 and was asked to leave. Two police officers, who are not fully identified in the lawsuit, met him in the parking lot, where they slammed him against a car and used a stun gun on him several times, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Hammond, claims that Hunter did nothing to provoke the officers and that their use of force was not warranted. The lawsuit names the two officers and the city of Hammond as defendants.

Hunter is asking for compensatory and punitive damages, along with legal fees.

Man accused of running over woman's foot

A Winamac man has been charged in Lake Superior Court with battery by means of a deadly weapon, two other battery counts and criminal recklessness.

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Jason S. Middleborn, 38, was charged with running over the right foot of a woman who was arguing with him and a 25-year-old woman in the car with him at the Go Lo gas station, 5300 Broadway in Gary, about his alleged drug use and where he was taking the woman, the probable cause affidavit states. The woman the victim was concerned about is someone the victim had taken into her home when she was about 16, court records state, and she considers her like a stepdaughter, court records state.

The victim, who is 49 and has several health issues, had told Middleborn not to drive off because she was in the way of the car's tires and has trouble walking, records state.

The woman suffered internal and external bruising and a hairline fracture to her foot, records state. She was treated at Methodist Hospitals Southlake campus in Merrillville and a Chicago health care facility.

The most serious of the charges is a Level 5 felony, which is punishable by one to six years.

Chicago woman sentenced for check forgery

A Chicago woman with two prior felony convictions was sentenced Monday to 364 days, plus 18 months on probation, for misdemeanor forgery.

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Shenquella Moore, 31, told Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Ross Boswell she was ashamed of herself for committing the offense. In court, Moore admitted she presented an $8,509 check to be cashed on Sept. 17 at PNC Bank in Munster and that she forged the signature of the account holder.

Defense attorney T. Edward Page said Moore was destitute and committed the offense out of desperation. During the 110 days she was in Lake County Jail, Moore completed a conquering-chemical-dependency program.

Deputy prosecutor Lonnie Randolph III noted Moore's criminal history includes convictions in Illinois for attempted murder and failure to report an accident. Moore was on parole at the time of the forgery. She had faced one to six years on a charge of fraud on a financial institution, which was dismissed.

Boswell suspended the 364-day sentence and entered judgment of Moore's conviction as a Class A misdemeanor.

Gary visitor charged with stealing from host

A Gary man has been charged with theft of several electronic items from a woman who had let him stay in her home for a few days following his release from the hospital.

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Deviontrelle Ja-Chuan Howard, 21, of the 2200 block of Fillmore Street, was charged with stealing an Xbox One video game system, PlayStation 4 video game system and a computer tablet, which had a total value of about $1,150.

The woman told police that on Nov. 29 she picked Howard up from 155th Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Gary as he was walking from a wooded area. She said it appeared Howard had been beaten and was bleeding badly, so she took him to Methodist Hospitals Northlake campus in Gary for treatment. After Howard was released from the hospital, she let him stay at her home for a few days, the probable cause affidavit states.

She left her home about 2:30 p.m. Dec. 1. When she returned 30 minutes later, the items were missing, and Howard was gone, records state.

The charge is a Level 6 felony, punishable by up to 30 months.

Merrillivlle man charged following pursuit

A Merrillville man has been charged in Lake Superior Court after authorities said he stole a car and then fled from police.

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Everett Brian Palmer, 41, who listed his address as a Merrillville motel, refused to stop for police and struck one Gary squad car twice during attempts to stop it.

Police were called about noon Dec. 27 to an address in the 6500 block of Birch Avenue in Miller for a disturbance. The victim pointed out the 2015 Kia Forte, which had been reported stolen from a Merrillville motel parking lot after the owner left it running unattended to warm up. As the car started to drive away, two officers followed with emergency lights and siren activated, according to court records. The pursuit continued to 3rd Avenue and South Lake Street, where Patrolman Michael George got his squad car in front of the car while Patrolman Anita Adamson got behind the car in her police car and forced it to stop.

Palmer, however, refused to open the door or shut off the car, even when officers pulled their guns, records state, and drove away again. Both George and Adamson tried to shoot out the car's rear tires, but Palmer continued driving to Indiana 51 and then onto the Borman Expressway heading west, according to court records. After a near-crash with a tractor-trailer, George again positioned his police car in front of the Kia, but Palmer rammed the Kia into the rear passenger side and refused to stop.

The Kia drove south on Interstate 65 and exited at 61st Avenue heading west, turned onto a side street that led into a business parking lot, and then struck George's squad car again, records state.

Lake County and Merrillville police assisted in stopping the car, which had been reported stolen in the late morning.

Palmer was charged with battery by means of a deadly weapon, battery on a public safety official, two counts of resisting law enforcement and auto theft. The most serious of the charges is a Level 5 felony, which is punishable by one to six years.

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Gary man charged with trying to rob couple

Two counts of attempted robbery have been filed against a Gary man who is charged with confronting a couple who had just withdrawn cash from an ATM at a Griffith business.

Reilly Jackson, 42, of 1241 Arizona St., was charged in Lake Superior Court after police were flagged down by a passer-by regarding a man with a gun.

Officers found a red van parked behind a black SUV and took the gun from the SUV driver, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. That man told police he and his wife had gone shopping at Walgreens, 1225 E. Ridge Road, and that his wife had withdrawn $400 from the ATM at the store. After his wife got into the SUV, a man later identified as Jackson opened the passenger side door and appeared to be trying to check the woman's jacket pockets while yelling, "Where's my money, y'all got my money," the probable cause affidavit states.

Jackson reached over the woman and tried to grab money out of the driver's hands, court records state. The driver then produced a 9 mm from a holster and pointed it at Jackson until police arrived, records state.

Jackson told police he had tried to withdraw $500 to pay rent, but wasn't sure of the ZIP code for Griffith and went out to check on his car insurance form. He also asked customers in the store where the money was dispensed, and the couple showed him the slot with a sign marked "cash" and an arrow pointing to it.

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The couple showed police their receipt for the cash. Jackson had two receipts showing "transaction denied," records state.

The charges are Level 5 felonies, which are punishable by one to six years.

 Teresa Auch Schultz and Ruth Ann Krause
South Shore Convention & Visitors Authority employees (background) stand at the ready to replentish plates of mashed potatoes for the adult contenders during the Mommy's Little Piggy Eating Contest at the Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond. (Sue Ellen Ross / Post-Tribune)

The Harrison family of Hammond eats only a certain type of mashed potato during family dinners, and that specially seasoned table staple is made only at a local grocery store delicatessen.

As luck would have it, that exact food item was offered as the focal point during the recent Mommy's Little Piggy Eating Contest held at the Indiana Welcome Center. The competition was sponsored by the South Shore Convention & Visitors Authority.

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"The goal today is not to move around as many mashed potatoes on the plate as you can, or to get them on your face," Speros Batistatos, visitors authority president and CEO, said as he greeted the contenders and the audience. "The goal is to see how much you can actually eat."

The yearly contest is a fun replay of a scene in the classic holiday movie, "A Christmas Story," written by Hammond native Jean Shepherd. The actor who plays Ralphie's younger brother Randy in the story eats his plate of mashed potatoes hands-free, as his mother calls him "my little piggy."

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Although 72 participants were registered for the four age groups  children ages 4-7, 8-12, 13-17, and those 18 and older  additional eaters were added as walk-ins.

"It's not unusual that more people want to join the fun once they get here," volunteer Jennifer Rush said as she manned the sign-in table. "We usually have a few dozen more who sign up."

Janet Ramsey attended with her daughter Julie Montealegre of Highland, and three of her grandchildren. Although the grandchildren were registered for the eating competition, Ramsey and her daughter were not.

"We wanted to surprise the kids, so we registered once we got here," Ramsey said. "We wanted to show them that the adults can have fun too."

Contestants in all categories kept their hands under the table until the bell sounded, and then hands could be used only to hold the plate.

Local grocer Strack & Van Til provided the mashed potatoes that were served at the proper temperature  not too hot or not too cold.

"I wonder how they do that (correct temperature)," said Lynda Kristos of Merrillville, as she watched her niece take the stage with the 4- to 7-year-old group. "But I guess if they taste good, the kids will eat them no mater what."

The younger groups were judged on the time taken to consume one helping (ice-cream scoop size) of mashed potatoes  sans hands.

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Adults were presented with a plate containing two ice-cream scoops of potatoes, replaced as they consumed each plate. The moderator chose the winner in this category based on total amount of platefuls eaten.

Participating in the annual Mommy's Little Piggy Eating Contest has become a must-do for some families, as well as entering the other contests held in honor of "A Christmas Story."

"We tried the O'Fudge Race last year and had a blast, but everyone was too busy this year to do it," Joe Pennington of Hammond said as he cheered on the eating contestants. "The kids were so disappointed, so we'll definitely register for it next year. Doing things together is giving us some great memories."

Developed eight years ago, Mommy's Little Piggy Eating Contest has grown.

The "Christmas Story" event staged each December at the Indiana Welcome Center also includes animated scenes from the movie, an iconic story of a 1940s childhood. The event involves hundreds of visitors each year.

Sue Ellen Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Can somebody please let Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, know that he doesn't represent the prosperous suburbs around Indianapolis that already have plenty of state largesse showered on them?

Soliday is the clout-heavy chairman of the House Roads and Transportation Committee, yet his proposed solutions for roadway funding neglect the fact that Northwest Indiana, which he represents, has been treated like the red-headed stepchild for years and his proposing tax hikes on the little guy up here does nothing to fix that.

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Not sure if Ed even knows he's being played by the suburban Indianapolis Republicans who really run the Statehouse. Reminds me of that story that says if you don't know who the sucker is at the poker table, it's probably you.

We've been taken to the cleaners for years by the card sharks who run the legislature and Ed says nothing. For instance, why didn't he scream bloody murder when Gov. Mike Pence pushed through the legislature an extra $400 million in funds for state highways in 2014, yet none of those new dollars came to our region, according to news reports.

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Soliday was also missing in action when LaPorte and Lake counties united to try to win the Indiana Toll Road lease rights early in 2015, which could have meant tens of millions annually for our region in revenues kept here for road-building, rather than shipping those profits overseas.

Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Nothing shakes Ed's loyalty to his Indianapolis area buddies  not even statistics released earlier this year by the LaPorte County Board of Commissioners, which proved that the already prosperous suburbs around Indianapolis that make up the INDOT district there received $4.1 billion in funds for state roads and highways over the past 10 years, while our INDOT district here in Northwest Indiana received just $2.4 billion  a whopping $1.7 billion difference. Adding insult to injury was the fact that much of that money bound for the Indianapolis suburbs came from the 2006 sale of the Toll Road, the same road that Northwest Indiana residents paid tolls on for decades, while Indianapolis-area residents hardly ever drove on it.

Ed Soliday was a highly skilled airline pilot who is by all accounts a good storyteller and a genuinely nice guy. But he's getting rolled downstate and he's certainly no fighter for our region. When a bridge or overpass needs repair near Indianapolis, they work overtime to fix it. But the Cline Avenue overpass in Lake County has been out for years and Ed sat back while the governor moved to privatize it, charge tolls and let a private vendor repair it, since the state refused to.

Rather than fight to get our fair share, Ed's proposed House Bill 1001 would raise gas taxes, hike cigarette taxes, and he's even talking about putting toll booths on I-65. Worse yet, Soliday wants to give counties the "right" to impose new wheel taxes and hike local option taxes further. Jeez, how lucky can we be to have Ed Soliday down there?

He and House Speaker Brian Bosma claim they're ready to have an "adult conversation" about dealing with long-term needs for infrastructure. Translated, that means higher taxes on the little guy who can ill afford it. What about considering House Democratic leader Scott Pelath's plan to steer more of the sales taxes collected on gasoline to roads? Even Republican Sen. Brandt Hershman's idea to free up some of the local income tax money the state is hoarding and give it back to counties for road repair makes more sense than Ed's tax hikes.

Ed Soliday has proven he's no poker player. He needs to take a lesson or two from his colleagues in Hamilton County near Indianapolis who know how to leverage their clout and influence and "bring home the bacon." Take a look at the new roads, bridges and highways near Carmel, Fishers and Avon, and you'll see what real clout means for a region.

Rep. Ed Soliday may be a great guy to invite to a party, but we sure don't want him playing poker down there with our money.

Attorney Shaw Friedman represents the LaPorte County Board of Commissioners, which passed a resolution one year ago requesting area legislators fight for Northwest Indiana's "fair share" of road money.
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Kashmir militant alliance United Jihad Council (UJC) on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack on India's military base in Punjab state, local media said.

Local news-gathering service Current News Service (CNS) said Monday that Kashmiri militants associated with the "Highway Squad" and attacked the airbase, citing UJC spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain.

"The attack on Pathankot airbase from Kashmiri Mujhadeen carries a message to India that no security establishment and garrison are out of reach of militants," said the spokesperson.

UJC is a conglomerate of around 13 militant outfits based in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

At least 12 people - seven Indian troops and five militants - were killed in the gunfight over the weekend at Pathankot airbase, about 430 km north of Indian capital city of New Delhi.

The sixth gunman was killed Monday at the airbase, ending the three-day combing operation against the attackers, according to local media.

On Saturday at 3:30 a.m.(local time), a group of gunmen in military fatigues entered the base firing with automatic weapons and hurling grenades.

Indian officials blame Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed militant outfit for the attack.

The attack came just days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore to give boost to the renewed peace initiative between two neighbors.

However, India was mulling cancelling or delaying the Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan following the attack, sources said.
An electronic Microsoft logo is seen at the Microsoft store in New York, July 28, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

Microsoft Corp is under an antitrust investigation in China, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) announced Tuesday afternoon on its website.

Regional executives related to the matter have been asked to respond to inquiries from and data acquired by the watchdog, said the announcement.

The US software giant said in response that it is serious about complying with China's laws and committed to addressing SAIC's questions and concerns.

"Asking questions is at least giving Microsoft a chance to explain all the details and the company has set up the partnership with CSC which is to show that they are willing to follow the government policy," said Kitty Fok, director of research firm IDC China.

Microsoft has been teaming up with the giant systems integrator CSC to tap China's government procurement market selling its Windows 10 operating system.

"I think like Qualcomm, it is still better to be fined than wait without answer. The same thing applies to Microsoft," said Fok. "You'd rather get the result and then you can move on."

The US chip maker Qualcomm has been fined 6.088 billion yuan ($975 million) by the Chinese regulator NDRC after finding the company had violated anti-monopoly laws.

Last August, the SAIC questioned Microsoft's lawyer, Deputy General Counsel Mary Snapp, after formally investigating the software giant and raiding four of its offices in China, reported Reuters.

Microsoft was suspected of violating China's anti-monopoly law since June 2014 in relation to problems with compatibility, bundling and document authentication.

The company had promised to respect Chinese law and fully cooperate with the SAIC's investigation work, adding that its business practices are "designed to be compliant with Chinese law", according to the news agency.

Regulators levied a fine of about 350 million yuan ($54.8 million) on Daimler's Mercedes-Benz in April last year. In September, authorities fined FAWVolkswagen's luxury brand Audi almost 250 million yuan, Dongfeng Nissan nearly 123 million yuan and Chrysler almost 31.6 million yuan.

Gao Yuan contributed to this story.
A residential project is under construction in Huai'an, Jiangsu province. [File Photo/China Daily]

Smaller areas were less fortunate, experiencing declines in sale prices

If there is one word to summarize China's property market in 2015, it would be "divergence".

Overall sales and prices recovered after a slump in 2014, as average new home prices in 100 cities monitored by China Index Academy, a private research institution, rose 4.15 percent in the past year.

But that belied the fact that only China's largest cities saw higher prices, as losses in smaller cities were offset by strong gains in the largest cities.

Even within large cities, there was significant divergence. Average new home prices in first-tier cities advanced 17.2 percent, but that was largely driven by a spectacular surge in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, where prices swelled 38.7 percent to a record 42,591 yuan ($6,540) per square meter due to short supply of land, a ballooning wealthy class and speculation.

Prices in Shanghai surged 15.3 percent to 36,935 yuan per sq m. In Beijing, prices saw a more modest 9.2 percent increase to 34,981 yuan per sq m.

Second-tier cities as a group saw new home prices decline by 0.53 percent. But performance varied among cities.

Prices in Wuhan, Hubei province, gained 15 percent, the highest among second-tier cities. Central Hefei in Anhui province rose 7.7 percent to reach 7,992 yuan per sq m. Thanks to its proximity to Beijing, prices in Langfang, Hebei province, rose 5.6 percent.

However, Fuzhou, Fujian province, saw prices slump 11 percent, the largest fall in similar cities. Prices in Sanya, Hainan province, contracted 8.4 percent while Dalian in Liaoning province saw prices fall 8 percent.

Prices in most third- and fourth-tier cities fell, with Shaoxing (9.2 percent) and Taizhou (8.3 percent) in Zhejiang province losing the most. Third-tier cities as a group saw a 1.1 percent decline.

The price slump of 2014 continued into 2015, as national prices declined in the first four months of the year, until the effects of favorable policies kicked in, notably allowing second-home buyers who have paid off their mortgage to enjoy the benefits of "first-home buyer" status. Prices began picking up in May, and month-on-month growth was largest in August (up 0.96 percent). Prices in December rose 0.74 percent.

Nationwide, sales surged 20.6 percent on a floor-space basis. Again, first-tier cities led the rebound with a 34 percent surge, while sales in second-tier cities rose 17 percent and third-tier cities climbed 22 percent.

A total of 104 developers sold properties worth more than 10 billion yuan in 2015. In 2014, only 80 did so.

The China Index Academy has a positive outlook for 2016, as the government will roll out more stimulus measures to ease inventory pressures. Of the more than 200 developers surveyed by the academy, 36 percent predicted home prices nationwide would rise within 5 percent. Another 32 percent predicted flat prices.

Fifty-seven percent of developers still feel heavy inventory pressure, but 43 percent feel no or slight pressure. Half of developers plan to raise prices, while 23 percent plan to cut prices.
Chinese firm Qunar listed on Nasdaq in New York in November 2013. [Photo/China Daily USA]

Growing complaints about extra charges, refunds and issues related to ticketing are prompting airline companies to end ties with online travel agencies.

The latest to face the music is Qunar Cayman Islands Ltd, China's second-largest online travel agency, which saw its cooperation with China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Capital Airlines, the Beijing-based subsidiary of HNA Group, end abruptly on Dec 31, 2015.

Air China Ltd, China's flagship carrier, said on Monday it was closing its flagship store on Qunar after repeated consumer complaints about Qunar. Other carriers are also expected to take similar steps in the next few days, said industry sources.

China Southern Airlines, Asia's largest carrier in terms of fleet, said it has been piqued by the growing passenger complains about ticket purchases and refunds through Qunar.

"In order to protect passengers' interests and improve market order, China Southern Airlines is suspending its association with Qunar and the closure of its flagship store on the platform," the airline said in a statement.

Hainan Airlines and Capital Airlines also released similar statements citing passenger complaints about Qunar's extra charges and higher priced air tickets.

Qunar, when contacted for its response, confirmed the suspensions but said the issue was not about extra charges, but rather about air ticket ranking.

"China Southern and Hainan Airlines insisted that we change the order of ticket display on our website from an order by price to a chronological order. However, we think that displaying tickets by the order of their prices is more suited to the typical booking search habits of users," it said.

"Consumers can still buy the carriers' air tickets from Qunar during the suspension period," it said.

Air ticketing is a fast-developing business for Qunar, as its revenues from flight and flight related business reached 596.6 million yuan ($93.9 million) during the third quarter of 2015, a 91.2 percent year-on-year growth.
Family members set to rake in millions when pickled chicken feet seller floats 79.5m shares

Chongqing-based Youyou Food Co, one of the country's largest distributors of pickled chicken feet, is planning an initial public offering which could make billionaires of its family owners.

The firm's IPO prospectus said 79.5 million shares will be offered, including those currently owned by Lu Youzhong and his relatives, who own 90 percent of the business or around 200 million shares.

If successful, Lu and family could be worth around 4.4 billion yuan ($675.4 million), according to a report by The Beijing News, based on a share price expected to be in excess of 22 yuan.

Analysts, however, cautioned that any flotationone of an estimated 600 IPOs in the pipelinemight be considered risky, as Youyou's core business relies so heavily on the one blockbuster product: pickled chicken feet.

Youyou is currently listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations, better known as the New Third Board, an over-the-counter market for growth enterprises.

The company said in a statement that its IPO application had been accepted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and its shares have been suspended from trading on the NEEQ since Dec 16.

Youyou's market value on NEEQ rose to 4.2 billion yuan at its highest, but it had dropped to 2.84 billion yuan by the time the trading of its shares was suspended.

In the latest set of annual figures, its 2014 sales revenue was 880 million yuan with net profit of 119 million yuan. Pickled chicken feet contributed more than 75 percent of total revenue.

Youyou said in a statement on its website, however, that it has been developing new products to serve fast-changing market demands, including pickled peanuts, smoked bean curd and pickled chicken wings.

A research report by TX Investment Consultancy Co on the possible flotation said any business model that relies heavily on a sole product or service may be more exposed to risk.

"Such a heavy reliance may leave a business fragile when market demand shrinks drastically, especially when the product or service is not in solid demand."

According to a report from China National Food Industry Association, demand for prepacked snacks such as those defined as "leisure food" are also prone to decline during an economic slowdown.
Events organizer Reed Exhibitions said it is increasing its marketing spending in China and its use of digital development tools.

Chet Burchet, Reed's global CEO, said it is accelerating its presence in China to match the rapid growth of the country's middle class, especially in second- and third-tier cities.

Part of RELX Group Plc, which provides information solutions across a variety of sectors, Reed Exhibitions will particularly target its marketing focus on the mobile market, which is "extremely important in China", said Burchet.

He said it has developed an integrated online digital platform called Axon, an interconnected tool to enhance the organization's marketing capability. The firm recently appointed Hu Wei as its first Chinese national to head the China division.

The company has 43 offices worldwide, and Reed Exhibitions greater China has nine subsidiaries covering trade exhibitions, consumer events, conferences and meetings.

Burchet said changing economic conditions have played a key role in Reed's business strategy, and that the burgeoning Chinese middle class is now the major factor in its thinking. "As well as rising disposable incomes, consumption trends have changed and there is an overall desire for better lifestyles, dominated by the very best possible products," said Burchet.

"These factors point to the lifestyle and healthcare industries, especially experiencing fast growth in the short and medium term."

Last year the company launched various events targeted on enriching people's lives such as the debut Shanghai Comic Convention in May, which brought the worlds of comics, cinema, television, toys and video games to fans from all across Asia.

Burchet claims Reed in China continues to lead in key industry segments, ranking first in the homeware, packaging, healthcare and medical and pharmaceutical events. Last year, it hosted some 25 major annual events.

One of the highlights of the year was its launch of the health industry summit in Shanghai, also in May, which added significant clout to Reed's role in the industry, he said.

The event, which attracted participants from the global pharmaceutical and medical industries, was organized by Reed Sinopharm Exhibitions, a joint venture between Reed and Sinopharm, China's largest State-owned pharmaceutical group.

Now ranked as the world's largest integrated health industry event, he said the summit was held in the city's newly opened National Exhibition and Conference Center, considered the world's largest single block exhibition complex spanning a massive 260,000 square meters of exhibition space.
BEIJING -- A fund that mobilizes insurance company funds for infrastructure has been set up with an initial pool of 40 billion yuan ($6.15 billion), China's insurance watchdog said on Monday.

The fund will be managed by the China Insurance Investment Company Ltd., newly established with 1.2 billion yuan of registered capital and 46 corporate shareholders, including 27 insurers, 15 insurance assets management firms and four private companies, according to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

In its first investments, the fund will help China Merchants Steam Navigation Company with overseas port projects. It will also support liquefied natural gas projects with Russia.

The fund was approved by the State Council in July and is expected to ultimately reach 300 billion yuan. It is designed to facilitate strategic projects such as housing renovations, urban infrastructure, water conservation and the Belt and Road Initiative. It can also invest in emerging industries, logistics, healthcare, information technology, environmental protection, small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Belt and Road Initiative, a reference to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to revive the ancient trade route between Asia and Europe.
Signs show the direction of Vanke group headquarters and Shenzhen Vanke Real Estate at its headquarters in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, November 2, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

China Vanke Co, the country's largest homebuilder, announced late Monday that its asset revamp plan has been progressing as expected but it will continue to halt trading in the stock markets as uncertainty remains.

The property giant did not disclose restructuring details further, but said the company signed a non-binding agreement with a potential counterparty over possible transactions on Dec 25.

Negotiations with the counterparty, among others, is still underway, said the company.

Risks remain for investors as uncertainty of its restructuring process persists, it added, saying the company has thus decided to continue suspending its trading in the stock markets.

Vanke, which is listed in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, said in an earlier statement that it will unveil its revamp plan by January. It will also resume trading by Jan 18 if the board fails to seek a delay in the bourses.

The company has had its shares halted since Dec 18, amid a prolonged takeover tussle with Baoneng Group which has become its largest shareholder with a 24.3 percent stake, replacing State-owned China Resource Group.

Chairman Wang Shi has said that he did not welcome the hostile bid of the property and insurance group, adding the firm lacked "credibility" and would negatively impact Vanke.

The company has successfully won the backup of China's Anbang Insurance Group which raised its stake from 4.5 percent to 7.01 percent in just a few weeks, said an earlier report.

Vanke's December contract sales stood at 33.2 billion yuan ($5.08 billion), bringing its total sales to 261.5 billion yuan in 2015, according to Reuters.

It bought back 12.5 million A-shares for 160.1 million yuan as of Dec 31.
After being in a tight spot for over three years and writing off more than 80 percent of losses, China's coal industry faces another tough year with its overcapacity, Securities Daily reported Tuesday. [Photo/China Daily]

After being in a tight spot for over three years and writing off more than 80 percent of losses, China's coal industry faces another tough year with its overcapacity, Securities Daily reported Tuesday.

Authorities have stressed steps to accelerate the merger and reorganizations of the 'zombie' enterprises, or large-scale sectors with excessive productions suffering long-term losses and have little hopes turning the situations around.

Coal sector has become the main target in the sweep.

Starting from 2012, the coal price saw continuous slumps with a drop over 30 percent. Even though the price fell lower even than potatoes, many companies would rather lose profit than halt production in order to expand the market share. Industry insider told the newspaper that when production stops, the cash flow stops too which puts the companies in a more difficult situation.

Statistics show that the coal sector suffers from an average asset liability ratio of 67.7 percent, the highest point in 16 years.

Many coal companies are swamped. Hidili Industry International Development Limited, the biggest private owned coal mining company in Sichuan, has reportedly defaulted on its $183 million debt. China Shenhua Energy Co Ltd, the nation's biggest coal producer by volume, has seen a 40 percent salary cut.

The China National Coal Group Corp (ChinaCoal), the nation's second-largest producer of coal by output, sold its low-profitable assets in hard cash worth 927 million yuan to reduce the debt and keep the cash flow. Half of the assets were sold by the end of 2015, but it only reduced the debt by one percent, which stood at 79 percent by Sept 30 last year.

According to the company's third-quarter report, the miner has gained 44.8 billion yuan in the first three quarters of last year, a 13.8 percent decrease year on year. The net profit loss was about 1.67 billion yuan, a 352.8 percent slump year on year.

It's also the company's first loss in seven years.

With the bigger players having their hands tight, small fish find it harder to keep it together in the industry winter.

Deng Shun, an analyst with ICIS, told the newspaper that many coal firms keep the wheels running by loaning and will not stop the production any time soon.

Deng said that this situation won't last long as the government's accelerates reforming the sector which means that many small- and medium-sized companies will drop out while bigger ones will merge and reorganize.

China will accelerate the closing and reorganizing of the coal productions of old and low quality and control the capacity tightly, said Lian Weiliang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, at 2016 China Coal Trade Conference in December last year.

Premier Li Keqiang said that China will lessen the pollution by 60 percent in electric power industry through upgrading, saving around 100 million tons of raw coal demands.

According to statistics, 49 cases of mergers had taken place in coal mining industry in the first 11 months of 2015, a 58 percent of increase from the previous year.

An industry report released by Goldman Sachs Group showed that the reshuffling of the coal sector isn't enough to save the downward trend, more solutions on reforming and reorganizing the industry are still called for.
An employee demonstrates an HTC Vibe virtual reality headset in the HTC Corp pavilion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in March 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

In the next 10 years, the Taiwan-based firm will focus on the 'disruptive innovation' that 'will transform the way we interact with the world'

Taiwan-based smartphone marker HTC Corp has diversified its range of products by investing in virtual reality or VR devices amid a declining demand for cell phones in the global market, the company's CEO has said.

Cher Wang, co-founder and CEO of HTC, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily that the company will be focusing on the virtual reality devices in the next 10 years. HTC will continue to make smartphones.

A man watches a 9-dimensional movie supported by the virtual realty technology in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, at the 17th China High-Tech Fair in November. [Photo/Provided to China Daily]

"Virtual reality will transform the way we interact with the world. We can see enormous business opportunities arising from this disruptive innovation," Wang said.

Users are restricted by screens when using phones and computers, but the VR devices will offer them more colorful and diverse experience in a broadened horizon, she said.

HTC Vive, the company's first VR device, was launched on Dec 18 in Beijing. The high-definition head-mounted device can transmit images and sound to make the virtual world seem real to users. It is assisted by two location trackers and a pair of wireless controllers.

The device can achieve a real-time interaction between the user and the image-and-hearing effect in a fully immersive, room-scale experience with 360-degree movement.

The device, designed for areas such as online gaming, medical care and educational purposes, made its debut in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, at the China High-Tech Fair in November. It attracted thousands of visitors who were keen on experiencing the new technology.

According to iResearch Consulting Group, the global market value of VR devices is estimated to reach $30 billion by 2020, 10 percent of which will come from head-mounted VR devices like HTC Vive.

Such estimates have sparked enthusiasm among manufacturers in Taiwan as well as the Chinese mainland. Over the past few months, stock prices of some companies listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges soared, even doubled, as they unveiled plans to develop VR devices.

Experts told Wang when she was in Beijing that the VR technology can be applied in diverse fields such as surgery and education. "You can imagine a patient being able to see arteries and blood cells inside the brain with the help of a VR device. It will be easier to convince them to go in for a surgery," Wang said.

She said the VR technology can be adopted by car sellers and apartment designers as well. Wang said Audi, a luxury car brand of the German carmaker Volkswagen Group, will install HTC Vive in its flagship stores on the Chinese mainland this year. This will help customers see the car models from different perspectives.

With the help of HTC Vive, people can make informed decisions on home decoration after watching previews of interior design proposals or wall paint colors, she said.

To fine-tune its VR strategy, HTC held its first developers' summit on Dec 18 in Beijing. Top executives from online gaming and virtual reality companies attended the event. More than 300 virtual reality developers, engineers and startup entrepreneurs took part and focused on cutting-edge VR technologies and latest market trends.

Raymond Pao, vice-president of VR technology at HTC, said enterprises on the Chinese mainland, irrespective of their size, are very proactive about embracing new technologies. This creates a supportive atmosphere for technology startups and raises hopes of adequate investment.

"Major companies would like to outsource minor projects to smaller enterprises and then merge them all when the final product is to be made in the United States. However, enterprises on the Chinese mainland would like to try all new things which they believe have great potential," Pao said. "That's why, HTC has found some strategic partners to promote VR devices. This is to provide superb experience when a user tries it."

HTC has forged tie-ups with leading online platforms on the mainland. For instance, it has a tie-up with swjoy.com, a website that has signed cooperation agreements with more than 100,000 Internet cafes across the country. Soon, HTC will install its Vive devices at these cafes to attract young consumers, especially online gamers.

Wang said the first batch of Vive devices will be shipped to buyers in April. She declined to disclose other details.
The Nokia company logo is pictured at its headquarters in Espoo January 29, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

HELSINKI -- Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia said on Monday it has controlled some 80 percent of its French counterpart Alcatel-Lucent's shares.

The Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent deal amounted to 15.6 billion euros($16.88 billion) and was the largest business purchase in Finnish industrial history. Following the takeover, Nokia is one of the three major network technological companies, the others being Ericsson and Huawei.

Nokia also announced on Monday that the French stock market authority (AMF, Autorite des Marches Financiers) had declared the Nokia exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities in France and the United States as successful.

The Espoo based company said it will now move to combine Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent and execute integration plans.

Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri said the launch date for the "new Nokia" is slated for January 14, 2016.

He noted in a press release the new company will offer a combined end-to-end portfolio of the scope and scale that meets the needs of global customers. He described the research and development capabilities of the company "unparalleled".

In an interview with the Finnish business daily Kauppalehti on Monday, Nokia chairman Risto Siilasmaa recollected the company's come back "from the brink" -- first securing its survival through selling its ailing handset business to Microsoft and the purchase of the other half of its network operations from Siemens. Nokia was then able to take time to define its new position in a world where technology has a key role.

"We have now in three years increased the value of the company's business 15 fold. It is not quite easy to find another comparable achievement", Siilasmaa told Kauppalehti.

Analysts believe Nokia will be able to benefit from its corporate size in negotiating prices with customers.

The company is expected to retain its name Nokia, which originated from the name of a town in southern Finland, and its headquarters in Finland, albeit a large part of its operations are likely to be located in France.
Smartphone firm Qiku Network Technologies (Shenzhen) Co Ltd said shipments of its Dazen mobile phones reached five million units in 2015, similar to the level in 2014.

The Shenzhen-based company unveiled a new smartphone, the Dazen Note 3 high-end version, in Beijing on Monday.

This newest model, created through a joint venture with NYSE-listed Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd and Coolpad Group Ltd, a major contract smartphone maker in China, has a fingerprint recognition function.

It offers a 3G random access memory (RAM) and 32 GB of storage space, and is equipped with a 360 operating system, where users can be protected against harmful viruses and Trojans. It is also available for three major telecom carriers.

The company launched a Dazen Note 3 Golden version in October, with a storage capacity reaching 16 GB.

Industry insiders said the launch of the Dazen Note 3 high-end version marks the smartphone, priced below 1,000 yuan, as having stepped into the stage of popularization with a large memory and fingerprint recognition.

Zhu Fanghao, president of Qiku Technology, said the company has finished the business integration of its two subordinate smartphone brands, including the Qiku and the Dazen. "We haven't set a sales goal in 2016. Qiku is positioned to be products with cutting-edge technology, aiming at high-end users, while Dazen is designed for the younger generation, tending to be full of vitality and passion," Zhu said, adding Dazen will focus on users' experience in the future.

Users can log onto social media platforms WeChat using two account numbers at the same time with Dazen.

Zhu added that Dazen mobile phones will concentrate on online sales channels, while Qiku will pay attention to both online and offline channels, as online sales only account for 25 percent of the total.

Furthermore, the company has overseas expansion plans in India, Southeast Asia and Europe. It launched Qiku Q Terra in India in 2015; it was priced at over 2,000 yuan.

The Dazen Note 3 high-end version will be sold officially through online shopping malls, including Qiku.com and JD.com from Friday, priced at 899 yuan.


On his first inspection trip of the year, Premier Li Keqiang visits a shantytown in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, on Monday. An emotional Li told some of his accompanying ministers: "Haven't you seen that these people are still living in such conditions?" [Photo/Chinanews service]

Li Fanyu, 78, a resident of Xinghualing district in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, never expected that she would meet China's premier in her humble home.

Nonetheless, Li's one-story house, a rundown home built in the 1950s, was where Premier Li Keqiang spent part of his first work day of the new year on Monday morning.

The shanty neighborhood, named Xiaobeiguan, houses 830 households like Li Fanyu's.

Residents of the community share one toilet. Tap water is available, but there is only one faucet for everyone to use.

Walking out of Li Fanyu's house, the premier was told that the woman's situation was not rare in Taiyuan, which is about 500 kilometers from Beijing. There are at least 80 more such shantytowns in Taiyuan.

At this, the premier stopped and stood still. Becoming emotional, he said to some of the accompanying ministers: "Haven't you seen that these people are still living in such conditions? There are way too many things left to be done in China!"

He told the residents of Xiaobeiguan neighborhood that he knew well their hardship.

"We'll let you live in new buildings as soon as possible," the premier told the residents as they waved goodbye.

Renovating shantytowns has been a government priority.

In October, Li told a national work conference, "Renovation of shantytowns raises many low-income families' hopes for improving their living conditions and is also a focal point in pushing forward people-oriented urbanization."

During his inspection tour in Shanxi, Li also visited Taiyuan Iron& Steel (Group) Co, which is struggling with sluggish global iron prices.

He told hundreds of workers that difficulties faced by iron and steel companies will surely be conquered, as long as workers use wisdom and courage.

Taiyuan Iron & Steel, founded in 1934, is the world's largest stainless steel producer. In recent years, the company has worked on developing other products related to the iron and steel industry, hoping to diversify.

Li praised the idea. "Developing with some diversity will help the company stand stronger in facing unexpected challenges," he said.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks to members of the Security Council at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, New York, Dec 18, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

A Syrian opposition leader will begin a four-day visit to China on Tuesday, in Beijing's latest effort to push forward talks between the Syrian government and opposition.

Though China has long been making efforts to promote talks between the parties in Syria, it apparently is the first time that Beijing has announced in advance a visit by a Syrian opposition leader.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Alptekin Hocaoglu, president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, during the opposition leader's stay, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily media briefing on Monday.

She said the leader was invited by the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs.

The visit to Beijing by the coalition leader, who also goes by the name Khaled Khoja, comes after Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem visited China from Dec 23 to 26.

Al-Moallem told reporters after meeting with Wang that the Syrian government was ready to participate in peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending its civil war.

"Our delegation will be ready as soon as we receive a list of the opposition delegation," al-Moallem said, adding that there should be no foreign interference in the talks.

The remarks came after the UN Security Council gave unanimous support in December to a resolution calling for a cease-fire, talks between the Syrian government and opposition beginning in January, creating a unity government and holding elections.

Li Guofu, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said there is still a deep gap between the Syrian government and opposition on the final settlement, but it is good that they are willing to talk under great international pressure.

"China is now serving as a mediator," he said.

Li Shaoxian, an expert of Middle East studies at Ningxia University in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, said that the diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran has added to the difficulties of reaching a final settlement.
A book about Chinese president Xi Jinping's remarks on anti-corruption.[Photo/IC]

Top watchdog vows to take tougher line against officials violating regulations

More than 29,000 people were subject to Party discipline and government regulations during the first 11 months of last year as the country's anti-graft campaign picked up steam.

A total of 29,011 were involved in more than 32,000 cases that contravened the eight-point regulations aimed at practicing austerity among Party members and bringing the Party closer to the masses.

The figures were announced on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the county's top anti-corruption body.

In 2014, a total of 23,646 people were reprimanded in 53,085 cases.

In contrast, the number of senior Party officials found to have committed misconduct in 2015 increased.

Eight officials at provincial or ministerial level, 441 city-level and 3,818 county-level officials were punished in the first 11 months of last year. The figures for officials at the three levels for the whole of 2014 were two, 198 and 2,630, respectively.

The number of officials at and above county level punished from January to November last year rose by 51 percent year-on-year.

The commission pledged to take a tougher line against officials who violate the eight-point regulations and to make "ceaseless efforts" to root out bureaucracy, extravagance and undesirable work practices.

Nationwide in the first 11 months of last year, 1,818 cases involved the use of public money for meals and overseas trips, accepting gifts and money in contravention of Party rules, and holding extravagant wedding and funeral receptions.

The anti-graft body warned that such violations could go "underground", and listed examples of misbehavior.

Some officials ate in canteens at their workplaces without paying and some asked companies to foot the bill for their meals, the commission said.

It added that some officials used public money for tourism after saying they were holding meetings and developing research projects. Others accepted gift cards through middlemen.

Sixty-four officials from State-owned enterprises administered by central authorities had been investigated by the end of November, the commission said on Monday. They are largely from firms in the energy, communication, transportation and machine manufacturing sectors.
They were there one minute and - presto! - they weren't.

They'd vanished into shops to cuddle scarves and wriggle footwear over their toes.

Houdini would've poked a thumb skyward at their vanishing acts.

Our Portuguese tour guide labeled one word "dangerous" - "shopping". She was half joking yet completely exasperated with members of our Chinese media group disappearing into Porto's boutiques and big-brand stores en route to the next site.

The guide had a contractually obligated itinerary.

These Chinese wanted to buy more than see or do.

Places like Porto will shift from barely registering on Chinese tourists' radars to places where Chinese home in on cash registers. Budding shopping destinations will bloom this year, as the seeds they've sown take root.

Indeed, Chinese shopping overseas was one of the global tourism industry's top stories last year. About 88 percent of the $165 billion Chinese spent overseas last year was on shopping, the China National Tourism Administration reports.

China's biggest online travel agency, Ctrip, forecasts Chinese will spend $3,500 per capita this year, as the number of outbound Chinese reaches 130 million.

Japan's word of the year for 2015 comes from China. (Well, actually, from Chinese visitors.) Bakugai - "explosive shopping", referring to inbound Chinese customers - beat out 50 proposals for the top spot at publisher Jiyukokuminsha's 2015 U-Can New Words and Buzzwords Awards.

Chinese spending in its neighboring nation grew 165 percent to nearly $9 billion during the first nine months. It blasted to $834 million during the National Day Golden Week, when it generated 0.1 percent of Japan's GDP.

The biggest uptrend came from Down Under, where Chinese spent an average $21 million a day, surpassing Australian tourism authorities' goals half a decade early.

Shopping in South Korea is so rigorous that China's e-commerce titans JD.com and Alibaba are contending to foster online-shopping programs enabling Chinese to buy Korean goods from home.

The UK destination Chinese visited most after Buckingham Palace was the Bicester Village luxury outlet. Chinese accounted for 20 percent of global spending in London's West End.

This phenomenon is poised to project further and farther this year, when more Chinese will likely spend more money in more places. Take Lisbon's Freeport outlet as an up-and-comer.

It recently hired a Chinese consultancy and plans to recruit Mandarin-speaking staffers. Freeport expects Chinese to jump from 10 percent of global visitors last year to 50 percent this year. Its tourism center even offers hot water to suit Chinese preferences.

"It's like this all over Europe," Freeport's director, Nuno Oliveira, told me. "In terms of culture, it's easy to figure out what people like and don't like. The most difficult thing is language."

Freeport put 20 people through Mandarin training in the fall. Yet most couldn't get past ni hao (hello).

Still, it's a start - a literal and figurative greeting to Chinese customers. Such emergent shopping destinations around the world seem set to, well, emerge this year. They're preparing to open their registers wider, as more Chinese visitors arrive, wallets open.

Perhaps more languages will mint new words for it.
A series of drills has been held since the start of the new year to hone the combat readiness of the newly established People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, according to a report by China Central Television.

Several ballistic missile units under the new force conducted war games with an "enemy force" in snow-covered Northeast China over the weekend, footage from the broadcaster showed.

The PLA Rocket Force was formed on Thursday to replace the PLA Second Artillery Corps and to manage the country's strategic missiles.

The footage featured the DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile being operated by soldiers, with units carrying out more than 10 maneuvers.

At the same time, another missile brigade staged a drill in Northwest China that involved simulated target-setting and multiple launches of short-range ballistic missiles, according to CCTV.

At a ceremony at the Central Military Commission in Beijing on Thursday, President Xi Jinping, who is also the commission's chairman, announced the establishment of the PLA Rocket Force.

Military enthusiasts were attracted by what appeared to be a minor detail in the CCTV report on the ceremony.

Their attention focused on three white, small-scale models of missiles, together with another three models of launch vehicles, which were placed on a shelf in the hall where the event was staged.

The enthusiasts said the missiles in the footage were DF-5 and DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missiles and DF-21, showcasing the new force's capability of reaching short-, medium- and long-range targets worldwide.

According to PLADaily, the PLA Rocket Force has at least nine missiles in active service. They include the DF-5B, the intermediate-range DF-26 and the CJ-10A ground-launched cruise missile.

Seven of the nine types were displayed during the Sept 3 parade in Tian'anmen Square marking the 70th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and the end of World War II.

Their appearance caused a global surprise, as it confirmed the existence of the DF-21D and DF-26. According to experts, they are the only two ballistic missiles capable of sinking aircraft carriers.
Photo taken on Dec 23, 2015 shows a seagull flying in smog in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The government of Shandong province is doubling the rewards and fines for cities' air pollution performance.

It will pay cities that reduce air pollution 400,000 yuan ($64,500) for each microgram of pollutant reduced per cubic meter, under an amended regulation that took effect on Friday.

"Meanwhile, fines for those whose air quality deteriorates will also be doubled," said Xue Mei, an official at the Shandong Bureau of Environmental Protection. This will encourage local governments to intensify their efforts to curb air pollution, Xue said.

Under the regulations, the evaluation system is based on quarterly indexes of PM2.5 and PM10 - particulate matter that is hazardous to humans-as well as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

PM2.5 counts for 60 percent in the evaluation system, while PM10 and sulfur dioxide are weighted at 15 percent each, and nitrogen dioxide counts for 10 percent.

Rewards and fines are determined according to quarterly evaluations.

The province offered a total of 129 million yuan in rewards to 17 cities during the first three quarters of 2015, statistics from the Shandong Bureau of Environmental Protection show.

Heze, in southwest Shandong, handed in 360,000 yuan in fines during the third quarter, becoming the only city thatwas fined for ecological damage over poor air quality in the first three quarters.

"Shandong's regulations for ecological compensation for air quality, which have been enforced for two years, are paying off," Li Guobin, deputy head of Hubei Bureau of Environmental Protection, was quoted as saying by Changjiang Times.

The average concentration of PM2.5 in Shandong was 67 micrograms per cubic meter during the first three quarters, a year-on-year decrease of 15.2 percent, PM10 was down 12.2 percent to 122 micrograms per cu m, while sulfur dioxide fell 23.2 percent to 43 micrograms per cu m and nitrogen dioxide was down 11.6 percent to 38 micrograms per cu m.

Hubei province brought in regulations for air quality at the end of 2015 that will reward cities 300,000 yuan for each microgram reduction per cubic meter.

The evaluation system in Hubei is based on PM2.5 and PM10.

The central government is also offering funds to help heavily polluted cities improve air quality.

From 2013 to 2015, the Ministry of Finance allocated 27.1 billion yuan in financial rewards to Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and the areas of Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta.
A high-profile tomb robbery case was closed at the end of last year, with 30 defendants given sentences ranging from three years to life imprisonment, a court in Liaoning province said on Monday.

The Chaoyang Intermediate People's Court announced the judgment on Thursday in which five defendants, including the ring leader surnamed Yao, were sentenced to life in prison for stealing cultural relics from the Hongshan cultural relic protection region.

The other 25 defendants received sentences ranging from three to 15 years in jail on the same charge, the judgment said.

Of the defendants, four were archaeologists.

A total of 280 stolen relics, including 29 classified as national level, have been recovered, the court said.

The case was said to be the largest example of cultural plunder since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The number of cultural relics and the number of people involved in the thefts both set records, according to the court.

The police in Chaoyang found several clues pointing to illegal excavation and set up a special investigative team.

In December 2014, 785 police officers who were sent to 10 cities in seven provinces, including Liaoning, Henan and Shaanxi, moved against 10 gangs suspected of robbing graves and detaining all the suspects who were later convicted.

In the Hongshan cultural relic protection region, located along the border of Lingyuan and Jianping counties, five key historical finds have been unearthed, including a large altar thought to be 5,500 years old. The region is home to a number of other cultural relics, according to the court.

The region, created in 1921, is a key national relics site and was a candidate for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage designation in 2013, the statement said.

Chen Zhijun, a criminal law professor at People's Public Security University of China, applauded the judgment, saying that such large-scale tomb robbery has been rare since the 1980s.

"There were a series of crackdowns, and relics theft was added to the Criminal Law. In the 1990s, a law was drafted to protect relics, which contributed a lot to reducing and fighting theft," Chen said.

Although the death penalty for the crime was revoked in 2012, "the fight and efforts to protect cultural relics was not weakened", he said.

Zhao Li, a criminal lawyer in Beijing, said the life imprisonment sentences given to five convicts in the case showed the seriousness of their behaviors. "After all, robbing a grave isn't like stealing other property," Zhao said, "because some relics cannot be repaired after they are damaged, and some are priceless."
Visits from the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong grew slightly over the New Year holiday, according to travel agencies.

Tuniu, one of the leading online outbound travel service providers, based in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, said on Sunday that Hong Kong ranked first among overseas tourist destinations, thanks to the efforts made by the region's tourism industry coupled with preferential prices for hotels and airlines.

Lvmama, another online travel service provider, based in Shanghai, saw the same trend. Data provided by Lvmama showed that the visits paid by mainland travelers to Hong Kong and Macao as a package jumped tenfold compared with the same period last year.

"More than 30 percent of mainland tourists chose to spend the New Year holiday overseas, especially neighboring regions and countries," said Wang Xiaosong, chief executive officer of Lvmama.

"The growth in trips to Hong Kong and Macao mainly came from the interest in Hong Kong Disneyland's 10-year anniversary. Fans of Disneyland, especially kids, flooded there during the holiday," Wang said.

For years, Hong Kong was the first choice for outbound mainland tourists. Now it is losing its luster for increasingly affluent and sophisticated mainland tourists to competitors such as South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Europe.

Xu Xiaolei, spokesman for China Youth Travel Service, said he saw a slight rebound over the Christmas holiday and expects another rise between 1 percent and 3 percent from the New Year to the Lunar New Year holidays.

However, Xu said, the overall situation remains at a standstill.

The next growth engine may come from individual visitors instead of tour groups, Xu said.

Joseph Tung Yiu-chung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council in Hong Kong, said he has heard that hotel occupancy did well during the New Year holiday, but he understood inbound tourist groups have continued to perform badly compared with individual travelers.

Yan Xin, publicity officer at Ctrip, a leading online travel service provider based in Shanghai, said Hong Kong is no longer on the top 10 list for outbound tour groups, but is still the favorite for individual visitors and shopping-driven travelers.

"Hong Kong tops the most favorite overseas shopping destinations," Yan said. "Paris and Seoul followed as the second and third favorite choices.

"Among travelers who plan their own trips, Hong Kong also ranked first. And this also put Hong Kong as the first choice for overseas hotels."
President Xi Jinping inspects the Guoyuan Port in Liangjiang New Area, Southwest China's Chongqing municipality on Jan 4, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

President Xi Jinping paid his first visit on Monday since taking office to Chongqing municipality, a city once clouded by the scandal of its high-profile former party chief, Bo Xilai.

The trip, on the first work day of the new year, highlights the importance of the municipality's impressive economic performance.

As the only municipality in the country's west, Chongqing made headlines over the past several years because of Bo, a former member of China's powerful Politburo, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power in 2013.

According to reports by the Xinhua News Agency, connectivity and cutting-edge technology were the focus of Xi's visit to the city, a starting point of the trans-Eurasia Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe international railway route.

When inspecting Guoyuan Port on Monday afternoon, Xi said "great" when told that countries along the rail route have all subscribed to the "one check for clearance approvals" .

The port is a comprehensive transport hub accommodating rail, highways and waterways, and is home to 16 ship berths that can handle vessels of 5,000 DWT (Dead Weight Tonnage).

"This is full of promise," Xi said when he saw various facilities at the port.

At the Chongqing BOE Optoelectronic Technology Co., Ltd, a branch of China's display manufacturing giant BOE, Xi examined the presentation of flexible screens and ultra high definition displays.

Xi said "top priority should be placed on innovation", an area where he expected to see major progress.

Chongqing has a population of around 30 million and its annual GDP in 2014 hit 1.42 trillion yuan ($217.8 billion).

The city's heavyweight industries such as vehicle manufacturing, electronics, information technology and equipment manufacturing have undergone rapid development since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

Chongqing's annual GDP in 2015 is estimated to record a year-on-year increase of 11 percent, Xinhua News Agency said.
BEIJING -- China has lodged a solemn representation to Myanmar after a Chinese person was injured by a landmine on the Chinese side of the border with Myanmar on Sunday, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.

"The incident is under investigation," spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing. "China is gravely concerned and has lodged a solemn representation to Myanmar."

Hua urged Myanmar to take effective measures to avoid such incidents and prevent the conflict in northern Myanmar from spilling over the border to affect Chinese human and property security.
Promotion poster of "A Dream Like a Dream". [File photo]

Renowned theater director Stan Lai has brought his play "A Dream Like a Dream" back to Beijing's Poly Theater. It is an eight-hour epic that literally places the audience in the heart of the drama.

Watching this eight-hour production is in itself something like a dream. The plotline tells several interwoven stories, beginning with a medical school graduate's first day at a hospital, during which four of her five patients die.

None of her medical knowledge can stop it until she turns to psychology for her fifth patient, played by TV heart-throb Hu Ge.

"Being on stage is quite different from being on TV. For me, it's a great learning experience. And the stories and the philosophy in the show are so profound that it will become an unforgettable experience for anyone who sees it," Hu said.

A landmark in Chinese-language theater, this work revolutionizes the audience's experience by placing them in the center of the action while scenes unfold all around them.

"It's a long show. Performing around the audience, I think, is a respect to their eight hours' concentration," Lai said.

After its stop in Beijing, "A Dream Like a Dream" will come to Shanghai in February.

Related:

A trio of titans
Poster of "Sherlock: The Abominable Bride". [Photo/Mtime]

The Christmas special, entitled "Sherlock: The Abominable Bride", was granted a Chinese release thanks to a series of cultural exchanges between China and Britain.

It's been reported that there is even an Easter Egg specially designed for Chinese viewers. However, according to audiences it's too subtle to get.

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Hobbit star Martin Freeman, the movie grossed $4.6 million dollars in its first day and had nearly 25 percent of the Chinese market share.

The Chinese release of the 115-minute show is the most complete version among global releases, with 25 minutes in bonus scenes.

Related:

Sherlock, Downton Abbey, Black Mirror become best sold UK TV series in China
The water town of Wuzhen will hold the first International Contemporary Art Exhibition from March 27. [Photo provided to China Daily]

As a well-known tourist site in East China's Zhejiang province, Wuzhen is often in the headlines - either for the World Internet Conference or for its theater festival.

But now, the water town is embracing contemporary art by holding its first International Contemporary Art Exhibition beginning March 27.

The exhibition will display works by 40 influential artists from 15 countries and regions, including famous names like "the grandmother of performance art" Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst, the father of the Rubber Duck Florentijn Hofman, Bill Viola and Araki Nobuyoshi.

The works on show cover installations, sculptures, videos, performance art, photos, paintings and sound art.

It will run through June 26.

"The event will be either a biennial or triennial one. It's the first time for a small town in China to hold such a large-scale exhibition with so many star artists from across the globe," says curator Feng Boyi.

Usually, biennial or triennial events are held in big cities in China like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. However, this event in the water town of Wuzhen can be seen as an attempt by a small town in China to attract art resources, says Feng.

Feng says that as many of the artists are creating works specially for this show they can make them blend with the ancient architecture of the water town.

For instance, visual artist Ann Hamilton will create an installation to be placed on a traditional grand stage that is hundreds of years old. Florentijn Hofman, whose Rubber Duck has toured the world, will also create a work for Wuzhen.

Among the 40 artists, half of them are Chinese including Xu Bing, Sui Jianguo, Ai Weiwei and Liu Jianhua.
'New normal' calls for govt action to tap into China's vast population for growth, experts say

Economists called it a "great signal", an "important change" and a "starting point of all innovations".

The Leading Group for Overall Reform, which was set up at the end of 2013 and is headed by President Xi Jinping, has been talking for the last couple of years about the economy's new normal, which many say means new and challenging realities.

Many changes, such as rising labor costs, a shrinking export market and a saturation in demand for many products, all seem to point to a sharp fall in growth, if not stagnation.

What should the government do? Should it dole out more financial stimulus for producing the same goods it has been producing for a decade? Or should it wait for demand to rebound?

Xi's solution for the new normal is known as supply-side reform.

For a layman, that may sound like just another opaque economic term. For some foreigners, it may ring a bell from the policies pursued by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. But for Chinese economists and corporate leaders it carries major significance as part of a distinctively Chinese strategy.

It bids farewell to the Keynesian strategy, namely to overcome a recession through financial stimulus and government spending. "Keynesianism is only useful for dealing with short-term problems", senior economist Wu Jinglian says.

Li Zuojun, a researcher with the State Council Development Research Center, tells Xinhua News Agency that demand-side support policies "can no longer cure the economy's disease".

In practice, it means abandoning the tangled small debates - whether to stimulate or not to stimulate, whether or not to bail out failing companies, whether or not to incur new government debt, whether to rely on old industries or bet on new industries and services.

Supply-side reform represents a much clearer line of thinking to lead the economy forward, many experts say. Its focus is to tap Chinese society's potential and release its creativity more than ever before by phasing out discriminatory policies, such as the rigid urban household registration system, and enacting accommodative laws.

Xi elaborated supply-side reform in a recent speech at the Central Economic Work Conference, an annual high-level economic strategy-making meeting, after he first raised the idea in mid-November.

Wang Xiaoguang of the China Academy of Governance says supply-side reform will be of central importance throughout the country's 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20).

China's near-term tasks in supply-side reform include cutting housing inventories and business costs, reducing government debt, eliminating superfluous industrial capacity, and streamlining administrative procedures, according to a statement produced at the work conference.

In forging ahead with reforms, China will try to keep a balance with the demand side, says Wang Jun, a researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a high-level think tank.

Other than the supply-side reforms, Chinese leaders have also proposed several other key notions:

A sense of gain. The best way to test if a reform is successful or not is to check the people's feelings about its result, Xi told the Leading Group in February, pledging that China will bring to its citizens a greater "sense of gain".

Four no changes. This means there will be no change in the Chinese economy's fundamentals; no change in resilience and room for maneuver; no change in its positive side; no change in progressive momentum.

Beautiful China. Other than economic goals, the 13th Five-Year Plan will bring marked improvement in China's environmental and ecological conditions.

zhaohuanxin@chinadaily.com.cn
New law poised to prohibit surrogacy Source: China Daily USA Wang Xiaodong Updated: 2015-12-22

The top legislature is considering banning surrogacy, as well as the buying and selling of sperm, eggs, fertilized eggs and embryos in China, as it reviews a draft amendment to a family planning law.

Violators will face fines of at least 10,000 yuan ($1,540), or even criminal charges, according to the draft.

The amendment, proposed on Monday by the State Council, China's Cabinet, to the National People's Congress for review, would allow only authorized medical institutions to conduct assisted reproductive technologies after approval from provincial-level health authorities.

The draft, which is likely to be passed when the legislature closes its bimonthly session on Sunday, would take effect on Jan 1.

Wang Aiming, a professor of assisted reproductive medicine at Navy General Hospital in Beijing, said the practices involved have already been banned under some regulations and are waiting to be included in a law, which would have greater enforcement power.

Trading of eggs, sperm and surrogacy for profit would raise a series of ethical problems, she said.

"There have been many problematic cases caused by surrogacy, such as the death of the surrogate mother during pregnancy. Disputes may also arise when a surrogate mother and the biological mother fight for the rights to the baby."

Some unlicensed clinics have been conducting surrogacy operations secretly for profit.

"Some surrogate mothers are college students. Some also sell their eggs for money. But clients pay much more to agents of such clinics to get the service," Wang said.

According to current rules, men and women who are infertile are already able to have children through assisted reproductive technology at authorized medical institutes or sperm banks, she said.

In April, the government launched a campaign to crack down on medical organizations and personnel providing illegal surrogacy services.

However, little progress has been made due to a lack of legislation and law enforcement at grassroots level, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

It is also difficult to collect evidence on surrogacy cases and punish those held accountable without having a law, the commission said earlier this month.

wangxiaodong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 12/23/2015 page4)
File photo taken on July 2013 shows students, some with their parents, wait to enroll for the new semester at Tsinghua University.[Photo/China Daily]

Beijing-based Tsinghua University received more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) by the end of 2015 from donors both at home and abroad. This was the highest amount among all Chinese universities, according to cuaa.net, a website that focuses on alumni affairs. Such donations must be put under public supervision, says Scol.com.cn:

True, private donations from alumni or other third parties are often considered an important measure of a university's quality and reputation. But in Tsinghua's case, it is also necessary to make sure that every penny of the more than 10 billion yuan is put to good use.

That being said, it is more than necessary to question why some business people are willing to donate and whether any money-for-power exchanges are involved.

On the one hand, what the universities do in return for these donations should be closely watched, especially the public universities that are basically funded by governments at all levels.

Unlike local governmental departments, colleges always seem to have good reasons to open their doors to the public donations, such as "for further educational development", without being accused of taking bribes.

On the other hand, it is the less-renowned colleges that receive the least donations and are most in need of the money. The more financial resources the leading universities manage to acquire, the less goes to them.

Of course, for all universities alike, how the private funds go to their accounts must be made perfectly clear and placed under public scrutiny, in a bid to prevent the educational resources from being abused as a return of favor.
A screen capture of Feng Xiaogang in Mr. Six. [Photo/Mtime]

Beijing's tobacco control association recently published an open letter criticizing the movie Mr Six, which stars well-known director Feng Xiaogang, for glamorizing smoking. It asked the producer to apologize and to add a warning at the beginning of the film about the risks of smoking. The producer said the film, instead of encouraging smoking, just reflected the lives of ordinary people. The Beijing News says:

The movie lasts two hours and has 102 smoking scenes. Given the story and characters that number may not seem excessive. Besides, it was approved by the authorities for release.

However, do such films need so many shots of the characters smoking to reveal their personalities?

To limit the number of smoking scenes in a movie that may potentially lure young viewers to start smoking, a draft regulation suggests levying a charge for 30,000 yuan ($4,500) for each smoking scene in a film. In the case of Mr Six, it is better to make it more serious, if they really want to tackle the issue.
A shop assistant arranges chocolate products in a supermarket in Nanchang, Jiangxi province.[Photo provided to China Daily]

A 12-year-old girl, who was detained by a convenience store's managers in Yongchang county of Northwest China's Gansu province for allegedly stealing some chocolate bars, committed suicide by jumping from a high-rise building. While stealing is an offense, the tragedy that led to mass protests in Yongchang last week should prompt a rethink on the practice of shop-owners detaining alleged thieves and demanding high fines.

Although media reports give different details of the Yongchang incident, they all say the girl was detained by the store managers for some time. We do not know whether she was subjected to other forms of humiliation as well.

Over the years, many media reports have described how store and supermarket managers demand fines of up to ten times the value of the stolen goods  a standard that all supermarket and store managers across the country seem to follow. If the "thieves" cannot pay the amount, they are generally detained by the stores' security guards. But in most cases, the alleged thieves pay some money  often not as high as ten times the value of the stolen goods  to settle the dispute without the involvement of police.

For many people, theft is a morally unacceptable act and, therefore, they do not think there is anything wrong with such detentions. But from a legal point of view, no store has the authority to detain alleged thieves.

According to China's laws, only police can impose fines on or detain people for theft, irrespective of whether the case is minor or major. In other words, only police are empowered to detain or impose fines on wrongdoers.

In reality, however, since the alleged thieves are often less privileged members of society, they are unaware of their legal rights. As a result, they often succumb to the intimidation by the stores' security guards and pay the demanded money.

Moreover, since stealing is considered a shameful act, wrongdoers are afraid of police intervention, because the news could then spread to their relatives and employers and they might end up being labeled a thief by neighbors and/or colleagues. And some shops have taken advantage of these possibilities to squeeze money out of alleged thieves.
An undated file photo shows China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning. [Photo for chinadaily.com.cn]

The Ministry of Defense has confirmed that China is building a second aircraft carrier. Zhang Junshe, a researcher at the PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute, shares his views on the development with China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang:

Q: What are the major differences between China's second aircraft carrier and the first?

A: The hull of China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning was purchased from Ukraine, although its engine, power distribution system and weapons are all China-made.

The second one will be fully designed and made in China and set a milestone in Chinese navy history. The trial and operation of Liaoning have provided precious experiences, which help the designers and engineers to avoid some common problems in the building of an aircraft carrier.

Q: How big will the new aircraft carrier be? And why will it use conventional instead of nuclear power?

A: Middle sized. Aircraft carriers can be divided into four categories according to their tonnage. China's new aircraft carrier will displace about 50,000 tons of water without loading and possibly 60,000 tons when fully loaded, which makes it a mid-sized aircraft carrier.

Building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier involves many concerns: security, preventing nuclear leaks and the replacement of the nuclear reactor after it expires in 15 years. China has technologies to use nuclear power in submarines, but it needs more research to do so in an aircraft carrier.

Q: Is a second aircraft carrier necessary for China? How many does China need?

A: Yes, because one aircraft carrier is not enough to meet the defense needs of a large country like China. Aircraft carriers have to undergo regular checks and trials, and some times even repairs. Therefore, a country like China theoretically needs at least three aircraft carriers to ensure one is always in operation. For example, neighboring India has three aircraft carriers.

As a country with 1.3 billion people, more than 18,000 kilometers of coastlines, about 3 million square km of maritime territory and increasing overseas interests, China certainly needs three aircraft carriers. Those hyping up the China threat theory need to look at China's reality.
Flames and smoke rise from Saudi Arabia's embassy during a demonstration in Tehran January 2, 2016. Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran early on Sunday morning as Shi'ite Muslim Iran reacted with fury to Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric. [Photo/Agencies]

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran on Monday and asked all Iranian diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours after angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Teheran in protest against the execution of 47 people, including prominent Shi'ite imam Nimr al-Nimr, on terrorism charges by Riyadh. Following Saudi Arabia's move, Sudan, Bahrain also said they would sever ties with Iran as United Arab Emirates said it would downgrade ties with Teheran.

The United Nations, the United States and the European Union all condemned the latest executions carried out by Saudi Arabia, and urged countries in the Middle East to not escalate religious tensions further. On the other hand, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saudi Arabia would face "divine revenge" for "unjustly spilling the blood" of Nimr and urged the Islamic world to strongly protest his death.

This is not the first confrontation between Riyadh and Teheran, which for decades have been fighting for the religious leadership in the Middle East. Portraying itself as the de facto leader of the Islamic world, the Sunni Saudi Arabia has prided its guardianship of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, on which millions of Muslims converge to perform hajj every year. And Iran, as the largest Shi'ite Muslim country, has become a major security concern for many Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, for not only following a different strand of Islam but also its growing military might.

Having survived the Western economic sanctions over the past decade, Iran has also managed to make notable progress in ballistic missile and submarine research. Besides, The new Shi'ite-majority government in Iraq has fundamentally reshaped Baghdad-Teheran ties, to the benefit of the latter. And even the regional political upheaval, or the so-called Arab Spring, failed to create unrest in Iran.

As such, the latest confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia has a lot to do with the latter attempting to contain the former's rise. Also, the confrontation has highlighted the fact that Islam as a religion stands divided, not least because of non-religious factors.
Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir attends an interview with Reuters, in Riyadh January 4, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

Saudi Arabia has severed diplomatic ties with regional rival Iran, following attacks on the kingdom's embassy and consulate in Iran over the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Riyadh announced on Sunday that it was cutting ties with Teheran, and it asked all Saudi diplomats to leave within 48 hours, local media reported.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said he had informed the UN Security Council of the attack on the Saudi diplomatic mission in Iran late on Saturday, adding that the Saudi diplomats had safely reached Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

He accused the Iranian authorities of not taking any measures to prevent the attacks against the embassy in Teheran and the consulate in Mashhad, Iran. He also said the attack violated international agreements.

Late on Saturday, angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi diplomatic mission to protest the Saudi execution of 47 individuals on terrorism charges, including a Saudi Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Monday Saudi Arabia used the embassy attack as a pretext to fuel tensions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described the execution of al-Nimr as "inhuman" and urged his government to prosecute those who attacked the embassy.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's top leader, predicted "divine vengeance" for al-Nimr's execution.

China voiced concern on Monday over the row between Iran and Saudi Arabia, calling on the two countries to keep calm and show restraint.

"China is paying close attention to the development of the situation and worries about the escalation of the regional conflict caused by their row," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a regular news conference.

XINHUA/AP/REUTERS
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch (L) looks toward US President Barack Obama during a meeting with other top law enforcement officials to discuss what executive actions he can take to curb gun violence, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington January 4, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - The White House unveiled gun control measures on Monday that require more gun sellers to get licenses and more gun buyers to undergo background checks, moves President Barack Obama said were well within his authority to implement without congressional approval.

The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives now will require that people who sell guns at stores, at gun shows or over the Internet be licensed and conduct checks, officials said. The ATF was finalizing a rule requiring background checks for buyers of dangerous weapons from a trust, corporation or other legal entity as well.

Obama, speaking to reporters before the measures were made public, said they were consistent with the US Constitution's Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

"These are not only recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch, but they're also ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support," Obama said during a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other advisers.

Obama is igniting a political firestorm by bypassing Congress with the measures, which could spark legal challenges. Republicans say Obama is misusing his powers.

Shares in gun makers Smith & Wesson Holding Corp and Sturm Ruger & Co Inc rose against a falling stock market on Monday in anticipation of increased gun sales, as has happened before when the White House mulled weapon sales reform.

Stymied by Congress' inaction on gun control, the president asked his advisers in recent months to examine new ways he could use his executive authority to tighten gun rules unilaterally after multiple mass shootings generated outrage nationwide.

The White House had drafted a proposal on licenses previously but was concerned it could be challenged in court and hard to enforce.

Guns are a potent issue in US politics.

The National Rifle Association, the top US gun rights group, is feared and respected in Washington for its ability to mobilize gun owners. Congress has not approved major gun-control legislation since the 1990s.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the administration did not have an estimate of the number of people who would be affected by the changes.

She did not set out a numerical threshold for dealers, telling reporters on a conference call that people selling one or two guns at a flea market could considered be dealers. But she said hobbyists and collectors would still be exempt from registration requirements.

Obama said the measures would not prevent every mass shooting or violent crime, but they did have the potential to save lives. The president is scheduled to give remarks about gun control at 11:40 am EST (1640 GMT) on Tuesday.
Flames and smoke rise from Saudi Arabia's embassy during a demonstration in Tehran January 2, 2016. Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran early on Sunday morning as Shi'ite Muslim Iran reacted with fury to Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric. [Photo/Agencies]

TEHRAN - Many countries including world powers on Monday expressed concern over rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as unrest in the Middle East.

Controversy in the wake of the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric by Saudi Arabia was followed by attacks against Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, leading the Kingdom and some of its regional allies to sever ties with Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others over terrorism charges Saturday, sparking protests in Shiite-dominated Iran during which angry mobs stormed and set fire to Saudi Arabia's Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate in the city of Mashhad.

Saudi Arabia announced its dissolution of diplomatic ties with Iran Sunday, requesting all Iranian diplomats depart the country within 48 hours.

Following Saudi's announcement, three Sunni Muslim countries joined the Arab kingdom Monday in severing or downgrading their diplomatic ties with Iran.

Bahrain and Sudan announced they will cut diplomatic relations with Iran Monday, declaring that Tehran interferes in the Arab states' affairs.

In addition, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Iran Monday and reduce the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during a news conference at the Government Office in Hanoi in this July 29, 2015 file photo.[Photo/Agencies]

LONDON - British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday condemned a new execution video by Islamic State (IS) as "desperate stuff" from an organization that is "losing anybody's sympathy."

In the video released on Sunday, a masked IS executioner with British accent threatened to invade the UK and called British Prime Minister David Cameron an "imbecile," before executing five men who appeared shackled and dressed in orange boiler suits. They were accused of spying against the IS for the UK.

"It's desperate stuff from an organization that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts and people can see that again today," Cameron said during a visit to east London on Monday.

"But this is an organization that's losing territory, it's losing ground, it's, I think, increasingly losing anybody's sympathy, and this again shows what an appalling organization we're up against," he added.

"They hate us not for what we do but for what we are - the fact that we are a successful, tolerant, democratic, multi-faith, multi-ethnic nation," the prime minister continued.

Cameron went on saying that "Britain will never be cowed by this sort of terrorism."

"Our values are so much stronger than theirs. It may take a very long time but they will be defeated," said Cameron.

The video was allegedly filmed in Raqqa, the de facto "capital" of the terrorist group in northern Syria.

"One would have thought you would have learnt the lessons from your pathetic master in Washington and his failed campaign against Islamic State," the man said in the video.

"But it seems that you, like your predecessors Blair and Brown, are just as arrogant and foolish," he said, adding: "In fact, David you are more of an imbecile."

"You will lose this war as you lost in Iraq and Afghanistan," he continued.

A boy aged about five or six, who also spoke with British accent, is also pictured in the video wearing military-style outfit.

British security and intelligence authorities have been examining the video and are working to identify the masked man, who also described the British prime minister as a "slave of the White House".

In a statement, the British Foreign Office said: "We are aware of the video and are examining its content."

In November last year, the US military launched a drone strike targeting Mohammed Emwazi, aka "Jihadi John," reportedly killing the infamous black-clad Kuwaiti-born Briton from west London. Emwazi had been pictured as a callous executioner in several beheading videos released by IS.

British warplanes have been bombing IS targets in Iraq since September 2014. British military extended its airstrikes against the group from Iraq to Syria last month.


A worker sets up a display on Sunday in the TCL booth in preparation for the 2016 International CES trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week. [Photo/Agencies]

More than 1,100 Chinese companies making up more than a quarter of the 3,600 exhibitors will represent at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week.

Chinese companies have taken out sprawling booths on the show floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Major TV makers Hisense Co Ltd and Sichuan Changhong Electric Co Ltd will set up next to Intel Corp, the US semiconductor giant, occupying prime locations in the main hall at the convention center.

The growing presence of Chinese companies is palpable.

The Chinese lineup includes makers of home appliances, computers and smartphones, such as Lenovo Group Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, ZTE Corp, Haier Group, TCL Corp, Skyworth Digital Holdings Co Ltd and Konka Group Co Ltd.

Starting Wednesday, some exhibitors will unveil new products while others hope to use the extravaganza as a springboard to capture bigger slices of their markets.

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Chinese website Baidu Inc and LeTV, the "Netflix of China", also will attend the show.

Beyond the traditional markets, Chinese companies also will have a presence in the emerging categories of drones and autonomous cars.

Shenzhen-based DJI is the world's largest maker of consumer drones and is again expected to dominate the unmanned-systems marketplace this year.

Faraday Future Inc, a California-based electric-car company funded by LeTV Chairman Jia Yueting, has received a lot of attention due to some leaked photos of its much anticipated concept car.

The details state that it has more than 1,000 horsepower and can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than three seconds. The car will be unveiled at the show.

China-based automaker BAIC BJEV announced it will present a new intelligent network system at CES.

Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc, said the increased presence of Chinese companies resembles how Japanese players embraced CES in the early 1990s.

"Make no mistake, the Chinese have arrived," Bajarin wrote on Time.com. "They plan to disrupt the traditional CE players as much as possible."

The world's largest electronics show takes place every January in Las Vegas. Last year, more than 170,000 attendees from over 150 countries gathered across 2.2 million square feet of exhibit space. The event will expand again this year, to 2.4 million square feet.

According to various news outlets, people are expecting to see more 4K TVs, virtual reality headsets, robots and drones, smarter homes, fashionable wearables, connected cars and plenty of quirky stuff such as robotic bartenders, connected toothbrushes and smart bras.

hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
Foreign Minister Wang Yi, right, meets with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Beijing on Tuesday. FENG YONGBIN/CHINA DAILY

China and Britain have agreed on a joint statement addressing the situation in Syria, the two countries' senior foreign affairs officials said on Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the two nations have decided to issue the statement to support a political solution to the Syrian issue and "support Syrian people to decide on their own future".

He made the comments at a joint news conference held with visiting British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

Hammond said the statement shows the commitment of the two countriesboth members of the International Syria Support Groupto "end the bloody civil war in Syria and to allow a better future for people in Syria".

A delegation from the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is visiting China. During the visit, China will encourage the delegates to form a negotiation delegation "accepted by all parties" to hold talks with the Syrian government, Wang said.

The visit follows an announcement by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem in Beijing on Dec 24 that the Syrian government will hold talks with the opposition parties in Syria as soon as the latter come up with a list for a negotiation delegation.

Wang reiterated on Tuesday that peace talks and political solutions are the only correct ways to address the Syrian issue. China's efforts to promote talks and political solutions "are totally in line with the Syrian people's fundamental and long-term interests", he said.

Hammond said he hopes the two countries make further progress in bilateral issues and in their work together on multilateral concerns, "particularly around the global security agenda, where we have shared interests in the global battle against Daesh (Islamic State) and more broadly against terrorism".

He emphasized that the United Kingdom hopes that progress can be made in implementing a series of agreements achieved during President Xi Jinping's visit to Britain in October.

Li Guofu, a researcher of the Middle East at the China Institute of International Studies, said the joint statement shows that international society has reached an agreement on addressing the Syrian issue through political solutions.

"It's not only China's stance, but China has also gained support from an important European country. This shows that China and Europe have a lot of consensus on this issue," he said.
(Photo : Credit: Oxford Journals/ Louis D. Saravolatz,) The gene, called MCR-1, makes bacteria resistant to a member of the class of antibiotics known as polymyxins. Sections of a Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain showing the alterations in the cell following the administration of polymyxin.

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A new gene, highly resistant to a last-resort class of antibiotics, has been identified in China. Doctors warn of the global implications the gene brings.



Dr. Ritu Banerjee, a Mayo Clinic paediatric infectious diseases expert said, "These genes could result in infections that are very difficult to treat in humans."



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The gene, called MCR-1, makes bacteria resistant to a member of the class of antibiotics known as polymyxins, which also gives the bugs the capacity to resist the drug colistin. It is an old drug that was rarely used for decades because of other antibiotic options that have fewer side effects.



MCR-1 can move among E.coli bacteria, but it can also go into other bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It was scientists from the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, the China Agricultural University in Beijing, and other institutions that called the resistance gene MCR-1.



They described the emergence of MCR-1 as "the breach of the last group of antibiotics" by plasmid-mediated resistance, in ther report, which has been published in the journal Lancet Infectious Disease.



In a Reuters article, the discovery is described as "alarming" by the scientists.



The researcher's findings emphasize the urgent need for coordinated global action. They are calling for urgent restrictions on the use of polymyxins, which are widely used in livestock farming.



"The fact that it has just been found in China it doesn't mean that we are safe from that here. International travel and global food supply networks mean that resistant bacteria anywhere in the world can be spread to the United States and to the world," said Dr. Banerjee.



According to the Tribune News Service, an expert at the US Centers for Disease Control said that if the resistance spreads, it will seriously limit the treatment options available to doctors facing antibiotic-resistant infections.



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(Photo : Credit: GREG BAKER / Getty Images) Couples in China can now have two children.

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The first day of the year 2016 marked the end of China's controversial one-child policy after 40 years. The change is expected to catalyze the fertility rate, with two million couples projected to apply for a second pregnancy in 2014.



However, families will still require government-issued birth permits, or face the sanction of a forced abortion. Couples, who are caught breaking the law, will be penalized by losing state benefits, paying fines or even getting sterilized.



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Critics say the working single child, with two retired parents and four elderly grandparents to care for, can hardly provide for two children.



Xinhua, the official news agency in China, stated that China's full implementation of the policy of allowing each couple to have two children is an active response to the country's ageing population. This change of policy is aimed at balancing population development and addressing the effects of China's ageing population.



The reason for ending the policy for all Chinese citizens is purely demographical. Many Chinese are heading into retirement and the nation's population has too few young people entering the labor force to provide for their retirement, healthcare and continued economic growth.



According to Keiichiro Oizumi, Senior Economist at the Japan Research Institute, China's demographic dividend is just about spent. In 2011, Oizumi predicted that China's productive age population (15-64 years old) would begin to decline as a proportion of the whole in 2015. This assumes a constant birth rate in China's population that would begin to decline by 2030.



Now, according to statics, about 30 percent of China's population is over the age of 50 and the number of workers entering China's overall labor force in the last three years has been declining, a trend that is expected to accelerate.



While some have questioned the effectiveness of the reversal of the one-child policy in solving the country's population problem quickly, many Chinese citizens have celebrated the move as a positive step towards greater personal freedom.



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TagsChina One Child Policy, 40 years, two children, New Policies, family planning
(Photo : REUTERS/Stringer) Firefighters put out a bus fire in China.

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Fourteen people have been killed and more than 30 others sustained injuries after a bus caught fire in northern China on Tuesday. Police officers in Xiamen have already launched a manhaunt for the arsonist responsible for the bus fire.



According to a spokesperson for the local fire department, the incident happened in Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia region, at around 7 a.m. Authorities are still investigating what caused the fire, a spokesperson for the Ningxia Fire Department, who was only identified by her surname Wang, said.



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Firefighters succeeded in halting the fire about 10 minutes after it went alaze, but there were already 14 people dead and 32 injured.



This is not the first time that a bus has caught fire in the country. In recent years, China has seen a number of brutal bus fires caused by mentally deranged individuals or those seeking revenge.



On June 7, 2013, a mass murder-suicide attack happened on a bus in Xiamen, Fujian province, after an individual set the bus on fire, killing 47 people and injuring 34.



On July 22, 2011, a bus was set on fire in Xinyang, Henan, leaving 41 people dead. The bus' capacity was only 35, but it carried 47 people. Initial reports pointed out that hazardous goods were being illegally transported in the bus.



On June 5, 2009, a mass murder-suicide happened on a bus in Chengdu in Sichuan, killing 27 people and injuring 76 others. A series of bus fires followed days later: in Shenzhen on June 13, in Wuhai, Inner Mongolia on June 15, and in Zhoushan, Zhejiang on June 16. However, there is no that the bus fires were caused by terrorist attacks and no death was reported from the three other bus fires.



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Jordanian King Abdullah II gestures as he speaks during a dialogue session with students at the Peking University on October 30, 2007 in Beijing China. (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

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Pan Weifang, the Chinese ambassador to Slovakia from 2013 to 2015 has been named as new ambassador to Jordan, replacing Gao Yusheng, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.



Chinese President Xi Jinping signed Pan's appointment as new ambassador to Jordan following the approval by China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.



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In a statement on 04 December, the national legislature said Pan, who was also ambassador to Oman from 2006 to 2010, will replace Gao effective immediately.



The statement, however, did not mention what will happen to Gao.



According to the Xinhua report, Pan is a veteran diplomat in West Asian and North African affairs.



Last September, President Xi and Jordanian King Abdullah Il Bin Al-Hussein have agreed to establish a strategic partnership between the two countries.



Based on the joint statement, China and Jordan will hold regular consultations on international and regional affairs of concern to both to reach greater understanding and enhance mutual trust.



"The decision to set up the strategic partnership is an important milestone for our relationship," President Xi ahead of the signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.



Among the issues discussed during the meeting was the boosting of cooperation in trade, investment, industrial capacity, infrastructure, energy, finance and law enforcement among other sectors.



The two countries also pledged to support each other on issues involving their core interests.



President Xi also assured the Jordanian leader that he will encourage Chinese companies to invest in and increase imports to Jordan.



King Abdullah welcomes the statement of President Xi and vowed to boost cooperation with China.



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(Photo : SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images) Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong's chief executive, speaks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Manila, the Philippines, on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015.

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The Hong Kong publisher who reportedly went missing sent a letter saying he is currently in China and is assisting the authorities in an investigation.



When Lee Bo mysteriously vanished on Wednesday, an issue arose between Hong Kong and China over speculations that the publisher was illegally abducted by Beijing authorities. However, Lee recently told a colleague in a letter that he is in China and is "cooperating with the authorities" in an ongoing probe, according to The Washington Post.



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Lee is one of the five members of the Mighty Current publishing firm who had vanished suddenly as the company was reportedly planning to publish a book about Chinese President Xi Jinping's romantic life. There are some lawmakers and experts who think Beijing police illegally detained the Hong Kong-based book seller, the report details.



The Hong Kong publisher reportedly sent a handwritten fax to one of his colleagues at Mighty Current subsidiary Causeway Bay Books to say that he voluntarily travelled to China to assist in the investigation and that he is in a good situation. The fax was published by Taiwan's Central News Agency, the report relays.



However, the letter itself also became the subject of suspicion because Hong Kong police said Lee did not leave any immigration trail. In addition, his wife Sophie Choi said he did not have travel papers with him at the time of his disappearance. On Monday, the wife withdrew the complaint she filed with Hong Kong police, the report adds.



"I think it's a charade performed under duress," the Post quotes democratic Civic Party's lawmaker Claudia Mo. "He has obviously been smuggled out, but his wife has got the message that keeping a low profile would help his release, because the Chinese would save face."



Pro-democracy lawmakers say the alleged abduction of Lee goes against the "one country, two systems" principle that has delineated Beijing's ties with Hong Kong since 1997, a Reuters report published on CNBC says.



On Monday, Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying said there was no sign that Chinese police abducted Lee. On the other hand, the pro-Beijing leader also called Chinese authorities' independent operation in Hong Kong as an unacceptable move.



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The Islamic State claimed responsibility for bombings at three restaurants in northeastern Syria, which killed 18 people and injured about 45.

The attacks happened in a Christian neighbourhood of Qamishli, in the province of Hasakah, when the locals were preparing celebrations for the New Year.

At least two of the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, according to the Kurdish YPG militia. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the bombs detonated near a security checkpoint. The bombings severely damaged the scene of the blasts.

"Three explosions, [at least] one by a suicide bomber inside a restaurant, hit... Qamishli city in Hasakeh province," the Rami Abdel Rahman of the Observatory told AFP.

The New Year celebrations were cancelled after the bombings, and the Assyrian-Syriac Churches released a statement saying, "We dedicate this evening to prayers for the victims of those attacks. We pray for our region and country amid the bloody war that claims lives of civilians every day."

"Dozens of dead and wounded in the bombings by the fighters of the Islamic State in different parts of Qamishli city," Amaq reported.

In the past, the IS militants tried to capture the Hasakeh province where the city of Qamishli is located, but were pushed back by Syrian and Kurdish forces.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi condemned the attacks on the restaurants owned by Christians.

"These terrorist explosions will make us more determined and firm for confrontation to liberate every part of Syrian land," he said on Syria's state news agency SANA.

In other parts of Syria, air strikes lasting two days on IS-dominated areas killed 15 people. About 55,219 people were killed in the civil war in the year 2015 alone, among whom some 20,000 were civilians, including 2,574 children, according to statistics released by the Syrian Observatory.

US-based Assyrian Universal Alliance released a statement calling for the attacks against Christians in Syria and Iraq be termed as genocide.

"These cowardly attacks are directed at uprooting Assyrians from their ancestral lands. The utter failure of the non-Christian forces in control of the area to avert such inhumane attacks on innocent people is not only unacceptable but unpardonable," said Yonathan BetKolia of AUA.

In a separate statement on a local news channel, Father Touni Hannah, condemned the attacks that cause loss of lives.

"People were making their preparations to celebrate this Eve, but they were shocked with the brutal attacks that killed and wounded dozens of civilians," Hannah said.

"We hope the year 2016 would bring peace to Syria and the region after years of bloodshed."

    press@cdaily.co.kr



- Copyright ,    

#Bombings
More than 40,000 college students and young adults welcomed the new year by flooding the Philips Arena in Atlanta, where this year's Passion Conference was held. The conference, for the first time in its history, is also being livestreamed at two other locations: the Infinite Energy Arena in Atlanta, and the Toyota Center in Houston.

Passion, an annual conference which began in 1995, has focused on "igniting a passion" in college students and young professionals between the ages of 18 to 25. This year, the conference is centered on the theme, "The Jesus Generation United for His Fame," and concludes on Monday.

Louie Giglio, the founder and leader of the Passion movement, kicked off the first night on Saturday with a sermon that focused on the resurrection of Jesus. Giglio focused on the meaning of Jesus' death in Passion 2015.

"Last year at Passion 2015, we began and ended with three words: 'It is finished.' And tonight, we start with three words: 'He is risen,'" said Giglio, and emphasized the fact that Jesus' resurrection is a reality.

"The enemy wants to relegate this reality to one holiday a year -- Easter. But this needs to be celebrated every day," Giglio said. "He is risen on this day. All the realities of Jesus being alive are true, and He is living in my life right now."

"The deck may have been stacked against you, but the stone has been rolled away for you. The message at Passion is Jesus has risen. The Son of God is alive. It is a reality, it is a fact. We all celebrate what God has done."

Other renowned speakers, including John Piper and Ravi Zacharias, also spoke throughout the conference, and artists such as Chris Tomlin and Hillsong led the congregation into worship.

Passion has also been known for its philanthropic efforts, such as by collecting donations from conference attendees to help combat human trafficking through the "The End It" Movement over the past several years, which added up to some $8 million in donations. This year, the conference organizers are also encouraging attendees to donate socks and towels to give to homeless shelters, and to donate funds to build a hospital in northwest Syria for displaced women and children.

    press@cdaily.co.kr



- Copyright ,    

#Passion2016Conference
The unknown can be frightening for anyone, no matter the stage or season. Anytime we step outside our comfort zone and try something new, we may hear that little voice of doubt inside that says, "Can I really do this?" How loud and clear that voice is depends on one's mindset.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for bombings at three restaurants in northeastern Syria, which killed 18 people and injured about 45.

The attacks happened in a Christian neighbourhood of Qamishli, in the province of Hasakah, when the locals were preparing celebrations for the New Year.

At least two of the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, according to the Kurdish YPG militia. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the bombs detonated near a security checkpoint. The bombings severely damaged the scene of the blasts.

"Three explosions, [at least] one by a suicide bomber inside a restaurant, hit... Qamishli city in Hasakeh province," the Rami Abdel Rahman of the Observatory told AFP.

The New Year celebrations were cancelled after the bombings, and the Assyrian-Syriac Churches released a statement saying, "We dedicate this evening to prayers for the victims of those attacks. We pray for our region and country amid the bloody war that claims lives of civilians every day."

"Dozens of dead and wounded in the bombings by the fighters of the Islamic State in different parts of Qamishli city," Amaq reported.

In the past, the IS militants tried to capture the Hasakeh province where the city of Qamishli is located, but were pushed back by Syrian and Kurdish forces.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi condemned the attacks on the restaurants owned by Christians.

"These terrorist explosions will make us more determined and firm for confrontation to liberate every part of Syrian land," he said on Syria's state news agency SANA.

In other parts of Syria, air strikes lasting two days on IS-dominated areas killed 15 people. About 55,219 people were killed in the civil war in the year 2015 alone, among whom some 20,000 were civilians, including 2,574 children, according to statistics released by the Syrian Observatory.

US-based Assyrian Universal Alliance released a statement calling for the attacks against Christians in Syria and Iraq be termed as genocide.

"These cowardly attacks are directed at uprooting Assyrians from their ancestral lands. The utter failure of the non-Christian forces in control of the area to avert such inhumane attacks on innocent people is not only unacceptable but unpardonable," said Yonathan BetKolia of AUA.

In a separate statement on a local news channel, Father Touni Hannah, condemned the attacks that cause loss of lives.

"People were making their preparations to celebrate this Eve, but they were shocked with the brutal attacks that killed and wounded dozens of civilians," Hannah said.

"We hope the year 2016 would bring peace to Syria and the region after years of bloodshed."
Pastor Larry Wright of a Fayetteville church in North Carolina was giving a sermon on senseless deaths in the region, 20 minutes before the New Year, when an armed man walked in with a rifle and bullet clips.

Wright, 57-year-old pastor at Heal the Land Outreach Ministries, is also a City Councilman.

A congregant Allison Woods narrated her New Year's Eve experience to CNN: "It didn't seem real because it was like the scripture that our pastor was reading, it was like it came off the page. It's the next day, when you think of all that could have happened, what could have gone wrong, it sinks in how terrible it could have gone wrong."

That evening the church members had been discussing violence in churches in different parts of the country, and to their surprise they encountered a man carrying weapons in the middle of the service.

"I think that night the spirit of God was definitely in the place," Sylvester Loving, 67-year-old deacon at the church told The Fayetteville Observer.

The identity of the man, presumed to be in his 20s by the onlookers, has not yet been disclosed by the police.



When the pastor saw him approaching to the front of the church, with his rifle pointing into the air, he stepped down from the pulpit to meet him, near the front of the sanctuary.

"Can I help you?'' the pastor asked the man.

Wright said that he decided his next move would depend on the man's response.

"If he was belligerent, I was going to tackle him," said Wright, a retired veteran, who stands 6-foot-2 and weighs 230 pounds.

After the stranger appeared to be calm, Wright took the weapon from him, patted him, and called four bulky deacons to hug the man to make him feel welcomed and loved.

The pastor then prayed for the man, who fell on his knees and started crying.

"When I told the congregation, it's OK, he wants prayer and I began to pray for him, and the power of God hit and he fell to his knees and began to cry and weep and he had his face on the ground," Pastor Wright was quoted as saying by WNCN.

He was then invited to sit in the front row, as Wright continued with the service.

"I finished the message, I did the altar call and he stood right up, came up to the altar, and gave his life to Christ. I came down and prayed with him and we embraced. It was like a father embracing a son," Wright said.

The night ended peacefully, but someone had called 911 and police arrived at the scene. Pastor Wright did not want to interrupt the service, so he asked the police to wait until the service was over.

Some eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the man pacing anxiously in the parking lot before he entered the service.

The man later told the congregation that the Lord had told him to go to church before he took any step to do something wrong.

"It's so hard to describe, to explain the excitement and love of God in the room. This man came in to do harm and he has given his life to Christ," Wright told CNN.

The man was taken to a hospital for mental evaluation, and is now receiving treatment. He has not been charged.
Update (Jan. 6): Larycia Hawkins was surprised by Wheaton Colleges decision to initiate the process of terminating her tenure and employment with the Illinois school [see prior post below].

I am flummoxed and flabbergasted, she told the press Wednesday at the Chicago Temple in downtown Chicago.

Flanked by roughly three dozen clergy, along with Wheaton faculty and alumni, Hawkins recounted her conversation with Wheaton provost Stanton Jones after she published her same God Facebook post.

According to Hawkins, Jones asked her if she affirmed the schools statement of faith and told her that if her theological statements were sufficient, no further conversation would be necessary. She delivered a statement that, according to Hawkins, Jones told her would be accepted by the faculty personnel committee with little to no revision.

But then Wheaton told Hawkins that if she intended to stay on, her tenure would be removed for the next two years ...

1
In 1970, evangelist and author Tom Skinner delivered an iconic speech entitled The U.S. Racial Crisis and World Evangelism at InterVarsitys Urbana student missions conference, held that year in its namesake Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

The Harlem-based speaker brought with him a soulful worship band and drew hundreds of black students to the mostly-white gathering. During his remarks, Skinner boldly held the church accountable for racial injustice. He delineated the countrys racial history, charging that there is no possible way you can talk about preaching the gospel if you do not want to deal with the issues that bind people. His speech is remembered as a groundbreaking moment in the history of Urbana and of American missionsa Christ-centered call to see our racial realities through a gospel lens.

The most recent Urbana conference, held last week in St. Louis, was reminiscent of his powerful message in 1970. This time it was speaker and minister Michelle Higgins who put out a call for a new generation of Christians to stand up for racial justice and declare that Black Lives Matter.

As a blogger focused on Christianity and race, Ive spent the past few years following evangelical responses to racial injustice and the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement. These recent events have challenged Christians to reexamine what it means to love thy neighbor and do good; seek justice, correct oppression (Is. 1:17). At Urbana, 2015 came to a close with one of the strongest statements Ive seen on the topic from an evangelical organization.

Early in the conference, the worship team took the stage wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts, and I could tell ...

1
March for Life Chicago 2016: Thousands Converge in Loop to Proclaim Sanctity of Human Life Diverse Faiths, Cultures and Generations Unite to Call for an End to Abortion



Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312-422-1333, tc@tcpr.net



CHICAGO, Jan. 5, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- The 2016 March for Life Chicago will draw a diverse crowd from across Illinois and the Midwest. On Sunday, January 17, 2016, people from varied ethnic, social, and religious backgrounds will come together on Chicago's Federal Plaza to proclaim the sanctity of human life and call for an end to abortion as they march through the Loop beginning at 2 p.m. (Central).



Organizers anticipate the 2016 March for Life Chicago to draw more than 5,000 participants, making it largest pro-life event in the Midwest to date.



Chicago's Archbishop Blase Cupich returns to the March for Life Chicago after a well-received debut at last year's event. As he marked with sadness the January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States, Cupich encouraged the pro-life crowd. He reminded listeners that, "We are here to do everything possible to make sure that the right to life is preserved." Chicago's highest ranking Catholic will share the March for Life stage with clergy representing Orthodox and Evangelical church leaders. Additional speakers include an abortion survivor who testified before the U.S. Congress.



"The theme for this year's March for Life Chicago is 'We Are Family,'" shared Emily Zender, president of March for Life Chicago, explaining, "We want every woman and man in an unplanned pregnancy to know that no matter what obstacles they may be facing, the pro-life 'family' is there to support them. We want everyone to understand that families are very diverse, including biological children, adopted children, downs syndrome children, single moms and single dads."



The 2016 March for Life Chicago encourages those facing an unplanned pregnancy to choose life for their family and assures them that those who proclaim the sanctity of human life are here to offer help and support.



WHAT: 2016 March for Life Chicago



WHEN: Sunday, January 17, 2016, from 2 to 4 p.m. (Central)



WHO: Thousands of individuals and pro-life groups from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio and Missouri.



WHERE: Federal Plaza, 50 W Adams, Chicago

MAP: goo.gl/maps/Zu1lI



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: www.MarchForLifeChicago.org



FEATURED SPEAKERS: Emily Zender, Executive Director of the Illinois Right to Life and President of the March for Life Chicago



The Right Reverend Paul (Gassios), Bishop of Chicago and the Midwest, Orthodox Church of America



Reverend Corey Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago



Most Reverend Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, Roman Catholic Church



Dan Kulp, comedian and father of three adopted children



Eareen James "EJ" Yambao, Students for Life Illinois Student Leader, DePaul Students for Life



U.S. Congressman Randy Hultgren, 14th District (R-IL)



Melissa Ohden, abortion survivor who testified before Congress



Reverend Wilfredo De Jesus, Senior Pastor of New Life Covenant Church



Firsthand stories from women whose lives were changed Presenting organizations include: Illinois Right to Life



Orthodox Church of America Chicago Deanery



L.E.A.R.N.  Life Education and Resource Network



Students for Life of Illinois



Pro Life Action League



CatholicVote.org



Archdiocese of Chicago



Archdiocese of Chicago Respect Life Office



Lake County Right to Life



Catholic Conference of Illinois



Couples for Christ Foundation for Family and Life



Renovacion Carismatica Catolica Hispana Sponsors include: Spirit Juice Studios



Pro-Life Wisconsin



Thomas More Society



Southside Pregnancy Center



Aid For Women



Families in Christ Jesus



Relevant Radio



The Women's Center About the March for Life Chicago

The March for Life Chicago is an annual public event composed of people from diverse ethnic, social, and religious backgrounds dedicated to defending and protecting all human life. The event marks with deep sadness the great tragedy of the legalization of abortion in the United States along with the devastating social, moral, and legal consequences that have followed. Marching together in hope, the March for Life Chicago calls upon government, religious, civic, and community leaders to renew every effort to build a nation that affirms the authentic dignity of women, the gift of children, and a culture dedicated to protecting life at every stage of development. Learn more at: MarchForLifeChicago.org.

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15 Christians arrested after prayer meeting interrupted by Hindu extremists

Fifteen Christians were arrested for alleged forced conversions in Karnataka, India after the church they were praying in was surrounded.

Christians had gathered on 31 December for a prayer meeting to usher in the New Year at an evangelical protestant church called Believers Church. The police interrupted the gathering, arresting those inside.

The police justified their arrests as an act of protection from the dozens of Hindu extremists who had surrounded the church building, according to AsiaNews.

The Hindu radicals surrounding the church came from two ultra-nationalist groups called the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. They had intended to raid the church, but locked doors prevented them until the police were able to intervene.

Police then arrested the Christians, taking them to the nearest police station, before releasing them a few hours later.

The religious leaders were called the next day to testify in order to ensure that there was no attempted proselytism during the service.

Although the Christians were released, the police gave the religious leaders rules that must be observed in future, including the obligation to alert authorities of gatherings.

No action has been taken "against those who disturb social peace", according to Sjan George, the president of The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC).

"The GCIC strongly condemns the police actions, who intervened quickly and acted against people who were praying in a private place. The police should have only dispersed the mob that had gathered outside the church."

This event is further evidence that the Christian minority "is vulnerable and subjected to harassment and persecution by both extremist as well as authorities, who are responsible for protecting citizens. Clearly, Christians are considered second-class citizens", George added.
78-year-old pastor who called Islam 'satanic' vows to defend Christian faith, says human freedoms on trial, not him

An ailing 78-year-old British pastor who has been charged in court for calling Islam "satanic" and "heathen" has vowed to defend his action and his Christian faith with all his might during his trial set for Dec. 14-16 in a Belfast court.

Pastor James McConnell was charged with sharing a "grossly offensive" message at the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle.

"I am not running away, definitely not. I am going to take my stand for the Lord," he told BBC as reported by Charisma News.

McConnell told reporters that as far as he is concerned what is on trial is not him for the "Muslim issue" but rather "freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the freedom of worship and the freedom of preaching the gospel and saying what is in your heart."

Writing on his blog, the pastor urged Christians and even Muslims to join him in his protest against the charges raised against him.

"I also appeal and challenge every Muslim who lives in this country," McConnell wrote. "No one is questioning your right to worship here and practice your religion. If I was living in many Muslim countries in the world, I would be forbidden to practice my religion and would probably be imprisoned or even put to death for doing so. Yet you, as a Muslim, have perfect liberty here. So I appeal to you, come with me and protest."

He also wrote a stirring message for Irish Christians. "Once again I appeal to every child of God and every minister of God. If I am put in prison then, in a sense, you are also put in prison with me; for every sermon you preach and record will be examined and scrutinised!" he wrote.

McConnell he is prepared to go to jail to protect his freedoms even as he justified his comments by clarifying the context in which they were spoken.

"I have qualified my comments by those who use their religion as justification for violence. As a preacher of God, it is this interpretation of the doctrine of Islam which I am condemning," he said.

McConnell has surprisingly and ironically received the support of prominent atheists in the country. In a number of articles, Irish journalist and editor Suzanne Breen has come to McConnell's defence, saying he represents freedom of speech.

"As an atheist, I carry no candle for Christian fundamentalists, but there is something seriously wrong in hauling a pensioner pastor in ill health through the courts for simply expressing his opinion," Breen wrote.

"Let's get this straight. James McConnell didn't incite hatred or encourage violence against any Muslim. Had he done so, I'd be first in the queue to denounce him. He simply expressed his views about another religion. Freedom of speech should mean that he has every right to lambast Islam, as Islamic clerics have to lambast him and Christianity if they so choose."

Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly member Nelson McCausland also defended McConnell even as he compared the language used by the pastor to what Jesus Christ said in the Bible.

"Even more important and significant is the fact that Jesus Christ Himself used such language during his Earthly ministry. He denounced false teachers and false teaching in what many today would regard as very strong language and, in John 8:44, 45, he said to some of his hearers: 'Ye are of your father the devil.' Yet He loved those to whom He referred and He loved them so much that He died for them," wrote McCausland in an op-ed for The Belfast Telegraph.

Northern Ireland Director of the Evangelical Alliance Peter Lynas was likewise alarmed by the charges brought against McConnell.

"I don't agree with all that Pastor McConnell said, but I am deeply concerned about this prosecution for allegedly sending a message that is grossly offensive," he said. "Many churches will be wary of what they place on the Internet until this case is heard and the law is clarified. This prosecution seems to stretch the Communications Act well beyond what parliament intended."
Christian America? Yes, says Justice Scalia  but is he right?

America is a famously religious country, with rates of churchgoing that cynical old Europe can only dream of. Even so, one of the most fundamental principles of its public life is the separation of church and state. Not only is there no state church, but increasingly, state funding and recognition of religious expression has been challenged in the courts.

Step forward Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a famously conservative voice on the bench, who in a brief address to a Catholic high school in a New Orleans suburb put the cat of religion among the pigeons of secularism.

A nice metaphor, but what did he actually say?

Thank you. Scalia said that contrary to what people  including lawyers  had assumed, the state didn't have to be neutral about religion. "To be sure, you can't favour one denomination over another, but we can't favour religion over non-religion?" He also said there is "nothing wrong" with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. Instancing such varied examples as the Revolution and the Battle of Midway, he said: "I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honour."

I thought we lost the Revolution because we had useless generals and lots of us thought the Americans had a rather strong case?

Let's stick to the point. Scalia's words have delighted conservatives but infuriated liberals, who think he's trying to undermine the constitution.

Remind me?

The relevant bit of the First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". According to Cornell University Law School, "It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual's religious practices."

I thought Scalia's point was that it didn't stop the state favouring religion over non-religion?

Cornell again: "It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion."

That seems pretty clear.

Yes, though Scalia obviously disagrees. The Cornell article goes on: "Although some government action implicating religion is permissible, and indeed unavoidable, it is not clear just how much the Establishment Clause tolerates." It's all a bit murky; the Supreme Court has allowed prayers before legislative sessions and helps fund private religious schools with textbooks, but it's ruled against religious displays at courthouses and funding salaries at religious schools.

It's all a bit abstract. An example might help.

Take Roy Moore, the Alabama Supreme Court Justice, who erected a huge granite monument showing Ten Commandments in the state judicial building. After an expensive lawsuit he was compelled to remove it. In his judgment, Federal Judge Myron Thompson said that Moore "installed a two-and-a-half ton monument in the most prominent place in a government building, managed with dollars from all state taxpayers, with the specific purpose and effect of establishing a permanent recognition of the 'sovereignty of God,' the Judeo-Christian God, over all citizens in this country, regardless of each taxpaying citizen's individual personal beliefs or lack thereof. To this, the Establishment Clause says no."

There can't be too many people who want to put a granite monument to the Ten Commandments up in a public place.

Perhaps not, but the point is that people like Moore and Scalia believe that America is fundamentally a Christian country and that judges are using the law to get rid of religion from the public sphere against the intention of the country's founders.

This is beginning to seem like quite a familiar sort of argument.

Yes. In Britain we have an established Church that is entrenched within the legal systems of the state to such an extent that unpicking it would be more trouble than it's worth. Nowadays we all rub along pretty well  which was not the case when America was writing its constitution  though there are still periodic rows about how far Britain is a Christian country. Christians here get very wound up when they think secularists are trying to ban religion from public life, but in spite of our lower rates of churchgoing we are much more hospitable to faith in this respect than the US.

Ah, but for how long?

Long enough; don't worry. But on both sides of the Atlantic, Christians have to get used to having their spiritual dominance questioned. That's not a bad thing. What is bad is if we seem to be willing to use the law to assert Christian privileges at other people's expense. A little tolerance, patience and humility go a long way.

Follow @RevMarkWoods on Twitter.
First Catholic service for centuries to be celebrated in chapel of King Henry VIII

The first Roman Catholic service for more than 450 years is to be celebrated in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace.

Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Nichols will celebrate Vespers and the Bishop of London, Dean of the Chapel Royal, will preach in Henry VIII's chapel, built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in the early 16th century but taken from Wolsey by the King and rebuilt.

Henry VIII broke with Rome and established the Church of England after Wolsey failed to secure his annulment from Catherine of Aragon. Henry's third wife Jane Seymour gave birth to his only son Prince Edward at Hampton Court. His fifth wife Catherine Howard is said to haunt the palace, where she had faced accusations of adultery. The King married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court.

The Genesis Foundation and the Choral Foundation are working together to make the service possible, as the first Latin Rite of the Catholic Church to be celebrated since the 1550s at the Chapel Royal.

A spokesman described it as "an unprecedented coming together of the Catholic and Anglican churches on such an historically important site".

The Vespers will be dedicated to St John the Baptist, remembering the origins of the chapel as built by Cardinal Wolsey on the site of a former chapel of the Knights of St John Hospitaller. Members of the public will be able to take part in a ballot for a stall or boxed pew at the service.

The music will be performed by Harry Christophers and his ensembles The Sixteen and Genesis Sixteen and will include Thomas Tallis' Magnificat, William Cornysh's Salve Regina and John Taverner's "Leroy" Kyrie.

Before the service, Cardinal and Dean will take part in a "conversation" on "Faith and the Crown" in the Great Hall at Hampton Court. They will debate the role of the Chapel Royal in maintaining elements of Catholic worship to the present day.

John Studzinski, founder and chairman of the Genesis Foundation, said: "Dialogue between faiths is much needed and welcomed in these turbulent times. We need to recognise that we have more in common than not. I'm therefore delighted that the Genesis Foundation is enabling the Catholic and Anglican churches to engage in dialogue on this site that is so rich in history, both theological and musical. It will be an unforgettable occasion and is genuinely one for the history books."

Michele Price of the Choral Foundation said: "The Chapel Royal at Hampton Court played centre stage to the religious changes in the 16th Century. Its musicians and composers met the challenge of serving the spiritual needs of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, by producing new and beautiful music and in so doing became the cradle of English church music. This historic occasion enables us to explore our rich heritage and bring together Christian traditions as we celebrate 500 years of Hampton Court Palace."
Samsung Galaxy S7 release rumors: 5.7 inch version of the phone could be coming to the U.S.

A 5.7-inch variant of the Galaxy S7 may be on its way to the United States.

According to GSM Arena, a new Samsung phone that has just made its way past the AnTuTu benchmark would seem to indicate that the company is planning to offer a 5.7-inch version of their upcoming flagship unit.

More details about the Galaxy S7, which is believed to be codenamed "Project Lucky," also came via the leak.

According to the leak, the 5.7-inch version of the Galaxy S7 is also reportedly equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoC, and that bit of information may actually indicate where this particular variant of the smartphone is heading.

If the rumors surrounding the Galaxy S7 are to be believed, then that would mean that the 5.7 inch variant powered by the Snapdragon chipset would be coming to the United States and perhaps even to China.

Galaxy S7 units that will be powered by the Exynos chips are currently expected to ship to other regions.

As for the other specs of the 5.7-inch Galaxy S7 model, it is also expected to have 4 GB of RAM paired up with 64 GB of internal storage. It's been rumored that the Galaxy S7 phones will bring back microSD card support, although this has yet to be confirmed.

The 5.7-inch Galaxy S7 will also reportedly have a 16-megapixel rear camera along with a five-megapixel front-facing shooter, although according to some rumors, the megapixels may not tell the entire story.

According to Forbes, the Galaxy S7 line could also feature an image sensor known as BRITECELL, and the addition could greatly enhance the capabilities of Samsung's smartphone cameras.

Samsung has yet to announce when they are planning to unveil their new Galaxy S7 units, although it's widely believed that the company will showcase this year's line of flagship devices at the Mobile World Congress taking place in Barcelona this February, according to The Verge.

More news about the Galaxy S7 is expected to be made available soon.
Iran crisis: 'We are not natural-born enemies' says Saudi UN envoy

Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.

Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple  Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."

He added, "If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh's example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.

Jubeir blamed Iran's "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilt over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom's embassy in Tehran.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries  Kuwait, Qatar and Oman  stayed above the fray.

Shi'ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.

A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq's Shi'ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East's top Sunni and Shi'ite powers.

But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones.

"The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy...(but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Calls for restraint

Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.

Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a US senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.

"It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the US official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable."

Brent jumped 4 per cent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.

Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 per cent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil.

Syria, Yemen

The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

"It was very difficult to get everybody around the table," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism."

Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria's political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad's government.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on January 25 in Geneva.

Saudi UN Ambassador Mouallimi said his country's severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh's decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling.

The UN chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months.

Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared with the size of their economies, but some business is routed through the United Arab Emirates; comprehensive figures are not available. Investment ties are also minimal, though Saudi food conglomerate Savola has major manufacturing operations in Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shi'ites on terrorism charges on Saturday, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shi'ite Iran hailed him as a "martyr" and warned Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family of "divine revenge".

Shi'ite groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State.

Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticised Saudi Arabia's judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies.
Meet Allyson Robinson, the first openly transgender Baptist minister

Allyson Robinson had been married for over a decade when she says she "finally spoke my truth". At the time she was known as Daniel Robinson, and she told her wife  Danielle  that she wanted to be a woman. Formerly an army officer and then studying to be a minister at Texas' Baylor University, the largest Baptist university in the world, it wasn't a decision she took lightly.

In fact, as she wrestled with her sexuality, Robinson was almost driven to take her own life. "I grappled with the truth that was emerging within me at that time in ways I never had before. It nearly led me to suicide," she told Christian Today. She would cry all the way to Divinity school, a 45 minute commute, and again all the way home. One day, she considered deliberately driving into the river; afraid of what coming out as transgender would mean for her wife, children and church. "By grace alone in that moment I caught myself thinking those thoughts and realised that was not the right way forward," she recalls. "I didn't know what the right way was, but I knew there had to be some other way."

She started seeing a therapist, and began an in-depth study of LGBT theology. "It's ironic that the seminary at the largest Baptist university in the world has an incredibly diverse library on faith, sex and gender," she laughs. "It gave me many different perspectives, I realised that there were other perspectives, and that began the journey for me."

She told her family the truth, and Danielle vowed to stand by her, as did the majority of her relatives. The support of her loved ones "has not just empowered my ministry and my work for inclusion, but it has strengthened me, and helped me to see myself as a beloved child of God in ways that I never did before I came out."

Robinson went on to become the first openly transgender minister to be ordained in the Baptist tradition, and served as transitional pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington DC. MSNBC called her "the most radical preacher in America".

She realises, however, that not everyone who identifies as transgender or who struggles with their sexuality is fortunate to find such support, particularly within the Church. It's why she's dedicated herself to the promotion of LGBT civil rights, working for a number of key organisations.

This weekend, she's speaking at the Gay Christian Network's (GCN) annual conference in Houston, Texas. It's the world's largest annual LGBT Christian conference, and will explore what's next for the Church as it grapples with issues of sexuality and gender in the midst of a culture war.

"I think it's critically important at this point in history that places like this [GCN] exist. In American culture, we have over the course of a generation or two lost the ability to speak across our differences, and that applies equally to Christians and to those who profess other faiths or no faith," she says.

"One of the things I love about GCN is its tradition and commitment to make a space where people who don't agree on all the details can get together as followers of Jesus and share worship."

Previous speakers include evangelical author Philip Yancey, blogger Rachel Held Evans and Baptist theologian Tony Campolo, who announced his support of same-sex relationships in June last year. The conference encourages Christians with different perspectives to come together and wrestle with the big questions facing the Church.

The US legalised same-sex marriage last year, though provisions have been made for churches and religious organisations to refuse to perform ceremonies for gay couples. Some denominations, such as American Baptist Churches USA, allows individual congregations to decide whether to ordain LGBT clergy or perform same-sex marriages, but the majority remain in favour of a traditional stance. It's led to renewed accusations that the Church is out-dated and irrelevant.

"I think that that the Church may always suffer from this impression, that it's behind the times, simply because it's rooted in traditions and cultures, many of which date from before the time of Christ, and I think that's okay," Robinson says.

"That said, I think our society has watched the Church grapple with these questions, and many are disappointed that it has taken the church longer comparatively than the rest of society to come around."

Though she commended the Church for its conservative nature; the way that it "measures very carefully the winds of change before it sets sail to them", Robinson says that same caution may be hindering its ability to reach out to those outside.

"It's important for the Church to weigh carefully the pull of the culture in which it lives, and yet that careful weighing serves to set it apart from culture in ways that can be less than helpful for the Church's mission of carrying forth the gospel in to the future," she says.

Sexuality is just one of many issues the Church has faced. Many believe it's become more divisive than necessary, but Robinson says it's crucial we get to grips with it. "The big difference here is that the traditionalist stance on inclusion for LGBT people in the Church is hurting people," she says.

"In fact, I don't think it's alarmist to say it is killing people, because of the influence the Church continues to wield across our society. It gives this conversation a different level of gravity than conversations about worship style of some of the other finer points of theology."

The good news is that Robinson believes there is hope for the future for LGBT Christians struggling to find their place within the faith community. She says it's "very likely but not inevitable" that soon there will be many more Christian leaders who identify as LGBT across the denominations.

"I think that it the future rests upon our ability  and by 'our' I mean LGBT affirming Christian people  to continue to hold the institution accountable while finding new ways to cross the divide; ways that reflect the truth that outside of the walls of the institution, this war is over. The cultural war has come to a close at least on this front, and those of us on the affirming side have won," she says.

"It is critical that we as affirming Christians find ways not to become the kind of church that once rejected us."

The Gay Christian Network Conference is taking place from 710 January in Houston, Texas. For more information, click here.
New Dean of the Chapel Royal and Queen's Chaplain inducted

It was a special day for the Reverend John Chalmers as he was accompanied by his military hero son for his induction as a new chaplain to the Queen in Scotland on Sunday.

Marine Reservist JJ Chalmers, 25, was badly injured while serving in Afghanistan.

He was with his father for the induction during the morning service at St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

The Very Reverend Professor Iain Torrance was at the same time inducted as the new Dean of the Chapel Royal.

As Dean of the Chapel Royal, Professor Torrance is responsible for the oversight of the ecclesiastical establishment, which is part of the Royal Household. He is also Pro-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen.

Mr Chalmers served in the parishes of Renton in Dumbartonshire and Palmerston Place, Edinburgh between 1979 and 1995 before taking up an appointment in the Church's Board of Ministry and is now Principal Clerk.

He said: "Today is a very special one, made all the more special for me by the fact JJ was able to attend as he continues to recover from his injuries. I am delighted to be appointed as a Chaplain to the Queen and look forward to fulfilling the duties of this role."

Professor Torrance said he was greatly honoured by the trust placed in him by the Queen.

He said: "I am honoured to take up this role and am looking forward to the challenges and opportunities which it will present."

The service was also attended by former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Very Reverend Dr John Cairns, who has recently retired as Dean of the Chapel Royal and has subsequently been knighted. He was appointed Dean to the Chapel Royal in 2006.

The Right Reverend Lorna Hood, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and also a Queen's Chaplain, welcomed the appointments.

"Both Iain and John have faithfully served the church with distinction and we rejoice with them in this recognition by the Queen," she said.

"The Church of Scotland is proud of its relationship with the Royal Household and we look forward to maintaining those links in the future."
Norwegian church shares gospel with refugees through Google Translate and Bibles

A Church in Norway was able to give refugees Bibles in both Arabic and Farsi in time for Christmas after receiving a generous donation.

Elias Samer Nema, a refugee who arrived in Norway last year, started attending the Seventh Day Adventist church shortly after arriving in Vadso, having crossed the Russian border.

He was keen to tell other refugees about Jesus and help them to get Bibles.

One of the elders at Vadso Seventh Day Adventist Church, Hilde Huru, told the Norwegian Bible Society about Nema's request, to which the Bible Society responded by giving a number of Bibles in both Arabic and Farsi for distribution.

"We see a deep gratitude in the eyes of those who received Bibles. This is really important to them," said Huru.

The church has sought to engage with the refugees, giving them Bibles and using smartphones in order to communicate through Google Translate to overcome the language barrier.

They have also developed a multi-lingual Sabbath School, translating each lesson's handout into both Arabic and Farsi.

For one refugee, the Bible he received was the first he had owned. He had belonged to an underground church in Iran and was unable to own a Bible out of fear that his Christian faith would be discovered, putting his life in danger.

"I have never met anyone in the Middle East with such a love for God as you have," said one of the refugees
Not guilty: Pastor James McConnell acquitted at Belfast court

James McConnell, the 78-year-old pastor of Belfast's Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle accused of broadcasting hate speech about Muslims, has been found not guilty by a Belfast judge.

McConnell was charged with improper use of a public electronic communications network and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network.

He was prosecuted under the 2003 Communications Act.

The verdict follows a highly controversial trial after one of his sermons was broadcast online. In it McConnell said: "Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell."

He likened Muslims to the IRA, saying there were cells spread right across the UK. He also said: "Now people say there are good Muslims in Britain  that may be so  but I don't trust them."

McConnell also praised Conservative politician Enoch Powell, who was widely condemned for his 1968 speech warning of the dangers of unchecked immigration. "Enoch Powell was right and he lost his career because of it," McConnell said. "Enoch Powell was a prophet and he told us that blood would flow in the streets and it has happened."

During his trial he said he still believed everything he said in his sermon. "I was attacking the theology of Islam. I was not attacking any individual Muslim," he told the court. "I didn't realise that good Muslim people would be hurt.

"I didn't go into the church to provoke anyone. I went into church to present the truth."

The verdict was welcomed by Peter Lynas, national director of the Evangelical Alliance Northern Ireland, who said:

"Today's verdict is a victory for common sense and freedom of speech. However, until the law is changed or clear guidance is issued, there will still be concern about further prosecution. The Public Prosecution Service need to explain why this case was brought and assure everyone that this will not happen again.

"This case contains challenges to both the State and the Church. It is vital that the State does not stray into the censorship of church sermons or unwittingly create a right not to be offended. Meanwhile, the Church must steward its freedom of speech responsibly, so as to present Jesus in a gracious and appealing way to everyone."

The case polarised opinion in Northern Ireland and more widely, with many adamant that it represented an attack on freedom of speech and religious liberty.

McConnell drew support not only from evangelical Christians but also from Muslims and atheists concerned about the risk to free speech. Muhammad al-Hussaini, a senior research fellow in Islamic studies at the Westminster Institute, travelled to Belfast to back him during the trial. He said: "Against the flaming backdrop of torched Christian churches, bloody executions and massacres of faith minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is a matter of utmost concern that, in this country, we discharge our common duty steadfastly to defend the freedom of citizens to discuss, debate and critique religious ideas and beliefs  restricting only speech which incites to physical violence against others.

"Moreover, in a free and democratic society we enter into severe peril when we start to confuse what we perhaps ought or ought not to say, with what in law we are allowed to, or not allowed to say."

Boyd Sleator, chairman of the organisation Atheist NI, said on Sunday: "Pastor McConnell's remarks will strike many as offensive and irresponsible, but as a society we ought to resist the urge to declare things criminal simply because they might hurt our feelings.

"That a judge is left to decide whether or not Pastor McConnell's remarks are worthy of legal consequences may set a precedent for all manner of irreverence and criticism being deemed against the law.

"At Atheist NI we strongly oppose any creeping legislation that might have a chilling effect on free expression."

Several high-profile politicians, including Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson, Democratic Unionist Party deputy leader Nigel Dodds and former Finance Minister Sammy Wilson also pledged support for the pastor.

McConnell told the Belfast Telegraph last night that he would refuse to pay any fine the judge imposed and was prepared to go to prison for his beliefs. "It's a matter of principle," he said. "Paying a fine would be an admission of guilt and I have said from the beginning that I am an innocent man. I know that not paying a fine means that people eventually end up in jail and I am prepared to accept that."

He added: "I have said from the beginning of all this that I am willing to go to jail for my beliefs and that is still the case. I'm not going to start running scared at this late stage.

"I don't want to sit in a prison cell but I'd rather do time than pay a fine for something that I don't believe is a crime."
Oregon sheriff tells anti-government militia: 'It's time for you to leave'

A county sheriff and judge on Monday demanded that self-styled militiamen occupying a remote US wildlife centre in Oregon peacefully end their three-day-old anti-government siege, telling the protesters: "It's time for you to leave our community."

The flashpoint for Saturday's takeover of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Oregon, was the imminent incarceration of two ranchers convicted of arson and re-sentenced to longer prison terms.

But the occupation marked the latest flare-up of anger against the US government over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by political conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual freedom and property rights.

Federal authorities have so far kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which remained closed to visitors.

The FBI said in a statement it was seeking a "peaceful resolution to the situation" while Obama administration officials said law enforcement officers had been told to avoid a violent confrontation with the occupiers.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy, whose father's ranch in Nevada was the scene of an armed standoff against federal land managers in 2014, told reporters on Monday his group had named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and was making a stand for personal liberty.

"They [the federal government] are coming down into the states and taking over the land and the resources, putting the people into duress, putting the people into poverty," he said.

Flanked by supporters, Bundy declined to say how many were participating in the takeover. But about a half-dozen occupiers were visible to reporters, some in a watchtower on the property and others standing around a vehicle used to block an access road.

The two ranchers whose cause Bundy's group has embraced  Dwight Hammond Jr and his son, Steven  turned themselves over to federal authorities in California earlier on Monday.

Some residents in Burns, a town of some 3,000 people about 280 miles (451 km) southeast of Portland, voiced sympathy with the militia group's cause, if not its methods.

But many said they viewed the occupation as mostly, if not entirely, the work of outside agitators  a sentiment echoed by Harney County Sheriff David Ward.

"You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County," Ward said at a news conference in Burns, addressing Bundy's group in a statement he read on behalf of himself and county Judge Steven Grasty. "It is time for you to leave our community, go home to your families, and end this peacefully."

The sheriff said the takeover had "significantly impacted" the local community, where authorities have closed public schools and some government offices as a precaution.

Three administration officials told Reuters that federal authorities were following US policy guidelines instituted to prevent such standoffs from turning violent in the wake of deadly clashes at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas in the early 1990s.

Sagebrush rebellion

The Oregon occupation marked the latest skirmish in the so-called sagebrush rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres (hectares) of land and natural resources in the West, much of it administered by the Interior Department, parent agency of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

It followed a demonstration in Burns over the case of the Hammonds, who were found guilty in 2012 of setting a series of fires, including a 139-acre (56-hectare) blaze in 2001 intended to cover up evidence of wildlife poaching, according to federal prosecutors.

The younger Hammond was initially sentenced to 12 months in prison and the father three months, below the federal minimum for arson. In October, a US district judge increased the sentences to five years.

Through an attorney, they have dissociated themselves from Bundy's group.

Residents interviewed by Reuters said that while the US government could sometimes seem overzealous in enforcing rules on ranchers, it was also a major local employer.

Wendy Bull, a teacher, came to listen to the sheriff's remarks in part so she could ask when her husband, a social worker, could reopen a local clinic run by the US Veteran Affairs Department.

"I believe that they are domestic terrorists," she said of the occupiers.

Patrick Wright, 33, a taxi driver who said he knew the Hammonds, agreed with the protesters that sending the two men back to prison was unfair.

"I get why they're here," Wright said of the occupiers. "Taking over the refuge and threatening gun violence is a little extreme, but it's getting them heard, that's for sure."

Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose ranch was the scene of an armed demonstration against federal Bureau of Land Management officials in 2014 that ended with the authorities backing down, citing safety concerns.

That standoff drew hundreds of armed protesters after federal agents sought to seize Bundy's cattle because he refused to pay grazing fees.

The takeover in Oregon drew criticism on social media, with some users asking if the occupiers would have been treated differently if they had been black or Muslim.

The Hammond ranch borders the southern edge of the Malheur refuge, a bird sanctuary in eastern Oregon's arid high desert, about 305 miles (490 km) southeast of Portland.
Pastor James McConnell trial: A victory for common sense and free speech

Pastor James McConnell has been acquitted by a Belfast court of sending a 'grossly offensive' message in a sermon about Islam broadcast on the internet. This is a significant victory for common sense and free speech, though many will wonder why the case ended up in court at all. The Public Prosecution Service now needs to issue clear guidance to ensure that others are not subjected to a similar ordeal.

The case has sparked global legal and media interest, not least because McConnell is an outspoken and charismatic personality. But more importantly, the case is about freedom of speech and religion and an attempt by the State to censor sermons.

Pastor James McConnell is a 78-year-old retired pastor suffering from cancer. One Sunday in May 2014, he preached a sermon on Christ being our mediator and ransom, in which he called Islam 'heathen' and 'satanic'. The sermon was streamed on the internet.

The comments were picked up by the media and complaints were subsequently made to the police, who launched an investigation into whether there was a 'hate crime motive' behind the pastor's remarks. The police decided not to seek prosecution under hate crime legislation. However, prosecutors decided the pastor had sent a grossly offensive message under the Communications Act 2003. This legislation is designed to deal with offensive and abusive letters, emails and phone calls. To apply this legislation to an online sermon was a significant stretch.

The pastor was offered an 'informed warning', which he declined as it would be an admission of guilt and would create a criminal record lasting a year. Instead he faced a three-day trial and the possibility of up to six months in prison if he was found guilty.

A key aspect of the case was determining what McConnell had said that was 'grossly offensive'. The prosecution accepted that characterising Islam as 'heathen' and 'satanic' would be theological views protected by human rights legislation. This concession is helpful, but needs to be clearly stated in a guidance note to protect others.

During his sermon, the pastor said: "People say there are good Muslims in Britain. That may be so, but I don't trust them." Those last five words were the 'grossly offensive' speech.

Both sides insisted these words must be seen in context - context is everything. The prosecution showed subsequent media interviews arguing that the pastor was categorising an entire people group in a way that was offensive. The defence insisted on playing the whole two-hour pentecostal worship service, arguing that to be offended any listener would have had to sit through three hymns, two prayers, various Bible readings and the rest of the sermon on the supremacy of Christ.

The prosecution decided not to call Dr Raied Al-Wazzan of the Belfast Islamic Centre, who was thought to be the main complainant. He had previously caused controversy himself by publicly praising Islamic State for making the city of Mosul "the most peaceful city in the world".

McConnell had a Catholic priest, a Muslim cleric and a DUP MP lined up to speak in his defence, though not all were called. The judge reserved his decision, leaving him to face Christmas uncertain as to whether the new year would involve a prison sentence.

In the end justice has been done, but this is a prosecution that should never have been brought. The verdict is a victory for common sense, freedom of speech and freedom of expression. However, until the law is changed or clear guidance is issued there will be concern about further prosecution. Despite his age, Pastor James McConnell had the resources to fight this charge, but others might not be in that position. The Public Prosecution Service needs to explain why this case was brought and assure everyone that it will not happen again.

This case contains challenges to both the State and the Church. It's vital that the State does not stray into the censorship of church sermons or unwittingly create a right not to be offended. Meanwhile, the Church must steward its freedom of speech wisely to present Jesus in a gracious and appealing way. The gospel will be offensive to many, but we must be careful not to add to that.

Peter Lynas is a former barrister. He leads the work of the Evangelical Alliance in Northern Ireland and serves on the leadership team at Causeway Coast Vineyard. Follow him on Twitter.
Pegida: Anti-Islam group launches in the UK

Anti-Islam movement Pegida yesterday launched its UK branch, branding the religion a "fascist ideology".

Set up by Tommy Robinson, one of the founders of the English Defence League, Pegida UK will campaign against what it calls the "Islamification of Europe".

Pegida originated in Dresden, Germany, and was established to protest against mass immigration. The movement gained huge support when it first began in late 2014, with a peak of around 25,000 people at its weekly rallies in January last year, and demonstrations spread throughout Europe. Though support then waned, Pegida has seen a surge of popularity in response to the influx of refugees into Germany over recent months. Previous rallies in the UK have been met with powerful counter-protests and often descended into violence.

"We have an ideological problem in this country with Islam. It's not assimilated in any sort of way," Robinson told reporters yesterday.

"Our political leaders and our European leaders are working against the interests of the people with the refugee influx  which is a migrant invasion  and we want to replicate the resistance of Pegida in Germany in the UK. It will be very different to how the English Defence League used to do things."

Robinson insisted that Pegida is "not an anti-Muslim group" and said that it would no longer take part in demonstrations, and will hold peaceful meetings outside of city centres.

"I'm opposed to Islam as a fascist ideology," he said. "We feel Muslims are victims of Islam."

Paul Weston, who stood as a candidate for Liberty GB in the 2015 general election, was announced as the new leader of Pegida's UK branch. UKIP candidate and Sharia Watch chairwoman Anne Marie Waters will join him in the senior management of the group.

Pegida UK came under fire in December when its scheduled march in Birmingham was criticized by the local leaders of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

Robinson told the IB Times that Birmingham had become the "terrorist epicenter of Britain" and announced a rally would be held there on February 6.

However, a joint statement from Birmingham councilors said: "On the day that Birmingham was formally awarded City of Sanctuary status (December 4), it was disappointing to hear of the plans for the launch of a new anti-Islamic far-right group.

"Birmingham is a city that has a proud history of tolerance, cohesion and integration  with people from around the world of all faiths and heritage welcome to make their home here. Brummies do not subscribe to ideas based on prejudice, intolerance and hate. That is why the planned launch of a new group in Birmingham is rejected by the council."

It is not clear whether the Pegida march will still go ahead as planned, though it is still being advertised on the group's Facebook page.

Additional reporting by Reuters.
Scottish primus warns of damage done by historic agreement between churches

The head of the Anglican church in Scotland has warned the Church of England against treading on his ecclesiastical territory in an historic agreement with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Bishop of St Andrew's David Chillingworth, known as the "blogging bishop", who is also primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, said: "The Church of England is not a Scottish Church nor does it have any jurisdiction in Scotland. The Anglican way is to recognise the territorial integrity of each province  they are autonomous but inter-dependent."

He said the document had already caused damage to long-established relationships, and called for its publication to be delayed to allow a fuller consultation to take place.

The Columba Declaration commits the Church of England and the Church of Scotland to growing closer together in communion and mission and to recognising each other's clergy and laity. The document appears to take little account of the Anglican province in Scotland, the Scottish Episcopal Church, which withdrew from the talks early on but remained present as an observer.

The Church of Scotland and the Church of England announced the Columba Declaration on the morning of Christmas Eve, stating they had reached an historic agreement to work more closely together. Both churches will debate it later this year, at General Synod in York and the General Assembly in Edinburgh.

It also looks certain to be yet another cause of division in Canterbury this week, when Bishop Chillingworth represents the Scottish province of the Anglican Communion at the primates' meeting called by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a bid to prevent splits over homosexuality.

Bishop Chillingworth writes: "The aspect of the Columba Declaration which will cause most concern to the Scottish Episcopal Church is the potential involvement of the Church of England in the ecclesiastical life of Scotland."

Because the launch has been so public, he said, this has stirred considerable feeling and concern in his church.

He says it strays into areas which are "properly the concern of the Scottish Episcopal Church" as the church which represents the Anglican Communion in Scotland.

Whether or not it becomes independent at some stage in the future, Scotland is becoming a more distinct place, more sure of its own identity, he writes. "The Columba Declaration turns the Church of Scotland towards the Church of England in a way which to me seems to be a misreading of our context. The ecumenical family of churches in Scotland needs the leadership and active involvement of the Church of Scotland at this critical time in our national life."

He also says that the agreement suggests that the Church of England will respond warmly to the idea that its members will worship in Church of Scotland Churches when they visit Scotland. "Yet the Church of England's Anglican Communion partner in Scotland is the Scottish Episcopal Church."

Recognition of each other's ministries is also an issue. "The Scottish Episcopal Church now seems to be faced with the possibility that Church of England clergy will minister in Scotland under the authorisation of the Church of Scotland and without reference to the Scottish Episcopal Church," the bishop writes.

A spokesperson for the Scottish Episcopal Church said: "We fully understand the desire of the Church of Scotland and the Church of England as national churches to discuss and explore matters of common concern. However certain aspects of the report which appear to go beyond the relationship of the two churches as national institutions cause us concern. The Scottish Episcopal Church, as a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, represents Anglicanism in Scotland, and we will therefore look forward to exploring the suggestions within the report more fully in due course."

The Church of Scotland said: "The joint study group report and the Columba Declaration are the outcome of ecumenical work that has been under way since 2010. The Scottish Episcopal Church was a full partner in the joint study group until it chose to withdraw from active participation in 2013. From that point on, the Scottish Episcopal Church continued to attend as an observer."
Syria: Priest released by Islamist militants two weeks after kidnapping

An Iraqi priest kidnapped by militants in Syria has been released, it has been confirmed, nearly two weeks after his abduction.

In a short statement released late on Monday, the Custody of the Holy Land said Father Dhyia Aziz "has been liberated and... he is doing well."

"Due to confidentiality reasons we cannot give further details," the statement continued. "We thank all those who helped us to liberate him."

Fr Aziz, a Franciscan priest originally from Mosul but working in Idlib province, Syria, was abducted on December 23 while returning to his village from Turkey, where he had been visiting relatives.

Fr Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the current superior of the Custody of the Holy Land, previously confirmed to Asia News that Fr Aziz had been kidnapped, though he did not know "who did it or even if he is still alive".

Yakubiyah village, where Fr Aziz works, is surrounded by conflict. "Many groups are active in that area, affiliated with various factions and without coordination among themselves, each on its own, so it is difficult to understand who did it," Fr Pizzaballa said.

December was the second time that Fr Aziz had been kidnapped. On July 4 last year, he was abducted by militants and released five days later. A number of priests have been taken by assailants in Syria since the outbreak of conflict in 2011, either by ISIS or other militant groups.

Speaking to Vatican Radio following Fr Aziz's releae, Fr Pizzaballa said: "The situation remains very grave and dramatic in Syria, though we are doubtless happy and relieved that Fr Dhiya has been released."
'Teen Wolf' season 5B spoilers: What to look forward to in the midseason premiere

The long wait is finally over for the "Teen Wolf" fans as the second half of season 5 is about to begin.

But instead of the usual Monday night release, MTV decided to move the show's time slot to Tuesday when season 5B begins this year. Series creator Jeff Davis talked about the move during the 2015 New York Comic Con, saying that the network implemented it as part of their efforts to come up with more schedules for their scripted shows.

Davis also revealed that Deputy Jordan Parrish (Ryan Kelley) will be a major part of the plot in the second half of season 5, which means that his connection as a hellhound with Lydia (Holland Roden) as a banshee will be finally tackled when the series returns.

Meanwhile, actress Shelley Hennig also revealed what fans should look forward to with her character Malia in "Teen Wolf" season 5B.

"She wants revenge. Malia has had enough and no one can really stop her at this point," Hennig said in an interview with TV.com.

"I feel like the Desert Wolf wants to mess with her a little more but Malia's intention is to straight up kill her. This woman has essentially messed up her life and her family. Everything in Malia's life has been shaped by what the Desert Wolf has done to her and Malia has nothing to lose."

The synopsis for the episode "The Last Chimera," which marks the start of the second half of season 5, reveals that Sheriff Stilinski's (Linden Ashby) life will be in danger, and Scott (Tyler Posey) and Stiles (Dylan O'Brien) must put their rift behind to be able to know what caused the mysterious infection that is hurting the Sheriff.

"Teen Wolf" season 5B premieres on Tuesday, Jan. 5, on MTV.
'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' season 8 spoilers: Mama Joyce confronts Phaedra in episode 10

This week on "The Real Housewives of Atlanta," Phaedra Parks and Kandi Burruss' husband, Todd Tucker, sat down to discuss the money that she owes him for her pregnancy workout video.

While Phaedra was very civil toward Todd, she told the cameras that he must be desperate to get her money because his allowance from Kandi wasn't enough anymore. Todd gave her documents to prove that she still owes him $8,500 for his work, and Phaedra said that she wasn't able to pay him because she had to focus on her family after her husband, Apollo Nida, went to jail last year.

Meanwhile, Kenya Moore spent some time with her father, Ronald Grant, who seemed to disapprove of the fact that she was dating again. When Ronald failed to express enthusiasm over her new house and her plans of having children in the future, Kenya confronted him and told him that the fact that they didn't talk for years since she was a teenager really hurt her.

But her father surprised her when Ronald said that she hurt him when she ran away when she was a teen, and that made him felt like a bad father. Because of this, Kenya decided to organize a family reunion, complete with her mother, who has very little communication with Kenya as well.

Next week, more confrontations are up ahead as Mama Joyce, who is Kandi's mother, will come to confront Phaedra. Does this have something to do with the money that Phaedra owes Todd?

Mama Joyce has never been a big fan of Todd, but back in season 7 the two finally put their feud to rest as Mama Joyce apologized to Todd for anything that she did or said to offend him and for speaking ill against his mother, Sharon, who passed away in December 2014.

It's possible that Mama Joyce will now be speaking up in behalf of her son-in-law and it will be interesting to see how Phaedra reacts to this.

Meanwhile, Kenya may finally get the chance to confront her mother next week, and fans will find out if they will come up with a solution to resolve their problems just like Kenya and her father were able to do.

"The Real Housewives of Atlanta" airs Sundays at 8/7c on Bravo.
'The Voice' winner Jordan Smith gets engaged to his 'best friend' Kristen Denny

"The Voice" season 9 winner Jordan Smith really knew how to greet the New Year with a bang!

The last few months of 2015 had really been good to Smith since he won the singing competition which catapulted him to fame. It seems like the Christian singer wants to continue his happy, lucky streak by proposing to his girlfriend (now fiancee) Kristen Denny.

Smith shared the joyous news on his Twitter account (@JordanSmithLive) with a picture of himself with Denny holding up her diamond ring. He writes, "RINGING in the new year with my future wife! She said YES! #Mr&Mrs. Smith."

Denny, on the other hand, expressed her joy on her Instagram account (@kristend) with a photo of her and Smith holding hands. "Wow! Yesterday was absolute perfection! Thanks for all the well wishes and sweet messages! I am so incredibly blessed and I can't wait to marry my best friend!"

The happy couple was showered with lots of love and congratulations from fans. "Congratulations, what a fabulous year this has been for you!! You deserve all the good that has come into your life!" someone told Smith.

Smith and Denny have been very open about their relationship on social media, often sharing sweet photos of how they hold "date nights" while in two different places as well as sweet surprises. "I seriously have the BEST boyfriend!!" gushed Denny as she shared a photo of her birthday present.

This is why their engagement did not come as a shock to fans and followers. "I feel like I've kind of been 'following' your guys' love story for a while now & its so sweet & beautiful that you're marrying," someone commented.

Another added that Smith's songs have always made her cry, but the proposal was a different thing altogether. "Once again, he brings me to tears of joy! He did good! ;) Hearing the news made my heart smile, love that for you both! God continues to bless you!"
Tory MP condemns Archbishops who speak up for refugees

Conservative MP David Davies has launched a scathing attack on the Archbishops of Canterbury and Wales for their calls for Britain to let in more refugees.

The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, used their New Year and Christmas messages to point out that Jesus was a refugee and to suggest that more refugees should be welcomed to Britain.

But in an article on his website, the MP for Monmouth said: "How wonderfully saintly it must feel to sleep at night with an easy conscience knowing you have roundly condemned the wicked politicians and bigots who worry about mass migration without actually having to take difficult decisions yourself and live with the consequences."

Such views will not fill the pews, Davies warned, citing a recent poll that shows that immigration is the issue of greatest concern to the population, more so than climate change, which is an issue that all church leaders including the Pope refer to frequently.

Davies said: "If Anglican leaders spent a bit more time listening to their rapidly diminishing flocks, they would discover that people want to help genuine refugees but are deeply concerned by the implications of the open door immigration policy which the Church seems to want."

He urged church leaders to heed the huge financial costs of immigraton, not just in terms of providing housing and money to those who come, but in terms of the impact on NHS services, school places and downward pressure on wages, especially for those in low paid jobs.

There are also environmental costs, he added. "The hundreds of thousands who arrive each year and the hundreds of thousands more who the Church want will need houses, roads and workplaces which need to be built in our decreasing number of green areas."

But the most serious costs are cultural, he argued. "Some of those coming to the UK have very different values to our own on issues such as gay rights, women's rights and the right of people to choose to leave their religion and take up another. Much more needs to be done by both Church and state to assimilate people with different values to our own. But the more who come, the harder this will be."

He admitted that church leaders had spoken up about forced marriage and female genital mutilation but challenged them to speak out also on the practice of covering women from head to foot in black. "The burka is now official uniform policy at some UK schools. Surely this is a matter the Church should have a view on," he wrote, quoting the Bible. "The Old Testament makes clear that foreigners living in the land of Israel were expected to obey the laws and customs of the land. It's a message we don't hear much of today."

Davies challenged church leaders to preach a different message.

"The Archbishop willing to confront in person those whose religious values condemn women and gays to being, at best, second class citizens and who would do harm to those converting to Christianity, would be truly walking in the footsteps of He who turned over the tables of the money changers."

A spokeswoman for the Church in Wales said: "We warmly welcome Mr Davies, and anyone else with a limited view of the scope of the ministry and concerns of the Church in Wales and the faith on which it is based, to join us and find out more. Our clergy serve every community in Wales."

The Archbishop of Canterbury's office made no comment.
Trump says Clinton and Obama created ISIS, claims that he's predicted the burning of Saudi embassy in Iran

U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is now blaming both President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for the creation and rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).

He is also claiming that he has predicted the burning of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran on Saturday as part of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In a rally in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Saturday night, Trump said Obama and Clinton "created ISIS," calling them a "bunch of dishonest people," Business Insider reported.

Trump followed this up with a new accusation against Clinton on Sunday, saying her decisions when she was Secretary of State in Obama's first term led to unnecessary deaths on both sides in the Middle East.

"She has caused tremendous death with incompetent decisions," Trump told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "She caused a lot of the problems that we have right now. You could say she caused the migration," he said as reported by USA Today.

"The entire world has been upset. The entire world, it's a different place. During Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's term, she's done a horrible job."

Trump said getting rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraqa policy of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bushhas led to the rise of the ISIS. "All of this has led to tremendous death and destruction," he said. "And she, for the most part, was in charge of it, along with Obama."

Trump and Clinton have been at loggerheads in recent weeks after Clinton said that his provocative campaign-trail statements had become propaganda for the ISIS, especially his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.

Trump demanded that Clinton apologise, but her campaign replied at the time, "Hell no. Hillary Clinton will not be apologising to Donald Trump for correctly pointing out how his hateful rhetoric only helps ISIS recruit more terrorists."

Days later, a video purportedly produced by the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab came out with the voice of Trump calling for the "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the U.S.

In reaction, Michael Cohen, a top Trump aide, tweeted on Saturday suggesting that Clinton was behind the new terrorist recruiting video featuring Trump, CNN reported.

Later on Sunday morning on "Face the Nation," Trump responded to his "starring role" in a recent terrorist recruitment video, according to CBS News.

After programme host John Dickerson played a portion of the al-Shabab video, Trump said he shouldn't be blamed for this.

"I bring it up. Other people have called me and say, 'You have guts to bring it up because frankly, it's true but nobody wants to get involved. Now people are getting involved."

Dickerson then asked, "Does it concern you at all that you're being used in essentially a recruitment video by a terrorist organisation?"

"They use other people, too," Trump said. "What am I going to do? I have to say what I have to say. And you [know] what I have to say? There's a problem. We have to find out what is a problem. And we have to solve that problem."

Earlier in Mississippi, Trump commented on the execution in Saudi Arabia of a prominent Shiite cleric that triggered massive protests in Iran. "I see a lot of things happening," he said.

"One thing I see out there just happened today in Tehran," he said. "They're burning down the Saudi Embassy, you see that? Now, what that is, is Iran wants to take over Saudi Arabia. They always have. They want the oil, OK? They've always wanted that."

In Saturday's rally, Trump also blasted Clinton, saying she "shouldn't be allowed to run" because of the private email system she used for her State Department work.

"She should be in jail, by the way, for what she did," Trump said. "Everybody knows she should be in jail. What she did with the emails is a disgrace," he said.

Earlier on Friday, five planes flew over the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, writing messages in the sky that included "America is great! Trump is disgusting. Anybody but Trump, US."

CBS News said an Alabama businessman, Stan Pate, was behind the airborne protest targeting Trump.
Vatican denies responsibility for alleged child labour on Catholic land

The Vatican has denied responsibility for child labour that is allegedly taking place on church-owned land in Uganda, claiming it is the responsibility of the local church.

A BBC investigation claims land owned by the Roman Catholic Church in Kabale, South West Uganda is being used for child labour.

The land, owned by the Catholic church and overlooked by a Catholic Cathedral, is loaned out to Kigezi Highland Tea Company, who are though to employ child labourers.

The BBC were alerted to the child labour on the plantations by Alex Turyaritunga, a former child soldier who now works as a nurse with the UNHCR in Uganda.

A supervisor on the plantation who worked for Kigezi Highland Tea Company told the BBC anonymously that children did work on the farm.

Reporters found 15 children working, gathering tea plants and carrying them up the steep hill to be planted. They were also litter picking and weeding.

Some of the children, when asked their age, told reporters that they were "10 years", before laughing and returning to work.

The youngest age it is legal for a child to work is 14, yet the latest UN figures estimate that 30 per cent of children between the ages of five and 14 are working.

A local Catholic official confirmed that the land was owned by the Catholic Church and that there had been "a business deal between the diocese and Kigezi Highland Tea" since 2013.

Attempts to contact the Bishop of the local diocese went unanswered, and Father Lucien, his secretary, denied that child labour was taking place on the church-owned land.

The Pope's spokesperson, Federico Lombardi, said "if there is a problem for the local church, I am not responsible for that."

Turyaritunga disagreed, saying; "Child labour damages children psychologically. I feel the Vatican should wake up and revise the business policy of the Catholic Church  or else there is going to be danger.

"I feel at the same time the Catholic Church is not ready for business," he added. "That's why I am calling for policy reform. And I know this policy reform will transform the community very well, because we will have no child abuse, we will have no child labour."
My space: Kathy Grayson

The New York gallerist talks to Lisa Johnson about what she puts on her walls at home. Photograph by Daniel Shea

Hanging in Kathy Graysons East Village apartment is a selection of art that amounts, she says, to a little story of all the people I have worked with over the years. A former director of Deitch Projects, Grayson now runs The Hole , which she launched in 2010. Dartmouth-educated, she has been discovering and developing talent for 13 years, and reckons that 99 per cent of the art she owns was given to her as a gift.

The one-bedroom apartment, shared with her boyfriend and a Pomeranian called Bert, is not architecturally significant, she admits; but it is in an old building with these cute details, and the wood flooring is really fancy and decorative. As well as her super-colourful art collection, Grayson has more than 10,000 art books, zines and catalogues, though the furniture is simple white or black: shes too much of a crazy mess to own any exceptional pieces.

The apartment is only a walk from her gallery, which is in the Bowery, a neighbourhood she loves for its history and energy. Granted, its become a design and art district thanks to the New Museum , she says. But though the museum opened in 2007, the old contrasts still exist: You literally get a line of people waiting for free food from the Bowery Mission that intersects with the line of people waiting to preview the Urs Fischer show.

Artists really hang together in New York, and that community philosophy informs my curating

Grayson named her gallery The Hole after the now defunct club of the same name, where all the subcultures of New York used to hang together: the graffiti guys, the gay-club kids, the arty weirdos and the bikers from Bushwick, and where she met the artists who became her friends. Even if she is no longer the wild curator person she was at Deitch, she says that the same spirit of freedom and rebellion still informs what we do here, and I think people feel it. Artists really hang together in New York, and that community philosophy informs my curating. The shows are about artists who relate to each other, have collaborated with each other or share philosophies.

Some of the gallerys exhibitions and artists make money, among them Holton Rower and Matthew Stone; others do not. But thats fine, says Grayson. Her latest discovery, featured in the group show Not a Photo , is Australian artist Ry David Bradley, who is interested in the impact of digital media on painting.

The gallery used to be renowned for the big opening parties it held, but Grayson, now 35, has put them on hold for the moment: You cant be up at 5am, dancing in your underpants, and run a business, she says. And I want people to think critically about the art and take the gallery seriously.

01 & 02

This is a drawing by Matt Leines and a painting by Keegan McHargue, who were in the first show I curated after I graduated. I found them a gallery in Williamsburg, the show was reviewed in the New York Times, and I sold all the works. So they gave me a present to say thank you.

03

The Dan Colen gum painting is probably the most valuable thing I own. In 2006, I went to his studio in Tribeca to interview him for a magazine. He was just starting to make gum paintings and he gave me that; it was like a little test one.

04

A Polaroid enlargement by my late friend Dash Snow , who died of a drug overdose in 2009. He heavily influenced my perspective on art and just living in the world. He took about 80,000 Polaroids and I have 15 or 20. Hes just had a giant show at the Brant Foundation in Connecticut.

05

The drawing with the rolled-up dollar bills for nostrils is by the Canadian artist Aurel Schmidt, who is someone I discovered. We did a show at Deitch, and shes now a famous artist. She gave me this one; we were doing tons of coke at the time.

06

This is by Ben Jones, a creative genius who is now a head of animation at Fox, so hes one that I lost! He did a show at Deitch called Super Mario Movie that was the best piece of new media ever.

07

A present from Holton Rower. We launched his career at The Hole and his works now sell for $50,000. Hes Alexander Calders grandson and known for his gigantic pour paintings.

08

This one is by Michael Dotson. Im good at telling early on whos going to be great. Occasionally Ill buy a piece for $1,000 because I love it and know its going to skyrocket in value.

09

This is by Matthew Stone, the first person I called saying, Im opening a gallery and wed like to show you. He started an art collective in a south London squat and is now a manifesto-writing artist-intellectual, but his insight comes from lived experience. Thats the type of work we want, not art thats only about art and the art world.

Not a Photo runs until 17 January
The KTRK family is getting even bigger, the Houston station says.

Morning anchor Samica Knight announced on the air, and on Twitter, that she and her husband are expecting a baby. The happy news comes about two weeks after traffic reporter Rebecca Spera showed off her new baby boy.
The armed standoff in remote southeast Oregon, where white militants led by the Bundy clan have taken over federal buildings at a wildlife refuge, isn't going according to plan.

The would-be insurrectionists are undermanned, undersupplied and exhausted. They've been unable to provoke the confrontation with federal agents that they chest-thumpingly declared themselves willing to die in. And they've found themselves roundly mocked on social media as "Yee-hawdists" in the service of "Y'all Qaeda," "Yokel Haram" or "Vanilla ISIS."

Taking up arms against the federal government is no laughing matter, of course. And if the militants were black, brown or Muslim, they'd likely be dead by now. But for a group of heavily armed Christian white dudes play-acting at revolution, things could hardly be going worse.

On Monday night, in fact, one Bundy brother told Oregon Public Broadcasting the militiamen might be willing to move along now  if the community requests it: "This is their county  we can't be here and force this on them," Ryan Bundy said. "If they don't want to retrieve their rights, and if the county people tell us to leave, we'll leave."

How did the Bundy plan for revolution go sideways? The troubled evolution of the plot can be traced via Ammon Bundy's social media presence.

December 29

The grand scheme to take a "hard stand" against federal "tyranny" took shape in the days after Christmas. In a video posted December 29, Ammon Bundy, son of the infamous deadbeat rancher Cliven, decried the "tremendous abuses" faced by a pair of Oregon cattlemen convicted of arson by the federal government. "We have to say that either we're OK with these gross, blatant violations of the constitution or we make a stand," Bundy declared.

That's when Bundy, fighting tears, issued a call to action to his family's militant, anti-government supporters: "I'm asking you  and you know who you are: You that came, and you that felt to come, to the Bundy Ranch  I'm asking you to come to Burns [Oregon] on January 2, to make a stand."

December 31

Almost from the beginning, there were warning signs that this plot wasn't gelling, because of internal strife in the "patriot" community. In his next video, posted on New Year's Eve, a nervous looking Ammon Bundy calls out to militia members across the country. He pleads with them to flout the orders of militia leaders who, he reveals, had been calling for a "stand down"  instead of a standoff  in Oregon.

Looking into the camera lens, Bundy says: "I am wanting to talk to the individual, to the patriot. This is not the time to stand down," he says, "It's time to stand up. And come to Harney County. We need your help. And we're asking for it. No matter what your leader says you need to get to Burns on the 2nd."

January 2

Bundy did find followers, including men like John Ritzheimer, the Arizona man who organized the gun-toting protest of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix last October. Ritzheimer ventured to Oregon and declared himself, in a goodbye video to his family, "100 percent willing to lay my life down to fight against tyranny in this country."

Seizing an unoccupied federal complex wasn't the tricky part. Following a demonstration on the streets of Burns on Saturday, January 2, the Bundy militiamen drove 30 miles south to execute their takeover of the compound at the federal Malheur National Wildlife Refuge  which was closed for the weekend, and to which somehow they had obtained a full set of keys.

The Malheur complex has more than half a dozen buildings, and one, major strategic asset for men with guns: a massive fire-watch tower, easily converted for use by snipers.

In the immediate aftermath of the Saturday takeover, Bundy talked a big game: "We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he said. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

The militants also told reporters that their numbers were legion  as many as 150. Oddly, however, Bundy also issued a call for backup: "Those who... feel the need to stand, we're asking them to come. We have a facility that we can house them in. We need you to come and be unified with us so we can be protected," he said.

January 3

By light of day it becomes clear the militants' manpower was greatly exaggerated: Credible estimates from visitors to the complex put their number at fewer than two dozen, and perhaps as low as 15 men. And this skeleton crew is clearly struggling to secure the sprawling complex in the bitter cold of the Oregon high desert, where temperatures drop into the single digits at night.

By Sunday night a visibly exhausted Ammon Bundy made a new call for reinforcement, invoking his divine inspiration: "I know that what we did is right. I know the Lord is involved, and I know that we're going to see great things come from this," Bundy said. "But we need you. We need you," he pleaded. "We have a group of wonderful people here that are strong. We've got good numbers. But there is a lot to do, and we will eventually get tired if we do not have help. We also need more of a defense. Need to make sure that there is enough people here that nobody comes down upon us  and that is a very real reality right now. So we need you to come and we need you be part of this."

January 4

The militant's preparedness for an as-long-as-it-takes standoff was similarly laughable. By Monday, it was clear the militants were under-resourced, and hungry. Supporters put out a call online to send "supplies and snacks."

Another self-described "patriot," Maureen Peltier, took to Facebook with a laundry list of desired supplies, including foil, hygiene needs and locks, and provided an address where supporters can send them.

Ironically, the same folks who are seeking a local overthrow of the federal government still seem to have confidence the government will deliver their mail.

As the standoff has dragged on, the federal government seems content to let the militants freeze in isolation  and tire of their make-believe revolution.

Even once-reliably anti-government Republicans are turning their backs: Ted Cruz, who once sympathized with Cliven Bundy's stand against the Obama administration's "jackboot authoritarianism," has called on Bundy's sons to "stand down."

The Harney County Sheriff released a statement saying flatly: "It's time for you to leave our community."

Even the wife of one of the two local ranchers  for whose honor and justice the militants claim to be ready to lay down their lives  has been throwing shade: "I don't really know the purpose of the guys who are out there," she told Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Where We Are Now

Instead of building the fearsome anti-government insurgency of their fever dreams, the hungry, dirty, exhausted Bundy militants are looking more and more like the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Here's hoping they have the sense to lay down their weapons before their true marksmanship is tested.

This article originally appeared on Rollingstone.com: Armed, Pathetic and Hungry: How the Oregon Militants' Revolutionary Plan Went Sideways
Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen was arrested at his New York City home Monday night after a physical altercation with his wife, musician Libby Titus. A New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed to Rolling Stone that Fagen was charged with misdemeanor assault.

"[Titus] and Fagen were involved in a verbal dispute, at which point he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her," the spokesperson says. "She fell, bruising her arm." A representative for Fagen declined to comment.

Fagen was released Tuesday morning without bail after his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court. Per The New York Post, Fagen was also issued an order of protection to keep away from Titus.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by the paper, Fagen allegedly pushed Titus into a marble window frame, "causing her to fall onto the frame and suffer bruising and swelling to her right arm, as well as substantial pain."

Fagen and Titus married in 1993. They met while attending Bard College in the mid-Sixties, during which time Fagen also co-founded Steely Dan with guitarist Walter Becker. The group has not released an album since 2003's Everything Must Go, but continues to tour regularly.

Titus has also had a fruitful music career, releasing a handful of solo albums and collaborating with a variety of artists and producers including Paul Simon, Phil Ramone, Robbie Robertson, Burt Bacharach and Carly Simon. Titus also helped Fagen produce the New York Rock and Soul Revue  a series of concerts featuring an array of top musicians  from 1989 to 1992.

This article originally appeared on Rollingstone.com: Steely Dan's Donald Fagen Arrested for Domestic Assault
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As part of what could be a lengthy process, Harris County officials have obtained a temporary injunction to close a "nude modeling studio" accused of promoting prostitution.

Miyun Studio, 7711 Gulf Freeway, was closed Dec. 18 by a temporary injunction signed by State District Judge Jaclanel McFarland of the 133rd Civil Court.

The business, which holds itself out as a nude modeling studio and massage establishment, is the site of prostitution activity, according to court documents.

RELATED: 60 charged with prostitution in Houston in 2 weeks

The office of Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, on behalf of the state of Texas, requested the injunction as part of its Dec. 16 petition for "abatement of a common nuisance."

"Ultimately, we're seeking a permanent injunction that shuts this place down," Assistant Harris County Attorney Julie Countiss said Tuesday. "It's important that we get a permanent injunction that attaches to that property, so this landlord can't rent to another tenant (of the same type)."

Google Maps

Named as defendants in the petition are Woosung Corp, which does business as Miyun Studio; Yun K. Pak, the business operator; and B. J. Hooks, the property owner.

"A person who maintains a place to which persons habitually go for prostitution and who knowingly tolerates the activity and fails to make reasonable attempts to abate the activity maintains a common nuisance," the petition states.

Attorney David M. Paz, representing the defendants, filed answers to the petition, stating a general denial as well as special exceptions and affirmative defenses.

RELATED: Bust of Houston gentlemen's club reveals prostitution, gambling, alcohol violations

"The State of Texas' petition fails to allege the facts which would demonstrate how and in what manner defendant knowingly tolerate(d) the activity and failed to make reasonable attempts to abate the activity..." the answer states.

According to the petition, Houston police officers did an investigation Aug. 21 at the studio which resulted in the arrest of another employee, Yong Gomez, 46, who was charged with prostitution.

She was released on $2,000 bail and has a court date for Friday in the 232rd State District Court.

Pak, 73, was arrested in May 2013 on a charge of operating a massage parlor without a license. That case was dismissed five months later.

RELATED: 38 Houston-area massage parlors cited for illegal activity

The new case is set for trial in December.

In the meantime, if the business resumes operation, it will be found in contempt of court and subject to appropriate sanctions, Countiss said.
A 28-year-old woman employed as an English tutor at Kingwood Park High School is accused of having sex with a male student both at her home and in her car.

Cierra Nicole Crain, of Cleveland, is charged with sexual assault of a child age 14 to 17. She was not in custody on Tuesday, according to online records.

School employees overheard students gossiping about an alleged sexual relationship between a male student and a teacher, Humble school district police said. When the school principal spoke with the student, he confirmed that he had a relationship with Crain, police said.

The principal called Crain into her office on Nov. 16 to tell her there had been an allegation of an inappropriate relationship and that she needed to leave the campus, according to the arrest warrant.

The first time the student and teacher engaged in sexual activity was at her home, the boy told authorities. Another sexual encounter occurred late in the evening Oct. 30, after he received a Snapchat message on his phone, records state. Prior to that occasion, the boy had communicated with Crain "many times" by Snapchat, he told police.

On Oct. 30, Crain asked the boy to meet her in the parking lot of Woodland Hills Elementary School, which he did. The two had sex in her car, according to the arrest warrant.

A spokeswoman for the Humble school district could not be immediately reached on Tuesday.
Police departments around Fort Bend County are urging residents to play it safe when meeting strangers to conclude online transactions, offering their parking lots as safe sites for meetings.

"We are trying to be proactive in preventing crimes. We have only had one reported incident of robbery so far, but just because it is not a significant problem at this time does not mean it could not become one," said Sugar Land Police Department crime prevention officer Lauren Stockholm.

The Sugar Land department via press release has extended a formal invitation for residents to utilize its parking lot as a meeting place to complete transactions from online sales. Other departments offering a similar invitation include the Fulshear and Rosenberg Police departments.

"Strangers often meet to complete transactions from online sites like eBay, Craigslist and other classified listings. It is a practice that can result in assaults and thefts. Well- lit, public places like police parking lots provide a safer option to finalize sales and purchases," said Sugar Land spokesman Doug Adolph.

Stockholm said the one confirmed incident she referred to took place at a local Wal-Mart and was the culmination of a Craigslist transaction. The crook got away with money and the victim's cell phone.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation website (fbi.gov) lists numerous accounts of crimes committed under the ruse of completing an online transaction.

According to the FBI, in one standout case, three Kansas City men were indicted for a series of robberies in 2014. The indictment alleged the three participated in a conspiracy to rob several individuals at gunpoint. According to the indictment, "six armed robberies occurred after conspirators posted false advertisements to buy or sell items on craigslist.org in order to entice their victims to meet so that conspirators could steal money and electronics."

Other widely reported incidents from last year include a couple who were shot in McRae, Georgia, after meeting a man who answered their online ad to buy a 1966 Ford Mustang; a 21-year-old college student who was robbed, shot and killed in Marietta, Georgia, after answering an ad to purchase an iPhone; and a pregnant woman in Longmont, Colorado, who responded to an ad to buy baby clothes who was stabbed and had her fetus removed from her body. She lived but the fetus died.

Lt. William Henry with the Rosenberg Police Department said there have been no reported incidents of crimes committed under the guise of an online transaction in Rosenberg.

He said the department does not have an official policy at this point, "but we welcome people to conclude their online transactions at our parking lot. Public safety is important. It is important that we never let our guard down."

Henry said citizens should use common sense, which includes meeting in well-lit, public places and preferably in the daylight hours.

Henry and Stockholm agree that a citizen should trust their instincts. As the adage says, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

"If something does not feel right, then back out," Henry said.

"If something makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, leave. There is no law that says you have to stay and complete the transaction," Stockholm said. She said she has herself bought and sold and completed online transactions via personal meetings.

Adolph added tips which include sharing the location of the intended meeting place with a friend or family member, keeping your cell phone available, and having friends in attendance.

A spokesman with the Fulshear Police Department told the Chronicle the department began making its parking lot available last year and the practice has been positively received by the community.

"We do not have any written policies regarding this matter but we always encourage citizens to make such transactions in a public place, which would include the police department parking lot," said Missouri City police Capt. Paul Poulton.

Though the departments make their parking lots available, none commit officers to monitor transactions.
Two years ago H-E-B introduced a program called, "Quest for Texas Best," which is an opportunity for local, small, women and minority food and beverage suppliers to have their items considered for H-E-B shelves.

Because the program has been so well-received, H-E-B is bringing the program back for a third year.

The open solicitation for product ideas will take tentatively take place in February. Interested food and beverage suppliers will have a chance to use an online H-E-B portal to submit ideas.

The top 25 finalists have a chance to win prize money for finishing in the top four. Many of the winners, finalists and entrants' products have been placed on H-E-B shelves.

Contact James E. Harris, H-E-B, at 713-329-3929 for information.

Industrial parkwelcomes new tenants

Energy Park West will open new buildings in early 2016. It recently added industries to its facility.

At Energy Park West, three businesses recently signed leases. Texas Food Solutions, a food processing company, moved into a 40,000-square-foot building in November. Seanic Ocean Systems, which manufactures underwater remotely operated vehicles, will move in January when its 60,000-square- foot building is ready. The third business, Inquest Services, which tests oil and gas drilling services, is building a 15,000-square-foot facility. A fourth building to be leased to another tenant is scheduled for completion by summer.

Japanese, Vietnamese food restaurant opens

Express Rolls opened Jan. 5 at Mason Village, 21953-A Katy Freeway, Katy. The restaurant offers sushi dishes as combos and as individual pieces. Summer rolls boxes are loaded with veggies and fruits with a variety of protein options.Bento Boxes and bowls contain protein and side dishes. Bowls are filled with traditional Vietnamese rice and topped with fresh vegetables and different protein options.

For more information check http://expressrolls.com or call 832-913-3770

Grand Morton Town Center signs tenants

Grand Morton Town Center, 89 acres at the northeast and southeast corners of Grand Parkway and Morton Ranch Road in Katy, has proposed tenants of Kroger, Chick-Fil-A, Whataburger, Michael's, Ross and McDonalds.

Other expected tenants include Freebirds World Burrito, Subway, Petco, Rack Room Shoes, Sport Clips, Sherwin Williams, Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo Bank, T-Mobile, Supercuts, Mattress Firm and Mattress Pro.

Altitude Trampoline Park plans opening

Altitude Trampoline Park has announced an agreement is in place for a 33,000-square-foot facility in Katy, located at Interstate 10 West and Katy Fort Bend Road. Facility preparation has begun and company officials expect to be open in mid spring of 2016.

Altitude Trampoline Park-Katy will be one of the first trampoline parks in Texas to house more than 19,000 square feet of trampolines as well as two Extreme Dodgeball courts, an interactive foam pit, two battle beams, a rockwall and a trapeze bar.

The facility expects to hire 50 or more part-time employees as well as several full-time positions.

For information: http://www.AltitudeKaty.com
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Healthcare in Spring continues to expand with the opening of CHI St. Luke's Health's new $120 million medical campus in Springwoods Village later this month.

St. Luke's is working to fill the growing need as 10,000 new employees start work at Exxon Mobil Corp's Spring campus. Southwestern Energy Co., one of the largest producers of natural gas in the United States, also recently opened its new headquarters in the area and 50,000 new residents and employees are expected to move to the master-planned community of Springwoods Village.

The medical campus at the corner of the new Grand Parkway and Holzworth Road will serve not only the Springwoods Village development, but also the greater Spring area.

Healthcare has been one of the main pillars as Springwoods Village is built, said David Argueta, president of CHI St. Luke's Health-The Woodlands Hospital and Lakeside Hospital.

More Information More details CHI St. Luke's Health's $120 million medical campus is opening later this month at the corner of the new Grand Parkway and Holzworth Road. The medical campus will have a graduated opening, with the first and second floors opening in January and the other primary -care floors opening in the spring. The first phase of the hospital will include a 55,000-square-foot ambulatory medical center and a 100,000-square-foot medical office building. CHI St. Luke's Health began seeing patients in May at its new Springwoods Village location at a temporary clinic while its medical campus was under construction. The clinic will move into the main building in the spring. See More Collapse

"Everything is on track, ready to go," Argueta said. "We are extremely excited about serving the community."

CHI St. Luke's has been training its Springwoods Village staff at its Woodlands hospital to prepare for the opening.

The medical campus will have a staggered opening, with the first and second floors opening in January and the other primary-care floors opening in the spring.

The first phase of the hospital will include a 55,000-square-foot ambulatory medical center and a 100,000-square-foot medical office building.

CHI St. Luke's Health began seeing patients in May at its new Springwoods Village location at a temporary clinic while its medical campus was under construction. The clinic will move into the main building in the spring.

Primary care is the anchor of the entire Springwoods Village project, said Matt Wright, chief operating officer with CHI St. Luke's Medical Group.

The clinic, which opened May 4 at 2255 E. Mossy Oaks in Spring, offers primary-care services by established St. Luke's Woodlands physician Dr. Amil James Soliz. The facility offers wellness exams for infants, children and adults, nonemergency care, in-house EKG and lab collection, as well as an array of other medical services.

"It's been a huge success," Argueta said of the clinic. "We're seeing 15 to 20 patients a day, and about 60 new patients each month."

The patients are a combination of Springwoods Village residents and employees and residents from the surrounding Spring area, Argueta said.

"We have been seeing patients from other Spring areas, like the Riley Fuzzel area where there's a lot of population growth," Argueta said. "For people who haven't had as ready access to healthcare; access is now easier."

The new medical campus will reduce the need for area residents to travel far from home for healthcare, Argueta said.

CHI St. Luke's Springwoods Village medical campus will be run very differently from a traditional acute-care hospital system, Wright said. It is an integrated community healthcare provider, focusing on healthy living, wellness and preventative care, Wright said.

St. Luke's is bringing in physicians from all over the Houston region. In addition, St. Luke's partners with Baylor College of Medicine and will have specialists from the Texas Medical Center rotating through the Springwoods Village campus.

The hospital is building its facility in phases and has plans to continue growing along with the community. At build out, the hospital will have 250-beds.

St. Luke's will be the exclusive healthcare provider for Springwoods Village for 6 years.

In addition to the initial investment for the project of $120 million, CHI St. Luke's Health has committed as much as $70 million over the next five years for further development.
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Community leaders in northwest Houston are taking a closer look at marketing as the Grand Parkway moves closer to completion.

Representatives from the Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce and the Tomball Economic Development Corp. took a tour of the nearly completed Grand Parkway with members of the North Houston Center for Economic Development, the Greater Houston Partnership and the Harris County Precinct 4 representatives to see firsthand the opportunities for economic development as a result of the Grand Parkway.

"We are all so close (proximity), but they were just amazed at what we had to offer out here," said Bruce Hillegeist, president of the Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce.

The purpose of the tour was to showcase economic benefits of the area of northwest Houston and the Grand Parkway to business leaders in and around Harris County, and see first-hand many of the available properties along the Grand Parkway.

Many of those properties are owned by Caldwell Companies, and NewQuest Development, Hillegeist said.

"This was a game changer for us," he said.

The Greater Tomball region has become a significant player in attracting business large and small, including Baker Hughes, which relocated to Tomball in 2012, and Packers Plus, which announced plans to relocate to the Tomball Business and Technology Park in 2016.

"The idea behind doing that trip was to get a little more of an understanding of the activity that's going on in the north Houston region," said Kelly Violette, executive director for the Tomball EDC. "We wanted to bring everyone together, and look at regionally what is going on, and the spine of it - being the Grand Parkway - and how that really connects us."

Debbie Howle, director for the North Houston Regional Center for Economic Development, said the tour was exciting from an economic development standpoint, but seeing the vast amount of land between U.S. 290 and Interstate 45 means the region will likely begin to see substantial development soon after the Grand Parkway officially opens to traffic in 2016.

"We try and imagine and we have seen maps with dots and the Grand Parkway on it, but to actually driveand see all of the land that is now accessible for development, our metropolitan area is greatly expanded," she said. "It's just made our region so much bigger because of accessibility now. These were farm lands. They were out in the country, but they aren't now."

Segments F1, F2 and G of the Grand Parkway - between U.S. 290 in Cypress, and Interstate 69 north of Kingwood - include more than 33 miles of land that is already seeing some development in mixed-use or residential communities.

However, in northwest Houston, much of that land is untouched.

Howle said the accessibility will likely attract industrial manufacturers, or corporations looking to relocate their administrative teams.

"We receive a lot of inquiries through the Greater Houston Partnership or site selectors who are looking to find large parcels of land to develop.

Since there are few, if any, economic development organizations outside of the Greater Tomball area, a great many commercial developers could look more toward the Tomball region in an effort to obtain grant or incentive funding to help with infrastructure costs, as well as to provide direction with the Tomball City Council.

"The message was relayed over and over of this really being a game changer for us," Violette said. "I think this really opened everyone's eyes and brought us together as a region."
That I could stand stalwart in the hopes that they might live, inextricable from the scattered remains of courage that blow through the infinite passages we seek. --Bridgid
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050116NON RELEASE OF MEMBERS FUNDS COULD AFFECT THE START OF TECHNICAL SCHOOL ON BOUGAINVILLE.



By Aloysius Laukai



Non release of funds promised to fund the Baneo Campus of the MORAMORA Technical School in West New Britain could cancel the sister arrangement that could have started this year.



The Chairman of the Bougainville Education Board and caretaker for the School, TONY TSORA revealed this to New Dawn FM today.



MR. TSORA said that they had applied for funds from the District Service Improvement Program funds(DSIP) from the Member for North Bougainville, LOUTA ATOI and the Provincial Services Improvement Program(PSIP) fund from the Regional member, JOE LERA and both had approved the completion of buildings at the School.



He said because these funds have not been released it has affected the establishment of this school this year.



MR. TSORA called on the two members to fast-track their funds so that preparations for these building can be done quickly.



MR. TSORA made this known when updating New Dawn FM on the progress of Education services on Bougainville.



He said despite these problems the Tinputz High School near TEAROUKI will commence classes this year.



Ends


This site is kept by Boyce Richardson, journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker, of a leftist persuasion. Established 1996
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Now that licensed Texans can openly carry their guns, schools face the challenge of knowing when to call for a lock down.

If someone approaches a school while wearing a firearm, how do authorities proceed?

In an official blog post, the Houston Independent School District outlined answers to some of those questions. If someone is spotted with a gun outside a campus, the district wrote, "several decisions can be made from monitoring the individual" and evaluating their familiarity to school staff plus any "suspicious activity" they may be exhibiting.

RELATED: Open Carry: Do's and Don'ts

Firearms will be allowed in parking lots, school bus pick-up and drop-off areas, parent drop-off or pickup areas, on sidewalks surrounding the school and up to the door of the school building.

In its post, the district said it would remind staff to stay vigilant for armed individuals, and would maintain extra security by keeping doors locked and directing all visitors to a main entrance.

It also said that law enforcement are allowed to demand identification and license from anyone carrying a firearm near the school.

RELATED: What Texas' Open Carry gun law actually says

Guns will not be allowed inside the schools, at school-sponsored events, on school vehicles or at district board meetings.

District policy prevents employees from carrying firearms anywhere on campus, whether inside or outside the school building. An item addressing that rule will be presented at the district's January board meeting.
Surgeons at the Texas Medical Center had to remove a hammer from a woman's head after she was attacked in Chambers County, authorities said Monday.

Sheriff's deputies found Lee Ann Bridges, 29, about 2 p.m. Sunday after they were sent to investigate an assault in the 400 block of South 3rd Street in Stowell, officials said.
Britain's Daily Mail retraced the steps of Texas' infamous "affluenza" teen who wandered through a Mexican boys' town in hiding from U.S. authorities, and published an exclusive report Monday.

Ethan Couch, 18, drew ire in 2013 when he got off without jail time for killing four in a drunk driving wreck. His attorney had argued he suffered from "affluenza" and that his wealthy upbringing impeded his understanding of right and wrong.

When video evidence emerged that Couch violated his 10-year probation via a game of underage beer pong, he and his mother fled to Mexico in December.

The Dallas Morning News already reported that Couch blew big bucks and strip club bars and stumbled home to his Puerto Vallarta hotel to ask his mom for money. But the Daily Mail took a closer look at Couch's wild night, churning up dark details about each step he took.

RELATED: Hotel employee: 'Affluenza' teen racked up a strip club bar tab in Mexico and his mom had to pay it

Couch was in exclusive company down a central strip in a Pacific coast resort town. The Puerto Vallarta bars, the Daily Mail reported, are a frequent hangout for members of the criminal underground. One manager even named famed outlaw El Chapo Guzman as a customer. Many of the bars openly offer free condoms for high-paying clients, the Daily Mail wrote.

Couch visited one of the area's classiest strip clubs, then moved across the street to another establishment that advertised "boobies and booties galore" below its logo. There he threw down more than $2,000. What he purchased remains unknown, but it surely included plenty of alcohol, because media reports indicate that Couch was unable to walk well or remember how much he'd spent when he asked his hotel receptionist to wake his mother in the middle of the night and ask her for cash to cover his tab.

RELATED: Call for pizza led authorities to 'affluenza' teen

On Tuesday, Couch's mother Tonya Couch agreed to be sent back to Texas to face charges for aiding her son's escape from the law. She will likely face extradition to her home state of Texas.

The young Couch remains in Mexico where he won a stay of deportation, and has retained the services of a highly-regarded attorney who will fight to keep him safe from the U.S. justice system.
Argument over the nation's Civil War legacy has flared up again in Texas.

Some residents in Georgetown are rejecting plans for a Jan. 30 "Old South Ball" at the Williamson County Courthouse, calling it a glorification of an era underpinned by war and racism, reported the Austin American-Statesman.

Mickie Ross, director of the Williamson Museum at the Courthouse, told the Statesman that the event was "just telling the story" of Civil War-era Texans. According to the museum website, the ball, dubbed "a civil war dance," will feature historical costumes, dances and music.

RELATED: 150 years after fall, Confederate memories linger in Texas

But an online petition with over 100 signatures claimed that common people would have celebrated at small home gatherings in common clothes, while the scheduled event seems more like "a slaver's plantation ball."

"It would fall in the same vein as "The Old Nazi Ball," one Georgetown signatory commented.

The petition also noted that Georgetown and Williamson County voted against inclusion of Texas in the Confederacy, and cast one of few dissenting votes against secession.

RELATED: How Texas is whitewashing Civil War history

"Perhaps we should glorify our resistance to secession and slavery instead of celebrating the senseless death of hundreds of thousands of men," the petition said.

Texas seceded from the United States in 1861, based primarily on disputes over slavery, according to the state's declaration of secession, which mentioned slavery 21 times.

According to the museum's calendar, the ball is still planned to proceed with tickets $25 per person or $40 per couple.
THE LEAD: #txlege 2017 radar

As soon as ethics reform went down in flames last session, it became the biggest 2017 target for state lawmakers and the governor. Read the latest story by the Houston Chronicles Jim Drew to get a glimpse at the important questions facing them when they return next year.

"How much should state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican, be required to disclose about her husband's 34 businesses, which include an array of local bars that are regulated by the state? It's a question currently before the Texas Legislature that surfaced last session and helped derail Gov. Greg Abbott's reform agenda on ethics, which he called the most important commodity we have as elected officials. When Abbott made ethics reform a top priority a year ago, spousal disclosure wasn't front and center in a package of provisions that he designated as emergency items. But it is on his radar screen now after an eleventh-hour maneuver by Huffman in which she inserted a clause into an unrelated ethics measure that answered the question about disclosure and her husband's businesses in a word: Nothing. How the matter plays out could be a harbinger of progress in Texas, which is not known for the strength of its ethics laws - hence Abbott's focus. http://bit.ly/1UsUxMs

Good Tuesday morning from Texas Take, where were thrilled Eva Ruth Moravec will be joining our partners at Quorum Report as a contributing writer. Watch out, yall. Meanwhile, send your 2016 predictions, scoops and tips to bobby.cervantes@chron.com or tweet me @BobbyCervantes.

 NEW this morning: Trump and Cruz send shivers down GOP spines, by Politicos Alex Isenstadt. In private conversations with several former aides, Mitt Romney, who in March will keynote the National Republican Congressional Committees annual fundraising dinner, has expressed rising frustration about Trumps prolonged lead in polls and has argued that the real-estate mogul could inflict lasting damage on the partys brand.

In Washington and elsewhere, meanwhile, Republicans are on the hunt for a political entity that can be used to stop Trump. In recent weeks, Alex Castellanos, a veteran TV ad man who was a top adviser to George W. Bush and Romney, has been meeting with top GOP operatives and donors to gauge interest in launching an anti-Trump vehicle that would pummel the Manhattan businessman on the television airwaves. http://goo.gl/jj5Zso

 Advisory committee see Texas first interstate in decades as possible, by Quorum Reports Kimberly Reeves. The creation of the first new interstate freeway in Texas in decades is expected to cross 14 border crossings, 8 seaports and 10 commercial airports, at a cost $14.2 billion. The long-awaited Interstate 69, however, is still on the books. But, some like former lawmaker Judy Hawley still hold out hope for completion which would move traffic and freight from Brownsville up through East Texas. http://goo.gl/5oCuQ3

 Becoming Ted Cruz: How he turned an obscure Texas legal post into a national platform, by Politicos Michael Kruse. As Cruz climbs to the top of the Republican presidential field, the five-plus years he served as the solicitor general of Texas remain the most important period in his public resume. Theyre the record he ran on when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012and they represent significantly more of his working life than the three years he has served so far in the Senate. They're also a prime source of fodder for liberal and moderate critics, should be become the Republican presidential nominee.

A Politico review of Cruzs record as solicitor general shows he used the role in a new and far more ideological way than his predecessors, taking a relatively low-profile job that had traditionally been used mostly to defend the state government and turning it into a stage for pushing national conservative causes. http://goo.gl/pt9OCu

 Obama to unveil new gun restrictions, slams Congress for inaction, by WashPosts David Nakamura.The package, which Obama plans to announce Tuesday, includes 10 separate provisions, White House officials said. One key proposal would require more gun sellers - especially those who do business on the Internet and at gun shows - to be licensed and would force them to conduct background checks on potential buyers. Obama would devote more federal funds to treating mental illness - a move that could require congressional approval - and require that firearms lost in transit between a manufacturer and seller be reported to federal authorities.http://goo.gl/QIj3i6

 For you GOPers: Obama initiative on gun control shows limits of acting alone, APs Josh Lederman.Yet even the more modest steps Obama will announce Tuesday rely on murky interpretations of existing law that could be easily reversed by his successor. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other top officials declined to explain why Obama hadn't taken these steps years ago and whether the administration had contemplated these actions in the past but determined Obama didn't have the authority. http://goo.gl/klbxN5

SPEED READ

Donald Trump dominates first national poll of 2016, Politico

TEA punts charter school property issue to AGs office, Quorum Report

Management shakeup at Agendawise, Quorum Report

Carpetbaggers on display in District 120 race, San Antonio Express-News

White House asks top court to reject Texas abortion law, Reuters

Bonuses flow at LCRA, especially at the top, Austin American-Statesman

How the culture of victimhood translates to Texas politics, Texas Monthly

Tilove: Ted Cruz and the ghosts of caucuses past, Austin American-Statesman

Texas to flex its muscle in big Super Tuesday primary, The Dallas Morning News

Division in GOP signals moment of repose for Texas Dems, The Dallas Morning News

Contrasting tones in Cruz and Trump ads, Houston Chronicle

Oil prices volatile on Saudi-Iran tension, Houston Chronicle

Mayor Turner delivers inaugural speech, Houston Chronicle

Obama administration moves to deport Central American families denied asylum, Houston Chronicle

Big Bend pipeline passes environmental hurdle, San Antonio Express-News

Uber lawsuit zooms closer to trial, Houston Chronicle

QUOTE TO NOTE

Its not a snub. Hes going to be in New Hampshire, working hard to win New Hampshire. No disrespect. It just is going to work out this way.

 Rick Tyler, a spokesman for Ted Cruz, on why the Texas senator is missing President Obamas final State of the Union address. http://goo.gl/7gIifM

RACE TO 2016

 Obama thrusts gun control debate into forefront of 2016 race, by APs Julie Pace. But in a general election, the gun debate becomes a blurrier political proposition. Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws.  For now, Obama's gun actions are a central topic as candidates crisscross Iowa, New Hampshire and other early voting states. http://goo.gl/8Upa6X

 GOP candidates are starting to condemn the armed protesters, while keeping one eye on Nevada, by the Politicos Kyle Cheney. After two days of silence, the GOP candidates are treading carefully around the armed seizure of a federal wildlife refuge, in which the protesters vowed to make a long-term stand against what they described as overbearing federal land regulations. Most candidates still havent addressed the crisis, and one professed ignorance of it. But the few who have spoken up did so gingerly. http://goo.gl/hqhBXm

 What the 2016 candidates must do to win, per Bloombergs Sahil Kapur, Michael Bender, Arit John:Can a Republican win without succeeding in Iowa and New Hampshire? Can Clinton avoid a stumble?http://goo.gl/UZBPoa

 Forget hopes and dreams: GOP race is all about nightmares, by WashPosts Matea Gold. Scenes of masked men toting guns and waving black Islamic State flags. Refugees scrambling across the border. Fires and explosions. Its not just a Donald Trump ad . Most of the Republican presidential contenders and their allies are now waging campaigns focused on fear  bombarding voters with ominous television spots that warn of national security threats and amping up their alarming rhetoric on the stump. https://goo.gl/hP7b4e
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
Cherokee Historic Preservation Commission seeks new member The Cherokee Historic Preservation Commission has a vacancy for a new member beginning immediately due to the departure of a...

Library friends busy building Book Baskets This year will mark the 23rd year for the Book Basket Project, which is a major fundraising project for the...

Pre-registration deadline for voters this weekend The voter pre-registration deadline for the general election is Saturday, Oct. 24. The Cherokee County Auditor and Commissioner of Elections...

Drought worsens as harvest heats up Cherokee County continues to slip deeper into extreme drought, a trend being seen throughout Northwest Iowa as rainfall remains scarce...
Ruth Marcus, the reliably liberal Washington Post columnist, wrote a piece the other day that came close to being brave. Given the source, for much of the papers readership its very headline was surely a stunner: TRUMP IS RIGHT: BILL CLINTONS SORDID SEXUAL HISTORY IS FAIR GAME. Yes, Marcus noted, Trump may be everything progressives say he is, racist, sexist, narcissist, for starters . . . . But he has a point about Clinton playing the womans card, and about the male behavior thats more concerning: her husbands . . . . (I)n the larger scheme of things, Bill Clintons conduct toward women is far worse than any of the offensive things that Trump has said . . . . Trump has smeared women because of their looks, Clinton has preyed on them, and in a workplace setting where he was by far the superior. Ordinarily, she added, I would argue that the sins of the husband should not be visited on the wife . . . . But Hillary Clinton has made two moves that lead me, gulp, to agree with Trump on the fair game front. She is (smartly) using her husband as a campaign surrogate, and simultaneously (correctly) calling Trump sexist.

Whats the problem with such a piece? It is at its essence a dodge, an attempt to avoid a far more serious indictment by copping to a lesser charge. In fact, Bill Clinton was not just a workplace harasser, or even a serial adulterer; he was, and remains, someone credibly accused of sexual assault. And what goes unmentionedfor this obviously could be catastrophic for Hillarys campaignis that she has been his willing cohort, the energetic enabler who sought to destroy his accusers to protect their joint political and financial interests.

In this regard, the piece is emblematic of what the Clintons have done to their fellow liberals and Democrats, in the media and beyond, over the past couple of decadesthey turned them into serial equivocators and liars. Never mind that progressives continue to see (and often define) themselves as morally and ethically superior: in the fight to save Bill Clintons presidency there could be no adherence to larger truths, or moral consistency, or commitment to time-tested standards; all were sacrificed in defense of Clintons political survival.

Indeed, in key ways, America pre-Sexgate was a very different country from the one we live in today, immeasurably more innocent and less jaded; still respectful of values now widely seen as antique. This is why, in bien pensant quarters, the lead story in the Washington Post of January 21, 1998CLINTON ACCUSED OF URGING AIDE TO LIEproduced a tidal wave of angst and disorientation not unlike that brought on by a sudden presidential death. In that different moral universe, there was every reason to believe Clintons presidency was finished. Even more calamitous than the allegation of presidential perjury was what the president had lied about: Starr Probes Whether President Told Woman to Deny Alleged Affair to Joness Lawyers, as the Posts subhed had it.

Every sentient being in America would soon know that the woman in question was White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who might have been more appropriately termed a girl. Shed been just 21 when the soon-to-be-exposed liaison began, with a childish, wide-eyed crush on her boss. Little wonder that the news hit especially hard in the nations newsrooms, longtime hotbeds of Clinton support. The press had excelled at covering up/rationalizing Clintons indiscretions since his appearance on the national scene (most notably the one involving longtime Arkansas squeeze Gennifer Flowers). But this was different. Not even proudly enlightened progressives could in good conscience see this as anything but sexual exploitation. In any case, and perhaps more to the point, they realized that the vast majority of Americans out therethe hicks in flyover countrywould see it that way. Hopelessly naive in that peculiarly American way, ordinary citizens actually expected more of their president.

God knows the media had done its best to bury the story. In fact, it had first surfaced several days earlier, on a fledgling blog run by the unknown Matt Drudge on the still-new Internet. Drudge hadnt reported the details of the story itself, only that Newsweeks Michael Isikoff had the story but the magazine was refusing to run it. Newsweeks publishing partner, the Post, was forced to acknowledge the storys existence. Once it broke, even outlets that otherwise reflexively rallied behind a beleaguered liberal leader quickly took up what amounted to a death watch. Did the president encourage a former intern to lie about their alleged affair? demanded the Miami Herald in an editorial the day after the Washington Post report. If that assertion is proved true by credible evidence, then the president would have suborned perjury and obstructed justiceboth felonies. Strong censure, including possibly an effort to impeach him, would be likely. ZIPPERGATE COULD BE END FOR CLINTON PRESIDENCY, ran a headline in the liberal Cleveland Plain Dealer the next day. I would probably guess that what Congress would do is find urging perjury to be an impeachable offense, echoed Geraldine Ferraro, as the first female candidate for vice president, a full-fledged Democratand feministheroine.

Among the presidents loyalists, there is bitterness, observed the Washington Post in a piece on the Lefts angst. Especially betrayed are the baby boomers: They all want 21-year-old interns, too, but they know not to touch them. . . . At liberal institutions, a pall set in. At People for the American Way, workers got an e-mail from the boss instructing them not to contribute to the rumor-mongering, and the honchos were talking about scrapping a planned radio campaign in support of the presidents push to get his judicial nominees confirmed by Congress. For Washington veterans, there was a familiar feeling about this day, a stomach-flipping sense of deja vu, a realization that even in this era of cheap scandals and easy outrage, some events have the power to halt a nation in its tracks.

Not even The New York Times could summon up so much as tepid support for the beleaguered president, noting that while there is a general reluctance to have the private life of any President become a matter of public inquiry and that Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, has a vendetta against Clinton, this Administration repeatedly forces its supporters to choose between loyalty and respect for the law. . . . Mr. Clinton has denied the charges, and on the surface they seem so tawdry, the alleged impropriety so avoidable by a mature leader, that it is hard to comprehend their potential impact.

Of course, Clinton did deny the charges, in those early days lying and spinning ferociously, the desperation evident in his look and timbre; driven by both the desertion of his allies and growing signs of cratering public support. According to a USA/CNN poll taken late that first week, An overwhelming majority, 72%, say they would find it relevant to his performance as president if Clinton participated in an effort to obstruct justice by urging her to lie under oath. Nearly as many, 67%, say it would be relevant if Clinton lied under oath about the affair. Insisting to PBS that he did not ask anyone to tell anything other than the truth, and there is no improper relationship, Clinton appeared a trapped and doomed man. A few days later, on January 27, he dug himself in even deeper when he infamously declared, jabbing a finger toward the camera: I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. Im going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people.

How did he in fact did survive? More than anything, it had to do with the identities of those who rallied to his defenseabove all, his wife. It was the very next morning, January 28, that Hillary appeared on NBCs Today, expressing absolute faith in her husbands credibility and blaming the crisis on a vast right-wing conspiracy, led by Starr. As David Maraniss characterized her appearance in the Washington Post, she assumed a familiar and crucial role as Bill Clintons first defender. She said she knew him better than anyone in the world, still loved him, and fully believed his denial of allegations that he had entered into a sexual relationship with a White House intern and had urged the young woman to lie about it. . . Her words at once established a clear line of counterattack for Clintons loyalists . . . The decision to transform Clintons public defense into a rhetorical war with Starr and the political right wing was made at the White House in a series of meetings over the past four days, according to several administration sources. In every discussion in which she participated, the first lady was a leading advocate of an aggressive strategy attacking Starr, but it was not until her remarks yesterday morning that they realized that counterattacking was their most effective choice, and that she was their most effective weapon.

Its now clear that from the earliest days of Bills public career, it had been Hillary taking the lead in tamping down the bimbo eruptions, as Clinton insiders termed them, which threatened their joint enterprise. According to Flowers, whose revelation of her 12-year affair with Clinton led to a sympathetic interview with both Clintons on 60 Minutes in which they asserted the strength of their marriage, the notion Hillary didnt know about the affair is beyond ludicrous. I think she has always known everything about him, concurs Juanita Broaddrick, the Little Rock nursing home executive who charged Clinton raped her 1978. In an interview with Aaron Klein, she recalled being told personally by Hillary in 1978 to keep quiet about the episode. I think they have this evil compact between the two of them that they each know what the other does and overlook it. And go right on. And cover one for the other. She enabled his behavior, says alleged Clinton sexual assault victim Kathleen Willey flatly. Its as simple as that.

The Clintons have systematically attempted to blacken the accusers names and otherwise destroy their credibility. Yet, at the height of the 1998 crisis, Hillarys pose as the aggrieved yet forgiving wife allowed the Clinton partisans, starting with those in the media, to push the line that this was a private matter, unworthy of the attention it was receiving. After all, if his wife didnt care, why should anyone else? The other pivotal point came on March 22, when Americas leading feminist gave Clinton a total pass. In a New York Times op-ed, Gloria Steinem declared that while he may be a candidate for sex addiction therapy, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. Why not? Because his accusersshe mentioned only Paula Jones (to whom he had exposed himself and to whom he would pay an $850,000 out-of-court settlement) and Kathleen Willey (whom he had groped when she was reeling from the suicide of her husband)were supporters from whom he eventually took no for an answer. (Broaddrick, whose contemporaneous corroborating testimony in support of her rape allegation lent vast credibility to the charge, had not yet come forward publiclybut to this day there is no record of Steinem or any other leading figure in the sisterhood supporting her, either.) In any case, wrote Steinem, what ultimately mattered most were the presidents policy positionsespecially his solid support for abortion.

As Clintons prospects for survival brightened, his Democratic colleagues likewise rallied to his support, even as many privately expressed deep contempt for his behavior. Indeed, it was already becoming clear that the Clintons scorched-earth campaign for survival would impose steep and long-lasting costs on the quality of the nations civic life. It is no accident that the campaigns rallying cry, Lets Move On, would be the genesis of MoveOn.org, which continues today aggressively to push the Lefts agenda and eviscerate those on the other side.

There were other costs, too. Here are just a handful of the jokes which became ubiquitous on late-night TV, circa 1998:

Q: What is Bills definition of safe sex?

A: When Hillary is out of town. Q: What is the difference between Clinton and the Titanic?

A: Only 200 women went down on the Titanic. Q: How does Bill keep Monica Lewinsky away from the White House?

A: He keeps offering to send Ted Kennedy over to give her a ride. Q: How can a woman tell shes just had sex with Bill Clinton?

A: Shes got French fries in her hair, and Vernon Jordan is handing her a job application.

Little wonder that through it allfrom the initial word of the presidents affair with Lewinsky to the revelations about cigars and the semen on the blue dressthere were reports on the difficulties American parents were having trying to explain to their young children things they wished they didnt have to. Nor, from this distance, is there much doubt that those times had a deep and lasting impact on American mores. Is it coincidence that millions of Millennials maintain, along with the president of their formative years, that fellatio does not actually constitute sex? If America has indeed lost much of its former innocence, who can doubt that the 42nd president accelerated the process?

We will of course hear little of that during the upcoming campaign, at least from the liberal media. Stalwart as they were in serving as Barack Obamas Praetorian Guard in 2008effectively scuttling their candidates decades-long relationships with his racist, America-hating minister and an American terrorist as campaign issuesthey may be faced with an even more difficult task this time. Things arent looking good for Hillary, joked Jay Leno in 1998. Like a lot of women in Washington, I think shes just starting to realize she may have slept with Bill Clinton for nothing. But Hillary has always gotten plenty from her husband, and bereft of accomplishments of her own, she is now more dependent on his record, and his fabled charisma, than ever before. That will not be easy to square, however, with the fact that she is running, above all, as a bearer of two X chromosomes, someone who is actually on the record proclaiming that Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.

Already, prompted by GOP frontrunner Donald Trumps aggressively bringing the subject to the fore, the media obfuscation and minimizing have begun in earnest. For all its seeming candor, Ruth Marcuss piece was part of that effort. So, too, was CNNs Don Lemons declaration that Hillary was not responsible for Bills misbehavior and that the matter had already been fully litigated, before cutting off conservative commentator Kurt Schlichters mic when he refused to drop the subject. So, too, was Todays Savannah Guthries delicate reference to Bill Clintons alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky. Perhaps most egregiously, the International Business Timess Abigail Abrams made a heroic attempt to distinguish the ex-presidents behavior from that of the disgraced and newly indicted Bill Cosby. Unlike Cosby, Abrams wrote, Bill Clintons most well-known extramarital activities were consensual.

Its not the reality of Clintonian sexual misconduct that will be at issue in this election, nor Hillarys role in savaging Bills accusers, nor even the remarkable lengths to which the press will go to protect them both. All of that has by now been established beyond question, for those willing to see. The real issue in this election is how much of this history the American people will be willing to ignore, shrug off, or decide doesnt matter. The real question will be how much the Clintons have changed America.

PHOTO BY JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES
Producing newspapers that go undelivered seems like a task of journalistic purgatory. But The Boston Globe, which rode a Spotlight-backed wave of goodwill throughout the final months of 2015, finds itself in a mess of its own doing.

Since the Globe last week changed the company it uses to deliver papers, its print product has failed to reach thousands of loyal and paying subscribers. The new vendor, the California-based ACI Media Group, not only failed to hire enough carriers in time for the handoff, but also saw its routing software initially spit out highly inefficient delivery routes.

The newspaper publisher was conspicuously mum on the scale of disruption for almost a week after problems arosethe Globe itself ran just one story. But after a front-page piece Monday morning reported that a complete fix could be several months away, Globe chief executive Mike Sheehan hopped on the damage-control carousel, promising improvements within the next week and a return to normalcy in 30 to 45 days.

First of all, ACI is starting with new software [on Tuesday], Sheehan says in an interview. Theyre hiring people. New people are going to learn their routesACI is going to be a valued partner.

Though Globe brass were warned of service disruptions before the switch, Sheehan says they had no idea how severe the problems might be. Globe officials have put the frequency of missing dead-tree editions at up to 10 percent of print subscribersabout 115,000 on weekdays and more than 200,000 on Sundays. Disgruntled subscribers have flooded the Globes call center and blared their dismay on social media.

Might need the Spotlight Team to investigate why I have not received home delivery of The Boston Globe for the past seven days @BostonGlobe  Yuri Orellana (@yorellanaRRHH) January 4, 2016

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The mishap is staggering considering that print still provides a large chunk of news organizations revenue. Sheehan insists the service change was in fact an effort to preserve the print subscriber base, citing internal analyses that pegged delivery problems as a leading cause for cancellations.

But Globe management is being battered with accusations that the switch to a new carrier was more about saving money than saving subscribers. Sheehan says that wasnt the primary motivator but he does say this: There were also more costs savings overall because [ACI works] at a lower margin, enough for us to save a few million dollars overall.

Sheehan declined to provide a more specific number regarding savings with ACI Media Group. He also declined to elaborate on the scale of delivery problems under the previous carrier, Publishers Circulation Fulfillment. A representative for that company did not respond to a request for comment.

Globe staff provided some PR cover Sunday morning by moonlighting as home-delivery reinforcementsa feel-good story for a newspaper company failing to provide a fundamental service. But it, too, highlighted poor planning and execution of the handoff. The routes were repetitive, reporter Beth Healy says. They were not efficient. Clearly that has to be fixed for the real drivers. Fellow reporter David Abel described the chaotic distribution as journalistic apocalypse in a blog post on Sunday.

Bewilderment among Globe journalists has mounted, with staffers airing their frustrations on social media or directly to subscribers. In politics or business, you should never take your base for granted, columnist Joan Vennochi wrote Tuesday. The Globes decision to switch carriers did so by accepting there would be some service disruptionOur subscribers are the victims.

Dear @BostonGlobe readers: we value you, apologize to you, are as angry as you about this #globedelivery failure & are trying hard to fix it  Sacha Pfeiffer (@SachaPfeiffer) January 3, 2016

Despite Sheehans slew of mea culpas in recent days, a few important questions havent been sufficiently explained. ACI Media Group President Jack Klunder did not respond to multiple requests for comment on what went wrong under his companys watch. Heres what Im still scratching my head about:

Why is the new carrier better?

Sheehan cites improvements to home delivery as the ultimate driver for switching vendors but offers few specifics on why ACI Media Groups service is superior. The Globe is saving millions by changing companies. So make a compelling case that the change was really about improving service.

Why couldnt the new carrier hire enough drivers in time?

The Globe reported Sunday that roughly 150 delivery routes lacked drivers. Speculation has abounded that the labor shortage stems from ACI offering lower pay rates than other carriers. But ACI and Globe management have both denied that claim. Regardless, the deal between the two companies was inked weeks ahead of when papers were to be delivered. Isnt that enough time to hire the delivery crews you knew youd need?

What happened with the new carriers routing software?

After he finished his paper route Sunday, Globe columnist Kevin Cullen wrote that the routes he followed looked as if you handed an Etch-a-Sketch to a really drunk guy and told him to turn the knobs.

Sound stupid? Cullen continued. Here we were, 4 in the morning, stumbling around the winter lawns of Hingham like three blind mice. That doesnt sound stupid. That is stupid.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti.
The year 2016 is shaping up as a big one for health policy in Colorado. In the fall, regulators shut down the states nonprofit insurance co-op, leaving some 80,000 residents to find other coverage. Many of those people were left to shop for new plans on the states insurance exchange, which has been slated for an expanded audit after an initial review a year ago found serious concerns. Most significant of all, state residents will vote in the fall on a plan to create a new single-payer universal healthcare system, funded by about $25 billion in taxes. The debate over the referendum is likely to be one of the major political stories in the state all year.

But one of the states best sources for health news wont be around to cover it. In October, Health News Colorado, one of the many nonprofit news services that sprouted around the country over the last decade, closed its doors. The sites leading supporter, the Colorado Health Foundation, had changed its grant-making priorities, and editor Diane Carman was unable to raise enough money from other sources to keep the operation alive.

Though other outlets will cover the big stories, the demise of Health News Colorado leaves the states most dedicated readers without an important source of comprehensive, aggressive coverage of the insurance exchange and other health policy news. The sites experience, meanwhile, highlights both the promise and the pitfalls of foundation-backed nonprofit journalism.

Health News Colorado launched in 2010, and it was always dependent on support from the Colorado Health Foundation, which provided $500,000 over the years, or about half the sites budget. The goal in supporting the news outlets was to increase coverage of health policy news and broaden the audience for it, Amy Latham, the foundations vice president of philanthropy, told me. Its a pattern we saw in several places around the country, as the debate over the Affordable Care Act sparked a surge of interest just as newspapers were undergoing wrenching job losses.

With the money, Health News Colorado did deliver increased coverageincluding some gutsy work from reporter Katie McCrimmon about struggles at the states health insurance exchange that angered state officials and often brought uncomfortable pushback. As I wrote last year, the sites skeptical reporting stood out from the cheerleading that has marked too much Obamacare coverage around the country. And it was apparently finding an audience. Carman told the Colorado-based media writer Jason Salzman that the sites stories were routinely getting 20,000 or 25,000 hits.

It was clear some time ago, though, that that coverage was on shaky footing. Shortly after making its second grant to Health News, the foundation gave Carman a heads-up that funding was not likely to be renewed again. The decision was part of a strategy refresh that included a shift away from supporting nonprofit news. Another startup, the I-News Network, also lost its funding from the foundation, but a merger with Rocky Mountain PBS in 2013 avoided a difficult situation, said Laura Frank, the outlets president and general manager for news. And a foundation grant to support health coverage at Colorado Public Radio is scheduled to end next year, Latham said. (Support for Health News and a handful of other journalism projects never amounted to more than a fraction of the foundations giving, which has topped $97 million in a single year. The foundations giving priorities are healthcare services, health coverage, and healthy living; it also provides support to the advocacy group Healthier Colorado.)

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Another local foundation that was a smaller supporter of Health News also reduced and then ended its funding as part of a strategy shift, Carman said.

The foundation-backed public radio project operates in partnership with Kaiser Health News, and it produces some policy coverage, like this piece comparing the failure of Colorados co-op with the apparent success of one in Connecticut. Theres other health coverage in the state, too. Both The Denver Post and KUSA, a Denver TV station, have reported on concerns over the proliferation around the state of costly freestanding emergency rooms, for example, and both have followed developments at the exchange, from the latest enrollment numbers to a typo that sent customers to a phone sex line. The Posts investigations desk has turned out a number of health-related projects, including coverage of care for inmates and problems with a new VA hospital. When the failing co-op cut off payments to brokers, the Post covered the story, and Frank told me her outlet is working on a major package about infant mortality.

Still, the tenacious, detail-oriented coverage of the day-to-day operations of the states health agencies that Health News Colorado provided will be missed.

Nobody does it now as regularly, reliably, or as comprehensively, said T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter who is now spearheading the campaign to enact universal health coverage in the state. Its a loss. Is anybody going to fill that gap?

The sites trajectory highlights some of the challenges faced by nonprofit sites more broadly, especially those with a niche focus. As both for-profit and nonprofit outlets struggle to identify new revenue sources, foundations can provide essential support. But in many places, the list of local foundations that might support journalism is not especially deep. When one or two change directions, it can be hard to recover.

Latham, of the Colorado Health Foundation, said that when the foundation supports a project, it always asks about sustainability. We cant make promises of funding in perpetuity, she said.

Health News had tried to develop a broader funding base, Carman told me. Her initial vision included a job-listing service and public media-style sponsorships. But regulations at Colorado Universitys Denver School of Public Affairs, where they were based, prevented those approaches, she said. One after another the options disappeared, and we were left with foundation funding solely.

Carman also had talks with Kaiser officials about bringing the Colorado site under their umbrella. There was mutual interest, but she needed to secure two years of funding from local sources. Even without the Health Foundation money, she had some commitmentsbut ultimately, not enough.

Carman is now doing media relations consulting. When I spoke with McCrimmon, the reporter, late last year, she was doing PR on a short-term contract for the non-profit Nurse-Family Partnership. Health News Colorado had folded just about the same time as the states insurance co-op, she noted. It really killed me not to do the story.

In 2010, when Health News launched, it was a fertile period for nonprofit journalism and there was lots of experimentation and a great deal of optimism that we could make this work, Carman said. For five years, they did. And even if it wasnt sustainable in the end, Carman believes they had an impact.

I think we really did succeed in our mission to increase public awareness and discussion, she told me. We did it by creating a competitive environment where other media felt compelled to cover health policy more intensively.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Trudy Lieberman is a longtime contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. She is the lead writer for CJR's Covering the Health Care Fight. She also blogs for Health News Review and the Center for Health Journalism. Follow her on Twitter @Trudy_Lieberman.
Chinese authorities blamed freak weather for the capsizing of a cruise ship that killed hundreds earlier this year, but also recommended that the captain be further investigated and representatives of the shipping company and local authorities be punished for management flaws, state media announced Wednesday.

The disaster on the Yangtze River on the evening of June 1 killed 442 people and left just 12 survivors. The Eastern Star was carrying many elderly tourists on a 10-day cruise from Nanjing in Chinas east upstream to Chongqing.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the Cabinets investigation team concluded that the Eastern Star was brought down by strong winds and heavy rains associated with a downburst, a strong downdraft that is a very rare weather phenomenon.

The conclusion backs up the initial finding that the disaster was caused by strong winds, although passengers relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its voyage despite a weather warning.

Xinhua said the investigation team found that 36 local government and Communist Party officials and seven people from the shipping company should be given administrative punishments for flaws in management, which would likely include demotions and firings.

The seven included the captain and the officer in charge at the time, who died in the disaster. The investigation found the pair responded inadequately to the emergency and had not properly ascertained the threat posed by the dire weather conditions, Xinhua said.

It recommended that the ships captain, Zhang Shunwen, have his license revoked and his contract terminated, and that his case be sent for further investigation to determine whether he should face criminal charges.

The captain was arrested after he was rescued from the river, with investigators looking into why he chose to sail into the storm instead of dropping anchor. Investigators had also been expected to focus on alterations made to the ship. A government agency had earlier cited the ship for safety violations.

Qin Meiping, who lost her 73-year-old father and 49-year-old brother, questioned whether the modifications to the vessel had been safe.

If you blame it on the weather, why were the other two boats that were also traveling at that time safe? Why was this boat modified three times before? Were the modifications done properly? asked Qin, who said she has had tears in my eyes every day since the sinking. We are not experts, but is the report by the experts the truth?

She pointed to other deadly disasters in China in the past year, including a stampede in Shanghai on New Years Eve 2014, explosions at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin and the toppling of a mountain of construction waste that buried a large area in Shenzhen.

It will happen again if people do not face the truth and dont admit there are management problems, she said.

___

Associated Press news assistant Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The University of Minnesota is experimenting with a reflective film on campus windows in Minneapolis and St. Paul to see whether it can deter birds from colliding with the glass.

A research team from the San Diego Zoo this summer installed video cameras and shock sensors at three buildings at the university, the Star Tribune reported.

The university is a magnet for birds because of its closeness to the Mississippi River flyway, a popular migration path for more than 300 species.

Veterinary technician Stephanie Beard has been tracking birds collisions with windows on campus. Beard helped point the researchers to what she calls the most deadly areas on campus for bird collisions. Those include a three-level skyway on the West Bank of the Minneapolis campus and Coffey and Ruttan halls on the St. Paul campus.

Migrating birds tend to congregate in the fields of food plants and trees that dot the St. Paul agricultural school campus. But navigating the nearby buildings has proved deadly for the birds.

The windows at Ruttan Hall are particularly large and dangerous, Beard said, and the scene of many fatalities for Nashville warblers, yellowthroat and white-throated sparrows.

The university has tried to warn away birds by plastering bird silhouettes and glitter squares on the windows, and placing plastic owls on ledges. But the crashes keep happening. Beard said the most dangerous time is the fall migration from August to November.

Paquita Hoeck, who is heading the research for the San Diego Zoo, said the hope is that the birds might have better luck spotting the glass if its covered with stripes of ultraviolet-reflecting film.

For the experiment, researchers lined some of the windows with a prototype called Anti-Bird Strike film, which was developed by Erickson International with the help of students at the University of Nevada. For comparison, some windows were left untreated.

If a bird crashes into one of those windows, a sensor sends a signal to a video camera to save the footage several seconds before and after the hit, Beard said. This way we can verify that it was indeed a bird collision that caused the vibration, she said.

Hoeck said its too early to know if the reflecting film is saving birds lives. But she said some birds continue to collide with the film-treated windows.

So if it makes a difference to the birds at all, its likely not a very strong one, Hoeck said, adding she is hopeful researchers eventually will find a solution.

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The costliest global natural catastrophe for the insurance industry in 2015 was the series of winter storms that struck the northeast United States and Canada, according to Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. In the U.S., 2015 estimated natural catastrophe losses totaled $25 billion (in 2014, cat losses totaled $28 billion), of which an estimated $15 billion was insured. 2015 estimates exclude loss events that occurred during the last week of December.

Industry-wide losses from natural catastrophes in 2015 were lower than the previous year, due in part to El Nino climate conditions in the Pacific ocean which reduced hurricane activity in the North Atlantic.

In terms of financial losses, the industry was somewhat fortunate in 2015, said Tony Kuczinski, president and CEO, Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. However, the comparatively low losses are no reason for complacency. Near misses and time between significant events tend to decrease perception of risk. We must continue to focus on creating resiliency and saving lives through stronger building codes, better land use and protective infrastructure.

Natural catastrophes claimed 280 lives in the U.S. in 2015 (there were 270 deaths in 2014), below the annual average for the last 30 years (580).

In 2015, strong tropical cyclones primarily hit sparsely populated areas or did not make landfall at all. In the North Atlantic, wind shear from the El Nino event helped to curtail the development of tropical cyclones, while measures to reduce loss susceptibility may have also had a positive effect, said Peter Hoeppe, head of Munich Res Geo Risks Research Unit. However, scientists believe that in the coming year the strong El Nino phase might be followed by a La Nina event. Both versions of the climate oscillation ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) in the Pacific, influence weather extremes throughout the world. A La Nina phase would promote the development of hurricanes in the North Atlantic, for example.

The costliest natural catastrophe for the insurance industry in 2015 was a series of winter storms that struck the northeast United States and Canada. Insured losses came to $2.1 billion; overall losses were $2.8 billion.

North America is hit by dozens of winter storms annually, which cause a variety of hazards such as snow and sleet, said Mark Bove, senior research meteorologist, Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. But despite the frequency and size of winter storms, they do not usually have the same loss potential as tropical cyclones or earthquakes. Nevertheless, a large number of winter storms in rapid succession can lead to significant aggregate losses.

While the direct overall losses due to the harsh winter of 2014/15, totaled $4.6 billion, only $3.4 billion of it was insured. Losses were higher the year before with direct overall losses totaling $4.4 billion and insured losses totaling $2.5 billion.

Two tornado outbreaks in late December 2015 across the southern states brought an unfortunately destructive and deadly end to what had been a relatively quiet year for severe thunderstorms. The December outbreaks included two EF4 tornadoes with wind speeds up to 200 mph. The first devastated several small towns in northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee, while the second carved a path through a densely populated suburb of Dallas, Texas. Both tornadoes took the lives of at least 10 people each; only ten tornado fatalities had been recorded nationally in 2015 before these events.

Earlier in 2015, two severe thunderstorm outbreaks each produced billion-dollar insured losses, though overall, the spring thunderstorm season in the U.S. was quieter than usual. Less than 1,200 tornadoes were recorded in 2015; the average figure is 1,360. The relatively inactive storm season still produced insured losses in excess of $ 9.4 billon (excluding industry-wide loss estimates from the late December storms which are not yet available). The current El Nino likely impacted conditions that led to a quieter overall thunderstorm season, as well as the late December storms that occurred close to the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

Drought conditions in California deteriorated further in 2015, following yet another winter without significant rainfall. Forests and brush land turned into tinder boxes, which fueled numerous wildfires across the state, including two that caused significant property losses in northern California. The Valley Fire ignited near the Napa Valley winemaking region and the Butte Fire in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada destroyed thousands of structures. The two fires caused losses totaling $1.6 billon, with $1.2 billion in insured damages. They were the costliest wildfires in California since the 2007 Witch Creek Fire in San Diego, and the costliest in northern California since the 1991 Oakland firestorm.

2015 Global Natural Catastrophes

Worldwide, 94 percent of loss-relevant natural catastrophes in 2015 were weather-related events. Due to the strong El Nino phase, the number of 11 tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic was below the basin average since 1995 (14.8). Of these cyclones, only four reached hurricane strength (average 7.6). Overall losses and insured losses came to just a fraction of the averages for previous years.

On the other hand, El Nino promoted the development of intense tropical cyclones in the northeast Pacific, partly due to the higher water temperatures it brings. A total of 26 cyclones (long-term average 15.6) developed there, 16 of which reached hurricane strength. Eleven (long-term average 4.1) grew to major hurricanes.

Although most storms in the northeast Pacific do not make landfall, one storm in 2015 did, and was particularly noteworthy: Hurricane Patricia became one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record globally and the most powerful in the northeast Pacific to make landfall. With sustained wind speeds of up to 200 mph, Patricia came ashore in late October close to Cuixmala in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Fortunately, this region contains the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve and is therefore sparsely populated. The storm was also relatively small in size and did not cause the level of damage that many less powerful but larger storms usually do.

Overall losses from Hurricane Patricia are estimated at $500 million, of which only a fraction was insured. Had the storm reached the nearby holiday resort of Puerto Vallarta, the damage and losses would have been much greater. Besides this fortuitous set of circumstances, timely precautions and early warnings helped bring people to safety and prevented losses. One such measure was the prompt evacuation of affected areas ordered by the government, explained Hoeppe.

The El Nino phase had a considerable effect on droughts and heatwaves, especially in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Overall losses worldwide from such events last year came to US$ 12bn, of which US$ 880m was insured. However, the highest losses from heatwave and drought  albeit not influenced by El Nino  were caused by the hot, dry summer in Europe. The overall loss totalled some US$ 2bn (1.9bn); only about a tenth of this was insured.

Source: Munich Reinsurance America, Inc.
A year that bounced from drought to flooding, back to drought and then to flooding again finished as the wettest year on record in Oklahoma.

State Climatologist Gary McManus said Saturday that 2015 ended with a statewide average of 53.88 inches of rain to break the record of 47.88 inches set in 1957. Weather records date to 1895.

The year 2015 began with 59 percent of the state in drought, increasing to 68 percent in April, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, before storms brought tornadoes, heavy rain and floods to the state, ending the drought in June. The rains caused a rock slide that shut down Interstate 35 in southern Oklahoma for seven weeks and was blamed for at least 15 deaths, while a 16th death was blamed on a tornado, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

When the spring rains ended, drought returned during the second half of the summer, peaking at 36 percent of the state before heavy rains came in November and December, including severe storms that began Dec. 26 and resulted in at least six deaths by the end of the year, emergency management officials said.

Preliminary statistics also show December was the wettest month on record for Oklahoma with an average of 5.92 inches of rain. Thats 3.86 inches above normal and breaks the record of 4.87 inches set in 1984.

A National Weather Service station at Daisy in Atoka County also set a record with the most rainfall collected during a calendar year with 89.69 inches, topping Tuskahomas 88.27 inches in 1990.

The year was also warmer than average, finishing with a statewide average of 61 degrees, 1.1 degrees above normal and ranking as the 17th warmest on record. The highest reading of the year was 108 degrees at Mesonet sites in Buffalo and Freedom, both in northwestern Oklahoma, while the lowest temperature was minus 6 degrees at Boise City in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

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Western Tennessee and Kentucky are still facing flood threats as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Tennessee Valley Authority work to control water levels.

The National Weather Service issued a flood advisory for the Cumberland River at Dover through Monday evening. The river was expected to rise to near 66.6 feet. Flood stage is 67 feet.

Minor flooding along the Ohio River was affecting parts of Owensboro and Paducah in Kentucky, with most cresting expected by Tuesday. Moderate flooding was reported along the Green River near Paradise, Kentucky.

The Mississippi River was expected to crest in Memphis at 41 feet on Jan. 8. Flood stage is 34 feet. Although no major flooding was expected in the city, officials were moving to protect roads and a local airport.

The city said it will close a portion of North Second Street to through traffic on Monday as crews install temporary barriers along the street to hold back floodwater north of downtown.

And workers will be filling sandbags to protect the nearby General DeWitt Spain Airport, which flooded in 2011 when a temporary levee along North Second failed. Some plane owners have moved their airplanes to other sites as a precaution.

Along the Downtown riverfront, the expected high water will force the relocation of several transformers in Tom Lee Park and some electrical equipment at one of the Beale Street Landing islands.

In Wickliffe, Kentucky, also on the Mississippi, residents were filling sandbags to protect local homes from the river.

In Finley, farmers along the Mississippi were evacuating homes and moving equipment to higher ground. The sheriffs office placed deputies in the area and planned increased patrols to protect property there.

Janie Smith and her granddaughter Amanda began packing their home early Wednesday morning.

If the water makes it up to my house this year that will be twice since 2011 that its got me, Smith said. Back in 2011, there was 4 inches of water in my house. I have another home in Dyersburg. We plan on going there until the water goes back down, but Im hoping that it wont make it this far.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
When Lomor Drive flooded in 1996, 3 feet of water washed into Diana Bachs house. She and her late husband, Gene, spent $30,000 to raise the home 4 feet. But last weeks flood waters covered her front yard and driveway and came within inches of her floor.

They need to do something, Bach said earlier this week as she hosed mud from her driveway. If it had rained any more it would have been in my house.

I just wish something could be done. Anything: a pump or a culvert, Bach said.

Cowlitz County engineers are well aware of the flooding problems on Lomor Drive and nearby streets, which include Westover and Merritt drives. The county has replaced a culvert and raised road surfaces since the 1996 floods  but further improvements would be complicated and expensive.

County Engineer Brad Bastin said his staff has met with residents of the flooded area many times. They know what we can do and what we cant do, he said.

The neighborhood is located at the base of Nevada Drive, sandwiched between the old Weyerhaeuser Co. railroad line and the hill that makes up Columbia Heights. It is about a block from the Cowlitz River. But its chronic flooding trouble is caused by Westover and Lomor creeks, small streams that join in the neighborhood and then meet the Cowlitz about a half mile to the south.

According to Daily News records, the area has experienced some level of flooding at least five times since the massive deluge of 1996.

Ron Stamey, another longtime resident of Lomor Drive, said flooding was worse in 1996, when he lost power for three days and was stuck in his home, which is high enough to be out of the flood zone.

Stamey is familiar with the neighborhoods the drainage network.

Decades ago Westover Creek flowed into the Cowlitz under highway and railroad bridges. But at some point, the bridges were replaced with culverts that restrict the flow, according to county engineers.

Housing development and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens both have contributed to Lomor/Nevada drive flooding problems. Sediment that flowed from the volcano into the Cowlitz decreased its capacity to carry water. And what had been a flood plain that could handle overflow from Westover Creek was covered with dredge spoils, allowing construction of houses on nearby Crown Point and Oxford roads.

Before the eruption, You had a lot more area for the water to spread out, said Ken Stone, an engineer who has worked for the county for nearly 40 years.

And as people build houses uphill, more water runs off driveways rather than soaking into the soil. The culverts were put in when there was very little development, so the runoff was much less, Stone said.

The county also put in a 48-inch culvert along Lomor Drive to replace an open drainage ditch. It was the largest culvert that would fit over sewer pipes from homes, Stone said. Its still not big enough, but it was the largest that could be done, he said. The culvert fills up with silt and needs to be cleaned out regularly.

This year, Stamey had sandbags ready in case that culvert plugged up, but he said county workers were good about keeping it cleared. Theyve been a lot better this year, he said.

Because Westover Creek has been identified as salmon habitat, its harder for the county to get permits to cut brush along the creek, which would allow better drainage, the engineers said.

Increasing the size of culverts that drain Westover Creek into the Cowlitz would involve several state and federal agencies. The states not going to spend the money, said County Commissioner Dennis Weber.

The county did raise the lower part of Nevada Drive, but the water just flows around it, Stone said.

After the 96 floods, the county used federal funds to purchase five houses in the area, including the ones next door to and across the street from Bachs. The homes were moved or torn down. But not all residents want to be bought out, Bastin said. Its not always a welcome solution by people who live there, he said.

After flooding problems in Lexington, residents created a taxing district to pay for pumps that send water to the Cowlitz. But the relatively few homes in the Lomor Drive area would result in high tax rates for such a district there.

The county plans to further evaluate other measures to alleviate flooding in the area. Maybe theres a way to look at it we havent seen, Bastin said. It has a lot of moving parts. It gets very complex.

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Gerard Depardieu to Play Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin in French Film

Controversial French actor, Gerard Depardieu, who a couple of years back famously gave up his citizenship because of a tax row and settled in Russia, is set to play infamous Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. The French-based production is based on French author, Jean-Daniel Baltassat's 2013 novel Le divan de Staline (Stalin's Sofa). The production is set to be filmed in Russia, with the help of state-run Russian production company, Mosfilm.

According to the Hollywood Reporter online, "Moscow-based film studio Mosfilm said it would provide costumes and props for the movie, produced by French/Portuguese company Leopardo Filmes. The Russian company won't co-produce the movie, with its role limited to providing production services. The movie is to be set in the 1950s Soviet Union and will center on a young artist who is commissioned to create Stalin's monument and must go through KGB scrutiny."

Depardieu, since quitting France for Russia, has been appearing in a number of Russian-oriented projects. This one will have a French creative team behind it, as it will be directed by a former co-star in one of Francois Truffaut's final films, Fanny Ardant.

Depardieu has grown quite comfortable in Russia. A presidential visa by Vladimir Putin gave Depardieu a new home, as well as a free place to live and work in Russia. For his part, the French icon has embraced everything Russian. From the Guardian online, "Since becoming a Russian citizen in 2013 to avoid paying wealth-based taxes, Depardieu has also announced another project dealing with the former Soviet Union. He wants to make an "historically accurate " film about second world war French fighter aces who flew alongside Soviet Air Forces pilots. Depardieu denounced the US, while reaffirming his love for Russia at a press conference last October. 'They fought each other, destroyed the Indians, after that they perpetrated slavery, then there was the civil war. After that, they were the first to use the atomic bomb ... I prefer being Russian."'



 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsGerard Depardieu, Joseph Stalin, Gerard Depardieu Plays Joseph Stalin, Moscow Based French Production, Fanny Ardant Directs
AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man will spend the next five years in prison after he admitted to selling fentanyl to a woman who later died from using the drugs.

Gary Thompson, 30, pleaded guilty Monday to corrupting another with drugs and two counts of drug trafficking. An involuntary manslaughter charge was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

Summit County Common Pleas Judge Paul Gallagher sentenced him to five years in prison.

Thompson sold fentanyl to Angela L. Biren, 32, on June 17, 2014. She was found dead the next day on the bathroom floor of her Glen Street home.

Barberton police set up an undercover sting two days later to buy heroin from Thompson.

Thompson sold detectives heroin and later admitted to selling drugs to Biren and others, police said.

Thompson's criminal history includes nine convictions of felony cocaine possession since 2004 and a single felony domestic violence conviction.
AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron woman will spend the next three years in prison for giving heroin to a Norton man who died after using the drug.

Alyssa Hatfield, 26, sobbed Tuesday during her sentencing in front of Summit County Common Pleas Judge Lynne Callahan. She apologized for giving heroin to Otto Christopher Jarvis, 27, who died Feb. 27 from overdosing on the drug.

"I'm so sorry," Hatfield said. "I know I can't bring him back. I loved him like a brother. He was truly my best friend."

Hatfield previously pleaded guilty to corrupting another with drugs, a second-degree felony. Charges of involuntary manslaughter and drug trafficking were dropped as part of the plea agreement.

Defense attorney Jonathan Yoder said during the hearing that Hatfield gave Jarvis heroin because he was suffering from withdrawal.

Yoder said Hatfield and Jarvis were longtime friends who used heroin together and that Hatfield has battled drug addiction for 12 years. He said Hatfield's father had provided $50,000 worth of drug treatment programs in the past but she was still unable to kick her addiction.

Hatfield was arrested in August after police found counterfeit drugs and syringes hidden in her underwear during a traffic stop.

Norton police reviewed messages between Jarvis and Hatfield that said Hatfield was to give Jarvis heroin in exchange for prescription narcotic painkillers. She confessed to Norton detectives the next day to giving Jarvis heroin. Jarvis died from an overdose of heroin and painkillers.

Hatfield has been convicted of three misdemeanor drug cases since 2012. She also was convicted in a 2012 meth-lab bust in Akron.
Akron City Council Marilyn Keith

Marilyn Keith, of west Akron, was voted Akron City Council president Monday in a 7-6 vote. Deep divides still persist on Akron City Council after the most recent election.

(John Harper, cleveland.com)

Akron Ward 8 Councilwoman Marilyn Keith.

AKRON, Ohio -- After an election that brought in three new members, Akron City Council is still divided, barely settling Monday night on new leadership.

Marilyn Keith, a three-term councilwoman from West Akron, won a 7-6 vote over Linda Omobien to take the council presidency in a last-minute shuffle.

What many thought would be a new majority on City Council - made up of former Mayor Don Plusquellic's critics and newly elected members Bruce Kilby, Veronica Simms and Zack Milkovich - fell one vote short of taking control of the body's presidency.

"It was disappointing," Kilby said after the meeting. "I guess all the change we hoped for in the election really wasn't worth anything."

Many council members were optimistic Monday that Keith's calm demeanor may help heal wounds caused last spring when Plusquellic's abrupt resignation led to a power struggle between his supporters and critics on council.

"It feels good to move forward," said At-large Councilman Jeff Fusco, who served as acting mayor for six months. "With that out of the way I think we will be able to get back to a more respectful environment."

Who is Marilyn Keith?

A former Akron Public Schools teacher, Keith is serving her third term on city council. She is a native of Akron, a graduate of the University of Akron and lives near Sand Run MetroPark.

As council president, Keith now sits at the podium next to her husband, city council clerk Bob Keith.

The two have a long history in Akron politics. Bob Keith said they have worked well together before and should be able to do so again.

Some members worried about a possible conflict of interest, since Keith's husband is in charge of preserving council records and enforcing council rules.

"I'm concerned about that relationship," Councilman Russ Neal objected.

"Headline, conflict of interest," former councilman Mike Williams said in the audience.

The city's newly appointed law director, Eve Belfance, said that rules could be adjusted to correct any conflicts.

How did Keith become council president?

It was long thought that Ward 6 Councilman Bob Hoch may take the presidency after wooing both sides of the political divide after handily winning reelection.

On Nov. 5 the Akron Beacon Journal described Hoch as council's "most wanted" man, bridging the divide between longtime Democratic incumbents and the incoming opposition. Hoch is best known for being uninvited to Plusquellic's State of the City speech last year, after the mayor said he feared for his life.

Hours before the meeting, though, rumors circulated that Omobien had the votes to take charge.

Keith said she had pledged support to Hoch months ago and had no idea she would be a candidate for the presidency until Monday afternoon. Hoch said he did not have the votes necessary to win, and chose to back Keith.

"If this vote had taken place a month ago it would have been different," Hoch said. "At the end of the day I did what I felt was best for the council and for the city."

Hoch's vote upset many though, including councilwoman Tara Mosley-Samples, who called the vote a "betrayal."

"One side now hates me," Hoch said. "Just a few month ago the other side hates me. It's really not about me. This seat doesn't belong to me, it belongs to people who live in Ward 6."

Keith was quiet about the appointment, and said she wasn't in the mood for celebration.

"A lot of people were disappointed with what happened, and I honor that," Keith said. "It was a difficult moment. just want to do the best job for everybody."

What does the leadership change mean for the city?

With Keith in charge, newly elected Mayor Dan Horrigan will have a reliable ally and ardent supporter at the helm of the city's legislative body. Keith supported Horrigan in the Democratic primary, while Omobien supported Councilman Mike Williams.

Keith presided over committee selections and Jeff Fusco, also the chairman of the Summit County Democratic Party, was able to retain his seat on the committee on committees, which decides committee appointments.

Black leaders present at Monday's meeting were frustrated with the outcome, all having believed that Omobien would be elected president.

Omobien has been a champion of black issues on council, including felony employment and urban development, making her a popular choice among many black leaders in the city.

Depending on how well the new council leadership can reconcile policy differences with black leaders in the city, a divide between the two sides of council could persist.

Many expressed surprised that Margo Sommerville, daughter of former council president Marco Sommerville, voted for Keith over Omobien.

City council rules simply state that the committee on committees is to be filled based on seniority, but does not define whether seniority means total time served or consecutive time served. Though there were arguments, Keith ruled total time counted.
AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man and a Copley woman are accused of being part of a group that pistol-whipped two men and tied them up as they stole more than $1,000.

Alexandra Amos, 22, and Davon Irvine, 22, each face two counts of aggravated robbery. Amos is also charged with obstructing justice and faces charges in connection with another violent incident later in the day.

Amos is in the Summit County Jail awaiting a court appearance. Irvine is not in police custody and a warrant was issued Sunday for his arrest.

The robbery happened about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday at a home in the 1300 block of Pontiac Street. Amos distracted two brothers, ages 40 and 29, in order to set them up for the robbery, according to court records.

She let Irvine and others into the home. Amos watched as the gunmen grabbed the brothers, bound them with zip ties and repeatedly pistol-whipped them and demanded to know where they kept their money, court records say.

The gunmen also put a bag over the 29-year-old man's head and put duct tape over the 40-year-old man's mouth, according to police reports.

The gunmen then stole $1,280 and a cellphone before running out of the house and driving off in a sedan, court records say. The 29-year-old man managed to escape the house and call for help. Akron police arrived to find the 40-year-old man still bound with the zip ties and duct tape, police reports say.

Akron police are still trying to identify other suspects in the case, according to court records.

About nine hours later, Amos argued with a 30-year-old man at Fischer's Car Wash in the 1600 block of South Hawkins Avenue, according to police.

A 42-year-old car wash employee broke up the fight. Amos got in her car and sped towards the two men, striking them with her 2011 Buick Regal. Amos crashed into a large vacuuming unit, causing several thousand dollars worth of damage, according to police reports.

She drove away before police arrived. Police eventually arrested her Sunday at Akron City Hospital, court records say. She was charged with two counts of felonious assault.

Irvine was released from prison in May after serving two years for shooting a man in the face during an argument at a home in the 700 block of East Avenue. The 30-year-old man survived the shooting.

His sentence also included convictions for possessing a loaded gun and a small amount of crack cocaine about two weeks before the shooting.
ELYRIA, Ohio -Communities served by University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center will get a wellness boost, thanks to a $10.6 million donation by Karen Mole of LaGrange and the Hampson Family Foundation of Lorain County.

It is the largest gift in the hospital's 107-year-old history.

The money will support wellness initiatives for many nearby communities, including Avon, North Ridgeville and Sheffield Village.

In recognition of the gift, the hospital will rename its main pavilion the Hampson Mole Pavilion.

"In today's new era of health care, UH is increasingly reaching out to our community to address root causes of poor health together," Thomas F. Zenty, III, CEO of University Hospitals, said in a news release. "We're collaborating around innovative ways to keep people healthier and help patients manage complex diseases at home. Philanthropy holds great power to catalyze new healthy-community approaches, and Karen Mole and the Hampson Family Foundation have set an example for the entire nation."

The donation will be used to support the development and expansion of programs that address residents' most pressing health care needs, as determined through the hospital's recent Community Health Needs Assessment.

The Hampson Mole Community Health Project will address issues including obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.

The project will support health screenings and fund a "patient navigator" to ensure people get follow-up care, including additional testing, treatment and education to manage chronic conditions.

Additionally, the Elyria Medical Center Foundation is providing $1.5 million to support the Hampson Mole Community Health Project.

"I was born in this hospital and it has special meaning for me and my family," said Karen Mole, president of the Hampson Family Foundation. "Because of the quality and outstanding patient-centered care provided by Elyria Medical Center's doctors, nurses and staff, the trustees of the Hampson Family Foundation and I are so pleased to support and promote health in our area through the UH Elyria Medical Center."

UH officials said Mole and the Hampson Family Foundation have a long tradition of giving to the hospital and the community.

Karen Mole and her family have been patients of UH Elyria Medical Center. Her late parents, Lois, and Bert, and husband, Jim, were all treated for cancer at the hospital.

The Hampsons were owners and operators of Hampson Enterprises in Elyria., which manufactures injection molding materials.

A six-figure gift in October 2015 helped establish the Hampson-Mole Breast Health Suite, which provides patients with screenings, biopsies and other services in a special section of the hospital.

Charlotte Wray, President of UH Elyria Medical Center, expressed gratitude for the support.

"Their generosity demonstrates their passion for health care and their commitment to our community," she said.

Mole said the donation continued a decade-long effort to support Lorain County. "I care deeply for the people of this community," said said, "and feel this endeavor will help provide quality care and a personalized experience where it matters most - close to home."

Founded in 1908, University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center is a 387-bed hospital with additional campuses in Amherst (UH Amherst Health Center), Avon (UH Avon Health Center) and Sheffield (UH Sheffield Health Center), along with medical offices in Grafton, North Ridgeville and Westlake.
Janovitz2.JPG

Barbara Bellin Janovitz takes the oath of office as administered by lawyer Leon Weiss at Monday's Beachwood City Council meeting. Janovitz is the first woman in 15 years to serve as a Beachwood council representative.

(Jeff Piorkowski/Special to Sun News)

BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- The Beachwood City Council meeting Monday night was one of multiple oaths of office, including one taken by council's first female member in 15 years, Barbara Bellin Janovitz.

It was not the meeting, however, at which council chose its new president. That decision was put off until Jan. 11 when all council members will be present.

As council's senior member in terms of service, Councilman Melvin Jacobs served as president for Monday's meeting. Jacobs said it was decided to wait until next week when all seven members were present to decide who will run council meetings.

The position of council president was held the last two years by Fredric Goodman, who did not run for re-election in November.

Newly elected Brian Linick and Justin Berns were both out of town and unable to attend Monday's meeting.

When council does choose its next president, it appears as if the decision could be between four-year Councilman Martin Horwitz, who was sworn into his second term Monday by his daughter, federal government attorney Gayle Horwitz, and Jacobs, who has served on council 18 years, three and a half of those years as president.

Horwitz and Jacobs were the two of the five council members present Monday who said they had an interest in becoming president.

"I've been there and done that," Jacobs said of serving as president. "It's not an easy job. It's a job people want, but once they have it, they see how hard it can be."

Still, Jacobs said he has expressed interest to his council colleagues about the position.

"I would be interested," said Horwitz of the president's job. The lawyer is a former Beachwood Board of Education member who is beginning his 21st year of public service to the community.

Linick, like Horwitz, has served four years on council. His time on council was interrupted two years ago, however, when he unsuccessfully challenged Mayor Merle Gorden for the city's highest position.

Berns has previously served one-and-a-half years on council, having been appointed by council before losing an election bid.

Councilmen James Pasch, and Alex Isaacson, each two-year council members, said they would not seek the presidency. Pasch said he would support Horwitz, as did Janovitz.

"Mel has said it before, that he's part of the old guard," Janovitz said. "He's associated with the mayor in a lot of people's minds. I think the residents would like to see a new face as president."

Janovitz, who received more votes than any council candidate in November's election, said she has no interest in the council presidency.

"I have a learning curve to work on right now," she said.

A lawyer, who's lived in Beachwood her entire life, except for the years she was in law school, Janovitz said she was supported in her election run by the last woman to hold a council seat in Beachwood, Alice Jacobs, who is not related to Melvin Jacobs.

"I didn't run on being a woman, but I think I can offer the perspective of a woman," Janovitz said. A mother of three, Janovitz' husband, Lee, and children were at her swearing in, as was her father, Allan Bellin.

Melvin Jacobs, who served as council president last in 2012-13 when former president Saul Eisen resigned from council, said that in the past, the candidate elected to the two-year term as council president is the one who gets four votes from his colleagues.

In Beachwood, the council president serves as mayor if the mayor is unable to carry out his duties. At the Jan. 11 meeting, council will also elect a council vice president.

Also sworn in on Monday were Law Director Brian Reali, 20-year Beachwood Prosecutor Thomas Greve and, to the city's Planning Commission, re-appointees Orry Jacobs, Craig Cohen and Bryan Zabell. Orry Jacobs, also not related to Melvin Jacobs, will serve as chairman.

Sworn in as members of the city's Civil Service Commission were Brian Burke and new member Robert Cohen. Burke will serve as chairman.
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Beachwood wants to ensure citizens can give input for the plan, which will outline goals for future growth, including land use, housing, economic development, business, parks and transportation.

(Jeff Piorkowski/Special to Sun News)

BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- New neighborhood names. New development at Chagrin Highlands. Beachwood residents on Monday can learn more about these proposals and others detailed in a draft of the city's first ever five-year master plan.

"Beachwood today is a very desirable place to live and is an excellent location for businesses," Beachwood Mayor Merle Gorden said in a news release. "But we can't stand still and become complacent. We need to keep pushing forward in order to intelligently help determine the Beachwood of tomorrow."

The city wants to ensure citizens can give input for the plan, which outlines goals for future growth: land use, housing, economic development, business, parks and transportation.

The city wrote the proposed plan with the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission. The draft of the master plan draft addresses green space, and suggests adding more multi-family homes along Richmond Road and near Chagrin Boulevard and South Green Road.

The meeting will start at 7 p.m. Monday inside Beachwood City Council Chambers.
BEREA, Ohio--Is there a city department where Barb Jones couldn't work?

"Finance," says Jones. "I have no qualifications and no interest."



But the versatile Jones has already run the recreation, service and safety departments. She has also worked in the building department. And on Jan. 1, she switched from being safety and service director to safety and law director.



Jones' latest leap was one of several changes on New Year's Day at City Hall, as Mayor Cyril Kleem started his third four-year term. Among them:

* Former Councilman Dean Van Dress returned to the building part-time as assistant law director and mayoral assistant.

* Paul Anzalone was promoted at the service department from superintendent to director.

* Daune Jaynes became part-time manager of Berea Community Outreach, a city hunger program. She's also working with community and social services, marketing and special events.

* Cedric Fossett's work as building inspector grew from part-time to full-time.

Jones, 56, was born in Parma Heights and has lived in Berea since her preschool days. She held summer jobs at City Hall, returned in 1986 as a law intern, and graduated from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Over the years, even while serving in other departments, she has helped with the law department's responsibilities, particularly for personnel.

Says Jones, "I'm never bored because I'm not pigeon-holed."



Says Mayor Kleem, "Barb is a jack of all trades. She can pretty much do anything and does it well."



She and Kleem know of no officials in Berea or elsewhere who have simultaneously run safety and law. But her recent double bill in safety and service has precedents, in Berea and elsewhere. Her late father, John, held both jobs at once and also served on council when he was not in the administration.

Kleem and Jones see little potential for conflict in her two current jobs. As before, the city will assign investigations and defenses of police officers to outside counsel.

Over the past few years, Kleem has created or expanded a couple of jobs. But the mayor says he has shrunk his administration overall. Law Director Jim Walters is retiring. Former Safety Director Ken Adams was dismissed in June of 2014, after a management audit. Kleem plans to fill just one of two vacancies for service superintendents.

Click here to read about minority hiring at Berea City Hall.
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Members of Berea City Council are, front row, from the left, Margarette Key, Ward 1; Nick Haschka, Ward 2; Cheryl Banaszak, Ward 4; back row, from the left, Bill Devito, at large; Gene Zacharyasz, at large; Jim Maxwell, Ward 3; and Rick Skoczen, Ward 5.

(Linda Kramer)

BEREA, Ohio - Mayor Cyril Kleem, City Council President Mary Brown and the seven members of City Council were sworn into office on Sunday.

Berea City Council President Mary Brown and Mayor Cyril Kleem celebrate after the swearing in ceremonies at Berea-Midpark High School on Sunday.

Council will see two new faces this term - Councilman-at-Large Bill DeVito and Ward 5 Councilman Rick Skoczen.

In his remarks, Mayor Kleem said it was a great honor and privilege for him and all members of council to serve as public officials. He particularly thanked city employees, "who do the day-to-day work and make this community special."

The Declaration of Independence declares that "we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights - that means they can't be taken away," the mayor said. "Our rights don't come from the government," he said. Rather, elected officials' responsibility is to protect those rights. When they forget that, when elected officials become enamored with power, then corruption ensues.

"We need to take the principals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with us on our journey," the mayor said.

He also urged cooperation among elected officials. "We need to avoid divisions and factions motivated by self-interests," Mayor Kleem said. "That has an adverse affect on the community. In spite of our differences, we still have to find a way to get along, to cooperate and compromise."

Government can't solve all the problems in a community, he said. "It takes all of us. Sometimes the answer is neighbors taking care of neighbors."

Mayor Kleem was administered the oath of office by outgoing law director James N. Walter III, who also swore in Ward 3 Councilman Jim Maxwell. Mayor Kleem administered the oath to Council President Mary K. Brown, Ward 1 Councilwoman Margarette S. Key and Ward 4 Councilwoman Cheryl A. Banaszak. Councilman-at-large Gene Zacharyasz was sworn in by Mari Alice Zacharyasz; Councilman-at-large Bill DeVito by Common Pleas Court Judge Shannon M. Gallagher; Ward 2 Councilman Nick Haschka by Raymond Wohl, clerk of court; and Ward 5 Councilman Rick Skoczen by State Sen. Tom Patton.

The invocation was offered by the Rev. Ronald Thomas, associate pastor of Heritage Congregational Church.

The Color Guard detail included Patrolman Joe Frimel, Firefighter Allen Scott and Fire Capt. Brand Eisenhardt.

The ceremony took place in the auditorium of Berea-Midpark High School.
BROOKLYN, Ohio -- A 15-year-old Brooklyn girl who authorities say was held hostage by a man she met online is the subject of a two-part episode of Dr. Phil.

The teen and her family will appear in episodes on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the girl's Nov. 8 disappearance that led to the arrest of a 41-year-old Missouri man.

For viewers in the Cleveland area, the episodes are scheduled to air at 5 p.m. on WKYC.

Christopher Schroeder, who the teen said she met on the Kik messaging app, is facing state and federal charges in connection with producing child pornography and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

Schroeder picked up the girl Nov. 8 near her home, according to an indictment. Once she was in Schoeder's car, he forced her to remove the battery and SIM card in her cellphone so that she could not be tracked.

Schroeder drove to Marthasville, Missouri only stopping for fuel, court documents say. Once at his home, Schroeder told the teen that she was to clean his home and have sex with him. He forced her to change her appearance and told her that she needed to lose weight. Schroeder also smashed the girl's phone and threw it into a river.

The teen told police that she asked to go home, but Schroeder refused. She said she was afraid to leave the home because Schroeder had multiple weapons in his home, according to court records.

When police executed a search warrant on Schroeder's home, they found two cameras pointed toward Schroeder's bed, records say. Footage from a DVR in the home shows images of the teen and Schroeder that led to the sex charges.

Schroeder told police that he thought the girl was 18 and that someone else drove her to Missouri. However, the teen told police that she informed Schroeder of her real age when they initially met on Kik and after he picked her up in Ohio.

Schroeder faces 15 years to life in prison if convicted.
BRUNSWICK HILLS, Ohio --- When started with the Medina County Parks District in 2010, Natural Resources Manager Jim Spetz's attentions were immediately drawn to one particular area of Princess Ledges Park.

"With a background in streams, the first thing I noticed was a lot of erosion," Spetz said of the inadvertent detrimental effect a residential area near Pearl Road and Elm Avenue was having on portions of the 45-acre nature preserve.

"There are a couple houses on the corner of Pearl and Elm Avenue with a lot of impervious surface," Spetz explained. "(One resident) was getting a lot of water in her house and the solution was to intercept and redirect the water into a roadside ditch."

The nature preserve is home to a 1,100-foot sandstone ledge that, thousands of years ago, formed a portion of the Lake Erie shoreline. Aquatic fossils still can be found in the stone formations.

Over the years, however, construction of such residential drainage systems have concentrated the force of water flow into the ledges during times of heavy rain and snow melt, carrying pollution, eroding soil and carving a deep gully on the landscape.

"Just in the past five or six years, the continued erosion has gotten exponentially worse," Spetz said.

Stopping the damage

In September 2015, with the aid of Jared Bartley, Rocky River Watershed Coordinator for the Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District, and a $55,000 grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to fully fund the project, the park district set out to recreate a natural wetlands system on two acres above the ledges.

Instead of flowing unchecked in a roadside ditch and down the hillside where it was causing damage, Spetz said, most of the water would be diverted into the wetlands where it could soak slowly into the ground.

Two small basins were created to slow down the flow of the water and trap pollution and sediment. Much like it did before the streets and neighborhood drainage systems were constructed, water now filters gradually through the soil and bedrock below, where it eventually will drip clean and cold through the sandstone ledges down the hill.

"We redirected the flow - as opposed to it going into the ditch, it is now directed into the wetland where it can drop off sediments and absorb nutrients," Spetz said.

In most cases, wetlands are found in low-lying areas adjacent to lakes and streams. Less often, wetlands also exist on hilltops, making ones like that at Princess Ledges Nature Preserve critical.

Spetz said water rushing into the ledges also threatened the diverse population of invertebrates living there - animals that rely on the perennial flow of cold water that percolates slowly through tiny fissures in the sandstone. Sediment contained in the storm water runoff was clogging the tiny spaces between cobbles and boulders, suffocating the animals and destroying the habitat.

Into winter

Spetz said it will take some time for the wetland area to fully mature. Park district volunteers began planting trees in November, which will further stabilize the soil and restore the natural landscape.

In the meantime, the county is not overly concerned with the effects of changing seasons - or even future development - on the park district's work.

"Because the bedrock is so shallow it is hard to build there," Spetz said. "There is still potential for impervious surface, especially commercial property on the west side of Pearl. But I don't expect much building."

Best practices in residential and commercial development have also come a long way in recognizing the long term impact of erosion, Spetz added.

"I am not an engineer, but that is why you see these big ponds go in beside developments," he said. "That is what detention and retention basins are designed to do."
Pepper Pike Village Hall

A new 42-unit residential community is being considered for the corner of Lander and Cedar Roads. Each unit is expected to see for around $500,000.

(File)

PEPPER PIKE, Ohio - A $21 million town home development is expected to break ground this spring, if council approves the 42 units at the corner of Cedar and Lander roads this month.

The Orleans Co. presented preliminary plans to the city's Planning and Zoning Commission in December. Council will have the chance to approve the plans at its Jan. 27 meeting.

Developers are targeting downsizing empty nesters and young urban professionals looking for good schools. The units are expected to sell for around $500,000.

According to developers, there will be two units per building, each with 2,500-2,800 square feet. The exterior of each unit will be uniform, while the interior will be customizable, including a choice between first or second floor master bedrooms.

Preliminary plans call for the development to be built in two stages. Developer Kenneth Lurie said he would prefer to not build infrastructure for the full development at one time, but would build as the units sell.

Lurie hopes to maintain as much of the wooded frontage as possible to give the neighborhood a "private atmosphere." Plans also call for community areas, including walking trails, picnic areas and a dog park.
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- New mayor Cheryl Stevens would like to see more involvement from City Council members in their work with their appointed committees.

"I want the committees to be engaged much more than they have been recently," Stephens stated at the outset of council's Committee of the Whole meeting, prior to being sworn in as the new mayor on Monday (Jan. 4).

Stephens is also calling for a retreat within the first two months or so of the new administration, one that would include council and department heads, possibly with a facilitator from Case Western Reserve or Cleveland State University.

Part of the discussion will revolve around "why a City Manager form of government is different and how it works best."

"I don't want anyone to compromise their independence, but this is pretty much a team sport," Stephens told council, reminding them that "I don't let my love of color get in the way of what's practical and realistic for this community."

Stephens provided council members with a link to the city's Codified Ordinances, which would be easier than lugging around the large print edition.

"Familiarize yourselves with the Codified Ordinances, especially the Zoning Code -- it's very important," Stephens said.

She noted that some additional desk space is being cleared at City Hall for further official business.

"I've not been real happy with the fact that, when we have a task to do, we end up at Starbucks or Phoenix Coffee," she explained. "This gives us a place to work."

There will also be the process of selecting a new council member to fill the remaining two years on the term of Jeff Coryell, who resigned at the end of the year to move to Michigan, where his wife is the dean of the law school at the University of Detroit-Mercy.

"This is a very important task," Stephens stated in a memo to council. "We must be open about the acceptance and deliberation process for a new member."

The open filing period for Coryell's seat will last close to 30 days, having begun Jan. 4 and continuing through council's first meeting in February.

Stephens is still considering whether council should interview the candidates in public, with an alternative being a standardized video interview that could be posted.

She would also recommend that "if a majority of council accepts candidate, all members support that candidate."

In addition to Councilman Jason Stein being voted in to Stephens' old position as vice mayor, the main committee appointments were also announced Monday.

Stein will also chair council's Finance Committee, serving with Mary Dunbar (vice chair) and Melissa Yasinow.

Council's newest member, Carol Roe, will chair the Administrative Services Committee, serving with the soon-to-be selected council person as vice chair, as well as Dunbar.

Dunbar will chair the Planning and Development Committee, along with Kahlil Seren (vice chair) and Stein.

Yasinow will chair the Municipal Services Committee, serving with Roe (vice chair), along with the new council member.

Seren will chair the Public Safety Committee, with Stein (vice chair) and Roe.

And council's new member will chair the Community Relations and Recreation Committee, with Yasinow serving as the vice chair and Seren as a member.

Stephens said further appointments will be made to various ad hoc committees, subcommittees and representatives for the Special Improvement Districts (Cedar-Fairmount, Cedar-Lee, Coventry Village), as well as the Cedar-Taylor business district.

She also wants at least one member of council to attend the meetings of the Noble Neighbors group.

"Ideas are not just accepted -- they are needed," Stephens told council. "Please bounce them off the mayor and vice mayor on a regular basis."

The starting time for Council-of-the-Whole meetings will also be moved back 30 minutes on Mondays to 6:15 p.m., to allow council members who work downtown a little more time to make the commute to City Hall.

Asked if he planned to take on the issue of eliminating taxpayer-funded meals at those meetings as he brought up previously, Seren said he was under the mistaken impression that the subject could have been a part of the city's recently-concluded budget hearings.

"It's a separate issue, and it may or may not have any traction on it at this point, but we'll see," Seren said.

A public hearing has also been scheduled for 7 p.m. on Jan. 21 in City Council chambers to hear recommendations on dealing with "Political Influence by Corporate Entities on Elections," after the issue appeared on the ballot in 2013.
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Former Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald talked to kindergartners at Cleveland's Campus International School in May 2014 when he launched a new $100 college savings account program. The program ended Dec. 31.

(Andrew Tobias, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The repeal of Cuyahoga County's college-savings program, which created $100 accounts for county children who enrolled in kindergarten in 2013 and 2014, will result in nearly $3 million returning to the general fund.

The county had offered to transfer the money from all 23,500 accounts to another savings program administered through the Ohio Tuition Trust Authority. But officials said Tuesday that only 300 account holders accepted the offer by the time the county program ended on Dec. 31.

Officials said they did not know why so few people sought to retain the $100 accounts.

The savings plan, which then-Executive Ed FitzGerald had made a signature initiative of his administration, was approved with the support of Democratic council members. Supporters envisioned that creation of the tax-supported accounts would encourage parents and relatives of the kindergartners to make additional deposits.

But only 67 of the 10,500 accounts established in 2013 received additional deposits totaling $24,975 from family members. Some council members questioned the cost of administering the program.

Accounts were not opened in 2014 because council was discussing repealing the legislation, but 13,000 eligible families were notified that $100 was set aside for their kindergartner, said Ken Surratt, who oversaw the program.

The county spent $293,000 for salaries and benefits to administer the savings account program, $73,000 for contracting services and $45,900 for mailing.

In June 2015, council voted unanimously to repeal the program. Several members said they were committed to education and encouraging students to succeed, but felt the county should pursue a more cost-effective plan.

Once council repealed the program, all 23,500 families were notified by letter and email about how to transfer the money to accounts they had to establish with the Ohio Tuition Trust Authority.

Information was also provided on the county's program website.

Final documents are still being processed, but about 300 people throughout the county requested the county transfer the $100, said Surratt, who is now the director of housing. That included the 67 who added funds, and nearly all transferred that money as well.

Surratt said other college savings programs across the country are starting on a smaller scale than Cuyahoga County's, including in single school districts or school programs.
Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift performs songs during The 1989 World Tour at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.

(Lisa DeJong)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - It's not Los Angeles, Chicago or New York, but Cleveland that still carries some serious weight in the national touring market.

Pollstar released its annual list of the top grossing tours of 2015 and six of the top-10 artists performed in Cleveland last year. The top-10 is as follows:

Taylor Swift AC/DC One Direction U2 Foo Fighters Fleetwood Mac Ed Sheeran Kenny Chesney Garth Brooks The Rolling Stones

Swift's "1989 Tour" took first place by a wide margin with a total worldwide gross of $250.4 million. Her show at The Q last June sold out in a matter of minutes.

Garth Brooks performed four shows in Cleveland last October. Ed Sheeran, Kenny Chesney, Fleetwood Mac visited Northeast Ohio as well.

It's also worth pointing out that while AC/DC did not perform in Cleveland last year, the band will arrive at The Q on March 26. The same goes for Maroon 5, which placed 16th on the top grossing tours of 2015 and will perform at The Q on Sept. 28.

Of course, there are still a number of big tours that did not stop in Northeast Ohio. For instance, The Rolling Stones opted for a show in Columbus instead of Cleveland (which happens often with big-name acts).

Meanwhile, Cleveland was not a stop on Foo Fighters' latest tour. However, Warren-native Dave Grohl did bring the band to Niles (near his grandmother's home) for a special Record Store Day performance at Record Connection in April.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- 'The Shoreway' building features luxury lofts on the outskirts of downtown Cleveland and across Edgewater Park.

It was previously 'The Globe Machine and Stamping Company' dating back to 1918. In the summer of 2014, the first residents were able to move into the new apartment complex.

The space features 45 units with one or two bedrooms, which are currently all occupied. A one-bedroom ranges from $1,200 to $2,000 and two bedrooms are $1,500 to $2,500.

We're searching for downtown's sweetest pads and this week we took a look inside this two-bedroom, two-bath unit in the video above.
potholes.jpg

Fixing potholes was just one improvement readers said they wanted to see in 2016. What other improvements would make your Greater Cleveland community a better place to live this year?

(Matt Rourke/Plain Dealer/file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - It's a new year, a fresh start and a time to think about what we'd like to see happen in the coming 12 months.

Last week, we asked readers what would make their Greater Cleveland community a better place to live in 2016. From improved streets and a more responsive government to more recreation opportunities and a greater awareness for the environment, people had plenty to say.

Here's a sample of some of the comments. What's on your wishlist? Add your own thoughts in the comments section below.

"Bring a decent department store to the city such as Macy's or Dillard's. Build it on SOM where Sears was located. Tired of the usual shopping centers (Bainbridge and Macedonia) anchored by big box stores. I am not a fan of Kohl's."

Hometown : Solon

"I would make the city more appealing to residents by addressing our basic needs. One need is to live in a clean well-maintained environment. Residents must stop littering. Homeowners and landlords must maintain their properties."

Hometown : Parma

"A new state of the art emergency room and new economic development in downtown Lakewood."

Hometown : Lakewood

"I would like to see more trees on Kemper Road in Shaker Heights, also hanging flower baskets on Fairhill Road would look nice."

Hometown : Shaker Heights

"Connect bike trails of Lorain County ( Oberlin) to Clemetroparks. Elyria-North Ridgeville-North Olmsted. Utilize 480 bike trail to west."

Hometown : North Ridgeville

"We need new leadership. We need intelligent people with vision who understand that the best way to attract well-educated new residents with good jobs who will contribute to the community is to invest in infrastructure and neighborhoods."

Hometown : Berea

"My town would be a better place if we had leaders that coached, generated enthusiasm, gave credit, accepted blame, actually fixed problems instead of creating problems, and said "LET'S GO!"

Hometown : Parma, Parma Heights

"City Leadership that is not in over their heads."

Hometown : Avon

"Fix the roads in Parma!"

Hometown : Parma

"I would love to see Avon become 100% pedestrian and bicycle friendly with complete sidewalks throughout the city. With so many wonderful places to go, it would be nice to have a safe way to get there while helping to reduce some of the traffic."

Hometown : Avon

"Sell Cassidy Theatre and use the money to support programs that help the elderly, including home services, transportation, mental health, day care, basic life skills, and health information."

Hometown : Parma Heights

"Offer a tax abatement for additions on the homes. The ranches that are in Brook Park are too small for today's modern family. This will keep families in Brook Park and provide additional incentives to stay put."

Hometown : Brook Park

"A recreation center with a pool, basketball courts, hot tub, and steam room."

Hometown : Parma

"Crocker Road traffic is absolutely HORRIBLE!! And everyone forgets how to drive once they get by Crocker Park (tons of accidents always). Better traffic flow needs to be established and that is on the City."

Hometown : Rocky River

"Westlake will adjust the timers on ALL the traffic lights on Crocker Road and Detroit Road in the vicinity of Crocker Park. The traffic is already a nightmare and American Greetings headquarters isn't even occupied yet. (Now seven lights in front of CP alone!)"

Hometown : Westlake

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LAKEWOOD, Ohio - There were plenty of smiles Monday evening during the swearing-in ceremonies for new Lakewood City Council representatives John Litten (Ward III) and Daniel O'Malley (Ward IV), but they disappeared as residents continued to denounce council's Dec. 21 vote to close Lakewood Hospital.

Ward II Councilman Sam O'Leary was installed as council's new president, and Ward I Councilman David Anderson received approval as vice president. They got a taste of the year to come, however, when several citizens vowed the fight to save Lakewood Hospital is not over and likely will include a ballot issue to overturn council's December vote.

Former 12-year councilman Edward Graham called Lakewood council's 2015 executive sessions about the hospital "clandestine", and he reminded council members of their responsibilities and the importance of accountability.

"When people are giving away millions and millions of dollars of city money and getting no valuable consideration in return, this is not good government," Graham said. "It should stop and it should be undone."

Another resident, Dr. Terry Kilroy, said council's role will be to "heal" a city deeply divided by the contentious hospital issue. Tara Peppard of citizens' group Save Lakewood Hospital shared her opinion that "corporate greed" led to the current situation.

"We have truth on our side," Peppard told council members, confirming a referendum is in process. "We're going to continue our fight, and I want to make that very clear. I don't know what the backlash is going to be from you, but I hope it's truth."

To try to facilitate consistent communication about all 2016 council issues, Council-at-Large Representative Tom Bullock presented a letter to council that proposed a weekend or off-site (but open to the public) planning session to establish priorities, set expectations and "regularly communicate to the public" about the hospital issue. His ideas will be discussed at the next Committee of the Whole meeting.

"My personal opinion is that council has a lot to say on this complicated topic," Bullock said in an interview following the meeting. "In order to explain this very important, complex, multi-layered and long-term issue, it's going to take a lot of consistent, clear communication."

It's unknown at this time how, and in what form, that will be accomplished.

"I'm optimistic that the new year and the new approach we're going to get will give us a chance to do that," Bullock said.
Lakewood, Ohio --

Lakewood welcomes Urban Bulk Foods

A trip to Middlefield, Ohio, or just about anywhere in southern Ohio, puts one in contact with the rural Amish stores and their well-known bulk foods. Clevelanders Dennis and Jen Paszkowski dreamed for years about bringing the tradition to northern Ohio.

When Dennis, a former construction worker, retired last year the timing coincided with a store front "for rent" sign he and Jen spotted one day on Madison Avenue in Lakewood. The couple knew immediately they had found the location they dreamed about.

"We wanted to bring to Lakewood what we shopped for over the past 20 years," said Paszkowski. The couple opened Urban Bulk Foods in October 2015.

An important distinction about Urban Bulk Foods versus Amish stores is that they carry pre-packaged foods, not barrels full of food with scoopers for filling plastic bags. The Paszkowskis studied the Amish store model carefully before deciding to concentrate on several areas of inventory.

The candy selection will have any child jumping for joy just to look over the huge selection. The shelves of fresh spices will delight the most elementary cook as well as the experienced chef. Don't miss the steak rubs or the three different types of paprika.

Looking for a nice gift of a special food item? How about elderberry or bumble berry jelly or pickled eggs and beets?

Rounding out the shelves are dried fruits and many organic snack items like roasted green peas.

Paszkowski's long time friend, Dan Banyard, visits frequently and holds court on a folding chair near the door. He proudly pointed out the re-purposed items that have prominent places in the store. "Dan built that counter top with a plank from the tree at St. Paul's Lutheran Church on Detroit Avenue," he said. The countertop still has bark attached to the edge. Many of the store items are featured in re-purposed crates from the Cleveland Museum of Art's last expansion.

Customers Noelle and Craig Huddleston came in the store for the first time. "We drove past several times," said Noelle, "and decided we just had to stop in." She was especially impressed by the overall variety and the selection of spices while their two year old daughter was more interested in a big bag of puffed corn snacks.

But it's the cage free Amish eggs and the rolls of country butter, as well as the well-known Amish cheese, that people love best, according to Paszkowski. Just in case, though, he features a good supply of organic potatoes and onions in one of the crates.

New wood floors and artistic lighting give Urban Bulk Foods more of an upscale chic look than a down home type of store. The inventory in the 1,000 square foot store is arranged beautifully and everything is sparkling clean. It is a pleasure to take the time to browse here.

Urban Bulk Foods is located at 14021 Madison Avenue and is open six days a week.
MEDINA, Ohio -- A Medina County man pleaded guilty Monday in a crash that killed a woman and injured three others in Lafayette Township.

Noah Silcox, 21, of Westfield Center, was charged in the Oct. 17, 2014 crash that killed 21-year-old Tara Green of Burbank. He was driving without a license.

The crash also injured Green's mother and two men who were riding in a third car.

Silcox pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and vehicular assault. He will remain in custody at the Medina County Jail until his Jan. 11 sentencing hearing, court records say.

Defense attorney Kristopher Aupperle was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.

Silcox was driving a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee at 3:43 p.m. when he tried to pass another car. He hit a 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan then crashed head-on into a 2000 Chevrolet Lumina, the State Highway Patrol said.

Green, who was a passenger in the Chevrolet, died after being flown to MetroHealth. Her mother, Teresa Green of Medina, was also flown to the hospital.

Silcox was taken to Lodi Hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. The Dodge's driver, a 23-year-old Lodi man, and a 59-year-old passenger were taken to Medina Hospital. Their injuries were not life threatening.

Green's estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Silcox on Dec. 17, 2014. Silcox's mother was named as a co-defendant because she entrusted her Jeep to him even though he was unlicensed, according to court records.

The two sides reached a settlement last month, but terms of the settlement have not been disclosed in Medina County Common Pleas Court records.

The Dodge's driver and passenger also sued Silcox for damages on July 13, 2015. That lawsuit has not been settled but is scheduled for a second meditation hearing Jan. 22, according to court records.
Eastwood and Ross.JPG

Newly elected Medina City Schools Board of Education member Ronald Ross, right, introduces his friend and longtime Police Department colleague, Mayor Dennis Hanwell, at last night's school board meeting. Hanwell was on hand to deliver the oath of office to Ross and Doug Eastwood, left, who are beginning new terms on the board.

(Ann Norman, Sun News)

MEDINA, Ohio - The Medina City Schools Board of Education welcomed its newest member last night and set the stage for selecting its next one later this month.

Mayor Dennis Hanwell was on hand to deliver the oath of office to his longtime friend and colleague Ronald Ross, who was elected to the board last November. Hanwell served as Ross' training officer, sergeant, lieutenant and chief during Ross' 25-year tenure with the Medina Police Department.

Hanwell also swore in board member Doug Eastwood, who is serving his second term after being elected in November, and incoming board president Robert Skidmore.

Eastwood will also serve as the board's vice president for 2016, and outgoing president Tom Cahalan will take on the duties of treasurer pro tempore in the absence of district Treasurer David Chambers.

The board also set up interviews for Jan. 13 for the open seat recently held by Becky Parkhurst. Parkhurst was appointed to the board in August, after the deadline had passed to submit her name for the November election.

Among those applying for the post are Parkhurst, Dennis Churgovich, Janice Krusoczky and Kevin Selva. Churgovich has run for election in the past, and is a familiar face at school board meetings.

Interviews will begin at 6 p.m. Jan. 13 at the board offices on Weymouth Road. Teacher, support staff, student and community representatives will be asked for their input, Cahalan said.

The board could vote on the appointment as early as Jan. 13 - after the interviews -- and expects to make it official at the Jan. 19 regular board meeting at Medina High School.

Skidmore said the board's goals for next year will be to continue to improve transparency, strive for academic excellence and diversity, add new academic opportunities, update the district's master plan for the next five years, and continue to provide for high-quality maintenance of existing facilities.

The Medina High School alumnus said it is an honor for him to serve on the board and as its president.

"The pride I have in Medina High School is just as strong as it was years ago," he said.

The board also dealt with a number of housekeeping issues at its organizational meeting, including setting committee appointments and meeting dates, as well as holding its Fiscal Year 2017 tax budget hearing.

Here is the link to the tax budget information: http://www.boarddocs.com/oh/medina/Board.nsf/files/A5MR3S6BC3D4/$file/Tax%20Budget%20for%202017.pdf
Top stories:

A bullet grazed an Akron woman's face Monday after someone shot at her house. (cleveland.com) (WKYC Channel 3)

A Lorain man accused of choking his ex-wife and holding a knife to her throat was caught in Cleveland today, authorities said. (cleveland.com)(Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

Bond is set at $500,000 for Gola Lynch, a Cleveland woman who admitted to shooting a man to death.(cleveland.com) (WOIO Channel 19)

Area crime news:

A Cleveland property manager has been indicted for murder in the death of his tenant. (WEWS Channel 5)

A 21-year-old Westfield Township man pleaded guilty Monday to four felony charges related to an October 2014 crash that killed a 21-year-old woman and injured three others. (Medina Gazette)

Dawud Wilson, a South Euclid man who faces up to 18 years in prison for allegedly robbing a Painesville Township credit union, has withdrawn his motion to withdraw his "no contest" plea. (News-Herald)

Warren police responded Monday night to a home for a man who told a dispatcher he had a gun to his head and wanted to "die by police." (Youngstown Vindicator)

A homeless man was arrested over the weekend for robbing a Wooster drug store at knifepoint. (WQKT 104.5-FM)

Police are looking for the suspect in the theft of a catalytic converter stolen from a vehicle in a Fairview Park apartment complex. (WJW Channel 8)

Local news - east:

A man was taken to the hospital with a stab wound today, and Ashtabula police are searching for a suspect who fled on foot leaving the Ashtabula Towers. (Ashtabula Star Beacon)

An appellate court has ruled despite the city of Mentor's objections, the sale of alcoholic beverages at a Johnnycake Ridge Road gas station is not unlawful. (News-Herald)

Friends and colleagues are remembering former Canfield schools superintendent Dante Zambrini for his generosity and dedication to helping others. Zambrini died unexpectedly Monday. (Youngstown Vindicator)

Local news - west:

Asian carp could become the most common fish in Lake Erie if the ravenous invaders develop a breeding population there, while popular sport species including walleye and rainbow trout likely would decline, scientists said Monday. (Associated Press)

The city of Lorain will suspend its economic development loans up to 120 days while city staff examines the policies and procedures of the loans. (Lorain Morning Journal)

Elyria Schools is hoping to sell at auction two long-shuttered schools. (Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

Akron-Canton area news

Marilyn Keith, a three-term councilwoman from West Akron, won a 7-6 vote over Linda Omobien to take the Akron City Council presidency in a last-minute shuffle. (cleveland.com)(WAKR 1590-AM)

The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles Deputy Registrar agency at 3039 Graham Road in Stow closed without notice Monday. (WNIR 100.1-FM)(Stow Sentry)

A 43-year-old Plain Township woman, who underwent groundbreaking surgery at Aultman Hospital last month, continues to recover. (Canton Repository)
road closed.jpg

East 101st Street will be closed from Euclid Avenue to Chester Avenue until Jan. 23 during a Cleveland Clinic electrical project.

(File photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A portion of East 101st Street is closed beginning Monday while crews complete electrical work at the Cleveland Clinic's main campus.

The road is shut down between Euclid and Chester Avenues for the installation of electrical duct banks, according to a news release from the city of Cleveland.

The construction, titled the Ring Bus project, is expected to finish by Jan. 23.

Northbound traffic will be detoured westbound to Euclid Avenue, then northbound to East 93rd Street and finally eastbound to Chester Avenue.

Southbound traffic will be directed eastbound to Chester Avenue, then southbound to East 105th Street and finally westbound to Euclid Avenue.

The project aims to create a more efficient and environmentally-friendly power-distribution system, according to the Cleveland Clinic website.
Elvin Sanchez

Cleveland police officer Elvin Sanchez pleaded guilty Monday to charges stemming from an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old girl.

(Cory Shaffer, Northeast Ohio Media Group)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland police officer pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor sex charges involving a 14-year-old girl.

Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst spared Elvin Sanchez jail time, but ordered him to register as a sex offender for 15 years after he pleaded guilty to sexual imposition, attempted importuning and possession of criminal tools, according to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office.

Fuerst sentenced Sanchez to two years of probation. The officer then resigned from his position as a patrolman in the city's First District, police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said.

Sanchez was scheduled to begin trial Monday on felony gross sexual imposition, importuning and possessing criminal tools charges.

The charges stem from a relationship Sanchez had with a 14-year-old girl while he worked off-duty at a private West Park high school in 2014, according to prosecutors.

The two started exchanging sexually explicit text messages in December of that year, and Sanchez also touched the girl inappropriately, prosecutors said.

Sanchez's lawyer, Joseph Patituce, said in a phone interview Monday that Sanchez agreed last week to a prosecutor's offer to drop the felony charges to misdemeanors

"[Sanchez] takes full responsibility for his actions, but this wasn't a felony," he said.

Sanchez had been placed on unpaid administrative leave until his case was settled.

Sanchez was convicted of misdemeanor theft in 2003 in Parma Municipal Court. He said he was going through a divorce and was "not in a good state of mind," according to his personnel file.

Sanchez is also scheduled to appear Jan. 25 in Parma Municipal Court to change his plea on a domestic violence charge, according to court records. Sanchez pleaded not guilty at his arraignment April 29.

Update: This post was updated with a comment from Elvin Sanchez's lawyer and information from Parma Municipal Court.
cmsd.jpg

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is investigating a Facebook post that a school resource officer posted about the Tamir Rice case.

(Ryllie Danylko, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland Metropolitan School District placed a school resource officer on paid leave after a controversial Facebook post surfaced in which he criticized Tamir Rice and the slain boy's mother.

Matt Cicero, 43, was placed on paid administrative leave Monday for the post that criticized the 12-year-old's mother and made "hurtful" comments about the shooting, school district's spokeswoman Roseann Canfora said on Tuesday.

The post was published two days after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty announced that a grand jury decided to not charge the two officers involved in the child's death, newsnet5 reported.

The Facebook account has since been deleted.

Officer Timothy Loehmann shot Tamir Nov. 22, 2014 while responding to a report of a "guy" with a gun who was scaring people outside Cudell Recreation Center. The gun proved to be an airsoft replica pellet gun.

Cicero, in the post that was screen-grabbed by newsnet5, wrote that Tamir's mother Samaria, who he called a derogatory name, should have taught her son not to play with fake guns. He also wrote that Tamir's mother had financial motives, but did not elaborate.

"You pull out a gun you get shot. I don't have time to ask questions and coddle kids that wave guns around," he wrote.

Cicero has been an armed mobile patrol officer for five years at the school district where Tamir was a student, Canfora said.

District CEO Eric Gordon issued a statement Tuesday calling Cicero's comments "hurtful."

"The comments posted are particularly insensitive, considering that Officer Cicero works for the school district that served Tamir Rice and his family," Gordon wrote "Even as we grieve the tragic loss of this child to his family and to our entire school community, we are mindful of the very difficult job of our safety forces in our schools and our communities. Neither our citizens nor those who police our communities should be painted with a broad brush, and I don't believe we will ever find solutions to such complex issues through Facebook posts -- especially posts that further divide us."

Cleveland City Councilman Jeff Johnson, who has called for the Cleveland city prosecutor to file charges against the officers in the Tamir shooting, blasted the officer's comments.

"It's an unacceptable public declaration or opinion being expressed by an agent who works within a school system that Tamir attended, and that his mother supported," Johnson said Tuesday in a phone interview. "So I think he crossed a line and I think it was disrespectful, not only to Ms. Rice, but to women in general by using a derogatory word."

The Ward 10 councilman said he doesn't want officers like Cicero working in the city's schools.

"He showed an insensitivity toward children and toward the understanding that children do children-type things such as play act," Johnson said.

Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed, also contacted by phone, called the post "very disturbing."

Reed said the incident is an example of widespread distrust between law enforcement in Cleveland and the communities they serve - especially the black community.
Voters cast their ballots on Election Day

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is hiring 5,000 poll workers and temporary staff for the March 15 primary.

(Marvin Fong/The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is hiring 5,000 poll workers and temporary staff for the March 15 presidential primary election.

Poll workers can earn up to $200 for their services, which include completing a poll-worker class and attending a pre-election meeting. In addition, the board is hiring workers for 150 temporary jobs that could last up to several months.

"Our democracy depends on citizens being engaged in the election process," Board of Elections Director Pat McDonald said. "Poll workers are the backbone of all elections as they assist voters on Election Day, and temporary personnel help with vital administrative work before, during and following each election."

Interested applicants can apply through the Board of Elections website. The following jobs are posted:

Precinct election official: Works at a polling location and helps set up precincts for voting by 6:30 a.m, assists voters and closes polls. Applicants must be able to lift approximately 35 pounds and attend a three-hour training session. Precinct election officials will earn a $172.10 stipend.

Voting location manager: Oversees a polling location, assigns duties to poll workers, administers oaths of office and assists with set-up and tear-down of polling locations. Applicants must have a valid driver's license, be able to lift approximately 35 pounds and attend a three-and-a-half-hour training session. $182.10 stipend.

Polling location coordinator: Handles logistics of polling locations, including supplies, set-up and tear-down. Serves as contact point with the Board of Elections, assists poll workers with procedural questions and finds replacements for absent workers. Applicants must have a valid driver's license, be able to lift approximately 35 pounds and attend a four-and-a-half-hour training session. $200 stipend.

Bilingual poll worker: Works a polling location and translates voting instructions for Spanish-speaking voters. Helps with set-up and tear-down of voting locations and reports to the presiding judge. Applicants must be able to lift approximately 35 pounds, be fluent in Spanish, attend a three-and-a-half-hour training session and one-hour bilingual training session. $197.10 stipend.

Ride-along clerk: Works election night beginning at 5 p.m., and rides with law enforcement officials to maintain political balance as they deliver election materials to the Board of Elections. Applicants must be registered Democrats or Republicans. Base rate is $45.

Drop-off captain/rover: Travels to various polling locations and assists with problems, safeguards sensitive documents and supplies and supervises ballot drop-off. Applicants must have a high school diploma, personal vehicle and driver's license, and be able to lift 50-70 pounds. Hourly rate is $11; bonus is $10.

Drop-off assistant: Aids the drop-off captain/rover in verifying supplies received at ballot drop-off locations and the Board of Elections, safeguards sensitive supplies and reports to the election support manager. Applicants must have a minimum of a high school diploma and be able to lift 50 to 70 pounds. Base rate is $65.

Temporary election support rover: Travels to various polling locations and drops off election-related materials, assists with problems related to the election process and safeguards documents and supplies. Applicants must have a minimum of a high school diploma and be able to lift 50 to 70 pounds. Hourly rate is $11.
Government response to Harper Review

4 January 2016

The Government on 24 November 2015 released its response to the Competition Policy Review chaired by Professor Ian Harper (Harper Review). The Harper Review had reportedly been sidelined by the Abbott government, however, following the Liberal party leadership change in September, 2015 the new Turnbull government accepted many of the Harper Review's recommendations, supporting 39 in full, 5 in part and remains open to the remaining 12 recommendations. On 11 December 2015, the Treasurer released a discussion paper on section 46, the misuse of market power provision. The discussion paper is aimed to encourage debate on the Harper Review proposal to strengthen the provision. Submissions on the discussion paper close on 12 February 2016.

This alerter considers the key recommendations in relation to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (CCA) accepted by the Government.

Download PDF
Still, traders believe some appealing plays exist under the surface.

Major U.S. averages fell more than 1.5 percent, following global stocks lower after a sell-off in China. Geopolitical concerns also weighed on equities.

Stocks suffered Monday to start 2016, but "Fast Money" traders saw opportunities in the slide.

Financials: "I think this is a place where there's opportunity," said trader Tim Seymour of the financial sector.

He cited a "fundamental change" in the yield curve. He looked to the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund , which fell Monday with broader markets.

Utilities: Trader Dan Nathan would look to limit exposure outside the United States and make "defensive" moves. He pointed to the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund , which closed Monday 0.2 percent lower.

Telecom: Nathan also likes U.S. telecom stocks. He contended that AT&T and Verizon would make strong buys, particularly because of their dividend yields.

Macy's: Seymour sees upside in some stocks that were "banged up" in 2015. He pointed to shares of department store Macy's , which have plunged 45 percent in the last year.

Trader Guy Adami added that Macy's "traded exceptionally well" Monday, climbing more than 2 percent higher.
Acadia will pay 1.28bn ($1.88 billion) in cash and issue 5.36m shares  worth about 230m  to Priory's owners, the private equity group Advent International.

Acadia Healthcare Company , which operates psychiatric hospitals, treatment centres and outpatient clinics in the US, has bought the group's 322 facilities, including the well-known clinic in Roehampton in south-west London.

The deal represents a profit of more than 500m for Advent, which bought Priory for 925m five years ago.

The move is part of a broader push into the UK by Tennessee-based Acadia, which operates 54 facilities in the country after buying Priory's rival, Partnerships in Care, for 394m in June 2014.

Joey Jacobs, Acadia's chief executive, said a long-term increase in demand for behavioural health services would provide opportunities for growth and further acquisitions in the UK.

Falling NHS funding has helped the UK's private behavioural healthcare market to grow 9.2 per cent a year since 2004.

More from the Financial Times:

World stocks unsettled by Chinese worries

PAG raises $3.6bn for Asian buyout fund

Equities: And then there were nine

Acadia declined to comment on its UK market share, but the combined revenues of Priory and Partnerships in Care would give the company more than 50 per cent of the non-government market, according to estimates provided by the company in 2014.

Priory Group had revenues of 521m in 2014, the last year for which figures are available, and Acadia expected revenue to have grown to about 587m last year. Shares in Acadia rose 3 per cent during morning trading in New York.
"I know about the process of money management. Money managers are under tremendous pressure to outperform the . They also want to show that they are 'with it' and have a 'brain,'" the " Mad Money " host said.

Cramer said that FANG should be avoided right now. These stocks are up so much that he now expects profit taking. Actually, it would be insane if that didn't happen at this point.

What should they do if they already own these stocks, or want to own them?

The New Year kicked off with an ugly sell-off on Monday, and many investors asked Jim Cramer what to do with FANG  which stands for Facebook , Amazon , Netflix and Alphabet  and the once-popular favorite Apple .

Don't bet against the percentages. They can be wrong, but not as often as they can be right

The best way to demonstrate that a money manager is "with it" is to buy the stocks that make up FANG going into the year end, since they were up huge for 2015.

Once the money manager owns these stocks, they will try to keep the stocks higher in the last few weeks of the year, typically through concentrated buying.

Cramer regarded both of these techniques as artificial buying  and it will disappear the moment the New Year begins.

This could explain why all members of FANG were hit heavily in Monday's trading session.

Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer

Cramer: The market is totally irrational!

Cramer: Horrifying stocks to avoid in a sell-off

Cramer: Stocks that get stronger in a decline

From a valuation perspective, Cramer found that both Amazon and Netflix are plays that do not trade based on standard measurements of valuation. These stocks trade off of growth in retail sales and sign up, and cannot be simply measured. That means they have no inherent valuation that makes them buyable right now.

"Sure, you can go buy them if you can't help yourself. But if you want to minimize the risk of paying too much, why not wait until the full magnitude of that artificial buying wears off?" Cramer said.

Alphabet trades at a far more reasonable valuation compared to the rest of the group. However the stock traded up to almost $800 from $530 in 2015, so Cramer wants investors to wait for pullback and then buy this stock first in the group.

As for Apple, the world has decided that without growth in cellphones the stock is finished. But there is another market that is big enough to matter down the road  autos.

Cramer recommended for Apple to spend $9 billion to buy the brains behind the connected car, Harman. At its current valuation, Cramer only wants those investors that do not own Apple to buy it. But if you already own it, he wants you to wait.

"You now have your rationale. Don't bet against the percentages. They can be wrong, but not as often as they can be right," Cramer said.
Iranian protesters in Tehran hold pictures of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr during a Jan. 4, 2016, demonstration against his execution by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia widened its rift with Iran on Monday, saying it would end air traffic and trade links with the Islamic republic and demanding that Tehran must "act like a normal country" before it would restore severed diplomatic relations.

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters in an interview that Tehran was responsible for rising tensions after the kingdom executed Shi'ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, describing him as a terrorist.

Insisting Riyadh would react to "Iranian aggression", he accused Tehran of dispatching fighters to Arab countries and plotting attacks inside the kingdom and its Gulf neighbours.

"There is no escalation on the part of Saudi Arabia. Our moves are all reactive.

It is the Iranians who went into Lebanon. It is the Iranians who sent their Qods Force and their Revolutionary Guards into Syria," Jubeir said.

Tehran says it has sent only military advisers to Syria and Iraq at their governments' requests, and denies plots in Gulf states.

The execution of Nimr provoked protests among Shi'ites across the region and Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, setting fires and causing damage, prompting Riyadh to cut ties and inflaming an already heated rivalry.

"We will also be cutting off all air traffic to and from Iran.
As the world's second-largest economy rings in the New Year with a stock market crash, investors are wondering whether Beijing will once again bring out its "National Team" to bolster jittery sentiment.

The Shanghai Composite tanked as much as 3 percent early Tuesday before paring losses, having tumbled 7 percent on Monday amid weak manufacturing surveys, a depreciating yuan , the introduction of circuit breakers and the upcoming lifting of a six-month ban on share sales by investors with holdings of 5 percent or more in a company.

The ban was implemented last year as part of Beijing's aggressive stabilization toolkit after the benchmark index lost trillions of its market value during a June-August rout. At that time, government officials also ordered state-owned brokerages and a coalition of financial institutionsdubbed the "National Team"to buy shares, a move that came under sharp international criticism, with economists calling it "heavy-handed" and a blow to Beijing's international credibility.

But should the current turmoil persist, the National Team could make a comeback this year.

"There is a possibility that the authorities may intervene to prop up the markets via the National Team, but Beijing is arguably more concerned over growth than the stock market. Furthermore, it could look really bad if they have to throw in more measures when they are in the process of withdrawing the rescue measures," said Bernard Aw, IG market strategist.
watch now

With medicinal marijuana licenses in hand, New York dispensaries are finally gearing up to sell cannabis legally beginning Thursday.

Columbia Care arguably has one the buzziest dispensary locations in New York City's Union Square neighborhood. The state in July granted five medicinal marijuana licenses. Nicholas Vita, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, runs Columbia Care. He's gearing up to open his shop on 14th Street. Business neighbors include a CityMD office and a Chickpea restaurant. "Almost every subway line in the city touches Union Square, which makes the location incredibly accessible," said Vita, Columbia Care's chief executive. And in case you're wondering, there are no marijuana plants on-site. Columbia Care has been growing its marijuana in Rochester, as the law requires all cannabis to be cultivated and manufactured in the state.

Read MoreVireo Health New York is preparing to sell medicinal cannabis in the state



Inside Columbia Care, one of New York City's first medicinal marijuana dispensaries. The Columbia Care shop is located on 14th Street right off Manhattan's Union Square. Jodi Gralnick | CNBC

The dispensary's exterior is intentionally discreet, lacking marijuana plant designs so commonly seen around the country. There are five security cameras out front, and patients will be buzzed in after showing medicinal program cards. Once inside, customers are invited back to the pharmacy area. The interior space is modern and warm, not sterile like a doctor's office.

But key larger questions remain including how many medical practitioners will participate in the program, and recommend medicinal marijuana to patients.

Also, health insurance does not cover medical marijuana so patients will have to pay out of pocket. Columbia Care will run a separate program for low-income patients. The company has submitted its consumer-facing price proposals to the state for approval. "There remains uncertainty ... [around] the willingness of the medical community to recommend marijuana as an alternative treatment," says Matt Karnes, founder of GreenWave Advisors, an industry watcher. The New York program is a "symbolic step forward in terms of visibility and awareness," he said.

Jodi Gralnick | CNBC

The dispensary's pending opening comes as New York puts into practice one of the country's most restrictive medicinal marijuana laws. The Compassionate Care Act was signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in July 2014. "We will be providing products and services to a chronically ill patient that hasn't had a great deal of success relying on the standard of care," Vita said. "Part of our mandate is to provide the highest-quality products, services and information so patients can make the right decisions with their physicians," he said. New York patients seeking medicinal marijuana have been diagnosed with a "specific severe, debilitating or life-threatening condition that is accompanied by an associated or complicating condition," according to the New York state Department of Health. This currently includes 10 different recognized conditions including an HIV infection or AIDS, cancer and ALS.

The department declined to respond to multiple requests from CNBC on the size of the state program in terms of registered doctors and patients. Smoking the product is restricted in New York state, as is consuming via edibles. Instead, approved uses of cannabis include liquid and oil preparations for consumption orally or through a tube as well as capsules, according to the department. Read MoreFrom 'cash teams' to security, marijuana business gets serious



David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Following are excerpts from the transcript of a CNBC interview by Hadley Gamble and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia, Adel al-Jubeir.

HG: Iran is threatening divine retribution for the execution of Shi'ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, what is your government's response to that message from Tehran?



AJ: Our response is that he is a terrorist. He is as much of a religious scholar as Osama bin Laden was. He was implicated in inciting people, recruiting people, providing weapons and munitions for people and he was involved in attacks against security people and police stations that led to the killing of the innocents. In Saudi Arabia we are very determined to confront terrorism and confront it robustly and firmly. We will show no mercy to those that kill the innocents. The individual, along with the other 46 individuals had their due process, they went through the courts, the courts of appeal, it was reviewed by the Supreme Court. These were open trials. The media, both domestic and foreign had access to them if they wanted to, the records are available. The charges are clear, the convictions are clear and when the sentences were carried out  that was the end of it. The kingdom of Saudi should be commended for showing resolve and taking a firm position against people who kill the innocent, not condemned for it. And as far as the Iranians are concerned, what I find very puzzling is this individual is a Saudi citizen, he committed a crime in Saudi Arabia, he was convicted in a Saudi court and the sentence was carried out by Saudi authorities. What does Iran have to do with this? They execute hundreds of people every year, nobody says anything about it. This is their system, and so for the Iranians to inject themselves into our domestic affairs is in-line with what Iran has been doing for years throughout the region; in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Bahrain, in Yemen. They have been providing supplies for terrorists, they have been recruiting people, they have been assassinating people, they have been sowing sectarianism in the region, splitting the Islamic world. Their policies are in violation of all the norms and customs that the international community has been based on. And yet, and so we have decided to say enough is enough and as a consequence we cut off our ties with the Iranians.



HG: So why is this happening now? Given that backlog of events, given Iran's involvement not just in trying to cement problems across the region but also attacks, personal attacks, even on yourself, what happened now that you decided to cut ties.



AJ: At a certain point everybody reaches their limit. The Iranians have gotten away with murder, literally for more than 30 years. The attacks against the American embassy in Beirut, the attacks against American marines at Beirut airport, the kidnapping and assassination of diplomats in Beirut and elsewhere. The fact that they harboured the individuals who were implicated in the Khobar bombings in 1996. One of them was apprehended last year carrying an Iranian passport, even though he was a Saudi citizen. They harboured al qaeda leaders after the 2001. Some of them are still there. The order to blow up the compounds in 2003 came from an al qaeda operative who was based in Iran at the time. The Iranians are known to be involved in this. The Iranians sent militia to fight with the consequence being more than 250,000 Syrians killed and more than 12 million people displaced. The Iranians smuggled explosives into Bahrain and weapons. They've tried to do the same in Saudi Arabia. They did the same in Kuwait. The Iranians have sent supplies and weapons and money and personnel to support the Houthis in Yemen so that they can takeover Yemen and present a threat to Saudi Arabia. So we see Iran's nefarious activities all over the region and so we have had grievances with them which we have made clear to them. We have tried to engage the Iranian government on this issue, we have told them that good relations with the countries of the region they should ask the responsible members of the international community and they should cease and desist in activities that are hostile or aggressive, unfortunately this is not what we have seen and so this latest round is just where we said enough is enough, we have to make a stand our public will not tolerated continued Iranian aggression towards Saudi without a response and so the response we took was to cut off our relations with Iran close down Iran's embassy missions in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.



HG: But shouldn't the number one priority right now be the fight against the Islamic State and considering that you're, you seem to be at least, on the same side of that issue. Isn't it going to be a problem if you guys aren't talking?



AJ: I don't think that we're on the same side in terms of fighting Islamic State. I think Iran contributed to the rise of the Islamic State 



HG: but they say that you did..



AJ: Well they can say whatever they want but facts are stubborn things. The fact is there was no Islamic state before the war in Syria began. The fact is in the first year of the war in Syria there was no Islamic state, nor was there one in Iraq. Bashar Assad released criminals form his jails, Nouri al-maliki also released criminals from his jails. Those criminals made their way to Syria, this became part of the extremist movements which then evolved into Daesh, or Islamic State  they are not Islamic nor a state so we shouldn't call them that. In the first couple of years Bashar Assad traded with them, he bought oil from them, he allowed them to expand, and he allowed them to grow so that he can tell people that it's either me or the terrorists, and as a consequence they grew. The Iranians sent their militias, their Quds force and militias that they recruited from Iraq and other places and Hezbollah, to Syria to fight in support of Bashar Assad. They didn't fight Daesh, they fought the moderate Syrian opposition while allowing Daesh to grow and flourish and become a threat to everyone. So for Iran to say they're fighting Daesh is disingenuous. When it comes to Daesh and Iraq, the reason that we have Daesh in Iraq is because of the sectarian policies that nouri al-maliki, Iran's agent, pursued in Iraq for many years. He marginalized the Sunni's, he short-changed the Kurds when it comes to revenue sharing and he tried to impose a very radical Iranian driven sectarian agenda that the Iraqi people refused and as a consequence Iraq became fertile ground for Daesh, and we always say, I've always said, that the two elephants in the room that people need to seriously look at are Bashar Assad in Syria  he has to go in order to open the way for a defeat of Daesh, and the implementation of the reforms that the Iraqi people agreed to the summer before last that would keep the country united, give equal rights to all of Iraq's communities irrespective of their religion sect or ethnicity  that's how we remove the fertile ground in which Daesh flourishes then we can deal with them.

HG: Talk to me a little about the situation in Syria because if Saudi Arabia and Iran aren't technically talking doesn't that mean that the death and destruction and the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants is just going to continue longer term?



AJ: Well, we support the resolution of the conflict in Syria based on the principles of Geneva one and the discussions in Vienna and New York. A settlement that would lead to the establishment of a governing council that would take power from the Bashar government and that will then write a constitution and prepare for elections in order to move to a new Syria, a Syria in which Bashar has no role. We've always supported this. We've always said that we prefer a political solution to a military solution. But we've also said that the Syrian people have a right to defend themselves against this tyrant, and we support that right in every way we can and we will continue to. And so this is our position, the Iranian position on the other hand has been to send thousands of troops and recruit thousands if not tens of thousands of militias from different places from Iran, from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Shia militias from Iraq from Lebanon in order to support Bashar Assad.



HG: So what needs to happen next in terms of ending this crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran, what are the steps that need to happen and also does the US need to play some kind of role?



AJ: I think that it's very simple, we did not escalate and we have not escalated in the past



HG: *INTERRUPTS* but Iran has arrested 40 people at least in connection to what happened to your embassy, isn't that at least a show of support or a show of doing something?



AJ: We will see, as I said we have not escalated, our reactions have been in reaction to what Iran has done, we don't interfere in Iran's domestic affairs, we don't send weapons and explosives into Iran, we don't recruit Iranians to go and kill other Iranians



HG: *INTERRUPTS* so would you characterise your foreign policy as reactionary?



AJ: So we have, in terms of the steps that we have taken they have been in response to the aggressive steps that Iran has committed to us so your original question was what would it take to resolve this? Very simple Iran should back-off, they should stop being aggressive they should stop interfering in the affairs of their neighbours, they should stop supporting terrorism, isn't that what all of us around the world want? I hope that they will turn around and adapt a more conciliatory policy and a more normal policy, the way that countries and governments should behave. And I want to emphasize here that we have not enmity towards Iran, we have no enmity towards the Iranian people, we have tremendous respect for Iran's culture and Iran's history. Iran is a neighbouring country, it's a fact, but we have a problem with their government, that's where the aggression is coming from, we wish the Iranian people well, and we wish that their government will behave as a government, not as a force for mischief and aggression. With regards to the steps that the Iranians took, what we have seen is we asked for assistance security at 2 o'clock or so in the afternoon, none was forthcoming, we asked again at 6, nothing happened, we asked again several hours later when the crowds were increasing, nothing happened



HG: *INTERRUPTS* So they just didn't show up to help you?

AJ: We didn't see anyone helping us, and then what they did is they, even though this is a fundamental principle of the Vienna convention and the protection of diplomatic relations; it is the responsibility of the host government to protect foreign missions accredited to them. And it's one of the fundamental principles in international relations, even countries at war protect each other's diplomatic missions, in this case the Iranians didn't, and what we then saw was when people entered the embassy and began to set it on fire, then we saw security forces from Iran come in, then we saw the same security forces walk out with computers and documents



HG: *INTERRUPTS* You have this on tape?

AJ: Well we have a briefing of this that we were provided 2 days ago, we have it, I believe in the public domain, we have eye witnesses who have this, other diplomats, non-Saudi diplomats, and they even took selfies of themselves inside the Saudi embassy, and we thenin Mashhasd we believe that the prestige was part of the operation that organised the demonstrations that were the same prestige that stormed the British embassy in 2011 , and then we noticed that the electricity was cut off in the neighbourhood where our diplomats live at about 2 or 3 in the morning while our Charge D'affaires was having meetings with other diplomats from friendly countries to see what steps to take. There are too many coincidences here.



HG: So you think it was a coordinated incident.



AJ: The other thing we noticed is there seem to have been a shift, a changing of the demonstrators, in the middle of the night one group left another group came. It seemed like our shift is over let's leave bring in the next shift. It was too, too organised to be random and the expressions of regret from Iran came after the fact. Give you another example. We discussed with the Iranian authorities the taking out of the Saudi families, the women and the children, and we agreed that we will take them out the next day. They agreed. We told them that some of them don't have their passports because they were burnt and we agreed on a mechanism. They showed up at the airport and they kept them waiting for more than 3 hours. You don't play these games if you're serious. Not when you have a crisis, you either defend the mission or you don't.



HG: Talk to me about the Russians. They've offered to mediate here, they've offered to mediate in Syria as well  does Russia have a role to play and if so what is it?



AJ: Every country has a role to play as long as it's a positive role, every country has a role to play. When it comes to mediation, we don't need mediation. We know where Iran is , Iran knows where Saudi Arabia is, they know what our issues with them are um and what they have to do is show us that they are serious. Show us a change in behaviour, show us a change in attitude, show us a desire to want to have normal relations with us and we will do the same, we have no issue with this. With regards to Russia, Russia can play a very important role by putting pressure on Bashar Assad to step down and allow for a transition in Syria and we've made this to them, we've made this very clear to them.



HG: There's been a noticeable shift in terms of outrage from the Saudi government and the Russia Government in terms of investments in Russia. This is a country that's been hurt by sanctions for a couple of years now, they're also being hurt by these lower oil prices as is Saudi Arabia, is there an opportunity there to come to some kind of agreement on oil output do you think?



AJ: Well oil is a commodity that is controlled by the markets and by supply and demand. It is subject to cyclical swings depending on how much supply, how much demand and this affects the price of oil. I think the discussions about being able to manipulate the price or being able to manipulate the markets are exaggerated at the end of the day its fundamental economics of supply and demand. With regards to our relationship with Russia, we believe that the extent of trade we have with Russia is not in line with the size of our respective economies. We are both members of the G20 but we have very little trade, very little investment and so we wanted to change that. Russia is a great power, Russia has 20 million Muslims living in it, Russia can play a positive role and we wanted to engage with Russia, we wanted to improve our relationship with Russia not at the expense of our relationship with any other country but for the sake of having better ties with Russia. So we began a process of reaching out and began a process of encouraging trade, encouraging scientific exchanges, encouraging investment and we will continue to do that and on the areas where we may have disagreements we will agree that we will talk about them and try to resolve them and if there are areas which cannot be resolved, we will just wait until the opportune time comes to be able to resolve those.



HG: So continuing to invest in Russia is important to Saudi Arabia?



AJ: If we find investments that are profitable  yes. If we find investments that are good for the Saudi people and the Saudi treasury yes, but we invest the way any serious investor does  you look at cost and you look at returns.



HG: You think that analogy when you look at the conversation that is ongoing in the region about whether or not your intervention in Yemen is successful  what does success in Yemen really look like and how close are you to achieving it?



AJ: There are two phases to the operation in Yemen. The first phase had to do with an emerging threat on our border. We had a militia that allied with Iran and Hezbollah that took over increasing parts of the country. Went from its base and took over the capital, took over the government, moved south, took over Aden, surrounded the Presidential palace in Aden, and was on the verge of either kidnapping, imprisoning or killing heaven forbid the President. The President of Yemen asked for support under article 51 of the UN charter. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of 10 countries provided that support. We were facing a situation where we had a militia that was in possession of heavy weapons, that was in possession of ballistic missiles with a range of several hundred miles and that was now in the possession of an air force. I don't believe there is another example in the world where you have a militia outside the government in possession of military aircraft. And this was an imminent threat to Saudi. So the first phase of the operations was designed to take out that threat  the heavy weapons, the ballistic missiles, the air defences and the air force so that we remove the threat. The other part of this operation was to defend the legitimate government of Yemen which nobody in the world took issue with  we have a legal basis UN Security Council 2216 and we have article 51 and we have requests by legitimate government, so, and we've always said that the operations are meant to open the door for a physical settlement in Yemen. Yemen can only be resolved politically through the implementation of the GCC initiative the outcomes of the national dialogue and UN security council resolution 2216 that's what we're working on. Military operations have been making gradual progress in Yemen. The legitimate government is now in charge of almost 80% of the territory in Yemen, six months ago that was not the case



HG: *INTERRUPTS* So how much longer are we talking?



AJ: And I don't think anyone can predict wars it's like trying to predict the stock market there may be ups and downs but what we're seeing is progress and progress increasingly so and we're seeing the talks in Geneva between the government and the ???? alliance and we're hoping that they'll be able to make progress. But if they don't make progress we'll continue to support, the legitimate government and Yemen will be resolved  it's just a matter of time.



HG: Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the region and of course you are also the largest oil producer as well  many people are worried about not just what's happening in the Middle East of course but the knock on effect that has in the west. What happens here has major implications for global markets as well  does Saudi Arabia have a plan?



AJ: A plan for?



HG: A plan for the future in terms of an economic vision in terms of tackling not just the challenges here at home but also the challenges in the region?



AJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. We have been for decades devising 5 year plans in order to meet certain targets development so that we can build infrastructure build schools build hospitals, educate our people, provide jobs for people attract foreign investment, diversify our economy and we've been doing this. We are now working on another aspect of Saudi Arabia where we will fundamentally change our economy and have  be able to have a quantum leap forward and look at every aspect of the Saudi economy and every aspect of Saudi institutions to see how we could make it more efficient, how we can generate more value, how we can generate more income out of non-oil sources and we have, this will be announced in the next few weeks, we are very transparent about it. This country has huge potential and huge opportunities we have political stability, we have a young population we have a dynamic population, we have an educated population, we have almost 70% of our population is under the age of 30, we are the most wired people in the world in terms of social media Twitter, Facebook and the like, and so there's tremendous - and we have great business establishment some of the world's leading businesses are in Saudi Arabia companies like Saudi Aramco, STC all operate here. We have hundreds of thousands of very young men and women who have studied abroad or are currently studying abroad everywhere from Japan to the United States and they will come back appreciative of and knowledgeable of different cultures and they will be able to speak different languages, they will be even more connected with the world and all of this energy will bring together in a country that has as you said a huge mineral base, a huge natural resource base, a huge savings base a first rate infrastructure, stable political environment in a geographically strategic location and you have all the ingredients for a tremendous acceleration of economic growth in Saudi Arabia and this is what we are hoping to achieveJust to give you a sense of where we are in the past year in 2015 was the year for planning and 2016 is going to be the year when we begin the execution of these plans. Last year we were able to increase our non-oil share of revenue in the budget to 29% its unheard of, most oil producers are somewhere around 90-95% of their income is from oil  we were able to diversify and we haven't even scratched the surface yet. The things that you will be seeing in the coming weeks are tremendously ambitious and very realistic and I have no doubt that it will increase the already strong investor confidence in Saudi Arabia, it will increase the confidence of our citizens which is already very strong and it will transform Saudi Arabia.



HG: And finally your excellency one more question can you continue to pursue an expansionary foreign policy given the current price environment with oil prices where they are and also in terms of what's happening here at home, in terms of the cutting of subsidiaries in terms of this basically austerity which is very new for Saudi Arabia  is that something that's achievable?



AJ: With regards to foreign policy and security policy it's not a luxury it's not like a hobby that you pursued and you decide at one point that it's too expensive I shouldn't do it  it's a necessity we have to work to put our region in order and we have to do what we need to do to protect our citizens and our country  there can be no price tag attached to it that will continue  that's firm. With regards to our domestic situation I think one of the points I would also like to emphasise is that of the G20 countries we're virtually debt free. Our debt to GDP ratio is 5 or 6 or 7 per cent it's very very low. In most countries 50-60% would be an enviable percentage. In some countries in the G20 the debt to gdp ratio exceeds 200%. We're not there sowe have a huge borrowing capacity we have a huge non-oil income generating capacity that will allow us to continue on our with our development plans without austerity  this is a term that's not in our lexicon, without having to have any kind of austerity or impacting on the quality of life of our citizens. When people talk about subsidiaries we have energy prices that are way too low and the people who benefit from them are probably 20% and so what we did is we changed the formula so that the middle class and the lower middle class prices for them don't change so their lives will not be impacted and those who can afford to spend more should be able to spend what it costs to produce this energy and so the impact is going to be very little. But on the people who would feel the impact the most the impact would be almost zero.

HG: So the world shouldn't be worried about Saudi Arabia?



AJ: Absolutely not. Saudi Arabia has been around for 300 years - this is the 3rd Saudi state, foundations are the same, the leadership is the same, Saudi Arabia is a country that is inclusive we are not .



HG: Many would dispute that



AJ: Inclusive in our own way I mean we connect with people discuss consultations go on we have a very strong bonds between the country and the people in the leadership. It's not an erratic country we have a clear sense of direction and we pursue that. Our policies have been consistent for the last 70 years  you dint see Saudi Arabia going from the western world to the soviet world and back to the western world we don't do this we don't have u-turns it's always very consistent. Sometimes people accuse us of moving, think we're moving too slowly and that's sometimes the same people who think we're moving too quickly and so I assume if people say both things about you that you're probably doing it at the right pace



HG: Your excellency thank you so much for joining us.



AJ: Any time, thank you.






Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Eli Lilly  The drugmaker cut its 2015 full-year guidance and forecast 2016 earnings below current Street consensus. The 2015 guidance cut is due to charges related to a previously announced drug acquisition, with non-GAAP earnings forecasts unchanged.

First Solar  Goldman Sachs upgraded the solar equipment maker's stock to "buy" from "neutral" and increased its target price to $100 per share from $60. Goldman considers First Solar one of its top ideas for 2016 and offers the most substantial upside in the sector over the next 12 months, citing a "best-in-class balance sheet" and added production capacity.

Willis Towers Watson  Towers Watson and Willis Group Holdings have successfully completed their merger, with the consulting firm beginning combined operations and trading under its new name and ticker symbol ("WLTW").

Tyson Foods  RBC downgraded Tyson to "sector perform" from "outperform," based in part on a decline in the performance of the company's prepared foods segment.

Amazon.com  Amazon said more than 23 million items were ordered from sellers on Cyber Monday, a more than 40 percent year-over-year increase.

Capital One  The credit card issuer was downgraded to "perform" from "outperform" at Oppenheimer. The firm said Street earnings expectations for the company are on the optimistic side, especially for 2017.

Nordstrom , J.C. Penney  Citi downgraded Nordstrom to "neutral" from "buy," while upgrading Penney to "neutral" from "sell." Citi said Nordstrom sales have slowed more than it expected, while rival retailer Penney is now fairly priced after sliding about 30 percent over the past three months.

Yahoo  Yahoo has shut down its online video portal Screen. The portal failed to gain traction after it was started in 2013, while rivals posted double-digit increases in viewership.

Smith & Wesson  Smith & Wesson raised quarterly revenue and earnings guidance for its third quarter and its 2016 fiscal year ending April 30. The gun maker said sales have been stronger than expected and that various indicators point to a continuation of that trend.

MetLife  Citi downgraded the insurance company's shares to "neutral" from "buy," citing "significant earnings headwinds" while lacking any near-term catalysts.

Ford Motor  Ford plans to triple the size of its fleet of self-driving test cars to 30. The automaker made the announcement to coincide with the kickoff of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Toyota Motor  Toyota set a 2.7 percent China sales growth target for 2016, less than analysts had anticipated. Toyota's China sales had increased by 8.7 percent in 2015.

Nvidia  Nvidia unveiled a new computer designed for use in self-driving cars, and the maker of graphics chips also said Volvo will be the first customer for the device.

International Business Machines  IBM announced the retirement of executive vice president Steven Mills, who had been with IBM since 1973 and had reportedly rejected a 2010 offer from Hewlett-Packard to become that company's chief executive officer.

Activision Blizzard  Activision bought video game competition producer Major League Gaming for $46 million, as it develops a new "e-sports" unit.
Saudi Arabia's decision to cut diplomatic ties with Iran sentoil on a wild ride to start the week.

Crude closed in the red Monday after surging 3 percent at one point  but one widely followed commodities watcher says despite the big moves, oil is likely to trade in a very tight trading range for the rest of 2016.

"I think we're going to be $4 on either side of $37 for spot WTI," Dennis Gartman told the CNBC "Fast Money" traders on Monday. "$33 is the low. $41 is the high. I think WTI will be happy to spend the next year or so at and around $37 per barrel. This is where we are today."



West Texas Intermediate crude was down 1.4 percent at $36.24 late morning Tuesday.

Oil's volatility Monday offered a stark reminder that record-high supply and continued aggressive production should keep crude prices low  at least in the near term.
Posters of books about China's politics including some featuring Chinese President Xi Jinping are seen displayed in the staircase leading to a bookshop in Hong Kong. Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said on Monday there was no indication so far outside agents were involved in the disappearance of five booksellers specializing in publications critical of China, but that it would be "unacceptable" if any were. The disappearances have stoked fears of mainland Chinese authorities using shadowy tactics that erode the "one country, two systems" formula under which the former British colony has been governed since its return to Chinese rule in 1997. Lee Bo, 65, a shareholder of Causeway Bay Books, "vanished" last week, according to a missing person report filed by Lee's wife on Thursday. Four associates involved in publishing or selling literature critical of Beijing have also gone missing in mysterious circumstances over the past few months. Hong Kong opposition lawmakers protested on Sunday outside Beijing's representative office over Lee's disappearance.

"We are highly concerned with this case," said Beijing-backed Hong Kong leader Leung. He added there was "no indication" so far that Lee may have been kidnapped by Chinese State Security agents in the financial hub and whisked across the border to China, though investigations were ongoing. "If mainland (Chinese) law enforcement personnel enforce the law in Hong Kong, this is unacceptable because it breaches the Basic Law," Leung said, referring to the city's mini-constitution, in rare comments defending Hong Kong's autonomy. The Basic Law guarantees wide-ranging personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, and independent law enforcement overseen by an independent judiciary. When asked about the disappearance of Lee, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing that she had no information to offer. Lee's wife told media that her husband had phoned her on what appeared to be a Chinese phone number to say he was "assisting" in an investigation, despite having left his travel document at home. Three of the missing men were last seen late last year in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

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Another key concern is the Chinese renminbi. In our base case, we expect it to weaken, but only modestly, toward 6.80 against the U.S. dollar in 12 months. In this scenario, we do not believe that the yuan would act as a major driver for financial markets. However, a key risk to this view is the possibility that a disorderly depreciation of the Chinese renminbi, or uncertainty over its management, drives greater regional currency volatility and global deflationary pressure.

With respect to the Middle East, we do not believe this latest rise in tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran is sufficiently severe to alter the outlook for global oil markets in 2016. That said, investors will need to continue to monitor the situation in case of a more serious deterioration in relations.



Overall, we are keeping our positioning unchanged and believe that global growth will ultimately support current valuations, and even an additional appreciation of riskier assets. However, further deterioration in credit spreads, currency moves in China, and developments in the Middle East are areas where we see a heightened need to monitor for risks.



Commentary by Mark Haefele, global chief investment officer at UBS Wealth Management, overseeing the investment strategy for $2 trillion in invested assets. Follow UBS on Twitter @UBSamericas.

For the latest commentary on the markets in the U.S. and around the world, follow @cnbcopinion on Twitter.
Since that hallowed date? Pretty much nothing. The market was trading Tuesday within a couple points of where it was the day the Federal Open Market Committee announced it was cutting off the market's lifeline.

The result was an anemic economic recovery but a stunning rise in stocks  200 percent in all off the March 2009 financial crisis lows.

Read More More market trouble is just around the corner

It is, of course, the very day the Federal Reserve announced it had concluded the third round of its massive money-printing operation known as quantitative easing . The Fed had been using its digital printing press to gobble up bonds, an operation that in turn was helping drive liquidity and boost asset prices in hopes of goosing economic activity,

The fact is, the market, at least as gauged by the , really hasn't done much of anything. Equities are almost right where they were when the market closed on Oct. 29, 2014.

Despite all of its pops higher and lower, the stock market only looks volatile over the past 14 months or so.

The floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell on Oct. 29, 2014, in New York City. The Federal Reserve phased out its bond purchasing program while keeping interest rates near zero for a "considerable time."

"The S&P 500 is now back to levels seen when QE3 ended in October 2014. These levels have been breached before, most notably in August 2015, but the recent trend of lower highs is saying something about risk appetite," Citigroup analysts said in a note Tuesday.



Sure, there have been peaks and valleys since the Fed took away the QE portion of the punch bowl. But stocks have been trapped in a pretty vicious range post-QE3, plunging amid geopolitical turmoil, fears of a hard landing in China and tumbling energy prices, then turning higher again after the storms temporarily passed. Indeed, the market has backstopped the losses.

But there has been little to spur any lasting gains.



"I don't know if anyone should be surprised that we've been on this bumpy trip to nowhere," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. "You've gotten to the point where there's diminishing returns on monetary policy."

Read More The Fed in 2016: THIS is what to watch out for



Since the end of QE, the Fed has sought to begin the other step towards policy normalization. At the December meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank approved the first hike to its key funds rate in more than nine years.

Expectations differ on what happens next: Fed officials, through their individual projections, expect the FOMC to hike four times this year. Market participants, though, doubt that will happen, with expectations now for two or three hikes.

"Expectations of them to go three or four more times this year are way out of whack," Hogan said. "I would applaud their ability to go two more times. They may not be able to."

Fed officials appear cognizant of the effect loose policy has had on financial markets. Recent statements from senior members that had a hawkish bent have helped contribute to the instability that has marked early 2016 trading.

The question, then, will be whether the Fed can maintain that resolve should the market continue to show the inability to grow without the Fed's largesse.

"More and more, this is a Fed that's saying, 'We want this market to stop relying on us and every word that comes from us.' You have to let market forces work," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial. "The Fed's not running a hedge fund."
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, is set to mark the first anniversary of the attacks on its Paris offices with a special edition, set to be published this Wednesday. The front cover of the 32-page special edition shows a bearded man representing God with a Kalashnikov rifle, with the accompanied (translated) headline saying "One year later: The assassin is still on the run."

The cover of Charlie Hebdo, to mark the first anniversary of the attacks on 7 January 2015. Courtesy of Charlie Hebdo | Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

On January 7 2015, two Islamist militants burst into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing some 12 people over its cartoons. In the three days following the attack, 17 people in total were killed, ending in a siege at a kosher supermarket and a raid on a printing facility on the outskirts of Paris. Throughout this week, the European country plans on remembering the victims with memorial plaques, eulogies and other public ceremonies. The magazine is expected to release around one million copies, with several thousand more to be sold overseas, with Charlie Hebdo's director and a cartoonist, Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau, publishing a special editorial to mark the anniversary. In the piece, Sourisseau condemns "fanatics brutalized by the Koran."

In the piece, Sourisseau documents the history of the magazine, which then goes on to a vivid description of what happened January 7, of which Sourisseau was one of those who survived the attack. While he admits "2015 was the most terrible year in the history of Charlie Hebdo," he adds that the newspaper would not have survived financially if the horrific event had not happened. "In short, Jan. 7 was our luck because at once the whole of France began to read Charlie. Imagine the effect that reading such words can make on those who tried to get up. Again, the existence of Charlie was an anomaly. Even in these nightmarish times," Sourisseau said in the (translated) piece, emailed to CNBC. Following the attack in January 2015, some 7.5 million individuals bought the first post-attacks issue, and 200,000 people signed up for a subscription to the magazine. Agence France-Presse contributed to this report


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Rapidly deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran  and, increasingly, other Middle Eastern nations  will damage peace talks in Syria and will only serve to benefit Islamic State (ISIS), the terrorist group operating in the country, analysts have warned. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Middle East's two opposing powerhouses, fell out spectacularly at the weekend after the Saudis executed a prominent Shiite cleric. The execution of Nimr al-Nimr, a vocal critic of Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia, was one of 47 carried out by the country against people it described as "terrorists." In particular, the execution of the cleric prompted protests across the region and a retaliatory attack on the Saudi embassy in Iran, a Shia stronghold. Rising tensions between the Shiite and Sunni authorities have already prompted surrounding nations to divide on sectarian lines, with Saudi Arabia's allies Bahrain, Sudan and UAE joining diplomatic action against Tehran by severing or downgrading ties with the country.



ISIS the real winner?

With the Middle East at risk of further conflict at a time when civil war is already raging in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, analysts said that any chance of peace in the near-term was unlikely.

More worryingly, they warned that ISIS, the terrorist group operating in swathes of Iraq and Syria and taking advantage of a power vacuum in both countries, could be the primary beneficiary from more unrest and division.

Demonstrators hold posters of Nimr Baqir al-Nimr during a protest rally against the execution of prominent Saudi Shia cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr by Saudi authorities, in Tehran, Iran on January 4, 2016. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

"The termination of Iran-Saudi diplomatic relationscomes in the context of the ongoing proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, also involving Turkey and, in the case of Syria, Russia, in countries including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and Yemen," Firas Abi Ali and Anna Boyd, senior analysts at IHS Country Risk, said in a note late on Monday.

"These conflicts are likely to escalate given that Saudi accusations against Iran will serve to close off diplomatic avenues. In the meantime, the growing sectarian polarization across the region will primarily benefit Islamic State, which is promoting a sectarian narrative."



The rising hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia has complicated the regional risk outlook with fledgling peace talks aimed at ending a five-year civil war in Syria at risk of stalling.

Read MoreIran's row with the Saudis: All you need to know Talks are due in Geneva on January 25 and crucially involve both Saudi Arabia and Iran despite them backing opposing sides with Iran backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Saudi backing rebel groups trying to oust him. Aware of the danger to the Syrian peace talks, the United Nations and U.S. went into damage limitation mode on Monday, urging both Saudi Arabia and Iran to show restraint.

Peace process 'to stall'

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday told both the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers that he was extremely troubled by the break in ties, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a press briefing on Monday, and "stressed the importance of continued constructive engagement by both countries in the interest of the region and beyond."

The U.N.'s special envoy for Syria was due to arrive in Riyadh on Monday and was expected to visit Iran later this week. The U.N. said the envoy would "assess the implications of the recent developments between Saudi Arabia and Iran on the momentum of the Vienna process for Syria." Analysts believe the peace process could be directly impacted. "The termination of Iran-Saudi diplomatic relations will likely ensure that progress on the Syrian peace process and the anticipated dialogue between the government and the opposition will stall," IHS' Abi Ali and Boyd, said.
Stocks kicked off the year with a steep drop on Monday, extending losses slightly on Tuesday morning. And according to one technician, the problems for the are just beginning.

Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer, said the index is heading even lower to the 1,900 level, another 6 percent drop from where stocks opened Tuesday.

"I don't think the correction has fully run its course here. I think the response to the China data was magnified because there was a very weak technical setup going into it," Wald said Monday on CNBC's "Power Lunch."



Most concerning to Wald are a broken four-year uptrend, higher trading volume on down days and a lack of participation from all stocks in market rallies. And while large-cap tech names such as Neftlix and Amazon saw a severe plummet on the first trading day of the year, Wald said these are the stocks investors should stick with.

Read More Something pretty strange happened in the market



"This is healthy consolidation. Those are the names you want to buy on that correction, they continue to lead the way looking out the rest of the year," Wald said.

From a fundamental perspective, Boris Schlossberg of BK Asset Management sees additional headwinds from China concerns, geopolitical risks, slowing corporate profits and a strong U.S. dollar . As the S&P 500 will have a hard time holding on to gains this year, Schlossberg said, investors should stick with defensive and consumer stocks.

"The consumer itself is going to do well as wages begin to increase and there's going to be a little bit more of a spend. But other sectors are going to be in much bigger trouble," Schlossberg said. "I'm just not a big lover of the S&P as a broad buy this year."
Toyota has chosen a technology developed by Ford to allow consumers to access smartphone apps and features via their dashboard, eschewing similar technology offered by Apple and Google.

Ford's SmartDeviceLink (SDL)  an open source software  allows drivers to access smartphone apps via the dashboard touch screen or even voice control. Toyota will be adopting the feature for upcoming vehicles, Ford said in a statement ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday.

The move highlights the pressure felt by some automakers to protect their industry from being dictated to by the likes of Apple and Google. Both companies have their own in-car software. Apple's CarPlay and Google's Android Auto both allow consumers to mirror their smartphone screen on the dashboard and use apps while driving.

Peugeot Citroen , Honda , Subaru and Mazda are also investigating whether to adopt the software.
However, a fourth theory also merits consideration: leadership has taken the country in a new direction, and this is dampening China's growth. From Deng Xiaoping until the current Xi administration, China has been ruled by an economically liberal philosophy emphasizing economic growth, global integration, and harmonious relations with other countries. With the Xi administration, however, the social compact has become conservative. Nationalism, not economic liberalism, now seems the driver of policy decisions.

Other post-communist nations have taken this path already. In Hungary, for example, the Orban government has repeatedly thumbed its nose at European norms, nationalizing pensions, reducing the independence of the judiciary, decreasing fiscal transparency, and restricting media rights. It has proved popular, with Orban's FIDESZ party winning a qualified majority in Hungary's 2014 parliamentary elections.

But nationalism comes at a price. Hungary's GDP is barely above its 2005 level, even as those of Poland and Slovakia have soared. From 2005 to 2015, Hungary's GDP growth averaged 0.8 percent, versus 3.4 percent for Slovakia and 3.9 percent for Poland. Not all of this is due to the Orban regime, which took power in 2010. But the Orban government has exacerbated a turn inward which had started in the early 2000s. As such, Orban is both a cause and effect of rising Hungarian nationalism. The resulting policies have knocked nearly 3 percentage points from Hungary's GDP growth annually.
In his first big ad buy, Donald Trump this week doubled down on his plan to temporarily block foreign Muslims from entering the United States. The question now is whether the ad, which also invokes his promise to build a giant wall on the Mexican border (somehow paid for by Mexico), will reverse his second-place status in the looming Iowa caucuses and prevent a big and possibly crippling loss the first time Republicans actually cast votes. Trump still enjoys big leads in national polls, including a new survey out on Tuesday that showed him with 35 percent support among registered Republicans to just 18 percent for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and 14 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Donald Trump Brian Snyder | Reuters

But Trump remains stuck behind Cruz in Iowa, and some GOP operatives say barring a major turnaround, the real estate billionaire will get tagged with the label he hates most  loser  after the Feb. 1 caucuses. A loss in Iowa would not necessarily derail Trump. He still has big leads over Cruz and Rubio in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the next two states to vote, and could quickly re-establish his front-runner status. But Trump's entire political brand is based on winning and domination. And the GOP primary process is highly fluid with the results in one state impacting the next. Trump's New Hampshire lead could vanish quickly depending on how he handles a possible loss in Iowa. The post-Iowa moment will go a long way toward deciding whether the conventional wisdom  that GOP voters will abandon their angry protest support for Trump in favor of more traditional candidates  is accurate or just wishful thinking. If Trump loses Iowa but comes back to win New Hampshire and South Carolina, there is a real chance he will become unstoppable and capture the GOP nomination for president. That will be especially true if the field remains large heading into the Super Tuesday primaries across the South on March 1. If Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich all remain in the race, splitting up the more centrist, establishment vote, Trump will have a clearer path to the nomination assuming he can fend off Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson for the conservative, evangelical base of the party.



Chances are fairly good that the field will in fact thin out before Super Tuesday and certainly after it. Bush has essentially gone all-in in New Hampshire and other early voting states, and if he does not finish strongly he may have little choice but to get out of the race. The same is probably true for Christie and Kasich. If the field does shrink significantly after Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, Trump may wind up battling Cruz for the activist base vote and Rubio for voters more concerned with nominating a candidate viewed as electable against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The establishment wing is clearly banking on Republicans "getting serious" as actual voting nears and rejecting Trump as too radical in his immigration positions and lacking in deep knowledge on serious issues.



Christie played this card in New Hampshire on Monday, referring to Trump when he said "showtime is over" and adding that "we are not electing an entertainer-in-chief." And Trump gives those who question his seriousness significant fodder on a near daily basis. In an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on Monday, Trump struggled to explain how he would handle the current tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia as president. Asked if he would support military action against Iran, Trump said he would want to help Saudi Arabia and then suggested the Saudis should be helping the U.S. economically. Pressed by O'Reilly to explain his policy toward Iran and how far he would go to address its nuclear program, Trump basically punted. "Bill, I want to do what's right," he said. "I'm not gonna tell you right now what I'm gonna do." Asked if voters had a right to know whether he would consider war against Iran, Trump said "No, they don't." It remains unclear whether Trump's bombastic approach that focuses on restoring American "greatness" while studiously avoiding or stumbling over policy details will continue to sell when voters actually start going to the polls. Iowa voters have the first chance to answer that question in less than a month. We will then finally find out if "showtime" is really over or just getting underway.
DeWITT, N.Y.  Menorah Park, a senior-living community at 4101 East Genesee St. in DeWitt, has secured $170,000 in grants from five foundations to help pay for a project to install electronic medical records (EMRs).

The grants include $70,000 from the Arlene L. and Jerome R. Gerber Family Foundation and $25,000 each from the Central New York Community Foundation Inc., the Green Family Foundation, the Leonard and Irwin Kamp Foundation, and the J.M. McDonald Foundation, the organization said in a news release issued Monday.

Of the awarding organizations, the J.M. McDonald Foundation is the only one based outside of Syracuse in Evergreen, Colorado, according to its website. Despite the Colorado contact address, the nonprofit considers its grant awards primarily in upstate New York because its where the foundation started and operated for over 48 years, according to the site.

Besides meeting state standards, the Menorah Park project will improve the current high quality of resident care and increase residents and health partners satisfaction through the secure digital connections, Mary Ellen Bloodgood, CEO of Menorah Park, contended in the release. EMR[s] will allow our medical partners to communicate with our nursing and admissions staff using secure electronic connections.

Plans for the project, which Menorah Park is calling the health-connection project, also include enhanced wireless capabilities for staff, residents, and their families.

We cannot be more grateful for the support of these five foundations in helping Menorah Park adapt to ever-changing technology. These grants directly help our residents quality of life, said Bloodgood.

Established in 1912 as the Jewish Home for Aged, the Menorah Park campus includes the Jewish Health and Rehabilitation Center; the Oaks at Menorah Park for independent senior living; the Inn at Menorah Park, which offers assisted living for seniors; Rothschild adult day services; the Beit Tikvah Group Residence; Syracuse Jewish Family Service; Menorah Park Home Health Care; and the Fink Institute for Applied Research on Aging, according to the release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
SYRACUSE, N.Y.  POMCO Group announced it has cut an additional 35 jobs in a business unit the firm had created under a contract with Health Republic Insurance of New York, which insurance regulators shut down in late 2015.

Syracusebased POMCO released a statement about the staff reductions on Monday.

As the wind down of the Health Republic Insurance of New York (Health Republic) business continues, an additional 35 positions were eliminated today. These staff reductions are related to the previously announced response to the Health Republic shutdown. Services related to the wind down of Health Republic will continue during the first half of this year with some remaining staff changes during that time, the company said.

POMCO Group is a third-party administrator of self-funded health-care and risk-management plans.

Health Republic was one of the Affordable Care Acts consumer-operated and oriented plans (co-ops), which are private, member-governed health-insurance companies. Like many other co-ops, Health Republic failed under the weight of financial losses.

POMCO has eliminated approximately 100 positions related to the Health Republic business since September, the Syracuse company told BJNN in an email on Monday.

POMCO first announced the initial cut of 50 positions from the Health Republic business unit in a statement issued on Oct. 9.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
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Best of Business 2022: Learn Who Won Our 15th Annual Reader Poll

Local professionals chose their favorite business and professional services, products, healthcare, dining and more. Find out who their top picks are.
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By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal

Memphis police alerted the public Monday that a serial rapist may be targeting area apartment complexes.

The suspect is believed to be responsible for at least five sexual assaults so far, going back to 2014. The most recent incident happened around 10:30 p.m. Sunday at the Arbors of Hickory Ridge apartments at 6296 Lake View Trail in the Hickory Hill area. Before that, the last time he struck, police believe, was last July.

According to police, the suspect  armed with a handgun  broke into the apartment of a 22-year-old woman. The suspect robbed and sexually assaulted the woman, police said, then fled before officers arrived.

Police believe the same man has committed at least four more sexual assaults as well as three separate burglaries at other complexes in the Memphis area dating back to 2014.

Three of those complexes are in the Cordova area: Country Squire, Woodchase and Lincoln at Wolfchase. Other incidents have occurred at the Summit apartments near Raleigh and Edgewater in Northeast Memphis, not far from Shelby Farms. No vehicle has been spotted, police said, and no surveillance video of the suspect has been located.

According to police, the suspect  wearing a mask  typically enters a residence through a window or patio door. The suspect is described as a black man between 20 and 27 years old, standing 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-9 and weighing 145-165 pounds.

The fact that the suspect attacked the women in their homes makes the situation even more frightening, said Deborah Clubb, head of the Memphis Area Women's Council. That group works to improve the quality of life for women in the Memphis area, including combatting sexual assault.

"If they're coming in through people's apartments, that's especially alarming. It's one thing to be in the parking lot, but it's another to be in your apartment where you feel like you're safe," she said.

Clubb added that women needed to take proactive steps to protect themselves from such attackers.

"You have to constantly be aware of your surroundings. Try to be in lit areas, not be alone until they catch this person," Clubb said. "Break a broom handle and put it in that patio door so it cannot open. If he's coming through windows, you've got to lock them. If they are broken, stand in your manager's office until they fix them."
Zaevion Dobson

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By Michael Collins of The Commercial Appeal

WASHINGTON  President Barack Obama called on the nation Tuesday to demand more gun control to honor the heroic actions of a Knoxville teenager killed while shielding two friends from random gunfire.

Closing an emotional news conference in which he announced additional gun-control restrictions, Obama cited the shooting death of Zaevion Dobson, who was killed just a few days before Christmas.

Obama noted that the 15-year-old Fulton High School sophomore was beloved by his teachers and classmates and that Mayor Madeline Rogero even called him one of the city's success stories.

"The week before Christmas, he headed to a friend's house to play video games," Obama said. "He wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time. He hadn't made a bad decision. He was exactly where any other kid would be. Your kid. My kid. And then gunmen started firing.

"And Zaevion, who was in high school, hadn't even gotten started in life, dove on top ... to shield them from the bullets. And he was shot in the head, and the girls were spared. He gave his life to save theirs, an act of heroism a lot bigger than anything we should ever expect from a 15-year-old. 'Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.'"

Tying Dobson's death to the need for more gun control, Obama said, "We are not asked to do what Zaevion Dobson did. We're not asked to have shoulders that big, a heart that strong, reactions that quick. I'm not asking people to have that same level of courage or sacrifice or love.

"But if we love our kids and care about their prospects, and if we love this country and care about its future, then we can find the courage to vote. We can find the courage to get mobilized and organized. We can find the courage to cut through all of the noise and do what a sensible country would do.

"That's what we are doing today, and tomorrow we should do more. And we should do more the day after that. If we do, we'll leave behind a nation that's stronger than the one we inherited and worthy of the sacrifice of a young man like Zaevion."

It's not the first time Obama has cited Dobson as an example of the need for more gun control.

While on Christmas vacation in with his family in Hawaii, the president tweeted that Dobson was a hero and asked, "What's our excuse for not acting?"
Collierville Elementary School's Blisters Brigade visited FedEx and had a chance to get a closer look at the 777, FedEx's largest plane.

By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal

FedEx is threatening to move its massive information technology center out of Collierville if the town government doesn't give the company millions of dollars worth of additional tax breaks over 20 years.

The Memphis-based shipping giant is Collierville's biggest employer, with 2,500 high-paying jobs at the 10-building information technology campus on Bailey Station Road, said John D. Duncan, the town's director of economic development. The town advertises the company's presence as it tries to attract more corporate headquarters and similar office jobs. Duncan said he supports the additional tax breaks to keep FedEx in town. "It's a crown jewel."

He said the company hasn't mentioned a specific possible relocation site. "As they would tell you, they're looking at all options and alternatives as they make their analysis."

FedEx is in discussions to renew one or more of its three leases at the Collierville tech center, FedEx spokesman Jack Pfeiffer wrote in a statement. "Our investment in the people and local economy is proof of our commitment to the area, but as with any negotiation, we must consider all options," he wrote. He said that if you include the 400 outside contractors who work on the technology campus, the total number of workers there comes to 2,900.

He also reiterated a statement that a FedEx official made last year  that FedEx might consider moving additional facilities out of the Memphis metro area if it doesn't get the tax breaks known as payments in lieu of tax, or PILOTs. "PILOTs have helped the Memphis metropolitan area successfully attract and keep companies like FedEx, which with more than 30,000 team members in the Memphis area, is proud to be the largest private employer in the region." FedEx's demand for local tax breaks in Collierville reflects a bigger pattern of the company seeking to reduce the amount it pays to governments. FedEx receives property tax breaks from other local governments in the Memphis area and similar support in other states. The company successfully lobbied the Tennessee legislature to vote last year to limit the jet fuel tax it paid, saving it millions.

Many other companies across the country are trying to cut taxes and maximize government subsidies. When picking sites for new factories, corporate headquarters or other investments, companies sometimes play communities off one another, pushing them into a subsidy bidding war, say researchers who've studied the issue. In the case of existing facilities, companies sometimes simply threaten to move to another community that gives them a better deal.

FedEx opened its Collierville information technology campus in 1998, and received 20 years of tax breaks. Those breaks expire in 2018, Duncan said. FedEx is now asking for an additional 20 years of tax breaks. Each year, $975,000 worth of taxes would be abated, he said. The company would give Collierville about $325,000 in payments in lieu of taxes each year.

Collierville's industrial development board is scheduled to discuss FedEx's proposed tax break extension at its meeting 11:30 a.m. Thursday at Collierville town hall, 500 Poplar View Parkway. The industrial development board would then vote on the matter later this month, probably sometime during the week of Jan. 18, Duncan said. If approved, the measure would go to the town's board of mayor and aldermen on Jan. 25.

Duncan said the current tax break discussion focuses only on the technology center, not the smaller facilities FedEx operates in Collierville.

The company is also seeking a 15-year extension of Shelby County tax breaks on the Collierville information technology property, said Pfeiffer, the company spokesman. Details on that application weren't immediately available.
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DeSoto County Schools has a new superintendent, and he will have tough shoes to fill in succeeding longtime Superintendent Milton Kuykendall, whose 12-year tenure ended Sunday.

Kuykendall, 68, did not seek re-election. His successor, Cory Uselton, principal of Southaven's DeSoto Central High, took the reins of the district's 42 schools and 33,000-plus students when he took the oath of office Sunday.

Uselton defeated three other longtime DeSoto Schools administrators in the district in the Republican primary and runoff elections earlier this year to win the office. He faced no Democratic opposition in November's general election.

Kuykendall was not everyone's favorite superintendent. Still, he led the state's largest school system with a steady hand, overseeing the addition of 17 schools countywide and renovation of older campuses to accommodate growth spurred largely by migration from Memphis and Shelby County.

He managed the building surge while successfully coping with severe funding issues caused by the tremendous influx of new students and the state Legislature's consistent failure to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, a failure repeatedly lamented by Kuykendall.

Kuykendall hoped the funding issue would be addressed before he left office through a proposed constitutional amendment requiring full education funding. He pushed the proposal locally, but voters defeated it in the November election.

Kuykendall's tenure saw improved academic performance, including triple-digit percentage increases in ACT scores and in the number of National Merit semifinalists, an improvement of about 20 percent in the graduation rate.

Despite those accomplishments, he had his critics, including those who felt the district was not being transparent enough. Also, he leaves office with the U.S. Department of Education assessing whether to take action regarding complaints that the district disciplines African-American students and students with disabilities more frequently and more harshly than others.

All in all, though, Kuykendall did a good job guiding the district through tremendous growth, despite serious funding challenges.
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By Janell Ross

As of Sunday afternoon, The Washington Post called them "occupiers." The New York Times opted for "armed activists" and "militia men." The Associated Press put the situation this way: "A family previously involved in a showdown with the federal government has occupied a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon and is asking militia members to join them."

Not one seemed to lean toward terms such as "insurrection," "revolt," anti-government "insurgents" or, as some on social media were calling them, "terrorists." When a group of unknown size and unknown firepower has taken over any federal building with plans and possibly some equipment to aid a years-long occupation  and when its representative tells reporters that they would prefer to avoid violence but are prepared to die  the kind of almost-uniform delicacy and the limits on the language used to describe the people involved becomes noteworthy itself.

It is hard to imagine that none of the words mentioned above  particularly "insurrection" or "revolt"  would be avoided if, for instance, a group of armed black Americans took possession of a federal or state courthouse to protest the police. Black Americans outraged about the death of a 12-year-old boy at the hands of police or concerned about the absence of a conviction in the George Zimmerman case have been frequently and inaccurately lumped in with criminals and looters, described as "thugs," or marauding wolf packs where drugs are, according to CNN's Don Lemon, "obviously" in use.

If a group of armed Muslims took possession of a federal building or even its lobby to protest calls to surveil the entire group, it's even more doubtful they could avoid harsher, more-alarming labels.

In fairness to those assembled in Oregon, it is true that there have been no reports of actual violence, injury or anyone being held inside the Oregon building against their will.

And in the interim, some may feel particularly inclined to take real care with the language used to describe the situation so as not to inflame it or offend people who, in some cases, have already been troubled by the decision to charge a father and son pair of ranchers with arson under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The charge not only carries what many of the ranchers' supporters believe to be an unjust five-year jail term, but it brings the very same t-word into the mix.

For those who know the father and son  Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond  personally, it is understandable that they would disagree vehemently with any government action that implies that the men they know as engaged members of the community are terrorists. But one really cannot help but wonder where similar outrage lives when data clearly indicate that black Americans are far more likely than white ones to face serious charges and jail time rather than misdemeanor penalties for resisting arrest. Where has the lock-step adherence to careful and delicate language been in all of 2015 when unarmed black Americans were disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than others?

Beyond that seeming incongruity, the Hammonds are not among the occupiers. The man who has helped to organize the building occupation in Oregon is Ammon Bundy. Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who engaged in a standoff in 2014 with the government over grazing rights. And the younger Bundy has, again, described the occupiers as "armed" and prepared to die.

The armed occupation of a federal building might be what Bundy considers an assertion of rights and a mere gathering in a taxpayer-financed space. But it would seem to contain the real risk of violence, serious injury or even death.

Deliberate language choices are always a wise and reasonable move. That is especially true when telling stories of conflict with government and political protests. But the incredibly limited and relatively soft range of words in wide use Sunday seems to extend beyond all of that. The descriptions of events in Oregon appear to reflect the usual shape of our collective assumptions about the relationship between race and guilt  or religion and violent extremism  in the United States.

White Americans, their activities and ideas seem always to stem from a font of principled and committed individuals. As such, group suspicion and presumed guilt are readily perceived and described as unjust, unreasonable and unethical.

You will note that while the group gathered in Oregon is almost assuredly all or nearly all white, that has scarcely been mentioned in any story. You will note that nothing even close to similar can be said about coverage of events in Missouri, Maryland, Illinois or any other place where questions about policing have given way to protests or actual riots.

You will note the extended debate about whether admitted Charleston shooter Dylann Roof's apparently racially motivated shooting spree was an act of terrorism or even violent racism and the comparatively rapid way that more than one news organization began hinting at and then using terms such as Islamic extremism to describe the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

The sometimes-coded but increasingly overt ways that some Americans are presumed guilty and violence-prone while others are assumed to be principled and peaceable unless and until provoked  even when actually armed  is remarkable.
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By Trudy Rubin

Nothing better symbolizes the depressing foreign policy year of 2015 than the bromance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Trump has been fulsome in his praise for Putin. He refers to the Russian leader as "a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond" that they "would get along very well" as leaders. For his part, Putin calls Trump "brilliant" and "an outstanding and talented personality."

What draws these two men into a mutual admiration society, and what does this tell us about the state of the world?

For starters, there's style  and ego. Putin's show of macho aggressiveness  wrestling, shooting wild animals, swimming bare-chested  no doubt delights the Donald, who constantly extols "strong" men and sees himself as the prime example. The two men revel in using vulgarities about their opponents.

Putin was Time magazine's runner-up for Man of the Year in 2014 after invading Ukraine and outsmarting NATO. Trump was runner-up, in 2015, for his meteoric rise on a tide of verbal demagoguery (he made very clear in public that he should have come in first).

Each man presents himself as the only one who can save his nation. Each denounces any critics, especially in the media. Of course, Putin has more leeway to shut them up. On his watch, the Kremlin seized control of all major media outlets in Russia, while around two dozen Russian journalists were murdered; leading Russian opposition figures have been shot dead or sent to prison.

That Russian repression doesn't bother Trump, who blithely insists there's no proof Putin is a killer. For his part, the Donald says he "hates" some journalists, although he "would never kill them." However, he has egged on supporters who were beating up a protester at a rally.

But let's get to the heart of the matter, the area where their similarities are most disturbing. Both men are masters at whipping up xenophobic nationalism based on fear.

Putin uses this tactic to distract domestic attention from his economic failures. Oil prices are sinking in an economy still shamefully dependent on energy exports and massive state corruption continues unchallenged. What better way to distract his public than to fan its fear of Islamist terrorism  and blame that terrorism on the United States?

Putin has bigger goals in mind, however, than demagoguery, goals that seem to elude The Donald in his eagerness to identify with a Russian "winner." The Russian president senses the fears besetting Western democracies, as technology and globalization gobble up more and more jobs that pay a middle-class salary. He watches Western publics losing faith in their leaders and in liberal democratic institutions.

The Russian leader sees his chance to promote an alternative model to the system of liberal democracy championed by the United States  an ideology of managed democracy where real power rests in the hands of an authoritarian leader. Of course, he would be the leader of this new global movement. Toward that end, Putin is funding right-wing parties in Europe that are gaining traction by stoking fears of Muslim immigration  parties with an authoritarian bent similar to his.

It's not clear whether Trump fully agrees with Putin's governing philosophy. Yet the Donald's suggestion that we "let Russia  get rid of (the Islamic State)" suggests how little he understands his new pal.

In Syria, Putin is less interested in fighting the Islamic State than he is in replacing America as the lead power in the region. Toward that end, he seeks to cement President Bashar Assad in place, even if that means the civil war and the refugee flows will continue. Russia planes are hardly bombing the Islamic State at all.

Indeed, what is most striking about the Trump-Putin bromance is Trump's willful blindness. The Donald has succumbed to the temptations that breed political "strongmen" in so much of the world in times of chaos. He watches Putin operate without any institutional checks or balances and probably wishes he could be just like him.

Meantime, Putin smells a compatriot, someone who scorns the niceties of democratic behavior in favor of whipping up the masses. Both men know exactly whom to scapegoat for every problem: immigrants, terrorists and minorities of color.

Fortunately, there is a crucial difference between Putin and Trump. The latter lives in a country where democratic institutions and a free press still function, despite their problems. I don't believe Trump will get the GOP nomination, or if he does, that the voters will choose him. In the unlikely event he should reach the White House, I still believe America's democratic institutions would be strong enough to check his authoritarian tendencies.

At least, I hope.

However, Trump's bromance with Putin should serve as a warning that America is not immune to the political turbulence felt elsewhere. Baby boomers born since 1945 have come to take liberal democracy too much for granted, even as ugly partisan politics shakes it. If Americans grow careless about defending their democracy, Putinism could happen here.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Contact her at trubin@phillynews.com.
Select Commodity All Ajwan Alasande Gram Almond(Badam) Alsandikai Amaranthus Ambada Seed Amla(Nelli Kai) Amphophalus Antawala Anthorium Apple Apricot(Jardalu/Khumani) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar Dal(Tur Dal) Ashgourd Astera Avare Dal Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Balekai Bamboo Banana Banana - Green Barley (Jau) Bay leaf (Tejpatta) Beans Beaten Rice Beetroot Bengal Gram Dal (Chana Dal) Bengal Gram(Gram)(Whole) Ber(Zizyphus/Borehannu) Betal Leaves Bhindi(Ladies Finger) Bitter gourd Black Gram (Urd Beans)(Whole) Black Gram Dal (Urd Dal) Black pepper BOP Bottle gourd Bran Brinjal Broken Rice Broomstick(Flower Broom) Bull Bunch Beans Cabbage Calf Capsicum Cardamoms Carnation Carrot Cashewnuts Castor Seed Cauliflower Chapparad Avare Chennangi Dal Cherry Chikoos(Sapota) Chili Red Chilly Capsicum Chow Chow Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum(Loose) Cinamon(Dalchini) Cloves Cluster beans Cock Cocoa Coconut Coconut Oil Coconut Seed Coffee Colacasia Copra Coriander(Leaves) Corriander seed Cotton Cotton Seed Cow Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea(Veg) Cucumbar(Kheera) Cummin Seed(Jeera) Custard Apple (Sharifa) Dalda Dhaincha Drumstick Dry Chillies Dry Fodder Dry Grapes Duck Duster Beans Egg Elephant Yam (Suran) Field Pea Firewood Fish Foxtail Millet(Navane) French Beans (Frasbean) Galgal(Lemon) Garlic Ghee Gingelly Oil Ginger(Dry) Ginger(Green) Gladiolus Cut Flower Goat Gram Raw(Chholia) Gramflour Grapes Green Avare (W) Green Chilli Green Fodder Green Gram (Moong)(Whole) Green Gram Dal (Moong Dal) Green Peas Ground Nut Oil Ground Nut Seed Groundnut Groundnut (Split) Groundnut pods (raw) Guar Guar Seed(Cluster Beans Seed) Guava Gur(Jaggery) He Buffalo Hen Hippe Seed Honge seed Hybrid Cumbu Indian Beans (Seam) Indian Colza(Sarson) Isabgul (Psyllium) Jack Fruit Jaffri Jamun(Narale Hannu) Jarbara Jasmine Jowar(Sorghum) Jute Kabuli Chana(Chickpeas-White) Kacholam Kakada Kankambra Karamani Karbuja(Musk Melon) Kartali (Kantola) Khoya Kinnow Knool Khol Kodo Millet(Varagu) Kulthi(Horse Gram) Lak(Teora) Leafy Vegetable Lemon Lentil (Masur)(Whole) Lilly Lime Linseed Lint Litchi Little gourd (Kundru) Long Melon(Kakri) Lotus Lotus Sticks Lukad Mahedi Mahua Mahua Seed(Hippe seed) Maida Atta Maize Mango Mango (Raw-Ripe) Marasebu Marget Marigold(Calcutta) Marigold(loose) Mashrooms Masur Dal Mataki Methi Seeds Methi(Leaves) Millets Mint(Pudina) Moath Dal Mousambi(Sweet Lime) Mustard Mustard Oil Myrobolan(Harad) Neem Seed Niger Seed (Ramtil) Nutmeg Onion Onion Green Orange Orchid Ox Paddy(Dhan)(Basmati) Paddy(Dhan)(Common) Papaya Papaya (Raw) Patti Calcutta Peach Pear(Marasebu) Peas cod Peas Wet Peas(Dry) Pegeon Pea (Arhar Fali) Pepper garbled Pepper ungarbled Persimon(Japani Fal) Pigs Pineapple Plum Pointed gourd (Parval) Pomegranate Potato Pumpkin Raddish Ragi (Finger Millet) Raibel Rajgir Ram Rat Tail Radish (Mogari) Raya Resinwood Rice Ridge gourd(Tori) Ridgeguard(Tori) Rose(Local) Rose(Loose) Rose(Loose)) Round gourd Rubber Sabu Dan Sabu Dana Safflower Sajje Same/Savi Season Leaves Seemebadnekai Seetafal Seetapal Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) She Buffalo She Goat Sheep Snake gourd Snakeguard Soanf Soapnut(Antawala/Retha) Soji Soyabean Spinach Sponge gourd Squash(Chappal Kadoo) Sugar Sugarcane Sunflower Sunhemp Suram Surat Beans (Papadi) Suva (Dill Seed) Suvarna Gadde Sweet Potato Sweet Pumpkin T.V. Cumbu T.V. Cumbu Tamarind Fruit Tamarind Seed Tapioca Taramira Tender Coconut Thinai (Italian Millet) Thogrikai Thondekai Tinda Tobacco Tomato Toria Tube Rose(Double) Tube Rose(Loose) Tube Rose(Single) Turmeric Turmeric (raw) Turnip Walnut Water Melon Wheat Wheat Atta White Peas White Pumpkin Wood Yam Yam (Ratalu)

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When a database of some 191 million voter records leaked just before New Years, the Internet freaked out over another massive data breach. Lost in the screaming was the fact that all of those millions of data points were already public information. The value to cyberthieves was solely a matter of convenience  a tidy pile of data all in one place.

People, this is a problem. Speaking as someone who cares intensely about both data security and privacy, our tendency to react in the same way to anything remotely resembling a data breach serves little useful purpose. But it does undermine serious security and privacy efforts in many ways.

As Ive noted before, the more frequently the IT community overreacts to non-events in security and privacy, the weaker the protections we can give to significant security/privacy problems.

Lets first delve into this 191 million-record incident, as its a bit complicated. This started with information published by DataBreaches.net, which is a wonderful resource for compilations of all kinds of data collections that have been exposed. It noted that the entries may contain your first and last name, your home and mailing addresses, your date of birth, gender, and ethnicity, the date you registered to vote, your telephone number, your party affiliation, your e-mail address if you provided one when you registered, your state voter ID, whether youre a permanent absentee voter, and whether or not youre on the Do Not Call list.

This brings us to the key question: Isnt all of that public data anyway? The short answer is yes, but its not quite that simple. Actually, it is that simple, but given that many government workers  especially those within municipal and state governments  dont understand how the Internet works, they craft rules that make no sense. Such is life.

A statement issued by one company that said that it might somehow be kind of involved in the breach sheds a little light, albeit in an impressively squirrely way. Nation Builder issued a statement that said, While the database is not ours, it is possible that some of the information it contains may have come from data we make available for free to campaigns. From what weve seen, the voter information included is already publicly available from each state government so no new or private information was released in this database.

That statement got into the public or not debate with this comment: Each state has different restrictions and we make sure that each campaign understands those restrictions before providing them with any data.

Therein lies the problem. Once the data is released and is being shared, its out. The Internet doesnt respect national boundaries  if an Italian company doesnt want to sell to someone in Albania, the onus is on that company to block such interactions  so it certainly wont respect state rules. Also, the people being given this data, as opposed to, say, law enforcement employees or lawyers, are not licensed or managed in any kind of uniform way.

These rules are based on earlier rules, which long predate the Internet and, for that matter, phones with RAM and disk space that rival that eras mainframes.

The idea is that the data is only supposed to be used for political purposes. But anyone can file to run as an independent candidate. Yes, they need to collect x number of verified signatures to get on the ballot, but no state rules say anything about being on the ballot.

The New York Times noted that the voter databases for North Carolina, Alaska, Florida and Washington, D.C., are free for all.

As an industry, we have to differentiate between restricted data  think payment card numbers, health records, bank account specifics  and unrestricted data. There can honestly not be much in between. If data is unrestricted anywhere, its unrealistic to consider it protected somewhere else.

In this situation, are we to believe that the voting details of a North Carolina voter are less sensitive than those from a California voter? And how much faith do we realistically have that a political operative working in Iowa isnt going to combine those records with those from Florida? And when data is combined, that its somehow going to be later segregated so that those files will comply with varying state ordinances? Really?

By the way, an example of restricted data that I chose to not cite is from religious leaders. How long will it be before Catholic priests, for example, will save confession details in a desktop database  or, better yet, a mobile app (SaveASin?)  for easier reference? As a parishioner leaves one congregation, the original priest could email that persons confession files to the new priest.

The point is that we cant get all worked up about the disclosure of data that was pretty much already widely disclosed. Technically, we clearly can get so worked up, but not if we want to be able to triage resources to safeguard truly sensitive data.

This story, "Data convenience isnt a crime, but treating it as one should be" was originally published by Computerworld .
DO YOU have a Boulevard Aristide-Briand near you? Or do you send your child to school in a Jules-Ferry or a lycee Emile Combes? If so, you are already familiar with key names in the construction of the French Republic.

Between them, these three politicians were responsible for free state schooling, obligatory education for girls and the rock of state neutrality towards religion on which la Republique is built: the principle of laicite.

The term is very much in the news, with a new laicite charter being introduced into schools this autumn alongside classes in morale laique. Presenting the charter, Minister for Education Vincent Peillon explained: Everyone is free to have his own opinions but no one has the right to contest teaching content or miss a class in the name of religious precepts.

Public debate over the Muslim community in France pops up in the news regularly and is nearly always related in one way or another to perceived challenges to this element of the Constitution. Peillons remarks refer also to repeated evangelist pressure to alter class content, in particular regarding the theory of evolution. A recent example was the proposal to swap two Christian holidays with Jewish and Muslim ones: confusing whether France was secular or multi-religious.

Left and Right politicians often unite to initiate laws to protect laicite. Once the source of conflict with the Catholic Right over private education funding, the principle, an important element in the integration process, regularly generates ill feeling these days among extremist sectors of the Muslim community. That is why, a century after the original 1905 law, several new laws have been passed to protect it.

First, a few explanations. Laicite does not translate well. Secularity is close but confusing. Laicite is not easy to define either. It has evolved over two centuries and is evolving still. The concept was born of the Revolution, which guaranteed freedom of conscience to all and first separated State and Church.

Napoleon backtracked, signing a concordat with the Vatican in 1801 that was to poison Church-State relations during the 19th century and put laicite on the back burner for much of it. (For historical reasons, this concordat still applies in Alsace and Moselle.)

Having been suppressed by the Vichy regime (along with liberte, egalite, fraternite  without which laicite could not function), the principle was cast in the constitution of the Fourth Republic in 1946  the State is indivisible, laic, democratic and social  and remains firmly in that of todays Fifth.

To understand the concept is to go a long way towards understanding the French. Maybe it could be defined as their permanent search for a delicate balance between sharing what they all hold in common, the Republic, and catering for diversity.

It is the principle that protects both personal and collective liberty and, as such, is the responsibility of both State and citizen. The indivisibility of the State is the States refusal to recognise any religious or ethnic community. France is one. There are two major dates in the history of laicite: 1881 and 1905. In 1881-82, Minister of Education Jules Ferry decreed school to be publique, gratuite et laique  state-run, free and non-clerical.

Teaching in French to a national programme provided children, whatever their linguistic background or beliefs, with the theoretical possibility of equal opportunity.

It created a framework in which adults could bring no pressure to bear on pupils to adhere to any philosophy, religion or political idea. That remains the basis of the French educational system today.

The 1905 law, engineered by Emile Combes and Aristide Briand, enforced the neutrality of the State and State institutions through the separation of the Churches and the State. Since that date, the State recognises no religion and therefore cannot directly fund any either.

If the same law grants the individual total liberty and privacy regarding beliefs, there is one condition: they must not disturb public order.

Given the repeated trauma that religion has caused in Frances recent history  from the Wars of Religion to the expulsion of the Huguenots and the Dreyfus affair  this means no proselytising and nothing that could be remotely interpreted as such.

It also explains why, in France, religious belief is far more than a private matter. Things spiritual belong to the realm of intimacy. It is extremely unusual to see anyone wearing any conspicuous religious symbol in public. To do so is perceived as a deliberate act, a message to others.

It is unthinkable to ask someone what their religion is and most people will be frankly embarrassed by anyone saying what theirs is. When Nicolas Sarkozy publicly announced he had appointed Frances first Muslim prefect, he sent shockwaves throughout the land.

Knowing this helps in understanding intense French reaction to young girls wearing veils. It is seen not only as an unacceptable way of bringing religion into the public sphere, but also a form of peer pressure on other girls to do the same. Which takes us back to Jules Ferry and neutrality in the classroom.

This insistence on the privacy of beliefs was of course also reinforced after World War II by the fate of Frances Jews under the Vichy regime, and the obligation to publicly show their religion by wearing the yellow star. As a result of the trauma of State responsibility in their deportation and extermination, no statistics may be made regarding peoples religious beliefs, ethnic origin or colour.

All citizens are not only equal, but remain neutral in the eyes of the State.

The mosque debate

The 1905 law was finally well accepted by both Catholic and Protestant churches in France, who benefited financially when the State handed existing buildings and their costly maintenance over to local authorities. But the State cannot fund new religious buildings.

Hence the mosque-building debate and recent legislation allowing local authorities to contribute. For with generous donations from Saudi Arabia and Muslim foundations abroad pouring in, the inherent risk of encouraging fundamentalist movements to develop in France is obvious.

Under the Nicolas Sarkozy government, the training of imams in France to Republican principles was considered.

But the State cannot finance religious education either. The impasse has been paradoxically circumvented by the Catholic University offering courses, and Algerian imams due to work in France being trained in French and laicite at the government-funded Institut Francais in Algiers.

Conspicuous symbols and full-face veils

After a number of potentially inflammatory cases in which some schools were confronted with Muslim girls wearing Islamic headscarves, legislation was passed in 2004 banning the wearing of any conspicuous religious symbol or sign in state schools. Never specifically aimed at the Muslim community (kippas, large crosses and Sikh turbans fall under the same category), the new law, despite fears it would be perceived as discriminatory and arouse further reaction, had the almost immediate effect of calming the situation, though some veiled Muslim girls and turbaned Sikhs found their way to private schools.

But this legislated solely for public schools, not privately run establishments. In March of this year, Fatima Afif, an employee dismissed in 2008 from the privately run Baby Loup creche in the Yvelines for refusing to remove her headscarf, won on appeal for wrongful dismissal on the grounds of religious discrimination.

New legislation is now under consideration to cover pre-school structures and religious symbols in the workplace, none of which are currently covered by law.

When, in late July, a police officer in the town of Trappes stopped a fully veiled young women for an ID check in the middle of Ramadan, he did not know he was unleashing days of rioting. But Cassandra, 22, was not infringing any law on laicite. This time it was the one against dissimulating the face in the public sphere, put into effect by the Sarkozy government in 2011.

Introduced ostensibly as anti-terrorism legislation, many felt its real purpose was more anti-veil. In fact, the number of women in France wearing the niqab is extremely small, and the number of women fined likewise.

Laicite with an adjective

The latest solution of Frances politicians to calm the debate has been to add adjectives. Sarkozy invented laicite positive, in which the government took into account the existence of religious groups in France.

He created a representative Muslim council, through which to address the Muslim community in France. Representative of only a portion of Frances Muslims, many of whom are non-practising, it has created more problems than it has solved.

The Hollande government has coined laicite apaisee, a low-profile approach in which negotiation would replace legislation as the best way of winning over those who regard the principle with suspicion.

True laicistes believe the principle cannot survive any moderating tags. It must exist alone.

Universities oppose campus headscarf ban proposal

In early August, Le Monde published a report signed by members of the Haut Comite de lIntegration (HCI), a body no longer briefed to deal with laicite since the creation of a separate mission last April. It called for a Muslim headscarf ban in universities.

Government replies were swift but hardly in unison. Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls stated evasively that the subject needed to be considered, while Genevieve Fioraso, Minister for Higher Education, warned that we should avoid problems where there are none.

For Gerard Blanchard, president of La Rochelle University, and vice-president of the national CPU, Conference des Presidents dUniversite, laicite is not an issue on his campus or anywhere in France. We have 14% foreign students in La Rochelle, mostly from South East Asia, and we only ask women students to take off their veils in science laboratories, for safety reasons. That has never posed a problem.

The University Presidents Conference has issued a public statement against any specific university ban. For Blanchard, the over-mediatised debate that burst upon us mid-summer is without foundation. He is adamant that he has never had a complaint from a teacher. An environmentalist, he is far more concerned by pressure that could be brought on teachers to introduce non-scientific versions of the origins of the universe into the syllabus. No university teacher should ever have to submit to any pressure on the content of his teaching.

Jean-Loup Salzmann, president of the CPU, and president of Paris XIII, in the heart of Seine- Saint-Denis, one of the most multi-cultural universities in France, firmly believes in laicite, but sees no need for new laws on the campus. His main concern is elsewhere. He is angered by the incongruity of the State promoting laicite on the one hand, while financing the Catholic universities on the other.

Expressing a personal opinion, he said: The main issue for these young Muslim women, who have enough problems coping with family pressure, is to achieve independence and emancipation through their studies, whether they wear a veil or not. An anti-veil law would achieve the opposite of what we want. Many of these women would then not have access to university at all.

How the principle of laicite is applied today

NICOLAS Cadene, chairman of the Observatoire de la Laicite, a watchdog committee created last April by President Francois Hollande to report on how the principle of laicite is applied in France today, spoke to Connexion.

Can you define this difficult concept for our readers?

Laicite is a principle which allows us all to live together. It is not a ban on religion or religious practices. On the contrary, it guarantees believers and non-believers alike the freedom to express themselves, to practise or not to practise a religion as they choose, on condition that public order is not disturbed. The State adopts an attitude of total impartiality towards citizens, who are all equal in the eyes of the State.

Do the current religious bank holidays not favour one religious group?

Christian festivals have, for the majority, become traditional holidays with little religious significance. Still, the State does not want to be seen as favouring one religion over another. In 1905, there was no Muslim population. But I dont think this poses a real problem. Employees can use their RTT (recuperation of unpaid overtime in the form of days off) as they wish. The Stasi Commission (set up by President Jacques Chirac in 2003) went a long way towards identifying issues in the workplace. We shall build on that.

The conspicuous religious symbols ban was seen as directed only at women. Is that not a form of discrimination?

If people set out to present themselves in a way which is obviously a proselytising or a provocative attitude, that is not acceptable. It is not so much what people wear or their physical appearance, as the reason behind the choice. This is one of the subjects we shall be working on.

Islam has no clerical hierarchy. Isnt the laicite legislation trying to apply to individuals a law aimed at an institution? Doesnt the 1905 law need to be adapted?

Not at all. The principle enables us all to live together. But, of course, we must avoid situations in which one group feels stigmatised by the law. That is one of our major subjects of reflexion. But there is no question of adapting the principle to new circumstances. It is one of bringing people to understand that laicite is not a ban on religious practice but a system of personal freedom and helping them to adapt to the principle.

There has been talk in the press over banning the Islamic headscarf at university. [The full-face veil is already banned anywhere in public].

The State has a duty to protect minors from any form of ideological persuasion, hence the headscarf ban in schools. University is a world of adults. But the Republic has a duty to protect its citizens against the dangers of extremism. Some people attribute to laicite powers it simply does not have. There is an urgent need for strong political action, at state and local level, in order to resolve the many problems the threat of extremism has brought to certain sectors of society.

The Observatoire has published its first report, a history and background to the concept. What else has it achieved?

We helped draw up two important documents: the laicite charter and the syllabus for non-religious morality for schools. Both take effect this year. In addition, our report has pinpointed situations needing close attention in public administrations and local authorities (non-Metropolitan France included), as well as in the private sector.

How do you see your work developing?

We need a better definition of laicite that reiterates the States position of neutrality and is more clearly understood by all, in France and at an international level. We are drawing up guidelines for the application of laicite and religious practice in the workplace, and in the wake of the Baby Loup issue [see main article], for pre-school structures. We must show people how to react to situations. Overreaction is one of the major problems we face, when so much could be achieved by negotiation and taking things calmly.
The sacking of Michael Dugher is the biggest story of Labours glacial reshuffle (so far). An experienced campaigner with a good relationship with the media, Dugher is likely to be a thorn in Corbyns side  certainly his new Twitter bio, Sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking, honest politics, suggests that he intends to be one. In the next few weeks he could well emerge as an unofficial spokesman for disgruntled Shadow Cabinet members.

However, there is a bigger cloud gathering above the Labour leaders head than disaffected men with whom he disagrees ideologically: disaffected women MPs who feel that he and his fellow lefties are misogynists. The view was articulated on Newsnight by Jess Phillips, who described his decision not to appoint any women to the great offices of state as low-level, non-violent misogyny.

The vile abuse slung at various female Labour MPs over the Syria vote by people who view themselves as Corbyn loyalists, and the presence of the Socialist Workers Party (which allegedly held a kangaroo court to handle rape allegations against one of its senior activists) within Momentum, have already raised fears among various female Labour MPs that the movement which is now in charge of their Party simply does not like women very much. While the hard left is not entirely a men-only environment, it is fair to say that its internal culture seems to have moved on from the 1970s about as much as its economics has.

Phillips willingness to accuse Corbyn directly of misogyny shows that these concerns are not going away. No doubt as a proudly right-on member of the patronising progressive movement he will fail utterly to recognise himself in her description (How could I be a misogynist? I have always praised the Greenham Common Peace Camp), and thus stands little chance of repeatedly confirming it. His unwillingness to seriously tackle the appalling behaviour of various of his allies and supporters thus far suggests he will continue to fail to rein in their abuse and threats, too.

Under those circumstances, the depth of feeling among many female Labour MPs will only grow. While he mulls over the possibility of Blairites knifing him in the back, Phillips could yet knife him in the front.
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The e-commerce giant, Amazon.com, is negotiating a deal of 20 Boeing 767 jets for its in-house air delivery service, told the cargo-industry executives to The Seattle Times. The aim to build its own fleet of cargo operations is to eliminate delays from third-party carriers such as United Parcel Service, who have failed to keep up with the growth of online shopping industry. "Amazon is pretty fed up with the third-party carriers being a bottleneck to their growth," Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian said. This is the reason Amazon is considering handling its own delivery systems. A senior executive at the aircraft-leasing company who is apprised with the plans of the company said that Amazon has approached many cargo-aircraft lessors to arrange for the planes. The company is already in talks with Atlas Air, Kalitta Air and Air Transport Services Group (ATSG), said the sources. However, Connie Kalitta, Chief Executive of Kalitta has denied the news, said The Seattle Times

Sources added that by adding 20 jets to the trial operation of Amazon out of Wilmington, Ohio, the company will be able to expand its operations significantly. The jets will be operated by ATSG on behalf of Amazon. A source from the cargo-industry also said that Amazon may just take a step beyond the trial run and move straight to a large air-cargo operation by the end of January. "I believe they are serious about looking at this," said the leasing executive, who asked not to be named because he may later do business with Amazon. "They are not going to hang about." An analyst even considers that Amazon may deliver for other companies and will then be in direct competition of FedEx and UPS, a step that can drastically shift the packaging business, said Reuters.

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Fabiola Gianotti, the new boss to CERN, largest particle accelerator in the world, is called a new breed of scientist. Starting off with arts and literature, her entrance into physics came very late. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, jogging and listening to music while keeping a keen eye on the world news. Dr. Monica Dunford, senior scientist at University of Heidelberg in Germany, said that Fabiola "embodies for me what's much more the millennium physicist, not so geeky, much more well-rounded, diverse, passionate." She added, "Fabiola brings freshness to science: She's incredibly energetic, incredibly passionate, has a lot of different talents. ... She has a degree in piano in addition to physics," Dunford said, as reported by Twin Cities.

Gianotti will be the first woman to become the Director General from 1st Jan and will be succeeding Germany's Rolf Heuer. She says that she is not want to be in the "front stage" at this world-renowned laboratory but wants to help produce science that can explain how the universe works. In an interview that was held at the conference room at CERN because her office was in a mess due to the move, Gianotti ruminated over the community where Nobel laureates eat lunch with 25-year-old students of PhD, says CTV news. "CERN is a special place where we do fund research by bringing together experts from over the planet -- great scientists -- but also a huge amount of young people," she said. It's "a democratic environment in that there are no barriers."

Fabiola was picked amongst the three candidates by a team of representatives of its 20 member states. Gianotti joined CERN in 1994 and by 2009, she became a project leader of the Atlas collaboration that was working with one other team to spot Higgs in the Large Hadron Collider data, reports Zee News

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Even though most of the country is in the clutches of rain and snow, the California sky and land is parched dry. Dealing with a drought of some sort, a recent study released by Carnegie Institution for Science has revealed what the drought is doing to the iconic forests of California. A fully equipped, high-end laboratory flying over California is measuring the impact of drought over a period of four years. "There's a lot of red on this screen, which is a sign that we're over an area that's in trouble," scientist Greg Asner told CBS News.

Asner and his team said that according to their study, as many as 888 million trees in California have suffered water loss that is caused since the drought began. So far, almost 1 billion trees have already been affected. The scientists can be sure of their discovery because of their plane being equipped by state-of-the-art lasers that scan 15 acres of forest per second. The x-ray vision produces 3D image, of the health of every single tree. The red areas in the image show trees affected by drought whereas blue means healthy trees, as reported by Tampa Bay Sarasota, 10 News

California's forests boasts of some of the oldest trees in the world that are, unfortunately, suffering due to the canopy water loss caused between 2011 and 2015. This historic scarcity has also threatened the survival of a billion trees many of which have lasted over all these years, some even a few centuries. The climate change effect made worse by El Nino is causing an irreversible damage on the ecology. These trees are at risk from not just the drought but also an insect, bark beetle, that is gradually chipping the forest away. The researchers say that the mortality risk of trees has gone up significantly, reported Raw Story.

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Researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technical University have developed a humanoid social robot that resembles the lead creator and professor Nadia Thalmann. This emotionally intelligent robot has soft skin and brown hair. If you meet her once, she will remember your name, your face and the conversation you had with her. This robot has been employed by the scientist as their receptionist so that they can closely monitor her skills. This robot is powered by an intelligent software that is similar to Apple's Siri. The robot, that is almost human, even acts like one, displays her own personality and expresses emotions and gestures independently. Nadine can also change her mood depending on the type of conversation you have with her. She even smiles when you look her in the eye while talking, as reported by ABC News

Nadia Thalmann said in a statement that the humanoid robot is like a "real companion that is always with you and conscious of what is happening." Equipped with emotions, knowledge, language and basic etiquette, these social robots can become something like a C-3PO, the famous Star Wars droid. In the future, Nadine like robots can act as assistants, caretakers, companions and even baby sitters. "As countries worldwide face challenges of an aging population, social robots can be one solution to address the shrinking workforce, become personal companions for children and the elderly at home, and even serve as a platform for healthcare services in future," Thalmann said, according to the NTU news release, says Value Walk.

Nanyang Technical University has a video posted on the Facebook page that shows Nadine, the robot, engage in a conversation with Thalmann and recognizing her face. The video attracted as many as 25,000 views since it was posted recently, reported The Antigua Observer

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval rate for novel drugs specifically nearly broke the all-time high record in 2015.

According to the numbers, the FDA approved a total of 45 novel drugs last year, which is just eight shy of the record of 53 that was set in 1996 and the highest since then. All 45 drugs, which were mainly manufactured for rare and hard-to-treat illnesses, included ingredients that have never been sold before.

The U.S. was not the only country that experienced increases in drug approvals. In the same year, the European Medicines Agency recommended 93 new products, which is higher than 2014's total of 82.

The increased approvals for specialty medications will most likely caused more debates about drug affordability.

Per the Boston Globe:

"While the trend toward specialty medicines is good news for industry and patients, it is likely to fuel the ongoing debate over rising prescription drug prices. That issue has become a top concern for consumers, a subject of congressional scrutiny, and even an issue on the presidential campaign trail. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both outlined proposals designed to curb prices.

The FDA is not allowed to consider prices when approving medicines, though some experts argue it should."

Reuters reported:

"But despite the rosy statistics and the prospect for further progress in 2016, the pharmaceuticals industry faces challenges, with increased political focus on drug pricing having punctured both biotech and specialty pharma valuations in recent months.

The prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming U.S. president could further undermine confidence in the sector's profitability in 2016, given her pledge to rein in drug costs."

The most expensive drug treatment regimen in 2015 was Orkambi, which is manufactured by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. A one-year supply of the drug that treats cystic fibrosis costs $259,000. Other drugs that come with a hefty price tag included new cancer drugs, such as Pfzier's Ibrance, which treats breast cancer.

Some of the novel drugs that were approved in 2015 included flibanserin (Addyi), which is used to boost women's sex drive and Amgen, Inc.'s Imlygic, used to treat melanoma.

Experts expect the approval rates for novel drugs to continue to increase with IMS Health estimating that from 2016 to 2020, there will be 225 new drug approvals.

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WBNG-TV, iHeart Media and American Red Cross sponsored blood drive for New Year resolution started off with a bang but it still needs many more donors to meet its targets. The total goal of the drive is to collect at least 205 pints of blood that can save as many as 615 lives! 188 pints were collected in the first 2-days of the drive. Theresa Blank, American Red Cross Account Manager said, even though the numbers look good, more donors must come forward for this noble cause. "We have fewer appointments over the weekend," Blank said. "We're looking for people to come and walk in or make appointments through our appointment system," as reported by WBNG News.

The blood donation process can take up to an hour but Red Cross took some steps out of the process to make it quicker. Before you qualify to donate blood, you will be required to go through a private screening test where the informant regarding your iron levels and blood type will be collected by the Red Cross. To make the process faster, many of these questions can be answered by the interested donors before they arrive to donate. "You can have it emailed to a smart device and then you can bring it right to your smart phone," Blank said. The last day of the drive is Sunday and is located at Oakdale Mall, opposite Ruby Tuesday's, reported WNBG News

Now that the medical science has found new and improved ways to use blood, more so with the population growing old, it is time for the donors to reach out and help, says Daily Telegraph.

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In a bizarre case, a woman in Hamburg, New York had her DUI charges dismissed after presenting the evidence that her body brews alcohol. When the woman blew into the machine, her blood alcohol levels were more than 4 times the permissible limit. According to the Judge who shelved her charges, she was suffering from a rare condition called "auto-brewery syndrome." "I had never heard of auto-brewery syndrome before this case," attorney Joseph Marusak told CNN on the condition his client's identity remain anonymous. "But I knew something was amiss when the hospital police took the woman to wanted to release her immediately because she wasn't exhibiting any symptoms. That prompts me to get on the Internet and see if there is any sort of explanation for a weird reading," adds Marusak. "Up pops auto-brewery syndrome and away we go," as reported by KTLA 5 News.

Gregory G. Wickett, the Hamburg Police Chief said that his officers were right in charging the woman. According to the Buffalo News, "She was highly intoxicated, as shown by the Breathalyzer. Our officers did the right thing in getting her off the road. Whether she has a medical issue that caused it is not for me to decide." Even though this seems like a clear case of rare medical condition, the prosecutors are planning to reinvestigate the case and restore the charges.

CNN reports that this syndrome, also known as gut-fermentation syndrome, happens when the abnormal amount of gastrointestinal yeast converts the regular food carbs into ethanol. "She can register a blood alcohol content that would have you or I falling down drunk, but she can function," her attorney Joseph Marusak told the newspaper.

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Middle East Tensions Escalate In Wake Of Saudi Mass Beheadings

By Bill Van Auken

05 January, 2016

WSWS.org

Tensions within the war-ravaged Middle East have escalated sharply in the wake of Saudi Arabias January 2 mass executions of 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shia cleric who had criticized the ruling monarchy and its suppression of the countrys Shia minority population.

Saudi Arabia cut all diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday, using angry protests against the beheading of the Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as the pretext. Demonstrators Sunday stormed the Iranian embassy in Tehran and firebombed a consular facility in the Iranian city of Mashhad. At least 50 of the protesters were arrested and no Saudi functionaries were injured.

On Monday, the Saudi monarchy followed up its severing of diplomatic links with the announcement that it is also banning all flights to and from Iran and also cutting trade ties.

The Saudi actions were followed Monday by Bahrain and Sudan severing diplomatic ties with Iran as well. Bahrain, which is host to the US Fifth Fleet, is a majority Shia country ruled by a dictatorial Sunni monarchy. Saudi troops and tanks played the decisive role in suppressing mass protests that swept the country in 2011.

For its part, Sudan, a former ally of Iran, switched allegiances last year after heavy Saudi investments in the Sudanese economy, including a reported deposit of up to $4 billion from the Saudis and their Gulf Cooperation Council into Sudans central bank.

Another Sunni gulf oil sheikdom, the United Arab Emirates, downgraded its diplomatic relations with Tehran, but stopped short of severing all ties with Iran, which is a major trading partner.

Irans Foreign Ministry condemned the Saudi regime for using the protests as a pretext to cut ties and ratchet up tensions. Saudi Arabia sees not only its interests but also its existence in pursuing crises and confrontations and attempts to resolve its internal problems by exporting them to the outside, ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said Monday.

He insisted that Iran was committed to providing diplomatic security, adding, Saudi Arabia, which thrives on tensions, has used this incident as an excuse to fuel the tensions.

Evidence emerged Monday that, indeed, the mass executions and the subsequent breaking of relations were part of a well-planned Saudi provocation.

The British daily Independent made public the contents of a leaked Saudi government memo showing that the ruling monarchy knew the mass execution of 47 people would spark an angry backlash and ordered its security services to be on full alert before going ahead.

The memo, directed from the head of security services to police agencies across the desert kingdom, placed the regimes extensive repressive apparatus on a high state of alert.

The British human rights group Reprieve, which first received the leaked memo, said it pointed to the politically motivated character of the mass beheadings.

This letter shows the level of preparation the Saudi authorities went to ahead of Saturday, having predicted the outrage that would follow their politically motivated executions of protesters, said Maya Foa, head of the death penalty team at Reprieve.

Mass protests have continued in the wake of the state killings. A crowd of several thousand gathered in Tehran again on Monday, while demonstrators in Iraq besieged the recently reopened Saudi embassy in Baghdads Green Zone and took to the streets of the predominantly Shia cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf.

In a disturbing sign that the Saudi action is stoking sectarian strife, two Sunni mosques in the area of Hilla, 50 miles south of Baghdad, were rocked by bomb blasts. A muezzin was killed at one of the mosques. In a separate attack, the Sunni imam of a mosque in Alexandria in central Iraq was shot and killed by gunmen.

Meanwhile, the Saudi regime itself reported a deadly shooting incident in Sheikh Nimrs hometown of Awamiya, in Saudi Arabias predominantly Shia Eastern Province, on Sunday night. While the regime claimed that its security forces had come under fire, the only victims reported were a civilian who was killed and a child who was wounded.

As the linchpin of repression and reaction in the Arab world, the Saudi monarchy has been the foremost instigator of sectarianism, deliberately exacerbating and exploiting tensions between Sunni and Shia as a means of dividing popular opposition within the country and isolating Iran, its principal regional rival.

Until now, the ruling monarchy has refrained from murdering leading figures within the Shia communityarresting and harassing them, suppressing demonstrations, but ultimately releasing them in an attempt to assuage anti-regime sentiments.

The beheading of Nimr, together with the 46 others, was clearly organized for political ends. He himself had been in prison since 2012, while the bulk of those whose heads were chopped off or were shot to death were Sunni accused of involvement in Al Qaeda attacks inside the kingdom. They had been jailed for upwards of a decade. Joining Nimrs execution with theirs was meant to signal that Shia opposition to the monarchys absolute rule was tantamount to terrorism.

The political purposes of this bloody provocation are both foreign and domestic. It was staged barely three weeks before Syrian peace talks were set to begin in Geneva and less than two weeks before UN-brokered talks on a settlement of the bloody nine-month-old Saudi war in Yemen were due to resume.

The Saudi monarchy, which has been a principal financier and sponsor of the Al Qaeda-linked Sunni Islamist militias unleashed in the war for regime change in Syria, has no interest in ending the more than nearly five-year-old conflict short of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, Irans principal Arab ally.

Nor does it want to end its war in Yemen under the present conditions, with the Houthis, a Shia-based insurgent movement, undefeated. The mass beheadings coincided directly with the Saudi announcement that a supposed ceasefire declared on December 15 had formally ended.

The war in Yemen has claimed nearly 6,000 lives since the Saudi military began launching indiscriminate air strikes last March. The US has aided the intervention with arms, intelligence and midair refueling of Saudi bombers, which have dropped American-made cluster bombs on civilian targets and struck at least 100 hospitals. While it is an increasingly costly debacle for the Saudi monarchy, to end the war without defeating the Houthis would be seen as a humiliating defeat.

Ultimately, the aim of the Saudi regime is to disrupt any rapprochement between Washington and Iran in the wake of the recent nuclear deal and, if possible, to drag US imperialism into a wider war against Iran itself.

Domestically, the fomenting of sectarianism and clashes with Iran serves as a means of diverting explosive social tensions away from the monarchy itself. The kingdom faces an increasingly intractable economic crisis driven by the collapse in oil prices for which its own policies bear major responsibility. It has already implemented cuts in gasoline subsidies and increases in fees for water and electricity in an attempt to confront its fiscal crisis. More drastic austerity measures, aimed at social subsidies used to quell popular unrest, are expected.

Within official Washington, the reaction to the mass beheadings and the judicial murder of Sheikh Nimr has been muted at best. There has been no direct condemnation of the grisly mass killings, and no senior official has so much as issued a statement.

Within the ruling political establishment, policy toward the Saudi monarchy, the number one arms market for the US and Washingtons closest Arab ally, is, like most basic foreign policy questions, an issue of conflict and divisions.

This was expressed Monday in editorials published by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The Journal, expressing the views of the most right-wing layers within ruling circles, as well as the constituency of the military-industrial complex and finance capital, which have both reaped super profits off the Saudi monarchy, posed the issue not as a matter of Saudi crimes or even crisis, but rather of the supposed danger of Iran and Russia toppling the House of Saud, and the question of whether the Obama administration would do anything to stop them.

The Journal editorial chided the Obama administration for having walked back sanctions against Iran over recent ballistic missile tests. While acknowledging problems in Saudi support for the export of Wahhabism, the ideological underpinnings of Al Qaeda, ISIS and similar outfits, the Journal concluded: But in a Middle East wracked by civil wars, political upheaval and Iranian imperialism, the Saudis are the best friend we have in the Arabian peninsula. The US should make clear to Iran and Russia that it will defend the Kingdom from Iranian attempts to destabilize or invade.

The Post took a somewhat more concerned approach, recognizing that the execution of Nimr was an act that appears boundand maybe was intendedto further inflame conflict between Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East. It warns against the Saudi ruling family sowing chaos in an already stricken region while undermining itself.

However, it attributes Riyadhs reckless moves to Saudi perceptions that the United States is no longer willing or able to stop Irans drive for Middle Eastern hegemony, forcing Sunni regimes to act in their own defense.

In the end both editorials point to the same supposed remedy for the destruction and bloodshed wrought by both US imperialism and its Saudi client state in the Middle East: the escalation of militarism and the preparation of new and even wider wars directed against both Iran and Russia.




Dress Codes: Culture or Patriarchy?

By Nikita Azad

05 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

A banner about the dress code for devotees put up at Sri Parthasarathy Swamy

temple at Triplicane in Chennai.  Photo: K.V. Srinivasan/The Hindu

2015 was an year of oppression and resistance, exploitation and revolts, demons and dreams. While on one hand, we were faceted with a strong Brahaminical fundamentalism, on the other, we created a strong communal harmony. While on one hand, we were mocked as aliens for our sexuality, on the other, we celebrated Queers. While on one hand, our homes were demolished in the name of beauty, on the other, we pledged to own our homes, our factories, our products. Where the state planned to sell higher education to WTO, and we said in huge numbers Occupy UGC and WTO Go Back. 2015 was the year where we were preached that menstruation is a sin, but we said #happytobleed, doing away with all taboos that restrict our mobility.

With all the resistances that we put last year, we entered into a new year, pledging and hoping to make and see a better, egalitarian, just society. We welcomed 2016 to life, love, and struggle. But, while many people were still celebrating the New Year, we were given another gift on the very first day of New Year.

On January 1, 2016, many pilgrims had gone to various temples in Tamil Nadu to seek blessings from god for the next year, where women were turned back, and sent home for wearing western clothes, jeans, or shorts. It happened because in December the Madras High Court ordered temple authorities in Tamil Nadu state to refuse entry to anyone wearing jeans, bermuda shorts, skirts, short-sleeves or tight leggings to "enhance spiritual ambiance". Earlier in 2015, Prayar Gopalakrishnan, head of Devaswom Committee, Sabarimala Temple, Kerala had given another controversial statement that once a purity checking machine (that checks whether women are menstruating or not) is invented, he will think about letting women enter the temple. Also, Mr. Abubacker, a leader of Sunni sect of Muslims said that gender equality is a myth, and women are fit only for reproduction. Continuing the legacy of patriarchy, women were given another archaic diktat which would control the amount of clothes they would put on their body.

Although Madras High Court dictated a dress code for men also, i.e. formal pants and shirt, or dhoti etc, but the scenario in the society at large is anti-women, which is why I choose to address the question from the lens of patriarchy. Secondly, the dress code that men were obliged to follow doesnt include the decent-indecent conflict; rather they are merely expected to look sober. Whereas when it comes to women, a lot of arguments are given like such clothes which reveal conventionally hidden parts of female body might distract the attention of people, incite sexual feelings, make women astray i.e. break the sexual barriers imposed by society. Also, this isnt the first time such a statement has come; thus we must see it in continuity rather than spontaneity. On November 23, 2015 the committee of Kashi Vishwanath temple gave a diktat that foreigners, or women who wear revealing dresses will not be allowed entry, and also the temple placed 25 sarees at its entry point for them to change! Earlier in October, 2012 women wearing jeans were banned from entering Jain temples in Madhya Pradesh.

The relation of women with clothes has always been an issue of debate in society, from where the sexual nature of society is judged. If in a society, women do not cover their bodies from head to toe, do not wear bras regularly, etc, they are branded as loose women, and society is recognised as one promoting promiscuity. But, if women cover their bodies fully, they are referred to as decent, homely etc, and society is called closed, or well civilized. However, this branding varies as we change the sample of judges, but in Indian context, this is the most appropriate categorization of societies, and women. Clothes have also become a symbol of societies, whereby we recognise societies, classes, castes by their clothes without interacting with people, and without knowing their profession. Clothes not only reflect economic condition of individual, but also social status, social acceptance, and social relations. We identify different cultures from the clothes they wear, rather than thoughts they bear. For example, if an individual wearing sturdy leaves or animal skin is shown to us, the first identity to which we relate the individual is Adivasi. The jungle, their dance, their music, even their faces, do not matter, but only their clothes. This is the level up to which clothes and culture are intertwined.

It is quite amazing how a thing of need, clothes, which humans invented to cover their bodies, became a tool of division among the very humans. The invention of agriculture, development of productive forces, private ownership of animals, slaves, and finally land, paved way for the transition from matriarchal society to a patriarchal one. The urge of major owners of means of production (man) to transfer the ownership to their legitimate children required a strict discipline on sexual nature of women. The first monogamy was imposed on women, to get a legitimate heir to the land of father. From this sexual control, started the first cultural manifestations of patriarchy in ideologies that preached that women are subordinate to men in every respect, and are fit only for homely purposes. Many justifications were created in order to counter every resistance, and question, which included developing an inferiority complex within a female with respect to her own body. She was excluded from direct production processes, and made to perform household functions. Most importantly, the work she did in home was perceived as her duty, not as labour, while work meant labour that men did beyond the realm of home. However this strictness was more practiced in land-owning classes, whereas in landless classes, there was certain flexibility. This was also because the sexual availability of lower class-caste women was at the discretion of upper class-caste men. Lower class-caste women were considered as objects of manual labour, as well as sexual labour. Within this structure, clothing was decided. Where on one hand, women were forced to remain within homes, cover themselves up completely; on the other hand, Dalit women were forced to make multiple sexual relations with men from the upper castes. This hypocrisy is manifested in the tradition of 19th century Travancore where lower caste women (Nadar climbers) were not allowed to cover their bosoms to punctuate their low status.

The reason why I am placing these arguments historically is that today when fundamentalists talk about preserving our culture, maintaining spiritual ambience, and regulate the behaviour of women, they tend to hide the heinous oppression in their very Great Indian Culture. The statement of Madras high court said that western clothes are inappropriate for a place like temple, but stripping Dalit women naked, making them run naked over a donkey, raping them to remind them of their status, is far more inappropriate, and a great threat to our plural culture. On May 15, 2015 four dalit women were stripped naked in the middle of the village by upper castes because a girl of upper caste had eloped with a boy from a dalit family. Later on August 19, 2015, khap panchayat of Baghpat village, Meerut ordered that a dalit woman and her sister be raped because their brother had eloped with a woman of upper caste. Facts state that 21 dalit women are raped each week, and many a times, rapes are celebrated as victories in wars, as assertion of rights.

Temples, which are exhibited as pride of the nation, were made only for upper castes, whereby all Dalit were refrained from going in. Till date, menstruating women cannot go into temples in the name of culture and tradition. Moreover, temples which are viewed as places of virtue are also perpetrators of crimes. In these very temples, women were married to deities and forced to have sex with priests under the Devadasi Pratha. On 26 October, 2015 a 10-year old girl was raped by a priest in a temple in Faridabad, and earlier on May 2, 2015 a woman was raped in temple premises by a priest. Such anti-women, sexist atmosphere of temples, and Casteist, patriarchal priests have absolutely no right to decide what a woman wears and what not. The priests who justify gender oppression as an extension of nature, as a gift of God, have no authority to dictate whether a man, or woman, or transgender enters a temple, or not.

The question, here, is not about entering the temple, but about putting restrictions on a womans behaviour, routine as well as sexual in the name of culture. This is not just patriarchal, but also political. Regulating womens choices is the politics of maintaining the classist-castiest-patriarchal power relations. Diktats regarding clothes, hostel timings, night outs, relationships, sex, are not given because men have a special psychology, but because the state structure and corporates need patriarchy to extract maximum profit from the labour of masses. The state makes one section of toiling masses, men, to stand against another, women, by propagating, and instilling patriarchy through various ideological and coercive apparatuses, and makes the loot easier for itself. Relating women to honour and secluding them from public places is the biggest politics that state has ever done with its people. By doing this, it has made half the population, a mere spectator of states policies and crimes, which is celebrated as decency of women by another half.

Within this context, comes the attitude of temples, colleges, workplaces and other institutions. On 21 September, 2015 an engineering college in Chennai gave orders to women that leggings, tight pants and tops, lose hair hairdo, short kurtis etc are not allowed within the campus. This system of making choices for women is very deep-rooted, and we need to look at it comprehensively and historically to find the correct answers and solutions. This is not the first time a temple has given such a diktat, but this is not even the last. We need to find ways by which we can change society, by which we can break the internalization of patriarchy within the minds of women. We need to address the questions of caste, class, gender with an embracing intersectionality, and forge a struggle against oppressive structures with a correct ideological basis.

Meanwhile, I would like to say, that this year is also going to be a struggling one for us, for masses.

A Happy, Struggling New Year to all, especially women, and LGTBTQ.

Nikita Azad, Student and Gender rights activist, Patiala, Punjab






Kosovo: NATOs Success Story?

By Dan Glazebrook

05 January, 2016

Countercurrents.org

In 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days, culminating in the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the Serbian province of Kosovo. Tens of thousands were killed or maimed by the airstrikes, and Kosovo was carved out as a NATO statelet under the control of UNMIK (the United Nations Mission in Kosovo) in alliance with its local quislings the Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA). Last months parliamentary debate on British airstrikes in Syria witnessed several MPs citing the operation as a great success. Labour MP Ivan Lewis was proud of the difficult choices that we made in Kosovo and elsewhere, which he claimed saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Kosovo was particularly held up by those supportingBritish military action in Syria as an example of how airstrikes alone, without support from ground forces, can be victorious. Mocking those who argued that coalition action which rests almost wholly on bombingwill have little effect, Margaret Beckett respondedwell, tell that to the Kosovans, and do not forget that if there had not been any bombing in Kosovo perhaps 1 million Albanian Muslim refugees would be seeking refuge in Europe. Conservative MP Richard Benyon concurred, adding: I asked one my constituentssomeone who knows a bit about this, General Sir Mike Jacksonwhether he could remember any conflict where air power alone made a difference. He thought and said one word: Kosovo.

The argument is entirely fallacious. One obvious difference between the NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 and the British bombing of Syria today is the contrast in their statedaims. NATO were ostensibly bombing Yugoslavia to achieve a limited goal  the secession of Kosovo. In Syria today, however, the ostensible aim of airstrikes against ISIS is the destruction of ISIS. In other words, whilst the first aimed to force a concession from the force it was targeting; the other apparently aims at the total elimination of its target. Whilst enough punishment might persuade someone to concede a demand, it will not persuade anyone to agree to their own eradication. There is, thus, no parallel in the logic behind the two campaigns, and anyone trying to draw one is being entirely disingenuous.

Secondly, when the actual historical record is examined, it becomes clear that, even on its own terms, NATO did not actually achieve its demands. The Rambouillet agreement was NATOs eleventh hour diktat to Yugoslavia on the eve of bombing, designed to be rejected in order to justify the bombing raids. The key bone of contention for Yugoslavia in this document was that it demanded NATO troops be granted full access to air fields, roads, ports and railroads across the country  that is to say, an effective NATO occupation of the entire federal republic. Obviously, as Sara Flounders and John Catalinotto of the International Action Centre have written, no self-respecting government could accept such an ultimatum. Instead, the Yugoslav government offered to withdraw their troops from Kosovo. This was rejected by NATO, who began bombing within days. After nearly three months of heroic resistance from the Yugoslav people, the bombing ended with Yugoslav troops withdrawing from Kosovo -without any NATO occupation of the rest of the country. That is to say, the war was brought to a close on the terms originally offered by the Yugoslavs, and not on the terms demanded by NATO at the outset: hardly the overwhelming victory claimed by the likes of Mike Jackson.

What really gives the lie to the Kosovo success narrative, however, is simply the condition of NATOs statelet today. An in-depth piece by VedatXhymshiti in Foreign Policy Journal last month notes that Kosovo is the poorest and most isolated country in Europe, with millionaire politicians steeped in crime. A third of the workforce is unemployed, and corruption is widespread. Youth unemployment (those aged 25 and under) stands at 2 in 3, and nearly half of the 1.8 million citizens of Kosovo are considered to be in poverty. From December 2014 until February 2015, about 5% of the population was forced to leave the country in an effort to find a better life, studies and more dignified jobs, on their uncertain path towards wealthier countries in the EU.

The British MPs argument that NATOs takeover of Kosovo was achieved by airstrikes alone, without ground forces, is a lie. NATOsallies in 1999 were the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), a violent sectarian group who openly sought the establishment of an ethnically supremacist state - much like the forces supported by NATO in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Once NATO had destroyed the Yugoslav administration in Kosovo, effective power on the ground passed to the KLA, who set about implementing their vision of an ethnically pure Kosovo via a series of pogroms, massacres and persecutions of the provinces Serb, Jewish and Roma populations. They gained effective control of Kosovan politics, and used this power to guarantee themselves impunity both for their historic and ongoing war crimes, and for their massive expansion of organised criminality.

In December 2010, a Council of Europe report named Kosovan Prime Minister and former KLA leader HashimThacithe head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according the Guardian newspapers summary. Following NATOs intervention, ThacisDrenica group within the KLA, according to the report, seized control of "most of the illicit criminal enterprises" in which Kosovans were involved in Albania. The report noted that "agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named HashimThaci and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics." The human rights investigator who authored the report, Dick Marty, commented that: "Thaci and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as 'key players' in intelligence reports on Kosovo's mafia-like structures of organised crime. In addition to their leading role in Europes heroin smuggling trade, Thaci and his group were also named as having been responsible for a professional organ smuggling operation involving the kidnapping and murder of Serb civilians in order to harvest and sell their kidneys. Currently serving as both Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Thacis NATO protection guarantees he has never been brought to justice for any of these crimes.

Indeed, NATO-sponsored impunity has been a consistent theme amongst the new Kosovan elite. A report by Amnesty International published in August 2013 noted that the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) singularly failed to investigate the abduction and murders of Kosovo Serbs in the aftermath of the 1998-1999 conflict adding that UNMIKs failure to investigate what constituted a widespread, as well as a systematic, attack on a civilian population and, potentially, crimes against humanity, has contributed to the climate of impunity prevailing in Kosovo. Martys report, too, noted the "faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively prosecute the former leaders of the KLA", and Carla del Ponte, former chief war crimes prosecutor at the Hague, stated that she was barred from prosecuting KLA leaders.

UNMIKs responsibilities for police and justice came to an end in December 2008, following Kosovos controversial declaration of independence. It was replaced by the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), which, according to Amnesty International, inherited 1,187 war crimes cases that UNMIK had failed to investigate. All the signs are that the overt impunity that has prevailed up until now will be replaced by lip service to the rule of law, accompanied by the prosecution of a few low level operatives, whilst maintaining the protection for those at the top. Following the Council of Europes damning report, EULEX spent three years investigating the claims, eventually publishing a verdict that was a textbook case of damage-limitation whitewash. EULEX concluded that the crimes were indeed real, and were linked to leading KLA members, but refused to corroborate the names of any specific individuals involved, despite copious evidence. Thacis protection, it seems, is absolute.

Nevertheless, in August of this year, the Kosovan parliament finally and grudgingly approved (after initially rejecting) the establishment of a special war crimes court to prosecute KLA leaders for crimes committed between 1998 and 2000. In moves highly reminiscent of scenes outside both the Libyan and Ukrainian parliaments when tentative and tokenistic legal moves were made to end the impunity of the sectarian death squads, the parliament has come under repeated attack ever since. Riots and six separate teargas attacks by the opposition have brought the normal functioning of the Kosovan parliament to a standstill. Failed state status surely beckons.

Meanwhile, the credibility of EULEX, whose officials will be overseeing the establishment of the new court, was further thrown into doubt in November 2014 when Andrea Capussela, former head of UNMIKs economic unit, released the results of an in-depth analysis of the most significant cases in which EULEX had been involved. Seven of these she claimed had only been brought after intense international pressure, whilst in a further eight, no investigation was carried out at all, despite credible and well-documented evidence strongly suggesting that serious crimes had been committed. She noted that Eulexs conduct in these 15 cases  the eight ignored ones and the seven opened under pressure  suggests that the mission tended not to prosecute high-level crime, and, when it had to, it sought not to indict or convict prominent figures. During its six years of operating, she noted, only four convictions had been secured  three of them against only secondary figures, whilst higher-ranking figures linked to the same crimes were either not investigated or indicted. A senior Kosovan investigator noted that There are people killing people and getting away with it because of Unmik and Eulex, adding that The political elite and Eulex have fused. They are indivisible. The laws are just for poor people, Indeed, Eulex seem to be operating increasingly like a mafia themselves, last year, putting pressure,according to Amnesty International, on journalist, VehbiKajtazi, who had reported alleged corruption in EULEX.

In a final twist to NATOs success story, Kosovo has now become the largest per-capita provider of fighters for regime change in Syria. The official figure is 300 but more reliable estimates suggests the true figure is more than 1000 (from a population of 2 million), including one of the top ten ISIS commanders, LavdrimMuhaxheri. As state education, along with most other social provision, has collapsed since 1999, Saudi-sponsored Madrasas have filled the gap, providing an extreme Wahhabi sectarian education now feeding its first generation of impoverished graduates into NATOs new Syrian battlefields. No surprise, then, that Kosovan governments efforts to prevent this have been superficial and ineffective, according to David Philips in the Huffington Post.

The lesson of Kosovo, then, is not that airpower works or any other such nonsense. The real lesson is what it reveals about NATOs formula for the destruction of independent regional powers - relying on a combination of aerial bombardment alongside the empowerment of local sectarian death squads, who come to dominate the political scene in the aftermath, obliterating the rule of law and guaranteeing a dysfunctional state incapable of providing either dignity or security to its citizens. This was the same formula that was used on Libya in 2011 and currently being attempted in Syria today. Of course, for NATO, all of this is indeed a success: Yugoslavia dismembered; its resources plundered at the expense of its desperate and impoverished people; and Kosovo turned into a provider of shock troops for regime change in Syria, and transit hub for heroin and organ trafficking. If this is what NATO calls a success, we must all pray for failure.

Dan Glazebrook is author of Divide and Ruin: The Wests Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

This article was originally published on RT.com




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By Staff Report

After losing her bid for a City Council seat, Henrietta Jenkins has set her sights higher.

The former independent candidate for the 4th Ward will vie for the Republican nomination in the race for Indiana House District 77, according to a message sent to the Courier & Press by campaign manager John Graybill.

Jenkins lost to longtime Democratic councilor Connie Robinson in the November election, garnering only 32 percent of the vote against Robinson's 67.

She was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police in that race.

Current District 77 Rep. Gail Riecken, who lost her bid to unseat Mayor Lloyd Winnecke in November, decided not to seek reelection. She has occupied the seat since 2008.

Another Evansville resident, the Rev. Billy Garrett, has said he plans to seek the Republican nomination as well.

Filing begins Wednesday for the May 3 primaries.
By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

A Fraternal Order of Police leader called comments blaming the organization for the removal of the Rev. Adrian Brooks from the Evansville police merit commission "misguided."

Brooks, the pastor of Memorial Baptist Church who has served on the three-member board since 1999, was not retained for another term by the new-look City Council during the first meeting of the year on Monday. He was replaced by Brandon Scott, a marketing professional who moved to Evansville in 2013.

Both Brooks and Council member Connie Robinson made comments suggesting that the police organization was behind the ouster.

"The FOP didn't have anything to do with that," the organization's vice president, Chuck Knoll, said on Monday night.

The group did call for the resignation of Brooks from the commission, as well as the removal of Robinson as then-council president, after a tense 2013 meeting that centered on police relations in the community.

In last year's city election, the organization, which is made up of local law enforcement, endorsed all but one of the candidates who voted for Scott's appointment. The FOP gave its endorsement to Henrietta Jenkins, the independent candidate who ran against Robinson for the 4th Ward seat. But it also endorsed Dan Adams, a returning council member who, along with Robinson, voted against Scott.

On Tuesday, Knoll said those endorsements did not come with the caveat that Brooks not be reappointed to the merit commission. Knoll said the organization met with Scott twice before Monday's meeting. He reiterated that Monday's appointment was a decision made by the City Council.

"That was the council's vote, and it was their appointment," Knoll said Tuesday. "We respect any decision that they make, whether it was Adrian Brooks or Brandon."

Newly-elected council president Missy Mosby also claimed Monday's vote was all the responsibility of the council. However, she specifically cited the same event in 2013 that led to the FOP's call to remove Brooks as one of the reasons she did not support him for another term.

That incident was the stop of bicyclist George Madison, a black firefighter, by two white police officers. Parts of the interaction were on video and led to continuous discussions about racial relations with police in Evansville.

"I didn't feel like it was appropriate for our merit commission appointee to come out and be supportive of George Madison when it was against our police officers," Mosby said. "To me that was just wrong, and it wasn't representing the City Council appointment as I felt should be done."

Mosby said Scott is someone who wants to get involved in the community who is "a fresh new face" who can "represent Evansville as a whole."

Brooks told the council on Monday that he believes his removal from the board will set back relations with the black community.

Scott, 32, is also black.

"The people always felt free to come and talk to me because I was a police merit commissioner," Brooks said, "and I had always felt free with every police chief that we have served with to have very candid conversations about the issues when it relates to policemen and their activities."

Knoll said both the police department and the organization will work to address issues for all citizens.

"The police department and the FOP have always had an open door for problems that arise in the community," Knoll said. "That doorway hasn't been closed, in my opinion."

The Fraternal Order of Police itself has one of the other two appointments to the police merit commission. Its representative is Mike Cook. His term expires at the of 2017. The mayor's office also has an appointment. That seat is occupied by John Hegeman. His term expires at the end of this year.

Brooks told the Courier & Press that despite some "voices within the FOP" who have made "a lot of noise," he always felt like he and the police department got along well "as a whole."
Brandon Scott, who was appointed to the Police Merit Commission Monday, talks with City Councilwoman Connie Robinson, who nominated Rev. Adrian Brooks to the merit board. Brooks, who has served on the board since 1999, was not reappointed Monday.



By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press

The man who replaced the Rev. Adrian Brooks on the police merit commission during Monday's City Council meeting said he was not told that he would be replacing someone who still wanted the job.

"The way things were kind of communicated to me before was that it was a vacancy and there was a nomination (process) and if I wanted to fill the position, and that's what I signed on to," said Brandon Scott, the new appointee to the commission. "I really wasn't aware of the energy behind this and the fact there was still somebody who desired to remain in this seat until maybe three hours before everything was going down."

However, Scott told the Courier & Press on Tuesday morning that he is "super humbled and honored to serve" on the board. He said he was approached by members of City Council to seek the post. He was officially nominated during the Monday meeting by new council Vice President Jonathan Weaver.

"I left a larger city to come in here just purely because I felt like I could contribute and add more value here," said Scott, 32. "That's something that means a lot to me."

Scott is a Philadelphia native who relocated to Evansville from the Atlanta area to work at Ten Adams in 2013. He said he spent time after Monday's meeting introducing himself to audience members, most of whom came in support of Brooks keeping his seat.

Scott said he did not anticipate the circumstances of Monday's meeting and spent about an hour on the phone with Brooks late Monday night. Brooks said it was Scott who reached out to him.

"(I) shared whatever information he desired to know," Brooks said about the conversation. "We just promised to stay in touch and continue to communicate."

Brooks, who had served on the board since 1999, offered Scott "wisdom, guidance and support" during that call, Scott said.

Scott expects that line of communication to stay open, and he thanked Brooks for his time. He acknowledged that he will be the only black member on the three-person panel but said he will work to represent all citizens of Evansville.

"I'm comfortable in the capacity to serve and do my job for every single member of this community," Scott told the Courier & Press. "I work with the values to be level-headed, to be open-minded, to be even-keel and to also keep things in their proper perspective. Those are my morals. Those are my values."

Weaver said he met Scott at an event in the fall and was instantly impressed. Weaver said he viewed Scott's appointment as the council deciding to go in a new direction.

"Replacing is a harsh term," Weaver said on Tuesday about the move. "The (commission) term expired, and we had the pleasure of going either direction. We chose to go a direction that was new. This guy is intelligent, he educated, he is well-attuned to what is going on in the community and he is well liked. We just felt like he was the choice we wanted at this point in time."

Weaver "sincerely thanked" Brooks for his service on the merit commission and noted that Brooks will still be doing deeds benefiting the city through his church as well as his community development corporation.

"He's still going to be around. We appreciate everything he does. He does a lot of great things for the community," Weaver said.

Scott said he does not have many relationships with law enforcement in Evansville but generally holds police officers "in the highest regard." Scott said he understands the role as a merit board member is to serve the public.

"My focus is purely doing that job to the 'T,'" he said. "There is no side agenda or any ulterior motive or anything like that. That's not who I am."
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This editorial appeared in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette:

North Dakota lawmakers clearly know what it means to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. They not only follow the federal recommendation for investing in tobacco prevention and cessation efforts, they exceed it by about a half-million dollars. Their state ranks No. 1 in meeting the recommendation on anti-tobacco spending.

And Indiana lawmakers? For the current fiscal year, they allocated only 8 percent of the recommended share of the federal tobacco lawsuit settlement dollars to helping smokers quit and to preventing young people from starting. It's a costly mistake over the long haul. Hoosiers pay an estimated $2.93 billion in annual tobacco-related health care costs, or about $920 per household. North Dakota, by contrast, faces smoking-related costs of about $326 million a year, or $823 per household.

Indiana is one of 21 states spending less than 10 percent of the federal recommendation on tobacco prevention programs. While North Dakota's spending on tobacco prevention has tripled since 2008, Indiana's has plunged from $16.2 million a year to $5.9 million, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The organization tracks states' commitment to using money from the 1998 settlement of a lawsuit against the major tobacco companies for anti-smoking efforts.

"Unfortunately, there has been no oversight and no accountability to ensure that the settlement money goes for tobacco cessation and prevention programs," Danielle Patterson, Indiana government relations director for the American Heart Association, told Kelly.

Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, defends Indiana's spending record, noting that most of the $141 million budget allocation for settlement proceeds goes to health care-related programs and that Indiana's tobacco use numbers are dropping.

"We don't think the same levels of money are needed," he told Kelly, adding that if the downward smoking trend reversed, he would reconsider the allocation to anti-tobacco programs.

It's time. The just-released America's Health Rankings, by United Health Foundation, shows the percentage of Indiana's population of smokers age 18 and older ticked up from 21.9 percent in 2014 to 22.9 percent. North Dakota, with its aggressive stand against Big Tobacco, saw its smoking rate drop from 21.2 percent to 19.9 percent.

If Kenley and other lawmakers aren't convinced by a reversal in Indiana's rate, they should at least note what the respondent in the federal lawsuit is doing.

The tobacco industry will spend nearly $50 dollars to promote its products for every $1 Indiana spends on prevention and cessation. That's an imbalance that will send Hoosiers' long-term costs on smoking-related health care ever higher.
Casey Stoner believes Marc Marquez 'felt in some way threatened by me' while the Australian was still at Honda and hinted that this may have contributed to HRC turning down his offer to replace Dani Pedrosa.

After quitting racing at the end of 2012 Stoner took up the role of test rider for Honda and witnessed Marquez emerge to claim back-to-back MotoGP crowns in 2013 and 2014.

When Marquez's Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa was forced to pull out of three rounds at the start of 2015 due to injury, Stoner offered to take his place, only to be turned down by Honda for Hiroshi Aoyama.

The two-time MotoGP world champion has now called an end to his test rider deal with Honda and returned to Ducati.

"At Honda I was just an occasional tester and wasn't being used to my potential," Stoner said to Motosprint. "I loved working with the HRC guys but I think Marc and his crew felt in some way threatened by me and I don't know why. I was just there to test and help.

"I have absolutely no hard feelings towards Honda and I have great respect for Shuhei Nakamoto [HRC vice president], so our relationship will be fine in the future.

"I felt ready [to replace Pedrosa] for Austin. Nakamoto told me he was sorry and that it had been him who made the decision. But I think other people must have put pressure on him for me not to race."

Stoner's new role at Ducati is as a 'brand ambassador and test rider', including an appearance at World Ducati Week from 1-3 July along with 'a selected number of MotoGP tests'.
Californian tech giant Cisco has released an advisory statement explaining that its chat client Jabbar is currently vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack.

Found in the Windows client of Jabbar, the vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to perform a STARTTLS downgrade attack.

Discovered by Renaud Dubourguais and Sebastien Dudek from Synacktiv, a French cyber-security firm, versions affected include the 10.6.x, 11.0.x, and 11.1.x releases.

Currently the client does not verify that the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) connection has been established with Transport Layer Security (TLS).

XMPP enables the near-real-time exchange of structured yet extensible data between any two or more network entities.

Speaking to SCMagazineUK.com, Renaud Dubourguais explained, Cisco Jabber is installed on an employee's computer and configured to connect to a Jabber server deployed by the company. During the connection process, a XMPP negotiation occurs to decide if they have to use a secured communication (TLS) or not which is where the vulnerability is. Once the negotiation is done, the client sends the company login details through XMPP messages to authenticate the employee and chats can start."

This means that subsequently, the attacker could cause the client to establish a plaintext XMPP connection. The report from Synacktiv says, A successful exploitation could allow anyone to wiretap communications, steal user credentials, but also tamper messages sent between the client and the Jabber gateway.

Cisco has released software updates that address this vulnerability, but as there are currently no workarounds available, the only way to make sure end users are protected would be to make sure their Jabber client is fully patched and up to date.

Gavin Millard, chief technical officer EMEA at Tenable Network Security commented, To finish off the year of multiple downgrade attacks against SSL/TLS, the recently announced Cisco Jabber client issue is similar to many we've experienced in 2015.

"As with many of the downgrade vulnerabilities, an attacker could manipulate the communication path to force a lower level of encryption between the client and server, making it easier to gain visibility into the data flow. What is of concern in this particular example though, is the fact the downgrade is to cleartext rather than a less secure implementation of SSL.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com
Electronics reseller Dick Smith has submitted to voluntary administration.

The public company made the announcement this morning to the Australian Securities Exchange, citing the pressure to attain short term funding as a major factor in its decision.

Whilst confident on the long-term viability of the company, the directors have been unsuccessful in obtaining the necessary support of its banking syndicate to see it through this period, said Dick Smith Holdings chairman Rob Murray.

The directors are of the view that without this support, there is no option other than to appoint a voluntary administrator.

McGrathNicol has been appointed as administrator. Murray said that Dick Smith management would work with McGrathNicol to try to keep the business operating.

The directors formed the view that any success in obtaining alternative funding would not have been sufficiently timely to support short-term funding requirements and allow the company to order required inventory during the next four to six weeks, Murray said.

He added that the board believed the voluntary administration as the best way to protect the interests of shareholders, creditors, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Disappointing sales at Dick Smith became apparent at the start of December when the chain copped a $60 million write-down on inventory. The company subsequently ran a clearance sale during the month to turn around its fortunes, but the move failed to satisfy its critics.

Dick Smith Holdings' share price is now at 35.5 cents - a stark contrast from $2 in August. This time last year the company was celebrating a $56.8 million year-on-year increase in revenue to hit $693.8 million for the half-year to 31 December 2014, with net profit up $25 million to $25.2 million.
Norwegian Cruise Line has revealed the companys new global brand campaign, Feel Free.

"Rooted in the lines fundamentals of freedom & flexibility, Feel Free is an invitation for guests to experience Norwegians philosophy of what a vacation should be, free from rigid schedules with the freedom to make their vacation their own," said Norwegian.

The integrated campaign, launched January 4, is inclusive of national television spots, online video, digital units, and various social media activations.

One social media initiative encourages usage of the campaigns #FeelFree hashtag by asking consumers to share their New Years resolutions for a chance to win a 7-day cruise with Norwegian.

The new campaign was created and developed with partner agencies BBDO Atlanta and OMD.

The concept of Feel Free transcends the idea of traditional cruising and speaks to the experience that is uniquely offered and delivered aboard Norwegian ships: our promise that guests should be free to vacation on their terms, said Meg Lee, Norwegian Cruise Lines senior vice-president and chief marketing officer.

The launch of Feel Free works hand-in-hand to communicate Norwegians new promotional offer Free at Sea. Norwegians Free at Sea promotional offer allows guests to choose from four free offers: free unlimited beverages, free specialty dining, free shore excursions or free wifi.
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A year-end housing market wrap-up compiled by real estate site Zillow offers a glimpse and the total amount of money Americans spent on buying and renting houses in 2015.

This year, the cumulative value of all homes in the United States hit $28.5 trillion, up 4.1 percent from 2014. That's an increase of $1.1 trillion nationwide.

U.S. renters paid $535 billion in rent, with an increase of 1.8 million people leasing their residences.

"This reminds us of the large role housing plays in the overall economy," Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell said in a statement. "Total home value growth slowed this year, but there was still a significant increase in overall value, and many markets are more valuable than they've ever been. At the same time, more renter households and rising rents combined to set new records in rental spending in 2015. Americans are spending a lot of money on housing, and that will make affordability an important issue next year."

Not surprisingly, housing values vary greatly by region. The total home sales numbers for Texas cities could be expressed in billions. In California, however, year-end home sales reached deep into the trillions.

As for rent, Americans spent nearly $20 billion more in rent in 2015 than in 2014.

According to Zillow, "Renters of single-family homes and apartments spent about the same amount on rent this year, with apartment renters paying $239 billion and single-family home renters paying $245 billion."

Take a look at year-end totals for San Antonio, Houston, San Francisco, Seattle and several other metros in the gallery above.
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, National Geographic magazine is leading their January issue with a unique image of Yosemite by Westport photographer Steven Wilkes.

"Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society," naturalist John Muir wrote in 1938. "Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind."
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First there no natural snow, warm temperatures and now this ... a burglary at a Connecticut ski area.

Two men have been arrested on charges of burglarizing the Mohawk Mountain ski area lodge, stealing more than $2,000 in cash, lift tickets and causing $5,000 in property damage.

On Monday at approximately 12:32 a.m., State Police responded to a reported burglary at Mohawk Mountain ski area in Cornwall. Upon arrival, troopers observed that forced entry was made into the lodge through a basement window. Two suspects were viewed on a surveillance video destroying three security cameras, smashing a wooden office door, and breaking a metal door that gave access to the money vault. Property damage was estimated at approximately $5,000.

The two suspects also took 10 money drawers containing $2,050 in cash, numerous ski passes valued at $60 each, and a large bucket of loose change.

Through the course of the investigation, troopers were able to identify the two suspects that entered the ski resort, and a third suspect that was located outside acting as a look out. Troopers also identified a suspect vehicle, Trooper First Class Kelly Grant said in a release, As the investigation continued, troopers obtained four search and seizure warrants from the Bantam Superior Court. The search and seizure warrants were served at the three separate addresses of the suspects, and the suspect vehicle.

Troopers recovered all of the cash drawers, ski passes, cash totaling $1137.12, evidence of the crime to include clothing worn during the burglary, burglary tools, and marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Arrested were Ralph Baldelli and Terrance Edwards, both of Winsted. They were charged with third-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief and related conspiracy charges.

On Monday at approximately 6 a.m. troopers took Baldelli into custody. Baldelli was transported to Troop B where he was processed and held on bond pending his court date. On Monday at approximately 1 p.m. troopers took Edwards into custody. Edwards was also transported to Troop B where he was processed and held on bond pending his court date.

Troopers will be applying for an arrest warrant for the third suspect in this case.

Mohawk Mountain, the state largest and oldest ski area, started its season last weekend. Warm temperatures had delayed its opening by more than three weeks. The return of colder temperatures has allowed it to make machine-made snow to cover its trails. The states other ski areas are expected to be open by this weekend.
FAIRFIELD-It may have been just an innocent miscalculation

But when William Dong steered his Segway onto the access road between Fairfield Middle School and Jennings Elementary School Dec. 7, he may have violated the terms of his federal probation. Fairfield police charged him with first-degree criminal trespass.

As a result, Dong, a Stratfield Road resident, will appear before U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny in Hartford Wednesday morning to explain himself.

Dong was put on five years federal probation for bringing a Bushmaster assault rifle across state lines. The rifle, the same kind used in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary massacre, was found in Dongs car moments before he was arrested Dec. 3, 2013 on the University of New Haven campus with two loaded handguns.

His actions led to the school being locked down for nearly four hours. No one was injured in the incident and no shots were fired.

It led to Dong being sentenced in Milford Superior Court to eight years in prison suspended after two years served and five years probation on state weapons charges.

One of the conditions of his release on probation was not to own guns, appear on school grounds or be arrested on state or federal charges.
BRIDGEPORT  Mayor Joe Ganim has complained about being saddled with bad decisions by defeated predecessor Bill Finch.

Now Ganim is relying on Finchs inaction as an argument for blocking another union contract from being implemented for 800 city and public school employees.

At the mayors urging, the City Council on Monday voted down a five-year pact with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The deal would have given the members  700 of them school clerical workers, janitors, classroom aides and special education bus drivers  two years worth of retroactive 3 percent raises; 2.5 percent pay increases in 2016 and 2017; and a 2 percent raise in 2018.

Those raises total $2.9 million over the five years. Ganim, who has claimed he inherited a $20 million deficit from Finch, told the council that $2.9 million was never budgeted on the city side and the Board of Education cannot foot the bill.

But the union was also taking concessions, including three unpaid furlough days and eliminating costly post-retirement health benefits for new hires.

AFSCME has filed a grievance with state labor officials, maintaining the time for council action expired in December and the city, under state law, was obligated to implement the collective bargaining agreement.

But the administration believes it found at least one loophole  Finch never signed the necessary paperwork when the contract was finalized Oct. 20.

There is no loophole, Larry Dorman, a union spokesman, said Tuesday. There is only the law (and) we firmly believe the law is on our side and this agreement must be legally implemented.

No money

Ganims faceoff with AFSCME follows his success last week in urging the council to vote down a contract with retroactive and future pay raises for the supervisors union.

Ive scoured the brain of the Office of Policy and Management and finance (department), Ganim told the council Monday ahead of its AFSCME vote. Theyve told me repeatedly theres no money for the last contract sent to you (the supervisors) and this one.

The biggest difference between the two pacts is that the Finch administration ahead of Ganims Dec. 1 swearing-in implemented the deal with the supervisors, making it harder to unravel.

The council had tabled a decision on that pact in October. After a few weeks had passed, the supervisors union notified the city that, under state law, because the council did not reject the collective bargaining agreement, it automatically took effect. The Finch administration agreed.

The Ganim administration last week convinced the City Council that a subsequent date change turned back the clock and presented that legislative body with another opportunity to act.

In the case of AFSCME, Ganim had already taken office by the time that union in a Dec. 4 letter to the administration wrote that the City Council had similarly missed its opportunity to reject their contract.

When no action was taken, AFSCME in mid-December filed a complaint with the state labor department, alleging the city has refused to bargain collectively in good faith.

Meanwhile, the Ganim administration decided to send the contract to the council Monday.

This AFSCME union also happened to endorse Finch over Ganim in the election.

Fact and fiction

The AFSCME deal was first taken up Monday at a hastily called meeting of the councils contracts committee, attended by Ganim, many of his chief advisers, and about two dozen angry union members.

I cant, in good conscience, just let a raise go into effect, Ganim told the committee.

Ganims budget chief, Nestor Nkwo, head of the Office of Policy and Management, said the financial hit was actually worse for the board of education. Nkwo said the cost of the raises to the city over three years is $100,000 versus $2.8 million for the schools.

We could take the position, in theory, thats not our problem, Ganim said. But it is our problem because the city budget funds education. The school district faces a $4 million deficit.

But, argued Council President Thomas McCarthy, many AFSCME members salaries are funded with state and federal grants which increase to cover the raises. McCarthy asked Nkwo if he had figured out what percentage of that $2.8 million would come from grants.

To be honest, I did not, Nkwo said.

Thomas Fascio, an AFSCME leader, interrupted the contracts committees discussion, alleging the Ganim administration was being misleading.

You gotta talk fact, not fiction, Fascio said.

Good faith

Councilwoman Denise Taylor-Moye was frustrated that no one from the Board of Education attended the committee meeting to provide that perspective.

Ganim said he had spoken with Schools Superintendent Francis Rabinowitz.

She didnt tell me she was in the loop on this, aware of it and would be supportive of it. ... She doesnt have the money, Ganim said.

In October, when the school board was warned the district was facing a possible $4 million budget deficit, Marlene Siegel, the school districts chief financial officer, factored the AFSCME contract into the shortfall. Siegel said a retroactive pay hike of 3 percent to July 2014 and another 2.5 to 3 percent increase in 2016 contributed to the projected shortfall. By how much wasnt clear.

Rabinowitz, on Tuesday, said the raises are costing the district about $2.3 million. That is $800,000 more than the district budgeted. In the meantime, she said the district is now projecting a budget shortfall totalling $5.8 million, due largely to increases in special education costs.

The contracts committee passed the AFSCME contract on to the full council, which added the deal to Monday nights regular meeting agenda.

After another plea from Ganim and some debate, the collective bargaining agreement was defeated, nine votes to four, with two absent and five council members with ties to AFSCME abstaining.

But others, including Taylor-Moye, John Olson and McCarthy wanted the contract passed.

The union voted in good faith and the citys obligated, Olson said.
BRIDGEPORT - Cut loose by the Secretary of the State, Av Harris has accepted a full-time, $100,000 job as Mayor Joseph Ganims communications guru.

This opportunity is so compelling that I could not pass it up, Harris said Tuesday. I think this is a very dynamic community. I think theres a really good and competent staff Mayor Ganim has put in place.

Harris, 40, a former radio journalist who was the Secretary of the States communications director for eight years, has been volunteering as Ganims spokesman since the latter was re-elected Nov. 3.

Ganim was mayor from 1991 until he was convicted of corruption in 2003.

Harris said he was let go from the Secretary of the States office with his final day being Nov. 6.

In recent weeks he had accepted a job with the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and was supposed to have started this week. But the position with the returned Ganim was too tempting for Harris, despite the fact it is a long commute for the single dad from his home in Holyoke, Mass.

I feel I can jump in, roll up my sleeves, get to work and see the impact of that work every day, Harris said.

Harris plans to rent an apartment in Bridgeport, a cost he said factored into his salary. He noted that his wages are equivalent to those for similar jobs in Hartford and New Haven.

Harris added, Im driving my 2008 Toyota Prius, alluding to Ganims efforts to limit take home vehicles.

Ganim on the campaign trail had mocked defeated ex-Mayor Bill Finchs communications operation. That was run in recent years by Brett Broesder, who earned $91,000.

Now Ganim has Harris, who said he will also have an assistant. And the administration just hired police and fire department spokesman Michael Giannotti for $63,500.

Ganim has also been complaining about inheriting a $20 million deficit from Finch.
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The shadow of the Sandy Hook shootings again hung over the White House as President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined actions his administration will take to stem the tide of gun violence, including increased pressure on informal gun sellers to obtain federal licenses and conduct background checks.

Speaking in the East Room packed with shooting survivors and relatives  including several from Newtown  Obama wiped away tears as he said the right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence had been stripped from ... first-graders in Newtown. First-graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.

Obama added: Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad.

Mark Barden, who lost his son, Daniel, at the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and who introduced Obama on Tuesday, said the presidents emotions resonated with all in the room.

It touched everyone deep inside their souls, Barden said after the rollout. At the end of the day, the president is a dad.

Jimmy Greene, a jazz composer and saxophonist who lost his 6-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, at Sandy Hook and who composed an album Beautiful Life to her memory, said he was very proud of Obama.

More Information President Obama's executive actions to reduce gun violence Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn't matter where you conduct your business-from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you're in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks. ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history records and criminal dispositions, information on persons disqualified because of a mental illness, and qualifying crimes of domestic violence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient. The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. The FBI will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process these background checks. Make our communities safer from gun violence The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws. The President's FY2017 budget will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws. ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network. ATF is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit. The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorney's Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts. Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care. The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons. The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons. Shape the future of gun safety technology The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology The President has also directed the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety. See More Collapse

Greene was among 13 relatives of victims or gunshot survivors who stood to Obamas right as the president addressed the crowd.

Greene recalled his last trip to the White House in 2013, just four months after Sandy Hook, when the Senate blocked a proposed expansion of background checks.

That was not a very inspiring day, but today was much different, he said. Today theres motion, theres executive orders, theres going to be action, theres going to be change. Even if its small and incremental, its in the right direction.

Strengthening regulations

Underneath the highly charged feelings on display in and out of the White House was a series of technical adjustments to gun regulations that administration officials insisted were aimed at bolstering current law rather than doing an end-run around the Republican Congress, which has no appetite for passing new gun laws.

Chief among these is renewed emphasis by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that those who fits the laws federal licensing requirement for anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must get a license.

Federal licensees who typically operate gun shops have been required to carry out background checks on each sale, whereas occasional sellers at gun shows and others involved in strictly private transactions have not.

The presidents measures propose budgeting the addition of 200 ATF agents and investigators to carry out beefed-up enforcement, and 230 examiners for the FBIs National Instant Criminal Background Check System  NICS  which performs the checks to make sure gun customers are not felons, illegal immigrants, mentally impaired, domestic abuses or have any other disqualifications.

The president earmarked an extra $500 million to combat mental illness, which often undergirds acts of gun violence.

The measures emphasize smart-gun technology to keep guns out of the hands of anyone other than rightful owners, and a requirement that legal entities such as trusts must get background checks when purchasing weapons.

Some gun-control advocates had called for a numeric limit to be imposed on unlicensed sellers, beyond which they must get a license. Some had mentioned setting the limit at 50 guns a year  requiring anyone who sells more than that to be licensed and run background checks. The White House measure did not establish such a limit.

U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn. who attended the White House event, insisted there is more to determining who should (and should not) get a license than numbers.

The answer is not to harass hunters and collectors, Esty said. Theyre not the ones killing people.

The dividing line on which sellers do and do not require a license could hinge on whether the seller has a business card or sells weapons in their original packaging.

Esty noted the rise of gun sales on the Internet, a category that didnt exist 20 or 30 years ago when the most recent laws governing licenses and background checks were formulated. One area that the FBI and ATF likely will focus on is the Dark Net, a shadowy underground online network in which guns are bought and traded with no oversight whatsoever.

The presidential initiatives evoked derision from Republicans, especially those contending for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. New York billionaire developer Donald Trump said Monday that pretty soon, you wont be able to get guns.

Connecticut at forefront

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, who was at the White House gathering, dismissed their objections.

Its how many people can get out of a clown car at one time? he said. Its a substantial test, which theyre all passing.

Malloy embraced his reputation as a state-level champion of keeping guns out of dangerous hands, as compared to states such as Texas and Florida that are more amenable to gun rights.

If you want to increase your chances of dying because of gun violence, there are states you should move to, Malloy said. And Connecticut is not one of them.

Obama was careful to reiterate his support for Second Amendment rights of qualified individuals to own guns, insisting this is not a plot to take away everybodys guns.

Nevertheless, he argued, Second Amendment rights had to be balanced against other rights including freedom of religion and peaceful assembly, which Obama said were violated when shooters opened fire at a church in Charleston, S.C., and a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in addition to Sandy Hook.

So the gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they cannot hold America hostage, Obama said. We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom.

The president indirectly praised Connecticut and its tough gun law adopted after the Newtown shooting by comparing the state to Missouri, which went in the opposite direction and loosened its gun laws.

Gun deaths (in Connecticut) decreased by 40 percent  40 percent! Obama said as the audience applauded. Meanwhile, since Missouri repealed a law requiring comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, gun deaths have increased to almost 50 percent higher than the national average.

The month after the Sandy Hook shootings, Obama issued executive orders that similarly were aimed at strengthening existing gun laws and protecting Americans against random shootings. But mass shootings have continued in regular succession, including ones in Roseburg, Ore., and San Bernardino, Calif.

Barden, who introduced Obama at a previous gathering, said he and other supporters of these measures had to be patient and stay in it for the long haul.

When youre talking about influencing attitudes and behaviors of the American public, thats a long process, he said. I see this moment today as part of that process.

dan@hearstdc.com
NEWTOWN  A two-year search for an accessible yet out-of-the-way spot for the Sandy Hook memorial has ended at a scenic and secluded hilltop meadow overlooking the Fairfield Hills municipal campus.

The selection of the hilltop meadow as the site to memorialize the 26 children and educators slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings is problematic, because the land is so environmentally sensitive. But the decision resolves the location question that needed to be settled before the town could start thinking about what design the memorial should take.

A 12-member group in charge of the memorial will now undertake a similarly deliberate process of setting the design parameters and seeking proposals.

We are going to put a specific timeline in place with dates that we would like to see the proposals by, said Kyle Lyddy, chairman of the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission. So we expect to see something in 2016, but we have always said that there is no timetable, so if we need to change plans, we will.

The group, which includes family members of victims killed at the school, has already met with the towns Conservation Commission, Police Commission and Parks and Recreation Commission about a preliminary proposal that would use less than an acre of the hilltop for the actual memorial, and a path leading to several parking spaces.

The plan received verbal approval from the three-member Board of Selectmen late last month.

I want to encourage you to proceed  and dont rush your work, First Selectman Pat Llodra told Lyddy during a Dec. 21 public meeting.

Creating a memorial that honors the victims and comforts those touched by the shootings is among the important townwide initiatives Newtown is undertaking as it recovers from one of the worst crimes in Connecticut history.

A separate commission is building consensus for a community center that will be funded with a $15 million gift from GE. That process had to be stopped and restarted last year when it was clear more outreach was needed to come up with a design everyone could endorse.

Newtown is looking to hire as many as four trauma-care specialists to replace a team that will be disbanded in March when its federal funding runs out.

The memorial commission began its mission by gathering input from the families of the 26 victims. The commission next spoke with school staff, parents and first responders. Members spoke with planners involved in memorials for the 1999 high school shootings in Columbine, Colo., and the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.

As part of the outreach, 95 percent of Sandy Hook parents said they thought there should be a memorial honoring the shooting victims.

Because the hilltop meadow and surrounding acres have been designated as open space, members of the memorial commission will have to work with the towns Conservation Commission to reduce the environmental impact.

Because the memorial could draw out-of-town attention and potential vandalism by conspiracy theorists, the Police Commission has suggested 24/7 surveillance cameras to provide extra security.

The project has a budget of $165,000 from grants and donations the town received after the shootings.

rryser@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342

lig
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BRIDGEPORT  If Mayor Joe Ganim wants to recoup retroactive raises paid to 200 employees, past and present, his administration will likely have to take them to court.

A city attorney last week suggested the first stop would be the state Labor Department. But a spokeswoman for the latter on Monday said that is not the case.
Route of Cubans to leave Costa Rica

Submitted by: Juana

Central America

Politics and Government

01 / 05 / 2016



On December 28, after more than six weeks of a crisis that has brought thousands of Cubans to stay on Costa Rican soil, the country's Foreign Ministry issued an official statement announcing the agreement between Central American nations for the safe and ordered movement of Cuban migrants.

The decision, which involves the relocation of Cubans by air from Costa Rica to El Salvador and then by bus to Mexico will take place with a pilot plan, through which next January 8 the first 250 Cubans will leave Costa Rican soil.

This is the route that will make Cubans to leave Costa Rica.

source: www.cibercuba.com

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Chinese Economic Data to Provoke Australian Dollar Volatility this Week

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After Mondays Asian session closed, the Shanghai Composite Index slumped close to -6.9%. This weighed heavily on trader risk appetite as global stock prices followed suit and commodity prices depreciated.The drop in Chinese stock values can be linked to disappointing domestic data. Decembers Chinese Manufacturing PMI failed to meet with the median market forecast rise from 48.6 to 48.9, with the actual result dropping to 48.2. Anything below the 50 mark is contraction.As a risk-correlated asset, the Australian Dollar slumped in response to significantly dampened trader sentiment.In addition to falling Chinese stock values causing trader risk-appetite to cool, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East continues to bolster safe-haven demand. Saudi Arabia has broken off diplomatic ties with Iran which has sent oil and gold prices higher, but most commodities lower.One positive, for those invested in the Australian Dollar, is rising iron ore prices after production in the National Mineral Development Corporations biggest iron-ore mine located in Chhattisgarhs Dantewada district halted following a workers strike.Although weakness from China will weigh on trader risk-appetite, there is the potential for Aussie (AUD) gains if the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC) opt to stimulate an economic recovery. The Chinese economy is set to grow at its slowest pace in a quarter of a century, suggesting that both the government and the PBoC will have no choice but to expand stimulus.Official intervention from Chinas government and the PBoC is supportive of demand for the Australian Dollar amid speculation that heightened efforts to provoke more impressive economic growth will cause increased demand for Australias exports.Over the coming week there will be a number of Australian and Chinese economic data publications with the potential to provoke significant Australian Dollar volatility.Australias Performance of Service Index, Building Approvals, Trade Balance, Performance of Construction Index and Retail Sales data should all be of interest to those invested in the Aussie.In addition, Chinas Consumer Prices, Trade Balance, Foreign Direct Investment, Services PMI and Composite PMI will also be significant for those trading with the Oceanic currency.

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Double murder trial day 4: A star witness for the prosecution backed out in the courtroom

The prosecution case in chief has to change its line up of witnesses when one decides not to take the stand when called to do so Tuesday morning.
As countless people clamour for a recipe they think might bag them a mate, others are starting to wonder: do we need to worry if our partner leaves the house with cookware?

by Samantha Selinger-Morris
COLONEL RICHARD KEMP: 'The British troops at the centre of this opportunistic, lucrative witch-hunt have been hung out to dry'

Time and again in recent conflicts across the world, British soldiers have willingly put their lives on the line for our country.

Yet instead of being honoured for their spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice, too many of them are now the targets of vexatious legal actions brought by politically motivated, greedy lawyers who undermine the ability of our Armed Forces to protect our national interests.

What makes this betrayal all the more disgraceful is the Governments failure to stand up to these legal wreckers. Indeed, far from challenging them, Whitehall provides them with funding, staff and judicial backing.

This pathetic collusion represents a complete inversion of morality, with the state now effectively bankrolling relentless attacks on our defenders.

The full extent of this taxpayer-subsidised treachery has been laid bare through news reports about the activities of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, which was set up in 2010 by the Ministry of Defence to investigate claims of ill-treatment and unlawful killings by British military forces.

Initially, the unit was meant to inquire into 152 cases, but now its work has spiralled out of control to more than 1,500 cases.

That phenomenal expansion should hardly come as a surprise, given that the MoD actually pays an Iraqi agent, Abu Jamal, nearly 40,000 a year to handle compensation demands from the supposed victims.

Jamals son has boasted that every week his father is now taking on 20 new clients who want to sue the British Government.

Meanwhile, the British troops at the centre of this opportunistic, lucrative witch-hunt have been hung out to dry.

Phenomenal expansion of casesL The MoD actually pays an Iraqi agent, Abu Jamal (left, pictured with his son Jama Alshiraida), nearly 40,000 a year to handle compensation demands from the supposed victims

Few of them have ever received anything like 40,000 a year for serving their nation. Now they have the threat of criminal charges hanging over them in a saga that could drag on for years. Indeed, the unit admitted this week that it may well not complete its investigations until 2019 at the earliest.

The Nuremberg trials of the Nazis were completed in just one year, yet the Iraq unit may last more than a decade. That fact alone is an indicator of the institutionalised madness that seems to have gripped the MoD. This whole expensive mess would not exist if the British Government was not supinely paying for it. The cases would soon stop if there was no hope of legal aid or compensation.

As a former senior Army officer who served in Northern Ireland, Iraq, the Balkans and Afghanistan, I find the whole business a disgrace. This is no way to treat our fighting men. Nor do the legalistic machinations take the slightest account of the brutal realities of a war zone.

It is absurd to pretend the battlefield, with all its danger and death, can be treated in the same way judicially as civilian life. The huge difference between the two is precisely why we have the Geneva Conventions, rather than ordinary criminal law, to govern the conduct of war.

Yet the exploitative lawyers, abetted by the MoD, seek to apply civilian niceties  especially the highly controversial European Convention on Human Rights  to all the recent conflicts in which British troops have been involved.

The Government could have easily stopped this nonsense by stipulating that the Armed Forces have a specific exemption from human rights legislation, just as the French and Spanish governments have done.

But in a shameful attempt to parade their compassionate credentials and appease their Left-wing critics, our ruling politicians have refused to do so.

This Iraqi betrayal echoes the disgraceful case of Alexander Blackman, the Royal Marines sergeant who was imprisoned for the murder of a Taliban insurgent in a battle in Helmand Province in 2011.

Huge difference: It is absurd to pretend the battlefield, with all its danger and death, can be treated in the same way judicially as civilian life. Pictured: A file image of British troops at the Al-Faw Peninsula in Iraq in 2003

The sergeant did wrong in shooting dead a fatally wounded enemy on the battlefield, but his conviction and sentence showed no recognition of the terrible stresses that war inflicts on combatants. It is grotesque that Sergeant Blackman, with his long, distinguished record in the Marines, should be treated as an ordinary criminal.

His case, though, suits the narrative of the lawyers and their agents, who aim to portray the British military as a brutal, cruel and ill-disciplined force.

Anyone with any experience of the Army knows that this is the opposite of the truth. That is why the Iraq unit has not been able to bring criminal charges in a single case, and why a public inquiry found that allegations of British soldiers murdering and abusing Iraqi civilians in 2003 were wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility by Iraqi witnesses.

Imprisoned: It is grotesque that Sergeant Alexander Blackman, with his long, distinguished record in the Marines, should be treated as an ordinary criminal

Accusations of ill-treatment are almost always empty because the British Army instils a duty of responsibility on officers to maintain discipline, including towards the enemy.

I recall how, on one occasion in Iraq, a number of troops under my command were becoming abusive towards a group of Iraqi prisoners. I stepped in and stopped this misconduct before it became serious.

Similarly in Afghanistan where I was commander of British forces  several of my soldiers were treating some captured al-Qaeda combatants in a manner that did not entirely comply with the Geneva Conventions. Their behaviour was bred of ignorance about the law, but I had a duty to intervene and put them right.

Far from illustrating the savagery of the Army, such cases show there is a structure in place that enforces discipline when it is required. That is why I feel hardly any of the allegations in the Iraq units burgeoning catalogue can be genuine.

Yet still the legal cases drag on, bringing cash for the lawyers and misery for the suspects. Lives will be damaged, careers wrecked, relationships broken.

Yesterday, this paper highlighted the appalling case of decorated soldier Richard Catterall, who served with distinction for more than two decades yet has been under investigation for 12 years for the death of an Iraqi civilian, despite having been cleared twice.

I know of one former soldier who found work as a security guard in Iraq, but has now been forced to give up his job simply because he was named in one of these legal investigations.

It is the same story with veterans of Northern Ireland. The peace process was meant to wipe the slate clean, with a flood of former terrorists released early from prison. But, characteristically, that did not apply to members of the British Army, who remain under endless investigation for deeds committed during the Troubles.

Just two months ago, a former paratrooper was arrested over the continuing inquiry by the Police Service of Northern Ireland into the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972 in Londonderry  something of a bitter irony given that former terrorists from that period are now in government in Northern Ireland.

But it is not just the soldiers who suffer from this judicial farce. Our national security is put under threat because all these accusations against the Army add fuel to the flames of Islamist extremism.

Accusations of ill-treatment are almost always empty because the British Army instils a duty of responsibility on officers to maintain discipline, including towards the enemy

In the mindset of the jihadists, the charges against our soldiers, no matter how base, reinforce the propaganda of victimhood, which says that all Western forces are bullying, anti-Islamic imperialists. In the same vein, there can be little doubt that the lawyers antics have encouraged scores of British Muslims to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

That is why it is no exaggeration to say that companies like Public Interest Lawyers, led by the notorious Left-wing zealot Phil Shiner, have blood on their hands. In their remorseless campaign of harassment against the British military, they provide ammunition to our enemies.

These lawyers, I believe, are driven partly by greed, partly by a desire to enhance their reputations. But, surely, by far their greatest motivation is political.

Seemingly filled with loathing for their own country, they want to smash the established order by inventing a gigantic conspiracy in which the British Army is seen as a bunch of assassins and torturers. But the only political conspiracy is their own.
Dream: Abdul Haroun has been granted refugee status, and will be housed and given welfare benefits

Who could fail to be struck by the reckless determination of Abdul Haroun, the Sudanese migrant who walked 31 miles through the perilous blackness of the Channel Tunnel  with trains roaring past at 100mph every few minutes  to achieve his dream of asylum in Britain?

It may have been hazardous, but for Mr Haroun the 11-hour trek from Calais has turned out to be worth every step.

Although he was arrested at Folkestone, charges have now been dropped. He has been granted refugee status, will be housed, given welfare benefits and be allowed to work. His dream has come true.

But why on earth should he be claiming asylum in Britain? During his 5,000-mile journey from war-torn Sudan, he passed through a string of countries that could have offered safe haven  including France, his last point of call before the Tunnel. If all he needed was sanctuary, why didnt he accept their hospitality?

The answer of course, is that like hundreds of thousands of other migrants, Mr Haroun wants to settle here because the job prospects and benefits system are among the most attractive in the world.

And by allowing him to remain despite having entered illegally, we send a message of encouragement to all migrants. If you can reach Britain  however risky the journey  youre here to stay.

Entry point: Haroun walked 31 miles through the Channel Tunnel - with trains roaring past every few minutes

But net migration is already over 330,000 a year, putting huge pressure on public services. How many more can we take?

Other European countries are also asking the same question, as thousands more refugees stream in from Syria and North Africa. The asylum system is on the point of collapse and the Schengen agreement  which allows free movement across the EU  disintegrating.

Historically liberal Sweden and Denmark yesterday became the eighth and ninth countries within the Schengen zone to restore frontier controls in a bid to stem the tide of migrants.

Through bitter experience, they are finally beginning to see the utter folly of a border-free Europe.

Voices of hatred

Disturbing: Another hooded killer denouncing the West in an English accent on a macabre IS video

The sound of another hooded killer denouncing the West in an English accent on a macabre Islamic State video is a disturbing reminder that hundreds of British Muslims have chosen the path of violent fanaticism.

This video even featured a small boy  apparently also from London  promising to kill the kuffars.

The Prime Minister says the film is a sign of desperation from an enemy being pounded into submission but he should beware sounding complacent. There has not been a major terror attack in London for more than two years but we remain near the top of the IS target list.

Meanwhile, the implications of the escalating conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran could prove to be more dangerous even than the rise of IS.

The blind sectarian hatred between them threatens not only to destroy any prospect of achieving peace in Syria and Iraq but to fuel even more violence.

Both are brutal regimes that carry out mass executions and abuse human rights, yet both are technically on Britains side in the war against IS. Do we really have any idea what we are doing in this powder keg region?

Bad medicine

Junior doctors have a special place in the publics heart for the long hours they work and the dedication they show. How quickly that respect and affection will surely evaporate now they intend to carry out their threat of winter strikes.
She has spent a year at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, sold 4.8 million copies of her book worldwide and has a cult following in Japan, Germany, Russia, France, Brazil and more.

Yet Marie Kondo, the guru behind the so-called 'magic tidying' method says that as a teenager she had an obsession with clearing up and couldn't control herself throwing things away.

In an interview with The Times' Saturday Magazine she revealed how her compulsion stemmed from a failure to be able to tidy up and she wanted to rectify it.

Scroll down for video

Marie Kondo has built a global empire thanks to her unique advice about tidying and clutter clearing

Marie Kondo with her husband, Takumi Kawahara at the TIME 100 Gala in New York last year

'As far as anything else went - cleaning, washing, sewing - I could do it. The only thing I couldn't do was tidying up.

'At school, while other kids were playing dodge ball or skipping. Id slip away to arrange the bookshelves in our classroom, or check the contents of the mop cupboard  I had begun to see my things and even my house as an adversary that I had to beat,' she is quoted as saying.

The 30-year old who has now made an empire over her quirky advice to treat animate objects as if they have a soul, revealed how one day, aged 16, the stress from her compulsion to throw things away made her fall unconscious.

'I walked into my room with the rubbish bag in my hand. And I looked at my room, and felt that I wanted to throw out everything in it. That was the climax of my stress, and at that moment I collapsed unconscious.'

Marie Kondo gives folding lesson to a teenager in America for her Japanese TV show

When she finally came around two hours later, the idea for her so-called KonMari tidying method was born: 'I stood up and in my mind came the words "Look at things more carefully". I dont know if it was an actual voice, or a feeling that came from myself.

'I believe it was the god of tidying...That was the moment when I had my inspiration.' She told the magazine.

THE KON MARI RULES 1. Store everything similar in one place 2. Have a place for everything, however small and insignificant it seems 3. Ask 'does it spark joy'? When you handle the item. If not, get rid of it 4. Let go of guilt- the item has now served its purpose for you, so let it go, with gratitude 5. Don't pass things onto family or friends- it means things stay in your orbit. 6. Stack vertically, never horizontally 7. Don't buy extra storage- get rid of enough so your possessions fit what you have 8. Don't tidy 'little and often.' Do it all at once, and maintain Advertisement

She made the revelations in an interview to mark the publication of her new book Spark Joy: An Illustrated Guide To The Japanese Art Of Tidying.

The book centres on her simple advice to look at all your possessions, and in turn hold each one up to the light and ask: 'Does this spark joy?'

If the answer is yes, you should carefully fold it, assign it a storage slot and even personally praise it. If the answer is no then the object should be thanked and apologised to, and even stroked, before being thrown away.

In her book Kondo - who always wears white - includes examples of her own dedications to items she has chosen to keep. In one passage describing her appreciation for a screwdriver she writes:

'Dear old screwdriver, I may not use you much, but when I need you, why, youre a genius. Thanks to you, I put this shelf together in no time. You saved my fingernails, too. I would have ruined them if I had used them to turn the screws. And what a design! Strong, vigorous and cool to the touch, with a modern air that makes you really stand out.'

Her hordes of followers worldwide claim that her tidying method has helped them think more clearly and given them inspiration to change jobs and even lose weight.

She made her name with her first book, The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying which is based on her idea that all items should be treated as it they have souls.

Kondo has since been named one of Time's 100 most influential people alongside Angela Merkel, Pope Francis and Kim Jong Un.

As well as celebrating seeing her book published in 21 countries Kondo - who has 46,000 followers on Instagram, with 24,000 posts made under the KonMari hashtag - is celebrating the birth of her daughter Satsuki in July.

But she is self-deprecating about her achievements, saying: 'I call myself a crazy tidying fanatic'.
A woman who was sexually abused from the age of eight by her mother, her older brother and her step-father has won a 200,000 settlement after claiming social services didn't protect her as a child.

Maureen Wood, 45, of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, suffered years of abuse at the hands of her mother Maureen Senior and stepfather John Wood, and fell pregnant as a result of rape by her brother, John Donnelly.

The mother-of-five finally proved the abuse and saw her attackers jailed after the body of the baby she gave birth to 20 years ago was exhumed - and DNA testing proved he had been fathered by Donnelly.

Maureen Wood (centre), 45, of Stoke-on-Trent who was abused by her stepfather John (left) and mother Maureen Senior (right) as a child has won 200,000 from Staffordshire County Council in an out of court settlement. She was also raped by her brother John Donnelly, who began abusing her when she was just eight

At the age of 13, Maureen gave birth to a son Christopher, after falling pregnant due to being raped by her brother John. Christopher died when he was just under a month old from cot death , but his body was exhumed 20 years on and DNA evidence proved John was his father and helped bring him to justice

The trio were convicted of abusing Maureen, and she has now won a 200,000 settlement from Staffordshire County Council after a legal battle against social services.

The local authority settled out of court following a lengthy legal case in which mother-of-five Maureen claimed they had failed to protect her as a child.

'It was a kick in the teeth,' she said. 'I felt like I had been let down twice by my family and then by the social workers.

'Of course the money will help. I plan to take my five children on holiday to America next year, as a thank you for their support throughout it all.

'But it doesn't change what happened to me. I brought the case, not for the money, but to ensure that they don't let this happen to another child.'

Maureen's stepfather John Wood (left) was convicted of seven counts of rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2011. Her mother, also called Maureen, (right) was found guilty of four counts of aiding and abetting the rape of a girl under 16 during a retrial

Maureen had been placed in care at the age of three, after her parents separated. She never saw her biological father again.

But four years later, her mother, Maureen Senior, took her and her older brother, John Donnelly, back out of care and they were introduced to their new step-father, John Wood.

When Maureen was eight, the sexual abuse at the hands of her brother - who was aged 14 - began.

She says: 'I remember every detail of that day. We had been outside, having a water fight, and as I dried off in the bathroom, my brother, John, who we called Jock, came in and started touching me.

'I didn't understand what he was doing but I knew it felt wrong and it was horrible.'

On her ninth birthday, Maureen was raped for the first time.

Maureen, (left) pictured at the age of nine, around the time her brother John (right) first raped her. A year later, her stepfather discovered what was going on, but instead of intervening he began to participate in the abuse against her

A year later, her step-father walked in as she was being abused.

'I felt relieved because I thought he would stop it,' Maureen recalled. 'I thought he would look after me.'

Instead, her step-father said nothing and weeks later, he began abusing Maureen too.

'I hoped against hope that my mum might step in and help me,' she said. 'But she walked into my bedroom and called me a "little whore".'

Soon after her tenth birthday, Maureen's mother became involved with the abuse.

Maureen says: 'They used to make me sleep in their bed, between them, and they took it in turns to abuse me. My mum helped to get me ready for when my step-dad would rape me.

'It felt like the end of the world. With them all against me, I had nowhere to turn.'

Despite her horrific family life, Maureen enjoyed school and did well academically. She had friends but confided in nobody.

Maureen left the family home at 16 and went on to have five children of her own. She often told her children about their older brother Christopher who had died as a baby but kept the abuse she had suffered hidden

'My family threatened that if I told anyone, I'd end up in care again,' she explained. 'I was terrified of that. They said nobody would believe me and that I'd get into trouble with the police.

'It was difficult because, to the outside world, my parents were respectable people. They worked at a local social club and they were managers at the Masonic hall too. They were well-known.

I tried running away and once stayed away for two days. But the police found me and took me home

'I tried running away and once stayed away for two days. But the police found me and took me home.'

When she was 13, Maureen fell pregnant. By the time she realised, it was too late for a termination.

Maureen recalled: 'My mother was mortified; all she worried about was what the neighbours would think of her, with a 13-year-old pregnant daughter.

'Yet of course she knew that either her own husband or her son was the father. But she just blanked that out.

'The abuse stopped while I was pregnant. For the first time in my life I could remember, I wasn't being abused and it was like a little piece of heaven.

'I was ordered to tell people that I was raped by a stranger. But I knew, for certain, that my baby's father was my brother.'

As a teenager, her son Christopher was the only person Maureen had ever really loved, but she went on to find happiness with a family of her own as an adult

In October 1984, Maureen gave birth to a son, Christopher. He was born on her brother's 18th birthday.

She says: 'Christopher had blond hair, blue eyes. It didn't matter why he came about, or where he came from. He was mine.

'That maternal instinct kicked in immediately. I adored him with all of my heart and for the first time in my life, I felt what love was.'

But just under a month later, he suffered a cot death. Maureen discovered his body.

'When he died, I felt like my life had ended, my world had finished. He was the only person I truly loved,' she said.

'It was raining the day we buried him. I felt like the heavens were crying with me. I just wanted to die.'

After Christopher's death, Maureen's mother and brother stopped abusing her.

But her stepfather began assaulting her again only a couple of weeks afterwards.

After her difficult past, Maureen 'went off the rails' but says that her children eventually saved her. However, she was haunted by nightmares of the abuse she suffered and eventually realised she had to go to the police

He paid for Christopher's funeral but signed the burial plot  and the bills  over to his stepdaughter.

The abuse continued until, at 16, Maureen left home after suffering eight years of horrific abuse.

'My teens were very difficult. I was grieving for Christopher and I felt very angry and confused,' she said. 'I drank too much and I went off the rails a bit.'

When she was 17, Maureen had a son, Ben, now 27. She went on to have four more children: Naomi, 22, Josh, 18, William, 16, and Michaela, 14.

Although none of the relationships with her children's fathers have worked out, she has always loved motherhood.

It was almost as if Christopher was watching over me, helping my court case. He was  and still is  my guardian angel.

She says: 'My kids saved me. I turned my life around. There was no way I was going to let them down. I wanted them to enjoy their childhood. I told them I loved them every day.

'I always told them they had a big brother in heaven, but they didn't know about the abuse.'

But despite finding happiness in motherhood, Maureen was haunted by nightmares of the abuse.

She realised she had to seek justice and eventually she contacted police.

'It was 29 years since the abuse began and so the CPS insisted that the only way they would take the case to court was if the Home Office would approve an exhumation of Christopher,' she explained.

'His DNA would prove that my brother was his father, and that I had been telling the truth.

'I was warned that the DNA sample was unlikely to be viable. Yet when his body was exhumed it was almost intact. The sample was perfect and it proved I had been telling the truth.

'It was almost as if Christopher was watching over me, helping my court case. He was  and still is  my guardian angel.'

Christopher's body was exhumed in July 2009 and reburied a month later. Maureen has no pictures of him but she has the small plaque from Christopher's original coffin.

Maureen is planning to use some of the 200,000 compensation she's been awarded to treat her family to a holiday in America. The mother of five, pictured with her son Ben (right) says she still thinks about her baby boy Christopher, who died of cot death when he was less than a month old, every single day

She says: 'I didn't want my baby to be exhumed. But it was the only way. The night before, I went to his grave and came away with a sense of peace. I felt I had his support.

'The minute I went to the police, all my fear was lifted. It wasn't my shame and guilt to deal with any more. By going to court, I handed the fear and shame back to my family.'

Although she has got justice, Maureen says she still grieves for the childhood she never experienced and the mother she never had

At Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court in October 2011, Maureen's stepfather, John Wood, then 68, was convicted of seven counts of rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Her 46-year-old brother John Donnelly, received two years in jail after admitting rape, incest and indecent assault.

In a re-trial, her mother, Maureen Wood (senior), then 65, was found guilty of four counts of aiding and abetting the rape of a girl under 16.

She was jailed in October 2011 for nine years, and died from cancer in prison last year.

Maureen found it in her heart to attend the funeral, but she can't forgive the past.

'My mum and step-dad never apologised. But my brother pleaded guilty and told me he was sorry,' she said.

'I still grieve for the childhood I didn't have and for the mother I didn't have. I think of Christopher every day.

'But I have to look to the future and I have five children who I adore and who have finally taught me the meaning of love.'

Mike Lawrence, Staffordshire County Council's cabinet member for Children, said of Maureen's settlement: 'We are sorry that Maureen Wood suffered abuse from relatives while Staffordshire social services was providing support to her family.

'The service in Staffordshire and social work practice throughout the country has come a very long way since the late 1970s and early 1980s and many changes have been put in place during that time.

'Services are now independently inspected and monitored and detailed records are kept of any dealings with families.
Chantelle Houghton has vowed to 'never go under the knife for vanity again' after having her double F breast implants removed.

The Big Brother star, from Essex, admitted to Katie Piper on her Channel 4 show Bodyshockers, which returns for a new series on Wednesday, that she enhanced her cleavage after she first found fame because 'every celebrity on the planet at that time was having a boob job'.

But her large assets later became the bane of her life.

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The reality TV star said she is delighted to be back to her natural B cup again, pictured after breast reduction

Chantelle said she regretted having her cleavage enhanced to a double F, left, and is much happier after having them removed, right showing off the result on Channel 4 show Bodyshockers

The mother-of-one admitted: 'As a result of going so big there are times I haven't been able to get out of bed as I have been in such bad pain.

'When I go to the gym I have to wear sports bras and really tight tops just to keep my boobs down and when running it really hurts. I have to see a physio once a week and that is all in the name of vanity.'

Now, 32, Chantelle said having a boob job eight years ago was 'the biggest regret of my life.'

Explaining why she decided to have them boosted from a B cup to a double F after she won Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 and enjoyed a high profile whirlwind marriage with pop star Preston, she said: 'Every celebrity on the planet at that time was having a boob job - Katie Price, Victoria Beckham - if you didn't have a boob job at that time you were the odd one out.

Chantelle pictured before the reduction surgery said her first boob job was the 'biggest regret of my life'

Chantelle said she hated her cosmetically enhanced cleavage, pictured, but had the op ten years ago because it was the done thing for celebrities at the time

Chantelle said of her implants: 'They look like balls that have been thrown on and stuck there'

The mother said going to the gym when she had implants, pictured, was difficult and caused her back pain

'I didn't want to be the odd one out so I checked myself in pronto. I was on the party scene getting papped and at the time I loved them.'

But just like her marriage to Preston, which ended ten months after they tied the knot, she fell out of love with her large cleavage.

'They make me feel sick. They look like balls that have been thrown on and stuck there,' she said of her surgically enhanced breasts.

She was so desperate to be rid of them, she had surgery last July to have the implants removed and allowed the Bodyshocker cameras to follow her progress.

Chantelle pictured in 2008 not long after she had first had the boob job as she followed in the footsteps of stars such as Katie Price and Victoria Beckham

Chantelle sobs as she prepares for the breast reduction surgery. She said she was terrified about going under the knife again but had to 'grit her teeth' in order to be 'rid of them'

She admitted before the surgery that she was terrified about the operation and was worried about the resulting scars.

In tears at the hospital before the surgery, she sobbed: 'I am frightened but I want them to be gone so badly I am going to have to go under the knife to be rid of them.'

She was warned that as she wanted the implants removed completely and not replaced with smaller ones, she would have 'anchor shaped' scars and may have to have her nipples removed.

Chantelle, who has a three-year-old daughter, Dolly, with ex-fiance Alex Reid, 40, said she had to 'grit my teeth' and 'get through' the surgery so she could 'finally feel like the old me again'.

She met with Katie again after she had recovered to say she was delighted with the results and is back to being a B cup again.

Chantelle told Katie Piper why she wanted to have a natural look again on her Channel 4 Body shockers

The star shows off the results of the reduction and said she feels 'lighter and more able' now

'I just feel like I look normal now. I used to be a 12-14 and I bought a jacket the other day at size 6,' she said. 'I feel lighter and more able. I love going to the gym, it has had a massive change on my confidence.'

Katie, who has had to have vast plastic surgery in order to recover from a horrific acid attack, asked Chantelle if she would ever voluntarily go under the knife again.

The reality star vowed: 'The only time I will ever be in hospital now is she health reasons, I will never go under the knife for vanity ever again.'

She added that she was also keen to retire from the spotlight.

'I dipped my toe into celebrity but it is not my life any more,' she said.

Chantelle isn't the first celebrity to regret having a boob job. Both Katie Price and Victoria Beckham, who inspired her surgery, have since had their procedures reversed.

Cosmetic surgeons say it is a trend that is now being reflected nationwide with more women paying to have breast implants removed.

Demand to have them implanted in the first place has also fallen as just under a quarter of all cosmetic operations in Britain were boob jobs in 2013.

OTHER CELEBS WHO REDUCED THEIR COSMETICALLY ENHANCED BREASTS Victoria Beckham, left in 2007, admitted she underwent breast augmentation after giving birth to her first son, Brooklyn, in 1999 but has now returned to a more natural look, pictured right in 2015 At the end of 2014, Katie Price reduced her breasts by five cup sizes saying she wanted to be taken more seriously. Pictured left, before the reduction in October 2014 and right in 2015 on Loose Women Danielle Lloyd now has 32C breasts, pictured right last month. She used to have E implants, pictured left in 2007, but had to have them removed after doctors found a life-threatening blood clot The Hills star Heidi Montag enhanced her cleavage to an F cup, pictured left in 2013, but has since gone back down to a C, pictured right last year Advertisement
Like Debrett's, it's a quintessentially British institution and a handy guide to all things high society and aristocratic.

Now Tatler has come to the aid of those hoping to wed their way to a sizeable pile by publishing a guide to the world's most eligible and wealthy.

Shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos III, politician Zac Goldsmith and media heir, Amanda Hearst, are among the glossy bible's guide to the 'hottest really rich people in the world ever' with a cumulative fortune of several billion. Here, FEMAIL breaks down those who made the cut.

PRINCE CARL PHILIP OF SWEDEN

As the world's highest-paid royal - with an estimated net worth of 120m - it's little surprise that the 36-year-old made the list.

As well as his hefty fortune, the father-to-be - who is married to former glamour model Princess Sofia - is touted as one of the globe's best looking royals.

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Tatler has published a guide to the world's most eligible and wealthy with Swedish royal Prince Carl Philip among the movers and shakers

Sadly he is off the market after marrying Sofia last June. Carl Philip and Sofia married in the royal palace's chapel, with the bride wearing a lace wedding dress created by local designer Ida Sjostedt.

Then, in October, the couple announced that they are expecting and were seen smiling in black and white images released to celebrate the announcement.

But thanks to Princess Sofia's reality TV and glamour modelling past, Carl Philip's choice of wife initially proved controversial.

The now Duchess of Varmland's first shoot came at the age of 20 and saw her posing topless in a pair of camouflage print bikini bottoms and clutching a snake to preserve her modesty.

Unsurprisingly, when news of Carl Philip's new relationship emerged in 2010, the Swedish Royal Family were initially put 'on the defensive' as sources put it at the time.

Sadly he is off the market after marrying Sofia last June; the pair are now expecting their first child together

Since then, however, Sofia has gone out of her way to tone down her image while Carl Philip has hit the headlines for antics of his own - not least his infamous 'wild summer' of 2012.

Prince Carl Philip had a longstanding reputation as a playboy who preferred driving race cars and wild parties to royal duties.

The prince had been with his previous partner, PR executive Emma Pernald, for ten years before they suddenly split in 2009.

Before that, it was widely believed a wedding was on the cards.

In 2012, the prince hit headlines over his 'wild summer', which included him being slapped during a night out in Cannes, hitting the Swedish party scene wearing an alien mask, losing his Gucci wallet and hitch-hiking his way to a motoring competition where he crashed his car in the first race.

Prince Carl Philip had a longstanding reputation as a playboy who preferred driving race cars and wild parties to royal duties but has since settled down with his former glamour model wife

STAVROS NIARCHOS III

Stavros, 30, will one day inherit his shipping tycoon grandfather's 1.6bn fortune and he already has a roster of famous ex-girlfriends.

Proving himself as quite the intellect, the firstborn of four studied at College Stanislas in Paris, then moved to high school in Hawaii, followed by a stint at the University of Southern California Film School.

Better known for his flings with Mary-Kate Olsen, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, Niarchos has quite the reputation for breaking A-list women's hearts.

Stavros Niarchos III, 30, will one day inherit his shipping tycoon grandfather's 1.6bn fortune and is currently dating Victoria's Secret Angel, Jessica Hart

Indeed, speaking after their split in 2005, Mary-Kate told W magazine that she was 'crushed' that her beau had left her for Paris Hilton.

The Greek shipping heir is now dating none less than Victoria's Secret Angel, Jessica Hart.

The 28-year-old Australian model, who has been dating Stavros for four years, has been learning French in a bid to keep up with her multilingual boyfriend.

Better known for his flings with Mary-Kate Olsen, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, Niarchos, pictured in 2006, has quite the reputation for breaking A-list women's hearts

AMANDA HEARST

As the great-granddaughter of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst and heir to a reported 1.2bn fortune, Amanda, 32, has all the makings of a socialite - but she's far from it.

The model and associate market editor at Marie Claire, who is also founder of animal welfare charity Friends of Finn, guards her good-girl socialite image carefully, famously telling the New York Times candidly: 'I try to stay in line and not be a jerk.

'Ive always been conscious that if I really screw up people might notice.'

Amanda Hearst, 32, is the great-granddaughter of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst and heir to a reported 1.2bn fortune

Indeed, she modelled Liya Kebede's ethical line, goes on charity crusades with Mayor Bloomberg's daughter, Georgia, and was once ranked as the number seven Hottest Billionaire Heiress by Forbes.

With the world watching, it would be easy to fall into the trappings of other airhead heiresses and sassy socialites who find it hard to stay out of trouble.

She explained: 'You see how far it can go in the news when someone misbehaves.'

Shes also single, but what is sure to be bad news for every eligible bachelor, she says: 'Im definitely an independent person, and I dont need boyfriends all the time.'

Proving to be both beauty and brains, she has modelled for Tommy Hilfiger and Lilly Pulitzer.

The model and associate market editor at Marie Claire, who is also founder of animal welfare charity Friends of Finn, has modelled for Tommy Hilfiger and Lilly Pulitzer

ZAC GOLDSMITH

As well as being a mayoral candidate, Tatler selected Mr Goldsmith thanks to his 'blazing, baby-blue eyes and winning poker face.'

Plus, Eton-educated Mr Goldsmith, who did not attend university, is thought to have inherited 200million to 300million from his billionaire father, Sir James.

At 23 he became editor of The Ecologist magazine, owned by his uncle Edward Teddy Goldsmith, having joined the previous year.

Mr Goldsmith, 40, has said he feared being seen as a mothers boy after his mother Lady Annabel gave 50,000 to his mayoral campaign.

Zac was famously married to the mother of his three children, Sheherazade Ventura-Bentley, for ten years before marrying banking heiress, Alice Miranda Rothschild.

As well as being a mayoral candidate, Tatler selected Zac Goldsmith thanks to his 'blazing, baby-blue eyes'

Zac Goldsmith takes his seat at Richmond Park with Lady Annabel Goldsmith and sister Jemima Khan

ANDREA CASIRAGHI

Not only is dashing blue blood Andrea Casiraghi fourth in line to the throne of Monaco - one of the wealthiest countries in the world - but he also has Grace Kelly and Caroline of Monaco's genes.

Mr Casiraghi - the eldest son of Princess Caroline and her second husband Stefano Casiraghi, and the eldest grandson of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and American actress Grace Kelly - is also worth a few billion with his wife, Tatiana Casiraghi (nee Santo Domingo).

Mrs Casiraghi, 32, who wed her 31-year-old husband in 2013, landed herself on Forbes' 2015 World's Billionaires list at number 847, with an estimated net worth of 1.49billion, which she largely inherited from her Bavaria beer brewery owner grandfather, Julio Mario Santo Domingo, in 2011.

Andrea Casiraghi is fourth in line to the throne of Monaco - one of the wealthiest countries in the world

The socialite couple currently reside in Paris with their son Sasha, two, and baby India.

Mr Casiraghi did not appear on Forbes' rich list and though his net worth is unknown, his looks have earned him plenty of credit over the years.

The blonde aristocrat made Forbes' 20 Hottest Young Royals list in 2008, and was named the second most beautiful male royal of all time by BeautifulPeople in 2011.

Mrs Casiraghi, who founded an ethical fashion retailer called Muzungu Sisters in 2011, met her husband while the two were at boarding school together in Fontainebleau, near Paris.

They dated for seven years before tying the knot in a civil ceremony in Monaco on August 31, 2013. The pair later hosted a second celebration in Gstaad, Switzerland on February 1, where they exchanged their vows in a candlelit Roman Catholic service.

Mr and Mrs Casiraghi, who, in addition to carrying out their royal duties, both support a number of children's charities and a cerebral palsy fund called the Motrice Foundation, waited a year and a half to publicly introduce their son Sasha to the world.

Mrs Casiraghi, left, met her husband while the two were at boarding school together in Fontainebleau, near Paris, and the couple currently reside in Paris with their son Sasha, two, and baby India

MARQUESS OF DOURO

Jemma Kidd's husband became heir apparent to the Duke of Wellington after his grandfather died six months before the 200th anniversary of Waterloo in December 2014.

Arthur, 37, a former equities trader who married the aristocratic model and make-up artist Jemma Kidd, 40, is heir and currently holds the title Marquess of Douro.

The couple have five-year-old twins, Lady Mae Madeleine and Arthur Darcy, with the little boy handed the courtesy title Earl of Mornington, which is traditionally given to Wellington heirs.

Their third child, Alfred, was born early in 2014.

Tatler chose the blonde haired, blue-eyed aristocrat as one of their most eligible thanks to his future 75m fortune and the fact that he was the 'most sought-after man in his year at Oxford.'

Arthur, 37, a former equities trader is married to the aristocratic model and make-up artist Jemma Kidd, 40
In one shot, Jean-Claude Van Damme's 25-year-old daughter poses as an activist, while others see people having an orgy, or being a cat lady

Steven Klein, who photographer the campaign, said the series of ad images address 'today's issues and social commentaries'

Lydia, 31, is the granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and heir to the Hearst publishing fortune

Lydia Hearst is aiming to get you to go to the gym in a new campaign for Equinox, but the actress and model isn't lifting weights to inspire you - she's lifting babies. To her breasts.

Though the 31-year-old granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who is engaged to Chris Hardwick, the 43-year-old CEO of Nerdist Industries, doesn't actually have children of her own, she appears to be breastfeeding twin newborns in a new ad for the gym.

The campaign, which features numerous images including Lydia's, charges people to 'Commit to Something' in 2016 - though that 'something', as far as the images depict, means anything and everything other than going to the gym.

Something new: Heiress Lydia Hearst appears to be breastfeeding twin babies in a new ad campaign for Equinox gyms - despite not having any children herself

Family values: The 31-year-old, pictured at the Star Wars premiere last month, is the granndaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and heir to the Hearst publishing fortune

Happy couple: Lydia is engaged to Chris Hardwick, the CEO of Nerdist Industries, however the couple do not have any children

Photographer Steven Klein, who also shot Kylie Jenner's infamous Interview cover and a recent Versace campaign, said that the ads are about more than just selling gym memberships.

'It is the responsibility of advertising to communicate modern times and social issues,' he said.

'This campaign addresses todays issues and social commentaries, which is a powerful approach instead of portraying people as superficial objects with no narrative.'

Breastfeeding in public seems to be one of those 'social issues', as Lydia feeds her little ones in full view of a crowded restaurant.

She is seen sitting at a table in an upscale eatery, all dolled up in a black dress, statement earrings, and bold red lipstick on her unsmiling pout.

However, the front of her dress is pushed to the sides and so the two small babies can breastfeed. She seems to be wearing an expression of determination, challenging anyone to voice a problem with her publicly feeding her children.

Commit: The ad campaign, which also features images of people indulging in orgies, or acting like crazy cat ladies, urges people to dedicate themselves to something

Famous faces: Jean-Claude Van Damme's 25-year-old daughter Bianca Bree poses as a feminist activist in the ad series

Commit to anything but the gym! Although the ads feature many trim and toned models, they seem to have very little to do with any gym-based activities

Showing off her physique: Each of the models in the campaign images does take the opportunity to show off their figure in one way or another, including this underwear-clad cat lady

'With Lydia Hearst, she was the right character for the scene, which is set in a ritzy restaurant. Lydia is an aristocrat,' Klein told W.

Lydia certainly has the aristocratic aspect of the campaign down, indeed the model actually comes from one of America's most famous families.

Her grandfather William Randolph Hearst was a publishing magnate with immense political influence, who was also famously anti-communist.

In 1974 her mother Patricia was infamously kidnapped by a left-wing terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, a story which hit the front pages of every major newspaper around the world.

To make matters all the more scandalous, however, Patty, as the then-19-year-old was known, actually joined the group while in captivity and took part in a bank robbery, wielded a machine gun, then became a fugitive.

Although convicted of armed bank robbery her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

But Lydia is not the only famous face to appear in the campaign.

Famous family: Lydia's mother Patricia Hearst (center) is the daughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (right) and his wife Catherine (left)

Strike a pose: Lydia has been forging a career for herself as a fashion star, appearing at many red carpet events in the process

In one image, Jean-Claude Van Damme's 25-year-old daughter Bianca Bree 'commits' to to being a women's rights activist.

She stands in front of what looks like a government building, her hair wild and her face angry, with a female gender symbol painted across her nearly-bare chest.

Across her is the campaign message, with Equinox's tagline - 'It's not fitness. It's life.' - written across the bottom.

In yet another image, MMA fighter Alan Jouban, 33, is also eschewing the gym, instead devoting himself to being a cheerleader.

He poses in front of a wall of trophies, pom-poms, and a megaphone, his abs shiny and oiled-up - which, incidentally, would probably not be very safe while performing cheerleading stunts.

Other images see people showing their 'commitment' to having sex by participating in an orgy, having a magical year by performing a witchcraft ritual in the forest, and being rich by lounging in a pile of money.
Nutritionist Jessica Sepel, 26, recently proved that she could have the perfect 'clean' wedding with her new husband Dean Steingold, 30.

The pair married in an intimate Thai ceremony where wholesome foods were served, guests were invited to do sunrise yoga and organic wine was offered to all guests.

And it didn't stop there.

Mrs Sepel and her new husband are currently experiencing a wholesome three-part honeymoon - from the idyllic Keemala in Phuket to Point Yamu by COMO and now, the picturesque Maldives.

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Non-traditional: Australian nutritionist, Jessica Sepel, 26, decided to incorporate her healthy and 'clean' lifestyle into her wedding

At peace: The happy couple are now enjoying a healthy honeymoon and are currently in the Maldives after spending time in Thailand

Doesn't stop there: The Australian couple are proving that a healthy honeymoon is just as possible as a healthy wedding

The Australian couple are proving that a healthy honeymoon is just as possible as a healthy wedding- the pair enjoying nutritious meals, yoga and green smoothies as they venture from one country to the next.

Mrs Sepel shared snaps from their 'enchanted resort nestled in the rainforest of Phuket' which showed a 'healthy and holistic' twist on the traditional indulgent honeymoon dining.

From daily yoga and 'fruit sticks in the pool', to quinoa porridge and string bean and coconut salad, the pair couldn't be happier with their menu.

'Paradise': The pair are enjoying nutritious meals, yoga and green smoothies as they venture from one country to the next

Ideal: Mrs Sepel shared snaps from their 'enchanted resort nestled in the rainforest of Phuket' which showed a 'healthy and holistic' twist on the traditional indulgent honeymoon

'Just love the herbs and spices of Thai cuisine. All the garlic and ginger is so nutritious! Love Thailand,' Mrs Sepel wrote on Instagram, before sharing a picture of her breakfast bowl and green smoothie.

'Green smoothie needed. I feel I'm in glutenville here in Thailand - all this soy sauce!' She said.

But the newlywed did admit she is happy to relax a little and 'eat imperfectly' on vacation.

'That's part of a healthy life - to try and not be too fussy with foods. And relax into the new cultures and embrace flexible eating when need be,' Mrs Sepel said.

'Just love the herbs and spices of Thai cuisine. All the garlic and ginger is so nutritious! Love Thailand,' Mrs Sepel said

'Try and not be too fussy': 'Green smoothie needed. I feel I'm in glutenville here in Thailand - all this soy sauce!' Mrs Sepel said

'I think it's so unhealthy to be too worried about every single thing that passes our lips (unless you're coeliac, of course) but my body is so happy when I eat foods with joy and in a relaxed way.'

Mrs Sepel and Mr Steingold travelled to Point Yamu by COMO where they enjoyed a 'healthy menu and holistic activity schedule' which included steamed fish, lots of lemongrass and chilli and veggie sushi rolls.

The pair then arrived in the Maldives where Mrs Sepel described her experience as a 'dream' and shared a picture of herself doing yoga and having a healthy breakfast while laying by the ocean.

Adventure: Mrs Sepel and Mr Steingold travelled to Point Yamu by COMO where they enjoyed a 'healthy menu and holistic activity schedule'

Idyllic: The pair then arrived in the Maldives where Mrs Sepel described her experience as a 'dream' and shared a picture of herself doing yoga and having a healthy breakfast while laying by the ocean

The wholesome couple married in late December and were committed to a completely clean experience for both themselves and their guests.

'We wanted a healthy wedding because both Dean and I are committed to a healthy lifestyle...it was important that our wedding reflected this aspect of our lives,' Mrs Sepel told Daily Mail Australia.

'We also wanted everyone to feel great - something that is easy to do if youre eating the right foods.'

Healthy and idyllic: Ms Sepel and her new husband Dean Steingold, 30, wanted to prove their healthy lifestyle didn't need to be placed on hold just because they were getting married

Proof: The wholesome couple married in late December and were committed to a completely clean experience for both themselves and their guests

Refreshing treat: Guests were invited to sip on a fresh organic coconut water while watching the ceremony

Instead of a traditional breakfast buffet with pastries and croissants, the health conscious bride made sure her guests were offered both savoury and sweet options each morning for breakfast, including sugar-free bliss balls and banana-date-walnut muffins from her recipe book, The Healthy Life.

They were also served steamed veggies for dinner, fresh fruit for dessert and had access to an impressive vitamin juice station, where healthy shots from a range of different vegetables were set out - all while looking out over idyllic Thai views.

'On the wedding night there were a range of dishes, including Thai green papaya salad, roasted brussel sprouts, grilled local white snow fish and fresh fruit for dessert,' Mrs Sepel said, who admits treating herself to a glass of wine as well.

Wholesome: On the wedding night there were a range of dishes, including Thai green papaya salad, roasted brussel sprouts, grilled local white snow fish and fresh fruit for dessert

Morning boost: Guests had access to an impressive vitamin juice station, where healthy shots from a range of different vegetables were set out

'I don't usually drink, but I did enjoy a glass or two of certified organic Australian Chardonnay from Organic One,' she said, 'There are no chemicals used in the manufacturing process which means your body is better able to break down all the alcohol and you're not left with a hangover.'

The couple incorporated their passion for a healthy lifestyle into more than just the menu, offering their 170 guests a four-day retreat-like experience in Koh Samui instead of a boozy vacation.

'On the first day, I took the ladies to Tamarind Health Spa on the other side of the island, where we enjoyed the most relaxing massages after a sauna and scrub, made from rice, coffee and ground fruit,' Mrs Sepel said.

More like a retreat: 'It was important that our wedding reflected this aspect of our lives,' Ms Sepel told Daily Mail Australia

Location wedding: Ms Sepel and her husband hosted 170 of their nearest and dearest at Koh Samui, Thailand

Great for everyone: 'We also wanted everyone to feel great - something that is easy to do if youre eating the right foods,' Ms Sepel said

'For lunch there was a raw vegan menu, featuring tofu "fish" cakes, rice paper rolls, fresh fruit and natural teas.'

The group also arranged for yoga each morning on the beach deck and at the ceremony, fresh coconuts were available for all guests to sip on.

'As a special treat, we arranged for some beautiful gift bags for each guest,' Mrs Sepel added.
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark proved she's a true style chameleon by stepping out in a floor-sweeping ivory dress - just days after she dazzled in a sequin-adorned evening gown.

The Australian-born royal, 43, donned the understated attire to attend the nation's annual New Year's Diplomatic Reception on Tuesday.

Adding interest to the otherwise demure dress, Mary tied a blush-pink coloured belt around her waist and hung a taupe overcoat on her shoulders as she made her way into the halls of Copenhagen's Christiansborg Palace with her handsome husband Crown Prince Frederik, 47.

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Crown Princess Mary of Denmark proved she's a true style chameleon by stepping out in a floor-sweeping ivory dress - just days after she dazzled in a sequin-adorned evening gown

The Australian-born royal, 43, donned the understated attire to attend the nation's annual New Year's Diplomatic Reception on Tuesday alongside husband Prince Frederik

Queen Margrethe, dressed in a navy brocade coat with brown fur sleeves, was also in attendance and led the evening proceedings

Her ensemble wasn't without a hint of sparkle though as she accessorised the plain but elegant dress with a large pearl necklace complete with pink diamond droplet

Her ensemble wasn't without a hint of sparkle though as she accessorised the plain but elegant dress with a large pearl necklace complete with pink diamond droplet, a light blue ceremonial sash and a broach.

The mother-of-four pulled her glossy brunette locks into a half-up half-down style - a look coveted by the Duchess of Cambridge - and make-up was kept simple with just a slick of pale pink lipstick.

Mary's husband meanwhile, was very dashing in his Danish military uniform.

Queen Margrethe, dressed in a navy brocade coat with fur sleeves, was also in attendance and led the evening proceedings.

Adding interest to the otherwise demure dress, Mary tied a blush-pink coloured belt around her waist and hung a taupe overcoat on her shoulders as she made her way into the halls of Copenhagen's Christiansborg Palace

Mary's husband Prince Frederik looked was very dashing in his Danish military uniform

It is the second royal engagement of the year already for Princess Mary and Prince Frederik

The mother-of-four pulled her glossy brunette locks into a half-up half-down style - a look coveted by the Duchess of Cambridge - and make-up was kept simple with just a slick of pale pink lipstick

Like many trend-setters, Princess Mary decided to stylish hang her taupe coat over her shoulders

The New Year's Diplomatic Reception is held in honour of the members of the diplomatic corps

It is the first official function the 75-year-old has attended alone since her husband, Prince Henrik, 81, retired from royal life

Queen Margrethe appeared in high spirits despite having to attend her first royal engagement alone

After Prince Henrik's retirement, Queen Margrethe is joined by her son Prince Frederik and Princess Mary

Queen Margrethe receives the diplomatic corps as Princess Mary and Prince Frederik look on

After taking off her taupe coat, Princess Mary unveiled her sophisticated gown complete with wide neckline

It is the first official function the 75-year-old has attended alone since her husband, Prince Henrik, 81, retired from royal life.

The New Year's Diplomatic Reception is held in honour of the members of the diplomatic corps.

Despite only being the first week of 2016, it has already been a busy one for the Danish royals.

On Friday, they were out in force to attend the annual New Year royal banquet at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen.

Wearing a midnight blue velvet floor-length gown with the bottom half embellished with delicate sequins, Princess Mary looked elegant as she arrived arm-in-arm with Prince Frederik.

She wore her hair pinned back underneath her antique diamond and ruby-encrusted tiara and paired her outfit with her Knight of the Order of the Elephant collar.

Princess Mary looked like a vision in her almost ethereal white gown as she walked into Christiansborg Palace

Queen Margrethe led the march into the palace and was flanked by guards in military red uniforms

Director of the Foreign Policy Society Michael Ehrenreich, pictured left, and Chief of Communication for the Danish Royal Family Lene Balleby, right, were also in attendance

Jytte Krag-Juel-Vind-Frijs, Annette de Scheel and Ane Vibeke Foss make their way into the palace

US Ambassador Rufus Gifford and his husband Stephen DeVincent posed in that black-tie attire

Princess Mary's lady-in-waiting Christine Pii Hansen chose a purple-hued outfit for the event

Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik celebrated New Year in style at the annual annual royal banquet in Copenhagen

Prince Frederik donned Danish military uniform and carried his ceremonial sabre for the traditional event and the couple were greeted with thunderous applause from well-wishers as they exited the car and made their way up to the castle doors.

His parents Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik hosted the VIP gala and waved to the waiting crowds as they made their way inside.

Their younger son, Prince Joachim, 46, also wore traditional military regalia for the event and was pictured beaming as he made his entrance with his wife Princess Marie.

The 39-year-old wore an exquisite cream floor-length dress embroidered with small flowers and a beautiful tiara.

January is one of the most eventful months of the year for the Danish court, especially for Prince Frederik and Australian-born Princess Mary.

Following the New Year's banquet, there is at least one more turn of the year party before they celebrate the birthday of her twins, Prince Vincent Frederik Minik and Princess Josephine Sophia Ivalo Mathilda, who turn five on January 8.

Wearing a midnight blue velvet floor-length gown with the bottom half embellished with delicate sequins, Crown Princess Mary looked elegant as she made her entrance at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen

Princess Mary wore her hair pinned back underneath a tiara and paired her outfit with her Knight of the Order of the Elephant collar

Queen Margrethe, 75, and Prince Henrik hosted the VIP gala and waved to the waiting crowds as they made their way inside
that he is the father after months of speculation

The 25-year-old took to Instagram to share photos of herself posed with her mom and holding a semi-automatic rifle

Bristol Palin may have given birth to a baby girl less than two weeks ago, but that didn't stop the mother-of-two from hitting the shooting range to show off her gun skills with family and friends on Monday afternoon.

The 25-year-old, who gave birth to daughter Sailor Grace on December 23, took to Instagram to share a photo of herself aiming a semi-automatic rifle, as well as a short video that sees her shooting a handgun at a target, during a firearms training class with Mat-Su Tactical.

Bristol also shared a picture of herself with her mother, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and her sister Willow, 21, alongside a group of other family members and friends, captioning the group snapshot 'target practice'.

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'Target practice': Bristol Palin (far left) went shooting with her mother Sarah Palin (second from left) and her sister Willow (right), 21, on Monday, less than two weeks after she gave birth to her daughter Sailor Grace

Ready to fire: The mother-of-two took to Instagram to share photos of herself at the shooting range, including this picture of herself taking aim with a semi-automatic rifle

'Bullseye': Bristol, who wore jeans and wedge booties for the outing, also shared a video of herself shooting a handgun at a set of targets

The mother-of-two's newborn daughter Sailor was born a day early, on Wednesday, December 23, seven months after Bristol split from her fiance, the little girl's father, Marine Dakota Meyer.

However, Bristol, who also has a seven-year-old son named Tripp, didn't waste any time getting back to practicing her shooting skills.

In the short clip, which Bristol captioned 'bullseye', she can be seen pointing a handgun at a piece of wood featuring four orange and green targets.

For one of her first outings since giving birth, Bristol wore jeans, a dark jacket, and wedge booties, and the video begins with her holding the gun in front of her with two hands.

After Bristol takes her first shot, someone behind her says: 'Nice shot by the way. Do it again.' And while she is unsure if she hit her mark on her second attempt, she is told that she 'hit the very center' of the target.

Ready to go: Sarah shared this photo of Bristol posing with a semi-automatic rifle on her Facebook page as she argued the value of Second Amendment rights

Taking aim: Sarah wore a tan jacket and cowboy boots to practice her shot with a semi-automatic rifle

Graduates: Sarah posed with a handgun and a certificate after completing her firearms training course with Mat-Su Tactical, LLC

And it's not just Bristol who has a keen eye for the target; her mother Sarah is renowned for her love of hunting, and during her TLC reality series Sarah Palin's Alaska was often filmed hunting near her home. Indeed, the former Governor once claimed that she needed to hunt in order to 'feed my family'.

Sarah, who was wearing shooting earmuffs, a tan jacket and cowboy boots, also shared photos from the outing on her Facebook page.

'Proudly Clinging To God, Guns, and Constitutional Rights to Keep 'Em,' she wrote. 'What a great gift! What a great way to spend the day with family and friends. (Remember this, guys, as you seek that perfect Valentine's Day gift!) My daughters and I shared the day with friends getting a gun safety refresher course - and learned so much more about self-defense, home defense, and safety.

'Even if you've been around guns your entire life, I guarantee you'll pick up new, valuable information to keep you on target if you hire superb tactical instructors like our guys, Peter Menage and Rich Bolender. Mat-Su Tactical, LLC keeps us up to speed on the latest in firearms, various state laws employed to protect the good guys, and your Constitutional right to bear arms.'

SARAH PALIN'S FACEBOOK MESSAGE ABOUT FIREARMS TRAINING CLASSES Proudly Clinging To God, Guns, and Constitutional Rights to Keep 'Em What a great gift! What a great way to spend the day with family and friends. (Remember this, guys, as you seek that perfect Valentine's Day gift!) My daughters and I shared the day with friends getting a gun safety refresher course - and learned so much more about self-defense, home defense, and safety. Even if you've been around guns your entire life, I guarantee you'll pick up new, valuable information to keep you on target if you hire superb tactical instructors like our guys, Peter Menage and Rich Bolender. Mat-Su Tactical, LLC keeps us up to speed on the latest in firearms, various state laws employed to protect the good guys, and your Constitutional right to bear arms. Contact matsutactical.com 907-357-GUNS for more information, including info on tapping into gun experts in your local area. Let me add my cousin, Jason Morgan, is another excellent instructor; his exemplary military service led him to his position as Director of Operations for NarrowGate Security Agency, Executive & Dignitary Protection. Thank you Alaska Directional Drilling for that great gift today! It was a pleasure spending time with you in your home training to be vigilant, prepared and safe... all under the tutelage of great patriots who know how to protect the innocent. Thank you, Mat-Su Tactical. To all who value your freedom and security, I encourage you to enroll in firearms training courses and get in touch with Mat-Su Tactical and Narrowgate Security. Protect those you love! -Sarah Palin Advertisement

Self-defense: Sarah, who can be seen getting a lesson on guns, advised everyone to enroll in firearms training courses

Family outing: Sarah's daughters Willow (left) and Bristol (right) can be seen listening to the instructors before they took turns shooting

Sarah went on to thank Mat-Su Tactical, adding: 'To all who value your freedom and security, I encourage you to enroll in firearms training courses and get in touch with Mat-Su Tactical and Narrowgate Security. Protect those you love!'

In the pictures Sarah shared, she can be seen loading a handgun, shooting a semi-automatic rifle, and proudly holding up her certificate after completing the training course.

She also posted photos of her daughters, including a snapshot of Brisol cheekily posing with her rifle.

Bristol, who often shares photos of her children and family adventures on Instagram, announced her daughter's birth on Christmas Eve with a photo of her cuddling her newborn in bed.

'My sweet Sailor Grace was born yesterday, our family couldn't be more complete,' she wrote to her 89,000 followers.

Gun safety: Sarah also snapped a photo of Willow standing in the kitchen with a series of firearms laying on the counter in front of her, as well as an image of someone holding a handgun

Bonding time: At the end of the training course, Sarah took photos of her and her daughters' completion certificates

Favorite pastime: Sarah and Bristol struck a pose with their guns while hunting together in October 2015

Just one minute later she posted a second image of the infant, this time with her older brother Tripp, which she captioned: 'My heart just doubled.'

Bristol returned to Instagram days later to share a heartwarming photo of her newborn, writing 'so in love'.

Meanwhile, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota, 27, shared his own precious snap of the mother with her newborn on his Twitter account on Christmas Eve, confirming after months of speculation that he is in fact Sailor's father.

'Best Christmas present ever!!' he captioned the sweet image of the snoozing baby. 'I couldn't be more proud of this little blessing.'

Just an hour earlier, the marine has shared a touching image on his Instagram account, which featured a pair of soldiers putting a star on top of a Christmas tree while standing in front of a sunset.

'So in love': Bristol Palin shared this adorable snap of her week-old daughter Sailor Grace on Instagram

Unforgettable holiday: Bristol gave birth to her second child on December 23, sharing the news on Christmas Eve

He captioned the sentimental image: 'Merry Christmas to all those who cannot be with their families because they are serving our nation over seas.'

Although Bristol has never personally confirmed who fathered the newborn, she had strongly suggested that Dakota is the child's dad, writing on her personal blog in June, that she had believed she was 'heading towards' a 'bigger family' and 'more kids' during her relationship with Dakota, adding that this feeling had caused her to 'get ahead of herself' and fall pregnant.

And earlier this year, the marine's grandmother Jean all but confirmed to Daily Mail Online that this was indeed the case.

Commenting on the news of Bristol's pregnancy, she said: 'It will not be the first. I have other great-grandchildren.

The former couple, who got engaged in March of this year, before calling off their wedding just a week before it was due to take place in May, after rumors emerged that Marine Dakota has been secretly married to a woman named Cassandra Wain, whom he wed - and then soon divorced - in 2008, when he was just 19.

Special bond: The 25-year-old also shared this snap of her seven-year-old son Tripp smiling down at his sister

Doting dad: Dakota Meyer confirmed that he is the father of Bristol's baby with this touching Twitter picture of newborn Sailor, taken in the hospital and posted just a few minutes after Bristol's announcement

New baby: Sarah (left) was able to witness the arrival of her granddaughter, Sailor Grace, on December 23

Bristol's mother Sarah shared the news of the split on her Facebook page, but at the time did not give a reason for the cancellation, instead stating that the barbecue which was due to take place as part of the celebrations on May 23 would still be going ahead as planned.

'[Bristol and Dakota] have informed loved ones that unfortunately the announced celebration planned for May 23 will not be held,' she wrote.

'Many friends and family still look forward to getting together that day in Kentucky anyway  and the Palins and Meyers are happily looking forward to still being at "the old Kentucky home" on May 23 to celebrate life, in general!'

At the time, Bristol insisted to media outlets that she had been aware of the marriage, but would not confirm whether or not it was the reason for the breakdown of her relationship with Dakota.

When the Alaskan first shared her pregnancy news with the world in June, she referred to it as a 'huge disappointment' to her friends and family.

On her personal blog, she wrote: 'I know this has been, and will be, a huge disappointment to my family, to my close friends, and to many of you.

But it seems she has since made peace with having a second child out of wedlock. Indeed, shortly after sharing the news, she took to her blog again to explain her statement in greater detail.

Parents: Bristol got engaged to marine Dakota (pictured) in March, but called off their wedding after rumors emerged that the groom had covered up a 'secret wife' he married, and then divorced at age 19

Grandmother: Sailor Grace is the second grandchild for Bristol's mother Sarah, who is pictured with her daughter in 2010

Baby bump: Bristol documented much of her pregnancy on Instagram, sharing numerous images of her growing belly, including this snap, which was shared just five days before her due date

'I do not regret this baby,' she wrote. 'This baby is not a disappointment and I cannot wait to be a mom times two...

'Life moves on no matter what. So no matter how you feel, you get up, get dressed, show up, and never give up. When life gets tough, there is no other option but to get tougher.'

After her son Tripp was born, Bristol claimed publicly that she'd never have premarital sex again. She partnered with the Candie's Foundation to promote abstinence.

She told Good Morning America: 'Im not going to have sex until Im married. I can guarantee it.'
Posed with Australian jockey Michelle Payne, who recently became the first woman to win the Melbourne Cup

After a day being put through their paces by a group of children riding miniature ponies on Surfer's Paradise beach, Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall turned their attentions to the sport of socialising as they attended the launch party for Magic Millions.

Zara, 34, and husband Mike, 37, looked relaxed in formal attire at the event, which drew in the cream of Australian high society.

The couple were on the Gold Coast for racehorse auction house Magic Millions' annual shindig, which involves races in the day and plenty of partying at night.

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Ready to party: Zara Phillips wore an above-the-knee black dress with strappy heels while husband Mike opted for light grey trousers with a smart shirt and jacket to attend the Magic Millions launch party

Clutching a gold bag, Zara, who'd spent much of the day at a racing event on Surfers Paradise beach, posed with Magic Millions co-owner Katie Page-Harvey and Australian jockey Michelle Payne

Co-owner Gerry Harvey, a retail entrepreneur and horse breeder, and his wife Katie Page-Harvey posed with the royal couple as they arrived at the glamorous cocktail party.

Zara was happy to pose for pictures with Australian jockey Michelle Payne, who recently won the 2015 Melbourne Cup.

Riding her horse the Prince of Penzance, Payne made history after becoming the first female jockey to win ever the event.

Earlier in the day, Zara showcased her competitive streak today while racing the miniature ponies against her husband.

Australian retail entrepreneur and horse fanatic Gerry Harvey (far right) revived the fortunes of the Magic Millions racehorse auction house. Harvey now owns the brand with wife Kate Page-Harvey (second from left)

Sharing a joke: Zara, 34, laughs with Michelle Payne after posing for photos in front of the Magic Millions sign

Having a ball: Zara and Mike looked relaxed and happy at the event. Right, Zara meets Australian heroine Michelle Payne, who recently became the first woman to win the Melbourne Cup

Swapping her riding boots for running shoes, the champion equestrian worked up a sweat as she jogged along the sand at Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast with her small white steed - and a delighted youngster - in tow.

Even though the horse was a lot smaller than the animals she usually works with, the Queen's granddaughter ensured she was race-ready in a loose-fitting navy T-shirt, figure-hugging cream jeans and white pumps.

Her blonde hair was pulled into an elegant low chignon and make-up was kept minimum save for a spot of brown eyeshadow.

Despite lagging behind her former England rugby star partner Mike, 37, Zara remained in good spirits and laughed throughout the adorable pony race.

A heavy downpour couldn't even dampen spirits as the pair continued to chat to children and photographers on the beach shortly afterwards. The couple are currently in Australia for the Magic Millions Barrier.

Competitive streak: Equestrian champion Zara Phillips swapped her riding boots for running shoes to take part in an adorable pony race against her husband Mike Tindall at the Magic Millions

Full steam ahead: The award-winning sportswoman urged the pony to run, much to the delight of her young riding prodigy

Loved up: There appeared to be no hard feelings as Zara grabbed her husband's face and planted a loving kiss on his cheek

High kicks: The British royal was seen stretching her leg as she chatted to the youngsters taking part in the adorable race

Photo opportunity: Zara posed for a pictured alongside a delighted young fan and miniature brown pony

Friends: The pair reunited with Magic Millions co-owner Gerry Harvey (second from right) and his wife Katie Page-Harvey

Fits of laughter: Zara giggled as she recounted the time Mike purchased a $25,000 race horse - much to her dismay

There appeared to be no hard feelings between Zara and Mike - she was later spotted grabbing her husband's face and planting a loving kiss on his cheek.

After the comical skit, Zara headed into the eager crowd of well-wishers to chat about her personal experience of owning horses.

She drew the barriers alongside Mike, dressed in a light blue shirt, dark jeans and trainers, before the pair took to the podium to chat to the audience about horse ownership.

The royal burst into laughter as her husband began recounting a story about her criticism of him spending $25,000 on a horse that went on to win The Grand National, The Daily Telegraph reported.

'You always tell this story,' she said, before Mike added her training led the horse to victory.

Zara was reunited with Magic Millions co-owner Gerry Harvey and his wife Katie Page-Harvey and posed for group photos with the couple as the day wore on.

Mr Harvey shared a laugh with owners and trainers after his horse Zafina drew barrier 21, saying it 'hasn't got a chance.'

'Why I am here and why I am doing this is an absolute joke,' he laughed.

Luck of the draw: The Magic Millions Barrier Draw has a prize pool of $10 million

Last year, the Magic Millions ambassador got into the saddle for an equestrian demonstration to the delight of the crowd.

However, this year she remained on solid ground and instead rubbed shoulders with other guests including sports broadcaster Hamish Mclachlan and fellow Magic Millions ambassador and wife of Australian polo player Rob Archibald, Francesca Cumani.

Zara is the only daughter of Princess Anne and her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips.

In 2012, she was announced as the Magic Millions Racing Woman Ambassador and has attended three events since.
In August, Amy joined her cousin - New York Senator Chuck Schumer - as he unveiled a three-part gun plan

President Barack Obama also cried during his speech detailing his new action plan for gun control

The 34-year-old has been a vocal advocate for ending gun violence after the July shooting that took place during a screening of her film Trainwreck

Amy Schumer struggled to hide her emotion as she listened to President Barack Obama's emotional speech pushing for gun control while sitting in the front-row at the event held in the White Houses East Room on Tuesday.

The 34-year-old comedian has been a vocal advocate for ending gun violence after the July shooting in a Louisiana movie theater that killed two women and injured nine others during a screening of her film Trainwreck.

And while she smiled for photos at the event, Amy's red-rimmed eyes gave away the fact that she was overcome with sadness while listening to the speech that also brought President Obama to tears.

Moved to tears: Amy Schumer was left with red-rimmed eyes following President Barack Obama's emotional speech pushing for gun control

Avid supporter: The 34-year-old comedian sat in the front row next to Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews (right) during the speech, which White Houses East Room on Tuesday

Personal subject: Two young woman were senselessly shot dead in a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater on July 23, as they watched Amy's romantic comedy Trainwreck

The comedic actress wore a black blazer over a white shirt featuring a black tied around her neck and had her blond hair pulled back in to French braids for the somber event.

Amy sat in the front row next to Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews during the speech, which was also attended by rapper Wale, who is also known as Olubowale Victor Akintimehin.

Sharing a photo of the President to Twitter later in the day, Amy wrote: 'Well the word is out. It's official. Here's my new boyfriend. #StopGunViolence.'

The President was introduced by Mark Barden, the managing director of Sandy Hook Promise. Marks son, Daniel, was killed in the Dec. 14, 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook .

And while speaking of the horrific shooting that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama cried for the 20 school children who died in the massacre as he stood with their families.

'Every time I think about those kids it makes me mad,' Obama said as tears rolled down his face.

Needs to stop: During the speech detailing his new federal gun control measures, the President shed tears for the 20 school children who died in the massacre at Elementary School as he stood with their families

Heartbreaking tragedy: 'Every time I hear about those kids it makes me mad,' Obama said as tears rolled down his face

Spreading the word: After Obama's speech, Amy posed for photographs with victims of gun violence, their families, and other supporters of the President's new action plan

The President berated lawmakers on Capitol Hill for not doing more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and said: 'The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now but they are not holding America hostage.'

Obama is looking to put an end to the gun show loophole, which allows buyers to purchase guns from private sellers without a background check.

His new plan of action will also allow health care providers to report individuals with mental health problems to the FBI firearms background check system.

After the President detailed his new gun control measures, Amy posed for photographs with victims of gun violence, their families, and other supporters of the President's new action plan.

Elegant attire: The comedic actress wore a black blazer over a white shirt featuring a black tied around her neck and had her blond hair pulled back in to French braids

Reaching out: Amy can be seen embracing two female victims of gun violence who also attended the White House event

The stand-up comedian also posed for a photo with Wale, who shared the picture on Twitter, writing: 'Back at the White House supporting the President w/ my home girl @amyschumer #StopGunViolence.'

Amy retweeted the photo, while adding the message: 'We can't stop, cause we won't stop. [sic]'. Earlier in the day, she shared with her 3.1 million Twitter followers a link to the article 'Seven Actions You Can Take to Help Prevent Gun Violence', with was created by Everytown, a movement for gun safety.

'Here are 7 actions you can take right now to help #StopGunViolence [sic],' she wrote while sharing the information.

Amy, who attended the event with her older brother Jason Stein and younger sister Kim Caramele, later took to Instagram on Tuesday to share her own person snapshots from the event.

Sharing her support: Amy gave a small smile and waved goodbye before leaving the high-profile event

Family portrait: Amy attended the event with her older brother Jason Stein and younger sister Kim Caramele

'Dub house with my brother and sister #stopgunviolence [sic],' she captioned an image of herself with her siblings.

Amy, Jason, and Kim also took a photo with the actress's rumored boyfriend Ben Hansich outside the White House. 'Fam and man at the whitehizzy,' Amy wrote when she shared the photo on Twitter.

Meanwhile, another picture sees her posing with Wale and NBA stars Bradley Beal and Alan Anderson of the Washington Wizards.

In August, Amy joined her second cousin, New York senator Charles 'Chuck' Schumer, to call for tighter gun control as he unveiled a three-part plan that would make it harder for violent criminals and the mentally ill to obtain guns.

Amy shed tears as she took to the podium to talk about the victims and address the horrific shooting which unfolded in a Louisiana theater the month before.

'Casablanca': The siblings also posed for a photo outside the White House with Amy's rumored boyfriend Ben Hanish

Famous faces: The rapper Wale, who also attended the event, shared this picture of himself with Amy at the White House on Twitter. The actress retweeted the image, writing: 'We can't stop, cause we won't stop'

'Obama's place': Amy and Wale are pictured with NBA stars Alan Anderson (far left) and Bradley Beal (third from right) of the Washington Wizards

'These shootings have got to stop,' she said. 'I don't know how else to say it.'

'I wanted to take this opportunity to say how I feel, Amy added. 'We're here today to say enough is enough to mass shootings in our schools, college campuses, our military bases end even in our movie theaters.

She continued: 'These are not extreme ideas. No one wants to live in a country where a felon, the mentally ill or other dangerous people can get their hands on a gun with such ease.'

Two young woman were senselessly shot dead in a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater on July 23, as they watched the romantic comedy Trainwreck.

The victims were later named as Jillian Johnson, a 33-year-old who ran a gift shop with her husband, and Mayci Breaux, 21, a Louisiana State University student studying radiology.

Gunman: Amy has been a vocal supporter of gun control ever since John Russel Houser, 59, opened fire in the in Lousiana theater of more than 100 just 20 minutes into a showing of her film Trainwreck

Victims: The shooter opened fire and killed Mayci Breaux (left), 21, and Jillian Johnson (right), 33, andbefore police entered the theater and he turned the gun on himself

Gunman John Russel Houser, 59, opened fire in the theater of more than 100 just 20 minutes into the 7pm screening, killing Jillian and Mayci. His deadly rampage also left nine others injured before he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide when cornered by police.

'Maybe the worst part about this is that there is a common sense way to stop mass shootings,' Amy went on to say. 'There are many ways. For me the pain I share with so many other Americans on the issue of gun violence was made extremely personal to me on Thursday July 23.

'When John, I'm not even going to say his name,' she said close to tears, 'When he sat down for my movie Trainwreck at the Grand theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, two lives were tragically lost and others injured.

'I have thought about these victims each day since the tragedy. When I heard about this news, I was completely devastated. I just wanted to go down to Louisiana. And then I was angry.

Making a difference: In August, Amy formed an unlikely partnership with her second cousin, New York Senator Charles 'Chuck' Schumer, to call for tighter gun control

Emotional moment: Amy shed tears as she took to the podium to talk about the victims and address the horrific shooting which unfolded in a Louisiana theater the month before

Heartfelt words: 'I have thought about these victims each day since the tragedy. When I heard about this news, I was completely devastated. I just wanted to go down to Louisiana,' she said during her speech

'My heart goes out to Jillian and Mayci, to the survivors, to the families, and everyone who's tied to this tragic, senseless and horrifying actions of this man who should not have been able to put his hands on a gun in the first place.

Holding back tears she added: 'The thought of this community being turned upside down by this just sickens me...unless something is done soon dangerous people will continue to get their hands on guns.

Amy went on to call for tougher background checks, with accurate information that 'protects us like a firewall', while urging more to be done to stop those with mental illness, or a violent history from being able to buy guns.
My husband has suffered from Peyronies disease for the past year. He is still waiting for a hospital appointment. He was given potassium powders and he had an adverse reaction. He cant make love any more. Can you advise?

Name and address withheld

This is a seriously distressing disorder, and it must be a burden for you both. Peyronies disease is where fibrous scar tissue forms in the penis, causing curved and painful erections as well as thickened nodules (called plaques) in the shaft.

We dont know exactly why it occurs, but 20 per cent of patients will also have Dupuytrens contracture, a condition where the fingers on one or both hands become bent towards the palm.

And for 2 per cent of patients there is a family history of Peyronies. This suggests there is a genetic link, but repeated minor injuries (even if youre not aware of them happening) may also play a part, as the disorder is thought to be linked to an abnormality in the wound-healing process.

About 5 per cent of men are said to be affected, but this figure may be an under-estimate, as some may be too embarrassed to talk about it or, because it tends to occur with age, they accept it as part of getting older.

Serious disorder: Peyronies disease is where fibrous scar tissue forms in the penis, causing curved and painful erections as well as thickened nodules (called plaques) in the shaft

The condition resolves without treatment in about 12 per cent of patients, but in about half of cases the deformity worsens (although the pain on erection usually gets better within a year or two of the disorder developing).

Research into medical treatments has been limited. One option is the potassium powders your husband has been prescribed  potassium para-amino benzoate (brand name Potaba) comes as capsules, tablets or in sachets.

It is an anti-fibrotic drug, but the evidence for its effectiveness is vague. Moreover, it is expensive and commonly leads to gastrointestinal side-effects, such as abdominal pain.

There are those who swear by vitamin E pills. This is a potent antioxidant when taken by mouth and it is believed to affect scar formation, but studies do not show benefit in Peyronies disease.

Other oral medications include colchicine (usually used for gout) Tamoxifen (a breast cancer drug), and pentoxifylline (usually used to improve blood flow in patients with circulation problems), but again studies are unclear about how well they work.

The nodules can be treated with injections of Verapamil, interferon alpha 2b or collagenase, which work in different ways. These treatments are generally safe, and when administered with skill and local anaesthetic have shown improvement in some patients. However, if the problem has persisted for more than 12 months and the deformity is interfering with sexual function, as in your husbands case, then surgical treatment is advisable.

Distressing for sufferers: The condition resolves without treatment in about 12 per cent of patients, but in about half of cases the deformity worsens

There is no one single recommended procedure, and the specialist will make a decision based on the individual circumstances. One option is plication  surgery to shorten a section of the tunica albuginea (the tough layer of connective tissue in the penis affected by Peyronies).

Alternatively, the surgeon may lengthen a different part of the tunica albuginea, usually by grafting in a section of a vein, taken from elsewhere in the body.

The best prospect for your husband is the forthcoming referral to the urologist  the important thing is to let the specialist decide on the best technique.

I have acid reflux and have been told that the valve at the point where the oesophagus joins the stomach does not close. I have been taking ranitidine and omeprazole but still get the reflux, and have resorted to taking antacid solutions. Is there anything that can be done? I am 62.

Sylvester B. Chileshe, Chingola, Zambia

Acid reflux, also known as gastro-oesophageal reflux, occurs when the contents of the stomach spill back upwards into the oesophagus (or gullet). This happens to all of us from time to time. It is only considered a disease when it causes regular symptoms, which may include heartburn  a discomfort in the chest that sometimes spreads to the throat  or difficulty swallowing, hoarseness, sore throat or cough.

Frequent acid reflux can cause damage to the oesophagus; this can include bleeding ulcers, stricture (narrowing of the oesophagus due to scarring), and Barretts oesophagus (changes in the cells lining the lower oesophagus, which can become cancerous in future). It can also cause lung and throat problems.

All of these complications occur because, unlike the lining of the stomach, which actually secretes the acid, the oesophagus does not tolerate it well.

Most cases of chronic acid reflux are thought to be caused by a problem with the lower oesophageal sphincter. This is a ring of muscle where the oesophagus joins the stomach.

Ouch: Acid reflux, also known as gastro-oesophageal reflux, occurs when the contents of the stomach spill back upwards into the gullet

It works like a valve; after you swallow, it relaxes to allow food to pass through, then contracts to prevent spillage back upwards. In some people, this function fails or does not work properly.

Some patients may also have a hiatus hernia, where part of the stomach squeezes up into the chest through an opening in the diaphragm, the horizontal wall of muscle that separates the abdomen from the chest.

A hiatus hernia can prevent the valve at the bottom of the oesophagus from functioning properly, making acid reflux more likely.

You say that you are still experiencing reflux despite medication. My question is whether you have symptoms  such as pain or cough  or whether you are merely aware of the regurgitation at times. The severity of your symptoms could influence the course of action you take.

The medication you are taking, ranitidine and omeprazole (which reduce the amount of acid the stomach produces) will not affect the mechanics of acid reflux, and if you still have significant discomfort you may benefit from some other measures.

First, losing weight can help. In addition, raise the head of your bed by about 6in  this allows gravity to assist in keeping the stomach contents from spilling into the oesophagus.

Avoid smoking and avoid eating for at least three hours before bedtime. Or if you do eat, have only a small meal and go for 30-minute walk afterwards.

Sage advice: Avoid smoking and avoid eating for at least three hours before bedtime. Or if you do eat, have only a small meal and go for 30-minute walk afterwards

There is no evidence that anti-acid liquids improve reflux, though they may reduce the discomfort of persistent heartburn: they work by coating the lining of the oesophagus to protect it, as well as blanketing the stomach contents to prevent the acid refluxing upwards.

Surgery is an option for severe cases. The most common procedure, laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication, involves wrapping the upper part of the stomach around the lower end of the oesophagus, effectively creating a new valve.

The results are good, though complications can occur and the repair may, in time, fail. Dont push for this operation merely to deal with a sense of regurgitation  we all experience regurgitation at times, and it is better to tolerate that than undergo the hazards of general anaesthesia and surgery, which should never be underestimated.

My view is that surgery should be reserved for those who have persistent and severe symptoms, despite taking medication and after the lifestyle changes outlined.

By the way...Nobody should be allowed to patent our genes

The fates may take with one hand, but they deliver with the other.

I wrote recently about how Tory MP Alistair Burt most shamefully wrecked proposals to allow drugs that were no longer covered by their initial patents to be re-licensed so they could be prescribed for other conditions. For instance, the bisphosphonate drugs are licensed for treating osteoporosis but research has shown they can also greatly reduce the chance of breast cancer recurring.

WRITE TO DR SCURR... To contact Dr Scurr with a health query, write to him at Good Health Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email drmartin@dailymail.co.uk - including contact details. Dr Scurr cannot enter into personal correspondence. His replies cannot apply to individual cases and should be taken in a general context. Always consult your own GP with any health worries Advertisement

However, the drugs arent licensed for that purpose so doctors wont prescribe them to breast cancer patients. There was cross-party support for changing the law on this, as well as determined backing from a host of senior doctors, but the windbag Mr Burt  a health minister, no less  filibustered the Bill, talking out the time available to discuss the proposal. Shame on him.

But the gods have looked kindly on us in another respect, with the highest court in Australia recently ruling that genes are not inventions and cannot be patented  they are a natural part of the human body.

This ruling will save lives as companies will no longer have patent protection for the tests for genes they have discovered, such as the faulty BRCA1 and BRCA2 (which are linked to a greater risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer).
Linda Rowe, 70, a grandmother from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was one of the first women in the UK to undergo a new procedure to locate cancer in the breast, as she tells ADRIAN MONTI

THE PATIENT

SINCE I turned 50, Ive had a mammogram every three years  but a fortnight after the one in July last year, I got a letter asking me to return for another. I hadnt felt any lumps but it set alarm bells ringing.

The second mammogram showed a shadow in my left breast, so I had a biopsy under local anaesthetic the same day.

Two weeks later Henry Cain, a breast cancer surgeon at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, in Newcastle, said I had a small cancerous tumour below my left nipple which needed to come out before it spread.

Frontier medicine: Linda Rowe, 70, was one of the first UK women to undergo a new procedure which locates breast cancer via radioactive seed localisation

Early detection: A mammogram showed a shadow on her left breast,which needed removing before it spread

Mr Cain then explained that the hospital was trialling a new way to make the surgery easier  they were using a tiny radioactive seed about the size of a grain of rice as a marker to help direct the surgeon more accurately to where the tumour is.

The main benefit was that it would mean less healthy breast tissue being removed, because the marker pinpoints the tumour so well.

Two weeks before the operation, a radiologist inserted the seed into my breast using a thin needle, under local anaesthetic. I was quite relaxed about the procedure.

I had a small cancerous tumour below my left nipple which needed to come out before it spread

The next day my husband Dennis and I went to France on holiday. I put the cancer to the back of my mind and enjoyed our break. The day after we got back in mid-September, I went for my surgery.

I had a general anaesthetic before Mr Cain carried out the 90-minute surgery. He removed the 14mm tumour and the radioactive seed by making a 20mm long downward cut under my nipple. I felt a bit sore afterwards but was able to go home the same day.

Straight-forward: Linda's surgeon removed the 14mm tumour (and the radioactive seed added prior to her operation) by making a 20mm long downward cut under her nipple

After healing, it left a small scar which doesnt show, even if Im wearing a bikini.

For the next five years Ill take a daily dose of letrozole. Its an anti-oestrogen drug  oestrogen had caused my cancer to grow, so reducing it will hopefully stop it returning.

In November I had three weeks of radiotherapy as a precaution, and Ill now have regular mammograms to check the cancer hasnt returned.

THE SURGEON

HENRY CAIN is a consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon at Newcastles Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Each year more than two million UK women undergo breast cancer screening. Of those, 4 per cent are recalled for a second mammogram and about one in five of these will have cancer.

Mammograms are particularly good at detecting impalpable tumours  the ones that cannot be felt as a lump, as in Lindas case. But its the way we mark the tumour which is new.

Linda is among the first 150 patients in the UK to undergo this procedure, called radioactive seed localisation.

Surgical intervention: Each year more than two million UK women undergo breast cancer screening. Of those, 4 per cent are recalled for a second mammogram and about one in five of these will have cancer

Common: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. The cancer can invade surrounding tissue and spread to other parts of the body (metastasis)

If a lump cant be felt, the surgeon traditionally relies on a guide wire to locate it. On the day of surgery the radiologist finds the lump using a mammogram or an ultrasound scan.

Then, under local anaesthetic, a flexible metal wire, 0.5mm wide, is threaded into the breast using a fine needle, while the radiologist looks at the mammogram or ultrasound scan on the screen to ensure it reaches the lump.

This guide wire has a barb on the end which goes into, or as close as possible to, the cancer. The other end sticks out from the patients breast. Putting in the wire can take up to an hour.

The new technique reduces the risk of incomplete removal of the tumour at the first operation

Once the wire is in place, the surgeon relies on it to guide them to the tumour. This involves looking at a 2D mammogram on a screen, then back at the breast itself, and moving your gaze constantly between the two to try to find exactly where the wires tip is. This can be quite an art. You then make an incision in the breast and tunnel towards the wires tip to remove the tumour.

Then, in 2001, a U.S. surgeon devised a new way of marking a breast tumour, using radioactive seeds as a marker.

As with the guide wire technique, the seed is inserted by a radiologist using an ultrasound scan or mammogram.

The seed has a titanium outer shell, so its strong and light. Inside is a tiny gold wire  this shows up easily on a scan  and iodine 125, a very low-dose radioactive source.

We use a special probe that detects this radioactive source to pinpoint the seeds location. This means a smaller amount of healthy tissue is taken away  and theres an improved clearance of the tumour, too.

We were the first unit in the UK to start using the radioactive seeds, in October 2014.

The seed can be inserted at least a week before surgery and even longer if need be. This reduces anxiety for patients.

The seed is put into the exact spot where the cancer has been found, using a thin needle, as the radiologist watches whats happening on screen. This takes about 15 minutes using an ultrasound scan, and up to an hour using a mammogram.

Delighted with the results: After healing, it left a small scar which doesnt show, even if Linda wears a bikini

Once in theatre, I use a gamma probe, which detects radiation. Its about the size of a marker pen and I hold it close to the patients breast. As I move it closer to the seed, the digital dial shows a higher reading as its measuring the amount of radiation being emitted from it.

By constantly checking the seed location with the probe, I take out the lump. I use the probe throughout the operation and check the seed is still inside the tumour once it is removed.

The seed makes removing the tumour more straightforward, and research shows this technique gives greater accuracy in locating the tumour.

The new technique reduces the risk of incomplete removal of the tumour at the first operation.

We also plan to use more than one seed in a breast to remove multiple cancers, or to bracket larger areas of tissue that need to be removed.

ANY DRAWBACKS?

Radioactive seeds are a win-win for both the patient and the hospital  with the guide wire you are never completely sure where the tip is, says Jenny Piper, a consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon at York Hospital.

The only downside is the cost: guide wires are about 30, compared with 80 for the seed.

There are also very strict rules on using radioactive material in a hospital, so gaining approval is causing some delay. But we hope to introduce the same technique at York Hospital soon.
A British woman has told of the pure joy she felt after a revolutionary bionic eye allowed her to see for the first time in six years.

Rhian Lewis, 49, said it felt like Christmas Day when she was able to read a clock again and could see a car in the street.

The mother of two  who began losing her sight when she was just five years old  can also identify everyday objects such as cutlery once more, as well as enjoy simple pleasures such as seeing the sun shine.

Rhian Lewis, 49 (pictured), from Cardiff, said it felt like Christmas Day when she was able to read a clock again and could see a car in the street after becoming the first Briton to have a revolutionary bionic eye fitted

Its pure elation, she said.

Miss Lewis, from Cardiff, is the first Briton  and the first person outside Germany  to be fitted with the worlds most advanced bionic eye.

Actually an aspirin-sized microchip, the implant has been fitted in Miss Lewiss right eye  which lost all sight 16 years ago.

It works by catching light and funnelling it to the brain, where it is processed into images.

The process is able to work because the retinitis pigmentosa which has damaged her sight hasnt affected the brain circuitry Miss Lewis needs to be able to see. Instead, the hereditary disease gradually destroys the light-sensitive retina at the back of the eye itself.

The implant could revolutionise the treatment of blindness  and could be available on the NHS in just two years, with the first beneficiaries likely to be patients who have the same condition as Miss Lewis.

But in time, the chip from German firm Retina Implant AG could be used to treat age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness among the elderly.

Miss Lewis, who has also barely been able to see with her left eye for six years, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as a child.

Miss Lewis (pictured being tested reading a clock face) is the first Briton - and the first person outside Germany - to be fitted with the worlds most advanced bionic eye. The implant could revolutionise blindness

Miss Lewis, 49, said it felt like Christmas Day when she was able to read a clock and see a car in the street

A mother of 18-year-old twins, she hasnt been able to see their faces clearly since they were ten.

However doctors at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford were able to begin the process of restoring her vision during a seven-hour operation to fit the implant.

One of the first things she saw after the treatment  sunbeams dancing on a car  moved her to tears.

Miss Lewis, who features in tomorrows episode of Trust Me, Im A Doctor on BBC2, said: I walked up the street, and... there was a silver car.

'I couldnt believe it  the signal was really strong. I was quite teary. Now when I locate something, like a fork on the table, its pure elation. Its pure joy to get it right.

Seven months on from the procedure, her vision is still improving and it is hoped that one day she will be able to recognise her son and daughter again.

The second generation retinal implant that was given to Rhian Lewis, who has retinitis pigmentosa, to help improve her vision at the back of her retina at the the Oxford Eye Hospital at Oxfordis John Radcliffe Hospital

She is the first of at least six Britons to be given the implant in a trial part-funded by the Health Service. Six others have already benefited from a more basic device, and if it continues to impress it could be available on the NHS by 2018.

It is likely to cost around 50,000  on a par with training a guide dog for the blind.
Critics accused him of 'typical spin' after he said pay was sticking point

But BMA walked away from talks and announced series of strikes

Crucial talks between Government and health officials to try to stop next week's strike lasted for less than an hour yesterday, the Health Secretary has claimed.

Jeremy Hunt said the Government thought it was 'making very good progress' in talks and he was disappointed the BMA had called strikes, but added that 'the door is open'.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'There were 16 areas the BMA wanted to talk about.

'Yesterday we met and we thought we had a solution to one of them and we were prepared to negotiate on the final one but the talks lasted less than an hour and they walked out and started the strikes going.'

The strike was announced yesterday after talks between the British Medical Association (BMA), NHS Employers and Government officials broke down.

If a consensus is not found, junior doctors have promised to stage three strikes, starting with a walkout on January 12.

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Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Acas had informed him 'very good progress' had been made on 15 of the 16 issues raised and said Dr Malik's language was 'not helpful'

Mr Hunt said he would 'like to know' from the BMA's chairman, Dr Mark Porter, what the other areas of contention were.

It comes as he denied allegations that he lied over the state of negotiations to avoid the first mass walk-out by junior doctors in 40 years.

Critics today accused him of 'typical spin' for his remarks saying that only the pay issue still needed to be resolved.

Mr Hunt claimed yesterday that agreements had been reached on 15 of the 16 issues under discussion.

But his claims were disputed by junior doctor and campaigner Dr Salwa Malik.

Appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain alongside Mr Hunt, she said the parties remained at loggerheads over three issues.

Commenting on Dr Malik's allegations, he said: 'I think that kind of language is not very helpful.'

Mr Hunt said he had received a letter from Acas, the Government's industrial relations body, which said 'very good progress has been made on 15 of the 16 issues raised in the Acas process'.

He added: 'That's where I got my numbers from and I think we did make good progress and I think the particular area where we made good progress was over pay and was patient safety.'

Up to 45,000 junior doctors will go on strike next week after three weeks of talks broke down last night.

Junior doctor and campaigner Dr Salwa Malik accused Jeremy Hunt of 'typical spin' for claiming the pay issue was the one remaining sticking point

The British Medical Association announced yesterday afternoon that doctors will walk out on Tuesday, January 12 for 24 hours.

This will be followed by two further walk-outs on January 26 and February 10 if no agreement is reached.

Tens of thousands of operations and appointments will be cancelled and patients will be told to avoid A&E and treat themselves at home.

Speaking on Radio 4, Mr Hunt said that 'no government' wanted to cut doctors' pay but changes must be made to increase weekend staffing levels.

Yesterday we met and we thought we had a solution to one of them and we were prepared to negotiate on the final one but the talks lasted less than an hour and they walked out and started the strikes going. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt

'Pay is one of the issues and another is safety. It's in no one's interest to have doctors who are too tired.

'We have 200 avoidable deaths every week in the NHS and doctors are as committed as I am to bringing that down in the wake of Mid Staffs.

'In this new contract, we're saying doctors can't work more than four nights in a row, which is very important in terms of sleep patterns.'

He told BBC Breakfast the planned walkouts 'could be very damaging for patients'.

But he said: 'The current contract means we have three times less medical cover on weekends because hospitals can't afford to roster enough people on Saturdays and Sundays. And that is what we want to change.'

He added: 'We have a situation where every weekend in the NHS we have lapses in care, that we are not able to promise NHS patients the same high-quality care every day of the week. And you can't choose which day of the week you get ill on.'

Mr Hunt said his department had agreed with the BMA to put a cap on doctors working more than four nights or five 'long' days in a row.

The maximum hours that any doctor can work in a week will be reduced from 91 to 72, or an average of 56 hours a week over a two-month period, he said.

Junior doctors march and protest in London about Government plans to impose a new contract in October

He added that plans were being considered to have more experienced clinicians on hand to support junior doctors at weekends.

But BMA chairman Dr Mark Porter hit back, saying junior doctors already worked a seven-day service, including nights and weekends.

'I really don't think many listeners will understand what the Government is going on about in trying to imply that there is not a seven-day service for emergencies already,' he told the Today programme.

He said the BMA thought it was 'really necessary' to invest more resources in seven-day working.

WHAT THEY WERE OFFERED An 11 per cent rise in basic pay

Higher rates for evenings and weekends  time and a half for 10pm to 7am, time and a third for Saturday evenings and Sundays

Saturday day rate to remain the same rather than time and a half or a third

Incentives for trainees in 'unpopular' careers such as general practice and A&E

Limit of 72 working hours a week  down from 91 hours

No more than four night shifts in a row Advertisement

'The Government has simply come along and said they want to reduce the pay of junior doctors who do take part in seven-day services.'

Dr Porter said the doctors who did most of the out-of-hours work would 'not see' a pay uplift as set out by the Government.

He said the Government's claim that only 1 per cent of doctors would be paid less under the new deal was part of 'Government propaganda' and was not a figure junior doctors recognised.

Dr Porter said it 'remains possible' that action could be called off but insisted the Government would have to go 'further' than it has so far.

He also said that doctors regretted the disruption to patients that will be caused by strikes.

For three weeks, representatives from the BMA union have been meeting health officials to thrash out a deal.

Mr Hunt claims the new contracts will make hospitals safer by ensuring more doctors work evenings and weekends when death rates are up to 16 per cent higher.

But junior doctors fear the new rotas will leave them exhausted and prone to mistakes, and that their overall earnings will be slashed.

Yesterday afternoon, the BMA blamed the 'Government's continued failure to address junior doctors' concerns about the need for robust contractual safeguards on safe working, and proper recognition for those working unsocial hours.'

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, pictured, denies that he lied about how negotiations were progressing

In a statement, the union said: 'Unless progress is made on these key areas, the 24-hour action, during which junior doctors will provide emergency care only, will be followed by a second, 48-hour period of emergency care only beginning on 26 January and a third day of action on 10 February, which will see a full withdrawal of junior doctors' labour between 8am and 5pm.'

By law, the union must give the public and the NHS at least seven working days to prepare.

But the union confirmed it has written to trusts across England informing them of its intention to take industrial action on the following dates:

12 January 2016 - Emergency care only between 8am on Tuesday, 12 January and 8am on Wednesday, 13 January (24 hours)

26 January 2016 - Emergency care only between 8am on Tuesday, 26 January and 8am on Thursday, 28 January (48 hours)

10 February 2016 , full withdrawal of labour between 8am and 5pm on Wednesday, 10 February

Campaigners say patients are being unfairly 'caught in the middle' and fear lives will be put at risk.

The proposed strikes last month caused the cancellation of up to 20,000 operations and appointments. Even though the action was called off, it was too late for patients to be booked in again.

While negotiations are set to continue today, NHS trusts across England will be forced to cancel thousands more operations ahead of next week's planned strike.

Johann Malawana, chairman of the BMA junior doctors' committee, had sent a message to members on Facebook last weekend, preparing them for the Government's announcement.

He said: 'On Monday we will be hoping that the Government will have taken on board and addressed our legitimate concerns.'

The union has accused the Government of 'dragging its feet' during contract negotiations for junior doctors

Referring to possible strikes, he added: 'I am truly hoping that we will not be forced to once again test our unity and resolve.

'However, I know from the messages so many of you have sent, that should the need arise, we will stand together for ourselves and for the next generation of our colleagues.'

Just before Christmas he posted a message preparing junior doctors for strikes, warning that while 'significant ground' had been made there were 'still a couple of absolute areas of disagreement'.

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He added: 'Should we not be able to reach an acceptable outcome by 4pm on January 4, the BMA will need to commence serving notice as per its mandate, to the NHS, for industrial action the following week.'

In November, Mr Hunt promised to increase junior doctors' basic pay of by 11 per cent to avert the strikes.

But the BMA rejected this, claiming overall earnings would still be slashed by cuts to out-of-hours payments.

Katherine Murphy, Chief Executive of the Patients Association, said the decision was 'disappointing.'

'It is extremely disappointing that negotiations have failed to break the impasse between the Government and the British Medical Association over proposed contracts for junior doctors.

'Once again patients are being caught in the middle of this bitter dispute. 'The short term impact that this strike will cause is very worrying.

'Cancelled operations and reduced access to services will directly affect patients, leaving many at risk. All parties in the dispute must remember that their primary duty is to patients.

'Thousands suffered when strikes were cancelled at the eleventh hour in December, as will many more if industrial action goes ahead.'
But, women 'exposed' in early pregnancy were more likely to miscarry

A common prescription drug used to treat yeast infections may increase the risk of miscarriages if taken during the early stages of pregnancy, a study has revealed.

Over the course of 17 years, scientists examined the effects of oral versions of fluconazole on 1.4 million pregnancies in Denmark.

They found that women who used the drug during the first six months of their pregnancies were nearly 50 per cent more likely to suffer a miscarriage than non-users.

Though less than 10 per cent of women in each group of the study had miscarriages, scientists urged doctors to exercise caution when prescribing the drug early in pregnancy.

The study doesn't provide proof of harm, but the drug has been linked with other problems when used in high doses in pregnancy.

A large study in Denmark found that oral versions of fluconazole - a common prescription drug used to treat yeast infections - may increase the risk of 'spontaneous abortion' if taken during the early stages of pregnancy

The study authors said: In this nationwide cohort in Denmark, oral fluconazole use in pregnancy was associated with a significantly increased risk of spontaneous abortion.

Until more data on the association are available, cautious prescribing of fluconazole in pregnancy may be advisable.

Although the risk of stillbirth was not significantly increased, this outcome should be investigated further.

Pregnant women have a heightened risk of vaginal candidiasis  known as yeast infections.

In the US, an estimated 10 per cent of pregnant women experience a yeast infection.

The first-line treatment for pregnant women are usually intravaginal formulations of topical azole antifungals.

But, oral fluconazole is also often used despite limited safety information'.

Scientists from Statens Serum Institut investigated the association between oral fluconazole exposure during pregnancy and the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth between 1997 and 2013.

Oral fluconazole-exposed pregnancies from that group were compared with up to four unexposed pregnancies.

The pregnancies were matched on maternal age, calendar year and gestational age.

The filled prescriptions for oral fluconazole were acquired from the National Prescription Register.

Of 3,315 women exposed to oral fluconazole from seven through 22 weeks gestation, 147 experienced a spontaneous abortion.

Comparatively, 563 of 13,246 of the matched women who werent exposed to antifungals experienced miscarriage.

The study thus found that there was a significantly increased risk of spontaneous abortion associated with fluconazole exposure.

Women who were at increased risk included those on a low 150-milligram dose.

And, those on higher doses faced greater miscarriage risks, the study found.

Of 5,382 women exposed to fluconazole from gestational week seven until birth, 21 experienced a stillbirth.

Scientists found that women in Denmark who used the drug during the first six months of pregnancy were almost 50 percent more likely than nonusers to have a miscarriage

In contrast, 77 of the 21,506 unexposed matched women had a stillbirth.

The scientists then looked at topical azole exposure as a comparison.

They found that 130 of 2,823 women exposed to fluconazole  as opposed to 118 of 2,2823 exposed to topical azoles  had a spontaneous abortion.

Similarly, 20 of 4,301 women exposed to fluconazole suffered a stillbirth, compared to 22 of 4,301 exposed to topical azoles.

Yeast infections are common among women and occur more often in pregnancy because of hormonal changes.

Over-the-counter creams and suppositories, and prescription fluconazole, in pills or liquid, are among treatments.

Fluconazole is available in generic versions and under the brand name Diflucan, typically prescribed in a single dose.

Multiple high doses of fluconazole are sometimes prescribed for stubborn infections.

A US Food and Drug Administration safety announcement in 2011 said those higher doses in early pregnancy may be linked with certain birth defects but that a single 150 mg-dose appeared safe.

Research since then on possible risks from low-dose versions has had mixed results.

Dr Scott Sullivan, a member of the ethics committee at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said the new study doesn't prove any miscarriage risk from fluconazole, 'it just means we need more data, more studies'.

Dr Sullivan, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, said most oral medicines are used cautiously in women during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy because of concerns about potential risks.

Dr Sarah Branch, deputy director of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, in the UK, who wasnt involved in the study, said: Fluconazole is an important and widely used medicine for the treatment of fungal infections, including vaginal candidiasis (thrush).

The product information accompanying fluconazole states that it should not be used during pregnancy unless clearly necessary.

In the UK, alternative antifungal agents (topical clotrimazole and miconazole) are recommended for the treatment of thrush in pregnant women.

Professor Kevin McConway, professor of applied statistics, at The Open University, was not involved in the study, but said in a statement that the fact the authors used propensity score matching allows us to be slightly more confident that the association they found really did have something to do with fluconazole'.

But, he added that the study only looked at matched pregnancies.

That means the study didnt include most of the unexposed pregnancies that were in the register.

Professor McConway said: So you cant say that the adverse effect risk for all Danish pregnancies is the same as what it is for the pregnancies in this study.
They are the elite wing of the Delhi Police tasked with tackling terror-related activities, but the squad popularly known as the Special Cell has an abysmal record in performing its prime job.

The year 2015 kept Special Cell sleuths busy catching petty criminals like cheats, robbers and auto-lifters.

The force arrested only six terror suspects during the course of the year, while its officers caught 46 cheats and 24 robbers.

The force arrested only six terror suspects during the course of the year, while its officers caught 46 cheats and 24 robbers. (File picture)

Similarly, 2014 was not very good with the unit arresting 13 alleged terrorists.

Having suffered a major embarrassment following the indictment of its officers by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) and the controversy surrounding Manoj Vashisth encounter, the Special Cell faced a challenge in improving its performance to salvage its reputation.

However, its performance only went from bad to worse.

According to Delhi police records, the Special Cell arrested 229 persons in 2014, but it managed to arrest 210 accused in the past year.

In 2015, the Special Cell arrested 33 drug traffickers and 12 gun-runners, but these figures were relatively higher in 2014 with the arrest of 44 drug traffickers and 29 gun-runners.

In 2014, the Special Cell was busy arresting the likes of robbers and snatchers but during the last year, it seems the focus shifted to Capitals terror catch: Cheats, burglars and chain-snatchers cheats and robbers. The main job of this wing is to deal with terrorists. It is one of the most equipped units in India to deal with terror outfits. It has every facility which is necessary to counter terrorism. Last year, the unit dented Delhi Polices image by making headlines for the wrong reasons, a top Delhi Police officer told Mail Today.

Not only did the Special Cell perform poorly, but the intentions of officials remained in question throughout the year.

The unit received its first setback when the NIA recommended departmental action against at least five officials, including an official of assistant commissioner of police rank for allegedly fabricating a case against a resident of Kashmir and projecting him as a suicide attacker from the Hizbul Mujahideen terror group.

Even as the Special Cell struggled to deal with the embarrassment, the anti-terror unit again made headlines for allegedly killing businessman Manoj Vashisth, claiming it to be a genuine encounter.

Senior Special Cell officers who were involved in the operation were then transferred to other units.

2015 was not satisfactory at all for the Special Cell due to various controversies and poor performance. Moreover, in the month of November, the unit lost one of its finest officers ACP Amit Singh who was found dead with a bullet injury in his head inside his Noida flat. Police suspected the officer Amit Singh shot himself with his service revolver after a verbal altercation with his wife. The top brass is hopeful that the Special cell will improve things in this year, the officer added.
Tej Pratap Yadav may be the health minister in the Nitish Kumar government, but it is his father Lalu Prasad who is keeping a watch on the condition of hospitals in the state.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal president landed at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) unannounced on Sunday evening to take stock of the situation at the hospital.

He not only met the doctors on duty but also visited different wards to get patients' feedback about the medicare and other facilities at the government-run hospital.

RJD chief Lalu Prasads son Tej Pratap Yadav (right) is Bihars health minister. Lalu landed at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) unannounced to speak to patients and their attendants.

Surprised to see Lalu in their midst, many patients and their attendants told him about the dearth of facilities at the hospital.

Sources said that Lalu also called up his son - the health minister in the state - advising him to inspect the hospitals at regular intervals.

IGIMS director Dr NR Vishwas, who came rushing after getting information about Lalus surprise inspection, briefed the RJD president about the ongoing and proposed projects at the IGIMS.

He is learnt to have apprised Lalu about the delay in the release of funds for the construction of the new buildings for the medical college and the cancer institute.

Lalu assured the director that he would help solve the problems being faced by the institute. He also reportedly asked the senior officials of the health department to review the matter.
Fans are now hoping for a Hindi version of Kannada hit Killing Veerappan

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Vermas debut Kannada movie, Killing Veerappan, which chronicles the lead-up to the death of dreaded forest brigand Veerappan, is creating ripples in south India after getting rave reviews from audiences.

Police officers and politicians from both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are thronging to theatres to understand the truth behind Veerappans death.

The movie has become an internet sensation, with people posting selfies resembling the film poster.

Now, there is a demand from Bollywood to release the Hindi version too.

Though K Vijay Kumar, head of the joint Special Task Forces (STF), was widely credited for ending the barbaric reign of Veerappan, in reality, it was another police officer - Senthamarai Kannan, who masterminded the downfall of the brigand in 2004.

The plot of Killing Veerappan is based on Operation Cocoon and the undisclosed secrets that prompted Veerappan to emerge out of the forests to be gunned down by the police.

Senthamarai Kannan and Shriya (a civilian) played prominent roles in Veerappans death and they have been portrayed on the screen. While Kannan continues to work for the Tamil Nadu police, little is known about Shriya.

RGV selected Kannada superstar Shivarajkumar, whose actor father Dr. Rajkumar was abducted and held hostage by Veerappan in 2000, to play the role of Kannan.

Multilingual actress Parul Yadav is seen in the role of Shriya, who befriends Veerappans wife Muthulakshmi (Yagna Shetty), to understand more about the brigand and his hideout.

The movie is running to packed houses and has already collected over Rs 12 crore in the first three days across Karnataka.

Actor Parul Yadav is playing the role of Shriya, who befriends Veerappans wife Muthulakshmi

RGV is overwhelmed with the response: I must say that I am more than satisfied because the story is so well known to Kannadigas and yet they accepted a completely different version from what they so far believed... That speaks about the narrative honesty. Also, it is a kind of a shock to the film industry that a film without songs, heroic fights, comedy, etc, can do commercially so well.
An uneasy calm now prevails in West Bengals northern Malda district, following a massive protest rally by Muslim groups on Sunday January 3 against the hate speech of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari.

Over two dozen police vehicles, including one belonging to Indias border-guarding agency Border Security Force (BSF), were torched.

Maldas Kaliachak police station was ransacked as an irate crowd went on a violent rampage in the Muslim-dominated Sujapur area of the district.

Over two dozen police vehicles, including one belonging to the BSF, were torched in Malda during the violence

The situation is now under control. Regular police arrangements are there in that area to take care of the law and order part, Malda district police superintendent Prasun Banerjee told Mail Today, refusing to divulge anything further on the situation and about the organisation which held the protest rally.

Asked about the number of arrests, the police official said that raids are on.

No one has been arrested so far, he added.

Armed with tall green flags, thousands of sloganeering protesters took out the march on National Highway (NH)-34 on Sunday, condemning self-proclaimed Hindu Kamlesh Tiwaris recent hate speech about the Prophet Muhammad, though nobody knew what exactly the Hindu fundamentalist leader had said.

The violence broke out when the protesters came across a North Bengal State Transport Corporation (NBSTC) bus that was trying to cross the rally.

They got into an argument with the driver of the bus and soon the situation got out of control. The passengers got off the bus as the protesters had set it on fire. Then the mob attacked the nearby Kaliachak police station, drove out all the policemen and ransacked the building, including its barracks.

They destroyed all the records that were stored on piled-up files and computers.

The violent mob also attacked the BDO office at Kaliachak-I, and went to Khaltipur railway station and squatted on the railway tracks in protest.

When police arrived, a clash broke out which injured several officers on duty.

As tension gripped the area, shops were shut down. The Muslim protesters also looted some nearby houses. Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel were called in to take control of the situation.

Police sources said peace and normalcy were restored in the troubled area late last night.

The situation is under control now, Malda district magistrate Sharad Devidi told Mail Today. Sources said an organisation called Anjuman Ahle Sunnatul Jamat (ASJ) had organised the rally which led to violence in the area. However, an ASJ official later claimed that outsiders had masterminded the rampage.

Kamlesh Tiwari, the self-proclaimed Hindu leader, was arrested following protests across the country over his alleged remarks.

On December 3, 2015, Tiwari reportedly called the Prophet Muhammad the worlds first homosexual. He had also reportedly circulated pamphlets against the Muslim community. He was arrested in Lucknow and is currently lodged at the Lucknow District Jail.

The Lucknow police have invoked the National Security Act against Tiwari. The Hindu Mahasabha has stated that Tiwari is not at all a part of their outfit.

A case under IPC sections 153-A (promoting enmity between groups on ground of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) was registered against Tiwari at Lucknows Naka Hindola police station.
Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi at his last annual conference as police chief in the Capital

Addressing his last Delhi Police Annual Conference as police chief, BS Bassi made a veiled attack on the Aam Aadmi Party government and said that people of the city are fortunate that its police are not under the Delhi governments jurisdiction.

Bassi maintained that if Delhi Police fell under the state government, then they would have to work under local pressure.

I can tell you that people of Delhi are 100 per cent fortunate to have the police not under the Delhi government... otherwise there would be a lot of local pressure. This would become another troublesome job for Delhi Police. No society is without pressure but in present condition we can manage it as there is no local pressure, Bassi said.

The police commissioners statement came amid the ongoing rift between Delhi government and Delhi Police on various issues, including control over police machinery by the state government.

However, Bassi in his statement did not make any direct reference to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal or AAP.

Last year was one of confrontation between the Delhi government and Delhi Police. Terming Delhi Police as most corrupt, the AAP government had earlier demanded control over police for at least a year. The party routinely charged police commissioner BS Bassi with working as an agent of the Centre.

Claiming that Delhi Police is functioning perfectly under the Centres jurisdiction, Bassi said: Neither a prime minister nor a home minister will have local influence, but if the Delhi Police comes under the local government, they would have local influence.

The police chief further explained that the present system is the best.

No prime minister has any vested interest in Delhi unless he belongs to Delhi. I have not seen any PM having any local interest in Delhi during my long career, he said.

The AAP government, which has been at loggerheads with the Delhi Police over cases of crime and action against AAP MLAs, had blamed the cops of being after elected AAP MLAs as they have no time for peoples security.

Reacting to the arrest of AAP MLAs and FIR against other legislators, Bassi said: As per CrPC section, a person can be arrested only if he is named in a crime in which punishment is over seven years. In these cases (cases against AAP MLAs) they were getting advantage as punishment is less than seven years. In some cases, people were arrested too.

Replying to charges that the Delhi Police is remote controlled by the Centre, Bassi said: We get no pressure from Centre now and Delhi Police works on the merit of the case.

Bassi, who is retiring on February 29 this year, did not disclose his post-retirement plans.

If I got a chance to serve the nation after retirement, I will definitely do it. If I dont, then I will enjoy myself.

AAP members have repeatedly accused Bassi of behaving like a senior BJP leader.
Arun Jaitley has to appear before the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate

The BJPs legal cell is in full action mode as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has to appear before the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate on Tuesday.

A message has been circulated urging members to assemble at the Patiala House premises to express solidarity with the senior leader.

Jaitley had filed a criminal defamation case in the city court against Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and five senior AAP leaders in the DDCA case.

During the last hearing, many Union ministers had reached the court along with Jaitley.

V-P for Jinnah

Releasing a book on Pakistans founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Vice-President Hamid Ansari said the leader has either been canonised or demonised in the various books written on him.

A very commonly prevalent human trait is to talk in terms of absolute, either a person or situation is good or bad...rarely it is that there can be elements of both. Matters worsen when subject of discourse is an eminent personality, our option then is to cannonise or demonise, Ansari said at the function.

What's in a name?

The right-wing has once more raised the bogey of Hindu symbolism when it comes to renaming significant landmarks after people considered exalted in the Hindu culture.

This time the demand for renaming Mandi House Circle has cropped up. The right-wing wants it named after Acharya Abhinavagupta of Kashmir.

The Sangh Parivar is celebrating the 1000th birth anniversary of the saint. A proposal regarding this was submitted to NDMC. The move was endorsed by BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi.

I support the demand. It would be an honour to name the circle on the renowned saint, she said.

Embarrassing words

Expelled from the BJP for his anti-party remarks, noted lawyer and Rajya Sabha MP Ram Jethmalani sought to embarrass party veteran LK Advani at a function here.

I can find my friend Mr LK Advani has arrived. Well, I have a lot to say about him. But I will save him the embarrassment today, he said while completing his speech felicitating the Dalai Lama on his birth anniversary.

Advani, who joined the function late and spoke after Jethmalani, went up to him after his speech and jokingly accepted hearing him out and his embarrassing remarks aimed at him.

All for Maya

The BSP will celebrate the birthday of its supremo Mayawati on January 15 as Jan Kalyankari Divas (peoples welfare day) across the country.

The next edition of the book written by Mayawati, A travelogue of my struggle-ridden life and BSP movement, and the party calendar will also be launched that day.
Euphoria in the Grand Alliance over its spectacular victory in the recent Bihar assembly polls has given way to intense speculation over the future of the new coalition government in the state.

The question uppermost on the minds of the political observers these days is whether Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad has committed his biggest political blunder yet by accepting Nitish Kumar as the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance.

Many of them believe that a similar move had cost the Bharatiya Janata Party dear in the past.

All is not well: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with RJD chief Lalu Prasad in Patna

According to them, Lalus decision has not only deprived his party of the chief ministers post, but also put him under the shadow of Nitish for the next five years.

Of the three parties in the coalition, the RJD had won the most (80) seats in the recent assembly polls and should have emerged as a natural claimant to the top post in the new state government. But Lalu had made a commitment to Nitish much before the polls, which he had to honour afterwards.

This decision appears to have let down many leaders in his party, and voices of dissent and dissatisfaction are already emanating from the RJD camp.

Right from accepting Nitishs leadership in the run-up to the assembly elections to accepting his seven-point resolve as the common manifesto of the Grand Alliance without demur, Lalu has backed Nitish to the hilt in recent times.

He has also admonished his party leaders, who have fired salvos against Nitish.

Many RJD leaders find it baffling. They believe that Lalu has chosen to play second fiddle to Nitish only to damage the prospects of his own party in the long-run.

Some of them privately cite the example of the BJP, which let Nitish call the shots as the leader of their alliance much to its own detriment.

Hence, they want Lalu to keep the Nitish government on a tight leash instead of giving it a free hand.

They believe that the RJD, being the largest party in the state assembly, should play a proactive role within the coalition.

The RJD president, of course, has his own reasons to back the Nitish-led government without any preconditions.

He has made it abundantly clear to his partymen that the voters had given their mandate to the alliance to serve the poor, and any bid to destabilize the state government will clearly go against the verdict of the people in the state.

Political analysts, nonetheless, believe that he may well have other reasons to accept Nitishs leadership for the remainder of his tenure.

First, he knows it very well that his party cannot form the government on its own without seeking the support of the BJP. Given his political ideology, that is a near-impossible situation.

Second, given his past, Nitish might restore his ties with the BJP if the RJD ever tried to rock the boat of his government.

It is, therefore, a losing situation for Lalu. He is left with no options, despite having the largest number of MLAs at his disposal.

Above all, Lalu should know by now that Nitish is his own man, who would not like to be seen as a submissive chief minister.

Even during his alliance with the BJP, he had disallowed anybody from the saffron party dictating terms to him.

It was primarily because of his firmness that he was able to push several minority welfare projects in those days, regardless of the reservations of his coalition partner.

In his present term also, Nitish has dropped ample hints about his style of functioning.

He recently underlined his governments commitment to ensure the rule of the law and vigorously pursue the agenda of inclusive growth with justice in order to drive home an unambiguous message to his allies.

Under such circumstances, Lalu is hardly in a position to play the big brothers role. If he does anything now to create hurdles for Nitish, he will be primarily seen as a betrayer of the great Bihari cause.

The best move for him, therefore, is to remain a fence-sitter and applaud Nitish for pursuing his development agenda - just the way the BJP did earlier in Bihar.

But he has to remember at the same time that it is the leader of the alliance who walks away with all the credit for the performance of his government.

If he thinks his party will reap equal benefits, he may well be mistaken.

Bihar government wakes up to pollution menace

Main roads in Patna remain congested during peak hours

The Bihar government has finally woken up to the burgeoning problem of pollution.

After the findings of a recent survey which placed Patna and Muzaffarpur at the second and fourth positions respectively on the list of the most polluted cities in the country, it has set out to take concrete steps to reduce the pollution level in the state.

To begin with, the Nitish Kumar government banned the use of 15-year-old diesel vehicles.

The Bihar State Pollution Control Board (BSPCB) followed it up by cracking a whip on 100 brick kilns which had been running without a licence in different districts.

At least 96 others have also been served the show-cause notices.

The Patna district administration went a step further by imposing a ban on the sale and use of pressure horns.

It also exercised its power under the Environmental (Protection) Act, 1986 and Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000 to restrict the use of loudspeakers between 10 pm and 6 am.

The administration also barred disc jockeys (DJs) from using high-decibel sound systems during wedding parties and other programmes.

Bihar's small-town girls make their mark in fashion

Girls from small towns of Bihar are making rapid strides in the fashion world.

One such example, Aishwarya Sushmita, a 21-year-old from Darbhanga, won the Kingfisher Supermodel 3 contest and beat nine other participants in the final round recently.

A post-graduate student, she is now looking forward to a fruitful career in modelling, and later in the world of showbiz.

Patna girl Piyush Varsha (centre) was recently crowned as Miss Bihar

Aishwaryas success points towards the increasing awareness of the growing opportunities in the glamour world.

This was illustrated at the recent Miss Bihar pageant in which 150 contestants took part.

Patna girl Piyush Varsha was adjudged the winner, while Tanushree and Arohi Srivastava were declared first and second runners-up, respectively.

Piyush, who is at present pursuing dentistry in Lucknow, talked about CM Nitish Kumar in glowing terms.
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With Delhi returning to work after a long weekend, the AAP governments odd-even scheme faced its first real test with a large number of Delhiites travelling by Metro and buses.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) claimed that it was successful in handling the rush, which pushed up the number of passengers to 22.8 lakh (compared to last Mondays 20.51 lakh) and led to a jump of around 2 lakh passengers over last Monday.

People also took to car-pooling enthusiastically. The city's air quality, though, remained abysmal.

Authorities recorded a severe quantity of pollutants, eight to ten times above the safe limits in real time. It was blamed on the play of atmospheric factors.

The hourly update of System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) showed an upward trend of PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentration since morning.

Earlier in the day, a picture showing a jam-packed Rajiv Chowk metro station trended on Twitter, prompting DMRC chief Mangu Singh to clarify that it is an old image.

DMRC said in a statement: "Delhi Metro was successful in handling the expected huge rush on all its lines, on the first working Monday of the year. All necessary measures were already planned in advance and were in place to manage any additional rush of passengers. All lines and stations were thoroughly monitored throughout the day."

Commuters also claimed there was a substantial, but manageable increase in passengers.

Indu Sharma, who boarded the Metro from Civil lines, said: I am glad that the frequency of trains has been increased to make it more bearable. It was crowded, but manageable to travel.

During the 15-day odd-even trial, the DMRC has planned to run 3,192 total trips to handle the passenger rush.

The taxi hailing apps also claimed that more Delhiites are opting for car-pooling and shared rides to reach their destinations, resulting in a rise in usage of their platforms in the last couple of days.

As for the pollution level, at 1pm, PM 2.5 was at 241 micrograms per cubic metre.

Monitoring stations of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) at Anand Vihar and RK Puram had PM 2.5 at 563 and 590 micrograms per cubic metre around the same time, while PM 10 was 901 and 694.

The safe limits of these harmful micro particles, that can enter the respiratory system and subsequently the blood stream, are 60 and 100, respectively.

Gurgaon residents caught in odd-even web

By Ajay Kumar in Gurgaon

While Delhiites have so far been spared a major hassle by the odd-even plan, it is the residents of Gurgaon who are facing the brunt.

The residents of Ambience Island and hundreds of other visitors to the Ambience Mall are being challaned by the Delhi Police for entering the Delhi region on their way to the mall.

For want of an alternate route, the motorists headed to Ambience Mall have to take a U-turn from Rajokri in Delhi, only to be caught by the Delhi traffic police.

Gurgaon residents, who were headed to Ambience Mall, had to take a U-turn from Rajokri in Delhi only to be stopped by Delhi Traffic Police for driving odd-number cars

The Gurgaon administration, on the other hand, has no idea how to solve the issue as residents and mall visitors have to go to the Rajokri flyover, under the territory of Delhi, to make a U-turn to reach two high-profile condominiums, the five-star hotel Leela Kampinski and the Ambience mall.

On Monday, 45 motorists from Haryana were caught and challaned for driving odd number cars while they were travelling between defunct Sirhaul toll plaza and Rajokri flyover.

I was going to Ambience mall but I was stopped at the pedestrian subway and fined with a Rs 2,000 challan. This is the only route to reach there. What is my fault as Gurgaon administration having no alternative facilities to meet the need, said Rohit Choubey, a resident of Cyber Park in Gurgaon.

Over 1,500 families in two upscale condominiums - Lagoon Apartment and sevenstar Caitriona are also a harassed lot.

Sirhaul toll plaza was removed in January 2014 for taking U-turn from the Rajokri flyover. Now, the Delhi Police is penalising us with hefty challans under the oddeven formula, said Praveen Kakkar, RWA president of Lagoon apartment.

Delhi Police claimed that they are only following the government's orders.
Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh was reportedly abducted by terrorists just before the attack on Pathankot air force base

Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, who was released unharmed by five Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists on the night of December 31, slammed the authorities for not taking him seriously.

In an exclusive telephone interview with Mail Today, Salwinder said it was his job to inform them about his abduction by the terrorists and had the authorities acted immediately, the terror attack could have been averted.

My duty was to share the inputs and I did that. If they did not act on time, that was their fault. The results are in front of you, Salwinder said.

The senior cop, in his complaint given to the Narot Jaimal Singh Police station, said he was abducted around 11.30pm on December 31 when he was on his way back to Gurdaspur after offering prayers at a Talur shrine.

He was signaled by some men for a lift at a curve near Kolian village. These men turned out to be the terrorists who later attacked the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot.

They were in army fatigues and were carrying backpacks. They forcibly got inside my vehicle. They first asked my friend Rajesh Kumar to sit at the back seat. They then blindfolded me, tied my hands and slapped me hard. My cook was also in the car, Salwinder said.

Sources said the terrorists had earlier taken an Innova car from taxi driver Ikagar Singh who they killed near the Kathlor bridge. But when tyres of that taxi got punctured, they abandoned it and waited at Kolian for a lift. Thats when they spotted the SP's vehicle.

When asked why he was released unharmed, Salwinder said the terrorists took him to be a commoner as he was in civil dress.

I was not in my uniform. They thought I am a commoner. When one of the terrorists accidentally pressed the hooter, they realised the vehicle was not an ordinary one. Sensing trouble, they pushed me and my cook off the car at Gulpur Simbli village. I had lost consciousness. I later got to know they let Rajesh go after a while, Salwinder explained.

Salwinder insisted he is not a suspect but a victim of circumstances. He clarified he was not under detention by any agency. He said he alerted the control room immediately after he gained consciousness.

Incidentally, Salwinder is facing five sexual harassment cases brought by female constables. Police officials have said the accusations will not stand in the way of Salwinder being made the prime witness in the terror attack case.
The terrorist attack on the Air Force base in Pathankot has security agencies worried about a possible nexus between Pakistani terror groups, local drug cartels and Indian officials.

Security agents suspect that the terrorists, who came in from Pakistan, had help from drug smugglers to enter India through routes tried and tested by traffickers.

Highly-placed sources said there was a strong suspicion that the arms and ammunition used by the Pakistani terrorists were part of a drug consignment which was concealed by smugglers, and the group of terrorists entered separately using the same route.

Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh, and Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha address the media in Pathankot

The possibility of connivance of Indian officials will also be probed, sources said, adding that Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh, who was kidnapped by the terrorists along with a jeweller friend and cook, would also be investigated.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) will be questioning him along with other agencies to verify his antecedents.

Singh, his friend Rajesh Verma, and Singh's cook were kidnapped by the heavily-armed terrorists on December 31 when they were travelling in the officer's SUV.

While Singh and the cook were freed unharmed, Verma's throat was slit by the terrorists - though he managed to survive.

The Border Security Force (BSF) has been asked to explain the terrorist infiltration.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar expressed his anguish on Tuesday, questioning how the terrorists had managed to get inside the base which has a perimeter of 24 km and was located in an area covering about 2,000 acres. He admitted to some gaps.

Security personnel on the premises of the Air Force station at Pathankot during the anti-terror operation

I see some gaps. But I do not think there is any compromise on security. Once the investigations are over, things will become clear. Every security detail cannot be discussed and something should be kept for investigation, he said.

Six terrorists were gunned down and seven security personnel lost their lives in the operation, which went on four days from the early hours of January 2. This is the second time in the last five months that Pakistan-based terrorists have infiltrated the border areas around Gurdaspur in Punjab. This is also an area notorious for drug trafficking.

The issue of officials colluding with drug smugglers from Pakistan has been raised in the past but it has never been investigated or established. If there is a crackdown on the drug smuggling, the routes used for infiltration will automatically be plugged, said a government official.

Easy availability of drug couriers who dig tunnels, pipes inserted through border fencing, and well-knit syndicates including transnational criminals running operations from jail are some of the factors the BSF blamed for the drug menace in Punjab.

Narcotics smuggling in Punjab from across the border has been rampant, with thousands of youths falling victim to substance abuse. Sources said that since there was a good network of couriers ensuring smooth clearance of consignments from the border areas, the drug kingpins were never nabbed.

The ruling Shirimoni Akali Dal government in Punjab has blamed the BSF for the drug menace and said it resulted from easy trafficking from Pakistan, but the force has strongly refuted such allegations.

Responding to allegations, the BSF had earlier submitted a detailed report to the Home Ministry listing steps taken by the force and at the same time identifying the weaknesses in the mechanism that tries to curb the drug racket.

Non availability of pucca (concrete) roads along international border in Punjab, suitable observation posts and obsolete infrastructure for border floodlights, are some of the factors given by the BSF that contribute to easy drug trafficking routes making it difficult for them to crackdown on the menace. The drug cartels have a unique modus operandi to hoodwink intelligence agencies. Mobile phones of Pakistani companies are used by Indian smugglers and vice versa.

SIM cards are frequently changed to hoodwink surveillance. Indian smugglers use Pakistani SIM cards and Pakistanis use Indian SIM cards. Trans-national criminals contact each other from within and outside jails as well, said the BSF report on drug smuggling.

Sources said the NIA would also try to establish how terrorists infiltrated the border and reached the airbase and look into lapses which allowed easy passage.

Its a very challenging case and a lot of investigation needs to be done. Therefore, I am not fixing any deadline to the case but we will try to complete the probe soon, NIA chief Sharad Kumar said.

The NIA has registered three cases in connection to the brazen terror strike, including the murder of a taxi driver by terrorists, kidnapping of the SP and the attack on the IAF base.

Sharif assures Modi of full co-operation

By Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi

Pakistan has promised prompt and decisive action against the terrorists behind the Pathankot attack to ensure that PM Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif resume the stalled dialogue between the two countries and improve bilateral ties.

With a Pakistani link becoming clear in the Pathankot attack, Nawaz Sharif telephoned Modi to convey his sorrow over the loss of lives.

Nawaz Sharif telephoned PM Modi to convey his sorrow and condolences for the lives lost in the attack

Sharif told Modi that terrorists always try to derail the peace process between the two countries and that his country would fully cooperate and investigate the leads and information provided by India.

During the telephonic conversation, Modi pressed for urgent action against those responsible for the attack, which saw six terrorists sneak into an airbase and seven securitymen killed.

Modi received a call this afternoon from the prime minister of Pakistan regarding the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase, the PMO said.

The Prime Minister strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack, the PMO said in a statement.

The statement said specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan. NIA chief Sharad Kumar on Tuesday also said that there was little doubt that the attackers were from Pakistan.

The NIA will seek help of Pakistan in solving the Pathankot terror attack case once the identity of people contacted by the perpetrators has been established, Kumar said.

Man held for Facebook comments about martyr

A 24-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly making unsavoury remarks on social media against Lt Colonel EK Niranjan, who was killed while defusing a grenade during the terror attack at Pathankot IAF base.

Lt Col Niranjan Kumar was laid to rest on January 5 after he died defusing a grenade

The man, identified as Anwar Sadhik, a casual labourer, was arrested under IPC 124 (A) (sedition).

Police said Sadhik, posing himself as a journalist attached to a regional daily, allegedly made derogatory remarks against Niranjan and his family in his Facebook post.

He was arrested based on a complaint by the management of the regional daily, whose name he used in the post. He was arrested from his house at Chemmankadavu in Malappuram district.

Mail Today

Post-mortem of attack to shed light on lapses

By Mail Today Bureau in New Delhi

With the guns falling silent, a post-mortem of the three-day operation in Pathankot airbase to kill six terrorists will now be conducted. Pointers suggest major lapses due to the multiplicity of forces on the ground operating under confused command.

Questions are being asked about why the Army, which has two infantry divisions in Pathankot, was not allowed to conduct the operation.

Security personnel inside the Pathankot Air Force station after the operation

Sources said the claims that it was a well-coordinated operation lie in tatters considering the high casualties.

It was also felt that the Armys special forces would have been better equipped to deal with a situation that existed in the airbase.

Some personnel were already positioned in the airbase following an alert about the possible strike. Two columns of Army were present in the technical area of the airbase guarding the aircraft, helicopters and the air defence missiles.

The National Security Guard (NSG) commandos were also flown in to deal with the emerging situation.

Sources said that the Army eventually played a crucial role in the operation as soldiers from 11 JAK RIF, deployed from the Mamun brigade, killed three terrorists on the first day itself.

A group of NSG commandos had also tried to establish contact with the fourth terrorist but he inflicted injuries by hurling grenade at the team. At least four NSG commandos returned injured. The Army later moved in and killed the terrorist, said sources.

The fifth and the sixth terrorists were killed when the Armys BMP, a troop carrier which is like a mini tank with a mounted gun, blew a two-storeyed building where they were hiding.

A squad of 1 para commandos, comprising around a dozen men, was also present at the airbase but was not utilised. The officials said that it was a classic special forces operation as they are highly trained to deal with such situations.

The Army has gained expertise in the domain after being involved in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir for years. But the operation in Pathankot was carried out under the NSG command.

There are indications that there could have been issues regarding the command structure on the ground, resulting in confusion.
A BJP MP has alleged that the Congress vice president presented himself as a British citizen to float a firm

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has forwarded a complaint against Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to the Ethics Committee of Parliament.

The complaint was made by a BJP MP and it alleged that the Congress vice president had presented himself as a British citizen to float a firm.

Whenever a member of Parliament (MP) sends a complaint to the Lok Sabha Speaker, it is referred to a certain committee as per rules.

This particular complaint against Rahul Gandhi has been referred to the Ethics Committee who will look into it and take the necessary steps after due investigation, the Lok Sabha Speaker said when she asked about the issue of the complaint.

Shah's Jaipur trip

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah will be in Jaipur on Wednesday, January 6, and party sources said that he will be meeting the ministers of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Rajes cabinet for the first time amidst the Oppositions claims of an indication that there will soon be a change of guard in the state.

Amit Shah will be arriving at the Pink City in the afternoon, and will be holding an interactive meeting with all ministers in a city hotel.

This is Shahs maiden introductive encounter with the state ministers. The BJP president, who has maintained a low profile after the staggering defeat in the Bihar elections, is also likely to review the functioning of the Rajasthan state government on this visit.

ASHA honoured

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare JP Nadda is very impressed with the performance of the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers who are active in rural areas and is planning to give them an incentive, a tablet PC.

Nadda appreciated ASHAs outstanding performance in healthcare on various platforms across the country and said that a tablet will not only make their work easier but will also provide access to real time data collection.

ASHA is community of health workers instituted by the government of India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) as part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).

The mission began in 2005; full implementation was targeted for 2012. Once fully implemented, there is to be an ASHA in every village in India.

Birthday wishes

Bharatiya Janata Party veteran MM Joshi may have fallen out of favour with the ruling party as member of its margdarshak mandal but union minister M Venkaiah Naidu remembered to wish the leader on his birthday.

Besides Joshi, Naidu also tweeted to wish happy birthday to another party veteran Kalyan Singh who has been rewarded with the post of Rajasthan Governor after the saffron party came to power in Delhi in 2014.
To say that anti-dowry laws are not misused may be wrong, but repeated court guidelines aimed at checking misuse of the provisions may be frustrating the very objective behind the laws enacted to counter the social evil.

While there can be no two opinions on the need for courts to send a strong message by taking and recommending action in specific cases of abuse, there is a fear that general directions and observations by courts against dowry laws could be tilting the balance by prejudicing dowry harassment cases against victims.

Giving a new dimension to the debate over section 498A (cruelty for dowry) of the IPC, which often hits headlines following observations by courts highlighting misuse, an NGO has pointed out in a PIL before the Supreme Court that the judicial and administrative guidelines issued from time to time may have frustrated the object of the provision by putting victims in a disadvantageous position.

A total of 24,771 dowry deaths were reported in the country in the past three years. (Picture for representation only)

According to media reports, the Social Justice bench of the Supreme Court has agreed to review the guidelines on FIR, arrest and bail in 498A cases, which pertain to cruel treatment of women by husband and in-laws for dowry.

The bench presided over by Justice Madan B Lokur has sought the response of the ministries concerned on the PIL by Social Action Forum for Manav Adhikar seeking a uniform procedure to be followed in section 498A and dowry cases.

The hearing is likely to bring the victims perspective to the fore as section 498A has often been debated in the backdrop of concerns expressed by courts against its rampant misuse by women against husband and in-laws.

Following observations made by the Supreme Court while deciding an anticipatory bail case in July 2014, the government had even hinted at having initiated the process of diluting section 498A, which is a non-bailable offence at present.

The hearing of the PIL - which highlights the counter-view - should help the government take a decision on amendments, if required.

The NGO, which has claimed that directions in the July 2014 judgment had taken away fear of arrests in 498A cases, has pointed out that a total of 24,771 dowry deaths were reported in the country in past three years.

It further claimed that victims in anti-dowry laws cases were forced to opt for mediation or compromise due to unequal bargaining power. To take strict action or call for action against women misusing the provision is one thing and repeatedly making general observations against 498A cases, given the influence observations by superior courts wields on lower courts, is another.

The observations in the 2014 judgment by Justice C K Prasad (since retired) had raised questions on section 498A in the form it exists.

"The fact that Section 498A is a cognizable and non-bailable offence has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives. The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision," Justice Prasad observed, while granting anticipatory bail to a husband.

Justice Prasad had made a general observation about the law being used as a weapon while stressing that the mandate of section 41 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) on arrests (recording reasons for making or not making arrests) should be followed in dowry-related cases.

Incidentally, the inference that the law was being used as a weapon was not drawn from the facts of the case nor was it necessary for the court to make the observation merely for directing compliance of the provisions of CrPC.

Evidently, rampant misuse of a provision is no ground to quash any particular case. Making or quoting general observations on misuse of section 498A - while deciding a particular case - only raises fears of bias in favour of the accused.

Tamil Nadu's preference for Dhoti

The Madras High Court order prescribing dress code for entry into temples in Tamil Nadu came into force on January 1.

As per the mandate, men need to wear a dhoti or pyjama with upper cloth or formal pants and shirts; women need to wear a sari or a half-sari or churidhar with upper cloth; and children can put on any fully-covered dress.

A dhoti or pyjama with upper cloth is the dress code for men to enter temples in the state

In short, the judicial dicta makes it mandatory for people to put on traditional clothes before entering temples. If dhoti is a symbol of culture, the state has been zealously preserving it since long and some judges from the state have shown special penchant for the traditional clothing.

The record of Constituent Assembly debates show how a member rued that most judges of the Supreme Court were taking to western dress with the exception of those coming from South India.

Not long ago, the state framed a law - popularly called the Dhoti Bill - to ensure that private clubs did not look down upon people wearing traditional dress and dhoti, following a controversy over a judge being denied entry to a club as he was wearing a dhoti.

The object and reasons appended to the law stated that it was enacted to deal with clubs denying entry to those wearing dhoti "reflecting Tamil culture".

It started with a Sikh woman lawyer seeking a ban on websites displaying Sardar jokes, but now it seems the entire Sikh community may be feeling bad about Sardars being made the butt of jokes.

She informed Chief Justice T S Thakurs bench - which asked if her community supported the plea in her writ - that the Delhi Sikh Gurduwara Management Committee had also filed a similar petition before the court.

Now, the fate of Santa and Banta, fictional Sikh characters in Sardar jokes, will hinge on the outcome of the petition.

Homeless can also vote now

Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda informed Parliament recently that being homeless was not a disqualification for enrollment as a voter.

"In all such cases where a homeless applicant does not possess any proof of ordinary residence, booth-level officers have specifically been directed to physically verify the ordinary residence by visiting the address given in Form 6 at night to ascertain that the concerned homeless person actually sleeps at the place as given in the Form," the law minister said, in response to a question which shows that many citizens of the country still did not have a roof over their head.

The address of a homeless person's night shelter will be considered as their home address

The response in Parliament ironically comes not long after the Supreme Court upheld a Haryana law banning those not having a functional toilet at home from contesting Panchayat polls.
Guinness is one of the most recognised stouts in the world.

But owner Diageo has had to react fast to defend the Black Stuff from a boom in craft beer. Back in 1759 when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease on Dublins St Jamess Gate brewery there was not much by way of innovation in Irish dry stout.

Fast forward 250 years and the craft beer industry is booming, with the number of breweries in Europe up more than 70 per cent since 2008 as entrepreneurs introducing bold flavours and cool packaging reinvigorate the declining industry.

Stout success: It has since rolled out a new Dublin Porter, West Indies Porter, Hop House 13 lager, and Guinness Nitro IPA

The established players have had to move fast to catch up. Just before Christmas Diageo (down 39.5p to 1817p) opened an experimental bar at the Guinness brewery as a hub for its master brewers to incubate new ideas.

This is meant to tap into the trend for something different. It has also dug up recipes from its archives and introduced a raft of variants using the Guinness badge.

It has rolled out a new Dublin Porter, West Indies Porter, Hop House 13 lager, and Guinness Nitro IPA.

Diageos global head of beer and Baileys Mark Sandys said their strategy is about putting [the brand] in the right places and having the right products so consumers drink it week in week out.
HSBC says cyber attack is not to blame for the account blackout

The banking giant has suffered IT glitch for two days running

HSBC online systems are suffering from a prolonged New Year's hangover as customers found themselves unable to access their accounts for the second day running.

Millions of business and personal customers with the high street giant are unable to log-in online to check accounts and make payments.

HSBC said a 'complex technical issue' was to blame and it was not a cyber attack.

Online problems: Up to 17m HSBC customers are currently struggling to access their account details online while its mobile app buckles under pressure of more people trying to log in

In an update this afternoon, John Hackett, HSBC's UK chief operating officer, said: 'Our customers continue to have issues with HSBC online and mobile banking. We profoundly apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

'We will ensure customers do not lose out as a result of this issue. Any fees customers incur as a result of this outage will be waived.

'There is a complex technical issue with our internet banking systems, and our IT team has been working non-stop since yesterday morning to find a solution. This has involved many tests, diagnostics and trial runs.

'We are getting closer to solving the problem, but are not there yet. We can, however, confirm this is not a cyber-attack or any other malicious act.

'We have mobilised all our available resources to cope with the increased customer demand in our call centres and branches, and they are doing their best; however, due to very heavy volumes we ask for your patience.

HSBC has one of the largest current account bases in the UK, with roughly 17million personal and business customers.

They were unable to access accounts from yesterday morning. Last night, HSBC said on social media website Twitter that online access was functioning again, but it appears to have failed once more this morning.

HSBC was hit by a major IT glitch in the summer of 2015 when 275,000 bank payments failed to go through just before the Bank Holiday weekend.

It says business customers who need to make urgent payments up to a daily limit of 100,000 can still call business telephone banking between 8am and 10pm on 03457 60 60 60.

Personal current account customers who need to make urgent payments can call personal telephone banking between 8am and 10pm on 03457 404 404.

Crucial time: Just after Christmas customers may be trying to pay bills and make essential payments

Customers flocked to Twitter to tell their tales of woe. Santhie Goundar (@santhiegoundar) said: 'Well, that's annoying. Thought I'd be super-organised and pay my tax bill to HMRC before the 31 Jan deadline but HSBC online banking is down.'

Simon Gardner (@SimonWork1) said: '@HSBC_UK this service is dreadful where is a statement on the web page about what is going on. Shocking communication. Poor poor poor.'

At the weekend, some NatWest customers' cards were declined at the tills after it suffered a technical breakdown.

NatWest/RBS suffered from one of the most infamous and prolonged outages back in 2012, where millions were left without their salaries and unable to withdraw cash for a number of days, which was blamed on a software update.

It was fined 56million in 2014 by the Finance Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority for the glitch.
A prosecutor told jurors Monday that a man charged with murder and racketeering in a Chinatown organized crime investigation was not the reformed bad boy he claimed to be during his testimony.

In her lengthy closing argument in a packed San Francisco courtroom, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Badger depicted defendant Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow, 55, as a cold-blooded killer and skilled liar.

Chow, on the other hand, presented himself as a reformed criminal during his testimony.

While he acknowledged serving more than seven years in prison after a 1978 armed robbery conviction, and admitted formerly running an escort service, dealing cocaine and being involved in a street gang, he claimed that upon his release from prison in 1989 for a second time, he got jobs at a supermarket and law office.

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Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow is accused of arranging hits on rivals and gangsters but he says he meditates and is working on his memoir

Chow said after engaging in meditation, he decided to renounce criminal activity and focused instead on writing his biography.

The prosecutor strongly disagreed with his version of his life.

'He is not the victim here,' Badger said during her nearly four-hour presentation Monday morning. 'He is not the world's most misunderstood criminal.'

'The evidence is that Raymond Chow was a vicious gangster,' said Badger. 'Raymond Chow was not a changed man after he got out of prison. Raymond Chow has been planning for this defense  since he was discharged from prison.'

The prosecution finished its closing argument in the case that previously ensnared former State Sen. Leland Yee and former school board member Keith Jackson.

Raymond 'Shrimp Boy' Chow is accused of running one of the biggest crime syndicates in Chinatown but he says prosecutors hounded him as he tried to start a new life out of prison

Yee and Jackson committed a series of crimes to further Yees political ambitions. The two have since pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges.

Yee, a vocal gun control advocate, was accused of buying automatic firearms and shoulder-launched missiles from an extremist group located in the southern Philippines and attempting to re-sell those weapons to an undercover FBI agent.

He was also accused of accepting a $10,000 bribe from an undercover agent in exchange for using his influence to try and get a contract with the California Department of Public Health.

Prosecutors have said Chow took over a Chinese crime syndicate, Ghee Kung Tong, after having its previous leader killed and ran an enterprise that engaged in drug trafficking, money laundering and the sale of stolen cigarettes and alcohol.

FROM STABBING A MAN AGED NINE, TO A DEADLY SHOOTOUT AT 17: THE VERY SHADY PAST OF RAYMOND 'SHRIMP BOY' CHOW Raymond Chow, born in Hong Kong in 1960, was involved in gang life from a very early age, joining a branch of the Triads in his home country, where he stabbed a man age nine. In 1976, at the age of 16, he came to San Francisco, where he quickly became involved in underground activity in the states. According to his testimony and news reports at the time, he became an enforcer for, and later leader of, the Hop Sing Boys - involved in shaking down gambling halls and prostitution. Despite his diminutive 5ft 5in stature, from where he gets his nickname, he became one of the most feared mobsters of the time. In 1977, just a year after arriving in San Francisco, he was involved in an infamous shootout in the city's Chinatown neighborhood, which had been trying to shake off its crime connections for years. As part of a gang war involving illegal fireworks, gunmen burst into the Golden Dragon restaurant where Chow and his associated were eating, before opening fire. Five innocent people were killed as the gangsters exchanged hails of bullets, while 11 others were wounded. Chow escaped unhurt. The following year Chow had his first brush with the prison system, sentenced to 11 years in San Quentin on armed robbery charges. He was released early after cooperating with police, a tactic he would use multiple times over the years, but quickly found himself back inside on weapons charges. When he was released from that sentence in 1989, the FBI first began following him, and in 1992 he and 19 others were charged with racketeering for trying to bring several Asian gangs together under the umbrella of Triad gang Wo Hop To, in Hong Kong. Again convicted on gun charges he was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but in 2001 he ratted on partner Peter Chong in return for a reduced sentence, and got out in 2003. Claiming to have reformed his life, Chow became an anti-gang school speaker and was often filmed talking to tourists about his past, with clips of him still on YouTube. He was pictured with mayors and prominent campaigners, though the FBI refused to believe he had gone straight, and in 2010 they sent undercover agents in to investigate - ultimately culminating in the charges he faces today. Advertisement

He is charged in the 2006 slaying of then-dragonhead (or 'Godfather') Allen Leung and Jimmy Tat Kong, an alleged gangster who was allegedly involved in growing marijuana before he was found dead in a minivan in rural Mendocino County in 2013, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

Chow's lead attorney, J. Tony Serra, told jurors at the start of his closing argument that prosecutors had not proven their allegations.

'If you convict this man on the nature and quality of the evidence that has been produced, you will be convicting an innocent person,' Serra said.

The investigation was spearheaded by an undercover FBI agent posing as a member of an East Coast crime syndicate.

He testified that he spent hours with Chow and people connected to him at fancy restaurants and nightclubs, recording many of their conversations.

The agent, who testified under a pseudonym to protect his identity, said Chow tried to distance himself from any criminal activity - court transcripts showed he would repeatedly say things like 'No, no, don't tell me about any criminal activity,' and 'Stop doing illegal stuff.'

The years-long probe ended up snagging former state Senator Leland Yee, who faces up to 20 years in prison

But the agent said he repeatedly accepted money after introducing the agent to money launderers.

The probe led to the indictment of more than two dozen people in 2014 and the subsequent racketeering conviction of state Sen. Leland Yee.

Yee faces up to 20 years in prison.

Chow testified to dealing drugs and getting involved in a street gang but said he decided to renounce criminal activity after engaging in meditation.

He denied involvement in the slayings and said the agent gave him the money because the agent was looking out for him, not in exchange for criminal activity.
Chris Christie used a variety of terms today to knock Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, except the most obvious one  the candidate's name.

'Showtime is over,' the New Jersey governor told the crowd gathered at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. 'We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief.'

Christie is positioning himself as a viable alternative to the billionaire businessman and former reality television star as the first primary contests are just weeks away.

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Chris Christie didn't name names, but said the country didn't need an 'entertainer-in-chief' and that 'showtime' was over. Perhaps he was talking about former reality star Donald Trump?

Chris Christie is seeing a good return in his investment in New Hampshire, as he's now fourth place in most polls, way behind Trump, but in striking distance of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

Christie has been gaining steam in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary.

He's averaging fourth place in the polls, behind Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, though he's increasingly been within striking distance of both Rubio and Cruz.

The New Jersey governor's campaign, which was once on life support, could get a ticket out of the Granite State, especially if he bites off Rubio's establishment support.

Today in New Hampshire, it was Trump Christie was more focused on.

Trump, a week before, had called out Christie's economic record and suggested he was behind the closure of the George Washington Bridge, the central action in the 'bridge-gate' scandal, which Christie has denied being aware of.

'His state is No. 50 out of 50 economically,' Trump said.

'How could they close down the largest and most traveled bridge in the U.S. and he didn't know about it?' the billionaire also mused.

The Republican frontrunner also said Christie was 'like a little boy,' mocking the way the New Jersey governor embraced President Barack Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Christie hinted to today's crowd that it's really Trump who's the child.

The governor noted how these are 'dangerous, perilous times' with challenges that 'demand a grown-up.'

But Christie also split the difference between Trump, the loud-mouthed outsider, and Rubio, a sitting U.S. senator, and thus a Washington insider.

All that time spent campaigning in New Hampshire, however, is being noticed by voters in his home state of New Jersey. The Wall Street Journal reported that Christie was out-of-state 72 percent of the time last year

'If we are going to turn our frustration and anger with the D.C. insiders, the politicians of yesterday and the carnival barkers of today into something that actually changes American lives, we must elect someone who has been tested,' Christie told the crowd. 'Someone with proven experience.'

'Someone who knows how to make decisions because he has been making them for years, in the middle of the firefight between big government liberalism and our brand of freedom loving conservatism,' the governor added, touting his red state-approved record in a blue state.

But it's his day job  or the fact that he's spent so much time away from it campaigning in New Hampshire  that could cause Christie some real trouble.

He and Rubio traded barbs on the topic just last week.

To Christie's 'dude, show up,' mocking Rubio for missing Senate votes, he received a, 'you know, Chris has been missing in New Jersey for half the time,' the Florida senator countered.

The Wall Street Journal reported on it too, writing that Christie spent 261 partial or full days traveling outside of New Jersey, or 72 percent of the year.

Christie was understanding of the criticism, but countered on Fox News Sunday that he's been governing from the road.
ISIS has murdered a female journalist after accusing her of being a spy, activists have confirmed.

Ruqia Hassan often posted information about the daily lives of residents living under ISIS in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

Writing under the pen name Nissan Ibrahim, Ms Hassan's posts described how the city was targeted by coalition airstrikes on a regular basis.

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Journalist: Ms Hassan's family were only informed of her death three days ago and were told she was found guilty of carrying out counts of espionage

It is unclear when the young journalist was first arrested by ISIS militants but her last Twitter post was on July 21 last year. Her death was confirmed by an activist from Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.

'Go ahead and cut off the internet, our messenger pigeons won't complain,' Ms Hassan wrote for the final time, maintaining her good sense of humour and hope even during the most difficult of times.

Her family were only informed of her death three days ago and were told she was found guilty of carrying out counts of espionage.

Murdered: Ruqia Hassan regularly posted information about the daily lives of residents living under ISIS in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa

ISIS has been carrying out a ruthless murder campaign to silence anyone who might be speaking out against their rule or providing intelligence information about their movements in Raqqa.

The jihadi group has previously posted videos showing the execution of members from Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.

Several members of the group have also been assassinated in Turkey by ISIS militants.

ISIS's latest video showed a British fighter taking part in the execution of five Syrian men accused of carrying out acts of espionage.

Each of the men are forced to give an account of why they were charged with spying.

Executions: The terror group's captives (pictured), dressed in orange jumpsuits, were filmed 'confessing' in Arabic to spying for British security service

Warning: ISIS also threatened David Cameron in the video in which it executes five suspected spies (pictured)

The victims give their names and briefly discuss the details of their so-called offences  presumably under duress.

Although their identities could not be verified, among them was Umaar Hamud al-Ja'far, 30, from Raqqa, who said he supplied information about the city's topography. Another victim, Ubi Muhammad Abdul Ghani, 26, said he undertook covert surveillance.

Faisal Hamud al-Ja'far, 25, said he was also from Raqqa and stated he was paid money to open an internet cafe in the city.
The behavior is routine during mating season

They are hailed as the cuddliest critters in Australia, but a video has emerged that shows koalas can turn hostile when push comes to shove.

The footage from a suburban street in Adelaide Hills, South Australia, begins with a pair of the emblematic marsupials in the throes of a heated battle on the side of a gum tree.

The larger male koala can be seen wrestling the smaller female down as she shrieks in protest, before pushing her off the trunk and sending her toppling onto the floor.

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A-paw-ling: The larger male koala wrestles the female off her gum tree and sends her sprawling onto the floor

Devastated with her loss of territory, the displaced animal crouches on her hind legs and howls out in a heart-wrenching display.

The marsupial makes a last ditch effort to regain her lost territory, only to be shoved back down once more and appearing to sob.

But it seems the encounter had a happy ending, as the description for the video reveals the female managed to 'reclaim the tree by nightfall.'

While the clash is a far-cry from the marsupials cute reputation, this behaviour is routine during mating season, when koalas come to blows over breeding.

Sydney Taronga Zoo koala keeper Laura Jones told Daily Mail Australia the male koala is making an unwanted advance on the female, who screams to tell him 'she isn't interested.'

From August to February, amorous male koalas often square off with competitors as well as disinterested females who reject their advances.

The displaced animal crouches on her hind legs and howls in a heart-wrenching display

The female marsupial makes a last ditch effort to regain her lost territory, but to no avail
Oregon Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr and his son Steven handed themselves over to federal custody on Monday.

Our exclusive photos captured the moment the pair - who hit the headlines after an armed militia occupied a federal building in their name - arrived at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, just before 2pm.

Mr Hammond, 74, and his son Steven, 46, were convicted of setting fires in 2001 and 2006 on lands managed by the US Bureau of Land Management and served time after admitting they started the fires to prevent the growth of invasive plants into their land.

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Oregon Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr (right, in blue) and his son Steven (left, in plaid) have handed themselves in to federal authorities at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California on Monday afternoon

Dwight Hammond, 74, and his son Steven, 46, were convicted of setting fires in 2001 and 2006 on lands managed by the US Bureau of Land Management. They served time, but a judge ruled that they had to finish their five-year mandatory sentence

Dwight (left) and Steven (right) Hammond made headlines on Saturday after a rally was held for them in of Burns, Oregon on Saturday. After the rally, armed militiamen took over a federal building in their behalf

Arson on federal land carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, but after the Hammonds were originally sentenced, they argued that the five-year rule was unconstitutional, and the trial court agreed and imposed lesser sentences.

But, in a statement from the US Attorney's Office, federal law was eventually upheld.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, upheld the federal law, reasoning that given the seriousness of arson, a five-year sentence is not grossly disproportionate to the offense", it said.

The court vacated the original, unlawful sentences and ordered that the Hammonds be re-sentenced in compliance with the law",

The Hammonds were driven to the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in San Pedro in a black Audi SUV.

Once at the gate the men were seen hugging family members and saying their goodbyes.

Two federal prison officers then escorted the Hammonds in to the prison building to be processed.

Dwight and Steven Hammond (pictured above) said that they had nothing to do with the rally or occupation

The men (Steven Hammond pictured above) were seen hugging family members (pictured) before turning themselves in

Both men embraced family members as they peacefully turned themselves over to federal authorities on Monday

Family spokesperson Karyn Gallen, who said she is Steven Hammonds cousin and was with the men outside prison, said: Theres a lot of supportive and loving people who have stepped up to support the Hammonds.

The family has been able to make arrangements for their ranch to be looked after.

Its very surreal, I cant imagine what my cousin is going through and his wife and three children.

The Hammonds have always been about family first. The last 48 hours has been about family.

For family matriarch Susan Hammond, she said her goodbyes to husband Dwight and son Steven on Sunday.

She told Daily Mail Online: They left on Sunday, San Pedro is a long way from here. They flew down there.

When asked if she was concerned for her boys, Mrs Hammond simply said yes, before saying she wasnt allowed to say any more.

The two men hit the headlines over the weekend after a rally was held for them in the town of Burns, Oregon on Saturday, which has led to an armed militia occupying the headquarters of the federally owned Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The militia took control of the refuge building in Princeton claiming it belongs to the people, not to the government.

It was a symbolic gesture to defend the freedom of the Hammonds.

Ammon Bundy and his militia members are holding up in Malheur National Wildlife refuge building to protest the prosecution of two ranchers

Ammon Bundy said he had med the Hammonds (Dwight pictured left and Steven right) 'many, many times'. He would not answer questions about whether the Hammond family supported his occupation

Dwight (center) and Steven (left) Hammond walked in to the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in San Pedro after saying their farewells

In a surprise statement on Sunday, the Hammonds hit out at the protesters, rejecting their support and insisting they plan to comply with local government agencies.

But the occupation's leader Ammon Bundy - son of famed rancher and anti-government protester Cliven Bundy - insisted Monday morning, 'we understand each other' and they plan to stand there 'indefinitely'.

Bundy said at a press conference Monday that the occupying group is called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and its purpose is to restore and defend the Constitution.

Bundy also claimed he came to Burns about eight weeks ago and met with the Hammonds many, many times.

I watched them in tears multiple times, he said.

But he wouldnt answer questions around whether the family is supporting the group's armed protest.

Family spokesperson Karyn Gallen, who is Steven Hammonds cousin, was with the men before they headed into the prison

Gallen said her family has been supportive of the Hammonds, and that arrangements have been made for their ranch to be looked over

Earlier today Daily Mail Online visited the refuge, which lies about 60 miles south of the town of Burns and is only accessible via an icy lakeside road banked with snow.

An SUV blocked the access road to the refuge and a man with a goatee beard and wraparound sunglasses stood guard.

All guns were hidden as the group has seemingly become wise to their media image.

The guard initially refused us entry to the federally owned facility.

But after our reporter explained we planned to go down there anyway he reluctantly waved us through.

The facility, comprised of several office buildings and outbuildings, was quiet.

We approached the main office building and knocked on the back door.

A burly bearded man answered and would only give his name as Raging Unicorn.

Yesterday it was Fluffy Unicorn, he said.

Later he revealed he is in fact Cliven and Ammon Bundys personal bodyguard.

Ammon Bundy(center-R), leader of a group of armed anti-government protesters, arrives to speak to the media as other members look on at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on Monday

Ammon Bundy(right) speaks to the media from the refuge center. FBI sought a peaceful end to the occupation by armed anti-government militia members at a US federal wildlife reserve in rural Oregon, as the standoff entered its third day

LaVoy Finicum addresses the media on Monday during the same press conference in which Ammon Bundy spoke

Jon Ritzheimer, left, and Blaine Cooper, both from Arizona, at the protest in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

Jon Ritzheimer, 32, shows a family picture on his phone to the media at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters

A sign of the National Wildlife Refuge System is seen at an entry of the wildlife refuge, where some vehicles are seen used to block access to the inside of the refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns on Sunday

Im a retired United States marine, I can rage, he said.

When I asked if we could come in to take a look at where they are sleeping and their supplies, the man said: No thats logistical security issues that we cant have happen, head count cant be divulged for security purposes.

The man told us to wait for the scheduled 11am press conference.

He added: We are one of the last countries that has the ability to stand on its back bone because of the second amendment, he added.

The militia has also taken over an observation tower, normally used by staff at the wildlife refuge to monitor local wildlife and look out for wild fires.

Today two armed sentries are posted in the tower.

Daily Mail Online tried to climb the tower to get a better viewpoint of the facility.

But Raging Unicorn screamed for us to get down.

Now we are at a cross hair where my men and photographs of aerial reconnaissance or photography is now putting peoples lives in jeopardy and I will be upset,' he said, adding: 'I dont know what the hell could happen, they could be out there with snipers and not know who you are.

The Bundys later emerged for an 11am press conference at which they re-stated the goals of their protest.

Ryan Bundy talks on the phone at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, on Sunday. He is one of the many occupying the refuge to object to a prison sentence for local ranchers for burning federal land

Ammon Bundy walks with fellow militiamen after his press conference. The loose-knit band of farmers, ranchers and survivalists -- whose action was sparked by the jailing of two ranchers for arson -- said they would not rule out violence if authorities stormed the site

Ammon Bundy(C), leader of a group of armed anti-government protesters, returns to the headquarters building after speaking to the media on Monday
Foreign citizens who make often spurious claims of mistreatment against British troops should be banned from claiming legal aid, top military brass demanded last night.

As anger over the inquiry into UK soldiers behaviour during the 2003 Iraq War intensified, they said ambulance-chasing law firms should not be handed taxpayers money.

They also demanded an inquiry into the firms and said they should be prosecuted for using agents, such as Abu Jamal, who persuaded a grieving widow to mount a claim against the MoD in the aftermath of the war.

The practice of touting for business is a breach of the Solicitors Code of Conduct whether it is undertaken by the firm or an agent working for them.

Foreign citizens who make often spurious claims of mistreatment against British troops should be banned from claiming legal aid, top military brass demanded last night

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander in Afghanistan, said: We need to deny legal aid to foreign citizens making claims against our troops. This is the major factor that encourages so many of these cases.

They [law firms] should be prosecuted if they are found to be breaking the law and struck off if they are breaking the Solicitors Code of Conduct.

The Government needs to find a better way of stopping all of these fraudulent claims coming in and filtering out the genuine ones.

LAWYERS GRABBING PUBLIC CASH Phil Shiners Public Interest Lawyers made its name pursuing soldiers over alleged Iraq War crimes. In 2008, Mr Shiner alleged soldiers had executed, tortured and mutilated innocent Iraqis after a ferocious firefight, dubbed the Battle of Danny Boy. But in 2014 the claims, also put forward by firm Leigh Day and which prompted a 31million public inquiry known as the Al-Sweady inquiry, were denounced as lies by a judge. PIL received around 3million in public money for the inquiry and now represents more than 1,000 Iraqis who say they are victims of British abuse. Leigh Day currently has nearly 900 outstanding claims alleging negligence by soldiers. Referring to the Al-Sweady inquiry last year, Martyn Day, who runs the firm, said: We do high-profile cases. We make big enemies. When they get a chance, they have a go at us. Advertisement

Admiral Lord West, former First Sea Lord, said: Far from having a five-year review into British soldiers, of which many of the claims turn out to be totally spurious, I would like to have a short and sharp thorough investigation of all the law firms in this.

I know from my contacts in Iraq that it is quite clear agents are turning up on peoples door steps, saying we gather your son, husband was injured, and telling them we know how you can claim money for this.

We need to chase this up and follow the agents and prosecute law firms using the agents where necessary.

Today hundreds of veterans will march to Westminster to call for an immediate end to the harassment of soldiers, many of whom are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Yesterday it emerged that the number of cases being examined by the 145-strong Iraq Historical Allegations Team (IHAT) has passed the 1,500 mark. Despite no convictions, the probe will drag on until 2019 at the earliest and will cost tens of millions of pounds.

Last night Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said lawyers should no longer be mounting spurious claims against war heroes which he said was a completely unacceptable attempt to abuse our legal system to falsely impugn our Armed Forces.

He added: We made a clear manifesto commitment to ensure that our Armed Forces are not subjected to persistent legal claims that undermine their ability to do their job. We are now working to deliver precisely that.

Mr Fallons comments came as it emerged the law firms have been sending duplicate submissions to the inquiry looking into Iraqi claims.

As anger over the inquiry into UK soldiers behaviour during the 2003 Iraq War intensified, they said ambulance-chasing law firms should not be handed taxpayers money

Legal firms Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) and Leigh Day  both receiving legal aid  have tried to launch more than 2,000 claims alleging criminality by the Armed Forces. But one third of their cases have been knocked back.

Many of the estimated 750 cases submitted to the 57million IHAT were thrown out because the death was already being examined. Some duplicate cases alleging torture and unlawful killings featured different spellings of the name of the same dead Iraqi.

LAWYERS USING THE 1998 HUMAN RIGHTS ACT TO HOUND ARMED FORCES Lawyers are using the 1998 Human Rights Act to relentlessly hound the Armed Forces. Under the Act, Britain has an obligation to investigate allegations of murder, abuse and torture. A High Court judgment in May 2013 said that in cases where a prosecution did not result, an inquisitorial inquiry modelled on a coroners inquest would also be needed. This means that even once the cases have been concluded by IHAT, the scrutiny of soldiers actions on the battlefield does not stop. Cases where no criminal activity has been found, and there is not enough evidence to prosecute a soldier for murder or manslaughter, can then be referred to the Iraq Fatality Investigation so families can receive compensation. Two cases have been completed at a cost of at least 400,000 to the taxpayer. At least one family is awaiting a huge pay-out. Advertisement

There is no evidence to suggest that PIL, run by Phil Shiner, or Leigh Day submitted duplicate cases deliberately. But it casts even further doubt on the authenticity of the claims and reveals how taxpayers money is potentially being squandered.

A Leigh Day spokesman said IHAT never suggested there had been confusion or duplication surrounding its claims. A PIL spokesman denied the allegations and said the amount of duplicate cases was less than 1 per cent of the total number of cases.

A spokesman added: No PIL cases have been dismissed.

The Ministry of Defence said: 'We believe that people should only benefit from civil legal aid if they have a strong connection to the UK.
Of all the horrific images bombarding the West from the Islamic State propaganda machine, the five-second clip of a British child in army fatigues is as chilling as any.

At the end of the most recent barbaric video, which shows the cold-blooded execution of five men accused of spying for Britain by their own side in Syria, the camera cuts to a small boy, no more than five or six years old.

While this video is horrifying, the terror group using children to further their brutal regime is nothing new.

The child soldier who has threatened the UK with new atrocities in a chilling ISIS execution video is believed to be the son of notorious Jihadi bride Grace 'Khadijah' Dare

In 2014, Dare posted a shocking photograph to her Twitter account of her then four-year-old son Isa, meaning 'Jesus', holding an AK-47 rifle. He bears a remarkable similarity to the child in the latest propaganda video

What the West often fails to understand is that when the so-called Islamic State (IS) seized power in Syrian cities in 2013, it did not begin with military might. It simply colonised the schools.

Its emissaries were sent to schools in Aleppo, where they used money as well as forceful argument to persuade the staff to teach their extreme interpretation of the Koran. This was the first building block of its 'state'.

At the same time, it set about building orphanages. Syria is a country full of orphans, where the remaining adults are often unable to feed and protect their own children, let alone anyone else's. When IS commanders offered to look after these orphans, it was a tempting proposition.

But IS doesn't care for children from any humanitarian impulse. It sees these orphans as its new generation, who will grow up knowing nothing but propaganda and indoctrination.

One Syrian rebel, who has seen the colonisation of schools by IS at first hand, told me: 'Syrian society is producing a new kind of extremist  an unpredictable kind. This is a new experience  and when some of them go to Europe and America and explode themselves, don't ask us why.'

Some of the schools double as military training camps. It is never hard to get children interested in playing with guns, and their tutors take full advantage of this.

ISIS have used child soldiers from Russia, Kazkhastan and France as executors in jihadi videos

In late November 2014, ISIS released a slickly made video of Kazakh child soldiers training in Syria

Some of the children look as young as four or five-years-old and can barely carry their weapons

The training camp shows the young recruits being taught close combat skills

ISIS have released video footage of youngsters undergoing the same military drills practiced by the men

In 2014, in northern Syria, I was the first Western journalist to meet two Kurdish boys  aged 14 and 16  who escaped from one of these training camps where they were held with 184 other youngsters. They said their teachers were not Syrian and could be brutal, sometimes beating them, but on the other hand the food was better than what their parents could give them.

The jihadis split the children into groups of about five and appointed a captain for each. This created a pecking order, a military hierarchy, which increases discipline.

The Kurdish parents were suspicious of the changes in their children when they returned from these camps. Many thought the youngsters had swallowed some of the ideology. In some cases, however, it's hard for parents to prevent their sons from being taken away, not least because the jihadis pay them  money that can mean survival for the rest of the family.

Furthermore, the IS fighters believe what they preach so fiercely that they are ready to die for it  and it is difficult to argue against that intensity of commitment.

The children at these camps are usually aged between seven and 15, and their parents are told that they will not be sent to the front line. Instead, they will be used in safer roles such as guarding checkpoints, sentry duty and so on.

But this simply isn't true. Especially as IS loses ground and personnel as it is doing at the moment, children are being rapidly promoted in all aspects of military operation. It seems they are made to feel comfortable around adult fighters and in military environments. This was highlighted to me two years ago when I was speaking on the phone with a British jihadi in Raqqa, Syria  a man named Kabir Ahmed.

Ahmed broke off, saying that a child  clearly relaxed enough to approach this adult soldier  had brought him a lollipop. It was not uncommon to see children around the men's training bases, he told me. (Five months after I interviewed him, Ahmed killed himself in a suicide bomb attack.)

The children are also brought to relaxation centres known as the 'maqar', where jihadis unwind before going into battle.

But it is not only the adult fighters who are sent to die. I talked to a Syrian rebel in Aleppo who said that after gunfights it was not a rare sight to find the corpses of young teenagers on the battlefield. There are also documented cases of children as young as 12 being used as suicide bombers.

Khadijah Dare travelled to Syria with her young son Isa in 2013. She was married to Swedish fighter until he was killed in battle

Dare is married to a Swedish Islamic fighter called Abu Bakr, and is reported to be a convert who previously attended a mosque in South London. The couple are pictured with their child in a Channel 4 report in 2013

The footage shows Dare and another veiled woman going about daily life in Syria. She told reporters she can use a Kalashnikov and would like to fight, but has had to settle for the life of a jihadi's wife

What is especially shocking is that some of these children come from Britain. It is incomprehensible for most people to imagine why anyone  however deluded  would want to take their child to a war zone. It's especially difficult to fathom leaving a democratic, First World country such as our own.

There is no definite figure as to how many families have left Britain to join IS. My vague estimate would be several dozen. One such example was last July, when 12 members of the Mannan family from Luton confirmed they'd reached Syria to join IS  and urged other Muslims to do the same.

Another family of six  father Asif Malik, mother Sara Kiran and their four children aged from one to seven  were also thought to be travelling to Syria when they left their Berkshire home in April last year.

Adult British newcomers to the 'caliphate' are of little more than propaganda value. But children brought from the West are very different.

Volunteers are encouraged to bring their young families because IS is trying to build a generation of children without borders who know no nation and have no allegiance  not to Britain, not to Syria.

That's a whole new kind of stateless human being. It brings us back to that image of Syria as a country filled with orphans. As they grow up, brainwashed, the plan is for them to be capable of anything for the global Islamist cause.

IS knows the terrifying effect of that small boy in the video, stating that he wants to attack us. There is no more elemental fear to strike into Western hearts. That is why Islamic State is doing it.
He comes from money, has an enviable property portfolio  and together with his wife is thought to be worth more than 30million.

But even the substantial family fortune has apparently not allayed David Camerons fears that his children could struggle to get on the housing ladder.

The Prime Minister admitted his worries as he set out plans to boost the number of homes available by paying developers to build on public land.

Mr Cameron, who owns two homes with a combined worth of around 4.5million, said he was concerned his children Nancy, 11, Elwen, nine, and Florence, five, could struggle to afford property in future.

Tense: David Cameron and Zac Goldsmith attend a meeting with Bellway executives on the site of a new housing development in Barking, east London

Asked whether he feared his children would be shut out of home ownership, he told LBC radio: I absolutely worry about it. This is why this is the first announcement I have made in 2016 of a series of steps to build more homes.

Mr Cameron added: All of us who own our own homes, you can remember the magic of that first moment, the first set of keys.

I want this to be a country where if you work hard, youre putting the hours in, you should be able to own a flat or a house of your own.

The maximum income for first-time buyers to get help through a shared ownership scheme will rise to 90,000  a very high joint sum, Mr Cameron conceded.

But he said this showed just how unaffordable housing had become, particularly in the capital.

Tory London mayoral hopeful Zac Goldsmith met property developers in the capital alongside Mr Cameron to discuss the issue.

The pairs relations have been strained of late, with the Prime Minister frustrated that billionaire heir Mr Goldsmith has shown no gratitude after being groomed as a rising star ahead of the 2010 election.

Asked whether he feared his children would be shut out of home ownership, Mr Cameron said he 'absolutely' worried about it

The Prime Minister visited a Bellway housing development in Barking, east London, on Monday

Meanwhile Mr Goldsmith, MP for Richmond, has criticised the Government over proposals to expand Heathrow Airport.

Mr Cameron managed to buy his first home aged just 25 in 1992  a smart one-bedroom flat in Notting Hill for 130,000. The same flat would be worth up to 1.4million today.

His two current properties are a terraced house in North Kensington, West London, which is worth upwards of 3.5million, and his large constituency house in Oxfordshire, called The Barn Cottage, worth more than 1million.

He and wife Samanthas combined fortune was estimated by Philip Beresford, compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List, in 2007.

He said: I put the combined family wealth of David and Samantha Cameron at 30million plus.

But the key phrase is family wealth.
Facebook post has been shared thousands of times and

The undercover vehicle was pulling over motorists on the Gold

An image of an unmarked police car patrolling with what appears to be a broken tail-light has triggered a heated social media backlash.

The undercover police car was spotted pulling over unwitting motorists in the Gold Coasts Upper Coometra on December 30, before being uploaded to Facebook.

Katii Peachey spotted the car pulling over the vehicle in front of her, despite having a rear tail-light which appears to be broken and held up with duct tape.

The unmarked police car can be seen with what appears to be a broken rear tail-light held up with duct tape

Katii Peachey spotted the car pulling over the vehicle in front of her on the Gold Coast

'Undercover cop car in upper Coomera today including dodgy taillight with gaffer tape fix,' the post reads.

The post was shared over 1,700 times and garnered an array of outraged comments slamming the sneaky officers responsible, with one claiming it is disgusting for police to stoop this low.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Queensland Police for comment.

It comes just two weeks after controversy erupted over 'My Family' stickers spotted on an unmarked another unmarked police car on the Gold Coast.

Jake Boehm saw a Hyundai i40 - with 'My Family' stickers stuck on the rear window - in Surfers Paradise on Boxing Day and shared the photo on Facebook.

'Saw an undercover police car disguised as a family wagon with the My Family stickers on the back, how is this even legal?' he wrote.

Two weeks ago Jake Boehm uploaded a snap of a police car disguised with 'My Family' stickers

Mr Boehm's post prompted other people to publish their own photos of disguised police vehicles spotted around Queensland's Gold Coast

Mr Boehm formerly told Daily Mail Australia he wanted to alert motorists to what police were doing.

'I think it's almost entrapment really. It's pretty cheeky. I personally think they shouldn't be allowed to do it,' he said.

Mr Boehm said he understood the reaction to his photograph was mixed, however he pointed out that many people held his view and were sharing the photo to warn others about the police's latest tactics.

'They're going around pretending to be a family car and looking out for people doing the wrong thing, and it's more revenue raising,' he said.

The picture was shared more than 10,000 times, sparking heated social media debates around the incident.

Unmarked Gold Coast police vehicles have been spotted disguised with P-plates, baby mobiles and roof racks with ladders

Reaction to Gold Coast police disguising their unmarked vehicles has been mixed on social media

'These unmarked/disguised vehicles do so much less to deter speeding etc than marked cars do. It also does not help with the public view of revenue raising as it is perceived as a sneaky tactic,' another person wrote.

Unmarked Gold Coast police vehicles have previously been spotted disguised with P-plates, baby mobiles and roof racks with ladders.

'There is nothing to stop over-enthusiastic police adding extra disguises to their cars,' Gold Coast Road Policing Unit boss Senior Sergeant Bradyn told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Mel Gibson will be a presenter at the Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles this Sunday.

The annual awards show hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which honors both film and television revealed the news that Gibson would be part of the show on Twitter.

The news was met with immediate outrage by many on the social media site.

'Mel Gibson? What are you, desperate?' wrote on person on Twitter.

Another was a bit more blunt, writing; 'Mel f***ing Gibson? You guys must be out of your minds.'

Host Rickey Gervais also weighed in, writing; 'Mel Gibson is presenting an award at The Golden Globes. Thank you Jesus.'

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Big news: Mel Gibson will present at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday (left at the 2010 show, right in July)

This Sunday's show will be a reunion of sorts for Gibson and Gervais as the actor, 60, last presented at the show in 2010 when the British funnyman first hosted.

Gervais introduced Gibson by saying; 'I like a drink as much as the next man, unless the next man in Mel Gibson.'

Gibson played along with the bit, and came out slurring his words.

The appearance on Sunday could be the start of Gibson trying to rehabilitate his image after being charged with drunk driving in 2006 and allegedly saying to the arresting officer at the time; 'Fu**ing Jews... the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?'

Then, in July 2010, Gibson's girlfriend at the time Oksana Grigorieva recorded him in phone conversations in which he allegedly used both racial and homophobic slurs.

Shade: Gibson previously presented in 2010 and was mocked by host Ricky Gervais, who said; 'I like a drink as much as the next man, unless the next man in Mel Gibson'

His career in the aftermath of these incidents cooled down, with the actor taking small roles in films including The Expendables 3 and Machete Kills.

It was a massive fall from grace for the two-time Oscar winner, who seems to now be hoping to restart his career.

He is set to star in the film Blood Father next year alongside William H. Macy and Elisabeth Rohm, and will also be releasing his most recent work as a director, the film Hacksaw Ridge.

That film features a star studded A-list cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Rachel Griffiths, and Teresa Palmer.
Claims Avery's aggressive behavior seeking out Halbach and DNA clues were skimmed over in the true-crime expose

However, many have now accused the show of filtering out vital evidence which paints the convicted killers in a bad light

It's the latest cult TV show and became a sensation across America over the holidays - but Netflix's Making a Murderer is now under fire for leaving vital evidence out of its 'documentary' coverage.

The 10-episode Netflix series revolves around the murder of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach, 25, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey were convicted in March 2007 and have remained imprisoned since.

However, the series - following in the footsteps of the acclaimed true-crime shows Serial and HBO's The Jinx - has raised questions over the convictions and has prompted nearly 250,000 to sign petitions demanding the pair's release.

Now, those who believe the convictions were correct are fighting back claiming the popular show purposely excluded evidence which painted Avery in a bad light.

According to those close to the case, this evidence includes the fact Avery met Halbach wearing just a towel and called her three times on the day she disappeared.

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Steven Avery's December 2015 mugshot is seen here. Avery's case has received much media attention after appearing in the Netflix program Making a Murderer

Both petitions have directly appealed to President Obama to pardon Avery and Dassey (pictured right), who were both convicted in March 2007 in the death of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach

Halbach first went to Avery's home in 2005 to feature him in a photo shoot commissioned by AutoTrader.

Ken Kratz, the ex-Calumet County District Attorney told People, he met her 'just wearing a towel' and left her terrified.

'She was creeped out [by him]. She [went to her employer and] said she would not go back because she was scared of him,' Kratz said.

According to the New York Daily News, the trial did not include the incident because a judge's ruling over the lack of details.

Kratz told People that Avery later requested that AutoTrader magazine dispatch 'that same girl who was here last time' on October 31, 2005.

Halbach went missing that same day.

Kratz told People that as a way to get Halbach to show up, Avery provided the phone number and name of his sister.

None of Halbach's (pictured) DNA was ever discovered inside of Avery's home, where the prosecution claimed she was raped and shot in the head

The 10-episode documentary revolving around Avery and Dassey's murder trial for 25-year-old Halbach's murder in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, has become a sensation over the holidays

Avery had been in prison for 18 years when DNA evidence exonerated him of a 1985 sexual assault conviction. It was after his release and a lawsuit against cops that he was arrested for Halbach's murder

Kratz also claims phone records have been left out of the popular series.

He told People: 'Phone records show three calls from Avery to Teresa's cell phone on Oct. 31.One at 2:24 [p.m.], and one at 2:35  both calls Avery uses the *67 feature so Teresa doesn't know it him... both placed before she arrives.

'Then one last call at 4:35 p.m., without the *67 feature.

'Avery first believes he can simply say she never showed up... so tries to establish the alibi call after she's already been there, hence the 4:35 call.

'She will never answer of course, so he doesn't need the *67 feature for that last call,' he said.

Kratz stepped down regarding a sexting scandal.

The Change.org petition, which has received tens of thousands of signatures, was created by a Colorado resident who said he was 'outraged' after viewing the documentary

That petition, however, was changed Monday to address Gov. Scott Walker as well. Michael Seyedian wrote: 'Gov. Walker has the legal authority to pardon Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey'

On Milwaukee has also reported how the show skims over the traces of Avery's sweat found in Halbach's car.

'Avery's blood was found in six places in the Halbach vehicle, and DNA from his sweat was found on a hood latch,' it reports.

Making a Murderer does talk about police maybe placing his blood in the vehicle, the New York Daily News noted.

DNA belonging to Halbach was also found on a bullet that lined up with one of Avery's guns.

On Milwaukee also reports how handcuffs and leg irons were found in Avery's house, but Avery said they were meant for his girlfriend Jodi -- and they did not have Halbach's DNA on them.

The filmmakers have defended their work and say they were at pains to include all 'significant evidence'.

Laura Ricciardi told The Wrap: 'All of the most significant evidence of the state is in the series. It was a nearly six-week-long trial, and it would just be impossible for us to include all of the less significant evidence.'

Filmmaker Moira Demos also told the website: 'We tried to choose what we thought was Kratz's strongest evidence pointing toward Steven's guilt, the things he talked about at his press conferences, the things that were really damning toward Steven. That's what we put in.'

A new mugshot of Avery, taken last month, was revealed Monday, as the two petitions to pardon Avery and Dassey gathered steam.

The calls on Obama to pardon the pair are, however, misplaced. The President can only pardon or commute federal sentences, according to Slate.

However, many hope just drawing attention to the case will embolden bids to win the pair a second chance - with Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin having the ultimate authority to pardon them.

Avery had been in prison for 18 years when DNA evidence exonerated him of a sexual assault conviction in 1985. He was released in 2003 and, two years later, sought $36million from Manitowoc County for the wrongful conviction.

Less than a month after the federal lawsuit was filed, Avery was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the murder of Halbach.

Avery's defense argued that Manitowoc officers who were in the middle of being deposed in his lawsuit were also involved in the gathering of evidence for the Halbach murder and may have framed him.

Brendan Dassey, Avery's 16-year-old nephew, then confessed to sexually assaulting Halbach and cutting her throat on his uncle's orders. He later said the confession was coerced.

Avery was released in 2003 on a sex assault conviction and, two years later, sought $36m from Manitowoc County. It was then that he was tied to the murder of Halbach

Avery, pictured left in court in 2007, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the murder of Halbach. His nephew Brendan Dassey (seen right in 2010) confessed but later said his statement was coerced by cops

None of Halbach's DNA was ever discovered inside of Avery's home, where the prosecution claimed she was raped and shot in the head.

Avery was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Dassey was also given a life sentence but has a chance for early release in 2048.

Netflix's Making a Murderer became an instant hit when it was released December 18.

It received glowing reviews from critics and celebrities alike, who took to Twitter to share the number of hours they had binged and to beg their followers to watch.

'I can't stop watching,' wrote Mandy Moore. 'It's crushing but utterly spellbinding.'

'Never mind an Emmy or an Oscar...Making a Murderer deserves a Nobel Prize,' tweeted Ricky Gervais.
Michael Dugher today claimed he had been sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for 'too much straight talking, honest politics' as the shadow cabinet reshuffle dragged on past 24 hours.

The former shadow culture secretary blasted his leader for 'squandering' the opportunity his idea of a 'new politics' had offered followed his landslide leadership victory in September had offered.

The Labour leader faced open revolt within his top team after sacking Mr Dugher as shadow culture secretary as nine members, led by deputy leader Tom Watson, made clear their dismay.

Scroll down for video

Jeremy Corbyn left his London home this early this morning to complete his reshuffle, which involved sacking Michael Dugher. Mr Dugher, pictured leaving TV studios tonight, has said the move means Mr Corbyn is 'squandering' the hope generated by his call for a 'new politics'

Mr Corbyn's plans appeared to have stalled by mid-afternoon as no official statement was made all day, more than 24 hours after talks first began.

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, the subject of fierce speculation over Christmas, sat next to Mr Corbyn in the Commons as MPs assembled for the first time in 2016 to hear a statement from Prime Minister David Cameron.

Mr Dugher announced his sacking on Twitter, before adding to his profile: 'Sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking, honest politics'.

He then told Sky News: 'The real casualty today has been the new politics we were all promised four months ago from Jeremy.

'I think that's a real shame, a real squandered opportunity, because I think people were attracted by the idea we could unite and come together people of different views, make a virtue of having debates and proper discussions.

'In Jeremy's words, even have a little dissent - straight talking, honest politics.'

Mr Cameron joked in the Commons 'you could have watched the whole run of the Star Wars movies' since yesterday's negotiations began and apologised to Mr Corbyn for 'interrupting the longest reshuffle in history'.

Mr Dugher was the first casualty of the so-called 'revenge reshuffle'. He revealed his dismissal on Twitter, claiming the Labour leader blamed his recent newspaper articles.

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn had appeared to be safe in his post despite weeks of speculation about his future in the aftermath of the Commons vote on bombing ISIS in Syria.

As the reshuffle pressed on into its second day, at least four shadow cabinet members were due at the Commons despatch box within hours.

Announcing the news, Mr Dugher said: 'Just been sacked by Jeremy Corbyn. I wished him a happy new year.'

He continued: 'Jeremy said he didn't like things I'd been writing (in defence of good colleagues & new politics).'

Mr Corbyn and Mr Benn appeared alongside each other in the House of Commons today as the shadow cabinet reshuffle ground on

Shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle, pictured leaving home this morning, is expected to be moved to another post. Clive Lewis, a left wing backbencher photographed in Westminster today, has been tipped for a surprise promotion to the top table

Mr Dugher linked to a New Statesman column he wrote last week comparing Mr Corbyn to a Star Wars Jedi Knight and containing the warning: 'Revenge is not very Jedi. It's also not very new politics.'

He later updated his Twitter profile to read 'Sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking, honest politics'.

Mr Dugher, who has been at the heart of Labour politics since he was Gordon Brown's top spokesman in Downing Street, was immediately endorsed by several key members of Mr Corbyn's shadow cabinet.

Following the sacking Mr Watson said in a statement: 'Michael Dugher is a rare politician - a talented working-class MP who hasn't lost his strong Yorkshire roots.

'Politicians with his ability and commitment can make a difference in any role.

'Labour's loss in the shadow cabinet will be compensated for by Michael's free thought on the back benches.'

Former leadership contender Andy Burnham said: 'Michael is Labour to the core and I have no doubt he will continue to serve the best interests of our party in whatever way he can.

Mr Dugher revealed his sacking as shadow culture secretary on Twitter, adding he had wished Mr Corbyn a 'happy new year' after taking the call

Mr Dugher said Mr Corbyn had cited newspaper articles he had written warning against a 'revenge reshuffle' when he fired him

'We face a big challenge in winning back the trust of our traditional supporters in the north and midlands and Michael is one of the authentic voices who can do that.

'I thank him for all the support he has given me and wish him well.'

Shadow young people minister Gloria de Piero said: 'In over 20 years of friendship with Michael, I have witness his tireless commitment and determination to campaign for a Labour government.

'I know that will continue from the backbenches.

'But it's always sad to lose to lose someone from an ordinary background from the shadow cabinet.'

Shadow mental health minister Luciana Berger said: 'Michael has shown great passion and dedication to his brief as shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport.

'He is a skilled campaigner who has worked hard to widen access to arts and culture to protect small music venues and to promote grassroots sport.'

The former front bencher later updated his Twitter profile to claim he had been 'sacked by Jeremy Corbyn for too much straight talking, honest politics'

Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said she was 'very sorry' to see him leave the shadow cabinet, while backbencher Angela Smith said it was a 'big mistake'.

Shadow cabinet office minister Jon Ashworth tweeted: 'I've been mates with since I was 16. Sorry to hear this news. I know he will continue to campaign hard for the party he loves.'

Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Vernon Coaker tweeted: Really sorry to see @MichaelDugher leave Shad Cab. He will be missed! He will be just as ferocious attacking the Tories from the b/benches.'

Shadow Scotland secretary Ian Murray tweeted: Disappointed that '@MichaelDugher will not be around Shadow Cabinet table. A gr8 parliamentarian, super guy & ferocious opposer of injustice.'

Shadow Commons leader Chris Bryant said he was 'sorry' to see Mr Dugher leave the shadow cabinet.

Fellow Barnsley MP Dan Jarvis, who is widely tipped as a future party leader, tweeted: 'Sad to see this. @MichaelDugher is a highly effective & authentic voice 4 working ppl & a great champion for Labour.'

Former front bencher Chuka Umunna, another named as a potential Labour leader, said: 'If getting rid of the Tories & electing a Labour government to implement Labour values is your thing, @MichaelDugher is your man. A big loss.'

A 12.45pm meeting of the shadow cabinet was cancelled as Mr Corbyn's reshuffle continued.

Shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle is thought likely to be moved from her post.

The Labour leader is thought to want a unified message from his top team on foreign affairs and defence, with military action on-going in Iraq and Syria and a Commons vote looming on Trident nuclear weapons.

Several supporters of Mr Corbyn have been tipped for promotion in the reshuffle, which dominated Labour politics throughout the Christmas break.

Among those earmarked for bigger jobs are Emily Thornberry - currently a junior justice spokeswoman - and Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy secretary.

The shadow cabinet is due to meet for the first time in 2016 at lunchtime today.

Allies said earlier on Monday Mr Benn would consider quitting if asked to move to another shadow cabinet post, triggering a 'domino effect' among fellow moderates.

ITV News reported up to eight shadow cabinet ministers could have quit if Mr Benn lost his post.

If Mr Benn does keep his job, it would be another blow to Mr Corbyn's authority, coming just hours after the leader's staunch supporter Ken Livingstone called for Mr Benn to be sacked.

Today, Mr Livingstone told BBC Radio 5 Mr Benn had 'stopped being so dissident and critical' and predicted the shadow foreign secretary would keep his post.

Yesterday, the veteran left winger had predicted Mr Benn would go or be involved in a job swap with shadow home secretary Andy Burnham.

The persistent reports Mr Benn would be sacked led to calls for Mr Corbyn not to 'purge' people who disagree with his politics from the top table of Labour politics.

Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said she was 'very sorry' to see Mr Dugher leave the shadow cabinet, insisting he was a 'formidable' campaigner

The shadow minister without portfolio Jonathan Ashworth also tweeted commiserations to Mr Dugher following his sacking

Mr Benn's future has been at the centre of speculation ever since he took advantage of a free vote on bombing ISIS in Syria to make a passionate speech in favour of the Government's proposal - infuriating his leader.

Suggestion's Mr Corbyn could seek 'revenge' have led to growing tension among Labour ranks.

Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, was also seen today heading back to Parliament amid claims his post is now safe as Mr Corbyn finalises his first reshuffle

Shadow culture secretary Mr Dugher - another seen as a likely candidate to be fired - urged Mr Corbyn not to carry out a purge.

Other mooted changes include a promotion for Diane Abbott, the shadow international development secretary.

AMID RESHUFFLE DRAMA LABOUR MP CLAIMS 'WE CAN'T ACCEPT LOW LEVEL MISOGYNY JUST BECAUSE IT'S JEREMY' Jeremy Corbyn was accused of 'low-level non-violent misogyny' last night by one of his most outspoken female MPs. Backbencher Jess Phillips said he had failed women by not appointing any to top jobs when he became Labour leader last year. And Harriet Harman, the former acting leader, called for a change in Labour's rules to prevent another all-male team from leading the party. Mr Corbyn came under fire last year for appointing men to all three shadow 'great offices of state'. Despite the fact that 43 per cent of Labour's MPs are female, the party leader, deputy leader, chairman and London mayoral candidates are also all male. Mrs Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, told BBC2's Newsnight last night: 'Had Tony Blair not given any of top jobs to the women people would rightly have been up in arms. 'But it's a bit like some people in the Labour Party are accepting low-level non-violent misogyny because it's Jeremy doing it.' Miss Harman said: 'We are a party for women and equality.' Mr Corbyn's allies say his shadow cabinet was the first to have a female majority. Advertisement

Clive Lewis, the new MP for Norwich South, has been named as a possible replacement at defence for Maria Eagle who strongly disagrees with Mr Corbyn on the Trident nuclear deterrent.

But Mr Lewis today told the BBC: 'I haven't been sounded out at all and I'd be deeply disappointed if this was dropped on me from a great height five minutes before, 'here we are, take this'.

'I haven't been spoken to by anyone so I think it's complete speculation.'

Asked if he wanted the job, Mr Lewis said 'no' before adding: 'If Jeremy Corbyn offered me that and said 'I need this, I need you to do it, it's essential you do it', I would have to think about it.

'But to be quite frank, my initial inclination would be to say no.'

The New Statesman suggested shadow energy secretary Lisa Nandy was another possibility for the defence brief - one of Ms Nandy's deputies Barry Gardiner has visited Mr Corbyn's office today and is a possible replacement.

Former interim leader Harriet Harman has told tonight's Newsnight women need to be appointed into top jobs.

She said: 'We can't have a men-only leadership when we are party for women and equality.'

Following the Syria vote and ahead of an expected Commons clash on Trident this year, Mr Corbyn is believed to want one message on foreign affairs and defence coming from his team.

The Labour leader refused to discuss the expected reshuffle while attending a rally on train fares at Kings Cross station this morning.

Mr Dugher said that Labour was a 'broad church, not a religious cult' and urged his party leader not to leave himself with a 'politburo' of just seven members.

Corbyn ally Diane Abbott, the shadow international development secretary, pictured today, is one MP tipped for promotion as the reshuffle gets underway

There had been speculation that Mr Corbyn was backing away from plans to sack several Labour heavyweight figures, including Hilary Benn.

The shadow foreign secretary was said to have been in the firing line over his speech backing government plans for bombing raids in Syria last year.

But senior Labour sources told the Daily Mail said Mr Benn could be moved to shadow home secretary, in a 'job swap' with Andy Burnham.

Mr Burnham, who came second in the Labour leadership race last summer, voted alongside Mr Corbyn in opposing the bombing.

Shadow defence secretary Ms Eagle is also likely to be moved rather than sacked. The Telegraph said she could be replaced by left-wing MP Mr Lewis.

She supports the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent, in opposition to Mr Corbyn who is a lifelong pacifist.

RUNNERS AND RIDERS: WHAT MIGHT JEREMY CORBYN DO? SACKED Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher: A long time operator in Labour circles, Mr Dugher first rose to prominence as a spokesman for Gordon Brown. He has urged Mr Corbyn not to 'purge' the shadow cabinet and criticised the leaders' office for allowing reshuffle speculation to continue over Christmas Staying? Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn: The Labour veteran infuriated Mr Corbyn with his pitch on bombing in Syria but has huge support among back bench MPs. Chief whip Rosie Winterton: Mr Corbyn's chief whip is highly experienced but was also the subject of much speculation of Christmas. Dame Rosie held on to her post when Mr Corbyn was first appointed and now looks certain to stay again. Going? Shadow Justice Secretary Lord Falconer: Arguably the last true 'Blairite', Lord Falconer has been on the Labour front line since being appointed by Tony Blair himself in 2007. The peer has been low profile since an early interview under Mr Corbyn where he publicly disagreed with the leader on a series of policies. Moving? Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle: A junior minister under Tony Blair, Maria Eagle was first brought into the shadow cabinet by Ed Miliband. Ms Eagle's appointment to shadow defence, despite a clear gap between her views and Mr Corbyn's on Trident, was seen as a key part of the leader's 'big tent' approach. Advertisement

Another senior source said the demands for a purge of MPs who voted against Mr Corbyn over Syria was being led by his leading advisor Seamus Milne, the former Guardian columnist who has been accused of 'Stalinist' sympathies.

Mr Dugher told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio Five Live: 'In my experience having worked closely with previous leaders, there's a reason why they tend to be a bit reluctant to go down the path of big reshuffles and that's because they do try and hold the party together, they do recognise that the Labour Party is a broad church not a religious cult, that you need people of different backgrounds and try and get the best possible talents.

'Ultimately that will be a decision for Jeremy.'

He added: 'In truth, I don't see it happening and the reason why I don't see it happening is because I think it would be inconsistent with what Jeremy has talked about since he got the leadership, which is about room for a little dissent, about having debates.'

Dugher warned his leader that he would end up with a 'politburo of seven' if he attempted to surround himself with hard-Left allies.

And shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden pointed out the Syria decision was a free vote for Labour MPs, arguing that Mr Benn should not pay the price for his views  particularly given Mr Corbyn's own long history of rebellion. He said sacking the shadow foreign secretary would be seen as 'petty and divisive'.

But Corbyn ally John Lansman tweeted: 'What exactly is the case for having a shadow foreign secretary whose position on going to war in Syria is supported by less than 29 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party?' Mr Livingstone went on the radio to demand that Mr Corbyn move Mr Benn to a different job.

The ex London mayor, who is co-chairing a review of Labour's defence policy with Miss Eagle, said he 'got on fine' with her and it was 'a matter for Jeremy Corbyn' if she remained in the post.

He added: 'There is a problem if  as we had with the debate on Syria  our principal spokesman stands upand puts a completely different line to the leader of the Labour Party.

'It might well be the case  and I have no knowledge of this  that it would be better to move Hilary Benn to something where he is in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn.'

Kim Howells, a former Labour minister, labelled the leadership of the party 'super-annuated Trotskyist oppositionists. They are not real politicians and I am afraid it is a disaster.

'It will change of course because the Labour Party has been on its knees many times before

'But it's going to take guts and intelligence and trying to get realistic about the tasks that face all modern societies.

'When I saw Ed Miliband standing in front of that big lump of stone, the Ed Stone, I began to realise that the Labour Party had fallen under the control of lunatics and I'm not sure it's escaped that control.

'They've probably got even deeper in that embrace because they feel so much more comfortable there.'

Mr Howells urged colleagues to confront Mr Corbyn: 'They should show some guts and start opposing this awful, bland nonsense about a new politics. They've got to get real about being politicians. I would have been opposing him.'

'We can't win like this!': Labour MPs react in horror as polling reveals depth of the party's troubles while Jeremy Corbyn 're-arranges the chairs'

A YouGov survey has found Labour is trailing the Conservatives on most key issues facing the country, with huge deficits on the economy, unemployment and taxation.

The research - carried out last month - also found Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn trailing badly against the potential successors to David Cameron.

A 23 per cent lead for the Tories on handling the economy - 41 per cent to Labour's 18 per cent - prompted Labour MP Wes Streeting to warn: 'Can re-arrange the chairs around the table as much as we like, until these numbers change we won't win gen election.'

Labour MP Wes Streeting warned the polling numbers on the economy - where the Tories had a 23 per cent lead - would be fatal to Labour's general election chances

Labour led the Tories in the poll on which party was best placed to handle the NHS and housing.

But on law and order the Tories were ahead 36 per cent to 17 per cent and on taxation by 35 per cent to 22 per cent.

The poll even indicated a narrow Tory lead on education, by 28 per cent to 27 per cent.

Labour led on the NHS 34 per cent to 27 per cent and on housing by 28 per cent to 23 per cent.

Asked who would make the best Prime Minister, Mr Corbyn faired poorly against a string of senior Tories.

Pre-race favourite George Osborne led the Labour leader by 39 per cent to 29 per cent, while London Mayor Boris Johnson was ahead of Mr Corbyn by even more - 43 per cent to 29 per cent.

David Cameron was rated by 49 per cent as the best prime minister to Mr Corbyn's 23 per cent.
Argentina's new government has vowed to press for the 'return' of the Falklands on the 182nd anniversary of the dispute.

The statement came on January 3, the anniversary of when Argentina claims Britain 'invaded' the Falklands in 1833.

Its new Conservative government, led by President Mauricio Macri, had said it wanted to resolve the matter 'peacefully' with Britain.

Argentina's new government has vowed to press for the 'return' of the Falklands on the 182nd anniversary of the dispute

Susanna Malcorra, Argentina's foreign minister, said: 'Argentina renews its firm commitment to peacefully settling its differences, to international law and multilateralism'

Diplomatic ties between the UK and Argentina deteriorated during the eight-year, populist rule of Cristina Kirchner, who placed the Falklands at the heart of her foreign policy.

It was hoped relations could improve with the new government in Buenos Aires.

But Susanna Malcorra, Argentina's foreign minister, said: 'Argentina renews its firm commitment to peacefully settling its differences, to international law and multilateralism.'

Buenos Aires 'invited the United Kingdom to resume as soon as possible negotiations aimed at settling fairly and definitively, the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas (Falkands) Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands and surrounding territorial seas'.

But Miss Malcorra said that there was more to relations with Britain than 'the Malvinas issue'  using the Argentinian name for the Falklands.

She added: 'Yes we have an area of dissent which are the Malvinas Islands and we must find a way to address and solve the issue, but this does not mean we have to cancel all dialogue with the United Kingdom. We have areas of common interest where to advance.'

Miss Malcorra said that there was more to relations with Britain than 'the Malvinas issue'  using the Argentinian name for the Falklands

Britain went to war with Argentina over the islands in 1982, when 255 Britons and 649 Argentinians died. (Pictured the sinking of the General Belgrano)

A 2013 referendum showed an overwhelming majority of the islanders wanted to remain under British control.

Of 1,517 votes cast - a turnout of more than 90% - 1,513 were in favour, while just three votes were against.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'The UK has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. We would like a more productive bilateral relationship with Argentina but not at the expense of the Islanders' right to choose their own future.'

Relations with the UK plunged to a near 30 year low under the former President, Cristina Kircher.
Dozens of spoof pages set up to mock the decision to give the artist money

Aims to find how 'career, social life, family' affected by staying in one place

Ellie Harrison, 36, has been given money by Creative Scotland for 'project'

London-born academic Ellie Harrison has been given 15,000 by Creative Scotland to live in Glasgow for a year - a city she lives in anyway

The Scottish Government has angered taxpayers after agreeing to pay a Glasgow-based academic 15,000 for an 'art project' in which she lives in the city for a year.

Several spoof pages have been set up following the revelation London-born Ellie Harrison has been given the cash by Creative Scotland for her performance piece 'The Glasgow Effect' - even though she lives in the city anyway.

Residents used the pages to express their anger at the decision, which means the 36-year-old will only leave Glasgow if she falls unwell or a close relative dies.

Robbie Seath set up a website called '15k better spent in Glasgow' and posted a link on Harrison's Facebook page with the message: 'This was my "art project" this evening.'

Examples on his list included '10,000 Jagerbombs in The Cathouse', 'an actual art project' and '60,000 packs of Tesco Saver noodles'.

Meanwhile, Ryan Currie created an online poll called: 'What do you think of The Glasgow Effect?' with 73 options for people to express their opinion.

Leading the poll on Tuesday morning, with 5,138 votes, was 'pretentious s***e and a waste of money'.

And Scottish rapper Loki wrote a blog called: "Do you want to get paid to sit on Tumblr in your pants for a year? Apply now.'

Miss Harrison, who is a lecturer in contemporary art practices at Dundee University, will be given 12 months off work to allow her to complete her venture, which has been funded by the National Lottery.

She describes herself as an 'artist and activist' who specialises in performance art criticising the 'absurd consequences of our capitalist system, particularly climate change'

The lecturer has labelled the 'experiment' as one which will 'challenge the demand-to-travel placed upon the "successful" artist'.

Several spoof pages have been set up following the revelation the London-born artist has been given the cash by Creative Scotland including this page '15k better spent in Glasgow'

Residents used the pages - including this poll on Facebook - to express their anger and bemusement at the decision

One man took to Twitter to suggest the decision is typical of a 'drunk guy climbing on your back and coning you', perhaps in a reference to revellers' fondness for sticking a traffic cone on the statue of the Iron Duke in the city's Royal Exchange Square

The project aims to find out how 'your career, social life, family ties, carbon footprint and mental health [will] be affected' by not being able to leave one city, she said.

She will report her findings as she attempts to 'increase her sense of belonging' by investing 'all her ideas, time and energy within the city'.

Others labelled the exercise, which began on January 1, unfair to artists and the thousands of families surviving off foodback hand-outs.

Commenting on the project's Facebook page, Kenny Leckie wrote: 'I know literally hundreds of people (including me) who've been creating art of all descriptions in Glasgow for years and funding it from our day jobs or from hosting fundraisers.

'Doesn't this disrespect everyone who doesn't have that luxury of being funded to create art and who lives here because they can't afford to move away?'

The 36-year-old will now only leave Glasgow (pictured) if she falls unwell or a close relative dies, and will report her findings as she attempts to 'increase her sense of belonging' by investing 'all her ideas, time and energy within the city'

Laura Walsh commented: 'I haven't left Glasgow in nearly four years living on benefits and raising a child at the same time can do that to you. There have even been times I couldn't even afford the bus to travel to the next town.

'My life is not your art to concept nor do I need you getting 15k to try to.'

And David Kirkland said: 'I haven't had a holiday for two years, I feel like Da Vinci.'

Originally from London, she moved to Glasgow in 2008 to study at the city's School of Art and is now a lecturer in contemporary art practices at Dundee University's Duncan of Jordanstone College.

Her most recent work is a vending machine which gives out a packet of crisps when the recession is mentioned on the BBC's online newsfeed.

Miss Harrison promises to keep a blog of her experiences but, as of last night, there had been no updates to the project website.

Eben Wilson, director of the campaign group Taxpayer Scotland, blasted the decision to support the project.

Many Glaswegians have reacted to the decision to fund the 'project' with dismay - voicing their concerns that public money would be 'wasted' on forcing an artist to live in the city when thousands of families surviving off foodbank hand-outs could not even contemplate leaving

He said: 'This is what happens when the state decides what art is. Glasgow is one of the most exciting cities in the world, full of character and life.

'And yet the intervention of a quango has managed to celebrate this with one of the dullest and un-daring projects ever conceived. It feels like a committee attempting to have a sense of humour.

'When the public sees its taxes wasted on such silly projects so devoid of ambition and adventure, it only encourages a jaundiced view of art and what it can achieve, which is a shame considering the genuine talent that exists within Scotland.'

This is what happens when the state decides what art is Eben Wilson, director of the campaign group Taxpayer Scotland

Creative Scotland awarded Miss Harrison 15,000 last October for the project, which, at that stage, was titled Think Global, Act Local.

The quango has been mired in controversy since its creation in 2010.

Funded by the taxpayer and the National Lottery, it has a budget of 81 million to distribute to the arts north of the Border.

In 2014, it decided to cut regular funding to Scottish Youth Theatre which sparked a storm of criticism, meanwhile, the 110,000 salary of chief executive Janet Archer has also come under scrutiny.

A spokesman said: 'Ellie's project met the criteria for Open Project Funding to develop her practice and we await the outcome with interest.'

Miss Harrison was last night unavailable for comment.
A clip in Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's most recent ad attacking illegal immigration at the US border is actually a scene of Morocco, 5,000 miles away from the implied Mexico.

In the 30-second clip, which features ISIS, illegal immigration and the San Bernardino mass murders, a segment shows people racing to a wall in which the narrator says Trump will 'stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for'.

But the segment shows a clip by an Italian TV network from May 2014 of Moroccans going to Melilla, not Mexicans running to the US border, according to PolitiFact.

Trump's campaign, however, said that the use of the clip was 'intentional'.

Shadowy figures are seen in the video are actually in Morocco, not Mexico, like the ad implies. Donald Trump's campaign said this was 'intentional'

Message: Donald Trump vows to 'make America great again' in a pyrotechnic first campaign ad which features ISIS, illegal immigration and the San Bernardino killings

'The use of this footage was intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration,' spokesman Hope Hicks toldPolitico.

'The biased mainstream media doesn't understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and their families do,' Hicks added.

The billionaire GOP candidate has said he planned to spend at least $2million a week on television advertising in the first three voting states, starting this week.

Trump's first ad begins with shots of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before showing a US battleship launching a missile.

It then shows the shooters in the December 2 San Bernardino terrorist attacks, ISIS fighters and Moroccans going to Melilla, an autonomous enclave in North Africa held by Spain.

The ad makes no apologies for Trump's agenda - and calls the San Bernardino terror attacks 'radical Islamic terrorism'.

'That's why he's calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what's going on,' the ad's narrator - who is not Trump - says.

The TV spot makes mention of Trump's controversial plan to ban Muslims from entering the US, 'until we can figure out what's going on'

Familiar faces: The 30-second ad also features the images of the San Bernardino killers, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik

'He'll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he'll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.'

Trump, filmed at one of his rallies, then declares: 'We will make America great again!'

Trump's decision to spend $2million a week on television advertising is a move that would mark a departure for a candidate who has so far relied on free media to fuel his insurgent campaign.

He said last week: 'I don't think I need to spend anything. And I'm very proud of the fact that I've spent the least and achieved the best result. I feel I should spend. And honestly I don't want to take any chances.'

Trump leads in national Republican preference polls but has seen his lead dissolve in lead-off Iowa, where Texas Senator Ted Cruz is surging on the backing of the state's robust evangelical conservative voting bloc.

The front-runner had spent nothing on television advertising to date, and just over $300,000 on radio ad time, according to advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG - far less than his rivals.

Bold statement: In his first campaign ad, the GOP front-runner promises to 'cut the head off ISIS' and take their oil

Former Florida Gov Jeb Bush, by contrast, has spent more than $40million and trails Trump and several other candidates by polling in the single digits

Trump has teased plans to advertise on television in the past, but ad buys have failed to materialize.

Although Trump often brags about his wealth, he has proven to be a frugal campaigner, putting very little of his own money on the line. Last week he claimed his campaign was $35million under-budget.

The billionaire also likes to claim he's self-funding his campaign, the vast majority of what he's spent so far has come from donors across the country sending checks or purchasing merchandise from his website.

His penchant for creating controversy - and headlines - has also meant that he has been able to cash in on free media attention for the past several months.

'I'll be spending a minimum of $2million a week and perhaps substantially more than that,' he told reporters, adding, 'If somebody attacks me, I will attack them very much and very hard in terms of ads.'

Trump said last week that he had screened the first two ads and says they touch on immigration, trade and national security policy.

The billionaire Republican presidential candidate revealed that he planned to spend at least $2 million a week on television advertising in the first three voting states
Former police officers are being up to 1300 a week to investigate British soldiers for alleged crimes during the Iraq War, it can be revealed.

British taxpayers are footing the 64,000 a year bill for the 33 an hour ex-detectives to wade through thousands of claims submitted by human rights law firms.

They will be tasked with filtering the claims and also quizzing former and serving soldiers about their actions on the battlefield a decade ago.

They are part of a team of 145 investigators working for the Iraq Historical Allegations Team (Ihat) in Wilshire looking into historical allegations of abuse by British armed forces personnel.

Last night it also emerged the former police officer leading the investigation is paid double by the taxpayer.

As well as his unpublished salary as director of Ihat, Mark Warwick is also entitled to a police pension, which will be in the tens of thousands per year.

Mark Warwick (pictured) is also entitled to a police pension, which will be in the tens of thousands per year

The Government has set aside 57.2million for the nine year inquiry, which was set up by the Ministry of Defence in 2010, when there were just 152 claims.

In December last year the Ministry of Defence awarded a new two year contract to a recruiting firm to find specialist investigators.

In the same month, Red Snapper Recruiting Limited posted advertisements for at least seven different roles on several sites, including one aimed at ex-police officers.

In the advertisement, it said the pay scales are above market rates and said workers who needed to rent local accommodation would be paid an enhanced rate.

It boasted: The work at the Ihat is complex and challenging and there is no other inquiry like it in the UK.

The length of contract is more than double the industry average.

It added: The nature of the work, the opportunities to travel and the ability to hold senior positions are all unusual dimensions to the Ihat contract and not readily available elsewhere in the market for policing skill sets on contract worker terms.

Salaries for the positions start from 16.77 an hour, and range up to 32.82 an hour  or over 1,300 a week based on eight hours work per day.

One position aimed at former police officers was the role of a senior investigating officer.

Those not based in Wiltshire would be paid 32.82 an hour, and those whose permanent address is within one hour of the office would receive 28.05 an hour.

They are also hiring for an intelligence analyst, who would receive 24.69 an hour if they live more than an hour from Wiltshire.

Other roles include an intelligence researcher and investigator.

Mr Warwick, a former Scotland Yard and Thames Valley detective, retired from policing in 2014 after 33 years as an officer.

He will have retired on a generous final salary pension with the option of taking a significant lump sum worth tens of thousands of pounds.

His final front line role was as a Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of the South East counter terrorism unit and he will have been earning around 79,000 per year.

His civil service grade is the equivalent of an Army brigadier.

Former police officers are being up to 1300 a week to investigate British soldiers for alleged crimes during the Iraq War, it can be revealed

He told an careers website for ex-police officers: My role focuses on investigation and has an international element  it really interested me at that point in time and that remains the case now. We have a significant number of allegations of homicide, ill-treatment and torture we are investigating.

By its nature the investigation is highly complex  for me it extremely important that the job is carried out thoroughly and the right outcome is reached.

Among the 145 workers, there are a small number of Royal Navy police officers and civil servants.

Up to 127 workers are specialist investigative personnel employed under a contract.

An Ihat spokesman said:  There has been no significant change to the size or structure of the IHAT, but recruitment is sometimes necessary to fill vacancies which arise through natural wastage.
Five specially trained dogs died in the blaze, while three others survived

Her mother Robyn Thomas also suffered burns as she helped her daughter

Brianna Creenaune, 16, was hit by burning debris as her roof collapsed

A teenage girl is in a coma after sustaining burns to 60 per cent of her body

A teenage girl with severe burns to 60 per cent of her body could remain in a coma for two months after the roof of her home collapsed on her as she attempted to run from a devastating house fire.

Brianna Creenaune, 16, was placed in a medically induced coma and remains in the intensive care unit at the Royal Brisbane Hospital after her family home was consumed by a fire in Ipswich early Sunday morning.

Tony Creenaune, Brianna's father, said her mother Robyn Thomas suffered minor burns as she and her partner Brett Ward pulled the teen's melting clothing off and poured water over her badly burned body.

Brianna Creenaune, 16, was placed in a medically induced coma and remains in the intensive care unit at the Royal Brisbane Hospital

'It all happened in a matter of seconds,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Bri just ran the wrong way towards the verandah where the worst of the fire was and a part of the roof fell down on top of her.'

Mr Creenaune said that fortunately the 'vibrant' teen only suffered minor burns to her face, but had sustained serious on her back, legs, arms and hands, which will require several skin graft operations.

'They operated on her yesterday for about four or five hours then took her again this morning,' he said on Tuesday.

'As long as she can tolerate the procedures they will keep removing the burnt flesh and cleaning her injuries.'

The 'vibrant' teen's family home was consumed by a fire in Ipswich early Sunday morning

Fortunately, Brianna only suffered minor burns to her face, with the most serious on her back, legs, arms and hands, which will require several skin graft operations

The devastated father said Brianna's 'big blended family' have all rallied together, collecting family photos for her room and playing her favourite music by her bedside

The devastated father said Brianna's 'big blended family' have all rallied together, collecting family photos for her room and playing her favourite music by her bedside.

Mr Creenaune has worked tirelessly to find a home base for the family, as well as encourage donations that will go towards Brianna's on-going medical treatment.

He directed friends, family and members of the community towards a MyCause fundraising page, requesting that people donate money, clothing or furniture towards the family who lost everything in the fire.

The community managed to raise more than $17,000 at the time of publication in a bid to help get the family back on their feet, with another $2,000 promised from Ipswich's mayor Paul Pisasale.

Three people were in the home at the time of the fire, all of them sleeping soundly in bed when Ms Thomas was woken up by smoke alarms at around 3.30am on Sunday.

Three people were in the home at the time of the fire, all of them sleeping soundly in bed when Brianna's mother was woken up by smoke alarms at around 3.30am on Sunday

The community have managed to raise almost $17,000 to help get the family back on their feet, with another $2,000 promised from Ipswich's mayor Paul Pisasale

Mr Creenaune said the majority of the money raised will go towards Brianna's ongoing medical treatment

Ms Thomas, 50, is a senior dog trainer with the Australian Outback Spectacular and had eight specially trained canines locked up in kennels when the fire tore through the home, in Wulkuraka, a western suburb of Ipswich.

Brianna's father said five of the dogs perished in the fire, including a three-year-old border collie Jack - a star of the Outback Spectacular who was trained for the show since birth.

The mother-of-six initially thought she had lost six of her beloved dogs, but was shocked to find that one had managed to break free amidst the horror and was hiding in the bushes.

Ms Thomas, 50, is a senior dog trainer with the Australian Outback Spectacular and had eight specially trained canines locked up in kennels when the fire tore through the home

Five of the dogs perished in the fire, including a three-year-old border collie Jack - a star of the Outback Spectacular who was trained for the show since birth

Mr Creenaune said authorities believe the fire was caused by an electrical fault in the family's aging home.

A spokesperson from Queensland Fire and Emergency Services were unable to comment on what sparked the blaze as investigations into the fire will continue until the end of the week.

A 'numb' Ms Thomas, who was treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation, said she was struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.

'I can't talk to my daughter at the moment, my dogs have died and my house has burnt down,' she told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

'I can't talk to my daughter at the moment, my dogs have died and my house has burnt down,' Ms Thomas said

'It's so much to take in and I haven't comprehended it at all,' she said after leaving the hospital.

Mr Creenaune took to social media on Tuesday, posting a heart warming message of support for his 'beautiful and talented' daughter following the 'unfolding nightmare of Sunday morning'.

'I don't know why the world throws hurdles like this at people... but I am sure that in time we will grow to understand it,' he wrote on Tuesday.
The BBC'S War and Peace was watched by some 6.3milllion people

It boasted a cast of world class talent, with Lily James, Gillian Anderson and the dashing James Norton all fighting for the spotlight.

But the unlikely star of the BBCs new adaptation of War and Peace was in fact a horse called Ziggy, whose untimely death in battle sent the audience into floods of grief.

The animal, whose character was called Little Rook, made only a brief appearance being ridden by Jack Lowdens Nikolai Rostov but viewers have jokingly called for him to be awarded a BAFTA.

However, even Ziggy  a horse who has perfected the art of falling safely after years of training  could not help the show claim the title of the most watched programme of the day.

War and Peace was watched by 6.3milllion people, 600,000 short of the number that tuned into Countryfile as the nature programme looked back at its encounters with winter animals.

Many viewers said the real star of War and Peace's opening episode was a white horse

While some War and Peace viewers swooned over the chiselled jawline and brooding demeanour of Nortons Prince Andrei, many were far more taken with Ziggy as he charged into battle.

One fan wrote on Twitter: Star of last nights #WarAndPeace was that horse at the end - more emotional range than James Norton, while another posted: The look on that horses face. If it doesnt win the Best Supporting Horse BAFTA there is no justice.

A third added: Shame they killed off the horse. It was the only character I had more than 90 seconds to become invested in.

Some worried that Ziggys death  seeing him gunned down during a cavalry charge  was so realistic that it may actually have been hurt but the BBC was quick to say that it trotted away unscathed.

Ziggy, who lives is Aylesbury, was trained by Gerard Naprous, who runs the stunt team The Devils Horsemen. He was chosen for the part because he is trained to be able to fall down safely, a skill that takes years to learn and is mastered by very few animals.

Watched by millions, War and Peace boasted a cast of world class talent, with Lily James, Gillian Anderson and James Norton all starring in the epic drama

War and Peace tells a story of love, loss and politics in Tsarist Russia, set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. The new sexed-up adaptation has been written by Andrew Davies, whose pen has also been behind versions of Bleak House and Vanity Fair and the Colin Firth starring Pride and Prejudice. He has admitted to inserting more love scenes while updating the text for TV.

BBC bosses are pleased with War and Peaces initial ratings, although it attracted a smaller audience than Poldarks debut last year in the same slot, which was watched by 7million.

War and Peace may see its 6.3million viewers increase over the remaining five episodes if James Nortons dashing but tortured Prince Andrei proves as popular as Aidan Turners Ross Poldark, whose shirtless scenes sent the nation into a frenzy.

Norton, 30, known for starring in Grantchester and Happy Valley, is already finding fans with his chiselled looks.

One viewer wrote on Twitter: What a fine actor (and fine specimen of a man), while another added: James Nortons cheekbones and jawline are a thing of wonder.

Despite the starring cast, the unlikely star of the BBCs new adaptation of War and Peace was the horse called Ziggy

The figures will also rise as viewers catch-up using BBC iPlayer. Such online services have become increasingly popular.

The Downton Abbey Christmas special was watched by 4million through such facilities, the biggest catch-up audience for any UK TV programme on record.

The reaction to the adaptation was very positive overall, with viewers calling it simply stunning. However, its launch was not without some hiccups.

The novel is seen as one of the great masterpieces of Russian literature, which is why some viewers were surprised to find the characters speaking with British accents.

Fans took to Twitter to critique the drama, and lament the death of Ziggy the horse

Give that horse a Bafta!

One wrote on social media: 15 mins into #WarAndPeace and Im not really having aristocratic Russians with British accents to be honest... while another added: War And Peace, demonstrating Americans trying to use British accents to portray Russians...

The 1,200 page book is famed for being difficult to follow, with its cast of 600 characters boasting ever more complicated names. So, true to this original, problems with the sound quality left some struggling to work out what was going on on-screen.

A number of viewers complained about having to use subtitles to make out the dialogue. One posted on Twitter: Fact I had to activate subtitles to follow the dialogue. Mumbling again in #WarAndPeace. Such a shame.

While another added: Sorry #BBC but having to use subtitles to follow the mumbling is no good to me, & I am not deaf. Just old. #WarAndPeace what a shame and a third wrote: WarandPeace Reaction = The Sound Is Awful, I Need Subtitles

This is not the first time a BBC drama has run into trouble over its dialogue being hard to hear. Quirke, Birdsong and Jamaica Inn were all criticised for lines being mumbled, making the stories hard to follow. The latter programme sparked 2,200 complaints from disgruntled viewers.

Even director-general Tony Hall intervened in 2014 to say he would deal with the issue of mumbling actors. The BBC has received no complaints about War and Peace.
The nieces of current polygamist leader Lyle Jeffs have revealed what life was like on the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Kate Musser, 20, and May Jeffs, 18, have described a life of 5.30am wake-up calls, constant cooking and only being allowed to clean with their right hand to The Salt Lake Tribune.

The two sisters moved to The Jeffs Block in 2012, a Hilldale, Utah compound surrounded by 10-foot walls where Lyle Jeffs instructed everyone to refer to him only as 'Father'.

Lyle is the brother of Warren Jeffs, the president of the FLDS who was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 for sexually assaulting two girls - aged 12 and 15 - he said were his 'spiritual wives'.

The nieces of current polygamist leader Lyle Jeffs have revealed what life was like on the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Kate Musser and May Jeffs moved to The Jeffs Block (pictured) in 2012, a Hilldale, Utah compound where Lyle Jeffs lived in 'The Big House' and instructed everyone to refer to him only as 'Father'

Although it is rumored Jeffs is still running his church behind bars, it is Lyle who is on the ground at FLDS as the bishop of Short Creek, the collective name for Hilldale and Colorado City, Arizona.

Kate, 20, and May, 18, who have since both left the FLDS, said each day on Jeffs Block began at 5.30am with a scripture lesson taught by Lyle for the 60 people living on his compound.

Then the women had to get to work. May had a joke in an FLDS bakery, where she baked bread for Lyle's family.

May said she worked with a friend, but that they could only communicate via letters - because Lyle said they were not allowed to speak to each other.

Kate had a room in Lyle's actual home, a two-story property that is nearly 10 times the size of an average American home, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

'The Big House', as it was called, was surrounded by other residences, including those that housed some of Lyle's then-nine wives that had not qualified for the United Order, the church's elite branch.

Kate, who at the time had a seventh-grade education, was a cook in the house, where everyone who lived in the block ate their daily meals.

Women and young children ate in a dining room upstairs, while men and the older boys had their meals in the downstairs kitchen.

Kate said Lyle was never at any of the meals in the house. While she cooked fellow members' tacos or tilapia and rice. There was rarely dessert.

But Kate was required to make special meals for Lyle, consisting of steaks and shrimp and plenty of cakes.

Kate said she spent every day in the kitchen, in addition to her job teaching third-grade boys English, math and the history of priesthood. At the time she had a seventh-grade education.

Lyle is the brother of Warren Jeffs, the president of the FLDS who was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 for sexually assaulting two girls - aged 12 and 15 - he said were his 'spiritual wives'

Pictured are some of Warren Jeffs' numerous wives in the FLDS, underneath a portrait of the leader

And then there was the cleaning, which was constant at Lyle's house in addition to the monthly cleaning required of Jeffs Block residents.

The girls said they were always required to clean with both hands. If they needed to use both, the right one had to be on top.

They also had to sew either a man's shirt or the prairie dresses worn by the FLDS women once a week and regularly write prison-bound letters to Warren.

Along with the daily duties, were the rules.

The sisters said no one could do anything without getting permission from Lyle first, and going to and from Jeffs Block required a pass card or notifying the FLDS security office.

Kate and May said no one could leave Jeffs Block before telling Lyle the three W's - where they were going, why they were going there, and who they planned to see.

Meanwhile Lyle was usually absent from the block following his morning lesson and would not return until 11pm, sometimes suddenly announcing members who have been exiled.

The girls' own father had been evicted from the FLDS before they moved to Jeffs Block, for an alleged sin he committed before marriage that Lyle never revealed.

As members of the United Order, the sisters also had to 'pass' a monthly interview where Lyle, accompanied by his two male counselors, would ask them questions one by one.

In September Warren Jeffs' son and daughter, Becky and Roy Jeffs, said they were molested by their father as children. The two also revealed they believe that Jeffs molested countless other children inside the church

Questions included if they had bad feelings against others in the church and if they continued to honor Warren Jeffs as their 'prophet'.

Another question was whether they touched themselves 'inappropriately'.

'That one always really blew me away,' Kate told The Salt Lake Tribune. 'Why he thought he had the right to ask that.'

May was kicked out of the United Order just weeks after moving to the block after she admitted to watching movies and listening to music that had been made by people outside the church.

She eventually left the church in February 2014 and now lives in Ivins with a brother.

Kate was booted from the United Order in July 2013 and left Short Creek for good August 2015, moving to Park City. Both girls plan to get their GEDs and go to college.

Meanwhile scandal continues to rock the FLDS.

Charlene Jeffs, one of Lyle's wives, revealed that women in the church are no longer allowed to have sex - or even children - with their husbands.

And Charlene Jeffs, one Lyle's wives, revealed during a custody battle that women are no longer allowed to have children with their husband and must have sex with the 'seed bearer' chosen by the priesthood

That privilege, she wrote in a petition obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, now only belongs to the 'seed bearer'.

'A seed bearer is an elect man of a worthy bloodline chosen by the Priesthood to impregnate the FLDS woman,' she revealed.

'It is the husband's responsibility to hold the hands of their wives while the seed bearer "spreads his seed."

'In layman terms, the husband is required to sit in the room while the chosen seed bearer, or a couple of them, rape his wife or wives.'

Soon after this document was filed Lyle agreed to share custody with Charlene.

Kate also revealed that Lyle sleeps alone in his bedroom and that none of his wives have birthed any children recently.

In September Warren Jeffs' son and daughter said they were molested by their father as children.
Saudi Arabia was omitted from an official UK campaign against the death penalty despite the number of executions it carries out.

The oil-rich state was the only major country with the death penalty left off a Whitehall list to be challenged by diplomats, it emerged last night.

Those given a greater priority than Saudi Arabia, which carried out 158 executions last year, included Barbados, Singapore and Jordan which passed fewer than ten death sentences between them in 2014.

Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burn an effigy of King Salman of Saudi Arabia as they hold posters of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq

The revelation comes as a dangerous rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran deepened last night over the execution of a prominent Muslim cleric.

Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia imam, was one of 47 convicts executed by beheading or firing squad at 12 separate Saudi prisons last weekend.

The fallout threatens to destabilise the entire Middle East after Iran, which mainly adheres to the Shia branch of Islam, said Sunni-run Saudi would face divine vengeance. Saudi Arabia cut its diplomatic and trade ties with Tehran yesterday and suspended all commercial flights.

Its allies Bahrain and Sudan also severed diplomatic ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates recalled its ambassador.

Lord Ashdown warned yesterday that the deepening confrontation between Sunni and Shia Muslim states would pose a far greater danger to the west than Islamic State.

The White House has urged restraint and Russia offered to mediate in the developing crisis between the two rival branches of Islam.

Britains Middle East minister, Tobias Ellwood, said yesterday that the Government had expressed its disappointment at the mass executions to the Saudi authorities.

It has emerged, however, that the Saudi regime was left out of the 20-page Foreign Office document setting out a five-year strategy to reduce the use of executions around the world.

Shiite Muslims push barricades installed by police during a protest against the execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed along with others in Saudi Arabia, in front of Saudi Arabia embassy in New Delhi, India

The UK strategy, which was written in 2011, sets out a list of what it describes as priority countries where British diplomats would be encouraged to proactively drive forward and make progress towards the UKs ultimate goal of abolishing the death penalty over five years.

It names China, Iran, Belarus, the US and the Caribbean as the countries where most effort should be focused, but goes on to list another 25 where posts should also be working towards reducing the use of the death penalty.

Saudi Arabia does not appear on either list despite having one of the worst human rights records in the Middle East. Maya Foa, of human rights organisation Reprieve, said it was a shocking omission.

Saudi Arabia does not appear on either list despite having one of the worst human rights records in the Middle East. Maya Foa, of human rights organisation Reprieve, said it was a shocking omission

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said Britains relationship with Riyadh is sycophantic, and ministers must take a harder position on Saudi abuses to help preserve the Syrian peace talks in Vienna.

David Cameron is under pressure to explain what judicial co-operation the Government still has with Riyadh, which is seen as a western ally in the battle against terrorism. The Prime Ministers spokesman said yesterday there were still broad areas of co-operation.

Last night a Foreign Office spokesman said the five-year strategy document was a general policy guide from 2011, rather than a case by case list of countries where the death penalty is applied.
One of the two men accused over the death of an 18-year-old man in Brisbane was out celebrating his 21st birthday on the night Cole Miller was attacked.

Daniel Jermaine Lee Maxwell's lawyer, Michael Bosscher, said his client was 'doing it tough' in custody.

'He's only a young man himself. It was his birthday on the evening in question,' said Mr Bosscher.

Scroll down for video

Cole Miller, 18, died after a one-punch attack in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley in the early hours of Sunday

Moments before the fatal attack, Daniel Maxwell allegedly asked co-accused Armstrong Renata (pictured): 'Do you want to see something funny?' Mr Renata's Facebook page has since been flooded with thousands of abusive comments and his lawyer said the 21-year-old is 'very stressed, very anxious' in custody

'He's devastated by what's occurred - he feels nothing but the greatest sympathy for the family of the victim.

'He has no friends or family really here in Australia - they're all in New Zealand.'

Armstrong Renata, 21, appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court earlier on Tuesday to face the upgraded charge of unlawful striking causing death, a day after teenager Cole Miller's life support was switched off.

'He's very stressed, very anxious - he's never been in custody before so the watch-house is a pretty tough place,' defence lawyer Neil Lawler told reporters outside court.

'I think it's safe to say it's a tragedy for all concerned,' Mr Lawler added.

Renata, who now also faces a possible maximum life sentence, was remanded in custody and his case was scheduled for mention again on February 8.

Police allege he punched Cole Miller in the back of the head in Fortitude Valley's Chinatown Mall, after co-accused Daniel Jermaine Lee Maxwell challenged Miller and his friend to a fight.

Miller, an elite water polo player, was rushed to hospital after the attack early on Sunday morning and died from massive brain trauma on Monday.

Maxwell, 21, also appeared in court charged with unlawful striking causing death.

The two 21-year-olds had both allegedly been stirring violence throughout the evening, along with two others.

Police will also allege Maxwell had attacked three people and attempted to assault a further two before he punched Miller unprovoked.

A group of four Maori men had confronted Miller and friend Nick Pace at about 3.30am, it was alleged in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday.

The two teens are said to have tried to walk away towards Ann Street after they were challenged to a fight, but had then been followed.

Detective Senior Constable Amanda Foster called Maxwell callous for seemingly enjoying tormenting his victims.

Maxwell allegedly punched Cole Miller and then Nick Pace, before punching Miller again in the side of the face.

Paramedics attend to the 18-year old man who was coward punched then left for dead on the floor

Maxwell allegedly punched Cole Miller and then Nick Pace, before punching Cole again in the side of the face

The blow rendered him immediately unconscious, the court heard.

Maxwell and Renata then fled the scene rather than trying to help, police claimed.

The two 21-year-old men were initially charged with grievous bodily harm.

On Monday, after Cole Miller died, their charges were revised to unlawful striking causing death.

Renatas Facebook page has been flooded with thousands of abusive comments following the deadly attack on Sunday morning.

One image had received almost 1,500 comments in recent days, while many others have received hundreds of comments from angry strangers.

One commented on the Facebook page that they would pay for the price of a bullet.

Another said that suicide is the best option for you.

After Cole Miller passed away in the Brisbane Royal Hospital, heartbroken father Steven Miller spoke about his son who had his whole life yet to be lived.

'It is with deep sadness that I announce that our 18-year-old son Cole has today passed away as a result of massive brain trauma,' Steven Miller said on Monday afternoon.

The random attack on Cole Miller happened at Chinatown Mall in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley early on Sunday

'He has struggled bravely in the intensive care unit of the Royal Brisbane Hospital and our family and many close friends have been by his bedside since the incident.

'Cole was a beautiful, brave, young man with his whole life yet to be lived,' the teenager's father said.

'The Miller family would like to sincerely thank the support provided by Cole's school friends from Brisbane State High, and the water polo community, and the many many many others who have sent messages of love and hope.'

Steven Miller also thanked emergency services and the doctors and staff at the hospital where his son was cared for.

Cole Miller and his friend were believed to have been trying to catch a taxi home when the attack occurred.

Police said they believe Cole Miller and his friend had not provoked the attack.

He was a young man who had been out for a night in the town, hadnt caused any issue or any concerns he was walking through the mall with the intent to catch a cab, said Detective Tom Armitt at the weekend.

Two priests had given Cole Miller first aid until paramedics arrived, Nine News reported.

He was a Queensland under-20s water polo player and the younger brother of Australian representative Billy Miller.

The teenager's father Steven Miller broke down as he described his son as a 'brave young man'

Cole Miller was a Queensland under-20s water polo player and the younger brother of Australian representative Billy Miller (pictured)
A spherical ball of light lit up the skies of the Australian Capital Territory before quickly disappearing into thin air.

A video, originally uploaded to Reddit, shows a doughnut shaped orb appearing above Canberra during a storm on Sunday night, faintly backlit with a red and green glow.

The incident has been speculated to be extraterrestrial by some social media users, while experts suggest that it may be the equally mysterious weather phenomenon known as 'ball lightning.'

In the video the sky is illuminated by lightning and a greenish red hue, when suddenly a bright white orb shines in the centre of the dark sky and appears to burst into nothingness and fade away.

An outline of the orb can be seen in the sky for a few seconds before it completely disappears.

Suggestions have been made that extraterrestrial activity could been linked to the incident some going as far as to say that the footage shows a UFO exiting a portal from another dimension.

YouTube user David Tefler claims to have seen a flying saucer open up and enter a portal and said that there was no light when that particular incident happened.

'I'd say that this was a craft exiting a portal,' he added.

A spherical ball of light lit up the skies of the Australian Capital Territory before quickly disappearing into thin air. Social media users have suggested extraterrestrial activity while experts speculate 'ball lightning'

Jakka Warren was convinced the formation was a 'Class B UFO' because of the 'typical hyperdrive residue' formation which allegedly occurred.

'They wanna tell me it's a ball of lightning, nice try fools,' said Mr Warren.

Another YouTube user commented: 'It was Bronwyn Bishop in her tax payers funded UFO.'

Some Reddit users made suggestion that the light had opened up hyperspace.

Despite these claims Australian National University astronomer Brad Tucker told the ABC that he doesn't think that it was aliens.

A video, originally uploaded to Reddit, shows a doughnut shaped orb appearing above Canberra during a storm on Sunday night, faintly backlit with a red and green glow

Mr Tucker said: 'If it was, they might visit somewhere more active than Canberra.'

Sceptics have coined the video as a hoax with one Reddit user commenting 'you managed to fool a lot of r*****s.'

But Mr Tucker, who is convinced that the incident was in fact ball lightning, said: 'It's probably not Photoshop either. Everything kind of fits and it seems right.'

The energy used to create the unusual activity can usually occur when a lot of electrical charge is rubbed against the gases in our atmosphere.

Lightning and a greenish red hue appears in the sky. Suddenly a bright white orb appears and bursts into nothingness. The outline of the orb can still be seen for a few seconds before disappearing

'Sometimes, if you get a really interesting occurrence, you create something called ball lightning' said Mr Tucker.

The red and green glow was also suggested to be an aurora but Mr Tucker said although it holds the characteristics of an aurora 'there was no activity from the sun' which is needed, when trying to see an aurora in the sky.

'It's pretty amazing no doubt,' he added.

Ball lightning is one of the strangest phenomena on our planet and is seen 'more often in Australia than anywhere else.'

Australian National University astronomer Brad Tucker didn't think it was aliens but suggested it may be the equally mysterious ball lightning weather phenomenon, which is often seen across Australia

A ball of light about the size of a grapefruit, with the intensity of a 40W light bulb illuminates for about ten seconds and then disappears.

The strange weather spectacle has been seen by hundreds of people but remains a mystery to this day, reported The Conversation.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted UFO expert Bill Chalker for comment on the event.

Meanwhile this comes after a bright orange streak of light was seen flying over the Northern Territory in October.

The UFO slowly shoots through the sky and experts speculated it could have been space junk re-entering the Earth's atmosphere or a high altitude military jet with its afterburner.
Dr Lisa Cameron (pictured with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon) makes thousands of pounds from renting the properties to her constituents, who pay more than tenants in identical homes still in public hands

A nationalist MP who campaigned against the sell-off of social housing has been accused of 'shameless hypocrisy' after buying up ex-council flats.

Dr Lisa Cameron makes thousands of pounds from renting the properties to her constituents, who pay more than tenants in identical homes still in public hands.

A Scottish Daily Mail investigation has uncovered the details of her 628,000 portfolio of seven properties, which includes five ex-local authority dwellings in impoverished areas  three of which were repossessions, sold off at bargain prices after previous owners could not keep up their mortgage payments.

The homes are now rented out on the private market for up to 400 a month  around 150 more than the average council rent for the East Kilbride area she represents.

Dr Cameron's husband, who was declared bankrupt less than three years ago, is responsible for the day-to-day running of the flourishing business.

But at a General Election hustings in April, 43-year-old Dr Cameron vowed to 'oppose the sale of housing association homes', arguing: 'We need to make sure we have affordable homes for people within our communities. We would end austerity to the most vulnerable people and support them in finding homes.'

In recent years there have been up to 4,000 people on the housing waiting list in East Kilbride, and South Lanarkshire Council has struggled with a shortfall of affordable housing.

In 2013, Nicola Sturgeon scrapped the popular right-to-buy policy for council tenants in an effort to prevent the further sell-off of homes.

The First Minister, who has said it is 'absolutely vital that people can access social housing when they need it most', will come under intense pressure to take action against her MP.

The party is still reeling after it suspended another MP, Michelle Thomson, amid a police investigation into allegations of mortgage fraud involving property deals.

Mrs Thomson was accused of hypocrisy after it emerged the website for her property company promoted opportunities for investors to snap up former council homes.

Scottish Conservative housing spokesman Alex Johnstone said: 'This is yet more incredible hypocrisy from an SNP MP. No doubt those who heard her views on council houses at the hustings will feel completely deceived.'

Labour MSP James Kelly said: 'This looks like absolutely shameless hypocrisy from yet another Nationalist MP.'

The Mail can reveal that Dr Cameron bought some of the properties in the 18 months after her husband, Mark Horsham, went bust running a business which traded in her name.

Her husband was declared bankrupt in February 2013 with debts of more than 25,000, which he ran up while trading as 'Lisa Cameron & Associates'. He now takes care of the day-to-day running of the property business while Dr Cameron sits in the Commons representing the former Labour stronghold of East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow.

Dr Cameron's husband (left), who was declared bankrupt less than three years ago, is responsible for the day-to-day running of the flourishing business

Dr Cameron said: 'Lots of people become bankrupt. Like many people we have had to struggle in terms of that issue. I have always had to pay for things and that's the way it is.'

The MP said she has 'always had to struggle for everything I have had in my life  I come from a very meagre background'.

One of the homes she owns is the impressive sandstone detached villa in Lanarkshire where the couple live, and another is an upmarket holiday let in Edinburgh. The other five are ex-local authority properties in run-down areas rented out to constituents of Dr Cameron.

She began building her empire back in 2003 and purchased a modest former council house in East Kilbride for 75,000, taking out a 31,000 mortgage with the Nationwide Building Society and renting it out from 2009. Her next property, an ex-local authority flat, was left to Dr Cameron by her grandmother in 2012.

Then, amid a rising tide of house repossessions, she acquired her third rental property for only 38,750 in cash  an ex-council flat whose previous owner could not keep up the mortgage payments. It is likely the price was considerably less than the former owner paid for it.

1. Dr Cameron snapped-up this ex-council house in East Kilbride for 75,000 in July 2013. She has rented it out since 2009

2. The SNP MP's grandmother, Mary, left her second-floor council flat in East Kilbride in 2012. It is now rented out

3. A third-floor flat in this ex-council block was repossessed before Dr Cameron bought in for 38,750 cash

Nine months later, Dr Cameron bought another repossession for 42,000.

Her next rental flat was bought from the estate of the previous owner after his death. The three most recently purchased flats were bought in the year-and-a-half after 42-year-old Mr Horsham went bust, yet she was able to pay 230,000 in cash with no new mortgage required on the three homes.

The property empire nets an estimated 2,000 a month in rent.

Mr Horsham, a former software developer with Standard Life, used a debt mechanism known as a low income, low assets (LILA) insolvency, which was set up to protect the 'most vulnerable'.

To qualify for the LILA scheme, which has now been axed, a debtor needed to have no single asset worth more than 1,000; assets worth no more than 10,000 in total; and a weekly income of the national minimum wage or less.

4. Another flat, just round the corner in East Kilbride, costing 42,000 but bought in cash from the estate of the previous owner

5. Third floor former council flat which was another repossession in East Kilbride bought for 42,000

He was able to meet the criteria for the scheme even though he was living in a 243,000 villa because the property is owned in his wife's name only.

An ex-council flat bought for the property business three months before Mr Horsham went bust could not be included in his assets because that, too, is registered in his wife's name only.

On top of the 74,000 Westminster salary to which she is entitled, Dr Cameron receives 150 a month from her company, Psychological Services Scotland, for five hours' work supervising the reports of an assistant forensic psychologist.

Last night, the MP insisted she had told voters she had her own business before the election. 'But I don't think I said I had six houses. I said I had a business,' she said. 'I didn't buy the properties under right-to-buy. Other people have bought them previously, years ago, probably when I was at university. We are in a different situation now.

'At that point there was a lot of council housing available.' She added: 'I treat my tenants with the utmost respect. People are happy with my flats. I charge a market rate for my properties in East Kilbride.' Dr Cameron went on: 'My husband looks after [the properties] now that I am in Westminster. He tidies them up. They are my properties, he looks after them.'
Fans can vote online for their favourite commercials till the end of January

and is teasing the baby with a corn chip

An Australian filmmaker has made it into the finals of the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Competition putting Aussies in the running for the third consecutive year.

Peter Carstairs, 45, made it to the tenth and final edition of the competition with his tongue-in-cheek commercial that will have your stomach in knots.

'Ultrasound,'  a short set in the consultation room of a doctor, shows new parents watching an ultrasound monitor, when the father begins loudly eating Doritos and discovers something peculiar about his unborn child.

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Australian filmmaker, Peter Carstairs, made it into the finals of the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Competition for the third consecutive year, with a tongue-in-cheek commercial that will have your stomach in knots

'Ultrasound,'  a short set in the consultation room of a doctor, shows new parents watching an ultrasound monitor, when the father begins loudly eating Doritos and discovers something peculiar about his unborn child

Teasing the young foetus with a Dorito chips, the child who can be seen on the ultrasound monitor, begins to reach out for the triangular snack food.

The father can be seen playing with the baby who knocks his head against his mother's womb trying to get the chip from his fathers hand.

Annoyed, the mother says 'give me that' and throws the chip to the ground.

A few seconds pass and the baby launches itself from her womb to try and grab the Dorito which was thrown across the room.

Teasing the young foetus with a Dorito chips, the child who can be seen on the ultrasound monitor, begins to reach out for the triangular snack food

The father can be seen playing with the baby who knocks his head against his mother's womb trying to get the chip from his fathers hand

Mr Carstairs told The Daily Mail Australia that the concept of childbirth is really different between a mother and a father.

'The guys I wrote it with really liked the idea when it comes to child birth and the concept that mothers usually see the process as really spiritual and life-changing.

'Dads are usually sitting in the corner, watching the footy and keeping to themselves and mums get annoyed with this. We thought we could play with this idea,' said Mr Carstairs.

With an element of truth behind it Mr Carstairs said that with 'every source of conflict there is always an element of humour.'

Annoyed, the mother says 'give me that' and throws the chip to the ground

A few seconds pass and the baby launches itself from her womb to try and grab the Dorito which was thrown across the room

'It's always good to have a bit of a squirm,' he added.

When asked whether he was anything like the man in his commercial when his own children were born, Mr Carstairs responded 'not quite' but said that he understands that both parents go through a different journey.

In the running for $USD1million and the chance to work with Hollywood filmmaker Zack Snyder, the 45-year-old filmmaker said that working with such a well known director would be a 'foreign' concept.

He also said that a chance of winning would be a 'dream come true and great exposure.'

Australia again showed its strength last year with Armand De Saint-Salvy's 'Doritos Manchild' making it to the final 10

The woman in the film is seen feeding the 'man-child' as he devours Doritos

'They flew me to L.A. to tell me that I'd made the finals. Sometimes being from Australia the concept of working with a Hollywood director seem completely out of reach  this will be a good opportunity for a lot of viewers and a chance to be recognised,' said Mr Carstairs.

One of three Australians to make the finals since 2014, previous finalists followed suit creating 'questionable' choices when creating their commercials.

Tom Noakes' 'Finger Cleaner', the first international finalist in the comp's history racked up more than 4 million views on YouTube.

The advertisement shows a man dipping into his Dorito packet and putting his cheesy fingers into a small hole in the wall.

The 'man-child' throws tantrums when he isn't given Doritos to eat

When the finger comes out it is clean, the concept dabbles in sexual innuendo and caters to the brash humour all Aussies know and love.

Australia again showed its strength last year with Armand De Saint-Salvy's 'Doritos Manchild' making it to the final 10.

This commercial shows a grown man turning into a child because 'Doritos make him as happy as a child ... literally.'

The man's partner says that taking care of him is 'challenging' unless he's kept fed.

Tom Noakes' 'Finger Cleaner', the first international finalist in the comp's history racked up more than 4 million views on YouTube

Mr Carstairs said that the selection panel liked his entry but has concerns about how an American audience may react.

'I think some will be confronted by it. I don't think a lot of Americans will like it,' he said.

'I think if it was just for an Australian audience it would fare much better in the competition,' added Mr Cartstairs.

Mr Carstairs will compete against two other finalists from the U.S.

The advertisement shows a man dipping into his Dorito packet and putting his cheesy fingers into a small hole in the wall

When the finger comes out it is clean, the concept dabbles in sexual innuendo and caters to the brash humour all Aussies know and love

Jacob Chase and his ad 'Dorito Dogs' and David Rudy with 'Swipe for the Doritos.'

Runner ups will still receive $USD100,000 and an opportunity to consult on an upcoming Doritos project.

Four thousand five hundred ads were submitted from 28 different countries for the competition, which has also reached its final year of running the competition.
The extremist believed to be ISIS new masked executioner left Britain with his wife and children less than 24 hours after being released on bail for terror offences.

Siddhartha Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumasayah, was arrested in September 2014 on suspicion of belonging to the banned group Al-Muhajiroun.

Police chose not to detain him, but demanded he handed over his passport.

Siddhartha Dhar (left), who is also known as Abu Rumasayah, was arrested in September 2014 on suspicion of belonging to the banned group Al-Muhajiroun. However, he was released and left the country a day later. He is now believed to be ISIS' new masked executioner (right)

Yet, a day later he took a coach from London to Paris and headed to Syria with his young family, where he joined ISIS.

The former bouncy castle salesman then taunted border control online for allowing him to leave the country and travel across Europe with ease.

He posted on Twitter: 'What a shoddy security system Britain must have to allow me to breeze through Europe to the Islamic State.'

He also boasted how he had fooled MI5: 'My Lord (Allah) made a mockery of British intelligence and surveillance. Make hijrah (flight) Muslims. Place your trust in Allah.'

His escaping will now be the subject of much public scrutiny, after he appeared to be able to leave Britain without question.

The 32-year-old father-of-four from Walthamstow was one of nine men detained on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and supporting the banned group Al-Muhajiroun.

He is also believed to have met, and possibly mentored, Michael Adebolajo, one of the murderers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, and was photographed at an Islamist rally in London marking ten years since the September 11 attacks.

Siddhartha Dhar (pictured, far right, at a rally) was one of nine men detained on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and supporting the banned group Al-Muhajiroun. However, within 24 hours he had left London for Paris

British security agents are racing to identify the militant who spoke with an English accent, with speculation mounting that the gunman could be Dhar. His sister, Konika Dhar (pictured), admitted the voice sounded 'a bit like' her brother, but did not believe it was him

The pair were seen marching with Muslims Against Crusades - often shortened to MAC - an extremist group which campaigned against what they deemed the 'tyrannical British empire'. They gained national notoriety in November 2010 when members gathered outside the Royal Albert Hall to burn poppies on Remembrance Day.

The group was made illegal a year later.

Dhar is believed to be ISIS' new 'Jihadi John' in Syria.

A video uploaded online yesterday shows a masked man brutally execute an alleged British spy.

British security agents are racing to identify the militant who spoke with an English accent, with speculation mounting that the gunman could be Dhar.

His sister, Konika Dhar, admitted the voice sounded 'a bit like' her brother, but did not believe it was him.

Ms Dhar, from North London, said: 'If it is him, bloody hell am I shocked? I am going to kill him myself. He is going to come back and I am going to kill him if he has done this.
The militia members who seized federal property in rural Oregon in an effort to galvanize opposition to the U.S. government are now being mocked on social media.

Among the hashtags being used to describe the group are Vanilla ISIS, Yall Qaeda and Yee Hawsdists.

'If your master plan is to overthrow the world's most powerful government and you attack a remote bird sanctuary you might be #YallQaeda,' wrote one person on Twitter.

Another posted; 'Join the Bundy militia! #YallQaeda #YeeHawd #YeeHawdists #Oregonstandoff.'

That person also attached a photo of Al Bundy, the character from Married With Children, holding a gun.

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People on social media also mocked the militia's request for food, referring to them as Meal Team 6 and including a flag that said 'Please send snacks.'

One Twitter user wrote; 'Seriously, what kind of extremist doesn't bring snacks when besieged? Isn't that, like, the third thing on the list? #YallQaeda.'

They then added; 'Guns? Check. Enormous flags? Check. Snacks? Umm.... Frank's in charge of snacks so..... #YallQaeda #WheresFrank.'

Meanwhile, as the armed anti-government activists occupied a snowy wildlife refuge for a third day to call attention to a land-use dispute, militia leaders from similar groups across the country criticized the seizure of federal land and a building.

The protesters have said they aim 'to restore and defend the Constitution' to protect the rights of ranchers and ignite a national debate about states' rights and federal land-use policy they hope could ultimately force the federal government to release tracts of Western land.

Their occupation of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge comes as the number of paramilitary groups is on the rise in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks their numbers.

But the latest call to arms appears to have failed to resonate with like-minded groups whose support would be crucial for creating a coalition of armed militia members substantial enough to thwart a law enforcement operation.

'There's a better way to go about things,' said Brandon Curtiss, president of Three Percent of Idaho, a militia group that has been involved in the dispute.

'If you want to make a change like that, you need to get the county citizens behind you to go through the proper channels.'

The protesters have rallied behind Oregon ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who were found guilty of arson on public land near their property.

They were initially sentenced to 12 months in prison, below the federal minimum for arson, but a U.S. judge raised the sentences to five years.

The Hammonds, who turned themselves in as planned on Monday at a federal prison in California, have said they do not support the protesters or their leader, Ammon Bundy, whose father, Cliven Bundy, was at the center of a 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights in Nevada that ended with federal agents backing down in the face of about 1,000 armed militiamen, many on horseback.

The Pacific Patriot Network, an umbrella group for militias in the region, said it did not support seizing federal property even if it understood the underlying frustration with the federal government.

'This land use issue is decades old and it's boiling up in frustration. That's what you're seeing,' spokesman Joseph Rice said.

The Oath Keepers, another paramilitary group that participated in the 2014 Bundy ranch dispute in Nevada, also distanced itself from the latest standoff.

Some militia leaders said Bundy was using the dispute to provoke the federal government with little regard for the local community.

'Here you have a guy who believes he's on a mission from God. What the Hammonds want and what the community wants is immaterial,' said Mike Vanderboegh, a founder of the III Percent Movement, which draws its name from the notion that only 3 percent of Americans actively participated in the Revolutionary War.

Vanderboegh and other leaders said they worried Bundy would provoke a violent response from the U.S. government similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that ended in the deaths of 76 people.

Three Obama administration officials said federal authorities had been told to avoid a violent confrontation, in line with official U.S. policy after the deadly clashes at Waco and in 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho

Armed U.S. paramilitary groups, which had been on the wane since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have seen their ranks swell in recent years, driven by fears among the far right that President Barack Obama will threaten gun ownership and erode local rights.

The movement has also been energized by confrontations between ranchers, miners and federal regulators in the Western United States, where the government owns vast stretches of land.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are 276 active militia groups today, one-third more than before last year's standoff.

The latest incident began after militia groups from Oregon and Idaho staged a peaceful march in the nearby city of Burns on Saturday to protest what they see as heavy-handed management by bureaucrats with little interest in local concerns.

Other militia leaders declined to question Bundy's motives but said he stood little chance of getting the federal government to back down.

'If you want me to demonize this guy, I won't do it,' said Bob Wright, a commander of the New Mexico Militia.
An 11-year-old Italian boy has suffered significant injuries after he was bitten by a shark at a holiday island in the Great Barrier Reef.

The shark took a significant bite from the boys lower right calf at Heron Island, in the reefs south, a Queensland Ambulance spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

He had been wading in knee-deep water and was bitten by a blacktip reef shark around 2.32pm on Tuesday when paramedics were called.

By 4.45pm local time, he was being transported to Gladstone Hospital from Gladstone airport.

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An 11-year-old boy has suffered significant injuries after he was bitten by a shark at a holiday island in the Great Barrier Reef

The shark took a significant bite from the boys lower right calf at Heron Island, in the reefs south. He has been transported to Gladstone hospital (pictured)

The 11-year-old boy had been bitten by a blacktip reef shark around 2.30pm on Tuesday

The 11-year-old boy is an Italian tourist, according to ABC, and he'd been pulled from the water by his father.

Hed been attended to by a registered nurse on the island before he was airlifted to Gladstone, six hours north of Brisbane.

He was accompanied by the registered nurse and his father to Gladstone and is in 'quite good spirits, quite happy, quite jovial and in minimal pain', according to QAS paramedic Brad Lawson.

The 11-year-old boy is in a stable condition and his injuries are not critical, the Queensland Ambulance spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'He was actually on the beach, just in the water wading near deep water and he said he actually saw the shark or he saw something and the next minute it bit him and Dad got him out of the water,' Mr Lawson said.

Mr Lawson said he'd been bitten at the water's edge, and was quickly presented to the medical centre.

The boy is being transported to Gladstone Hospital (pictured), six hours north of Brisbane

He'd been treated by a registered nurse at a medical centre on the island and was transported to Gladstone Hospital (pictured), accompanied by the nurse and his father

He had been airlifted to Gladstone Airport (pictured) after he was attended to by a registered nurse at the island. He is being transported to hospital from the airport

Queensland Ambulance had originally reported that the boy suffered injuries to his left leg, but later amended that his injuries were to his lower right calf.

It's the second shark attack in the central Queensland area in the past week.

On Saturday, a spear diver saved his own life by continuously punching a three-metre-long shark off the coast of Yeppoon.

The 31-year-old man received severe injuries to his hands and arms as he attempted to fight the shark off, before it finally swam away.

Although he has not been able to talk in detail, he has told ambulance officers that he was in a school of mackerel as he scuba-dived.

With the mackerel all around him, the shark, chasing the fish, suddenly loomed up and went for the diver.

Hes in a serious but stable condition, but he has received quite severe injuries to his upper limbs, Mr Miers told the ABC.

The man went into the waters off Miall Island in Yeppoon just before midday on Saturday armed with a speargun when he was attacked, suffering severe lacerations to his arm and legs.

He was rescued by friends after coming to the surface who helped the man aboard the Coast Guard's boat, which happened to be in the area.

He was then transferred by helicopter to Rockhampton Base Hospital.

He'd been bitten at Heron Island and was transported to Gladstone, six hours north of Brisbane

The 11-year-old boy was bitten at Heron Island (stock pictured) in the Great Barrier Reef, off central Queensland

An 11-year-old boy has suffered significant injuries to his lower right calf after he was bitten by a shark around 2.30pm local time on Tuesday
Former students who say they were sexually abused at a prestigious Rhode Island boarding school are calling for an independent investigation into the abuse.

St. George's School in Middletown announced last month that it found 26 students were sexually abused by six school employees in the 1970s and 1980s.

The private coeducational Episcopal school sent a report after the internal investigation to alumni in which school officials apologized and detailed the credible allegations.

It acknowledged it did not report abusers to authorities at the time, but administrators fired three staff members.

Former students who say they were sexually abused at St. George's School (pictured) in Middletown are calling for an independent investigation into the abuse

Lawyers for some of the victims say their own investigation found 16 additional victims.

They say they also identified an additional staff member who abused children and seven ex-students who abused others.

They say they plan to release more information during a news conference in Boston on Tuesday.

According to the Boston Globe, more than 40 people have come forward with stories ranging from molestation to rape by mainly staff but also by fellow students.

Attorneys Eric MacLeish and Carmen Durso said they have heard from two male and one female alumni who said they were raped by classmates.

An online petition calls for another investigation and criticizes the school's hiring of Will Hannum as investigator in the internal review, questioning how independent he could be in scrutinizing the school's actions since he is a law partner of the school's legal counsel.

One of the accusers said she cooperated with the internal investigation but felt betrayed when she learned later that Hannum was associated with the school's lawyer.

Andy Paven of O'Neill and Associates, a public relations firm retained by the school, said St. George's investigation and report was 'a conscious effort by the headmaster to not avoid the past and to try to grapple with it.'

Lawyers representing some of the former students called the report a 'sanitized version of the truth,' the Providence Journal reported.

'(The investigation report) did not state anything about the failures of the current school leadership,' MacLeish said.
Karen and Simon Danczuk both appeared on television within hours of one another today as their private lives continued to hit the headlines following the suspended Labour MP's sexting scandal.

Selfie Queen Ms Danczuk told ITV's Loose Women that she would 'take complete control' over her ex-husband's life, only hours after he insisted to Good Morning Britain that he will fight a 'malicious and upsetting' rape claim against him.

Ms Danczuk, 32, told the programme's panel, including model Katie Price, that she was standing by her 49-year-old former husband, and argued that he should not lose his job over sexually explicit text messages sent to a 17-year-old girl.

Earlier today, Mr Danczuk told the ITV morning show that he would battle to clear his name after Lancashire Police launched a rape investigation following a complaint regarding the twice married father of four, which dates back to 2006.

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Karen Danczuk (left) said today that she will 'take complete control' over her ex-husband Simon's life as the suspended Labour MP (right) insisted he will fight a 'malicious and upsetting' rape claim against him

Ms Danczuk was told by the show's presenters not to discuss the rape allegation, but launched a passionate defence of the father of her two children in regard to the text messages sent to Sophena Houlihan, over which he has been suspended by the Labour Party.

Despite the couple splitting in June last year, Ms Danczuk said she would not be able to look their two sons in the eye if she did not help her ex-husband.

'He's not broken any law,' she told the panel, which included Coleen Nolan and Ruth Langsford. 'It's up to him to build respect up again and he will do it.

'He's very determined and I will not let him fail. I'm going to literally take complete control over his life, I'm going to have to.'

Former local councillor Ms Danczuk, who wore a lilac jumper with embellished sleeves for her appearance on the programme, said that she and her ex-husband were on good terms and 'get on better now then we did when we were married.'

She said she could not condone the messages Mr Danczuk sent to Miss Houlihan, who is now 18.

Ms Danczuk (second from right) told Ruth Langsford, Coleen Noland and Katie Price (left to right) that she would be supporting Mr Danczuk despite their split in June last year, saying she would not be able to look the couple's two sons in the eye if she did not help him

Labour is investigating Mr Danczuk's conduct regarding the texts, which he has apologised 'unreservedly' for. The teenager said she had received explicit messages from Mr Danczuk after contacting him about a job.

One message asked if she wanted a 'spanking' while another said he was 'horny'.

The teenager has since been revealed to be a dominatrix who sold her toenail clippings, bras and used and worn thongs and knickers for 15-a-pair online.

Ms Danczuk, who married Mr Danczuk in 2012, said she had given him 'a big rollocking' over the messages, and added that 'he admits he's done wrong.'

She added: 'It's shocking, he shouldn't have done that. When he got suspended I said "Simon, you need to take a step back".

'I'm glad he got suspended, and he's glad he can take a step back.

'He's made a mistake, we all make mistakes, I've made mistakes and he is genuinely upset.'

Mr Danczuk's personal life has repeatedly made the headlines over the past year following the collapse of his marriage to his second wife, Karen.

Ms Danczuk, who has become as famous for her trademark selfies as she has for her relationship, was then asked by fellow Twitter user Katie Price what she wanted to do with her career, and if she wanted to become a 'glamour girl', or go on a show like Big Brother

The Selfie Queen said that although she enjoyed writing, all she wanted to do was to support Mr Danczuk

She today posted one of her trademark selfies on Instagram and Twitter, writing that she felt 'ill and rundown', but needed to 'keep hammering through'.

His ex-girlfriend Claire Hamilton, a Labour councillor in Leyland, Lancashire, said she broke up with the MP shortly after Christmas after he admitted sending texts to Miss Houlihan.

Around 20 protesters gathered on Monday at his constituency office calling for him to resign following revelations he had sent saucy messages to the teenager.

Ms Danczuk said she still had 'feelings' for her ex due to his role as the father of her sons. When the couple separated last year, Mr Danczuk had said that his campaigning against child abuse had left him depressed, and that this had affected their marriage.

'I was there before he was an MP,' she said. 'I was there when he was working 20 hour days to get elected. He needs help and I'm going to help him.

'I couldn't look my boys in the eye and say "I'm leaving your father out to hang".'

Ms Danczuk, who has become as famous for her trademark selfies as she has for her relationship, was then asked by fellow Twitter user Katie Price what she wanted to do with her career, and if she wanted to become a 'glamour girl', or go on a show like Big Brother.

'I want to write,' Ms Danczuk replied. 'I enjoy writing.

'What I want to do is look my boys in the eye and say "when your dad needed help I was there for him".'

Ms Danczuk, pictured outside the ITV studios, said her ex-husband had 'made a mistake'

She maintained she was talking about her ex-husband's problems on television to show the world that she was supporting him.

'I want to take control over him,' she added. 'At the moment he needs that guidance.

'It's horrible when you feel so alone, I can't leave him to feel alone. Morally I can't do it.

'This man works so hard, he made a mistake and he wants to prove to people he can change.'

Ms Danczuk's appearance on television came after it emerged that she is being investigated by police over a comment made about his former girlfriend on Twitter.

She had tweeted about Miss Hamilton, and now police say they are looking into a complaint of 'harrasment'.

Ms Hamilton publicly dumped Mr Danczuk following a social media storm over photographs posted of the couple out together on Boxing Day, as parts of Mr Danczuk's constituency were hit by flooding.

Addressing the investigation on ITV's Good Morning Britain today, Mr Danczuk told presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid: 'It's a malicious allegation, it's very upsetting and I'm completely clear'

The tweet at the centre of the investigation was posted after Ms Hamilton gave a number of interviews about her relationship with Mr Danczuk, and has since been deleted.

Ms Hamilton had claimed he had a drink problem and 'cried like a baby' when she dumped him.

A Lancashire Police spokesman said: 'We can confirm that we have received a complaint of harassment and enquiries are on-going to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place.'

The allegation means Lancashire police are now conducting two separate investigations in the wake of claims made about Mr Danczuks sex life in recent days.

The force had earlier confirmed it was investigating a historic claim of rape against the MP.

Appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain earlier today, Mr Danczuk vowed to clear his name, and described the rape allegation as 'malicious'.

'It's a malicious allegation, it's very upsetting and I'm completely clear,' he said.

'I will make sure I fight to clear my name.'

He added: 'These claims are malicious, untrue and extremely upsetting.

'The police have not been in touch with me but I will co-operate fully with any inquiries and am confident my name will be promptly cleared.'

The Rochdale MP also said he 'shouldn't have responded' to messages from Miss Houlihan.

The party is investigating Mr Danczuk's conduct regarding the sexually explicit messages to Sophena Houlihan (pictured), which he has apologised 'unreservedly' for

The MP told the ITV morning show that he had displayed 'inappropriate behaviour and I have apologised unreservedly for it', but said the texts to Miss Houlihan (pictured) should be seen 'in context'

Mr Danczuk's ex-wife Karen posted one of her trademark selfies on Instagram and Twitter today, but said she felt 'ill and rundown'

The MP told the ITV morning show that he had displayed 'inappropriate behaviour and I have apologised unreservedly for it', but said the texts should be seen 'in context'.

He said: 'I was having an online friendship with somebody over social media for several months and just, as you have pointed (out), at a low point in my life in September, on just two occasions I responded to some messages that were sent to me.

'I shouldn't have responded to those messages and that's why I apologised.

'So I do regret that, there is no doubt about it, but I think we can put it behind us.'

Mr Danczuk has blamed a 'drink problem' for his tangled personal life and insisted the people of Rochdale want him to continue to be their MP.

He said: 'What the public want are ordinary people to be Members of Parliament and that is exactly what I am - I am an ordinary guy that happens to do politics.

Mr Danczuk was met with protests when he arrived at his constituency office yesterday

'And it is fair to say, there is no denying it, that I have a relatively colourful personal life. But I am not the only politician that has such a life - you could say that Boris Johnson has a similar life. I shouldn't be condemned for that necessarily; I don't think the people of Rochdale condemn me for that. They judge me on my performance.'

He admitted his credibility as a campaigner against child sexual exploitation has been 'dented', but said the lewd texts he sent are a 'far cry' from the abuse he has campaigned against.

He added: 'The Labour Party is carrying out an investigation into these allegations, quite rightly and understandably, and I am quietly confident that they will conclude that I should remain a member of the Labour Party.'

It emerged last night that police had launched a rape investigation into the campaigning MP.

'We can confirm that we have received a report of a historic rape dating back to 2006,' a spokesman said last night.

'We are in the very early stages of an investigation and inquiries are on-going. The complaint relates to a 49-year-old man.'

Mr Danczuk, who has campaigned against child sex abuse, was suspended from the Labour Party last week after being caught sending explicit texts to Miss Houlihan.

Furthermore, the MP's first wife Sonia Rossington claimed in an interview on Sunday that he 'bullied' her into sex during their eight-year marriage.

Mr Danczuk initially dismissed his ex-wife's claims, accusing her of 'telling lies' and being 'consumed by bitterness'.

But after admitting to a long-term drink problem, he has remained bullish about his future in politics and vowed to carry on as an MP.

Despite the protest in his own constituency yesterday, Mr Danczuk said he was 'quietly confident' he would not be expelled from Labour because his 'one or two foolish' mistakes didn't warrant it.

Around 20 protesters gathered outside Mr Danczuk's constituency office in Rochdale yesterday morning calling for him to resign, including Karen's Danczuk's brother, Michael Burke (seen in a pink shirt with a phone to his ear, left)

Michael Burke (left), who is accused of a string of historical sex offences against three alleged victims, was photographed heckling the embattled MP

The embattled MP compared his supposedly harsh treatment in the media as a working-class politician to that of the 'upper-class' Boris Johnson.

He said there was 'still very much an establishment class issue' shown by the fact he was 'lambasted' whereas the London Mayor, who was 'playing it out with debutantes', was not.

Mr Danczuk's resolute defence came as yet more revelations emerged about his private life, with Mrs Rossington exposed for advertising herself as an escort following their divorce in 2010.

Around 20 protesters gathered outside Mr Danczuk's constituency office in Rochdale yesterday morning calling for him to resign, including Karen's Danczuk's brother.

Michael Burke, who is accused of a string of historical sex offences against three alleged victims, was photographed heckling the embattled MP as he left his constituency office to face the crowd of protestors.

The MP's first wife Sonia Rossington (pictured) claimed in an interview on Sunday that he 'bullied' her into sex during their eight-year marriage. He denies the claims

The 38-year-old security guard, who is Mr Danczuk's former brother-in-law, was charged in October with 11 counts of rape, five counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted rape.

But, despite the protests, Mr Danczuk remained resolute and branded the group a 'rag tag bunch of political opponents'.

Amid a string of revelations involving his former wives, his ex-girlfriend and the teenage girl, the outspoken anti-paedophile campaigner insisted it was 'not for ex-girlfriends or ex-wives' to decide who should be MP for Rochdale.

After walking around Rochdale for two hours speaking to constituents, Mr Danczuk said the campaign group did not reflect the views of most constituents and he was 'humbled' by the positive response from locals.

He said: 'I don't think I will be expelled from the Labour party, I think when they carry out the internal investigation  which I will cooperate fully with  they will conclude that, whilst I made one or two foolish mistakes, it doesn't warrant me being expelled from the party.

'So I'm quietly confident that they will conclude I'll remain a Labour member of parliament.'

He added: 'I do think there is an interesting dichotomy between people like Boris Johnson, who make a lot of money as a member of Parliament and indeed as Mayor of London, whilst writing for the Daily Telegraph and the right-wing media and who has a very colourful personal life.

'And yet a working class lad like me in Rochdale, who writes for some of the national newspapers and has a working class colourful personal life, I get lambasted, whilst Boris, playing it out with debutantes and all the rest of it in this upper-class world, doesn't get lambasted.

'And I think there is still very much an establishment, class issue going on in terms of, you know it's a sociological issue is this, about how some of this stuff plays out, I think it's quite interesting.'

Responding to Mr Danczuk's comments, Mr Johnson told LBC radio today: 'I really don't know what he is talking about. All I can say is I have no desire whatever to intervene or superimpose my own judgment on the judgments that Jeremy Corbyn has to make.

'I think the best thing we can do with the Labour Party at the moment is leave them to their own delectable disputations about whatever Mr Danczuk is talking about.'

After the sexting scandal broke out, Mr Danczuk apologised 'unreservedly' but blamed his behaviour on his 'drink problem'.

Mrs Rossington then criticised her former partner for humiliating their two children, Marymartha, 13, and George, 18.

Mrs Rossington then criticised her former partner (pictured together in 2002) for humiliating their two children, Marymartha, 13, and George, 18

Painting herself as a 'paragon of virtue', the 39-year-old, with whom he split in 2007, insisted she even planned on changing their surnames to help them avoid embarrassment in public.

She later claimed in an interview with the Mail On Sunday that the Rochdale MP would bully her into silence and attempt to have sex with her while she slept. He has strongly denied having done anything illegal.

Yesterday, The Sun revealed how Mrs Rossington allegedly offered individual meets and sex parties while posing as an escort.

She reportedly advertised herself on the sex website under the name 'Stephanie36HH', a reference to her bra size, and was once filmed in an orgy with three paying customers, it is alleged.

Yesterday, Mr Danczuk's second ex-wife Karen, who still uses the Danczuk surname, took to Twitter saying she had evidence of not just the escorting, but 'other things' too.

Mr Dancsuk yesterday denied wanting to have sex with Miss Houlihan, telling BBC News: 'Certainly not, no, that's been made clear time and time again.

'This was an error of judgment for which I have apologised.'

Yesterday, Mr Danczuk's second ex-wife Karen, who still uses the Danczuk surname, was seen out and about in a pair of skimpy shorts following a gym session

Yesterday, Ms Danczuk told LBC radio that her ex-husband had worked himself 'almost to death' to become an MP.

'Politics is his life and the threat of that one thing in his life, that keeps him going, being taken away from him, it has really, really shocked him and really upset him,' she said.

'For me, I am glad he has been suspended in a way because he needs that break, he needs to sort himself out. I think he can make a comeback.

'I would hope people can get behind him and say this is a man who has had a very difficult 12 months, who has had to listen to some outrageous things.'

Speaking about their attendance at church together, she said: 'He was very sombre ... the congregation was so supportive, and I think that overwhelmed Simon.

'I am being firm with him and not making excuses for him and telling him what he did was wrong. But I do think that he can come back from it and I will absolutely be behind him 100 per cent.'

She was pictured yesterday arriving and leaving a nearby gym, wearing skimpy shorts ahead of a workout with her personal trainer Lewis Bailey.

Following his split from Karen in June, Mr Danczuk had a three-month romance with Labour councillor Claire Hamilton, 32 (pictured together), which ended over the texts to Miss Houlihan just after the Christmas period

Meanwhile, Mr Danczuk has reportedly written to Labour's general secretary, Iain McNicol, asking for former London mayor Ken Livingstone to play no part in his disciplinary process.

Mr Livingstone has been highly critical of the MP's behaviour.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Mr Danczuk wrote to Mr McNicol: 'I strongly deny any illegality in my actions. His comments were featured under critical headlines and clearly showed a prejudicial view of my case.

'Despite, voicing such trenchant criticism, he went on to say that 'I can't say too much because I'm on Labour's NEC and might have to take the final decision about whether he's allowed to resume his party membership or whether we expel him'.

'With Ken Livingstone having clearly displayed a prejudiced view from the outset, could you give me your assurances that he will play no part in this investigation.'

Mr Danczuk left school aged 16 and began working at a factory making gas fires, before becoming making his move into politics through the GMB trade Union and becoming a local councillor.

By contrast, Old Etonian Boris Johnson studied Classics at Oxford University and became a national newspaper journalist, before being selected to stand for the Conservatives.
Police have told Oregon militiamen occupying a remote federal building it's time for them to 'go home'.

But a leader of the armed group insists they will not leave until control of the land has been turned over to the locals saying he is on a 'mission from God' and vowing to carry on even though the two men who inspired the protest have surrendered to the authorities.

Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, two ranchers who were convicted of setting fires that spread to government land, arrived at San Pedro prison on Monday to begin jail terms.

However occupier Ammon Bundy, who comes from a Mormon family, says he is following directions from God and invokes his family's faith when explaining the anti-government movement he is attempting to lead.

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward has said it is time for the militiamen occupying a remote federal building on Oregon to go home as they are no longer welcome in the community

Ammon Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, has insisted the group is staying put until control of the land is handed over to the locals

In a statement issued Monday, Mormon leaders said the Oregon land dispute 'is not a church matter,' but they condemned the seizure and said they were 'deeply troubled' by reports that suggest the armed group is acting 'based on Scriptural principles.'

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said that the rest of the occupiers were no longer welcome in the community.

'The Hammonds have turned themselves in,' he said. 'It is time for you to leave our community. Go home, be with your own families and end this peacefully.'

Bundy - one of the sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights - said at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that ranchers, loggers and farmers should have control of federal lands.

Bundy offered few specifics of the group's plan, but LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, said the group would examine the underlying land ownership transactions to begin to 'unwind it.'

Finicum said he was eager to leave Oregon.

'I need to get home,' he said. 'I've got cows that are scattered and lost.'

As of Tuesday morning, authorities had not shut off power to the refuge, Finicum said.

'If they cut it off, that would be such a crying shame, all the pipes would freeze.'

On the third day of the occupation Ammon Bundy said the group felt it had the support of the local community.

However, the county sheriff has told the roughly 20 people to go home and a community meeting was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

While the anti-government group is critical of federal stewardship of lands, environmentalists and others say officials should run the lands for the broadest possible benefit of business, recreation and the environment.

Dwight Hammond, 73, (left) and his son Steven, 46, (right), the two ranchers who inspired the occupation, were convicted of setting fires that spread to government land and have begun jail terms in California

Oregon Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr (right, in blue) and his son Steven (left, in plaid) have handed themselves in to federal authorities at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California on Monday afternoon

Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against a group numbering close to two dozen, led by Bundy and his brother, who are upset over federal land policy

So far, law enforcement has not taken action against the group of about two dozen activists opposing the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.

'These guys are out in the middle of nowhere, and they haven't threatened anybody that I know of,' said Jim Glennon, a longtime police commander who now owns the Illinois-based law enforcement training organization Calibre Press. 'There's no hurry.'

Some observers have complained, suggesting the government's response would have been swifter and more severe had the occupants been Muslim or other minorities.

The activists seized the refuge about 300 miles from Portland on Saturday night as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

They said they want an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.

The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006, one of which was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors. The men served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

Their sentences were a rallying cry for the group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, whose mostly male members said they want federal lands turned over to local authorities so people can use them free of U.S. oversight.

The Hammonds have distanced themselves from the protest group. Many locals don't want the activists here, fearing they may bring trouble.

An American flag is shown at the front entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters where the armed group are standing firm

Ammon Bundy has said he had never heard of the Hammond case until his father mentioned it to him. The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago of setting fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. One of the blazes was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors.

The men served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

Ammon Bundy said he prayed about the matter and 'clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds.'

The Hammonds said they lit the fires to reduce the growth of invasive plants and protect their property from wildfires.

'I did exactly what the Lord asked me to do,' Bundy said in a YouTube video posted last week in which he appeals to like-minded people to join him in Oregon to protest against the treatment of the Hammonds.

Seeds of the dispute date back decades in the West, where the federal government owns about half of all land.

In the 1970s, Nevada and other states pushed for local control in what was known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. Supporters wanted more land for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting.

A manned watch tower is shown at sunrise Tuesday near Burns, Oregon. The group occupying the remote post has insisted they will not use violence unless the government intervenes
It is one of Scotlands most historic firms, whose foil-wrapped tea cakes delight tastebuds the world over.

But Tunnocks has incurred the wrath of cybernats after rebranding the sweet treat as British, with its traditional Lion Rampant motif missing from a new advertising campaign in England.

The promotion, which has appeared on the London Underground, also describes the product as Tunnocks Great British Tea Cake.

Tunnocks has incurred the wrath of cybernats after rebranding the sweet treat as British, with its traditional Lion Rampant motif missing from a new advertising campaign in England

Tunnocks, which also produces caramel wafers, snowballs and caramel logs, has recently enjoyed record profits

Managing director Boyd Tunnock was a vocal supporter of the No campaign in the run-up to the independence referendum in 2014.

The 82-year-old biscuit baron  grandson of founder Thomas Tunnock, who started the company in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, in 1890  said of the change: It was the idea of my son-in-law, Fergus Loudon, who is the sales manager and looks after advertising. Youve got The Great British Bake Off and things like that these days.

We could have said Scottish, but youre then promoting Scotland. Were British. But cybernats have responded furiously, demanding on social media that Scots stop buying Tunnocks products.

On the Expats for Scotland Independence Facebook page, one poster declared: Tunnocks are no longer (and never were) Scottish. They campaigned for a No vote. Dont buy them ever again.

Cybernat2015 tweeted: Boycott Tunnocks. F****** traitors. Dont buy their sh**** teacakes or anything else. Scumbags.

The tea cake was one of the stars of the opening ceremony of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, where dancers performed in giant tea cake costumes

Tunnocks, which also produces caramel wafers, snowballs and caramel logs, has recently enjoyed record profits

Gordon Ross said on Facebook: Tunnocks are now about to go the way of Scottish Labour. I never imagined a Scottish biscuit company would turn on its own customers and employees.

But it seems the narrow mindedness of an old man is more important than the company.

I wait to see Tunnocks close in Scotland and survive as a shadow in England

Brian Ritchie said: Bye bye Tunnocks  you know where you can shove your teacakes!

Mr Tunnock added: The vote said were British. Were Scottish, however were still in Britain. Down south, people wouldnt know it as Scottish. Weve had caramel wafers advertised on the London Underground but I think that was the first time for tea cakes.

He said there were no immediate plans to brand the tea cakes British north of the Border.

We probably wouldnt, he said. Wed just say tea cakes. But we could probably call it the Great World Tea Cake as we sell them abroad as well, in places like Australia and Canada and weve just started to sell them in Germany.

The tea cake was one of the stars of the opening ceremony of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, where dancers performed in giant tea cake costumes.

Tunnocks, which also produces caramel wafers, snowballs and caramel logs, has recently enjoyed record profits. The latest accounts for the family-run firm show a 7 per cent increase in sales for the year to February last year, with profits rising 17 per cent to 7.9million.

Despite the cybernat backlash, there was also support online for the move by Tunnocks.
For more of the latest on the ISIS siege visit www.dailymail.co.uk/isis

Witnesses say there's been no food or water and homes are destroyed

Survivors of the battle of Ramadi have revealed the devastation left behind after Iraqi government forces reclaimed the city from ISIS militants last week.

The provincial captial of Anbar, some 70miles west of Baghdad, had been under ISIS control since May last year, but now only a handful of fighters remain in the city.

Civilians who have escaped the city say they had been without food for months and that only dogs now roam the streets of Ramadi, feeding on the bodies of dead ISIS militants.

Saved: Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters help trapped civilians in Ramadi on Monday, as they advance into the city in the wake of the siege last week

A woman who fled the city this weekend told of how Ramadi has been reduced to rubble during the battle, and that most ISIS fighters have either fled or been killed in the siege.

'We saw ISIS fighters when we left our houses, we saw their dead bodies in the streets,' she told CNN.

'Dogs are eating their heads. We only saw their hands and their legs.'

She also revealed the dire state families have been left in while ISIS has been in control of the city.

'We have been without food for two months, no water for the past ten days,' she added, speaking from a refugee camp in Habbaniyah, 25 miles east of Ramadi.

'We were surprised when we left our home and drove outside the city, we only saw destroyed houses and roads. We could not recognize the city. It looked like another city.'

Crisis: Witnesses have revealed that civilians in Ramadi have been without food and water for weeks while under ISIS control, and many have been trapped in their homes during the siege

Destruction: A burned out car lies amid damaged buildings in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad after Iraqi government forces drove ISIS militants out of the city

Marked: A member of the Iraqi security forces runs after planting an Iraqi flag in the ground in Ramadi

Iraqi government troops have been met by civilians waving white flags as they have advanced through the ruined city over the weekend.

'They (Islamic State) are not Muslims, they are beasts,' one of the men rescued from the central district told a reporter accompanying the advancing Iraqi column.

'We thank our security forces, from the soldiers to the generals. They saved us,' the man said before breaking into tears.

Another man added that the fighters had killed seven people who refused to come with them to another district where they were making a stand.

Major Salam Hussein said that ISIS have been using families as human shields. More than 52 families had been rescued so far in the city, he said on Friday.

Another military officer, reached by telephone from the battlefield, said security forces were using loudspeakers to urge civilians to head toward the advancing troops, before calling air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition on residential blocks still held by the militants.

ISIS has recently lost control of Baiji, Sinjar and now Ramadi - all in Iraq - as well as a key dam on the Euphrates in Syria.

Destruction: A picture taken last week as Iraq declared the city of Ramadi liberated from ISIS

Recapturing Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, was one of the most significant victories for Iraq's armed forces since ISIS swept across a third of the country in 2014.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes had punched into the city centre last week, with the fighting over the final days of the battle concentrated around the former government complex.

ISIS fighters had been defending with snipers, suicide car bomb attacks and hundreds of roadside bombs and booby traps.The advance by the government forces had also been hampered by the possible presence of dozens of families trapped in the combat zone and used by ISIS as human shields.

After Ramadi, the army plans to move to retake the northern city of Mosul, the biggest population centre under ISIS control in Iraq and Syria.

Dislodging the militants from Mosul, which had a pre-war population close to two million, would effectively abolish their state structure in Iraq and deprive them of a major source of funding, which comes partly from oil and partly from fees and taxes on residents.

Patrick Martin, Iraq analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said the Ramadi win was the reversal of an earlier loss and would fall short of seriously crippling IS in the area.
Kuwait has recalled its ambassador to Iran, becoming the latest country to side with Saudi Arabia in a diplomatic spat with Tehran in the wake of an execution of a prominent Shite cleric last week.

The small Gulf nation joins a number of Saudi allies in shunning Iran, but have yet to elaborate whether Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be completely severed.

Saudi Arabia cut all diplomatic ties to Iran this weekend, after protesters stormed its embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashdad, following the execution of top Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

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Protesters burn an effigy of King Salman of Saudi Arabia during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq, as Kuwait became the latest Gulf nation to side with the Saudis in withdrawing diplomats from Iran

The execution of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr incited demonstrations in several countries in the Middle East, and has now sparked a diplomatic crisis where countries are siding with Saudi Arabia or Iran

After Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday, Bahrain - a small Shi'ite-majority Gulf state ruled by a Sunni family - and Sudan followed suit on Monday.

Sudan's foreign affairs ministry summoned Iran's charge d'affaires in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to inform the mission that the diplomats have two weeks at the most to leave, state news reported yesterday.

Shortly afterwards, the United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.

Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry denounced the attacks in Tehran and Mashdad, calling them 'unacceptable' and tantamount to 'intervening in the kingdom's internal affairs'.

Iranian protesters gather during an anti-Saudi Arabia demonstration at the Imam Hossein square in Tehran, on Monday, where protesters stormed and burned the Saudi embassy on Saturday

The execution of Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia incited demonstrations in several countries in the Middle East, and has now sparked a diplomatic crisis where countries are siding with Saudi Arabia or Iran

The Egyptian diplomat also reaffirmed his country's support for Saudi Arabia ahead of an upcoming meeting of foreign ministers at the Arab League that is due to discuss the Iran-Saudi spat.

He said the 'security of the kingdom is an integral part of Egypt's security and Egypt's security is an integral part of the kingdom's security'.

WHO IS SUPPORTING WHO? SAUDI ARABIA VERSUS IRAN Completely cut ties with Iran: - Saudi Arabia - Sudan - Bahrain Downgraded ties/criticized Iran: - Kuwait - United Arab Emirates - Egypt Advertisement

The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a longtime regional rival.

'What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented ... It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message,' said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University.

'This is the Saudis saying: 'There is no limit to how far we will go.''

The diplomatic standoff began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges  the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. Late Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

Spreading: Shi'ite Muslims push barricades installed by police during a protest in front of Saudi Arabia's embassy in New Delhi, India, on Monday

Global rift: A Shi'ite Muslim burns a picture of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz during the New Delhi protest

On Monday, Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdom's cutting of diplomatic ties.

Iran expressed 'regret' over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Iran's U.N. envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

Switzerland's Foreign Ministry has said it summoned the Saudi charge d'affaires to reiterate its opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances after a mass execution in the kingdom.

The Swiss ministry, in a statement on Monday, said 'these mass executions risk reviving the confessional tensions which have already caused far too many victims in this region of the world'.

It stressed the importance of doing everything to lower those tensions and 'avoid provocations'.
The mother of a young man critically injured in a hit-and-run on Christmas Day has made an emotional appeal for information to catch the driver.

JJ Armstrong, 24, was on his way to enjoy Christmas with family and friends when he was hit by a car and left fighting for his life in north London.

Ten days after the horrific incident, his mother, Sharon Bixby, 55, is urging the driver to come forward.

JJ Armstrong was treated for two hours in the street where the hit-and-run took place before being rushed to a hospital where he went through eight hours of life-saving surgery

Sharon Bixby, JJ's mother, is encouraging the hit-and-run driver to come forward. She said JJ is breathing again, but she has to expect the worst and hope for the best. He is pictured here with his mother

Sharon said: 'I am still numb. From now on Christmas is done for me, I can't ever look towards another Christmas again.

'JJ was on his way to meet me at a party at a family friend's house. It was about quarter to seven in the evening and my daughter called me and said he had been involved in a hit-and-run.

'We were rushed straight to Royal London Hospital and I arrived before JJ - the paramedics were working on him for two hours on the street.

'JJ is now off the life support machine and he is breathing for himself, but doctors have told me that in the best case scenario it could take him up to two years to walk and talk again.

'In the worst case scenario he could be left forever a baby - that is my biggest fear.'

She has been told many times that she needs to 'prepare to lose him'.

JJ is a former animal sanctuary volunteer from Newham, east London. He was released from the hospital after surgery, but then rushed back soon after. He is still on life support and his mother said he is in a half coma

After undergoing eight hours of life-saving surgery in an attempt to stop the bleeding around his head and neck, JJ was discharged from the hospital on December 26, but he had to be rushed back in.

He is still on life support, but is breathing again his mother said. She has now launched an appeal on social media in a bid to find the person responsible for the incident.

She encouraged anyone with information to come forward in a recent Facebook post.

'Please please help us find who did this to JJ we need answers someone has to be held accountable for leaving him for dead. No mother should have to go through this.'

Sharon said: 'If I could speak to the person responsible I would say: "I know you're hurting. I know you are scared, but if you don't give yourself up it will eat you up."

'I just want justice for my son. A lot of people have shared my post on social media, so I hope the person who did this will hand themselves in.

'I am just taking each day as it comes at the moment. I have to expect the worst, but hope for the best.'

Police said they are monitoring CCTV footage and carrying out all appropriate checks to find the car involved and they are confident that they will trace the driver

Metropolitan Police are appealing for the driver and any witnesses to come forward.

The driver of the light-coloured car did not stop and drove away eastbound towards Tottenham, police said.

Detective Sergeant Chris Osbourne, from the Roads and Transport Policing Command, said they are studying CCTV footage and carrying out all appropriate checks on the car involved.

'I am confident we will trace the driver, but would urge them to contact police right away regarding this incident.'

Sharon wrote on Facebook: 'Our son is still in a dangerous way, and we are praying for a miracle, that our son will pull through and be taken off the life support and have no brain damage.'

She continues to thank every one who has helped her fight for her son and said that her son is now in a 'half coma'.
A Syrian migrant offered his wife as payment to people smugglers then joined them in raping her daily during the family's crossing to Europe, it has been revealed.

The incident is just one of thousands of unreported cases of sexual assaults perpetrated against migrant women making their way to Europe.

The husband, who had run out of money to pay the smugglers in Bulgaria, put forward his 30-year-old wife to the smugglers in order to earn the family's crossing.

Refugees wait in a registration centre in Passau, Germany. Some migrant women (not pictured) are subjected to sexual assaults while living in vulnerable conditions at detention centres or during their trip to Europe

But he soon started joining the smugglers in the daily rapes, in what an expert described as a 'twisted logic' in which the man's wife had become the 'guilty party'.

According to the New York Times, the unidentified woman - a mother-of-four - now lives in Berlin with her children.

Although there is now a restraining order against her abusive husband, she is terrified of being killed by him for bringing 'dishonour' to their family.

Susanne Hohne, a psychotherapist in Berlin who treats female migrants, told the paper the woman displays signs of post traumatic stress disorder.

'One moment she will seem perfectly healthy, the next she is in her chair opposite you dodging bullets in Damascus or reliving her abuse in Bulgaria.'

However, she is not alone. Thousands of migrant women, often vulnerable and completely dependent on their husbands or male family members during their trek to Europe, face similar ordeals.

Last year four women's rights organisations co-signed a letter to Germany's Minister of Integration and Social Affairs in Hesse state described a culture of 'rape and violence' at asylum seeker shelters.

The letter, authored on August 18, stated: 'It is a fact that women and children are unprotected. This situation is opportune to those men who already regard women as their inferior and treat unaccompanied women as fair game.

'As a consequence, there are reports of numerous rapes, sexual assaults and increasingly of forced prostitution. These are not isolated incidents.'

Esraa al-Horani, a former makeup artist from Syria, told the New York Times she had dressed as a man and stopped washing to avoid being attacked.

Esraa al-Horani, a migrant from Syria, said she stopped washing and dressed as a man in order to ward of men's advances. She also claimed to sleep at her emergency shelter with a cupboard pushed against the door

She spends her nights in an emergency shelter in Berlin with a cupboard pushed up against the door.

Another, named only as Samar, described spending 14 months with her three daughters, aged 2, 8, and 13, on the trek from Syria to Berlin.

Refusing to let her daughters out of her sight, she and other female travellers banded together to take turns watching over the group while the others slept.

However, she too was propositioned by a people smuggler in Turkey - who offered to take her to Greece for free if she had sex with him.

She refused, but described hearing him wandering the halls of the hostel late at night.

She told the paper: 'Everybody knows there are two ways of paying the smugglers. With money or with your body.'

Meanwhile, the sexual violence continues to plague many of the refugee camps in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to take in hundreds of thousands of migrants.

This woman, named only as Samar, said she refused a smuggler's advances in Turkey when he offered to take her and her daughters to Greece for free if she slept with him

Johannes-Wilhelm Roerig, the federal commissioner for child sexual abuse issues, said: I am most concerned that refugee children in camps, gymnasiums, or former barracks are not sufficiently protected from sexual assault.

Other reports suggest migrant women in the refugee camps are being forced into 10-a-time prostitutes.

At one migrant centre in the town of Kitzingen, officials are now only employing male cleaning staff after a female employee was allegedly sexually assaulted every day for ten days.

Campaign group Women For Refugee Women has previously stated the solution is to integrate genuine refugees as quickly as possible into society to remove them from the risks of overcrowded conditions.
Taxpayers will pay 900 to fly the parents to see the youngsters this year

The children will instead live their aunt and uncle on the island of Madeira

It ruled parents were a danger to the children after one broke collarbone

A court is sending two Oxfordshire infants to live with relatives in

Judge Eleanor Owens (pictured) decided two young Oxfordshire children would be safer living with relatives in Portugal than with their parents

Taxpayers will pay 900 for two Oxfordshire parents to fly to Madeira to visit their children after a court ruled that the children should live on the Portuguese island.

Judge Eleanor Owens decided the infants - a one-year-old girl and her two-year-old brother - could not safely stay with the parents, and would be safer with their aunt and uncle.

But the parents will still be allowed to visit - and taxpayers will fund six 150 flights to Madeira because of father's low income job and because the mother is unable to work due to 'complex needs'.

The children were taken into temporary protective custody last year after the girl was 'deliberately' hurt by her parents. Her collarbone had been fractured and her face and arm bruised.

Yesterday Judge Owens decided the best long-term solution for the children would be for them to live with their aunt and uncle in Madeira.

The mother will have four flights paid for and the father will have two.

The mother didn't ask to care for the children but their father did.

Two Oxfordshire children will be sent to live on the island of Madeira after it was decided they could come to harm in their parents' care. Taxpayers will pay 900 on six flights this year for the mother and father

However, social workers said he lacked 'basic parenting skills', making the relatives in Madeira a better option for the children.

The father disagreed saying that his skills as a parent were 'more than adequate'.

Judge Owens said: 'I have no hesitation in concluding that the welfare needs of the children, when I consider the welfare check-list, do not allow me to return them to their father's care.'

The mother will fly the 1,530 miles to Madeira four times to see her children and the father will go twice

'Those needs are best met in the proposed placement with the uncle and aunt in Madeira.'

'That placement is also clearly in their best interests and I am satisfied that suitable arrangements have been made for their reception and welfare in Madeira.

Social workers spent three days on Madeira in October assessing the aunt and uncle. Once the children are settled later this month, they will visit again.
30% of children aged between five and 14 are engaged in child labour

Children as young as 10 are forced to work for a miserable salary in Uganda on plantation land owned by the Catholic Church, a BBC investigation has uncovered.

A tea plantation in Kabale, a town in the hills of south-west Uganda, was found to employ up to 15 children, working along with adults from the local community for a daily wage fluctuating between 1,000 and 2,000 Ugandan shillings (20p to 40p).

The plantation is managed by Kigezi Highland Tea Limited through a deal with the Catholic Church, which owns the land.

A Church-owned tea plantation in Kabale, a town in the hills of south-west Uganda, was found to employ up to 15 children (stock photo)

A local Catholic Church official confirmed to the BBC that the company was in business with the local diocese since 2013 and that the decision to harvest tea came 'through the financial sustainability plan committee' of the Church.

Kigezi Highland Tea Limited and the local bishop refused to comment on the investigation.

The children's job entails collecting young tea plants piled at the bottom of a steep hill and transporting them to the location of the designed point of cultivation.

They are also responsible for weeding the rows of tea plants

Allegations that child labour was taking place on Church-owned land in Uganda were first made by a former child soldier, Alex Turyaritunga, who was forced to fight during the bloody Rwandan Civil War of the 1990s.

Turyaritunga, now 32, spoke with a heavy heart as members of the Catholic Church helped his mum pay for his education and that of his four siblings.

Allegations that child labour was taking place on Church-owned land in Uganda were first made by a former child soldier, Alex Turyaritunga (stock photo)

Reports that church land in Uganda is being used for child labour come after Pope Francis' historical tour of Africa last November.

During his visits in Kenya, Uganda and Central African Republic, the pontiff said the children were some of the greatest victims of Africa's historical exploitation by other powers.

In 2014, Francis appealed for an end to child labour with a strong message in St Peter's Square in Rome.

'Tens of millions of children are forced to work in degrading conditions, exposed to forms of slavery and exploitation, as well as to abuse, ill-treatment and discrimination,' said Pope Francis.

During his Africa tour, Pope Francis said the children were some of the greatest victims of Africa's historical exploitation by other powers

'I sincerely hope,' he continued, 'that the international community can offer social protection to minors to defeat this plague.' The Holy Father went on to say, 'Let us all renew our commitment, especially families, to ensure the tutelage of every boy's and girl's dignity and the chance to grow up healthy.'

'A serene childhood,' he concluded, 'allows children to look with confidence to the life and future.'
David Cameron caved in to pressure to let Cabinet members campaign to leave the EU after being confronted by senior ministers, it was suggested last night.

The Prime Minister was warned that unless he provided clarity on whether MPs would be free to campaign to quit the EU, he risked opening up a damaging Government split.

At least two Cabinet ministers  Chris Grayling and Theresa Villiers  were understood to be preparing to quit if he insisted on keeping collective responsibility in place.

Mr Cameron met Commons Leader Mr Grayling on Monday, when he also had a telephone discussion with Miss Villiers.

All smiles (from left): Stephen Crabb, Greg Clark, Theresa Villiers (face obscured), Sajid Javid, Nicky Morgan (obscured), Sir Jeremy Heywood, David Cameron, Philip Hammond, Michael Fallon (obscured), Justine Greening, Jeremy Hunt, Amber Rudd, David Mundell, Priti Patel, Anna Soubry, Matt Hancock, Oliver Letwin, Patrick McLoughlin, Lady Stowell, Christopher Grayling, who had a key meeting with the Prime Minister on Monday over the EU referendum, Theresa May (obscured), Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove, Liz Truss. Also present but obscured: John Whittingdale, Mark Harper, Greg Hands and Jeremy Wright

Mr Cameron, pictured heading to Parliament from Downing Street today, has told MPs his ministers will be allowed to campaign for either side when the renegotiation of Britain's membership of the EU is completed

Eurosceptic sources say he was persuaded to make the announcement when MPs returned to Westminster yesterday. Downing Street insisted the Prime Minister had made up his mind over a number of weeks and there had been no decisive moment.

He said that he had never intended to strongarm his Cabinet colleagues into taking a position they did not support.

Government insiders also insisted that no one had directly threatened to walk out during their talks with No10.

But the timing of yesterdays announcement  coming a full six weeks before Mr Cameron is expected to finalise his referendum negotiations with Brussels on February 18  took Westminster by surprise and triggered speculation that his arm had been twisted.

Cabinet ministers said all that mattered was that the Prime Minister was now in the right place.

Tory grandee Ken Clarke has admitted the Prime Minister was 'probably forced' into suspending the normal rules to allow his eurosceptic ministers to campaign against him in the EU referendum.

The former cabinet minister said it was clear several of Mr Cameron's ministers were already briefing newspapers in favour of the Leave campaign - despite firm speculation David Cameron will recommend Britain stay in.

Mr Cameron is set to return to his negotiation tour this week with visits to Germany and Hungary ahead of the next EU summit in February, where he hopes to conclude a deal on Britain's membership.

Former cabinet minister Ken Clarke said Mr Camern was 'probably forced' into abandoning collective cabinet responsibility over the referendum

The Prime Minister has targeted the meeting as the point to conclude his renegotiation of Britain's membership, heightening suspicion the referendum will be called as soon as June.

Ministers will be free to start campaigning once the deal is completed and the Government's recommendation is made, Mr Cameron announced.

Mr Clarke told the BBC World at One: 'He probably has been forced into it, as people have been saying, because one or two of them are obviously already briefing the newspapers and have been for some time.'

Mr Clarke criticised the move, arguing that frontbenchers should have to resign if they disagreed with the Government.

'You don't stay in office and campaign against the government of which you serve,' he added.

Mr Clarke said 'firm ground rules' must now be set that mean Cabinet ministers campaign 'moderately' and they 'don't get carried away'.

But Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, praised the move as a 'mature' approach to politics.

He told World at One: 'It's a matter of learning from the mistakes of the past.

'Many of us have fresh experience of the aftermath of the Maastricht Treaty very much in mind.

'The attempt to force the party together over Maastricht clearly did not work - it left us with many years of dissent, dissatisfaction and rancour within the party.'

Mr Camerons decision was also applauded by Steve Baker, of Conservatives for Britain.

London Mayor Boris Johnson made clear he could vote to leave if the EU did not offer a good deal - but said it would not be the Prime Minister's fault.

He told LBC Radio: 'The Prime Minister has a negotiation to fulfil and conduct and I'm obviously supporting him.

'My view remains what it always has been, this is a great opportunity to reform the EU.

'If we don't get what is good for Britain and for Europe then we should not hesitate to say '"no".

'What I think will happen - this is very, very important - if the British people were to say "we don't think that's good enough" I don't think that for a minute means David Cameron has to resign.'

Mr Johnson said Mr Cameron was doing a 'brilliant job' and 'fighting a very tough renegotiation' with his fellow EU leaders.

Mr Cameron told MPs today: 'My intention is that at the conclusion of the renegotiation, the government should reach a clear recommendation and then the referendum will be held.

'It is the nature of a referendum that it is the people not the politicians who decide.

'And as indicated before Christmas, there will be a clear government position, but it will be open to individual Ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the government.

'Ultimately it will be for the British people to decide this countrys future by voting in or out of a reformed European Union in the Referendum that only we promised and that only a Conservative majority government was able to deliver.'

Despite critics on his backbenches claiming his negotiating goals were limited, the Prime Minister insisted they were on the 'outside edge of what we can achieve'.

Mr Cameron made his announcement at the Commons despatch box today flanked by Home Secretary Theresa May, right, and Commons leader Chris Grayling - both of whom are known to be eurosceptic

Mr Cameron has faced repeated calls to allow his cabinet a free hand in the campaign as several members are known to want to leave Europe - despite Mr Cameron being likely to keep Britain in.

The pre-Christmas row prompted former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine to warn suspending collective responsibility would make Mr Cameron a 'laughing stock'.

As soon as the announcement was made, MPs began speculating on which heavyweight MPs would join the out campaign. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, Mr Grayling and Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers are expected to be at the forefront.

BORIS JOHNSON IS BACKING CAMERON 'AT THE MOMENT' Boris Johnson continued to hedge his bets on the EU referendum yesterday  saying he was backing the Prime Ministers renegotiation at the moment. The London Mayor added that, while David Cameron was doing a brilliant job, Britain must be prepared to walk away if the deal he secures is not good enough. His remarks  dubbed classic Boris by one Government aide  keep his options firmly open for potentially leading the Leave campaign. MPs say that if either Mr Johnson or Theresa May, the Home Secretary, were to act as the figurehead for a successful out campaign, they would be best placed to secure the backing of the partys right. Mrs May has refused to be drawn on which side she will support. But Mr Johnson has made a series of Eurosceptic comments in recent months. Yesterday, he told LBC radio: I think weve got to be prepared to walk away, but at the moment I am backing the Prime Minister to get a great deal for this country and for Europe. Mr Johnson went on: If we dont get what is good for Britain and for Europe then we should not hesitate to say no. If the British people were to say we dont think thats good enough I dont think that for a minute means David Cameron has to resign. Advertisement

The spotlight also fell on avowed eurosceptics Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, and Business Secretary Sajid Javid.

One Government insider said: Both could be the most eloquent speakers for the leave campaign, but they are very loyal to the PM and the Chancellor.

Had the ban on speaking out remained in place, it would have been simpler for them. They have a big choice to make now.

Mr Grayling declined to comment, but he is now expected to play a prominent role in the leave campaign once the referendum begins.

Former PM Sir John Major has urged Mr Cameron to maintain collective responsibility throughout the campaign, while former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine warned a free vote would make Cameron a laughing stock.

The move was criticised by Labour. The party's referendum campaign chairman, Alan Johnson, said: 'While the Tories are divided on Europe, Labour is clear that Britain's national interest is best served by campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU.

'Our place in the world and our economic future are far more important than any internal Conservative issues or jockeying for position in a post-David Cameron leadership contest.

'Labour will campaign clearly and firmly for a vote to remain in the EU.'

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said it was the right thing to do, telling Sky News: 'This is much bigger than party politics so I think what the Prime Minister has done is the right thing - though he may be surprised now just how many cabinet members come out in favour of leaving.

'I now think there will be a large number of Conservative MPs who will support the leave campaign.

'There are a significant number of people who are concerned about our EU membership and even more who are concerned about the Prime Minister's renegotiation.

'What is becoming clear is the EU is not prepared to yield. Mr Cameron is going to come back from the summit in February with, frankly, very little.'

The Tory's London Mayor candidate Zac Goldsmith today said he was waiting on David Cameron's EU renegotiation as a 'courtesy' to the Prime Minister but will join the Leave campaign if reform is not 'meaningful'.

Home Secretary Theresa May, left, has been named as a potential leader of the Out campaign and will now be able to choose to campaign for out. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is known to be one of the strongest eurosceptics in the cabinet

The declaration from the Tory candidate for London Mayor comes a day after six Conservative MPs first elected last year also announced they would definitely campaign to get Britain out of the European Union.

Mr Goldsmith, a known Eurosceptic, insisted he was 'not a headbanger' on the issue and wanted to give the Prime Minister a 'chance' to deliver reforms.

He said the organisation needs to be 'radically reformed' to make it more democratic and more accountable.

But he said: 'If the reforms are not meaningful, if they are not radical, if it doesn't mean that we will have a more decentralised, more democratic union then, of course, I will vote to come out because that would be in the national interest.'

The mayoral candidate said he '100 per cent supported' the manifesto promise of renegotiating Britain's membership.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: 'David Cameron should have the courage of his convictions and make the case we all know he wants to make, that by staying in Europe, Britain can thrive.

'The Prime Minister is failing to lead his own Government, let alone the country, putting his own internal party strife above what's best for Britain.

'Now is not the time to back down. The Government should take a collective position on this issue, and if ministers disagree with the Prime Minister they should resign.

'The Liberal Democrats are the only party united in the case to remain. Together we created the world's largest free trade area, we delivered peace, and we gave the British people the opportunity to live, work and travel freely. History shows that Britain is better when it is united with Europe.'

Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, said the PM had made exactly the right call, adding: It is a mature approach to politics. It shows respect for the British public.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Vote Leave group, said: The referendum could be as little as 170 days away, so ministers should be allowed to campaign openly as soon as the renegotiation is complete  and certainly no later than the end of the European Council in February.

The British people deserve to hear where their elected representatives stand on this vitally important issue.

Weve had lots of useful meetings with ministers and look forward to working with them much more closely now. The ban on speaking out will be lifted only when the negotiations with Brussels are complete, which is almost certain to be in February.

Critics have argued that this gives Mr Cameron an unfair advantage because he is already making the case for Britain to stay in. Privately, however, ministers acknowledge they signed up to remain on-side until the talks were over.

Downing Street was unable to say whether special advisers would be free to campaign to leave alongside their ministers  or would have to toe the Government line.
Marlin bit on Conor Cogan's line before jumping toward his head

A competitive fisherman thought it was his lucky day when he snagged a 90kg marlin, but the feisty fish had other plans and leapt into the fishermans boat  almost impaling him in the head.

Conor Cogan was fishing 40km off the coast of Port Stephens, NSW, with a group of friends on New Years Day when the marlin bit down on his line.

Within seconds, the massive and now angry fish, turned and jumped out of the water directly toward Mr Cogan.

The last thing I remember is him coming straight for me and in line with my head, Mr Cogan told Daily Mail Australia.

Scroll down for video

Conor Cogan (pictured left) was fishing with his two friends Peter and Ryan Constable (right) when the marlin jumped out of the water and straight toward him

Mr Cogan (pictured) ducked out of the way, turning his back on the 90kg fish

The marlin flailed around on the side of the boat and on Mr Cogan's back

At the last second, I ducked and [the marlin] fell onto the side of the boat and onto my back and I thought, geez Im alive.

I still dont realise how I managed to get out of that one.

Mr Cogan said the fish that day were especially energetic and they were all jumping around.

At the last second, I ducked and [the marlin] fell onto the side of the boat and onto my back and I thought, geez Im alive, Mr Cogan said

The marlin then rolled off his back and back into the sea, just outside of Port Stephens, NSW

All he can do is look on in shock as the marlin swims away (pictured)

He and his fishing mates Peter and Ryan Constable, who were helping him tame the marlin, compete regularly and had headed out on Constables boat The Pump for a practice run, Mr Cogan said.

The three have seen fish jump near the back of the boat before but never into the boat.

I know guys that have had marlins jump into the back of the boat before, but never have they hit someone and fall back into the water without anyone being seriously injured, Mr Cogan said.

Mr Cogans lucky dodge was captured on video and posted online to his Facebook, where it has now been viewed more than 135,000 times since Saturday.

The marlin was their second bit of the day during their New Year's Day fishing trip
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Aid workers have warned that thousands of refugees and migrants, including more than 160 children, staying in a camp near Dunkirk, northern France, are living in conditions so filthy it is on the brink of a sanitation crisis.

The Grand-Synthe camp is home to hundreds of families who have fled war and oppression in the Middle East, but with the population exploding from 600 people in October to more than 3,000 this week, it is now being described as 'far worse than the Calais jungle'.

Torrential rains over recent weeks has left the occupants, who are mostly Iraqi Kurds with some Syrians and Persians, living in squalid marshland conditions which are rife with disease and infested by rats.

Misery: Sisters Havin, six, and Hana Ttahsin, four, from Kurdistan walk through awful muddy conditions at the Grand-Synthe migrant camp which holds about 3,000 migrants in Dunkirk, France

New home: As of last month, Grand-Synthe, near Dunkirk, is home to hundreds of families, including 150 children and at least ten infants

Living in squalor: Aid workers warn that conditions for the 3,000 refugees and migrants, including more than 160 children, staying in a camp near Dunkirk, are now 'far worse than the Calais jungle'.

Family home: Havin and Hana Tthasin's younger sister Yamud, aged one, looks out from the family's tent in Grand-Synthe migrant camp

The settlement in Grande-Synthe has existed since 2006 but for years had fewer than 100 migrants, but a population count in December found that around 3,000 people were living in the camp, of which around 150 were children and around ten infants.

Photographs taken in the camp on Monday, show young children wading knee-deep through thick mud while their families huddle around fires, surrounded by ever-growing piles of rubbish.

In some places, mounds of sodden clothing, mud-soaked duvets and shoes swallowed by the swamp sit next to polluted streams and marquees selling food.

Elsewhere, metal sheets form makeshift paths between groups of tents in the flooded field, which has been battered by constant rain in recent weeks.

The camp only has two drinking water points and 26 toilets, which is roughly one per 100 people - five times fewer than the bare minimum in other refugee camps.

Don't worry, eat curry: Grande-Synthe has only two drinking water points and 26 toilets, which is roughly one per 100 people - five times fewer than the bare minimum in other refugee camps

Making do: A young refugee wades through the ankle-deep water as he crosses the sodden camp on Tuesday morning

High risk: Volunteers say they are not sure how much longer the refugees and migrants can continue living in the camp

Dark future: Yamud Tthasin, one, looks out from the family's tent at the Grand-Synthe migrant cam in Dunkirk, on Monday

In the dirt: A sack of potatoes lie in the mud next to a refuge sack and a number of mis-matched discarded shoes

These harrowing pictures show the desperate conditions in a French refugee camp - which has become become a mudbath due to torrential rain

Abandoned: A child's doll lies half-buried in mud and water having been dropped on the ground in the camp

Appalling: Grande-Synthe only has two drinking water points and 26 toilets, which is roughly one per 100 people - five times fewer than the bare minimum in other refugee camps

There are no healthcare facilities whatsoever, though doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) visit the camp a few times a week to treat the sick.

Front-line charity Helpful Humans said police in the area stop volunteers from entering the over-populated camp, which is on a small field next to a housing estate.

There is no organisation or system of distributing aid and donations must be sneaked in through the woodland at the back of the settlement.

Helpful Humans volunteer Georgina Hickman, who visits Grande-Synthe every two weeks, said: 'The conditions in the camp are worsening by the hour.

'People are ill and the camp is so, so boggy and muddy due to the constant rain and terrible weather conditions. The mud is so deep and thick.

'The whole place smells like waste - there are piles and mounds of waste. The refugees are getting no support and are more desperate than ever.'

What future? Seven-year-old Iraqi refugee Yawar gets a snack while running around between the tents in the Grand-Synthe migrant camp

Hope: Halwest Raswele and his son Aren, one, from Iran stand by their tent in the mud at the Grand-Synthe migrant camp

Filthy: Torrential rains over recent weeks has left the occupants living in a marshland which is rife with disease and infested by rats

Dreaming of Britain: The occupants of the camp are mostly Iraqi Kurds with some Syrians and Persians, hoping to come to the UK

Lunch break: Iranian migrant Rasul, ten and his father visit a charity 'restaurant' at the Grand-Synthe migrant camp in Dunkirk

Charity workers claim police in the area stop volunteers from entering the camp, which is on a field next to a housing estate

'They are hungry, cold and sick and the local police are manning the site 12 hours stopping all donations and help that arrives.

'It is completely different to Calais. There is no warehouse or system or organisation. It is chaotic.

'When I started going there in October, there were around 600 people. Now there are more than 3,000. It is so cramped, and the number grows by hundreds every week.

'Families arrive with absolutely nothing. They need tents, food and clothes.

'But the police aren't allowing anything to go in. At the beginning there were a few select volunteers who were allowed inside, but now we have to sneak supplies through.

'Dunkirk is far worse than the Calais jungle. There are more people in Calais, but the conditions on the ground in Grande-Synthe are worse.

'It is a forgotten camp. I don't know how much longer these people can carry on surviving in these conditions.'

There are no healthcare facilities whatsoever, though doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres visit the camp a few times a week

Path to nowhere: Metal sheets form makeshift paths between groups of tents in the flooded field, which has been battered by constant rain in recent weeks

Sisters Havin and Hana Ttahsin left Kurdistan with their family in the hope of a better future in Europe

There is no organisation or system of distributing aid and donations must be sneaked in through the woodland at the back of the settlement, according to charity workers

Still growing: An aerial picture from October shows the Grand-Synthe migrant camp at a stage when it had just a few hundred residents
The city of Chicago has paid $5.5 million in reparations to 57 people whose claims that they were tortured by police decades ago were found to be credible.

The money was paid on Monday to victims of a police unit run by disgraced former police commander Jon Burge from the 1970s through the early 1990s, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

More than 100 men, mostly African-American, have accused Burge and officers under his command of shocking, suffocating and beating them into giving false confessions, some of which landed them on death row.

Disgraced former police commander Jon Burge (pictured, middle) ran a Chicago police unit from 70s to early 90s that has been described as a new wave Ku Klux Klan. Victims claim that officers under his command suffocated and beat them into giving false confessions

Now, 57 victims have received reparations which total $5.5 million. One of the Burge victims Darrel Cannon, said on Monday that the payments were only the first step toward healing the city

Burge has never been criminally charged with torture, but he served a four-year sentence for lying about the torture in a civil case and was released from a halfway house last year.

The $5.5 million adds to more than $100 million that has been paid in court-ordered judgements, settlements of lawsuits and legal fees - most of it spent by the financially strapped city of Chicago and some by Cook County - over the years related to the torture scandal.

The $100,000 payment most victims received on Monday is a fraction of some previous settlements.

A months-long claims process for the payments included vetting by an arbitrator and by a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Kent School of Law.

Tensions remain: Despite the reparations, Chicago Police Department remains under criticism following the shooting of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald. Protests were held in Chicago in November 2015, a year on from the shooting

Protesters lined the streets in solidarity for Laquan McDonaldin 2015. Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton told the Chicago Sun-Times: 'To a lot of members of the African-American community, my sense is [the payments are] a really a meaningful thing. Now, is this going to make up for Laquan McDonald? No. It's not. But, in terms of resolving some of those wrongs and particularly egregious ones, yeah. I think it does'

The reparations were part of an ordinance the City Council passed last year that also mandated a formal apology, the construction of a memorial to the victims and the addition of the police torture to the city's school history curriculum.

It also provides psychological counselling and free tuition at some community colleges. Some of the benefits are available to victims' children and grandchildren.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times that paying reparations 'is a moral compunction and a moral reckoning to right a wrong. There is no statute of limitations on that.'

The payments come as the Chicago Police Department is under criticism since the release of a video in November showing white police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014.

The video prompted protests and led to a civil rights investigation of the entire department by the U.S. Department of Justice.

But these reparations may not be enough to ease the growing tensions caused by the more recent police shooting of 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier and the accidental shooting of LeGrier's neighbour, 55-year-old Bettie Jones in late December last year.

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke (left) was charged with first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald (right) following the release of a video in November showing Dyke shooting Mr McDonald 16 times

Despite the reparations tensions remain: Demonstrators held protests in Chicago in November 2015 and Burge victim Darrell Cannon says: 'We still have a long way to go.'

One Burge torture victim, Darrell Cannon, said on Monday that the payments were only the first step toward healing the city.

He said: 'We still have a long way to go.'

Cannon told the the Chicago Sun-Times he was 'tortured by a New Wave Klan' that 'wore badges, instead of sheets'.

The torture games included an electric cattle prod that Burge and his co-horts stuck on his genitals.

Cannon was freed after 24 years in prison when a review board determined that evidence against him was tainted.
Horrific footage has emerged of a hunter torturing a wounded wolf by beating the dying animal with his rifle butt.

A video clip of the incident, filmed in Kazakhstan, shows the man hitting the animal on the head as it tries in vain to defend itself, despite both its back legs appearing to be broken.

His companion is heard in the background of the video shouting in Kazakh: 'Hit it on the head, on the head'.

The hunter was filmed using his rifle to beat the badly wounded wolf while it is unable to run away

Footage of the incident in Kazakhstan showed the animal being repeatedly struck on the head

The man's companion is heard in the background of the video shouting in Kazakh: 'Hit it on the head'

Local reports stated the man seen in the video had not yet been identified, though his actions provoked outrage after the footage surfaced online.

Although wolf populations are strongly protected in Europe, no such legislation exists in Kazakhstan, where wolf cubs are sometimes bought and used to protect land and property.

An internet user named Kayrat, writing on a local forum, said: 'A real hunter would never do such a thing to a wolf, he would just shoot it instead of torturing it.'

Social media users were also overwhelmingly apprehensive about the trend of buying wolves, although a few accuse the government of failing to cull wolves in the first place.

'You can't blame villagers for using wolves to fend off wolves', one person wrote on social media.

However, wolf experts say keeping a wolf as a pet is dangerous and they are like a 'ticking time bomb'.

Footage of the cruel incident comes just months after a video surfaced showing another Kazakh hunter holding a wolf by its ears for a photograph before appearing to strangle it to ensure it is dead.

The footage, which emerged from eastern Kazakhstan, showed the hunter grabbing the stricken animal which has collapsed to the ground.

Blood from the bullet that struck the wolf can be seen staining the fur on its hind legs.

The hunter was caught on camera lifting up a dying wolf by the ears and forcing it to pose for the camera

After holding up the animal, it begins to fight back and even tries to bite the hunter but he manages to subdue it

He then forces the wolf down to the ground and appears to strangle it to death before leaving it to die

The wild animal then tries to fight back as it writhes around in the hunter's hand and even attempts to bite him.

But despite its best efforts, the hunter persists in pulling the wolf by the ears in order to get the trophy shot.

The man is dressed in traditional Kazakh hunting dress and smiles proudly while holding up his kill.

Eventually he forces the animal to the ground and then appears to strangle it with its bare hands to make sure it is dead.
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The father who 'deliberately' drove his car off a wharf, killing himself and his two young sons did not seek treatment for depression because he did not want to appear 'weak', according to his family.

Damien Little and his sons, Koda, four, and nine-month-old Hunter, were found dead inside a submerged car at Brennan's Wharf in Port Lincoln, west of Adelaide, on Monday, leaving their mother, Melissa, 'devastated'.

His older brother Shannon, 36, revealed that the labourer, truck driver and successful football player never took anti-depressants despite 'seriously struggling' with what appeared to be mental health issues for about three years.

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The family ripped apart by a horrific murder-suicide have released intimate family pictures - featuring Damien, his wife Melissa and their two sons Koda, four, and nine-month-old Hunter

Koda (left) and nine-month-old Hunter (right) were killed after they were driven off a wharf by their own father

The Little family had been living in a shed for the past two years as they saved up to build a rural property

Speaking from his pizza bar in Port Lincoln, west of Adelaide, Mr Little told Daily Mail Australia: He wasnt in his right mind. He was really struggling over the past few years, but he did want to appear weak.'

We realised something was seriously wrong a few months ago. Thats when it all really hit home. I just wish he had got the help he needed.

With tears in his eyes, Mr Little said his younger brother, who was a respected coach at the Lincoln South Football Club could have played for the AFL.

He recalled a poignant moment when the five brothers including Nathan, 37, Kynan, 31 and Aaron, 29 played together for the final time in 2012.

Of course we didnt realise that would be the last time we would all play together. He was such a talented player, he could have played for a big team in the AFL.

He was a well-known figure at the club, hopefully we will hold a memorial medal or cup in his name.

His grieving parents Sue, 58, and Ken also spoke about how Damien had battled with inner demons for the past few years, saying they had noticed a change in his personality.

He was such a lovely boy growing up, he wasnt a horrible person, his mother told Daily Mail Australia.

Speaking from her home in Port Lincoln surrounded by pictures of her sons as well as a portrait of her grandson, Koda, she said: He was just going through something and he never got the help he needed.'

Everyone from the family tried to help him, but he wouldnt take any anti-depressants or anything. We didnt think there were any issues with their relationship or anything.

Her husband said: It has hit us like a tonne of bricks. It was all just such a massive shock. We are just so upset for Melissa and our thoughts go out to her.

They were high school sweethearts, Mr Little said as he pointed to his sons wedding photo from March 2007. Ms Little said Melissa's parents were flying out from Darwin to support their daughter on Wednesday.

The family's plans to build a house in their 2.5 acres of grounds had not come to fruition, neighbours claimed

The bodies of Mr Little and his sons were removed from the white Ford station wagon that was recovered from ocean on Monday

Her family were very religious, they were Cooneyites, which is like a small religious sect. I think they may have even ran away together, neighbour Ashley Flint said.

A relative also confirmed that Melissas family were deeply religious, but said Melissa, who was a teacher at Navigator College, was not a member of the sect.

Sue Little said: She is absolutely distraught. Her parents are coming over from Darwin. The bodies are still in Adelaide, it could be a few weeks until the funeral.

It was earlier reported by Daily Mail Australia that Mr Little became depressed as he struggled to build the house of his dreams and was living in a shed with his family for the past two years to save money.

'He [Damien] asked me to rip up his paddock around two years ago, but I had not really seen much work on their property since,' neighbour Ashley Flint told Daily Mail Australia.

A close friend of Mr Little, who studied alongside the father-of-two for several years at Port Lincoln High School, wept as she lay a bunch of flowers at the memorial on Tuesday.

'He was obviously struggling and was going through some terrible issues,' the friend, who wished to remain anonymous said.

'Someone should have stepped in. He should have been supported.'

Pictured is the vehicle being hoisted from the sea by a crane after police divers found it on Monday morning

Mr Little's grieving brother Shannon had visited the site where the family died before returning to work at his pizza bar in Port Lincoln

Wendy Bond, who also lives next door, said the couple and their two sons had been living in a shed while they saved enough money to build their rural property.

'He was a great father, he was always playing with Koda. I think they have been living in a shed for about two years, I don't think they could find the right builder,' she said.

'They were trying to save up so they could build a home with beautiful views of Boston bay. They were just such a lovely couple. I can't understand it.'

The couple are believed to have met in Port Kenny and that Melissa is a school teacher at Navigator College in Port Lincoln.

Police divers recovered a rifle with telescopic sight from the water at Port Lincoln along with the three bodies.

Friends and neighbours revealed that Mr Little often went shooting as he grew up on a farm in Port Kenny with his four brothers.

'He would go shooting pretty regularly,' Mr Flint said.

'He came from a big family of farmers and they would have to kill kangaroos that tried to eat their crops.'

A young girl leaves a bouquet of flowers at the makeshift memorial held at the wharf where the family died

Mourners gather as they pay their respects after Mr Little and his two sons plunged to their deaths on Monday

Family and friends have paid tribute to the 'doting' father and 'beautiful' children, saying that the entire community has been 'ripped apart by the tragedy'.

Mr Little's grieving brother Shannon, 36, broke down when he visited a makeshift memorial at the wharf where the family was found inside the submerged car.

'Damo, my brother Damo, thank you for the memories you left me with. Please watch over me  you have now left me here to kick all the goals, bro. Forver flying, Shanno & Kyra,' he wrote in his tribute.

'Hunter, fly high you little man. Watch over us all, we will never forget you. Uncle Shannon and Aunty Kyra.'

The revelations of Mr Little's troubled life came as others who knew him said he was respected and well liked.

'It's just a shocking thing to have happen out of the blue and for no reason that we knew of,' Wheatsheaf Hotel owner Peter Watherston said on Tuesday.

'He and his brother used to pop out for a beer.'

South Australian Commissioner for Victims' Rights Michael O'Connell said the heart-wrenching incident had caused anguish for the family and friends.

But he also urged people not to rush to blame Mr Little, even those who might find murder by a parent to be among the 'cruellest of tragedies.'

'We do not know the reasons Damien did what he appears to have done and speculating helps neither the family nor the people of Port Lincoln,' he said.

Onlookers pay their respects to the family after Mr Little and his sons' bodies were retrieved from the ocean

A heartbreaking tribute left at a makeshift memorial from Mr Little's brother Shannon, who broke down when he visited the wharf

Mourners have created a makeshift memorial for the two young boys who died in the horrific murder-suicide

Mr Little's brother Shannon and his wife have made a heartbreaking tribute following the deaths

Mr Little was a respected coach at the Lincoln South Football Club and was heavily involved with the football community

He then returned to work at his pizza bar in Port Lincoln. When approached by Daily Mail Australia he said: 'We are all devastated. But I've come back to work.'

Mrs Little's cousin also lay flowers and a white teddy alongside hundreds of other tributes at the scene of the tragedy.

'I grew up with Melissa. She is just devastated and the family are all struggling to come to terms with what happened.'

'They were a lovely couple and we didn't know that anything was wrong. It is just such a shock.'

Grieving family and friends break down as they pay their respects to the Little family on Tuesday

Koda, four, and nine-month-old Hunter were killed after their father drove their family car into the water

The tight-knit community has been rocked by the deaths as a makeshift memorial is set up along the wharf

Mourners have created a makeshift memorial for the two young boys who died during the incident

The father 'deliberately' drove his car off a wharf, killing himself and his two young sons in the early hours of Monday morning

Mr Little, who plunged the family's white Ford station wagon into 30 metres of water, was a respected coach at the Lincoln South Football Club and was aged in his 30s.

One of the players he coached to a Premiership win in 2010 threw his winners medal into the water at Port Lincoln as a tribute.

'I just felt he deserved it more than I did,' said 25-year-old Kyle Sims.

'He was such an enthusiastic coach and he was very well respected.'

Brothers Nathan, 37, Kynan, 31 and Aaron, 29, visited the makeshift memorial at the wharf for a second time on Wednesday.

They each raised a bottle of Johnnie Walker red and cola in memory of their brother and poured the fourth into the ocean.

They left the empty bottles alongside the flowers and teddy bears.

Brothers Nathan, 37, Kynan, 31 and Aaron, 29, visited the makeshift memorial at the wharf for a second time on Wednesday

They each raised a bottle of Johnnie Walker red and cola in memory of their brother and poured the fourth into the ocean

They each raised a bottle of Johnnie Walker red and cola in memory of their brother and poured the fourth into the ocean

His grieving parents Sue, 58, and Ken also spoke about how Damien had battled with inner demons for the past few years, saying they had noticed a change in his personality
Self-styled wizard and children's author George Vernon (pictured) who racially abused and threatened to kill his Muslim neighbours as they celebrated Ramadan has been jailed

A self-styled wizard and children's author who racially abused and threatened to kill his Muslim neighbours as they celebrated Ramadan has been jailed.

George Vernon, 67, flew into a drunken rage after Farman Farah started playing loud music and invited a friend to his flat in Bristol to celebrate the religious festival.

He then turned his own speakers against an adjoining wall and grabbed a hammer and knife, before confronting Mr Farah in a doorway, Bristol Crown Court heard.

When his neighbour and the friend disappeared into the flat, Vernon smashed his bathroom window and repeatedly threatened to kill Mr Farah as he was arrested by police officers who had been called to the scene.

Vernon, who once called himself Mystic Merlin, said he was 'ageless' and claimed to be 'Bristol's only wizard', was convicted of making a threat to kill, causing racially aggravated fear of violence and racially aggravated criminal damage.

He was jailed for a year by Judge Michael Roach who told him: 'Your behaviour was determined, entirely ugly and thoroughly unpleasant.

'You denied these charges and suggested police did not act with propriety.'

The court heard reclusive Vernon had lost his temper at his flat in St Paul's, Bristol, in July last year.

Police called to the scene found him in an aggressive mood and using racially unpleasant language.

Judge Roach said: 'He made unpleasant, racially aggressive threats to kill to Mr Farah, who was standing in the doorway.

'After the door was shut the men tried to disappear into the flat but the bathroom window was broken.

'The speakers of his flat were turned inwards to the flat of his neighbour.

'When arrested he repeatedly threatened to kill Mr Farah.

'He was taken to a police station and he was offensive to police officers.'

Vernon, who once called himself Mystic Merlin, said he was 'ageless' and claimed to be 'Bristol's only wizard', was convicted of making a threat to kill, causing racially aggravated fear of violence and racially aggravated criminal damage when he appeared at Bristol Crown Court

The court heard Vernon had 12 previous convictions for 24 offences, two of them for violence, but had led a 'reclusive' life for the last 25 years, concentrating on his art and writing.

During that time he had penned four children's books, which are available online, and in 2010 he campaigned for a Hollywood-style walk of fame to be installed on a one-mile stretch in Bristol.

Neil Treharne, defending, said Vernon had avoided alcohol for 25 years and not been in trouble for 30 years but said drinking had contributed to his latest offences.

He told the court: 'He accepts he has very little memory about events that night, other than he cannot believe he conducted himself in such a way.

'He has promised that he will not touch alcohol ever again.
French president Francois Hollande was left embarrassed today as he unveiled the principal memorial to the Charlie Hebdo terrorism victims  and it contained a spelling mistake.

Hollande pulled a cloth off the tablet, which had been mounted on the wall of the satirical magazines former HQ in Paris, to find that the name of murdered cartoonist Georges Wolinski, 80, had been spelled with a 'y'.

This week sees a number of memorial ceremonies held across Paris and France to honor the total of 17 victims who were killed in the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a local kosher supermarket last year.

Awkward: French President Francois Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo unveil a commemorative plaque outside the former offices Charlie Hebdo during a ceremony to honour victims of the last year's attacks

Mistake: The plaque was hastily covered up after authorities discovered a spelling error in the name of slain cartoonist Georges Wolinski (bottom)

On January 7 last year, two Kalashnikov-wielding killers linked to al-Qaeda murdered 11 people in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, in revenge for cartoons they had published mocking the Prophet Mohamed.

Within a few minutes of the plaque being unveiled, it was covered up again, using a black cloth and sticky tape.

Of course it will be re-engraved, said a Paris city hall source. The mistake came during the engraving.

Mr Hollande was with his Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, and Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, at the time of the unveiling.

The 10am ceremony was broadcast live to millions of viewers in France, and others around the world.

President Hollande was with his Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, and Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, at the time of the unveiling

The 10am ceremony was broadcast live to millions of viewers in France, and others around the world

Colleagues of the French policeman Ahmed Merabet, who was killed by the Kouachi brothers as they fled the Charlie Hebdo shooting scene, stand near a memorial plaque and a 'Je suis Ahmed' (I am Ahmed) slogan

President Hollande greets the mother and the family of Ahmed Merabet, during one of a number of commemorative ceremonies honoring the victims of last year's Islamist militant attacks

Mr Hollande and Ms Hidalgos Socialist administration was widely criticised after the Hebdo attacks for not providing enough security to the magazine.

The HQ was meant to be secret, but its address was in the phone book, and online, as well as being published in the magazine.

Police were meant to be stationed around the building, but only a single bodyguard was on duty inside when the attack happened, and he was killed too.

Today there was also a ceremony on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, close to the former Hebdo offices, where another policeman was shot dead.

Later in the morning, the politicians unveiled a plaque at the Hyper Cacher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes where an Islamic State linked gunman killed four Jewish shoppers.

It was the beginning of a week of events, which will culminate in the unveiling of another memorial plaque in the Place de la Republique.
Romero was charged on Saturday with sex performance, sexual abuse, forcible touching and two counts of acting in a manner injurious to a child

Abuse had been ongoing from June 1 to Christmas Eve 2015, victims claim

Two teenage boys say they were asked to masturbate into a cup so their semen could be sold to a sperm bank as part of abuse lasting six months, it has been reported.

The allegations were made against a high-school janitor who lived in the same housing complex as the young boys, in Bayside, Queens.

The janitor, William Romero, was arrested on New Year's Day following a sting set up by police to arrange a secret meet-up with one of the victims, aged 16.

Police set up the sting after the boy reported abuse, which had apparently been ongoing from June 1 of last year up until Christmas Eve, the New York Daily News said.

William Romero, who worked as a janitor at Kennedy High School (pictured) was arrested on Saturday and charged with with sex performance, sexual abuse, forcible touching and two counts of acting in a manner injurious to a child. The victims - boys in their mid-teens - claim he forced them to masturbate into a cup so that Romero could sell the semen to a sperm bank

Romero, who worked at Kennedy High School, repeatedly had the boy masturbate in front of him or would help the boy masturbate into a cup so that Romero could sell the semen to a sperm bank, court documents revealed.

The complaint from the boy also described how Romero touched and squeezed the victim's testicles.

He apparently paid the teen in cash and police sources say he also gave him gifts.

The 16-year-old said he was not the only victim of Romero and that other teenage boys in the complex had been subject to similar abuse.

And one 15-year-old boy came forward with similar allegations, according to court papers.

After police were alerted to the allegations, investigators set up a 'control call' between Romero and the 16-year-old, in which he agreed to meet with the man to masturbate into a cup, sources said.

Police then arrested Romero that night. He had cash and a plastic collections cup on him at the time.

Romero later admitted to collecting sperm to donate but said he had not actually donated any samples yet.

He was arraigned Saturday on charges of using a child in a sex performance, sexual abuse, forcible touching and two counts of acting in a manner injurious to a child, a spokeswoman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
A murder suspect has been shot by police during a stand-off which shut down a Los Angeles freeway for three hours.

Artyom Gasparyan, originally from Armenia, was wanted by the LAPD for murder, attempted murder, carjacking and robbery following a month-long crime spree.

The 32-year-old fugitive was spotted by undercover police officers at a vehicle repair shop near the 5 Freeway in Sun Valley, north of Burbank, on Monday - prompting a dramatic high-speed chase and a confrontation with police.

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Murder suspect Artyom Gasparyan (far left in shot) is seen running away from police during a standoff which shut down a Los Angeles freeway for hours

A motorist captured the patrolman standing over Gasparyan with their guns drawn. He was taken to hospital under armed guard

The Armenian fugitive is carried on a gurney into the back of an ambulance. His shooting ended a month-long crime spree around Los Angeles

Gasparyan also saw the cops, so sped away and sparked a high-speed chase going in the wrong direction on the highway.

He then collided into two cars, one of which had a mother and her two children inside, before he jumped out and ran along the road in a bid to evade police.

LAPD officers then surrounded Gasparyan and shot him in front of horrified motorists.

Some captured the terrifying scene on camera.

Gasparyan was still in hospital as of Tuesday morning. His condition is not known

Gasparyan was then taken to hospital in a critical condition where he is being held under heavy guard.

The LAPD said they opened fire when Gasparyan approached officers who believed that he was still armed.

Chief Beck told ABC 7: 'He's a very dangerous individual. I've had well over 100 detectives and several hundred line officers assigned specifically to capture him over the past week.'

The LAPD launched a major manhunt for Gasparyan after he was connected to a string of crimes which began on December 6 across Los Angeles, Burbank, West Hollywood and Carson.

His co-accused Daniel Ramirez died in hospital after shooting himself during an armed standoff with police following a violent car jacking.

Police chased Ramirez into a house after he crash in Long Beach.

Ramirez shot two men in the house and stabbed their father in the face before shooting himself in the head.

The confrontation with Gasparyan began at a gas station at 2pm.

He hit two vehicles in the slow lane of the highway at around 3:20pm, and was shot a short time later. Both sides of the freeway going in each direction were closed as police scoured the scene.

The northbound side wasn't reopened until 5pm. The road going in the direction of the accident had only two lanes open as of 7pm on Monday night.

Gasparyan's smashed silver Volkswagen (right) is seen next to a red car he collided with while trying to go the wrong way on the freeway. One of the vehicles he hit had a mother and her two children inside at the time

The crash and following stand-off shut down both directions of the freeway for three hours

Gasparyan tried to escape by driving the wrong way down Interstate 5 before crashing his getaway car
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It has been a towering beacon on the Suffolk coastline since the height of the French Revolution, but a 224-year-old lighthouse is now teetering on the brink of disaster amid growing fears it will tumble into the North Sea after being battered by winter storms.

The historic Orfordness Lighthouse has survived massive waves and hurricanes, attacks by German warplanes in the Second World War, the 1953 Great Flood and secret government testing of bombs and nuclear detonators.

But now the 98ft (30m) beacon is just one violent storm from being swept away altogether because the treacherous coastline it guards has been pummelled by the savage weather.

Concern: A 224-year-old lighthouse (pictured in 2015) is teetering on the brink amid growing fears it could tumble into the North Sea

Receding: The historic Orfordness Lighthouse is pictured here in 2005, showing how much the beach has eroded in a decade. The problem has been compounded by the bad weather in recent weeks - with concern the lighthouse could topple over without emergency repairs

Campaigners have launched an urgent appeal to raise 10,000 for immediate repairs - with a team of ten volunteers on standby to carry out the emergency protection work.

If the money can be raised it could keep the grade-II listed lighthouse standing while funds are generated for a long-term solution.

Nicholas Gold, founding member of Orfordness Lighthouse Trust, said: 'Over the last few weeks the wind has turned to the south and south-east and has attacked the defences in front of the lighthouse and removed a quite severe amount of the beach.

'The lighthouse is now far more in peril than it was.

'We have a team of people and fishermen who are ready to help and rush round and carry out repairs to the shore.'

Mr Gold bought the striking 18th century lighthouse for 2,000 in September 2013 after it was decommissioned by Trinity House, which looks after England's lighthouse.

'We are staying vigilant and hoping that everything will be all right, but we know that one storm of the wrong combination could bring the end and that could come any time,' said the London-based lawyer, who has a home in nearby Orford.

The lighthouse has survived massive waves and hurricanes, attacks by German warplanes in the Second World War, the 1953 Great Flood and secret government testing of bombs and nuclear detonators. But now it is just one violent storm from being swept away

The beach which has guarded Orfordness Lighthouse in Suffolk for more than two centuries has been pummelled by the savage weather

Campaigners have launched an urgent appeal to raise 10,000 for immediate repairs - with a team of ten volunteers on standby to carry out the emergency protection work. Owner Nicholas Gold, founding member of the Orfordness Lighthouse Trust, is battling to save the beacon

'What we would really like to do is to put sheet piling in front of the lighthouse - similar to the work that was done around the Bawdsey Manor area and which has lasted 20 years.

'The lighthouse is one of the most fabulous and iconic features of the East Anglian coastline and people love it.

'We had 190 people visit to see it on New Year's Day alone.'

The trust believes that if urgent repairs are not carried out in the next few weeks then the lighthouse, which has a powerful beam that can be seen for 20 nautical miles, is doomed.

Recent huge seas and fierce winds have ripped out shingle covering the 15,000-worth of temporary defences Orfordness Lighthouse Trust put down in spring 2014 and 2015 after 33ft (10m) of shoreline was destroyed.

New south-easterly storms are predicted to blast the much-loved lighthouse head-on this week, with 'a real risk of significant damage' to the defences.

Aim: If the money can be raised it could keep the grade-II listed lighthouse standing while funds are generated for a long-term solution

The view: Mr Gold bought the striking 18th century lighthouse for 2,000 in September 2013 after it was decommissioned by Trinity House

The group says although the temporary defences have been exposed, the bags of shingle wrapped in 'sausages' of high-performance geo-textile bonding are still there.

The aim - if the cash can be raised - is to beef these up by putting another two layers of wrapped shingle to shore up the battered beach below the lighthouse.

In a heartfelt plea to its supporters, the trust said: 'This work must be done immediately to keep the lighthouse safe to enter.

'The structure is very sound, but the sea can easily strip out the land on which it stands.

'However, these "soft defences" are only a temporary sea defence - a long-term solution would be to put in "hard defences" of sheet piling in front of the lighthouse.
A German pensioner strangled his wife, dismembered her body and drowned himself in a lake in Austria by tying himself to a concrete block with her severed head encased inside.

The pair were later identified as a couple in their 70s, from Frankfurt, west Germany, Austrian authorities said.

The husband was discovered two days after police found two suitcases containing the woman's dismembered body near the shore of Lake Traunsee, central Austria.

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Suitcase death: The woman's remains were first discovered by a local resident who found the suitcase floating by the shore of Lake Traunsee on Sunday

Search: Austrian police divers retrieve a bag from the Traunsee in Gmunden, Austria, some of which were later found to contain a concrete block with the woman's head

Authorities said on Tuesday that evidence suggests the man strangled the woman and dismembered her body before drowning himself using the concrete block with her head in.

Police first discovered the woman's dismembered body on Sunday, when a local resident found a floating suitcase by the shore near the town of Gmunden, 50 miles east of Salzburg.

The witness opened the suitcase to discover that it contained bodyparts and called the police who began to search the area.

Police found the second suitcase with the woman's remains on Monday, but were unable to identify her as her head was missing.

After extending the search, police divers found the man's body at the bottom of Lake Traunsee, his body tied to several suitcases.

The second suitcase containting the woman's remains was found on Monday, after which police called in divers and eventually discovered the man's body on the bottom of the lake

Evidence: Forensic officers carry one of the suitcases found at the bottom of lake Traunsee tied to the body of a dead man, which was later found to contain the woman's head

Suspicion: Local prosecutors believe the two bodies may have been involved in a murder-suicide

The hands of the man, whose body showed no signs of struggle, were tied to bags containing rocks as well as personal belongings.

The head of the woman, who was between 50 and 70 years old, was discovered after forensic experts in the city of Salzburg broke open a concrete block found in one of the bags on the lakebed.

'This makes us primarily think of an 'extended suicide',' a prosecutor for the nearby town of Wels, Birgit Ahamer, told a news conference, adding that initial forensic examinations suggested the woman had been strangled and the man had drowned.
A man accidentally shot a 13-year-old girl and weeks-old baby through the floor of an apartment - before he was gunned down by someone who went upstairs to investigate, police say.

Police were called to the Corning Village Apartments in the Frayser area of North Memphis, Tennessee amid reports of gunfire at about 7.15pm on Monday.

Investigators say two people were in an upstairs room when a gun was mistakenly fired - and the bullet smashed through the floor before hitting the teenager and baby boy.

Police were called to the Corning Village Apartments (file picture shown) in the Frayser area of North Memphis, Tennessee amid reports of gunfire at about 7.15pm on Monday

Police believe someone then went upstairs to find the source of the gunfire.

According to Fox13Memphis the two people then tried to flee from the scene, but one of them, a 21-year-old man, was shot dead while running off. The second person ran from the apartment.

The 13-year-old girl was rushed to LeBonheur Children's hospital in Memphis in critical condition.

The 13-year-old girl was rushed to LeBonheur Children's hospital (pictured) in Memphis in critical condition. The baby was said to be in a non-critical condition

The baby was said to be in a non-critical condition.

Police had initially reported that the 21-year-old man had shot the girl and then turned the gun on himself.
A serial conman dubbed Champagne Charlie has been jailed for 15 months for selling 1,000-worth of non-existent Wimbledon tickets to the boss of Prince Harry's charity.

John Clugston, 69, duped Cathy Ferrier, the chief executive of Sentebale, by offering her four bogus Wimbledon tickets, which he claimed included full hospitality.

The fraudster turned up at the company's offices in Sloane Square, pretending to be from fashion retailer Hackett, which is based in the same building.

A serial conman dubbed Champagne Charlie (left) has been jailed for 15 months for selling 1,000-worth of non-existent Wimbledon tickets to the boss of Prince Harry's charity, Cathy Ferrier (right)

The charity was founded by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, South Africa, to help vulnerable children. Pictured: Prince Harry dancing with children during at visit to the Kananelo Centre for the deaf

But he failed to return with the tickets and Mrs Ferrier - who had given him 1,000 - realised she had been conned.

The charity was founded by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, South Africa, to help vulnerable children.

Mrs Ferrier said in a victim impact statement: This matter has knocked my confidence. It has made me feel very stupid and was a huge embarrassment.

I was so embarrassed about the incident I have not told my family. I have only managed to discuss this with my partner and when talking about it I broke down in tears.

It was extremely embarrassing that my staff were aware of what happened. I have always thought I was a mature, sensible person but something like this happens and you doubt yourself and your judgement.

Clugston, from Southwick, Brighton, admitted fraud by false representation at an earlier hearing.

He was sentenced to 15 months in prison following the hearing at Isleworth Crown Court. He smiled at his friends in the public gallery as he was led from the dock.

Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson told him: I accept that in this offence the amount gained was not huge but it was still gained from an individual who had to get cash out a bank, and one who works for a charity.

John Clugston (pictured), 69, duped Ms Ferrier - the chief executive of Sentebale - by offering her four bogus Wimbledon tickets, which he claims included full hospitality, after dropping into her office in Sloane Square

It was plainly pre-planned. You took advantage of somebody and some planning as well. You went to those offices to target someone by pretending to have knowledge about Hackett.'

Defending, Archangelo Power said: There is not much mitigation which one can put forward. Thankfully the money stolen is minimal and the defendant is willing to pay back the 1,000.

Custody has been tried and tested with this defendant, so it is my view to try something else.

Clugston, from Southwick, Brighton, admitted fraud by false representation at an earlier hearing

The court heard how Clugstons offending began almost six decades ago when he appeared before what was then known as Marylebone Juvenile Court, charged with theft.

For the next 50 years, he racked up convictions for offences of dishonesty.

In 2011, Clugston was given a five-year sentence for a champagne scam which he carried out 31 times in five months to pocket 19,500.

During the fraud, he visited offices around London pretending to have cases of leftover Bollinger and Dom Perignon from parties, before offering to sell it for knock down prices.

After taking cash, the fraudster vanished.

A judge who jailed Clugston in 2011 had dubbed him Champagne Charlie and described him as a public menace and a repeat offender.

Clugston had also been jailed in 2003 for the same scam, making off with at least 30,000 by offering the top quality champagne which did not exist.

He was caught again in June 2007, when he was let off with a community order, before being jailed again for the same scam the following year.

On September 15, 2008, he walked into the office of Kathleen Morrell at the Morrell Business Centre in Curtain Road, Old Street, east London.
Cole Miller, 18, who died in what is believed to have been an unprovoked assault, had met anti-coward punch campaigner and champion boxer Danny Green years earlier in a foreboding moment.

A picture of the pair meeting a few years ago has surfaced, with one of Mr Millers best mates, a training partner, posting the image to Facebook in the hopes it might reach Mr Green.

Roy Campbell posted the image to his personal social media page just hours after the champion boxer spoke out about the Brisbane water polo athletes tragic death on Monday.

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A picture of coward punch victim Cole Miller (right), 18, and anti-coward punch campaigner Danny Green (second from right) has surfaced. The pair met years earlier in a foreboding moment, according to a friend

Cole Miller, 18, died after a one-punch attack in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley in the early hours of Sunday

Not sure if Danny Green will ever see this, but Cole Miller actually met him while we were in Perth for a water polo tournament a few years back, Mr Campbell wrote on Tuesday afternoon.

Seeing as Danny is one of the most influential supporters of the coward punch campaign, when I was looking through old photos of Cole, this was certainly one of the most moving.

I still havent accepted the fact that one of my best mates and training partner has passed away so suddenly, Mr Campbell added.

Seeing his face everywhere I look, and hearing his name even as I walk down the street listening to strangers conversations.

I always thought Cole and I would be playing water polo together, improving together, growing up together and sharing moments together. Id see him every morning and night and thinking back now, there was never a dull moment with Cole.

It is hard to find someone as special as him, he wrote. I will miss you a lot buddy.

Mr Green featured in the NSW Barry OFarrell governments campaign to end coward punches through the lockout laws in 2014 (pictured)

He has been a vocal activist against coward punches in previous years, and on Tuesday spoke about Mr Millers avoidable death

Mr Green has been a vocal activist against coward punches in previous years, and on Tuesday spoke about Mr Millers avoidable death, Brisbane Times reported.

He said he wanted charges to specifically refer to these assaults as coward punches.

I want the vernacular in the legislation changed to cowards punch, he said.

The champion boxer said it would work as a deterrent because being called a coward is very demeaning for a bloke because it affects your pride.

He said the term king hit glorifies the one-punch assaults, according to Brisbane Times.

Mr Green said the culture around it would change in time and that coward punches would be seen less and less.

Hed featured in the NSW Barry OFarrell governments campaign to end coward punches through the lockout laws in 2014.

The short advertisement, played on Australian networks around two years ago, showed Mr Green intervene when someone threw a punch.

He also founded a national campaign against the unnecessary violence.

In another tragic coincidence, Mr Green had also met a family friend of the Miller family on Friday, the same weekend Mr Miller was assaulted in Brisbanes Fortitude Valley.

The champion boxer said changing the legislation to refer to the attacks as 'coward punches' would work as a deterrent because being called a coward is very demeaning for a bloke because it affects your pride

Moments before the fatal attack, Daniel Maxwell allegedly asked co-accused Armstrong Renata (pictured): 'Do you want to see something funny?' The two co-accused, both 21, have had their charges upgraded to unlawful striking causing death

I had some friends over and one of the people knows the family really well. We just happened to be talking about Cole and his father because the person I know comes from a water polo background, he told Brisbane Times.

Mr Miller died in Brisbane Royal Hospital on Monday morning after he was punched in Chinatown Mall in Brisbanes Fortitude Valley around 3.30am on Sunday morning.

Two 21-year-old men, Daniel Maxwell and Armstrong Renata, have had their charges upgraded to unlawful striking causing death.

Mr Miller passed away with massive brain trauma after a second blow to Mr Miller rendered him immediately unconscious, the Brisbane Magistrates Court heard on Monday.

Mr Maxwell had been celebrating his 21st birthday on the night of the attack, and had allegedly stirred violence with a number of other men on the same evening.

Paramedics attend to the 18-year old man who was coward punched then left for dead on the floor

Maxwell allegedly punched Cole Miller and then Nick Pace, before punching Cole again in the side of the face

Heartbroken father Steven Miller on Monday afternoon spoke about his son who had his whole life yet to be lived.

He had struggled bravely in the intensive care unit, he said.

Cole was a beautiful, brave young man with his whole life yet to be lived.

He thanked school friends, the water polo community, emergency services, doctors, hospital staff and the many, many, many others who have sent messages of love and hope.

Its alleged Mr Miller and his friend Nick Pace, who was with him at the time, had not provoked the attack.

Police believe theyd tried to walk away from Mr Maxwell, Mr Renata, along with two others, but were then followed by the group before the attack.

Moments before the fatal attack, Daniel Maxwell allegedly asked co-accused Armstrong Renata: 'Do you want to see something funny?' Courier Mail reported.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Roy Campbell and Danny Green for comment.

The random attack on Cole Miller happened at Chinatown Mall in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley early on Sunday

The teenager's father Steven Miller broke down as he described his son as a 'brave young man'
Jasmine Lapsley was playing cards on a family holiday in Morfa Nefyn, north Wales, when she started choking on a grape. An inquest into her death will start today

A father has told of his frantic efforts to save his six-year-old daughter as she choked to death on a grape while the family waited 30 minutes for an ambulance.

Jasmine Lapsley was playing cards on a family holiday in Morfa Nefyn, north Wales, when she started choking on the fruit.

Her parents Robert and Kathleen Lapsley were today forced to relive the 'nightmare' experience as an inquest opened into the young girl's death.

Mr Lapsley told the coroner at Caernarfon how he repeatedly slapped his daughter's back in a bid to dislodge the grape. An off-duty policeman and two neighbours, one trained in CPR, also tried to help.

Mrs Lapsley recalled 'She was choking. I didn't see her put it in her mouth but I knew...'

Her husband said at one stage Jasmine's body 'seemed to stiffen' and she was taken out into the garden.

Mr Lapsley told coroner, Nicola Jones, that after Jasmine, who was taken to hospital in Bangor, had died he went back to the house and then drove home to Liverpool.

When the coroner asked whether police had offered any help to drive them home he replied: 'We had no offer of help from anyone in an official capacity.'

The couple has previously slammed the Welsh Ambulance Service for the 30-minute wait and claimed the community responders, who arrived ahead of paramedics, were unable to help.

The responders were said to have reached Jasmine after 16 minutes and an RAF rescue helicopter eventually flew her 20 miles to Bangor's Ysbyty Gwynedd Hospital.

She told the inquest: 'There was no reassurance or notice about how long an ambulance might be.

'It was a sense of relief when the ambulance arrived because it had been a long wait.'

Speaking immediately after his daughter's death, Mr Lapsley said: 'It took the [Welsh Ambulance Service] half an hour to get an appropriate response there.

Her parents Robert and Kathleen Lapsley dialled 999 immediately and tried to dislodge the grape - but claim they were left waiting for half an hour before paramedics arrived

Mr and Mrs Lapsley, who are thought to be some of the first witnesses in the inquest, previously said they dialled 999 as soon as they realised what was wrong with their daughter

'The first responders were unable to help. It wouldn't have mattered if they had taken five minutes, 10 minutes or 25 minutes. She needed the paramedic.'

He also described his daughter as 'truly a shining light' and added that she was 'full of love, life, energy and enthusiasm'.

Mrs Lapsley added: 'When you open your eyes every morning, it's just there. This nightmare's just there. And we have to live with that now for the rest of our lives.

'She was always what we've wanted. She's not here any more.'

The Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust has since launched an investigation into their handling of the emergency and offered the family their 'sincere apologies'.

A spokesman for the Wales Ambulance Service said at the time: 'The trust has reported this tragic incident to Welsh Government as a Serious Adverse Incident (SAI).

The family were on holiday near this beautiful spot in north Wales when Jasmine began to choke on a grape

'SAI reports require a comprehensive and detailed investigation, and the trust endeavors to complete the investigation by mid to late-November.

'The trust received a formal concern from Cllr Liz Saville Roberts to which we have responded.

'Our thoughts and condolences remain with the family of the little girl at this sad and difficult time.'

The coroner commented that one issue would be whether there was anything any individual or organisation could have done 'which could have resulted in a different outcome'.

Lawyers are representing the Betsi Cadwaladr health trust and the Welsh Ambulance Service at the hearing.
Donald Trump maintains a double-digit lead over Ted Cruz nationally four weeks out from the first 2016 contest.

Typically polls tighten as an election nears, and that could still happen in the case of Trump and Cruz, especially if the Texas senator pulls off an upset in the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1.

For now, Trump is still the Republican candidate to beat, with 35 percent of the party saying they're with him in the latest NBC News poll compared with Cruz, who is at 18.

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Donald Trump maintains a double-digit lead over Ted Cruz nationally four weeks out from the first 2016 contest. He's seen here last night at a rally in Massachusetts

COMMITTED: Half of Trump's supporters say they are absolutely certain they'll check his name on the ballot. One Trump fan, Robin Roy, is seen here meeting the former reality TV star at his campaign rally in Lowell, Massachusetts

TOP TIER: No other candidate topped 10 percent in the NBC News poll released today

Marco Rubio ranked third in the poll at 13 percent. No other candidate topped 10 percent.

Trump and Cruz are both running strong with men, but lag with women.

Rubio has near even support between the two sexes and as much support from women as Cruz, despite a five percent difference in their overall polling numbers. The gap suggests that men are behind Cruz's surge to second.

Cruz also does well with voters who describe themselves as very conservative - but not as well as rival Trump.

Trump tops Cruz in that category, 35 to 30, despite the senator's endorsements from right-wing heroes such as Iowa Congressman Steve King.

And he does 12 points better among evangelicals, another demographic group Cruz is counting on to win, than his main competitor.

Cruz has worked hard to court that group ahead of the Iowa caucus and has won the backing of respected social conservatives, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and Iowa-based activist Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader.

He's winning just 21 percent of white evangelicals to Trump's 33 percent, though, the NBC News poll, taken in conjunction with Survey Monkey, discovered.

Ben Carson is also looking to the same voting block to rescue his bid. At nine percent in the new survey nationally, he rises to 12 percent among white evangelicals.

Typically polls tighten as an election nears, and that could still happen in the case of Trump and Cruz, seen here yesterday in Boone Iowa, especially if the Texas senator pulls off an upset in that state's caucus on Feb. 1

Hillary Clinton, seen here yesterday winking at a supporter in Iowa, is far and away the top pick of Democrats. She had the support of 53 percent of Democratic and Democratic leaning voters in the poll. Sanders was way behind at 36 percent

Republican contenders living on a prayer may soon be disappointed, as 51 percent of Trump's fans say that they are 'absolutely certain' at this point that they'll vote for the billionaire.

Cruz and Rubio's supporters weren't as sure of their plans.

A firm 36 percent professed loyalty to Cruz, and 26 percent said Rubio had their definite support. But a larger portion - 49 percent - of the lawmakers' followers said they could still change their mind, though there's a large chance they will not.

A third of Trump's proponents said the same thing.

Overall, 38 percent of Republican primary voters said their minds were made up. Another four in 10 said they were pretty sure. A relatively small 20 percent said they were 50/50 on their choice, while three percent said they were mostly undecided.

Pollsters found that Cruz has a good shot of picking up some of those votes, as he's the second choice of 22 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning voters who were surveyed.

Rubio was named by 13 percent as their secondary choice, and 11 percent said they had eyes on Carson. Another 14 percent gave Trump as an alternate pick.

Democratic voters were even more sure of their preferences than Republicans.

Nearly half, 48 percent, said they'd nailed down their support. A third said they were fairly certain, leaving a total 19 percent up for grabs.
In the suit, Cook also asks to be declared the legal mother so that she can seek primary custody of the unborn children

her $33,000 fee and sue her for child support if she went through with the pregnancy

A surrogate mother who is currently pregnant with triplets filed a lawsuit on Monday, in an attempt to gain custody of the children she agreed to carry for a single man in Georgia.

Melissa Cook, a 47-year-old mother of four from Woodland Hills, California entered into a $33,000 contract with a 50-year-old postal service worker last year, in which she promised to carry his child to term, give birth and then give up parental rights.

All was going to plan in August, when she was implanted with three male embryos, containing the sperm of the father - who is only identified as C.M. in the suit - and eggs from a 20-year-old donor.

But Cook and the father had a falling out this fall when he grew concerned at the prospect of having to raise three children at once and asked her to abort one of the embryos.

Cook refused and now she is suing C.M. on the basis that California's surrogacy law is unconstitutional. She also wants to be declared the legal mother of the children so that she can seek custody when they are born, according tot he lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Surrogate mother Melissa Cook, 47 (left and right), filed a lawsuit this week against the single man who hired her to get pregnant and then asked her to abort one of the embryos

The surrogacy fued first made headlines in November, when Cook was days away from the 20-week break-off mark for legal abortions.

I no longer view surrogacy arrangements in the same favorable light I once did. Children derive a special benefit from their relationship with their mother.

At the time, the father had reportedly been threatening to withhold Cook's fee if she did not perform the abortion, and to sue her for child support. According to their agreement, the father agreed to pay Cook $33,000 and another $6,000 for each additional child.

Now Cook has taken the first step in legal action against the father, and has hired a high-profile lawyer to take on her case.

The 47-page complaint filed Monday claims California's surrogacy laws are unconstitutional, violating due-process and equal protection rights.

Each of the triplets 'has a fundamental right to get to know and love their mother and to continue their relationships with her,' the lawsuit reads.

'I no longer view surrogacy arrangements in the same favorable light I once did. Children derive a special benefit from their relationship with their mother,' Cook said in a statement, obtained by Daily Mail Online.

'I now think that the basic concept of surrogacy arrangements must be re-examined, scrutinized and reconsidered,' she added.

A mother of four, Cook says she did not want to abort the third embryo because she had bonded with all three unborn children

Cook is being represented in the lawsuit by New Jersey lawyer Harold Cassidy, who famously defended the surrogate mother in the 1980s Baby M case.

In that case, couple William and Elizabeth Stern hired Mary Elizabeth Whitehead to get pregnant with Mr Stern's sperm, and give up custody of the child at birth in favor of Mrs Stern.

But Whitehead decided to keep the baby after giving birth and sued to be recognized as the child's mother. She won that right, but primary custody was eventually awarded to Mr Stern, with Whitehead getting only visitation rights.

'The surrogacy contract in this case and the California Surrogacy Enabling Statute will not withstand constitutional scrutiny,' Cassidy said of his new case.

'The notion that a man can demand that a mother terminate the life of one of the children she carries by an abortion, and then claim that she is liable for money damages when she refuses, is cruel to the mother.'

Cassidy tells Daily Mail Online that Cook is suing so that she can ensure the third child does not go to a stranger in adoption, as C.M. has allegedly threatened to do.

In the court documents, she asks that a judgement declare her the legal mother of all three children so that she can sue for custody when they are born.

She also wants the courts to rule that C.M.'s threats to sue her for not going through with the abortion are illegal.

In the lawsuit, Cook makes a claim that she is the legal mother of the three children, despite not sharing any DNA with them. Pictured on the right

According to the complaint, Cook and C.M. entered into a surrogacy agreement last spring, through the California-based company Surrogacy International, Inc., in which Cook agreed to carry the embryos, give birth 'and then surrender the child or children to the exclusive custody' of the father.

Cook claims that C.M. knew that there could be as many as three children born in the process before they even signed the agreement, but that he started to express financial concerns after Cook became pregnant with the fertilized eggs in August.

During IVF treatments, women are sometimes implanted with multiple embryos to ensure that at least one of them is viable. In cases where all the embryos are successful, mothers have the option to either do nothing and carry multiple babies to term, or narrow down the number of embryos through selective abortion.

When C.M. found out that all three embryos were successfully growing, he apparently grew nervous at the thought of caring for three children at the same time, and began to inquire with the surrogacy company about aborting one of the embryos, the complaint claims.

'I never anticipated something such worse (sic) like draining my finances so fast,' C.M. wrote in his lawyer in September.'... I do not have any more money in the bank, and my job does not pay great biweekly,'

This is when Cook, who describes herself as pro-life, grew anxious and she offered to adopt the third child, if the father could not afford three children at once.

At the end of September, Cook told the father that she would not 'abort any of them. I am pro life and I am not having an abortion'.

By November, C.M. made a final decision and asked Cook to abort one of the fetuses.

When Cook again stated that she would not go through with an abortion, C.M.'s lawyer told Cook that his client 'understands, albeit does not agree, with your decision not to reduce' - and threatened to sue Cook for damages and child support if she didn't go through with the abortion, citing a clause in the surrogacy contract that gives Cook the option to ask her to abort.

C.M. also has allegedly told Cook that he will pursue adopting the third son to a stranger, as opposed to her - the woman who is carrying the children.

'They are human beings. I bonded with these kids. This is just not right,' Cook told The New York Post about her decision to fight the father, back in November.

Ms Cook has four children of her own, including a set of triplets.

California is considered to be one of the most surrogacy friendly states in America. Commercial surrogacy is permitted - with many hopeful parents entering into financial contracts with surrogates.

Other states that are surrogacy friendly include Illinois, Arkansas, Maryland and New Hampshire.

Ms Cook is divorced, but is engaged to a new partner according to her Facebook page.
Family has since lost their home which was

A Texas couple is mourning the lost of their three-day-old baby girl after she was killed when a tornado struck their home.

Jose Santillano rushed his wife, Zuleyma, and their four kids into a bathroom seconds after the EF-0 tornado struck their Blue Ridge mobile home on December 26, causing it to flip over about six times.

Following the terrifying ordeal, which Mr Santillano said lasted less than a minute, their baby girl Aaleyah was found crying on the ground after being tossed from the home.

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Jose and Zuleyma Santillano (pictured left and right) of Blue Ridge, Texas are mourning the loss of their baby girl Aaleyah who was killed when a tornado struck their home the day after Christmas

The storm left their home wrecked after it was flipped over five to six times. They along with their three other children survived the tornado

The couple is now coping with the loss of their child after the newborn passed away due to her injuries being too severe to overcome, NBC DFW reported.

'They said, "We are really sorry, she has passed away. She didn't make it,''' said Mrs Santillano, 27, who suffered deep cuts to her arm and legs and had her right leg injured in the tornado.

Seconds before the storm hit, Mr Santillano, 30, had put his three children, age seven, nine and 10, into the bathtub with his wife who was holding Aaleyah in her arms, according to Fox 4 News.

He said after the third time their home flipped over, he was sucked into the tornado and was thrown from a window, leaving his clavicle shattered as well as his knee and ankle dislocated.

The couple is now coping with the loss of their child after the newborn passed away due to her injuries being too severe to overcome

Seconds before the storm hit, Mr Santillano, 30, had put his three children, age seven, nine and 10, into the bathtub with his wife who was holding Aaleyah in her arms

Their baby girl was found crying as she lied on the ground after being tossed from the home. She was transported to an ambulance but it was too late

He managed to get up and limp his way back to the mobile home as he headed towards the sounds of his crying kids and his panicked wife asking him if he saw the baby - however she was nowhere in sight.

Eventually, the baby girl's crying guided her father towards her and she was on the ground about 10 feet from the family's home.

'I picked her up, held her to my chest and she was still alive,' he told NBC DFW.

As their neighbor Debralee King was outside checking on her horses after the storm passed, she found Mr Santillano outside screaming, limping towards her with the child in his arms.

'He was frantic, because his wife was still trapped at the end of the house inside,' she told NBC DFW.

'He was running across the road with his baby saying, "Please help me, take her to the hospital." He was hysterical.'

The couple, who both suffered injuries in the tornado, said they are finding strength from their neighbors and children after losing their newborn

King held the baby while another neighbor drove them towards Blue Ridge before flagging down a Game Warden who called paramedics who arrived shortly after before the couple learned their child had not survived.

'I was holding her little fingers,' King said. 'When they're little they like to curl their little fingers around you. Her little hand was cold.'

As the Santillanos are healing from their own wounds, the mother said they are finding strength from their neighbors and children who survived the tornado.

'I have to make it for them. I'm hurting, yes, but I have to figure it out,' said Mrs Santillano who remains in hospital where she is in physical therapy.

A friend of the couple has since started a Gofundme page to help raise with funeral costs and to aid the family after losing their home. It fund has raised $28,145 since it was created on December 27.
The lives of more migrants have ended in tragedy today after at least 34 people including three children died when their boats overturned while trying to reach Europe.

Their vessels capsized in rough waters off the coast of Turkey as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

Pictures have shown the bodies of the migrants strewn across the shore, some wearing lifejackets, in the resort town of Ayvalik after rescue workers desperately tried to save them.

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The bodies of several migrants are left washed up on the shore on a beach in the Ayvalik district of Turkey after two migrant boats over turned today

A Turkish rescue worker looks at the body of a woman lying on the beach in Ayvalik, Turkey, after the boat she was travelling in capsized in rough weather

The deaths come just four months after pictures of the body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey shocked the world

The tragic images come just four months after the world was shocked by the pictures of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who also washed up on a Turkish beach in September.

The Syrian youngster died alongside his mother and older brother after the boat they were trying to reach Greece in capsized.

Today, nine bodies washed up on the beach in Ayvalik, prompting authorities to dispatch coastguard boats and police officials to search the area by sea and by land for possible survivors.

By late morning, the death toll reached 14, before seven other migrants were either rescued or found alive.

However, hours later, seven other bodies had washed up on shore at Dikili, a resort about 50 kilometers 30 miles south of Ayvalik.

People and gendarmes stand near the body of a drowned refugee after a failed attempt to sail to the Greek island of Lesvos at the shore in the coastal town Ayvalik

Pictures have shown the bodies of the migrants strewn across the shore, some wearing lifejackets, in the resort town of Ayvalik after rescue workers desperately tried to save them

Police officers stand guard around the body of a migrant, which has washed up on the Turkish coast in Dikili

People gather around the body of one migrant who washed up on the shore after their vessel overturned

Today, nine bodies washed up on the beach in Ayvalik, prompting authorities to dispatch coastguard boats and police officials to search the area by sea and by land for possible survivors

Rescue workers put one of the migrant bodies into a body bag after at least 21 people died today off the coast of Turkey

Rescue workers prepare to put another body into a bag after a failed attempt to sail to the Greek island of Lesbos

Rescue workers place another body inside a back on the shore of the coastal town of Ayvalik in Turkey

It is believed that most of the migrants who drowned hail from Iraq, Algeria and from Syria and they were trying to get to Europe

The body of a refugee is washed ashore on a beach in Ayvalik district of Balikesir after a boat carrying refugees sank off during their journey to Europe

They were the victims of a second migrant tragedy and the dead included women and children.

Namik Kemal Nazli, the local administrator for Ayvalik, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the victims of the first incident are believed to be from Iraq, Algeria and Syria.

There was no information on the nationalities of those drowned in the second incident.

Around 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in frail boats. Hundreds have lost their lives during the crossings.

The Turkish coastguard conducts a search and rescue operation in a bid to rescue more people from the sea after a migrant boat overturned

A refugee struggles as he attempts to swim ashore after the boat he was travelling in capsized on the way to Greece

The International Organisation for Migration said an estimated 3,770 people died crossing the Mediterranean Sea last year, making 2015 the deadliest year on record for migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe.

Meanwhile, top officials from Denmark, Sweden and Germany will hold talks in Brussels tomorrow amid concern about new border control measures aimed at stopping migrants entering northern Europe.

The meeting was called after Sweden introduced ID checks on all people traveling to Denmark, and Denmark tightened border controls on its border with Germany.

European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said that the meeting's aim 'is to improve coordination between the countries concerned to ensure better management of migratory pressures.'

Actress Vanessa Redgrave strokes the neck of one of the migrants she spoke to at the camp in Athens

The actress has organised charity performances in London to raise money for refugees that she visited

Ms Redgrave shows her solidarity with migrants children and their families at a refugee centre in Athens

Denmark introduced border checks on Monday for at least 10 days, citing concerns about public security because of migrant movements and border measures taken by other EU member states.

Meanwhile British actress Vanessa Redgrave and screenwriter Martin Sherman were in Athens to visit a refugee and migrant centre.

The activist, who has organised charity performances in London to raise money for refugees, visited the Eleonas camp, with Greece's deputy immigration minister.
The makers of Netflix's Making A Murderer have revealed a juror from Steven Avery's murder trial believes he was framed - as a dismissed juror revealed that two others who convicted him were related to a cop and a country employee.

The 10-part series about the murder of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach quickly became a phenomenon after it began streaming on Netflix last month.

It led to online petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures demanding the exoneration of convicted killers Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey.

But it also faced criticism that it was one-sided and that crucial damning evidence that led to the convictions was purposely excluded.

Now, filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos say they have spoken to a juror who believes that Avery deserves a new trial.

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The makers of Netflix's Making A Murder, Laura Ricciardi (left) and Moira Demos, say a juror from Steven Avery's murder trial believes he was framed

Steven Avery (right) was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of Teresa Halbach (left)

Speaking on TODAY on Tuesday, Ricciardi said: [The juror] told us they believe Steven Avery was not proven guilty.

They believe Steven was framed by law enforcement and that he deserves a new trial, and if he receives a new trial, in their opinion, it should take place far away from Wisconsin.

She added that the juror did vote to convict but only because they 'feared for their personal safety.

'They told us really that they were afraid that if they held out for a mistrial that it would be easy to identify which juror had done that and that they were fearful for their own safety,' Demos said.

Should there be another trial, the juror is willing to serve as a source, Ricciardi added.

The Netflix series has sparked a frenzy with petitions demanding a pardon for Avery (right) and his nephew Brendan Dassey (left), who were both convicted in March 2007

Her comments came as Richard Mahler, a juror who was excused from the trial, revealed that two jurors were related to Manitowoc County employees.

'After the trial, I found out [one juror] was the father of a Manitowoc County Sheriff's deputy,' Mahler told People.

'Another juror, his wife works for the Manitowoc County Clerk's Office.'

He added: 'I thought to myself, they shouldn't have been on the jury. That was a conflict of interest.'

Mahler was dismissed after his daughter was involved in a car accident, but he had spent four hours deliberating with other jurors at that point.

He said they had taken a vote early in the process. Seven voted innocent, three said guilty and two remained undecided. But in the end, they unanimously voted to convict Avery.

'I think about that every day,' he added.

Meanwhile, Avery's mother Dolores Avery told RadarOnline that she feels 'terrible' after watching the documentary about her son.

'I feel terrible for Steven,' the 78-year-old, of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, said. 'The cops lied!'

She believes her son was falsely convicted but is not hopeful that her son will be free any time soon. 'I don't know,' she said when asked about his future.

But filmmaker Ricciardi told TODAY that she and her co-filmmakers focus while making the series was to see if the American criminal justice system is functioning.

Is it delivering on its promise of truth and justice? And we thought Steven Avery would be an amazing window through which to look at the system.

Avery initially served 18 years for rape before being exonerated by DNA evidence in 2003.

Avery initially served 18 years in prison for rape before being exonerated by DNA evidence. While he was seeking $36millio from Manitowoc County for wrongful conviction, he was tied to the murder of Halbach

Two online petitions demanding the pardon of Steven Avery (pictured) and Brendan Dassey, the subjects of the new Netflix series Making a Murderer, have received nearly 300,0000 signatures

Two years later, while he was suing Manitowoc County in Wisconsin for $36m over wrongful imprisonment, he was arrested over the death of Halbach.

He and his nephew Brendan Dassey have been in prison since 2007 after being convicted of Halbachs murder.

Making A Murderer casts doubt on Dasseys testimony during the trial. He was 16 at the time and told authorities that he helped his uncle commit the murder.

Dassey, who has an IQ of reads at a fourth grade level, told police he helped Avery rape, stab, shoot and dismember Halbach.

Dassey,confessed to sexually assaulting Halbach and cutting her throat on his uncle's orders. He later said the confession was coerced.

None of Halbach's DNA was ever discovered inside of Avery's home, where the prosecution claimed she was raped and shot in the head.

The 10-episode documentary revolving around Avery and Dassey's murder trial for a 25-year-old Halbach's murder in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, has become a sensation since it began streaming in December

Avery was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Dassey was also given a life sentence but has a chance for early release in 2048.

But those who believe the pair were rightly convicted have spoken out to say that the series purposely excluded the damning evidence against Avery.

This included evidence that he met Halbach wearing just a towel and called her three times on the day she disappeared.

Manitowoc County Sheriff Robert Hermann, who worked on the case, slammed the show as a skewed movie that has taken events out of context.

Former Calumet District Attorney Ken Kratz, who prosecuted the cases, said the show was more of a defense advocacy piece than a documentary.

He told the Herald Times Reporter that there is only one conclusion that the viewer can come to and that is that Mr Avery and Mr Dassey are innocent and they were perhaps set up.

Avery had been in prison for 18 years when DNA evidence exonerated him of the 1985 sexual assault

Avery (left in court in 2007) was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the murder of Halbach. His nephew Brendan Dassey (right, in 2010) confessed but later said it was coerced by cps

But Kratz told People that Avery met Halbach just wearing a towel and left her terrified when she first went to his home in 2005 to feature him in a photo shoot commissioned by AutoTrader.

'She was creeped out [by him]. She [went to her employer and] said she would not go back because she was scared of him,' he said.

According to the New York Daily News, the trial did not include the incident because a judge's ruling over the lack of details.

Avery later requested that AutoTrader magazine dispatch 'that same girl who was here last time' on October 31, 2005. Halbach went missing that same day.

Although all of Averys state appeals have been denied, Netflixs Making A Murderer follows other popular true-crime series, including HBOs The Jinx and podcast Serial, that has brought worldwide attention to their cases.

Season 1 of Serial followed the case of Adnan Syed, who was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999.
A juvenile jail counselor has been arrested after authorities said she had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy.

Texas Rangers arrested Selena Marie Baxter, 29, and charged her with violating the civil rights of a person in custody and indecency with a child by sexual contact.

Baxter, who is a licensed professional counselor intern with the Texas Department of State Health Services, allegedly met the boy while working at Lake Granbury Youth Services - a juvenile jail.

Hidalgo County sent the teen to the juvenile jail in October 2014, and that's when he met Baxter while she provided counseling to him, KGBT reported.

Arrested: Selena Marie Baxter, a juvenile jail counselor, has been arrested by Texas Rangers and is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy she counseled

The 29-year-old woman (above) has been charged with violating the civil rights of a person in custody and indecency with a child by sexual contact

Baxter, who is a licensed professional counselor intern with the Texas Department of State Health Services, met the boy while working at Lake Granbury Youth Services (above), a juvenile jail, in October 2014

In June he returned home and his mother found inappropriate text messages on his phone that she sent, KGBT reported.

The messages included naked photos of Baxter and comments, including 'Babe I have never felt this much for anyone as I feel for you. I am so in love with you.'

The concerned mother contacted Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office and also spoke with Texas Rangers about the messages she found.

After a six-month investigation, authorities determined that Baxter traveled to Rio Grande Valley for the 'Life in Color' concert at State Farm Arena with the boy, KGBT reported.

When questioned by investigators, the teen said they engaged in sexual activity at the Holiday Inn Express in McAllen, Texas.

Baxter is being held at the Hidalgo County jail and it's unclear if she has a lawyer.
Seven Brits have been arrested in Spain following a record seizure of cocaine bound for the UK.

Three tonnes of the class A drug - worth an estimated 500million - were confiscated from an industrial warehouse and a van in the north west province of Pontevedra in Galicia following a tip-off from Britain's National Crime Agency.

Police say the Brits, held in the province of Malaga, had arranged to buy the cocaine from Dutch traffickers who had smuggled it into Spain from South America.

Seven Brits have been arrested after Spanish police, acting on a tip off from their British counterparts, stopped a car containing 1,500lb of cocaine. Another three tonnes were found in a warehouse (pictured)

A switch blade and a trace of cocaine, which police say was destined for Britain, lie open at the warehouse

One of those arrested in the raid sits handcuffed on the pavement next to two balaclava-clad police officers

A bundle of cash, found during the police raids, can be seen in this image. Police say the drugs were due to be broken into smaller shipments before being transported

As well as an estimated 500,000 of cocaine, police confiscated hundreds of thousands of euros and guns

A bag containing thousands of euros is pictured by police after it is found at the site of the police raids

Spanish detectives today described the men as members of an 'important group of drugs traffickers based on the Costa del Sol'.

Five of the Brits, aged between 31 and 59, are from Liverpool including the alleged 59-year-old leader of the drugs gang.

A 41-year-old from Kingston upon Thames in Surrey and a 50-year-old from Thornbury, Gloucestershire, were also held.

It is understood all three tonnes of cocaine, the biggest land seizure of cocaine by Spain's National Police force in Galicia since 1999, were due to be taken to Britain.

The drugs found in the van had been hidden inside a specially-adapted false roof and the traffickers had put an engine in the back of the vehicle to pretend they were carrying a legal load.

Weapons including a loaded 9mm pistol as well as cash were also seized.

A source close to the inquiry said: 'The entire three tonnes of cocaine were due to end up on the streets of Britain but they were going to be transported in parts.

'The buyers were British and had already made a down-payment of 500,000 (365,000) for the first 700 kilos of cocaine found in a specially-adapted roof inside the van.'

A total of 12 people were held as part of the operation - including the seven Brits, three Dutch sellers and two Spaniards hired to transport the drugs from north west Spain to Malaga.

The arrests took place last month but details were only revealed at a press conference in Madrid at midday today.

Dozens of packages, containing an estimated 500m worth of cocaine, are stacked next the alleged drug runners' vehicle

A parcel of cocaine sits inside a false roof built into the van in order to hide the illegal goods

A composite image shows police officers pulling the bundles of cocaine out of the van's hidden compartment

The alleged smugglers placed a motor inside the back of the van to try and mask their activities

Police described how elite GEO police trained in dealing with terrorist attacks and hostage taking intercepted the van being used to take the first consignment of drugs from Pontevedra to Malaga.

A spokesman said: 'A lead car driven by one of the two Spaniards that acted as lookout for the van driver tried to ram a police vehicle in a failed attempt to avoid arrest.

'Several bricks of cocaine weighing around 700 kilos hidden in a false roof behind the driver's seat.

'The remaining 3,000 kilos were found in a warehouse in an industrial estate in Barro, Pontevedra.

'At the same time officers arrested the Dutch traffickers in the nearby city of Santiago de Compostela and eight people in Malaga including the seven Brit members of the gang who had bought the cocaine for its subsequent distribution.'

As well as the drugs, police also seized nearly 900,000 in euros as well as the pistol, four cars and a motorbike.

A police spokesman said the two suspected Dutch traffickers - arrested at stunning five-star Santiago de Compostela hotel Hostal Dos Reis Catolicos on the city's famous Obradoiro Square - had drawn attention to themselves by 'throwing 500 euro notes around as if they were water.'

Galicia, where the group was detained, is an important entry point for cocaine from South America

The alleged leader of the Costa-del-Sol based British drugs gang is thought to have met with the Dutchmen in the hotel.

National Police General Director Ignacio Cosido told a press conference today in Madrid: 'This is the biggest land seizure of cocaine in Galicia since 1999.'

Police said in a subsequent press release: 'National Police have smashed an important international organisation dedicated to the maritime transport of cocaine from south America to Europe.

'The operation has resulted in the arrest of 12 people and the seizure of 3,000 kilos of cocaine which was going to be bought by an important group of drugs traffickers based on the Costa del Sol.

'The twelve detainees include the Spanish nationals tasked with the transport of the drugs as well as the sellers and buyers of the cocaine who were Dutch and British respectively.'

Galicia is an important entry point for cocaine from South America.

Galician drug barons first opened routes into Spain via the region with the Colombian Cali and Medellin cartels in the 1980s.

Spain's proximity to north Africa and its close ties to South America have helped make it the gateway into Europe for cannabis and cocaine.

The drugs seized in Galicia in this new operation are thought to have come from Colombia.

British Costa del Sol-based villains became major players in the multi-billion-pound drugs trafficking industry operating through Spain after early forays into cannabis smuggling by the first waves of gangsters in the late seventies and early eighties.

Last month six men from Liverpool were arrested after police in the port of Valencia, eastern Spain, discovered 1.5tonnes of cocaine disguised as wooden pallets.

In November a Brit described by Spanish police as Europe's number one drugs trafficker was arrested at his luxury villa on the Costa del Sol.

Robert Dawes, 44, from Nottingham, was held on a European arrest warrant issued by a French court related to the discovery of 1.3tonnes of cocaine at Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport in September 2013.

The seizure was the largest ever made in France.
The humble roast dinner is the most iconic thing about Britain - and stripping off at the first sign of sun is our most common trait, according to new research.

A detailed study, the 'Britishness Audit', found that nothing encapsulates our national identity better than a piece of beef, roast potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding.

The ever-present Sunday meal pipped fish and chips and the BBC in second and third respectively to be named the most British thing imaginable.

A traditional British roast dinner with roast beef, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings (file image) is the most iconic thing about Britain

But when it comes to our national traits the list was topped by wearing summer clothes at the first glimpse of sun, apologising too often, talking about the weather - and making a cup of tea in response to a crisis.

The famous British stiff upper lip is also highlighted in the top 10, as well as declaring 'it's fine' when faced with poor customer service and queuing for absolutely anything.

The 2016 Britishness Audit, commissioned by Tetley, involved an analysis of the British Social Attitudes survey by NatCen Social Research and a poll of 2,000 people by OnePoll.

Fish and chips have also been be named one of the most British things imaginable (file image)

When asked what the country's national emblem should be, most Brits say a cup of tea (32 per cent), closely followed by Big Ben (31 per cent), with the Queen's face coming third.

The NatCen report reveals that the majority of Brits (82 per cent) are proud of their nationality and 62 per cent of people who live in Britain say they'd rather be citizens of Britain than anywhere else.

The report also explores who in this country feels most proud, and reveals that older people are more positive than their feelings about Britain appear to be, with 66 per cent of those aged 75 and older saying they were 'very proud' of being British, compared with just 20 per cent of those age 18-29.

The study revealed that Britons make a cup of tea when they have no time to drink it and even in response to a crisis (file image)

10 MOST COMMON BRITISH TRAITS 1. Wearing summer clothing at the first sight of sun 2. Apologising automatically 3. Ability to talk at length about the weather 4. Making a cup of tea in response to a crisis 5. Finding queue-jumping the ultimate crime 6. Forming a queue for pretty much anything 7. The typical British 'stiff upper lip' 8. Grumbling throughout a meal, but not telling staff so as not to cause a fuss 9. Making sarcastic/dry jokes 10. Having a beer at the airport even though it's before 8am Advertisement

Ian Simpson, senior researcher at NatCen, said yesterday: 'The notion that the people who inhabit this particular set of islands have strong emotional attachments to our nation is an enduring one.

'Our report delves a little deeper into these feelings of national pride, and who exactly is feeling them.

'Differences in age, gender and education have an impact on the depth of patriotic feeling - but the report reveals that feelings of national pride still run high, with eight in ten people saying they feel proud to be British.'

When it comes to recent events, the poll shows that British pride was at its peak during the 2012 Olympics, which was voted the most rewarding time to be British.

This chimes with the NatCen report findings that national pride is linked to our sporting achievements, with 73 per cent of Brits feeling proud when the country does well in international sports.

The Queen becoming our longest serving monarch and the 70-year commemoration of VE Day also make the top of the list of events that make us feel most proud of Britain.

Tetley commissioned the audit to mark the latest Tea Folk adventure - a new TV ad which sees national treasures Gaffer, Sydney and Tina stroll back in time to celebrate the best things about Britain.

Along with tea, the Royal Family and James Bond, Big Ben is such an iconic part of Britishness (file image)

When it comes to recent events, the poll shows that British pride was at its peak during the 2012 Olympics, which was voted the most rewarding time to be British.

This chimes with the NatCen report findings that national pride is linked to our sporting achievements, with 73 per cent of Brits feeling proud when the country does well in international sports.

The Queen becoming our longest serving monarch and the 70-year commemoration of VE Day also make the top of the list of events that make us feel most proud of Britain.

Tetley commissioned the audit to mark the latest Tea Folk adventure - a new TV ad which sees national treasures Gaffer, Sydney and Tina stroll back in time to celebrate the best things about Britain.

Getting sunburnt on the first warm day of the year comes in at number 13 on the Most Common British Traits list (file image)

Cassie Shuttlewood, Senior Brand Manager at Tetley, said: 'Our new ad is all about celebrating Britain's greatest moments - the people and events that fill the nation with pride.

' And we wanted to explore this a little further with our audit, shining a light on how Brits feel about the country and the things people associate with Britishness.

'An interesting finding is that patriotic feeling seems to increase with age - perhaps because the older you are, the more tea you tend to drink! We are heartened and proud to see that a cup of tea is high on the list of British icons.

'Tea is such an iconic part of Britishness, right up there with the Royal Family, James Bond and Big Ben. Nothing in the UK starts without a cuppa - and we'd like to invite the nation to raise a cup to celebrate the very best of British.'

Wearing summer clothing at the first sight of sun tops the list of Most Common British Traits (file image)
A married substitute teacher was arrested over the weekend in Florida on 10 counts of sexual battery after the victims parents found condoms and other evidence in their son's possession, a newly unsealed affidavit has revealed.

Sara Moore, 35, a paraprofessional at St Cloud Middle School, was taken into police custody on Sunday, one day after her 14-year-old lover's parents learned of their illicit three-month relationship, according to the documents.

The affidavit states that the boys father contacted law enforcement on Saturday after finding a 12-pack of condoms in their son's room and suggestive messages on his Instagram account sent to the married teacher on New Years Eve.

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Bad teacher: Sara Moore, a substitute health teacher from Florida (pictured left, and right in her mugshot), has been charged with 10 counts of sexual battery involving her children's 14-year-old friend

Moore, pictured in court during her initial appearance Monday, allegedly told police she viewed her underage lover 'as an adopted son'

Among the amorous missives addressed to Moore that were discovered on the teen's social media page were: I just want to be with you'; 'I don't want you for a mom, I want you' and 'We don't have to do it.'

When asked about the his relationship with Moore, the boy reportedly broke down in tears, telling his parents the affair 'was not her fault, and he did not want to ruin her life,' according to the documents made public Monday and cited by Orlando Sentinel.

The 14-year-old, who was friends with Moore's children, later revealed to police that he and the substitute health teacher had as many as 25 sexual encounters in the back of her SUV in a gas station parking lot, as well as in her daughters bedroom.

The boy also revealed that the 35-year-old wife and mother would wear a black see-through lingerie top during their trysts.

When investigators searched Moores vehicle, they recovered a blanket containing what they believe to be the victims DNA and the lingerie item.

The affidavit says that Moore and the 14-year-old first met at St Cloud Middle School about a year ago. Before long, the teen befriended her children and began spending time at the woman's home at Moon Dance Place.

He once even went on vacation to California with Moore's family.

Family home: The victim told police about multiple sexual encounters with Moore at her home at Moon Dance Place in St Cloud, Florida (pictured)

Moore had been employed as a paraprofessional and a substitute health teacher at St Cloud Middle School (pictured)

Police believe the relationship between the boy and the teacher turned sexual sometime in October 2015.

When detectives questioned the teacher, she said the 14-year-old was like her adopted son, but she refrained from commenting on the allegations of sexual battery that have been leveled at her.

Moore initially agreed to take a polygraph test but then had a change of heart, telling police she had to talk to her husband first, according to WFTV. She also refused to provide a DNA sample.

On Monday, Moore had her initial court appearance, which concluded with a judge ordering her to remain in jail without bond pending a hearing that will decide if her case would go to trial.

That same day, the 35-year-old educator was fired from the Osceola County School District, where she had been employed for at least three years.

Speaking to the station WKMG, Moore's mother insisted that her daughter has not done anything wrong and urged the public to reserve judgment.

'She's a good, lovely person. You ask anybody that knows her,' the woman told a reporter.
An official navy Twitter account has been shut down after the senior Muslim officer who ran it posted politically charged statements criticising then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott and supporting the Grand Mufti.

Captain Mona Shindy, Chief of Navys strategic adviser on Islamic affairs, had reportedly run account @navyislamic until it was removed following complaints of partisanship.

Australian Defence Force removed the account sometime before Christmas, after Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA) complained of its existence, Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Captain Mona Shindy had reportedly run account @navyislamic until it was removed following complaints of partisanship

The account run by Captain Shindy had shown support for Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed following his controversial response to the terror attacks in Paris

The account run by Captain Shindy had shown support for Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed following his controversial response to the terror attacks in Paris.

#IstandWIthTheMufti Righteous & courageous man who categorically denounces #ISIS #terrorism #ListenRespectInclude, the account wrote.

The Grand Mufti had been criticised for his statement that racism and Islamophobia had contributed to the Islamic State terrorism.

He later clarified that he agrees there is no justification for the taking of innocent lives.

Ahead of Septembers leadership spill, the account posted a tweet that said: Looking forward to a PM that unites.

Captain Shindy is Chief of Navys strategic adviser on Islamic affairs and is a mentor for the Lebanese Muslim Association. She was once Telstra NSW Businesswoman of the Year

Following the coup, @navyislamic retweeted Anne Aly, a counter-terrorism expert.

Wait. Did our new PM just give a speech and not mention boats, death cult, security, death cult, terrorism, national security and death cult? Ms Aly wrote in the tweet shared by @navyislamic.

The following month, @navyislamic criticised the Queensland party ALA whose catchphrase is to fight against the Islamisation of Australia.

Real shame to see these extreme ill informed fringe groups threatening #community #cohesion. #auspol #teamhumanrace, the tweet read.

The account was described as the Official Royal Australian Navy Islamic Advisor Twitter account, and expressing political views in an official capacity is prohibited.

The decorated Egyptian-born senior navy official is a mentor for the Lebanese Muslim Association, and was once Telstra NSW Businesswoman of the Year.

In the 2015 Australia Day honours, she was also awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross.

The Grand Mufti had been criticised for his statement that racism and Islamophobia had contributed to the Islamic State terrorism. He later clarified that he agrees there is no justification for the taking of innocent lives

#IstandWIthTheMufti Righteous & courageous man who categorically denounces #ISIS #terrorism #ListenRespectInclude, the account wrote

The account was created in 2013 to encourage Muslims to join the defence force.

Captain Shindy was counselled on the issues by the Chief of Navy, Air Chief Marshall Mark Binskin AC, a Defence spokesperson told Sydney Morning Herald.

The account had been shut down to consolidate the navys social media, Defence spokesperson told Guardian Australia.

However, navy-linked accounts @NavyASRL and @RanRURugby remain running on Twitter.

Debbie Robinson of ALA had complained to the ADF by letter in mid-December.

It is completely unacceptable for an official Defence Twitter account to criticise any registered political party in Australia, she wrote.

The Australian Liberty Alliance is very concerned that the Australian Defence Force appears to be promoting pro-Islamic political views and attacking a party that has the support of many Australians.

Bernard Gaynor, also of ALA, has called for Captain Shindy to face disciplinary action.

Defence is trying to run from this embarrassing farce but it can't hide.

Ms Robinson wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday that they had not received an official response from ADF.
A U.S. special operations solider has been killed and two have been wounded during an intense battle in southern Afghanistan.

The special operations troops came under heavy mortar and small-arms fire in Helmand Province, NBC News said on Tuesday, amid a resurgence of violence in the area.

The forces were reportedly involved in a counter-terrorism operation in the town of Marjah, in the center of the Taliban stronghold, when they came under attack.

The Taliban in recent weeks have focused their efforts on retaking parts of Helmand, and the U.S. has countered with U.S. special operations forces working with Afghan troops.

A U.S special operations soldier is believed to have died and two others are said to have been wounded in two separate operations in Marjah, reports suggest

Several helicopters were reportedly sent in to retrieve the wounded, however one malfunctioned after it hit a wall.

'There is still a fight going on,' Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said hours after the casualties were sustained. 'We don't yet have all the details surrounding what has taken place.'

He said Defense Secretary Ash Carter was being briefed on the situation by commanders in Afghanistan, but many key details were unclear.

The Washington Post reported that pilots of another were told to avoid the area because of heavy gunfire.

The U.S. military command in Kabul said in a statement confirmed one soldier died of wounds sustained 'during operations' in Marjah, and that two were wounded.

The statement did not identify their service branch. Two U.S. officials said they were special operation troops.

'We are deeply saddened by this loss,' said Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Speaking for Gen. John Campbell, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Shoffner said, 'our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved.'

A U.S. helicopter was sent to evacuate the casualties but did not immediately take off because of an unspecified problem.

In Kabul, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ron Flesvig, said the helicopter sent to evacuate the casualties had landed with a mechanical problem.

According to The Washington Post, the U.S. deployed special operations troops to assist their beleaguered Afghan counterparts.

They have come under increased pressure from the Taliban who have looked to recapture towns in the area since the withdrawal of large numbers of Western forces.

Last month, six U.S. Airmen were killed when a suicide bomber detonated in the middle of a patrol,

It was the largest loss of U.S. life in the country in 2015 and the first major deadly event since many soldiers pulled out.

According to the website iCasualties.org, 22 Americans died in Afghanistan last year.

Marjah was the scene of the largest military offensive during the War on Terror. Operation Moshtarak (Dari for Together or Joint) was an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) pacification offensive.

It involved 15,000 American, Afghan, Canadian, Estonian, Danish and British troops.

The operation, compared in scale to the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004, aimed to remove the Taliban from the area and eliminate the last Taliban stronghold in central Helmand.

In the past, the town had been controlled by the Taliban and drug traffickers.
Ted Cruz's presidential campaign jumped feet-first into the immigration war on Monday with a video ad showing an army of lawyers and journalists illegally crossing the Rio Grande river and leaping a crude border fence into the United States.

It's a dramatization of an inside joke he's been telling for months on the campaign trail  a complaint that Washington, D.C. politicos and reporters would only take job losses from illegal immigration seriously if their own careers were being threatened.

The ad ends with a somber pledge to 'build a wall that works' and 'secure the border,' a page from Donald Trump's well-worn hymnal.

Trump, rallying nearly 10,000 people in Lowell, Massachusetts on Monday night, threw a shoulder at Cruz without calling him out by name.

'Here's the good thing,' the billionaire real estate developer said: 'He's a politician, so he wouldn't know where to start.'

INVASION: In Cruz's telling, a horde of lawyers and journalists flooding into America illegally would wake up the political establishment

BORDER HAWK: Ted Cruz has been talking about a comprehensive southern border wall since before Donald Trump's political makeover

'I KNOW HOW TO BUILD A WALL': Trump told a massive crowd in Massachusetts that Cruz 'wouldn't know where to start'

Trump has made his fortune as a financier of massive building projects including the iconic Trump Tower in New York City.

'I know how to build a wall, okay? I know exactly how to build a wall,' he said as his crowd hooted and hollered at the boast.

'I know the footings, I know how deep they have to go, I know how high we could go with the pre-fab. I know everything. They don't know. They don't know.'

'And they won't know how to ask for he money back either,' Trump said, referring to his pledge that Mexico would be forced to pay for the construction of thousands of miles of such a wall.

The 60-second Cruz ad opens with a series of dramatic shots showing illicit border-crossers wearing business suits and skirts.

'I understand that when the mainstream media covers immigration, it doesn't often see it as an economic issue,' the Texas senator's voice intones.

'BUILD THAT WALL!' Children stood on their seats and cheered Trump last night on the issue of border security

BORDER PATROL: Cruz's ad dramatizes a joke he's been telling on the campaign trail for months

'But I can tell you, it is a very personal economic issue. And I will say, the politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were coming across the Rio Grande, or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press.'

'Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation,' he says.

'If I'm elected president, we will triple the Border Patrol. We will build a wall that works. We will secure the border.'

That last line comes from the December CNN debate  but the Cruz advertising team left out what he said next.

'We will get a wall that works, and Ill get Donald Trump to pay for it!' he proclaimed at the time  a jab at The Donald's boasts.

At the debate, Trump interjected: 'I'll build it!'

A fleeting second of Cruz's pledge in the ad includes a split-screen shot of Cruz speaking while rival senator Marco Rubio of Florida listens. That's no accident.

Cruz has hammered Rubio for his participating in the 2013 'Gang of Eight' immigration plan in the Senate, and for votes that he has said would have weakened border security.
A Marine has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a 20-year-old sorority sister after harassing her and her friends on New Year's Eve.

Cpl Eric Johnson, of Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1, was arrested at his air base in Yuma, Arizona, on Tuesday morning - five days after University of North Texas student Sara Mutschlechner was fatally shot in the head as she drove three friends home from a party.

According to police, shots were fired from a black SUV that pulled up beside her as she was driving through Denton, Texas, in the early hours of New Year's Day.

Daily Mail Online understands Johnson, 20, is an administrative specialist and had been stationed at the Marine Corp Air Station in Yuma since August 12, 2013. It is unclear if he was on holiday leave.

He will be detained in Yuma County Jail until he is extradited to Texas.

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Pictured: Cpl Eric Jamal Johnson, 20, (left) has been arrested on suspicion of shooting dead sorority sister Sara Mutschlechner (right), a 20-year-old University of North Texas junior, early on New Year's Day

Pictured: Cpl Eric Johnson, was arrested at his air base in Yuma, Arizona, on Tuesday morning. He is an administrative specialist of Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1, which he joined in August 2013

Johnson was at the same party as Sara and her friends. He left at around the same time with two of the party's performers of the rap collective Dayonta Boyz, as well as two other African American males in a black SUV

Mutschlechner, philanthropy chair of her sisterhood, was driving this Sedan when she got into a fight with members of an SUV. Shots were fired, she was hit in the head, then crashed into an electrical pole

Sara's group had been at a nearby party on Crisoforo Drive which hosted a number of musicians, including local rap collective The Daytona Boyz. They left shortly before 2am.

Johnson, whose street name is 'Santana Sage', was also at the party. He left at around the same time with two of the Dayonta Boyz - known as Tay-K and F***PimpyZ - and two other African American males in a black SUV.

Both vehicles were driving through Denton when Johnson's black SUV pulled up alongside Sara's sedan.

Members of Johnson's group started shouting that they wanted to 'f***' the two girls in the car.

One of Sara's two male friends hit back that the comments were inappropriate. One of the men in the SUV told him he would 'beat his ass' and another said, 'I'll shoot your ass', and 'displayed a handgun'.

According to police, Sara's party did not make derogatory comments in response and drove off.

But as they went through the intersection at West University Drive, shots were fired from the SUV and Sara was hit in the head.

The 20-year-old immediately lost control of her sedan, veered to the right into a parked car then crashed into an electrical pole.

She was taken to hospital and treated for her wounds but died later on New Year's Day.

Another girl in Sara's car broke her collar bone, and was treated in a local hospital.

Police said at least two of the men in the SUV had been at the same party as Sara and her three friends but the groups are not believed to have interacted until the dispute between their vehicles.

They insisted that the investigation is ongoing. Detectives are examining surveillance film taken from a nearby business, which is believed to show the vehicle involved.

Speaking to Daily Mail Online Johnson's stepfather, Darryl Joseph, 49, expressed shock at the news of Johnsons arrest which he said he was only just learning. He said: Erics a great kid. Hes never had no problems.'

Today the house on Crisoforo Drive where Sara had partied with her friends lay empty  its door wide open. According to neighbors the occupants who rented the house left in haste, clearing out their stuff and piling it into a truck just yesterday.

Outside the evidence of the party is clear with overstuffed trashcans and bags holding beer cases, cups and other party detritus.

Neighbors said the occupants who rented the house left in haste, clearing their stuff into a truck just yesterday

Today the house on Crisoforo Drive where Sara partied with friends lay empty, its door wide open

Respectable: Eric Johnson's family home in Fort Worth, Texas. He lived on based with the Marines

This was the flier made for the New Year's Eve party Sara and her friends attended, as well as Johnson and his friends, including at least two members of headline act Daytona Boyz, Tay-K and F***PimpyZ

According to police, Johnson (pictured left and right) threatened one of Sara's male friends and flashed a gun

Johnson (pictured, left, with a friend). Sara's friends who were in the car with her have told police they recognized this 'F*** Everybody' shirt, and said someone in Johnson's car was wearing it during the fight

In the car with Johnson: Police said two members of the rap collective the Daytona Boyz were also in the black SUV. They identified the rappers by their stage names: F***PimpyZ (left) and Tay-K (right)

The police were called at least twice as the party raged on Thursday night and into the small hours of Friday morning with one neighbor reporting partygoers banging on her door and windows at 5 in the morning.

According to Mallory Bersi, 21, 'It was really weird. At like 5am someone was banging on the door trying to get into our house. They were like banging on the door, on the windows, they went into the back yard. We called the cops. Things like this dont happen in this neighborhood. It was crazy, scary.'

A neighbor of Eric Johnson's mother Sheryl Joseph, Virgil Turner, 49, has lived across from them for six to eight years.

When we got here they were already here. I know Eric a little bit. When we moved here him and my kid used to play. They used to skateboard up and down this street. Then he took off and went to the military.

He was a nice boy. Im very surprised.

I know his mom. Shes a very nice lady, very friendly, never had a problem with her.

He added: Im just shaking with this news. Im very surprised. He was a very nice boy from a very nice family.

I haven t seen him but he was back here for the weekend.

This is the electrical pole that Sara's car veered into after she was shot in the head at 2am on New Year's Day

Well-wishers have left flowers as tribute to the murdered sorority sister

Mutschlechner (pictured) was driving friends home from a party at 2am when a black SUV pulled up beside them and they got into an argument. Within minutes rounds were fired, she was shot, and the car crashed

According to her LinkedIn page, Mutschlechner had volunteered at the American Cancer Society

According to Jason Blackhawk, 38, The mother is really nice. Shes a single mother. I feel bad for her. Their youngest son was a perfect gentleman he would come over and check on us whenever one of my roommates had to go to hospital.

The family are really nice, theyre real good people. Its kind of a shame whats going on. Its a very quiet, peaceful neighborhood. This right here is a surprise to us. Everybody keeps to themselves but are friendly.

My brother who is the owner of this house and has been for about 10 years he always had good things to say about the neighbors especially the people across the street there.'

Mutschlechner's devastated parents have revealed that she was an organ donor - and that she has already helped a burns victim.

In an interview with Fox 4, the parents of Mutschlechner said their daughter - a junior at the University of North Texas - had dreamed of being a film director or producer and that being an organ donor was a cause close to her heart.

Her father Clay called the killing 'senseless and tragic' while her mother Gloria said: 'All I could think about was her and this horrible thing that happened to her. She did not deserve this.'

Clay added: 'We're all going to miss her. Some people don't get to have their kids 20 years. We have to be blessed with what we've had with our time spent.'

Fox 4 revealed that Mutschlechner's decision to be an organ donor had already helped a burns victim.

The parents (pictured) of Mutschlechner said their daughter had dreamed of being a film director or producer and that being an organ donor was a cause close to her heart

Mutschlechner, philanthropy chair of the school's Zeta Tau Alpha chapter, was taken to hospital to be placed on life support after the shooting, and was pronounced dead hours later on January 1.

Witnesses told police there were 'five or six African American males' in the SUV, and that at least two had been at the same party as Mutschlechner.

Around 60 people were at the house party and witnesses say Mutschlechner was designated driver on the night.

Paying tribute to Mutschlechner on Saturday, her sorority - Zeta Tau Alpha - posted on Facebook: 'Our thoughts are with the sisters, family and friends of Gamma Phi Chapter (University of North Texas) member Sara Mutschlechner, who passed away in a tragic accident this weekend.'

The post quoted chapter president Jordan Roberts, who said: 'Each and every one of our lives at the Gamma Phi Chapter of ZTA has been touched by the spunky, selfless attitude of our beloved sister, Sara.

A candlelit vigil was held at the school on Saturday night to remember the popular student Mutschlechner

According to her LinkedIn page, Mutschlechner had done some volunteer work for the American Cancer Society. Pictured above people light candles at the vigil

'She is by far one of the most spirited, honest and fun-loving people I ever had the privilege to know. She will truly be missed.'

According to her LinkedIn page, Mutschlechner had done some volunteer work for the American Cancer Society.

She had also worked as a waitress and made a short horror film as she explored film-making.

UNT spokesman Margarita Venegas told ABC: 'The university is saddened by the loss of one of our community members. Our thoughts are with Sara's family and friends.'

A candlelit vigil was held at the school on Saturday night.

'It goes to show that she was who she was and she wasn't afraid to be herself,' NBC quoted Jordan Roberts, Sara's sorority sister as saying.
A family of ranchers who inspired the controversial standoff in Oregon were accused of repeatedly abusing a 16-year-old relative as they set fire to government property.

Dusty Hammond was allegedly forced to hike 10 miles before his skin was scraped raw with sandpaper by his uncle Steven Hammond, 46, and grandfather Dwight Hammond, 74, in 2004.

The pair, who have made headlines as the so-called 'heroes' behind the militia occupying a remote federal building, also made the teenager eat chewing tobacco as part of the suspected abuse.

According to a police report he was punished because Dwight heard he had scratched the initials 'J' and 'S' into his chest with a paperclip.

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Dusty Hammond, 16, (pictured) was allegedly forced to hike 10 miles before his skin was scarped raw with sandpaper by his uncle Steven Hammond and grandfather Dwight Hammond, who are the inspiration behind the standoff in Oregon. The marks on his chest are where self-made tattoos were scratched off

The alleged abuse took place in 2004, while the Hammonds were setting fires on public properties managed by the US Bureau of Land Management

Dwight Hammond and the boy's grandmother, Susan, were in the room when Steven allegedly scratched off the markings with the sandpaper to teach Dusty to 'respect his own body'.

According to police, Dusty tried his best not to cry, fearing they would just continue the torture if he shed a tear.

The teenager revealed his family's role in setting fires on government-owned land, leading to their Dwight and Steven Hammond's arson conviction in 2012.

They surrendered to authorities on Monday for starting blazes in 2001 and 2006 on lands managed by the US Bureau of Land Management.

They had served time after admitting they started the fires to prevent the growth of invasive plants into their land.

The pair argued that the five-year rule was unconstitutional, and the trial court agreed and imposed lesser sentences.

But, in a statement from the US Attorney's Office, federal law was eventually upheld.

Daily Mail Online captured exclusive pictures of them arriving at San Pedro Prison in California to begin lengthy prison sentences.

Once at the gate the men were seen hugging family members and saying their goodbyes.

Two federal prison officers then escorted the Hammonds in to the prison building to be processed.

Dusty had to wait eight years to tell authorities about their crimes, fearing he would be abused again if they found out.

Dusty revealed his family's role in setting fires on government-owned land, leading to their Dwight (left) and Steven Hammond's (right) arson conviction in 2012.

Oregon Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr (right, in blue) and his son Steven (left, in plaid) handed themselves in to federal authorities at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California on Monday afternoon

Susan and Dwight Hammond had obtained temporary custody of Dusty four years prior to the abuse  a period that they said drove them to their 'wits end', according to the report seen by the Daily Beast.

Deputy Sheriff Brian Needham of the Harney County Sheriff's Office wrote: 'His grandparents did not know how to handle the situation with Dusty, so they called Dusty's uncle, Steve Hammon.

'Dusty told me that Steve is the one that disciplines him on any matters that his grandparents do not know how to handle.'

The report goes on: 'Dusty told me that in the past several months the discipline has gotten worse and worse.

'Dusty told me that two to three months ago he and Steve had gotten into an argument about how Dusty was doing his chores. Dusty stated that Steve became very upset and charged him.

'Dusty stated that Steve hit him in the chest with a closed fist, knocking him to the ground. Dusty stated that Steve then took Dusty's face and rubbed it into the gravel. Dusty stated that this action hurt and made him fearful of Steve.'

The report further states that when Dusty was caught with tobacco, 'Steve made him eat two cans of Skoal Smokeless tobacco, then again drove him 10 miles from the ranch and made him walk back.'

The standoff in Oregon rolled into a fourth day on Tuesday with self-styled militiamen vowing to press on with the protest against the U.S. government even as local officials told the group to go home.

Dwight (left) and Steven (right) Hammond made headlines on Saturday after a rally was held for them in of Burns, Oregon on Saturday. After the rally, armed militiamen took over a federal building in their behalf

Dwight Hammond, 74, and his son Steven, 46, were convicted of setting fires in 2001 and 2006 on lands managed by the US Bureau of Land Management. They served time, but a judge ruled that they had to finish their five-year mandatory sentence

Dwight (center) and Steven (left) Hammond walked in to the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in San Pedro after saying their farewells

Saturday's takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Oregon, was spurred by the imprisonment of two ranchers for setting fires that spread to federal land.

The occupation marked the latest protest over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by political conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual freedom and property rights.

Protest leader Ammon Bundy, whose father's ranch in Nevada was the scene of an armed standoff against federal land managers in 2014, said his group had named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and was defending the Constitution and personal liberty against the federal government.

A Twitter page under Bundy's said the group had no intention of leaving the refuge until its conditions are met.

The protesters have said they aim 'to restore and defend the Constitution' to protect the rights of ranchers and start a national debate about states' rights and federal land-use policy that they hope will force the federal government to release tracts of Western land.

The standoff in Oregon rolled into a fourth day on Tuesday with self-styled militiamen vowing to press on with the protest against the U.S. government even as local officials told the group to go home

Many residents in Burns, a town of some 3,000 people about 280 miles (451 km) southeast of Portland, viewed the occupation as the work of outside agitators.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward, in a statement on behalf of himself and County Judge Steven Grasty, asked group members to stand down.

'It is time for you to leave our community, go home to your families, and end this peacefully,' Ward said.

The FBI said it was working with state and local law enforcement for a peaceful resolution and federal law enforcement officials have kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which is closed to visitors.
Two men who sexually assaulted women while a third filmed the terrifying attack at a bus stop are being hunted by police.

The men 'rubbed themselves' against two women, aged 49 and 45, during the assault in south London.

One of the men spat on a victim as she attempted to help the other woman.

Officers from the Roads and Transport Policing Command are appealing for help in identifying the three men following the sexual assault in Mitcham.

Two of the suspects have short, light-coloured hair and the third has dark-coloured hair (right). Police listed the man (left) as suspect number one, who was wearing a dark shirt and dark jeans at the time of the assault

The women were waiting at the Amen Corner bus stop when three men approached them.

Passengers on board a route 355 bus called the police when it pulled into the stop as the incident was unfolding.

Police have described the three men as white, slim build and in their early 20s. Two of the suspects have short, light-coloured hair and the third has dark-coloured hair.

All three men left in the direction of the Sainsbury's at Amen Corner.

This man has been listed as suspect number two, who was wearing a light-coloured shirt at the time of the attack. It's unknown which of these men filmed the incident

Officers released the CCTV images of the men and are asking anyone with any information to come forward.

Unwanted sexual behaviour on the transport network is not tolerated and all sexual offences are taken very seriously. Police are encouraging people to always report incidents of this nature.

The Met recently launched the 'Report it to stop it' campaign with Transport for London, the British Transport Police and City of London Police.

The campaign aims to further increase the reporting of unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport in the capital.
Shocking footage shows youths in Brussels yelling 'Allahu Akbar' as they set fire to a Christmas tree in a public square using a petrol bomb.

Bystanders are seen looking on as the group use what appears to be a home made bomb to set the tree ablaze.

In the seconds following the loud bang, the flames engulf the tree as the group run away yelling 'Allahu akbar' - Arabic for 'God is great'.

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The youths gather around the tree (left) before a loud band is heard and it bursts into flames (right)

The group of teenagers then run away from the scene while shouting 'Allahu akbar' - Arabic for 'God is great'

After the video was uploaded online, many took to Facebook to express concern. According to The Daily Star, one wrote they were 'shocked' by what they saw in the city.

The person wrote: 'Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to travel abroad may realise that the situation in Brussels is neither normal nor tenable in the long-term.'

A second person called it an 'act of racism', and an attack on the country's customs.

Only yesterday did Belgian authorities scale down heightened security adopted over fears of a militant attack in the capital on New Year's Eve.

Belgium's crisis centre, a state body that advises the government on security, said the alert status for potential targets such as the police, military and Brussels's main square was downgraded to level two.

However, the overall security level for the country, which has been at the heart of investigations into attacks in Paris on November 13 in which 130 people were killed, remains at level three, one notch below the maximum alert status.

Brussels had called off the city's traditional New Year's Eve fireworks over an alleged plot to attack the capital.

Two of the Paris suicide bombers, Brahim Abdeslam and Bilal Hadfi, had been living in Belgium, and at least one man was suspected of having coordinated the attacks by mobile phone from Belgium as they were being carried out.
Evangelical Protestant preacher Pastor James McConnell has been found not guilty of making grossly offensive remarks during a sermon in which he described Islam as 'heathen', 'satanic'.

This afternoon Pastor James McConnell, 78, of Newtownabbey, Co Antrim, walked free from Belfast Magistrates' Court after being cleared of sending grossly offensive messages.

The high profile evangelical pastor had been charged with two alleged offences after the sermon delivered from the pulpit of his Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on May 18, 2014 was streamed online.

This afternoon Pastor James McConnell, 78, of Co Antrim, walked free from Belfast Magistrates' Court after being cleared of sending grossly offensive messages (pictured outside court following the verdict)

In his sermon he described Islam as a 'doctrine spawned in hell' and said he did not trust Muslims.

But following a hearing he was today cleared of improper use of a public electronic communications network and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network.

The court heard although the words upon which the charges were based were offensive, they did not reach the high threshold of being 'grossly offensive'.

Delivering his reserved judgment, District Judge Liam McNally said: 'The courts need to be very careful not to criminalise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive.

'It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances.

'Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges.'

In his sermon (still from the footage pictured) the pastor described Islam as a 'doctrine spawned in hell'

As the judge delivered his reserved judgment, the crowd of up to 50 Christian supporters who had packed into the public gallery of courtroom 13 erupted into applause.

The judge said: 'He is a man with strong, passionate and sincerely held beliefs.

'In my view Pastor McConnell's mindset was that he was preaching to the converted in the form of his own congregation and like-minded people who were listening to his service rather than preaching to the worldwide internet.

He is a man with strong, passionate and sincerely held beliefs... his passion and enthusiasm for his subject caused him to, so to speak, 'lose the run of himself' - District Judge Liam McNally

'His passion and enthusiasm for his subject caused him to, so to speak, "lose the run of himself"'.

The judge said the comments about Islam being 'heathen' and 'satanic' were protected under human rights legislation.

When considering the remarks about mistrusting Muslims, Judge McNally said he was satisfied the pastor had not set out to intentionally cause offence.

If the preacher had qualified his remarks, as he did in subsequent media interviews, he could have been spared the legal battle, the court was told.

Judge McNally said: 'If he had clarified this in his sermon and set out in a clear and precise way why Sharia law was repugnant to him he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.

'In the manner in which he did express this he has, in my view characterised the followers of an entire religion in a stereotypical way.

'Indeed when he uses the word 'may' in the context of whether there are any good Muslims it leaves open the inference that that might not be exactly right and there may not be any good Muslims in Britain. Either way, he is making it crystal clear that he does not trust any Muslim.'

The distinction between offensive and grossly offensive was an important one and not easily made, the court heard.

'Context and circumstances are highly relevant and as the European Court of Human Rights observed... the right to freedom of expression includes the right to say things or express opinions that offend, shock or disturb the state or any section of the population,' said Judge McNally.

Following the verdict Pastor McConnell was greeted outside the court by werll-wishers and the media

Throughout proceedings Mr McConnell, who was dressed in a dark grey suit with grey shirt and pink and purple coloured tie, sat alongside his wife Margaret and other family members.

He was not required to sit in the dock.

During the three day trial in December, Mr McConnell spent more than an hour in the witness box giving evidence in his defence. He said he had not intended to provoke, hurt or offend anyone but was unrepentant for preaching the Christian gospel.

He also claimed he had refused the lesser punishment of an informed warning because it would be an insult to Jesus and he did not want to be 'gagged' in the future.

The prosecution had claimed it was a 'straightforward' case because the words were delivered in a rehearsed sermon to an audience of 2,000 and watched by 700 online, and had been carefully chosen.

Outside court hundreds of supporters cheered as Mr McConnell emerged. Some sang hymns as the preacher gave his reaction to the judgement.

'I am very happy,' he said, before adding he would do the sermon again, though word it differently.

'The only regret I have is the response from the Muslim community - that I was out to hurt them,' he said. 'There was no way I was out to hurt them - I wouldn't hurt a hair on their head.

'But what I am against is their theology and what they believe in.

Outside court hundreds of supporters cheered as Mr McConnell emerged and some even sang hymns

'If there are Muslims out there I want to assure them I love them and, if they need help, I am there to help them, but their theology and their beliefs I am totally against them.'

He added: 'I would do it again but I would word it differently because I would be conscious I was hurting innocent Muslims, I would be conscious I was hurting Muslims who have come here to work hard and are doing their best - there's no way I would hurt those people, but I would do it again - yes.'

The pastor said he did not realise how far his sermon would travel.

'As far as I was concerned I was preaching to my own people, I was preaching in my own church - I didn't realise it would go out there and so forth,' he said.

Mr McConnell also said he believed he had said 'worse things' in other sermons that had been streamed on-line.

ENOCH POWELL HAILED AS PROPHET IN SERMON THAT SPARKED CASE The case against Pastor James McConnell centred on a sermon delivered during a service at his Whitewell Tabernacle Church in north Belfast in May 2014. Here is a transcript of the section which sparked the controversy: 'Today we see powerful evidence that more and more Muslims are putting the Koran's hatred of Christians and Jews alike into practice. 'Now people say there are good Muslims in Britain, that may be so but I don't trust them. Enoch Powell was right and he lost his career because of it. 'Enoch Powell was a prophet and he told us that blood would flow in the streets and it has happened. 'Fifteen years ago Britain was concerned of IRA cells, right throughout the nation they done a deal with the IRA because they were frightened of being bombed. Today a new evil has arisen. There are cells of Muslims right throughout Britain. Can I hear an Amen? 'Right throughout Britain and this nation is going to enter a great tribulation and a great trial. To judge by some of what I have heard in the past few months you would think that Islam was a little more than a variation of Christianity and Judaism, not so. 'Islam's ideas about God about humanity, about salvation are vastly different from the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.' Advertisement

Pastor James McConnell is one of Northern Ireland's best known evangelical preachers with a congregation in which politicians, ex-paramilitaries and police officers worship side by side.

He described himself as Pentecostal with a 'capital P' and his trial heard how he was not the average 'watery clergyman' but someone who connected with society's 'untouchables'.

Born and raised by his grandparents in the working class Woodstock area of east Belfast - a staunchly Protestant suburb -- he endured a lonely and at times difficult childhood.

The death of his mother during the birth of a sibling and loss of his father and sister to tuberculosis left him an orphan at the age of eight.

Like many of his peers he left school at 14 to work in Belfast's bustling shipyard but having 'given his heart to God' as a child he was drawn towards full-time ministry three years later.

After a brief stint in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he returned to his native city aged 19 and set up a makeshift church on the Whitewell Road.

If the preacher had qualified his remarks he could have been spared the legal battle, the court was told

He also met and married Margaret, the mother of his two daughters, who was at his side during every court appearance.

Mr McConnell's first service, in 1957, was in front of just 22 people, but the ambitious and charismatic young preacher who had a unique style of ministry was soon packing the pews and in 1994 he opened one of Ulster's largest sanctuaries - the 12 million Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on the Shore Road.

Mr McConnell has rarely shied away from publicity and when his sermon about Islam sparked a major controversy he took to television and radio to defend himself.

Following the public outcry the elderly preacher apologised for any offence or distress he may have caused but declined to retract the remarks.

The police initially investigated a potential hate crime but the Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service decided to pursue the case under the misuse of public communications.

Leading up to and throughout his three-day trial in December Mr McConnell remained defiant and said he would rather go to prison rather than stop preaching the Christian gospel.

Now aged 78, Mr McConnell's health is in decline. He has undergone major heart surgery including a quadruple by-pass and heart valve replacement, has also been treated for prostate cancer and suffers from diabetes.
Iran has unveiled a brand new underground depot that houses precision guided missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The defiant move to publicise its missile programme comes after the country's president warned Saudi Arabia cannot 'cover up' the execution of a leading Shiite cleric by severing relations between the two countries.

In a broadcast on state TV, the new underground facility, situated beneath mountains, was revealed to contain Emad precision-guided missiles.

The United States has responded to the broadcast saying the missiles are able to take a nuclear warhead and the facility could violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution

Iran has unveiled a brand new underground depot that houses precision guided missiles capable of taking nuclear warheads

In a defiant move to publicise its missile programme, Iran have broadcast a clip on state TV of its new underground missiles depot

The depot is run by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and was inaugurated by the speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani.

However, the United States has responded to the broadcast saying the missiles are able to take a nuclear warhead and the facility could violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution.

It also comes at a time when Iran is in a diplomatic stand-off with Saudi Arabia over the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Mr al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, was executed after being convicted of sedition and of other crimes, though he long denied advocating violence.

Iran's president Hassan Rouhani toured the factory, which is deep in the mountains and is used to store Emad precision guided missiles

The depot is run by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and was inaugurated by the speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani

In Iran, protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. before Saudi Arabia announced it was severing relations with the country.

And today Iranian president Hassan Rouhani discussed the breakdown in relations with visiting Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen.

In a statement he said: 'The Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes of beheading a religious leader in its country.

'Undoubtedly, such actions can't cover up that big crime.'

Iran is in a diplomatic stand-off with Saudi Arabia over the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, which has sparked protests in Tehran

Mr al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, was executed after being convicted of sedition and of other crimes

Meanwhile the United States look set to issue fresh sanctions against Iran after the broadcast showing their new missiles depot.

Release of one-minute video followed footage of another underground missile depot last October.

Iran's boasting about its missile capabilities will challenge President Barack Obama's administration as the United States and European Union plan to dismantle nearly all international sanctions against Tehran under the nuclear deal reached in July.

Iran has abided by the main terms of the nuclear deal, which require it to give up material that world powers feared could be used to make an atomic weapon and accept other restrictions on its nuclear programme.

Iranian president President Hassan Rouhani recently ordered his defence minister last week to expand the missile programme

But President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defence minister last week to expand the missile programme.

The Iranian missiles under development boast much improved accuracy over the current generation, which experts say is likely to improve their effectiveness with conventional warheads.
A man came home from his night-shift job on Monday morning to find his wife, son and granddaughter brutally beaten to death and police are now trying to find who's responsible.

The victims have been identified as Gloria Short, who is in her 50s; her son Caleb Short, 17; and her granddaughter Gianna 'GiGi' Lindsey, 10.

The bodies of the three family members were discovered at 8:30am, when Mrs Short's husband Robert Short returned from his job and found the three lifeless bodies 'scattered throughout' the family's home on Bentley Drive in Upatoi, Georgia.

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Victims: Gloria Short, her son Caleb and her granddaughter Gianna were found beaten to death inside their home in Uptaoi, Georgia Monday morning

Who did it? The person or persons responsible for the murders remain at large. Police say they have not identified any potential suspects yet

Investigators say there were signs of an 'apparent break-in' since the garage door was open and two cars missing. Those vehicles - a silver 2014 Volkswagen Beetle and a green GMC Envoy - were found abandoned on local roads later in the day.

Autopsies on the three bodies are scheduled for Wednesday, but authorities told WRBL that each showed sign of blunt force trauma.

'I've been in office for 3 years now and this is way out of the ordinary to see a triple homicide in Muscogee County,' Coroner Buddy Bryan told WLTZ.

Police Maj. Gil Slouchick said Monday afternoon that they had not identified any suspects yet, but there were bloody footprints found at the scene.

'Were still trying to piece everything together,' he said.

Emotional moment: Two people embrace near the scene of the brutal murders on Monday

Stolen: Investigators say there were signs of an 'apparent break-in' since the garage door was open and two cars missing. Those vehicles were found abandoned on local roads later in the day

Gruesome discovery: Mrs Short's husband Robert (pictured) found the bodies after coming home from a night-shift job

Neighbors say Mrs Short was a friendly woman who was very hospitable when they came over to the home to spent time with Caleb, who attended Shaw High School.

'Every time they would come over, she would feed us and let us play video games and all that type of stuff,' neighbor Palmer Holloway said. 'I cant believe this would happen.'

Meanwhile, friends and family have been writing tributes to the Short family on social media.
Royal Mail sorter Nadia Oates who stole money from birthday cards and letters to convince her Russian family she was rich has been jailed

A Royal Mail sorter who stole money from birthday cards and letters to convince her Russian family she was rich has been jailed.

Nadia Oates, 58, had only been working at the sorting office in Slough, Berkshire, for a matter of weeks when she started rifling through packages in a bid to find gift vouchers and money.

The mother-of-four then used the vouchers to buy more than 3,000 worth of gifts, which she sent home to her family in Russia as a way of pretending she was earning a good salary.

When police searched her home, they found 19 unused gift vouchers for shops such as John Lewis and Boots and receipts showing thousands of pounds which had been spent in high street stores. They also found 16 books of first class stamps.

Oates, who had a Russian translator in the dock, has now been jailed for eight months after admitting two counts of theft and one count of opening mail while employed by Royal Mail.

Handing down the sentence at Reading Crown Court, Judge Alexia Durran said Oates had 'fallen into greed borne out of a desire to satisfy family expectations'.

'It was greed, or an inability to face up to your personal situation with your family, that led you to commit these crimes,' she said.

'You caused damage to the Royal Mail and members of the public.'

The court heard how Oates started her six-month crime spree after handling a damaged letter from which a gift voucher fell out.

When she realised she could spend the voucher without it being traced, she began searching through more packages and ripping them open in secret.

The court heard how Oates was only caught when a customer complained about a birthday card which arrived at their home without the expected 40 Love 2 Shop gift voucher.

After an investigation was launched, Oates's fingerprints were found on several torn-up packages which had been discarded in the ladies' toilets.

Thomas Edwards, prosecuting said: 'Opened packets of mail had been found in sanitary bins in the ladies toilet. Some of these packages were found to have her fingerprints on them.

'Vouchers for shops such as Boots, TK Maxx and John Lewis were found as well as receipts for 3,389.36 of goods that were paid for entirely by the use of gift vouchers.'

To Russia with love: The mother-of-four had been working at the sorting office in Slough, Berkshire, for a matter of weeks when she started rifling through packages to find gift vouchers and money (file picture)

Nyll Thompson, defending, said Oates 'deeply regrets' what she has done.

'She felt an expectation from her family back in Russia that, after living in the UK for a number of years, she would have a lot of money,' he said.

'She wanted to be able to show them this and found this was a way to send back presents.'
A nine-year-old boy in northern California was mauled to death while he was home alone by his half-sister's three pit bulls.

Alexandria Griffin-Heady, 24, left her half-brother, Tyler Griffin-Huston, 9, alone inside her Yuba County trailer to go to work Sunday.

A few hours later she returned home from her security guard shift and found the boy had been viciously attacked by the dogs. She called 911 and he was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

The three dogs, a mother and two offspring that Griffin-Heady had raised since they were puppies, have been seized and placed in an animal shelter, the Sacramento Bee reported.

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Tragic: Tyler Griffin-Huston was left alone inside his half-sister's trailer Sunday and was mauled to death by her three pit bulls. Above he is pictured with her, Alexandria Griffin-Heady

Authorities say Griffin Heady went to work and when she returned home she found the nine-year-old boy critically injured. She called 911 and he was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Above she is pictured left with her half-brother and right with one of the three dogs involved in the attack

Authorities say at least two of the dogs had the boy's blood all over them. Above they are pictured as puppies

Authorities say at least two of the dogs had the boy's blood all over them, Fox 40 Sacramento reported. The dogs, who have no history with Animal Care Services, will likely be euthanized.

Her neighbors said that she had just recently moved into the small trailer in Linda from Florida to better her life and eventually get her little brother out of the foster system.

Since his mother died of a drug overdose in 2011, the little boy had bounced around different foster homes and was also homeless at some points in time, CBS Sacramento reported.

At the time of his death, he was visiting his sister who was recently approved for overnight weekend visits with him by Child Protective Services.

'The only wish for Christmas was that he wanted to have a mom and I so badly wanted to be that person for him,' Griffin-Heady told Fox 40 Sacramento.

'I failed him, whether it's my fault, my dog's fault, whoever's fault, I wanted to protect him and give him an amazing life.'

When asked if she felt her dogs were dangerous, she said that 'never a day their life' did she feel that way.

Since his mother died of a drug overdose in 2011, the little boy (left) was in foster care. Griffin-Heady (right) had plans of adopting him. At the time of his death, he was only visiting her for the weekend

In reaction to what happened, Griffin-Heady said: 'I failed him, whether it's my fault, my dog's fault, whoever's fault, I wanted to protect him and give him an amazing life'

'He loved them, he laid in the bed with them, he played with them, he wanted one of their puppies.'

Undersheriff Jerry Read told CBS Sacramento that Griffin-Heady may face child endangerment charges.

'I don't know. This one seems to have affected me most,' he told the television station. 'The child being home alone and just had to have been terrified of what took place.'

Her lawyer, Roberto Marquez, told the Sacramento Bee that criminal charges would be 'inappropriate for what was essentially an unpredictable tragedy.'

He added that she had no idea that her dogs would pose a threat.

'If she had any hint at all that these dogs had any propensity for violence, she would never have left her brother with them,' he told the newspaper.

'She raised them and cannot fathom what could have happened that caused them to attack a little boy.'

When asked if she felt her dogs were dangerous, she said that 'never a day their life' did she feel that way

Griffin-Heady said that her half-brother loved her dogs. 'He laid in the bed with them, he played with them, he wanted one of their puppies,' she stated

'I don't even think it rises to the level of negligence. She had no knowledge that anything like this could occur.'

The boy's aunt, Laura Badeker, believed that Griffin-Heady's living circumstances and the dogs put the boy at risk.

Badeker said she told Child Protective Services that she felt her nephew was 'unsafe with his sister.'

'She was trying to rescue him from the system,' Badeker told the Sacramento Bee.

'But I told everyone on the team that was supposed to be protecting Tyler that Ali was not prepared to take care of him on any level.'

Child Protective Services also issued a statement about Griffin-Huston's tragic death.

Griffin-Heady (above) may face charges of child endangerment for the situation

'We are deeply saddened by the tragic death of this child. Sacramento County Child Protective Services was notified by Yuba County law enforcement yesterday, January 3. CPS is continuing to work with Yuba County law enforcement during this investigation,' it reads.

Badeker shared that his father is mentally disabled and was unable to care for him. He was the youngest of five siblings his mother left behind after her death, the Sacramento Bee reported.

His aunt feels that someone needs to be held accountable for his death.

'They were warned, over and over again,' she told the newspaper. 'Why didn't someone evaluate what was happening? Somebody needs to be held accountable for this.'

Before moving to California, Griffin-Heady was living in a motel room in Florida with her dogs, Badeker told the Sacramento Bee.

Her dogs, which she calls ' the wolf pack', are featured in several videos on YouTube that she recorded of her interactions with them.
Ginger-bearded extremist Ibrahim Anderson allegedly set up a stall on London's Oxford Street in a bid to drum up support for ISIS

A ginger-bearded extremist allegedly set up a stall on London's Oxford Street in a bid to drum up support for ISIS.

Ibrahim Anderson invited passers-by to back the terror group and handed out leaflets bearing its logo, a court heard.

The 38-year-old was joined by Shah Jahan Kahn, 63, as they attempted to engage with shoppers on the busy street for around two-and-a-half hours on August 9, 2014, it was said.

The men, who were part of a larger group, also allegedly told two Shia women to 'go die' after the sisters challenged the group about what their actions.

Mark Seymour, prosecuting at the Old Bailey, said the men were 'well aware' of what they were doing.

He added: 'During the course of the afternoon the group in Oxford Street, who were acting together, invited support for ISIS through engaging with members of the public who were passing.

'ISIS is a proscribed organisation and inviting support for a proscribed organisation is prohibited by law.'

Anderson has denied possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist. He and Khan, who both live in Luton, Bedfordshire, also denied inviting support for a proscribed organisation.

Mr Seymour added that ISIS, also known as ISIL, was made a proscribed organisation on June 19, 2014.

CCTV captured Anderson and Khan among a group of six people arriving to set up the stall, with Anderson carrying the trestle table which formed its centrepiece at 2.39pm, the court heard.

Leaflets they were allegedly handing out referred to seven great responsibilities of Muslims.

These 'responsibilities' included pledging an oath of allegiance to the Caliph, obeying the Caliph according to Shariah law and migrating and resettle in the caliphate.

It also spoke about educating people about the caliphate and exposing any lies and fabrications made against the Islamic state.

The leaflet continued: After many attempts and many great sacrifices... the Muslims with the help of Allah have announced the re-establishment of the Khilafah (caliphate) and appointed an Imam as Khaleef (Muslim leader).

The 38-year-old was joined by Shah Jahan Kahn, 63, as they attempted to engage with shoppers on the busy street with a leaflet for around two-and-a-half hours on August 9, 2014, it was said

Mr Seymour this referred to ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The court was told the police were also sent pictures of the stall by two sisters, who had been targeted by the men after they challenged them about what they were doing.

Asmaa and Reem Al-Jufaisha were returning from a nearby pro-Gaza march when they saw the stall around 3pm.

[The ginger man] said we should all support ISIS and help them Mark Seymour, prosecuting

Anderson overheard them criticising ISIS and asked what was wrong with the group, it was claimed.

Mr Seymour said: Asmaa said to him that ISIS were killing innocent people, Christians and Muslims, both Sunni and Shia.

The ginger man said that Shia Muslims were Khuffar, [or] arent real Muslims. When Asmaa said she was an Iraqi Shia Muslim he told her they were all Khuffar and should go back to Iraq and die.

When Reem told the man he was worse than Al Qaeda, the ginger man said: "Whats wrong with Al Qaeda and supporting something for the cause of your religion?" He said we should all support ISIS and help them.

Anderson also told the sisters they would burn in hell and should be killed, it is claimed, while Khan allegedly told Asmaa she was a disgrace to her religion and commented on Reems makeup.

Instructions for travel to Syria were later found by police on a notebook computer at Andersons home, it was claimed.

Mark Seymour, prosecuting at the Old Bailey (pictured), said the men were 'well aware' of what they were doing

Photographs of Andersons young sons posing with a sword in front of a black Islamic flag were also found on his mobile phone, the court heard.

Another picture allegedly showed his toddler daughter wearing a headscarf in front of the same banner bearing the shahada prayer. The banner is similar to Islamist flags used by Al Qaeda or the Taliban, jurors were told.

Other photos on his phone included Anderson standing with his left finger pointing up, a practice adopted by members of ISIS, and a man wearing a hoodie bearing the symbol of the Islamic State and holding a handgun, the court heard.

Another photo apparently showed Anderson posing in a black turban, a Quran and an Islamic State flag. He also had an image of a poster with the writing Keep calm and support ISIS.

The laptop also contained the official Islamic State video of the beheading of journalist James Foley in 2014.

Anderson, who is married with four children, was arrested at his home on December 16, 2014.

He admitted he was present at the stall but told police he did not support ISIS and did not hand out the leaflet.

Khan was arrested the same day but his phone has never been recovered. He made no comment in interview.
The city switched back to Detroit water in October but problems continue and now city wants millions in emergency funds

The water and children were found to have elevated levels of lead

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency in Flint over problems with lead in the city's drinking water, the same day federal officials confirmed they're investigating the matter that prompted a local public health emergency.

Snyder's action on Tuesday follows emergency declarations declared by the city and Genesee County, which requested help from the state.

Michigan's declaration makes available state resources in cooperation with local response and recovery operations.

U.S. Attorney's spokeswoman Gina Balaya said in an email that the federal investigation is 'an effort to address the concerns of Flint residents,' but she couldn't say whether it is a criminal or civil investigation.

The Flint River (above) is seen flowing through downtown Flint, Michigan - The city switched from Detroit's water system to Flint River water in a cost-cutting move in 2014

In December, Food Bank of Eastern Michigan worker, Kelly Belcher shows some of the bottled water in the agency's warehouse that will be distributed to the public after elevated lead levels were found in the city's water

Gov. Rick Snyder (left) declared a state of emergency in Flint on Tuesday; (right) Genesee County board Chairman Jamie Curtis signs the county's endorsement of Flint Mayor Karen Weaver's request for a federal disaster declaration on Monday

The city switched from Detroit's water system to Flint River water in a cost-cutting move in 2014, while under state financial management.

Detroit's water system serves about 4 million people in communities across southeastern Michigan

That was intended as a temporary step while a pipeline was built from Lake Huron.

Residents complained about the water's taste, smell and appearance, and children were found to have elevated levels of lead due to the water supply.

Exposure to lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in children.

The city returned to Detroit water in October.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, left, of Hurley Hospital, and Dr. Lawrence Reynolds, CEO of Mott Children's Health Center, speak to the Genesee County board of commissioners on Monday in Flint about elevated levels of lead in the drinking water and its potential effect on children, including learning and behavior problems

Before the switch, the city is was telling residents to use only cold water for drinking, cooking and making baby formula, and recommending they use the certified filters.

The General Motors Foundation, the local United Way and others have given at least $105,000 to buy filters for 5,000 residents.

Last week, Snyder apologized and Michigan's top environmental regulator, Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant, resigned after a task force created by Snyder blamed problems on his agency.

Administration officials have pledged to cooperate fully with any federal requests.

The state initially downplayed lead concerns but ultimately had to commit $10.6million to reconnect Flint to Detroit and to respond with filters, testing and other services.

The city's request for a disaster declaration includes roughly $50million in aid, most of which is taken up by $45million to replace 15,000 lead service lines - 'one of the most cost-intensive endeavors related to ameliorating water contaminants' in its system, according to the application.
Right wing political parties have rounded on Angela Merkel after 1,000 men of 'Arab and North African origin' were said to have carried out a wave of sexual assaults at Cologne train station.

German police are hunting for the men, who are accused of rape and numerous sexual assaults at the main station, next to the city's famous cathedral on New Year's Eve.

About 90 women have reported being raped, robbed, threatened or sexually molested at the New Year's celebrations by young, mostly drunk, men, police said today.

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Fireworks are thrown into the crowd outside Cologne's main station, prompting members of the public to flee

Another firework is let off as a group of men watch on laughing in a video posted online to YouTube

Witnesses and women who reported being attacked described the men as looking as if they were from 'the Arab or North African region', police chief Wolfgang Albers said.

The incident has stirred strong emotions in Germany and has fuelled calls by right-wing groups to halt the admission of immigrants.

Germany took in just over a million last year, far more than any other European country.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained in polls in part at Merkel's expense thanks to a campaign against refugees, said she should close the border.

'Mrs Merkel, is Germany "colourful and cosmopolitan" enough for you after the wave of crimes and sexual attacks?' tweeted AfD chief Frauke Petry.

Mrs Merkel responded on Tuesday, urging people to respect strangers.

'We... respect everyone, even if we don't know them. That is the case not only for Germans, but for everyone.'

However, Cologne mayor Henriette Reker said there was no reason to believe that people involved in the attacks were refugees.

After a crisis meeting, Cologne mayor Reker said the perpetrators had acted 'absolutely unacceptably' and women must continue to join celebrations but with more protection.

Reker was stabbed in the neck and seriously hurt in October, just a day before she was elected mayor. Police said that attack appeared to be motivated by her support for refugees.

'We don't currently have any suspects, so we don't know who the perpetrators were,' Cologne's police chief Wolfgang Albers told reporters. 'All we know is that the police at the scene perceived that it was mostly young men aged 18 to 35 from the Arab or North African region.'

Heiko Maas, the justice minister, said: 'We will not accept the disgusting attacks on women. All perpetrators must be held to account.'

Some politicians have suggested installing more security cameras and increasing police numbers at traditional carnival celebrations next month when the city closes down for five days of drunken street parades and parties.

Mayor Henriette Reker and President of Cologne Police Wolfgang Albers (right) hold a news conferenece after about 90 women reported being robbed, threatened or sexually molested during New Year's Eve celebrations

German police are hunting for a group of up to a 1,000 men 'of Arab and North African origin' who are said to have sexually assaulted numerous women and caused trouble at Cologne's main station

One of the victims, named only as 'Katja L', gave a harrowing testimony of her ordeal.

'When we came out of the station, we were very surprised by the group that met us there'. She said the group was 'exclusively young foreign men,' she told Der Express.

'We then walked through this group of men. There was an alley through [the men] which we walked through.'

She described the moment she 'felt a hand on my buttocks, then on my breasts, in the end'.

'I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and beat them, the guys did not stop. I was desperate and think I was touched around 100 times in the 200 meters,' she said.

'Fortunately I wore a jacket and trousers. A skirt would probably have been torn away from me'.
Convicted drugs mule Michaella McCollum Connolly, one of the 'Peru Two', has reportedly been struck down with an unknown tropical disease in a Peruvian prison.

McCollum Connolly and Scot Melissa Reid were jailed for six years and eight months in 2013 after they were caught with cocaine worth 1.5million hidden in their luggage at Lima Airport.

In June last year, authorities in Peru agreed to let the 23-year-old women serve the remainder of their sentences in the UK, but the pair still remain in prison in the South American country.

Michaella McCollum Connolly, pictured in 2013 at the time of her conviction for drug smuggling, is reportedly being treated for a 'tropical disease' in the prison hospital in Pery

McCollum Connolly, from Dungannon, Northern Ireland, is reportedly undergoing treatment in the hospital wing of the Ancon 2 prison, north of the capital Lima.

'Michaella has been brought to the hospital in the prison. She has a tropical illness but we don't know what it is,' an inmate told the Irish Mirror.

'We really hope she is ok. This [illness] is pretty regular in here, especially with the foreigners.'

According to the inmate, McCollum Connolly is popular with the other prisoners and has learned to speak Spanish while serving her time.

The British women's families had hoped that McCollum Connolly and Reid, from from Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, would have been able to return to serve the rest of their time in the UK before Christmas.

Northern Irish Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid from Scotland were jailed for six years and eight months in 2013 after they were caught with cocaine worth 1.5million hidden in their luggage at Lima Airport

Peruvian authorities have agreed to let the 23-year-old women serve the remainder of their prison sentences in the UK, but the pair still remain in prison in South America

According to The Mirror, their transfer has been delayed due to a series of strikes and court backlog in Peru.

They were caught at Lima Airport in August, and later pleaded guilty to drug smuggling, each receiving a jail term of six years and eight months.

The pair had previously been held at Virgen de Fatima prison but were later moved to the Ancon 2 jail, where conditions are said to be cramped, with poor sanitation and toilet facilities.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said: 'We continue to provide consular assistance. For reasons of consular confidentiality we cannot go into further details.'
A 44-year-old Italian nurse has been detained by Vatican gendarmerie after stripping naked and marching into St Peter's Basilica in front of shocked churchgoers.

Footage shows Luis Carlos Giampaoli, who is of Brazilian origin, striding up and down the main nave of the Basilica while shouting church litanies and gesticulating at onlookers.

'Dear brothers and sisters, I'm from Brazil!' he can be heard saying in Portuguese while marching with open arms.

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Luis Carlos Giampaoli aka Cherubino marched up and down the main nave of St Peter's Basilica wearing only shoes and backpack

Giampaoli, who calls himself Cherubino - Italian for cherubs, angelic winged creatures - on his Facebook page, has been described as 'deranged' by Vatican investigative sources.

He has been taken to a psychiatric ward in Rome's Santo Spirito hospital.

Pictures on Facebook show him posing in front of the Basilica on Sunday and dressed as a Catholic cardinal in a mask.

He reportedly entered the church regularly dressed, then he hid in a corner and undressed, before bursting out wearing only shoes and backpack.

Giampaoli, who calls himself Cherubino - Italian for cherubs, angelic winged creatures - on his Facebook page, has been described as 'deranged' by Vatican investigative sources

Pictures on Facebook show him posing in front of the St Peter's Basilica on Sunday
Former Miss Egypt (pictured) Jasmine Radwan, 24, attacked Bella Napolitano-Fudge in a pizza takeaway after a night out in Ladbroke Grove, west London

A former beauty queen smashed her glamour model friend over the head with a wine bottle in a row over an ex-boyfriend at a pizza shop.

Former Miss Egypt Jasmine Radwan, 24, attacked Bella Napolitano-Fudge in a pizza takeaway after a night out in Ladbroke Grove, west London.

Ms Napolitano-Fudge was rushed to hospital and needed stitches to her scalp after the attack last March 14.

Radwan admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm when she appeared at Southwark Crown Court today.

The court heard that the women, who had been friends for five years, had arranged to meet at the takeaway where Miss Napolitano-Fudge told Radwan that her boyfriend had moved on and she should no longer be calling herself his partner.

Earlier prosecutor Peter Zinner said: On the day in question an arrangement was made at a pizza takeaway in W10.

An argument then ensued, we believe over an ex-boyfriend.

The Crowns case is that the defendant then produced a bottle which was concealed under her jacket and struck the victim on the head and the upper part of her body.

It appears there was a split by was of a wound to the victims head which required cleaning and suturing, he said.

The incident was witnessed by some independent members of the public who heard the disturbance.

Mr Zinner said there was a compelling case against the model, adding: The wine bottle was seized an a DNA sample taken from it which is a match for Ms Radwan.

Prosecuting Grace Ong said: 'They had arrange to meet outside a pizza shop. There was an argument, and an independent witness heard shouting and angry voices.

'Bella Napolitano-Fudge's telephone rang and she turned to answer it and felt an impact on the left side of her head.

'A witness said the defendant had pulled out a bottle from her clothing.

'Ultimately the victims mother took her to the hospital and took photos of her injuries.

'DNA linked the defendant to the neck of the bottle.'

When cautioned by police, Radwan said: 'This sounds like a fit up.'

Wearing blue denim jeans, a black top and a black cardigan with a big black bow in her hair, Radwan stood with her arms folded in the dock as she was sentenced to 135 hours of unpaid work in the community.

She was also ordered to pay 100 compensation to the victim, along with a victim surcharge of 60 and 250 towards the court's costs.

Sentencing her, the judge Mr Recorder Nicholas Bacon QC said: 'It is cowardly to hit someone when their back is turned.

'She said she was at home, she was making that up. Any credit has gone out the window.

'You have previous convictions when you were 19 for road traffic offences and a more recent offence for shoplifting.

'There had been a dispute between the two of you about a boyfriend. This however was a nasty assault. The bottle was used as a weapon.

'You accept remorse, you accept your behaviour was unacceptable and I agree this was out of character for you.

'This was a nasty assault and you are lucky she suffered only minor injuries.

'When you were arrested you gave no response to questions put to you and left it until you were at the court door, at the last minute, to plead guilty.'

Southwark Crown Court heard Radwan, who now works part time as a nursery nurse, has a history of depression.

Earlier this year, she was diagnosed with depression and a personality disorder and has also undergone counselling.

In a victim impact statement the victim said she is also suffering form health issues since the attack, adding:

'Since I was assaulted I have felt very depressed and anxious.'

Defending Radwan, David Martin-Sperry said: 'The complainant and the defendant have known each other for five years.

'The meeting was called by the complainant and the object was to tell the defendant that the boyfriend had moved and she should no longer be calling herself his partner.

'That meeting itself must have been quite humiliating, and there it is, she behaved out of character.
Mexico is trying to seal its southern border to prevent migrants from Central America from sneaking into the country on their way to the United States.

Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto has been under pressure to stop the flow of people moving from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras through Mexico.

Traditionally, Mexico has had a relaxed attitude to people transiting through the country to their northern neighbour.

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Thousands of migrants try and sneak into Mexico from south and central America on their way to the US

Many migrants try and use La Bestia train, pictured, but risk attack by drug and criminals gangs

But since July 2014, President Nieto announced a plan to make the southern border 'safe for Mexicans and migrants like'.

Figures have shown that the numbers of migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras found crossing the US border illegally has fallen dramatically.

However, according to data collated by Reuters, complaints by migrants about their interaction with Mexican officials have increased by 40 per cent.

Migrants are being actively discouraged from using The Beast - 'La Bestia' - a dangerous, slow moving train through Mexico which is used by criminals to transport migrants.

President Nieto's plan also requires migrants to register, something many are reluctant to do.

Despite also pledging to protect their rights, migrants complain the opposite has happened.

In the year through June 2015, Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) logged 567 complaints of abuse by officials at the National Migration Institute (INM), up by 39 percent from the previous 12-month period.

That far outweighed a slight dip in complaints against police during the same period, to 83 from 92, according to CNDH data requested by the Washington Office on Latin America for an upcoming report.

Migrants cross into Mexico from Guatemala on makeshift rafts, pictured, risking their lives in the process

Mexican authorities had previously ignored migrants crossing into the country, sometimes for bribes

Migrants using La Bestia are regularly robbed by people traffickers and are exposed to the elements

Activists say the vast majority of abuses go unreported but that anecdotal evidence supports the increase shown by official data.

'Plan Frontera Sur has turned the border region into a war zone,' said Alberto Donis, managing director of the Hermanos en el Camino shelter, near the migrant stopping-point of Ixtepec in Oaxaca state. 'Talk of human rights is a lie. Almost all of the migrants who arrive here have been abused by authorities.'

Evidence that migration officials harass and abuse Central Americans sits uncomfortably alongside Mexico's condemnation of U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump for labeling Mexican migrants as rapists and drug runners.

So worried are some migrants about being attacked in Mexico that they reported climbing trees and using belts to tie themselves to the upper branches so they can sleep in peace.

Delivered by migrants or legal intermediaries, the CNDH testimonies accuse Mexican officials of beatings, extortion, robbery and willful neglect.

INM spokeswoman Sofia Vega declined to comment on the CNDH findings but said Plan Frontera Sur 'has provided countless benefits to people of different nationalities.#

The migrants' path through Mexico is a map of violence and extortion and is studded with sites of atrocities like the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants near the northeastern town of San Fernando by the Zetas drug cartel.

Mexican drug gangs have long preyed on migrants crossing their turf, but they face competition in the criminal food chain from corrupt officials.

Shelters offer scant respite. Overwhelmed and understaffed, many resemble refugee camps, with space, water and food scarce.

For accountancy student Victor Santos from El Salvador, crossing Mexico is now even more dangerous than it was.

In March, the 21-year-old was deported for the sixth time in three years after he was pulled off a bus by six Mexican migration agents outside El Ceibo, in Tabasco state.

He said he ran off, but the agents caught up with him, beat and robbed him and then deported him. 'They hit me and took $1,000,' he said by telephone from El Salvador.

Santos said he filed a complaint against the officials while being held at an INM detention center, but was removed from Mexico before it was processed.

INM spokesman Ruben Dario Garcia said the agency had no knowledge of the incident.

President Nieto unveiled his southern border strategy after a jump in detentions in the United States of unaccompanied minors from Central America created a political crisis for President Barack Obama.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, pictured, has enforced a major clampdown on migrants seeking to enter his country with a view of travelling north to illegally enter the United States

The U.S. government stepped up efforts to secure its border and Mexico began deporting many more migrants before they could reach the 2,000-mile frontier.

The flow of migrants duly slowed. From October 2014 through August 2015, the number of minors caught travel ling alone at the U.S. border fell by nearly half to 35,494.

Total border apprehensions dropped by a fifth to 249,726 between July 2014 and March 2015.

Meanwhile, deportations from Mexico in the first five months of 2015 rose more than 70 percent from the same period in 2014 to nearly 68,000.

To escape deportation, migrants often pay bribes to INM agents of between $30 to $300, according to testimony from dozens interviewed by Reuters.

Gonzalo Chavez, an Ixtepec-based immigration lawyer working for the attorney general's office of Oaxaca state, said Pena Nieto's plan has created a 'climate of legalized anarchy'.

Among migrants he has represented is Carlos Arevolo, a 40-year-old Salvadoran who reported witnessing INM officials setting fire to a field of long grass where he and three others were hiding to avoid capture.

'I saw a lot of fire and smoke and heard people screaming,' Arevolo said in testimony registered at the Ixtepec public prosecutor's office after he alone escaped the INM officials.
On December 11, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh (pictured) announced the country would be an Islamic republic

Less than a month after declaring Gambia an Islamic republic its government has issued a decree ordering female civil servants to cover their hair while at work.

No reasons were given for the introduction of the new rule, which was announced in a memo that was leaked to local opposition newspapers.

It comes only a few weeks after President Yahya Jammeh announced Gambia would become an Islamic republic due to its majority Muslim population and a desire to break from its colonial past.

The memo, published by Freedom, stated 'all female staff' within government departments were no longer allowed to expose their hair during working hours, effective from December 31.

It went on to urge female staff 'to use a head tie and neatly wrap their hair'.

'All heads of departments and agencies are urgently advised to implement this directive and bring it to the attention of their female staff,' the memo concluded.

On December 11, Jammeh - who is notorious for his alleged human rights abuses and persecution of homosexuals - declared the West African country an Islamic republic.

Although it doesn't appear that his announcement changes Gambia's laws or its constitutional status as a secular state, it could yet form the justification for rules such as that now affecting its female employees.

During the declaration at a political rally in the coastal village Brufut, 9miles west of the capital Banjul, he stated: 'In line with the country's religious identity and values, I proclaim Gambia as an Islamic state.

'Gambia cannot afford to continue the colonial legacy,' Jammeh said of his country, which gained independence from Britain in 1965.

Jammeh said the rights of Gambia's Christian community will be respected and there would be no mandates on dress.

'We will be an Islamic state that would respect the rights of all citizens and non-citizens.'

However, the head of the country's Islamic body wouldn't say if he endorsed the declaration.

'We haven't met yet to discuss over the presidential announcement,' said Gambia's Supreme Islamic Council Chairman Imam Momodou Lamin Touray.

Hamat Bah of the opposition National Reconciliation Party criticized the decision.

'There is a constitutional clause that says that Gambia is a secular state. You cannot make such a declaration without going through a referendum.'
Newman's trial begins October 31 and he faces life in prison if convicted

But the judge said he was troubled by the delay in the cop's trial and decided to release him on house detention

Newman denied Slager, 34, bond in September and said he was a 'danger' to the community

Michael Slager was caught on camera shooting Scott as he ran away

About two dozen people gathered outside the Charleston County jail

Charleston-area activists are protesting the release of a former North Charleston policeman charged with killing an unarmed black motorist.

About two dozen people gathered Tuesday outside the Charleston County jail.

They say ex-officer Michael Slager remains a danger to the community and a possible flight risk.

The group shouted, 'We want Slager back in jail!' One woman yelled, 'There is a murderer on the loose!'

He is charged with murder in the April shooting of Walter Scott.

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Freed, for now: Michael Slager (left, in court on Monday) was released from prison on Monday on a $500,000 bond. Slager has been charged with shooting at Walter Scott (right) eight times during a traffic stop as he was running away

Consequences: Slager faces the possibility of 30 years to life in prison without parole if convicted of murder. Pictured above in court on Monday

A bystander recorded the shooting in dramatic cellphone video that sent shockwaves across America

Circuit Judge Clifton Newman agreed with a defense request earlier Monday that Slager be released on a $500,000 surety bond.

Slager was released from jail custody about 7pm, said Maj. Eric Watson, a spokesman for the Charleston County Sheriff's Department.

He will remain under house arrest until his trial is set to begin next Halloween.

Slager was indicted on a murder charge in June and Newman refused to set bond in September, saying his release would 'constitute an unreasonable danger to the community.'

But on Monday Newman said he was troubled by the delay in Slager's trial and said he had decided to grant him bail.

He added that Slagger would only be able to leave his home for court hearings, as well as to see his lawyers and doctors and attend church. He also must not contact the victim's family.

A statement from the National Action Network founded by Al Sharpton was read at a news conference. It says the decision to release Slager will reflect negatively on South Carolina.

Slager, 35, faces 30 years to life without parole if convicted of murder.

Slager's attorneys had requested a speedy trial that would begin in March or April, but prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said the state wanted to begin in November.

Wilson is also prosecuting Dylann Roof, the white suspect in the killings of nine black parishioners at the Emanuel AME church last year, in a July trial.

She said the state Supreme Court order protects her from trying other cases before that one.

On April 4 a cell phone video recorded by a bystander captured Slager, 34, firing eight times at Scott, 50, as he ran away from a traffic stop.

Slager told investigators after the incident that Scott tried to grab his gun and Taser.

But Wilson told the court that Scott was running away from the officer and that the only time Slager picked up the Taser and dropped it by Scott's body after shooting him dead.

In October a $6.5m settlement was reached with Scott's family after it was approved by the North Charleston City Council in a 10-0 vote.

Slager's wife and parents broke down in tears in the courtroom after Newman announced his decision, according to The Post and Courier.

Walter Scott, Sr. and Judy Scott, parents of Walter Scott, look on during a bond hearing for former police officer Michael Slager in September. Some of Scott's family members were present when it was announced they'd be awarded $6.5 million on Thursday

Walter Scott, the father of the slain man, also addressed the judge, saying he often goes to the cemetery to visit his son's flower-bedecked grave.

'If we let him out, he's going to go home to see his wife and children. All I can look at is a pot of flowers,' Scott said.

'I hope you allow me reasonable bond to work on my case,' Slager told the judge who said 'these are excruciating issues for the court to deal with.'

But Newman said he was troubled that the trial is being delayed because of the order in the Roof case.

Justin Bamberg, the attorney for Scott's family, said they were disappointed by the ruling but respected it.

He also urged the community to remain 'as peaceful as we have been'.

'Know that at the end of the day, the justice system is going to run its course,' he said.

'While nothing can replace having Walter in our lives, the City of North Charleston's historic action ensures that he did not die in vain,' Scott's brother Anthony said, noting the settlement will provide for Scott's children.

'It was a bittersweet victory,' he added. 'The family still wants justice for my brother and this was a step in the right direction.'

Anthony Scott said the family plans to donate some of the money from the settlement to disaster relief for victims of the recent floods in South Carolina.

Mayor Keith Summey said he was pleased with the settlement.

'The family took steps to keep the community calm, and for that the city is thankful,' he said. 'This is a very difficult period for the Scott family. I know they are glad to have this part behind them so their healing process can continue.'

The bystander's cellphone video showed Slager firing eight times as Scott ran. The shooting inflamed the national debate about how blacks are treated by law enforcement officers.

After the video went public, the family called for peace and calm in the community.

The mayor said that since the shooting, North Charleston police have been outfitted with body cameras. Slager was not wearing one.

Summey also noted the police department will be working with a division of the Department of Justice that helps local communities resolve issues involving race, color, national origin or gender.

Slager was fired following his arrest on the murder charges and has been detained in solitary confinement.

Before the video was brought to the attention of authorities, Slager had told investigators that Scott tried to grab his gun and Taser.

But prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said Scott was running away and the only time Slager could be seen running was to go back, pick up the Taser and then drop it by Scott's body.

Slager faces from 30 years to life in prison without parole if he is convicted of murder.
Comes days after British boy, four, appeared in sickening execution video

Terror group rigged explosives so that 'his organs would be blown apart'

ISIS has blown up a four-year-old boy a week after executing his father, who they accused of killing two of its fighters, it has been reported.

The bomb, which was triggered by a remote controlled device, was attached to the boy in a way 'that his organs would be blown apart', a spokesman of the state sponsored rebel group, Popular Mobilisation, is reported to have said.

It comes days after a British boy, Isa Dare, also four, appeared in one of the terror group's sickening execution videos threatening to 'kill kuffar [non believers]'.

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ISIS has blown up a four-year-old boy a week after executing his father, who they accused of killing two of its fighters (file photo of ISIS fighters)

The four-year-old boy was killed by ISIS in Iraq's northern al-Shirqat district, Jabar el-Maamouri, a senior official in Popular Mobilisation, told the Alsumaria news agency.

He told human rights organisations of the atrocity to publicise the group's barbarity and 'condemn' the people funding them.

ISIS is said to have controlled the Al-Shirqat district, considered one of its strongholds, since last June.

The terror group is also said to have 'wiped out' a village in the Nineveh province after its residents rebelled against the group.

It executed 'dozens of civilians' including old people, women and children in the village of al-Choud, an unnamed source told Alsumaria.

He told of how it carried out mass executions after locals demanded the ISIS gunmen leave the village in peace.

British boy Isa, dubbed 'Jihadi Junior', begged his grandfather to save him just days before he was forced to appear in a sickening ISIS execution video, it emerged today.

The shocking claims come days after a young British boy, Isa Dare (pictured), also four, appeared in one of the terror group's sickening execution videos threatening to 'kill kuffar [non believers]'

The young boy was paraded in military fatigues and an ISIS bandanna while being made to declare: 'We are going to kill the kaffir (non-believers) over there.'

He was brainwashed by ISIS fanatics after being taken to Syria three years ago by his mother, the Muslim convert Grace 'Khadija' Dare, 24, who had links to the killers of Lee Rigby.
Doctors declared Aden brain dead on May 28, but her father insisted on continuation of treatment

Hailu had been in a coma since April 1, when she failed to wake up from anesthesia after an abdominal surgery

Aden Hailu, 20, passed away Monday at St Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, after her heart stopped

A 20-year-old college student at the center of an end-of-life legal battle over her treatment at a Reno hospital died while still on life support Monday.

Aden Hailu passed away at around 4.30pm at Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center, where she never awoke from anesthesia after surgery April 1, 2015, said David O'Mara, the attorney representing Hailu's father and family.

O'Mara said the family was told Hailu was pronounced dead after her heart stopped and efforts to revive her failed.

Rest In Peace: Aden Hailu, 20, passed away at a Reno, Nevada, hospital while still on life support on Monday, more than eight months after she fell into a coma

Full of life: Hailu was a college freshman when she went in for surgery to remove her appendix on April 1. She never woke up from anesthesia

Aden's father, Fanuel Gebreyes, was at the hospital and noticed Hailu had trouble breathing - even with a ventilator. But Gebreyes wasn't in his daughter's room when her heart stopped.

Hospital officials have declined to comment on Hailu's death citing privacy laws.

Gebreyes lost a bid in court last week to delay brain electroencephalogram, or EEG, tests that the hospital said would show she was brain dead and would never recover.

Washoe County Family Court Judge Frances Doherty had given Saint Mary's the green light to conduct brain wave tests, but indicated she wouldn't rule until at least January 22 on the question of life or death.

O'Mara said Tuesday it didn't appear the tests had been done. The family lawyer earlier accused the hospital of wanting to pull the plug on Aden to cut costs.

He said Gebreyes felt that that as long as there was a chance the 20-year-old woman was alive, the hospital should treat her or find a place that would.

The father appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court after the doctors at Saint Mary's pronounced Hailu dead last May 28.

The high court ruled Doherty too quickly rejected the family's bid to keep Hailu on life-support and sent the case back to Doherty.

Hailu's father, Fanuel Gebreyes (pictured in court in December), lost a legal battle last week to delay EEG tests that the hospital said would show his daughter was brain dead

Washoe County Family Court Judge Frances Doherty had given Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno the green light to conduct brain wave tests on Hailu a week before her death

The judge last week said she wanted both sides to submit arguments about whether additional EEG, CT scan and eye reflex tests should be performed.

Attorneys representing the hospital argued it was unfair to force the hospital to treat Hailu indefinitely.

The hospital said money wasn't the issue, but that administrators needed to respect doctors' medical judgment.

Lynn Sack, aide to Washoe County Coroner Ellen Clark, said Tuesday that because Hailu died at a hospital, there was no need for a public autopsy.

Hailu was from Las Vegas and was a freshman at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Doctors say she suffered severe low blood pressure and a lack of oxygen to the brain during surgery to remove her appendix and explore the cause of unspecified abdominal pain, according to court documents.

A lawyer representing Hailu's family earlier accused the hospital of wanting to pull the plug on Aden (pictured left with a friend and right) to cut costs. Her father wanted the hospital to treat her as long as she was alive

Saint Mary's doctors said three EEG tests conducted during the first two weeks of April showed declining brain function, and no EEG tests were performed after that.

Gebreyes, meanwhile, refused to consent to new brain wave tests. He insisted that Hailu needed treatment, not tests, including thyroid medication and a tracheostomy so she could receive nutrition through her throat, not just intravenous fluids.
MPs will debate a petition calling for Donald Trump to be excluded from the UK after it became the biggest ever protest on the Government's website.

More than 568,000 people signed the petition demanding the Republic US presidential candidate be banned from Britain after a series of outbursts about Britain's 'massive Muslim problem' and his call for all Muslim entry to America to be blocked.

Last week the Government officially responded to the call by outlining its powers to ban individuals from entering the UK.

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MPs will debate whether to ban Donald Trump, pictured on the campaign trail in Massachusetts yesterday, from the UK later this month

A separate petition, opposing any ban, will be debated at the same time on Monday January 18 in Westminster Hall. That petition, which has been signed almost 40,000 times, was given an identical response by minister.

Announcing the debate, petitions committee chairwoman Helen Jones said: 'By scheduling a debate on these petitions, the Committee is not expressing a view on whether or not the Government should exclude Donald Trump from the UK.

'As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the Committee has decided that the subject should be debated.

'A debate will allow a range of views to be expressed.'

Veteran Labour MP Paul Flynn will lead the debate, which will not lead to a vote and cannot implement a ban.

Last week, the Government declared Mr Trump could be banned from entering the UK if he is deemed by ministers to be 'non-conducive to the public good'.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Mr Trump's call to ban all Muslims from entering America was 'divisive, stupid and wrong' and ministers had steered clear of backing a ban on the controversial politician.

The Government used its response to outline its 'very serious' banning powers, warning they are not 'used lightly'.

It said: 'For good reasons the Government does not routinely comment on individual immigration and exclusion decisions.

'The Home Secretary may exclude a non-European Economic Area national from the UK if she considers their presence in the UK to be non-conducive to the public good.

'The Home Secretary has said that coming to the UK is a privilege and not a right and she will continue to use the powers available to prevent from entering the UK those who seek to harm our society and who do not share our basic values.

'Exclusion powers are very serious and are not used lightly. The Home Secretary will use these powers when justified and based on all available evidence.

Mr Trumps claims about Muslims in the UK and in America drove the e-petition to the highest number of signatories ever recorded earlier this month

'The Prime Minister has made clear that he completely disagrees with Donald Trump's remarks. The Home Secretary has said that Donald Trump's remarks in relation to Muslims are divisive, unhelpful and wrong.

'The Government recognises the strength of feeling against the remarks and will continue to speak out against comments which have the potential to divide our communities, regardless of who makes them.

'We reject any attempts to create division and marginalisation amongst those we endeavour to protect.'

MPs will decide whether to debate the petition in the new year.

The petition to the Government read: 'The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry.

'The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK.

'If they United Kingdom is to continue applying the 'unacceptable behaviour' criteria to those who wish to enter its borders, it must be fairly applied to the rich as well as the poor, and the weak as well as the powerful.'

Speaking to the Home Affairs committee of MP last month, Home Secretary Theresa May said she would not comment on an individual case.

She said: 'I think we all agree that the comments Donald Trump made in relation to Muslims were divisive, unhelpful and wrong.

Donald Trump sparked outrage with his claims about Muslims earlier this month prompting more than half a million to sign a petition calling for him to be banned from Britain

'In relation to the question of banning individuals from the UK, given the role I play in making those decisions, I don't comment on individual cases.

The decision on whether to ban anyone from the UK is made by the home secretary on the basis of the evidence at the time.'

Mr Trump has become an unlikely front runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, ahead of the contest to replace Barack Obama in the White House next year.

Despite sparking outrage with his remarks, Mr Trump's poll rating has appeared to move ever higher with each controversy.

The tycoon has remained defiant, accusing Britons of 'trying hard to disguise their massive Muslim problem' and said his critics are just 'pandering to political correctness'.

One of his most inflammatory Twitter messages about Britain has been retweeted more than 6,000 times.

In a series of outbursts he said 'UK politicians should be thanking me' for his claim that some of the country's Muslim communities are no-go areas because of extremism.

He also attacked 'out of touch' MPs who abused him over his demand for an end to Muslim immigration to America, tweeting: 'Everybody is wise to what is happening, very sad! Be honest!'

And he hit back at the hundreds of thousands signing the official petition demanding Mr Trump he be banned from Britain, writing on Twitter: 'They don't know what they're getting into'.

Mr Trump caused worldwide consternation after a string of incendiary remarks about Muslims in the United States.

He said he was 'calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on'.
A man who authorities say is an associate of the New Jersey crime family believed to be the real-life inspiration for HBO's TV series The Sopranos has been sentenced to six years in prison.

Anthony 'Whitey' Stango, 34, of Brick, New Jersey, will also have to serve five years of supervised release once he's freed from prison under the sentence imposed on Tuesday, federal prosecutors said.

Stango had pleaded guilty last August to a complaint charging him with selling cocaine, using a telephone in interstate commerce to conduct a prostitution operation and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.

Anthony 'Whitey' Stango, 34, of Brick, New Jersey, was sentenced to six years in prison on drug and prostitution charges on Tuesday

Authorities say is an associate of the New Jersey crime family believed to be the real-life inspiration for HBO's TV series The Sopranos

'I deeply regret my actions,' Stango said in a brief statement. 'I hope to get through this to be a better father.'

The father of two children, age seven and nine, had admitted to distributing more than $70,000 worth of cocaine and planning a high-end prostitution service in the Toms River area, according to NJ.com.

Stango was arrested in March, along with 10 other alleged members of the DeCavalcante crime family.

In a brief statement, Stango (pictured with his father Charles) said he deeply regrets his actions and 'hope to get through this to be a better father'

Prosecutors say the family engaged in numerous offenses, including murder, extortion, fraud, and more.

Among the suspects included Stango's father, reputed captain 71-year-old Charles Stango, of Henderson, Nevada and 72-year-old Frank Nigro, of Toms River, a reputed consigliere, or adviser.

Prior to the sentencing on Tuesday, Anthony Stango's attorney acknowledged that Stango sold cocaine to a government agent at least seven times and that he talked about the prostitution operation with his father, NJ.com reported.

Gary Mizzone, his attorney, said Anthony Stango, 'got washed up' in the notoriety surrounding organized crime and described Stango's relationship with his father as 'distant' and 'estranged'.

Stango was arrested in March, along with 10 other alleged members of the DeCavalcante crime family

Assistant U.S. Attorney Grady O'Malley also noted that Stango's criminal history also included burglary, probation violations and passing bad checks, according to NJ.com.

He is scheduled to report to prison on March 15.
Tipo Qureshi, 44, a plastic surgeon, reportedly pestered colleagues for dates

A doctor stunned an NHS manageress by asking her if her nail polish matched the colour of her underwear before pestering other female hospital colleagues for a date, it was claimed today.

Tipo Qureshi, 44, is said to have behaved inappropriately towards five separate female members of staff in less than three months at Sandwell General Hospital in West Bromwich, Midlands.

Quershi, a locum specialist registrar in plastic surgery, began his flirtatious behaviour during his induction meeting at the hospital, a medical tribunal heard.

This is when he made his nail polish remark while discussing a work timetable with a female employee known as Miss A, who manages NHS waiting lists.

She said she was 'surprised by how forward he was' and attempted to ignore his comment.

But Qureshi, who denies the allegations, began to pester her for her personal mobile number when he took up a full-time post at the hospital, it was said.

When he asked her out on a date, she informed him she had a boyfriend but he replied: 'How would your boyfriend feel if we went for a coffee?' it is alleged.

Qureshi, of Warwick, would view dating websites on his mobile phone whilst on a ward with patients and told a nurse it was a shame she was engaged because he 'had a lot of money', the court heard.

He told the same woman that she reminded him of an ex-girlfriend with whom he had had a 'very physical relationship', it was said.

When she asked what he meant, the medic allegedly 'raised his eyebrows' and gave her a 'knowing look'.

Qureshi also told a nurse known as Ms C that he was viewing a dating website on his mobile phone while on a hospital ward in 2013, the tribunal heard.

He then showed her a picture of a teenage girl in a bikini on the screen and said she had a good pair of legs, it is alleged. Ms C later complained that he asked her out on a date.

The surgeon is also said to have told a student nurse that she was too pretty to be a nurse and should be a model, before asking if she minded dating older men'.

Qureshi was reported to the General Medical Council when two nurses complained of indecent assaults allegedly committed on the same day.

Both had separately been in an operating theatre with the medic on December 6, 2013 when he is said to have leant across them for paperwork or medical equipment and deliberately touched their breasts.

On the second occasion, towards a nurse known as Miss F, Dr Qureshi allegedly fumbled around her breasts while attempting to catch a vial of anaesthetic.

Both women say he failed to apologise after each incident, which would have been consistent with the possibility of accidental touching.

Miss F overheard the first woman, known as Ms E, talking about her experience when they bumped into each other in the hospital staffroom.

She in turn revealed her alleged ordeal, which was heard by a department practitioner who suggested they report the incidents. The matter was then passed to the GMC.

The surgeon is also accused of swerving clinical duties - on one occasion refusing to cannulate a patient because a less senior member of staff could do it, and on another refusing to take a surgical case because he was close to finishing his shift.

When questioned by a nurse, he allegedly said: Patients dont care about me, why should I care about them?' loud enough for patients and other members of staff to hear.

Qureshi is said to have behaved inappropriately towards five female members of staff in less than three months at Sandwell General Hospital in West Bromwich, Midlands. He allegedly began his flirtatious behaviour on the day of his induction meeting

Recalling the nail polish comment, Miss A told the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester: 'I was quite taken aback that in our initial meeting, during an induction with a professional, that comment was made.

'I continued with the meeting and dismissed the comment. I'm not really sure why I didn't complain immediately in hindsight.

'It was an element of disbelief and the fact I didn't take it as: "Oh my gosh, this man can't ever work here again." It was when additional incidents and allegations were being made and I realised this wasn't one-off behaviour, this was an ongoing thing.'

When Qurashi later asked her for her number, she laughed and brushed it aside.

'He would ask me for my number and say things like: "How would your boyfriend feel if we went for a coffee?" I didn't respond. He certainly asked for my number more than once,' she said.

Counsel for the GMC Simon Jackson QC said: 'There are three elements to the GMCs misconduct case. Firstly, inappropriate remarks or questions with a sexual overtone. Secondly, refusals to assist colleagues with tasks and thirdly, two incidents of alleged sexual assault.

'Right from the outset of his appointment at the hospital, Dr Qureshi was rather forward in manner and soon began to make inappropriate remarks to female colleagues. As early as the induction meeting with the hospital manager and Miss A when Dr Qureshi was discussing the timetable, he spontaneously said to her: "Does your nail polish reflect the colour of your underwear?"

She didnt take the remark seriously but was surprised at how forward he was. They were to be future colleagues and had only just met. He plainly did not treat Miss A with respect on this occasion and other colleagues on other occasions.'

Describing his use of the dating website, Mr Jackson added: 'While in the nurses station and again in the company of Ms C, Dr Qureshi used his mobile phone on the ward, which is not permitted, and in the course of doing so told Ms C he was logged into a dating website and then proceeded to show her a picture of a teenage girl in a bikini on his mobile and said the girl in the picture had a good pair of legs.

'On another occasion while working together he asked Ms C out on a date. The witness will say that this course of conduct by Dr Qureshi made her feel uncomfortable while in his presence and when she sensed he might seek her out to do clinical tasks - the request being an excuse to talk to her - she took steps to avoid it.

'The GMC alleges all these incidents had a thinly-disguised sexual overtone. Not simply over-personal or intrusive or rude, but when looked at in the context, all had an underlying theme of the doctor wanting to pursue sexual conduct or a sexual relationship with the women he approached and spoke to in this way.'
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An iconic Parisian canal is being drained for the first time in 15 years and a whole host of bizarre and unexpected objects have already surfaced.

The Canal Saint-Martin is at the heart of the French capitals 10th arrondissement, one of the citys most exclusive and fashionable districts.

But in recent years the area has developed a reputation for its lively nightlife, and a magnet for tourists and locals alike.

Residents blame this surge in popularity as the reason for some of the more bizarre objects that have been discovered lurking in the canal.

Clean-up operation: A man wades through the last dregs of the Canal Saint-Martin, in the heart of one of Paris' most fashionable areas

Hidden treasures: An abandoned scooter, covered in mud, is revealed as the water from the three-mile stretch of canal is drained away

The last time the three-mile stretch of water was emptied in 2001, among the 40 tons of rubbish were bicycles, motorbikes, gold coins, wheelchairs, a toilet bowl, two First World War shells and even a car.

This time round, the clean-up team has already discovered a pistol during the operation, which has been handed over to the police.

Emptying to 90,000 cubic metres of water, and renovating its four double locks, will cost the city 9.5million euros (7million), and it will remain drained of water for three months.

The first step was to drain the water until just 50cm were left in the bottom of the canal.

Discoveries: The last time the canal was drained, in 2001, more than 40 tons of rubbish and discarded possessions were revealed

Exclusive: The Canal Saint-Martin runs through the heart of one of the French capital's most fashionable districts, the 10th arrondissement

Frozen in time: An old camera lies at the bottom of the Canal Saint-Martin, as it is drained in a massive and expensive clean-up operation

Rusted wheels: An abandoned bicycle lies covered in mud at the bottom of the canal, which has been uncovered in the clean-up operation

Discarded: The Canal Saint-Martin clean-up operation is costing the French capital authorities some 9.5million euros (7million)

Muddied: Residents lucky enough to live in the exclusive area near the canal blame its lively nightlife for the amount of discarded items

This allowed the team to fish out the 4.5 tons of trout, carp and bream that have made their home in the canal, and transfer them to another part of the canal.

The team had just three days to catch the fish before the canal is fully drained on Thursday.

Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned the canal in 1804, according to news site France24, to provide the city with goods and fresh water.

But residents lucky enough to live in the now exclusive vicinity of the river are concerned about its thriving nightlife, and the damage it does to the area.

Team work: Employees clutching nets save fish that are trapped in the dregs of the drained canal, to move the fish to their new home

Abandoned: A man inspects the numerous discarded bicycles at the bottom of the canal, which hasn't been drained for some 15 years

Unusual journey: A man steers a bicycle as he walks through the remaining water in the canal, before it is completely drained on Thursday

Rescue operation: An employee releases trapped fish into a container before they are taken to their new home away from the operation

Fresh start: They had just three days to fish out and rescue the 4.5 tons of trout, carp and bream that have made their home in the canal

Going wading: Staff force their way through clouds of leaves and rubbish floating on the surface of the canal's remaining water

Sneak peak: A woman looks at the Canal Saint-Martin after it was drained for maintenance, which is expected to take around three months

They even launched a social media campaign to draw attention to the vandalism and drinking, posting Instagram images of piles of vomit and smashed bottles.

The deputy mayor in charge of the environment, Celia Blauel, beseeched Parisians to respect the canal once its makeover is finished.

If everyone mucks in and avoids throwing anything in the water, we might be able to swim in the canal in a few years, as in numerous other European cities, she told Le Parisien.

Lucky: Residents who live in the exclusive vicinity of the river are concerned about its thriving nightlife, and the damage it does to the area

Mission: The massive operation includes draining the three-mile stretch of water, cleaning out the rubbish and it's four double locks

Lunchtime: Seagulls search the newly-emerged debris in the hope of finding some tasty morsels on the discarded bicycles

Historical: Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned the canal in 1804 to provide the capital city with goods, transport and fresh water
Russia have claimed it is 'highly probable' that ISIS are illegally using chemical weapons in Syria.

Traces of the deadly nerve gas sarin were found in samples of victims by a global arms watchdog who have been tasked with investigating the use of chemical weapons in the civil war.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has for months been warning of the continued use of mustard, sarin and chlorine gas in the brutal conflict.

Kurdish news outlet Rudaw revealed footage of ISIS chemical weapon use in Iraq and Syria in September 2015

US officials have previously claimed that ISIS are making and using chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq

Ahmet Uzumcu, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) chief, explained how blood samples had revealed blood samples showed the use of sarin gas.

'In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance.

'Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred.'

The news come as it was declared Syria's chemical weapons arsenal has been completely destroyed.

Ahmet Uzumcu, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) chief, explained how blood samples had revealed blood samples showed the use of sarin gas

One badly injured man is tended to by doctors after being hurt in the painful chemical attack

The announcement came after more than two years of work, a global arms watchdog said today.

After years of denials, the regime caved to international pressure in September 2013 and agreed under a US-Russia deal to hand over its toxic stockpile to the OPCW for destruction.

The admission came after a sarin gas attack in August that year on rebel-held areas near Damascus that was blamed by the West and the opposition on the regime. Hundreds of civilians were killed.

The removal of the weapons was the result of a historic deal which averted threatened US air strikes against Damascus after the August attacks.

ISIS forces have reportedly lost as much as 40% of their territory in Iraq, according to US estimates

A member of the Kurdish YPG examines samples found in Iraq, following a chemical attack

'One hundred percent has been destroyed,' Malik Ellahi, the OPCW spokesman, told AFP on Tuesday.

With the UN Security Council poised to discuss the chemical weapons issue on Tuesday, OPCW director general Ahmet Uzumcu said: 'This process closes an important chapter in the elimination of Syria's chemical weapon programme.'

But he acknowledged the organisation based in The Hague was still continuing 'efforts to clarify Syria's declaration and address ongoing use of toxic chemicals as weapons in that country.'

The first shipment of chemical weapons left Syria from its port of Latakia in January 2014.

A total of 1,300 metric tonnes of chemical weapons have now been removed from Syria, with the majority neutralised on the US Navy ship MV Cape Ray and turned into less harmful effluent.
Its one of the most infamous gaffes in BBC radio history, and another reporter has now become the fourth person at the corporation to make the same error within six years.

BBC 6 Music news presenter Niki Cardwell accidentally pronounced Health Secretary Jeremy Hunts name as Jeremy C*** during a piece in her bulletin at 10.30am on the upcoming doctors strike.

But she immediately corrected her mistake, saying: The Health Secretary Jeremy C***-Hunt says hes disappointed that junior doctors in England are going to strike in a row about a new contract.

Scroll down for audio

It's happened again: A BBC 6 Music news presenter accidentally pronounced the name of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (above) as Jeremy C*** during a piece in her bulletin at 10.30am on the upcoming doctors strike

The error during the bulletin on Lauren Laverne's show on the digital radio station was noted by many listeners, with one saying it made me spit my tea out and another joking: I like her version.

And technology journalist Danny Palmer from London tweeted: 'The Radio 6 Music newsreader just so, almost, almost said Jeremy Hunt's name in the somewhat popular alternative way.'

The BBC has not officially commented on the error, but a source at the corporation told MailOnline tonight: It was a live broadcast, so mistakes do happen - but she corrected herself shortly after.

It follows the infamous gaffe in 2010 by former BBC Radio 4 Today journalist James Naughtie, who also called Mr Hunt 'Jeremy C***' - which sent a newsreader under the table in fits of laughter.

Reaction: Technology journalist Danny Palmer from London tweeted: 'The Radio 6 Music newsreader just so, almost, almost said Jeremy Hunt's name in the somewhat popular alternative way'

Listener: 'Merv' from Sheffield tweeted that the error on Lauren Laverne's show made me spit my tea out

Mr Naughtie later apologised to listeners and suggested the error came courtesy of Dr Spooner - referencing an Oxford don known for muddling his words, and after whom a spoonerism is named.

And he told the Radio Times last August: ''I was there with lots of bits of paper and someone was shoving headlines in front of me and I said, "After the news well be talking to Jeremy C***".

'And all I could see behind the glass were arms going up in the air, as in "We surrender". And the guy who was passing the news bulletins to the late Rory Morrison went under the table [laughing].'

Astonishingly, just one hour later Mr Naughties Radio 4 colleague Andrew Marr made the same mistake when talking about the error - and both men later personally apologised to Mr Hunt.

Previous incident: An infamous gaffe in 2010 by former BBC Radio 4 Today journalist James Naughtie (pictured) saw him also call Mr Hunt 'Jeremy C***' - which sent a newsreader under the table in fits of laughter

Then, last November, BBC West Midlands newsreader Olivia Morley made exactly the same error over Mr Hunts name during an evening radio bulletin, before correcting herself immediately.

Today, BBC 6 Music was reporting on the strike, which will see junior doctors - angry over planned changes to their contracts - provide emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday of next week.

This will be followed by a 48-hour stoppage and the provision of emergency care only from 8am on January 26. Then on February 10 there will be a full withdrawal of labour from 8am to 5pm.
Anthony Constantinou, pictured outside the Old Bailey today, is on trial for six counts of sexual assault against three women

A City boss molested a string of women in an atmosphere likened to the hit Hollywood film Wolf Of Wall Street, the Old Bailey has heard.

Anthony Constantinou, chief executive of the company Capital World Markets (CWM), is on trial for six counts of sexual assault against the three women during after-work drinks.

On one occasion, one alleged victim described how the married 34-year-old shoved a chunk of wasabi paste in her mouth, remarked that she had a 'cracking a*** and t**s' and then thrust his tongue into her mouth, treating her 'like a piece of meat', the court heard.

Prosecutor Eloise Marshall said the allegations came to light when one of the women filed a complaint with the police in Grays, Essex.

She described three incidents occurring on October 29, 2014, during drinks at the 21st floor office of the Heron Tower, Bishopsgate, one of the City's most prestigious office blocks.

She said Constantinou had followed the victim into the ladies' lavatory, grabbed her face and kissed her, the court heard.

The second incident took place in the office reception, where he pushed her up against the frosted glass and kissed her again, the court heard.

He then took her into a company stockroom where he pulled her pants down and exposed himself before sexually assaulting her, jurors were told.

Ms Marshall said: 'She pushed him away and stopped him.'

She never returned to the office block after that night, jurors were told.

Investigators later uncovered more complaints against Constantinou involving two other women.

The second woman, also a CWM employee, recalled being molested on October 6 2014, three weeks before the first alleged victim said she was attacked.

She told police that Constantinou dragged her into a utility room at the office and kissed her until she pushed him off and left, the court heard.

At the time she 'just shrugged it off' but later that night, when they went on to a nearby bar, he touched her bottom and squeezed it, jurors were told.

The married CEO of Capital World Markets, pictured arriving at the Old Bailey today, shoved a chunk of wasabi paste in one victim's mouth, remarked that she had a 'cracking a*** and t**s' and then thrust his tongue into her mouth, treating her 'like a piece of meat', the court heard

Constantinou, pictured with Princess Anne at the London Boat Show, denies six counts of sexual assault against the three women

One of the victims likened the atmosphere in the office to the Hollywood film Wolf Of Wall Street about New York traders (pictured)

The last alleged incident came to police attention when they searched the offices of CWM and uncovered a letter from the third alleged victim's bosses terminating their company's contract, citing Constantinou's 'behaviour' .

The third woman described how she was sexually assaulted during drinks after a business meeting on February 20 last year.

He introduced her by remarking to colleagues that she had a 'cracking a*** and t**s', the court heard.

During the meeting, he had allegedly thrown her mobile phone against a wall and told her: 'Don't answer phones in my meeting.'

Later that night, he picked up a big chunk of hot wasabi paste and shoved it in her mouth, jurors were told.

The woman immediately left the room but was followed by Constantinou, who pinned her against a partition and assaulted her in what she described as a 'disgusting' manner.

She told police that he 'shoved his tongue in her mouth as if she was a piece of meat', Ms Marshall said. Others pulled the defendant off her and she too left the office, never to return.

Constantinou is pictured arriving at the Old Bailey on Monday. He is the youngest son of fashion tycoon Aristos Constantinou, who was gunned down in his Bishops Avenue mansion in 1985 when Anthony was three

Constantinou, who is part-Greek, told one victim she couldnt refuse a Greek man, the Old Bailey heard yesterday

Constantinou, who is part-Greek, said she couldnt refuse a Greek man, the Old Bailey heard today.

The woman likened the atmosphere in the office to the Hollywood film Wolf Of Wall Street about New York traders.

She left the offices immediately and never returned, Ms Marshall.

Constantinou, of Wildwood Road, Barnet, north London, denies six counts of sexual assault against the three women. The trial continues.

He is the youngest son of fashion tycoon Aristos Constantinou, who was gunned down in his Bishops Avenue mansion in 1985 when Anthony was three.

The unsolved case was dubbed the Silver Bullet Murder due to the six nickel-jacketed bullets that ended Aristoss rags-to-riches life.
Ben Carson Retired physician

Age on Election Day: 65

Religion: Seventh-day Adventist

Base: Evangelicals

Resume: Famous pediatric neurosurgeon, youngest person to head a major Johns Hopkins Hospital division. Founder of the Carson Scholars Fund, which awards scholarships to children of good character.

Education: B.A. Yale University. M.D. University of Michigan Medical School.

Family: Married to Candy Carson (1975), with three adult sons. The Carsons live in Maryland with Ben's elderly mother Sonya, who was a seminal influence on his life and development.

Claim to fame: Carson spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2013, railing against political correctness and condemned Obamacare  with President Obama sitting just a few feet away.

Achilles heel: Carson is inflexibly conservative, opposing gay marriage and once saying gay attachments formed in prison provided evidence that sexual orientation is a choice.





Ted Cruz Texas senator

Age on Election Day: 45

Religion: Southern Baptist

Base: Tea partiers

Resume:U.S. senator. Former Texas solicitor general. Former U.S. Supreme Court clerk. Former associate deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.

Education: B.A. Princeton University. J.D. Harvard Law School.

Family: Married to Heidi Nelson Cruz (2001), with two young daughters. His father is a preacher and he has two half-sisters.

Claim to fame: Cruz spoke on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours in September 2013 to protest the inclusion of funding for Obamacare in a federal budget bill. (The bill moved forward as written.) He has called for the complete repeal of the medical insurance overhaul law, and also for a dismantling of the Internal Revenue Service. Cruz is also outspoken about border security.

Achilles heel: Cruz's father Rafael, a Texas preacher, is a tea party firebrand who has said gay marriage is a government conspiracy and called President Barack Obama a Marxist who should 'go back to Kenya.' Cruz himself also has a reputation as a take-no-prisoners Christian evangelical, which might play well in South Carolina but won't win him points in the other early primary states and could cost him momentum if he should be the GOP's presidential nominee.





Jim Gilmore Former Virginia governor

Age on Election Day: 67

Religion: United Methodist

Base: Conservatives

Resume: Former governor and attorney general of Virginia. Former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Former U.S. Army intelligence agent. President and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation. Board member of the National Rifle Association

Education: B.A. University of Virginia.

Family: Married to Roxane Gatling Gilmore (1977), with two adult children. Mrs. GIlmore is a survivor of Hodgkin's lymphoma

Claim to fame: Gilmore presided over Virginia when the 9/11 terrorists struck in 1991, guiding the state through a difficult economic downturn after one of the hijacked airliners crashed into the Pentagon. He is nest known in Virginia for eliminating most of a much-maligned personal property tax on automobiles, working with a Democratic-controlled state legislature to get it passed and enacted.

Achilles heel: Gilmore is the only GOP or Democratic candidate for president who has been the chairman of his political party, giving him a rap as an 'establishment' candidate. A social-conservative crusader, he is loathed by the left for championing the state law that established 24-hour waiting periods for abortions. Gilmore also has a reputation as an indecisive campaigner, having dropped out of the 2008 presidential race in July 2007.





John Kasich Ohio governor

Age on Election Day: 64

Religion: Anglican

Base: Centrists

Resume: Governor of Ohio. Former chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee. Former Ohio congressman. Former Ohio state senator.

Education: B.A. The Ohio State University.

Family: Married to Karen Waldbillig (1997). Divorced from Mary Lee Griffith (1975-1980).

Claim to fame: Kasich was Ohio youngest-ever member of the state legislature at age 25. He's known for a compassionate and working-class sensibility that appeals to both ends of the political spectrum. In the 1990s when Newt Gingrich led a Republican revolution that took over Congress, Kasich became the chairman of the House Budget Committee  a position for a wonk's wonk who understands the nuanced intricacies of how government runs.

Achilles heel: Some of Kasich's political positions rankle conservatives, including his choice to expand Ohio's Medicare system under the Obamacare law, and his support for the much-derided 'Common Core' education standards program.





Marco Rubio Florida senator

Age on Election Day: 45

Religion: Catholic

Base: Conservatives

Resume: US senator, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, former city commissioner of West Miami

Education: B.A. University of Florida. J.D. University of Miami School of Law.

Family: Married to Jeanette Dousdebes (1998), with two sons and two daughters. Jeanette is a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader who posed for the squads first swimsuit calendar.

Claim to fame: Rubio's personal story as the son of Cuban emigres is a powerful narrative, and helped him win his Senate seat in 2010 against a well-funded governor whom he initially trailed by 20 points.

Achilles heel: Rubio was part of a bipartisan 'gang of eight' senators who crafted an Obama-approved immigration reform bill in 2013 which never became law  a move that angered conservative Republicans. And he was criticized in 2011 for publicly telling a version of his parents' flight from Cuba that turned out to appear embellished.





Donald Trump Real estate developer

Age on Election Day: 70

Religion: Presbyterian

Base: Conservatives

Resume: Chairman of The Trump Organization. Fixture on the Forbes 400 list of the world's richest people. Star of 'Celebrity Apprentice.'

Education: B.Sci. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Family: Married to Melania Trump (2005). Divorced from Ivana Zelnickova (1977-92) and Marla Maples(199399). Five grown children. Trump's father Fred Trump amassed a $400 million fortune developing real estate.

Claim to fame: Trump's niche in the 2016 campaign stems from his celebrity as a reality-show host and his enormous wealth  more than $10 billion, according to Trump. Because he can self-fund an entire presidential campaign, he is seen as less beholden to donors than other candidates. He has grabbed the attention of reporters and commentators by unapologetically staking out controversial positions and refusing to budge in the face of criticism.
ISIS is developing driver-free cars in a bid to carry out spectacular attacks against the West, it has emerged.

Scientists and ballistics experts have been employed by the terror group to create sophisticated new weapons intended to bring bloodshed to Europe.

From a 'jihadi university' in the Syrian city of Raqqa, they are working on building remote-controlled vehicles which can be used as mobile bombs in devastating strikes.

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ISIS is developing driver-free cars in a bid to carry out spectacular attacks against the West, it has emerged

The videos would be smuggled to Islamist sleeper cells in European cities who would then use the instructions to build their own car bombs

In another chilling twist, IS  also called Daesh  have stunned Western security agencies by modifying defunct missiles so they are capable of downing passenger jets or military aircraft.

The products of the terror group's research-and-development unit were disclosed after eight hours of training videos carried by a captured IS fighter were handed to Sky News.

Major Chris Hunter, a former UK Special Forces soldier and advisor to the British military, said he was shocked at some of the developments revealed in the film footage.

He said: 'I think this is one of the most significant intelligence finds in terms of Daesh.

'What we've seen with their typical propaganda videos is they're very, very high quality. They're designed, they're produced to inspire people and prospectively touch the nerves of anybody who is viewing them; they're done in a very specific way.

'With this training footage it's very clearly purely designed to pass on information  to pass on the progress in the research and development areas  and it gives us a very good insight into where they are now, what they're aspiring to do and crucially the diversity of the types of threats we might face. I would say it is an intelligence gold mine.'

According to the film clips, an IS team has produced fully-working driver-free cars which can be packed with explosives and driven into a target, causing horrific damage.

According to the film clips, an IS team has produced fully-working driver-free cars which can be packed with explosives and driven into a target, causing horrific damage

Scientists and ballistics experts have been employed by the terror group to create sophisticated new weapons intended to bring bloodshed to Europe

According to the film clips, an IS team has produced fully-working driver-free cars which can be packed with explosives and driven into a target, causing horrific damage

The footage also shows IS scientists producing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles

In the driver's seat, the jihadists claim to have placed mannequins with thermostats to produce the heat signature of humans in a bid to allow the vehicle to fool scanning machines that protect key buildings in the West.

The videos would be smuggled to Islamist sleeper cells in European cities who would then use the instructions to build their own car bombs.

This would potentially allow terror groups to cause carnage without risking their own lives.

The footage also shows IS scientists producing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles.

The component could allow the fanatics to recommission thousands of missiles that Western governments assumed were redundant through old age.

Major Chris Hunter, a former UK Special Forces soldier and advisor to the British military, said he was shocked at some of the developments revealed in the film footage

The videos would be smuggled to Islamist sleeper cells in European cities who would then use the instructions to build their own car bombs

This would potentially allow terror groups to cause carnage without risking their own lives

Heat-seeking warheads can be used to attack passenger and military aircraft. They are 99 per cent accurate once locked on.

For decades, terror groups including the IRA had these weapons but storing them and maintaining the thermal battery  a key component to the warhead  was virtually impossible.

An IS trainer carrying the unedited training videos was captured by the remnants of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as he headed north through Turkey towards Europe.

In Turkey, an IS defector said that the top secret training programme was known about in Raqqa. He confirmed the programme was designed for attacks in Europe and further afield, said Sky News.

He said: 'Videoing and documenting this training programme was meant for Europe to cause huge damage.
The stepmother of a teenage soldier killed in Afghanistan has been seriously injured after being beaten up by another woman in an unprovoked attack.

Leigh Ring, 37, whose stepson Joshua Hammond, 18, died while fighting the Taliban in 2009, was assaulted on New Years Eve in a pub in Plymouth, Devon.

The nurse said her female attacker came from behind to drag her down the stairs at the Victoria Inn at about 11.30pm and punched her several times in the face.

Seriously injured: Leigh Ring (left), 37, whose stepson Joshua Hammond (right), 18, died while fighting the Taliban in 2009, was beaten up on New Years Eve by a mystery woman in a pub in Plymouth, Devon

Mrs Ring - who had been preparing to celebrate the start of 2016 - was left black and blue in hospital and spent several hours in A&E having suffered extensive injuries.

She said: My neighbour and I were having an argument in the beer garden and the next thing I knew I was attacked from behind, dragged down the stairs and my face was being pummelled.

The attacker had me in a headlock and the punches were coming like a round of bullets. My face is black and blue - I have got lips like a duck. Ive been in hospital to see if my jaw was broken.

Ive got to go back to check if my nose is broken. Ive got black eyes, a swollen nose, concussion, whiplash [and] bruising on my right side.

Mrs Ring added that she has been spoken to by police and detectives are now investigating.

Scene: The nurse said her female attacker came from behind to drag her down the stairs at the Victoria Inn (above) in Plymouth at about 11.30pm and punched her several times in the face

She said: I feel angry, hurt and it has made me question my choice of the area I live in. In my 37 years I have never experienced anything like this.

The attacker had me in a headlock and the punches were coming like a round of bullets. My face is black and blue Leigh Ring

If Im honest it has made me worried about going out in future because I think this will scar me. This has taken away a part of me that I always classed as my best feature - my bubbly sense of humour.

Mrs Ring was previously in the news when she made a moving tribute to her stepson Joshua, who died in an improvised explosive device blast just 30 days into a six month deployment with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment in July 2009.

At the time of Trooper Hammonds death, she said: God gave me the biggest beautiful stepson anyone could ever have. My heart will always be filled with your laughter and memories I will treasure. Until we meet again, my love for you will never die.
Carly Fiorina had a new celebrity-related jab for Donald Trump this morning.

'But honestly, Donald Trump reminds me of the Kim Kardashian of politics  they're both famous for being famous and the media plays along.'

Fiorina appeared on Fox & Friends and was asked about Trump tapping into American anger, as Esquire just labeled the Republican frontunner the 'hater in chief.'

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Carly Fiorina appeared on Fox & Friends this morning and reacted to an Esquire cover story that labeled Donald Trump the 'hater in chief.' Fiorina likened him to reality star Kim Kardashian

What do Kim Kardashian (left) and Donald Trump (right) have in common?' According to GOP hopeful Carly Fiorina they're both 'famous for being famous'

Carly Fiorina noted that women make up a majority of the electorate, which was just another reason for why Donald Trump shouldn't be the Republican nominee

'Look, I don't exactly think Esquire is an authority, but there is no doubt Donald Trump is an extremely divisive candidate  that is why he cannot win, that is why he cannot be our nominee,' Fiorina said.

She then equated Trump, a former reality star, with one of the most famous faces in the genre.

Aside from the Kardashian quip, Fiorina was discussing the results of an NBC News/Survey Monkey/Esquire poll that came out Sunday, which found that 58 percent of white women are angrier today than they were a year ago.

Fiorina wasn't surprised.

'Well, yes, women are angry,' she said.

'Women are angry because more of them are living in poverty. Women are angry because they feel they're losing power and control over their own lives. Women are angry because they worry that their children don't even know what the American dream is anymore,' she continued.

'Women are angry because their health costs are going up,' Fiorina added. 'Yes, women are angry.'

Pointing to the fact that women comprised 53 percent of the electorate, Fiorina thumped Trump again.

'So we can't nominate someone who routinely insults women,' she said.

Fiorina, as she has throughout her campaign, suggested she would be the toughest candidate to go up against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, because she would snuff out the historic nature of Clinton's election, that of the country's first female president.

'I take a very important card away from Hillary Clinton,' Fiorina said. 'I can fight her on ground that we can win on,' she added.

Fiorina had a few good weeks in late September, after she was propelled onto the main debate stage in Simi Valley, California.

At her campaign's peak she was averaging 11.8 percent and was in third place behind Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the two other political newbies running for president.
Lee Kelly, 19, of Glasgow, collapsed at a nightclub on New Year's Eve after taking ecstasy

The grieving family of a teenager who died after taking ecstasy showed his dying body to a group of his friends - in a dramatic bid to warn them off drugs.

Business student Lee Kelly, 19, collapsed at a nightclub in Glasgow on New Year's Eve and died in hospital two days later.

Shortly before his life support machine was switched off, Lee's family took a group of his friends into his hospital room hoping that the sight of his body would put them taking drugs forever.

Lee's grandfather Eddy, 71, said the shocked teenagers were inconsolable when they saw Lee slipping away.

He said: 'His friends were sobbing. I was telling them: "This could have been you - this is what drugs can do."

'I asked them why they would risk doing this to themselves and they broke down in tears. You could tell they were heartbroken.'

After the life support machine was switched off, a second group of friends who had been staging a vigil at Glasgow Royal Infirmary were brought in to see the body.

Lee was with a group of revellers at Glasgow's O2 Academy venue before he became ill.

His mother Vivien, 46, said: 'He had never done drugs in his life but the doctors told us he had taken MDMA.

'We don't know why he decided to take it. It was a one-off.'

The family decided to show Lee's body to his friends because they didn't want any more lives to be ruined.

Devastated teenagers have paid tribute to Lee, who lived with his mother in Glasgow's Croftfoot area.

His pal Kelly-Anne Crockwell said: 'RIP Lee, you gained your wings early, was a pleasure knowing you and I'm sure you will touch everyone's hearts up there like you did down here.'

Sarah Hampton posted: 'Rest in peace bro no more random walks to the shop for the fun of it and no mad weekends, actually can't believe you're gone, love you angel.'

Darren Harkins said: 'Rest in peace mate, was a pleasure knowing someone that lived their life to the full although you had so much more to live, rest easy up there, you'll be missed by many.'

Connor Martin said: 'God has gained another legend. RIP Lee, thoughts are with his family and friends.'

Lior Brown said: 'Still can't believe you're gone brother, you are missed so much.'

Rachel Leyden said: 'Still can't believe this, spoke couple of days before this happened to him as well. RIP Lee, such lovely boy taken too young. Sleep tight angel.'

Courtney McBride said: 'Honestly can't believe what I've just read, RIP Lee you were an amazing boy, thinking of your family and friends.'
Federal investigators are seeking the public's help in filling out the timeline of the San Bernardino terrorists' moves on the day of the massacre last month.

Los Angeles FBI official David Bowdich said at a news conference Tuesday that officials are specifically seeking information about an 18-minute gap in the timeline between the attack at the Inland Regional Center on the afternoon of December 2 and the shootout with police in which both Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were killed.

Bowditch told reporters that investigators hope to find out if the assailants contacted anyone in that period, between 12.59pm and 1.17pm.

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This map shows the area Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik drove through on the day of the killings on December 2

The FBI displayed photos of the couple's rental SUV, a black 2015 Ford Expedition SUV with Utah license plates X52-3RY

We will leave no stone unturned, Bowdich vowed.

The FBI official revealed that the gunmen did 'a lot of zig zaging around' without any apparent 'rhyme or reason' after the mass shooting.

During the press conference, the FBI showed a map of the area Farook and Malik drove through on the day of the killings, from their home in Redlands to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, reported the Press-Enterprise.

Investigators also displayed a poster featuring photos of the married couple's rental SUV, a black 2015 Ford Expedition SUV with Utah license plates X52-3RY.

Bowditch said officials have conducted 500 interviews to date, which helped them piece together 3 hours and 42 minutes of the timeline, leaving 18 minutes unaccounted for.

The feds are now asking anyone who may have seen the couple or caught them on surveillance video on the afternoon of December 2 to contact them.

Investigators hope to find out if the assailants, pictured passing through Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in this July 27, 2014, contacted anyone during the unaccounted-for 18 minutes

Victims: A composite photo of all 14 victims from the San Bernardino shooting rampage. They are top row left: Robert Adams, Isaac Amanios, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman and Sierra Clayborn. Second row from left: Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman and Damian Meins. Bottom row from left: Tin Nguyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco and Michael Wetzel

In mid-December, FBI divers spent three days scouring a San Bernardino lake in search of Farook and Maliks missing hard drive, but Bowdich said Tuesday that no evidence was found there.

Farook, 28, a US citizen, and his Pakistani-born wife, opened fire at a holiday party attended by many of Farook's co-workers in the San Bernardino health department, killing 14 and injuring 22 others. The couple died in a gun battle with law enforcement hours later, leaving behind a 6-month-old daughter.

Authorities say Farook and Malik, who came to the US on a fiancee visa in July 2014 and married her husband the next month, were not known to law enforcement before the shootings.

But since the attack they have determined the couple discussed martyrdom and jihad online as early as 2013.

The federal probe into the mass shooting, which is currently in its second month, so far has cost San Bernardino County nearly $4million.
A mother-of-four in Missouri is crediting her right to carry arms for saving her entire family after being approached by a knife-wielding man while her husband was pumping gas.

While on their way home Sunday evening, Matthew and Katie Claxton stopped to fill up their gas tank at a local station in Springfield.

In her account about the incident on Facebook, she explained that she was sitting in the passenger seat and their four daughters were in the back seat when a man wielding a large knife approached the car.

She wrote in the post that she reached over to try to lock the car doors, but she accidentally rolled down the window.

Katie Claxton is crediting her right to carry arms for saving her entire family after a knife-wielding man approached their car while her husband, Matthew, was pumping gas. Above the couple is pictured together

The mother-of-four claims that David Middleton, 42, 'opened the door and pulled put a knife about the size of a machete and pointed it at me while starting to get in the van.' Police arrested Middleton a short time later

'He opened the door and pulled put a knife about the size of a machete and pointed it at me while starting to get in the van,' Katie wrote.

The frightened mother yelled for her husband to get his gun, and the man started to leave.

'He said 'You're lucky he has a gun,'' she wrote. 'And then he shut the door and started to back away.'

Katie said that her husband pointed his Beretta handgun at the man and called 911 as the man walked off.

While waiting for the police to arrive, the family began following the man down the street in their vehicle to make sure he didn't disappear.

The mother is thankful that her husband had his gun and was able to protect the family. 'Our Second Amendment right to carry is what saved our lives. If we didn't have our right to carry, I feel like we wouldn't be here today,' she said

Katie said that he tried unsuccessfully to break into cars before police officers arrived and arrested him.

According to USA Today, Springfield Police Department spokeswoman Lisa Cox confirmed Claxton's account is consistent with the police report that was presented to prosecutors on Monday afternoon.

The mother is thankful that her husband had his gun and was able to protect the family.

'Our Second Amendment right to carry is what saved our lives,' Claxton told USA Today. 'If we didn't have our right to carry, I feel like we wouldn't be here today.'

David Middleton, 42, was arrested in connection with the incident and is in Greene County Jail awaiting charges to be filed.

Katie's Facebook post about the incident and protecting the Second Amendment, has been shared more than 9,000 times.
The now iconic Banksy graffiti in the Calais migrant camp known as The Jungle has itself been vandalised, with the words 'London Calling'.

The mysterious street artist sprayed an image of Apple founder Steve Jobs carrying an early Apple computer and his belongings on a wall in the camp in December.

The stencil image shows Jobs, the son of Syrian migrants, dressed in his familiar black turtle neck, holding a bag full of possessions.

But now an unknown person has added the words 'London Calling' in giant lettering over the top of the image - using the figure of Steve Jobs as the 'I'.

Defaced graffiti: Banksy's stencil of Steve Jobs with an early Apple computer and a bag of his belongings in the Calais migrant camp has now been defaced, after someone spray painted the words 'London Calling' over the top

Permanent: The Calais camp, which has become known as The Jungle, has become such a permanent settlement that it is now home to places of worships, schools, a disco - and even solar panels (pictured)

Alongside, in smaller yellow letters, someone has printed a 'Happy New Year' message.

It isnt yet clear who added the lettering but it was likely a resident of the camp, many of whom hope to reach the UK in the New Year.

It comes as new photographs from inside the camp - which is home to an estimated 7,000 people - show the settlement is becoming so permanent that it has even installed solar panels.

The panels can be seen set up in the middle of a circle of tents, and more secure looking temporary houses. Organisation Care4Calais told MailOnline that the panels had been installed by a private group, many of which go over to Calais from the UK.

As well as the renewable energy source, the camp is home to places of worship, schools, restaurants, barbershops and even a disco.

At the time of unveiling his initial graffiti design, Banksy said in a statement: Were often led to believe migration is a drain on the countrys resources, but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant.

Set-up: A refugee cycles past an Eritrean orthodox church in the camp known as 'The Jungle' on January 5

Conditions: Rubbish and waste is piled up in the camp, as the residents are offered limited places to leave it

Home: An Afghan migrant cooks in a restaurant in the camp known as 'The Jungle', which is becoming an ever more permanent installation, and is now home to an estimated 7,000 people

He continued: Apple is the worlds most profitable company  it pays over $7billion a year in taxes  and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.

Alongside his image of Steve Jobs, in yellow paint, is the caption: Nobody deserves to live this way.

Calais council pledged to preserve Banksys graffiti by installing transparent plastic panels over it to protect it from the weather or vandalism.

Refugees and migrants living in The Jungle camp even began charging visitors 13 each to view the mural.

Many of the refugees living in the camp have travelled from as far as Eritrea and Syria in order to try and find a new life in the UK and France.

Waiting: The estimated 7,000 people living in the camp have arrived from all over the world, including Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. But most hope to reach the UK in the New Year

Lifestyle: A man carries bread through the camp known as 'The Jungle'. The Calais council pledged to preserve Banksy's artwork on a wall in the camp, by installing transparent plastic panels over it to protect it from the weather or vandalism

Makeshift: A man walks past a tent near one of the main roads running through Calais, in front of giant lettering which reads 'We Have a Dream'

Warmth: Two men from Afghanistan prepare a fire in the camp, where they are surrounded by makeshift tents

Steve Job's biological father was Syrian political refugee Abdul Fattah Jandali, who came from the ruined city of Homs.

Mr Jandali, 84, who lives in Nevada, is the son of a wealthy millionaire who owned 'several entire villages', according to Job's biological father.

He left Syria to study at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon where he became heavily involved in political activism, attending protests in support for Algerian independence.

The 84-year-old left Lebanon and moved to New York for further university education at Columbia and Wisconsin University to which he gained a Ph.D. in Economics and Political Sciences.

Working hard: A man removes a wheelbarrow load of dirt after digging a ditch inside the camp in Calais
Criticism: Rachel Johnson, pictured with her husband Ivo Dawnay, told her local council that it is 'long, long past time to call a halt to this madness'

Rachel Johnson has launched a campaign to stop her neighbours building an iceberg basement in their 7million Notting Hill home.

The 50-year-old Mail on Sunday columnist and sister of London Mayor Boris Johnson has criticised the plans for the property as wildly unsuitable and potentially hazardous.

And Miss Johnson, who has lived in the upmarket West London area since 1979, is protesting at the third attempt by Igor and Christina Kryca to get the basement passed by Kensington and Chelsea borough council.

The couple's last two attempts were rejected over concerns including stability and flooding, and Mrs Johnson believes that the unpopular development would cause major disruption.

In a letter co-signed by her husband Ivo Dawnay, London director of the National Trust, she wrote: This terraced section of the street is wildly unsuitable to the digging out of what would be in effect a double basement.

'These are small, delicate, jerry-built Victorian houses, not Kensington mansions. They are quite unsuitable for deep subterranean excavations and all the attendant noise, traffic movements, disruption, structural damage and environmental impacts they cause for up to years at a time.

This continues to be the wrong plan, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time... It is long, long past time to call a halt to this madness.

Also upset at the plans is another local resident in Bafta-winning producer Stephen Lambert, who is behind Gogglebox and The Secret Millionaire.

Controversy: Miss Johnson has criticised the plans for the house on this street (above) as 'wildly unsuitable'

He wrote a letter to the council saying: The applicants have appealed the councils decision [to reject the last plan] and we are awaiting the inspectorates ruling on the appeal.

In the meantime, our neighbours need for a basement media room and gym is obviously desperate as, rather than wait for the inspectors decision, they have now submitted this third application which their architects describe as almost identical.

This continues to be the wrong plan, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time Rachel Johnson, Mail on Sunday

The planning statement claims that the new application addresses the five reasons the council gave for rejecting the last application. We do not believe the new application adequately addresses the reasons for rejection.

Another Notting Hill neighbour called Justin Abbott pointed out that the council has recently built an excellent gym two minutes walk away and there are several local cinemas.

Developers have admitted the new proposal is similar to the previous one, but insisted that alterations such as amendments to the flood risk assessment have been made.

Upmarket area: The couple's last two attempts for getting the basement built on their property on this road (above) were rejected over concerns including stability and flooding

The council is set to make a decision on the application at a planning meeting next Tuesday. Homes on the street in Notting Hill are worth up to 13.8million, according to Zoopla.

Our neighbours need for a basement media room and gym is obviously desperate Stephen Lambert, TV producer behind Googlebox

In April 2013, a wealthy financiers plan to build a huge extension for a gym and kitchen in his 8million home on the same street was rejected after another campaign by Miss Johnson.

She joined with neighbours such as comedian Ruby Wax after Mark Hawtin applied to add a second basement level to his five-storey house by digging 5ft 9in out below the road.
Republicans have tapped Nikki Haley, the two-term governor of South Carolina who banned the confederate flag last this year, to give their response to President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address next Tuesday.

Haley rose to notoriety last year after a national controversy erupted over the continued use of the Civil War-era flag on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds.

A month before a shooter stormed an African-American church in Charleston and murdered nine parishioners, including its pastor, while uttering a racial slur, and injuring a tenth. He was identified afterward in Confederate flag memorabilia online.

Republicans have tapped Nikki Haley, the two-term governor of South Carolina whose seen here banning the confederate flag last year, to give their response to President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address next Tuesday

Haley gave an emotional tribute to the victims of the shooting, saying 'the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken' in remarks as she characterized it as a 'strong and faithful state.'

She found herself back in the spotlight weeks later as South Carolina came under scrutiny over a statute that required the flag to waive atop a Confederate war memorial on state property.

The governor threw her support behind the removal of the flag - but said it wasn't up to her. Only the state legislature could make that change in the law.

Days later state lawmakers passed legislation discontinuing the use of the historically controversial flag that critics said was a symbol of racism.

'For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation,' President Barack Obama said at the time. 'We see that now.'

Obama said the state's step was 'a signal of good will and healing, and a meaningful step towards a better future.'

The moment made Haley a national hero for a time, as Democrats and Republicans praised her for advocating for its removal.

'I am proud to say that it's a new day in South Carolina,' Haley said on the day it came down.

Haley wasn't always so popular in her state.

After a tenure that included a hacking scandal that exposed the data of 3.8 million of the state's residents and 700,000 businesses, she was expected to have a tough re-election battle in 2014, though she ended up beating her Democratic opponent 56-41.

The youngest governor in America and the first woman to lead South Carolina, Haley represents two demographics the GOP has struggled to win over in previous national elections and is an attractive pick for vice president for this year's Republican presidential candidates.

She's the daughter of immigrants, and the 43-year-old is one of two sitting Indian American governors, the other being Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who gave the GOP's response speech in 2009.

VICE PRESIDENT HALEY? Haley represents several demographics the GOP has struggled to win over in previous national elections and is an attractive pick for vice president for this year's Republican presidential candidates. She's seen here standing with Rick Santorum and a forum in her state for 2016 candidates in September

House Speaker Paul Ryan made the announcement this afternoon that Haley had been tapped to serve as the voice of the GOP after Obama's speech on Jan. 12.

'Nikki Haley has led an economic turnaround and set a bold agenda for her state, getting things done and becoming one of the most popular governors in America,' said Ryan, who rose to the challenge in 2011 on behalf of the GOP.

'In a year when the country is crying out for a positive vision and alternative to the status quo,' he said, 'Governor Haley is the exact right choice to deliver the Republican Address to the Nation.'

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Haley is 'a proven leader and committed reformer who believes deeply in the promise of the country we all share.'

'Governor Haley knows the American Dream and wants to see every American share in it, and were pleased that she will be delivering this years Republican Address,' McConnell said.

The party in power typically gives a response to the State of the Union that is also broadcast on major news networks.

Used successfully, the address can serve as a launching pad for rising stars, as it did for Ryan and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, now a Republican candidate for president.

Rubio is known for guzzling water in the speech in an embarrassing episode of dry mouth, but he turned the incident into a laughable moment and it did not ultimately hurt his presidential prospects.

Giving the address has was the kiss of death for other Republicans, including Jindal, who gave the first GOP response to Obama in 2009.

The last three years Republicans have made women the face of their efforts, putting up newly elected Iowa Senator Joni Ernst in 2015 and Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top-ranking woman in House leadership, the year before.

McMorris Rodgers had just had a baby two months prior and gave her address from a seated position on a couch rather than a standing position.

Haley, whose time in office will come to an end in 2018, said today that she is 'honored' to have been selected.
Deep-sea octopi will brood on their eggs more than four years. Jeremy Corbyn was not quite that slow hatching his reshuffle but Labour was plainly in a state of glacial uncertainty.

In the Commons at one point in the afternoon, seven of the Opposition frontbenchers present were flicking through the internet on their mobile devices.

The same was evident on the Labour backbenches where Diana Johnson, Robert Flello, Tom Blenkinsop, Graham Jones, Ben Bradshaw, Fiona Mactaggart, Peter Dowd, Paula Sherriff and Paul Blomfield were all glued to their computer screens.

Fevered introspection: what a way for the Comrades to start 2016.

Mr Corbyn sat on the Labour front bench directly next to Hilary Benn, the man he had reportedly been trying to sack for the past several days. Two ice-bound eskimaux might have radiated greater warmth.

It made life carefree for David Cameron when he approached the despatch box to deliver a Statement on Europe.

He apologised for interrupting the worlds longest reshuffle. (Laughter.)

Alluding to the Shadow Cabinets Eagle twins, one of whom (the fair Maria) was struggling to retain her seat as Shadow Defence Secretary, Mr Cameron said, no matter how many Eagles you have, youve got an albatross at the head of your party.

More mirth. Even Angela Eagle, sitting two down from Mr Corbyn, cracked a smile. It was comparable to the moment in certain 1970s James Bond films when Jaws bares his gnashers.

There are rituals on the first day of any parliamentary year. Who had the best winter sun tan? Super-rich Jonathan Djanogly (Con, Huntingdon), brown as an old banana.

Who was looking prosperous? Boris Johnson had plainly been at the mince pies over Christmas.

George Osborne has become a silent-films cameo of scowly poses, sitting low in his seat, all crossed arms and sceptical eyebrows and Mexican villainy. Pictured, Osborne leaving 11 Downing Street today

That beard on the chin of Toby Perkins (Lab, Chesterfield) had sprouted another wispy inch, though it may not yet be Marxoid enough to secure loping Toby a place in the Corbynistas inner counsels.

Mr Cameron looked sleek, lifting his chin headboyishly as he sauntered towards his place at 2.37pm.

George Osborne had a bigger claque around him as he entered. The Chancellor has become a silent-films cameo of scowly poses, sitting low in his seat, all crossed arms and sceptical eyebrows and Mexican villainy.

Cheer up, lad. Youll never become Prime Minister if you look so thoroughly cheesed-off the whole time.

His communications director should buy a Ken Dodd feather duster with which to tickle Mr Osborne under the stifles.

Speaker Bercow delayed us briefly by announcing that the new Serjeant at Arms  the person traditionally i/c security at Westminster  is to be some Muslim chap good at martial arts.

The Serjeant wears black stockings and a long ceremonial sword so one hopes he will not do himself a nasty injury if he attempts a taekwondo kick while in uniform.

His previous job, said Mr Bercow, was front of house at the Ministry of Justice. How very Drury Lane.

While the PM made opening remarks, Mr Corbyn sat on the Labour front bench directly next to Hilary Benn, the man he had reportedly been trying to sack for the past several days.

Two ice-bound eskimaux might have radiated greater warmth.

At the end of the bench, tan-creamed legs crossed, sat Labour Chief Whip Dame Rosie Winterton.

The New Year Honours damehood takes her even further into the realms of vaudeville. Marvellous. And to think she started her career as John Prescotts typiste.

Of Michael Dugher, assassinated as Labours culture spokesman and democratic socialisms new Spartacus, there was no sign.

Hes appearing on telly, explained a fellow scribe. But former Shadow Cabinet thruster Rachel Reeves was back from maternity leave, sitting beside Emma Reynolds. No fans of Corbyn, those two.

The Labour leader spoke in an unexciting manner for rather too long.

He tried to give Mr Cameron tips on diplomacy, saying to achieve change you need to make friends. This created an explosion of laughter from several sides.

Mr Cameron said that when he was in Brussels, European leaders kept asking him what on earth has happened to the British Labour Party?
An unrecognisable lump of charred plastic and metal is all that is left of a hoverboard which destroyed a family home in Melbourne's north-west on Monday.

A faulty hoverboard's battery exploded while it was charging, sparking a state-wide investigation into businesses selling 'dodgy', unsafe, recalled models of the toy.

Authorities will be inspecting all hoverboard stockists, including online suppliers, from Wednesday to ensure they are not supplying recalled products.

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The charred remains of the hoverboard which sparked a house fire in Stratham on Monday

The fire started in a child's bedroom where the machine was charging, the family watching television were oblivious to the disaster unfolding just metres away

Models which do not comply with Australian standards will be seized by authorities, individuals will be fined $4000, while businesses can expect a $20,000 fine.

The house fire, in Melbourne's Stratham left a family of five without a home, and everything they owned destroyed by fire, smoke and the water used to extinguish the blaze.

The fire started in a child's bedroom where the hoverboard, a Christmas gift, was charging.

Acting Commander Phil Smith of Victoria Police told Daily Mail Australia that the family were watching television in the front of the house when the fire, which would gut their home, broke out were 'oblivious to what was going on'.

The fire has sparked a state-wide investigation into the sale of recalled hoverboards in Victoria

The hoverboards are known for their unstable lithium battery which has caused many of them, usually cheaper models, to explode without warning

They were alerted to the blaze when a smoke alarm was activated.

It took firefighters 30 minutes to control the fire, the family and their pets managed to escape without injury.

Victoria's Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett will write to toy retailers and peak industry bodies to remind them of their responsibilities.

'These toys are very popular but they are also dangerous and could have devastating consequences if they are dodgy or aren't used properly,' she said on Wednesday.

The occupants of the house managed to escape unharmed, however authorities are concerned that the devices could lead to a tragedy

It took firefighters 30 minutes to control the fire which spread from a child's bedroom

'I have instructed Consumer Affairs Victoria to conduct an immediate blitz across the state to make sure we don't have a tragedy.'

This is the first house fire to be caused by a hoverboard in the Melbourne area however Mr Smith expects that to change.

'There is a good chance, following this, there are going to be more,' he said.

Victoria's Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett is calling for a nation-wide ban of the toy

The popular Christmas gift has had safety issues globally, especially with cheaper models, and have been removed from the shelves of many stores including Amazon.

Major airlines have also banned the gadget as their lithium battery is a potential fire hazard.

Ms Garrett is calling for a nationwide ban of the toy.
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With a head as large as a two-storey house, this gigantic golden Chairman Mao Zedong sculpture sits proudly in Tongxu county, central China's Henan Province.

The 121-foot-tall statue - which was funded by a group of entrepreneurs and local villagers  cost 3 million Yuan (310,000) to build, reports the Peoples Daily Online.

The giant sculpture of Communist China's first chairman, who ruled the country from 1949 for almost three decades, sits in the empty fields of the village of Zhushigang in Henan.

Sitting proud: This giant statue of Chairman Mao Zedong towers way above the trees in Tongxu county, central Chinas Henan Province

Striking: The painted gold statue costs nearly 3 million Yuan (300,000) donated by several entrepreneurs and some of the villagers

Mao's head: Some people online have said the statue in central China doesn't look like Mao Zedong, Communist Chinas founding father

The enormous figure has reportedly taken nine months to build, and is almost completed.

Villagers in the area have praised the statue and taken great pride in erecting it, but some people from the online community are confused by it, others think this statue is not the way to show respect.

One online user named Laputan-youxuan said: 'Farmers are so rich.'

Courage094 asked: 'Whats this for?'

Bai Shaolei had a few points to make: '1. Doesnt look like. 2. Mao Zedongs theory is important, not his image. 3. Is this built on farming land or housing land?'

Despite being blamed by the western media for killing millions of people in the late 1950's after his economic policies led to a widespread famine, and the cultural revolution in the 1970's, Communist Chinas founding father Chairman Mao is still widely respected in China, almost 40 years after his death in 1976.

Enormous: A crane is seen next to a giant statue of Chinese late chairman Mao Zedong under construction near crop fields in China

Shrine: A man looks at the giant statue of the late chairman Mao Zedong under construction, costing over 300,000 to build
One husband in the doghouse with his wife chose a novel way to apologise by renting out the illuminated banners of hundreds of taxi cabs with his own personalised message.

The unnamed man from downtown Yibin, Sichuan Province, south-west China, chose to publicly broadcast his message 'Sorry darling, please forgive me' to the entire city, according to People's Daily Online.

The lovelorn husband is said to have rented out the advertising for 1,407 cabs in total for three days between January 2 and 4 in an attempt to win back his partner after a mysterious wrong-doing.

Never too late: The unnamed man spent thousands on the hiring of advertising in downtown Yibin city, China

Heartfelt: The desperate message of 'Sorry darling, please forgive me' was beamed out all over the city

The man allegedly spent 30,000 yuan (around 3,000) hiring the ad boards, or 10,000 per day, in an attempt to show that this was one apology she simply could not ignore wherever she turned.

Netizens on the popular social media network Weibo were eager to chip in with their two cents about the whole affair, with some calling it romantic and others dismissing it as desperate.

One user Yi Tou commented: 'Is spending money on ads really [the way] to admit ones fault? Sincerity doesnt need a lot of money, the point is to use your heart.'

Whatever the cost: The boards, hired between January 2nd and 4th, are said to have cost him 30,000 yuan

Another, Yu Mo Ying Xiu, added: If shes a romantic woman, shell be happy; but if shes a pragmatic woman, she will distance herself even further, men like this are not reliable.

Dramatic public expressions of regret create buzz on Chinese social media, such as the man from Beijing who in April last year bought four pages of a major newspaper to apologise to his girlfriend.
Two university students have generated a lot of attention by publicly advertising to be 'rent-a-girlfriend' to single men in need of love and affection.

The unnamed girls put on the popular stunt on January 2 while visiting the shores of West Lake in Hangzhou, east China, one of the countries' major tourist destinations, according to People's Daily Online.

Holding up signs for hundreds of visitors to see, the women offered multiple 'accompanying services' including going to the movies, shopping and dinner dates for an unspecified monetary price.

On the lookout: The two unnamed girls offered services like movie dates to men at West Lake, east China

Business-savvy: The entrepreneurs declined to say how much money they were looking for for their company

Attention: The students, who merely claimed to be looking for extra cash, drew plenty of curious gazes

When asked by passers-by, the pair claimed to be business-savvy students who wanted to make some extra income in their spare time.

Seeing a gap in the market for single men in desperate need of female company, they figured that offering themselves as temporary girlfriends would do the trick.

West Lake was packed with visitors over the four-day New Year holiday last week and the girls took their chance with the big crowds, with pictures of their antics going viral on social media.

Many commenters on Weibo were quick to praise the beauty of the girls as well as their go-getting attitude and entrepreneurial spirit, with many offering to pay for the specified services.

Going viral: Many visitors posted pictures of the girls to Weibo, on which they impressed many men online

Business: Although they were quickly surrounded by crowds, its not certain whether they got any customers

By the lake, they were swamped by a crowd of curious potential customers, although it is not certain whether anyone took them up on their offers.

Some passers-by criticised their stunt as attention-seeking and turned their noses up at the girl's activities, although such behaviour is not unusual these days.

The stunt is part of a growing trend of 'rent-a-girlfriend' relationships across China, in which bachelors pay for temporary romantic company in order to appease demands from pushy parents.

In October, a week-long national holiday saw a particular surge in the business as desperate single men paid up to 1,000 Yuan (100) on various apps to hire a 'girlfriend' they had never met before, whom they'd bring back home to meet parents.
Shocking pictures have been posted on a Chinese social media app showing three passengers on a plane in the capital Beijing pointing what looks like a handgun at each other.

The pictures were first shared on WeChat on January 3 by an account called Tingjiping, with many internet users speculating what the gun-like object could be, reports The Peoples Daily Online.

Some have said its a prop or a toy, and others believe the object is a laptop charger. Beijing Capital International Airport Public Security Bureau said they were unaware of any weapon being taken onto a plane, but the matter will be thoroughly investigated.

Shocking: The unidentified man proudly holds what looks like a handgun on a plane in China's capital Beijing

Joking around: Two other men can be seen posing in the picture as if they are terrified of the 'handgun'

It is unclear which airline the passengers are flying with, but the pictures were thought to have been taken in an airplane at the Beijing Capital International Airport.

The unidentified men in the pictures are posing in a variety of different ways with the pistol-shaped object, looking extremely pleased and showing off.

One image shows a man pointing the item at his friends who are sitting down looking towards him and pretending to be terrified.

According to the report, the pictures have led to a heated online debate, with users asking how he managed to get the pistol or laptop battery on the plane in the first place.

One user said: Even if it is a fake gun, how come the airport security did not spot it?

Another person blamed the airport for allowing this to happen: The Beijing Capital Airport needs to give us an explanation.

This behaviour is ridiculous in a sensitive location such as an airplane. They have little sense of laws.

The object is suspected to be a laptop battery by Beijing Youth Daily. Reporters from the newspaper spoke to a computer expert who said a certain model of laptop battery in China can look similar to a handgun.

Debate: People on Chinese social media site Weibo are in two minds over what this object could be

A gun? It is unclear exactly what the man is holding in the picture, some say laptop battery, others say gun

The Civil Aviation Administration of China states that firearms, including a variety of simulation toys, miniature transmitters and various types of offensive weapons are prohibited on flights.

The authority writes on its website: Punishment will be given in accordance with the relevant legal provision warnings, fines, penalties and detention.

According to Europa.eu: 'When travelling by plane from an airport in the EU, you should keep in mind certain security requirements when packing and boarding. No weapons of any kind are allowed on board the aircraft.'

These items will be seized and you may be prosecuted.
You might think that the great masterpieces of Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci and Johannes Vermeer could never be replicated - but this group of Chinese school children is giving it a good go.

A contest at a school in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, east China, has invited entrants to give their best shot at recreating famous artworks in real life, according to People's Daily Online.

Many of the entries show a child in a comically intense pose as they strive to accurately imitate their favourite masterworks from the world of classical art.

Classics: Children at a school in Hangzhou, east China, pulled out the stops to recreate Mona Lisa and others

Uncanny: This girl's interpretation of Vermeer's 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' is particularly striking

Brilliant: A boy uses his homemade ruff to have a shot at being in Ruben's classic 'Portrait of a Man'

In one photograph, a young girl gazes over her shoulder and dons a makeshift towel-turban hat to replicate Vermeer's timeless 'Girl with A Pearl Earring' painting.

In another entry, a boy with a homemade cut-out paper ruff attempts to recreate Peter Paul Ruben's 'Portrait of a Man', complete with a rather serious pout.

In a third, a student recreates Sir Thomas Lawrence's 1825 classic 'The Red Boy' - but this time in his wooly pajamas, lounging on the sofa.

Taking it easy: One pupil lounges around to replicate Lawrence's enigmatic 'The Red Boy' masterpiece

Not short of effort: Manet's famous 'The Fifer', on display in Paris, is brought over to China by this young boy

Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night', meanwhile, was lovingly reproduced using what seems to be bits of shredded noodles stuck onto a sheet of blue card.

The contest's organisers at the school said they hoped the challenge would encourage the children to appreciate the ability to create real beauty, which is not always conveyed through merely looking at a painting.
Samsung has big plans for the newest additions of the Galaxy family and with just a month away from the unveiling, rumors are spreading about the new designs.

The major change could be the 5.7-inch display, listed on the screenshot that surfaced today, which would beat out iPhones 6s Pluss screen of just 5.5-inches.

Its also been going around that the company will be producing two versions of its Galaxy model this year.

Samsung has big plans for the newest additions of the Galaxy family and with just a month away from the unveiling, rumors are spreading that these are supposed to be the best variants yet. The major change could be the 5.7-inch display, which is listed on the screenshot that surfaced today, which beats out iPhones 6s Pluss screen of just 5.5-inches

One model is said to use a Samsung-made processor and the other will use Qualcomm.

The screenshot was shared by SamMobile, which shows the screen size, camera pixels and more.

WHAT ARE THE RUMORS ABOUT? The new Galaxy S7 display could be 5.7 inches. The rear-facing camera could be 12.2-megapixels and the front could be 5-megapixels. Other features such as a 4GB RAM and fingerprint sensor are expected to debut with the design. Other images show front panels have cut out for home button and sensors on each side. Advertisement

There is also word buzzing around about the Galaxy S7 Plus, and the model could run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor.

Its also suggested that the rear-facing camera will be 12.2 megapixel and the front will be 5-megapixels.

Other features such as a 4GB RAM and fingerprint sensor are expected to debut with the Galaxy S7 design.

A report was published by Phonearena yesterday, which showed two images that are rumored to be the display panels of the new smartphone.

The images shows a cut out of the home button, with sensors on each side.

The Wall Street Journal has also reported that the new phone will include a pressure sensitive display, just like the iPhone.

And with the new USB Type-C technology, the smartphone will have high-speed charging capabilities.

One model is said to use a Samsung-made processor and the other will use Qualcomm. The screenshot was shared by SamMobile , which shows the screen size, camera pixels and more. There is also word buzzing around about the Galaxy S7 Plus, and that the variant will run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor

The new device, which has not yet been officially announced, is expected to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, next month.

SAMSUNG LOSES OUT TO APPLE The British love affair with Apple endured in 2015, with six iPhones featuring in a list of the top 10 bestselling mobile phones of the year. Figures from price comparison site uSwitch.com show the 16GB version of the iPhone 6 took the crown, followed by the iPhone 5s, the larger 64GB iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6s. Major rival Samsung's highest position was fifth, for its Galaxy S6 handset, but its Galaxy Note 4 phablet did outsell Apple's iPhone 6s Plus, which failed to make the top te Advertisement

Its not secrete that Samsung has been struggling and next year could either make or break the company, if comments made by the tech giant's chief executive are anything to go by.

In a message to employees, Kwon Oh-hyun warned that growth in the company will continue to be slow over the next 12 months, and he blamed it on weak economies and growing competition.

The comments, which didn't disclose specific forecasts, come amid growing concerns that Samsung's results for October to December may be weaker than previously expected.

The warning was made as part of the chief executive's New Year report to his staff.

Its also suggested that the rear-facing camera will be 12.2 megapixel and the front will be 5-megapixels. Other features such as a 4GB RAM and fingerprint sensor are expected to debut with the Galaxy S7 design. The images shows a cut out of the home button, with sensors on each side

In his statement, he said he expects a difficult business environment in 2016 due to weak global economic conditions and heightened competition in key businesses including memory chips and smartphones.

Samsung shares dropped by 3.4 per cent overnight, after earlier dropping 3.5 percent to a three-month low, while the broader Seoul market was off 1.5 per cent.

'Negative impact from weak demand and falling sales prices for semiconductor and liquid crystal display industries was likely bigger than initially anticipated,' brokerage Korea Investment said in a report issued separately on Monday.

Samsung's boss Kwon Oh-hyun has warned that growth in the company will continue to be slow over the next 12 months, and he blamed it on weak economies and growing competition. The comments come amid growing concerns Samsung's results for October to December may be weaker than previously expected

Korea Investment lowered its estimate for Samsung's fourth-quarter operating profit to 6.4 trillion won ($5.41 billion) from 6.8 trillion won previously.

The mean estimate of 36 analysts' forecasts, compiled from a survey by Thomson Reuters, is for operating profit of 6.8 trillion won, 8.1 per cent lower than the 7.4 trillion won booked in the third quarter.

Samsung boss Kwon also warned of greater competition in the firm's main businesses, Samsung said in its statement, without offering detailed financial forecasts.

The firm is expected to issue official earnings guidance for the October to December period on Friday.

Samsung shares dropped by 3.4 per cent overnight, after earlier dropping 3.5 percent to a three-month low, while the broader Seoul market was off 1.5 per cent (pictured)

It already said in late October that operating profit for the quarter will be lower than July-September earnings, citing seasonally weaker demand for its component businesses.

The British love affair with its major rival Apple endured in 2015, with six iPhones featuring in a list of the top 10 bestselling mobile phones of the year.

Figures from price comparison site uSwitch.com show the 16GB version of the iPhone 6 took the crown, followed by the iPhone 5s, the larger 64GB iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6s.
World Meteorological Society recently warned droughts are the biggest concern from all the possible effects of global warming

Like Moses in the Bible, a French geologist has proved he can find water even in the dry, dusty landscapes of the desert.

But instead of striking rocks with a stick, Alain Gachet has designed software that can unscramble radar images taken by satellites high above Earth to expose water hidden underground.

So far, Mr Gachet has used the technique to find water in some of the world's driest regions such as Darfur, Kenya and Ethiopia, offering hope that deadly droughts could be stopped.

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Alain Gachet (pictured) has written a computer programme that can unscramble radar images taken by satellites high above Earth to expose water hidden underground

Dr Gachet, 65, told John Lichfield from The Independent that his process peels away layers of rock 'like an onion' to reveal subterranean aquifers and rivers of fresh water below desert areas.

He came up with the Watex system in 2002, which combines radar and conventional data used for finding oil.

Watex uses ground-penetrating radar scans from satellites and aircraft to detect humidity up to 98ft (30 metres) underground.

Ground-penetrating radar uses high frequency radio waves to image the subsurface.

When waves encounter a buried object or boundary between materials - for example, sand to water - some are scattered back to the surface and the variations recorded to build up a map of materials undergound.

Dr Gachet said: 'Nasa's Landsat and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission [data] are my eyes on the ground' and are used by the system for terrain analysis.

The images are used to identify geological features such as faults and drainage channels, for example.

A computer algorithm then combines geology, slopes, fractures, watershed boundaries, regional precipitation and temperature data.

Because of his invention, Dr Gachet has been likened to the prophet Moses, whom, the Bible said, 'lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came forth abundantly' (illustrated)

Dr Gachet came up with the Watex system in 2002. It uses radar scans from satellites and aircraft to detect humidity up to 98ft (30 metres) underground. This image shows a hydrogeologic map of Kenyas Turkana region created with the Watex program

HOW DOES WATEX WORK? Dr Gachet came up with the Watex system in 2002, which combines radar and conventional data. It uses ground-penetrating radar scans from satellites and aircraft to detect humidity up to 98ft (30 metres) underground. He said: 'Nasa's Landsat and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission [data] are my eyes on the ground' and are used by the system for terrain analysis.' The images are used to identify geological features such as faults and drainage channels, for example. A computer algorithm then combines geology, slopes, fractures, watershed boundaries, regional precipitation and temperature data. It removes 'ground features' such as trees clouding water reserves to allow it to look deeper - with the aid of geological surveys - some 2,297ft (700 metres) below the surface, to produce groundwater target maps. Mr Gachet said that the programme makes water 'glow' on the radar scans and that it can locate water with 94 per cent certainty. Aid workers can be trained to use a laptop with the programme on, GPS systems and maps that indicate where the best prospects for drilling are. Advertisement

It removes 'ground features' such as trees clouding water reserves to allow it to look deeper - with the aid of geological surveys - some 2,297ft (700 metres) below the surface, to produce groundwater target maps.

Aid workers can be trained to use a laptop with the programme on, GPS systems and maps that indicate where the best prospects for drilling are.

Mr Gachet said that the programme makes water 'glow' on the radar scans and that it can locate water with 94 per cent certainty.

'You can see the shining veins of the edges of aquifers and underground rivers.'

Because of his invention used by NGOs, Unesco and governments, he has been likened to the prophet Moses, whom the Bible said, 'lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came forth abundantly'.

Mr Gachet, who is the boss and founder of Radar Technologies International (RTI) has proved vast reservoirs of natural water lie beneath barren parts of the world and are constantly replenished.

He said they are 30 times larger than the contents of the world's man-made reservoirs, rivers and lakes.

However, reaching these resources is another challenge, because extracting deep water is expensive and does not currently have the commercial value of oil.

In 2013, Mr Gachet hit the headlines when he discovered a lake larger than Windermere some 1,050ft (320 metres) below the the Turkana desert - a drought-stricken part of north Kenya.

The Watex system has also been used to find water for aid agencies foreign governments in Angola, Chad, Darfur and Afghanistan.

Mr Gachet has additionally helped engineers from the US geological service find a 'Karamara East Aquifer' some 124 miles (200km) long and 31 miles (50km) wide, up to 2,297ft (700 metres) below deserts in north Ethiopia, which has suffered numerous famines.

In 2013, Mr Gachet hit the headlines when he discovered a lake larger than Windermere some 1,050 feet (320 metres) below the the Turkana desert - a drought-stricken part of north Kenya. A file image showing a Turkana woman and her son carrying water in the desert is shown above

THE DISCOVERY IN DROUGHT-PRONE KENYA In September 2013, large underground water reserves were found in Turkana - one of Kenyas driest and poorest regions. Some two million people live in the region which suffers drought and water scarcity. RTI surveyed groundwater reserves for the Kenyan Government on behalf of the UN. Aquifers were detected using the firm's Watex system. Overall, the RTI study found that Turkana hosts a minimum reserve of 250 billion cubic metres of water, which is recharged mainly by the rainfalls of the Kenyan and Ugandan highlands. Nasa wrote: 'This groundwater raises the prospect for improving the livelihoods of the Turkana people, most of whom live in poverty and have limited access to basic services and clean water.' The Lotikipi Basin Aquifer found is estimated to hold 207 billion cubic metres of water - the same amount as nearby Lake Turkana. RTI also found two billion cubic metres of water passing only a few metres under the ground within easy reach, which could be used by struggling farmers. Advertisement

The service said the aquifer could contain up to 30 billion cubic metres of water and will make the lives of one million impoverished people living nearby easier.

Dr Gachet added that the drillers are the 'real heroes', as they put themselves at risk from Al-Shabaab terrorists.

A recipient of France's highest honour, the Legion d'Honneur, the programmer has now written a book about his career, called 'L'Homme qui fait jaillir l'eau du desert' or 'The man who makes the desert gush with water'.

Dr Gachet believes the lack of water in Africa and the Middle East is the cause of problems.

'Why are migrants pouring into Europe from Africa? Because drought means that their animals are dying and their families are dying and they have no choice but to seek a living elsewhere,' he told Mr Lichfield.

'Similarly, the failure of crops from Tunisia to Syria, caused by shortages of water, is largely responsible for the conflicts which have spawned Daesh (Isis).'

Last month, head of the World Meteorological Society, Michel Jarraud, warned widespread water shortages caused by rising global temperatures could lead to food shortages and mass migration.

He said that of all the threats posed by a warming climate, shrinking water supplies are the most serious.

It is predicted that by 2025, some 2.8 billion people will live in 'water scarce' areas - a huge rise from the 1.6 billion who do now.

Dr Gachet believes his invention could be the basis of a global programme to find new water resources and that it could lead to the development of commercial infrastructure capable of pumping it to the Earth's surface, with the aim of ending droughts.

Dr Gachet believes the lack of water in Africa and the Middle East is the cause of problems such as war and terrorism. This file image shows children collecting water from a well in Ethiopia
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It is a journey that takes even the speediest cruise liners up to a week, but a group of British engineers is hoping to cross the Atlantic by boat in under two days - on a single tank of fuel.

Led by businessman Richard George, the team is building a boat capable of smashing the world record for the 3,100 mile trip (4,988km), yet said it will also be capable of carrying commercial passengers.

The wave-piercing 112ft (34 metre) powerboat, which will have a seven-man crew, will make the trip between Cornwall and New York at an average speed of 65mph (105km/h) in just 48 hours.

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A group of British engineers is building a boat capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean between Cornwall and New York in just 48 hours. The design (illustrated in a CGI image) will make the crossing with an average speed of (105km/h), beating the current two day, ten hour and 54-minute record for the crossing that has been held since 1992

The current record for the crossing is two days, ten hours and 54 minutes, achieved by the Aga Khan's 220ft (68km/h) powerboat Destriero in 1992.

But Mr George, project leader of Team Great Britain, said he hoped his new carbon-fibre boat will be able to complete the record using just a single tank of fuel.

'It will be a wave-piercing catamaran that, given the right conditions, will be able to complete the crossing in 48 hours, while using a fraction of the fuel of former competitors,' he said.

'The idea is not only to win the record back for Britain but to develop a boat that will go on to influence the industry in terms of efficiency.

Team Great Britain's vessel (illustrated) will be made from carbon fibre and crewed by seven crew members. It has been designed to make the journey on a single tank of fuel, similar to Aga Khan's record-breaking trip in 1992

Team Great Britain will attempt to make the 3,100 mile journey from Cornwall to New York in under 48 hours in their state of the art boat

'It's an enormous challenge but we're confident we can pull it off.'

Sir Richard Branson set the world record for crossing the Atlantic Ocean by boat in 1986 in his 72ft (22 metre) Virgin Atlantic Challenger II with a time of three days, eight hours and 31 minutes.

This was then broken six years later by the Aga Khan's Destriero.

FASTEST ATLANTIC CROSSINGS 1986  Sir Richard Branson set a new eastbound transatlantic speed record in the power boat Virgin Atlantic Challenger II. The vessel averaged 36.79 knots (42.3mph) and refuelled three times to achieve a voyage time of three days, eight hours and 31 minutes. 1988  The Italian, Azimut Atlantic Challenger failed to make the record attempt twice due to bad weather. 1989  The US vessel Gentry Eagle, owned by Tom Gentry, achieved a time of two days 14 hours and seven minutes, refueling three times. 1992  The Italian designed Destriero made the crossing, without refuelling, in two days 10 hours 54 mins 50 seconds with an average speed of 53.09 knots (61.09mph). 1998  The 91m Catalonia, built by Tasmanian company Incat set a new passenger vessel record in three days, nine hours at an average speed of 38.9 knots (44.7mph). 1998  The 91m Cat-Link V built by Incat set another passenger vessel record of two days, 20 hours and nine minutes with an average speed of 41.3 knots (47.5mph). Advertisement

But the new team hope its 15 million ($22 million) project will smash the existing record when it makes its attempt in summer 2018.

Mr George has assembled some of the biggest names in powerboating to join his Team Great Britain crew including 82-year-old Dag Pike, Branson's navigator in 1986, and Dan Stevens, the current owner of Virgin Atlantic Challenger II.

The IT specialist and powerboat enthusiast from Plymouth, Devon, said: 'I used to race XCat powerboats and it always struck me how environmentally unfriendly the powerboat racing industry is as a whole.

The catamaran design will allow the vessel to pierce through waves, helping to improve its efficiency and speed as it makes the 3,100 mile (4,988km) journey from Cornwall to New York

Project leader Richard George (crouching) has assembled a team of powerboat experts and engineers, some of whom worked on Virgin Atlantic Challenger 2. Member of the team are pictured above

'The boats are built for power and speed with little thought to how much emissions they pump out.

'It got me thinking that there had to be a way to do something based around efficiency that gave off a positive message.

'It's always been something that interests me but to do it these days you have to have a boat that is not only fast but also very efficient.'

The schedule date for the record-breaking attempt has not yet been announced.
They will be replacing a failed voltage regulator that compromised one of the station's eight power channels last November

Major Peake will venture outside the station with flight engineer Tim Kopra

This will make him the first Briton to walk in space outside the ISS

Tim Peake will take part in the spacewalk on 15 January

Astronaut Tim Peake is to make history by becoming the first British citizen to conduct a spacewalk next week when he will step outside the International Space Station to conduct important repairs.

The 43-year-old has been conducting preparatory work ahead of an extravehicular activity - as spacewalks are known - to repair a faulty power unit on the outside the space station.

Together with Nasa astronaut Tim Kopra, he will spend six hours outside the safety of the orbiting habitat in a spacesuit when it begins on the morning of 15 January.

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Major Tim Peake will make history for a second time next week when he steps outside the International Space Station to conduct repairs as the first British astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. Although he was not initially scheduled to conduct a spacewalk, he underwent extensive training (pictured) before his launch last month

Major Peake has been on board the International Space Station (ISS) for two weeks after blasting off from Kazakhstan in a Soyuz rocket.

Although he was not initially scheduled to conduct a spacewalk during his time on the International Space Station, he was hopeful he might get the chance to do one.

He underwent extensive training for conducting EVA's when he was preparing for his six month stay on the space station. The repairs will now see him step outside.

Commenting on the news, Major Peake said: 'I am thrilled at this opportunity for a spacewalk. Right now we are focusing on preparing the tools, equipment and procedures.

Tim Peake has taken a lead role in the preparation for the repair mission by testing space equipment that may be used to replace the faulty power unit on the outside of the space station. During a media conference after his first week in orbit (pictured), Major Peake said he had hoped to experience a spacewalk for himself

Major Peake will conduct the first spacewalk of 2016. Last month he helped to support two Nasa astronauts last month as they performed an emergency spacewalk to unjam a railcar on the outside of the space station (pictured). He helped them put on their spacesuits and provided vital contact from inside the space station

'Maintaining the International Space Station from the outside requires intense operations - not just from the crew, but also from our ground support teams who are striving to make this spacewalk as safe and efficient as possible.'

Major Peake has completed training for a spacewalk as part of his preparations for the Principia Mission ahead of blast off on 15 December.

The Esa astronaut has taken a lead role in the preparation for the repair mission by testing and preparing a spare sequential shunt unit (SSU) that will replace a faulty one.

SSUs are responsible for receiving power from the solar arrays and regulating the voltage on the space lab, 249 miles (400km) above Earth.

I am thrilled to be assigned a spacewalk in 10 days. Lots of work to do before Tim and I can open the hatch https://t.co/ff7IEBfc3k  Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) January 5, 2016

PREPARING FOR A SPACEWALK Before the astronauts leave the safety of the space station they will then breathe pure oxygen for two hours to purge their bodies of nitrogen. The spacesuit pressure is lower than in the Space Station and the drop could give them the 'bends', much like scuba divers rising too quickly to the sea surface. Donning their spacesuits and safety equipment will take hours before they enter the airlock to reduce the pressure until it is safe to open the exterior hatch. Each will require help to put on the awkward equipment and helmet. Advertisement

On 23 December he connected power and data cables to the spare SSU before putting power through the unit to confirm it was in working order.

On Christmas Eve he conducted further preparations before stowing the spare unit safely ahead of the walk.

Commander Scott Kelly has also been involved in conducting preparations for the spacewalk by charging batteries for the extravehicular mobility unit.

However, Nasa has now confirmed that the spacewalk will be conducted by Flight engineer Kopra and Major Peake.

Inside the Station, Scott Kelly will help the spacewalkers into and out of their suits.

The repair mission will be broadcast live on Nasa TV on 15 January.

Major Peake said: 'Our primary task will be to replace a failed Solar Shunt Unit, which transfers electrical power generated by the solar panels.'

Writing on Twitter, he added: 'I am thrilled to be assigned a spacewalk in 10 days. Lots of work to do before Tim and I can open the hatch.'

After a stuck brake handle stalled a railcar outside of the ISS, two astronauts set out on a 'spacewalk,'before Christmas to repair the car in time for an upcoming docking. In under an hour, Nasa's Commander Scott Kelly and flight engineer Timothy Kopra were able to release the brake handles by hitting it twice

The unit is relatively easy to replace because it is a simple box that can be removed by undoing one bolt.

If they manage this quickly, the spacewalkers will then lay cables in advance of new docking ports and reinstall a valve that was removed for the relocation of the Leonardo module last year.

The ISS has eight shunt units to regulate power but has been operating with only seven since last November.

Major Peake added: 'If the spacewalk is successful, this will restore the International Space Station to 100% of its operational capability.

In November SSU-1B was found to have a fault causing a power outage that forced the crew to switch to a different power channel.

Attempts to fix the problem from inside the space station have been unsuccessful and now the faulty unit will be replaced from the outside of the ISS.

A similar SSU replacement was performed in October 2014 by spacewalkers Reid Wiseman and Barry Wilmore.

Tim Peake has previously completed training (shown above) for a spacewalk as part of his preparations for the Principia Mission ahead of his blast off that took place on 15 December

At a press conference held shortly after arriving at the space station, Major Peake said he was looking forward to experiencing the view of the Earth from outside the space station.

'When I went to the Cupola [an observatory module in the ISS] yesterday, I watched a sunset and a sunrise at different times. It was incredible,' he explained.

'To be out there on a spacewalk when that actually happens will be the most spectacular thing ever.'

It takes around 90 minutes for the ISS to orbit Earth once, so astronauts get to experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets each day.

Last month, Major Peake helped to support two Nasa astronauts  commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineer Timothy Kopra  as they conducted an emergency EVA to fix a jammed rail car.

This NasaTV image grab shows a live broadcast of Scott Kelly during the spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The hastily planned spacewalk lasted three hours and 16 minutes, and the two astronauts completed the main mission in less than an hour

In under an hour, Commander Kelly and Kopra were able to release the brake handles by hitting it twice, and then guided it back into place.

The hastily planned spacewalk lasted three hours and 16 minutes, and the two astronauts completed the main mission in less than an hour.

'That was pretty easy,' Commander Kelly said during to a live broadcast of the spacewalk on Nasa TV.

The astronauts had to guide the car just four inches (10cm) back into place after releasing the brake handle, and then latch it back to its rightful spot.

If they had not fixed the problem, a Russian Progress cargo ship carrying nearly three tons of food and supplies would not be able to dock as scheduled days later.

Luckily, the mission was quick and successful.

'Good news! It appears to have reached the work site,' astronaut Mike Hopkins in Mission Control said shortly after the rail car was moved.

'It's in a good config,' Hopkins said to the astronauts. 'Well done!'

Four hours after the spacewalk began, the cargo ship launched from Kazakhstan to make its way toward the ISS.

This spacewalk was the seventh one this year, but operated under significantly less planning than normal.

A handout photograph made available by Nasa showing Expedition 46 Flight Engineer Tim Kopra on the spacewalk. Astronauts had to guide the stalled rail car just four inches back into place after releasing the brake handle, and then latch it back to its rightful spot

If they hadn't fixed the problem, a Russian Progress cargo ship carrying nearly three tons of food and supplies would not be able to dock as scheduled on Wednesday. Luckily, the mission was quick and successful. Four hours after the spacewalk began, the cargo ship launched from Kazakhstan to make its way toward the ISS

Astronauts plan for months before going on a spacewalk. Due to the circumstances, this month's spacewalk was organised quickly.

The rail car became stuck last Wednesday after being blocked from its latching point by a crew equipment cart was left with its brake on.

Once the problem was fixed, Kelly and Kopra turned their sights to other housekeeping tasks outside of the ISS.

The two astronauts spent the remaining time routing cables along the space station, and retrieving tools that had been stored on the side.

Commander Kelly has been at the space station since March, and Kopra arrived just six days before his spacewalk along with Majro Peake.

During the three-hour spacewalk, Major Peake, along with Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko, Yuri Malenchenko and Sergei Volkov, remained on board the ISS.

Tim Peake (pictured) gave the crucial 'go' signal for the two astronauts to open the airlock hatch to begin the spacewalk just before Christmas
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An artist used logarithmic maps and satellite images to created a piece of artwork that is out of this world.

Pablo Carlos Budassi took our massive universe and compiled it into a single a breathtakingly, colourful image.

The image includes showcases everything from the sun to the Andromeda galaxy to the plasma left behind billions of years ago by the Big Bang.

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An artist used logarithmic maps and satellite images to created a piece of artwork that is out of this world. Pablo Carlos Budassi took our massive universe and compiled it into a single a breathtakingly, colorful image. The image includes everything from the sun to the Andromeda galaxy to the plasma left behind billions of years ago by the Big Bang.

LOGARITHMIC MAPS Logarithms help us make sense of huge numbers, and in this case, huge distances. Rather than showing all parts of the universe on a linear scale, each chunk of the circle represents a field of view several orders of magnitude larger than the one before it. This allows the entire observable universe to fit inside the circle. Advertisement

The design is based on the logarithmic maps put together by Princeton University and images taken by NASA with telescopes and satellites.

Logarithmic maps let us visualise extremely large areas, because each 'step' on the axes increases by a factor of 10.

In the center of the image is the glowing sun, then each planet is placed where it is in our Solar System.

Budassi captured the outer rings of the Milky Way, the Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri star, Perseus Arm, other nearby galaxies, the cosmic microwave radiation leftover from the Big Bang and ended with the ring of plasma also from the Big Bang.

'Then when I was drawing hexaflexagons for my [son's] birthday souvenirs I started drawing central views of the cosmos and the solar system,' Budassi told Tech Insider in an email.

'That day the idea of a logarithmic view came and in the next days I was able to [assemble] it with photoshop using images from NASA and some textures created by my own.'

WHAT ARE HEXAFLEXAGONS? Hexaflexagons are paper hexagons folded from strips of paper which reveal different faces as they are. It has six different 'faces'. Hexaflexagons began in the fall of 1939 when a Princeton University graduate student trimmed an inch from his American notebook sheets to fit his English binder. After folding the trimmed-off strips for amusement, he came upon the first Hexaflexagon, one that had three faces (now called a Trihexaflexagon). Advertisement

The researchers from Princeton University created their maps using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which used a 2.5-meter, wide-angle optical telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

Their detailed three-dimensional maps included more than 3 million astronomical objects, according to an article in Science Alert.

SDSS has measured images for tens of millions of galaxies and three-dimensional positions (using redshifts obtained from spectra of these galaxies) of about 500,000 objects.

Our universe was created about 13.75 billion years ago and since then it has been growing at a fast pace.

Scientists believe the oldest photons they have studied traveled 45 to 47 billion light years since the beginning of our universe or the Big Bang.

This means the universe we know is about 93 billion light-years wide.

This past October, astronomers had a glimpse of a parallel universe bumping against our own.

Artist's logarithmic scale conception of the local galaxy cluster region with the Solar System at the center, inner and outer planets, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri, Perseus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, nearby galaxies. Image highlights the center of Budassi's single image of the universe

The design is based on the logarithmic maps put together by Princeton University (pictured) and images taken by NASA with telescopes and satellites. Budassi captured the outer rings of the Milky Way, the Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri star, Perseus Arm, other nearby galaxies, the cosmic microwave radiation leftover from the Big Bang and ended with the ring of plasma also from theBig Bang

HOW IT WAS MADE In the center of the image is the glowing sun, then each planet is placed where it is in our Solar System. Budassi captured the outer rings of the Milky Way, the Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri star, Perseus Arm, other nearby galaxies, the cosmic microwave radiation leftover from the Big Bang and ended with the ring of plasma also from the Big Bang. It was created using Photoshop, using images from NASA and some textures created by the artist. Advertisement

Scientists say they have seen hints in signals from the furthest reaches of space that suggest the fabric of our universe is being disrupted by another quite different universe.

The analysis could provide one of the first pieces of proof of the multi-verse theory, which says there are many alternate universes.

Dr Ranga-Ram Chary, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, examined data from the cosmic microwave background gathered by the European Space Agency's Planck Space Telescope.

Within this glow left over from the moments after the Big Bang, he discovered a number of spots where the microwave light is far brighter than it should be.

These, he claims, may be signals caused by the interaction between our universe and another one a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago.

According to New Scientist, which first reported the Dr Chary's research, this is akin to two bubbles bumping into each other.

These so-called 'bubble universes', which are expanding within the multiverse, bumped into each other as they expanded after the Big Bang, leaving an imprint on each other's outer surface.
By my third day here, I'm finally comfortable with none of the hotel rooms in the British Virgin Islands coming with a door key. This corner of the Caribbean runs on trust.

No need to lock anything up and nothing seems to get nicked.

There are other things missing. Many of the hotels don't bother with TVs - but I've found something better to watch: the pelicans skimming the surface of the smooth sea inches from your face, the frothing, red blooms of the tamarind trees, the hummingbird who joins me for my hotel breakfast.

Sheer bliss: Cane Garden Bay, on the largest of the BVIs, Tortola, sums up the archipelago's appeal

Not to mention the broad-shouldered giant iguana - the size of a cat - who, one day as I get back from the beach, lurches across my path with the threatening gait of Phil Mitchell on his way to a pub fight.

The BVIs are a little off the beaten path, and all the better for that. Perched between Puerto Rico and Anguilla, the country consists of 60 islands, 20 of them inhabited and lots of them with silly sounding names: Great Dog, Prickly Pear, Fallen Jerusalem.

It's a strange nation in some respects: the Queen is on the stamps, they drive on the left and the bottled water is, almost without fail, Highland Spring.

But the currency is the U.S. dollar and probably 90 per cent of the visitors are American.

It's a friendly place. One day, we're in a taxi heading out to a restaurant when the driver pulls over. A middle-aged woman in big, hoopy earrings is waiting at the bus stop, obviously on her way to work.

'She's your chef,' says our driver. 'Do you mind if I pick her up?'

We start off with a couple of nights at Guana Island, an 850-acre private island - so-called because locals reckon it resembles an iguana on the map. (In fact, it looks more like Rod Hull's Emu.) We're collected off the boat and driven up a winding hill through a cedar forest.

When we get to the top, we can see this piece of craggy rock in all its glory: lush, green, a lake with flamingoes, beaches on all sides.

There are never more than 30 people on Guana at a time. Our room is a whitewashed stone cottage with heavy wooden shutters. It wouldn't look out of place in the Algarve.

Dinner is served up overlooking the Caribbean, the lights on the yachts winking at us in the dark.

Andrei, the Romanian-born general manager who came here via Canada, tells me what he likes about the BVIs - the things it doesn't have. 'If you want the bright lights, go to Puerto Rico,' he says. 'There's no cinema in the BVIs. Or a nightclub to talk of.' Perfect for this city dweller.

The highlight of my trip is a stay at the Rosewood Little Dix Bay, a hotel that manages to be beautiful - my tree-house room is on stilts, overlooking the sea - and brilliant at the details.

One example - you go for a swim, and emerge to find that a staff member has left a lens cleaner next to your smudged sunglasses.) It's years since I've stayed in a hotel as chilled out as this. And the walk to the beach from my front door takes less than a minute.

I try paddle boarding for the first time (a cross between surfing and punting).

Another time, I'm given a lesson on how to sail a Hobiecat two-person catamaran. I'm rubbish, but it's a pleasant enough hour at sea. My only disappointment: when I snorkel in Little Dix Bay, I'm the only person not to get a glimpse of the giant turtles.

You can see the sparkle of the water from almost everywhere in the BVIs, thanks to the fact that all the islands are so small and it's against the law to build higher than the tallest palm tree.

The sea is everything you'd expect: warm, gentle, deep blue. Forgive me if I sound like a child playing Top Trumps - but is there any sea in the world better than the Caribbean?

I snorkel most days and go for plenty of pre-breakfast swims. The beaches here all look like they've been Photoshopped  the water so blue, the perfectly placed palm trees. There's no need to worry that the islands' most famous beach, a breathtaking bay called The Baths (named thus because slaves were brought here to be cleaned just before they went on sale), will be mobbed.

The morning we visit there are fewer than a dozen people on the sand. (Just make sure you avoid this beach on the day the cruise ship comes in.) I leave, after a week, a deep shade of brown, deeply relaxed and wondering where on earth I put my house keys...
A pilot is being hailed as a hero for conducting an emergency landing after a baby boy had a 'heart attack' on board.

The KLM flight from Amsterdam to Singapore was around three hours into the 13 hour trip on Sunday when the captain conducted the unplanned landing in Bucharest, Romania, for 'medical reasons'.

A baby on board allegedly went into cardiac arrest during the flight and although a doctor on the aeroplane treated him, his condition did not improve, local media reported.

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The KLM flight from Amsterdam to Singapore was around three hours into the 13 hour long journey

Speaking to RTL Nieuws, Netherlands DJ Mental Theo, who was a passenger on the flight, said: 'The child seemed to have had a cardiac arrest. A doctor on board got the child conscious again using medical equipment.

'The captain decided to find a safe airport for medical help as quickly as possible.'

Writing on Twitter, the popular DJ Mental Theo, who has 136,000 followers, dubbed the captain's actions as 'heroic'.

He wrote: 'Heroic action. Captain @KLM on a flight to Singapore !! Fast emergency landing prevents death of little baby on board!'

According to the DJ, the captain later updated passengers from the cockpit and said that both the mother and baby were doing well and remain in hospital in Romania.

The flight refuelled and took off again just after midnight to continue its journey to Singapore.

Writing on Twitter , the popular DJ, who has 136,000 followers, dubbed the captain's actions as 'heroic'

The captain conducted the unplanned landing in Bucharest, Romania, (above) for 'medical reasons'.

MailOnline Travel also reported on a scene from a KLM flight on Saturday which saw passengers on board a transatlantic flight were treated to an impromptu performance by a university choir.

Members of the Virginia State University gospel broke into song on board an eight-hour flight from Amsterdam to Washington, DC, on New Years Eve.
Qantas has been named the worlds safest carrier for the third year in a row by a leading airline review website, which revealed today that its top 20 includes only one British company.

Thanks to its fatality free record in the jet era and other factors, Sydney-based Qantas fared the best in an analysis of more than 400 airlines around the world.

British Airways was in last years top 10 but didnt make the cut in this years expanded list, which included American Airlines, United Airlines, Gatwick-based Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

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Australia's national carrier, Qantas, has been named the world's safest airline for the third year in a row

THE 20 SAFEST AIRLINES IN THE WORLD Qantas (the rest are in alphabetical order) Air New Zealand Alaska Airlines All Nippon Airways American Airlines Cathay Pacific Emirates Etihad EVA Air Finnair Hawaiian Airlines Japan Airlines KLM Lufthansa SAS Singapore Airlines Swissair United Airlines Virgin Atlantic Virgin Australia Source: AirlineRatings.com Advertisement

Australia-based AirlineRatings.com ranked the airlines in alphabetical order, with Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates and Etihad among the 20 safest carriers.

The rest of the list includes EVA Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, SAS, Singapore Airlines and Swiss.

Of those surveyed, 148 airlines received the top seven-star ranking and the 10 that received just one star are all found in Indonesia, Nepal and Surinam.

British Airways scored six of a possible seven stars, while Ryanair had five, matching Malaysia Airlines, which rebounded in 2015 after a disastrous 2014.

AirlineRatings.coms editors chose Qantas as the worlds best thanks to its extraordinary record of firsts in operations and safety over its 95-year history and its reputation as the industrys most experience airline.

Indonesia's Batik Air was named one of the 10 least safe airlines, along with Bluewing Airlines and Lion Air

TOP 10 BUDGET AIRLINES Aer Lingus Flybe HK Express JetBlue Jetstar Australia Thomas Cook TUI Fly Virgin America Volaris WestJet Source: AirlineRatings.com Advertisement

TEN LEAST SAFE AIRLINES Batik Air Bluewing Airlines Citilink Kal-Star Aviation Lion Air Sriwijaya Air TransNusa Trigana Air Service Wings Air Xpress Air AirlineRatings.com Advertisement

The website has also revealed its list of the 10 safest budget airlines: Aer Lingus, Flybe, HK Express, JetBlue, Jetstar Australia, Thomas Cook, TUI Fly, Virgin America, Volaris and WestJet.

The editors of AirlineRatings.com said they chose those airlines because they meet International Air Transport Association standards and have excellent safety records.

According to the website, the worlds least safe airlines are (in alphabetical order) Batik Air, Bluewing Airlines, Citilink, Kal-Star Aviation, Lion Air, Sriwijaya Air, TransNusa, Trigana Air Service, Wings Air and Xpress Air.

AirlineRatings.com rates carriers on things such as audits by aviation authorities and governments, reported incidents from the past 12 months and an airlines fatality record.

Last year was a disturbing year for airline safety with a number of tragedies, including the deliberate crash of a Germanwings plane into the French Alps and the downing of a Russian passenger jet in Egypt.

There were 16 accidents with 560 fatalities last year, including the deliberate crash of a Germanwings plane

Despite these incidents, the 16 accidents with 560 fatalities were below the 10-year average of 31 accidents and 714 fatalities, the website said.

It was a significant improvement over 2014 when there were 21 fatal accidents with 986 fatalities.

Last year, the worlds airlines carried a record 3.6 billion passengers on 34 million flights.
This shocking video shows the moment passengers realised the emergency exit on their plane was open in mid-air.

The Boeing 737-800 belonging to Jin Air was carrying 163 passengers to Busan in South Korea from Cebu, Philippines, when it turned back shortly after take-off after a door was found to be leaking air.

And in this footage shot by a passenger in the cabin, you can clearly make out a gap showing the door was not correctly sealed shut, as well as a strange noise coming from the frame.

In the video, the person recording shows how he can fit his hand in the gap of the emergency door

People on board complained of suffering headaches, while one says he thought he 'might die'

Passengers told Seoul's Yonhap News Agency that they suffered headaches and felt pain in their ear.'

'I thought I would die here because I was numb with a headache,' said South Korean passenger Kim Jin-bae.

Speaking once he had disembarked, Kim added: 'The flight turned back about 30 minutes after take-off because the gap in the door was big enough to put a finger in it.

'I thought I would die because I was numb with a headache.'

'Adults felt so much pain because of (the pressure on) eardrums. How painful could it be for children?' said another passenger Lee Sang-gyu.

There were no serious injuries reported although passengers had to be transferred onto another aircraft and were delayed by 15 hours.

Kim Jin-bae says the gap in the door was big enough to put a finger in it in an interview once grounded

South Korea will review safety at six low cost airlines after the flight was forced to make the emergency return to the Philippines.

The transport ministry said on Monday that the safety investigation comes as the ministry is looking into the incident.

'All low-cost carriers will undergo an overall inspection of their safety management to prevent similar accidents,' the transport ministry said in a statement following the incident.

The company said its initial investigation found no defect in the jet. No injuries were reported but local media reports said passengers complained of a loud noise and suffered from headaches during the return trip.

No injuries were reported but local media reports said passengers complained of a loud noise

Jin Air is an affiliate of Korean Air Lines, South Korea's largest airline.

Last month, a passenger jet belonging to another budget carrier, Jeju Air, plunged 3,000-metres in mid-air due to problems with its on-board air compression system.

The safety inspection order by the ministry will include a check on all maintenance records and flight procedures.

South Korea currently has six licensed budget airlines operating in an increasingly crowded market.
She promised her Instagram followers that she would shave her armpit hair at some point before the new year.

But Michelle Rodriguez, 37, didn't keep to her word as she proved during her vacation to Mexico this week.

The Texas born beauty proudly displayed her underarms as she splashed about with a pal in Cancun on Sunday.

Beach babe: Michelle Rodriguez was pictured enjoying a dip in Cancun, Mexico on Sunday

The Furious 7 star donned a mismatch bikini showing off her toned physique.

She teamed black boy style briefs with a stylish white halterneck top and sported some simple gold jewelry.

Her long dark locks were left loose as she jumped about in the waves with a male friend.

Just before Christmas the actress took to Instagram with a festive message alongside a selfie she took in front of her Christmas tree while flashing her underarm hair.

Hairy and proud: The 37-year-old actress laughed as she gave her armpits a good rub while enjoying a dip in the ocean

Getting away from it all: The Furious 7 star showed off her toned physique in mismatched swimwear

Fun with friends: The Texas born beauty was joined by a male pal for the beach time

Getting their tan on: The duo appeared to check out their arms during their swim

In the message the star star talked about being grateful in life and loving those around you.

Amusingly she ended the caption with 'I promise to shave my arm pits at some point before the New Year mad love and peace to all'

Michelle was recently pictured filming gender-reassignment thriller Tomboy, A Revenger's Tale in November.

Looking good: Michelle teamed black boy shorts with a white halterneck bikini top

Cooling off: The star has been enjoying a break in Mexico after a very busy 2015

Well, she's an action star: The brunette beauty got knocked by a wave

Her distressing appearance on set gave a glimpse of what's to come in the gritty film, directed by Walter Hill.

The brunette beauty wore bloodied underwear and a soiled robe as she was filmed walking down a dimly lit alleyway.

The crime drama tells the story of an ace assassin (Rodriguez) who is double-crossed by gangsters and falls into the hands of a rogue surgeon known as The Doctor (Sigourney Weaver), who turns him into a woman against his will.

Throwing herself into it: The actress wasn't afraid to jump backwards into the surf

Natural beauty: Michelle emerged from the surf with drenched locks after her splash about

Taking it easy: Michelle was earlier seen strolling along the beach wearing mirrored shades

The hitman embarks on a bloodthirsty revenge mission, helped by a nurse called Johnnie, who is harboring her own secrets.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Freida Pinto was originally attached as the lead when it was first discussed at TIFF.

The film marks the first time Michelle will have headlined a film since the likes of Avatar, Resident Evil and Fast & Furious have seen her take part in all-star ensemble casts.

Tomboy, A Revenger's Tale is due for release in September 2017.
She recently landed her first job in two years after struggling to find work following the tragic royal prank.

But it seems thrifty radio DJ Mel Greig is holding off on splashing any new earnings.

The 33-year-old recycled a $70 shirt for an appearance on the Today Show on Tuesday as she prepares to make her return to radio.

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Thrifty: Mel Greig recycled her $70 Sportsgirl top for an appearance on the Today Show on Tuesday morning

Sharing a snap of herself backstage before her appearance on the Channel Nine show, Mel posed in a mirror to show off the garment from chain store Sportsgirl.

Captioning the shot, she wrote: 'Getting my money's worth out of my Sportsgirl top.'

Mel was among guests who appeared on the show to take part in its Mixed Grill segment on Tuesday morning.

It came ahead of her return to radio after spending three years out of work.

Favourite: Mel was seen wearing the same garment as she jetted into Sydney last year ahead of her return to radio

Tough: The blonde and her husband Steven Pollock were forced to say goodbye to one another as she left Adelaide for Sydney

The blonde will join Illawarra radio station, Wave FM, a role which has required her to relocate to Wollongong from Adelaide.

Gushing over the appointment, she recently told Daily Mail Australia: 'After three years, a long and hard battle, I am finally back in radio.'

As she prepared to move on Monday however the former 2DayFM star was forced to say goodbye to family and friends, sharing the difficult moments on Instagram.

Farewell: Mel was also seen waving goodbye to her nephew, sharing this photograph of their goodbye online

Posting a photograph as she hugged her nephew, she wrote: 'Now the goodbyes start to get tough.'

Later she shared a selfie with husband Steve Pollock, writing: 'I refuse to say goodbye... can't bare the thought of us being apart.'

Mel found herself unable to find work after her role in a 2012 prank while she was working for 2DayFM which involved a call to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was receiving treatment during her first pregnancy.

The nurse who spoke with Greig and her then co-host Michael Christian, who pretended they were The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, committed suicide when the hoax was made public.
While many are struggling to work off the excesses of the festive season, Isabelle Cornish looks as if she avoided overindulging.

The 21-year-old actress flaunted her sensational figure whilst undertaking yoga on the beach during a New Year's trip to Byron Bay.

The Puberty Blues star looked flawless as she posed up a storm in front of the idyllic early morning horizon, showing off the fruits of her labor - most noticeably her pert behind and washboard abs.

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Namaste! Isabelle Cornish flaunted her sensational figure whilst undertaking yoga on the beach during a New Year's trip to Byron Bay on the Northern New South Wales coast

Undertaking the planking position, the yoga enthusiast raised one leg in the air as she made sure her slender body was perfectly in line with the waters edge for the enviable black and white snap.

With her hair pulled back into a bun, the Australian star looked relaxed and carefree as she absorbed the rays of the rising sun whilst showing off her petite frame in a black stringe bikini.

'You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection'  Buddha,' she captioned the image.

Adding: 'New Year resolutions I have been pondering... self love, compassion, eat organic , support local farmers and stalls, meditate, car for the animals and the environment.'

Model look: To ring in the New Year Isabelle road tripped to Byron Bay to attend the Falls Music Festival

To ring in the New Year Isabelle road tripped to Byron Bay to attend the Falls Music Festival with her boyfriend of over two years, artist Mitch Revs.

Isabelle is a firm advocate of living healthily, posting photos of her clean meals regularly on Instagram, as well as images of her exercising.

On New Year's Day she wrote underneath a fresh faced selfie: 'HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May 2016 bring you happiness love and laughter. What a beautiful morning for a jump in the ocean followed by a yummy vegan breakfast.'

'HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May 2016 bring you happiness love and laughter. What a beautiful morning for a jump in the ocean followed by a yummy vegan breakfast': On New Year's Day the actress posted a fresh faced selfie

'When I spend time in nature I feel calm and grateful': In another shot, the television star bent over to reveal her back, while peering down at a breathtakingly beautiful nearby waterfall wearing a bikini

The yoga enthusiast is also extremely passionate about relaxation and meditation and last week her social media posts reflected this very theme.

'When I spend time in nature I feel calm and grateful. It's a reminder of the cycle of life and living in harmony with one another have you gotten outside or jumped into the ocean lately? (sic),' she captioned another image of herself by the water.

In a bikini, the television star bent over to reveal her back, while peering down at a breathtakingly beautiful nearby waterfall.

At one with nature: The yoga enthusiast is extremely passionate about relaxation, meditation, exercise and clean eating

Isabelle, who despite being a qualified yoga instructor isn't teaching yet, has previously told Daily Mail Australia she owes her sculpted shape to yoga.

'I try and do a lot of yoga in winter, especially because of the hot studio, it's nice getting in there and you can get warm and you feel all warm and fuzzy when you leave,' she said.

'Getting outdoors when possible and enjoying the sun when it's out.'

'Do exercise that you love, so find something that works for you and your lifestyle, if you like yoga do that. I love health and fitness, I'm really passionate about that,' she mused.'

'I love health and fitness': Isabelle, who despite being a qualified yoga instructor isn't teaching yet, has previously told Daily Mail Australia she owes her sculpted shape to yoga

Clean and lean: Isabelle is a firm advocate of living healthily, posting photos of her clean meals regularly on Instagram, as well as images of her exercising

The star is also a devoted vegan who refuels with super foods such as kale, chia and raw food bars.

Earlier this year, Isabelle posed topless in a mermaid suit for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in an attempt to raise awareness for the mistreatment of fish.

Striving to forge an international career like her sister Abbie, Isabelle has been taking acting classes and auditioning for roles in the US.

Talented beauty: Striving to forge an international career like her sister Abbie, Isabelle has been taking acting classes and auditioning for roles in the US

In love: Isabelle has been dating boyfriend Mitch Revs for over two years




She is known for sharing multiple snaps a day of her two children across social media, along with her media empire.

And on Monday PR queen Roxy Jacenko uploaded a precious photo of one-year-old son Hunter as he comfortably sat behind the car steering wheel of her pricey Range Rover.

The tiny tot had a large smile displayed across his face as he clutched onto the wheel tightly with both hands.

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Sharing: PR queen Roxy Jacenko uploaded a precious snap of one-year-old son Hunter as he comfortably sat behind her car's sheering wheel on Monday

Happy days: The tiny tot had a large smile displayed across his face as he clutched onto the part tightly with both hands while sitting on his mother's lap

Roxy's top of the range car doesn't come cheap with a new modeling costing $283,370.

While sitting on his mother's lap, Hunter looked more than pleased with his efforts as he dressed in a simple white t-shirt and a navy and red patterned bib.

The little man gave off a cheeky look for the shot as he looked straight while his blonde locks were combed over to the right.

Showing off her comedic sense of humour, Roxy captioned the shot 'Needed to grab a juice, he offered to drive.'

Hot water: While she shows off her comedic sense of humour on social media, last week Roxy came underfire by a media publication who accused her of 'exploiting' her three-year-old daughter Pixie Curtis (pictured)

Hurtful: The article controversially proclaimed that 'Pixie Curtis and every other Instagram kid exploited by their poseur parents' should be able to 'successfully sue for child abuse'

Followers of the media personality were quick to comment on the image with one writing 'How happy is he @roxyjacenko, thinks he's really driving.'

Another follower echoed the thoughts and commented 'And as if one could say no to that little face'.

Last week the mother-of-two came under fire after a media publication accused her of 'exploiting' her three-year-old daughter Pixie Curtis.

The article controversially proclaimed that 'Pixie Curtis and every other Instagram kid exploited by their poseur parents' should be able to 'successfully sue for child abuse.'

The statement was written among others in a would-be Christmas wishlist advocating 'greater good for the masses' by a columnist writing for The Age.

Hitting back: Roxy told DMA at the time it was 'a disgrace' to suggest she had in any way harmed her daughter by starting a business for her

Hard at work: Pixie is the face of the hair accessories company and appears in all its campaigns

Speaking to the Daily Mail Australia about the incident Roxy said it was 'a disgrace' to suggest she had in any way harmed her daughter by starting a business for her.

'Using the term child abuse is nothing short of a disgrace and undermines the severity of those kids, babies and toddlers who may be suffering abuse. I think it's a disgrace to suggest anything of the sort,' the 35-year-old said.

'I dont see anything humorous about likening ones parenting skills in a loving, caring environment to that of an abusive environment  its sick.'
She's powered home the message of body-confidence.

And Lena Dunham rocked yet another swimwear look on Monday - just 24 hours after stripping down to a bikini.

The 29-year-old star posted a snap posing in a 1950s style bottle-green flared-skirt swimsuit which cinched at the waist.

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Vintage style: The 29-year-old star posted a snap posing in a 1950s style bottle-green flared-skirt swimsuit which cinched at the waist

She captioned the image: '@jennikonner selected this vintage Norma Kamali swimsuit realness like 3 years ago and promised me it would have its day. Boy oh boy did she see the future #sexico'

The actress saw in the new year in Mexico in just her bikini which she showed with a serious-looking selfie on Sunday.

Reclining on a striped towel photo while sporting a black two-piece swimsuit, she wrote: 'Not her natural habitat but she's trying her darnedest!!!!'

'Not her natural habitat': Lena sported a black two-piece swimsuit in an Instagram post

The Golden Globe winner donned a sports bra-inspired top with high-waist bottoms featuring a gold chain detail.

Keeping stony-faced for the camera, the creator, writer and star of HBO's Girls wore no makeup and pulled her damp brunette locks back.

And the bikini selfie comes just two days after she showed off her derriere while wearing just a jacket and cream colored underwear on Instagram.

New Year's fun: Her bikini selfie comes just two days after she showed off her derriere while wearing just a jacket and cream colored underwear on Instagram

The TV star, who is face down on the ground in the New Year's snap, joked in the caption: 'Super sad local news story: girl dies of shock after confetti cannon erupts several feet away. Underwear out. No one mourns.'

Earlier in the evening, the brunette wore a black dress featuring gold hand prints all over, even stopping to take a sweet photo with her boyfriend of four years, Jack Antonoff.

In the picture, Jack, who plays the guitar in the band, Fun, embraces his girlfriend while lovingly resting his cheek on her head.

Lovebirds: Earlier in the evening, the brunette wore a black dress featuring gold hand prints all over, even stopping to take a sweet photo with her boyfriend of four years, Jack Antonoff

She captioned the photo: 'So much joy to you and yours! Thank you for making 2015 a pleasure, insta-friends! Lucky to spend my fourth NYE with his old man.

Her Girls co-star, Jemima Kirke also made an appearance on her Instagram, in a playful photo mimicking the hand pattern on Lena's dress.

Jemima posed with her hands over Lena's chest, while her husband, Michael Mosberg, snapped the picture.

The HBO star wrote: 'Captured by @mikemosberg on his LUMIX-he's a real arty guy that guy. Hey 2016, you have nice eyes.'

She's a handful: Her Girls co-star, Jemima Kirke also made an appearance on her Instagram, in a playful photo mimicking the hand pattern on Lena's dress
She is already a proud mother to her adorable two-year-old daughter Phoenix, but it appears Tammin Sursok may be not far off from adding a new addition to her family.

The 32-year-old Australian actress revealed to Channel Nine's Today Show on Tuesday that her husband Sean McEwen is desperate to expand their brood - sooner rather than later.

My husband keeps trying to have a baby with me everyday,' she laughed.

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My husband keeps trying to have a baby with me everyday': Tammin Sursok revealed to Channel Nine's Today show on Tuesday that her husband Sean McEwen is desperate to expand their brood

'He would like five kids,' the Pretty Little Liars star beamed.

'Of course he could have five kids, because he didn't have to give birth to a ten pound baby!' she joked.

The mother-of-one went on to detail that when Phoenix was born she weighed in at a whopping ten pounds (four and a half kilos) even though she was born three weeks prematurely.

'He would like five kids': The pair already have an adorable two-year-old daughter Phoenix, but it appears the happy couple may be not far off from adding a new addition to their family as they publicly flaunt their romance

'Of course he could have five kids, because he didn't have to give birth to a ten pound baby!' she joked on the Channel Nine Today Show

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the former Home And Away star and her beau made a very public display of affection on social media.

The happy couple proudly licked each other for all to see.

'11 years still obsessed,' South African-born star Tammin captioned the image of the intimate moment between the pair, which she shared with her 621,000 Instagram fans.

She then added the hashtag: 'Sorry not sorry.'

The perfect match: Tammin celebrated New Year's Day in Sydney at an exclusive event at Catalina Rose Bay where she was accompanied by her husband who also happened to be celebrating his birthday

Can't keep their hands off! The genetically-blessed couple, who married in 2011, couldn't resist a playful kiss on the lips as they posed for the cameras on the picturesque deck of the waterside venue

It's not the first time the couple have publicly displayed their affection for one another, hinting that despite their lengthy relationship, they are still well and truly in the honey-moon phase.

Tammin celebrated New Year's Day in Sydney at an exclusive event at Catalina Rose Bay where she was accompanied by her actor, producer and director husband who also happened to be celebrating his birthday.

The genetically blessed couple, who married in 2011, couldn't resist a playful kiss on the lips as they posed for the cameras on the picturesque deck of the waterside venue.

The starlet also took to Instagram to share a number of memorable snaps from the extravagant day.

In the first picture, Tammin and her husband cradle their heads towards each other as they pose for the loved-up selfie.

She captioned the first of three posts: 'Party for my birthday boy.'

In the second photo, Sean plants a big kiss on his wife waterside.

'11 years still obsessed': The couple regularly share public displays of affection on social media

Last December Tammin told the Daily Mail Australia that she is considering moving back to Australia with Sean, in the hope of raising Phoenix Down Under and expanding their brood.

'We want three kids,' the actress candidly revealed, explaining her own upbringing and familiarity with Australia makes it an ideal country to raise her children in.

'The schooling system is so amazing here and this is where my friends and family are,' she said, adding the couple have 'a five year plan' in which a relocation to Australia is on the cards.

'It's really nice and it's very nostalgic,' she said of being back in the country she was raised after moving to the US in 2006.

'We want three kids': Last December Tammin told the Daily Mail Australia that she is considering moving back to Australia with Sean, in the hope of raising Phoenix Down Under and expanding their brood

Tammin and Sean currently run their own production company Charlie Baby Productions and will develop, write and direct their own web comedy series called Aussie Girl together.

The striking star rose to fame in her hometown of Australia playing feisty teenager Dani Sutherland on Home And Away.

But after four years on the soap, Tammin put acting on hold to pursue a singing career in the US.

After a foray into the music world, the brunette beauty returned to her acting roots and joined the cast of popular American soap The Young And The Restless, followed by her current stint playing Jenna Marshall on Pretty Little Liars.
The Real Housewives of Melbourne are accustomed to flying first class in private planes.

But on Monday Gamble Breaux experienced a very different form of flight as she was sent hurtling through the air following a spectacular tumble off a hoverboard.

The 43-year-old documented her fall from grace with a video on Instagram, which showed her riding the two-wheeled scooter around the kitchen of her luxury Mount Eliza home.

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Fall from grace! Gamble Breaux was hurled to the ground on Monday due to a mishap on her new hoverboard

Wearing dangerously high stilettos and holding a large glass of wine in her hand, the blonde beauty balanced on the board as it slowly moved forward - clearly oblivious to the painful fate that awaited her.

It didn't take long for the stunning star's carefree display to meet an abrupt end as the board's wheel became caught on the edge of a kitchen bench.

The former art consultant let out a blood-curdling scream as the transportation device slid from under her heels and hurled her backwards towards the hard wooden floor.

Asking for trouble? The 43-year-old rode her hoverboard in the house in a pair of sky-high stilettos with a glass of wine in her hand

Unhappy ending: It didn't take long for the stunning star's carefree display to meet an abrupt end as the board's wheel became caught on the edge of a kitchen bench

As she tumbled towards her temporary demise the crimson liquid from her glass was flung into the air - right before the glass itself was shattered into sharp broken shards.

Gamble's stepson, Luke Wolfe, who had been filming the glamorous blonde, quickly rushed to her side and switched the camera off before the true aftermath of the damage could be revealed.

Despite suffering through the painful looking incident, the good-natured Gamble joked about the gaffe, writing: 'Perhaps dinner is served best without the #Hoverboard.'

Taking fight: The glamorous jetsetter experienced a different form of flight as she flew through the air

Crash landing! The reality TV star hit the ground moments before her wine glass was shattered into shards

It was all a blur: Gamble's gaffe happened so fast that it became a blur on camera

In a strange and sad coincidence, the star's hoverboard hell happened on the same night that one of the trendy boards burned down a family home in Melbourne.

The two-wheeled scooter, which was given as a gift, decimated a Stratham home after it ignited while charging in a child's bedroom.

The child had placed their Christmas present on a charger in their bedroom at the back of the home while the family watched television in the front room, Acting Commander Phil Smith told Daily Mail Australia.

The aftermath: Broken glass and red wine were left all over Gamble's hard wood floor

Better days: Less than a week before the accident the bubbly blonde was out partying with her fellow Housewives, clearly oblivious to the painful fate that awaited her

The hoverboard then caught on fire but the family were 'oblivious to what was going on', Mr Smith said.

A fire alarm went off and when the family went to look at the bedroom they saw it had been engulfed in flames.

It took firefighters 30 minutes to get the blaze under control and they remained there overnight to make sure there were no hot spots.

Dangerous: On Monday a hoverboard sparked a fire at a Melbourne home while it was plugged into the wall

Thankfully the family and their pets were able to escape the burning blaze unscathed.

Hoverboards have not caused any other fires as of yet in the Melbourne area, but Mr Smith said he expected that to change.

'There is a good chance, following this, there are going to be more,' he said.

The popular Christmas gift has been a frequent fixture in the news recently after it was discovered their batteries can explode.

Worse gift ever: The board was a Christmas present given to a child

Safe... for now: Fortunately nobody was injured during the fire but firefighters said they were concerned about a rise in numbers of boards sparking fires

The self-balancing machines were removed from stores around the world, including online retailer Amazon, after reports circulated of them suddenly exploding.

The batteries used in the cheaper models of the machines made in China, which are then re-branded before being sold in the U.S. and UK., are believed to be the cause.

The potential fire hazard has led many major airlines to ban the gadgets.
Despite being tipped as 2015's hottest movie, Fifty Shades Of Grey was met with a mixed reception.

Yet leading lady Dakota Johnson has disregarded the critics and insisted she stands by the sexy movie, as she credits the film with making her a household name.

The 26-year-old actress spoke in a candid interview with Vogue magazine, while also landing a coveted spot on the cover of the fashion bible in which she smouldered while wearing a stunning lingerie-inspired dress.

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Proud of her work: Leading lady Dakota Johnson has disregarded the critics of Fifty Shades Of Grey and insisted she stands by the sexy movie, as she credits the film with making her a household name

Dakota, whose parents are esteemed actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, sizzled on screen as Anastasia Steele opposite Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey in the adaptation of E.L. James' hit novel.

Despite being the most hotly anticipated movie of 2015, the film failed to impress some critics as it was dubbed 'painfully dull' and 'tame', yet Dakota insists she stands by the Samantha Taylor-Johnson directed movie.

She told Vogue: 'Im proud of Fifty Shades of Grey. I dont need to distance myself from that. The more work I do, the more the general public sees the different things I can do. Do I think it opened doors? Yeah. More people know my name.'

Stunning: The 26-year-old spoke in a candid interview with Vogue magazine, while also landing a coveted spot on the cover of the fashion bible in which she smouldered while wearing a stunning lingerie-inspired dress

While the 2011 book, the first in the erotic romance trilogy, was lauded by many after selling over 125M copies globally and being translated into 52 languages, the film adaptation fell short.

The New Yorker's review included cutting remarks, such as: 'Think of it as the Downton Abbey of bondage, designed neither to menace nor to offend but purely to cosset the fatigued imagination.

'You get dirtier talk in most action movies, and more genitalia in a TED talk on Renaissance sculpture.'

Newsday concurred with the review, writing: 'You might be equally agog at how an R-rated film full of kinky sex and dirty talk could be so painfully dull'

Elsewhere in the interview, she blasted the film industry, calling it 'f****** brutal' and suggesting that it's ageist towards female actresses.

Referencing her Working Girl star mother, 58, and actress grandmother Tippi Hedren, 85, she said: 'Why isn't my mother in the movies? She's an extraordinary actress. Why isn't my grandmother in the movies? This industry is f****** brutal.'

Legs eleven: A photoshoot accompanying the magazine sees Dakota in a stylish monochrome shot wearing patent heels, bare legs and a thigh-skimming coat

A photoshoot accompanying the magazine sees Dakota in a stylish monochrome shot wearing patent heels, bare legs and a thigh-skimming coat.

For the magazine's cover shot, the actress wears a satin and black lace negligee, with a coat that falls at her left shoulder.

Her ombre locks fall in loose natural waves with a flirty fringe tickling her eyebrows, while she smouldered with lashings of eyeliner and a dab of taupe lipstick.

Back on the health kick: After the overindulgence of Christmas, Dakota was spotted leaving the gym in Beverly Hills on Monday
She continues to make a name for herself in the modelling industry, having starred in a recent fashion spread for Vogue Taiwan.

But Ireland Baldwin was worlds apart from her glammed-up self in a haunting and goth-inspired pictorial for Flaunt magazine.

The 20-year-old flashed the flesh as she got in touch with her inner vamp with a heavy coat of black eye shadow, making her look almost unrecognisable.

Haunting: Ireland Baldwin tugged the fabric of her jacket to flash the flesh in just one image from her Flaunt magazine fashion spread

Flashing the flesh: The 20-year-old's long black coat did little to protect her modesty

Ireland was spellbinding as she modelled the unforgettable apparel, with photographer Michel Comte behind the lens.

In one image, the daughter of Alec Baldwin and his ex-wife Kim Basinger donned a funky black jacket with a studded outline and a pair of large, coordinating shoes.

The starlet pulled her coat open as she leaned against the wall, showing some skin.

A new perspective: Baldwin bent over backwards in a grey jumpsuit, platform ankle boots, and a fur silver vest

Far from glam: The daughter of Alex Baldwin looked worlds apart from her usual self with her thick black eye shadow and a long white sweater, which was loosely belted around her waist

Pressing her forehead against a wooden wall in a separate image, the rising model also donned a long black coat, which was strategically worn to expose her nipple.

She also donned black leggings and a funky pair of shoes with a silver touch.

Ireland additionally demonstrated her flexibility as she bent over backwards in a grey bodysuit and silver fur vest.

Ireland has been busy upping her profile as a model, recently scoring a high profile shoot for the November 2015 issue of Vogue Taiwan.

Taking a breather: Ireland looked worlds apart from her glamorous self as she laid upon a blue fabric

A striking sight: The star was practically unrecognisable with black eye shadow smeared against her brow

The starlet is determined to carve out a career for herself independently from her famous parents and previously revealed she finds it unfair when people assume she hasn't worked hard for her success.

She told Cosmopolitan: 'I do think it's not fair that a lot of people perceive me, as well as someone like Kendall Jenner, as someone who was born into a particularly famous family.

'I don't think it's fair that they think because of our "silver spoon" heritage, that we don't work hard. Because we do.

'And some people get jobs and things in different ways, but ultimately, it comes down to if you have it or not.'
He looked near-death in the series two finale of The Fall.

But Jamie Dornan, 33, will be reprising his role as serial killer Paul Spector for the third and final series of the BBC Two drama, which is set to be explosive.

Fans of the show will no doubt still be reeling from the last aired scenes in 2014, which saw Spector shot in an ambush, leaving him bleeding in the arms of Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson - played by Gillian Anderson.

Hotly-anticipated: Jamie Dornan, 33, will be reprising his role as serial killer Paul Spector for the third and final series of the BBC Two drama, which is set to be explosive

In a statement, the BBC revealed: 'As The Fall reaches its inexorable conclusion, its clear that the rules of this deadly game of cat and mouse are set to shift once again.'

Eager to keep the details of the final series firmly under wraps, creator Allan Cubitt added: 'I've been on a very exciting journey over the last five years... and I'm thrilled to have recently started filming the third installment of their macabre, obsessive dance of death.

'Obviously I don't want to give anything away about how the third series will end but I can say that I am looking forward to working with both Gillian and Jamie again in the near future!'

Cliffhanger: Fans of the show will no doubt still be reeling from the last aired scenes in 2014, which saw Spector bleeding in the arms of Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson - played by Gillian Anderson

The five-part series, set to air later this year, will not only see the return of Jamie and Gillian, but a host of new faces, with Trollied's Aisling Bea and Mr Selfridge's Aidan McArdle signed up.

Meanwhile, Jamie will no doubt be keen to throw himself into filming in order to finish production before he 'welcomes his second child.'

In November, People magazine reported the star confirmed the happy news in an interview for their Sexiest Man Alive issue, but the Irish actor and his wife Amelia Warner have yet to confirm the news publicly.

The pair wed in April 2013 and welcomed their first daughter, Dulcie, just seven months later.
They've spent the past 10 days in their own winter wonderland after spending Christmas and New Year's Eve in Aspen.

But it was back to normality on Monday for David Furnish as he flew back to Los Angeles with his two sons Zachary and Elijah.

With husband Sir Elton John elsewhere, it was David on daddy duty as he arrived at LAX airport following his two hour flight from Colorado.

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The holidays are over: David Furnish arrives at Los Angeles' LAX airport on Monday with his sons Elijah and Zachary after flying in from Aspen

The film producer, 53, showed he was a hands-on father as he balanced toddler Elijah on his shoulders while holding Zachary's hand.

He was accompanied by a nanny who was left wheeling the children's robot-patterned suitcases.

Eldest son Zachary, who turned five on Christmas Day, was wearing a pair of black trousers, red jumper and checked shirt while carrying a Thunderbirds toy.

Birthday boy: Little Elijah, who turns three next week, looked like he was enjoying himself riding high on his father's shoulders

Juggling act: The film producer, 53, showed he was a hands-on father as he balanced toddler Elijah on his shoulders while holding Zachary's hand.

Meanwhile, his younger brother Elijah, who turns three on January 11, looked like he was revelling balancing on his dad's shoulders.

Notably absent was David's partner Sir Elton, who is presumably preparing for his Wonderful Crazy Night tour, which kicks off at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles next week.

The 68-year-old is also due to resume his residency in Las Vegas at the Colosseum in Las Vegas later this month.

The family spent Christmas Eve at Disneyland in Anaheim, California before travelling to Aspen for the Christmas period.

Back to the grind: The family will be reunited with Sir Elton again, who is preparing for his upcoming world tour

Back on firm ground: Over the holidays, the young boys have been spending a lot of time on the snowy mountain slopes

Over the past week and a half, proud fathers Sir Elton and David have been posting photos of their winter break.

It looks like young Elijah and Zachary have been getting plenty of experience on the ski slopes.

On December 30, David excitedly announced on Instagram that Zachary was already skiing on the grown-ups slope.

He wrote: 'Today was a landmark day in the Furnish-John household. Our son graduated from the kid's ski run to take his very first proper grown-up ski run!'

Hitting the slopes: David riding the ski lift in Aspen with his two sons on January 2

Racy! David shows off his unusual snowboard - a lingerie-clad Pamela Anderson - a good friend of his and Sir Elton's
He stated that 'he'd rather slash my wrists' than return in another Bond outing.

And while Daniel Craig has remained quiet about his future as 007 since the release of Spectre in October, producers are said to be desperate to have him star in two more films.

'Desperate' movie bosses and the film studio behind the James Bond franchise are so keen to have the 47-year-old actor back in the role that they are offering him a back-to-back shoot deal.

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Back to Bond? While Daniel Craig has remained quiet about his future as 007 since the release of Spectre in October, producers are said to be desperate to have him star in two more films

According to The Sun, the 'two in one' deal being proposed is specifically to persuade the British actor to stay on in the role - despite him dropping heavy hints that Spectre would be his final outing.

Citing worries about his family as a reason behind his reluctance to do another Bond, an insider explained: 'The producers and studio are desperate to get Daniel back.

'His concern [about committing to another film] was the amount of time it takes to shoot as hes away from his family.'

However movie bosses are said to be hoping this shorter way around filming two films will lure the star back into Bond's shoes for the 25th and 26th instalments of the series.

'The producers and studio are desperate to get Daniel back.': And insider revealed that movie bosses behind the James Bond franchise are so keen to have the actor, 47, back that they're offering him a back-to-back deal

And in a further hint to such a package being offered to Daniel, Bond producer Barbara Broccoli said: 'In spring, we start again. I love Daniel and will do my best to keep him.'

MailOnline has contacted a representative of Daniel for comment, but has yet to receive a reply.

However in an interview with Time Out in October, the actor slammed the idea of a back-to-back shoot.

'At the studio there was a real keenness to get it done as soon as possible,' he explained. 'In fact, there was a conversation at one point that went: Lets film two movies back to back. I just went: Youre out of your f*****g minds.

'Youre out of your f*****g minds': However the actor previously poured scorn on the idea in an interview in October, saying that the filsm are just 'too big' for such a shoot

'In the nicest possible way. Theyre just too big.

And in the same interview, the actor - who has played Ian Fleming's famous secret agent since 2006 - hinted that he was finished with the role.

'Were done. All I want to do is move on,' he stated.

Adding yet more gravitas to his remarks, he told Esquire magazine: 'At this moment, no. I have a life and I've got to get on with it a bit. But we'll see.'

'I have a life and I've got to get on with it': Following a wrap on the shoot of Spectre, Daniel has dropped heavy hints that he will not return to play Bond again

Time for a new one? And with the star yet to confirm his return as the suave MI6 agent, other top British talent, such as, Damien Lewis and Idris Elba (pictured)

'I'm incredibly fortunate. But the day I can walk into a pub and someone goes, "Oh, there's Daniel Craig" and then just leaves me alone, that'll be great.'

Meanwhile with Daniel yet to confirm his return as the suave MI6 agent, other top British talent, such as, Damien Lewis and Idris Elba.

However his co-star Naomie Harris, who plays the fearless and trusty Moneypenny, revealed that Daniel is the her only leading man when it comes to the spy franchise.

Speaking to MailOnline in October the 39-year-old actress said of the actor:'He is the ultimate Bond and I've loved working with him. For me, Bond wouldn't be Bond without him, he's revolutionised the whole thing. Honestly, I don't think there's been a better Bond.'
She recently revealed that she feels confident naked.

So it comes as no surprise that Jesinta Campbell was willing to give a teasing glimpse of her model physique in a plunging lace dress on Tuesday evening.

The former beauty queen looked sensational in the black long-sleeved Manning Cartell number as she shared a glamorous snap on her Instagram page.

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Moet moment: Jesinta Campbell was willing to give a teasing glimpse of her model physique in a plunging lace dress on Tuesday evening

Crafted from graphic guipure lace, the deep-v design of the black underlay drew attention to her perky cleavage while she held a glass of Moet in hand.

The brunette beauty wore her locks out in natural waves, while she added height to her ensemble with black sandal heels.

The 24-year-old captioned the shot saying: The Launch of Magic Millions with Moet and Chandon @moetchandon @magicmillions #moetmoment wearing @manningcartell.

Lovely in lace: The former beauty queen looked sensational in the black long-sleeved Manning Cartell number

Feeling good: Crafted from graphic guipure lace, the deep-v design of the black underlay drew attention to her perky cleavage while she held a glass of Moet in hand

Instagood: The 24-year-old captioned the shot saying, The Launch of Magic Millions with Moet and Chandon @moetchandon @magicmillions #moetmoment wearing @manningcartell

Say cheese: The brunette beauty wore her locks out in natural waves, while she added height to her ensemble with black sandal heels

In her recent interview with Womens Health magazine, the former Miss Universe Australia credited her fiance Buddy Franklin for her high self-esteem.

The beauty explained how falling in love with the Sydney Swans player made it easier for her to love herself.

'I feel so confident naked, which is funny  I never felt like that until I was with my fiance,' Jesinta tells the magazine.

'Maybe its because when somebody loves you so much, its easier to love yourself,' she adds.

Her comments come as she appears on the cover of the magazine's 100th issue, her bronzed figure on full display in a revealing bikini.

Hot bod: In her recent interview with Womens Health magazine, the former Miss Universe Australia credited her fiance Buddy Franklin for her high self-esteem

Loved-up: The beauty explained how falling in love with the Sydney Swans player made it easier for her to love herself

Feeling good: 'I feel so confident naked, which is funny  I never felt like that until I was with my fiance,' Jesinta tells the magazine

But just hours after the issue hit stands, the model has had to go on the defensive after coming under fire from some of her fans.

The 24-year-old responded with a scathing remark after one Twitter user said: 'Oh please spare me! I hate chicks like this fishing for compliments and reassurance. Lucky you're good looking...'

Jesinta took no time to hit back to the tweet, which had a link attached to the story where she talks about her new found body confidence.

'It's women like you that bring the sisterhood down,' the David Jones catwalk stunner wrote on Monday before adding: 'Sending you a big hug, I feel like you need it'.

She works out: Jesinta has recently been getting into the boxing ring to add more tone her figure while Pilates and running are also staples of hers
Star Wars actor John Boyega and Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson have been nominated alongside a host of critically acclaimed talent for the 2016 BAFTA EE Rising Star Award.

The 23-year-old British actor and the actress, 26, have been nominated for the prestigious gong alongside Taron Egerton, Brie Larson and Bel Powley.

The five young rising stars, all under the age of 30, have been nominated for the coveted award for their exceptional performances on both the big screen and small screen.

Rising talent: Star Wars actor John Boyega and Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson have been nominated alongside a host of critically acclaimed talent for the 2016 BAFTA EE Rising Star Award

John, who played the lead role of Finn in J.J. Abram's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, received his nomination after a plethora of critically acclaimed performances in which culminated in his role in the highly-anticipated Star Wars sequel.

The Peckham-born star said of the news: 'Thank you to BAFTA and the jury. I'm honoured to be considered for the EE Rising Star Award in this company. What a great way to start the new year.'

Also propelled firmly into the spotlight in 2015 was Dakota, whose performance opposite Jamie Dornan as Fifty Shades protagonist Anastasia Steele earned her world-wide fame.

Speaking about her nomination, Dakota said: 'I am thoroughly stunned, and honoured to be acknowledged with an EE Rising Star Award nomination. Thank you, I am truly grateful.'

See more of the latest on the Star Wars actor John Boyega as he is nominated for a BAFTA

A galactic performance: John received his nomination after a plethora of critically acclaimed performances in which culminated in his role in the highly-anticipated Star Wars sequel

A domineering year: Also propelled firmly into the spotlight in 2015 was Dakota, whose performance opposite Jamie Dornan as Fifty Shades protagonist Anastasia Steele earned her world-wide fame

Taron Egerton, another aspiring British leading-man, has seen his career go from strength-to-strength in with the leading role in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and a role opposite former winner Tom Hardy in the Kray twins biopic, Legend.

Dakota is joined on the list by fellow American actress Brie Larson, who sees herself nominated following stand-out performance in the adaption of Emma Donoghue's award-winning book, Room.

The actress, who has starred in hits such as Trainwreck and 21 Jump Street, said she was 'very honoured to be in the company of esteemed peers, past and present'.

Hotly tipped: Taron Egerton has seen his career go from strength-to-strength in with the leading role in Kingsman: The Secret Service and a role opposite former winner Tom Hardy in the Kray twins biopic, Legend

Room for another accolade? Brie Larson sees herself nominated following a stand-out performance in the adaption of Emma Donoghue's award-winning book, Room

Star in the making? The nominations for the 2016 award are completed by British actress Bel Powley, who earned her Hollywood break with The Diary Of A Teenage Girl

The nominations for the 2016 award are completed by British actress Bel Powley, who earned her Hollywood break with The Diary Of A Teenage Girl.

This year's nominees have been picked by a panel of judges which includes the likes of award-winning actress Olivia Coleman, broadcaster and critic Jonathan Ross and a host of revered professionals from across the film world.

The awards are often a tipping point in the career of rising stars, with former recipients including James McAvoy, Kristen Stewart, Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Will Poulter and Jack OConnell.

A sign of success? The awards are often a tipping point in the career of rising stars, with former recipients including James McAvoy, Kristen Stewart, Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, Will Poulter and Jack OConnell
They might currently enjoying some time out in Bali, but 5 Seconds Of Summer treated their fans to a special performance on American talk show, Conan, on Tuesday evening.

The Australian band gave a faultless rendition of their hit track, Hey Everybody, in a pre-recorded performance for the show which airs live from New York City.

Opting to perch on their seats instead of jumping around the stage, the four young men - Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings and Calum Hood - gave the track their all as they belted out the tune.

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Hey Everybody: 5 Seconds Of Summer treated their fans to a special performance on American talk show, Conan, on Tuesday evening

The band have been enjoying some well-deserved time off in Bali alongside bikini model Bryana Holly and Victoria's Secrets star Josephine Skriver.

On Monday drummer Ashton showed off his manly figure as he went shirtless for a social media snap before venturing out with rumoured girlfriend Bryana.

The 21-year-old posed in nothing but a pair of navy knee-length shorts while standing in the middle of a bamboo bridge, forming the 'peace' sign with his right hand.

The band member captioned the image, which was liked 386,000 times, 'Sending love, hope you had a happy new year xxx.'

See more of the latest news on 5 Seconds Of Summer as they appear on Conan

Getting into the groove: The Australian band gave a faultless rendition of their hit track, Hey Everybody, in a pre-recorded performance for the show which airs live from New York City

Sing it out loud: The four young men - Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings (R) and Calum Hood (L) - gave the track their all as they belted out the tune

Moments later Ashton uploaded another photo which pictured himself sitting closely alongside Bryana - making it the first ever photo he has shared of the pair.

In the image, he lent forward to take the shot as the group of eight huddled closely together while getting a lift in a mini-bus.

While Ashton had a large toothy smile smudged across his face, Bryana sat back in a white singlet, displaying little emotion.

The bikini model, who was formally dating Kardashian step-brother Brody Jenner, tied her blonde locks back into a messy ponytail while hiding her eyes underneath a pair of large sunglasses.

Laid-back: The boys opted to perch on their seats instead of jumping around the stage

Pre-recorded: The band have been enjoying some well-deserved time off in Bali alongside bikini model Bryana Holly and Victoria's Secrets star Josephine Skriver

The shot also featured fellow 5SOS members Luke and Calum, along with fellow model Josephine and her beau Alexander DeLeon.

Missing from the snap was guitarist Michael Clifford who is also on the group trip.

Since arriving in the holidaying destination last Monday, Bryana has shared multiple photos of herself in skimpy bikini sets, failing to share any of herself and beau Ashton.

Moments after the record artist shared the group snap across his picture-sharing account, the beauty uploaded an image of herself in a black one-piece swimsuit which displayed her super toned behind.

Ashton and Bryana's holiday to Bali comes two months after the drummer revealed the pair had split during an interview with legendary radio host Howard Stern.

Baring all: On Monday drummer Ashton showed off his manly figure as he went shirtless for a social media snap before venturing out with rumoured girlfriend Bryana
She recently dropped her biggest hint yet that she may soon be expecting another child.

But Teresa Palmer took the chance to lavish attention onto her adorable son Bodhi as she shared a sweet Instagram snap of the pair as they spent some quality time together.

The doting mother could be seen laying down on a bed as she took the selfie, while her cute tot smiled down at her while dressed in a teddy bear onesie.

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'Mummy happy, Bodhi happy!': Teresa Palmer took the chance to lavish attention onto her adorable son Bodhi as she shared a sweet Instagram snap of the pair as they spent some quality time together

The 29-year-old actress captioned the shot saying: Mummy I luff you, Mummy happy, Bodhi happy!

Only a day before, the loving mother shared a snap of the pair during their New Year celebration as she told fans: 2016 (pray) for (peace) and (love) and a little.

Last week saw Teresa tease fans with a video for her website, where she explained that she was going through a 'beautiful challenge' that she would tell fans about in 2016.

Happy New Year: Only a day before, the loving mother shared a snap of the pair during their New Year celebration as she told fans 2016 (pray) for (peace) and (love) and a little

Mother: Last week saw Teresa tease fans with a video for her website, where she explained that she was going through a 'beautiful challenge' that she would tell fans about in 2016

The make-up free beauty filmed herself over her sleeping son, Teresa said of her year: 'I had some really intense challenges, I'm going through one at the moment which I'll talk about next year.

Suppressing a smile, she continued: 'Really unexpected, totally out of the blue. It's beautiful, the first few days I was like "what is happening!?"'.

The Point Break star went on to tell of her desire to have another child and admitted to including 'pregnant bellies' on a 'manifest' board which to prepare for 2016.

Family first: The 29-year-old is already mother to one-year-old Bodhi and a stepson to Mark's child Isaac

'Next year for me is about family. I want to have another baby, I want to slow down,' she confessed to the camera, adding: 'On my manifest board I have a lot of pregnant bellies.'

At the end of the 14-minute video, in which the actress also told of her plans to be more 'present' in the new year, Teresa revealed her sleeping son lying next to her.

The pair recently returned from a sunshine Christmas break with Teresa's husband Mark, with the family returning to the same Mexican resort where the couple married to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

Loved-up: Teresa and her husband Mark Webber recently celebrated their anniversary in Mexico

Teresa also chose to ring in the new year with her son, sharing a photograph of herself with a friend and some other toddlers on Instagram.

Posting a collage of photographs from the celebration, she wrote: 'Happy New Year! My raging NYE!'.

She went on to describe her 'kid friendly/tired mum friendly party', dispelling any speculation of a booze-filled night.
Seth Meyers returned to his Late Night show by spoofing Making a Murderer, the most buzzed about cult show on Netflix.

The host marked the end of his two-week vacation with a parody of the true crime docu-series about Steven Avery.

Avery was imprisoned for sexual assault and attempted murder and later exonerated, before subsequently being accused of the murder of Teresa Halbach.

The series about his life became a sensation across America over the holidays, sparking outrage and controversy.

Seth's version - Making a Talk Show Host - mimicked the string score, Wisconsin accents and the collect phone calls that feature in the compelling 10-part show.

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Parody: Seth Meyers paid homage to the Netflix documentary du jour, Making A Murderer, when he returned to the small screen on Monday

Controversy: Steven Avery was imprisoned for sexual assault and attempted murder and later exonerated, before subsequently being accused of the murder of Teresa Halbach as documented in the ten-part Netflix series

In the sketch, Seth makes a collect call to a staff member at 30 Rockefeller Center.

The anonymous employee is heard telling him he's 'gotta come back' to work from vacation.

'They don't got no more reruns', the staff member says while the camera pans across a shot of an empty studio.

Seth asks: 'Supposing I don't wanna come back?'

'Don't get strange,' replies the staff member, over tense background music.

'What time's the show on again?' asked Meyers.

Making Meyers: The skit ends with a still of Seth complete with scruffy greying beard and similar clothing to Steven Avery

Original: The series was filmed over ten years and available from December on Netflix

'12:35' comes the terse reply.

'God. That's late' concludes Meyers to laughter from the audience.

The skit ends with a still of Seth complete with scruffy greying beard and similar clothing to Steven Avery.

Netflix's Making a Murderer became an instant hit when it was released December 18.

It received glowing reviews from critics and celebrities alike, who took to Twitter to share the number of hours they had binged for and to beg their followers to watch.

'I can't stop watching,' wrote Mandy Moore. 'It's crushing but utterly spellbinding.'

Skit: He's heard talking to an anonymous staff member, who tells him: ' You gotta come back', mimicking the style of the documentary - which heavily featured taped telephone conversations

Empty chairs: 'Don't get strange' the staff member tells Seth, over tense background music

That's late! The audience laughs at Seth's response to hearing the show's on after midnight

'Never mind an Emmy or an Oscar...Making a Murderer deserves a Nobel Prize,' tweeted Ricky Gervais.

'The greatest documentary I have ever seen.'

The series - following in the footsteps of the acclaimed true-crime shows Serial and HBO's The Jinx - has raised questions over the convictions and has prompted nearly 250,000 to sign petitions demanding the pair's release.

However, there are those who believe the convictions were correct, claiming the popular show purposely excluded evidence which painted Avery in a bad light.

Thumbs up: The ten-episode Netflix series was praised by Alec Baldwin on Twitter
She works hard to maintain her flawless figure - and Lucy Mecklenburgh showed off the results of her labour as she flaunted her enviably pert posterior in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

Taken on holiday in Thailand, she captioned the image: 'One week ago today'.

Throwing her arms in the air to create a heart shape with her hands, the 24-year-old showed off her toned frame in a flattering white bikini, the idyllic background of Khao Lak beach framing her photograph.

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Cheeky! Lucy Mecklenburgh, 24, showed off her enviably pert posterior in a cheeky Instagram belfie on Tuesday, which was taken on a trip to Thailand with her Olympian boyfriend Louis Smith

The former TOWIE star wore her chestnut coloured tresses up in a messy bun for the snap, revealing her defined shoulders and arms.

The beautifully framed shot was no doubt taken by her olympian beau Louis, 26, who joined the star on the island as they celebrated not just the New Year, but their first anniversary.

And Lucy was keen to make her love known, taking to social media sites to share a series of snaps of the cute couple.

It's our 1 year anniversary at midnight. Can't believe I've put up with him for a WHOLE YEAR.. jokes love him to bits Bring on 2016!!!!!!!!!!!! Xxx #nye,' the brunette beauty gushed.

'Love him to bits': Lucy and boyfriend her gymnast boyfriend Louis celebrated their first year anniversary in Thailand during New Years

The stars, who met last August after appearing on the BBC show Tumble, have been dating since December 2014 and have been inseparable ever since.

On Sunday, Lucy went on to upload an envy-inducing snap of herself, showing off her glowing sun-kissed complexion and incredibly toned curves in all its glory.

Stripped down to a skimpy orange bikini, from Elizabeth Hurleys swimwear range, she appeared content and relaxed as she kicked back on a sun lounger whilst admiring the scenic view from her balcony.

What a view: On Sunday, the former TOWIE star went on to upload an envy-inducing snap of herself, showing off her glowing sun-kissed complexion and incredibly toned curves in all its glory

Loved up: Over the past few days, Lucy and her handsome beau have been jetting around the globe, celebrating their first year anniversary together

The fitness fan happily paraded her long legs and her deep tan in the sexy two-piece, finishing the ensemble off with stylish designer aviators.

Alongside the image, Lucy confessed just how much she overindulged during her festive break, telling her followers she cannot wait to get back into training.

She said: Not ganna lie I'm slightly in love with my new boobs that have come from nowhere (well prob made from a serious amount of gin, red wine, cocktails, mince pies, sausage rolls, Christmas dinner, bread, pasta, American pancakes, Thai food etc..) but I'm really looking forward to getting back into training & eating. [sic]

Smitten: The stars, who met last August after appearing on the BBC show Tumble, have been dating since December 2014 and have been inseparable ever since

The TV star, who is known for her love for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, is preparing to launch the latest plan from her fitness and nutrition website, Results With Lucy.

I'm starting my @resultswithlucy 'NEW BEGINNINGS UPGRADED' programme with the food delivery which I'm super excited about, she happily revealed.

I'm hoping u all love the new plan & the food delivery makes your life a little easier! The meals are sooo delicious Bring on a healthy & happy 2016!!!
She was making her debut as a panelist.

But Katie Price didn't hold back during her Tuesday appearance on Loose Women as she told her co-stars she wouldn't be surprised if her ex husband Alex Reid transitioned to be a woman.

The former glamour model was discussing new film The Danish Girl which follows the story of one of the earliest gender reassignment surgeries, with Katie admitting she can't wait to watch Eddie Redmayne's film as it's close to her own experiences with Alex.

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Speaking her mind: Katie Price didn't hold back during her Tuesday appearance on Loose Women as she told her co stars she wouldn't be surprised if her ex husband Alex Reid transitioned to be a woman

The mother of five addressed the issue after the ITV daytime show screened a clip of the Oscar-touted film.

'Every individual is different in how they do things, but obviously one of my husbands liked to dress as a woman, whether he'll end up being a woman, who knows, only he would know that,' she said after watching the scene, before confirming she was talking about Alex, who she married in 2010.

She went onto explain that she felt Alex's cross-dressing, which he has openly talked about, started when she offered to put makeup on him. 'So basically we had a drink and I said, "Shall we try and do some make-up?" mucking about, and obviously I opened a can of worms, a can of worms I wish I never opened,' Katie explained.

Exes: 'Whether he'll end up being a woman, who knows, only he would know that,' Katie told the show of Alex, who she married in 2010 before divorcing a year later

'For me, what I went through with him, it frightened me. His voice changed, his personality changed, the way he was changed. It actually frightened me. The things he wanted me to do frightened me. Some people can cope but I obviously didn't love him enough.'

Loose Women panellist Kaye Adams was keen for Katie to clarify whether Alex liked to dress as a woman who whether it was something more, to which Katie claimed: ''...and sexually, stuff [was] different. I'm not going to say on daytime TV. But like I say, if he does end up being a transgender it wouldn't surprise me. It would be hard for me to say [why] on daytime TV because it's a bit intimate.'

The star, who is now married to third husband Kieran Hayler, added that she tried to get Alex 'help' after claiming she was forced to lock her wardrobe because he'd borrow her underwear and clothes.

A spokesperson for Alex has been contacted by MailOnline for comment, while a source close to the star told MailOnline that he 'has no sex change plans now or in the future'.

Her side: Katie went onto explain that she felt Alex's cross-dressing, which he has openly talked about, started when she offered to put makeup on him

Alex, 34, recently revealed in an interview with Star Magazine that he identifies with Caitlyn Jenner and is keen to speak out on trans rights.

The cage fighter recreated Caitlyn's iconic Vanity Fair cover for the magazine, and explained in the interview that he doesn't think of himself as a 'drag queen or a female impersonator'.

Speaking as his female alter ego Roxanne, he explained: 'Ever since I was a child I've been happy to dress up and play different characters,' adding that he can definitely relate to Caitlyn, 66, and looks up to her as a role model.

Making her mark: The outspoken star was making her first appearance as a regular panellist on the ITV show alongside Ruth Langsford, Coleen Nolan and Kaye Adams

'Bruce was mocked because trans people are the last social taboo. We don't have the same rights. Wow, I just said 'we'. I guess I am. Why not be trans?' he said.

When asked about his sexuality, the star, who is engaged to personal trainer Nikki Manashe, explained that he didn't like 'labels,' pointing out: 'I believe we're all souls. I could have been a woman. When the lights are off, we're all souls.'

Alex recently finished writing his autobiography, entitled Alex Reid Exposed, which will reveal details of his life with ex-wife Katie and his experiences of fame.
Amy Schumer went public with her new relationship on Tuesday.

And less than 24 hours later, the 34-year-old actress couldn't help but share another photo featuring her handsome man.

She took to Instagram once again on Wednesday to post a photo of herself cuddling up with boyfriend Ben Hanisch.

The Trainwreck writer and actress sat on the lap of the Chicago-based furniture designer - who owns his own company - as he wrapped his arms around her.

Scroll down for video

Getting cosy: Amy Schumer posted this sweet snap with boyfriend Ben Hanisch on Instagram Wednesday as they looked happy while cuddling up with each other

Amy looked like the cat that got the cream as she flashed a wry smile while looking fashionable in a black mini dress featuring a white collar.

The two certainly appeared to be very happy as Amy posted the image with a caption featuring the URL to a donation page for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

This comes just one day after Ben joined her at the White House where they cuddled for a group photo.

She referred to him her 'man' when she tweeted the frame.

'So proud of this babe!!': Ben certainly seems smitten as he also shared a photo of the two of them together on Tuesday as they got cosy while posing for a photo from after her press conference at the White House to stop gun violence

And four days ago, Ben posted a sweet shot of the pair cuddling up along with a smitten caption.

'Sometimes in life you get extremely lucky, and the smartest, funniest, most beautiful woman comes along when you least expect it. Here's to what adventures 2016 brings!' he wrote on New Year's Day.

Amy responded by posting a comment under the picture.

'I'm pregnant. I didn't know how else to tell you.'

See more of the latest pictures of Amy Schumer and her new man Ben Hanisch

New love? The pair first went public as they went to the White House on Tuesday

Smitten: Ben called the Trainwreck star the 'most beautiful woman' in a sweet Instagram picture posted on New Year's Day

It's a joke... we think: The comedian left a comment under the picture joking about being pregnant

And the comedian appeared to confirm their relationship on Twitter.

'Fam and man at the whitehizzy,' she wrote, sharing photos from their visit to The White House on Tuesday.

Ben, who founded custom furniture design company The Last Workshop, put his arm around Amy as they smiled and posed for a photo on the White House grounds. They were joined by Amy's sister Kim Caramele, who is a writer on Amy's show, and their brother Jason.

New guy: Amy shared a photo of Ben with her sister Kim Caramele and brother Jason at the White House on Tuesday, where they supported President Obama's push for gun control

Ben, 29, is a University of Utah graduate who previously worked as a design consultant for HGTV before founding his own business, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Amy told Barbara Walters last month that she would like to have a family, but wasn't sure 'how realistic' that dream was.

'I would love those things, but I don't really see it for myself,' she told Walters.

'I hope that happens, but I don't know how realistic it is.'

New man: Furniture designer Ben previously worked at HGTV before founding his own business

Younger guy: The 29-year-old is based in Chicago

The Comedy Central star previously dated comedian Anthony Jeselnik and WWE star Dolph Ziggler.

Last year, the star revealed the three things she is looking for in a man.

'He has to be funny, he has to be nice, and he has to have a normal relationship with his mother,' she told Entertainment Tonight.

Amy has also been open about how hit comedy Trainwreck was inspired by her fear of falling in love, which she told The Chicago Tribune was 'horrible.'

'We would talk a lot about why my relationships haven't lasted,' she said of her brainstorming sessions with producer Judd Apatow.

Based on real life: Trainwreck was inspired by her fear of falling in love, Amy has said

Old flame: Amy with thjen-boyfriend, comedian Anthony Jeselnik, at a Hollywood party in 2012

'I was falling in love at the time and I was scared out of my mind and he was like, 'You should write about that.'

'Whenever I think of falling in love, it's this ecstasy. But actually it was horrible. It wasn't fun.

'Falling in love, for me, is a bad feeling... It's like you're on drugs but you can't come down.

'And you're terrified that the person could just tear your heart out at any second.'

Big news: Amy attended President Obama's remarks about gun control on Tuesday

Emotional: The comedian and gun control advocate appeared to tear up as she attended the remarks

The comedian and gun control advocate looked emotional as she attended President Obama's remarks at the White House on Tuesday.

Amy teamed up with her cousin, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, to press for greater gun control after a man opened fire at a screening of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana in July.

The gunman killed two people and injured nine before killing himself.
Turkey warns Saudi-Iran tensions will hurt 'powder keg' region

Turkey on Monday urged Iran and Saudi Arabia to calm tensions in their diplomatic crisis, saying the hostility between the two key Muslim powers would only further escalate problems in an explosive region.

"We want both countries to immediately move away from the situation of tension that will obviously only add to the already severe tensions existing in the Middle East," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said in Ankara's first reaction to the crisis.

"The region is already a powder keg," Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said after a cabinet meeting, quoted by the Anatolia news agency. "Enough is enough. We need our peace in the region."

People demonstrate outside the Saudi Embassy in Ankara, on January 3, 2016 Adem Altan (AFP/File)

The crisis began at the weekend when Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as well as 46 other convicts, prompting a furious reaction from Tehran and anti-Saudi protests.

Riyadh and then Bahrain and Sudan have now severed relations with Tehran, the main Shiite power.

Turkey's relations with Saudi Arabia have warmed considerably in recent months and in December President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Riyadh for talks with King Salman and the entire Saudi elite.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim powers, share the same vision over the conflict in Syria where they believe only the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad can bring an end to almost five years of civil war.

But in a rare public criticism of Ankara's ally, Kurtulmus emphasised that Turkey, which abolished the death penalty as part of its bid to join the EU, was opposed to capital punishment.

"We are a country that abolished the death penalty. Death penalties, especially ones that are politically-motivated, are of no help to making peace in the region," he said.

As Turkish ties with Riyadh have warmed, Ankara's relations with Tehran have grown more tense in recent months, notably over Iran's role in Syria -- where the Islamic republic supports Assad's regime -- and over its burgeoning relations with Russia.
Saudi Arabia sees 'no effect' from break with Iran on Syria, Yemen

Saudi Arabia's decision to break off relations with Iran should have no impact on peace efforts in Syria and Yemen, Riyadh's envoy to the United Nations said Monday.

"From our side, it should have no effect because we will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria and Yemen," Saudi Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi told reporters.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Arabia's Ambassador the United Nations Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, pictured on January 22, 2015, says Riyadh "will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria and Yemen" Jewel Samad (AFP/File)

International fears were growing that the Saudi-Iranian rift would derail peace efforts in Syria and Yemen and two UN envoys were dispatched to Riyadh to keep diplomatic gains afloat.

The envoy said Saudi Arabia "will attend the next Syria talks and we are not going to boycott them because of Iran" but he also took a swipe at Iran's role in the search to end the nearly five-year war in Syria.

"The Iranians even before the break of diplomatic relations have not been very supportive, not very positive in these peace efforts," said Mouallimi.

"They have been taking provocative and negative positions.. and I don't think the break in relations is going to dissuade them from such behavior."

The Saudi envoy spoke as the UN Security Council haggled over the wording of a statement on the Saudi-Iranian tensions.

In a letter to the council, the Saudi ambassador called on the council to "take all appropriate measures to ensure the inviolability of diplomatic facilities and the protection of all Saudi diplomats in Iran."

Riyadh also defended the execution of 47 men including Nimr, saying in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that they were "granted fair and just trials without any consideration to their intellectual, racial or sectarian affiliation."

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura was in Riyadh for talks and was to head later this week to Tehran to seek assurances that hard-won gains in the Syria peace process were not in jeopardy.

De Mistura is counting on broad support to launch peace talks between President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition in Geneva on January 25 -- the culmination of a three-month effort involving all key players.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have a crucial role in the diplomatic push to end the nearly five-year war in Syria and to bring about a political settlement for Yemen.
New Zealand seal series win over Sri Lanka

New Zealand sealed the one-day series against Sri Lanka on Tuesday with Martin Guptill's century spearheading a 36-run victory in the fifth and final one-dayer at Mount Maunganui.

Matt Henry's five-wicket bag helped ensure the hosts took a 3-1 series win to go with their 2-0 Test domination last month.

New Zealand posted 294 for 5 batting first at the popular beachside resort venue with Guptill making 102, before Sri Lanka were all out for 258 with 17 balls remaining.

Martin Guptill of New Zealand (L) sets off for a run as Nuwan Pradeep of Sri Lanka (R) looks on during the fifth ODI at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui on January 5, 2016 Michael Bradley (AFP)

Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews, with a brave knock of 95, had set the scene for a cliff-hanger finish when he led his side to 223 for 5 before the tail folded in six overs for the addition of only 35 runs.

The last three wickets fell for six runs in the space of 10 deliveries.

Along with Mathews, Dinesh Chandimal and Milinda Siriwardana played their part in keeping Sri Lanka in with a chance for most of the their innings.

Mathews and Chandimal produced a 93-run stand for the fourth wicket before Trent Boult, making his first appearance in the series, dismissed Chandimal for 50.

After Thisara Perera (15) made a brief appearance at the crease Siriwardana and Mathews cracked 62 off 40 to have Sri Lanka at 223 for 5 with nine overs and five wickets to get the remaining 72 runs.

But when Siriwardana fell to Mitchell Santner for 39, New Zealand rammed home their advantage.

At the start of the day Guptill capped a remarkable home season with his 10th ODI century, reaching 102 in 109 deliveries to go with his 79, 93 not out, 30 and 27 earlier in the series.

When Mathews won the toss and put New Zealand into bat he had an immediate result with Tom Latham out in the first over without scoring.

But Guptill and Kane Williamson then established New Zealand's dominance with 122 for the second wicket.

Any loose ball was despatched towards the boundary with a Guptill four bringing up their century partnership in 115 balls.

But a lapse in timing by Williamson on 61 led to his undoing when he gloved an attempt to sweep a leg-side delivery from Tillakaratne Dilshan and wicketkeeper Dinesh Chandimal snared the catch.

Ross Taylor put on 81 for the third wicket with Guptill who was caught by Thisara Perera off Nuwan Kulasekara.

Taylor brought up his half-century with a six to mid-wicket before also falling to Kulasekara.

Sri Lanka in reply were on the back foot in the third over when Dilshan, marking his 300th ODI, was removed by Boult for five.

Henry bowled Lahiru Thirimanne for two and had Danushka Gunathilaka caught for 15 as Sri Lanka slumped to 33 for 3 after nine overs before Mathews put some respectability into their innings.

Henry, who was only required by New Zealand for three of the five matches, finished with five for 50 to give him 13 wickets in the series, while Boult took three for 43.

Sri Lanka's Angelo Mathews walks from the field after being dismissed during the fifth ODi against New Zealand at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui on January 5, 2016 Michael Bradley (AFP)
Brisbane International wide open after Sharapova, Halep pullouts

The Brisbane International women's draw was thrown wide open Tuesday after defending champion Maria Sharapova and top seed Simona Halep both withdrew with injuries before their opening matches.

Sharapova, the third seed, pulled out with an arm injury before an Achilles problem forced Halep to announce her withdrawal.

Both women stressed the injuries would not affect their Australian Open preparations, saying their decisions to pull out were strictly precautionary.

Defending champion Maria Sharapova has withdrawn from the Brisbane International Roslan Rahman (AFP/File)

Organisers were left scrambling to replace the injured pair, with two qualifying lucky losers getting main draw places.

Sharapova's first round opponent, Ekaterina Makarova, took full advantage of the third seed's absence, beating fellow Russian Margarita Gasparyan 6-4, 2-6, 6-3.

Halep had a first-round bye and was due to play former world number one Victoria Azarenka, from Belarus, in the second round.

Azarenka will now play Belgian Ysaline Bonaventure.

Eighth-seeded Italian Roberta Vinci cruised into the quarter-finals when she demolished Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova 6-1, 6-1 and will now likely play Azarenka in the last eight.

Vinci said she was full of confidence after beating Serena Williams on the way to last year's US Open final.

"I'm confident right now, I'm 15 in the world right now and trying my best to reach the top 10," Vinci said.

"This is my goal. I know it is not easy, but I would like to enjoy this year, no pressure, try my best, improve every single day, every single tournament."

She said she wasn't worried about a possible clash with Azarenka.

"I've got nothing to lose, of course," she said.

"I'm happy that I won two great matches already. So there's no pressure -- just play my game."

Vinci was joined in the quarter-finals by Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who downed Frenchwoman Alize Cornet in three sets 6-2, 1-6, 6-4.

Sixth-seeded Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro advanced when she subdued local favourite Samantha Stosur 6-1, 6-7 (3/7), 6-4.

In the men's draw, sixth-seeded Belgian David Goffin was impressive in his 6-4, 6-4 win over Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci, while Serb Viktor Troicki downed Steve Johnson of the US 7-6 (7/3), 6-1.

Eighth seed Dominic Thiem of Austria beat Australian wildcard James Duckworth 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, and Czech veteran Radek Stepanek thumped young Serb Dusan Lajovic 6-0, 6-3.

Croatia's Ivan Dodig was too strong for 17-year-old Australian qualifier Oliver Anderson 6-3, 6-2, while Frenchman Lucas Pouille battled past Japan's Yoshihito Nishioka 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Italy's Roberta Vinci demolished Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova 6-1, 6-1 in the second round of the Brisbane International on January 5, 2016 Saeed Khan (AFP)
Accidental hero: the Muslim who saved Jews in Paris attack

Lassana Bathily was an undocumented migrant from Mali until he became an unlikely hero by saving shoppers' lives during the jihadist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris a year ago.

The 25-year-old became the one positive story to emerge from the three days of violence in January, when jihadist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, police and the Jewish Hyper Cacher supermarket in the east of the capital killed a total of 17 people.

"Ah, here is my favourite Frenchman," cried President Francois Hollande when he received Bathily at the Elysee Palace a fortnight after the carnage.

Lassana Bathily, the employee of the Hyper Cacher jewish supermarket in Paris who helped shoppers hide from an islamist gunman who attacked the store on January 9, 2015, poses with book 'Je ne suis pas un heros' ('I Am Not A Hero') Dominique Faget (AFP)

Bathily, a shelf-stacker in the supermarket, helped save shoppers from gunman Amedy Coulibaly on that fateful day, January 9, 2015.

The narrative of a Muslim saving Jews from a jihadist made him a positive symbol of France's diversity.

But as he writes in his book "I'm Not a Hero" to be published Wednesday, heroism has been an uncomfortable mantle for Bathily.

"The next morning, I turned on Facebook and 800 people had asked to be my friend," he told AFP.

"In the days that followed I said 'No, I'm not a hero'. I did something that had to be done."

Bathily was just a few minutes from the end of his shift at the supermarket, unpacking frozen items in the basement, when he heard a flurry of gunfire upstairs and saw around a dozen people fleeing down the stairs.

Coulibaly, who claimed he was working in the name of the Islamic State group, had taken several shoppers hostage upstairs and ordered a cashier to go round up the others.

Some of those who were huddled downstairs obeyed, but others refused to go and Bathily urged them to use the goods elevator to escape.

When no one wanted to take the risk, he ushered them into the refrigerated room, flicking off the light and the motor, and then made his own escape via the elevator and a fire escape.

"My heart was beating so hard that I was scared I'd be heard," he said.

Once outside, he helped police sketch out the layout of the shop and prepare their raid. A few hours later, they stormed in and shot Coulibaly dead.

Some say Bathily's role was exaggerated by media and officials hungry for a good news angle.

"The media and officials wanted to paint this pretty picture, that he helped us escape downstairs, that he hid us, and so on. Which wasn't really true, but that's not Lassana's fault -- at that moment, we needed a hero," one of the former hostages later told the Liberation newspaper.

Bathily is not bothered by the backlash.

"If they now say that I didn't do anything for them, that's their problem. I won't play their game," he said.

- Hero's welcome -

Several days after the violence, Bathily was granted French citizenship by the president himself, something he says had been a dream since his childhood in a small village on the Mali-Senegal border.

But Bathily was passed over for a Legion d'Honneur, France's highest award, according to nominations published Friday.

He returned to a hero's welcome in Mali, where he was offered free rooms in top hotels and was received by President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Bathily has set up an aid group to provide basic facilities in his village, which he left aged 16 to seek work in Paris.

But he has also had trauma to overcome. He lost close friend and colleague Yohan Cohen -- one of the four killed by Coulibaly that day -- and just a few days later, he heard that his younger brother Boubakar had died from a longstanding illness.

Moreover, deadly reminders of the terrorist threat seem to have dogged his life.

Bathily was just 300 metres (328 yards) away from the Bataclan venue in Paris when it was attacked on November 13.

"I ran like everyone else. But I was stuck in the neighbourhood. I didn't get home until 5:00 am," he said.

Just a week later, jihadist gunman attacked the Radisson Blu Hotel in the Malian capital of Bamako -- one of the hotels Bathily had stayed in during his recent visits.

He remains sanguine: "It's not the terrorists who can kill me -- if God decides that I will die, I will die, it's not they who will decide."

The media circus has had its benefits -- he was given new social housing and a job at the Paris town hall.

He is studying and dreams of becoming a teacher.

"I just continue to live, I continue to do what I did before," he said. "We must show solidarity, we must stay united. There is hope."

Lassana Bathily was granted French citizenship by the president himself, something he says had been a dream since his childhood in a small village on the Mali-Senegal border Eric Feferberg (AFP/File)

US Secretary of State John Kerry (C) talks to Lassana Bathily, a Muslim employee who helped Jewish shoppers hide in a cold storage room from an islamist gunman during the January 9, 2015 attacks in Paris Joel Saget (AFP/File)
Palestinian stabs soldier in West Bank, shot dead

A Palestinian stabbed and wounded a soldier in the southern West Bank on Tuesday before being shot dead, the army said, the latest in a three-month wave of attacks.

"An assailant stabbed a soldier at the Gush Etzion junction," a statement said.

"Forces at the scene responded to the attack and shot the assailant, resulting in his death. The victim is receiving emergency medical treatment."

An Israeli soldier stands guard at the Gush Etzion junction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on January 5, 2016 Menahem Kahana (AFP)

A spokesman for Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service said a 34-year-old man was taken to hospital with stab wounds to his face and hand.

A military spokeswoman told AFP he was a reserve soldier.

The Palestinian health ministry named the stabber as Ahmed Kawazbeh, 18, from Sair, a village northeast of Hebron.

Twenty-two Israelis, an American and an Eritrean have been killed in Palestinian attacks including stabbings, car rammings and gunfire targeting security forces and civilians since October 1.

At the same time, 139 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, most while carrying out attacks.

Also Tuesday, Israeli forces apprehended a young Palestinian in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, who had been feared to be on his way to attack Israelis, police said.

Ahmad Khatib, 20, from the village of Sur Baher near Jerusalem, had stormed out of his home Tuesday morning after an argument with his father, threatening to commit an attack.
India urges Pakistan to act after air force base attack

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his Pakistani counterpart Tuesday to take "firm and immediate action" against those behind an attack on an Indian air force base that left seven soldiers dead.

Modi's office said New Delhi had given Islamabad "specific and actionable information" on the audacious attack, which came just days after a landmark visit to Pakistan by the Indian premier raised hopes of improved relations.

Security officials suspect the gunmen belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group that staged a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament which brought the two countries to the brink of war.

Indian commandos guard the air force base in Pathankot on January 5, 2016 Narinder Nanu (AFP)

In a statement, Modi's office said Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had telephoned him to discuss the attack on the Pathankot base in the northern state of Punjab near the border with Pakistan.

Modi "strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack", said the statement.

"Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan."

It said Sharif had given assurances that his government would take "prompt and decisive action".

Pakistan had already condemned the attack, which began on Saturday with a dawn raid on the vast air base that triggered a 14-hour gunbattle.

A statement Tuesday from Sharif's office said his government was "working on the leads and information provided by the Indian government".

Sharif also expressed his condolences for the loss of life and said he appreciated the "maturity" shown by the Indian government in the wake of the attack.

- Derail peace process -

Some analysts have suggested the rare targeting of an Indian military installation outside disputed Kashmir may have been aimed at derailing talks between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

It coincided with a 25-hour siege near an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that left at least one policeman dead and 11 others wounded.

Analysts in Pakistan believe it is nearly impossible that the prime minister would have been allowed to hold a breakthrough meeting with his Indian counterpart last month without the consent of the army, widely understood to dictate foreign and security policy.

But analyst Khadim Hussain said the attack on the air base along with a Taliban surge in Afghanistan indicated that elements of the Pakistani military were not on board with the negotiations.

"The immediate result is they would like to derail the peace process," he told AFP, clarifying that it was unclear whether such decisions were sanctioned at the highest levels.

Sharif's statement Tuesday noted that whenever a "serious effort" for peace between the India and Pakistan was launched, "terrorists try to derail the process".

Modi's comments came as India's defence minister said the Pathankot attack had exposed "some gaps" in security following media criticism of how the incident was handled.

Gunshots could still be heard from the base on Monday - more than 48 hours after the raid - leading some to question why it took so long to neutralise the six assailants, all of whom were finally killed.

"I do see some gaps (in security), which will be clear after investigations," minister Manohar Parrikar told journalists.

He stressed that the base was a "complicated area" spread over nearly 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) and housing 3,000 families.

The Pathankot attack was claimed Monday by the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group for jihadist outfits fighting in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir.

Jaish-e-Mohammed is not part of the United Jihad Council.

Indian air force personnel guard the base in Pathankot on January 5, 2016 Narinder Nanu (AFP)
Missing Hong Kong bookseller is British citizen: UK

Britain confirmed Tuesday that one of five missing Hong Kong booksellers feared detained by Chinese authorities is a UK citizen, saying it was "deeply concerned" over the disappearances.

The case has sparked fury from lawmakers and activists in semi-autonomous Hong Kong, adding to growing unease that freedoms in the city are being eroded.

Lee Bo, 65, disappeared last week and was last seen in Hong Kong, where he is a resident.

Protesters hold up missing person notices for (L-R) the general manager of book publisher Mighty Current, Lui Bo, and colleagues Cheung Jiping, Gui Minhai, Lee Bo and Lam Wing-kei, near China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong on January 3, 2016 Anthony Wallace (AFP/File)

All five missing men worked for the same Hong Kong-based publishing house Mighty Current, known for books critical of the Chinese government.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, visiting Beijing, told reporters: "We have urgently inquired with both Hong Kong and mainland authorities."

Hammond added that if Lee were charged with any offences, he should be tried in Hong Kong.

Foreign minister Wang Yi did not reply directly when asked whether China had detained the booksellers, but said policy towards Hong Kong remained "unchanged".

"We will continue to uphold the principles of 'one country, two systems', Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong, and a high degree of autonomy," he said.

He was also asked whether China would recognise Lee's British passport.

"Based on the basic law of Hong Kong and China's nationality law, this person in question is first and foremost a Chinese citizen," he said.

China does not recognise dual nationality of its own citizens.

An earlier statement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed Lee was a British citizen, saying it was "deeply concerned by reports" about the disappearances.

The FCO urged the Hong Kong government to "honour its commitment" to press freedom.

It added that it hoped Chinese authorities would ensure the environment for media and publishers in Hong Kong supported "full and frank reporting".

- 'I feel unsafe' -

Hong Kong was handed back to Beijing by Britain in 1997 and enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland. Chinese law enforcers have no right to operate in the city.

Police confirmed Tuesday Lee's wife, Sophie Choi, had retracted a report on her husband's disappearance, a move Amnesty said smacked of "intimidation".

"I believe he did it voluntarily, so I cancelled the report," Choi told reporters.

A friend of Lee who volunteers at the book store and did not want to be identified said: "His wife is on the brink of collapse."

He added he too was now afraid.

"I feel unsafe -- I don't know whether the next one will be me," he told reporters.

Amnesty said it was common for Chinese authorities to put pressure on those close to detainees.

"One wonders whether the same sort of intimidation is being used against associates and friends (of the publishers)," said Amnesty International's China researcher William Nee.

Rights groups also questioned the validity of a letter, published by Taiwan's Central News Agency, purportedly faxed to a colleague by Lee on Monday, saying he was well and had reached the mainland using his own means on an "urgent matter".

He said he was "assisting an investigation" but did not elaborate.

Lee's wife has previously said he called her from a number in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen after he went missing.

Police are also probing the disappearances of three other missing employees who were Hong Kong residents.

One is a Swedish national, and embassies in Beijing and Bangkok are investigating his case.

In comments to a lawmakers Tuesday, pro-Beijing legislator Ng Leung-sing accused the five men of smuggling themselves to the mainland to visit prostitutes.

Ng said he had received the information in a message from "a good friend".

Messages of support (L and R) are seen hanging on the door of a closed bookshop selling books about China's politics in Hong Kong on January 4, 2016 Philippe Lopez (AFP)
North Korea Foreign Minister Ri to attend WEF in Davos: official

North Korea will send a delegation to the World Economic Forum for the first time in 18 years, with Foreign Minister Ri Su-Yong scheduled to attend this month's meeting in Davos, an official said Tuesday.

"He's coming," North Korea's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, So Se-Pyong, told AFP when asked to confirm reports circulating in South Korean media about Ri's trip.

So, who gave the confirmation at the UN's European headquarters, made no comment about the motivation for the trip to the high-profile meet.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (right) shakes hands with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-Yong at the United Nations in New York on October 1, 2015 Kena Betancur (AFP/File)

The World Economic Forum's annual meet, which was inaugurated in 1974, groups leading government, business and civil society leaders for talks at a Swiss alpine resort.
UN Security Council condemns attack on Saudi embassy in Iran

The UN Security Council on Monday strongly condemned an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran by protesters angered by Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

The statement by the 15-member council, which called on Iran to protect diplomatic personnel and property, made no mention of the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad.

Iranian protesters angered by the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimrset set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, on January 2, 2016 Mohammadreza Nadimi (ISNA/AFP/File)

"The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the attacks against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, and its Consulate General in Mashhad in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which resulted in intrusions into the diplomatic and consular premises, causing serious damage," said the council statement.

Expressing "deep concern" over the attacks, the council "called on the Iranian authorities to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel, and to respect fully their international obligations in this regard."

Council members urged the sides to "maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region."

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi had earlier urged the council to "take all appropriate measures to ensure the inviolability of diplomatic facilities and the protection of all Saudi diplomats in Iran."

Iran, for its part, expressed "regret" after the attacks on Saudi posts.

In a letter to the UN Security Council, Iran's mission at the United Nations vowed to "take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future."

Riyadh also defended the execution of 47 men including Nimr, saying in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that they were "granted fair and just trials without any consideration to their intellectual, racial or sectarian affiliation."

Concern is growing that the Saudi-Iranian rift could derail peace efforts in Syria and Yemen. Two UN envoys were dispatched to Riyadh to safeguard the gains made in the peace talks.
Saudi beheadings wrong response to criticism: Iran president

Saudi Arabia should not respond to criticism of its regime by beheading people, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday following Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

He was referring to the execution for "terrorism" Saturday of Nimr al-Nimr, who had been behind anti-government protests among Saudi Arabia's Shiite Muslim minority.

Officials have not said how Nimr was put to death, but beheading is common in the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom, which has since cut diplomatic ties with predominantly Shiite Iran.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani leaves after a press conference in his office in Tehran on December 16, 2015 Atta Kenare (AFP/File)

"One does not respond to criticism by cutting off heads," Rouhani said as he welcomed visiting Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen to Tehran.

"I hope that European countries who always react on human rights matters will meet their duties."

Human rights groups frequently criticise use of the death penalty in Iran, where hanging is employed.

Rouhani also accused the Middle East's top Sunni Arab power of using the row over Nimr, which led a mob to ransack and set fire to the kingdom's embassy in Tehran, as an excuse to sever ties.

Saudi Arabia's consulate in second city Mashhad was also torched.

"Saudi Arabia cannot cover its crime of having cut off the head of a cleric by cutting relations," he said.

The violence was condemned by Rouhani, and Iran's judiciary has said 50 people involved in the incidents, including ringleaders, have been arrested and will face legal action.

Iran's mission at the United Nations also expressed "regret" at the fireraising and disobedience in a letter to the UN Security Council.

' Trade ties limited '

Before Rouhani spoke, a government spokesman, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, said cutting diplomatic relations would not hurt Iran or damage its development.

Bahrain and Sudan also broke ties with Iran, and a number of other Arab countries have recalled their envoys, in sympathy with Riyadh.

Commerce between Iran and the countries that have severed relations is low, according to official figures released Tuesday by economic daily Donaye Eghtesad.

Bilateral trade between Iran and Saudi Arabia reached $172.5 million (159.7 million euros) during the first eight months of the Iranian year that began on March 20, 2015.

It comprised $132.2 million of Iranian exports, particularly fruit and steel, and $40.2 million of imports from Saudi Arabia, mainly fabrics and packaging products.

In the same period Iran exported $63.6 million of goods to Bahrain while buying only $60,000 worth from the Gulf state.

The tension with Saudi Arabia "will have no impact on Iran's national development," Nobakht said.

Instead, "it is Saudi Arabia that will suffer", he argued, reiterating Tehran's harsh criticism of Nimr's killing but condemning the violence by protesters as unjustified actions "beneath the dignity of the Iranian people".

And he compared Riyadh's "immature reaction" to the attacks with Iran's "restraint" after 464 Iranian pilgrims died in a stampede at the hajj in Saudi Arabia in September.

Nobahkt also said: "We condemn the inhumane, barbaric and Daesh-like execution of the cleric Sheikh Nimr," using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

He said Riyadh is trying to compensate for its political failures in regional conflicts, naming Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have long competed for influence in the region.

Even before Nimr's execution, relations were strained over the two nations' backing opposing factions in Syria and Yemen.

An Iranian woman holds a portrait of Nimr al-Nimr during a demonstration against his execution by Saudi authorities, on January 3, 2016, outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran Atta Kenare (AFP/File)
25 Iraqi fighters killed thwarting IS assault in Haditha

At least 25 Iraqi fighters have been killed repelling a major three-day offensive by the Islamic State group in the western region of Haditha, security sources said Tuesday.

"We have given 25 martyrs in 72 hours," a tribal commander, Sheikh Abdallah Atallah, told AFP by phone from Haditha, an area that includes a key dam and has held off IS since 2014.

"It was one of the biggest offensives we have seen. It came from three directions," he said, adding that dozens were also wounded.

A member of the Iraqi pro-government forces looks towards a military vehicle during battles with Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province, west of the capital Baghdad, on January 3, 2016

The mayor of Haditha, located in Anbar province about 200 kilometres (120 miles) northwest of Baghdad, confirmed the casualty toll.

"We have more than 20 martyrs and more than 50 wounded. They are from the army, CTS (the counter-terrorism service), the police and the tribal fighters," Mabrouk Hamid said.

"Haditha was targeted Sunday by a massive offensive involving more than 40 vehicles, all armoured and some explosives-laden," Hamid said.

"They were destroyed by coalition and Iraqi air strikes," he said.

Both the mayor and tribal commander said IS had lost very large numbers of fighters in their failed assault.

The US-led coalition confirmed it provided support to the Iraqi forces defending Haditha, a strategic area where Sunni tribal fighters opposed to IS have resisted several previous waves of attacks.

"There have been several ISIL (IS) attacks near Haditha. None of these attacks have been successful" thanks to stronger aerial support, US-led coalition spokesman Colonel Steve Warren wrote on social media.

- Civilians trapped -

The jihadists appeared to make an offensive on Haditha -- one of the most coveted prizes for the group in Iraq -- their priority after losing control of the provincial capital of Ramadi a week ago.

Senior military commanders said when the security forces launched their offensive on central Ramadi late last month that IS had redeployed some of its assets further west in Anbar.

In the course of their latest offensive on Haditha and the neighbouring towns of Barwana and Haqlaniyah, further south along the Euphrates, IS was nonetheless able to seize a village called Sakrana, several sources told AFP.

"Daesh controls the village of Sakrana... but they are surrounded by our forces and we should clear it within hours," Atallah said, using an Arab acronym for IS.

"They used 20 suicide car bombs just for Sakrana -- this is why they were able to take it," he said.

Hamid also confirmed that IS fighters were inside the village, east of Haditha.

The dam north of the city of Haditha is the country's second largest after the Mosul dam.

Both sources also said families were trapped in a district just north of Barwana called Al-Shay, which IS fighters were able to seize.

"The area is only about two square kilometres. All the rest of the city and the main checkpoints are controlled by us," said Atallah, from the Jughaifi clan which has spearheaded tribal resistance to IS in the Haditha area.

"Several families, including children, are besieged there," he said.

"Iraqi security forces are currently trying to rescue them," said Ziad al-Nimrawi, from Barwana police.
Top south Yemen officials survive bombing: security sources

Three senior south Yemeni officials survived a car bombing that targeted their convoy in the port city of Aden Tuesday and killed two of their guards, security sources said.

Seven other guards were wounded when the bomb-laden vehicle exploded in the Inmaa district, the sources said, after previously giving a toll of one dead and eight wounded.

Newly appointed Aden Governor Aidarus al-Zubaidi, city police chief General Shallal Ali Shayae and the governor of neighbouring Lahj province, Naser al-Khubaji, were travelling in the convoy.

Yemeni officials said the bomb-laden vehicle exploded in the Inmaa district on Aden Saleh Al-Obeidi (AFP)

They were returning from a visit to a camp of Emirati troops taking part in the Saudi-led coalition that has been battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March, the sources said.

Aidarus was appointed in December after his predecessor, Jaafar Saad, was killed in an Aden bombing claimed by the Islamic State group.

The assassination attempt comes after security forces arrested a local Al-Qaeda leader during a sweep targeting jihadists in the southern city, security officials said.

The capture of Mohammed al-Lahji, the group's chief in the Tawahi district, along with two of his bodyguards, sparked a gunfight overnight in which a policeman was wounded, they said.

Aden, the government's temporary capital, has seen a growing jihadist presence, with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, long active in Yemen, and IS apparently vying for influence.

The government imposed a one-month night-time curfew in Aden on Monday, a day after clashes blamed on jihadists killed at least 22 people, including 10 members of the security forces.

An official at the Aden governor's office said that "homes in Tawahi and Mualla districts are being searched one by one to hunt down terrorists".

Business came to a near halt in Aden as the curfew took effect, with shops closed and streets empty, residents and security officials said.

Pro-government forces trained by a Saudi-led coalition supporting President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi set up checkpoints across the city, they added.

Sunday's clashes erupted when Hadi loyalists came up against resistance while trying to secure Aden's port, security sources said.

Pro-Hadi forces eventually managed to take control of the facility after hours of fighting.

The extremists are occupying government buildings and are frequently seen patrolling several districts of the city.

"We will work on forcing the armed groups out of government buildings. We will cleanse all neighbourhoods from terrorists," Shayae told reporters late Monday.

The city was rocked by months of fighting last year between pro-government forces and Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels who seized the capital in September 2014 before expanding southwards.

Loyalists have regained control of Aden and four other southern provinces since July, but the rebels still hold Sanaa and have besieged the third city of Taez for months.

Peace talks held in Switzerland last month ended without any breakthrough after a ceasefire aimed at calming tensions was widely violated.

Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians.
Timeline of the latest Iran-Saudi crisis

The latest crisis between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia deepened Tuesday, four days after it erupted with the execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

A snapshot of events so far:

- January 2 -

Iranian protesters demonstrate outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran on January 2, as they protest against the execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities Mohammadreza Nadimi (ISNA/AFP)

Riyadh announces the execution of Nimr, 56, who had voiced bitter opposition to the Saudi royal family, and 46 other "terrorists".

Demonstrators rally in Qatif, eastern Saudi Arabia, where most of the Shiite minority live. Nimr was arrested in 2012, three years after calling for Eastern Province's Qatif and Al-Ihsaa governorates to be separated from Saudi Arabia and unite with Bahrain.

Tehran warns that Riyadh would "pay a high price" for the execution, but the Saudis call Iran "a state that sponsors terror".

Diplomatic envoys from both countries are recalled.

Gulf monarchies express support for Saudi Arabia, in particular Bahrain which faces chronic unrest among its Shiite minority, and where police use tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

Indignation floods the Shiite world. In Iraq, hundreds demonstrate in the holy Shiite city of Karbala and prominent Shiite lawmaker Khalaf Abdelsamad calls for the closure of Riyadh's newly reopened embassy in Baghdad after a 25-year hiatus.

In Tehran, hundreds of demonstrators set fire to the Saudi embassy and police make 40 arrests. In Mashhad, northeastern Iran, four are arrested after a crowd torches a Saudi consulate.

- January 3 -

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns that Saudi Arabia will face "divine revenge" for executing Nimr. President Hassan Rouhani denounces attacks on the Saudi embassy and consulate as "totally unjustifiable".

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah slams the Riyadh government as "criminal and terrorist". "This is not something we can ignore," he warns.

Thousands of Shiites demonstrate in Pakistan and violence breaks out in Bahrain and Indian Kashmir.

Saudi Arabia announces the rupture of diplomatic relations with Iran and gives Tehran's diplomats 48 hours to leave.

- January 4 -

Iran accuses Riyadh of seeking to stoke regional tensions.

Thousands of supporters of prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr protest to demand that Baghdad sever ties with Riyadh. Blasts rock two Sunni mosques in central Iraq killing one man, while a muezzin is gunned down south of Baghdad.

Bahrain and Sudan cut diplomatic ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgrades its relations.

In Tehran, 3,000 people protest against the Saudi royal family, and burn Israeli and US flags.

Saudi Arabia cuts all air links with Iran.

Russia offers to mediate and US Secretary of State John Kerry calls both countries' foreign ministers to urge calm.

- January 5 -

Riyadh says the crisis should not affect peace efforts in Syria and Yemen.

A UN Security Council statement strongly condemns the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran but makes no mention of Nimr's execution.

Iran says Saudi Arabia's severance of diplomatic relations will not hurt it or damage its development.

Iranian President Rouhani says Saudi Arabia should not respond to criticism of its regime by beheading people.

Kuwait recalls its ambassador to Tehran, the fifth Arab country to cut or downgrade relations with Iran.

UN Syria peace envoy Staffan de Mistura holds talks in Saudi Arabia before a visit to Iran.

Turkey says it is ready to help calm tensions.
Police officer in S. Carolina shooting released on bail

A police officer who shot dead a black motorist in South Carolina has been released on $500,000 bail, The Post and Courier newspaper reported Monday.

Michael Slager, who was dismissed from the North Charleston police force after the incident, had been held in jail since his arrest in April for killing 50-year-old Walter Scott.

Scott's death set off protests in Charleston and followed a string of highly publicized incidents of police violence against African Americans around the United States.

This April 7, 2015 booking photo provide by the Charleston County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina shows Michael T. Slager

"The decision was met with gasps from Scott's family and with tears from Michael Slager's wife and parents, who appeared together for the first time in the downtown Charleston courtroom," the daily reported.

"Slager was released at 7 pm after posting $500,000 bail, a jail spokesman said. Under a surety bond, he would have to pay $50,000 of that total," it added.

Scott was shot in the back five times as he tried to run away from Slager on April 4 after being pulled over, reportedly for a broken brake light.
Khomeini grandson could be excluded from Iran elections

The grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, could be excluded from upcoming elections because he did not attend a qualification exam Tuesday.

Hassan Khomeini, 43, was not among 400 candidates for the Assembly of Experts who took the theology test in the holy city of Qom, one hour's drive south of the capital Tehran.

The exam was organised by the Guardian Council, a powerful committee that vets candidates for the Assembly, a clerical group that will pick the country's next supreme leader, and for parliament.

Hassan Khomeini is the best-known of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 15 grandchildren

Elections to both will take place on February 26.

"If someone does not participate in the examination to test his level of theological knowledge, he will not have the requirements to be a candidate," said Siamak Rahpeyk, a Guardian Council member.

"We informed the candidates via the media and through the official website of the Council" of the test, he said on state television.

A source close to Khomeini, who has never previously run for public office but is close to the reformist former president Mohammad Khatami, told the official IRNA news agency he had not received any "invitation or text message" to go to the exam.

"At the time of examination, he was giving a lecture" on theology, the source said.

According to Rahpeyk, 540 of 800 candidates who originally registered for the Assembly election were invited to take the test -- including 12 women -- but only 400 showed up.

The Assembly is responsible for monitoring the actions of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei, now 76, took over from the elder Khomeini, Iran's first supreme leader, who died in 1989.

Though considered highly unlikely, the Assembly has the power to dismiss a supreme leader. It would also have the task of picking a successor should Khamenei die.

The Assembly currently has 86 clerics, but February's vote will see 88 members elected to eight-year terms.

Incumbents in the Assembly and candidates who have previously passed the theology exams are not required to take the test again.

Those who had not taken religious studies were not invited to the exam and were automatically excluded, as the Assembly is entirely made up of clerics.

February's elections to the Assembly are seen as vital as its new members may be in post when, given Khamenei's age, his successor is appointed.

Interest in the parliamentary polls is also high, with a record 12,000 candidates registered. Both the Assembly and the Council are currently dominated by conservatives.

The February ballot is crucial for President Hassan Rouhani, who has faced vocal opposition from the current chamber, including on a nuclear deal with world powers.
Saudi-Iran crisis unlikely to lead to war: analysts

The escalating standoff between Iran and Saudi Arabia may raise instability in the Middle East, but it will probably not become a direct military confrontation, experts and diplomats say.

Riyadh has severed all ties with Tehran, withdrawn its diplomats and cut air links in response to weekend attacks on its missions in the Islamic republic.

The assaults on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad followed vehement Iranian criticism of Sunni Saudi Arabia for executing leading Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr after convicting him of "terrorism".

Iranian women protest against the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr (portrait) by Saudi authorities, during a demonstration in Tehran, on January 4, 2016 Atta Kenare (AFP)

"The Saudis have no intention to escalate... but if the other side decides to escalate, the Saudis are ready to take up the challenge at any price," said Mustafa Alani, security expert at the Gulf Research Center.

"The mood in Riyadh is that there will be no compromise... The new administration is going to take up the challenge and the fight with no regard to the cost," he said.

According to a Western diplomat, Iran is "not going to enter a war with Saudi Arabia".

Gulf officials have spoken instead of possible Iranian attempts to fuel instability in the region by attacking Saudi and Arab interests.

Other sources said there could be also a rise in attacks on Shiite mosques, mainly in Iraq and Lebanon.

"This would be much more vicious... by proxy," said the diplomat, ruling out direct conflict between the rival regional heavyweights.

"It is not the moment for the Iranians to detonate mines in the Gulf" region as they await an effective lifting of sanctions and are about to start exporting oil again, said the diplomat.

In July last year, Tehran agreed to measures to put a nuclear weapon beyond its reach in exchange for sanctions relief.

- Knock-on effects -

Experts say that the worsening diplomatic crisis will at least affect the situation in conflict-ridden Syria and Yemen, where the rivals were already at loggerheads.

The dispute is also likely to have an effect on international efforts to bring the warring parties in Syria and Yemen to the negotiating table.

In an apparent attempt to salvage those efforts, the United Nations envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura travelled on Monday to Riyadh before heading to Tehran later in the week.

The world body's Yemen envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is also expected in Riyadh on Wednesday.

Riyadh's ambassador to the UN, Abdallah al-Mouallimi, said the diplomatic rupture with Iran will not alter the kingdom's efforts to reach a political solution to the wars in Syria and yemen.

"From our side, it should have no effect because we will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria and Yemen," he said.

Although Riyadh has no intention to escalate, Alani argued that the crisis will "harden the Saudis' attitude in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen".

"For the Saudi leadership, there will be no compromise with Iran's aggressive policy," he said.

"The old policy was a wrong policy in which you turned a blind eye to the Iranian challenge and intervention," he added.

In almost a year on the Saudi throne, King Salman has departed from the kingdom's hesitant policies of the past.

By executing cleric Nimr, the authorities have appeased the kingdom's Sunni clergy but also risk provoking the Shiite minority which has always complained of marginalisation, experts say.

"The Iranian support for Sheikh Nimr will be welcomed by many Shia, even those who do not agree with the Iranian system itself, because they see virtually no one else speaking up for them," said Jane Kinninmont of the London-based Chatham House think tank.

Iranian protesters set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran during a demonstration against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities, on January 2, 2016 Mohammadreza Nadimi (ISNA/AFP/File)
Obama's executive actions on gun safety

President Barack Obama, noting the more than 300,000 firearm-related US deaths over the past decade, announced executive orders Tuesday aimed at reducing gun violence.

The "commonsense" reforms, which bypass the Republican-controlled Congress, are opposed by critics, including Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls who argue that Obama's unilateral actions violate the US Constitution and restrict law-abiding citizens' access to firearms.

Here are key elements of Obama's executive actions:

Demonstrators take part in a rally to demand "sensible" gun laws in front of the White House on January 4, 2016 in Washington, DC Mandel Ngan (AFP)

- Requiring background checks

The core of Obama's move involves firming up the existing system for conducting background checks on gun sales, notably by closing the "gun show loophole" which exempts dealers at gun shows or online from conducting a background check before selling a weapon.

- Strengthening background check system

Authorities will act to make the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) more efficient, including improving state reporting to the system, hiring 230 more examiners to swiftly process checks around the clock, and modernizing digital aspects of NICS.

- Licenses for all sellers

Anyone "engaged in the business" of selling firearms must now be licensed as a dealer, which would require that person or entity to perform background checks for all gun sales.

There is no specific threshold that triggers the licensing requirement, and those who sell exclusively online or at gun shows can be considered dealers just as is a person running a brick-and-mortar store. Failure to comply with licensing requirements may result in a five year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

- Expanding mental health treatment

"Significant" new resources are being dedicated to boosting access to mental health care, including a $500 million proposal to increase service capacity, and ensuring that people with mental illness are prevented from acquiring guns. The Social Security Administration is to ensure that those with documented mental health issues are reported into NICS.

- Reporting mentally ill patients

The reforms enable health care providers to report names of mentally ill patients into the background check system. Health care privacy rules prevent doctors from sharing such data without consent of their patients, but the administration rules now allow health care providers to report to the NICS "limited demographic and other necessary information about these individuals."

- Improving gun law enforcement

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch is vowing to conduct "smart and effective enforcement" of existing gun laws, including tracking illegal online firearms trafficking and enhancing the ballistics system that can help investigators link violent crimes across jurisdictions. Obama's 2017 budget will include funding for 200 new agents to help enforce gun laws.

- Researching gun-safety technology

Obama wants to boost research efforts to improve "smart gun technology," and has directed the Pentagon, Justice Department, and Department of Homeland Security to increase research on technology that would reduce accidents and improve tracing of lost or stolen guns. The agencies must report back to Obama in 90 days with strategy outlines.

- Combating domestic violence

Lynch issued a memo to US Attorney's Offices to renew domestic violence outreach efforts. The goal is to provide additional resources for state, local and tribal law enforcement and for community groups to help fight the scourge and prevent domestic abusers from obtaining guns.

US President Barack Obama speaks with Acting ATF Director Thomas Brandon (L), Attorney Genral Loretta Lynch (2nd L), and FBI Director James Comey (R) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, January 4, 2016 Jim Watson (AFP)
Cruz echoes Trump with ad slamming immigrant 'invasion'

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, following archrival Donald Trump in fanning fears about illegal immigration, released a TV ad Tuesday denouncing an "invasion" of migrants from across the Mexican border.

The surging White House hopeful released a hard-hitting, minute-long commercial decrying the influx of undocumented immigrants from across the Rio Grande dividing Mexico from the United States.

Filmed like the trailer of a Hollywood movie, the ad portrays the migrants as bankers, lawyers and journalists dressed in suits and carrying briefcases as they run through scrubland and water.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz speaks on January 4, 2016 in Carroll, Iowa Aaron P. Bernstein (Getty/AFP)

"When the mainstream media covers immigration it doesn't often see it as an economic issue," says Cruz.

"The politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande, or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press.

"Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation," he added.

The 45-year-old conservative senator from Texas promised to triple border patrols if elected president in November 2016.

"We will build a wall that works, we will secure the border," he said.

His campaign said the ad was airing in New Hampshire, which hosts the nation's first presidential primary on February 9.

The first-term senator is in second place to Trump in nationwide Republican polls, buoyed by support from the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement and evangelical Christians.

Trump, the brash real estate tycoon from New York, has promised to end illegal immigration by building a wall along the Mexican border.

His first TV ad, which was unveiled on Monday, uses footage that shows migrants fleeing Morocco to the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla in 2014.

The Mexican-US border stretches more than 3,100 kilometers (1,950 miles), but only around a third is marked by high-security fencing.

The latest national poll of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters has Trump leading with 39 percent and Cruz on 18 percent.

But Cruz leads in Iowa with 31 percent to Trump's 21 percent.
Tearful Obama pleads for 'urgency' on gun control

President Barack Obama shed tears Tuesday as he announced limited measures to tackle rampant US gun violence and called on Americans to punish lawmakers who oppose more meaningful reforms.

Flanked by survivors of the gun violence that kills around 30,000 Americans every year, and relatives of those killed, Obama became emotional as he remembered 20 elementary school children shot dead three years ago in Newtown, Connecticut.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," the president said, struggling to collect himself. "So all of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies."

US President Barack Obama gets emotional as he delivers a statement on executive actions to reduce gun violence on January 5, 2016 at the White House Jim Watson (AFP)

In the face of Congressional opposition, Obama formally unveiled a handful of executive measures that will make it harder to buy and sell weapons, but which he admitted would not stop the scourge of mass shootings.

"We know we can't stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence," he said.

There are thought to be substantially more than 300 million guns in circulation in the United States, more than one per person.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House, Obama invoked the words of his hero, Martin Luther King, as he called for urgency in a generational struggle akin to the fight for women's, African-American, or gay rights.

"We do have to feel a sense of urgency about it. In Dr. King's words, we need to feel the fierce urgency of now, because people are dying," he said. "And the constant excuses for inaction no longer do."

"Yes, it will be hard. And it won't happen overnight. It won't happen during this Congress. It won't happen during my presidency," he said.

"But a lot of things don't happen overnight. A woman's right to vote didn't happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn't happen overnight. LGBT rights, that was decades worth of work."

- Gun lobby 'can't hold America hostage' -

Taking on Republicans and the National Rifle Association directly, he decried the pro-gun lobby's grip on Washington.

"The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they can't hold America hostage," he said.

The NRA hit back at Obama's "emotional, condescending lecture."

"The timing of this announcement, in the eighth and final year of his presidency, demonstrates not only political exploitation but a fundamental lack of seriousness," said Chris Cox, a senior NRA official.

A legal challenge is likely.

Polls have shown most Americans back tougher gun laws.

But that support has ebbed recently amid concerns about the Islamic State group and the wider threat from terrorism.

Republicans, who have long championed gun owners, quickly castigated Obama for trampling on the constitutional right to bear arms.

"His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty," said the speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan.

"No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment. We will conduct vigilant oversight. His executive order will no doubt be challenged in the courts."

The measures would tighten rules on who must register as a gun dealer, narrow a "gun show" loophole that allows buyers to dodge background checks, and crack down on "straw purchases" of weapons through intermediaries.

It would also encourage the Pentagon, with its vast buying power, to procure weapons from manufacturers who invest in "gun safety technology," such as fingerprint scanners that could be applied to commercial weapons.

Obama's remarks and recourse to controversial executive actions during an election year ensure that gun control will feature prominently in the 2016 race for the White House.

In the past, both Democrats and Republicans have used the issue to invigorate supporters and raise campaign funds.

Gun manufacturers frequently see sales surge each time tighter gun controls are proposed or a mass shooting occurs.

According to FBI figures, requests for background checks jumped by a third to over three million in December.

Gunmaker Smith and Wesson on Monday hiked its earnings estimates for the year ending in April, citing data which point to increased sales.

Former congresswoman and gun violence victim Gabrielle Giffords arrives to hear US President Barack Obama on January 5, 2016 Mandel Ngan (AFP)

Figures for gun violence in the United States in 2016 Jean Michel Cornu, Jonathan Jacobsen (AFP)
James Foley documentary to make world premiere in US

A documentary about the US journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by the Islamic State extremist group in 2014, will make its world premiere this month, HBO said Tuesday.

The premium cable network, which has acquired US TV rights to "Jim: The James Foley Story," said the documentary will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival before airing on HBO on February 6.

The 40-year-old freelance journalist was captured in Syria in 2012 and killed in August 2014. Video of his murder triggered worldwide outrage.

This picture, courtesy of Nicole Tung, taken on November 5, 2012 in Aleppo, Syria shows US freelance reporter James Foley

He had reported for GlobalPost, Agence France-Presse and other outlets from Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

Directed by Brian Oakes, the documentary tells of Foley's life, death and legacy, HBO said.

"Made with unparalleled access, 'Jim: The James Foley Story' is a harrowing chronicle of bravery, compassion and pain at the dawn of America's war with ISIS," the network added.

The film will debut in the US documentary competition at Sundance, the film festival held in Park City, Utah that opens on January 21.

HBO described Oakes as a close childhood friend of Foley.

The film includes interviews with family, friends and fellow journalists and "never-before-heard details" of his captivity revealed by fellow hostages, the network said.

"I made this film to carry on the stories that Jim needed us to know," Oakes said in a statement released by HBO.

"It's important that we understand the significant role of today's conflict journalists and why they risk their lives to tell the world how bad it can be."

Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders said 110 journalists were killed around the world in 2015, including 10 in Syria.
S. Carolina governor to give Republican response to key Obama address

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who has been mentioned as a possible 2016 vice presidential pick, will deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address.

Haley, the first female and first minority governor in her state's history, will address the nation on the night of January 12 after Obama's speech, congressional leaders said Tuesday.

She surged into the spotlight last year during a bitter debate over the Confederate flag, when she ordered the divisive and controversial banner be taken off state capitol grounds in the wake of a church shooting in Charleston.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley during the National Governors Association meeting at the White House in Washington, DC on February 27, 2012 Saul Loeb (AFP/File)

Several observers said Haley, who is 43 and in her second term as governor, used the opportunity as a political launch pad, securing her image as the face of the new South and helping her party's profile in the process.

"Nikki Haley has led an economic turnaround and set a bold agenda for her state, getting things done and becoming one of the most popular governors in America," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in announcing her as the person to deliver the Republican address.

"Governor Haley knows the American Dream and wants to see every American share in it, and were pleased that she will be delivering this years Republican Address," added Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Haley is one of two Indian American governors in the United States. The other, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, briefly ran for president before dropping out in November.

"This is a time of great challenges for our country, but also of great opportunities. I intend to speak about both," Haley said in a statement.
Armed takeover of building in Oregon puts feds in tough spot

SEATTLE (AP)  The armed takeover of a remote Oregon nature preserve has put federal officials in a tough spot: Should they confront the occupiers or lay off, given that the public faces no imminent harm?

The former risks bloodshed. The latter risks emboldening anti-government groups and possibly giving the impression that authorities treat the white armed anti-government activists with more deference than, say, young black men in the city.

A look at some of the key issues surrounding the federal response to the takeover at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns, Oregon:

A members of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, wears a camouflage jacket with a patch on his shoulder Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, near Burns, Ore. The group calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and has sent a "demand for redress" to local, state and federal officials. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

___

RACE AND RELIGION

About 20 people are occupying the refuge in the frigid high desert to protest the prison sentences of two ranchers who set fire to federal land. They want the property turned over to local authorities so people can use it free of U.S. oversight.

President Barack Obama said Monday that federal authorities were monitoring the situation, but agents made no apparent moves to surround the property or confront the group  an approach that reflected lessons learned from bloody standoffs at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, in the early 1990s.

But it also prompted complaints from many observers who suggested the government's response would have been swifter and more severe had the occupants been Muslim or other minorities.

"Every time something like this occurs, we use the phrase, 'If a Muslim had done it,' and we imagine the completely different response that would follow," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "You don't have to stretch your imagination to come up with a different scenario if these weren't white Christians."

"There seems to be somewhat of a reluctance to think white people are as dangerous as people of color," said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

But other observers suggested that from a tactical standpoint, the government's cautious response would make sense no matter who was holed up in the government building in the reserve.

"These guys are out in the middle of nowhere, and they haven't threatened anybody that I know of," said Jim Glennon, a longtime police commander who now owns the Illinois-based law enforcement training organization Calibre Press. "There's no hurry. If there's not an immediate threat to anyone's life, why create a situation where there would be?"

Instead, he and others expected the FBI to use a negotiator to try to persuade the group to leave peacefully.

___

ANTI-GOVERNMENT MOMENTUM

Among those leading the occupiers was Ammon Bundy, the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. The elder Bundy made headlines in 2014, when hundreds of armed anti-government activists rallied to his defense after federal authorities started seizing his cattle over more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

In Cliven Bundy's case, federal authorities and Las Vegas police retreated and let him have his cattle back rather than escalate the confrontation. While officials have said that federal authorities are investigating, no one has been charged with a crime, even though authorities said some of those involved had trained their weapons on police. The FBI declined to comment Monday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was quick to say that the failure to hold anyone accountable was a major victory that emboldened anti-government groups around the country and led directly to the situation in Oregon.

"They got away with something pretty serious," Beirich said. "You have a bunch of emboldened people who think weapons can be used to settle their disputes with the federal government."

Michael Barkun, an emeritus professor at Syracuse University who has studied extremist groups, agreed that not confronting the Oregon group could embolden others. On the other hand, however, some extremists crave such a fight.

"You can say, well, a negotiated settlement emboldens them," he said. "But by the same token it deprives them of a confrontation that some of them want."

___

TERRORISM OR TRESPASSING?

Some people took their criticisms a step further, arguing that if a radical Muslim group had seized the property, many would call it terrorism. But John McKay, the former top federal prosecutor in western Washington and now a professor of national security law at Seattle University, did not see it that way. The federal definition of terrorism requires an act "dangerous to human life" that appears intended to intimidate civilians or influence government policy.

"I'm not sure what the terrorism is. I don't see a violent act," he said. "They're trespassing and trying to change policy."

Wayne State University law professor Peter J. Henning said their actions more closely meet the definition of sedition, which includes conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, oppose it by force or seize its property. Sedition charges are typically reserved for the most severe cases, he noted, including that of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind Muslim cleric" who was linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The sedition charge was for a plot to attack the United Nations and other landmarks.

In 2010, the Justice Department brought sedition charges against members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan, alleging that they planned to kill a police officer and then attack those who attended the funeral. A judge dismissed those charges, saying the evidence did not prove a concrete plan to oppose the authority of the federal government by force.

If the FBI can resolve the occupation peacefully, Henning said, he did not expect that the Justice Department would bring sedition charges, but rather charges of trespassing or possibly destruction of federal property, if that applied.

"This is clearly a trespass: They're not allowed to be in there," he said. "That's an easy violation to prove."

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters stand guard Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, near Burns, Ore. The group calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and has sent a "demand for redress" to local, state and federal officials. An armed anti-government group took over thenational wildlife refuge as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West. The latest dispute traces its roots to the 1970s and the "Sagebrush Rebellion," a move by Western states like Nevada to increase local control over federal land. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Wednesday, January 6

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 6, the 6th day of 2016. There are 359 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1492 - King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ride victoriously into Granada after their armies defeat Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Spain, completing the Christian reconquest of Spain.

1540 - England's King Henry VIII weds fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage ends six months later when she agrees to an annulment.

1810 - Turkey agrees to Russia's annexation of the Crimea and Kuban with the enactment of the Treaty of Constantinople.

1818 - Dominions of Holkar in India are annexed with Rajput states and come under British protection.

1838 - Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph, in Morristown, New Jersey.

1839 - British forces capture Aden, Yemen.

1912 - New Mexico becomes 47th U.S. state.

1925 - Top South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung, a three-time presidential candidate, is born.

1941 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt defines American goal of "Four Freedoms"  freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

1942 - The Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper arrives in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

1950 - Britain recognizes the Communist government of China.

1963 - Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi launches his "white revolution," including redistributing land to peasants and giving women the vote.

1972 - Washington indicates that a U.S. naval task force dispatched during recent war between India and Pakistan marks start of regular American naval operations in Indian Ocean.

1989 - Soviet Union calls downing of two Libyan aircraft by the United States "absolutely unfounded."

1990 - Polish Communist leaders vote to disband their party and form a new leftist party under a different name.

1992 - Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his supporters shoot their way out of their stronghold and speed away.

1996 - Rebels raiding a village in northern India shoot and kill 15 Hindu men after pulling them from their beds and separating them from Muslims.

1997 - After a week of torrential rain in southeastern Brazil, at least 67 people are killed and more than 32,000 are left homeless.

2002 - U.S. Special Forces and allied Afghan fighters return empty-handed from a four-day manhunt aimed at extracting Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar from his alleged mountain hideout in southern Afghanistan.

2003 - The Tamil Tigers rebel group and the Sri Lankan government hold a round of peace talks, making modest progress toward reconciliation after a 19-year-old civil war, but reaching no significant breakthroughs.

2004 - Ugandan church leaders tell American supporters of gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson they are not welcome at the consecration of the new leader of Uganda's Anglicans, Bishop Henry Orombi.

2005 - A baby boy is declared China's 1.3 billionth citizen in a blaze of publicity to promote the government's controversial "one child" birth limits.

2008 - Mikhail Saakashvili is elected to a second term as Georgia's president. Thousands of opposition protesters denounce the election as fraudulent.

2011 - The internationally recognized winner of Ivory Coast's presidential election asks for special forces to launch a commando operation to remove the country's defiant sitting president who has refused to cede power five weeks after losing the vote.

2013 - A defiant Syrian President Bashar Assad rallies a chanting and cheering crowd to fight the uprising against his authoritarian rule, dismissing any chance of dialogue with rebels he blames for nearly two years of violence that has left 60,000 dead.

2014 - Iraq's prime minister urges Fallujah residents to expel al-Qaida militants to avoid an all-out battle in the besieged city.

2015 - Nigerias' chief of defense staff acknowledges that the headquarters of a multinational military force on Nigeria's border with Chad has been seized by Islamic extremists.

Today's Birthdays: Joan of Arc, French leader and saint (1412-1431); Max Bruch, German composer (1838-1920); Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American philosopher (1883-1931); Carl Sandburg, U.S. poet (1878-1967); Kim Dae-jung, South Korean president (1925-2009); E. L. Doctorow, U.S. author (1931--2015); Rowan Atkinson, English actor/comedian (1955--).

Thought for Today:
Deliberate acts cause more airline deaths than crashes

WASHINGTON (AP)  There were more airline deaths worldwide due to deliberate acts in 2015 than to accidental air crashes for the second year in a row, according to an industry tally.

There were only eight accidental airline crashes last year accounting for 161 passenger and crew deaths  the fewest crashes and deaths since at least 1946. The tally by Flightglobal, an aviation news and industry data company, excludes a German airliner that was deliberately flown into a mountainside in the French Alps last March, and a Russian airliner packed with tourist that exploded over Egypt in October. The toll for those two incidents was 374 killed.

In 2014, the toll from a Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared and another that was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 was 537 deaths compared to 436 accident deaths that year.

This photo released by the Prime Minister's office shows the tail of a Metrojet plane that crashed in Hassana, Egypt on Saturday, Oct. 31, 2015. The Russian aircraft carrying 224 people crashed Saturday in a remote mountainous region in the Sinai Peninsula about 20 minutes after taking off from a Red Sea resort popular with Russian tourists, the Egyptian government said. There were no survivors. There were more airline deaths worldwide due to deliberate acts in 2015 than to accidental air crashes for the second year in a row, according to an industry tally. (Suliman el-Oteify/Egyptian Prime Minister's Office via AP)

"In recent years, airline safety has improved very considerably to the point where, typically, there are now very few fatal accidents and fatalities in a year," said Paul Hayes, Flightglobal's director of air safety and insurance. "However, flight security remains a concern."

Although some years are better than others, the fatal accident rate has been improving for many years. The global fatal accident rate for all types of airline operations in 2015 was one per 5 million flights, the best year ever. The previous best year was 2014, with a fatal accident rate of 1 per 2.5 million flights. Airline operations are now about four or five times safer than they were 20 years ago.

Those tallies are for all types of airline flights, including cargo, positioning, training, and maintenance flights. There were just 98 paying passengers killed last year in accidental crashes compared to 790 in 2007. A far cry from the 1970s, when the annual average of passengers killed in accidental crashes was 1,289.

A big reason for the improving record is better engineering: Today's airliners and aircraft engines are far safer than earlier generations of planes. They are more highly automated, which has reduced many common pilot errors. They have better satellite-based navigation systems. They are made of stronger, lighter weight, less corrosive materials. And they're equipped with safety systems introduced in recent decades, and repeatedly improved over time, that have nearly eliminated mid-air collisions between airliners and what the industry calls "controlled flight into terrain"  pilots who lose situational awareness and fly their planes into a mountainside or into the ground.

The aircraft improvements are due primarily to lessons learned from crash investigations that are taken into account when new planes are designed, said John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member. As older planes are replaced with newer planes, aviation becomes safer, he said.

"We're now up to about the 7th generation of jet airplanes," he said. "We know the first generation  DC-8s, 707s  had a higher accident rate than the second or the third or the fourth generations, and it just moves on up."

But more needs to be done to weed out disturbed pilots and guard against acts of terrorism, experts said.

The Germanwings case is especially perplexing, said John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety consultant. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz managed to conceal his troubles even though airlines are continually evaluating pilots for signs of trouble. Pilots evaluate each other as well.

It's not known what caused Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to disappear while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, but many aviation safety experts theorize that it was mostly likely the result of deliberate acts, probably by one of the two pilots.

"Pilots from day one are so ingrained with protecting the passengers, with learning skills to deal with unanticipated events ... and evaluated on how well you deal with stress," Cox said. "Those who don't do well with it don't survive as professional pilots."

The Islamic State has claimed credit for a bomb suspected of blowing apart a Russian MetroJet A320 over Egypt. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory in Eastern Ukraine, according to Dutch crash investigators.

Terrorists "have been probing nonstop since 9/11 and every once in a while they find a way to get through," Goglia said.
An emotional Obama unveils his plan to cut gun violence

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama, with tears streaking his cheeks, launched a final-year push Tuesday to tighten sales of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of tougher gun restrictions that Congress has refused to pass.

The president struck a combative tone as he came out with plans for expanded background checks and other modest measures that have drawn criticism from gun rights groups, which Obama accused of making Congress their hostage. Palpable, too, was Obama's extreme frustration at having made such little progress on gun control since the killing of 20 elementary school children in Connecticut shocked the nation more than three years ago.

"First-graders," Obama said woefully, resting his chin on his hand and wiping away tears as he recalled the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad."

President Barack Obama wipes away tears from his eyes as he speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, about steps his administration is taking to reduce gun violence. Also on stage are stakeholders, and individuals whose lives have been impacted by the gun violence. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Obama's 10-point plan to keep guns from those who shouldn't have them marked a concession by the president: He'll leave office without securing the new gun control laws he's repeatedly and desperately implored Congress to pass.

Although Obama, acting alone, can take action around the margins, only Congress can enact more sweeping changes that gun control advocates say are the only way to truly stem the frequency of mass shootings.

"It won't happen overnight," Obama said. "It won't happen during this Congress. It won't happen during my presidency." But, he added optimistically, "a lot of things don't happen overnight."

The National Rifle Association, the largest gun rights lobbying group, panned Obama's plan and said it was "ripe for abuse," although the group didn't specify what steps, if any, it will take to oppose or try to block it.

The centerpiece of Obama's plan is an attempt to narrow the loophole that exempts gun sales from background checks if the seller isn't a federal registered dealer. With new federal "guidance," the administration is clarifying that even those who sell just a few weapons at gun shows, flea markets or online can be deemed dealers and required to conduct checks on prospective buyers.

Whether that step can make a significant dent in unregulated gun sales is an open question, and one not easily answered.

Millions of guns are sold annually in informal settings outside of gun shops, including many through private sales arranged online. But the Obama administration acknowledged it couldn't quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a license.

Easily reversible by a future president, the government's guidance to gun sellers lacks the impact of a new law, such as the one Obama and likeminded lawmakers tried but failed to pass in 2013 in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

What's more, none of the steps would have probably prevented any of the recent mass shootings that Obama invoked in the East Room, including those in Aurora, Colorado, Charleston, South Carolina, and Newtown. Obama defiantly rejected that critique, dismissing it as the tired trope of gun lobbyists who question "why bother trying?"

"I reject that thinking," Obama said. "We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some."

Hoping to give the issue a human face, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans affected by searing recent gun tragedies. Mark Barden, whose son was shot to death at Sandy Hook, introduced the president with a declaration that "we are better than this."

Obama readily conceded the executive steps will be challenged in court, a prediction quickly echoed by Republicans. The White House expressed confidence Obama was acting legally, and said Justice Department and White House lawyers had worked diligently to ensure the steps were watertight.

Other new steps include 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks, aiming to prevent delays that enabled the accused gunman who killed nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, to get a gun when the government took too long.

Obama is also asking Congress for $500 million to improve mental health care.

Obama's announcement carved a predictably partisan fault line through the presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, both competing for the nomination from Obama's Democratic party, pledged to build on his actions if elected. The Republican field formed a chorus of voices vowing to annul the whole package, with Marco Rubio claiming "Obama is obsessed with undermining the Second Amendment." That amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.

"Rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican. "His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty."

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Nancy Benac contributed to this report.

An emotional President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about the youngest victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, where he spoke about steps his administration is taking to reduce gun violence. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Barack Obama, joined by Vice President Joe Biden and gun violence victims, pauses as he speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, about steps his administration is taking to reduce gun violence. Also on stage are stakeholders, and individuals whose lives have been impacted by the gun violence. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

White House guests and victims of gun violence console one another after listening to President Barack Obama spoke in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, about steps his administration is taking to reduce gun violence. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
African boy mauled by chimps to undergo facial surgery in NY

STONY BROOK, N.Y. (AP)  Dunia Sibomana was considered the lucky one two years ago when a group of chimpanzees jumped from the trees and attacked him and two other boys as they played near a preserve in their native Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Dunia, unlike the others, survived. But he was severely disfigured: His lips ripped off and one cheek torn apart, leaving him with muscle damage that make it hard for him to eat, swallow and communicate.

Now, 8-year-old Dunia is set to undergo a rare and complicated surgery at a Long Island hospital that will use tissue and muscle from his forearm to recreate both lips. The hope is that he will once again be able to open and close his mouth, and eat and talk normally.

Eight-year-old Dunia Sibomana, left, poses for a photo with Dr. Alexander Dagum, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stony Brook Children's Hospital, Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 in Stony Brook, N.Y. Sibomana was left disfigured after he was attacked two years ago while playing with his brother and cousin near a nature preserve in the Congo by a group of chimpanzees. He will undergo rare facial reconstruction surgery on Monday. (AP Photo/Mike Balsamo)

"As you can imagine, not having any lips, the food can just come right out," said Dr. Leon Klempner, an associate professor of dentistry at Stony Brook Children's Hospital, where Dunia will undergo the operation. "He drools all the time and can't pronounce different words."

Monday's planned eight-hour procedure will be the first of three major operations for Dunia, who was brought from the Congo in November with the help of the nonprofit foundation Smile Rescue for Kids.

Dr. Alexander Dagum, the hospital's chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery, said he believes there are only three other documented cases where the same surgery has been performed. The hospital is covering the cost of the surgery and the doctors have all donated their time.

Since the attack, which killed Dunia's 4-year-old brother and a young cousin, Dunia has been the target of bullies and become shy and withdrawn. In his short time in the United States, he has been living with a host family on Long Island, attending elementary school and learning English in addition to his native Swahili.

Appearing for an interview with this doctors on Monday, Dunia, buried himself in video games on a tablet and colored with markers. He occasionally stuck his tongue out at the doctors as they explained the procedure.

"We're feeling very optimistic," Klempner said. "We're hoping after the surgery he'll reintegrate into society and perhaps go back to school or have some semblance of a normal life."
India says all 6 militants killed in air base siege

PATHANKOT, India (AP)  Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked an air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution.

Manohar Parrikar stopped short of saying the operation had ended, but Indian officials have said repeatedly that only six gunmen were involved.

Parrikar did not explain how just a handful of gunmen managed to paralyze a large Indian air base for almost four days, insisting that security forces had done "a commendable job." Seven Indian soldiers were killed during the attack.

An Indian military commando is seen on the top of a building at the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked the air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

"I see some gaps (in intelligence) but we will be able to understand only after the investigation. But I don't think we compromised on security," he told reporters after touring the scene of the fighting. He noted that the base is large, and is wooded in some places, making it difficult to pin down the gunmen.

Indian officials had been warned beforehand that an attack could be imminent at the Pathankot base, and had flown commandoes there in case of trouble. The warning came after the gunmen kidnapped an off-duty policeman near the base two days before the attack began, apparently to steal his vehicle. The policeman was freed the next day, and warned security forces that a team of heavily armed militants was in the region.

Parrikar said the militants' weapons included AK-47 assault rifles with makeshift rocket launchers attached, mortar rounds that could be fired from the launchers, pistols, and 50-60 kilograms (110-130 pounds) of ammunition.

In the first known claim of responsibility, the United Jehad Council, an alliance of 13 Kashmir-based rebel groups, claimed that its "highway squad," which normally attacks military convoys, carried out the attack.

Alliance spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain said in a statement to Current News Service, which is based in the Indian portion of Kashmir, that the attack was a message to India that its security forces were not beyond the militants' reach.

The council is based in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between the countries but claimed in its entirety by both.

Sharad Kumar, chief of India's National Investigation Agency, has said that telephone intercepts suggested the attackers were from Pakistan. He gave no details on those intercepts in an interview Tuesday with the television news channel TimesNow.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to his Pakistani counterpart, Modi's office said in a statement, saying the Indian prime minister called on Pakistan "to take firm and immediate action" against those linked to the attackers. "Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan," the statement added.

Pakistani officials confirmed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had spoken to Modi, expressing his sadness over the attack and saying Pakistan would investigate any information that India provides.

Sharif also told Modi that the militants wanted to derail the Pakistan-India peace process, according to Pakistani Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid.

The attack followed Modi's surprise recent visit to Pakistan and came days before top foreign ministry officials were to meet in Islamabad to discuss a range of outstanding issues, including Kashmir.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents in its portion of Kashmir. Pakistan denies that and says it only provides moral and diplomatic support.

___

Sullivan reported from New Delhi.

Indian military commandos stand at the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked the air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar, center, prepares to leave after addressing the media at the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag is on left. Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked the air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar addresses the media at the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016. Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked the air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar addresses the media at the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, Tuesday, Jan.5, 2016.Indian air force chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha is on left. Indian forces have killed the last of the six militants who attacked the air force base near the Pakistan border over the weekend, the defense minister said Tuesday, though soldiers were still searching the base as a precaution. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)
Mystery of missing men in Hong Kong takes a twist

HONG KONG (AP)  Five men associated with a Hong Kong publisher known for books critical of China's leaders have vanished one by one in the last three months, alarming activists and deepening suspicions that mainland authorities are squeezing free expression in the enclave.

The mystery took another turn Tuesday when the wife of the latest man to disappear said she now believes he went to China voluntarily and has canceled a missing person's report for him.

Lee Bo, a British citizen who vanished Dec. 30, purportedly wrote to say he went to mainland China to help with an investigation. His case has sparked fears that he was seized in Hong Kong by security agents from the mainland and taken there in violation of an agreement giving Hong Kong a high degree of control over its own affairs.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks during a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Lee's wife said she believed the letter showed he wasn't acting under pressure.

"I believe that it was voluntarily written, so that's why I retracted the case," Choi Ka-ping told reporters in brief comments.

Lee and the other four missing men are associated with the publisher Mighty Current, which specializes in gossipy books on political scandals involving China's Communist leaders and other sensitive topics that are banned in the mainland.

The disappearance of the five  all since October  has raised concerns Beijing is eroding the "one country, two systems" principle that's been in place since Britain ceded control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The principle maintains civil liberties in Hong Kong that are nonexistent on the mainland, including freedom of the press.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, on a visit to Beijing, said he pressed officials for information on Lee.

"We have urgently enquired, both of the Hong Kong authorities and of the mainland Chinese authorities, what  if anything  they know of his whereabouts," Hammond said. He added that if Lee is involved in any investigation, it should be settled by the Hong Kong judicial system.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the same press briefing, warned against making "assumptions or meaningless speculations" about Lee, saying that "above all, he is a Chinese citizen."

When Lee vanished, he reportedly did not have a travel permit for mainland China with him, an indication he didn't plan to go there that triggered speculation about Chinese security agents abducting him. The four others were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.

An image of Lee's handwritten letter was published by Taiwan's government-affiliated Central News Agency late Monday and subsequently by Hong Kong media.

The letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing company's Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, said: "Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren't to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties."

"It might take a bit of time," it said. "My current situation is very well. All is normal."

The letter gave no details on the investigation to which it refers and raised more questions than it answered.

Hong Kong police still have missing persons' files open for three other staff members or shareholders of the publisher or the bookstore. One of the publishing company's owners, Gui Minhai, is a Swedish national who disappeared in Thailand in October, according to Hong Kong media and human rights groups.

Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Joakim Edvardsson said Monday the government was "very concerned" about the disappearance of one of its citizens.

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers and human rights activists were skeptical the letter proved Lee was safe.

"If he did indeed write the letter, it was almost certainly written under duress," said William Nee, Amnesty International's China researcher. "What we see in mainland China all the time is that police and state security put enormous pressure on family members not to speak to media and not to raise a fuss on social media. If indeed it was state security that detained Lee Bo, one wonders whether the same tactics are being used to silence family members here in Hong Kong."

China's nationalist newspaper Global Times slammed the bookstore in an editorial Monday for "profiting on political rumors" and selling books with "trumped-up content."

"Although the Causeway Bay Bookstore is located in Hong Kong, it actually stays in business by disrupting mainland society," the paper said.

___

Associated Press writers Isolda Morillo in Beijing and Karl Ritter in Stockholm, and news assistant Dong Tongjian in Beijing contributed to this report.

In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016, file photo, a protester holds a photo of missing bookseller Lee Bo during a protest outside the Liaison of the Central People's Government in Hong Kong. The mystery surrounding five missing Hong Kong booksellers known for titles banned in mainland China deepened after Lee Bo purportedly wrote to say he was fine and helping with an investigation, prompting his wife to drop a missing persons report. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, left, watches Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answering a question during a joint press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond speaks during a joint press conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Afghan troops end standoff at Indian Consulate in north

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  Afghan special forces have ended a standoff with gunmen holed up near the Indian Consulate in the country's north and have killed all the attackers after a 24-hour gunbattle, officials said Tuesday.

The standoff began on Sunday night in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, when three gunmen tried to storm the consulate, and then retreated into an adjacent, four-story building. Later, Afghan troops rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of the building to drive out the gunmen.

Sarwar Hussaini, a police spokesman in northern Balkh province, said the standoff ended late Monday night. There were three gunmen and all were killed while 10 people were wounded during the clashes, including five civilians who got caught in the crossfire, he said.

CORRECTS FROM DECEMBER TO JANUARY. Foreign security forces walk at the site of a suicide attack near a compound belonging to foreigners in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Jan. 4, 2016. Afghan troops rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a four-story building near the Indian Consulate in a northern city on Monday to drive out gunmen who had attacked the diplomatic mission the night before, officials said. (AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini)

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Meanwhile, Saifudin Sahadat, a provincial high peace council chief, was shot and killed by a gunman on Monday night in northern Samangan province, said Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the interior minister. The gunman was arrested and would be soon handed over to the judiciary for prosecution, Sediqqi told reporters.

He also said the casualty toll from Monday evening's suicide car bombing near the Kabul International Airport has risen to two dead and 36 civilians wounded, including nine women. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack.

CORRECTS FROM DECEMBER TO JANUARY: Afghan police soldiers stand guard at the site of a suicide attack near a compound belonging to foreigners in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Jan. 4, 2016. Afghan troops rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a four-story building near the Indian Consulate in a northern city on Monday to drive out gunmen who had attacked the diplomatic mission the night before, officials said. (AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini)
US Pacific Fleet smaller, even as China's military grows

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP)  The U.S. Pacific Fleet is shrinking even as the U.S. and its allies are facing challenges posed by China's growing military power.

U.S. Navy officials say the more advanced ships of today make up for the decline in numbers. But the Navy has also had to lengthen deployments and postpone maintenance to maintain its presence with fewer ships.

Peter Jennings, an expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said the issue in peacetime is whether there are enough American vessels to reassure friends and allies.

FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2015 file photo, family members of sailors wave as the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrives at a U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan south of Tokyo. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is smaller than it was in the 1990s, helping fuel a debate about whether the U.S. has enough ships to meet challenges posed by fast-growing and increasingly assertive Chinese naval forces. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

"I think this is emerging as a serious long-term problem," he said.

The Pacific Fleet currently has 182 vessels, including combat ships like aircraft carriers as well as auxiliary and logistics vessels, said spokesman Cmdr. Clay Doss. That compares to 192 nearly two decades ago.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy has more than 300 surface ships, submarines, amphibious ships and patrol craft, according to the Pentagon's Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy report released in August.

This all comes as China has grown more aggressive in asserting claims to islands also claimed by U.S. allies, including the Philippines in the South China Sea and Japan in the East China Sea.

China sees the U.S. military presence in Asia as an attempt to contain it, said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. Beijing sees itself as returning to its rightful and historical role as the pre-eminent cultural and political power in the region, he said.

Since December 2013, China has built what the U.S. estimates to be 3,000 acres of artificial islands in disputed areas of the South China Sea using sand dredged from the ocean floor.

China has said the islands are meant to help ships, fishermen and disaster relief.

Questions about whether the Pacific Fleet has enough resources are more of a reflection of regional anxieties than the Navy's actual capability, said its commander, Adm. Scott Swift.

"I'm very comfortable with the resources I have," Swift said.

He pointed to the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer upgraded with new ballistic missile defenses, as well as three new stealth destroyers, the DDG-1000, in the pipeline, as examples.

One consequence of a smaller fleet has been more time at sea. Retired Adm. Zap Zlatoper, who commanded the Pacific Fleet in the 1990s, said deployments longer than six months made it harder for the Navy to retain sailors. Ships now deploy for an average of seven to nine months, though the Navy plans to lower this to seven.

Ship conditions have also suffered. The USS Essex left an exercise with Australia early in 2011 and skipped another with Thailand the following year because it developed mechanical problems after delaying maintenance to stay at sea.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, said these are signs the status quo is unsustainable.

In a November report, Clark outlined alternatives: build more ships, though this would require money Congress may not give the Navy, or deploy less, though the Pentagon has been reluctant to accept less of an overseas presence.

The other choices: keep more ships at overseas bases where they would be closer to where they operate or mix up how ships deploy. One example would be to send fewer escorts with an aircraft carrier.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington in Washington, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea contributed to this report.

FILE - This Oct. 1, 2015 file photo shows sailors of U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan man the rails as the ship arrives at a U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan south of Tokyo. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is smaller than it was in the 1990s, helping fuel a debate about whether the U.S. has enough ships to meet challenges posed by fast-growing and increasingly assertive Chinese naval forces. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE - This Oct. 17, 2015 file photo shows a U.S. Navy helicopter approaching to land on the deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as the USS Normady sails nearby during Exercise Malabar 2015 about 150 miles off Chennai, India. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is smaller than it was in the 1990s, helping fuel a debate about whether the U.S. has enough ships to meet challenges posed by fast-growing and increasingly assertive Chinese naval forces. (AP Photo/Arun Sankar K., File)

FILE - This Oct. 17, 2015 file photo shows a U.S. Navy fighter jet approaching to land on the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt during Exercise Malabar 2015 about 150 miles off Chennai, India. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is smaller than it was in the 1990s, helping fuel a debate about whether the U.S. has enough ships to meet challenges posed by fast-growing and increasingly assertive Chinese naval forces. (AP Photo/Arun Sankar K., File)
The Latest: Mom of 'affluenza' teen to be in Texas this week

LOS ANGELES (AP)  The latest on the case of a Texas teenager serving probation for killing four people in a drunken-driving wreck after invoking an "affluenza" defense (all times local):

2:30 p.m.

Authorities say the mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case will return to Texas before Friday.

ADDS IDENTITY OF WOMAN IN FOREGROUND - Tonya Couch, left, attends an extradition hearing, as one of her attorneys, Sonia Perez-Chaisson, is seen in the foreground, at Los Angeles Superior Court, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Couch, mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case, waived extradition and will be sent to Texas to face a charge of hindering the apprehension of a felon. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool)

Tarrant County, Texas, Sheriff Dee Anderson said Tuesday that he will dispatch deputies to California to bring back Tonya Couch after some "administrative matters" are cleared up. She's charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon and will be held on a $1 million bond.

Couch was flown to Los Angeles last week after being deported from Mexico. She appeared for an extradition hearing in Los Angeles and agreed to be sent back to Texas.

Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan, were arrested last week in Mexico, where authorities believe the pair fled in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

___

9:35 a.m.

The mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case has agreed to be sent from California to Texas to face a charge.

Tonya Couch appeared Tuesday for an extradition hearing in Los Angeles, where she was flown last week after being deported from Mexico. It's unclear when she will be sent to Texas, where she's charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon.

Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan, were apprehended last week in Mexico, where authorities believe the pair fled in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation in a car crash that killed four people.

Her attorneys have said that Couch wanted to return to Texas as soon as possible to have her day in court, saying she violated no laws.

___

1 a.m.

The mother of a fugitive 18-year-old known for using an "affluenza" defense in a drunken-driving case is expected to appear in a Los Angeles courtroom.

Tonya Couch is expected to appear for an extradition hearing in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday. Prosecutors are planning to ask that she be extradited to Texas.

The 48-year-old Couch was deported from Mexico and was flown to Los Angeles early Thursday morning.

Her attorneys say in a statement that Couch looks forward to returning to Texas as soon as possible to have her day in court.

The statement says that while the public may not like or agree with what Couch did, she never violated Texas law when she and her son went to Mexico.

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson has said he believes Couch and his mother fled to Mexico in late November after a video surfaced that appears to show Couch at a party where people were drinking, which would be a violation of his probation.

Her son, Ethan, is being held in an immigration facility in Mexico City.

___

This item has been corrected to show that Tonya Couch is 48, not 38.

Tonya Couch is taken by authorities to a waiting car after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, Thursday, Dec. 31, 2015, in Los Angeles. Authorities said she and her son, Texas teenager Ethan Couch, who was sentenced to probation after using an "affluenza" defense for a 2013 wreck in Texas, fled to Mexico together in November as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation. Both were taken into custody Monday, Dec. 28, after authorities said a phone call for pizza led to their capture in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
The mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an 'affluenza' defense in a drunken-driving case agreed Tuesday to be sent from California to Texas to face a charge.

Tonya Couch, 48, appeared for an extradition hearing in downtown Los Angeles, where she was flown last week after being deported from Mexico. She said very little, answering 'yes' when asked if she is the Tonya Couch wanted by the state of Texas.

It's unclear when she will be sent to the Lone Star State, where prosecutors charged her with hindering the apprehension of a felon.

Scroll down for video

Tonya Couch, 48 (left), the mother of 'affluenza' teen Ethan Couch, appeared in California court on Tuesday and agreed to be extradited back to her home state of Texas

In Texas, she will face charges of hindering the apprehension of a felon. She faces a maximum of 10 years probation if convicted. Pictured above in California court on Tuesday

Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan, were apprehended last week in Mexico, where authorities believe the pair fled in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation in a car crash that killed four people.

Ethan Couch was being held at a detention facility in Mexico City after winning a court reprieve that could lead to a weeks- or even months-long legal process in Mexico.

Tonya Couch's attorneys released a statement saying she had done nothing illegal and wanted to get back to Texas as soon as possible.

Mrs Couch and her son (pictured on December 28) were arrested in Mexico last month. Traveling out of the country was a violation of 18-year-old Ethan's parole

'While the public may not like what she did, may not agree with what she did, or may have strong feelings against what she did, make no mistake - Tonya did not violate any law of the State of Texas and she is eager to have her day in court,' lawyers Stephanie K. Patten and Steve Gordon said in the statement.

She is being held in Los Angeles without bail until she is extradited to Texas, where her bond was set at $1 million.

Ethan was driving drunk and speeding near Fort Worth in June 2013 when he crashed into a disabled SUV, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in his pickup truck.

Ethan has been fighting extradition back to the U.S. and remains held up in a Mexico City jail (pictured on December 31)

During the sentencing phase of his trial, a defense expert argued that his wealthy parents coddled him into a sense of irresponsibility - a condition the expert termed 'affluenza.'

The condition is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its invocation during the legal proceedings drew ridicule.
Activists protest ex-officer's release from jail on bond

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP)  A former South Carolina policeman charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist will remain under house arrest until his trial begins in the fall, and about two dozen civil rights activists gathered outside the jail in North Charleston on Tuesday to protest his release on bond.

"We want Slager back in jail!" they chanted. Representatives of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network released a statement calling former officer Michael Slager a danger to the community and a possible flight risk.

Slager's attorney said Tuesday that he's gratified by his client's release. "In granting Michael bond, Judge Newman recognized that Michael is presumed innocent and that he should not be punished by remaining in jail during a lengthy pretrial delay," Andy Savage's statement said.

Former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager speaks during a hearing in front of Judge Clifton Newman in Charleston, S.C., Monday, Jan. 4, 2016. The state judge approved bail Monday for a former South Carolina police officer charged with killing an unarmed black motorist. (Brad Nettles/The Post and Courier via AP, Pool)

Slager, a 34-year-old former North Charleston officer, is shown on cellphone video firing eight times as Walter Scott ran from a traffic stop last April 4. The case inflamed a national debate about how blacks are treated by white police officers.

Scott's family is disappointed and "believes at the end of the day that justice will prevail," family attorney Justin Bamberg said shortly after Monday's ruling to release Slager.

Slager had been in solitary confinement at the Charleston County Detention Center. Now, he will have to remain at an undisclosed location in South Carolina and must have no contact with the victim's family.

Court documents show that Slager will be allowed to leave the residence to work at a job, though it was unclear Tuesday whether he had obtained a position or intended to do so. Slager also will be allowed to leave to attend church, visit the doctor or his attorneys, and attend court appearances. Otherwise, he must stay at the house.

Slager faces 30 years to life without parole if convicted of murder.

During an hourlong hearing Monday, Savage told Judge Clifton Newman that he was prepared to go to court this spring and that his client should be granted a speedy trial. But prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said the state would not be ready until November.

She also is prosecuting Dylann Roof, the white man charged with murder in the killings of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church. That trial is set to begin in July, and the state Supreme Court has issued an order protecting Wilson from trying other cases before that one.

Savage renewed his request for bond after Newman rejected an initial bond request last September. The judge said at the time that Slager posed a threat to the community.

Savage said Monday that Slager has health problems and faced another 11 months in jail before even going to trial.

Scott's father, also named Walter, told the judge he often goes to the cemetery to visit his son's grave, which is adorned with flowers.

"If we let him out, he's going to go home to see his wife and children. All I can look at is a pot of flowers," Scott said.

Slager told the judge, "I hope you allow me reasonable bond to work on my case."

Newman conceded that "these are excruciating issues for the court to deal with" and said he was troubled that the trial is delayed because of the order in the Roof case.

Joe Savitz, a criminal defense attorney in Columbia, said he wasn't surprised Slager was granted the opportunity to get out of jail, given the major events  including the Charleston church shooting and the ensuing debate over the Confederate flag  in the months since his arrest.

"The Roof case is going to be tried fairly soon," Savitz said. "Everybody is kind of focusing on that."

___

Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
Iran president criticizes Saudi Arabia over severing ties

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Iran's president said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia cannot "cover up" its crime of executing a leading Shiite cleric by severing diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic, even as the kingdom's allies began limiting their links to his country.

President Hassan Rouhani's comments came as Kuwait announced it had recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic.

The execution last weekend of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric and opposition figure in Saudi Arabia, has heightened the Saudi-Iran regional rivalry, threatening to derail already shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

FILE -- In this Sept. 29, 2015 file photo, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani briefs media upon his arrival from the U.S. at Mehrabad airport in Tehran, Iran. In a statement posted to his website Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, Rouhani said that Saudi Arabia cannot cover its crime in executing a Shiite cleric by severing ties with the Islamic Republic, referring to the execution last week of Sheikh Nimr-al Nimr. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

A statement posted on his official website said Rouhani discussed the current diplomatic dispute with visiting Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen.

"The Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes of beheading a religious leader in its country," Rouhani said. "Undoubtedly, such actions can't cover up that big crime."

Iran's Vice President Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, addressing journalists Tuesday, said the country's intelligence services were investigating the diplomatic mission attacks and that police officers who failed to take action to stop the assaults would be prosecuted. Iranian police say at least 50 people already have been arrested over the attack.

The diplomatic standoff between Iran and the kingdom began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges  the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980. It's not clear whether al-Nimr was beheaded with a sword, though Saudis routinely use that form of execution.

Al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, was executed after being convicted of sedition and of other crimes, though he long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters responded by attacking the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. Late Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced it was severing relations with Iran because of the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said Monday they would sever ties with Iran The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.

On Tuesday, Kuwait announced the recalling of its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency. However, Kuwait did not say it would sever its ties to Iran over the tensions.

Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

Meanwhile Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of Shiite protesters marched in Sitra, south of Bahrain's capital, Manama, over al-Nimr's execution. An Associated Press journalist saw police fire tear gas and bird shot, while some protesters threw gasoline bombs. A number of protesters suffered wounds from the birdshot.

Bahrain, a tiny island off the coast of Saudi Arabia, is predominantly Shiite, but ruled by Sunnis. It's been the scene of long-running, low-intensity unrest since 2011 Arab Spring-inspired protests.

Iran expressed "regret" over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Iran's U.N. envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the U.N. Security Council late Monday strongly condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi diplomatic posts. The council statement, agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in the Middle East. Their rivalry deepened following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

World powers have sought to calm the tensions. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The U.N. envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran. Iran, a staunch supporter of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. De Mistura has set a Jan. 25 target date for a fourth round of talks.

The White House urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Hussain al-Qatari in Kuwait City and Reem Khalifa in Manama, Bahrain, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap
Record-tying El Nino's storms hitting parched California

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Forced by drought to become miserly with water, Californians were warned against reverting to old habits Tuesday as the first of several storms spawned by a record-tying El Nino began drenching the state.

A series of storms lining up over the Pacific Ocean was welcome news in parched California, despite their potential for causing flash floods and mudslides.

But authorities cautioned that even the wettest of winters can't replenish depleted reservoirs and aquifers unless everyone keeps pitching in.

Authorities investigate a multi-vehicle crash involving a semi-truck in the westbound lane of Foothill 210 Freeway at Sierra Madre Blvd., Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Pasadena, Calif. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

California's water deficit is so deep after four years of drought that a "steady parade of storms" like these will be needed for years to come, said Mike Anderson, climatologist for the state's Department of Water Resources.

"We're at least on a good trajectory," he said. "We've got to keep it going."

The current El Nino  a natural warming of the central Pacific Ocean that interacts with the atmosphere and changes weather worldwide  has tied 1997-1998 as the strongest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center said, citing statistics that go back to 1950.

El Ninos usually bring heavy rains to California, although it remains to be seen whether people should expect anything like a repeat of 1997 and 1998, when storms killed 17 people, wiped out crops, washed out highways and pushed houses down hillsides.

"DarthNino may finally have California in its sights," said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private Weather Underground.

"A parade of strong Pacific storms characteristic of a strong El Nino event will batter the state this week and will likely bring damaging flooding by the time the second storm in the series rolls through on Wednesday," Masters said.

However, Masters and meteorologist Ryan Maue of the private WeatherBell Analytics don't believe this first storm is as powerful as some other Pacific storm systems, and they caution that the storms now following it may land elsewhere.

The current forecast calls for a "kind of a nice level of bombardment" over the next two weeks  probably not enough to cause the tremendous flooding of 1998, but then again, that year's floods didn't peak until February, Masters said.

As much as 15 inches of rain could fall in the next 16 days in Northern California, with about 2 feet of snow expected in the highest points of the Sierra Nevada, said Johnny Powell, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

In Southern California, between 2 and 3.5 inches of rain is predicted to fall across the coastal and valley areas, and up to 5 inches falling in the mountains.

The first in the line of storms also drenched the desert Southwest on Tuesday and was aiming for the Gulf Coast, but should weaken to no more than a couple inches of rainfall by the time it reaches the Southeast, Masters added.

Flash flooding and flows of mud and debris were a concern, especially in places left barren by last year's wildfires. Residents of the Silverado Canyon burn area in Orange County and the Solimar burn area in Ventura County were urged to consider evacuating.

"The best time to prepare is before a weather event happens, but there is still time to prepare at least a basic emergency kit for your home, your car or your place of work," said Brad Alexander, spokesman for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

In Orange County, south of Los Angeles, a homeless man in his 40s was swept off his feet by swift waters and washed nearly a mile down Brea Creek in Buena Park before he pulled himself out, county fire Capt. Steve Concialdi said. He was treated at a hospital for scraped feet and arms.

Rocks fell on the roadway through Malibu Canyon, damaging four vehicles and clogging a heavily traveled commuter route through the steep Santa Monica Mountains, and Los Angeles police were rousting the homeless from normally dry riverbeds.

As steady and sometimes heavy rains fell, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti urged people to clear gutters and anything in their yards that might clog storm drains, and to stockpile sandbags if their home is susceptible to flooding.

Garcetti also said that the city's homeless encampments have been mapped for the first time, and he promised shuttles to bring people to shelters with 6,000 beds.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas said swift-water rescue teams are ready, but he'd rather not deploy them. Authorities hope to avoid a repeat of last September's rescue of a homeless man who scrambled up a tree with his dog when the Los Angeles River quickly grew to a torrent.

The storms are whipped up large ocean swells that could generate hazardous breaking waves at west-facing harbors. Ventura's Harbor Boulevard was closed Tuesday by flooding about a foot deep, police there said.

Altogether, the storms hold the potential for massive amounts of precipitation for a very parched state, but water managers won't be able to fully estimate this year's snowmelt until April 1, when the snowpack is typically at its deepest.

"Mother Nature has a way of surprising or disappointing us," Department of Water Resources spokesman Doug Carlson said, insisting that conservation must continue.

Californians used 20 percent less water this past November than they did in November 2013, before Gov. Jerry Brown declared the state's water emergency, the Water Resources Control Board announced Tuesday.

That falls short of Brown's 25 percent conservation mandate for a second straight month, although board chairwoman Felicia Marcus said the state remains on track to meet his overall goal.

"The fact that per-person water use dropped to 75 gallons per person per day on average is proof that Californians are clearly thinking twice before turning on the tap," Marcus said in a statement.

Despite these storms, Shawn Coburn says growers like him, working thousands of acres in the western San Joaquin Valley, expect no water this year from the federal government's vast system of reservoirs and canals. He blames strict environmental laws designed to protect endangered fish.

"I hope that it rains so much that Noah and his ark are flowing down the San Joaquin River," he said. "The people that run the system are telling us to be prepared for zero."

___

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Smith reported from Fresno, California.

Rain drops bead on a car window below the Golden Gate Bridge Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Sausalito, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. Stronger systems are predicted starting Tuesday following light rain a day earlier. At least two more storms are expected to follow on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly bringing as much as 3 inches of rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Concrete barriers are set to protect homes from flash flooding in Glendora, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

People make their way across a wet street near Union Square Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in San Francisco. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. Stronger systems are predicted starting Tuesday following light rain a day earlier. At least two more storms are expected to follow on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly bringing as much as 3 inches of rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Chris Lene sweeps water out of one of the businesses in the building he owns that was flooded by rain water Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific promise to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increase fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Richard Polich crosses a street in the rain on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in San Francisco. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. Stronger systems are predicted starting Tuesday following light rain a day earlier. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Los Angeles County Flood Control District crew member David Martinez uses an excavator to keep a flood inlet clean in Glendora, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Mike Thawley fills a sandbag Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in San Anselmo, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

A residence garage is sandbagged in Glendora, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Concrete barriers are set against flood debris in Glendora, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Office workers arrive to work in the pouring rain in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

A man stands near crashing waves on the Pacifica Pier in Pacifica, Calif., Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Office workers arrive to work in the pouring rain in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works Flood Maintenance Division Construction Superintendent, Stan Brown, left, inspects a flow control inlet as crews clean debris at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in Azusa, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Traffic crosses the Golden Gate Bridge in the rain Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in this view from Sausalito, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. Stronger systems are predicted starting Tuesday following light rain a day earlier. At least two more storms are expected to follow on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly bringing as much as 3 inches of rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

A car navigates through a flood water as it turns into a parking lot Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific promise to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increase fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Traffic maneuvers around a flooded roadway from high tides and rain Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Mill Valley, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. Stronger systems are predicted starting Tuesday following light rain a day earlier. At least two more storms are expected to follow on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly bringing as much as 3 inches of rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Los Angeles County Flood Control District crews inspect a flood inlet in Azusa, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

A resident drives in the rain around concrete barriers protecting homes from flash flooding in Glendora, Calif., on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Persistent wet conditions could put some Los Angeles County communities at risk of flash flooding along with mud and debris flows, especially in wildfire burn areas. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Traffic maneuvers around a flooded roadway from high tides and rain Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Mill Valley, Calif. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks and increasing fears of mudslides and flash floods in regions stripped bare by wildfires. Stronger systems are predicted starting Tuesday following light rain a day earlier. At least two more storms are expected to follow on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly bringing as much as 3 inches of rain. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Bavuma 1st black SAfrican to make test 100 to defy England

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP)  Temba Bavuma became the first black South African to make a test century in helping his team defiantly declare at 627-7 in reply to England's 629-6 declared in the second test on Tuesday.

Captain Hashim Amla made 201 and Bavuma reached 102 not out to effectively wipe out England's advantage and probably save a draw with one day to play on a serene pitch where runs have flowed and bowlers have struggled.

Bavuma, raised in a poor township in Cape Town, gave South Africa a feel-good moment after the pressure it's been under early in this series, and in this game.

South Africa's Temba Bavuma, right, celebrates making a century, during the second test cricket match between South Africa and England in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo)

"When I made my debut for South Africa I came to be a bit more aware, and realize the significance behind it more," said Bavuma, the first black specialist batsman to play for the Proteas. "It's always been an inspiration for other kids, black African kids, to aspire to."

England was 16-0 in its second innings to lead by 18 after batting out the last six overs of the day.

A victory for either team is unlikely at Newlands. England still leads the four-match series 1-0 but South Africa will take heart by a return to form from their batting ahead of decisive tests in Johannesburg and Centurion.

England was left ruing a bunch of missed catches, giving let-offs to Amla, Bavuma, and AB de Villiers, Faf du Plessis and Chris Morris, who all made half-centuries in the South African fightback.

"We're extremely disappointed that we've missed chances," England assistant coach Paul Farbrace said. "The upside is that we've created chances on a flat pitch."

The dream batting strip helped South Africa as much as it helped England in its first innings, when Ben Stokes struck a stunning 258 from 198 balls.

It was so good that tailender Morris hit boundaries with reverse sweeps off England spinner Moeen Ali, and was the fifth South African to go past 50 with his 69.

Earlier, Amla's double century was his fourth double ton, and second against England, and marked a significant return to form for him.

The only glimpse of hope for England came in the afternoon, when Amla's dismissal sparked three quick wickets in four overs from Stuart Broad and James Anderson and a brief opportunity to push for victory. England had waited 70 overs for any kind of breakthrough.

Broad began by bowling Amla for 201 and had Quinton de Kock caught for just 5. Between those strikes, Anderson forced out Faf du Plessis to a catch in the slips for 86.

The three rapid strikes threatened to derail South Africa's fightback and leave it still some way behind. When De Kock went, South Africa was still 180 runs adrift.

But Bavuma and tailender Chris Morris responded with a century stand, the third of the South African innings.

Bavuma sent a thick edge down to third man for four for his century, and celebrated by removing his helmet and waving his bat excitedly at the crowd in the city where he was born. Bavuma's family watched from the stands, including his father, who used to be a journalist.

"He was here today. He's quite happy. I'll see him later tonight. He'll probably have a few questions as well," Bavuma said.

The edge to reach his century was out of kilter with the rest of his maiden test hundred, for which he played an array of smooth cover drives and powerful hook shots to frustrate England.

South Africa declared soon after Bavuma's century, giving itself just under 30 minutes to bowl at England on the penultimate day of the match.

That finally gave the England bowlers some respite after the best part of three days and 211 overs of grind on a lifeless pitch and in searing summer heat.

"It's tough, but that is international cricket," assistant coach Farbrace said. "You're going to get on pitches like that occasionally."

Farbrace was asked if the England bowlers deserved some small reward for their work.

"There's a lot of ice up there (in the dressing room) but there's no beer," he said. "There's a lot of them sitting in ice."

South Africa's Temba Bavuma, celebrates making a century, during the second test cricket match between South Africa and England in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo)

South African Hashim Amla looks back after hitting the ball during their second Test against England in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

South African Hashim Amla makes two hundred runs during their second Test against England in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

England's Jonny Bairstow, right, looks up as South African Faf du Plessis, center, makes a run during their second Test against South Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

England Stuart Broad, center, celebrates with teammates taking the wicket of South African Quinton de Kock during their second Test against England in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)
A look at where countries stand in Saudi Arabia-Iran dispute

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdom's execution of a Shiite cleric and escalated with attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have countries around the world responding by choosing sides or urging calm.

Some nations have followed the Saudis' lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution aimed at calming the situation.

Here's a look at where countries and other regional actors stand at this point:

FILE -- In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 file photo, smoke rises as Iranian protesters, upset over the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia, set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, Iran. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. On Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, President Hassan Rouhani said Saudi Arabias move to sever ties with his country couldnt cover its crime of executing Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. (Mohammadreza Nadimi/ISNA via AP, File)

THE MAIN ACTORS:

SAUDI ARABIA  The kingdom severed ties to Iran after attacks on two of its diplomatic posts following its execution of a Shiite cleric last weekend. It also later cancelled all flights between the two nations.

IRAN  Since the attack on the diplomatic posts, Iran says it has made arrests and has criticized the violent protesters. However on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani took a slightly harder line, saying Saudi Arabia's move to sever ties with his country couldn't "cover its crime" of executing Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

COUNTRIES BACKING SAUDI ARABIA:

BAHRAIN  The tiny, Shiite-majority island kingdom off the Saudi coast, which long has relied on Riyadh for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran and has also halted flights. Bahraini officials repeatedly have accused Iran of training militants and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

SUDAN  The African nation cut diplomatic ties to Iran and gave Iranian diplomats two weeks to leave the country. Sudan once tilted toward Iran, but has been looking to Saudi Arabia for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES  The oil-rich country of seven emirates says it will reduce the number of diplomats in Iran, recall its ambassador and focus only on business relations. While backing Saudi Arabia, it may have chosen to reduce  rather than completely sever ties  because of a long trading history with Iran.

KUWAIT  The oil-rich country is recalling of its ambassador from Tehran, but it isn't immediately clear how Kuwaiti-Iranian diplomatic ties will be affected. Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most free-wheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

JORDAN: Overwhelmingly Sunni Jordan is a close ally of Saudi Arabia in the region and a beneficiary of Gulf aid. Jordan's government spokesman, Mohammed Momani, has condemned the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Iran.

EGYPT: Visiting Riyadh on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry denounced the attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran and said Iran's behavior after al-Nimr's execution amounts to "intervening in the kingdom's internal affairs." Cairo has been closely allied with Riyadh since the Egyptian military overthrew an Islamist president in 2013. Riyadh has provided billions in aid to Egypt since then.

THE ARAB LEAGUE: The body denounced the attacks on the diplomatic missions and reminded Iran of the importance of "not interfering in the internal affairs of an Arab nation," according to a statement carried by Egypt's official MENA news agency.

THE MEDIATOR:

OMAN  The sultanate has long historical ties to Iran and served as the base for secret talks between Iranian and U.S. officials that jump-started the international deal reached on Iran's contested nuclear program.

THOSE BACKING IRAN:

LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH MOVEMENT  Hezbollah was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran's Revolutionary Guard after Israel invaded Lebanon. The group is one the main Iran-backed factions in the region.

SYRIAN PRESIDENT BASHAR ASSAD  Iran has been one of the biggest supporters of Syria since the 1980s and has stood by Assad's government in his country's grinding civil war. Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest backers of those trying to overthrow him.

IRAQ'S SHIITE-LED GOVERNMENT  Al-Nimr's execution sparked outrage among the country's majority Shiites who have taken to the streets in Baghdad and the south, calling for an end to ties with Saudi Arabia. The Shiite-led government has warmed Riyadh that such executions "would lead to nothing but more destruction."

OTHER REGIONAL ACTORS:

ISRAEL  Israel considers Iran to be its greatest regional threat because of its nuclear program, its arsenal of long-range missiles, its support of anti-Israel militant groups and its repeated threats to destroy it. While Israel has no direct ties to Saudi Arabia, the countries have a shared concern over Iran's growing influence.

THE PALESTINIANS  The Palestinian Authority issued a statement after the execution of al-Nimr saying that it stands alongside the Saudis in their fight against "terrorism." The Saudis are the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, providing them some $200 million annually. The PA, and the Fatah faction that leads it, has had a strained relationship with Iran because of its support of its rival, Hamas.

YEMEN  The Arab world's poorest country is torn by a civil war pitting its internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are supported by Iran.

THOSE URGING CAUTION:

THE UNITED NATIONS  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to support peace efforts in Syria and Yemen and avoid escalating tensions.

EUROPEAN UNION: The 28-nation bloc, which opposes the death penalty, criticized Saudi Arabia's mass executions and said al-Nimr's case undermined freedom of expression and basic political rights in the kingdom. Since tensions flared between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the EU foreign policy chief has had phone contact with both sides, fearing an escalation would further destabilize the whole region.

THE UNITED STATES  The White House has urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war. President Barack Obama's administration also hopes to see the Iranian nuclear deal through.

UNITED KINGDOM  Britain and Iran reopened their respective embassies in 2015, four years after hard-line protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia is a key diplomatic and economic ally of Britain, though Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood said Britain told the kingdom about its "disappointment at the mass executions."

TURKEY  Turkey has urged both Saudi Arabia and Iran to ease tensions, saying the Middle East region is "already like a powder keg" and cannot withstand a new crisis.

GERMANY  Berlin has called on Saudi Arabia and Iran to work to mend their diplomatic ties, while condemning both the mass executions in the kingdom and the storming of the Saudi missions in Iran.

RUSSIA  State news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It's unclear whether Russian officials have made a formal offer to work with the two nations.

___

Associated Press writers Aron Heller in Jerusalem, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Raf Casert in Brussels, Susannah George in Baghdad, Jill Lawless in London and Nour Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap

FILE -- In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 file photo, Iranian and Turkish demonstrators hold pictures of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as they protest outside the Saudi Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. Turkey has urged both Saudi Arabia and Iran to ease tensions, saying the Middle East region is "already like a powder keg" and cannot withstand a new crisis. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)

FILE -- In this Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016 file photo, a Bahraini anti-government protester holds a banner in Arabic that reads, "damn you" during a demonstration against Saudi Arabia's execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, in Daih, Bahrain. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. Bahrain, which long has relied on Saudi Arabia for support of its Sunni rulers, was the first to cut ties with Iran. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)

FILE -- In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, Iraqi Shiite protesters chant slogans against the Saudi government as they hold posters showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week, in Najaf, Iraq. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim, File)

FILE -- In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, an Iranian woman holds up a poster showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent opposition Saudi Shiite cleric who was executed by Saudi Arabia, in Tehran, Iran. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. On Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, President Hassan Rouhani said that Saudi Arabias move to sever ties with his country couldnt cover its crime of executing al-Nimr. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE -- In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 file photo, Iranian demonstrators burn representations of the U.S. and Israeli flags during a demonstration in front of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of Shiite Sheik Nimr al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. On Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, President Hassan Rouhani said Saudi Arabias move to sever ties with his country couldnt cover its crime of executing al-Nimr. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 file photo, a tear gas shell explodes near Kashmiri Shiite Muslim demonstrators during a protest against Saudi Arabia in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of Saudi Shiite Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)

FILE -- In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burn an effigy of King Salman of Saudi Arabia as they hold posters of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. Some nations have followed the Saudis lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

FILE -- In this Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 file photo, Shiite Muslims take part in a rally to condemn the execution of Saudi Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, in Lahore, Pakistan. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. Some nations have followed the Saudis lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary, File)
36 migrants killed in 2 boat disasters off Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Authorities recovered the bodies Tuesday of at least 36 migrants who drowned off Turkey after their boats overturned in rough waters as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, officials and news reports said. Twelve others were rescued.

Nine bodies, including those of children, washed up on a beach in the resort town of Ayvalik early in the morning, prompting authorities to dispatch coast guard boats and gendarmerie officials to search the area by sea and by land for possible survivors.

Seven other bodies were washed up on a shore at Dikili, a resort about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Ayvalik, the victims of a second migrant tragedy, the private Dogan news agency reported. The dead included women and children, the agency said.

Turkish paramilitary police officers collect the body of a migrant lying on the beach in Ayvalik, Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. A Turkish media report says the bodies of seven more migrants have washed up on a shore in Turkey _ in a second migrant tragedy at sea in one day. The Dogan news agency the drowned bodies, including women and children, washed up at the coast of Dikili on Tuesday, hours after nine bodies were discovered further north, on a sandy beach in the resort of Ayvalik. Dikili and Ayvalik _ some 50 kilometers (30 miles) away _are crossing points for migrants trying to make their way to the Greek island of Lesbos.(AP Photo)

By late afternoon, the gendarmerie forces had recovered a total of 29 bodies in the area while seven others were found by the coast guards, a Coast Guard statement said, without providing details.

Around 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in frail boats.

Undeterred by the bitter cold and the rough winter seas, migrants are continuing to risk the journey to Greece in the hope of a better future in Europe. Most of them are Syrian refugees escaping the civil war.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that 3,771 migrants overall died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe last year. It says that makes it the deadliest year on record for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, with the number of deaths rising from 3,279 in 2014.

The IOM said 2,892, or 77 percent, of the deaths last year were on the central Mediterranean route, mainly involving people crossing from Libya. However, there were 805 deaths in the eastern Mediterranean, accounting for 21 percent of the total. That's 1 percent more than the previous year, reflecting the increasing popularity of that route.

Top officials from Denmark, Sweden and Germany, meanwhile, were scheduled to hold talks in Brussels on Wednesday amid concern about new border control measures aimed at stopping migrants entering northern Europe, EU officials said Tuesday.

Sweden introduced ID checks on all people entering from Denmark, and Denmark tightened border controls on its border with Germany on Monday for at least 10 days, citing concerns about public security because of migrant movements and border measures taken by other EU member states.

Danish officials said 18 people without proper ID were refused entry from Germany in the first 12 hours of the increased border crossing checks. Three people were also arrested, suspected of human smuggling.

In Turkey, Namik Kemal Nazli, the local administrator for Ayvalik, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the victims of the first incident are believed to be from Iraq, Algeria and Syria. There was no information on the nationalities of those drowned in the second incident.

A body with a lifejacket was pulled from the sea onto the beach at Ayvalik by a fisherman and a military police official, Dogan news agency video footage showed. Other bodies, also in lifejackets, were seen lying nearby.

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

A Turkish rescue worker looks at the body of a migrant lying on the beach in Ayvalik, Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. A Turkish media report says the bodies of seven more migrants have washed up on a shore in Turkey _ in a second migrant tragedy at sea in one day. The Dogan news agency the drowned bodies, including women and children, washed up at the coast of Dikili on Tuesday, hours after nine bodies were discovered further north, on a sandy beach in the resort of Ayvalik. Dikili and Ayvalik _ some 50 kilometers (30 miles) away _are crossing points for migrants trying to make their way to the Greek island of Lesbos.(AP Photo)

A Turkish paramilitary police officer stands next to the body of a migrant lying on the beach in Ayvalik, Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. A Turkish media report says the bodies of seven more migrants have washed up on a shore in Turkey _ in a second migrant tragedy at sea in one day. The Dogan news agency the drowned bodies, including women and children, washed up at the coast of Dikili on Tuesday, hours after nine bodies were discovered further north, on a sandy beach in the resort of Ayvalik. Dikili and Ayvalik _ some 50 kilometers (30 miles) away _are crossing points for migrants trying to make their way to the Greek island of Lesbos. (AP Photo)

The body of a migrant lies on the beach in Dikili, Izmir, Turkey, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. A Turkish media report says the bodies of seven more migrants have washed up on a shore in Turkey _ in a second migrant tragedy at sea in one day. The Dogan news agency the drowned bodies, including women and children, washed up at the coast of Dikili on Tuesday, hours after nine bodies were discovered further north, on a sandy beach in the resort of Ayvalik. Dikili and Ayvalik _ some 50 kilometers (30 miles) away _are crossing points for migrants trying to make their way to the Greek island of Lesbos.(DHA via AP) TURKEY OUT
Norwegian court to hear Breivik's rights case in prison

STOCKHOLM (AP)  The Oslo District Court says it will hear convicted terrorist and mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's case against the Norwegian government in the prison where he's serving a 21-year term.

Breivik, who killed 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in 2011, has sued the government for alleged human rights violations for holding him in isolation at the Skien prison in southern Norway.

Court spokeswoman Irene Ramm on Tuesday said the four-day trial will be held in the prison for security reasons, starting March 15.

FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 24, 2012 file photo, mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik makes a salute after arriving in the court room at a courthouse in Oslo. The Oslo District Court said on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2015 it will hear convicted terrorist and mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's case against the Norwegian government in the prison where he's serving a 21-year term. Breivik, who killed 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in 2011, has sued the government for alleged human rights violations for holding him in isolation at the Skien prison in southern Norway. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

Prison authorities have denied that Breivik is being mistreated.
Franciscan priest freed from captivity in Syria

JERUSALEM (AP)  Roman Catholic officials said Tuesday that a Franciscan priest who had been abducted by militants in Syria has been freed.

The custodian of the Catholic Church's properties in the Holy Land said the priest, Rev. Dhiya Azziz, was released late Monday. The office of the custodian, Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said the priest was abducted by jihadis who had hoped to "profit" from the abduction.

The statement did not elaborate, and it was not clear which of the multiple militant groups in Syria had been holding the priest or whether a ransom had been paid.

Sir, the news agency of the Italian bishops' conference, said the Iraqi-born Azziz was abducted on Dec. 23 as he traveled from Turkey to the town of Yacoubiyeh in Syria's northwestern Idlib province.

The Vatican's envoy in Aleppo, Monsignor Georges Abou Khazen, told the agency that Azziz had been treated well in captivity but was exhausted and needed to rest.
Woman gets a top post in Zimbabwe's air force

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP)  A woman has broken through the glass ceiling of a high-flying profession in Zimbabwe: the air force.

Ellen Chiweshe, whose title was group captain, has been promoted to become the southern African country's first female Air Commodore, the No. 3 post in the air force.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported Chiweshe's new rank in Tuesday's edition, which included a photograph of Air Force Commander Perrance Shiri fitting a hat onto her head as part of a promotion ceremony.

The newspaper quotes Chiweshe as saying: "It was a man's world and it was difficult to break in."

Chiweshe, one of the first women officers to work in the finance department of the air force, was promoted "not because of bias or favor but because of her competency," the Herald quoted Shiri as saying.

"The sky is the limit. There is nothing that can stop women from attaining high posts," he said. Zimbabwe's army has a female brigadier, according to Shiri.

Zimbabwe's constitution, adopted in 2013, requires gender parity in all state institutions, though men remain dominant in top government and military jobs.
French telecoms: Orange in talks about buying rival Bouygues

PARIS (AP)  French telecoms giant Orange is in talks about a possible buyout of rival phone provider Bouygues Telecom.

It's the latest effort at consolidation in the sector, after Bouygues rejected a bid last year by Altice, owner of rival operator SFR. The French government objected to that bid out of fears a deal would reduce competition and jobs.

Orange said in a statement Tuesday that it's in "preliminary discussions" with Bouygues and "is exploring the opportunities available within the French telecoms market." Orange, the former state phone monopoly, is France's biggest phone and Internet provider and is now present in more than 30 countries.
Queen of Creole Cuisine, Leah Chase, still cooking at 93

NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Leah Chase has spent her culinary life on the cutting edge of history, mixing fine dining with her southern Louisiana roots at her classic New Orleans restaurant, Dooky Chase's.

She broke the city's segregation laws decades ago by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She offered an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. Her jambalaya, fried oysters, shrimp Creole and Gumbo des Herbes have introduced countless people to Creole cooking.

The woman who's been dubbed the Queen of Creole Cuisine says she has few regrets  maybe just one.

Leah Chase speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

"Maybe I should have worked harder. I don't know. But I did the best I could do," says Chase, sitting in the dining room during a recent lunch rush, while fielding tourists' requests for autographs of her cookbooks or photos.

The notion that Chase hasn't worked hard enough would shock her customers. Using a walker, she still goes table to table and greets diners and steps into the kitchen to make sure her fried chicken is crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

Chase, who turns 93 on Wednesday, has spent most of her life cooking and directing the restaurant named after her husband in Treme, a historic African-American neighborhood. New Orleans restaurateur John Besh calls her an "ambassador of our food, our people of south Louisiana," where she prepares classic dishes like red beans and rice or shrimp Clemenceau.

The restaurant opened in 1941 serving sandwiches and lottery tickets. Not until after Chase married her husband Dooky in 1946 was it gradually redesigned to offer more upscale dining: tablecloths and silverware set on the table, for example, and Creole dishes.

Segregation meant that fancy restaurants were off limits to black patrons in the city. But those same restaurants were staffed by black employees, and Chase waited tables in the French Quarter during World War II.

"I worked in a restaurant so I knew what they did in them. I said well, why we can't have that for our people? Why we can't have a nice space?" she said.

Dooky Chase's also became the meeting spot for black and white civil rights activists.

Ernest "Dutch" Morial, the city's first African-American mayor, courted his wife Sybil Morial during lunches at Dooky Chase's. Sybil Morial recalled how Marshall and other lawyers would visit New Orleans and work with her husband and fellow NAACP lawyer, A.P. Tureaud, to plot legal strategies after the 1954 landmark ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education. The black and white lawyers would go to Dooky's for lunch or dinner.

"It was a haven for them to refresh themselves with wonderful gumbo and it was a place where they could strategize after a hard day's work," said Morial.

Chase doesn't boast about it, saying simply that she did what she thought she had to do.

"All I had to do was feed them. If they were in jail in New Orleans I would send food to jail. They didn't eat that prison food," she says.

Her menu reflects the south Louisiana culture she was raised in, such as crab soup, stuffed shrimp and praline pudding. She's also famous for her "Gumbo Des Herbes," which she cooks the Thursday before Easter. The gumbo, thick with cabbage, spinach or mustard greens, is traditionally made meatless on Good Friday when Catholics generally don't eat meat. But Chase's gumbo is usually made with meat so she serves it on Thursday, said Liz Williams who heads the city's Southern Food and Beverage Museum.

"It's just a reflection of how seriously Creole her restaurant is that she was serving a dish that is something you would serve at home," Williams said.

Chase has fed stars, world class athletes and presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Her life inspired the Disney movie The Princess and the Frog about an African-American girl who dreams of opening the finest restaurant in New Orleans. But except for two photographs of Obama, there's little evidence of her illustrious customers at the restaurant. Instead, her extensive collection of art by African-American artists adorns the walls.

Chase herself never went to culinary school, although she has an intense interest in New Orleans' culinary history. During one chat with a customer, the conversation quickly delves into the merits of oxtails. She's happy with the recent growth in Vietnamese restaurants and likes to use lemon grass in chicken soup.

After seven decades in the restaurant business, it's clear her passions for food and her city haven't waned.

"It's fun for me. I like what I'm doing. I hope to get it done really well someday," she said.

__

Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal.

FILE - In this April 15, 1986 file photo, Leah Chase, is seen in the kitchen of her restaurant "Dooky Chase's." New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Burt Steel, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2007 file photo, President George W. Bush, left, talks with Leah Chase during a dinner with community leaders at her restaurant, Dooky Chase's, in New Orleans. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Leah Chase talks to patrons at her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Leah Chase shakes hands with patrons Susan Actor, center, and Lisa Fisher, of Mt. Vernon, Washington, at her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Leah Chase hugs patrons at her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Leah Chase walks through her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Leah Chase speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Leah Chase clasps her hands as she speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at her family's restaurant, Dooky Chase's Restaurant, in New Orleans, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase broke the citys segregation laws by serving white and black customers, including civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall. She strove to provide an upscale, white-tablecloth dining experience at a time when none existed for blacks in the city. And after Hurricane Katrina she lived in a FEMA trailer for months as her beloved Dooky Chases Restaurant was being rebuilt, and she still goes to work daily. She said she has few regrets. Well, maybe one. Maybe I should have worked harder. I dont know. But I did the best I could do. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Belfast preacher acquitted of hate speech against Muslims

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP)  A Belfast evangelist charged with hate speech against Muslims has been acquitted after a judge ruled that his sermon had not been sufficiently offensive.

Scores of Christian supporters cheered Tuesday's judgment at Belfast Magistrates Court as Pastor James McConnell walked free. McConnell faced a charge of spreading grossly offensive messages after his church put his May 2014 sermon denouncing Muslims online.

Outside, the 78-year-old McConnell said he hadn't intended to offend Muslims when describing their faith as satanic and many Muslims as terrorists. He said: "I wouldn't hurt a hair on their head."

Evangelical preacher James McConnell, center, celebrates after being found not guilty at Belfast Magistrate's court, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The 78-year-old preacher from North Belfast had been facing charges of grossly offensive message to Muslims relating to a sermon at his church in 2014. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

District Judge Liam McNally said courts must be "careful not to criminalize speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of criminal law to censor offensive utterances."

Evangelical preacher James McConnell speaks to the media after being found not guilty at Belfast Magistrate's court, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The 78-year-old preacher from North Belfast had been facing charges of grossly offensive message to Muslims relating to a sermon at his church in 2014. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Evangelical preacher James McConnell arrives at Belfast Magistrate's court, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The 78-year-old preacher from North Belfast was found not guilt Tuesday, where he was facing charges of grossly offensive message to Muslims relating to a sermon at his church in 2014. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Evangelical preacher James McConnell, centre, gives a thumbs up after being found not guilty at Belfast Magistrate's court, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The 78-year-old preacher from North Belfast had been facing charges of grossly offensive message to Muslims relating to a sermon at his church in 2014. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Evangelical preacher James McConnell speaks to the media after being found not guilty at Belfast Magistrate's court, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The 78-year-old preacher from North Belfast had been facing charges of grossly offensive message to Muslims relating to a sermon at his church in 2014. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Evangelical preacher James McConnell arrives at Belfast Magistrate's court, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The 78-year-old preacher from North Belfast was found not guilt Tuesday where he was facing charges of grossly offensive message to Muslims relating to a sermon at his church in 2014. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Official: Burundi mediation talks postponed at gov't request

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP)  A Burundi official says talks to bring peace to his country will not resume Wednesday in Tanzania as agreed earlier.

Burundi's ambassador to Uganda Jean Bosco Barege said Tuesday his government has asked for more time to prepare for mediation by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Tanzania. Barege denied reports that the Burundi government had withdrawn from the talks.
Chinese liquor baijiu takes a shot at the US cocktail scene

Think bourbon is hot? It's got nothing on baijiu.

Yet chances are good you haven't even heard of baijiu, the high proof, pungent, spicy, savory, sweet traditional liquor of China. It packs a fiery punch. It also happens to be the world's best-selling liquor by volume, a drink with a pedigree stretching back centuries, and was poured to toast the warming of U.S.-Sino relations during Nixon's historic 1972 visit.

Now, producers are making diplomatic overtures to an entirely new audience  the U.S. craft cocktail scene.

This Friday, Nov. 20, 2015 photo shows Baijiu brands, from left, Zhen Pen, Kweichow Moutai, Honk Kong Baijiu, Shui Jing Fang and Lu Zhoulao Jiao at Lumos, a Baijiu bar, in New York. As the No. 1 liquor in China, the powerful spirit, has always been big. But now it's also showing up in the United States as bartenders explore its nuances and experiment with it as a cocktail base. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

"We feel that it has incredible potential," says Yuan Liu, senior vice president of business development for Los Angeles-based CNS Imports, the largest importer/distributor of baijiu in United States.

Baijiu is sorghum-based, though it also can contain wheat, rice and corn. An it's not a uniform product; it's a class of spirits with many categories. Think whiskey with its range from smoky Scotch to mellow bourbon. But unlike whiskey, which is fermented in a liquid state, baijiu is more or less dry fermented inside in-ground pits. It then is steam distilled several times in goose-neck stills, aged in massive terra cotta vessels, then finally blended (itself a complex and labor-intensive process.)

It generally is bottled at around 100 or 120 proof (well above the typical 80 proof for vodka, gin, etc.) and is classed by aroma, such as "light," ''rice," ''strong" and "sauce"  labels which aren't all that helpful to Westerners. Typical reactions from first-timers are that it smells and tastes like blue cheese, mushroom or soy sauce  not the most alluring descriptors.

"This is not a spirit you can just pour into a martini glass and enjoy," says New York bartender Orson Salicetti.

But introduced more gently as part of a cocktail? That can work, says Salicetti, co-founder of the Lumos bar, which focuses on the Chinese spirit and has a menu of more than 60 baijiu cocktails. Salicetti was introduced to baijiu by his architect partner Qifan Li and realized baijiu would be a great way to stand out in a city awash with specialty bars.

A popular option at Lumos is the "sesame colada," which includes caramelized pineapple juice, white sesame paste and agave syrup. There's also the goji baijiu punch, consisting of goji-infused HKB baijiu, mezcal, pink grapefruit juice, lime juice, agave syrup and orange bitters.

Lumos carries a full range of baijiu, including the No. 1 brand, Kweichow Moutai, recognizable by its distinctive packaging of a white bottle with a red and gold label. Other major players include Wu Liang Ye and Shui Jing Fang. A newer brand is HKB, designed with cocktails in mind and bottled at a relatively mild 86 proof. There also is a U.S.-produced baijiu, from Vinn, a distillery just south of Portland, Oregon.

Most of the $23 billion baijiu market stays in China, though there's been growing interest in exporting. Most of the baijiu imported to the United States goes to Chinese restaurants and shops. But about two years ago, CNS Imports decided to expand their reach. "We looked at each other and said, 'Why aren't we introducing this category of spirits to people outside the Chinese community?'" said Liu.

They've moved slowly, introducing the spirit to bartenders and learning, from experience, to work with rather than mask the unique flavors. "Instead of trying to mask the spirit and make it into something it isn't, like vodka, they're essentially creating and building a cocktail around the spirit," says Liu.

Clearly, there's a push to raise the profile of baijiu in the West. Whether it will be successful is another story. Baijiu has an exotic appeal which is both a weakness and a strength, says Jim Boyce, who blogs about Beijing nightlife at beijingboyce.com. "Baiju is such a novelty and that's going to be its challenge, going from 'Yes, I tried it once and it's interesting,' to something people buy regularly or even stock at home."

Chinese traditionalists wouldn't dream of drinking baijiu anything but neat and in very small glasses, which is how Kathy Fang serves it at her family's FANG restaurant in San Francisco's bustling SOMA district. Meant to go with food, baijiu pairs well with savory bites, such as Fang's fried pork confit eggrolls, and it's been a surprising hit with tech workers who tend to be open to new tastes, says Fang.

"If you tell them it's really strong like moonshine they're even more like, 'Oh, I want to try,'" says Fang.

___

Online:

http://www.lumosnyc.com/

http://www.cnsimports.com/

http://www.fangrestaurant.com/

___

Michelle Locke tweets at https://twitter.com/Locke_Michelle

This Nov. 2, 2015 photo shows Kweichow Moutai baijiu, Hong Kong Baijiu, and Jian Nan Chun Chiew baijiu in Concord, N.H. Baijiu is a high proof, pungent, spicy, savory, sweet traditional liquor of China. (AP Photo/Matthew Mead)

This Nov. 2, 2015 photo shows Kweichow Moutai baijiu, Hong Kong Baijiu, and Jian Nan Chun Chiew baijiu in Concord, N.H. Baijiu is a high proof, pungent, spicy, savory, sweet traditional liquor of China. (AP Photo/Matthew Mead)
Vice News says reporter released on bail in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Iraqi Kurdish journalist Mohammed Rasool has been released after 131 days in a Turkish prison, the organization he was working for said Tuesday. Rasool's arrest on charges of assisting a terrorist organization had been widely criticized by international media organizations.

Rasool, who was arrested in August while covering the conflict in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast, will be required to report to a police station twice a week and is barred from leaving the country.

"Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time," Vice News said.

FILE - In this Saturday Nov. 1, 2014 file photograph, freelance translator Mohammed Rasool is pictured during a break while working with an Associated Press team in Turkey. Vice News said Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016 that reporter Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail after being held in a Turkish jail for four months. Rasool was detained in August along with two other journalists while reporting for Vice News on the situation in Turkey's mostly Kurdish regions. (AP Photo/Elena Becatoros, File)

Rasool, 25, was working as a news assistant and translator when he was detained along with two Vice News journalists  Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury  in the city of Diyarbakir on Aug. 27. The two British journalists were released after 11 days and deported, while Rasool was sent to a high-security prison.

The three journalists had traveled to towns along Turkey's border with Iraq, the center of renewed violence between Kurdish militants and government forces.

Rasool's detention came amid a spike in prosecutions of journalists in Turkey, many charged with anti-terrorism offenses and under laws against insulting the president. Media advocacy groups had criticized his detention and called for his immediate release.

"We are relieved that Mohammed Ismael Rasool is free on bail after spending 131 days in a high-security prison on trumped up terrorism charges," said Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "We urge Turkish authorities to drop all charges against him and allow him to travel and work freely."
Mother of 'affluenza' teen agrees to be sent back to Texas

LOS ANGELES (AP)  The mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case agreed Tuesday to be sent from California to Texas to face a charge.

Tonya Couch, 48, said very little at an extradition hearing in downtown Los Angeles, where she was flown after being deported from Mexico. She answered "yes" when asked if she is the Tonya Couch wanted by the state of Texas.

It wasn't clear when Couch would return to the Lone Star State, but authorities there said they will bring her back before Friday. Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said he will dispatch deputies to pick her up after clearing up some "administrative matters."

ADDS IDENTITY OF WOMAN IN FOREGROUND - Tonya Couch, left, appears for her extradition hearing at the Los Angeles Superior Court, as one of her attorneys, Sonia Perez-Chaisson, is seen in the foreground, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Couch, mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case, waived extradition and will be sent to Texas to face a charge of hindering the apprehension of a felon. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool)

She is charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon and will be held on a $1 million bond.

Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan, were apprehended last week in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta, where authorities believe the pair fled in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation in a car crash that killed four people.

Ethan Couch was being held at a detention facility in Mexico City after winning a court reprieve that could lead to a weeks- or even months-long legal process in Mexico. His lawyer in Mexico, Fernando Benitez, said he met with the teen at the center Tuesday but declined to say what they discussed.

Tonya Couch's attorneys previously released a statement saying she had done nothing illegal and wanted to get back to Texas as soon as possible.

"While the public may not like what she did, may not agree with what she did, or may have strong feelings against what she did, make no mistake  Tonya did not violate any law of the State of Texas and she is eager to have her day in court," lawyers Stephanie K. Patten and Steve Gordon said in the statement.

She is being held without bail until she is extradited to Texas. Prosecutors and defense attorneys declined to comment after Tuesday's hearing.

Ethan Couch was driving drunk and speeding near Fort Worth in June 2013 when he crashed into a disabled SUV, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in his pickup truck.

During the sentencing phase of his trial, a defense expert argued that his wealthy parents coddled him into a sense of irresponsibility  a condition the expert termed "affluenza." The condition is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its invocation during the legal proceedings drew ridicule.

He was sentenced to probation.

___

Associated Press writer Emily Schmall in Fort Worth, Texas, contributed to this story.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Tonya Couch is 48, not 38.

Tonya Couch attends an extradition hearing at the Los Angeles Superior Court, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. Couch, mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case, waived extradition and will be sent to Texas to face a charge of hindering the apprehension of a felon. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool)

FILE - This Dec. 28, 2015 file photo, released by Mexico's Jalisco state prosecutor's office shows who authorities identify as Ethan Couch, after he was taken into custody in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The Mexican lawyer for the Texas teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident said Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 that his appeal against deportation could delay his client's return to the United States for weeks, perhaps months - or just a single day. (Mexico's Jalisco state prosecutor's office via AP, File)
IMF chief says it can help Nigeria recover stolen funds

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP)  The managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said Tuesday that her organization wants to collaborate with Nigeria in plugging leaking of funds through corruption and to trace looted money.

Lagarde, on a visit to the African economic giant, said Nigeria has enough of a financial war-chest to overcome the current economic challenge without resorting to the IMF for financial support.

She said at a press conference that during her meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, she told him that the IMF would be willing to assist the Nigerian government in plugging revenue leakages, tracing stolen funds and restructuring its tax system.

The economy of Nigeria, a major oil producer, has been hit hard by dropping oil prices on the international market. Lagarde said she looks forward to discussing how the country could face the challenges associated with global economic downturn, within the remaining days she would be in the country.

She said she and Buhari also discussed his anti-corruption crusade as well as his commitment to transparency and accountability.

For his part, Buhari, who was elected last year, said his government is committed to enforcing regulations to stop fraud and adopting practices to generate more revenue to mitigate the effect of dwindling oil prices, according to presidential spokesman Femi Adesina.

Adesina said the presidency has "told all heads of ministries, departments and agencies of government that, on our watch, they will fully account for all funds that get into their coffers."

Adesina, quoting Buhari, said the government will welcome the IMF's support.
British lawmakers to debate call for Trump to be barred

LONDON (AP)  British lawmakers will debate a petition calling for U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be banned from the country over his remarks about Muslims  and a rival petition saying he should be allowed in.

More than half a million people signed an online petition calling for Trump to be blocked after he called last month for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Almost 40,000 people backed one saying he should not be barred.

Under British law any petition that gets 100,000 signatures must be considered for parliamentary debate.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as a protestor is removed from the arena during a campaign stop at the Tsongas Center in Lowell, Mass., Monday, Jan. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The House of Commons Petitions Committee said Tuesday that both petitions would be debated Jan. 18. Chairwoman Helen Jones said the debate "will allow a range of views to be expressed," and did not mean the committee supported a ban.

The debate will not result in a binding vote.

Prime Minister David Cameron has condemned the remarks by the contender for the Republican presidential nomination as "divisive, stupid and wrong." But he and other senior officials have said they do not think Trump should be banned from Britain, where he owns a Scottish golf course.
New Navy leader: Nukes 'foundational to our survival'

WASHINGTON (AP)  In his blueprint for a stronger Navy, the sea service's new top boss, Adm. John M. Richardson, is blunt about what he thinks matters most: nuclear punch.

Battling terrorists is today's problem, but in looking toward a farther horizon, Richardson wants a Navy built to counter unpredictable future threats from other countries. No. 1 on his list is a new fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, known as "boomers," that prowl the oceans as the quiet centerpiece of the nation's nuclear force. The Navy plans to replace the current fleet of 14 Ohio-class boomers, which began service as early as 1981, with 12 next-generation subs.

"This is foundational to our survival as a nation," Richardson writes in what he calls his design for the future, released Tuesday.

FILE - In this July 30, 2015 file photo, Navy Adm. John Richardson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. In his blueprint for a stronger Navy, the sea services new top boss, Richardson, is blunt about what he thinks matters most: nuclear punch. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

It also is a gigantic investment, estimated at $100 billion. Even one of the project's biggest supporters, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., calls the cost "staggering." And it happens to be just one of three efforts by the Pentagon to modernize the U.S. nuclear "triad" - new long-range bomber aircraft, new or upgraded land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and new missile-toting submarines. The price tag for these, plus related upgrades and replacements, is likely to approach $348 billion by 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Richardson acknowledges the expense but argues it is part of the cost of doing business on the world stage.

"From a security standpoint in this day and age, a world-class nuclear capability" is required to be considered a great power, he said Dec. 31 in an Associated Press interview. Without it, "we could be threatened or coerced by another nation who could hold this nuclear threat over our heads," he added.

Russia and China are both modernizing their nuclear forces, although not every expert agrees that this alone justifies to do the same, at huge expense. William J. Perry, defense secretary from 1994 to 1997, says the U.S. can adequately deter a nuclear attack with a slimmed down force of nuclear bombers and nuclear-armed submarines. He favors scrapping the Air Force's land-based missiles, or ICBMs.

Others say a combination of ICBMs and subs would be the right mix. In almost any proposed arrangement, the submarines would be part of the mix. That is because they are easily the least vulnerable to targeting by an enemy force, since they are nearly undetectable while on undersea patrol.

Richardson took over as the Navy's chief of naval operations, its top job, in September after three years as head of naval nuclear propulsion programs, meaning he was responsible for the nuclear reactors that propel submarines and aircraft carriers, but not for the Navy's nuclear weapons. He is a career submariner.

His focus on the Navy's nuclear future may seem surprising at a time when the military's agenda is dominated by the threat posed by the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, who are not in the nuclear game and may not be deterred by U.S. nuclear weapons. The Navy plays several roles in countering terrorist threats, including launching airstrikes from aircraft carriers, flying aerial reconnaissance missions and providing Navy SEAL teams as part of the military special operations forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the greater Middle East.

Richardson says the Navy must stay fully involved in countering terrorism, but he is convinced that it must also maintain a nuclear arsenal second to none.

Like most new service chiefs, Richardson spent his early weeks on the job developing a document that outlines his view of the service's future. At the top of his list of ways the Navy must strengthen its combat power is the nuclear challenge, which he defines as maintaining and modernizing the nuclear submarine force.

He also cites international terrorist groups as a long-term threat to security and stability around the world, and he worries about North Korea making new advances in its nuclear weapons and missile programs. He says the nuclear deal that the U.S. and other world powers made with Iran "may curb its nuclear weapons ambitions," but Tehran still poses threats in other ways, including with advanced missiles.

He says the Navy also is challenged by an accelerating range of technological change, including advances in genetic science and artificial intelligence.

"Our competitors are moving quickly, and our adversaries are bent on leaving us swirling in their wake," he wrote. He mentions Russia and China as well as North Korea.

Amid this change, the U.S. faces a "return to great power competition" for the first time in 25 years, he says, with China seeking to develop a global reach and Russia asserting itself militarily, not just with its occupation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine but also its tough talk. "Their goals are backed by a growing arsenal of high-end warfighting capabilities, many of which are focused specifically on our vulnerabilities," he wrote.

This is where nuclear weapons come in, Richardson says. The current fleet of Ohio-class submarines, armed with Trident II missiles and based at King's Bay, Georgia, and Bangor, Washington, has already exceeded its projected 30-year lifespan.
Besieged Syrian villages run short of food, medicine

BEIRUT (AP)  Pro-government fighters recently evacuated from two besieged villages in northern Syria described harsh conditions there with scarce food and medicine, saying some residents are eating grass to survive and undergoing surgery without anesthesia.

The villages of Foua and Kfarya in Idlib province have been under siege for more than a year, but the situation has worsened since September. That's when insurgents captured a nearby air base where helicopters used to take off and drop canned food, vegetables, rice and bread to about 30,000 people in the mostly Shiite area.

"Our life was catastrophic in Foua and Kfarya," said Hussein Mahdi Kazem, a 16-year-old wounded fighter. He spoke from a bed in Hezbollah's Rasoul al-Azam Hospital south of Beirut, where he was evacuated last month from Kfarya.

In this picture taken Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015, pro-government Syrian fighters Hussein Mahdi Kazem, 16, right, and Moamen Haj Ali, 20, who were evacuated from the villages of Foua and Kfarya, speak during an interview with the Associated Press as they lay in beds in a hospital south of Beirut run by the militant Hezbollah group. Pro-government Syrian fighters who were recently evacuated from two besieged Shiite villages in northern Syria say residents there live under harsh human conditions where people can hardly find medicine or even food to eat making some rely on grass in order to survive. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

But the two Shiite villages are not alone in their suffering. Both sides in Syria's nearly 5-year-old conflict have used siege tactics on towns or villages as a way of getting an area under control.

In retaliation for the siege of the Shiite villages, opposition activists say Syrian troops and members of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group have taken harsh measures against a Sunni area of Syria of about 40,000 people near the Lebanese border.

The mountain border town of Madaya has been besieged since early July, and conditions have worsened with colder weather and dwindling supplies. A snowstorm hit early in the new year, and there has been no electricity or diesel fuel.

People have taken to removing interior doors in their homes and burning them for heat, said a local official who identified himself as Samir Ali. He told The Associated Press via Skype that the cost of goods has soared, with a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of crushed wheat selling for about $250 and 900 grams (31 ounces) of powdered milk for infants going for about $300. A group of people recently killed a dog and ate it, he said.

Of 23 deaths in Madaya in recent weeks, 10 were attributed to a lack of food and the rest were either shot to death or blown up by mines planted by pro-government and Hezbollah forces, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group. At least 25 checkpoints prevent people from leaving, Ali said.

A Facebook page describing conditions in Madaya posted photos of several older men who it said had starved to death. The photos could not be independently confirmed.

It's not known how many people died in Foua and Kfarya. The evacuated fighters described how people who need medication in the two villages often must take drugs that are expired, and that mothers must crush grains of rice  when available  and boil the mixture to make baby food.

Pawl Krzysiek, a Syria-based spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the situation in the villages of Foua, Kfarya and Madaya "is extremely dire, and winter is making things even more difficult for them."

"For far too long, people were left without basic necessities such as food and medicine," Krzysiek said. "It is the ICRC's utmost priority to deliver in the coming days to people there."

He said ICRC is coordinating the aid to the villages but refused to give further details.

The main Western-backed Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, called on the U.N. and the international community to allow aid into Madaya, warning that any delay "will lead to more deaths among innocent civilians."

"Children, women and elderly are dying as a result of hunger and cold," said coalition member Salah Hamawi.

But U.N. efforts to take in food often get disrupted by either insurgents or pro-government fighters, the Observatory said.

A U.N.-backed deal led to the Dec. 28 evacuation of more than 450 people from two war zones in Syria, including 338 people from the two northern villages and 125 people from the Zabadani area near the border with Lebanon.

Madaya, which is near Zabadani, was not part of the evacuation deal, but food was supposed to go in.

In October, the U.N. said it had mistakenly sent hundreds of boxes of expired nutrition biscuits to besieged civilians in Zabadani and Madaya.

Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Syria, said in a statement that human error during the loading process caused the mistake.

Ali, the local official in Madaya, said some people got sick after eating the biscuits. He added that residents were promised more supplies, but nothing has been delivered since then.

In all three besieged areas, residents used to rely on troops or insurgents to bring them food at inflated prices, but the smuggling has recently dropped sharply.

Moamen Haj Ali, another wounded Shiite fighter being treated in Beirut, said water is running out in Foua and Kfarya because of a lack of diesel fuel for pumping stations.

"Life is miserable. People cannot find a pill of aspirin or painkillers," said Mohsen Darwish, a Shiite cleric from Kfarya who lives in Lebanon but is in contact with residents of both. "Their dream is to eat vegetables.

Hussein Yahya Darwish, 19, who was evacuated from the village of Kfarya, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press as he lays in a hospital south of Beirut run by the militant Hezbollah group, Lebanon, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015. A U.N.-backed deal reached in September led on Monday to the evacuation of more than 450 people from two war zones in Syria including 338 people from the two Shiite northern villages and 125 people from the Zabadani area near the border with Lebanon. Eight seriously wounded Syrian fighters, are undergoing treatment at the heavily-guarded Rasoul al-Aazam Hospital. Almost all of the eight have been paralyzed by bullets or shrapnel that hit their necks, heads or backs. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Palestinian families push Israel to return attackers' bodies

JERUSALEM (AP)  Palestinian accountant Ahmed Oweisat last saw his son Moataz in October  hours before Israeli police say the 16-year-old boy tried to stab an officer and was fatally shot in Jerusalem.

The son still has not been buried  one of about a dozen bodies of Palestinian suspected attackers that Israel continues to hold nearly four months after a wave of violence erupted in Jerusalem and spread across Israel and the West Bank.

Israel says it is holding the bodies due to security concerns, but Palestinians say the measure is stoking anger and worsening the atmosphere. Islam, like Judaism, requires swift burial of the dead.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, file photo, Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of Ishaq Badran, 16, and Ahmed Quneibi, 23, during their funeral, in the Kafr Aqab on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. The two were killed in attacks on Israelis in 2015. Israel continues to hold a dozen bodies of Palestinian attackers, nearly four months after a wave of violence erupted in Jerusalem and spread across Israel and the West Bank. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)

"Every time I sit next to the heater and I feel warm, I imagine my son in the refrigerator," said Oweisat, toasting his hands over an electric heater in a drafty home in east Jerusalem.

The current round of fighting broke out in mid-September, fueled by rumors that Israel was plotting to take over a sensitive Jerusalem site that is holy to Jews and Muslims. Israel has said there are no plans to change the sensitive arrangements at the hilltop compound, revered by Jews as the location of the biblical Temples and which today houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Since then, 21 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, shootings and car rammings, while at least 132 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including 91 said by Israel to be attackers.

Israel blames the continuing violence on incitement by Palestinian leaders and social media sites. The Palestinians say it is the result of five decades of Israeli military occupation.

At the outset of the violence, Israel's public security minister, Gilad Erdan, recommended holding on to the bodies of Palestinian assailants, claiming the funerals turn into "an exhibition of support for terror and incitement to murder."

The issue has become a sore point with Palestinians. Posters of the dead are plastered on walls in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and residents hold frequent demonstrations calling for the release of the bodies.

On Tuesday, Israeli riot police used stun grenades to break up a demonstration in Jerusalem by dozens of Palestinians calling on Israel to return the bodies of their relatives.

The issue "has surpassed Al-Aqsa as the main rallying cry of many of the protests in Jerusalem and Hebron," said Nathan Thrall, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, referring to the two main flashpoints of violence.

Palestinians have said Israel has placed conditions on the return of bodies, demanding they hold small nighttime funerals and provide cash deposits to guarantee their compliance. The Israeli police, military and Public Security Ministry all declined to comment on why Israel has continued to hold the bodies for so long or the criteria for their release.

But an Israeli official familiar said the overall policy has been aimed at "de-escalation." He said the delays have a deterrent effect among potential attackers who dream of being honored with large funerals. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal policy discussions, said releases are decided "case by case" based on security assessments.

Last week, Israel released the bodies of nearly two dozen Palestinians in the West Bank. A mass funeral for 17 of them in the volatile city of Hebron on Saturday passed without incident. Early Tuesday, Israel released another three bodies, which were buried on the outskirts of Jerusalem after funerals attended by hundreds. There were no reports of unrest.

Eitan Dangot, a retired Israeli general who served until 2014 as the head of Cogat, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian issues, said the release reflected a more relaxed atmosphere in the West Bank. He compared Saturday's funeral with a funeral for five Palestinian teens on Oct. 31 in Hebron that devolved into clashes with Israeli troops. "The conditions are more ripe at the moment," Dangot said.

Palestinians welcome the releases, but say the delays have had macabre results.

When Bassem Salah's family received his body in late December, a month after he was killed during what police say was a stabbing attack on an Israeli border police officer in Jerusalem, his feet were frozen at an angle that made it impossible to bury him until the corpse defrosted.

"It was painful. We forced him into the grave," said his brother Shadi.

In the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, residents say they raced to bury Ayman Abbassi, a 17-year-old killed in an evening clash with Israeli forces in November.

Police say Abbassi was shot after he threw a firebomb at Israeli forces. When he was pronounced dead at a clinic, friends sped to the family home, wrapped the body in a Palestinian flag and buried him in an old cemetery after midnight to prevent the Israelis from taking his body to a morgue.

"People come back from there as a chunk of ice," his brother Anwar Abbassi said. "It was a big relief to bury him."

Attorney Mohammed Elayan's son Bahaa, 22, opened fire on a Jerusalem bus in mid-October, killing three Israelis before he was killed. Since then, Elayan has been leading a campaign to recover the bodies of his son and others, earning him the nickname "Father of the Martyrs."

He said last week's release of the bodies in Hebron was a significant accomplishment. "We forced the Israelis to release the bodies without conditions," he said.

As of Tuesday, Elayan, 60, said he still had not recovered his son's body. He said he refused Israeli demands that he bury Bahaa at night without a funeral procession, and post a $1,300 deposit.

On Monday, Israeli forces demolished Elayan's home. Israel says such moves deter other potential attackers. But Elayan, 60, said he believed the demolition was retribution for his activities.

"If you bury the bodies in five minutes, their families go home," Alayan said. "Now people have been in the streets for 85 days . I thank the Israelis for giving us this momentum."

FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, file photo, Palestinians carry the body of Mohammed Ali during his funeral in the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem. Ali was killed after he stabbed Israeli policeman in October 2015. . Israel continues to hold a dozen bodies of Palestinian attackers, nearly four months after a wave of violence erupted in Jerusalem and spread across Israel and the West Bank. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
Obama's move on guns may have only modest effect on violence

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Barack Obama's move to tighten controls on guns could curb the unregulated buying and selling of weapons over the Internet and at gun shows. But the overall effect on violence in the U.S. could prove to be modest.

"It's not ever going to be difficult to get a firearm, just like it's not ever going to be difficult to get illegal drugs," said James Jacobs, a New York University law school professor. "What makes us think that we can now create a regime that will make guns hard to obtain for someone who wants to obtain them?"

The president used his executive authority Tuesday to clarify that anyone "in the business" of selling firearms must obtain a federal license and conduct background checks on prospective buyers, regardless of where the sales take place. Currently, many private sellers online and at gun shows do not bother to get licenses, and weapons sales over the Internet have become a booming business.

FILE - In this Oct. 21, 2012 file photo, police stand with guns drawn at the entrance to Brookfield Square Mall across from the scene of a shooting at Azana Salon in Brookfield, Wis. President Barack Obamas moves to license more private gun sellers and do background checks on buyers will have the greatest impact on the fast-growing and largely unregulated world of online sales. But its not clear that the steps will transform the broader gun market, and even the White House says it cant predict how much good it will do. Online transactions have included weapons later used in high-profile mass shootings, including the 2012 mass shooting in Brookfield, Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Tom Lynn, File)

The White House and others can't say how many transactions the step will block or how much bloodshed it may prevent.

But the new controls probably wouldn't have prevented several of the grisly mass shootings around the country that have led to demands for tighter gun laws, and may affect only a fraction of the nation's 30,000 annual gun deaths.

The president's action "has potential impact  the degree or the type, it's hard to predict," said University of Pennsylvania professor Susan Sorenson, who studies violence prevention. "And it's really important to acknowledge that we can't just have one change and expect that to change things wildly."

For one thing, studies have shown that criminals are more likely to get guns directly from friends or other social connections than at gun shows or flea markets.

The president also called for the hiring of more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to process the millions of background checks received annually. But even with added manpower, there's no way to completely eliminate human error like the clerical mistakes that allowed Dylann Roof, the young man charged in the Charleston, South Carolina, church massacre, to buy a weapon even though he should have been disqualified after an earlier drug arrest.

The White House did not set a threshold for the number of guns someone has to sell to be covered by the licensing and background check requirement. But it warned that people can be charged with a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison for selling as few as two firearms when there is evidence they are running a business, such as selling weapons in their original packaging and for a profit.

Theresa O'Rourke of Downers Grove, Illinois, said she hopes Obama's action will deter illegal transactions that have deadly consequences. Her best friend, 36-year-old Jitka Vesel, was killed in 2011 by a stalker who had illegally purchased a gun from a seller he met through Armslist.com, an online gun site. The seller was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to an illegal sale.

"People do it now because it's easy," O'Rourke said. "But if we say upfront that if you break the law and you are going to go to prison, most people are going to take a step back and say, 'You know what? It's not worth it.'"

She and other gun control advocates said too many individuals make a living selling guns without obtaining the $150 license and following requirements to conduct background checks, keep detailed sales records and face federal inspections.

Private sales  often carried out in person after Internet advertisements connect sellers and buyers  can be exploited by convicted felons, domestic abusers and others who cannot pass a background check, critics say.

Private sales have increasingly gone online over the last decade, but precise data is hard to pin down. GunBroker.com, which calls itself the world's largest online auction site for firearms and accessories, says it has grown every year since 1999. It now boasts 750,000 active listings on any given day. Armslist claims 7 million site visits per month.

One in 20 guns advertised through Armslist last year was linked to an unlicensed seller who had listed at least 25 guns, according to recent research published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. A 2013 investigation by that group's predecessor, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, found that more than 3 percent of potential buyers on Armslist had criminal records that would bar them from owning firearms.

Armslist, which was founded after Craigslist banned gun ads in 2007, says in a disclaimer on its website that it doesn't get involved in transactions and that buyers and sellers must follow all state and federal gun laws. Still, guns sold through ads on the site have been linked to some fatal shootings.

A lawsuit filed in October alleges that an abusive husband purchased a handgun through an Armslist ad and used it to kill his wife and two other women at a salon in suburban Milwaukee in 2012. The man, Radcliffe Haughton, was able to buy the gun even though a judge had issued a restraining order days earlier that should have made him ineligible. He went online to say he was "looking to buy ASAP," and made the purchase in the parking lot of a McDonald's, the lawsuit says.

Armslist owner Jonathan Gibbon called Obama's moves "well-meaning but ultimately ineffective." He said many private sellers want to conduct background checks but are discouraged by a "costly and burdensome" system that requires them to go to licensed dealers and pay fees.

"Further scrutiny of law-abiding people will not stop criminals," he said.

Everytown president John Feinblatt called the clarification a welcome if modest step.

"It puts them on notice and, if accompanied with aggressive enforcement, has the potential to narrow the number of unlicensed dealers who are selling without background checks," he said. "But even so, millions of guns will be sold online without background checks unless Congress or states pass universal background checks, as 18 states have done on their own."

The Obama administration appeared determined to tamp down expectations, with Obama saying he realizes his actions won't stop all gun violence.

"Obviously the president is not able to take strong measures because that's going to require Congress to act," said Philip Cook, a Duke University professor. "But if he is able to disrupt a relative handful of sales and save a handful of lives, that may well be worthwhile."

He added: "What we're looking at here is a low-cost intervention with the possibility of some payoff."

___

Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa.
Iraq must walk a fine line amid Iranian, Saudi tensions

BAGHDAD (AP)  While many Iraqi Shiites took to the streets in outrage over Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, the country's prime minister has had to walk a more cautious line, trying to contain Iraq's own explosive sectarian tensions.

The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr has inflamed the sectarian divide across the region. Shiite-led Iran has been the most vocal in its condemnation, and protesters stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran over the weekend. That prompted Sunni-led Saudi Arabia to cut diplomatic relations with Iran, and the kingdom's allies have lined up behind it, either cutting or reducing their ties with Tehran.

The government of Iraq, however, is straining to keep the peace amid the regional tumult. Iran is a key ally of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, has helped it in the fight against the Islamic State group, and supports powerful Shiite militias in the country.

Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters display weapons used by Islamic State militants to attack their city in Haditha, 240 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. The Islamic State group had captured Ramadi in May, in one of its biggest advances since the U.S.-led coalition began striking the group in 2014. Recapturing the city, which is the provincial capital of Anbar, provided a major morale boost for Iraqi forces. (AP Photo)

At the same time, as the fight against IS extremists enters its second year, Iraq is grappling with the worst political and security crises since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. Only last week, Saudi Arabia sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time in 25 years to try to improve its relationship with Iraq.

In Washington, Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spent most of Monday on the phone trying to ease tensions in the region.

"We are encouraging a de-escalation, because any time you have regional polarization, regional escalation, it obviously can cause difficulties and it opens up seams for extremists on all sides to take advantage of the situation," McGurk told reporters Tuesday.

In a sign of the Iraqi government's caution, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a statement expressing regret over al-Nimr's execution and warning that such actions would "bring more destruction and devastation."

His office followed that Tuesday with a call for unity among Iraqis. Regional tensions should be faced "wisely, responsibly and rationally in order to preserve the security and stability of Iraq," according to a statement from al-Abadi's office.

A day earlier, thousands of Shiites gathered a few hundred meters (yards) from his office and called for the government to sever diplomatic ties with Riyadh. The protesters, supporters of prominent Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, chanted that al-Nimr's blood had not been spilled in vain and that the Mahdi Army, Sadr's disbanded Shiite militia, would avenge his death if needed.

That points to the government's bigger fear: That the regional dispute over al-Nimr's execution will turn into new violence between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis.

Sectarian violence has quickly spiraled out of control in Iraq in the recent past, and a renewed form could disrupt Baghdad's campaign against the Islamic State group, the Sunni extremists who control large parts of the north and west of the country.

Iranian-backed Shiite militias, whose might rivals that of the military and security forces, have been a major factor in the fight, and the government has already had to cede them considerable authority. At the same time, al-Abadi has sought to encourage reconciliation with the Sunni minority, among whom hatred of the militias is strong, and include Sunnis in the fight against IS.

"This is the last thing (al-Abadi) needs after the high point in Ramadi," said Kirk Sowell, publisher of the Inside Iraqi Politics newsletter, referring to the recent government victory pushing IS fighters out of the western Iraqi city.

While al-Nimr's execution is unlikely to change Iraq-Saudi policy in any meaningful way, it does have the potential to set off violence in Iraq, Sowell said.

Two Sunni mosques were attacked in the southern town of Hilla in apparent retaliation for the execution, but al-Abadi was quick to blame IS and order a buildup of security in the province.

A group of powerful Shiite militias with strong ties to Iran, including Asaib al-Haq and the Badr Brigade, demanded the government cut diplomatic ties with the kingdom, expel the ambassador and execute all Saudis held in Iraqi prisons on charges of terrorism.

Acceding to their demands risks disillusioning Sunnis, who already accuse the government of being too beholden to the militias and who often see neighboring Sunni powerhouses like Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as allies.

"What you have right now is a split," said Sajad Jiyad, a fellow at the Iraqi Institute for Economic Reform in Baghdad, describing the opposing interests al-Abadi is struggling to satisfy. "The prime minister will find himself having to do something or face risking his popular appeal."

Al-Abadi may lack the ability to get ahead of a potential crisis, Jiyad said.

"It's unclear how much control the government has in Iraq," he said.

FILE -- In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burn an effigy of King Salman of Saudi Arabia as they hold posters of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. Some nations have followed the Saudis lead in severing or downgrading ties with Iran, while others have offered words of caution. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

FILE -- In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, Iraqi Shiite protesters chant slogans against the Saudi government as they hold posters showing Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week, in Najaf, Iraq. Diplomatic tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which began with the kingdoms execution of al-Nimr and later saw attacks on Saudi diplomatic posts in the Islamic Republic, have seen countries around the world respond. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim, File)

FILE - In this Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, file photo, Iraqi security forces and allied Sunni tribal fighters evacuate an injured woman after she was shot by Islamic State group fighters as she tried to cross from neighborhoods under control of Islamic State group to neighborhoods under control of Iraqi security forces in Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq. Iran is a key ally of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, has helped it in the fight against the Islamic State group and supports powerful Shiite militias in the country. But at the same time, Baghdad is trying to rebuild long strained ties with Saudi Arabia _ which only last week sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time in 25 years. (AP Photo, File)
Man behind armed Oregon band says he's on mission from God

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  The man behind the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge comes from a Mormon family that has been challenging government authority for at least two decades.

Ammon Bundy, like his father in previous confrontations, says he is following directions from God and invokes his family's faith when explaining the anti-government movement he is attempting to lead.

In March 2014, Cliven Bundy was at the center of an armed standoff with federal officials over grazing rights on government land. Federal officials backed away from seizing the Nevada rancher's cattle, but the dispute remains unresolved, and the Bureau of Land Management says the family has not made payments toward a $1.1 million grazing fee and penalty bill.

FILE - This is a combo of file photos showing the Bundy family from left to right, Ryan Bundy, Cliven Bundy and Ammon Bundy. Ryan and Ammon Bundy are part of a group of protesters who are in a standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Ore. They are also the sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights. (AP Photos/File)

Now Cliven Bundy's son has put himself in the spotlight, this time in Oregon in a dispute over someone else's ranching operation. His armed group is pressing federal authorities to turn over government land to local control.

Ammon Bundy came to Oregon hoping to rally support behind his cause, but his tactics have been broadly rejected by many locals, by the state's main ranching group and by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which the Bundy family has belonged to for generations.

In a statement issued Monday, Mormon leaders said the Oregon land dispute "is not a church matter," but they condemned the seizure and said they were "deeply troubled" by reports that suggest the armed group is acting "based on Scriptural principles."

The ranchers that Ammon Bundy came to defend rejected his assistance and on Monday voluntarily surrendered to serve a federal prison term on a 2012 conviction on charges of committing arson on federal land.

A leader of the group Oath Keepers_past and present members of the military, first-responders and police officers who pledge to uphold the Constitution issued a statement saying Ammon Bundy has gone too far. Many Oath Keepers were at the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff in Nevada.

But in Oregon, Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes said, Ammon Bundy had picked the wrong battle.

"We cannot force ourselves or our protection on people who do not want it," Rhodes said last week on the group's website.

Speaking through their attorney, Dwight Hammond Jr. and son Steven said they preferred to turn themselves in and serve out their sentence.

"And that clear statement of their intent should be the end of the discussion on this," Rhodes said.

Ammon Bundy has said he had never heard of the Hammond case until his father mentioned it to him. The Hammonds were convicted three years ago of setting fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. One of the blazes was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors.

The men served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

Ammon Bundy said he prayed about the matter and "clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds."

The Hammonds said they lit the fires to reduce the growth of invasive plants and protect their property from wildfires.

"I did exactly what the Lord asked me to do," Bundy said in a YouTube video posted last week in which he appeals to people to join him in Oregon to protest the treatment of the Hammonds.

In the 2014 showdown with federal authorities in Nevada, Cliven Bundy also justified his actions in religious terms, saying that he decided to challenge federal agents after praying for guidance.

Their ideology aligns with a strain of anti-government thinking that was espoused by some church thought leaders during the Cold War. But it is rejected by mainstream Mormons today, according to Matthew Bowman, a professor of American religion at Henderson State University in Arkansas.

Still, whether to submit to church leaders or follow a personal conviction remains "a deep and central tension within Mormon doctrine and culture," Bowman said.

The Bundy family's dispute with federal authorities dates to 1993, when land managers in Nevada cited concern for the federally protected desert tortoise and capped Cliven Bundy's herd at 150 animals on a 250-square-mile allotment of land. Officials later revoked Bundy's grazing rights completely. Federal officials' attempts to round up the cattle from the arid habitat 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas were called off in an effort to avoid bloodshed.

The 2014 standoff  and the current one in Oregon  are continuations of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West. Many people living in rural areas say their efforts to make a living have been hurt by federal policies regulating the use of government lands.

Conservation groups counter that federal agencies are a better choice than states to manage public lands. That's because the agencies can authorize the land for multiple uses, such as mining, grazing or recreation, while many Western states are constitutionally obligated to use lands they manage for the most lucrative purpose  often mining.

"Certainly the folks that live close to these places have a very legitimate voice in this debate. But what is unique about this national land system is that everyone gets to participate," said Jessica Goad, advocacy director for the Denver-based Center for Western Priorities.

Many locals agree with Ammon Bundy that the second Hammond sentence was too harsh, considering the crime. But they disapprove of Bundy's occupation and fear it could lead to violence.

Those concerns were shared by John O'Keeffe, president of the Oregon Cattleman's Association, who said Monday that his group "does not support illegal activity taken against the government."

Ammon Bundy himself has benefited from federal programs. Records show that in 2010 he borrowed $530,000 through the Small Business Administration for his company, Valet Fleet Service LLC. On Tuesday, he justified the loan by saying he is not anti-government but is opposed to federal policies that go against the people's will.

___

Associated Press Writer Michelle Rindels reported from Carson City, Nevada.

An American flag is shown at the front entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement took no action Monday against the group numbering close to two dozen who were upset about the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Ammon Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, speaks during an interview at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against a group numbering close to two dozen, led by Bundy and his brother, who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Ammon Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, speaks during an interview at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against a group numbering close to two dozen, led by Bundy and his brother, who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Suspect says not guilty to mailing cyanide in man's suicide

BANGOR, Maine (AP)  A U.S. suspect pleaded not guilty Tuesday to mailing cyanide to an Englishman who killed himself.

Federal investigators say Sidney Kilmartin of Windham, Maine, advertised and mailed a substance he claimed was cyanide to several suicidal people. The substance was actually Epsom salt.

But prosecutors say he mailed the real thing to Andrew Denton of Hull, England, to keep him from telling investigators about his moneymaking scheme. Denton, 49, used the cyanide to take his life.

Kilmartin pleaded not guilty to federal charges of mailing injurious articles resulting in death, wire fraud, mail fraud, witness tampering and witness retaliation. He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges in Denton's suicide but those charges were superseded by the latest counts.

Kilmartin has a history of mental illness. He was previously committed to a psychiatric facility in 2008 after he was found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity for entering a man's apartment and attacking him while he slept. He was released in 2011.

An affidavit by a U.S. postal inspector said Kilmartin obtained the cyanide by posing as a jeweler to persuade a California distributor to ship him 100 grams of the industrial-grade chemical for $127.56.
Panel: No criminal charges in student's suicide after hazing

PITTSBURGH (AP)  A Pennsylvania grand jury says no criminal charges should be brought in a university student's suicide that his family blames on a fraternity hazing.

The grand jury reported Tuesday that 18-year-old Marquise Braham, a student at Penn State-Altoona, had left a note indicating he contemplated killing himself since he was a child. The panel said it found no evidence linking the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity hazing to Braham's death while home in New York during the school's 2014 spring break.

"Rather the evidence points to a young man who though he had a sunny and very pleasant exterior, had been contemplating suicide for a very long time," the grand jury said. "(This) investigation and this Report should shine a light on what can happen to vulnerable 18 year olds when they go off to college."

While several grand jury witnesses described hazing similar to that alleged by Braham's family, the grand jury in recommending no criminal charges cited "conflicting views and the unwillingness or inability of the former pledges to name other individual fraternity brothers as hazing them."

Braham's family said in a statement that they were "disappointed, though not surprised" by the decision. They said the grand jury was denied access to some "substantial" evidence and testimony from mental health experts and Braham's friends and relatives.

"They interviewed a bunch of kids that were in a frat and kept their mouths shut," family spokesman Mike Paul said. "Remember, fraternities are secret societies. Their whole mission is to keep things quiet."

The family last month sued the school and the fraternity  which has been suspended for six years  claiming the hazing drove Braham to jump off a hotel roof in Uniondale, New York, on March 14, 2014.

The freshman was forced to "consume gross amounts of alcohol" and mouthwash, swallow live fish, and kill, gut and skin animals, the suit alleges. The suit also claims he was made to fight fellow pledges, was burned with candle wax, was deprived of sleep for 89 hours and had a gun held to his head as part of the hazing activities.

The lawsuit contends Braham also "struggled deeply with having to witness and participate in the hazing of others," and killed himself the day before he was to return to the fraternity house. The school knew Braham was "suffering physically, psychologically and academically" but disregarded the information, the suit alleges.

The grand jury report supports most of the hazing claims, though no mention is made of animal abuse or guns.

The panel referenced two suicide notes. One included the line "I should have died a long time ago"; the other said, "In all honesty, I saw this coming since I was a child so I apologize to those of you who are surprised by this."

Paul said the second note was left on a phone when Braham "had a tremendous amount of alcohol in his system." The first note, left in his mother's car while he was sober, references "a long time," Paul said. "A 'long time' to an 18-year-old could be within the same year he's being hazed."

University spokeswoman Shari Routch said in a statement Tuesday that while the grand jury found no link between Braham's suicide and the fraternity's pledge process, a task force announced last spring continues its university-wide study of the Greek system "to identify strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities." Its report is due in April.

"Penn State does not condone physical, verbal or emotional abuse of any kind," Routch said.
Family, hospital team up on autopsy in Reno end-of-life case

RENO, Nev. (AP)  A private autopsy is planned at hospital expense to determine how a 20-year-old college freshman died while on life-support in the midst of a Nevada end-of-life court battle, the family's lawyer and medical center officials said Tuesday.

Aden Hailu, of Las Vegas, died Monday at Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno, having never awakened from anesthesia after surgery in April, said David O'Mara, the attorney representing Hailu's father and family.

Doctors at Saint Mary's first pronounced Hailu dead May 28, but her father, Fanuel Gebreyes, went to court to delay removing her from life-support.

FILE - In this Dec. 29, 2015 file photo, Fanuel Gebreyes, right, father of Aden Hailu, talks to his attorney David O'Mara during a hearing in Washoe County District Court in Reno, Nev. Hailu, a 20-year-old woman at the center of an end-of-life court battle over her treatment at a Reno hospital, died Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, while still on life support, her family's lawyer said Tuesday. Hailu died at Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center, where she never awoke from anesthesia after surgery April 1, said O'Mara, the attorney representing Hailu's father and family. (Cathleen Allison/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Pool, File)

O'Mara said hospital officials told Gebreyes on Monday that Hailu's heart stopped and two resuscitation attempts failed.

The lawyer said a medical post-mortem is expected to answer key questions about Hailu's treatment, and the cause and manner of death. He said the hospital and family were cooperating and Saint Mary's agreed to pay for the procedure.

"In this situation, we think an autopsy will be helpful to find out the true cause of death, and it may provide guidance about how these cases are handled in the future," he said.

The Washoe County coroner wasn't involved because the death was at the hospital and a public autopsy isn't required, said Lynn Sack, aide to Coroner Ellen Clark.

Saint Mary's spokeswoman Jamii Uboldi confirmed the hospital has agreed to pay for the private autopsy.

"Saint Mary's extends its heartfelt condolences to the family of Ms. Hailu," Uboldi said in a statement. The statement said officials were unable to comment further, citing patient privacy provisions of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

Gebreyes was at the hospital when his daughter died, O'Mara said, and he noticed Hailu was having trouble breathing  even with a ventilator. But Gebreyes wasn't in the room when hospital staff later told him that monitors signaled Hailu's heart had stopped.

Hailu was a freshman at the University of Nevada, Reno. Saint Mary's said in court filings that she suffered severe low blood pressure and a lack of oxygen to the brain during surgery April 1 to remove her appendix and explore the cause of abdominal pain.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in November that Washoe County Family Court Judge Frances Doherty was too quick to reject the family's bid to keep Hailu on a ventilator and intravenous fluids.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to Doherty for more hearings about what justices acknowledged was an "extraordinarily broad standard": Whether Saint Mary's met state law requiring a finding that irreversible cessation of brain stem functions met "accepted medical standards" that are "uniformly applied among the states" that enact the Uniform Determination of Death Act.

Nevada is among 37 states and the District of Columbia with laws based on the act, according to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.

Last week, the judge gave Saint Mary's the go-ahead to conduct brain wave tests that the hospital said would confirm doctors' determinations that Hailu was brain dead and wouldn't recover. But the judge indicated she wouldn't rule until on the question of life or death until at least Jan. 22

O'Mara said Tuesday it didn't appear new EEG tests had been performed but he had no more immediate information.

O'Mara earlier accused the hospital of wanting to end life-support to cut costs. He said Gebreyes felt that as long as there was a chance Hailu was alive, the hospital should treat her or find a place that would.

Attorneys representing the hospital argued it was unfair to force the hospital to treat Hailu indefinitely.

The hospital maintained that money wasn't the issue, and that administrators needed to respect doctors' medical judgment.

Saint Mary's doctors said three EEG tests conducted in April showed declining brain function, and no EEG tests were performed after that.

Gebreyes then refused to consent to new brain wave tests. He insisted that Hailu needed treatment, not tests, including thyroid medication and a tracheostomy so she could receive nutrition through her throat, not just intravenous fluids.

The judge told the father he could move Hailu to another facility if he wanted, but O'Mara has told AP the family couldn't immediately find a place to take her.

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Ritter reported from Las Vegas.
Man asks judge to delay sentencing to save military pension

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP)  A man convicted of committing sex crimes against a child at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne is asking a federal judge to delay his sentencing hearing for a few months so he can qualify for a military pension.

Wyoming Army National Guard Lt. Timothy Wells was convicted in federal court in October of sexual exploitation of a child and other charges. He faces at least 15 years in prison, federal prosecutors say.

Jim Barrett, one of Wells' lawyers at the Federal Public Defender's Office, recently asked U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne to release Wells from custody temporarily and push his scheduled sentencing hearing back from next Tuesday until April so he can finish 20 years of military service necessary for a pension.

"Mr. Wells, as this court is aware, is a member of the armed services," Barrett wrote. "He is a matter of months away from obtaining his twenty year retirement. If released, Mr. Wells could serve the necessary number of days to procure retirement. This is expected to be completed by late March, 2016. Mr. Wells desires release to obtain this retirement in order to fulfill his financial obligations to his family while he is incarcerated."

Barrett was unavailable for comment on Tuesday, his office stated. David Weiss, another assistant federal public defender representing Wells, declined comment.

Federal prosecutors are urging Johnson to deny Wells' request to be released for a few months pending sentencing.

Prosecutor Thomas Szott wrote to Johnson last week stating Wells, 47, doesn't deserve any special consideration. "If his crimes have in fact cost him his twenty-year retirement, he must bear that loss as a consequence of the choices he made. His detention pending sentencing remains appropriate," Szott wrote.

Szott also stated it's unclear that Wells would in fact have to be released in order to qualify for the pension. Szott stated that his office consulted with the Wyoming Army National Guard and understands that Wells will attain the required twenty years of military service this March even if he's not released.

Szott stated Wells should have to substantiate his assertions at a court hearing before Johnson would consider releasing him from custody.
Leader of armed group wants land transfer, then will go home

BURNS, Ore. (AP)  A leader of the small, armed group of people occupying a remote national wildlife preserve in Oregon said Tuesday they will go home when a plan is in place to turn over management of federal lands to locals.

Ammon Bundy told reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that ranchers, loggers and farmers should have control of federal land  a common refrain in a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

"It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching," said the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, holding rifle, speaks to reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Ammon Bundy, the leader of a small, armed group that is occupying a remote national wildlife preserve in Oregon said Tuesday that they will go home when a plan is in place to turn over management of federal lands to locals. (AP Photo/Rebecca Boone)

The younger Bundy's anti-government group is critical of federal land stewardship, but environmentalists and others say U.S. officials should keep control for the broadest possible benefit to business, recreation and the environment.

The armed group seized the refuge's headquarters Saturday night. Roughly 20 people bundled in camouflage, earmuffs and cowboy hats seem to be centered around a complex of buildings on the 300-square-mile preserve in the high desert.

As the takeover entered its third day, authorities had not moved in and had not shut off power to the refuge, Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum said. On Tuesday evening, Finicum said he believes federal officials have issued warrants for the arrest of five group members  including himself and Ammon Bundy  but offered no details.

The FBI in Portland referred calls to the Harney County Joint Information Center, which said in a statement it had no information on arrests or arrest warrants and that authorities were "still working on a peaceful resolution."

Finicum, holding a rifle and a backpack, told reporters he would stay at the entrance to the refuge overnight so authorities could find him. Bundy said they would take a defensive position anticipating a possible raid.

Earlier, Bundy offered few specifics about the group's plan to get the land turned over to local control. But Finicum said the group would examine the underlying land ownership transactions to begin to "unwind it."

The federal government controls about half of all land in the West, which would make the wholesale transfer of ownership extremely difficult and expensive. For example, it owns 53 percent of Oregon, 85 percent of Nevada and 66 percent of Utah, according to the Congressional Research Service. Taking over federal public lands in Idaho could cost the state $111 million a year, according to a University of Idaho study.

Randy Eardley, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman, said the group's call for the transfer of land ownership didn't make sense.

"It is frustrating when I hear the demand that we return the land to the people, because it is in the people's hand  the people own it," Eardley said. "Everybody in the United States owns that land. ... We manage it the best we can for its owners, the people, and whether it's for recreating, for grazing, for energy and mineral development."

Bundy said the group felt it had the support of the local community. But the county sheriff has told the group to go home, and many locals don't want the group around, fearing they may bring trouble. A community meeting was scheduled for Wednesday.

So far, law enforcement has not taken action against the group whose rallying cry is the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.

"These guys are out in the middle of nowhere, and they haven't threatened anybody that I know of," said Jim Glennon, a longtime police commander who now owns the Illinois-based law enforcement training organization Calibre Press. "There's no hurry."

Some observers have complained, suggesting the government's response would have been swifter and more severe had the occupants been Muslim or other minorities.

The group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom said it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.

The Hammonds, who have distanced themselves from the group, were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

The takeover comes amid a dispute that dates back decades in the West. In the 1970s, Nevada and other states pushed for local control in what was known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. Supporters wanted more land for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting.

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Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this story.

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This story has been corrected to show the community meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, not Tuesday.

Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum speaks to reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Ammon Bundy, the leader of a small, armed group that is occupying a remote national wildlife preserve in Oregon said Tuesday that they will go home when a plan is in place to turn over management of federal lands to locals. (AP Photo/Rebecca Boone)

Ammon Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, speaks during an interview at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against a group numbering close to two dozen, led by Bundy and his brother, who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, who is part of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge speaks with reporters during a news conference at the the refuge Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. Finicum said the group would examine the underlying land ownership transactions to begin to "unwind it," stating he was eager to leave Oregon. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, drives near the front entrance Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, stands guard Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A manned watch tower is shown at sunrise Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement took no action Monday against the group numbering close to two dozen who were upset about the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, who is part of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge speaks with reporters during a news conference at the the refuge Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. Finicum said the group would examine the underlying land ownership transactions to begin to "unwind it," stating he was eager to leave Oregon. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Jon Ritzheimer, of Arizona, a member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, adjust a sign Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

An American flag is shown at the front entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement took no action Monday against the group numbering close to two dozen who were upset about the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Ammon Bundy, center, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, arrives for a news conference at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against a group numbering close to two dozen, led by Bundy and his brother, who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, looks on from a manned watch tower Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement law enforcement took no action Monday against the group numbering close to two dozen who were upset about the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, stands guard Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A member of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, walks to the front gate Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Law enforcement had yet to take any action Tuesday against the group numbering close to two dozen who are upset over federal land policy. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum speaks to reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, near Burns, Ore. Ammon Bundy, the leader of a small, armed group that is occupying a remote national wildlife preserve in Oregon said Tuesday that they will go home when a plan is in place to turn over management of federal lands to locals. (AP Photo/Rebecca Boone)
Obama measures wouldn't have kept guns from mass shooters

The gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have prevented the slaughters of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, or 14 county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.

Obama's executive action expands mandatory background checks to gun shows, flea markets and online sales, adds more than 230 examiners and staff to help process them and calls on states to submit accurate and updated criminal history data.

Those measures are seen as crucial to stemming gun suicides  the cause of two-thirds of gun deaths  by blocking immediate access to weapons. But, an Associated Press review shows, they would have had no impact in keeping weapons from the hands of suspects in several of the deadliest recent mass shootings that have spurred calls for tighter gun control.

President Barack Obama embraces Jennifer Pinckney, wife of Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the 2015 Charleston church shooting, after speaking in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, about steps his administration is taking to reduce gun violence. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The shooters at Sandy Hook and San Bernardino used weapons bought by others, shielding them from background checks. In other cases, the shooters legally bought guns.

In Aurora, Colorado, and at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., men undergoing mental health treatment were cleared to buy weapons because federal background checks looked to criminal histories and court-ordered commitments for signs of mental illness. The Obama administration is making changes in that realm by seeking to plug certain Social Security Administration data into the background check system and by helping states report more information about people barred from gun possession for mental health reasons.

The suspect in a shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, should have been flagged at the time, but errors and delays cleared the way for his purchase.

Though the moves probably wouldn't have prevented recent mass shootings, Obama rejected the idea that undermines the changes.

"We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some," Obama said.

A look at how some recent mass shooting suspects got their weapons:

Dec. 2, 2015, San Bernardino, California, 14 killed

Syed Farook and his wife used weapons that the FBI says his neighbor, Enrique Marquez, purchased legally from a federally licensed dealer in 2011 and 2012. Marquez, now facing conspiracy and other charges, told investigators that Farook asked him to purchase the weapons because he would draw less attention. At the time, the FBI says, the men were plotting to shoot up a community college and a highway.

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Oct. 1, 2015, Roseburg, Oregon, 10 killed

Christopher Harper-Mercer and his family members legally purchased the handguns and rifle he used in the Umpqua Community College shooting from a federally licensed gun dealer, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

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July 16, 2015, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 5 killed

The FBI says some of the weapons Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez used in his attack on a pair of military facilities were purchased legally and some were not. It is unclear when the purchases were made and whether he was subject to a background check. Relatives say Abdulazeez had a history of mental illness, made a series of overseas trips and was arrested in April on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. In May 2013, he failed a background check for an engineering job at a nuclear power plant in Ohio.

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June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina, 9 killed

A February drug arrest should have prevented Dylann Roof from purchasing the pistol authorities say he used at Emanuel AME Church, but a record-keeping error and background check delay allowed the transaction to go through. The FBI says a background check examiner never saw the arrest report because the wrong arresting agency was listed in state criminal history records. After three days passed, the gun dealer was legally permitted to complete the transaction.

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Sept. 16, 2013, Washington, D.C., 12 killed

Aaron Alexis, a former reservist turned civilian contractor, passed state and federal background checks and legally purchased the pump-action shotgun used in the Washington Navy Yard shooting despite a history of violent outbursts and recent mental health treatment. Alexis was accused of firing a gun in anger in Texas in 2004 and Seattle in 2010, but was not prosecuted in either case. In 2011, he received an honorable discharge despite bouts of insubordination, disorderly conduct and unauthorized absences. None of that would have disqualified him from purchasing a weapon.

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Dec. 14, 2012, Newtown, Connecticut, 26 killed

Adam Lanza used his mother's weapons, including a .223-caliber semi-automatic rifle, in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Investigators say Lanza's mother, whom he fatally shot before going to the school, also purchased the ammunition.

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July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colorado, 12 killed
UK urged to take in lone child refugees from Europe

Britain should welcome thousands of lone children from Europe on top of the Syrian refugee resettlement programme, a committee of MPs has said.

The International Development Committee called on the Government to accept proposals to take 3,000 unaccompanied children from within the EU.

This would be in addition to the 20,000 Syrian refugees set to be brought to the UK from camps in the region around the war-ravaged country over five years.

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron called for the UK to harbour unaccompanied children from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea who are displaced by conflict

Meanwhile, Press Association analysis of the most recent UK asylum figures has found that the number of applications from unaccompanied children is at its highest level for almost seven years.

Charity Save the Children has led calls for 3,000 refugee children living alone in Europe to be resettled in the UK.

The campaign has also been backed by Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, who called on the Government to to offer save haven to unaccompanied children from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea who are displaced by conflict.

In a report published today the committee said it would welcome a decision in favour of the plan.

It said: "We are very concerned about the plight of unaccompanied refugee children in Europe, particularly as reports suggest they are falling prey to people traffickers."

Britain is not taking part in major EU-wide resettlement schemes for refugees who have already arrived in Europe.

In relation to Save the Children's proposals, Minister for Syrian Refugees Richard Harrington told the committee in November that it was "under discussion".

He added: "At the moment, I cannot report any further progress on it, but we are very aware."

Thousands of under-18s are thought to have reached Europe alone last year as the world was gripped by a migration crisis.

Figures published in November showed that around one in five of the 800,000 people who had arrived by sea were children.

Labour MP Stephen Twigg, chairman of the committee, said: " Having survived the treacherous journey, there is a grave possibility that unaccompanied children become the victims of people traffickers who force them into prostitution, child labour and the drugs trade.

"This is an issue of utmost urgency."

The report also:

:: Commends the Government for its response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, with the UK providing the second highest level of bilateral funding at 1.1 billion.

:: Raises concerns about a lack of financial support from other donors and calls for the Government to insist that fellow wealthy countries meet their funding commitments.

:: Says evidence suggests that it is more cost-effective to support refugees in the region than it is to direct resources towards resettling them in the UK.

It comes after the Government's response to the migrant crisis faced fresh criticism from charities and aid agencies.

In a letter a group of 27 organisations said the commitment to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees said the UK's offer to rehome refugees was "too slow, too low and too narrow".

Mr Farron said: "It is good to see the International Development Committee endorsing our call on the Government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children from Europe.

"There are many thousands of orphaned children fleeing war and persecution in Syria. Britain has always been a beacon of hope for people in their darkest hour. It is time for Britain to do the right thing.

"The Government must now act to save these vulnerable children by offering them safety and sanctuary in the UK."

David Cameron's official spokeswoman pointed out that the Prime Minister announced last month a review of the issue of vulnerable children, particularly orphans, who have arrived in Europe.

Work on the review is under way and it is expected to conclude "shortly", she said.

The spokeswoman said: "We are already playing our part, both in terms of the Syrians that have been resettled so far, who include vulnerable children, and in terms of the life-saving aid we are providing to the region, with the 1.12 billion we have put into the Syrian humanitarian crisis.
Sudanese man who 'walked length of Channel Tunnel' granted asylum in UK

A Sudanese man who entered Britain after apparently walking the length of the Channel Tunnel has been granted asylum.

Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, is believed to have been found inside the 31-mile long tunnel near its exit at Folkestone, Kent, on August 4.

He was charged with causing an obstruction to an engine or carriage using the railway under the Malicious Damage Act 1861.

Abdul Rahman Haroun is believed to have been found inside the 31-mile long tunnel near its exit at Folkestone

Haroun's caseworker, Sadie Castle, from Kent Defence, said he was granted asylum on Christmas Eve, and at a hearing at Canterbury Crown Court, prosecutors said they were considering whether to drop the charges in light of the decision.

Operator Eurotunnel said it was disappointed with the decision to grant asylum, as it may encourage others to attempt the same journey.

Spokesman John Keefe said: "We believe that it is something that can only act as an incentive to other illegal immigrants to seek to enter the country.

"We had hoped the authorities would use the full force of the law as a dissuasive measure."

Haroun was released on bail until another court hearing on January 18.

Countless migrants have risked their lives trying to enter the UK via the Channel Tunnel.

The crisis in Calais became part of a wider migrant surge in to Europe from countries in north Africa and the Middle East.
Jeremy Corbyn sacks Europe spokesman Pat McFadden

Jeremy Corbyn ejected another senior figure from his top team tonight with Europe spokesman Pat McFadden losing his job for "disloyalty".

The leader's reshuffle claimed its second victim after more than 30 hours of apparently bitter internal battling over the shape of the shadow cabinet.

Earlier Michael Dugher announced he had been sacked from the culture brief, with uncertainty still surrounding the fates of shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn and shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle.

Shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden has been sacked for "disloyalty", Labour Party sources said

Pat Glass has been promoted to replace Mr McFadden, according to senior party sources.

Michael Dugher said he has been sacked by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
Tunnock's advert brews up storm in a tea cake

Tunnock's has been accused of ditching its Scottish heritage with a new campaign promoting its famous treat as "the Great British Tea Cake" in England.

Managing director Boyd Tunnock said the London Underground advert is simply a nod to the hit BBC show the Great British Bake Off, but the move has angered some Scots who say it is a rejection of the Lanarkshire-based firm's Scottish roots.

On Twitter, one SNP member said: " Re-branding is one thing - what Tunnocks did was a brazen rejection of Scotland."

Tunnock's tea cakes are associated with Scotland to such an extent that they featured in the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony

Another independence supporter said: "Imagine if Guinness had said they wouldn't promote Ireland or Toblerone saying they wouldn't promote Switzerland."

Conservative voter Mr Tunnock, who spoke out in favour of the Union during the 2014 referendum debate, said the furore was a "storm in tea cake".

He told Radio Scotland: "The advert we put in London was a sort of spoof of the British Bake Off. It was my son-in-law who suggested this and I thought it was okay."

But he later told Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show: "We're in Britain, that's what we say.

"We are advertising the Great British Tea Cake because we had a referendum here and 55% of Scottish people wanted to be in Britain and that's why we're calling it the British tea cake."

Mr Tunnock said the lion rampant image has not been removed from the packaging, as some people had suggested.

He said he sent a box of the treats to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as well as to Prime Minister David Cameron for Christmas, and a packet is also making its way to "the Labour man".

The family firm established in 1890 and based in Uddingston sells around 3.5 million tea cakes a week.
IS weapons capabilities revealed after intelligence 'gold mine' seized

Weapons experts are being used by Islamic State in Syria (IS) to train jihadists and modify surface-to-air missiles, it has been claimed.

The report by Sky News reveals the group can potentially recommission thousands of missiles that Western governments assumed had become redundant through old age.

Weapons experts are said to have been left shocked by the capabilities of scientists from a "jihadi university" in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Experts were said to be shocked by the weapons capability of Islamic State fighters

Footage obtained by the broadcaster shows IS is able to produce home-made thermal batteries for surface-to-air missiles, something that had been considered virtually impossible for terror groups working without a military infrastructure.

The organisation is also able to produce fully working remote controlled cars to act as mobile bombs.

To bypass sophisticated scanning machines that protect Western military and government buildings, the cars are fitted with drivers, mannequins with self-regulating thermostats to produce human heat signatures.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) passed on the footage of more than eight hours of unedited training videos after taking it from an IS trainer who was captured as he headed through Turkey towards Europe.

The material has been described as an intelligence "gold mine" by a British military adviser.

Major Chris Hunter, a former bomb technician in the special forces, told Sky News he was shocked at some of the developments revealed in the videos.

He said: "I think this is one of the most significant intelligence finds in terms of Daesh.

"What we've seen with their typical propaganda videos is they're very, very high quality.

"They're designed, they're produced to inspire people and prospectively touch the nerves of anybody who is viewing them; they're done in a very specific way.

"With this training footage, it's very clearly purely designed to pass on information - to pass on the progress in the research and development areas - and it gives us a very good insight into where they are now, what they're aspiring to do and crucially the diversity of the types of threats we might face.

"So I would say it's an intel gold mine."

In one of the videos a man speaking Russian walks through a store containing explosive materials including improvised missiles and TNT.

An IS defector further told the broadcaster that a top secret training programme was known about in his home town of Raqqa. He added that the programme was designed for attacks in Europe and further afield.

A jihadi college training foreign fighters to fight in other countries, while developing missiles to continue the war in Syria, was suspected but never seen.

It is believed this is the first evidence of the existence of such a training facility, and that groups of trainees from a range of countries including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Egypt and Pakistan were given terror training courses using science labs and facilities based around the former Equestrian Centre in Raqqa.

Responding to the report, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "Daesh will use all measures at their disposal to cause harm, and Britain will never be cowed by such terrorists.
Germany sees no evidence Iran could retreat from nuclear deal

BERLIN, Jan 4 (Reuters) - There is no evidence that Iran is planning to depart from a deal reached with world powers last year to scale back its nuclear programme and it could even fulfill all of its agreements this month, a German foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday.

"I very much expect that there is no interest among the decisive actors in Iran - the Iranian government, the Iranian president, and elsewhere - in diverging from the agreements made in Vienna last summer," Martin Schaefer told a news conference.

Iran signed a nuclear deal with six world powers, including Germany, in July that would see it curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of crippling economic sanctions.

Schaefer suggested these sanctions could be lifted soon. "The day on which Iran fulfills all of its obligations from the Vienna agreement, which will result in international sanctions being suspended or revoked, is getting closer and could even be reached this month," he said.

Volker Treier, managing director of Germany's DIHK Chambers of Commerce, said German companies were hoping that a timetable to dismantle Western sanctions would be presented in the first quarter and that this process would then quickly start.

However he said German businesses were concerned about rising tensions between Iran and its regional rival Saudi Arabia, after Riyadh's execution of four prominent Shi'ites on Saturday. The kingdom severed its ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters stormed its embassy in Tehran.
Bahrain police fire tear gas, birdshot at protesters - witnesses

DUBAI, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Bahraini police on Monday fired tear gas and birdshot at protesters demonstrating against the execution of a top Shi'ite cleric in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, witnesses said.

The standoff in the village of al-Daih, west of the capital Manama, was the latest of several protests which have turned violent since Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, stoking outrage among Shi'ites in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Several dozen women wearing face veils faced off with police chanting, "down with the house of Saud" when a group of masked youths arrived and threw stones and petrol bombs at the personnel, who responded with tear gas and birdshot.

Nimr's execution has deepened sectarian sensitivities in the region, and Bahrain on Monday joined Saudi Arabia in cutting ties with Iran, a mutual foe and the region's preeminent Shi'ite power, after a mob stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran.
Saudi civil aviation body announces halt to Iran flights - Twitter account

DUBAI, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Civil Aviation on Monday halted all flights to and from Iran following Riyadh's severing of diplomatic relations with Tehran, the authority said on its official Twitter account.

"Based on the kingdom's announcement of the severing of diplomatic relations with Iran, the General Authority for Civil Aviation is halting all flights from and to Iran," the authority tweeted.
'We are not natural-born enemies of Iran,' Saudi UN envoy says

By Michelle Nichols and Sam Wilkin

UNITED NATIONS/DUBAI, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work "very hard" to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.

Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdom's execution of prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution.

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: "Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own."

He added, "If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran."

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadh's example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers.

Jubeir blamed Iran's "aggressive policies" for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdom's embassy in Tehran.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.

Shi'ite Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an "excuse" to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.

A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraq's Shi'ite-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle East's top Sunni and Shi'ite powers.

But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones.

"The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states," said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

CALLS FOR RESTRAINT

Crude importer China declared itself "highly concerned" with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.

Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a U.S. senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.

"It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it," the U.S. official said. "They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable."

Brent jumped 4 percent early on worries about the tensions. But the crude oil benchmark erased its gains and settled a few cents lower as fears rose about the global economy and the Middle East dispute looked unlikely to disrupt oil supplies immediately.

Stock markets across the Gulf dropped sharply, led by Qatar which fell more than 2.5 percent, with geopolitical jitters outweighing any benefit from stronger oil.

SYRIA, YEMEN

The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syria's five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

"It was very difficult to get everybody around the table," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism."

Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syria's political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assad's government.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva.

Saudi U.N. Ambassador Mouallimi said his country's severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. "We will attend the next Syria talks and we're not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter," he told reporters at the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadh's decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling.

The U.N. chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shi'ite Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months.

Trade between Saudi Arabia and Iran is small compared with the size of their economies, but some business is routed through the United Arab Emirates; comprehensive figures are not available. Investment ties are also minimal, though Saudi food conglomerate Savola has major manufacturing operations in Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shi'ites on terrorism charges on Saturday, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shi'ite Iran hailed him as a "martyr" and warned Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family of "divine revenge".

Shi'ite groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State.

Western powers, many of which supply billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Gulf Arab powers, tried to tamp down the tensions with Iran but also deplored the executions, as human rights groups strongly criticised Saudi Arabia's judicial process and protesters gathered outside Saudi embassies.
North Korea to send delegation to WEF meeting in Davos

SEOUL, Jan 5 (Reuters) - North Korea will send a delegation to the World Economic Forum meeting in Switzerland this month, the organisation said, a sign the isolated country sees international engagement as a way to bolster its economy.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Monday that North Korea's participation at the event in the town of Davos, which attracts heavyweights from the worlds of business and politics, would be its first in 18 years.

A World Economic Forum official confirmed the North's participation in the conference, which takes place on Jan. 20-23, but did not have further details. A list of participants will be released on Jan. 13.

Impoverished North Korea is under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and missile programmes, and struggles to attract investment. It last sent a delegation to the forum in 1998, Yonhap said.

Yonhap said the North Korean delegation would be led by Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, who spent two decades in Switzerland as ambassador and representative at the United Nations in Geneva.

Ri acted as surrogate father to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when Kim was a student at a Swiss school.

Kim, believed to be in his early 30s, focused on development of the economy during a New Year's Day speech.
Romania - Factors to watch on Jan 5

BUCHAREST, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Tuesday.

DEBT TENDER

Romania sold a planned 600 million lei ($144.87 million) of Jan. 2018 treasury bonds in the first tender of the year on Monday, with the average accepted yield at 1.47 percent, central bank data showed.

Debt managers last issued the paper in December at an average yield of 1.43 percent.

FX RESERVES

The Romanian central bank's foreign exchange reserves, excluding 103.7 tonnes of gold, rose by 134 million euros to 32.2 billion euros ($35.12 billion) at the end of 2015, it said on Monday.

CEE MARKETS

Poland led a decline by currencies and equities in Central Europe on Monday, as worries over new regulation of Polish media coincided with renewed concern over China's economy.

CEE POWER

Czech day-ahead power fell on Monday as wind generation remained strong and temperatures were forecast to rise, but outages and fewer renewables helped drive Slovak, Hungarian and Romanian prices higher, traders said.

For the long-term Romanian diary, click on

For emerging markets economic events, click on

For an index of all diaries, click on
Leader of Taiwan DPP, party hated by China, leads last election poll

TAIPEI, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The leader of Taiwan's independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), an organisation loathed by rulers in giant neighbour China, maintained her lead in the last opinion poll on Tuesday before a polling blackout begins ahead of the Jan. 16 elections.

The poll by Taiwan's Cross-Strait Policy Association showed 45.2 percent of 1,052 people surveyed supported Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the DPP, while 16.3 percent backed Eric Chu, chairman and candidate for the ruling Nationalists (KMT).

The margin of Tsai's expected victory is important in terms of how fiercely democratic Taiwan gets on with Communist-ruled China, which considers the island a breakaway province. The DPP has been supported by youthful voters angered by a perceived economic dependence on the mainland.

The links between Beijing and the DPP will be crucial to managing one of the world's most potentially dangerous relationships, with Taiwan facing a China that aims hundreds of missiles at the island and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under Beijing's control.

The DPP is detested by Beijing because the party believes the future of Taiwan is for its 23 million people to decide, which Beijing takes to mean independence.

China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province ever since Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Nationalists fled to the island in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists.

The association's poll showed 59-year-old Tsai's approval rating over 54 percent for respondents aged between 20 and 34. However, it also showed that 22.4 percent of all respondents were undecided about their presidential pick.

Tsai's support rating rose by one percentage point from the last poll in late December by the association, made up of prominent scholars and bipartisan figures. In comparison, Chu's rating was down by 5.8 percentage points.

Surveys in recent months have shown Tsai holding on average a double-digit lead against her rivals, which include a third presidential candidate from a minority party. The island's 113-seat parliament will also be up for grabs in the elections.

TVBS, a cable television channel in Taiwan, put Tsai's support at 44 percent, or 20 percentage points ahead of Chu, in a poll conducted on Saturday.

A poll sponsored by the Nationalists and issued on Monday put Tsai's support at 39.2 percent, ahead of 31.2 percent support for Chu.
Poland - Factors to Watch Jan 5

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):

CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR

Polish central bank governor Marek Belka will at 1000 GMT outline the monetary policy guidelines for 2016 to the parliamentary public finance committee.

BANK TAX

The introduction of the bank asset tax should not be delayed, and it is likely to be implemented as of February, Rzeczpospolita daily quoted the finance ministry as saying.

PKN ORLEN

Polish refiner PKN Orlen does not rule out taking over petrol stations in Lithuania and Latvia, Rzeczpospolita daily quoted the company as saying.

VAT

The 1-percentage point VAT tax rate reduction planned by the Polish finance ministry for next year may be scrapped if tax revenues do not increase, daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna quoted an unnamed ruling party source as saying.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on Jan 5

PRAGUE, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 1 hour) =========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== End-December budget balance data (1230 GMT) Real-time economic data releases................... Previous stories on Czech data............ Overview of economic data and forecasts......... Updates on CEE currencies........................... =========================EVENTS================================ BUDGET ANNOUNCEMENT: Finance Minister Andrej Babis will reveal 2015 budget results at 1230 GMT. INDUSTRY MINISTER SPEAKS: Minister Jan Mladek will discuss 2015 activities. The ministry is involved in restructuring talks with troubled coal miner New World Resources (1030 GMT). =========================NEWS================================= OIL SHIPPING: Unipetrol has agreed with state-owned pipeline operator MERO on oil shipments. Mero said that it expects a final agreement on transport fees, which have been a sticking point in talks going back to 2010, by the end of March. CEZ TO BUILD GERMAN WIND PORTFOLIO: Czech electricity producer CEZ has mandated investment firm Aquila Capital to help build its wind power portfolio in Germany, with plans to invest hundreds of millions of euros over the next five years. HYUNDAI RAISES OUTPUT: Hyundai Motor's Czech unit aims to boost output by 2.3 percent to 350,000 cars in 2016 after beating production targets last year. ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2016 vs Euro 27.026 27.053 0.1 -0.1 vs Dollar 24.993 24.537 -1.86 -0.53 Czech Equities 938.23 938.23 -1.89 -1.89 U.S. Equities 17,148.94 17,425.03 -1.58 -1.58 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1600 GMT =========================PRESS DIGEST========================= ERSTE UNIT BUYS LARGE RECEIVABLE: Erste Bank unit Ceska Sporitelna has agreed to buy a 9 billion Czech crown ($360.88 million) receivable towards a Prague city transport company from tram producer Skoda Transportation. The credit is guaranteed by the city. Lidove Noviny, page 3 PRESIDENT ON MIGRATION: President Milos Zeman, known for his anti-immigration rhetoric, said he believed immigration to Europe was organised by the Moslem Brotherhood. Zeman does not have many executive powers under the Czech constitution. Czech Radio ROAD BUILDING: The Transport Ministry plans to start construction on 130 km of new highways this year, more than double of last year's projects. Funding is growing at a slower pace. E15, page 1 TESCO: Tesco has separated its small-size convenience stores known under the Zabka brand into a new firm. It said the reason for the move was internal restructuring. It declined to comment on speculation the step may indicate a possible sale of the business. E15, page 5 CZECHS OPTIMISTIC ON ECONOMY: Three quarters of Czechs consider 2015 as a successful year. Thirty-eight percent believe their financial situation will improve this year, while only one in eight expect a worsening. Pravo, page 5 Reuters has not verified the media reports, nor does it vouch for their accuracy. For Instant Views of key economic data click on For summary of economic data and forecasts For diary of forthcoming Czech events For calendar of east European economic indicators TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets TOP NEWS -- Convergence watch For an economic indicator diary for the euro zone, the United States and other Group of Seven countries see For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX News editor of the day: Jan Lopatka on +420 224 190 474 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com ($1 = 24.6170 Czech crowns) ($1 = 24.9390 Czech crowns) (Reporting by Prague Newsroom)
China says to allow transit stops in Taiwan for onward flights

Jan 5 (Reuters) - China will allow transit stops in Taiwan for onward flights from three Chinese cities, China's Taiwan Affairs Office said on Tuesday.

Passengers flying from Nanchang, Kunming and Chongqing will be allowed to transit through Taiwan's main international airport before flying on to a third destination, according to a statement on the Chinese government agency's website.

The two sides had been discussing the issue, which proponents have said would be a boon for Taiwanese airlines, as it could give them more business from mainland passengers traveling onwards from the island.

China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war to the Communists.
Miners and telecoms help European shares bounce back

LONDON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - European shares bounced back on Tuesday following a rally in mining and telecom stocks and some stabilisation in Chinese markets, a day after poor Chinese factory numbers triggered a sharp sell-off in local equities and hit world markets.

Chinese regulators leapt to support the country's stock markets early on Tuesday, with the central bank pouring cash into the money market system and the securities regulator suggesting it might restrict share sales by major shareholders.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was up 1 percent at 1,415.77 points after slumping 2.5 percent on Monday, its biggest one-day drop since early December.

The STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources index jumped 2.3 percent, the top sectoral gainer, as prices of key industrial metals rose 1.1 to 1.6 percent after slumping in the previous session. Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Glencore rose 2.7 to 3.1 percent.

Telecoms stocks also outperformed, after French telecom operator Orange confirmed it was in renewed preliminary talks about a merger with domestic rival Bouygues Telecom. Bouygues rose 1.4 percent, Altice climbed 4.3 percent and Numericable surged 6.4 percent.
Bodies of 21 migrants found on Aegean coast - Turkish gendarmerie

ISTANBUL, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Turkey's gendarmerie said it found the bodies of 21 migrants, three of them children, at two separate locations on the Aegean coast on Tuesday after their boat apparently capsized as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

Eleven of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalik, while ten others were found in the district of Dikili, a gendarmerie official in the local headquarters told Reuters.
More guards killed in Islamic State attacks on Libya's oil ports

BENGHAZI, Libya, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Islamic State militants attacked checkpoints near the Libyan oil port of Es Sider for a second day on Tuesday and an oil storage tank in the port was set on fire by a long-range rocket, a spokesman for the security guards said.

Ali Hassi said militants had attacked checkpoints 30-40 km (19-25 miles) from the port, and that two guards were killed and 16 wounded in the fighting. Seven guards were killed and 25 were wounded in Monday's clashes, he said.

The National Oil Corporation (NOC) said the oil tank fire started just as firefighters were close to bringing under control another blaze at an oil tank that was hit during fighting in the nearby port of Ras Lanuf on Monday.

Both fires were still burning on Tuesday afternoon.

Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, Libya's biggest oil ports, have been closed since December 2014. They are located between the city of Sirte, which is controlled by Islamic State, and the eastern city of Benghazi.

Libya descended into chaos after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and rival governments and militias have been competing for the country's oil wealth ever since.

The U.N. is trying to win support for a deal to form a national unity government, but many members of Libya's rival parliaments have not signed up.

The country's crude oil production has dropped to less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day.

Islamic State militants have taken advantage of a security vacuum to tighten their grip on Sirte, and have been threatening to advance east along the coast. They have not managed to take control of any oil installations yet, as they have in Syria.
Turkey's Pegasus Airlines cancels Russian flights after failing to obtain visas

ISTANBUL, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Pegasus Airlines, a Turkish budget carrier, said on Tuesday it has suspended flights to and from Russia until Jan. 13 after authorities there failed to give its crew members visas.

Russia has instituted a number of sanctions against Turkish companies and individuals after the Turkish military shot down a Russian jet in November it said had breached its airspace while on a bombing campaign in neighbouring Syria.
US, allies launch 20 strikes against Islamic State -US military

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led coalition on Monday staged 20 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in its latest daily attacks on the militant group, the coalition leading the operations said.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the Combined Joint Task Force said 19 strikes near six Iraqi cities hit seven Islamic State tactical units. The strikes, centered near Mosul, Kisik and Sinjar, also struck numerous fighting positions, vehicles, weaponry and other targets, the statement said.

In Syria, one strike near Ayn Isa hit three of the militant group's fighting positions, according to the coalition.
Malaysia Airlines bans checked baggage on some Europe flights

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Malaysia Airlines said on Tuesday it has temporarily banned checked-in baggage on some flights to Europe because of "unreasonably strong head winds" on the longer routes it is taking for safety reasons.

The airline did not elaborate on the safety reasons behind its new flight paths to Europe but one of its airliners was shot down over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of all 298 people on board.

The national carrier said in an advisory on its website it could only accommodate one cabin bag of up to 7 kg for economy passengers and two bags of up to 14 kg for business and first class passengers.

"The longer flight path consumes more jet fuel and for safety reasons Malaysia Airlines has had to impose temporary limitations on checked in baggage allowance," it said, referring to the routes to Europe it was flying for safety reasons.

"Passengers who wish to check in their luggage will be able to do so, however their baggage will only arrive later," it said.

The airline said the baggage limitations applied to flights to Amsterdam and Paris operated by its Boeing 777 aircraft.

The airline suffered two disasters in 2014.

In March that year, its flight MH370 carrying 239 passengers and crew disappeared while on a flight to China and is believed to have gone down in the Indian Ocean.
The 'hacktivist' group Anonymous claims to have attacked Thai police websites in protest against the trial of two migrant workers sentenced to death last month for the murders of two British tourists.

Anonymous said on its Facebook page that 14 Thai police websites had been attacked. Of those it listed, nine were inaccessible yesterday.

The words 'Failed Law', 'We Want Justice', and a hashtag #BoycottThailand were displayed on some of the hacked sites, along with the name of Myanmar-based 'Blink Hacker Group'.

A message is displayed on a computer screen in Bangkok, Thailand, yesterday after the police website was allegedly hacked by the group Anonymous in response to a Thai court decision that has been widely protested

Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were killed on a beach on the picturesque island of Ko Tao, in Thailand

Burmese migrant workers Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Htun (pictured) were later sentenced to death for the crime, despite protestations about how the Thai police and courts handled their prosecution

Thai Police confirmed the attack on its websites but said there was no confidential data on the public websites.

In a 37-minute video posted on the Anonymous Facebook page, a masked person questioned the competency of the Thai police force and its handling of this and other cases.

On December 24, a Thai court found Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Htun, both 22, guilty of killing Hannah Witheridge, 23, and David Miller, 24.

The pair's battered bodies were found on a beach on the southern Thai holiday island of Koh Tao in 2014.

Dechnarong Suthicharnbancha, a police spokesman, said: 'They're not good enough to hack into our system and steal any of our data.'

He added: 'I received an initial report that the hackers are from another country.'

When asked if he meant they were from Myanmar and whether the hack was in response to the Koh Tao verdict, he said, 'It's possible. We are investigating.'

Police rushed to solve the crime, under intense pressure to limit negative publicity to the tourism industry.

They were criticized for not properly securing the crime scene and conducting more than 200 random DNA tests.

The also released names and pictures of suspects who turned out to be innocent, mishandled crucial DNA evidence from the victims and allegedly tortured their prime suspects.

A judge dismissed the allegations of torture, saying there was no evidence it took place.

A police diver searches for evidence in the water near where Ms Witheridge and Mr Miller's bodies were found

The verdicts sparked anger in Myanmar where hundreds held protests outside the Thai Embassy in the commercial capital of Yangon, calling for the two to be released.

After facing several days of fierce criticism, Thai junta Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha angrily dismissed those calls in his first comments on the case since Thursday's verdict.

'They have the right to appeal, right? Laws all over the world have this. Or should Thai law not have this? Is it the case that we should release all people when pressured?' a visibly angry Prayut told reporters.

Prayut, who seized power in a coup last year, is known for his mercurial outbursts and often colourful statements.

In the days and weeks after the Koh Tao murders, Prayut ordered police to make swift arrests, fearful of the impact the killings might have on the vital tourism industry.

He frequently aired his own opinions about who might be guilty, saying it was unlikely a Thai could carry out such a grisly murder.
German minister urges Riyadh, Tehran to focus on opposing ISIS

BERLIN, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and Iran owe it to the international community to put aside their differences in the Middle East and focus on opposing Islamic State, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told newspaper Bild.

Saudi Arabia cut its ties with Iran on Sunday in response to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row between the rival Middle East powers over Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric.

Steinmeier urged both countries to show responsibility and focus on calming the region and opposing the radical Islamist movement he referred to by the acronym ISIS.

"I hope that the turbulence will soon end, reason prevails and Riyadh and Tehran focus on what's really important - defusing the military conflicts, fostering political solutions in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere and thus pulling the rug out from under ISIS," he told Bild in an interview published on Tuesday.

"The whole Middle East, and especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, are somewhat indebted to us," he said. "The international community has worked extensively for years to bring peace to the interrelated conflicts in the region."
Turkey releases Vice News reporter held on terrorism charges -Vice

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - A Vice News reporter held on terrorism charges was released on bail in Turkey after spending more than four months in prison, the news magazine said on Tuesday.

The reporter, Mohammed Rasool, was detained in August along with two other Vice journalists in southeastern Turkey and sent to prison.
Central African vote: frontrunners neck-and-neck, also-rans cry foul

By Crispin Dembassa-Kette

BANGUI, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Two former prime ministers of Central African Republic were neck-and-neck in the race for the presidency on Tuesday, with 20 out of 30 candidates complaining of irregularities and a run-off vote on Jan. 31 looking increasingly likely.

Thousands have been killed in three years of conflict between Muslim rebels and Christian militias in the impoverished country and about a fifth of its 5 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

Hopes were that the election would stop the cycle of violence that intensified when mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in the mostly Christian nation in early 2013, provoking reprisals from Christian anti-balaka militias.

With about half the votes counted from the Dec. 30 election, Faustin Archange Touadera - a maths professor - was leading with 166,934 votes, while Anicet Georges Dologuele - supported by major business interests - was just 301 votes behind, according to the national electoral authority. Both men are Christian.

No other candidate had more than 80,000 votes.

Twenty candidates demanded on Monday that authorities stop the vote count because of what they said were irregularities in the ballot. Neither of the leading two candidates joined their call.

France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius hailed the election and called on politicians to act responsibly as results come in. The United Nations has also praised the conduct of the election.

Mahamat Kamoun, prime minister in the transitional government, called on all candidates to respect a code of good election conduct that they had signed.

"I exhort them to respect the rules for the good of the nation," he said on Radio Centrafrique.

Bilal Nzanga-Kolingba, son of a former president, was third while Jean Serge Bokassa, son of a late dictator, was fourth, election authority spokesman Julius Rufin Ngouade said. Ballots from all provinces were in the capital Bangui and only those from refugees in Chad and Cameroon were outstanding, he said.
Germans shaken by New Year attacks on women in Cologne

By Madeline Chambers

BERLIN, Jan 5 (Reuters) - About 90 women have reported being robbed, threatened or sexually molested at New Year celebrations outside Cologne's cathedral by young, mostly drunk, men, police said on Tuesday, in events they have described as 'a new dimension in crime'.

Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers told a news conference officers described the men as looking as if they were from "the Arab or North African region" and mostly between 18 and 35 years old. "We have one complaint that represents a rape," he added.

Integration commissioner Aydan Ozoguz warned against putting foreigners and refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom have entered Germany largely from Middle Eastern war zones, under "blanket suspicion".

Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed shock over the attacks that police said occurred when about 1,000 men split into gangs as officers cleared a square to stop fireworks being thrown from the top of steps into the crowd below.

While politicians also urged people not to become wary of all refugees, the incident fuelled calls from right-wing groups to stop letting in migrants.

Germany took in just over a million last year, far more than any other European country.

Cologne mayor Henriette Reker said it was "unbelievable and intolerable what happened on New Year's Eve" but there was no reason to believe those involved in the attacks were refugees.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas said Germany would not accept such attacks which he described as "a new scale of organised crime".

Around 150 people gathered in front of Cologne's cathedral on Tuesday evening to protest against violence against women. One of them held a sign saying: "Ms Merkel where are you? What do you say? This scares us!"

"TOUGH RESPONSE"

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained in polls in part at Merkel's expense thanks to a campaign against refugees, said she should close the border.

"Mrs Merkel, is Germany 'colourful and cosmopolitan' enough for you after the wave of crimes and sexual attacks?" tweeted AfD chief Frauke Petry.

Merkel told Reker in a phone call the attacks deserved a tough response.

"Everything must be done to investigate those responsible as quickly and completely as possible and punish them, regardless of where they are from," she said, according to her spokesman.

There are almost daily attacks on refugee shelters.

"Events like that in Cologne foster xenophobia," said Roland Schaefer, head of Germany's association of towns and localities.

After a crisis meeting, Cologne mayor Reker said new steps would be taken to avoid a repeat, including increasing police numbers at big events and installing more security cameras.

She stressed that women must feel safe at traditional carnival celebrations next month when the city closes down for five days of drunken street parades and parties.
U.S. judge agrees to delay deposition of Cosby's wife

By Scott Malone

BOSTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. magistrate judge on Tuesday agreed to delay the deposition of Bill Cosby's wife by lawyers for women who have accused the comedian of sexual assault and sued him for defamation for calling them liars.

Cosby lawyers on Monday asked Magistrate Judge David Hennessy to delay the deposition, which was scheduled for Wednesday, saying there was a risk to her reputation if intimate details of the couple's relationship were revealed.

Hennessy agreed to delay the deposition while lawyers for each side argue over whether Camille Cosby, the entertainer's spouse of almost 52 years and business manager, can be compelled to give evidence against her husband.

The deposition was intended to gather evidence in Massachusetts civil suit, one of a series of legal actions Cosby, 78, is facing over claims by more than 50 women that the actor sexually assaulted them after plying them with drugs and alcohol, in alleged instances that played out over decades.

Cosby's lawyers had argued that Camille Cosby could be embarrassed if her responses to questions about "the most intimate details of her marital life" were released publicly.

Lawyers for the seven women argued that the same judge's order on Monday to seal the deposition eliminated any need to delay it.

"It would not serve (and in fact would offend) the 'interest of justice' for this court to deny the motion for a stay, and thereby effectively deny Mrs. Cosby any right to appeal," Hennessy wrote in his order.

People magazine on Tuesday reported Camille remained firm in her support of her husband, citing an unnamed source close to the family.

"They remain steadfast and resolute about working through this together," People quoted the source as saying.

A spokesman for Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania last week charged Cosby, best known for his role as the father character in the 1980s television hit "The Cosby Show," with sexually assaulting a women in 2004. That is the only criminal case filed against Cosby, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Cosby is free on $1 million bail and his lawyer has said the entertainer is not guilty and will not consider a plea bargain.
Major shootings in the United States

Jan 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, outlining steps to tighten rules on guns on Tuesday, tearfully recalled a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school in 2012 in which 20 children were murdered.

The Newtown, Connecticut, killings, were among the more recent of a series of mass shootings dating back to at least the mid-1990s. Below are some of the worst such incidents in recent years, ranked by the number of dead, including the gunman:

Virginia Tech April 16, 2007 - A gunman slaughters 32 people and kills himself at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Sandy Hook Dec. 14, 2012 - A gunman shoots his mother to death, then kills 20 children, six adults and himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

San Bernardino Dec. 2, 2015 - A husband and wife kill 14 people at a workplace holiday party in San Bernardino in Southern California before being killed in a shootout with police.

Columbine April 20, 1999 - Two heavily armed teenagers go on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, shooting 12 students and a teacher to death and wounding more than 20 others before taking their own lives.

Immigration center April 3, 2009 - A Vietnamese immigrant opens fire at an immigrant services center in Binghamton, New York, killing 13 people and wounding four. He then kills himself.

Fort Hood Nov. 5, 2009 - A gunman opens fire at Fort Hood, a U.S. Army base in Texas, killing 13 people. The gunman, an Army major and psychiatrist, was sentenced to death for the rampage.

Washington Navy Yard Sept. 16, 2013 - A former Navy reservist working as a government contractor kills 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. The gunman was killed by police.

Colorado movie theater July 20, 2012 - A masked gunman kills 12 people and wounds 70 when he opens fire on moviegoers at a midnight premiere of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, a Denver suburb. A former graduate student is sentenced to life in prison for the rampage.

Washington, D.C., snipers October 2002 - Two men ambush 13 people, killing 10 of them, in a string of sniper-style shootings that terrorize the Washington area.

Oregon College Oct. 1, 2015 - A gunman storms onto the campus of Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon and opens fire, killing nine people before police shoot him to death. Charleston church June 17, 2015 - A white supremacist gunman kills nine black churchgoers during a Bible study session at a historic, predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The suspect is awaiting trial.

Waco bikers May 17, 2015 - Rival motorcycle gangs kill nine at a restaurant in Waco, Texas. More than 170 people are arrested.

Grandfather kills family Sept. 18, 2014 - Man kills his daughter and six grandchildren in Bell, Florida, and then kills himself.

Oikos University April 2, 2012 - A former student kills seven students at Oikos University, a small Christian school in Oakland, California. The suspect is awaiting trial.

Sikh temple Aug. 5, 2012 - A white supremacist walks into a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six worshippers. The gunman kills himself after being shot by a police officer.

Florida apartment July 26, 2013 - A man goes on a shooting spree at an apartment complex in Hialeah, Florida, killing six people. The shooter is killed by police.

Congresswoman assassination attempt Jan. 8, 2011 - Then-U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords is the target of an assassination attempt by a gunman in Tucson, Arizona, in which six people are killed and 13, including Giffords, are wounded.

Amish school Oct. 2, 2006 - A gunman kills five girls in a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, before killing himself.

Planned Parenthood Nov. 27, 2015 - A gunman storms a Planned Parenthood health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three people and wounding nine. Police arrest the gunman.
India has been primarily Hindu in terms of culture and religion for many centuries, extending to thousands of years. Hinduism has endured remarkably through long periods of foreign invasion and hostile rule, though other ancient religions have long since perished.

We find this vast spiritual and cultural tradition comprehensively explained as early as the Mahabharata, and synthesised philosophically in the Bhagavad Gita more than 2,000 years ago. The Mahabharata describes the geography of the entire subcontinent of India relative to the worship of Krishna, Rama, Vishnu, Shiva and Durga, explaining the main deity forms and yogic teachings of later Hinduism, as well as delineating the rule of kings. Other important dharmic traditions, notably Buddhism and Jainism, share a common culture, values and practices with the Hindu.

Christianity arrived in India at an early period but was a minor influence until the colonial period. Islam began inroads in the eighth century and become a strong force after the thirteenth century. Yet these religions, in spite of great efforts, could not replace Hinduism as the dominant cultural tradition.

Composite culture and cultural continuity

Culture has an identity and continuity that evolves over time. In this regard, we can speak of an Indian culture and identity that is predominantly Hindu, just as we can speak of a European culture and identity that is predominantly Judeo-Christian, or a Middle Eastern culture that is predominantly Islamic.

There is certainly much beautiful art, profound philosophy, transformative yoga practices and deep experiential spirituality in Hindu and related dharmic traditions. This ancient dharmic culture spread to East Asia, Indochina and Indonesia, but also to Central Asia and influenced West Asia and Europe.

Yet Hindu dharma has not been frozen in time and continues to assimilate not only other religions, but also science, democracy and other modern trends, without losing its identity as promoting the spiritual quest above outer forms or dogmas.

It is crucial that India recognises its past, which has a strong Hindu component, in order to understand its cultural heritage. There may be aspects of older traditions that are not politically or scientifically correct in terms of current standards or may need reform, just as is the case with older cultures of the world. But there is much of tremendous value that should not be forgotten.

The fear of Hindu majoritarianism

There is a fear in India that highlighting its Hindu past may alienate non-Hindus or make Hindus intolerant today. There is a fear of Hindu majoritarianism in India, just as there isa fear of Christian majoritarianism in the West, or Islamic majoritarianism in the Middle East.

Yet Hinduism has never had a single book, church, or religious law, nor any single savior or religious leader. It recognises that the Divine dwells in the hearts of all beings as the very power of consciousness. Its views of religion and culture are pluralistic and synthetic, not exclusivist or monolithic. Hinduism has not been an aggressive religion, but one often under siege owing to its emphasis on inner spiritual practice over seeking power in the external world.

The British tried to eradicate pride in India's past through denigrating Hindu teachings starting with the Vedas. Though they preserved certain Sanskrit texts, their interpretations were condescending and inaccurate. Marxist and Freudian scholars have continued with demeaning interpretations of Hinduism and miss its sublime art and spirituality.

The great gurus of modern India since Vivekananda have kept the teachings alive and expanding in spite of such concerted efforts that have even targeted them personally.

India's characteristic culture and yogic spirituality that the world honours owes a great deal to its Hindu background. India has more peace and tolerance today than Pakistan and Bangladesh that have rejected their Hindu past and where the percentage of Hindus in the country has been radically reduced. Muslims have greater religious freedom in India than in Pakistan, with Islamic groups like Shias and Ahmadiyyas that are often attacked in Pakistan able to operate freely in India.

Mahatma Gandhi referred to himself as a "proud Hindu". Yet such a term will rarely be found repeated in media and academic circles in the country today.
Punjab Police gets a tip off at least 10 hours before the first bullet is fired inside the strategic Pathankot Air Force base, but displays poor reflexes which, if avoided, could have prevented the deaths of seven security personnel and a three-day long stand off.

It was not just the poor reflexes but also the lack of professionalism, ineptitude, corruption, involvement of some personnel in drug trafficking that the latest terror attack and a few other instances in the recent past have shown about their handling of such situations. It was less than six months ago, on July 27, that one of its police stations - in Gurdaspur - was attacked by Pakistani jihadis.

Evidently, even that attack did not perturb the police administration and virtually the same route was taken by the latest groups of terrorists from across the border to launch an attack at the Pathankot Air Force Station. While it is true that the primary responsibility to check infiltration from across the international border is that of the Border Security Force (BSF), it is the responsibility of the police to strengthen its intelligence and information network inside state territory.

Its failure to strengthen vigil close to the border despite intelligence inputs of a possible terrorist attack became apparent when an SP-level officer of the Punjab Police, Salwinder Singh, was kidnapped by the terrorists in his official vehicle. Not only he did not put up any resistance, he has also not been able to convincingly explain his presence close to the border for what he claims was a religious visit to a peer. What is even more intriguing is that he takes along a jeweller friend and a cook, rather than a gunman who was provided to him, and goes about in the sensitive area, unarmed. All these aspects reflect poorly on Punjab Police's discipline and administration. It does not seem unusual for police officers to use official vehicles for private purposes and taken along dubious characters.

The road which Salwinder Singh had taken, and where he was allegedly kidnapped and later released, is a well-known drug smuggling route. Even the locals avoid taking the route after dusk. The SP claimed that he was travelling unarmed on that road close to midnight. There are several questions that the security and intelligence agencies need to ask the SP. The jihadis, not known to show any mercy to their "enemies", killed the driver of a car they had hijacked earlier but spared the SP and his cook. In a similar attack at Dinanagar, they had killed a shopkeeper and all those who were inside the police station. They had also attempted to hijack a bus and blow up railway tracks but their attempt was foiled. Given the ruthless attitude of the jihadis, it is indeed strange that they let these people go while on their way to carry out a highly secretive and major operation.

His seniors also have much to answer for. Even though the SP had a dubious past (he was transferred a few days back following a complaint of sexual harassment by five policewomen), how could his seniors have failed to grasp the significance of the information given by an SP? It took them several hours to convey the message to the central agencies who dispatched the NSG. Security experts, however, say that while doing this was fine, the local police and the army units based in Pathankot should have been immediately deployed to cordon off the Air Force base.

The arrest of three men in Mohali on January 4, while the Pathankot operation was underway, further exposed the links between drug smugglers and their Pakistan counterparts, and the possible connivance of some security personnel. Although the police have denied having links with the Pathankot attackers, the recovery of a Pakistan SIM card, a sten gun with two magazines with Pakistan markings, two pistols of .30 bore and several guns from them raises questions. Mohali SSP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar told mediapersons that the three men were drug smugglers and that they were caught after specific information was received about their movement.

Significantly, two of these men were arrested with two kilograms of heroin and sentenced to 12 years' prison in 2010. However, they had jumped parole in 2014 and were declared Proclaimed Offenders (POs). The recovery of Pakistan-marked weapons and the SIM card proves that they had been actively engaged in drug trafficking across the border even after they were declared POs.

It is also significant to note that the Punjab Police faces the highest number of cases of human rights' abuse. Data recently released by the Punjab Human Rights Commission (PSHRC) revealed that of the total 2.33 lakh complaints received by the commission since its inception in 1997 (roughly the time when militancy had ended), 1.28 lakh or 55 per cent of total number of complaints were against police department and its personnel. During the last year itself, the PSHRC had received over 8,000 complaints against police personnel.
The State government on Monday issued an official gazette notification, making wearing of helmet by pillion riders on two-wheelers mandatory across the State, including Bengaluru City, with immediate effect.





But people may breathe easy as the enforcement authorities are not likely to crack the whip against violators for a few days.



The helmet rule is applicable to all pillion riders, irrespective of age. Hitherto, helmets were mandatory for only riders of two-wheelers. The government action follows a stern directive by a Supreme Court appointed committee on road safety. The notification has been issued under Section 138 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 (Central Act).



Every person while driving or riding (both for rider and pillion rider) a motor cycle of any type i.e., to say motor cycles, scooters and mopeds irrespective of brake horse power of the vehicle, within the limits of Karnataka State, shall wear protective headgear, the notification stated.



Interestingly, the gazette notification has been predated to December 31, 2015 in order to avoid committing contempt of the Supreme Court. There was no clarity in the government on the date of implementation of the new rule.



Though the notification clearly states that the new rule will come into effect from the date of publication in the official gazette, Transport Commissioner Ramegowda said helmet wearing will be mandatory for pillion riders from January 11 onwards.



The deadline set by the Supreme Court committee is January 10. The government will submit a compliance report to the committee in a day or two and inform it that the rule will come into effect from January 11 onwards, he said.



The government had issued the draft notification on September 18, 2015, inviting objections and suggestions from the public within 30 days. But the government had been dragging its feet on issuing the final notification. An apex court panel headed by retired judge Justice K S Radhakrishnan had directed the government to enforce helmet rule for pillion riders starting January 1, 2016.



Official sources in the government said the committee had on December 28, 2015, written a letter to the government, warning it of initiating contempt proceedings if its direction was not implemented within a fortnight. The panels warning followed media reports that the government was planning to defer implementation of the rule till completion of the ZP, TP elections.


The US has launched nationwide enforcement operations to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who entered the country with children and have lost asylum cases.



Most of those arrests are of those entering the US from its southern border.



This past weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) engaged in concerted, nationwide enforcement operations to take into custody and return at a greater rate adults who entered this country illegally with children, the US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said.



"This should come as no surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed," he said.



Johnson said the focus of this weekend's operations were on adults and their children who were apprehended after May 1, 2014 when they were crossing the southern border illegally.



They have been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court and have exhausted appropriate legal remedies and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under US laws.



"As part of these operations, 121 individuals were taken into custody, primarily from Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, and they are now in the process of being repatriated," Johnson said.



To effect removal, most families are first being transported to one of ICE's family residential centres for temporary processing before being issued travel documents and boarding a return flight to their home countries, he said.



Over 11 million immigrants are living in the US illegally, according to estimates.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum said these arrests and deportation is not safe or sustainable.



"Deportation raids instill fear in immigrant communities, and deportation is not an acceptable substitute for well-functioning refugee and asylum processes for families with credible fear of persecution," he said.



"The approach DHS has outlined is not safe or sustainable. It is faulty logic for DHS to believe that if they deport people fleeing violence back to violence, others will never come to the US," Noorani said.



The Homeland Security Secretary defended the action.



"As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration; if you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values," Johnson said.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar along with Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag will today visit the Pathankot Air Base, which was attacked by Pakistani terrorists on Saturday.





The three are scheduled to visit the strategic base, situated about 35 km from the border with Pakistan, in the afternoon to get a first hand assessment of the ground situation after six terrorists were killed by security forces.



The visit comes at a time when the government has ordered a security audit of all vital defence installations in the country to find out the possible security loopholes.
An explosion took place today 400 metres away from the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, two days after the country's mission was attacked by terrorists in Mazar-e-Sharif.





However, official sources in New Delhi said the reports suggested that the mission was not the target of the blast. Further details about the explosion were awaited, they said.



"The Indian Consulate was not the target," a source said dismissing reports that the explosion was targeted at the Indian mission.



"Pakistan Consul General's house in Jalalabad was closer to the blast site than the Indian mission which was 400 metres away," the source said.



An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end last night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.



While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight earlier, the remaining were neutralised by the night.



A group of terrorists had attacked the Consulate on Sunday night with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces.


The NIA will seek help of Pakistan in solving the Pathankot terror attack case once the identity of people contacted by the perpetrators has been established, the anti-terror probe agency's chief Sharad Kumar said today.



Kumar, who will be flying tomorrow to the Pathankot Indian Air Force base for an on-the-spot assessment, said solving the conspiracy behind the attack is a "very big challenge" but recalled how the agency had in the past established the identity of culprits in many blind cases.



"It's a very challenging case and a lot of investigation needs to be done. Therefore, I am not fixing any deadline to the case but we will try to complete the probe soon," Kumar said.



Asked about the nationality of the terrorists involved in Pathankot attack, Kumar said there was little doubt that the accused were from Pakistan and added "whatever evidence that is available in front of us till now is based on intercepted telephone calls between the terrorists and their handlers and family members across the border".



He, however, refrained from naming the terror group responsible for the attack, saying "Let us work first. We will be able to establish everything once we have some evidence to support our claims. The case has to be proved before the court of law and therefore I will refrain from making statements on speculation."



The terrorists were believed to owe allegiance to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed. Kumar said the probe was at an initial stage and refused to confirm if Pakistan's external spy agency ISI had a role to play in the incident. "I can't say whether ISI is involved or not. Let us see what happens after our probe is completed," he said.



NIA had yesterday registered three cases in connection with the brazen terror strike, including the murder of a taxi driver by suspected terrorists, kidnapping of a Superintendent of Police rank officer and attack on the IAF base on the intervening night of January one and two.



The NIA Chief also said the agency would try to identify the slain terrorists and may seek Pakistan's help in getting the voice samples of those from across the border whose voices figured in intercepted conversations.



"We will ask them (Pakistan) to give us the voice samples once we identify these people," he said.



The terrorists had made several calls from the local mobile phone of a jeweller Rajesh Verma to places in Pakistan including Bahawalpur where they spoke to their handlers as well as family members, official sources said.



The NIA chief said Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) team was already assisting the 20-member agency team that is camping in Pathankot after the news of terror strike broke in the morning of January two.



"We will also collect the DNA samples from all the dead bodies of the terrorists which may come in handy in future," he said.



The cases in connection with the terror assault were initially registered by the local police and later transferred to NIA, a central agency that was set up after the audacious 26/11 Mumbai attack to probe all terror cases in the country.



The first case pertains to Superintendent of Police Salwant Singh's abduction and the second of killing of taxi driver Ikagar Singh. Both the cases were registered at Narot Jaimal Singh Police Station in Pathankot district.



The third and the main case, registered at Police Station Division No. 2 Pathankot, relates to the terrorist attack on the Air Force Station.



A 20-member team of NIA led by an Inspector General- rank officer has been camping at Pathankot since January 2 to supervise the ongoing investigations.



An officer of the rank of Superintendent of Police has been appointed as the Chief Investigating Officer of the case.



The NIA registered the case under various sections of Indian Penal Code, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Arms Act against unknown persons, official sources said.



The Pathankot IAF facility, located near the border with Pakistan, is the base for MiG-21 fighter planes and MI-25 attack helicopters of the Air Force.


Delhi University's decision to allow a seminar in the varsity by a VHP-affiliated organisation on Ram Janmabhoomi temple has drawn flak from students and teachers who termed it as an "attempt to vitiate and communalise the campus".





The university, however, has clarified that it has nothing to do with the subject of the seminar and the organisation had booked the venue for the event which is available to outsiders for hiring.



The two-day seminar titled "Shri Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple: Emerging Scenario" and beginning January 9 is being organised at DU's Arts Faculty by Arundhati Vashishtha Anusandhan Peeth (AVAP), a research organisation founded by late VHP leader Ashok Singhal.



BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who is chairman of AVAP, is scheduled to deliver the inaugural address at the seminar which will see historians, archaeologists and law experts discussing various topics including "Lord Ram's character and values, and their impact on Indian culture", "History of the Ram temple and related archaeological findings", "Legal issues around Ram temple" and "Experience and future of Ram temple".



AVAP Convenor Chandra Prakash said the seminar is being organised to "make students aware of the verdict of the Allahabad High Court on the Ayodhya issue as many don't know the details".



Prakash maintained that the seminar is being independently organised by AVAP and DU has no role in it. According to a senior DU official, "the seminar is not being organised by any of the DU departments. Anyone can book the venue through the office of the Assistant Registrar if there is availability".



Various student groups and teachers have opposed DU's decision to offer its campus for the non-academic event. "The question is what have these kind of events to do with academic sphere. DU administration giving permission to organise it is an indication of letting the government push its saffron agenda in the field of education," said a statement by All India Students Association.



Students Federation of India said, "DU administration must withdraw the permission for the seminar as it is a clear attempt to vitiate and communalise the campus. We demand that the permission to conduct this programme be withdrawn."



Delhi University's Teachers Association (DUTA) said that events that are communal in nature should not get any space in educational institutions.



"A centrally-funded institution offering its platform for such an event speaks volumes about the agenda being pursued by the government as well as the administration," a DUTA statement said.
Mitchell Johnson have called time on his international career and Mitchell Starc is injured, but India's star batsman Ajinkya Rahane today said it is always a challenge to play against Australia.





If Johnson called time on his international career late last year, Starc suffered a stress fracture on his ankle during the Day-Night Adelaide Test against New Zealand.



Rahane, though, still believed that Australia have wicket-takers like James Pattinson to trouble the Indian batsmen in their upcoming tour.



"It's a challenge always to play against Australia. Yes, they will miss Mitchell Johnson and Mitchell Starc, but they have got other bowlers like (James) Pattinson. We are going to focus first on ODIs and then think about T20 series. By then we would have got used to the conditions. I am confident we will do well on tour," Rahane said in a media interaction here.



"They (Johsnson and Starc) have been top performers for Australia. Australia will definitely miss them. But they have Pattinson and other good bowlers. As a batting unit we have to play on the merit of the ball," he added.



India will play Australia in five ODIs and three T20s starting January 12 and Rahane is focussed on his game.



"I always try to improve my game (when asked about rotating the strike in ODIs). I am confident about myself. I am a team man and would be happy to do whatever team management wants me to do," he said.



Rahane is in red hot form after the Mumbai batsman struck two centuries in the final Test against South AFrica in Delhi and he is ready to face the bouncy Australian pitches.



"Two Test hundreds againt South Africa in last Test were very special as they were made at the place where I made my debut and we won the series too. For this tour have made normal preparations to face bouncy conditions in Australia. We will play in challenging conditions but we want to return with a win," said the confident batsman.



Meanwhile, Indian pacer Umesh Yadav stressed on "confidence" and "attitude" when taking on the Australians.



"It's all about your attitude and confidence. They need to be high to play well against Australia. I am here because of my pace. I am trying to get more pace. I try to swing with a good wrist position. But I also focus on line and length while aiming at the off stump," Umesh said.
Pakistan today sealed a landmark deal to sell JF-17 Thunder fighter jets to Sri Lanka as the two countries signed eight agreements to boost cooperation in areas like trade promotion, and science and technology besides combating money laundering and terror financing.



On the second day of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's visit to Colombo, Pakistan agreed to sell eight aircraft to Sri Lanka, in the first successful deal to sell the jets which Pakistan has been trying to sell for some time.



JF-17 Thunder is already part of Pakistan Air Force and has been successfully used to strike terrorist hideouts in northwestern tribal region.



Initially, the jets were manufactured with Chinese technical assistance but now it is solely done in Pakistan, according to a Geo TV report that claimed the deal has been finalised despite pressure from India which was forcing Colombo to buy Indian aircraft.



The deal was reached during the three-day trip of Sharif to Colombo that also saw the two sides signing eight agreements in the fields of education, science and technology, healthcare, agriculture, tourism, sporting contacts, cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts.



Sharif said both sides expressed their satisfaction at the existing bilateral cooperation in the field of defence.



He conveyed his desire for more frequent port calls, participation in military exercises and fence seminars and training of military personnel.



"We have also signed a number of Agreements and MoUs today, which would help promote cooperation between our two countries in the fields Trade promotion, Culture, Health, Gem and Jewellery, Science & Technology and Combating Money Laundering and Terror Financing," Sharif said at the official ceremony to welcome him by Sirisena.



His trip comes eight months after President Sirisena's visit to Pakistan in April last year. Sharif also invited Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena to make a return visit to Pakistan at an early date so that the relations of mutual trust and confidence can be further enhanced.



Islamabad and Colombo grew closer during Lanka's civil war by supplying arms to fight the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who sought an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils.

Describing Sri Lanka as a "strong and steadfast friend" of Pakistan that has "stood by us in our most difficult moments", Sharif said: "We remain eternally grateful to the people and government of this beautiful Island State."



The two countries also agreed to re-invigorate efforts to realise the goal of achieving USD 1 billion bilateral trade target at the earliest from the present USD 325 million that "does not reflect true potential".


Learning its lessons from last month's goof-up of posting a doctored picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's aerial survey of Tamil Nadu floods, the government has come out with Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for coverage of VVIP events.





The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has issued an order which mainly deals with the SOP regarding coverage of Prime Minister's assignments which says, "No join up and merging of two images will be done under any circumstances of any coverage."



Last month, the ministry had faced flak after the Press Information Bureau (PIB), a department under it, posted a doctored photograph of Modi surveying Tamil Nadu floods from a helicopter. The PIB later expressed regret, saying that a technique of "merging" two pictures was used in the photo.



In an attempt to ensure that such errors don't recur and there is accountability of the officers concerned, the ministry has listed over two dozen rules in the SOP laying down the drill for various photography-related assignments.



Among the various procedures laid in the SOP, for all type of assignments, the Photo Division should be informed a day in advance, if within Delhi, and seven days advance, if it is outside Delhi. The SOP also lists the role of various officers in carrying out that work.



For assignments of the Prime Minister, the SOP lists that four photographic officers and four senior staff members would be special duty in morning and evening shifts at 7 Race Course Road.



Images of Prime Minister's event will be released to press through Directorate of Public Relations, PIB only after it is finally approved by the PMO, the SOP states.



It also adds that Photo Division will never issue soft copies of Prime Minister's coverage to anyone and only hard copies are to be issued under pricing scheme to the individuals for personal file records only.



Referring to the issuing of the merged picture last month, a senior I&B ministry official said that this practice was followed during the previous governments as well but has been discontinued now.


Bengaluru-based online marketplace for furniture, Mebelkart, is in talks with top realty players to access more customers, a top executive said on Tuesday.





Talking to Deccan Herald, Mebelkart Technologies CEO Rahul Agrawal said, We are in the process of tying up with few of the biggest real estate players, and online portals, to get the interiors projects out. It helps us strategically to get access to customers looking to get their homes done. We will be signing the deal in the next 20 days.



Mebelkart (Mebel implies furniture in several European languages), which was founded by three young IIT graduates and entrepreneurs Rahul Agarwal, Nikhil Saraf and Ranjeet Vimal in 2012, currently sells over three lakh furniture products across India, and works with 2,500 vendors. Last year, Askme.com invested $20 million in Mebelkart.



Agarwal said, We have embarked on a lot of interior projects, with some of the biggest construction companies approaching us for designing their projects. If you look at the interior design market, when somebody shifts into a new home  they dont know whom to hire as an interior designer. We solve that problem. Second, we ensure that the services rendered are among the best. Plus, the customer wont be paying the additional cost for the products we source. We want to make designing homes and furnishings affordable.



When asked how Mebelkart works, he said, When a person logs into our website, it enquires the city to which the user belongs to, and based on that the website filters out the inventory or furniture. All the inventories found near by will be displayed.



Next day delivery



The company is now setting out on its next category of furniture, in about 80 cities, which is the service level it wants to reach. While our competitors talk about next day shipping for a certain number of products, we are already getting the next day delivery of products; thats the huge advantage. We have tied up 27,000 interior designers to come and work with us. Design with affordable commodity, Agarwal said.



On expansion, he said, Currently, we serve 20,000 pincodes that translates to over 100 cities. We intend to expand this to 1,20,000 pincodes in the next 2-3 months. We are tying up with third-party logistics, as well.



Mebelkart has set up a warehouse in Jodhpur, which is the biggest hub for sheesham wood. The company has an intent to establish similar hubs in Nagpur.



We are starting a hub in Nagpur, and Mumbai. We have one in Bengaluru, he said, adding, We measure growth on month-on-month basis. We earn around Rs 8 crore per month, which results into Rs 78 crore, a year. We intend to reach Rs 100 crore a month by May 2016, which translates into Rs 1,200 crore, a year. A lot of growth is coming from the interior design market, where we receiving projects worth Rs 70 lakh, with an average ticket size of about Rs 7.5 lakh.



Furnishing fortunes



Mebelkart eyes realty market in a bid to boost business

Bets big on interior design space

Eyes Rs 1,200 crore turnover in near future




PaytmLabs, Toronto-based research arm of the fastest growing mobile-first marketplace and payments ecosystem Paytm, is all set to ramp up its staff strength to place more leverage on the data analytics and security segment of the company.





In an interaction with Deccan Herald, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that PaytmLabs at Toronto will help the company plug its security loopholes and ramp up revenues. We have been expanding exponentially as a platform, and security is a big concern. Also, we are looking at various revenue streams in advertising and analytics, said Sharma.



Sharma said the company believes in the importance of technology which can transform lives. Our success is bringing together people who are making that happen. Paytm has been able to deliver on this front, as we give thrust to innovation. PaytmLabs helps us in fraud detection and in finding new revenue streams in the area of advertising and merchant analytics, he said.



The Lab has already hired 50 people from around the globe, including Asia, the US and Europe. PaytmLabs further plans to ramp up its strength to an additional 100 staff, this year. Majority of this staff will be in the area of analytics, he said.



Harinder Takhar, a former Blackberry engineer who heads PaytmLabs, said that Toronto gives the company opportunity to hire more data scientists. PaytmLabs would like to hire data scientists from internet companies, analytics firms, nuclear science establishments and other startup companies where engineers with innovative ideas work.



Paytm is the worlds fastest growing mobile-first marketplace and payment ecosystem that serves over 100 million people, who make over 1.5 million business transactions, representing $1.7 billion worth of goods and services exchanged annually. We are a data company in the business of human fulfillment. PaytmLabs is the signal processing engine for our mothership, Paytm, handling recommender systems to advanced machine learning and distributed computing platforms, said the Paytm CEO.



Acquisition plans



The Noida-headquartered Paytm acquired Delhi-based consumer behaviour prediction platform Shifu in an $8-million (Rs 53-crore) deal. Shifu is expected to enhance consumer experiences on the Paytm platform.



For Paytm, the acquisition is in line with its plan to invest about $150 million in emerging companies to build a complete digital ecosystem.



Last month, it acquired online local services marketplace Near.in for close to $2 million. Prior to that, it invested in Jugnoo, a hyper-local transportation app; in Little, a discovery platform for lifestyle consumers and a significant sales channel for merchants; and in LogiNext, a logistics startup.



Paytm, owned by One97 Communication, has received its largest investment of $680 million from Chinas Alibaba Group. Backed by its 120 million mobile wallet users and a warchest of $400 million for expanding its online marketplace business, the company plans to make a deep impact on the growing eCommerce business in India.




The Saudi execution of dissident Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr on January 2 instantly sharpened the existing regional rift between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran at a time Iran and Western powers were seeking to ease tensions. Tehran, which sees itself as an advocate for Shia minorities in largely Sunni West Asia, is unlikely to take direct action to punish Saudi Arabia.





Iran could, however, exact indirect retribution in several ways. Although Riyadh accuses Iran of sending arms to Yemens Shia Houthi rebels, they have secured weaponry from regular army arsenals and do not need Iranian arms. Iran could provide advisers and logistics support to the Houthis who last year seized control of the north, the capital Sanaa, and the southern port of Aden and drove the Saudi-backed government into exile.



At the end of March, the Saudis launched an air war to wrest territory from the Ho-uthis and restore the government. At present, there is a stalemate in the conflict and the Saudis stand condemned for destroying the country and killing 6,000 Yemenis, half of them civilians.



This conflict is also draining Saudi coffers at a time its oil revenues have diminished and a $98 billion budget deficit is looming. Iranian involvement could prolong the conflict at Saudi expense and great cost to Yemen, the poorest Arab country.



Iran will not increase its involvement in the war in Syria where Tehran supports the government and Saudi Arabia backs a collection of armed groups seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Tehran can, however, make it more difficult for the international community to impose ceasefires on the government and insurgent forces in line with the road map agreed by 17 foreign ministers at a meeting in Vienna mid-November. This road map also provides for transition to a democratic regime, a new constitution and elections.



Iran could insist that Assad remain in charge throughout the transition period and even stand for re-election once a new constitution is adopted, possibilities rejected by Saudi Arabia and its Arab and Western allies. This could torpedo negotiations between the government and the Western and Saudi backed opposition set for the end of this month in Geneva and prolong other highly destructive and dangerous West Asian conflict.



Having accused Riyadh of failing to organise the annual Haj following the death of a reported 2,200 during last year's pilgrimage, Tehran could also call for the creation of a commission to manage the pilgrimage. This could undermine Saudi Arabias claim that its ruler is Guardian of the two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, a pillar of the rule of the dynasty of Abdel Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern kingdom.



Iran could stir up Shias in Saudi Arabia's oil rich eastern province and in neighbouring Bahrain where a restive Shia majority is ruled by a repressive Sunni monarch.



Saudi-Iraq ties



Finally, the row between Saudi Arabia and Iran has put at risk efforts to normalise ties between the kingdom and Iraq following the reopening of the Saudi embassy in Baghdad. It had been hoped that restoring ties could improve relations between Iraqs dominant Shia majority and alienated Sunnis who have been marginalised and persecuted by Baghdad since the 2003 US occupation.



Reconciliation between Riyadh and Baghdad is not on the cards for the present, stalling any coming together of Shia and Sunni in Iraq at a time Baghdad needs Sunni tribesmen to support its armed forces in the battle against Islamic State and al-Qaeda elements in Iraq.



Iraqs highly respected Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the execution of Nimr and referred to him as a martyr, confirming him as a hero of the Shia branch of Islam which is considered an aberration by Saudi puritans professing the kingdoms Wahhabi doctrine. Shias have a very long list of martyrs and commemorate their death on numerous holy days. Furthermore, Shias have not forgotten that in 1802, Wahhabi warriors sacked the Shia holy city of Karbala and slew 5,000 of its inhabitants.



Having sparked fresh tensions with Iran by executing Nimr, Saudi Arabia has overreacted to the attack on its embassy in Tehran by cutting relations with Iran, suspending flights between the two countries and encouraging Sunni allies to break off diplomatic connections. This can needlessly exacerbate and deepen the rift between Sunnis and Shias  which may very well be Riyadhs intention.



Saudi Arabia's nightmare is an Iran unfettered by the current sanctions regime due to be lifted once Tehran implements the deal on its nuclear programme reached with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council  the US, UK, France, Russia, and China plus Germany. Riyadh believes Iran will regain its position as a Western ally  lost after the 1979 revolution against the shah  and assert its influence in the region at the Saudi expense.
Union minister Hansraj G Ahirs alleged attempt to help a Maharastra-based applicant, who got an LPG cylinder distributorship through a courts intervention after being initially rejected by an oil PSU, has landed the coal scam whistleblower in a legal trouble.





A petition has been filed in Punjab and Haryana High Court accusing Ahir of exerting political pressure on Minister of State for Petroleum Dharmendra Pradhan to refrain the HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd) from initiating legal proceedings thereby extending illegal benefit to Geeta Kapgate.



The petition also charged that Pradhan succumbed to pressure exerted by Ahir so as to keep interest of one person above the interest of public at large.



As per the official website of High Court of Punjab and Haryana, which sits in Chandigarh, the petition filed by Neetu Rani against Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited came up for hearing before Judge Augustine George Masih in April 2015, and was still to be disposed of.



Ministers Pradhan and Ahir figure among the five respondents in the writ petition filed before the single bench of the high court.



Minister of state for Chemical and Fertilizer Ahir wrote a letter to Dharmendra Pradhan on December 31, 2014, after receiving a memorandum from Geeta Kapgate, a resident of Pragati Colony of Sakoli area in Bhandara district, Maharastra.



In the letter attached in the petition, Ahir requested Pradhan to look into the matter and take action in Kapgates matter.



Her candidature was rejected and she appealed for justice and won the same. Now the company is planning to go in appeal in (a) senior court and she has urged to give directives to the company officers not to go in appeal, wrote Ahir on his official letterhead.



Minister Ahir refused to comment on the serious allegations made in the petition.

It is a court matter. I would not like to comment, reacted Chandrapur MP Ahir who shot into fame by digging out coal scam during the UPA II regime. The arbitrary coal blocks allocations were subsequently cancelled by the Supreme Court and a CBI inquiry against former UPA ministers and bureaucrats are still going on.



The chemical and fertilizer minister concluded his one-page letter to Pradhan, seeking proper action after due verification of the matter and as per the guidelines of the company.



The petition questioned the petroleum ministrys decision relaxing the condition of 15 years land lease period through a letter on January 21, 2015, which was the last date of submission of application.



The petroleum ministry has filed an affidavit in the court more than a month back, rejecting the charges levelled by Rani.


Bongamlung, a 54-year-old Rengmai Naga farmer heading a joint family of 11, has been mourning the death of his granddaughter who died a few days back.





For the past few days, his family was consoled in their grief by community members. Youths, as per the indigenous practice, would come and spent the night to protect them from evil spirits who may come to haunt the living.



However, on the fateful morning of January 4, four youths who were following the age-old tradition and sleeping peacefully in the mud-walled house of Bongamlung got the shock of their lives, not from evil spirits, but the 6.8 strong earthquake that shook entire eastern India. They were trapped as the wall and the roof collapsed on them.



We got a sudden jolt. Before I could realise what had happened, I fell off my bed.



Everything around me was shaking. I suddenly saw the mud wall of the next room crumbling in seconds and falling over the four youths. They got trapped under the rubble.



I shouted for help, Bongamlung narrated as Deccan Herald visited his earthquake ravaged village.



However, villagers managed to rescue them and were rushed to the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in the state capital Imphal. Their conditions are stated to be critical.



The epicentre of the quake was a few miles from Bongamlungs Longmai village in Noney of Tamenglong district in Manipur. The massive earthquake left 6 dead and over 70 injured across Manipur besides huge loss to property and infrastructure.



According to government sources, the epicentre is within 10 km radius of Noney, where about 10,000 people live.



The neighbouring Nagaching and Kabui Khullen village also suffered a lot. Over 50 houses are said to be turned into rubble in remote villages which can only be reached with trucks. Locals believe people might still be trapped there.



The earthquake was like a storm. I was the first person in the village to step out. It was chilling cold and due to fog I could not see. I rushed back inside to get my family out and I grab a torch and went looking around. At least 20 houses in our village are totally damaged. Telecom and power supply got disrupted, said Lanthuigong, the secretary of the Longmai Village Council.



He also said that people were apprehensive of another major quake or after shocks. Yet they dont want to leave the village, he added. The quake has been recorded as the strongest to hit the trouble-torn Manipur since 1957 when a major earthquake of 7.3 on the RichterScale shook the state.



I was young then. I forgot that horror over the years, but now I am even more terrified. My house is weak. It has developed cracks. I am staying in my shop with my family until I get government assistance, said Pengma Rongmei.



After more than 24 hours since the quake, the village is yet to see any signs of government officials or ministers. However, a team of NDRF reached the village around 3 pm on Tuesday. The villagers have started rebuilding their village on their own.


As the military operation inside the Pathankot airbase ended on Tuesday with the killing of the sixth terrorist, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar admitted to gaps in security apparatus.





I see some gaps, but there has been no compromise on security, Parrikar told the media in Pathankot. The defence minister also hinted at Pakistans role saying that the material recovered from the slain terrorists indicates that they were made in Pakistan.

He also said the matter was under probe and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has gathered leads as to how and where the terrorists came from.



The airbase has been cleared of terrorists, but the combing operation to neutralise un-exploded bombs and high-quality explosive material dropped by the militants will continue at least till Wednesday.



Those martyred in the operation have been declared as battle casualty which entitles the next of their kin to avail the honour, emoluments and employment.



While the minister lauded security agencies for the success in this complex operation, he also expressed a serious concern. My worry is how the terrorists managed to enter the air base. Though the security agencies contained them, it is still worrying that they entered inside, said Parrikar.



Bodies of the last two terrorists gunned down since Monday were all burnt. In fact, parts of the bodies were scattered in two sides and a DNA verification will now be required.



A body was booby-trapped and had a explosive with a unplugged pin that made it potentially risky to deal with. Bengaluru-based Lt Col Niranjan Kumar was killed in an explosion while trying to deal with the body of a terrorist which had a similar booby trap.



The minister said, only one security personnel, Garuda commando Gursewak Singh, died in direct offensive operation. The death of five DSC personnel, I would say, was more due to bad luck, he said. He lauded two security personnel, including Jagdish Chand, who physically grappled with the terrorists before he was killed. The terrorists had at least 40-50 kg of bullets and 3-4 dozens of magazines besides AK-47 assault guns, specially modified under-barrel grenade launchers and more.



On the preparedness of the security forces, the minister said it takes time to guard such a huge campus spread over 1,900 acres. There were 3,000 families, strategic air force assets and foreign officers from six to seven countries inside the compound, he said.



On whether or not the Army wasnt requisitioned on time, he said: The Army does not perform civil duties. It cannot stop routes. Parrikar said he has now advised the Army, NSG and other security agencies to regularly conduct joint exercises. Meanwhile, the NIA is observing contradictions in the statements made by Gurdaspur SP Sulwinder Singh, who was abducted and let-off by these terrorists.



Singh was the one to alert the police about the possibility of terrorists around since they were in Army fatigues and were armed.


Telephone call records, DNA samples of slain terrorists and contact details of their handlers will form parts of the evidence collected by Indian security agencies to pinpoint Pakistans involvement in the Pathankot terror attack.





Investigators also said one of the terrorists killed in the operation was wearing a shoe manufactured by Pakistani company Epcot, as security agencies are trying to recover more tell-tale signs of the terrorists links with the neighbouring country.



Official sources said the government will be sending a letter rogatory to Pakistan along with DNA samples of slain terrorists, their phone call details, the numbers of handlers based in that country and other information to help nab the mastermind of the crime.



Intelligence agencies had intercepted at least four telephone calls made by the terrorists using phones snatched from people whom they had abducted while trying to sneak into the air base.



One of the telephone calls was made to a mother and investigators believe that Pakistani authorities could use this to track down the family of the terrorist. Sources said India would urge Pakistan to collect voice samples of handlers and the mother of a slain terrorist to establish the link of Pakistanis involved in the attack.



Sharad Kumar, Director General of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) who will be visiting Pathankot on Wednesday, said the investigators would seek Pakistans help in joining the threads once the identity of people contacted by the perpetrators is established. Kumar would also meet the NIA team investigating the case. Acknowledging that solving the conspiracy behind the attack is a very big challenge, he said: I cant say whether the ISI is involved or not. Let us see what happens after our probe is completed.



However, he added that there is little doubt that the terrorists were from Pakistan.

The NIA had on Monday registered three cases in connection with the terror strike, including the murder of a taxi driver by suspected terrorists, kidnapping of a superintendent of police- rank officer and an attack on the IAF base on the intervening night of January 1 and 2.
As Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar visits the Pathankot airbase at the end of the operation, a question being increasingly heard within the military circle is why the Indian Army was not pressed into action earlier?





Within few kilometre from Indian Air Force station is the 29 Division of Indian Army and two independent armoured brigades. The first batch of soldiers that were sent to protect the assets were from 11 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles that was part of the Mamun brigade under the 29 Division.



But in the first day of the terror attack, Army troops played only a secondary role as the Air Force Garud commandos and men from the National Security Guards fought with the terrorists. Security forces lost seven lives and 20 men were injured in the gun battle.



The strategy is being questioned within the military circle because the Army has years of experience in tackling counter insurgency and counter terrorism operations unlike the NSG, who are trained for situations like hostage crisis.



For an operation in 1900 acres of woody area, Army CI-CT teams would have been a better choice, feel several retired officers, who raised questions on the need to have better coordination among various agencies. We have lost more men and this could have been prevented by effective coordination. And also that the time taken to neutralise the attackers is way too long, former Western Air Command Chief Air Marshal P S Ahluwalia, who had commanded the Pathankot airbase during his service said on Sunday.



The present Commander- in-Chief of the Western Air Command, Air Marshal S B Deo was at the site for coordination among Army, NSG and local police for operational activities.
India has asked Pakistan to immediately act against the leadership of the terror organization, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), beginning with the arrest of its three operatives, who were coordinating the Pathankot terror attack and were in touch with the terrorists who carried it out.





New Delhi also asked Islamabad to arrest Moulana Masood Azharthe JeM founder, who has been subjected to sanctions by the US government for his links with terror networks at least since 2010, but lives free in Pakistan.



The specific and actionable information Prime Minister Narendra Modis National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval shared with his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua on Monday included recordings and transcripts of the calls between the terrorists, who carried out the attack on the IAF base at Pathankot and their handlers at the control room JeM set up in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, sources in New Delhi told Deccan Herald.

The calls were intercepted by Indias intelligence agencies.



Sources said the JeM operatives, who had coordinated the attack from Pakistan, had been identified as Ashfaq Ahmad, Hafiz Abdul Shakur and Kasim Jaan.



Ashfaq is known as a close aide of Masood Azhar and is believed to have played a key role in reviving the JeM over the past couple of years.



Doval is understood to have also shared with Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharifs NSA the specific location of the control room set up by the JeM to coordinate the attacks.



Azhar was arrested by the Army in Kashmir in 1994, but New Delhi had to release him in 1999 in exchange of the passengers of the IC-814, which was hijacked by the terrorists and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan.



The JeM, based in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department in 2001. After Pakistan was forced to outlaw it in 2002, the outfit began using Al Rehmat Trust as a front for its operations.



The Al Rehmat Trust provided support for militant activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including financial and logistical support to foreign fighters operating in both countries.



In early 2009, several prominent members of Al Rehmat Trust were recruiting students for terrorist activities in Afghanistan, according to a report by the US Department of Treasury.


Thousands bid an emotional farewell to martyred NSG commando Lt Col E K Niranjan on Tuesday as his mortal remains were laid to rest with full military honours near his ancestral home at Elambulassery in Palakkad district.





The body of the officer, killed during combing operations at the Pathankot airbase in Punjab, was brought to Palakkad from Bengaluru on Monday evening.



Earlier in the day, Niranjans body was placed at the KAUP School at Elambulassery for people to pay their respects. Hundreds had been queuing up at the family home in Elambulassery village since Monday night to pay respect to the departed soldier. Niranjan was killed while defusing an IED at the terror-hit airbase.



The last rites were performed in the presence of Niranjans family, friends, colleagues and hundreds who turned up to bid farewell to the slain officer.



Officers of the armed forces monitored the arrangements at Elambulassery. The state government was represented by Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy visited the family late on Monday. Palakkad MP M B Rajesh, MLAs A K Balan and M Hamsa were among people who were at Niranjans home on Tuesday. Chennithala said that details of compensation to Niranjans family will be finalised in a state Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.



Man held for offensive FB post

Kozhikode Police on Monday arrested a 24-year-old man for posting an offensive comment about the slain soldier on a website, DHNS reports from Thiruvananthapuram.



Anwar Sadhik, a native of Kodur in Malappuram district, had commented on Facebook report saluting the martyred commandoAnother nuisance gone. Now his wife will get a job and money while the common man gets nothing. Rotten Indian democracy.



Josey Cherian, Assistant Commissioner, Kozhikode North, said Anwar was booked for sedition, under Section 124A of the IPC. The officer said the arrested man, a ration shop employee, was also being probed over his other inflammatory social media posts.


The terror strike on consulate general of India at Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan was aimed at avenging the execution of 2001 Indian Parliament attack conspirator Afzal Guru, the terrorists wrote on the wall of their last refuge just before they were gunned down by soldiers of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).





The terrorists scribbled Afzal Guru Ka Inteqam (Revenge for Afzal Guru) in Urdu on the wall of a room in the unoccupied building they used as base to launch the attack on the adjacent Consulate General of India.



The ANSF soldiers noticed the words written, apparently with blood, on the walls of the rooms, while searching the half-constructed building after the 25-hour-long operation to neutralise the terrorists ended, according to reports New Delhi received from Afghan government. The wall of another room in the building had written on it Ek Shaheed, Hajar Fidayeen (one martyr, thousand suicide attackers).



Probes by National Directorate of Security of Afghan government confirmed that the terrorists had crossed over to Afghanistan from Pakistan.



Guru, who hailed from Sopore in Jammu and Kashmir, was convicted by a special court in New Delhi for hatching the December 13, 2001 terrorist attack on the Parliament. He was sentenced to death in 2002 and it was confirmed by Delhi High Court in 2003. His appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2005 and executed at Tihar Jail in Delhi on February 9, 2013. Kabul already shared with New Delhi the findings of the probe by its agencies into the attack on Consulate General of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President M Ashraf Ghani on Monday echoed each other to refer to the attack as an act of cross-border terrorism, thus tacitly pointing fingers at Pakistan.



Afghan governments agencies are trying to ascertain the extent of the role played by state and non-state actors of Pakistan in orchestrating the attack. New Delhis envoy to Kabul, Amar Sinha, who visited the consulate on Tuesday, said that both India and Afghanistan were facing the same enemy.



A group of heavily-armed terrorists targeted the consulate late in the evening on Sunday.

It came even as security personnel were engaged in repelling an attack on Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab that too was carried out by terrorists, who had crossed over from Pakistan.


Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday asked his Pakistani counterpart M Nawaz Sharif to act immediately against individuals and organisations responsible for the terrorist attack on the Air Force base at Pathankot.





Modi talked tough when Sharif called him to discuss about the terrorist attack, which cast a shadow on the resumption of the stalled bilateral dialogue, particularly the meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two nations scheduled to take place in Islamabad on January 15.



According to the Ministry of External Affairs statement, Modi strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot attack.



Modi made it clear that New Delhi would expect Islamabad to act fast on the specific and actionable information gathered and shared by Indian governments agencies with Islamabad against terrorists based in the neighbouring country.



Sharif assured Modi that his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists, the MEA added.



The Pakistan prime minister, who is on a tour to Sri Lanka, told journalists in Colombo that New Delhi and Islamabad would hold the foreign secretary-level talks as scheduled.



The MEA press release had no reference to the future course of Indias engagement with Pakistan.Officials, however, told Deccan Herald that New Delhi had made it clear to Islamabad that it would be very difficult to resume bilateral dialogue unless Pakistan acts on the information provided by India. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Monday shared with his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua details of the calls and transcripts of the conversations between the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists, who attacked the air base, and the commanders of the terror outfit based in the neighbouring country.



He also shared with Janjua, a former Lt General in the Pakistan army, information about the manufacturers of the shoe worn by the terrorists, the army fatigues and the weapons and ammunitions carried by them. Sources said all information provided to Janjua conclusively proved that not only did the terrorists come from Pakistan, but the attacks were also plotted and coordinated from JeMs headquarters at Bahawalpur in the neighbouring country.


With the resurvey of cities ranked under Swachh Bharat beginning on January 9 in 75 cities, including Mysuru, Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) will launch awareness programmes on January 6. Mysuru was ranked number one among 476 cities in the rankings announced in August last.





Scion of the erstwhile royal family Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar and his mother Pramoda Devi, chosen ambassadors for the cleanliness drive in the city, will launch the initiative by distributing information, education and communication (IEC) pamphlets to select citizens at Yadavagiri at 4 pm, MCC Commissioner C G Betsurmath told media on Tuesday.



On January 8, at 7 am, a walkathon from Kote Anjaneya Swamy temple, Mysuru Palace north gate, has been organised. It will pass through prominent thoroughfares, to create awareness among the people. Corporators, MCC officials and volunteers of Rajeev Sneha Balaga are expected to take part.



Betsurmath said, as many as two lakh stickers and pamphlets on dos and donts will be distributed during the awareness drive. The survey will be conducted between January 9 and 11, with varying weightage fixed under different categories. For IEC programme, weightage of 10 per cent is fixed, followed by management of solid waste-13 per cent, public toilets-30 per cent and 60 per cent for others.



Besides Mysuru, the survey is being conducted in Bengaluru and Hubballi-Dharwad, in the State. Betsurmath appealed to the people to take part in the survey by recording their opinion on the toll-free number: 1800-267-2777.






To conceal her extra-marital affair, a 24-year-old woman and her lover, a jawan in the Army, hacked her in-laws to death and attempted to murder her husband. But alert neighbours caught the duo and handed them over to the police.





The incident took place in AKG Colony in Kadugodi on Monday evening.



The deceased couple was identified as Kannan, 70 and his wife Manoramani, 65. The police arrested Durga and Anji, 23, who is currently posted in Punjab, for the crime.



Kannan and Manoramani, who hail from Vellore, were fruit vendors while their son Manikantan, 34, works as a lab technician in a private company in Electronics City. Durga and Manikantan were married eight years ago and have a seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son.



Preliminary investigations revealed that Anji and Durga were relatives.



A year ago, they started having an affair. They were in constant touch and used to talk over mobile phones. Kannan and Manoramani got to know about their relationship and warned Durga to stay away from Anji, said the police.



Durga informed Anji that her in-laws had got to know about their affair and that is when they planned to elope. On Sunday, Anji came down to the City from Delhi and spent the night at the Kadugodi railway station.



On Monday, around 11 am, after everyone left for work, Anji went to Durgas house. Kannan came back home around 11.30 am and found them in a compromising position.

Anji and Durga were shocked to see Kannan and fearing that they would be reprimanded, Anji took a machete and hacked Kannan to death.



They hid the body under the cot in the bedroom. Around 12.30 pm, when Manoramani came home, they killed her too and dumped her body next to that of her husband. They cleaned up the blood stains on the floor.



Around 7 pm, Manikantan returned home. But there was a power cut. Around 7.30 pm, when the power supply resumed, he went inside the bedroom to get the mobile phone charger. As he entered, Anji kicked him on the chest and hit his head with the machete. Manikantan ducked and was hit on the neck. He ran out of the house screaming, said a senior police officer.



The neighbours, who heard the commotion rushed there and found Manikantan bleeding.

They noticed Anji and Durga trying to flee the spot. They nabbed them and handed them over to the police.


With the announcement of elections to the taluk and zilla panchayats as well as by elections to the Assembly round the corner, the ruling Congress has become generous in releasing funds to rural areas in the name of development.





Not just that. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his cabinet colleagues have drawn up hectic tour schedules to launch programmes. In the last few days, Siddaramaiah toured Mysuru and Belagavi.



On Tuesday, he was in Davangere and Bengaluru Rural, while on Wednesday he will be in Bagalkot and later Hassan and Chamarajanagar districts. Wherever he is touring, he is launching development programmes.



For example, Devadurga taluk in Raichur district is going to see the launch of programmes worth about Rs 150 crore before January 11, according to sources in the Congress.



The State Election Commission is scheduled to announce calendar of events for the TP and ZP polls on January 11. Soon after this, the model code of conduct will be in place, restraining the government from announcing and launching new programmes.



Devadurga Assembly constituency will have a byelection following the death of Venkatesh Naik, the sitting Congress MLA, before the end of February.



Keeping this election as well as the panchayat polls in mind, the government has scheduled a series of programmes which will be launched on Sunday.



A sum of Rs 100 crore will be released from the social welfare department for the welfare of SC/STs and minorities in Devadurga taluk of Raichur district. Drilling borewells and disbursing loans to self-help groups will be part of the welfare programme.



The Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigam Limited will launch a programme worth Rs 65 crore in the taluk.

Home Minister G Parameshwara is touring many of the North Karnataka districts.

He was in Hubballi on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he will be touring Manvi, Sindhanur and Raichur to participate in programmes of the police department. Like him, many other ministers are touring districts to launch programmes in a hurry.



The government could not release funds for nearly a month because of elections to the Council from 25 seats.



The elections to 30 ZPs and 175 TPs (except Sorab) will be held in two phases in January and February.



The byelections to the Assembly have to be held from the Hebbal, Devadurga and Bidar constituencies.




The Department of Fire and Emergency Services has served notices to as many as 13 malls across the City for violating fire safety norms mandated in National Building Code of India (NBCI).





The Department, which slapped the notices, has also directed the managements of these malls to clear the encroachment on driveways within 15 days.



The audit report of the department pointed out that driveways in the malls were encroached upon for storage or parking purposes which is a violation of guidelines mandated in NBCI. The encroachments on the driveways has blocked free movement of emergency vehicles which might pose huge problem in case of any mishap.



Director General of Police (Fire & Emergency Services) M N Reddi has set a deadline of 15 days for the managements of these malls to adhere to the NBCI norms.



 We have issued notices to many malls in the City to set right as per original clearance certificate issued. The managements have been given 15 days' time to set right the violations. Action will be taken as per the law if the managements fail to comply with the norms, Reddi said.



He warned of initiating action including disconnecting power supply to the malls if the violations were not set right.  Malls have high footfalls. Therefore, fire safety measures are of extreme importance to protect the public from fire hazards, Reddi said.




A 26-year-old bank employee was cheated of lakhs of rupees by a person whom she met through a matrimonial website. A complaint was registered at Cyber Crime police station on Monday.





According to the police, the victim Neha (name changed), a private bank employee, was cheated by Ranjith (28), a native of Faridabad in Haryana. She met Ranjith through Jeevan Saathi, a matrimonial website in October, 2014.



They began exchanging messages over Facebook and were talking constantly. Soon, they fell in love. He claimed that he was residing in Malaysia and owning a software company. After winning her confidence, Ranjith asked her to give him Rs 5 lakh as his bank account was blocked due to some technical problems. He gave her a bank account number and Neha believed his version and deposited money into it. He promised her that he would return the money in a week.



As days went by, he gave several similar reasons and took Rs 22 lakh from Neha, who believed that he was truthful and would return it back, said the police.



Who are you?

After a few months, she started realising that he is trying to avoid her. Neha finally sent a message asking him to return her money. He replied back asking her Who are you?.



She did not lose hope and waited for him to respond. But when she realised that he stopped answering her calls. She approached the police and lodged a complaint, a senior police officer said.



We have traced his mobile phone number and found that he is in Faridabad, the official added.



A case has been registered in Cyber crime police station and investigation is being carried out.



Kidnapped man found dead

A man was abducted and murdered by unidentified persons in JJ Nagar police limits. The deceased has been identified as Syed Yakub, a resident of 6th Main Road at Padarayanapura.



According to the police, Yakub partied with his friend Aslam on the night of December 31 and returned to his house. The suspects abducted him from his house in an autorickshaw around 1.30 am and took him to an undisclosed location. Yakubs sister Naseema had lodged a missing complaint with the police.



Yakub was rushed to Victoria Hospital with stab injuries around 3.30 am on January 1. He failed to respond to the treatment and died around 9.30 am. With the help of Naseema, the police could identify the victim.



Yakub was arrested in 2015 for selling ganja and was jailed. He began selling sarees after his release. He was staying alone as he had parted ways with his wife, added the police.


January 5th, 2016, Brno, Czech Republic -- Codasip, an industry leading application specific processor (ASIP) vendor, today announced that it has joined with other industry leaders as a founding member of the RISC-V foundation to accelerate customer adoption of commercial implementations of RISC-V based processor designs. Additionally, Codasip announced it is making available versions of its Codix Processor IP that are compliant with the RISC-V specification - expanding its existing embedded processor IP offerings.

ASIPs offer an unmatched combination of power, performance, and flexibility by optimizing the embedded processor for its target application. This is done by adapting the processors Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and microarchitecture (how the processor responds to the ISA), and can lead to orders of magnitude improvements in power and performance.

"We are very pleased to have Codasip as a Founding Sponsor of the RISC-V Foundation. As a commercial developer of ASIP solutions, Codasip will be a welcomed contributor within the RISC-V community" said Rick O'Connor, Executive Director of the RISC-V Foundation.

Codasips highly automated technology has made ASIP technology as accessible as standard embedded processors, allowing customers to create a processor ISA from scratch, or to use an existing ISA. The availability of RISC-V, with its support for extensibility, provides a great starting point for customers, combining the advantages of Codasips proven technology and the open RISC-V ecosystem.

"One of the biggest challenges for customers new to ASIP technology is availability of a strong ISA they can build on," said Karel Masarik, CEO of Codasip. "Codasips tools allow the creation of processors with any ISA and microarchitecture. By supporting RISC-V we leverage this powerful open initiative in order to accelerate our customers a path to a completed ASIP. At the same time, we provide the assurance of a commercially supported solution. It has always been Codasips policy to build on open standards wherever possible, and so support for RISC-V builds on this product strategy.

In addition to ensuring that Codasip tools work seamlessly with the RISC-V specification (alongside customer specific enhancements), Codasip will also be making available RISC-V compatible versions of its Codix Processor IP. These cores will join the existing Codix implementations spanning ultralow-power to high performance with both RISC and VLIW implementations.

As with all Codix Cores, Codasips RISC-V compliant cores are delivered using the high level processor description language CodAL, which allows customers to easily modify, adapt, and extend every aspect of the processor. Using this model, the complete LLVM/GNU based SDK, QEMU emulation model, RTL and verification environment is automatically generated. The result is unmatched flexibility, seamless integration of customer specific changes, and compatibility with the rich and evolving RISC-V ecosystem.

If you are interested in learning more about Codasip and our RISC-V offerings, you can connect with our technical team at the RISC-V workshop (Jan 5th & 6th - Oracle Conference Center in Redwood Shores, CA), visit our booth at Embedded World (Feb 23rd to 25th - Booth #620, Hall 4 - Nuremberg, Germany) or visit our website at www.codasip.com

About Codasip

Codasip delivers leading-edge technology that enables adoption of Application Specific Instruction-set Processors (ASIPs). ASIP's utilize dedicated instructions/architecture to accelerate software and are at the heart of applications that require very high performance with low power. Codasip's unique technology makes ASIP adoption as simple and easy as standard embedded processor cores. Formed in 2006 and headquartered in Brno, Czech Republic, Codasip currently has offices in the US and Europe. More information on Codasip's products and services is available at www.codasip.com.






How do you upgrade your most popular smartphone to something better? Well, first and foremost, you add a fingerprint sensor to it, followed by a better display and longer battery life. This is more or less the blueprint that Lenovo followed with the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note, launched in India today. While it took the company some time to bring the earlier Lenovo K3 Note to India, the Lenovo K4 Note launches first in the country. But reiterating the fact that Lenovo is serious about the Indian market is really not what the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note is for is it? Lenovo is trying to capitalise on the brouhaha around the Lenovo K3 Note, hoping to gain some fans and loyalists. And looking at the Lenovo K4 Note, it just might.

In a lot of ways, the K4 Note is the face of a new Lenovo, one that has brought us phones like the Lenovo Vibe S1. Its a Motorola influenced Lenovo, one that pays close attention to experience, rather than pushing brute specs into its devices. The Lenovo Vibe K4 Note, on first impressions, is an effort at making a device better, but not just through specifications. Yes, the phone has a 5.5 inch FHD display, but not one that can be better its predecessor; the display is dim and more reflective. It has a larger 3,300 mAh battery, but the higher display resolution may take away the extra 300 mAh (compared to the K3 Note) on this phone.

Yes, the Lenovo K4 Note inspires experience, with a distinct message that it is a better phone than the original. The emphasis on design is much more here than it was in the Lenovo K3 Note, thanks, in no small part, to the Vibe brand attached to it now. The Lenovo K4 Note has a matte-ish finish on the back, with a metallic frame around the side. Its worth noting though that the frame isnt the kind you see on the Vibe S1. It feels more like tin than chrome metal, if you know what I mean. Yet, the overall feel is distinctly that of a phone that belongs on the top of this price (Rs. 11,999) segment.

What I personally dont like is the size of the Lenovo K4 Note. Despite the curved back, its just not the grip youd want. The Lenovo K4 Note, much like the Yu Yutopia, feels too wide to hold comfortably. At 158 grams, its not very heavy, but the size somewhat overshadows that fact, making it rather unwieldy.

Beyond all that though, the Lenovo K4 Note becomes one of only two phones to bring the fingerprint sensor to this market and like the Coolpad Note 3 (the other one), this fingerprint sensor is also quite good. Of course, using it five or six times at the demo arena doesnt really count for much, but hey, first impressions matter, right?

In a nutshell, the Lenovo K4 Note is a phone that takes everything good about Motorola and combines it with everything good about Lenovo. It takes a distinctly different design point of view, to a low price point, while keeping the specifications reasonably high enough that you dont disregard it on first look. Its a phone that deserves attention and not simply for the history attached to it.
The company has partnered with several PC and notebook makers and said that its Maxwell graphics architecture was developed keeping VR in mind

Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia unveiled the new VR-ready program today at CES 2016. The company has partnered with several PC and notebook makers as well as add-in card providers for this initiative. Nvidia says, that its Maxwell graphics architecture was developed keeping VR in mind. The company says VR requires almost seven times the graphics processing power required by a traditional 3D games and applications and Nvidia will be able to deliver via a combination of Maxwell GPUs NVIDIA Game Ready Drivers and its software tools for developers, NVIDIA GameWorks VR and NVIDIA DesignWorks VR. Nvidia has also getting support from various PC Builders such as Alienware, Maingear and MSI.

Read the full press release below

NVIDIA today unveiled a VR-ready program to help gamers navigate their way to great virtual reality experiences.



The company has partnered with PC and notebook makers and add-in card providers to deliver GeForce GTX VR Ready systems and graphics cards that deliver an immersive VR gaming experience. The program minimizes confusion regarding which equipment is necessary to play the range of VR games and applications increasingly coming to market.



Delivering a great VR experience demands seven times the graphics processing power of traditional 3D games and applications  driving frame rates above 90 frames per second (fps) for two simultaneous images (one for each eye).1



For customers, navigating an emerging technology like VR can be daunting, said Jason Paul, general manager of emerging technologies at NVIDIA. Were working with trusted partners worldwide to simplify the buying process with a GeForce GTX VR Ready badge that will let customers quickly identify PCs or add-in cards that are capable of handling the demands of VR.



NVIDIA GPUs are at the heart of the VR ecosystem and are powered by the award-winning NVIDIA Maxwell graphics architecture, which was created with VR in mind. In addition to powering fast frame rates, it includes unique VR features, such as support for NVIDIA Multi-Res Shading, which boosts performance by up to 50 percent while maintaining image quality and reducing latency.2



NVIDIA provides the fastest performance and lowest latency for VR experiences through a combination of its Maxwell-class GTX GPUs, NVIDIA Game Ready Drivers and its software tools for developers, NVIDIA GameWorks VR and NVIDIA DesignWorks VR.



Support from PC Builders



The worlds leading PC vendors are participating in the GeForce GTX VR Ready program.



As trailblazers in gaming and graphics, Alienware and NVIDIA are committed to providing great turnkey VR experiences. The program will guide customers to the products that will delight them. Maxwell-based GPUs are a great match for VR experiences, and cards like the GeForce GTX 970 help Alienware PCs set the industry standard.

 Frank Azor, General Manager, Alienware



NVIDIAs GeForce GTX VR Ready program makes VR easy and enjoyable. NVIDIA is helping to lead the industry forward. Its Maxwell-powered graphics cards provide the horsepower and low latency needed for VR. And its GameWorks VR platform provides developers the necessary tools to create the next bestselling VR game of the future.

 Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder, MAINGEAR



VR has traditionally been reserved for desktops, but NVIDIA has given notebooks such as the MSI GT72 Dominator and GT80 Titan with GeForce GTX 980 the necessary punch to bring virtual experiences to life while on the go. NVIDIAs GeForce GTX VR Ready badge makes identifying VR capable machines easy and guarantees a fantastic and immersive gaming experience.

 Andy Tung, President of MSI PAN AMERICA, MSI

Learn more and see participating PC makers at http://www.geforce.com/vr-ready.
Ithaca Energy announced the appointment of a new Chief Commercial Officer on Tuesday, in long-serving staff member Richard Smith.

The AIM-listed North Sea oil and gas operator confirmed Dr Smith's appointment was effective from January 1.

"Dr Smith has held the position of corporate development manager at Ithaca for the last five years", the company's board said in a statement.

"He has over 19 years of experience in the oil and gas industry and wider energy sector, in various senior business development, corporate strategy and commercial positions", it added.

Prior to joining Ithaca, Dr Smith spent eight years with Total S.A., working in that company's UK North Sea business and at its France head office.

At the same time, Ithaca Energy's board said it had approved the grant of 12m share options to employees, officers and certain directors of the company in accordance with its stock options plan, as well as 400,000 shadow options to the two most recently appointed non-call executive directors.

The options have been granted effective January 5, and may be exercised for a period of four years from that date. They had an exercise price of CAD $0.55, which was Ithaca's closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange on January 4.
The European Commission will open an in-depth investigation into whether the UKs plans to support the conversion of part of the Drax coal power plant to biomass are in line with EU state aid rules.

The EC, whose investigation will focus on UK estimates for the plants performance, said the help may lead to overcompensation.

It added that the estimates may be too conservative and could allow the plant to make more money than anticipated.

It will also look into whether the plants demand for around 2.4m metric tonnes of wood pellets a year mainly from the US and South America would distort competiton in the biomass market.

The Commission fully supports member state efforts to increase the use of renewable energy and pursue EU energy and climate objectives. At the same time, EU state aid rules make sure that the cost of such support for consumers is limited and does not give certain operators an unfair advantage over competitors.

Therefore, the Commission will now investigate further to make sure that the public funds used to support the Drax project are limited to what is necessary and do not result in overcompensation.

The Drax power plant is one of several projects selected under the Final Investment Decision Enabling for Renewables, a UK support measure for renewable energy projects.

The plans notified by the UK concern state support to convert one of the six units at the Drax plant to operate entirely on biomass.

Last year, German energy company RWE won EU approval to convert its Lynemouth power station from coal to biomass.

Drax said on Tuesday that the EC's formal Phase 2 investigation was "the next step in the process for obtaining State aid approval and is in line with expectations".

At 1430 GMT, Drax shares were down 4% to 222.10p.
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Surgeon general on mental health: 'Are we taking care of our kids?'
China on Sunday test-landed a plane on an airstrip it constructed on the disputed Spratly Islands, inviting a furious response from Vietnam and expression of concern from Washington, ratcheting up tension in the already hot South China Sea. Japan and the Philippines lend support to Vietnam's expression of anger at Beijing after a Chinese plane landed on an airstrip it constructed on the islands, which have been artificially enlarged by China. China, which is defiant against all criticism and continues to claim almost the entire South China Sea as its backyard, has been causing alarm among its neighbours as it builds up infrastructure on reefs in the disputed waters. The flight at Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands "adds to tension and uncertainties in the region," Charles Jose, a spokesman for Philippines' department of foreign affairs, said on Monday. Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida told media that the flight was an attempt by China to make its island-building ''a fait accompli,'' according to Japan's Kyodo news agency. ''Japan is gravely concerned about China's act, which is a unilateral change of the status quo,'' Kishida said. China has become increasingly assertive over its territorial claims in recent years and has been ramping up military spending. Some observers say the airstrips being built in the South China Sea are capable of hosting military jets. Hanoi had protested at the flight, labelling it "a serious infringement of the sovereignty of Vietnam.'' "We did not find this particular flight activity to be helpful to security and stability in the region; that it runs counter to our belief that the reclamation process needs to stop; that the militarisation of facilities, whether they are reclaimed or not, in the region should stop, because it's just increasing tension,'' US state department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday. ''Our concern is that to begin flight operations at a new airfield in a disputed area is only going to raise tensions and threaten regional stability,'' he said. John McCain, the chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Obama administration was allowing China to continue to "pursue its territorial ambitions" by delaying ''freedom of navigation'' patrols near the islands. China has confirmed that a test flight by a civilian plane landed on an artificial island built in the Spratlys, the first time Beijing has used a runway in the area. Beijing, however, denied the island building is aimed at boosting its military might, and Hua Chunying, foreign ministry spokeswoman, reiterated China's position that it had ''indisputable sovereignty'' to the Spratlys, which are called the Nansha Islands in China. Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan also have rival claims to islands in the disputed waters. The spokeswoman also said a civil aircraft was used to conduct the test, and that China hoped it could continue ''sustainable, healthy and stable'' ties with Vietnam. More than $5 trillion (1.95 million) of world trade passes every year through the South China Sea, which is also said to hold huge deposits of gas.










Ferrari has officially split from parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA).

Following its initial public offering in October, Ferrari was formally separated from its parent on Monday, after FCA distributed its remaining 80 per cent stake to company shareholders.

As part of the spin-off, FCA's stakeholders will each receive one common share in Ferrari for every ten they hold in Fiat Chrysler. The shares being distributed will account for 80 percent of Ferrari's ownership, sitting alongside the 10 per cent already floated in the company's IPO, and the other 10 per cent held by Enzo Ferrari's son Piero Ferrari.

The split leaves FCA with some weighty challenges as it forges ahead without the Prancing Horse's fat margins. FCA shed one-third of its market value as a result of the spin-off on Monday, highlighting an already high debt pile and product delays. Despite pocketing $5.5 billion from Ferrari's offering and spin-off, the Italian supercar maker had contributed to 12 per cent of FCA's total earnings in 2014.

FCA's shares were down 3.7 percent on Monday, underperforming a 2.5 percent drop in Milan's blue-chip index.

Marchionne confirmed FCA's targets to 2018, centred around a revamp of its Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Maserati brands. The group will present an updated product plan later this month to address weaker growth in some markets.

The split also presents fresh challenges for Ferrari, whose share price has fallen 20 per cent since its Wall Street debut in October. Some analysts questioned whether the small-volume, capital-intensive carmaker will be able to sustain the high valuations going forward.

"Though Ferrari will be the most profitable stand-alone automaker, its gross and EBIT margins are still around 20 per cent and 5 per cent lower, respectively, than luxury peers," Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Evercore ISI said in a note.

Ferrari shares were trading at 43.4 in Milan by 1443 GMT, close to their opening price of 43.

Marchionne, who rang the opening bell in Milan along with other top Ferrari and FCA executives, vowed to keep production of the red cars with the prancing horse logo in Italy and said the carmaker would start to distribute generous dividends.

"The spin-off gives Ferrari the necessary independence to uphold the uniqueness of its models and its brand and to fully realise its potential," he said.

-With Reuters
One of the world's largest carmakers has bet almost $700 million that you won't want to buy its products in the near future.

General Motors, the US parent company to Australia's Holden, has announced plans to invest US$500 million into self-driving cars through the Lyft ride-sharing service.

Lyft, a US-based rival to Uber, plans to offer autonomous vehicle services in place of human drivers. General Motors will provide technology at the core of the planned service, and become Lyft's "preferred provider" of vehicles.

GM President Dan Ammann says people will soon have a new relationship with cars.

"We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous," he says.

"With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly."

Lyft president and co-founder John Zimmer says the arrangement may mean that people will no longer own their own cars.

"Working with GM, Lyft will continue to unlock new transportation experiences that bring positive change to our daily lives," he says.

"Together we will build a better future by redefining traditional car ownership."

While it hasn't made waves in Australia, Lyft is popular in the US.

Self-driving tech is set to figure heavily in ride-sharing services. Lyft's key rival, Uber, has invested in autonomous vehicle research while also benefiting from investment by Google. Most of the world's top car companies are working to introduce self-driving cars.




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A 34-year-old Elmira Street man was arrested Saturday morning by Lockport Police, charged with manufacturing methamphetamines.According to the police report, the Niagara County Drug Task Force, New York State Police and LPD executed a warrant on the home of Vincent E. McCabe, 55 Elmira St., on Jan. 14, where they found two containers with a white powder substance and numerous items commonly used to manufacture meth. A subsequent lab test proved the white powder substance to be methamphetamine.LPD found McCabe Saturday morning and charged him. He is due in City Court on Monday.


Check out East Niagara Post videos on YouTube, Vine and Periscope.



A 37-year-old Lockport woman is in police custody after being charged this morning with running a meth lab on Elmira Street.According to Niagara County Sheriff Jim Voutour, the Niagara County Drug Task Force, along with the New York State Police Special Operations Response Team, executed the search warrant at 55 Elmira St., where it was suspected that methamphetamine was being manufactured.Arrested at the residence was Jennifer J. McCabe, charged with second-degree unlawful manufacture of methamphetamine -- a felony. She is also facing three counts of first-degree unlawfully dealing with a child -- a Class A misdemeanor -- "because kids were living in a meth lab," Sheriff Voutour said. McCabe was held pending arraignment in the City of Lockport Court.The arrest is part of a year and a half long investigation into the manufacture of methamphetamine in the City of Lockport area along with complaints from the public.Thirty-four-year old Vincent McCabe was charged in March with manufacturing methamphetamines following a similar warrant on the same 55 Elmira St. home. He is currently out on bail from that charge, according to Sheriff Voutour. He was also arrested in November on a methamphetamines charge in North Tonawanda, where he took a plea to a D felony and a B misdemeanor. Sentencing on that case is slated for next month. Additional charges are now pending against Mr. McCabe from today's warrant, but he wasn't located, according to Sheriff Voutour.The New York State Police Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team processed the scene due to the volatile nature of the by-products used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.Voutour lauded their actions in "containing these volatile labs."
This year will have many challenges, not the least of which will be comparing and contrasting Bernie and Hillary while sifting through the Frank Luntzian messages coming from the dozen or so remaining GOP presidential candidates. You might wonder why Progressives would even want to spend time inviting blood pressure problems by trying to decoding right-wing messages? For one thing, hearing out the opposition is a habit of mind that we see most often on the left because of our appreciation of nuance and our understanding of our own imperfections of thought. We have trouble putting Progressive politics on bumper stickers and placards because, well, modern life and government are complicated and difficult to distill into catch phrases. Its because of this and because Internet right-wing trolling appears to be swinging into full force that I offer below a crash course in reasonable Republicanism, the kind that existed before the party gave itself over to theocrats, autocrats, cosmocrats and plutocrats. (They are more -cratic than Democrats, see.)

Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a lifelong Republican and chief of staff to Secretary of State General Colin Powell, has much to say about the decline of the United States as an empire and world power, and he understands why all of the bombastic pandering and phony cheerleading among his partys candidates and their espoused policies will not reverse our countrys course and will certainly lead to an unmanageable acceleration of our decline. So if you are home from work or school with the chilblains, ague, or the vapors, please linger on your cot or sofa and watch this presentation by Colonel Wilkerson who explains where the U.S. is today, why were here, and what should be done about it.

There is something refreshing and even encouraging about a high profile Republican who is critical and introspective and confronts, assesses, and suggests solutions to the problems of our nation while he is aligned with a party that has failed to govern or has misgoverned us for decades. Wilkerson is of course not alone in jabbing at his party. There have been others whove taken their party to task. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann wrote an entire book criticizing the Republican Party for its fecklessness and extremism, terms the current GOP likes to use in describing President Obamas policies.

Ornstein and Mann have continued their criticism, pointing out that the GOP has been aided and abetted in their folly by a mainstream media that is insistent that both sides do it, an insistence based on the medias need not to offend in order to secure access. Weve seen what happens to reporters who confront GOP candidates and make them uncomfortable, as Chris Christie tells them to shut up or Donald Trump has Jorge Ramos of Univision ejected from a town hall late last summer. Colonel Wilkerson criticizes the media for the same reasons and believes that foreign reporters and foreign newspapers do a better job of looking at events in the U.S. than does our corporately owned news media.

The Colonels presentation is lengthy and is followed by a Q and A with the audience, but if you can remain engaged with the lecture you will find an amazing level of crossover between old school Republican thinking and contemporary Progressivism, including approval of single payer health care, a need to reduce military spending, the toxicity of corporate lobbyists, and the importance of dealing with climate change (Wilkerson does not equivocate about the reality of climate change.). His audiences reactions and questions at the end are actually encouraging inasmuch as they may signal the possibility of sanity returning to some of the GOP. Watching Colonel Wilkerson is time well spent by all Americans, especially those whose only view of the world through the lens of Fox News.

[CC image credit: New America | Flickr]
Last month, I wrote about Senate Bill 571, a Republican campaign finance bill that will do a number of truly anti-democratic things.

Heres a recap from that post:

[The] faux sincere desire for voters to be more informed was proven to be the lie that it is when [Republicans] passed Senate Bill 571. This bill bans using public dollars or resources to educate the public about ballot proposals in the 60 days before an election. The bill has drawn outrage and scorn from all directions. The Michigan League of Women Voters calls it a bill that includes provisions that block access to unbiased, objective communication on ballot proposals to local residents, saying that they are very concerned about the limits that will be imposed on our mission to educate the public if this bill becomes law.

This bill, too, was a result of some epically shitty Republican machinations. More from Brian Dickerson at the Detroit Free Press:

When Lyons committee voted unanimously to recommend its passage a week ago, SB 571 was a 12-page bill that reduced paperwork, but not disclosure requirements, for political action committees across the state. It had breezed through the state Senate with nary an objection from lawmakers of either party. But when it emerged from a Republican caucus room Wednesday evening, SB 571 had metastasized into a 53-page behemoth that included GOP-friendly amendments to 10 different sections of Michigans Campaign Finance Act. It was adopted by both houses late Wednesday night without a single Democratic vote or amendment, and after the Republican majority voted to clear the Senate chamber of Democratic staffers and lock the senators themselves inside.

After hearing from State Representative Gretchen Driskell, the Saline City Council sent at letter to Gov. Snyder urging him to veto the bill:

Driskell said that SB 571 was a 12-page bill that grew into a 53-page bill in 10 minutes. We (Democratic legislators) had to pull our names off the bill because we didnt know what was in it, Driskell said. She said legislators learned the proposal will prevent local governments, school boards and library boards from providing information about bond and millage proposals. Its a huge problem when youre working on a local project. Citizens need to know whats going on, Driskell said. We tried to the block the bill but the rules were suspended and we werent able.

Even librarians (LIBRARIANS!) are up in arms and it takes a LOT to get librarians to speak out on political issues. They have started a petition asking Gov. Snyder to veto the legislation:

The Michigan House and Senate pulled a fast one last week and Governor Snyder needs to do the right thing for libraries, schools, and parks by Vetoing SB 571. If SB 571 becomes law, librarians would be sent to jail for sharing factual information about elections with their communities. Library boards would be fined thousands of dollars of sending out a newsletter if it shares information about what is on your local ballot. We need honest and transparent elections. SB 571 is ridiculous. It is both anti- free speech and anti- good government. Dont let the politicians in Lansing force librarians to hide information about what is on your ballot! Join thousands of citizens from around Michigan and tell Governor Snyder to Veto SB 571 because information needs to be free by signing the petition today.

But thats not all SB 571 does. It also eliminates the February campaign finance reporting requirement and allows independent expenditures to remain secret until AFTER the election. Rich Robinson of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network spells it out:

In the case of regularly scheduled elections, independent expenditures that occur subsequent to the last scheduled pre-election report do not have to be disclosed until the first regularly scheduled post-election report. In the case of Michigans 2014 November elections, millions of dollars-worth of independent expenditures were first disclosed months after Election Day.

It turns out that Democrats werent the only ones with the wool pulled over their eyes about this truly bad piece of legislation. Republicans, too, were duped. Heres Republican Dave Pagel in a letter to a school superintendent in Berrien County (emphasis mine):

I apologize for being unable to attend the meeting on Jan. 11, but I am glad to send this written communication that can be shared with whoever might be concerned. Often times the House sends a bill over to the Senate and then receives it back with some minor language changes or technical corrections. SB 571 came back to the House and we were asked by our leadership to quickly accept the changes which, we were assured, were only minor. One of the House Democratic members raised concerns that there were around 40 pages added to this bill and no one had time to read them. As it turns out, his concerns were merited. I am embarrassed to say that I, along with my Republican colleagues, voted yes on SB571 without knowing about the significant changes that were made to it. I trusted the House leaders because this came up late in the evening after many hours of session. This is the first time anything like this has happened during my tenure. I am demanding an explanation  which has yet to come  about why this happened and who was responsible. I have written the Governor, asking him to veto this bill so that we can take this language out. I have contacted several other Representatives who feel the same way I do. As a long time school board member who proposed a couple of millages over the years to improve our buildings, I know the importance of clear and complete informational communication to voters. Voters deserve to know exactly what is being proposed, how the money will be spent, and what it will cost the taxpayers. I knew very well the law against using public dollars to advocate for the passage of a ballot proposal. The language in SB571 will be a detriment to both the voters and to those entities making ballot proposals. I will do whatever I can to stop SB571 as it stands. Even if it is signed by Governor Snyder, I will work to get this changed by further legislation. State Representative Dave Pagel

Must be really tough being a Republican in Michigan these days. If you have any credibility and a love of democracy, that is.
Last night, Rachel Maddow covered the Flint water lead poisoning story for a third time in the past month. In the segment, she lauded the Michigan press  including the ACLUs crack investigative journalist Curt Guyette who wasnt named explicitly  for their vigilance and doggedness in pursuing this story, something I agree with completely. For this report, Maddow brought in Flint Journal/MLive editor Bryn Mickle. Here is the video:

Mickle said something very important during his interview:

MADDOW: Even with the state saying, The town cant run its own affairs [and installing an Emergency Manager], the state ends up poisoning the town. From a distance that just seems like a Shakespearean level of tragedy but its also infuriating and I wonder, from closer up to that situation, how does that issue sit with your readers in Flint? MICKLE: Again, theyre angry. Flint was stripped of its democracy. Make no mistake, the people that the Flint citizens voted to put into office had no real power and for the state to turn around and try to put this back onto the mayor and city council and say that these were decisions that they made I mean there was an Emergency Manager in place. Those people had no real power. And its insulting to the people of Flint, I think, to be told that your elected leaders cant lead and then to have something like this happen. People have lost faith and understandably so.

Mr. Mickle is 100% correct about this. There was one particular decision made by Emergency Manager Darnell Earley in 2014 that sealed Flints fate. After first telling Flint that they would no longer supply water to them after a certain date, a date well before a pipeline being built to bring Lake Huron water to Flint would be completed (which likely wont happen until June at the earliest), the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department came back to Earley and told him Flint could continue to buy water from them, water also coming from Lake Huron. However, Earley told them thanks-but-no-thanks and moved forward with his plans to use Flint River water in the interim. It was the corrosive chemistry of the Flint River water that eroded the protective layer of minerals coating lead pipes in many Flint homes that has lead to the current catastrophe.

So, yes, this is entirely on Gov. Snyders shoulders.

Genesee County officials declared a public health emergency on October 1st of last year. This week, they declared a state of emergency and it is now up to Gov. Snyder to decide whether or not to grant their request and the request of Flint Mayor Karen Weaver to spend more than $50 million to replace lead pipes in Flint homes and to make other necessary infrastructure upgrades.

It took over three months for Gov. Snyder to apologize to Flint residents for poisoning their water. Hopefully he will make this decision  and the CORRECT decision  much faster than that.

The sad part about all of this is that this crisis is going to be VERY expensive to resolve and that money will come from the state budget at the expense of other important things. And you can be very sure that corporations in Michigan will not be asked to help shoulder this burden. That burden will be carried by the citizens of the state because when it comes to fixing Michigans problems, we are decidedly NOT all in this together.

One more thing: Part of the reason that the crisis in Flint went on so long before action was taken is that reports filed by the Department of Environmental Quality were altered to make it look like everything was fine:

Mike Glasgow is with the city of Flint. Hes the guy in charge of collecting the water samples. Glasgow remembers including samples taken at one home that showed extremely high lead levels. A sample of Lee Anne Walters home turned up a result of 104 parts per billion  almost seven times the federally mandated limit. They instructed me to take it off the report, says Glasgow. I know she had taken some other samples and they had all the results too. I dont know that I can give you a good enough answer to tell you why they decided to remove it from the report.

Democratic state representative Phil Phelps from Flushing has introduced legislation to make manipulating data in this way a felony punishable by five years in prison:

Michigan Rep. Phil Phelps doesnt know whether officials at state agencies manipulated data to mask lead levels in Flint water, but he does know that theres no law stopping somebody from doing so. As far as we were able to determine, not directly, said the Democrat from Flushing. Theres no laws on the books that say you cant manipulate data. When the legislature comes back on Jan. 13 he plans to introduce a bill that would make intentionally manipulating or falsifying information in state reports a five-year felony and fine of up to $5,000. Phelps said he wasnt saying for sure that anybody did something wrong in relation to the Flint water crisis, but if somebody did in the future it would be a crime under this bill. His understanding is that every other law on the books right now a prosecutor would have to stretch to apply to such an instance. Im not a judge, Im not a prosecutor. I just want to make sure that this is another tool that we have in the future, Phelps said.

Its sad that this is even needed.

UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press is reporting that the U.S. Attorneys Office, an arm of the U.S. Justice Department, is now investigating the Flint water poisoning crisis:

The U.S. Attorneys Office, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is investigating the contamination of Flints drinking water supply, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. Gina Balaya of the U.S. Attorneys Office would not say whether the investigation is a criminal or civiI matter. Were just confirming that were looking into it, Balaya told the Free Press. She said the U.S. Attorneys Office doesnt normally confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation, but it made an exception in this case because of the number of inquiries it was receiving from Flint residents. She would not place a time line on the investigation. In an effort to address the concerns of Flint residents, the United States Attorneys Office for the eastern district of Michigan is working closely with the EPA in the investigation of the contamination of the city of Flints water supply, she said.

Halle-freakin-lujah.
Twice in Michigans past Republicans have passed a law to take away the right to vote for all the candidates of a single political party with one mark on a ballot. Both times voters went to the polls and rejected their law. As the clock ticked down on the 2015 legislative session, Republicans passed the same damn law a third time. But this time they included a laughably inadequate $5 million appropriation to add more voting machines in every precinct in the entire state making the proposed law democracy-proof, safe from the pesky desires of Michigan voters.

Earlier this morning Gov. Snyder signed the bill into law.

Be sure to remember this when Michigan Republicans spew platitudes about personal choice and freedom from onerous government intrusion into the lives of our states citizens. Because its all a pack of blatant lies.

(I have a bunch of quotes I could post from various groups and elected officials about Gov. Snyders action but why bother? Until the voters of this state start voting for politicians that actually give a damn about democracy, its all just yelling from the sidelines. And, yes, Im angry.)

[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]
Juniper Networks on Sunday informed customers that recent security threats to its ScreenOS were not as widespread as initially believed.

The company last week issued an alert following its discovery in ScreenOS of unauthorized code that could allow an attacker to gain administrative control of devices using Netscreen (Administrative Access) or to decrypt a virtual private network (VPN Decryption).

The two issues are unrelated to each other, according to the company.

Juniper originally advised all customers that the Administrative Access code affected ScreenOS 6.30r12 through 6.30r20, and that the VPN Decryption code affected ScreenOS 6.20r15 through 6.20r18, and it advised users to patch their systems.

Once we identified these vulnerabilities, we launched an investigation into the matter and worked to develop and issue patched releases for the latest versions of ScreenOS, noted Bob Worrall, senior vice president and chief information officer.

That investigation led Juniper to narrow the list of affected versions.

Administrative Access  only affects ScreenOS 6.3.0r17 through 6.3.0r20, Worrall wrote in Sundays update. VPN Decryption  only affects ScreenOS 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20.

We strongly recommend that all customers update their systems and apply these patched releases with the highest priority, he added.

Juniper had not received any notifications of exploitation of the vulnerabilities when it issued its original alert last week, and as of Monday, it had nothing further to share on the security issues, spokesperson Danielle Hamel told TechNewsWorld.

NSA Suspicions

Because the vulnerabilities are reminiscent of the disclosures whistleblower Ed Snowden made about NSA techniques to gain unauthorized access to various networking systems, questions have surfaced about whether the unauthorized code could be connected to backdoor government surveillance.

The NSA ANT catalogue has detailed capabilities on penetrating Juniper firewalls and they have spent considerable time and effort building customized capabilities for several enterprise firewall vendors, LogicNow Security Lead Ian Trump told TechNewsWorld.

Juniper declined to respond to TechNewsWorlds specific questions about the timing of its discovery of the latest vulnerabilities, but the company vehemently denied working with government officials to install code that could exploit its own systems.

As weve stated previously, Juniper Networks [takes] allegations of this nature seriously, said spokesperson Hamel. To be clear, we do not work with governments or anyone else to purposefully introduce weaknesses or vulnerabilities into our products.

The company consistently operates with the highest of ethical standards and is committed to maintaining the integrity, security and assurance of its products, she said.

Juniper previously investigated reports published in Germanys Der Spiegel, which suggested that the NSA might be using software implants to exploit vulnerabilities in its BIOS.

Release notes from the company appear to show the affected ScreenOS flaws date back to at least 2012.

Open Source Solution?

We dont know whether the culprit in this instance is the NSA or some other state-based actor, but it is clear that the network equipment providers are targets  sometimes willingly, sometimes not, said Eli Dourado, research fellow and director of the Technology Policy Program at George Mason Universitys Mercatus Center.

Moving more of the code that runs the guts of the network to an open source model could prevent this type of intrusion, he said  and in fact, he made that proposal in a 2013 New York Times essay, following Snowdens revelations about NSA surveillance practices.

With more eyeballs on the code, we may be able to discourage some of these hacking attempts and better detect the ones that are not deterred, Dourado explained.

The potential impact on Junipers customer base likely will be short term, said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

I think its safe to assume every network technology company has had its technology compromised by some government, and I think most CIOs realize that, she told TechNewsWorld. Juniper is no different than others in that regard.
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(Photo: REUTERS / Darren Staples)Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with Chief Iman Allama Qamar-uz-Zaman Azmi (R), Waqar Azmi (2nd R) and Baroness Warsi (L) during a visit to the Jamia Mosque in Manchester, northern England August 7, 2013.

With a decreased focus on the lives of Muslims in the Western world in U.S. and European TV, stereotypes and negativity have increased in the news, new research has found.

This is according to new research from Media Tenor International, the global media research company, made public Friday.

The finding were presented by Media Tenor CEO and founder Roland Schatz at the Alwaleed bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Washington's Georgetown University.

It was part of the Muslim-Christian Relations in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities conference.

"Despite the increasing need for better understanding between people of all religious faiths, overall the news media is not helping to build compassion and tolerance, but, in many cases, is actively working against it," says Schatz.

He noted that Media Tenor analyzed more than 430,000 news reports from 2007 to 2013 in recognition of Professor John L. Esposito's tireless work on these issues with the ACMCU.

Muslim-Christian Relations in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities is an exploration and critical discussion of the contemporary challenges facing religious pluralism and Muslim-Christian relations.

This conference commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Alwaleed bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).

At the conference Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the United Kingdom's first minister for faith, and first Muslim cabinet minister called for an international response to religious persecution.

Tom Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, moderated the event.

Warsi spoke on the issue of extremism in Britain and worldwide.

"The problem with extremism isn't too much religion, it is too little religion. The people who kill in the name of Allah or whatever god lack a basic understanding of their own faith," Warsi said.

"For myself, a Muslim mother, I teach my children to be good people, and then show them that Islam is a good basis for that kind of behavior, but I don't indoctrinate them in the way that some people indoctrinate their children. I want my children to be good people first, and then hopefully good Muslims."

Founded in 1993, the center has spent the last two decades building stronger bridges of understanding between the Muslim world and the West, as well as between Islam and Christianity.

For more than 20 years Media Tenor's says its mission has been to contribute to objective, diverse and newsworthy news by bringing together the diverse parties who both impact and are affected by the news.

Media Tenor's global research projects include analyses of election campaigns, investor relations, public diplomacy, corporate communications and other topics critical to news makers and news audiences.
(Photo: Church of Scotland)Shafiq Sharif, secretary of the al-Farooq education trust, and Rev. Ian Taylor, Church of Scotland minister, outside the Springfield Cambridge Parish near Glasgow, Scotland in December 2015.

The faith communities of a Scottish town have come closer together after an intentionally started fire destroyed an Islamic center in November.

The act of arson in Bishopbriggs near Glasgow had the unintended effect of acting as a unifier of the different faith communities, the Church of Scotland said.

After the Al Farooq cultural center was destroyed, in what police said was a suspected hate crime, Springfield Cambridge Parish Church offered the Muslim community a place to hold its Friday prayers.

Community leaders say the incident has led to much greater understanding between the different faith groups.

"After the firebombing attack, Christians in Bishopbriggs came together through the ecumenical group, Bishopbriggs Churches Together, to discuss what we could do to help our Muslim brothers and sisters," said Rev. Ian Taylor, minister at Springfield Cambridge Parish Church.

"We sent them a card expressing our disappointment and sorrow and asking if we could offer them temporary accommodation."

The pastor said they called and accepted. After meeting with Muslim representatives on 2 December, they agreed they will use a meeting room within Springfield Cambridge Church to hold Friday prayers.

"They started to use the room on 4 December and can stay as long they need to.

"As Christians we believe that love is stronger than hate. So we hope that some good can come out of this destructive act," said Taylor,

"By reaching out at this time of sorrow and fear we hope to build stronger relationships between Christians and Muslims in Bishopbriggs."

Shafiq Sharif, secretary of the al-Farooq education trust, thanked the minister and the congregation, saying the Muslim community had been humbled and uplifted by the offer, the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland said on its website.

"We are really very appreciative of the support we have had from the Church of Scotland and from a lot of Christians in our community," said Sharif.

"We had managed to create a small place where we could come together as a community, and now we don't have anything at all, so the community was feeling lost."

He said that after the first gathering, "everyone was very pleased and happy."

"After the fire we got a lot of phone calls from the Christian community to offer help. We never knew that help and support was there before. So can good come from this? It has, because it has brought us closer together.

"Through this we have learned we are not alone."

About 80 families use the Bishopbriggs center, both as a mosque and as a place to gather, share community meals and teach children about their cultural heritage and traditions.

Families using the center generally have long established roots in Scotland, Sharif said, noting that his own grandfather settled in Dunbartonshire in 1930, before the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan.

After the Paris attacks, Police Scotland reported a spike in hate crimes, but Sharif said his community feels comfortable in Glasgow.

"Glasgow is a great place for the Muslim community who have lived here for a great number years, contributing to the wider society.

"The arson attack carried out on 17 November's was the work of a misguided individual, or individuals, who do not represent the wider community," he told the Church of Scotland.

The Islamic center will be reconstructed and may reopen as early as January.
(Photo: Church of Scotland)The Moderator of the General Assembly, Rev. John Chalmers, has thanked the congregations of the Church of Scotland for their response to his Doves of Peace campaign.

Religious education has an important role in the school curriculum in combating violent extremism, the Moderator of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland says.

In his New Year message, Rev. John Chalmers says the issue of religious fundamentalism is one of the issues of greatest concern in the world today.

"Nothing is more dangerous than the radicalised mind and there is nothing worse than the indoctrinated child. We will not, however, defeat such extremism simply by confronting it across battle lines," said Chalmers.

"The frontline for winning this battle is education and the school is the place where young minds need to be introduced to the power of critical enquiry," he said.

Chalmers asked how else could a young person grow to make sound choices without access to the widest possible range of knowledge and how else could they learn tolerance unless introduced to a range of ideas.

However, the Humanist Society Scotland said it was in favour of religious study in schools, but not acts of worship.

There is growing concern about the number of young Britons travelling to the Middle East to take up arms with the jihadi group calling itself the Islamic State, The Scotsman newspaper reported.

The Humanist Society Scotland said it was in favor of religious study in schools, but not acts of worship, said The Scotsman report.

RESPECTING THOSE WHO DISAGREE

Chalmers noted that peace will only come when the means to respect those who people disagree with is tolerated on views of religion, philosophy and politics.

"Such tolerance, however, will not come by removing, as some desire, religious observance from the school curriculum; on the contrary what we should be doing is building on the strong tradition of religious reflection which is currently a part of the Scottish school environment," he said.

The Scotsman referred to Abdul Raqib Amin, who grew up in Aberdeen northern Scotland this year and appeared in a propaganda video for the group, which is responsible for the murder of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

Chalmers said he was not calling for proselytising within schools but, rather, a place in the curriculum for understanding other faiths.

"Every child needs to know about religious practice and it has to be shared in a context of open-mindedness and mutual respect, so I'll be doing all that I can to see that religious observance or time for reflection stays in the curriculum."

Earlier this year, both the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Humanist Society agreed the phrase "religious observance" had become outdated in non-denominational schools.

They said changing the legal definition to "time for reflection" could ease the concerns of parents, helping make schools more inclusive.

Gary McLelland, a spokesman for the Humanist Society Scotland, said in The Scotsman: "I share John Chalmers' broad call for more understanding about different faiths.

"Mr. Chalmers might want to bear in mind that religious faith is very much a minority pursuit among young Scots, with 74 per cent of 14- to 17-year-olds having no religious faith.

"Increasingly people of all ages are looking to reason, rationality and evidence to base their moral and social views on - not necessarily religious teachings.

"We are, though, completely supportive of comparative religious and philosophical study.

"The Humanist Society Scotland and Church of Scotland joined together at the start of this year to say that religious observance should be replaced with a more inclusive form of 'time for reflection' - something which is inclusive of all religions and belief traditions."
State and federal tax money should start flowing as early as Tuesday to the cash-strapped school districts, counties and human services organizations that suffered the brunt of the protracted budget fight between Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled Legislature .

The unlocked money equals an estimated $3.3 billion in 16,400 payments that had not been processed since July 1, according to the state Treasury.

Out of those back payments, $117 million will start flowing to the 16 school districts in Lehigh and Northampton counties.

More than $35 million is due to the two counties, mostly for human services costs.

And about $1.1 million will head to the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, the regions largest provider of services to homeless, jobless and low-income residents.

Treasury staff worked during the past several weeks to pre-audit thousands of critical payments and delivered them in days rather than weeks, state Treasurer Timothy Reese said in a statement.

While local officials are breathing easier in the new year, they still are upset over Pennsylvanias record-setting budget fight. Wolfs partial vetoes mean the budget fight is not completely over, and it has bled into local officials financial planning for their own 2016 budgets.

The frustration is most keenly felt in school districts, which will receive about six months worth of 2015-16 funding due to the partial vetoes Wolf instituted Dec. 29 after the Legislature backtracked on a costlier budget compromise.

The single biggest cut Wolf made in the budget occurred at the Department of Education. He slashed the states per-pupil subsidythe Department of Educations largest expense itemby 55 percent to about $2.5 billion, which is why districts are only getting part of what they are owed.

The governors blue line [veto] released emergency funding to schools through Dec. 31, Wolfs spokesman, Jeff Sheridan, said. The governor called on the Republican leaders to call the Legislature back into session to provide the historic increase in education funding they all agreed to in the compromise budget.

The Allentown School District will start receiving about $48.5 million, or 47 percent of its total 2015-16 allocation, to cover reimbursements for Social Security payments, pensions, transportation, basic education, special education and Ready to Learn grants, state Department of Education records show.

The Bethlehem Area School District will get about $15 million, or about half of what it is owed.

That money will help, but its still not enough, said Bethlehem Superintendent Joseph Roy. Its especially frustrating, he said, because the district is preparing its 2016-17 school-year budget and is guessing as to what state revenue might look like.

We still need a state budget, Roy said. This sort of budget didnt solve any of the larger problems in public education funding, nor did it answer the question as to what funding we will receive for the current school year.

In Lehigh County, the state checks mean the county will not have to take out loans to sustain operations. Executive Tom Mullers administration was preparing to borrow up to $30 million, which could have funded operations until local taxes started arriving in late March and April. The state owed the county approximately $15.6 million.

Were delighted its happening. It took a long time for it to happen, said Lehigh County Director of Administration Dan McCarthy.

Things didnt quite pan out as well in Northampton County.

Executive John Brown could not provide an estimate Monday as to how much money the county is owed, but he believes its more than $20 million. County Council approved borrowing up to $45 million in December, and the county started tapping that Monday to finance its services and payroll until the state money arrives.

The budget stalemate also prevented federal tax money from passing through the state to schools, counties and nonprofits like CACLV.

About three quarters of CACLVs money was from the federal government, said Ross Marcus, deputy executive director of CACLV. But the lack of money was only part of the problem, Marcus said. The other part was frozen tax credits.

The state also withheld annual tax credits that corporations receive for donating money to nonprofits like CACLV or private and parochial schools.

Businesses and nonprofits are still waiting for the state to send letters granting the tax-credit status for 2015. Until those letters are received, businesses and nonprofits cannot list the donations on their annual federal tax returns.

CACLV was preparing to curtail programs if the tax credit freeze was not lifted, Marcus said. Although it has been lifted, CACLV still has not received all necessary documentation for all tax credits.

That was as much an issue as the actual cash, Marcus said.

In March, Wolf proposed a $33.8 billion budget that relied on higher or new taxes on nearly every sector of the economy. He didnt get it.

Around Thanksgiving, the administration and Republican leaders announced plans for a $30.8 billion budget, which included property tax relief and changes to the state pension and liquor systems.

The deal fell apart.

Shortly before Christmas, the House adjourned without holding an expected vote on what was left of the dealthe $30.8 billion spending plan and a pension bill the Senate had passed.

So the Senate passed the Houses smaller, $30.3 billion budget that relied on higher cigarette taxes and the higher fees casinos would have paid if the Legislature had adopted Internet gambling.

On Dec. 28, Wolf called the House budget garbage and vetoed about $7 billion of its spending, leaving a total spending bill of $23.4 billion.

Differences among the House, Senate and Wolf plans will require more bargaining to reach a final budget. No one can say when that might occur.

Despite unknowns about the overall size of the state budget and education funding in particular, big and small businesses are breathing easier. Thats because the budget stalemate did nothing to slow down or stop Wolf and the Legislature from completing a decades-long phase-out of a centuries-old tax on business physical assets. The capital stock and franchise tax expired Friday.

In 2008, the tax generated slightly more than $1 billion, state Revenue Department records show. By 2014, it was down 69 percent to $320 million, records show.

We need to find new revenue, Sheridan said, but this is an unfair tax the governor has never supported.

The 2016-17 state deficit is expected to be $2.4 billion, according to the Legislatures Independent Fiscal Office.
With the signing of the Every Student Succeeds Act into law, an era of significant federal involvement in teacher licensing and evaluation has come to an end.

Most notably, the new law does not require states to set up teacher-evaluation systems based in significant part on students test scoresa key requirement of the U.S. Department of Educations state-waiver system in connection with ESSAs predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act.

At least symbolically, then, ESSA comes as a repudiation of one of the Obama administrations key policy pushes. But practically, its an open question to what extent the law will embolden states to revise or abandon their new methods for grading teachers.

There are already efforts underway in states such as New York, Oklahoma, and South Carolina to reconsider evaluation policies; other states plan to hold firm.

Some states may roll back evaluation laws in the short-term, but I think itll be a longer discussion in the bulk of the states, said Daniel Weisberg, the CEO of the teacher-training and advocacy group TNTP, a supporter of the administrations push to overhaul teacher evaluation.

The biggest variable is how much opposition states get for proposing to go back to days where virtually all teachers were rated good or great without any measures of student impact, he said.

Less Rigid Approaches

Largely prompted by the contrast between sky-high evaluation scores for teachers and research showing that teachers vary significantly in their ability to raise student achievement, the Education Department conditioned its 2011 waivers in part on states setting-up new systems for evaluating teachers. (Some states also committed to revamping their evaluation systems to qualify for federal Race to the Top funds.)

Most states got the NCLB waivers, but struggled mightily to get new systems in place. The focus on test scores proved to be highly unpopular with teachers, prompting more than a dozen lawsuits and helping fuel the testing opt out movement among parents.

Given those political stumbling blocks, will states continue to hold on to a difficult, messy policy when no longer mandated to do so?

Title II Shifts One of the lesser-noticed changes in the Every Student Succeeds Act concerns the $2.3 billion state teacher-quality grants program, also known as Title II. The formula for allocating these dollars considers both student population and poverty. As part of ESSA, Congress rewrote the formula to weight the poverty factor more heavily. It also did away with the minimum award amount guaranteed to each state since 2002. The new formula will be phased in gradually to avoid sudden or drastic shifts. But over time, because of the changes, teacher-quality funding will move away from the Rust Belt and toward Southern states. A Congressional Research Service analysis projects that, by the time the new formula fully takes effect in fiscal 2023, the following states and territories annual allocation will decrease by $10 million or more from their fiscal 2016 grant: Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico. California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas will see an annual award of $10 million more than they received in fiscal 2016. Among other changes, states may now use their teacher-quality funds to support residency-based teacher-prep programs, in which teacher-candidates spend a year being guided into teaching by mentors. They can also set up teacher-preparation academies independent of higher education and traditional quality-control systems, but over time the academies must produce teachers with effective track records. Stephen Sawchuk

Some state officials contacted by Education Week said theyre committed to improving teacher evaluation, but want far less rigid approaches.

The Education Departments waiver demands caused us to have to train all our teachers on evaluation in one year and implement it very hurriedly, said Molly Spearman, the state superintendent for South Carolina. Shell be asking her state board of education to delay for two yearsuntil 2018-19the requirement for all districts to use student learning objectives, which are student-growth goals set by teachers, for evaluations. And the state would like to make those measures an artifact examined by evaluators, not a specific, weighted component of each teachers review.

Well still use student progress as some part, but were de-emphasizing the model and the weighting, Spearman said.

Georgias current superintendent, Richard Woods, has been vocal about his concerns about the states weighting of student achievement for 50 percent of each teachers evaluation rating. And although its too early to outline specific revisions, the superintendent will be taking a very close look at this, Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza said.

In Oklahoma, districts have struggled to implement student-growth measures for teachers in non-tested subjects. Oklahoma Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said shed like her state to consider an approach taken by the Tulsa school district, which uses student survey results instead. And she thinks that teachers should still receive value added information on students test progress, but that it shouldnt trigger consequences like dismissals.

We certainly need to have a system of teacher effectiveness and an evaluative tool for principals and teachers, but it needs to be focused more on self-reflection, continuous improvement, and professional growth, Hofmeister said. We do not want to unravel or derail the work of our state ... yet I definitely think changes have to be made in order to accomplish that goal.

New York officials last month approved plans to delay for four years the tethering of test scores to teacher evaluation. But that could have had more to do with the states political situation than with ESSA, contends Jenny Sedlis, the executive director of StudentsFirst NY, an advocacy group that backs the use of scores in evaluations.

The high rate of testing opt-outs in New York this past spring was unusual, as was the extent of the states teachers union efforts to promote the movement, she said. In taking a step back, she argued, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to rebuild buy-in on evaluation and accountability.

After a year or two of seeing 98 percent of teachers rated effective, parents and legislators are not going to be so open to claims that teachers are being held to an unfair standard, she suggested.

Still other state officials are already on the record saying they plan to hold firm to the systems they established during the waiver era.

We absolutely intend to stay the course, said Hanna Skandera, the superintendent in New Mexico, where the new evaluation system has faced several legal challenges, in a recent press call organized by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

North Carolinas state chief, June Atkinson, said she could envision only minor alterations to her states system.

And though hes a critic of the Obama-era teacher evaluations, Aaron Pallas, a sociologist of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, doesnt think that ESSAs passage will necessarily change things much in states.

The ESSA law still requires the state testing systems that provide fodder for teacher evaluations, he noted, so I dont think that ESSA by itself is likely to alter the trajectory of statewide teacher-evaluation systems.

But the teachers unions see an opening to change policies their members have broadly rejected. They are also far more powerful among state legislatures than in Congress.

Over and over and over, what we heard from state officials [on teacher evaluation] was, The feds are making us do this. Wed like to negotiate more with you, but we cant, said Segun Eubanks, the director of the National Education Associations professional-supports division. We hope for a more cooperative process if we want to revisit [evaluation].

The American Federation of Teachers plans to bring its political clout to bear on the issue, too.

Absolutely, AFT President Randi Weingarten said. You cant just stop at weve gotten the law changed. You cant just stop with getting rid of bad things. You have to fight forward to craft better policy. In some ways, this step is harder, because you have to make things right now.

Highly Qualified Rules Cut

Winning those revisions wont necessarily be easy. Teacher-evaluation policies are set in law or regulation in some 42 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, which means most states would need to rewrite legislation or regulations.

And the past decade has given rise to a slew of state-based advocacy groups that largely back evaluation reformand that can be expected to keep the pressure on to preserve the systems.

Meanwhile, the ESSA law also abandons its predecessors well-known requirement that states staff each core academic class with a highly qualified teacher. (Generally, that meant a teacher had to hold a bachelors degree, state certification, and have demonstrated content knowledge.)

Under ESSA, teachers in schools receiving Title I funds need only fulfill their states licensing requirements.

The NCLB teacher-quality rules were broadly unpopular because of their bureaucratic complexity and because many advocates questioned how much they helped boost teacher quality. Various loopholes in the law exempted teachers-in-training and many veteran teachers from having to fulfill all the requirements.

States were to have met the 100 percent mark for their teachers as far back as the 2005-2006 school year. But the law specified few consequences for states that fell behind, and the U.S. Department of Education never penalized any state financially for not meeting the goal. As of the 2014-15 school year, states reported more than 96 percent of their core academic classes were taught by highly qualified teachers.

Kate Walsh, the president of the NCTQ, believes that the rules nevertheless did spark some positive changes, such as encouraging several states to establish content tests for elementary teachers.

But most of those revisions took place in the first few years under the law. By now the provisions have largely run their course, she said.

Were not holding a funeral over here, she said.

Still, other teacher-quality advocates worry that the absence of a minimum teacher-quality standard in ESSA could end up hurting poor and minority students.

For example, the NCLB law explicitly prohibited out-of-field teachers and those on emergency certificates from being considered highly qualified. And under ESSA, parents will no longer have to be notified in writing if their children are taught by those teachers.

Expectations regarding entry and success [in the profession] should also be set for those responsible for educating students, said the Coalition for Teaching Quality, which represents more than 100 national and state groups, including the teachers unions and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

In a period of regional teacher shortages, the groups concerns are not merely academic. In states like Oklahoma and Nevada lawmakers have been frantically exploring ways to hire new teachers more quickly.

The HQT rules put significant restrictions on how those vacancies are filled; without them, it will be interesting to see what states and districts decide to do, Eubanks of the NEA said.
For more than a decade, state legislators say theyve stood on the sidelines while their education departments followed the federal governments blueprint in rolling out demanding accountability systems.

So legislators let out a collective sigh of relief when President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act last month. The first new version of the nations main K-12 law since 2002 rolls back the direct federal role in improving student outcomes and hands much of that power to governors and legislatures.

And with the 2016 state legislative season about to begin in 46 states, lawmakers throughout the country will be looking closely at that opening as they wrestle with a range of K-12 issues, from academic standards and teacher evaluations to testing and the turnaround of low-performing schools.

States to Watch With their legislative sessions about to launch, state lawmakers nationwide are taking aim at a range of education-related issues. Among the hotspots of expected activity and the forces behind it: Fiscal Squeeze (Wyoming, Alaska, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, North Dakota, West Virginia)

Several states that have tied their education funding to coal and oil revenue have in recent years dipped into their slush funds to avoid education cuts as oil prices have plunged and the coal industry has largely collapsed. But now those coffers are emptying and state officials will have to decide whether to raise taxes or send down cuts to school districts. Funding Formulas While most states regularly make periodic adjustments to their funding formulas that determine how they distribute state education dollars among districts, some are scrapping their school funding formula wholesale or making significant changes. Washington: The states supreme court is fining it $100,000 a day until the legislature can figure out a more equitable way to fund the school system. Kansas: Legislators last session ditched the states funding formula in response to a lawsuit and replaced it with temporary block grants until it comes up with a new formula. The governor has said he wants the legislature to put those grants into a permanent formula but stopped short of saying block grants are a long-term solution. Delaware: A special commission is expected to deliver to the states board of education a report that will recommend fundamental changes to the states funding formula, which has gone largely unchanged since the early 1940s. The state faces a $100 million deficit this year. Nebraska: A legislative committee recommended in December several changes to the states funding formula after farmers and ranchers complained about soaring property taxes. Several legislators have already proposed new bills. Montana: A legislative commission is reviewing ways to address several funding issues brought to the state in a 2005 lawsuit and could make recommendations as soon as 2017. Teacher Shortages (Oklahoma, Indiana, Wisconsin, and California)

Several states are struggling to recruit and retain teachers, resulting in thousands of students stuck with long-term substitute teachers. Lawmakers in some places have discussed easing demands on their teachers by tweaking certification requirements or making wholesale changes to teacher evaluations. Assessments At least 16 states legislatures created assessment task forces in 2015 to make recommendations on what tests should be used to measure how well their students grasped learning standards. Legislators in Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee are expected to debate those recommendations in 2016. Sources: Education Commission of the States; National Conference of State Legislatures

Legislators are super-excited, said Michelle Exstrom, the education program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Theyve been asking for a decade for some of these changes, and they have been very frustrated that weve been limping along with the [No Child Left Behind Act] waiver system that enticed states to put in place policies they wouldnt put in place otherwise.

At the same time, many states will have more locally specific concerns to address, such as reversing teacher-staffing shortages, fixing school funding formulas that courts have deemed unfair, and, in a handful of cases, cutting state money bound for school districts budgets.

We need to take a step back and look at what were doing well and what were not doing so well, said Alice Hanlon Peisch, a Massachusetts state representative who chairs that state legislatures joint education committee.

Most states are currently operating on yearlong waivers from the NCLB law, the previous version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Those waivers are set to expire in August under ESSA, the new version of the law.

Because ESSA was passed so late in 2015, observers say many legislators will use the next few months pulling together task forces to study what flexibility they have and where constituents want to make adjustments. ESSA will take full effect in the 2017-18 school year.

Im not anticipating that theyll start passing legislation in the new year, said Jennifer Thomsen, a policy researcher for the Education Commission of the States. Its so new, a lot of them are still sort of digesting it.

There have been tensions in the past between state and local officials on who calls the shots on education policy. While district advocates expect a move away from a one-size-fits-all, top-down approach to improving schools, they encourage state legislators to include them in the conversation when making policy.

This cant be just a check-the-box mentality, that we had a meeting, said Tom Gentzel, the executive director of the National School Boards Association. Were going to be looking for and promoting meaningful and substantive consultation with state and local officials. This model is one that can spur innovation and collaboration at the local level.

With state waivers, the federal Education Department required states to design plans to turn around their worst-performing schools and include test scores in teachers evaluations.

In 2015, four statesArkansas, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvanialaid the groundwork for state-run districts to turn around low-performing schools. But districts will have more power under ESSA to design their own turnaround models. Several urban districts will be lobbying their legislatures to roll back punitive turnaround measures.

Separately, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, said last month that he would be willing to abolish that states controversial state-run district if the legislature adopts his proposed turnaround model.

Teacher Tensions

On the teacher-evaluation front, teachers unions nationally have complained for years that test scores are not accurate reflections of a teachers abilities.

A task force in New York recently recommended that the state place a four-year moratorium on factoring tests into teachers evaluations. The state board of regents followed suit, and The New York Times has reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who once advocated that scores be incorporated into evaluations, could call on the legislature to permanently decouple evaluations from state tests.

And South Carolinas state superintendent, Molly Spearman, proposed late last month that teachers be judged on incremental tests taken throughout the year rather than one end-of-year test, the Associated Press reporteda response, Spearman said, to the passage of ESSA.

Legislators in California, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin are studying ways to pacify anxious teachers who are leaving the classrooms in droves, causing staffing shortages.

The researchers say theres no silver bullet in fixing teacher shortages, the NCSLs Exstrom said. One area that kept coming back over and over is that teacher working conditions have to be steadied. We have to understand what makes teachers leave.

Testing, Standards Showdowns

Lawmakers in states such as Colorado and New York will be looking to quell opt-out movements led by parents who are demanding fewer high-stakes tests.

At least 16 state task forces that convened in 2015 recommended that legislatures make dramatic changes to the tests they give and how often they give them.

Massachusetts board of education decided in November to mix its state assessments with questions from PARCC and local standards, a move Peisch said the legislature will review this session.

We have not completely abandoned common core, she said.

Indiana replaced PARCC last school year with its homemade ISTEP exams, but several district superintendents called the scores botched. After an Indianapolis Star investigation revealed a possible testing glitch, House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican, said he will push to scrap the test this year.

While states will still be forced to track how well minority and disabled students perform on tests, states can now determine how much to factor those scores into school, district, and teacher assessments. That has civil rights organizations on edge.

Im excited about states having more autonomy, but we need to make sure we dont move backward, said Joyce Elliott, a former NCSL education chairwoman and an Arkansas representative who is leading a task force to study new indicators to measure.

At least 19 states are in the process of reviewing their state standards after parent advocates complained that their common-core standards were not locally designed. Oklahoma is in the process of a full rewrite. And in West Virginia, legislators said they would review recently passed standards to make sure they are different from common-core standards.

Education takes up a lot of states budgets, and with 30 of the 50 statehouses controlled by Republicans, many of them looking to cut taxes in 2016, school funding will likely dominate the discussion in many capitols.

In Pennsylvania, GOP legislators and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf were still struggling to hammer out a long-overdue budget for the current fiscal yeara standoff thats lasted since July and has districts taking hundreds of millions of dollars out in emergency loans and, in some cases, laying off staff.

Several oil-dependent states, such as Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas, last year dipped into reserve funds to avoid cuts to their education departments. But many of those funding pools are now empty, and with tax revenues off because the oil industry is still hurting, legislators in Louisiana and Oklahoma will have to decide whether to make cuts or raise taxes.

Money Issues

A recently released study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a center-left think tank, says at least half the states still provide less education funding than they did in 2008, before the recession took hold.

And a handful of states will look to make major changes to their school funding formulas.

On the legal front, Washington and Kansas are still attempting to answer their state supreme courts demands to craft a new funding formula after districts there successfully sued. Washington is being fined $100,000 a day by its state supreme court until it can come up with a new formula.

In Delaware, Montana, and Nebraska, task forces recently recommended drastic changes to their funding formulas to more equitably distribute state funding.

The fiscal picture is not all gloomy, however.

One standout example: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, proposed in December adding $1 billion to the states $17 billion K-12 and higher education budget, in part to hire at least 2,500 new school teachers.

Overall  its going to be a good year, not a great year, said Michael Griffith, who tracks school finance at the Education Commission of the States. For the rest of the states, youre going to see increases in spending in education. The question is how much is it going to be?
State and school district officials who have complained for years that an inflexible, overprescriptive federal role in public education is at the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act seem to have finally gotten their wish: a replacement law that scales back Washingtons K-12 footprint for the first time in more than a quarter-century.

Now, big questions loom about just where states and districts will take the leeway granted to them under the newly minted Every Student Succeeds Actand just how their decisions will affect the perennially foundering schools and traditionally overlooked groups of students and schools the NCLB law was designed to help.

Its equally unclear just how much power the U.S. Department of Education will have when the law, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is fully implemented.

The new lawalready widely known by the acronym ESSAslims down the U.S. Department of Education, consolidating nearly 50 programs, including elementary and secondary counseling, into a giant block grant.

It also aims to crack down on the U.S. secretary of educations authority when it comes to standards, assessments, school turnarounds, teacher evaluation, and other areas.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a key architect of ESSA, said he thinks the federal role will be very different from here on out.

What I believe is that when we take the handcuffs off, well unleash a whole flood of innovation and ingenuity classroom by classroom, state by state, that will benefit children, Alexander said in an interview. Weve got a law that will govern the federal role in K-12 education for 10 or 20 years.

Bipartisan Consensus

In signing ESSA on Dec. 10, 2015, President Barack Obama was on the same pageat least rhetorically.

The NCLB law, launched under his predecessor, President George W. Bush, had good intentions, Obama said, but it often forced schools and school districts into cookie-cutter reforms that didnt always produce the kinds of results that we wanted to see.

The new law creates real partnerships between the states, which will have new flexibility to tailor their improvement plans, and the federal government, which will have the oversight to make sure that the plans are sound.

And Obama said ESSA, which goes into full effect with the start of the 2017-18 school year, will maintain the civil rights legacy of the underlying ESEA, which turned 50 last year.

Setting the Direction

The federal role in K-12 education has been steadily building in successive editions of the ESEA since the late 1980s.

The newest version retains the federal requirement for annual testing in reading and mathematics in grades 3-8 and once in high school. But it calls for states to revamp their accountability systemsand they can significantly scale back the role those tests play in gauging school progress.

Under ESSA, states and districts will still have to transform their lowest-performing schools, but they will be able to choose their own interventions, as long as the strategies have some evidence to back them up. Theyll also have to flag schools where historically overlooked groups of students, such as English-language learners, members of racial minorities, and students in special education, arent performing as well as their peers.

And, for the first time, states must include at least one factor that gets at school quality or students opportunity to learnsuch as access to advanced course work or a nurturing school climatewhen considering school performance.

They can also opt to get rid of teacher evaluations based in part on students standardized tests, which were required for states who wanted one of the Obama administrations waivers from portions of the NCLB law.

And while they are required to adopt challenging academic standards, they can move away from the Common Core State Standards. The federal education secretary is explicitly barred from requiring or encouraging any particular set of standards.

For their part, states say they arent going to back down from ensuring equity for all students.

See Also The Every Student Succeeds Act: Explained

I dont see anything changing, except for it being better, Tony Evers, Wisconsins state superintendent, said shortly after ESSA was passed by Congress. There will be no backpedaling.

Different factions of the education community already are gearing up to help states and districts bring the new K-12 era forwardtypically with an eye to protecting their own interests at the same time.

Moving Forward

Teacher evaluation may be one area ripe for early and significant change. Thanks in part to the Obama administrations NCLB waivers, 42 states and the District of Columbia have some sort of policy on teacher evaluation on the books, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and advocacy organization in Washington.

In many of the states, those performance reviews are enshrined in law, meaning it would take new legislation to undo them. But already states are mulling their options. New York, for instance, decided to put off using test scores in teacher evaluations for the next several years. Its possible that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, will make the shift permanent.

Teachers unions are likely to give states a hand with all this rethinking. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers would love to see states move beyond teacher evaluations that rely heavily on student test scores.

The way tests were used in teacher evaluation, ... it became lunacy, AFT President Randi Weingarten said last month.

Teachers unions arent the only groups gearing up to influence state policy in the ESSA era. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, for instance, will be helping its partners figure out how they can help local and state leaders keep the ESEAs historic focus on equity for often-overlooked groups of students in this new version.

Under ESSA, states will no longer be able to rely solely on so-called supersubgroups, which allow them to combine a variety of different groups of students for accountability purposes. States liked the flexibility of supersubgroups, but civil rights advocates said they masked achievement gaps.

And states will have to measure English-language proficiency in their new systemssomething few if any states do now. Theyll have to incorporate new factors that get at students opportunity to learn, and break those factors out by different groups of students, just as they do with test scores now.

The requirement for such breakdowns may influence the kinds of factors states end up picking, said Daria Hall, the interim vice president for government relations and communications at the Education Trust, which advocates for poor and minority students. For example, the legislation lists teacher engagement as a possible factor, but Hall is not sure how that would play out.

How do you disaggregate teacher engagement by groups of kids? she said. Im not here to say right now that there is no possible way to make that a valid and reliable student-based indicator. But there are real questions about how to make that work.

But Donna Harris-Aiken, the director of education policy and practice at the National Education Association, said that all sorts of indicators, including bullying and school climate factors, are incorporated in the data collection of the Education Departments office for civil rights.

What weve learned over the past few years is that it doesnt make sense to look at one or the other, she said, referring to results and inputs. The outcome piece isnt coming off the table. [As for] the effort that districts and schools are making to work in support of students, theyll now get credit for those efforts.

To be sure, theres still plenty to puzzle over inside the Beltway. Its unclear whether the language circumscribing the education secretarys authority will make it more difficult politicallyor even legallyfor the department to take a hard line in regulating the law.

Michael Kirst, who worked on implementation of the first version of the ESEA during President Lyndon B. Johnsons administration and is now the president of the California state board of education, wouldnt mind if the federal department erred on the side of leeway for states.

Im at the bottom looking up now and wanting to preserve flexibility, he said.

Loosening the Reins

The Golden State is one of just a handful that didnt participate in the Obama administrations NCLB waiver program. (It couldnt get on board with then-U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncans teacher-evaluation vision.)

Kirst is happy to be shrugging off the NCLB law for good, and especially to be gaining access to federal money that the state has had to set aside for the laws mandatory interventionsschool choice and tutoringwhich he saw as largely ineffective.

But ESSA may not be a breeze to implement. Kirst is already scratching his head over one new requirement, borrowed from the Obama administrations waiver initiative, that states turn around their bottom 5 percent of schools. In California, that could mean about 500 low performersa tall order for the state education agency, in Kirsts view.

For state officials, embracing ESSA represents a huge time and conceptual burden, Kirst said. But it feels to be a step in the right direction, so at least youre swimming with the tide.
The U.S. Department of Educations most recent blueprint for how technology should be used in schools calls for improving teacher training and drawing attention to what it describes as a digital-use divide between active and passive uses of digital and online content and tools.

We really see the plan as a vision for the country of what ed tech could be in our classrooms if its implemented in the way we think is best, said Joseph South, the deputy director of the departments office of educational technology, in an interview.

But while educators and observers hailed the fifth National Education Technology Planreleased last month and the first one issued only in a digital formatas a compelling statement of whats possible, attempts to institutionalize the vision it lays out will face big hurdles, according to ed-tech experts.

Hard Choices

Among the most significant: the newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The comprehensive federal education law, now known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, has left states and school districts to face tough choices in the coming years about whether to use federal dollars for technology or other pressing needs.

The last national ed-tech plan was released in 2010, a time when digital tablets were just coming on the market and the notion of digital personalized learning was still being developed. Five years later, the conversation has shifted from whether schools should use technology to how it can be used most effectively, the new plan contends. The country has also made big strides in improving the broadband and Wi-fi infrastructure serving schools and in providing classrooms with laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, and other digital devices.

The new plan focuses on five areas: learning, teaching, leadership, assessment, and infrastructure. As a guide to educators and policymakers, the document profiles various exemplars, ranging from the Cities of LRNG initiative, a nonprofit that uses technology to connect young people to a wide range of learning opportunities inside school and out, to a digitally enabled classroom collaboration between teachers in Denver and Cook County, Ill.

Outlining a National Vision for Better Tech Use in Schools The U.S. Department of Educations 2016 National Education Technology Plan includes a call to action, examples of best practices, and recommendations for the field in key areas, including: Learning: Technology can support engaging and empowering learning experiences in both formal and informal settings, the NETP says. Especially important are personalized learning opportunities optimized to meet the needs and preferences of each child; choice for students over what, when, and how they learn; and a focus on non-cognitive competencies, such as persistence. Games, simulations, and 3-D imaging software are emerging technologies to watch, the plan contends, and schools should focus on using technology to provide active learning experiences such as computer programming and media creation. Teaching: Effective use of technology is not an optional add-on or a skill that we simply can expect teachers to pick up once they get into the classroom, so teacher preparation and professional development around effective technology use must improve, the NETP argues. Federal officials hope to support teachers in collaborating via online communities and in taking leadership roles in their own schools around the effective use of ed tech. One key recommendation: developing a teaching force skilled in online and blended instruction. Leadership: Responsibility for articulating and implementing a strong vision for using technology in schools cannot be delegated, the NETP says. Through its Future Ready initiative, the U.S. Education Department is supporting superintendents in collaborating with each other and key local stakeholders, providing the resources and guidance needed to implement personalized learning models, and ensuring school access to adequate technology infrastructure. Assessment: The NETP calls for the use of technology to imagine and redefine assessment in a variety of ways, including more unobtrusive measurement of students as they learn; greater focus on assessing complex skill sets, such as problem-solving ability; more real-time feedback for educators and students alike; and better dashboards to visualize assessment results and other data in more user-friendly ways. Infrastructure: Reliable connectivity, like water and electricity, is foundational to creating an effective learning environment, the NETP says. Reform of the federal E-rate program should help in school; now department officials hope to see similar efforts to improve access at home. One area that some ed-tech experts would have liked to see addressed in greater depth: interoperability issues, so that information from the various software programs used by districts can be merged more easily. Benjamin Herold

Even though such early adopters have garnered plenty of attention, some longtime observers say the real challenge confronting the ed-tech field in 2016 and beyond is helping best practices take root more widely.

We need to be very clear-eyed about where we are in terms of access, types of technology usage, and the challenges of institutionalization, said Douglas A. Levin, the president of the consulting group EdTech Strategies and a contributor to the new plan. The reality out in many districts around the country is that we are actually pretty far away from the vision that is laid out in the plan.

Focus on Equity

Like its predecessors, the new document places a heavy emphasis on issues of equity.

Now, though, the most pressing digital divide has to do with how technology is used in the classroom, the plan contends. The department hopes to see more active uses of ed tech, such as coding, creative media production, design, and collaboration with experts.

The plan also calls for districts to shift away from buying print textbooks and instead make wider use of digital open educational resources, which are licensed to be free to use, revise, and share.

And one of the plans greatest areas of focus is on improving teacher training and professional development.

Across the board, teacher-preparation and professional-development programs fail to prepare teachers to use technology in effective ways, the document says.

The departments South said teacher-preparation programs bear the primary responsibility for fixing the problem. Ideally, he said, colleges and universities would move away from single stand-alone technology classes for prospective teachers, and they would also focus more heavily on training teachers to work in blended environments that merge face to face with computer-based instruction.

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, which represents about 845 of the nations 1,500 or so university-based teacher-preparation programs, took exception to the criticism.

I cant think of one teacher-preparation program that doesnt have integrated technology in their curriculum, said Rodrick Lucero, the groups vice president for member engagement and support. The naysayers who are critical maybe havent spent time in classrooms.

The focus on training was also part of the recent legislative struggle around reauthorization of the ESEA.

As recently as this past summer, ed-tech advocates hoped that a new federal education law would include an amendment known as I-TECH, which would have meant dedicated funding for schools to address the issue of teacher education around technology use.

Although the U.S. Senate approved the amendment, it did not make it into the Every Student Succeeds Act ultimately signed by President Barack Obama. Instead of dedicated technology funding, states and districts will receive block grants that may be spent on a broad array of needs, ranging from arts programs to Advanced Placement classes to suicide-prevention efforts.

A New Set of Problems

Advocates and department officials say theyre glad that spending on ed tech is allowed under the new law but disappointed that the money is not specifically earmarked for technology-related purposes.

Its going to mean challenging decisions for states and districts on how they allocate those resources across a number of diverse possibilities, South said. One concern is that the gap between technologically savvy states and districts and the rest of the country could grow even more pronounced. Those who have articulated a strong vision for how digital tools and content should be used have developed the capacity to turn those plans into reality, and should be able to find ways to further incorporate the tenets of the new National Education Technology Plan. Others, however, might struggle.

As it stands, said Levin of EdTech Strategies, the new national ed-tech plan looks like a hymnal for the true believers to use for inspiration and encouragement.

But whether the federal governments new blueprint can take root more widely may hinge on the degree to which it shapes the federal governments philosophy and rules around distributing the resources to be made available through the new block-grant program.

The legacy of this plan is dependent entirely on its influence over the regulatory work the department is about to embark on under ESSA, Levin said.

Its going to be the implementation of the new law that really actually drives peoples behavior.
With the dust finally settling on the passage of ESSAthe Every Student Succeeds Actthe implications are clear: The pendulum has swung. No matter who becomes our next president, we are entering an era in which the federal government is loosening its grip on public education policy. Without that backstop, the onus of school accountability will rest squarely on the states with the start of the 2017-18 school year. As a result, public and private leaders at the state and local levels will need to fundamentally rethink their roles.

This has been a long time coming. The No Child Left Behind Act, the ESSA predecessor passed by Congress in 2001, created a fairly muscular federal role in public school accountability. Through legislative authority and funding allocations, the federal government inspired a shift toward rewards and sanctions based on student assessments developed by each of the states.

The Obama administrations Race to the Top challenge, in 2009, took things further. By offering hundreds of millions of dollars of grant funding in exchange for important but hard-to-implement state strategies, the U.S. Department of Education catalyzed higher standards; aligned assessments; stronger teacher and school accountability; better college access; classroom innovation; and a raft of efforts to support these ideas at the classroom level.

Today, 14 years after No Child Left Behind was signed into law and six years after Race to the Topits dollars spent and scrutinizedthe country has repositioned the role of the federal government in education. Despite several unknowns about the path ahead, the left and the right seem to agree that power and influence should swing from the feds to the states.

Without a strong federal role, how will states avoid exacerbating the divides between the haves and the have-nots? How will we make real progress on complex issues and avoid the typical policy churn at the state and district levels? (Charismatic leader arrives, lots of new initiatives are introduced, field says too much, too fast, leader moves on, or gets moved on, the patina on the machine changes, the machine itself changes little.)

The reality is that any of the meaningful changes we hope to address in education will take longer than any one political cycle. If we want to address early learning systemically, fundamentally redesign a funding system, strengthen the teaching profession, or re-evaluate the delivery of education via personalization, we need a consistent vision that is owned by the public and private stakeholders and that can endure multiple political cycles.

While public-private partnerships exist in many states, the breadth and longevity of one particular state coalition is pretty unusual: that of Delaware.

Since 2005, education stakeholders in the First State have maintained a collaboration of public and private leaders called the Vision Coalition , of which I was a founding member. This group includes a leadership team of 12 with members from the following sectors: labor and business, districts and charters, nonprofits and corporations, higher education and early learning. Back in 2006, we released a report called Vision 2015"a 10-year vision for the states work ahead .

Fast-forward to today. More than three-quarters of the recommendations from that plan have been implemented, thanks in no small measure to funding from two federal government competitions$119 million through Race to the Top in 2009 and $49 million for the Early Learning Challenge in 2011. Our early-learning structure statewide has been transformed. Our higher standards, in the form of the common core and the Next Generation Science Standards, have been implemented statewide.

The state built a data system that is arguably the best in the country. We revamped teacher preparation, created a stronger teacher-evaluation system, and piloted personalized-learning models throughout the state.

As a result, our students are better off. In-state indicators have moved aggressively, particularly in areas like early learning, high school graduation, and college access and completion. Delaware, like many other states, saw its National Assessment of Educational Progress scores dip this year, but between 1992 and 2011, we had the third-fastest student-achievement growth trajectory in the United States, according to a 2012 study by Erik Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann.

How will we make real progress on complex issues and avoid the typical policy churn at the state and district levels?"

Weve been fortunate, but the landscape is changing. The federal funding is nearly gone. Gov. Jack Markell, a champion of education, will see his tenure end a year from now. And, as in much of the nation, the political environment around education in Delaware is fractious and tense.

Its why our Vision Coalition remains more important than ever. The personal relationships that have developed over the last decade among charter and district leaders, and CEOs and union presidents, have enabled us to continue moving forward. Its hard to demonize someone you actually know.

As we approached the shifting tides in 2014, the coalition began engaging the local community in an effort to think through their priorities for the next decade. The result is Student Success 2025" an education plan for the state. (The full report and student videos are available at www.visioncoalitionde.org. )

The coalition released the report this past fall, and here are five lessons that may be helpful to other states entering this new world of federal devolution:

1. Map backward. We learned from our colleagues in Canada and Singapore that if we asked people to imagine a long-term goalin our case: what a well-educated Delaware graduate would need to know in 2025that we could establish an ambitious common vision and not get mired in the current debates. Once we defined that North Star, which included much more than the mastery of academic content, it drove the design of the policy changes needed to get us there.

2. Design from the bottom up, rather than the top down. On the heels of Race to the Top, there was a real desire for bottom-up solutions. The coalition had 4,000 cups of coffee with local citizens, including more than 1,000 students and recent high school grads, to hear their thoughts and to help us build the plan. Some were online, but most were in local fire halls and libraries. They were real conversations.

3. Seek common ground, and lead. Like every other state, Delaware has debated issues like school choice and testing. Our coalition didnt avoid those issues, but we didnt let them derail us either. We had an 85 percent rule, which meant any leadership-team member could walk from the table if he or she disagreed with more than 15 percent of the plan. No ones walked yet. As one of our early facilitators, Marty Linsky, of Harvards Kennedy School of Government, said: Leadership is about being willing to disappoint your own constituency at a rate that they can stand.

4. Build in time and transparency. We deliberately took time to do this right so that everyone had a chance to weigh in. Rather than look for tepid endorsements at the 11th hour, the coalition produced a draft plan in six months and solicited feedback for five months. We didnt publish the final report until almost a year later.

5. Incorporate independent voices to avoid mush. Commission reports often sink to the lowest common denominator because the authors dont want to offend anyone on the commission. The result is often meaningless mush. To mitigate that danger, we looked to a third-party consulting group, as well as national and international experts, who informed and challenged our recommendations.

Vigorous debate wont (and shouldnt) ever go away. But in this new era of federal devolution, state and local leaders will need to find new ways to infuse more respect and humility into their work together. Agreeing on a plan is hard. Implementing it is harder.

As the country recalculates its course on how to prepare our next generations of leaders, parents, and citizens, Delaware hopes to learn with and from other states moving down the messy, yet essential, path toward higher ground and higher achievement for our students.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia signalled on Tuesday its breach in relations with Iran would not affect talks on Syria, another round of which is scheduled in Geneva this month.

Riyadh and Tehran have attended previous talks and support opposing sides in the war. There is concern the rift between them could set back diplomatic efforts to bring peace.

Speaking after talks in Riyadh with U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA):

"The recent tensions that impacted the region negatively will not affect ... the operations that the United Nations carries out alongside the international community to achieve a political solution in Geneva soon."

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on Monday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday.

Restating the kingdom's position on Syria, Jubeir said Riyadh sought a solution based on the Geneva 1 communique, a 2012 document setting out guidelines for a path to peace including a transitional governing authority, SPA said.

He reiterated President Bashar Al Assad would have no role in the future of Syria, SPA said.

The United Nations has set a target date of Jan. 25 for the talks. But Damascus has dismissed a new opposition body formed to oversee negotiations, and the opposition wants to see confidence-building steps from President Bashar al-Assad, a demand that could complicate efforts to start talks.

De Mistura, speaking after he met Jubeir and the Syrian opposition in Riyadh, said there was a clear determination on the Saudi side that current regional tensions would not have a negative impact on the momentum of the talks and on the continuation of the political process in Geneva.

De Mistura did not characterise the position of the Syrian opposition at the meeting, but said: "We cannot afford to lose this momentum despite what is going on in the region."

Syria's opposition has said it wants to see confidence-building steps from Damascus including a prisoner release, a halt to bombardments of towns and cities, and the lifting of blockades imposed by the government on rebel-held areas.

Britain's Special Representative for Syria on Tuesday urged the government to lift sieges as a step towards ending the nearly five-year-old conflict.

"Starving civilians is an inhuman tactic used by the Assad regime and their allies," Gareth Bayley said in a statement, referring to a months-long blockade in the town of Madaya, near Damascus.

"Sieges must be lifted to save civilian lives and to bring Syria closer to peace ... this human tragedy underscores the need for an end to this conflict."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said many of Madaya's 40,000 residents are starving.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; additional reporting by John Davison in Beirut, Omar Fahy in Cairo and Hadeel al Sayegh in Dubai; Editing by William Maclean and Andrew Roche)
By Greg Torode and Michael Martina

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - China's first landing of a plane on one of its new island runways in the South China Sea shows Beijing's facilities in the disputed region are being completed on schedule and military flights will inevitably follow, foreign officials and analysts said.

China's increasing military presence in the disputed sea could effectively lead to a Beijing-controlled air defence zone, they said, ratcheting up tensions with other claimants and with the United States in one of the world's most volatile areas.

China has confirmed that a test flight by a civilian plane landed on an artificial island built in the Spratlys, the first time Beijing has used a runway in the area.

Vietnam said the plane landed on Jan 2 and launched a formal diplomatic protest, while Philippines Foreign Ministry spokesman Charles Jose said Manila was planning to do the same. Both have claims to the area that overlap with China.

"That's the fear, that China will be able take control of the South China Sea and it will affect the freedom of navigation and freedom of over flight," Jose told reporters.

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said China's landing of the plane "raises tensions and threatens regional stability."

Senator John McCain, the chairman of the influential U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, criticised the Obama administration for delaying further "freedom of navigation" patrols within 12 nautical miles of the islands built by China.

China has been building runways on the artificial islands for over a year, and the plane's landing was not a surprise.

The runway at the Fiery Cross Reef is 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) long and is one of three China was constructing on artificial islands built up from seven reefs and atolls in the Spratlys archipelago.

The runways would be long enough to handle long-range bombers and transport craft as well as China's best jet fighters, giving them a presence deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia that they have lacked until now.

Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed that the new islands would be mostly for civilian use, such as coast guard activity and fishing research.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at the weekend that the test flight was intended to check whether the runway met civilian aviation standards and fell "completely within China's sovereignty".

Asked about McCain's remarks on Tuesday, she said: "We hope the U.S. can take an objective and fair attitude, and not make statements that confuse the situation and are harmful to regional peace and stability," she said.

DE FACTO DEFENCE ZONE

However, military landings on the islands were now "inevitable", said Leszek Buszynski, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

"The next step will be, once they've tested it with several flights, they will bring down some of their fighter air power - SU-27s and SU-33's - and they will station them there permanently. That's what they're likely to do."

Ian Storey, a South China Sea expert at Singapore's ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, said he expected tensions to worsen as China used its new facilities to project power deeper into the South China Sea.

Even if China stopped short of formally declaring an Air Defence Identification Zone, known as an ADIZ, Beijing's need to protect its new airstrips and other facilities could see it effectively operating one.

Work is well underway to complete a range of port, storage and personnel facilities on the new islands, U.S. and regional officials have said.

Fiery Cross is also expected to house advanced early warning radars and military communications facilities, they said.

"As these facilities become operational, Chinese warnings to both military and civilian aircraft will become routine," Storey said. "These events are a precursor to an ADIZ, or an undeclared but de facto ADIZ, and one has to expect tensions to rise."

China sparked condemnation from the United States and Japan in late 2013 when it declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea, covering uninhabited islands disputed with Tokyo.

Hua, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Monday that there were no immediate plans for an ADIZ in the South China Sea.

However, regional military officials say they are logging increased warnings to aircraft from Chinese radio operators, including some from ground stations on Fiery Cross reef.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of world trade ships every year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims.

The United States has no claim in the South China Sea, but has been highly critical of China's assertiveness and says it will protect freedom of navigation.

In Washington, McCain said that the lack of U.S. action after a navy patrol near the islands in October was allowing China to continue to "pursue its territorial ambitions" in the region.

U.S. officials remain committed to carrying out further "freedom of navigation" patrols near the disputed islands, but are still debating the timing of another patrol, said one U.S. defense official, who was not authorised to speak publicly.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in WASHINGTON, Megha Rajagopalan in BEIJING, Manuel Mogato in MANILA and Matt Siegel in SYDNEY; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
By Rupam Jain Nair and Krista Mahr

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian security forces have killed six militants who launched an assault on a military air base in northern India that killed seven security personnel and injured 22, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the air base, Parrikar declined to say definitively that no more militants were at large until the four-day-old operation to clear the facility was over. He said those efforts could end as soon as Wednesday.

While praising Indian security forces for eliminating the attackers, Parrikar also alluded to "some gaps" in security that allowed the attackers to reach the base in the northwestern state of Punjab.

It has emerged that the militants hijacked a police officer's car but that his call to a colleague, after he was dumped by the roadside, was not taken seriously. The National Investigation Agency, a central body set up to probe such cross-border attacks, is investigating.

The apparently well-planned assault on a strategic military target just 25 km (16 miles) from the border has put pressure on an attempt by prime ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif to improve historically fraught relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

The Indian leader paid a surprise birthday visit to his Pakistani counterpart in late December. In a sign that both want the incipient dialogue to continue, Sharif called Modi on Tuesday to convey his "sorrow and grief" at the losses from the air base attack.

Pakistan will investigate leads and information provided by the government of India, Sharif's office said in a readout of the call. Both premiers are resolved to fight terrorism together, an aide also said.

According to a statement issued by the Indian government, Modi called for "firm and immediate action against those responsible for the air base attack", based on specific and actionable information provided to Pakistan.

A round of talks between the two countries' foreign secretaries has been tentatively scheduled for Jan. 15.

ENGULFING INDIA

The United Jihad Council (UJC), an alliance of pro-Pakistan militant groups based in the Pakistani-administered part of the divided Kashmir region, has claimed responsibility for the assault.

The group's leader warned that their attacks "can engulf all of India" if the issue of Kashmir's divided rule is not resolved.

"Whenever they want, wherever they want, they can target the enemy," UJC leader Syed Salahuddin said in a voice recording released by a group spokesman on Tuesday. Salahuddin's voice was recognised by a Reuters reporter from previous messages and public appearances.

The claim of responsibility has, however, met a sceptical response among India's security establishment, which blames another group called Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed).

That group was founded by Masood Azhar after he was released by India in 1999 in exchange for passengers on an Indian airliner that was hijacked.

The head of India's National Investigation Agency, Sharad Kumar, told reporters in New Delhi that the attackers came from Pakistan but did not elaborate.

"I REALISED THAT THEY WERE TERRORISTS"

The day before the assault, a police officer returning from a temple was abducted by a group of heavily armed men speaking Urdu, among other languages, he said on Tuesday.

"The minute I saw them I realised that they were terrorists," Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh told media.

"One of the gunmen snatched my phone and made calls to Pakistan," Singh said. Urdu, widely spoken in Pakistan, can be mostly understood by Hindi speakers.

Phone records indicate the perpetrators used Singh's phone inside the air base by mid-afternoon on Jan. 1, according to the Indian Express, 12 hours before they were detected through aerial surveillance.

It remains unclear exactly how the attackers infiltrated the fortified base, which has a 24-km (15-mile) perimeter surrounded by a 3-metre (10-foot) wall topped with concertina wire.

(Additional reporting by Asad Hashim in Islamabad and Mukesh Gupta in Pathankot, India; Editing by Douglas Busvine, Robert Birsel)
Washington, Jan 5 (EFE).- U.S. President Barack Obama outlined Monday executive measures aimed at reducing gun violence in the country that, he said, could "potentially save lives."

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a daily press briefing there was need for imminent action in the face of the Congress' failure to enact gun control legislation to prevent 30,000 Americans from dying from gun violence every year.

Shortly after, Obama met U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, among other officials and advisers, for recommendations to toughen gun-control through executive action.

In brief statements to reporters from the Oval Office, Obama said he will reveal the executive measures in the coming days and shortly after the White House said they will be announced Tuesday morning.

Obama explained the measures would fall within his legal authority as president and will be consistent with the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which gives citizens the right to bear arms.

Although "it's not going to prevent every mass shooting, it's not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal, it will potentially save lives," the president emphasized.

The U.S. president's move comes amid congressional lethargy on approving legislation to achieve greater control on the sale and possession of firearms in the country, which he has admitted has been the biggest frustration last year, but he may not be able to completely prevent the Republican-dominated Congress from blocking them.

The Congress will have to approve the request for fresh funds in the fiscal 2017 budget plan to employ 200 new agents and investigators of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Obama wants the FBI to recruit over 230 more agents and other personnel to speed up the process of conducting background checks.

This is an important aspect, said Lynch on Monday, as existing laws say if a background check takes more than three days a person can buy a gun without being cleared.

The measures also include a request for $500 million to improve mental health research.

On Thursday, Obama will take part in a town hall-style question-and-answer session on ways to control gun violence that will be broadcast by CNN.
New York, Jan 5 (EFE).- The U.N. Security Council is exploring various actions in the wake of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia but is yet to reach conclusions, said Uruguay U.N. Ambassador Elbio Rosselli on Monday.

Rosselli, whose country is council president for the month, referred to the discussions during a briefing on the U.N. body's monthly program, where the Middle East situation is expected to dominate several sessions.

The U.N. announced it is closely monitoring tensions in the region after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked by a mob protesting the execution of a Shiite cleric in Riyadh.

The attack led to Saudi Arabia breaking off diplomatic relations with Iran, with Bahrain and Sudan following suit.

The Uruguayan diplomat also said the council had received a letter from Saudi authorities requesting measures by the council to ensure the inviolability of diplomatic facilities and protection of all Saudi diplomats in Iran.

Iran and Saudi Arabia, belonging to different blocs, are key players in the Middle East, and can have a decisive role in resolving armed conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

However, tensions sparked over the weekend could mean a setback for the Syrian peace talks, although Saudi U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi told reporters Monday the rift won't hurt the Syrian peace efforts so far as his country was concerned.

In telephonic conversations with foreign ministers of both the countries late Monday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged both Tehran and Riyadh to avoid an escalation of tensions.

A U.N. spokesperson said Ban told Iranian minister, Mohamad Yavad Zarif, the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was deplorable, but added the announcement of a rupture in Saudi diplomatic relations with Iran was deeply worrying.
Mexico City, Jan 5 (EFE).- Information will be released about the contract with Autotraffic, the company that operates red-light cameras in the capital, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said.

Public Safety Secretary Hiram Almedia will be providing information to the public about the bidding and contract award process involving Autotraffic, the mayor said following an event on Monday.

Stories about the company having to meet a quota of 5,000 citations a month are a "myth," Mancera said, adding that "there is no way this would be allowed."

Mexico City's new traffic code is not "going to be taken down" because it has received a positive reception from residents, the mayor said.

City council members from the leftist National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, said over the weekend that the contract allowed Autotraffic to keep 46 percent of the revenue from citations.

Felipe de la Cruz Menez, a Morena member on the city council, said the contract should be reviewed and called for all information relating to the deal be made public.

The controversy over red-light cameras stems from the new Federal District traffic code, which took effect on Dec. 15 and has already resulted in the issuance of more than 23,000 citations via the automated systems.
Select the Times' Boys and Girls Athletes of the Week for Oct. 10-16
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.

17:55, 17 OCT 2022
Residents given the opportunity to learn Mandarin

People in the north of the Island are being offered the chance to learn how to speak Mandarin.

In a pilot scheme, being launched this month, Ramsey Grammar School will host community classes focussing on the language and wider Chinese culture.



The Department of Education and Children is funding a teacher for 10 hours of study time.

It follows the government's efforts to improve links between the Island and China - a nation seen as important economically; headteacher Annette Baker says it will also help make the school a community hub:

Media

Annette Baker
Re: Suing a Potential Employeer in Switzerland Quote: TheAvenger I also don't say that I am a good fit, I just think that I have the right to defend my answer to the above question and explain how I decided to give it. I would be totally OK if they afterwords still told me I am not fit because I help too much/don't help enough.



I have a colleague who recently did a series of interviews and tests with a games company, including a practical that had him write a game for them over a weekend as proof of his skills. In doing so he agreed to give them all rights to his work. Then multiple interviews and development of a game for them later, they simply said they were not going to progress.



Job applications are an investment that cost people time and, sometimes, money. Unless otherwise stated they don't 'owe' you anything for this, any more than you are obligated to accept a job offer from them. Not even feedback. If you don't like that kind of thing, ask them what their policy is before progressing with them and if they tell you - in writing - that they will give you feed back, all well and good. Otherwise, tell them you're not interested and wish them all the best in their search.



But don't blindly apply, make that investment of time and money, and then whinge how you didn't bother to check what the deal was afterwords. When you apply for a role like this, most HR departments will include the necessary disclaimers should you choose to read them and if required. Google will bluntly tell you they won't give you feedback of any kind if they don't take you on and then run you through various tests and interviews.I have a colleague who recently did a series of interviews and tests with a games company, including a practical that had him write a game for them over a weekend as proof of his skills. In doing so he agreed to give them all rights to his work. Then multiple interviews and development of a game for them later, they simply said they were not going to progress.Job applications are an investment that cost people time and, sometimes, money. Unless otherwise stated they don't 'owe' you anything for this, any more than you are obligated to accept a job offer from them. Not even feedback. If you don't like that kind of thing, ask them what their policy is before progressing with them and if they tell you - in writing - that they will give you feed back, all well and good. Otherwise, tell them you're not interested and wish them all the best in their search.But don't blindly apply, make that investment of time and money, and then whinge how you didn't bother to check what the deal was afterwords.
Re: Turing Pharmaceuticals in Baar, Switzerland Quote: jsherk There are worse offenders out there...Gilead's Hep-C drug, which can effectively cure the disease, was, as I understand, created by a Veteran's Affairs Dr. who sold the drug to Gilead. In return, they are kind enough to charge the VA administrations a discounted price of approx. $50k per dose, making billions off the US market alone.



The cost to produce is approx. $1.5k per regimen. There are hundreds of thousands of patients in the US alone that could be cured, but the insurance companies can't afford the cost and neither can the VA. At $10k per regimen, they would make $5B on 500k patients. The VA alone has 200k patients that would benefit, but they are out of funds.



They charge Germany and France approx. EUR 40k.



"(The three-point seat belt) was a revolutionary invention, and one that probably could have netted Volvo a fortune on patents alone.

But Volvo didn't do that  they gave the patent away because they decided it was too important to keep to themselves. From the story: The reason the three-point seatbelt is so widely adopted is actually because Volvo opened up the patent so that any car manufacturer could use it in their design. They decided that the invention was so significant, it had more value as a free life saving tool than something to profit from.

Volvos managing director Alan Dessell is quoted as saying: The decision to release the three-point seat belt patent was visionary and in line with Volvos guiding principle of safety. "

http://jalopnik.com/volvo-gave-away-...ave-1069825878

The company that patented the cheap industrial chemical for use as an MS drug paid its CEO $18.6 million in 2014. Volvo apparently paid its CEO less.



See p.47 for CEO of pharma company's 2014 earnings:



http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...m#toc786327_27 Occasionally, there is a company that puts human lives ahead of corporate profits. Consider the case of Volvo and its patent on the three-point seat belt:"(The three-point seat belt) was a revolutionary invention, and one that probably could have netted Volvo a fortune on patents alone.But Volvo didn't do that  they gave the patent away because they decided it was too important to keep to themselves. From the story:The company that patented the cheap industrial chemical for use as an MS drug paid its CEO $18.6 million in 2014. Volvo apparently paid its CEO less.See p.47 for CEO of pharma company's 2014 earnings:
Re: Arab gang assaults in Germany It is a great example of how different media outlets report on the same story.



Simply put:

- Violence by drunk people on large gatherings is nothing new. What is new is the quality and scale of this event. It simply sounds like it was planned. So let's see what the cops will find out. Currently are more and more witnesses coming forward and filing reports... let's see what the evidence can do before people jump to conclusions. Last December did the government introduce a massive phone record storage program to "fight terrorism". Now we can see how long it takes to find out whose mobile phone was on the square at the time of the assaults...

- within one post did the word "refugee" come up here. Most refugees are from Syria and Afghanistan, most newspaper mention witnesses talking about North Africans, many apparently speaking French. That leads to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. I know that for many newspapers an Arab is an Arab, but I hope the cops do a better job...

- Cologne is a large city (around twice the size of Zurich) with a for German standards rather high crime rate and well established organized crime scene. The biggest groups there are Turkish and indeed Arabian and have been so for decades. Blaming anything on refugees arriving last year without any concrete arrests is ridiculous. It's not like they are the only middle Eastern men around... and definitely not the most dangerous in Cologne.

- The whole thing happened in front of the main station. If you have never been to Cologne: That's the one place I'd expect new year parties to go out of hand in terms of alcohol and fireworks. I'd expect the police to be present with quite a force and they apparently have been. What I am most curious about is how the cops can have missed 90 cases of sexual assaults right in front of their noses. In one case apparently even including a plain clothes female police officer ON DUTY. Do they not have radios?!
Now that Teresa Giudice is a free woman after spending the last twelve months in jail, it looks like she has another huge problem looming over her head: her husband Joe Giudice and his upcoming 41-month sentence. In fact, there's a new report that suggests the reality television star's life might be in danger as he prepares to spend his time behind bars as well.

Photos: Teresa Giudice Returns Home, Films 'RHONJ' Season Seven In Montville

According to Star Magazine on Monday, even though Teresa and Joe are enjoying what little family time they have together, it's not going to last very long as Joe's prison life will apparently be "no walk in the park."

The father-of-four, who has been found guilty of multiple counts of fraud, will be serving his time at New Jersey's FCI Fort Dix center, which is supposedly one of the toughest prisons in the country.

You'll Never Believe What Pricey Gift Teresa Giudice Received When She Arrived Home From Prison

One source said, "Fort Dix used to be an Army camp before it was a prison."

The insider added that the New Jersey facility is "more of a dorm style in terms of how the prisoners are held." The source added: "Instead of jail cells, they mostly all sleep in one contained area with many beds."

The tipster further explained, "Although Giudice may think he is going to a lax facility. the staff there will try to treat Joe the same as they treat everyone else, but there will be guys who latch on to him because he is famous."

Keep up with Enstars for all the latest updates on the Giudices as well as all of your favorite reality stars right here.
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - In Colombia, bean crops contribute significantly to the region's agriculture. Because these important crops are vulnerable to pests and diseases, growers often need to rely on chemicals to protect valuable crops. New research on the use of kaolin (aluminosilicate clay) contains information that can help bean producers limit the use of conventional pesticides and develop new strategies for integrated pest management.

The authors of the study in HortScience said previous experiments in temperate regions have shown that kaolin foliar sprays have insecticidal attributes. "However, this type of research in tropical areas, specifically in Andean regions, is virtually nonexistent," they noted. The researchers from Universidad Nacional de Colombia studied the greenhouse whitefly Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood), one of the most prevalent pests in the region's bean crops. The study design consisted of three experiments using four treatments: no insecticide (control), synthetic chemical insecticides, foliar applications of kaolin at 2.5%, and foliar applications of kaolin at 5% (weight/volume).

Foliar applications of kaolin at both doses controlled 80% of the population of whitefly in different stages (eggs, nymphs, and adults) in all three experiments. Analyses showed that the percentage of efficacy of the two doses of kaolin was similar to that obtained in bean plants treated with synthetic chemical insecticides (90%).

The study also showed kaolin doses at 5% produced positive effects on the bean plant physiology, causing a 40% reduction in transpiration and an increase of 43% in leaf chlorophyll content compared with untreated plants.

"We can suggest that the use of kaolin can be considered as an alternative to control whitefly, T. vaporariorum, without any negative effect on seed yield," the authors said. They added that kaolin may also help the plant physiology, especially under conditions of abiotic stress such as drought.

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The complete study and abstract are available on the ASHS HortScience electronic journal web site: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/50/10/1503.abstract

Founded in 1903, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) is the largest organization dedicated to advancing all facets of horticultural research, education, and application. More information at ashs.org
The Harold Alfond Foundation today announced a $3.1 million award to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences for construction of a 32-bed student and visiting scientist residence with four visitor's apartments on the Laboratory's East Boothbay Campus. An anonymous donor has matched the award, allowing the project to break ground in April 2016. A separate endowment has been established to cover maintenance and operating costs of the new facility for 50 years.

"We are both honored and delighted that the Harold Alfond Foundation has recognized the value of the Laboratory's education programs by offering its generous support, making it possible for us to house students and visitors safely and comfortably on site while participating in our many educational and collaborative research programs," said Graham Shimmield, executive director of Bigelow Laboratory. "It will allow us to expand our educational programs so more students and professionals have access to our world-class scientists."

"This is exactly the type of project that the Harold Alfond Foundation likes to support," said Greg Powell, chairman of the Harold Alfond Foundation Board of Trustees. "Bigelow Laboratory's new residence met or exceeded all of our requirements. The project is entrepreneurial in that it will allow the Laboratory to expand its educational offerings to not only students but to professionals, which, in turn, will help ensure economic growth for the Laboratory and the region. The project is rock solid financially and matched by a generous donor. Plus, it will be overseen by a great management team at Bigelow Laboratory, who have great vision and optimism for the state of Maine."

Bigelow Laboratory's educational programs serve high school students from every county in Maine, undergraduate students from across the U.S., professional short course attendees, and visiting scientists from around the globe.

The new 15,000 square-foot dormitory residence will overlook the Damariscotta River on the Laboratory's East Boothbay campus and will be a short walk from the main Laboratory building and its shore facility. Energy efficiency, ease of maintenance, and respect for the surrounding environment embody the design.

The ground floor will be below grade to accommodate the natural slope of the landscape, creating a courtyard surrounded by ledge or a "natural amphitheater" in the upper area. A partial green roof will help absorb rainwater, provide insulation, and help create an aesthetically pleasing natural look for the structure. A mixture of glass, natural wood, aluminum, and preformed concrete construction materials will promote longevity and easy maintenance, while allowing the building to blend into the wooded acreage of the waterfront site. A 75 kW array of photovoltaic cells will provide energy to meet all electric needs of the residence, including heating and ventilation. Windows, doors, and insulation will all be energy efficient and provide maximum R-value rating.

"We are striving for a Net Zero Energy building," added Shimmield. "Since inhabiting our energy-efficient laboratory space that opened in December 2012, we personally understand how efficient energy use and construction goes a long way toward making a building pleasant to be in, and we are sure the same will hold true for the students and guests in the new residence."

The two-story structure will have 8 double bedrooms on each floor that can be flexibly arranged to accommodate guests numbering from 8 to 32. It also will provide a communal student kitchen and social area, adaptable meeting space that can serve dual functions as an auditorium or recreation area, and fitness and laundry areas.

Two adjacent wings will contain three studio apartments with kitchen, bedroom, and bath to accommodate visiting scientists and other guests, and a two-bedroom apartment to house visitors with families.

Scott Simons Architects of Portland, Maine designed the building. The Portland office of Consigli Construction Company, Inc. is providing construction management services.

The Harold Alfond Foundation furthers the legacy of Harold Alfond by investing in education, healthcare, youth development, and other philanthropic charitable causes that hold the promise of making enduring transformative contributions to the community and State of Maine.

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, an independent not-for-profit research institution on the coast of Maine, conducts research ranging from microbial oceanography to large-scale ocean processes that affect the global environment. Recognized as a leader in Maine's emerging innovation economy, the Laboratory's research, education, and enterprise programs are spurring significant economic growth in the state.

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The Large Hadron Collider, a.k.a. CERN, found success in a simple idea: Invest in a laboratory that no one institution could sustain on their own and then make it accessible for physicists around the world. Astronomers have done the same with telescopes, while neuroscientists are collaborating to build brain imaging observatories. Now, in Trends in Plant Science on January 5, agricultural researchers present their vision for how a similar idea could work for them.

Rather than a single laboratory, the authors want to open a network of research stations across Europe--from a field in Scotland to an outpost in Sicily. Not only would this provide investigators with easy access to a range of different soil properties, temperatures, and atmospheric conditions to study plant/crop growth, it would allow more expensive equipment (for example, open-field installations to create artificial levels of carbon dioxide) to be a shared resource.

"Present field research facilities are aimed at making regional agriculture prosperous," says co-author Hartmut Stutzel of Leibniz Universitat Hannover in Germany. "To us, it is obvious that the 'challenges' of the 21st century--productivity increase, climate change, and environmental sustainability--will require more advanced research infrastructures covering a wider range of environments."

Stutzel and colleagues, including Nicolas Bruggemann of Forschungszentrum Julich in Germany and Dirk Inze of VIB and Ghent University in Belgium, are just at the beginning of the process of creating their network, dubbed ECOFE (European Consortium for Open Field Experimentation). The idea was born last February at a meeting of Science Europe and goes back to discussions within a German Research Foundation working group starting four years ago. Now, they are approaching European ministries to explore the possibilities for ECOFE's creation.

In addition to finding financial and political investment, ECOFE's success will hinge on whether scientists at the various institutional research stations will be able to sacrifice a bit of their autonomy to focus on targeted research projects, Stutzel says. He likens the network to a car sharing service, in which researchers will be giving up the autonomy and control of their own laboratories to have access to facilities in different cities. If ECOFE catches on, thousands of scientists could be using the network to work together on a range of "big picture" agricultural problems.

"It will be a rather new paradigm for many traditional scientists, but I think the communities are ready to accept this challenge and understand that research in the 21st century requires these types of infrastructures," Stutzel say. "We must now try to make political decision makers aware that a speedy implementation of a network for open field experimentation is fundamental for future agricultural research."

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This work was made possible with the financial support of the European Research Council.

Trends in Plant Science, Stutzel et al.: "The future of field trials in Europe: establishing a network beyond boundaries" http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2015.12.003

Trends in Plant Science (@TrendsPlantSci), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that features broad coverage of basic plant science, from molecular biology through to ecology. Aimed at researchers, students, and teachers, its articles are authoritative and written by both leaders in the field and rising stars. For more information, please visit http://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science. To receive media alerts for Cell Press journals, please contact press@cell.com.
To arrange for an interview with a researcher, please contact the Communications staff member identified at the end of each tip. For more information on ORNL and its research and development activities, please refer to one of our media contacts. If you have a general media-related question or comment, you can send it to news@ornl.gov.

COLLABORATION - World of opportunities ...

With the creation of the Unmanned Aerial Systems Research Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory makes available tools and capabilities with applications in environment, energy, infrastructure, security and humanitarian efforts. For example, the ability to fly over land that is not easily accessible allows the center to carry out detailed critical structure, agricultural and environmental inspections, said Rick Lusk, director of UASRC and leader of ORNL's Data System Sciences and Engineering Group. Unmanned aerial systems can provide virtually unlimited amounts of information about airborne contaminants, bridges, dams, transmission lines, cell towers, pipelines and can help first responders determine needs during a natural or man-made disaster. Tactical surveillance is another key application for unmanned aerial systems and the center, which will allow industry and government agencies to tap into a wealth of resources. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/drone%20tip.png

Cutline: Drones can play an important role in a number of areas, including making the U.S. safe, improving crop yield and safeguarding the environment.

MATERIALS - Clear advantages ...

Touchscreens, smart phones, liquid crystal displays and solar panels of tomorrow could be more efficient because of a new material profiled in a paper published in Scientific Reports. Researchers at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a transparent conducting oxide thin film that relies on fundamentally different physics than existing transparent conducting oxides. "The charge carriers in our material are highly mobile and can move very fast under electric fields, allowing logic devices to switch rapidly such as for the on/off operation in transistors," said UT's Ramki Kalyanaraman, who led the team. "This property also allows them to carry electrical current efficiently." Researchers noted that their approach isn't based on indium, a precious metal, yet is already competitive with the state of theart. The paper is available at http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18157. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/news/images/02%20Clear%20advantages%20-%20ramki%20tip.jpeg

Cutline: New transparent conductor made from more earth-abundant elements promises lower cost solar cells and displays.

POPULATION - New modeling component ...

By studying hospital occupancy rates in hospitals of countries where data is readily available, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers hope to further refine their population distribution and dynamics work. For this effort, researchers are focusing on night and day population density for more than 50 facility types, including hospitals. "This research is important to the project in support of the best modeling algorithms for building occupancy around the world, including in data-poor regions," said Jason Kaufman, who will be presenting the work at the Association of American Geographers conference in San Francisco. Kaufman noted that the data play an important role in natural hazards loss analytics, population distribution estimates and green building technologies. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]

SENSORS - Extending limits ...

Through manipulation of two laser beams and plasmonic sensors, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are pushing the boundaries for detecting trace biochemical compounds. These sensors, which exploit local electromagnetic fields and the ultra-sensitive plasmon resonance, are widely used for commercial sensing and in research labs. Detecting individual molecules, however, typically requires long integration times, but by reducing the noise floor with quantum states of light, Ben Lawrie and Raphael Pooser have enabled faster detection of trace biochemical signals. Their work appears in ACS Photonics. This finding builds on research just published in Physical Review A in which they used quantum noise as the signal in an otherwise identical plasmonic sensor. "We showed that instead of reducing the noise floor we can use quantum noise as the signal for plasmonic sensors, amplifying the sensor response for a given change in chemical concentration," Lawrie said. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/03%20extending%20limits%20tip_2.jpeg

Cutline: The entanglement between the two beams of light enables researchers to resolve trace signals from the plasmonic sensor that would otherwise be undetectable.

ECOLOGY - Mapping forest canopies ...

A new data analytics approach developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory could help forest and wildlife managers track changes in vegetation and wildlife habitat across large land areas. Computational researchers from ORNL's Climate Change Science Institute designed a framework to transform complex LIDAR remote sensing data into high-resolution maps of vegetation canopy structures. In collaboration with the USDA Forest Service, the team used the tool to characterize the diverse ecosystems found in the Tennessee portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "Over time, we can track if vegetation is shifting from one type to another and understand how structural changes might affect habitats for animals, especially bird species," said ORNL's Jitendra Kumar. The tool uses machine learning to classify the vegetation types and incorporates knowledge from existing maps. [Contact: Morgan McCorkle, (865) 574-7308; mccorkleml@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/04%20mapping%20forest%20tip.jpeg

Cutline: This ORNL-developed map depicts different classes of vegetation canopy structure in the Tennessee portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

COMPUTING - Patterns and predictions ...

Drawing connections between seemingly disparate and vast amounts of text could become easier thanks to software developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Researchers Matt Sangkeun Lee and Sreenivas Rangan Sukumar bring "six degrees of separation" to the computational field with holistic graph analysis technology, a smart data tool that scales on Cray's URIKA-GD. The open-source software generates webs of patterns and predictions from stored data while automatically extracting tidbits of useful knowledge. For a world of disparate data such as social media or healthcare, this is a promising tool for visualizing and discovering new information from stored data. "We have the hardware and the software," Lee said. "It's not just theory anymore." [Contact: Ashanti B. Washington, (865) 241-9515; washingtonab@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/05%20patterns%20tip.png

Cutline: ORNL's open-source software mines for insights in Big Data, enabling timely detection of useful information such as fraud within a healthcare service provider network.

MATERIALS - Steel like none other ...

Steel unlike any forged in the last 2,000 years will be in the spotlight at the TMS 2016 Annual Meeting & Exhibition Feb. 14-18 in Nashville. Lynn Boatner of Oak Ridge National Laboratory will present a paper that describes the "intrinsically decorative steel" manufactured with no forging operations whatsoever. "The process for forming this material is unlike that of any of the fabrication methods utilized in making the original Damascus steels or the more recent pattern-welded steels," Boatner said. The material begins as melt-grown single crystals of an iron-nickel-chromium alloy that, following additional non-mechanical processing steps, emerges as steel that earned second place honors at the 2015 International Metallographic Contest and Exhibit in Portland, Oregon. It has applications spanning cutlery, automotive, jewelry and a variety of other uses. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/06%20steel%20tip.jpg

Cutline: This is an example of the decorative pattern formed on a surface of an austenitic alloy single crystal.

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Local health departments could play a significant role in tackling mental health issues in the United States, according to a recent study conducted by faculty in Drexel's Dornsife School of Public Health.

Local health departments are government entities responsible for addressing the public health needs and concerns of a specified geographic population. Nearly 3,000 serve cities and counties nationwide.

Drexel's professors found that of the 505 local health departments they studied, between 30 and 40 percent provided some form of mental health care services. Additionally, those that provided services were found to be seven times more likely to perform population-based mental illness prevention activities and almost three times as likely to be involved in policy or advocacy for activities to address mental health issues.

Jonathan Purtle, DrPH, assistant professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management, was the lead author of the study, "Prevalence and correlates of local heath department activities to address mental health in the United States," which was published in the journal Preventive Medicine. Purtle's co-authors in the study were Ann Klassen, PhD, Jennifer Kolker, MPH and James Buehler, MD.

"Mental health is important for public health in two main ways," said Purtle. "One is that mental health conditions adversely impact quality of life and are highly prevalent. Depression is among the top conditions in the world that leads to an adverse quality of life. And the second part if why mental health is important is a huge body of research tells us that mental health conditions hugely increase the risk of developing physical conditions and injury."

Providing a more holistic sense of health, linking the mental and physical aspects, is important.

"For 100 years, people in the United States have been saying mental health is a public health issue. And people in the public health field have been saying, 'Yes. It is,'" Purtle said. "That said, many of these organizations have been focused on physical health and mental health has been looked at as the domain of psychologists and psychotherapists, which is an individually-based view of health."

With local health departments taking on a more holistic view of health that includes mental health services, there are opportunities to leverage that into further growth.

Under the Affordable Care Act, to retain their tax-exempt status, non-profit hospitals must conduct a community health needs assessment every three years. Local health departments could provide opportunities for partnerships with these hospitals to to better address those community mental health needs, according to the Drexel research team.

The Drexel team found that roughly 25 percent of local health departments implement strategies to target the mental health service needs of under-served populations. If a local health department already had some form of mental health care services to offer, the study indicated that it was almost three times as likely to attempt to reach underserved populations.

When looking at those local health departments that implemented strategies to reach underserved populations, it was found that roughly 80 percent of them sought to access gaps in mental health care and just over 88 percent attempted to increase access to mental health services. Additionally, almost half of those local health departments were found to be involved in policy and advocacy activities addressing mental health.

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Boulder, Colo., USA - Apatite has recently gained considerable attention as a mineral with many uses within the Earth and planetary sciences. Apatite chemistry has recently given new insight into a wide range of geological processes and tools, such as magmatism, metasomatism, planetary geochemistry, and geochronology. In their open-access Geology article, Emilie Bruand and colleagues expand the utility of apatite by presenting a novel way to fingerprint magma chemistry and petrogenesis using apatite inclusions within robust titanite and zircon.

Bruand and colleagues present trace element data from apatite mineral inclusions shielded within magmatic zircon and titanite. Importantly, apatite inclusion and host titanite chemistries detailed in this study allow estimation of the whole-rock Sr and SiO2. They show how these data can be used to assess the degree of fractionation of the host magma and to calculate key trace element abundances and ratios. They also demonstrate that the inclusions can be linked to discrete periods in the crystallization history of the host phases, thus providing insight into petrogenesis.

These results highlight the fact that apatite compositions might discriminate modern granitoids (younger than 2.5 Ga) from Archean-Proterozoic transitional granitoid compositions (sanukitoid signatures). Development of such a petrological tool has important potential for interpretation of provenance and a better understanding of the secular evolution of the continental crust, including that of early Earth.

FEATURED ARTICLE

An apatite for progress: Inclusions in zircon and titanite constrain petrogenesis and provenance

Emilie Bruand et al., School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Burnaby Building, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth PO1 3QL, UK. This paper is OPEN ACCESS online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2016/01/04/G37301.1.abstract.

Other recently posted GEOLOGY articles are highlighted below:

Spatiotemporal variability of typhoon impacts and relaxation intervals on Jaluit Atoll, Marshall Islands

Murray R. Ford and Paul S. Kench, School of Environment, University of Auckland, 10 Symonds Street, Auckland 1010, New Zealand. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37402.1.

Low-lying reef islands such as those in Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Marshall Islands are considered highly vulnerable to a range of climatic hazards including tropical storms. Within the Marshall Islands storms have had devastating impacts on atoll populations. However, the impacts of storms on the islands themselves are not well understood. Jaluit Atoll in the southern Marshall Islands was severely impacted by Typhoon Ophelia in 1958. Using a collection of aerial photos from before and after the typhoon, we were able to track the impacts of the storm around the atoll. Modern, high-resolution satellite imagery was then used to assess the current state of the islands over 50 years after the event. Our results show massive impacts of the typhoon, with widespread loss of land, including in some cases the complete destruction of islands. However, we also observed the significant ongoing reformation and recovery of the islands, to the extent that the land area on Jaluit Atoll now exceeds the pre-storm size and continues to increase. It appears that the storm generated vast quantities of sediment which has driven the growth of islands. Our observations occur in the context of local sea level rise and highlight the inherent dynamism of reef islands.

Paleogene laterites bearing the highest insect ichnodiversity in paleosols

Eduardo Bellosi et al., Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, C1405DJR Buenos Aires, Argentina. This article is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37250.1.

Laterites are red-colored residual deposits formed by intense and long-lasting subaerial weathering (i.e., soil/paleosol) of any rock or deposit under present or ancient warm and humid conditions. Eocene stacked laterites from Uruguay are unique in preserving in detail highly diverse and abundant assemblages of insect trace fossils. This paleopedological and ichnological study allows knowing the activity (nesting and pupating) of the invertebrate soil fauna from an ancient tropical-seasonal savanna. Trace fossils also helped for the reconstruction of complex and iterative sedimentologic and bio-geochemical processes that originated different facies in these laterites. Such processes were governed by cyclic changes in tectonics and climate, particularly iterative desiccation and rehydration stages.

Nanoscale constraints on porosity generation and fluid flow during serpentinization

Benjamin M. Tutolo et al., Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37349.1.

Olivine, the primary constituent of mantle rocks, is converted to hydrous phases when brought into contact with water at upper lithospheric temperatures. This reaction, known as serpentinization, results in some of the most extreme redox and pH environments on Earth and provides nutrients for unique, chemosynthetic microbial ecosystems, which have been inferred to represent possible modern analogues for the origin of life on Earth. Field samples of mantle rocks are nearly always serpentinized -- commonly to completion --but, paradoxically, their intrinsic porosity and permeability are diminishingly low, and serpentinization is a solid volume-increasing reaction. Here, we utilize neutron scattering techniques to present the first measurements of the evolution of pore size and specific surface area distribution in partially serpentinized rocks. Our measurements and analyses demonstrate that serpentine and accessory phases form with their own, inherent porosity, which accommodates the bulk of diffusive fluid flow during serpentinization and thereby permits continued serpentinization after voluminous serpentine minerals fill reaction-generated porosity.

Slow cooling of the lowermost oceanic crust at the fast-spreading East Pacific Rise

Kathrin Faak, Institut fur Geologie, Mineralogie und Geophysik, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Universitatsstrasse 150, D-44801 Bochum, Germany; and Kathryn M. Gillis School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3P6, Canada. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37353.1.

The processes involved in the accretion of molten rock from Earth's mantle to form new ocean crust and how the new crust cools is one of the great questions in earth science. Recent recovery of deep gabbroic rocks by the IODP Expedition 345 allowed us to determine the cooling history of the lowermost ocean crust formed along a mid-ocean ridge in the Eastern Pacific for the first time. As these rocks cool, their minerals exchange certain elements in ways that were calibrated in the laboratory. By measuring the distribution of these elements in different minerals it was possible to calculate how fast this cooling happens. Our results show that the lower oceanic crust cools slowly, at about 0.001 degrees C per year. Cooling rates for the deep gabbros are key to testing predictions of the thermal structure of the lower crust based on remote imaging techniques and thermal modeling. The slow cooling rates are most consistent with models dominated by conductive heat transport within the lower oceanic crust, rather than heat transport by deep hydrothermal circulation. This implies that the lower crust formed at fast spreading mid-ocean ridges remains "hot" (above 900 degrees C) up to 10 km away from the ridge axis.

Early hydrothermal carbon uptake by the upper oceanic crust: Insight from in situ U-Pb dating

Laurence A. Coogan et al., School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8P 5C2, Canada. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37212.1.

The long-term carbon cycle involves the degassing of carbon from the solid earth (e.g. through volcanoes) and the drawdown of this CO2 into rocks through fluid-rock reactions. This cycle requires a feedback mechanism to prevent atmospheric CO2 levels becoming either too high or too low for Earth to maintain a clement climate. It has generally been though these fluid-rock reactions are largely associated with continental chemical weathering with rivers carrying the solutes derived from these reactions to the ocean. An alternative model proposes that the fluid-rock reactions occur in the oceanic crust with seawater reacting with the lavas that make up the upper oceanic crust forming carbonate minerals. Here we use a new dating approach to show that these seafloor carbonates are formed very early in the lifetime of a piece of oceanic crust. In turn this suggests that fluid-rock reactions within the oceanic crust rapidly sequester carbon from the ocean and that this process may provide an effective feedback on the long-term carbon cycle.

Calcite/aragonite ratio fluctuations in Aptian rudist bivalves: Correlation with changing temperatures

Enric Pascual-Cebrian et al., GeoScience Limited, Falmouth Business Park, Bickland Water Road, Falmouth TR11 4SZ, UK. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37389.1.

Understanding how bivalves responded to past temperature fluctuations may help us to predict specific responses of complex calcifiers to future climate change. During the Aptian cold episode, aragonite-rich rudist bivalves decreased in abundance in northern Tethyan carbonate platforms, while rudists with a thickened calcitic outer shell layer came to dominate those of Iberia. Seawater cooling and variations in calcium carbonate saturation states may have controlled this faunal turnover. However, our understanding of how rudist lineages responded to changing environmental conditions is constrained by a lack of quantitative data on the evolution of thickness, size, and mineralogy of the shell. This study is based on volumetric measurements of the shell and shows the transition of a lineage of rudist bivalves from aragonite-rich mineralogy to calcite-dominated mineralogy, and returning to aragonite-dominated mineralogy. Calcite-dominated shells occurred during the Aptian cold episode, and more aragonitic shells were observed during the warmer intervals. These results imply a correlation between shell composition and temperature and suggest that some bivalves adapted to less favorable calcification conditions by changing calcite and aragonite proportions of their bimineralic shells and decreasing skeletal thickness, thereby reducing the cost of shell growth.

Age of the Laschamp excursion determined by U-Th dating of a speleothem geomagnetic record from North America

Ioan Lascu et al., Institute for Rock Magnetism, University of Minnesota, 100 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37490.1.

The Laschamp excursion is a short-lived geomagnetic event during which the polarity of Earth's magnetic field reversed for a brief period, and its intensity decreased by an order of magnitude. Geomagnetic field decay rates during the Laschamp excursion are often cited as analogs for modern field decay rates. In addition to its geophysical significance, the Laschamp excursion is an important global geochronologic marker, occurring around the time of the demise of Homo neanderthalensis, in conjunction with rapid climatic oscillations leading into the Last Glacial Maximum, and coeval with a major supervolcano eruption. Precise determination of the timing and duration of the Laschamp would elucidate major scientific questions situated at the intersection of the physical and natural sciences. This study presents a North American speleothem geomagnetic record of the Laschamp excursion that is dated using a combination radioisotopic (U/Th) and incremental dating. This allows for the excursion timing and duration to be determined directly from a geological archive for the first time. In this record, the Laschamp excursion spans the interval 42,250 to 39,700 yrs before present (BP), with an age of 41,100 +/- 350 yrs BP for the period in which the virtual geomagnetic pole was situated in the southern hemisphere.

Water-fluxed crustal melting produces Cordilleran batholiths

William J. Collins et al., NSW Institute for Frontiers Geoscience, The University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia. This paper is online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G37398.1.

Most granites and related calc-alkaline silicic volcanic rocks from the United States and New Zealand Cordillera are saturated with zircon between 65 and 70 wt% SiO2. For this silica interval, zircon saturation temperatures (Tzr) are universally lower (<800 degrees C) than those expected by dehydration melting of mafic crust (T >900 degrees C). The values contrast with Tzr from alkaline rocks from the Cenozoic U.S. Cordillera, which are typically >800 degrees C for 65-70 wt% SiO2. Case studies of titanium-in-zircon thermometry from the U.S. Cordillera also suggest that alkaline magma injections into granitic magma chambers are hot, but calc-alkaline magma injections are usually cooler. A model is presented suggesting that silicic Cordilleran magmas form in magmatic arcs where hydrous basaltic magmas solidify in the arc root, producing mafic underplates that exsolve aqueous fluids, which transfer to the crust and promote water-fluxed partial melting at ambient pressure-temperature (~750-800 degrees C at 8 kbar) conditions. Subsequent rock-buffered melting reactions modulate the water content of arc magmas. The granitic partial melts are water undersaturated, rise adiabatically as increments, but stall in the middle to upper crust, building cool and hydrous, crystal-rich magma chambers (batholiths). However, injections of hotter magmas are required to drive volcanic eruption. In the backarc, granitic magma chambers are intermittently recharged with hotter, drier alkaline magmas, which are produced mostly by decompression melting during lithospheric extension, not hydrous fluxing. This highlights the control of subduction dynamics on water content and consequently magmatic temperatures in silicic magma systems.

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GEOLOGY articles are online http://geology.gsapubs.org/. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary articles by contacting Kea Giles at the e-mail address above. Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.

Contact: Kea Giles

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. and CAMBRIDGE, Ma. - Jan. 4, 2016 - Researchers will soon undertake one of the largest-ever long-term clinical trials of a system designed to help regulate blood sugar levels of individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus. If the so-called artificial pancreas system performs in patients as hoped, it could lead to commercial trials and eventual regulatory approval in the United States and abroad.

With $12.7 million in support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the system developed by a team of researchers from the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) will be tested in 240 patients at nine sites in the U.S. and Europe. The two six-month trials will begin in early 2016, in collaboration with a half dozen other institutional partners.

Already one of the most common chronic disorders, the incidence of diabetes is increasing worldwide. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.25 million Americans have type 1 diabetes. In people living with the disease, the body's immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas so that little or none of the insulin needed to regulate blood glucose is produced. Diabetics must vigilantly monitor blood glucose levels and, when necessary, administer doses of insulin either via needle injections or infusion pump. Failure to maintain proper blood glucose levels through insulin management can cause life-threatening hyperglycemia, or low blood sugar, among other complications.

"To be ultimately successful as an optimal treatment for diabetes, the artificial pancreas needs to prove its safety and efficacy in long-term pivotal trials in the patient's natural environment," said principle investigator Boris Kovatchev, director of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology. "Our foremost goal is to establish a new diabetes treatment paradigm: the artificial pancreas is not a single-function device; it is an adaptable, wearable network surrounding the patient in a digital treatment ecosystem."

Through a marriage of control engineering with medical practice and behavioral science, the artificial pancreas system is designed to supply the appropriate levels of insulin by not only reacting to changes in the body, but accurately predicting blood glucose levels in advance.

The artificial pancreas is not a replica organ; it is an automated insulin delivery system designed to mimic a healthy person's glucose regulating function. The closed-loop system consists of an insulin pump, continuous glucose monitor placed under the user's skin, and advanced control algorithm software embedded in a smart phone that provides the engineering brains, signaling how much insulin the pump should deliver to the patient based on a range of variables including meals consumed, physical activity, sleep, stress, and metabolism.

"The idea is that this can lead to an improved quality of life for individuals with this disease -- not a solution to diabetes, but a means to really extend the quality of their healthful living," said co-principal investigator and engineering lead on the project Francis J. Doyle III, dean and John A. & Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Harvard SEAS.

In the first of the two trials planned as part of the new NIH-funded study, 240 patients with type 1 diabetes will test the safety and effectiveness of the artificial pancreas for six months while going about their normal daily routines. The control-to-range artificial pancreas system for this trial was developed at UVA and is now licensed to TypeZero Technologies. The artificial pancreas will be compared with a standard insulin pump on two key measures: how well blood-sugar levels are controlled and whether the risk of hypoglycemia is reduced.

The second trial will follow 180 patients who completed the first study for an additional six months to test the advanced adaptive control algorithm developed by Doyle's Harvard team. That system is based on zone model-predictive control (zone MPC), a strategy originally developed by Doyle and colleagues in a seminal paper published in 1996. Rather than regulating glucose levels to a specific point in the same way that a home thermostat keeps the room temperature at a precise setting, zone-MPC defines an acceptable zone for an individual's glucose levels and controls variables to stay within that range.

"The biggest challenge in the design of the artificial pancreas is the inherent uncertainty in the human body," Doyle noted. "Day to day, hour to hour, the various stresses that impact the human body change the way it responds to insulin-controlling glucose. Physical stresses, anxiety, hormonal swings will all change that balance. To be able to control for those factors we need to see longer intervals of data. This is the first trial where we'll be looking at multi-month intervals of time with cohorts of subjects where we can actually see a long enough window to learn those patterns, to adapt and fine-tune the algorithms, and to improve the overall level of glucose control."

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In addition to UVA and Harvard, the institutions that comprise the International Diabetes Closed Loop Consortium and will participate in the clinical trials include: Mount Sinai Hospital, New York; the Mayo Clinic; Stanford University; the University of Colorado; the University of Padua, Italy; Regional University Hospital Center of Montpellier, France; the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam; William Sansum Diabetes Center, Santa Barbara; with coordination by the JAEB Center for Health Research in Florida.

The UVA/Harvard award is the largest commitment by NIH under a $20 million program the agency announced in 2014 to fund advanced clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of artificial pancreas systems. The goal is to acquire the data necessary to satisfy requirements for regulatory approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other international agencies. NIH announced awards to three other teams earlier this year to: the University of Cambridge ($6.4 million); the Diabetes Wireless Artificial Pancreas Consortium (DREAM) comprised of diabetes centers in Germany, Israel, and Slovenia ($2 million); and Boston University/Massachusetts General Hospital ($1.5 million).

For Doyle, the launch of the clinical trials is the latest milestone in a research pursuit now in its twentieth year. Early in his career, he co-authored one of the first papers on the systems control aspects of a hypothetical artificial pancreas. From theoretical mathematical modeling to clinical testing, his research group has been building on that work ever since, as the technology has evolved from open-loop studies with humans in the loop to closed-loop systems embedded on a chip.

Doyle and SEAS senior researcher Eyal Dassau, collaborators at the University of California, Santa Barbara before joining Harvard in the fall of 2015, are also part of a team working on a pediatric version of the artificial pancreas system as well as an implantable version of the device.

The work announced today is supported under NIH grant number DK108483-01.

Watch Prof. Doyle discussing the artificial pancreas and the significance of the clinical trials: https://youtu.be/w7AmVn2Rj2Q
Boston, MA - A large new study of twins has found that having a twin sibling diagnosed with cancer poses an excess risk for the other twin to develop any form of cancer. Among the 23 different types of cancer studied, an excess familial risk was seen for almost all of the cancers, including common cancers such as breast and prostate cancer, but also more rare cancers such as testicular cancer, head and neck cancer, melanoma, ovarian and stomach cancer.

The study, led by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the University of Southern Denmark, and the University of Helsinki, is the first to provide family risk estimates for these and other rarer cancers. The study also showed, for the first time, that in twin pairs where both developed cancer, each twin often developed a different type of cancer--which suggests that, in some families, there is a shared increased risk of any type of cancer.

"Prior studies had provided familial risk and heritability estimates for the common cancers--breast, prostate, and colon--but, for rarer cancers, the studies were too small, or the follow-up time too short, to be able to pinpoint either heritability or family risk," said Lorelei Mucci, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and co-lead author of the study.

The study will be published online January 5, 2016 in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).

Familial risk of cancer is a measure of the cancer risk in an individual. The study also looked at heritability of cancer, a measure of how much of the variation in cancer risk of populations is due to genetic factors.

"Findings from this prospective study may be helpful in patient education and cancer risk counseling," said Jaakko Kaprio, from the University of Helsinki and co-senior author of the study.

The researchers looked at more than 200,000 twins, both identical and fraternal, in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, who participated in the Nordic Twin Study of Cancer followed over an average of 32 years between 1943 and 2010. Large twin studies can help scientists assess the relative contribution of inherited factors in cancer and characterize familial cancer risk by taking into account the genetic relatedness of identical and fraternal twins.

Overall, one in three people in the study developed cancer over the course of a lifetime. Cancer was diagnosed in both twins for 3,316 of the pairs, in whom the same cancer was diagnosed among 38% of the identical twins and 26% of the fraternal twins. The researchers estimated that, when one fraternal twin was diagnosed with any cancer, the co-twin's risk of getting cancer was 37%; among identical twins, the risk jumped to 46%. One of the strongest familial risks was observed for testicular cancer. The researchers found that a man's risk of developing this disease was 12 times higher if his fraternal twin developed it, and 28 times higher if his genetically identical twin developed it.

Given the fact that fraternal twins are similar genetically to siblings who aren't twins, the finding of excess cancer risk among fraternal twin pairs can provide information about an increased cancer risk for families in which one sibling gets cancer.

The researchers also found that the heritability of cancer overall was 33%. Significant heritability was found for skin melanoma (58%), prostate cancer (57%), non-melanoma skin cancer (43%), ovarian cancer (39%), kidney cancer (38%), breast cancer (31%), and uterine cancer (27%).

"Because of this study's size and long follow-up, we can now see key genetic effects for many cancers," said Jacob Hjelmborg, from the University of Southern Denmark and co-lead author of the study.

"This study was possible given the unique databases in the four Nordic countries, and will be a future resource to solve other complex questions in cancer," said Hans-Olov Adami, adjunct professor of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and co-senior author of the study.

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Other Harvard Chan School researchers involved in the study included Rebecca Graff, David Havelick, Peter Kraft, Christina McIntosh, Elizabeth Nuttall, Kathryn Penney, Giovanni Parmigiani, and Robert Unger.

Funding for the study came from the Ellison Foundation to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Nordic Cancer Union.

"Familial risk and heritability of cancer among twins in Nordic countries," Lorelei A. Mucci, Jacob B. Hjelmborg, Jennifer R. Harris, Kamila Czene, David J. Havelick, Thomas Scheike, Rebecca E. Graff, Klaus Holst, Soren Moller, Robert H. Unger, Christina McIntosh, Elizabeth Nuttall, Ingunn Brandt, Kathryn L. Penney, Mikael Hartman, Peter Kraft, Giovanni Parmigiani, Kaare Christensen, Markku Koskenvuo, Niels V. Holm, Kauko Heikkila, Eero Pukkala, Axel Skytthe, Hans-Olov Adami, Jaakko Kaprio, on behalf of the Nordic Twin Study of Cancer (NorTwinCan) collaboration. JAMA, online January 5, 2016, doi: 10.1001/jama.2015.17703.

Visit the Harvard Chan website for the latest news, press releases, and multimedia offerings.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health brings together dedicated experts from many disciplines to educate new generations of global health leaders and produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere. As a community of leading scientists, educators, and students, we work together to take innovative ideas from the laboratory to people's lives--not only making scientific breakthroughs, but also working to change individual behaviors, public policies, and health care practices. Each year, more than 400 faculty members at Harvard Chan School teach 1,000-plus full-time students from around the world and train thousands more through online and executive education courses. Founded in 1913 as the Harvard-MIT School of Health Officers, the School is recognized as America's oldest professional training program in public health.
This news release is available in French.

- An international team of researchers including Professor Federico Rosei and members of his group at INRS has developed a new strategy for fabricating atomically controlled carbon nanostructures used in molecular carbon-based electronics. An article just published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications presents their findings: the complete electronic structure of a conjugated organic polymer, and the influence of the substrate on its electronic properties.

The researchers combined two procedures previously developed in Professor Rosei's lab--molecular self-assembly and chain polymerization--to produce a network of long-range poly(para-phenylene) (PPP) nanowires on a copper (Cu) surface. Using advanced technologies such as scanning tunneling microscopy and photoelectron spectroscopy as well as theoretical models, they were able to describe the morphology and electronic structure of these nanostructures.

"We provide a complete description of the band structure and also highlight the strong interaction between the polymer and the substrate, which explains both the decreased bandgap and the metallic nature of the new chains. Even with this hybridization, the PPP bands display a quasi one-dimensional dispersion in conductive polymeric nanowires," said Professor Federico Rosei, one of the authors of the study.

Although further research is needed to fully describe the electronic properties of these nanostructures, the polymer's dispersion provides a spectroscopic record of the polymerization process of certain types of molecules on gold, silver, copper, and other surfaces. It's a promising approach for similar semiconductor studies--an essential step in the development of actual devices.

The results of the study could be used in designing organic nanostructures, with significant potential applications in nanoelectronics, including photovoltaic devices, field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, and sensors.

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About the article

This study was designed by Yannick Fagot-Revurat and Daniel Malterre of Universite de Lorraine/CNRS, Federico Rosei of INRS, Josh Lipton-Duffin of the Institute for Future Environments (Australia), Giorgio Contini of the Italian National Research Council, and Dmytro F. Perepichka of McGill University. The results are published in Nature Communications (DOI :10.1038/NCOMMS10235) in an article entitled "Quasi one-Dimensional Band Dispersion and Surface Metallization in Long Range Ordered Polymeric Wires." The researchers were generously supported by Conseil Franco-Quebecois de cooperation universitaire, the France-Italy International Program for Scientific Cooperation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fonds quebecois de recherche - Nature et technologies, and a Quebec MEIE grant (in collaboration with Belgium).

About INRS

Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS) is a graduate-level research and training university and ranks first in Canada for research intensity (average funding per professor). INRS brings together some 150 professors and close to 700 students and postdoctoral fellows at its four centres in Montreal, Quebec City, Laval, and Varennes. Its basic research is essential to the advancement of science in Quebec and internationally, and its research teams play a key role in the development of concrete solutions to the problems faced by our society.
BOULDER -- A team of scientists is launching a series of research flights this month over the remote Southern Ocean in an effort to better understand just how much carbon dioxide the icy waters are able to lock away.

The ORCAS field campaign--led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)--will give scientists a rare look at how oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged between the air and the seas surrounding Antarctica. The data they collect will help illuminate the role the Southern Ocean plays in soaking up excess carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by humans.

"If we want to better predict the temperature in 50 years, we have to know how much carbon dioxide the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems are going to take up," said NCAR scientist Britton Stephens, co-lead principal investigator for ORCAS. "Understanding the Southern Ocean's role is important because ocean circulation there provides a major opportunity for the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and the vast reservoir of the deep ocean."

ORCAS is funded by the National Science Foundation's Division of Polar Programs.

"Building on decades of U.S. Antarctic Program research, new questions of global significance continue to emerge," said Peter Milne, program director of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences in the Division of Polar Programs. "ORCAS addresses one of those questions: how the Southern Ocean affects global climate by storing, or releasing, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and heat."

Carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas contributing to human-caused climate change, is continually transferred back and forth between the atmosphere, plants on land, and the oceans. As more carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, oceans have stepped up the amount they absorb. But it's unclear whether oceans have the ability to keep pace with continued emissions.

In the Southern Ocean, studies have disagreed about whether the ocean's ability to act as a carbon sink by taking up carbon dioxide is speeding up or slowing down. Measurements and air samples collected by ORCAS--which stands for the O2/N2 Ratio and CO2 Airborne Southern Ocean Study--will give scientists critical data to help clarify what's actually happening in the remote and difficult-to-study region.

Tracking carbon by air

The ORCAS field campaign will operate out of Punta Arenas, near the southern tip of Chile. The researchers plan to use the NSF/NCAR HIAPER research aircraft to make 14 flights across parts of the Southern Ocean between Jan. 15 and Feb. 28. A suite of instruments on the modified Gulfstream V jet will measure the distribution of oxygen and carbon dioxide, as well as other gases produced by marine microorganisms, aerosols, and cloud characteristics in the atmosphere.

The flights also will observe the ocean color--which can indicate how much and what type of phytoplankton is growing in the water--using NASA's Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM). The addition of the PRISM instrument to the ORCAS campaign was funded by NASA.

The science campaign is being led by Stephens and NCAR scientist Matthew Long. Other principal investigators include Elliot Atlas (University of Miami), Michelle Gierach (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Ralph Keeling (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), Eric Kort (University of Michigan), and Colm Sweeney (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences). CIRES is a partnership of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado Boulder.

The management of the field campaign is being handled by NCAR. Logistics include everything from obtaining diplomatic clearances from multiple countries to fly through their airspaces to providing housing and workspace for project scientists in South America.

Carbon, oxygen, and phytoplankton

Measuring oxygen alongside carbon dioxide can give scientists a clearer picture of the ocean processes affecting carbon dioxide than they would get from measuring carbon dioxide alone.

"The air-sea exchange of carbon dioxide is controlled not just by physics but also by biology," Long said. "There's a nice relationship between the fluxes of oxygen and the fluxes of carbon dioxide that can be exploited to gain insight into these processes."

Carbon dioxide in the ocean is drawn into a chain of chemical reactions that buffer the impact of biological and physical ocean processes on carbon dioxide in the overlying atmosphere. Oxygen air-sea fluxes, however, are more directly tied to these same biological and physical factors. So if scientists know what's going on with oxygen, they can better understand the processes affecting carbon dioxide as well.

Additionally, if scientists know how the concentrations of the two gases change relative to one another with location and time, they can disentangle how biology and physics separately affect the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

Physics and biology affect the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen in the air in different ways. In the austral spring the warmth of the returning Sun drives both carbon dioxide and oxygen out of the Southern Ocean surface and into the atmosphere. But the sunlight also triggers the growth of phytoplankton in the water. As the organisms begin to flourish, they take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, causing the relative amounts of those two gases in the atmosphere to shift in opposite directions. Observations of these shifts can ultimately tell scientists how much carbon is going where and, more importantly, why.

A window into the deep ocean

The Southern Ocean is unique among Earth's oceans. Unimpeded by continental landmasses, and driven by a westerly wind, the Southern Ocean is able to form a circular current around Antarctica. This huge flow, the largest current on the planet, connects the adjacent Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. The complex interactions between this Antarctic Circumpolar Current and currents flowing in from other ocean basins creates an overturning circulation that brings deep water to the surface where it can exchange gases with the atmosphere before it is returned to depth.

Once it dives toward the ocean floor, that surface water--and any carbon dioxide it takes with it--can stay sequestered in the deep ocean for hundreds or even thousands of years. Data collected by the ORCAS flights will help determine how much carbon dioxide goes along for the ride.

"The Southern Ocean provides a window into the deep ocean, but it's a difficult system to simulate in our Earth system models," Long said. "It's remote, and so there has been a paucity of observations that can be used to improve the models we have."

The data generated during the field campaign will be used by the ORCAS team to improve these global computer models so they do a better job representing the complexities of the Southern Ocean. The data set, which will be managed by NCAR, will be publicly available.

While the measurements made during the ORCAS campaign will help scientists fine-tune what they know so far about the Southern Ocean, it's possible the project will also bring to light entirely new aspects of how the ocean works.

"The Southern Ocean is very inaccessible, and existing measurements are from ships or surface stations that represent only a few tiny dots on a huge map," Stephens said. "The airborne measurements we take will be helpful in terms of understanding the system better. And because we're doing something that no one's ever done before, we're likely to find things that we aren't expecting."

The NSF's Division of Polar Programs manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it funds researchers, coordinates all U.S. government research on the southernmost continent, and provides logistical support needed to make the science possible.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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On the web

#ORCAS16 Field Project http://www.eol.ucar.edu/field_projects/orcas

For news release, images, and more http://www.ucar.edu/atmosnews
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Commercial Dungeness crab fishing on the West Coast is one of the highest risk occupations in the United States, based on fatality rates. But non-fatal injuries in the fishery appear to go largely unreported, a new study from Oregon State University shows.

While the fatality rates in the Dungeness crab fleet have been reported in the past, the incidence of non-fatal injuries have not been previously studied, said Laurel Kincl, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health and safety in the OSU College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

"The commercial Dungeness fishing fleet, which operates along the coast of Oregon, Washington and Northern California, is a vital economic commodity," she said. "Injuries can be life-threatening and life-altering, leading to disability, decreased quality of life and lost wages."

Understanding the type and nature of fatalities and injuries, including describing and categorizing the types of injuries, is the first step in identifying safety issues and pinpointing areas for prevention, she said.

Kincl and a team of researchers examined 12 years of death and injury data, and found that 28 people died while commercially fishing for Dungeness crab from 2002-2014. In that same period, 45 injuries were reported to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The fatality rate among Dungeness crab fishermen is several times higher than the national rate for commercial fishing. But the injury rate among Dungeness fishermen is much lower than injury rates in other commercial fishing fleets that have been studied.

"Fatal injuries are tracked in a national system, but non-fatal injuries are not," Kincl said. "We knew there was likely underreporting, but we had no idea how low the injury numbers were until now."

The findings, published in the latest issue of the journal International Maritime Health, are the first step to better understanding fishing injuries among Dungeness crab fishermen. The research is part of an OSU-led research project to identify and reduce the risks of injuries in the industry, Kincl said.

The Fishermen Led Injury Prevention Program, or FLIPP, is designed to take a new approach to fishing industry injury prevention by working with commercial Dungeness crab fishermen to identify and reduce injury risks. The project is supported by a three-year, $825,000 grant from the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health. Kincl is the principal investigator.

The lead author of the paper, Samantha Case, is a researcher in the NIOSH office in Alaska. Other co-authors are OSU Associate Professor Viktor Bovbjerg; OSU doctoral student Laura Syron and Devin Lucas, who earned his doctorate at OSU and works at NIOSH.

The researchers found that the majority of the fatalities, about 71 percent, occurred during vessel disasters, such as boats capsizing or sinking. The other deaths were the result of a fisherman drowning or falling overboard. Fractures were the most commonly reported injury, at 40 percent, followed by hypothermia, lacerations and digit amputations.

Working with Oregon Sea Grant and community researchers in local fishing communities, Kincl and her colleagues are meeting with focus groups of fishermen and surveying fishing crews along the Pacific coast to learn more about safety and injuries in the industry.

"No one has ever gone up and down the coast and learned from the fishermen," Kincl said. "What are they doing to stay safe? Are there things that can be improved? How can we share that information among the various crews?"

By the end of the project, researchers plan to come up with and test several interventions that could help reduce injuries among crab fishermen.

"We want to identify some things that might work, but we don't want to tell them what to do," Kincl said. "We want to let them decide what would be most helpful."

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Randomized trial in Kenya demonstrates importance of cotrimoxazole prophylaxis for HIV/AIDS management in malaria-endemic regions

Cotrimoxazole (CTX) discontinuation is inferior to CTX continuation among ART-treated, immune-reconstituted HIV-infected adults living in a malaria-endemic region, according to a trial published this week in PLOS Medicine by Christina Polyak at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and University of Washington, U.S., and colleagues. These trial findings were important for December 2014 WHO guidelines recommending that CTX prophylaxis be continued regardless of CD4 cell count or HIV/AIDS clinical stage in settings where malaria is endemic and/or severe bacterial infections are common.

The trial enrolled 500 HIV-infected adults living in a malaria-endemic region of Kenya who had been treated with ART for ?18 months, who had a CD4 count of >350 cells/mm3, and who were taking CTX. After 12 months of follow-up, the combined rate of morbidity events (malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea) and non-trauma mortality events was significantly higher in the CTX discontinuation arm than in the CTX continuation arm (IRR = 2.27, 95% CI 1.52-3.38; p < 0.001). The difference in this primary outcome between the trial arms was driven by malaria morbidity -- there were 33 cases of malaria in the CTX discontinuation arm but only one case in the CTX continuation arm.

Study limitations included lack of blinding and statistical constraints from lower than expected incidence of morbidity. However, analyses were strengthened by 98% retention rates in both arms. The authors state, "Malaria endemicity may be the most relevant factor to consider in the decision to stop CTX after ART-induced immune reconstitution in regions with high infectious disease prevalence."

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01425073

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Research Article

Funding:

Supported by the Merle A. Sande Award in International Infectious Diseases, Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) and the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center -- Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections System. Research reported in this publication was also supported by NIAID, NCI, NIMH, NIDA, NICHD, NHLBI, NIA, NIGMS, NIDDK of the National Institutes of Health under award number P30AI027757 and NICHD K24-HD054314 (G.J-S.). Vestergaard Frandsen donated insecticide treated bednets and water filters. Alere Inc. donated CD4 cartridges for Pima machines. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent the positions of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Competing Interests:

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation:

Polyak CS, Yuhas K, Singa B, Khaemba M, Walson J, Richardson BA, et al. (2016) Cotrimoxazole Prophylaxis Discontinuation among Antiretroviral-Treated HIV-1-Infected Adults in Kenya: A Randomized Non-inferiority Trial. PLoS Med 13(1): e1001934. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001934

Author Affiliations:

US Military HIV Research Program, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Kenya Medical Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya

Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Contact:

Christina S Polyak

cpolyak@hivresearch.org

301-500-3688

U.S. Military HIV Research Program | HJF

6720-A Rockledge Drive

Bethesda, MD 20817

UNITED STATES
Opting in to data sharing should be the default practice during public health emergencies, such as the recent Ebola epidemic, and barriers to sharing data and findings should be removed to ensure those responding to the emergency have the best available evidence at hand according to Vasee Moorthy and colleagues from the World Health Organization (WHO) in a Policy Forum article published in PLOS Medicine.

In their article the authors outline the findings of a recent WHO-organized consultation that was attended by leading representatives from the scientific community, biomedical journals, industry, funding organizations, and government ministries. Meeting participants collectively identified several key obstacles to sharing research data and findings in times of acute public health need. These included the misperception that disclosure of major findings may negatively prejudice subsequent journal publication; limitations in technical capacity to share information; concerns that data would be analysed and published without due recognition; and the possibility that data sharing could lead to the development of products that source populations are unable to afford.

During the meeting representatives from leading biomedical journals responded with an unequivocal assertion that public disclosure of information of relevance to public health emergencies should not prejudice journal publication of full scientific reports. Meeting participants also recognized that it is not enough for parties to simply agree, in principle, on sharing primary data, as the world must also commit to tackling the technical challenges of implementing data sharing agreements by simplifying and standardizing data capture procedures, assuring data quality, and harmonizing disparate data platforms. How best to effect a shift away from the culture of data ownership toward one of data stewardship remains paramount among broader issues to be addressed.

The authors conclude, "[a]s the quick and transparent dissemination of information is the bedrock of good science and public health practice, it is important that the current trends in data sharing carry over to all matters of acute public health need. Such a global norm would advance the spirit of open collaboration, simplify current mechanisms of information sharing, and potentially save many lives in subsequent outbreaks."

In an accompanying Perspective article Patrick Vallance and colleagues from GlaxoSmithKline note, "[w]e are perpetually in the midst of several health care crises, including those of neglected tropical diseases and other chronic diseases, for which data sharing has the potential to lead to faster and better solutions. As a matter of principle, we should be willing to share data without regards to which disease is being studied."

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FROM THE PLOS MEDICINE MAGAZINE:

Vasee Moorthy and colleagues

Funding: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The Wellcome Trust contributed towards the cost of the consultation.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Modjarrad K, Moorthy VS, Millett P, Gsell PS, Roth C, Kieny M-P (2016) Developing Global Norms for Sharing Data and Results during Public Health Emergencies. PLoS Med 13(1): e1001935.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001935

Author Affiliations:

World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001935

Contact:

Vasee Moorthy

moorthyv@who.in

World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Patrick Vallance and colleagues

Funding: There was no specific funding to support this work.

Competing Interests: We have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: PV is a President at GlaxoSmithKline and holds stock or stock options in GlaxoSmithKline. AF is Head of Medical Policy at GlaxoSmithKline and holds stock or stock options in GlaxoSmithKline. MS is Chief Medical Officer at GlaxoSmithKline and holds stock or stock options in GlaxoSmithKline. PV is a member of the Editorial Board of PLOS Medicine.

Citation: Vallance P, Freeman A, Stewart M (2016) Data Sharing as Part of the Normal Scientific Process: A View from the Pharmaceutical Industry. PLoS Med 13(1): e1001936. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001936

Author Affiliations:

GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford, Middlesex, United Kingdom;

GlaxoSmithKline, Collegeville, Pennsylvania, United States of America

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001936

Contact:

Patrick Vallance

patrick.5.vallance@gsk.com

GlaxoSmithKline, United Kingdom,
TORONTO, Jan. 5, 2016--About half of all patients with Alzheimer's disease develop symptoms of psychosis, such as delusions or hallucinations.

But the pathological mechanisms that underlie psychotic symptoms are unclear, limiting the ability to manage and treat them. Some studies have suggested they are related to the underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease such as the protein deposits found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, but others found no correlation.

A study published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that cerebrovascular disease is a major determinant of psychosis in people with Alzheimer's disease. Cerebrovascular disease is a group of conditions that restrict the circulation of blood to the brain.

Using data from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Centre database collected from 29 Alzheimer's disease centres in the United States between 2005 and 2012, researchers led by Dr. Corinne Fischer, a psychiatrist and researcher at St. Michael's Hospital, analyzed autopsy data from 1,073 people.

Of the 890 people who had been clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer's while they were alive, the people most likely to be psychotic were those whose autopsies showed they had more physical signs of Alzheimer's such as neuritic plaques (protein deposits) and neurofibrillary tangles (twisted fibers found inside brain cells).

But when they looked at the 728 people whose autopsies confirmed they had Alzheimer's, those with psychosis did not show increased physical evidence of Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's can only be confirmed through an autopsy, so some patients in the clinically diagnosed group had been misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's.

In both groups of patients, psychosis correlated significantly with Lewy bodies, abnormal protein aggregates found in nerve cells of patients with Parkinson's disease. This was not an unexpected finding since psychosis is prominent when dementia accompanies Parkinson's disease.

What was entirely unexpected was the prominent role in psychosis of vascular risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, age at quitting smoking) and cerebral injuries related to small vessel disease,

About 19 per cent of people with Alzheimer's who live in the community (rather than in institutions) are thought to have delusions and 14 per cent have hallucinations. Psychotic symptoms are significant in Alzheimer's patients because they have been shown to be associated with increased burden on caregivers, increased functional decline and more rapid progression of the disease.

###

This study received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

About St. Michael's Hospital

St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 23 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, and care of the homeless are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Center, which make up the Li Ki Sheng Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.

Media contact:

For more information or to arrange an interview with Dr. Fischer, please contact:

Leslie Shepherd

Manager, Media Strategy,

St. Michael's Hospital

Phone: 416-864-6094 or 416-200-4087

shepherdl@smh.ca

http://www.stmichaelshospital.com
In an analysis of approximately 1.4 million pregnancies in Denmark, use of the oral antifungal medication fluconazole during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of spontaneous abortion compared with risk among unexposed women and women who used a topical antifungal during pregnancy, according to a study in the January 5 issue of JAMA.

Pregnant women are at increased risk of vaginal candidiasis (yeast infection); the prevalence of vaginal candidiasis among pregnant women is estimated to be 10 percent in the United States. Although intravaginal formulations of topical azole antifungals are first-line treatment for pregnant women, oral fluconazole is often used despite limited safety information. Ditte Molgaard-Nielsen, M.Sc., of the Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues evaluated the association between oral fluconazole exposure during pregnancy and the risk of spontaneous abortion and stillbirth. The study included 1,405,663 pregnancies in Denmark from 1997-2013. From this group, oral fluconazole-exposed pregnancies were compared with up to 4 unexposed pregnancies, matched on maternal age, calendar year, and gestational age. Filled prescriptions for oral fluconazole were obtained from the National Prescription Register.

Among 3,315 women exposed to oral fluconazole from 7 through 22 weeks' gestation, 147 experienced a spontaneous abortion, compared with 563 among 13,246 unexposed matched women (women not exposed to antifungals). There was a significantly increased risk of spontaneous abortion associated with fluconazole exposure. Among 5,382 women exposed to fluconazole from gestational week 7 to birth, 21 experienced a stillbirth, compared with 77 among 21,506 unexposed matched women. There was no significant association between fluconazole exposure and stillbirth. Using topical azole exposure as a comparison, 130 of 2,823 women exposed to fluconazole vs 118 of 2,823 exposed to topical azoles had a spontaneous abortion; 20 of 4,301 women exposed to fluconazole vs 22 of 4,301 exposed to topical azoles had a stillbirth.

"In this nationwide cohort in Denmark, oral fluconazole use in pregnancy was associated with a significantly increased risk of spontaneous abortion," the authors write. "Until more data on the association are available, cautious prescribing of fluconazole in pregnancy may be advisable. Although the risk of stillbirth was not significantly increased, this outcome should be investigated further."

###

(doi:10.1001/jama.2015.17844; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)

Editor's Note: This study was supported by the Danish Medical Research Council. All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported.
Naturally occurring changes in brain wiring can help patients at high genetic risk of developing bipolar disorder avert the onset of the illness, according to a new study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online today in the journal Translational Psychiatry. The study's findings open up new avenues for researchers to explore ways the brain can prevent disease expression, also known as resilience, with the hope of developing better treatments.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes fluctuations in patients' mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. Bipolar disorder is highly heritable, meaning that people with a parent or sibling with bipolar disorder have a much greater risk of developing the illness, compared with individuals with no family history.

Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to map the connectivity patterns in the brains of three groups: patients with bipolar disorder, their siblings who did not develop the illness (resilient siblings), and unrelated healthy individuals. While having their brains scanned, each participant was asked to perform an emotional and a non-emotional task that taps into two different aspects of brain function known to be affected by bipolar disorder. The resilient siblings and the patients showed similar abnormalities in the connectivity of brain networks involved in emotional processing. However, the resilient siblings showed additional changes in brain wiring within these networks.

"The ability of the siblings to rewire their brain networks means they have adaptive neuroplasticity that may help them avoid the disease even though they still carry the genetic scar of bipolar disorder when they process emotional information," said Sophia Frangou, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and lead author of the study. Dr. Frangou's ongoing research uses neuroimaging to study how differences in brain wiring can either increase or decrease the likelihood of developing mental health problems.

"A family history remains the greatest risk factor for developing bipolar disorder and while we often focus on risk, we may forget that the majority of those who fall into this category remain well," said Dr. Frangou. "Looking for biological mechanisms that can protect against illness opens up a completely new direction for developing new treatments. Our research should give people hope that even though mental illness runs in families, it is possible to beat the odds at the genetic lottery."

###

The study was supported by awards from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. Additional collaborators include researchers from King's College London and Imperial College London, UK.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system committed to providing distinguished care, conducting transformative research, and advancing biomedical education. Structured around seven hospital campuses and a single medical school, the Health System has an extensive ambulatory network and a range of inpatient and outpatient services--from community-based facilities to tertiary and quaternary care.

The System includes approximately 6,100 primary and specialty care physicians; 12 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked as one of the nation's top 10 hospitals in Geriatrics, Cardiology/Heart Surgery, and Gastroenterology, and is in the top 25 in five other specialties in the 2015-2016 "Best Hospitals" issue of U.S. News & World Report. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked in seven out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel is ranked regionally.

For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Research published in the Journal of Neuroscience has shown that retrieving memories of events from our past may take place quicker than we previously thought - and it is possible to interfere with that process.

The process of retrieving episodic memory, personal experiences that require revisiting sensory information received in the past, was believed to be a relatively slow process in the brain - taking around half a second.

Using electroencephalography (EEG), which monitors neural activity with a high time resolution, the team showed that episodic retrieval starts with a very rapid reactivation of sensory brain areas.

The findings provide the first neural evidence for this early sensory activation, and show that it actually takes between 0.1 and 0.2 seconds to begin recalling the event.

Furthermore, the initial activation of sensory brain areas was shown, for the first time, to be causally relevant for conscious remembering.

The study was conducted as a collaboration between the University of Konstanz in Germany and the University of Birmingham, which incorporated two independent experiments in human participants, also found that it is possible to interfere with memory retrieval by applying repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) to alter brain function.

Dr Simon Hanslmayr, from the University of Birmingham, explained, "Semantic memories, such as knowing that Paris is the capital of France, are bound by no specific time or place. You rarely remember how or where you first learned of that information."

"Episodic memories however, that we were studying here, are unique events with a unique frame of reference within both space and time. They were thought to require searching within the hippocampus, and therefore take a little time, but these findings challenge that belief and illustrate a much more fast-acting response."

Dr Gerd Waldhauser, now at the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, added, "Knowing that episodic memory functionally relies on this very rapid reactivation of sensory information, and seeing that we can interfere with that process, really improves our understanding of how our memory works."

"It is early days but there are, of course, a number of ways in which this could be useful. For example, it may help in understanding psychiatric conditions that involve the automatic intrusion of unwanted memories. There are a number of instances where being able to intervene and target traumatic memories would be beneficial."

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If they successfully invade Lake Erie, Asian carp could eventually account for about a third of the total weight of fish in the lake and could cause declines in most fish species -- including prized sport and commercial fish such as walleye, according to a new computer modeling study.

However, most of the expected declines in Lake Erie will not be as extreme as some experts have predicted, according to the food-web study by the University of Notre Dame's David Lodge and colleagues from other American and Canadian research institutions. A few fish species, including smallmouth bass, would likely increase.

The study is the first to use a food-web model to examine the likely impacts of bighead and silver carp in Lake Erie. These plankton-eating Asian carp are established in watersheds close to the Great Lakes, but not in the lakes themselves.

The invasive carp would likely affect Lake Erie's food web in two main ways: They would likely compete with native fish by eating their food, and juvenile Asian carp would likely become food for fish-eating fish.

According to the study, walleye, rainbow trout, gizzard shad and emerald shiners could all decline, with declines in emerald shiner of up to 37 percent. Smallmouth bass stood to gain the most, with increases of up to 16 percent.

A paper summarizing the findings was published online in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society on Dec. 30.

The model results suggest that Asian carp could eventually account for up to 34 percent of the total fish weight in the lake, said Hongyan Zhang, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan's Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research, School of Natural Resources and Environment and co-author.

"Fortunately, the percentage would not be as high as it is today in the Illinois River, where Asian carp have caused large changes in the ecosystem and have affected human use of the river," she said.

Previous predictions of Asian carp's influences in the Great Lakes have ranged widely. Some experts say Asian carp could decimate Great Lakes fisheries and food webs, while others suggest the effects would likely be minor because much of the Great Lakes is not suitable habitat for Asian carp.

Results of the new study fall somewhere between the two extremes.

"This study goes beyond previous efforts in two significant ways. It focuses on the food webs and -- where model input data were not available -- it includes uncertainty estimates from experts," said co-author Ed Rutherford, a fisheries biologist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Ann Arbor, a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility.

To include uncertainty in model predictions, team members interviewed 11 leading experts on Asian carp biology and Great Lakes ecology and fisheries, then incorporated the experts' estimates into the model. The experts were also asked to indicate the level of uncertainty associated with each statement they provided.

"We don't know how these two Asian carp species are going to do in Lake Erie, so we have to incorporate that uncertainty into our model projections," said co-author Doran Mason, a research ecologist at GLERL. "It's like using computer models to predict a hurricane's path and intensity and including the margin of error in the forecast."

"Model results suggest the most likely intensity is severe -- who wants a third of the fish biomass in Lake Erie to be Asian carp? -- but that possible outcomes include both stronger and weaker impacts. It is also important to remember that our research provides scenarios for impact only on the food web and only in Lake Erie itself. Impacts like jumping fish hitting people are not included, nor are any impacts in tributaries of Lake Erie that might suffer impacts like those in the Illinois River," said Lodge, founder and director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI), which tackles the interrelated problems of invasive species, land use and climate change, focusing on their synergistic impacts on water resources.

The team has shared its Lake Erie results with Great Lakes resource managers to help inform decisions related to Asian carp. Of the Great Lakes, Erie may be most vulnerable to Asian carp invasion due to its proximity to waters where Asian carp exist, the presence of adequate food and the availability of suitable spawning habitat.

The same research team is now working on modeling studies to predict the influence of Asian carp in lakes Michigan, Huron and Ontario, as well as a study of the regional economic impacts associated with Asian carp in Lake Erie.

###

Other authors of the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society paper, in addition to Lodge, Zhang, Rutherford and Mason, are Jason T. Breck of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Marion E. Wittmann of University of Nevada-Reno; Roger M. Cooke of Resources for the Future and Delft University; John D. Rothlisberger of the U.S. Forest Service; Xinhua Zhu of Fisheries and Oceans Canada; and Timothy B. Johnson of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

The project received financial support from the Environmental Protection Agency through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and from NOAA's Center for Sponsored Coastal Research.
A merger between DZ Bank and WGZ Bank, the two remaining central institutions among Germanys cooperative banks, brings some relief to long-suffering advocates of bank consolidation in the federal republic. The two banks say merging will help them deal with the extensive challenges in German banking, such as low rates, digitalization, and increasing regulatory and reporting requirements.



Andreas Dombret,

Bundesbank

The merger, they say, will add to the sustainability of our cooperative financial network in times of market-induced and regulatory changes. That echoes comments from influential figures such as Bundesbank board member Andreas Dombret, who told German newspaper Die Welt in September that lower rates would increase the impetus for bank mergers, given German banks reliance on interest income. There are structural problems at play here which call for structural answers, said Dombret. Although DZ and WGZ are not listed, credit analysts have welcomed the news. The tie-up brings together the main German central cooperative institution, DZ Bank, and the last regional central institution, WGZ, which runs the franchise in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germanys biggest state by population.

In a market crowded by middle-market players, the merged entity, to be known as DZ Bank, though retaining some of WGZs branding, will be Germanys third-biggest bank.

Benefits

The merger will bring capital benefits in the mid-triple digit millions of euros, the banks say. That largely springs from the elimination of charges for minority stakes in jointly-owned product providers in asset management, insurance, private banking and a building society. Although this is of less benefit for DZ, which already owns a majority in two of these, WGZ comes to the merger with a higher capital ratio and a lower proportion of non-performing loans.

DZs asset quality, which suffered from the early 2000s German recession, had hindered previous merger negotiations, says Michael Dawson-Kropf, senior director at Fitch Ratings. Wolfgang Kirsch, DZs CEO since 2006, has also had to rein in an international presence, selling minority stakes in cooperative groups elsewhere in Europe since 2009. As a result, Dawson-Kropf says DZ has only of late been able to demonstrate the benefits of prior consolidation, including the 2001 merger of DG Bank and the southwestern cooperative group, GZ Bank, which led to the creation of DZ. But the cooperative sector, under DZ and WGZ, has already proven more cohesive than the public-sector banks: avoiding competition in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, and advancing partnerships in areas like private banking. Indeed, Katharina Barten at Moodys says that DZ has been much more profitable than public and private-sector banking groups in recent years. They are efficient, too. In the first half of 2015, DZs cost-to-income ratio was 51.5%. WGZs ratio was even lower at 45%.

There are more than 1,000 member-owned cooperative banks in Germany, but they have found economies of scale by sharing systems in areas like IT, reporting and marketing. That has happened less among public sector banks, where state governments have defended a middle tier between the nationwide support system and the local savings institutions. Although Dekabank exists as a common asset manager for public-sector banks, many Landesbanken have eroded each others margins further by competing outside their regions, while failing to come together in areas like insurance.

After the merger of DZ and WGZ, by contrast, there will only be two tiers of cooperative  DZ Bank, and the 1034 local cooperatives. That makes it similar to the Dutch Rabobank network, and unlike Austrias Raiffeisen system, which maintains a three-tier structure. The merger will bring around 100 million in annual savings, according to the two banks. But it is not just about cost cutting. The motivation is more explicitly targeting capital charges, and duplication of future investment, such as IT upgrades, needed to meet heavier reporting requirements.

One hub

After the merger, the network will move to one hub, in Frankfurt, for central functions such as strategic planning. However, there will also be headquarters in WGZs home town of Dusseldorf, which will become the centre for managing much of the relations with local banks, being a centre for corporate customer services, the back office, and settlement. More than 10 regional support bases for the local banks, as well as corporate banking, will survive: from Hamburg to Munich, and from Dresden to Koblenz.

They will reduce staff over time, but in a socially acceptable manner, as is usually the case in Germany, says Barten. She adds that the initially outsized joint board of 12 directors, embracing both banks boards, will gradually shrink in number.

Dawson-Kropf at Fitch says DZs recent results have been unusually strong, thanks to lower loan impairment charges and healthy asset management revenues, largely the result of benign conditions in the capital markets (the cooperative groups asset manager, Union Investment, is Germanys third biggest). But it reflects well on the banks management that they are seeking answers now for problems ahead, says Dawson-Kropf.

Theyre doing it from a position of strength; its forward-looking, he says. They have the time and flexibility to prepare for the future.

The next question is whether the Landesbanken will follow suit and engage in mergers themselves. However, Dawson-Kropf and others are not holding their breath. We dont think it is very likely that the Landesbanken will merge, says Barten.
ABN Amros return to the Amsterdam stock exchange in late 2015 was the biggest European bank IPO since the 2008 crisis. Its marketing as a Dutch domestic bank was a far cry from the global claims it once made. Nevertheless, it can boast some success.

Pricing in the middle of a range between 16 and 20 a share, it raised 3.8 billion for the Dutch state and gained a market capitalization at IPO of around 16.7 billion, roughly equal to book value. The stock rose 3.5% on its first day of trading in late November, rising 8% within a week. The IPO price of 17.75 was appropriate given the 77% that the state still has to sell after the six-month lock-up period, says Fred Bos, ABNs senior managing director overseeing the IPO.

Primed

Bos says ABN Amro was able to stand out from the slew of European bank equity issuance  including recent capital raisings from Credit Suisse and Standard Chartered, and planned state sell-downs in the UK and Ireland in 2016  as investors were well-primed for its deal, and the bank had maintained contact with the investor community in the debt markets.



Fred Bos, ABN Amro

The government first asked ABN Amro to start preparing for the transaction in 2013, four years after it was nationalised, alongside the Dutch assets of Fortis, in a 30 billion bail-out. Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in late 2014 that the bank was ready and his criteria for the IPO could be met in 2015.

With the stock market buoyant, the bank was under pressure to complete the deal by the end of the year, particularly after a row with lawmakers in the spring over bankers pay delayed the sale. The process only got going again when executives waived part of their compensation.

Bos downplays fears of political interference on matters such as costs, which some investors raised with analysts at Exane BNP Paribas during the offering. The influence of the government on the bank has been minimal, and from a strategic perspective it has been nil, Bos says.

After parliament allowed the process to continue, the task of selecting global coordinators began in early summer, and the bank had already started preparing the prospectus and other documentation. It selected itself, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley to coordinate the transaction, backed up by six joint bookrunners and two co-lead managers. Rothschild advised the government; Lazard advised the bank.

Investors managed to gain a small discount to ING, previously the only big listed Dutch bank, which Bos attributes to ABN Amros lack of an existing presence on the stock market. He notes his banks valuation has since overtaken ING  overturning the hierarchy in Dutch banking. INGs stock fell in the month after the launch of ABN Amros offering by roughly as much as ABN Amros stock rose in its first week.

ING was ABN Amros closest peer, but with clear differences, says Bos. He points to the far higher proportion of international revenues at ING. Bos says ABN Amros business, 80% of which is in the Netherlands, revolves around very traditional activities, and a very clear business model. Investors appreciated that home bias due to the local recovery, including in the housing market. The Dutch economy was set to grow by 2.3% in 2015 compared to 1.6% in the eurozone as a whole, according to the banks own projections late last year.

In late November, ABN Amro said its return on equity had reached almost 13%, well above the European average, even after the local bank levy. Net profit for the first nine months of 2015 more than doubled over the same period the previous year. Its cost-to-income ratio, just over 60%, has been consistently higher than ING, according to research from Mediobanca, though ABNs ratio has trended down in the past year.

ABN Amro has a bigger private bank, which is a typically high-cost business, counters Bos. In retail banking the difference [with INGs efficiency ratio] is minimal.

Despite the stated focus on the Netherlands, growth at ABN Amro is mainly mentioned in the context of foreign operations. Bos insists this will only be in private banking, asset-backed finance, clearing, and energy, commodities and transport (ECT).

However, given the bearish natural resources outlook, the firms growth in the latter in recent years is another area of concern for investors, according to Exane BNP Paribas.

Although Mediobanca highlights higher new lending volumes in mortgages at the bank, Bos says ABN Amros Dutch mortgage portfolio will remain roughly stable.

Growth

In the Netherlands, we can grow our market share in corporate banking, and as the economy recovers we can pick up more business, but not beyond GDP growth, he says. In our international activities, our growth can be more in line with global trade growth, which is likely to be higher than Dutch GDP growth.

ABN Amros main attraction should still be yield, Bos concludes. We havent positioned ABN Amro as a growth stock, he says. He highlights the firms dividend policy. Its pay-out target is around 50% of earnings from 2017, according to the third-quarter results presentation. With a 14.8% fully loaded CET1 ratio at end-September, readiness for Basel IV was a further comfort for investors in the dividends context, in Bos view.
It was a treacherous and even dangerous end to the year for many executives at Chinas under-pressure broking houses. Arrests, disappearances and suicides rocked an industry still struggling to deal with the fallout from a mid-year stock market rout that wiped $5 trillion off the value of mainland shares, unsettled the countrys political elite, and led to talk of looming financial crisis in the worlds second-largest economy.

In late November, Wang Dongming, chairman of Citic Securities, was forced out of his job after seven of the brokerages senior personnel, including president Cheng Boming, were either charged with or probed over insider trading. It was a bitter pill to swallow for the countrys leading investment bank, an institution that boasts of its strong ties to government.

Lost contact

Wangs fate could have been worse. A host of leading figures in Chinas financial firmament simply disappeared in the final weeks of the year, undermining trust in their companies and shredding the value of their domestic and foreign listed securities. On November 23, shares in Hong Kong-listed Guotai Junan International Holdings slumped more than 17% after the firm said it had lost contact with chairman and chief executive, Yim Fung. As Euromoney went to press, Yims whereabouts remained unknown.



Guo Guangchang, Fosun

On December 11, mainland investment group Fosun International said police had detained 48-year-old founder-chairman, Guo Guangchang, at Shanghai airport.

Fosun, which immediately suspended trading in its Hong Kong shares, stopped short of calling it an arrest, with chief executive, Liang Xinjun, claiming that Guo was assisting the authorities with an external investigation and that his detention was not because the company has problems.

Guo re-emerged from detention four days later, but refused to give an explanation for his extended disappearance.

One of the countrys most visible businessmen, Guo boasts a fortune estimated at $9 billion, and enjoys comparisons with Warren Buffett. In recent years, Fosun has become one of Chinas fastest-growing and most acquisitive firms. It owns insurance and banking assets in Germany, Belgium and Portugal, and launched a hostile 675 million ($740 million) takeover bid for financial services group RJH International in July. French investment bank Oddo & Cie trumped it in November, by tendering a 760 million offer for the Brussels-based owner of Kleinwort Benson. But it completed a deal in the same month, when it bought Bermuda-based insurer Ironshore for $1.8 billion.

To many, a clear line can be drawn through accusations of market rigging and insider trading, which have dogged mainland brokerages since last summer, and a broader push by Chinas president Xi Jinping to tackle the endemic and corrosive corruption that is undermining the economy and, some insiders fear, threatening the ruling Partys very future.

A slew of senior executives at leading banks were also removed from their posts in 2015. In May, Wang Yaoting, vice president at Hua Xia Bank, was publicly charged with taking bribes worth $164,000; in November Zhang Yun, president of Agricultural Bank of China, the countrys third largest lender, was formally taken away to assist an investigation, state media reported, using a well-worn euphemism for corruption-related arrests.

Knocks

Domestic investment bankers increasingly live in fear of being singled out by Beijing. Its pretty nasty out there, said a European investment manager living in Shanghai. Everyone is keeping their heads down, hoping that no one knocks on their door.

Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism, said any senior executive at a Chinese bank or brokerage should be very worried indeed, while experts warned of more arrests to come. There will be lots of other cases of insider trading, wrongdoing and stock manipulation, predicted Xiang Songzuo, chief economist at Agricultural Bank of China in Beijing.

Since June 2015, according to the state-run Securities Times, more than 30 senior executives at leading financial firms have gone missing, killed themselves, or faced government probes. In September a director of Founder Securities, Zhao Dajian, was arrested by police as part of a wider investigation. A month later, the president of Guosen Securities, Chen Hongqiao, hanged himself at his house in the southern city of Shenzhen, following the arrest of Zhang Yujun, his former boss at the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

Two immediate challenges present themselves in 2016. First, can Beijing reform a broking industry that has frequently suffered stock manipulation and insider trading?

Xis determination to reform the onshore IPO process in the first quarter of the year, by transitioning from the current approval-based mechanism to a registration-based system, is laudable. Yet experts wonder how much corruption that move will really dispel in a one-Party state where power is structured vertically.

Second, China desperately needs to tap new sources of foreign capital to inject fresh life into its slowing economy. Yet Beijings hard-nosed attitude to the countrys financial elites has unnerved foreign investors.


The arrest of Andre Esteves at the end of November has severely harmed BTG Pactual

The arrest of former BTG Pactual CEO, Andre Esteves, has finally extended the Brazilian corruption investigation, Lavo Jato, to the countrys financial industry. The fall-out for Brazils largest investment bank has been swift and severe, and its new management team was still scrambling to shore up its short-term liquidity position to reassure investors and stem the flood of withdrawals from its asset management division as Euromoney went to press in mid-December.

While there seems little chance of financial contagion spreading to the rest of the banking sector from BTGs precarious situation, the focus has fallen on bank exposure to the underlying source of these investigations  Petrobras, and the rest of the oil and gas industry that is suffering operational paralysis and growing, and in some cases possibly unsustainable, indebtedness.

Meanwhile, the quasi-sovereign oil firms huge amount of debt (R$507 billion at the end of Q3 2015) has led a growing number of analysts to predict it will need government support, which would be good news for bondholders but a further dilution in the equity base would trigger another lurch downward in the share price.

Petrobras

Esteves arrest and subsequent charges relate to an alleged attempt to dissuade a former Petrobras director, Nestor Cervero, from giving testimony about bribes he received, as part of a plea bargain to reduce his jail sentence. Police and prosecutors have not yet formally dragged the bank into the investigations but they say they have uncovered documents that suggest the bank paid Congress president Eduardo Cunha a R$45 million bribe. There are also deals that investors fear may become linked to corruption, such as BTG Pactuals acquisition of 50% of Petrobras assets in Africa in June 2013 for $1.53 billion.

Despite the bank, and Esteves, acting quickly to minimize the damage  Esteves resigned and sold his stake in the bank when prosecutors managed to extend his temporary arraignment to an open-ended incarceration  the banks share capitalization has fallen by over 50%, fixed income fund investors have pulled out over 60% of funds and AUM, including in the private banking division, have fallen by 15%.

All of the rating agencies have stripped the bank of its investment grade rating, which will cause further problems as it is an active counterparty in trading markets in Brazil and Latin America.

In the short term, the bank faces a severe liquidity crisis but a R$6 billion loan from Brazils Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGC), agreed on December 4, provided near-term safety from collapse. The banks new management team, under co-CEOs Roberto Sallouti (previously head of asset management) and Marcelo Kalim (CFO), also acted prudently by dismantling trading positions, selling portfolios of loans to competitors and selling other non-core assets. The bank also put up some of its private equity assets for sale: according to CVM filings, BTG Pactual is preparing to divest BR Properties and BodyTech. The bank also plans to try to sell recently-acquired Swiss private bank BSI.

The move to offload its $1.7 billion acquisition, which it completed only three months ago, is a clear sign that the private banking franchise is caught up in the crisis. Clients have less flexibility to react in the short-term, because of lock-up agreements and penalties for liquidizing positions, than the banks other tiers of investors, but high net-worth individuals and families are reported to be seeking an exit from the bank that, before the crisis, had the fourth largest AUM in the industry.

BTG Pactual refused to discuss any of the issues it is facing and other private banks declined interviews but local business magazine Veja has reported that while BTGs competitors refuse to speak openly about its problems, so as not to appear vultures, there is fierce pitching to BTGs client base. Banco Safra, one of the countrys smaller private banks, has reportedly offered to pay redemption fees if clients switch their business. Banco Safra did not return calls seeking comment.

Meanwhile, as BTG Pactual struggles to define its future scale, there is also growing concern that Lavo Jato will have a big impact on the rest of the banking industry in 2016, even in the absence of any formal corruption charges. Petrobras dominates the oil and gas sector, not only with its own scale but also as head of the supply chain for private sector companies.

Exposures

Analysts say private and public banks are taking a much more conservative stance to the oil and gas sector. The public banks have the largest exposures, with 10.4% of Banco do Brasils R$472 billion credit portfolio connected to the sector. Private banks also have large loans, with bank reports showing that Itau has 1.8% of its R$477 billion credit portfolio extended to the sector, the majority of which is to Petrobras. Bradesco has 3.2% of its R$366 billion extended to oil and gas companies and Santander has allocated 3.7% of its R$262 billion portfolio to the industry. In the short term, private sector banks will try to lower these exposures, which will increase the risks of these companies refinancing debt.

Marcela Nagib, Petrobras analyst for JPMorgan, says Petrobras alone has between $20 billion and $22 billion of debt to roll over in the next 14 months. At some point the government will have to provide some kind of support but, given the political situation right now is very challenging, we dont see that in the near term, says Nagib.
Some revolutions have long onramps. Modern epigenetics has been around for well over a decade, but its impact has yet to be fully explored. Which interpretation of biology  evolution or intelligent design  stands the best chance of advancing scientific understanding of genomics through epigenetics research?

Well, it is indeed a revolution; thats what senior reporter Heidi Ledford calls it in her Nature Outlook piece, Epigenetics: the genome unwrapped. She ends with remarks by Tomasz Jurkowski, a biochemist and epigeneticist at the University of Stuttgart in Germany who is racing against other researchers to untangle DNAs secrets:

He takes the competition in stride  it is the price of entry into the fast lane. Epigenetics is on the verge of a revolution, he says. This is just the beginning, he says. With just a little more time, It will develop into a completely new field. [Emphasis added.]

As with any field in such a revolutionary condition, the ultimate outcome is unpredictable. Thats why Ledfords subtitle reads, Epigeneticists are harnessing genome-editing technologies to tackle a central question hanging over the community  does their field matter?

Theres reason to think it will matter  a lot. Of the many epigenetic markers already identified, many have shown to affect an organisms phenotype. Some of them have been shown to be heritable, opening up new vistas of epigenetic inheritance. Now, with the updated CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool, despite its potential for ethical quandaries (see discoverer Jennifer Doudna in Nature worrying about the Pandoras box she opened), epigenetics researchers are pushing the accelerator pedal.

Ledford describes how CRISPR-Cas9  Science Magazines 2015 Breakthrough of the Year  has already allowed one research team to speed around another team that did things the old-fashioned way.

Ren Maehr, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and his colleagues fused an enzyme called histone demethylase, which removes methyl groups from histones, to a deactivated Cas9 enzyme, and then programmed it to target regions of DNA believed to enhance the expression of certain genes. The result was a functional map of genetic enhancer sequences that allows researchers to determine what these enhancers do, how strongly, and  most importantly  where they are located in the genome.

Question: Why were they seeking to determine what these enhancers do? Answer: They didnt believe they were junk. They watched the target gene increase its expression significantly. That result started to convince me that the acetylation of histones may be a direct cause of gene activation. This suggests a new layer of specified complexity that supersedes the old Central Dogma that viewed DNA as the master controller. Functional mapping now steps up from genes to the epigenetic markers that regulate them.

Researchers dont know if all epigenetic marks have such dramatic effects. For all we know, they might have very minor effects on gene expression except in a few special cases, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle opines. We may not have long to find out.

Now, however, researchers have a tool to pick apart the detail. Because of its simplicity and versatility, CRISPR-Cas9 opens up an opportunity to launch the kind of large-scale projects needed to reach that level of understanding. If we want to target a region in the genome, we can have that targeting molecule here tomorrow for five dollars, says Reddy. Were going to get to march through every single one of these modifications and figure out what they actually do.

You dont try to figure out what pieces of junk do. Whatever the outcome of the ambitious projects ahead, the rapid pace of the field is already defying expectations, Ledford writes. Lets look at some other recent articles for clues.

Epigenetic markers may shed light on the long-standing mystery of the molecular basis for caste-specific behavior in ant colonies. (Science Magazine):

These findings reveal the epigenome as a likely substrate underlying caste-based division of labor in eusocial insects. Furthermore, in light of the conserved role of CBP in learning and memory in both invertebrates and mammals, these data suggest that CBP-mediated histone acetylation may similarly facilitate the complex social interactions found in vertebrate species.

Epigenetic markers affecting the immune system change with habitat, researchers found when comparing methylation marks on forest-dwelling African tribes with sedentary farmers. (Pasteur Institute):

These results partly explain why some people are predisposed to certain diseases. Our research shows that changing lifestyles and habitats have a major influence on our epigenome and that urbanization significantly affects the epigenetic profiles of the immune system. This demonstrates how important it is, alongside more traditional genetic research, to investigate how epigenetic changes could result in an immune system that is more prone to the development of autoimmune diseases, allergies, inflammation and so on, explains Lluis Quintana-Murci. [Italics in original.]

Epigenetic discovery suggests DNA modifications more diverse than previously thought (University of Cambridge):

The world of epigenetics  where molecular switches attached to DNA turn genes on and off  has just got bigger with the discovery by a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge of a new type of epigenetic modification. Its possible that we struck lucky with this modifier, but we believe it is more likely that there are many more modifications that directly regulate our DNA.

This is just a taste of the kind of high-level research that is attracting grant money. The project at Cambridge, for instance, was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Human Frontier Science Program, Isaac Newton Trust, Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, and the Medical Research Council.

Four years ago, we discussed whether the epigenome is Evolutions Newest Nightmare. Current Biology put up a brave front, claiming that epigenetics might promise interesting new angles in the study of evolution. Thats hard to support now. None of the articles quoted above had any use for evolutionary theory. Indeed, how could they? If epigenetic markers regulate genes; if they act like molecular switches; if they can be placed into functional maps  then they represent a higher level of complex specified information that defies the neo-Darwinian mutation/selection story.

Stated explicitly or not, its design-based thinking that leads scientists to build functional maps of epigenetic markers and motivates them to figure out what they actually do. Who would waste time or money on junk? The downfall of the junk-DNA concept gives scientists encouragement to seek new levels of specified complexity in epigenetic regulation. The future of epigenomics looks bright  for intelligent design.

Image:  fnalphotos.com / Dollar Photo Club.
Koko, the sign-language-talking gorilla, wants to save the earth. From the Daily Mail story:

Koko was filmed delivering a 38-word bulletin about how stupid mankind is harming the Earth. In the 60-second video, the 44-year-old great ape, which has been learning sign language since she was one, said: I am gorilla, I am flowers, animals. I am Nature. Koko love man. Earth Koko love.

Wow, so Koko supports the Paris (non) treaty to stop climate change? Not quite:

A spokesman for The Gorilla Foundation: Because of her unique ability to communicate with humans in sign language, Koko is a natural ambassador for endangered species. We presented her with a script drafted by NOE and allowed her to improvise during a series of brief daily video discussion sessions. The result was edited from a number of separate takes, for brevity and continuity. The spokesman said Koko had to learn a few new signs for the video including protect and nature.

Koko is trained to use sign language and doesnt understand the meaning of what she has been taught to communicate. She is oblivious to the concepts of climate change, pollution, politics, and the earth. Rather, the gorilla is being used as a shill to speak her owners sentiments.

Quick, PETA! Time to protest! They are using a gorilla as a trained monkey.

Image credit: Elrond (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cross-posted at The Corner.
by Conde' Butcher | Buccaneers Correspondent | Mon, Jan 4th 9:33pm EST

Tampa Bay's defense allowed 38 points to a Week 17 loss to Carolina. They earned four sacks and two fumbles recovered.

Fantasy Impact:

The Bucs' defense did ok in fantasy in Week 17 but overall, they tumbled over the last few weeks and ended at 20th overall. Unfortunately, Tampa was not able to stop Cam Newton and allowed the most points of the year at 38 to them- and that is with Carolina's top back and top WR out. The Bucs were winning games when their defense kept teams under 25 points however, if they get in a shoot out, the Bucs' offense can't keep up a this point. Look for them to add some depth and beef up the Defensive line in the offseason.
GREENSBURG, Pa.  The Penn State Extension Dairy Team will offer a one-day interactive mastitis workshop Jan. 27, at the Penn State Extension office in Westmoreland County, from 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

Understanding Mastitis Control from the Inside Out, is designed to give attendees a firsthand view of the effects of mastitis on milk production by dissecting an udder to view important structures and how they relate to mastitis control and infection.

Producers, managers, farm employees and industry representatives will learn about useful tools for managing mastitis with emphasis on specific mastitis-causing bacteria and preventive practices.

An extension veterinarian will discuss the role of nutrition in fighting mastitis. Cost is $40 and registration deadline is Jan. 20. Featured speakers will be Penn State Extension veterinarians.

The Westmoreland County Extension office is located at 214 Donohoe Road, Suite E, Greensburg, Pa.

To register visit www.extension.psu.edu/mastitis-management. A second date will be offered in Franklin County in the Spring. For more information, contact Amber Yutzy, anl113@psu.edu; Dr. Ginger Fenton, gdc3@psu.edu; or Greg Strait, gls10@psu.edu.
South Korea has reopened its borders to Canadian beef after imposing a temporary ban over concerns about mad cow disease.

Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland made the announcement Thursday.

The country imposed the ban in February after a beef cow was discovered near Edmonton with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Latest BSE case in Alberta a setback for beef export strategy BSE cow was found on Spruce Grove farm Canada to accept imports of EU beef, 19 years after mad cow disease

Soon after Peru, Belarus and Taiwan also imposed temporary restrictions on beef imports, but Agriculture Canada says Peru has since lifted its ban.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in November that contaminated feed was the most likely cause of the case of mad cow disease. It said no part of the Black Angus cow entered human food or animal feed systems.

A case of BSE in 2003 at an Alberta farm devastated Canada's beef industry as 40 countries closed their borders to Canadian cattle and beef products, although most of those markets have since reopened.

In 2014, South Korea was the sixth biggest export market for Canadian beef, buying $25.8 million of Canada's $1.9 billion in beef product exports.

The lifting of the ban is good news for beef producers, said Dave Solverson, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

"South Korea holds huge potential for beef and especially cuts and offals that are underutilized here at home," Solverson said Thursday in a news release.

"Korea is a market that will pay more for those select items and that helps to increase the overall value of the animal for producers."

With the implementation of the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement in late 2014, the association said Canadian beef exports to Korea have the potential to exceed $50 million per year.

Click here to see more...
Ryan Coogler is set to direct Black Panther.

Ryan Coogler

Coogler has been just one of the names to be linked with the Black Panther director's chair in the past twelve months - Ava DuVernay and F. Gary Gray were in the mix as well.

While we knew that Coogler was in talks with the studio late last year, Kevin Feige has confirmed in the February issue of Empire that the filmmaker is on board the project.

While the appointment of Coogler doesn't come as any surprise, it is great to see him officially on board so this exciting Marvel project can finally move forward.

As well as announcing that Coogler is on board the film, Feige also hinted as to how important the Black Panther movie is to the Marvel Movie Universe.

In his interview with Empire, Feige said: "This one is important. Not only do you get an unbelievable lead character, but you also get all of Wakanda which is a whole new setting and culture to explore.

"It's a big geo-political action adventure that focuses on the family and royal struggle of T'Challa in Wakanda, and what it means to be a king. T'Challa's story is very important to us as it links to the next Avengers films, which is why we brought it forward."

Coogler grabbed everyone's attention back in 2013 when he made his feature film directorial debut with Fruitvale Station. The movie was met with acclaim and picked up a whole host of awards - including the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Coogler is set to return to the director's chair later this month with Creed; which sees him reunite with Fruitvale Station actor Michael B. Jordan. The movie also sees him team up with Sylvester Stallone for the first time as the actor reprises the role of Rocky Balboa.

However, Black Panther is set to be the biggest film of Coogler's career to date and we will see Chadwick Boseman take on the title role. Andy Serkis is also believed to be reprising the role of Ulysses Klaue - who we were introduced to in Avengers: Age of Ultron last year.

We will meet Black Panther for the first time later in 2016 as he is set to make an appearance in Captain America: Civil War.

However, we will have quite a wait for the Black Panther solo film as it won't be released until 6th July 2018.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip were spotted looking at the perfect pram to buy ahead of the birth of their first child.

Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip

The Swedish royal couple were seen looking at the supplies in a baby store in Skane county, Sweden, over the Christmas holidays.

A shopper saw the couple in the shop and asked them for a picture, to which the pair happily obliged.

Sofia, who is thought to be around six months pregnant, clad her growing bump in a grey woolly cardigan and glowed as she smiled for the camera alongside her husband and the fan, Alva Lennwall.

Speaking about seeing the royal pair, Alva told local paper Expressen: "I was so surprised. I saw that they were looking at the prams."

Sofia, 31, and her 36-year-old spouse purchased several items in the shop, but the store owner refused to disclose exactly what they were.

Carl Philip and Sofia married in June 2015 and shortly afterwards announced they were expecting a baby in April 2016.

Sofia appears to be coping well so far with the pregnancy, admitting she feels "great". She also told a reporter that she and her husband aren't planning on finding out the baby's gender before the birth.

She said: "It'll be a surprise!"
On Halloween night over a decade ago, Sandra Begotka and her husband Dave claim they saw Steven Avery at around 5.15pm at a fuel station around 13 miles away from the Avery Salvage yard, where he is said to have murdered Teresa Halbach and burned her remains.

Sandra exclusively told Female First:

"On October 31, 2005, we were riding our bicycles around Two Rivers, something we did often. I'm not sure of the exact time, but it had just gotten dark. Dusk for that time of year in that area should have been around 5.15pm, central standard time.

"We stopped at a fuel station - Patsy's Hwy 42 Mobil Mart - 816 22nd Street, Two Rivers, Wisconsin. This is where we saw Steven Avery.

"He was driving a nice looking, dark coloured Ford truck. He was wearing a red and white jacket (I would conclude it's the same one he is often seen wearing in the documentary [Making A Murderer]). He appeared to be buying gas for a red five gallon gas jug.

"Dave saw him first and said to me, "Look... it's Steven Avery!" I knew what he looked like because he had been on the news a lot... and I was also already very aware of who he was due to Dave's previous experience in the first crime. There was no mistake it was him. There appeared to be a blonde adult woman with him and she was reasonably attractive. I remember thinking and commenting to Dave that it looked like Steve was doing pretty good. We didn't stick around for long, we continued on with our bicycle ride.

"Dave knew who he was because he had lived in Two Rivers, Manitowoc County his whole life and had seen Steve before he was sent away to prison the first time - he did not know him well but had been out to the Avery Salvage yard many times in a business capacity. Then Dave was involved in the first incident on the beach for which Avery was convicted. After Steve was released, Dave following the news closely regarding his release.

"Soon after the story broke about Teresa Halbach being murdered and Avery being charged Dave and I called the Manitowoc Sheriff's department to report that we saw him. Someone took our info on the phone. Then I also composed a letter stating what we'd seen and sent it to the sheriff's department. We never heard anything further. So the sheriff did not follow up with us.

"That's about it. Dave followed the trial very closely and was upset by how it went. I recall him telling me about the strange way evidence was found. How Manitowoc County was not supposed to be involved but were actually very involved. We drove by Avery's Salvage business right after all this broke... there were hundreds of state police cars there. The place was crawling with cops and investigators... and none of them found any of the evidence. It was all discovered later. Too much does not add up."

If Steven was indeed spotted at around 5.15pm, this coincides with his calling Halbach's phone at 4.35pm, and then going on to speak to his girlfriend for about 15 minutes from 5.30pm. At around 6pm, Steven then allegedly called Brendan Dassey to invite him over for the bonfire. It's very possible he was spotted by Sandra and Dave Begotka.

Though the pair say they made a statement to the police, they add that it was never followed up. Could this now be deemed new evidence and enough to bring Steven a new trial?

Sandra's husband Dave has a YouTube channel where he talks about his experience relating to the situation. Strangely, Dave was also a witness to the first crime Avery was wrongly convicted for. His interactions from that day onward continue to confuse him. Check out what he has to say below:

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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As the existing wage agreement for textile workers of Tirupur is about to end, the Tirupur Exporters' Association (TEA), the South India Hosiery Manufacturers' Association (SIHMA) and four other textile associations of the textile hub are exploring a new common wage agreement for the workers, The Hindu reported.

As of now, there is no common wage agreement for the whole of textile workers in Tirupur. SIHMA, along with a few other associations, sign a separate wage pact for the workers in agreement with the labour unions. TEA along with a few other associations signs a different wage pact.

The pay scale for the different verticals of the textile and garmenting sector like packing, knitting machine operations, tailoring, damage checking, ironing, fabrication and labelling is also different under both agreements.

TEA, SIHMA and four other textile associations of the Tirupur are exploring a new common wage agreement for the workers.#

A common agreement will bring parity in the pay scale of workers across the entire textile cluster. It will also make the negotiation procedure with labour unions easy, according to SIHMA.

Post an introductory meeting attended by representatives of various Tirupur based knitwear associations, various trade unions have been asked to submit their joint demands before the wage revision talks are held. The unions had initially submitted their demands separately. (MCJ)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
YiwuTex 2015 which successfully concluded on December 3, 2015 saw over 160 participating exhibitors, while 9,985 local and international trade visitors from 25 countries and regions visited the trade show.Over 70 industrial associations and enterprise delegations visited and sourced at the exhibition, a press release from the organiser, Adsale stated.

YiwuTex 2015 which successfully concluded on December 3, 2015 saw over 160 participating exhibitors, while 9,985 local and international trade #

YiwuTex 2015 had three theme zones, including 'Knitting & Hosiery Machinery Zone', 'Sewing & Automatic Garment Machinery Zone' and 'Dyeing & Finishing Machinery Zone'.Tiziano Sandonini, marketing director at Santoni (Shanghai) Knitting Machinery said, We have successfully maximised our business prospects, promoted our new technology and also strengthened our brand image.Meanwhile, we noticed the seamless knitting market of Yiwu is becoming quite mature, so we have sufficient confidence in this industry, and we surely won't give up this part of the market, he added.Wang Laicheng, president of Wellknit Machinery too said, Adsale's exhibitions are always satisfactory and we could enjoy a high-quality service.We are pleased with the visitor flow and overall result of YiwuTex 2015 and are very likely to show more hosiery machines, circular machines and more of our latest technologies in YiwuTex 2016, Laicheng stated.As a specialized show focusing on knitting and hosiery, YiwuTex provides a one-stop platform running through knitting and garment industry, and has become an important trade platform for Zhejiang textile industry.YiwuTex 2015 was widely supported by the textile industry including; China Haining Hosiery Industry Association, Hangzhou Textile Industry Association, Wenzhou Garment Association and many others.In addition, many top hosiery brands too visited the show including; Langsha Hosiery, Mengna Hosiery, Bonas Hosiery, Naier Hosiery, Danjiya Group, Fenli Hosiery, Zhenhan Hosiery, China Buren Hosiery, etc.MDS Hemantha Kumara, chairman, Sarasavi Exports remarked, We are visiting YiwuTex since the last 4-5 years and each time we could find some new technology especially in knitting and hosiery machinery.Yu Huiben, deputy general manager of Jason Group said, The trend of textile machinery development is to be safer, more eco-friendly and easier for operation, so I hope I find more equipment with high performance and low energy consumption in YiwuTex 2016.YiwuTex 2015 also saw concurrent events like 'Green and Sustainable Textile Technology Forum', 'Fashion Trend Forecast Forum' and 'Using Internet+ to Realise Textile Transformation and Upgrading'.Another highlight, according to the organisers was Santoni's innovative exhibiting concept which divided its booth into four display areas: Design, Product Development, Production and Sales. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Karnataka government has approved six investment proposals worth Rs.23,383 crore, including one of Kirloskar Toyota Textile Machinery Private Limited at a high-level meeting chaired by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.The decision comes ahead of the state's global investor summit scheduled for next month.

The Karnataka government has approved six investment proposals worth Rs.23,383 crore, including one of Kirloskar Toyota Textile Machinery Private#

The new investments can potentially create over ten thousand jobs. They investments include six proposals, three greenfield projects and three proposals for capacity expansion of existing units.The meeting approved Kirloskar Toyota Textile Machinery Private Limited's proposal to ramp up its production capacity of textile machinery and diesel engines at its plant in Anekal taluk of Bengaluru Urban district with an investment of Rs 150 crore. It has a a potential to create 150 more jobs.(SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
Not long ago, the entire film industry was abuzz with speculations that had suggested the involvement of Chinese actor Jet Li in superstar Rajinikanth's upcoming film Kabali. It was said that the famed martial artist and Wushu champion might play the main antagonist in the film.

But according to the latest report, Taiwanese actor Winston Chao and Malaysian actor Rosyam Nor will play villains in the film, being helmed by Pa Ranjith of Madras fame.

"Winston, who has acted with Jackie Chan, will be the main villain in Kabali. Malaysian actor Rosyam Nor is yet another villain. Rajini will fight these two international actors in this film. After completing a major schedule in Malaysia, Ranjith and his team are back in the city (Chennai), shooting with Winston and Rosyam," a source has told Times of India.

Rosyam Nor, recently confirmed his involvement in the project. According to the Malaysian actor, he plays a small role and will be seen as a sidekick to the main villain, played by Winston Chao.

Kabali, which narrates the tale of a retired gangster, is expected to release all over the world in the month of April. Stay tuned for more updates.

Maalai Nerathu Mayakkam Movie Review & Rating: Blatant Reality!
The makers of Swaragini are leaving no stones unturned to make the show engaging. When audiences are all excited to watch whom will Sanskar (Varun Kapoor) choose - Kavita or Swara, another twist in the story may bring in major changes. Read on to know more...

In the previous episode, we saw how Swara (Helly Shah) caught Kaveri red-handed, who had joined hands with Ragini (Tejaswi Prakash Wayangankar) and Dadi to blackmail Durga Prasad. Swara gets Kavita to the house, whom Kaveri said was killed by Durga Prasad.

Kavita Kavita will be explained on how Sanskar and Swara got married. Sujatha will also reveal that they are divorced now. Kavita will directly ask Sanskar if he still loves him or not. Kavita & Swara Kavita confirms with Swara about the divorce, and thanks her for taking care of the family and Sanskar. Swara asks the family members to put an end to this story soon. Kavita-Sanskar According to the spoiler, Kavita, who loves Sanskar crazily, goes to the extent of arranging engagement ceremony. Sanskar, who is yet to decide, whom to choose as his life partner, asks Kavita why did she arrange the event without asking him. Ragini & Lakshya Also, Ragini and Lakshya will get closer. Ragini will ask Lakshya why he saved her, when she is being so cruel to the family. Lakshya gives example of Ragini saving him, also he says that since he wants to put an end to the story. Ragini Ragini's masi will enter the show, who will bring in the new twist in the current track. She will reveal about the person who was responsible for her mother's death. Ragini-Dadi Can you guess, who it is.... It is none other than Dadi. After knowing this, Ragini will be shattered and Lakshya will be consoling her. This brings both closer. Ragini & Lakshya With this, there are all possibilities of Ragini's character turning positive. It has to be seen if Ragini will help Swara and Sanskar reunite?

Dadi would have called police, who reaches the place and asks whom to arrest. While Sujatha asks police to take Ragini and Dadi, Durga Prasad and others ask police to arrest Kaveri, who was the root of the cause.

Kaveri threatens Ragini with knife and asks police that if she is arrested Ragini and Dadi too have to come along, as they were equally involved in this case. Ragini will be saved by Lakshya, while Durga Prasad asks police to just arrest Kaveri.

Kavita thanks Swara to reunite her with Sanskar, but he reveals that Swara is his wife. This shocks Kavita, who will be explained about the situation. She will also get to know that Swara and Sanskar are divorced.

Sanskar will be in confusion to accept his first love (past) Kavita or Swara (present). Kavita says Sanskar that she will not stay alive if she is separated from him this time; while Swara tells Durga Prasad that she will accept whatever Sanskar decides on!

Swara will be shattered that when he loved her, she didn't accept his love and when she started loving him, his past (Kavita) came in between them. Sanskar too will be in dilemma; he recalls the time spent with both Swara and Kavita and tries to decide. (Spoilers in the slides)
Barclayss bankers in Asia are feeling nervous. Talk of swathing job cuts in the coming weeks has many of them looking for a way out, say people familiar with their thinking.

Barclays plans to scale-back its 24-person strong India equities business and is mulling the sale of its Asian wealth management division, according to a variety of well-placed industry sources. Layoffs are most likely in cash equities and equities research across Asia, including Japan and areas of the region where the bank is sub-scale, they said.

One person familiar with the matter told FinanceAsia that more clarity on job cuts and the British bank's strategy is expected as early as next week. However, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Barclays declined to comment when pressed on this.

The most recent, high-profile Barclays banker to walk is Didier von Daeniken, who had headed Barclayss private banking business for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Standard Chartered said it hired him on December 15.

It remains unclear how deep the cuts in Asia will go. The Barclays spokeswoman said widespread talk within the bank that the bank will shutter its business in the region is untrue.

We are constantly monitoring our opportunities in different geographies and businesses over the cycle. If any firm decisions are made, we will provide an update, the spokeswoman said.

However, senior managers in London have made it clear that cost cuts are in the offing.

Costs will be down. This will be the second year in succession, next year will be the third year in succession, any which way you measure it, Tushar Morzaria, Barclays group finance director, told analysts on November 6.

Barclays had 18,200 full-time employees in the Asia Pacific region as of 2014, down from 18,500 in 2013 but up from 16,500 in 2012, according to its annual report. Its income from the region totaled 776 million in 2014, down from 1.28 billion in 2013.

About-face

Barclays is in the midst of a three-year cost cutting programme that entails eliminating 19,000 jobs worldwide or 14% of its staff. As part of this restructuring the bank said in May 2013 that it would cut 7,000 jobs within its investment bank by 2016.

That marks a major turnaround in Asia. Whilst US investment banks floundered in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, Barclays under the regional leadership of Robert Morrice went on the offensive. After buying the US arm of Lehman Brothers, it built out its investment banking and cash equities business across Asia and had a record year in the region in 2013.

Barclays hired what many in the industry dubbed a dream team of investment bankers including Matthew Ginsburg from Morgan Stanley in 2009, Ed King, Johan Leven, Peter Ding and Helge Weiner-Trapness. It is unclear if Barclays ever hit the financial targets it set for Asia but it certainly struggled as the US banks recovered and Chinese banks became more competitive.

That team of bankers has since been dismantled. Morrice retired in May 2014 and, according to his LinkedIn profile, is self-employed on a farm estate in southern England. Ginsburg also stepped down in May 2014, while Jason Rynbeck, vice-chairman of M&A for Asia-Pacific, left Barclays to join HSBC as its head of M&A for the region.

King, Leven, Ding and Weiner-Trapness have since started their own boutique investment banking advisory firm called Quintus Partners.

John McFarlane looks to cut costs

The rush to the door seems to have gathered new urgency ahead of Barclays's full-year earnings results and strategy update for investors due on March 1.

That is partly because any layoffs are likely to come ahead of bonuses being awarded -- usually in late February -- but is also because management has made it clear that the strategy has changed.

Barclays chairman John McFarlane said in July that: The role of the network is to be precisely that, a network where its main role is to serve our major market clients internationally, and major international clients in our core markets.

Barclays in Asia is less independent and instead of serving local clients its primary purpose is to help the clients of its core franchises in the US and Britain.

McFarlane added that parts of the network that no longer fulfilled their role or their potential needed to be scaled back or exited.

Barclays' equities trading share in Asia is outside of the top six, according to the latest survey by consultants Greenwich Associates. Only the top franchises are profitable in Asia and brokers fiercely compete for every percentage point of share, say industry sources.

However areas such as execution services will continue to be useful to other regions of the bank, the sources said.

Talk in the Corridors

As a result senior bankers at Barclays in Asia have been meeting with headhunters and a few managing directors are trying to move entire teams to other franchises, several recruiters for banks told FinanceAsia.

However, headhunters say its hard to place them.

Chinese brokers are reining in their international expansion plans after a volatile 2015 and in the wake of corruption probes. Japanese brokers are also more cautious overseas, unlike in 2008, whilst CIMB is in retreat and other mid-market players have closed their Asian equities divisions, including Samsung Securities, Standard Chartered, and Knight.

Barclays is not alone in seeking to cut costs. New York-headquartered Jefferies laid off just under 20 people in cash equities, or 5% of the team in Asia, in December.

At the time of the banks half-year earnings McFarlane said he was targeting a group cost:income ratio in the mid-50s. As of September 30 it stood at 64%.

The cost:income ratio in the investment banking side of Barclays is 81%.

Jes Staley, who joined the British bank on December 1 as group chief executive officer, has the experience to be able to reposition the investment bank, having previously been head of investment banking at JP Morgan.

Additional reporting by Richard Morrow and Ray Chan
MEXICO CITY, 2016-01-04 22:42 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- -Limpiemos Nuestro Mexico cleanup campaign collected 50,000 tons of garbagewith the help of 9 million volunteers--Esperanza Azteca formed better human beings through 82 orchestras with the participation of 16,000 underprivileged children--El Jugueton, the world's largest toy drive, distributed more than 16 million toys to low-income children-MEXICO CITY, Jan. 04, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Grupo Salinas (www.gruposalinas.com), a group of dynamic, fast-growing and technologically advanced companies, deeply committed to the modernization of the countries where they operate and founded by entrepreneur Ricardo Salinas (www.ricardosalinas.com), announced today solid performance of its member companies.In addition to generating wealth, Grupo Salinas also believes its companies are mediums for social change. Grupo Salinas companies promote higher standards of living and responsible environmental practices through products and services that support the well-being of families in Mexico, USA and Central and South America. And through Fundacion Azteca, Grupo Salinas supports initiatives in favor of health, education and the environment. Programs such as La Ciudad de las Ideas, Caminos de la Libertad andKybernus similarly promote freedom, foment innovative thought, and seek a better future.Fundacion Azteca (www.fundacionazteca.org) has placed the values of Grupo Salinas into action since 2007. In 2015, Limpiemos Nuestro Mexico (www.limpiemosnuestromexico.org), Mexico's largest cleanup campaign, called 9 million volunteers to action to collect and separate 50,000 tons of garbage throughout Mexico.Meanwhile, Esperanza Azteca (www.esperanzaazteca.com), an initiative that promotes discipline, excellence and teamwork through music, integrated a network of 82 orchestras and choirs in Mexico, El Salvador and Los Angeles, benefiting more than 16,000 youth.The Jugueton (www.azteca7.com/jugueton) -the world's largest toy drive- in 2015, received and delivered more than 16 million toys to underprivileged children for Three Kings' Day, the traditional gift giving holiday for children in Mexico. During 20 annual drives, more than 170 million toys have been distributed, generating joy in a growing number of families.In 2015, there were six Movimiento Azteca (www.movimientoazteca.org) awareness and fundraising campaigns that raised more than Ps. 123 million for the Mexican Red Cross, cancer treatment, neonatal care, support to food banks, mammograms, breast feeding education and canine-feline sterilization, among many other initiatives.Meanwhile, Plantel Azteca provided high quality middle and high school excellence to 2,100 low-income students. Also in education, the foundation supported the Escuela Nueva program in Puebla, where 20,000 students from 200 grade schools in rural communities participate in active and collaborative learning.Grupo Salinas also strengthened the activities of its Kybernus (www.kybernus.org) program that seeks to form political and social leaders through a values-based culture. The program increased the number of participants to 1,350 future leaders, compared to 892 a year ago.It also sponsored the Ciudad de las Ideas (www.ciudaddelasideas.com) thinkers' festival that with the theme What's the Point?, which brought dozens of brilliant international minds to the city of Puebla to present cutting edge ideas to thousands of attendees. Grupo Salinas further supports Caminos de la Libertad (www.caminosdelalibertad.com), a program that promotes the value of freedom through essay contests and other forums. In 2015, it presented the Una Vida por la Libertad award to American thinker and former congressman Ron Paul.To educate consumers and foment entrepreneurism, Banco Azteca continues to support its financial education and small businesses program Aprende y Crece, which promotes informed financial decisions and encourages entrepreneurial culture.Fomento Cultural Grupo Salinas (www.fcgs.mx) continued supporting the preservation of Mexico's cultural heritage and artistic creation. In 2015, it sponsored Design Week Mexico, where contemporary Mexican design is promoted. Fomento Cultural also presented the following exhibitions: "Jimenez Deredia. A Genesis for Peace," and "Dreams of Immortality. Cards and Portraits of the XIX Century," as well as the Hugo Salinas Price National Silver Award.Grupo Salinas' companies seek to promote economic development together with environmental protection. From 2009 to date, Grupo Salinas has achieved energy savings of 367 GWh, leading to a reduction of 195,721 tons of carbon dioxide. This savings is equivalent to the energy consumed by 213,994 households for a year or the CO2 reduction of planting 978,606 trees.Grupo Salinas has over 100 years of contributing to the welfare of the communities in which it operates and has a solid position to continue its outstanding performance in activities of an economic, social and environmental value, which will generate further progress and boost the quality of life of millions of families in 2016.About Grupo SalinasGrupo Salinas (www.gruposalinas.com) is a group of dynamic, fast growing, and technologically advanced companies focused on creating shareholder value, building the Mexican middle class, and improving society through excellence. Created by Mexican entrepreneur Ricardo B. Salinas (www.ricardosalinas.com), Grupo Salinas operates as a management development and decision forum for the top leaders of member companies. These companies include: TV Azteca (www.tvazteca.com.mx; www.irtvazteca.com), Azteca America (www.aztecaamerica.com), Grupo Elektra (www.grupoelektra.com.mx), Banco Azteca (www.bancoazteca.com.mx), Advance America (www.advanceamerica.net), Afore Azteca (www.aforeazteca.com.mx), Seguros Azteca (www.segurosazteca.com.mx), Totalplay (www.totalplay.com.mx) and Enlace TPE (www.enlacetpe.com.mx). Each of the Grupo Salinas companies operates independently, with its own management, board of directors and shareholders. Grupo Salinas has no equity holdings.Press Relations:Luciano Pascoe, +52 (55) 1720 1313 ext. 36553, lpascoe@gruposalinas.com.mx Daniel McCosh, +52 (55) 1720-0059, dmccosh@gruposalinas.com
ST. LOUIS, MO--(Marketwired - January 04, 2016) - Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE: SF) today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Eaton Partners, LLC, a global fund placement and advisory firm.

"We have made significant investments in our capital raising capabilities, including the acquisitions of Eaton Partners and the Barclays Wealth Advisors. Together, our partnership will leverage Eaton Partners' extensive relationships with private equity firms, hedge funds, high net worth family offices, and institutional investors across Stifel's investment banking platform and high net worth private client business. We are excited to welcome Charlie Eaton and his team to Stifel," said Ronald J. Kruszewski, Chairman and CEO of Stifel.

Eaton Partners has over 60 employees across six offices and relationships with over 4,000 of the largest active institutional investors. Since Eaton Partners' inception in 1983, they have raised over $68 billion for 90 highly differentiated funds, of which $25 billion was raised in the past five years. Eaton Partners' advisory revenues were approximately $60 million in 2015. Eaton Partners will retain its brand name and will be run as a Stifel company.

Stifel Company Information

Stifel Financial Corp. (NYSE: SF) is a financial services holding company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri that conducts its banking, securities, and financial services business through several wholly owned subsidiaries. Stifel clients are served through Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated in the U.S., through Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited in the United Kingdom and Europe, and through Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc. in the U.S. and Europe. The Company's broker-dealer affiliates provide securities brokerage, investment banking, trading, investment advisory, and related financial services to individual investors, professional money managers, businesses, and municipalities. Stifel Bank & Trust offers a full range of consumer and commercial lending solutions. Stifel Trust Company, N.A. offers trust and related services. To learn more about Stifel, please visit the Company's web site at www.stifel.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The information contained in this press release contains certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements in this report not dealing with historical results are forward-looking and are based on various assumptions. The forward-looking statements in this report are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the statements. Material factors and assumptions could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The Company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Stifel Investor Relations Contact

Sarah Anderson

(415) 364-2500

investorrelations@stifel.com
MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/04/16 -- Today, KUBRA announced the acquisition of iFactor, a customer communication solution provider offering automated alerts, preference management, mobile applications, industry-leading outage communications and customer-facing mapping technology to the utility industry. The acquisition strengthens and expands KUBRA's customer interaction management solution set, positioning the company as the only complete and integrated suite of meter-to-cash and outage communication management solutions.

"The acquisition of iFactor complements KUBRA's overall service offering and represents an important strategic opportunity for us to provide an end-to-end suite of customer experience management solutions," said Rick Watkin, CEO of KUBRA. "As a clear leader in digital customer communications for the utility industry, iFactor solutions will help KUBRA take a significant step forward in our goal of creating a seamless, cross-platform experience for our clients and the customers they serve."

The combination of the two organizations will increase the overall value KUBRA will be able to deliver to the combined client base and grow its market share of leading North American gas and electric utilities. Prior to the acquisition KUBRA, had as clients 36 of the top 100 gas and electric (based on customer meters) utilities in America. Post acquisition, this number grows to 54, including 60% of the top 25 utilities, creating tremendous opportunities to expand relationships with mutual and net new clients and to continue to grow our market share in the enterprise North American gas and electric utility market space with a truly unique offering. With the iFactor suite of products, KUBRA will be able to expand our cloud-based solution 'stack' to include outage communication management, preference management, and an advanced mobile application offering. iFactor also has a number of client relationships in Canada and additional opportunities in Europe and Asia-Pacific that have tremendous potential.

"When KUBRA was acquired in 2014, our hope was to create a platform for future growth in the important sector of payment and communications solutions for the utility industry," said David Carey, President Hearst Magazines. "We're pleased to welcome the iFactor team to the Hearst family, as we expand our presence in this area."

"In KUBRA, we've found an incredible partner with a suite of solutions that will enhance and expand iFactor's current customer communication offerings," said Shazir Khan, President and CEO, iFactor. "This is an exciting time in the evolution of iFactor solutions, as the acquisition will ultimately provide clients with access to a greater breadth of technologies."

KUBRA believes utilities will be moving away from the current state of multiple 'point solution' relationships and on to large enterprise strategic partnerships where multiple solutions and services are managed by one integrated partnership with one core real-time interface to their CIS/OMS. With the iFactor acquisition, we have now positioned KUBRA to manage literally every customer interaction within the meter-to-cash and outage communications management ecosystem from delivering e-bills and powering online payments to processing paper bills and checks to mobile apps, energy usage, and proactive communications and alerts. The iFactor solution complements literally every solution module within our digital e-commerce platform.

About KUBRA

KUBRA provides customer interaction management solutions to some of the largest utility, insurance, financial services, government, healthcare, and communication companies across North America. Our portfolio of integrated multi-channel outsource solutions include document print and mailing, e-billing and self-service, document management, and payment solutions. With over 500 clients and 1 billion customer interactions annually, KUBRA enables innovative performance-driven value to its clients every day. KUBRA is an operating subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation.

www.kubra.com

About iFactor

iFactor develops software products and delivers complete communication solutions for the utility sector, delivering information to more than 150 million people in North America through deployments at more than 45 utilities. iFactor products and solutions enable utilities to leverage connected technologies such as the web, mobile web, and smartphones to interact with their customers. Visit www.ifactorinc.com for more information.

Contacts:

KUBRA

Tiffany Wildfong

Marketing Communications Coordinator

1-800-766-6616 ext 495

tiffany.wildfong@kubra.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/04/16 -- Diversified Royalty Corp. (TSX: DIV) (the "Corporation" or "DIV") is pleased to announce that its board of directors has approved a cash dividend of $0.01854 per common share for the period of January 1, 2016 to January 31, 2016, which is equal to $0.2225 per common share on an annualized basis. The dividend will be paid on January 29, 2016 to shareholders of record on January 15, 2016.

Board of Directors and CEO Elect to Receive Compensation in Restricted Share Units in Lieu of Cash for 2016

During 2016 the board of directors of DIV have elected to receive all compensation in the form of Restricted Share Units and Sean Morrison, the CEO, has elected to receive at least 45% of his base salary in Restricted Share Units. The Restricted Share Units will be issued quarterly pursuant DIV's Long Term Incentive Plan at the five day weighted average trading price of DIV's common shares as at the end of each quarter. The election by the board of directors and the CEO to receive compensation in Restricted Share Units of DIV demonstrates their commitment to DIV and further aligns their interests with those of DIV's shareholders.

Dividend Reinvestment Plan

DIV currently has a dividend reinvestment plan (the "DRIP") in place. The DRIP allows eligible holders of the Corporation's common shares ("Common Shares") to reinvest their cash dividends paid in respect of their Common Shares in additional Common Shares, which, at the Corporation's election, will be issued from treasury or purchased on the open market. If the Corporation elects to issue Common Shares from treasury, such Common Shares will be purchased under the DRIP at a 3% discount to the volume weighted average of the closing price for the Common Shares on the TSX for the five trading days immediately preceding the relevant dividend payment date. The Corporation may, from time to time, in its sole discretion, change or eliminate the discount applicable to Common Shares issued from treasury.

To be eligible to participate in the DRIP, holders of Common Shares must be resident in Canada. Participation in the DRIP does not relieve shareholders of any liability for taxes that may be payable in respect of dividends that are reinvested in new Common Shares under the DRIP. Shareholders should consult their tax advisors concerning the tax implications of their participation in the DRIP having regard to their particular circumstances.

The full text of the DRIP is available under the "Investor Relations" section of the Corporation's website located at http://diversifiedroyaltycorp.com and on Computershare's website located at www.investorcentre.com. Eligible beneficial shareholders who wish to participate in the DRIP should contact their investment advisor, bank or brokerage firm to enroll in the DRIP. Eligible registered shareholders may enroll online at Computershare's web portal located at www.investorcentre.com.

Shareholders should carefully read the complete text of the DRIP before making any decisions regarding participation in the DRIP.

About Diversified Royalty Corp.

DIV is a multi-royalty corporation, engaged in the business of acquiring top-line royalties from well-managed multi-location businesses and franchisors in North America. DIV's objective is to acquire predictable, growing royalty streams from a diverse group of multi-location businesses and franchisors.

DIV currently owns the Franworks, Sutton, and Mr. Lube trademarks. Franworks operates mid-tier casual neighborhood pub restaurants under the Original Joe's, State & Main, and Elephant & Castle brands across Canada and in select US markets and generates approximately $225 million of gross sales annually. Sutton is among the leading residential real estate brokerage franchisor businesses in Canada with approximately 8,000 agents and 200 offices across Canada. Mr. Lube is the leading quick lube service business in Canada with 169 locations across Canada and approximately $200 million of annual system sales.

DIV is currently paying a dividend and expects to increase cash flow per share by making accretive royalty purchases and through the growth of purchased royalties. DIV expects to pay a predictable and stable dividend to shareholders and increase the dividend as cash flow per share increases allow.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "confident", "plan" and "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Specifically, forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements made in relation to: the amount and timing of the January 2016 dividend to be paid to DIV's shareholders; the DRIP; the issuance of Restricted Share Units to DIV's board of directors and CEO in lieu of cash compensation; and DIV's corporate objectives. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events, performance, or achievements of DIV to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in such forward-looking statements. DIV believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. In particular there can be no assurance that DIV will: be able to make monthly dividend payments to the holders of its common shares; keep the DRIP in place; issue Restricted Share Units to its board of directors and CEO in lieu of cash compensation on the terms described in this news release, or at all; or achieve any of its corporate objectives. Given these uncertainties, readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance, and such forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied upon. These statements speak only as of the date of this news release. DIV undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by law.

In formulating the forward-looking statements contained herein, management has assumed that business and economic conditions affecting DIV and its royalty partners will continue substantially in the ordinary course, including without limitation with respect to general industry conditions, general levels of economic activity and regulations. These assumptions, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect.

All of the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, DIV.

THE TORONTO STOCK EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR THE ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Additional Information

Additional information relating to the Corporation and other public filings, is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Contacts:

Diversified Royalty Corp.

Sean Morrison

President and Chief Executive Officer

(604) 235-3146



Diversified Royalty Corp.

Greg Gutmanis

Chief Financial Officer and VP Acquisitions

(604) 235-3146




CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - January 04, 2016) - Keno Kozie, a leading provider of information technology design, service, and support to law firms, today announced the company has been nominated for Best IT Outsourcing Provider for U.S. Law Firms in the 2016 Best of The National Law Journal Reader Rankings survey.

The survey gives the legal community the opportunity to acknowledge those they believe are the best providers of products and services.

"It is always a top honor to be nominated in this category," stated Barry Keno, president of Keno Kozie. "This year marks our 27th anniversary in business, and as we continue to grow and evolve, so does our client base, spanning across the nation. Since the inception of the awards survey, we have been grateful each year we've been nominated in this category, nationally and specifically in Chicago and D.C."

Voting is open until January 4, 2016 at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2016BestNLJ; recipients will be announced March 28, 2016. Keno Kozie is listed in Question 39: "Who is the nation's best provider of IT Outsourcing for U.S. law firms?"

About Keno Kozie

Keno Kozie Associates, Ltd. (kenokozie.com) has been providing information technology design, service, and support to leading law firms and legal departments since 1989. Hundreds of firms have chosen Keno Kozie to provide IT consulting, system and advanced application integration, 24/7/365 Help Desk support, training, managed services, and security and risk management services. The company has been recognized from 2012 through 2015 as the Best IT Outsourcing Provider in The National Law Journal's national Best of Legal Times and Best of Chicago awards. The company maintains partnerships with many leading software and hardware vendors to provide clients with optimal value and support.

For more information contact:

Katie Kahn

kkahn@kka.com

312-448-5026
STAMFORD, CT -- (Marketwired) -- 01/04/16 -- Finacity Corporation ("Finacity") announced that it has successfully launched a combined receivables securitization program for Papier Union GmbH ("Papier Union") and PMF Factoring GmbH ("PMF Factoring"), allowing up to EUR 100 million in funding through a leading European bank.

Finacity acted as Joint Arranger and provided analytic and structuring support. It also serves as the transaction's Administrator.

About Papier Union

Papier Union is part of Inapa, a leading European paper merchant group. The Papier Union group is a service provider for the printing industry, supply partner for office supplies, offers packaging solutions as well as services as a system house for outdoor advertising and display. Papier Union provides tailor-made products and services, a proven logistics system geared precisely to clients' needs and a close client working relationship and competent consulting by 800 employees and a broad local office network. For more information, please visit www.papierunion.de.

About PMF Factoring

PMF Factoring is one of the largest bank-independent factoring companies in Germany, concentrating on medium sized corporations. PMF Factoring began as a subsidiary of Papier Union, but has since become its own entity, contributing its own receivables into the combined securitization program. PMF Factoring's success has been driven by high consulting competency, transparent rates and fair contract terms. PMF Factoring strives to help their customers concentrate on their core business and watch sales grow. For more information, please visit www.pmf-factoring.de.

About Finacity

Finacity specializes in the structuring and provision of efficient working capital funding programs, supplier and payables finance, back-up servicing, and bond administration. Finacity currently facilitates the financing and administration of an annual receivables volume of approximately US $100 billion. With resources in the USA, Europe and Latin America, Finacity conducts business throughout the world with obligors in more than 165 countries. For further information, please visit www.finacity.com.

For more information on this transaction, please contact:

Finacity

Charles Nahum

+44 20 7935 3390

Email Contact




Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PUNE, India, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Market-Research-Reports.com adds "Global and Chinese Nicotinic Acid Industry, 2010-2020 Market Research Report" of 150 pages, published in Nov 2015, to the organic chemicals intelligence collection of its store.

This report estimate 2015-2020 Nicotinic Acid Industry Cost and Profit with Market Competition of Nicotinic Acid Industry by Country: (Including Europe, U.S., Japan, China etc.), By Company and Application. Complete report on Nicotinic Acid market divided into 11 major chapters that offer an overview of current market scenario as well as 2020 forecasts is now available at http://www.market-research-reports.com/406045-global-and-chinese-nicotinic-acid-cas-59-67-6-industry-2015-market-research-report .

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The report reviews the basic information of Nicotinic Acid including its classification, application and manufacturing technology. This report explores global and China's top manufacturers of Nicotinic Acid listing their product specification, capacity, Production value, and market share etc. The report further analyzes quantitatively 2010-2015 global and China's total market of Nicotinic Acid by calculation of main economic parameters of each company.

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The first chapter introduces the Nicotinic Acid Industry by Brief Introduction, Development & Status of Nicotinic Acid Industry.

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Another research titled Global and Chinese Iodoacetic Acid Industry, 2010-2020 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Iodoacetic Acid industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Iodoacetic Acid manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry. Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international and Chinese major industry players in detail. In this part, the report presents the company profile, product specifications, capacity, production value, and 2010-2015 market shares for each company. Through the statistical analysis, the report depicts the global and Chinese total market of Iodoacetic Acid industry including capacity, production, production value, cost/profit, supply/demand and Chinese import/export. The total market is further divided by company, by country, and by application/type for the competitive landscape analysis. The report then estimates 2015-2020 market development trends of Iodoacetic Acid industry. Analysis of upstream raw materials, downstream demand, and current market dynamics is also carried out. In the end, the report makes some important proposals for a new project of Iodoacetic Acid Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2010-2020 global and Chinese Iodoacetic Acid industry covering all important parameters. Comprehensive Table of Contents and more for the report is available at http://www.market-research-reports.com/424738-iodoacetic-acid-cas-64-69-7-industry .

Explore more reports on organic chemicals Industry at http://www.market-research-reports.com/cat/chemicals/organic-market-research .

About Us:

Market Research Reports is an aggregator of syndicated market research studies that offer current and future market intelligence across multiple industrial verticals through is high quality database. Market Research Reports aims to help you take business decisions accurately and on time, every time. Understanding your time constraints, we can help you find the most relevant research based on the requirements you share with us. Our customers get 24 X 7 email and phone support. Feel free to reach us at +1 888 391 5441 with your business intelligence needs.

Contact:

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UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

Tel: +1-888-391-5441

sales@market-research-reports.com


STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, filed a civil complaint in federal court in Detroit, Michigan, against Volkswagen AG (VKW.L, VLKAF.PK, VOW.BE), Audi AG, Volkswagen Group of America Inc., Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations LLC, Porsche AG and Porsche Cars North America Inc.- collectively referred to as Volkswagen. The Department reportedly seeks billions of dollars in penalties in the wake of an emissions-cheating crisis at the German auto maker. The civil complaint filed accuses the automaker of four violations of the Clean Air Act and outlines penalties that could amount to as much as $80 billion -- about four times as much as the maximum some legal experts had estimated. The complaint alleged that nearly 600,000 diesel engine vehicles had illegal defeat devices installed that impair their emission control systems and cause emissions to exceed EPA's standards, resulting in harmful air pollution. The complaint further alleged that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by selling, introducing into commerce, or importing into the United States motor vehicles that are designed differently from what Volkswagen had stated in applications for certification to EPA and the California Air Resources Board or CARB. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
(2) Reflects the number of positions in issuers: (a) in which the Company has previously, publicly disclosed an investment, (b) in which the Company has invested more than 5.0% of its AUM (as defined below), or (c) in which the Company has invested more than 1.0% of its AUM and for which it has completed its accumulation strategy. Cash, cash equivalents, direct or indirect currency or other hedges and income/expense items are excluded. Multiple financial instruments (for example, common stock and derivatives on common stock) associated with one (1) issuer will count as one (1) position. A position will be removed from the table only if: (a) the investment is less than 1.0% of the AUM of the Company, and (b) the Company has previously, publicly announced a disposition of the investment, or otherwise becomes 0.0% of the portfolio.

(3) Investments for purposes of valuation are valued as follows: (a) issuer equity or debt is valued at market value, (b) options referencing such issuer equity or debt are valued at market value, and (c) swaps or forwards referencing such issuer equity or debt are valued at the market value of the notional equity or debt underlying the swaps or forwards. Long position is determined by whether an investment has positive exposure to price increases; therefore, long puts count as short exposure.

(4) Includes all issuer equity and debt securities and derivatives related to issuer equity and debt securities and associated currency hedges. Cash, cash equivalents, direct or indirect currency or other hedges and income/expense items are excluded. The market values of associated currency hedges are added to the associated investment. In the event that there is a change in market cap category with respect to any non-publicly disclosed position, this information is not updated until such position is publicly disclosed.

(5) Portfolio composition is reflective of the portfolio positions as of the date of this report, but is not necessarily indicative of the composition of the portfolio in the future which may be significantly different than that shown here. A position in an issuer investment is only assigned to a sector (including the "Undisclosed Position" sector) once it meets the criteria of Footnote 2.

(6) "Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. AUM" is the assets under management of Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. Performance fee crystallized as of the end of the year will be reflected in the following period's AUM.

(7) "Total Strategy AUM" is the aggregate assets under management of Pershing Square, L.P., Pershing Square International, Ltd., Pershing Square II, L.P. and Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. Redemptions effective as of the end of any period (including redemptions attributable to crystallized performance fee/allocation, if any) will be reflected in the following period's AUM.

(8) "Total Firm AUM" is the aggregate of the Total Strategy AUM and the assets under management of PS V, L.P., PS V International, Ltd. and affiliated entities (collectively, "PSV"), less amounts invested in PSV by the entities listed above (as applicable).
United States, Jan 5, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - E Fund Management (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. (E Fund Hong Kong), announced that the company launched the E Fund China A Enhanced Equity Fund (the Stock Fund or the Fund) in the US market, as the first RQFII active mutual funds in the US. This new active product, targeting US institutional and retail markets, will provide an alternative to current passive offerings in the market with possible MSCI inclusion in China in its indices in the future.



The Chinese equity market is known for its potential investment opportunities. Even with the selloff in June, A share's return in 2015 still beats many developed markets. The E Fund China A Enhanced Equity Fund could be regarded as one of new ways to diversify investors' portfolio and gain exposure to the Chinese equity market. The Stock Fund's stock selection strategy incorporates quantitative, fundamental and technical analysis to identify different dimensions that influence a stock's valuation. The Fund normally invests at least 80% of its assets in China A-Shares, which are equity securities of issuers located in the People's Republic of China that trade in renminbi ("RMB") on the Shanghai or Shenzhen Stock Exchanges.



Mr. Zhang Qiang (David), Managing Director and Head of E Fund US commented, "As one of the largest asset manager in China, E Fund is the first Chinese firm to launch 40 Act mutual funds in US. The launch of the Stock Fund marks the start of a new era that Chinese asset managers move from just offering passive products to active products in overseas markets. Going forward, performance and active investment capacity will become the key differentiating players and products in the field. We believe that A-share shall play an increasingly important role in global investors' asset allocation next year. By launching in 2015, the Fund will be able to gain a full year's of track record by the end of 2016. As part of our global expansion strategy, E Fund opened US office in August 2015. We expect to launch more products in 2016." He added, "This is not a recommendation to invest in the Fund, investors should read the prospectus carefully before deciding to invest."



* E Fund China A Enhanced Equity Fund is not an SFC authorized fund and is not available to retail investors in Hong Kong.



About E Fund Management (Hong Kong) Co, Ltd.

E Fund Management (HK) Co., Ltd ("E Fund HK") was officially established in 2008 and is licensed by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong to conduct Type 1 (Dealing in Securities), Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 9 (Asset Management) regulated activities. As a premier global business platform for E Fund Management Co., Limited ("E Fund"), E Fund HK has a subsidiary office in New York, and listed a total of 18 RQFII ETFs and RQFII/QFII public funds at six stock exchanges across the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Total assets under management of E Fund HK exceeded RMB 40 billion (over US $7 billion)*.



E Fund, the parent company of E Fund HK, was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Guangzhou. It has branch offices in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, Nanjing, and subsidiaries including E Fund International Holdings Ltd., E Fund HK, E Fund Asset Management Co., Ltd. and GuangDong Xin San Lian Investment Development Co., Ltd. E Fund has grown tremendously to become one of the largest fund management corporations in China with assets under management of RMB 535 billion*. It is licensed to cover a full spectrum of asset management services in China including, public funds, the national social security fund, corporate annuities, discretionary accounts, QDII, QFII and RQFII. E Fund passed independent verification of the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) in August 2014, signifying an important step forward to becoming more internationalized with unified performance reporting.



Capitalizing the investment and research ability of E Fund, E Fund HK maintains three investment research teams, each specializing in RQFII/QFII, overseas and alternative investments. Integrated with E Fund's global expansion strategies, E Fund HK is committed to providing quality asset management services for onshore and offshore investors in Greater China and US ADR markets. Through the construction of a global-facing asset allocation platform, E Fund HK serves as a window to investors in China for asset allocation exposures all over the world.



* as of 30 June, 2015



E Fund HK Disclaimer

Nothing in this document should be construed as advice, recommendation, offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to invest in any of the funds or products in any jurisdiction, whether or not managed by E Fund Management Co. Limited and/or E Fund Management (HK) Co., Limited ("E Fund HK"). None of the information contained herein has been reviewed or approved by any regulatory authority in Hong Kong or in any jurisdiction. This document is supplied to you solely for your information. E Fund HK has, to the best of its endeavor, ensured that the information contained herein is accurate and reliable at its original date of publication, but makes no representation (in any form) as to its accuracy, completeness and validity, whether in whole or in part. Such information is subject to change without notice. E Fund HK shall have no responsibility whatsoever for any use or reliance thereof. Investment involves risk. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. You should not solely base on the information contained herein to make investment decision. You shall refer to the offering document for details of the relevant scheme or product, including the risk factors. This document is issued by E Fund HK and has not been reviewed by the Securities and Futures Commissions of Hong Kong.



Disclosure

Investors should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the E China Enhanced Equity Fund and E China Total Return Bond Fund. This and other important information about the Fund is contained in the prospectus, which can be obtained by calling 888-292-8490. The prospectus should be read carefully before investing. The E China Enhanced Equity and E China Total Return Bond Funds are distributed by Northern Lights Distributors, LLC member FINRA/SIPC. E Fund Management (HK) Co., Ltd. is not affiliated with Northern Lights Distributors, LLC.







Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.





Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Total of non-dilutive funding at EUR 5 million for the full year 2015

Regulatory News:

BONE THERAPEUTICS (Brussels:BOTHE) (Paris:BOTHE),the bone cell therapy company addressing high unmet medical needs in the field of bone fracture repair and bone fracture prevention, today announces it has been granted an additional EUR 2 million in non-dilutive funding1 to support its research programs. The funding comes from the Walloon Region by decision of the Minister for Economy, Industry, Innovation and New technologies, Mr Jean-Claude Marcourt, bringing the total of non-dilutive funding to EUR 5 million for the full year 2015.

Enrico Bastianelli, Chief Executive Officer of Bone Therapeutics, commented: "We are grateful to the Walloon Region, and more specifically to the Minister for Economy Mr Jean-Claude Marcourt, for its continued support of the Company. During 2015 we were granted a total of over EUR 5 million in non-dilutive funding, an amount equalling 13.5% of our IPO proceeds. This will significantly boost our research and consequently the potential of our products."

The extra funding will be used to further investigate the mode-of-action of Bone Therapeutics' allogeneic bone cell therapy product ALLOB. The research conducted during this two-year project will help understand the impact of proteins produced by ALLOB on bone reconstruction. This will allow the Company to gather additional supportive information for the ongoing proof-of-concept studies with ALLOBin the treatment of delayed-union fractures and in spinal fusion.

Footnote

1. The non-dilutive funding is granted under the form of 'avances recuperables' to support specific research and development programs. Under the applicable conditions, the funding is reimbursable over the economic life of the project. Thirty per cent is refundable based on a fixed reimbursement schedule, while the balance is refunded under the form of royalties over the same period.

-Ends-

About Bone Therapeutics

Bone Therapeutics is a leading biotechnology company specializing in the development of cell therapy products intended for bone fracture repair and fracture prevention. The current standard-of-care in this field involves major surgeries and long recovery periods. To overcome these problems, Bone Therapeutics is developing a range of innovative regenerative products containing osteoblastic/bone-forming cells, administrable via a minimally invasive percutaneous technique; a unique proposition in the market.

PREOB, Bone Therapeutics' autologous bone cell product, is currently in pivotal Phase IIB/III clinical studies for two indications: osteonecrosis and non-union fractures, and in Phase II for severe osteoporosis. ALLOB, its allogeneic "off-the-shelf" bone cell product, is in Phase I/IIA for the treatment of delayed-union fractures and lumbar fusion for degenerative disease of the spine. The Company also runs preclinical research programs and develops novel product candidates.

Founded in 2006, Bone Therapeutics is headquartered in Gosselies (South of Brussels, Belgium). Bone Therapeutics' regenerative products are manufactured to the highest GMP standards and are protected by a rich IP estate covering 11 patent families. Further information is available at www.bonetherapeutics.com

Certain statements, beliefs and opinions in this press release are forward-looking, which reflect the Company or, as appropriate, the Company directors' current expectations and projections about future events. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could adversely affect the outcome and financial effects of the plans and events described herein. A multitude of factors including, but not limited to, changes in demand, competition and technology, can cause actual events, performance or results to differ significantly from any anticipated development. Forward looking statements contained in this press release regarding past trends or activities should not be taken as a representation that such trends or activities will continue in the future. As a result, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release any update or revisions to any forward-looking statements in this press release as a result of any change in expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which these forward-looking statements are based. Neither the Company nor its advisers or representatives nor any of its subsidiary undertakings or any such person's officers or employees guarantees that the assumptions underlying such forward-looking statements are free from errors nor does either accept any responsibility for the future accuracy of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release or the actual occurrence of the forecasted developments. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160104005795/en/

Contacts:

Bone Therapeutics SA

Enrico Bastianelli, Chief Executive Officer

Wim Goemaere, Chief Financial Officer

Tel: +32 (0)2 529 59 90

investorrelations@bonetherapeutics.com

or

For Belgium and International Media Enquiries

Consilium Strategic Communications

Amber Fennell, Jessica Hodgson, Lindsey Neville and Hendrik Thys

Tel: +44 (0) 20 3709 5701

bonetherapeutics@consilium-comms.com

or

For French Media and Investor Enquiries

NewCap Investor Relations Financial Communications

Pierre Laurent, Louis-Victor Delouvrier and Nicolas Merigeau

Tel: 33 (0)2 44 71 94 94

bone@newcap.eu
Regulatory News:

bioMerieux (Paris:BIM), a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, today announced the acquisition of Applied Maths, a company that develops state-of-the-art software solutions for the biosciences, in particular for databasing, analysis and interpretation of complex biological data. Since it was founded in 1992, the company has gained worldwide recognition by leveraging its strong and unique combined expertise in informatics and microbiology.

The interpretation of extensive and highly complex biological information generated by technologies such as next-generation sequencing (NGS), mass-spectrometry and molecular biology is becoming a critical success factor to provide high-precision diagnostic information to the scientific community and healthcare professionals. The in-depth understanding of biology also supports a trend towards more integrated therapeutic and diagnostic products. At the crossroads between biology and computing, the bioinformatics market is undergoing sustainable double-digit growth with the potential to turn big data into meaningful and actionable decisions for improved patient management.

With an installed base of over 81,000 instruments worldwide, bioMerieux's automated diagnostic solutions are generating rapidly-increasing quantities of biological information that is key to improve clinical knowledge about disease-causing microorganisms. Strengthening its bioinformatics know-how is instrumental to enable bioMerieux to enhance its offering in the analysis and interpretation of biological data. Initially, the acquisition of Applied Maths will enrich and expand the bioMerieux EpiSeq service in NGS for the epidemiological monitoring and control of healthcare-associated infections. Taking a more long-term perspective, synergies are foreseen in the field of clinical microbiology, particularly for the optimization of bioMerieux's data management tools and unique collection of clinically-relevant bacterial strains, the consolidation of data from different instruments (including the recently-acquired FilmArray), as well as in industrial microbiology to facilitate the traceability and investigations of epidemics all along the food chain.

Building on more than 20 years of expertise, Applied Maths develops and commercializes BioNumerics universal software for microbiology applications, including in bacteriology, virology and mycology. Through its ability to manage a wide range of different data types (phenotypic information, molecular PCR, genetic sequences, spectral profiles, whole genome maps, metadata, etc.), its superior reliability and excellent networking capabilities, BioNumerics has become the preferred software in many prestigious national and international projects, networks, and critical-mission applications for the integrated analysis of biological data.

"Bioinformatics unleashes the potential of big data management and may have an impact on in vitro diagnostics by progressively breaking down barriers between service offerings from laboratories and diagnostic solutions commercialized by IVD companies," said Jean-Luc Belingard, Chairman of bioMerieux. "True to our pioneering spirit, we are opening up new markets. The acquisition of Applied Maths with its powerful BioNumerics software suite will help answer the most recent expectations of our customers, facing a growing digitalization of the laboratory environment and requiring more insights to make more informed clinical decisions for better patient care

Alain Pluquet, Chief Technology Officer at bioMerieux, added, "we are delighted to welcome on board the extremely talented team from Applied Maths. Their knowledge and energy are important foundation stones on which we will build a dedicated team focused on data analytics and content-oriented services within bioMerieux

"Applied Maths is very pleased to join the bioMerieux family," said Koen Janssens, Chief Executive Officer of Applied Maths. "Our common passion for microbiology forms a very solid basis to build our future synergies on the short and longer term. By combining our fields of expertise, we will improve the quality of public health and food safety worldwide.

Applied Maths is a privately-held company based in Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium. Its 25 employees serve more than 2,000 customers worldwide, mainly in Europe and the U.S., including leading public health organizations, research and academic institutions, industrial companies and hospitals. The scientific impact of Applied Maths' software is evidenced by the vast number of research studies in peer-reviewed publications that use it, as well as the company's impressive portfolio of customers from academia and industry.

The financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.

About bioMerieux

Pioneering Diagnostics

A world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics for 50 years, bioMerieux is present in more than 150 countries through 42 subsidiaries and a large network of distributors. In 2014, revenues reached 1,698 million with 88% of sales outside of France.

bioMerieux provides diagnostic solutions (reagents, instruments, software) which determine the source of disease and contamination to improve patient health and ensure consumer safety. Its products are used for diagnosing infectious diseases and providing high medical value results for cancer screening and monitoring and cardiovascular emergencies. They are also used for detecting microorganisms in agri-food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products.

bioMerieux is listed on the Euronext Paris stock market

(Symbol: BIM ISIN: FR0010096479).

Corporate website: www.biomerieux.com

Investors website: www.biomerieux-finance.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160104006312/en/

Contacts:

Investor Relations

bioMerieux

Sylvain Morgeau, 33 (0)4 78 87 22 37

investor.relations@biomerieux.com

or

Media Relations

bioMerieux

Aurore Sergeant, 33 4 78 87 54 75

media@biomerieux.com

or

Image Sept

Laurence Heilbronn, 33 1 53 70 74 64

lheilbronn@image7.fr

or

Claire Doligez, 33 1 53 70 74 48

cdoligez@image7.fr
Further EnhancesIts Leading Position in Middle East Market

HONG KONG, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Leading global land drilling rig manufacturer,Honghua Group Ltd. (Stock Code: 196.HK) ("HH"), is pleased to announce that it has entered into an ultra-deep drilling rig sales agreement (the "Sales Agreement") with Kuwait Drilling Company K.S.C. ("KDC"), worth a total of approximately US$25 million (HK$194 million). Pursuant to the Sales Agreement, HH will provide and deliver one set of ultra-deep drilling rigs to KDC in 2016.

Mr. Zhang Mi, Chairman of HH commented, "This Sales Agreement marks the first domestic-made ultra-deep drilling rig to enter into the Kuwait market and breaks the long-term monopoly of the Kuwaiti ultra-deep drilling rigs market by western drilling rigs manufacturers. Since HH entered the Kuwait market in 2008 it has maintained a very good relationship with KDC. The continued cooperation not only represents high market reorganization of our products, but also shows brand loyalty. We believe that the agreement will benefit HH in consolidating and increasing its market share in Kuwait, as well as serving its goal ofcontinuously penetrating into the high-end drilling rigs market in the Middle East, further optimizing our global business layout which will provide a solid foundation for HH's wider and deeper cooperation in the future and increase our influence on global markets."

About Honghua Group Ltd.

Honghua Group Ltd. ("HH") is one of the largest land drilling equipment manufacturers in the world, which is primarily engaged in manufacturing conventional land drilling rigs, digital drilling rigs, accessories of drilling rigs, as well as the parts and components for the drilling rigs or for the maintenance of the drilling rigs in operation. Based on the existing solid foundation, HH will implement business diversification strategy, and expand to become the integrated enterprise which is involved in the interaction development of three major sectors, including onshore and offshore areas, equipment manufacturing and oil and gas resources development, as well as engineering services.

For further information, please contact:
Press release

NNIT assumes responsibility for development and maintenance of the insurance companies' shared business platform

Copenhagen, January 5, 2016 - NNIT, leading provider of IT services and consultancy, announces that it has signed an agreement end of 2015 with Koebstdernes Forsikring and Popermo Forsikring on the further development and maintenance of the insurance companies' shared business platform.

For a number of years Koebstdernes Forsikring and Popermo Forsikring have worked together on the development of the shared IT platform that handles the business for both companies. They have now moved their cooperation forward and entered into an application outsourcing agreement with NNIT.

The agreement with NNIT is part of the companies' efforts to ensure a scalable and futureproof platform. The medium-sized, double-digit DKKm agreement initially runs for three years and four months.

"It is our job to ensure the lives our policy holders choose to live. With an increasing number of customers and growth it is imperative that our clients continue to experience that we are with them and can offer attention and personal advise before and after an insurance claim, while at the same time offering competitive products quickly and efficiently. That obviously places high demands on the development and maintenance of our IT platform," says Anders Hestbech, managing director at Koebstdernes Forsikring.

John Rasmussen, managing director at Popermo Forsikring adds: "Popermo Forsikring aims to be the natural choice by making it easy, swift and professional for our members. With NNIT we have chosen a partner who can support our technological demands thus ensuring quality, delivery and agility."

Senior Vice President and responsible for sales in NNIT Michael Bjerregaard says: "We very much look forward to working with Koebstdernes Forsikring and Popermo Forsiking. Their clients should continue being the most satisfied policy holders in Denmark - and we will take advantage of our many years of experience with application outsourcing to ensure this."

More information

Rikke Dalager, NNIT Communications, +45 30 77 80 80, rida@nnit.com (mailto:rida@nnit.com)

About Koebstdernes Forsikring

Koebstdernes Forsikring is Denmark's oldest insurance company and the only one to be owned by the policy holders, national and able to deliver overall insurance schemes to both private and professional clients. Koebstdernes Forsikring has grown over the past 250 years by being curious and knowledgeable about the demands of the people. The solid experience combined with a strong and competitive business platform means that the clients can have the insurances that provide them an unconcerned life. For more information, please go to www.kfforsikring.dk (http://www.kfforsikring.dk/)

About Popermo Forsikring

Popermo's story is the tale of enterprising police officers who decided to form their own insurance company in 1963 allowing them to offer inexpensive car insurances for their own cars. The idea was carried out and 'Popermo - our insurance' became reality. After more than 50 years in the insurance business, Popermo today offers all private insurances for members of the police force and other select groups. Popermo Forsikring is owned by its members. For more information, please go to www.popermo.dk (http://www.popermo.dk/)

NNIT signs agreement with Koebstdernes Forsikring, Popermo Forsikring (http://hugin.info/163771/R/1976583/723451.pdf)



This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: NNIT A/S via Globenewswire



HUG#1976583



NNIT A/S is one of Denmark's leading IT service providers and consultancies. NNIT A/S offers a wide range of IT services and solutions to its customers, primarily in the life sciences sector in Denmark and internationally and to customers in the public, enterprise and finance sectors in Denmark. As of September 30, 2015, NNIT A/S had 2,539 employees. For more information please visit www.nnit.com (http://www.nnit.com/).
LONDON, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Asia Pacific Gold Mining Investment Ltd (APGMI) announced today (Monday 4th January 2016) that it has now completed the process of serving a legal claim against a number of ex-directors

Michael Cunningham and also David Mapley were dismissed from the company on 20th February 2015 at an EGM held in St John, Canada. The board of APGMI then engaged a respected London based legal firm with specialist commercial law expertise, to commence proceedings against the pair.

The claim that has been served states that Mr Cunningham and Mr Mapley mishandled or were negligent in their negotiation of an important contract with an Ethiopian mining company, and have subsequently refused to provide necessary paperwork as legally required.

More specificallythe claim outlines that Michael Cunningham and/or David Mapley (from the time he became a Director) breached fiduciary and common law, equitable and statutory duties, and the Duty of Care by failing to act with any reasonable care, skill and diligence while undertaking due diligence and/or proceeding with investment on the basis of the information they received while serving as Directors of APGMI.

APGMI's claim states that as a direct result of the above breaches, it has suffered loss and damage to its finances, reputation and business operations.

As such, pending disclosure and expert evidence, APGMI is seeking damages and/or equitable compensation to the nature and extent of its losses, as well as an order for delivery of all property and documents belonging to APGMI.

Mr Cunningham and Mr Mapley have 21 working days from the time of the claim being served to submit an appeal via a UK Court.

An APGMI spokesperson said:

"I would like to reassure our shareholders that by taking this action we are following an effective legal route in order to get the company on track and receive compensation for the damage caused by our ex-directors."

Notes to announcement:

Asia Pacific Gold Mining Investment Ltd (Asia Pacific GMI Ltd) was formed to pursue business opportunities relating to gold and other valuable mineral resources. The company was pursuing opportunities in Africa .

. APGMI is incorporated in New Brunswick, Canada , the new board is working with the company secretary to ensure strict compliance with the province's Company law

, the new board is working with the company secretary to ensure strict compliance with the province's Company law APGMI does not use nor has ever used social media and its official website is http://www.asiapacificgmi.com. Any social media or other sites are not endorsed and may represent breaches of copyright.

For further information please contact EdenCancan:

Nick Fulford on nick.fulford@edencancan.com / +44(0)203-745-6960

Sarah Nagy on sarah.nagy@edencancan.com / +44(0)203-745-6960
Leading US Pay-TV software integrator will leverage the first independent open source middleware for digital TV to create custom solutions for Pay-TV operators

Wyplay, a creator of software solutions for leading pay-TV operators, and JetHead Development, a leading integrator of embedded technology for the STB and Smart TV markets, announced today that JetHead is joining the "Frog by Wyplay" community. Frog by Wyplay is the first independent open source software solution for pay-TV operators. This initiative brings together a growing ecosystem of more than 110 companies across the entire digital TV technology value chain, including chipset vendors, device manufacturers, independent software vendors, software development/integration services providers and operators. The Frog by Wyplay solution gives partners access to the complete source code and all the components to build TV operator products.

With JetHead's extensive capability in multi-room video distribution technologies such as RVU, DLNA and DTCP-IP, JetHead has enabled operators in North and South America to deploy low cost multi-room Pay-TV solutions that can securely deliver SD, HD and 4K broadcast quality video to thin-client STB and Smart-TV platforms. By blending this knowledge and expertise with the Frog by Wyplay solution, JetHead and Wyplay can deliver the next generation of innovative solutions to the Pay-TV market place worldwide.

"As one of the market leaders providing of software products and services for MVPD operators, we are excited to partner with Wyplay. With their robust, open source, scalable software solutions and JetHead's extensive knowledge and experience in the operator space I believe we are able to provide some new and innovative features, that create a cost-effective compelling solution for operators," says Ben Payne Chief Operating Officer at JetHead.

JetHead has been providing innovative embedded software services to the satellite, cable and IPTV industry for over 20 years and has strong long-term relationships with a number of major operators, numerous OEM partners and all the major multimedia chipset vendors.

The Frog Marketplace is of particular interest, and brings with it the possibility to leverage the JetHead expertise and technology through all the existing Wyplay partners in a quick and efficient manner, to bring additional capabilities to the Frog by Wyplay solution.

"We welcome JetHead as a system integration and scaling partner, thereby deepening the Frog Community's footprint in the Americas," said Wyplay CEO Jacques Bourgninaud.

He added, "JetHead is a great addition to the Frog By Wyplay community and we look forward to leveraging their technology across our ecosystem and though our partners."

JetHead will set up an integration lab in San Diego, with engineering resources skilled in the Frog solution, to create custom digital TV solutions based on the Wyplay open source middleware. Operators and device vendors can then tap into JetHead's expertise and products to cover the wide spectrum of activities required in customer deployments, including set-top box middleware integration, Smart-TV software integration, device driver development/support, conditional access integration, system testing and quality assurance.

Frog By Wyplay is showcased at the CES 2016 tradeshow in Las Vegas, January 6-9, 2016.

The source code and documentation are available by signing up at https://frogbywyplay.com/signup.

About JetHead

JetHead is an embedded software services company. We specialize in C/C++, and in the development, testing and integration of Linux-based embedded s/w for the delivery of high quality HD/UHD operator video on STB and Smart-TV. JetHead is the leading developer of RVU (for AT&T/DIRECTV) and DLNA VidiPath (for the US cable industry). JetHead also offers new technology, including the "JetHead Cloud Browser", designed to deliver an HTML5 user experience to video devices such as an already deployed connected STB, that are not able to run a full browser. For more information, please visit: www.jetheaddev.com.

About Wyplay

Independent and internationally recognized, Wyplay develops open, modular and innovative software solutions for IPTV, cable, satellite and terrestrial TV operators and broadcasters around the world.

Wyplay's technology enables operators to select, configure, and deploy solutions easily from the richest list of preconfigured functionality available in a modular online TV solution, including an electronic program guide; video recorder; multiscreen and multiroom connectivity, an application store; and more.

Wyplay's professional services team creates user experiences that exactly match and complement an operator or broadcaster's product and market strategies. Wyplay is now a strategic partner for such leading brands as SFR, Vodafone, Belgacom, Canal+ and Sky Italia.

To learn more about Wyplay's set-top box, multi-screen and OTT solutions, please visit www.wyplay.com and www.FrogByWyplay.com.

Please Meet JetHead Wyplay at CES 2016

JetHead: Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 2

Private Suite MP25282 (by Appointment Only)

Wyplay: Venetian Hotel, San Polo 3401

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160105005172/en/

Contacts:

PR Contact for Wyplay

Julie Geret, +33-621-047-705

Head of Communications

jgeret@wyplay.com

or

PR Contact for JetHead

David Bye, +1-760-444-1200

VP Marketing and Business Development

marketing@jetheaddev.com
The Carlsberg Group has signed an agreement regarding the sale of Danish Malting Group A/S ("DMG") to Viking Malt Oy. The transaction is expected to be finalised within few months, subject to approvals by relevant anti-trust authorities. The transaction is in line with the Carlsberg Group's ambitions of disposing of non-core assets, improving return on invested capital and reducing financial leverage. The sales price is not disclosed. Facts about DMG: DMG is a 100% owned subsidiary of the Carlsberg Group. The company has 88 employees and operates three malting plants (one in Denmark and two in Poland) with a combined annual capacity of 220,000 tonnes and an annual turnover of approximately DKK 700m. Contacts: Media Relations: Kasper Elbjrn +45 4179 1216 Investor Relations: Peter Kondrup +45 3327 1221 Iben Steiness +45 3327 1232 Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=542422

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
AB Klaipedos nafta (hereinafter - the Company) and the Swiss-registered company Verum Plus AG has signed a long term transshipment contract on provision of dark oil products services in AB Klaipedos nafta terminal (hereinafter - the Contract). The term of the Contract is until 31 December 2016, with an option to extend it for one more year. This Contract shall guarantee additional volume of dark petroleum products from Belarus Republic refineries. The conclusion of the Contract is approved by the Board of the Company as provided for in the Articles of Association of AB Klaipedos nafta. Marius Pulkauninkas, Director of Finance and Administration Department, tel. 8 46 391763

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The election and remuneration committee of Norske Skog has unanimously nominated Ms Joanne Owen (42) and Mr Nils Ingemund Hoff (55) as new directors of the board. The election and remuneration committee has been informed by Ms Karin Bing Orgland and Mr Ole Enger that they wish to resign from the board of directors with effect from the end of business on 6 January 2016. Hence, they will not be up for election at the extraordinary general meeting to be held on 6 January 2016.

Joanne Owen, born in 1973, is a partner in the global law firm DLA Piper. She is a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales. Ms. Owen has extensive experience in a wide range of institutional and commercial property transactions. She has worked on numerous large-scale, high-value portfolio transactions involving disposals, acquisitions and developments. Ms. Owen is an English citizen and lives in London, England. She graduated from Exeter University in 1995 with a Law degree LLB Hons. Following graduation Ms. Owen undertook the legal practice course at Nottingham Trent University and graduated with Distinction (equivalent to first class degree) in June 1996.

Nils Ingemund Hoff, born in 1962, is an advisor and consultant. Mr. Hoff has extensive experience across a wide range of businesses. He currently holds the position of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in Bergen Group ASA. He has worked as a consultant to Eagle AS (a family owned investment company with interests in industry, shipping and real estate) and to Viken Aurora AS. In the period from 1998 to 2014 Mr Hoff was chief financial officer to different businesses such as Tandberg Data S.a.r.l, Tandberg Data ASA, Tandberg Storage ASA and Data Invest AS. Nils Hoff is a Norwegian citizen and lives in Norway. He achieved a bachelor's degree in shipping, economy and administration from Agder Distriktshoegskole in 1985 and went to Drammen Business School from 1987 to 1990.

Extraordinary general meeting

As required by large shareholders of the company, the extraordinary general meeting will resolve the election of new members to the board and the election and remuneration committee. The proposal to change the composition of the election- and remuneration committee was later withdrawn. The election and remuneration committee currently consists of Dag J. Opedal (chairman), Marianne E. Johnsen, Svein Erik Nicolaysen and Olav Veum, and in addition Kjetil Bakkan as an observer from the employees with the right to attend and speak.

Recommendation of the election and remuneration committee

If the proposals of the election and remuneration committee are adopted, the governing bodies in Norske Skog will have the following shareholder-elected composition following the annual general meeting:

Board of directors Election and remuneration committee

Jon-Aksel Torgersen (chair)

Eilif Due

Siri Beate Hatlen

Nils Ingemund Hoff

Joanne Owen

Dag J. Opedal (chair)

Marianne E. Johnsen

Svein Erik Nicolaysen

Olav Veum

The entire proposal from the election and remuneration is enclosed.

Oslo, 5 January 2016

Norske Skog

Communications and Public Affairs

For further information:

Norske Skog media:

Vice President Corporate Communication

Carsten Dybevig

Mob: +47 917 63 117





Norske Skog financial markets:

Vice President Investor Relations

Tom Rogn

Mob: +47 948 55 659

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

Proposal from the election and remuneration (http://hugin.info/105/R/1976675/723499.pdf)



This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Norske Skog via Globenewswire



HUG#1976675


SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Today, PayScale Inc. -- the leader in cloud compensation data and software for businesses and individuals -- released the Q4 2015 PayScale Index, which tracks both quarterly and annual trends in compensation and also provides a U.S. national wage forecast for the coming quarter. In the last quarter of 2015, U.S. wages across all industries exceeded expectations by a significant margin; a promising sign for workers' wages after years of stagnation. The PayScale Index predicted quarterly growth of 0.1 percent and annual wage growth of 0.6 percent in Q4, however, wages actually rose 1.1 percent in the quarter and the average 12-month increase was 1.5 percent.

"Our economy has produced a bleak landscape for wages across almost every industry since the recession," said Katie Bardaro, Lead Economist at PayScale. "While wage growth was still tepid in Q4, it was encouraging to see that U.S. wages exceeded expectations and that real wages showed signs of improvement. We'll watch closely to see whether this positive trend continues into 2016."

Key findings in the Q4 2015 PayScale Index

Real wages improve, but wages still buy less today than in 2006: Although real wages are down almost 7 percent since 2006, the measure reflects an improvement over the past three years during which real wages reached a low of more than 8 percent. PayScale real wages are calculated by analyzing nominal wage growth and the average change in price of a fixed basket of goods and services.

Wages rose for STEM-focused jobs: Although wages for IT jobs fell for the first two quarters of 2015, they picked up once again in Q4, growing 1.3 percent for the quarter and 1.2 percent annually. In addition to IT jobs, wages in other STEM positions also recovered from a major dip in the first half of 2015 with 0.8 percent annual wage growth for engineering jobs and 1.1 percent annual wage growth for science and biotech jobs.

Wages continue to rise for the real estate and construction industries: Both the construction and real estate industries saw a major downturn after the recession and wages experienced some ups and downs in 2014 and early 2015. However, annual wages for these industries showed encouraging signs of life in Q4. Quarterly wages grew 0.7 percent in construction and 0.9 percent in the real estate industry.

Wages for Mining, Oil and Gas Exploration industry rebounded: Wages for this industry fell the first three quarters of 2015, then rose in Q4 with 1.6 percent annual wage growth. However, the Q4 increase wasn't enough to overcome the dips earlier in the year, as annual wages for the industry were a meager 0.2 percent. Annual wages in Houston, a city dominated by the oil industry, fell by 0.9 percent last quarter.

Highlights for U.S. Metro wage growth include: The top five U.S. metro areas experiencing the most annual wage growth were: San Francisco, CA (2.5 percent) Chicago, IL (1.9 percent) Riverside / San Bernardino, CA (1.9 percent) Washington, DC (1.8 percent) St. Louis, MO (1.8 percent) The three U.S. metros experiencing the least growth in annual wages were: Philadelphia, PA (0.4 percent) Phoenix, AZ (0.0 percent) San Diego, CA (-0.4 percent)

Positive Canadian wage growth: Similar to the U.S., most measures showed positive wage growth in Canada, as the country experienced 1.2 percent annual wage growth nationally. The oil town of Edmonton, Alberta experienced Canada's highest positive wage growth in Q4 as quarterly wages grew 2.5 percent and annual wages increased 0.7 percent. As a result, wages in Edmonton have recovered from the dip in early 2015.

Strong wage growth in the United Kingdom: In the second half of 2015, wages in the U.K. rebounded from a period of stagnation and the quarterly measure showed an increase of 0.9 percent in Q4. Wages in the U.K. have grown by 9.7 percent since 2006, tied with the U.S. and lagging behind Canada (12.1 percent).



To view the entire interactive Q4 2015 PayScale Index, which reflects wage trends across various industries, job categories, company sizes and major metros, please visit: http://www.payscale.com/payscale-index.

About The PayScale Index:

The PayScale Index follows changes in total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. The PayScale Index also includes:

A forecast of the National U.S. PayScale Index for Q1 2016

A PayScale Real Wage Index, which tracks changes in wages adjusted for inflation since 2006

For more information on The PayScale Index, please visit the methodology and FAQ pages.

About PayScale:

Cloud software, crowdsourced data and unique algorithms power the world's largest real-time database of rich salary profiles giving PayScale the unique ability to provide employees and employers alike immediate visibility into the right pay for any position. PayScale's cloud compensation software is used by more than 3,500 customers including Bloomberg BNA, Cummins, Warby Parker, Clemson University and Signature HealthCARE. For more information, please visit: www.payscale.com or follow PayScale on Twitter: http://twitter.com/payscale.

Press Contacts:



Phyllis McNeice

Email: phyllis@fireflycmns.com

Tel: 206-954-1481



Steven Gottlieb

Email: press@payscale.com

Tel: 206-427-9591




AppCarousel to Feature New and Future Technology at the GENIVI CES 2016 Demonstration Showcase & Reception in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AppCarousel, the leading provider of app platforms for connected cars, fleets and other connected devices, announced today that the company has joined the GENIVI Alliance, a nonprofit automotive alliance committed to driving the broad adoption of specified, open source In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) software. AppCarousel is one of only 19 First Tier vendors in the GENIVI Alliance. AppCarousel is a Tier 1 vendor to leading vehicle manufacturers including Jaguar Land Rover.

As one of the newest members of the GENIVI Alliance, AppCarousel brings a depth of experience operating a range of cloud services for the provisioning of apps and content, enabling software over the air updates and managing data analytics for connected vehicles. The company was recently selected by Jaguar Land Rover to power the cloud services for Jaguar Land Rover's advanced infotainment solution, InControl TouchPro. With the number of connected cars estimated to reach 115 million in 2020, according to Business Insider Intelligence, AppCarousel and the GENIVI Alliance are aligned in their efforts to help automakers and suppliers approach their connected car solutions in new and innovative ways that impress today's connected drivers.

"The car is emerging as the next significant connected device and we are committed to creating app management, data analytics and over-the-air solutions that will help the auto and connected technology industries continue to innovate in the coming years," said Emanuel Bertolin, CEO of AppCarousel. "We are delighted to join the GENIVI Alliance and we look forward to working with them to bring the latest in connected technology to the global automotive community."

AppCarousel will be showcasing its latest connected car technologies at the GENIVI CES 2016 Demonstration Showcase & Reception, taking place Wednesday, January 6th and Thursday, January 7th from 6:00-8:30 p.m. PST at the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. Demonstrations will include AppCarousel's Connected Vehicle Owner Portal, Analytics Dashboard, OEM Management Portal, and Fleet Management App Marketplace. Industry professionals focused on connected vehicle solutions interested in attending the event or seeing a demo should contact AppCarousel.

About AppCarousel

AppCarousel is the leader in end-to-end app management platforms for connected devices. The AppCarousel platform delivers a seamless, integrated solution to securely distribute, update, control and manage any kind of software or digital asset over the air. AppCarousel provides curated app stores and software marketplaces, developer programs, and the merchandising and monetization of apps. AppCarousel serves businesses in market sectors including connected cars and fleets, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and the growing number of devices connected through the Internet of Things. AppCarousel is a wholly owned subsidiary of AppDirect. AppCarousel has offices in Calgary and San Francisco and a global team to serve its worldwide customers. Learn more at www.appcarousel.com.

About GENIVI Alliance

The GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit industry association dedicated to driving the broad adoption of In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source software. The GENIVI community provides reference architecture, software components, and standard interfaces which are used by the global automotive industry to deliver branded IVI solutions world-wide. Comprised of more than 160 member companies, GENIVI is headquartered in San Ramon, California. Please visit www.genivi.org for more information.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- BMO Wealth Management today released a study examining Canadians' New Year's resolutions for 2016 with a focus on their plans for charitable giving in the year ahead.

According to the study, almost 60 per cent of Canadians plan to make it a priority to donate to charitable causes in 2016. Other priorities identified include becoming healthier, spending more time with family and friends, and improving their overall financial situation by spending less, saving more and paying off debt.

"Around this time of year, people tend to re-evaluate their priorities and where they spend their energy, time and money. It's gratifying to note that, with all the different directions Canadians are pulled in, the majority intend to put a premium on charitable giving in 2016," said Marvi Ricker, Vice-President and Managing Director of Philanthropic Services, BMO Wealth Management.

When thinking about which charities they will support in the year ahead, one-third (32 per cent) of Canadians say they will donate to the same charities they did in 2015, while 56 per cent say they are considering making some changes. The top causes or sectors to which Canadians plan to donate in 2016 are:

-- Health/medical (54 per cent) -- Anti-poverty and helping the disadvantaged (48 per cent) -- Animal welfare (27 per cent) -- Foundations (20 per cent)

From Charitable Giving to Philanthropy

Although Canadians have an idea of where they will donate, the study found that more than half (58 per cent) do not have a strategy in place for donating and give only as they feel the need or have the money. The top reasons why Canadians say they do not have a philanthropic strategy for donating are:

-- They prefer to give on a case-by-case basis (33 per cent) -- They do not think it is necessary (31 per cent) -- They do not have enough money to give regularly (31 per cent)

According to the study, only 42 per cent of Canadians would describe themselves as knowledgeable about developing a strategy for charitable giving and just half (51 per cent) say they are knowledgeable on how to incorporate their donations into an overall financial plan.

"Having a strategy for donating will help ensure that you'll make the greatest impact possible on the causes most important to you and also make the act of giving that much more rewarding for you and your family," noted Ms. Ricker. "A financial professional can help you develop a philanthropic program and ensure you're being tax smart when donating. Anyone on any budget can be a philanthropist, it's the mindset that counts, not the amount of the donation."

Regional Breakdown:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- % who consider donating Top cause or sector % who do not have to charities to be they plan to support a charitable giving Region priority for 2016 this year strategy in place ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- National 59 Health/Medical 58 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Atlantic 57 Anti-poverty 58 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health/Medical and Quebec 55 Anti-poverty 65 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ontario 60 Health/Medical 54 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prairies 66 Health/Medical 53 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alberta 61 Health/Medical 60 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- B.C. 62 Anti-poverty 59 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The survey results cited from the 2015 BMO Charitable Giving Report conducted by Pollara were compiled from a random sample of 1,000 Canadians 18 years of age and over between December 4th and December 7th, 2015. A probability sample of this size would yield results accurate to +/- 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

For more information, please visit: https://www.bmo.com/main/wealth-management

Get the latest BMO press releases via Twitter by following @BMOmedia. Also, get additional timely updates, related articles and insights on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

About BMO Financial Group

Established in 1817, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of approximately $642 billion as of October 31, 2015, and close to 47,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

Contacts:

Media contacts:

Jessica Bonin, Toronto

416-867-3996

jessica.bonin@bmo.com




PUNE, India, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Cellular Concrete Market by Application (Building Material, Road Sub-bases, Concrete Pipes, Void Filling, Roof Insulation, Bridge Abutment, and others), by End-user (Residential Building, Commercial Building, Infrastructure, Others) - Global Forecasts to 2020," published by MarketsandMarkets, The Cellular Concrete Market size is projected to grow from USD 337.6 Million in 2015 to reach USD 449.8 Million by 2020, at an estimated CAGR of 5.9%.

Browse 88 market data Tables with 49 Figures spread through 140 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Cellular Concrete Market".

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/cellular-concrete-market-1019470.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

Accelerated urbanization, growth in infrastructural activities, and increasing industrialization has multiplied the growth rate of the cellular concrete market which has resulted in the need for cellular concrete market across the globe. The increasing income and spending capacity of people in developing economies and increasing demand in various end-use sectors such as commercial buildings, residential buildings, and infrastructure are the major factors driving the cellular concrete market.

Building materials segment to gain maximum traction during the forecast period

Building materials demand is growing due to the following factors such as low cost, lesser time to build, and less labor. Cellular concrete is used to build housing colonies in a wide range. It is very flowable material and so can be easily installed by using gravity and is a self-levelling material. The reason behind the growth in this product segment is the need of making the floor, slabs, window panels and levelled roofs, which is the primary concern of customers.

Asia-Pacific to play a key role in the cellular concrete market

The cellular concrete industry is witnessing growth because of increasing applications and growing demand in the Asia-Pacific region. It accounts for a major market share followed by the Rest of the World, North America, and Europe. In terms of countries, China dominates the Asia-Pacific region primarily due to rising household incomes and fast-growing middle-class population. Factors such as increasing urbanized population in India along with the growth in disposable income are driving the growth of the Asia-Pacific cellular concrete market.

For Further Inquiries: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=1019470

The various key companies profiled in the report are as follows:

Saint Gobain ( France ), Xella Group ( Germany ), Cellucrete (U.S.), Cematrix ( Canada ), Litebuilt ( Australia ), Laston Italiana S.P.A ( Italy ), Cellular Concrete Technologies (U.S.), Aerix Industries (U.S.), ACICO ( Kuwait ), Shirke ( India ), Broco Industries ( Indonesia ), Aircrete Europe ( Netherlands ).

The scope of the report covers detailed information regarding the major factors influencing the growth of the cellular concrete market such as drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. A detailed analysis of the key industry players has been conducted to provide insights into their business overview, products & services, key strategies, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, partnerships, agreements, joint ventures, and recent developments associated with the cellular concrete market.

Browse Related Reports:

Concrete Admixtures Market by Type (Superplasticizers, Normal Plasticizers, Accelerating Agents, Air-Entraining Agents, Retarding Agents, Waterproofing Agents, & Others), & by Application (Residential, Non-Residential, & Infrastructure) - Global Forecasts to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/concrete-admixtures-additives-market-768.html

Shotcrete/Sprayed Concrete Market by Process (Wet - Mix & Dry - Mix), by Application (Underground Construction, Water Retaining Structures, Protective Coatings, Repair Works & Others), by System (Robotic & Manual) and by Region - Global Trends and Forecasts to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/Sprayed-concrete-shotcrete-market-1116.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.



Contact:

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Markets and Markets

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Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/chemical

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets


CHICAGO, IL -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Yello, the leading web and mobile recruitment software, services and consulting company, announced today the appointment of four sales executives responsible for driving the company's continued growth and bringing its advanced recruiting solutions to new markets. The company welcomed Corey Epperly as Southeast regional vice president; Dionne Rodrigues Healy as West Coast regional vice president; Michael Megerian as group vice president, Account Management; and Scott Schoenick as Midwest regional vice president.

Epperly, Rodrigues Healy and Schoenick join East Coast regional vice president Matt Stager to round out Yello's localized U.S. coverage, while Megerian is responsible for building and leading Yello's Account Management team. As Yello continues to reinvent recruiting, it has experienced rapid adoption by companies ranging from Fortune 500 multinationals and large public sector organizations to high-growth, early-stage companies. In response to increasing demand for its solutions, the company recognized the need to expand its sales team to serve this growing client base.

"Yello's plan for sustainable growth involves building a strategic and geographically diverse sales team to expand our ability to reach more companies looking to innovate how they source and hire talent," said Jason Weingarten, CEO of Yello. "I am pleased to welcome Corey, Dionne, Michael and Scott to the Yello team. Their combined expertise and proven business results will be instrumental in bringing our solutions to more employers across the country."

Corey Epperly, Southeast regional vice president

In his new role at Yello, Corey Epperly leverages nearly 20 years of sales experience, including 12 years in the recruitment space, to drive Yello's sales and business development opportunities. Prior to his current role, Epperly served as regional vice president of Sales with Monster; vice president of Personified, the consulting and staffing division of CareerBuilder; and as area sales manager for CareerBuilder. He also held sales positions with several IT and telecommunications companies.

Dionne Rodrigues Healy, West Coast regional vice president

With nearly 15 years of experience in HR cloud software consulting and customer success, Dionne Rodrigues Healy is well versed in helping clients find the right solutions for their organizations and is integral in expanding Yello's presence on the West Coast. Before joining Yello, Rodrigues Healy served as account executive for One2Team, senior implementation consultant and project manager at Taleo and senior client executive with Oracle, following its acquisition of Taleo.

Michael Megerian, group vice president, Account Management

In his new role, Michael Megerian leads Yello's Account Management team responsible for relationship management, client success and strategically partnering with clients to understand their business challenges in order to derive value through Yello's solutions. Megerian leverages more than 14 years of SaaS-based strategic sales, enterprise account management, customer success and consulting experience, having previously served as director of HCM Enterprise Customer Success at Oracle, a client executive at Taleo and various sales and customer success positions at Ariba.

Scott Schoenick, Midwest regional vice president

Scott Schoenick leverages two decades of experience with startups and established HR technology companies to lead Yello's sales and business development activities in the Midwest region. Schoenick built his career managing and motivating high-performing teams and previously served as regional sales director at Workday, principal business consultant and senior client executive with Taleo and director, Central Region Customer Success for Oracle.

"Yello continues to pioneer new innovations in the talent acquisition space that change the way companies source, recruit and hire great talent," said David Stiefel, senior vice president of Sales. "With Corey, Dionne, Michael and Scott supporting our sales efforts, I am confident we have the best talent in place to grow the business, welcome new clients and position Yello as the recruiting solutions provider of choice for today's high-growth companies."

More information about Yello's open sales positions is available at: http://hubs.ly/H01pW6P0.

About Yello

You had me at Yello: Work with the Chicago-based software leader that is radically reinventing recruiting. Employers of all sizes -- from Fortune 500 multinationals and large public sector organizations to high-growth early stage companies -- rely on Yello to manage and mobilize their recruiting processes. Previously known as Recsolu, Yello's considerable experience includes campus, professional, high volume and specialty recruitment. When you're ready to say hello to your next great hire, think Yello. Connect with us on Web | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- PROGREEN PROPERTIES, INC. (PROGREEN) (OTC PINK: PGEI) is pleased to announce that the discussions for a joint venture with a Mexican land owner in Baja California, as announced on October 28, 2015, have progressed very positively and we expect to complete the acquisition of a first tract of land (approx. 300 acres), before February 15, 2016. This first piece of land is intended to be divided into parcels for agriculture use. Once the infrastructure has been completed and the land has been prepared for active farming, the parcels will be leased or sold as prime farmland to local or foreign growers of produce, destined for the US market.

"This represents the beginning of what we believe is a huge opportunity to create long term sustainable growth for PROGREEN," says Jan Telander, President

About ProGreen Properties, Inc.

PROGREEN PROPERTIES, INC. (PROGREEN) (OTC PINK: PGEI) based in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, is engaged in the business of acquiring, refurbishing and upgrading residential real estate into modern affordable homes, some being aimed at the local real estate market and some sold to European Property Investors. The company is also presently looking negotiating investment opportunities in Baha California, Mexico.

PROGREEN wholly owned subsidiaries:

PROGREEN REALTY LLC, purchasing, leasing and sale of properties.

PROGREEN PROPERTY MANAGEMENT LLC, management of properties sold to investors.

PROGREEN CONSTRUCTION LLC, in house construction company

"This press release contains statements, which may constitute 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. 'Forward-looking statements' are based upon expectations, estimates and projections at the time the statements are made that involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated"

Contact:

Jan Telander

President

Phone: 248 805 3652

Email: jan@progreenproperties.com






www.citywindmills.com TICKER - CYW G4 CITY WINDMILLS HOLDINGS PLC Registered in England, Co. # 0894545 Incorporated under the Companies Act 2006



SUITE 39, 35 BUCKINGHAM GATE, LONDON SW1E 6PA UNITED KINGDOM



January 5(th)., 2016



CITY WINDMILLS PLC. - Chinese Production Partner Agreement



HACC IN CHINA TO ESTABLISH CW PRODUCTION FACILITIES



CW has signed an agreement with Hebei Always Composite Co. ('HACC') to establish production facilities in various locations in China, for its full wind turbine range. As part of the agreement, initial small scale production will take place in Iowa to satisfy current orders, and where HACC have a small facility. The composite material Cerarmix to be used in the wind turbine design.



Matt Merchant, partner in HACC, has used Cerarmix(TM )in a number of applications, finding it lightweight, strong and durable - ideal for a wind turbine manufacture.



David Mapley, CEO of CW, will assist Michael Cunningham, Chairman of CW and Matt Merchant, in establishing the production facilities in China. Thereafter, a revenue sharing agreement will operate for sales to domestic China and to export markets. David already has extensive connections into Asia, being based there for 10 years.



HACC will refine the manufacturing process to support mass production - thereafter, similar facilities can be established worldwide to support local production.



For further information, please contact the company on info@city-windmills.com.



David Mapley Chief Executive Officer pp City Windmills Holdings PLC. www.city-windmills.com



This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.



Source: City Windmills Holdings Plc via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1976728]



B88T5N2R25



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WEST PALM BEACH, FL--(Marketwired - January 05, 2016) - Comvest Partners ("Comvest"), today announced that it has completed the acquisition of D&S Community Services ("D&S" or "the Company"), a leading provider of residential and community-based services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). This investment is Comvest's second out of its latest private equity fund, Comvest Investment Partners V, which closed in October 2015 with $893 million in capital commitments.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, D&S provides a full array of services specifically designed to meet the needs of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Texas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The Company's residential and community-based services include supported group home living, Intermediate Care Facilities, foster care, in-home support, day habilitation programs, and specialty therapy and nursing services.

"The trend in healthcare has been to move individuals with disabilities from large institutions to home and community-based settings. D&S serves as an excellent platform that enables states to provide a variety of in-home and community supports to improve the continuity and quality of care for these individuals," said Roger Marrero, Partner at Comvest Partners. "We look forward to partnering with Mickey Atkins and the existing management team to help grow and expand the organization in both existing and new states."

"Our industry is continuing to change in both sophistication and complexity. There is great demand for providers that can meet these needs. We're excited to team up with Comvest and leverage their experience in growing companies such as ours. This allows D&S a new opportunity to expand our services across multiple states and reach even more families and individuals in need of quality community supports," said Mickey Atkins, President and CEO at D&S.

McDermott Will & Emery served as legal advisor to Comvest Partners. Cadence Bank, Fifth Third Bank, and Patriot Capital provided financing for the transaction.

About Comvest Partners:

Comvest Partners is a private investment firm providing equity and debt capital to middle-market companies across the U.S. Since its founding in 2000, the firm has invested $1.9 billion in over 135 companies. Today, Comvest's funds have $2.5 billion of assets under management. Through our extensive capital resources and broad network of industry relationships, we offer our companies financial sponsorship, critical strategic and operational support, and business development assistance.

About D&S Community Services:

D&S is a leading multi-state provider of IDD services whose mission has been to provide premier community supports since inception in 1991. Over the past 25 years D&S has transitioned from a family-owned operation to a professionally-managed business that provides supports to consumers across 25 regional offices. Through quality operations and innovative leadership D&S is ensuring successful community living for a vulnerable and important population.

For More Information:

Louis Colosimo

Comvest Partners

(212) 829-5880

l.colosimo@comvest.com



Carlos Soto

Comvest Partners

(561) 727-2032

c.soto@comvest.com



Roger Marrero

Comvest Partners

(561) 727-2020

r.marrero@comvest.com
PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Bouygues (BOUYY.PK) announced that preliminary discussions have started with Orange (ORAN) to look at the possible options. A confidentiality agreement was signed by the companies. Bouygues said the company will attach decisive importance, in all the discussions it will pursue, to the interests of Bouygues Telecom employees. Orange also confirmed that it has renewed preliminary discussions with the Bouygues Group with a view to a consolidation with Bouygues Telecom. Orange said the company will be particularly vigilant with regards to the value created through any resulting project. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
JACOBS WINS CONTRACT WITH BIOGEN

Providing EPCM Services for Manufacturing Plant in Switzerland

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (NYSE:JEC) announced today it was awarded a contract to provide engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services for Biogen's (NYSE: BIIB) new manufacturing facility in Luterbach, Switzerland.

Under the terms of the agreement, Jacobs is providing EPCM services for Biogen's fourth manufacturing plant. Biogen discovers, develops and delivers worldwide innovative therapies for people living with serious neurological, autoimmune and rare diseases. The company currently manufactures therapies in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; and Hillerd, Denmark.

Plans for the new facility include state-of-the-art biotech manufacturing technology, which is expected to triple the company's global capacity to produce large protein-based drugs known as biologics.

In making the announcement, Jacobs Global Life Sciences Senior Vice President Robert Norfleet stated, "We are pleased Biogen chose to work with us to meet its demands for increased manufacturing capacity. As the largest professional services provider to the biopharmaceutical industry, we look forward to providing innovative solutions that can help strengthen its medication supply system around the globe."

Work on the facility started in late 2015. The plant is expected to be in operation by 2019.

Founded in 1978, Biogen is one of the world's oldest independent biotechnology companies providing therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, hematologic conditions and autoimmune disorders.

Jacobs is one of the world's largest and most diverse providers of technical professional and construction services.

Statements made in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors which may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements please refer to our 2014 Form 10-K, and in particular the discussions contained under Items 1 Business, 1A Risk Factors, 3 Legal Proceedings, and 7 Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made herein.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160105005401/en/

Contacts:

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

Robin Shermer, 817-735-6284
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Kane Biotech Inc. (TSX VENTURE: KNE) (the "Corporation"), a biotechnology company developing and commercializing products that prevent and remove microbial biofilms, is pleased to appoint Audrey Goertzen CPA, CGA as Kane Biotech's new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) replacing Mark Matthewson CPA, CA, effective January 4, 2016. Ms. Goertzen has broad experience in financial management and accounting over the past 22 years in public accounting, public and government crown corporations, as well as rapidly growing entrepreneurial companies. Mr. Matthewson's services had been provided to Kane Biotech through a Management Services Agreement with MKM Management Services Ltd.

"The board and management team welcomes Audrey to Kane Biotech as CFO and thanks Mark Matthewson and Christine Johnson for their valuable contribution and excellent financial skills provided to Kane over the past four years," stated Mark Ahrens-Townsend, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Commercialization Team Expansion

The Corporation is pleased to announce the following personnel who have joined the Kane Biotech team over the past few months to focus on the commercialization of Kane Biotech's expansive patented and patent protected anti-biofilm technology:

-- Wendy Nachtigall - Director, Retail -- Erika Linden - Marketing Manager -- Avery-Anne Gervais - Retail Accounts Associate -- Andrea Gordon - Director, Regulatory and Quality Assurance -- Courtney Dalton - Supply Chain Manager -- Diane Gordon Pappas - Research Associate

Each brings a wealth of experience as well as new creativity, innovation, and energy to Kane Biotech as it develops and launches new products into new markets.

U.S. Sales Representation Agreement

Kane Biotech is excited to announce it has entered into a Sales Representation Agreement with a U.S. based marketing, consulting, and sales management firm specializing in the pet industry. Work has already started with Kane's commercialization team to launch the Corporation's bluestem pet oral care brand into the United States in Q1 2016. More information about bluestem can be found at www.bluestempets.com.

Stock Options

The Corporation has granted an aggregate of 2,825,000 stock options at an exercise price of $0.08 per common share to Kane Biotech's new employees and an advisor to management and the board. The options fully vest over a two-year period, are set to expire five years from the date of grant, and are subject to TSX Venture Exchange acceptance and the terms of Kane Biotech's stock option plan. In accordance with securities regulatory requirements, any shares issued pursuant to the exercise of such options will be subject to resale restriction for a period of four months from the date of the grant.

About Kane Biotech Inc.

Kane Biotech is a biotechnology company engaged in the development of products to prevent and disperse biofilms. Biofilms develop when bacteria, and other microorganisms, form a protective matrix that acts as a shield against attack. When in a biofilm, bacteria become highly resistant to antibiotics, biocides, disinfectants, high temperatures and host immune responses. This resiliency contributes to human health problems such as tooth decay, medical device associated infections and recurrent urinary tract infections.

Kane Biotech uses patent protected technology based on molecular mechanisms of biofilm formation and methods for finding compounds that inhibit or disrupt biofilms. The Corporation has evidence that this technology has potential to significantly improve the ability to prevent and/or destroy biofilms in several health, medical and industrial applications.

The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian provincial securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, our objectives, goals, targets, strategies, intentions, plans, beliefs, estimates and outlook, including, without limitation, our anticipated future operating results, and can, in some cases, be identified by the use of words such as "believe," "anticipate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "will," "may" and other similar expressions. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances are forward-looking statements.

These statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these expectations include, among other things: the Corporation's early stage of development, lack of product revenues and history of operating losses, uncertainties related to clinical trials and product development, rapid technological change, uncertainties related to forecasts, competition, potential product liability, additional financing requirements and access to capital, unproven markets, supply of raw materials, income tax matters, management of growth, partnerships for development and commercialization of technology, effects of insurers' willingness to pay for products, system failures, dependence on key personnel, foreign currency risk, risks related to regulatory matters and risks related to intellectual property and other risks detailed from time to time in the Corporation's filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities, as well as the Corporation's ability to anticipate and manage the risks associated with the foregoing. The Corporation cautions that the foregoing list of important factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on the Corporation's forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to the Corporation's, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events.

These risks and uncertainties should be considered carefully and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, the Corporation cannot provide assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The Corporation undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement.

StrixNB, DispersinB, Aledex, bluestem and coactiv+ are registered trademarks of Kane Biotech Inc. All Rights Reserved 2016.

Contacts:

Kane Biotech Inc.

Mark Ahrens-Townsend

President & CEO

204-477-7592

204-474-7552 (FAX)

ir@kanebiotech.com

www.kanebiotech.com




REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- STORAGEVAULT CANADA INC. ("StorageVault") (TSX VENTURE: SVI) is pleased to announce that it has closed the acquisition of the Brampton assets, a Winnipeg Manitoba self-storage store as well as the final tranche of its $0.65 common share private placement.

Completion of the Brampton Assets Acquisition

Further to its December 9, 2015 news release, subject to final TSXV acceptance, StorageVault has completed the $18,400,000 acquisition (the "Brampton Assets Acquisition") of all of the self storage assets, property and business used in the operation of one Brampton Ontario area self storage store from Access Self Storage Inc. ("Access"). The Brampton Assets Acquisition continues StorageVault's strategic expansion into the Southern Ontario market.

5,384,615 Common Shares were issued to Access at a deemed price of $0.65 per share ($3,500,000) as part of the purchase price for the Brampton Assets Acquisition and such shares are subject to a hold period that expires May 1, 2016. The remainder of the purchase price was paid by the assumption of a mortgage in favor of a Canadian Chartered Bank in the amount of $7,978,598 and the remainder in cash. Pursuant to the Brampton Assets Acquisition, StorageVault acquired one self-storage store with approximately 97,500 square feet of rentable storage space.

Completion of the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition

Further to its October 16, 2015 and November 20, 2015 news releases, StorageVault has completed the $5,600,000 acquisition (the "5559 NWT Assets Acquisition") of all of the self storage assets, property and business used in the operation of one Winnipeg Manitoba area self storage store from 5559 N.W.T. Ltd. The 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition closed in escrow pending receipt of certain closing consideration which is expected to be delivered on or around January 6, 2016. The 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition is not a related party transaction.

The purchase price for the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition was paid by the assumption of a mortgage in favor of a Canadian Chartered Bank in the amount of $3,075,000 and the remainder in cash. Pursuant to the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition, StorageVault acquired one self storage store with approximately 50,000 square feet of rentable storage space. The 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition expands StorageVault's presence in the Winnipeg market.

Closing of Final Tranche of the Private Placement

Further to its news releases dated October 21, 2015, November 25, 2015, December 18, 2015 and December 22, 2015, StorageVault has closed the final tranche of its non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") of common shares ("Common Shares"). Pursuant to this tranche, StorageVault issued 1,870,763 Common Shares at a price of $0.65 per Common Share for gross proceeds of $1,215,996. The Common Shares issued in connection with this tranche of the Offering are subject to a hold period that expires on May 1, 2016. Finder's acting in connection with this tranche of the Offering received fees of $1,400.

A portion of the proceeds of this tranche of the Offering was used to fund, in part, the Brampton Assets Acquisition and the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition (both discussed above). In addition, the proceeds of the Offering will be used to fund, in part, the previously announced acquisition of one self storage store in Winnipeg Manitoba (the "Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition"; see StorageVault's October 16, 2015 and November 20, 2015 news releases), other potential future acquisitions and for general corporate purposes. It is anticipated that the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition will occur in January 2016. The Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition is subject to certain conditions including closing conditions and the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. ("TSXV"), all as more particularly set forth in the October 16, 2015 and November 20, 2015 news releases. There can be no assurance that the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition will be completed as proposed or at all.

Pursuant to all tranches of the Offering including this final tranche, StorageVault issued 26,337,034 Common Shares for total gross proceeds of $17,119,072. After all tranches of the Offering and the completion of the Brampton Assets Acquisition, StorageVault now has 167,945,821 Common Shares issued and outstanding.

Exemption from MI 61-101 and TSXV Policy 5.9; and Early Warning

Directors and officers of StorageVault participated in this tranche of the Offering purchasing 16,920 Common Shares and Access participated in this tranche of the Offering purchasing 1,538,462 Common Shares and these purchases are considered "related party transactions" under Canadian securities laws. StorageVault is relying on exemptions from the formal valuation and minority approval requirements of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101") and TSXV Policy 5.9, in respect of these purchases, pursuant to Section 5.5(b) (Issuer Not Listed on Specified Markets) and Section 5.7(a) (Fair Market Value Not More Than 25% of Market Capitalization) of MI 61-101, respectively. No new insiders were created, nor has any change of control occurred, as a result of the Offering.

The Brampton Assets Acquisition from Access is considered a "related party transaction" under MI 61-101 and TSXV Policy 5.9. StorageVault is relying on exemptions from the formal valuation and minority approval requirements of MI 61-101 and TSXV Policy 5.9, in respect of the Brampton Assets Acquisition, pursuant to Section 5.5(b) (Issuer Not Listed on Specified Markets) and Section 5.7(a) (Fair Market Value Not More Than 25% of Market Capitalization) of MI 61-101, respectively. No new insiders were created, nor has any change of control occurred, as a result of the Brampton Assets Acquisition.

5,384,615 Common Shares were issued to Access in connection with the Brampton Assets Acquisition and Access acquired 1,538,462 Common Shares in connection with the final tranche of the Offering. Access now owns or controls 54,214,306 Common Shares or approximately 32.3% of the total issued and outstanding Common Shares of StorageVault. Access may increase or decrease its investment in StorageVault depending on market conditions or any other relevant factors.

About StorageVault Canada Inc.

StorageVault owns and operates storage locations in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking information. Generally, forward-looking information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "proposed", "is expected", "budgets", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information regarding: the use of proceeds of the Offering; the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition and completion of the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition; potential future acquisitions by StorageVault; and receipt of certain closing consideration for the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition and the timing for removal of escrow closing conditions for the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information. This forward-looking information reflects StorageVault's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to StorageVault and on assumptions StorageVault believes are reasonable. These assumptions include, but are not limited to: final TSXV acceptance of the Brampton Assets Acquisition; satisfaction of the conditions to the completion of the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition; market acceptance and approvals, including TSXV acceptance of the potential issuance of Common Shares, for the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition and the closing of the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition; the anticipated closing date for the Winnipeg Mini Storage Acquisition; market acceptance of potential future acquisitions by StorageVault; and receipt of certain closing consideration for the 5559 NWT Assets Acquisition.

Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of StorageVault to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; general capital market conditions and market prices for securities; delay or failure to receive board or regulatory approvals; the actual results of future operations; competition; changes in legislation, including environmental legislation, affecting StorageVault; the timing and availability of external financing on acceptable terms; conclusions of economic evaluations and appraisals; and lack of qualified, skilled labour or loss of key individuals. A description of additional assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information and a description of additional risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking information can be found in StorageVault's disclosure documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Although StorageVault 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. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking information contained in this news release represents the expectations of StorageVault as of the date of this news release and, accordingly, is subject to change after such date. However, StorageVault expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities law.

Contacts:

StorageVault Canada Inc.

Mr. Steven Scott or Mr. Iqbal Khan

(416) 288-2402

srs@accessstorage.ca




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Gold futures nudged higher for a second day Tuesday morning, as traders expressed anxiety over the outlook for the global economy in 2016. With investors looking for a safe haven amid geopolitical tensions and falling stocks, US gold for February was up 4 dollars at $1079 an ounce, having touched $1082 a few hours ago. There will be no major economic data released today, giving markets a chance to catch their breath after yesterday's drubbing of global equities. Traders will instead be watching developments in the Middle East, where tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia risk escalating to a wider conflict. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Focus Ventures Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: FCV) ("Focus" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results of an Independent NI 43-101 Prefeasibility Study (the "Study") on its Bayovar 12 Phosphate Project (the "Project"), located in the Sechura desert of northern Peru.

The Study was prepared by M3 Engineering and Golders Associates. The report will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days. Focus is the majority owner in the Project through its 70% ownership of Juan Paolo Quay S.A.C., - title holder of the Bayovar 12 mining concession. All numbers reported, unless otherwise stated, are in $US dollars (where applicable, an exchange rate of 3.0 Peruvian Soles to 1 $US was used).

Key Results of the Study

-- Production of 18.5 Mt of Reactive Phosphate Rock ("RPR") concentrate from 52.3 Mt of ore over a 20 year mine life -- Two RPR product lines producing +24% and +28% P2O5 concentrate by a simple, proven beneficiation process -- Post-Tax Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") of 17.2% and Net Present Value ("NPV") of $252.9 million at a 7.5% Discount Rate -- After-tax cash flow of $847 million over the mine life -- Payback of 6.6 years -- Proven and Probable open-pittable Reserves of 54.7 Mt of ROM ("Run-of- Mine") ore (dry basis) -- Substantial mineral resources remain in inventory to extend mine life -- Initial capital costs of $127 million including pre-production stripping, process plant, tailings storage, water pipeline and powerline, owner's costs and contingency -- Several opportunities identified to improve project economics via optimization studies including review of mine schedule, infrastructure requirements and extension of mine life

"Completion of the Study within 21 months of collaring our first drill hole is a big accomplishment," commented David Cass, President of Focus Ventures. "Located near tidewater and in an established phosphate mining district, the Study offers a base case for the open pit development and processing of the Project's large-scale and near-surface RPR reserves and resources. Although meeting our year-end deadline date for the Study completion was a challenge, this is a solid first step and demonstrates the Project's viability and potential to generate robust returns, with sufficient mineral resources to potentially support a mine life well beyond 20 years of operation."

"We now intend to advance the Project to Feasibility Study with particular emphasis on optimization of the mine plan and equipment selection, earlier achievement of nameplate capacity in the process plant, pilot plant testing and definitive marketing studies," Mr. Cass concluded and adding: "Bayovar 12 sits on the doorstep of a large and rapidly growing market for natural plant-ready rock fertilizer. Our goal is to make Bayovar 12 the long-term supplier of choice for those markets."

Study Description

The Bayovar 12 Concession is located in the Province of Sechura, Department of Piura in northwestern Peru. The property is approximately 15 km northeast of the operating Miski Mayo Phosphate Mine owned by the Vale-Mitsui-Mosaic consortium, and directly east of the Fosfatos del Pacifico (FOSPAC) project. The concession is connected by sealed road to tidewater and port loading facilities 43 km to the west.

The open pit mine plan targets production of RPR concentrate for use as direct application phosphate fertilizer, a natural product that can be applied directly to the soil without the need for conventional acid pre-treatment of the rock or the addition of chemicals. Research has demonstrated that Sechura RPR, due to its high reactivity, can outperform more expensive and non-organic manufactured fertilizers especially when used in tropical soil and climatic environments, conditions that are prevalent over most of South and Central America.

Production will be from 13 horizontal phosphorite beds hosted in free-digging diatomite that are laterally continuous for many kilometers, with the same sequence of beds currently being mined at the Miski Mayo operation. At full capacity the Bayovar 12 Mine will produce 1.0 Million tonnes per year (Mtpy) over the life of mine of 20 years for a total of approximately 18.5 million tonnes of dry fertilizer product.

Mineral Resources & Reserves

The Bayovar 12 concession comprises an area of 125 km2 of which phosphate has been continuously delineated over 34 km2, approximately 30% of the Concession area, with mineralization remaining open. Resources outside of the designed pit were not considered in the Reserves estimation. The reader is cautioned that only Reserves have undergone analysis to demonstrate economic viability. There is no guarantee that Resources outside of the current Reserves will become economically viable.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resources(i) Tonnes P2O5Grade (Mt; dry) (wt.%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Measured 17.7 13.16 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indicated 209.5 13.04 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inferred 102.2 13.11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reserves(ii) Tonnes P2O5Grade (Mt; dry) (wt.%) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proven 14.2 12.99 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Probable 40.5 12.99 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Reserves 54.7 12.99 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(i) No minimum thickness, grade cut-off or other mining parameters applied. Phosphorite bed specific wet and dry relative densities used for tonnage calculations. Resource tonnes reported include tonnes converted to Reserves. (ii) The Study assumes RPR prices of US$145/tonne and US$185/tonne (dry) for 24% and 28% P2O5 respectively.

Mine Design

The Bayovar 12 phosphorite deposit consists of 13 flat-lying phosphate beds. The mine plan will extract 52.3 Mt of ore and remove 445 Mt of overburden and interburden waste over the 20 year mine life, for an overall strip ratio of 8.5: 1. Overburden will be stripped by a contractor and removed with 12.2 m3 front-end loaders, or other similar excavators, matched with 90-tonne capacity haul trucks.

The mine plan takes into account anticipated dilution of 7.5 cm on both the roof and floor of individual phosphate beds where the beds are greater than the minimum mineable thickness of 30 cm. These assumed dilution and mining loss factors are based on extracting the phosphorite with GPS-controlled surface miners. The mine plan maximizes the number of available production faces for the various beds throughout the mine life in order to accommodate blended plant feed requirements. Production equipment is included in the plan to source ore from multiple beds and maintain the blend and feed tonnage to the plant.

Beneficiation

Two process plant lines, Line 1 and Line 2, will beneficiate the Bayovar 12 ore. Each Line is capable of producing 1,370 tonnes of RPR concentrate per day at 85% plant availability. Line 1 will produce approximately 300,000 tpy in Year 1 of concentrate with a grade of +24% P2O5, ramping up to 400,000 tpy in Year 3 and 500,000 tpy from Year 4 onwards. Line 2 commences production of concentrate in Year 3 with a grade of +28% P2O5 at 500,000 tpy and continues at this rate for the Life of Mine.

A simple beneficiation process, similar to that used in adjacent operations, has been developed by Jacobs Engineering consisting of desliming and dewatering using drum and attrition scrubbing, size classification, hydraulic classification, filtering, and finally drying to 4% moisture. The two process plant lines are essentially identical. The higher grade 28% P2O5 Line 2 product is achieved by coarsening the tertiary desliming cut-point to reject lower-grade near-size material.

Infrastructure

It is proposed to haul concentrate 43 kilometers to tidewater and port facilities using contractor-owned, 35-tonne end-dumping trailers. Infrastructure requirements include: site access, power transmission line, a seawater pipeline for process water supply, ancillary building facilities, a reverse osmosis water treatment plant for potable water, fire protection and sanitary septic facilities, site communications, and the Tailings Storage Facility ("TSF").

Capital Costs

Initial capital cost estimates includes the construction of a phosphate process plant capable of producing 500 ktpy of RPR concentrate (dry basis) from a single process line at full production. Capital requirements associated with ore production include purchasing mobile mine equipment for stripping interburden material and to mine phosphorite beds. Contractor overburden waste stripping is also capitalized in the preproduction period, as are the construction of berms and lifts for the TSF. The initial capital requirement is estimated at $127 million including owner's costs and is summarized below. Plant and TSF costs include contingencies of 20% and 25% respectively.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Initial Area Detail CAPEX ($000s) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Capex Mine 28,724 -------------------------------------------------- Processing Plant 81,683 -------------------------------------------------- TSF 14,405 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owner's Costs 2,508 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total CAPEX 127,320 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Operating Costs

The Life-of-Mine operating costs were developed for mining, processing and G&A costs. Operating costs include labor, equipment operation, power, fuel, reagent, and consumable consumption, maintenance and repairs, and outside services.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item Unit Cost LOM Cost ($000s) ($ per Product Tonne) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owner Mining $32.23 $596,292 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contract Mining $20.29 $375,456 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Process Plant $10.49 $193,110 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- G&A $2.58 $47,771 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transportation $10.09 $186,675 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Cost $75.68 $1,400,184 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Economic Analysis

A summary of the financial model is tabulated below;

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item $ (millions) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life of Mine Revenue 3,042 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Pre-Production Capital 127.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Sustaining Capital 230.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cumulative Royalties 136.9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cumulative Income Taxes 303 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pre-Tax Cumulative Cash flow 1,150 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After-Tax Cumulative Cash flow 847 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NPV calculation includes Years 1 through 20 and adds the pre-production capital in Years 1 and 2. The economic analysis indicates that the Project has an after-tax IRR of 17.2% with a payback period of 6.6 years and an NPV at 7.5% of $252.9 million.

Sensitivity Analysis

The graph below compares the base case NPV when the RPR price, initial capital and operating costs are varied. The project is most sensitive to variation in prices, operating costs and initial capital costs, in that order respectively.

To view the image associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1038432b.jpg

Summary

The Study has demonstrated that the Bayovar 12 Phosphate Project is technically and economically viable under certain assumptions and parameters and has the potential to generate robust economic returns. Continued work is warranted to advance the project to Feasibility Study with opportunities for improvement recognized in several areas including resource/reserves, infrastructure capex and mine opex. Initial studies will include a review of the stage development of the open pit, including reduction of waste stockpiles outside of the pit and by using in-pit backfill opportunities earlier in the mine life, given the project economics are sensitive to waste haulage distances. On the product marketing side, onsite blending of RPR concentrates with selected nutrient additives to make custom DAPR fertilizers will be reviewed. The Company believes that blending can add substantial value to the products from Bayovar 12.

Qualified Person

The information presented in this press release was reviewed by David Cass, Focus's President, who is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia, and a Qualified Person in accordance with National Instrument 43-101. The information presented is regarded as a representative and accurate summary of the information presented.

About Focus

Focus is developing the Bayovar 12 phosphate deposit located 40 km from the coast in the Sechura District of northern Peru. Bayovar 12 hosts a large resource of highly-reactive sedimentary phosphate rock - a key raw material input for fertilizers and vital to world food production. Reactive phosphate rock from Sechura is a natural, slow-release source of phosphorus that can be applied directly to crops. Focus aims to supply direct application phosphate rock to the nearby agricultural regions of South and Central America, the fastest growing fertilizer market in the world.

For further information, please call 604-630-5544 or visit our web site www.focusventuresltd.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Ralph Rushton, Director

Symbol: TSXV-FCV

Shares Issued: 116.6-million

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and include, without limitation, statements about the Company's Bayovar 12 project including details from the prefeasibility study prepared on the project. Often, but not always, these forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimate", "estimates", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "upgraded", "offset", "limited", "contained", "reflecting", "containing", "remaining", "to be", "periodically", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations.

Forward-looking Statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and factors relate to, among other things, information contained in the prefeasibility study prepared for the Bayovar 12 project; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; the Company or any joint venture partner not having the financial ability to meet its exploration and development goals; risks associated with the results of exploration and development activities, estimation of mineral resources and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; unanticipated costs and expenses; and such other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's quarterly and annual filings with securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended.

Forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the Company's stated goals for the Bayovar 12 project will be achieved; that a feasibility study will be completed for the project; and that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Contacts:

Focus Ventures Ltd.

Ralph Rushton

(604) 630-5544

(604) 682-1514 (FAX)

info@focusventuresltd.com

www.focusventuresltd.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- SPOT COFFEE (CANADA) LTD. (TSX VENTURE: SPP) ("SPoT" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement for a SPoT Express franchise cafe which will be located in West Seneca, a lively Buffalo suburb which houses the Charles E. Burchfield Nature & Art Center, a 29-acre art and nature center complex, as well as the $7.2 million state-of-the-art Southtowns Family YMCA facility. SPoT Coffee West Seneca Express will be located in a high traffic area of the community and will feature SPoT's distinctive interior design, a variety of seating options, a relaxed atmosphere and a patio.

The addition of SPoT Coffee West Seneca Express will give SPoT a stronger presence in the inner Southtowns district, which is a cluster of suburban towns that includes Orchard Park and Hamburg. Beyond the signing of this fourth new franchise in the last three months, SPoT continues to negotiate new full cafe and express cafe franchises with serious potential franchisees from across Western and Upstate New York in accordance with its primary strategy for regional franchise and brand name expansion. We will be issuing further news releases in a timely fashion, to inform our shareholders and stakeholders of forthcoming new franchises as they are get successfully negotiated and enter final agreement phases.

"We are extremely pleased to keep and even accelerate the momentum that our franchise program has achieved in the short period of time since we obtained franchise registration from the State of New York. We are kicking off 2016 with a new franchise in West Seneca," said Anton Ayoub, president of Spot Coffee. Mr. Ayoub further commented: "West Seneca offers its residents, visitors and businesses a busy and prosperous suburban environment, which is well suited to embrace the SPoT Coffee Express cafe concept."

About SPoT Coffee

SPoT Coffee trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol SPP. SPoT designs, builds, operates and franchises community oriented cafes and express cafes in New York State. SPoT's community cafes provide its customers with the highest quality service, signature made-to-order meals and award winning micro-roasted coffee. Each SPoT cafe is distinctively designed to suit its local neighbourhood, creating a warm and friendly gathering place for the community. SPoT's commercial business focuses on the sale of roasted coffee beans to food service and grocery chains, business offices and third party resellers such as universities and hospitals.

Forward Looking Statements

Except for statements of historical fact relating to the Corporation, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable securities requirements, the Corporation undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the release.

Contacts:

Michael Lorenzo

Shareholder Communications

Tel: (416) 368-2220

Email: mlorenzo@spotcoffee.com



David Freeman

Corporate Development

Tel: (416) 368-2220

Email: dfreeman@spotcoffee.com



Anton Ayoub

CEO

Tel: (416) 368-2220

Email: aayoub@spotcoffee.com




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A man who held a woman and 11 children hostage at a motel in DeKalb County, Georgia, after midnight Tuesday stabbed himself as police encountered him, local reports say. Reports quoting local police said they responded to a domestic dispute call from a woman at the Rite4Us Inn and Suites on Snapfinger Woods Drive at around 2 a.m. The suspect stabbed himself in the neck as a SWAT team entered the motel, police said on twitter. The unidentified suspect was taken to hospital, and was in a critical condition, reports quoting police said. The standoff ended and everyone else is safe, it added. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Perisson Petroleum Corporation (CSE: POG) ("Perisson") announces that after several months of discussions and due diligence, it has entered into a long term relationship with a new strategic investor group.

The new strategic investor group (the "Strategic Investor") is proposing to undertake an initial non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of up to USD$40 million at a subscription price of $0.40 per share (the "Financing"), for the purposes of financing an aggressive oil and gas asset acquisition strategy by the Company. Accretive strategic acquisitions are anticipated to occur starting in the first half of 2016.

The Financing is a planned first step by the Strategic Investor, whose intention is to fund approximately USD$150 million of high-quality acquisitions in Canada, based on the recommendations of Perisson's management team, over the next 18 months.

The Company strategic intent is focused on expanding its operations into North America where low-cost, producing, cash-generating assets are readily available. Core to the strategy will be focusing on assets that are cash-generative at present oil market pricing, or higher, and have significant running room for future growth. Management believes that Canada represents a stable, efficient producing environment with a multitude of opportunities available in today's depressed market. As such, the Company is expected to become a low cost producing and cash-generating entity with a stable Canadian production base, while a maintaining large, long-term, exploratory asset base in South America.

About Perisson

Perisson Petroleum Corporation holds a 100% working interest in 39,927 hectares (almost 100,000 acres) known as the VMM-17 block, a license located in the prolific, stable, oil-producing region of the Middle Magdalena Basin in central Colombia. The Corporation's objectives are to explore, exploit and produce oil from the relatively shallow reservoirs believed to be within the VMM-17 block.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release includes certain information, with management's assessment of Perisson's future plans and operations, and contains forward-looking statements which may include some or all of the following: (i) anticipated production rates; (ii) expected results of capital programs; (iii) expected timelines for production optimization; (iv) net debt levels; (v) anticipated operating costs; and (vi) expected capital projects and associated spending; which are provided to allow investors to better understand the Company's business. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties; some of which are beyond Perisson's control, including the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, currency fluctuations, imprecision of reserve estimates, environmental risks, changes in environmental tax and royalty legislation, competition from other industry participants, the lack of availability of qualified personnel or management, stock market volatility and ability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources, and other risks and uncertainties described under the heading 'Risk Factors' and elsewhere in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis and other documents filed with Canadian provincial securities authorities and are available to the public at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The principal assumptions Perisson has made includes security of land interests; drilling cost stability; finance and debt markets continuing to be receptive to financing the Company, the ability of the Company to monetize non-core assets and industry standard rates of geologic and operational success. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Perisson disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. For more information on the Company, Investors should review the Company's registered filings which are available at www.sedar.com.

This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of any offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities offered have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws.

Contacts:

Chien-Yeh (Gary) Chen

Chairman of the Board and CEO

gchen@perisson.com



Wayne Rousch

President

wrousch@perisson.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- The Laurel Hill Advisory Group is pleased to announce David J. Salmon has been appointed President of Laurel Hill's Canadian Entity, The Laurel Hill Advisory Group Company, Canada's leading Shareholder Communications firm. David is an industry veteran with over 17 years in progressive leadership roles and brings his extensive experience and successes to the new role.

"David has been an integral part of our growth and success since he joined the company back in January 2008," said Laurel Hill Senior Partner, William J. Catacosinos. "His promotion is well deserved and I am very proud to have David lead our Canadian business going forward."

"This is a tremendous honour and I am very excited about the opportunity, Laurel Hill has earned the reputation as being the "go-to" firm for generating results and I am continually impressed by the team's commitment to excellence and client satisfaction. I am looking forward to continuing our momentum and furthering our commitment to being the best Shareholder Communications firm in the industry," added David Salmon.

About The Laurel Hill Advisory Group

The Laurel Hill Advisory Group is North America's only independent, cross border proxy solicitation firm. Our team's experience has resulted in Canada's best proxy contest win record for the past 8 years. We are regularly engaged on high profile, complex and contentious situations involving M&A, restructuring, and corporate governance issues. Cross border operations allows us to effectively reach shareholders regardless of their location - Canada, US and globally.

Contacts:

David Salmon

604-620-2224

dsalmon@laurelhill.com




CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Africa Hydrocarbons Inc. (NEX: NFK.H) ("AHI" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Kari Wilkie as contract Chief Financial Officer "CFO", effective Jan 01, 2016.

The Company also announces the resignation of Ms. Charidy Lazorko as the Company's CFO, effective Jan 01, 2016. The Company would like to thank Ms. Lazorko for her service to AHI.

The new appointment to the Corporation's management team is subject to approval by the TSX Venture Exchange.

About the Company

Africa Hydrocarbons Inc. is a Canadian based company listed on the NEX board of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this News Release.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF

AFRICA HYDROCARBONS INC.

John Nelson, CEO

Contacts:

Africa Hydrocarbons Inc.

John Nelson

CEO

(587) 955-9993

www.africahydrocarbons.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Enercare Connections Inc. ("Enercare"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Enercare Inc. (TSX: ECI) and Canada's largest and most reputable non-utility sub-metering provider, has entered into an agreement with Quadlogic Meters Canada Inc. ("QMC") for the exclusive supply of thermal sub-metering technology from GWF MessSysteme AG ("GWF") of Switzerland. Under the terms of the agreement, QMC will supply thermal meters exclusively in Ontario to Enercare, other than to certain local Ontario utilities.

"Our agreement with QMC to provide thermal sub-metering technology from GWF represents a tremendous opportunity for current and prospective Enercare clients," said John Macdonald, President and Chief Executive Officer of Enercare. "GWF is in a class of its own when it comes to thermal metering, and their technology has already been effectively deployed in some of the smartest and most efficient buildings in Europe."

The deal follows Enercare's acquisition of Ottawa-based Triacta Power Technologies Inc. in July 2015, and underscores the company's commitment to providing leading edge sub-metering technology and solutions to developers, landlords and property managers.

"We are very pleased to partner with Enercare on an exclusive basis in Ontario," said James Easton, President and CEO of QMC. "Our two companies are aligned in providing developers, landlords and property managers with the very best technology to monitor and reduce energy consumption, and reduce overall costs."

Manufactured in Switzerland and deployed to measure both heating and cooling in residential, commercial and institutional applications, GWF thermal meters meet some of the highest international standards for accuracy and reliability, including EN 1434.

Key features of the GWF thermal meters include:

-- Swiss quality and precision, providing longer meter life and improved accuracy -- M-Bus communications standard to provide absolute meter readings and power-over-M-Bus, which could lower installation costs -- CF-51 and CF-55 commercial models can be adapted to any size pipe (both in-line and insertion meters) -- Ultrasonic flow meter, meaning no moving parts are blocked -- Flexible mounting options, translating into easy installation in fan coil/heat pump factory or retrofit at site

About Enercare Connections

Enercare Inc. is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ECI). As one of Canada's largest home and commercial services and energy solutions companies with approximately 1,000 employees, Enercare provides water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners and other HVAC rental products, plumbing services, protection plans and related services to more than 1.2 million customers. Enercare is also the largest non-utility sub-meter provider, with electricity, water, thermal and gas metering contracts for condominium and apartment suites in Ontario, Alberta and elsewhere in Canada, and through its Triacta division, a premier designer and manufacturer of advanced sub-meters and sub-metering solutions. For more information on Enercare visit enercare.ca.

About QMC

QMC is a leader in thermal energy metering solutions for the Canadian market. QMC helps building owners and occupants conserve energy and save money through intelligent sub-metering of a building's utilities: electricity, water, thermal and gas. Vancouver-based with offices across Canada, QMC has both hands-on experience in the field, and extensive knowledge of utility billing, analytics, and conservation. For more information about QMC visit qmeters.com.

Source: Enercare Inc.

Contacts:

Enercare Connections Inc.

Jeff Lanthier

jlanthier@enercare.ca



QMC

James Easton

james@qmeters.com




MISSISAUGA, ON -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Bibby Financial Services Canada announces a $2.5 million asset-based loan provided to the continent's largest manufacturer of office security containers.

The company has provided high-quality products since its inception in 2003 and has four fully-stocked warehouses, distribution and pickup centers throughout North America, with a focus on providing excellent customer service at every touchpoint.

Part-owned by a private equity firm looking to increase its dividend payments to fund other acquisitions, the company came to Bibby Financial Services (BFS) because it could no longer meet the debt-to-equity ratios required by traditional lending institutions.

BFS provided an affordable facility with a flexible financial covenant to support the growth of the company, while also allowing shareholders the ability to maximize their dividends.

"It's important for companies to consider the interests of shareholders, and often that means getting creative in their growth strategy," says Leigh Lones, Bibby Financial Services CEO, Americas. "Bibby Financial Services provides funding to companies in a variety of growth stages, and our financing options are flexible enough to meet the needs of virtually any company, private or public, large or small."

About Bibby Financial Services

Bibby Financial Services, a worldwide market leader in business financing solutions, supports businesses of all sizes in virtually every industry with flexible, customized funding solutions. With its asset-based lending and factoring products, the company provides clients access to the working capital needed to grow and support their businesses. Bibby Financial Services is proud to have helped more than 8,900 clients grow their businesses by providing more than $1 billion in funding across the globe. It operates offices in seven North American cities and 16 countries. Bibby Financial Services is a subsidiary of The Bibby Line Group, a privately held company established in the United Kingdom in 1807. For more information, please visit www.bibbycanada.ca.

Media Contact

Savannah Weeks

Trevelino/Keller

(404) 214-0722 X 110

Email Contact




Commercialized cognitive computing and AI platforms are enabling a new era in data driven decision support, says Frost & Sullivan

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Changes in healthcare delivery methods, timelines and payment options are requiring the adoption of innovative tools to manage patient information and make decisions. The need for data mining and decision-making has put artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled solutions at the forefront of the healthcare revolution. AI facilitates greater accessibility, relevancy and actionability of healthcare information.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/318983LOGO

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Computing Systems in Healthcare (https://www.frost.com/nffe'src=PR), finds the market earned revenues of $633.8 million in 2014 and estimates $6,662.2 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent.

For complimentary access to more information on this research, please visit: http://bit.ly/1Ntltd6.

Clinical support from AI will strengthen medical imaging diagnosis processes. In addition, the use of AI solutions for hospital workflows will enhance care delivery. Overall, AI has the potential to improve outcomes by 30 to 40 percent while cutting treatment costs by as much as 50 percent.

"Already playing a critical role in other industries, AI systems are poised to transform how we think about disease diagnosis and treatment," said Frost & Sullivan Transformational Health Industry Analyst Harpreet Singh Buttar. "Augmenting the expertise of trained clinicians, AI systems will provide an added layer of decision support capable of helping mitigate oversights or errors in care administration."

The capacity to extract information from disparate information silos, translate large unstructured data sets, and tools for natural language processing allow AI systems to tackle challenges in care coordination that previously had no other means of recourse.

Further research and fine tuning of the AI engine will facilitate the optimized use of AI systems for both clinical decision support and workflow logistics within hospitals. Selecting the right solution partners and business models will be a critical determinant of success for vendors.

"By 2025, AI systems could be involved in everything from population health management, to digital avatars capable of answering specific patient queries," noted Buttar. "On a global scale, in regions with high underserved patient populations, AI is expected to play a significant role in democratization of information and mitigating resource burdens."

Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Computing Systems in Healthcare is part of the Visionary Healthcare (http://www.frost.com/c/6671427/home.do) Growth Partnership Service program. Frost & Sullivan's related studies include: Assessing Ultrasound's Market Potential within Emerging Clinical Points of Care, Care Coordination Software - US Overview and Outlook, Big Data Opportunities in the US Medical Imaging Market, and Executive Outlook of Health, Wellness, and Wellbeing Technologies in the Global Automotive Industry. All studies included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants.

Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.

provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive Computing Systems in Healthcare

NFFE-54

Contact:

Kayla Belcher

Corporate Communications - North America

P: 210.247.2450

F: 210.348.1003

E: kayla.belcher@frost.com

http://www.frost.com
BOISE, ID -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce today announced the addition of four new members to the Boise team.

"We are delighted to have three brokers and one dedicated admin join our Boise team," said Tim Reid, Market Leader of Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce Idaho. "We are particularly pleased to see the retail team grow its ranks. The retail segment of the market in Idaho is very strong and Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce is seen as the go-to team for retail clients. Each new person is joining us with their own unique expertise and successes; we are very excited to have this new talent work with us to maximize our growth and impact on the market in 2016."

Karen Sander joins Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce as the new downtown office and retail specialist, where she will support and lead the Boise team in building relationships with prospective and existing clients throughout Boise's downtown commercial real estate market. Previously, Sander worked for the Downtown Boise Business Improvement District, where she worked with organizations and businesses to create and implement plans promoting economic and community benefits for downtown Boise.

Rhonda Garland joins Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce as investment specialist director. Prior to joining the Boise team, Garland worked for Investment Analytics Group, LLC as managing principal, where she held responsibility for the oversight of management leasing, financing, contract negotiation, strategic planning and company and tenant entity administration for multiple clients and real estate portfolios.

James Stewart joins the Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce Boise location as retail specialist director. Previously, Stewart taught undergraduate marketing courses where he assisted in the development of curriculum for a new marketing course, Retail Marketing, and was awarded the Advanced Facilitator Certification in 2014 at the University of Phoenix. Stewart also managed 12 company-owned Starbucks coffeehouses, where he successfully launched LaBoulange product resulting in double digit year-over-year growth in food sales.

Laura Morrison joins Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce as a dedicated retail brokerage assistant. Previously, Morrison gained extensive experience with CBRE as senior project coordinator for Chevron, and global knowledge manager and senior project coordinator for Google. The national and international knowledge she gained coordinating/managing the Chevron and Google portfolios will be an invaluable asset to the retail team and Boise retail market.

Social Links Connect with Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/comre_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/COMRE1

Blog: http://blog.comre.com/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/commerce-real-estate-solutions?trk=tabs_biz_home

About Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce

Cushman & Wakefield | Commerce, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah is an independently owned and operated member of the Cushman & Wakefield Alliance, with offices throughout Utah, Nevada, Washington and Idaho. The firm partners with its sister company, Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq to provide innovative commercial real estate solutions to occupier and investor clients, offering transaction services, capital markets services, occupier and investor services, and real estate advisory.

Together the firms manage more than 52 million square feet of retail, industrial, and office assets, have annual revenues of more than $100 million, and employ more than 750 professionals. Learn more at www.comre.com, and www.cushwakenm.com. Cushman & Wakefield/Commerce and Cushman & Wakefield /NorthMarq are part of the Cushman & Wakefield platform.

About Cushman & Wakefield

The successful merger of Cushman & Wakefield and DTZ closed September 1, 2015. The firm now operates under the iconic Cushman & Wakefield brand and has a new visual identity and logo that position the firm for the future and reflect its trusted global legacy and wider history. The new Cushman & Wakefield is led by Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Brett White and Global President Tod Lickerman. The company is majority owned by an investor group led by TPG, PAG, and OTPP.

Cushman & Wakefield is a leading global real estate services firm that helps clients transform the way people work, shop, and live. The firm's 43,000 employees in more than 60 countries provide deep local and global insights that create significant value for occupiers and investors around the world. Cushman & Wakefield is among the largest commercial real estate services firms with revenue of $5 billion across core services of agency leasing, asset services, capital markets, facility services (C&W Services), global occupier services, investment & asset management (DTZ Investors), project & development services, tenant representation, and valuation & advisory. To learn more, visit www.cushmanwakefield.com or follow @CushWake on Twitter.

Media Contact:

Tim Rush

Springboard5

+1 801 208 1100

Email Contact




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Romios Gold Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "Romios") (TSX VENTURE: RG)(OTC PINK: RMIOF)(FRANKFURT: D4R) is pleased to announce the appointment of Frank van de Water as Chief Financial Officer of the Company, subsequent to the resignation of Michael D'Amico in order for him to pursue another opportunity. The directors expressed their gratitude to Michael for his years of service with the Company and wished him well in his new endeavor.

Frank is a Certified Professional Accountant and is currently a director, the Chief Operating Officer and Secretary of Romios. He has been involved in international mining, metals and resource companies in North and Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Contacts:

Romios Gold Resources Inc.

Tom Drivas

President, CEO and Director

416-221-4124

416-218-9772 (FAX)

romios@romios.com




BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Fish & Richardson announced today that it has been named "IP Litigation Department of the Year" finalist by The American Lawyer. The American Lawyer singled Fish out for this prestigious award because "Fish & Richardson is omnipresent in the IP world -- and it wins." The American Lawyer award winners were published on January 1, 2016.

According to The American Lawyer, "When it comes to the numbers, Fish & Richardson can't be beat. In 2014...the firm handled 245 new intellectual property suits...more than any other Am Law 200 firm. The firm also handled more cases at the International Trade Commission and was one of the most active firms in post-grant proceedings at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). But Fish's success is not just about numbers; it also wins."

The American Lawyer highlighted some of Fish's many significant wins over the past two years. "Victories include two high-stakes Federal Circuit patent cases for Apple Inc. and LG Electronics in which more than $172 million in damages was at risk in a battle with an Alcatel-Lucent SA subsidiary. Fish also won two big Hatch-Waxman patent cases for Allergan Inc., blocking four competitors from selling a generic version of a glaucoma drug that has $200 million in annual sales."

The magazine also lauded Fish's impressive work in precedent setting cases and for developing novel legal theories to help clients win. "Fish helped establish precedent in an administrative law decision at the PTO when it convinced the Federal Circuit that it has no jurisdiction to review the denial of an inter partes review proceeding. At the International Trade Commission (ITC), Fish successfully led a joint defense fighting a company that was seeking to exclude Fish client LG Electronics Inc. and 23 other companies from importing products that contained technology that it said infringed its patent. Even though the patent had already survived challenges, Fish convinced the ITC that none of the companies were guilty of infringement."

"It is an honor to be recognized by The American Lawyer for the third time for this highly competitive and coveted award," said Kurt Glitzenstein, Practice Group Leader of Fish's Litigation Group. "Over the past two years, we handled disputes with over $10 billion in controversy. Our clients trust Fish with their highest stakes, biggest dollar litigation because no other firm comes close to Fish in winning the most technically complex and challenging mission-critical cases. We dominate the IP litigation landscape because we have the deepest and most experienced IP trial bench in the world, and understand our clients' industries and technologies."

The American Lawyer's IP Litigation Department of the Year contest is conducted every two years. The 2016 contest covers IP litigation matters between August 1, 2013 and July 31, 2015. Fish's Litigation Group, which includes over 250 lawyers in 12 offices, was also named a finalist in The American Lawyer's 2014 and 2010 IP Litigation Department of the Year contests.

Fish & Richardson is a global patent, intellectual property (IP) litigation, and commercial litigation law firm with more than 400 attorneys and technology specialists across the U.S. and Europe. Fish has been named the #1 patent litigation firm in the U.S. for 12 consecutive years. Fish has been winning cases worth billions in controversy -- often by making new law -- for the most innovative clients and influential industry leaders since 1878. For more information, visit www.fr.com.

Contact:



Amy Blumenthal

Blumenthal & Associates

617-879-1511

amyb@blumenthalpr.com



or



Kelly Largey

Fish & Richardson

800-818-5070

largey@fr.com




TORONTO and WASHINGTON, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Sara Charney, chair of the Lionel Gelber Prize and president of The Lionel Gelber Foundation, and Stephen Toope, director of the Munk School of Global Affairs, are pleased to announce an outstanding jury for 2016:

Jury Chair John Stackhouse ( Toronto, Canada )

( ) Michael Barnett ( Washington, D.C. )

( ) Rachel Lomax ( London, England )

( ) David M. Malone ( Tokyo, Japan )

) Matias Spektor ( Sao Paulo, Brazil ).

"Created in memory of the Canadian scholar, diplomat and author Lionel Gelber, we are gratified that the Prize attracts such distinguished jurors, year after year," said Ms Charney, niece of Lionel Gelber.

Key Dates : Shortlist announced February 2; winner announced March 1. The winner will speak at a free public event at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto onTuesday, March 29, 2016.

The Lionel Gelber Prize, a literary award for the world's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues, was founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber. A cash prize of CDN$15,000 is awarded to the winner. The award is presented annually by The Lionel Gelber Foundation, in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine and the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

The Prize marked its 25thanniversary in 2015 with a commemorative video exploring 25 years of global change, presented in conversation with five of its previous winners: http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/gelber/media.html

Serhii Plokhy won the 2015 Prize for his book The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union published by Basic Books.

Media Contact: June Dickenson,junedickenson@cogeco.ca, +1-647-477-6000; Lionel Gelber Prize Website:http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/gelber/; Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gelberprize; Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/gelberprize
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Fourteen-term Washington Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., announced Monday he will not run for another term in Congress this year. In a news conference in downtown Seattle, McDermott said he is forever humbled and grateful to his constituents for his nearly thirty years in Congress. McDermott, an outspoken liberal, said there are things he'd still like to accomplish but he would leave the Congress with few regrets. A former Navy psychiatrist, McDermott said he would spend his last year in office on several critical unfinished issues, including a mental health reform bill. The Washington congressman achieved some notoriety for leaking audio of a 1996 phone call between then-House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other Republican leaders. Boehner filed a lawsuit against McDermott, who was eventually ordered to pay more than $1 million in damages after a long legal dispute. In a statement, President Barack Obama said McDermott has worked tirelessly on behalf of the people of Washington State and called him a much-needed voice for his most vulnerable constituents. 'Across America, you'll find families that are better off because Jim McDermott was fighting for them,' Obama said. 'I'm grateful for Jim's service, and Michelle and I wish him all the best in whatever the future holds.' The district represented by McDermott is expected to remain in Democratic hands, although his retirement could launch a contentious primary. Democratic state Rep. Brady Walkinshaw previously declared his candidacy for McDermott's seat, and several other state legislators have also been mentioned as possible candidates. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LAS VEGAS, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Following the successful launch of 2015's best smartwatch, Huawei's new editions aimed at women who sparkle and shine

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Huawei Consumer Business Group (BG) unveiled Jewel and Elegant versions of 2015's premium smartwatch. In collaboration with Swarovski's Gemstone Business, the HUAWEI WATCH Jewel and Elegant mark a new female focus for the company.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/318861 )



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/318862 )



Timeless beauty, for any occasion

Joining the Classic, Active and Elite smartwatches released last year to critical acclaim, the new Jewel and Elegant editions offer two stylish options aimed at women. Featuring 68 Swarovski Zirconia dotted around the rose gold-plated case, each measuring 1.5mm in size, the Jewel glistens and shines like nothing else available on the smartwatch market today.

A more understated option, the Elegant edition has a knurled pattern effect around its rose gold-plated case.

Complemented beautifully by the two genuine Italian leather watch straps, available in pearl white and sapphire blue, the HUAWEI WATCH Jewel and Elegant comes pre-loaded with over 40 watch faces as on the original model, including 10 exclusive feminine designs.

Huawei Watch, where fashion and technology embrace

With the same best-in-class specs of the original Huawei Watch, the Jewel and Elegant's classic designs, inspired by Swiss watch manufacturers, sees scratch-proof sapphire crystal (the favoured choice amongst high-end Swiss brands) coating their fully circular 44mm faces. Cold-forged stainless steel, plated in rose gold, cements both models' strength thanks to its durable nature.

Powered by Android Wear' and both Android and iOS compatible, the Huawei Watch displays alerts for calls, texts, instant messages and emails. The Watch also features Bluetooth connectivity for wireless headphones usage, meaning you can listen to offline music downloads while you work out. With voice commands capable of controlling music as well as navigation, it's the perfect running device. A heart rate sensor accurately measures heart rates, and the 6-Axis motion sensor can track activities including walking, running and mountain climbing.

A premium watch inspired by classic timepiece design, it truly embodies the space where fashion meets technology.

Availability and Accessories

The standard models of the Huawei Watch are available in more than 20 countries and regions, including: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States. HUAWEI WATCH Jewel and Elegant will be on sale in the same countries and regions, from March 2016.

For more information, please visit: consumer.huawei.com

For regular updates on Huawei Consumer BG, follow us on:

Facebook: facebook.com/HuaweiDevice

Twitter: twitter.com/HuaweiDevice

Google+: google.com/+HuaweiDevice

YouTube: youtube.com/HuaweiDevice

Flickr: flickr.com/HuaweiDevice

About Huawei Consumer Business Group

By 2014, Huawei's products and services have covered more than 170 countries, and a third of the world's population. Huawei's shipments of smartphones ranked third in the world in 2014. Huawei has 16 R&D centers have been set up in the US, Germany, Sweden, Russia, India, and China. Huawei Consumer Business Group is one of three businesses within Huawei, covering smartphones, mobile broadband devices, home devices and cloud services. Based on more than 20 years of Huawei's expertise in the telecom industry, built on Huawei's global network, worldwide operations and business partners, Huawei Consumer Business Group is dedicated to providing the latest technology to the consumers and bringing the joy of technological advances to people all around the world. Huawei acts on its word and fulfills dreams.

For more information please visit: http://www.consumer.huawei.com

About Swarovski

Swarovski delivers a diverse portfolio of unmatched quality, craftsmanship, and creativity. Founded in 1895 in Austria, Swarovski designs, manufactures and markets high-quality crystals, genuine gemstones and created stones as well as finished products such as jewelry, accessories and lighting. Now celebrating its 120th anniversary and run by the fifth generation of family members, Swarovski Crystal Business has a global reach with approximately 2,560 stores in around 170 countries, more than 25,000 employees, and revenue of about 2.33 billion euros in 2014. Together with its sister companies Swarovski Optik (optical devices) and Tyrolit (abrasives), Swarovski Crystal Business forms the Swarovski Group. In 2014, the Group generated revenue of about 3.05 billion euros and employed more than 30,000 people. The Swarovski Foundation was set up in 2012 to honor the philanthropic spirit of founder Daniel Swarovski. Its mission is to support creativity and culture, promote wellbeing, and conserve natural resources.

http://www.swarovskigroup.com
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/05/16 -- Erdene Resource Development Corp. (TSX: ERD) ("Erdene" or "Company"), is pleased to announce the appointment of David Mosher as a strategic advisor to the Company.

"We are very pleased to have Mr. Mosher join the Erdene team and to assist with our rapidly evolving gold projects in southwest Mongolia," said Peter Akerley, Erdene's President and CEO. "With the recent high-grade gold discovery at Bayan Khundii and the nearby Altan Nar gold deposits, we believe we have the necessary projects to move Erdene towards our goal of becoming a gold producer in the near-term. With David's thirty-five years of executive level experience in mine building, project management in foreign jurisdictions and company building, he is extremely well qualified to help guide the Company both technically and professionally as we advance our core projects."

Mr. Mosher is a mining executive with over thirty-five years of international experience. From 1992 to 2008, David was President and CEO of High River Gold Mines Ltd., a TSX listed company involved in the exploration, development and production of gold in Canada, Africa and Russia. In that role, he negotiated the acquisition of two producing Russian gold mines, completed mining investment agreements with the government of Burkina Faso, raised over $300 million to support the company's growth, and supervised the development of two open pit gold mines (the Taparko gold mine in Burkina Faso, and the Berezitovy gold mine in Russia). He has served on many boards including Cambior Inc. and earlier in his career was project manager for Pancontinental Mining Limited, where he and his team discovered and outlined the largest uranium deposit in the world at that time (the Jabiluka deposits in northern Australia).

Over the past decade, Mr. Mosher has been active in the restructuring and refinancing of a number of junior resource companies, both private and public, and currently serves as a director of several mining and exploration companies, including Pancontinental Uranium Corporation (TSX-V) and Pelangio Exploration Inc. (TSX-V). Mr. Mosher received his B.Sc. degree in geology from Acadia University.

Project Update

Bayan Khundii Gold Project (100% Erdene)

Erdene's Q4-2015 drill program at the Bayan Khundii gold discovery in southwest Mongolia returned multiple, high-grade intersections over a 475 m area, including; 7 m of 27.5 g/t gold, including 1 m of 187 g/t gold (hole BKD-01); 35 m of 5.7 g/t gold from surface, including 12 m of 16.0 g/t gold (hole BKD-10); and 26 m of 6 g/t gold, including 15 m of 9.9 g/t gold (hole BKD-09). Visible gold was observed in 10 of the 15 drill holes, with no significant sulphide material present. All mineralized zones were intersected within 50 m of surface and remain open along strike and at depth. Additional exploration of this high-grade gold discovery is in the planning stage and is expected to include a second phase of diamond drilling and metallurgical testing during the first half of 2016.

Link to Erdene's latest news release on Bayan Khundii - click here

Altan Nar Gold-Polymetallic Project (100% Erdene)

Erdene's Q3-2015 drilling, trenching and metallurgical program at its Altan Nar gold-polymetallic project, 20 km northwest of Bayan Khundii, was focused on the Discovery Zone ("DZ") and Union North ("UN") mineral resource areas. Infill drilling at DZ supported continuity of a high-grade mineralized zone with 9 m of 7.3 g/t Au, 25 g/t Ag, 1.20% Pb and 1.65% Zn within 50 m of surface (hole TND-92). Infill drilling at UN returned multiple mineralized zones including 8.9 m of 5.0 g/t Au, 17 g/t Ag, 1.49% Pb and 0.28% Zn within 36 m of surface (hole TND-81), while trenching at UN extended the mineralized zone by approximately 200 m to the east with a step-out trench (trench ANT-21) that returned 28.5 m of 1.9 g/t Au, 4.3 g/t Ag, 0.78% Pb and 0.35% Zn. Metallurgical test work at DZ North returned high gold recoveries of up to 88% from leaching. Going forward, work at Altan Nar is expected to include additional metallurgical process test work, evaluation of the mining, engineering, transportation, and marketing options, exploration and development related programs, and work required for a mining license application.

Link to Erdene's latest news release on Altan Nar - click here

The drill intersections reported above for Bayan Khundii and Altan Nar are not true width. Additional work will be required to determine true widths. They represent drill intersection widths from holes drilled at 45 to 60 degree angles. The mineralization at both projects is moderate to steeply dipping and approximately perpendicular to the drill hole angle.

Qualified Person

Michael MacDonald, P.Geo. (Nova Scotia), Director of Exploration for Erdene, is the Qualified Person as that term is defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release. All samples have been assayed at SGS Laboratory in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. In addition to internal checks by SGS Laboratory, the Company incorporates a QA/QC sample protocol utilizing prepared standards and blanks.

About Erdene

Erdene Resource Development Corp. is a Canada-based resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of base and precious metals in underexplored and highly prospective Mongolia. The Company holds four exploration licenses and a mining license located in southwest Mongolia. These include: Altan Nar - an extensive, high-grade, near-surface, gold-polymetallic project that the Company is aggressively advancing toward a production decision, however the Company has not yet completed a mining study to support the technical feasibility and economic viability of Altan Nar; Bayan Khundii - a high-grade gold discovery made in Q3-2015 that the Company is currently exploring; Khuvyn Khar - an early-stage, copper-silver porphyry project with multiple drill targets and significant copper intersections; Zuun Mod - a large molybdenum-copper porphyry deposit; Altan Arrow - an early-stage, high-grade, gold-silver project. In addition to the above properties, the Company has an Alliance with Teck Resources Limited on regional, copper-gold exploration in the prospective Trans Altay region of southwest Mongolia. For further information on the Company, please visit www.erdene.com. Erdene has 105,060,005 issued and outstanding common shares and a fully diluted position of 124,720,102 common shares.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information regarding Erdene contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements may include estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, guidance or other statements that are not statements of fact. Although Erdene believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Erdene cautions that actual performance will be affected by a number of factors, most of which are beyond its control, and that future events and results may vary substantially from what Erdene currently foresees. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration results, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. The forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The information contained herein is stated as of the current date and is subject to change after that date. The Company does not assume the obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

NO REGULATORY AUTHORITY HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED THE CONTENTS OF THIS RELEASE

Contacts:

Peter C. Akerley, President and CEO or

Ken W. MacDonald, Vice President Business Strategy and CFO

(902) 423-6419

E-mail: info@erdene.com

Website: www.erdene.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ErdeneRes




NORTH CONWAY, NH--(Marketwired - January 05, 2016) - The Board of Directors of Northway Financial, Inc. (the "Company") (OTCQB: NWYF), the parent company of Northway Bank, today announced that it has redeemed all of the 23,593 outstanding shares of the Company's Senior Non-cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series C (the "Preferred Stock") that had been issued to the United States Department of the Treasury (the "Treasury") in September 2011 pursuant to the Treasury's Small Business Lending Fund ("SBLF") program. The aggregate redemption price of the Preferred Stock was approximately $24 million, including dividends accrued but unpaid through, but not including, the redemption date. After the redemption, the Company's capital ratios remain in excess of the capital ratios required to meet the regulatory "well-capitalized" designation. The redemption, approved by all appropriate regulatory authorities, was paid for out of the Company's retained earnings with no additional equity or debt required. This was made possible by five years of record earnings, reflecting Management's successful execution of its growth strategy of the past several years.

Participation in the SBLF program benefited numerous small businesses in the Company's primary markets of central and northern New Hampshire. Utilizing the funds from the SBLF the Company was able to grow its small business loans by $44 million. The decision to repay the Preferred Stock was influenced by the scheduled increase in the dividend rate to 9% in March 2016. The Company continues to be committed to provide financial solutions to small businesses throughout the state of New Hampshire.

About Northway Financial, Inc.

Northway Financial, Inc., headquartered in North Conway, New Hampshire, is a bank holding company. Through its subsidiary bank, Northway Bank, the Company offers a broad range of financial products and services to individuals, businesses and the public sector from its 17 full-service banking offices and its loan production offices located in Bedford and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Forward-looking Statements

Statements included in this press release that are not historical or current fact are "forward-looking statements" made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical earnings and those presently anticipated or projected. Northway Financial, Inc. disclaims any obligation to subsequently revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements, or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances.

Contact:

Gary Laurash

Chief Financial Officer

603-326-7377
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil prices remained near the lowest since 2009 Tuesday, as the global supply glut offset escalating tensions between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' top producers Iran and Saudi Arabia. Feb. oil settled at $35.97/bbl on Nymex, down 79 cents, or 2.2%. Prices moved back toward 6-year year lows seen early in December. Iranians have violently protested the execution of a popular cleric in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis escalated a war of words today, with Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of foreign affairs, telling CNBC that 'Iranians have got away with murder, literally, for more than 30 years.' The American Petroleum Institute is set to release its crude oil inventories estimates for the final week of 2015 later today. Official numbers from the Energy Information Administration are due Wednesday morning. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Swiss Re Corporate Solutions has signed an agreement with Independence Holding Company (NYSE: IHC) to acquire IHC Risk Solutions, LLC and its direct employer stop loss (ESL) business, for an aggregate of USD 152,500,000 in cash. The transaction includes IHC Risk Solutions' operations, its team of experts and business portfolio, including in-force, new and renewal business written with IHC subsidiaries, Standard Security Life Insurance Company of New York and Independence American Insurance Company. Upon closing, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions expects the transaction to be accretive to earnings already in 2016.

Through this arrangement, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions broadens its current ESL capabilities in the small- and middle-market self-funded healthcare benefits segment. The transaction enhances the company's underwriting and claims management capabilities, while strengthening its product distribution through IHC Risk Solutions' direct broker and third-party administrator relationships. Under the terms of the agreement, business produced by IHC Risk Solutions will be written through Swiss Re Corporate Solutions' largest US carrier, Westport Insurance Corporation, rated "A+ (Superior)" by A.M. Best and "AA-" by Standard & Poor's.

Bob Petrilli, CEO North America of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, comments: "We are very pleased to join forces with IHC Risk Solutions, a firm with an excellent reputation and disciplined underwriting. Employers will realise tremendous value from our combined capabilities and expertise as they seek to better manage high-cost healthcare benefits and the financial risks associated with catastrophic medical events."

Mike Kemp, President of IHC Risk Solutions, says: "Since its inception, IHC Risk Solutions has focused on growing a world-class employer stop loss operation. Joining Swiss Re Corporate Solutions allows us to advance toward that objective. Our current and future clients will benefit from the financial strength of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, while we grow our existing operations and core partnerships."

IHC Risk Solutions has over 100 employees in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close during the first quarter of 2016.

About Swiss Re Corporate Solutions

Swiss Re Corporate Solutions offers innovative, high-quality insurance capacity to mid-sized and large multinational corporations across the globe. Our offerings range from standard risk transfer covers and multi-line programmes, to highly customised solutions tailored to the needs of our clients. Swiss Re Corporate Solutions serves customers from over 50 offices worldwide and is backed by the financial strength of the Swiss Re Group. For more information about Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, please visit www.swissre.com/corporatesolutions or follow us on Twitter @SwissRe_CS.

About Independence Holding Company

Independence Holding Company (NYSE: IHC) is principally engaged in the life and health insurance business, and the acquisition of blocks of policies through its insurance company and its marketing and administrative affiliates. The company furnishes medical stop-loss, group major and limited medical, short-term medical, group long-term and short-term disability, group life and various supplemental insurance products.

Cautionary Note on Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements and illustrations contained herein are forward-looking. These statements (including as to plans, objectives, targets, and trends) and illustrations provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to a historical fact or current fact.

Forward-looking statements typically are identified by words or phrases such as "anticipate", "assume", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "foresee", "intend", "may increase", "may fluctuate" and similar expressions, or by future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would" and "could". These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause SwissRe's actual results of operations, financial condition, solvency ratios, liquidity position or prospects to be materially different from any future results of operations, financial condition, solvency ratios, liquidity position or prospects expressed or implied by such statements or cause SwissRe to not achieve its published targets. Such factors include, among others:

instability affecting the global financial system and developments related thereto;

deterioration in global economic conditions;

SwissRe's ability to maintain sufficient liquidity and access to capital markets, including sufficient liquidity to cover potential recapture of reinsurance agreements, early calls of debt or debt-like arrangements and collateral calls due to actual or perceived deterioration of SwissRe's financial strength or otherwise;

the effect of market conditions, including the global equity and credit markets, and the level and volatility of equity prices, interest rates, credit spreads, currency values and other market indices, on SwissRe's investment assets;

changes in SwissRe's investment result as a result of changes in its investment policy or the changed composition of its investment assets, and the impact of the timing of any such changes relative to changes in market conditions;

uncertainties in valuing credit default swaps and other credit-related instruments;

possible inability to realise amounts on sales of securities on SwissRe's balance sheet equivalent to their mark-to-market values recorded for accounting purposes;

the outcome of tax audits, the ability to realise tax loss carryforwards and the ability to realise deferred tax assets (including by reason of the mix of earnings in a jurisdiction or deemed change of control), which could negatively impact future earnings;

the possibility that SwissRe's hedging arrangements may not be effective;

the lowering or loss of one of the financial strength or other ratings of one or more SwissRe companies, and developments adversely affecting SwissRe's ability to achieve improved ratings;

the cyclicality of the reinsurance industry;

uncertainties in estimating reserves;

uncertainties in estimating future claims for purposes of financial reporting, particularly with respect to large natural catastrophes, as significant uncertainties may be involved in estimating losses from such events and preliminary estimates may be subject to change as new information becomes available;

the frequency, severity and development of insured claim events;

acts of terrorism and acts of war;

mortality, morbidity and longevity experience;

policy renewal and lapse rates;

extraordinary events affecting SwissRe's clients and other counterparties, such as bankruptcies, liquidations and other credit-related events;

current, pending and future legislation and regulation affecting SwissRe or its ceding companies and the interpretation of legislation or regulations;

legal actions or regulatory investigations or actions, including those in respect of industry requirements or business conduct rules of general applicability;

changes in accounting standards;

significant investments, acquisitions or dispositions, and any delays, unexpected costs or other issues experienced in connection with any such transactions;

changing levels of competition; and

operational factors, including the efficacy of risk management and other internal procedures in managing the foregoing risks.

These factors are not exhaustive. SwissRe operates in a continually changing environment and new risks emerge continually. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. SwissRe undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This communication is not intended to be a recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities and does not constitute an offer for the sale of, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, securities in any jurisdiction, including the United States. Any such offer will only be made by means of a prospectus or offering memorandum, and in compliance with applicable securities laws.
Novartis International AG / Novartis Pharmaceuticals collaborates with Qualcomm in digital innovation with the Breezhaler inhaler device to treat COPD . Processed and transmitted by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

The Breezhaler inhaler is the device for Novartis' portfolio of COPD treatments of Onbrez and Seebri, and Ultibro, the leading LABA/LAMA treatment

The collaboration further supports Novartis' focus to empower patients making it easier for them to manage their own chronic disease by having near real time access to their own data on inhalation use

Novartis plans to launch the next generation connected Breezhaler in 2019

Basel, January 5, 2016 - Novartis announced today a collaboration with Qualcomm Incorporated through its subsidiary, Qualcomm Life, Inc., in digital innovation with the Breezhaler inhaler device to treat COPD. Under this collaboration, Qualcomm Life will provide the technology solution for the connectivity of the next generation of the Breezhaler inhaler, a device used for Novartis' portfolio of COPD treatments of Onbrez Breezhaler Seebri Breezhaler, and Ultibro Breezhaler, the leading LABA/LAMA treatment.

This next generation of the Breezhaler inhaler will enable patients to have access to their own data on the use of their inhaler in near real time. The small, disposable and low power module contained within the inhaler device can detect and report usage, the time that the inhaler is used, as well as additional relevant information for patients and physicians. The module then wirelessly sends the data to the patient's smartphone and a Novartis COPD mobile application, which sends the data to the cloud, allowing patients and potentially their healthcare providers to monitor their COPD. The connected device will be ready for use by patients, with no assembly required.

"Novartis supports patients being empowered to make it easier for them to manage their chronic conditions," said David Epstein, Head Novartis Pharmaceuticals. "By enabling near real time data capture from the patient and the connected Breezhaler device, patients can monitor their own adherence to the medication they take which is vital to their health outcomes."

Novartis aims to be the first company in respiratory medicine to offer a completely integrated, connected delivery device to provide a seamless, easy to use and simple experience for patients.

About Ultibro Breezhaler

Ultibro Breezhaler 110/50 mcg is a once-daily LABA/LAMA dual bronchodilator approved in the European Union (EU) as a maintenance bronchodilator treatment to relieve symptoms in adult patients with COPD2. Clinical trials have shown that it offers statistically significant improvements in bronchodilation compared to treatments widely used as current standards of care, including SFC 50/500 mcg and open-label tiotropium (18 mcg). Ultibro Breezhaler is currently approved for use in over 80 countries worldwide, including countries within the EU and Latin America, Japan, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. In the U.S. the treatment is approved as a indacaterol 27.5 mcg/glycopyrrolate 15.6 mcg administered twice daily, known as Utibron Neohaler.

About the Novartis COPD portfolio

Novartis is committed to addressing the unmet medical needs of COPD patients and improving their quality of life by providing innovative medicines and devices. The Novartis COPD portfolio includes Ultibro Breezhaler (indacaterol/glycopyrronium bromide), Seebri Breezhaler (glycopyrronium bromide) and Onbrez Breezhaler/ArcaptaTM NeohalerTM (indacaterol), which are all indicated as maintenance treatments for COPD patients. Glycopyrronium bromide was exclusively licensed to Novartis in April 2005 by Vectura and its co-development partner Sosei.

Novartis continues development of respiratory products for delivery via the low resistance Breezhaler inhalation device, which makes it suitable for patients with different severities of airflow limitation. The Breezhaler device allows patients to hear, feel and see that they have taken the full dose correctly.

About COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects an estimated 210 million people worldwide and is the third leading cause of death. It is progressive (usually gets worse over time), and can be a life-threatening disease. COPD makes it difficult to breathe, with symptoms that have a destructive impact on patients' function (i.e. activity limitation, decreased mobility) and quality of life. It is often considered to be a disease of later years but estimates suggest that 50% of those with COPD are now less than 65 years old, resulting in increases in absenteeism, premature retirement and reductions in workforce participation.

Disclaimer

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by words such as "focus," "plans," "will," "potentially," "aims," "committed," "continues," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing authorizations for the next generation of the Breezhaler inhaler, potential new indications or labeling for Ultibro Breezhaler, Seebri Breezhaler, Onbrez Breezhaler and the other products in the Novartis COPD portfolio, or regarding potential future revenues from such devices and products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of management regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the next generation of the Breezhaler inhaler will be approved for use in any market, or at any particular time. Neither can there be any guarantee that any of the products in the Novartis COPD portfolio will be submitted or approved for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that such devices and products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding the next generation of the Breezhaler inhaler and the products in the Novartis COPD portfolio could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including unexpected clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the company's ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; general economic and industry conditions; global trends toward health care cost containment, including ongoing pricing pressures; unexpected safety issues; unexpected manufacturing or quality issues, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Novartis

Novartis provides innovative healthcare solutions that address the evolving needs of patients and societies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis offers a diversified portfolio to best meet these needs: innovative medicines, eye care and cost-saving generic pharmaceuticals. Novartis is the only global company with leading positions in these areas. In 2014, the Group achieved net sales of USD 58.0 billion, while R&D throughout the Group amounted to approximately USD 9.9 billion (USD 9.6 billion excluding impairment and amortization charges). Novartis Group companies employ approximately 120,000 full-time equivalent associates. Novartis products are available in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.novartis.com (http://www.novartis.com).



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Degreed, a San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT-based edtech company that provides individuals and organizations with a platform to discover, track, and measure all learning, raised $21m in Series B funding.

The round was led by Jump Capital with participation from Signal Peak Ventures, Rethink Education, Deborah Quazzo and other existing investors.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate further expansion.

Led by David Blake, Co-Founder & CEO, Degreed provides individuals and organizations with a platform to discover, curate, share, track and value all kinds of learningfrom internal portals, external training vendors and over 1,200 providers of free and low-cost informal learning resourcesall in a unified system.

Founded in 2012 and first launched in January 2013, the company participated in the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator powered by TechStars in Summer 2013. Previous investments include a $7m Series A funded by Signal Peak Ventures and Peak Ventures and a $1.8m seed round from angels including Mark Cuban and Deborah Quazzo, among others.

FinSMEs

05/01/2015
Fluido, an Espoo, Finland-based cloud services consulting company, raised 3.3M in funding.

The round was led by Norvestia Growth Equity with participation from Salesforce Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to support the continued international expansion as a Nordic Salesforce partner.

Established in 2009 and led by CEO Kai Makela, Fluido helps Salesforce customers implement Salesforce CRM solutions and tailors apps into customer experience management solutions. The company is a Salesforce Platinum Consulting Partner with revenues of approximately 8m in 2015 and employs over 80 people in total.

Customers, which include both large listed enterprises and growth-oriented SMEs in various sectors in all Nordic countries, are served locally from the offices in Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen.

FinSMEs

04/01/2015
Developers in certain micro markets of metros like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru witnessed a drop of 4-20% in launch prices of residential projects in 2015 over the previous two years, a report said.

According to the report by property consultant Cushman & Wakefield, metropolitan cities of Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru recorded a drop in launch prices in high development activity markets of these cities.

As per the study, new residential projects in select micro markets are cheaper by 4-20% on average weighted basic sale price over the last two years. The report tracks the development activities in locations of Dwarka Expressway, New Gurgaon Southern Peripheral Road Sohna, Noida Expressway and Noida Extension in NCR, Thane, Goregaon and Malad in Greater Mumbai, and south-west and southern sub-markets in Bengaluru.

The suburban location of Mumbai's Goregaon registered the biggest decline in average weighted basic sale price at 20%, where the per sqft rate averaged at Rs 10,500 per sqft in 2015, followed by Thane which saw an 18% decline.

Southern Peripheral Road in Gurgaon also saw a decline of 10% in average base selling price of new launches, as compared to 2013. In contrast, most of the sub-markets in Bengaluru witnessed steady launch prices, except in far south and western sub-markets, where average new launch prices in 2015 declined by 2-7%, as compared to 2013.

South East micro market of Bangalore was an exception to the rule, where both the average weighted basic sale price (19%) and the average ticket size (18%) of the apartment saw an increase.

Delhi-NCR witnessed launches of 23,000 units in 2015, out of which 79% were launched in the locations of Dwarka Expressway, New Gurgaon Southern Peripheral Road Sohna, Noida Expressway and Noida Extension in NCR. Half of the total new launches in 2015 were in the mid-segment, the report said.

Mumbai, on the other hand, witnessed a 37% decline in residential unit launches, totalling 15,735 units, from the corresponding period last year with Mulund, Thane, Goregaon and Malad accounting for nearly 51% of the total launches during 2015.

The new launches in 2015 have been smaller in configuration, therefore, with reduced base selling prices and smaller units, the ticket size or the cost per apartment has also seen a decline in these key markets, the report said.

A majority of the new launches (83%) were concentrated in the mid-segment. While new launch prices have remained stable across most sub-markets, developers in the far south reduced the average weighted basic sale price in the mid-segment by 7%, to remain competitive.

PTI
by Himadri Ghosh

The northern state of Punjab has witnessed 34 terror attacks over the last 27 years, the highest nationwide, according to government data. The majority of the attacks occurred during the 1990s, with the latest attacks reinforcing a view that Indias security forces cannot cope with small bands of terrorists.

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Delhi have witnessed 27 and 18 attacks, respectively, during the same period, according to data released by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

A majority of the 34 attacks in Punjab over 27 years were between 1990 to 1992, a time when Sikh militancy was at its peak; 31 of 34 attacks took place in the 1990s, while the 16 years between 2000 and 2015 saw three attacks in Punjab. Maharashtra (primarily Mumbai) and Jammu and Kashmir have seen more attacks over this period.

terror attack at an Air Force base in Pathankot, Punjab, has claimed the life of seven soldiers, including Lieutenant Colonel Niranjan E Kumar of the National Security Guard (NSG).

India has witnessed 136 terrorist attacks in the last 27 years, including the one at Pathankot, the data show.

More than 2,000 people died in these attacks, and more than 6,000 were injured, according to latest data released by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Of the 135 attacks, 121 attacks were on civilians and 14 attacks on VIPs.

There were more attacks in 2004 than any other year. In 17 attacks that year, more than 170 people were killed and more than 350 injured.

State police continue to be inadequate to anti-terror task

The terror strikes on the Pathankot air base and in Gurdaspur on July 27, 2015, point to the state of Indias police forces, which as IndiaSpend previously reported are understaffed.

In Gurdaspur, it took the Punjab police 12 hours to kill three gunmen dressed in Indian army uniforms, drawing criticism.

The Punjab Polices Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams went in wearing no more than cotton T-shirts, according to this report. India exports body-protection equipment to more than 230 security forces in over 100 countries, NDTV reported recently.

Most of our police force in states is equipped for anti-riot protection, not anti-terrorist operations, the report quoted Manoj Gupta, chairman of Kanpur-based MKU, Indias largest manufacturer of body armour, as saying. There has to be deep thinking over this by policy makers.

There is no clear-cut policy to fight terrorism on Indian soil, said Prakash Singh, a former director general of police (DGP) involved with police reforms. The first response to a terrorist crime comes from the local police but the police force is in terrible shape across the country. As long as the reforms are not carried out, as per the directives of the Supreme Court, the force will remain handicapped.

Limited Black-Cat hubs and creaky infrastructure

That even the elite NSG, also called the Black Cats, sustained casualties in the Pathankot attack is telling.

Created in 1984 as a federal contingency force to counter terrorism, the NSG, until the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, had only one base camp in Manesar, Haryana.

It was only after 24 years and more than 100 attacks that the government set up more NSG units. In 2009 four NSG regional hubs were created in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. The last was set up in Gujarat in 2014.

Questions have been raised about NSG training and equipment. For instance, the Black Cats barely had any helicopter-borne training in 2012 because there were no helicopters, according to this Mail Today investigation in 2013.

During the last six months, no heli-borne training could be conducted due to non-availability of the helicopter, a letter written by the then chief of NSG to the minister of state for home had said.

States do not have enough anti-terror units

Anti-Terror Squads (ATS) are special police forces run by state home ministries to combat terror attacks. Even if some states have special units, the units are either inactive or under-equipped. Only Maharashtra (Mumbai) has an anti-terror unit Force One.

(Ghosh is with 101reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroot journalists. He writes on political and social impact stories.

(Indiaspend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit)
Hyderabad: Demonstrations have given a completely new dimension to the agitation against the Free Basics initiative by Facebook. It may sound natural for the protest rallies and demonstrations to happen in Hyderabad, where the India office of Facebook is located. The pro-net neutrality agitators describe it as a manifestation of the nations mood against the attempts for a monopoly on internet.

With the TRAIs deadline for submission of views is 7 January on Facebooks attempt to provide Free Basics services by widening the user base of internet in India, the net neutrality crusaders have stepped up their campaign on and off line against it.

Y Kiran Chandra, Chairman of Swecha, crusaders of free and open-source software, and general secretary of Free Software Movement of India (FSMI), told Firstpost that the agitation program is intended at talking to like-minded people on net neutrality and campaigning together on saving the internet from being monopolized by the rich and influential.

Now that the date of comments on Free Basics is extended upto 7 January, we are asking and motivating more and more people to send emails and comments in favour of net-neutrality, he says.

The last three days of the deadline are crucial. The decision of TRAI hinges on the support mustered by the net-neutrality activists, who see the statement of professors from IIT and IISc in support of net neutrality and raising the concerns over the challenges arising out of FreeBasics as a morale booster.

Sidhartha Malempati, vice-president of Swecha, says that there are a lot of Indian companies that have expressed their concerns and voted against Free Basics. They expect more of this to happen in coming three days. Facebook has responded to our questions on info.internet.org. This shows how seriously FB has taken us. We will respond to those and do our bit to take this to a larger audience. Apart from this, we will spread awareness among people using social media and other means, including traditional media, says Kiran Chandra.

Regarding the splurge by Facebook in unleashing a massive publicity blitzkrieg to motivate more and more people and enlisting their support for Free Basics initiative, he says this campaign and the knee-jerk reactions by Facebook are clear indicators for their voices are not feeble in front of the loud rhetoric of Facebook.

Internet penetration in India is growing and there are around 40 crore internet users in India, which is less than 40% of the countrys population. Facebook is hopeful that Free Basics will be able to connect the remaining two-thirds of population in the country that is left outside the ambit of internet -- even with access to a limited number of websites, platforms, and apps.

Kiran says Free Basics has connected 15 million people worldwide, whereas in India, more than 60 million connections were added in the last 12 months without Free Basics and in spite of the high data prices.

We would also like to stress that being able to access Free Basics is not to be termed as access to Internet. It is like having access only to the movie section of a newspaper and then terming it as having access to 'news', points out Kiran.

If TRAI permits the Free Basics into India, there is a very high chance that access to internet will become costlier and preferential access to websites will become the norm. For example, accessing Facebook might be faster than accessing news or informational videos on YouTube. Certain websites might become so slow to the extent that they are practically unusable.

This could sound a death knell for a lot of small and medium enterprises, including start-ups and small news websites, among other things.

Barrier of entry is the major issue for small enterprises and start-ups. The companies which have a tie-up with Free Basics will always have an advantage over those which don't, a case where a healthy competition is lost completely. This could adversely affect the Digital India and Make in India campaigns.

Swecha and FMSI could rope in IT employees and students to come forward to take part in the agitation.

They feel that Facebook has misinformed and under-informed them. Most of them have expressed doubts in Facebook's intentions with Free Basics, when they havent been able to find any reject button in notifications of their respective Facebook accounts. Some have even complained that they have got notifications, which have shown that even the Facebook accounts of the deceased were also listed as supporters to free basics, recounts Kiran.

We are seeing a lot of groups of people across the country showing outrage against Free Basics. Cobbling up the efforts with these groups is what FMSI is doing so that they are united in the struggle to protect the internet as we know it, says Sidhartha.

The single-point charter of Swecha is: Free basics should not be permitted in India, to save the innovation capacity, emerging knowledge society, net neutrality and sovereignty.

Against this background, Hyd Park, an open platform for discussions and exchange of ideas, debates, books, and intellectual, literary events, will be organising a debate with net neutrality crusader Mahesh Murthy, founder of Seedfund and Pinstorm, Sriram Karri, author of An Autobiography of a Mad Nation debating the Free Basics is Bad for India on 10 January, Sunday.

Karri tells Firstpost that he is in favour of Free Basics as millions of people who dont have access to internet will be connected. He says Free Basics is not against neutral internet, they co-exist. Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Free Basics can be accessed by any telco, and lets developers place their services free of cost. All developers and telcos are welcome at no cost, he quotes Free Basics campaign as claiming. They miss every known context of life in arguing for net neutrality, he points out. Personally you may be dead against the monopoly of Facebook. But if internet is food, Free Basics is offering at least something to the starving. Above all, Sriram Karri says, the poor can reject this charity.
New Delhi: Do Sardars feel bad about Santa Banta jokes on them? If so, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will seriously consider examining a plea to ban websites displaying jokes on them.

"If we think that your community do feel bad about it, we will definitely seriously consider it," a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice A K Sikri and Justice R Banumathi said. "Does your community stand by you," the bench asked a Sikh woman lawyer Harvinder Chowdhary, who has filed a PIL in this regard.

She said Delhi Sikh Gurduwara Management Committee(DSGMC) has also filed a petition on the same issue and they are engaging a battery of senior advocates including Ram Jethmalani to argue the matter.

While the woman advocate was making submissions, the bench intervened and asked Additional Solicitor General P S Patwalia to express his views on the issue being a Sardar himself.

However, before he could say something, the woman lawyer continued to make submissions in high pitch, prompting the ASG to comment that "she is getting over-excited".

Later, at the end of the proceedings, Patwalia said, "we have taken things seriously."

The bench said that matter will be heard along with the petition of the DSGMC.

During the hearing, the bench wanted to know from the woman lawyer as to "who will determine that a particular joke is derogatory."

She also had reservation about the jokes and outspoken comments of noted Sikh author Khushwant Singh.

The bench stopped the lawyer from going ahead by saying that she should keep her submissions reserved for the main hearing.

During the last hearing on October 30, 2015, the bench had said, "This (Sikh) community is known for a great sense of humour and they also enjoy such jokes. You must have gone through the jokes of Khushwant Singh...

"This is only an amusement. Why do you want it to be stopped?...Prepare your case well. We will hear you," the bench had said.

The PIL had said that there are more than 5,000 websites which display jokes on Sardars projecting the members of the community in poor light.

Chowdhury has sought direction to Telecom Ministry to filter websites which target the Sikh community on the ground that it is violative of sections 153A and 153B of the Indian Penal Code.

"All the jokes relating to Sikh community should be stopped. My children are humiliated and feel embarrassed and they don't want to suffix Singh and Kaur after their name," Chowdhury had claimed.

PTI
Pathankot: Guns fell silent on Tuesday morning at the air base in Pathankot even as the operation against terrorists entered its fourth day with security personnel engaged in search and combing operations to sanitise the installation.

According to CNN-IBN, India's National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval spoke to Pakistani counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua over the Pathankot terror attack on Tuesday morning.

Defence sources said that the firing at the air force base in Punjab ceased on Tuesday morning after the attack that began in the wee hours on Saturday.

However, search and combing operations are on to ensure that the defence installation is properly secured and sanitised, they added.

Security forces had on Monday killed two more Pakistani terrorists inside the Pathankot air base with the government saying that six attackers had thus been neutralised. However, it was not clear whether all the intruders who attacked the base have been eliminated.

Following a meeting of the National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the bodies of four terrorists have been recovered and those of the remaining two would be found.

The number of intruders had been put at six by officials and the figures given by Jaitley implied that all of them have been eliminated. However, none in the government was prepared to say on Monday that no more terrorists were inside the base or that the operation was over.

Combing and search operations will continue till "we are able to fully render the base safe", NSG IG Maj Gen Dushant Singh had said.

Jaitley, who had attended the NSC meeting along with senior Cabinet colleagues Sushma Swaraj and Manohar Parrikar, had said that all the assets at the base were safe.

Security forces were able to confine the terrorists to the point at which they had intruded and held them at a "reasonable distance" from where the assets were located, the senior minister had added.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the Pathankot attack as well as the strike on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan, both probably originating in Pakistan, indications were that next week's scheduled visit by Foreign Secretary Jaishankar to Islamabad for talks will be put off.

It is likely that the National Security Advisors of the two countries may have an urgent meeting in the next few days after which a call would be taken on the Foreign Secretary-level talks.

PTI
Sherlock Holmes would have called it the curious case of Pathankot. He would have found the conduct of the police intriguing, noticed disturbing similarities between the attack on Dinanagar and the strike on the air base at Pathankot and said: Watson, there is something really rotten in the state of Punjab.

First, of course, is the incident involving Punjab SP Salwinder Singh, who was first abducted and then released by the purported terrorists. The SP, according to reports and his own statement, was stopped by armed militants, gagged, blindfolded and later released. The SP claims he was moving around unarmed well past midnight because he was on a pilgrimage.

But, why did the terrorists let such a high-profile target go unhurt? Why did they risk their entire mission by giving him the opportunity to raise an alarm? Only a detailed investigation can reveal if the SP was actually out on pilgrimage or on some other personal mission; and whether his survival was just happenstance or there was a reason behind the unexpected display of mercy by terrorists.

Experts have already pointed out at the inability of the Punjab police to track the militants after Salwinder Singh reported the carjacking. One explanation for the delay is that the cops did not believe the SP. Really? Have things become so rotten in Punjab that even a SP warning of an imminent terror strike is not taken seriously? Notice also the attempt to downplay the kidnapping of an SP  not a constable or a junior officer  and keeping the matter hush-hush for almost 12 hours. Is there any other state in India where an SP would be ridiculed for reporting his own abduction by terrorists from Pakistan?

The Pathankot attack was almost identical to the terror strike in Dinanagar in July 2015. Before entering the mainland, these militants too had spent some time hiding in the border villages, a clear indication that they were hosted by sleeper cells on the Indian side.

In that incident too, terrorists had hijacked a white Maruti and later stormed a police station, killing nine persons. Would the Punjab government not have been alarmed by the hijacking after the Dinanagar incident, especially when an SP was raising the alarm?

When terrorists had struck in Dinanagar, eyebrows were raised when the Punjab police refused to let the army intervene and took on the militants in spite of lack of adequate counter-insurgency training and weapons. Back then the Punjab police decision was attributed to bravado. But now questions have started surfacing.

A former Punjab DGP I spoke to had a volley of unanswered questions: "Why was the identity of the terrorists never revealed? Who were they, where had they come from? Why wasn't the case handed over to the National Investigation Agency? Why did the Punjab government insist getting the case probe by its own agencies? Is it just coincidence that all the militants were killed and nobody tried to capture even one of them alive? It seems there was an attempt to hide something," he said.

All these questions about Dinanagar and Pathankot seem to have a common link: the flourishing drug trade between Pakistan and Punjab. And some of the answers may be found in the modus operandi of the drug dealers.

When a consignment of drugs leaves Pakistan for Punjab, it usually takes two routes. In areas where there are barbed wires on the border, smugglers stuff them into PVC pipes and push them across into India, where couriers pick them up for transporting them to the main land.

Though most of the Punjab border is guarded by barbed wires, the riverine belt of around 100km is unguarded. To push drugs through this region, drained by Ravi and Beas and lined with dense forests, smugglers use boats and couriers. This riverine belt is mostly to the west of Gurdaspur and Pathankot, and in some areas of Ferozepur, making them most vulnerable.

Transporting drugs to the border from Pakistan is not a problem since the ISI and many other agencies are involved in the trade. But, once the drug consignment reaches Punjab, the involvement of a huge network of people at every level becomes necessary.

In the border areas of Punjab, it is stored in safe houses for some time -- called a cooling off period -- and then relayed from point to point through an intricate network of middlemen and peddlers, who charge the dealers on the basis of the risk and distance involved.

According to sources, many politicians and police officials have been compromised by the drug dealers. In 2007, the state intelligence had compiled a four-page list of politicians, bureaucrats and cops who were part of the drug cartels. It had names of politicians of all parties and officers and cops at every level. But, somehow the list went missing.

Opposition parties have regularly alleged that members of the Badal family are shielding drug dealers. In 2014, Bikram Majithia, brother-in-law of deputy CM Sukhbir Badal, was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the sale and supply of synthetic drugs in the state.

In March 2015, he was accused of receiving the drug money by arrested synthetic druglord Jagjit Singh Chahal. Chahal, in a written statement to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), has claimed that he had made a payment of Rs 35 lakh to Majithia between 2007 and 2012. According to reports, Chahal had also said he had supplied pseudoephedrine (a chemical used to make drugs) to Satpreet Singh Satta and Parminder Singh Pindi, who are close to Majithia.

So, there is widespread apprehension that dealers have infiltrated the Punjab government and are calling the shots. And this network was in likelihood abetting the safe transit of terrorists from Pakistan to Gurdaspur. In return they got a huge consignment of drugs.

If the Centre has to ensure that Punjab doesn't get attacked again, it will have to find answers to the disturbing questions about the Pathankot and Dinanagar incidents. Only a thorough probe into the conduct of the state police, laxity of the Punjab government and the influence and extent of drug mafia will guarantee safety of our border.

As Sherlock would have said, begin from the top.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called up Narendra Modi Tuesday and promised "prompt and decisive" action against those behind the attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot which has threatened to take a meat cleaver to the Indo-Pak dialogue revival process which has barely begun after a three year frost. Seven Indian soldiers have been killed in the attack, combing operations are still on.

Nawaz Sharif called Modi as soon as the Indian government announced that all six terrorists who had attacked the airbase and used Pakistan-made equipment had been killed by security forces, reports The Indian Express.

Modi's office said New Delhi had given Islamabad "specific and actionable information" on the audacious attack, which came just days after a landmark visit to Pakistan by the Indian premier raised hopes of improved relations.

Security officials suspect the gunmen belonged to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group that staged a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament which brought the two countries to the brink of war.

In a statement, Modi's office said Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had telephoned him to discuss the attack on the Pathankot base in the northern state of Punjab near the border with Pakistan.

Modi "strongly emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack", said the statement.

"Specific and actionable information in this regard has been provided to Pakistan."

It said Sharif had given assurances that his government would take "prompt and decisive action".

Pakistan had already condemned the attack, which began on Saturday with a dawn raid on the vast air base that triggered a 14-hour gunbattle.

A statement Tuesday from Sharif's office said his government was "working on the leads and information provided by the Indian government".

India is expected to send to Pakistan a letter rogatory (LR) along with DNA samples of the slain terrorists and their phone call details. The DNA test of the six terrorists will be conducted as early as possible so that Pakistani authorities can move on the case, official sources said.

Sharif expressed his condolences for the loss of life and said he appreciated the "maturity" shown by the Indian government in the wake of the attack.

#PathankotAttack PM Sharif calls PM Modi, assures that his Govt wd take prompt & decisive action against terrorists pic.twitter.com/aV41NRCUnV  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) January 5, 2016

#PathankotAttack | Heads can only roll after inquiry is completed: BJP pic.twitter.com/8ZRI31jHfX  CNN-IBN News (@ibnlive) January 5, 2016

#BREAKING | Explanation needs to be sought from NSA over #PathankotAttack, says Subramanian Swamy to CNN-IBN pic.twitter.com/BSW6oirQsx  CNN-IBN News (@ibnlive) January 5, 2016

- Derail peace process

Some analysts have suggested the rare targeting of an Indian military installation outside disputed Kashmir may have been aimed at derailing talks between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

It coincided with a 25-hour siege near an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that left at least one policeman dead and 11 others wounded.

Analysts in Pakistan believe it is nearly impossible that the prime minister would have been allowed to hold a breakthrough meeting with his Indian counterpart last month without the consent of the army, widely understood to dictate foreign and security policy.

But analyst Khadim Hussain said the attack on the air base along with a Taliban surge in Afghanistan indicated that elements of the Pakistani military were not on board with the negotiations.

"The immediate result is they would like to derail the peace process," he told AFP, clarifying that it was unclear whether such decisions were sanctioned at the highest levels.

Sharif's statement Tuesday noted that whenever a "serious effort" for peace between the India and Pakistan was launched, "terrorists try to derail the process".

Modi's comments came as India's defence minister said the Pathankot attack had exposed "some gaps" in security following media criticism of how the incident was handled.

Gunshots could still be heard from the base on Monday - more than 48 hours after the raid - leading some to question why it took so long to neutralise the six assailants, all of whom were finally killed.

"I do see some gaps (in security), which will be clear after investigations," minister Manohar Parrikar told journalists.

There is no suspected terrorist inside right now I will not give a negative report till the combing operations are over. The combing operations may be over by tomorrow, he said in reply to questions. One of the terrorists still has a body vest where they (security forces) can see a grenade stuck I am very very clear they should not take any risk. We have already lost one person to a booby trap, so no more losses, Parrikar said.

He stressed that the base was a "complicated area" spread over nearly 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) and housing 3,000 families.

The Pathankot attack was claimed Monday by the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group for jihadist outfits fighting in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir.

Jaish-e-Mohammed is not part of the United Jihad Council.

With Agencies
By Vice-Admiral Suresh Bangara (retired)

Observe the faces and body language of security personnel engaged in the action to eliminate the terrorists holed up inside the Pathankot Air Force Station as depicted in print and electronic media. It is surreal. Because what you see is perhaps the tertiary line of security; not even the secondary. Why, because we learnt a bitter lesson during the Mumbai attack  that half-baked, little informed and self appointed expert anchors and live commentators were driven by the desire to be closest and fastest to report.

TRP was more important than eliminating the terrorists. Our own administrators and security establishment had to contend with multiple challenges of inadequate manpower, infrastructure, out dated protection gear and sensors and weapons. Yet the greatest challenge was to stop the media from being judgemental and alarmist on every move of those tasked to neutralise the terrorists. The first role of the media is neither to spread fear and concoct doomsday scenarios nor to speculate on conspiracy theories during hostile action. Safety considerations also dictate that the cameras are well away from the scene of action.

This is not unique to India and the South Asian region but to most democracies that are yet to stabilise their respective economies and hence are compelled to fight with what they have due to budgetary constraints. It will be some years before India can claim to have well equipped security personnel with the requisite gear, ordnance and training. Hence constantly comparing our reactions to those from USA or UK or Israel would lead to erroneous conclusions and hypothetical discussions. Let us view the current action in Pathankot from this prism or perspective.

First, Commandos and the National Security Guard commandos are forces in limited numbers who are meant not to protect but to eliminate the threat once identified. Training and equipping these forces is an expensive proposition which limits their use to specific missions. We need to look at the security forces that are tasked to defend important installations. In the case of defence establishments the DSC is charged with security of access points and the periphery. It is common knowledge that they are limited by age, mobility and equipment. They were adequate to meet the old threat perceptions of occasional ingress of lightly armed anti-social elements or at best insurgents.

Why can't the forces themselves undertake this task? The navy and the air force train their personnel to man ships and squadrons which carry complex war fighting machines. Sentry duties per se would add to the poor utilisation of highly trained manpower. However, during heightened tension, the available resources are supplemented and augmented as required. This cannot be round-the-clock or round-the-year. Terrorist threats are unexpected and they do not appear like a traditional enemy, as they emerge from within. Hence each unit maintains a Quick Reaction Team to augment those employed as sentries.

Very rarely do authorities vested with the responsibility to raise levels of readiness such as red alert, also lower the readiness level after the threat ceases to exist. In practise it is possible that units on paper continue to remain at high alert without physically and mentally being all there. Other than the military which has well defined procedures to raise and lower state of readiness other central agencies often suffer from this lacuna.

In the case other important installations such as airports, harbours and industrial complexes, Central Police forces like the Central Industrial Security Force are used to defend them. Their training is often limited to suit the assigned role.

The police forces are perhaps the worst prepared and yet may well be the first point of contact during a terrorist strike. Pot bellied, obese and poorly turned out cops with World War-discarded .303 rifles or worse with just batons or sticks are the typical cops that one encounters. States exposed to insurgency, Naxalism and terrorism are far better equipped and ready to meet emerging threats. Jammu and Kashmir has the ethos and culture of operating under a unified command and disseminating both intelligence and information expeditiously. Real time communication is mandatory to meet emergency situations.



In terms of our neighbours, military governments have done their bit to modernise the gear and weapons of police forces. Our borders are porous from land and the sea. Our threats emanate from these penetrable borders where none can guarantee total success to prevent infiltration. Smuggling is a well established profession with deep connections with political and business interests.

With the above ground realities, what can be done at the strategic, operational and tactical levels to raise our preparedness to combat terrorism?

At the strategic level, the prime minister has ensured that major players in global affairs and our South Asian neighbours in particular are sensitised to terrorist threats emanating from Pakistan. Terrorism has, hence, taken centre stage in discussions and articulation/joint statements. Isolating non state actors and their supporters is an important first step. Asserting the need to galvanise support at the United Nations for an acceptable definition for terrorism and subsequent actions to cut off material and financial support to terrorist organisations has been well articulated by India.

At the operational level, creating and nurturing a strong central organisation which was initiated by the previous government after the Mumbai attack needs to be accorded the highest priority. A round-the-clock operations room to expeditiously share and disseminate information and intelligence on real time basis is an inevitable necessity for every state in India irrespective of its location.

Finally at the tactical level, states have to modernise and reform their police forces to include the need to effectively react to a terrorist threat before special forces arrive on the scene. Recent reports suggest that every traffic policeman in Delhi would be armed to meet emerging threats. This is a good beginning. Communications, mobility and fire power are essential elements. Unity of command for operations would need to be made mandatory, so also single point briefings for the media.

No special committees or studies are needed to implement these suggestions. Only the will to fight terrorism is required to execute them. When the best things are not possible, the best can be made of those that are.

The author is a former flag officer commanding-in-chief of the Southern Naval Command.
New Delhi: A huge crowd, raising of slogans and a minor scuffle between photographers and security personnel marked the presence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at a court where he came to substantiate the charge of criminal defamation against Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and five AAP leaders.

As soon as Jaitley's car zoomed into the Patiala House Court complex at 1.56 pm amidst a tight security cover, onlookers, lawyers and police officials surrounded the vehicle.

Security personnel were on their toes to prevent any untoward incident. As Jaitley came out of his vehicle, a large number of photojournalists rushed towards him to click his picture, leading to a minor scuffle between them and the policemen.

The policemen, who insisted that photography was not permitted inside the court premises, were seen pushing the photo journalists due to which some of them fell down.

Before Jaitley arrived at the court premises, the security officials had asked everyone to vacate the courtroom of chief metropolitan magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal, before whom the matter was listed.

Only the concerned lawyers were allowed to enter the courtroom along with some BJP leaders.

As Jaitley entered the court, the police officials formed a human chain to prevent the onlookers from entering.

As Jaitley came out of the courtroom at around 4.25 PM after recording his statement, some lawyers and BJP supporters started shouting slogans in his favour.

However, the security officials escorted the minister to his vehicle during which several onlookers, who were trying to come close to Jaitley, were pushed off.

PTI
In a surprising move, the United Jihad Council (UJC), a loose confederation of almost 15 militant outfits based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), on Monday claimed responsibility for one of the deadliest terror attacks in Punjab in recent times; one that has already left 14 people dead. Search operations continued on Tuesday, the fourth day of the attack and security forces have their apprehensions that one terrorist is still hiding in the compound.

The UJC's claim has left security establishments in India surprised because the core members of the confederation have never carried out any attack beyond the borders of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, the UJC has expelled members found to be involved in carrying out attacks outside Kashmir.

In a statement to Srinagar-based news-gathering agency CNS, UJC spokesperson, Syed Sadaqat Hussain, said that the Pathankot air base attack was carried out by "Kashmiri militants" associated with 'Highway Squad'. But strangely enough, the statement provides little information about the actual terrorist group that carried out the attack, alluding cryptically instead to a 'Highway Squad'.

The spokesperson of the UJC said, (The) Indian government and its media have been suffering from Pakistan-phobia. By accusing Pakistan for every attack, India neither succeeded in the past to malign the Kashmir Freedom Struggle, nor will it get anything in the future through malicious propaganda."

It is these lines that have raised eyebrows, because it seems the UJC is trying to shift the blame from the original perpetrators, believed to be the Maulana Masood Azhar-led group Jaish-e-Mohammed, say security experts.

The United Jihad Council or Muttahida Jihad Council  headquartered in Muzaffarabad, POK  came into being in 1990 to centralise command among dozens of militant groups, and to create a unified command among Pakistan-based groups and Kashmir-based militants outfits. Its first chairman Azam Inqilabi is now a member of the moderate faction of the Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir.

Inqilabi told Firstpost on Tuesday that the main reason behind its emergence as the largest militant umbrella group was the aftermath of the killing of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, the leader of Awami Action Committee on 21 May, 1990 in Srinagar, when the insurgency had just started in Kashmir. Soon after, there was infighting between different militant groups. In November 1990, during a public gathering in Muzaffarabad, the JKLF and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen even fired at each other. Following which, I assembled them to gather and told them they were fighting for the same cause and should get together, Inqilabi told Firstpost.

Eighteen militant outfits came together under the umbrella and I was appointed chairman, he adds.

But after serving for three months, Inqilabi recalled that some people came to him and told him that if Kashmir becomes independent, it should become part of Pakistan. This was a turning point for the former UJC chairman.

I didnt oppose it," admitted Inqilabi, "But I distanced myself from the militancy later, and tried to fight on the diplomatic and political front. Militancy is fine, but should be confined. Politics needs to take over.

Today's UJC is an umbrella organisations of 15 terrorist groups, comprising the likes of Harkat-ul-Ansar, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, Al-Jihad, Al-Barq and Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen. Among these, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (Party of Holy Warriors) is the strongest one. Most of the other outfits are defunct. The council even expelled Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) from its membership because of their involvement in operations outside Kashmir region. However in 2003, both were given observer status in the confederation.

The poster boy of Kashmirs new militancy, Burhan Wani, belongs to Hizb-ul-Mujhdeen and is widely seen as the man behind a renewed face of insurgency in Kashmir.

However, the council has gone into hibernation following a temporary crackdown after the US began exerting pressure on Pakistan, during General Pervez Musharraf's reign, to close terror camps inside PoK. The coalition now headed by Syed Salahuddin disappeared for some time, removed all signs of the organisation, and asked its leaders to maintain low profiles after the 26 November, 2008 Mumbai attacks and the subsequent tension between India and Pakistan, according to security experts.

It (UJC) is dysfunctional; most elements are reeling from bans in January 2002 and because of a much more restricted space. Some of the groups are just on survival mode and the policy since June 2014 (read: Operation Zarb-e-Azb) has been one of a gradual deactivation and disengagement from these groups. But you obviously can't throw out those who came from the Indian side of Kashmir, Imtiaz Gul, a strategic analyst and executive director of Islamabad-based think tank Centre for Research and Security Studies, told Firstpost via email.

Mast Gul (a Pakistani militant commander who fought in Kashmir) even joined Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Syed (Salahuddin) some times gives interviews but his actions and movements are largely restricted, he added.

Last year in mid-July when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, the LeT had asked the UJC to "step up attacks against Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir rather than holding rallies and conferences in Pakistan."

"(The UJC) should take part in practical jihadi activities in the battlefields of Jammu and Kashmir; there should have been attacks on Indian forces to unnerve New Delhi," LeT commander Iftikhar Rana said in an address at a ceremony organised by the UJC to commemorate 13 July, which is marked as Martyrs' Day in Muzaffarabad.

Mohammad Yousuf Shah aka Syed Salahuddin, the head of UJC, was one of the key candidates of the erstwhile political party Muslim United Front (MUF) in Kashmir, which contestedthe 1987 elections. Salahuddin was MUF's candidate from the Amira Kadal Constituency. He was arrested following the results in the polls, which were widely believed to be rigged.

The arrest of Shah  who modelled his nom de guerre on the name of 12th Century Muslim Saracen fighter Salahuddin Ayubbi  is believed to have resulted in the armed insurgency in Kashmir for the next two decades. In an interview in 2012, Salahuddin accepted that Pakistan has been backing Hizb-ul-Mujahideen for its fight in Kashmir. We are fighting Pakistans war in Kashmir and if it withdraws its support, the war would be fought inside Pakistan, he had said after becoming the chairman of the UJC in 1994.
Mumbai: Lashing out at the Centre in the wake of the Pathankot terror strike, the Shiv Sena on Tuesday said it had warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to trust Pakistan and that time has now come for him to focus on India rather than trying to unite the world.

The attack has proven that our borders are not safe, India's internal security is in shambles and the only national work being done is giving condolences to the martyred on social networking sites, the Sena said in a hard-hitting editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

"Seven of our soldiers get martyred in return of a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif...The incident has proven that our borders are not safe and our internal security is in shambles. With the lives of six terrorists, Pakistan has managed to finish India's self-respect," it said.

Further hitting out at the government, the ruling alliance partner said, "The Prime Minister was in Lahore only last week as a guest of his counterpart Nawaz Sharif. At that time, we had warned him not to trust Pakistan."

"See how we have been betrayed today. If Pakistan wants to improve relations with India, they should immediately hand over Jaish-e-Mohammed's Maulana Masood Azhar to India," it said.

The Sena also said that had the Congress been in power today, there would have been demands to strike at Pakistan and avenge the deaths of soldiers, but now nothing is being done about the incident.

"The only national work being done is condoling the deaths of soldiers on (social networking site) twitter. But why have these soldiers died? PM Modi is trying to unite the world, but time has now come for him to concentrate on India," it said.

The Sena also said that if India does not avenge the Pathankot terror attack, then displaying its military and arms and ammunition strength on Republic Day would be futile.

PTI
Sagar (MP): Taking a dig at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over his visit to Hyderabad, where he is slated to address a public meeting today, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said that the BJP had lost polls wherever the former campaigned for it in the past. "We are not afraid of Modi. Wherever he had gone for campaigning, BJP got defeated in the polls," the Congress general secretary said.

Singh was talking to reporters after his arrival here to take part in a Congress rally to be addressed by the top leaders of the state. On the issue of Rs five 'registration' fee for Modi's public meeting in Hyderabad, Singh said, "It is all bogus! The BJP itself will deposit the fee and later claim that so many people attended it. They are masters in manipulating things."

Replying to a question on Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's act of sporting a skull cap on the occasion of Eid, Singh said, "Whether he wears a red cap or black, Congress has nothing to do with it. This is their job." The senior Congress leader also alleged that "rampant

corruption" took place in the implementation of the special package of Bundelkhand region (of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh) under the Backward Region Grant Fund, which was sent to the state on the initiative of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi."

When asked, Singh said he was not interested in becoming Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister again as he wanted to focus on the national affairs. "But I am working in the state to ensure that Congress comes back to power," he added.

Now we have a FAKE DESI OBAMA too. FEKU at his best !  digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) August 12, 2013

PTI
When I first met him in his Lutyens Delhi office days after Rajiv Gandhis assassination in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, on 21 May, 1991, Ajit Doval was a Deputy Director of the Intelligence Bureau, in-charge of operations.

The office building, an imposing white palatial property, still continues to be the operations hub for the IB, though I should refrain from giving its exact address for obvious security reasons.

As I sat opposite Doval, with a huge table between us, he noticed that I was taking stock of his room. He asked me: Do you see anything odd here in this room?

My unspoken reactions were naturally that of a perplexed young man whose mind had been completely read inside out by his host.

Not really, I sputtered, gingerly.

Doval puffed from a cigar (he is a chimney, when it comes to smoking!) and then said: OK, I will tell you what it is.

I leaned forward to the extent the obstructing table would allow as Doval took a deep breath. It was a signal, as I would know during my thousands of interactions with Doval all these years, that he was about to be unplugged.

Have you noticed that there are no wires in this room? Doval said. It was obvious that he was not asking me, but telling me.

And even before I could ask why, the real gems started coming from him. Wires are a source of worry, the most obvious tools for our enemies who would do anything to bug or eavesdrop us. Without wires they can do nothing. Thats why this room is completely without any wires.

Today it may sound a bit odd and out of place; not 23 years ago. Those were the Doordarshan times, the MTNL times, the DESU times (the last one, only a hardcore Delhiite like me would relate to). Those were the days when having a phone connection (landline, of course) itself used to be a status symbol.

But forget about the economic outlook of the nation at that time, this was my first lesson in counter-terrorism.

Now cut to 30 May, 2014, the day when Doval, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), was appointed as National Security Advisor (NSA) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He retired as the IB chief in January 2005. Incidentally, though he is known to be close to the BJP and BJP patriarch LK Advani, he was appointed as the IB chief during the UPA 1.

Dovals appointment should send jitters to Pakistan, particularly the likes of Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed and Sayeed Salahuddin.

This crucial appointment may well be a sneak peek into Modis upcoming plans for Pakistan, particularly the terror apparatus that has been flourishing there for decades.

The Pakistanis are not dumb either and have already played their chess moves with regard to their strategic assets named above. That is why Dawood Ibrahim went underground immediately after Modi swept to power and days before he was sworn in as Indias 15th Prime Minister.

One can look forward to more Pakistan-centric news dominating the Indian media in the near future. No, this wont be about the usual sugar-coated diplomatic charade. Most likely, it would pertain to the breaking news category.

Well, how and why, I should not pre-judge or predict. But those who know something about the intelligence-craft would find my statement pregnant.

Most likely, Pakistani military establishment must be on the same page and must be aware of my hints.

Interestingly, Dovals appointment preceded Jamait-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, founder of Indias biggest blood-sucker Lashkar-e-Toiba, going ballistic hours before and declaring jihad against India in front of a crowd of about ten thousand people he led in the heart of Pakistan.

Saeeds shenanigans have not gone unnoticed by Doval.

Having known Doval from close quarters for such a long time and having interacted closely with top intelligence honchos of India in the past quarter century, I can say one thing with a very high degree of confidence. Doval is the best NSA India could have ever got.

No, it is not because that he has been a hardcore operations man of the IB for decades. No, it is not because that as a master of disguises he melted into whichever theater he deployed in  the northeast or Punjab or Pakistan  he came up with astounding results.

Of course, all this is true. But that alone is not his USP.

Doval was the man who dared to sneak deep into Pakistan at the risk of his life and remained in that country incognito for years, delivering virtually real time intelligence on Pakistans Kahuta nuclear plant.

But then his capability is over and above all this. He is a shrewd man of action who thinks and a thinking man who acts. This is a deadly combination. He has the capability of thinking out of the box and planning daredevil operations with surgical precision.

This is what Modi needs from him. Inevitably, Pakistan would figure highest on Dovals mind.

Here is a clue. One would do well to keep a watch on major India-baiters based in Pakistan  Dawood, Hafiz Saeed and Salahuddin.

Significantly, I understand that Doval will have a free hand in navigating Indias national security which has been moribund for years.

These are the interesting times. These are the action times. Or shall we say, these are the Ajit Doval times?
One of the reasons Mamata Banerjee won big in West Bengal in 2011 was the shift in the Muslim vote from the Left Front to her Trinamool Congress. When the Left laid siege to Nandigram in 2007 and then recaptured the village  which had a significant Muslim population - from those protesting against land acquisition, Muslim opinion started moving towards Banerjee.

But it seems Banerjee is proceeding along the same path of buying the Muslim vote with symbolic gestures rather than substance. The same tokenism that has marked secular politics in the rest of India is now visible in West Bengal, so much so that many in the majority community are concerned and even the minority community is accusing her of vote bank politics.

An Indian Express report today (14 March 2014) quotes an unnamed government official as saying: Steps like allowances for Muslims clerics, the images of Didi wearing a burqa and offering namaaz, and a slew of projects and schemes targeted at the minority Muslims have only enhanced the polarisation. When Banerjee went to Delhi to address a rally with Anna Hazare, a Muslim cleric warned her not to share the platform with the RSS-backed Anna, and Anna anyway failed to turn up.

Worse, as the Express report shows, there has been a sudden spike  a near quadrupling  in communal clashes in the state. Statistics show that between 2008 and 2012, communal incidents averaged around 25 a year. In 2013, the number soared to 106  a more than four-fold jump from the average over the preceding five years. Mamatas Bengal is looking like Mulayam Singhs Uttar Pradesh, with a rising trend in communal tensions. In 2013, UP topped the list of states with the highest number of communal incidents. Some 95 out of the 143 deaths resulting from communal incidents were in UP, thanks to the Muzaffarnagar and other riots.

To be sure, one cannot lay all the blame on Mamata-didi for the deterioration in Bengal. Thanks to continuing migration from Bangladesh, many constituencies near the porous border now have either Muslim majorities or near-majorities, or have a Muslim voter share of 25-30 percent. They will thus decide the winner. This demographic shift is creating both social tension and a new assertiveness among Muslims who dont see the need for the secular parties to mediate between them and the majority.

In fact, Muslim netas even within secular parties are revolting against the existing orthodoxy. The CPI(M), which has arrogated to itself the role of issuing certificates of secularism to others, recently expelled Abdur Rezzak Mollah from the party for his outspoken attacks on its leadership. Among the nicer things he said about the partys politburo is that they are dalals not grassroots people.

Mollah, who hasnt lost an assembly election since 1972, has now floated a Social Justice Manch for Muslims, Dalits and the scheduled tribes  a grouping he calls the majority, an Indian Express report in February noted. He believes the present CPI(M) leadership is too Brahminical in its approach.

This could be an effort to ultimately form a political party, but other fledgling Muslim political parties are already flexing their muscles and abandoning the umbrella of the regional or national parties.

In Bengal, at least two Muslim parties made their presence felt in the 2012 parliamentary byelection to the Jangipur constituency, which was vacated by Pranab Mukherjee and allotted to his son Abhijit. The Welfare Party of India and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) polled 41,620 and 24,691 votes, almost robbing Abhijit of victory.

He squeaked through with a wafer thin margin of just around 2,500 votes. The next time, he may not be so lucky  as there could be a withering of the Muslim vote bank, even as a new Hindu minority vote develops in this Muslim majority constituency. In the 2012 contest, the BJP got 85,000 votes  more than the two Muslim parties put together.

More Muslim competition is on the way in Bengal. Apart from the Welfare Party and the SDPI, Badruddin Azmals All India United Democratic Front, which has a solid base amongst Muslims in Assam, is planning a foray into West Bengal by fielding at least 10 Lok Sabha candidates.

The Welfare Party will field 18 candidates, and the Express quotes party president Raisuddin Baidya as saying: We are a new party. But our party did well in the Jangipur byelection in Murshidabad in 2012. We are fielding candidates in 18 seats and believe that the time has come for Muslims to be a part of the parliamentary system.

With so many Muslim parties flexing their muscles in Bengal separately, it is possible that the Muslim vote in elections 2014 will get split  enabling Didi to get a lot more seats.

But the writing on the wall is clear. It is only a matter of time before Muslims will abandon tokenism from the main regional and national parties and demand a real share of power.

This could be one reason why Bengal is seeing so many communal incidents. Muslims are not looking for Didis in burqas and Mulayams in a fez. They want a share of the spoils  of both power and development.

Either the secular parties will have to become truly secular and not just symbolically so, or they will end up communalising the state. Mamata Banerjee is presiding over a Bengal which may be inching towards increasing polarisation.
Lahore: About 100 Pakistanis, including women, have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State since the rise of the dreaded terror group in the Middle East, a minister in the provincial Punjab government said.

Punjab province Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said. "The government is doing its best to stop the recruitment for the ISIS," the minister said, adding that eight activists of the group were arrested from Sialkot district of Punjab and they are still associated with the Jamaat-ud-Dawah.

He said the government would not let the Islamic State have a foothold in Pakistan. Earlier, the law enforcement agencies arrested over 40 people, including women, over their alleged linkage to Islamic State. The arrests were made during a series of raids by counter-terrorism officials to nab the alleged supporters and activists of the Middle Eastern terrorist group in Pakistan.

Rana Sanaullah said top Islamic State operatives were among those arrested, including Islamabad chief Amir Mansoor, his deputy Abdullah Mansoori and chief for Sindh province Umer Kathio.

Pakistan has officially denied the presence of Islamic State in the country, but secretly it has been neutralising militants who have either shifted their allegiance from the Taliban to the Islamic State or have shown inclination to support the group.

Meanwhile, Lahore police arrested three recruiters of Islamic State from Sham Nagar. A police source said the law enforcement agencies raided a house in Sham Nagar and arrested Dr Usman Malik, Ahsan Siddique and one unidentified man and recovered hate literature, propaganda material and a laptop. He said the three 'ISIS members' were recruiting people for Jihad in Syria.

They have been shifted to undisclosed location for interrogation.

PTI
Paris: French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday kicked off a week of commemorations marking the jihadist rampage in Paris that began with an assault on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and lasted three days, claiming 17 lives.

Hollande, flanked by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, unveiled a plaque at Charlie Hebdo's former offices, where cartoonists who were household names in France, nicknamed Cabu, Wolinski and Charb, were killed along with nine others.

The 7-9 January, 2015, attacks by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, dubbed "France's 9/11", marked the start of a string of jihadist strikes in the country that culminated in the 13 November attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.

The massacre at Charlie Hebdo unleashed an outpouring of solidarity for freedom of expression, with the rallying cry "Je Suis Charlie" taken up around the world.

After the sombre ceremony in a light drizzle, Hollande could be seen embracing Georges Wolinski's widow Maryse.

Red-faced authorities admitted later that they had misspelled Wolinski's name, promising to correct the plaque "within the hour".

The president and mayor unveiled a separate plaque nearby at the site where one of the jihadist gunmen fleeing the scene shot police officer Ahmed Merabet as he lay on the pavement.

The entourage, limited in size at the request of the victims' families, also included Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

'Remembrance tree'

They went on to unveil a third plaque at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket in an eastern suburb where four Jews  three shoppers and an employee  were killed during a horrifying hostage drama.

Hollande could be seen greeting Lassana Bathily, the Muslim worker at the supermarket credited with saving many shoppers' lives by helping them hide in the store's underground cold room and later aiding police in the logistics of their raid.

The French leader will return to the supermarket on Saturday for another ceremony organised by the Jewish umbrella group CRIF.

Also on Saturday, a fourth plaque is to be unveiled at the site in the southern suburb of Montrouge where Amedy Coulibaly, who later attacked the Jewish supermarket, gunned down a policewoman.

Commemorations will culminate in a public event Sunday in the Place de la Republique, the vast square that has become the rallying point for "Je Suis Charlie" solidarity as well as the 13 November carnage.

An oak "remembrance tree" standing some 10 metres (35 feet) tall will be planted in the square.

Veteran rocker Johnny Hallyday will perform "Un Dimanche de Janvier" (One January Sunday), a song recalling the vast mobilisation that saw 1.6 million people march in Paris on 11 January, 2015.

Dozens of world leaders including British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the march.

Charlie Hebdo had been a target for jihadist attack since publishing Mohammed cartoons in 2006, and saw its offices firebombed in 2011.

Ingrid Brinsolaro, the widow of cartoonist Charb's bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro who was shot dead in the attack, has filed a lawsuit claiming that her husband was left vulnerable because Charlie Hebdo was inadequately protected.

Cazeneuve on Tuesday defended the decision to reduce security at the magazine's offices before the attack, telling French radio that authorities had determined that jihadists had shifted to targeting soldiers and police.

AFP
In a first of its kind collaboration between the education ministry and the police in Malaysia, the police will be holding talks with students of the country about the perils of Islamic State.

The Malaysian Insider quoted the Deputy Education Minister Chong Sin Woon and said, "Together with the police and security forces, we will start disseminating information in schools this year." Even though Malaysia has built a reputation of a moderate Muslim state, there have been a number of Islamic State-related arrests in the nation in recent years.

This comes in the backdrop of the terrorist organisation gaining more and more sympathy in the Muslim nation.

According to this report in Al-Jazeera, Malaysia's transport minister in December had said that at least 50,000 people in the country of 30 million supported the Islamic State. Liow Tiong said the figure is based on police intelligence estimates.

"If only 1 percent of these sympathizers turn radical and if they attack any part of Malaysia, we will be in trouble," Liow was quoted as saying December last.

According to a report in Foreign Policy, more than 112 individuals were arrested by the Malaysian police for either joining the Islamic State or attempting to the leave the country to join the terrorist group since 2013.

The Pew Research Center, in a November 2015 poll, found that about 67 percent of Muslims in Malaysia were opposed to Islamic State  21 percent were undecided.

Islamic State has in the last few years launched a massive campaign online and otherwise to brainwash and recruit youth from across the world.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had told the Parliament last year that, "The involvement of Malaysians in militant activities in the name of Islam has tarnished the countrys image and affected the purity of Islam."
London: The terrorist dubbed "new Jihadi John" and appeared in the latest Islamic State video threatening attacks on the UK is believed to be Indian-origin British Muslim convert, media reports said on Tuesday.

Siddhartha Dhar, also known as Abu Rumaysah, had skipped bail and fled Britain in 2014 with his wife and their four children to join Islamic State in Syria.

Born a Hindu, the 32-year-old ran a business renting out bouncy castles in London before converting to Islam and joining the radical Islamist group Al Muhajiroun.

An official source told the BBC that Dhar is the focus of investigations into the video, which purports to show the killing of five men Islamic State says were spying for the UK.

Dhar's mother and sister have also watched the video, released by Islamic State on Sunday, and noticed similarities between the voice of the masked terrorist, being referred to as the "new Jihadi John" by the British media.

"I heard the voice, yes, but I don't know, I'm not sure of the voice. These are the most difficult questions to answer. I just cannot say. I'm not sure within myself whether it is the truth or not," his mother Sobita Dhar told The Daily Telegraph.

His sister, Konika Dhar, from north London, said: "I believed the audio to resemble, from what I remember, the voice of my brother but having viewed the short clip in detail, I wasn't entirely convinced which put me at ease.

"I can't believe it. This is just so shocking for me. I don't know what the authorities are doing to confirm the identity, but I need to know if it is."

She said her brother had converted to Islam more than 10 years ago and her memories of him are from when they were children and teenagers.

"He was a very pleasant boy, and I know it may be hard to believe but he still is, and I still believe that he still can be that person," she added.

One of Dhar's former business associates told the BBC he had "no doubt" the voice on the video was that of Dhar, who had been arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism by the British police but was later able to travel to Syria after being bailed.

His former neighbours from Walthamstow in east London claimed Dhar's wife was more devout than him and suggest she may have put him on the path to extremism.

In the months leading up to his arrest Dhar was accused of calling for the imposition of Sharia law in Britain.

In one interview around that time he said: "We believe that whenever the sharia is established, the pure Islamic state maybe in Iraq or Syria, one day the leader will wage jihad and annexe Britain into the Islamic state.

"We are not going to forget Europe, we are not going to forget Britain, the armies will be sent here to conquer these lands."

In the latest ISIS video, he is now believed to be the masked man speaking in a British accent and holding a gun. He says: "We will continue to wage jihad, break borders and one day invade your land where we will rule by the Sharia."

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday said the video was "desperate stuff" from a group that was "losing territory".

The 11-minute video also features a little boy speaking in a British accent.

Channel 4 News has reported that a south London man named Sunday Dare recognised the boy in the video as his grandson, Isa Dare, who was taken to Syria by his daughter Grace Dare aka Khadija.

In the video, five men, wearing jumpsuits and kneeling in a desert location, appear to be shot in the back of the head, after making what is claimed to be their confessions.

PTI
LOS ANGELES The office building in San Bernardino, California, where 14 people were massacred last month by a married couple inspired by Islamist militants, reopened on Monday.

Security would be heightened for the facility, which was closed in the aftermath of the Dec. 2 shooting, said Inland Regional Center Executive Director Lavinia Johnson.

The property would remain fenced off, and guards at each entrance would continue to monitor security, Johnson said.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, stormed into a holiday party attended by his co-workers from a San Bernardino County social services agency and opened fire on Dec. 2, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Authorities have said the couple were inspired by Islamist militancy, and called it the deadliest such attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

The couple attacked the California holiday party just weeks after gunmen and suicide bombers linked to the Islamic State militant group killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks in Paris.

The San Bernardino attackers had not targeted any of the centre's roughly 600 staff members, but rather employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, Johnson told reporters Monday.

"We want to send to them our condolences today," she said.

Counsellors would be on hand to offer support to workers, Johnson said.

None of the people with developmental disabilities that the centre serves, numbering about 31,000, would visit this week, the Los Angeles Times reported.

San Bernardino County officials said many county offices would close at noon on Monday to allow employees to attend a private memorial for the victims of the December attack.

A former neighbour of Farook's, who prosecutors say supplied assault rifles to the couple, was indicted last week on charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Enrique Marquez was charged with conspiring with Farook in 2011 and 2012 to support an attack that was never carried out.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in Los Angeles; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bernadette Baum)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BURNS, Ore. Residents of the Oregon town thrust into the spotlight after self-styled militiamen took over a U.S. wildlife refuge voiced sympathy for the jailed ranchers whose plight inspired the action and but were critical of the armed protesters.

Saturday's takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Oregon, marked the latest protest over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual rights.

Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, who on Monday surrendered to serve longer prison terms for setting fires that spread to federal land, had been regulars at a town diner where residents were sympathetic and said they feared the federal government wanted to seize ranch lands for its own use.

"The BLM wants that land bad and they'll probably end up getting it," said Tim Slate, a butcher who said he had gone out to slaughter the Hammonds' cattle many times over the years, using an acronym for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "The federal government wants to take over the state of Oregon and turn it into a park."

Diners voiced skepticism about protest leader Ammon Bundy, the son of a Nevada rancher who along with a large group of armed men successfully stared down federal agents in 2014 when the government attempted to confiscate his livestock because he refused to pay grazing fees.

"I don't think it's right to take over a public building," said James Arndt, a retired painter. "I'm kind of mixed about that."

He echoed other residents of the town of some 3,000 people about 280 miles (451 km) southeast of Portland, who viewed the occupation as the work of outside agitators. Lawyers from the Hammonds have sought to disassociate themselves from the occupiers, saying that the action did not represent their clients' will.

Authorities have closed schools for the week in the area out of concerns of possible violence, although so far the occupation has been peaceful.

'DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION'

Bundy said his group had named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and was defending the Constitution and personal liberty against the federal government.

A Twitter page under Bundy's name said the group had no intention of leaving the refuge until its conditions are met.

The protesters have said they aim "to restore and defend the Constitution" to protect the rights of ranchers and start a national debate about states' rights and federal land-use policy that they hope will force the federal government to release tracts of Western land.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward, in a statement on behalf of himself and County Judge Steven Grasty on Monday, asked group members to stand down.

"It is time for you to leave our community, go home to your families, and end this peacefully," Ward said.

Both protesters and authorities have declined to say how many people are involved in the occupation. About a dozen occupiers have been visible at the site.

The FBI said it was working with state and local law enforcement for a peaceful resolution and federal law enforcement officials have kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which is closed to visitors. They are following U.S. policy guidelines instituted to prevent such standoffs from turning deadly as they did in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas in the early 1990s.

The success of the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch, likely emboldened the group to occupy the refuge, observers said.

"They forced the federal government at gunpoint to stand down. They won," said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups.

"The group that's holed up there in Burns seems to think they're going to take that same idea to another level: You solve your issues over land usage or grazing fees or whatever by refusing to pay up and then using weapons to run cops off the land."

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball and Andy Sullivan in Washington and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
WEST POINT, N.Y. The first female commandant of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy was sworn in on Tuesday, the latest milestone for American women who now are allowed to serve all military combat roles.

Brigadier General Diana Holland, 47, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, assumed the leadership post after being honoured in packed ceremony at the academy 50 miles (80 km) north of New York City, whose graduates typically serve as Army officers.

"I'm very grateful for this opportunity," said Holland, a 1990 West Point graduate who thanked her husband and father for their support and said she looked forward to working with the cadets. "They ask for so little, only to be well led."

Holland assumes the historic leadership position a month after the U.S. military struck down gender barriers in the armed forces, announcing it would accept women in all combat jobs previously open only to men, from leading infantry soldiers into battle to serving as Navy SEALS.

At the ceremony, West Point superintendent Lieutenant General Robert Caslen gave a nod to other female alumni who recently made military history, including the first two women to receive the coveted U.S. Army Ranger title, Army Captain Kristen Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver, who completed their training in August 2015.

Holland's resume includes barrier-breaking accomplishments such as becoming the first female general of the U.S. Army Fort Drum & 10th Mountain Division.

Holland, whose hometown is Santa Barbara, California, served in Germany as well as in deployments to Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2010 and 2013.

As the 76th Commandant of Cadets, she replaces Major General John Thomson III.

The new post marks a return to West Point for Holland, who taught history at the academy after earning a master's degree at Duke University.

West Point, founded in 1802, accepted its first female cadets in 1976.

(Writing by Barbara Goldberg; editing by David Gregorio)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
United Nations: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday condemned the terror attack on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan and said that diplomatic posts need to be protected.

The attack on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif "obviously is an attack which we condenm...especially an attack on a diplomatic outpost that needs to be protected," Ban's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told PTI at the United Nations on Monday when asked about the terror attack on the Consulate premises on Sunday.

When asked to comment about another terror attack at the Pathankot Air Force base, Dujarric said he did not have any comment as the operation there is still ongoing.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end tonight with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight overnight, the remaining were neutralised by the night.

A group of terrorists had attacked the Consulate at around 9.15 pm on Sunday with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces.

PTI
Washington: President Barack Obama's critics Tuesday savaged his gun control steps as an unlawful assault on Americans' constitutional rights, with Republican White House hopefuls pledging to immediately repeal the orders if they are elected in November.

Obama, wiping away tears as he pleaded for citizens and lawmakers to be more resolute in tackling gun violence, announced measures to tighten federal background checks for gun sales, require those in the business of selling guns to be licensed or face criminal prosecution, and expand mental health treatment.

Republicans, in the heat of a presidential campaign, immediately balked, with White House candidate Jeb Bush warning that Obama was "trying to do an end-run" on the US Constitution despite an increased terrorism threat.

"Rather than taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens as Obama and (Hillary) Clinton would like to do, we should focus on keeping guns out of the hands of the terrorists who want to kill innocent Americans," Bush wrote in Iowa's Gazette newspaper.

"When I am president of the United States, I will repeal Obama's anti-gun executive orders on day one of my administration."

Republican hopeful Marco Rubio pledged the same, while long-shot candidate Mike Huckabee offered a stinging rebuke to Obama, linking the gun control fight to another hot-button battle in America's culture wars: abortion.

"You say if we can save one life we should," Huckabee tweeted to the president. "Well, apply 5th & 14th amendments to the unborn & save 4,000 lives a day."

Former business executive Carly Fiorina slammed Obama's move as "lawless unconstitutional overreach," while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson warned the president was merely "advancing his political agenda."

Obama, in his White House address, said there was no "slippery slope" towards eroding gun owners' rights and confiscating guns.

But critics including the top Republican in Congress accused him of intimidation that undermines American's right gun rights.

"No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a tweet as Obama unveiled his executive actions.

Several Democrats spoke out in support of Obama's plans, including the three candidates running for their party's presidential nomination.

Frontrunner Clinton took to Twitter to thank Obama "for taking a crucial step forward on gun violence. Our next president has to build on that progress -- not rip it away."

AFP
Broadcom at ongoing Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016 in Las Vegas has announced a new 64-Bit quad-core processor for high-end routers.

The new Broadcom BCM4908 enables OEMs and service providers to deliver the extra CPU power needed for smart home and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, says company.

The manufacturer also claims that the BCM4908 includes the industrys first 1.8GHz 64-Bit quad-core ARM CPU, and uses Broadcoms Runner network packet processor to deliver more than 5 Gbps of system data throughput with ease. It can also support the increased speeds of Google Fiber and Comcast 2 Gbps via an interface for a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PHY. It pairs with Broadcoms BCM4366 wave 2.5G Wi-Fi MU-MIMO to deliver more than 3.4 Gbps of simultaneous Wi-Fi throughput.

With this new SoC, Broadcom is driving home network connectivity to the next level, said Manny Patel, Broadcom Director of Marketing, Wireless Connectivity. By increasing the CPU performance and adding advanced features, were enabling OEMs to build more powerful home routers that address the increased bandwidth requirements needed to support the continued consumption of high-bandwidth content, growing demand for UltraHD as well as the growing emergence of more IoT and smart home applications.

The company didnt announce any time frame for the availability of BCM4908. It only said that the chipset is currently sampling.

Broadcom BCM4908 Key Features

Zero CPU Wi-Fi offload frees up CPU resources for other tasks

BroadStream iQoS acceleration

Dedicated security processor to enable hardware VPN acceleration

2.5Gb Base-X Ethernet WAN/LAN port for supporting fast connectivity to multi-gigabit modem or a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device

Feature-rich connectivity with integrated SATA III, two USB 3.0 ports and three PCIe Gen 2 ports reduces external RBOM cost

Utilizes low power 28nm technology and advanced power management, offering power reductions of more than 50 percent as compared to previous solutions

Supports Broadcoms tri-band (AC5300) 5G WiFi XStream 802.11ac MU-MIMO: Three BCM4366 44 radios, each with an integrated CPU for host offload processing Providing a total of seven CPU cores (Septacore) with more than 9.6 GHz of CPU horse power

Powerful hardware acceleration for routing and USB storage
Huawei unveiled the MediaPad M2 8.0 last year, now the company is all set to introduce the Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 tablet at its CES 2016 event later today, according to @evleaks. Another Twitter user @SuomiMobiili from Finland has revealed the specifications and also posted images of the upcoming tablet.

According to the leak, the tablet will have a 10.1-inch Full HD display, will be powered by Kirin 930 64-bit Octa-Core processor and run on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) with Emotion UI 3.1 on top. It will come with a 8-megapixel auto focus rear camera with LED flash, 2-megapixel front-facing camera and come with 4G LTE support, similar to the MediaPad M2 8.0. Based on the images, it has a unibody metal design and there is a home button below the display.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 rumored specifications

10.1-inch (1920  1200 pixels) IPS display

2GHz Kirin 930 64-bit Octa-Core processor with Mali-T628 MP4 GPU

2GB LPDDR3 RAM, 32GB / 64GB storage, expandable memory up to 128GB

Android 5.1 (Lollipop) with Emotion UI 3.1

8MP auto focus rear camera with LED flash

2MP front-facing camera

4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz), Bluetooth 4.1, GPS / aGPS

The Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 is expected to be priced at 349 Euros (US$ 377 / Rs. 25090 approx.) for the 32GB version and the 64GB version is expected to cost 449 Euros (US$ 485 / Rs. 32285 approx.). We will have to wait for Huawei to announce the tablet officially.
The ideacentre 610S is the latest mini desktop computer from Lenovo and it has a design that seems to have been taken right out of a Star Wars movie. Not only does it look futuristic, but it also can get the job done without a monitor thanks to a wireless projector that is bundled with it.

The projector is wireless and can provide a screen that is 100 in size at a distance of 2.4 meters. The projector can either be placed on top of the desktop unit itself or can be mounted onto a small tripod for example thanks to the built-in tripod hole. The projector itself features a 3W speaker, an HDMI port and a USB port. It has a resolution of 720p and is powered by a Texas Instruments DLP chip.

The desktop computer itself is around 2kgs in terms of weight and comes in a Platinum Silver colour. You can configure it to have upto 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 2TB of HDD storage. It is powered by an Intel i7 Skylake processor and can have upto 2GB of GDDR5 GPU memory thanks to the NVIDIA GTX 750Ti. It also has built-in WiFi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.0, 3 USB 3.0 ports and a 3 in 1 card reader.

Users can also choose to connect their device to a monitor via the HDMI cable. The ideacentre 610S will start at a price of US$ 849 (Around Rs 56,000) with the optional projector when it launches in June this year.
Lenovo on Tuesday launched the successor smartphone of popular K3 Note in India, but this time around as a part of its Vibe lineup dubbed the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bux4B0NsSNI

During an event in Delhi, the company also launched an ANT VR headset (a Google cardboard like VR device, but better built) priced at 1,299 and for now will be bundled with the Vibe K4 Note. The standalone Lenovo Vibe K4 Note is priced at Rs. 11,999, while the Vibe K4 Note and ANT VR Headset bundle is for Rs. 12,499.

Starting with the design of Vibe K4 Note or we should rather say the complete device is essentially the same Lenovo Vibe X3 Lite or VIBE A7010 smartphone that was introduced in China back in November last year, but this has 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB.

The front has a 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) IPS 178 degree wide-view display, with 450 Nits Brightness, 1000:1 contrast, and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. There are dual front-facing speakers featuring Dolby Atmos located above and below the display. The handset measures 153.6 x 76.5 x 9.15mm and weighs 158 grams. Apart from the metal band running around the phone, rest of the body is made of plastic.

The back of Lenovo Vibe K4 Note boasts of soft rubberized matte finish, which feels nice to touch but attracts little stains. It packs a 5-megapixel front facing camera and a 13-megapixel rear camera with dual-color LED Flash (PDAF, f/2.2 aperture, ISOCELL sensor). The fingerprint sensor on the back sits below the rear camera.

The new K4 Note is powered by a 1.3 GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6753 processor coupled with Mali T720-MP3 GPU and 3GB of RAM. So thats a bump from 2GB RAM on K3 Note.

Lenovo Vibe K4 Note runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with companys Vibe lite UI skinned on top, similar to Lenovo Vibe P1, so you do get an app drawer. The 16GB of internal storage is expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB).

The Lenovo Vibe K4 Note supports dual Micro-SIM cards with 4G LTE. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, NFC, and USB OTG.

The Lenovo Vibe K4 Note is priced at Rs. 11,999, the K4 Note VR bundle for Rs. 12,499, the bundle will be up for grabs on 19th January at 2PM on Amazon and the standalone K4 Note will be available in flash sale on 20th January at 2PM. Registrations for the sale have already started. Lenovo has also partnered with Skullcandy for Lenovo Skullcandy Ando headphones  priced at Rs. 1,299, which will also be available on the sale day. There is no time frame for the ANTVR Headset sale separately.
A quarantine problem in the citrus industry within the other states will probably slow down fruit donations in Phoenix food banks. St. Mary's Food Alliance and United Food Bank in Mesa stopped taking in citrus donations due to the quarantine problem that is in effect as announced by the Arizona Agriculture department, according to Yahoo! News. St. Mary's Food Alliance and United Food Bank are the primary citrus donation charity organizations in Phoenix.

According to state authorities, there is a need to stop the toxicity of an Asian citrus psyllid.

Yahoo! News described the citrus psyllid as, "a tiny bug that can transmit citrus greening disease, which can kill citrus trees." The bug also has a name referred to as Huanglongbing. The bug is not known to be toxic to humans and animals.

Agriculture authorities in Arizona have issued an advisory as to the ban of sending and receiving of citrus fruits, leaves and plants in and out of county and state borders.

Usually, St. Mary's Food Alliance gets 3 million pounds citrus fruits annually. St. Mary's spokesman, Jerry Brown said, however:

"This current pest will likely cause a 30 to 35 percent drop."

Food bank authorities have to fetch fruits themselves to avoid the epidemic. As for the volunteers helping to fetch the fruits, Brown only had this to say:

"We have to establish a chain of custody,"

"No matter how many volunteers we have, we're not going to be able to pick as much as fruit as the people who bring it to us."

According to Sergio Paris, there were some fruits donated to low-key organizations, such as the Boys and Girls Clubs. Citrus greening disorder causes fruit on a toxic tree bitter and misshapen. The tree passes away, in turn, in a few years' time. Florida and Texas also suffered from this citrus epidemic, according to Yahoo! News.
After a miserable performance in 2015, Chesapeake Energy's (CHKA.Q) stock is now 93.5% off its all-time high of more than $65 per share, which it set in July of 2008. Suffice it to say, the company has a long way to go to recapture that record, which was set when natural gas prices were north of $13 per Mcf.

With natural gas now closer to $2 per Mcf, and Chesapeake Energy's debt at what some consider an unsustainable level, we can forget about the company setting a new stock price record in 2016. That said, there is reason to believe natural gas prices could rally in 2016, which could fuel quite a strong rally in Chesapeake Energy's stock price and put its debt worries on the back burner for a while.

The bull case for natural gas

Thanks to a combination of robust natural gas production and a late start to winter, there's 16.5% more natural gas currently in storage than there was a year ago at this time. Further, inventory levels are 13.5% above the five-year average. This bloated inventory is keeping a lid on the natural gas price right now, which is at a 14-year low.

However, there are some signs on the horizon that are bullish for the price of natural gas. In the last week of December, the U.S. experienced a larger-than-expected inventory draw, which sent natural gas prices spiking. Further, recent winter storms suggest that cold weather could be here to stay for a while. In fact, there are some forecasts showing that this winter could end up being colder than expected. Should this winter be 10% colder than projected, it would cause natural gas consumption to be 1% higher than last year according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Such a scenario could spark a big rally in natural gas prices.

In addition to the potential for greater natural gas demand this winter for home heating, there are other demand drivers on the horizon. For example, Cheneire Energy (LNG -2.12%) finally began production for the first LNG export cargos at its Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana. At the moment, the Cheniere Energy facility is receiving 50 million cubic feet of gas per day and expects to have its inaugural shipment ready for export later this month. As Cheniere Energy ramps up its capacity, it could help draw down some of the excess inventory. Further, this company alone will be a major consumer of gas, with it expecting to be consuming more than 3.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2018, which is roughly 4% of current U.S. natural gas production.

Not only are there demand catalysts for natural gas starting to materialize, but there are supply catalysts as well. Chesapeake Energy has already said that due to "expected low prices, we intend to meaningfully reduce our capital spending in 2016," which suggests its production won't grow, and could even decline.

Meanwhile, other large natural gas producers are letting production decline by focusing on oil drilling. ConocoPhillips (COP -0.40%) is one of the many large U.S. independents allowing its natural gas production to decline, and last quarter, it fell by 2 MBOED year over year while the rest of its production was up 58 MBOED. Further, not only are companies like ConocoPhillips not drilling dry gas wells, but they are drilling fewer wells overall, with ConocoPhillips' total shale production starting to decline, which is leading to decline in the associated gas production from oil and liquids wells.

Investor takeaway

Add it all up, and the potential is there for natural gas prices to rebound in 2016. Given that Chesapeake Energy is the second largest natural gas producer in the country, and three-quarters of its production is natural gas, its stock would clearly benefit from a rally in the natural gas market. It might not fuel a rally past its former high to capture its best year ever, but the potential is there for Chesapeake Energy to have a rebound year.

Still, if natural gas doesn't rebound, the company could face a lot more pain in 2016 given that it's debt levels are not sustainable if $2 gas and $40 oil are the new normal.
Without a doubt, 2015 was a great year for Nike (NKE -0.32%) investors. Despite the negative effects of foreign currency exchange holding back Nike's reported top-line growth, CEO Mark Parker made it clear early in the year that Nike's diverse product set and global scale meant the company viewed any macroeconomic turmoil as an advantage over the competition, and a prime opportunity to come out stronger in the end.

Nike consistently delivered one solid quarter after another, with an outsized focus on improving margins, fostering innovation in its products, and returning billions in capital to shareholders through dividends and stock repurchases. When all was said and done, Nike stock managed to climb an impressive 30% in 2015, handily outpacing the broader market's returns:

That also raises the question: Will 2016 be an even better year for Nike?

Nobody can accurately predict exactly where Nike stock will go in the near term. If Nike's long-term goals and shareholder-friendly initiatives are any indication, however, it seems almost certain that 2016 will be the best year ever for Nike from a business standpoint.

First -- and keeping in mind that Nike doesn't typically offer full-year financial guidance -- consider that, when Nike released its most recent quarterly results three weeks ago, it revealed that worldwide futures orders for NIKE brand footwear and apparel climbed 15% for the period from December 2015 through April 2016. On a currency-neutral basis, the same metric would have risen 20%.

Meanwhile, though gross margin is expected to fall around 50 basis points in the current quarter due to Nike's efforts to clear end-of-year inventory and efficiently bring new products to market, Nike expects gross margin to expand by around 50 basis points when all is said and done this fiscal year. As it stands, gross margin already sits near an all-time high for Nike, while trailing-12-month revenue and net income each continue to steadily rise to new company records.

NKE Gross Profit Margin (TTM) data by YCharts

We should also remember Nike's most recent quarterly results were technically held back by a 5% decline in revenue from Converse, to $398 million. That's still just a little more than 5% of Nike's total sales, but on the surface stands in stark contrast to the strong year-over-year growth Converse was exhibiting early in the year.

But perspective is in order. Specifically, Converse continues to enjoy strong growth in North America, and was held back by declines in the most-recent quarter in Europe. As I pointed out just prior to the report, however, management warned investors well in advance that Converse's year-over-year comparisons would be lumpy as it transitions to a "more direct operating model" outside the United States. After that new model is in place, it seems safe to expect Converse will resume its formerly strong growth on a global scale.

Finally, in October, Nike announced a new target of $50 billion in revenue by the end of fiscal 2020, representing a whopping 63% increase from fiscal 2015 revenue of $30.6 billion. In addition, Nike laid out realistic long-term plans to maintain high-single-digit to low-double-digit revenue growth, gross margin expansion of 30 to 50 basis points per year, earnings-per-share growth in the mid-teens, and continuously expanding returns on invested capital to a high-20% to low-30% range.

All the while, Nike will aim to grow free cash flow faster than net income. The company followed up in November by not only raising its quarterly dividend by 14%, but also approving a new $12 billion, four-year share-repurchase program to take effect when its current $8 billion program is exhausted (expected to be sometime before the end of this year).

These aren't the actions of a company expecting to lose ground in 2016. So whether the market deems it fit to bid up shares of Nike once again this year remains to be seen. But if Nike has its way, 2016 should be another banner year for the business.
BUT...





Oddly enough the only two places the word "and" is used may be the saving grace of this law for a decently capable defendant. "or shall purposely release significant quantities of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions into the air and onto roadways and other vehicles while operating the vehicle" So for this clause the emissions must not only enter the air(duhh) AND onto roadways(on the road, that means down) AND another vehicle. So by the letter the emission must strike the road AND another vehicle. Again, more idiotic wording, it completely contradicts the rest of the poorly worded law. But could also constitute a decent defense.





EDIT..





It would go something like "I move to dismiss the charges due to not meeting all elements of the alleged crime. Your honor will please note that the law applies to particulate exhaust that contacts both the roadway and another vehicle. You're honor will also please note that the ticketing officer provided no evidence or testimony that the alleged exhaust particulates struck the roadway AND another vehicle. I therefor motion to dismiss the charges due to insufficient evidence.
Add another disease to the list of ailments that may be thwarted by regular aspirin useprostate cancer.

Researchers reported that men who took at least three aspirin tablets a week reduced their risk of developing or dying from advanced prostate cancer. The aspirin didnt affect whether the men developed the disease to begin with, though.

Separately, other scientists found what they described as early evidence that a government panels recommendation against routine prostate-cancer screening may be having an unwelcome result: an increase in detection of tumors at more advanced states, when they are harder to treat.

Findings from the two studies were released Monday ahead of their presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco later this week.

About 220,000 cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in the U.S. last year, according to American Cancer Society estimates, making it the second-most common cancer among men, after skin cancer. About 27,500 men died of prostate cancer in 2015.

In most cases, the cancer is slow-growing, doesnt spread beyond the prostate gland and is of little clinical consequence. In such cases, 99 percent of men are alive after five years and 98 percent after a decade. Once the tumor spreads to bone or other parts of the body, though, five-year survival falls to 28 percent .

The aspirin study is a new analysis from the long-running Physicians Health Study, a longitudinal trial at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Previous prostate-cancer studies have yielded conflicting results on aspirins preventive benefits.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
History shows that, in the summer of 1876, George Custer made his fabled last stand in the then-territory of Montana.

Fast-forward 138 years to the summer of 2014 and its Montana Democrats making their last stand in defense of a Senate seat that hasnt fallen into Republicans hands in well over a century (the answer to that trivia question: Joseph Moore Dixon, a Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose who lasted only one term).

Like Custer, Montana Democrats have fallen victims to bad choices and bad circumstances. It began with former Sen. Baucus decision, back in April 2013, not to seek a seventh term this fall. That opened the door for former Gov. Brian Schweitzer to become the Democrats de facto nominee. But with his eye on a 2016 challenge to Hillary Clinton, Schweitzer declined.

[pullquote]

By December, the race took yet another unexpected twist when Baucus was named U.S. ambassador to China. His Senate replacement: Lt. Gov. John Walsh, seen as a credible 2014 contender in that Walsh saw action in Iraq with the Montana Army National Guard.

Only, it turned out Walsh wasnt as valorous as his candidacy promised and Montana Democrats suffered their fourth surprise in a little over a years time: soon after accusations that hed plagiarized a masters degree paper seven years ago while attending the Army War College, Walsh ended his candidacy  leaving Montana Democrats with precious little time to get a replacement on the ballot.

So who could step in and keep the Montana seat in Democratic hands? A Hollywood ending calls for a Hollywood mainstay. And it just so happens theres one lurking in southwestern Montana: actor Jeff Bridges, a property-owner in rustic Park County and dabbler in state and national politics (Bridges has worked both sides of the aisle as a longstanding champion of school breakfast programs).

Bridges has yet to profess any interest in going to Washington. Still, that hasnt stopped Libby Pratt, a Billings resident, from starting up this online petition to draft the Academy Award winner. Over on Twitter, an anonymous soul who goes by @DudeSenator  The Dude, Bridges uber-slacker, White Russian-swigging character in "The Big Lebowski," has a cult-like following  is advocating the actor's candidacy.

Could this actually happen? The truth is, its pretty simple to give The Dude the nod, if he wants it. To become the Democrats nominee, all Bridges would need is a majority of the delegates votes at the partys nominating convention in Helena this Saturday. And hed have to become a Montana resident. At present, Bridges owns a home in Paradise Valley (other notable residents: Peter Fonda and Dennis Quaid)  meaning, he's not registered to vote in Montana.

One other piddling detail: his wife, Sue, hates the thought of this. As Bridges told Howard Stern earlier this week: Evidently, theres a group of people that have called in and want me to run for senator of Montana, like 1,000 people, and so I say, Sue? And she looks at me and goes, Dont even think about it.'

The funny thing is, theres a parallel to whats befallen Bridges this week: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Californias 2003 gubernatorial recall election (more trivia: the two co-starred with Sally Field in 1976s "Stay Hungry," Arnolds breakout film).

Much like Montana Democrats at present, California Republicans back then were scrambling at the filing deadline for a splashy candidate. Schwarzenegger, like Bridges, offered high name recognition and a record of championing social causes (for Arnold, after-school programs. The soon-to-be Governator waited until the last minute (Aug. 7 of that year -- only two months before the Oct. 7 vote) to throw his hat in the ring.

As for a reluctant spouse, Maria Shriver was anything but enthusiastic at first about the thought of going to Sacramento.

The key difference, of course: Schwarzenegger long saw a political run as his destiny, whereas Bridges probably sees himself as more of an advocate (he hung out at both national conventions in 2012, espousing the school-breakfast cause).

Still, Bridges likely non-participation in Montana points to one of 2014s shortcomings: a lack of star power.

Sure, celebrities have started to pump cash into Senate races in hopes of keeping the chamber from going Republican. Just as, in 1986, Hollywood organized to flip the Senate from Republican to Democratic. But theres a world of difference between donating to Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky versus Ashley Judd actually challenging Sen. Mitch McConnell, as she once considered.

Not that a star-turn by the lead in "Starman" could prevent Republicans from ending their 100-year Big Sky drought. But like Custer, encircled Montana Democrats must be wondering: where's the cavalry?
President Obama announced Tuesday that he is issuing an executive order on guns and background checks. Heres a look at what the president is doing and if it is even legal under the Constitution of the United States.

Just what is an executive order? A presidential executive order is a written instruction to persons in the executive branch of the federal government informing them of the manner in which the president wants federal laws or regulations enforced. Executive orders do not direct private persons, or persons in the legislative or judicial branches of government. Executive orders remain in effect until abandoned or rescinded by the president who issued them or by a successor president.

President Obama has very little room to issue executive orders on guns because the congressional legislation is so extensive, detailed, and clear. The principal thrust of the presidents orders addresses the requirement for background checks in occasional sales and the requirement that occasional sellers become federal licensees and the imposition of reporting upon physicians.

Congress has expressly removed occasional sales (sales not made by full-time dealers) from the obligation of obtaining federal licenses and from conducting background checks.

The president is without authority to negate the congressional will on this, and any attempt to do so will be invalidated by the courts. Mr. Obama will now require that anyone who sells a gun, that is even an occasional seller will be required to perform a background check. By defining what an occasional seller is, the president is essentially interpreting the law, a job reserved for the courts.

The courts will ignore his interpretation, and impose their own.

As well, by requiring physicians to report conversations with their patients about guns to the Department of Homeland Security, (yes, even an innocent conversation in the examination room, we gave Bobby a bee bee gun for Christmas, we plan to get him some instruction on how to use it) the president will be encouraging our government to invade the patient/physician privilege.

But wait, theres more. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental liberty. Under the Constitution, fundamental liberities (like speech, press, worship, self-defense, travel, privacy) are accorded the highest protection from governmental intrusion.

One can only lose a fundamental right by intentionally giving it up, or via due process (a jury trial resulting in the conviction of criminal behavior). President Obama -- whose support for the right to keep and bear arms is constitutionally limited to the military, police, and his own heavily-armed body guards -- is happy to begin taking America to a slippery slope down the dark hole of totalitarianism whereby a president can negate liberty.

Finally, we still have a Constitution in America. Under the Constitution, Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them.

President Obama can no more write his own laws or impose his own interpretations upon them than the Congress or the courts can command the military.
The president shed tears Tuesday at the White House, as he pushed for new executive action to prevent gun violence.

He spoke of mass killings that took innocent lives, but the first time he broke down was when he uttered the words first graders.

No sentence should include the words killing and first graders. The 6 and 7-year-olds gunned down by a crazed killer in Newtown, Connecticut, days before Christmas in 2012.

The memory of those little faces, is too much to bear. The father of Daniel Barden introduced the president today.

I looked up little Daniel to remember his face. He was an angel. Only a monster could snuff that life.

The Newtown killer Adam Lanza was deeply disturbed. He spent hours in his basement trolling the Internet, searching guns, ammo, playing school shooting games. Yes, such games exist. He claimed he was tormented by dreams that babies were trying to kill him.

Nancy Lanzas life was a nightmare. The divorced mom was tied to her home by a son who couldnt communicate or socialize or go out. He wouldnt even stay in a hotel, so when they went away she rented an RV. She tried to help him by getting him into a mental health program at Yale, a school in South Carolina, but nothing worked.

They connected on one thing. She had guns and they had gone to the range together. Why in heavens name she thought this was a good idea for her disturbed son, we will never know.

On December 14, 2012, he took his mothers legally purchased gun from their home and killed 26 children and teachers.

The report done after the killing by the Connecticut Office of Child Advocate, said that by 10th grade, Lanza had become a virtual shut-in who was "increasingly preoccupied with mass murder" and was egged-on by "a micro society of mass murder enthusiasts with whom he was in email communication." At the time of the shooting he was anorexic and at 6 feet tall, weighed only 112 pounds.

He was a powder keg.

Under the presidents new action, would Lanzas mother be prosecuted for allowing her mentally ill son to use the gun? Not likely, he put 5 bullets in her head, before he went to Sandy Hook Elementary.

Would $500 million in spending on mental health services have stopped this killer? His mother would not likely have been eligible for funding, she lived in a nice house in Connecticut. Under current rules, you cant institutionalize someone if theyve not committed a crime, which Lanza had not. Will any of that money go to build new facilities for people like Adam?

Donald Trump recently said, there are a lot of sickos in the world, who need to be locked up. Its his typical rough language, but its true that if Jared Loughner (Gabby Giffords shooter) or Seung Hui-Cho (Virginia Tech) or James Holmes (Aurora theater) families or doctors had been able to commit these young men, more than 100 people would be alive or unharmed today. Not to mention the hundreds of broken hearts attached to all those fallen innocents.

In this country, weve gotten away from institutionalizing and weve moved toward assimilating and drugging the mentally ill. If we are going to get serious about gun violence we should get serious about facing the facts of the violent mentally ill. In each of these killers lives, someone knew they were dangerous. No one wants to talk about putting people away. But its time to put some of the half billion towards properly run institutional options.

The president said today that of the 30,000 killed each year in this country by gun violence, two-thirds are suicide. That leaves roughly 10,000 that includes the deaths from the kind of rare but heart-breaking mass shootings we saw in Newtown.

But that 10,000 also includes gang and drug related violence.

The second moment that moved the president as he spoke today dealt with that brand of murder.

Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and yet the murder rate keeps going up. There is a societal issue here that also needs to be addressed. Families that need to be pulled together. Faith that needs to be strengthened. It requires the fierce urgency of now to quote Martin Luther King as the president did Tuesday, but in referencing background checks.

Imagine if President Obama walked the streets of Chicago, and spoke with the passion he had today. If the evil he took on there was not just gun violence, but the scourge of gangs and drugs and the falling apart of families. What if he teared up when he looked young men in the eye and told them to do what it took to hold their families together, and raise their children. What if he talked about the deep pain of being abandoned by a dad. Who could do this more powerfully than he?

He has spoken on the topics to be sure. He has highlighted the My Brothers Keeper organization which has done good work in this arena. But it has not been a major tenet of his presidency.

Ive heard disappointment about this from African-American friends. If you shed tears for violence in our inner cities, you must fight this essential part of the sad puzzle.

It would be a powerful legacy.

The tears for lost children. Lets take on not just background checks, but detachment, the lack of community and quiet pain and illness that exist in the streets and the dark basements of our country.

Then perhaps we can begin to turn the tide that makes America a place that suffers more than its fair share of this brand of tragedy.


The new year begins with a promise of hope for Syria. Representatives of world and regional powers will gather in Geneva later this month for a U.N. conference led by the U.S. and Russia to discuss how to end the bloodletting that has ravaged Syria for nearly five years.

Optimism that this may mark a positive turning point is grounded in a U.N. Security Council resolution, unanimously adopted on December 18, endorsing a diplomatic road map that could lead to a cease-fire, creation of a transitional government, and elections.

The good news is that a plan, written by Syrians, already exists. The Syria Transition Roadmap (STR) should be seriously considered by every nation and Syrian faction in attendance at the Geneva conference.

The STR was developed by several hundred Syrians who participated in an elaborate process under the auspices of the Syria Expert House. They reviewed Syrias political system, economy, army and security services, and judiciary, and came up with concrete, workable recommendations for reform.

Each of these categories has a timeline for implementation during a period of transition between the end of the Bashar al-Assad regime, approval of a new constitution, and formation of a democratically elected parliament representing all of Syrias population groups, and the choice of a new president. The STR also calls for establishing a system for justice and national reconciliation, which will be especially critical to healing the fractured nation as the country rebuilds.

A fundamental commitment to democracy is central to the 235-page roadmap. There are many references to Syrias period of democratic government following independence in 1946, which lasted until the unity agreement with Egypt in 1958, followed by the first Ba'athist coup in 1963, and then 45 years of tyranny under the Assad family.

The Syrians who wrote the roadmap do not accept the often-stated grim conclusions of many outsiders that their country is a failed state. They are convinced that a unitary Syrian state can rise anew. Moreover, the majority of Syrians who fled their homes, either under coercion or simply seeking security and safety, are still in the country or in refugee camps across the borders in nearby Jordan and Turkey. They have neither the resources nor the will to attempt the highly risky trek to Europe.

They do need the assistance of major world powers as well as Middle Eastern countries that have intervened directly in the war or provided financial and materiel support to competing factions. The nations represented in Geneva need to agree to a cease-fire, avoid actions that further inflame the situation, and provide support for Syrians as they negotiate the future of their country.

The first step the STR requires is Assads removal, to which Assads Russian and Iranian allies, who will be at the Geneva talks, will likely object. The U.S., which originally called for his ouster, has wavered in recent months, but needs to firmly reassert that demand.

Acquiescence in Assad's continued rule would be a travesty, in essence rewarding him for his regimes murderous campaigns that have left more than 250,000 Syrians dead. The sham June 2014 election when he won 90 percent of the vote and extended his reign for another seven years, should be declared invalid.

The Syria Transition Roadmap, first issued in 2012, reflects the determination of the suffering Syrian people to envision a future of peace that can allow rebuilding.

It is a powerful initiative that should be welcomed.
President Obama on Tuesday will formally announce plans to expand background checks and make other changes to America's gun rules via executive action, going around Congress and fueling allegations of executive overreach.

At the centerpiece of Obama's plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of gun sales subject to background checks. At gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers, but officials said new federal guidance would clarify that it applies to anyone "in the business" of selling firearms.

Obama's actions, detailed by the White House Monday, mark a renewed bid by the president to enact gun control measures with or without Congress.

Republicans accused the president of going too far, and already have threatened to fight the new measures by withholding DOJ funding. The guidance, though, aims to achieve a long-time administration goal of at least narrowing the so-called gun show loophole.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers, but many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or in other informal settings don't register as dealers. The ATF has issued updated guidance that says the government can consider someone a gun dealer regardless of where the guns are sold.

In an attempt to prevent gun purchases from falling through the cracks, the FBI will hire 230 more examiners to process background checks, the White House said.

The FBI has a computerized system that can process background checks for many in seconds, but in instances where the FBI needs more time, the government only has three days before prospective buyers can return and buy the gun without being cleared.

Earlier Monday, Obama vowed to press ahead with new executive actions on gun control after meeting with top law enforcement officials, claiming he has the legal authority to act  and defying congressional critics who say hes pursuing a dangerous overreach.

The president spoke after meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and other top officials to review their proposals and finalize his plans.

Obama said their recommendations are well within my legal authority and would be supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners.

The recommendations that are being made by my team here are ones that are entirely consistent with the Second Amendment, Obama said, claiming they could potentially save lives.

The revived push to tighten Americas gun laws via executive action, however, has resulted in a backlash on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Republicans made clear they would fight the administration and accused the president of overstepping.

"While we dont yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in a statement. This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, who chairs a key appropriations panel, warned Lynch on Monday that he would use every tool at my disposal to immediately restrict DOJ funding if the department proceeds with new restrictions on our Constitutional rights.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump vowed to reverse any such actions if hes elected.

"We're not changing the Second Amendment," Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Biloxi, Miss. "I will veto that. I will un-sign that so fast."

While Obama took heat from Republicans, supporters of stronger action on gun control applauded the presidents new push.

"We definitely think there are things he can do," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates for expanding background checks. Gross says his recent conversations with White House aides have left him hopeful.

"It's very clear that the White House is feeling emboldened," he said.

Obama announced the meeting with Lynch in his weekly address from his Hawaii holiday vacation. On Thursday, he'll take his argument to prime time, participating in a town hall discussion of gun violence on CNN. He's slated to make his case for changes in his State of the Union address on Jan. 12.

The high-profile rollout reflects a White House continuing to look for ways to wrap up unfinished business despite an uncooperative Congress.

After all but ignoring the issue in his first term, Obama changed course after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012. Nevertheless, the president failed to push a package of gun measures through Congress, including one expanding background checks.

At the same time, Obama took nearly two dozen executive actions to tighten gun laws, but left a major expansion of background checks out of the mix.

But after the shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Ore. in October, Obama ordered his staff to redouble the effort to look for ways to work around Congress.

Under current law, federally licensed firearms dealers are required to seek background checks on potential firearm purchasers. But advocacy groups say many sellers are currently exempt from having to register, increasing the chance of sales to customers prohibited by law from purchasing a gun.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Associate Editor of The Hill A.B. Stoddard said Monday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that Bill Clinton could potentially bring trouble during the general election for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"I think Bill Clinton is great for her right now in the primary race, said Stoddard. I actually think that in the general election the message that Trump is giving which is they use their power to lie and cover up is a really potentially troubling one for Hillary Clinton in the general election."

Former President Bill Clinton, campaigned in New Hampshire on Monday for his wife ahead of the primaries later this year. Yet, Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, continues to remind his followers that Clinton has personal scandals.
Congressional Republicans bill to repeal most of ObamaCare would cut the federal deficit by $516 billion over the next decade, according to a new estimate that boosts the GOP effort ahead of an expected vote.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which analyzes Capitol Hill budget and economic issues, announced the estimate on Monday.

The legislation, which the Senate already has approved, is expected to pass in the House later this week and dovetails with a related effort to replace the law with an alternative plan.

House Republicans will take the first steps Tuesday on the repeal bill, formally known as the Restoring Americans Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, with a full floor vote coming as early as Wednesday.

Obama would undoubtedly veto the measure to repeal his signature health care law, and the GOP-controlled Congress doesnt have the votes to override.

However, the effort would mark the first time that Republicans get an ObamaCare repeal bill on the presidents desk.

Were forcing the president to confront the failures of this law once and for all, the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan recently said.

The latest CBO estimate, which updates an earlier report, was issued after Congress passed an omnibus spending bill in late December that included several tax adjustments to ObamaCare. This contributed to an estimate reflecting larger savings than originally projected -- more than a half-trillion over the next decade.

The biggest savings would come from repealing costly insurance subsidies and the expansion of Medicaid under the law.

Meanwhile, Republicans are moving on a years-long effort to complete a bill to replace the 2010 health care law.

House Republicans that year drafted the Pledge to America -- a political compact to help them take the chamber from Democrats and tell voters what they would do if in control.

One of the promises was to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

After Republicans earned the House majority, the first major vote of 2011 was to repeal the law. The House and Senate have voted more than 60 times to either fully or partially repeal the Affordable Care Act, as it is more formally known. Yet theyve never held a vote to replace ObamaCare.

But with Ryan now running the House and the GOP controlling the Senate, this may be one of the few chances the party has to unite around a bill that would replace the six-year-old law.

Still, Ryan is tempering expectations. He recently suggested the House is basically obligated to pass a replacement bill. And though he seems confident about his chamber doing so this year, Ryan realizes Obama undoubtedly would never sign such legislation into law.

The effort is also part of Ryans attempt to contrast Republicans with the agenda of Obama and fellow Democrats during the presidential election cycle and to silence their argument that the GOP cannot produce a better alternative to ObamaCare.

The Senate last year finally passed the repeal bill through a legislative maneuver known as budget reconciliation, which prevents the minority party from blocking legislation.

House Republicans initially planned to take up the reworked Senate bill before Christmas. But they decided to wait until after the holiday to maximize exposure of the House debate and vote and the presidents planned veto.

Fox News Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
China landed a civilian plane on one of its controversial man-made islands in the South China Sea over the weekend, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

The test flight, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is seen as a sign of the countrys growing capabilities. According to the Journal, the flight already has drawn a protest from Vietnam, which accused China of violating its sovereignty.

According to the U.S. defense official, China landed a Cessna at Fiery Cross Reef on Saturday to test one of its new runways built on top of the artificial reef -- part of the disputed Spratly Islands.

Asked if the official expected China to bring military aircraft to the contested islands, there was no immediate comment.

On Monday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said he was concerned by Chinas action.

To begin flight operations at this new airfield in a disputed area raises tensions and threatens regional stability, he said. We again call for all claimants to halt land reclamation, further development of new facilities, and the militarization on their outposts, and instead focus on reaching agreement on acceptable behavior in disputed areas. We have made this case clear repeatedly, and we will continue to make it."

According to the Journal, China has now completed two airfields in the South China Sea  in an area claimed by several nations including the Philippines

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
The super PAC behind GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio is airing its first TV ad in the crucial, early-voting state of South Carolina.

The 30-second spot -- titled Nobody Better -- highlights the recent endorsement of conservative rock star and South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy.

Our founding fathers gave us a president and a commander in chief because they understood that national security and public safety are the foundations of a free people, and there is nobody better on those two issues than Marco Rubio, Gowdy says in the ad by Conservative Solutions PAC.

Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for the group, described the ad to Fox News as the first in a significant statewide buy. However, he declined to release the cost of the ad campaign in the Palmetto state, which holds its GOP primary February 20.

The RealClearPolitics poll average for the GOP field in South Carolina has Rubio, a Florida senator, in third place behind front-running Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
The University of Missouri professor who called for some muscle to toss a reporter out of a demonstration on public property could be the one who gets bounced, after state lawmakers on Monday demanded that she be fired.

Communications Professor Melissa Click made national news in November, when she tried to have a student reporter on assignment for ESPN thrown off the quad during a racially charged protest.

Who wants to help me get this reporter out of here? Click yelled out after reporter Tim Tai refused to leave in an incident caught on video. I need some muscle over here.

The Nov. 9 incident came as students protested the racial climate on campus and reacted to the earlier resignation of former school President Tim Wolfe. Video of the confrontation went viral and drew nearly 3 million views, igniting a nationwide debate on the First Amendment.

"The fact that, as a professor teaching the communication department and the school of journalism, she displayed such a complete disregard for the First Amendment rights of reporters should be enough to question her competency and aptitude for her job."  Letter from Missouri lawmakers demanding University of Missouri fire Prof. Melissa Click

Critics fumed that a professor could not only take part in a student protest, but also that one affiliated with the schools venerable journalism school would try to forcibly stop a journalist from reporting the news. Click lost her courtesy appointment in the journalism school and was accused of assault and Title IX violations, but remains an untenured professor.

Now, more than 100 House Republicans and 18 Senate members from the state Legislature have signed a letter to the schools board of curators demanding Clicks immediate firing.

"The fact that, as a professor teaching the communication department and the school of journalism, she displayed such a complete disregard for the First Amendment rights of reporters should be enough to question her competency and aptitude for her job," reads the letter, penned by Rep. Caleb Jones and Sen. Kurt Schaefer.

The letter also questioned Clicks taxpayer-funded research into 50 Shades of Grey, Lady Gaga and Twilight."

School spokesman Christian Basi told the Missourian he doesn't comment on personnel matters as a matter of university policy.
New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel said Tuesday that hes resigning from Congress.

Israel, a close ally of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said he wont seek re-election next November and will leave in January 2017 when the seat is officially filled.

Nearly 16 years ago, I was honored to take the oath of office and stand on the House floor for the first time, said Israel, a member of Democratic House leadership. Now, Ive decided to leave  It is time for me to pursue new passions and develop new interests, mainly spend more time writing my second novel.

The 57-year-old Israel also suggested that he would face a tough re-election contest and didnt want his leadership group to lose the seat to Republicans.

I want to be a team player, said Israel, whose district is in Long Island, N.Y.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Chris Peck said immediately after Israel's announcement: "We fully expect this seat to be a top pickup opportunity for Republicans in November."

Israel was elected to Congress in 2000, to fill the House seat left open by Republican Rick Lazio.

He served two terms as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before becoming the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

Israel -- who has a large, pro-Israel, Jewish constituency -- made some waves this summer when he went against the Obama administration on the Iran deal, in which Tehran agreed to curtail its pursuit of a nuclear weapon in exchange for the easing of crippling economic sanctions.

Washington Democrats did not support his and other House Democrats bid in 2009 to take the New York Senate seat left open by Hillary Clinton, instead appointing then-New York Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this story.
President Obama announced plans Tuesday to expand background checks to almost anyone buying a firearm from a dealer and make other gun rule changes via executive action -- bypassing Congress and fueling an election-year fight with Republicans.

Everybody should have to abide by the same rules, Obama said.

The president, speaking at the White House, said background checks "make a difference" and will be expanded so that they can cover purchases online, at gun shows and in other venues. This would put the onus on most sellers to get a license and conduct the checks.

Anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecutions, he said. Obama was flanked by victims of gun violence and introduced by Mark Barden, whose son was killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting.

At the heart of Obama's plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of gun sales subject to background checks. At gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers, but officials said the new federal guidance clarifies that it applies to anyone "in the business" of selling firearms.

The changes were first detailed by the White House overnight, and mark a renewed bid by the president to enact gun control measures with or without Congress.

They dont go as far as proposed background check legislation  which has failed to advance on Capitol Hill  but nevertheless have prompted allegations of executive overreach.

"No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment. We will conduct vigilant oversight, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said, adding that the actions will no doubt be challenged in the courts.

Obama, blasting the gun lobby and appearing to choke up as he discussed gun violence victims, rejected claims that he is infringing on the Second Amendment, citing other restrictions that can constitutionally apply to freedom of speech and other rights.

But Republicans said the changes would only hurt law-abiding Americans.

He knows full well that the law already says that people who make their living selling firearms must be licensed, regardless of venue. Still, rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens, Ryan said in a statement.

This executive order is just one more way to make it harder for law-abiding people to buy weapons or to be able to protect their families, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a GOP presidential candidate, told Fox News.

The guidance, at its heart, aims to achieve a long-time administration goal of at least narrowing the so-called gun show loophole.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers, but many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or in other informal settings don't register as dealers. The ATF has issued updated guidance that says the government can consider someone a gun dealer regardless of where the guns are sold.

The administration also said ATF is finalizing a rule to require checks for people buying certain weapons through a trust, corporation or other legal entity.

In an attempt to prevent gun purchases from falling through the cracks, the FBI will hire 230 more examiners to process background checks, the White House said.

In advance of the announcement, the president asserted he has the legal authority to act here. The president finalized the plan after meeting Monday with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey and other top officials.

The recommendations that are being made by my team here are ones that are entirely consistent with the Second Amendment, Obama said Monday, claiming they could potentially save lives.

The revived push to tighten Americas gun laws via executive action, however, has resulted in a backlash on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Republicans made clear they would fight the administration and accused the president of overstepping.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, who chairs a key appropriations panel, warned Lynch on Monday that he would use every tool at my disposal to immediately restrict DOJ funding if the department proceeds with new restrictions on our Constitutional rights.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump vowed to reverse any such actions if hes elected.

"I will veto that. I will un-sign that so fast," Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Biloxi, Miss.

While Obama took heat from Republicans, supporters of stronger action on gun control applauded the presidents new push.

"We definitely think there are things he can do," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates for expanding background checks. Gross says his recent conversations with White House aides have left him hopeful.

"It's very clear that the White House is feeling emboldened," he said.

On Thursday, Obama will take his argument to prime time, participating in a town hall discussion of gun violence on CNN. He's slated to make his case for changes in his State of the Union address on Jan. 12.

The high-profile rollout reflects a White House continuing to look for ways to wrap up unfinished business despite an uncooperative Congress.

After all but ignoring the issue in his first term, Obama changed course after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012. Nevertheless, the president failed to push a package of gun measures through Congress, including one expanding background checks.

At the same time, Obama took nearly two dozen executive actions to tighten gun laws, but left a major expansion of background checks out of the mix.

But after the shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Ore. in October, Obama ordered his staff to redouble the effort to look for ways to work around Congress.

The background check provision rests in the murky realm of agency "guidelines," which carry less weight than formally issued federal regulations and can easily be rescinded. Lynch said the administration chose to clarify guidelines because it allowed the policies to be implemented immediately. Left unsaid was the fact that developing regulations would have dragged out likely until Obama's presidency ends and would have generated more opportunities for Republicans to intervene.

The new guidance still exempts collectors and gun hobbyists, and the exact definition of who must register as a dealer and conduct background checks remains exceedingly vague.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Obamas executive action to expand gun sale background checks has opened up a legal can of worms, specifically the presidents bid to broaden the definition of whos a dealer -- and therefore must get a license and conduct background checks.

Under current federal law passed by Congress, only federally licensed dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. The law does not specify whether this applies to online sales and other areas -- so those selling or trading guns on websites or in informal settings such as flea markets often dont register.

As the centerpiece of Obama's new gun push, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Monday night issued updated guidance that now deems anyone in the business of selling guns a dealer, regardless of where they sell.

All of which puts a constitutional spotlight on Obamas actions, raising questions of interpretation that may have to be settled by the courts.

Mr. Obama will now require that anyone who sells a gun, that is even an 'occasional' seller, will be required to perform a background check. By defining what an 'occasional seller' is, the president is essentially interpreting the law, a job reserved for the courts, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News' senior judicial analyst, said in a FoxNews.com opinion piece.

Until the courts weigh in, it falls on the sellers to figure out who technically is "in the business" of dealing.

It's a tough question -- and one with serious implications. As Obama noted during remarks at the White House Tuesday, failure to follow these rules can result in criminal prosecution.

While the new guidance says collectors and gun hobbyists are largely exempt, the exact definition of who must register and conduct background checks is vague. Some officials suggested that selling just one or two firearms could subject a seller to these rules.

Philip Dacey, president of the Pennsylvania Gun Collectors Association, told FoxNews.com that while he thinks the new orders will not have a huge impact on collectors, the devil is in the details.

"I think [to require a license for] one or two guns would be ridiculous, and how will you enforce it? If theres no paperwork trail, how would you know when people are selling one or two guns to their neighbor?" Dacey said.

Dacey also noted that getting a federal license could take over three months and entail a complex process involving fingerprints, photographs and a visit by ATF agents.

The guidance says determining whether someone is engaged in the business of dealing requires looking at "the specific facts and circumstances of your activities.

As a general rule, you will need a license if you repetitively buy and sell firearms with the principal motive of making a profit. In contrast, if you only make occasional sales of firearms from your personal collection, you do not need to be licensed, the guidance says.

Click here to read the guidance.

However, the document also notes the courts have deemed people dealers in some cases even if they only sell a couple guns.

Note that while quantity and frequency of sales are relevant indicators, courts have upheld convictions for dealing without a license when as few as two firearms were sold, or when only one or two transactions took place, when other factors were also present, the guidance says.

In a conference call with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett sought to clarify, but risked making the confusion even greater.

ATF will make clear that whether you are engaged in the business depends on the facts and circumstances, Jarrett said, according to The Washington Free Beacon. On factors such as: whether you represent yourself as a dealer, such as making business cards or taking credit card statements. Whether you sell firearms shortly after theyre acquired or whether you buy or sell in the original packaging.

On the question of the number of guns sold, Lynch said: It can be as few as one or two depending upon the circumstances under which the person sells the gun."

Adding to the questions, the background check provision rests in the murky realm of agency "guidelines," which carry less weight than formally issued federal regulations and can easily be rescinded.

Republicans blasted the new guidance as a form of intimidation that would only target law-abiding citizens.

[Obama] knows full well that the law already says that people who make their living selling firearms must be licensed, regardless of venue, said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a statement. Still, rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens. His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.

FoxNews.com's Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps new television ad showing dozens of people swarming over a border fence is being criticized by a prominent fact-checker for using footage from a Spanish autonomous city that shares a border with Morocco.

The ad features a narrator who says of Trump, "He'll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for, as images show people streaming across a border fence.

PolitiFact said the footage comes from the Italian television network RepubblicaTV, which posted video on May 3, 2015 of Moroccans crossing the border into the Spanish city of Melilla.

"Trumps television ad purports to show Mexicans swarming over 'our southern border.' However, the footage used to support this point actually shows African migrants streaming over a border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla, more than 5,000 miles away. We rate the claim Pants on Fire," PolitiFact said in its ruling on the ad.

But the Trump campaign defended the ad, the candidate's first TV ad of the 2016 cycle.

In a statement to Fox News on Monday, Trumps campaign said the use of the footage was "intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration."

"The biased main stream media doesnt understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and their families do," the statement continued.

The ad is part of the campaign's $2 million-a-week buy in early-voting Iowa and New Hampshire.
A new study is questioning long-held government claims that background checks on private gun transfers could help stop mass public shootings.

The report, published by the Crime Prevention Research Center on Jan. 2, argues that not only are background checks expensive, but that they have failed to thwart mass public shootings.

The findings come as President Obama on Tuesday formally announced plans to expand background checks and make other changes to Americas gun rules through executive action. The White House has aggressively pushed for background checks following mass public shootings.

After the December murders by a husband and wife terror team in San Bernardino, Calif., Obama told the nation there were steps the U.S. could take to improve the odds that they dont happen as frequently: commonsense gun safety laws, stronger background checks.

The study, however, states that the initial data on universal background checks does not confirm the claims of supporters and the White House.

Despite the frequent calls for expanded background checks after mass public shootings, there is no evidence that background checks on private transfers of guns would have prevented any of the attacks that have taken place since at least 2000, the study states, adding that there is no statistical evidence that proves the mass public shootings are rarer in states with background checks on private transfers.

Simple regression estimates provide no support for the claim that background checks reduce mass public shootings or the harm from those attacks, the study states. Mass public shootings may vary between states for many reasons that have nothing to do with background checks.

Since 2013, states with universal background checks have had 124 percent more mass public shootings and dramatically higher rates of death and injury.

Per capita, there were 267 percent more deaths and 1,431 percent more injuries, the study states.

The study also found the per capita rate of deaths and injuries from mass public shootings increases after states pass stricter background checks on private transfers.

In addition, the study calls out the costs of expanding background checks to private transfers  specifically, the fees attached to private transfers.

Law-abiding poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas and who benefit the most from protecting themselves will be the ones most likely priced out of owning guns for protection, the study finds. Without some benefits in terms of either reduced crime or mass public shootings, it is hard to see how these rules pass any type of cost-benefit test.

Obama, speaking Tuesday at the White House, acknowledged that the changes cant stop every act of violence. But he said, We maybe cant save everybody but we could save some.

Federal law requires a criminal and mental illness background check for every person who buys a gun through a federally licensed dealer. Felons as well as those who have been involuntarily committed for mental illness are banned from buying a gun.
As the terrorist group ISIS is pushed out of northern Iraq, archaeologists are resuming work in the region, making new discoveries and figuring out how to conserve archaeological sites and reclaim looted antiquities.

Several discoveries, including new Neanderthal skeletal remains, have been made at Shanidar Cave, a site in Iraqi Kurdistan that was inhabited by Neanderthals more than 40,000 years ago.

Additionally, though ISIS did destroy and loot a great number of sites, there are several ways for archaeologists, scientific institutions, governments and law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe to help save the region's heritage, said Dlshad Marf Zamua, a Kurdish archaeologist and doctoral student at Leiden University in the Netherlands. [Photos: Restoring Life to Iraq's Ruined Artifacts]

He criticized antiquity dealers who are benefiting financially from ISIS' looting and destruction, calling on authorities in North America and Europe to prevent those dealers from selling northern Iraq's heritage. "It was said that war was created for selling weapons, but in the situation of our area, the war was created for selling weapons, oil and antiquity objects," Marf Zamua said.

New research

Before ISIS moved into Iraq in the summer of 2014, scientists with 45 foreign missions from 16 countries were conducting archaeological excavations and surveys in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, said Marf Zamua.

Over the past few months, Kurdish forces have gone on the offensive and, with support from allied air strikes, are pushing ISIS out of the region. And archaeologists are returning to the area, including at Shanidar Cave. This cave was originally excavated between 1952 and 1960 by a team led by archaeologist Ralph Solecki from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The archaeologists at that time found several Neanderthal skeletons and pollen remains suggesting that the Neanderthals placed flowers in graves before burial.

In an article recently published in the journal Antiquity, a team that has recently returned to Shanidar Cave reported finding additional Neanderthal bones, "including a hamate [a wrist bone], the distal ends of the right tibia and fibula, and some articulated ankle bones, scattered fragments of two vertebrae, a rib and long bone fragments."

The newfound bones are likely from one of the Neanderthals that archaeologists dug up in the 1950s, said University of Cambridge archaeologist Graeme Barker, who is part of the research team. He said that as excavations continue, new Neanderthal skeletons may be found.

Additionally the team's research is shedding light on the environment in the cave where the Neanderthals lived.

For instance, scientists reporting in another paper published in the journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology found that bees were transporting pollen into the cave. This complicates the idea that Neanderthals in the cave buried their dead with flowers, suggesting instead that pollen remains from flowers could have entered the cave through natural means.

Protecting heritage

When ISIS took over parts of northern Iraq, the group began looting and destroying archaeological sites such as ancient Assyrian cities like Nimrud. After bulldozing these cities, but before blasting them, ISIS looted thousands of artifacts from the sites, Marf Zamua said. "Thousands of objects reached the black markets over the world."

Additionally, many unexcavated "Tell" (mound) sites were also bulldozed, looted and blasted. Those sites contained artifacts that have not yet been excavated. There "are hidden treasure [within these mounds], and by losing any of them, we lose an important part of history and civilization of Mesopotamia," Marf Zamua said.

In addition to curtailing the black market, scientific organizations in the West can help train Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian archaeologists in conservation techniques, Marf Zamua said. "Institutes can offer local archaeologists scholarships in restoration, protecting heritage and museum studies," he said.

Additionally, in Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), the Iraqi Institute for the conservation of Antiquities and Heritage offers "courses taught by specialists in conservation of all types of objects, materials and architecture," said Marf Zamua. Volunteer guest lecturers from universities and museums in the West help teach the courses.

Those with professional expertise who are willing to travel to Erbil could contact the institute and offer to volunteer, Marf Zamua said, noting that the institute provides accommodations and food free of charge.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Iraqis aren't the only ones relishing recent victories against ISIS. There are also archaeologists who have returned and made new discoveries at a key Neanderthal site in Iraqi Kurdistan, one they describe as having "iconic status in Palaeolithic archaeology." Shanidar Cave's status was established following 1950s excavations by Ralph Solecki, a Smithsonian Institution archaeologist, Live Science reports.

As modern-day archaeologists write in Antiquity, he uncovered several Neanderthal burials; the pollen contained in soil samples taken there was in 1975 proposed as evidence of flowers placed at the burials.

Some five years ago, the Kurdistan Regional Government suggested archaeologists return to Shanidar. Initial fieldwork began in the summer 2014; interrupted by ISIS, two phases of excavation ultimately occurred in 2015.

Those excavations, which "focused on the location at which the earlier fieldwork discovered most of the Neanderthal remains," yielded human bones (probably from those previously unearthed remains) and other "ephemeral but persistent evidence for human activity," like ash and charcoal, from around 40,000 years ago.

"The emerging picture is of small groups making regular short-term visits for shelter and tool maintenance in extreme conditions," the article reads. Live Science points to additional research on the cave: a pollen-focused scientific paper published in December that suggests the pollen in the cave may have actually been carried in by bees, disrupting the notion of burial flowers.

(The remains of a 16th-century pirate may have been found under a playground.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: With ISIS Forced From Iraq, Old Bones Turn Up

More From Newser
The Hypnos Hoodie is about to turn many a dream of napping on the go into a reality.

Although the product, which launched on Kickstarter on Nov. 13, comes in basic sizes and colors, dont let the hoodies outward simplicity fool you. This oversized hood has superpowers. It contains a removable, inflatable ergonomic pillow that is designed to inflate and deflate easily with a valve, making the next snooze as easy as flip, breathe, zzzz.

Related: Garmin unveils Varia Vision, touts tech to boost cyclist safety

These wearable sleep aids are made in Los Angeles and come in fleece, French terry, cotton and nylon, with options for men, women and children. Hypnos also offers some versions in pullover or zip front styles.

On its Kickstarter page, Hypnos writes, the demands of modern life can catch up with us all. Hypnos was originally created for and remains devoted to the traveler, jet setter, nomadic families and anyone who loves comfort on the go.

Related: Rise of smartwatches prompts top Japanese university to ban ALL watches from exams

It looks as though plenty of people share this vision. As of the publication of this story, 1,080 backers had pledged $110,953 for the campaign on Kickstarter, while the original goal was to raise $30,000.

The campaign ends on Jan. 11.
A Texas police chief who warns President Barack Obama in a social media video that trying to disarm Americans would "cause a revolution in this country" is the latest law enforcement official to urge citizens to arm themselves in the wake of mass shootings.

Randy Kennedy, longtime chief in the small East Texas town of Hughes Springs, about 120 miles east of Dallas, says in the video posted this week on his personal Facebook page that the Second Amendment was established to protect people from criminals and "terrorists and radical ideology."

"It's also there to protect us against a government that has overreached its power," Kennedy says in the video. "You are not our potentate, sir. You are our servant."

He warned people in his town to prepare themselves: "Be ready when the wolf comes to the door, because it's on its way."

Law enforcement officials in Arizona, Florida and New York also have recently prompted citizens to arm themselves -- some using similar comments aimed at terrorism.

Kennedy said his call to arms was the result of his disappointment with Obama's Oval Office speech Sunday in which the president vowed the U.S. will overcome a new phase of the terror threat that seeks to "poison the minds" of people here and around the world. The police chief told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he's not asking residents to turn into vigilantes or "become super action heroes."

He said feedback on his video has been supportive for the most part.

"There have been a few extremely nasty comments, calling me basically a backwoods redneck hick creating monsters that don't exist," he said.

Wayne Ivey, the sheriff in Brevard County, Florida, said in a video post on the department's Facebook page over the weekend that political leaders appear more interested in being politically correct than protecting people. He urged residents to arm themselves as a first line of defense against an active shooter.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," Ivey said.

Another Florida sheriff, Steve Whidden in Hendry County, this week encouraged more people to carry weapons because "we as a nation are under attack by radical Islamic terrorists."

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona issued a statement Tuesday asking "legally armed citizens to take a stand, and take action during a mass shooting/terrorist event until law enforcement arrives."

And last week, Ulster County Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum in upstate New York called for licensed gun owners in his county to arm themselves when leaving home, citing mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

John Moritz, spokesman for the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said he assumes the comments from Kennedy, the Texas chief, reflect the views held in his community. But Moritz said caution should be used when giving such instructions to people who have no law enforcement training.

"Most times citizens are going to be best served and best protected by calling trained law enforcement officers whenever they feel their lives or property are in danger," Moritz said.

The FBI said last week that it processed a record number of firearms background checks on Black Friday, the busy shopping time the day after Thanksgiving. The agency processed 185,345 background checks -- roughly two per second -- the same day that three people were killed and nine others wounded in an attack at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado.

The previous record for the most background checks in a single day was Dec. 21, 2012, about a week after 20 children and six adults were shot to death in a Connecticut elementary school. The week following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary saw the processing of 953,613 gun background checks.
A University of North Texas police officer shot and killed a student who allegedly threatened him with an ax early Sunday.

The student was identified as Ryan McMillan, who had celebrated his 21st birthday Sunday. University spokeswoman Kelley Reese told the Dallas Morning News. McMillan was a sophomore transfer student from Fort Worth studying pre-hospitality.

UNT spokeswoman Margarita Venegas says police responded about 1 a.m. to a report that someone was breaking car windows in a parking garage about two blocks from campus. KDFW reported that university police were asked to respond to the situation because local police in the town of Denton were busy handling other calls.

When the officer responded, Venegas said McMillan "advanced" toward him with the ax in his hand. The officer, whose name has not been released, shot and killed McMillan.

The officer, who was not injured, has been placed on administrative leave pending the result of an investigation by Texas Rangers.

The university's student newspaper, the North Texas Daily, posted a grainy 10-second video of McMillan walking through the parking garage earlier in the evening with the ax in his hand.

"This is a tragic event that saddens us as a university community," UNT President Neal Smatresk said in a statement. "We offer our condolences to the individuals, their families and all involved."

North Texas, which has just under 30,000 undergraduates, is located in Denton, approximately 40 miles northwest of Dallas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A former South Carolina police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist was released from jail Monday evening and will remain under house arrest until his trial is set to begin next Halloween.

Circuit Judge Clifton Newman agreed with a defense request earlier Monday that Michael Slager be released on a $500,000 surety bond.

Slager was released from jail custody about 7 p.m., said Maj. Eric Watson, a spokesman for the Charleston County Sheriff's Department.

Slager will have to remain at an undisclosed location in South Carolina and must have no contact with the victim's family. He has been held in solitary confinement at the Charleston County Detention Center since his arrest last April.

Slager, a former North Charleston police officer, is shown on cellphone video firing eight times as Walter Scott ran from a traffic stop. Attention over the case and the bystander's cellphone video enflamed a national debate about how blacks are treated by white police officers.

Slager, 35, faces 30 years to life without parole if convicted of murder.

Slager's attorney, Andy Savage, said his client wanted a speedy trial and he was ready to go to court this spring.

However, prosecutor Scarlett Wilson is also prosecuting Dylann Roof, the white suspect in the killings of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church, in a July trial. She said a state Supreme Court order prevents her from trying other cases before that one.

Newman set the trial date and then considered Savage's second request to release his client on bond. Last September, Newman refused to set bond, saying that Slager posed a threat to the community.

Savage said Slager has health problems and faced another 11 months in jail.

Wilson said there's been no change in circumstances to warrant the renewed request for bond. "We believe the defendant remains, as the court found, a danger to the community and a flight risk," she said.

Walter Scott, the father of the slain man, also addressed the judge, saying he often goes to the cemetery to visit his son's flower-bedecked grave.

"If we let him out, he's going to go home to see his wife and children. All I can look at is a pot of flowers," Scott said.

"I hope you allow me reasonable bond to work on my case," Slager told the judge who said "these are excruciating issues for the court to deal with."

But Newman said he was troubled that the trial is being delayed because of the order in the Roof case.

An attorney for the Scott family urged the Charleston community to remain calm after Slager's bond was set.

"Doing anything to damage someone's property or to hurt another innocent individual is not doing anything that will help the Scott family," attorney Justin Bamberg said. "It's not doing anything that is going to have an effect on the criminal trial process. The only thing that can do is land you where Officer Slager is right now, which is a defendant on a criminal charge."

Joe Savitz, a criminal defense attorney in Columbia, said he wasn't surprised that Slager was granted the opportunity to get out of jail, given the major events  like the shooting deaths of nine black churchgoers in Charleston and the ensuing debate over the Confederate flag  that have happened in the months since his arrest.

"The Roof case is going to be tried fairly soon," Savitz said. "Everybody is kind of focusing on that."

In October, the city of North Charleston approved a $6.5 million civil settlement with Scott's family.
Gov. Chris Christie's comments on the GOP campaign trail regarding his prosecutions of extremists while he was New Jersey's U.S. attorney have focused renewed scrutiny on two highly publicized cases.

Both resulted in convictions and long prison sentences but also raised questions about the government's methods.

London merchant Hemant Lakhani (HEH'-muhnt luh-KAH'-nee) was convicted in 2005 of trying to broker a deal for shoulder-fired missiles he thought were going to be used to shoot down airplanes.

Five foreign-born Muslim men living in southern New Jersey were convicted in 2008 of plotting to attack the Fort Dix military base.

In both cases, defense attorneys argued that the defendants wouldn't have done anything if not for government informants who spent months pushing them into action.
Police in New York City have arrested a 15-year-old girl in the shooting and stabbing deaths of her mother and her mother's common-law husband.

Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said the teen told investigators her mother had been abusive.

She was charged Monday with two counts of murder and weapons possession.

The bodies of 39-year-old Rosie Sanchez and 40-year-old Anderson Nunez were discovered Sunday in their fifth floor Brooklyn apartment.

Police say Sanchez suffered multiple gunshot wounds. They say Nunez was found in the kitchen with gunshot and stab wounds.

Police say responding officers discovered the bloody scene after the public housing apartment's door was left ajar.
The city of Chicago has paid out $5.5 million in compensation to dozens of people who claimed to have been victims of police brutality decades ago.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that all but "five or six" of the 57 people whose claims of being abused were deemed credible received $100,000. The others had received previous settlements and saw those amounts deducted from their share.

The checks have been mailed 44 years after the "first known instance" of torture by a police unit led by former commander Jon Burge and known as the "midnight crew."

More than 100 men, most of them African-American, have accused Burge and officers under his command of shocking, suffocating and beating them into giving false confessions, some of which landed them on death row. Burge has never been criminally charged with torture, but he served a 4 -year sentence for lying about the torture in a civil case and was released from a halfway house last year.

"Reparations is not a necessity," Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Sun-Times. "But it is a moral compunction and a moral reckoning to right a wrong. There is no statute of limitations on that

The Sun-Times reports that the latest award to victims is a fraction of the estimated $100 million that has beenpaid in court-ordered judgments, settlements of lawsuits and legal fees  most of it spent by the financially strapped city of Chicago and some by Cook County  over the years related to the torture scandal. The $100,000 payment most victims received Monday is a fraction of some previous settlements.

The payments mark the latest black eye for the police department in the nation's third-largest city, which has come under withering criticism since the release in November of a video showing white police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014.

A months-long claims process for the payments included vetting by an arbitrator and by a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Kent School of Law.

The reparations were part of an ordinance the City Council passed last year that also mandated a formal apology, the construction of a memorial to the victims and the addition of the police torture to the city's school history curriculum. It also provides psychological counseling and free tuition at some community colleges. Some of the benefits are available to victims' children and grandchildren.

One torture victim, Darrell Cannon, said Monday that the payments were only the first step toward healing the city.

"We still have a long way to go," he said.

Cannon was freed after 24 years in prison when a review board determined that evidence against him was tainted. The Sun-Times reported that Cannon has claimed that Burge's officers played a game of Russian Roulette with him and shocked his genitals with a cattle prod.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the Chicago Sun-Times.
A historic black church based in Virginia has pledged to donate $1 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Alfred Street Baptist Church, a historically black congregation in Alexandria that traces its history back to the early 1800s, has announced their donation for the educational institute.

"ASBC has always been a leader in community outreach and missions within the faith-based community," said the Rev. Howard-John Wesley, lead pastor of Alfred Street Baptist, in comments to The Christian Post on Monday. Wesley added that this was the first time a faith-based organization had donated $1 million to the Smithsonian.

"We hope and pray that other predominantly African-American churches and organization will contribute to telling our story as well."

The National Museum of African-American History and Culture was first approved by Congress in 2003 to be part of the Smithsonian Institute.

"The Smithsonian Board of Regents, the governing body of the Institution, voted in January 2006 to build the museum on a 5-acre site on Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets N.W.," reads the NMAAHC's website.

"The new museum, the Smithsonian's 19th, will be the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African-American life, art, history and culture. It is expected to open in 2016."

Read the Original Story from ChristianPost.com
The defense for a man charged with murder and racketeering in a San Francisco Chinatown organized crime investigation is expected to finish its closing arguments.

J. Tony Serra, lead attorney for Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, resumes his final comments Tuesday in a trial that has gained widespread attention for colorful characters and alleged crimes.

The investigation, which involved an undercover federal agent posing as a member of an East Coast crime syndicate, had previously snared a state senator. And in an unusual move, Chow took to the stand to testify he had renounced his life of crime and declare his innocence.

Prosecutors have said Chow took over a Chinese fraternal group with criminal ties after having its previous leader killed and ran an enterprise that engaged in drug trafficking, money laundering and the sale of stolen cigarettes and alcohol. He is also accused in a second killing.

Serra  a flamboyant and well-known defense lawyer  derided the prosecution's evidence Monday as flimsy, based on secret recordings and shady testimony from Chow's former colleagues. He railed at the government use of secret surveillance.

"If you convict this man on the nature and quality of the evidence that has been produced, you will be convicting an innocent person," Serra said, later adding: "This is a case that is fraught, fraught with reasonable doubt."

Much of Monday's trial in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer was consumed by a lengthy closing argument by the prosecution. Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Badger asked jurors to disregard claims that Chow was a changed man, saying that deception was his true nature.

"He is not the victim here," Badger said during her nearly four-hour presentation. "He is not the world's most misunderstood criminal."

She pointed to an evidence table displaying about a dozen firearms, guns seized from the homes of Chow's alleged partners in crime.

The 56-year-old Chow sat at a table flanked by four of his attorneys. He looked on stoically for the most part, aided by a language interpreter. At one point, he cheerily waved hello to a person in the courtroom audience.

After Serra concludes his closing, prosecutors will get a chance to rebut. Jurors could get the case Tuesday.

The undercover FBI agent testified that he spent hours with Chow and people connected to him at fancy restaurants and nightclubs, recording many of their conversations.

The agent, who testified under a pseudonym to protect his identity, said Chow tried to distance himself from any criminal activity during the probe but repeatedly accepted money after introducing the agent to money launderers.

The probe led to the indictment of more than two dozen people in 2014 and the subsequent racketeering conviction of state Sen. Leland Yee.

Chow testified to dealing drugs and getting involved in a street gang but said he decided to renounce criminal activity after engaging in meditation.

He denied involvement in the slayings and said the agent gave him the money because the agent was looking out for him, not in exchange for criminal activity.
Former students of a prestigious Rhode Island boarding school are calling for an independent investigation into sexual abuse that they say spanned three decades and involved at least seven former staff members.

St. George's School in Middletown announced last month that it found 26 students were sexually abused by six school employees in the 1970s and 1980s. It acknowledged it didn't report abusers to authorities.

During a news conference Tuesday in Boston, three former students called for an independent investigation and called on the school to set up a victims' assistance fund for mental health counseling.

The school's current headmaster didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Rhode Island State Police began investigating in November.

About 400 students attend the private high school, with annual tuition of $56,000.
A county in Central Texas is winning the war on feral hogs one tail at a time.

Caldwell County has become the Lone Star State's front line in the fight to curb the exploding population of the wild beasts, which cause millions of dollars in property and environmental damage every year. A volunteer task force has found success using a host of strategies including $5 tail bounties, helicopter hunts and smartphone-controlled corrals.

One hog can become 200 over the course of two years.  Nick Dornak

Were probably the most coordinated program in the state, Nick Dornak, founder of the countys Feral Hog Task Force, told FoxNews.com.

In the two years since it was founded, the task force has helped kill or capture 10,000 of the wild swine, providing a model  and hope  for other counties dealing with the nearly 20-year-old wild hog boom.

The feral hogs -- which are much larger, meaner and wilier than their farm-raised cousins -- destroy crops, break farm machinery and pollute rivers and streams. Dornak estimated the hogs cause $2 million in damages every year in the agricultural community, devouring crops and digging ruts that damage tractors and other equipment.

When they are not sowing a path of destruction, they are breeding, he said. Sows can bear two litters per year, with each litter consisting of up to a dozen.

One hog can become 200 over the course of two years, Dornak said, noting that 70 percent of the hogs must be killed each year just to maintain current population levels.

The hogs are shot by hunters, sometimes from aboard helicopters, and trapped along the waterways they travel. Others, including entire broods, are caught in giant corrals that are closed remotely after the quarry is lured inside.

Of all the methods employed by Dornaks porcine patrol, the $5 bounty for tails has been one of the most effective  at least in terms of monitoring the number culled. Setting up a roadside table, he and his fellow volunteers have paid out thousands of dollars for the tails that prove there is one less wild hog in the area. Funding comes in part from $100,000 in state and county grants, according to the Austin-American Statesman.

Wild hog meat is leaner than farm-raised pig, and requires extra care in cooking because they can carry diseases. But when handled properly, its just pork, Dornak said.

Its good meat, especially if the hogs are kept in good condition, Dornak said.

The tails can be turned in by hunters who kill the hogs or by farmers and ranchers, who buy and take them to market. Hunters, who face no restrictions on the number of hogs they kill, can get up to $300 each. Some report bagging hundreds per year.

In the last two years Ive gotten out of the red and into the black, Val Ramirez, a landowner and hog trapper in Caldwell County, told FoxNews.com. On average, (the revenue from selling wild hogs) runs between $13,000 and $18,000 a year.

The feral hog -- often referred to as a razorback or wild boar -- has seen an explosion in population across rural America in recent years, with an estimated 6 million nationwide. Nearly half are believed to inhabit Texas.

Hogs were first introduced to North America by Spanish settlers. The breed most commonly seen in Texas is a mixture of those hogs and Russian boars brought over more recently for sport hunting, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Some speculate the population boom is due to relatively recent cross-breeding in the wild.

In Caldwell County, the hogs travel along the San Marcos River and Plum Creek, leaving behind large amounts of fecal matter and polluting the waterways in the process. Ramirez sets up dozens of traps along the creek and on the land of other ranchers looking for help.

They are just a nuisance, he said. We are not going to get rid of them completely. Trapping will never get rid of all of them, but at least we can try to curtail them.
A Georgia grandfather came home from working a night shift to find his wife, son and granddaughter dead from blunt force trauma with their bodies scattered throughout the house, FOX5 reported.

The victims were identified as Gloria Short, her son Caleb, 17, and her 10-year-old granddaughter Geonia Lindsey. Gloria Short was identified as being in her 50s.

Its a brutal death, Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Bryan told the Ledger-Enquirer. Its a horrible situation. Its out of the ordinary for us to run across a triple homicide like this.

Robert Short came home from his job as a nurse around 8 a.m. on Monday to find his family massacred, authorities said. The north Columbus homes garage door was open when Robert arrived and two vehicles were missing. Both were later recovered, police said.

Detectives have provided scant details but Bryan told the Ledger-Enquirer that bloody footprints were found at the scene.

The bodies were only removed from the home late Monday night. Autopsies were scheduled for Wednesday, Bryan told the Ledger-Enquirer.

Gloria Shorts brother, Teddy Kindred, said his sister was a good mother who loved her kids and grandkids.

I am lost really, without words, because I never thought anything like this would happen to her, Kindred told FOX5. She didnt deserve it because she was a God-fearing woman and she worked hard for everything she had.
A former South Carolina policeman charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist will remain under house arrest until his trial begins in the fall.

The release of Michael Slager on bond Monday was a disappointment to the family of the victim, Walter Scott, said Justin Bamberg, the attorney for the family.

"The family is not happy about Mr. Slager getting bond," Bamberg said shortly after Circuit Judge Clifton Newman said Slager could be released on $500,000 surety bond.

Until he was released Monday evening, Slager had been in solitary confinement at the Charleston County Detention Center since the incident last April.

"This is just another step in the criminal justice process, and the family believes at the end of the day that justice will prevail," Bamberg said.

Slager will have to remain at an undisclosed location in South Carolina and must have no contact with the victim's family.

Slager, a former North Charleston police officer, is shown on cellphone video firing eight times as Walter Scott ran from a traffic stop. The case enflamed a national debate about how blacks are treated by white police officers.

Slager, 34, faces 30 years to life without parole if convicted of murder.

During an hourlong hearing Monday, Newman heard Slager's attorney, Andy Savage, argue that his client should be granted a speedy trial.

Savage said he was prepared to go to court this spring. But prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said the state would not be ready until November.

She is also prosecuting Dylann Roof, the white man charged with murder in the killings of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church. That trial is set to begin in July and the state Supreme Court has issued an order protecting Wilson from trying other cases before that one.

Savage renewed his request for bond after Newman rejected an initial bond request last September. The judge said at the time that Slager posed a threat to the community.

Savage said Monday that Slager has health problems and faced another 11 months in jail before even going to trial.

Scott's father, also named Walter, told the judge he often goes to the cemetery to visit his son's grave, which is adorned with flowers.

"If we let him out, he's going to go home to see his wife and children. All I can look at is a pot of flowers," Scott said.

"I hope you allow me reasonable bond to work on my case," Slager told the judge who conceded "these are excruciating issues for the court to deal with."

But Judge Newman said he was troubled that the trial is being delayed because of the order in the Roof case.

Bamberg urged the Charleston community to remain calm after Slager's bond was set.

"Doing anything to damage someone's property or to hurt another innocent individual is not doing anything that will help the Scott family," he said. "It's not doing anything that is going to have an effect on the criminal trial process. The only thing that can do is land you where Officer Slager is right now, which is a defendant on a criminal charge."

Joe Savitz, a criminal defense attorney in Columbia, said he wasn't surprised Slager was granted the opportunity to get out of jail, given the major events  like the shooting deaths of nine black churchgoers in Charleston and the ensuing debate over the Confederate flag  that have happened in the months since his arrest.

"The Roof case is going to be tried fairly soon," Savitz said. "Everybody is kind of focusing on that."
A 39-year-old mother from Colorado City, Texas was found dead inside her car two days after she was reported missing, local media reported Monday.

Amber Sevier's car was halfway submerged in a ravine southwest of Abilene, the Mitchell County Sheriff's Office told KWES. Investigators said it was unclear how her car ended up in the water.

Sevier had called a friend on Saturday night before her phone either died or was turned off, sheriff Patrick Toombs told KTXS.

Invesigators said they planned to conduct an autopsy.
A lawyer says former Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger's longtime girlfriend plans to plead guilty to a federal contempt charge.

Catherine Greig already is serving an eight-year prison term for helping Bulger avoid capture during his 16 years on the run.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington told a magistrate judge Monday she would plead guilty to the one-count contempt indictment. Prosecutors allege she disobeyed a judge's order to testify before a grand jury investigating whether other people helped and harbored Bulger.

Greig didn't attend the hearing. Reddington says a formal plea agreement hasn't been filed.

Bulger and Greig were living in Santa Monica, California, when they were captured in 2011.

Bulger was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He argued he was unable to fully present his defense at trial.
Police officials in Ohio say two officers who raced toward a burning car to rescue the driver on Christmas Day are heroes.

The driver lost control of his car, slamming it into a utility pole early Christmas morning in Kent, southeast of Cleveland, Fox 8 reports. His car quickly became engulfed in flames.

Police say the driver managed to get out of the car, but his clothing was still on fire. That's when officers Matt Brooks and Matt Butcher reportedly raced into action, pulling him to safety and wrapping him in a blanket.

"They say they were just doing their job but I believe they are heroes," Kent police Lt. Michael Lewis told the news station.

Click for more from Fox 8.
Americas federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radical Islam, warn critics, who say imprisoned terrorists are more likely to spread their beliefs than renounce them.

As law enforcement authorities lock up more home-grown terrorists, experts are warning the success could turn sour if jailhouse jihadists are allowed to infect fellow inmates. Prisons have long been criticized for a culture that can make some inmates more dangerous than when they entered, but the possibility that typical felons could become lone wolf terrorists upon earning parole is a disturbing new wrinkle.

Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization."  Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn.

If we continue to downplay the threat, we do so at our own peril, said Patrick Dunleavy, author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorisms Prison Connection.

The aggressive recruitment of Americans by ISIS has resulted in a spike in domestic terror-related convictions. Some 71 people are imprisoned in the U.S. on ISIS-related charges, including 56 individuals arrested in 2015, the most terrorism arrests in a single year since September 2001, according to George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism

In addition, the FBI has said it is currently conducting more than 900 investigations into ISIS-linked radicalization, including cases in all 50 states.

There are hundreds more federal inmates serving time for terrorist activities related to other terror groups. An estimated 100 are scheduled for release in the next five years, according to the Congressional Research Service. Still more terror suspects could be transferred to U.S. prisons from Guantanamo Bay in the coming months.

We have never been faced with such a large number of terror inmates before, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., during a recent Homeland Security Committee hearing on countering violent extremism in prison.

King and others say the federal Bureau of Prisons must do a better job of monitoring and, if necessary, isolating inmates who could radicalize others behind bars.

Dunleavy, a retired deputy inspector in the criminal intelligence unit of the New York Department of Correctional Services, said criminals have been radicalized in prisons for years, and predicted it will only get worse. He cited Chicago gang member Jose Padilla, who converted to radical Islam while doing time in jail in the 1980s, and was later accused of plotting to set off a radiological dirty bomb in the U.S. He is now serving a 21-year sentence for conspiring to commit acts of terror overseas.

More recently, ex-convict Alton Nolen was arrested in a September, 2014 attack at his former place of employment, a food processing plant in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore. Nolen, who is awaiting trial, allegedly beheaded a 54-year-old female worker while yelling Islamic slogans. Dunleavy believes Nolen converted to Islam while serving time in an Oklahoma prison after attacking a police officer in 2010.

In between Padilla and Nolen, Dunleavy says there were scores of others who became radicalized in state and federal prisons, either by listening to fellow inmates or hearing sermons on contraband devices smuggled into prisons and shared.

Kevin James, who while serving time at Sacramentos New Folsom Prison on robbery charges in 2004, founded his own jihadist movement and recruited fellow inmate Levar Washington to join his cause. Upon Washington's release in 2005, he plotted to attack Los Angeles-area synagogues, the Israeli Consulate, the Los Angeles airport and U.S. military recruiting offices. James, remained in federal prison, where some critics fear he could be radicalizing more inmates to his cause.

Tens of thousands of federal prison inmates have converted to Islam while serving time, and many others have found other religions. Most do not subscribe to a violent interpretation of the faith, but it takes only a few to create a threat, according to Mark Hamm, a professor at Indiana State University who specializes in the field of prison radicalization.

It is not the sheer number of prisoners following extremist interpretations of religious doctrines that poses a threat, Hamm told FoxNews.com. Rather, it is the potential for the single individual to become radicalized.

Estimates of the number of terrorists behind bars could be too low because some could be serving time on weapons-related crimes, rather than terror-related. Those suspects are especially dangerous, Dunleavy said, because their involvement in terror plots may not be disclosed to prison officials who might otherwise be able to monitor them.

As far back as 2010, well before ISIS was formed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report that identified three dozen U.S. citizens who had converted to Islam while in U.S. prisons, and then traveled to Yemen to train at Al Qaeda camps upon being released.

According to the FBI, radicalized inmates are of concern for a number of reasons, including the possibility they could urge other prisoners to attend radical mosques upon their release from prison; could pose a risk to prison security inciting violence; and could pass on skills used in terrorism activities.

King, who has had several hearings on Islamic radicalization, said lapses in how prisoners are monitored and how religious service providers are vetted continue despite numerous oversight reports.

In June, the federal Bureau of Prisons disclosed in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that it failed to complete a background check on a religious services contractor who had a well-documented past of advocating violence against critics of Islamic extremism.

While monitoring prisoners is potentially more difficult, lawmakers believe the government could at least minimize the risk of radical clerics being invited into prisons to proselytize  and radicalize.

Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization, said Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., who introduced a measure that would compel the BOP to study prison radicalization and beef up background checks for clergy and other workers allowed access to inmates. By allowing volunteers to enter the system without first having to undergo a comprehensive background check, some of the most vulnerable members of society have become susceptible to radicalization.
Twin toddlers were killed in a house fire in Walker County, officials said.

An adult male was put into intensive care after the Monday evening fire in the Manchester community, north of Jasper, Walker County Coroner Joey Vick told AL.com.

Vick said the toddlers were 19-month-old twins -- one was a boy, the other a girl. The victims were found inside the house and will undergo autopsies to determine causes of death.

The victims' identities have not been released pending family notifications.



The State Fire Marshal's Office will help investigate the cause of the fire.
A Burundi official says talks to bring peace to his country will not resume Wednesday in Tanzania as agreed earlier.

Burundi's ambassador to Uganda Jean Bosco Barege said Tuesday his government has asked for more time to prepare for mediation by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Tanzania. Barege denied reports that the Burundi government had withdrawn from the talks.

Burundi has been rocked by violence since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for and won a controversial third term in office last year. April's announcement that Nkurunziza would stand for a third term sparked off violent street protests that led to a failed military coup in May and a rebellion. At least 400 people have died from the violence which has escalated since Nkurunziza's re-election in July.
Israeli soldiers patrolling the West Bank will soon get new protection in the form of neck guards, an army official told The Times of Israel Monday.

Stabbing attacks have happened almost daily over the past few months. A Palestinian attacker stabbed an Israeli soldier Tuesday in the West Bank, lightly wounding him before troops at the scene shot and killed the assailant, the military said.

Officials at Israel Defense Forces' Central Command reportedly asked for the new protection in November. The neck guard slips under a soldier's protective vest, The Times reports.

Still, officials admit there may be no way to keep Israeli troops completely safe from attackers. Theres no such thing as 100 percent protection, Lt. Col. Liron Segel said.

Tuesday's stabbing at the Gush Etzion junction is the latest in three-and-a-half months of near-daily attacks that have killed 21 Israelis since mid-September mostly in stabbing and car-ramming attacks. That death toll does not include the two Israelis killed in a shooting last Friday in the coastal city of Tel Aviv, as the motive for that assault remains unclear.

Police and special forces are still searching for the accused shooter in that attack, Nashat Milhem, an Arab from northern Israel who is considered to be armed and dangerous. He has been on the loose since the attack.

In the latest wave of violence since mid-September, at least 132 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, 91 of them identified by Israel as assailants. The rest died in clashes with security forces.

Israel says the violence is being fanned by a Palestinian campaign of lies and incitement. The Palestinians say it is rooted in frustration stemming from nearly five decades of Israeli occupation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lithuania's Defense Ministry says NATO jets patrolling the airspace of the Baltic countries scrambled 160 times to intercept Russian planes last year, a 14 percent increase from the year before.

The ministry said Tuesday that the number was up from 140 in 2014 and 47 in 2013, reflecting increased Russian air activities over the Baltic Sea.

Spain and Belgium are taking over NATO's rotating Baltic Air Policing mission this week from Hungary and Germany.

The alliance says the "efforts are focused on stopping incursions into NATO airspace and on preventing acts of air terrorism."
NATO is flatly dismissing a claim by Russia that its actions and expansion constitute a menace for Russia's security.

Alliance spokesperson Oana Lungescu said Tuesday that NATO is still studying Russia's new security doctrine, approved last week.

"That said," Lungescu added, "we categorically reject totally unfounded claims that NATO and its policies constitute a security threat" for Moscow.

The new Russian document, signed last Thursday by President Vladimir Putin, accuses NATO of violating international law and moving its military infrastructure closer to Russia's borders.

Last month, NATO invited Montenegro to begin accession talks to become its 29th member. Lungescu said "NATO's enlargement is not directed against anyone" and that each sovereign nation "has the right to choose for itself whether it joins any treaty or alliance."
Roman Catholic officials say a Franciscan priest who had been abducted by militants in Syria has been freed.

The Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, custodian of the Catholic Church's properties in the Holy Land, said the priest, Rev. Dhiya Azziz, was released late Monday. In a statement Tuesday, the custodian's office said the priest was abducted by jihadis who had hoped to "profit" from the abduction.

The statement did not elaborate, and it was not clear which of the multiple militant groups in Syria had been holding the priest and whether a ransom had been paid.

Sir, the news agency of the Italian bishops' conference, said the Iraqi-born Azziz was abducted on Dec. 23 as he travelled from Turkey to the town of Yacoubiyeh in Syria's northwestern Idlib province.
The terrorist who appeared in an Islamic State video showing the killing of five accused spies is believed to be a British man who left his job selling bouncy castles to join the insurgency.

The Daily Telegraph reported Monday that the prime suspect is Siddhartha Darr, a 32-year-old Muslim convert from east London. When he wasn't selling or renting bouncy castles for children's parties, he enjoyed the rock band Nirvana and the Arsenal soccer club, British media report.

Darr's mother and sister admitted the man on the video sounded similar to their relative, according to the Telegraph.

The masked man has been dubbed the "new Jihadi John" by some media outlets. The nickname is a reference to Mohamed Emwazi, a British-born Muslim who had figured prominently in earlier ISIS beheading videos before being killed in a U.S. drone strike this past November.

Relatives told the Telegraph that Darr had been raised as a Hindu, but converted to Islam to marry his wife Aisha and became radicalized soon after. However, Sky News reported that there had been no official confirmation of the militant's identity.

The Telegraph reported that Darr was arrested in September 2014 on suspicion of belonging to a banned group, Al-Muhajiroun, an organization whose goal is to bring Sharia law to Britain.

Hours after being granted bail, the Telegraph reported Darr was able to leave the U.K., making his way to Syria via Paris.

The man in the video, occasionally pointing a gun at the camera for emphasis, vows the extremists will soon invade Britain and establish Sharia law. He also mocks British Prime Minister David Cameron as a "slave of the White House," and "mule of the Jews."

The identity of a small boy who also appears in the ISIS video was confirmed by members of his family Monday.

Isa Dare, believed to be 4 or 5 years old, appears near the end of the video wearing camouflage gear. He makes a pointing gesture and says, "Go kill the kuffar (non-believer) over there."

The boy's mother, Grace Dare, was raised in a Christian family of Nigerian descent. She converted to Islam and changed her first name to Khadijah before traveling to Syria in 2012. She later married Abu Bakr, a Swedish ISIS fighter who is believed to have been killed.

Dare has said on social media she wanted to be the first British woman to kill a British or American ISIS hostage. Last year, she was said to have tweeted a picture of her son with an AK-47 rifle.

"I still call her our Grace," Dare's mother Victoria told the Daily Telegraph. "I want her back in my life. She is the only child that I have and the devil took her away."

Click for more from Sky News.

Click for more from The Daily Telegraph.
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
One U.S. special operations soldier was killed and another was wounded while fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan Tuesday, a U.S. defense official confirmed to Fox News.

One other person wounded is an American service member, but not a special ops soldier, and was believed to be inside the U.S. military medevac helicopter that landed nearby, according to that official.

U.S. forces were engaged in a "train, advise and assist" mission in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. He did not give any other details about the mission.

Cook said the battle was still ongoing around the helicopter late Tuesday in Afghanistan. He said some Afghan troops were also hurt.

Data curated by FindTheData

"We are deeply saddened by this loss," said Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, United States Forces-Afghanistan spokesman. "On behalf of General Campbell and all of USFOR-A, our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved."

The helicopter landed in Helmand Province in the city of Marjah to get wounded U.S. and Afghan troops out of the area, but sustained damage from a mortar attack.

The Taliban in recent weeks have focused their efforts on retaking parts of Helmand, and the U.S. has countered with U.S. special operations forces working with Afghan troops.



The helicopter is currently on the ground due to damage sustained in the attack. A U.S. Army spokesman told Reuters that the helicopter suffered mechanical malfunctions.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.


The widow of a bodyguard killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo wants an investigation into what she says were lax security measures at the French satirical newspaper before it was attacked a year ago.

Ingrid Brinsolaro said on RTL radio Tuesday that her husband "saw dysfunctions" and a lack of security in the office targeted and "it was impossible to do his job correctly."

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he was open to the idea of an investigation, but also defended the government's efforts to ensure security and fight Islamic extremism.

Both spoke as France marks a year since Islamic extremists targeted Charlie Hebdo and a kosher market Jan. 7-9, killing 17 people. French President Francois Hollande is unveiling plaques later Tuesday to honor the victims.
A woman has broken through the glass ceiling of a high-flying profession in Zimbabwe: the air force.

Ellen Chiweshe, whose title was group captain, has been promoted to become the southern African country's first female Air Commodore, the No. 3 post in the air force.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported Chiweshe's new rank in Tuesday's edition, which included a photograph of Air Force commander Perrance Shiri fitting a hat onto her head as part of a promotion ceremony.

The newspaper quotes Chiweshe as saying: "It was a man's world and it was difficult to break in."

Zimbabwe's constitution, adopted in 2013, requires gender parity in all state institutions, though men remain dominant in top government and military jobs.
Domino's Names Judy Werthauser EVP, Chief People Officer

Industry veteran joins company from Target Corp.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Jan. 4, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Domino's Pizza (NYSE:DPZ), the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, has named Judy L. Werthauser to the brand's Global Leadership Team as executive vice president and chief people officer, reporting to Domino's CEO J. Patrick Doyle. Werthauser joins Domino's effective today.

In her new role, Werthauser will be responsible for leading a best-in-class human resource organization and maintaining a people-first culture for the brand's company-owned stores, which employ more than 12,000 team members.

"Judy comes to us with broad human resources knowledge, covering retail, banking and education  and has even had the experience of an entrepreneur, having owned her own family business," said Doyle. "I believe she is the right person to help guide us through the next phase of growth for our brand."

Werthauser comes to Domino's from Target Corp., where she was senior vice president of HR. She joined Target in 2008, holding increasing levels of HR responsibilities there. These included overseeing a 300-person HR team in the Minneapolis headquarters, supporting over 15,000 Target team members, and in Bangalore, India. She provided oversight and direction for significant organizational change at Target, including the company's transformation to an omni-channel retailer with Target.com and Mobile, Target Technology Services, the establishment of an enterprise business intelligence function and in-house management of all online related strategies.

Prior to Target, Werthauser was senior vice president of HR for U.S. Bancorp in Minneapolis. She also held several senior HR positions at Marshall Field's department stores and directed student programs at the University of Minnesota. She was also the co-owner and operations leader of Aljohn's and Junkyard Retailers, a diverse retailing and manufacturing company that she grew from one to 11 locations.

About Domino's Pizza

Founded in 1960, Domino's Pizza is the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, with a significant business in carryout pizza. It ranks among the world's top public restaurant brands with a global enterprise of more than 12,100 stores in over 80 international markets. Domino's had global retail sales of over $8.9 billion in 2014, comprised of more than $4.1 billion in the U.S. and nearly $4.8 billion internationally. In the third quarter of 2015, Domino's had global retail sales of over $2.1 billion, comprised of over $1.0 billion in the U.S. and over $1.1 billion internationally. Its system is comprised of independent franchise owners who accounted for nearly 97% of Domino's stores as of the third quarter of 2015. Emphasis on technology innovation helped Domino's generate approximately 50% of U.S. sales from digital channels at the end of 2014, and reach an estimated run rate of $4.0 billion annually in global digital sales. Domino's features an ordering app lineup that covers nearly 95% of the U.S. smartphone market and has recently introduced several innovative ordering platforms, including Ford SYNC, Samsung Smart TV and Pebble Watch, as well as Twitter and text message using a pizza emoji. In June 2014, Domino's debuted voice ordering for its iPhone and Android apps, a true technology first within traditional and e-commerce retail.

Order - www.dominos.com

Mobile - http://mobile.dominos.com

Digital Info - anyware.dominos.com

Company Info - biz.dominos.com

Twitter - http://twitter.com/dominos

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/dominos

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/dominos

SOURCE Domino's Pizza

Media Contact:

Tim McIntyre

734-930-3563

tim.mcintyre@dominos.com

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1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza Inks 12-Unit Deal in South Florida

Entrepreneurial Couple Sees Potential in Emerging Customizable Fast-Casual Pizza Brand

January 05, 2016 // Franchising.com // GALLOWAY, N.J. - 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza, a fast-casual restaurant serving authentic, hand-tossed Neapolitan pizza with an American spin, has signed a franchise agreement to bring 12 units to South Florida, the first of which is expected to open by March 2016.

The South Florida agreement is part of 1000 Degrees rapid expansion throughout the state. The company has recently partnered with local franchisees in the Northern and Central regions of Florida, with restaurants expected to open in Lake City, Jacksonville, Gainesville and Orlando within the next three years.

Franchise partners Julianne Burtin and Nick Anagno of Inferno Group Holdings said they plan to open the 12 new South Florida 1000 Degrees locations within the next five years. Both entrepreneurs, having previously launched a swimwear company and grown a motorcycle brand and restaurant respectively, the couple decided to go into business together when they saw the rapid growth of the fast-casual pizza industry. Despite industry competition, Burtin and Anagno ultimately chose to pioneer their market and develop 19 counties of South Florida with 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza because it served the best tasting product.

Through our deal with 1000 Degrees, Nick and I found an opportunity to develop the customizable pizza concept throughout South Florida, said Burtin. Were excited to bring the brands upbeat vibe, high quality ingredients and great tasting food to our hometown and surrounding counties.

1000 Degrees currently has more than 10 domestic restaurants open in New Jersey, Michigan and Connecticut and one location in Malaysia. The international franchise is growing at a rapid pace, estimating it will open more than 80 units by the end of 2016, and projecting an additional 170 units by 2017.

This multi-unit franchise deal is only one example of the increased demand were seeing for 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza across the nation, said CEO and Founder Brian Petruzzi. Were thrilled to have Julianne and Nick on board to grow our brand and introduce our high-quality product throughout the South Florida region.

1000 Degrees serves personalized, made-to-order authentic Neapolitan pizza. Unlike traditional Neapolitan pizza which has a slightly undercooked center and requires a fork and knife to eat, 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza has fused this classic style with American flare. The result is a thin crust pizza that maintains the light and airy appeal of a Neapolitan style pizza.

To learn more about 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza, please visit http://www.1000DegreesPizza.com.

About 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza

1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza brings guests the finest hand-tossed Neapolitan pizza. Founded in 2014, the international franchise has experienced unparalleled growth and is on target to have more than 80 units open by the end of 2016, and projects more than 170 units by 2017. For more information on the 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza brand, or for franchise or investor relations, please visit the company website at http://www.1000DegreesPizza.com. Watch to brands YouTube video and follow 1000 Degrees on social media on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

SOURCE 1000 Degrees Neapolitan Pizza

Contact:

Bre Whalen

1000 Degrees Pizzeria

+1 8479451300

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Chronic Tacos Proclaims 2016: Year of the Better Taco

Inspired Mexican Grill Recognizes Demand for Better Taco

January 05, 2016 // Franchising.com // ALISO VIEJO, Calif.  Chronic Tacos, the California inspired Mexican grill, has seen an increase in popularity and demand for quality tacos across North America with no slowing in sight. The state of the taco heading in to 2016 is looking strong as the better taco movement gains momentum.

Evidence of the craving for a better taco can be seen in Chronic Tacos expanding its franchise to include more than 15 new locations across North America in 2016. The fast-casual franchise uses third generation recipes to create fresh, authentic Mexican food, differentiating Chronic Tacos from other chains.

Chronic Tacos is unique in that we stay true to our traditional recipes while continually innovating and working to improve and deliver the best experience for our customer, said Michael Mohammed, CEO and President of Chronic Tacos. Our locations are not typical chain restaurants, every Chronic Tacos embraces the local spirit while remaining inspired by our California roots.

Chronic Tacos offers high-quality Mexican cuisine using locally sourced ingredients. For 2016, Chronic Tacos will also be expanding its menu to include all-natural meats and vegetarian options.

The Chronic Tacos menu currently offers burritos, tostada bowls, tortas, taquitos, flautas, salads and tacos, including a breakfast menu all day. Customers can choose from carne asada (steak), pollo asado (chicken), carnitas (slow-cooked pork), al pastor (spicy marinated pork), and fresh pico de gallo and guacamole. Seafood lovers can also order grilled, beer-battered, or baja-style fish and shrimp.

For more information visit eatchronictacos.com. Get involved! Follow Chronic Tacos on Twitter and on Instagram or become a fan on Facebook.

About Chronic Tacos

Chronic Tacos is a California-inspired Mexican grill that celebrates authenticity and the individuality of its customers. The fast-casual franchise is known for its fresh Mexican cuisine that is customized for each guests distinctive taste. Founded in 2002, the Aliso Viejo, California-based company has more than 30 locations operating across North America and is committed to serving only the highest quality with locally sourced ingredients. Chronic Tacos offers traditional Mexican items such as tortas, taquitos, flautas and tacos as well as burritos, tostada bowls and salads, including a breakfast menu all day. Customers can choose from vegetarian and gluten-free options, as well as carne asada (steak), pollo asado (chicken), carnitas (slow-cooked pork) and al pastor (spicy marinated pork). Seafood lovers can also order grilled, beer-battered or baja-style fish and shrimp. Each restaurant incorporates original art designs inspired by traditional Day of The Dead art, creating a unique experience at each location. For more information or to find the nearest Chronic Tacos, visit www.eatchronictacos.com.

SOURCE Chronic Tacos

Contact:

Lindsey Mee

Account Supervisor

O (310) 395-5050

M (818) 370-1747

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Experimac, One-of-a-Kind Retail Storefront Concept, Is Looking To Open More Than 100 Stores In 2016

January 05, 2016 // Franchising.com // West Palm Beach, Florida - Its hard to argue with the impressive growth Experimac experienced in 2015, but the innovative franchise brand is looking to post even more impressive figures in 2016.

Experimac is a one-of-a-kind retail storefront concept that specializes in sales of pre-owned Apple computers and devices; repair of laptops, phones and tablets; trade-ins of existing devices; system updates; and sales of accessories.

Experimacs innovative business model attracted attention very quickly, United Franchise Group CEO Ray Titus said of the brand, which operates under the United Franchise Group umbrella. Titus added that Experimacs business model offers franchisees the opportunity to buy products from the brands inventory company so they don't have to worry about searching for the products they will sell.

The unique business model that Experimac founder and president Jim Muir developed takes advantage of multiple revenue streams. Not only can customers buy pre-owned products at a lower cost, they can also get their devices repaired and get memory upgrades along with accessories. Weve got a great thing here; Ive been in franchising for over 3 decades and its obvious that Experimac is a concept that fits United Franchise Group to a T, Titus said.

The technology sector is obviously booming. In 2014, about 302 million computers were sold worldwide, generating about $304 billion in sales revenue. At the same time, nearly seven billion cell phone subscriptions were purchased worldwide by May 2014, nearly one for every person on the planet.

With that in mind, having added 60 new stores in 2015, Experimac is looking to add more than 100 new locations in 2016, including 15 to 20 international retail stores, targeting Australia, Canada, Mexico, Chile, France and the United Kingdom, in particular.

According to Franchising.com, having a blueprint for international growth has been increasing in popularity for U.S.-based franchisors, 80 percent of the world's population lives in areas that are considered emerging markets. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that over 75 percent of the expected growth in the world's trade over the next two decades will come from developing countries, particularly big emerging markets, which account for over half the world's population, but only 25 percent of its gross domestic product.

In addition, the report said that finding well-qualified master franchisees outside the U.S. can pave the way for growth of a franchise because the qualified master franchisee can be the key to identifying and recruiting talented franchisees who fit the system and successfully execute the franchise concept.

Since Experimac specializes in selling used products, particularly used Apple products, the products can be sold at a price point that is accessible to a much-wider range of customers. When customers enter competing retail stores that sell new computers, Smartphones and tech equipment, only one out of every 100 or so people actually purchase something because of the high price point, but they are much more likely to buy at Experimac.

Because of its outstanding early success, Experimac is focusing on expanding its bulk purchasing power to a more global scale to meet expected product demand in 2016. Additional new product offerings are also being considered to meet the needs of customers, while at the same time, providing additional revenue streams for franchise owners.

About Experimac

Experimac is the latest addition to the United Franchise Group family of brands, joining a team with over 30 years of franchise experience. Capitalizing on a sustained demand for Apple products, Experimac provides pre-owned computers and devices, repair of laptops, phones and tablets, trade-ins of existing devices, sales of accessories and upgrades. For more information visit experimacfranchise.com.

SOURCE Experimac

Media Contact:

Rhonda Sanderson

Sanderson & Associates

312-829-4350

Rhonda@sandersonpr.com

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Home Care Assistance Announces Opening of New Fort Lauderdale Office

In-home care leader will provide home care for the growing senior population in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and surrounding areas

January 05, 2016 // Franchising.com // Fort Lauderdale, FL  Home Care Assistance of Ft. Lauderdale, the premier home care provider, is pleased to announce the opening of its new office, which will serve the greater Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach communities. This location is the 117th Home Care Assistance office in North America and is opening during a stage of incredible growth and measured success for Home Care Assistance. The office is located at 5975 N Federal Hwy, Suite 124 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

I am excited to share the unique and innovative programs offered by Home Care Assistance as a resource for the communities in Ft. Lauderdale and the surrounding area, said Manpreet Dhalla, Owner/President of Home Care Assistance of Ft. Lauderdale. At Home Care Assistance, our mission is to change the way the world ages through distinct offerings such as our proprietary Balanced Care MethodTM based on the scientifically studied lifestyles of the longest living people on Earth and our Cognitive Therapeutics MethodTM, an activities-based program designed to delay the onset of cognitive decline.

Home Care Assistance hires only the most qualified and compassionate individuals as caregivers to serve the evolving needs of the companys clientele; Home Care Assistance accepts only one out of every 25 caregiver applicants on average. Applicants undergo thorough screening including background checks, reference checks, and work authorization. A proprietary Caregiver Personality Screening test assesses each applicants traits, such as kindness, honesty and conscientiousness.

Krystal Williams, Client Care Coordinator at Home Care Assistance of Ft. Lauderdale, upholds these standards in the highly-selective hiring process. Along with her compassion and professional expertise, Krystal helps match clients with the caregiver best-qualified for his or her unique needs and preferences, and treats every client as though he or she were a part of her own family.

Nine out of ten seniors prefer to age in the comfort of their own home, yet thousands of seniors still move to facilities every year. A professionally trained and compassionate caregiver can provide the support to help each senior age safely and independently for as long as possible where they prefer: home. Home Care Assistance caregivers provide the following services to help seniors live well at home: hourly and live-in care, meal preparation, transportation, walking/transferring assistance, medication reminders, companionship and more.

To learn more about what Home Care Assistance has to offer or to schedule a free in-home assessment, please visit www.HomeCareAssistanceFtLauderdale.com or call 954-909-0370 today. Home Care Assistance of Ft. Lauderdale is located at 5975 N Federal Highway, Suite 124, in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

About Home Care Assistance

Home Care Assistance is the leading provider of home care for seniors across the United States, Canada and Australia. Our mission is to change the way the world ages. We provide older adults with quality care that enables them to live happier, healthier lives at home. Our services are distinguished by the caliber of our caregivers, the responsiveness of our staff and our expertise in Live-In care. We embrace a positive, balanced approach to aging centered on the evolving needs of older adults. A 2015 Franchise500 and Inc. 5000 Company, Home Care Assistance has received numerous industry awards including Entrepreneurs Fastest-Growing Franchises and Franchise Business Reviews Top 50. For more information about Home Care Assistance, our services and franchise opportunities, visit homecareassistance.com.

SOURCE Home Care Assistance

Media Contact:

Kathryn Zakskorn

Director of Franchise Marketing

650-462-9501

kzakskorn@homecareassistance.com

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JDog Junk Removal & Hauling Celebrates Record Franchise Growth, Expects to Triple Locations in 2016S

Nations Only U.S. Military Brand Ends 2015 with 33 Franchise Locations in 15 States

BERWYN, Pa. - January 04, 2016 - (BUSINESS WIRE) - JDog Junk Removal & Hauling, a company dedicated to increasing post-military career opportunities for veterans, experienced a strong year of results in 2015, going from five franchise locations to 33 in just one year. Additionally, JDog debuted in six states, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, New Hampshire, South Carolina and North Carolina.

According to statistics released last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, veteran unemployment was at its lowest level in seven years, and veterans are twice as likely as nonveterans to pursue entrepreneurship. JDogs mission is simple: to put 10,000 military veterans to work by the year 2025.

The significant growth we experienced across the nation is largely thanks to the tremendous dedication of our franchisees and the support of JDog customers across the country, said JDog Founder and CEO Jerry Flanagan. As we continue to build our footprint, we will remain committed to offering viable career opportunities for U.S. veterans and their families.

Expansion in the coming year will be driven by franchise deals already set to bring new JDog services to the states of Oklahoma, New York, Indiana, Rhode Island, Ohio, Virginia, and Georgia, as well as a 10-unit franchise agreement signed earlier this year for Arizona, Missouri and Louisiana. JDog plans to have 133 locations up-and-running by the end 2016. The company has attracted a record number of franchise inquiries due to its experienced leadership team and strong sales to investment ratio.

JDog has a proven formula for success that leads to significant growth and profitability for franchisees, said Steve Devaux, who owns three JDog franchise territories in Pennsylvania. Joining the JDog mission offers an opportunity to not only support fellow veterans, but also to give back to local communities.

JDog sells franchises exclusively to military veterans and their family members. Franchise owners operate easily recognizable, camouflage vehicles and trailers and wear military-style uniforms. JDog recycles and repurposes a substantial amount of the collected material. The Philadelphia-based company works closely with local and national organizations like Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity, as well as local schools, churches and hospitals to donate useful items to those in need.

About JDog Junk Removal & Hauling

JDog Junk Removal & Hauling is a national company that awards franchises exclusively to military veterans and veteran family members  people who understand the notion of service to our country, hard work, and dedication. The company is committed to offering its proven operating model to veterans and military family members, enabling them to realize the American dream of business ownership. JDog has awarded franchises in California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Illinois, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and South Carolina and is actively looking for qualified franchisees to join the JDog movement nationwide. For more information on JDog Junk Removal & Hauling, please visit www.jdogjunkremoval.com.

SOURCE JDog Junk Removal & Hauling

Contact:

Kayla Atwell

Fishman PR

(847) 945-1300

katwell@fishmanpr.com

###

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Business / Companies

by Ndou Paul

A miner was killed at Zvishavane-based platinum miner, Mimosa Mining Company, the company said on Tuesday.Aquarius deeply regrets to advise that an employee of JV entity Mimosa Platinum Limited was fatally injured whilst working underground on 4 January 2016. There were no other injuries. The Aquarius board and management express their sincere condolences to the family of the deceased," the company said in a statement."The name of the deceased is being withheld until the next of kin have been informed. The relevant regulatory authorities have been informed and a full investigation is under way.Mimosa is jointly held by Implats and Aquarius Platinum Limited (Aquarius) in a 50/50 joint venture.According to its website, it is located on the Wedza Geological Complex on the Zimbabwean Great Dyke, 20km west of the town of Zvishavane and 150km east of Bulawayo.
Pretzelmaker Declares January Customer Appreciation Month - $1 Pretzels Every Tuesday in January

New Year, new deal! To thank customers, Pretzelmaker is introducing "Treat Yourself Tuesdays," featuring $1 pretzels and buy one get one coupons for free Pretzel Bites on your next visit.

ATLANTA - Jan. 5, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Pretzelmaker is ringing in the New Year by declaring January Customer Appreciation Month. To thank customers, the national pretzel bakery is offering $1 pretzels* (Original Salted or Unsalted) every Tuesday in January during regular store hours. Additionally, through the "Treat Yourself Tuesdays" promotion, customers who purchase Pretzel Bites, will also receive a buy one get one coupon for free Pretzel Bites on their next visit. Stores will also pass out fun customer appreciation stickers.

Pretzelmaker is known for fresh delicious pretzels and product innovation. With stores across the U.S., the bakery has thousands of loyal fans and is the original creator of the Pretzel Dog, Pretzel Bites and Mozzarella Cheese Stuffed Bites.

"Our customers have made Pretzelmaker the preferred pretzel bakery and we want to thank them for their loyal patronage," said David Smith, Vice President, Pretzelmaker. "We love our fans and thanks to their support and feedback, we've been able to create pretzel items that are now staples on our menu. We hope everyone joins us for 'Treat Yourself Tuesdays' in January and all throughout 2016."

For more information and store locations, visit our website www.pretzelmaker.com or join us on social media: follow @pretzelmaker on Twitter; add @pretzelmakerpics on Instagram; follow "Pretzelmaker" on Snapchat; or become a fan of the brand on Facebook www.facebook.com/pretzelmaker.

Pretzelmaker is managed by Global Franchise Group, LLC, the strategic brand management company and franchisor behind Pretzelmaker, Great American Cookies, Marble Slab Creamery, MaggieMoo's Ice Cream & Treatery and Hot Dog on a Stick.

*Limit one offer per guest during the days of the promotion. Valid only at participating U.S. stores. No purchase necessary. No cash value.

About Pretzelmaker

www.pretzelmaker.com

Since 1991, Pretzelmaker has specialized in serving fresh baked, hand-rolled soft pretzel products, dipping sauces and beverages. Long recognized as an innovator in their industry, the brand is credited with inventing the popular Pretzel Dog, Mini Pretzel Dogs, and the portable Pretzel Bites. Following integration in 2010, the Pretzelmaker brand now also includes Pretzel Time. Pretzelmaker is currently the second largest soft pretzel concept in the United States and is also rapidly expanding worldwide with locations in Canada, Guam and Mexico.

About Global Franchise Group, LLC

www.globalfranchise.com

Global Franchise Group, LLC is a strategic brand management company with a mission of championing franchise brands and the people who build them. The company owns a portfolio of franchise brands that includes five primary quick service restaurant (QSR) franchise concepts: Great American Cookies, Hot Dog on a Stick, Marble Slab Creamery, MaggieMoo's Ice Cream & Treatery, and Pretzelmaker. The brands are managed by GFG Management, LLC, a subsidiary of Global Franchise Group, LLC. Global Franchise Group, LLC is a portfolio company of Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, an independent investment firm, with approximately $7 billion of capital under management and substantial franchise management experience.

SOURCE Pretzelmaker

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School Of Rock Names Lisa Merry As Chief Operating Officer

Newest Addition to Executive Team Brings Years of Franchise Experience

January 05, 2016 // Franchising.com // EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - School of Rock, the leader in performance based music education, announces the hiring of Lisa Merry as chief operating officer. As the newest addition to the School of Rock team, Merry will oversee company and franchise operations in addition to the training and programming departments.

With over 20 years of experience in the childhood education industry, Merry brings a wealth of knowledge to the music franchise. Prior to joining School of Rock, Merry held the position of vice president of operations at Huntington Learning Center, where she was responsible for company center and franchise operations. Merry was not only instrumental in expanding the Huntington Learning Center to over 250 locations, but also in helping all students reach their highest potential by improving success rates at each location.

Music has been a significant influence in my life since childhood, so I find great value in School of Rocks mission to inspire a passion for music in children, said Lisa Merry, COO of School of Rock. I hope to contribute to the incredible impact School of Rock has on young, aspiring musicians.

Lisa brings to the School of Rock team a great amount of experience and a proven history of success in growing a business, said Dzana Homan CEO of School of Rock. We are confident her enthusiasm and expertise in the industry will be a major asset to our company as we continue the growth and success we have seen in the past year.

For more information on School of Rock, please visit www.schoolofrock.com.

About School of Rock

The music school your mom and dad wished they had when they were kids, School of Rock is an ingenious concept that gets kids and adults rocking out to the classics and up and performing with their peers. With more than 170 locations in nine countries, the franchise proves that rock and roll is here to stay.

SOURCE School of Rock

Media Contacts:

Erin Morrissey

emorrissey@konnect-pr.com

Madison Jones

mjones@konnect-pr.com

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Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating Kicks Off its 2016 Slim Down Weight Loss Contest

January 05, 2016 // Franchising.com // Ottawa, Ill. - Seattle Suttons Healthy Eating (SSHE), the premier provider of freshly prepared meals nationwide, kicks off its weight loss contest called Seattle Sutton's 2016 Slim Down. For 10 weeks, the chosen Rockford area contestants will compete for prizes and improve their health by making positive lifestyle changes while losing weight.

SSHE has a successful track record with six previous contests under its belt, helping to transform peoples eating habits and overall health. SSHE held its first successful weight loss contest for the Chicago area in 2010, when 10 contestants lost a total of 372 pounds in 14 weeks. Since then, the contests have helped people lose a total of 2,421 pounds to date.

"Im thrilled to assist these people who are taking on weight loss and improved health with our 10-week challenge. Making a lifestyle change like this is not easy and I applaud them for taking a step in the right direction. They will not only receive our delicious, freshly prepared meals at no cost, but they also compete for some amazing prizes too, said Seattle Sutton, RN, BSN, Founder of Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating.

Sutton continued, The key to good overall health is moderation and balance and with our help, I know we will teach them about portion control and balanced nutrition. My hope is that they learn new skills in order to achieve long-term success beyond the contest.

The family-owned company based in Ottawa, Ill., is headed by 84-year old registered nurse and matriarch, Seattle Sutton, who founded the company in hopes of helping to improve people's eating habits and overall health by providing the healthiest meals possible. The company has never veered off the mission Sutton created since it began in 1985. Since the company's inception, the company has prepared and provided clients coast-to-coast with nearly 100 million meals to date.

The Seattle Suttons 2016 Slim Down Contest is a 10-week weight loss challenge beginning on January 4, 2016 and concluding on March 14, 2016. The contestants will receive 21 SSHE meals per week for a total of 210 meals throughout the 10-week contest. The meals will consist of freshly prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner items.

The contestant who loses the most weight based on percentage of body weight will win a three-night trip for two to Riu Montego Bay, Jamaica, provided by Apple Vacations and Riu Hotels and Resorts, valued at $2,000. The second-place prize will be a $500 cash prize from SSHE, and the third-place prize will be a Macys gift card valued at $200, courtesy of SSHE.

Contestants will also have blood work completed, once at the beginning of the contest and once at the end, to measure fasting blood sugar, as well as have their blood pressure taken. This is a free service provided by Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating, as part of the contest. Contestants will be weighed each week at their nearest SSHE Rockford-area retail location when they pick up their SSHE meals.

The Seattle Sutton's 2015 Slim Down contestants competing for improved health and great prizes are:

Lori Alario, 48, of Rockford, Ill.

JoJean Edler, 57, of Rockford, Ill.

Kathy Jarvis, 56, Rockford, Ill.

Cindy Johnson, 58, of Roscoe, Ill.

Jim Nelson, 69, of Rockford, Ill.

The contestants were chosen from entries accepted between October 5, 2015 and November 2, 2015 from web and mail entries. To learn more about the contest, visit seattlesutton.com and read the official rules.

Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating in cooperation with Apple Vacations and Riu Montego Bay, Jamaica sponsor the contest.

About Seattle Sutton's Slim Down Contests

Seattle Sutton's Slim Down Contests are weight loss contests that have transformed the lives of contestants, helping create healthy habits and improve lifestyles. Since the first challenge in 2010, the company has now held six successful contests helping contestants lose a total of 2,421 pounds to date.

About Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating

SSHE is a family-owned, Illinois-based freshly prepared meal company recognized for dedication to convenient, healthy eating since 1985. SSHE takes the guesswork out of portion control and calorie counting by offering complete, freshly prepared 1,200 and 2,000-calorie (per day) traditional meal plans plus a 1,500-calorie vegetarian plan. A weekly plan consists of three meals per day or 21 meals per week. Meals are available for pick up at select retail locations or via UPS delivery nationwide. To contact Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating, call 1-800-442-3438 or visit seattlesutton.com. You can also find SSHE on Facebook: facebook.com/SeattleSuttons and follow SSHE on Twitter: Twitter.com/SeattleSutton.

SOURCE Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating

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The group came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to contest the prison sentences of two ranchers who set fire to federal land, but their ultimate goal is to turn over the property to local authorities so people can use it free of U.S. oversight.

People across the globe have marveled that federal authorities didn't move to take back the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Residents say they have not seen a large presence of officers, and the government's tactic generally is to monitor protesters from afar but leave them be as long as they don't show signs of violence.

That's how federal officials defused a high-profile 2014 standoff with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy over grazing rights. Now, Bundy's two sons are leading the push in Oregon.

Ryan Bundy told The Associated Press on Sunday that he hopes the takeover will prompt others to take action across the country to seize control of federally managed land.

"The end goal here is that we are here to restore the rights to the people here so that they can use the land and resources. All of them," Bundy said.

That means ranchers can graze their cattle, miners can use their mineral rights, loggers can cut trees, and hunters and fishers can shoot and cast, he said.

The latest dispute traces its roots to the 1970s and the "Sagebrush Rebellion," a move by Western states like Nevada to increase local control over federal land. While ranchers and others complain of onerous federal rules, critics of the push for more local control have said the federal government should administer the public lands for the widest possible uses, including environmental and recreation.

Residents of the tiny town of Burns, 30 miles south of the wildlife refuge, are concerned about the potential for violence.

Keith Landon, a longtime resident and employee at the Reid Country Store, said he knows local law enforcement officials who fear their kids will be targeted by the group.

"I'm hoping most of it's just muscle, trying to push," he said. "But it's a scary thing."

If the situation turns violent, Bundy contends that it will be because of the federal government's actions.

"I mean, we're here to restore order, we're here to restore rights, and that can go peacefully and easily," he said.

The ranchers whose cause has been the rallying cry also reject the group's support. Dwight and son Steven Hammond were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. They served their original sentences  Dwight, three months and Steven, one year  but a judge ruled that the terms were too short under federal minimum sentencing laws.

Both men were ordered back to prison for four years each. They have said they plan to turn themselves in Monday.

The Bundy brothers say the group plans to stay at the refuge as long as it takes. They declined to say how many people were at the property where several pickup trucks blocked the entrance and armed men wore camouflage and winter gear.

"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," Ammon Bundy told reporters over the weekend. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."

The FBI is working with local and state authorities to "bring a peaceful resolution to the situation," the bureau said in a statement late Sunday. It said it is the agency in charge and would not release details about the law enforcement response to ensure the safety of officers and those at the refuge.

Some are criticizing the lack of action, saying it is because those occupying the property are white.

Landon, the longtime Burns resident, said he sympathizes with the Bundys' frustrations. Landon was a logger until the federal government declared the spotted owl a protected species in the 1980s, damaging the local logging industry.

"It's hard to discredit what they're trying to do out there. But I don't want anybody hurt," he said.

Landon said that on the surface, it doesn't look like much has changed in Burns, a high desert town of about 2,700 people.

"It's weird  I woke up this morning expecting the town to be crawling with this and that agency. But you don't see any of it. They're keeping a low presence," Landon said Sunday.

However, most of the hotels in the area are booked, and he's noticed that officers are doing their patrols in pairs instead of alone. The biggest difference since the takeover is the undercurrent of worry, he said.

"I'm glad they took the refuge because it's 30 miles away," Landon said. "I mean, they could have took the courthouse here in town."
The president struck a combative tone as he came out with plans for expanded background checks and other modest measures that have drawn consternation from gun rights groups, which Obama accused of making Congress their hostage. Palpable, too, was Obama's extreme frustration at having made such little progress on gun control since the slaughter of 20 first-graders in Connecticut confronted the nation more than three years ago.

"First-graders," Obama said woefully, resting his chin on his hand and wiping away tears as he recalled the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad."

Obama's 10-point plan to keep guns from those who shouldn't have them marked a concession by the president: He'll leave office without securing the new gun control laws he's repeatedly and desperately implored Congress to pass.

Although Obama, acting alone, can take action around the margins, only Congress can enact more sweeping changes that gun control advocates say are the only way to truly stem a scourge of mass shootings.

"It won't happen overnight," Obama said. "It won't happen during this Congress. It won't happen during my presidency." But, he added optimistically, "a lot of things don't happen overnight."

The centerpiece of Obama's plan is an attempt to narrow the loophole that exempts gun sales from background checks if the seller isn't a federal registered dealer. With new federal "guidance," the administration is clarifying that even those who sell just a few weapons at gun shows, flea markets or online can be deemed dealers and required to conduct checks on prospective buyers.

Whether that step can make a significant dent in unregulated gun sales is an open question, and one not easily answered.

Millions of guns are sold annually in informal settings outside of gun shops, including many through private sales arranged online. But the Obama administration acknowledged it couldn't quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a license.

Easily reversible by a future president, the government's guidance to gun sellers lacks the legal oomph of a new law, such as the one Obama and likeminded lawmakers tried but failed to pass in 2013. The Justice Department said online the guidance "has no regulatory effect and is not intended to create or confer any rights, privileges, or benefits in any matter, case, or proceeding."

What's more, none of the steps would have probably prevented any of the recent mass shootings that Obama invoked in the East Room: Aurora, Oak Creek, Charleston, Newtown, to name some. But Obama defiantly rejected that critique, dismissing it as the tired trope of gun lobbyists who question "why bother trying?"

"I reject that thinking," Obama said. "We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some."

Hoping to give the issue a human face, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans affected by searing recent gun tragedies, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Mark Barden, whose son was shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced the president with a declaration that "we are better than this."

Obama readily conceded the executive steps will be challenged in court, a prediction quickly echoed by Republicans.

Chuck James, a former federal prosecutor who practices firearms law at the firm Williams Mullen, said opponents are likely to challenge Obama's authority to define what it means to be "engaged in the business" of selling guns beyond what's laid out in the law. The White House asserted confidence Obama was acting legally, and said Justice Department and White House lawyers had worked diligently to ensure the steps were watertight.

Other new steps include 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks, aiming to prevent delays that enabled the accused gunman in Charleston, South Carolina, to get a gun when the government took too long.

Obama is also asking the government to research smart gun technology to reduce accidental shootings and asking Congress for $500 million to improve mental health care. Other provisions aim to better track lost or stolen guns and prevent trusts or corporations from buying dangerous weapons without background checks.

Obama's announcement carved a predictably partisan fault line through the presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, both competing for the nomination from Obama's party, pledged to build on his actions if elected. The Republican field formed a chorus of voices vowing to annul the whole package, with Marco Rubio claiming "Obama is obsessed with undermining the Second Amendment."

"Rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican. "His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty."

The National Rifle Association, the largest gun group, panned Obama's plan and said it was "ripe for abuse," although the group didn't specify what steps, if any, it will take to oppose or try to block it.
Snake Robot Device Markets Are Anticipated To Reach $2.3 Billion By 2019 : Radiant Insights,Inc

RadiantInsights.com has announced the addition of "Global Snake Robot Device Markets Trends, Growth And Forecast Report To 2019 : Radiant Insights, Inc" Market Research Report to their Database.

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Confined spaces exist in nuclear reactors where radiation is dangerous for human, aircraft inside the wings and other small spaces that need to remain intact, the human body which likewise cannot be dismantled easily, industrial processing plants that have containers, underwater environments, ship-building, and space. Buildings, roads, pipelines and other man-made spaces all have confined spaces. The world is full of awkward confined spaces.

Snake-arm robots are self-contained portable devices and extensions to existing systems. These products build on software and hardware technology.

Snake robots used for small space access, inside airplane wing access, first responder tasks, and surgery: They are used for going where nothing else can go. Snake robots provide systems that significantly improve traditional open surgery by consolidating the number of minimally invasive access ports to one and eliminating open surgery.

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The automated process revolution has come to robotics, used in surgery, industry, ships, airplanes, first responder help, and communications. Automated process is being implemented via robots. Robots are automating systems, providing significant improvement in the accuracy of surgery and penetration of spaces that were previously impenetrable.

According to Susan Eustis, lead author of the study, "A confined space needs long smooth snake shapes to achieve access. Confined spaces exist by design (aircraft engine), by failure (collapsed building) or naturally (human body). Existing open surgery can be replaced in large part by robotic and minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Minimally invasive surgery MIS, drug therapies, radiation treatment, and emerging interventional surgical approaches complement robotic surgery techniques as a replacement for or complement to open surgery. The snake robots reduces the number of ports needed to gain access and repair the heart."

According to Susan Eustis as she continued: "The companies that get an early foothold in the market have significant strategic advantage. The robotic snake leverages a new technique for robotic movement that benefits users by providing efficient access to difficult spaces. This factor is driving demand for snake robot systems. Since robotics provide a precise, repeatable and controlled ability to perform procedures in tight spaces, they are increasingly in demand."

During a robot assisted surgical procedure, the patient-side cart is positioned next to the operating table with the electromechanical arms arranged to provide access to the initial ports selected by the surgeon. Metal tubes attached to the arms are inserted through the ports, and the cutting and visualization instruments are introduced through the tubes into the patient's body. The surgeon performs the procedure while sitting at a console, manipulating the instrument controls and viewing the operation through a vision system. When a surgeon needs to change an instrument the instrument is withdrawn from the surgical field using the controls at the console. This is done many times during an operation.

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The aging US population has supported demand for robotic surgical instruments, since the occurrence of health issues that require medical devices is higher in the elderly population. Buoyed by strong demand and sales, industry profit margins have increased. Snake robot device markets at $33.6 million in 2012 are anticipated to reach $2.3 billion by 2019 as next devices, systems, and instruments are introduced to manage access to difficult spaces through small ports when large openings are unavailable or inconvenient.

Companies Profiled

o Market Leaders

o OC Robotics

o HiBot

o Medrobotics

o Hirose Fukushima Lab ACM

o Sarco

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De Bruin Law Firm Launches New Website Providing Education On Legal Topics

The quality of legal representation can make or break any case. See how De Bruin Law Firm's new website is educating Greenville residents about the importance of good legal help at debruinlawfirm.com.

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Whether it's a criminal trial or a civil litigation matter, having quality legal representation is key in any case. Not only will an attorney use their knowledge of the law to fight for their client's rights, but they'll also thoroughly educate their client on what they need to know about the legal process. Consequently, having help from an attorney can significantly increase a person's chance of getting a favorable outcome.

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Aaron De Bruin, one of the experienced attorneys at the helm of the firm, stated "Our mission is to take care of our clients in the best possible way. We realize that one of the most important things we can do for them is to educate them on how to handle the circumstances that pertain to their case. That is exactly what our new website aims to do. The information they will find there covers all areas of the law in which we practice, which includes a myriad of things from business to real estate to criminal law."

As De Bruin continues, "We realize that the legal arena can quickly become overwhelming and confusing. We believe that this new website will help clarify some important information for our clients. We want to help them understand the legal options they have and encourage them to pursue what is rightfully theirs with the help of a qualified attorney. We're bringing all of our knowledge and experience to the table for the sake of our clients in an effort to help them win."

Whether we're dealing with a domestic violence case or helping a family with an estate planning issue, we want to make sure we're there for our clients every step of the way. The new De Bruin Law Firm website will be one way that we can continue to assist the people of Greenville around the clock."

Visit debruinlawfirm.com to learn more about De Bruin Law Firm and see what their new website has to offer.

About De Bruin Law Firm:

The De Bruin Law Firm is a full-service law firm dedicated to serving its clients in a multitude of legal issues. The experienced De Bruin Law Firm team is dedicated to creating a firm that can offer a wide variety of legal insight to its clients. With Gary De Bruin's twenty-plus years of experience in corporate law, employment law, business planning and business transactions, Aaron De Bruin's litigation experience as a former prosecutor, and Bryan De Bruin's experience in real estate and business transactions with a hands-on customer service approach to every real property and refinance closing he does, clients of the firm are provided with an extensive range of legal services in areas of Business Law, Estate Planning, and Criminal Defense.

For more information about us, please visit http://debruinlawfirm.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Aaron De Bruin

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Phone: (864) 982-5930

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Krause, Moorhead & Draisen, P.A. Announces Official Launch Of New Legal Website

Personal injury cases aren't always as straightforward as they seem. Visit http://kmdlawyers.com to see how Krause, Moorhead & Draisen, P.A.'s new website is helping clients understand how to win.

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Krause, Moorhead & Draisen, P.A., a premier law firm in the Anderson, South Carolina area, is announcing the official launch of their new website. With this launch, the firm aims to better educate South Carolina citizens on what the law has to say about personal injury, car accidents, workers compensation and criminal defense. Pages on the site will feature in-depth articles and videos related to the process for filing workers compensation and give details about what steps a person should take if they are injured on the job, hurt in an auto accident, have a medical malpractice claim, or are facing criminal charges.

Steven M. Krause, one of the firm's experienced attorneys, stated "Dealing with a personal injury issue can be overwhelming for a victim. While their injuries may be obvious, they still have to prove their case before they can receive compensation for those injuries. This can often be a very complex task, and placing a fair value on the case so that the victim won't be tricked into taking a low settlement can make things even more confusing. It is our hope that our new website will help to alleviate much of that confusion."

Krause goes on to say, "At our firm, we believe that educating the client about their rights as well as about the challenges they will face in each case is one of the best ways to help and support them. The website we are launching will not only provide and in-depth education on personal injury and criminal defense topics, but it will show them how having help from an experienced attorney can definitely increase their chances of getting the outcome that they desire in their case."

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Entertainment / Celebrity

by Staff Reporter

Utakataka Express frontman Peter "Young Igwe" Moyo, who survived a horrific accident along the Masvingo-Beitbridge highway on New Year's Eve, has fully recovered, his manager Sukol Dube has said.Young Igwe's BMW vehicle veered off the road on his way to Beitbridge where the sungura artiste had scheduled a New Year's Eve gig.The accident took place after the young artiste had performed at Ritz Night club in Masvingo.Dube is quoted saying the accident did not disrupt the band's festive season gigs."Peter is now fine and even the four guys he was travelling with are all fine."The accident did not affect our schedule as we went on to fulfil the Beitbridge concert on the same night".This is not the first time Moyo has been involved in an accident.In 2014, he was involved in another car accident in Hillside, Harare after his Jeep Cherokee rammed into another vehicle.Three years earlier, he was involved in yet another car crash on his way to Zhombe to bury his father Tongai Moyo  who had succumbed to non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.
The otherwise unremarkable corner of Detroit Avenue and West 25Street is on the verge of a rebirth that will include hundreds of students, the bulk of which will be five years old and under."We think Ohio City is a perfect fit for us," says Charles Lawrence, president and CEO of The Music Settlement , a 103-year old organization that offers music therapy, early childhood education, and music instruction to people of all ages and levels of experience. "Hingetown is an incredibly energetic and engaging area."His enthusiasm is in response to the prospect of the organization's announcement last month that it will be expanding into a second location as part of the Snavely Group 's forthcoming mixed-use project , which will transform the drab intersection with new construction on the north side of Detroit and renovations on the south side in the historic Forest City Bank Building.The Music Settlement will occupy 19,000 square feet on the first floor of the new building, which will also house retail and apartments on the upper floors. While all of it will positively impact that stretch of Detroit, a school  particularly one with so many very young children  brings a special brand of activity."The city and other individuals are looking to make Detroit a walkable street from 25to Gordon Square. Our school is busy from six thirty in the morning to nine at night. We're open all the time Monday through Saturday," says Lawrence, adding that such constant activity will improve the presence of pedestrian and family traffic."That's a big thing," notes Lawrence.Slated to open in late summer 2017, the school will serve approximately 150 early childhood program students, 75 music and music therapy students and have about 50 employees. While Lawrence expects the early childhood programs to fill quickly, the music and music therapy sessions are likely to reach capacity more slowly."It may be four years before we hit out target numbers," says Lawrence.Two thirds of the Settlement's space will be dedicated to the early childhood development center catering to preschool children, kindergarteners and day care kids. The balance of the space will house studios and instructional space for the institution's music and music therapy programs. The facility will also have a kitchen and access-controlled outdoor playground.Funding for the $3 million project is underway and will benefit in part from New Market Tax Credits. The Snavely group is managing the design (with input from The Music Settlement) and construction of the project.Considering the intersection of Detroit and West 25was once home to a go-go club and the site of one of Cleveland's most notorious gang murders more than 40 years ago, the ideological transformation for those with long memories is no less than staggering, but The Music Settlement is accustomed to a neighborhood in transition."We've been in University Circle since 1939," says Lawrence of the organization's home campus, adding that today's desirable University Circle addresses weren't always thusly described. "We've been there in good times and bad times and challenging perceptions of our location. We've persevered through all of it." Lawrence vows that perseverance will extend to the new Detroit Avenue location."We're not going about this with a wish and a prayer," he says. "We're in it for the long run. We're going to help to elevate the community and be a key to avoiding the perception that Ohio City is just going to be another Flats, that in 10 years Ohio City will fade." He believes The Music Settlement will become a stalwart anchor with consistent offerings that will help stabilize the area and attract residents and families long term.Outreach programs are a big part of the Settlement's legacy. To that end, the organization is already engaged in an array of off-site programs on the west side including an after-school orchestra program at Tremont Montessori School , a music therapy program at Lutheran Hospital with the Behavioral Health unit and individual music lessons at St. Ignatius High School , where they are also developing a Latin jazz ensemble that will be open to the community."We're going to be meet with representatives of the Spanish speaking community" in order to solicit their input, says Lawrence. He also emphasizes the fit between the Settlement and the unique diversity of the near west side, tagging residents in new and renovated historic housing, in Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority units and the Spanish speaking community."That's our DNA," says Lawrence, noting the organization's inherent commitment to serving all members of the community.Lawrence notes that the project at West 25and Detroit has gotten some push back about the issue of gentrification, but he sees the Settlement's move to Ohio City as just the opposite."The Settlement has always been an organization that exists for those who can afford it and those who cannot. We're bringing programming and opportunity and access for folks regardless of where they're coming from and what their background is. By bringing that element to the Hingetown area, we're actually counteracting any perception of gentrification," he says."We're raising the sea level for everybody."
News / Africa

by Stephen Jakes

The Migrant Workers Association South Africa (MWASA) has revealed that out of the 75733 people who applied for asylum in 2014 in South Africa, 12% (9088) got the refugee status, 88% (66645) were rejected and they are busy with appeals or they are now moving around being illegal.The association said the Department of Home Affairs sent us a crucial document that is still under discussion called Strategy on Integration, Settlement and Repatriation of Refuges."They need input on it, we could not ask for input because we thought it might not receive enough attention due to the festive season but it seems like we have created another challenge because the inputs are needed in 5 days time. We are having the National Stakeholders Forum meeting on the 20th of January," said the association.The association said those who are knowledgeable, passionate and who can work within this short time frame should get hold of us to send the document."We are aware that some people will just have the document for themselves and not contribute to the discussion. We are asking for those who will give inputs to help the refugee community at large," the association said."In the document there are disturbing numbers about the number of people who seek asylum in South Africa and the success rate...for example out of the 75733 people who applied for asylum in 2014, 12% (9088) got the refugee status, 88% (66645) were rejected and they are busy with appeals or they are now moving around being illegal."The organisation said the are issues that need engagement. Send us your email address so that we can share the document" I have challenges responding timeously to messages sent here, on our wall or inbox, but our National Administrator has been trying his best to attend to messages. Please bear with us, I respond faster on whatsapp 0814956500," said the organisation.
Santander UK has restarted branch-based investment advice two years after it was hit with one of the biggest ever retail banking penalties for giving unsuitable advice to customers.

According to FTAdviser parent paper the Financial Times , the bank plans to have 225 advisers across the country by the end of March.

Santander announced the closure of its bancassurance division in February 2013 after the Financial Services Authority found serious failings in the way the bank assessed customers risk appetite.

The following month, the bank informed 874 staff that their jobs were at risk, and they would be made redundant on 7 May 2013 unless other roles were found.

At that time the FSA conducted a mystery shopping exercise, finding roughly a quarter of financial advice given by retail banks and building societies was unsuitable.

In April 2014, the regulator confirmed in a final notice Santander had been fined 12m due to not providing clear information about its products and services, not carrying out ongoing checks on investments, not ensuring new advisers were properly trained and failing to properly assess customers appetite for risk of customers before making a recommendation.

At the end of October 2015, the bank revealed it had set aside 43m to cover redress for investment advice claims relating to wealth and investment products.

However, in the last few months, signs from the regulator have encouraged banks back into the advice space, not least the FCA dropping its review of culture at UK retail and wholesale banks just before the New Year.

Santanders return came after Personal Finance Society chief executive Keith Richards told FTAdviser that a number of big institutions will re-enter the advice sector in 2016, as they have the resource to build expediently on a national basis.

He noted the Financial Advice Market Review showed the government and regulator was ready to consider increasing access to advice for the mass market through things like safe harbour and robo-advice.

Nathan Bostock, chief executive of Santander UK, told the FT that the launch was another crucial element to establishing relationships with customers.

The banks new team of investment advisers can only recommend in-house products and will cater for customers with more than 50,000 to invest.

Advisers will be based in the banks largest UK branches, representing about one in four of its 900-strong network.

Santander UK is also set to launch an online investment platform, which will provide all customers with access to more than 2,000 funds across the market.

Alan Mathewson, managing director of wealth management at Santander UK, said: Online investing is likely to represent 25 per cent of the UK investments market over the next couple of years and as a scale challenger, we want to be at the forefront of this trend, providing a simple and convenient way for our customers to access the investment market.

peter.walker@ft.com
Artemis Peter Saacke has taken on the role of chief investment officer (CIO) at the firm, replacing the retiring Ruth Keattch.

Investment Adviser can reveal Ms Keattch is to retire from the fund management industry in the first quarter of 2016, following a financial services career spanning more than three decades.

First rising to prominence as an analyst and then head of equities at stockbroker Granville, Ms Keattch made her name in the fund management industry at Deutsche Asset Management between 2001 and 2005.

She then moved to Troy Asset Management before heading to Artemis in 2008, co-managing the 1.2bn UK Special Situations fund alongside Derek Stuart until 2013.

Ms Keattch then took on the CIO role full-time, and the position has since been strengthened further via the addition of a trio of staff focusing on corporate governance, broker relations and front office issues.

This trio will now support Mr Saacke, who heads the firms 466m Global Growth fund and is co-manager of the recently-launched Global Emerging Markets Oeic, as he takes the role from Ms Keattch.

Mr Saacke will chair the firms monthly investment committee as a result of the change. A spokesman for the fund house confirmed Artemis managers will continue to work in accordance with their own investment processes, rather than conforming to a house view.

The move comes shortly after Artemis senior partner and co-founder Mark Tyndall stepped back into a non-executive role. Mark Murray, chief operating officer since 2001, took over as senior partner at the end of 2015.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

A WOMAN reportedly poured a pot of boiling spinach on her husband on Sunday afternoon  because he didn't bring home money from work!Daily Sun reported that the 40-year-old wife was furious when her 36-year-old husband returned home from a piece job without a cent.Shocked neighbours rushed to the couple's home in Tambo Square kasi, Mangaung, in South Africa after hearing the husband's screams.A neighbour said the wife was cooking spinach while she waited for her husband to come home."When he arrived and told her he didn't get any money from his piece job, she lost it."She started accusing him of working long hours for free and said she was going to phone the man he had been working for," said the neighbour."After the husband told her he wouldn't let her make the phone call she threw the boiling spinach on his back and shoulders."Another neighbour (33) said the woman was bossy towards her husband, who was a quiet man.Police spokeswoman Sergeant Ikobeng Hlubi confirmed the incident and said the woman was arrested on the same day and will face an assault charge when she appears in court soon.
Graham Lilley is the new chair of the trustees at the Farming Community Network (FCN), a leading agricultural charity.

He explains why he got involved with the organisation and why the work it does is so important in the countryside, given the issues that farmers are facing.

FCN, which has a strong Christian ethos, has helped thousands of farmers with business, family, health and farm issues.

What are your farming connections?

I worked on a dairy farm in Cheshire as a teenager and was due to go to Reaseheath agricultural college. That never happened and in 1973 I started working for Barclays Bank and, as the years passed, climbed the ladder in banking.

In 1996 I was asked if I wanted to start working in the agricultural sector in the bank. It was a dream come true as I was getting back to what I had always wanted to do. I put energy into learning about the industry and getting involved in the farming community, part of which was a 12-year connection with The Hertfordshire Agricultural Society, initially as treasurer and latterly as chairman.

Why did you get involved with FCN?

I first heard of FCN as they were establishing a group in Hertfordshire and asked if we could give them a free stand at the county show, which we did. Then before I retired from work I made contact with the FCN group in Yorkshire, where we had moved to in 2012.

The first conversations were to see if volunteers were needed and I quickly got involved with case work. It didnt take long to realise the good work done by FCN. I wanted to put something back to society  and what better way than to do something that I am really passionate about and that suits my skills.

FCN contacts Helpline: 03000 111 999 (7am-11pm every day)

e-Helpline: chris@fcn.org.uk

To make a donation in support of FCNs work, please go to www.fcn.org.uk

What are the main issues causing stress and hardship at the moment?

The cash position of many farm businesses is stretched (in some instances because of BSP-related issues). Commodity prices are depressed across all sectors and cost of production must be buttoned down if businesses are to survive.

Health issues are also prevalent and the stress of prolonged periods of hard work, financial pressures and possibly family concerns can bring on illness.

The complete food chain needs to be connected, farmers, shopper and supermarket, so that all in the chain are fully aware of the others positions. The drive for reduced food prices, legislative recording and timely supply ultimately puts pressure on the core producer, the farmer.

How can FCN help?

We have coverage throughout the country and a team of dedicated and professional volunteers supported by a capable and proactive head office team.

This means that we can help farming families and walk with them through difficult times providing practical and pastoral support and, where necessary, put them in touch with other sources of professional help.

We have a significant role to play in making sure that any farming family in the country who needs help through their own stressful time gets that help before they really do reach the end of their tether.

Are farming families generally prepared to ask for help?

It is the most difficult thing in the world for anyone to ask for help. All the more so for farmers who are generally very proud, independent and passionate about their farm, family and business. If they ask for help some may consider that to be a sign of failure.

This is certainly not the case so we are trying to get over this hurdle by being active in the community by attending livestock markets, agricultural shows and discussion groups.

We will never know all farmers but those that we do know should be able to point a friend in need towards us. Asking for help frequently takes a great deal of courage but it is the first positive step towards regaining control of ones affairs.

What is your sense of how 2016 will be for farmers?

I dont think it will be easy but then it never is. Year 2015 has provided a bumper harvest for many, but depressed prices across all sectors are not making for bumper profits.

The dairy industry, if it is recovering, has a lot of ground to make up and many are still leaving the industry which can be a very traumatic time for the family.

There continues to be pressure on the price that we pay for food. Finances will be tight for many, which is a concern for the future investment which the industry needs.

Would you advise a young person to pursue agriculture as a career?

The industry needs bright, enthusiastic and hard-working young people. However, the cost of entry to getting your own farm is enormous.

We like to hear in the press of those who have been successful in starting a farming business but in truth they are few and far between.

Farming is full-on and you should do it because you want to and not because you have to. There are many and varied ancillary career opportunities that require top-class agricultural and countryside knowledge.

So I would recommend that a youngster sets their sights on a realistic goal and then aims to be the best they can possibly be at their chosen career. So, yes, I would  but make sure you get a good education first.

How does FCNs Christian ethos guide its work?

We maintain our Christian identity while serving anyone in the farming community of all faiths and none. We act in ways that respect the dignity, uniqueness and intrinsic worth of every person.

What is the best bit of advice that youve ever been given?

Dance like you think nobody is watching. Translated to everyday life, I suppose this means enjoy each day and lead your life with a smile on your face.
More than 1,100 delegates will debate the latest issues affecting agriculture at two farming conferences in Oxford this week.

Some 490 people, including industry leaders, are due to attend the Oxford Farming Conference, which runs from 5-7 January at the Oxford Examination Schools.

Meanwhile, 650 delegates will attend the sixth annual Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC), which focuses on environmentally sustainable agriculture.

See also: British farmers better off out of EU, says former Defra secretary

The ORFC is being held from 6-7 January at Oxford Town Hall.

Founded 70 years ago, the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) remains the establishment event  despite attracting fewer people than its much younger rival.

As well as a report examining whether farming entrepreneurs are born or bred, this years OFC will include two sessions of intense political debate.

The Oxford Farming Conference has earned a reputation for delivering insightful and challenging research for delegates and the wider industry, says its chairman, Al Brooks.

The 2016 conference will expose you to the people, science and businesses that epitomise these descriptions; they will inform you, challenge you and inspire you.

Defra secretary Liz Truss and shadow Defra secretary Kerry McCarthy will both outline their visions for agriculture in a plenary session on Wednesday (5 January).

A day later, European farm commissioner Phil Hogan and former Defra secretary Owen Paterson will debate the implications of the UKs forthcoming referendum on EU membership.

The ORFC will largely focus on farming practices.

Sessions will address a range of issues facing modern farming  from the benefits of cover crops to ways of improving soil health.

The case against intensive livestock production, biopesticides, agroecology and life without neonicotinoids will also be debated.

Although many ORFC attendees are campaigners and activists, an increasing number of speakers and delegates are professional farmers and industry representatives.

Shadow Defra secretary Kerry McCarthy  who has chaired parliaments All-Party Agro-ecology Group  has said she will be attending both conferences.
An extra 40m to rebuild and improve flood defences in the aftermath of Storm Eva has been described as a sticking plaster.

Prime minister David Cameron announced the funding on Sunday (3 January), taking investment in recovery from Storm Eva and Storm Desmond to nearly 200m.

That package is now set to be extended with grants to reimburse fire and rescue authorities, which have incurred excessive costs protecting flooded communities.

See also: Flood recovery fund area and deadline extended

Mr Cameron said: I have seen at first-hand the devastation caused by flooding  and thats why this work to repair and improve flood defences is so vital.

More than 40m would be spent to fix defences overwhelmed by the record rainfall seen in recent weeks and to make them more resilient to further bad weather, he added.

Some 10m of the new funding package would be reserved to improve the Foss Barrier protecting York, which was overwhelmed at the height of Storm Eva.

The other 30m would be spent repairing defences on the rivers Wharfe, Calder, Aire, Ouse and Derwent. It will include repairs to pumping and barriers and clearing blockages.

Further detailed work will be conducted along all rivers affected by Storm Eva  and it is likely the overall bill will top 40m once the full damage is identified.

The announcement of matched funding for charities follows a similar pledge made to community foundations in Cumbria and Lancashire in the aftermath of Storm Desmond, which battered the UK in early December.

But shadow Defra secretary Kerry McCarthy described Mr Camerons announcement of an extra 40m as a short-term, sticking-plaster approach.

The governments 40m failed to compensate for past failings on flood defences and the need for broader approach, she said.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron labelled the 40m extra a short-term fix.

The MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale was similarly critical of the governments response when Mr Cameron visited flood-hit York last week.

The PM pulling on wellies, wading through some water for a photo op does not make people believe he is doing enough, said Mr Farron.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

A Malawian politician has demanded that homosexuals be killed after the country's justice minister Samuel Tembenu put a temporary prohibition on anti-homosexual laws.Nyasa Times reported that Ken Msonda, who is the spokesperson for the former ruling Peoples Party (PP), also called on government to clarify its stance on homosexuality."Government should come up clear on the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] administration's stand on the issue of gays and lesbians," Msonda reportedly wrote on his Facebook page.He described homosexuals as being worse than dogs and that gays and lesbians were "sons and daughters of the devil"."Arresting them won't address this problem because sooner or later they are being released on bail. The best way to deal with this problem is to KILL them!" he wrote.Msonda is not the first African politician to have openly discriminated against homosexuals.Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has previously expressed his view on homosexuality, describing gays as being "worse than pigs and dogs".A report by the Guardian indicated that the African continent was the most homophobic continent in the world.According to Amnesty International homosexuality was illegal in 36 of Africa's 55 countries and punishment in some result in death
Residents continue to pound away in opposition to plans for an extension of Northwest Kings Boulevard through the Timberhill area.

More than 125 people turned out Monday night as the Corvallis City Council heard the appeal of developers who hope to build the road. The plan was rejected Dec. 2 by the Corvallis Planning Commission on a 3-2 vote in which chairwoman Jasmin Woodside, who usually does not vote, broke a 2-2 deadlock.

Residents will have to wait two weeks to get the verdict from the nine councilors. Because of requests to hold the record open, the council did not deliberate on the issue. It is scheduled to do so Jan. 19. City staff continues to favor approval of the plan, although they slightly modified the conditions of approval that the Planning Commission had considered.

GPA1, the development group that owns 200 acres in the Timberhill area, continues to assert that the road extension is needed to fulfill current transportation and neighborhood plans for the region as well as possible future development. The land is zoned for low- and medium-density residential housing and is one of the largest such undeveloped parcels left in the city limits.

Opponents, however, streamed into the LaSells Stewart Center at Oregon State University on a cold and rainy night to speak out against the plan. The meeting was held on campus, away from the councils normal venue of the downtown fire station, because of strong public interest in the case.

No members of the public testified in favor of the plan.

Concerns raised by opponents, both individuals and representatives of groups such as the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters and the Timber Ridge Neighborhood Association, included:

 That the city should not be moving forward with such a project given that its plans for the region are nearly two decades old.

 That its difficult to evaluate the appropriateness of a road extension when nothing is known about what might be built on the surrounding acreage. The developers withdrew an application last year for the Hub, an 835-bedroom student housing complex on 30 of the acres of the property, because of community opposition and a negative staff report. GPA1s Rob Wood has said that a new application for the Hub is likely by this spring.

 Numerous references to possible negative impacts on natural features, wetlands, riparian corridors, wildlife and oak habitat.

 Threats to the road and the region from active earthquake faults.

Daniel Stotter, a Corvallis land-use attorney who is working with the Northwest Alliance Corvallis, a group which formed to give neighbors a voice in Timberhill development issues, compared the project to a holiday dinner in which guests were asked to bring a serving dish  without knowing what is on the menu.

How can you make the right decision on the dish? Stotter asked. You cant evaluate a road when you dont know what it will be serving.
Despite the closure of Oregon State University, the Corvallis City Council will proceed with a meeting and public hearing at LaSells Steward Center tonight.

The meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. Monday, at the centers Construction and Engineering Hall, 875 SW 26th St. Community members interested in learning more about the proposed Kings Boulevard extension are encouraged to attend the meeting. The public hearing portion of the meeting is expected to begin around 7:30 p.m. The meeting is open to the public.
While freezing rain shut down Oregon State University, Linn-Benton Community College and most mid-valley schools Monday, the forecast offers some temperatures that should improve road conditions Tuesday and beyond.

Gerald Macke, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Services Portland office, said the service is predicting rain and temperatures above freezing through Sunday.

Macke said the ice accumulation on the floor of the valley was caused by moisture from California falling through a layer of cold air from the Plains states that is trapped on the valley floor by a high pressure front. The result, Macke said: The valley formed a bowl for cold air flowing into the Columbia Gorge to become trapped by the high pressure front.

Macke said the valley experiences conditions like those seen Sunday and Monday three or four times a year. In other words: They likely will return this season.

Macke added that the level of ice accumulation was not enough to cause many power outages. A representative of Pacific Power said the company had no major outages with its 70,000 customers in Linn and Benton counties. A Consumers Power representative said theyd had no outages for their customers in rural Benton County.

However, icy roads contributed to at least five noninjury crashes on Monday morning in Albany and rural Linn County, according to police logs.

If you were outside of town, where there were any small hills, it was incredibly slick, said Detective Sgt. Dan Jones of the Albany Police Department.

Linn County Sheriff Bruce Riley described the road conditions as a sheet of ice and said deputies and tow truck firms were backlogged and running from crash to crash.

The Corvallis Fire Department responded to three accidents Sunday; two of those required medical transport. But as of about 1:30 p.m., the department had not responded to any crash reports Monday. A Corvallis Police Department representative said the department responded to one noninjury crash Monday.

Detective Cyndi Pichardo of the Sweet Home Police Department said her agency had a few minor crashes, but nothing serious.

The Albany Police Department also had two reports of vehicles possibly sliding out of sloped driveways and into streets during the middle of the night.

The ice started to break up on area roadways at about 9 a.m., Jones said.

The most serious crashes due to the arctic blast in the Albany area came on Sunday, however.

At about 2:45 p.m., a 2008 Dodge Caliber with Washington license plates lost control in the 200 block of Juniper Lane in North Albany and crashed into a tree, Jones said.

Driver Cynthia Olvera, 22, and passengers Fidel Padilla-Sanchez, 22, Anabella Aquino-Olvera, 2, and Gale Padilla-Olvera, about 9 months old, were all taken to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis.

Oregon State Polices Albany office had reports of five crashes on Sunday, and two of them had significant injuries.

At about 10:30 a.m. Sunday on Highway 34 near Tangent, a westbound Honda Accord driven by Martin Clark, 21, of Gresham, spun across the eastbound lanes of traffic and collided with another car. Clark, his passenger Annie Croll, 20, of Gresham and the driver of the other vehicle, Aaron Duclos, 44, of Hubbard, all were taken to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center.

At 10:56 a.m. on Sunday, at the intersection of Highway 20 and Knox Butte Road, a Dodge Caravan driven by Jack King, 58, of Lebanon slid off the road and crashed into a utility pole. He was taken to Samaritan Albany General Hospital.

Jones at the Albany Police Department said he was surprised there werent more injury crashes in the area. I think people recognized the danger, he added.

School closures

The school closures in Benton County Monday included all schools in the Alsea, Corvallis, Monroe and Philomath districts. In Linn County, closures included the Albany, Harrisburg, Lebanon, Scio and Sweet Home school districts.

Corvallis also remained closed Dec. 18 this school year during flooding, but district officials say they have one makeup day in the schedule in February and another six potential makeup days at the end of the school year.

Although the last day of school in Corvallis is planned for June 16, the districts published calendar has weather makeup days stretching until June 24. The Oregon Department of Education also allows a reduction in the number of required instructional hours for a school year by up to a total of 14 hours for emergency school closures.

We take our responsibility very seriously when we are aware of unsafe travel conditions for our students and staff, said Kevin Bogatin, Corvallis assistant superintendent, noting that the district had no weather-related closures last year.

He said the district has a number of makeup-day options designed to lessen the instructional impact of closures.

While these closures can be disruptive to school and family schedules, we will always put safety first with wintry weather conditions," Bogatin said.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

A man, 33, and a woman, 29, were viciously attacked near the Port Shepstone beachfront on Monday before the woman was raped.It is alleged the man's left arm was hacked open and the woman was left with gaping wounds on her head and both thighs. She was also raped, South Coast Herald reported.Police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Zandra Wiid said Port Shepstone police responded to the scene near Princess Elizabeth Drive at about 10pm."The couple was attacked with a bush knife. The suspect also raped the woman before running away. An attempted murder case has been opened," said Wiid.She added shortly afterwards, police were called to Hansen Road, Oslo Beach. A man watching television in his lounge was attacked by an intruder wielding a bush knife."The man (45) sustained injuries to the head and was taken to hospital," she said.An attempted murder case was opened. No arrests have yet been made.In a separate incident, a 23-year-old man was attacked with a bush knife and beheaded in KwaZulu-Natal last year.The head was discovered in an advanced state of decomposition inside several plastic shopping bags and buried in the ground.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A political commentator Pedzisai Ruhanya has expressed deep concerns over the Zimbabwe's government.,s move to take people for granted as it has done to date since independence.This comes in the wake of skirmishes that erupted when 5trhe rural teachers association members staged a demonstration and were seriously brutalised by the police in Harare."Have never seen a people, a nation taken for granted like our rulers have done to Zimbabwe, Zimbabweans. This circus should have boundaries," said Ruhanya.
bohlah at 5-01-2016 07:24 AM (6 years ago) (m)

Monday Hounga, the 28-year-old-man, who was believed to have killed his live-in lover on Christmas day, Cecelia Joseph, and fled to Benin Republic, has voluntarily submitted himself to the police.

Monday Hounga, the 28-year-old-man, who was believed to have killed his live-in lover on Christmas day, Cecelia Joseph, and fled to Benin Republic, has voluntarily submitted himself to the police.

Hounga claimed that he and Cecelia were attacked by a three-man gang on Christmas Day, adding that the armed men stabbed 21-year-old Joseph to death and ripped open his stomach.



He said after he was rejected by four hospitals in Nigeria, a relative got a cab which took him to Porto Novo, Benin, on the fateful day, where he underwent a life-saving operation.



Hounga said he decided against medical advice to risk his health and submit to the police after he

learnt that he had been declared wanted for murder.



The 28-year-old had been declared wanted by the Interpol for allegedly killing Cecelia in Raji Rasaki Estate, in the FESTAC Town area of Lagos State.



The suspect and Cecelia had had a disagreement on Christmas day which culminated in a bloody fight during which the victim was stabbed to death.



The Lagos State Police Command had contacted Interpol to assist with the arrest of the suspect, after he was said to have escaped to Benin Republic.



The police later released a statement saying it had arrested a woman, Taiye Ganiyu, and one Sodjinou Singbo, for aiding his escape.



However, PUNCH Metro was told that Hounga surrendered himself to the police in Benin on January 1, 2016, and was transferred to the FESTAC Police Division the next day.



The matter was immediately transferred to the State Department of Criminal Investigation, Yaba.



The suspect told Punch he had never had a fight with Cecelia in the house he rented in Raji Rasaki Estate.



While Hounga is an iron bender, Cecelia worked in a shop in Mile 2 as a hairdresser.



Hounga said:

We have known each other for more than 10 years now. We met while in the primary school. Although we attended different primary schools, we usually met during inter-house competitions and that was when we started dating.



I rented the apartment where we lived and we had been living together for more than one year. We would have been married, but her parents said she should get pregnant for me first.

On December 25, around 12.30am, while we were both asleep, she (Cecelia) suddenly shouted, Monday, help me. As I opened my eyes, I woke up to see a gun pointed at my head. The intruders were three, but only one carried a gun. He said if I shouted, he would blast my head off.



They stabbed me in the hand and in the wrist when I tried to struggle with them. They later stabbed me in the stomach. I forced myself to pull out the knife from my stomach. When I checked Cecelia, she was dead.

He said the landlord of the house and a few other people later arrived and put him in a tricycle which took him to a nearby hospital where he was rejected.



He said he was also taken to the FESTAC Police Station, where he was issued a police report to enable him get quick treatment.



However, around 4am, after being rejected at a general hospital and two other places, a relative was said to have suggested that he should be taken to the Porto Novo Hospital in Benin.



The doctors at the hospital were said to have operated on him, before placing him on admission.



He said:

I was on admission when I heard in the news that I killed Cecelia. Here was somebody I loved so much and would many times kneel to beg whenever we had issues. Why would I kill her?

Hounga explained that Cecelia had once separated from him after she was impregnated by another man, whom she claimed her family supported.



He said after a few years with the man, she returned to him, adding that she had two stillbirths for the former boyfriend.

She came back in 2014 and because of the love I had for her, I accepted her. Despite what happened, I have not stopped loving her and if I get out of this case, I dont think I will ever love any woman like I loved her, he said.

However, the elder sister of the victim, Titilayo Joseph, denied that Hounga and Cecelia lived together, saying that her sister was staying with her in Mazamaza.



She said:

Cece (Cecelia) lived with me and not him. She would go to work in the morning and return home at evening.

I called her on December 24 to know why she was not at home and she said the Yuletide season had kept her busy at work.

On December 25, she came home to pick something and my neighbours said they saw her. I was sick and couldnt go out.

I was at home on December 26 when I received a call that she had a fight with her boyfriend and he had stabbed her to death.

He claimed they were attacked by robbers; were they the only one living in that compound? Why was she the only one that was stabbed to death? Why didnt he raise the alarm?

Titilayo said the family was not aware of the relationship, urging the police to bring the killer of her sister to justice.



A source said the police would accommodate all witnesses and sieve the evidence to arrive at the truth.



He said:

It was a miracle that he survived because all his entrails were out. One of the doctors in the hospitals he was rushed to has made statement to corroborate Houngas story.

The Deputy Police Public Relations Officer, Lagos State Command, ASP Aliyu Giwa, confirmed the arrest.



He added that the police would get to the roots of the case and give justice to the deceased.





For more scintillating and juicy stories, follow the official Naijapals accounts On Twitter - https://twitter.com/Naijapals and Facebook - www.facebook.com/naijapals Hounga claimed that he and Cecelia were attacked by a three-man gang on Christmas Day, adding that the armed men stabbed 21-year-old Joseph to death and ripped open his stomach.He said after he was rejected by four hospitals in Nigeria, a relative got a cab which took him to Porto Novo, Benin, on the fateful day, where he underwent a life-saving operation.Hounga said he decided against medical advice to risk his health and submit to the police after helearnt that he had been declared wanted for murder.The 28-year-old had been declared wanted by the Interpol for allegedly killing Cecelia in Raji Rasaki Estate, in the FESTAC Town area of Lagos State.The suspect and Cecelia had had a disagreement on Christmas day which culminated in a bloody fight during which the victim was stabbed to death.The Lagos State Police Command had contacted Interpol to assist with the arrest of the suspect, after he was said to have escaped to Benin Republic.The police later released a statement saying it had arrested a woman, Taiye Ganiyu, and one Sodjinou Singbo, for aiding his escape.However, PUNCH Metro was told that Hounga surrendered himself to the police in Benin on January 1, 2016, and was transferred to the FESTAC Police Division the next day.The matter was immediately transferred to the State Department of Criminal Investigation, Yaba.The suspect told Punch he had never had a fight with Cecelia in the house he rented in Raji Rasaki Estate.While Hounga is an iron bender, Cecelia worked in a shop in Mile 2 as a hairdresser.Hounga said:We have known each other for more than 10 years now. We met while in the primary school. Although we attended different primary schools, we usually met during inter-house competitions and that was when we started dating.I rented the apartment where we lived and we had been living together for more than one year. We would have been married, but her parents said she should get pregnant for me first.On December 25, around 12.30am, while we were both asleep, she (Cecelia) suddenly shouted, Monday, help me. As I opened my eyes, I woke up to see a gun pointed at my head. The intruders were three, but only one carried a gun. He said if I shouted, he would blast my head off.They stabbed me in the hand and in the wrist when I tried to struggle with them. They later stabbed me in the stomach. I forced myself to pull out the knife from my stomach. When I checked Cecelia, she was dead.He said the landlord of the house and a few other people later arrived and put him in a tricycle which took him to a nearby hospital where he was rejected.He said he was also taken to the FESTAC Police Station, where he was issued a police report to enable him get quick treatment.However, around 4am, after being rejected at a general hospital and two other places, a relative was said to have suggested that he should be taken to the Porto Novo Hospital in Benin.The doctors at the hospital were said to have operated on him, before placing him on admission.He said:I was on admission when I heard in the news that I killed Cecelia. Here was somebody I loved so much and would many times kneel to beg whenever we had issues. Why would I kill her?Hounga explained that Cecelia had once separated from him after she was impregnated by another man, whom she claimed her family supported.He said after a few years with the man, she returned to him, adding that she had two stillbirths for the former boyfriend.She came back in 2014 and because of the love I had for her, I accepted her. Despite what happened, I have not stopped loving her and if I get out of this case, I dont think I will ever love any woman like I loved her, he said.However, the elder sister of the victim, Titilayo Joseph, denied that Hounga and Cecelia lived together, saying that her sister was staying with her in Mazamaza.She said:Cece (Cecelia) lived with me and not him. She would go to work in the morning and return home at evening.I called her on December 24 to know why she was not at home and she said the Yuletide season had kept her busy at work.On December 25, she came home to pick something and my neighbours said they saw her. I was sick and couldnt go out.I was at home on December 26 when I received a call that she had a fight with her boyfriend and he had stabbed her to death.He claimed they were attacked by robbers; were they the only one living in that compound? Why was she the only one that was stabbed to death? Why didnt he raise the alarm?Titilayo said the family was not aware of the relationship, urging the police to bring the killer of her sister to justice.A source said the police would accommodate all witnesses and sieve the evidence to arrive at the truth.He said:It was a miracle that he survived because all his entrails were out. One of the doctors in the hospitals he was rushed to has made statement to corroborate Houngas story.The Deputy Police Public Relations Officer, Lagos State Command, ASP Aliyu Giwa, confirmed the arrest.He added that the police would get to the roots of the case and give justice to the deceased.

Post Reply I have been reporting on latest news from Nigeria for almost 10 years now. I report on every possible news area I come across, but always ensure my reports are compiled with dignity and fact to uphold my personal values and duty as a journalist Posted: at 5-01-2016 07:24 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero
News / National

by Business Reporter

A 12-member business delegation from the Qingdao province of China is expected in Zimbabwe today for a four-day visit which will include signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on investment collaboration.The 12-member delegation comprises of representatives of the Qingdao Overseas Investment Service Centre, the Qingdao Branch of the People's Bank of China, the Qingdao Bureau of Commerce, and the Qingdao Communist Party of China (CPC) Committee."The Ministry of Macro Economic Planning and Investment Promotion shall host the delegation and shall be signing the MoU with the Qingdao Bureau of Commerce."The MoU will provide a platform for; investment collaboration; staff capacity building and identification of priority projects between our country and Qingdao," the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Macro Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Dr Desire Sibanda said.He said the ministry has organised a half day investment conference to be held at Crowne Plaza Hotel which will provide a platform for the delegation to meet the private sector, parastatals, Local Authorities and other interested investors.The objectives of the conference include, to ensure that concrete deals are discussed and cemented for the mutual benefit of both business parties and countries; to present the reforms being undertaken to improve the doing business environment in the country and to promote the uptake of the country's priority projects.The conference will seek to increase interaction between Zimbabwean business people and their Chinese counterparts and to enhance further cooperation between Zimbabwe and China.The Ministry of Macro Economic Planning and Investment Promotion has invited the Ministries of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing; Industry and Commerce; Finance and Economic Development; Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development; Mines and Mining Development; Transport and Infrastructure Development; Health and Child Care, Environment, Water and Climate Change; Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment; Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development; Energy and Power Development; Foreign Affairs; Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services; Zimbabwe Investment Authority; the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe; the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority; the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority; the Environmental Management Authority and ZimTrade.
PHOTOS: Most Beautiful Queen In Nigeria, Iniobong Okon Honors New Year Baby

bohlah at 5-01-2016 07:31 AM (6 years ago) (m)

The reigning Most Beautiful Queen in Nigeria, Iniobong Okon , in celebration of the new year,visited University of Uyo teaching hospital to honour the new year baby. The beauty queen who congratulated the mother also presented a towel, baby bath, pampers, powder, Oil and soap to the parent. She also promised to always visit the child till he is one year old.



Photos below.........

The reigning Most Beautiful Queen in Nigeria, Iniobong Okon , in celebration of the new year,visited University of Uyo teaching hospital to honour the new year baby. The beauty queen who congratulated the mother also presented a towel, baby bath, pampers, powder, Oil and soap to the parent. She also promised to always visit the child till he is one year old.Photos below.........























For more scintillating and juicy stories, follow the official Naijapals accounts On Twitter - https://twitter.com/Naijapals and Facebook - www.facebook.com/naijapals

Post Reply I have been reporting on latest news from Nigeria for almost 10 years now. I report on every possible news area I come across, but always ensure my reports are compiled with dignity and fact to uphold my personal values and duty as a journalist Posted: at 5-01-2016 07:31 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero

DAMILARE100 at 5-01-2016 08:18 AM (6 years ago)

(m) Congratulations queen Posted: at 5-01-2016 08:18 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Congratulations queen Reply

Giftous1 at 5-01-2016 08:22 AM (6 years ago)

(f) nice one Posted: at 5-01-2016 08:22 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac nice one Reply

moralemike07 at 5-01-2016 08:25 AM (6 years ago)

(m) That's good. Posted: at 5-01-2016 08:25 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac That's good. Reply

BLACKY77 at 5-01-2016 08:47 AM (6 years ago)

(m) NICE Posted: at 5-01-2016 08:47 AM (6 years ago) | Upcoming NICE Reply

gogoman at 5-01-2016 09:49 AM (6 years ago)

(m) mmm sweet queen , where be your palace Posted: at 5-01-2016 09:49 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero mmm sweet queen , where be your palace Reply

akinmanchy at 5-01-2016 10:03 AM (6 years ago)

(m) I love any form of kind gesture but I detest any iota of publicity stunt. God bless u still queen Life na jeje so just try to take am softly Posted: at 5-01-2016 10:03 AM (6 years ago) | Hero I love any form of kind gesture but I detest any iota of publicity stunt. God bless u still queen Reply

zezprincess at 5-01-2016 10:08 AM (6 years ago)

(f) Welldone queen inibong,God bless you,God will remember you when you marry &bless you with beautiful kids. Posted: at 5-01-2016 10:08 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Welldone queen inibong,God bless you,God will remember you when you marry &bless you with beautiful kids. Reply

Trueyarn at 5-01-2016 11:07 AM (6 years ago)

(m) U do well girl,kip it up. Posted: at 5-01-2016 11:07 AM (6 years ago) | Hero U do well girl,kip it up. Reply

okatee at 5-01-2016 11:17 AM (6 years ago)

(m) NO BE LIE DIS QUEEN FYN OO. NYC GESTURE. Posted: at 5-01-2016 11:17 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac NO BE LIE DIS QUEEN FYN OO. NYC GESTURE. Reply

winace at 5-01-2016 01:58 PM (6 years ago)

(f) Nice gesture queen INI. Well done Posted: at 5-01-2016 01:58 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Nice gesture queen INI. Well done Reply

DAMILARE100 at 6-01-2016 11:59 AM (6 years ago)

(m) CONGRATULATIONS Posted: at 6-01-2016 11:59 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac CONGRATULATIONS Reply

cocoeni at 6-01-2016 12:32 PM (6 years ago)

(f) nice 1 Posted: at 6-01-2016 12:32 PM (6 years ago) | Hero nice 1 Reply

Mopera at 10-01-2016 08:57 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Welldone queen inibong,God bless

you,God will remember you when

you marry &bless you with

beautiful kids. Posted: at 10-01-2016 08:57 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Welldone queen inibong,God blessyou,God will remember you whenyou marry &bless you withbeautiful kids. Reply

Mopera at 10-01-2016 08:58 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Welldone queen inibong,God bless

you,God will remember you when

you marry &bless you with

beautiful kids. Posted: at 10-01-2016 08:58 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Welldone queen inibong,God blessyou,God will remember you whenyou marry &bless you withbeautiful kids. Reply

Oworen25 at 12-01-2016 04:27 AM (6 years ago)

(m) Calabar girls with their natural beauty, they always rocks Posted: at 12-01-2016 04:27 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Calabar girls with their natural beauty, they always rocks Reply

Novic at 26-01-2016 09:03 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Naija nah country wey hate

integrity,transparency and

honesty,dats why its very possible

that some group of people may be

planning evil against PMB. Hahaha,igbo mbaka youth

seekers,hahaha,buhari youth

mbaka attention seekers,una sure

say una no road to asaba or

abuja? Ndi ara. Posted: at 26-01-2016 09:03 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Naija nah country wey hateintegrity,transparency andhonesty,dats why its very possiblethat some group of people may beplanning evil against PMB. Hahaha,igbo mbaka youthseekers,hahaha,buhari youthmbaka attention seekers,una suresay una no road to asaba orabuja? Ndi ara. Reply

Novic at 26-01-2016 09:04 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Naija nah country wey hate

integrity,transparency and

honesty,dats why its very possible

that some group of people may be

planning evil against PMB. Hahaha,igbo mbaka youth

seekers,hahaha,buhari youth

mbaka attention seekers,una sure

say una no road to asaba or

abuja? Ndi ara. Posted: at 26-01-2016 09:04 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Naija nah country wey hateintegrity,transparency andhonesty,dats why its very possiblethat some group of people may beplanning evil against PMB. Hahaha,igbo mbaka youthseekers,hahaha,buhari youthmbaka attention seekers,una suresay una no road to asaba orabuja? Ndi ara. Reply
Acer Iconia One 8 is the latest affordable Family Slate with 8 HD display, Android 5.1 on-board Tablet oi -Sayan

Acer has announced a new tablet dubbed the Iconia One 8 at the CES 2016 which is sure to catch your kid's fancy. This all new tablet from Acer comes with Kid-Centric features and that too at a budget price.

The 8 inch tablet touting a HD (1280x800p) screen is part of Acer's Iconia series of slates. However this one runs on Android Lollipop 5.1 which comes with a simplified interface and pre-screened content solely targeted at children. The Taiwanese OEM has also bundled in a number of parental control features.

SEE ALSO: Acer to launch 4 new Windows Phone at IFA 2015

The Acer Iconia One 8 is powered by a quad core Mediatek SoC and 1GB of RAM. This is strapped to 16GB of on-board storage and a slot for memory expansion via MicroSD card (up to 128GB). While it's a known fact that users generally don't use cameras on their tablets, Acer has been quite generous in this regard by packing in a 5MP (rear) and 2MP (front) in the tablet.

As of now the specifications of the Acer Iconia One 8 tablet is quite sketchy. In fact Acer hasn't detailed regarding the battery, the exact SoC on the inside etc. However the Taiwanese OEM has quoted a launch price of $99, which vaguely translates to Rs 6,435 in Indian currency.

Prices are however expected to rise slightly when the tablet lands up in the country. Acer has also added that the tablet will retail in two colour variants - blue and white finish.

SEE ALSO: Acer S59 spotted, to feature 13MP selfie camera, octa-core CPU

Best Mobiles in India
News / National

by Felex Share and Prosper Dembedza

Police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba has said a demonstration by rural teachers in Harare on Monday was organised by opposition MDC-T.She said three people, Rural Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (RTUZ) president, Obert Masaraure, secretary-general Robson Chere and programmes officer, Pride Mkono were nabbed."I confirm that MDC-T youths, touts, vendors and members of zinasu carried out an unsanctioned demonstration along Nelson Mandela today (yesterday) but were quickly dispersed by the police," she is quoted by the state run Herald."As the police, we will not sit and watch these unsanctioned demonstrations happening because they are unacceptable and we are going to arrest those involved in such activities."According to the Herald, less than 20 people turning out for the march while three were arrested for taking part in the illegal protests.It said MDC-T activists masquerading as teachers' representatives were behind it.The paper said Bona fide civil servants representatives disowned the union saying it was clear they were political activists who wanted to capitalise on the situation to gain cheap mileage".However, according to News Day , several people were injured as police disrupted the protests.Demonstrators held placards denouncing the Zanu PF government for misgovernance, said they wanted to petition Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa to speed up the payment of civil servants' salaries and bonuses for 2015.Passersby were also not spared the police wrath, as they were beaten up while shops close by were temporarily closed, as the police got busy, beating up almost everyone on sight.Shortly before the march, Masaraure had addressed the group, calling on President Robert Mugabe to cut short his annual holiday in the Far East to return home and address pressing domestic issues."President Mugabe is flying in and out of the country while civil servants are suffering. (Vice-President Phelekezela) Mphoko is staying in a hotel at the civil servants' expense. We are here in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the army, police and civil servants who cannot stand for themselves," he said.After his address, the protesters started marching and sang songs demanding Chinamasa, Mphoko and Mugabe immediately provide funds for civil servants' salaries.
Maintainers keep KC-135s flying downrange

By Tech. Sgt. James Hodgman, 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs / Published January 04, 2016

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AFNS) -- The 340th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Unit here maintains the largest KC-135 Stratotanker fleet in the world of more than 40 aircraft valued at roughly $2 billion.

The unit is responsible for ensuring each aircraft is mission ready and must quickly fix any mechanical problems the planes may have. The unit has more than 350 mechanics assigned serving in a variety of specialties from hydraulics to guidance systems.

One of those mechanics, Senior Airman Christopher Herrera, a 340th EAMU guidance and control avionics specialist from Pensacola, Florida, said he enjoys working on the KC-135.

"Every time I fix a jet there is a sense of accomplishment," Herrera said. "It's a great feeling because my job makes an impact around the world. Other aircraft rely on our refuel capabilities to accomplish their mission."

In 2015, KC-135s refueled hundreds of aircraft from 19 nations including Jordan, Australia and France as they offloaded more than 700 million pounds of fuel. The airframe is in high demand across the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility often refueling more than 90 aircraft a day.

These results are possible, in large part, because of the Airmen of the 340th EAMU who often work up to 12-hour shifts repairing aircraft.

"Working 12-hour days in the heat can be grueling and physically taxing," said Senior Airman Michael Charlton, a 340th EAMU KC-135 crew chief from Vancouver, Washington. "It's worth it though because we are working on the KC-135 which impacts so many other airframes, our sister services and coalition partners."

Capt. Kelly Womble, the 340th EAMU officer-in-charge from Cookeville, Tennessee, said that without the KC-135 maintainers these aircraft wouldn't be flying.

"It takes a lot of attention and care to keep a 60-year-old aircraft running, especially with the operations tempo and environmental conditions our maintainers have to endure," Womble said.

The captain said her Airmen give aircrews the capability to provide the fuel needed for many different types of airpower across the region.

"From bombers and fighters to ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and other refuelers, across sister services and our coalition partners -- we keep the mission going," Womble said.

KC-135 maintainers perform a variety of maintenance work to keep the plane flying. Herrera shared some of his most challenging moments working on the aircraft.

"The most challenging job I had was troubleshooting a satellite triangulation switching malfunction which would not allow the aircraft to display accurate GPS data to the pilot," Herrera said. "This was caused by a bad grounding wire for a terminal lug; it caused the jet to sense a channel malfunction and wouldn't switch to the backup system. After 72 hours of troubleshooting we finally fixed it."

Herrera also fixed an issue with a KC-135's autopilot feature.

"I remember one aircraft had an autopilot failure," Herrera said. "I fixed it, which allowed the aircraft to take-off on time. I felt a great sense of accomplishment knowing the jet would refuel fighters over Iraq and support our ground forces."

Master Sgt. Benjamin McCullough, the 340th EAMU air tasking order production superintendent from Ripon, California, said he's proud of his team.

"They make the mission happen day-in and day-out," he said. "Any time something breaks we have guys out there fixing whatever may be wrong. It can get very hot on the flightline and our Airmen are out there for four or five hours, sometimes longer, working on aircraft trying to get them ready for their next flight.

"Our rates for losing sorties based on maintenance not being accomplished are also incredibly low and that's due to their diligence and hard work," he continued. "I'm very proud of them."

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The world's clogged asylum system

By Jonathan Vit

JAKARTA, 4 January 2016 (IRIN) - The teenage boys curled up atop pieces of scrap cardboard as they prepared to spend another night sleeping on the sidewalk outside the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) office in the Indonesian capital.

They had travelled thousands of kilometres, fleeing violence and persecution in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. After perilous journeys aboard smugglers' boats, they ended up confused, homeless, and vulnerable to assault on the streets of Jakarta where they make their homes, as the government doesn't provide shelter aside from detention centres in some cases.

"This situation is really bad," said 17-year-old Mohammad Amin Ahmadi from Afghanistan. "It is so dangerous. We are worried about our future. What will happen? How will we stay here?"

Ahmadi's dream is to make it to the United States and resume his education, which was halted at fifth grade. But a refugee crisis unfolding half a world away will likely mean a very long wait for resettlement for Ahmadi and other refugees.

Resettlement has long been a solution for only a tiny proportion of the total refugee population (about one percent in 2014). But UNHCR says the refugee crisis created by Syria's civil war has added further pressure on such programmes, meaning there are even fewer opportunities for refugees in Southeast Asia to be resettled.

The agency's Indonesia representative, Thomas Vargas, said the impact is already being felt in countries like Indonesia, which, like most countries in the region, is not a signatory to the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention. Asylum seekers are given no special protection or prospect of integration. Only those legally recognised as refugees by UNHCR can hope for eventual resettlement to a third country. But the process of getting refugee status and then applying for resettlement can take two to three years. Vargas expects it to take significantly longer in the near future.

"The demand for resettlement far exceeds the number of refugees that there are places for in the world," Vargas said. "It is becoming harder and harder because of the state of the world we live in right now."

More refugees, fewer spots

More than four million people have already fled Syria, according to World Vision, while another 6.6 million are displaced within the country. A number of nations in Europe and elsewhere have responded by offering to resettle Syrians, while refugees from other countries  Afghanistan in particular  are considered less of a priority.

Yet, the number of people fleeing Afghanistan is dramatically increasing as security deteriorates. Emboldened by the withdrawal of most American troops, the Taliban is mounting a resurgence 14 years after being driven from power. The so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, has also been making inroads, while pro-government militias abuse and extort civilians.

Afghanistan is now second only to Syria in the number of its people arriving in Europe via the Mediterranean, according to UNHCR. Afghans comprised 19 percent of the nearly 800,000 migrants and refugees who arrived by sea to Europe throughout 2015 up to November, which is equivalent to about 150,648 people.

Still more Afghans, like Ahmadi, have chosen a more circuitous route through Southeast Asia in a bid to gain asylum. As a member of the ethnic and religious minority Hazara group, Ahmadi has even more to run from than others in Afghanistan as extremist groups gain more ground.

The Hazara are Shiite Muslims in a Sunni majority country. They have historically been marginalised and even persecuted under various regimes, perhaps most mercilessly by the Taliban, which was overthrown in a US-led invasion in 2001. When the Taliban took the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998, their fighters slaughtered at least 2,000 civilians, mostly Hazaras, according to Human Rights Watch.

In a 2014 report, Human Rights Watch documented ongoing attacks against the Hazara across the border in the Pakistani city of Quetta, which is a Taliban stronghold. Hundreds have been killed since 2008, and the "situation has prompted large numbers of Hazara to flee Pakistan for refuge in other countries," the organisation said.

Indonesia has long been used as a stopover for refugees from various countries, but many get stranded as they wait to be officially recognised and then accepted for resettlement by a third country. First they need to wait until their asylum claim is approved, then they can apply for resettlement. At that point, UNHCR forwards their application to countries with resettlement programmes. If one country rejects the application, the process begins again.

A lifetime on the run

Ahmadi is the product of a history of attacks on members of his community. A lifetime of trying to escape violence has led him here, to this patch of concrete outside the UNHCR office in Jakarta.

Ahmadi's family is from Parwan, a province in central Afghanistan, but they fled to neighbouring Iran, the Shiite-majority country where he was born. His father moved the family to the Iranian capital, Tehran, after his decision to support a powerful Hazara political party led to attempts on his life. When his father became ill, the family fell into poverty and Ahmadi had to cut his education short in order to work.

In 2008, the Iranian government announced it would deport more than a million unregistered Afghan refugees, many of them Hazara. Ahmadi's brother was deported to Afghanistan and went to Parwan Province, where he was killed by unknown assailants.

When Ahmadi was told he would be deported to Afghanistan with his uncle, he began to fear for his life. He was sure his brother's killing was connected to the political dispute that forced his father to flee years earlier. Then, he and his uncle were sent back. A few months later, his uncle was killed and Ahmadi decided it was time to leave.

A smuggler in Kabul told Ahmadi to work his way to Indonesia, where he said the wait times for resettlement were the shortest in the region. The teenager flew to India, and later caught a flight to Malaysia where he paid $1,500 to board a boat bound for Indonesia.

End of the road

Despite the dangers back in Afghanistan, Ahmadi now wonders if he made a mistake by leaving.

As night fell, Ahmadi and the other teenage Hazara refugees packed in tight along the sidewalk. It's the only place they said they feel safe sleeping after being attacked around the corner a few weeks ago.

The boys said a large group of Indonesians confronted them during the night and began to shout. Most of the refugees had been in the country only a matter of months and none spoke enough Bahasa Indonesian to understand what was being said. But they all remembered one man shouting, "Disini Indonesia!" ("This is Indonesia!"), before punching one of the boys in the face, breaking his nose.

Ahmadi and his friends eyed the Indonesian teenagers strumming an acoustic guitar and singing down the block with suspicion. Ahmadi sat on his scrap of cardboard in socks and a stretched out t-shirt as he rifled through his backpack to pull out a worn notebook. He removed a pristine white envelope from between its pages and gently opened the letter before smoothing it out on the ground.

The letter listed his refugee information and the date of his next interview with UNHCR. The appointment is in five months time. Ahmadi doesn't know if he can survive on the streets that long, let alone the years it will take for resettlement. He worries that by the time he gets resettled he will be in his 20s and hampered by his halting English and poor education.

"We are still young. We can improve," Ahmadi said before pausing a moment to think. "But not after five years."

jv/jf/ag

Theme (s): Refugees/IDPs,

Copyright  IRIN 2016

This material comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or its Member States.

IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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Today's Task Force Al Asad

US Marine Corps News

By Gunnery Sgt. Christine Polvorosa | January 4, 2016

At the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Al Asad was the second largest U.S. air base in Iraq, and home to thousands of deployed coalition personnel from II Marine Expeditionary Force/Multi-National Force West and other major tenant commands.

Today, there's only one commandTask Force Al Asad (TFAA)a modest contingent of coalition personnel from the U.S. and Denmark. The majority of the core team are individual augments from I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), which also includes U.S. Marines and Sailors from Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task ForceCrisis ResponseCentral Command (SPMAGTFCRCC), as well as Soldiers from the Royal Danish Army (RDA), and joint-personnel from the U.S. Army and Air Force. The task force was established in support of Combined Joint Task ForceOperation Inherent Resolve's (CJTF-OIR) mission to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

TFAA's mission is building partner capacity (BPC), and to advise and assist (A&A) the al-Jazira al-Badiyah Operations Center (JBOC) and the 7th Iraqi Army Division (7th IAD) in the conduct of combat operations in order to defeat Daesh in the Euphrates River Valley (ERV) and successively enable follow-on operations. Additionally, the task force provides security for the air base and coalition personnel.

"Our part of the mission is to train, advise and assist the JBOC and 7th [IAD] in order to allow them to develop (their plans and tactics) to defeat Daesh in their area of operations, and ultimately assist the Government of Iraq (GOI) in expelling threats and restoring their borders," said U.S. Marine Col. David Casey, TFAA commander.

At the time Casey's team arrived on deck, in July 2015 just a few months after the task force was established, the mindset of the Iraqi forces was that of much of the worldthe enemy was invincible.

"We received the baton from a team that did great work literally laying the foundation with the establishment of this base, developing those initial relationships and garnering [the Iraqis'] trust," Casey explained. "But the bad guys at the time were still winning and aggressively taking ground, and to some extent, had the populace living in great fear and certainly had the 7th [IAD] intimidated. Many Iraqi forces had fled to different parts of Iraq, and the threat was right at our doorstep."

Though Daesh was still at the forefront, the combined efforts of the previous task force team and Iraqi forces kept the enemy at bay and reinforced the 7th IAD's positions.

"[The Iraqis] were in a very strong defensive mindset, partnered with the (Sunni) tribes to hold their ground and were effectively doing so," Casey added.

However, having a strong defense didn't mean the Iraqis were ready at the time to go on the offensive.

"In [the minds of the Iraqis], the enemy was 10-foot tallthey were [larger than life]; you couldn't step off base because Daesh held that area; you couldn't get anyone to conduct offensive operations; and they were solely focused on protecting Haditha and Al Asad, as well as their checkpoints," said U.S. Marine Maj. Rick, the operations officer for TFAA and primary maneuver advisor to the 7th IAD. "Since then, they've realized they are competent enough to defeat Daesh, which has come from a preponderance of intelligence gathering that our [intelligence section] developed, and we provided to the Iraqi forces so they understand what the status of [Daesh] is so they can start focusing their efforts on destroying [Daesh] in zone or their area of operations."

Many of the task force members attribute the progress the Iraqi forces have made to the confidence in their training and the change in their perception of the enemy.

"In December (2014)-January (2015), the Iraqis were in fixed positions, but by September, they did a small-scale offensive operation (to clear a checkpoint), and you could see the change in mindset to go forward," said Danish Lt. Col. Thomas Knudsen, the executive officer for TFAA and commanding officer of the Danish Contingent (DANCON). "Because they had a good experience from this offensive [engagement], they started believing they could go [outside the wire] and fight Daesh."

And the 7th IAD did exactly that by conducting two more offensive operations and planning for a third.

"Because we're increasing the individual soldier's skills, now we see the Iraqi leaders asking for more training," Knudsen continued. "Between the two rotations of the Dane (regiments), we've trained approximately 2,700 Iraqi soldiers of the 7th (Iraqi Army) Division as part of the BPC mission."

Most of the BPC training is focused on basic combat skills, which include military tactics, marksmanship, weapons handling, counter-improvised explosive devices, military operations on urban terrain, mortars, battlefield medicine, land navigation, periods of instruction (POI) in leadership, ethics, the law of war and curriculums in specialized fields.

Most recently as part of BPC, the task force's Danish and U.S. intelligence personnel completed training of its first class of Iraqi intelligence officers, added U.S. Marine Maj. Ben, the intelligence officer for TFAA.

"Using current intelligence drawn from the local situation and incorporating elements of ongoing coalition and [Iraqi Security Force (ISF)] planning efforts into the training, allowed [the coalition intelligence team] not only to impart important concepts related intelligence tradecraft to their Iraqi counterparts, but to begin planning with them and preparing them for their next operation," said Ben, who is also the primary intelligence advisor to 7th IAD.

For the task force's part in the A&A mission, key TFAA personnel integrate in staff and operational planning meetings with senior Iraqi staff members at the 7th IAD headquartersadvising them in the planning and execution of offensive operations and continued sustainment of their forces, and assisting them in bolstering their operations with fires support, close air support, and intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) capabilities.

"Going to the staff meetings opened the door for us, and that's what really enabled us to be part of their team and know what's going on," said Rick. "It gave us a better understanding of how they operate and how we can integrate whatever capabilities we have to fit within their architecture."

According to Ben, the fires support and the ISR capabilities the task force provides in support of 7th IAD's offensive operations, primarily focused in al-Anbar province, effectively enables Iraqi maneuvers and that stirs up the enemymaking them more vulnerable to the Iraqi-coalition targeting efforts.

"It's a mutually beneficial relationship," added Ben. "When the Iraqis go on the offense, our fires become more effective and vice versa."

By enabling ISF through the A&A and BPC missions, the task force is doing their part in supporting CJTF-OIR's multinational coalition in helping the GOI to set the conditions to defeat ISIL.

Now, more than halfway through their deployment, a different kind of energy flows through Al Asadsome could say 'the Force has Awakened.'

"To go from a group we're trying to convince to go out and attack the enemy to a group that wants to; we're doing the training, trying to get these guys to believe in themselves and now they've completed that training and gone out and effectively executed it," Casey adamantly affirmed. "They believe in those things and believe in themselves as well, so the resilience of the force is much better, they've developed that!

"That then has permeated into our partnership so I think we're much closer, and they're a much better force because of it. The summation of it really is the confidence they have, the willingness they have to go out there and defeat Daesh and hold ground. That turning point has significantly hit the 7th (IAD). They now have confidence, now they believe they can do things, now they're willing to leave that defensive posture and become offensive, and that turning point has been tremendous for us," Casey continued.

Reinforcing the offensive mindset of the ISF, focusing on developing mature operations plans that can be carried out to defeat Daesh, and enhancing their skills and abilities, arguably sounds like a an amazing feat for this modest contingent, but the task force members believe in what they're doing and also in the potential of the Iraqi forces.

"Success builds upon success they're really riding a wave of high morale and momentum, the Iraqi Security Forces have taken back the initiative from Daesh," reaffirmed Ben.

The second task force rotation is scheduled to return home early this year, and the next rotation will have some big shoes to fill.

Editor's note: Special Operations Forces service members assigned to CJTF-OIR routinely go by their first names to protect operational security.

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Littoral Combat Ship USS Fort Worth Arrives in Phuket

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160104-04

Release Date: 1/4/2016 11:01:00 AM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Antonio Turretto Ramos, USS Fort Worth Public Affairs

PHUKET, Thailand (NNS) -- The littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) arrived in Phuket, Thailand for the first time Dec. 30 for a scheduled port visit.

The visit allows the independently deployed ships the opportunity to experience the local culture and customs, enjoy a variety of recreational activities and participate in a community service event.

'I first visited Phuket 15 years ago and it's great to be back,' said Cmdr. Michael Atwell, Fort Worth commanding officer. 'I know our Sailors will enjoy it here and this is a great way for them to be good ambassadors of the United States while meeting the warm and friendly people of Thailand.'

In addition to the community service event, the ship's Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) program representative informed Sailors about opportunities for tours.

'One of the advantages of LCS is that we have a small crew and it opens up more affordable and diverse options when we pull into port because we don't need to book tours for large groups of Sailors,' explained Naval Aircrewman-Tactical Helicopter 1st Class William Petri, Fort Worth's MWR representative. 'Unlike larger platforms, we have a relatively smaller footprint and that allows us to collectively experience more.'

In an effort to increase integration between the U.S. and partner nations in Southeast Asia, Fort Worth embarked one naval officer from Sri Lanka and one coast guard officer from the Maldives prior to making the transit to Phuket. The embarked officers stood watch with the crew of Fort Worth and participated in underway operations, gaining firsthand knowledge of what life is like on the Navy's newest class of ship.

Fort Worth is the second LCS to deploy as part of an initiative for up to four rotational deployments of these ships simultaneously to U.S. 7th Fleet in the coming years. Fast, agile and mission-focused, littoral combat ships are designed to operate in near shore environments and employ modular mission packages that can be configured for surface warfare, mine countermeasures or anti-submarine warfare.

The U.S. 7th Fleet conducts forward-deployed naval operations in support of U.S. national interests in the Indo-Asia-Pacific area of operations. As the U.S. Navy's largest numbered fleet, 7th Fleet interacts with 35 other maritime nations to build maritime partnerships that foster maritime security, promote stability and prevent conflict.

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Saudi-backed militants fire shells at aid convoy in Yemen

Iran Press TV

Mon Jan 4, 2016 7:42AM

Saudi-backed militants have fired shells at a humanitarian aid convoy in the southwestern Yemeni province of Ta'izz.

A civilian was injured during the attack, which occurred in the Dahi district of Ta'izz on Monday, Yemen's al-Masirah news channel reported.

The militants also blocked an aid convoy that was heading toward the Habil Salman district of the province.

The report also said that Saudi-backed snipers have recently targeted a number of Yemeni civilians in Ta'izz, including one in Dahi and another in Habil Salman on Sunday.

Also on Monday, officials loyal to Yemen's fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi imposed a curfew on the southern port city of Aden following a heavy infighting on Sunday, which claimed 17 lives.

The curfew will come into effect at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Monday and last until 5:00 am (0200 GMT) the next day.

On Sunday, three civilians were killed in a Saudi airstrike on a residential area in the Saqayn district of Sa'ada Province, in northern Yemen. In another air raid on the Kataf district of Sa'ada, six women were killed.

Also on Sunday, Saudi warplanes bombarded a number of areas in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, including the al-Sabaha district.

The regime in Riyadh began the campaign against Yemen in late March 2015. The strikes are supposedly meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to Hadi.

More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured since the strikes began. The Saudi war has also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country's facilities and infrastructure.

Yemenis have, meanwhile, been carrying out retaliatory attacks against the Saudi forces deployed in the country as well as targets inside Saudi Arabia.

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Spanish Jets Arrive in Lithuania to Patrol Baltic Airspace

Sputnik News

18:37 04.01.2016(updated 18:57 04.01.2016)

Spanish Air Force fighter aircraft arrived in the Lithuanian Siauliai Air Force Aviation Base on Monday to take part in the NATO Air Policing Mission, the country's defense ministry said.

VILNIUS (Sputnik)  According to the ministry, some 130 representatives of the Spanish Air Force are expected to take part in the duties transfer ceremony scheduled for Thursday. Spanish Eurofighter Typhoon jets are due to replace Hungarian JAS-39 Gripen multirole fighter jets.

This is the third Spanish mission to protect the airspace of the Baltic States. For the first time the Spanish military participated in the mission with Mirage F1 fighter planes in Lithuania in 2006, and the second time with Eurofighter Typhon jets in Estonia in 2015.

Since joining NATO in 2004, the three Baltic countries' airspace has been defended by a rotating NATO mission.

 Sputnik

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US Special Forces in Firefight in Afghanistan's Helmand Province

by Carla Babb January 05, 2016

One U.S. service member was killed and two others were wounded Tuesday during fighting in Afghanistan's Helmand province, where Taliban fighters recently have expanded their operations.

U.S. defense officials said American special forces units were involved in the operation near the city of Marja, a scene of intense fighting in recent weeks.

A helicopter was sent to evacuate the wounded, but was unable to take off from Marja when a rotor struck a wall compound, a senior defense official told VOA Tuesday on the condition of anonymity. He added that the helicopter is still in Marja trying to evacuate the wounded.

Another official, U.S. Colonel Michael Lawhorn, told VOA the helicopter 'was not shot down.'

Intense mortar fire prevented a second U.S. military medevac helicopter from landing, according to a senior defense official.

Marja is one of several parts of Helmand under control of the Taliban. Taliban insurgents have put pressure on the province in southern Afghanistan's poppy-growing region for months.

Ten of Helmand's 14 districts either have fallen to the Taliban or have an uncertain status in the midst of fighting between the Afghan government's security forces and Taliban fighters.

The insurgents' advances have prompted commanders of NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan to deploy American and British military advisers last month, to help Afghan forces better coordinate their efforts to re-take lost territory in Helmand, Afghanistan's largest province.

The U.S. soldier killed Tuesday was not identified.

'We are deeply saddened by this loss,' Brigadier General Wilson A. Shoffner, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said.

(VOA's Ayaz Gul contributed to this report)

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Protests Lodged Over Chinese Plane Landing on Artificial Island

by VOA News January 05, 2016

Tensions are rising between China and its regional neighbors after Beijing tested out a runway on one of its artificial islands in the South China Sea.

A civilian plane landed on a runway on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands, one of many islands and reefs in the South China Sea claimed by China and other Asia-Pacific nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Vietnam has lodged a formal diplomatic protest with China over its action, while a spokesman for the Philippines Foreign Minister said Monday it was planning to take similar action.

A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry says aircraft were sent to the island to determine whether the runway conformed to civilian aviation standards. Beijing launched a massive building project last year to transform the submerged reefs into islands that can support runways and other facilities.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Monday that China's test flight on Fiery Cross Reef 'raises tensions and threatens regional stability.' Washington deployed a guided missile destroyer within 22 kilometers of the Subi Reef in the Spratly's last October on an operation aimed at establishing rules of 'freedom of navigation' in international waters.

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Pentagon Officials Thwart White House Efforts to Close Guantanamo

Sputnik News

16:45 04.01.2016(updated 16:48 04.01.2016)

An investigation has revealed the tactics used by Pentagon officials to prevent the transferal or freeing of prisoners from Guantanamo, despite the wishes of the White House.

US Defense Department officials have used several tactics to delay or stop prisoners from leaving the Guantanamo Bay prison since US President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, when he signed an executive order to close the facility.

According to data from Human Rights First, 242 prisoners were held there at the start of Obama's presidency; as of November 2015, 107 were still being held there, 90 of whom have been imprisoned for more than ten years.

One detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was transferred to the US for prosecution for his role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings. Four of the 242 died in custody, and 131 prisoners have been transferred, repatriated or resettled under Obama.

Since the prison opened in 2002, a total of 780 detainees have been incarcerated at Guantanamo. The cost of holding a prisoner there is more than $3 million per year.

According to an investigation Reuters published last week, the Pentagon's refusal to cooperate with the process of transferring, repatriating or resettling prisoners has resulted in them spending years longer than necessary in Guantanamo.

Officials from the White House and State Department have revealed that their Defense Department counterparts refused to provide photographs, complete medical records and other basic documentation to foreign governments willing to take detainees.

James Dobbins, the State Department special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014 told the agency that negotiating prisoner releases with the Pentagon was like 'punching a pillow," and that its officials would "come to a meeting, they would not make a counter-argument  and then nothing would happen.'

Four Afghan detainees spent an additional four years at Guantanamo after they had been approved for transfer because of the inaction of the Pentagon. The transfers of prisoners to Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Mauritania and Britain were also delayed for months, said Dobbins.

Omar Farah, a lawyer for Guantanamo detainee Tariq Ba Odah, on the revelations that Pentagon officials obstruct White House efforts to free prisoners and close the prison.

Yemeni prisoner Tariq Ba Odah, who is on hunger strike, is one of those who remains at Guantanamo despite having been cleared for release five years ago.

"At the moment Tariq Ba Odah is being kept in solitary confinement in Gauntanamo and force fed, even though they could have released him long ago. The government of one country has already said they will take him. In order to agree his release, there just remains a couple of formalities, for example, demonstration of his medical history, so that that country can decide if it can provide the necessary medical assistance for him," Bo Odah's lawyer, Omar Farah, told RT.

"But regardless of the fact that the National Security Council has intervened on more than one occasion, the Defense Department stubbornly refuses to carry out this simple bureaucratic procedure. In my view, this behavior cannot be characterized as anything other than intentional. This is just more proof that the Defense Department is preventing the closure of Guantanamo."

Farah said that in order to fulfil his pledge and finally close the prison during his final year in office, Obama must use his executive powers to force the intervention of the Department of Justice, which could issue court orders forcing the Defense Department to comply with the release of prisoners.

 Sputnik

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Kim Jong Un Seeks Economic Development Amid Sanctions

by Kim Hwan Yong January 04, 2016

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's New Year's speech shows the young leader is placing a high priority on the economy, analysts in Seoul said.

In a 30-minute address Friday, Kim appeared to stress economic development over military power. The annual speech is a possible indicator of the communist country's intentions for the coming year.

'We should concentrate all our efforts on building an economic giant to bring about a fresh turn in developing the country's economy and improving the people's standard of living,' Kim said.

In a report released Sunday, Cheong Seong-chang, director of unification strategy at the Sejong Institute, noted that the country's military-first politics  or Songun, a guideline for domestic governance and foreign policy set by Kim's father  was less visible in the speech.

Cheong, who specializes in the North Korean leadership, said Kim has been focusing less on the military-first policy in his annual speech since he took power in late 2011. The change shows Kim is gaining confidence in his power, according to Cheong.

'Stabilized grip on power'

'Politically, Kim appears to believe he has stabilized his grip on power. With submarine-launched ballistic missile tests, he might feel his country has secured deterrent against the United States and South Korea militarily,' Cheong said.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said Kim appears to be seeking economic self-reliance in anticipation of prolonged international sanctions.

'The North Korean regime isn't expecting international sanctions to be lifted anytime soon, so it has been focusing its efforts on creating foundation for self-reliance. Related policies have been introduced during the last four years,' Lim said.

Yang Moon-soo, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies, expects Kim to pursue pragmatic economic policies this year. In a discussion in Seoul, Yang said Kim is likely to invest resources in fields that could show visible results, including agricultural, livestock and construction industries.

In an apparent attempt to broaden its engagement with the international community, North Korea is reportedly planning to send a delegation to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland for the first time in 18 years.

South Korea's Yonhap News said North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong may attend the annual event, scheduled to take place January 20 to 23 in Davos.

Jee Abbey Lee contributed to this report.

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India forces searching air base for militant after battles

Iran Press TV

Mon Jan 4, 2016 4:1PM

At least one attacker still remains at an Indian air force base in the northern state of Punjab, which recently came under attack by a group of heavily-armed militants, with security troops still working to secure the place.

Major General Dushyant Singh, from India's elite National Security Guard, told reporters Monday that troops backed by helicopters have launched a massive operation to hunt down the militant at the heavily guarded site in Pathankot district, which is located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Pakistan border.

Singh said search operations at the strategic air base would continue until the entire facility is secured. He also confirmed that army troops on Monday had killed a fifth militant in the siege, which began on Saturday morning.

Over the weekend, it appeared at least twice that the militant raid had ended, but fresh explosions hit the area and gun battles erupted there again.

At least six Indian troops, a senior army officer and five militants have so far been confirmed killed in the incident.

No group has claimed responsibility for the assault so far, but Indian officials claim it bears the hallmark of previous attacks by Pakistan-based militant groups.

The attack came about six months after Indian security forces fought a prolonged gunfight with the militants who attacked a moving bus and stormed into a police station in the town of Dinanagar in Punjab's Gurdaspur district.

At least four policemen and three civilians were killed in attack. The militants were also shot dead during the gun battle with security forces.

The latest developments come as violence, including cross-border fire exchanges, has recently flared up between Indian and Pakistani troops along the disputed de facto border in Kashmir. The two sides have accused each other of provocation.

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India Urges Pakistan To Take 'Firm' Action After Base Attack

January 05, 2016

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged his Pakistani counterpart to take 'firm and immediate action' against those behind an attack on an Indian air base near the country's border with Pakistan.

Modi 'strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organizations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack,' the Indian government said in a statement posted on January 5, after Modi spoke by telephone to Nawaz Sharif.

Seven Indian soldiers were killed in the attack that began early on January 2 and dragged on for nearly four days as the troops struggled to contain the heavily armed attackers in the sprawling compound.

Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said on January 5 that six attackers were killed and that a search operation was under way to make sure no militants remain on the facility.

An air force spokeswoman said that 'there has been no firing since the night on January 4 at the base.'

The United Jehad Council, an alliance of 13 Kashmir-based rebel groups, claimed its 'highway squad' stormed the base.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents in its portion of Kashmir. Pakistan denies the claim.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/pakistan-india-urges- action-after-base-attack/27468749.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Spokesman: Iran committed to int'l conventions regarding diplomatic places

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 4, IRNA -- Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said here on Monday that the Islamic Republic of Iran is fully committed to the international conventions regarding diplomatic places.

Talking to reporters in his weekly press conference, Jaber Ansari reiterated that Saudi Arabia is trying to settle its domestic problems by playing blame games.

Referring to the demonstrations held in front of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate in the northeastern city of Mashad by angry protesters over execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, he said it is not the first time in the world that incidents happen to embassies and consulates.

'The important point is, the host government has fulfilled its legal obligations aimed at safeguarding the diplomatic places and diplomats based on the international conventions,' Jaber Ansari added.

'Saudi Arabia is trying to escalate tensions in the Middle East, imposing the bloody war in Yemen and pursuing the policies aimed at fueling insecurity and instability in the region,' he said.

'It seemed that the Saudies not only benefit, but consider the continuation of theie existence from escalating tensions and fueling conflicts in the region and are playing a blame game aimed at settling its domestic problems,' the spokesman added.

'Saudi Arabia's ruthless behavior with demands of freedom-seeking people, domestic crackdown and beheading of opponents, including the martyr Sheikh Nimr, indicates that this Arab country is engulfed by domestic and foreign crises and is perusing policy of escalating tension in the region,' he said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced on Sunday that Riyadh severed its diplomatic relations with Tehran one day after the government and people of Iran protested to execution of the prominent cleric Sheikh Nimr.

9060**1771

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New bans, defense restrictions sabotage JCPOA: Iran

Iran Press TV

Mon Jan 4, 2016 4:51PM

A senior Iranian official says any attempt to impose new sanctions on Tehran and restrict its defense and deterrence capabilities will undermine a nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

In a meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen in Tehran on Monday, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani reaffirmed the Islamic Republic's goodwill to precisely and swiftly implement its obligations under the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and said the execution of the deal requires that both sides fulfill their commitments.

He added that Iran will show a "strong reaction" to any measure aimed at imposing restrictions on its defense capabilities.

In a letter to Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan on December 31, President Hassan Rouhani ordered stepped-up production of missiles after reports that the US was preparing fresh sanctions on international companies and individuals in Iran.

The Wall Street Journal said later that the White House had delayed plans to impose new sanctions on Iran but added that the measures remained on the table.

The SNSC secretary further expressed hope that exchange of political and economic delegations between Iran and European countries would have positive outcomes on the expansion of all-out relations.

Shamkhani said the necessary ground has been prepared for Tehran and Copenhagen to improve cooperation in various economic and industrial sectors.

The Danish foreign minister, for his part, commended Iran's effective measures to precisely fulfill its commitments under the JCPOA.

Jensen said his country is determined to boost relations with Iran in all fields and added that the two countries have numerous grounds for economic and technical cooperation.

On July 14, 2015, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries  the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany  finalized the text of the JCPOA on Tehran's nuclear program in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Under the agreement, Iran will accept restrictions on its nuclear program in return for the removal of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the US and the EU.

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Iran's New Underground Missile Depot Set to Ruffle America's Feathers

Sputnik News

22:12 05.01.2016(updated 23:14 05.01.2016)

On Tuesday, Iran unveiled a new subterranean storage facility, the latest piece of its expanding missile program. The move is likely to anger officials in the US, who have already threatened to apply new sanctions, despite the promises of the Iran nuclear deal.

Airing on Tasnim news agency and state television, the footage shows a state-of-the-art missile depot beneath an Iranian mountain range. Administered by Revolutionary Guards, the facility was inaugurated by Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament.

The depot is needed to ease overcrowding in similar sites, and houses a stockpile of Emad precision-guided missiles.

The unveiling comes after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced plans to expand the country's missile defense program. On Friday, Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan said that the program was necessary for national security.

'Iran boosts its defense capabilities in accordance with its objectives and its national interests,' he said, according to IRNA News. He also added that the current situation in the Middle East required peace and security that can only be provided by the existence of strong military forces.

While Tehran has stressed that the program is in no way meant to provoke Washington, US officials have nonetheless expressed outrage. Military analysts say that the Emad missiles could, in theory, carry a nuclear warhead.

Last Wednesday, US officials speaking on condition of anonymity indicated that the US Treasury Department was preparing a new round of sanctions against companies and individuals associated with Iran's test-firing of two ballistic missiles. Washington called these launches a violation of international law, though Tehran maintains that the tests were conducted in accordance with UN regulations and to be used for defensive purposes.

The threat of new penalties came as the international community is working to lift sanctions related to Tehran's nuclear program. Following the nuclear deal agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 nations  China, Russia, the US, the UK, France, and Germany  the Iranian government has worked steadily to eliminate its uranium supplies.

While US officials insisted that any fresh sanctions would be unrelated to the nuclear deal, Iran warned that new financial penalties would be viewed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a breach of the agreement.

On Friday, the White House announced that it planned to delay the implementation of new sanctions. It remains unclear whether Tuesday's unveiling will reinvigorate calls for financial penalties.

Tehran has also recently accused Washington of violating the nuclear deal. Following the San Bernardino shooting in December, the US Congress passed laws requiring any foreign national who has visited Iran or Syria to obtain a visa before entering the United States. Iran claims the legislation could harm Iranian businesses and cut off access to foreign investment.

 Sputnik

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Law Minister Says 100 Pakistanis Joined IS in Syria, Iraq

by Noor Zahid January 04, 2016

A state law minister said Monday that around 100 Pakistanis have left the country to join Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Rana Sanaullah, Punjab's law minister, also said 42 Pakistanis were arrested in recent days for trying to establish IS sleeper cells. The raids came in four Punjab cities over the weekend and IS literature and weapons were found, he said.

'According to our probe and investigation, those who left the country to join the IS are not more than 100,' Sanaullah said.

It is the first time that a senior minister has released figures about Pakistani citizens who left the country to join IS.

Pakistani officials have consistently denied that IS has a presence in the country. But recent arrests, raids and intelligence reports indicate IS may be gaining a foothold, analysts and government critics say.

No 'footprint'

Despite his revelations, Sanaullah attempted to downplay IS's presence in Pakistan, telling VOA's Urdu service that unlike many other countries, there is no IS 'footprint' in Pakistan. He said only a few Pakistanis have been lured through social media or literature to join IS abroad, and that does not mean the group has a presence in the country.

'Hundreds of people from different countries have fled to Iraq and Syria to join IS,' he told VOA. 'However, only a very few Pakistanis have left the country in hopes of joining the militant group.'

Sanaullah said the group has no network inside the country that could plan or carry out terror activities.

Among the 42 detained over the weekend were alleged IS Islamabad chief Amir Mansoor; his deputy, Abdullah Mansoori; and the group's chief for Sindh province, Umer Kathio, officials say.

Previous arrests

The raid came days after Pakistan's counterterrorism authorities told VOA that they had arrested a group of 13 suspected militants last week and accused them of operating a recruiting and training facility for IS in Punjab state.

Security forces found 'an underground training center and seized automatic weapons, communication equipment, bomb-making material, laptops, CDs containing IS propaganda material, maps of Pakistan military's bases and other facilities,' the officials said, requesting anonymity.

The officials told VOA the suspects confessed that they pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi. One of the detainees facilitated contacts between the suspects and a Pakistani national who was in charge of recruiting Pakistani militants to Syria.

The man helped nine suspected militants reach Syria through Turkey, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper said, citing official documents.

Turkish officials arrested two Pakistanis last week, along with a Briton, in Istanbul for links to IS.

And according to Pakistani news reports, three women, along with their children, reportedly left Punjab's capital city of Lahore recently to join IS in Syria and Iraq.

Authorities in Karachi last month discovered a network of women raising funds for IS. And Pakistan's Counter-Terrorism agents apprehended a suspect last week who allegedly was involved in generating funds for IS in Sindh province.

A divided Pakistan

The reports of a possible growing IS presence in the country are causing concern among some Pakistani politicians and analysts.

A leader of the opposition parties in Pakistan's parliament, Sayed Khurshid Shah, accused the government of not doing enough to counter the militant group's activities in Pakistan. He said recruitment for IS has been going on in Punjab, and lists of the enrollees have been prepared.

Pakistan's former secretary of the interior, Tasneem Noorani, told VOA's Urdu Service that the Pakistan government must stop Pakistanis from leaving the country to join IS in Syria and Iraq.

They could pose a greater threat to the country once they return, he said, and they will be equipped with 'real life' experience and would have established contacts with IS's global leadership.

The increasing presence of the militant group in Pakistan could further widen the sectarian divide that has hard hit the country for decades, analysts say.

'This is very dangerous, as the country has been divided into two parties,' former Pakistan military brigadier Syed Nazir told VOA's Deewa service. 'One group is fighting against the IS and the other group is supporting IS.'

'This is very dangerous.  this war may expand, which will have extremely dangerous consequences for Pakistan,' he said. 'IS's influence needs to be countered.'

IS activity in Pakistan is blending into IS's growing stronghold in neighboring Afghanistan, where the group has launched attacks against government facilities in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan. The group also has been engaged in fierce fighting with rival Taliban militants.

'IS is present with full strength and capability in the Afghan-Pakistan border region,' Pakistan-based analyst Aqeel Yusafzai told VOA.

Several Pakistani militants who have joined IS have been killed in ongoing clashes between IS and Taliban militants in Nangarhar during the past few days, he said.

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UN chief calls on Iran, Saudi Arabia to avoid further exacerbating tensions after executions

4 January 2016  United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has phoned the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran to urge both countries to avoid actions that could further exacerbate tensions after the recent Saudi executions, the attack on the Saudi embassy in Iran, and the rupture in diplomatic ties.

In his call to Saudi Foreign Minister Abel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir today, Mr. Ban reiterated his views on capital punishment, which he strongly opposes, and his disappointment at the execution of Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, whose case he raised with the Saudi authorities several times.

He also reiterated that the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, Iran's capital, was deplorable, but added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Iran was deeply worrying. Regarding Yemen, he urged Saudi Arabia to renew its commitment to a ceasefire.

Speaking to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif yesterday, Mr. Ban recalled his earlier statement voicing dismay at Saturday's execution of Sheikh al-Nimr and 46 other prisoners by Saudi Arabia, as well as his condemnation of the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and he urged the Minister to take the necessary measures to protect diplomatic facilities.

He urged both Ministers to avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation between two countries and in the region as a whole, stressing the importance of continued constructive engagement by them in the interest of the region and beyond.

In a statement by his spokesman on Saturday, Mr. Ban said Sheik al-Nimr and a number of the others executed "had been convicted following trials that raised serious concerns over the nature of the charges and the fairness of the process."

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein yesterday stressed the strict requirements for carrying out the death sentence in those countries that still permitted it, including only for the most serious crimes, with a fair trial, full transparency, and the exclusion of confessions obtained under torture, when application of the death penalty is "unconscionable."

"Generally, I remain very concerned over whether strict due process guarantees, including the right to an effective defence, were met in all cases," he said, urging the Saudi Government to impose a moratorium on all executions and to work with the UN and other partners on alternative strategies to combat terrorism.

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UN Chief Urges Saudi Arabia, Iran Not to Escalate

by Margaret Besheer January 04, 2016

Saudi Arabia formally complained to the United Nations Monday about the storming of its embassy in the Iranian capital on Saturday, after Riyadh carried out the death penalty against a prominent Shi'ite cleric.

In a letter sent to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as well as to the presidents of the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly, Saudi Arabia's U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi strongly condemned the invasion of its Tehran embassy and damage to its consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad.

"We call upon the Security Council to take all appropriate measures to ensure the inviolability of diplomatic facilities and the protection of all Saudi diplomats in Iran," al-Mouallimi wrote.

He said Riyadh is "appalled" at the failure of Iranian authorities to prevent the attacks. Under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, host countries are required to take necessary steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises and staff.

In its own letter to the U.N. chief, Iranian envoy Gholamali Khoshroo acknowledged that "around 8,000" protesters staged a peaceful demonstration that got "out of control," despite "extensive efforts" by police. He said more than 40 protesters were arrested and an investigation to find other perpetrators is under way.

The protesters were angry at the execution of Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. The Saudi government announced his execution on January 2, along with 46 other prisoners on terrorism related charges. Nimr was an outspoken critic of the Saudi monarchy.

The Iranian ambassador called the cleric's execution by beheading "unjustified and provocative."

Regional Consequences

Secretary-General Ban expressed concern at the escalation in tensions between the two regional powers, urging them to avoid actions that could exacerbate the situation bilaterally and in the region as a whole. He added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Tehran is "deeply worrying."

Bahrain and Sudan also said they are cutting their diplomatic ties with Tehran, while the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations with Iran.

"This escalation is likely to have regional consequences in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond," said George Washington University international affairs professor Edmund Ghareeb. He warned it could hurt efforts to push the fledgling peace process forward in Syria. The U.N. hopes to hold the first round of intra-Syrian talks on January 25.

"This escalation is likely to complicate the efforts of the United Nations, Russia and the United States to bring the parties together," Ghareeb added.

"We are concerned it could escalate and could derail the Syria talks; it could derail the Yemen talks; it could potentially become a much bigger problem," Britain's U.N. ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters. He said he hopes the Security Council will do its part to manage the "tension and to seek de-escalation."

The secretary-general spoke Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and on Monday with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir in a bid to calm the situation.

The U.N. said Ban expressed his condemnation to Zarif of the attack at the Saudi embassy in Tehran and urged the foreign minister to take the necessary measures to protect diplomatic facilities in the country. He also reiterated his deep dismay at the execution of Sheikh Nimr and the 46 other prisoners.

Death Penalty

In his call with the Saudi foreign minister, the U.N. said the secretary-general "reiterated his views on capital punishment and his disappointment over the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr, whose case he had raised with the Saudi authorities on several occasions."

The secretary-general has previously said the death penalty "has no place in the 21st century," and has urged a worldwide moratorium on its use.

In a statement Saturday about the mass executions, Ban expressed concern that they were carried out "following trials that raised serious concerns over the nature of the charges and the fairness of the process."

Saudi Arabia rejected that criticism, saying in a statement from its U.N. mission that all of those convicted had fair and public trials and the right to appeal.

'He was very much misinformed," the Saudi ambassador told reporters about the secretary-general. "The allegations that the trial and the procedures were somehow tainted is simply misinformed," he added.

UN Envoy to Riyadh

The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, arrived in Riyadh Monday to meet with officials. He said this is a "very worrisome development" and he will assess the implications of it on the Syria peace process. He will visit Tehran later this week.

The U.N.'s Special Envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, also is due in the region Wednesday to try to secure a new cease-fire after the Saudis ended a shaky one put in place on December 15 that coincided with peace talks in Geneva. Both sides repeatedly violated that truce.

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Saudi, Iran Tensions Risk Sinking Syria Peace Efforts

by Jamie Dettmer January 04, 2016

Boiling tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia risk dooming fragile, painstaking efforts to negotiate a Syrian peace deal as the fallout from the Saudis' execution of a Shi'ite cleric spreads across the region.

The escalating confrontation over the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and three other Shi'ites, along with 43 Sunni Muslim jihadists, on terrorism charges, is already worsening Islamic sectarianism in the region, with allies and proxies taking sides and threatening retaliation.

Western diplomats are now scrambling behind the scenes to persuade the Saudis to refrain from executing al-Nimir's nephew, who also faces a death sentence for participating in anti-government protests like his uncle.

But the rhetorical confrontation between Riyadh and Tehran - initially over the beheadings and then over the weekend storming of the Saudi embassy in the Iranian capital by protesters -- is already turning violent, risking more trouble between the two regional powers best positioned to help shape an end to the nearly five-year-long Syrian conflict.

Allies and proxies of the Saudis and Iranians are already making their feelings felt  and not just with words and protests.

Violence and attacks

Bomb blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in Hilla, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad; a Sunni imam in Iskandariya, in central Iraq, was killed by a gunman; and police came under heavy gunfire Sunday night in Sheikh Nimr's hometown of Awamiya in Saudi Arabia's restive Eastern Province, leaving one civilian dead and a child wounded.

More could come, warns David Weinberg, an analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington DC-based think tank.

He fears both Tehran and Riyadh could miscalculate their responses. "The danger of all of this is that it could lead to miscalculation militarily in the region by the Saudis and the Iranians, ...with violence spinning out of control due to the reactions of terror properties of Iran retaliating, as they had threatened to do, if al-Nimir was executed," he says.

"This is going to be very hard to contain," he adds.

Some analysts argue that the executions illustrate the Saudi kingdom's new aggressive posture under King Salman, who was crowned monarch last year following the death of his half brother Abdullah. Weinberg suspects the Saudi leaders may not have considered the possible geopolitical fallout from executing the Shi'ite cleric. "

"Saudi Arabia has been tone deaf for years about how its conduct towards the Shia minority in the kingdom engenders a backlash," he says.

Likewise, Iran appears to have handed the Saudis a public relations and strategic victory  at least as far as Saudis' Sunni Gulf neighbors are concerned  with the storming of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran. The Iranian government insists that it was not behind the protest, but the Saudis insist the storming of the mission was a purposeful escalation.

The stage is set for both sides to exploit the row.

'Political agitation'

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards warned Sunday that the execution of al-Nimr will lead to the "downfall" of the Saudi monarchy. Analysts say that in retaliation, Iranian hawks are likely to encourage restive Shi'ite Muslims in eastern Saudi Arabia to up their political agitation against the ruling House of Saud.

Bahrainis fear this will also happen in their emirate, where a long-running, low-level insurgency has been under way since Bahrain's majority Shi'ite population began protests in 2011 against the emirate's Sunni rulers.

Bahrain's leaders say they have seen signs of increased Iranian agitation. In July, the Bahrainis withdrew their ambassador from Tehran after claiming the Revolutionary Guards were behind a plot to smuggle arms into the country, orchestrated by two Bahraini nationals with close ties to Iran. And, in October, Bahrain accused Iran of seeking to topple the Bahraini royal family, claiming Iran's Revolutionary Guards were training Shi'ite terrorists.

The row between Riyadh and Tehran comes at a difficult moment for efforts to find a political solution for the wars raging in the region  conflicts in which Iran and Saudi Arabia are backing opposing sides.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert acknowledged Monday that "relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran are of fundamental importance for solving the crises in Syria and Yemen."

Prospects of Syrian peace talks

Developments inside and outside Syria are not helping advance peace. Russian airstrikes and Syrian government barrel-bombing of civilians are hardening rebel sentiment. Regional rivalries have complicated the search for peace from the outset, but last month there were signs that both Tehran and Riyadh were getting more serious about resolving the conflict.

Saudi Arabia played a key part in brokering a deal between more than 100 Syrian rebel and opposition groups, securing an agreement between them over a negotiating framework. But with confrontation flaring between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the prospects for the Syrian peace talks look even more forlorn.

And the standoff may help hardliners in Iran, who have already been maneuvering ahead of next month's parliamentary elections, seen as a crucial test of reformist President Hassan Rouhani's authority. Hawks have already been seeking to gain the upper hand with a civil liberties crackdown and Rouhani has been unable to rein in the country's security apparatus.

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Probe Confirms Traces of Deadly Sarin Gas Exposure in Syria

Sputnik News

12:07 05.01.2016

A fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has found indications that some people in Syria were exposed to sarin gas, according to a report to the UN.

The findings were presented in the latest monthly report on Syria from chief of the OPCW Ahmet Uzumcu.

According to the report, the mission to Syria was looking into charges by the Syrian government that chemical weapons were used in 11 instances. The report did not specify when the alleged chemical attacks occurred.

'In one instance, analysis of some blood samples indicates that individuals were at some point exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance. Further investigation would be necessary to determine when or under what circumstances such exposure might have occurred,' Uzumcu was quoted as saying by Reuters.

The Syrian government has repeatedly accused rebel fighters of using chemical weapons. In turn, Western-backed rebels in Syria have denied using chemical weapons.

Several sources also reported that chemical materials, particularly the deadly sarin gas, were delivered from Turkey to Syrian militants.

The latest to speak publicly on the allegations was Eren Erdem, a member of the Turkish opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). In December 2015, he disclosed to RT that Ankara was aware of sarin supplies to terrorist groups via Turkey.

In December 2015, the Syrian government and the UN signed the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM). Damascus agreed to support the JIM to conduct its activities in accordance with UN decisions. The mechanism was established in August 2015 to identify those involved in the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Syria agreed to destroy its entire chemical weapons arsenal in September 2013, under a deal negotiated with the US and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of Damascus.

Sarin is a lethal gas, classified by the UN Resolution 687 as a weapon of mass destruction and banned by the UN Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. By late October 2014, the OPCW declared that nearly 98 percent of the chemical weapons in Syria had been removed and destroyed.

 Sputnik

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News / National

by Wilbert Mukori

MP Eddie Cross as the nation's political and economic crisis gets worse and worse the people of Zimbabwe will look back and ask themselves could this nightmare been avoided and, with time, they will know and understand the true cost of MDC's failure to implement even one reform during the GNU.If MDC had implemented the GPA reforms as expected of them then the July 2013 elections would have been free, fair and credible. Mugabe would not have rigged the elections and be in power today."We have struggled in the main opposition party, the MDC, to unseat the government through non-violent and democratic means but have not only been denied any significant external assistance in this struggle but faced the active opposition of many African states, including South Africa," wrote Eddie Cross.There are lies and then there are damned lies; Eddie Cross is telling us damned lies!MDC was reminded many times throughout the GNU to implement the reforms by SADC and many others but MDC leaders paid no heed. Short of SADC drafting the proposed democratic reforms for MDC what assistance did Eddie Cross want from SADC or SA?MDC failed to get not even one democratic reform implemented in five years of the GNU because Mugabe had bribes them with the gravy train lifestyles plus the $4 million Highlands mansion for Tsvangirai. MDC leaders "were too busy enjoying themselves during the GNU they forgot why they were there," remarked SADC Heads of State is sheer frustration at MDC's failure to implement even one reform.MDC failed to unseat Mugabe in the July 2013 elections because they had sold-out, period.As the cost of failing to unseat Mugabe begins to mount, soaring unemployment, increased poverty, starvation, etc.; the people will ask whether this could have been avoided. They will be disappointed to know Zimbabwe would be on a different economic and political trajectory if only MDC had implemented the reforms. The people's disappointment will turn to anger to see the people who sold-out are still in denial and refuse to apologize!
Taiwan urges Japan to negotiate over 'comfort women' issue

ROC Central News Agency

2016/01/05 16:39:55

Tokyo, Jan. 5 (CNA) Taiwan's representative office in Japan said Tuesday it will continue to ask Japan to negotiate the 'comfort women' issue with Taiwan, after Japan indicated that it does not intend to resolve the issue with other countries the same way it did with South Korea.

'On the issue of 'comfort women,' Taiwan has consistently demanded that the Japanese side formally apologize to and compensate the victims, properly handle the issue with a responsible attitude, and give the victims the justice and dignity that they deserve,' the office said in a statement.

The office and Taiwan's government have made this request to Japan many times, and it will continue to demand that Japan 'quickly negotiate with Taiwan' on the issue, the statement said.

The term 'comfort women' euphemistically describes the women around East Asia who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese imperial military during World War II.

Japan and South Korea recently reached a deal in Seoul under which Japan agreed to apologize to the 'comfort women' and give around 1 billion Japanese yen to a foundation set up by the South Korean government for the women.

Taiwan's statement came after Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga indicated on Japanese TV on Monday that his government does not intend to resolve the 'comfort women' issue with other countries and regions in the same fashion that it did with South Korea.

At a press conference later on Tuesday, Suga said Japan has so far faced the 'comfort women' dispute with other countries in an honest manner, and said it will not divulge the details of its negotiations with Taiwan.

Japan's Kyodo News, meanwhile, cited a high-level Japanese official as saying Monday that Tokyo has no intentions of launching new talks with Taiwan over the issue.

In response to the report, Chang Jen-joe (), secretary-general of the Association of East Asian Relations () under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Tuesday in Taipei that his ministry will convene an inter-ministerial working group later that day to seek a domestic consensus on the issue.

It will continue to communicate with Japan over the issue, Chang said.

Kang Shu-hua (), executive director of the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation, which helps Taiwanese 'comfort women,' told CNA that it does not think the Japanese government is sincere in resolving the issue.

Kang said the most important thing is for Japan to apologize and try to restore the reputation of the women, adding that monetary compensation comes second.

Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou () said on Aug. 15 that Tokyo should 'do more and do better' in dealing with its World War II legacy, especially on the issue of 'comfort women.'

That came after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed remorse for Japan's wartime aggression in a talk marking the 70th anniversary of the war's end.

Foreign Minister David Lin () again reiterated the Taiwanese government's stance on the issue in a press conference on Dec. 29.

(By Yang Ming-chu, Tang Pei-chun and Christie Chen)

ENDITEM/ls

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No Thanks: Ukraine Won't Allow US Military Base on Its Soil

Sputnik News

10:22 04.01.2016(updated 10:33 04.01.2016)

Ukraine doesn't want a US military base established on its soil, according to a top defense official.

Establishing a US military base in Ukraine would contradict the country's legislation, Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak told the local media.

While the US and Ukrainian militaries do cooperate with each other, the issue of establishing a US base in the country isn't even been considered, the minister added.

'This issue isn't even been considered. The Ukrainian legislation doesn't allow such an option. The close cooperation between our militaries allows us to share experience and learn from each other,' Poltorak said, according to RIA Novosti.

The minister also said that he hopes a joint Ukrainian-Polish-Lithuanian brigade will be created shortly, which would allow Ukraine to adopt NATO standards.

In 2015 the Ukrainian parliament adopted new legislation which allows foreign nationals to serve in the country's military on a contract basis. The law also states that foreigners and stateless persons may become officers of the Ukrainian military after obtaining the country's citizenship.

 Sputnik

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SAN DIEGO, Jan. 5, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CONNECT, an innovation company accelerator in San Diego, awarded its highest honor for a technology or product developed in San Diego to the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS), manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC). The William W. Otterson Award was given in recognition of Global Hawk's significant impact on society and quality of life.

Global Hawk earned the award for its record-breaking endurance, vital intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, its support to science missions and its disaster relief responses to wildfires, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes.

"Global Hawk has always been on the cutting edge of innovation, from its first flight in 1998, to our current efforts to fly any current or future sensor at any time," said Mick Jaggers, vice president and program manager, Global Hawk, Northrop Grumman. "Global Hawk flies worldwide but is directly tied to San Diego  its development birthplace. William Otterson's efforts to evolve San Diego as a world-class technology community played a role in Northrop Grumman's decision to establish its Unmanned Center of Excellence in San Diego. We have a strong connection to this city and are honored to accept this award."

The William W. Otterson Award is named after CONNECT's first executive director, an early Internet entrepreneur, who worked tirelessly to create a technology hub in San Diego. Global Hawk received the award at a special presentation at CONNECT's annual Most Innovative New Products ceremony Dec. 1, 2015. CONNECT is an innovation company accelerator in San Diego focused on the technology and life sciences sector.

Global Hawks operate at altitudes up to 60,000 feet for over 30 hours, surveying thousands of square miles on a single mission. In addition to the Otterson Award, the Global Hawk program received the coveted Dr. James G. Roche Sustainment Excellence Award this year - for an unprecedented third year in a row - for demonstrating performance excellence in aircraft maintenance and logistics readiness.

Global Hawk first entered combat operations shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, it has flown operational missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as humanitarian missions supporting relief during the 2007 Southern California wildfires, Japanese tsunami, Haitian earthquake and the Philippines typhoon.

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in unmanned systems, cyber, C4ISR, and logistics and modernization to government and commercial customers worldwide. Please visit www.northropgrumman.com for more information.
SANTIAGO, Chile, Jan. 5, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fratelli Investments Limited (the "Offeror") agreed to provide to Serabi Gold plc (the "Corporation"), an interim unsecured short term working capital convertible loan facility of up to US$5 million (equivalent to approximately UK3.3 million) (the "Loan"). The Loan is for a period expiring on January 31, 2017 and for a maximum of US$5 million. The facility may be drawn-down in up to three separate instalments of an initial US$2 million and two further installments of US$1.5 million each. The Loan is available to be used at any time up to 30 June 2016. Interest is chargeable at the rate of 12% per annum. There is no prepayment penalty or arrangement fee.

The first US$2 million of the Loan is convertible at the election of Fratelli Investments into new Serabi Ordinary Shares ("Shares") at an exercise price of 3.6 pence per new Share at any time. The remaining amount of the Loan, if drawdown, may be repaid by the Company at its option at any time on or before 30 June 2016. Thereafter, Fratelli Investments will have the right to convert all or part of the remaining amount of the Loan into new Shares at an exercise price of 3.6 pence per new Share at any time

Assuming that (i) the Loan is drawn down in full, (ii) the Offeror elects to exercise its conversion rights in full and (iii) based on an exchange rate of 1:US$1.50, then up to 92,592,593 new Shares may be issued on conversion of the Loan by the Offeror. The Offeror is currently interested in 343,613,166 Shares representing 52.35% of the Issuers current issued share capital and assuming full conversion would become interested in 436,205,759 representing 58.23% of the Issuers enlarged share capital on a non-diluted basis.

There is no obligation on the Company to utilise the Loan and the Company may at its option elect to utilise the Loan in whole or part. There is no penalty or fee payable if all or any part of the Loan is unused.

The Offeror has made available the Loan and any Shares that may be acquired pursuant to the exercise of the conversion rights attaching to the Loan for investment purposes.. The Offeror has a long-term view of the investment and does not intend at this time to acquire additional Shares, but may increase its shareholdings of the Corporation in the future depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors.

In this press release, for the purpose of calculating the percentage of Shares owned, the Offeror has assumed that there are 656,389,204 Shares issued and outstanding as of the date hereof, as reported by the Corporation on its website as at January 5, 2016 .

This press release is issued pursuant to National Instrument 62-103  The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues, which also requires a report to be filed with regulatory authorities in each of the jurisdictions in which the Corporation is a reporting issuer containing information with respect to the foregoing matters (the "Early Warning Report"). A copy of the Early Warning Report will appear with the Corporation's documents on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval and may also be obtained by contacting Nicolas Banados, the MD Private Equity of the Offeror at +56 2577 3600.

The Toronto Stock Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept the responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this press release.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

A CENTRAL Intelligence Organisation operative based in Masvingo - Mudenge Munashe Mugwira has been dragged to court on four counts of killing rhinos valued at $480 000 and selling the horns to private buyers in Zambia.Mugwira is among the five-member syndicate arrested alongside Tavengwa Machona (39) and Jason Chisango, who are being separately tried on the same charge.Mugwira (36) allegedly supplied guns to the syndicate.He was arrested by police when they raided a flat between 4th Avenue and Samuel Parirenyatwa Street, where Munashe Mugwira late December.They are facing a charge of contravening Section 45 (1) (a) of the Parks and Wildlife Act.The other two, Chris Kombayi and Dumisani Moyo, have evaded arrest and are on the run.Machona was last Friday slapped with a 35-year jail term by Masvingo magistrate, Langton Ndokera.Mugwira and Chisango are awaiting trial.According to NewsDay, the court heard that the gang first struck at Sango Valley Conservancy on February 10, 2014, armed with an AK47 rifle and shot a rhino before de-horning it.They also returned 12 days later and gunned down three rhinos.However, they ran out of luck on December 29 when they were arrested while trying to shoot other rhinos in the sanctuary.The suspects later assisted police detectives to recover the carcasses.Zimbabwe is battling to save its few hundred remaining black and white rhino amid an upsurge in poaching in 2015. The Tikki Hywood Trust, which is well-known for its work rehabilitating endangered pangolins, described the sentence as "a great victory for Zimbabwe"."Congratulations to all departments involved from the ZRP (Zimbabwe Republic Police), to Parks, the magistrates together with the public prosecutors who were involved in ensuring that justice was served," the trust said in a post to Facebook.
News / National

by Staff reporter

THE Tendai Biti-led opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) has intensified its rural penetration, introducing the concept of shadow councillors, as a strategy to reach the grassroots and keep the incumbents on their toes ahead of the 2018 elections.Secretary General of People's Democratic Party(PDP, Tendai Biti speaking at a congress held in Harare yesterdaysPDP spokesperson, Jacob Mafume said the concept had already been introduced in Mashonaland East province amid plans to roll it out to all parts of the country by year end."The concept is currently being done in our stronghold areas and provinces and we are set to introduce the concept nationally," Mafume said, adding shadow MPs would also be introduced shortly."This helps us in building strong structures ahead of 2018, as we will also avoid jostling for positions during election time. But the main issue is that we wanted to appoint shadow MPs as soon as yesterday and we are in the process of doing that."PDP Mashonaland East provincial chairman, Langton Matuku told NewsDay that his team had so far covered Chikomba and Murewa districts."We are achieving this by setting up PDP full ward structures and appointing, in addition to a full ward structure of 42 members, a shadow ward councillor. We have covered some ground in Mashonaland East," he said."As PDP, we realise and are convinced that the majority of councillors, once elected, have neglected their duty, becoming highly irresponsible and unaccountable to residents as to their duty to provide the critical services to residents. There is no supervision from higher authorities to ensure they perform to residents' expectations, neither is there any means whatsoever to check and oversee their performance," Matuku said."Instead, the councillors engage in corrupt and unbecoming activities with impunity and without challenge. Therefore, we believe if government, through the Local Government ministry, cannot provide the checks and balances, we will gladly and dutifully provide a parallel structure to show how we believe the services should be delivered to residents. We are going in the playing field to contest the bona fide councillor as a means of forcing competency. This is permissible in the interim rather than wait for a by-election or election to force accountability."
Capco Machinery Systems, a manufacturer of industrial grinders, has apparently shut down its Botetourt County plant on short notice.

CEO Edward West did not return calls and declined to be interviewed Monday at the empty factory. But according to three employees, West told the workforce of about 40 last Thursday that the company was closing immediately.

He told us he was sorry, everything had gone bad, and he had to cease operations at that moment, said Richard Beall, who worked for Capco as a service technician for nearly 10 years.

Two other former employees, who asked that they not be named, gave a similar account of how they were called into the breakroom Thursday morning and told they no longer had jobs.

This was so unexpected, Beall said. We had no time to prepare or plan.

Capco builds roll grinders that are used in the steel, aluminum and paper industries. The company was founded in Maryland in 1940. It moved to Salem in 1972 and was acquired by West in 1977, according to its website.

In 1992, Capco moved to its current location in Botetourts EastPark Commerce Center. During its time there, the company established an overseas market  much of it in China  for its grinders, which were custom-made based on individual contracts.

Two years ago, the company announced a $4.2 million expansion that was expected to create as many as 60 new jobs. At a groundbreaking ceremony in November 2013, West said he planned to double the plants size and production capacity, hiring 30 engineers and high-tech workers at an average salary of $60,000.

But the expansion never happened. They dug a hole in the ground and filled it back in, Beall said.

At the time, the county board of supervisors offered Capco a $99,000 performance grant over four years to help offset permit costs and fees associated with the expansion. The county expected to recoup its investment within three years from increased taxes.

The incentives were never paid after the expansion did not go forward, county spokesman Cody Sexton said Monday. Sexton said county officials have heard reports of Capcos closing, but said there had been no official confirmation.
Virginia firearm sales spiked in December after the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings that killed 14 people, boosting an overall 9.5 percent rise in Virginia gun transactions in 2015, newly released figures show.

Estimated firearm sales based on mandatory criminal background checks of gun buyers rose from 405,838 in 2014 to 444,627 last year, according to Virginia Firearm Transaction Center figures. That total is second only to 2013's record year of 479,253 transactions.

December's total of 70,626 transactions is the highest for the month of December since 2012, when 75,120 transactions were recorded. The 2012 record occurred after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults, and prompted calls for increased gun control.

A similar phenomenon appears to have occurred this past December in Virginia after the Dec. 2 San Bernardino attack that killed 14 and wounded 22 after the perpetrators targeted a San Bernardino Department of Public Health training event and holiday party of about 80 employees.

President Barack Obama and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe have been among those calling for tighter firearm restrictions that gun rights groups have decried.

Gun transactions increased every month but two in 2015 and rose most significantly in December, jumping 46 percent from 48,428 transactions in 2014 to 70,626 last year, figures show.

Last year's 9.5 percent rise in gun transactions followed a 15-percent drop in 2014 that ended three consecutive years of steep growth statewide. Those increases were fueled in part by the buying that generally follows high-profile shootings and calls for increased gun control as a response, criminologists say.

Exact sales of firearms in Virginia are neither reported nor recorded, but the background check records provide a rough estimate of the number of firearms sold. There is not a one-to-one correlation between background checks and the number of guns sold because some customers buy multiple firearms.

Also, about 1 percent of the background checks in Virginia typically result in people being denied permission to buy a weapon. The background checks also do not reflect activity between private parties, such as family members or collectors at gun shows.
HAVANA  Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe began a trade mission to Cuba on Monday, expressing optimism about imminent changes in the U.S. relationship with the island but seeming less certain his trip would quickly generate new business for his state.

McAuliffe is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton and a longtime advocate of trade with Cuba. He is the fourth governor to visit Cuba since Dec. 17, 2014, when Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared an official end to one of the world's longest-running hostile relationships.

McAuliffe said he sees this year as key for U.S.-Cuba relations, saying the United States could allow freer travel to the island and end a ban on American businesses selling goods to the country on credit. Cuba has cited the credit limit as a prime reason it has sharply reduced purchases of food from states such as Virginia.

"I think 2016 is going to be a very big year. This is an important legacy item for President Obama," McAuliffe said. "I think this is the year we can get an awful lot of things done: normalization of relations, extending credit, open travel. These are all things I hope to accomplish this year. I think we can do it."

The White House said last week that Obama may travel to Cuba in March, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit this island since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

While U.S.-Cuba detente has moved relatively quickly on the diplomatic front, efforts to increase business have been far slower with the United States' half-century-old trade embargo against the island still in force.

Despite an initial rush of American business enthusiasm, there have been few big U.S. business deals with Cuba. None of the four U.S. governors' trips have spawned significant commercial ties except for a relatively small sale of chicken parts by Arkansas poultry companies following a September visit by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

McAuliffe met with Cuba's top foreign trade official Monday morning and watched the heads of the University of Havana and Virginia Commonwealth University sign an agreement for academic cooperation and exchanges. The governor is expected to sign a similar memorandum of understanding Tuesday between the Port of Virginia and Cuba's Mariel port and free trade zone.

Later Monday, the governor planned to sit down with the vice president of the Council of Ministers, one of the country's highest-ranking officials.

McAuliffe is accompanied on his trip by executives from seven Virginia-based businesses, including Smithfield Food and Perdue Agribusiness, who met with Cuban government officials throughout Monday.

Cuban officials have used the meetings with visiting U.S. dignitaries to press for an end to the trade embargo. Foreign Trade Minister Rodrigo Malmierca and others emphasized the continuing difficulties of doing business with the U.S. despite Obama's loosening of trade limits.

McAuliffe deflected questions about whether he would leave Cuba with any new deals for Virginia businesses.

"We're here for a couple days of meetings, let me get through all the meetings," he said. "This is about building relationships for the future."
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 5, 2016) - CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQB: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) "the Company" is pleased to announce Denison Mines Corp. (TSX: DML) (NYSE MKT: DNN) has optioned part of the Company's Moon uranium project (claim S-107558) in Saskatchewan. The claim comprises the southern portion of CanAlaska's Moon project which adjoins Denison's Wheeler River project in the eastern Athabasca Basin.

To view an enhanced version of the Moon Project Claim S-107558, please visit:

http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2864/18724_imageenhanced.jpg

On signing of the option agreement, Denison paid CanAlaska $62,405 to make the necessary assessment security deposit to maintain the claim in good standing and will carry out $200,000 of exploration work on the claim over the next two years to acquire a 51% interest. CanAlaska has also granted to Denison the right to increase its interest in the claim to 75% for further $500,000 in expenditures. The claim currently has a royalty payable to Denison. The option agreement includes provisions for the formation of a joint venture and a 2% NSR Royalty which will be automatically granted if either party's interest is decreased below 10% ("NSR Dilution Royalty). The NSR Dilution Royalty may be purchased by the non-diluting party for $500,000.

President, Peter Dasler, commented, "This is a good transaction for CanAlaska as we will start to benefit from Denison's experience in an area where they have had recent multiple success at Wheeler River with the discovery of the Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits. CanAlaska will retain a 100% interest in the northern part of the Moon project."

In other news, CanAlaska is waiting for results for the drill program at NW Manitoba, under option to Northern Uranium Corp., and the drill program at Patterson Lake West, under option to Makena Resources Inc. The Company has acquired by staking additional claims in the Athabasca basin and is continuing discussions concerning its projects with various parties.

About CanAlaska Uranium

CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQB: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) holds interests in approximately 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres), one of the largest land positions in Canada's Athabasca Basin region - the "Saudi Arabia of Uranium". CanAlaska's strategic holdings has attracted major international mining companies Mitsubishi, KORES and KEPCO as partners at its core projects. CanAlaska is a Project Generator and is positioned for discovery success in the world's richest uranium district. For further information, visit www.canalaska.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Peter Dasler"

Peter Dasler, M.Sc., P.Geo., President & CEO,

CanAlaska Uranium Ltd.

Contact:

Peter Dasler, President and CEO.

Tel: +1.604.688.3211 x 138

Email: info@canalaska.com

The TSX-V has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release: CUSIP# 13708P 10 2.
Toronto, Ontario (FSCwire) - West Red Lake Gold Mines Inc. (West Red Lake Gold or the Company) (CSE: RLG) (FWB: HYK) (OTC: HYLKF) announces that it has completed a non-brokered private placement of flow through units for aggregated gross proceeds of $120,000.

West Red Lake Gold issued 2,400,000 flow through units (the Flow Through Units) at a price of $0.05 per Flow Through Unit for aggregated proceeds of $120,000. Each Flow Through Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company issued on a flow through basis pursuant to the Income Tax Act (Canada) and one half of a common share purchase warrant (the Warrant). Each full Warrant issued in connection with the Flow Through Units entitles its holder to purchase one common share in the capital of the Company at an exercise price of $0.10 per share for a period of 18 months from the date of issuance.

West Red Lake Gold also issued 250,000 common shares and paid $11,000 to Rubicon Minerals Corp. as a final property payment pursuant to a purchase option agreement dated November 24, 2010 (as amended). Ownership of the mining claims, which are part of the Companys West Red Lake Project property located in the Red Lake Gold District of Northwest Ontario, are to be transferred to West Red Lake Gold.

In connection with the financing, West Red Lake Gold paid finders fees consisting of $9600 in cash to qualified registrants. As a result of the financing, Accilent Capital Management Inc., a principal shareholder of the Company as a finder and also as a subscriber of Flow Through Units through its affiliate Pavilion Flow-Through L.P., has increased its direct and indirect holding of the voting securities of the Company from 31.8% to 35.04% on a fully diluted basis.

Gross proceeds from the Flow Through Units will be used by the Company for exploration expenditures on its 3100 hectare property package containing three former producing gold mines located within the Company's West Red Lake Project in the prolific Red Lake Gold District of Northwest Ontario.

West Red Lake Gold Mines Inc. is a Toronto-based minerals exploration company focused on gold exploration and development in the prolific Red Lake Gold District of Northwest Ontario, Canada. The Red Lake Gold District is host to some of the richest gold deposits in the world and has produced 30 million ounces of gold from high grade zones. The Company has assembled a significant property position totalling 3100 hectares in west Red Lake (the "West Red Lake Project") which contains three former producing gold mines. The Mount Jamie Mine and Red Summit Mine properties are 100% owned by the Company and the Rowan Mine property is held in a 60%-owned joint venture with Red Lake Gold Mines, a partnership of Goldcorp Inc. and Goldcorp Canada Ltd. The properties cover a 12km strike length along the West Red Lake Trend and the Company plans to continue to explore these properties both along strike and to depth. To find out more about West Red Lake Gold, please visit our website at http://www.westredlakegold.com.

For additional information, please contact: John Kontak, President and acting CFO Phone: 416-203-9181 Email: jkontak@rlgold.ca

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. Certain statements contained in this news release constitute "forward looking statements". When used in this document, the words "anticipated", "expect", "estimated", "forecast", "planned", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements or information. These statements are based on current expectations of management, however, they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this news release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements. West Red Lake Gold does not undertake any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise after the date hereof, except as required by securities laws.

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/WestRdLkJan52016.pdfSource: West Red Lake Gold Mines Inc. (CSE:RLG) http://www.westredlakegold.com/

Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com

Copyright  2016 Filing Services Canada Inc.
Former MasterChef contestant Reynold Poeromo opens his venue this week. Photo: Channel 10

Crowned the dessert king of MasterChef 2015, Reynold Poernomo will be delivering Sydney its sugar fix from January 10 when he opens Koi Dessert Bar in Chippendale. If your tastebuds were watering just watching Poernomo on TV, Koi is your chance to watch his creations come to life before your very eyes.

Koi's delicate desserts pull out all the stops, and are artfully sprinkled with all sorts of surprises. The chic building spans two levels, with a patisserie-style cafe on the ground floor, and lounges and a bar upstairs (where a $77 six-course degustation is on offer). Koi fuses a fine-dining dessert experience with a sleek, but casual environment.

"It has an elegant feel to it," says Poernomo. "But it still feels like a home kitchen. It feels very comforting."

One of the floors at Reynold Poernomo's new dessert bar. Photo: Supplied

MasterChef buffs will recognise the aptly named Something Similar - chocolate mousse, raspberry gel, soil and strawberry - based on Poernomo's showstopping "apple" creation. But his favourite is The Summer Pearl. Poernomo describes it as, "a hot and cold coconut with a passionfruit, white chocolate sphere, caramelised saffron-pineapple, and passionfruit curd".

What is hot and cold coconut? One coconut is siphoned into a bath of liquid nitrogen, then to serve, a hot coconut broth is poured next to it. "So you have one side that is really hot and one side that is really cold. It's a play of both textures and temperatures. It also doesn't really melt that quickly, either. It's quite surprising," says Poernomo.

A savoury Indonesian menu is also available for the not-so-sweet-toothed diners. Koi is aiming to move the cuisine away from its cheap student meal stereotype.

Koi's Yakuzu dessert includes coconut panna cotta, yuzu curd, mango creme, black sesame sponge and toasted meringue. Photo: Supplied

"We have fine-dining Chinese, we have fine-dining Japanese, all over Australia, but we have nothing Indonesian, because people just see it as comfort food, home food, or street food."

His brother Arnold Poernomo (a judge on the Indonesian MasterChef), will be in the kitchen, reinventing traditional Indonesian dishes, such as white curry with poached chicken breast, toasted nuts and grains in spiced coconut veloute.

Come February or March, a cocktail bar will provide matched drinks to the desserts.

Open Tue-Sun 10am-11pm.

42-44 Kensington Street, Chippendale, koidessertbar.com.au
SHARE

By Federico Martinez

Local gun proponents' opinions differ on President Barack Obama's recent move to broaden background checks for gun sales.

Some gun owners say the president's plan  to take executive action requiring all gun sales to include a background check of purchasers  is another attack on people's liberties, while others suggest stronger measures are needed to make sure firearms don't get into the wrong hands.

Currently only federally licensed firearm dealers are required to seek background checks on potential purchasers. People who sell guns from their personal collection, which many do at gun shows throughout the country, are not required to conduct background checks before selling a gun.

"My personal opinion is that the 2nd Amendment clearly states that people have a right to bear arms," said San Angelo resident Fred Hindman. "What we have is a president who is doing everything he can to weaken the Constitution.

"Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves."

Kenneth "Fluffy" Myers, a licensed gun safety instructor, says he also supports people's right to own firearms, but he believes allowing some people to sell guns without conducting background checks is a recipe for trouble.

"Yes, it is a loophole that a person can do that," Myers said. "There's a lot of people who abuse the designation, and that needs to be addressed."

Obama has said his goal is to find a way to keep guns out of the hands of "a dangerous few" without depending on Congress to pass a law on gun control. The Republican-majority Congress, which overall supports laws that favor gun owners, has refused to entertain any restricting laws.

Many gun dealers fear that if Obama succeeds it would eliminate gun shows and sales at flea markets, where many people who are not licensed sell firearms. Many of the dozens of firearm dealers who participated in a two-day gun show in San Angelo this past weekend were unlicensed gun sellers, organizers said.

Monty and Kim Sansom, whose company Silver Spur Trade Shows hosts 20-25 gun shows annually throughout the country, including three in San Angelo, said Obama's efforts are cause for concern.

"Of course we have concerns, this is our livelihood," Kim Sansom said. "But it won't stop us. We've made it through the Brady Bill and everything else they've thrown at us. We'll get through this."

Kim Sansom she is more concerned about the "unanswered questions" that the president hasn't explained, for example how his proposed background checks would be enforced and how much it would cost taxpayers. There's also some ambiguity about how such laws would regard rifles that shoot black powder rather than bullets, she said.

"It's all very frustrating," she said.

Hindman's concern is that Obama's plan would keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens and do little to curtail law breakers from obtaining guns, since most likely do so illegally already. Making it more difficult to legally purchase a gun makes law-abiding citizens more vulnerable, he said.

"I know this sounds radical," Hindman said, "but let's say that there are ISIS training camps in Mexico. I don't know if that's true, but some people believe it.

"But right now you're not going to see ISIS come through here, because West Texas people are going to stop them. What would happen if you take people's guns away?"

Myers said he believes background checks are necessary, but doesn't believe it's necessary for Obama take executive action.

"We need background checks  the NRA actually supports that," Myers said. "We already have existing laws, they just need some teeth to them."
SHARE Swinehart

By Staff Report

A San Angelo man was arrested Sunday after a violent confrontation with police and a citizen, according to a news release from the San Angelo Police Department.

Police were dispatched to Edmund Boulevard and North Van Buren Street around 3 p.m. in response to a report of a man walking in the street and inhibiting the flow of traffic while yelling at passing vehicles, the report stated.

SAPD located the man in the area who they said exhibited behaviors that indicated he could have been under the influence of an unknown intoxicant, the release stated.

An officer confronted the man who became combative toward the officer, stated the release.

The officer then used a Taser on the man after the two engaged in a struggle, the release stated. The Taser had no effect on the man, and several people who witnessed the incident attempted to help the officer until backup arrived, according to the release.

Timothy Swinehart, 33, was eventually taken into custody and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest search or transportation.

Police learned during a field investigation that before their arrival, Swinehart was accused of confronting and assaulting a man in front of a nearby residence, according to the release. The victim told police he and his child were exiting their residence when Swinehart confronted him, according to the release.

The man also told police he was able to secure the child in his vehicle before Swinehart assaulted him, the release stated. The man and his child were uninjured and did not pursue charges, stated the release.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

Posing as a Good Samaritan, a Harare commuter omnibus driver robbed and raped a woman he had escorted to her destination on New Year's Eve.Gabriel Mwali (23) is alleged to have committed the offence in Caledonia on New Year's Eve.The victim who was from South Africa indicated to other passengers that she was not familiar with her bus stop.Mwali, who was a passenger in the same vehicle, offered to assist her.When they reached the bus station, Mwali escorted her out and carried her bags.He then led her to a secluded place, where he raped her and robbed her of cash and goods worth R5 000.Mwali, who is being represented by Arthur Roy Mabhena, was not asked to plead when he appeared before magistrate Elijah Makomo yesterday.
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Harold Byler, Brady

Here's your voting primer

First, let me say that I am writing this as an independent voter and not in support of any political party.

There seems to be some confusion about the voting options in the forthcoming primary and general elections. These options are especially important in this year's presidential election because some people on both sides may not be happy with their party's choice and want to cross party lines to vote for a different candidate. These options vary from state to state and some of the confusion may be caused by people moving here from another state, or by listening to someone talking from another state.

I will present only those options pertaining to Texas. The primary election options are different from the general election options, so I will present them separately:

General voting requirements:

Photo ID is required at the polls.

Must be a U.S. citizen.

Must be a resident of the county.

Must be 18 years old (you may register at 17 years and 10 months).

Must not be a convicted felon (unless a person's sentence is completed, including any probation or parole).

Must not be declared mentally incapacitated by a court of law.

Registration must be completed 28 days before the election. Texas does not permit online voter registration.

Primary election options  March 1:

Regardless of party registration, a voter can select the ballot slate for any party at the polls; however, if there's a runoff election, that voter must then vote for a candidate in that selected party.

General election options  Nov. 8:

Any qualified voter may vote for any candidate on the general election ballot.

In order to vote, you must register before the end of this month! Please consider your choice of candidates carefully and vote accordingly. If you have any further questions, go to: http://www.votetexas.gov/.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Government says it plans to engage a consultant to reorganize Beitbridge border post by the end of March to plug leakages.Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said the government was in the process of upgrading the border post to international standards, but it was necessary to put in place interim measures to alleviate the current challenges and also take advantage of the strategic position of the border post.Chinamasa said Treasury would identify a company to install a closed circuit television system that will be used to monitor adherence to border procedures by Zimra and other agencies.The company will report to the Zimra board chairperson and the minister.
getting the attention it once did. Five years ago, the much-criticized United Nations environmental manifesto was all over TV news and conservative talk shows, denounced by Glenn Beck and others as a sinister globalist threat to American sovereignty and liberty.That debate has more or less quieted down. But the opponents of Agenda 21 havent gone away; they have merely spread out, into the politics of cities and counties planning for the future. They arent winning everywhere, but they have acquired access to funding and a collection of allies that makes it wise to pay attention to them.In many cases, they are avoiding some of their most incendiary rhetoric of a few years ago -- they are shape-shifting, in the words of Karen Trapenberg Frick, a scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied the movement. The campaign has become subtler in its approach. But it is making its presence felt almost everywhere public arguments are taking place over urban design and public transportation.If you are at all familiar with the Agenda 21 controversy, you probably will find this a little strange. The document, approved at a U.N. conference in Brazil in 1992, is devoted almost entirely to global poverty, pollution and the need to conserve natural resources. It scarcely says anything about transportation or urban design.Reading through Agenda 21s turgid pages, its hard to find much that would frighten most people. I came across only two passages that looked like possible candidates for serious urban controversy. One was a recommendation that governments develop efficient, cost-effective, less polluting and safer rural and urban mass transit. The other talks about reducing the need for motor vehicles by favoring high-occupancy public transport. This is the sort of innocent language that mayors in American cities use every day. And in any case, Agenda 21 is purely voluntary. Governments are free to ignore it, and for the most part, they have been doing so for more than two decades.But to a sizable number of conservative activists, this seemingly innocuous text is merely coding for a scheme to change the very form of urban existence by imposing smart growth master plans, visioning and a whole range of freedom-destroying collectivist experiments. Becks 2012 novel, itself titled, paints a picture of future dystopian cities whose residents are stripped of their individuality by being confined to ubiquitous concrete living spaces. Last year, a writer for the Washington, D.C.-based Selous Foundation warned that the stated goal of Agenda 21 is to change peoples behavior through restrictions in land use, herding people into dense inner-city housing, and restricting mobility to force Americans out of their cars and into government-controlled mass transit systems. A couple of years ago, an online newsletter calledtold its readers flatly that smart growth is Agenda 21.Conspiracy theories have existed in the United States since the country was founded, and most of them have faded away without doing a great deal of damage. The AgEnders, as the Agenda 21 opponents often call themselves, are likely to meet the same fate eventually. But there are a couple of reasons why they have managed to stick around as long as they have.The most important reason has to do with the relationships formed between AgEnders and other well-financed transit opponents at the national level. The most important anti-21 activist is Tom DeWeese of Warrenton, Va., whose organization, the American Policy Center, has been fighting Agenda 21 almost since its passage in 1992. DeWeese wrote recently that the international policies of the document go directly into local communities, disguised as innocent-sounding development projects or historic preservation -- drastically changing our way of life.Disciples of DeWeese have been involved in several anti-transit campaigns in the past few years, thanks in large part to their alliance with Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group founded by the oil-billionaire Koch brothers. Americans for Prosperity has formed branches in many of the cities that have voted on major transit projects, and it can bring in a virtual repertory company of speakers to inveigh against these projects.This coalition was active in Georgia in 2012, when voters in metropolitan Atlanta turned down a sales tax increase for transportation that had the support of virtually all local elected officials and business leaders. It was at center stage the same year in Alabama, where the legislature passed a resolution prohibiting any government involvement with or participation in Agenda 21. It achieved mixed results in 2014 in Indiana, failing to block a bill in the legislature that allowed a transit referendum in Indianapolis but amending the bill in a way that prevented the city from spending money on a light rail system.But the biggest victory for the anti-transit forces was the one that took place early last year in Nashville. Mayor Karl Dean and his administration were promoting a new streetcar that would run between gentrifying East Nashville and wealthy West End. The citys business community was firmly behind the project, as was the influential leadership of Vanderbilt University. The federal government was poised to kick in $75 million. Final approval seemed to be just a formality.Then Americans for Prosperity, recognizing that it couldnt stop the streetcar at the city level, began working the state capitol. Tennessees Republican-controlled legislature had already passed a resolution denouncing Agenda 21 as a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering and global political control. Persuading the same lawmakers that the Nashville streetcar was part of the global urbanist cabal didnt prove very difficult. Both the Senate and House passed bills giving the legislature control over adoption of the system. That effectively made the Nashville project impossible to execute. The city had to tell the Obama administration that it wouldnt be taking the money.It would be a stretch to claim that the AgEnders and Americans for Prosperity were the only problem the streetcar project had. There was considerable local sentiment against it on the grounds that, for all the expense, it wouldnt do anything to relieve downtown traffic congestion. Even the projects backers acknowledged that the Dean administration hadnt done a very effective job of mobilizing support for it. Nevertheless, the killing of the Nashville streetcar -- using a strategy of persuading the state to nullify a local decision -- was a crucial moment in the continuing ideological war over mass transit in American cities.Since then, anti-transit forces have thrown their support behind a variety of local efforts. They are fighting against a bus rapid transit system in downtown Albuquerque, a project for which backers have sought $80 million in federal funds. They also have generated sufficient opposition to a proposed streetcar system in Milwaukee to make it a decisive issue in that citys upcoming mayoral campaign.have focused on Agenda 21; some of them have stuck to local arguments and opposed transit funding strictly on fiscal and libertarian grounds. But it seems fair to say that wherever a significant transit or urban planning challenge is launched, the theories of the AgEnders are never entirely absent from the discussion.That was the case this November in Utah, where the anti-transit movement won another notable victory: Proposition 1, a sales tax increase aimed at paying for transportation improvements in 17 counties surrounding metropolitan Salt Lake City, narrowly failed in the most important jurisdiction, Salt Lake County, where the city is located. This was a case where proponents of the tax, including virtually the entire metro-area business leadership, vastly outspent the opponents, who were directed in a low-budget campaign by the Utah branch of Americans for Prosperity. The opposition hammered away at the argument that 40 percent of the revenue generated by the tax increase would go to transit rather than roads, and this ultimately proved decisive.Agenda 21 didnt figure in the public discussion in Utah, but the Tea Party saw Agenda 21 as relevant to the entire debate over the areas future. A visit to the website No Agenda 21 yielded denunciations of the U.N. initiative and criticism of Proposition 1 in almost equal measure. One of the Tea Party targets was Envision Utah, the long-range planning body that has won national recognition for its consensus-based approach to difficult issues . Some of the Tea Partiers appear to have zeroed in on Envision Utah as a target for their resentments.But the vote on Utahs Proposition 1 wasnt the only major transportation decision on Election Day. While Salt Lake City voters were showing their transit skepticism, those in Seattle were making an opposite choice: endorsing their own Proposition 1, a $930 million spending package designed to improve the citys transit system and devote more resources to street maintenance and pedestrian and cyclist safety. Neither Americans for Prosperity nor the AgEnders were very visible in Seattle; they may have considered it a lost cause. The transportation package, backed by Mayor Ed Murray and a diverse array of major corporations, passed with more than 59 percent of the vote.The lesson from all these recent skirmishes seems to be that the anti-transit coalition can be a potent force in a community where a significant cadre of opposition already exists, based on specific local grievances. Then Americans for Prosperity can come in and stir up the critics, Tea Party activists can work the grassroots and the AgEnders can rally their troops with frightening visions of urbanist apocalypse. Where those pre-conditions dont exist, there arent going to be many startling defeats for mass transit and urban planning.But there are going to be some surprises: The next one will most likely be in a place where you didnt see it coming.
have been complaining for years about the way the state funds its K-12 education system. The poorest local systems have the most reason to complain; they have extra-large burdens, but they dont receive any extra help from Harrisburg. Joe Gorham runs one of those poor districts, the Carbondale Area School District in northeastern Pennsylvania. He thinks the state needs a complete overhaul in the way it funds public schools. A year ago, Gorham thought meaningful change might be on the way: A new governor had just taken office promising to make school funding a top priority.But for six months (from July through the end of December), no lifeline had come from Harrisburg. Instead, a protracted budget fight between Democrats and Republicans at the state capitol choked off state funds for schools starting in July and nearly forced the Carbondale schools to shut down. As 2015 trudged to a close, Gorham couldnt help wondering whether the same event that gave him hope -- the arrival of a new governor -- had instead added to his districts troubles. The state didn't start cutting checks for schools until a partial budget passed in late December. Even with the stopgap measure in place, the prospects of a major school funding overhaul are still very much in doubt. But what is certain is that just having the conversation exacted a heavy toll on schools.Pennsylvania offers proof that states are not immune from the partisanship that has crippled Congress and the federal government. Just as in Washington, lawmakers in Harrisburg last year strained to keep the governments lights on and the bills paid. And just as in Washington, the forces that led to gridlock are deeply ingrained and unlikely to disappear soon. Its not a comforting prospect for those dependent on the state for crucial assistance, particularly schools, which are at the heart of the recent impasse.Tom Wolf, the states new Democratic governor, campaigned in 2014 on the idea of taxing companies drilling for natural gas and using the money to reimburse school systems , which experienced big cuts under the previous administration. But Republican lawmakers, emboldened by new leadership and the biggest legislative majorities for either party in Pennsylvania since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, balked at the energy production tax. The result was an inability to produce a state budget and a partial shutdown of state government after the July deadline.With no budget in place, Pennsylvania stopped sending money to support school districts. That put Carbondale in a tight spot. The district didnt have a lot of money to begin with, and it had already depleted its reserves to cope with state budget cuts after the Great Recession. So Carbondale borrowed $1 million to make payroll while the fight in Harrisburg continued. In the second half of the year, the district skipped all payments to its teacher pension fund and withheld contributions to a local charter school. Still, the districts cash balance dipped at one point to just $11,000. Gorham weighed the idea of shutting down Carbondale schools one day a week to save on utility costs. He considered a one-day systemwide protest closure to bring attention to the dire financial straits the district found itself in. But ultimately he decided that those moves would be too disruptive. These funding stalemates not only affect our students and our teachers here on the campus, Gorham says, but they also have a greater impact on the community at large, because this is the main employer.By October, 27 school districts had borrowed a total of $431 million from banks and other sources to keep their schools open during the standoff. Hard-hit districts like Carbondale became the poster children of the budget crisis early on. But dozens of other districts reported that they, too, would have to resort to borrowing if state money didnt start flowing by November. Even with the added pressure on lawmakers and the governor to reach a deal, it wasn't until after Christmas that the first break in the impasse came. Wolf allowed most of a partial budget to become law, even though he called the legislation garbage. He vetoed many provisions to force lawmakers to return to the negotiating table. The governor said the budget falls short, in part because it does not include enough new money for schools. But the agreement does mean that schools will finally start to get money, as will many other organizations that had borne the brunt of the gridlock.The budget stalemate has squeezed more than just schools. Counties, which rely on the state for as much as 40 percent of their budgets, have scrambled to deal with the revenue loss. Several stopped paying vendors. Others cut programs, laid off staff, depleted reserves and borrowed money. As wards of the state, Pennsylvanias counties have been malnourished and mistreated this year, wrote Charlie Ban of the National Association of Counties. Whats more, both the state and county have depended on nonprofit safety net providers to continue offering social services. The effect of the impasse hit close to home for legislators, too. The state Senate had to take out a $9 million loan from PNC Bank so it could pay legislative staff during the shutdown.in part, from the fact that Pennsylvania voters are themselves deeply divided. Wolf, a wealthy businessman and former state revenue secretary, won the governorship handily in 2014 over the unpopular incumbent Republican, Tom Corbett. It was a stinging rebuke for the GOP, marking the first time a sitting governor of either party had lost a re-election bid since the state constitution was changed to allow two-term administrations in 1968. At the same time, however, voters increased Republican majorities in the legislature. The GOP lawmakers elected in 2014 and in the previous 2010 midterm election are to the right of their own party predecessors. In one sign of the philosophical shift, GOP senators chose more conservative leadership following the elections. You have two sides of an issue, says Terry Madonna, the director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. They both think theyre right, and they both have a mandate to do what they think is right.In short, the 2014 election gave both sides little incentive to compromise on the most important issues. Besides education and energy taxes, the two parties clashed over myriad things, such as how to offer property tax relief, whether to privatize some or all of Pennsylvanias state-owned liquor business and whether to shift state employees from traditional pensions to 401(k)-style retirement plans. But most, if not all, of those questions divided Harrisburg well before Wolf took office. The difference in 2015 was that both sides knew the deal they struck in the governors first year would set the tenure for the rest of his term. That emboldened Wolf to refuse to sign a stopgap measure in the summer that would have kept the state running as normal while its leaders negotiated. It would have come as a relief to some of the states strapped agencies and programs, but it would have taken pressure off Republicans to strike a permanent deal. Both sides also dismissed overtures from each other that they saw as insignificant. This budget really matters, says Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the left-leaning Keystone Research Center. It matters partly because of whats specifically in the budget, but it also matters to the nature of the political process in Pennsylvania for the next three-plus years.The deadlock of 2015 was by no means the first long-delayed budget for Pennsylvania. In the 1960s, budgets were chronically late: An epic showdown in 1969 lasted 247 days (although the state operated on stopgap budgets in the meantime). Pennsylvanias last Democratic governor, Ed Rendell, went into overtime negotiations three times in his eight-year tenure. In fact, Madonna says, many Pennsylvania governors have begun their terms with budget fights that initially damaged their popularity, only to see their standing rise in time for re-election.But the most recent budget crisis does stand out. Unlike the others, it came on the heels of a deep recession that left localities and social services agencies ill-prepared for another financial hit. As a result, the consequences have been significantly worse.Gorham, the Carbondale superintendent, worried as the stalemate dragged on that the struggle to reach a budget deal would suck the oxygen out of Harrisburg for solving longstanding problems, including one that forced the standoff. My fear is that well pass a budget, and everybody will forget about the main issue, he says. The main issue is that schools are not fully and fairly funded across the commonwealth. That should not continue."
A recent decision by the Illinois Supreme Court will allow Cook County to collect about $3 million in unpaid taxes from Des Plaines' Rivers Casino.The decision also will allow the county to continue to collect another $1 million in yearly tax revenue from Midwest Gaming, the casino's owner and operator. A separate recent state appellate court decision also upheld the county's legal right to tax gambling machines.The Supreme Court decision effectively ends a three-year legal battle over a gambling tax approved by the Cook County Board of Commissioners in late 2012. The high court denied Midwest Gaming's petition to appeal an earlier ruling by an appellate court.The county lost in circuit court and won in appellate court. The appellate court's decision was upheld when the state's high court declined to hear the case.As a result of the decision, the county's Department of Revenue anticipates receiving an about $3 million one-time payment for outstanding taxes from 2013, 2014 and 2015."We are pleased with the Supreme Court's decision confirming our long-held belief that the county's tax on video gaming machines is legitimate and lawful," said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in a news release. "The revenue generated from the gambling tax will help provide important funding for critical public safety services to county residents."Rivers Casino spokesman Dennis Culloton offered a different opinion."We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling, and we are considering our options," he said in an emailed statement.When asked about the issue, Des Plaines City Manager Michael Bartholomew said the city was aware of the lawsuit but that it had little bearing on the municipality. He said the tax revenue the city receives from Rivers Casino is remitted by the state, not the county.State Rep. Marty Moylan, D-Des Plaines, said in an emailed statement that he opposed the 1 percent sales tax increase passed by the Cook County board last year and would "continue to oppose any tax increase that hurts our local economy and middle-class families," but did not specifically mention the county's gambling machine tax.After approval of the tax, Midwest Gaming filed suit against Cook County in circuit court. An agreement reached during the hearing process stipulated that the county would not enforce the tax or issue non-compliance citations while the case was still being fought. Midwest Gaming also agreed to pay any unsettled taxes after a final decision by the court.Tax decals for gambling machines found in casinos in Cook County cost $1,000, while those for video poker machines in bars and restaurants cost $200 per the county ordinance. Based on the number of gambling machines at Rivers Casino, the county expects to receive $1 million in annual tax revenue.
Mayor Kenney on Monday barred almost all cooperation between city law enforcement and federal immigration agents, reverting to a policy that made Philadelphia one of the nation's "sanctuary cities.""The only way that people buy into [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is when they . . . have input into the process," Kenney - who had promised to rescind his predecessor's eleventh-hour order on his first day in office - said at a signing ceremony where immigrant-rights activists cheered.Kenney said he had spoken with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who is promoting "Priority Enforcement," a replacement for "Secure Communities," an ICE program that has been rejected by immigrant groups and dozens of municipalities, including Philadelphia, as overly aggressive.
Maryland has some of the toughest restrictions on gun sales in the nation, but gun control advocates said Monday they hope President Barack Obama's executive actions on the issue address an outstanding concern: weapons trafficked to Baltimore from other states.Frustrated by the lack of progress in Congress after a string of mass shootings during his presidency, Obama will unveil on Tuesday what White House officials called "common sense" proposals to stem the violence -- a unilateral move that has provoked condemnation from congressional Republicans."This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country," Obama said Monday in the Oval Office. "It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain and the extraordinary loss that they've suffered as a consequence of a firearm getting in the hands of the wrong people."At the center of the effort is a proposal to expand background checks on gun sales at shows and online. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, administration officials said, will issue new guidance intended to narrow the circumstances under which a seller might claim he or she is merely a collector, and therefore not subject to the background check rules.Federal law requires licensed gun dealers to administer background checks, but the definition of "dealer" is vague and allows some to sell firearms in less regulated settings.But the proposal -- billed as guidance to "clarify" current rules -- falls far short of the tougher background check provisions Obama pushed Congress to approve in 2013. White House officials declined to predict how many more sellers would be required to register under the new effort, or whether the provisions would have prevented any of the nation's recent high-profile shootings.Maryland is one of 18 states that mandates background checks for handgun sales at gun shows, though gun-control advocates point out that guns purchased in neighboring states such as Virginia are not subject to that rule. Clamping down on enforcement of the current federal law might have an impact on people buying guns in other states and bringing them into Maryland, the advocates said.About 43 percent of guns used in crimes in 2014 in Maryland were originally purchased in other states, according to a recent ATF study. A large share came from states with less stringent gun laws."We need these laws to be solid around the country," said Vincent DeMarco, president of Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence and a longtime advocate on the issue. "This may not affect us directly, but it will affect us because people go outside of the state to purchase guns."A spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association said the group wanted to study specifics of Obama's proposal before commenting. In the past, gun rights groups have held up the high crime rate in Baltimore as an example of how strict gun laws don't always lead to low crime.Baltimore just concluded a particularly violent year, the deadliest ever on a per-capita basis. The tally of 344 homicides in 2014 was second only to the record 353 in 1993, when Baltimore had about 100,000 more residents. Nearly 90 percent of the year's homicides were the result of shootings.Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake applauded the measures late Monday."Some of our cities, including Baltimore, have seen a recent spike in homicides, and we know that the proliferation of guns on our streets and in the hands of people who should not have them has been a significant factor in this," Rawlings-Blake said in a statement in her capacity as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.Republicans on Capitol Hill vowed to fight the administration's effort. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the president, at a minimum, was "subverting the legislative branch" and potentially overturning its will."We all are pained by the recent atrocities in our country, but no change the president is reportedly considering would have prevented them," Ryan said in a statement, referring to mass shootings around the country. "We have seen consistently that an underlying cause of these attacks has been mental illness, and we should look at ways to address this problem."In addition to the gun show issue, Obama is expected to discuss a series of other proposals Tuesday -- some new, and some long in the making.The FBI will hire more than 230 examiners and other staff to process background checks, the White House said. And the administration will request that Congress fund 200 new ATF agents to help enforce its new guidance.The administration said a years-long effort to limit the ability of buyers to purchase a gun through a trust or corporation is being finalized. The number of applications for that kind of arrangement has increased from fewer than 900 in 2000 to more than 90,000 in 2014, the administration said. Officials also noted the near completion of a proposed rule that has been in the works to require gun dealers to notify police if their shipments are lost or stolen.The administration also is making an effort to improve the background check system. For instance, it plans to clear legal hurdles that states have faced in identifying the mentally ill. The Woodlawn-based Social Security Administration plans to propose a rule that would enable the agency to help identify beneficiaries who are prohibited from buying a gun for health reasons, the White House said.Obama and other Democrats largely avoided the issue of gun control during the president's first term, but they have become more vocal -- and more visibly frustrated -- following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.Even with executive actions, though, the president's proposals could be stymied. Obama is already familiar with the limits of what is possible without Congress' consent.An immigration initiative the president pursued unilaterally in 2014 to defer deportation for millions of people in the country illegally has been tied up in court for nearly a year, and it's not clear that the proposal will move forward before a new president is inaugurated in 2017.Obama, in a tacit acknowledgment of the potential for a legal challenge to his gun proposal, said Monday that the measures are "entirely consistent with the Second Amendment." He also nodded to "a strong tradition of gun ownership in this country" for hunting and self protection.Joseph Vince, director of criminal justice programs at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, said that booths at gun shows often carry signs that advertise no background checks. The concern many have, he said, is about where some of those guns wind up."The idea here is to keep guns away from the people who shouldn't have them," said Vince, a former ATF agent, "not keep guns away from law-abiding citizens."
The two Oregon ranchers at the center of a controversial resentencing decision that has led militants to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters reported Monday to federal prison in California.Dwight Hammond Jr., 73, and his son Steven, 46, surrendered at the Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution in San Pedro, Calif., said Monica Devore, a prison spokeswoman. They arrived at 1:37 p.m., according to Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward.It's the second time that the two will serve federal time for setting fires on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.In 2012, they were convicted of arson for setting fires in 2001 and 2006 on land where they had grazing rights for their cattle business. Dwight Hammond was sentenced to serve three months in prison and Steven Hammond to one year.Arson on federal land carries a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, according to the U.S. District Attorney's Office, but the Hammonds successfully argued during their sentencing that the mandatory minimum was unconstitutional.The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed the decision, and a federal judge in October sentenced them both to five years in prison with credit for time they already served.Dwight Hammond now faces nearly five years in prison and his son faces up to four. Attorneys for both men announced Monday that they plan to seek clemency from President Barack Obama.
(TNS) -- Google aims to expand at the former Alameda Naval Air Station, where the technology giant plans to lease a third building.Google has been at the former military base since 2013, when it acquired Makani Power, a company specializing in wind-power technology development that was then leasing about 17,000 square feet of a former aircraft hangar.In March 2014, Google renewed Makani's lease with the city for up to 21 years and for an additional 110,000 square feet, as well as for an option to negotiate for an additional 367,000 square feet in nearby hangars when those properties become available.On Tuesday, the City Council will consider approving a lease that will allow Google to make good on the expansion clause and take over a 65,400-square-foot building at 1190 W. Tower Ave.Google and Makani will use the site for offices, engineering and manufacturing, as well as for research and development. The four-year lease calls for a monthly base rent between $26,160 and $34,008 and gives Google five extension options for periods of three years each.Google also has first rights for negotiating to purchase the building at the former Navy base, now known as Alameda Point. The city is not obligated to sell, however. Nanette Mocanu, the city's assistant community development director, said bringing jobs to the area has been a priority since the Navy left in 1997."The growth of Google continues to create an exciting opportunity to cultivate a long-term relationship with a major, growing, global employer," Mocanu said in a background report for the council. "It also raises awareness in the greater Bay Area community of Alameda Point's potential as a unique and competitive location for jobs."Makani Power, which takes its name from a Hawaiian word meaning "wind" or "breeze," is aiming to make wind energy costs competitive with fossil fuels. Its technology includes an airborne wind turbine, or tethered wing, that generates power by flying in large circles where wind is powerful and consistent, such as at high altitudes or above deep ocean waters.Other innovative companies at Alameda Point include Imprint Energy; Sila Nanotechnologies; and Wrightspeed, which was launched by Tesla Motors co-founder Ian Wright and produces technology to make commercial trucks greener and more energy efficient.
In 2016, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton wants to triple the state's past broadband efforts.When Dayton commented on the state's $1.87 billion budget surplus, he recommended that Minnesota allocate $100 million in grant funding for rural broadband development. If that funding is approved by the state Legislature this spring, the current grant program would require applicants to at least match the funding offered, which means the state may soon see a total of $200 million in rural broadband funding.The Minnesota Office of Broadband Development (MOBD) launched in January 2014 and has since managed $30 million in investment, leading to the connection of more than 10,000 homes and businesses, said Danna Mackenzie, MOBD's executive director. If the Legislature votes to make this funding available before the regular session closes at the end of May, the office expects an additional 20,000 to 30,000 homes and businesses would gain connectivity. A different bill seeking $100 million in broadband funding in 2015 was cut down to $10 million by the Legislature.Following the FCC's 2015 revision of the definition of broadband, which is a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload speed of 3 Mbps, Minnesota achieves roughly 90 percent broadband connectivity statewide and rural connectivity of about 70 percent."One of the other things we're seeing is providers coming in with applications that are middle-mile only," Mackenzie said. "They're seeing this as an opportunity to push their backbone deeper into the rural areas."The state's estimates of what the funding can do are just estimates, Mackenzie said, because while connecting some areas can be done relatively cheaply, others are more expensive, and it's hard to know how far the funding will stretch until work begins.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Zimbabwe can still import maize from private Zambian traders, who have large quantities of grain reserves for export, despite an export ban by the national food agency.Executive director of Grain Traders' Association of Zambia (GTAZ), Chambuleni Simwinga, said the neighbouring country's Food Reserve Agency (FRA), which is mandated to secure strategic reserves for the nation and at times sell its maize to the local or export market, is currently supplying Zambian millers only.Simwinga said the suspension of maize exports by FRA did not mean that other countries in the region could not import from Zambia.
With gubernatorial transition in Kentucky, CIO Jim Fowler steps down. No news on replacement.  NASCIO (@NASCIO) December 31, 2015

Kentucky CIO Jim Fowler resigned in December following the induction of Gov. Matt Bevin earlier that month, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) confirmed in a Dec. 31 tweet.Kentucky is currently in the early stages of a five- to seven-year cloud transition, Fowler told earlier this year -- a move that frees up staff to become more innovative while also allowing government to use current technologies. And in August, the state unveiled a three-year broadband program driven by a public-private partnership that is designed to bring access statewide.In June, Fowler spoke with Government Technology about having worked at different levels of the public sector, noting that the biggest lesson he's learned is to make sure that as a CIO, you have strong executive support -- something he had during his time leading IT in Kentucky. Not only did Fowler have former Gov. Steve Beshears full support, but he also sat on the cabinet, which gave him a peer-level relationship with other cabinet members.If there are pushbacks at the mid-department level, I have the relationships to make that go away, he said at the timeOn Jan. 5, The Wallstreet Journal (paywall) reported that Kentucky moved Jim Barnhart from deputy to acting commissioner of the Commonwealth Office of Technology. Barnhart served as deputy commissioner since February 2008, and previously was a scientific technical assistant at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
Two texts. Thats all it takes to avoid potential stomach pains in Evanston, Ill.Or at least, that was the goal behind an endeavor that pairs the citys restaurant inspection scores on Yelp with text message alerts for diners. When the SMS program launched early in 2015 it was a quiet release. In fact, Erika Storlie, Evanstons deputy manager, described the undertaking as more of a four-month side project than anything else.The city had just completed a project with Yelp to feed restaurant inspection scores to the review site and wanted to investigate joining the scores with its 311 non-emergency texting app. The problem was, Evanstons 311 app required a person on the other end to retrieve or record data and submit replies.So then, that began the exploration of, Well, wouldnt it be cool if we could text the restaurant name to 311 and automatically get the inspection score back? Storlie said. It kind of came from the fact we were using these two different types of technologies and we wanted to marry them.Roger Wood, the citys application analyst who coordinated much of the initiative, said they worked out an affordable deal with OneReach to provide the texting tech support along with the help of Accela, which provides open data services to the city, to iron out the rest. The program launched without much fanfare in February 2015, however, subtleties aside, now it appears this texting service may have bested Yelp in sheer practicality.I just know that with the advent of open data initiatives and these third-party services, theyll allow you to publish data in formats that can be interpreted by anyone that wants to read them, Wood said. And so with that, the skys the limit I think.The proof is in the app. Whether its Evanstons Kafein coffee house on Chicago Avenue or the Peckish Pig on Howard Street, finding scores is simple. Diners just text food to the citys 311 number, and after a prompt, enter a restaurant name and theyre returned the recent score and inspection date.Its simple and much easier than Yelps mobile app, which compels users to tap and swipe their way to a restaurants More Info tab and deep dive through a list of miscellaneous information.Since Yelp and the texting services launched, Evanston officials said theres an interest in tracking how public scoring influences health inspections.We want to do more research down the road, Storlie said. It would be a real driver if, overall, city restaurant scores are raised because of the transparency.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year, about one in six Americans  or about 48 million people  are infected with foodborne illnesses. Of these, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 are killed.Evanston seeks to be an anomaly in these statistics.We obviously do inspections for compliance and to ensure safety, Storlie said. So it just made sense to us to make that data available to people in a way that might be meaningful to them.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Zanu-PF has threatened to crack the whip on party members who continue to attack each other on social media platforms in defiance of President Robert Mugabe's recent directive.Party spokesperson, Simon Khaya Moyo yesterday said Zanu-PF members who continue to violate the party policy and attack their leadership on social media would be dealt with by an appropriate organ of the party.Moyo's comments came after Zanu-PF activist and musician, Energy Mutodi last week attacked Acting President Phelekezela Mphoko, accusing him of being the worst politburo member followed by party commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere.
'Handcuffed and locked up' by US officials: Deported Hyderabad Girl

A student from Hyderabad sent back by United States authorities has alleged that she was handcuffed and locked up by immigration officials there at an airport, deepening a swirling controversy over recent instances of deportation of Indian students headed to two California-based universities.

The young woman says her only offence was reaching the US to join an institute recognised by the US consulate in India but classified as blacklisted by the US immigration department.

About 200 Indian students have been deported in the last fortnight by US authorities to Hyderabad, the city that sends the maximum number of students from the country to American higher education institutes every year.

The woman, a graduate in business administration, says she took off for the United States on December 30 and was to take a flight from Dallas to San Jose to get admission for an MBA programme at the Silicon Valley University.

They told me to go back to India as joining such a university would spoil my career, she said. Apply for a good university and come back, I was told.

Her trauma did not end there, she says. In the name of procedure, the officials handcuffed me along with a few other Indian students, made us wear a uniform and put us in a cell with other offenders for over nine hours, she said recounting the horror.

Karunakar, a student from the states Guntur district, said the officials treated them like thieves. All our papers are proper, but still we were handcuffed, Karunakar, who returned on Saturday, told TV channels at the Hyderabad airport.

The students say they are angry with the Indian government for not acting tough with the US and coming to the rescue of its citizens. In addition to the deportations, dozens of students were stopped from taking US flights in the last few days from the international airport here.

We do not maintain the record of those who are stopped here but those who were sent back would be close to 200, an immigration official at the airport told HT. Almost all of these students were seeking admissions in the Northwestern Polytechnic and Silicon Valley universities in California and were sent back from ports of entry like San Francisco, New York and the US immigration checkpoint in Abu Dhabi.

Source: HindustanTimes
Dasari To Join Jagan Party?

Former Union minister and Congress leader Dasari Narayana Rao is most likely to join the YSR Congress party very soon.

YSR Congress party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, along with senior leaders of the party, went to the residence of Dasari in Hyderabad on Tuesday and invited him to join the party.

Dasari apparently responded positively. He said Jagan had the qualities of a great leader and that he had excellent relationship with the family of late Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.

I am confident that Jagan will soon rule the State, he said.

It is believed that Jagan had realized his mistake of distancing the Kapu community, particularly in East and West Godavari districts, which had made all the difference in the 2014 elections.

On the other hand, the Telugu Desam Party had played the Kapu card very well by utilizing the services of actor Pawan Kalyan. So, Jagan thought Dasari would be of big help to him to win back the confidence of Kapu votes.

But it is doubtful whether an outdated politician like Dasari would be acceptable to the people, especially because of his alleged role in the coal scam. It is better Jagan deals with Dasari very carefully.
Fugitive Vishnu Surfaces, Says He Went On Pilgrimage!

Former MLA Malladi Vishnu, accused No. 9 in the spurious liquor case in which five people died and over 20 fell ill after consuming liquor at Swarna Bar last month, told the media that he never went absconding.

He held a meeting with Congress workers at his house and addressed the media to clarify on his involvement in the spurious liquor case.

Asked about his fleeing after the incident, Vishnu said he went on a pilgrimage as planned before the incident.

He said he would share all the information he had with the police as per the notices issued by the court on Wednesday.

It may be recalled here that over two dozen people, who consumed liquor at M Bar within Swarna Hotel in Krishnalanka in Vijayawada, fell ill and five of them died while undergoing treatment.

The hotel and the bar are owned by a close relative of Vishnu while the Congress leader owns eight other wine shops in the city.

Vishnu has gone absconding after the incident on December 7. Police had failed to find his whereabouts even though they claimed to have searched for him in all places including Hyderabad. Raids were conducted on his liquor shops and also his properties at several places.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Harare mayor Bernard Manyenyeni has accused the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration of only releasing funds for roads maintenance when there is a visiting foreign delegation, ostensibly to cover up for the poor state of the country's road network.He said last year, Zinara only provided funds for roads rehabilitation ahead of visits by regional leaders for the Sadc Summit in Victoria Falls in August and Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.He said in May last year, Harare City Council received more than $700 000 to maintain its roads ahead of the Sadc Summit held in Victoria Falls.
The complaint further alleges that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act by selling, introducing into commerce, or importing into the United States motor vehicles that are designed differently from what Volkswagen had stated in applications for certification to EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

The US Department of Justice, on behalf of the US Environmental Protection Agency, has filed a civil complaint in federal court in Detroit, Michigan against Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC, Porsche AG, and Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (collectively referred to as Volkswagen). The complaint alleges that nearly 600,000 diesel engine vehicles had illegal defeat devices installed that impair their emission control systems and cause emissions to exceed EPAs standards, resulting in harmful air pollution. ( Earlier post .)

So far, recall discussions with the company have not produced an acceptable way forward. These discussions will continue in parallel with the federal court action. Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance at EPA

Consistent with EPAs Notices of Violation, issued on September 18, 2015 for 2.0 liter engines, and November 2, 2015 for certain 3.0 liter engines, the complaint alleges that the defeat devices cause emissions to exceed EPAs standards during normal driving conditions.

The Clean Air Act requires vehicle manufacturers to certify to EPA that their products will meet applicable federal emission standards to control air pollution. Motor vehicles equipped with illegal defeat devices cannot be certified.

The complaint alleges that Volkswagen equipped certain 2.0 liter vehicles with software that detects when the car is being tested for compliance with EPA emissions standards and turns on full emissions controls only during that testing process. During normal driving situations the effectiveness of the emissions control devices is greatly reduced. This results in cars that meet emissions standards in the laboratory and at the test site, but during normal on-road driving emit NO x at levels up to 40 times the EPA compliance level. In total, the complaint covers approximately 499,000 2.0 liter diesel vehicles sold in the United States since the 2009 model year.

The complaint further alleges that Volkswagen also equipped certain 3.0 liter vehicles with software that senses when the vehicle is undergoing federal emissions testing. When the vehicle senses the test procedure, it operates in a temperature conditioning mode and meets emissions standards. At all other times, including during normal vehicle operation, the vehicles operate in a normal mode that permits NO x emissions of up to nine times the federal standard. In total, the complaint covers approximately 85,000 3.0 liter diesel vehicles sold in the United States since the 2009 model year.

The filing of a civil complaint under Sections 204 and 205 of the Clean Air Act seeks injunctive relief and the assessment of civil penalties. A civil complaint does not preclude the government from seeking other legal remedies. The United States will seek to transfer its case and fully participate in the pretrial proceedings now initiated in the related multi-district litigation in the Northern District of California. The United States investigation is ongoing, in close coordination with CARB. EPA and CARB have been in active discussion with Volkswagen about potential remedies and recalls to address the noncompliance, and those discussions are ongoing.

Affected 2.0 liter diesel models and model years include:

Jetta (2009-2015)

Jetta Sportwagen (2009-2014)

Beetle (2013-2015)

Beetle Convertible (2013-2015)

Audi A3 (2010-2015)

Golf (2010-2015)

Golf Sportwagen (2015)

Passat (2012-2015)

Affected 3.0 liter diesel models and model years include:
Their hybrid approach combines the highly efficient light harvesting of inorganic semiconductors with the high specificity, low cost, and self-replication and -repair of biocatalysts. Biologically precipitated cadmium sulfide nanoparticles served as the light harvester to sustain cellular metabolism. This self-augmented biological system selectively produced acetic acid continuously over several days of light-dark cycles at relatively high quantum yields, demonstrating a self-replicating route toward solar-to-chemical CO 2 reduction. A paper on their work is published in Science.

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have induced the self-photosensitization of a nonphotosynthetic bacteriumMoorella thermoaceticawith cadmium sulfide nanoparticles ( M. thermoacetica CdS), enabling the photosynthesis of acetic acid from carbon dioxide.



M. thermoaceticaCdS reaction schematics. (A) Depiction of the M. thermoaceticaCdS hybrid system, proceeding from the growth of the cells and bioprecipitation (loading) of the CdS nanoparticles (shown in yellow) through photosynthetic conversion of CO 2 (center right) to acetic acid (right). (B) Pathway diagram for the M. thermoaceticaCdS system. Two possible routes to generate reducing equivalents, [H], exist: generation outside the cell (dashed line) or generation by direct electron transport to the cell (solid line). Credit: AAAS, Sakimoto et al. Click to enlarge.

Weve demonstrated the first self-photosensitization of a non-photosynthetic bacterium, M. thermoacetica, with cadmium sulfide nanoparticles to produce acetic acid from carbon dioxide at efficiencies and yield that are comparable to or may even exceed the capabilities of natural photosynthesis.

The bacteria/inorganic-semiconductor hybrid artificial photosynthesis system weve created is self-replicating through the bio-precipitation of cadmium sulfide nanoparticles, which serve as the light harvester to sustain cellular metabolism. Demonstrating this cyborgian ability to self-augment the functionality of biological systems through inorganic chemistry opens up the integration of biotic and abiotic components for the next generation of advanced solar-to-chemical conversion technologies. Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Labs Materials Sciences Division, who led this work

Artificial versions of photosynthesis are being explored for the sustainable production of chemical products now made from petroleumprimarily fuels and plastics. Yang and his research group have been at the forefront of developing artificial photosynthetic technologies that can realize the full potential of solar-to-chemical synthesis.

Cadmium sulfide is a well-studied semiconductor with a band structure and that is well-suited for photosynthesis. As both an electrograph (meaning it can undergo direct electron transfers from an electrode), and an acetogen (meaning it can direct nearly 90% of its photosynthetic products towards acetic acid), M. thermoacetica serves as an ideal model organism for demonstrating the capabilities of this hybrid artificial photosynthesis system.

Biological routes to solid-state materials have often struggled to compete with high-quality traditionally synthesized materials. This work demonstrates not only that biomaterials can be of sufficient quality to carry out useful photochemistry, but that in some ways they may be more advantageous in biological applications.

 The M. thermoaceticaCdS system displays behavior that may help it to exceed the utility of natural photosynthesis. First, the quantum yield increased with higher M. thermoaceticaCdS concentrations. The ability to tune the effective light flux per bacterium by changing the concentration of the suspension is a considerable advantage over similar light management practices in natural photosynthesis that are achieved through genetic engineering of chloroplast expression. Second, the catabolic energy loss observed during dark cycles in natural photosynthesis was absent in our hybrid system, which may be an innate feature of the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway, in which acetic acid is a waste product of normal respiration. Additionally, many plants and algae tend to store a large portion of their photosynthetic products as biomass, which requires extensive processing to produce useful chemicals. In contrast, the M. thermoaceticaCdS system directs ~90% of photosynthetic products toward acetic acid, reducing the cost of diversifying to other chemical products. Sakimoto et al.

This work was funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE)s Office of Science. The interface design part of the study was carried out the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office Science User Facility hosted by Berkeley Lab.

Resources
The Yomiuri Shimbun reports that Honda Motor Co. and General Motors Co. have entered final negotiations to expand their collaboration beyond the current work on fuel cell vehicles to include plug-in hybrids (PHEVs).

The two companies are interested in using joint procurement of parts to help drive prices down, according to the report.

The two companies are reportedly considering the joint manufacture of PHVs and FCVs as well, in addition to their development.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A Gweru woman has approached the Constitutional Court, challenging the use of multiple currencies by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, an institution she accuses of being incompetent and causing the fall of the Zim dollar.Flattah Moyo says although she once approached the RBZ to offer her ideas on how to revive the Zimbabwean currency, no one was willing to engage her.She also says the central bank should have come up with a mechanism to protect the Zim dollar.Moyo says the RBZ has failed to discharge its duties in accordance with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act Chapter 22:15 Section 6 which mandates the central bank to achieve and maintain the stability of the Zimbabwean dollar, to foster liquidity solvency, stability and proper functioning of Zimbabwe's financial system.
As they return to classes this week, Greenwich High School juniors now stand about 18 months away from graduation.

That timespan might sound like an eon to some students, but the schools guidance counselors say now is the time for juniors to start planning their higher education.

To help 11th-graders prepare, guidance counselors have organized in the next two weeks a series of voluntary College Kick Off meetings, which will focus on applying to colleges. Counselors will make the same presentation at all of the meetings, so students and families can choose which one to attend.

Based on the feedback from our students and parents, GHS does a great job guiding students through the college application process, said Greenwich High Headmaster Chris Winters. The first step of the journey is the College Kick Off meeting. These events are well attended and provide parents and students with key information.

During the meetings, counselors will discuss a number of topics including strategies for selecting schools to apply to, application trends, school visits, academic goals and parents role in the application process. Juniors will also receive folders with planning documents.

The Kick Offs will precede guidance counselors meeting individually with students and their parents in the coming months to discuss their post-high school plans.

More Information Greenwich High School will host College Kick Off meetings on the following dates to help 11th-graders and their families plan college applications. Guidance counselors will present the same information at the meetings, all of which will be held in the Greenwich High School auditorium. Jan. 5: 7 p.m. Jan. 6: 7 p.m. Jan 11: 7 p.m. Jan 12: 7 p.m. (snow date) See More Collapse

If students attend this meeting, theyll have a foundation of information that they can use to make the most of their individual planning meeting, said Judith Nedell, the districts coordinator of guidance services in grades 6-12. We find that people can hit the ground running in their individual meeting if theyve gone to a Kick Off meeting.

The meetings are one of several ways that guidance counselors help students to manage the college-application process. The school regularly hosts panels featuring guidance staff and college admissions officials. It also holds a College Night event each October, which attracts representatives from hundreds of colleges.

pschott@scni.com; 203-625-4439; twitter: @paulschott
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

Commuter omnibus drivers and touts were engaged in running battles with police and Chitungwiza Municipal Police in the morning over $100 traffic fines.Council reportedly hired Zanu PF youths to deal' with the protesting transport operators.Bulawayo24.com understands that council later sought reinforcements from police who fired tear gas on the transport operators.So fierce were the battles that no commuter omnibuses were travelling and stranded commuters had to walk a distance from the main metropolitan area to hike for lifts.According to NewsDay, by mid-morning Zanu PF youths and touts have been dismissed by use of tear gas and the town council offices closed as police continue monitor the situation.
Stand back! Photo: Tetra Images/Corbis

A mother and daughter say their dinner at Bocca East, an Italian joint on the Upper East Side, didnt go quite as planned after a waiter in the process of flambeing a dish table-side proceeded to light the daughters face, hair, neck, and hand on fire. According to the suit, Judith and Laura Katz were sitting at their table back in 2013 when Laura became engulfed in flames from the neck up. She reportedly sustained serious and severe injuries, which were in turn followed by burns to her mom once she leapt to her daughters rescue and attempted to extinguish the flames that were engulfing her daughter. Their suit, which demands an unspecified sum from Thomas Vito Bifulco, Bocca Easts owner at the time, argues the restaurant was careless in allowing anything to be flambeed so close to patrons in a crowded dining room. The duo say that besides the shock, fright and emotional distress suffered, the daughter continues to receive medical care for her burns.

Bocca East was in the news in April, too, when an enraged customer attacked a manager after waiting an hour and a half for an omelette. While this wasnt the restaurants fault (the violence part, anyway), these are not the kinds of incidents anyone in hospitality wants  especially since people are happy to catalogue them on Yelp. Bifulco apparently sold the restaurant six months ago, and, fortunately, Bocca East no longer offers flambeed dishes of any kind.

[NYP]


Ready to take the family out for barbecue. Photo: Michal Fludra/Corbis

Even the NRA has said that gun-toting inside restaurants can get downright weird for other diners, but there will always be restaurateurs strongly in favor. The most recent example: The owner of Brooks Place, a Houston joint thats made Texas Monthlys famed ranking of the states top barbecuers, has started offering a 10 percent discount to customers who come in visibly wearing firearms.

Texass new open-carry law went into effect January 1, and owner Trent Brooks wanted the states 826,000 license holders (plus the recognized license holders from 42 other states) to know they and their .45s are more than welcome to a heavily discounted plateful of ribs. He actually marked New Years Day with a 25 percent discount, but hes since reduced it to 10 percent (though he adds it applies to both open and concealed carry).

Media statewide are cataloguing which restaurants want guns and which are exercising their right under the new law to opt out. Some of the do-nots are owned by active gun carriers, like a Dallas restaurant owner who explained his position to NPR like this: If there are three or four people in the restaurant all carrying guns then youre going to be uncomfortable. And Id just rather people not be uncomfortable.

Brooks, who personally carries a Springfield handgun every day, says so far that there hasnt been much blowback  or at least none that hes aware of, since, as he notes, There have been no complaints face to face. Wonder why.

[Chronicle]
Huawei has started its press event at CES today by boasting about its smartphone market share, among other things. The Chinese company has told us that its brand recognition has improved dramatically over the past few years, and the trend is for it to become even better in the future.

But that's not all. Not only do more people know about Huawei now, but more and more people are buying its smartphones. According to the company, it's been the world's No.3 smartphone maker in the third quarter of 2015, with 9.7% market share.

That's almost twice as much as the next contender has managed (which, surprisingly, is Oppo). Huawei's aim is to one day be No.2, and it thinks it may actually achieve that in a few years. One thing is clear, though - the company is very much focused on growing.

Source
Lenovo has just pulled the wraps off the Vibe S1 Lite, a toned-down version of the existing Vibe S1. The focus has remained on selfies but a few key specs have been changed.

For starters, the Vibe S1 Lite has a 5-inch FullHD IPS display, quite like the non-Lite model. The new smartphone, however, is powered by the Mediatek MT6753 chipset, as opposed to the MT6752, promising global LTE coverage, but a lower CPU clock speed (1.3GHz vs. 1.7GHz). Theres 2GB of RAM on board, as well as 16GB of storage, expandable via microSD cards up to 32GB.

Its the front cam that is the headline feature, using an 8MP Sony sensor with large 1.4 micron photosites. Theres a flash to help in low-light situations  a feature gaining in popularity, but still somewhat rare. The 5-element lens is fixed-focus though. The primary camera looks good on paper too with a 13MP sensor, phase detection autofocus, and a dual-LED flash.



Lenovo Vibe S1 Lite

The Lenovo Vibe S1 Lite measures 145 x 71 x 8.6mm and weighs 129g, so while its a bit tall for a 5-incher, its certainly on the light side of average. It packs a 2,700mAh battery, which Lenovo promises is good for a day.

As already mentioned, the Vibe S1 Lite supports Cat. 4 LTE over some 10 bands on top of the quad-band 2G/3G. Theres Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS with A-GPS, and an FM radio receiver. The smartphone runs android 5.1 Lollipop.

Lenovo has put a $199 price tag on the Vibe S1 Lite, and it should hit the stores early this year.
Yesterday, Amazon UK and France pulled the Lumia 950 XL from its online stores. While the actual reason is not known, both UK and France have begun selling the Lumia 950 XL again.

While the black model on the UK site is back for sale, the white model remains out of stock. The French site of the retailer, strangely, shows the Noir model in stock but shows pictures of the white model. Maybe Im lost in translation, but either way, the phones are back on the virtual shelves.

Were not sure exactly why Amazon, among some other retailers, kept pulling the new Lumia phones from their online stores. The first couple of times were due to unusually high return rates, deeming horrible battery life to be the culprit.

This time around, Amazon UK notified its users that the complication was either of three things: inventory issues, description error, or the way an item was shipped.

For all we know, the black models and white models may have been labeled wrong and customers were getting the white model when they ordered the black one. (This didnt actually happen, its just an example) We hope this is a learning experience for Microsoft or whoever is to blame.

Via
Microsoft has revealed that over 200 million monthly active devices worldwide are now running Windows 10. That's up from the 110 million figure the Redmond, Washington-based company reported back in the month of October last year.

Of the new Windows 10 devices added in the past three months, more than 40% became active since Black Friday. "Windows 10 continues to be on the fastest growth trajectory of any version of Windows  ever  outpacing Windows 7 by nearly 140% and Windows 8 by nearly 400%," Microsoft noted in a blog post.

The Software giant also revealed that more than 76% of its enterprise customers are currently in active pilots of Windows 10, and a total of over 22 million devices running the OS are the company's enterprise and education customers.

Microsoft also shared a many other interesting usage statistics - head to the Source link below to access the information.

Source
News / National

by Staff Reporter

Post-congress Zanu PF bigwigs opposed to embattled Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa succeeding President Robert Mugabe are reported to be campaigning for Senate president Edna Madzongwe to be vice president.Madzongwe is reportedly linked to the former liberation movement's ambitious Young Turks known as the Generation 40 (G40), who are said to be working closely with the women's league to derail Mnangagwa and push for her assuming authority instead of the First Lady Grace Mugabe who has been all along tipped for the post by analysts."It is now a question of when in 2016, not whether we will have a woman VP. Last December's (Zanu PF) conference set a clear deadline that 2016 would be the year that gender parity would be realised in the presidium. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing will stop women from realising their long-cherished dream, and that woman is likely to be Mai Madzongwe, and not Dr Amai (Grace), whom you guys wrongly accused of wanting to succeed the president," one of the bigwigs said.Women's league senior member and Goromonzi West MP, Beatrice Nyamupinga  who is also the chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio committee on Women's Affairs, Gender and Community Development  told the Daily News yesterday that while 2015 had variously been dubbed Gore Rezvidzidzo (the year of learning), 2016 was the Women's Year.




Haiti - Politic : Jovenel Moise ready to talk with Jude Celestin





Yesterday Monday, the presidential candidate Jovenel Moise, of the PHTK platform (Haitian Tet Kale Party) gave a press conference at the Hotel Kinam.



Jovenel Moise, praised the sacrifices made by members of the Independent Electoral Commission of Evaluation (CEEI) who performed their work during the holiday periods.



The candidate of PHTK also called for credible elections "I firmly believe that it is important that all players, regardless of their ideological and political, shall ensure that the elections are credible, honest and transparent," he also has not ruled out the possibility of entering into dialogue with his opponent Jude Celestin of the Alternative League for Progress the Haitian Empowerment (LAPEH) "we have no opponent, it's a competitor that we have, today he remains a competitor, the competitor remaining is a Haitian as we [...] we are ready to sit down and talk," he said.



He also took advantage of this conference to talk about his electoral campaign lead across the country and talk about his program if he is elected "To the end of 2015, I was invited to many places in the country, I am aware of many problems that there are in the cities and communal sections.



I have interacted with many people to learn about the problems they confront in their area. I made a commitment to work to put food on the table of these people.



Economic development that we need must value all that we have at home, that's why we want to continue with all that is good at home.



I identified four areas that can bring growth and create jobs for the people: agriculture, tourism, construction and services.



To ensure social development of the country, I promise you that I will mobilize the entire Nationon the issue of education. Education is a national cause.



We will continue with the implementation of networks of hospitals, clinics and health centers and those of trauma.



My vision is that of a State that will do what is necessary to improve the business environment and diplomacy.



The Haitian Diaspora will found all the attention of my administration to better facilitate their integration in the country's affairs," was among other what Jovenel Moise said at the press conference.



Concerning the report of the CEEI, he refrained to comment about it not having yet received the report.



S/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Electoral Zapping...





Report well received but also rejected

Following the submission of the report of the Independent Electoral Commission of Evaluation https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16231-haiti-elections-the-recommendations-of-the-commission-of-electoral-evaluation.html ,the conclusions and recommendations of the Commission have highlighted the divisions on the one side the Haitian Tet Kale Party (PHTK) has welcomed the report while the leaders of Pitit Dessalines party have rejected it and continues to demand the cancellation of the first round of presidential elections, the resignation and arrest of members of the CEP and the director of the tabulation centre taht it accuses of electoral crime.



Refusal to sign

Gedeon Jean, Secretary of the Independent Electoral Commission of Evaluation (CEEI) and also representative of the National Defense of Human Rights Network (RNDDH), whose name appears at the end of the document, did not sign the report of the said commission, denouncing this report and criticizing the refusal of the other committee members to demand a recount of the ballots as part of a thorough assessment of the election.



Recount necessary according to...

According to Jean Gedeon, a recount is necessary to respect the popular vote, knowing according to him that serious irregularities considered equivalent to massive fraud were recorded on 15% of the Minutes, he recommends a thorough investigation of all the minutes. Mr. Jean argues that cases of serious irregularities considered equivalent to massive fraud can influence the outcome of the vote.



Question of term...

Louis Armand, the Coordinator of the Independent Electoral Commission of Evaluation said that he and the other three members (Rosney Desroches, Spokesperson ; Mgr. Patrick Aris, Secretary et Euvonie Georges Auguste, Logistics) did not want to add the words "recount" in the document because according to him a thorough review involves a recount of minutes.



An opaque CTV according to Jean Gedeon

Jean Gedeon, the dissident member of the CEEI, highlighted the opacity of the Votes Tabulation Center (CTV), as the absence of recruitment process of auditors lawyers that validate the minutes and of manual or training modules concerning them, and the non-access to the operating procedures of the tabulation center.



Fanmi Lavalas rejects the report

Maryse Narcisse, presidential candidate of Fanmi Lavalas rejects the report of theelectoral Evaluation Commission according to her the commission has given no explanation on to whom benefited frauds. The party announced demonstrations on 6 and 8 January to continue to seek the annulment of elections of 9 August and 25 October.



50th Legislature

The President Martelly has confirmed that it has received from the hands of the CEP the results of parliamentary elections for publication in the official journal, Le Moniteur, to meet the deadline of 11 January for the entry of the 50th Legislature.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Korean Movie | 2015

 Animation

Directed by Lee Yong-sun ()

30min | Release date in South Korea: 2016/01/07

Synopsis

A father named Sangmin has been working and living alone for 3 years. He sends money to his family overseas so his daughter can study abroad. But one day, his company recommends that he resign. Being unaware of this, his wife and daughter ask him to let them stay abroad longer, and allow his daughter to study the violin. In order to avoid his resignation, Sangmin visits the manager who is in hiding and sacrifices himself.

Source
Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby.

13:46, 17 OCT 2022
The PDP notes with grave concern the brazen failure by the Mugabe led government to pay civil servants their December salaries and the 13th cheque that Mugabe and Mnangagwa promised.As a Party we also note the criminal and dangerous tactic used by the inconsiderate and heartless government of trying to divide the civil servants by paying some sections of the government workers namely the security sector.This is an orchestrated plan by the regime to play divide and rule.

Recognising the acrimonious divisions and cat fights between the Minister of Labour and the minister of Finance regarding the status of the civil servants salariesNoting that the ZANU PF government is at sixes and sevens in addressing this issueThe PDP urges the Civil servants across all sectors to unite in solidarity inherent in the true spirit of the working class and wage a massive public protest and force the ZANU PF government to make an urgent solution to the National crisis.The PDP notes with indignation the brutal onslaught by the Police on the unsuspecting teachers who were exercising their constitutional right to petition and demonstrate.In the eyes of the PDP, this wanton act is a reminiscence of oppression and stands as a reminder that the ZANU PF regime thrives on repression, oppression and suppression.The PDP would want to send a message straight to the dictatorial Mugabe regime that;As a Party we are booking no nonsense and we would not stand by and fold our arms as the Mugabe regime brutalises mercilessly citizens who are fighting for their legitimate right by airing their concerns.We are cautioning the police stop taking command from their bosses who are enjoying huge perks from the regime or else we will mobilise the agitated citizens to go out in full force and render this country ungovernable.We remain a people's movement ready to deliver a HOPE and a New Zimbabwe and we have the courage to be different
Friday Bridge Program in Sugar Grove Continues in January

The Western Watauga Community Center in Sugar Grove will be continuing the Friday Afternoon Bridge program in January. Starting time 12:00. Ending time 3:45. New members welcome. Call to sign up and reserve your spot.

Bahai Devotional Set for Sunday in Stony Fork

There will be a Bahai devotional meeting on Sunday 10 January at 11am in Stony Fork. The theme will be Working for unity  the foundation of peace. All are welcome. For directions and more information call 268 2191.

Students Begin Filling Out FAFSA for College Applications

With the start of the new year, high school seniors planning to attend college in the fall should begin the process of filling out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form.

The earlier the FAFSA is completed, the sooner the student and family will have information about the possibility of financial aid. To be considered for a share of the billions of dollars available in federal and state aid to students with financial need, you must apply.

When students complete the FAFSA, theyre automatically being considered for federal and state grants, Federal Work Study and Federal Student Loans. Federal and state grants are gift aid  free money the student does not have to pay back. If eligible for Federal Work Study, a student has the chance to get a job on-campus to help pay expenses. And the FAFSA helps determine whether a student may be eligible for subsidized as well as unsubsidized Federal Student Loans.

Families who would like help completing the FAFSA are invited to attend a FAFSA Day near them on Saturday, February 20. This free event is open to assist high school seniors, their families and college students complete and submit their forms online.

Pre-registration is strongly encouraged. Go to CFNC.org/FAFSAday or call 866-866-CFNC toll-free for a list of event sites and register for the one nearest you. More than 65 sites will be available the morning of February 20.

During the week following FAFSA Day (February 22-26), State Employees Credit Union branches will be ready by appointment to help students and families with FAFSA completion. Families also can get help with the FAFSA on Tuesday, February 23 at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Greensboro.

To be fully prepared to complete the FAFSA at one of these February FAFSA events, participants should either file their 2015 federal taxes in advance or bring the following: (1) both the students and parents federal 1040 tax forms for 2015 (or W-2 forms and other income and asset documents if completed tax forms are not available); (2) the students and one parents Federal Student Aid identification obtained in advance from the U.S. Department of Education website, fsaid.ed.gov ; and (3) a FAFSA on the web worksheet with as much information entered as possible. The online worksheet is available at www.fafsa.gov.

Early completion of the FAFSA helps students take advantage of all of the financial aid opportunities available for North Carolinians, said Marcia Weston with the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority and CFNC coordinator of the FAFSA Day program. Students and parents dont need to worry if they arent sure how to answer all of the questions on the form. Thats why we have arranged to have experienced college aid professionals and financial specialists to help at each site.

Filing 2015 federal taxes early makes FAFSA completion easier. Most of those who file well in advance of FAFSA Day can then take advantage of the automatic transfer option to enter their tax information directly onto their FAFSA, she said. If a student or parent hasnt yet filed taxes, they can enter estimated income information on the FAFSA, and updated tax information can be transferred to the FAFSA at a later date. 

FAFSA Day is sponsored by a collaboration of College Foundation of North Carolina, the North Carolina Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and State Employees Credit Union.

A February FAFSA Phone-In, also sponsored by CFNC, is another option for students and parents who have only a few questions on completing the FAFSA. Every Tuesday night in February between 5 and 8 p.m., financial aid specialists will be available to help at the toll-free number, 866-866-CFNC (2362).

More information is available on college and career planning on the College Foundation of North Carolina website, CFNC.org. Families will find college cost estimators, lists of scholarship, grant and loan opportunities, information about North Carolinas 529 college savings plan, career descriptions and requirements, virtual tours of more than 100 of the states college campuses, and online college admission and financial aid applications.

About CFNC

College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC) is a free service of the State of North Carolina that helps students plan, apply, and pay for college. CFNC is a joint effort of Pathways, the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority, and College Foundation, Inc.

Pathways , created by the N.C. General Assembly in 1999, is a statewide initiative to increase the college-going rate of North Carolinians by providing: comprehensive college and career planning resources; electronic applications and transcripts accepted by all 110 North Carolina colleges and universities; and, information on student financial aid and college affordability. Pathways is administered by The University of North Carolina General Administration in collaboration with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, the N.C. Community College System, and the N.C. Independent Colleges and Universities.

The North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA ), established in 1965, is the State agency that promotes access to higher education by administering financial aid and savings programs, informing students and families about paying for college, teaching educators about financial aid administration, and advocating for resources to support students.

College Foundation, Inc. (CFI) , a nonprofit corporation serving North Carolina students and families since 1955, administers a large portfolio of education loans, several major grant and scholarship programs for students attending N.C. colleges and universities, and the tax-advantaged 529 college savings program on behalf of the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority. CFI also delivers information to North Carolina students and families about paying for college, assists colleges and universities with financial aid services, and provides technology support for CFNC.org.

State Employees Credit Union (SECU) is a not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by its members. SECU has been providing employees of the State of North Carolina and their families with consumer financial services for 77 years. With more than 1.9 million members, SECU provides services through more than 250 branch offices, 1,100 ATMs, 24/7 Contact Centers and a website, www.ncsecu.org .

CFNC offers resources toll-free at 1-866-866-CFNC and at CFNC.org.

Organist J. William Greene to Host Guest Recital at ASU on Jan. 19

J. William Greene, organist and choirmaster at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, will present a guest recital Jan 19 at Appalachian State University.

The Hayes School of Music event will begin at 8 p.m. in Broyhill Music Centers Rosen Concert Hall. Admission is free.

Greene graduated from Appalachian, where he was a student of the late H. Max Smith. He also holds degrees from Northwestern University and the Eastman School of Music, where he received the Doctor of Musical Arts and Performers Certificate. Greene has taught organ at Appalachian, the Nazareth College of Rochester and Ithaca College.

The recital program includes Offertoire from Messe pour les Paroisses by Francois Couperin, Praeludium in G Minor by Nicolaus Bruhns, Aria, BWV 587 by J. S. Bach, Fantaisie in C Major by- Cesar Franck, Fuge fur die Orgel by Johannes Brahms and Consolation by Franz Liszt.

Watch Hyde Park on Hudson at Watauga Library on Jan. 11

High Country Lifelong Learners in association with the Watauga County Public Library invite you to join us for a movie viewing of Hyde Park On Hudson on January 11th from 2:00 pm  4:30 pm.

The story of the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Daisy Suckley, centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York.

Stars: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams

This film has an MPAA rating of R and an approximate run-time of 94 minutes.

For more information please email [email protected], Attention: Deb Gooch.

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News / National

by Staff reporter

The trial of Gokwe-Nembudziya member of the National Assembly, Justice Mayor Wadyajena, who is being accused of criminally insulting the First Lady, Dr Grace Mugabe, failed to kick off this Tuesday afternoon after the defence counsel applied for refusal of further remand.Wadyajena (35) was arrested in Victoria Falls soon after the 15th Zanu-PF Annual National People's Conference for allegedly denigrating the First Lady and appeared in court on charges of criminal insult.He was later released on US$800 bail.According to his lawyer, Mr Givemore Muvhiringi, the section that his client was charged on, Section 95(1a) of the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act, was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, implying that the accused has no criminal case to answer.The defence counsel also made an application to allow the accused to be absent from the court when the ruling on the application for refusal of further remand is made on Tuesday next week.The application was however dismissed and the accused will be expected to appear in court for the ruling.
The network equipment manufacturer announced on Monday that its 15.6 billion euro public exchange offer for shares in Alcatel-Lucent in France and the United States has received a preliminary approval from Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF), the regulator of French financial markets.

Nokia is on the edge of acquiring nearly 80 per cent of shares in its French competitor, Alcatel-Lucent.

AMF published the interim results of the initial offer period on Monday. The final results of the offer period are scheduled for publication in February, according to Reuters.

We're delighted that the offer has been successful and that Alcatel-Lucent's investors share our confidence in the future of the combined company. We will move quickly to combine the two companies and execute our integration plans, Rajeev Suri, the chief executive of Nokia, states in a stock exchange release.

The scope and scale of the end-to-end portfolio to be offered by Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent will meet the needs of customers around the world, he affirms.

We will have unparalleled R&D and innovation capabilities, which we will use to lead the world in creating next-generation technology and services.

Nokia announced its plans to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in an all-share deal in the second quarter of last year. The network equipment maker declared on Monday that if it manages to acquire 95 per cent of the outstanding shares and convertible bonds in Alcatel-Lucent, it also intends to squeeze out the remaining shares.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Markku Ulander / Lehtikuva
The wife and father-in-law of slain Irishman Jason Corbett have been charged with his murder in the US.

Dad-of-two Jason (39) was allegedly beaten to death with a baseball bat at his home in North Carolina last August.

His widow, Molly Martens Corbett (31), and her father, Thomas Michael Martens (65), have both been charged with second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter.

Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Greg Brown said the grand jury has indicted the pair and they will appear in court later this week. The lawyer representing them was informed of the indictments.

Malice

"Second-degree murder means killing with malice and voluntary manslaughter means killing without malice. The grand jury found there was sufficient probable cause for each of the charges," said Mr Brown.

Bail and other matters will be dealt with during the court appearance and the trial is expected to begin later this year.

The incident is alleged to have happened at the couple's home in Wallburg, North Carolina, last August 2. The Davidson County Sheriff's office received an emergency call at 3am and arrived to find Jason (39) with fatal head injuries. Detectives were treating the death as "a domestic disturbance" and have said that Mr Martens claimed he was acting in self-defence to protect his daughter.

Autopsy results found Jason died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.

Molly Martens Corbett fought a custody battle with Jason's family in an attempt to keep his children, Jack (10) and Sarah (8), in the US. But the clerk of Davidson County Superior Court said it was not in the best interests of the children and they were transferred to the care of their aunt, Tracey Lynch.

Ms Martens Corbett posted a message on Facebook after she was indicted asking: "Shouldn't the truth matter? I cannot believe the level of slander, harassment, lies and absolute utter corruption?"

Members of Jason's family travelled to the US to hear the grand jury indictment.

Last night, Treacy and her husband, David, said in a statement: "We want all of the facts to go in front of a jury so that we can all know the truth. We continue to grieve over the murder of Jason," they said. "Jason's children are doing well given what has happened."
A 37-year-old web designer is recovering from a horror ordeal after he was brutally assaulted and held against his will in a disturbing incident on Sunday.

Gardai in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, are investigating the shocking event which happened shortly after 5.30pm on Sunday.

Sources say that officers are investigating allegations of aggravated burglary, assault, threats to kill and false imprisonment of the victim, and a forensic examination of his apartment took place.

completed

The dispute is believed to centre around a website which was due to be completed but has not yet been finalised.

The victim of the attack was targeted after he got into his car in the Derravarra House complex in Mullingar on Sunday evening.

The Pakistani national, who has asked not to be named, was allegedly pulled from his car by a father and son who had arrived in the Co Westmeath town from their home in Dublin's south inner city.

A close pal of the victim explained that after the man was taken from the car, "he was punched in the head rapidly and repeatedly".

The suspects allegedly then took the victim's keys and dragged him back into his apartment.

He then faced a nightmare 40-minute ordeal in which the two men, aged in their 50s and 20s, ransacked the property and continued to make threats against the terrified man.

"They were looking for a computer and told him to sit down. They busted the other side of the man's face. He then produced the computer," a pal of the victim told the Herald.

"He ended up having to get two stitches in the face and two in the back of his head.

STARK

"One of the worst aspects of this was that they left the man with a stark warning in which they threatened to kill him if he went to gardai, but this matter was reported almost as soon as it ended," the pal added.

It is understood that the argument centred around a business dispute between the web designer and the two men who are suspected of attacking him.

It is believed that the suspects in the case became "annoyed" because they had previously paid a four-figure deposit for work that was not completed on time.
Health Minister Leo Varadkar has said the trolley crisis in some hospitals will need a "number of years" to solve.

There are currently more than 500 people on trolleys in hospitals across the country, 93 of them in Dublin.

Mr Varadkar confirmed there was "severe overcrowding" yesterday in Beaumont Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

But he also defended the Government's record on health, saying that "overcrowding is down on last year".

He admitted, however, that it would take several years to solve the problem.

The numbers waiting on trolleys was said to have been as low as 50 on Christmas Eve, according to the minister, who visited six hospitals yesterday.

Crisis

Mr Varadkar maintained that overcrowding was down by between "10 and 15pc this year" compared with last.

"We're in better shape than we were last year," he said outside St James's Hospital in Dublin.

A total of 83pc of people were being seen in less than nine hours, while 17pc of patients waited longer than that.

The first few weeks of the year are traditionally the busiest for hospitals.

Mr Varadkar's hospital visits yesterday allowed him to "see the situation" for himself.

"I want to make sure that hospitals are opening any beds that are closed and discharging patients that can be discharged," he said.

To alleviate the crisis, the minister confirmed that elective surgeries are being cancelled or not scheduled at all in some hospitals experiencing overcrowding.

"This is not a problem that can be solved quickly, it's been around for about 20 years," he said.

"What is required is that we make incremental improvements over the next number of years and that's going to require sustained focus, sustained investment and additional capacity."

Mr Varadkar said the Government has invested considerably in health, including the Free GP Scheme.

"Nearly 300,000 people who used to pay for their doctor don't have to. Not everything is better, but lots of things are," he said.
Just five candidates standing for Lucinda Creighton's Renua Ireland have publicly backed changes to the Constitution on abortion.

The new political party grew out of a revolt by key Fine Gael figures in July 2013 against changes to the law on abortion. But since the party was launched last March, Ms Creighton and her colleagues avoided taking an official stance on the matter, saying it was among a series of matters best left to personal conscience.

The party has now become the first political group to launch their manifesto - some eight weeks ahead of the expected polling day at the end of February. The party's 18 candidates gathered for a function in Dublin and outlined their plans, with Ms Creighton saying they would publish their "red-line issues" for any government negotiations before the election.

Declared

But just five of the 18 Renua candidates were prepared to say they backed the idea of changing the 1983 amendment to the Constitution which effectively curtails abortion except where the mother's life is at risk. The five who declared their support for some kind of change were: Michael Gargan of Dublin South Central; Frank Cronin of Dun Laoghaire; Milo Power of Waterford; Anne Farrell of Galway-Roscommon; and Patrick McKee of Carlow-Kilkenny.

Mr Cronin said he understood it was a very difficult issue and he respected all other people's views. "I favour change to face the reality of life as it is. But I think we should have an open debate on the matter," Mr Cronin told the Herald.

Ms Creighton also highlighted a simplification of the tax system with a new 23pc flat rate applying to all people earning less than 70,000 per year. The former EU affairs junior minister defended the move as promoting work and fairness while simplifying the tax system.

Renua deputy leader Billy Timmins urged a crackdown on crime with a life sentence being applied for repeat offenders of serious crime.
The cast of Rebellion got together to watch the airing of the first episode in 37 Dawson Street on Sunday

The great-grandson of one of the 1916 Rising leaders has given a "guarded welcome" to the portrayal of the events in RTE's Rebellion.

The first episode aired on Sunday night and has been met with widespread praise.

Rebellion was watched by some 619,000 viewers, according to the latest figures from RTE, with the show having a 41pc share of the audience.

An additional 45,000 watched it on RTE One+1 and 9,200 on RTE Player.

James Connolly Heron, who is the great-grandson of James Connolly, said he was impressed with the first episode.

"It's well-produced and has echoes of Strumpet City. It looks well - I think it would be unfair to be too picky about it at this stage," said Mr Connolly Heron.

Impact

However, while he did say it was too early to be critical of the series after one episode, he did question one particular moment.

"I thought the idea of storing guns and ammunition in the Royal College of Surgeons was a bit fanciful," he said.

The scene he was referring to saw the rebels concealing guns in boxes in the college in the build-up to the rebellion.

Mr Connolly Heron commended the performances of the actors and added that the programme could "open up the whole story to a new generation of our people".

The portrayal of his own great-grandfather, he felt, "certainly had impact".

"It is shot well, and looks good - it's certainly a good starting point," he added.

The 6m five-part RTE drama will continue over the next few weeks, charting the pivotal events in Ireland from the outbreak of World War I to the Easter Rising in 1916.

A lot of praise has been heaped on the strong female characters in the show, as well as the high production values.

Several members of the cast got together to watch the airing of the first episode on Sunday night at 37 Dawson Street - including Brian Gleeson, Sarah Greene, Ruth Bradley and Charlie Murphy.

Colin Teevan, who wrote the show, said on Today FM that he wanted to keep the focus away from the leaders of 1916.

He said he wanted to explore what life was like for those who were living during that time.

Mr Teevan added that feminism, socialism and nationalism had fuelled risings across Europe at the time and said that was a key part to telling the story of 1916.

However, he defended the 6m budget.

"It was an extraordinary time of social upheaval and I wanted to capture that," he said.

"It was expensive, there was an awful lot of actors - I think there are 79 named parts - and shooting on location is expensive, as is CGI."

Glen Killane, Managing Director of RTE Television, said that Rebellion is the beginning of a number of productions from Montrose to mark the year.

"[Rebellion] marks the beginning of a series of programming across television, radio and online that audiences can engage with, understand, commemorate and celebrate 1916," he said.

A three-part documentary series narrated by Liam Neeson, Joe Duffy's Children of the Revolution, Michael Portillo's The Enemy Files and Bob Geldof on Yeats will also feature in the year ahead.
News / Press Release

by ZHDA and ZINA National Executive Committees

04 JANUARY 2016The Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) and the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA) jointly receives with great shock, disbelief and disdain the late disbursement of December 2015 salaries for health workers. We maintain that it is unacceptable for health workers to be paid today after going through a horrendous festive season and had reached alarming levels of socioeconomic deprivation. We maintain that such levels of irresponsibility and uncaring attitudes should be discarded forthwith and health workers must regain their good status in society.It can never be justified to pay health workers after most of them had started to fail to report for duty as they now lacked basic commodities and transport fares. We the doctors and nurses of Zimbabwe today jointly state that* We shall never accept our salaries in any month that is outside the time frame worked. Salaries are a basic right and they must never be postponed into a different month. We demand an unconditional apology from the employer for the hardships we have endured as a result of their recklessness and juvenile planning* We demand our outstanding bonuses on or before the 31st of January 2015. Health workers deserve to be paid the 13th cheque as they work for long extra unpaid hours during the night, weekends and holidays. Fiscal challenges cannot be an excuse as we had long proposed an alternative non cash incentives scheme.* Our members will report for their duties as normal as soon as they access their cash from their accounts beginning tomorrow. We maintain that for this normalcy to be long lasting our January salaries and beyond must never be tampered with again.Lastly we reiterate our commitment to serve Zimbabwe and we call upon our employer to equally regard the renumeration of health workers as a top national priority as it has a direct bearing on the quality of health care to all Zimbabweans. It is unpatriotic to let our health workers go without bus fare , sundries and basic meals particularly during the festive season.For and On behalf of our health workersZHDA AND ZINA NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEES
News / Regional

by Thupeyo Muleya

Government has revised travellers' rebate to $200 from $300, among a cocktail of measures as it seeks to maximise revenue collection from imports and address the continued abuse of the facility by local businesses.The daily import duty remission was also reduced from $50 to $30 per individual traveller per day.Under the new regulations, all travellers using small cross border transport (mostly open trucks) or buses with huge trailers and carrying goods of a commercial nature no longer qualify for rebate.The goods are now treated as commercial.According to Statutory Instrument (SI) Number 148 of 2015 (Customs and Excise (General) (Amendment) Regulations, 2015 (No 80) issued recently by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, travellers' rebate will only be granted to pedestrians and travellers using private vehicles.Prior to the new development, individual travellers would enjoy the rebate whether they used commercial transport, buses or small cross border transport operators.Provisions of the Customs and Excise Act allow a traveller to import goods of a prescribed amount on their first entry into the country which is known as a travellers' rebate.In the event that the goods exceed the set amount, the individual pays import duty on the excess.The Statutory Instrument also states that third party transporters carrying goods of a commercial nature will have to be cleared into the country by Zimra under the commercial category."It is hereby notified that the Minister of Finance and Economic Development has in terms of section 235 of the customs and excise act (Chapter 23:03) made the following regulations:"1. The regulations may be cited as customs and excise (General) (Amendment) Regulations, 2015 (no 80)"2. (1) the customs (General) Regulations, 2001, published in Statutory Instrument 154 of 2001 (hereinafter is called "the principal regulations"), are amended by insertion after part IV," read part of the SI.The new law also states that a traveller importing goods in a transport service vehicle , which vehicle is drawing a trailer and is used for conveyance of goods through a port of entry shall pay full duty.However, the SI has adversely affected those travellers (inclusive of returning residents) importing goods from South Africa through Beitbridge border post as those stranded are accusing Zimra, which is the implementing agent, of failing to notify the public (travellers) on the latest development.For the last three days, travellers have been sceptical of importing goods using buses or small cross border transport operators for fear of being stranded at the border in the event they fail to raise money for duty.Cross border transport operators have criticised the new regulations saying this was meant to elbow them out of business."You can see that there are very few vehicles in the border. As small cross border operators, we feel these regulations are meant to push us out of business because few travellers would want our services or manage to raise the money for duty especially that rebate has been scrapped," said one operator who preferred anonymity.However, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) officials at Beitbridge border post recently told the parliamentary thematic committee on Peace and Security on a visit to the area that there was rampant smuggling of controlled goods and the abuse of travellers' rebate.
News / Regional

by Mxolisi Ncube

Nkomose (in black top) with some of the beneficiary officials

Some of the donated supplies

PLUMTREE - Plumtree benefactor, Bigfoster Nkomose made a second donation in as many years in the district, when he handed over educational equipment to three primary schools in his rural area during the just-ended festive season.The Johannesburg-based Nkomose, who first donated educational supplies to Tjingababili, Makuzeze and Tshitshi primary schools during a ceremony attended by local traditional and political leaders in 2014, had a few additional helping hands as he donated to the same schools again this time round."We got a positive feedback from the first time donation I made and that helped encourage other people to become part of the initiative this time and that is quite pleasing," said Nkomose."We had other people like Author Jankie Ncube come on board with additional books, pencils, pencil erasers, crayons and ballpoint pens, which were shared equally among the three schools. Mahlathini Ncube - a cross-border transport operator popularly known Umalayitsha wakoTshitshi, offered free transport for the donations and that helped us a lot. That he did this at such a busy time of the year, when other transport operators were making a killing showed us what a responsible citizen he is. It became much easier this time because I wasn't alone. In the first instance, everything had come from my own pocket." Nkomose, who values education as the key to unlocking development for the future generation, promised to turn his initiative into an annual event and urged fellow Zimbabweans to do the same in their respective areas."My wish is to see everyone in our country do the same because educating one child can change the whole environment," added the philanthropist."We thank our councillor, Sindisiwe Sibanda and the three Schools Development Committees for attending and giving us their feedback. Our next target is growing and expanding this initiative to neighbouring schools next year. We are also planning to form a formidable committee and register as a non-governmental organisation for such purposes."Nkomose, who attended Makuzeze for his primary school education, said he felt obliged to contribute to the current generation of students at not only that school, but neighbouring ones as well.
8 a.m.

Authorities say they are seeking additional information about the attack that killed 14 people last month in San Bernardino.

The FBI says federal and local law enforcement officials will hold a press conference at 12 p.m. Tuesday.

Authorities will appeal to the public for information related to the Dec. 2 shooting by a county health department employee and his wife at a holiday luncheon for his co-workers.

The couple were killed by authorities in a shootout later that day.
Ceremony held for new baseball stadium, games months off

A ceremony was held for a multi-use sports facility in Hagerstown on Tuesday, but the first pitch is still months away.
News / Regional

by Staff reporter

A juvenile from Gweru's Mkoba 20 has allegedly murdered a 41-year-old housemaid in a quarrel over a memory card.The 14-year-old boy, who has since been arrested by police, is alleged to have struck the deceased woman identified as Nyarai Kadonzva with a hoe before attempting to commit suicide by drinking a cleaning detergent.The incident occurred on Sunday evening and the juvenile allegedly spent two days with the body in the house without alerting anyone.He later attempted suicide by drinking a detergent but survived and is currently admitted at Gweru Provincial Hospital, where he is recuperating.He spoke to the ZBC News on his hospital bed and explained that he struck Kadonzva on the head with a hoe several times after she had accused him of stealing a memory card and a tools box.He then dragged the body of the deceased from the lounge to the toilet where he removed her blood stained clothes and placed them in a plastic bag and left the deceased lying in a blood.Neighbours say on Sunday evening, at around 11, they heard a sharp scream which quickly subsided.The following day when they attempted to investigate what might had happened, the boy refused to open the doors.The boy was staying with the maid as his parents are in Mozambique where they are working.The murder comes just after a 19-year-old man brutally murdered his mother last month in Gweru's Lundi Park accusing her of refusing to give him money and a car.
Opinion /

Julius Malema has blamed policies put in place during Nelson Mandela's era for the country's high levels of inequality. He may have a point.Addressing the Oxford Union recently, Julius Malema, leader of South Africa's opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters, did something few South Africans have dared: he challenged Nelson Mandela's post-apartheid legacy.Malema accused Mandela of "turning against himself" in abandoning elements of the Freedom Charter during the democratic transition in the early 1990s. The charter was drawn up by a coalition led by the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1950s and is still viewed as the blueprint for an equal, non-racial and democratic society. Mandela, he noted, was hosted by a rich white man after his release, and attended "the club meetings of those white men who owned the South African economy".Malema touched a nerve. The ANC's promised economic transformation has been disappointing in several ways. Poverty hasn't reduced quickly enough, inequality remains at world-beating levels, and the pace of growth has, on average, been pedestrian. It is currently glacial.It is quite likely that decisions made during the transition, before and after 1994, contributed to this outcome.Poor performance compared with peersIn a recent paper, colleagues and I showed that growth in South Africa since 1990 has been very slow compared with other middle income developing countries such as Malaysia, Turkey and Brazil. In per capita terms, South Africa is clearly the poorest performer.The country has performed poorly on other measures too.Exports over this period have been the weakest, investment levels have been the lowest, domestic levels of competition are very weak, and performance on innovation indices is steadily declining.More importantly, poverty remains persistently and unconscionably high at over 40 percent. This is despite the fact that the reduction of poverty accelerated in the 2000s with faster growth and the extension of social grants.And inequality remains extremely high in an era when even countries in the notoriously unequal region of Latin America have shown that inequality can be reduced.Compared with similar middle income countries, the gap between the richest 20 percent and the rest is considerably greater in South Africa.Of the 50 richest Africans in the Forbes Africa's 50 richest list, 16 are South Africans, and only two of the South Africans are black. Three of the four richest Africans are white South Africans.Economic transformation is slow indeed.The 1994 compromisesIt is certainly possible to trace some of the country's relatively poor performance since 1994 to compromises of that era. Established business mounted a concerted campaign to maintain the existing structures of the economy. This was a key item on the agenda of a series of meetings with ANC and other opposition leaders in the 1980s and early 1990s. This demonstrated short-termist defensiveness and a lack of imagination about South Africa's future.It is important to remember that the era was characterised by the poor economic performance of most other African countries. And Latin America was absorbed in a seemingly unending series of debt crises. In this context, reassuring investors on whom the country was believed to depend was a high priority for the ANC and the new government.Attempts to build a mechanism to drive economic transformation failed as the level of trust between business, labour and government deteriorated through the late 1990s and early 2000s.Had the ANC not been constantly looking over its shoulder, what might have been different? Some examples: assets such as wealth and land could have been more radically redistributed; the Reserve Bank could have been given a full-employment mandate (like the Fed in the US); competition policy could have attacked oligopolistic structures, not only anti-competitive behaviour; a more vigorous industrial policy might have been introduced; small businesses could have had more committed support; and the apartheid structure of cities could have been more urgently addressed.Such interventions were constrained by concerns for economic stability.There were poor policies tooSouth Africa's capacity to transform the economy was also undermined by accidents of poor thinking, or the by-products of political horse trading. Examples of these include: the excessively radical liberalisation of agricultural markets and structures; some very poorly conceived reforms in basic education in the first two post-1994 governments; the very poor design of privatisation of some state owned enterprises; and the constrained and complex designs for the liberalisation of some key network industries, especially in the ICT and energy sectors.What could be doneAn interesting thought experiment would be to separate the missed opportunities and policy accidents into two categories.The first category would be those that could have been avoided. The second those that were really difficult to avoid in the political climate of a peaceful transition through negotiation.This separation would not necessarily indicate which of the mistakes is reversible today. But reviewing compromises and mistakes made during the transition would be a very fruitful exercise if accompanied by strategic thinking about what to do about these policies today.Strategic thinking means thinking about what political bargains are possible, and how to build an environment of trust that would encourage short-term sacrifices for long-term gain.Alan Hirsch, Professor and Director of the Graduate School of Development Policy, University of Cape Town. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Commissioner candidates Jones, Robinson on housing, annexation

Incumbent Lee Jones, D, and Perry Robinson, R, share what they plan to do if elected to Monroe County's District 1.
If there has been criticism about India-Russia ties it has been that if one were to take out the defence component from it, there would be little to show for substance. Judging by the recent annual summit between India and Russia in Moscow things are set to change.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the joint statement at the Kremlin, said that the India-Russia relationship truly meets the test of a special and privileged strategic partnership. But for two countries that boast of having strong ties and mutual goodwill the annual bilateral trade has a buoyancy of just about $10 billion. To put that in perspective: Russia does not feature in the top 10 list of Indias trading partners, and on trade volumes is way below nations like South Africa and Belgium  two countries that do not feature in the popular mindscape as Indias leading trading partners.

Cooperation in the defence sector has been the bedrock of ties and now there is a concerted effort to diversify trade to cover a wide range of sectors.

Two highlights from the Moscow summit was the focus on hydrocarbons and terrorism. The deal to give ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) a 15% stake in Rosnefts Vankorneft oil fields  the second largest oil fields located in eastern Siberia  is a major development. For Russia to let India have a stake in its oil, which it sees as a strategic asset, reflects the importance of ties with India here, a top official in the Indian embassy in Moscow said.

The focus on terrorism, especially from the Indian side, showed that New Delhi was willing to shed its cautious approach of self-censoring on the developments in West Asia. In his joint statement Modi expressed his condolences on the unfortunate downing of the military jet in Syria... The PM not only stood by Russia but also made a clear political statement when he said that the jet was downed in Syria and not in Turkish airspace. If India wants to be taken seriously in the international arena it needs to take such bold positions on world affairs, as Modi did. In fact sections of the media glossed over this important nuance and chose to pay more attention to his alleged disrespect to the national anthem  which, anyhow, was not the case.

Other sectors that will get a push are trade in diamonds, pharma, mining and tourism. With Russia freezing ties with Turkey and Egypt unsafe because of terrorism, India needs to step into this vacuum by attracting budget tourists from Russia. Efforts like the six-month multiple entry tourist visa and talks on group visa-free travel will enhance people-to-people contact.

These developments come at a time when there is a decline in Russias role in Indias foreign policy. Growing India-US ties are a reason for this, but that does not take away from the fact that Russia is still a very important  some say the most important and reliable  strategic and military partner for India.

Several factors have led to the ties remaining strong despite the lull.

The war on terror and Indias quest for acceptance at the nuclear high-table made it move closer to the West. Now, New Delhi is widening the depth of that focus to include both the superpowers. Moreover, it is increasingly becoming clear that when it comes to cooperation and progress the way India envisages it, it is not the West but Russia that walks the talk. The summit saw agreements furthering cooperation in the defence sector, in the transfer of technology and joint production. In the nuclear power sector, the agreement between Russias RosAtom and Indias Department of Atomic Energy for localisation of manufacturing is a new milestone.

From Russias vantage it is alienation from the West. For many years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russias official priority was to develop better ties with Europe and the United States. When [Dmitry] Medvedev was president Kremlin developed a policy paper that clearly stated what Russia needed was to modernise relationships with countries that can deliver hi-tech and an entry into sophisticated world circles, and thereby, diminish ties with countries like India and China, says Fred Weir, who was Hindustan Times Moscow correspondent for two decades and is now with the Christian Science Monitor in Moscow. Also the developments in Ukraine, and more recently with Turkey, have forced the Kremlin and the countrys elite to develop an eastern orientation and recognise India again as a natural and reliable partner.

These factors have meant that while both nations are expanding their foreign policy horizons it is done by not compromising on the strategic importance of the bilateral ties. New Delhi-Moscow ties might be decades-old, but the political leadership in both countries have recalibrated it to the diplomatic realities of the 21st century.

There are very few bilateral relations that can be compared to the ties India and Russia share. A close parallel could be the US-Israel ties, but without Washingtons carte blanche to Tel Aviv. Russia has been Indias all-weather friend, much like China is to Pakistan, but with much more credibility and respectability.

Postscript: Blame it on a routine that has set into India-Russia ties or the blink-and-you-miss-it duration of his visit, but Modis Moscow trip did not generate the buzz one expects from a foreign visit by this Prime Minister. This feeling is amplified when one compares it to the reception former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received in 1976. Archive footage shows the grand welcome she received with both Russians and NRIs lining the streets of Moscow on a rainy day to have a glimpse of Gandhi. But that was about four decades ago; the times were different, the world was different. Gandhi was in Soviet Union and Modi in Russia  and the two are not the same.

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The terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base, which began on January 3, confirms our worst fears that we are yet to learn the lessons of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. I had pointed out some of the more glaring lacunae in the security set-up and the governance structure in an earlier column (Lessons of 26/11 must not go unaddressed, HT, November 26, 2013). It is distressing to note that those lacunae still persist.

There continues to be a penchant for ad hoc responses, rather than building upon well-established institutional mechanisms and fully tested drills. The Centre has a crisis management group (CMG). It is headed by the Cabinet secretary and includes key officials from the intelligence, security, defence set-up, and also civil ministries and other agencies. States are expected to have a similar set-up, headed by the chief secretary. The mandate of the CMG is to bring together the collective wisdom and capacities of the State to respond to a crisis and remain engaged till it is over. There are well-established drills to respond to different kinds of crises, which were drawn up after detailed deliberations and based on experience. These are expected to be constantly reviewed and updated.

I know that such a detailed drill, involving multiple agencies, was drawn up for the CMG after the Kandahar hijacking incident in 1999. The value of relying on a well-established institutional structure, in which the lines of authority are clear and unambiguous and each arm of the State knows what it has to do, cannot be overstated. No individual or multiplicity of functionaries, acting in an ad hoc and uncoordinated fashion can deal effectively with a crisis. Neither in the case of 26/11 nor in this current instance was there any mention of the CMG. The Cabinet secretary appears to have been a bystander. If the CMG has been set aside, has any alternative, more efficient institutional structure been put in its place? Are there clearly laid down drills for well-trained personnel at clearly designated agencies to respond to specific crises? Were these seen in Pathankot? No. The deployment of security personnel such as the National Security Guard or the Indian Army appears to have been ad hoc, reactive and mostly uncoordinated.

The CMG structure has a built-in media component. Decisions are taken about regular press briefings and who is authorised to conduct them. In the Iraq hostage crisis in 2004, when three Indian drivers on their way from Kuwait, were kidnapped by Iraqi militants, the then minister of state (external affairs) made press statements twice daily on the basis of inputs from the CMG. These statements then became a guide for the other central ministers as well. We are all aware of the free-for-all media coverage of 26/11, where responsible and senior officials were seen seeking their five minutes of fame on the TV and often revealing sensitive operational details. In the present case, it is fortunate that the Press has been restrained from sensitive coverage but there has been no well-organised and carefully coordinated communication strategy. This has led to premature declarations of closure and sometimes contradictory reporting.

Mumbai in 2008 and Pathankot in 2016 reveal severe structural inadequacies that remain unaddressed. No National Intelligence Agency or the proposed counter-terrorism centre can deliver results if the base remains weak and unreliable. We may have highly-trained professionals at senior levels, assisted by the latest gadgets and technology, but unless they are complemented by well-trained, fully motivated and well-cared for police personnel at the level of a constable, sub-inspector, inspector and deputy superintendent of police, who are our ears and eyes at the local level, we will continue to be at serious risk.

Despite serious terror-related law and order incidents in the past, little has been done to stop recruitment through political patronage, upgrade the training and capacities of the lower ranks of police and, most importantly, improve their living conditions and welfare. VIP security continues to take precedence over public security. While state governments are primarily responsible for law and order and policing, the Centre must find ways and means to persuade them to deliver on long-pending police reforms.

It is likely that the terrorists entered India taking advantage of the several routes that are known to be used for smuggling, in particular drug trafficking. The growing seriousness of the drug problem among Punjabs youth is linked to this. The connivance of elements in our border security forces, who have been compromised because of large pay-offs, is an open secret. I found the same situation along the India-Myanmar border while I was serving in Yangon. Large shipments of contraband goods and drugs made their way into Manipur across the border, controlled by a powerful trade mafia. The local administration, the Assam Rifles and customs personnel deployed at the border were compromised. Should it be a matter of surprise that along with smugglers and contraband, terrorist elements are also able to enter without hindrance and attack targets in India? Even if India was to harden the India-Pakistan border, would the terrorists not move their operations to another stretch of our porous borders? The legalisation and regulation of cross-border trade would be one important means of reducing this threat.

We are now debating whether post-Pathankot India should continue to engage with Pakistan. Instead of this debate, we need to concentrate on how to address the serious institutional and policy infirmities that continue to weaken our defences against cross-border terrorism. There is a larger governance issue here that we continue to duck. Unless there is political will to undertake urgent structural reforms, we will continue to be vulnerable to such security challenges.

Shyam Saran, a former Foreign Secretary, is currently chairman, RIS and senior fellow, CPR

The views expressed are personal
The Bhopal Development Authority (BDA) on Monday measured the land allotted to National Herald group in MP Nagar Zone I where exist a shopping mall Vishal Mega Mart and other business establishments including Mangalam and Lotus. The activity was part of the BDAs move to claim rights over the land in court.

This land, measuring 1 acre was originally allotted for Rs 1 lakh in 1982 to Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which brought out English daily National Herald, Hindi daily Navjeevan and Urdu daily Kaumi Awaz.

Confirming the information regarding the measurement, BDA public relations officer Vibha Sharma said in 2011 when the lease was about to be renewed, the authority noticed that the land, which was allotted for publications, was being used for commercial use so the authority denied to renew it.

We had allotted this land to the National Herald group on a very nominal rate when Press Complex was being developed in MP Nagar, but we (BDA) observed that commercial activities were going on the land and hence repeatedly sent notices and cancelled the lease in 2012, Sharma said.

After the lease got cancelled, the AJL group filed a case against BDA in the district court, but lost. The group had lost the legal battle in the lower court and hence they are taking the case to high court. We are doing a survey, taking photographs and also making videos to prove our point in the court, Vibha Sharma added.

Notably, a legal battle for the possession on the land continues between BDA and those who claim to be owners of the land. As per the BDA sources, the BDA paid attention to the land when lease of the land given for 30 years expired in 2011.

Then the BDA authorities came to know the ownership of the land had changed several hands.

Private firm moves high court on National Herald property

A private firm has moved the high court challenging a lower court order in Bhopal that rejected its plea to be made a party in owning a suit pertained to the property of The Associated Journals Limited, the publisher of National Herald in Bhopal.

The private firm, in its petition, has made Bhopal Development Authority and The Associated Journals Limited as respondents. The lower court rejected the application of the firm on September 18, 2015 for making it party in the suit pending before it. The petitioner claimed that it has got leasehold rights over a portion of the property as it owned the office space for which it was paying tax to BMC. Hence, it has right in the suit. The petitioners counsel said ownership rights of the superstructure, are with those who purchased leasehold rights in the said offices or press spaces in building known as City Centre.

The instant suit for eviction from plot no 1 cannot be decided without hearing the petitioner, who has exclusive leasehold ownership right of the part of the city centre building and also is currently in possession thereof, he said.
The Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Bhopal, chairperson KS Dubey was removed from the post on December 28 on charges of sexually harassing a woman, besides harassing children, his dismissal letter revealed.

HT has a copy of his dismissal letter. According to the letter, Dubey abused his official powers under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000. The letter also stated that a case under section 354 of Indian Penal Code was registered at Kamla Nagar police station against Dubey for allegedly harassing a woman in his office.

The conduct of Dubey proved that he is unable to use his powers given as chairman of CWC, says the letter.

In August 2015, a woman had lodged a complaint of harassment against Dubey at Kamla Nagar police station. In the complaint, the woman alleged that her younger sister was missing and she came to know that her sister was in a girls shelter home. When she had gone to take her sister back, the CWC chairman harassed her.

However, CWC chairperson Dubey had dismissed all the allegations and said that the womans younger sister had levelled serious charges against the complainant and after that they had lodged a complaint with police. To save herself, the woman hurled false charges against him.

According to a letter, the working of Dubey, who had the powers of first judicial magistrate, was not according to JJ Act.

According to a letter received from collector, there were complaints at regular interval which came to be known through newspapers regarding disclosing of identities of children, harassment of children and affecting the interest of shelter homes, stated the letter.

The other complaints include insensitive behaviour with children and failing in preparing child care plan. Following the complaints, divisional commissioner and district collector probed the matter. In the probe letter it was found that Dubey had misused his post and had not performed his duties according to JJ Act.

Dubey, however, said there was a conspiracy against him and that he worked as per the JJ Act.

Abusing powers

Dismissal letter of KS Dubey revealed that he abused his official powers under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000

It stated that a case under IPC section 354 was registered against Dubey for allegedly harassing a woman in his office.

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Opinion / Columnist

The recent claim by the private media that ZANU-PF was in the panic mode following a meeting that was held at former ZANU-PF Secretary for Administration, Didymus Mutasa should not be taken seriously but dismissed with due contempt.There is indeed no concrete reason for ZANU -PF officials in Manicaland and Mashonaland East provinces to panic. People First (PF) is just a new baby on the block which is yet to learn the ropes of opposition politics in Zimbabwe. Surely, ZANU-PF will not lose sleep over political turncoats in that PF project. No wonder why the People First members are failing to launch a political party, a year after their expulsion from the ruling party. That cabal is full of overzealous people who are power hungry, but clueless.Most people are aware that the private media is now a mouthpiece of People First project. There is no doubt that the private media is campaigning for the PF. All they want is to oust the ruling party ZANU-PF from power despite the genre of people they are rooting for, incompetent and visionless. People First should therefore be reminded that ZANU-PF will not lose sleep over such a minor hopeless project which is failing to transform into a real political party.It is actually a shame to hear that only a handful of about 150 people were attending People First meetings. Who knows, maybe the number is representing Mutasa's farm workers. Honestly, such a number is inconsequential to ZANU-PF. It is also surprising that whenever People First meetings are held, former Vice President Joice Mujuru who is said to be fronting the cabal will always be absent.Also, one would really wonder what percentage of the electorate is concerned by People's First project here in Zimbabwe. In actual fact People First is a failed project filled with wretched political turncoats who were shown the exit door by the ruling party because of fanning factionalism in different provinces.The private media should stop being used as a tool of cheap politics by members of PF project. There is indeed confusion in that project. With the recent one being the misunderstanding in the United Kingdom People First cabal. It is reported that the PF,UK province is crumbling only two weeks after being set up. This can be a clear reflection of the fortunes that await the PF project upon its launching in Zimbabwe.It is noted that there are two groups working under PF in the UK province. The first group is said to be led by Tichatonga whilst the other by Josh Chigwangwa. PF has commenced its project with fissures that characterize opposition in Zimbabwe, hence their failure. Truth be told, who would want to be associated with such a political group of people who lacks focus and not dependable when doing party business?It is imperative to note that even in the coming 2018 harmonized elections; People First will not stand against the revolutionary party, ZANU-PF.As it stands, ZANU-PF is the party that stands out as the main ideological rich political party in the political landscape. What really matters presently are ideas that can revive the economy and the ruling Zanu PF government is doing just that and results will be reaped in the near future. On the other hand opposition parties are bankrupt of ideas and are calling for change for the sake of change, a mantra which has not found any takers among Zimbabweans.It is a shame that political parties that are being formed nowadays are formed by politicians who are self centered. Forming a political party in Zimbabwe has become so fashionable and in other words a means of survival for many people. Today's politicians are after power and money at the expense of delivering to the populace. For that reason, Zimbabweans must abstain from being fooled by People First members who are only trying to grab votes from them and offers nothing beyond that.For instance, it is well known that the Mujuru cabal is obviously desperate for Western dollars as is the case with most opposition politics in Zimbabwe. The western community has been continuously making efforts to effect regime change in the country. The West has been trying to remove ruling governments in most developing nations, especially Africa, through funding small political outfits such as PF. It is very unfortunate that opposition parties fail to realize the agenda and interests of the western governments in the country.Surely, it is hideously mistaken if the Mujuru cabal and its mouthpiece think that the ruling party is losing sleep over their useless People First project. The private media should be encouraged to stop writing despicable propaganda which does not contribute to nation development in anyway.
The Madhya Pradesh high court on Monday sought a reply from the director general of civil aviation (DGCA) on the operational status of the Dumna airport in Jabalpur by January 6.

The DGCA had suspended the licence of the airport after a Spicejet aircraft with 53 people aboard skidded off the runway while landing on December 4 last year and ran into bushes on the periphery. Flight operation from the airport was suspended on December 25 last year.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) on Monday informed the high court that it has completed all the work required ensure safe landing of aircrafts at Dumna airport, as pointed out by the DGCA. AAI counsel, Anoop Nair, submitted that the authority had already forwarded its report on the steps taken to the DGCA. He told the court that as per the AAI, the airport is ready for operations. The AAI is now waiting for the nod of the director general of civil aviation to resume flight operation at Dumna airport, he said.

The high court was hearing an application on resuming flight operations at the airport. The application was heard along with a petition filed by one Sudhir Chandra Datt to improve facilities at the Dumna airport, including a proper approach road to the terminal.

Senior advocate Manish Datt, who appeared for the petitioner, argued that flight operations should be resumed at the airport at the earliest as the AAI had already submitted its report to the DGCA.

The counsel argued that when a flight carrying Union minister Nitin Gadkari could land at the airport at night then why was the general public denied air service.

Union minister Nitin Gadkari took the plane from Dumna airport on December 29 night for Delhi. He had come to Jabalpur from Nagpur by road to attend the marriage function of a relative a day earlier.

The court has fixed the next hearing on January 6.

The Youth Congress activists on Sunday had staged a huge demonstrating against cancellation of Dumna airports licence. The activists were cane charged when they were going to gherao the office of Jabalpur Member of Parliament Rakesh Singh.

December 5 accident

SpiceJets Mumbai to Jabalpur flight -- a Bombardier Q400 aircraft -- had a close shave when it was landing at 7.30 pm on December 5 as wild boars ran across its path

Captain Amartya Basu was flying the craft and skillfully managed to divert the aircraft

The aircrafts main gear and nose landing gear collapsed, but all the passengers and the crew were safe.

The airport is surrounded by a jungle on three sides.
Seven months after he was appointed as Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) chairman, a posting that was vehemently opposed by enrolled students, Gajendra Chauhan will finally take charge this Thursday.

Chauhan, who will visit the campus for the first time since the appointment, will chair the FTII societys meeting in which members of Governing Council will be selected, said institute director Prashant Pathrabe.

Chauhan will first take charge as institute chairman and will chair the meeting of all the FTII societys members. During the meeting, the new Governing Council will be formed, Pathrabe said.

Speaking to Hindustan Times over phone, Chauhan confirmed his proposed visit to the FTII. When asked about his plans for the institute, Chauhan replied, I will first attend the meeting and then talk to the press. Anything I say now will be considered fake.

Read: Govt ready for compromise on Gajendra Chauhan

The meeting of the FTII society was earlier slated for December 18 but had to be pushed owing to the unavailability of some members. While the 14-member Governing Council is responsible for governance, the 24-member FTII society is considered as the apex body of the 50-year-old institute.

After the government nominated Chauhan as president, students of FTII had gone on a strike that lasted 139 days, calling it a political appointment. Stating that the television actor-turned-politician lacked stature and vision, students refused to accept Chauhans appointment, going on strike from June 12 last year.

Read: Gajendra Chauhan hasnt visited FTII since appointment

The protesting students finally acquiesced after numerous rounds of talks with government, which stood firm on the appointment. Calling the deaf government a bully government, students relented saying they could not throw away their academics any more.

In his previous interview to HT immediately after the strike was called off, Chauhan said he would attempt to ensure that the students would not lose out on their studies any more.

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Goldman Sachs has invested 4.4 billion rupees ($66 million) for a significant minority stake in Indian hotel investment and development firm Samhi Hotels, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday.

Samhi, which operates 10 hotels and is developing 16 more, will use the money to grow its portfolio to about 30 to 35 properties, the companys Chief Executive Officer Ashish Jakhanwala told Reuters. Its portfolio is leased to operators such as Marriott International, Starwood Hotels, Accor SA and Hyatt International.

A gradual recovery in Asias third-largest economy is boosting demand for hotel rooms.

Hotel occupancy in India in the year up to March 31, 2015 rose to 60.3 percent, the highest in four years. Revenue per available room, a measure of profitability, grew for the first time since 2010-2011, showed a report by consultant HVS.

There will be continued opportunities for acquisitions, given several hotels need fresh capital to relieve them of financial stress of past few years, said Jakhanwala.

Samhi has raised $240 million in equity since 2011 and has focussed on acquiring economy and mid-scale hotels and refurbishing or rebranding them.

Samhi declined to specify the exact stake that the Goldman Sachs investment had bought. Samhis biggest investor remains Equity International, founded by billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell, which has invested $90 million in Samhi.

Goldman Sachs has invested more than $2.5 billion in the country since 2006, mainly in the infrastructure and energy sectors.
Pedro Meduna is over the moon. The co-founder and global CEO of Tripda, the Brazilian car pooling start-up, believes the odd-even formula being tried out in Delhi will make car pooling mainstream. India is already one of Tripdas top three markets, along with Brazil and Columbia. So much so that Meduna chose to tell HT about Tripdas biggest milestone yet before any other publication. Read on.

Hi Pedro, what is this big milestone everyone in Tripda is so excited about?

We have reached the very significant milestone of a million members transported.

Congratulations.

For the last 12 months, we have grown 30% month-on-month. India is one of our top three markets. Its a country we are very excited about.

Is some of it due to the odd-even trials in Delhi?

Car pooling is a very good fit for emerging markets, as also for India. The cost of owning a car there is very high. People want to share the cost. Many people live in downtown Delhi and work in Gurgaon. Its about 30 km but can take a long time. We do expect to have a higher usage because of the odd-even plan.

Uber and Ola have announced forays into car pooling. What is your response to it?

In terms of taxi companies, it often happens that some company wants to take advantage of the word car pooling, which means a good, clean ride. If a taxi aggregator starts to offer car pooling, what it means is people sharing taxi rides. It is important not to get confused.

What is the difference?

If people share a taxi, the driver makes money. We incentivise people to only share the cost of the ride. Our pricing is 30-50% of what a shared ride will be on an Uber or Ola. On Tripda we are sure of travelling with a car owner, whom you can choose. Users of Tripda end up having good relationships with people they pool with.

Once they have a relationship, wont they bypass Tripda?

They will have to call every day and reach out. You might get to know someone, but you dont want ask everytime, Can you pick me up? Our product offers smart flexibility. If there are 500 options from Delhi to Gurgaon every day, you will be able to find a ride that suits you the best.

Your service is free. When will you start to monetise?

Our biggest challenge is to make the product popular. We may start to monetise by the end of 2016 or beginning of 2017. It will be a market-to-market decision.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to modify its December order banning registration of large diesel vehicles in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) in view of the alarming air pollution levels.

A bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur had on December 16 ordered a ban on sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and luxury cars with the engine capacity of 2000cc or higher, a move that was pleaded against by top car manufacturers.

A plea asking for a revision of the order was filed by Toyota, Mahindra and Mahindra, and Mercedes, claiming that their cars did not cause much pollution.

Do your cars emit oxygen? the bench remarked as it directed the three car manufacturers to submit documentary evidence that pollution from their vehicles equaled those of petrol engines.

The top court also banned the entry of heavy commercial vehicles from four additional entry points at NH 2, NH 10, NH 58 and state highway 57 which connects Ghaziabad to Baghpat. In an earlier order, the apex court had restricted the entry of trucks not bound for Delhi through NH1 and NH8.

However, the court allowed entry of such vehicles which are Delhi-bound on payment of a pollution cess.

The measure reinforces the Delhi governments crusade against air pollution with its 15-day trial of an even-odd formula for cars plying on Capital roads.

The court also directed the city government to appropriately award No-Objection Certificates (NOCs) to 10-year-old diesel vehicles and 16-year-old petrol vehicles being sold outside the NCR.

Furthermore, it expressed its displeasure at the Centre over government agencies and department vehicles contributing to pollution too, asking why they should not be phased out.

You are using vehicles older than five to 10 years. Are they not polluting, should they not be removed?

The central government counsel sought time to seek instruction on the issue.

According to industry experts, about 400,000 units of diesel vehicles with two-litres or heavier engines are sold in the country annually and of these five to eight percent are sold in the NCR.

Data shared by the company (from the Delhi governments website) show that of the 2.64 million cars registered in the National Capital Territory until March 2015, 1.42 million were of BS II, the government-mandated Bharat Stage emissions standard. The current required standard is BS IV.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is familiar with the triumphs and setbacks of political life. He had two tumultuous stints as prime minister in the 1990s, weathered a long exile in Saudi Arabia after attempting to depose General Pervez Musharraf as army chief before returning to power in 2013. Mr Sharifs India policy has also never proceeded as planned. For long a proponent of good bilateral ties he saw the landmark Lahore Declaration undermined  or so he claims  by Gen Musharrafs misadventure in Kargil. In recent months, he has seen New Delhi call off talks twice after being invited for Prime Minister Narendra Modis swearing-in. It is a measure of his longstanding links with the Indian establishment that such disruptions were worked out and Mr Modi was able to drop by for an unannounced visit to Lahore last month.

The attack at Pathankot, however, puts Mr Sharif in a difficult spot much as it enrages the public and his interlocutors in India. Not only does the attack potentially jeopardise the prospect of quickly enhancing economic ties that Pakistan is keen on, it is a blow to Mr Sharifs authority that has both domestic and bilateral ramifications. The attack suggests that non-State actors and elements in the Pakistani military establishment can, at any time, unravel his diplomatic initiatives should they choose. Not long ago, Mr Sharif had to deal with domestic instability and political gridlock through the protests staged by Imran Khans Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri, which many alleged were supported by the military. Now Mr Sharifs outreach to India is being threatened by machinations staged either by his opponents or those implacably opposed to bilateral rapprochement.

India cannot expect forward movement under these conditions. Notwithstanding his keenness for better ties and his domestic constraints, Mr Sharif now needs to demonstrate to Mr Modi  who has taken risks of his own and rallied the BJP and the RSS to support engagement  that he is capable of taking action against the perpetrators of Pathankot and 26/11 Mumbai. A large part of the India-focused terror networks are in his home province of the Punjab. Rather than merely attempting to contain terrorists through political means, which is clearly not an airtight strategy, Mr Sharif has to be seen as taking on the LeT and the JeM more directly. He has done the right thing by calling Mr Modi to reassure him of support while investigating the Pathankot assault. There has to be a certain measure of urgency in meeting that commitment and punishing the perpetrators. Else, India will soon question the point of bilateral contact.
Louise Richardson, a prominent academic specialising terrorism and security studies, has taken over as the first woman vice-chancellor in the 900-year history of the University of Oxford on January 1.

Born in Ireland, Richardson taught courses at the University of St Andrews and Harvard on terrorism, international security, and American and comparative foreign policy. She takes over from Andrew Hamilton.

Richardson will be formally admitted to office on 12 January at a ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre, where she will address Congregation, the Universitys parliament.

The chancellor of Oxford University, Chris Patten, said: We are delighted to welcome professor Richardson to the vice-chancellorship of one of the greatest universities in the world. She has an outstanding reputation on both sides of the Atlantic as a scholar and academic leader.

Richardson read History at Trinity College, Dublin and holds an MA in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and an MA and PhD in Government from Harvard University.

Read more: Women students develop app to stop sex assaults in Oxford

She is an internationally-renowned scholar of terrorism and security studies, on which she has advised policy makers and others internationally. Her publications include the ground-breaking study What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy Containing the Threat (2006).

The new vice-chancellor said her top priority was to maintain Oxfords position as a world leader for outstanding teaching and research: We want to ensure Oxford is a magnet for every young person, no matter where they are from, to come here and study. We want every talented, ambitious academic to aim to be at Oxford to teach and to conduct their research.

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Commuters have found a way out of the Delhi governments odd-even road rationing policy  they queue up on the Gurgaon side of the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway till 8pm to avoid getting fined. This has been slowing down traffic on the speedway during the evening rush hour.

Ever since the rule came in to effect, on January 1, most office goers, who do not prefer using public transport, start their day early to cross the borders before the clock strikes 8am. In the evenings, they start to line up by 7pm before the border.

When an HT team visited the Sirhaul toll plaza on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway on Tuesday evening, an odd day, it spotted commuters driving even number numbers queueing up 6km ahead of the toll plaza. The cars were parked along the main carriageway, hindering peak traffic flow.

I have been leaving for my office by 7am to avoid the road rationing policy. Earlier I used to leave by 9am. Even in the evening , I sometimes stay back in office for an hour and leave according to not get fined, said Ajay Singh, a resident of Delhi and works in Gurgaon.

Under the road rationing policy, implemented by the Delhi Government, all private vehicles are allowed to enter the Capital before 8am and after 8pm. Those flouting the rule are fined for Rs 2,000.

On Tuesday evening, traffic moved slowly on the 11-km stretch of the expressway between Iffco Chowk and the defunct Sirhaul toll plaza. Atlas Chowk and Shankar Chowk saw major traffic jams, with people waiting for over 20 minutes just to cross the 2-km-stretch to enter Delhi. MG Road also saw snarls at the MG Road Metro station.

I have been stuck in traffic for the last 20 minutes. There are jams almost every day but, the situation has worsened from Monday. The jams start after 7pm as many commuters park their cars along the road, said Dheeraj Kumar, a commuter on MG Road.

The Gurgaon traffic police said it has been trying to control the snarls across the city. Officers said the Delhi police has barricaded the borders, which has slowed down vehicular flow. Additionally, police personnel stopping car driver to fine them under the odd-even policy has also been causing traffic jams in Gurgaon, the police said.

The jams are due to the odd-even rationing policy being implemented in Delhi. Police personnel at the borders slow down vehicles for checking and fining. The ripple effect of the same is seen on all the major roads of Gurgaon, said Sumeer Pratap Singh, ACP (traffic).

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Defence minister Manohar Parrikar said on Tuesday some gaps in security may have led to the deadly terrorist attack at the Pathankot air force station and though six gunmen have been killed, a days-long operation to secure the base is still underway.

While visiting the sprawling compound in Punjab, the minister announced that the NIA had got major leads in the case about how the attackers entered the base while he congratulated the defence forces for restricting the highly motivated terrorists to a small area.

I can see certain gaps, which will be known only after investigation, he said. But I dont think that we have made any compromise with security.

Security sources say the attack may have been carried out by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, though the United Jihad Council, a conglomerate of several terror groups claimed Kashmiri militants were responsible.

Parrikar said the attackers were carrying AK-47 assault rifles with makeshift rocket launchers attached, mortar rounds that could be fired from the launchers, pistols, and 50-60 kilograms of ammunition.

The terror strike came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, in Islamabad and it has cast a shadow over planned talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries on January 15.

A combing operation is still on at the airbase for safety purposes, Parrikar said, and this is expected to end by Wednesday. The National Security Guard (NSG) would take the final call on calling off the operation.

There are live bombs and the high-quality explosives that need to be detonated. One of the terrorists still has body vest with grenades stuck, the minister said.

So, I have told them to take no risk because we have already lost one person to a booby trap. The operation was very difficult and it has been done without compromising with any strategic asset or other building. Only one building where two terrorists were holed up has been damaged.

The minister maintained that the air force base was a complicated area spread over nearly 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) and housing 3,000 families. He was accompanied by army chief General Dalbir Singh, IAFs Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and NIA chief Sharad Kumar.

(With inputs from PTI)
Two months after his outfit Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) publically supported the Congress for Gujarats local body elections, firebrand Patidar leader Hardik Patel has now made a U-turn, distancing himself from the opposition party.

Hardik and his five aides  all currently lodged in a jail under the charges of sedition  have made it clear that they would not like to be associated with any political party even though new core members of PAAS have decided to continue the support to the Congress.

When I met Hardik in Surat jail last week, he told me not to join the Congress Akrosh Daman rally. His five aides have also asked their families to stay away from the rally, Hardiks father Bharatbhai Patel told the Hindustan Times.

Patel quoted his son as saying that the OBC agitation is a non-political movement.

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Opinion / Columnist

Section 59 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe states that every person has the right to demonstrate and to present petitions, but these rights must be exercised peacefully. Of late, the Zimbabwe Republic Police and other organs of the State security apparatus have ruthlessly and unlawfully clamped down on peaceful demonstrations. On Monday, January 4,2016 in Harare, the Police unlawfully blocked a protest march that was organised by the Rural Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (RTUZ) to press government to urgently release civil servants' December salaries. The MDC unreservedly condemns the high - handed and unlawful action by the Police in violently crushing a peaceful demonstration.It is apparent that the Zanu PF regime is afraid of the people of Zimbabwe. The regime is now paranoid as it is acutely aware of the fact that millions of Zimbabweans are living in abject poverty and destitution as a direct result of the regime's misrule, unmitigated corruption and misgovernance. Typical of all dictatorial and fascist regimes, the Zanu PF government is determined to use brute force and violence in order to unconstitutionally stop Zimbabweans from exercising their constitutional right to stage peaceful demonstrations. Zimbabwe has now degenerated into a virtual Police state since all forms of demonstrations against the deteriorating socio - economic conditions presently obtaining in the country are crushed through the thuggish and Stalinist use of force and repression.At a time when more than 90% of the population is living rough, President Robert Mugabe and a large entourage of his hangers - on have decided to embark on an expensive holiday in the Far East; which holiday jamboree is fully funded by the near bankrupt State. Whilst the majority of civil servants such as doctors, nurses and teachers have not been paid their deserved annual bonuses and salaries, Robert Mugabe is completely insensitive to the plight of these hardworking servants of the State. Instead of urgently returning home to address the emergency situation caused by the non - payment of civil servants' salaries as well as the impending drought, Mugabe and his extended family are busy enjoying a very good time ; wining and dining in very expensive and upmarket hotels and restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai.As the largest and most popular political party in Zimbabwe, the MDC would like to call upon Robert Mugabe to cut short his undeserved State - funded holiday and to immediately come back so that he can personally take control of the collapsing national economy. The country is on virtual auto pilot as the nonagenarian President is living it up in the Far East. How insensitive and selfish can a President be? The MDC would also like to take this opportunity to call upon all Parliamentarians, across the political divide, to put their heads together when Parliament resumes sitting within the next few weeks. It is abundantly clear that President Robert Mugabe has abdicated his responsibilities as the Head of State and as such, Parliament should proceed to impeach him. The old man is now clearly out of his wits and he is no longer fit for purpose. He doesn't deserve to continue exercising the duties and functions of our State President. We call upon Mugabe to call it a day and retreat to Gushungo Estates in Mazowe where he can spend time admiring his huge herd of dairy cows.Zimbabweans have suffered for too long under the Zanu PF dictatorship that is fronted by President Mugabe. The chains of servitude now have to be unlocked. 2016 should be the Year of The People's Liberation.MDC : EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALLOBERT CHAURURA GUTUMDC NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON
BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha on Tuesday opposed his partys decision to suspend fellow parliamentarian Kirti Azad saying it was not giving a good message to people because the perception was that he was fighting against corruption and urged the party to revoke it.

In an oblique message to the top party brass, Sinha, who has been critical of their decisions over a host of issues, said if they decided to punish him for mistakes he had not made, then it will remind him of a soothsayers prediction that he would change his party once.

I hope, wish and pray it does not come true, he said with a laugh.

In an interview to PTI, he called Azad a worthy son of a worthy father and also supported the veterans, including L K Advani, who have questioned the leadership following the Bihar debacle.

I found it very unfortunate that Azad, a worthy son of a worthy father, was suspended in this way. What has the general perception gone out? That he was talking about corruption. This is the perception.

I feel sad that he was suspended and I appeal to those who matter in the party to revoke his suspension. It is certainly not giving good message, good image to the people, he said. Azads father late Bhagwat Jha Azad was Bihar chief minister.

The cine star-turned-politician added that he respects the decision taken by the partys parliamentary board but asserted that feeling sad or happy is not an anti-party activity.

A reference to the soothsayers prediction about his changing his party has been made in his biography, Anything but khamosh, published by Om Books International.

It is being released on Wednesday by Advani, whom he called his friend, philosopher, guide, guru and ultimate leader.

Sinha said it was unfortunate that he could not meet party chief Amit Shah during Bihar assembly elections despite trying so many times.

I felt sad for what was happening in Bihar. I was not being called, invited... He being the party president I just hoped and wished he would give me protection. He would call me and talk. It did not happen...

Asked about his outspoken views that have not gone down well with the party, Sinha said calling spade a spade was his habit and his base was always truth, something he learnt from Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani.

I have said that BJP to me is the first and last party ever... I am in party with no demand, no command, no complaint and no expectation. I have no personal grudge against anybody, he said, adding that he had got blessings of Advani, Yashwant Sinha and Murli Manohar Joshi.

Incidentally, these three leader besides Shanta Kumar had attacked the party leadership on Diwali eve following BJPs big loss in Bihar and met again a couple of weeks ago, a day after Azad was suspended.

Asked about their dissatisfaction, Sinha said they had taken BJP from two seats in the Lok Sabha to 200 seats and they had a right to express their concerns.

They are thinking in the larger interest of the party, he said.

Asked about his views of Shah, he said I hardly know him and added that he had a more learning experience and comfort level during Vajpayee-Advani era.

His biography says that the politics within BJP in 2014 had almost brought him to breaking point, almost up for grabs to an opposition party.

He confirms in the book, authored by Bharathi S Pradhan, that people from AAP approached me and recounts his personal equations with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad.

He also takes a veiled dig at Shah in the book while saying that he had predicted with great confidence that the party would win with two-thirds majority.

Perhaps it had become a habit with him because he had said the same thing in Delhi also. But ultimately we got only two or three seats...

Modi government was working in the right direction, he said, adding that the Prime Minister was a symbol of peoples hopes and expectations.
The Punjab Police superintendent of police Salwinder Singh -- who was allegedly abducted by terrorists before being left off--Tuesday said that had he had his weapon and gunmen with him he would have killed the terrorists he met on the fateful night of December 31 when he was abducted by them. Facing a departmental inquiry into a complaint of sexual harassment against him the SP had been transferred to Jalandhar two days before the incident happened. In an interview with HT, the SP says he did his best in the circumstances and the fact that he was alive is nothing short of a miracle.

Q: Why do you think you and your cook were thrown off your vehicle alive by the terrorists?

A: I dont know. They tied me and the cook and threw me out thinking we will not be able to move away. They did come back to kill me when they realised who I was but by then I had got away.

Q: Do you think you could have done more in the circumstances given that you are a policeman and you were confronted with terrorists?

A: I did not have any weapon. Nor were my gunmen with me. Had they been with me or had I been carrying my gun, I would have killed the terrorists. When I was thrown off the car, I did my best in untying myself and locating the nearest village where I called my seniors. My input to the Punjab police minimized the loss of life at the hands of Pakistani untras as the police immediately laid nakas and search started in the area.

Q: But your seniors did believe you. Why?

A: I did my duty in informing my seniors whatever happened to me. It is for them to take subsequent action on my information. Whether they believed me or not, I dont know, only they can answer this question.

Q: Can you recount the manner in which you were picked up?

A: It was New Year eve and I had gone to the Khwaja peer dargah in village Kolian where I go regularly. I was returning to Gurdaspur with my cook Madan Gopal and my jeweller friend Rajesh Verma who was driving. We were asked to stop by four-five army men. They were clean shaven and in their 20s. They asked us to switch off the lights of the vehicle. The moment we put the lights off, one of them dragged Rajesh out and packed him into the boot of the car. I was asked to squat in the space between the first two row of seats and Madan between the rear two rows of seats. They spoke in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. They told us that if we moved, they will kill us. I realised they were terrorists. They were armed with AK -47s and had back packs on their shoulders. They snatched one my mobile phone and tied my hands behind me and a cloth around my face. After about 45 minutes of travel during which we could not see the road at all, they dumped me and Madan at an unknown place. There wa which i later at Gulpur Simbli village under police station, Kanwan in Pathankot district after.

Q: How did you get away from there?

A: I kept still for about ten fifteen minutes thinking that the terrorists are around us. But when I did not hear anything I tried to move my wrists. The knot was loose and I got free. Then I freed Madan and we crossed a small nallah, reached a track, crossed another nallah and reached a road. There we saw car lights approaching us. We were so scared thinking that it could be them again that we hid. I was totally puzzled. Then I realised that my other phone was still with me. I called up my senior officers then who asked me to inform the police station. I called 100 number and got everything noted down.

Q: Did the terrorists come to know that you are an officer?

A: They did not know I was an officer. Rajesh told me later that they came to know when my gunman Head Constable (PR) Kulwinder Singh rang up from my residence in Gurdaspur to the phone the terrorists had snatched away from him. The terrorist asked my gunman to whom he had called and the gunman told the terrorist that he wanted to speak to his Saab (SP), then the ultra cut the call. Had they come to know about my official position, they would have eliminated me.

Read more: Terrorists didnt know I was a police officer, says SP who was abducted

Missed clues, security gaps in run-up to Pathankot airbase attack

Sharif gives Modi his word, Pak will act against Pathankot terrorists
Someone who has shown a knack for firing away googlies to keep Indias political class in a thrall, actor-politician Shatrughan Singh is once again set to deliver a prodigiously spinning wrong one.

Aptly titled Anything But Khamosh, Sinhas biography will be released by BJP veteran LK Advani, widely acknowledged as his political mentor, at New Delhis Claridges Hotel on January 6. Sinhas actor daughter Sonakshi will be among those attending the function.

As a testimony to Sinhas bridges that extend to beyond his own party, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has written a foreword to the biography that is sufficiently candid to stir another controversy or two.

It is one of the most honest biographies you will get to see, author Bharthi S Pradhan, who has written the book based on personal interviews spread over seven years beginning November 2008, says.

And not all of it is flattering to Mr Shatrughan Sinha, she adds about the Patna Saheb BJP MP, whose tweets in the run-up to the 2015 Bihar assembly polls cornered his party on issues ranging from the dissent within to sky-rocketing prices of lentils among other things.

Sinha was in the news recently for hailing fellow BJP MP Kirti Azad, who has been suspended from the party for questioning the conduct of Union finance minister Arun Jailey in the affairs of the DDCA, as a hero. Going by the contents of the biography, Sinha seems unlikely to give up his aggression.

Pradhan writes that in 2014, when he was almost denied re-nomination from the Patna Saheb Lok Sabha seat, The politics within his party had almost brought him to breaking point, almost up for grabs to an opposition party.

In a startling moment of candour, writes Pradhan, he communicated, In 2014, if I had not been given a ticket, I would have stood as an independent.

Even though Sinha was a sitting MP at the time, the party had held back the announcement for his re-nomination for the 2014 Lok Sabha poll. Sinha blames this on opposition from senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Modi, who allegedly aspired to be the chief minister.

Advaniji wanted to make me CM, so did Atalji, claims Sinha, but he wanted to be a Union minister, a position he could not get when Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014.

Once when I was in two minds about the party, Sushma Swaraj had cooled me down and said, Shatrughan, even if they cut me to pieces or pull out my hair, I will never leave this party. Her resolve gave me the strength to stay on, Sinha says.

An astrologer had predicted I would change my party just once in my political career, Sinha says in the book.

Pradhan writes that Advani appreciated Sinha for joining the BJP about 25 years ago when the party was not in power and had only a few things going for it. He is also quoted as saying why Sinhas friendship with all shades of politicians was not to be categorised as traitorous to his party.

Irrespective of his political affiliations, we are his himayati, prashanshak, his admirers. He will be welcome anywhere irrespective of the party. Unka swagat hoga, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, whom Sinha described as a top-rated CM in the midst of a pre-poll war of words with the BJP, says.

If he needs our support, we are there for him. Samarthan denge. He is a good man. Our doors are open for him, twenty four hours, bilkul swagat karenge, openly bola hai (We will definitely welcome him, I am saying this openly), RJD chief Lalu Prasad adds.

The book says being ignored in the BJP was difficult for Sinha to bear after a time he became its poster boy making a popular troika at the top. There would be three aircraft available for campaigning  for Atalji, Advaniji and me, Sinha always said, Pradhan writes.

Politics, of course, is just one part of the book which also deals with his early years in the Mumbai film industry, how he first saw his now wife Poonam as a school girl on a train and fell for her and his close ties with top Pakistan leaders.

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A team from the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the anti-terror agency formed after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, is in the Pathankot air base to begin its investigation into the audacious attack by Pakistani terrorists.

NIA chief Sharad Kumar spoke to Hindustan Times on the investigation.

HT: What does the probe indicate?

Kumar: We have taken over three FIRs, registered in connection with the murder of driver of an Innova taxi that was first captured by the terrorists; abduction of Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh along with his friend and a cook as well as the hijacking of their vehicle; and the attack on the air base.

The preliminary probe points to involvement of Pakistan-based elements as indicated by phone intercepts. A team of 20 officers from the NIA is in Pathankot and gathering evidence.

Read: Mop-up ops amid sporadic firing in Pathankot, Parrikar rushed to airbase

HT: Did the terrorists sneak in through routes that smugglers take to reach India?

Kumar: That aspect is part of the probe.

HT: It is being suspected that the attacker of Dinanagar and Pathankot may have used similar routes to enter India?

Kumar: We also suspect that but that is part of the overall probe.

HT: A significant part of the probe will be in Pakistan? How will you overcome this hurdle since the country had never cooperated in previous probes?

Kumar: We hope Pakistan will cooperate. A judicial request for assistance will be sent to Pakistan in due course. We have intercepted conversations between the terrorists and their handlers. Their phone numbers are with Indian security agencies. We hope to identify the conspirators based on scientific and other evidence.

DNA samples of the terrorists bodies will be taken and sent to Pakistan in due course. Besides, we will seek voice samples from Pakistan as well.

Read: War over Pathankot attack: Congress targets Modi, BJP hits back

HT: Dont you think the inquiry into the Dinanagar attack in July last year should have been transferred to the NIA?

Kumar: I would not like to comment on it. The decision has to be taken by the Punjab government and the government of India.

HT: Involvement of Pakistan based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed is being suspected?

Kumar: The probe has just begun. I would not like to guess the real identity of the conspirators, Jaish or elements behind Jaish, until the probe is completed.

HT: Questions are being raised on statements of Punjab Police officer Salwinder Singh and his jeweler friend and cook?

Kumar: We will record statements of all of them and thoroughly analyze calls made from their phones as well as the number belonging to the dead Innova driver and verify each and every detail. SP Salwinder Singhs cook had two mobile phones. It is too early to point fingers at anyone.

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Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani asked Kashmiri youth on Tuesday to not wave Islamic State flags, condemning the militant outfit as anti-Islamic and a group of murderers.

Geelani also criticised outfits such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan that is responsible for the 2014 Peshawar school massacre that killed 132 schoolchildren, saying it and the IS -- also known as Daesh  did not represent Islam.

Those fighting for Daesh are actually murderers who are spilling innocent blood and are not in any way representing Islam, Geelani said.

Geelani asked the youth to not be swayed by the organisations propaganda. I am saddened to know that our youth unfurl and raise IS flags on some occasions. IS is a group of murderers, our people should know it, he added.

This is the second time Geelani has called the IS anti-Islam. His comments come after several instances of Kashmiri youth unfurling the IS flag were reported from the troubled state this year, including in the state capital of Srinagar. In some instances, local youth waved the flags after the Friday prayers and clashed with the police.

The hardline separatist was speaking at a seminar organised at his residence to mark the anniversary of the UN resolution on Kashmir.

He said the IS was like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who were killing innocents in Pakistan.

No one can justify the attack on Pakistans army public school on December 14, 2014. These acts can only be undertaken by people who dont know Islam, he said.

Calling for safeguarding minorities, Geelani asked Pakistan to ensure peace in Karachi and Balochistan. It is my message to Pakistan to ensure that all its minorities are given foolproof security, he said. It was tragic that over 400 bodies were recovered in Balochistan in 2015 alone, he added.

We are not against your parleys with India; we want good future for 121 crore Indians, he said.

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The hijacking of a police officers car by terrorists disguised in uniform should have set off alarm bells and helped prevent a deadly weekend attack on a military air base, officials and security experts said.

His colleagues slowness to react was one of several security lapses in the buildup to the pre-dawn raid.

Three days on from an assault that killed seven military personnel and wounded 22, five attackers have also been eliminated, but an operation was still under way to secure the sprawling compound in Punjab that lies 25 km from the border with Pakistan.

Police superintendent Salwinder Singhs call to a colleague in the early hours of Friday morning, after his car was hijacked, was at first treated as a case of armed robbery, the officer who answered the phone said.

Read| Pathankot: Search ops to continue as 5th terrorist killed

The truth is that we did not take Singhs complaint seriously, because his record has not been clean, a second senior officer in the Punjab police told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

The police sources said Singh had just been transferred after a woman constable filed a sexual harassment case against him. Singh, who was interrogated on Monday for six hours by federal investigators, could not be reached for comment.

Home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi has said the location of the attackers was only pinpointed as Pathankot on Friday afternoon.

That was at least 12 hours after the seizure of Singhs unmarked vehicle, in which he was travelling with two other men following a visit to a shrine near the border with Pakistan.

Too much time was wasted, said AS Dulat, a former head of the Research & Analysis Wing, Indias main foreign intelligence agency. How did they infiltrate to where they did? How were they allowed to roam around for 24 hours?

Read:Punjab cops reduced to bystanders as Army takes on Pathankot attackers

Civilian and military officials say a security alert was circulated quickly enough to prevent the assailants from damaging fighter jets and helicopters at the base.

Nevertheless, a lack of inter-agency cooperation may have hobbled the security response, with another local police chief calling the air base a fortress that senior colleagues cannot enter without a written request.

It always operated like a self-sufficient township but had no interaction with the city police or local administration, Manoj Kumar, Pathankots deputy superintendent of police, told Reuters.

Dumped by the roadside

Singhs cook, Madan Gopal, said he was dumped by the roadside with his employer after a long drive during which their eyes were taped shut. The gunmen took fellow passenger Rajesh Verma, a jeweller, with them.

We both walked for an hour to reach a nearby police outpost, Gopal, 61, told Reuters. Singh got in touch with his superiors but they told him to go home and come to the office the next day.

Verma survived and testified to police that the attackers had used his phone, possibly to call their handlers, according to the Indian Express.

One local report said the assailants dumped Singhs car 500 metres from the base. How they got into the compound is still unclear. Once inside, they burst into a guards mess and fired indiscriminately.

One guard tackled and killed an attacker, only to die from another gunmans bullet, said Air Commodore J.S. Dhamoon, commander of the base.

Three more suspected militants were killed later on Saturday after running through the compound, firing into windows.

The guard who died was a member of the Defence Security Corps (DSC), a unit made up of veterans who guard military facilities. Five of the seven military personnel to die served in the DSC, some of them in their fifties.

Read: Gaping holes along border, says BSFs Pathankot attack report to Centre

Some observers said the DSC should not guard high-value military assets.

They were not up to speed, said Nitin Gokhale, a security analyst who edits a defence portal.

Yet the greater weakness at the base, with a 24-km perimeter and a 3-metre (10-foot) wall topped by barbed wire, may have been a lack of adequate surveillance.

You can have a wall, but a wall can be scaled and, probably, a surveillance system such as CCTV was lacking, said Govind Sisodia, a former senior commander of the National Security Guard counter-terrorism unit.

There have been conflicting reports of how many attackers were involved in the raid, since claimed by the United Jihad Council, an alliance of more than a dozen pro-Pakistan militant groups based in Pakistan-run Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir, both claiming the region in full but ruling it in part. Tight security along the frontier there has pushed militant attacks south to Punjab.

Analysts and officials said the attackers may have worked in groups, with the carjackers acting together and two others believed to have entered the air base separately, possibly before the main attack. One remains unaccounted for.

Home minister Rajnath Singh tweeted his congratulations on Saturday evening to Indias security forces on successfully neutralizing all the five terrorists in Pathankot Operation.

At the time, the official body count was four.

Singhs tweet was later deleted.

Read: After Pathankot, Nawaz must ensure talks with India dont fail
Military attack helicopters hovered overhead while commandos sporadically fired at specific targets on Tuesday in what appeared to be a mop-up operation after security forces gunned down six Pakistani terrorists who had laid siege on Pathankot air base.

On Day 4 of the daring attack by terrorists trying to disrupt Indias peace initiative with traditionally hostile neighbour Pakistan, armoured vehicles and trucks carrying soldiers entered and exited the base amid a concerted combing operation to ensure the defence installation is properly secured.

There were reports of an unidentified body being recovered but it could not be confirmed if it belonged to the sixth terrorist. Also, it was not clear whether all the intruders have been eliminated.

Read: Missed clues, security gaps in run-up to Pathankot airbase attack

Spent bullet shells were littered residential buildings of the air base, pointing to a fierce gunbattle over the past three days.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar was rushing to the Pathankot air force base to assess the situation. Indian Army chief General Dalbir Singh and IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha were accompanying the minister. The top military brass will also meet the families of martyrs.

Combing and search operations will continue till we are able to fully render the base safe, National Security Guard IG Major General Dushant Singh said.

Following a meeting of the National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday assets at the base were safe.

Read: Punjab cops reduced to bystanders as Army takes on Pathankot attackers

Security forces were able to confine the terrorists to the point at which they had intruded and held them at a reasonable distance from where the assets were located, the senior minister said.

In the wake of the Pathankot attack as well as the strike on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in

Afghanistan, both probably originating in Pakistan, indications were that next weeks scheduled visit by foreign secretary S Jaishankar to Islamabad for talks will be put off.

It is likely that the national security advisers of the two countries may have an urgent meeting in the next few days after which a call would be taken on the foreign secretary-level talks.

(With agency inputs)
A mob attack on a police station in Kaliachak, Malda district of West Bengal, has led district officials to suspect fake money racketeers and poppy cultivators of instigating A mob attack on a police station in Kaliachak, Malda district of West Bengal, has led district officials to suspect fake money racketeers and poppy cultivators of instigating locals against the police for their action against the illegal trade.locals against the police for their action against the illegal trade.

On Sunday morning, scores of people stormed the Kaliachak police station, setting fire to several police vehicles and the station after ransacking it. The police, who could barely muster a counter in the face of the mobs fury, watched as documents were burnt away and the building damaged.

A leaflet distributed locally by the agitators said they wanted to protest a remark made in Lucknow on December 1 last year. The remark had snowballed in the communally-sensitive area.

Speaking to Hindustan Times a day after the incident, district police sources said the mob was egged on by racketeers in retaliation to police action.

It is designed to keep police under pressure so that in future they think twice before taking steps against the people involved in fake money circulation and those involved in poppy cultivation, said a district police officer.

A burned -out vehicle outside of the police station. (HT Photo)

A senior officer of Malda district police cited similarities in another attack on the police station from three months ago, saying the two were probably orchestrated by the same people.

However, Malda superintendent of police, Prasun Bandapadhyay, declined to comment on the issue.

Malda district accounts for about 90% of the fake money that finds its way into the country across the Indo-Bangladesh border. Kaliachak, which falls near the Indo-Bangladesh border, is regarded as the cradle that nurses the business, and despite several operations, police are yet to find a formidable way to tackle the problem.

Policemen claim that operatives from Bangladesh incentivise farmers in Kaliachak to cultivate poppy in their land, luring farmers with the promise of plenty of money earned from the illegal trade.

During preliminary investigation, police discovered that the business in Kaliachak is spearheaded by three people. While one of them assembled the mob on Sunday, two others were involved in the attack on the police station.

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Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday assured his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi that Pakistan will take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists responsible for the Pathankot attack, the external affairs ministry said.

Sharif, currently on a visit to Sri Lanka, gave the assurance when he called Modi to discuss the attack. The two leaders spoke hours after a conversation between Indias national security adviser Ajit Doval and his counterpart Naseer Khan Janjua.

Taking a strong stand, Modi emphasised the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against organisations and individuals responsible for the Pathankot attack on the basis of specific and actionable information provided by India, said a statement from the external affairs ministry spokesperson.

Sharif assured Modi his government would take prompt and decisive action against the terrorists, the statement added.

Read: Working on leads provided by India on Pathankot attack: Pakistan

A statement issued by the Pakistani premiers office quoted Sharif as saying: Our government was working on the leads and information provided by the Indian government. Sharif said Pakistan would investigate this matter.

The brazen attack on Pathankot airbase, blamed by Indian authorities on the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, left seven security personnel dead. At least six attackers were also killed.

Reports have suggested that India has linked a planned meeting of the foreign secretaries on January 15 to action being taken against the JeM.

According to the Pakistani statement, Sharif pointed out to Modi that whenever a serious effort to bring peace between (the) two countries was underway, terrorists try to derail the process. Sharif also appreciated the maturity shown by the Indian government in its statements.

Both the PMs agreed that a cordial and cooperative relationship between the two countries would be the most appropriate response to the nefarious designs of the terrorists, the statement said.

Sources said New Delhi had shared with Islamabad intercepts of calls made to Pakistan-based handlers by the terrorists who attacked the airbase. Details of the Pakistani numbers which the attackers called were also shared with Pakistani authorities.

Pakistans Foreign Office earlier said the two countries should continue with a sustained dialogue process and adopt a cooperative approach for tackling terrorism.

The US has said it expects Pakistan to bring to justice the elements responsible for the Pathankot attack without discriminating between terrorist groups during its operations.

Referring to the discussions between the prime ministers and the NSAs, an Indian official said: These conversations amply reflect Indias concerns over the Pakistan-based group staging a daring attack in Pathankot. There are enough leads for Pakistan to follow up on and take action. They need to match their words with action.

Read | Defence minister Parrikar admits security gaps at Pathankot air base
As the guns fell silent at the Pathankot airbase on Tuesday with security personnel killing six heavily armed terrorists and investigators trying to retrace the attackers steps, the spotlight once again fell on the curious case of a police officer allegedly abducted and later released by the militants.

Though superintendent of police Salwinder Singh says the information he provided helped minimise loss of life, he has been questioned by authorities and the NIA too is examining him.

Punjab police denied having caused any delay in sharing inputs provided by Singh but they are increasingly coming under fire for alleged lapses in collating the information in the first few hours after receiving it.

Sources say investigators are trying to determine why the terrorists, who killed the driver of another car they hijacked, released the SP and those with him.

While top police officers from the state admit they took the information given by Singh over the phone about his kidnapping with a pinch of salt, they added that once the matter was verified, no efforts were spared in alerting all the agencies that needed to be in the loop.

Salwinder has a certain reputation and we were wary of him, said a top cop. Moreover, he was under transfer and was facing a departmental inquiry for a serious complaint. It did cross our mind that he might just be cooking up information.

Singh told HT he stopped his car on Friday when four to five men in military-style clothing signalled him to halt and he had no reason to believe or could tell in the darkness they were terrorists in disguise moving in an area where army movements are routine.

I did not have any weapon. Nor were my guards with me, he said. Had they been with me or had I been carrying my gun, I would have killed the terrorists.

Read: Punjab on alert after cop thrashed by men in army uniform

The gunmen allegedly used the vehicle to reach the airbase which they attacked over the weekend, with six militants and seven Indian soldiers killed in a days-long operation.

Security personnel inside the Pathankot air force base after the military operation against terrorists ended on Tuesday. (Sameer Sehgal/HT)

Singh said the terrorists abducted him along with his friend Rajesh Verma, whos a Gurdaspur-based jeweller, as well as his cook Madan Gopal at Kohlian village in Pathankot district.

The officer said the kidnappers left him at Gulpur Simbli village after about 45 minutes of travel while they later slit the jewellers throat before dumping him and the cook near another village. Verma is receiving care at a hospital.

Singh said the gunmen learnt his identity only when a constable called up on his cellphone which they had snatched.

Police sources said the districts top officers reached the police station where Singh was waiting and the exercise of corroborating what he was saying began almost immediately.

Based on his information, a massive manhunt was launched for his car. Police stations were informed and even nakas laid for checking of moving vehicles, added an officer.

While the search for the vehicle began, Singh was questioned about the details of his statement. What was the SP, who had been transferred and was to take up his duties in Jalandhar, doing in Gurdaspur and that too in the middle of the night on a road so close to the Pakistan border?

Also, why was the SP moving without any weapon and gunmen despite the fact that the area had seen a terrorist attack barely five months ago?

Read: Defence minister Parrikar admits security gaps at Pathankot air base

In his defence, Singh told HT he was without his gunmen and his own weapon as he was going to a shrine on New Years Eve and he routinely visits such religious places.

Controversy swirled when intelligence officials in Punjab police were informed that the SPs mobile phone was with the terrorists.

By 7am, we had information that his phone had indeed been used to make calls to Pakistan, added a senior officer. A little later the vehicle was also located outside the air force station. All agencies which needed to know this information were given the details.

Though Punjab police has assessed that the SPs account is true, he has been questioned by central agencies and is likely to be examined again.

Read: Probe shows Pak-based elements behind Pathankot attack: NIA chief

Missed clues, security gaps in run-up to Pathankot airbase attack

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Opinion / Columnist

MDC-T spokesman Obert Gutu condemned the Police harassment and ban of civil servants demonstrations demanding government pay them their December wages and bonus. "Mugabe's Zanu-PF regime is now a de facto terrorist organisation," he said.For a lawyer Obert Gutu, is as stupid as they come but, worst of all, he is always showing off!"Section 59 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe states that every person has the right to demonstrate and to present petitions, but these rights must be exercised peacefully. Of late, the Zimbabwe Republic Police and other organs of the State security apparatus have ruthlessly and unlawfully clamped down on peaceful demonstrations," Gutu stated.Yes section 59 of the constitution say people are allowed to hold peaceful demonstrations but Gutu should also know that the same constitution grants Mugabe the power to formulate security policy as he alone sees fit and necessary to maintain law and order. In other words if Mugabe should stipulate that the ZRP must ban all public demonstrations then all public demonstrations will be banned!When the first draft of the new constitution was first realised for public scrutiny in July 2012, MDC was warned again and again that the constitution has weak and feeble to deliver the democratic freedoms and rights it supposed to deliver and guarantee. Mr Gutu and his fellow MDC leaders ignored the warning and campaigned for a yes vote in the March 2013 referendum. They assured the nation the new constitution all the freedoms and rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections.The new constitution failed its first real test a few months later in July 2013 when it failed to deliver free and fair elections. People have since learnt there are many other freedoms and rights that denied them although they are clearly state in the constitution because like all weak and feeble constitution the freedoms and rights are given in one sections and taken away in the next!Obert Gutu is making a big song and dance about section 59 giving the right to demonstrate to impress the impressionable public but is silent about section(s) giving Mugabe the power to take away the same right like a scatter-brain mother hen chasing after an eagle that has snatched her chick.When I was a boy my mother had a scatter-brain hen that lost all her first brood of chicks to the eagle within a few days; she lost the second brood two or three weeks. Each time the eagle snatched one of her chicks the hens would flap her wings so vigorous and make a real racket chasing after the eagle!On one occasion she went after the eagle as usual. She had not realized there were two eagles; the second eagle was swooping for her. She got away just in time!The day the hen lost the last chick of her third brood it was the cooking pot for mizz scatter brain!"On Monday, January 4,2016 in Harare, the Police unlawfully blocked a protest march that was organised by the Rural Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (RTUZ) to press government to urgently release civil servants' December salaries," raved the irate mother hen, Obert Gutu. "The MDC unreservedly condemns the high - handed and unlawful action by the Police in violently crushing a peaceful demonstration."If you are as irate and sure of your legal standing on this; sue Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri and put an end to Zanu PF lawlessness once and once for all instead issue all these press statements full of sound and fury but signifying nothing!It is intolerable enough already that people are still being denied the basic freedoms and rights but all this charade of irate mother hen defiance by MDC officials is adding insult to injury. MDC wasted the nation's golden opportunity to have a democratic constitution, five years and over $100 million writing this weak and feeble constitution which MDC officials like Obert Gutu still goes through the theatricals pretending it is worth the paper it is written on.
Lashing out at the Centre in the wake of the Pathankot terror strike, the Shiv Sena has said it had warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to trust Pakistan and that time has now come for him to focus on India rather than trying to unite the world.

The attack has proven that our borders are not safe, Indias internal security is in shambles and the only national work being done is giving condolences to the martyred on social networking sites, the Sena said in a hard-hitting editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

Seven of our soldiers get martyred in return of a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif...The incident has proven that our borders are not safe and our internal security is in shambles. With the lives of six terrorists, Pakistan has managed to finish Indias self-respect, it said.

Read: Mop-up ops amid sporadic firing in Pathankot, Parrikar to visit airbase

Further hitting out at the government, the ruling alliance partner said, The Prime Minister was in Lahore only last week as a guest of his counterpart Nawaz Sharif. At that time, we had warned him not to trust Pakistan.

See how we have been betrayed today. If Pakistan wants to improve relations with India, they should immediately hand over Jaish-e-Mohammeds Maulana Masood Azhar to India, it said

The Sena also said that had the Congress been in power, there would have been demands to strike at Pakistan and avenge the deaths of soldiers, but now nothing is being done about the incident.

Read: US expecting Pakistan to work on Pathankot attack leads given by India

The only national work being done is condoling the deaths of soldiers on (social networking site) twitter. But why have these soldiers died? PM Modi is trying to unite the world, but time has now come for him to concentrate on India, it said.

The Sena also said that if India does not avenge the Pathankot terror attack, then displaying its military and arms and ammunition strength on Republic Day would be futile.
The terrorists that stormed the Pathankot air base were carrying anti-cough tablets and painkillers with Pakistani markings, sources told HT.

We have recovered anti-cough medicines and painkillers from the dead bodies of the terrorists killed in the Pathankot air base. They all have Pakistani marking and are not available in India, a counter-terror official said, requesting anonymity.

After neutralising six terrorists, a combing-up operation is on at the air base to account for the weapons and ammunitions carried by the attackers. The terrorists were also carrying dry fruits, which counter-terror officials said is a standard practice among suicide attackers who are prepared for a long haul.

We have recovered four assault rifles and three pistols so far. One of the assault rifles is equipped with an under barrel grenade launcher (UBGL) and some others have a pipe mounted on the barrel for launching mortars, said another counter terror official involved in the mopping-up operation.

On Tuesday, defence minister Manohar Parrikar said the terrorists were carrying AK47s, modified UBGL pistols, Swiss and commando knives, 40-50 kg of bullets as well dozens of magazine and mortars.

The role of Punjab police official Salwinder Singh is also under the scanner of counter-terror officials. Singh was travelling with his friend and cook when his vehicle was snatched by the terrorists.

The big question is why he was left alive, said a senior government official, requesting anonymity.

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Pockets were picked and cellphones stolen as hundreds of admirers, politicians and party members queued up to pay homage to veteran CPI leader AB Bardhan on Monday.

At least 15 cellphones and wallets of serving and former lawmakers were lifted as the veteran Left leaders body lay in state at Ajoy Bhavan, headquarters of the Communist Party of India, in central Delhi.

One of the first complaints the Delhi Police received was from partys national secretary and Rajya Sabha MP D Raja.

He told police that a cellphone was stolen from his wifes bag when they were at Ajoy Bhavan. I have already informed the police and they have assured of swift investigation. Later at Nigambodh Ghat, I was told that a young comrade had also lost his cellphone, the Left leader told HT.

Bardhan, 92, died in a city hospital on Saturday after a prolonged illness. His mortal remains were brought to Ajoy Bhavan to allow people to pay their last respects. The cremation was held at Nigambodh Ghat later in the day.

While police said they received complaints from only four party leaders, sources said many CPI members who came from outside the Capital like former West Bengal MP Pramod Panda left the city without filing a complaint.

Former Kerala minister of forests and housing Binay Vishram and party general secretary BV Vijaylakshmi, a former MP, too reported their phones missing. Vishram, it is learnt, complained that his two cellphones were stolen.

The cases have been registered at the IP Estate police station.

In his complaint, general secretary and youth vice-president Ginu Zacharia Oommen said he had gone to pay his last respects to Bardhan and later found his phone and wallet, which had some cash and ATM cards, missing.

Police were looking into the complaints, DCP(Central) Parmaditya said.

A huge crowd had gathered here on Monday, a party member told HT at Ajoy Bhavan. There is no CCTV here. Many of our comrades have reported that their phones were stolen. Most of them had come from Kolkata and Kerala. They have all returned, he said, on condition of anonymity.

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Indias loss is Chinas gain as red tape and threats forced Metalsa, a global structural component solution providing company from Mexico, to shift its proposed strategic business unit for the Asia-Pacific region from the Jharkhand industrial hub of Seraikela to Beijing.

Metalsas move is a blow for Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das as he has been stressing on zero tolerance on corruption in his first year in office, which he completed on December 29. The efforts earned him Prime Minister Narendras Modis praise for pushing development at several business forums.

But the results on the ground are not encouraging; Metalsa is one big victim of the states corrupt bureaucracy.

The companys human development coordinator for India, Saurabh Prasad, said it was forced to pay bribes at various levels to get things done despite adhering to global norms in terms of pollution, licencing and ethics. Worse, local ruffians have allegedly made a habit of extorting money from it for anything and everything.

The problems are aplenty that cannot be counted on fingers. Fed up, the company decided to shift its strategic business unit to China, Prasad said.

A strategic business unit is a wing of the parent company that carries the responsibility of controlling the entire business of a particular region. Had the unit come up in Seraikela, it could have created hundreds of job opportunities for the local population, thereby boosting the regions economy.

The decision of the company, which has operations in at least 15 countries, is seen as a setback for Modis ambitious Make in India campaign. Also, it mocks a World Bank report that recently declared Jharkhand as the third among 32 states and Union territories in terms of ease of doing business.

Only two states, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, have been rated above Jharkhand in the report.

The situation got industry heads worried too. Industries are not getting government support to flourish, said Ram Bangar, chairman, law and order, Federation of Jharkhand Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FJCCI).

Metalsas Prasad alleged that the company approached the police and civil administration on several occasions for help but most often it ended up getting a cold response.

I cannot reveal everything to the press but time to time we do inform authorities about the hardships we are facing in running the existing plant. Unfortunately, the problems persist still, he said.

A copy of a complaint letter lodged by the company on August 30 and assessed by Hindustan Times reveal how 10 hoodlums, most of them facing serious criminal charges and currently out on bail, barged into the campus, abused guards, misbehaved with woman staff members and demanded extortion money as well as steel scrap material.

Authorities said the accused were still moving freely and are constantly threatening to bomb the company premises and harm officials, four months since the complaint was filed.

Metalsa is plagued with industrial relation hazards, police superintendent Indrajeet Mahtha said. We are committed to providing security to all institutions, companies that are contributing towards development of the area provided specific complaints are lodged with us. We will waste no time arresting the culprits if the company lodges FIR.

Md Akhtar, one of the accused, denied the allegations and said the company has failed to keep its promise of providing jobs. Villagers who donated land for the plant are feeling duped and, hence, they resort to peaceful demonstrations occasionally. The company dislikes the protests and frames us in false cases.

Exodus of companies, at least three in the past three years and withdrawal of FDI in a state that has been miserably failing to contribute towards the national GDP and whose investment has fallen from Rs 1 lakh crore in 2005-06 to Rs 33,000 crore in 2014-15 is not auguring well for Jharkhands ruling government.

This government has failed on all fronts, said former chief minister and leader of the Opposition, Hemant Soren.
Lieutenant Colonel Niranjan was laid to rest with full military honours in the officers village in Kerala on Tuesday. An officer of the National Security Guard (NSG), he was killed in Pathankot on Sunday while trying to defuse a bomb at the airbase where alleged Pakistani militants laid siege for more than three days.

A 21-gun salute and slogans accompanied the last rites conducted by Niranjans inconsolable family.

The lieutenant colonel was killed on Sunday morning while trying to defuse a bomb during the three-day siege at the Pathankot airbase by alleged Pakistani militants.

Niranjans remains were first taken to Bengaluru where his family lives, and then brought to his village Elambulasserry in the Palakkad district. The last rites were delayed as there was a heavy rush of people to pay their respects to the NSG commando.

Serpentine queues were visible outside the KUP School where the body was placed before family members conducted the final rites at the family-owned burial ground.

Read More | Bengaluru: People pay tribute to NSG Lt Col Niranjan Kumar

Kerala home minister Ramesh Chennithala was present at the funeral while chief minister Oommen Chandy called on the family on Tuesday night.

Many areas in the district as well as several schools remained closed on Tuesday in tribute. Though Niranjan was brought up in Bengaluru, where he did his schooling and college, he maintained a connect with his village, which he last visited during the festival of Onam in September 2015.

Read More | Seven soldiers dead in Pathankot attack

However, insulting remarks by a 24-year-old from Malappuram posted on social media slightly marred the tributes that were pouring in. The man was arrested by police and will be charged with sedition, a senior police officer said.
The United States consulate in Hyderabad is working to resolve the issue of multiple deportations of Indian students headed to two California-based universities by American immigration authorities but hasnt blacklisted the institutes, consular general Michael Mullins said on Tuesday.

This is the first time a US official has spoken on the controversy surrounding the deportation of around 200 students belonging to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the past two weeks, prompting the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to take the issue up with the US.

This is a very serious issue and our embassy in Delhi is in touch with the MEA to resolve it. I am also meeting the Telangana CMO officials. Please do not think we are indifferent to the students concerns, Mullins told HT. Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao met Mullins to take up the issue.

Almost all the students were headed to two Californian universities  Northwestern Polytechnic and Silicon Valley  but were stopped by the US immigration officials. Some of the deported students told HT the two universities were shown to them as blacklisted by US immigration officials but Mullins said they were not blacklisted. The two universities are not blacklisted but in any case the visa we issue can take you till the port of entry. Thereafter it is up to the immigration officers to allow you entry, Mullins said.

He reiterated the importance of Hyderabad and the two Telugu states in the relations between the two nations. Hyderabad is the fourth in the world in sending students to the US, the first three cities being in China, he said.

The statement came a day after a student from Hyderabad alleged she was handcuffed and locked up by immigration officials there at an airport.
Forget the beauty pageants. Far away from the glitzy stage of Miss India, 30 women will be battling it out in Uttarakhands Tehri district on Wednesday to be crowned queen of a different kind, based on who collects the most cattle fodder in the treacherous Himalayan forests.

As part of the contest called Ghasyari Queen, women will be required to cut maximum quantity of grass in two minutes, earning 10 points for each kilogram of fodder collected.

But they will also be judged on the quality of fodder collected, their knowledge of medicinal herbs for the livestock found in the forests and various uses of its by-products. Participants are disqualified immediately if any green tree leaves or shrubs are found in their collection. The contest will be held in Tehris Bhilangana block  around 170 km from Dehradun  to highlight the contribution of hill women to ecology. A total of 30 women from 112 villages have made it to the final, after clearing preliminary hurdles.

The ghasyaris ensure sustainable removal of weeds from the forests while ensuring no harm to the trees. But with increasing downhill migration and changing mindsets, their ecological services have been going unnoticed, said Trepan Singh Chauhan, convener of Chetana Aandolan, a peoples movement that is organising the event. We want to recognise their contribution and change the mindset of outsiders and locals towards their work.

The winner will be given Rs 1 lakh and a silver crown. For centuries, the women of the mountains have been an essential part of conserving the hill ecology. Finally, we get our long overdue credit, said Saita Devi, one of the finalists from Khola village.

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Guns fell silent at Pathankot air base on Tuesday after troops killed the last terrorist holed up there but the political war on the attack escalated with the Congress and BJP trading barbs over scheduled India-Pakistan talks.

The Congress came down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for engaging in talks with Pakistan despite the attack of the IAF base, saying a dialogue in Islamabad between foreign secretaries of the two countries should be called off.

Terror and talks cant go hand in hand. After Ufa (a Russian resort where Modi met Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif), you saw the Gurdaspur attack. After Lahore, you have seen Pathankot. So under these circumstances first thing this government must do is to call off the foreign secretary-level talks, Congress leader Manish Tewari said.

The BJP countered its main rival, saying it should stop politicising terror.

Minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi asked the Congress to keep petty politics aside when it came to national security.

Read: Missed clues, security gaps in run-up to Pathankot airbase attack

Terrorism is an international challenge and the world is fighting against it as one. Amid such a situation, things should not be said that bolster the confidence of the terrorists and our global war against terrorism is affected, Naqvi said.

They (Congress) need to introspect and think about their political childishness. They also need to think about what they say during such sensitive times when the nation is standing together.

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said any party trying to gain political mileage from the terror attack with untimely comments was condemnable.

They are making such comments even when an operation is going on the field and our security forces are fighting bravely and have given their life. It shows the Congress in poor light, he said.

Congress continued with their verbal barrage, targeting the governments soft stand on Pakistan.

Policemen patrol near the Indian Air Force Base in Pathankot. The attack at the air base near the border with Pakistan began early Saturday morning . (AP)

Read: Gaping holes along border, says BSFs Pathankot attack report to Centre

Tewari said the NDA government was bending over backwards to please a hostile neighbour. There is a growing perception in the strategic circles that this government is going to hand over Sir Creek and Siachen to Pakistan. So, it is very imperative that this government makes a declaration and take the nation into confidence as to what transpired during its engagements with Pakistan.

Party colleague Anand Sharma made a similar demand, separately.

After cancellation of NSA-level talks in August, what was the understanding reached between NSA Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart in Bangkok? After the Pathankot attack, the government should take the nation into confidence and consult all political parties.

The political war of words continued even as security forces searched the sprawling air base on Tuesday for any more terrorist hidden there. It is spread over more than 2,000 acres, including forests and fields.

The base has a fleet of Russian-origin MiG-21 fighter jets and Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, along with other military hardware. Officials said no military hardware was damaged in the fighting.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, 79, on Tuesday was put under sedation in the ICU at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), where he was admitted with fever and breathlessness on the morning of December 24.

He continues to remain critical but haemodynamically stable, which means his heart rate and blood pressure is under control. He is not in coma, he is not on ventilator support, he is on respiratory support. His condition, however, requires close monitoring, said AIIMS spokesperson Dr Amit Gupta.

Sedation involves putting the patient in a semi-conscious state, as opposed to very deep unconsciousness associated with medically-induced coma. Sedation eases pressure on the lungs and is part of oxygen-therapy protocol, said Dr Gupta.

Sayeed is currently on essential antibiotic and anti-fungal medicines. His blood count was low and had been given blood transfusion but doctors say he does not require blood or blood products as of now.

Since he has developed pneumonia and has had a previous history of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, which is a progressive disease of the lungs that makes it difficult to breathe, he has been put on oxygen therapy. He is not in coma but needs to be kept sedated as part of the treatment protocol, he added.

Sayeed was flown in from Srinagar, Kashmir in a state aircraft, on the morning of December 24 after he complained of some uneasiness and fever.

The team of experts monitoring Sayeeds condition include Dr Rita Sood (Professor of Medicines), Prof Mohammad Ashraf Ganaie (Endocrinologist), Dr Tulika Seth (Hematology) and Prof. PN Dogra (Urology), among others.
The Gautam Budh Nagar administration has directed all industrial units in Noida to switch to piped natural gas by March 31 or face closure, stepping up efforts to clean up the deteriorating air quality over the district.

However, the move may run into rough weather with industrialists expressing skepticism owing to huge costs involved.

Officials said that most of the industries in Noida  adjoining Delhi but geographically in Uttar Pradesh  use petrochemicals as fuel which is adds to air pollution in the region.

The move came barely a few days after the Delhi government introduced a radical road rationing scheme, allowing odd or even number vehicles to ply on alternate days, one of the several measures adopted in view of growing air pollution in the capital city.

As per rough estimates, there are nearly 8,000 industrial units running in Noida and more than 450 in Greater Noida.

As of now, only 330 industrial units are running on piped natural gas (PNG) in the district.

We have told them to replace the existing petrochemical-based fuel with PNG by March 31 or face action. A meeting was also held with the representatives of Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL) who conveyed that PNG could be made available to an applicant within 20 days, said NP Singh, district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar.

The IGL spokesperson was also positive about their preparedness to meet the demand.

Our network in major industrial areas across the district is already in place. It will not take us much of time to supply PNG to an applicant, he added.

However, industrialists do not seem to be ready to oblige due to the cost factor involved in the switch over.

We are for cleaner Noida but everything cannot be done in one go. Switching over to PNG would incur a liability of lakhs of rupees on each industry which most of us find unaffordable. It will not be possible for us to go for PNG, said Vipin Malhan, president, Noida Entrepreneurs Association.

In another development, the state home department on Monday directed police to improve traffic management in Noida, Ghaziabad and Lucknow within one week.

Inspector general of police (Lucknow zone) Zaki Ahmed and IG (Meerut zone) Alok Sharma have been given the responsibility to streamline the movement of traffic in the three cities.

Traffic jams in the three cities especially Noida are notorious during the peak morning and evening hours with vehicles moving at snails pace through the major arteries.

(With inputs from HTC, Lucknow)

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FERNDALE, Mich.Adult distributor Nalpac has the Nexus Sparta in stock and ready to ship.

Nalpac received the Nexus Sparta shortly after its November release date and customers can now place their orders.

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Nalpac is one of the industrys first distributors to receive this innovative product. The Nexus Sparta is available in limited quantities. With the products reputably high quality build and increasing demand by customers, Nalpac is anticipating the Nexus Sparta to be a best selling item for retailers.

For more information, visit Nalpac.com.
The Akal Takht  the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs  has taken a serious view of distorted photographs or portraits of Sikh gurus being uploaded on social media sites and has told the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) to take it up the sites concerned sites.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, Akal Takht jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh said at times these photographs are accompanied by derogatory content that can hurt religious sentiments and in the process can lead to communal unrest. He said such acts are a handiwork of those elements who want to disturb the peace and communal harmony in Punjab.

The jathedar directed the Dharam Prachar Committee of the SGPC to identify the elements behind such content and take action against them in accordance with the law.

The jathedar also warned the Sikh community against taking the holy book to marriage palaces or resorts for solemnising marriages or other functions. He pointed out this act is a clear violation of the directive issued a decade ago banning the display of the Sikh scripture in hotels and marriage palaces.

The jathedar issued the warning after receiving complaints that marriages were being solemnised at hotels/resorts and not gurdwaras.
The court of additional sessions judge HK Sidhu has dismissed the bail plea of Baltej Pannu, a social media activist and journalist with a Canadabased Punjabi radio station, in a case where he is accused of raping a clerk in Punjabi University. The local police had arrested Pannu on November 27, 2015.

On Monday, during arguments for bail, Pannus lawyer Mohit Kapoor alleged that Pannu had been a victim of political vendetta and claimed that he had been falsely implicated by the state government. He added that Pannu had been critical of the state government for alleged corruption in the system and the proliferating drug trade.

Pannus counsel added that he would now move the Punjab and Haryana high court in next couple of days.

On the other hand, the victims counsel KS Nagra submitted before court that the offence committed by the accused was of very serious nature and argued that the allegations of political vendetta by the defence counsel had no substance since there was no nexus between victim and political establishment.

The ruling party has no role to play in the present incident, said Nagra, adding that Pannu had committed an offence against an individual who had moved before the police with her complaint of having been duped into entering into a sexual relationship under false pretenses of marriage. Subsequently, legal action was initiated without any political pressure.

Investigation is still on and grant of bail at this stage might hamper police investigation. The accused might also tamper with evidence if granted bail, public prosecutor DK Garg claimed.

Garg also argued that why should a woman levy false allegations against a man at the cost of her modesty.

Baltej Pannu was picked up from his residence 98, Green Field Enclave, Officer Colony on November 27, and was soon booked under Sections 376 (rape), 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code.

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Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh and Congress Legislature Party leader Charanjit Singh Channi seem to be pulling in opposite directions as far as the role of Punjab Police is concerned in the terror strike at Pathankot.

While Amarinder gave a clean chit to the police, saying it gave advanced information on the presence of the four Pakistani terrorists and their plan to strike at the airbase, the CLP leader felt there was an intelligence lapse on the part of the police that enabled the terrorists to strike. The CLP leader said deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is also the home minister, should be held accountable for the lapse.

The two leaders were here on Tuesday to attend the bhog ceremony of Jagat Mitter Soni, father of state Congress vice-president and local MLA OP Soni.

Later, in an informal chat with the media, Amarinder said the police had no role to play in the operation that was launched inside the base to neutralise the attackers.

Army should have been preferred

The Amritsar MP, who himself has served in the army, felt the mopping-up operations after four terrorists were killed, should have been carried out by local army units stationed at Pathankot cantonment. The National Security Guards (NSG) is an elite commando formation and its duty is to neutralise targets, he added.

The army has experience of mopping-up operations in the Kashmir valley. Even after killing a terrorist, the army jawans take precautionary measures while moving the body. The NSG does not have this experience in mopping-up operations, he said while pointing out that the life of NSG Lt Col Niranjan Kumar and some of his colleagues could have been saved.

The deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha said his personal view was that the peace dialogue with Pakistan must continue. These elements will continue to create hurdles, but we must not fall in their trap. If we stop the dialogue, we will only weaken Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, he observed.

Channi holds police responsible

On the other hand, Channi wanted the deputy CM to tell people as to why there was intelligence lapse on the part of Punjab Police. He felt that the police did not take the inputs provided by central intelligence agencies about a possible terror strike in the state seriously.

Talking to the media separately, the CLP leader claimed that senior police officials did not give due importance to the information provided by abducted SP Salwinder Singh.

This clearly shows two things, one how much the Punjab Police trusts its own officers and, second, if they dont trust these officers, why are they posted in Gurdaspur, a highly sensitive area? he added.

Channi demanded that the compensation given to the families of the securitymen killed be raised to at least Rs 20 lakh besides giving a government job to a member of the family.
A Punjab police officer being investigated after he was allegedly abducted and subsequently released by a group of terrorists that laid siege to the Pathankot air force base said on Tuesday his inputs helped minimise loss of life.

Superintendent of police Salwinder Singh who has been transferred pending further inquiry said security personnel set up checkpoints and stepped up surveillance based on information he provided, making it difficult for the attackers to move around and reducing damage.

Read full interview here

I informed police as soon as I could. I completed my responsibility. They believed me completely, he said. If I had tried to fight them (the terrorists), they would have killed me.

Singh said he stopped his car on Friday when four to five men in military-style clothing signalled him to halt and he had no reason to believe or could tell in the darkness they were terrorists in disguise moving in an area where army movements are routine.

But he knew right away that they were terrorists when the men rushed towards his SUV, the moment it braked to a halt.

Singh, who was in his civvies, said he did not resist since the attackers were heavily armed and he was without his weapon and guard as he was visiting a nearby shrine.

The terrorists allegedly used the vehicle to enter Gurdaspur and attacked the airbase near the Pakistan border over the weekend, with six militants and seven Indian soldiers killed in a days-long operation.

The gunmen allegedly abducted Singh along with his friend Rajesh Verma whos a Gurdaspur-based jeweller, as well as his cook Madan Gopal at Kohlian village in Pathankot district.

The officer said the kidnappers left him at Gulpur Simbli village after about 45 minutes of travel while they later slit the jewellers throat before dumping him and the cook near another village. Verma is receiving care at a hospital.

Armed men were in army fatigues and had AK 47 with them: Gurdaspur SP Salvinder Singh (who was abducted) pic.twitter.com/n98Ec3gGRI  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

Singh said the gunmen learnt his identity only when a constable called up on his cellphone which they had snatched.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has registered three cases to probe the conspiracy behind the Pathankot terror attack. The first of the three cases pertains to the SPs abduction.

The mens appearance and speech confirmed they were Pakistanis, said Singh. They used Urdu and Hindi while speaking to someone on the phone that they had taken from him.

The officer said he contacted senior officers about the presence of Pakistani terrorists in the area after being freed at around 3.30am on Friday.

(With agency inputs)
Even as defence minister Manohar Parrikar remained tight-lipped on whether Pakistans involvement in the terror attack, saying that he could not comment till the investigation was on, Punjab Police have registered a first-information report (FIR) against Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Director General of Police (DGP) Suresh Arora told a press conference, We have registered three FIRs. The first has been against Pakistan-based militant outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad, after documents related to the organisation were found in the abandoned car of the abducted SP. Another FIR has been registered in connection with the murder of driver of Innova Ikagar Singh. The third case has been registered against six unidentified terrorists, who attacked the airbase, he added.

On why Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh was not believed initially and action was delayed, the DGP said, We sent immediate alerts to the Central government. This was for the first time when the National Security Guard (NSG) was pressed into action even before a terrorist attack. This usually happens after the attack has happened.

He added that the SPs statement was recorded and senior police officers reached Pathankot soon after the officer and his companion disclosed that they had been abducted by heavily-armed terrorists.

To pointed questions on the SP, the DGP said that there were many things that could not be shared at the moment. On why was the SPs vehicle was not stopped at police nakas in the region, the DGP said, It is a matter of investigation.

The DGP added that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Punjab Police would jointly probe the Pathankot attack.

New battalion to be stationed in Pathankot

On being questioned over repeated security breaches in the Narot Jaimal Singh Block and the Bamiyal sector, the DGP claimed that as instructed by deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, a new battalion would soon be stationed in Pathankot. He added that an SP (operations) would be also be posted to coordinate with security officials. Another post of assistant inspector general (AIG) would be raised and more CCTVs would be installed. He claimed that with the addition of more personnel, better vigil would be maintained across the border areas.
Tension prevailed in the Tripuri area on Tuesday morning as over 200 shopkeepers protested and stalled the municipal corporations anti-encroachment drive, despite heavy police force.

The anti-encroachment drive was conducted in compliance with a Punjab and Haryana high court order that directed the MC to clear footpaths of encroachments. The corporation is set to submit a compliance report before the court on January 15.

The heavy encroachments on the footpaths in the area have left the pedestrians at their wits end, besides causing traffic snarls. An MC team during its visit to Tripuri in December had urged the shopkeepers to voluntarily remove the encroachments within a week.

However, with the encroachments still in place, a joint team of MC officials and police reached Tripuri about 11 am on Tuesday and began removing encroachments on the footpaths.

While there was no resistance in the initial one hour due to police cover, a crowd started building up around noon. Soon, the shopkeepers gheraoed the MCs JCB and staged a protest by sitting in front of it, bringing the drive to a halt.

MCs joint commissioner Nazar Singh, along with other senior MC officials, tried to pacify the crowd, but in vain.

A shopkeeper said the sudden action by the MC staff was unwarranted as it did not give them sufficient time to remove encroachments.

On finding the situation going out of hand, the enforcement staff stopped the drive mid-way and left the area.

Later, an MC official, not wishing to be named, claimed that they had given the shopkeepers a one-day ultimatum to clear the encroachments. We will revisit the area on Thursday and remove any remaining encroachments, he added.

Drive bringing little respite

Despite MCs efforts, shopkeepers seem to have a final say when it comes to encroachments. Just a few days after the MC conducted anti-encroachment drives at the bus stand, district court complex, Kali Devi temple, Mall Road, Leela Bhawan Chowk and Bhupindra Road, squatters have returned with their goods and articles blocking pathways and public spaces.

As such, the MCs much-hyped drive is proving to be a damp squib.
Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Monday described the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a party of defectors, which was bereft of any ideology for public welfare.

Addressing public gatherings during sangat darshan programmes at Sathiali, Gunnopur and Bhaini Mian Khan villages here, the chief minister said the turncoat leaders who had been rejected by people time and again were joining AAP, which was a clear indication that the party did not have any concrete ideology or programme for the welfare of the state and its people.

He said the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had a glorious history of relentless struggle for the cause of Punjab and its people.

Criticising AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Badal said he had run away from the promises made to people. Citing an example, the chief minister reminded the people that his Delhi counterpart had announced to hold regular janta darbar for resolving the issues of public.

However, instead of keeping his word, the Delhi chief minister abandoned his well-publicised programme, Badal said.

The chief minister said Punjab was the only state where the government resolved the issues of people through sangat darshans. He said this pro-people initiative extensively aimed at welfare of people was a flagship programme of SAD-BJP alliance government.

Badal said no other chief minister of any other state undertakes such an exercise to redress the grievances of people in such an elaborate manner.

Coming down heavily on former president of the state Congress, Pratap Singh Bajwa, for issuing baseless statements against the state government, the chief minister said it would be better for Bajwa to focus more on his party affairs.

He said rather than wasting his energy on posing questions to the state government, Bajwa should seek answers from his party chief Captain Amarinder Singh.

Slamming the state Congress leadership for opposing his sangat darshan programmes tooth and nail, the chief minister said the state Congress leaders were envious of the states overall development and prosperity of its people. Badal said besides giving a major fillip to the overall development of the state, the sangat darshan programmes had also been instrumental in mitigating the woes of common people.

He further said the concept of sangat darshan was an integral part of the states governance as it virtually brought the government to the doorsteps of the people thereby bridging the communication gap between the masses and the administration, which normally hindered the process of development.

The chief minister said that besides acting as a catalyst for redressing the grievances of people, the sangat darshan programmes were also helpful for the state government to adjudge the working of officers of the various departments.

He said that nobody, including the Congress leaders, could deter him from holding sangat darshans to ensure the well-being of people. The sangat darshan helps us to evaluate the performance of the officers which further facilitates us to provide effective, accountable and transparent governance to the people, he added.

Meanwhile, in a major reprieve for the people of the region, the chief minister announced to start a major drive for cleaning of the drains in the chhamb (wetland) area.

Interacting with a delegation of cane growers from the region at Gunnopur village, the chief minister assured them that the state government was firmly committed to bail out the farming community from any problem being faced by them. He said Rs 540-crore arrears had already been paid to sugarcane growers by the government besides arranging Rs 200-crore loan for private sugar mills for sugarcane arrears. Likewise, he said the Punjab government had also decided to give Rs 295 per quintal for sugarcane against Rs 220 fixed by the Centre.

Prominent amongst others present on the occasion included former cabinet minister and chairman of Punjab State Technical Education and Industrial Training Board, Sewa Singh Sekhwan, Youth Akali Dal leader Jagroop Singh Sekhwan, Badals special principal secretary S Karunaraju and deputy commissioner Abhinav Trikha.
In a big relief to 30 odd master of dental surgery (MDS) students of private colleges in Haryana, the Punjab and Haryana high court has directed a state university to award degrees to those who have successfully completed the course.

These students were admitted by private dental colleges for the academic session 2010-11 on the basis of counselling conducted on their own and they had not passed the requisite screening test as mandated by the Dental Council of India (DCI).

A single-judge bench in August 2014 had dismissed the petition of these students, leaving them in the lurch. In this petition, they had challenged a Government of India communication, whereby their admissions were termed illegal. SGT University, Gurgaon; Sudha Rustagi College of Dental Science and Research, Faridabad; JN Kapoor DAV Centenary Dental College, Yamuna Nagar; and other colleges affiliated to Pt BD Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak, were asked to refund tuition fee and admission fee. Following this, the students filed an appeal in the division bench.

The manner in which the private dental colleges have conducted themselves is somewhat improper but for that the appellants-students are not to suffer. Even otherwise, the grouse of the private dental colleges has been that there was inaction on the part of the state admissions committee and there was no clear policy or directions for admitting students who were qualified and seats were available, the high court division bench of justice SS Saron and justice Amol Rattan Singh said, while allowing the petition of these students.

The high court bench noted that the private college conducted counselling in a hurried manner, which though may be somewhat improper but cannot be said to be illegal or bad.
The Punjab government would join hands with Punjabi Sahit Academy (PSA) for promotion of Punjabi and implementation of the Language Act in all schools of the state.

State education minister Dr Daljit Singh Cheema disclosed this at a meeting with PSA representatives on Tuesday. Cheema also announced a grant of Rs 5 lakh to the academy from his discretionary fund.

The minister said the education department would strictly implement the Language Act and the department has recently conducted surprise raids at private schools in this regard.

The minister said Cheema informed that it has come to the notice of the department that there are 40 such schools who did not implement the provisions of the Language Act. He said the government will personally call the management of these schools and ask them to abide by the Act.

He asked the academy representatives to identify schools that havent implemented the Language Act. Poet Dr Surjit Patar and PSA chief Dr Sukhdev Singh Sirsa were also present at the meeting.

The minister also informed that the state government during a national-level meeting held in New Delhi recently, advocated the need for making Punjabi a tool of employment generation. It was also proposed that the medium of all national=level competitive examination should be in vernacular languages, he added.
Fifteen years after the formation of Jharkhand, more than half of anganwadi centres in the state are still running in rented accommodations, a document from the state child and woman welfare department has revealed.

Out of the 38,432 anganwadi centres in the state, only 18,935 have their own buildings, while the remaining 19,497 run in rented quarters, the document says.

State social welfare minister Louis Marandi claimed that the anganwadi centres were running on rent due to unavailability of land. No availability of land caused a delay in construction of anganwadi centres. Once we get the land, we will have our own buildings for all anganwadis, Marandi said.

The anganwadi, which literally translates to courtyard shelter in Hindi, is a government sponsored child-care and mother-care center in India. It caters to children in the 0-6 age group. They were started by the Central government in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services programme to combat child hunger and malnutrition.

In Jharkhand, anganwadi centres play a crucial role due to the high rate of malnutrition in the state, particularly among the tribe groups. According to Unicefs Rapid Survey on Children report for 2013-14, 47% children in the state are stunted while 42% are underweight.

However, the proportion of stunting among children in the tribal state has fallen from 49.8% a decade ago. There has been similar improvement in other measures of malnutrition in the state. The malnutrition rate among children under the age of five has fallen from 56.5% to 42.1%.

Activists claim that running these centres on rented accommodation causes several problems including dearth of space, lack of pre-school education for children and hurdles in medical checkup of pregnant and lactating mothers.

In many villages, anganwadis do not have the space to keep food grains. So, they keep it in separate storerooms, many of which are unhygienic, said Anup Hore, Right to Education and Right to Food activist from NGO Plan India.

Hore said that technically there should be an anganwadi centre for every 700 people. Jharkhand has a population of 32.9 million, which means it should have at least 47,000 anganwadi centres, and falls short by 8,000 at present.

State social welfare director Ravindar Prasad Singh said that around 6,000 new anganwadi centres were being constructed under the 13th finance commission. Land is a problem in urban areas, not ruralWe will have new anganwadis very soon, he said.

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A Ranchi couple has claimed Rs 10 lakh as compensation for alleged rat bites in the AC first class compartment of a Kolkata-bound train.

PC Sinha (72) and his wife Alka Sinha (62) were travelling in Kriya Yoga Express (Hatia-Howrah Express) from Ranchi to Howrah on December 30 last year. Around midnight, Sinha, a retired chief engineer in Bokaro Steel Limited, was allegedly bitten by rodents and had to take rabies vaccines after reaching Kolkata.

It is shameful that at a time when the prime minister is talking of Swacch Bharat, the Indian railways cant even get rid of rats from the highest class of compartments, Sinha said in a letter to the general manager of south eastern railways. HT has a copy of the letter written on December 31, 2015.

Sinha claimed that he had suffered a 3mm bite and was at the risk of contracting diseases as he was a diabetic.

There were four passengers in the compartment, and three were bittenI have never seen such big rats in my life, he said.

When the train halted at the Santraganchi railway station, around 30-minute journey from Howrah, the couple lodged a complaint with the grievance redressal cell and asked for the compensation.

The government is dreaming of bullet trains while they cant even keep the existing trains cleanThe compartment was a mess, with rat droppings everywhere, said Alka, a school principal in Ranchi.

The couple has alleged that the railway staff did not pay heed to their complaint.

A south eastern railways official said the complaint would be conveyed to the Ranchi division and necessary steps would be taken.

I have not got the information yet, but we will do the needful, said Deepak Kumar, Ranchi divisional railway manager.

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An explosion took place on Tuesday 400 metres away from the Indian consulate in Afghanistans Jalalabad city, two days after the countrys mission was attacked by terrorists in Mazar-e-Sharif.

However, official sources in New Delhi said that initial reports suggested that the mission was not the target of the blast. Further details about the explosion were awaited, they said.

The Indian Consulate was not the target, a source said dismissing reports that the explosion was targeted at the Indian mission.

Pakistan Consul Generals house in Jalalabad was closer to the blast site than the Indian mission which was 400 metres away, the source said.

An intense 25-hour gun-battle between security forces and terrorists outside the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif came to end last night with the killing of all the attackers who attempted to storm the Mission building.

While three of the attackers were killed in the gunfight earlier, the remaining were neutralised by the night.

A group of terrorists had attacked the Consulate on Sunday night with an aim of storming the building but their plan was thwarted by the security forces.
A debt-ridden migrant labourer set a packed bus on fire in northwest China on Tuesday, killing at least 17 people and leaving more than 30 with burn injuries.

The suspect, Ma Yongping, was arrested late in the afternoon after he threatened to jump off a building, state media reported.

A suicide letter purportedly signed by Ma said he had not been paid his dues for three years and his efforts to recover the money had failed. Police are investigating the letters authenticity.

According to the state media, Ma carried two buckets of fuel onto the bus in Helan county of the northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, ignited them with a lighter and escaped from the window on the drivers side.

State media quoted eyewitnesses as saying the bus belonged to a local transport company and was packed with more than 40 people. Pictures on microblog Sina Weibo, a social networking site, showed the bus engulfed by flames and smoke.

In addition to the 17 killed, eight were severely burnt, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Hundreds of policemen were dispatched to hunt for Ma, who was finally located and arrested from the terrace of a building from where he was threatening to jump.

China has seen several similar attacks involving citizens, reportedly angry for personal reasons or bearing a grudge against local authorities, who attacked public transport and even school children.

In July 2014, a 34-year-old man was suspected of setting fire to a bus in Hangzhou in the eastern Zhejiang Province, injuring 32 people.

In late 2012, a knife-wielding man attacked dozens of kindergarten children following family problems in central China.
Concordes chief test pilot Andre Turcat, who was the first to break the sound barrier in the supersonic jet, died at age 94, his family said on Tuesday.

Turcat was the first person to ease the 001 prototype off the Toulouse runway on March 2, 1969 and took the jet through the sound barrier on October 1.

He died on Monday at home in Aix-en-Provence in the French Alps, after a glamorous life that saw the rise and fall of the legendary Concorde aircraft.

He remained a staunch defender of the jet even after an Air France Concorde bound for New York crashed on July 25, 2000 while taking off from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 people and sounding the death knell for commercial supersonic travel.

This file photo taken on February 28, 1969 shows the crew of Concorde 001 (from L to R) flight mechanic Michel Retif, chief test pilot Andre Turcat, flight engineer Henri Perrier and first test pilot Jacques Guignard posing three days before the first flight of Concorde 001, the Franco-British supersonic aircraft in Toulouse. (AFP File Photo)

Born in 1921 in the southern French city of Marseille to a family of car manufacturers, Turcat was briefly deployed in 1947 as an air force pilot in what was then known as Indochina, where colonial power France was fighting a war.

In 1952 he was named director of the air forces school of test pilots, and soon afterwards became chief test pilot for Frances specialised aviation centre.

He was chief test pilot for Concorde from 1964 to 1976.

After turning in his wings, he was Toulouse deputy mayor from 1971 to 1977 and a member of the European parliament from 1980 to 1981.

Married with three children, Turcat published a memoir entitled Test Pilot.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday Saudi Arabia cannot hide its crime of executing a Shia Muslim cleric by cutting ties with Tehran, warning that discord could affect the fight against terrorism.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan broke all ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on Monday after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday.

An angry mob broke into the embassy on Saturday night and started fires following protests against the kingdoms execution of cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent critic of Saudi policy, and three other Shiites as well as 43 Sunni al Qaeda jihadists.

Saudi Arabia cannot hide its crime of beheading a religious leader by severing political relations with Iran, Rouhani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA in a meeting with the Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen in Tehran.

We believe diplomacy and negotiations are the best way to solve problems between countries, he added. Regional countries can save the region of terrorism dangers through unity.

The Iranian government is trying to calm tensions by distancing itself from the attack on the Saudi embassy and even blaming foreign elements for organising it.

Iranian governments spokesman called the attack suspicious and in favour of Saudi Arabias policies.

A few people - with whom its not clear which countrys interests they are serving - took advantage of peoples feelings, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht was quoted by ILNA news agency on Tuesday.

Irans justice minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was also quoted by Iranian media as saying the latest action against the Saudi embassy could be planned and supported by infiltrated agents.

President Hassan Rouhani has referred to the embassy attackers as extremists and said Iran should put to an end to attacking embassies once and forever.

Iran celebrates the anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran every year and refers to it as the Second Revolution. Since then, Iranians have attacked several embassies in Tehran including those of Kuwait in 1987, Saudi Arabia in 1988, Denmark in 2006 and Britain in 2011.
The man threatening Britain in the latest Islamic State video  dubbed New Jehadi John  is suspected to be Siddhartha Dhar, a British Indian who converted to Islam and moved to Syria in 2014.

However, there is no official confirmation of his identity yet.

His sister, Konika Dhar, told the media on Monday that if indeed the man is her brother, I am going to kill him myself. He is going to come back and Im going to kill him if he has done this. She further said she was in a state of shock.

Konika, based in Edmonton, London, told The Independent: I believed the audio to resemble, from what I remember, the voice of my brother but having viewed the short clip in detail, I wasnt entirely convinced which put me at ease.

Known to security services, Siddhartha is reported to be a former salesman based in Walthamstow, London. His name after conversion is Abu Rumaysah. He has been supportive of the Islamic State for some time, and went to Syria in November 2014.

Read More | New Jehadi John video is desperate stuff from IS: David Cameron

As the focus of the investigation into the video is on Siddhartha, his past has been recalled in several accounts, from his joining the radical group, Al-Mahajiroun, to attending demonstrations in London against the US and Israel.

Amid the focus on Siddhartha, a London-based Nigeria-origin grandfather, Henry Dare, confirmed the boy seen making threats in the video was his grandson Isa, whose mother converted to Islam and moved to Syria.

Henry Dare told Channel 4 News: I cant disown him. Hes my grandson. I know him very well.

Prime Minister David Cameron has described the IS video as desperate stuff from an organisation that was losing territory.

He said: Its desperate stuff from an organisation that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts and people can see that again today. But this is an organisation thats losing territory, its losing ground, its, I think, increasingly losing anybodys sympathy, and this again shows what an appalling organisation were up against.

Cemeron said the IS hated Britain for being a successful, tolerant, democratic, multi-faith, multi-ethnic nation, and added: But I know that Britain will never be cowed by this sort of terrorism. Our values are so much stronger than theirs. It may take a very long time but they will be defeated.
An independent woman journalist was executed by Islamic State for reporting from inside their territory, Syrian media reported on Monday.

Citizen journalist Ruqia Hassan, better known as Nisan Ibrahim in social media, was killed for writing about life under Islamic States rule.

Hassan wrote about life under IS rule on her personal Facebook page and often reported on airstrikes in Raqqa when they happened, Furat al-Wafaa, an independent citizen journalist told Syria Direct, a media organisation.

The news was confirmed by Abu Mohammed, founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently - a news website run by Syrian activists against ISIS.

Mohammed tweeted Hassans last words: Im in Raqqa and I received death threats, and when Isis [arrests] me and kills me its ok because they will cut my head and I have dignity its better than I live in humiliation with Isis [sic]

Hassans Facebook page was last updated on July 21, 2015.

In a FB post on July 20, 2015, Hassan had written against Islamic States decision to ban Wi-Fi hotspots in Raqqa city, reported Syrian Direct.

Go ahead and cut off the internet, our messenger pigeons wont complain, was the literal translation of the post.

According to alaan.tv, a news website, the Islamic State informed Hassans family of her execution on January 2, 2016 - almost 6 months after she allegedly disappeared from Raqqa city.

According to Syrian Direct, the execution marks the fifth journalist to be killed by IS and also this is believed to be the groups first capital punishment given for a woman.
Islamic States territory shrank by 40% from its maximum expansion in Iraq, and by 20% in Syria in 2015, as international forces pushed it out of several cities, the US-led coalition fighting it said on Tuesday.

There was no immediate comment from the hardline Islamist group on the estimates from the coalition, made up of countries including Britain, France and Jordan that have been bombing its positions.

We believe in Iraq its about 40 percent ... And Syria, harder to get a good number, we think its around 20, coalition spokesman US Army Colonel Steve Warren told a press briefing in Baghdad.

Taking together Iraq and Syria .. they lost 30 percent of the territory they once held, he said.

Islamic State swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, seizing Mosul, the largest city in the north, and reaching the vicinity of Baghdad.

Counter-offensives by Iraqi and Kurdish armed forces supported by the US-led coalition, and by Iran-backed Shia militias have forced them out of several cities since, including Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and Ramadi, to the west last month.

In Syria, Islamic State is fighting the army of President Bashar al-Assad and other rebel groups opposed to his rule. It is facing air strikes by the US-led coalition and by Russia which has sent warplanes to support its ally, the Syrian government.

Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi last month said 2016 will be the year of final victory on the hardline group.
The mystery surrounding five missing Hong Kong booksellers known for titles banned in mainland China deepened after one purportedly wrote a letter saying he was fine and helping with an investigation on the mainland, prompting his wife to drop a missing persons report.

Hong Kong police said late Monday that Lee Bos wife cancelled the report, but that they would continue investigating the other cases. They didnt say whether Lee had been located.

Lee is among five people associated with publisher Mighty Current, which specializes in books critical of Chinas Communist Party leaders, who have vanished in recent months. One of the five is British, with Hong Kong media reporting that it is Lee.

Their disappearances have prompted fears that Beijing is eroding the one country, two systems principle thats been in place since Britain ceded control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, granting the city civil liberties non-existent on the mainland, including freedom of the press.

When Lee vanished last Wednesday, he reportedly did not have his travel permit for mainland China with him, triggering speculation that Chinese security agents entered Hong Kong to abduct and spirit him there.

Four other people linked to the publishing company went missing in October, but they were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.

An image of Lees handwritten letter was first published by Taiwans government-affiliated Central News Agency late Monday. Hong Kong media have also published the image, crediting the news agency.

The letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing companys Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, said: Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that arent to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties.

It might take a bit of time, it said. My current situation is very well. All is normal.

The letter gave no details about what the investigation was related to.

Britains Foreign Office responded to inquiries about media reports that Lee is British by saying in an email Tuesday that one of the people reported missing is a British citizen, without naming the individual. It said it was deeply concerned about the case and has urgently requested help from authorities in Hong Kong and mainland China to find out the persons location and condition.

Hong Kong media reported that Lees wife, Choi Ka-ping, asked police to drop the missing persons report after learning of the letter, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed. Chois phone number was written on the fax, but calls to her by The Associated Press went unanswered.

Choi told Hong Kongs Apple Daily newspaper that she found his travel permit for mainland China at home after he went missing.

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers and human rights activists were skeptical the letter proved Lee was safe.

If he did indeed write the letter, it was almost certainly written under duress, said William Nee, Amnesty Internationals China researcher. What we see in mainland China all the time is that police and state security put enormous pressure on family members not to speak to media and not to raise a fuss on social media. If indeed it was state security that detained Lee Bo, one wonders whether the same tactics are being used to silence family members here in Hong Kong.

Chinas nationalist newspaper Global Times slammed the bookshop in an editorial Monday for profiting on political rumors and selling books with trumped-up content.

Although the Causeway Bay Bookstore is located in Hong Kong, it actually stays in business by disrupting mainland society, the paper said.

Hong Kong police still have missing persons files open for three other staff members or shareholders of the publisher or the bookstore. A fifth person, Gui Minhai, a Swedish national who is one of the publishing companys owners, went missing in Thailand in October, according to Hong Kong media and human rights groups.

Swedish foreign ministry spokesperson Joakim Edvardsson said on Monday that the government was very concerned about the disappearance of one of its citizens.
The White House outlined on Monday an ambitious plan to expand background checks for buyers of firearms and increase funding for mental health treatment and law enforcement agencies.

President Barack Obama is scheduled to announced it in remarks from the White House on Tuesday at 10PM (IST), flanked by victims of gun violence and his vice-president, Joe Biden.

But critics were on it already  calling it presidential overreach, unconstitutional or just plain more-show-than-action demonstrating why gun control continues to defy reason.

Obama addressed the Constitutional issue on Monday saying these changes are well within my legal authority, and, he added, they are supported by most Americans, including gun owners.

His plan will make it mandatory for anyone selling firearms  which remains loosely defined  to be licensed and allowed to sell only to customers who have been thoroughly checked.

Read: US President Obamas gun control options have legal pitfalls

The proposal aims to plug a loophole in current law that allows gun shows and fairs and online sellers to sell to buyers without adequate background checks.

The Obama administration also proposes investing $500 million on mental health treatment, which, experts pointed out, was an attempt to address a pet peeve of the pro-gun lobby.

They argue that guns dont people. Most mass murders, including Newtown killer Adam Lanza and Tucson gunman Jared Lee Loughner, they say were mentally ill.

As they were, indeed. But gun control proponents have called for stricter gun control measures to prevent guns from falling into wrong hands, such as those mentally ill.

Lanzas mother, a single parent, kept high calibre weapons at home despite the fact that her son was diagnosed with mental disorder, and refused medication prescribed by doctors.

Read: 264th US mass shooting this year, angry Obama attacks gun politics

Over 150,000 people died in gun-related homicide in the United States from 2001 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, a government agency.

Terrorism, on the other hand, claimed the lives of over 3,000 Americans between 2001 and 2014, according to Global Terrorism Database, a University of Maryland initiative.

Gun control remains a bitterly contested issue, though, despite the massacre of 20 first-graders and six adult staff members in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

But here are a few things what the plan wont do, according to experts: it wont make access to firearms any more difficult than it is now, or bring down the number of victims.

But its a start, even if a little ambitious.
The Pakistani Taliban has released its first annual report, claiming it killed hundreds of people in 2015, with analysts suggesting its inflated figures illustrate the militants struggle to demonstrate their capability as security improves.

The report, written in Urdu, has a detailed list of attacks carried out on security forces, police and politicians in several Pakistani cities and the northwestern tribal areas between January 3 and December 26.

Released on December 29, it says that in 2015, the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) carried out 73 target killings, 12 ambush attacks, 10 raids, 19 IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blasts, five suicide attacks, 17 missile attacks and shot down two helicopters, and claims it killed some 686 people in 2015.

In the report, it claims that it killed 247 people in an attack on Peshawars Badaber air force base in September. The official death toll was 29.

This report mostly carries big claims, but there is no evidence to support these claims which are often inflated, said Pakistani analyst Rahimullah Yousafzai.

They have realised that this kind of report is necessary to show people that they are still active and potent, Yousafzai said.
Nearly 200,000 people have signed petitions seeking a presidential pardon for two men featured in a murder mystery documentary on Netflix.

One of the petitions, on the White House website, had gathered more than 20,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon.

One of the men featured in Making a Murderer, Steven Avery, was freed from prison in 2003 after serving 18 years for rape. He was exonerated through DNA evidence.

But while he was suing Manitowoc County in Wisconsin over that wrongful imprisonment, he was arrested over the death in 2005 of a 25-year-old photographer named Teresa Halbach.

Avery was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. He insists he is innocent.

His nephew Brendan Dassey, who was 16 at the time, was sentenced to life in prison with parole possible starting in 2048.

Based on the evidence in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, the justice system embarrassingly failed both men, completely ruining their entire lives, reads the appeal in the open petition section of the White House website.

A file photo of inmate Steven Avery. Nearly 200,000 people have signed petitions seeking a presidential pardon for Avery and his nephew who were featured in a murder mystery documentary on Netflix. (AFP Photo)

It said there is clear evidence that the Manitowoc County sheriffs department used improper methods to convict Avery and Dassey.

If 100,000 people sign that petition by January 19 the White House is required to respond to it.

The petition was opened up on December 20, two days after the streaming launch of the highly popular 10-episode Netflix series.

Other petitions seeking a pardon for the two men are featured on the web site www.change.org.
The United Nations moved quickly on Monday to safeguard peace efforts in Syria and Yemen from the diplomatic storm unleashed by Saudi Arabias recent break in relations with Iran.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura travelled to Riyadh for talks and was to head later this week to Tehran to seek assurances that hard-won gains in the Syria peace process were not in jeopardy.

De Mistura is counting on broad support to launch peace talks between President Bashar al-Assads government and the opposition in Geneva on January 25 -- the culmination of a three-month effort involving all key players.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after angry protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran over the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by phone with the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers to urge them to avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation, said Bans spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

A breakdown of relations between Riyadh and Tehran could have very serious consequences for the region, said Dujarric.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have a crucial role in the diplomatic push to end the nearly five-year war in Syria and to bring about a political settlement for Yemen.

Saudi Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi said the break in relations with Iran should have no effect because we will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria and Yemen.

The envoy said Saudi Arabia will attend the next round of Syria talks, but he also took a swipe at Irans role in the diplomatic push to end the war in Syria.

The Iranians even before the break of diplomatic relations have not been very supportive, not very positive in these peace efforts, said Mouallimi.

Saudi break with Iran deeply worrying

In his conversation with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Ban expressed disappointment over the execution of al-Nimr, whose case he had raised with Riyadh many times, said Dujarric.

While the UN chief said the Iranian attack on the Saudi embassy was deplorable, the Saudi decision to break off relations with Tehran was deeply worrying, he told Jubeir.

Ban spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday and urged him to protect diplomatic facilities after the attack on the Saudi embassy.

Taking a a conciliatory tone, Irans Ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, expressed regret over the attack and pledged in a letter to Ban that Iran will take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future.

The Saudi-Iran rift was seen as a potential setback to the peace effort in Syria that had been hailed as a breakthrough for bringing Iran and Saudi Arabia at the table, along with Russia, the United States and other powers.

Tehran is among Assads strongest allies while Riyadh is backing militias fighting Damascus.

In Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition in March launched an air campaign against Iran-backed Shiite rebels.

Ban urged Saudi Arabia to renew its commitment to a ceasefire after the coalition announced on Saturday that it was ending the truce with the rebels.

The UN envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, heads to Riyadh on Wednesday to push for a renewed ceasefire.
Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would restore ties with Iran when Tehran stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries and pledged that Riyadh would continue to work very hard to support bids for peace in Syria and Yemen despite the spat.

Saudi Arabia cut all ties with Iran on Sunday following the kingdoms execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Protesters in Iran and Iraq marched for a third day to denounce the execution. Saudi Arabia executed Nimr and three other Shias on terrorism charges, alongside dozens of Sunni jihadists. Shia Iran hailed him as a martyr and warned Saudi Arabias ruling Al Saud family of divine revenge.

Shia groups united in condemnation of Saudi Arabia while Sunni powers rallied behind the kingdom, hardening a sectarian split that has torn apart communities across the Middle East and nourished the jihadist ideology of Islamic State.

When asked what it would take for ties to be restored, Saudi UN Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told reporters: Very simple - Iran to cease and desist from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including our own.

He added, If they do so, we will of course have normal relations with Iran. We are not natural-born enemies of Iran.

On Monday, Bahrain and Sudan cut all ties with Iran, following Riyadhs example. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters Riyadh would also halt air traffic and commercial relations between the rival powers. Jubeir blamed Irans aggressive policies for the diplomatic action, alluding to years of tension that spilled over on Saturday night when Iranian protesters stormed the kingdoms embassy in Tehran.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), home to hundreds of thousands of Iranians, partially downgraded its relations but the other Gulf Arab countries - Kuwait, Qatar and Oman - stayed above the fray.

Shia Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using the attack on the embassy as an excuse to sever ties and further increase sectarian tensions.

A man was shot dead in Saudi Arabias Eastern Province late on Sunday, and two Sunni mosques in Iraqs Shia-majority Hilla province were bombed in the fallout from the dispute between the Middle Easts top Sunni and Shia powers.

But analysts said fears of a sectarian rupture across the Middle East were premature, and the break in Saudi-Iran relations could be more a symptom of existing strains than evidence of new ones.

The downgrading of ties is not fundamentally a question of responding to executions and the storming of an embassy... (but rather) a function of a much deeper conflict between the two states, said Julien Barnes-Dacey, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Calls for restraint

Crude importer China declared itself highly concerned with the developments, in a rare foray into Middle East diplomacy. The United States and Germany called for restraint.

Russia offered to mediate an end to the dispute but a US senior State Department official said Iran and Saudi Arabia must work out their differences themselves.

It is not going to be helpful for us to own this process, certainly to be seen to be driving it, the U.S. official said. They have to work this out between themselves if a solution to this tension is going to be long-lasting and sustainable.

Syria, Yemen

The row threatened to derail efforts to end Syrias five-year-old civil war, where Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers support rebel groups against Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

It was very difficult to get everybody around the table, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism.

Saudi Arabia has been instrumental in bringing together Syrias political and armed opposition groups that would participate in peace talks with Assads government.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington expected meetings between the warring parties in Syria to take place as scheduled this month. The United Nations aims to hold talks on January 25 in Geneva.

Saudi UN Ambassador Mouallimi said his countrys severing of ties with Iran would not affect its efforts to secure peace in Syria and Yemen. We will attend the next Syria talks and were not going to boycott them because of Iran or anybody else for that matter, he told reporters at the United Nations.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Saudi foreign minister on Monday that Riyadhs decision to break off diplomatic ties with Iran was extremely troubling.

The UN chief urged Saudi Arabia to renew a ceasefire it ended this weekend with the Iran-allied Shia Houthi group in Yemen that it has been bombing for nine months.
Netflix has another hit series on its hands that the world cannot stop talking about. "Making a Murderer" is the latest true crime documentary series that tells the story of Steven Avery, a man from Wisconsin who was released from prison after being wrongfully convicted for sexual assault only to be arrested and imprisoned for the murder of a young woman a few years later. The series was shot and produced over a 10-year period and explores all the twists and turns of Avery's intriguing case.

The new series has been closely compared to both the HBO true crime series "The Jinx" and the popular podcast "Serial." Like the two other series, the central question in "Making a Murderer" is: Did Avery actually commit the murder? If he is not guilty of the murder, then why was he convicted of it? One of the aims of the documentary is to show that Avery might have been framed for the crime.

Here are five things to know about the Netflix series "Making a Murderer."

1. Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault and spent 18 years behind bars even though he maintained his innocence

Avery was arrested for sexually assaulting a woman named Penny Beerntsen in 1985 even though there was no physical evidence that tied him to the crime. He was imprisoned for 18 years despite claiming his innocence the entire time, according to BuzzFeed. The documentary implies that the only reason Beerntsen identified Avery as her attacker was because authorities strongly suggested him. As a result he was sentenced to 32 years in prison.

After 18 years in prison, newly tested DNA evidence exonerated Avery in 2003 thanks to the Innocence Project. The man who was actually guilty of sexually assaulting Beerntsen, Gregory Allen, was ignored throughout the entire initial investigation. Avery was released from prison as a free man, but not for long.

2. Avery was arrested and charged for the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005

After Avery was released from prison he filed a $36 million civil suit against Manitowoc County for wrongful incarceration. In the middle of the lawsuit he was charged with another crime, the murder of car photographer Teresa Halbach. Halbach was a 25-year-old car photographer who worked for an automotive magazine. She had visited the Avery family's car salvage yard to photograph a minivan they had.

In October 2005, Halbach was reported missing. Avery was one of the last people to see the young woman alive, and there was a ton of evidence that came in that pointed towards Avery. His blood was found in Halbach's Toyota RAV4, which was discovered in the Averys' salvage yard, according to the New York Times. The key to her car was also found on the floor of Avery's bedroom and a bullet casing with her DNA was found in his garage. Fragments of Halbach's bones and teeth were also found in a fire pit next to Avery's home.

Brendan Dassey, the then 16-year-old nephew of Avery, confessed to police that he helped Avery kidnap and murder Halbach. Dassey is described multiple times in the series as someone who has learning disabilities and changed his statements multiple times. The makers of "Making a Murderer" aim to show that Dassey was allegedly prompted by authorities to pin Avery down as the murderer of Halbach.

Once again, Avery maintained his innocence and claimed that he was framed by officers who were angry at him due to the public humiliation they endured after he was exonerated. In order to finance his trial, Avery settled his pre-existing $36 million lawsuit with the county for only $400,000 and hired two experienced defense lawyers, Dean Strang and Jerome Buting. The case was lost and Avery was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Dassey was also found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

3. Avery is still imprisoned for the murder of Halbach

Both Avery and Dassey are still serving out their life sentences in prison and have appealed their cases to no avail. Avery is now acting as his own lawyer because he ran out of money and is no longer entitled to a court-appointed attorney, according to People. Avery has used up all of his state appeals and is trying to find a different way to get a new trial and lawyer.

Dassey is still receiving help from the lawyers at the Center of Wrongful Convictions of Youth. The organization is trying to get him a new trial and has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. The organization's argument is that his constitutional rights were violated when his confession was allegedly coerced by police and when his pre-trial lawyer allegedly worked with the prosecution.

4. It took 10 years to make the series

The creators of "Making a Murderer," Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, spent a decade following the case of Avery and compiling a 10-part true crime series. In 2005, Ricciardi, 45, and Demos, 42 were two graduate film students at Columbia University and had been dating for two years. The two were in in the middle of working on their theses when they read about Avery's case and thought it could be an opportunity for a documentary.

The two then traveled to to Manitowoc, Wis., to "test the waters to see if there was a story," according to the New York Times. They arrived at the initial hearing with other members of the media as well as onlookers who were all interested in the case. In January 2006 they subleased their apartment in New York City and moved to Manitowoc for a year and a half to work on the project.

Ricciardi and Demos shot more than 500 hours of interviews and visuals then recorded another 180 hours at the trials. As the two started to piece together their documentary, they met with executives from HBO, PBS and other various networks with no luck. The two continued to work on "Making a Murderer" and submitted a rough cut of three episodes with a proposal to Netflix in 2013. As a result, they were offered an eight-episode series, which was later expanded to 10.

5. There is a petition circling the Internet calling to pardon Avery.

After the success of "Making a Murderer," supporters of Avery have grown in numbers since the show premiered last month. More than 200,000 people have signed a petition that calls for President Barack Obama to pardon Avery and Dassey.

"Steven Avery should be exonerated at once by pardon, and the Manitowoc County officials complicit in his two false imprisonments should be held accountable to the highest extent of the U.S. criminal and civil justice systems," the Change.org petition reads.

Another petition was aimed at the White House and asked the president to pardon Avery and his nephew.

"There is clear evidence that the Manitowoc County sheriff's department used improper methods to convict both Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey," the White House petition reads.

"This is a black mark on the justice system as a whole, and should be recognized as such, while also giving these men the ability to live as normal a life as possible," the petition continues.

"Making a Murderer" is now available to stream on Netflix.

Check out the trailer for the true crime series below:

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Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Monday called for a group of armed protesters who occupied a federal building in Oregon over the weekend to "stand down peaceably."

"Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds," Cruz told reporters in Iowa, according to The Hill. "But we dont have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence against others. So it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation."

Republican presidential rival Marco Rubio also called for a peaceful solution but sympathized with the militia's stance on federal control over land.

"And I agree that there is too much federal control over land especially out in the western part of the United States," Rubio said Monday morning on Iowa radio station KBUR, according to Time. "There are states for example like Nevada that are dominated by the federal government in terms of land holding and we should fix it, but no one should be doing it in a way thats outside the law. We are a nation [sic] laws, we should follow those laws and they should be respected."

Ammon and Ryan Bundy are leaders of the armed protesters who have occupied a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, according to NBC News. Their father, Cliven Bundy, became known in 2014 when he staged an armed standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management. The group in Oregon says it is protesting the punishment of Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, a father and son who are due to return to jail Monday to serve out a five-year prison sentence for arson on nearby federal land.

Other 2016 candidates have largely been silent about the standoff. However, John Weaver, a senior aide for Democratic candidate John Kasich, said in a tweet: "I know a good federal compound for Bundy and his gang: a U.S. penitentiary."

I know a good federal compound for Bundy and his gang: a U.S. penitentiary.  John Weaver (@JWGOP) January 3, 2016

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Noe Juarez, a 20-year veteran of Houston's police force and named one of the Houston Police Officers' Union's "Officers of the Year" in 2009, was charged with drug and weapon trafficking based on damning evidence in two videos secretly recorded as part of a federal investigation into his involvement with the Zetas drug cartel in Mexico. The videos were obtained in April by news affliate KPRC.

Juarez worked off-duty as a security guard at "El Chapparo" nightclub, where the videos were recorded. One clip from March 2011 allegedly shows Juarez offering two assault rifles to an undercover federal agent in exchange for $4,500. A second video recorded in July 2011 allegedly shows him giving information to an informant on two license plate numbers he ran through the HPD database connected to people he was told owed $800,000 in gang money.

Investigators contend that Juarez had also been working as a "straw buyer" for his nephew and Zetas cartel member Efrain Grimaldo by purchasing automobiles for Grimaldo and his business associates to hide the owners' identities. Grimaldo was sentenced to 33 years in prison in September 2014 after being found guilty of distributing 3,615 lbs (1,640 kilograms) of cocaine throughout the U.S. Newly released court documents show that Juarez and Grimaldo have been participating together in the conspiracy to distribute cocaine from New York to Louisiana since 2006.

Juarez's lawyer, George Murphy, claimed in the bond hearing that his client was unaware that he was doing business with drug dealers. "He had no idea these people were associated with any drug activity at all, and if he had known he wouldn't have done it."

Juarez has consistently been rated as "outstanding" or "strong" on his performance reviews at the Houston Police Department, according to The Houston Chronicle. He has been suspended from the Houston police force and is being held in New Orleans, where his $500,000 bond was overruled by a federal judge. He faces life in prison if found guilty of his alleged crimes.

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A brief standoff involving 11 children hostages finally ended early on Monday after the suspect stabbed himself in the neck. Police surrounded an Atlanta hotel and SWAT was called in after a still-unidentified man took hostages at the Rite4Us Inn & Suites in Atlanta, Ga. Authorities previously feared that the incident would escalate since up to 11 children were reportedly inside the hotel, St. Louis Post Dispatch reported.

It is not yet clear what precipitated the standoff, which the police now call a hostage situation, but initial reports point to a domestic dispute that began around 2 a.m. between the injured man and a woman who were staying in the Rite4Us Inn & Suites in the Decatur area in DeKalb County. The children who were held hostage included a three-month-old baby, according to CBS News.

The unidentified assailant barricaded himself inside his room and refused to let the children leave. Authorities evacuated the hotel before proceeding with the assault. The incident ended around 7 a.m., according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The wounded kidnapper was rushed to a nearby hospital and is currently in critical condition. The woman and the children were not injured.

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Because grilled cheese is so widely-loved, everyone has their own way of making it. But we have some tips for you to make your grilled cheese even better. To make any grilled cheese shine, shred your cheese for even melting and use about 3 oz per sandwich. Also, always thoroughly grease your bread, be it with butter or olive oil, to get that crispy exterior and soft interior. Cook your grilled cheese in a pan over medium-low heat, never higher, to let the cheese melt slowly as the bread goes golden, explains Cafe Mom.

If you want to broaden your cheesy horizons though, try making one of these internationally-inspired grilled cheeses.

Spain: Manchego cheese and roasted red peppers are two ingredients found all over Spain, eaten plain or in delicious dishes. Use these two ingredients to make a grilled cheese that will transport you across the ocean. Manchego takes a while to melt, so shred it very finely and give this sandwich extra-low heat over a long time.

Cyprus: Halloumi, the salty, semi-hard cheese native to Cyprus, Greece and the Middle East is a very unique one, explains Hellim Halloumi. You can slice it and sear the pieces on a hot pan, leaving the outside crispy and the inside chewy and melty. To make a Cyprus-inspired grilled cheese, drizzle two slices of crusty bread with olive oil and toast them lightly. Grill some thin squares of halloumi in a pan and place them on the bread. Place the slices of bread with the cheese on them under the broiler for a quick minute to get the cheese to warm up. Top with arugula and a dollop of kalamata olive tapenade. Close the sandwich, and enjoy.

America: Kraft slices (or American cheese) on white bread. The recipe from Kraft is foolproof and will bring you back to your childhood.

Italy: Make your grilled cheese with olive oil, fresh rounds of mozzarella, a good smear of pesto and sliced tomatoes. You'll love it so much that you'll have to make a second one as soon as you finish it.

Mexico: Get your hands on some Oaxaca cheese, the most stringy and most wonderful of all the Mexican cheeses. Olive oil the outside of the bread and spoon some salsa verde onto the bread before you add the shredded cheese. Close and grill, low and slow, until you're in spicy, cheesy nirvana.

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A 16th century Scottish castle is on the verge of collapse after chunks of soil were swept away by floods caused by heavy rains, leaving the building just a few feet away from from the water's edge.

On Sunday, the caslte's owner, 76-year-old Baron John Gordon, was forced to evacuate the A-listed four-story building after the River Dee swept away a large portion of the land behind the property, leaving it at risk of collapsing into the now-swollen river, according to the BBC.

"It moved a 60-foot lump of ground and took a lot of big mature trees," said neighbor Gordon Fraser.

After evacuating, the baron was forced to take refuge in Fraser's home before moving on to another house on the 11,700-acre estate, according to the Daily Record.

"He left the castle when the river was at its height," Fraser said.

The baron, too upset about the ordeal, declined to talk to local news crews.

"John is at his wits' end. It's not only a home. It's the heritage, the history. Nothing can be done while the river is in spate like it is," said another neighbor, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Abergeldie Castle is located in Aberdeenshire and is an historic landmark. It was built by Sir Alexander Gordon of Midmar around 1566. It's believed to be haunted by a French serving woman named "French Kate" who was imprisoned in the cellars beneath the castle before she was burned alive after she was accused of being a witch.

In the meantime, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency issued more than 30 flood warnings on Monday in Tayside, Angus, Dundee and Aberdeenshire, as well as four flood alerts, as Scotland continues to clean up after Storm Frank ravaged the country last Wednesday.

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AirlineRatings.com has named Australia's flag carrier airline Qantas as the world's safest airline for the third year in a row, according to the Telegraph. The site, launched in 2013, serves as a feedback-driven ratings site that collects user reviews and other information to provide information about airports and airlines worldwide and annually presents listings of their findings as awards.

Qantas has come first for aviation safety out of the 407 airlines that AirlineRatings.com monitors, making it the third consecutive year that the airline has received the award, according to CNN. There are many criteria that AirlineRatings.com takes into account when deciding upon the award, which they detail on their site as including "factors related to audits from aviation's governing bodies and lead associations as well as government audits and the airline's fatality record."

Others that made it into the top 20 were American Airlines, Emirates, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, according to Yahoo! News.

The AirlineRatings.com editors also took note of public interest and released a list of the top ten safest airlines that are low cost but have still passed the International Air Transport Association Operational Safety Audit and have good safety records.

In alphabetical order, these are: Aer Lingus, Flybe, HK Express, Jetblue, Jetstar Australia, Thomas Cook, TUI Fly, Virgin America, Volaris and Westjet.

The AirlineRatings.com editors noted that Qantac took the title of world's safest airline again as a result of its 95-year history in which it has achieved "an extraordinary record of firsts in operations and safety and is now accepted as the industry's most experienced carrier."

The airline was also praised for its use of technologies such as the Flight Data Recorder to monitor plane and crew performance and real-time monitoring of engines, which AirlineRatings.com editors say has allowed the airline to "detect problems before they become a major safety issue."

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One U.S. Service member and two others were wounded during a joint U.S.-Afghan Special Operations mission near Marjah, located in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, U.S. Defense officials said Tuesday. Details about the battle are unclear, with officials at the U.S. military command in Kabul releasing a statement only saying that one of the soldiers died of wounds sustained "during operations" in Marjah and that two were wounded, according to the Associated Press.

Speaking for General John Campbell, spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan Brigadier General Wilson A. Shoffner expressed his condolences over the recent turn of events. "We are deeply saddened by this loss," he said, according to FOX News. "On behalf of General Campbell and all of USFOR-A, our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved."

A medical helicopter sent to the province to evacuate the wounded was reportedly forced to stay on the ground after coming under Taliban fire. Reports indicated that the helicopter had been shot down, but an official refuted those claims, saying that the helicopter landed safely but was experiencing mechanical problems after it was hit by a mortar shell.

"We can confirm a U.S. helicopter has landed in Marjah, Helmand Province, and is experiencing mechanical problems. It was not shot down," said Resolute Support Public Affairs Director U.S. Army Col. Michael Lawhorn, according to CNN.

News of the casualty comes after six U.S. airmen were killed by a suicide bomber near Bagram air base north of Kabul in December, bringing the total number of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan in 2015 to 22.

This incident marks the first U.S. casualty in 2016.

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Kuwait has recalled its ambassador to Iran following the execution of a Shia leader in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi embassy in Tehran was pillaged and burned on Saturday after its government executed 46 on Saturday, including Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. In response, Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran on Monday. The Sunni nation's allies Bahrain and Sudan followed suit. Kuwait marks the most recent nation to join them.

The conflict follows religious sectarian disputes. Iran found Saudi Arabia's action particularly offensive because the Sunni nation executed a Shia leader. Iran is the only country in the world that hosts a Shia majority and is governed by a Shia government.

"[Saudi Arabia] cannot hide its crime of beheading a religious leader by severing political relations with Iran," said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, according to the BBC.

The attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, however, has been condemned by Iranian officials. Brig. Gen. Mohsen Kazemini, commander of the Tehran unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a conservative military group, described the attack as "totally wrong," according to RT.

While several countries have downgraded their diplomatic ties with Iran, other Sunni-led nations have grown silent. Fearing internal insurgencies of their own, Egypt and Pakistan have remained conspicuously neutral.

Turkey has gone so far as to call for peace and calm. "Diplomatic channels must be given a chance immediately," said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, according to the New York Times.

The escalating sectarian conflict is concerning to those who hoped for peace in Syria and Yemen. Staffan Mistura, the UN's international envoy for peace in Syria, is struggling to reach out to the two nations. If the conflict cannot be solved soon, there appears to be little hope for the peace conference scheduled for the end of the month in Syria.

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Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union address on Jan. 12, 2016, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday. It will be President Barack Obama's final address.

"Nikki Haley has led an economic turnaround and set a bold agenda for her state, getting things done and becoming one of the most popular governors in America," Ryan said in a statement, according to USA Today. "In a year when the country is crying out for a positive vision and alternative to the status quo, Governor Haley is the exact right choice to deliver the Republican Address to the Nation."

In a statement, Haley said, "This is a time of great challenges for our country, but also of great opportunities. I intend to speak about both."

Haley, who was elected in 2010, has developed a national profile in serving as the youngest governor in the country and the first woman in South Carolina's history elected to the post. She was boosted in the national spotlight in July for successfully removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. That, along with her strong approval ratings and staunch conservatism, has earned her a spot on the short list for potential vice president candidates in Republican circles, according to National Review.

"Nikki Haley is a proven leader and committed reformer who believes deeply in the promise of the country we all share," McConnell said, the Post and Courier reported. "Not only has Governor Haley fought to bring opportunity and prosperity to the people of her state, but shes also demonstrated how bringing people together can bring real results. Governor Haley knows the American Dream and wants to see every American share in it, and were pleased that she will be delivering this years Republican Address."

The opposition party's response has typically been reserved for rising stars in politics. However, in recent years, it has also been a source of embarrassment, NBC pointed out. When Obama delivered his first address in 2009, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was mocked for his awkward delivery. In 2013, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took what became an infamous sip of water on camera that has become a running joke for the 2016 presidential candidate. And Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.), who gave the response in 2010, was convicted on felony corruption charges in 2014.

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Underprivileged patients in Southeast Asia are at major risk of disease-related financial catastrophe (FC), economic hardship (EH), and mortality.Researchers at the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) conducted a study of 9,513 cancer patients from 47 hospitals in eight low and middle-income Southeast Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). The patients were assessed at baseline, three months, and one year after diagnosis using cost diaries and questionnaires to determine risk of FC, EH, and impoverishment (living on less than USD 2/day). Analysis allowed death as a competing risk to assess the association between baseline socio-demographic status, FC, and EH.The results showed that one year after diagnosis, 29% of the patients had died, 48% experienced FC, and just 23% were alive with no FC. The risk of dying from cancer and facing catastrophic payments was associated with some clinical variables, such as a more advanced disease stage at diagnosis, as was socioeconomic status pre-diagnosis. Participants in the low income category within each country had significantly higher odds of FC and death than participants with high income, as were those without health insurance.The incidence of mortality and FC ranged from 12% and 45% (respectively) in Malaysia to 45% and 50% in Myanmar. Overall, cancer-induced EH was evident in one third of patients, of which 45% could not pay for medicines, and 28% resorted to taking personal loans; 5% percent of patients were pushed into poverty. The study was presented at the inaugural European society for medical oncology (ESMO) Asia Congress, held during December 2015 in Singapore.Cancer stage explained most of the financial catastrophic risk and premature deaths observed in the study, said senior author Nirmala Bhoo-Pathy, MD. However, low-income patients remained financially vulnerable, even when diagnosed at very early cancer stages. There appeared to be missed opportunities for surgery in patients with operable malignancies, particularly in low-income groups. Patients without health insurance also remained at higher risk of incurring catastrophic expenditures and dying, even in early stages.Early detection may provide the best avenue to favorably influence economic and disease outcomes in cancer patients from low- and middle-income Southeast Asian countries, followed by increasing accessibility to effective treatments and provision of financial risk protection, concluded Dr. Bhoo-Pathy. The health financing systems in these countries also requires re-examination to ensure that public funds are directed to patients who need them the most.
- T. S. Eliot

Thoughts After Lambeth

"The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."
The compelling reason is mobile - that is why you need a video component in any 2016 marketing and content creation strategy.

That is the takeaway from recent research conducted by Ipsos for Google. A foundational argument is that in the mobile age there has been a shift away from "the moment of truth" in selling to what Ipsos calls "micro moments:" "These micro-moments are the new battleground for hearts, minds, and wallets," said Ipsos.

The company elaborated: "Increasingly, we're seeing that these moments happen while people are watching video on their mobile devices. When it comes to digital video viewership, mobile's small but mighty screen is having a profound impact. In fact, 50% of global viewership on YouTube comes from mobile devices."

Tnooz has flamed this fire for hotel marketers in particular with statistics it attributes to Google UK sales director Dr. Bernd Fauser. The numbers jump off the page: 65% of consumers use video when thinking about taking a trip; 63% use it in deciding on an accommodation; and 67% use it in deciding on activities.

Isn't video just for millennials? Nope, although millennials are the most active group in watching. But the 55+ cohort is the second most active, according to Tnooz.

Those numbers add up to this: Ignore video at your own peril.

Is this a play for only the big budget crowd? Fauser said not in the Tnooz piece: "You don't need huge budgets, it's about the content people engage with. Anyone can be an artist, you just need a good idea. You can reach a lot of people in a very emotional way."

Creative imagination - not money - is the winning ingredient. So is emotional authenticity. Be real. Never be manipulative. Video is not your personal soapbox for shouting about your property's superiority in your opinion.

What else not to do: my advice is forget using models who look like models, actors who look like actors, and any script that reeks of the heavy hand of an anxious DoSM. You want video that seems natural, organic, unscripted.

And if guests are posting their own videos of your property, you are in clover. My suggestion: run a promotion where guests are explicitly encouraged to post videos - then hunt for them and link to the best, with a grateful hat tip to the artful guest.

The wonderful thing: hotels and especially resorts usually have much that lends itself to video moments.

Right now, I am working up a video menu for a resort in Arizona that will highlight the property's lovely and unique art collection, the gorgeous patio dining, the location with a picture perfect view of Camelback Mountain, and the spacious, tastefully decorated rooms. Over time the video library will grow - videos of moments in the many classes offered by the resort are an obvious addition - but the immediate objective is just to get started.

These will all be short videos, really just a few minutes apiece. But storyboard the video before shooting. Do this quickly and easily by assembling a sequence of still photos that tell the story - and, oh yes, every video should in fact tell a story. Yes, I said the video should seem unscripted - but definitely script it. It is too easy to make three minutes of nothing that just bores viewers.

When we have the videos in hand, the present plan is to host them at Google's YouTube, with links to same from the resort's website.

The rest of the plan is to do silent films no audio - and that means very probably the iPhone 6 camera will be good enough. An advantage of using a smartphone: it just does not seem too slick, too sales and marketing in character. Its informality ought to work to heighten effectiveness especially for mobile phone watchers.

We'll also closely monitor comments on the videos we post - and use that viewer feedback to better shape ongoing efforts.

Want more inspiration? Start by looking at any videos posted by your competitive set. Add in study of some of the top video travel bloggers.

And have fun. Content created without a spirit of fun just flops. Always.

Babs Harrison

Babs Harrison + Partners

Babs Harrison + Partners
Conferred to recognize individuals with visionary leadership and significant contribution to the tourism sector, the UNWTO Lifetime Achievement Award has been bestowed on the deceased Arthur Haulot, founder of the International Social Tourism Organization (ISTO/OITS), for his pioneer work in promoting social tourism and the right to tourism for all.

Born in Belgium in 1913, Arthur Haulot founded the International Social Tourism Organization (ISTO/OITS) in Belgium in 1963. The Organization regrouped 170 active organizations in 35 countries in the Americas, Europe and Africa. The ISTO/OITS is currently an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote access to leisure, holidays and tourism for all.

Mr Haulot was also President of the International Union of Official Travel Organisations (IUOTO), precursor of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

Mr Haulot was instrumental in the foundation of the European Travel Commission (1946), the first Regional Commission within IUOTO, where he became chairman and played a key role in the granting of United Nations (UN) consultative status to IUOTO in 1948 and the designation by the UN of 1967 as the International Year of Tourism. In 1973, he founded the International Bureau of Social Tourism and became its Secretary General until 1988.

Honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels, Mr Haulot was a writer, a poet and the founder of the Biennale de Poesie de Liege. Arthur Haulot was also the director of 'Journal of Poets' and the president of the International House of Poetry. He was a member of the Socialist Party, established the basis of the National Youth Council and a respected Minister of Tourism, and one of the pioneers for ensuring the rights to tourism for all, social tourism.

Mr Haulot dedicated his life to tourism  in 1938 he was appointed as inspector at the National Holiday Office workers and later in 1939 as Commissioner General for Tourism (equivalent to Minister of Tourism in Belgium), a post he held for thirty-three years.

Mr Haulot passed away on May 25, 2005. The Award will be presented to his family during the UNWTO Awards Ceremony on 20th January 2016 in the framework of the Spanish Tourism Fair FITUR.

Additional information:

About The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations specialized agency fostering tourism as a vehicle for equal, inclusive and sustainable development. Working with its Member States, international organizations and the private sector, UNWTO promotes safe and seamless travel for all. UNWTO also works to make tourism the foundation of trust and international cooperation and a central pillar of recovery. As part of the wider UN system, UNWTO is at the forefront of global efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including through its ability to create decent jobs, promote equality and preserve natural and cultural heritage.

Follow UNWTO on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin.

Rut Gomez Sobrino

Principal Media Officer

(+34) 91 567 81 60

UNWTO
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Courtyard by Marriott Nizhny Novgorod City Center Opens in Russia

Courtyard by Marriott Nizhny Novgorod City Center opened its doors in one of Russias most important historical city centres on 18 December 2015. Close to the business district and attractions, including the main pedestrian street Nizhegorodsky Kremlin, the hotel, the 7th Courtyard branded hotel in Russia offers 143 rooms including a Presidential Suite with its own private entrance.

The hotels architecture is an extraordinary mix of modern and traditional with half a modern building connected to a 19th century renovated house that once belonged to a famous city merchant. It represents the charming architecture found in Western European art nouveau town houses.

The Courtyard design offers great efficiencies for business travelers with a flexible and minimalist space, while providing 24-hour access to food and drink. Free WIFI is available in all public areas, where guests can choose between more formal business meeting setting and relaxed seating for social gatherings.

The hotels ballroom, Svetloyar, housed in the historical part of the hotel preserved the luxurious style of 18th century Russian ballrooms and in keeping with this style, will serve Russian and European cuisine. Center 46 bistro is located in the hotels lobby and will cater for more casual dining and all day refreshments.

A fully equipped conference and boardroom make up the hotels meeting space, hosting up to 150 guests and offering state of the art technology and services to ensure excellent meeting experiences. In addition, the hotel can help with visa applications for guests and delegates.

Courtyard by Marriott celebrated its 1000th hotel milestone in March 2015 with the opening of Courtyard Washington Walla Walla, USA and has the largest global rooms pipeline across the Marriott portfolio. With a current presence in all 50 U.S. states, nearly 50 percent of new projects are expected be outside of the brands home country in the coming years, including two new hotels planned for Europe by the end of 2016. Courtyard celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2013 and remains Marriotts second largest revenue generator.
[T]he governments interest in veterans cases is not that it shall win, but rather that justice shall be done, that all veterans so entitled receive the benefits due to them. Barrett v. Nicholson, 466 F.3d 1038, 1044 (Fed.Cir.2006)
AC Hotels By Marriott to Open 22 Hotels In 2016

AC Hotels by Marriott today announced global plans for 22 new design-led hotels slated to open in 2016. January 2016 is expected to bring five AC hotels, AC Guadalajara Mexico; AC Cincinnati North/West Chester, OH; AC Boston North, MA; AC Marseille, France; and AC Queretaro, Mexico. Additional properties expected to open in 2016 include:

AC Panama City, Panama AC Santiago, Chile AC San Jose Downtown, CA AC Manchester England, UK AC Atlanta North, GA AC Des Moines Downtown, IA AC Asheville, NC AC Santa Fe, Mexico AC Rio Barra de Tijuca, Brazil AC Minneapolis, MN AC Rio Porto Maravilha, Brazil AC Mainz, Germany AC Herzliya, Israel AC Wroclaw, Poland AC Birmingham England, UK AC Boston Cambridge, MA AC Phoenix Tempe, AZ

AC Hotels celebrates the beauty of classic modern designs with its European soul and Spanish roots, born from the signature vision of renowned hotelier Antonio Catalan, who founded the brand in 1998 and grew it into one of the most well-respected hotel brands in Spain. Following its success in Europe, a joint venture was formed with Marriott International in 2011, which launched AC Hotels by Marriott globally into France, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and the U.S.

Based on a belief that purposeful design improves lives, AC Hotels carves away what is unnecessary, in order to provide guests with thoughtfully designed moments of beauty; moments that elevate their stay and help them focus on what is important to them. That is why at all AC Hotels guests get only what they need, without paying for what they don't. The result is sophisticated yet unpretentious style, innovative beverage and food programming and locally inspired experiences for both guests and locals.

"AC Hotels by Marriott is a new breed of lifestyle hotels created to inspire the next-generation traveler through innovative design," explains Tina Edmundson, Global Officer, Luxury and Lifestyle Brands, Marriott International. "Our rapidly growing portfolio of design-led hotels illustrates Marriott International's commitment to making distinctive architecture and design affordable and accessible for creatives and entrepreneurs around the worldappealing to a large and growing demographic, with a robust development pipeline to match."



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AC Hotels by Marriott is designed for those creative, well-traveled, entrepreneurial spirits who are constantly on the go and who appreciate the oasis of a well-designed hotel that allows them to welcome moments of tranquility, be present and connect with others. Beautiful layers of deep gray and charcoal tones create a sophisticated and modern European sensibility, showcasing a timeless design that is contemporary and sleek. Guest rooms incorporate monochromatic schemes, with clean lines and hardwood floors. Furniture is lifted from the ground to create a sense of space and crisp white linens are used to craft a look that's both refined and elegant. The AC Lobby features the brand's signature open-concept spaces and features a thoughtfully selected collection of inviting furnishings, modern designs and textures that evoke the feeling of a well-curated art gallery. Ambient lighting and cozy seating in the AC Library and Lounge areas invites travelers to relax in chic surroundings, while also creating an effortless space in which to conduct a business meeting or connect with friends over cocktails. Each AC Hotel is designed to reflect the uniqueness and character of its urban location.

Beverage and Food Programming

At AC Hotels, premium touches are balanced with comfortable service. A signature element of the hotel includes an innovative beverage and food program within its AC Lounge. A twist on the traditional hotel bar, the experience includes offerings of local craft beers, specialty wines, expertly made signature cocktails and a selection of tapas-style small bites.

Located adjacent to the AC Lounge, the AC Kitchen serves a European-inspired continental breakfast selection of flaky croissants, savory egg tarts and Nespresso coffee. A signature piece in all AC Hotels is the Berkel slicer, offering visitors hand-cut meats including artisanal La Quercia Prosciutto for a true taste of Europe.

AC Library

The AC Library provides a quiet space to linger and peruse the selection of inspiring titles that line the shelves, ranging from modern art to design, all in a soothing environment. Each AC Library features a rotating selection of specially selected reads by guest curators. Currently, Nigel Barker's handpicked reading list rests at AC Hotel Miami Beach.

Additional Amenities

Complimentary Wi-Fi is offered for guests and locals to work, connect, explore and socialize. When a private meeting area is needed, guests can book a variety of spaces, which vary in size and are equipped with the latest audio-visual technology. State-of-the-art fitness centers and on-site parking round out the hotels' offerings. To facilitate frictionless service Kallpods, wireless service buttons, are provided in the public and meetings spaces -- enabling guests to immediately request a staff member's attention.

AC Hotels by Marriott guests who are enrolled in the award-winning Marriott Rewards loyalty program are able to earn points during their hotel stays that can be redeemed for free holidays, flights, hotel rooms and merchandise, including jewelry, home furnishings, fashion and more.

AC Hotels by Marriott is a lifestyle brand within the Marriott International global portfolio of 19 brands. The brand currently offers a portfolio of more than 80 hotels in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Turkey, France and the United States. Growth plans include more than 50 hotels set to open within the next three years throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Latin America. AC Hotels by Marriott debuted its first U.S. location in November 2014 in the iconic Cotton Exchange Building in New Orleans, followed by AC Kansas City in March 2015, AC Hotel Washington D.C. at National Harbor in April 2015, AC Chicago in May 2015, and AC Hotel Miami Beach in June 2015.
Rosewood Hotel Group to require HFTP certification for information technology staff

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) Certified Hospitality Technology Professional (CHTP) certification program has been named a requirement for the information technology staff of the prominent Rosewood Hotel Group. Current IT professionals employed at Rosewood Hotel Group are diligently working to obtain their CHTP designation. Rosewood Hotel Group is the first group certification HFTP has coordinated, and has been a success from the get-go.

Since its inception the CHTP designation has been a benchmark of knowledge and skill for the hospitality technology industry, says HFTP CEO Frank Wolfe, CAE. It has been well-documented that holding a CHTP designation leads to better job opportunities, career advancement and higher salaries and HFTP is thrilled to have Rosewood Hotel Group recognize the prestige that this certification carries.

Andy Tjan, CHTP and corporate director of technology and innovation for Rosewood Hotel Group explains, "We are firmly committed to continuing education within our profession and ensuring that we effectively adapt to changing technologies and evolving our business practices to match. HFTPs newest generation of technology certification effectively marries industry experience with core technology knowledge. Frank (Wolfe) and the team have done an exceptional job representing hospitality IT professionals, and we are so excited to demonstrate our support by certifying our entire IT group."

CHTP designees from U.S.-based Rosewood properties include: Jennifer Hysaw, Kelly Moore, Shafiq Rhaman, Jonathan Watje and Spencer Wheatcroft. CHTP designees from U.K.-based Rosewood properties include: Dzmitry Isakou, Mat Kolarik and Barry Thomas. CHTP designees from other Rosewood locales include: Ravi Veerasawmy -- Abu Dhabi and Dwyer Williams -- Caribbean.

The CHTP exam was recently updated by a committee of industry professionals to ensure that the material covered is current with industry knowledge and practices. Exam questions are routinely evaluated for clarity, validity and timeliness for the benefit of the individual and industry employers at large.

HFTP offers two certifications: Certified Hospitality Technology Professional (CHTP) and the Certified Hospitality Accountant Executive (CHAE). Both designations require professionals to sit for an initial competency exam and complete continuing education credits for each renewal cycle. Becoming certified indicates that the individual is committed to professionalism, continuing education and the chosen career path.

For more information on HFTPs certification programs (CHTP and CHAE), please contact Robin Bogdon, HFTP Certification Manager, at Robin.Bogdon@hftp.org.

About HFTP

HFTP, founded in 1952 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA with additional offices in Maastricht, The Netherlands, and Kowloon, Hong Kong, is the global professional association for financial and technology personnel working in hotels, clubs and other hospitality-related businesses. HFTP provides first class educational opportunities, research, and publications to members around the globe including, the premiere hospitality technology conference HITEC  founded in 1972. HFTP also awards the only hospitality specific certifications for accounting and technology  the Certified Hospitality Accountant Executive (CHAE) and the Certified Hospitality Technology Professional (CHTP) designations. HFTP was founded in the USA as the National Association of Hotel Accountants.
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New series of your favourites, and some brand new additions, are on their way to the streaming service

With the likes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Narcos and Marco Polo landing on our screens with an almighty bang, 2015 was a landmark year for Netflix's original offerings - and the good news is that things only look brighter for the coming 12 months.

Those favourites all return to the streaming service in 2016, with the charge led by the fantastic Better Call Saul (above), which premieres from February 16. House of Cards will arrive fast on its heels on March 4, and the likes of Orange Is The New Black, Daredevil and Bloodline will also be returning to our screens.

As far as new content is concerned, there's not long to go until one that we're particularly excited about appears; Flaked, which stars Will Arnett - who joins forces with former Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz - will also see Irish actress Ruth Kearney assume a lead role.

Irish eyes will also be smiling when the first ever Netflix Original from these shores arrives; Jadotville, a filim centred on a UN batallion under siege in the Congo, will break our national duck on the service, with 50 Shades star Jamie Dornan front and centre.

Throw in War Machine (a provocative comedy set in the Afghan war and starring Brad Pitt), Baz Luhrmann's much-anticipated series The Get Down, and even a long-awaited fowwow-up to Full House - Fuller House, obviously enough - and it's a wonder that we'll make it off the couch at all this year...
Hot Press' Stuart Clark gives his top 10 tips for people wanting to work in music

Enrolment is underway for the 2016 MIX (Music Industry Xplained) course, which runs every Tuesday night from February 2-April 28 in Dublin city centre. Brought to you by Hot Press and featuring prominent guest lecturers from all areas of the business, it's aimed at those who want to succeed in music, management, media, publicity, promotion, publishing, record labels and lots more. Our Assistant Editor, Stuart Clark, has some advice for those wanting to work in the industry...

1. Get involved. Even if its just helping a band out with a bit of PR, running a gig in a pub backroom or maintaining a music blog, it will help you make contacts and look good on your CV.

2. Find out who the key players are in the Irish music industry. The Hot Press Yearbook is a great source of info, as are the About Us and Contacts sections of record, radio, music rights and PR company websites.

3. Build a profile on Twitter. By following the right people and interacting smartly with them, your name will get known and youll also get a sense of how they operate.

4. Keep abreast of industry developments. Knowing what the likes of Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Time Warner etc. are up to is essential, as is an awareness of who the hot start-ups are.

5. A polite email to people working in the industry seeking advice often yields positive results. I sent a DJ demo aged 14 to Tony Blackburn, and got a wonderfully constructive letter in return, which really got me fired up.

6. Remember that prospective employers/clients are likely to check your social media to get a sense of who you are - and how you behave/misbehave! Dont post anything that you wouldnt want them to know.

7. The more you can do, the more youre worth to those prospective employers/clients. Social media skills, being able to maintain websites and mailing-lists etc. are all big plusses. Unsexy as they might be, even a basic understanding of stuff like VAT, tax and contractual law will also stand you in good stead.

8. I was at a gig and got pissed! is not an excuse for missing your 9am appointment! You have to be as punctual and professional as you would in any other industry.

9. Be nice! Compatibility is as important as ability when youre slotting into whats often a small team. People in the industry compare notes, so prima donnas rarely prosper.

10. Dont give up! Theres a lot of knocking on doors and unreturned emails, but if youre good youll get a gig.

Get the full MIX (Music Industry Xplained) lowdown at [link]hotpress.com/mix[/link] or contact Louise Zayed at [email protected] or (01) 24 11 500.
The Irish actress won the award for Best Actress last night at the prestigious awards show.

The 21 year old actress won the award for her performance as Eilis Lacey in the film Brooklyn adapted from the novel of the same name by Colm Toibin.

Brooklyn has received a rapturous response from both critics and audiences alike. The film tells the story of a young woman's emigration from Ireland in the 1950's to New York in search of a better life. While there she falls in love with an Italian-American and the film portrays the young woman's struggle to adapt to her new life.

Speaking at the awards ceremony last night, Ronan spoke of how the role was perfect for her as she was born in the Bronx to Irish parents before moving back to Ireland.

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Im one of you she said to the New York audience last night. I am from the Bronx, after all. Saoirse from the Block is what they call me, she joked, referring to Jennifer Lopezs Jenny from the Block.

With the Oscar nomination ballot due out this coming Friday, last night's award ceremony is often a good indication of Academy Award nominations. Fingers crossed that it won't be the last gong Ronan will receive this year.
Their 'Walter Presents...' strand brings together shows from Sweden, Belgium, Argentina, France, Germany and beyond...

[link]channel4.com[/link] has unveiled its new Walter Presents brand, the Walter in question being Global Series Network Chief Creative Officer, Walter Iuzzolino, whos scoured the world for the best shows to stream free of charge by registering on the site.

Their flagship is Deutschland 83, the Cold War tale of an East German soldier forced to spy on the West, which Channel 4 are airing conventionally as well on Sunday nights.

You can also gorge on full box-sets of Cenk Batu, another German series thats described as Inspector Montalbano on speed; Czech police thriller The Lens; Pure Evil, an Argentine series in which a psychopathic sect leader vows to make a former policeman and criminologists life a living hell, and award-winning Swiss poker thriller 10.

Debuting this Friday at 9pm on More4 and available after that for Walter Presents catch-up is the If House of Cards and Borgen were set in Paris Spin; Blue Eyes, which is described as Political intrigue, violent murders, and high level corruption, Swedish-style; Thicker Than Water, A glorious Nordic Noir with a difference, set in the enchanting Swedish archipelago, and smash hit Belgian black comedy Clan, which is apparently Desperate Housewives on acid.

Let us also point you in the direction of the 100 Code, a Fortitude-style international collaboration that focuses on an American cop who transfers to the Swedish police force. It starts its Sky Atlantic run at 10pm on Wednesday January 6.
The Houston Area Chamber of Commerce will host its annual banquet at 5:30 p.m. Saturday in the community building at the chambers fairgrounds on U.S. 63 north of town.

The event will have a beach theme and dinner will be catered by Two Good Cooks.

Representatives of KZ88 radio station (FM 88.1 in Cabool) will conduct an audio scavenger hunt, and a surfs-up contest will also take place, with prizes being presented.

Tickets can be purchased in advance for $20 per person, and can be obtained at the visitors center on Walnut Street in Houston or by contacting any chamber board member. Tickets will be available at the door for $25.

For more information, call 417-967-2220.
Crazy Trapped In The Closet Story

This Hilarious Twitter Story About A Girl Trapped In The Closet Will Kill You

Do you remember Zola and her wacky stripping adventures in Florida and how they blew your Twitter timeline open? Well, if youve been looking for your next Twitter yarn, look no further than Xavier Burgin, tweeting under the moniker @XLNB. The filmmaker begins his fictional story by asking one of his lady friends why she is still single (yikes!) then quickly devolves into a hilarious story about hooking up and calling lady parts apple pie. If youve been needing a good laugh, or just want to see Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Photoshopped onto a bunch of random stuff, check out the thread. The story is filled with intrigue, mystery men named X, and belly-laughs, so give it a read before you miss out on the water-cooler moment of the week.

So a few days ago I asked one of my homegirls why she's been single for a second. She's fine, good job, no kids, independent, etc  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

She tells me, Its cuz Ive been trapped in the closet. Every girl has a trapped in the closet moment.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Of course, Im curious so I ask, Watchu mean trapped in the closet Tina? Like, youre wondering if you like girls?  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Shes like, Nah, let me break this down for you X.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

So I met this dude right, X. He cute. Bout a 7 or 8. Smart, good head on his shoulders. Hes a nurse. I like male nurses. Its my thing.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Me & him been talking for a second. All chill & good. A few dates, and he invites me over to his house. Like a Netflix and chill type thing.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

So you know me, X. Imma take the plunge. Maybe get it popping. I done seen him in the sweatpants. He gots an anaconda.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

So I head over to his house that night. I done got myself all ready. Pooched the cooch. Tidied up. Imma let him catch these cookies.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) First time Ive ever heard a girl say pooch the cooch. Im listening real intently like pic.twitter.com/kUvSIbLi06  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) So me and oldboy sitting on his couch. We snuggled up, feeling all good and stuff. Then he asks me a question  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

So what you think about starting us? Im like, Watchu mean start us? Hes like,We been talking and I wanna take it to the next level  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Of course this is exactly what I wanna hear X. Men these days just drag it out and you gotta force them to acknowledge you.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

I aint that kinda girl. I dont make the first move. Im old school. The man leads and I wanna follow. He cant lead, I cant follow.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

So when he said this I was justI was just happy. To see a man take the first step and let me know hes ready for something. Thats real.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

So I crawl up in his arms real tight. I can likefeel myself just twinkling so next thing you knowwe in the bedroom.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Were ripping off clothes. Hes kissing me like a lion in heat. He scoop me up and throw me on the bed and my lady parts feel like apple pie  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) Who call they lady parts apple pie? pic.twitter.com/KW73ViwU0b  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) So he done whipped off everything but my panties and Im ready for this man to take me on a journey.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

He get on top of me. I can feel his shoulders just covering my whole body. Hes making my womanhood quiver. Just Qua-evvv-rrr  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Guess what he whisper in my ear X?  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) What he whisper in ya ear Tina? pic.twitter.com/sIsYr1swtt  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) That man told me hes about to make my body gush like Im chasing waterfalls & tasting heaven.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Yes X. Like waterfalls. Like Im falling in water of falls. At this point I just wanna have his babies and start a family  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Just as hes about to whip out the meat.we hear a banging at the door.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Someone is screaming. Like, screaming they lungs out. Its a womans voice. It sounds like shes gone break down the door, X.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) Im on the edge my seat listening like pic.twitter.com/dXhsh1naiN  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Oldboy face goes white. Like, Tom Hanks. He looks at me and says#8230;get in the closet.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Im likewhat you meanget in the closet? I aint getting in no closet. This n*gga picks me up and throws me into the closet.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

He shuts the closet door and runs out to the front door. Be reminded, I aint got nothing but my panties on. Im nekkid  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Nekkid on the floor in his closet next to some timbs and Gucci flip flops. At this point, Im too in shock to even get up.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) Im sitting beside Tina thinking, not some Gucci flip flops pic.twitter.com/dRkMULQBD7  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Im about to bust out the closet. Who TF he think he is. Like, how dare he do some foul sh*t like this!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

But right as Im bout to bust that closet open I hear screaming from the living room. Oldboy and whoever homegirl is, they going at it!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

I mean, she screaming. Who TF you think you are Kevin. How you gone sit up here and do this to me! I been fighting for you Kevin! Fighting!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

I back away from the closet door. F*ck! This POS got a girl! He got a girl and Im stuck on his fing closet while they fighting!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

She screaming! And cussing him out. He tryna calm her down. And thenthey bust into his room  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) My hands cringing like this pic.twitter.com/qEayiZsTof  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Xavier  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Xavieritjust  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) WHAT IS IT TINA! pic.twitter.com/Kef4mMSfSu  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) It wasnt a woman that bust thru that door Xavier  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Im in the closet Xavier. Im in the closet while the man I wanted to have my babies is fightingwith his boyfriend.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Kevin saying, Chris, baby just calm down you dont know what youre talking bout. Chris like,I know what you been doing!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Kevin trying to calm Chris down. And Chris, Chris is just hysterical. Chris screams,Oh yea! Chris starts walking towards the closet  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Chris gets closer and closer to the closet. I am in shock, X. I cannot move. I cannot think. Chris can prolly hear me breathing I swear  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Then Chris opens  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) Im in the cut listening to Tina like pic.twitter.com/nVkNACUmqJ  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) his phone. I immediately see pix of Kevin. Explicit pics. Like, some BET Uncut sh*t.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

X, I immediately realize Kevin anaconda done slithered across every continent. Chris dont even know nothing bout me. I aint even in this.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Chris throws up his phone and just screams, So whats all this huh! Who all these motherf*ckers! Who is dey Kevin. WHO. IS. DEY!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Kevin grabs Chris & starts kissing him. Chris is trying to fight him off, I hate you Kevin! I hate you! I hate you! Everything about you!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

But Kevin. Look X its obvious he done been thru this before. Hes kissing on Chris and pulling off all his clothes.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

And Chris is justhe cant even help himself. Kevin drops his drawers and it just flops out like a baby elephant.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) I just want to leave at this point, but nowI gotta finish hearing this story. pic.twitter.com/ULb0SO7x6c  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Then Kevin picks Chris up & tells him,Dont worry baby, Imma make ya body gush like ya chasing waterfalls&tasting heaven.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

And thats when I snapped X. I snapped. Every cell in my body saw red and thenthen  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

I farted X. I was so mad, I farted in the closet.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) Im looking at Tina like pic.twitter.com/MWZZTtN36E  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Everything stops. We all get quiet. You can hear a pin drop. Chris pushes Kevin off him, and looks dead at the closet.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Chris touches the handle of the closet door  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) Im just like, Chris plz stop pic.twitter.com/3xcaM9CvQJ  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Chris opens up the door and  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) I hit that n*gga with the Gucci flip flop. Chris falls to the floor and I run into the living room!  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

I grab my purse. F*ck my clothes. And I dash out the front door. In my panties. Dead at night. Straight to my car.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

As Im driving away. I just let it all out. I just start f*cking crying. Like, tears. Real tears.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) I just sit there. Astounded. I ask, Why did you cry?  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Cuz I didnt deserve this. No woman deserves this, X. It aint about him having a boyfriend.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

It aint about him being a cheater. Its about me. ME. When everything else dies, Ill still be here waiting for someone to do me right.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

Why X? Why do we give ppl so much. Me & Chris. Why do we pour our hearts out and get so little in return?  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Me) I really, really do wish I knew the answer.  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to Tina) Every girls has their trapped in the closet moment,X. To be honest, it aint always this f*cking sad, and thus f*cking funny  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

(Back to me) You right. But real talk Tinawhy you had to Hitm with a Gucci flip flop? pic.twitter.com/skjXbeFv2J  X (@XLNB) November 19, 2015

RELATED READING: This Guy Got Majorly Pranked On Tinder - And Started Getting Tons Of Dick Pics
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Equifax Workforce Solutions Honored with Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry Fast Track Award Equifax Recognized as One of the Fastest Growing Organizations in Missouri

Posted by Press Releases on Tuesday, 01-05-2016 4:24 am

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ST. LOUIS (Dec. 18, 2015)  Equifax Workforce Solutions, a leader in human resource, analytics and verification services, and a business unit of Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX), today announced it has been named a winner of the 2015 Fast Track Award by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, highlighting the companys impressive record of continued growth. Dann Adams, president of Equifax Workforce Solutions, accepted this prestigious award during the Missouri Chamber 2015 Annual Meeting and Awards Banquet, held on Thursday, November 19, 2015 at the Intercontinental Kansas City. Through the annual Fast Track Award, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry recognizes the fastest growing companies in the state, based on their revenue over the past four years. Companies that earn this award represent a diverse range of industries and share a common ability to identify market opportunities and inspire their workforces to achieve them. Under Adams leadership, Equifax ...

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I first wrote about the possibility of employees seeking unpaid overtime for time spent away from work checking emails on mobile devices all the way back in 2007, and have kept writing about it since (for example, here and here). Now, more than eight years later, we finally have the first judicial decision on whether non-exempt employees are owed overtime or other compensation for this off-the-clock time. The result is a mixed bag for employers. In Allen v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill. 12/10/15) [pdf], the court held that the Chicago Police Department did not violate the FLSA by failing to pay police officers for off-duty time working on their employer-issued BlackBerrys. Yet, the case is not a clear win for employers across the board. The court applied a two-pronged test to determine whether the police officers were entitled to overtime for off-duty emailing. 1. Did they perform compensable work for which they were not paid? 2. Did the employer have actual or constructive knowledge that the employees performed work without compensation? On the first question, the court determined that some, but not all, of the off-duty activities the employees performed on their Blackberrys constituted compensable work under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The court drew a line between those tasks necessary to the employees jobs (compensable) and those incidental and non-essential (not compensable). The department-issued BlackBerrys give the pl...
In a recent opinion, the Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld a judgment in favor of a healthcare employee that alleged wrongful termination of employment following her repeated refusal to work mandatory overtime. The judgment included damages of $121,869.93 and an order reinstating the employee to her former position. The courts opinion focused on the question of whether an employers violation of Act 102 can form the basis of a wrongful termination action. The court answered that question affirmatively in the case of Roman v. McGuire Memorial. Pennsylvanias Act 102, the Prohibition of Excessive Overtime in Healthcare Act, generally provides that a covered health care facility may not require an employee to work in excess of a predetermined and regularly scheduled work shift. This prohibition is aimed at limiting situations where employees of covered health care facilities are mandated to work overtime with little or no advance notice. Health care facilities covered by Act 102 include most hospitals and long-term care facilities. In this case, the employee alleged that she was terminated after her fourth refusal to work overtime mandated by her employer, a covered healthcare facility. The employer had a policy in place requiring direct care workers to work mandatory overtime. The employee claimed that she informed her employer that she could not accept mandatory overtime due to childcare responsibilities. She also claimed th...
Thoughts on recent Ninth Circuit and California appellate cases from Professor Shaun Martin at the University of San Diego School of Law.
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The Edmonton mother of two boys who were killed by their father testified in a fatality inquiry Monday that she feels their deaths were entirely preventable.

Andrea Badger said that her requests for the province to monitor Jason Cardinal's mental health and to impose supervised visits with her sons were ignored, reported the Edmonton Sun.

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The bodies of six-year-old Caleb and three-year-old Gabriel Cardinal were found in their father's home just before Christmas in 2010. Jason Cardinal is currently serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in the boys' deaths.

"He was going to do something. Hurt himself or others."

Cardinal told the inquiry on Monday that he suffers from a mental illness, and was only sporadically taking his medication at the time.

"It was deteriorating and he was being pushed like a rat in a corner," Badger said, according to CBC News. "He was going to do something. Hurt himself or others."

Cardinal refused to answer most questions at the inquiry, and was removed from the stand after he asked to be treated as a "hostile witness."

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Worried about losing custody

Before leaving the proceeding, he called Child and Family Services "horrible," and said that on the day he killed his children, he was worried about losing custody, said the Calgary Herald.

The boys lived primarily with their mother and spent weekends with Cardinal. When she went to pick them up that December weekend, nobody answered the door. Police later found the brothers strangled to death, as well as Cardinal who was suffering from self-inflicted wounds.

Badger filed a lawsuit against Alberta and children's services in 2013. She contends that if Cardinal had been supervised, her sons' deaths may have been prevented.

The fatality inquiry isn't looking into how the boys died, but is seeking to answer why, inquiry lawyer Peter Duckett said.

With files from The Canadian Press

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Donald Iain Smith via Getty Images Girl sitting in front of flat screen television in dark room.

A group of unions and guilds involved in Canadas media industry are pressuring the federal Liberal government to undo changes to TV rules announced under the previous Harper government.

Starting this year, Canadians will be able to pick and choose the cable or satellite TV channels they buy, a move many consumers' advocates applauded. But a new study commissioned by those media groups argues those and other changes will harm the economy.

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Specialty channels are at risk of disappearing and Canadian content will suffer under the new pick-and-pay rules, according to the report issued Tuesday.

It says the changes to TV regulations will cause more than 15,000 direct and indirect job losses by 2020, and will reduce Canadas economic output by $1.4 billion by that time.

"For good reason the new government has abandoned Stephen Harper's policy of denigrating the CBC. It should take the same approach to the CRTC's [TV] decisions, said Ian Morrison, spokesperson for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, in a statement.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting was one of the groups that commissioned the report, along with performers' guild ACTRA, the Canadian Media Guild, the Directors Guild of Canada and Unifor.

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Changes to Canadian TV distribution rules will cost a cumulative total of more than 15,000 jobs, and will reduce GDP by a total of $1.4 billion by 2020, a new report predicts. (Chart: Friends of Canadian Broadcasting)

Under pressure from the former government, the Commission placed so-called consumer protection ahead of the cultural and democratic interests of citizens and creators in its decisions, Morrison said.

The previous Harper government championed consumer-friendly TV and telecom policies (though some argue they failed to deliver) and it was under its watch that the new TV rules were announced.

The new federal Liberal government has not suggested it would like to see any of the CRTCs rule changes undone, but some experts argue the Liberals are likely to be friendlier to the telecom and media industries than the previous Conservative government was.

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CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais talks to reporters at the CRTC offices in Gatineau, Que., March 19, 2015. (Canadian Press photo)

The CRTCs new rules, announced last year, will require TV providers to offer smaller bundled channels or a-la-carte channels by March of this year, and both by the end of this year.

Broadcasters can also keep their existing bundled channel packages, but they will be required to offer a skinny basic channel package for no more than $25 a month.

The study says Canadas broadcasters and content producers will suffer with or without the rule changes, mainly due to technological changes like the arrival of streaming video services like Netflix. But the report predicts the pain will be much worse under the new regulations.

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Cable and satellite broadcasters will see their revenue drop by $858 million by 2020, compared to what they would have made otherwise, the study estimates. Thats a loss of 9 per cent of revenue. Speciality channels will be even worse off, losing $970 million, or 23 per cent of revenue.

By 2020, it sees job losses in media of 6,380 (some of which have already happened, the report says), plus additional losses of 8,300 jobs that indirectly depend on media spending.

The study estimates the changes would also reduce spending on Canadian content by around $400 million annually, though the Liberals' vow to restore some of the funding cut from the CBC could soften that blow, the report said.

The war on evidence may be over elsewhere in government, but it seems to be alive and well at the CRTC, said Randy Kitt, Media Council Chair for Unifor, in a statement.
Imagine sitting down to a meal, and finding out exactly how nutritious your food is the moment you stick your fork in it.

Two Grade 11 students at Vancouver's West Point Grey Academy have pioneered technology that could do just that.

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Madeleine Liu and Angela Wang are the minds behind Culitech, which produces special cutlery that can scan food for nutritional content  as well as allergens, toxins and bacteria.

"In Canada, one in 13 people have a food allergy, and in the U.S. every three minutes somebody is sent to the emergency room for a food-related allergy," Liu told The Globe and Mail. "So right now there is a need for medical innovation."

The Culitech cutlery uses infrared waves and a spectrometer to analyze a food's molecular breakdown and identify its caloric, sugar or protein content.

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"All food molecules vibrate in their own way, creating a unique optical signature," according to an explanatory video posted to YouTube.

The invention, which comes as a spoon, fork or chopsticks, won $10,000 in prizes and first place at Startup Weekend Vancouver in November, along with a "Most Disruptive Idea" award.

Liu said she was inspired by learning about the infections and allergies associated with Helicobacter pylori, a bacteria that can cause ulcers and gastritis, CTV News reported.

"We knew that there are Helicobacter pylori bacteria in the world and it's especially common in China, where it spreads through cutlery," Liu told the outlet.

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"We wanted to think of a way to prevent it before it spreads."

Helicobacter pylori is less of a problem in Canada, but she still believes the technology can help people watch what they eat.

The cutlery is still in its research and development phase as Liu and Wang work to shrink the size of the spectrometer, The Globe and Mail reported.

But they hope the product will eventually be small and portable like an EpiPen, said CTV News.

B.C. is turning out quite a few teen inventors recently.

Victoria's Ann Makosinski recently appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" after inventing a mug that can charge your cellphone.

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She first made waves in 2013 for inventing a flashlight powered by the warmth of your hands.

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A Starbucks cashier in California has lost her job after she confessed to stealing a customer's credit card info, the chain says.

Juana Martinez confronted the alleged thief at a drive-thru in Bellflower, according to KTLA.

In a YouTube video recorded from inside a vehicle, Martinez accuses the employee of taking a copy of her card on New Year's Day and then using it at a grocery store.

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"So we got you on camera yesterday at Ralph's for $212, so just know that the cops are coming up here," Martinez says.

"They recorded your ass and everything."

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Canada's resident Superwoman is calling on women to spread some #GirlLove in 2016.

Lilly Singh, one of our favourite YouTubers (who also goes by the name IISuperwomanII), decided to use her platform to encourage more love, positivity and support among women and girls to help end "girl-on-girl hate."

Geared towards the more than six million women subscribed to her channel, Singh posted the video above with the #GirlLove challenge tag at the end of December.

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She recruited other celebrities and Internet stars, including Shay Mitchell, Priyanka Chopra, Brittany Furlan and Lindsey Stirling to spread the message along with her. Using the hashtag, they gushed about what they love about women and what a difference it would make if they swapped hate and jealousy for support.

Shout outs to @NICKIMINAJ for setting a standard for herself and not being afraid to boss up when the situation calls for it. #GirlLove  Lilly Singh (@IISuperwomanII) December 28, 2015

I love @Jenna_Marbles because not only is she gorgeous & hilarious but she has comforted me & encouraged me this year! #GirlLove  Kandee Johnson (@kandeejohnson) December 28, 2015

The women doled out compliments to comedians, advocates, actresses and fellow YouTubers they admire, and encouraged the women watching to do the same for others they look up to.

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I really love @GloZell and @LindseyStirling and @itsashlyperez and...just too many to name! This is like signing yearbooks! #GirlLove   Hannah Hart (@harto) December 28, 2015

I am all about #GirlLove. Ladies, let's stop the hate and congratulate. https://t.co/9mda7Frymb  Tyra Banks (@tyrabanks) December 29, 2015

"As women, we know how awesome other women can be," Singh said in the video.

Singh has pledged to donate the money the video earns to the Malala Fund to support girls' education worldwide. So far the video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times and she's encouraging viewers to share the video to spread the message and raise more money.

Plenty of people have been tweeting the hashtag and sharing the video, which has thrilled Singh.

Check her Instagram account on January 28, when she'll announce how much was raised. In the meantime, spread some #GirlLove!

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It's the most wonderful time of the year (in terms of reality television)  the show that warms America's heart is back for its 20th season!

Monday night's season premiere of "The Bachelor" was all we dreamed about and more  drama, mini horses, twins and a whole lot of fashion. In the quest to find love, 26-year-old Ben Higgins of Denver, Colo. welcomed 28 stunning women from around America (and Canada!) who could potential be his future wife.

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This modern-day fairy tale, full of roses and trips around the world, has been known to bring some interesting fashion choices to our television sets, and last night was no exception. With the dramatic limo exit of each contest comes a pageant-like display of gowns and tiaras (or rose fascinators) that us viewers either admire with glee or cringe in disappointment. It truly is a fashion form of "The Hunger Games."

From the gorgeous to the downright weird, we take a look at some of the major fashion moments from last night's show:

A photo posted by bachelorabc (@bachelorabc) on Dec 30, 2015 at 8:46am PST

Double the trouble? Or double the fun? Emily and Haley, twins from Las Vegas, didn't arrive in matching outfits sadly, but they did bring a bit of sparkle to the night. Each opted to keep their platinum blond hair down with a light curl. If we're gonna have to pick who won the dress battle, we pick Haley on the right (at least, we think that's Haley) with her embellished, shoulder-baring gown.

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A photo posted by bachelorabc (@bachelorabc) on Dec 23, 2015 at 12:04pm PST

Yup, a little horse even made an appearance last night. Maegan, who's occupation is listed as "Cowgirl," showed up in true Texan fashion wearing brown cowboy boots that she paired with a low-plunging black slip dress.

A photo posted by bachelorabc (@bachelorabc) on Dec 16, 2015 at 3:08pm PST

Leah was ready to throw a TD straight into Ben's heart with this embellished frock with shimmering pastel pinks, blue and yellow sparkles. The dress fades into a see-through tulle, showing off the event planner's killer silver strappy heels.

A photo posted by bachelorabc (@bachelorabc) on Dec 18, 2015 at 10:55am PST

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Do unicorns exist? "JoJo" sure thinks so. We're not really sure what is going on here, but we've got to say, the girl definitely knows how to rock a little red dress. And those tie up gold heels make up for that beyond weird limo exit.

A photo posted by bachelorabc (@bachelorabc) on Jan 3, 2016 at 12:07pm PST

Amber and Becca are back for their second chance at love, and the former contestants both opted for black cocktail dresses. Even though we're not really into Amber's draping halter top frock, we dig Becca's frontal cutouts with a high-neck.

We're betting that everyone is talking about Lace today for making quite the impression on fans last night, but we've got to hand it to the 25-year-old from Denver who sported a interesting black lace frock with a revealing back. The dress' neckline was elegantly showed off by Lace's chignon up 'do.

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"Goodness gracious!" said Jami of St. Albert, Alta. as she exited the limo to find Ben standing in front of her. The 23-year-old looked gorgeous in a simple white mini dress that featured lace detailing.

The line of the night came from 24-year-old Caila of Hudson, Okla. who donned a shimmering frock with T-shirt sleeves.

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Yes, that is Mandi the dentist donning a rose hat as she meets Ben, which she claims she "picked from the garden." Her gown however was quite stunning  a white body-fitting dress with a high neckline and low back ("business in the front, party in the back!"). She also needs to give us a tutorial on how to achieve such soft curls.

Olivia = late '90s / early 2000s Britney Spears amiright? #TheBachelorpic.twitter.com/FtImT1h4IS  POPSUGAR Love (@POPSUGARLove) January 5, 2016

Olivia landed herself the "first impression rose" all while rocking a sequin frock that gave the Internet major Britney Spears vibes.

The mini horse might be more judgy than Lace #TheBachelorpic.twitter.com/UQMA3FZgPv  Us Weekly (@usweekly) January 5, 2016

Samantha may have had her dressed stepped on by a mini horse, but that didn't stop her from looking super chic. Wearing a gorgeous red lace dress with a high-slit hitting on the thigh, the 26-year-old attorney played up all the dress' details and proved to have the best frock of the night.

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A photo posted by bachelorabc (@bachelorabc) on Jan 1, 2016 at 11:10am PST

The dapper software salesman kept things classic rocking a black suit with a white shirt and black tie.

In the words of Chris Harrison, it looks like this is going to be the most "dramatic season yet."

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Paper Boat Creative via Getty Images origami, cranes, blue, hand, sleeve, paper craft, studio background, floral print, checked print, dark blue, light blue

Michelle was tired of slinging drinks as a bartender. At 42, she dreamed of a more fulfilling career. But as a high school dropout, her reading, writing and math skills were nowhere near good enough for the competitive Canadian job market.

So Michelle enrolled in an initiative at B.C.'s Douglas College that gives unemployed and low-income Canadians brighter futures through skills training in basics like literacy and math. In just 11 weeks, Michelle improved so much, she was accepted into a college tourism management program.

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Today, the Douglas College program has changed hundreds of lives. It's also Canada's hottest investment opportunity. As of this September, the initiative is piloting our country's first federally-funded national social impact bonds initiative.

This public-private partnership between the federal government and Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan), the non-profit overseeing the Essential Skills Social Finance Pilot, will use social impact bonds to expand Douglas College's program to three additional colleges in Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, ultimately helping 400 unemployed Canadians to enter the workforce.

A social impact bond provides a novel way for governments to tackle issues from unemployment to the environment by leveraging the power of private capital. Investors buy into a project just as they might a business start-up.

These bonds could forever transform the way we fund positive change, effectively creating a Dragon's Den for social entrepreneurs, who must present truly sound and innovative ideas that achieve specific social outcomes to win over potential investors.

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We are strong believers in the power of business approaches, like social enterprise, to tackle global challenges.

But the real innovation of the Essential Skills social impact bond is its pay-for-performance model. Participants will be tested before and after completing the program to determine how well they have improved their skills, David Kelley explained to us. Kelley is the director of business development and social finance with CICan.

In order to maintain funding from investors, the colleges must hit a minimum benchmark for upgrading students' skills. Investors are repaid, and earn a return of up to 15 per cent if positive results are achieved. This reduces risk for all involved, providing incentive to try new approaches.

The model is a powerful tool for increasing impact, forcing organizations engaged in social programs to measure their outcomes.

We are strong believers in the power of business approaches, like social enterprise, to tackle global challenges. And we have closely followed the development of social impact bonds since they were first introduced five years ago in the UK. There, private backers funded a prison rehabilitation program that has reduced recidivism by eight per cent.

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All along, we waited for Canada to catch on to the idea. And we were pleased to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently make social finance a priority for his minister of employment, workforce development and labour.

"Social impact is no longer seen as a trade-off to financial results, but rather as a key factor in investment decisions," says Tania Carnegie, one of Canada's foremost leaders in impact investing. She sees an increasing number of investors who want to achieve positive social results as well as healthy returns in their portfolios.

Carnegie founded and leads Impact Ventures, a new practice at global consulting firm KPMG that helps businesses improve both their bottom line and their social impact. Global Ventures is working on the Essential Skills Social Finance Pilot as a financial advisor to CICan.

At a minimum stake of $150,000 per investor, the Essential Skills project is currently out of reach for the average Canadian, but great for foundations and investor funds that are looking for a financial return while doing good.

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And if the pilot proves successful, it will help hundreds more people like Michelle--who is now working for a B.C. tour company -- and open the door for ordinary Canadians to invest in improving their communities and their country.

Brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger founded a platform for social change that includes the international charity, Free The Children, the social enterprise, Me to We, and the youth empowerment movement, We Day. Visit we.org for more information.
By Michael Guta, Contributing Writer

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As one of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Qatar is part of a union with considerable wealth. This has allowed these countries to rapidly develop their infrastructure across the board and bring their standard of living up to those in the West, and healthcare is one of the segments that have received a sizable investment. The latest drive is the launch of a call center by Qatars Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) to better inform individuals about the program it has in place for breast and bowel cancer screening.





The wealth in the GCC has increased health issues related to life choices. This includes diabetes, heart disease and obesity, which in turn can make other conditions such as cancer more prevalent in the population.

As reported on menafn.com, the new call center brings together a website for a comprehensive information system that can be accessed anytime. According to PHCC, the call center will be operated by medical professionals and trained staff that are able to address Arabic- and English-speaking consumers.

The staff will be encouraging callers to schedule screenings if they meet some of the criteria, including age, family history and other conditions.

The PHCC was established by a decree in 2012 from the Emir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to focus on the development, skills and knowledge necessary for the effective implementation of a cancer screening service.

The Breast and Bowel Cancer Screening Program is part of that initiative, whose goal is to save lives by increasing the awareness in the Qatari population with campaigns to promote education, awareness and early detection of breast and bowel cancer. The program will include several screening centers at health care facilities, as well as a mobile unit which will deliver services to communities that are not able to access these facilities.

The Qatar Supreme Council of Health has revealed that among the top malignant primary sites of cancer in Qatar, breast cancer accounted for 17.42 percent, while bowel cancer made up 10.55 percent.

"Our state-of-the-art call center facility is run by staff who have all been trained and equipped with the knowledge, skill and personality to deal with the subject and with individuals who may have varying attitudes and questions, said Dr. Mariam Ali Abdul Malik, managing director, PHCC. We are confident that this call center will effectively and significantly contribute to the overall success of the program."

Edited by Rory J. Thompson
ASSOCIATED PRESS Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves during a rally in Biloxi, Miss., Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

January 20, 2017

Donald Trump is sworn in as America's 45th president and his running mate, Sarah Palin, is sworn in as vice president. For first time ever, the inaugural ball is held in Atlantic City.

January 21, 2017

As his first official act, U.S. President Donald Trump orders defeated Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders sent to Guantanamo Bay. "Bernie keeps claiming he won the election," says Trump. "But I clearly won the opinion polls and that's what really matters. A little Cuban holiday should clear his mind and help him finally see the light."

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January 23, 2017

Hillary Clinton announces her intention to run for Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, 2024 and 2028. "It's too early to commit yet for 2032," says Mrs. Clinton. "But if Trump can win the presidency, then anything's possible."

January 30, 2017

Trump has a 15-foot illuminated sign installed atop the New Trump White House & Casino. As part of his dealmaking prowess, he announces finalization of negotiations with the Chinese for an elaborate purchase-and-lease-back arrangement. "It's a guaranteed moneymaker," says Trump. "And the Chinese will be on the hook for a 200-year-old building."

February 1, 2017

Construction begins on a 12-foot-high wall along the Mexican border. Mexico not only agrees to pay for it, they agree to actually build it in order to keep out the new wave of American immigrants.

February 14, 2017

President Trump declares February 14 National Trump Love Day as Americans are encouraged to demonstrate the many ways they love their new president. In an unrelated matter, Trump's security detail doubles.

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February 24, 2017

After unsuccessfully trying to get his Muslim Prison Camps bill passed, President Trump walls off Congress and renames it the Uncooperative Legislators Internment Camp. "That's what Franklin Roosevelt would have done," says an unrepentant Trump.

March 3, 2017

ISIS surrenders. Spokesperson Abu Mohammad al-Adnani publicly announces: "We quit. We thought we were crazy but that infidel Trump makes us look like amateurs," says al-Adnani. "So long as he has his finger on the nuclear trigger, we just can't take the chance."

March 21, 2017

Trump completes his Supreme Court un-appointment process by removing eight sitting justices and leaving Antonin Scalia as the sole person on the bench to rule on his executive decisions. "Tony and I see eye-to-eye on almost everything," says Trump. "I think that together we can make America great again."

March 27, 2017

President Trump stages mass patriotism rallies under the name "Crystal Night" and nationalizes the health care system and several major industries. "It's my fabulous new program for America," says Trump. "I call it national socialism."

April 1, 2017

The president wakes up to read the front page of the New York Times announcing that his popularity has reached an all-time high of 99 per cent. Trump revels in great success until First Lady Melania Trump announces "April Fool's" and informs her husband she had a mock front page printed from TrumpSucks.com.

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April 2, 2017

President Trump declares war on China and announces the immediate launch of a nuclear strike. He then declares it a belated April Fool's Day prank on his part, though he says he can't promise the same for next year.

April 29, 2017

Professing boredom with the job, Trump resigns and Sarah Palin is sworn in as the 46th president by Chief and Sole Justice Scalia. America experiences its first military coup.

April 30, 2017

Donald Trump announces he's running for Secretary General of the United Nations or Emperor of the World, whichever position opens up first.

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Christopher Kimmel via Getty Images Sunrise on a crisp winter morning near Vancouver BC.

Like any year, 2015 had its share of good and bad, tragedy and beauty, hope and despair. It's difficult not to get discouraged by events like the Syrian war and refugee crisis, violent outbreaks in Beirut, Paris, Burundi, the U.S. and so many other places, and the ongoing climate catastrophe.

But responses to these tragedies and disasters offer hope. It became clear during 2015 that when those who believe in protecting people and the planet, treating each other with fairness, respect and kindness and seeking solutions stand up, speak out and act for what is right and just, we will be heard.

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As Syria descended deeper into chaos during 2015, people in many wealthy nations called for blocking refugees. But many more opened their hearts, homes, and wallets to show compassion. Governments responded by opening doors to people who have lost everything, including family and friends, to flee death and destruction.

Shootings and the inevitable absurd arguments against gun control continued south of the border, but many people, including the president, rallied for an end to the insanity. And while the U.S. presidential race remains mired in bigotry, ignorance, and a dumbfounding rejection of climate science, many U.S. citizens, including political candidates, are speaking out for a positive approach more aligned with America's professed values. And in 2015, voters here and elsewhere rejected fear-based election campaigns that promoted continued reliance on climate-altering coal, oil, and gas.

The fossil fuel industry and its supporters continued to sow doubt and confusion about the overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change and to rail against solutions, but many more people marched, signed petitions, sent letters, talked to friends and family, demanded action from political, religious and business leaders, and got on with innovating and implementing solutions.

The public appetite for a constructive approach to global warming led Canada to shift course in 2015, taking global warming seriously enough to make positive contributions at the Paris climate conference in December. The resulting agreement won't lower emissions enough to prevent catastrophic warming, but it's a significant leap from previous attempts, and it includes commitments to improve targets.

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If we want to heal this world we have so badly damaged, we must do all we can. Although many necessary and profound changes must come from governments, industry and other institutions, we can all do our part. For the climate, we can conserve energy, eat less meat, drive less, improve energy efficiency in our homes and businesses, and continue to stand up and speak out.

Those who fear and reject change have always been and always will be with us. They've argued ending slavery would destroy the economy; they've claimed putting people on the moon would be impossible; they've rejected ending South Africa's apartheid system; they've said the Berlin wall wouldn't come down.

With today's technological and communications advances, everyone with access to the Internet can be heard. That's good, but people who fear they have something to lose often speak loudest, and in the greatest numbers. I tell people at the David Suzuki Foundation, "Don't read the comments!" It's often disheartening to see online discourse sink to such irrational and often idiotic depths.

But many comments and efforts to stall or block necessary progress arise from fear. People who are afraid that change might remove or diminish their privilege -- real or imagined -- often do or say anything to block it. Unfortunately, those who benefit most from privilege or the status quo, even if only in the short term, often stoke those fears and uncertainties, taking advantage of and manipulating the frightened and ignorant for political or economic gain.

That's not to say people must always agree. But racism, sexism, homophobia, religious prejudice, the denial of climate science and solutions, and blindness to the need for gun control are all irrational.

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We can and must speak louder than those who would keep us on a destructive path despite the overwhelming evidence that it's past time to shift course. Events in 2015 taught us that when those of us who care about humanity and the planet's future stand up and speak out, we can make this small, blue world and its miraculous life and natural systems a better place for all.
Desiree Navarro via Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 02: Founder of Brother Vellies, Aurora James, handbag detail, attends the 29th FN Achievement Awards at IAC Headquarters on December 2, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Desiree Navarro/WireImage)

Buy something African.

Whether you're a designer, a stockist, or a general fashion enthusiast, that's the best piece of fashion advice you'll hear this year. Africa is the next big fashion trend. Want proof?

How much do you buy from Africa?

If you said "I don't know," you're not alone. Not for lack of interest, Africa is a place that most Western consumers just don't know much about. The media is only recently starting to feature stories about its commerce, culture and economic trends.

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It's 2015, and yet there are no African brands selling in most North American stores, and where the raw materials are African, that message is not well-delivered or even sought-after.

In the world of fashion, this represents a massive opportunity for fresh fashion ideas, business and growth. If you had bought into the notion that there is nothing "new" left in fashion, this is a reality check.

"Part of the magic of African brands lies in the continent itself, which is still hidden from the spotlights of the connected world."

In fact, there are three massive areas of '"newness" in fashion: technology, sustainability and Africa.

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Africa is ready for trade, and its potential is massive. As of June 2015, African countries held six of the 13 spots for the world's fastest growing economies.

The problem is that many of us are just not aware of the local market.

Luckily, e-commerce platforms like Kisua make shopping for African brands easy. Founder Samuel Mensah comes from a business and banking background and has a sharp focus on well-made designs that are fit for anything from cocktail parties to boardrooms.

African businesses have a lot to offer as production partners, too.

Newcomer brands like Oliberte have capitalized on African innovations in manufacturing technology. Oliberte produces in Ethiopia with Hafde Tannery, one of the most progressive and sustainable leather tanneries in the world. Oliberte is noted as the world's only Fairtrade certified footwear factory. It's recent collaboration with trendsetter Hype Beast to design a part of its collection was notably well-received.

Africa has powerful brand stories

Part of the magic of African brands lies in the continent itself, which is still hidden from the spotlights of the connected world. Powerful brand stories are taking the world by force, and Africa has no shortage of fascinating history, culture and stories. Stories brought to life with skilled production and quality raw materials make for memorable and significant business propositions.

Part fashion brand, part social enterprise TAARIK designs and hand-looms scarves employing traditional methods and motifs, and offers a coveted viewpoint for the new-world luxury market, where movements towards humble luxury and "luxuriously sustainable" designs are afoot.

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And then there's Vogue, who chose Brother Vellies as one of its 2015 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners. Founder Aurora James combines luxury with sustainability, social enterprising and African craftsmanship.

I first stepped foot on African soil earlier this year during my trip to Tanzania. Richard Dowden was spot-on to write that newcomers to Africa "often find themselves suddenly cracked open." During my three-week stay, I spent time shopping in Tanzania, purchasing from businesses that are producing deliciously unique goods with local people and methods at the heart of their corporate style and culture.

My visit cemented the reality

As an undisputed new frontier for fashion, African businesses will grow and disrupt the market with an army of talent the world has not yet met. Smart businesses are establishing long-term partnerships and investments in local trade that are built on sustainability and trust.

Buy something African. Your wardrobe and business will be all the better for it.

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Our healthcare system remains focused on acute emergency care and the "therapeutic imperative" to fix everything we can fix when a patient is ill. But when someone is approaching the end of life, this approach may no longer be what the patient and their families need or want most. And it may mean many patients at the end of life are not receiving the best care.

When someone is admitted to hospital, the focus is often on reversing acute conditions rather than providing comfort care for patients even when they have little time left. This may lead to the use of drugs or other medical interventions that offer little benefit. More significantly, it can also lead to the avoidance of comfort medications for patients who may be experiencing extreme stress or pain.

A person with advanced lung cancer is probably not going to benefit from a medication that lowers cholesterol, but they may benefit from a drug that treats pain or shortness of breath, for example. Or a person with severe heart failure is probably not going to benefit from a medication to prevent osteoporosis, but they might benefit from medications to improve their sleep or mood.

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Using non-beneficial medications or failing to offer comfort medications is potentially harmful, time-consuming and simply bad medical care. Unnecessary or unwarranted medical interventions, including medications, are also costly to the healthcare system.

Canadians are living longer and the accumulation of chronic illnesses as people age has led to an increased use of pharmaceutical drugs for chronic conditions, such as diabetes or high blood pressure. The Canadian Institutes of Health Information (CIHI) reports that medications account for the second largest component of healthcare spending after hospitals -- approximately $29 billion dollars per year.

If we look specifically at pharmaceutical drug use in senior populations there is a clear and steady increase in the number of chronic conditions treated. More than half of seniors in Canada are on medications to treat two or more chronic conditions. A quarter of Canadian seniors are on medications to treat three or more conditions.

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When looking at the number of claims from publicly funded drug programs, there's a corresponding increase in the number of pharmaceutical drugs taken. Over 60 per cent of Canadian seniors take five or more drugs from different drug classes and over 20 per cent have claims for 10 or more per year. A whopping 30 per cent of those over the age of 85 claim 10 or more drugs.

There is no denying that modern medicines have improved the quantity and quality of our lives. But what should we do with chronic medications as the end of life nears?

A recent study is looking into just that question. At the Technology Evaluation in the Elderly Network (TVN) and the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, we've been examining the impact of assigning a "medication rationalization" team of physicians, pharmacists and nurses to review medications prescribed to patients with advanced medical illness. The team makes recommendations on stopping any non-comfort medication that has no clear benefit to the patient and suggests comfort medications. These recommendations are presented to the patient or substitute decision maker and medication changes are made with their consent.

The response among the 60 patients involved in the study to date has been overwhelmingly positive. Patients and their family caregivers are happy to receive expert recommendations that stop medications that are no longer helpful.

It was once believed that patients themselves would get upset if a doctor suggested they stop taking a long-standing medication -- as if it were an admission of defeat or a sign the doctor was giving up on a patient. On the contrary; patients and family members in our study ask a lot of questions and are comfortable voicing their concerns or disagreement. The patients' voice then becomes part of the process and helps to improve end-of-life care.

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Too, the concern that that some patients would feel as though doctors were simply trying to save money by stopping their medications has also proven to be unfounded. Our study has found so far that patients are usually very comfortable stopping some medications and starting others because they also believe it is the right thing to do.
According to the dictionary, a cartel is an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition. The provision of elementary and secondary public education falls into the category of a cartel in most jurisdictions, but the Ontario education cartel is more entrenched than most -- primarily because of provincial legislation that gives it a greater than usual amount of protection.

There are four principal members of the Ontario education cartel: the unions; the school boards; the faculties of education; and the ministry of education. In addition, there is an alphabet soup of other bodies that help glue the cartel together.

The Ontario education unions, especially the teachers' unions, are arguably the most influential members of the cartel. Their mission is to improve their members' pay, benefits, and working conditions, and this they do very effectively -- keeping education prices very high. These unions have huge political clout because they contribute millions of dollars to political candidates and parties every year, and as well they field an army of door-knockers and phone-callers at election time. Because of their political power, the unions can and do influence Ontario politicians to support policies that suit the cartel.

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The Ontario school boards tend to be dominated by educators, especially union-oriented educators. The school boards had more influence over education prices back when they could set local property taxes, but these days their main contribution to the cartel is helping to restrict competition. This they do by assigning students to specific schools, meaning that most parents are at the mercy of a monopoly when it comes to their children's education.

The Ontario faculties of education work hard to recruit and train teachers who firmly believe in the cartel and are unlikely to break rank. The faculties are a critical component of the cartel because they control the certification that is a condition of employment in every Ontario publicly-funded school. As well, many of their graduates go on to assume important positions in the school boards, the education unions, and the Ontario Ministry of Education.

The Ontario Ministry of Education is the education cartel's enforcer. It safeguards its most crucial underpinnings -- for example, the teacher certification requirements, the forced unionization, the ban on charter schools, the provincial testing that covers up poor results, the school boards' ability to assign students to specific schools, the education faculties' iron grip, and the many measures that handicap the province's private schools.

Earlier, we mentioned an alphabet soup of enabling education bodies. Here are just a few of them to give an idea of the interlocking nature of the cartel.

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The Ontario College of Teachers (OCT), originally intended to regulate the teaching profession in Ontario in the public interest, has been captured by the unions. Even though it has a majority of union representatives on its governing body and always advocates policies that favour the cartel, the OCT still claims to be independent.

The Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) is ostensibly in charge of assessing how well Ontario's public education system is teaching its students. In fact, the EQAO is largely composed of educators from the Ontario Ministry of Education, the faculties of education, and the school boards. As a result, the EQAO's reporting is heavily spun to cast the best possible light on the system and prop up the cartel.

The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS) was designed to help boost student achievement. Like the rest of the soup, it is composed almost exclusively of former members of the big four, and its policies and recommendations reflect the same point of view.

Curriculum Services Canada (CSC), among other things, determines which textbook sets can be used in Ontario classrooms. It too is composed of former educators drawn from the Ontario Ministry of Education, the school boards, and the faculties of education. Even the authors of the textbooks approved by the CSC tend to be drawn from - you guessed it - the Ontario Ministry of Education, the school boards, and the faculties of education. Another closed loop.

Of course, it makes sense that educational institutions should be staffed by knowledgeable educators, but effective systems must include enough independent voices to provide checks and balances. Lacking independence, all of these groups and many other minor players work together in harmony with the big four to preserve the status quo in Ontario.

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Since most of these educators enjoy well-paid and secure positions, they strongly resist initiatives that threaten their iron rice bowl. Ontario's elected politicians are well aware of the backlash that will greet any threatened change to the province's education system, and to date few politicians have dared to go up against the might of the education cartel. However, the situation is not hopeless.

No cartel lasts forever. There have been many other cartels in the past that have been disrupted, often by popular opposition and the resulting political legislation. Unfortunately, the chances of political disruption to the Ontario cartel are remote for reasons already mentioned.

Recent history shows us, however, there are other ways cartels can be disrupted. Typically these involve the use of information technology to restructure the service delivery process and drive down costs. Two very visible examples are low-cost airlines in Europe like Ryanair and Uber's challenge to the traditional taxi industry.
"The world only spins forward," wrote Tony Kushner. Schools, on the other hand, too often only spin. Or they get stuck altogether. When they do, blame does not always lie tidily with teachers, administrators, school boards, parents, or the government, and certainly not with "kids these days." We look for answers, but fail to step back to the philosophical.

Holistic Education is a framework -- both a prevention and a cure -- for schools and school systems that spin or get stuck. Because it's 2016, we need to use the evidence we have to address real areas of need in both private and public schools, and make certain things a 'given'.

Here are a few suggestions.

Firstly, we need to dissolve divisions between subjects. Because it's 2016, scientific research has allowed us to see more of the butterfly effect: interconnectedness and interdependence in the world. Yet we still sit teens in 75-minute periods that separate physics and English, social studies and history, math and music, geography and economics, even physical education and biology.

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We separate so we can measure more easily, but out of an intention to improve educational accountability, we put the curriculum before the person and end up with an epidemic of anxiety and alienation. How many kids love school?

Secondly, we need to educate the whole child. Because it's 2016, science also continues to reveal how mind and body interact. But we still treat kids as a 'brain on a stick', sitting them in classrooms as we attempt to cater exclusively to the intellect. Gandhi said the mind, body, and spirit (the head, hands, and heart) comprise an "indivisible whole," and that it's a "gross fallacy" to think these three can be developed independently of one another. We commit this gross fallacy in schools every day.

Schools at every level all over the world are dedicating more and more of their days to fitting square pegs into round holes and preparing staff and students for standardized tests. Kids are taught both implicitly and explicitly to accumulate, compete, compare, and be successful by seeking fulfillment as good little cogs in an economic wheel. Only 18% of teachers in the United States say the tests they are asked to administer are useful, writes Prof. Jack Miller, in his 2010 book Whole Child Education.

Thirdly, we need to prioritize compassion and care. Kids in school are implicitly taught to see themselves as a number. The higher the grade, the more important they feel; the grade evaluates their worth and, from their perspective, shows how much someone recognizes and cares about them. They're punished for being different, taking risks, questioning the teacher, or giving the 'wrong' answer. As early as preschool, they watch the teacher congratulate the fastest reader. Everyone wants to become that kid, but that kid wants to be seen for what he or she is: a whole person, and more than an accomplishment or an academic average.

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Kids in school are told of their "potential," then live their lives wondering if they've reached it. They are required to choose what they want to be when they grow up by the age of 17, or risk feeling like a failure.

Where is the kindness? What are we doing? Why do we cling to this educational model when, by now, we know better? Because it's 2016, why don't we scrap the curriculum and adapt teaching and learning to cater to students' individual needs, while making the school a beloved community that puts personal and collective flourishing, intrigue, and engagement first?

Holistic Education, to provide more context, is balance, inclusion, and connection throughout the school. It is, as Ramon Gallegos Nava writes, "educating individuals to live responsibly in an emergent, sustainable culture," and the avoidance of "erroneous educational decisions that could negatively affect the lives of our children and young people."

Balance is emphasized between the individual and the group, content and process, knowledge and imagination, the rational and the intuitive, the quantitative and the qualitative, as well as in teaching strategies (transmissive, transactional, and transformative).

Inclusion is emphasized in making room for students' questions and learning to negotiate difference with compassion at the centre.

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Connection is emphasized in six forms: between linear and intuitive thinking, mind and body, areas of knowledge, self and community, the self and the Earth, and the personal and the transpersonal (the contemplative).

In Holistic Education, the Whole Teacher personifies patience, presence, caring, love, and humility. The teacher becomes an attentive presence in students' lives, working diligently for their overall well-being, in collaboration with the home.

Holistic Education uses everything the world has to offer (literature, music, movement, drama, math, science, and so on) to approach complex problems. It dissolves narrow 75-minute blocks in the name of integrated, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary learning. Love for the mystery and beauty of life is at the curriculum's core.

By and large, elementary schools do these things better than high schools, so when students hit the Grade 9 rotary, they get walloped with the message that the world is fragmented into discrete subject blocks, that their worth will be measured out of 100, that personal growth means surviving a tightly prescribed academic onslaught, and that the 'real world' will be neatly organized for them into simple subdivisions with success criteria neatly attached. This is not how real learning happens. Ms. Frizzle of the Magic School Bus said it best: "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!" Why can't that be the paradigm in high schools, too?

Equinox Holistic Alternative School in Toronto is a very successful example of elementary education. In a hypothetical holistic secondary school, the music, history, English, drama, and international languages teachers collaborate as kids investigate and marvel at Don Giovanni. Or the science, English, and art departments collaborate for a project on photosynthesis. Or a question like 'How can we end poverty?' is written on the board, and we meet and exceed the curriculum in the areas of politics, economics, English, geography, civics, history, and more.

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It's time to demand more of our education system, and there is a way. Holistic Education provides a framework for any school for balance, inclusion, and connection across the curriculum. We should put our knowledge of science, educational psychology, and economics to good use and really go about the business of cultivating inspired, empowered students with a hunger for continual exploration and discovery, a sense of collective responsibility, and an excitement about life. Then schools will spin forward with the world.

I would like to express deep thanks to Isis Lunsky, Lauren Bialystok, and Jack Miller for their guidance on this article.
Rawpixel Ltd via Getty Images ***NOTE TO INSPECTOR: All models in this image have signed model releases. Some models have been duplicated more than once.***

Canada's new Liberal government pledged to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2015. They missed the mark. Predictably, opposition parties (Conservatives in particular) have focused on the numerical gap, declaring it as an early example of Liberal broken promises. And technically, it is. But who cares? The point is that people are arriving in Canada with a warm welcome and a new future.

The error the Liberals made was to put a nicely rounded numerical target by which critics could measure success or failure.

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Numbers coming from the government and political operatives should give pause to any observer. Why? Because rarely do either have the expertise or data sources to make reliable predictions. When they do, other factors come into play that skews the totals. The usual culprit is misguided optimism to demonstrate competence or distinguish from the opposition.

My first experience with the misguided use of numbers was back in the day (OK, way back in the day) when I ran Ontario's apprenticeship program. We were in the habit of promising to increase the number of apprentices by many thousands each year. To make matters worse, we also committed to increasing the number of women in "non traditional" trades. Laudable goals indeed. The only problem was that we had no control over either situation.

Apprentices are almost entirely hired by the private sector according to their market needs. While apprentices signed a Contract of Apprenticeship with the government, there was no way of knowing how many of these were terminated and how many were active. We, therefore, had no reliable method for determining if the goals were achieved. Success was declared anyway. Our annual reports to the public were glowing.

Further (and more serious) examples include government budget forecasts, particularly economic growth and projected revenue. Economic growth depends on a world of global factors and revenue depends on economic activity. Neither is especially predictable and it shows. Yes, some prognostication is needed in order to prepare a budget, but don't bet on accuracy. Like refugee numbers, the inaccuracy of the sooth saying becomes fodder for critics.

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Numbers are a funny thing. Does anyone really know the size of the federal deficit? The answer depends on your assumptions and more likely on your partisanship. You have questions. We have made up sums. That may be a bit harsh. Let's just say that the answer can be counted on the fingers and toes of the partisans.

Most of us are used to exaggeration and favourable spin on numbers. "If 6 Was 9" is not just a Jimi Hendrix song title. Sooner or later in real life, the truth will be revealed and most often six is just six. But at least there is a way of finding out. If not, why not just say, "Gee, I just don't know... depends on how you look at it?"

The Syrian promise could have easily been to bring in as many as possible, considering security and other factors, with an ultimate goal of 25,000. Most Canadians understand that moving large numbers of people across the globe in times of crisis is not a precise, predictable science. Do they really care what the exact number is on any give date?

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AFP via Getty Images Police with riot gears patrol in downtown streets during student protesting against tuition hike in Montreal, Quebec, April 29, 2012. The Liberal Party of Quebec Premier Jean Charest, faced with a student protest movement that has turned violent, said Sunday it was relocating its annual convention to a city outside Montreal. AFP PHOTO / ROGERIO BARBOSA (Photo credit should read ROGERIO BARBOSA/AFP/GettyImages)

"The police become necessary in human society only at that junction in a society where there's a split between those who have and those who ain't got." --Omali Yeshitela, from Dead Prez's "Police State"

Daily in my work in the pediatric emergency department, I see the detrimental effects of various forms of structural violence in our society -- capitalist, colonial, patriarchal, racist, ableist, etc. -- on children and their families.

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The tangible impacts stemming from these systemic injustices -- what some refer to as the structural determinants of health -- on people's day-to-day realities compelled me to become actively involved in grassroots movements for social justice, including against police violence and impunity.

When a friend told me that her teenaged cousin, Brandon Maurice, was shot and killed by a Surete du Quebec (SQ) agent early in the morning of November 16, I was shocked and outraged. Violence resulting in a death in the context of a police intervention -- whether the victim is young or not -- is simply revolting.

A lethal police intervention that raises questions

Brandon was shot and killed not far from his hometown of Maniwaki, which has a population of about 4,000 people and is adjacent to the Anishinabeg (Algonquin) community of Kitigan Zibi, about 300 kilometres northwest of Montreal.

His death went almost completely unnoticed in the media. Yet, a 17-year-old adolescent killed by the police in the context of a banal driving violation is newsworthy, particularly in light of the the fact that more than 50 people, most of whom were marginalized, have been killed in police operations in Quebec (and over 150 in Canada) since 2005.*

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That the Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal (SPVM) has been mandated to investigate Brandon's death is particularly scandalous. Since investigations of police by police are inherently flawed, there is a serious concern that we will never know what actually happened that night.

Why did the police intervene in the first place? Why did they engage in a car chase? Why did the police officer take his gun out and fire? When Bruno Jolivette, Brandon's uncle, affirms that "We are supposed to have people who protect us, not to kill us!" the underlying question is, "Who will protect us from the police?"

Brandon's killing came as a shock to his family and friends, who described him as a caring and considerate person, and felt that his death was completely avoidable. They have many questions that deserve answers. These answers won't bring Brandon back to life, but their absence will add bitterness and resentment to the mourning process. A truly independent and equitable public inquiry would be a start.

Ten years later: The shooting death of Anas Bennis

By tragic coincidence, Brandon's death occurred almost 10 years to the day after the death of Anas Bennis, a 25-year-old man killed by the SPVM in the multi-ethnic and mixed-class neighbourhood of Cote-des-Neiges (in Montreal) on Dec.1, 2005.

The wounds for one family are barely healing as the nightmare of another family begins.

I was actively involved with the Justice for Anas Coalition during its public campaign (2007 to 2012). The Bennis family was simply seeking an exhaustive and independent public inquiry to clarify the mysterious circumstances surrounding Anas' killing so that they could mourn his death.

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Instead, they were consistently met with contempt and disdain. A coroner's inquiry was finally granted in 2008, following a relentless public campaign. It eventually took place in 2011, but only after the motion by the City of Montreal and the Montreal Police Brotherhood to have it canceled in court was rejected.

However, the coroner's inquiry was a sham. It never questioned the police investigation by the Service de police de la ville de Quebec (SPVQ). The police officers involved were never cross-examined about their version of what happened. Furthermore, the coroner didn't consider the potential role of racial and religious profiling to explain the officers' actions.

Police investigations that are highly criticized

Yet, the process of one police force investigating another has been consistently criticized for its inherent lack of neutrality, accountability, transparency and credibility.**

The code of silence that exists among police forces undermines their investigations and ensures that justice will not be served. The SPVM, SPVQ and SQ are the three police forces in the province of Quebec mandated to conduct investigations when police officers are involved in a civilian death; they are not exceptions to this tendency.

A compelling illustration of this reality is the SPVM investigation into last year's death of five-year old Nicholas Thorne-Belance. Nicholas was in a car being driven by his father, when they were hit by an unmarked SQ vehicle recklessly driving over twice the speed limit.

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Initially, no charges were filed against the officer. However, the impunity inherent to this decision outraged Nicholas' family and resulted in public indignation. A mandate to review and expand on the initial SPVM investigation was conferred to an independent committee (without police officers). This resulted in criminal accusations being filed against the offending officer.

Many people think that the creation of the Bureau d'enquete independant (BEI) -- announced by the provincial government of Quebec in 2012, but still inactive to this day -- is the answer. However, the BEI has many flaws, including the fact that former police officers will be part of the investigating team.

Police violence as a public health issue

We must have zero tolerance for police brutality. The price to pay -- human life -- is too high.

Economic, political and social realities have tangible impacts on people's health, well-being and dignity. In the United States, the Black Lives Matter movement has forced various actors to more seriously regard police violence as a public-health issue.

This discussion needs to begin here as well, so that the economic and socio-political contexts surrounding police interventions are addressed. Instead of relying on flawed police investigations, our society may actually be able to prevent police brutality by identifying and confronting the conditions that eventually lead to the police interventions in question.

For years, activists opposed to police violence have highlighted how it impacts marginalized individuals and communities. Many advocate disarming police forces outright. In fact, several countries (including England, Iceland and New Zealand) already restrict or prohibit their patrolling police officers from carrying firearms, though they can admittedly still resort to the use of lethal force by other means (batons, electrical impulse devices, etc.).

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Meanwhile, radical social-justice activists are imagining community responses that would not resort to the police at all, given that the police force is an institution -- from its origins to the current day -- through which structural violence manifests itself, typically against the most marginalized and oppressed in our society.

At the end of the day, we simply can't accept that people like Anas Bennis, Nicholas Thorne-Belance, Brandon Maurice and too many others continue to die at the hands of the police. Any hope of preventing such deaths will require us to scrutinize the institution of policing. But, more fundamentally, we must oppose the economic, political and social forces that produce systemic injustice and structural violence in the first place.

Author's addendum: since the initial drafting of this text, 25-year-old Mathieu Levesque was killed by municipal police in the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. The SQ is "investigating" the incident.

---

The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of Alexandre Popovic, Anne-Marie Gallant, Nazila Bettache and Raven Dumont-Maurice to the development of this piece.

* Unfortunately, there is no government-compiled data of civilians killed in police operations that is publicly available; grassroots social-justice groups with limited resources are compelled to do this work instead.

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Tetra Images via Getty Images USA, New Jersey, Woman writing letter on porch

Rob Reiner's 2007 comedy-drama, The Bucket List, about two terminally ill men (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) who escape from a cancer ward and set out on an adventure to see and do the things they desired before they die inspired people around the world to take action on their dreams.

Nearly a decade later, the term "bucket list" continues to be a popular phrase used when referring to experiences someone desires and intends on accomplishing, knowing full well there is an expiration date. However, the term bucket list makes me cringe because it reminds me of my great grandmother's metal slop bucket filled with food scraps that sat on the doorstep of her farmhouse in the Canadian prairies. If this is ruining the idea of a bucket list for you, I have a better alternative:

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Turn your bucket list into a love list.

Having a love list, that is, a list of loves gives you a different visual and, with that energy and vibe, might serve you better. Whether your heart's desires are world travel, writing a book, creating a blog, speaking to groups, starting a family, rock climbing or attending Burning Man, turn them into a love list -- and toss away the bucket.

Words give thoughts their shape. - Goethe

Writing a love list is a powerful exercise that enables you to get clear on what is high on your values. Whenever you act on what is high on your list of values, you are doing things aligned with your heart. How do you know what is a high value? You will use words such as "I know," "I am," "I can," rather than "I don't know," "I am not," and "I can't," which point to lower-ranking values.

Knowing what your values are and prioritizing them is key to having a fulfilling life and manifesting our heart's desires. Our life's purpose is an expression of our highest values, or, in the case of business, the highest priority.

Leaders live by their highest values, and usually love what they do. Take Richard Branson, for example, who is one of the biggest entrepreneurial thinkers of our time and who is making a significant contribution to society, and loves to have fun while doing it. Mother Teresa, a different kind of leader and whose ashram I recently got to visit while in Kolkata, India, loved her work and was fully dedicated to helping the poor.

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Review your list of loves as often as possible and visualize your life purpose. Do this daily, or several times a day if you can. By continuing to focus on your love list, you minimize distractions, which is an ever growing problem in our society today. Focus on the details. Fine-tune. Re-write. And fine-tune again.

The idea of writing down your loves is not new. Even the ancients knew the power of writing and today we intuitively know its value. But sometimes we need a reminder or gentle nudge.

And so, with the fresh start of the new year upon us, here is a sample of some of the top items on my love list for 2016:

1. Travel to at least a dozen beautiful and inspiring places in the world, and write about my experiences to inspire others to experience more of what this amazing planet offers.

2. Speak to many more groups of people around the world, to share messages of love and wisdom.

3. Get paid handsomely to do more of what I love to do.

Finally, I would love to hear what some of your list of loves are. Please leave me a comment or tweet to me at @Shannon_Skinner.

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Shannon Skinner is a television and radio talk show host, speaker author, writer and traveler.

To hire me as a speaker for your group or organization, please contact me at shannon (at) shannonskinner.com.

This article was originally posted at ShannonSkinner.com.

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Steve Russell via Getty Images MISSISSAUGA, ON- DECEMBER 11: Christine Youssef, second from right and George Hababeh, third from the right, are excited to reunite with their cousins. Syrian refugees begin to arrive in Canada at a hotel near Pearson International Airport in Mississauga. December 11, 2015. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

During my travels to nearly 50 towns and cities across Ontario in the past year, I have been deeply impressed and inspired by the caring nature of Ontarians. You have repeatedly demonstrated what it looks like to be truly dedicated to the health and wellbeing of our people and our communities. During a visit to Belleville in late November, I witnessed this generosity come alive in response to one of the largest crises in migration and refugee settlement since the Second World War.

On November 21, I joined residents to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Bridge Street United Church in Belleville. This church's legacy is a testament to the work and vision of many, and the church continues to have a significant impact in its local community, largely through its food ministries.

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As a gesture of thanks for attending and addressing the church's celebration dinner, a donation was made in my name to the efforts of the United Church Joint Assistance Sponsorship Group 388 in support of the settlement of a Syrian family, then living in a refugee camp in Jordan. In the weeks since, I have received reports on the travels and experiences of this family. Their story is similar to many now unfolding for these new residents and their sponsors in Canada.

This young family of five arrived in Canada on December 6. They had tried to remain in Syria, but had to leave due to increased violence and hostility to their political beliefs. The father was twice detained and was mistreated by the authorities. The family feared for its safety in Syria, and sought a better life. Like so many Canadians born here or elsewhere, they are driven by the hope of a better future.

Upon arriving in Canada, they immediately attended orientation sessions and received the necessary documentation to work, go to school, and receive health care. The three children are now attending school in Belleville, and their school is fortunate to have its own ESL specialist. I am hopeful that their experiences as students will help them successfully adapt to Canadian life.

To me, the most remarkable part of this story is how the community has rallied behind its new neighbours. I have been told of how complete strangers have been united by a desire to help in their own way: a couple who drove to a Middle Eastern food store in Toronto and brought back a carload of food; another who translated into Arabic all the labels for the spice rack in the kitchen. There were students from Albert College who moved furniture, a local handyman who installed curtains, drapes, and fixtures, as well as many whose only connection is that they have made donations. Students from the local St Michael Catholic School organized a fundraiser.

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This sort of heartfelt generosity is a prime example of the kind of caring communities we nurture in all corners of Ontario. No less important is the support of places of worship, ethnic and community groups. And any definition of community must include the remarkable collaboration and warmth shown by all levels of government, the private sector, and civil society organizations that make the entrance of refugees at the airport so hospitable. It was such a privilege to witness. It says much about our values in Canada and what can be achieved by working together. It shows just how Ontario can and does contribute to the world.

Warmly welcoming Syrian refugees to this land of hope and promise. #WelcomeRefugeespic.twitter.com/6ZyDpoHMxT  Elizabeth Dowdeswell (@LGLizDowdeswell) December 21, 2015

What is also clear is that the arrival of these refugee families is not the end of the process, but merely the end of the beginning. With the kindness and compassion present in so many Ontario communities large and small, it is clear that these new Syrian families will receive a warm welcome and be supported as they make a new start in this vast and diverse country. As more displaced families begin to arrive in larger numbers, let us continue to offer our hands in friendship and offer this new generation of Canadians the encouragement they deserve. We eagerly look forward to the many contributions they will make to our beloved Canada.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends a fares protest at King's Cross Station, London, as the Government was accused of profiting from commuters as the annual hike in rail fares hits people returning to work. Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

Jeremy Corbyn is expected to confirm his Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday amid continuing doubt over the role of key figures on his frontbench.

The Labour leader had an hour-long meeting in his Commons office on Monday night with Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn and a half-hour meeting with Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle.

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Mr Corbyn is understood to want greater "coherence" on foreign and defence policy after damaging divisions over Syria and Trident of late, in order to allow him to focus on the unity within the Parliamentary party over domestic and economic policy.

But he is also keen to avoid further damage that could be triggered by moving Mr Benn, as well as Shadow Chief Whip Rosie Winterton. Ms Winterton is said to have warned the leader of a wider walkout if Mr Benn was fired.

Ms Eagle's future seems less certain, with suggestions that she will be moved following her decision on the Andrew Marr programme in November to back up Chief of Defence Staff Sir Nick Houghton's concerns about Mr Corbyn's anti-nuclear stance.

Mr Corbyn is set to appear in the Commons on Tuesday afternoon opposite David Cameron for the Prime Minister's statement on the December EU summit, and Mr Benn would normally be expected to sit alongside him in his current post.

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Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher and Shadow Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer were being tipped for the axe for repeatedly challenging the leadership's line on a range of issues. Both are key allies of Andy Burnham and it is possible only one may be moved. Figures such as Emily Thornberry and Catherine McKinnell could be promoted.

Mr Benn had been expecting the sack for days and had the longest in a series of one-on-one meetings with the leader. He emerged smiling but refused to comment.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary - whose speech in the Syria debate last month triggered both praise and criticism within the party - was keen for other ministers not to quit in protest if he was fired, but was unlikely to accept a serious demotion for acting in line with his conscience on a free vote.

Ms Eagle's position was unclear too, although the party leadership is now determined to stage another email consultation with party members on the issue of Trident - as hinted by Mr Corbyn in his HuffPost UK interview - ahead of party conference next year.

Ms Winterton, whose position had assumed to have been safe following recent speculation, was claimed to have been spotted having a heated discussion with Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in the middle of the reshuffle manoeuvres.

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Sources close to Mr McDonnell denied there had been any "big bust up" and instead pointed out that he and the Shadow Chief Whip had ended the evening joking with each other.

None of the ministers who met Mr Corbyn commented on the outcome but a full list of the new team is expected on Tuesday.

It is possible all three of the big names touted for reshuffle will remain in place, although it appears that Mr Corbyn has insisted on greater unity over policy statements and acceptance of his huge mandate from party members on key issues of defence and foreign policy.

After hours of talks, a spokesman for the leadership told HuffPost UK: "Jeremy Corbyn has had several discussions today about changes to Shadow Cabinet. There will be an announcement in due course."

Allies of the leader stress that there is no desire for 'punishment' or 'revenge' over the Syria vote but that 'coherence' is the main aim as the party heads into a series of electoral tests in London, local elections, Scotland and Wales this spring.

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There was speculation that Ms Winterton could lose her role chairing the boundary review of Parliamentary constituencies, a move that one insider said would amount to 'an act of war' greater than any reshuffle change, given the way some activists want to use the review to select more left-wing Parliamentary candidates.

Mr Corbyn is determined to appoint more women to senior posts, not least to counter the hasty reshuffle of September when his team failed to spot the impact of men in the post of leader, deputy leader, Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Angela Eagle, the Shadow Business Secretary, was given the extra title of Shadow First Secretary of State to allow her to stand in for Mr Corbyn at Prime Minister's Question Time.

Backbencher Jess Phillips accused the party leader on Newsnight of accepting "low-level, non-violent misogyny", while former deputy leader Harriet Harman called for a new rule forcing the party to have a man and a woman for leader and deputy leader.
Murder squad detectives have taken over the hunt for missing former EastEnders actress Sian Blake and her children who have been missing for several weeks.

Blake, 43, was last seen on December 13 after visiting family in Leyton, east London, along with her sons Zachary Bilal Kent-Blake, eight, and Amon Ben George Kent-Blake, four.

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Police are also concerned for the welfare of Blake's partner, and the father of her children, Arthur Simpson-Kent. The 48-year-old has not been seen since December 16 when officers spoke to him at the family home in Erith, Kent.

Sian Blake with 'EastEnders' co-star Howard Antony

The investigation to find the family continues to be treated as a high-risk missing persons inquiry, police say, but added that "due to concerns for their welfare" the Homicide and Major Crime Command (HMCC) was now leading the hunt.

The HMCC will provide their expertise and additional resources to the enquiry, police said in a statement Monday, while renewing calls for any information on the missing family.

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Police said: "HMCC detectives retain an open mind concerning the circumstances of the family's disappearance, and consideration has been given to whether they may have become victims of a crime.

"At this stage this is one line of enquiry, but with the HMCC now providing additional resources and expertise to find them, it is still hoped that they can be returned home safe and well."

Blake and her children were reported missing after officers visited her home address and spoke to Simpson-Kent having received "information passed to us by another organisation".

When officers were then unable to contact Simpson-Kent a second time he became a "high-risk missing person".

"At this stage it is not known if the family is together or where they may have gone," police said.

Blake's silver/beige Renault Scenic - registration number SM54 FUO - was found in Calvert Avenue, Bethnal Green on January 3. It is not known why the vehicle was parked there and by whom, police said.

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Detective Chief Inspector Graeme Gwyn of the HMCC said the family had been missing for a "considerable period of time now, and I am growing increasingly concerned for their welfare".

He added: "In particular Sian suffers from a serious life-threatening condition and we do not know if she is receiving the medication and treatment she requires to keep well.

"I am appealing directly to Sian and Arthur to get in touch with the police and let us know they are all well. I am also appealing to anyone who has seen the family or knows where they may be to get in touch as soon as possible."

Blake, who played homewrecker Frankie Pierre in BBC soap EastEnders in the 1990s, suffers from motor neurone disease.

According to website IMDb, the Frankie Pierre character featured in 56 episodes of the BBC soap opera between 1996 and 1997.

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Blake is described as being 5ft 2ins tall and of slim build. Blake has short black hair and often wears glasses.

Simpson-Kent is described as a light skinned black man who is 6ft 2ins tall. Zachary and Amon are both described as light skinned black boys. It is not known what any of the family was wearing when they went missing.
While there's really only one way to quench your wanderlust - booking a trip abroad - coming home with an empty wallet (and bank account) can quickly take the just-been-on-holiday wind out of your sails. And being strapped for cash won't help those post-holiday blues.

Luckily, there are plenty of easy ways to cut costs and make your money stretch more on your next trip - whether you're off to Italy or India.

Don't miss these 10 hacks to get more for your money abroad from Chris Johnson, Head of Operations at vouchercloud.com.

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1. Don't change your money at the airport

Holidaymakers are always advised to get their holiday money in advance from travel shops, supermarkets and even online in order to get the best rates. Airports tend to have the worst exchange rates, with up to 10% difference when compared to the high street, which means you'll lose up to 100 per 1,000 you change.

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If possible, purchase slightly more currency than needed, as the rates get better the more you purchase. It also saves on bank charges for withdrawing money whilst abroad. On the plus side, if you come home with more than you need you can always get it changed back or save it for your next holiday.

2. Speak to your bank and credit card providers

Some banks and credit card providers dont charge for card transactions made overseas, and if they do they may be able to provide you with some tips on how to spend on your card without being charged excessive fees. You can also apply for an overseas spending credit card (the MBNA American Express card, Nationwide Building Society card and Post Office Money platinum card are just a few examples) with no foreign transaction charges.

It's also worth chatting to your mobile provider before you jet off to figure out what extra charges you might incur abroad so and how to avoid them so you won't end up with a surprise bill when you return.

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3. Use a credit card for pre-authorisations

Several services, such as booking into a hotel and hiring a car, require a customers card in order to block a pre-authorised amount of money to cover the payment should you not return and make the payment or if any further funds are required. This block on your card will reduce the amount of money you have access to whilst on your holiday, so its advised that you do any pre-authorisations on a credit card where possible, and then complete the payment on either a debit card or pre-paid card.

There are also services out there such as Travelex , which allow travellers to purchase a "multi-currency cash passport" (a pre-paid currency card) in order to manage their spending whilst abroad. Its easy to add money onto and it locks in the exchange rate from the moment the cash transfer is made.

4. Dont be afraid to shop around

When browsing in your holiday destination, do shop around in order to get the best price for something you wish to purchase. Many shops will feature similar items, so you may find something youd like to buy in one shop for a reasonable price, but then in the next the same item is sold for an even better price. Beware of tourist traps and shops within resorts and hotels, as these will often hike the price up.

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5. Pay in the local currency

Some vendors abroad will give you the option to pay in either the local currency (such as Euros) or Sterling. When given the option, always choose to pay in the local currency. Many vendors dont use an accurate exchange rate to work out the cost in Sterling and you may end up paying far more for the purchase than you would otherwise.

6. Learn to haggle

We wouldnt advise that you haggle in shops and supermarkets, however most street-side vendors and pop-up shops will be flexible with the cost of their items if they think that you will make a purchase. In fact, if you dont you could really miss out, as many will state an inflated price in the first place in order to accommodate for this process! Just be careful: shopkeepers may offer to let you haggle the cost if they can convince you to purchase items that you dont want or need.

7. Look for online discounts

Just as you would if you were shopping in the UK, look online for store discounts specific to the country that you are in. It may be 10% off, buy one get one free, or a free product with every purchase, but every little bit helps.

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8. Set a daily budget

Some days you may plan on taking part in activities and some days you may just want to lounge around by the pool, so its no surprise that your spending will fluctuate from day to day. A good tip for making your money last is to set a budget each day, and then anything left over at the end of the day can be rolled over and added on to the next days allowance. This is a surefire way to ensure you have money to spend every day for the duration of your holiday.

9. Take advantage of the all-inclusive

Many of us book all-inclusive holidays with the intention of eating and drinking out on at least one occasion. However, the majority of all-inclusive destinations will provide a wide variety of food, allowing for something different to be eaten almost every day. Eating out abroad can be expensive before any local taxes and tips are added onto the bill - something you dont have to worry about when going all-inclusive.

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10. Keep your pre-paid cards
The Government has failed to provide any evidence to prove that migrants are travelling to the UK in order to receive in-work and out-of-work benefits.

In a request submitted by Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader asked the Government to back up the claim that benefits are a factor in encouraging immigration to the UK from other European Union states.

But in the response from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Government said that the benefits system is "one of a range of factors in attracting migrants to Britain", without providing clear evidence to support the claim.

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Jonathan Portes, Principal Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, highlighted that the response from the Government shows that it "admits" it does not have any evidence to support its claim on "benefit tourism".

Lord Kinnock asks government for factual evidence on "benefit tourism." Government admits it doesn't have any: pic.twitter.com/2PmAmh8w9f  Jonathan Portes (@jdportes) January 5, 2016

In the written question, Lord Kinnock wrote: "To ask Her Majestys Government whether they will provide all factual evidence they have, together with their sources, that UK in-work and out-of-work benefits are a factor in encouraging immigration to the UK from other EU member states."

The DWP's response read: "The benefits system is one of a range of factors attracting migrants to Britain.

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"Net migration to the UK stood at 336,000 in the year to June 2015 according to the November 2015 Migration Statistics Quarterly Report from the Office for National Statistics, and EU nationals are a significant contributor to recent increases.

"Meanwhile, an analysis of administrative data held by the Department for Work and Pensions showed that between 37% and 45% of all recent EU migrants were in households supported by the benefits system as of March 2013."

Lord Freud, to whom the statement is attributed to, added that the Government had already introduced "tough new measures" to migrants seeking benefits, adding that the Prime Minister is pushing further reforms.

The Huffington Post UK has contacted the DWP for comment.

Last month, it was revealed that ministers refused to publish official migration figures because their release would be "unhelpful" to David Cameron's EU renegotiation process.

Portes criticised the government spurning his query as feeding a "paranoia and mistrust in official statistics".

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File photos of Prime Minister David Cameron (left) and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has challenged Mr Cameron to take part in an annual "state of the nation" televised debate with other political leaders. PA Wire/PA Wire

David Cameron has been accused of using Jeremy Corbyn's prolonged Labour reshuffle as cover for his announcement that Conservative ministers will be allowed to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.

The prime minister announced on Tuesday that his cabinet will be free to argue on either side of the referendum debate even though the government will present a "clear recommendation" to the country.

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Cameron told the Commons it would be "open to individual ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the government".

He said he would not "strong arm" his ministers into campaigning in favour of a position on the EU that they did not agree with.

Former Conservative deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine recently warned the prime minister would be a laughing stock across the world" if he allowed his ministers to campaign on the opposite side of the referendum to him.

However former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell told the BBC it was the "obvious decision" for the prime minister to take.

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Cameron is widely expected to recommend Britain remain inside the EU. Eurosceptic Tory MPs have argued ministers who disagree and want the UK to leave the union should be allowed to do so without having to quit their jobs.

Several cabinet ministers are rumoured to want to campaign in favour of Brexit.

The announcement comes as much of Westminster's attention is focused on Corbyn's long-awaited and contentious shake-up of his shadow cabinet.

Former shadow chancellor and Corbyn critic Chris Leslie told the BBC's Daily Politics Cameron had been able to use the Labour reshuffle to "hide beneath this a major change on European referendum policy".

Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop said Cameron was using Labour's internal divisions "hide" the divisions within his own party over Europe.

I wonder why Cameron chose today to hide his weak announcement letting cabinet colleagues do as they please re EU in/out? #labourreshuffle  Tom Blenkinsop (@TomBlenkinsop) January 5, 2016

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Writing for The Huffington Post, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: "The prime minister has used Labour's implosion, or day two of their reshuffle if you are being kind, to sneak out an announcement that his Ministers will be free to campaign on either side of the referendum on Britain's continued membership of the EU.

"It is yet another day that Britain needed David Cameron to show the courage of his convictions. It is sadly yet another day he has flunked that test and capitulated to calls on his right flank."

And he said Cameron was copying "Corbyn's weak style of leadership" by granting a free vote. "Now is not the time to back down. The government should take a collective position on this issue, and if ministers disagree with the prime minister they should resign," he said.

Both Labour shadow business secretary Angela Eagle and former shadow cabinet minster Mary Creagh said Cameron's decision showed he was "weak weak weak".

And Labour backbencher Wes Streeting said it was "simply incredible" that the Conservative Party would not have a unified position on EU membership. "Cameron's EU weakness once again shows he puts party before country," he tweeted.

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Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of of pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign, welcomed the reports ministers would be given a free vote.

"We hope that many Ministers will speak out honestly about how much of their jobs are now really controlled by Brussels, not by the votes of the British public, and how it is much safer to Vote Leave," he said.
Two Labour MPs engaged in a very public spat over the future of the party on Tuesday, as Jeremy Corbyn's front bench reshuffle saw shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher fired.

Former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, who is no fan of Corbyn, told the BBC's Daily Politics programme the reshuffle risked the "hard left" seizing control of the party.

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But in tense exchanges, Cat Smith said the current shadow cabinet was more right-wing than the Parliamentary Labour Party and Corbyn needed a top team he could trust.

This morning Dugher became the first casualty of the reshuffle, losing the culture job. In recent days he had warned against Corbyn taking "revenge" on his critics inside the shadow cabinet.

Leslie, who quit the frontbench following Corbyn's election as leader in September, said he was not entire sure what Dugher's "sin" had been.

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"I think he was very effective in opposing the government and opposing the Conservatives. I don't think removing him makes Labour's chances of winning any greater," he said.

"There is a natural impetus among the hard-left who want to tighten their control, they want to sideline moderate voices. I don't think anybody should be surprised, that is the nature of the hard left."

Leslie added that "the hard-left famously can not tolerate any dissent" and that voters were seeing Labour being taken over by "the disdainful hard left" which was "focusing inwardly".

But Smith hit back, questioning who exactly Leslie meant by the "hard-left" and insisted Corbyn, as leader, was free to pick his own team just as previous leaders were.

She asked Leslie: "Who are the hard left? Am I the hard left? We don't understand that language. I am a Labour MP and proud to be Labour. I am assuming you feel the same?"

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"I think Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of Labour Party is within his rights to pick the people who want to serve in the shadow cabinet," she said.

"If he doesn't want people in his shadow cabinet who spend more time attacking the Labour Party leadership than the Tory benches opposite us, then he is perfectly within his rights to do that."

Smith, who is shadow minister for women and equalities, said Corbyn was in a "very strong" position to move the shadow cabinet to the left.

"He is trying to realign his top team to match more what the PLP is and more what the party is. I think the current shadow cabinet is frankly to the right of where the PLP is," she said. "It's right Corbyn has a team around him he trusts."

Today's reshuffle followed speculation of a possible "purge" of those with views at odds with the leader, including shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle's support for the renewal of the UK's Trident nuclear deterrent.

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Another nine shadow cabinet members voted for air strikes after Corbyn was forced to allow a free vote - fuelling suggestions that he could replace them with left-wing supporters.
Michael Dugher leaves Millbank Studios in London, after he became the first casualty of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet reshuffle as he was sacked from the post of shadow culture secretary. Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

Labour's civil war continued tonight as the senior MP sacked by Jeremy Corbyn accused his team of deploying a "barrage of briefing" against "good, decent and loyal" members of the Shadow Cabinet.

The Labour leaders first significant act in the so-called revenge reshuffle was this morning to axe Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher for writing a critical piece written for political magazine, the New Statesman.

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After seven members of the Shadow Cabinet made public their support for the Barnsley MP, Mr Dugher appeared on BBC Radio 4's PM programme to criticise the "systematic process" of briefing against MPs by Mr Corbyn's inner circle.

The MP, a former Gordon Brown media aide, was among 10 members of the Shadow Cabinet to vote for RAF airstrikes in Syria, which is said to be fuelling the Labour leaders re-arrangement of his top team.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle and Chief Whip Rosie Winterton featured most often as being vulnerable in recent reports.

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Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn (left) and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons this afternoon

Mr Dugher said: I was sick and tired over many weeks of stories coming out from people who he chooses to employ.

"There was this barrage of briefing saying that good, decent, loyal members of the shadow Cabinet - named at length - would be fired in a revenge reshuffle because they took a different position to Jeremy on a free vote on Syria.

He also stood by comments criticising the Momentum campaign group, which was set up to champion Jeremy Corbyn and his policies, and labelling some of their members as acting like a "mob".

You will not find a quote from me attacking Jeremy Corbyn," he said. "The comments I made about Momentum? I said at times - at times - they had acted like a mob.

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"The way that many of them have taken to social media, condemned good Labour MPs because they took a very difficult decision on military action, extending it from northern Iraq to Syria ... that these colleagues were being condemned as 'Red Tories' and they should be kicked out the party.

"In fairness, Jeremy Corbyn spoke out against this abuse as well. I was critical of Momentum and rightly so."

He also questioned the time it was taking to get the job done as details were looking like they may not emerge for another day. If youre going to spend three days doing it, fine. But that could be three days attacking the Conservatives, he said.

Mr Dugher took to Twitter straight after a getting a phone from Mr Corbyn to announce he had been "sacked" - then added it was because Mr Corbyn didnt like things Id been writing (in defence of good colleagues and new politics).

Just been sacked by Jeremy Corbyn. I wished him a happy new year.  Michael Dugher MP (@MichaelDugher) January 5, 2016

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Jeremy said he didn't like things I'd been writing (in defence of good colleagues & new politics). Well here it is https://t.co/prMdUislEe  Michael Dugher MP (@MichaelDugher) January 5, 2016

Significantly, Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, heaped praise on Mr Dugher as he recognised the "loss" to the Shadow Cabinet.

He said: "Michael Dugher is a rare politician - a talented working class MP who hasn't lost his strong Yorkshire roots.

"Politicians with his ability and commitment can make a difference in any role. Labour's loss in the Shadow Cabinet will be compensated by Michael's free thought on the backbenches."

Labour jeopardising its working-class origins was picked up on by a number of Labour MPs, and could be seen as a swipe by them at Mr Corbyn's comfortable upbringing.

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.@MichaelDugher With the sacking of Dugher, traditional working class Labour is dying. pic.twitter.com/qFZGZmJ4v6  Graham Jones MP (@GrahamJones_MP) January 5, 2016

The picture is a reference to the controversial tweet made by Labour MP Emily Thornberry, apparently sneering at working-class families, which saw her lose her front bench job under Ed Miliband. She has been touted for promotion under Mr Corbyn.

Mr Dugher wrote last week about a revenge reshuffle not being very "new politics". I was also attracted by Jeremys call for a new, kinder politics. This would be one where there would be room for a little dissent and where the party, including the Shadow Cabinet, would have the confidence to have proper debates and discussions. What greater evidence of this than his decision that, despite his strong opposition to military action, there should be a free vote on Syria? And his insistence that all sides of the debate should respect one anothers different but sincerely held points of view.

Andy Burnham, the Shadow Home Secretary, also praised Mr Dugher, who ran his leadership campaign.

.@MichaelDugher is Labour to the core & has served our Party with distinction. He can leave the front-bench with his head held high.  Andy Burnham (@andyburnhammp) January 5, 2016

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Vernon Coaker, Labour's Northern Ireland spokesman, paid tribute.

Really sorry to see @MichaelDugher leave Shad Cab. He will be missed!He will be just as ferocious attacking the Tories from the b/benches  Vernon Coaker MP (@Vernon_Coaker) January 5, 2016

As did Shadow Education Secretary, Lucy Powell.

Very sorry to see @MichaelDugher leave Shadow Cabinet. Michael is a formidable campaigner who provides an important & authentic voice.  Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) January 5, 2016

And another member of the Shadow Cabinet, Jon Ashworth, offered his support too.

I've been mates with @MichaelDugher since I was 16. Sorry to hear this news. I know he will continue to campaign hard for the party he loves  Jonathan Ashworth MP (@JonAshworth) January 5, 2016

They were followed by Ian Murray, the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.

Disappointed that @MichaelDugher will not be around Shadow Cabinet table. A gr8 parliamentarian, super guy & ferocious opposer of injustice.  Ian Murray (@IanMurrayMP) January 5, 2016

And Chris Bryant, the Shadow Leader of the House.

I'm sorry to see @MichaelDugher has left the Shadow Cabinet - although he never once recognised the UK brass band supremacy of @Coryband  Chris Bryant MP (@RhonddaBryant) January 5, 2016

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But the wall of praise was not thought to be an orchestrated attempt to undermine the leader.

Shad Cab source: friends of Dugher wanted to ensure he got dignified exit, but no calculated snub to JC. Praise is 'spontaneous/heartfelt'  Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 5, 2016

Though the sacking prompted many Labour backbench MPs to condemn the move.

Sad to see this. @MichaelDugher is a highly effective & authentic voice 4 working ppl & a great champion for #Labourhttps://t.co/bGFEhfFqxD  Dan Jarvis (@DanJarvisMP) January 5, 2016

Hows make-it-work working out?  Gavin Shuker (@gavinshuker) January 5, 2016

Where's the broad church in all of this? Dugher is an effective communicator. Big mistake. https://t.co/PKgeSjSKh0  angela smith (@angelasmithmp) January 5, 2016

Michael Dugher told it straight about the way this Momentum group seems to be a vehicle for Labour's opponents. Huge respect to him.  John Woodcock (@JWoodcockMP) January 5, 2016

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Very disappointing - Michael was doing some great work on opening up arts & culture to people from all backgrounds https://t.co/0WBiCG9EDY  Anna Turley MP (@annaturley) January 5, 2016

Tory culture minister Ed Vaizey even chipped in.

Very sorry to hear that. You are passionate and effective on DCMS issues https://t.co/bbhbceTn6h  Ed Vaizey (@edvaizey) January 5, 2016

And political observers suggested there would be unintended consequences.

Dugher sacking reminds me of the famous LBJ phrase about tents and piss. I predict someone is about to get very wet indeed.  Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) January 5, 2016

Mr Corbyn is expected to confirm his Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on today amid continuing doubt over the role of key figures on his frontbench.

The Labour leader had an hour-long meeting in his Commons office on Monday night with Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn and a half-hour meeting with Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle.

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Mr Corbyn is understood to want greater "coherence" on foreign and defence policy after damaging divisions over Syria and Trident of late, in order to allow him to focus on the unity within the Parliamentary party over domestic and economic policy.
About 80 women were targeted in a series of sexual assaults and muggings in an "organised" mass attack at a busy German station on New Year's Eve.

Scores of women were targeted by about 1,000 men in Cologne city centre, by the main train station on Thursday. One woman has claimed she was raped.

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Fireworks were also thrown into the crowd, with chaotic scenes uploaded to YouTube.

The attacks have been described as a completely new dimension of crime by city police chief Wolfgang Albers.

Scores of women were attacked at Cologne city centre's train station on New Year's Eve

The men involved were described as drunk and aggressive and largely of Arab or North African appearance, according to police.

A volunteer police officer was among those sexually assaulted.

Germany's justice minister, Heiko Maas, echoed Albers' comments, describing the incident as "a whole new dimension of organised crime".

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Maas wrote on Twitter that the attacks on women would not be tolerated.

Arnold Plickert, head of the police trade union in NRW, told the Deutsche Presse Agentur "what weve been able to establish is that this is an organised method.

One British woman who was visiting Cologne said that fireworks were thrown at the group she was with.

She told the BBC: "They were trying to hug us, kiss us. One man stole my friend's bag.

"Another tried to get us into his 'private taxi'. I've been in scary and even life-threatening situations and I've never experienced anything like that."
Rising tensions following Saudi Arabias execution of a prominent Shia cleric have brought into focus the 1,400 year divide between two main branches of Islam.

The Kingdoms decision to kill Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a driving force behind the Arab Spring of 2011, has seen its regional rival Iran issue strongly worded statements deploring the execution, while other regional players rally to support either side.

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The situation highlights the differences between Shia and Sunnis, two opposed interpretations of Islamic theology, which lie behind much of the sectarian division we see in the Middle East today.

Both Muslim sects share Islams five pillars, as well as rituals such as pilgrimage to Mecca

Shia and Sunnis: Explained See gallery

Sectarianism in the Middle East looks set to continue, and could even worsen, after the Sheikhs execution, analysts say.

Fawaz Gerges, of the London School of Economics, has said the Sheikh al-Nimrs execution could well open the chasm between the two Islamic sects further.

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Gerges told CNN: I fear that the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr will most likely pour gasoline on raging fires in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Lebanon, Bahrain, and in Saudi Arabia itself.

Another expert told the broadcaster that it was thought that Saudi Arabia would keep Shia prisoners as bargaining chips.

Toby Matthiesen, senior research fellow in the International Relations of the Middle East at Oxford said: "Several regional and international actors and countries lobbied for the release or pardoning of al-Nimr."
Experts have expressed doubts about the widely-reported claim that thea British Islamic State executioner who featured in the group's latest video is a prominent militant who recently fled the UK.

Siddhartha Dhar, also known as Abu Rumaysah, was a prominent extremist in Britain, who had aired his radical views on the BBC's Sunday Morning Live and a documentary by Vice, before fleeing to Syria in September 2014 to join IS.

He was a member of the now-banned UK-based extremist group Al Muhajiroun, which was once headed by Anjem Choudary.

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The masked man in the latest execution video calls David Cameron an "imbecile" for challenging the "might" of the so-called Islamic State. He then executes a group of prisoners accused of spying for the British government.

On Tuesday, the media reported he was believed to be Dhar but keen observers of IS, also known as Isis, Isil or Daesh, have some doubts.

The man in the IS video (above) and Dhar appearing on the BBC in 2014 (below)

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Shiraz Maher, a King's College London lecturer and expert in British recruits to IS, said he "really did not think" the executioner was Dhar, saying the voice was wrong and the masked man's figure was "much too bulky".

I'm really not at all convinced that the new "Jihadi John" is Abu Rumaysah. New guy doesn't sound like him and is much too bulky.  Shiraz Maher (@ShirazMaher) January 4, 2016

He pointed on that people initially mis-identified 'Jihadi John', the previous British masked executioner who turned out to be Mohammed Emwazi. He was killed in a drone strike in November.

Remember when everyone thought 1st "jihadi John" was Abdel-Bary Majeed? I disagreed then & now. New guy doesnt look like Abu Rumaysah to me.  Shiraz Maher (@ShirazMaher) January 4, 2016

Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security studies at defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, told The Huffington Post UK the man's appearance in the video cast doubt in his mind.

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He said: "If you look really closely at the eyes, it looks like the eyes aren't quite even.

'While Rumaysah's eyes in the pictures you can see don't look even as well, it looks more pronounced in the [IS] video. But it could be a bad camera angle.

"The other thing is the ears seem a little lower. At the end of the day we're only going to know when is when someone talks to the guy who shot the video."

This echoes what Konika Dhar, Dhar's sister, said. She believed it was him on hearing the voice but on viewing the video found "one eye is smaller than the other, my brother has symmetrical eyes. The eyebrows are bushy and this guy is taller, my brother is shorter and he has got broader shoulders".

He also said claims from Al-Muhajiroun that it is Dhar were not credible, saying: "We've got a bunch of guys from Al-Muhajiroun saying 'oh yeah, it's him, it's him, it's him' but they would say that because it makes them look cooler."

But Pantucci added he did not read much into the fact the man in the IS video was masked. Some have suggested someone as prominent as Dhar would not have hidden his face.

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He said: "I don't agree with the line 'if it was him, why would he mask himself when he's been so visible in the past?'

"I'm not sure that decision would necessarily have been up to him. The group might have made the decision a masked murderer is a far more potent symbol than a recognisable figure."

Prof Jane Setter, a linguistics expert at the University of Reading, studied Dhar's voice from clippings of his television appearances, alongside the executioner's voice in the IS video. She concluded the two had both differences and similarities.

Setter said the pitch of the executioner's voice was higher, but "the minimum and maximum pitch in both samples is similar," she said.

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"The average pitch range is different - 203Hz in the Jihadist video and 153Hz in the interview - but it is likely that he is more 'excited' in the Jihadist video so this could account for the difference."

She added that both Dhar and the executioner emphasise a distinct 'l' when using words that end with that letter.

She told HuffPost UK: "Having listened to both samples, I tentatively suggest there is some possibility that this could be the same speaker. However, detailed forensic analysis would be needed to verify this conclusion."

Downing Street hinted it had been given a name but would not confirm it.
An 11-year-old who has a rare condition which causes him to grow benign tumours has become the first child in the UK to undergo a mastectomy.

Lewis Deakin, from Wythenshawe, Manchester, suffers from a condition called arteriovenus malformation.

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According to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is a "specific term used to describe a tangle of blood vessels with abnormal connections between arteries and veins".

Lewis recently had a mastectomy to remove his right pectoral muscle at Birmingham Childrens Hospital.

According to The Telegraph, Lewis' mum, Victoria, said: "I would just crumble if it was me but Lewis is really good.

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"It was a really big lump on his chest and it even stretched out his clothes. One teacher thought he had a beanbag up his top."

Tumours first began to grow in Lewis' chest three years ago and he has since had surgery 15 times.

His parents have completed the 160-mile round trip to the Birmingham hospital dozens of times since his diagnosis.

Unfortunately the hospital trips are not over for the youngster, who is due to have another growth in his chest tested later this month.

When he is older, doctors will be able to reconstruct his chest following the mastectomy, too.

For now, Lewis and his parents would like to raise awareness about arteriovenous malformation.

Victoria said: "I dont think people really know about this condition. The only charity I have come across is AVM Survivors. Theres no awareness or advice for people living with it except on Facebook."
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Biloxi, Miss., Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) Rogelio V. Solis/AP

MPs will debate whether Donald Trump should be banned from the United Kingdom later this month, following his call for Muslims to be banned from the United States.

The US presidential candidate, who is leading the race to become the Republican nominee, has been widely condemned in Britain for his comments.

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On Tuesday, the House of Commons announced a debate would be held on Monday January 18 as a result of two petitions on the government website.

One petition which which has called for Trump to banned from the UK has so far attracted 568,609 signatures. A counter petition which urges the government not to ban Trump has been signed by 39,417 people.

Labour MP Helen Jones, the chair of the committee which chooses which petitions warrant a debate, said: "By scheduling a debate on these petitions, the committee is not expressing a view on whether or not the government should exclude Donald Trump from the UK.

"As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the committee has decided that the subject should be debated. A debate will allow a range of views to be expressed."

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Trump has called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" following deadly terror attacks involving Islamic extremists in California and France.

The comment led to the British government taking the unusual step of publicly condemning an American presidential candidate.

A spokesperson for David Cameron said at the time: "The prime minister completely disagrees with the comments made by Donald Trump which are divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.

"The prime minister is clear that as we look at how we tackle extremism and this poisonous ideology, what politicians need to do is look at ways they can bring communities together and make clear these terrorists are not representative of Islam, indeed what they are doing is a perversion of Islam."

Chancellor George Osborne has indicated he does not think Trump should be banned from the country. He told the House of Commons it would be better to "engage in a robust democratic argument" with Trump rather than ban him.

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A stunning display of light seen in Russia over the weekend has lead to a few strange explanations.

Residents in Birobidzhan believes the spikes of light emanating from the sky meant beings from another world were visiting.

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Dimitry Arkady, a local stargazer, made a sensible judgement however and said it was probably the Northern Lights.

According to Central European News, local media outlets reportedly compared it to a scene from the film 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' "when the aliens visit Earth amid huge light-and-sound bursts."

One local said: "It was like the Orson Welles broadcast, you know, the War of the Worlds back in America when they read out the book on the radio and the people thought it was the real thing."

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Despite Arkady's predictions about earthly reasons for the mysterious light show, he did argue that the display was "strong and unusual enough to be thought by many to be the result of an alien visitation."

"It sent several dozen people at least scrambling for their cars to get away," he said.

"There was real fear in the air."
The five things you need to know on Tuesday January 5, 2016

1) BIG BENN STRIKES

The Commons is back today. Health Questions (including on the junior doctors strike) and a statement on the floods may well concern voters outside the Westminster bubble more than Labours reshuffle.

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But the reshuffle has sucked the life away from other political news and the big Parliamentary event will come when Jeremy Corbyn faces David Cameron across the despatch box for the PMs statement on the December EU summit. And senior MPs expect that Hilary Benn will be sitting alongside the Labour leader on the frontbench, as would be normal for such a statement, in his role as Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Ask not for whom the Benn tolls, he tolls for thee. That seems to have been the message among shadow ministers yesterday. In the very first one-on-one meeting with Corbyn, Rosie Winterton is said to have warned the leadership that sacking Benn (he wasnt interested in any other job) would have sparked a wider walkout.

If Benn stays it would show that you can, like IDS, refuse to move and make yourself unsackable in a reshuffle. Or, more aptly, you can signal you will quit if youre offered another role. (IDS has written a resignation letter several times since 2010, I understand, with his most recent during the tax credits threat to Universal Credit). Its a dangerous game though and is not always a long-term recipe for stability.

Winterton was later seen having a heated discussion with John McDonnell, but party sources deny they had a big bust up. In fact, Im told McDonnell and Winterton ended the evening with him joking about her being a pantomime Dame (a reference to her New Years Honours gong) and they both left late on good terms.

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But bad blood remains. And Maria Eagle could be the biggest victim, with persistent suggestions that Lisa Nandy could replace her. Eagle infuriated the leadership during conference when she said Corbyns Today prog nuclear button remarks were not helpful for a potential Prime Minister. She further irritated Corbyn by backing Gen Nick Houghton on Marr over the same issue. Even if Eagle remains, as Gary Gibbon pointed out late last night, the leadership is determined to go ahead with another email plebiscite on Trident (as JC hinted in his HuffPost end-of-year interview). Bypassing the Shad Cab may be a smarter tactic than defenestrating it in one go, more cautious advisers say.

The hour-long talk with Benn may well have focused on the need to sing from the same hymn sheet and to publicly recognise Corbyn's authority and mandate on foreign affairs. The leaderships team want this to be known as the coherence reshuffle rather than the revenge reshuffle.

Allies say free votes and debate are one thing, but a leader has a right not to be openly undermined and his personal credibility as PM questioned for his views on Trident and foreign policy, for which he has a mandate from members. But some more hard line Corbyistas think the danger is the reshuffle will be seen as botched butchery and the moment for a big clear out has passed. Corbyns own affability and natural caution could be the most important factors.

But what of the bigger picture? As the Sun points out, a new YouGov poll out yesterday showed the Tories are trusted much more than Labour on the economy, law and order, tackling unemployment and even on education (a nice fillip for Nicky Morgans own leadership ambitions?). Corbyns personal poll rating is minus 32. Wes Streeting put it thus: You can rearrange the chairs around the table as much as we like, until these numbers change we wont win a General Election.

Shadow Cabinet is due to take place at 12.45pm today. Senior sources hope a new list be ready by then. Will it feature incremental change rather than revolution, with more women in more senior roles?

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2) DOCTOR DOCTOR

Its Health Questions at 2.30pm today (anorak alert: its normally 11.30am on a Tuesday but this is the first day back) and Jeremy Hunt is sure to be quizzed on the fresh threat of industrial action by the BMA after talks broke down yesterday. Talks could resume as early as today.

The BMAs Mark Porter was on Today suggesting junior doctors have been left with no option, disputing Jeremy Hunts claim that there was a narrow gap between the two sides. Doctors point out that weekend pay is actually central to the entire dispute.

Speaking of pay, today is Fat Cat Tuesday, which is already trending on Twitter: top bosses have earned as much by today as the average worker does in a year.

3) MAN IN THE MASK

David Cameron yesterday described the latest ISIL propaganda video as desperate stuff that proved the terror group was clearly now on the back foot. Todays papers are stuffed full of descriptions of the man believed to be behind the mask.

Siddhartha Dhar, 32, a British-Indian Muslim convert, is a former bouncy castle salesman (that makes the Stars splash) from Walthamstow, east London. The Sun says Dhar was known as Sid and grew up a fan of rock band Nirvana and Arsenal, but "changed" following the death of his father when he was 16, and abandoned plans to become a dentist.

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The Telegraph splashes on a report that Dhar was travelled to Syria with his wife and four children despite being on bail for allegedly encouraging terrorism - after he reportedly failed to hand over his passport. The Times is more sceptical, as some audio and video experts said Mr Dhar's accent, inflections and facial features did not match the gunman in the footage. Dhars sister says shell kill herself if its all true.

The BBCs Dominic Casciani has a Vine that shows how similar Dhar is to the masked man.

The Sun and Mirror focus on claims that the boy in the video is four-year-old London-born Isa Dare. Many papers report on an interview from a cabbie who claims his five-year-old grandson is the boy in the film, having been taken to Syria by his daughter in 2013.

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Watch the bonkers viral video of a cat in a monkey suit.

4) SAUDI QUATTRO

Saudi Arabia is part of a quartet of nations that has now broken off diplomatic relations with Iran (Sudan, Bahrain and the UAE joined it yesterday) as Sunni-Shia tensions across the Middle East reach worrying new levels.

And the Saudi plan to deliberately provoke Tehran (to undermine Assad and the Syria peace talks, some suspect) looks like its working. Last night, the UN Security Council voted to condemn attacks on the Saudi embassy in Iran by protesters angered by the execution of a Shia cleric.

But the UN statement made no mention of the execution of the cleric, Nimr al-Nimr.

The Times reports that David Cameron has delayed a planned high-profile visit to Saudi Arabia for at least three months. Sources insist this is more because he wants to focus on his EU renegotiation but it does have other benefits, clearly.

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The Indy, which has had a string of exclusives on Saudi, splashes a story that the country is the only major death penalty state to be omitted from a 20-page Foreign Office document setting out the UKs five-year strategy to reduce the use of executions around the world.

5) THE SIMON COMMUNITY

It never rains but it pours for Simon Danczuk, the Rochdale MP. After a day of protests outside his constituency office from people he felt were mad leftists demanding his deselection, it emerged last night that Lancashire Police are looking at claims of an historic rape allegation dating from 2006. The MP described the claim as "malicious, untrue and upsetting.

Danczuk then had another cringe-making interview with Newsnight where he again repeated that he liked young women (who advises him to talk about his private life like this?), before being quizzed on new claims from Nick Davies that he takes cash from a photo agency that sells snaps of him to tabloids.

He defended the 1,100 he gets (and declares in the Members Register) from a photographic agency FameFlyNet. It was a properly declared payment for "media advice and [to] give ideas about what they might or might not do, he said and added: "I don't make any apologies for it."

Danczuk is certainly not shy about appearing on the media. Perhaps what caught the whips and leaderships ear too was his LBC interview in which he refused to rule out standing as an independent in 2020 if he was not restored to the party whip. He certainly won a huge majority in 2015 but theres a big doubt that his personal appeal would be enough to retain it outside Labour. More worrying locally are claims that he just wasnt around during the Christmas floods.

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FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015 file photo, British astronaut Tim Peake, member of the main crew of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), gestures prior the launch of Soyuz TMA-19M space ship at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Anyone can dial a wrong number, but its not often done from outer space. Peake tweeted an apology on Christmas Day from the International Space Station after calling a wrong number. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky, File) Dmitry Lovetsky/AP

A schoolgirl who recently passed her radio exams to become a licensed amateur radio user is going to be the first student to speak to astronaut Tim Peake using Amateur Radio.

Jessica Leigh, a student at Sandringham School in St Albans, will be operating a VHF/UHF amateur radio station to enable her school to communicate directly with Peake, who is currently on board the International Space Station (ISS).

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The talented teen will be establishing contact and managing a group of 10 students who will be questioning the astronaut on Friday morning.

The students who will be talking to Peake

The Amateur Radio on International Space Station (ARISS) will be livestreaming the chat on its website at 8.47am, as the ISS passes over the UK.

The school will be able to speak with Peak as long as the ISS is in sight of its ground station.
The creators of the iconic Tunnocks tea cakes are under fire by critics who claim the brand is trying to ditch its Scottish heritage.

There has been an outpouring of anger aimed at Tunnocks after an advert on the London Underground branded the teatime treat the Great British Tea Cake.

Some people also claimed that the Lion Rampant symbol had been removed from the products packaging - something managing director Boyd Tunnock later denied, according to the Press Association.

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Worrying tube advert for Tunnocks. Surely their Tea Cakes are Scottish? pic.twitter.com/uGA3bCnu8V  Kate Muir (@muirkate) December 18, 2015

The Conservative voter, who spoke out in favour of the Union during the 2014 referendum debate, said the furore was a "storm in tea cake".

He told Radio Scotland: "The advert we put in London was a sort of spoof of the British Bake Off. It was my son-in-law who suggested this and I thought it was okay."

But he later told Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show: "We're in Britain, that's what we say.

"We are advertising the Great British Tea Cake because we had a referendum here and 55% of Scottish people wanted to be in Britain and that's why we're calling it the British tea cake."

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That didnt stop some people using Twitter to express their ire at the decision

@indycyclist Absolutely. Re-branding is one thing - what Tunnocks did was a brazen rejection of Scotland.  Gary Elliot (@GaryE1869) January 4, 2016

I mean, imagine if Guinness had said they wouldn't promote Ireland or Toblerone saying they wouldn't promote Switzerland.  Mark Coburn (@indycyclist) January 4, 2016

After over 100 years, why are Tunnocks suddenly ashamed to call themselves Scottish? Disappointed https://t.co/pdvXvSVwSU  Laura Harper (@Harperthewriter) January 3, 2016

I'm sure that never eating another caramel wafer will be good for me anyway. Bye bye Tunnocks. https://t.co/sqo88epzoy  Ian McLean (@embradon) January 3, 2016

Tunnock said that he sent a box of the treats to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as well as to Prime Minister David Cameron for Christmas, and a packet is also making its way to "the Labour man".

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The family firm established in 1890 and based in Uddingston sells around 3.5 million tea cakes a week.

Asked about the effect of his comments during Scotland's independence debate, Tunnock said: "I did get a few letters from folk saying 'our extended family of 11 will never buy another tea cake', but since then we've sold even more and more, because they are nice - they are good."
The founder of UK Black Pride has turned down an MBE from the 2016 New Years Honours List in protest of the persecution of LGBTQI people in the Commonwealth.

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, who is also a Stonewall trustee and Rainbow List judge, said that, while she was honoured and grateful to be selected for the accolade, she felt she had to turn it down.

She told DIVA magazine: "As a trade unionist, a working class girl, and an out black African lesbian, I want to stand by my principles and values.

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"If you're a member of a minority - or multiple minorities - it's important to be visible as a role model for others [and] for your successes to be seen.

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah turned down an MBE

She continued: I don't believe in empire. I don't believe in, and actively resist, colonialism and its toxic and enduring legacy in the Commonwealth, where - among many other injustices - LGBTQI [lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex) people are still being persecuted, tortured and even killed because of sodomy laws, including in Ghana, where I am from, that were put in place by British imperialists.

According to the Independent, 39 Commonwealth countries still have repressive anti-LGBT laws.

Opoku-Gyimah is in good company, with a host of high profile figures who have turned down honours over the years, including Danny Boyle, Jon Snow and Stephen Hawking.

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A number of LGBT people were honoured in the New Years list.

Tim Sigsworth of LGBT homeless charity The Albert Kennedy Trust was selected for an MBE while Paul Roberts, the chief executive of national charity LGBT Consortium was also awarded an OBE.

David Smith, first secretary of the foreign and Commonwealth office was chosen for an OBE for services in support of diversity and LGBT equality within the government.
Happy students posing for a picture at the matriculation ceremony outside the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford University England. Jon Bower at Apexphotos via Getty Images

In the past three years, almost 50,000 students have been caught cheating at British universities, with a disproportionate amount of the cheaters being foreign students, according to new figures.

An investigation by The Times revealed that students from outside the EU were more than four times as likely to cheat in university assessments. The newspaper used more than 100 freedom of information requests to get the data.

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At Staffordshire University, more than 50% of cheating cases involved foreign students, who make up just 5% of the student population.

Of the 59 students caught cheating at the University of Sheffield over the past three years, 75% were foreign, although they accounted for only 12% of the student body.

Overall, of the 70 universities that provided data on the nationality of their cheating students, foreign students made up 35% of all cheating cases, despite only making up 12% of the student body.

The University of Kent was the worst offender for cheating students, with 1,947 cheaters caught between 2012 and 2015. Not far behind was the University of Westminster, with 1,933 cheats, with The University of East London coming in at third place with 1,828.

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In a statement to the Independent, the University of Kent said we will not tolerate misconduct, assuring the paper that they had robust systems in place to detect cheats.

Though most cheating involves plagiarising essays and coursework, or cheating in exams, there were at least five cases of impersonation, where students arranged for someone other than themselves to sit their exam for them.

Cheating is also becoming a business for some: hundreds of unregulated websites exist, which allow academics and writers to produce work for students who pay.

These essay writing services allow cheaters to slip through the net, and go undetected in the face of programmes like Turnitin, which universities use to detect traditional plagiarism by comparing a students work against already published academic material.

What Id call type-1 plagiarism, copying and pasting, is on the wane because its so easy to detect, Geoffrey Alderman, History and Politics professor at the University of Buckingham, told The Times. But my impression is that type-2 cheating, using a bespoke essay-writing service, is increasing, he added.

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This form of plagiarism means that the data produced from the investigation is likely to be an underestimation of the true numbers of students cheating, which could be a lot more than the figures suggest.

A cursory search of cheat and essay into google provides lists of companies promising to get students the grades they need. One website, called UK Essays, promises plagiarism free essays, and boasts that it writes over 8,000 essays every single year.
Victoria Derbyshire Speaks Candidly About Hair Loss Following Chemotherapy Treatment In New Video Diary

Victoria Derbyshire has shared a new instalment of her video diary, in which she speaks openly about the hair loss shes suffered, as a result of her chemotherapy.

Since being diagnosed with breast cancer in August last year, Victoria has documented her battle and the treatment shes received in video diaries, and in her latest, she reveals that shes been wearing a wig to present her BBC2 show.

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The presenter removes her wig

Speaking to camera, Victoria explains: One of the things that I'm finding difficult to come to terms with is losing my hair," she said. "I would say I have lost about 30-50 per cent of it.

In the video, which can be seen above, Victoria goes on to remove her wig, and show the extent of her hair loss, before continuing: When I started wearing a wig a few weeks ago I didn't tell anyone at work I was wearing one, because I needed a little time to adjust to it myself.

I can confirm I'm now fully adjusted to it and so feel comfortable in being totally open about it.

The point is, it lets me crack on and get on with things - which is absolutely great.

In one of her previous video diaries, Victoria shared an inspirational message from her hospital bed, explaining that she had undergone a mastectomy, ahead of the chemotherapy treatment.

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Praising the healthcare professionals who cared for her, Victoria said: The NHS staff have been awesome. Im completely in awe of them. They are so inspiring and so caring and I feel so grateful to them.

When I woke up from the anaesthetic I did cry because it was just a relief. The malignant tumour in my right breast is gone.
The best way to counter the threat constituted by the referendum is to show that the EU can be remade to work better in the democratic service of its citizens.

At some point during the course of 2016, either in the summer or the autumn, it looks as if that fateful moment when the British people decide whether or not their country stays a member of the European Union will at last arrive. As so often in politics, 'events, dear boy, events' may still conspire to delay the decision until 2017, but it looks likely at present that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, wants to get the issue decided sooner rather than later. In other words, the referendum is coming, and is probably coming quite soon. There is no longer any point in complaining that it emerged from the Prime Minister's political weakness within his own party and that he could, and should, have faced down the demands of his own members for a decisive 'In-Out' choice. The referendum has to be confronted in full recognition of the reality that it has the potential to be seismic in its impact on British politics and political economy and Britain's future place in the world.

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It also needs to be understood that referenda by their very nature are crude, simplifying devices. The question posed is always direct - in this case, 'Should the UK remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?' - and the only answer permitted is the expression of a binary choice - in this case, 'Remain' or 'Leave', as the options have already been framed. Voters cannot respond by saying 'yes, but only if...', or 'no, as long as....'. This means that the campaign in the UK, which has not really yet got going, will unavoidably be drawn into a battle between literally non-sensical positions - to put the respective cases colloquially, either that the EU has been a great thing for Europe and the UK would be mad to leave; or that the EU has been an unbearable imposition on British freedom and autonomy and the UK must seize this opportunity to get out. There won't be much room for nuance once the politics starts flying around our heads.

Herein lies a huge problem for the 'Remain' cause and campaign. Assessing the state of the EU at the beginning of 2016 even from the starting-point of an inherently supportive perspective, itself derived from no more than a basic grasp of recent history, it's simply not possible to argue with any credibility that the European integration and co-operation project built up so painstakingly since the late 1940s is in good shape. There is too much too obviously wrong with the way that the EU has lately been run - indeed perhaps with the way it has always been run. There is no point in seeking to itemise these defects here: they have been much discussed and embrace even in recent times a raft of major failings, including excessively austere recent management of the Euro economy, the sharp divisions that have lately opened up about the free movement of people into and inside the EU and the seeming inability of the Union to articulate and defend Europe's position within a fast-changing and globalising political economy. The latter constitutes a special disappointment, given that so much early support for European integration, especially on the centre-left, derived from its promised capacity to stake out some ongoing social democratic terrain in the face of the onslaught of neoliberal globalisation.

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The key political point here is that a progressive 'Remain' position must not allow itself to be trapped in the upcoming referendum campaign in a place that is uncritical of the contemporary EU. That simply will not play with the current mood, as best we can discern it from polling evidence, of the British people. Instead, it has, somehow, to perform the trick of arguing as persuasively as possible what has unavoidably to be a nuanced case. It needs, in short, to call for major reforms of the EU, but do so from a standpoint that recognises in the EU too vital a geo-economic and geo-political structure for the UK to walk away from. This sort of case (which is easy to mount in the academic and intellectual arena), is notoriously difficult to pull off in the rough and tumble of 24/7 modern electoral politics. It must be seriously questioned as well whether the UK presently has any politicians - whether Cameron for the Conservatives or on this issue Alan Johnson (who is not even the party leader) for Labour - capable of displaying the gravitas, flexibility and cunning needed to carry such a task through to a successful outcome. Nicola Sturgeon will probably be able to deliver a majority 'Remain' vote in Scotland, but where is the leader capable of setting out for all of the peoples of the various nations of the UK a compelling and optimistic vision of where the UK can fit happily into the contemporary European and global order?

Nevertheless, this is surely the task and it is unfortunate that some on the left, such as Owen Jones, have run away from the challenge in favour of a short-sighted embrace of the idea of 'Lexit'. Even a journalist (and SPERI International Advisory Board member) as hard-headed in his analysis of political economy as Paul Mason has lately considered, and seemingly taken seriously, the notion of 'Brexit' as an 'economic opportunity'. This is a dead-end alley and it's puzzling that it appeals as much as it apparently does, especially when there is another powerful argument that left thinkers and politicians can and should now be making about the EU with all their available energy. This focuses on the key question of democracy and asserts in a nutshell that the EU was undemocratic in its inception, has been run consistently from a technocratic (and therefore anti-democratic) mind-set and has now accumulated such a debilitating 'democratic deficit' that the latter has become a major threat to the EU's very survival.

This argument has been developed most powerfully in Germany through the voice of Jurgen Habermas, the eminent philosopher and leading public intellectual. Even though he is now eighty-six years old, Habermas has engaged the debate about the future of Europe energetically and cleverly. Although deeply critical of Germany's management of the Eurozone economy and especially its treatment of Greece, he has remained a passionate advocate of a united European project, albeit one that needs to be deeply and seriously further democratised. Habermas takes the view that embedded national capitalisms of a social democratic or even a social market hue have run their course, overtaken by the power of globalising markets. Even powerful European nation-states, such as Germany, France and the UK, can no longer manage this power without peril to their different social orders and are finding with each new day that their many post-1945 social and political achievements are disintegrating before their eyes.

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This is certainly what many of the people of Europe, including the people of Britain, seem to be seeing with growing starkness of vision. They have to be persuaded that that these achievements can best now be defended and enhanced by proper democratic stewardship at a regional (that is, EU) level - that the EU can in effect be remade to work better in the service of its citizens. This is really what the UK referendum campaign needs to be about, not silly discussions of how to reclaim and retain a mythical sovereignty that has long disappeared anyway in conditions of globalisation. Of course, the argument about building a sustained democratic order across the institutions of the EU needs to be translated into a popular idiom, and that isn't going to be easily done from where the debate about Europe in the UK presently starts. But this is without doubt the challenge and it is the responsibility of democratic politicians to find ways of rising to it.
Two children play on the railway lines in Presevo, waiting for another train to take them on the next step in their journey

A few weeks before Christmas in 1938, a party of 196 German children arrived at the UK port of Harwich. They had left Nazi-controlled Berlin by train the day before, after their Jewish orphanage had been burned to the ground. They were the first of nearly 10,000 children who travelled to Britain to escape persecution, facilitated by volunteers and far-sighted officials, in what became known as the Kindertransport.

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The Kindertransport movement is something Britain can be incredibly proud of, a beacon of light in an otherwise dark time. I was reminded of it when I stood on a beach in Lesvos recently, helping families fleeing conflict to come ashore on flimsy rubber boats. Many held out their babies and small children first, calling out for them to be carried to safety - that innate desire of parents to save their children at all costs.

A young boy looks across the street in the unofficial camp at Kara Tepe on the Greek island of Lesvos

It was that same determination to survive that led them to set out on an uncertain journey in the first place. Unfortunately, the gamble does not always pay off - as I write this, news has come in of another tragic drowning off the coast of Turkey, with up to 21 bodies brought ashore in Lesvos including children.

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As we face the biggest refugee crisis globally since WWII, it's time to think again about how we can reach out a helping hand to those that need it most. After I met children in Sicily early last summer who had made the journey to Europe completely alone, walking across the desert and facing hunger, torture and abuse on route, Save the Children called on the UK government to offer to take in up to 3,000 of these lone children. That call was backed yesterday by a cross-party group of MPs on the International Development Committee, who recognised the extraordinary vulnerability of unaccompanied refugee children.

A young boy who is still wearing the life jacket that he was wearing when he crossed the sea walks around the city of Lesvos

The 3,000 number was calculated as Britain's fair share of the estimated 26,000 children who arrived in Europe in 2015 without any family. They come from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and elsewhere, some of them teenagers, some as young as eight. Like those children arriving in Harwich in the 1930s, many of them are escaping conflict. They seek safety and security, but unfortunately, with reception services in Greece and Italy totally overwhelmed, they do not always find it.

Last year, Italy said that 4,000 of the lone children they had registered had vanished. Some can be found working as prostitutes around train stations, others are moved on by people traffickers. They come to Save the Children's centres in Rome and Milan to get a decent meal and a shower, to have the chance to call back home and be children again for a while. In Greece, we try to identify and help child refugees who are on their own, but with up to 10,000 people arriving every day at the height of the crisis, the situation is chaotic.

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A boy who just arrived on an inflatable boat from the Turkish coast to the Greek island of Lesvos carries his lifebelt across the beach

As a result, children on their own are extremely vulnerable. Our staff have heard reports of a ten year old boy being raped while he slept in a park, and of children being tortured by people traffickers on the migration route to extort more money. We believe we can do more for children who have already suffered so much.

After hearing our call, organisations and individual families across the UK have come forward and offered to help. One charity, Homes for Good, has already registered 10,000 potential carers and adoptive parents who are ready and willing to give a refugee child a chance at building a better life. We believe that 3,000 is a manageable number for the UK - it's less than a third of those we took in during the Kindertransport and amounts to just five children per parliamentary constituency.
We know the devastating impact austerity has had on our most vulnerable, but what we don't talk about is how it has resulted in crushed aspirations for a whole generation.

That generation are people my age who went through their twenties and entered their thirties as the global financial crisis gave way to an age of austerity.

Everyone deserves a home and a chance, but too many people my age in Scotland are either living at home with their parents or stuck in expensive rents unable to get that first foot on the property ladder.

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Home ownership is a big ambition for hundreds of thousands of Scots, but for too many people my age it remains an ambition rather than a reality.

Instead many remain trapped in a vicious cycle from which there appears to be no escape. They decide to rent to save for a deposit to buy a house, but the rent is too high so they can't save much for a deposit, which means they continue to pay the high rent for years to come.

Under the SNP Government the number of people in Scotland aged 34 and younger who have bought their own home with a mortgage has fallen by 15%. Just 28% of those aged 16-34 in Scotland now own their home with a mortgage - the lowest level since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999.

Politics in Scotland is changing. It's not good enough to simply sit back and accept the consequences of austerity when we can reject it.

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That lack of ambition from the SNP Government doesn't add up anymore. It's time for something different.

At the moment you can save in a first time buyer ISA where savers will receive a 25% top up, up to the value of 3,000.

This is welcome of course but still leaves a deposit out of reach for many people.

Under Scottish Labour's plan we will effectively double the help towards saving a deposit for first time buyers, investing an additional 3,000 for first time buyers saving as part of our plan.

This means a person who currently saves through a first-time buyer ISA up to the value of 3,000 would be entitled to an additional 3,000 from a Scottish Labour Government to help toward the cost of a deposit to buy a property. Under this plan, the average couple each saving 100 a month would be able to save for a 15,000 deposit within three years.

We'll fund our promise by reversing the SNP's plans to cut air passenger duty. A tax cut costs money, and we think that money would be better spent helping make the aspirations of young people a reality rather than making a plane ticket cheaper.

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Our plan will give young people a leg up onto the housing ladder but also encourages them to save over three years.

The new powers coming to Scotland means we can do things differently. For Scottish Labour that means rejecting austerity. But rejecting austerity means more than protecting Scotland from Tory and SNP cuts but to offer something different and better. To offer what we used to be a given in politics but has been lost in the last few years - the opportunity for young people to turns aspiration and ambition into reality.
Four minutes and 15 seconds was the length of the Prime Minister's pre-recorded New Year message.

It was released onto the BBC website just sixteen seconds after midnight on January 1, which a cynic might suggest is probably the best time ever to bury bad news.

Let's face it - most of us probably had something better to do at that moment, didn't we? And you can absolutely bet David Cameron did, too.

The thing is, I'm quite a curious soul. I actually wondered what he'd said to us, as a nation. So I went to take a look back. And I'd invite you to do the same.

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Cameron is obviously a slick and now successful politician. He is of course in possession of a mandate after the general election of last year and is quite clearly making the most of it.

But in his New Year message he displayed himself at his most vainglorious best - the public relations man with a slogan for almost everything, but an answer for none.

He said "security". He said "economic renewal". He said "social reform". He mentioned "values" we British citizens hold "dear".

He also proposed "fixing things" and "securing a better deal in Europe" - and he did all of that with a straight face.

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But readers, my job before politics was in acting for many years, so I know all too well how much he must have practised to pull that one off.

Why? Because everything he spoke about - values, security, social reform - revolved around the one thing he didn't speak about: Immigration.

Last year the United Kingdom had a net influx of around 336,000 people arriving here to settle permanently. Maybe, to you, that doesn't sound a lot.

But if you're a mum, like me, then you will understand why that means it's harder and harder to get your child into the school you'd like them to be educated in.

You'll realise why sitting or sometimes even standing in your local hospital's Accident and Emergency Department takes longer and longer and longer.

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You'll understand, meekly, that the chances of your child being able to one day buy their own home which they themselves might pass onto their own kids becomes increasingly diminished because there simply isn't the housing stock.

And you'll worry, too, that with an ever-burgeoning population we will see wages stay as flat as the market can demand.

Because that's what markets do when there are too many people clambering for the same jobs.

I don't think David Cameron is a bad person. Of course not. But I do think he's a very, very rich and privileged one, with absolutely no idea how the rest of the country gets by.

His New Year rhetoric was just that: Hot air. Avoiding the real issues of today, while wearing a comfortable jumper with a fireplace roaring in the background, while our transport, health and education networks heave under pressure.

This is already heading up to be one of the most important years in British history in the lead up to an in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union.

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Don't let Cameron lead you down the path of staying in. His future is assured by vast personal wealth.

He's a showman, yes - but that's all he is.

Happy new year.
The latest episode of Jeremy Corbyn's criticism comes in the form of his controversial Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. MPs who have publicly disagreed with Corbyn on issues like Trident and airstrikes in Syria have claimed they are being unfairly dropped in an attempt to seek revenge for their opposition to the party leader.

The media is rife with speculation as to who will be dismissed from the current Shadow Cabinet and who will replace them, and have dubbed the adjustments a 'revenge reshuffle'. Those who were complaining that Corbyn's appointments were not inclusive enough are now saying his Shadow Cabinet should remain the same because it contains a wide range of voices. However, although Corbyn's decision to include several so-called 'moderate' MPs was welcomed by many, it is clear that such a range of opinions is no longer sustainable.

With a vote on Trident due to take place in the Commons sometime this year, it is simply not viable for the Shadow Defence Secretary to openly disagree with the leader on such an important issue, as this simply provides the Tories with an open goal. Furthermore, for Hilary Benn to remain as Shadow Foreign Secretary risks further division in the future if the issue of Syria is brought before parliament again. It is clear that changes have to be made within the current Shadow Cabinet for Labour to become an effective opposition.

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However, to simply label these changes as an act of revenge is to completely misunderstand the reasoning behind this reshuffle. To have a Shadow Cabinet openly disagreeing on vital issues such as Trident and Syria is a recipe for disaster, and we have seen this in recent months with news headlines often focusing on the division within Labour rather than the actual issues at hand.

Therefore, with Hilary Benn and others unlikely to change their minds anytime soon, Jeremy Corbyn and those around him have sensibly come to the decision that a reshuffle is the only option available to them. Rather than claiming that this reshuffle will unleash 'carnage' within the Labour party, MPs need to welcome these changes as an attempt to effectively take the fight to the Tories without opposition within the leader's own Shadow Cabinet.

Those who have so publicly opposed this reshuffle need to ask themselves whether they would prefer a Shadow Cabinet that constantly disagrees and consequently benefits the Tories or one that can come to consensus' on a more regular basis, allowing for real opposition. That is the dilemma that Jeremy Corbyn currently faces, and correctly he has decided that he would rather a more effective opposition so he can get on with fighting the Tories without having to worry about dissent within his own ranks.
The Prime Minister has used Labour's implosion, or day two of their reshuffle if you are being kind, to sneak out an announcement that his Ministers will be free to campaign on either side of the referendum on Britain's continued membership of the EU. It is yet another day that Britain needed David Cameron to show the courage of his convictions. It is sadly yet another day he has flunked that test and capitulated to calls on his right flank.

He should know by now that he will not win these people over. They do not respond to rhyme or reason and we should be in no doubt that they will demand more and more 'concessions' and more and more favours regardless of what the Prime Minister's renegotiation returns. That being the case the Prime Minister shouldn't be following Corbyn's weak style of leadership, which he continuously mocked last year, but take a firm stand. Currently, the Prime Minister is failing to lead his own Government, let alone the country, putting his own internal party strife above what's best for Britain.

I believe that the Prime Minister should have the courage to make the case we all know he wants to make, that staying in Europe is good for our economy, our national security and our international interests.

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Now is not the time to back down. The Government should take a collective position on this issue, and if ministers disagree with the Prime Minister they should resign.

If people have opposing views to the Prime Minister, Chancellor and others - how can they sit there in one interview arguing the Government line for the first question and then in another vehemently disagree. Not only is it patently absurd it also seems to herald a period of chaotic and ineffective government.

The Prime Minister has put off various things to avoid splits and schisms but a battle with his Eurosceptic MPs is one he cannot avoid, no matter how much he twists and turns.

The Liberal Democrats are the only party united in the case to remain. Together we created the world's largest free trade area, we delivered peace, and we gave the British people the opportunity to live, work and travel freely across Europe. History shows that Britain is better when it is united with Europe.

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Together we are stronger in the fight against the global problems that don't stop at our borders. Together we can stop international crime, we can fight climate change, and together we will provide hope and opportunity for the future.

The Prime Minister like me knows that is not the time to turn our backs on Europe, leaving us isolated, side-lined and alone.

By voting to remain in, Britain can thrive. Together we show the world an open, outward-facing Britain we can all be proud of. Join the Liberal Democrat campaign today, to remain in together, and to stand up for the type of Britain you think we should be.

Today is a shameful day; the Official Opposition is stuck navel-gazing instead of holding the Government to account, so yet again it falls to the Liberal Democrats to do that. We will step up to the challenge.
It has been three days since a group of armed men broke into the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, in what has been described by mainstream media as an act of 'protest' against government overreach on rangelands throughout the western United States. As it stands, there have been no attempts by law enforcement to remove them. Instead, a federal government official has described passive plans to cut off power to the refuge, to give these guys "a long, lonely winter to think about what they've done."

Some argue this is not terrorism, claiming that the group's actions have not posed danger to human lives. There have certainly not been reports of gunfire or anyone being held against their will, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

To be clear, what we are dealing with is a group of armed men forcefully taking publicly managed property, and using the threat of violence to get the federal government to change a law. The group's leaders, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, have said they are willing to kill or be killed if there are attempts to remove them, and have called for supporters and other 'patriots' to join them: "We need you to bring your arms".

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The inaction we have seen thus far is driven by a paradoxical combination of underestimation and fear. On the one hand, the approach to "wait things out" and "avoid confrontation" has been defended on the grounds that the militants will come to their senses and desist. This is a luxury offered to few other criminals, and based on the assumption that right-wing sovereign citizen violence doesn't need to be taken seriously. On the other hand, a passive approach has been defended on the basis that law enforcement officers directly intervening will ignite and escalate violence.

The very specific context in which this is raised as an excuse for inaction - largely white militants or extremists undertaking coercion and violence for a political cause - leaves us with the unsavoury conclusion that those with darker skin are more justifiable targets of excessive application of federal law enforcement, even before proven guilty. The argument has already been well made that if the Oregon militants were Muslim or Black, they would probably be dead by now. In a year when 'resisting arrest' has been used as justification for injury and even death for those unarmed in police custody in America, tiptoeing around an armed militia has said they are willing to kill (a particularly violent form of 'resisting arrest') seems undue caution.

However, in criticizing the double-standards at play here, the solution should not be to use excessive force across the board. There is reason to handle this situation with care. This occupation is part of a series of standoffs between the state and so called 'Patriots' over the past three decades which have fanned the flames of a growing set of right-wing sovereign citizen extremist movements. Namely, two other cases of 'resisting arrest': the siege of Ruby Ridge in 1992 (during an attempt to arrest by force, killing two), and the subsequent Waco siege in 1993 (where 70 people died during an FBI assault on a religious compound during a search and arrest warrant), which were critical moments that helped to mobilize both the patriot movement and white supremacist movements.

Like Islamist extremists, right-wing extremists are inspired by a perception of being at war, and are preoccupied with the notion of martyrdom. Ruby Ridge and Waco developed a new line of martyrs in the perceived war between the government and the patriots. The results of this perceived war? Everything ranging from lone shoot-outs with police, to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and was directly inspired by Ruby Ridge and Waco.

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The number one domestic terrorism threat as noted by the FBI comes from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists, who believe the government has no authority over them. Governments often rely on the assumption (and in some cases reality) that right-wing groups lack the organizational capacity to carry out large-scale acts of terror, but when a group of right-wing sovereign citizen extremists (between 15 and 150 in Oregon) do organize themselves duly, we overlook the severity of their actions.

Armed occupation and destruction of spaces by extremists is a dangerous tactic, and this isn't the only context or country in which right-wing extremists have used this tactic for political objectives. Those that believe this is a uniquely American problem are misguided. The clearest example of this phenomenon at play is the ongoing wave of attacks against refugee and asylum centers across Europe, which have been dubbed 'protests' against the arrival of and acceptance of refugees. These so-called acts of 'protest' have ranged from occupation of buildings, to arson and bombings.

Just as dangerous as these actions themselves is that some European governments have justified new restrictions on refugee arrivals on the basis of this violence, which serves to legitimize right-wing violence against publicly managed spaces as a form of political protest - and an effective one at that. Not only do we tend to overlook the severity of right-wing violence, but the implications of passive responses.

Though use of excessive force by law enforcement should not be the answer in Oregon, it is not good enough for law enforcement to give armed gunmen time to "think about what they've done" and hope they come around.
PO

Cruising is a polarising form of travel -- people either absolutely love it, or can't stand the idea of being 'stuck' on a ship for days on end. But things are changing in the Australian cruise industry.

More than one million Australians took a cruise holiday in 2014, with statistics showing that we are the worlds fastest growing source of cruise passengers.

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The equivalent of 4.2 percent of Aussies took a cruise last year -- significantly ahead of the well-established North American market, which ranked second. A cool million can't be wrong, right?

It's timely then, that cruising juggernaut P&O announced the plans to build a new ship specifically for Australian waters, and Australian people. It will be the first of its kind.

Launching in 2019, the 135,500-tonne ship would be the biggest cruise ship ever to be based full time in Australia, carrying more than 4200 guests, with 2100 guest rooms.

"As the only homegrown Australian cruise brand, P&O Cruises has been driving growth, and demand for our cruises continues to surge year on year," P&O Cruises President Sture Myrmell told The Huffington Post Australia.

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"To meet demand, in 2015 we signalled the evolution of our fleet with the addition of two ships. Next year well be adding a sixth ship to our fleet, Pacific Explorer, and in 2019 well go one step further with the debut of our new build. Creating a new ship specifically for Australia will take local cruising to a whole new level. Its a massive vote of confidence in the local cruise market and it will be an absolute game changer," Sture said.

Probed on exactly what a ship built specifically for Aussie's might look and feel like, Sture revealed that it will encapsulate the laidback Aussie spirit.

"Australians love contemporary design, great food and stylish decor, but were also relaxed and were a bit cheeky with our humour -- well be bringing all those elements to play in our new ship."

We're picturing a luxury day spa stocking homegrown beauty brands such as Jurlique and Sodashi, and perhaps the iconic meat pie with tomato sauce on offer as the ship's signature dish.

"Everything is on the drawing board -- well have more announcements to make in due course. Great food is part of a great holiday, and that will be reflected on board our new ship," Sture said.

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With routes still to be determined, Sture revealed the company's plan to dock the ship in Sydney.

"We will be announcing itineraries at a later stage, but our plan is to base the ship in Sydney, cruising on a range of itineraries between three to 10 nights duration."
Cassandra Hannagan via Getty Images BYRON BAY, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 31: Festival goers enjoy the musical performances at Falls Festival on December 31, 2015 in Byron Bay, Australia. (Photo by Cassandra Hannagan/Getty Images)

Australian electronic music duo The Presets have spoken out on Facebook slamming the NSW governments threats to shut down music festivals in the wake of a string of drug overdoses.

Band member Kim Moyes took to Facebook earlier this week in response to Premier Mike Bairds crackdown on illicit drug use at music festivals.

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Threatening to shut down NSW music festivals and blaming the organizers for the choices of the attendees? Nuts, Moyes wrote.

It's devastating that there have been 2 drug related deaths at Australian music festivals in recent months, I feel for... Posted by The Presets on Saturday, January 2, 2016

Moyes' comments came after nearly 200 people were charged with drug offences at New Years Day music festivals across the country, including at Sydney's Field Day where 184 were arrested for drug possession and supply.

A 23-year-old woman was rushed to St Vincent's Hospital in a critical condition after she collapsed at Field Day after taking MDMA, but has since been released.

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Moyes compared the recent deaths on NSW roads to drug related deaths at music festivals.

Tragically, 10 people have been killed on NSW roads between Dec 20 + Jan 2 which has been reported as a 'good result' in relation to the previous years road death tolls. I don't want to trivialize their deaths but no government is threatening to shut down transport, Moyes wrote.

On Sunday NSW Premier Mike Baird told News Corp Australia that more needed to be done by festival organisers to prevent drug abuse, declaring enough is enough.

Baird said the permit system for music festivals would be toughened up, adding organisers needed to take more responsibility. The premier vowed to close down festival organisers who did not comply with stricter rules, according to the report.

A young woman has been taken to hospital after a suspected drug overdose at Sydney's Field Day music festival #9Newspic.twitter.com/WLz7b1HeiD  Nine News Brisbane (@9NewsBrisbane) January 2, 2016

In the light of this latest distressing and avoidable incident, I will be asking the relevant ministers to review the current system of regulating events held on public land, including the system for granting permits for public events such as music festivals, Baird said.

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But rather than canning music festivals for good, some drug experts, academics and advocates are pushing for Australia to legalise pill testing and drug checking facilities at music festivals, to give drug users more information about the substance they are about to consume.

"Using drugs is never without risk. Using unknown drugs is much riskier. If this continues, more young people will die. Its as simple as that," Will Tregonning, from harm reduction group Unharm, told The Huffington Post Australia last week.

"People are going to use drugs anyway, not knowing what they're taking. We want to provide that at-risk group of people, already about to use drugs, info about the drugs they're intending to consume, and give them info around the risks of consuming that substance."

Pill testing, in place in various forms in certain parts of Europe, can be as simple as a litmus test indicating the presence of certain substances -- for instance, ecstasy, MDMA, methamphetamine, heroin or poisonous cutting agents -- up to sophisticated, laboratory-grade equipment that gives precise rundowns of the chemical ingredients in a certain substance. Pill testing regimes put forward by Australian advocates would not tell a potential drug user that a substance is "safe" or "unsafe" -- they would give the user more information on that substance, for the user to then make an informed decision.

Emergency physician and drug expert Dr David Caldicott is one of those speaking out loudest for pill testing to be introduced. He wants to run a trial at a music festival this season, with laboratory-grade equipment.

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"I don't give a shit about the morality or philosophy of drug use. All I care about it is people staying alive," he told HuffPost Australia.

"Instead of just cataloguing the deaths, we should do something to stop them dying. Some people say they shouldn't take drugs to start with," but that's like saying you shouldn't have sex before marriage. This is about acknowledging what everybody already knows, that young people will take drugs."

Music festivals could be shut down if organisers don't do more to fight drug problem https://t.co/6rm43QpgOj#7Newshttps://t.co/cB2ehRswH9  7 News Sydney (@7NewsSydney) January 3, 2016

But NSW Police Minister, Troy Grant, has ruled out introducing pill testing following a suspected overdose at Field Day.

"We're not going to set up a regime testing for something that's illegal to see if it's safe to ingest or not. We're not going to condone illegal drug-taking, full stop," Grant said on Monday.

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In the wake of Sylvia Chois death at the Stereosonic music festival in November last year, NSW Police rejected calls for the institution of a pill testing regime, saying their hardline stance on drugs would not waver.

"There are many that continue to this day to call for less police interaction, fewer drug dogs, in fact, no drug dogs, fewer police at these events," NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told the ABC in November.
For decades, those of Israeli descent living in America kept their suitcases packed. Despite U.S. passports, English-speaking families, and American homes and businesses, we always thought that we would return to Israel one day. Since we didn't feel rooted in the United States, we saw little need to cultivate community -- and generally remained disconnected from synagogues, Jewish education and Jewish community organizations.

This mindset did not serve our community well. Oftentimes, our children sought to distance themselves from our foreign culture, and quickly began assimilating, in many cases leaving both their Jewish and Israeli identities behind. Our insistence that we were not Americans alienated the Jewish-American community and our neighbors in the U.S. And because we lived outside of Israel, Israelis never fully accepted us as their own.

In the last decade, all of this has changed dramatically. More and more, people like me -- born in Israel, but residing in the U.S. -- along with our children and grandchildren, are proudly embracing an Israeli-American identity. Americans of Israeli descent!

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It is centered on the idea that we are Americans and our home is in America, while our Jewish homeland will always be Israel. Eight years ago, I came together with several other Israeli-American leaders in Los Angeles to nurture this new identity. We formed the Israeli-American Council (IAC) to meet the unique needs of our community.

Our organization has grown dramatically over the past three years -- from a single office in Los Angeles and a few hundred members into a national movement with regional councils in nine major cities and an active constituency of 250,000. At our second annual national conference last fall in Washington D.C., we hosted the largest gathering of Israeli-Americans in history, with more than 1,300 attendees, up from 650 the year before, during our inaugural convention.

During the conference last fall, Israeli government officials on the left and the right -- from Isaac Herzog to Yuval Steinitz to Ayelet Shaked -- embraced Israeli-Americans as a strategic asset for the Jewish State and the Jewish people. This would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, when Israelis in the Diaspora were often criticized, called names like Yordim -- those who went down (from Israel) -- and much worse.

The Israeli-American community has the potential of encompassing close to one million people, when you include those who have at least one Israeli parent and Americans who spent substantial time in Israel and feel that it's part of their identity. Accepting the fact that Israeli-Americans are first and foremost, Americans, has also unified our community like never before -- and now we are mobilizing the IAC as movement across our country, with a three-part mission.

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First, we transmit "Israeliness" -- our Israeli culture, Hebrew language, a familial sense of community, our Jewish heritage and values, and connection to the Land of Israel -- to the next generations.

Second, we cultivate Israeli-Americans as Jewish leaders within the U.S., enriching and strengthening Jewish pride and Jewish life across the country.

Third, we are reinforcing the U.S.-Israel alliance. Our fluent understanding of both cultures uniquely positions us to serve as a nexus between the Israeli people and the American people - and to offer a personal perspective on the current debates about national security and the Middle East. It's much easier to explain Israel's security challenges when your brother lives in Sderot, your mother lives in Jerusalem, and you have served in the Israel Defense Forces. And -- as you can probably imagine -- we are not exactly a shy group.

The Israeli-American community can form an army of activists who can stand up against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, which isn't just an issue for Israel or the Jewish community, but a threat to the future of America and all of Western society.

I'm confident that the IAC is just getting started. Rooted in our emerging Israeli-American identity, we will continue to expand all across the country, engage more and more Israeli-Americans, and build bridges and alliances with other communities across America. We need all members of the pro-Israel community to be part of the process by engaging in our programs, getting involved in their region, and bringing others into our movement.

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The IAC is filling a void that many Israelis living in America have long felt. As Israeli-Americans, we are energized and feel a sense of purpose. The infrastructure is growing. Our collective voice is louder than ever before. The Israeli-Americans are not only a new identity, but a historic game changer!
Ammon Bundy(R), leader of a group of armed anti-government protesters speaks to the media as other members look on at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon January 4, 2016. The FBI on January 4 sought a peaceful end to the occupation by armed anti-government militia members at a US federal wildlife reserve in rural Oregon, as the standoff entered its third day. The loose-knit band of farmers, ranchers and survivalists -- whose action was sparked by the jailing of two ranchers for arson -- said they would not rule out violence if authorities stormed the site, although federal officials said they hope to avoid bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / ROB KERR / AFP / ROB KERR (Photo credit should read ROB KERR/AFP/Getty Images)

A religious vision compelled Clive Bundy and his followers to seize an Oregon federal wildlife refuge. Their goal is to win the prison release of arsonists and to undo federal law governing the land patrimony of all American citizens.

If these were environmentalists and not ranchers accustomed to free use of public lands, if these were conservationists using a paramilitary action to protest the failure of federal policies to protect national wildlife refuges or parks like the Everglades -- where the federal EPA has aligned with polluters like Big Sugar -- how quickly do you think the FBI and justice department would intervene?

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The domestic terrorists in Oregon expect the American people will rally to their side. They will be there for "years and years" until the Insurrection. Part of their strategy is to dove-tail with right-wing extremists using the 2nd Amendment to rile up fearful white America.

The concept unifying the gun toters and the ranchers who do not want to pay fees to graze their cattle on public lands is "over-reach" by the federal government.

Over-reach includes excessive measures to protect the middle class, civil rights, worker safety and public health.

If there is anything to protest, it is the inflammatory rhetoric of GOP presidential candidates who continue to poison the well of relations between taxpayers and the government. Yesterday, trying to sound presidential, Ted Cruz addressed the press in Iowa where he leads the polls: "Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds, but we don't have a constitutional right to use force of violence or threaten force of violence on others ... There is no right to engage in violence against other Americans, and it is our hope and prayer that that situation resolves itself peaceably sooner rather than later."

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In 2014, Cruz had another message: that the standoff of another Bundy revolt was "the tragic culmination of the jackboot of authoritarianism."

Demonizing the federal government taps into populist fears but mainly benefits big campaign contributors who are often polluters of the environment.

When government is the problem and not the solution, and when this message is hammered home so repetitively that all logic and reason is flattened like a penny on a railroad track, it is simply not possible to clarify how government could do a better job.

The wackos -- who are mostly but not exclusively Republican -- do not believe in "the public good". (In fact that would be an excellent question at any of the forthcoming TV campaign "debates": do you believe in the public good?) In 2014, Cruz fanned the flames: "We have seen our liberty under assault from a federal government that seems hell-bent on expanding its authority over every aspect of our lives. Thomas Jefferson famously said the Constitution is meant to serve as chains to bind the mischief of government and we have seen, sadly, our Constitutional liberties eroded under the Obama administration and I think it is in that context that people are viewing this battle with the federal government. We should have a federal government protecting the liberty of the citizens, not using the jackboot of authoritarianism to come against the citizens. And I think this is the unfortunate and tragic culmination of the path that President Obama has set the federal government upon."

Federal ownership of millions of acres of land across the nation, mainly in the American west, is a pure expression of the public good -- and one embraced by Republican decision-makers throughout the 20th century. Yesterday, Marco Rubio -- during a radio interview with an Iowa station -- implied that he agreed with the terrorists but that elections were the way to reverse federal ownership of public lands.
Tom Henley thanked his Henley Medical work crew during a Monday staff meeting for being passionate about serving medically-fragile children.

Born in 1951, Tom grew up the oldest of six children to Chattanoogan parents Ralph and Helen Henley. His parents were missionaries who served overseas, so from ages ten to sixteen Tom lived in Jerusalem, Israel; Athens, Greece; and Izmir, Turkey.

When he and his family moved back to Chattanooga from overseas, Tom attended City High School. He went to Lipscomb University in Nashville, where he studied Pre-Med. In 1972 the U.S. Army drafted him, and Tom worked as a Physicians Assistant in a small hospital in the south of Frankfurt, Germany for two years.

He returned to the states in 1974 and finished college with a B.S. in Psychology. He went on to receive his Masters in Special Education. During this time Tom married Ave Bareham, who also received her Masters degree in Special Education. He met Ave through Aves college roommate at the time, Toms sister Susan. They will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this year.

When discussing his and Aves company, Henley Medical, during a recent interview, Tom said, I was taught the best way to go through life was to serve your fellow man. I chose medically fragile children.

Henley Medical, located on McCallie Avenue, has operated for 27 years as a center of excellence in mobility for children and young adults. It is an independently owned assistive technology company serving individuals with disabilities in the greater East Tennessee, North Georgia, and North Alabama areas.

Henley Medicals great contribution is that it provides seating and mobility to people in need through products like custom wheelchairs.

Tom said that when Henley Medical provides a wheelchair that fits a child properly, it is magical.

These children reek of courage, Tom said of his clients. Henley Medical is a Center of Excellence because these children deserve no less.

Before starting Henley Medical in 1988, Tom worked as a special education teacher and acting principal at Dawns School for Severely Handicap Children. He then entered what he called the world of business by working for a local company, King Medical.

When King Medical wanted to bring childrens medical products into Chattanooga, Tom was instrumental in setting the groundwork for this to happen. He learned very much during his time at King Medical. That was the stepping stone for the birth of Henley Medical, he said.

His two children Anna, 30, and Matt, 28, live in the area and work in business.

A plaque on Toms desk at Henley Medical revealed a quote by Albert Einstein: In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Toms life work has been to provide opportunity to individuals who live amidst difficulty.

We live and breathe Gods word [at Henley Medical] every day, and I believe God looks out for us, Tom said.
In 2015, news of Syria's globalized civil war and the mobilization of ISIS recruits dominated the international sections in U.S. newspapers. In contrast, Colombia's civil war, which has been winding down, has received much less attention. 2016 promises to be the year in which fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, the largest and longest-running insurgency in the Western Hemisphere, lay their weapons down. This is big news not only for Colombia but also for the Americas more broadly, because it will extend the depolarization of the hemisphere following the rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba that the world witnessed in 2015.

As Colombian political scientist Dario Villamizar has argued, the disarmament of the FARC will mark the end of a cycle of armed revolution in Latin America dating back to the 1950s. The FARC formally began in 1964, emerging out of unrest that engulfed Colombia in 1948 after the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, a populist leader. Although the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959 provides a clear inflection point in Latin American history, inspiring armed movements throughout the region, it was predated by insurrections during the early Cold War, most notably in Colombia, where liberal and communist rebellions coalesced after Gaitan's assassination on April 9, 1948. The violence that unfolded on that day in Bogota, known as the Bogotazo, helped to radicalize a young Fidel Castro, who happened to be in Bogota to participate in a conference of youth leaders from Latin America. Colombia is where Latin America's age of revolution began, and nearly 70 years later, it will be where that period ends.

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2015 saw the culmination of secret negotiations in the restoration of diplomatic ties between the United States and Cuba. The anticipated agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC in 2016 will help to diffuse further the long-standing polarization that is the legacy of the Cold War. Most urgently, Colombia's neighbor Venezuela, which has been instrumental in facilitating the ongoing talks between the Colombian government and the FARC, stands to benefit from a regional depolarization. The Maduro government and its opposition remain locked in an unproductive cycle of hysterical recriminations while the Venezuelan economy continues its implosion on account of depressed oil prices and chronic mismanagement. A Colombian peace agreement could inspire Venezuelan politicians who, in a reversal of Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum, have been conducting politics as war by other means.

The Obama administration has encouraged the peace talks in Colombia through public statements and by sending a special envoy, Bernard Aronson, a senior U.S. diplomat with extensive experience in Latin America. As Colombia's High Commissioner for Peace, Sergio Jaramillo, has warned, the peace agreement will be only the beginning of a long and fraught transitional period that will play out primarily in regions wracked by the conflict. The Obama administration and its successor should follow through in supporting Colombia's transitional justice initiatives, the conflict's victims, and economic development initiatives to avoid the disastrous post-conflict scenarios that have haunted Central America -- and indirectly spurred the current migrant crisis.
The American Visa in a passport page (USA) background - selective focus

The tragedy in San Bernardino last month has prompted numerous suggestions for changing our immigration policies to prevent such events. One of the shooters was a recent immigrant who had been allowed to come to the U.S. through her marriage to the other shooter, a U.S. citizen. Soon after the shooting, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, commented that the U.S. State Department "sloppily approved" Tashfeen Malik's temporary K-1 visa which let her enter the U.S. to marry Syed Rizwan Farook.

This and other criticisms suggest that visa approval through family sponsorship is relatively easy and unsupervised. Furthermore, it suggests that family sponsorship programs allow families to live together easily and quickly.

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Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, our family sponsorship policy keeps families apart for years through application costs and delays. Most Americans are not aware of the hurdles of sponsoring a relative. Perhaps a story from my research on Ghanaian immigrant families can bring perspective to help us see how our immigration system could be fixed and how to prevent terrorism that is simultaneously home-grown and imported from abroad.

Family sponsorship is slow and expensive. The application fee for a single green card is $420. Such official fees are only a small part--applicants also spend money on brokers, lawyers, transportation, and health documents, vaccinations, photographs, and DNA tests. Immigrants' sponsors have trouble paying such fees not only when they work in low-wage, fast-growing sectors of the economy in the U.S., but also when they are middle-class, educated professionals of low- to middle-income countries.

Take the case of Afua, for example. Afua's father, a contractor, came from Ghana in 1993 when he was harassed by the government. Two years later, through the diversity lottery, Afua's mother won the opportunity to apply for green cards for herself, her spouse, and her unmarried minor children which included Afua and her four siblings. Applying for six green cards was simply too expensive for a part-time religious worker in the US and a mid-level government bureaucrat in Ghana. Afua explained, "They couldn't bring all five of us because of financial problems."

Afua's mother made the difficult decision of coming with her two youngest children and left the three oldest in the care of her sister in Ghana. In the U.S. as a permanent resident, she applied for family-sponsorship visas for her older children and saved up for the fees. However, a quota on green cards for the relatives of permanent residents meant she had to wait years.

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One way that permanent residents can speed up the application process is by becoming U.S. citizens. Afua said, "So, my mom, her only hope was to be a citizen and then file all together again for all of us." A permanent resident can apply for citizenship after living five years in the U.S., and processing the application currently takes around five months after that, although it took longer in the past when Afua's mother applied. Afua observed, "You know, it was years and years and years"--seven in all since her mother's departure. In the meantime, Afua and her two brothers grew up in Ghana, in the care of an aunt they did not like very much.

After seven years, in the happiness of reunification, tragedy struck. Afua's mother died two months after Afua arrived in the U.S. Afua said, "What I was holding onto, eventually we would come over here, be a family again, and everything would be fine. That was what I was hoping for, we'd all come together again, be what we have always been. It never really happened."

Afua's story is a common one--financial constraint and administrative backlogs combine to keep parents and children separated for many years. Immigration fees and processing delays have come down in recent years. While welcome, if we care about family togetherness and solid communities, the fees need to be reduced dramatically, and more fee waivers granted, to put them within the reach of immigrants.

The experiences of Ghanaians migrating to the United States suggest that our family reunification policies are not at fault for the San Bernardino shootings. Family reunification is already too expensive and takes too long. Rather than simply blaming our immigration system, we need to account for the complex sources of such an event, in which Syed Razwin Farook and Tashfeen Malik relied on multiple traditions--both American revolutionary and jihadi--which created the conditions for a mass shooting fueled by terrorist ideology and easy access to arms.

Cati Coe is professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and the author of "The Scattered Family: Parenting, African Migrants, and Global Inequality" (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Scrolling through my newsfeed leaves me sad and disappointed at people I otherwise thought were "good" people. I never liked the saying that 'history repeats itself' but I am constantly reminded that it's true. People are boldly writing their feelings of hate and 'anti-anything they don't understand.' One of the more disturbing ones I read recently was "I'm against Muslims & Refugees even being in our country." This was coming from a person who frequently posts things against immigrants; which if she is not Native American, her bigoted racist self can be deported out of America on the same plane she wishes to send others out on. I know her from volunteering, and despite the good mission we work towards together in our volunteer work, I need to remove her from my social media. I have no reason to see her remarks of ignorance and hate. My first thought had me visualizing arguing with her or punching her. Many people may say that violence is not the answer, and that is understood, which is why my first thoughts usually remain only thoughts. However, when I see statements that remind me of dangerous dictators and mass murderers of the past, I want to squash the seed that breeds this hate. I don't want there to be another holocaust; another genocide.

I remember when I was 9 years old I read novels and books about the Holocaust and learned how awful people could be. I went to the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. and bought a button I still own that says "Never Again." I pledged from that day forward to do my part in making Never Again mean something. If I ever heard anyone make racist remarks, or generalized hateful statements to a type or group of people, I became enraged and would get involved. Yet in this era of social media, I am unaware of how to combat the mass of ignorant garbage laced statements that I come across. I cannot get rid of them all, because then I see a thread that someone else I know commented on and I see the title of the article, or the gruesome meme that depicts the hate and ignorance in a picture with a stupid statement that has other like-minded folks 'yelling' out in agreement. I feel overwhelmed in a world I felt I could previously tackle; yet it is out of my control, so I stop and remind myself, there are things, people, opinions, and actions that I cannot control in this world.

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I am unable to force people to open their eyes. I am unable to put someone else in the shoes of another, and to feel the punishment of actions they never committed. I can never make these hateful mockers be brown, or wear hijabs for a day, or to be raised in a country with no opportunity and so much corruption, violence, and theft that the best option is to try and make it in America. (Wait a second, that sounds like the American dream?) I can't make you understand the 10+ year waiting list of U.S. immigration, or how the knocking at the door puts fear in your heart, or how girls wearing headscarves must now walk in fear, in the country of America, that's supposed to be safe and maintain freedom of religion. Can I have you feel the pain of having your family killed in front of you; a slow torturous death, as they remove all your fingernails and proceed to torture you for believing in a faith that is different than your attackers? What about the feeling of hope when your remaining surviving relatives take you with them to seek a better life, to go through an arduous voyage where many die on the way, to arrive to the place of hope, and be turned away and flown back to the country where those in power will kill you for trying to flee. I can beg, plead, cry, yell, and get violent. None of it may even make you flinch. Until you experience some form of discrimination unto you, or someone you love, then maybe you will understand. I suppose that is how some of us can relate in the first place.

I am a second generation immigrant; my parents arrived to Canada illegally and very poor many years ago, and now my father owns a multi-million dollar business in the U.S. Do not excuse my family as the exception or not the norm; what families like mine are is proof that uninformed, crooked views are just that; crooked. Proof that immigrants have built, and will always be building this country. The Irish, Christians, Italians, Greeks, Polish, Jews, Chinese, Buddhists, Arabs, Indians, Muslims, Hispanics; the list goes on. That's exactly what WE are. A colorful diverse group of WE are who have built this beautiful nation into what it is today. Shame on any person who discredits the minority or religious group of another; special shame on those belonging to minority groups who simultaneously spread hate and fear of another minority group.

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How we love to despair. Americans, that is. We recite with a modicum of pride the high rates of depression that affects our country. It was one out of every ten on anti-depressants when I was first prescribed them. It gave me solace knowing that so many others suffered the way that I did. It was far less solace the second time around. If a third time shows up I'm sure any solace will be lost altogether.

Despair has become so woven into the speech and rhetoric of our society that we don't even recognize it anymore. It is preached to us on Sunday from pulpits and become the leading theme on cable TV. Our most popular shows focus on the post-apocalyptic as though we are mentally and emotionally preparing ourselves for the tragedy that is sure to come. Conservative commentators have created such an atmosphere of fear and despair that the hatred and xenophobia they preach comes across sounding like hope. As though the only way to reclaim our freedom and safety is by violently expunging the other.

Progressivism isn't doing much better. The despair we preach inspires nihilism and the fatalism of eventuality. We progressives - whatever that means - woefully imprint the pages of history onto the present and in doing so portend our future. The lessons of the past are seen as instruction manuals rather than cautionary tales. The specter of hatred and fascism raised by Trump harkens to regimes past that successfully directed the desperate rage of the masses towards tyranny. Like his predecessors, Trump promises greatness and reconciliation on the backs of another's destruction.

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In times like these we are wont to ask why. Why is this happening? Why has Trump or Carson or Cruz risen to power? Asking why is probably the most American response to tragedy. We want to know the arithmetic behind the problem. To unearth the deep reason that precipitated an event. There must be a rationale to it, we tell ourselves. There must be a reason. There must be something we can blame and point at. There must be something that we can destroy.

What we need to be asking is what is transformational and transcendent? Author Tim O'Brien once said, "Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is." What stories are we telling ourselves these days? Are they of hope and reconciliation? Or are they about the eventuality of loss? We need to be telling better stories. Stories of hope and reconciliation, stories that bring narratives of triumph and beauty to confront the myriad tragedies we see everyday. Stories that pierce through the blurry lines of difference so we can see the other as a Thou - a holy incorporation who carries the same thumbprint of the Divine that I do. We need stories that disrupt the solipsistic "me" and begin elevating the congregational "we", so that we can understand that mutual self-interest has much more staying power than self-interest ever could.

Ultimately, we need stories that can disinfect us from the religion of despair that is being preached and prophesied across America. We disinfect despair by choosing joy and believing it to be the rule rather than the exception. We disinfect despair with actions that bring community together and dispel any notion that we don't possess the power to change the status quo. We disinfect despair by acknowledging that yes, it exists, and that yes there is reason be afraid, but rather than leaning into fear despair we explore the space of hope and healing. We disinfect despair by turning off the TV.

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Saudi Stupidity?

I'm not going to pretend to be deeply knowledgeable about the politics of the Muslim world, and still less about the full range of considerations the Saudi authorities confronted regarding how to deal with the Shia cleric -- Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr - whom they just executed.

Hence the question mark in the title, above.

But that decision to execute the man sure looks like stupidity from here.

Before "stupid," it looks reckless. In a region already rife with Sunni-Shia conflict - that fissure being at the heart of the continuing strife in Iraq and Syria - the execution of a Shia cleric by a Sunni regime will obviously pour gasoline onto an already dangerous and uncontained fire.

Recklessness would not be stupidity, however, if the Saudis had good reason to believe that - in their long-running rivalry and simmering conflict with the Shia regime in Iran -- it would work to their advantage to bring their conflict to a head in this way.

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But this situation hardly looks like it plays to the Saudi advantage.

What were they thinking? In their calculations, did the Saudis reckon the cost of making the pariah Iranian regime the more sympathetic figure - in the world's eyes -- in the conflagration they chose to ignite?

Surely world opinion must have some value for the Saudis in their contention with Shia Iran. And in particular, the opinion of the Western nations with whom the Saudis have been aligned over so many years.

Yet, quite predictably, the decision to execute a Shia cleric - as part of a mass execution of 47 people - makes the Iranian outrage something with which Western peoples and governments can more readily sympathize than the Saudis' slaughter.

How can it be good for the Saudis for the world to side emotionally, even for just a while, with their enemies?

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(Here's a passage from an article on Huffington's World Post:

Saudi Arabia's Western allies, many of whom supply it with arms, are growing concerned about its new assertiveness. The U.S. State Department said Nimr's execution "risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced," a sentiment echoed by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The State Department also urged Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights. France said on Sunday it deeply deplored the mass execution and said it reiterated its opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances.)

The Saudi regime has long had its unsavory, dark side--with its lopping off the hands of thieves and public beheadings of criminals, and its oppression of women. But their barbarisms and their oppressions have generally been matters of their internal affairs. In the international sphere, they have usually been "moderate" and careful.
The first time we saw the Sandhill Cranes, Frank and I felt like we were in heaven. Rounding a corner in a residential neighborhood in Kissimmee, Florida in 1996, we came upon a flock of these elegant, statuesque birds, almost five feet tall, their gray bodies capped with a bright red patch on their head. They were in the median dividing two lanes, leaping up and flapping their wings, displaying and calling to each other in a fascinating mating ritual. We watched in delight from the curb, and wrote rapturously about the experience in the next issue of our environmental newsletter.

Thus began our love affair with Sandhill Cranes, and units of the National Wildlife Refuge System where they live in large numbers. We're wildly anticipating fulfilling our dream this March and seeing the Great Sandhill Crane Migration in Nebraska.



Greater Sandhill Cranes in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are almost five feet tall with a six-and-a-half foot wingspan and mate for life.

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So when I learned that one of our country's National Wildlife Refuges had been seized by armed militia challenging the federal government to reduce the amount of land it protects, I found the idea shocking and preposterous on multiple levels. It strikes me as a dangerous escalation in a movement that seeks to seize and sell off our publicly owned lands.

First, the 630-plus million acres of land that we have in protection belong to the entire American population - not to any one segment or interest group. The wildlife refuges in particular are set aside for the propagation of wildlife species. The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge where the siege is underway was established after a wide-scale slaughter of birds in the region was brought to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. The President used his executive authority to set aside the area "as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds." Takeover by an armed militia is definitely inconsistent with that purpose.

Secondly, this insurrection disrupts the rhythm of life for the animals in the preserve, and deprives the workforce and visitors of the right to use the facilities that all Americans collectively pay for with our tax dollars.

But in a stark demonstration of contrasting values, while this faction of extremist 'ranchers' flout our laws and demand that the federal government reduce the land set aside for public use, the original inhabitants of the American landscape are petitioning President Obama to protect MORE land for the benefit of this and future generations.

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A view of the Bears Ears region in Southeastern Utah that the Coalition is seeking to protect as a National Monument. Salt Lake Tribune photo.

Members of the Hopi, Navajo, Utes, Ute Mountain Utes and Zuni and others in the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition are calling on President Obama to use his executive authority to protect their sacred lands in the Bears Ears, Utah, as a national monument. The area includes the ancestral homelands of their forebears going back many millennia, and monument status would protect these lands from continued destruction and save the archeological and cultural records they contain for this and future generations.

I can't help chuckling at what it means when extremist 'ranchers' who are relative newcomers to the land want less of it to be saved for the American public, but the Natives to whom all the land originally belonged want more to be protected for posterity.

I expected 2016 to be The Year of Public Lands as it marks the much-anticipated Centennial Celebrations of the National Park Service. I felt our forests and national wildlife refuges would get a much needed boost of national attention from the overflow of media attention. I was confident things were on track when the National Parks headlined the Rose Parade in Pasadena New Year's Day, and the venerated CBS Sunday Morning Show January 3 closed with a salute to the Centennial, its Moment of Nature featuring Yellowstone National Park.



"Buffalo Soldier" Ranger Shelton Johnson astride his horse in the Rose Parade New Years Day that featured the National Parks.

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How could I have known that our wildlife refuges would be topping the national news because of a siege? I am trusting that law enforcement will safely and speedily restore the rule of law and bring those responsible to justice.
KENT, OH: Visiting the campus where four students were killed by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest, you can't help but recall how divided America was 45 years ago. Strolling the grounds where America's Asian war came tragically home, the rhetoric of Donald Trump and the gulf between political parties appear manageable when contrasted to 1970.

The issues then were civil rights and stopping a war that had gone on for more than five years, each month costing more lives including college age men drafted into the military.

A cultural divide pitted young against old, draft resisters against patriots, free thinkers against straights, militant blacks against entrenched power. Most protesters saw themselves as taking a public stand against injustice.



When President Nixon on April 30th, 1970 ordered American troops into Cambodia protests erupted on scores of college campuses. At Kent State an ROTC building was set ablaze and burned to the ground. Shop windows downtown were broken. A panicked city mayor asked for troops to restore order and Ohio's governor obliged, sending in 700 National Guardsmen who occupied the campus. Governor James Rhodes called the demonstrators worse than Nazis.

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Despite the planned May 4th rally being banned, at noon that day some 1,500 students assembled anyway on the university commons. Five hundred feet away stood 100 guardsmen wearing gasmasks and carrying loaded M1 rifles. When the crowd ignored the order to disperse tear gas was fired. Then the soldiers advanced as students fled ahead of them, up Blanket hill, past Taylor Hall towards a parking lot and practice field.

At 12:24 p.m. from atop the hill near the pagoda next to Taylor Hall, several guardsmen opened fire in the direction of the parking lot. In 13 seconds 67 shots were fired. Four students were killed, nine others injured.





the iconic photo of the tragedy



This part of the campus is much as it was then. A May 4th Visitors Center is situated in Taylor Hall. There is a memorial to the victims and walking tour. Beverly Warren, the president of Kent State, which today has 28,000 students, writes in the commemorative brochure that, "this learning facility transports you to one of the most turbulent times in American history." It offers," she writes, "compelling evidence of the never-ending need to appreciate and protect the democratic values of free expression, civil discourse and nonviolent social engagement."

The memorial is well done, sticking to the facts as best they are known.

A visit here is sobering, providing an opportunity--as the words engraved on the memorial suggest--to inquire, learn, and reflect.

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I departed believing that the tragedy at Kent State 45 years ago could have occurred at any number of campuses across the country.


Jews and Judaism in the New Testament. Photo by Chynna Starr

It's well known that Christianity sprang from a Jewish context. While there may be controversy about Jesus' Judaism vs. the traditional Judaism of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Judaism in the first century, there's no doubt that Jesus, his family, and followers were practicing Jews, as recorded in the New Testament.

Biblical scholar Lawrence H. Schiffman, Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Director of the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish Studies at New York University (NYU), takes this understanding to a new level. He identifies citations in the New Testament that others have glossed over without recognizing their unique significance. On March 26-27, 2015, at a conference at NYU, "Integrating Christianity and Judaism into the Study of the Ancient World," Professor Schiffman delivered a talk titled "The New Testament as a Source for the History of the Jews and Judaism."

I interviewed Professor Schiffman to gain further insight into his perspective on this fascinating subject.

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Starr. Professor Schiffman: In Acts of the Apostles 2:5, book 5 of the New Testament, Peter, leader of the apostles after the crucifixion of Jesus, addresses a gathering of Jews from a long list of communities and countries outside of Israel. Acts 11:19 mentions additional communities of Jews in other Greek cities. What is unique about these citations?

Schiffman. We didn't know about some of these Jewish communities. Josephus wrote about places where Jews claimed citizenship based on ancient privilege. Later excavations uncovered synagogues in some of these places. But these are the earliest citations of the existence of Jewish communities so widely dispersed. Also the passages confirm that Jerusalem was an international city in the time of Jesus and the apostles.

Q. You talk about the prevalence of Greek/Roman names many Jews had in addition to their Hebrew names--Like Paul, who was also known by his Hebrew name Saul.

A. And Paul was not alone in that. Acts cites many Jews with Greek names, illustrating that this was not only commonplace but also that a degree of assimilation was commonplace for Jews living in the Greek Diaspora.

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Q. There's an ongoing debate about the language of the Jews in the first century. In your presentation you said that the New Testament throws light on that debate.

A. The Jewish community was basically a three language community. Clearly many Jews, especially in the Greek cities, spoke Greek and Hebrew, especially those, like Paul, as revealed in Acts 21:40. In Judaea and surrounding provinces such as Galilee, Aramaic was the primary language of the lower class--surely true for Jesus and his disciples, who were mostly working-class tradesmen. But as is common in international communities, even the working class are often fluent in several languages that they acquire through commerce with different cultures. Jesus probably spoke Aramaic but from citations in the Gospels and Acts we know that he could read Hebrew. He read from the Torah at Sabbath synagogue services (Luke 4:16) .

Q. The Sabbath mandate for rest and renewal in Jewish law and tradition invokes many restrictions on activities---particularly work. Acts 1:12 mentions the allowable distance one can walk on the Sabbath before it is considered a violation. Didn't Jews always know and practice that?

A. Yes and No. Yes we know about that law, but some say that these particular Sabbath laws only came into existence after the destruction of the Second Temple. But here we have verification that the laws existed in Jesus' time in the first century--- and that the disciples were scrupulously following Jewish law. In Acts 1:12 they were able to walk to the Mount of Olives (Olivet) on the Sabbath because it was in the allowable distance --"A Sabbath day's Journey away" of 3000 ft (2000 cubits). In fact, archaeological excavations have uncovered stones in some locations for marking the Sabbath limits. .

Q. What about celebrating the Jewish holidays?

A. We know that the Torah called for Jews to celebrate three holidays at the Temple in Jerusalem: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), and Sukkot (the Festival of Booths). The New Testament verifies that this mandate was actually followed. Luke 2:41 reports that Mary and Joseph traveled every year to the Temple in Jerusalem for Passover. Then Acts 2:1 and 20:6 say that Jesus' disciples and Paul also celebrated the prescribed holidays.

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Q. In the Torah the age of prophesy ends with the Prophet Malachi in about 420 BCE. Yet you point to a citation in the New Testament that calls David, who came before the age of prophesy, a prophet.



A. Rabbinic Judaism says that David was an author not a prophet. But Peter's words in Acts 2:29-30 inform us that in Second Temple Judaism some Jews considered David a prophet ("Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne."). Prophesy is also cited in a minor way in Acts 21:8-10 ("We went into the house of Philip the evangelist. He had four unmarried daughters who had the gift of prophecy. While we were staying there for several days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.")

Q. You were struck by a citation about the time of prayer.

A. Yes, who would think that the time of prayer would be noteworthy. But Acts 3:1 gives the earliest mention of the actual appropriate time for afternoon prayer--3:00 PM.

Q. What about other prayer times?

A. In later commentaries the rabbis prescribed three prayers--morning, afternoon, and evening. The Dead Sea Scrolls say two--morning and afternoon. And according to the Talmud the evening prayer was originally optional. But again, Acts gives us the actual time of the afternoon prayer, which we didn't know otherwise.

Q. Resurrection is a central doctrine of Christianity. But what about resurrection in Jewish thought? It's an issue that comes up in the New Testament.

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A. The New Testament confirms a division of thought about resurrection at that time between the Pharisees and the Sadducees-- Jewish Roman historian Josephus wrote about the controversy but he was considered untrustworthy. Later, rabbis noted the split in thinking. But the New Testament gives a specific time and place, bringing the discussion to life. In addressing the Sanhedrin in Acts 23:6-8 Paul reveals the dispute within Judaism about resurrection: "The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things."

Q. In the New Testament, Jesus, and later others, are prepared for burial according to Jewish law and customs. Didn't we know that those procedures go back to ancient times and were practiced in the first century?

A. We did not know exactly how bodies were prepared for Jewish burial at that time except from much later sources which were questionably authoritative. However, in the Gospels and Acts we have detailed descriptions of Jewish burial procedures (John 19:40; Mark 16:1; Luke 23:53-56; Acts 5:6). Some of these things are not even discussed in later sources.

Q. After the crucifixion of Jesus, Stephen was the first Jewish follower of Jesus to be martyred--he was stoned to death after his trial before the Sanhedrin. I was intrigued by your view that Stephen's trial and execution not only tells us a lot about the Sanhedrin but that the execution was a violation of Talmudic law.

A. This trial is very important because the accounts of Josephus and the New Testament differ completely from descriptions of how the Sanhedrin or high court operated according to rabbinic sources. This is another confirmation that the real Sanhedrin in Second Temple times was not functioning according to Pharisaic law--- that the Sanhedrin was a group of Pharisees and Sadducees and not a rabbinic court as described in rabbinic sources. And the elite Sadducees seemed to be running the show. But the Sadducees didn't hold to the oral law concept or customary law. What significance does this have for the trial and eventual stoning to death of Stephen? Apparently they set up false witnesses who all were willing to condemn Stephen (Acts 6:9-13). But actually there's a law in the Talmud that if the vote is unanimous you can't execute and the accused is considered innocent.

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Q. That seems strange, since unanimous is usually interpreted as a confirmation of guilt.

A. In Jewish law it is assumed that if a verdict is unanimous the accused must have been framed. And, similarly, the action of the Sanhedrin leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus doesn't follow this rabbinic law. The discrepancy provides overall evidence for the historic problem of what is being described in the New Testament vs. Talmudic law.

Q. Some commentators have questioned the importance of the synagogue in the Second Temple period stating that the temple in Jerusalem was the center of worship, with the synagogue being secondary if not optional. But in your view the New Testament gives ample evidence of and a broader picture of the importance of the synagogue in Jewish life, especially in the Diaspora.

A. That there were synagogues all over the Diaspora is no big deal since many have been excavated. But we wouldn't have known about some of those places that have not been excavated if not for their citation in Acts. The fact that some have been excavated strongly indicates that the others also existed---and their mention in the New Testament has encouraged excavations in search for them. There's some question of how observant of the Jewish way of life these Jews were who were living in various locations, since there was a lot of assimilation. Many Jews were Greek-speaking so it's important to know that the synagogue was central in worship and that Jews commonly attended synagogue services on the Sabbath.

Q. Doesn't that explain why Paul did most of his preaching in synagogues?

A. In Paul's travels throughout Greece and Asia Minor his first stop was a synagogue--in some instances he stayed and preached for months. The descriptions tell us that the synagogue services included readings from the Torah--especially Prophets (Acts 13:27), a sermon, plus discussion and debate (Acts 13:14-18;17:1-2;18:1919:8).

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Q. It's also interesting that synagogues are sometimes near the water as the one in Acts 16:13. It's not clear that this synagogue in Philippi Macedonia was a physical synagogue --it was apparently outdoors.

A. The word "synagogue" actually means "assembly," not necessarily a building. Why in this instance near water? We don't know. Perhaps for purity or possibly that Jews didn't want to be tied to the land. In any event, the citation is the earliest mention of a synagogue near the seashore.

Q. Doesn't the New Testament also inform us about the far reach of the Sanhedrin in ruling over Judaism?

A. The fact that the high priest in Jerusalem had influence throughout the Diaspora is revealed in Acts 9:1-2, when Paul is provided with a letter to a synagogue in Damascus authorizing him to seize Jewish followers of Jesus. And these letters apparently carried weight. Today, if the chief rabbi of Israel wrote to a synagogue in Westchester, N.Y., they probably wouldn't listen to him.

Q. You comment that Jesus wasn't the only one thought to be the Messiah in the New Testament period.

A. We know that throughout history there were many Messiah claimants--and probably at least six during the New Testament period. Acts 5:36-37 names two: Theudas, who rose up against Rome with his followers around 46 CE and was killed. Judas the Galilean similarly perished in his insurrection earlier in 6 CE, around the time of Jesus' childhood. The New Testament citations are the earliest sources about these two rebel "Messiahs." Their armed insurrections also reveal the ferocious Jewish resistance to Roman occupation

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Q. Any other firsts for the New Testament about Judaism?

A. Yes. Acts is the earliest source (5:34-39 and 22:3) that mentions the eminent Jewish scholar Gamaliel. He is known as Rabban Gamliel (I) the Elder in Jewish tradition and is quoted numerous times in the Mishnah (legal code). He was the grandson of Hillel and an important teacher and member of the Sanhedrin at the time of the crucifixion and during the ministry of Paul. In Acts we have reports of actual events in which Gamaliel was involved, which support the centrality of his position as described in rabbinic literature, despite the claims of some scholars that his role was fabricated.

Another first: In 49 CE the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome. And that included Jews, Jewish/Christians, and Christians--the Romans didn't know the difference. They were all Jews to the Romans. The first mention of this event is in Acts 18:2. Decades later the expulsion was also chronicled by Roman historian Seutonius, who may have learned about it from the New Testament.

Starr. Thanks Prof. Schiffman Your discoveries of what we can learn about Judaism from the New Testament should be of great interest to scholars as well as the general populations of Jews and Christians who seek a deeper understanding of the Jewish foundation of Christianity.

Lawrence H. Schiffman, PhD, is author of several important books including "Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their true Meaning for Judaism and Christianity" and "From Text to Tradition, A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism."
The Art Renewal Center (ARC) has collaborated with the Museu Eruopeu d'Art Modern (MEAM) in Barcelona and the Salmagundi Club in New York to present the International ARC Salon Exhibition.

Traditional works chosen as a part of the Art Renewal Center's Salon competition in 2015 were exhibited at MEAM and now the exhibition travels to New York where it opens on Jan. 18th at the Salmagundi Club.



La Fete Sauvage (detail) by Adrienne Stein

What a great step this is for paintings done in the Classical style to be featured in a major European museum dedicated to Realist art! It's essentially unheard of. Now we have the privilege of seeing this tantalizing show in North America. There are a plethora of celebratory events planned around the exhibition including a talk by Fred Ross, ARC founder and president, on the visual language of realism and the Da Vinci Initiative will be conducting drawing and painting workshops, and more.

The Art Renewal Center has been of great service to the representational art community for decades but this is the first time that work selected from their annual salon can be viewed live.

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Yolanda by Orley Ypon

Fred Ross has an important message about this work that is worth focusing on, especially since semantics seems to be a core topic of discussion within today's representational art community. Where Ross might say Traditional Art, Daniel Graves, founder of the Florence Academy of Art might say Classical. Some call it Fine Art, Odd Nerdrum calls it Kitsch and now, many are calling it Post Contemporary but it is clear to see that what we are talking about is similarly beyond words, and that is important to note. At the core, beyond the words, we are working toward similar goals. One of those desires we share is to steer the cultural paradigm toward one of beauty.



Absolute Trust: Sleeping Beauty by Arantzazu Martinez

I wish to avoid the topic of semantics, at least as much as is possible in an article filled with words, and instead focus on some thoughts that Fred Ross shared when this important exhibition opened in Barcelona, in which he reminded us that image making is a language unto itself. It communicates in its own unique way, a way that other languages cannot and it does so in a fashion that helps people connect with one another. It has the ability to reduce tensions and the likelihood of conflict, and this is something that Fred Ross brought out positively in his talk.

Representational painting comes with an inherent, borderless understanding of what is being depicted and that is a special power of the style, to tell stories that cannot otherwise be told. Told so silently, skillfully and beautifully that they become treasures. The exhibition we are talking about is full of treasures.



Dragon's Lineage by Hanwu Shen

Ross points out that, "The language of traditional realism cuts across all of the other languages. It can be understood by all the people of the Earth. It is a universal language. The modernist paradigm attempted to abolish the only universal language that exists."

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He also says, "A truth of human existence is that we are all going to die. Instead of shaking their fists at eternity and becoming overcome with sadness and depression, the artist rages at the dying of the light, seeking to overcome the vast loneliness of existence.



Departing Bodies by Nicholas O'Leary

We share the desire to be loved, held, and warmed. We also have pride and are vulnerable to having our feelings hurt. Fine Art has the capability of dealing with all of these feelings and experiences that benefit, excite, terrorize or plague humanity. Fine Art is that which communicates this array of experiences with dignity and grace. "

I have spoken to many hundreds of painters, sculptors and collectors too who are involved with the reconstruction and who are thankful for what ARC has done for the representational art community over the years. Thanks to the efforts of Fred Ross and like minded people, the universal visual language is reuniting us, reconstructing meanings, offering us beauty and it is thriving in the 21st Century.



Firestarter by Julio Reyes

Beyond the words we share a language. It is being spoken at the International ARC Salon Exhibition which will be at the Salmagundi Club from Jan. 18th until Feb. 4th.

To be able to see such a collection of paintings cooperatively collected and internationally exhibited is a big step in a beautiful direction!

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ARC is a non-profit educational foundation. They support and work in conjunction with he Da Vinci Initiative, whose mission is to bring skill-based techniques like those embodied by the works in the ARC Salon into K - 12 classrooms. They are planning on holding a special forum for high-school students and teachers on the atelier training method and its benefits for those interested in pursuing a professional career in the arts. Tickets for all events are available for sale / RSVP through the ARC website. All proceeds will help fund the ARC and help to pay for the costs involved with running the show.

More information can be found on the ARC website.

www.artrenewal.org

The Salmagundi Club

www.salmagundi.org
I first heard of Dane Terry from a mutual friend who photographed the two of us. Dane caught my eye as a fellow long-haired piano player from Brooklyn and I was slightly disconcerted at his skirting upon my territory.

But then I listened to some of his music and realized he's not just another artist to compare myself to but a uniquely talented one with a vision of his own which like mine, doesn't fit easily into any specific scene or genre.

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He was playing a downtown theater which surprised me as I usually play bars - I pled poverty as my excuse for not going as it was the end of the month and a ticket purchase was required.

What a mistake.

Dane Terry's musical theater piece, 'Bird in the House' is a genre defying, musical spell he casts on the audience, taking us effortlessly through a week of his imaginative childhood in Ohio.

As someone with a strictly musical background I'd never seen anything like this and after watching a few clips I knew I'd come across an artist I not only wanted to befriend, but to learn from and even collaborate with.

That's when I ran into Dane Terry in a coffee shop and convinced him to be my first interview subject for this blog. He was so open, eloquent and inspiring I hoped we could film the interview and he obliged, despite my lack of professional equipment or experience.

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Meeting me at my practice space in Gowanus, Brooklyn - Dane sat down to discuss his upcoming performance of 'Bird in the House' at The Public Theater as part of the Incoming! series in the Under the Radar festival.

I even got him to perform a song at the end.

I have a show of my own on the opening night of January 15th but will be there on the 16th ready to be mesmerized by this story telling, spell casting artist - read some more info and grab your ticket HERE.
Police were called on a report of a woman leaving Food City in St. Elmo wearing a camp coat with bulky items inside that were not there when she entered the store.

Store officials said she was only inside for a short time.

She did not bother to stop at the cash register.

An officer caught up with the woman before she could get into her vehicle.

He found, sure enough, there were two "rather large" bulges on either side of the coat.

The officer checked and found they were large bags of shrimp.

Lisa Ann Kelley was charged with theft under $500.

* * *

At the Brainerd Walmart, Brandy Vandergriff was caught concealing items and walking out without paying.

Store employees said she had been previously banned from Walmart for doing the same thing.

She was charged with theft under $500 and criminal trespass.

* * *

Officials at Hamilton Place Mall said Angela Degrasse concealed four items and left without paying.

The items added up to $132.

She is now banned from the mall and charged with theft under $500.

* * *

A resident of Hancock Road said, shortly after he and his wife returned home from shopping, they heard two loud crashes.

It was found that a bedroom window was busted out. A rock was on the bedroom floor.

The man said he saw a black female and a young black male dressed in black leaving the vicinity.

* * *

Police said Best Buy Motors at 2001 Long St. was condemned by inspectors.

However, officers got a call on a disorder over the repo of a vehicle.

It was found that the business was being carried on as usual.

Code inspectors came and gathered up the employees. They were told they cannot be at the location until the required improvements are made to the building.

They were told that only repair crews can go in and out.

* * *

Officer Clay Holmes responded to a dog in the roadway of Wilcox Boulevard.

He was assured by Kevin Arroyo that the injured dog was calm.

However, when he tried to move it out of the road, the officer was bitten on the right hand and forearm. He was left with bruises and lacerations and had to go to Erlanger Hospital for treatment.

* * *

An officer stopped a vehicle on MLK Boulevard after noticing that it had no headlights on and was not maintaining its lane.

Police said Ethan Powers had a strong odor of alcohol and did not do well on field tests.

In the vehicle were found seven liquor bottles, a grinder with suspect marijuana, some smoking apparatus and a 12 pack of Miller Lite with four empty and eight full cans.

Passenger Christopher Ballew was also taken into custody when about a gram of cocaine was found on him.

* * *



A woman on Overlook Avenue said she broke up with her boyfriend a few days earlier, but he still has her car keys.

She said her daughter saw him take it for a second time.

This time she wants to prosecute for the theft of the 1999 Cadillac Deville.


We are beginning to see signs that Congress may be willing to move beyond the partisan divide over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which hopefully means that we can fix problems with current law, build upon what is working, and continue to make progress in improving our nation's health care system. It is about time.

Nearly six years ago, the ACA was passed and it has made significant headway in cutting the uninsured rate in the country through an expansion of Medicaid for millions of low-income adults, the elimination of pre-existing conditions exclusions and annual or lifetime limits imposed by private health plans, and through the creation of tax credit subsidies to assist millions of other uninsured Americans purchase private health insurance. According to Dan Diamond's analysis in Forbes of recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "Nearly 16 million fewer Americans were uninsured in early 2015 compared to 2013."

However, beyond that and the extension of the bipartisan and wildly popular Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) last March, health policy has been largely stuck in partisan gridlock. Rather than work to fix problems that have arisen with the ACA, many of the opponents of "Obamacare" have insisted "every single word" of the bill be repealed, but that would have the effect of cutting off millions of people from health coverage and disrupting health coverage for millions of others. At the same time, proponents of the law have often displayed knee-jerk opposition to "opening up the legislation" to any changes, even to problems with the law. Gridlock has largely been the result.

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Breaking the impasse, Sens. Dean Heller (R-NV) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) came together on a bipartisan basis to introduce legislation to repeal the High-Cost Plan Excise Tax (otherwise referred to as the "Cadillac tax") in the ACA. The "Cadillac tax" would have imposed a non-deductible excise tax of 40 percent on the value of employer-sponsored health coverage that exceeds certain benefit thresholds: $10,200 for self-only coverage and $27,500 for family coverage in 2018. Although Congress and President Obama did not agree to a full repeal of the tax, they reached an agreement to delay the tax for two years.

In support of the legislation, Sens. Heller and Heinrich argued:

The Cadillac tax will hurt middle-class families who, for reasons outside of their control, have health plans that already or soon will reach the Cadillac tax's cost limits. The tax will force many employers to pay steep taxes on their employees' health plans and flexible spending accounts, and possibly eliminate some employer-provided health coverage plans altogether. Under this tax, deductibles will be even higher and benefits will be reduced even more --putting a strain on middle-class families trying to make ends meet.

Although the term "Cadillac tax" implies it would only impact high-cost, "gold-plated" health plans, in a 2014 Towers Watson survey of employers, 82 percent thought the tax could impact their health plan by 2023. And to avoid the excise tax, an Aon Hewitt survey found one-third of employers were looking to pass-on "higher out-of-pocket costs" in their employee and family health plans.

Consequently, both employers and employees were becoming increasingly concerned about the Cadillac tax. According to Heller and Heinrich:

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Organized labor, chambers of commerce, local and state governments, small businesses, and rural electric co-ops have come together to express the same concern: the Cadillac tax needs to be fully repealed or our employees will experience massive changes to their health care.

Another important group that is infrequently mentioned, but who would be disproportionately harmed, are children and those with family coverage. In a 2009 First Focus/Economic Policy Institute analysis by Elise Gould on the impact of excise taxes that were included in various health proposals prior to the passage of the ACA (including those in presidential candidate John McCain's 2008 health plan and President Bush's 2009 budget proposal), tax caps on employer-based family plans were often set for family plans at just two times that of individual coverage. However, since the cost for family coverage has historically been much higher than that, these caps would have more heavily and disproportionately short-changed family coverage.

Recognizing this, the ACA's congressional authors revised the initial legislative limits and set a higher, and yet, still arbitrary cap on family coverage. As a result, the law's Cadillac tax was established at an amount that was 2.7 times the cost for family plans than for single coverage ($27,500 for family plans to $10,200 for individuals) - a wider spread than at the levels set in previous ACA drafts. However, according to a 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Education Trust (HRET) Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits, the average premium for family coverage is actually 2.81 times that of single coverage, so the ACA's Cadillac tax would still hit family plans disproportionately.

As an example, Table 1 outlines the impact that the Cadillac tax would have had on a hypothetical company with 100 workers and premiums of $10,300 for individual coverage (50 employees) and $28,910 for family coverage (50 employees) in 2018. Reflecting the average 2.81 family-to-individual cost per plan ratio, both the individual and family coverage would exceed the threshold slightly, but enough to trigger the tax.

As this scenario demonstrates, kids and families would largely bear the brunt of the excise tax. In fact, the taxable amount would be more than 14 times greater for family plans than for individuals. Moreover, in this example, 94 percent of the Cadillac tax would fall upon family plans and, therefore, the children and families enrolled in them.

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Although some employers might pay the tax, the more likely scenario is that employers would increase deductibles, limit benefits, or impose higher cost sharing upon families to lower the cost of the insurance coverage below the cap. However, this merely shifts the cost of coverage to families and will make it unaffordable for some, particularly since families already absorb a much higher share of the premium costs in employer-sponsored coverage than individual workers.

According to the Kaiser/HRET 2015 survey, "Covered workers contribute on average 18 percent of the premium for single coverage and 29 percent of the premium for family coverage." Consequently, the average annual worker's contribution toward the premium is $1,071 ($89 per month) for individual coverage and $4,955 ($413 per month), or 463 percent more for family plans.

Since those numbers reflect the average, the disparity is, by definition, even worse than that for half of families. The Kaiser/HRET survey, for example, found that 45 percent of all firms surveyed "contribute the same dollar amount for family coverage as for single coverage." In such firms, 100 percent of the added costs of family coverage are absorbed entirely by the employee.

The share of premiums absorbed by workers is also greater for family plans in small firms or in firms with a higher percentage of lower-wage workers (defined as having at least 35 percent of workers earn $23,000 a year or less): 36 percent and 41 percent, respectively. For many families, these higher premiums along with limited benefits and higher out-of-pocket costs, including rapidly rising deductibles, have had the effect of making health coverage increasingly unaffordable to many families. This is a major reason why 59 percent of adults but just 47 percent of children have health coverage through employer-sponsored health insurance.

Consequently, delaying or eliminating the Cadillac tax is important in protecting when tenuous health coverage some families currently have for their children. This is why First Focus Campaign for Children joined groups like the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and the National Association of Counties as members of the Alliance to Fight the 40 in support of the Heller/Heinrich and Courtney bills.

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Although support for continuation of the Cadillac tax largely came from some of the law's supporters, the fact is that delay or outright repeal of the Cadillac tax is actually quite consistent with one of the prime objectives of the ACA, which the Department of Health and Human Services explains is to "[m]ake coverage more secure for those who have insurance, and extend affordable coverage to the uninsured." If the Cadillac tax had been allowed to take effect, it would have weakened health coverage for a number of individuals and families.

Furthermore, delay or repeal of the excise tax helps fulfill the Administration's oft-mentioned promise that the law protects and even strengthens current private coverage. As the President said at a Town Hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Aug. 15, 2009:

I just want to be completely clear about this. I keep on saying this but somehow folks aren't listening -- if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. Nobody is going to force you to leave your health care plan.

Since the Cadillac tax would undermine private coverage by making it more unaffordable for a rapidly increasing number of families over time, many supporters of Obamacare, including Rep. Joe Courtney, a majority of the 184 cosponsors of Courtney's bill, and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, support its repeal.

Many ACA supporters also recognize that, as employers moved to raise deductibles, reduce benefits, or increase other out-of-pocket costs to meet the caps established by the Cadillac tax, they could and some have already, as Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times explains, "scapegoated Obamacare" for the cost-shifting to employees.

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This is, in part, why some opponents of Obamacare actually opposed the delay of the Cadillac tax. In a recent Op-Ed, Mike Needham of Heritage Action for America correctly pointed out that the excise tax "forces employers to cut back the coverage that they offer" and that its repeal would help "stabilize Obamacare." However, since he opposes the ACA, Needham argued against delaying or repealing the Cadillac tax because leaving in place such "adverse effects" would help undermine the law.

Since the Cadillac tax was delayed for two years, this debate will need to be revisited prior to 2020. Fortunately, with bipartisan extension of CHIP last spring and the Cadillac tax's delay, Congress seems to be beginning to show important signs of moving past the partisan divide to a better place where we can once again work, on a bipartisan basis, toward improving our nation's health care system.

For children, the CDC estimated in early 2015 that less than 5 percent of our nation's children were uninsured - down from 14 percent in 1997 when CHIP was first enacted into law. In fact, since CHIP's passage, the uninsured rate for kids has been cut by nearly two-thirds.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is once again in the news for possible illicit, albeit government-sanctioned, usage of campaign funds.

On January 4, the Washington Examiner first reported that the Senator from Nevada made a two-pronged request to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), seeking allowance to use campaign cash to hire an administrative assistant to help with the Senator's post-office activities, and to use money from Reid's leadership PAC to fund the costs associated with transitioning out of his Senate role and into what would be his new role as a "former officeholder." In an advisory opinion directed to the Reid's General Counsel, the FEC granted permission for both requests.

This isn't the first time the senator has been involved in controversy surrounding the use of political money. In 2014, Harry Reid decided to voluntarily reimburse his campaign's coffers for spent money that was flagged by the FEC -- money that Reid spent on gifts for his granddaughter, staff and other family members.

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In spite of the fact that the reimbursement was given to the campaign as a way of appeasing the FEC in their initial investigation into the spending, there is an issue of whether elected officials should even conceive of campaign cash as something that they have free reign to use for personal spending.

The fact that campaign cash can first be spent for an elected official's personal agenda, later reimbursed, and then afterward have the issue altogether dismissed as having been "resolved," signifies that the inappropriate spending of political dollars has become an American norm.

Democrat FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel stated her support of Reid's request, claiming that this personal use of previously raised campaign cash is essential to the ability of the Senator to perform duties "important to the American public."

Ravel's support stems from her admiration of Reid as an "historic figure," who she says should be granted access to this money because Reid's leadership position has prevented him from performing the typical functions that Members of Congress, who are not under the stresses of being in a leadership position, are able to perform.

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The issue of whether former elected officials should be compensated following their time in office is not the issue in question. Assuming it is acceptable or even enacted into law that they would be, it is clear that there should be a different mechanism by which elected officials receive their money, other than from taking it away from the money raised by campaigns and leadership PACs.

Federal law prohibits using campaign funds for personal uses, which makes both Reid's request, and the FEC's nod of approval, all the more flabbergasting.
Outline of a crowd of angry people,

"Congress shall make no law respecting...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." So reads, in part, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. State legislatures considered this protection so important that it was included first among the guaranteed provisions considered necessary to protect against the potential tyranny of the recently formed federal government under the Constitution. Clearly, then, Americans have long considered the right to protest as fundamental to their democracy. Images of throngs of individuals marching in protest are thoroughly ingrained in the American consciousness, particularly those of Civil Rights marches. Consequently, it is no wonder why Americans esteem protests so highly and resort to them so quickly in the face of perceived injustice. Protests are and always have been an effective means of voicing and publicizing discontent on a large scale. However, protests are only as effective as the protestors who participate in them. These protestors must abide by certain rules if their protests are to affect substantial change. If not, their protests can actually prove counterproductive to their goals in their frequency. In some instances protests, no matter how they are conducted, are not an effective means of producing change.



I am considering the Black Lives Matter movement because I so wholeheartedly agree with their basic intentions but so often disagree with their methods. As I am not a political theorist, what is to follow are rudimentary suggestions of reform derived from my own observations and knowledge of history. I am comparing Black Lives Matter with the Civil Rights Movement of the middle 20th century as this is widely regarded as the most effective social movement in recent history.

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Protests at their most basic level can publicize a grievance. In the case of Black Lives Matter the principal grievance seems to be that black Americans are disproportionately subject to police brutality. This is fact according to conventional wisdom and private investigations despite a distinct lack of information from the Department of Justice. While protests inevitably call attention to this fact, they are less than certain to affect changes. The fact of the matter is that many are aware of this disparity but awareness alone is not enough to incite change. Ideally the powers that be would act immediately to implement change in the face of such information. However, as we do not live in an ideal world it is not enough to simply raise awareness.

First, protestors must have clearly defined policy goals. In order to affect change, protestors must have an idea of what changes they would like to see made. By having policy goals, protestors have a means to gauge the success of their protests and make changes accordingly. This is not to say that protestors need to draft a comprehensive bill before taking to the streets. However, in the absence of reasonable policy demands, a protest does little more than to voice anger. Real change comes from legislation. Consider the 1965 demonstrations in Selma. These marches were organized with a specific purpose in mind, to guarantee the protection of voting rights for black Americans. These protests motivated President Johnson to call on Congress to enact comprehensive voting rights legislation and ultimately resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As far as I can tell, Black Lives Matter protests are typically in response to individual cases and fail to adequately respond to larger structural problems or present policy goals for doing so. No policy goals are clearly described on the movement's website.

Secondly, protestors must impose costs on the state. By imposing costs on the state, protestors force legislators to acquiesce to their demands rather than asking them do so. Imposing costs on the state can take many forms, including labor strikes or boycotts. These methods can disrupt the operations of the state in a significant way. However, the key is in this regard is consistency. As such, any method of imposing costs on the state must be sustainable. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, lasted 381 days. The recent Black Lives Matter blockade of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport lasted only a few hours. It is important to note, though, that the Montgomery boycott concluded only after a Supreme Court decision ruled the segregation of public busses unconstitutional. Again, real change arises from legitimate legal means. But, by effectively and persistently imposing costs on the state protestors can hope to incite the government to act on their behalf.

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Thirdly, protestors must have effective organization and strong leadership. A movement must have a leader (or leaders) who can address the petitions of the movement at large with the powers that be. This leader should be equipped to negotiate the demands of the movement with individuals in positions of executive or legislative authority. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is widely considered the leader of the Civil Rights Movement but officially he was the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In this role King was able to cooperate with President Johnson to facilitate the passage of the most consequential pieces of civil rights legislation our country has seen. The Black Lives Matter website identifies Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors as the founders of the movement but doesn't ascribe leadership roles to any of them. I doubt that many even know the names of these women; I didn't before I began research for this article. Without an effective leadership structure it will prove exceedingly difficult for the movement to establish policy goals and impose costs upon the state so as to affect change.
Are you ready to enhance your digital footprint as a professional?



LinkedIn is the best tool for individuals who want to maximize their career impact.

Since LinkedIn is the #1 business social networking tool, it's important that you put the energy and effort into spending your time wisely on LinkedIn.

Do you have limited time? No worries!

Here are 5 LinkedIn Mistakes that You Can Fix in 5 minutes!

1.Your Identity is Unknown.

Are you hiding from the FBI? That's what people may assume if you neglect to add a photo to your LinkedIn profile. Think about it. Would you go to a networking event dressed in your sweaty gym attire? Why? You want to make a good first impression. Your LinkedIn photo is the gateway to other professional opportunities. Don't miss out on your next opportunity by having a mysterious identity on LinkedIn.



2. Your URL looks like a foreign language.

What do those numbers at the end of your LinkedIn URL represent? If you don't know, then it should not be included in your URL. This is your chance to create a unique LinkedIn URL that can be added to your business cards and email signature. Your LinkedIn assigned URL appears under your profile picture. To customize your LinkedIn URL, press the "Edit Profile" button. Click the gear symbol next to your URL, which will take you to a separate page where a "Your public profile URL" box will let you change the link. Most people use their first and last names as their unique URL. If you have a common name, use differentiators that would not question your professionalism.

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3. You are a LinkedIn Loner.

LinkedIn is a professional NETWORK. Your goal is to use your network in order to build your professional NETWORTH. It's important to engage with your network. You can't use your introvertedness or shyness as an excuse on LinkedIn. Sorry! There are many ways to engage with your network without directly reaching out to individuals. Under the "Connections" tab, LinkedIn makes it easy to find little ways to connect with people in your network. You can congratulate someone on a work anniversary, new job, or recent accomplishment. Take advantage!

4. You neglect the Relationship tab.

Do you remember every person that you meet at networking events? Will you remember the powerful conversation that you had with them two years from now? Don't feel bad if your memory is not up to par. The LinkedIn relationship tab solves all of your memory challenges! Every time you connect with someone new on LinkedIn, you should get into the habit of putting information in the "Relationship" tab that will appear when you click on their profile. In this section, you can add notes that trigger conversations that you had or how you met the person. There are even reminders to reach out to them again in a week, a month, or on a recurring cycle. Add anything you want to the relationship tab. You are the only one that will see these notes.

5. You are a LinkedIn Ghost.

How often do you update your LinkedIn profile? Do you comment on other posts? Do you share valuable information with your network? What are you doing to demonstrate that you are plugged-into what's going on in your industry? Never underestimate the power of your LinkedIn profile. People use LinkedIn to recruit employers, identify their next guest speaker, and create profitable partnerships. An active profile can be your ticket to a myriad of professional opportunities.

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Are you guilty of making any of these LinkedIn mistakes? Have you noticed other mistakes that people make on LinkedIn?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Ten weeks -- ten weeks from today puts us in mid-March. And by the time we reach mid-March, we shall have a good sense of the outcome of the GOP presidential primary. Predictions are always a hazardous undertaking yet their allure may be irresistible. So, here is my best judgment as to the way in which this strangest of all nominating contests is likely to play out.

Let's begin with the contenders. They are six in number, neatly divisible into two groups, the insurgents and the establishment candidates. Let's start with the insurgents.

Donald Trump has been at the top of most preference polls since the end of summer, 2015. The source of his appeal seems to the connection he has forged with Republican base voters. To be sure, a great part of his campaign is centered on racist and xenophobic themes and he rightly stands condemned for this toxic behavior. But there seems to be something more to his appeal also, and it suggests that his campaign might have staying power.

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That "something more" is alienation. The Republican base feels itself alienated from larger American society. Much of this alienation is ideological. The base simply rejects many elements of contemporary society, from gay marriage to the Affordable Health Care Act. But the base's alienation is more profound than political disagreement with the ideals of mainstream society. Many base voters perceive, rightly or wrongly, that their economic status has grown less secure since the Great Recession of 2008. They see themselves as left behind, facing a stagnant present and a bleak future.

The rise of an alternative conservative media has only heightened this sense of estrangement. Take a look at Breitbart sometime, or at Newsmax. Yes, their writing is sophomoric, and their "news coverage" distorted. But their goal is not an unbiased presentation of events but the capture of market share. They want to be the news providers to the Republican base.

Long before there was a Donald Trump, the coverage of public affairs in this alternative media created an environment in which Trump's message could find an enduring home. Trump's new advertising campaign seems designed especially to appeal to the alienated consumers of alternative news. He is reinforcing his message in a way designed to keep his campaign strong going forward.

But will Trump's campaign be strong enough to prevail as the standard-bearer of the insurgent right? To answer that question, we must consider Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. Senator Cruz is the insider who most closely captures the alienation of the Republican base. He is a fine lawyer, who has argued before the United States Supreme Court. He is a sitting United States Senator. But he has built his career not on legislative accomplishment, nor on social problems solved, or on deadlocks averted.

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No, he has risen to his standing in the polls on the basis of obstructionism and manufactured crisis. He has condemned his own Party's leadership and has, at the slightest provocation, called for the de-funding of the government. To someone outside the right-wing fever swamps, this conduct appears to be folly, but again, to an alienated base he comes across as authentic.

But Cruz' support extends beyond a disaffected hard core right wing. He also appeals to conservative evangelicals. An important key to whatever success he enjoys in the next two months is David Barton, who heads one of his superpacs. Barton is a self-styled historian whose book "The Jefferson Lies" was withdrawn from publication for its many misstatements. Still, Barton is an influential figure in conservative circles, and through Barton, Cruz can appeal to voting groups that Donald Trump would find unreachable.

The final candidate of note is Ben Carson. His star has faded nationally, but he has two important assets that can serve him well still: money in his campaign coffers and the support of many home-schoolers, nationwide but especially in Iowa.

These three contenders face off against three establishment candidates. Superficially, Marco Rubio might be the strongest candidate, but Rubio has problems that his opponents are beginning to exploit. He comes across as insincere. Furthermore, serious questions about his ethics are now being asked. There are, in other words, obstacles to a potential Rubio nomination that may or may not be successfully surmounted.

That leaves Chris Christie and Jeb Bush. Christie has stage presence. He speaks forcefully and articulately, and he seems able simultaneously to appeal to an old-fashioned "law-and-order" conservatism and to more moderate voices in his Party. Jeb, on the other hand, seems to have little going for him, aside from privileged birth, name recognition, and a large supply of cash he raised thanks to his family and party connections.

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So, let's get down to predictions. The Iowa caucus occurs on February 1. The current consensus is that the top two finishers will be Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, in that order. If Trump wins, look for him to generate substantial momentum, since no one is expecting a first-place finish. A Cruz win is expected and so will not generate nearly the same excitement.

The race will then be for third place in Iowa. Can one of the establishment figures finish ahead of Ben Carson? If someone does, he will pick up momentum going into New Hampshire. If it is Marco Rubio, that momentum may be particularly strong since many in the media seem ready to anoint Rubio as the natural alternative to Trump/Cruz.

The New Hampshire primary occurs eight days later, on February 9. The polling, which is mostly stale, suggests that Trump is the comfortable front-runner with a group of three or four closely-bunched contenders vying for second place. New Hampshire will either magnify or blunt momentum. If Trump manages a victory in Iowa, he will sweep New Hampshire. Still, the establishment candidates might show unexpected strength. Chris Christie, in particular, might be poised for an upset win.

The race then moves to the South. The South Carolina primary occurs on February 20. Again, the polls have Trump and Cruz running first and second. Cruz is counting on a strong showing by evangelicals and Trump is relying on a surging turnout by non-traditional primary voters. I'll predict a narrow Cruz victory. Cruz has been organizing the state for months and his voters are nearly certain to appear at the polls. The same cannot be said for Trump's potential pool of support.

The Nevada caucus occurs on February 23 and has the potential to create a surprise. A hard-right candidate like Cruz or Trump could fare well in the Silver State, but so might someone like Rubio. But whatever happens in Nevada, it will soon be engulfed by Super Tuesday on March 1, which promises to be equal parts circus, Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras.

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On that day, there will be primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Vermont; caucuses will occur in Alaska, Minnesota, Kansas, and Kentucky. Too many states, too many different demographics for one candidate to run the table. Still, given its southern center of gravity, Super Tuesday's outcome will likely leave Cruz and Trump as the two most viable contenders. And after Super Tuesday, it will be a slow, steady, grinding war of attrition for the nomination.

The establishment will be too fractured to challenge Cruz/Trump seriously. Even now, it consistently trails in the polls. I foresee Cruz winning the war of attrition. He will be the nominee because he is the more disciplined candidate, with a superior organization.

Still, there are wild cards that could influence the outcome. Events in January will have a disproportionate impact on the race. Let the stock market sell off by five or seven percent (a perfectly normal, mild correction) and the doom-sayers in the popular business press will be pronouncing the end of days. This can only assist Trump. Similarly, if tensions continue to rise in the Middle East, Trump's candidacy is benefited.

A second key wild card are the January debates. Trump and Cruz's positions are probably set, but the debates will likely play a significant role in determining who emerges as the establishment's standard bearer. As the number of debaters get winnowed to six, I expect Christie to make the most favorable impression.

The race will nevertheless likely come to the following questions: Will Donald Trump's popularity with the base and with occasional voters translate into sustained support at the polls? Will Ted Cruz' organizational strength, his self-discipline, and his reliance on religious right voters propel to him a first-place finish? I have been clear in my opposition to both of these candidates. I am loathe to concede it, but this seems like the most probable scenario with Cruz prevailing for the nomination. And so I fear for the health of the Republic.
Once again, it's been a month since I last took a look at the Republican presidential field as a whole, and in the intervening time two further candidates have dropped out, bringing the total to an almost-manageable 12 candidates (11 if you don't count Jim Gilmore... and at this point, many don't). Even an even dozen, though, is better than trying to keep track of 17 of these folks.

A few technical notes before I begin. All data comes from the Real Clear Politics Republican nomination poll-tracking page, and where I say "since last time" below, I'm referring to the numbers from my December 7th article. It's been a month of some major polling movement, so it's important to define this baseline. Last month, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson were all essentially tied for second place, but this is no longer true. Also, one candidate finally rose from the morass at the bottom to actual viability.

As always, I'm dividing the candidates into four arbitrary categories: No Chance, Slim Chance, Decent Chance, and Great Chance (all referring to winning the nomination, of course). This time around, however, I'm paying much more attention to polling in the first two states to vote (Iowa and New Hampshire). Up until now, I've mostly been relying on national polling, but the first two contests of the primary season have an outsized influence on the race as a whole, so they've got to be taken into consideration. OK, that's enough of an introduction, let's get on with the rankings.

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No Chance

I'm widening the criteria for this category, because otherwise it would have been pretty small this time around. George Pataki and Lindsey Graham both woke up to the fact that they weren't going to win, and dropped out in December. This leaves Rick Santorum and Jim Gilmore from last time, neither of which has caught any sort of fire in the meantime. But to this pair we have to now add Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee. None of these people will win the nomination, it can now be said with a high degree of certainty.

Mike Huckabee's national polling went from 2.0 percent last month all the way to 2.0 percent (OK, that was snarky, sorry about that). Carly Fiorina's polling sank a half a point, from 3.0 down to 2.5, continuing her slide into obscurity. Rand Paul actually improved, from 1.8 to 2.8 percent, but he's not even in the top six candidates in either Iowa or New Hampshire, so his chances have shrunk to zero of winning even a single state.

Slim Chance

This is the widest category, poll-wise. We have four candidates here, ranging from 1.8 percent all the way up to 8.8 percent. The bottom outlier is John Kasich, who has always been slated to be this year's Jon Huntsman -- the candidate the pundits all loved to love, but who fell flat with actual voters. Kasich's 1.8 percent national rating should really land him in the "No Chance" category, below Paul, Fiorina, and Huckabee. However, Kasich's campaign has gone all-in on New Hampshire, pretty much from the start of the campaign -- and it is finally paying off a bit. Not much, but enough to give him at least a slim chance of using it as a springboard to bigger and better things. Kasich is currently polling at 9.7 percent in New Hampshire, which puts him in fifth place in the state, two points ahead of Jeb Bush and two-and-a-half points in front of Ben Carson. Even picturing a fifth-place finish somehow causing Kasich to catch fire with other states' voters is a stretch (but not beyond the realm of the possible), so for now Kasich gets included here in Slim Chance.

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The other outlier also needs some explanation. Ben Carson is polling fourth overall, at 8.8 percent, which is a full four points higher than the rest of this category and less than three points behind the third-place candidate up in the next category. However, I truly feel Carson's day in the spotlight is over and nothing at this point is going to get him back into the top ranks. His polling has fallen off a cliff over the past two months, and the outlook is that it will continue to slide. From briefly besting Trump as the frontrunner (at around 25 percent), Carson fell to 15.8 percent last month and then he lost another seven points in December. It is incredibly rare for a candidate to fall this sharply in the polls and convince the voters give them a second chance (Newt Gingrich briefly pulled this off in 2012, but it's rare to see). So Carson at this point has to be considered a longshot, at best. Last month, he slipped from second place down to fourth overall, and he's likely going to continue his downward path. About the best he can hope for at this point is a fourth-place finish in Iowa, before his campaign becomes completely irrelevant.

Between Kasich and Carson in the polling for this category are two other candidates. The most surprising trend over the last month has been the rise of Chris Christie, who is the first candidate to break out of the truly dismal group at the bottom since Carly Fiorina managed the feat, many months ago. Christie is now polling at 4.8 percent nationally, up from 2.8 percent last month. More importantly, Christie's at an impressive 11.3 percent in New Hampshire, which puts him in fourth place there. Nationally Christie is in fifth place, which is especially noteworthy for the candidate he bumped out of this position.

Which brings us to Jeb Bush, of course. Bush's woes just seem to endlessly continue. He's spent a mountain of money, and he even still has another mountain of money to spend, but this just doesn't seem to matter at all to the voters. For all the money Bush has spent, he is now at a dismal 4.3 percent in the polls, up only 0.3 percent from last month. This puts him in only sixth place overall, down from fifth place last month. Not exactly a very good return on investment, eh?

If any of the three candidates currently leading the pack falls hard, there might be an opening for another candidate to quickly rise. But, at this point, it's only realistic to expect this to happen to John Kasich (the longest of the longshots), Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Ben Carson.

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Decent Chance

Two months ago, when I wrote about the race, I had five candidates in the top ranks to win the Republican nomination. Last month, that shrank to four. This month, there are really only three candidates with a decent shot (or better) of actually winning the nomination.

The raw national polling numbers seem to argue for Ben Carson to still be considered, but as I explained his trajectory is so bad I can't see him pulling out of his tailspin. Furthermore, some might divide the top two categories differently. But, for the moment, this is how I see things.

Marco Rubio still has a decent chance of winning it all. He's the only candidate even remotely considered part of the Republican "establishment" who has caught on in any sort of way with the voters. Unfortunately for him, this only led to a mild rise in support, and it now seems like even that has evaporated. Still, he's holding steady in double digits, a feat few other Republicans have managed this election cycle. Rubio moves up in the rankings this time, from fourth place to third, but this is only due to Carson's collapse. Rubio's own poll numbers actually headed down in the past month. He reached a peak of just under 15 percent, after Carson started to collapse, but then the voters who had drifted to Rubio drifted back away. He's now down to 11.5 percent, which is actually lower than where he was two months ago. This falloff has leveled off recently, though, so it looks like he's still got a pretty solid grip on third place nationally. Rubio is currently polling third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire. A second-place finish in New Hampshire could give him the boost he needs to move his polling upwards again. Especially as some of the other candidates run out of cash and have to drop out of the race.

Ted Cruz is really somewhere between "Decent Chance" and "Great Chance" at the moment, which is why I mentioned that some might actually award him frontrunner status. Cruz has continually risen in the polls as Carson fell, capturing almost all the former Carson supporters. That's an impressive feat, because this was the Cruz campaign's master plan all along -- to quietly lurk in the background and wait for others to implode. He's pulled this trick off quite well with Carson, and he clearly hopes to do the same to the frontrunner, should the laws of political gravity ever start to apply again.

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Cruz moved up from third place nationally to second, and his numbers continue to head upwards. Last month he was at 14.8 percent, and he's now added almost five points to that to land at 19.5 percent. Only two other 2016 GOP candidates have ever polled above 20 percent, to put this in some context. What's even more impressive is the fact that Cruz is now solidly leading the polls in Iowa, at 31.0 percent support. Cruz only ranks third in New Hampshire, but he'll be in good position to compete when many of the southern states vote in early March. Cruz has also been raising a pretty sizeable campaign chest, so he'll be around for the long run.

Great Chance

Once again, however, this brings us to the man who is clearly in a category by himself. Donald Trump is still the clear frontrunner of the Republican race, and his numbers went up once again in December. Last month he was at 29.5 percent support, and this month he has reached 35.0 percent, a 5.5 percent rise. So far his high point of support has been 36.5, which is (sorry) "huge," when compared to the entire rest of the field. As I said, only Ben Carson has ever gotten above 20 percent, and Trump is now solidly above 35 percent. Again, for context, the only candidate in 2012 to top 35 percent was Mitt Romney -- who then went on to win the nomination (Romney didn't hit this mark until the end of February, it's worth noting).

Trump said a lot of things in December that shocked the inside-the-Beltway set. His proposals were declared political poison by many. His fellow Republicans (some of them, at least) even tried to denounce him. And his poll numbers went up.

True, he has slipped a bit in Iowa. Ted Cruz has spiked there, up to 31.0 percent, while Trump has been pretty flat (now at 27.4 percent). It'll be interesting to see how Trump reacts if Cruz takes first place in the first state to vote, but Trump is still well-positioned for New Hampshire, with almost twice the support of his nearest competitor (Trump's 26.3 to Rubio's 13.3 percent). Trump is also in great shape for South Carolina, although he may not do as well in Nevada.

Still, everyone else's chances for victory require an early state victory followed by a swell of support in the polls. Everyone else's chances for victory also almost require Trump's support in the polls to suffer serious damage. If nobody else manages to break into the front rank, then Trump is the best positioned candidate to win the nomination -- hands down. Cruz or Rubio (or, conceivably, some other candidate) might manage an upset victory, but he'll have to defeat the clear crowd favorite to do so. That favorite is now -- as it has been for the past six months -- Donald Trump.

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Chris Weigant blogs at:
Fighters loyal to Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi look at the remains of a vehicle following a car bomb attack that targeted a convey of three senior south Yemeni officials in the Inma district, north of the the southern Yemeni city of Aden, on January 4, 2016. Newly appointed Aden Governor Aidarus al-Zubaidi, city police chief General Shallal Ali Shayae and the governor of neighbouring Lahj province, Naser al-Khubaj, survived the attack as they were returning from a visit to a camp of Emirati troops taking part in the Saudi-led coalition that has been battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March, the sources said. AFP PHOTO / SALEH AL-OBEIDI / AFP / SALEH AL-OBEIDI (Photo credit should read SALEH AL-OBEIDI/AFP/Getty Images)

Those of us who supported Barack Obama in 2008 in the hope that he was a man of peace must face the painful reality -- we were dead wrong. Nowhere is our folly better illustrated than in the ongoing human rights catastrophe now unfolding in Yemen with critical U.S. assistance.

For months, those who bother to care about Yemen -- one of the poorest countries on earth -- have been criticizing President Obama for aiding and abetting the Saudi Coalition assault on that country. As Foreign Policy reported back in October, Obama was already being accused of committing War Crimes through his logistical assistance to the brutal Saudi air offensive against Yemen.

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Yet, undeterred, Obama doubled down on his crimes in November by approving the sale of $1.29 billion in smart bombs to Saudi Arabia -- a sale which, among other things, is intended to replenish Saudi Arabia's arsenal in attacking Yemen.

Of course, as always, the U.S. mainstream media, which is in the most sorry state I have ever witnessed it, has been ready to lend a hand to Obama's crimes by (1) barely reporting on Yemen; and (2) reporting Yemen as a more or less equal battle between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition. To be clear, this is not a an equal fight, for it is the Saudis who are inflicting the disproportionate share of civilian casualties through a U.S.-backed air campaign against a country with no air defenses.

Thus, as News Week recently reported:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights told the U.N. Security Council . . . that a Saudi-led coalition's military campaign in Yemen appeared to be responsible for a "disproportionate amount" of attacks on civilian areas. Speaking at the council's first public meeting on Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began nine months ago, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said he had "observed with extreme concern" heavy shelling from the ground and air in civilian areas of Yemen including the destruction of hospitals and schools.

The toll on Yemen's civilian population from the U.S.-backed conflict is great, with Human Rights Watch reporting back in October:

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The war, and particularly the numerous coalition airstrikes, has taken a terrible toll on civilians. As of late September, the U.N. had documented that the war had killed 2,355 civilians and wounded 4,862, the majority in coalition airstrikes. In the nearly two dozen strikes that we have investigated on the ground, we collected the names of more than 300 civilians who died, many of them children. And the civilian deaths continue. In the last few weeks local authorities and activists in Yemen have reported that coalition aircraft bombed two wedding parties, killing dozens of civilians. While a proper investigation is needed to establish the facts, our research shows that many coalition airstrikes that have killed civilians violated the laws of war.

However, these numbers do not even begin to reflect the true extent of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen where literally millions of civilians are being brought to the brink of starvation by the conflict. As an obscure piece out of Australia entitled, "Yemen is the Crisis That the World Forgot," reports:

Yemen, which is just south of Saudi Arabia, is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. Even before the current conflict, it depended on imports for 70 per cent of its fuel, 80 per cent of its food and 100 per cent of its medicine. With its ports and airports closed by a military blockade, very little of anything is available to civilians now. Before the war, more than 10 million Yemenis were going hungry but now many are facing severe food shortages. Those numbers should be shocking. But the sad reality is they are easy to ignore in Australia and in other parts of the Western world. Yemen has a population of 24 million, roughly the same size as Australia. Now consider the fact that in Yemen there are 21 million people who are in need of humanitarian assistance.



Yes, the Obama Administration is knowingly aiding and abetting the Saudis in murdering millions in Yemen. This is a fact. And, it is a fact which is quite ironic given that the current Obama-appointed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is Samantha Power -- an individual who came to prominence through her Pulitzer-winning book which condemned the West's failure to respond to genocide throughout the world. In the case of Yemen, however, the genocide is not happening due to the mere omissions of the West, and in particular the U.S. -- rather, it is taking place with the active support of the U.S., including Power's own intervention at the U.N. which prevented any independent investigation of the Saudi crimes in Yemen.

In other words, the Obama team, including Samantha Power herself, have become exactly what Power herself once condemned -- co-conspirators in genocide. Indeed, Power's treachery at the UN looks a lot like the maneuvers carried out by the Clinton Administration in 1994 (maneuvers condemned by Power in her book on genocide) which resulted in UN troops being drawn down in Rwanda at the very time they were needed to prevent genocide.

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TEHRAN, IRAN - JANUARY 4: Demonstrators hold posters of Nimr Baqir al-Nimr during a protest rally against the execution of prominent Saudi Shia cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr by Saudi authorities, in Tehran, Iran on January 4, 2016. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the Saudi execution of a Shiite imam is only the latest episode in a 35-year old, low-intensity conflict between the two regional powers.

It is essentially a geopolitical struggle: Saudi Arabia and Iran are vying to dominate the Middle East's empire of oil and stake a place as a player among world powers. Saudi Arabia lonf held that position, but Iran threatens its status.

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The competition took off in 1979, when the Shiite Islamic revolution triumphed in Iran. The mullahs in Tehran began to slowly spread their influence. They set themselves up as a rivals to the US, established Iran as a staunch enemy of Israel and supported Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, putting their influence -- and military muscle -- at the heart of the traditionally Sunni Middle East.

Sunni Saudi Arabia reacted by intensifying the spread of its own ultra-conservative Islamic ideology, Wahhabism, throughout the region. Riyadh supported friendly governments, funded mosques, trained preachers and backed Islamic insurgent and terrorist groups in places as far afield as Palestine and the North Caucasus.

In both countries, rule is maintained by strict enforcement of ultra-conservative Islamic social norms. Iranian clerics directly oversee politics and brook no dissent outside their ultra-puritanical version of Shiite Islam. The Saudi monarchy declares itself carriers of a true, purist Islam. Politics are confined to intra-family intrigue; while the Western press focused on the execution of the Shiite preacher Nimr al-Nimr, it should be noted that the 46 other victims were Sunni opponents of rule by the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi-Iranian competition evolved as a largely-ignored subtext to the intermittent interventions by the U.S. in the Middle East and the region's chronic instability. Following the disastrous American adventure in Iraq and the subsequent decline in US dominance, the Saudi Arabia vs. Iran conflict is taking center stage.

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From the Saudi point of view, its influence is on a long losing streak, with most benefits accruing to Iran:

Iran dominates Syria and backs its beleaguered president Bashar al-Assad with arms, commanders and client militias against Sunni insurgents. Saudi Arabia backs the rebellion but has been unable to insure its success.

After the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein, he was replaced by a Shiite government with heavy Iranian influence. Saddam, while not a favorite of the Saudis, was at least seen as a buffer against Iranian expansion. A long-running Sunni insurgency has yet to supplant the exclusionist Shiite government in Baghdad.

In Lebanon, Iran is the main military supporter of Hezbollah, the political party and militia that became the chief competitor to traditional Sunni power in the country. Christians in Lebanon are on the sidelines of this power struggle. After former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri threw off Lebanese dependence on Syria as a broker in Lebanese politics and turned instead to Saudi Arabia, Syria engineered his 2005 assassination. In 2008, when a subsequent Lebanese government tried to force Hezbollah to give up its private communications network and end its use of Beirut airport as a conduit for arms, Hezbollah sent its allies to occupy West Beirut, symbol of Sunni economic and political power.

Saudi Arabia regards the Shiite rebellion in Yemen against a Saudi-backed government as a cat's paw for Iranian intervention. Riyadh struck back with its current, ineffective bombing campaign and support for pro-government mercenaries.

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Iran replaced Saudi Arabia as a chief sponsor of Hamas, the anti-Israel Palestinian faction that rules the Gaza Strip.

Last but not least, the US-led deal to end Iran's nuclear weapons program opened the way for Iran to reenter the global oil market and strengthen its economy. The US put no brakes on Iran's aggressive foreign policy.

The religious aspect of the struggle is especially devastating to coexistence among Muslim civilians. The history of Sunni-Shiite rivalry dates from the earliest years of Islam. Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has been a main promoter of anti-Shiite dogma, declaring Shia followers to be heretics. This concept has helped fuel conflicts between Sunni and Shiite communities wherever they meet. It is reflected in the vicious religious cleansing taking place in both Iraq and Syria. Christians, largely bystanders in this conflict, are nonetheless victims as each side seeks to purify its area of control.

In the old days (i.e. from World War I to the end of the US occupation of Iraq), some foreign power might have been willing and able to step in and impose some sort of self-interested, colonial order on such a situation. Not now. The US is unwilling, Great Britain and Europe are effectively in retirement, and despite its recent flexing of muscle Russia is weak.
Supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hold posters of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr during a demonstration in the capital Baghdad on January 4, 2016, against Nimr's execution by Saudi authorities. Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Shiite-dominated Iran, its long-time regional rival, after angry demonstrators attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate following Nimr's execution. AFP PHOTO / AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP / AHMAD AL-RUBAYE (Photo credit should read AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)

The Saudi decision to start the new year with mass executions bore the hallmarks of a calculated move. Riyadh doubtless anticipated that the Basij would do to Saudi diplomats what had been done to previous representatives of governments who had incurred the Ayatollah's wrath. The Saudis were prepared to cut diplomatic relations, and ensure that other Arab states followed suit.

Not for the first time in recent months, an Iran which prided itself on anticipating the next step of its enemies and on outsmarting them, found itself wrong-footed by the Saudi move. Just as it was when Riyadh announced its military offensive against the Houthi takeover of Yemen, Iran still worked on old assumptions that Saudi Arabia moved cautiously and behind a bead curtain.

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Here, however, the kingdom has played a different role. It has declared open season on the regional conflict with its Persian neighbour. This marks more than just one rung up the ladder of hostilities from its current stance of fighting proxies like the Iranian-backed Houthis, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or Hezbollah.

Hostility is overt. It brings the regional division to centre stage. Challenging the military and political influence that Iran has grown accustomed to wield in Syria, Yemen and Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003 has now become official Saudi policy. Very little of the spectrum of bilateral relations are left intact, bar the offer to host Iranian Muslim pilgrims at the Hajj. Considering what happened at the Hajj last year, that too is now in doubt. All trade and air travel between the countries has now been cut.

For good or for ill, in sickness and in health, Saudi Arabia under King Salman has become an assertive regional force, prepared to back its interests with hard power. It has defined regional allies in Turkey and Qatar. It faces defined regional enemies in Iran and Russia. It is forcing other Arab states to choose sides. Bahrain and Sudan did so on Monday, while the Emirates downgraded their relations with Iran.

It would be interesting to learn how much notice Riyadh gave Washington of Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir's statement. Probably even less time than the decision to launch an attack on Yemen. Saudi Arabia no longer waits for the approval of its chief military patron and supplier. Like other US allies in the region, it is used to acting on its own.

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The move spells the end, for now, to the Syrian ceasefire talks and possibly also Yemeni ones as well. The fallout from this weekend is unlikely to stop there. There is every indication that Riyadh will go on the offensive to restrict Iran's re-entry to global markets, after its nuclear deal with the Washington. Saudi Arabia will keep the price of oil at record lows, even at the cost of aggravating its own balance of payment crisis. It has already inflicted damage on the solvency of Russia's foreign trade bank Vnesheconombank, which needs $18bn to start lending again.

If this was planned, why was the plan carried out now? Forty-five of those executed were Saudi nationals, alongside a Chadian and an Egyptian. Forty-three were Sunnis, many of them al-Qaeda figures who had been on death row for periods stretching back to 2004. Their execution was a card Riyadh could have played anytime since the last wave of al-Qaeda bombings in 2012. Why was it played now, what political messages were sent and to whom?

Saudi Arabian rulers have faced two historic sources of internal dissent: the Shia minority, many of whom live in the Eastern Province, and Sunni jihadis. But only one of those sources makes the regime shake. Most analysts agree that Shia protests do not have the same ability. Of the 43 Sunni prisoners executed, the state media focused on Faris al-Shuwail al-Zahrani.

He was described as the ideologue behind a series of attacks on expats, police stations and oil plants which killed hundreds. In executing a "preacher of takfir", the regime took on ideological rival. In Wahhabi Salafism, only a state preacher can practise takfir, that is, declaring another person an infidel. This would have reassured the Sunni majority. But there was a message, too, for them. In a year in which the fuel subsidy is being lifted, overtime in state-run institutions is being cut, and everyone will have more taxes to pay, including a form of sales tax. The message is that no protest will be tolerated.

Externally, the execution of Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr was certain to touch off protests abroad, as Iran had done so much to highlight his case. On cue, Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah; and Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iraqi cleric; both reacted. According to the internal communique seen by The Independent, the head of Riyadh's security services ordered police forces in the country to cancel any holidays scheduled for early 2016 and urged them to exercise "maximum precaution" until further notice.

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The prospects of substantive Syrian talks had already been dealt a mortal blow by the alleged Russian air strike that killed Zahran Alloush, the leader of Jaish al-Islam. Alloush signed up for the Saudi peace process when other Syrian militia leaders walked away. In killing Alloush, Russia was showing, on Assad's behalf, that it could fashion the negotiating environment by selecting which interlocutors lived. Alloush's killing did less to the balance of forces on the ground outside Damascus than it did to Saudi determination to stop this.

Now the prospects of talks are dead. Instead, Saudi Arabia is cultivating a deepening security relationship with Turkey. Billions of dollars of contracts for advanced Turkish weaponry are rumoured to be in the offing as a result of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's latest visit to Riyadh.

The intensity and lethality of the combat in Syria that escalated when Russian warplanes began bombing largely opposition targets from the air are now set to escalate from the ground as well. As the front lines have changed little, this only means the conflict will be prolonged. Any talk of civil war winding down in local ceasefires now looks like the optimistic prattle of the past.

For at least one of the intervening powers, Russia and Iran on one side and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other, Syria will become an Afghanistan - a war from which one foreign power will have to beat an ignominious retreat. Saudi Arabia, whose foreign policy is popular among the majority-Sunni population of the region, is confident it will not be the one doing that.

This can only entrench conflict in the region in 2016. If 2015 was violent, this year is set to become even more so. The Saudi move will be as much a challenge for Egypt. Until now, the Saudi paymasters of the Egyptian military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Sisi tolerated the cold response Egypt gave to Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Syria. How much longer that will be the case with the Egyptian rapprochement to Russia and Iran remains to be seen.

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Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper."

If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there.

But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
Criminal Court judge candidate Mike Little said Monday that Governor Bill Haslam made a mistake in appointing Tom Greenholtz as judge, saying he lacks the experience in criminal cases.

He told the Pachyderm Club that Judge Greenholtz "has hardly any experience in Criminal Court and has never been the lead attorney in a state jury case."

Boyd Patterson, a third candidate, also stressed his experience in handling criminal matters as each of the candidates was allotted 10 minutes to speak.

Judge Greenholtz said the main requirement "first and foremost" for the office is to be an administrator. He cited his experience with handling budgets and employees by holding top board posts at Orange Grove Center and the Children's Home. He also mentioned a number of other civic involvements.

He said the judge "needs to get out in the community and not be isolated in chambers."

Judge Greenholtz said he wants to set up a mentoring program for at-risk youth so that will be their first visit to the court and not as a defendant.

He said he did not get into the judge search process until the second round after associates told him he was "very well suited" for the job. He said out of 17 applicants, he was the one chosen.

Mr. Little, who is assistant to Public Defender Steve Smith, said he has conducted 50 jury trials, while Mr. Patterson, former city Gang Czar, said he has more than 50.

Mr. Little noted that he served as bailiff to Judge Joe DiRisio in Division II, then to Gary Gerbitz, then Rebecca Stern, who resigned and caused the vacancy. He said Mr. Gerbitz, the former district attorney, has endorsed him. Mr. Little went to night law school and was a private attorney for 17 years.



Mr. Little said the new administration at the public defender's office has "brought the caseload to a manageable level." He oversees the legal work of 14 assistant public defenders.

Mr. Patterson, who has written a number of articles on the courts, said he has worked with disadvantaged youth and studied why criminals carry out their crimes. He said, "I've handled just about every kind of case," including in Juvenile Court.

He said he will push for new technologies to make the court work more efficiently and effectively.

He told the GOP club members, "I care about crime in our community."



All three candidates are UTC graduates.

The primary election is March 1. There are no Democratic candidates.








TV advertising - the stalwart of American marketing for the last 50 years - is going through a radical transformation. Driven by innovations in how advertisers measure and buy advertising and by changes in the way ad inventory is sold, the future of TV advertising will include many advertisers not a few large brands, media buys driven by data not ego, and relevant sponsored content instead of commercials.

The State of the State: Declining Viewership

The power of large TV networks has diminished considerably in the last 25 years. Virtually every indicator points to decline for both broadcast and cable entities:

By contrast, new entrants are gaining rapidly:

To Save TV, Make Ads More Relevant

So far, despite declines in viewership, TV ad revenue has not cratered to the same degree as other analog advertising mediums like newspaper and yellow pages. As Mary Meeker notes in her annual Internet trends report, US advertisers over-indexed 45% of media spend to TV in 2013, while only 38% of consumers' media consumption was spent on TV. But after a few years of tepid growth (but overall market share decline), Magna Global forecasts 2015 as the first year where US TV ad revenue will actually decline year-over-year.

TV has always been bought and sold based on one factor: which advertiser will pay the most for a given spot. With no regard for relevancy, the invention and proliferation of DVRs like TiVo to skip ads should have come as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, sixty-six percent of households with income over $75,000 a year have a DVR. A CBS executive recently admitted that 50% of DVR owners skipped ads, but bragged that this number was declining "because [people are] too busy on their phones to fast-forward through the ads."

To save TV advertising, commercials must become part of the viewing experience, instead of a distraction to be skipped. Online publishers have proven that this strategy works. Google and Facebook are poised to dominant online advertising, accounting for approximately 50% of US online ad revenue in 2014. Both companies run real-time auctions to determine which advertiser will win a given spot. Importantly, these auctions determine winners based not just on the highest bidder, but on a combination of bid and click-through rate (CTR), that is, the percentage of people who actually click on an advertisement. As a result, only advertisers relevant to a specific query or set of consumers will actually win the auction.

Google has actually taken this concept one step further by introducing Quality Score. Quality Score not only factors in CTR, but also the relevancy of an advertiser's landing page - evaluated in part by human reviewers and in part by data Google collects on how people interact with that page. Put another way, Google rewards advertisers for both creating ads that consumers like and creating Web sites that drive positive consumer experiences. As one senior Google product manager told me, Google is optimizing not just for a single click, but to ensure that consumers will find enough relevancy in Google ads that they will click on ads in the future.

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As consumers become conditioned to relevant online ads, the tolerance for irrelevant ads on other mediums will only decline. Google and Facebook see advertising as part of the overall consumer experience; TV networks see advertisements purely as a revenue source. Relevant online ads drive greater engagement; irrelevant TV ads sell more TiVos.

To Save TV, Make Buying Quantifiable and Democratic

At some point in the next three to five years, online advertising spend will surpass TV spend in the US. One obvious reason for this shift is the consumer migration from TV to online - advertisers have to follow consumers, after all. Online advertising, however, is also attractive to advertisers because it is so quantifiable; online marketing campaigns provide advertisers with highly actionable data.

This measurability works equally well for both direct response advertisers (trying to sell a product or service immediately to the consumer) and brand advertisers (trying to generate awareness and consideration). Unlike TV campaigns that have traditionally relied on survey data to determine who and how many people watched a given show, online publishers can quantifiably show advertisers who saw their ads, whether they interacted with the company, and how this influenced consumers' perceptions of their brand. Online branding campaigns can be optimized with near-real-time data, TV campaigns can take months to fully evaluate.

The TV networks are trying to respond. Earlier this year, for example, Time Warner "offered new technology that would let advertisers forecast sales results based on how they deploy advertising on the company's various outlets." Similarly, an executive at Turner Broadcasting recently complained: "I need campaigns measured and integrated all the time so I can normalize. We need 'provable ROI' for guaranteeing sales. I don't care about age and sex."

There are two technologies that might create parity with the measurability and real-time optimization of online advertising: addressable TV and programmatic TV buying. Cable companies, for example, collect plenty of information about consumers, including what shows a user is watching, home address, automobile data and credit card info. In the future, an advertiser could theoretically use all of this behavioral data to create highly-targeted, personalized ads, known as addressable TV.

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Programmatic TV buying, that is, TV buys transacted through a technical platform instead of negotiated with a sales team, is also on the rise, with Magna Global suggesting that $2.5 billion (4%) of TV buying in 2015 will be sold programmatically. This number could rise to 17% of the market by 2019.

So in the future, it's conceivable that TV advertising will compete with online advertising in three key ways: first, by optimizing ads not just on revenue, but on relevancy; second, by providing user-level targeting through addressable TV; and third, by democratizing media buying through programmatic exchanges. As a result, consumers would watch more commercials, TV networks would be able to increase their cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) as a result of better targeting of consumers and less commercial-skipping, and advertisers would get access to better data and would be able to make smarter decisions about their TV media buys and overall media allocation.

The TV Industrial Complex Re-Imagined

Measurable, relevant, and market-based TV advertising may save TV, but what emerges on the other side will look nothing like the TV industrial complex we know today. The TV networks may end up doing fine financially, despite having to completely rejigger the way they sell ad inventory. As noted, CPMs could actually increase substantially with better targeting, lower skip-rates, and more advertisers participating in the ecosystem.

For big brands, the shift from slow-moving, difficult-to-measure, massive branding campaigns designed to reach an entire demographic to pinpointed, real-time, data-driven targeting of individuals will hasten the rise of the data-driven CMO. Many commentators simply note that CMOs who do not embrace data will have limited tenures going forward. CMO who base success on how many awards their creative wins, or fuzzy goals like "lift" will struggle to remain relevant.

Big agencies will need to pivot to continue to lead in this new world order. To date, digital acquisitions have driven continued growth for large agencies, as this revenue was largely supplemental to traditional advertising budgets, and largely judged on branding-based metrics. CMOs - now accountable to data-driven KPIs - are starting to demand equal accountability from their agencies. As a result, agencies that could once bill millions on large branding campaigns (such as a TV placement) are now being asked to justify every dollar spent.

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In a "zero-based budgeting" world, TV advertising is just one of many channels against which an agency must optimize. Media efficiency may be better for advertisers, but it may also drive "a secular and downward shift in spending by the [large agencies'] biggest clients."
AUSTIN, TX - JANUARY 1: Art and Diana Ramirez of Austin with their pistols in custom-made holsters during and open carry rally at the Texas State Capitol on January 1, 2016 in Austin, Texas. On January 1, 2016, the open carry law takes effect in Texas, and 2nd Amendment activists hold an open carry rally. (Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)

It started just a few days after the Paris attacks. There was an awareness of how vulnerable I was and how vulnerable we all were.

For the first time in several years, I found myself staring at the door of my seminary classroom, imagining a man in a hood bursting through the door with guns blazing. My experiences in Iraq may have something to do with this feeling. I don't fully know. What I do know is that the classrooms I sit in are on the edge of the University of Texas, a school which will soon allow the concealed carry of handguns in classrooms, dormitories and other buildings. This law piggybacked the law authorizing the open carry of handguns. This one became legal in Texas on January 1, 2016. In the week between Christmas and the New Year, PSA videos by police departments told us not to panic and call 911 if we see holstered guns everywhere we go. I agree with proponents of Open Carry who insist that terrorists like to shoot people in gun-free zones.

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Part of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can feel like the loss of the illusion of safety. Coming face to face with raw violence changes a person's vision of the world. In this new, unsafe world, threats are everywhere and hyper-vigilance is the new normal. Can carrying a gun help a person feel safer? Can it, at least, give us back our illusion of safety?

I carried a concealed weapon when I lived in Pennsylvania, around the time I began to transition out of the Marine Corps Reserve. I had carried a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), a light, belt-fed, machine gun in the Marines as well as the standard M16 rifle. Having a pistol in my pocket helped me feel like I was in control, like I was safe. It gave me that feeling I got on the last day of boot camp when I marched across the parade deck as a Marine. I carried it for a few years before I moved.

I grew up around guns and I know how fun and dangerous they can be. I had one accidental discharge in all those years of recreational shooting. Just one, but it was one too many. I had been through Marine weapons training, I had qualified as an "expert" on the rifle range, yet I still made a mistake. I was embarrassed when the gun went off and shot a bullet in the patio bricks between my feet. I asked my two friends' forgiveness for my negligence. I'm glad I didn't kill anyone that day.

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A couple years later I went to Iraq as an army chaplain. I didn't carry a gun over there, although everyone around me did. When I came home, people asked me if the Iraqis "liked us being there." My first thought was always, Yeah, they were real nice to us. Most people are nice to people who are carrying guns. Sometimes I said it out loud and only received confused looks.

In my experience, people carrying guns openly are communicating some pretty serious messages. One of them is that they can easily kill you. Immediately, the presence of open weapons creates an asymmetrical power relationship where you're never quite sure how people feel about you--if you're the one with the gun. Most people are nice to people who are carrying guns.

In Iraq at least, most people were rarely completely honest to people who were carrying guns. The handshake--one of the oldest signs of peace--is a way of showing that you are unarmed. Can human relationships flourish in a world where no one can truly shake hands?

Now I'm a parish priest in the Episcopal Church and I think about an active shooter stomping into my church's school or worship service constantly. So I do sprints. I do pushups. I wonder if I'll be able to tackle the guy in time. What if there are two of them?

So I started to Open Carry--beads not bullets. I found the box with the old stuff from my Army days as a deployed chaplain. I pulled out a set of Anglican rosary beads. They were made for me by parishioners of Trinity Episcopal Church, in Mount Vernon, Illinois. I'd only used them a few times.

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Even though I was an Episcopal priest, I had little training with the beads. I had used them in Mount Vernon on the night they were given to me and twice in Texas at a contemplative service at a church next to the Fort Hood Army base. In my entire life, I've spent more times holding guns than prayer beads. I was an enlisted Marine, after all.

I googled Anglican rosary and printed the prayers that go with the beads. I picked the "Jesus Prayer", mainly because I could remember it and because the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of my Church, recently mentioned it in a talk. He said the Jesus prayer was a great way to deal with anxiety. According to Wikipedia, Anthony the Great was the first Christian to use prayer beads in the early Church. I have a picture of him glued on the inside cover of the prayer book I've used since my ordination. He's being assaulted by a dozen demons while he serenely prays. It always reminds me things could be worse.

I picked out a few other phrases from the website, grabbed my beads, and headed out to the street. As I walked, I thumbed through the beads, one after the other. Soon, the prayers merged with my breathing, as my thumb kept time. In class, when I would glance toward the door, I pulled them out and started working through them. I touched them every time I felt anxious, much like I had touched my M16 during my days in the Marines.

I know this is a controversial issue for Americans, and especially Texans. We live in anxious times and I'm thankful for 2,000 years of Christian reflection on the issues surrounding self-defense. These questions are not new. The venerable Saints Ambrose and Augustine thought it good for Christians to serve in the Army, however they denounced killing in self-defense for a number of reasons. Ambrose cited Jesus' command to "Put up thy sword, for every one that taketh the sword shall perish with the sword." He goes on to point to Christ's example of not defending himself against his enemies so he could heal the world through his wounds. Since then, most Christians have not been pure pacifists. I'm certainly not.

Like Ambrose and Augustine I see a need for soldiers and police officers to carry weapons. They are responsible to the community and act on our behalf. They are uniformed, set apart visibly for their duty to the community. Recent acts of injustice by police officers have highlighted the growing separation between the police and the community they work in. The Open Carry of guns, however, has very little to do with the community. Open Carry is centered in our modern worship of the individual. "I grew up with guns. I can handle it. I deserve to carry." What if my fellow Christians who endorse Open Carry took the time to reflect on whether their individualism is truly Christian, or merely American. Should a group so certain about the resurrection of the dead be so worried about dying?

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Jesus did tell his disciples in the Gospel of Luke to buy a sword. It says he did this so Jesus could fulfil a prophecy that "He would be numbered among the transgressors." It's a cryptic statement, and if you interpret this verse to rubber stamp carrying a pistol in your purse while you go to Chipotle, I think you may have missed Luke's point.
In 2000, north central North Carolina possessed a strong, diverse economy. It was a national and international center for textiles and apparel, furniture and tobacco - manufactured products which had seen the area through the economic ups and downs of almost a century dominated by manufacturing and related service sectors.

Fast forward 15 years of trade adjustments and technological disruptions and witness a new economy dominated by clinical health, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and other emerging technologies.

While the particulars of these legacy industries will look different in other states and other regions, economic regions across the country have experienced the same dilemma - where to find economic opportunity and jobs, how best to position a region to the jobs of tomorrow, and how to address the skills gap that has occurred with the transition.



While the answers vary, the characteristics of job development for the region and career development for individuals are markedly similar.

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Jobs and job preparation are located in the regional economy. According to Jonathan Rothwell of the Brookings Institute, 68 percent of two-year college alumni stay in the area of their college, compared to 42 percent of baccalaureate alumni. Regional workforce requirements at higher educational levels benefit more from mobility, while the skilled technical workforce, typically the product of the community college, is derived from the pipeline built in the region.

Regional clusters and niche development define the broad workforce pipeline that must be built in an area. Seattle and Wichita are homes to major aviation and aerospace facilities that require FAA certified technicians. Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina are grounded in IT hardware, software, and services. California, Massachusetts, and North Carolina compete in the biosciences and pharmaceutical sectors.

In each of these cases, and many others, curricula and clusters of curricula have been developed by community colleges to meet the need for highly-skilled technicians. The content of such curricula are based on labor market analysis that is becoming increasingly robust.

For example, in the Winston-Salem, N.C. area, the largest employment sector is health care with large academic and community medical centers as the focal points for clinical and non-clinical jobs, including biotechnology and pharmaceutical research.

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In response, Forsyth Technical Community College has grown existing and initiated new associate degree programs in nursing, imaging modalities, and therapeutic technologies (e.g., respiratory technology, radiation therapy, and nuclear medicine), all grounded in math, biology, and chemistry. From these curricular strengths, an associate degree in biotechnology evolved - the largest such program in North Carolina. Success in biotechnology led to a significant role in the state BioNetwork training initiative, and in 2005 the founding of the U.S. Department of Labor sponsored National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce.

Regions and communities also see workforce needs develop around niche sectors that are even more specific, albeit smaller, than those that grow around broader economic clusters. Motorsports is a $6 billion industry in North Carolina that attracts young people who want careers in the field. Community college students learn skills in welding, metal fabrication, machining, and assembly and develop a knowledge of physical principles such as torque and thermodynamics. They exit with skills applicable to racing teams or other advanced manufacturing operations.

In Winston-Salem, a segment of biosciences is creating job opportunities and the need for skilled technicians - tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The Wake Forest University Institute for Regenerative Medicine, its partnership with the Department of Defense, and its spin-off companies and research requires lab and research technicians well-versed in clean room techniques and processes, 3-D bioprinting, and other technologies -- in short, associate degree graduates who are job-ready to work in a growing niche at cutting edge of translational science.

Another common characteristic of the jobs that are being created in current economic recovery is their grounding in STEM - science, technology, engineering and math.

The new workforce in clinical health, advanced manufacturing, IT, or biotechnology, and those working at the intersection of these sectors (where innovation is driving new products and processes), requires a higher skill and knowledge level than those who were displaced in the recession.

The mill operations, assembly, and processing of the past have been replaced by advanced manufacturing - manufacturing driven by science and technology. Commodity manufacturing has moved off-shore and is not returning with the reshoring that is occurring today. The careers that once began with a high school shop class now require associate degrees with strong competencies in math, physical or biological sciences, and IT as the entry point.

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Not only are STEM skills needed for technical fields, they are respected in many others. Carnevale and Hanson point out that while "only 5 percent of all jobs are considered STEM occupations, 40 percent of all jobs 'value' STEM competencies."

A third characteristic of preparation for the workplace today is the need for clearly defined pathways. With the need for increased knowledge and skill for career entry and progression, potential college students and current students must define a career goal and pathway early - get on the path and stay there.

Students are increasingly bearing the brunt of cost increases of college and with student debt becoming an increasingly serious individual and societal concern, K-12 systems, community colleges, universities, government agencies, relevant non-profits, and employers must come together to create pathways that have multiple on-off ramps, recognized multiple credentials with labor market value, and that incorporate experiential learning as having academic value. Together partners can have a collective impact greater than the sum of its parts.

Finally, education for today's economy must be data driven. For the past decade or longer, student outcomes and especially completion have driven the conversation about quality in education in general and community college education in particular. The next question is completion or graduation to what end?

Providers of student information systems and learning management systems are increasing the analytic capabilities of their data management and, along with new entry, Civitas, are taking descriptive capabilities to the next level of predictive analytics.

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Beyond these tools, community colleges need to assess labor market outcomes, the end of completion. Economic research and data firms like EMSI and Burning Glass are supporting this effort taking the college's value-add assessment to a new level.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that's the group that picks the Oscar nominees and winners, faces its first big test on January 14. That's the day that it will announce who its members nominated for this year's Academy Awards. It's a big test for a good reason. A year ago the Academy was publicly embarrassed, almost humiliated, by the avalanche of bad press, and threats from civil rights leaders to picket and boycott the awards ceremony. It was under withering fire for having a near unbroken parade of white men and women troop to the stage to snare Oscars. It was the whitest Academy Awards in nearly two decades. It was so white that Award ceremony host Neil Patrick Harris got grim faced laughs when he cracked, "Tonight we celebrate Hollywood's best and whitest, sorry ... brightest."

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The Hollywood industry shot callers did not want a repeat of that image fiasco. They solemnly promised to do everything in their power to do better with the Oscars. They promised to do due diligence in breaking up the clubby, chummy nearly all white, mostly male membership of the Academy. That meant encouraging more minorities in the industry to apply for membership. They announced that they would launch a new initiative to get more minorities on the Academy staff. They would encourage the studios and independents to scour the woods for more black, Hispanic, Asian and female filmmakers and performers to bring into the industry establishment. They repeatedly pointed out that the film industry moguls meant business in their pledge to do more to break up the good ole' white guy club. The proof of that some offered to bolster their claim to do more to make a racial and gender make-over was that the Academy's own president was an African-American woman.



The debate over what Hollywood should or shouldn't do to make the film business more ethnically and gender representative of the country and the film going audience has raged for decades. The paltry number of black, Hispanic, Asian screen performers, directors and behind the camera talent who has been nominated, let alone who have won Oscars, has been endlessly cited. The landmark 2002 Academy Awards in which blacks won the best actor and actress award, or the even more landmark 2005 Awards in which five out of the 20 nominations of black actors, now seem like ancient history. The Academy has sped backward since those heady days.

The push to get Hollywood to open its doors wide to minorities and women up and down the filmmaking food change is not academic. Minority and women filmgoers yearly pony up tens of millions to help bolster the film business. What's presented on the big and little screen represents America's cultural face of what the industry and the country is supposed to look like. It's not just about a glitzy on screen image it's about transforming an industry whose business is to entertains into a business that reflects and fairly represents its clientele, that's the ticket buying public, and provides real opportunities for a part of that clientele to work and rise to the top in that industry. This goes far beyond ladling out a statute on the podium to a handful of hand-picked select and elite film talent every year. Still, it's the glitter and glamor of that ceremony and those awards that millions on ritual cue tune their TV sets into every year. They sit for hours watching, and along the way identify with and revel in the mirth, ecstasy and fantasy of the Oscar winners.

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The Academy is, of course, from its words and promises, and the embarrassment of a year ago is well aware of the industry's mass power and allure, and even its responsibility to literally put a better and different face on its business. The problem though is how to get those faces in its inner sanctum. It's a high bar to scale. A prospective member has to be sponsored by two current members of the Academy. Or, they must have been nominated for an Oscar. There's more. If they can get over that bar they have to pass muster by the Academy's Board of Governors who have the final say so over who gets in. The Academy hasn't given any indication that it will loosen its admission standards anytime soon, if ever.

Hollywood's business is what's it has been from the day in 1929 that it held its first Academy Awards ceremony and that's to entertain and not crusade for racial and gender diversity. That won't change. But what can and should is the face of those who receive its awards for entertaining. In 2015, all eyes watched an Oscars ceremony that was a mostly white guy's show. All eyes will again be on the Oscars to see what's changed. The message then is not another white Oscars.
2015: Shaping Port Harcourt Begins!

The Global Shapers Community (GSC) is a network of hubs founded and led by young people who are exceptional in their potential, their achievements and their drive to make a contribution to their communities. The GSC is a constituent and an initiative of the World Economic Forum. The Port Harcourt Global Shapers Hub is one of the over 450 Global Shapers Hubs around the world.

We are grateful to our donors, partners, volunteers, founding curator and shapers for their contribution towards making Port Harcourt--and the world at large--a better place for all of us in 2015. This newsletter is a summary of the different ways we started shaping Port Harcourt in the past 8 months.

Shaping Davos and Preparing to Shape Port Harcourt.

In January our Founding curator, Bitebo Gogo, and Deputy Curator, Ebenezar Wikina, joined the Abuja Hub for Shaping Davos; a series of live events hosted by the Global Shapers Community during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos using two-way video communications technology. Shaping Davos connected 40 cities from around the world.

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They both left Abuja inspired and challenged. The first step was to call for applications. We received 54 applications, and only 12 young people out of the 54 were accepted into the hub after the interview process.

The Port Harcourt Hub decided to focus on 2 thematic areas; volunteering and civic engagement to Shape Port Harcourt. Our research revealed that Rivers State, with Port Harcourt as its capital city, has a population of 4.5 million youth with 32% of them unemployed with an entitlement mentality in the oil rich state. This has resulted in a high level of youth restiveness, violence driven by criminality and impunity in the State. Most of these young people have little or no employability skills that will enable them to get employed. This is a gap that the hub is addressing through volunteering and civic engagement. Young people will be trained to volunteer for various causes, learn new skills; especially social skills to improve their employability skills.



(Founding Curator, Bitebo Gogo and Shaper, Abdulmalik Ibrahim, on Nigeria Info FM Port Harcourt on World Blood Donor Day with Host, Daniel Braide)

May: Raising Young Blood Donors

The Port Harcourt Hub commenced a month-long online Blood Donation Awareness Campaign with the theme; 'Save a Life, Become a Blood Donor' which culminated with a radio discussion on Nigeria Info 92.3 FM that has a reach of 3.2 million people, activities on Social Media and ended with an inclusive awareness seminar at University of Port Harcourt. 50 young people attended (including members of AIESEC and JCI chapters) The campaign was aimed at encouraging regular and new blood donors in Rivers State and beyond, particularly young people, to give blood. After the event, McLarry, a youth who attended the event, made a commitment to become a blood donor.

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June: World Economic Forum on Africa 2015

In June, Ebenezar Wikina, our Deputy Curator was one of the 80 shapers who participated at the historic 25th Anniversary of the World Economic Forum on Africa which held in Cape Town, South Africa. He was also a speaker at one of the public sessions that discussed new technologies and media consumption alongside Uzodinma Iweala, Publisher, Ventures Africa, and Hon Faith Muthambi, Honourable Minister of Information, South Africa. Ebenezar mentioned that "attending the event expanded his network and his horizon. He left Cape Town challenged by the projects other hubs are executing, and motivated to Shape Port Harcourt."

July: World Humanitarian Day and Speaking on Volunteering

The theme for World Humanitarian Day 2015 was "Shared Humanity". The Port Harcourt Hub in partnership with Keeping It Real Foundation worked with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to control traffic for few hours at a strategic bus stop in the capital city of Port Harcourt. One of the shapers said that volunteering to control traffic made her realize how important and tiring the job of a traffic warden is, and made a commitment to support the traffic wardens with bottled water every month.

On July 24th we visited International Secondary School, Rivers State University of Science and Technology to speak to over 300 students on the need to become volunteers and how to make the world a better place starting from their school. We distributed 30 copies of, "The Young Leaders Guide" --a book that teaches young people about leadership. Our visit was timely because, the school had given the students community service projects during the summer vacation.

August: Youth Civic Engagement and Annual Curators Meeting

On August 12th we commemorated the International Youth Day with radio discussions on Nigeria Info FM and Rhythm FM in partnership with KIR Foundation. After the discussion on radio we engaged some young volunteers from KIR Foundation to embark on an environmental awareness campaign. We spoke to shop owners and pedestrians on the need to take ownership for cleaning their environment.

In August our Founding Curator, Bitebo Gogo, was at the Annual Curators Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. She facilitated one of the sessions on Shapers Recruitment and Shapers motivation. Recounting her experience Bitebo Gogo said that, "she realized during the event how we are all connected in the world and none of us can achieve anything of global scale without the other"

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September: International Literacy Day

On 8th September, International Literacy Day, members of the hub together with Mary David, a Lawyer and educationist who is runs a literacy programme at the Port Harcourt Juvenile Home, were at Wave 91.7FM to talk about the importance of literacy for all. Afterwards, the Shapers went with Mary David to the Port Harcourt Juvenile Home to speak with the young people in the Home on the importance of being literate and obeying law and order.

We also donated books and educational accessories to the young people to enhance their performance in the new academic session. Mary David in her thank you speech encouraged the shapers to become mentors to the young people in the Home.

October: Meet the Leader and Supporting a Sister Hub



On October 1st, Nigeria's Independence Day, we had our first Meet-the-Leader Session with Mr Folarin Banigbe, an entrepreneur and publisher of the Niger Delta's first freely distributed newspaper; Port Harcourt Microscope. Mr Folarin spoke to the hub on "The Ideal Leader", and shared the story of how he left the oil and gas industry to become a seasoned entrepreneur.

Also in October, we supported our Sister hub in Bangui, the capital city of Central Africa Republic. We sponsored the publication of the #HelpBanguiRise campaign on Huffington Post in a bid to draw awareness to the relief efforts of the Bangui Hub in their period of crisis.

November: #KnowtheSDGs Campaign Starts

Following the adoption of the SDGs by global leaders, the hub commenced an awareness campaign tagged "#KnowtheSDGs" on the 10th of October 2015. The aim of the campaign is to educate Port Harcourt city, offline and online, on the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals and to suggest ways everyone can be a part of it.

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December: Taking the #SDGs to Schools, For the Love of the Boys, and Preparing for 2016

We took #KnowtheSDGs to Norwegian International School, on 3rd December, International Day of Persons with Disabilities. After speaking to the students about inclusion and all the 17 goals, we shared stickers to the students which had infographics about the SDGs and donated an SDGs-board to the school which will be hung at a central place in the school to remind students about the goals regularly. During the event, the management of the school agreed to incorporate the SDGs in their curriculum in the coming academic session.

Our final project for 2015 was on December 23rd at Association Badamia; a Home for street boys in Port Harcourt. We gave the boys gifts and also exchanged hand-made cards which we made with them using cardboard and glue.

In preparation for 2016, we had a meeting with the Special Adviser to the Rivers State Government on the Sustainable Development Goals; Mrs Toru Ofili. In that meeting we discussed to discuss possibilities of partnering with the government to make the SDGs work in Rivers State, especially in Port Harcourt. She was excited and willing to work with the hub in 2016.

Looking Back and Looking Forward



Shaping Port Harcourt in 2015 for the hub meant, bonding as a team, inspiring one another to reach out for valuable learning experiences, giving back in a sustainable and scalable manner in little ways as we went along; this was truly what shaping was all about for us.

Shaping is empowering and we look forward to shaping Port Harcourt with you again in 2016. Happy New Year everyone!

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Meet the Port Harcourt Global Shapers Team

Bitebo Gogo - Founding Curator

Ebenezar Wikina - Deputy Curator

ThankGod Okorisha - Shaper

Onimim Karibo - Shaper

Dayo Ibitoye - Shaper

Jennifer Nkem-Eneanya - Shaper

Adeniran Adekola -Shaper

Ifeanyi Orajaka - Shaper

Adulmalik Ibrahim - Shaper

Precious Wachiku - Shaper

Nneamaka Obi -- Shaper

Clifford Onyenekwe - Shaper

Eden Andrew-Jaja - Shaper
If you think Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, you're out of your mind.

There is no way the Democratic Party will allow that to happen, for two main reasons.

First, this is Hillary's turn to be the nominee. And although that's pretty distasteful for many of Bernie' supporters, it's the truth and has been decided by people who actually matter in the party's hierarchy (read: not you).

Second, it is simply impossible that a neoliberal, right-wing political party like the Democrats in a country with a nominally right-leaning electorate will allow their standard bearer to be a self-described socialist.

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Putting aside the fact that Sanders is not a socialist, and at best a slightly right-of-center social democrat, he still is able to identify as one in American politics. The Democratic Party will not allow themselves to be identified as "socialist" for the next generation. Won't happen, guys.

The Democrats, like the Republicans, are faced with an insurgent campaign in 2016. Luckily for the Democrats, their insurgency is being led by one of the greatest political cowards in history (Sanders).

Sanders, in a December, 2014, interview with New York Magazine, said that he would not run as an independent and "play spoiler" like Ralph Nader did.

Setting aside the fact that Nader's candidacy had nothing to do with the election results in Florida (a bunch of retired Jews didn't vote for Buchanan, y'all, something else went down there), Sanders' refusal to consider the only chip he could cash in for actual political power before his candidacy even took off tells you all you need to know about him.

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Of course, things are different now. Sanders has a lot of political support on the ground and may eke out a few victories in early primary states. Clinton's support appears too strong for him to make a dent, but time will tell.

It's possible Sanders could win a majority of the primaries. But he still won't be the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Party will never allow it.

See, the Democratic National Convention, where the Democratic nominee will be decided, is under no obligation to assign delegates to the winners of primary states. In fact, the rules don't even specify that the primary results be taken into account when deciding on the nominee.

You may remember this from the last time Clinton ran for president in 2008. The Clintons made noise about a floor fight to wrest the nomination away from upstart Barack Obama, who had a plurality of delegates.

The Clinton team pointed out to the media through back channels that although Obama had won more primaries, it didn't really matter in the end. Hillary Clinton could still be nominated without winning.

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Clinton decided against that floor fight. Obama went on to become president.

This year, Clinton's lead in superdelegates is already insurmountable. Sanders doesn't have a chance.
Border police checks IDs on January 4, 2016 at the Danish-German boarder town Krusaa.Denmark announced the immediate introduction of random controls at the German border, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Monday, on the same day neighbouring Sweden introduced controls on its frontier with Denmark to stem the flow of refugees. / AFP / Scanpix Denmark AND Scanpix / Palle Peter Skov / Denmark OUT (Photo credit should read PALLE PETER SKOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Sociopathic scum harassed a number of women in the central train station in Cologne on New Year's Eve. Jens Spahn, member of the Bundestag for the CDU, asked earlier today on Twitter: "Where's the outcry when you really need it?"

Jens Spahn, along with other people fretting about the absence of an outcry, must be living on a different planet. Have they not read the reports published in various media outlets over the last few days, or are they just deliberately ignoring them?

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Media outlets heavily covered the event, quoting numerous politicians and Cologne officials. But Mr. Spahn seems to have missed all that. It's either that he lives in his own parallel world, or he believes that people are too stupid to recognize his statement for what they really are: cheap populism.

What Spahn, along with other populist politicians and professional critics of Islam -- who seem to be crawling out of the woodwork en masse -- hope to achieve with this is clear. They take the disruptive behavior of a small group of young Muslims and pin it on "Islam."

"Equally antisocial is the behavior of someone who would exploit these events to stir up hate against Muslims, refugees, or anyone else."

It won't be long before people start showing up and demanding a reform of Islam. Some are already claiming that this incident was the result of the "Muslim conception of women." If sexual harassment is part of the Muslim conception of women, was the highly intoxicated state these men were found in also a consequence of their deep religious convictions? Despite Islam's prohibition on alcohol?

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It gets even more absurd when total idiots insist that we shouldn't keep quiet about the cultural background of these men, even though countless articles and reports have already mentioned that the group consisted mostly of men from North Africa.

Alarmists will use such an incident as an excuse to raise the issue of culture clash. But sociopathic behavior is sociopathic behavior, regardless of the alleged background of the perpetrators.

Equally antisocial is the behavior of someone who would exploit these events to stir up hate against Muslims, refugees, or anyone else. I can already see how these same politicians, who always pose as heroes addressing unpleasant, allegedly underrepresented topics, will be making symbolic visits to mosques before the next elections, in order to secure both photo ops and Muslim votes. It's time to stop falling for these ruses.
It was as if Saudi Arabia executed yet another terrorist when Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir announced the severing of ties with Iran.

In fact, one could argue that the Iranian regime resembles the single biggest terrorist threat, not just to Saudi Arabia and the region, but to global security as well.

Iran -- in a typical manner -- pretended that it was trying to prevent protesters from attacking and setting fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, but in reality it did not prevent them (it wouldn't be surprising, or a first, if it turns out that it actually encouraged them as well).

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Iran also criticized the execution of convicted hate preacher Nimr al-Nimr, who had been described by Saudi authorities as an "instigator of sedition" and was found guilty of seeking "foreign meddling" in the kingdom, among other charges. Through its media and various mouthpieces, Iran made the issue appear sectarian -- because Saudi Arabia is a Sunni state and Nimr was Shiite. Conveniently, Iranian officials avoided mentioning the fact that only four of the 47 executed terrorists were Shiite.

The rest were not only Sunni, but extremist Sunnis who were leading figures in al-Qaeda, which Saudi Arabia is accused -- by Iran in particular -- of supporting!

Of course, it is easy to point the finger at Riyadh, for 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11 were Saudis. In addition, the late leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, was a Saudi before he was stripped of citizenship.

However, there is a big difference between being a regime that supports terrorism, such as Iran, and the Saudi government which has been praised by global powers as a key ally in the war against terror. The truth is the kingdom has been fighting the likes of al-Qaeda and ISIS relentlessly (for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, Al Arabiya's exclusive, recently-aired documentary is a must watch) and relentlessly going after any of its own citizens who are proven to be members of such groups.

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Among the al-Qaeda members executed was Faris al-Shuwail, a top al-Qaeda ideologue, whose writings attempted to justify the strategies and tactics employed by the militants. Like Nimr, al-Shuwail might have not personally killed people, but his teachings and sermons were a direct factor behind the taking of innocent lives, which makes them both equally responsible for the crimes committed.

While many fail -- whether intentionally or not -- to recognize Saudi Arabia's intense efforts and the sacrifices made by a large number of its own security forces on this front, it is shocking that Riyadh is still seen with dubious eyes when it is Tehran - according to the U.S. State and Treasury Departments - that is providing refuge and assisting al-Qaeda leaders both logistically and financially. This explains why al-Qaeda is more preoccupied with the Saudi government rather than what would arguably be its natural foe: Iran.

In all cases, it is surreal that Iran would have the audacity to criticize Saudi Arabia for executing a number of convicted terrorists.

According to Amnesty International, Tehran executed over 700 people in the first half of last year and the final toll for 2015 is expected to top 1,000 once officially announced (it should be noted that this is happening under the nose of the so-called "moderate" leader President Rohani!). It goes without saying that many of these sentences were against Sunni clerics who are believed to have not committed any crimes or received a fair trial.

While Saudi Arabia publicly tried and executed the al-Qaeda gunman who, among his many terrorist acts, attacked and paralyzed BBC journalist Frank Gardner and killed his cameraman back in 2004, the Iranian regime still maintains the detention of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who was subjected to a secretive trial and a cryptic sentencing late last year.

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Iran is also responsible for backing and financing numerous terrorist and paramilitary groups in the region, from Hezbollah (the key destabilizing force in Lebanon which is also responsible for the 1983 Beirut barracks attack on U.S. marines) to Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq (responsible for the killing of Iraqis, Brits and Americans), as well as the Houthis in Yemen.

While there is absolutely no issue with the Iranian people themselves, who are far more moderate and tolerant than their leaders, Riyadh severing its ties with Iran is certainly a step in the right direction and Saudi Arabia's allies should follow suit, like Bahrain did today.

If the U.S. and other global powers managed to succeed in ridding Iran of its nuclear ambitions (or so it seems) in 2015, then 2016 should be the year in which Iran's interference and destabilizing behavior in the region is put to an end... once and for all!
On the eve of January 1, 1956, Sudan became a fully independent country ending several decades of Anglo-Egyptian condominium rule. Very few developing countries were as fortunate as Sudan, which gained independence during the post-World War II era. Sudan was then not only the largest Arab and African country, with a total land area nearly nine times the size of its former British colonial power, but also had a prosperous agricultural economy. The country inherited from its colonial rulers a well-functioning and efficient infrastructure that included a web of railways, Gordon Memorial college -- later renamed the University of Khartoum, the Gezira scheme, competent civil service, a fair formal judiciary system, and a strong local currency where the value of the Sudanese pound was more than two U.S. dollars. Most importantly, the country was born with a vibrant multi-party democratic system. Unlike some former African and Asian colonies, Sudan maintained very good relations with its former colonizers. The general public was very optimistic and jubilant on the eve of Sudan's independence. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Sudanese enjoyed glorious success in sports, music, and foreign diplomacy. For example, Sudan hosted the most successful Arab summit in the history of the Arab League in 1967. This was the Sudan fondly referred to by the Sudanese people as the "beautiful past." Today, Sudan has been torn by conflicts and plagued by poverty, divided into two countries since 2011.

What went wrong? Two key issues contributed to major conflict in Sudan, the issue of national identity and the debate surrounding the role of Islam in public life. The founding fathers of modern Sudan failed to lay a strong foundation of national identity that would unify all Sudanese ethnic and religious groups. At the heart of the national identity issue are such questions as whether Sudan should wholeheartedly embrace its Arab or African identity. Unrest in southern Sudan exacerbated this problem and fueled uprisings and civil conflicts. The civil war in South Sudan, once considered Africa's largest civil war, resulted from deep negative sentiment among southerners who believed that the Arabs in the North controlled power throughout the country. Indeed, the former British colonial administration in Sudan planted seeds of political mistrust between the northerners and southerners through its controversial policy of "closed districts," which limited social and political interactions between the groups.

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Although the role of Islam in public life is closely related to the issue of national identity, it has unique political effects in the north, as two key political actors -- the Sudanese Communist party and the Islamic movement -- employed it in different ways to gain political benefits and seize power. In 1969, the Neimiri regime, backed by the Sudanese Communist party, adopted strong socialist policies including the celebration of Marxist teachings within a very traditional Muslim majority country and the national confiscation of private businesses and small agricultural projects. These policies proved to be disastrous to the Sudanese national economy for several years to come. In contrast to Neimiri's socialist leanings, the Al-Bashir regime, backed by the Islamic National Front, has embarked upon a number of Islamization projects in education, banking, public life, and mobilization of youth from the Islamic movement to fight in the south during the early 1990s. However, this ambitious agenda aimed at significant social engineering led to extensive political corruption, poverty, expansion of government, and the decline of the middle class. The Al-Bashir regime adopted belligerent liberal economic policies to remove or significantly reduce government subsidies of education, healthcare, and basic food items. The social cost of these policies was enormously negative, and the resulting increases in school dropout rates and income inequality have impacted the once strong Sudanese social fabric. Today, many educated Sudanese youth view working outside their home country as the only conceivable way to achieve their dreams in life. Furthermore, the discovery of oil during the late 1990s in the southern part of Sudan, which provided revenue before the separation from the south, distorted the Sudanese national economy because it led to negligence of the agricultural sector.

Faced with increased international isolation and pressure, the Al-Bashir regime finally signed a comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) with the leaders of the Sudan Liberation Movement in 2005 that ended the civil war and eventually led to the separation of the South. After holding power for more than two decades, the Al-Bashir regime has recently initiated a national dialogue that is unlikely to end major political problems such as the conflicts in Dar Fur,southern Kordofan, and the Blue Nile once and for all.

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There's a world of difference between book smarts and street sharps -- between braininess and savvy. The first has its place, but the second is more useful.



Being smart is the ability to logically think things out. Being sharp is the ability to tune into the world, to read situations, and to survive.

In my time as a cop, I dealt with a lot of people. I have to say some of the sharpest weren't dressed in suits, carrying briefcases, and living off retainers -- they were living off their wits on the street.

There but for the grace of God go I. Regardless of how these street people developed their lifestyle, it was evident some of them were pretty "intelligent".

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So what is intelligence?

Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as your capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity, and problem solving.

Where it comes from is anybody's guess.



It's something that's designed into us, possibly embedded in our brain through DNA.



I'm a believer in the concept of Infinite Intelligence which is the basis of Napoleon Hill's masterpiece on human achievement in his timeless book Think And Grow Rich. If you haven't read it, do so. If you have read it, go read it again.

Intelligence has long been measured in a quotient called IQ. It's different from a measure of your ability to control your emotions which is called EQ -- a much more difficult thing to measure.

Most average adults have an IQ around 100 on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.



The MENSA club requires members to be in the top 98 percentile which sets the bar at 132.

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According to the Guinness Book of Records, the 'smartest' person in the world is Marilyn vos Savant, who scored 185.

Probably the most intelligent person who ever existed was Leonardo da Vinci who's been estimated at around 220.

Conversely, mental retardation used to be divided into sub-classifications, but these labels are officially obsolete due to political correctness:

Borderline Deficiency (IQ 70-80), Moron (IQ 50-69), Imbecile (IQ 20-49) and Idiot (below 20).



I've dealt with a few in my policing career who rated around 15 and I have my own term for that classification.

So what about emotional smarts?

I have a great book called The EQ Edge by Steven J. Stein, Ph.D. and Howard E. Book, M.D. I'll steal their definition of EQ.

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Emotional Quotient is the set of skills that enable us to make our way in a complex world -- the personal, social and survival aspects of overall intelligence, the elusive common sense and sensitivity that are essential to effective daily functioning. It has to do with the ability to read the political and social environment, and landscape them; to intuitively grasp what others want and need, what strengths and weaknesses are; to remain unruffled by stress; and to be engaging. The kind of person others want to be around and will follow.

Sophisticated mapping techniques in brain research have recently confirmed that many thought processes pass through our emotional centers as they take the psychological journey that converts outside information from infinite intelligence into individual response and action.

God only knows where infinite intelligence comes from.

* * *
A Chattanooga woman has been charged with threatening two men with a gun and firing it into the ceiling of a residence.

Amanda Del Paris, 34, of 1206 Arlington Ave., is charged with reckless endangerment, aggravated domestic assault, being a felon in possession of a handgun and possessing a stolen weapon.

In the incident on Saturday, police were summoned to the Arlington Avenue address on a disorder with a weapon call.

Kelvin Holland and Michael Green said Ms. Paris threatened them with a gun if they did not leave. They said they immediately ran out of the house and called 911.

They said the gun was fired into the ceiling as they were exiting.

The pair said the boyfriend of Ms. Paris, Tracey Lamont, was still inside.

Police surrounded the house and called for Ms. Paris to come out. They said she did not do so at first.

Lamont did come outside and said Ms. Paris was inside with a loaded gun that she had fired into the ceiling.

After several attempts were made, Ms. Paris came out and was immediately taken into custody.

A search of the residence turned up a loaded gun with one spent shell casing in the chamber. There was damage to the ceiling.


Artificial Intelligence is constantly pushing the boundaries of what machines are capable of. But could machines ever become better than us? The answer is of course 'yes', at least in many things where our intellect used to be the unchallenged champion of creativity and intelligence. Here are 5 tough intellectual areas where AI is already performing better than humans.

Search the web quicker

RankBrain is a machine learning AI that handles the toughest web queries in Google's search engine. It understands the meaning of words and phrases, and can therefore guess what should be to the top ranking pages in never-seen-before searches. And it is better than its biological creators. When tested, humans could guess 70% of the time, while RankBrain's success rate was 80%. It has not replaced Google's brute force Hummingbird Search algorithm yet, but works synergistically with it; a sign of things to come as AI is embedded into existing information systems in order to enhance their performance.

Work in deadly environments

Robots can survive where no human can, in places like deep space, the oceanic benthos, or inside a radioactive reactor. The trouble has been that they could not perform at the dexterity and intelligence level of humans. As robotics pioneer Hans Moravec has famously noted, although high-level reasoning is relatively cheap to implement when it comes to low-level sensorimotor skills AI needs enormous computational resources. In other words, human babies can do more complex things with their bodies than the most sophisticated robots. But not any more: a UC Berkley team used deep learning to teach robots fine motor skills, such as screw caps on bottles, or use the back of a hammer to remove a nail from wood. The technique simulates eye-hand coordination in humans and the research results show that robots can now match human dexterity and speed.

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Translate in many languages

In the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" the babelfish was a fictitious alien fish that performed instant translation once inserted into one's ear. AI is catching up quickly with science fiction, as so-called "machine translation" is finally coming of age. The Google Translate app can instantly translate text in 27 languages. And Skype is using neural network technology that mimics the human brain in order to understand human speech and instantly translate from English to Spanish. At Microsoft, who own Skype, are beta testing the method with a view to expand it in any language, and thus facilitate face-to-face communication between humans with no knowledge of each other's language.

Get a PhD quickly

Critics of AI nauseatingly argue that machines could never be creative, or curious, or discover anything of significance - because they lack consciousness. Nevertheless, a team at Tufts have proved naysayers wrong. Intelligence does not need consciousness to discover new knowledge. By combining genetic algorithms with genetic pathway simulation the researchers created a system that was able to make the first scientific theory to be discovered by an AI: of how flatworms (or the species "planaria" to the initiated) regenerate body parts. The AI-generated theory will have a significant impact in human regenerative medicine.

Deliver a correct medical diagnosis

Ever since that day in 2011 when it beat the human champions of Jeopardy!, IBM Watson has been growing its capabilities with leaps and bounds. One of its focus areas has been oncology and the diagnosis of cancers. For human physicians the challenge of making correct diagnosis is huge. It is estimated that in order to be at top of medical knowledge human doctors must spend 160 hours per week reading new research papers. IBM Watson's AI does that at a fraction of the time. On top of this it has the ability to search through millions of patient records, learn from previous diagnoses, and improve the reasoning links between symptoms and diagnosis. The result? IBM Watson's accuracy rate for lung cancer is 90%, compared to a mere 50% of human physicians.

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Everyone is celebrating; it is time for family and friends, going back to sweet memories, or setting up plans for next year. For Syrians, during the last few years, things have been quite different. Actually, this time of the year is nearly the worst to go through.

A Syrian friend decided that we should try to be happy and together in the last day of the year. She launched an event on Facebook few hours before midnight, the idea was to celebrate together (at least virtually) and to share our wishes and feelings especially as most of us are spending this day far from home and family.

Can we celebrate?

Our event started, we exchanged salutations, wishes for a happy new year, love, prosperity and joy, and all the traditional words. Then a friend who recently left to Sweden, wrote to us: "Why can't we be happy and celebrate like others? God, we are killing each other, being bombed by our enemies and friends, what I really wish is to go out and shout loudly, Stop this war."

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Then others decided to express their real feelings; their wishes were simply heartbreaking:

"I want to feel happy again, since I left Syria nothing really matters." "I will not celebrate until the war is over." "I wish I can go home, but it is totally destroyed." "I forgot to bring my photos; I wish I remembered to bring them with me." "I am starting a new life and new career in Berlin, I keep myself busy the whole day, but I am sad from the inside, my family is besieged in Homs.""Cheers guys, we should not let the war defeat us.""Things are so complicated here, people are so racist, I don't think I can take it anymore, I just wish people have some mercy!""My brother is in prison since 2012, I just want to know if he is alive or not." "I just wish that this daily killing stops, I don't want anything else.""Would you please stop complaining, we don't even have food here once; I wish I had a nice meal like the one mum used to prepare. ""I can practice medicine here, last year my little nephew died as no medical treatment was available; he died because of his wounds, I just wish if I were there and rescued him." "Those fireworks are driving me crazy, my daughter is so scared, she remembers the bombings in Aleppo, I just wish she can forget what she saw there."

Can we be normal people after the betrayal by the civilized world?

Their words gave me the feeling that we can't be normal people anymore, as long as this war is going on, as long as our wounds don't heal, we are bleeding, daily, whether inside Syria or outside.

After about five years, there is a deep feeling of betrayal by the civilized world. There is no solution arising in the horizon. Even worse, Syria became the land of extremists, the promised land of the Islamic Khalifa. The called Islamic-state is fed by injustice, rejection, ignorance and of course, oil wells, which give them the needed finance. This terrifying monster are expanding even outside Syria and Iraq. What happened in France was a clear message.

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On the other hand, a few days ago, the anti-Islamic state Naji Jerf was shot in the head in Turkey, he tried to film their abuses in Aleppo and Raqqa. Jerf is not the first and unfortunately will not be the last. Injustice is the cry

In all this mess happening in Syria, 'injustice' is one of the most dangerous realities, as Martin Luther King says: ''Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". That is why the Syrian crises are not only humanitarian crises but also a threat to people's safety in other countries. For the next year and the years to come, it is fundamental that justice prevails, that those war criminals get what they deserve, and this suffering stops, not only because it is fair, but because it is the guarantee for a better future to us, All of us. Happy and Safe New Year.
This article first appeared on the blog of Intentional Insights, a nonprofit organization that empowers people to refine and reach their goals by providing research-based content to help improve thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns.

Imagine the following scenario: you have been raised in a deeply evangelical household. From an early age, your parents taught you to pray daily and told you that the purpose and meaning of life were found in God. Attending Sunday school reinforced this message. So did the television that your family watched, the books that they gave you to read, and the music to which they encouraged you to listen. You grew up in this environment throughout your early teenage years, attending a religious elementary and junior high school. Then, you went off to a local high school, because your parents could not afford a religious high school. There, you met an environment that challenged your beliefs that the purpose and meaning in life were to be found only in God. You started to question and doubt, maybe even attended meetings of the local affiliate of the Secular Student Alliance to find out what it was all about. You wanted to explore more broadly, but were afraid of losing your sense of purpose and meaning in life.

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This is the story of many students that I have taught in my role as a professor, as well as for those who have come to Intentional Insights presentations on "Finding Meaning and Purpose in Life." They were deeply confused about meaning and purpose in life, questioning what it was all about. They are wise to do so, as research shows that having a clear answer to the question of life meaning and purpose can greatly improve our mental wellbeing. This questioning correlates with the growing number of "nones," people without any religious affiliation in American society, especially among younger adults. Many nones, and young people in general, are seeking for answers that don't necessarily include a God as part of the equation. Recently, several books have explored this possibility, that of having life meaning and purpose or a sense of spirituality without God, as part of the public conversation.

So what does research on this issue show? Apparently, the important thing is simply to gain a sense of life purpose and meaning: the source of the purpose itself is not so important. Religion can be one among many channels to help someone gain a sense of life meaning. The pioneer in this field, Victor Frankl, was a Viennese psychiatrist who lived through the Holocaust concentration camps. In his research and work, both in the camps and afterward in private practice, he found that the crucial thing for individuals surviving and thriving in life is to develop a personal sense of purpose and meaning, what he terms the "will-to-meaning." His work correlates with the philosophical position of existentialism, the idea that the source of life meaning and purpose lies within ourselves as individuals. There are many paths to do so. For example, Frankl helped people find purpose and meaning in life through helping others to remember their joys, sorrows, sacrifices, and blessings, and thereby bring to mind the meaningfulness of their lives as already lived.

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Frankl's approach to psychotherapy came to be called logotherapy, and forms part of a broader therapeutic practice known as existential psychotherapy. This philosophically- informed therapy stems from the notion that internal tensions and conflicts stem from one's confrontation with the challenges of the nature of life itself, and relate back to the notions brought up by Sartre and other existentialist philosophers. These challenges, according to Irvin Yalom in his Existential Psychotherapy, include: facing the reality and the responsibility of our freedom; dealing with the inevitability of death; the stress of individual isolation; finally, the difficulty of finding meaning in life (Yalom). These four issues correlate to what existential therapy holds as the four key dimensions of human existence, the physical, social, personal and spiritual realms, based on extensive psychological research and therapy practice (Cooper).

So where does this leave us? Religion is only one among many ways of developing a personal sense of life meaning and greater sense of personal agency. One intentional approach to gaining life meaning and purpose involves occasionally stopping and thinking about our lives and experiences: we can find an individual sense of life purpose and meaning through the lives we already lead. A great way to do so is through journaling - it can help us deal with stress, process sorrows, experience personal growth, learn more effectively, and gain positive emotions through expressing gratitude.

Did you ever try journaling? If not, I encourage you to try it out and let us know what you found. If you did, what kind of benefits did you get? What kind of challenges did you run into? From your experience, how can the process of journaling be optimized?

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Review of Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections. By Richard L. Hasen. Yale University Press. 256 pp. $32.50

"There are two things that are important in politics," Marcus Hanna, chairman of the Republican National Committee and United States Senator from Ohio once declared: "The first is money, and I can't remember the second."

More than a hundred years later, things haven't changed all that much. Money influences the outcome of elections, access to politicians, and the content of legislation. And the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) opened the floodgates of corporate and union spending in elections and paved the way for the emergence of Super PACS.

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In Plutocrats United, Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine and the author of The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, provides a careful and compelling analysis of the role of money in American politics and proposes a legal strategy to reform campaign financing to give all Americans a meaningful opportunity to participate in elections and protect First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press, without allowing the wealthy (and non-human entities, including corporations) to exercise undue influence.

Hasen maintains that debates over campaign finance limits should not turn on whether or not they will reduce corruption. Access, he acknowledges, may be a legitimate expectation of donors to a candidate's campaign - and evidence of outright bribery is scarce. A better approach would cite "political equality as an interest in its own right." Since the Supreme Court called for "one man, one vote" in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) and struck down the poll tax in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966), Hasen points out, it has recognized that voting rules should give equal political power to all citizens. The Court has not yet held that each voter has a constitutional right to equal influence (through the electoral process) in having his or her preferred policies enacted into law, but Hasen believes it could and should do so to limit the likelihood that disparities in resources will be turned into disparities in political influence.

Hasen advocates levelling campaign financing up as well as down. Spending limits of $25,000 per election with a two year aggregate cap of $500,000 (and an exemption for media corporations which cover elections), he claims, would neither benefit incumbents nor inhibit competition. A $100 voucher, which every eligible voter could give to a candidate, political party or advocacy support, might even enhance political participation. Pointing to decades of experience with campaign finance limits in the United States and from the much stricter systems in Great Britain and Canada, Hasen insists that his proposals will not endanger freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

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He reminds us as well that the Supreme Court has always recognized that the First Amendment doesn't mandate no regulation ever of speech, expression or the spending of money on speech or expression. Courts have declared that society has a "compelling reason" to penalize libel and child pornographers, for example, as long as the regulation is "reasonable." Senator Ted Cruz's scare tactics to the contrary notwithstanding, neither Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, the NAACP, the Sierra Club or the little old lady who put up a $5 political year sign are likely to land in jail if Citizens United is no longer the law of the land.

Hasen understands that getting any changes in campaign financing through Congress and the courts won't be easy. His own proposals will almost certainly not command majorities in the House of Representatives or the Senate - and if they did wouldn't pass muster with the Supreme Court. And with good reason. Hasen deems a constitutional amendment on campaign finances a non-starter, especially when a solid majority of state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. An amendment, moreover, could well do more harm than good. The original language recently crafted by Senate Democrats, for example, seemed to give local, state, and federal legislatures far too much latitude to suppress political speech. A draft put forward by the group "Move to Amend," Hasen indicates, did not include a press exemption, "raising serious questions about whether a state could stop the New York Times or Fox News from covering an election. The "simplistic" amendment proposed from former Justice John Paul Stevens allows "reasonable limits" on campaign contributions but does not define "reasonable."

Unless and until the aging Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are replaced by progressives, Hasen writes, "no change is possible." For now, he recommends keeping the issue alive with short term fixes (which, to be sure, will face an uphill battle in Congress), such as more robust and rigorous disclosure requirements for donors and multiple matching funds for small campaign contributions.
A new year is here and with all the talk about resolutions and new beginnings bigger themes and issues may get lost in the shuffle. Teens should pay attention to the following 10 topics as we navigate our way through 2016 -- Bon voyage!

1. The Presidential Election. An election of firsts - first time that some of us will be able to vote, first time we might elect a female president, first time we might have a buffoon like Donald Trump as a nominee. This is an election that will determine the next four, if not eight, years of our country's direction, the period of time during which we will become adults. Not paying attention would be shortsighted, to say the least.



2. The Cost of College. It's a constant refrain and it's true -- without a college degree we stand no chance in the workforce of the future. With college on the horizon, the relentless series of articles about student debt make the process of choosing a college extra-harrowing. It's up to us to amplify the conversation about ballooning college costs so that we can get the education we need at a price we can afford.



3. The Environment. In the aftermath of the Paris climate conference, things are looking up for the global environment. It is especially noteworthy that traditional polluters, such as the United States, and emerging polluters, such as China and India, all signed on to the Paris protocols. But, will a flashy agreement based on a shaky consensus be enough for meaningful change? It may be, but only if we do our part to advocate for the initiatives to help save the planet, our planet.



4. The SAT. This spring ushers in a moment of fear and loathing for high school juniors as it marks the debut of the fabled "new" SAT. How will we prepare properly for a test no one has taken? Can we believe claims that it tests real knowledge not just aptitude? Will it be fair? Will colleges show sympathy for juniors who have to make tough choices about taking the old and/or the new test? Students have always had reasons to detest the SAT. This year, we have a few more.

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5. The Future of Social Media. As teens, we thrive on everything social media. Yet, we also have short attention spans and are always striving to discover the "new" and the "next." What will happen to Instagram and Snapchat in the coming year - can they remain fresh and relevant to our cohorts? Will Twitch streaming replace Vine (Instagram video pretty much already did)? Will After School continue to boom? Will Wishbone break through? It's vital that we stay up-to-date so that we can retain our thrones as social media kings and queens.

6. Sleep (lobbying to get more of it). Everyone says we need more sleep (8-9 hours to be precise). But they also say we need to do our homework, get straight A's, be a varsity athlete, do 10 extra-curricular activities, cure cancer, and save the world. Who has time for sleep? Will high schools back off the workload? Will parents push for later high school start times (all the evidence points to brain-building benefits). With more and more teens cracking under the pressure of too much stress and not enough shuteye, 2016 could be the year that the discussion over sleep heats up and real action is finally taken.



7. Mindfulness. Teens are constantly told that mindfulness is amazing. But, who has time for meditating, reflecting, yoga, and tai-chi? As mindfulness gathers steam via apps, classes, and pop culture, teens undoubtedly have a stake in its progression. Is mindfulness a miracle cure or just another way to Americanize and monetize yoga? I guess we'll find out.
2015 is over. I have written over 50 "Good Morning" stories, or GMS, my Sunday special, this past year!

It is not easy to think back on one's life, recall an incident, and then put those private thoughts into story form. No one can help me. Every thought has to come from me. When a thought comes to mind, I have to put those thoughts into words and then into a story.

But I do have many helpers in my life and that is today's GMS.

The other night when I was lying in bed wondering what to muse about in GMS, the word 'helper' came to mind because of an incident that occurred today and has occurred daily over the past 20 years!

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Rosa, my housekeeper, from San Salvador, never leaves our home without showing her appreciation for her job. "Thank you for everything, Suzi. I love you so much!" And I respond, "Thank you for everything, Rosa. I love you, too. Your help means so much to me."

I thought of the important helpers in my life, from my husband, Shelly, to my HoneyBees at HoneyGood.com, to my girlfriends, my family, my dog Orchid, and, last but not least, my housekeepers! And I carried my thoughts one step further as I lay in bed that night...

Thank the Gods that my parents taught me the value of gratitude and gratefulness so that I could feel grateful and always acknowledge thanks to those who help me. Thank the Gods, I have had the wisdom to draw the right type of people into my life, people that are giving and caring.

I had my GMS theme: helpers. Now I had to put my thoughts into words!

My first and foremost helper is my husband, Shelly, my right hand guy! In 25 years of marriage he has answered every single solitary call, putting me first and foremost. I am so grateful to him, my best friend, my confidante and love.

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My closest girlfriends, my support and focus group! They put their two cents in on everything from bunions, bras and breast lifts to real problems we face at this passage of our lives. I am so thankful for them.

My Honey Bees who help me run my site, HoneyGood.com; my Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and my Public Relations. They answer one hundred emails each day from me, never complaining. I am most appreciative of them.

My mother is my helper, my teacher and my loyal friend. To this day, at age 94, she reminds me how to meet and handle life's issues. I love her to my core.

Orchid, my pooch, helps me relax when she kisses me and cuddles by my side as I write.

The 'Grands' and my children. They love me and it is so helpful to feel loved.

Now that I have given credit to those most important in my life I thought I would have a little fun telling you about my housekeepers ... my helpers!

My Helpers -- My Housekeepers!

Over the course of my life I have had several funny, interesting, learning and loving experiences with my housekeepers ... my helpers.

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As many of you know, I grew up in a small Midwestern town in Illinois I call, 'Kankakee by the Sea'. From the time I was a little girl, my mother employed a married couple as her housekeepers. Henry and Belle were from Ireland. I would come home after school and Belle would welcome me at the the door and, in a strong Irish brogue, with twinkling eyes she would say, "Darlin', would you like a spot of tea?" and then she would give me a hug. I would always answer yes. We would sit down at the kitchen table with hot tea and honey and I would tell her all about my day. Henry and Belle were part of our family during my growing up years. I loved them.

When I married I followed in my mother's footsteps. I hired a mother's helper; a college girl named Tommy, who helped me take care of my home and babysit my first child, Jenny. I was a young newlywed with limited funds and very involved in community activities. Tommy was a college student in need of free room and board. She went to class each morning, arriving home at noon to help me take care of our home and Jenny. We became girlfriends! She stayed with me throughout her four years of college.

Nisi was one of my housekeepers when I lived in Honolulu. She was from Samoa. I helped her study for her American citizenship, and learned important facts myself. She spread kindness through our home and helped me with all my needs. When she became a citizen I threw a party for her in our home. She stayed with me until she married. We helped each other.

Edie was from England. She was at least 15 years older than I. When I interviewed her she sat across the kitchen table from me and interviewed me! She said and I quote, "I will help you run your home and meet all your needs if you have an Electrolux, clean with Parsons ammonia and if you are Jewish!"

I answered all in the affirmative and as I always say, "Edie hired me!" She was with me when I had three dogs, two cats, goldfish, two daughters with a million friends, and a large home. She was the helper of helpers and often came with bandaged knees from going up and down our stairs all day. When my daughter Jenny married, I sat her at the head table with our family to show my gratitude for her loyalty and constant help.

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Naze was my housekeeper in Chicago for many years. She was born in Lebanon and fled to America with her huge family because they were persecuted Lebanese Christians. She became an American citizen. She was a real lady who spoke French, had beautiful posture and prepared the most divine Middle Eastern foods for me. She stayed with me until she was 86. She was a second mother, helping me in the house. Naze was also a confidante.

Yoli is from Belize. She is with me now. She took over the house from Naze. She helps bring calmness into my life as well as taking care of our home. She does everything in slow motion. I do most everything quickly. She walks slowly, she talks slowly, she peels the carrots slowly, she dusts slowly, she takes a message slowly and she eats slowly! In other words, she takes her sweet ass time! She, unknowingly, has helped me learn that slow and steady gets the job done. The house looks sparkling clean, the messages are perfect and the carrots are peeled to perfection. My gratitude towards her is shown daily. I always thank her when she leaves our home each day.

Last but not least, there is my darling Rosa who has been my housekeeper and part of our family for over 20 years. She takes care of our California home as though it were her own. And tells, me, "Suzi, I take care of you and Senor and your casa because you are my family and your casa is my casa." She is the ultimate housekeeper. She is kind, soft spoken and makes the best guacamole and bean soup for me with tender and loving care.

My favorite people are kind, accommodating, supportive and cooperative, sympathetic and always make me feel they are eager to please. I revere each one, with gratitude, for their kindness and help.

Do something GOOD today: Teach the value of gratitude to your grandchildren.

Photography by Hallie Duesenberg



For more Good Morning Stories, click here.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:
Is it possible to become accepted into the Native American tribe of my ancestor? --David C.

_________________

Many Americans believe they have at least one Native American ancestor. More than 900 nations, peoples, tribes, and bands (the terms are interchangeable) once lived on the North American continent, and more than 560 are recognized by the federal government today, with an additional 24 being recognized by states. However, an estimated 80 percent of Native American families became disconnected from each other and from their people over the years. So questions about how to become a member of a tribe are common.

The answer usually has to do with a concept called blood quantum (which we'll discuss later) and your ability to prove your Native American lineage.

Native American nations set their own enrollment criteria in constitutions, articles of incorporation, and ordinances. These can include tribal blood quantum, tribal residency, or continued contact with the tribe. The criteria vary from nation to nation, so uniform membership requirements do not exist. The key is knowing which tribe or band your ancestor most often aligned with.

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American Indian and Alaska Native as Percentage of County Population: 2010. (U.S. Census Bureau)

Searching for Your Ancestor

A good place to start your research is with the free guide to American Indian research at Ancestry, which is full of hints and strategies.

You need to track your family generation by generation until you get back to the reservation or other location where you believe your Native American ancestor lived. Using U.S. Federal Census records is the easiest way to do this research. (Ancestry has a great article on census search secrets if you want some tips.) The 1910 census included an "Indian census" at the end of each county's enumeration that lists blood quantum and tribal affiliation. These records can be gold if your ancestor appears.

Ancestry has more than two dozen record collections that may reveal your ancestor's tribe. There are also terrific collections of photos, marriage records, allotment records (referring to reservation land given to individuals by the government), and an index card file of over 800 articles and folders with information about Indians who were moved to Oklahoma.

The overwhelming majority of written records are from five Native American nations: Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muskogee (Creek), and Seminole. The Federal government called these "The Five Civilized Tribes" for various reasons (one of which was the fact that they owned black slaves). Andrew K. Frank provides the following definition on the Oklahoma Historical Society website:

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The term 'Five Civilized Tribes' came into use during the mid-nineteenth century to refer to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. Although these Indian tribes had various cultural, political, and economic connections before removal in the 1820s and 1830s, the phrase was most widely used in Indian Territory and Oklahoma. Americans, and sometimes American Indians, called the five Southeastern nations "civilized" because they appeared to be assimilating to Anglo-American norms. The term indicated the adoption of horticulture and other European cultural patterns and institutions, including widespread Christianity, written constitutions, centralized governments, intermarriage with white Americans, market participation, literacy, animal husbandry, patrilineal descent, and even slaveholding. None of these attributes characterized all of the nations or all of the citizens that they encompassed. The term was also used to distinguish these five nations from other so-called "wild" Indians who continued to rely on hunting for survival. Elements of 'civilization' within Southeastern Indian society predated removal. The Cherokee, for example, established a written language in 1821, a national supreme court in 1822, and a written constitution in 1827. The other four nations had similar, if less noted, developments.

Records for these five nations constitute 35-50 percent of all Native American records and 80 percent of all Native American records filmed by the National Archives. This is because in the late 19 century, the U.S. government established the Dawes Commission to oversee land redistribution within the Five Civilized Tribes. To do this, the commission attempted to create an official list of members of each nation, and required families and individuals to fill out applications for acceptance, in essence making them prove that they belonged to that particular tribe.

The Dawes Commission ended up rejecting almost two-thirds of the applications for various reasons, but census cards and application jackets were created for each applicant and are available for research, whether they were accepted or rejected. Ancestry has most of these records, as well as applications made to the Dawes Commission during an earlier attempt to enroll the tribes in 1896. (Here's an insider's tip: when you check the Dawes Census Cards,be sure to look at the front and back of each card and read all the notes. This will often lead to other cards you should check.)

The best resource for information about Native Americans other than members of these five nations is the U.S., Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940, collection on Ancestry. These censuses include 565 federally-recognized tribes besides the Five Civilized Tribes. The early censuses usually list Indian andEnglish names, gender, age, and relationship. Some have additional birth, marriage, death and relationship notations. Not every group took a census each year. Keep in mind that blood quantum was usually not added until 1930s. Blood quantum is a measurement of tribal affiliation based on ancestry. For example, a child with one Native American parent and one non-Native American parent would be considered to have one-half Native American blood. If you have three non-Native American grandparents and one Native American grandparent, your blood quantum would be .25, or one-quarter. And so on.

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Location Is Key

Where your ancestors lived will help you determine with which particular nation they were affiliated. Tribes were made up of "bands" of families and often formed and reformed under new leadership over the years. It was often common for a Native American man to marry outside of his nation, and associate with his wife's people going forward. Maps showing where Native American groups lived in the U.S. at specific times can be a huge help to your search.



From The National Atlas of the United States of America (Arch C. Gerlach, editor). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Geological Survey, 1970

Once you complete your research you will need to purchase the birth, death and marriage certificates (certified copies) for each generation back to the oldest Native American ancestor you can locate, to prove your direct ancestral line to them.

Case Study: Becoming a Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma

For some peculiar reason, most Americans, white or black, who believe that they descend from a Native American ancestor believe that that ancestor was Cherokee, so let's use Cherokee records for a case study.

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Let's say you wanted to become a member of the Cherokee Nation. How would you go about it? Well, first, Cherokee Nation citizenship requires that you have at least one direct Cherokee ancestor listed on the Dawes Final Rolls. This roll (census, really) was taken between 1899 and 1914 and lists Indians, white citizens, and black Freedmen (former slaves) residing in what was known as "Indian Territory" (now northeastern Oklahoma). If your ancestor did not live in this area during that time period, they will not be listed on the Dawes Rolls. Certain requirements had to be met in order to be placed on the Dawes Roll, such as being listed on previous Cherokee rolls and a proven residency in the Cherokee Nation. Many modern-day applicants do not qualify for citizenship because their ancestors did not meet the enrollment requirements of the Dawes Commission and were not listed on the Dawes Rolls.

If you do find your ancestor listed on the Dawes Final Rolls, your next step is to obtain certified birth, marriage, and death certificates proving your lineage to that person. After you have obtained the necessary documents, contact the Cherokee Registration officer in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to obtain an application to become a member of the nation.
Since leaving Johannesburg in March 2015, we have travelled over 86 614km. We left our comfortable lives to chase foreign and exciting experiences, and get out of our comfort zones. One of the challenges we set ourselves early on in our trip, was to live within the Arctic circle during the summer months, and say "good night" to the night for 5 weeks.

We chose to stay in a town called Alta, right at the top of Norway, and work on a lodge that housed over 70 Huskies. After a two-hour flight from Oslo, we arrived in a rather cold Alta, on the 1st of May during the transition between Spring and Summer. The first thing we noticed was the spectacular scenery, and we were blown away to think that this was what we'd call home for the next 5 weeks.

Once we arrived at our host's house, about 10km from the main town, we were ushered into our small room in one of the wooden cabins, and soon found out that it wasn't quite a room until a few hours before we'd arrived. You see, it had been converted from a walk-in-closet the day before, and now we'd be sleeping here for the duration of our stay. We were happy to see that our cosy space had a window, but immediately noticed that it sadly had no curtains. Bright light fell into our room from the evening sun outside, and we realized that there would be no way that we could sleep, knowing that at this time of year the sun would be shining for almost 24-hours. We soon pegged some clothes up, to give us some rest-bite from the blinding light, and although only a temporary solution, it did the trick.

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That night, the sun did dip below the horizon, but only slightly, and the sky remained illuminated and very bright. By mid-May, we were very much used to having no darkness, and by May 17th, we said goodbye to the darkness all together. The midnight sun was upon us, and the next time Alta would see darkness, would be on July 27th.



Celebrating the Midnight Sun

The people who live in these parts of the world are tougher and more adaptable that we could've ever imagined. The summer months are a productive time for them, and they often work late into the night. The mornings would have a slow start; I remember we would wake up at around 10:00 a.m. and lunch would be taken shortly after 12:00 p.m. Afternoons had multiple "Fikas" (the Swedish term given to cake and coffee breaks) with our Swedish and Norwegian friends, and of course a late dinner was on the cards, sometimes as late as 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. We would sometimes get back to work after dinner, either working with the dogs, or chopping or stacking wood. If we had time off, we would go on long, late-night hikes along the river, and I remember taking an 11-hour road trip up to the North Cape, leaving at 9:00 p.m. and having the sun keep us company for the entire journey. Purely magical.

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Our body clocks were definitely in shock; it felt like a strange form of jet-lag, as our bodies and minds only really felt tired in the early mornings, and most nights we'd go to bed at around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.

The 9-to-5 "day shift" we had back home didn't exist here, and there was no urgency to get work done before the evening. When you're in a place such as this, there is no reason to fight the way of life -- you listen to your body, and go to bed when you're tired, and eat when you're hungry.

It's hard to imagine that at this time of year, the chilly months, Norway and the other areas within the Arctic Circle are experiencing the complete opposite way of life now, having absolutely no sunshine. A life with no light is something we'll have to experience one day too :)

A big thank you to our hosts, who became almost like family. We will see you again soon, but next time we'll bring a headlamp.



@howfarfromhome on Instagram



The moon illuminated by the Midnight Sun



Coco the Siberian Husky



Reindeer grazing at 3 am



The Alta river



Road-tripping to the North Cape

To follow our story, check out howfarfromhome.com or find us on Instagram, Facet or Twitter @HowFarFromHome.

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Also on HuffPost:
"It has felt like a never ending nightmare," said survivor Sydney Stanford. "I have been in survival mode for 5 years. It is finally over ... justice IS possible."
Even though Donald Trump wrote The Art of the Deal and frequently flaunts his entrepreneurial, branding and management skills as qualifications to run the country, very few people have caught on that he's using familiar negotiating techniques in his presidential campaign. Maybe the most obvious example is the magnate-cum-candidate's call to deport 11 million immigrants, the political equivalent of making an outlandish demand in a business proposal that one doesn't really expect to be met. Asking capitalists for way more than is needed might raise eyebrows, but it doesn't generally provoke the sort of outrage Trump's so-called immigration policy has evinced among Americans. A typical response to an aggressive opening volley in the world of commerce is to simply make a counteroffer. Which usually leads to more back-and-forth, and ultimately a deal that works for all parties.

Trump is making up his own rules if not his own game, and many Americans just aren't ready for a salesman's posturing to be applied so crassly to the political arena. But unless he's eliminated from the race sooner rather than later, look for Trump in the coming months to unveil a creative yet realistic immigration policy that everyone can live with. If he fails to transition from alarmism to pragmatism by Election Day, it will expose a profoundly flawed marketing strategy, and it will then be time to declare the emperor has no clothes. Not yet, though. It's fair to call Trump a carnival barker, but he's also an accomplished storyteller and master of mass communication. Stories have arcs, and they take a while to be told. Consider this possibility: Trump's timing is better than yours.

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Consider also, as if it were a negotiating position or film narrative, the Second Amendment argument made by Dorothy Samuels in the #4 most popular story on BillMoyers.com in 2015 (originally published by The Nation). Samuels was a member of The New York Times editorial board for 31 years, and is now a senior fellow at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice. She denies the right to bear arms applies to individuals, and insists the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller is the product of rightwing bias that came about as a result of the National Rifle Association (NRA) "winning over...the conservative justices." Samuels not-too-subtly characterizes the Court's opinion as "radical," "appalling," "judicial activism" (natch) and "an epic feat of jurisprudential magic." Her tall talk is as disconnected from reality as Trump's immigration rhetoric.

Actually, the Court was influenced by renowned liberal law professors - including Laurence Tribe, arguably the nation's preeminent constitutional scholar - and the Heller lawsuit was filed by then small-fry attorneys who regarded the NRA as interlopers more than allies. If Samuels were deploying conventional negotiating tactics, she would follow up the false premise she initially floated with a more reasonable position that at least concedes the meaning of the Second Amendment is debatable. After all, the ambiguity of "a well regulated militia" is the very reason its interpretation is so controversial. But according to Samuels, it's obvious the amendment's drafters didn't believe firearms should be used in defense of one's home, and the legal experts who concluded otherwise are outliers who lack credibility and deserve no mention.

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Just as Trump will have failed if he doesn't eventually espouse a truly viable immigration policy, people like Samuels must at some point stop pretending the majority opinion in Heller is judicial malpractice. How is it fair to impugn conservative justices whose reasoning is in alignment with well-respected liberal jurists? Moreover, millions of Americans believe they are constitutionally entitled to own guns, and that using deadly force in self-defense is sometimes necessary. Because they're up against so many people who already have what they want, gun control advocates have a greater need to engage their ideological opponents than vice versa. It's self-defeating to dismiss gun rights advocates as incorrigible nuts, because if they're perpetually brushed off, they will inevitably walk away from the "bargaining table" in disgust - and acquire more weapons.

Any good storyteller knows the audience won't be satisfied unless the protagonists' problems are resolved. It appears Samuels is bent on alienating gun owners by clinging to a trite myth that is more likely to prolong cultural stagnation than lead to a resolution. Trump seems to be fostering similar estrangement with other segments of the population, but his story is a much fresher work in progress, and his background suggests he has a more strategic game plan in mind. One needn't endorse his methodology to recognize its usefulness as a frame of reference that helps us understand how influence is brought to bear in America. Second Amendment discourse is only one such comparison. You could likewise consider almost any issue of the day.
Mukta Panda, MD, FACP, has been awarded the Outstanding Educator of Residents and Fellows Award from the American College of Physicians (ACP), the national organization of internists. The award will be presented at ACPs annual convocation ceremony on Thursday, May 5, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, in Washington D.C., where ACP is hosting its annual scientific conference, Internal Medicine 2016, through May 7.

The Outstanding Educator of Residents and Fellows Award recognizes an ACP member who is a distinguished faculty member who spends a significant amount of time teaching residents and fellows.

A resident of Chattanooga, Dr. Panda is assistant dean for Medical Education and professor of Medicine at the College of Medicine Chattanooga of The University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She is the program director of the transitional year residency program and was previously associate program director of the Internal Medicine Residency and Department of Internal Medicine chair.



In various roles, she has influenced the education of resident physicians locally, regionally and nationally. As co-chair of the Associates Committee for the Tennessee chapter of ACP, she has contributed to the Associates activities at the annual chapter scientific meeting for many years. She has served multiple terms as member of the Governors Council of the Tennessee chapter and has co- chaired the chapter Scientific Planning Committee. Dr. Panda was a member of the AAIM-ACP High Value Care Curriculum Development Committee.



The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education recognized her as a 2008 recipient of the Parker Palmer Courage to Teach Award. The Tennessee chapter recognized her with the Laureate Award in 2011. She has received multiple teaching awards from medical students and resident at her present institution. Dr. Panda has authored over 60 publications, many with her residents serving as co-authors.


The first time I met Carmine Pikero, the man who would become my father-in-law, he was standing in the parking lot at Stamford (now Trinity) Catholic High School in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut. It was 1971 and he was there with my future mother-in-law, Jo, and the girl who would become my wife, their older daughter, Sue, whom I always had a crush on.

Sue and I had just graduated (she honorably, me miraculously). I walked up to Sue, kissed her, wished her a nice summer and said I'd see her in the fall at Saint Michael's College in Vermont, where we both were going.

"Who the heck is that?!" her parents wanted to know.

"Oh, that's Jerry Zezima," Sue said casually. "He's going up to St. Mike's, too."

They must not have been too comfortable with that. Their trust was sorely tested shortly after we graduated from college. Sue and I, with our good friend Hank Richert, another Catholic High grad who also went to St. Mike's, met at the now-defunct Sittin' Room in Stamford for a Saturday night of conversation and conviviality. We all drove separate cars (I wasn't formally dating Sue at that point) and didn't overindulge, but we did stay until the place closed.

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"I got in my car and started to drive home," Sue recalled when I spoke with her on the phone the next day. "As I was going up Long Ridge Road, I saw the headlights of this car behind me. I drove some more, but the car was still following me. I was getting scared. I turned onto Cedar Heights Road. So did the car. Then I turned onto Clay Hill and the car was still behind me. It followed me all the way home and up the driveway."

"Who was it?" I asked anxiously.

"My father," Sue said. "He was livid. He was out looking for me. He wanted to know who I had been with. I told him I was out with you and Hank."

All was (eventually) forgiven and I started dating Sue. When we were married, her parents warmly welcomed me into their family, just as my parents warmly welcomed Sue.

These memories came flooding back over the holidays, the first without my father-in-law, who died in July at the age of 89.

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Dad loved the holidays, especially Christmas Eve, when he got to help my mother-in-law make the Feast of the Seven Fishes, the traditional Italian dinner. He wasn't a cook (boiling water was his limit), but he did help clean the shrimp and soak the baccala.

He especially liked angel-hair pasta with anchovies.

"The pasta is great," I used to say, "but I draw the line at fish with hair."

Dad, who I think would have eaten it for breakfast, would invariably reply, "You don't know what you're missing."

After all these years, I have finally relented. And now I think it's pretty good.

Dad also was handy. He had to be because he had approximately 17,000 tools in the basement. He must have had triplicates of every kind imaginable, including hammers, saws and screwdrivers, which he liked to drink in the summer, though his cocktail of choice was a vodka and tonic.

Once, when my daughters, Katie and Lauren, were small, I "helped" Dad put up a swing set for them in the backyard of his house in Stamford. My main job was handing him tools. Afterward, I got each of us a beer.

"Thanks for your help," Dad said.

I smiled and replied, "It was nothing."

Another thing about my father-in-law was that he was a handsome dude. And a cool guy. He loved to dance and travel the world with my mother-in-law. In fact, they took the family on a cruise to Bermuda for their 50th wedding anniversary in 2000. I got to drive the ship. My father-in-law, calm and collected as ever, ordered a drink at the bar. I didn't blame him.

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But mostly, he was a terrific husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather and, of course, father-in-law who set a good example for me. Now I am the father-in-law of Dave and Guillaume. I don't know if they think I'm cool, but they're great guys who have patiently and cheerfully put up with my stupid jokes.

So did my father-in-law, a good man who was much loved and has been much missed, especially during the holidays.

A toast, with a vodka and tonic: Cheers, Dad.



Stamford Advocate humor columnist Jerry Zezima's third book, "Grandfather Knows Best," will be published in January. Visit his blog at www.jerryzezima.blogspot.com. Email: JerryZ111@optonline.net.
Istanbul is a multi-faceted city with new and old culture stuffed into every pocket of every back alley. There seem to be just as many cafes packed with hipsters as there are mosques and tourist hawkers. It's worth mapping out a game plan. If you want to buy carpets, it's worth reading up about Soumak and Hereke. If you want to eat well, it's worth making reservations. It's worth reading Orhan Pamuk's novel, The Museum Of Innocence. If you have five-ish days in Istanbul, here's how to do it.

Stay at SOHO HOUSE ISTANBUL. Opened in the summer by combining the former US Consulate building, an antiquated palace, and a newly built modern structure, it's a microcosm of the city itself.

DAY ONE:

When you arrive in the afternoon on your first day, go straight to a hammam to refresh.

Go HERE: Kilic Ali Pasa Hamami

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It's a modern hammam and will be the cleanest and nicest one that you visit. The ritual should take about 90 minutes, including chill time. Women's hours end at 4p and men's hours start up then so depending on when you arrive, either send you or your spouse to the hammam at the hotel. You need a reservation for this place so ask the hotel to book for you before you arrive to the country.

For dinner that evening, go to MIKLA. It's a quick walk from Soho House. Enjoy the view, which is nearly 360. And enjoy the food, which is upscale nouveau by a Turkish celeb chef. If you thought this was only about kabobs, then you may as well overpay for a machine made carpet and stick to the Old City.

Make it an early night; take ambien and go to sleep. Force the adjustment - there's a lot to do tomorrow.

DAY TWO:

On your first full day, see all of the major sites in the Old City. Start early.

- Blue Mosque

- Hagia Sophia

- Basilica Cistern

- Topkapi

Read the wikipedia articles first and skip the guides.

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Then go to another hammam for a little breather around 4p. Go HERE: Cagaloglu Hamami

It's opened to men and women simultaneously though separately. It's the most impressive of the hammams, architecturally.

Walk across the bridge and pass through the streets to the east of the bridges and ferry landing.

Shop a bit at Bey, Mae Zae, and the other little shops. They all close around 8p.

Have a drink at Unter.

Go to Karakoy Lokantasi for dinner; it's a lot of excellent fish and Mediterranean style Turkish.

DAY THREE:

In the morning, walk to the Museum of Innocence in Cukucurma and check it out. It's the museum version of Orhan Pamuk's book by the same name.

Wander that neighborhood and down through Cihangir. Shop and plan to have tea/coffee in any one of the many hip cafes. Journey is cool; there are many more that are hidden and cool, too. Get clothes made at Civan (men only).

End up at the Istanbul Modern. Enjoy the amazing collection.

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Wash up at the hotel (use the hammam at the Cowshed) and head to dinner at Zubeyir Ocakbasi. It's down and dirty as far as ambiance goes but the food is top notch. Don't miss the lamb ribs and lamb steak. Don't miss the mountain salad.

DAY FOUR:

Head to Babek in the morning via taxi to walk on the promenade and have coffee.

Take a boat down the Bosphourous to Eminou; from there, take a ferry to Kadikoy which is the part of Istanbul on the Asian continent.

Do more wandering, having coffee, and shopping. It's the Bushwick of Istanbul.

Head back via ferry in the late afternoon.

Check out the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian market for spices and tchotchkes, and expensive antiques.

Eat dinner at Munferit back in Beyoglu. It's mellow/tapas nouveau Turkish but gets crowded as a bar scene as well.
Responding to criticism, or, rather, ignoring it, Donald Trump's latest defense for the unending stream of vile speech emanating from his mouth is that he is merely saying what everyone else is thinking. Sadly, for many people, but certainly not all, that is true. Trump has tapped into a vein of suspicion, Islamophobia, racism, heterosexism and hatred that boils just beneath the surface in the lives of many Americans. Poverty, marginalization, job loss and other disappointments have always caused people to look for scapegoats as a way to cope the very real pain and frustration that come with life changes. History is replete with examples of this phenomenon, the most extreme cases being the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in America.

What is especially troubling to this writer is the way that so many Evangelical Christians have lined up behind Trump and his frightening ideology. How can one claim to follow the teachings of Christ while embracing the politics of hatred and objectification exemplified by Trump? I have been thinking about how I would address this problem, when, like a beautiful bolt out of the blue, I came across a document which originated with concerned seminary professors and other leaders. It challenges Christians to speak out against the politics of hatred. The document, entitled, "An Appeal to Christians in the United States," takes on Mr. Trump and his claim that his politics are consistent with Christian faith. The document challenges Christian clergy and leaders to speak out, and can be found here.

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As has been noted everywhere, there are now more restaurants in New Orleans than before Hurricane Katrina hit the city a decade ago, although not all are of a stellar stripe. Two new ones that have distinguished themselves show not only the resilience of the restaurant sector but of a continual evolution within it.

SHAYA

4213 Magazine Street

504-891-4213

shayarestaurant.com



I think I'm on safe ground in asserting that New Orleans is not a hotbed of modern Israeli cuisine, so the opening of Shaya by Israeli Chef Alon Shaya (with partner John Besh) marks a singular moment in the city's post-Katrina history, showing the kind of fresh new thinking and flavors the city needs. Shaya describes his food as "a grand mosaic, drawing influence from North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Turkey and Greece," which is very true of contemporary cuisine in Israel, which bears no resemblance to the largely eastern European food of New York Jewish culture.

At the same time Shaya draws happily on the bounty of ingredients indigenous to Louisiana and the Gulf, working closely with the Crescent City Farmer's Market, as he had at Domenica and Pizza Domenica. So he knows his way around a pizza oven, put to good use at Shaya to make wonderful, smoky pita bread that comes to the table quickly, all the better to scoop up eggplant baba ganoush, a tabouleh of barley and parsley with red onion, toasted almond and preserved lemon. Lutenitsa is a Bulgarian puree of roasted peppers, eggplant, garlic and tomato, while roasted okra comes with red onions, very creamy tahini, and a sesame spice. Three of these items go for a modest $15, five for $23.



Among the small plates to be shared is halloumi with chanterelle mushrooms and blueberry vinaigrette ($20), as well as a juicy grilled lamb kebab with more tahini, more tomatoes and fragrant cilantro ($16).

And, if the soul ever actually needs warming in New Orleans, there is a golden matzoh ball soup with slowly cooked duck, greens and a variety of herbs ($11). There is also a section just for hummus, including an unusual one of lamb ragu with pinenuts and peas ($14). Also there is a section of sandwiches, and we really enjoyed the chicken schnitzel with sesame-enriched challah bread and harissa-spiked mayonnaise and shaved pickles ($16).



Most every item I tasted had an amazing depth of flavor, buoyed by various creamy and chewy textures in vibrant colors. This carried over into desserts ($9) like malabi, a vanilla custard with cherry, rose, and coconut macaroons. Milk and honey is a very creamy cheesecake with mixed nuts granola, burnt honey ice cream.

The long, very sunny room, well lighted in tones of beige, with white brick and bleached wood, is just made for guests to share everything, so fortunately the food comes out fairly quickly, because, I promise you, your appetite will only build as the plates hit the table.



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Compere Lapin

Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery

535 Tchoupitoulas Street

866-226-4727

www.old77hotel.com
The hardest part of planning a trip (other than finding the time) is deciding where in this wide, wonderful world to go. So I called on a few of my travel writer and photographer friends to inspire me for 2016. Herein, their personal destination picks for the new year.



Syl Tang, @hipguide

"I'd go to Yunnan, China and stay at the Banyan Tree Lijiang. China is one of those places that I never get sick of visiting because there are easily 200 dialects, and therefore more than 200 cultural identities, cuisines, and lifestyles. Personally, I am a bit of a noodle hound and Yunnan is known for their noodles. But that's not why it's the place to go. Yunnan is known for its breathtaking forests, mountains and waterfalls. I'd visit the Stone Forest, climb Jade Dragon Snow Mountain with its nearly 5,000 meter peak and glacier, and go to the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Yunnan is also the first place many Westerners heard of when they first heard of China, as it was famously described as Utopia is in James Hilton's 1933 book, Lost Horizon. If I stayed there long enough, I'd probably try to learn the local dialect and make it my third Chinese language."

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Amy Rosen, @amyrrosen

"I haven't really been to southeast Asia since I backpacked for a few months in Thailand with my buddy after university, and I'd love to get back. Now as a real grownup I can afford to stay in hotels instead of hostels and luxuriate in spas. I'll still concentrate on the street food to be sure, but supplementing it with some fine dining and a cooking classes would be a winning mix. Vietnam is top of my list, and I've always wanted to check out the buzzy life and architecture of Hanoi before heading out to other regions of the country. The Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi in the Old Quarter looks right up my alley because I like my luxury colonial (it was built in 1901) and my amenities modern."



Kat Tancock, @kattancock

"My first overseas jaunt of the year will be to Hong Kong in February (my first trip to Asia!) where I have some pretty major eating plans alongside more active to-dos like hiking, tai chi classes and, uh, shopping. We'll also be there for Chinese New Year, so I'm hoping for some awesome photo ops of the parade, fireworks, decorations and seasonal prep and to learn all about auspicious foods and other local traditions. On the top of my where-to-stay list? The Hong Kong Four Seasons, whose infinity pool offers harbor views and whose amenities include Lung King Heen, the first Chinese restaurant in the world to earn three Michelin stars. Executive chef Chan Yan Tak leads food tours of the city, another perk for guests."



Emma Yardley, @byemmayardley

"It's been more than 10 years since I've spent any time in London. My family is British and I used to go to university just north of the city, but with a Canada-based career and life commitments somehow a decade has gone by. In 2016, I want to get back to my Marmite-loving roots and explore London as adult rather than a starving student. Museums, theaters, cocktail bars, I want to do it all and since Belgraves -- a Thompson Hotel is around the corner from Sloane Square, it's the perfect place to call my luxurious home base while I'm there."



Jackie Kai Ellis, @jackiekaiellis

"If people have spirit animals, are we also allowed to have spirit hotels? Hidden inside a little canyon, sitting alongside one of the few rivers running through the desert town of Sedona, is L'Auberge de Sedona, which has made its way onto my travel totem for calling to my innate need for luxury spas. Surrounded by spectacular nature, Sedona also feeds my love of the outdoors. The sienna-colored hikes up to Devil's Bridge, Cathedral Rock or Bell Rock are a breathtaking venue for photography and jeep tours. And if you're in the mood to discover your own spirit animal or spirit jewelry, there are many energy vortexes to explore, followed by a trove of silver and turquoise-studded stores that also have a vortex-like effect."





Jeremy Koreski, @jeremykoreski

"Change. Variety. Diversity. These are the reasons we travel, to have a different experience from our daily lives. To be immersed in something that is foreign will inevitably have a lasting impression on your view of the planet. To think of the opposite to the temperate rainforest I live in leads me to think of very dry and very warm. Al Maha, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa would be the ultimate in opposition to Vancouver Island. The culture, the food and the landscape would be an awesome experience, not to mention arriving in the city of Dubai en route to Al Maha, this would be a marvel in itself."

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Social media and the Internet make the world feel smaller. You can connect with friends from all over the world through these mediums and feel like you are there in the place where they live. When you travel, you realize the world is BIG, and there is a lot to explore.

For 12 years, I was a bread delivery driver. I hated my job. In 2011, I said "enough" and self-published my first book. Since that day, I have three traditionally published books and my books have sold over 100,000 copies. When the books started selling, conferences started reaching out asking me to come and speak about what I was doing.

Last year, I had the chance to fly over 100,000 miles to some amazing countries. Companies from all over the world hired me to come and train their employees. They paid me a fee and covered my travel costs. It allowed me to travel to 16 countries and enjoy some cool experiences. Seeing the world taught me these invaluable life lessons.

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You Learn That Life Isn't Always Black or White

I just got back from a trip to France, Israel, Egypt, and Palestine (all on the same trip). The day I landed at the airport in Tel Aviv, we were held inside because they thought there was a bomb in a car outside of the airport. There were also repeated stabbings all over Israel. To say there was tension would be an understatement.

Crossing into Palestine, we had a Palestinian tour guide. He had a different perspective than what I heard in Israel. Without getting into the politics--and the drama that comes from those kinds of discussions--it was clear there are some deep and complicated issues happening in the Middle East. I learned that life isn't always simple or clear. Generalizations don't solve problems; they add to them. There are some complicated issues we face in the United States today, and we need to see behind sound bites and Facebook philosophers.

You Constantly Test Your Comfort Zone

It's fascinating and scary when you step off the plane into a country that doesn't primarily speak English. You have to figure out how to get around without getting ripped off, and there are several ways to lose money right in most airports.

You learn that if you don't step outside of your comfort zone, you will stay stuck. It works the same way in life. If you want to make big changes and chase big dreams, you will have to constantly test the limits of your comfort zone. I didn't touch computers before I self-published my first book. If I stayed in my comfort zone, I wouldn't be writing to you right now.

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You Develop a Desire to Explore

When you get a taste of travel, you want more. Last year, I had the experience of First Class seats on international flights, and it was incredible. I also got to tour in a lot of the countries I visited and learned a lot. It's led to a desire to see as much of the world as possible. Travel does that to you.

Traveling today doesn't have nearly the cost it used to. There is also a whole new wave of travel hackers that can teach you how to travel cost-effectively. You can see more of the world and soak in new experiences that you'll take with you for the rest of your life.

The world is big--there's a lot to do and see. It can give you some invaluable life lessons. If you have the opportunity to travel, pack your bag and get ready to explore. See the world through another perspective and use the experience to grow as a person.

Do you have any travel plans?

---


Poseidon at the Cusp, by Larry Garmezy

Although Finding Equilibrium began as an exploration of the patterns, textures and colors found in the pristine waters of natural springs, midway through this adventure my thoughts shifted to the demands placed on these waters as they meander downstream through the human world. This exhibition ends with a social commentary designed to challenge the viewer with the question, "When are WE too many?" Are we, in fact, losing equilibrium? This is not the usual commentary on the need to preserve the environment rather the images at the end of the show represent my first two "shots over the bow" on the issue of unconstrained population growth.



Losing Equilibrium: When Are We Too Many?, Houston

Finding Equilibrium was also the title of the last image of my previous exhibition at Archway Gallery, Orogenesis which focused on the "solid" forms of mountain landscapes, ephemeral on a time scale only a geologist can appreciate. This time I studied waterscapes in and around natural springs that change in the blink of an eye. This fluid environment is designed for the photographic art form. Whereas the human eye can see the motion created by the upwelling of water, it takes a mechanical shutter to "freeze" the scene, revealing the composition in all its glory and novelty.

Through digital deconstruction of details the fundamental form and texture, color and light emerge. Seeing rhythms in the natural world is an offshoot of my geologic background and much of his work captures the unusual and subtle patterns I find at every scale of observation from the microscopic to the grand panorama.

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This exploration began with the discovery of a spectacular natural spring along the eastern flank of the "Island Park Caldera" in eastern Idaho and continued through the Rockies, central Texas, New England and Southern France. The spectacular range and intensity of color and the patterns created by the interplay of the water, light, plant life and topography spring from these images as the body of water attempts to "find equilibrium."



From the Depths, Larry Garmezy

The show's title also suggests the role the natural world plays in my life and where I return to seek my own equilibrium. To this day, I can close my eyes and return to every mountain range, valley, stream or snowfield I have traversed over the past 50 years.
washington june 29 us...

We are honored that the White House has invited us to witness President Obama taking executive action on January 5 to address the epidemic of gun violence in our country.

While waiting at the airport to board our plane bound for DC, CNN broadcast responses from Republican presidential contenders, complete with all the typical NRA false rhetoric. This includes the canard that "criminals won't follow the law." This is akin to saying, "Take no preventive action to address the public health crisis caused by guns in the wrong hands."

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This battle is personal for us. Our precious, beautiful, 24-year-old daughter, Jessica Ghawi, was slaughtered in the Aurora, Colorado theater massacre along with 11 others on July 20, 2012. Seventy more people were wounded. Many of them will continue to suffer for the rest of their young lives with horrific pain -- both emotional and physical.

Yes, this is personal. So we refuse to sit by and do nothing. So we fight for common-sense measures so that others will not suffer the same anguish that we suffer each and every day.

Five months after the Aurora theater massacre, the massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, took center stage. And we have been working for years with other gun violence prevention activists who are beating back the NRA and passing laws at the state level because a do-nothing Congress refuses to act.

Even with 90 percent of Americans supporting expanded Brady background checks to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people -- like felons, fugitives, and domestic abusers -- our Congressional leaders still cower in the lap of the NRA. Congressional delays despite overwhelming public support for expanded background checks -- even amongst 85 percent of gun owners! -- represent a total failure to protect public health by keeping guns out of the wrong hands.

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Hearing the likes of presidential wannabes, such as Donald Trump, Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (who takes great pride in having a close relationship with Gun Owners of America, an extremist group that has called for armed revolt) rant about reversing President Obama's Executive Orders if elected should make everyone in America ask, "Faced with an epidemic of gun violence, why are some presidential contenders so dead-set against saving lives?"

The answer would be that they are craven lap dogs cowering before the NRA and caving in to donors such as the Koch Brothers whose agenda is to radicalize the middle and lower classes that feel disenfranchised.

Let's also look at the so-called "patriots" who have just taken over a federal building in Oregon. These are angry white men trespassing on public property, waving guns around at innocent people, claiming that their actions are righteous instead of domestic terrorism.

There they are, occupying a federal building fully loaded with their assault-style weapons, itching for a fight with our nation's government. That is not what real democracy in action looks like. No, instead democracy looks like President Obama listening to the will of 90 percent of Americans, including the 85 percent of gun owners who want to take common-sense actions like expanding Brady background checks to keep more guns out of dangerous hands.

Since Sandy Hook, six states -- most recently, Oregon, the center of today's militia confrontation -- have passed background checks on all gun sales, including guns sold online and at gun shows.

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President Obama's Executive Actions will address online sales. Most Americans assume background checks are done on all weapon sales, but that is not true. Many online sales and gun show sales -- as much as 40 percent of all guns sold -- do not require background checks. In fact, we sued the online sellers of the military grade ammunition that made it possible for the killer in Aurora to carry out his massacre. The ammunition is designed to penetrate walls and theater seats and was sold without even checking the buyer's driver's license or asking for a verifying ID.

Anyone, a domestic or international terrorist, a felon, a fugitive, or a domestic abuser can purchase this military grade ammunition as well as guns by walking into a gun show or going online, in many cases with no questions asked.

That is why the tide has turned. America is sick of the continued rhetoric of the gun lobby and the 33,000 American lives claimed yearly by guns. President Obama recognizes that THIS is the time. THIS is the moment. That is why the president is requiring more gun sellers -- especially those who do business online and at gun shows -- to be licensed and to conduct Brady background checks on potential buyers.

We believe that America should applaud the bravery of President Obama to do take Executive Actions to address the epidemic of gun violence when Congress would not.

The president, in reviewing his Executive Actions in the White House on January 4 with U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey, said Congressional inaction following an increasing number of mass shootings and other gun-related violence justified his decision.

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He has taken the moral high ground when they would not. He has listened to the American people who are crying out for the carnage to stop when Congress would not. He has decided to be on the right side of history when others would not. He has decided to save lives when other leaders would not. He understands that gun violence is a public health issue when others do not. He understands that these Executive Actions do not infringe on our Second Amendment rights.
What happens when a government "wins" an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) attack provides a cautionary tale for the threats posed by the Trans-Pacific Partnerships (TPP). If enacted, the TPP would double U.S. ISDS liability overnight.

Recently, Phillip Morris International's infamous ISDS attack on Australia was dismissed. An ISDS tribunal ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to order Australia to compensate Philip Morris after the firm attacked Australia's public health law requiring that tobacco product packages feature graphic warning labels with the brand and product names in a standardized color, size and font.

But just the same, Australians saw more than $50 million of their tax dollars go to legal costs to defend against the attack, according to World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan. This includes having to pay the three private lawyers who served as "judges" during the four-year ordeal. They bill at least $375 per hour and, in a manner that would be unethical for real judges, often rotate between suing governments for corporations and "judging" cases.

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And, just by launching the case, Phillip Morris chilled other nations from enacting similar legislation to avoid being the next target. One example: New Zealand held off on its own plain packaging proposal to see what happened with Australia. This after Canada's efforts to enact plain-packaging legislation died after R.J. Reynolds sent a memorandum to the House of Commons arguing the policy would constitute an illegal expropriation under the North American Free Trade Agreement's ISDS regime, exposing Canada to millions in liability.

Meanwhile, another ISDS tribunal already has ruled that Phillip Morris' attack on Uruguay for enacting similar plain packaging policies can go forward. So the tobacco giant still is in the ISDS game to raid a government's treasury and chill other nations' tobacco policies. The day of the Australia ruling, a senior Philip Morris official declared: "There is nothing in today's outcome that addresses, let alone validates, plain packaging in Australia or anywhere else."

Even when a government "wins" an ISDS case, the public interest is usually still the loser.

This is worth noting. When trying to distract from the fact that the TPP would double U.S. ISDS liability overnight if enacted, TPP boosters often note that the U.S. has not yet lost an ISDS case. The controversial ISDS regime allows foreign corporations to skirt domestic courts and laws and go to extra-judicial tribunals to demand compensation from governments over laws or actions that they claim violate special investor privileges granted in trade and investment agreements.

The U.S. has not lost a case because it has been rarely sued because the past ISDS-enforced pacts we have now are almost all with developing nations with few investors here - unlike the TPP, which includes Japan and Australia. If the TPP is enacted, we can expect a flood of new ISDS attacks against the U.S. government.

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Only foreign corporations like Philip Morris can bring cases - governments or citizens don't have a similar procedural right to hold corporations accountable under these agreements. And the OECD reports that governments spend an average of $8 million defending against these cases even if they "win." But the government of the Philippines - like Australia - has spent more than $50 million in legal fees in an ongoing case. (Phillip Morris has insisted the proceedings remain secret, so the ruling has not been made public so it is impossible to know for sure, but only in a small minority of cases have tribunals required the losing party to pay the legal fees and arbitration fees in such cases.)

Defenders of the ISDS regime declared that the Australia decision proved the controversial extrajudicial legal system does not pose threats to countries' public interest laws.

Huh? Everyone expected that the tribunal would throw this case, if only in the name of self-interest. Ruling for a company like Phillip Morris in a highly publicized case against a developing country's health policy could have done serious damage to the ISDS regime and the lucrative hourly fees paid to tribunalists.

How well known was this case? If you want a funnier version, check out the John Oliver piece. Seriously.

The not humorous version: in 2010, Australia passed a landmark anti-smoking law that included "plain packaging." The policy has been lauded by the World Health Organization, which urged other nations to adopt it.

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Philip Morris International was not happy and vowed to fight the law through all means at its disposal. It challenged the law in Australia's domestic courts. In 2012, Australia's High Court ruled that the plain packaging law did not result in an unconstitutional acquisition of property and was justified as a public health measure.

That should have been the end of the story.

But Philip Morris International's Hong Kong subsidiary had launched an investor-state case against Australia in November 2011 using an obscure Hong Kong-Australia Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). Philip Morris' Hong Kong subsidiary had acquired shares in an Australian holding company at the same time that the plain packaging policy was announced.

Odd coincidence, eh? The corporation did not specify the amount of compensation it was demanding, but claimed the public health law "expropriate[ed] its valuable intellectual property" (by prohibiting the display of its logo, brand colors and the like) and violated its right to "fair and equitable treatment" as guaranteed under the Australia-Hong Kong BIT. The tobacco giant said the policy could spell losses "potentially amounting to billions of dollars."

The Australian government argued that the corporation's "investment" was merely a tool for launching the BIT claim against Australia. In late December, the tribunal relied on this logic to dismiss the case at the jurisdictional stage.

Yet when Phillip Morris characterized itself as a Swiss company to take advantage of a Swiss-Uruguay BIT to attack the small South American country's efforts to make good on its commitments in the UN's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a different ISDS tribunal gave the green light.

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Among the fatal flaws baked into the very structure of the ISDS system is how capricious and subjective ISDS tribunals are. And there is no appeal on the merits.

When a particularly egregious case gets massive negative attention and becomes highly politicized, it is in the interest of the tribunal to "make it go away" in order to preserve the ISDS system as a whole.

When Canadian companies Methanex and Glamis Gold launched some of the few ISDS cases against the United States - against California regulations of toxic substances and mining respectively - the public outrage by Members of Congress and others likely affected the outcomes and the U.S. dodged the ISDS bullet. Other, less high-profile cases with very similar fact patterns and based on the same claims ended with the taxpayers of other countries having to pay multi-million dollar awards to corporations.

For now, we breathe a sigh of relief that the case was dismissed and congratulate all the public health advocates that helped to spotlight the travesty of Philip Morris' ISDS attack against Australia. But, at the same time, we must redouble our efforts to stop the TPP, which would dramatically expand this dangerous and capricious ISDS regime.

As Germany and Canada have learned after paying hundreds of millions to corporations in ISDS cases attacking toxics bans, coal-fired power plant rules, and water, timber and oil exploration policies, the rich country ISDS bullet-dodge only works so long.
By James and Nancy Chuda founders of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World

Journey left his heart in San Francisco and was thrilled to be invited back to the one and only Fairmont Hotel. This time our boy wonder got to stay in the Tower Suite named after the Spreckels family. What a treat!

5 Paws and Counting!

A double bow wow for the hospitality, treats, and magnificent views. And speaking of views the Fairmont happens to have the all time best views. It's the most fabulous location on Nob Hill and its history thrives throughout the magnificent architecture and interiors.

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Recently sold, the Fairmont San Francisco now joins the ranks of many other prestigious hotel properties that have been purchased by outsiders. Here's the news.

The owners of the Fairmont San Francisco have sold the landmark Nob Hill hotel, the latest in a series of high-priced hotel transactions in the city.

As rumored in October, a Seoul, South Korea-based financial services concern, Mirae Global Investments, has purchased the hotel for $450 million. The sellers are Woodridge Capital Partners LLC, and Oaktree Capital Management, which jointly purchased the hotel in 2012 for $200 million and put in $20 million worth of renovations.

Talk about super amenities the Fairmont has them all. Large walk in closets, showers with inlaid marble tiles and giant shower rain water shower heads. Fluffy white robes and room service within minutes.

A Footnote about Adolph Spreckels

Adolph Bernard Spreckels

(January 5, 1857 - June 28, 1924) was a

businessman who ran

and who donated the

art museum to the city of

in 1924. His wife

was called the "great grandmother of San Francisco"

Adolph Spreckels

If your looking for a great staycation with your furry friend. And you feel like hob nobbing around this great city... you don't want to miss a fabulous dining experience at one of the most famous Chinese restaurants... the Far Eastern just a few blocks down hill from the Fairmont. Be wise and wear comfortable walking shoes because the trek down and up most of the city streets surrounding the hotel offer the same magical views on trolley but its much more fun on foot.

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A couple of Journey's buddies were dying to go along for the ride. Sorry boys. Get your parents to book the Fairmont and YOU TAKE THEM FOR THE RIDE and stay in one of the best hotels in the world.

Editor's Notes:

There is no limit to the size of your dog. Ask for a room in the Tower Suite and tell them Travels with Journey sent you.

The Fairmont San Francisco is located at 950 Mason Street, San Francisco, 94108
What's the job market like for chemists? Dude -- it's always bad.*

How bad is it? How the heck should I know? Quantifying the chemistry job market is what this blog is about. That, and helping chemists find jobs.

E-mail chemjobber with helpful tips, career questions or angry comments at chemjobber -at- gmail dotcom. All correspondence is kept confidential. (Didn't get an e-mail back? It's okay to try again.)

Voicemail/SMS: (302) 313-6257

Twitter: @chemjobber

RSS feed here

(The Blogger spam filter gets hungry sometimes, and likes to eat comments. You can e-mail me, and sometimes I can get it to cough up your comment. I am always happy to try.)

(*For the literal-minded, this is a joke. Mostly.)
Too many coincidences: A new terror-filled thriller on Ireland's "troubles" with links to Libyan mischief, as the real detention in Lebanon of a Qaddafi son makes headlines, while a study reveals connections between then Neanderthal migration from today's Middle East to the Emerald Isle.

It's a mind-boggling equation but worth exploring given the web of deceit and intricate power plays in the book, and the reality on the ground.

Alexander McNabb's hot adventure "A Decent Bomber" for a change wasn't set in the Arab world, but managed, in its Irish venue, to tie back to the region he's used as a backdrop for earlier novels.

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"A Decent Bomber" (courtesy McNabb)

'This nation was founded on terrorism. If it wasn't for Michael Collins, Dan Breen and the likes of them there'd be no Ireland. We'd still be a British colony.'

'Ah, come on. That's ancient history.'

The spark at the end of the reefer stabbed at Orla, the features behind its glow knit in fury. 'The fuck it is. What's a freedom fighter? What's an insurgent? What's a terrorist? That's what I want to know. We let ourselves be governed by old men who tell us what's good for us and what we need and the second we question it we're hauled off to face their idea of justice. You know what democracy is? Say you what you like, do what you're told. And we slap the label of terrorist on anyone who happens not to agree with us and doesn't conform to the restrictions we impose on them.'

Seem familiar?

The conversation is between Orla O'Carolan and Roisin McManus at a student party and sets the scene for a roller coaster adventure involving ex- and current "terrorists" as well as idealists drawn into the fray.

Orla is studying animal husbandry but gets tangled in a terrorist plot thanks to her dairy farmer uncle Pat O'Carolan and his bomb-making Irish Republican Army (IRA) past, and Roisin is majoring in "Terror Studies" of all things.

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Somali "Al Shabab" terrorists drag Pat into his former profession by abducting Orla to pressure him into action by producing explosives for their nefarious purposes.

He manages to rescue her by committing a few crimes and both end up on the lam as several of his former colleagues come into the picture only to end up as collateral damage.

There are Libyan rogues who invariably pop out of the past.

'Pat, give yourself up. The police know you're behind the bombs. They're going to hunt you down. Times have changed. It's different being on the lam these days, there are cameras everywhere. They'll listen to you if you walk in of your own free will.'

'The hell they will. You're not thinking straight. There's a bunch of African fellows dancing around Belfast waving guns and bombs and PSNI is looking for me? They'll be as good at listening as they are at looking.'

'Pat, I have to go--''Hamid, the Libyan. Remember him?'

'Libyan? What Libyan?'

MacNamara stuttered.

'Oh, you mean the Gaddafi fellow?'

'That's him. Whatever happened to him?'

'What the hell's he to do with anything?'





Alexander McNabb (courtesy McNabb)

The tortuous ties between the Irish in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; the relationship with contacts and targets in England; the terror network extending across the seas; and the connection between former comrades at arms, make for a good read and a painful reminder of similar sectarian "troubles" or "incidents" that rocked Lebanon during its 1975-90 civil war.

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But this is no Middle East-focused intrigue-filled book like McNabb's gripping trilogy Olives, Beirut and Shemlan.

It's an extremely complicated tale, sometimes going off on tangents, that nonetheless brings home the heavy legacy of internecine wars, greed, vengeance, and their lasting consequences.

So what's the Qaddafi connection?

In real life, former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was said to have supported the IRA with arms and money in the old days, hence the link in the book.

Qaddafi was also accused of abducting revered Shiite cleric Moussa Al Sadr who headed the Amal Movement in Lebanon and two companions while on a visit to Libya, and killing them almost four decades ago.

One of Muammar's sons, Hanibal, who is married to a Lebanese woman and has been on the run since his father was deposed and murdered, was recently abducted in Syria and eventually handed over to Lebanese authorities where he's been under lock and key pending an investigation into his knowledge about the disappearance of the Shiite trio, although he was too young to be involved at the time of the kidnapping.

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Screen shot of Hanibal Qaddafi

And what of the genetic connection between the Middle East and Ireland?

According to reports in The Irish Times and the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, genetic researchers have traced Irish origins to the Middle East.

Experts from Trinity College, Dublin and Queen's University, Belfast studied Neolithic and Bronze Age migration patterns from the Near (Middle) East to the British Isles with genome data from prehistoric Irish individuals indicating substantial links between the two regions.
I cannot lie. I was eager to put 2015 behind me. The news threatened to overwhelm me to a point of paralysis. I was only able to break through once I made a decision to focus on the positive. In almost all cases, the positive was everywhere. The negative was just louder.

I hope in 2016 the positive voices will rise to drown out the noise from those who promote hate, violence, and discrimination in any forms. Here are my seven favorite news stories that help me remember the good in people outweighs the bad.

1.Syrian orphan meets his hero

Despite the negative rhetoric that overwhelmed the political debates towards refugees, there was a strong wave of support across the globe for Syrians. Including a special visit from Cristiano Ronaldo who made a special visit to meet with a young boy orphaned by a suicide bombing.

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2.Strong Advancements in Public Health

Top of my list is President Carter's speedy recovery. Not only for the great humanitarian that he is, but the indication of breakthroughs in the health sector. From taking on cancer to strong advancements in the fight on Alzheimer's to the world's response to the Ebola crisis, there is a lot to celebrate in the public health sector

3.Shifting an Instrument of Destruction to Nourishment

An environmental engineer who worked for NASA for two decades is proposing a start-up that will contribute to address the world's climate problems with drones. The plan is to use drone technology to plant up to one billion trees a year. Drones will fly two or three meters above the ground and fire out pods containing pre-germinated seeds that are covered in a nutritious hydrogel.

4.Nuclear Iran Deal Moving Forward

Not only was a deal struck, but progress has been made towards its implementation. There was a strong assumption that Iran would never give up its partially enriched uranium, yet this is exactly what they have begun to do. This opens the door to address the international sanctions which has crippled the country. This deal also opens for further cooperation between the US and Iraq on crucial issues like Iraq, Syria, and defeating Daesh.

5.Saudi Women Step Forward - this is not your Grandmothers Gulf

From the fight on breast cancer in Saudi Arabia to women's participation in the elections, women across Saudi Arabia are stepping forward for change. On December 12, 2015, 10 KSA will host an event that will bring together 10,000 women in Riyadh to form a human pink ribbon and thus raise funds for the Zahra Breast Cancer Awareness Association. In addition, Women showed up in overwhelming numbers (almost 81% of female registered voters cast ballots, by comparison of about 44% of registered Saudi male voters) turned out. Women not only voted, but 20 female representatives were elected for the first time as well.

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6. Making Progress on Global Poverty

The World Bank announced that this year, for the first time on record, the percentage of the earth's population that is living in extreme poverty is likely to fall below ten per cent. As recently as 1990, the proportion was more than a third. "This is the best story in the world today--these projections show us that we are the first generation in human history that can end extreme poverty,'' Jim Yong Kim, the head of the World Bank, said in a statement accompanying the release of the new figures.

7.Kenya Leads the World on mobile money market

Kenya is leading the way on mobile money. Kenya is being described as "the most exciting, innovative mobile money market on earth. Below is an overview of some of the major and upcoming players. I like that- making the integration of microfinance and mobile money as affordable as possible. This has been long overdue and will definitely change the mobile money landscape.

Good news is out there. It shouldn't be so hard to find! I regularly seek out the good news for my area of focus - Middle East and Africa. So whenever you are in need for good news from Africa - visit Good News About Africa and for the Middle East visit BarakaBits.
Especially if you've never hosted before, it's time to make this thing happen. Take it from several Airbnb Superhosts.

Who better else to ask? I interviewed several of these people to see what set these hosts apart and so other hosts can become the best hosts that they can possibly be. (Note: I am also a Superhost.) Everyone hailed from Boston to San Francisco and listings ranged from super budget to super fancy. The most common theme? It seems like the best hosts are professional, easygoing and attentive. And know where to draw the line with guests.

This post originally appeared on Map Happy.

Each Superhost asked for anonymity because the majority still rented from landlords. Please keep in mind legal issues should definitely factor into hosting.

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How do I become an Airbnb Superhost?

Airbnb Superhosts are Superman. Just kidding.

Superhosts have basically perfected the art of hosting (and make Airbnb a lot of money). There's a couple of requirements in order to qualify:

Host at least 10 trips throughout their listings in a year.

Have a 90% response rate or higher. (This is calculated how quickly you respond within a 24-hour period. Responsiveness is super, super important!)

Get 5-star reviews on at least 80% of reviews. (Half of guests must also actually review the host).

Never cancel. (Extenuating circumstances don't apply.)

For the most part, Superhosts don't really get anything besides higher search results, marginally better service, invitations to exclusive events and a $100 travel coupon if they can maintain it for a year. And bragging rights.

Set clear expectations

That means if your place is a sh*thole, tell guests it's a sh*thole.

Okay, I know you can't really expect to write that and still get guests but there are ways of managing expectations so no one is surprised. No one likes being hoodwinked. (There is no harm in writing, "The house is a basic, clean and functional place for guests to sleep at night. It is not fancy.")

The more detailed the description is, the better off everyone will be since each Airbnb host is so different. Even if it seems obvious, there is no harm in restating the obvious.

Hosts often neglect to include the small details. Here are some things hosts rarely cover in their Airbnb listing:

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Is the guest sharing the apartment with the host? Will they be sharing the apartment with any other guests? If they are, how many will there be? Does the host work at home?

Does the apartment require the guest to climb up a series of stairs? Is there elevator access? This is going to be an issue for people with physical handicaps.

Is the place service-animal friendly? (Occasionally, people travel with dogs.)

Is there construction going on around the apartment and/or area?

Is the area noisy or is the apartment located right next to a bar?

What type of furniture is in the room? Is there a desk? Is there a window/no window?

How flexible are you with outside and/or overnight guests that the Airbnb guest may bring over?

What is the parking situation like?

It's okay if there are lots of house rules. But just make sure guests are aware of the house rules beforehand.

Don't accept everyone off the bat

It's tempting. But here's the deal: Most Airbnb guests are notorious for

not

reading the listing. Even if it doesn't make the most financial sense, it's a good idea to screen potential guests to make sure they're a good fit. If your place isn't accessible for handicapped guests, you should not be accepting handicapped guests. Screening ensures everyone has a good experience. (This doesn't mean asking for non-Airbnb references and conducting behind-the-scenes phone interviews. Don't start off on the wrong foot.)

There are ways to be subtle about it:

Hey, thanks for reaching out! Did you have any questions about the listing or the house rules that I can help with? Just want to make sure everything's clear about what the property does and doesn't offer. :)

This response will usually prompt the guest to reread the listing to check/read more carefully if there is something they missed. Guests that ask a lot of questions beforehand tend to be the problematic, but keep their responses in context with regards how detailed the information on the listing is. (I'm definitely going to ask if there's not much information available.)

Give a proper tour around the area

Even if you aren't able to be around to greet them, make the effort to say hello as soon as you can. This is especially important if the guest is sharing the property with the host, even if it's in a separate unit. There's no worse feeling than like you can't relax somewhere or like you have to avoid your host.

I'd also often give them a full tour and explain the intricacies of the apartment, and take them on the roof to give them an overview of San Francisco if they weren't familiar with the city. From there, I'd go over city attractions and key neighborhood landmarks--like the grocery store--that they might be interested in and answer any questions. One Boston Superhost I knew often personally walked around the neighborhood with her guests to show them every place they needed to know.

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This brings up another point: It's a FANTASTIC idea to provide a small, local written guide for guests that may include airport transportation options, good nearby restaurants, grocery and laundry options, public transport (including how much it may cost) and a quick house manual that includes the Wi-Fi password in case they forget it.

(Most people pretty much just do this manually in Word and throw it up on the house manual but there are a bunch of new apps like Coral that try to make this process simpler.)

For full apartment rentals, I've noticed hosts tend to never come by. In those cases, personal interaction is often a lot less relevant to most reviews. In those cases, reviews tend to reflect the amenities and perceived value.

Treat it like a business

Because it is. It's not just "an easy way to make some money" or like having a friend crash. It's a financial transaction in which guests are able to rate and review their hosts (and therefore affect your future earnings). That means it's probably not a good idea to nag people to turn off the light or do the dishes, even if they are annoying habits.

There's always a cost of doing business.

If guests are ever inconvenienced because of me--like I need them to check out early--or because I personally made a booboo, I often offered a fairly reasonable refund proactively before the stay was over to make up for the trouble.

If the house is constantly in demand, it's also a good idea to be aware of your own personal tolerance for hospitality. Be sure to block off weeks to yourself; both you and your guests will be happier for it. It's also better than driving review ratings down because you're tired and can't get a break. Most Superhosts I know limit their listings to one or two solid weeks per month.

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On pricing: Guests pay the fees and its important to take that into account. Satisfaction is based on perceived value (not actual value). All the Superhosts I talked to ran different kind of properties, from budget listings to fancy digs. If many guests aren't leaving five-star reviews, that means guests don't think its a great deal. Consider lowering the price.

Going above and beyond

I've had both great and terrible hosts, in almost equal proportion. That means if a guest needs a towel (and it's not technically included in the listing) and there happens to be a clean one lying around, it's not going to kill you to provide a clean towel.

If the apartment is meant to be functional, breakfast may not be provided. But offering guests a few cups of coffee or tea every now and then definitely doesn't hurt.

One particular host I stayed with not too long ago offered guests access to his Monterey Bay Aquarium membership passes for a small fee. Because of his generosity, we saved a full $60 on the price of tickets.
We are in a critical time in society. It's not that we are having greater incidences of racial injustice. It's simply that we are having greater incidences of public recording of racial injustice. While this critical time is difficult, chaotic and can be painful to many, it is also an opportunity for us to change the ways we have been living unjustly and out of balance. Activists on college campuses are demanding racial equity in force. Will the leadership on every college campus rise to this challenge and provide clear policy and implementation plans to address racial injustice on campuses? As for the unfair use of police violence against black and brown males and females-children and adults alike- every officer suspected of violation must be offered a fair trial. For this to occur, racially unbiased juries and judges are required. Is this possible? The chronic unfair dis-investment in black and brown communities-in housing, education, health, recreation, employment, transportation, criminal justice- is being revealed in greater detail. These disinvested communities are the ones showing the highest rates of unemployment, poverty, poor health indicators, housing abandonment, mass incarceration, crime and so on. A systematic analysis and funded plan of how to re-invest and bring communities back to balance is necessary. This requires an overwhelming change in political will and action.

Frederick Douglass said:

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

This holds true more than 50 years later as we organize movements and demand changes. Addressing these structural processes that perpetuate racial injustice is one form of activism and healing. Another is the process of healing our personal and collective pain of racial injustice. This too must be systematic, consistent, patient and compassionate. Becoming aware of our feelings and where in our body we hold our pain when we are faced with these injustices is a good place to begin identifying how we personally have been traumatized by this history. To become aware, mindful of this, we can stop, become still and calm and look deeply. When there is stillness there is the opportunity to see what is happening in front of us more clearly, and what is inside of us as well. Once we recognize the painful feelings we have we can begin to heal their effects inside of us.

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The practice of mindfulness of feelings, a foundational Buddhist practice, suggests that there are either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings occurring in us in response to any stimulation. Some teachers, like Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, suggests that neutral feelings are the unawareness of a pleasant feeling-or perhaps an unpleasant feeling. For example, several weeks ago our social activists mindfulness group in Baltimore gathered for our Saturday afternoon practice. [We meet on the third floor of St. Wenceslaus Hall in East Baltimore.] That day there was a program for neighborhood kids in the hall downstairs. During our sitting meditation, the music was blasting and we could feel the base vibrate the floor beneath us. When the music stopped for several minutes, there was calm and peace. At that moment I realized how pleasant the other times of sitting were, when there was no music blaring, like this quiet moment I was experiencing between songs. Each previous gathering I would take for granted the quiet we usually experienced; neither a pleasant or unpleasant feeling, just neutral. One month later as we sat together again, there was no music blaring and I reflected on the pleasantness of the quiet and wondered how long before I would take the relative silence for granted again. How long before I forgot again? What would keep me from forgetting?

Stopping, being still, allows for this reflection of our feelings in daily life. Stopping allows us to begin to recognize the places in our body that hold tension when, as people of color, we hear a siren, or walk into a restaurant, a subway, a classroom, a workplace with all white people. The automatic triggering from a history of racially motivated bias -- both implicit and explicit -- is traumatic to the body and mind. This pain requires healing in both our body and mind-because the body and mind bear the burden of this history of racism. These everyday occurrences require everyday attention,healing, which is a form of activism. In fact, it may be a more radical activism, this stopping so as to recognize and transform neutral and painful feelings into pleasant feelings. This is activism that we can engage in as energetically as we engage in systematic reform through protests in sit-ins, lobbying, writing and speaking. It is this personal act of self love that will help us to manifest peace and clarity in our social spaces of activism.

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Healing racism in the body and mind is also critical for our brothers and sisters with the socially constructed privilege of being white-skinned. Perpetuating racial discrimination requires one to separate and create a hierarchy based on skin color. This separation of "us" and "them" - enacted through thinking, speaking, acting - does not only diminish our shared humanity. Such implicit and explicit racial bias comes from a mind and heart which consciously or unconsciously accepts racial superiority. Whether conscious or not, the heart must harden itself to justify this socially constructed norm of discrimination and hatred, against its sister or brother. Such a body lives in antithesis, out of balance, with nature. Stopping, becoming aware, allows one to feel the unpleasantness of this hardened heart and separated body. Breathing mindfully we can recognize this feeling that may have previously been accepted as neutral. Removing this shell of indifference and separation- so the body and mind can find its way back to balance- is radical activism. This radical act of self love is a radical act of justice inside. A body filled with love, embodied justice, can only offer out what is inside: love, connection, brotherhood, sisterhood. This is a path toward ending racial injustice.

Healing racism and its divisive and traumatic imprints in our bodies is an opportunity to build trust in our bodies and mind, for all of us. The healed body and mind can begin to re-connect the tendrils of separation between "us" and "them."

How do we begin to notice the way we hold this trauma, racism and racial separation inside? How do we become aware of the way we may distract ourselves from this pain when we notice it? And how do we begin to notice when this pain and traumatic injury may spill over onto those near us because we are so full of pain; full of pain we have not taken the time to heal? Standing up for justice, to bring balance to unjust systems and structures, organizing and protesting in the streets requires courage and strength. Courage and strength is also required to stop long enough to bring balance to the injustice in our bodies and mind, to heal and to become whole. In his book Strength to Love Dr. King spoke about the strength to love not only our enemies, but also ourselves. Slowing down, becoming aware of our breath coming in and out, or our steps as we place one foot on the ground, then the other, are practices that allow us to come back to the present moment to identify what is happening inside of us, and to transform unpleasant and neutral feelings into pleasant ones. Racial justice is healing our bodies and minds and is part of our sacred activism, our journey to wholeness and balance individually and collectively.

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I was nearly incapacitated the first time I brought my boyfriend to a work event. It was the fall of 2009, and it had only been a few months since I came out as a gay man. With every handshake, every subtle glance, I wondered: Am I being judged? What do they really think? How will this introduction impact my business with them?



For some it was difficult to understand, but over time those close to me accepted and have come to celebrate my identity. Although I was nervous at those initial work events, many people in my business world learned of this life decision, allowing me to be comfortable having my partner as a traveling companion and familiar addition to work dinners and social events.



As the CEO, I knew my business could handle my coming out, simply because I set the tone for acceptance. As the Chief Executive, I am charged with determining the direction of my company, our identity, culture, and values. I work hard to create a corporate culture that embraces differences and promotes everyone's uniqueness.



As I examined my personal coming out situation, this responsibility led me to ask some difficult questions: If I wasn't the CEO of my own company, would I have felt comfortable coming out at work as a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered person? Would an employee at my company be comfortable coming out as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender? Most importantly, what can LGBT executives do better to welcome young LGBT business executives to our ranks, and how can we better create an environment of respect for our LGBT employees in the workforce?



Unfortunately and despite being out in their personal lives, many LGBT professionals are not out at work. They live with the fear that their careers may be compromised, or they might be exposed to discrimination, simply for being true to themselves.



This fear is justified. Over 40 percent of LGBT employees say they have been harassed, passed over for a promotion, or pressured to quit as a result of their sexual identity. And according to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, transgender people are four times as likely to earn under $10,000 per year and twice as likely to be unemployed as a typical American.



It is imperative that executives and business owners, particularly those who are part of the LGBT community, conscientiously create an LBGT-friendly environment in corporate America. For that to happen, it is incumbent upon all executives, but especially LGBT executives to lead with these three key actions:



Respect your employees, even if your beliefs differ. The decision to come out at work is a very important and personal one. Ensure you respect your employees' privacy and allow them to share their identity on their terms. Most importantly, respect their views even if you do not personally agree with them.



Educate your employees. Unknowns create an environment of insecurity. Inform your team on the importance of treating one another with respect using both your words and your actions. Be accessible to your employees if they have questions. Adopt a zero tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind including hateful speech, bullying or any other disrespectful behavior. Naturally, this applies equally to a person's sexual orientation and religious beliefs.



Mentor your employees. Create a culture of growth and advancement by pairing young employees with those who are more experienced to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, share new ideas, and build connections between all levels of your organization. Unify your employees in the shared vision for the success of your business.



Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple and an out gay man, said, "I don't consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I've benefited from the sacrifices of others." It's time that every executive, regardless of sexual orientation, becomes a champion for workplace equality. The future of our companies and the evolving identity of corporate America depend upon it.
I am a proud Christian. I grew up in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and as an adult worshipped at AME Zion and Baptist churches where the congregations were 100% black.

For the past decade I have worshipped at a Unity Church outside of Washington, DC where the congregation is multi-cultural and the doctrine is more spiritual than religious. The Unity Worldwide Ministries website says: We honor all paths to God as we provide a philosophy that is spiritual, not religious; and love-based, not fear-based.

We strive to help individuals have a stronger connection to God every day by helping them feel empowered, accepted, loved, inspired and connected. This openness drew me to Unity as the message was one of acceptance of all religions and the belief that there is a universal God that may be expressed in different ways, may be called by different names but with the same message, that of love, to peace, abundance and infinite potential for the possibility of realizing everything that we want. Unity teaches that there is something more powerful within us than that which we can see, feel or touch in the three-dimensional world. As I have evolved in my understanding of what religion means to me, Unity principles seem to support my worldview that the foundation of all the major religions of the world is the belief in a higher, invisible power that is in control and can lead us to a world where love not fear and joy not pain persist.

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I continue to evolve in my understanding. It is a journey. As a child I thought that my religion was the only religion and as I became a young adult I believed that my religion was the only "right" religion. I was fearful of other faith expressions. For example, during my childhood I accompanied my mother several times to Catholic funeral services. The rituals were so different from what I was used to. I did not understand the language, the dress of the priest and nuns and even the parishioners. These early experiences left me afraid of Catholics. It was that "scary" religion and then my first day freshman year in college I met the man who I would eventually marry and he told me that he was Catholic. I had never met a black Catholic before and all I could think of was my early experiences with Catholicism that frightened me.

When I went home with my future husband for the first time to meet his family (this was early 70's) I learned that his sister was converting from Catholicism to Islam. I certainly knew nothing about this religion and my early learnings were just that they did not eat pork, the men always wore bow ties, the women always covered their head and they prayed several times throughout the day. If I thought Catholicism was scary, Islam was really out of my comfort zone.

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Over the years I avoided conversation about Islam with my Muslim sister-in-law and her children who were being raised Muslim. I did not want to offend them and I believed that our ideologies were just so different that we had nothing in common. However, I did realize that they were different in the most amazing and beautiful ways. My sister-in law was and is the kindest person I know. I have never heard her speak an unkind word about anybody. She is modest, humble and dedicated to her family and her religion in disciplined yet loving ways. Her children embody their mother's spirit. One niece, Jamillah Karim, after graduating with honors from Duke with a degree in engineering, decided to pursue a PhD in Islamic Studies and is now one of the foremost authorities on Islam in the country. Jamillah always exudes love, patience and compassion and when I am in her presence I always feel an aura of peace. I have really envied my Muslim family because they made the Christian principles that I tried to abide by come alive in ways that I did not and could not.

I also learned from my Muslim family that there are a number of commonalities with Christianity. My epiphany happened one day in the mid-eighties. My sister-in-law and I were talking and she mentioned something about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I was shocked as I thought that these were strictly biblical figures. How could it be that they were also a part of the Muslim religion? This commonality was the ice breaker, the door opener if you will, for us to begin to have meaningful dialogue across religious differences. I am certainly not an expert on Islam but I am not afraid now to ask questions to better understand the tenets of this religion.

The main point here is that our lack of understanding of each other's religions keeps us polarized and fearful. Once I met someone who was Catholic (and actually married him!) and learned more about the commonalities with Protestants, I was no longer fearful of that religion. Learning more about Muslims through the interactions with my family, eliminated the fear that I initially had about Islam. I believe that in order to have meaningful dialogue across religions, we must first find that which we have in common. We cannot effectively explore those similarities from a place of fear and ignorance. This does not mean that we have to agree with every practice of other religions but that we can accept that there are a number of ways to express our faith. Without understanding, there can be no acceptance. The only way we can understand is to be curious without judgment and learn more.

Islam is not the enemy. Ignorance is!
The United States currently functions without a debt ceiling. Legislation in November suspended it through March of 2017, and it should stay gone.

Others have agreed--most notably James Surowiecki in "Smash the Ceiling" in The New Yorker (August 1, 2011). The debt ceiling, like the old saying, is "like a monkey in a China shop; it cannot do any good, but could do a great deal of harm."

Superficially, it would seem to be a mechanism to control federal spending, and many people think of it in that way. They are wrong. It does not control spending. Congress already controls federal spending through its budgeting processes.

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Since 1974, budget resolutions have determined specifically how the government may tax and spend. There is no need for an additional ceiling.

What the debt ceiling does do is pernicious. It lets Congress approve any amount of spending it pleases--amounts to be spent by the executive branch--but then places a limit on the amount that the Treasury can borrow to pay the bills that result from the spending that Congress has already approved.

People who find out about the system's true nature often are puzzled. "Isn't it irrational," they ask, "for Congress to approve spending, and then to create the possibility of refusing to agree to the borrowing required to pay for that spending"?

The reason it seems irrational is that it is. The United States is the only large, advanced, country that imposes such a restriction. The others have no difficulty functioning without one.

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The debt ceiling does not hold down federal spending at all. The only effect it could have is to prevent the government from paying the bills already owed for expenditures that Congress already has authorized. If Congress were not to raise the ceiling when necessary, the government could not pay its bills, it would go into default, and at the extreme would shut down.

That is why the debt ceiling has routinely been raised to cover borrowing whenever necessary to pay the bills--this has happened some 78 times since 1960, in fact; 49 times under Republican presidents, and 29 under Democratic ones. Ronald Reagan was among the Republicans raising the limit. He did so many times, arguing, correctly, that it was vital to raise the ceiling. Failure to pay the country's debts, he said, would lead to default, which would be disastrous in ways impossible to predict. "The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result," President Reagan said.

Occasionally a member of Congress will vote against raising the debt ceiling as a protest of a policy. Senator Obama did just that. Whether wise or not, such a vote now and then causes no trouble. It is completely irresponsible, though, for a substantial number of members--especially for a political party itself--to threaten an actual rejection of a needed increase. If successful, such a vote would be catastrophic. Unfortunately, it has become commonplace for large numbers of Republicans to threaten to vote against needed debt ceiling increases.

The danger here is that some extremist members of Congress simply do not believe in government. They do not believe a shutdown would be serious. In some cases--if they actually mean what they say--they even think that bringing the government they hate to a halt would be a good thing.

It is only recently that the debt ceiling became a potential threat to the country. However non-functional it may have been, as long as Congress recognized that its duty was to protect the country and make America's programs work as well as possible, the debt ceiling presented no danger.

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Recently, though, many congressional Republicans have come to believe that their foremost duty is to oppose the president, regardless. Such an attitude, combined with the existence of a debt ceiling, gives a lethal weapon to any faction willing (or eager) to cause a government shutdown.

Consider, for example, the opposition's reaction to the Affordable Care Act, "Obamacare." Previously, if one party opposed another party's enacted program strongly enough, the opposing party might try repeal. That is appropriate, but for the good of the country, the opposing party would cooperate to make that program work as well as possible so long as it existed. If repeal failed, they would accept the inevitable, and put the issue behind them.

With healthcare, however, failures of constant votes to repeal do not convince Republicans that they have lost. They continue attempts to undercut "Obamacare," misrepresenting it as a "job-killing failure" despite its obvious success; they literally try to make it fail. This reflects the extremism that makes the existence of a debt ceiling so dangerous.

How did such an irrational system come to be? At one time, a ceiling performed a useful function. Congress adopted one for the first time to deal with financing in World War One. Before then, as described by the Bureau of Public Debt, whenever the government needed to borrow, it had to seek congressional approval "for every debt issuance." In 1917, however, that became too cumbersome. Financial pressures from the war were so great that Congress approved a measure granting borrowing authority--the issuance of Liberty Bonds--to the Department of the Treasury so long as the amounts borrowed remained below a certain figure, a "debt ceiling."

In 1974 Congress adopted the Budget and Impoundment Control Act providing a budget procedure that permits the Treasury to borrow only what the budget specifies, and controls taxing and spending. Thus, Congress controls the budget without the necessity of a debt ceiling, yet the ceiling remains (although suspended for the time being).

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Conservatives and some economists argue that it continues to provide some sort of fiscal restraint. This is fanciful, but even if correct any potential benefit is tiny, while the possibility of harm is huge and very real.
2016 new year concept

From the rise of evangelical hipsters to the rise of religious "nones," religion is in a period of flux as we end one year and look forward to the next. Here at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, my colleagues and I study how religions change and make change in the world. Below are five trends that we are watching, paired with headlines you might see in The Onion in 2016. In other words, don't take our "predictions" too seriously. But there's often great truth in satire.

Trump Alienates "Papists" During Pope's Trip to Mexico



Donald Trump has already maligned Latinos and Muslims in his presidential campaign, so it only seems natural that Catholics will his next target. As Pope Francis follows the migrant route to the U.S.-Mexico border in February, an attack on Catholics will keep Trump in the headlines just as the first few primary results role in.

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Seriously, though, Pope Francis' message of hope and mercy may pose problems for certain U.S. politicians in 2016. The New York Times recently analyzed 95,000 of Trump's words and found his rhetoric to be overwhelmingly fearful and violent. Pope Francis' words from his U.S. trip stand in sharp contrast to Trump's. Indeed, check out the "who said it" quiz that Crux put together when Francis and Trump tied for second place as the most admired men in America.

Even as many are turning away from religious institutions, the leader of the world's largest religious institution is articulating a message that resonates broadly. On his trip to Mexico, Francis will capture many hearts north of the border, too, possibly igniting a new push for compassionate immigration reform.

Nothing is too outrageous for Trump, but alienating the Catholic swing vote wouldn't serve him well if he makes it past the primaries. By the time we reach the general election, we predict that Americans will want a more hopeful leader. We'll be betting on whatever candidate best taps into Francis' spirit of hope -- the word, not coincidentally, that took Barack Obama to the White House eight years ago.



New Hashtag Goes Viral: #SpiritualLivesMatter

From university campuses and town hall forums, to churches, synagogues and mosques, to our political arenas and talk shows, people are talking about race, thanks in a major part to Black Lives Matter, the hashtag turned social movement.

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No, we don't actually think #SpiritualLivesMatter will or even should go viral, but activists have found that they have to care for their spiritual lives to sustain themselves. Yes, many of these socialist-leaning, Marxist-studying social justice activists believe profoundly in the spirit and practice it, not only in their homes, but in their protests.

BLM chapters and affiliates have become a spiritual home to a new generation of activists. They use altars at their protests and burn sage when standing before police lines. They practice traditional African faith rituals, such as Ifa and Santeria, and turn to healing techniques such reiki and somatics as a form of self-care.

BLM also embraces all parts of the black community, including the Queer and Transgender communities. This radical inclusion and the promotion of acceptance have led to tensions between BLM activists and traditional religious leaders.

In 2016, the BLM movement may have an impact well beyond our police departments. BLM may push churches to grapple with their acceptance of LGBTQ people. Look for BLM to also influence and create new communities of spiritual practice within social justice circles and beyond.

While BLM is definitely not church, it is spirit infused, and that spirit has given it power.



32 Percent of Evangelical Pastors Have At Least One Tattoo Visible While Preaching



Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz shows off his tattoos on Facebook.

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Well, maybe not exactly 32 percent, but an unmistakable hipster aesthetic will become more prominent behind the pulpit of many evangelical churches. Though Millennials are less likely than any generation of Americans before them to maintain a religious affiliation, evangelical churches are thriving among the waves of Millennials who have poured into cities like Los Angeles over the last decade.

Currently, three of the largest churches in the city of Los Angeles, Hillsong, Oasis and RealityLA, are comprised almost exclusively of 20-somethings. Megachurches are no a longer suburban phenomenon; they now rent out central city theaters and school auditoriums. Justin Bieber even made the Staples Center into a megachurch this fall, according to the LA Times' review of his concert.

As cities continue to transform and attract recent college graduates, singles and young families--the type of people who would have never considered city-life twenty years ago--evangelical churches will continue to appear in unlikely urban spaces. As they continue to grow, they also will draw more people into cities' core spaces and speed up gentrification processes that are already running hot.

We'll be watching how these dynamics unfold--including both the role urban churches play in their communities and how a hip, urban environment affects evangelical churches. The pros and cons to this sort of urban development depend on a person's perspective, but one thing is for sure: The tattoo parlors will be happy.

Evangelical Pastor Declares, "We're all Queer!"

LGBT issues have long been a part of mainline Protestant denominations; by now, LGBT people are largely accepted as just other members of the church. Evangelicals have taken a much more oppositional stance to LBGT acceptance. The Supreme Court decision declaring same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional has presented a problem for many evangelical groups, but for others, it just underscores how they were already thinking about their role in the larger culture.

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In 2016, we'll be watching how evangelical churches and other organizations, such as colleges, universities and seminaries, adjust. We predict that an increasing number will show greater acceptance of LGBT individuals, in essence "de-queering" their identities just as mainline Christians have done. And not all of the LGBT-accepting evangelicals will be the ones with tattoos (see above). In turn, this will produce a non-negotiable line for other evangelical organizations, where we will see a hardening of their position on LGBT issues, creating a rift within the evangelical world over LGBT issues.

Also watch for pushback from parts of the young LGBT community that do not want acceptance from any church organizations. These groups are already partnering with broader justice movements, including Black Lives Matter (see above), to find healing through alternative spiritual practices.



Silicon Beach Venture Capitalists Venture into Religion

The tech industry isn't the only one innovating these days. Several groups essentially serve as the R&D divisions for long-standing religious institutions in Southern California. Holy Ground in Long Beach and Thad's in Santa Monica are "off-the-books" laboratories of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles where the beliefs and rituals that have traditionally defined mainline Protestantism are pulled apart and reassembled in remarkable ways. Similar experimental enclaves exist within Jewish and Muslim communities.



Maybe the most innovative groups in the Los Angeles area are informal, service-oriented gatherings like Laundry Love, Share-A-Meal and Monday Night Mission. These initiatives attract young participants from an array of religious traditions, as well as large contingents of religious "nones," to provide meals or free laundry to the homeless and working poor.

These loosely organized groups aren't likely to coalesce into new religious institutions on their own--that's definitely not the intention motivating the people who started them. But by creating religiously diverse networks of volunteers around the common impulse to help those in need, they could provide the DNA for new communities that will be unlike the churches, mosques and temples we currently know.

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Whether or not they attract the attention of venture capitalists--Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg did launch his own version of innovative philanthropy this year--we'll be watching Southern California's spiritual R&D laboratories closely to see which ones succeed or fail. The religious equivalent of Facebook or the iPhone could emerge from the one of them at any moment.
Several weeks ago, amid little fanfare, India and Afghanistan concluded an arms deal. This was no run-of-the-mill transaction: It was a significant weapons transfer -- perhaps one of the most consequential in the South Asia region in several years, thanks to the precedent it sets and the considerable implications it may have for regional stability.

Breaking New Ground

In early November, India agreed to send four Mi-25 attack helicopters to Afghanistan. They will be equipped with machine guns, rockets, and grenade launchers, and transferred from Russia -- the country where the aircraft were manufactured (Russia's deputy prime minister was said to have given Moscow's formal approval of the transfer during a visit to New Delhi on December 8). According to Indian media reports, the helicopters should be delivered to Afghanistan within the next few weeks.

The accord marks the first time that India has transferred offensive weaponry to Afghanistan. Previously, New Delhi's military assistance to Kabul had been restricted to training and advising, and to the provision of military transport vehicles and other non-lethal hardware. Notably, the security cooperation section of a strategic partnership agreement concluded in 2011, which speaks of assistance with "training, equipping and capacity building," was generally interpreted to mean that Afghan security forces should not be expecting any lethal kit. It also bears noting that there was a period of time in recent years when New Delhi went out of its way to explain that it was not in a position to provide helicopters to Afghanistan.

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Possible Motivations

Several factors could explain why New Delhi decided to change its policy and allow for the transfer of offensive weaponry to Afghanistan. One is the Indian government itself.

In previous years, India has held off on such moves in great part to avoid provoking Pakistan's army, which does not want an Indian military footprint in Afghanistan. However, since coming to power last year, the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has suggested that it won't let Pakistan's concerns affect its policy decisions. The helicopter deal telegraphs a dramatic message: The Modi government will pursue its interests in Afghanistan regardless of how many feathers it may ruffle in Rawalpindi.

A second possible reason why India agreed to the helicopter deal is the alarming situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Since the departure of international combat troops, the government's ability to exert its influence outside Kabul has become increasingly tenuous. The Taliban insurgency is expanding its territorial gains nationally, not just in its southern stronghold. Meanwhile, several hundred disgruntled Taliban militants have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Afghan security forces, despite demonstrating stronger capacities in kinetic operations, remain a work in progress. These forces are far less effective when forced to operate without U.S. enablers. One can't expect Afghanistan's dysfunctional National Unity Government, which cannot even fill its cabinet after 15 months in power, to address a policy challenge as major as capacity shortages within the military.

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New Delhi may well have calculated that the implications of the rapidly deteriorating security environment in Afghanistan justify more drastic moves to assist beleaguered Afghan forces. In this regard, for India, memories of pre-9/11 days, when the Taliban allowed Pakistan-sponsored militants to use Afghanistan as a training ground for their jihad against India, remain strong.

To be sure, four attack helicopters won't magically bring stability to Afghanistan. However, they will help ease one of the Afghan military's top operational deficiencies -- air support. This deficiency has been costly for the United States as well. Even after the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, Afghan forces have frequently called in U.S. air support, and sometimes with tragic results -- such as the U.S. strike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz.

A third likely reason India pulled off the helicopter transfer is Russia's evolving policy in Afghanistan. Russia is not merely the source country for the helicopters; it is a nation that has enjoyed a long and relatively warm friendship with India that harkens back to the Cold War era.

In recent weeks, Moscow has signaled a desire to step up its role in Afghanistan (however, as far back as April 2014, it inked a deal with New Delhi to provide Indian-funded small arms to Afghanistan). Several Afghan leaders have actively sought Russian military assistance. In October, a top parliamentarian, Mohammad Nazair Ahmadzai, went to Moscow to press lawmakers there for aid. One week earlier, Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum made his own visit and directly appealed to Russia for helicopter gunships and heavy weaponry. Kabul clearly realizes that Moscow has grown increasingly worried about the ISIL threat in Afghanistan, as well as about the potential impacts on Russia of Afghan refugee flows and drug trafficking -- both of which are heightened by Afghanistan's destabilization. Analysts in Afghanistan report that Moscow is already increasing its supplies of military hardware to Afghanistan.

This all gives India ample incentive to draw on Russian-manufactured products, such as attack helicopters, that can be conveyed to Afghanistan.Major Implications

Pakistan will not be pleased about this deal. It will provide ammunition for the destabilization-through-encirclement narrative frequently peddled by Pakistan. This narrative holds that India wishes to use Afghanistan as a base for supporting anti-Pakistan factions, whether they be Baluch separatists, the MQM political party in Karachi, or the Pakistani Taliban. For years now, Pakistan has claimed to have compiled "dossiers" chronicling evidence attesting to India's furtive footprint in Pakistan, including evidence of money and arms transfers to anti-state militants.

The possibility exists that Pakistan could retaliate by stepping up support for the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network in an effort to undercut an Afghan military that India wishes to strengthen, or by initiating new provocations along the Line of Control, the disputed India-Pakistan border.

That said, such Pakistani responses are unlikely, assuming the arms transfer is a one-off deal. Indian officials have claimed that no future deals are planned.

At the same time, a fresh and new variable has been injected into the calculus: the prospect, at least for now, of warmer relations. At a December 9 joint press conference in Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj pledged to resume a formal comprehensive dialogue that had been suspended after the Mumbai terror attacks seven years ago.

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India may decide that to ensure a continuation of this goodwill, it should refrain from provocative acts such as transferring weaponry to Afghanistan. This means that New Delhi may choose not to consider any other lethal arms transfers to Kabul other than the new attack helicopter one (given that this new deal has essentially been finalized, there is little reason to believe it will be canceled). On the other hand, India may seek to capitalize on this goodwill, calculating that it gives New Delhi the diplomatic space to initiate additional weapons transfers to Kabul.

The bad news is that the helicopter deal could exacerbate Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions, and deliver a blow to prospects for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Kabul and Islamabad enjoyed a brief period of detente earlier this year, but the relationship has since regressed. The helicopter deal will be seen by Islamabad as another indication that Kabul's earlier decision to put its relations with New Delhi on the back burner while intensifying relations with Beijing -- part of an effort to kick start reconciliation with the Taliban, which China was helping orchestrate -- has been reversed. Any backsliding in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations has problematic implications for a Taliban reconciliation process, given the critical role that Islamabad -- which enjoys leverage over the Taliban -- would need to play.

Overall, however, peace prospects are already limited -- even though on December 9, the Afghan and Pakistani governments pledged to try to resume talks. With the Taliban enjoying many battlefield triumphs, it seemingly has little incentive to seek peace. Additionally, as an organization, the Taliban is riven by infighting amid a fragile leadership transition. The Afghan government recently claimed that new Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mansour was seriously wounded in an internal dispute. The Taliban will be hard-pressed to present a united front in peace talks, and even if it agreed to resume negotiations, more hardline Taliban factions would refuse to stop fighting -- even in the event of a cease-fire.

These considerations, which reflect the long-shot chances of peace between Kabul and the Taliban, may have also contributed to India's decision to move forward with the helicopter deal. With Afghan forces destined to continue fighting, India might be trying to provide them with a shot in the arm.

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In sum, the short-term implications of the helicopter transfer should be minimal. Pakistan will be unhappy with it, but is unlikely to pay it much mind -- especially amid the sudden warming period in India-Pakistan relations, and also as Russia, which partnered with India on the helicopter deal, has quietly expanded its defense relations with Islamabad.

The long-term consequences, however, could be significantly more unsettling. If history is any guide, some spoiler will eventually sabotage the India-Pakistan dialogue, plunging relations back into crisis mode. If relations turn bad once again, we can expect that Pakistan will stage provocations along the Line of Control, and use its leverage over the likes of the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba to compel them to target Indians in India or Afghanistan.

India could well respond to all of this by returning fire along the Line of Control, as it has previously. However, India, building on the precedent set in November, could also respond in a different way: It could engineer additional arms transfers to Kabul.

In a real worst-case scenario, the helicopter deal could lay the groundwork for India-Pakistan proxy conflict in Afghanistan. This would further hasten Afghanistan's destabilization and imperil Taliban reconciliation efforts. It would also create more dangers for residual U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and headaches for officials in Washington, who don't want Afghanistan to be a distraction as the United States focuses its attention on countering the expanding threat posed by ISIL.
FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015 file picture released by the office of Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in a meeting with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the country's diplomats in Tehran. Iran's supreme leader says the slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies. Khamenei's website says Tuesday he made the comment while meeting with Iranian students ahead of the anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

Ever since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was appointed Iran's supreme leader in 1989, there has been a power struggle in Iran between two groups. In one group are the moderates, reformists and liberals who want to open Iran's political system and make Iran a normal, non-revolutionary state. The second group consists of those who want to keep Iran in a permanent revolutionary state, preserve its theocracy and oppose rapprochement with the West.

Ayatollah Khamenei is 76 years old. Rumors about his health have been circulating for at least 15 years. They became more credible when he underwent prostate surgery in 2014, and even more so when in a speech to the Revolutionary Guards officer corps in September of 2015 Khamenei said, Iran's enemies "are waiting for a time when the nation and system fall asleep, for example in 10 years when I may not be here, to realize their objectives," which he believes are trying to infiltrate Iran to gain influence. Thus, the question of Khamenei's successor grows more relevant each year.

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But, several very recent developments have added to the intrigue. The first one was the announcement by Hassan Khomeini, a grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that he will run in the elections for the Assembly of Experts on Feb. 26, the constitutional body that appoints the supreme leader.

Then, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an interview on Dec. 13 that a group of senior clerics in the Assembly is examining potential candidates to be the next supreme leader. Rafsanjani has also been advocating a "leadership council," instead of the supreme leader, which has angered the hardliners.

These developments brought to the fore the maneuvering behind the scenes by Khamenei's hardline supporters on the one hand, and the reformists and moderates, on the other hand. Both Rafsanjani and the young Khomeini are in the latter group. The moderates and reformers are hoping to send a group of like-minded clerics to the Assembly, so that if Khamenei's successor is to be selected, they can influence the outcome.

Who are the potential successors to Khamenei? What is their background? This article describes some of them.

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Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi

Former President Ahmadinejad, left, and Shahroudi attend a press conference in 2005. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi.

Ayatollah Sayyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was born in Najaf, Iraq in 1948. He received his theological education in Najaf, and a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq in 1982, which was the umbrella organ for two key Shia militias Iran funded and trained to oppose Saddam Hussein.

Shahroudi served as Iran's judiciary chief from 1999-2009, and is close to Khamenei. Many believe that he has been the supreme leader's mentor. He is a traditional conservative, and has been described as brilliant by his peers for his knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence.

Shahroudi was appointed the judiciary chief when former reformist President Mohammad Khatami was trying to implement his reforms. At that time Shahroudi spoke about the imperativeness of "judicial reforms" and the fact that he had inherited an "utterly ruined judiciary." Those statements gave hope to the moderates and reformists that he would depoliticize the judiciary, freeing it from the pressure by the hardliners. He did implement some reforms, including a moratorium on the punishment by stoning (the practice has been reduced, but has not completely ended); decriminalizing certain offenses and adding limited amendments to family law in favor of women by raising the legal age for girls to get married from 9 to 13. He also restored most of the structure of the judiciary that his predecessor, cleric Mohammad Yazdi, the current chairman of the Assembly, had dismantled.

But Shahroudi failed to end arbitrary arrests of political activists, journalists and human rights advocates. Cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, often accompanied by torture and biased, and often totally unlawful trials behind closed doors persisted. He did not attempt, or was unable to make progress on the arbitrary shuttering of hundreds of newspapers, weeklies and monthly publications. Under him, the judiciary even tried to prosecute the Majles deputies that had protested the crackdown on the dissidents.

Shahroudi is now a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, another constitutional body that acts as advisor to Khamenei. He is also a member of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts. If he were to succeed Khamenei, he would perhaps take somewhat more moderate approaches to both domestic issues and foreign policy than Khamenei, as he is not close to the radical hardliners. Because he is a recognized Islamic scholar, he has the authority that Khamenei lacked when he came to power. That could enable him to enact some modest reforms.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Rafsanjani during a meeting in October in Tehran. Thomas Koehler/Photothek via Getty Images.

Born in August of 1934, and a key member of the ruling elite since the 1979 revolution, Rafsanjani needs no introduction. He has been a two-term president, speaker of the parliament, commander of the armed forces during much of the Iran-Iraq war (a post that was given to him by Khomeini), chairman of the Assembly of Experts and of the Expediency Discernment Council. He is still influential, is an ally of Rouhani and has wide support among senior clerics.

But Rafsanjani is also 81 years old and despised by the hardliners. Ever since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president in 2005, the hardliners have been attacking Rafsanjani, trying to strip his political influence. Ahmad Jannati, the reactionary secretary-general of the Guardian Council, has called him a dog. Mesbah Yazdi has referred to him as a "smuggler." His daughters, Faezeh and Fatemeh, and son Mehdi Hashemi have all been prosecuted, and many senior IRGC commanders are fiercely opposed to him. Most recently, Hossein Fadaei, a hardliner with close ties to the IRGC threatened him with house arrest.

In his current confrontation with the hardliners, Rafsanjani is seemingly pursuing three goals. One immediate goal is to pressure the hardliners to allow a large number of moderates and reformists to run in the upcoming elections. The second goal is to change the composition of the Assembly of Experts, so that if the time comes for selecting the next supreme leader, Rafsanjani and his supporters can play a decisive role. If he achieves these two, then the ultimate goal, controlling the IRGC, and eliminating the hardliners from the judiciary will become possible.

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Rafsanjani has always been a pragmatist, and over the last several years his views have gradually become closer to those of the reformists. If he were to be the supreme leader, he may try to democratize the system somewhat by diluting the absolute power that the supreme leader has enjoyed.

Sadegh Larijani

Larijani listens to a speech by Rafsanjani in 2009. ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images.

Similar to Shahroudi, the current judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani was also born in Najaf in March of 1960. His older brother Ali Larijani is the speaker of the Majles [parliament], while his oldest brother, Mohammad Javad (Ardeshir) Larijani is chief of the human rights division in the judiciary who has been widely criticized for supporting the hardliners and their crackdown on dissent. Their father was Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hashem Amoli, who moved his family to Iran in 1961. Larijani was interested in science and received a scholarship to study abroad, but decided to join a seminary in Qom. His theological teachers included his own father, his maternal uncle Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, and Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani whose daughter is married to Larijani.

Vahid Khorasani is known to oppose Khamenei. When conservative clerics tried to promote Khamenei as a marja' taghlid [source of emulation] in the 1990s, Vahid Khorasani reportedly told him, "You be the sultan [king], but leave marjaeiyat [being source of emulation] to others." Whenever Khamenei visits Qom, Vahid Khorasani leaves town, just so that he would not have to meet with him. It has been reported that Vahid Khorasani is not happy about his son-in-law being the judiciary chief under Khamenei.

Larijani is a relatively junior cleric. His promotion to judiciary chief is only due to his absolute obedience to Khamenei, who has been appointing him to various important governmental organs, and praising him lavishly. He is also a hardliner. Under him, especially since Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013, the judiciary has cracked down hard on dissidents, outspoken reformists and journalists. If he succeeds Khamenei, he will continue his authoritarian rule, conservative domestic policies and anti-American posture.

Mojtaba Khamenei

Mojtaba Khamenei appears here in a BBC documentary about his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. BBC/YouTube.

One of Ayatollah Khamenei's six children, Mojtaba was born in 1969 in the holy city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. His first theological teachers were his own father and Hashemi Shahroudi. He moved to Qom in 1999 to study theology and join the ranks of the clergy. He was taught there by such conservative clerics as Ayatollahs Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, Lotfollah Safi Golpayegani and Sayyed Mohsen Kharazi -- all very senior clerics.

Another link between the younger Khamenei and the hardliners is Brigadier General Sayyed Mohammad Hejazi, a former commander of the Basij militia and currently a deputy chief of staff of the armed forces. He is an ultra-hardliner who functions as one of Mojtaba's closest aides and supporters. Hardline cleric Hossein Taeb, a former commander of the Basij militia and current head of the intelligence unit of the IRGC, who has been a friend of Mojtaba since their high school years, is another link. Taeb's brother, Mehdi Taeb, is another hardliner close to the supreme leader's son. Mojtaba Khamenei is also close to many senior officers of the IRGC. He also played a leading role in the rise of Ahmadinejad to Iran's presidency, to the extent that Mehdi Karroubi, former speaker of the Majles and a leader of the Green Movement (who has been under house arrest since February of 2011), publicly protested Mojtaba Khamenei's intervention in the elections.

Some experts believe that the elder Khamenei would like to see Mojtaba to succeed him. As evidence, they point to the efforts by Khamenei's allies to fill the ranks of the Assembly of Experts with younger clerics who owe their prominence to the supreme leader, and might play a decisive role in appointing the next supreme leader. But, Mojtaba Khamenei is not a senior cleric. It is only because of his father and his closeness to the hardline IRGC officers that he is even talked about as a possible successor to his father.

If Mojtaba Khamenei were to succeed his father, he would most likely push Iran toward radical policies, making it a pariah state that Khatami, Rafsanjani and President Rouhani have tried to dispense with.

Hassan Khomeini

Khomeini speaks at the election headquarters of the interior ministry after registering his candidacy for the Feb. 26 Experts Assembly elections in Tehran. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi.

Hassan Khomeini's father Ahmad Khomeini was very close to Ayatollah Khomeini and, together with Rafsanjani, played a key role in the rise of Khamenei to the post of the supreme leader in 1989. But, he later became a critic of Khamenei and is believed to have been murdered by Saeed Emami and his gang in 1995. Born in 1972 in Qom, Hassan Khomeini became a cleric in 1993. His only official post is being the caretaker of his grandfather's mausoleum. He was a critic of Ahmadinejad, has criticized the intervention of the IRGC in politics, supported former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi's call for cancelling the rigged presidential election of 2009, and is considered a moderate reformist. He is also close to Rafsanjani and Khatami. He is considered a relatively junior cleric. He or Rafsanjani can succeed Khamenei, only if the senior clerics are unified and publicly call for their appointment

If Hassan Khomeini were to be promoted to the supreme leader, he will follow in the footsteps of Rafsanjani, Khatami and Rouhani, trying to moderate the political system by providing more freedom, while preserving its Islamic character.

Dark Horse Candidate

Cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami in front of the portraits of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, left, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi.

Cleric Ahmad Khatami (no relation to the former president) is a dark horse candidate. Born in 1960 in Semnan, a town 130 miles east of Tehran, he is a hardline cleric promoted to various important positions only due to his absolute loyalty to Khamenei and the right-wing clerics. He is currently a member of the Assembly of Experts and part of its leadership, a Friday prayer Imam of Tehran that gives him an important position to espouse the conservatives' positions, and a member of the Association of Teachers of the Qom Seminaries, an important political group for the hardline clerics.

Khatami supported Ahmadinejad during his presidency, and is an ultra-hardliner when it comes to social issues. For example, he declared that if necessary, even blood of women can be spilled in order to force them to wear the Islamic hejab, and that an Islamic government can even lash people to send them to heaven [meaning forcing them not to commit sins]. After Rafsanjani reminded members of the Assembly that they have a constitutional duty to monitor Khamenei's performance, Khatami strongly rejected it and fiercely attacked Rafsanjani. He is also fiercely against the Green Movement and opposes rapprochement with the U.S.

If one were to identify three well-known clerics in Iran whose views, at least cultural ones, are similar to those espoused by the Daesh -- also known as the Islamic State or ISIS -- or the Taliban in Afghanistan, they would be Ahmad Khatami, Mesbah Yazdi and Mojtaba Khamenei.

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Given Iran's complex power structure and the constant behind-the-scenes maneuvering, it would be very difficult to predict with reasonable certainty who might be Iran's next supreme leader. But, it is likely that the next supreme leader would be from amongst the six described here.

This piece has been adapted from earlier pieces on this topic by this author.

Earlier on WorldPost:
Chicago Is No Longer The Most Segregated City In The Country

By Mae Rice in News on Jan 4, 2016 10:45PM



Chicago circa 2010, with each dot representing each person, color-coded by race and ethnicity (via Racial Dot Map)

Back in 2010, Chicago was the countrys most segregated citybut times are changing, very slightly! This year, its the countrys third most segregated city, a Brookings Institution analyst told the Tribune.

Milwaukee is now the most segregated city in the U.S., and New York came in second most segregated, according to William Frey, the demographer who analyzed the latest census data from the American Community Survey for Brookings.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty, the Tribune broke it down by the numbers:

Most people here live in neighborhoods that have a little more diversity [than] they did a decade ago, according to Frey's research, which looks at the Chicago region along with some outlying suburbs. For example, the average white resident in the Chicago area now lives in a neighborhood that is 71.5 percent white. That figure is down from nearly 79 percent in 2000 because there are more Asians, blacks and Hispanics living in those communities, Frey's report shows. In much the same way, the average black resident here now lives in a neighborhood that is 64 percent black. That figure is down from 72 percent in 2000, because more whites, Asians and Hispanics have moved into those communities.

Another demographer, Rob Paral, told the Tribune that neighborhoods like the South Loop and Cabrini Green are key sites of desegregationas are the suburbs, where many African-Americans are moving in search of better opportunities. (As a counterpoint, stats whiz Nate Silver, who spent a stint in Hyde Park, noted in May that often some of the most diverse cities end being the least racially integrated.)

Clearly, though, the city could stand to move even further from the old days of legal segregation and redlining. Segregation contributes to racial disparities in education, wealth, and employment, as the Tribune notes.
Baby boomers have spent more than half a century revolutionizing the way we live. Now it is time for us to revolutionize the way we die.

We came of age in the post-WWII era of complacency, consumerism, and conformity. Then we grew up seeing our leaders murdered: John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy. The U.S. sent troops to Vietnam and war turned out to be more complicated than we had been told. Politicians did not always tell the truth. Around the time we reached voting age, President Nixon was resigning in disgrace.

And so we became the generation that did not trust anyone over 30. We challenged everything the grown-ups gave us from the draft to healthcare to the toxic substances in air, water, and our homes and the products we produced and used. The "Our Bodies Ourselves" movement shifted the focus of medical treatment to give patients better information and wider choices. Was your father in the room when you were born? Did your mother get to decide how she wanted to manage medication for labor pains? You're welcome.

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We saw injustice and so we protested and we challenged more. We changed the laws to protect the rights of women, minorities, the disabled, and the LGBT community. We made consumer goods safer, especially cars and toys. We created the modern environmental movement, stopped the damage to the ozone layer, took lead out of gas, and brought our lakes back from near-death.

We understand that there is much more to do, and we have seen some of our most important efforts rolled back or distorted beyond recognition. But we have never given up on our commitment to questioning what is and pushing for what is better.

We understand that some of you who came after us consider us spoiled and selfish. You're welcome for that, too. We did not invent the idea of complaining about the excesses and failures of the previous generation, but we pretty much perfected it.

Here's a secret -- we're delighted when you blame everything on us. First, it means you learned our most important lesson about your obligation to recognize and repair the failures of the past. And second, we know how cycles of history work, which means that your children will think we were just great, while they are carrying on our tradition of rebelling against you.

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We can handle whatever you've got. We survived disco, yuppies, Iran-Contra, the Starr report, the dot.com bubble and the sub-prime meltdown. One word of advice, though: No complaining unless you have a constructive solution to propose along with it. Otherwise, it's just whining.

Before we turn it all over to you, though, we've got one last revolution: end-of-life care.

We used to talk to our friends about caring for our children, about teething, homework, and college applications. Now we exchange stories about caring for our parents, about finding caregivers and assisted living facilities, about durable powers of attorney and navigating Medicare, about dementia and rehab after strokes. There is a growing body of literature by baby boomers writing about caring for their parents at the end of life, including Roz Chast's brilliant Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, George Hodgman's touching Bettyville, and Scott Simon's heartrending Unforgettable.

A director of an assisted living facility says that she began her career helping people in their 50s care for parents in their 70s, but now works with people in their 70s caring for parents in their 90s. The advances in treatment for heart disease and cancer have given us more time than any generation in history with our parents, for which we are grateful beyond words. But it has also given us unprecedented health care challenges, with the number of people around the world living with dementia predicted to rise from 44 million today to 135 million by 2050. Our health care system is still too focused on treatment rather than prevention, which means that near-endless expensive treatments are covered, whether they will improve the quality of life or not. But until 2016, there was no coverage for conversations about whether a patient wants those treatments.

The numbers in the studies vary, but all of them conclude that a huge percentage of our health care costs are spent treating people in the last six months of life. Anyone who wants that six months should have it. But because doctors and families are skittish about asking patients what they want, too often the result is needless suffering. Over and over, my friends have told me, "I thought I was doing the right thing by seeking out the best treatment options for my parents and insisting on every possible procedure and medication. But now I realize that it was for me, not for them." Dr. Craig Bowron wrote in the Washington Post about the way that family members, particularly those who have not been caretakers, rush in to insist that "we do everything we can," meaning as many medical procedures and treatments as possible. They often use the vocabulary of battle. "This person may think she is being driven by compassion," he says, but it is more likely to be a reflection of "the guilt and regret of living far away and having not done any of the heavy lifting in caring for her parent." It can reflect the adult child's own fear of death, loss, and lack of control as well. Bowron writes:

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When their loved one does die, family members can tell themselves, "We did everything we could for Mom." In my experience, this is a stronger inclination than the equally valid (and perhaps more honest) admission that, "We sure put Dad through the wringer those last few months."

We must do better.
Most resolutions are about self improvement -- get fit, eat well, explore more. This year, try selfless improvement. Volunteering your time is both personally and economically beneficial. As we all know, getting started is the greatest barrier to any resolution.

Volunteering is not as easy as registering for a gym membership. It's easier. Volunteer Match is a San Francisco based nonprofit that connects volunteers with nonprofits. Think of it as an online dating site for altruists.

Three years ago, my resolution was to volunteer regularly and it began with a simple search on Volunteer Match. With thousands of opportunities, choosing one required refining my search. I started with my interests and values. I love cooking and wanted to contribute to our next generation. Sifting through results for food and kids, I came across Sprouts Cooking Club. This non-profit explores the Bay Area culinary scene and teach kids how to cook. (Un)like exercise, it became a regular habit.

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I spoke with Greg Baldwin, the president of VolunteerMatch.org, and discovered that volunteering isn't just for the time rich. According to Greg, employed individuals tend to volunteer more and 70 percent of Volunteer Match's profiles are female. Despite steady declining rates of volunteerism over the last decade, there has been a growth in network usage of 14 percent.

So how are volunteers connecting with non-profits? Greg explains that 60 percent of volunteers use search to find opportunities, while 25 percent find opportunities directly. The remaining 15 percent was through a referral. This gave volunteers access to over 100,000 nonprofits and charities. The problem is the number of volunteers, it's connecting the willing with the needy. This is the engagement gap that needs to be bridged.

Now, there is a new and easier way to connect with nonprofits. Simply text your zip code to (314) 282-8630 and you will instantly receive a reply with volunteer opportunities in your area. You can take this messaging technology further by texting a keyword and your zip code to narrow your search.

This technology was made possible through a partnership between VolunteerMatch.org and Twilio.org. As part of the Clinton Global Initiative, Twilio committed 1 percent of its equity value to its nonprofit arm and set a goal to deliver a billion messages for good. Since late 2015, 450 nonprofits signed up, including the Red Cross, Polaris Project, and Trek Medics.

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Being a gay Mormon has never been easy; two core parts of your identity -- your sexual orientation and your faith -- conflict. Within one's self this conflict is already hard to settle but add to it the rejection from society and one's religious community and it becomes unbearable at times. My growing up as a Mormon and coming out as gay has been a journey, a really hard journey that I am still on. When I came out, unlike many other LGBTQ Mormons I know, my family was fairly receptive to me and for the most part showed me love. I came out to a Dad whose unconditional love is pillar of strength in my life. I told my Mom who is still grappling with what this means for her child. "Will he remain active in the church?" "Will he date guys or live a life of celibacy?" These are questions she has pondered over and still ponders.

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My coming out story gives a little bit of background to the main issue of this post -- the recent policy change by the LDS church. Most Mormons (particularly those in the LDS/LGBTQ community) are aware of the recent policy change from the LDS Church in which clear guidelines are set for LGBTQ members and their families. The policy change (which is included in the handbook for LDS leadership) states that being in a homosexual marriage now meets the church's definition of apostasy. The policy change also affects children raised by same-sex couples -- they are now not allowed to be baptized until they reach 18. In order to then be baptized they must disavow the practice of homosexuality, move out of their parent's home and receive permission from the church's top leadership, the First Presidency.

These two changes (particularly the first one) may not come as a surprise to many -- the LDS church has often reminded us where they stand when it comes to marriage. They believe marriage to be strictly between one man and one woman. Even though it is clear what the church teaches, this policy change hit the LDS/LGBTQ community like a tidal wave, seeming to affect almost everyone in one way or another. Here I am, a gay Mormon watching this all unfold. I admit I was surprised by the change, but not nearly as much as others. I had known where the church stood and since a young age was very doubtful they'd ever come around to fully accepting homosexuality. I told myself a long time ago, when I was still coming to terms with being gay, that I would not let the LDS church (particularly what the leadership said) affect me and my thoughts of self worth and happiness. I continue to make a conscious choice to disconnect myself from what I hear in the oftentimes misguided and hurtful things the LDS church says in regards to LGBTQ issues. However when news of this policy came to light I couldn't push away the rhetoric any more. Now more than ever the line in the sand had been drawn and for me that was heartbreaking. It was incredibly painful to see the church I knew reject me and so many others in the LDS/LGBTQ community. I cried not just for myself but for the many families I know personally who are basically being told "You're not welcome in our church" "We won't let your children get baptized, they are not wanted" "Your marriage is not a valid marriage, we see you and your spouse as apostates" How does one cope with this level of rejection?

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Just as the pen can be mightier than the sword, China's non-kinetic "Three Warfares" may prove to be far more effective at expanding China's maritime and territorial boundaries than any arsenal of missiles or fleet of Chinese aircraft carriers.

The Three Warfares were first officially recognized as an important warfighting capability by China's Central Military Commission and Communist Party in 2003. They include everything from psychological and legal to media warfare.

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The goal of China's psychological warfare is to deter, demoralize, or otherwise shock an opponent nation and its civilian population and thereby discourage the opponent from fighting back. As former White House advisor Stefan Halper starkly revealed in a watershed report to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment in 2014: "It employs diplomatic pressure, rumor, false narratives, and harassment to express displeasure, assert hegemony and convey threats."

Thus, for example, when China imposes an economic boycott or bans Chinese tourism, it hopes to coerce a Japanese populace struggling with economic stagnation and hungry for prosperity into acquiescing to China's territorial demands regarding the Senkaku Islands.

As for China's legal warfare, its goal is to effectively bend - or perhaps rewrite - the rules of the international order in China's favor. A case in point is China's campaign to restrict freedom of navigation within its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone as defined by the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty.

In fact, this claim has no legal basis within the context of the actual Law of the Sea Treaty language. Yet China repeatedly and falsely asserts the opposite - in the spirit of the oft-repeated Orwellian axiom "if you say it enough, they will believe it."

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China's media warfare is, in many ways, the most pernicious. Its goal is to shape public opinion in a way that leads unwary viewers to accept China's version of events. Heritage Foundation scholar Dean Cheng describes such warfare as a "constant, on-going activity aimed at long-term influence of perceptions and attitudes;" and its use follows Halper's maxim that "it is not the best weapons that win today's wars but rather the best narrative."

The tip of China's media warfare spear is the Chinese Central Television Network (CCTV) - with a major facility in Washington, D.C. This is a faux 24-hour news channel replete with "white face" and "black face" American anchors -- mercenaries who shrink-wrap China's propaganda around healthy doses of CNN-style pure news while reaching over 40 million Americans along with hundreds of millions more viewers in the rest of the world.

As former Pentagon analyst Ed Timperlake has noted and the effectiveness of China's media warfare: Soft power and denial and deception has worked very well for the Chinese just by getting inside America, telling their story, showing a smiling face, and a benign face of China.

As a case in point of the power of CCTV, when an incident breaks out between China and the Philippines over disputed reefs in the South China Sea, CCTV is there first to quickly advance China's narrative - often before the western media are even on to the story. In a similar vein, when tensions mount over the Senkaku Islands, CCTV will quickly launch a strong offensive blaming "right wing nationalists" in Japan for any incident or escalation.

The dark beauty of the Three Warfares in today's modern age is that they offer China a new form of non-kinetic weaponry to achieve goals that in earlier times could only be realized through kinetic force. Moreover, the Three Warfares combine in a highly synergistic way.

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For example, in many of its territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, China first asserts false territorial claims based on vague history - that's the legal warfare. It next projects non-kinetic force in the form of flotillas of white-hulled civilian fleets - that's the psychological warfare. Finally, CCTV repeatedly portrays a "peaceful China" as a victim of foreign power domination only trying to right an historic wrong - that's the media warfare.

To date, both the American White House and Pentagon have largely ignored China's Three Warfares and therefore failed to develop a countervailing strategy. However, aggression by non-kinetic means is still aggression - which raises this ultimate question: Why does America continue to trade with a country that is waging war against it and American allies?
By Melanie Studer, MS, Industrial Ecology and Science Communication, Delft University of Technology and Leiden University

Becky Booth is standing in line for the cashier at the Tower of London, with family visiting from the U.S. But when she is ready to buy the tickets, instead of "conventional" money she hands over six "Time Credits." She had earned them earlier this year by volunteering with children at a local community festival in Wales.

Booth is CEO of the Spice "time bank," named for its mission to "add some spice" to the organization of society. Like many other community currency initiatives, Spice isn't aiming to replace "conventional" money but rather to supplement it.



"Our ambition is to counterbalance what the mainstream system is not good at," says Booth. "For example, engaging people in community services, building neighborhood cohesion and valuing unpaid work."

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Spice is a success story. Since its foundation in 2009, it has grown into an organization employing 25 staffers and working with 600 partners, from museums and concert halls to swimming pools and art schools. So far, an estimated 18,000 users have earned the currency, and approximately 450,000 Time Credits have been issued.

But it is also a relatively rare success story. According to Gill Seyfang, a researcher at England's University of East Anglia, Spice stands out among community currencies for its reach and longevity. For the past decade, she has been researching the spread of the three main types of community currencies. Among these, time banks like Spice make up 50 percent of the 3,500 community currencies in the world. Local exchange trading systems, or LETS, in which people exchange all kinds of goods and services with one another, are second at 40 percent, and local currencies, which issue paper or digital money for a defined region, make up the last 10 percent.

But while LETS are declining and local currencies are reaching a plateau, time banks, alone among the community currencies, are growing. The success of Spice and other time banks sheds a light on why some do-it-yourself currencies succeed and so many others fail.

Policy Support and Funding

For Seyfang, there are a number of reasons time banks tend to do better. They are generally professional projects that contribute to empowering communities and providing social services. As a result, initiatives like Spice have attracted the interest of policymakers in the past few years. Unlike some time banks, Spice is not based on a "person-to-person" system but rather on a "person-to-institution" model. Instead of people giving time to and receiving time from others, they can give time to community and public institutions, like schools and social and health care providers, in exchange for access to cultural and educational activities, like art classes and concerts; access to swimming pools; or even benefits like contributions to social housing rents.

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"Such a system is effective for gaining institutional buy-in and funding," says Seyfang.

Compared with time banks, LETS have low chances of getting funded because they generally consist of small, amateur projects made up of five to 200 users. According to Mary Fee, the coordinator of LETSlink UK, the main body supporting LETS across the U.K., many of the exchange currency projects die out because of lack of funding and human resources.

Local currencies, meanwhile, generally receive policy support when there is a crisis with the national currency, but this support tends to stop once the economy gets back on its feet. The Bristol Pound in the U.K. is a curious exception.

This currency appears to "be breaking the ceiling of the scale that most local currencies have failed to deal with," says Ben Brangwyn, co-founder of Transition Network, the mother organization behind eight local currency projects in the U.K. He says that a "friendly city council" and a credit union wanting to integrate the project also help explain the Bristol Pound's staying power.

Easy to Replicate, Attractive to Users

For Seyfang, a key feature of time banks is that they require little infrastructure to be replicated and can work in many different contexts. It's an idea shared by Spice's CEO.

"Time Credits are an incredibly adaptable tool," says Booth. "We have been able to replicate the model in schools, housing associations, churches, social care services, amongst young and old, in urban and rural areas."

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Like time banks, LETS can be set up easily and at low cost. "All you need is a computer and a circle of friends or of like-minded people, so LETS have been good at replicating," says Seyfang.

But while LETS are easy to set up, they're not considered mainstream. They typically include strong environmental or communitarian ideals, like economic inclusion and reducing material consumption, which can turn off some users. According to Fee, LETS also suffer from the competition posed by time banks--since Spice's creation, there has been a significant drop in the number of U.K. LETS members.

As for local currencies, Seyfang believes they're more difficult to set up because they require security systems. But Brangwyn disagrees and has developed a "How to" guide, which details 10 steps to set up a local currency scheme. For him, the biggest challenge to the growth of local currencies is that their use requires an extra effort: Users need to convert their national currency into the local currency and then find businesses that will accept it.

"The success of community currencies depends largely on the level of ownership the community feels towards the currency," his writes in his guide. "Communities have to consider it their currency or they will not embrace it."
By Melanie Studer, MS, Industrial Ecology and Science Communication, Delft University of Technology and Leiden University

Where do WRF 2015 participants come from?

DAVOS, Switzerland--Standing upright and proud, Bas de Leeuw, managing director of the World Resources Forum, announced at the opening session that the World Resources Forum 2015 will be carbon neutral.

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While offsetting CO2 emissions may be a means for compensation, for conference organizers and participants, it's not as easy to walk the talk.

One car, two planes and three trains later, Hossam Allam, Cairo-based regional program manager at the Centre of Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe, is happy to be arrived in Davos. "In my organization-even if it is an environmental one-the rule is that you have to buy the cheapest ticket not the least carbon intensive one, which would be a direct flight," he says.

Allam is one of nearly 650 participants from 109* countries who came to Davos to discuss the circular economy, resources efficiency and sustainable lifestyles and education. The record number of both participants and countries represented is worth celebrating. "We need people from all over the world to make a change and spread our message," Klaus Wiesen, project leader in sustainable consumption and production from the Wuppertal Institut in Germany, says excitedly.

But due to this increase in number of participants from far-away countries, the WRF 2015 has a larger footprint per participant than WRF 2013, which was the previous time the WRF was at Davos. This is despite numerous efforts to minimize the environmental impact of the conference.

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"This year, we decided to make the menus vegetarian by default and to print less conference material," says de Leeuw. While every bit helps, this good intention can however be hardly noticeable in the overall impact of the conference. This year, traveling accounts for 95% of the 720 tons of CO2 emissions related to the conference.

Altogether, the impact of the conference is equivalent to the annual average carbon impact of 140 Swiss citizens. Offsetting will cost about 9000 CHF; the equivalent of 10 conference tickets (the full conference fee being 970 CHF per person).

The question remains, is this carbon impact worth it? "If I can pick up let alone one idea that I can replicate at a large scale, then it is worth it," answers Mukesh Gulati, Delhi-based executive director of Foundation for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises Clusters.

Another participant from Belgium who preferred to stay anonymous adds, "Bas de Leuw promised us that our carbon impact was compensated so our consciousness is okay now."

In the audience, a feeling of both responsibility and guilty ignorance seems to reign. "I don't want to know my ecological footprint," confesses Allam with an uncomfortable laugh, "because it's huge."

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If one participant would know his ecological footprint I thought, it had to be Mathis Wackernagel, who co-founded the Global Footprint Network in 2004 after inventing the concept in 1994. Indeed, he knew. Every year, Wackernagel consumes as much carbon as about eight average citizens do in India he says.

"In our institute we more or less agreed, there is a phrase for that 'Not behind your front door'," says a group of participants who preferred to stay anonymous. "We are all employees of an environmental institute. We talk about environmental issues in the public domain but not behind our front door...we hope that our professional projects have a positive effect and create greater good but we don't talk about our own carbon impact."

*While we counted 109 countries, there are 10 participants who did not indicate their country.
On a frequent basis, I get messages from death row inmates. Due to the volume of my work, I can only engage a small percentage of those who write. In early November, I received a request for help from Tennessee. Opening the envelope, I figured Andrew Thomas would get my regrets. I was wrong. Before I finished the note, there was a phrase at the top of the letter that caught my eye, "I am innocent." It was not that I hadn't heard such talk before. I can assure you that anyone who does this work hears claims of innocence on a regular basis. This time was different. Line by line, I found his story more and more compelling. Sensing a grave injustice, I was desperate to know more.

The road went on forever. Darkness grew. Exhaustion set in. If I was going to make it, I had to drive faster. Nashville was much further than I anticipated. When I arrived at the prison, I went straight in. Minutes later, I was ushered into the visitation space. Upon entering, Andrew Thomas embraced me with a hug. Surprised by the welcome, I looked Andrew in the eye and asked him to tell me everything. I believe he did.

On April 21, 1997, armored car guard James Day picked up deposits at a Walgreens in Memphis, Tennessee. Upon exiting the store, Day met an assailant who robbed and shot him. Jumping in a white car, the shooter was driven from the scene by another person. Authorities recovered the abandoned vehicle down the road. On July 21, 1997, Bobby Jackson attempted to rob an armored car at Southbrook Mall. Upon arrest, Jackson admitted that this was not the first time he sought to or successfully robbed an armored car. One of the witnesses in the Walgreens robbery identified Jackson as the driver of the getaway car. Also around this time, Andrew Thomas and Anthony Bond were arrested on unrelated charges. Investigators determined that Bond's fingerprints matched prints on the getaway car from the Walgreens robbery. When confronted with this information, Bond admitted to being the getaway driver in the Walgreens robbery and claimed that Andrew was his accomplice and Day's shooter. Immediately, Andrew denied involvement. Andrew didn't match any of the descriptions provided by witnesses. Though Bobby Jackson was a heavy man and had a history or robbing armored cars in the area, authorities pursued Andrew as their primary suspect. In the midst of a rush to wrap up the case, Bond cut a deal with federal prosecutors for a lighter sentence and agreed to testify against Andrew. Based on Bond's testimony, Andrew was convicted and sentenced to life for the Walgreens robbery.

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James Day died on October 2, 1999. Though Day suffered from heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, the Shelby County Medical Examiner Dr. O.C. Smith ruled the death a homicide related to the gunshot of two and a half years earlier. The State of Tennessee put Andrew Thomas and Anthony Bond on trial for murder and sought the death penalty. Bond pled out and got life. The testimony of Andrew's estranged wife Angela Jackson was the key factor in his conviction. During the trial, Jackson gave detailed accounts of Andrew's purported confession and distribution of the stolen money. In addition to having dated Bobby Jackson, Jackson was also involved in a bitter divorce with Andrew at the time. In an unimaginable breach of legal ethics, prosecutors paid Jackson $750 for her testimony. Richard Fischer was the only person to put Andrew at the scene. Revealingly, Fischer falsely identified two men before he identified Andrew. Not long after he was convicted and sentenced to die, Andrew received a letter from Anthony Bond. On numerous handwritten pages, Bond admitted that he partnered with Angela Jackson to falsely implicate Andrew. Though it seems more than likely that Anthony Bond and Bobby Jackson are the actual culprits in the Walgreens robbery, Andrew Thomas is the only one the State of Tennessee is trying to kill.





When he finished his story, Andrew passed me a napkin that read, "I am innocent." I was moved. Before he could ask, I told Andrew that I would stand with him and do all that I could to save his life. The guard informed us that our time was up. Leaning in and putting my arm around my brother, I prayed, "God of justice...fix this and free your child."

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When I got back to the car, I drove to a diner and read as much as I could about the case. The evidence is out there and easily available. After a few hours, I began driving home. Throughout the journey, I grew angrier and angrier that the State of Tennessee was so dedicated to killing Andrew Thomas. Somewhere around Memphis, I pulled over and got out of my car. At the top of my lungs, I screamed out into the bitter freezing night air, "Andrew Thomas is innocent!" While I doubt many people heard me, it was then that I decide to not stop screaming until they do.
Arno Michaelis has a change of heart after being shown kindness.

Life's difficulties can come in many forms: illness, loss, prejudice, pain... and assembling furniture from Ikea. Anyone who has attempted to put together anything from this wonderfully creative, yet maddening, merchant understands the frustration. The box arrives with a zillion pieces and, the best part, instructions in Swedish. After hours of deciphering the directions and gathering together the countless tiny parts, inevitably you discover that a piece is missing. Somewhere in the unpacking of the zillion elements, you have dropped a small part under the refrigerator or behind the radiator. And it's never just a missing piece, it's usually the missing piece: the key part that transforms the pile of random plastic into the one-of-a-kind, fabulous piece it was meant to be.

The Ikea experience is not so different from life. Each of us is a unique creation with intricate gifts and abilities. While we were given those gifts at birth (shipped with all the parts so to speak), in the living and unpacking of life, we tend to drop a key piece. And as with Ikea furniture, without it we can never live as we were meant to.

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In our scripture this week, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, we are reminded of life's key piece through the story of Jesus' baptism. The moment Jesus emerges from the water, a voice descends from heaven and declares: "You are my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased." Such beautiful words. And yet, perhaps more powerful than the words themselves is their timing. The Spirit offered this blessing to Jesus before he had done anything: he hadn't preached; he hadn't performed any miracles; he hadn't raised the dead, healed the blind, or even transformed the wedding wine at Cana. The words were bestowed on him not for what he had done, but for who he was: a beloved child of God.

Each of us gets this same unconditional blessing at birth. As Jeremiah 1:5 explains, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; and before you were born, I consecrated you." The problem is that the farther we get from our birth, the more we tend to forget that blessing. Over the years, life beats us down with hurt, disappointment, grief, anger, each one breaking us down, tearing us down until those critical words, "You are my beloved," are muffled out. Our greatest blessing--our critical piece--goes missing.

After that, it's a slippery slope. Without the words of the blessing in our ears, all we hear are the negative, critical voices of the world. We start to believe that we are not beloved, but unloved. And when we feel unloved, we become fearful. We lash out, we judge, we harm. Worst of all, when we forget who we are, we forget our human connection. We begin to believe we are different, separate, better. It's like the old saying: "If you don't know who you are, you act like who you ain't."

We see it in the headlines every day. We deny opportunity, we judge and deride, we murder ... because we've forgotten that notwithstanding the color of someone's skin, we all have a common birth blessing. As the author Kelly Brown Douglas explained in her book Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, if we asked Jesus, "'Lord, where did we see you dying and on the cross?' Jesus would answer, 'On a Florida sidewalk, at a Florida gas station, on a Michigan porch, on a street in North Carolina. As you did it to one of these young black bodies, you did it to me.'"

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When we have a missing piece, we hold our "truth" in a death grip, we circle the wagons of tradition and sink into the comfortable bliss of ignorance. We do things like judge an entire religious tradition based on the actions of a few extremists. The New York Times has reported that hate crimes against Muslim Americans and mosques have tripled since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, including assaults on hijab-wearing students, a shooting of a Muslim cabdriver in Pittsburgh by a passenger who angrily questioned him about ISIS and mocked the Prophet Mohammad, and, in Anaheim, a bullet-ridden copy of the Koran left outside an Islamic clothing store. Our sense of human connection has deteriorated so badly that we not only unfairly harm our Muslim brothers and sisters; out of our ignorance, we erroneously lash out at other traditions that, thanks to a beard or a turban, we think are Muslim.

And many of these crimes are perpetrated by Christians. Perhaps we should all spend some time with Dave Burchett's book When Bad Christians Happen to Good People, especially Chapter 3, entitled "WJSHTOT (Would Jesus Spend His Time on This?)" Christians do not hold the monopoly on truth, nor on the Golden Rule (which we obviously don't follow so well). Consider the Muslim Hadith: "You will not enter Paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love each other. Shall I show you something that, if you did, you would love each other? Spread peace between yourselves." (Sahih Muslim 54)

All of us--Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, black/white, gay/straight, Republican/Democrat--were born beloved children of God. As Genesis teaches: God created humankind in God's image, and God declared everything "very good" (Genesis 1).

It is our greatest call as human beings to remind ourselves and each other that we are beloved children of God--ones in whom God is well pleased. It is whispered in our hearts before we are born into this life and it is whispered to us as we leave. We simply need to remember. We need to return to the source. We need to strive--every day of our lives--to find the missing piece.

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Bible Study Questions

1. Are you able to hear praise? Accept love? If the spirit spoke to you now and said, "You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased," would you be able to hear it?

2. Have you ever found yourself judging others because you are scared of them? Because you don't understand them?

3. Think of someone you have judged unfairly and identify three things you have in common. For example, what are their hopes and dreams? What are their worries? Do they have a family and or children? Do they find comfort in a connection to God?

For Further Reading

Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God

Rev. Peter Wallace, The Passionate Jesus: What We Can Learn from Jesus about Love, Fear, Grief, Joy and Living Authentically

Reba Riley, ISIS is to Islam what the KKK is to Christianity, Patheos, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rebariley/2015/11/isis-is-to-islam-what-the-kkk-is-to-christianity/

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For the established Republican order, the vista presented by this new year is filled with bewilderment and foreboding. For the last 28 years of presidential primaries, the consultants, donors and loyalists who constituted the party's so-called mainstream have taken it for granted that, in the end, the "most electable conservative" would once again ward off insurrection by the Visigoths of the GOP's outer reaches. This serene state of self-assurance has come to an abrupt and unseemly end.

The only surprise is that they seem so surprised. Over that span of time the meaning of "conservative" has moved ever rightward in the gravitational pull of evangelicals, gun rights absolutists, economically and socially threatened whites and, most recently, indignant Tea Party adherents who, collectively, have come to dominate the primary electorate. In the House, the Visigoths have already breached the wall, unhorsing John Boehner and hemming in Paul Ryan; in the Senate, the leadership avoided a similar fate only through the contentious stratagem of fighting off the Tea Party in primaries.

Yet despite the fevered passions of those on whom they have come to depend, the establishment's ever more dubious premise was that, at least in presidential primaries, its base would continue to settle on the candidate most congenial to the party's grandees. But how unruly those passions might be had already surfaced in 2012, when Mitt Romney was dragged into the malarial marshland of the right, merely to ward off the unlikely trio of Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum. Instead of giving the establishment a president, this ordeal contributed to Romney's defeat by compelling him to take highly conservative stands unattractive to the electorate as a whole.

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Fearful of a recurrence, for 2016 the party cut down on debates and condensed the primary schedule, hoping to spare the next "electable conservative" such a protracted and damaging gauntlet. As public opinion expert Peter Hart points out, and as the GOP professionals well appreciate, the party's image among the electorate as a whole is negative, not least because of the hard-line stance on social issues -- such as gay marriage and reproductive rights -- embraced by the party's base. Thus a post-election autopsy by the Republican National Committee emphasized the party's urgent need to expand its demographic appeal in presidential elections, notably to Hispanics and women, whose disaffection was another ingredient in its primary-driven defeat.

Too little, and way too late. Four more years of frustration with the political classes has left the base seething with negative feelings of anger and distrust, the visceral instinct that the only way to stop America's perceived downward spiral is by cleaning house. Far from wanting to expand its appeal to minorities, many of these voters resent them. And so the GOP's electoral Frankenstein has at last escaped the lab, running amok in the form of the two-headed monster Donald Cruz as its creators shrink back in astonishment and horror.

Summoned by the monster's virulent roar, nativism and rigid social conservatism dominate the Republican landscape. Suddenly nothing works as party strategists intended -- there is no consensus establishment choice, and the monster has rudely shouldered aside more acceptable prospects in a headlong lurch toward the primary season, leaving Dr. Frankenstein to pray that its two heads start devouring each other. In short, the formerly smug and powerful are reduced to depending on luck.

To kill the monster, they will need a lot of it. The rise of Ted Cruz was predictable enough -- he is simply a more ruthless and calculating version of the right-wing candidates who came before him. Completely contemptuous of the establishment and anyone else who stands in his way, and fueled by a recent surge in campaign contributions, Cruz is a demagogue to watch.

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But the true agent of disaster is the uncontrollable Donald Trump, not simply because he has harnessed the equally predictable outrage of a primary electorate inflamed by toxic GOP rhetoric, but because his amorphous appeal has stunted the growth of the presumptive mainstream candidates. In an age inundated with social media, he is the candidate of trash talk, each noxious phrase made to go viral.

Alienated by years of hostile attacks on government and its elected leaders, of whatever stripe, the GOP base is ready-made for Trump's siren song of resentment -- nativist, self-congratulatory, and utterly free of content save for the anti-immigrant venom which propelled his rise. 2015, after all, was the year in which Trump tied a presumably grateful Pope Francis for second place as Americans' most admired man.

It still seems probable that Trump will self-destruct -- or that the remorseless Cruz will cast aside his Halloween mask of amity and destroy him. And come the various election days Trump's support may be softer than it now appears: focus groups conducted last fall by Peter Hart indicate misgivings about his temperament and judgment, even among Republicans inclined to favor him. But there is no assurance that his decline will match the accelerated rhythms of the primary season, clearing the path for a challenger to swiftly emerge from the mainstream pool.

A look at the calendar explains why. After Iowa and New Hampshire, between February 20 and March 5 Republican contests occur in 18 states that are overwhelmingly southern, otherwise conservative, or open to Trump's insurrectionist appeal. Altogether, these first 20 states will select roughly 990 delegates out of 2472, out of which only half -- 1237 -- are needed to clinch the nomination. In this volatile season, prognostication is dicey -- in the wake of Paris and San Bernardino, Cruz rose as quickly as Ben Carson fell. But it is very hard to see a natural path through these early states for the mainstream contenders -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie or John Kasich.

Which means that New Hampshire is not merely critical, but potentially fateful. Often the state has been the bulwark that saved mainstream candidates from the vicissitudes of the Iowa caucuses, which this year are poised to give Cruz a rousing liftoff. But while New Hampshire's more moderate profile makes Cruz unlikely to win there, Iowa should give him a bit of a bump, and going forward he is positioned to be the chief beneficiary of a Carson tailspin.

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More ominously, as of now Trump has a significant lead in the polls of New Hampshire primary voters, and his lack of political definition gives him a broader ideological reach, especially in a year roiled by concerns about national security. The establishment's fondest wish is for a precipitous Trump collapse in New Hampshire, leaving the field wide open. At this point there is little sign that such a game changer can happen so quickly. This leaves the establishment desperately hoping that one of the four mainstream candidates can emerge as a strong consensus alternative.

This is always possible in a primary process where momentum shifts as swiftly as perceptions, transforming voter preferences and abruptly dooming candidacies. A poor showing in New Hampshire could kill off two or more contenders -- including at least one of the two most plausible long-term hopes, Rubio or Bush.

In tacit acknowledgment of this, the Bush campaign has canceled television advertising to invest in beefing up their organization in Iowa and New Hampshire. Seeking to rally conservatives, Rubio has called for a constitutional convention to enact a balanced budget amendment and impose term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court -- hoping, obviously, that voters are not aware that this is a political impossibility. In the next five weeks all this maneuvering may yield a survivor. By finishing lower than expected, Rubio could collapse; conversely, by exceeding his dramatically lowered expectations, Bush could reverse his decline. And a dismal finish in a state where they have staked their hopes would finish Christie and Kasich.

Still, it is equally possible that the four contenders will split what now appears to be about 40 percent of the expected primary vote, yielding no obvious savior. Recently, both Chris Christie and Jeb Bush have been going after Rubio, even as Trump, Bush and Rubio go after Christie. These attacks will intensify even as negative ads proliferate, increasing the chance of mutual damage and fragmentation. Further, as Hart notes, in a year where national security matters, none of the contestants has credentials that would elevate him above the others. And whatever happens in New Hampshire, every one of them has significant problems going forward.

Take Marco Rubio. Given the implausibility of Trump and Cruz, he has until recently been deemed the smart money favorite, a verbally facile fresh face who has worked assiduously to become a magnet for big donors. No doubt of his debating and stump skills, or his positioning as a superficially persuasive voice for foreign policy hardliners. But he is not wearing as well as he might.

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Insiders are murmuring that beneath the surface of his oft -- repeated and uplifting biographical speech there is, well, nothing much and no one at home. This is not a helpful reading of a one-term senator with little accomplishment, a spotty voting record, suspiciously mutable positions, a leisurely campaign schedule, an acolyte's eagerness to please wealthy political benefactors, and a demeanor which verges on the callow. His flip-flop on immigration has tarred him with opportunism without pacifying the anti-immigrant base.

Whatever Rubio's gifts, it is far from clear that he can strike sparks with primary voters in an angry and ideological year. And the downside of soaking up soft money is that it seems to have distracted Rubio's campaign from sufficiently organizing in key primary states. Among the early primaries, it is hard to pick one for Rubio to win, including his home state of Florida, where another switch -- this time favoring bondholders who are among his donors -- threatens to alienate 1 million or so Puerto Ricans.

Despite wide expectations that Sheldon Adelson and his millions would come to Rubio's aid, this has yet to happen, perhaps because Adelson's wife Miriam is reportedly drawn to Ted Cruz. And the relentless Cruz has zeroed in on Rubio as his principal competitor, working overtime to trash him with the base. Even should he be viable after New Hampshire, well before he reaches Florida Rubio could be a dead man walking.

By taking on Trump while the others vacillate, Jeb Bush has newly shown his mettle, and his more effective stump appearances have engendered needed enthusiasm. More than his competitors, he retains a national fundraising and political network which could be reenergized, including in the South, and access to seasoned political talent which could upgrade his campaign. But as suggested by Bush's challenge of Trump to a one-on-one debate, he risks getting bogged down with a master of personal insult, while alienating voters he will need down the road

Another difficulty, Hart suggests, is that too many of these voters already feel that Bush is not their guy. His daunting task is to defy the Zeitgeist in a year when the Republican base treats experience as a curse, persuading them that the qualifications of a successful conservative governor matter in choosing a president.

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But either Rubio or Bush is better positioned than their mainstream rivals. Chris Christie is a first-rate political talent and often fun to watch. His ready-made town hall style gives him a shot to do well in New Hampshire, dealing a serious blow to the other mainstreamers. His focus on the state, and his endorsement by its largest newspaper, have made him the latest target of Trump's attacks. But even if he makes a good showing, where next?

Christie is dragging from New Jersey not just baggage, but boxcars full of it -- the bridge scandal, faltering state finances, plunging approval ratings. In the South he has no discernible stronghold, or even a state that holds out clear promise. And his claim that a stint as US Attorney gives him superior anti-terrorism credentials is more rhetorical than real. All of which increases the danger that his Jersey Boy act will wear very thin very fast.

John Kasich has broad experience in Congress and as a governor, and his "ordinary guy" appeal to common sense makes him a viable New Hampshire-type candidate. But something -- perhaps a tendency toward bumptiousness or a failure to shine in debates -- has kept him stuck in single digits. And common sense is not what the party's angry base wants to hear. It's hard to see what delivers from the southern primaries with a discernible pulse.

And yet the establishment needs one of these men -- and only one -- to dispatch the others and survive past March 5 as a truly plausible alternative to Trump or Cruz. After that the promised land beckons -- Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and, ultimately, California. Assuming that it's not already too late, these states offer a genuine, if belated, chance to change the dynamic of the race.

This prospect would be helped immensely if Trump and Cruz were to cancel each other out through the early primaries. But if Cruz skips New Hampshire and takes his campaign straight to South Carolina, he could precipitate a string of southern victories that deals Trump -- and the establishment's hopes -- a serious blow. And if by March 5 either man -- most likely Cruz-- takes out the other while amassing a significant delegate lead, the establishment's dilemma becomes very dire indeed.

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At that point, even with more promising primaries ahead, every scenario is problematic for the GOP's erstwhile powers that be. Trump may be both uncontrollable and unelectable. While the establishment might more readily choke down the odious Cruz, he, too, would have grave problems in a general election, and those Republicans fastidious enough to look past lower taxes to fitness for office might find themselves gagging. But what delivers them a nominee more to their liking?

Before March, perhaps, alarmed and ultra-wealthy donors will have put money behind advertising in an effort to bring down the two interlopers, most likely through an independent group that prevents their chosen candidate from being labeled as an establishment tool. But query whether big money, in itself, can peel off voters from the tribunes of outrage in such a contrarian year.

And what of the mainstream alternative, should one of the four emerge. Will huge amounts of advertising suffice to overcome the momentum of Cruz or, perhaps, Trump? With what message does this white knight prevail? How does he distinguish himself as more inclusive and broadly appealing, and yet attract the support of the GOP's ever so restive base? How does he beat back Trump or Cruz without alienating their supporters?

And then there is the Hail Mary of desperate scenarios -- resuscitating Romney, or conjuring a fresher face in Ryan. While labeling this a 100-1 long shot, Hart can imagine an uprising of GOP senators and congressmen unwilling to follow Cruz or Trump off the electoral cliff. In that event, Hart believes that Ryan, not Romney, would be broadly acceptable to conservatives.

But either man would face the same difficulties as a mainstreamer propped up by establishment money -- worse, perhaps, in that the intervention of either could excite a counter reaction. Neither, even if successful, would be guaranteed to hold the party together. And what of the increased risk that one of the thwarted candidates, like Trump, would mount a third-party challenge lethal to the GOP's chances?

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For a preview of what our country might look like if Donald Trump had his way, let's go back to 1942 Oregon.

In Seaside, the Signal reported in April 1942: "Seaside's Lone Japanese leaves for Hood River."



"Mason Akiyama, Seaside's lone Japanese national and a resident of Seaside for the past 20 years, left with his family late Saturday night for Hood River, where he will meet other members of his family and join them as evacuees under the order evacuating enemy aliens from the Pacific coast," the Signal wrote.

Akiyama was the proprietor of the Red Gate Curio shop.

Akiyama had been in the United States for about 20 years, the Signal wrote. "His father has been in the United States for about 35 years and his mother for nearly as long. Mrs. Akiyama was born in the United States. Their children were born there and attended Seaside schools."

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Akiyama's wife and two children had already left Seaside to live with his parents, who ran an orchard near the Hood River.

"Eventually, however they will have to move still further inland and he had made no plans for the second move, anticipated within a few weeks," the 1942 Signal reported.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt had ordered the evacuation of all Japanese Americans to internment camps. Hood River not only had a sizable Japanese population, but when internment of Japanese Americans began, became a hub for rail traffic to camps throughout the West.

Evacuation of 111,000 people was completed by Aug. 12, 1942 to 10 inland camps. Each block contained about 20 barracks, and each barrack housed five to seven families. There was a shortage of toilets, showers, curfews, 100-degree temperatures and biting scorpions. Sentries in towers held watch with searchlights over families.

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In the weeks in Seaside before Akiyama was sent to Mount Hood and points beyond, he was busy packing up stock, storing some goods in Portland, while former competitors and shop owners in Seaside purchased additional items.

Not until Dec. 18, 1944, did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that loyal citizens cannot be held in detention camps against their will.

The Mount Hood Cultural Center and Museum has a monument to these Japanese Americans, and an exhibit in their honor. After the war, in 1945, Hood River Valley Japanese Americans were finally permitted to return to their farms and homes. But only 186 out of 462 pre-war Japanese Americans returned to the Hood River Valley by the following year.

As for Mason Akiyama, from records,it does not appear that he ever returned to Seaside.

There is a record of a Mason Akiyama who died in Salt Lake City in 1985 at the age of 81.

In Cannon Beach, Elaine Trucke of the Cannon Beach Museum and History Center said historians have determined more than 100 Japanese Americans lived in Clatsop County in 1940. Of those 60 people were interned first at the Portland Assembly Center, and then sent on to either Tule Lake or Minidoka internment camps.

In years to come, the internment of Japanese Americans became a source of national shame. Even while more than 100,000 citizens were in camps, many Japanese Americans served our nation valiantly, including the formation of a combat team by FDR himself. Despite the incongruity of his order on the camps, Roosevelt said, "The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of mind and heart. Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry."

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By the end of the war, 2,355 second-generation Japanese, or Nisei, from the camps entered the U.S. armed forces. They served with Military Intelligence Service as linguists, translators and interrogators and, "would become the eyes and ears of the Allied forces." By the end of the war, Nisei linguists in the South Pacific had translated two million documents with more than 20 million pages, interrogated 14,000 Japanese prisoners, and worked with front-line troops in every Pacific campaign."

General Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur's chief of staff for intelligence, said these soldiers "shortened the war by two years."

"Never before in history," General MacArthur said, did one army know so much concerning its enemy prior to actual engagement as did the American army during most of the Pacific campaign."

If Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's words on the segregation and isolation of Americans of Islamic faith chill us today, it is because they resonate with the worst of human instincts throughout history.

Mason Akiyama had done no wrong, committed no crime. Substitute "Muslims" for Japanese and we will soon find ourselves casting out our neighbors, including those who valiantly served their nation. If 9/11 should have taught us anything, it is that blind national rage is far worse than sound international policy.

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Troubling Emails Show Rahm's Office Knew They Had A Big Problem With Laquan Video

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 4, 2016 7:40PM



Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens as Interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante addresses changes in training and procedures. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Mayor's Office formally wished the city of Chicago a happy new year with a ream of emails showing that Rahm Emanuel knew just how bad the release of the Laquan McDonald video could be, long before its release.

On New Year's Eve, Emanuel's office released over 3,000 pages of emails, some of them heavily redacted, that showed how they were scrambling to respond to the release of the video, as well as subsequent protests over McDonalds death at the hands of police.

Despite Emanuels assertion he hadnt seen the video before the election, emails show that top aides for the mayor knew details of the shooting back in December 2014, and communicated regularly with the Chicago Police Department and the Independent Police Review Authority. Then-IPRA head Scott Ando sent a message to Janey Rountree, deputy chief of staff for public safety, with a link to a statement from the Invisible Institute demanding the release of the video of the shooting. In the days following, emails show several mayoral aides communicating back and forth about a response to that piece, along with other inquiries from reporters, including Mary Mitchell from the Sun-Times.

Should I defer her to IPRA as well, or provide some sort of statement? wrote Deputy Director of Communications Adam Collins to the CPD Director of News Affairs, in reference to Mitchells inquiry regarding the statement from the Invisible Institute.

Documents also show lawyers for City Hall believed a lawsuit from the McDonald family was nearly certain. "I have again asked our lawyers to be on the lookout for a complaint in that matter and to notify us immediately if and when a complaint is filed, wrote attorney Steve Patton to Emanuels staff. In a letter to the citys law department when a settlement was first demanded by the McDonald family, attorneys wrote of how impactful the video would be:

I submit the graphic dash cam video will have a powerful impact on any jury and the Chicago community as a whole. This case will undoubtedly bring a microscope of national attention to the shooting itself, as well as the Citys pattern, practice, and procedures in rubber stamping fatal police shootings of African Americans as justified.

During the settlement discussions, city lawyers asked about McDonalds past, writing:





Was Laquan associated with any street gangs? Was Laquans family/supporting adults aware that (he) was charged with numerous narcotics offenses, battery, resisting, obstructing, reckless conduct, agg. Battery to a peace officer, assault, alcohol, to minor offenses?

Shortly after the settlement agreement was reached, Collins crafted a statement for Ando. Collins said though, that the city was not involved with the IPRA investigation, telling the Sun-Times last week that coordinating with City agencies on press statements is completely separate from IPRAs independent investigative work.

Communications directly to and from Emanuel, who is referred to as MRE or REMOC, were scant, with many just containing simple press briefings. In addition to keeping abreast of what media had been reporting about the McDonald case and other related stories involving the Chicago Police, the mayors staff along with CPD regularly communicated about the numerous protests Chicago has seen in the past months, often sending each other links to social media postings about them.

You can view the documents in seven separate PDFs from Chicago Tonight. Additionally, Streetsblog Chicagos Steve Vance coordinated a crowdsourced document annotating the emails here.
From city halls around the country to Washington, DC, and other world capitals, lawmakers and regulators lately have come under intense pressure to regulate upstart Internet market platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, UpCounsel, and Heal, as they rapidly transform entire sectors of the economy by providing simple and elegant new ways for buyers and sellers to connect and do business online.

Uber's market capitalization has now skyrocketed higher than the annual revenues of the entire U.S. taxi industry, and Airbnb's value is almost on par with that of hospitality titans such as Hilton and Marriott, so it comes as little surprise that a loose coalition of advocacy groups and aggrieved incumbents have protested the disruption they are causing. Against this backdrop, the kneejerk reaction for some policymakers may be to rein in the Internet upstarts with specially tailored regulations. But if lawmakers take time to carefully sort through the facts, they will find that existing statutes give regulators all the power they need to oversee the new generation of companies powering the so-called "gig economy" -- and piling on would do more harm than good.

The first thing to understand about these new Internet platforms is that they create enormous value for buyers and sellers of all sorts. By making it easier for people to find potential mates, handymen, rides, customers, or product reviews, they significantly lower the cost of goods and services and increase convenience. By eliminating market barriers for would-be service providers and vendors, they create economic opportunities and give people ways to fully utilize their capital without spending a lot on advertising. And by allowing users to rate providers (and vice versa), they provide real-time quality control.

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In some respects, this is an entirely new phenomenon--and yet the regulatory issues raised by Internet market platforms like Google, Facebook, and Uber are not very different from those posed by more traditional companies. Critics variously contend the newcomers exercise monopoly powers, take undue liberties with consumers' data, and take advantage of workers by making them independent contractors rather than employees. But to the extent any of this is true (and much of it isn't), the circumstances have little to do with the fact that the companies in question are Internet market platforms, so singling them out would be unjustified and unwise as a policy matter.

When it comes to competition, the truth is that for all their size, Internet marketplaces generally find it difficult to turn their large market shares into unfair market power. That's because they exist to bring two or more sides of a market together. Any attempt to increase prices or degrade quality on one side of the equation might drive away users on all sides of the market, thereby threatening market share. In fact, there is a reason big market platforms like Facebook usually have to let people use their services for free. It is that their ability to charge sellers (including advertisers) is heavily dependent on how many users they have, and both buyers and sellers usually have other routes of finding each other online if prices increase too much.

With regard to data and privacy, Internet market platforms are just like any other company that gathers and analyzes customer and market information to reduce costs, increase sales, and improve customer service--and they are better practiced than most at keeping that kind of data safe and secure. In any event, agencies like the Federal Trade Commission already have significant powers to police the marketplace and take action when companies fall short of their obligations.

Existing laws also give regulators power to protect workers on Internet market platforms from obvious problems such as nonpayment, dangerous work conditions, discrimination, or abusive practices. To be sure, those laws largely reflect the workplace as it existed from the 1930s to the 1960s rather than the one that has been emerging over the last decade. The assumption has been that individual workers are generally employees while independent contractors are usually businesses that can take care of themselves. We need to modernize labor laws so companies and other organizations can help individual contractors purchase insurance, file their taxes, and set aside savings without destroying the flexibility of new work arrangements.

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Let's face it, many of the calls for regulation are coming from bricks-and-mortar incumbents who simply don't like the competition from these upstarts. Indeed, Internet marketplaces have generated the most opposition where they compete with heavily regulated or taxed industries. In some cases, the new entrants do operate under more favorable rules. This is usually because government has used regulation to restrict entry or raises prices, or both. For example, taxi regulations often reflect the interests of cab owners who want to restrict the number of new drivers. The result has often been higher prices and worse service, especially late at night or in minority neighborhoods.
Dear Corporate America,

I know what you say about us millennials. We have no loyalty, no work ethic, and all we care about is ourselves.

We're dependent on our parents, and we're entitled narcissists because we received too many participation trophies as children.

I'm guilty of some of these things. At age 25, I still live with my parents and so do a lot of my friends. Frankly, I like that I don't have to spend half my paycheck on rent and can spend it on traveling instead. And I like recognition for my work, which I guess is in some sense a participation trophy. But the fact that we have no work ethic and no loyalty to the workplace? That is where you're wrong.

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Sean Lyons, co-editor of Managing the New Workforce: International Perspectives on the Millennial Generation says,

This generation has the highest likelihood of having unmet expectations with respect to their careers and the lowest levels of satisfaction with their careers at the stage that they're at. It is sort of a crisis of unmet expectations.

The point isn't to complain about the lazy millennials quitting their jobs left and right. Rather, the question to ask here is WHY? Why are we so dissatisfied?

I, amongst many millennials, quit my job that made me miserable. I quit because I was tired of canceling plans, begging to take my vacation time, being micromanaged by multiple people, and having virtually nothing to show for my efforts. I quit because I value lunch breaks, education, hobbies, and travel in addition to working. But work was all or nothing. And the saddest part in all of this is that I'm not alone. Friends of mine have left all types of jobs from a variety of companies - everything from small agencies to giant tech companies. And they all cited one of these reasons.

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Corporate America - you might think we're entitled, but maybe we're just utterly disappointed. It's not that we're lazy. It's that we want our work to mean something. We want the opportunity to contribute our ideas because we have some good ones. We want to be innovative - to make the rules, change the rules, and break the rules. We want to make mistakes and learn from them. We want to matter - not just so we can go home and say, "work can't survive without me." No. We want to make a difference - to use our expertise as digital natives and channel it into something great. Why else do you think there are so many startups out there? Why do you think so many millennials are choosing to work at startups over the large corporations?

We don't want to be told that we can't contribute ideas because this is how things have always been. We don't want to hear that we have to cancel our plans three times a week because of a work "emergency." And we don't want to hear that we can't take vacation time because work is just too busy.

At the end of the day, we want two things: flexibility and opportunity. Give us the opportunity to innovate and lead. Be flexible, and let us determine what works best for our work style. The future I see is one that allows me to seamlessly incorporate my work into my life and my life into my work. It sounds far-fetched and idealistic, I know. But idealism is another great trait of our generation.

Dear Corporate America, we're the next CEOs, senators, and world leaders. We're here to stay. Give us a chance and don't stifle our ideas. You might like what you see.

This post originally appeared on Passport & Plates.
Dozens of Malaysian protesters shout slogans during a demonstration against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), which they claim will hurt the Malaysian people, as the 27th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit takes place in Kuala Lumpur on November 21, 2015. Malaysia is among signatories to the 12-country, US-sponsored Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The twelve countries recently agreed to US President Barack Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, and the US pledged to boost security assistance to its ally the Philippines, which is in a confrontation with China over maritime territory. AFP PHOTO / ADEK BERRY (Photo credit should read ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images)

How do you tell if the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a good deal or a bad one?

Consider the recent climate summit agreement in Paris. Nearly 200 countries negotiated the deal, more or less in public for the world to see.

All signatory countries wanted a sustainable planet where their citizens could prosper.

The climate change deal in Paris is not air-tight. Still, it is a significant political, social and moral commitment by leaders of most countries in the world to do better.

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TPP defines bad rules for globalization. It sets up skewed power relationships for dealing with climate change, inequality and many other important public policies.

Labor and environment show how power relationships work in trade deals.

Going back to NAFTA, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) enforces labor and environmental provisions in trade deals. The U.S.-Peru trade agreement was a high point in language for environmental protections. However, the World Bank estimates that 80% of logging in Peru is Illegal. The USTR has never enforced environmental protections in Peru or anywhere else.

What about labor? First, what ARE the labor protections? No child labor, no forced labor, the right to form unions, no discrimination for religion, race, country of birth. By modern standards, we take these basic human rights for granted. Didn't we win these fights generations ago?

We have trade deals with Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru, where labor standards are at the level of life-and-death. Guatemala is arguably the most dangerous country in the world for labor leaders. Violence against workers in Colombia is still common.

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Last year, a jaw-dropping and sobering performance from our negotiators lowered trust in the USTR close to zero.

On May 8, 2015, President Obama spoke at Nike in Oregon about labor rights. Irony aside, the speech was eloquent and inspiring.

And if Vietnam, or any of the other countries in this trade agreement don't meet these requirements, they'll face meaningful consequences. ... If you're a country that wants in to this agreement, you have to meet higher standards. If you don't, you're out. If you break the rules, there are actual repercussions.

Four days later, the Senate approved language saying that all countries in any new trade agreement must meet basic standards for human trafficking. As it happens, six of the 12 TPP countries have serious problems with human trafficking. Of the six, only Malaysia failed to meet the Senate's standard for inclusion in TPP.

Two weeks after the Senate vote, shocking press reports from Malaysia described mass graves, bodies showing signs of torture and 28 camps where refugees were held in pens for human trafficking. This was the second large-scale discovery of mass graves on the Thai-Malaysia border that month. More reports followed.

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The Prime Minister of Malaysia is suspected of corruption in a $700 million investigation in the U.S. and other countries. Official corruption extends into human trafficking and jungle camps.

The USTR and Obama administration could have put meaning into the President's lofty promise at Nike. They could have said, "Malaysia is out of TPP. When Malaysia deals effectively with human trafficking, they can dock into TPP like any other country."

Instead, on July 27, the official U.S. government upgraded its ranking of Malaysia regarding human trafficking, without explanation or justification. Presto! Malaysia is qualified to stay in the TPP.

President Obama's eloquence at Nike will be cold comfort to Rohingya refugees in Malaysia and Thailand who are sold from one human trafficker to another. Similar glowing promises for labor standards, going back to Gerald Ford, are lost on the families of murdered labor leaders in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru.

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The power relationships in TPP will be great for factories in Vietnam, where 90,000 workers make Nike's shoes. TPP will be great for Hewlett-Packard, Intel, AMD, Dell, Apple and other electronics producers, who use components from Malaysia, where 28% of workers in the electronics industry are subject to forced labor. Producers of palm oil, textiles, and garments in Malaysia can continue to use child labor.

Thailand and Indonesia want to join TPP, alongside reports of official complicity in 21st century slavery in their fishing industries.

It's clear that the Obama administration has no real interest in enforcing labor or environmental laws. It's shameful to promise 21st century standards, then accept conditions in Malaysia, Vietnam, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, and Brunei as global norms.

So, what is the difference between the Paris Climate Summit and TPP?

Significantly, China is racing to capture wind and solar energy. Developing countries see energy policy as their must-have connection to future prosperity.

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A generation of voters and activists followed the open public process for negotiating the Paris agreement. They could see themselves and their interests reflected in the deal.

Inequality is another overriding global issue. President Obama made inequality a defining challenge of our time.

As we take on climate change and income inequality as global issues, we see that TPP is worse than a step in the wrong direction. TPP locks in toxic power relationships that will block positive change for a generation or two.

TPP was negotiated in secret, keeping civil society at arms length. TPP clearly reflects interests of global investors, defining a version of globalization "of, by, and for the 1%."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said we should start over with a new paradigm for trade policy. She and many others would support a deal that does as much for workers and the environment as it does for global investors. That's exactly what we should do.
Just before Christmas, the former CEO of Iceland's Glitnir bank and two other senior bankers were sentenced to jail terms of up to five years for market manipulation and breach of fiduciary duties. This brings the total number of senior Icelandic bankers so far sentenced for crimes in the run-up to the 2008 banking crash to 29.

By contrast not a single senior banking executive in the US or the UK has been jailed for their role in the financial crisis. Whilst banks - such as the five found to be rigging the Libor rate - have been hit with substantial fines, the individual bankers behind the fraud, market rigging and irresponsible lending that led to the economic meltdown have all avoided time behind bars.

On top of this came news last week that Britain's financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, has shelved a planned inquiry into the culture of banking. Whilst this inquiry was never going to hold the guilty to account, it was hoped that it might at least provide a level of transparency and analysis to help shape more rigorous future regulation.

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The clearest example of why such regulation and cultural change are essential in the banking and beyond, presented to me some years ago, and in an unexpected way. I was at a weekend music festival, in a sunny field talking with friends outside a double-decker cider bus when my eye was drawn to a boy who could not have been older than ten. He was hanging around a nearby table surreptitiously eyeing-up a full but unattended pint. After glancing around to check no one was looking, he picked up the drink. But instead of indulging in a bout of underage binge drinking, the little tyke emptied it onto the grass beneath the table.

This may appear to be strange behaviour but in an attempt to be environmentally friendly this festival, like many others, offered a small refund on plastic glasses. At 10 pence the refund did not provide incentive enough for most adults to return their glasses, hence the festival was filled with battalions of children weaving through the crowds, their wobbly stacks of plastics protruding like glistening shark fins.

Whilst the activities of these mini-entrepreneurs, eschewing face-painting in a field or story-telling in a yurt in favor of earning hard cash, may be dismissed as a harmless if depressing sign of the times, the actions of the boy at the cider bus offer something more.

I'm sure that there was nothing inherently bad about the boy. He had not grown up in a moral vacuum and was perfectly aware that what he was doing was wrong. He almost certainly did not begin the day tipping out full pints of cider. Instead, he probably set out that morning collecting empty glasses with rosy-cheeked enthusiasm. But as the day went on he became more avaricious and his boundaries began to shift. It is this shift in moral boundaries and the circumstances under which it happens that hold the key to understanding where societies go wrong.

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By pouring away someone else's 4 pint in order to get 10p in his pocket, the boy was displaying the same instincts as the bankers who maximised their profits, heedless of the damage being caused to the global financial system. He was showing the same motivation of those working for big corporations that exploit our planet's natural resources regardless of environmental and human costs. He was showing the same behaviour of governments who prop up brutal dictators, sell arms to the highest bidder or wage wars of aggression for the sake of power and profit.

This is not to say this boy had somehow taken his lead from those around him or that the corruption at the top our society mysteriously trickles down. Instead, it illustrates how the baser elements of human nature will emerge and flourish in certain conditions. The conditions in this case are an unregulated free-market within a materialistic, consumer-driven culture. For bankers, risky sales were incentivised with enormous bonuses, and bad debt was insured against with credit default swaps.

Like the boy, the bankers thought they could get away with it. And like the boy, the bankers - other than those in Iceland - were right.

If I could step back in time I wish I had acted more swiftly. I wish I had confronted that boy outside the cider bus and told him that the pint he had just tipped away was mine. I would have liked to have seen his shame at being caught and his discomfort at having to hand over four of his hard-earned pound coins. Perhaps he might have learned a valuable lesson. Instead, he skipped off across the field looking for someone else's pint of scrumpy to pour away.
The iconic bookstore of Santorini is facing extinction but the people who have supported it throughout the years are not ready to lose the battle. Who is going to help them win it?

The sun has almost set over Santorini's caldera and everyone hanging out at the Atlantis Books terrace is pulling out their jackets and shawls to cover up against what seems to be the first evening chills of September in Greece. Every now and then, squeals of literary joy climb up from the bookshop's basement or some line slips out of a poem and hangs for a while in the air, while the reader's voice lowers again to a light murmur.

This is the 2015 Caldera Arts & Literature Festival, organized by Atlantis Books, the iconic bookshop of Oia, Santorini, that has gained international attention and acclaim, both for its eclectic collection of books and for the story and the vision behind its creation. The festival has been held yearly since 2011, bringing together both Greek and foreign writers and musicians, to create a varied cultural mix that doesn't fail to attract tourists and locals alike.

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"We love to put our time to good use, by doing things that matter" says Viviana Miliaresi who has been on the festival's organizing team since 2013. "This festival goes a long way toward reinforcing Oia's cultural identity and it is one of the very few literary festivals to be held in Greece nowadays. And I find this to be very important, especially under the current social and financial and cultural circumstances".

Earlier in this year's festival, Greek writer Auguste Corteau shared his experience of the Iowa Writers' workshop, along with family stories of bipolar disorder and coming out as gay. In their joint talk, writers Soti Triantafyllou and Amanda Michalopoulou discussed friendship, forgiveness, extraversion in literary writing and why it is so hard for Greeks to be translated abroad. David Sedaris read some of his hilarious short stories that are going to be published soon, while musicians Ross Daly and Julian Gargiulo delivered their live performances in the Panigirospito cultural hub of Oia.

On this evening of September 13, four Greek poets are here to recite on a one (or two)-to-one basis some randomly chosen poem or work of prose by Constantine Cavafy, one of Greece's most famous and beloved and insightful poets. And we are waiting, somewhat anxiously, for our turn.The readings, which have been organized under the auspices of the Onassis' Foundation, are happening both inside and above the main store, with people leafing through books and asking one another "what did they read to you?" and then googling their newfound love of an excerpt, in order to have it available in times of need.Later, when the readings come to their reluctant end, everyone will prepare to meet the former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, who has been, until now, largely unknown to the Greek public but is now awaited, in this guerrilla literary hub, with a noteworthy excitement that sweeps readers and fellow writers alike.

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For now, though, seated in front of our poet/reader, we ask him to choose a poem of his liking, experts of Cavafy as we aren't. He picks The Ships, a piece of prose on the difficulties and the perils of the writing journey.

From Imagination to the Blank Page. A difficult crossing, the waters dangerous. At first sight the distance seems small, yet what a long voyage it is, and how injurious sometimes for the ships that undertake it.

His choice is apt.

The story of the Atlantis

Located in the basement of one of Santorini's white houses, Atlantis Books was founded in 2004 by a group of young American and European book lovers who happened to find themselves stranded in Oia with no more books to read and no bookstore to buy them either. The story has it that Craig Walzer and Oliver Wise first conceived the idea of the Atlantis bookstore after a few too many glasses of wine and managed to pull it off mainly because they persuaded four of their friends to join them before realizing what they were getting themselves into.

Over the next few years, the bookstore became a main staple of the Santorini experience, a point of reference for young and not-so-young enthusiasts with big dreams and seemingly unrealistic visions, and an international media favourite. Through hard lessons and mishaps, months of fundraising, sleeping on beds incorporated into the hand-made bookshelves and managing a never-ending rotation of employees from all over the world, who were eager to come and work (and live) for a few months in a Shakespeare & Co-inspired bookstore in a remote Greek island, Craig and his friends managed to build a business that not only met their dreams but probably exceeded them.

They even created Paravion Press, a home-run publishing house that both satisfies the founders' literary obsessions and provides an additional revenue stream indispensable to the business. Paravion was built around the idea that "the future of books lies in looking at books as works of art" and has given birth to a host of artful publications that are a joy to leaf through. Along with those, Atlantis features a great collection of literature, poetry, translated Greek works and also rare gems, such as a Grapes of Wrath first edition and an original T.S. Eliot copy to boot.

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Up until recently, you could also find among them a 10,000 euros The Great Gatsby first edition, which Luke, one of the original Atlantis' founders, who now lives in Bologna with his wife and two kids, had bought for 2 euros in an Athens flea market. Luke had been keeping the book as seed capital for a bookstore he wanted to open in Italy, but then he decided to offer it as a gift to Craig, under one condition: he would only use it to contribute towards the - still unofficial - investment and crowdfunding campaign to build an artists' residency, which the Caldera Festival is also part of, and which is planned as the next stage in the evolution of the Atlantis venture.

A modern struggle

This isn't he first time that the Atlantis team has turned to crowdfunding: In 2011, they raised 40.000 USD through a two-month Indiegogo campaign which was organized in order for the owners to meet needs such as "overdue renovations to the shop interior, the transformation of our terrace into a flexible retail and performance space and the buying of fresh stock of unique books that will help solidify our niche as a purveyor of the fine volumes and small press gems from around the world". Some of the collected funds went towards organizing the first version of what is now the Caldera Arts & Literature Festival.

"Raising these funds is imperative to the survival of the shop and if we fall short, we do not expect to be able to open our blue doors for another season in Oia" stated the owners then. "We are asking for a lot of money because we only want to ask once. Less than this and we would be in the same position next winter."

Thankfully, four winters and summers have passed since then, with the bookstore continuing to attract tourists through its steady, if eclectic, flow of English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and, sparingly, Greek books, and engaging the locals through an interesting stream of art events, literary festivals and workshops for kids and adults alike, that inject the community with a much needed dose of culture and inspiration.

For the Atlantis crew, giving back to the community has been one of the main pillars of their mission, even before the shop was officially established in Oia. The active and eager involvement of the residents (who make up about 10% of the shop's customer base) and especially of Father Nicholaos, the priest of the local parish, to the organization of the Caldera Festival, serves as a testament to the value that the community itself ascribes to the store, its concept and its activities.

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Throughout this time, Walzer, the only one of the original founders who still works in the shop, being now, in effect, its sole owner, has continued to live as he did at the beginning of the Atlantis journey: during the medium- and high- season, he sleeps in the store, along with the junior interns and employees and has taken no salary whatsoever, apart from a modest daily stipend for his living expenses. During winter, he sustains himself through projects that he's running in other parts of the world.

It is no surprise, then, that by the end of 2014, Walzer was pondering on the idea of creating a writers' and artists' residency in Santorini, which would work as a collective and would hopefully become "the coolest artists' residency in Europe", when disaster struck: the owner of the picturesque cave house that has accommodated the Atlantis bookstore since 2005 came in with the news that he was ready to sell the property to someone else.

Although no legal documents have yet gone around regarding this sale, the owner claimed that he had secured a 1,000,000 euro deal for the building. Realizing what this loss would mean for the business, Walzer immediately suggested a deal: would the owner be willing to sell the property to them, if they managed to secure the same amount of money by the fall of 2015? The guy replied that he would, signalling the start of a fundraising race that is going to decide the future of Atlantis.

As part of the race, along with his own personal savings, which he is willing to invest towards the store buyout and the setup of the artists' residence, and the 10,000 that came from The Great Gatsby sale, Walzer also decided to tap into this year's festival allure in order to raise awareness around the Atlantis' struggle.

According to his estimates, for the building to be bought out and the business to be kept sustainable (and, hopefully, also expandable), any crowdfunding campaign held from within the US, will have to raise $1,500,000, which will go towards the cost of buying out the bookstore building and paying off the IRS tax that will be imposed on the campaign revenue.

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Why do we care?

What if Atlantis fails to secure the money it needs? Even Walzer isn't sure about how much more time and money and energy he can invest in this venture, however much he loves it. Trying to secure a new location for the store would be hugely problematic, cost-, logistics- and discoverability-wise.

But does it really matter? Is it actually important for a mainly foreign-language bookstore to exist on a Greek island? Is it even realistic for a traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore to thrive in a place of indescribable natural beauty and wild touristic development, where people usually come to enjoy more sunsets than books, more wine than stories, more custom-set wedding photographs than real cultural adventures? Who is going to miss Atlantis if it gets, indeed, lost?

"I don't mean to sound boastful, but we have indeed become a landmark for the area" says Walzer. And, all things considered, he doesn't sound boastful, he sounds about right: In a rather paradoxical way, through its sheer existence and of course through its commendable work in favor of the Santorini community, throughout the year, Atlantis manages to be both an actual pole of attraction and a balancing force to the touristy character of the place.

Walzer, in fact, loves to recite stories of tourists who have left their mark at the shop, in their own different ways. "I could tell you about the time I stamped a girl's actual Hong Kong Passport with the bookshop stamp - only after a very long and serious back-and-forth asking "are you sure this won't land you in prison?" And I could tell you about the fact that it's still funny to watch Italians come in to the shop - they're always the most fun customers, and the most complimentary about the shop ("Che bello! Complimenti!") and then I wait to see their faces turn like they've smelled something awful when they notice the super-cheesy Silvio Berlusconi autobiography I've strategically placed on the shelves for exactly this purpose, to enjoy watching them see it and make funny horrified noises and expressions ("O dio!"). Or about the man who had read about us in China and walked in speaking no English and presented us with a beautiful paper-cut good luck charm, without a further word. Or the quiet girl from Australia who had a day to spare and told us she'd paint a bird for us if we gave her a couch to sleep on that night, and we wound up with the gorgeous Kingfishers painted on our courtyard wall, or the Korean man who looked at our twin oscillating fans pumping air through the shop last August, and smiled and laughed as he exclaimed, "I designed those!". That's the best of tourism coming together with the best of bookstores. The familiar and the foreign - the world coming together in a very small good way."

And that is to say that, international tourist anecdotes aside, Atlantis Books stands for something much bigger, both for the local people and for the world at large. Its story serves as a standout for ethical business, for working hard in order to keep your castles in the clouds alive, for doing your best within a country that often punishes difference, creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit. One of the store's interns once put it this way:

I had always held the assumption that business was essentially a Darwinian struggle to best competition, while fending off would be predators, in order to vie for the business of customers. The bookshop however operates on an entirely different paradigm. Most notably for me is the complete lack of adversaries it inspires. The island locals are proud and grateful for the store, especially since they can find books in Greek. The tourists are delighted at the unexpected opportunity to refresh their travel reading, or take home a colorful coffee table book. The surrounding business are happy the bookshop does its part to attract people to the area, while not directly competing with them. The people working the store like myself are grateful for the opportunity to stay in such a beautiful location with inspiring company. And of course the owners are happy the store is performing all the above functions, as well as being profitable for them. In short the bookstore improves the lives of everyone it touches.

Cavafy, on the other hand, could have put it thus:
What do you do when ugliness invades your workplace? How about at home or in the public square? Whether it is a disagreeable co-worker, an irate customer or the heaviness of negativity in general, finding those things that yield life and joy can help get you through.

Having just closed out 2015, the 70th anniversary marking the end of the Second World War, it does us good to reflect on the lives of several courageous people who, though imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, were able to appreciate light and life in the midst of darkness and death. The threads that connect their resilience and ability to find meaning in affliction and hope in despair set them apart and teach us valuable lessons for finding beauty in adversity anywhere.

Take Gerda Klein, for example. I first heard about Klein when reading Futureville by Skye Jethani. Klein was one of two thousand girls held at a Nazi work camp in Grunberg. Even though death lurked around every corner, life sprang up all around in the form of flowers. Klein references a courtyard filled with beds of roses and tulips, describing the place of her captivity as,

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"cruelty set against a background of beauty."

Every morning, the ladies would make their way across the courtyard to work in the factory. One day, they spotted a crocus newly in bloom, piercing through a crack in the concrete. Klein noted how hundreds of feet shuffled around to avoid trampling the crocus that day. The preservation of its life was a measure of love and an exercise of free will. As best they could, they chose life and to show love instead of hatred.

Looking to nature as a source of beauty is not uncommon. Marian Lamprecht, a Polish Catholic arrested as a teenager for photographing a German soldier, fixed his gaze upon nature for freedom. Lamprecht, too, was kept in a Nazi labor camp. Though he was encircled by fences, the birds he would admire all the days of his life could fly freely and soar above the injustice below.

As a young man, Lamprecht vowed that he would do all he could to preserve their freedom and at times, risked his own to keep the vow he made. Throughout his life of 100 years, Lamprecht made it his business to see to the needs of his feathered friends. He considered the birds to be symbols of hope. For us, the birds and their freedom stand in stark contrast to the oppression Lamprecht and so many others experienced as captives over seventy years ago.

Lastly, we come to the fleas of Ravensbruck, once the bane but also the blessing of women held in the barracks of a Nazi concentration camp where the Dutch heroine Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were held. Picture being in an overcrowded lodging. Now imagine it infested with fleas. As you might have guessed, Corrie did not see the good in this at first. Her sister Betsie, on the other hand, believed God could use anything for good, even the fleas, going so far as to acknowledge them in her prayers. Grudgingly, Corrie followed suit and thanked God for the fleas also.

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Strangely enough, when other barracks were routinely visited by Nazi guards to assault their inhabitants, the ten Booms barracks was not. Little did they know at the time, but those same fleas deterred the guards from entering the barracks, serving as a barrier between the women and additional harm.

Now, you might be wondering how your workplace situation could even compare to living life on the brink of death. No matter what challenges you're facing, or how heavy your burdens, you can still have hope.

As Jethani says in Futureville, "We all journey through the wilderness of the world with echoes of Eden in our souls." Perhaps this is why humanity has the ability to see beauty in adversity and the capacity to hope, knowing that not all is lost.

Like Gerda, observe the background your career is set against. Admire the roses and tread carefully around the crocuses in your life. Like Marian, treasure freedom and do all you can to protect it. Like Betsie and Corrie, be thankful for the fleas and acknowledge that they serve a purpose. There's a reason for them, whatever your fleas may be.
The State of New York has opened up a new student loan assistance program, "Get On Your Feet," which I'm absolutely positive was created in an effort to help some people who are struggling with student loan payments. But as I sit here studying the initiative I'm left with a furrowed brow. I can see some getting the benefit of a short term reprieve but at a big future cost.

The New York "Get On Your Feet" program "offers up to 24 months of federal student loan debt relief to recent college graduates living in the State," says the governor.

"This program offers that help by supplementing the federal Pay As You Earn loan repayment program and allowing eligible college graduates living in New York State to pay nothing on their student loans for the first two years out of school," says the governor's office.

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On face value the "Get On Your Feet" program looks like a blessing but the huge black hole is what happens to people who simply fall back on income based repayment programs. Anyone considering any such program should absolutely read "Why Income Based Student Loan Payments Can Be a Terrible Trap."

The New York program is open to people who must meet the following criteria:

be a legal resident of NYS and have resided in NYS for 12 continuous months;be a U.S. citizen or eligible non-citizen;

have graduated from a NYS high school or received a NYS high school equivalency diploma;

have earned an undergraduate degree from a college or university located in NYS in or after the 2014-15 academic year;

have earned no higher than a bachelor's degree at the time of application; andapply for this program within two years of receiving an undergraduate degree.

be enrolled in the federal Income Based Repayment plan or Pay as You Earn plan;have a primary work location in NYS, if employed;

have an adjusted gross income of less than $50,000;

be current on all federal or NYS student loans;

be current on the repayment of any NYS award;

be in compliance with the terms of any service condition imposed by a NYS award.

But along with the exploding student loan balance surprise for loans in income based plans, people who jump into the "Get On Your Feet" program need to watch out for the yearly tax liabilities that will ensue. Participants in the program will receive "a 1099 form, issued by the NYS Office of the State Comptroller, reflecting the total loan forgiveness payments made for the tax year." It's just something to be aware of. As a 15 minute application of direct pressure to a wound, the "Get On Your Feet" program can be helpful, but as a tool to really deal with the student loan problem, not so much.

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Keep in mind this program does nothing for holders of private student loan debt. Those folks are still adrift on a raft without a paddle.

Steve Rhode



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If you have a credit or debt question you'd like to ask, just click here and ask away.

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The year closed in an epidemic of fear and displacement. Fear of terror, of violence, of speaking up, of being gunned down -- in church, in the street, in a park, at an office party, in one's own home. Displacement, due to barrel bombs and cluster bombs, terrorist thuggery and the very real threats on multiple continents from dictators clinging to power.

One speaks the truth in such horrific situations at the risk of one's life and family. Those with the courage to do so deserve our admiration and gratitude for striving to make our world more just; those who take in or care for others at risk are models for us all, in their essential humanity.

We can start 2016 by being humane. We can turn the page on the abuse and contempt we've seen on such disgraceful display these last months, by grotesque blowhards and their countless silent assenters.

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At WomenStrong International (WSI), people with great heart and compassion are working in five impoverished urban communities across the globe to address the six essential needs of women and girls -- those in whose well being our world's future resides. Meeting these six essential needs for health, shelter, safety, education, economic empowerment and a functioning urban environment is transformational, in women's agency and in their capacity to advocate for their own interests and those of their families, communities and ultimately, of their nations.

In Kumasi, Ghana, for instance, WomenStrong's consortium partner Women's Health to Wealth (WHW) screened, treated and referred hundreds of market women in 2015 for hypertension, diabetes, breast and cervical cancers and sexually transmitted diseases. Once screened, the women were qualified to join savings groups, attend health workshops and design community improvement projects that they then lead. WHW's 15 Girls' Clubs offer safe places for adolescent girls to go to strengthen their literacy and math skills, learn to handle their own sexual and reproductive health and seek out private health screenings, treatments and answers to questions they won't ask their parents. Women's Health to Wealth is addressing health, education and economic empowerment -- three of women's six essential needs -- in a series of smart, simple interventions that respond to the actual needs of the women and girls on the ground in an inspiring example of women-led programming, where the power of groups is harnessed to move women and girls to the next level of economic development.

In Madurai, India, WomenStrong partner Dhan Foundation also works through the power of groups, starting from the other direction -- with income enhancement as the initial key to individual and community development.

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These self-help groups, or Kalanjiams, and the federations they combine to form, operate as effective change agents wherein participating women can purchase health and life insurance, engage in incremental housing upgrades and build and manage clean, safe community toilets. The federations even campaign against the municipal government's monopoly ownership of liquor stores, which encourage the rampant alcoholism that in turn fuels domestic violence. Adolescent girls are screened, treated and counseled for anemia, endemic in this impoverished population where the girl is generally the last to be fed. Women and girls take workshops in financial literacy, in securing their legal rights to land, property and inheritance, in tailoring and beauty salon work, and in starting and growing small businesses. In Madurai, Dhan Foundation is addressing all six essential needs through the synergy of groups, where women's and girls' voices resound with far greater strength and power.

The same is true for WomenStrong's programs in Kenya, Haiti and Washington, DC, where WSI's partnership with the non-profit Bread for the City in the long-neglected Anacostia neighborhood has engaged nearly 100 mothers who are or have recently been homeless or hungry, victims of domestic violence, in recovery from substance abuse, transition from incarceration or in need of legal or government assistance. The women work with their wellness coordinators on individualized programs of healing; they come together for classes in Tai Chi, yoga and Zumba, computer, financial literacy and job skills, sewing, crocheting, photography and "body-mapping," all to help them come to terms with their personal histories and their communities.

In "Let's Talk" sessions, a self-described "crack mother" and "crack baby" share experiences, empathy and practical tips on where to access needed services; the "crack mother" has since graduated from WomenStrong, is working with Bread for the City as a housing advocate and has encouraged others to join WomenStrong DC, which she credits with her own accelerated recovery and the rediscovery of her own strong voice.
Sitting on a Zen meditation cushion in silence I felt nothing but the energy between us as if there was a cord roping us together.

My sweet, but we're-only-friends new homie invited me to a first silent meditation retreat in 2004.

Silence. Ha.

The communication between us was louder and clear.

I didn't speak, or even look at this friend, but my body could feel exactly where he was in proximity to mine the whole retreat. Electric. Zingy.

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When he peeled me an orange during one deliciously silent lunch, it was like the most sensuous foreplay I'd ever experienced.

Go ahead. Roll your eyes. I do, a bit, when I think of early moments (the majority spent in silence) with my partner of 12 years now.

But these burning motivations got us both to meditation retreat. And retreat. And retreat....



With tapas, the yoga of discipline towards growth, the trick is sometimes to allure our urges for a sweet ride along to fulfillment and higher spiritual ground.

This is the yoga of skillful means.



This is also the yoga of the use of the erotic Audre Lorde speaks of in her work the Use of the Erotic as Power.

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Traditionally, tapas is often equated with asceticism. This is patriarchally, and traditionally described as a negation of sensuality. If you look up tapas, the 3rd niyama, or ethical code, of the 8 limbs of yoga, you immediately see austerity and a turning away from world, self and desires..

Yet at its actual Sanskrit root tap means to burn. We burn with passion. We burn with love. We burn with yearning and longing.



We aren't talking a yoga of denial of the sensual.

So instead of inviting self-criticism or denial, let's turn toward that for which we burn.



We often start the year with big aspirations. We want to feel happy, be healthy.

Sometimes we have great resolutions. They stick for a week or two, often fade. Or we've gotten so disillusioned with others and ourselves for not keeping resolutions by now that we don't make them at all.



Either way, the yogic teaching of tapas offers powerful transformation of the self at the New Year or anytime.





New years resolutions are really about drive, intention and growth. But we are playing this human game. For us, intention is almost never pure. And if something doesn't feel great, it's almost never lasting.

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Tapas is the very first word of the second chapter in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Here, it literally means "actions, techniques or tools of yoga." This tapas is action. Training the senses and body. Asana, pranayama and sitting meditation are the most common types of tapas we can practice.

But there are more sides to the coin of tapas.

Tapas is used differently in ch 2:32, as part of the 8-fold path- where it is the third of five of the niyamas- or inner codes of the yogi.



Here, it means more than just practice. Tapas is a way of life. It is lifestyle that is ardent, devoted, disciplined, passionate and fiery.



It's the yoga of doing what we love. What sets us alight. Burns with pleasure.

"I met the love of my life at a monastery" sounds like a contradiction. How can we be both ascetic and amorous?

In chapter 2 section 43 of the Yoga Sutras Patanjali says through training of the senses we can gain mastery of the body, senses and actions in the world. By uniting our human drives with our drive for higher spiritual aims we sometimes get farther with both.

The heart and soul burn for union with another. For union with the self.



We can use tapas to burn towards growth. We can unite the spiritual and erotic. Elevating the spiritual to a realm of whole, sensual and exciting exploration.

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In a feminist yoga, one that includes the body and the senses, denying nothing, there is no dichotomy between the spiritual and the sensual. Tapas - burning desire- can be that bridge to intimate connection with all of ourself.

It's the yoga our bodies know organically. It's this Mary Oliver speaks of when she says "Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. . . "

Take the story of my meditative mixed motivations.

I've done yoga and meditated for 12 years pretty much everyday now. Spent close to 2 cumulative years in silent or mindfulness retreat.

Though I dearly love my partner, it's no longer chemistry between us that gets me to my mat or cushion.

The motivation started erotically...but now passion burns for the benefits practice gives me. It's part of my life. It's what I burn for.

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Tapas is fiery, passionate discipline. Not focus towards aims that harm others or ourselves, but the kind of presence that gets us to our cushion, our yoga class, our lovers, our prayers or ritual practice. However we get there is winning at this human game.

The kind of discipline that invites connection to soul, self, love, higher power- the power within.



Urge to be better, more, higher, greater. More.

Be the best of ourselves. Never shame, guilt or hate on ourselves.

Heat is generated from the friction of striving towards something different. Of striving to grow. With love. Working against habit. Burning new pathways.

Doing something new. A sensual inspiring experience.

Heat can be built also simply by being still.



So follow your fire this New Year.

Forget resolutions.

Go for what you burn for.

And if it's something higher, ride the urges to get you along that path towards growth.

This is the tapas of yoga's skillful fire in action. Forget resolutions - feel the yogic fire of desire. Follow it fully. Towards unfoldment.

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And who knows... we might just fall in love. We definitely will with ourselves.

Certainly, our meditations and yoga classes just got a lot more interesting.

This is the progression of yoga's natural unfoldment that unifies us with self and other through deep passionate union.

Let me know how it goes....

Burn on,

Susanna

If you are interested in developing your practice deeper, I work with individuals 1 on 1 in distance-learning custom curated yoga programs as well as in-person for Yoga Yoga Teacher Trainings.

More at www.susannabarkataki.com
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the release of a powerful statement of protest against the Vietnam War. Issued by the

, the statement called out the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, which claimed to wage a war for democracy overseas at the same moment it was also waging war against those fighting for democracy in the United States:

We maintain that our country's cry of "preserve freedom in the world" is a hypocritical mask, behind which it squashes liberation movements which are not bound, and refuse to be bound, by the expediencies of United States cold war policies.

The SNCC statement asks: "[W]here is the draft for the freedom fight in the United States?"

The murder of civil rights activist Sammy Younge Jr. on Jan. 3, 1966 prompted the release of the anti-war statement three days later. A 21-year-old who had lost a kidney while serving in the Navy, Younge was shot and killed when he attempted to use a whites-only restroom at a gas station in Macon County, Alabama.

SNCC saw Younge's murder as a clear example of our government's supposed fight for freedom abroad at the same time it denied that freedom to its Black citizens at home.

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Issued more than a year before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous Riverside Church speech against the war, SNCC faced repercussions for its dissent. For example, the Georgia legislature denied SNCC spokesperson and elected state representative Julian Bond his seat because he stood by the statement. As he fought for his elected office, Bond wrote an educational comic book on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the connection between the struggles of the Vietnamese and the struggles of African Americans for self-determination and human rights.

Below is the full Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee statement, written by Gloria House, James Forman, Charlie Cobb, and several others.

It highlights the often overlooked connections between the civil rights and the anti-war movements. At a time of growing activism against racial injustice at home, and seemingly

abroad, the

believes that this statement is especially timely.

Zinn Education Project

___________________________________________________

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Statement on Vietnam

January 6, 1966

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has a right and a responsibility to dissent with United States foreign policy on any issue when it sees fit. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee now states its opposition to the United States' involvement in Vietnam on these grounds:

We believe the United States government has been deceptive in its claims of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese people, just as the government has been deceptive in claiming concern for the freedom of colored people in other countries as the Dominican Republic, the Congo, South Africa, Rhodesia, and in the United States itself.

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We, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, have been involved in the black peoples' struggle for liberation and self-determination in this country for the past five years. Our work, particularly in the South, has taught us that the United States government has never guaranteed the freedom of oppressed citizens, and is not yet truly determined to end the rule of terror and oppression within its own borders.

We ourselves have often been victims of violence and confinement executed by United States governmental officials. We recall the numerous persons who have been murdered in the South because of their efforts to secure their civil and human rights, and whose murderers have been allowed to escape penalty for their crimes.

The murder of Samuel Younge in Tuskegee, Alabama, is no different than the murder of peasants in Vietnam, for both Younge and the Vietnamese sought, and are seeking, to secure the rights guaranteed them by law. In each case, the United States government bears a great part of the responsibility for these deaths.

Samuel Younge was murdered because United States law is not being enforced. Vietnamese are murdered because the United States is pursuing an aggressive policy in violation of international law. The United States is no respecter of persons or law when such persons or laws run counter to its needs or desires.

We recall the indifference, suspicion and outright hostility with which our reports of violence have been met in the past by government officials.

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We know that for the most part, elections in this country, in the North as well as the South, are not free. We have seen that the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act have not yet been implemented with full federal power and sincerity.

We question, then, the ability and even the desire of the United States government to guarantee free elections abroad. We maintain that our country's cry of "preserve freedom in the world" is a hypocritical mask, behind which it squashes liberation movements which are not bound, and refuse to be bound, by the expediencies of United States cold war policies.

We are in sympathy with, and support, the men in this country who are unwilling to respond to a military draft which would compel them to contribute their lives to United States aggression in Vietnam in the name of the "freedom" we find so false in this country.

We recoil with horror at the inconsistency of a supposedly "free" society where responsibility to freedom is equated with the responsibility to lend oneself to military aggression. We take note of the fact that 16% of the draftees from this country are Negroes called on to stifle the liberation of Vietnam, to preserve a "democracy" which does not exist for them at home.

We ask, where is the draft for the freedom fight in the United States?

We therefore encourage those Americans who prefer to use their energy in building democratic forms within this country. We believe that work in the civil rights movement and with other human relations organizations is a valid alternative to the draft. We urge all Americans to seek this alternative, knowing full well that it may cost them their livesas painfully as in Vietnam.

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___________________________________________________

The statement was reprinted from "Vietnam: Taking a Stand" on CRMvet.org
Rahm's Old Bud Rauner Says He Would Sign Mayoral Recall Bill

By Mae Rice in News on Jan 4, 2016 11:00PM



Rahm and Rauner at a funeral last year. (Photo by Chris Walker-Pool/Getty Images) ntroduced a bill that would allow voters to recall Mayor Rahm Emanueland now, Gov. Bruce Rauner has said he would sign it.

According to the Sun-Times:

"Rauner told reporters he would sign a bill allowing Chicago voters to recall their mayor from office if it reaches his desk. The governor also said he was 'very disappointed' in Emanuel and Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez over their handling of Chicago police misconduct cases."

This news feels shocking, both because Rauner is so stingy with his signature on more pressing legislationsuch as, say, the state budgetand because he and Rahm have gone on family vacations together. But that was then.
Putting Threats into Perspective for 2016

Its time to panic!

As 2015 ended, this country was certifiably terror-stricken. It had the Islamic State (IS) on the brain. Hoax terror threats or terror imbroglios shut down school systems from Los Angeles to New Hampshire, Indiana to a rural county in Virginia. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, citing terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, cancelled a prospective tour of Europe thanks to terror fears, issuing a statement that orchestra management believes there is an elevated risk to the safety of musicians and their families, guest artists, DSO personnel, and travelling patrons. By year's end, the Justice Department had charged an unprecedented 60 people with terrorism-related crimes (often linked to social media exchanges).

While just north of the border Canadas new government and its citizens were embracing the first of 25,000 Syrian refugees in an atmosphere of near celebration, citizens and government officials in the lower 48 were squabbling and panicking about the few who had made it here. (Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes, posting on Facebook images of snakes and refugees and asking, Can you tell me which of these rattlers wont bite you?)

In the two presidential debates that ended the year, focusing in whole or part on national security, the only global subject worthy of discussion was -- you guessed it -- the Islamic State and secondarily immigration and related issues. Media panelists didnt ask a single question in either debate about China or Russia (other than on the IS-related issue of who might shoot down Russian planes over Syria) or about the relative success of the French right-wing, anti-Islamist National Front Party and its presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen (even though her American analog, Donald Trump, was on stage in one debate and a significant subject of the other). And that just begins a long list of national security issues that no one felt it worth bringing up, including the fact that in Paris 195 countries had agreed on a potentially path-breaking climate change deal.

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As the Dallas Symphony Orchestra signaled, Paris now means only one thing in this country: the bloody terror attack on the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theater and related assaults. In fact, if you were following the news here as 2015 ended, you might be forgiven for thinking that we Americans lived in a land beset by, and under siege from, Islamic terror and the Islamic State. The latest polls indicate that striking numbers of Americans now view the threat of terrorism as the countrys number one danger, see it as a (if not the) critical issue facing us, believe that it and national security should be the governments top priorities, and are convinced that the terrorists are at present winning.

You would never know that, if you left out what might be called self-inflicted pain like death by vehicle (more than 33,000 deaths annually), suicide by gun (more than 21,000 annually) or total gun deaths (30,000 annually), and fatal drug overdoses (more than 47,000 annually), this is undoubtedly one of the safest countries on the planet. Over these years, the American dead from Islamic terror outfits or the lone wolves they inspire have added up to the most modest of figures, even if you include that single great day of horror, September 11, 2001. Include deaths from non-Islamic right-wing acts of terror (including, for instance, Dylann Roofs murders in a black church in Charleston), a slightly more impressive figure in recent years, and you still have next to nothing. Even if you add in relatively commonplace mass shootings, from school campuses to malls to workplaces, that are not defined as terror, and accept the broadest possible definition of such shootings (a minimum of four killed or injured), you would still have the sort of danger that couldnt be more modest compared to death by vehicle, suicide, or drugs -- phenomena that obsess few Americans.

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The Islamic State in Perspective

Still, as 2016 begins, terror remains the 800-pound gorilla (in reality, a marmoset) in the American room and just about the only national security issue that truly matters. So why shouldnt I join the crowd? Who wants to be left in the lurch? But first, I think it makes sense to put the Islamic State in perspective.

Yes, its a brutal, extreme religious-cum-political outfit, the sort of movement that probably could only arise on a shattered landscape in a shattered region filled with desperate souls looking for any explanation for, or solution to, nightmarish lives. There can be no question that its had remarkable success. Its self-proclaimed caliphate now controls territory the size of (to choose a common comparison) Great Britain with a population of perhaps a few million people. Since there are seldom reporters on the scene (for obvious reasons of health and well-being), we have no idea whether IS has 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 fighters and potential suicide bombers under arms. We do know that those arms (despite a couple of captured tanks) are generally light and the bombs largely of the homemade variety.

The Islamic State has shown quite a knack for generating a stream of revenue from black market oil sales, ransoms from kidnappings, the ransacking of the regions archeological heritage, and wealthy Sunnis elsewhere in the region. In addition, it's been skilled at promoting its brand in other parts of the Greater Middle East and Africa, from Afghanistan to Libya, Yemen to Nigeria, where local populations are also facing shattered landscapes, failed states, oppressive governments, and desperation. Finally, thanks to the talents of its social media militants, its shown a facility for attracting disaffected (and sometimes whacked-out) young Muslims from Europe and even the United States, as well as for inspiring lone wolves to acts meant to unnerve its enemies in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere.

So give credit where its due. Compared to a few training camps in Afghanistan -- the al-Qaeda model before 2001 (and again recently) -- this is no small thing. But the Islamic State should also be put in some perspective. Its not Nazi Germany. Its not the Soviet Union. Its not an existential threat to the United States. Its a distinctly self-limited movement, probably only capable of expanding its reach if even more of the region is laid to waste (as is, for instance, happening in Yemen right now, thanks in large part to a U.S.-backed Saudi war on the Iranian-inclined Houthi rebels).

IS is so deeply sectarian that it can never gain the support of a single Shia, Christian, Alawite, or Yazidi. Its practices, religious and political, are too extreme for many of the Sunnis it might want to appeal to. It is also an embattled movement. It has already lost some of the lands it captured to U.S.-backed Kurds in both Syria and Iraq and to the U.S.-backed, U.S.-equipped, and U.S.-trained Iraqi Army as well as Shiite militias. Its extremity has clearly alienated some of the Sunnis under its control. Its unlikely to take seven decades, as in the case of the Soviet Union, to implode and disappear.

On the other hand, if the Islamic State, at least in its present form, is crushed or driven into some corner and the region is liberated, one thing is guaranteed -- as images of the rubble and landscapes of skeletal buildings left behind at the victorious battle sites of Kobane, Sinjar, Homs, and Ramadi will tell you. Combine the massively bomb-laden, booby-trapped urban areas under Islamic State control, American air power (or, in parts of Syria, the barrel-bombing air force of the government of Bashar al-Assad and now the firepower of Russia), and fierce urban combat, and what may be left in the moment of victory could be a region in utter ruins. One expert suggests that it may take decades and cost $200 billion -- three times Syrias prewar gross domestic product -- to rebuild that country, bringing to mind the famed line from Tacitus: They make a desert and call it peace.

And just remind me, whos going to help with the reconstruction of that shattered land? Donald Trump? Dont count on it. And dont for a second believe that from such devastated worlds nothing worse than the Islamic State can arise.

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While we may be talking about a terror machine, IS represents a far more modest and embattled one than its social media propaganda would indicate. Its ability to threaten the U.S. bears little relation to the bogeyman version of it that at present occupies the American imagination. The sole advantage the Islamic State has when it comes to this country is that it turns out to be so easy to spook us.

A Republic of Insects and Grass

Still, dont for a second think that terror isnt on the American agenda. You really want terror? Let me tell you about terror. And Im not talking about 14 dead (San Bernardino) or 130 dead (Paris). What about up to 140,000 dead? (The toll from Hiroshima.) What about 285 million dead? (The official estimate of the dead, had the U.S. militarys Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP, of 1960 been carried out via more than 3,200 nuclear weapons delivered to 1,060 targets in the Communist world, including at least 130 cities -- and that didnt include casualty figures from whatever the Soviet Union might have been able to launch in response.)

Or what about -- to move from past slaughters and projected slaughters to future ones -- a billion dead? Despite the recent surprise visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his Pakistani counterpart, that remains a perfectly reasonable possibility, were a nuclear war ever to develop in South Asia. India and Pakistan, after all, face each other across a heavily armed and fortified 1,800 mile border, having fought three major wars since 1947. Small armed incidents are commonplace. Imagine that -- to take just one possible scenario -- extreme elements in the Pakistani military (or other extremist elements) got their hands on some part of that countrys ever-expanding nuclear arsenal, now believed to be at about 130 weapons, and loosed one or more of them on India, starting a nuclear exchange over issues that no one else on Earth gives a damn about.

Imagine that, in the course of the war that followed, each side released only 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons on the others cities and industrial areas (0.4% of the worlds more than 25,000 warheads). One study suggests that, along with the 20 million or so inhabitants of South Asia who would die in such an exchange, this modest local nuclear conflagration would send enough smoke and particulates into the stratosphere to cause a planetary nuclear winter lasting perhaps a decade. The ensuing failure of agricultural systems globally could, according to experts, lead a billion or more people to starve to death. (And once youre talking about a crisis of that magnitude, one humanity has never experienced, god knows what other systems might fail at the same time.)

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I hope by now youre feeling a little shudder of fear or at least anxiety. Perhaps not, though, since were remarkably well protected from thinking about the deeper terrors of our planet. And mind you, if youre talking terror, that South Asian war is penny ante compared to the sort of event that would be associated with the thousands of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the United States and Russia. Since the Cold War ended, they have more or less been hidden in plain sight. Call it an irony of sorts, then, that nuclear weapons have loomed large on the American landscape in these years, just not the ones that could truly harm us. Instead, Americans have largely focused in the usual semi-hysterical fashion on a nuclear weapon -- the Iranian bomb -- that never existed, while Russian and American arsenals undoubtedly capable of destroying more than one Earth-sized planet have remained in place, heavily funded and largely unnoted.

When you look at what might be posssible under unknown future conditions, there is no reason to stop with mere millions or even a billion dead human beings. A major nuclear exchange, it is believed, could lead to the shredding of the planetary environment and a literal liquidation of humanity: the wiping out, that is, of ourselves and the turning of this country into, in the phrase of Jonathan Schell, a republic of insects and grass. As he explained so famously in his international bestseller of 1982, The Fate of the Earth, this became a genuine possibility in the post-Hiroshima decades and it remains so today, though given scant attention in a world in which tensions between the U.S. and Russia have been on the rise.

Apocalypses, Fast or Slow-Mo

Its not that we dont live on an increasingly terrifying planet. We do. Its that terror fears, at least in our American world, are regularly displaced onto relatively minor threats.

If you want to be scared, consider this unlikelihood: in the course of just a few centuries, humanity has stumbled upon two uniquely different ways of unleashing energy -- the burning of fossil fuels and the splitting of the atom -- that have made the sort of apocalypse that was once the property of the gods into a human possession. The splitting of the atom and its application to war was, of course, a conscious scientific discovery. Its apocalyptic possibilities were grasped almost immediately by some of its own creators, including physicist Robert Oppenheimer who played a key role in the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb during World War II. As he witnessed its awesome power in its initial test in the New Mexican desert, this line from the Bhagavad Gita came to his mind: Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

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The destroyer of worlds indeed -- or at least, potentially, of the one world that matters to humanity.

The other method of wrecking the planet was developed without the intent to destroy: the discovery that coal, oil, and later natural gas could motor economies. It was not known until the final decades of the last century that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of such forms of energy could heat the planet in startling ways and undermine the very processes that promoted life as we had always experienced it. Its worth adding, however, that the executives of the giant oil companies knew a great deal about the dangers their products posed to Earth way before most of the rest of us did, suppressed that information for a surprisingly long time, and then invested prodigious sums in promoting the public denial of those very dangers. (In the process, they left the Republican Party wrapped in a straightjacket of climate change denial unique on the planet.) Someday, this will undoubtedly be seen as one of the great crimes of history, unless of course there are no historians left to write about it.

In other words, if enough fossil fuels continue to be burned in the many decades to come, another kind of potential extinction event can be imagined, a slow-motion apocalypse of extreme weather -- melting, burning, flooding, sea-level rise, storming, and who knows what else.

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And if humanity has already managed to discover two such paths of utter destruction, what else, at present unimagined, might someday come into focus?

In this context, think of the Islamic State as the minor leagues of terror, though at the moment you wouldnt know it. If we are all now the children of the holocaust -- of, that is, our own possible extinction -- and if this is the inheritance we are to leave to our own children and grandchildren, perhaps its understandable that it feels better to fear the Islamic State. Its evil is so specific, so other, so utterly alien and strangely distant. Its almost comforting to focus on its depredations, ignoring, of course, the grotesquely large hand our country had in its creation and in the more general spread of terror movements across the Greater Middle East.

Its so much more comfortable to fear extreme Islamist movements than to take in two apocalyptic terrors that are clearly part of our own patrimony -- and, to make matters harder, one of which is likely to unfold over a time period that's hard to grasp, and the other under as yet difficult to imagine political circumstances.

Its clear that neither of these true terrors of our planet and our age has to happen (or at least, in the case of climate change, come to full fruition). To ensure that, however, we and our children and grandchildren would have to decide that the fate of our Earth was indeed at stake and act accordingly. We would have to change the world.
As a professor of religious studies one might think I would instinctively argue that knowledge about religion is especially crucial for understanding the world. While I am in fact a big advocate of religious literacy I also recognize that religion alone seldom helps us to understand political events. That is especially true when it comes to understanding political events in "the Middle East." For example, it should be obvious that the Arab-Israeli crisis is not at its core a religious struggle between Muslims and Jews but rather a competition over land, national identity and self-determination. And despite the insistence of conservative American presidential candidates, the current spasms of political violence in the Muslim world cannot simply be reduced to "radical extremist Islam." They are the result of complex historical forces related to issues like class, political competition between elites and the legacy of colonialism. Similarly the current tensions in the region that have arisen in the wake of the recent mass execution of 47 people in Saudi Arabia are not at their core the result of an age-old sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shi'i Islam. They are much more complex. Granted there are religious and, more accurately communal aspects, to all of these events but religion in no way totally explains any of them. Some have applauded the recent mass execution in Saudi Arabia as part of the Kingdom's commitment to stopping "Islamic extremism." It should be remembered however that the official religion of the Saudi state, the Wahabi interpretation of Islam, is itself characterized by an intense religious exclusivism and puritanical legalism. In that respect it shares much in common with the religious worldviews of violent groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL. And crucially, among those condemned and executed by the Saudi regime as a "terrorist" was the Shi'i scholar Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Sheikh al-Nimr was a passionate critic of the Saudi government which has for decades oppressed the minority Shi'i population. An advocate of non-violent resistance his political catch-phrase was "Words not Bullets." His execution, which has been universally condemned by human rights advocates including Amnesty International, provoked an attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran which has subsequently led to a breaking of relations between Saudi Arabia, along with some its close allies, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This has resulted in what many are calling a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The situation is indeed quite serious. Many in the media have argued that this complex situation can be explained by referring to an ancient "Sunni-Shi'a sectarian conflict." They argue that that the current conflict has its roots in a 1400 year old dispute over succession following the death in the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th Century. This social drama has never been resolved and is still being played out in the modern world. It is an inevitable religious conflict rooted in Islam. Of course there are all kinds of problems with this argument. First of all over the course of history Sunni and Shi'i Muslims have lived together in peace more often than they have fought each other violently. Such conflict is not the norm, nor is it inevitable. In terms of the current situation it should be remembered the Saudis are far from the religious leaders of the Sunni world. The exclusivist nature of Wahabism which has destroyed the tombs of beloved companions and family members of the Prophet Muhammad, banned Sufi music and ritual, condemned visits to popular religious shrines and even attacked expressions of love and devotion for the Prophet Muhammad as violations of Islam is anathema to most Sunni Muslims. At the level of popular piety both Sunni and Shi'I Muslims love and venerate the Prophet and his family, especially his son-in-law Ali b. Abu Talib whom the Shi'a consider their first Imam. Thus at the level of popular piety Sunni and Shi'i Muslims share much more in common with each other than they do with the Wahabi puritans of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have little legitimacy to act as the leaders of a Sunni-Shi'a sectarian war. In fact, the Saudi regime is pretty much despised by a significant segment of the Muslim world which considers the ruling Saudi elites corrupt and hypocritical. While religion does play a role in the current conflict that role is much more complex than a simplistic reduction to Sunni and Shi'a conflict. Most importantly by focusing on religion as the source of the conflict we run the risk of seeing the participants in this current social drama as irrational prisoners of a timeless religious paradigm rather than conscious political actors. Rather than understand the behavior of Saudi Arabia as what it actually is--the actions of a modern authoritarian state sending a message to its citizens that any political dissent that questions the legitimacy of the current regime, whether that dissent comes from rival Sunni exclusivist groups or the oppressed Shi'i minority, will not be tolerated --we risk seeing it as the endless replaying of a mythical and inescapable religious drama of Sunni-Shi'a conflict. Overly focusing on religion blinds us to issues of politics and economics, such as the defensiveness and anxiety of a Saudi state weakened by a drastic decrease in the price of oil and newly threatened by an Iran that is likely to become increasingly economically powerful following the nuclear deal that that has lifted crippling sanctions. While religion and religious identity surely plays a role in all of this if we emphasize it too much we risk not seeing the larger picture. Islam simply does not explain everything that happens in the complex world of the modern "Middle East."
As 2015 comes to an end, the customary year-end reviews and prognostications for the upcoming year are beginning to roll in from various quarters. Deputy President (DP) William Ruto offered his 12-month assessment by proclaiming that "Kenya was headed in the right direction".

The DP went on to explain that "2015 was a good year for Kenya.....a period of progress, stability and growth in which we advanced our common prosperity through programs and projects across a variety of sectors".

Not surprising, Mr. Ruto's positive overview of the last twelve months was echoed by public figures closely linked to the ruling coalition's Jubilee Party.

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Equally unsurprising, especially to those who have read most of my articles over the last twelve months, my review of the digital duo's performance over the same period is unflattering and not as glowing as the DP's.

The year saw many high profile visits by global luminaries that definitely shined the spotlight on the country. US President and part-Kenyan Luo Barack Obama brought the full prestige and might of the American Presidency to Kenya. Mr. Obama's entourage effectively shut down Nairobi during his three-day stay. Together with Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta, the two boomers co-hosted the Global Entrepreneurial Summit (GES) in Nairobi in late July; an event that showcased Kenya's unquestionable (human) potential while burnishing the global "creds" of the erstwhile crimes-against-humanity suspect.

The visit by Mr. Obama was followed in November by another visit, this time by the wildly popular Pope Francis. The papal visit, unlike that of POTUS, DIRECTLY addressed the rot that is land-grabbing and the sugary taste of gains ill-gotten through corruption: Two vices that explain why a society with so much potential has continued to lag behind its peers of yesteryears despite claims of an "Africa Rising".

Back in mid-2014, the crimes-against-humanity charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta were dropped not because he was innocent, but because the "Government of Kenya had failed to adequately cooperate" with the International Criminal Court investigations in the case. The government's approach fell "short of the standard of good faith cooperation" and "this failure ... reached the threshold of non-compliance" required under the Rome Statute." Mr. Ruto, on the other hand, is still fighting charges against him as Jubilee's nemesis ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda seeks to convict the DP for the post-election violence of 2007/2008.

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The legal trials and tribulation of the two men aside, they have overseen continuation of projects that were set in motion BEFORE they came into office including the high profile Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Project. The duo has also overseen the expansion of the electrification of primary schools and villages not to mention the tarmacking of roads across the country. These massive projects require(d) equally massive amounts of money the country has had to borrow; mostly from her newest best friend China and through floatation of the Eurobond. Like clockwork, appropriation of funds from the latter (Eurobond) also morphed into yet another scandal implicating Jubilee stalwarts.

It did not surprise those of us who were skeptical about President Kenyatta's ability to confront corruption and impunity in his government when his own Office of the President (OP) became embroiled in one scandal after another; all involving misappropriation of public funds. The saying the fish rots from the head on down was vividly displayed in 2015 when persons working directly for the president AND his deputy were repeatedly implicated in scandals involving the theft and/or misappropriation of billions in public funds.

Mr. Kenyatta's impotence on corruption was driven home when he sought the services of the African Governance Initiative (AGI), a group headed by one of Jubilee's favorite whipping boy Mr. Tony Blair. The former British Prime Minister was brought in to oversee "delivery" of mega-projects such as SGR, Konza Technology City and the Lamu Port South Sudan and Ethiopia Transport corridor (LAPSSET) with minimal "eating of chicken".

Jubilee's signature laptop-for-primary-schools campaign promise also became mired in fights between competing tenderpreneurs; in the process becoming yet another symbol for the corruption that characterized the Kenyatta Administration. Not surprising, the project is yet to get off the ground.

If the suffering caused by the rampant corruption scandals of 2015 was shrouded in dueling narratives and legal gobbledygook, the pain and suffering caused by a corrupt, incompetent and unaccountable security apparatus was all too real, especially for the hundreds of Kenyans who were injured/maimed and/or lost loved ones to violence perpetrated by al-Shabaab extremists.

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2015 saw a Kenyan government unable to keep its citizenry safe and secure largely because of its inability to maintain a competent, well-armed, well-equipped and professional law enforcement and security apparatus. While the specter of terrorism is demonstrably a global phenomenon, its impact on Kenyans has been exacerbated by (a) the country's proximity to the "hotbed of terrorism" Horn of Africa region, (b)corrupt, incompetent and highly politicized law enforcement and security agencies, (c) the government's inability to hold accountable corrupt and incompetent personnel and (d) the governments inability to formulate a coherent strategy in response to the repeated attacks.
By Don Willmott

While wind power is an increasingly big deal in America, with three gigawatts of new capacity added last year, it still provides just five percent of all energy generated nationwide. One reason: up until now, we've looked inland to the vast plains to build our wind farms, ignoring the huge potential of offshore wind farms, which are tougher to construct. Contrast that with Britain and Northern Europe, where more geographically constrained countries such as Denmark have had no choice but to look to the sea to plant their turbines. It's worked out well for them; in 2014 Denmark got a record-breaking 39.1 percent of its overall electricity from wind.

But the winds of change are coming to our shores, and a glimpse of the future is now on view in tiny Rhode Island, where the nation's first experimental offshore wind farm is being built. Under consideration since 2008, Deepwater Wind's $300 million project is kicking off with five turbines with 30 megawatts of capacity located three miles off the coast of Block Island in state-controlled waters. Foundation steel has already been sunk to a depth of 90 feet (watch a video), and the turbines should rise this summer.

Deepwater Wind's project will be visible off the coast of Block Island. (Source: Deepwater Wind)

The economics are interesting. Today, Block Island has no electrical connection to the mainland, so its power comes from expensive and environmentally unfriendly diesel generation, which the Block Island Power Company bills at 24 cents per kilowatt-hour in peak season. The Deepwater Wind Project has an agreement to sell its excess power to mainland-based National Grid for at least that price for 20 years. Because Block Island doesn't need all the capacity, much of the power generated will travel to the mainland.

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Opposition to the project has been muted, in great part because the location for the turbines was voted on by the state government -- and not imposed on unwilling islanders by developers. Illustrations suggest that the turbines, which will tower 600 feet high, will be visible from the Block Island shoreline. Construction has been relatively smooth, although regulations demand that activities such as pile driving be stopped whenever noise-sensitive humpback whales show up in the area.

Deepwater Wind is so confident of success that it's already floating the idea of building a wind farm of 200 turbines farther east in federally controlled water.

Meanwhile, on the Vineyard...

It's been a tougher path to offshore wind power next door in Massachusetts, where a celebrity-studded group of protesters (including the late Walter Cronkite) spent years pushing back against the proposed Cape Wind project, which would have put more than 100 turbines just five miles offshore in Nantucket Sound.

DONG Energy's proposed wind farm is farther out to sea than earlier proposed projects. (Source: DONG Energy)

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Now, however, Denmark's DONG Energy, Europe's undisputed offshore wind leader, is backing a project called Bay State Wind that will be far larger than anything proposed by Cape Wind--but will also be farther out to sea and therefore less objectionable to lovers of a clear horizon. The Department of Interior is on board with leasing an area 15 miles off the Martha's Vineyard coast, and now feasibility studies are underway to see if a project featuring 100 turbines in waters 150 feet deep is viable. The goal: one gigawatt of generating power that could power half a million Massachusetts homes. DONG Energy says the environment and strong winds are quite similar to those of the areas of Europe's North Sea, where it has already had considerable success. The company says that construction would take about three years, with the first third of the project ready to come online early in the 2020s, and that the entire project can be self-financed. (Cape Wind had trouble keeping its finances intact.)

All these developments could add up to a future in which Deepwater Wind and Bay State Wind end up operating side by side, providing below-market-rate power to both Rhode Island and Massachusetts and offsetting the closure of obsolete onshore power plants such as the 680-megawatt Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass. From there, attention will likely move down the coast. In fact, Deepwater Wind has a site in mind 20 miles off the coast of southern New Jersey where it would like to put 200 turbines to generate another gigawatt of power.

Visit XPRIZE at xprize.org; follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+; and get our newsletter to stay informed.
By Sarah Lohschelder

Much has been written about the war in Afghanistan, from on-the-ground reports of foot soldiers to geopolitical analyses of U.S. government officials. Yet, Lieutenant Colonel Seth B. Folsom manages to find new insights in Where Youth and Laughter Go, a recounting of his experience as a battalion commander in the Sangin Valley. He tells two stories: one of leadership and one of war.

Folsom begins his story as commander of the renowned 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, "The Cutting Edge," during pre-deployment training in Twentynine Palms, California. He relates his triumphs and failures with surprising honesty, telling the reader about shortcomings in his communications with his senior leadership and about having to take responsibility when a soldier suffers from heat stroke after a training march through the desert is poorly planned and executed. His personal story of trial and error, of constantly adjusting his leadership style is instructive for leadership in any context.

This exploration of leadership continues during his time in Afghanistan but takes a back seat to the events happening on the ground. Folsom's meticulous descriptions of patrols give a sense of the experiences of an ordinary Marine: the hours spent planning each patrol route and talking through every step of every operation, the practiced response when one of their own triggers an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) buried in the ground, the injury, and the sense of loss when a Marine does not make it. The reader also learns about the perspective of the battalion commander who has to keep his Marines focused on the mission. Particularly inspiring is Folsom's resolve to patrol with every squad the day after they lose one of their own.

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For civilians, the book is an excellent illustration of military structure and decision-making procedures. It shows off video technology that allows Marines to spot Taliban insurgents planting IEDs and helps commanders determine hostile action and hostile intent - requirements for authorizing a strike against the insurgents. The author impresses upon the reader how high the bar is for a decision to strike to be made - absolutely no civilians or civilian objects in the vicinity of the strike area that may end up as collateral damage. By walking the reader through every step of the decision-making process, the author conveys a lot more faith in the validity of U.S. airstrikes than one would expect from reading the newspapers. The reader is left to wonder whether Folsom's personal standards were unusually high or if the press coverage of U.S. war efforts is massively biased, reporting only on extraordinary events such as the strike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz at the expense of the ordinary.

Folsom's personal accounts of interactions with local Afghan leaders give a deep sense of the tense relationship. The battalion commander is not just a military leader, but also has "diplomatic" responsibilities in Afghanistan. The lack of ownership on the part of many Afghan leaders, their unwillingness to take responsibility for the security of their own community, their complete refusal to believe that one of their own could be a Taliban fighter despite clear video evidence as proof, are what make Folsom's story so meaningful. His examples allow the reader to visualize what the broad and unspecific policy language coming from Washington actually means on the ground. More than any testimony that General John F. Campbell, commander of United States Forces in Afghanistan, could give before Congress and more than any Pentagon press release ever could, Folsom's account provides the reader with an entirely new and very real understanding of the many local problems in Afghanistan that contribute to broader nationwide challenges.

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The book, however, has two noticeable weaknesses. One shortcoming is the lack of any big-picture context. As a battalion commander, Folsom is neither a foot soldier nor a policymaker. His role is in the middle of the chain of command, precisely where abstract political decisions made by the leadership in Washington are transformed into tactical actions performed by individuals. Folsom misses the opportunity to connect his own narrow, but very deep, experience of the war to the larger political context of Afghanistan outside the Sangin Valley and Washington's strategy at the time. Except for the election of the interim District Community Council in March 2012, there is little discussion of what is happening in Afghan politics or other parts of the NATO coalition mission at the time.

Folsom also seems to occasionally get distracted in his storytelling. He is fiercely loyal to his men and many of the incidents he chooses to highlight in this book acknowledge the sacrifices and accomplishments of his Marines. But at times they do so without driving the story forward. On a few occasions he spends several pages describing specific events that have no bearing on the story he is trying to tell. Their sole purpose seems to be to give him an opportunity to praise the performance of his men - an honorable intention, but perhaps one that could have been reserved for the epilogue.

Where Youth and Laughter Go is a compelling read that offers a unique perspective into the war in Afghanistan. Folsom makes his part of the war in the Sangin Valley come alive for the American reader by sharing anecdotes and incidents that occurred during his command. Put together, these experiences tell a bigger story that allows the reader to appreciate the difficulties of a commander who has to reconcile strategic considerations with operational problems on a daily basis. Especially for civilian readers whose main source of information about the war is general newspaper coverage, this book is highly recommended.
Written by Moonlight, the Kitten



Mom took me to Cusco, Peru for a week where the highlight was going Machu Picchu, a 15th Century Inca site that sits on a mountain just northwest of the city. Machu Picchu is considered an icon of Incan civilization and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

When we first arrived in the Inca captial of Cusco, I saw many people in traditional Peruvian clothing with alpacas.

Peru has 90 percent of the world's alpaca population. I learned all about them when I visited a place my mom wrote about for a travel magazine called Awana Kancha.

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In the Cusco area, there are a ton of ruins to explore. There is Ollantaytambo, an archaeological site in the Sacred Valley that was once the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti who conquered the region.

That's me, above, at Ollantaytambo, which is also a popular starting points of the Inca trail, which is a four day, three night hike.

This seven-striped rainbow flag is the official flag of the city of Cusco. We waved it during the ceremony of Inti Raymi, which is the Festival of the Sun. This festival occurs every Winter Solstice and honors the Sun God so that he keeps the land fertile and the crops bountiful for the year.

It was fun to watch the celebrations unfold. They began in the streets of Cusco and ended up at the ancient fortress of Sacsayhuaman with processions involving mythical emperors being carried on golden thrones by locals wearing ceremonial garb, chanting prayers, dancing and playing music.

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ASSOCIATED PRESS A madrasa, or Muslim religious school teacher teaches his students in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, April 19, 2009. Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought the cooperation of Islamic leaders and scholars Saturday to fight against terrorism. (AP Photo/Pavel Rahman)

Kazi Masum Akhtar should be bigger news than he is.

When the headmaster of a madrasa is beaten up for training his students to sing the national anthem it should create a bigger furore than it has.

As of now only a couple of media outlets have reported the story. Akhtar is the headmaster of the Talpukur Ara High Madrasah in Kolkata. According to the New Indian Express he was training his students to sing the national anthem for Republic Day. But he ended up being viciously assaulted by maulanas and their henchmen who called the national anthem a sacrilege and a Hindutva song.

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That is a bizarre claim in itself since Jana Gana Mana is a pet peeve of the Hindutva brigade who insist, despite Tagores own statement to the contrary, that it is obeisance to the King Emperor and would rather have Vande Mataram as the national anthem. The maulanas may have well done the beleaguered Jana Gana Mana a favour.

Except this is not a story about just the national anthem. This is an older feud with Kazi Masum Akhtar. According to the Hindustan Times, way back in March 2015, Akhtar came under fire for not wearing a skull cap and being clean-shaven. His wife told HT that the members of the managing committee asked him to mail photographs to the school to see if his appearance passed muster.

Also Akhtar writes in Bengali dailies and a column calling for strong actions against madrasas which harbor terrorists and an end to early marriages for girls irked many in the local community.

Even back in June 2015, the state education department unable to find a workable and safe solution was allowing him to mark attendance at the office of the district inspector of schools. What the New Indian Express article does not make clear is how he was back at the school teaching the national anthem under those circumstances all of which again underscores the fact that the story has not been covered in depth.

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In March 2015, an incensed mob surrounded the school and beat him up with iron rods before police could get to him.

In March 2015, an incensed mob surrounded the school and beat him up with iron rods before police could get to him. They were angered, among other things, by an article he had written giving a historical perspective to the Battle of Karbala. He told the Indian Express he got calls saying Are you trying to become another Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen? You will be eliminated. The local police officer in charge told the paper they got a counter FIR where local Muslims alleged he was hurting the communitys feeling by promoting anti-Islam statements.

While many details appear confusing, what is clear is this is not a stray incident. According to the New Indian Express, Akhtar has appealed to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the governor and the chair of the State Minorities Commission six times but to no avail. The Indian Express reported in April 2015 that its investigations had revealed that the Metiabruz madrasah managing committee had petitioned the board to remove him because of an atmosphere of tension. At that time the Kolkata municipal elections were around the corner and the government had no interest in alienating powerful local community leaders. The Non-Party Democratic Forum had rallied by Akhtars side saying it signals a forthcoming Talibanistic orthodox reign of terror for all citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike".

Ironically, the same Akhtar was recommended for the state governments Shiksha Ratna award for best teacher in the state shortly before the trouble started.

The national anthem controversy has thrust him into the news because it is so egregious but this is the story of a longer tussle between the belief system of a teacher and the religious leaders of the community which he is serving. One could argue that his progressive beliefs are a mismatch in the more orthodox community where he works. But nothing can ever justify a mob with iron rods attacking the headmaster of the school.

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Kazi Masum Akhtar deserves our attention because every act of intolerance deserves to be condemned with equal vigour.

Kazi Masum Akhtar deserves our attention because every act of intolerance, especially intolerance that leads to violence, deserves to be condemned with equal vigour. If VHP or Bajrang Dal vigilantes decide to strong-arm theatres to stop screening Shah Rukh Khans Dilwaale in Mangalore because of his comments about intolerance or the Sri Ram Sene drag women out of pubs, they deserve to be condemned.

Those who threaten Vidya Dinker - the Citizens Forum activist in Mangalore fighting against the spate of immoral policing- with rape, assault and murder, should be charged just as those who beat up Akhtar should be charged with assault. When police turns a blind eye to verbal violence, harassment and intimidation because it fears tension it sends a green signal to thugs of all sides that they can get away with more.

And that is what seems to have happened in this case as well. The Mamata Banerjee government has actually been good at nipping attempts to create communal tension in the bud. (Remember the furore over the missing fourteen-year-old girl which given communal colours before she suddenly returned home?) But at the same time it has been accused of pandering to the minority community for votes. As a result the police seem unwilling or unable to stand up to bullying to protect the likes of a Kazi Masum Akhtar.

That is why we should ensure Kazi Masum Akhtars case is not just a local news footnote. In many ways he stood up for the national anthem. Hopefully the media will also stand up for him.

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The song, featuring Mandana Karimi with Tusshar and Aftab Shivdasani, has the Iranian beauty lip syncing to 'Oh boy you are my soft toy'. But the original lyrics were 'Oh boy I am your soft toy'. When Ekta heard the song, she told music composers Sajid-Wajid that she loved it but felt the need for one change. Instead of the girl taking a weaker position, Ekta suggested that she should get the upper hand. So, the lyrics were changed accordingly; the song was re-recorded and then shot.
Malini P/Twitter

NEW DELHI -- She was the first woman to be named editor-in-chief of The Hindu newspaper. But even before she completed a year in the job, Malini Parthasarathy has resigned, owing to differences with the company board over spends at a newly-launched edition in Mumbai, a person familiar with the developments said.

Parthasarathy confirmed to HuffPost India that she has resigned, but declined to comment further.

Her resignation was abrupt and followed in the wake of a stormy board meeting where the expenditure relating to the launch of the Mumbai edition was discussed, the person said. Parthasarathy was angered by what she perceived as questioning by the board about the expenditure incurred, the person said.

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The board of Kasturi and Sons Ltd. (KSL), publishers of The Hindu, appointed Parthasarathy as editor-in-chief of the daily at its meeting on January 20, 2015. She took charge on February 1, 2015.

The Hindu launched an edition in Mumbai in December, with Sachin Kalbag as the resident editor.

Parthasarathy is a member of the shareholder family of Kasturi And Sons. When she became editor, the paper reinstated a long tradition of family members calling the shots in the newsroom. The paper had departed from this tradition when it named Siddharth Varadarajan as editor in 2011. He was removed in 2013 and Parthasarathy was named editor.

Parthasarathy, who has worked at The Hindu in varying capacities for years, has made a number of senior editorial hires in recent months to bolster the paper's editorial capabilities. The tumultuous months following Varadarajan's departure also saw the exit of well-known journalists such as rural affairs editor P. Sainath and national security specialist Praveen Swami. Editorial pages editor Rahul Pandita also had a public and acrimonious departure, alleging micro-management by the editor-in-chief.

The NewsMinute reported that Suresh Nambath, national editor at The Hindu, will be the interim editor of the newspaper.

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Ram put out this statement on the paper's website on Tuesday.

Malini Parthasarathy has resigned as Editor of The Hindu with immediate effect. Suresh Nambath, National Editor, The Hindu, has been entrusted with the responsibility of managing the news and editorial operations of The Hindu until a new Editor is appointed. The KSL Board has placed on record its appreciation of the contribution of Malini Parthasarathy as Editor of The Hindu. She will continue as a Wholetime Director of Kasturi & Sons Ltd. N. Ram Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited & Publisher of The Hindu
ASSOCIATED PRESS An Indian army soldier is silhouetted against the setting sun as he stands guard next to his colleague, sitting on the roof top of a house outside the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. Indian troops were still battling at least two gunmen Sunday evening at the air force base near the country's border with Pakistan, more than 36 hours after the compound came under attack, a top government official said. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Four days after a group of terrorists attacked a heavily-guarded Indian air base 25 km from the border with Pakistan, reports on Tuesday suggested that all six gunmen have been killed. However an operation is still underway to fully secure the Pathankot air base 60 hours after the pre-dawn swoop by suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists.

Seven military personnel have been also killed and 22 wounded. Times of India reported that operation was on till late on Monday late night to ensure that no dormant terrorist launches a fresh attack.

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Alarmingly, Punjab police is said to have had an input that 15 terrorists have infiltrated India on new year. The body of the sixth attacker is yet to be retrieved from the vacant barack where they were hiding out. According to reports, no firing has been heard since 7:30pm yesterday.

The attacks are being seen as a lapse in security and response time after an alert by a police superintendent whose car had been hijacked by the gunmen dressed in army fatigues, was not taken seriously. Police Superintendent Salwinder Singh's call to a colleague in the early hours of Friday morning, after his car was hijacked, was at first treated as a case of armed robbery, the officer who answered the phone said. His colleagues' slowness to react is being seen as one of several security lapses.

"The truth is that we did not take Singh's complaint seriously, because his record has not been clean," a second senior officer in the Punjab police told Reuters.

Singh had just been transferred after a woman constable filed a sexual harassment case against him.

"Too much time was wasted," AS Dulat, a former head of the Research & Analysis Wing, India's main foreign intelligence agency, told Reuters. "How did they infiltrate to where they did? How were they allowed to roam around for 24 hours?"

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The search operations at Pathankot air force base will continue until all areas have been completely secured, Maj. Gen. Dushyant Singh, from India's elite National Security Guard, told reporters yesterday.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said it is working on the leads provided by the Indian government on the attack "in line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism".

Four attackers were killed by Saturday evening, and at least two were said to have been exchanging gunfire with troops as of Monday morning. Defense officials have said authorities had been alerted about a potential attack in the area on Friday, and that aerial surveillance at the base spotted the gunmen as they entered the compound, leading to criticism of the handling of the situation.

Singh told reporters in Pathankot that it will take a "long time" to declare the base completely secure because of its size and geography. It is spread over more than 2,000 acres, including forests and tall grass.

The commanding officer of the base, Lt. Col. J.S. Dhamoon, described it as a "mini-city" with homes and a school for the children of the personnel stationed there. An army statement said the last gunmen were firing from a building that is part of the living quarters on the base. The base has a fleet of India's Russian-origin MiG-21 fighter jets and Mi-25 and Mi-35 attack helicopters, along with other military hardware. Officials have said no military hardware has been damaged in the fighting.

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Military funerals were held for the soldiers who were killed in the attack. Their killings inside a military base despite intelligence alerts have angered many in India.

"The biggest problem is the multiplicity of command and control. Nobody knows who is really in charge," Rahul Bedi, an analyst for Jane's Information Group, told AP.

"It's a huge embarrassment," he said.

Add to that the fact that Indian authorities had already declared the operation over and successful. Home Minister Rajnath Singh even tweeted Saturday night to congratulate the troops for successfully killing all of the gunmen.

CNN-IBN reported that the six terrorists were "acting on the instructions of the handlers" in Pakistan.

Since Saturday morning, the base has been swarming with air force commandos, army soldiers, National Security Guard troops and local police. Officials, however, have refused to say how many security personnel were involved in the engagement.

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The air force base is on the highway that connects India's insurgency-plagued Jammu and Kashmir state with the rest of the country. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The violence follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise Dec. 25 visit to Pakistan, where he met his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. The two also held an unscheduled meeting at the Paris climate change talks last month.

Ahead of Modi's visit to Pakistan, the national security advisers of both countries met in Thailand. The foreign secretaries of both nations are to meet in Islamabad later this month. The responses to the attacks from both countries have been muted so far, with neither New Delhi nor Islamabad giving any indication that the planned talks are under any threat.

(With inputs from agencies )

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Big Changes Are In Store For Chicago's Police Review Authority

By aaroncynic in News on Jan 5, 2016 3:14PM



CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 07: New head of the Independent Police Review Board Sharon Fairley listens as Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks at a press conference on December 7, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The acting head of the Independent Police Review Authority announced a list of changes to the agency Monday she hopes will restore the public trust, after it has come under increasing amounts of criticism in the past few months.

Theres got to be a stronger independent body here, Sharon Fairley said, at a Monday afternoon press conference. Fairley replaced Scott Ando last month after he resigned in the wake of the release of the Laquan McDonald video. I realize trust in agency cant be rebuilt overnight. Its going to take time, she later added.

Fairley said the agency plans to take on new personnel, which include a new general counsel, chief of staff, first deputy and chief investigator, as well as staff dedicated to community outreach.

The IPRA was formed in 2007 and is charged with investigating allegations of police misconduct, including police brutality and the shooting of civilians by officers. It replaced the Office of Professional Standards with the intention of operating more independently from the Chicago Police Department. Since its inception, the agency has investigated hundreds of shootings of civilians by police, and only found officers were unjustified in their actions twice.

The agencys reluctance to discipline or fire officers who have shot and killed civilians, along with its structure as an appointed body and lack of community input, has drawn fierce criticism. One of its own investigators, Lorenzo Davis, was even fired over the summer for refusing to reverse his findings in six cases where he found shootings by officers were not justified. More recently, emails released by the mayors office show tight coordination in media relations between the agency and City Hall. A movement for an elected civilian-controlled accountability board has been growing.

Fairley said that, while she welcomed community input, the agency has no plans to currently involve the community in ongoing investigations. We want to hear about our community on what we think needs to change, she said.

In addition to new personnel, Fairley also said that IPRA would attempt to be more transparent to the public about investigations, when appropriate, but also continue to maintain their integrity.

We are no longer going to be standing by a hard-and-fast rule that we will never discuss the details of an investigation until its complete. I think that that position is now untenable in the world that were in.

The agency has an uphill battle convincing a skeptical public however, that the shake up will be more than just window-dressing. "I think its a good thing that there's going to be change, Mel Brooks of the Cook County Bar Association told ABC7. But there have been changes before, and you get all these promises, and what happens is we continue the cycle.

Ted Pearson, of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which has been pushing for an elected, all civilian police accountability board, likened the announced changes to "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." In an email to Chicagoist, Pearson said:

"Rearranging the personnel in IPRA wont keep that boat afloat either. IPRA has proven that it doesnt, wont and cant work. It is structurally incapable of bringing justice to the besieged people of Chicago. Its reputation has sunk. Its gone. It needs to be replaced with an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council, along with the Police Board and the CPD IAD. The Alliance has proposed an ordinance to do that."
Times of India You Tube screenshot

The new "Jihadi John," who is seen executing a prisoner in the latest Islamic State video, could be a 32-year-old bouncy castle salesman from east London, who was out on bail for alleged terrorism offences.

The family of British Muslim convert Siddhartha Dhar say that they have noticed similarities between the voice of the masked Jihadi and the 32-year-old former salesman, The Telegraph reported.

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On Sunday, IS released a video which showed the execution of five Syrian men, who were accused of spying for the British.

Dhar, also known as Abu Rumaysah, was born and raised in the UK in a Hindu family, BBC reported.

I heard the voice, yes, but I dont know, Im not sure of the voice. These are the most difficult questions to answer. I just cannot say. Im not sure within myself whether it is the truth or not," his mother said.

His sister, Konika Dhar, said that the voice on the video did sound like him." I can't believe it. This is just so shocking for me. I don't know what the authorities are doing to confirm the identity, but I need to know if it is.

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Konika said that her brother converted 10 years ago. "He was a very pleasant boy, and I know it may be hard to believe but he still is, and I still believe that he still can be that person," she said.

Dhar aka Rumaysah was arrested in September 2014 alongside the preacher Anjem Choudary on suspicion of belonging to the banned group Al-Muhajiroun, but he was able to travel to Syria with his wife and four children under the noses of British security, The Telegraph reported.

Just hours after being granted police bail, Dhar caught a bus to Paris with his family and then travelled on to Syria where he joined IS.

Dhar was reportedly radicalised after marrying meeting his Muslim wife Aisha, who was more devout than him, according to neighbours. He refused to talk to me - he was quite rude. He converted to marry her - it was her family that were more hardcore," one neighbour said.

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In an interview, Dhar said, We believe that whenever the sharia is established, the pure Islamic state maybe in Iraq or Syria, one day the leader will wage jihad and annexe Britain into the Islamic state."

We are not going to forget Europe, we are not going to forget Britain, the armies will be sent here to conquer these lands," he said.

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Anita Alvarez Believes Protests Against Her Are A Political Ploy

By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Jan 5, 2016 5:00PM



Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez discusses the shooting of Ronald Johnson by Chicago police officer George Hernandez on December 7, 2015. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The targets of protests over the death of Laquan McDonald have been wide-ranging: CPD Superintendent Garry McCarthy (who lost his job soon after the video of McDonald's death came out), the embattled mayor's office and the McDonald case's prosecutor, Anita Alvarez.

The Cook County State's Attorney, who is up for reelection, gave a wide-ranging interview to Chicago Magazine worth a full read. But a couple pieces stuck outnotably her unapologetic tone.

"I have no reason to resign," she says at one point. "I've done nothing wrong. I hold my head up high."

The video showing McDonald being gunned down by Jason Van Dyke wasn't released to the public for more than a year. Alvarez punts the question of the release to the city's mayor and aldermen: "When they reached that settlement [to pay the McDonald family $5 million] back in April, many of those aldermen who were critical of me now had the ability to release that video then and they didnt do it."

As for waiting 396 days to bring charges against Jason Van Dyke, the officer who shot McDonald? Alvarez admits that she wanted to bring charges before the release of the video, but she says that investigations into police shootings take time, and notes that the feds still haven't completed their end of the investigation: "I will not apologize for the meticulous, thorough investigation we did. As we sit here today, the United States attorney still has not finished his end of the investigation."



Demonstrators march around City Hall calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel and State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to resign on December 11, 2015. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the interview is that she believes the protests against her are little more than a political ploy:

I think what weve seen and what Ive learned from some of these protesters showing up at my office is that theyre organized, and one of my political opponents is behind it, showing up with empty boxes claiming that theres signatures of people in them. The boxes are empty, and giving us a flash drive claiming theres thousands of signatures and 95 percent of them are not from Chicago. I think we have to keep in mind that I am in the middle of a reelection. I have two opponents. For people who are protesting who have a passion and have a cause that they want to protest, I have no problem with that. I just ask that the protests be peaceful. Some of these calls for my resignation are not coming from the average citizen. Theyre coming from a political opponent and people who are supporting a political opponent. To me, you take that with a grain of salt.

She also says that she gets a lot of support when she's out and about running errands:

Despite what negative stories or whats been transpiring the last month, I cant tell you how many times I get stopped on the street. In fact, I wont be able to walk from here to my car without somebody stopping and saying to me, Do not resign. You hold your head up high. We support you. Going to the grocery store, standing in line just to get my deli meats, people coming up to me saying, You stand tall. You stand tall and we dont agree with whats happening to you.

Alvarez will have a chance to prove she has Chicago's support in this March's Democratic primary.
Kobach pushes to ban ballot drop boxes as AG candidates square off

Those who argue voter fraud doesn't exist are "ignoring reality" Kris Kobach, the Republican nominee for attorney general, said in a debate Tuesday.
Roscoe Village's Favorite Dive Bar, Jazz Institution Hungry Brain, Is Back

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 5, 2016 5:26PM



Photo by Eric Bartholomew

Amidst a spate of long-standing local bars and restaurants closing, there is at least some good news coming down the pipeline. The Hungry Brain in Roscoe Village, which closed in 2014, is back in business.

In November of 2014, Hungry Brain co-owner Janis White told Chicagoist several reasons factored into her and Luz Cordova's decision to close the bar at that time. One interesting reason: "We can no longer hold our own with all the new places opening in Logan Square," White said. "People in that neighborhood used to shoot down Western to drink with us and now there are breweries and bars and what not."

The venue built its reputation as a spot where Chicago's underground jazz scene could indulge its lost experimental tendencies. It attracted crowds of martini sippers comfortably rubbing shoulders with PBR-swilling bike messengers. And for years, it was a lonely outpost along a mostly residential stretch of Belmont Avenue.

We understood White's frustration at the time she spoke to us; Logan Square was in the midst of its boom, and it was newer venues west of Hungry Brain reaping all the benefits (and foot traffic).

The bar quietly reopened late last year, keeping irregular hours and hosting a few shows, including a New Year's Eve bash last week. The party featured a jazz combo anchored by drummer Mike Reedone of the new partners that helped to reopen the cluband a few spoken word performances.

As of this week, the soft open has officially ended and the club is open for regular business again.

And we're back! Hungry Brain officially open again every day (except Tuesday) 7pm-2am. Good to be back.  Hungry Brain (@HungryBrainChi) January 5, 2016

We're pleased that a venerable live music institution is back in the mix. Its stage was sorely missed by a scene that often fights for mainstream attention. And with Reed's involvement, especially given his experience booking both the Pitchfork Music Festival and the Chicago Jazz Festival, we anticipate plenty of late nights filled with excellent bands.
The chief executive officers of Aetna Inc. and Anthem Inc. are confident that their planned acquisitions of rivals Humana and Cigna, respectively, will go forward. Shareholders have approved the $54.2 billion and $47.5 billion transactions, and both are expected to close in the second half of the year.Yet a closer look at how the Department of Justice is treating such megamergers suggests that the sailing may not be quite so smooth.A recent report from law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP reveals that antitrust enforcement is growing, with 2015 a banner year for [Department of Justice] merger enforcement efforts. In fact, antitrust enforcement agencies brought an average of 34 merger enforcement ations per year, increasing to 41 between 2010 and 2012.Going forward, Gibson Dunn believes federal agencies will continue to challenge transactions at a relatively high rate.While the Justice Department is still reviewing the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna mergers, it has set a precedent of objecting to high-profile merger proposals in other sectors. General Electric and AB Electrolux called off their deal in December, as did Tri-Union Seafoods and Bumble Bee Foods, after the Department objected to them on the basis of reduced competition.It also investigated deals between Comcast and Time Warner and AT&T and DirecTV. The latter went through, while the former was called off after the Department voiced its concerns.The Justice Department has similar issues with the health insurance proposals. It is concerned the transactions will result in rate increases, affecting local and regional markets for specific insurance products.In 2012, for example, the department raised concerns with Humanas acquisition of Arcadian Management Services as well as WellPoints acquisition of Amerigroup due to lack of competition in smaller markets.If any of the deals currently being proposed go through, analysts say it would result in an industry topped by three dominant carriers  each earning more than $100 billion in annual revenue. That could seriously dampen competition in many markets.Industry officials, however, say merger and acquisition activity is not likely to affect premium pricing. Instead, insurers focus is on making sure consumers have affordable coverage, a spokesperson for Americas Health Insurance Plans said.Greater affordability certainly seems to be the focal point of messaging coming from health insurers. Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish characterized the potential takeover of Cigna as a deal that would result in the scale to drive greater efficiency and affordability for our customers as well as improvements in the total cost of care.Yet some critics say that rhetoric doesnt always pan out in reality.Theres no good evidence out there that scale is associated with lower premiums or improvements in plan quality, Leemore Dafny, a former official with the FTC, told the Wall Street Journal. Even if there are cost savings to be had, Dafny questions whether insurers would pass those on to consumers.Regardless of the effect on the market, merger and acquisition activity among insurers is likely to continue. The ACAs stipulation that insurers spend the majority of premiums on healthcare creates incentives to cut back on administrative costs  something thats more easily done in a merger.Similarly, pressure to collect data on consumers in an attempt to cut back on healthcare costs is better accomplished by companies that have the scale and resources to do so.Analysts say they expect these and other forces will continue to push insurers toward consolidation, and expect a deal between any of the top five health insurers shortly.
Willis Towers Watson plc is now officially operating following the completion of the merger of Willis Group Holdings and Towers Watson. The combined firm has 39,000 insurance professionals in more than 120 countries and serves 80 per cent of the 1,000 largest companies in the world. The insurers CEO John Haley is promising to shake things up a bit: We believe we can change our industry by delivering solutions that are driven by data and analytics, and are integrated, innovative and tailored to meet the evolving needs of our clients. Haley was chairman and CEO of Towers Watson and the merged firms board is made up of 6 members from each legacy firm. Former Willis chair James McCann holds the same position in the new company.A 15-year distribution deal between Canadian insurer Manulife and Singapores DBS Bank begins Tuesday. Speaking at a press conference the banks regional insurance head Richard Vargo noted: The middle class in this part of the world will expand by more than three times to 1.8 billion by 2020. He also highlighted the aging population and the largely under-insured population. Meanwhile Manulifes CFO Steve Roder commented that the market is expected to become the insurers third largest Asia market behind Hong Kong and Japan. He added: "We want to take bank insurance to the next level in Asia and be the most advanced bank insurance platform in the region.Nationwide Private Client has expanded operations into New Mexico, Utah and Nebraska. The division of Nationwide Insurance Co in Columbus, OH offers high-end insurance coverage and sees opportunity in New Mexico despite it being one of the poorest states. Jim Pederson, president of the division told Bizjournals.com that Santa Fe is of particular interest. The company now operates in 20 states.American International Group has appointed its European chief executive to head up the insurers UK operation. Anthony Baldwin will hold both the UK and European roles and has been the interim CEO in the UK during its restructuring process. He replaces Jacqueline McNamee.
Cybersecurity insurers may see premiums gross income rise by 300 percent or more in the next five years, even as the product's pricing and composition continue to evolve, insurance specialists and others told Bloomberg BNA.It took about 15 years, or until about 2012, for cybersecurity insurance to increase from the first cybersecurity policies ever written in the U.S. to about $1 billion in gross written premiums, the specialists said.A combination of high-profile breaches, increased state and federal statutes and guidance and continued efforts to educate brokers and potential insureds may drive premium revenue to $2.75 billion by the end of 2015 and perhaps $7.5 billion by 2020, they predict. Tracy Dolin, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services analyst, estimated the market could reach $10 billion by 2025.Our organization is looking to grow this portfolio significantly over the next two to three years. We see opportunity in additional industries such as associations. We see opportunities in law firms. We see opportunities in life science companies. There are a lot of other organizations that we're now seeing buy this cover, Toby Merrill, ACE Group global cybersecurity risk practice division senior vice president, said.That expected rapid sales growth is occurring as the cybersecurity insurance market is still viewed by many specialists as a product in its nascent stages with no real standardization surrounding its pricing, terms and conditions, and even the language used in policies, which could lead to uncertainty regarding just what policy holders are buying.Wild West or Stabilizing?The specialists' thinking on the development of the cybersecurity product somewhat differed, with some saying the market is moving toward uniform pricing and products while others offered a different view.Deloitte & Touche LLP Principal Adam Thomas said in some ways, the cybersecurity insurance market still resembles the Wild, Wild West, with companies hoping to buy protection against infrastructure intrusions or privacy liability but could end up with policies offering no protection against either risk, providing little more than a false sense of security.Others tended to agree. The market is immature, pricing is all over the place, Howard Mills, a former New York insurance department superintendent and now Deloitte LLP global insurance regulatory leader, said. Clearly there is a need, so you're going to see a very high degree of effort expended on the part of the industry to try to commercialize this opportunity as much as they can. But they've got to do so at a reasonable risk, he said.Robert Hartwig, Insurance Information Institute president, said cybersecurity insurance has a very, very bright future for insurers certainly, but more importantly it fills a gap, a void, that virtually every business in America has.The product essentially advertises itself, given that almost every week there is another announcement of another major corporation having been breached, he said. Beazley Plc Focus Group Leader Paul Bantick said it is very rare in an insurance person's career that a new product not only takes off but provides real benefit and value to the insureds, that's seen as a must-have product. And that's what this has become.Underwriting ChallengesDemand for cybersecurity insurance at times outstrips carriers' willingness to write specific policies, meaning some companies simply go without adequate coverage. Meantime, the largest U.S. companies sometimes can't find coverage exceeding $100 million, exposing them to uninsured costs associated with the largest breach incidents.Target Corp. for example said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that during the first 11 months of 2014 it realized $248 million in cumulative expenses due to the breach of its payment card systems and received $90 million in insurance payouts, leaving the firm to absorb a $158 million loss.Despite the uptick in demand for cybersecurity insurance, many carriers are hesitant to offer the product aggressively because they neither have robust historical data to construct adequate risk models nor have a solid understanding of the risks associated with providing the coverage, Standard & Poor's Credit Services Analyst Sridhar Manyem said.Buyers and sellers are adjusting to the fluid situation. Catherine Mulligan, Zurich North American Insurance Co. senior vice president (speciality products) said that one of the things that is evolving is the underwriting process. Attack vectors are changing, technologies are evolving, so as underwriters we are always working to understand the full scope of the exposures and what the controls might need to be.We will see a lot of product evolution. Clearly there is a need, so you're going to see a very high degree of effort expended on the part of the industry to try to commercialize this opportunity as much as they can, But they've got to do so at a reasonable risk, Deloitte's Mills said.Bespoke PoliciesMany policies continue to be bespoke, written specifically for an individual entity, John Lucker, Deloitte Consulting LLP principal who leads Deloittes advanced analytics & modeling practice, said. There is not really a standard cybersecurity risk policy at this point in time. The industry is really trying to figure this out, he said.Very simply, many in the industry believe they don't really have a firm grasp of the risk and the revenue they can get from premium for writing cybersecurity because the potential damages are so great. So while there are cybersecurity coverages available, there is not as much choice in the market right now, Mills said. Companies that simply got the risk analysis wrong, or their pricing wrong, have exited the market. While about 60 carriers offered cybersecurity insurance a few years ago, that number has shrunk to about 50, with fewer than a dozen holding significant market share in the U.S., a June report issued by Standard and Poor's Ratings Services said.Although it is true that cybersecurity-incident historical data isn't as robust as say, data on automobile loss ratios, insurance professionals can nevertheless assess a company's risks. You're not just looking at systems security, but also at some of the indirect aspects of the business: is there a culture of risk management, do they do employee background checks, Tim Francis, enterprise lead for cybersecurity insurance at Travelers , said.The stand-alone cybersecurity insurance policy will continue to evolve but development will bring challenges, with many concepts and wordings yet to be tested, potentially resulting in litigation. This is not unusual with new products and can improve risk knowledge, a September 2015 Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE report said.Stephen JoyceBloomberg
Insurance companies around the world paid out $27 billion for natural disaster claims last year, making it the number one driver of insured losses in 2015, data from Munich Re showed Monday.Weather was the greatest cause of these incidents, responsible for 94% of losses, despite the calming effect El Nino has had on the development of hurricanes in the North Atlantic.Floods in the UK and Scandinavia from Storm Desmond early in December was particularly damaging, costing insurers about $764 million in claims. Later flooding from Storm Eva may bring that total to more than 1 billion euros.In the United States, two tornado outbreaks and flooding caused widespread damage in December, though estimates are not yet available.Meanwhile, the proportion of insured losses for catastrophes in developing and emerging countries remains low.All told, the $27 billion in insured damage was lower than the $31 billion lost last year. It was also below the 10-year average of $56 billion. The dip in claims is creating some downward pressure on property/casualty rates, though lower claims payouts boost industry profit.There is one concern in the data that is new, however. These losses seem to suggest that climate change continues to be a concern for insurance companies, according to Munich Re.The insurance industry has lobbied governments to take action against climate change, citing such rises in payouts in heavily-insured countries. And Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, warned that the sector is not prepared for these unprecedented risks. With the era of fossil fuel-powered industrialization at an end, the equilibrium that we had enjoyed as a result is also coming to an end and we are now facing new levels of risk and new types of risk, she said.We have increased frequency, severity and scale of impacts because of globalization and the domino effect it has. And the insurance industry is not ready for that yet, Figueres said. The insurance industry is ready to take on weather impacts, but not ready to take on climate change. They are not the same thing.The UN representative went on to say that the industry is at the bottom of the curve of experience regarding a risk exposure that is completely unprecedented.Can you insure against unbounded climate change? No. All modeling goes beyond what can be explained. You cannot insure against climate change, she said.Figueres told the insurance industry that insurance products need to evolve to meet these new types of risk. The UN claims that less than 1% of weather losses in developing countries are covered by insurance.This is not only morally irresponsible, Figueres said, but from a business imperative its a huge opportunity. Developing markets will be mostly affected so you have a role to play.
Chris Nelson, Ed McCormick and Marc Palumbo posing with the Great Barrington Fire Department. Photo courtesy of Lee Rogers

Great Barrington Firehouse Sets CPR Open House After One of Its Own Is Saved

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.  Ed McCormick, a Great Barrington firefighter for more than 50 years, has helped many people in emergency situations during his service to the town.



At this past Thanksgiving's annual Turkey Trot Race at Bard College at Simon's Rock, some of his brother firefighters returned the favor by aiding him in his time of need.



McCormick, 68, had been walking and talking with Great Barrington Fire Captain Marc Palumbo and firefighter Chris Nelson on the race course and had just moved ahead of them when they saw him fall over. They knew it was serious by the way McCormick had fallen, and it turned out he was in cardiac arrest.



Palumbo and Nelson immediately started cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to stabilize him, with help from a nurse on the scene. The Southern Berkshire Volunteer Ambulance Squad and personnel with the Great Barrington Police Department responded and managed to restart McCormick's heart with a defibrillator and intravenous drugs.



"It was ironic that one of the first people to come to my aid, Marc Palumbo, was a guy I had convinced to join the Fire Department 12 years ago. You know who your friends are when you're in need, and when I needed it most, I was fortunate to have an incredible array of friends and colleagues on hand. They literally saved my life," McCormick said. "I can't thank the first responders, the Southern Berkshire Volunteer Ambulance Squad, the Great Barrington Police and Fire Departments, and Fairview Hospital enough for their professionalism, swift actions and wonderful care."



As a special thank you to the first responders and to the community, the McCormick family is sponsoring a special CPR training in partnership with the Great Barrington Fire Department and Southern Berkshire Volunteer Ambulance. This free event will be held at the Great Barrington Firehouse on Saturday, Jan. 23, at 10 a.m. While it's not a full certification class, attendees will learn many of the basics that could help save a life in the event of an emergency.
The School Building Committee meets for what may be the last time. Principal Shelley Fachini tells how much the children liked the new Colegrove Park Elementary School. Retiring Superintendent James Montepare and Historical Commission Chairwoman Justyna Carlson discuss an application for a preservation award for the school. The school opened on Monday morning. PreviousNext

North Adams School Building Committee's Mission Fulfilled

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  After more than three years, the School Building Committee adjourned Monday evening from what may have been its final meeting.



It's charge had been to shepherd an elementary school project, a mission essentially completed with the opening on Monday morning of Colegrove Park Elementary School."



"This is probably our last official meeting ... It's been a long process we've been at this almost three years," said Mayor Richard Alcombright, acknowledging the full project had been even longer. "It hasn't been easy at times and we had to make a lot of tough decisions."



The process really began in 2009 with the closure of Conte Middle School; eighth-graders were sent to Drury High School and Grades 6 and 7 to the three elementary schools, causing overcrowding and space issues.



In early 2011, a $680,000 feasibility study pointed to the renovation of Conte, which also had been the former Drury High, as the best option to replace Sullivan School. The School Building Committee eventually recommended the nearly $30 million renovation but protests, including a citizen's petition that forced a ballot vote on the funding, led to delays in process. The project finally got under way in 2014 but, again, delays led to its opening four months later than hoped.



During that time, the School Building Committee has waxed and waned in size. Attendance was heavy in the beginning, and a plaque at the school lists 15 people. But by the end, about half that number were in regular attendance at meetings that were occurring twice a month over the past year.



The mayor thanked the members for their input and dedication over the years. While Monday may have been the last "official" meeting, he said it was possible the committee could be called back for further action. The school may be open but there are still outstanding invoices, for example.



Andy Gentile, of owner's project manager Colliers International, said the project remains on target financially. Only about $100,000 in invoices are still out and nearly $1 million in changeovers is awaiting review by the Massachusetts School Building Authority for reimbursement.



The mayor asked if any of the changeovers would be looked at "unfavorably" by MSBA but it was believed they were in line with what had already been approved.





An official ribbon cutting will be held on Jan. 25, at 1:30, at the school with an open house for the community from 6 to 7:30 that night.

"I think it was a real successful opening," Gentile said.



Fachini said she kept "waiting to hear something ... I really kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it just never came."



There will be some settling in and changes made. Fachini noted the nurse had to move her desk because she couldn't see patients; that may require some electrical changes.



"It will be pretty typical over the next two or three months, shaking the building out of them trying stuff and moving stuff," Gentile said.

Staff parking is also an issue despite adding more spots than those available at Sullivan. And more direction will be needed at the entrance to prevent children from crossing East Main and through the dropoff area. While the majority of children arrived on buses, a lot of them were walking, many with their parents.



"There were 100 kids walking, that's a big deal," said Superintendent James Montepare, adding it was significantly more than at Sullivan.



Fachini summed up the day with a story about one of her students, who turned to her in the hallway, spread his arms, and declared: "I love this place!"
Four More Shots Please Stars Ready For Film Based On Series, Say 'Like Sex In The City, Why Not?' | Exclusive
Pour One Out For French Bistro Paris Club, Which Closed Monday

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jan 5, 2016 6:17PM



A pasta dish at the new il Porcellino, taking over the Paris Club spot.

It's no secret that River North is filled with mostly-forgettable restaurants, which makes the loss of Paris Club a bit depressing. The French bistro, which opened as an epic spot under a quartet of Chefs (including Jean Joho of Everest) in 2011, closed quietly yesterday, according to a statement from Lettuce Entertain You.

This wasn't the first blow to Paris Club. Last year, a chunk of it was carved out to make room for Ramen San (which won't be affected by this closure). The spot re-concepted, sort of, into a darker, more intimate version of itself but with the same cuisine. We actually were quite fond of it, while it lasted. But French onion soup and steak frites (some of the best around) will be giving way to pasta, pizza and antipasti, as il Porcellino, a new Italian spot, takes over.

The opening date hasn't been released yet, but we don't expect it to take long to make the change.

We have mixed feelings about this. We not only liked Paris ClubChicago also has a shortage of French restaurants, and too many mediocre Italian places that have nothing to recommend them.

However, if il Porcellino can get Italian trattoria right, we'll be first in line. The restaurant will still be run by the Melmans plus Chef Doug Psaltis, so the quality should carry over. Plus, the official release promises a selection of wines in "those familiar Italian wicker baskets," which makes us unnaturally happy.

More details to come.
A fund that mobilizes insurance company funds for infrastructure has been set up with an initial pool of 40 billion yuan (6.15 billion U.S. dollars), China's insurance watchdog said on Monday.

The fund will be managed by the China Insurance Investment Company Ltd., newly established with 1.2 billion yuan of registered capital and 46 corporate shareholders, including 27 insurers, 15 insurance assets management firms and four private companies, according to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

In its first investments, the fund will help China Merchants Steam Navigation Company with overseas port projects. It will also support liquefied natural gas projects with Russia.

The fund was approved by the State Council in July and is expected to ultimately reach 300 billion yuan. It is designed to facilitate strategic projects such as housing renovations, urban infrastructure, water conservation and the Belt and Road Initiative. It can also invest in emerging industries, logistics, healthcare, information technology, environmental protection, small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Belt and Road Initiative, a reference to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to revive the ancient trade route between Asia and Europe.
A US scholar is pointing out that China's construction and other activities in the waters of the South China Sea are often misunderstood.

An undated photo shows the view of South China Sea. [Photo: blog.163.com]

Dr. Greg Austin is a fellow at the EastWest Institute in New York, and currently a visiting professor of international policy at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia.

Dr. Austin says he doesn't see China's moves in the region as a threat to international freedom of navigation.

"Some people say that China represents a threat to shipping, to commercial shipping, through the South China Sea, and they get very nervous about this. But that too is an exaggerated threat: China does not represent a threat to shipping in the South China Sea; in fact, over half of the shipping in the South China Sea goes to and from China."

Waters surrounding the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea are filled with busy shipping lanes and fishing activity.

Nearly 40 percent of global trade is carried through the waters, which see the passage of at least 40,000 ships annually.

Despite the significant role it plays, the security situation in the South China Sea is complicated.

This is partially reflected during the global search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March 2014 as problems including lack of infrastructure, weak rescue forces, and insufficient public services in the area undermined the timeliness of the emergency response and assistance.

China started to build lighthouses on Huayang and Chigua reefs, which went into operation in October 2015, and has finished building an airfield on Yongshu Jiao on the Nansha Islands.

Dr. Austin says these moves are within China's sovereignty.

"China's motivations for its activities in the South China Sea relate to the defense of its claims to sovereignty of the Nansha islands. And what is very clear is that the Republic of China before 1949 and then, after 1949, the People's Republic of China did exercise some sort of administrative action and claim in respect of those islands."

Dr. Autsin says China should now work more closely with ASEAN countries to remove the misunderstanding and find longer-term solutions, while at the same time intervention from the outside should be prevented.

"I think there's a good chance that it will defuse the tension and eliminate the excuse for the sorts of intervention. And I think it's really within China's capability to be more creative in the South China Sea and bring these countries close together to prevent the external intervention."
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Lenovo recently announced the opening of the Lenovo Solutions Center in the Philippines, located at the Lenovo Philippines office The Lenovo Solutions Center, otherwise known as the POC Lab, serves as a venue to further strengthen Lenovos long standing relationship with its alliance partners.

The Lenovo PH Solution Center is a testament to our commitment to empower our Filipino ISV community - allowing them to experience the world-class technology that Lenovo has to offer. Seeing the growing potential in this market, we determined to continue investing significantly in this space." said Abraham Lim, Country Manager, Enterprise Business Group, Lenovo Philippines.

Data center class infrastructure

Providing a data center-class infrastructure, Lenovo Solutions Center utilizes the latest Lenovo System Server, Storage, and Networking products. The facility specifically aims to reach out to clients, business partners, alliance partners, and Independent Sofware Vendors (ISVs) who wish to test their solutions on Lenovo infrastructure. The facility is under the management of Lenovo Philippines Enterprise Business Group.

Lenovo Solutions Center currently features Lenovo System x's technologies, Lenovo Storage S2200 SAN, VMware solutions, and Microsoft technology. Designed to deliver a true RAS environment to enterprise data centers, Lenovo System x's latest technologies include innovations such as Predictive Failure Analysis, Light Path Diagnostics, and IMMv2. Lenovo Storage S2200 SAN, which can easily be deployed within an hour of setup, has an intuitive management interface that simplifies complex administrative storage tasks.

The Lenovo Solutions Center also features a powerful Lenovo System x virtualization environment that runs on VMWare vSphere, VMWare Horizon, and VMWare Virtual SAN. The virtualization environment also features Hyper-V, which allows users to create and manage a virtualized computing environment based on Windows Servers built-in virtualization technology.

Visitors information

Currently open for scheduled visits, the Lenovo Solutions Center is located at 10th floor, 11th Corporate Center, 11th Ave. cor. Triangle Drive, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City, Philippines.

Those who wish to drop by the Lenovo Solutions Center can contact a Lenovo representative to schedule their visit. Clients, business partners, alliance partners, and ISVs can also request for remote access to infrastructure resources from Lenovo Philippines.

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Central China's Hubei Province has announced a bonus/penalty scheme in its fight against pollution, the second province to do so after Shandong in the east.

The air quality in 15 cities, Shennongjia Forest District and the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture will be assessed quarterly.

Local governments will have to pay from 150,000 yuan (US$22,980) to 300,000 yuan, depending on weather conditions, for every microgram per cubic meter increase in PM2.5 or PM10 particles compared to the same period the year before. Should the figures be lower, they will be paid similar amounts.

In addition, they will be fined or rewarded from 300,000 yuan to 600,000 yuan if PM10 density is one microgram higher or lower than a desired level yet to be determined.

When environmental campaigners Greenpeace assessed air quality across China last year, Hubei ranked fourth in a list of worst provinces, with its PM2.5 density averaging 65 micrograms per cubic meter in the first nine months.

The annual safe level of PM10 and PM2.5 particles, according to national standards, is 70 and 35 micrograms, respectively.

Shandong introduced its air quality scheme in 2014.

Local governments in its 17 cities are given scores based on the density of PM2.5, PM 10, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

Rewards, or fines, are based on multiplying those scores by 200,000 yuan. That sum has been raised to 400,000 yuan this year.

By September 2014, only Yantai in the northeast of the province paid a 1 million yuan penalty while the other 16 cities had benefited from rewards totalling almost 116 million yuan.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson on Southwest Border Security

Washington, DC - Statement by Secretary Jeh C. Johnson on Southwest Border Security:

As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration; if you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values.

In the spring and summer of 2014 we faced a significant spike in families and unaccompanied children from Central America attempting to cross our southern border illegally. In response, we took a number of actions in collaboration with the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and the numbers declined dramatically. In Fiscal Year 2015, the number of apprehensions by U.S. Border Patrol of those attempting to cross our southern border illegally -- an indicator of total attempts to cross the border illegally -- decreased to 331,333. With the exception of one year, this was the lowest number of apprehensions on our southern border since 1972. In recent months, however, the rate of apprehensions on our southern border has begun to climb again.

In November 2014, I issued new priorities for immigration enforcement as part of the Presidents immigration accountability executive actions. These new Department-wide priorities focus our enforcement resources on convicted criminals and threats to public safety. These new enforcement priorities also focus on border security, namely the removal of those apprehended at the border or who came here illegally after January 1, 2014.

We must enforce the law in accordance with these priorities, and secure our borders.

Accordingly, the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with our domestic and international partners, is undertaking the following actions:

Removals

Since the summer of 2014 we have removed and repatriated migrants to Central America at an increased rate, averaging about 14 flights a week. Most of those returned have been single adults.

This past weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) engaged in concerted, nationwide enforcement operations to take into custody and return at a greater rate adults who entered this country illegally with children. This should come as no surprise. I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed.

The focus of this weekends operations were adults and their children who (i) were apprehended after May 1, 2014 crossing the southern border illegally, (ii) have been issued final orders of removal by an immigration court, and (iii) have exhausted appropriate legal remedies, and have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under our laws. As part of these operations, 121 individuals were taken into custody, primarily from Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, and they are now in the process of being repatriated. To effect removal, most families are first being transported to one of ICEs family residential centers for temporary processing before being issued travel documents and boarding a return flight to their home countries.

Given the sensitive nature of taking into custody and removing families with children, a number of precautions were taken as part of this weekends operations. ICE deployed from around the country a number of female agents and medical personnel to take part in the operations, and, in the course of the operations, ICE exercised prosecutorial discretion in a number of cases for health or other personal reasons.

This enforcement action was overseen by Sarah Saldana, the Director of ICE, and supported and executed by Thomas Homan, a career law enforcement official who leads ICEs Enforcement and Removal Operations.

At my direction, additional enforcement operations such as these will continue to occur as appropriate.

Increasing border security

We are continuing to enhance our border security resources and capabilities, working closely with state and local counterparts. As a result of our long-term investment in border security over the past 15 years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has greater capability to identify and interdict illegal crossings than at any time in our Nations history. This includes the largest deployment of vehicles, aircraft, boats, and equipment along the southwest border in the 90-year history of the Border Patrol. And through the Southern Border and Approaches Campaign Plan we launched in early 2015, we are for the first time putting to use in a combined and strategic way the assets and personnel of CBP, ICE, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Coast Guard to better protect the border.

In response to the recent increases in migrant flows along the southwest border, CBP has deployed additional permanent Border Patrol Agents to high-traffic areas, augmented operations in South Texas with Mobile Response Teams, and redirected support from other Border Patrol sectors including through remote interviewing technology. CBP has also increased surveillance capabilities by adding tethered aerostats (long-range radars) and other technology, along with additional aircraft. CBP will sustain these heightened border security efforts, along with the humanitarian aspects of its responsibilities, while the current migration levels persist.

Unaccompanied children

As the number of unaccompanied children crossing our southern border has risen again in recent months, DHS has continued our close coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as it increases its capacity to care for unaccompanied minors and place them with sponsors. Our goal is to ensure that CBP has the continued capability to quickly and efficiently transfer unaccompanied minors after they are apprehended to HHS custody, as is required by U.S. law. In the past month, HHS added over 1,000 beds for this purpose, and recently announced that another estimated 1,800 beds will be available soon. HHS is continuing to explore options for additional beds if necessary.

Cracking down on criminal smugglers

In the summer of 2014, the Deputy Attorney General and I announced Operation Coyote to crack down on those involved in the criminal smuggling of migrants from Central America and elsewhere. Since then, 1,022 smugglers and their associates have been arrested, and hundreds of bank accounts have been seized.

With the Department of Justice, we are now doubling down on these efforts. This will build on existing initiatives such as ICEs Human Smuggling Cell, which is working with the financial industry to target and disrupt the flow of funds to human smuggling organizations. DHSs recently formed Joint Task Forces, JTF-West and JTF-Investigations, will coordinate the deployment of additional DHS investigative and prosecutorial resources and their integration into the Department of Justices ongoing law enforcement and prosecution operations.

Cooperation with Mexico

We are expanding our cooperation with Mexico in dealing with illicit migration. In particular, we are working with our Mexican partners to enhance joint efforts on our shared border, to support Mexicos efforts on its southern border, and to shut down the criminal groups and illegal support networks that exploit vulnerable migrants. DHS and the Department of State will also continue to support the Merida Initiative, the longstanding partnership between the United States and Mexico to fight organized crime and associated violence.

Expanding the public messaging campaign

DHS and the Department of State are expanding our existing messaging campaign in Central America, Mexico, and the United States to educate those considering making the journey north, as well as their families abroad, about the dangerous realities of the journey. The messaging will also highlight the recent enforcement operations.

The Flores case

We continue to disagree with the District Court decision in the Flores case that a 1997 settlement of a case solely involving unaccompanied children now applies to children who arrive with a parent and their processing at todays family residential centers. The decision, and the resulting injunction, significantly constrains our ability to respond to an increasing flow of illegal migration into the United States. We have appealed the decision, and the appellate court has agreed to hear the appeal on an expedited basis. Meanwhile, we have implemented significant reforms to how we operate our family residential centers to transition them to temporary processing facilities for these individuals, and have taken steps to ensure compliance with the District Courts July 24 and August 21 orders.

Creating an alternative, safe and legal path

Finally, to effectively address this situation, we recognize that we must offer alternatives to those who are fleeing the poverty and violence in Central America. More border security and removals, by themselves, will not overcome the underlying conditions that currently exist in Central America. I am pleased that Congress, in the recently-enacted omnibus spending bill, included $750 million in aid for Central America.

In the meantime, DHS and the Department of State are accelerating the development of new mechanisms to process and screen Central American refugees in the region, about which we hope to make a more formal announcement soon. We will expand access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in the region and develop more legal alternatives to the dangerous and unlawful journey many are currently taking in the hands of human smugglers.

These new refugee processing mechanisms will build upon the existing Central American Minors Program, which is already providing an in-country refugee processing option for certain children with parents lawfully in the United States. Thus far, we have received more than 6,000 applications for the Program, some children have begun to arrive in the United States as part of the Program, and we expect the pace of arrivals to increase steadily moving forward. We are also engaging other countries in the region, encouraging them to join us in broadening access to protection for refugees from Central America.
41-year-old Piece of Cake From King Charles and Princess Diana's Wedding to Be Auctioned
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Theres no denying that the growth of the internet has come with a corresponding contraction in attention spans. Faced with an avalanche of content, people generally dip in and out, scooping the bare essentials of a story or event, taking on board more information every day than humans ever have but in thousands of tiny mouthfuls (mindfuls?).

Long Reads (as theyre despairingly called) have attempted to buck this trend, along with the concept of binge-viewing (though you could argue this is necessitated by impatience) but none so successfully as the lengthy true crime series.

Recommended Read more Making a Murderer rape victim speaks out about Steven Avery

Serial kick-started the trend, an offshoot of the already successful This American Life podcast, which promised to unfurl its story week by week.  Baltimore teen arrested for murdering ex-girlfriend  is a story that would have struggled for coverage outside of Maryland in print, broadcast and online news, but in the bubble, the cerebral clearing, that is the podcast, it became an obsession to millions of listeners all around the world and broke podcast records.

HBO to a lesser extent had a similar hit with The Jinx, which centred on real estate heir Robert Dursts alleged murders, and now Netflix has engrossed an audience bored over the festive season with Making a Murderer, the incredible, infuriating story of a man who spent nearly 20 years in prison only to be exonerated through DNA evidence.

Adnan Syed, the focus of Serial season 1

The genre isnt anything new of course - 1988s The Thin Blue Line, 2001s The Staircase and 2012s West of Memphis all spring to mind as other stories riddled with conjecture, contradiction and corruption - but its transference into the mainstream, the 'Trending Now', 50,000 shares, 'Must Read' mainstream, definitely is.

The reasons for this are manifold. Firstly, it is something about the density of the cases that seems to have drawn people in. Series like the above pour over the minutiae of their cases, making the listener feel informed and smart in a modern world where were usually quick to offer an opinion despite only knowing a scant few facts. The distribution method is key too, as podcasts and back-to-back episode TV series offer a sense of enclosure not unlike that of reading a book but somehow even more involved. Its as though refreshing Twitter, checking WhatsApp and scrolling through Spotify is like scanning through radio channels, but when you hit a podcast you tune into a specific frequency and block out the noise - totally absorbed by the subject matter.

The way they put you in the shoes of the (potentially) wrongly-punished suspect is integral too, forcing you to think long and hard about how you would act in these situations, how imperfect your memory actually is, and how skilled you would be at getting your versions of events over.

The 2014 podcast Serial re-examined the murder of a young woman, Hae Min Lee, for which her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, pictured, was convicted

I think the main reason for their sudden success however is the way they can effect change, where perhaps others couldnt pre-internet. People love justice and they love to see the truth out, and with it now being easier than ever for the masses to funnel their outrage at prosecutors and police departments online, listeners/viewers feel part of the story, as though theyre a million strong group of pro-bono lawyers standing behind the defendant in the courthouse (or angry mob, depending on how you look at it).

But what will be the next Making a Murder or Serial, and how will the genre change? Peoples outrage might be fiery, but it is finite. The makers of MaM have lamented how cases such as Steven Averys are rife throughout the world, but there are only so many hours in the day people can devote to such shows, much less being angry about them. While the series are undoubtedly a noble attempt to bring some order and sense to an often chaotic and corrupt world, the tragedy of them is that only a select few cases - blessed with particularly salacious narratives and good access to the people involved - will get the attention they deserve.
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Making a Murderer filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi have discussed the huge response to their Netflix documentary, saying that they are delighted that viewers have become so passionately engaged with Steven Averys case, but that the series is really about a problem endemic in the US justice system.

Asked what her reaction was to calls for Avery to be released following the shows premiere, Demos told The Wrap:

"I think its great to have viewers engaged and to have people getting involved in the world. But our hope is the dialogue reaches beyond these cases or beyond Manitowoc County or Wisconsin, for that matter. This is an American story. This just happened to be a high-profile case that two filmmakers spent a decade chronicling so that people could see it in depth. But I guarantee you that what you see playing out in this series is playing out in every state in this nation, and theres a broader dialogue that needs to be happening."

The documentary was met with anger from Ken Kratz, whom it does not paint in a good light, with the Wisconsin state prosecutor saying: You dont want to muddy up a perfectly good conspiracy movie with what actually happened.

Asked what they made of Kratz disparaging their work, Ricciardo fired back:

"This is coming from a man who argued in closing arguments that reasonable doubts are for innocent people. This is coming from a man who said, So what if the key was planted? This is coming from a man who was forced out of office for admittedly sending sexually suggestive text messages to a domestic-violence victim whose case he was prosecuting. We are confident. We stand by the project we did. It is thorough. It is accurate. It is fair. That is why it took us 10 years to produce it.

"As Ive said before, Ken Kratz is entitled to his own opinion, but hes not entitled to his own facts. If hed like to put together a documentary and try to discredit us in some way, hes welcome to do that. Were not going to be pulled into re-litigating the Halbach case with him."

The filmmakers tried to interview Kratz several times while making the show but he refused. They believe that by talking now he is clearly trying to rehabilitate himself in the public eye.

This is a man who was disgraced.
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Making a Murderer has caused quite a lot of hysteria online, with many viewers questioning whether the series subject, Steven Avery, was actually guilty of first-degree intentional homicide.

Since broadcasting via Netflix, petitions urging the president to conditionally pardon the Wisconsin man have gained traction, and the group Anonymous have claimed they hold critical evidence that proves he is innocent.

Recommended Read more Making a Murderer rape victim speaks out about Steven Avery

One of the suggestions in the series is that Wisconsin law enforcement framed Avery for the murder. Manitowoc County Sheriff Robert Hermann has since said he is not pleased with the Netflix documentary series, telling The Wrap that crucial footage had been manipulated.

 Making A Murderer- Where are they now?

Because of all the media stuff weve been getting, I actually did watch with it my inspector and I still stand by that statement, he said. In several areas throughout the film, you can see where they cut the tape and manipulated things.

One place real evident is one of the interviews with Steven Avery in episode 5  if you watch one video, it jumps from 3:20 to 3:21, then to 3:17, then to 3:22 and then to 3:18.

He continued: Were not pleased with the way the film has portrayed us. Weve noticed that the family of Avery and the attorneys are embedded with the film producers, and the attorneys from the get-go have portrayed us in a negative light, but theres not much we can do to change it.

In December last year, the Sheriff dismissed the documentary in an interview with The Herald Times Reporter, saying a documentary puts things in chronological order and tells the story as it is Ive heard things are skewed.

Theyve taken things out of context and taken them out of the order in which they occurred, which can lead people to a different opinion or conclusion. At that time, however, he had not watched the series.

You can read about whats next for Steven Avery and where do the cases in the Netflix documentary stand now, here.
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Cacao

Last year's obsession with so-called clean eating has spawned a taste for raw cacao  its dense and earthy bitterness being the next step for dark chocolate aficionados. Chocolate and cocoa powder come from cocoa or cacao beans, the oval pods that grow on trees in very hot places close to the equator, across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The cacao nibs and powder now available from supermarkets and health food shops are the bean  dried, powdered and packed  in the purest state we can buy it, free from all additives including sugar and cocoa butter.

Health food bloggers such as the Hemsley sisters, with their chocolate avocado mousse and Ella Henderson with her Deliciously Ella sweet-potato brownies, have sent the popularity of cacao through the roof  sales of bars alone are up 36 per cent at Waitrose.

Celeriac

This mysterious root vegetable isn't blessed with good looks, and is best known in the deliciously mustardy French dish, celeriac remoulade. Recently, it's been popping up on menus around London, suggesting that it's set to receive even more attention as 2016 rolls on. Peruvian restaurant Pachamama has celeriac cooked in Galician beef fat, the Grain Store is serving buttermilk and sage pot-roasted celeriac with cauliflower, Hackney's Poco cooks up mussels in celeriac milk, and the Rosewood Hotel's Mirror Room has fillet of venison with celeriac on the menu. Retailers are also reporting a surge: supermarket sales of the vegetable were up almost a third on the previous year.

The root vegetable celeriac is experiencing a supermarket sales surge (Alamy)

Gourmet tinned foods

The days when tinned food meant baked beans or a can of skipjack tuna are over. We are rediscovering canned goods alongside the renaissance in preserving. Other countries across Europe, especially Spain, have long known that cans are perfect for keeping our most treasured foods in top condition. There, high-quality seafood  mussels, scallops and anchovies  is marinated in escabeche, an acidic sauce, and canned. Nancho Manzano, the Michelin-starred executive chef of Iberica restaurants, expects gourmet tinned food to really come into its own this year, and says it's an easy way to make tasty tapas at home.

Look out for the Ortiz brand, which cans top quality tuna belly and anchovies, mackerel fillets and big anchovies from Nardin, and for Charles Basset tuna and the sustainable brands Fish 4 Ever and Fish Tales.

Kimchi is an entry point into the food of Korea (Alamy)

Korean cuisine

Kimchi, a staple of Korean food, has won plaudits for its stomach-settling and antibacterial qualities, but it's also served as an entry point to the national cuisine of Korea. Korean food has been slow to make an impact here, compared with Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese, but new restaurants, and increased availability of key ingredients, make it a cuisine to watch this year.

It's the next Asian food to become mainstream, says Jamie Dobbin, head chef of One Canada Square restaurant and Bar in London. It's less greasy than Chinese, less spicy than Thai and lighter than Indian.

Nicola Lando from souschef.co.uk has watched sales of DIY kimchi kits and gochujang (hot pepper paste) soar over the past year. It won't be long until someone rolls out a chain of mainstream Korean BBQ restaurants in the UK, each table with its own in-built burner and chimney for customers to cook their own meat at the table, wrapping it in a parcel of lettuce, with rice and spicy condiments before eating, she says. They push every consumer and restaurateur button: smoke, tableside theatre, spice, sharing dishes, healthy, short menus. In the meantime, Brits will continue to enjoy these fermented and sweet-spice-umami flavours at home.

If you can't wait, and live in London, seek out Korean street food vendors such as Kimchi Cult, Kimchinary and Busan BBQ. And if you're cooking at home, the recently published Our Korean Kitchen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 25) will teach you more about the cuisine.

Beyond wheat

Gluten-free foods are vital for coeliacs but are often dismissed as a fussy-eating fad. If you're curious, 2016 is the year that gluten-free will go mainstream, and we can all have a dabble.

Gluten-free is a trend we've seen on the rise for a few years now, with no sign of abating, says M&S nutritionist Helen Seward. We've grown our range considerably for coeliac customers and for those looking to cut down their gluten intake.

The retailer is also launching a range of Made Without Wheat ready meals (the first on the high street) and a new range of Made Without baking products and desserts.

Buckwheat (gluten-free, despite its name) got a boost last month after Nigella Lawson revealed her buckwheat cookie recipe  sales went up 116 per cent at Sainsbury's, which is planning a buckwheat pasta for 2016. The Ninth chef Jun Tanaka predicts that the popularity of soba noodles, made from buckwheat, will rise as we look for healthier ways to feed our ramen habits.

Souschef.co.uk says there is demand for other unusual flours, such as potato starch, tapioca flour and teff flour. Increased awareness of food allergies and intolerances is a great thing for broadening our larders, says Nicola Lando. And flours that have previously been in the back corners of Asian supermarkets are now in demand  even from cooks who have never thought about making a dish gluten-free. How to make the crispiest fried wings? Coat in potato starch. How to make sure onion bhajis stay crisp well after frying? Stir in a little tapioca flour. Want to add protein to homemade bread? Add a little Ethiopian teff flour.

Home smoking

Restaurants such as Smokehouse and Pitt Cue Co in London have popularised smoked foods, and now we can do it at home, too. Sales of home smoking kits and accessories are up, while experts recommend smoking yoghurt, cheese, and buying liquid smoke.

Smoking at home can be surprisingly simple. It's going to be a huge feature of our menus in 2016, says Grant McPherson, head development chef at high-end caterer Rhubarb. For home entertaining, this can be done quite easily. You will need a flat-based bowl, a colander and some smoking chips, which you can buy from any specialist food store. You can also use hay, which you can get from pet stores. Simply place your chips in the bowl, ignite, allow the smoke to calm a little and then place your colander on top with your chosen ingredient.

McPherson recommends smoking venison, sea trout and even chocolate.

Souschef sells home smokers as well as liquid smoke  made by condensing the gases of smouldering woods  in hickory, pecan and apple flavours, which bring an instant campfire taste to your food. Sales of its smoking products are up 300 per cent on last year.

Healthy street food

In recent years, dirty burger and burrito vans have turned us on to the potential of good quality and innovative street food. We haven't lost our taste for indulgent street-food treats, but growth brings diversity and this year looks set to build on a gathering force of healthy street-food vendors.

Finalists at the British Street Food Awards last month included Happy Maki, who make vegan sushi, while overall winner Seadog served up a herring laksa with rice noodles and seaweed.

Street food is showing no signs of slowing down, although healthier options are likely to take over in 2016 with more vegetable-based dishes, says Saiphin Moore, the co-founder and head chef of Rosa's Thai Cafe, which started out as a stall in Brick Lane, east London. East Asian cuisine from Thailand and Laos is perfect for this because it provides fuller-flavoured dishes that are fast, fresh and soulful with lots of vegetables and herbs.

Savoury desserts

Fancy a parsnip pud? Head over to the Grain Store in London's King's Cross, where chef Bruno Loubet has created a stunning parsnip and white chocolate cream dessert, paving the way for layfolk to start experimenting with more vegetable-based desserts at home. Rhubarb's Grant McPherson has been using peppers, fennel and chicory in his puddings, which include a chicory tiramisu.

We're already well acquainted with carrot cakes, but savoury pudding flavours are set to become more sophisticated. I predict more savoury, herb-based desserts such as mango and white chocolate mousse with basil and an influx of coastal and woodland ingredients such as sea buckthorn, wild garlic, wood sorrel and sea beets, says Matt Hill, head chef at Down Hall hotel in Hertfordshire.

Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson aims to popularise esoteric Nordic fare

Nordic

We've long had a soft spot for Scandi sensations, and Nordic cuisine  from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway  will have its moment in 2016 and beyond, as we show our appreciation for the chefs and ingredients from the region.

Magnus Nilsson, whose restaurant Faviken is in hard-to-reach northern Sweden, published encyclopaedic The Nordic Cookbook in October (Phaidon, 29.95); already a hit with foodies, its popularity will grow throughout the year. Fire and Ice: Classic Nordic Cooking by Darra Goldstein (Ten Speed Press, 27.50) was published in the same month.

Nordic ingredients such as rye and smoked or pickled fish are becoming more readily available. Nilsson shares recipes for rye bread and a rye-flour porridge, and open rye-bread sandwiches are popular at London restaurants such as the Nordic Bakery and Snaps & Rye.

Nilsson's professed aim, however, is to take us beyond stereotypical Nordic ingredients. Anyone for blood pancakes with reindeer fat, boiled seal intestines served with blubber, or reindeer heart stew?
A satellite image of flooding along the Mississippi River on Jan. 3, 2016. For comparison, the second image shows conditions under more typical conditions a year ago on Jan. 10, 2015.[Photo/NASA]

Waves of flood waters from the Mississippi River and many of its tributaries have ravaged several U.S. states from Illinois to Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, with other downstream states such as Tennessee and Louisiana expected to see crests passing through until mid-January.

Crests passed S. Illinois, set for downstream

The historical winter flooding, caused by three-day rains of more than 10 inches (25 cm) beginning on Christmas Day, has so far claimed 31 lives in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, most of whom drove their vehicles into flooded areas, according to Reuters.

The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) on Sunday canceled flash flood warnings for three counties in southern Illinois, where record or near-record water levels were about to breach embankments.

Nine people have died in the state of Illinois so far, and a dozen counties have been declared disaster areas, Reuters quoted Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Patti Thompson as saying.

The NWS forecast that significant flooding was expected to continue into mid-January as crests are set to pass through Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, possibly causing some backup flooding in feeder rivers of the Mississippi.

Recovery to take weeks

As local residents move out furniture, appliances and clothes no longer usable onto streets and await disposal crews to pick them up, recovery will take weeks if not months, said The Associated Press.

U.S. President Barack Obama, just returning from holiday in Hawaii, signed a federal emergency declaration on Saturday for Missouri after its Governor Jay Nixon requested federal aid. The declaration also allows for coordination work by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in disaster relief.

Nixon described the scale of the disaster as "other-worldly" as he visited hard-hit counties in eastern Missouri on Saturday. Meanwhile, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner continued his tour in flood areas on Sunday

Emergency officials of several hard-hit counties, although optimistic about the prevention of further loss of lives, fear that ensuing health risks such as hypothermia will affect residents.

The unprecedented inundation has also impacted rail transportation and oil production in the region.

The Amtrack passenger train service connecting St. Louis, Louisiana, and Kansas City had been halted for four days until Sunday due to high water levels reaching the tracks at some locations.

Meanwhile, an Exxon Mobil Corp's refinery terminal in Memphis, Tennessee, with a daily production capacity of 340,000 barrels remained closed.
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Malaysia Airlines has told passengers it has imposed a temporary limitation on check-in luggage on flights to Europe starting from Tuesday evening until further notice for safety reasons.

The airline is currently operating a long route to Europe, which, combined with temporary unseasonably strong head winds, limits its ability to carry luggage in the cargo.

This longer flight path consumes more jet fuel and for safety reasons, Malaysia Airlines has had to impose temporary limitation on checked in baggage allowance, the airline said in a statement.

Economy class passengers will be able to take one piece of luggage of 7kg, while business and first class passengers can take two pieces weighing up to 14kg.

Earlier limitations applied to London but have since been lifted. Baggage limitations however, still apply for flights to Amsterdam and Paris.

The airline said it will continue to assess the evolution of the situation over the region and will update travellers when operations are back to normal.

Safety remains the centre of the airlines operations, Malaysian airline said.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said an Airbus A380 operated by Malaysia Airlines has a flying range of roughly 8,200 miles (13,200 km) while a Boeing B772ER has a range of 8,900 miles (14,300 km), on its Twitter page.

In comparison the length of Malaysian flights from Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam Schiphol with 6,400 miles (10,300km), Paris Charles de Gaulle with 6,600 miles (10,500km)and London Heathrow with 6,600 miles (10,600km) are well below that range, according to Flightradar.

On Christmas Day, a Malaysia flight to Kuala Lumpur appeared to be travelling in the wrong direction after taking off from New Zealand. An investigation has since been launched.
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One of Britains foremost queer, black activists has refused an MBE in the New Years Honours List.

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah said that she could not accept the award so long as "LGBTQI people are still being persecuted, tortured and even killed" across the world by laws put in place by the British Empire.

Ms Opoku-Gyimah, who is also known as Lady Phyll, co-founded UK Black Pride in 2005. The organisation is dedicated to the celebration of black LGBT culture in the UK, putting on an annual Pride event and running networking and social events through the year.

Alongside her work as an executive director of Black Pride, Lady Phyll is a trustee of Stonewall and sits on the TUC LGBT committee.

She has previously appeared on the World Pride Power List, been awarded a Black LGBT Community Award, and both appeared in and helped to judge the Independent on Sundays Rainbow List of influential LGBTQ individuals.

But she told lesbian magazine DIVA that she could not accept the latest accolade offered to her.

She said: "As a trade unionist, a working class girl, and an out black African lesbian, I want to stand by my principles and values."

"I don't believe in empire. I don't believe in, and actively resist, colonialism and its toxic and enduring legacy in the Commonwealth, where - among many other injustices - LGBTQI people are still being persecuted, tortured and even killed because of sodomy laws that were put in place by British imperialists.

"I'm honoured and grateful, but I have to say no thank you."

Rainbow List 2015 Show all 30 1 /30 Rainbow List 2015 Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Khakan Qureshi, Seema Butt Matthew Mahmood-Ogston attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Dawn Vago, Suz Temko, Sarah Graham, Joe Holliday, Ela Xora and Holly Greenberry attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Sophie Green and Megan Key attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Lewis Hancox, Len Month, Jay Graph, Fox Fisher attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Ruth Hunt, Riley Carter Millington, Sarah Graham attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Zoe O'Connell and Sarah Brown attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Abbey Kiwanuka and Winfred Namubirau attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Rose Neelam and Holly Kyte attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Liz Carr and Jo Church attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Manuel Heichlinger and Suki attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 Lisa Egan attends the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) Andreas Pajma and John Martin attend the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 Charlie Craggs attends the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 Leng Montgomery attends the Independent on Sunday Rainbow List 2015 party at the 'Grange Hotel' in London  2015 Micha Theiner Rainbow List 2015 (l-r) S. 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39 Commonwealth countries still have repressive anti-LGBT laws, including India, Nigeria and Ghana. Ms Opoku-Gyimah describes herself as a strong Ghanaian African woman and speaks two Ghanaian languages.

Other figures from the LGBTQI community who did accept awards in last weeks 1200-strong lists included Tim Sigsworth from LGBT homeless charity the Albert Kennedy Trust and Paul Roberts from LGBT Consortium.

They will collect their medals alongside almost 30 Tory Party members and supporters, including the political strategist Lynton Crosby, who masterminded the Conservative Partys success in the 2015 General Election.

But Ms Opoku-Gyimah now stands alongside other queer and BME figures, such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Honor Blackman and David Bowie, who have previously refused awards.
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Molly OMalia, 14, has responded to a US magazine's claim that she had some sort of relationship with the rapper Tyga by holding a press conference.

Appearing alongside her lawyer Gloria Allred, who has a previous string of celebrity clients and currently represents some of the Bill Cosby accusers, Miss OMalia was visibly emotional as she discussed the articles impact.

The front page of OK! Magazine USA shows reality TV star Kylie Jenner, Tygas girlfriend, along with the headline Tyga In Love With Underage Teen!. Inside the publication, screen grabs of the Instagram private messages are shown.

 Tyga Admits to Contacting Teenage Girl; Claims He Thought She Was 17

Visibly upset at the conference, Miss OMalia claims Tyga initiated conversations with her over Instagram, conversations she says she initially believed would be about her music.

According to TMZ, Ms Allred said her client was forced to make her identity known following the magazines claims.

People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. 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He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. 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Im very upset that a story about Tyga, Kylie Jenner and me was published by OK! magazine and I want people to know the truth, she said, The truth is that Tyga contacted me first, he direct messaged me on Instagram, I knew who he was but I was surprised that he was contacting me.

The 14-year-old proceeds to say how she believed the 26-year-old was contacting her about her music but claims he did not acknowledge this in the initial or subsequent message, something she says she found strange.

I began to feel uncomfortable when he asked me to FaceTime with him. He asked me to FaceTime three times but I didnt do it. Because of my discomfort of why he wanted to communicate with me, I quickly stopped responding.

Crying, while Ms Allred placed a comforting arm around her, Miss OMalia reads: I never sent the communication between Tyga and me to OK! magazine and I dont know how they obtained them. I would never have allowed OK! magazine or any other magazine to use them. It is also upsetting to me that OK! magazine never even contacted my Mum or me to check the facts to see if what they were publishing was true.

Im speaking out today because I dont want what happened to me to happen to any other young girl.

Ms Allred reportedly criticised the magazine, claiming repercussions meant people figured out the pixelated image was Miss OMalia and have since hounded her.

The lawyer also said Miss OMalias mother believes it to be completely inappropriate for an adult male to communicate with her 14-year-old daughter, ask for her phone number and ask when she is coming to L.A, reports People.

Tyga has since responded to TMZ through his manager who reportedly told the gossip website that the rapper contacted Miss OMalia because she had a pretty strong musical following online and that the conversation was for business purposes. TMZ are also reporting that the messages indicated Miss OMalia to be 17.

The Independent has contacted a spokesperson for Tyga and Jenner for comment.
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Two men have appeared in court accused of canvassing for Isis outside Topshop on Oxford Street.

Muslim convert Ibrahim Anderson, 38, and Shah Jahan Kahn, 63, set up a stall outside the London shop to drum up support amongst Saturday shoppers, a court has heard.

The Old Bailey has heard that the pair spent two and a half hours trying to engage with passers-by for the terror group, including handing out leaflets encouraging support for the so-called Caliphate, on 9 August 2014.

Prosecutor Mark Seymour said: IS, Isis, Isil is a proscribed organisation and inviting support for a proscribed organisation is prohibited by law.

These defendants who both played their part as members of the group which invited support for IS in Oxford Street on 9 August 2014, would have been well aware that this is what they were doing."

The court also heard that when Andersons home was later searched, a mini notebook computer was seized which contained information on how to travel to Syria to support jihad.

Both men deny the charges.

With additional reporting by PA
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Three bodies have been found by police searching for the missing former EastEnders actress Sian Blake and her two children, police have confirmed.

The bodies have not been formally identified but were found at the family home in Erith in the London borough of Bexley, with police now treating the case as a murder inquiry.

Ms Blake, who played Frankie Pierre in EastEnders in the mid-1990s, has not been seen since visiting family in east London with her sons, eight-year-old Zachary and four-year-old Amon, three weeks ago.

She has been missing, along with her children, Zachary, eight and four year-old Amon

Police have appealed for information concerning the whereabouts of Arthur Simpson-Kent, Ms Blake's partner and the children's father.

Police are appealing for information on the whereabouts of Arthur Simpson-Kent, father of Sian Blake's two children and her partner

Detective Superintendant Paul Monk said: "Sadly, as part of a thorough forensic search we are carrying out at the family's home in Erith, we recovered three bodies from the garden of the property.

 House where 3 bodies were found in Sian Blake hunt

"As yet, we have not formally identified the bodies but this is of course a significant development and Sian's family have been informed.

"We continue to appeal for any information that could help us trace Sian's partner Arthur Simpson-Kent. If anyone has any information about where he is or his movements since 16 December then please get in touch with us."

In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake A police forensic officers arrive at the house in Erith, Kent, which is being searched by the police in relation to the missing former EastEnders actress Sian Blake In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake A police forensic officer leaves the house in Erith, Kent In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake A police forensic officer leaves the house in Erith, Kent In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake A police forensic officer in the back garden of the house in Erith, Kent In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake Sian Blake has been missing, along with her children, Zachary, eight and fouryear-old Amon In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake Sian Blake's children, Zachary, eight, and Amon, four PA In pictures: Search for missing Sian Blake Police are appealing for information on the whereabouts of Arthur Simpson-Kent, father of Sian Blake's two children and her partner

Neighbours reported that Ms Blake had motor neurone disease and was looking "thin and frail" when last seen.

Forensics teams were spotted entering Ms Blake's address in Erith with spades and forks, and a police tent was erected in the garden.
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The grandfather of the young British boy featured in an Isis propaganda video threatening the UK has said the child pleaded for him to take him home.

Henry Dare, also known as Sunday, identified him as his daughter Graces son, Isa Dare, who she took to Syria when she went to join the so-called Islamic State in 2012.

That is my grandson, Id know him anywhere. I couldnt believe it when I saw the pictures. I felt sick, he told The Sun.

The boy, thought to be Isa Dare, threatened to kill the 'kuffars'

They are pure evil for doing this to that child  pure evil. I burst into tears when I saw it was him. He doesnt like it there.

I spoke to him on the phone and he just said, Grandad, come and get me.

Mr Dare accused Isis of using Isa, believed to be four or five years old, as a pawn and a shield.

He appeared in a propaganda video entitled A Message to David Cameron, where a British militant threatened the UK for bombing the terrorist groups strongholds in Iraq and Syria, before five hostages were killed.

The boy thought to be Isa, now dubbed Jihadi Junior, was featured at the end of the footage in what appeared to be a warped trailer for a new execution video said to be coming soon.

We will kill the kuffars (infidels) over there, he said, while wearing military fatigues and an Isis headband, pointing towards a car in the distance where prisoners appeared to have been trapped inside.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP

Mr Dare said he wept after seeing his grandson paraded in front of the camera, telling Channel 4 News he felt Isa had been stolen from him.

He appealed for his daughter, who calls herself Khadijah Dare, to come home with his grandchildren and face the music.

Police said they could not confirm the boys identity but he bears a striking resemblance to the child seen in images posted online by accounts associated with Dare, including one where he is shown holding an AK-47.

Dare was brought up as a Christian in Lewisham, south-east London, but converted to Islam and started to change, her family said, with her father claiming he made three calls to police over her behaviour.

She travelled to Syria in 2012 and married Swedish Islamic fighter known as Abu Bakr, who is believed to have been killed in combat.

Khadijah Dare and her husband, Abu Bakr, in a Channel 4 documentary (Channel 4)

The pair appeared in a Channel 4 documentary in 2013, when Dare was reported to be pregnant with their first child, shown brandishing guns and playing with young Isa.

She used Twitter to call for more British Muslims to join her in Syria, vowing to be the first UK woman to kill a British or American hostage following the beheading of James Foley.

Police are working to determine whether the boy - thought to be aged under five - is Isa, one of the sons of Grace Khadijah Dare, a Muslim-convert extremist from Lewisham in south-east London.

More than 30 UK children had been made the subject of family court orders over radicalisation fears, Scotland Yard said in August. At that time, judges had considered cases involving 12 different families.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the country's most senior terrorism officer, said in some instances the children were almost babes in arms, with ages ranging from two or three up to 16 or 17.
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A group of Kurdish protesters entered the Tory campaign headquarters in London and, despite a large police presence, refused to leave.

Reportedly scores of activists entered the building shortly before 2pm on Tuesday afternoon and set up with flags inside the lobby.

The Metropolitan police blocked off the entrance to the building and, according to live video feeds from the scene, appeared to be trying to work with protest leaders to get them to leave.

Protesters against the Government's support of Turkey chanted "wake up UK" and "wake up Cameron".

At 4pm, protesters filed out of the building, decrying the Turkish government's "siege on Kurdish areas".

Calls to the Tory headquarters were not immediately answered.

More follows
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A woman who rented out her London home on Airbnb on New Years Eve was called back by neighbours before midnight to find it had been trashed by her tenant and nearly 100 partygoers.

Christina McQuillan, 31, had rented her one bedroom flat in Putney for 128 for the night to a girl who claimed to only needed it to sleep in.

But Ms McQuillan had to cut her own New Years celebrations short when her neighbours rang her to complain about a smell of cannabis coming from her flat and loud grime music, the Mirror online reports.

She arrived at her home before midnight to find nearly 100 people having a party in her flat and her TV had been ripped from the wall, her flooring had been pulled up, there was broken furniture and scratches on the walls.

When we got there the doors were wide open. There was loud music and everyone was smoking drugs, she told the news site.

Eventually the party started to stop after Ms McQuillans boyfriend went into the bedroom and switched off the power to the flat.

There were two people having intercourse on the bed while a crowd of people were watching, it was disgusting, she said.

As people were leaving Ms McQuillan was scratched and punched in the stomach by a man wearing a hood, at which point her partner called the police and five police cars turned up.

Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year Show all 6 1 /6 Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year 526241.bin Getty Images Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year 526293.bin GETTY Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year 526294.bin GETTY Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year 526292.bin GETTY Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year 526291.bin GETTY Millions gathering worldwide to ring in new year 526346.bin

Ms Quillan told the Evening Standard she and her partner regularly use Airbnb, and the company had apologised, offering to pay for any damage.

A spokesperson for Airbnb said in a statement: We have zero tolerance for this kind of behaviour and have removed this guest from our platform.

 London's fireworks display

We are also in contact with the host and are providing them with our full support.

A Met Office spokesperson said: Shortly before midnight on 31 December police were called to an address in Buer Road SW6 to a report of a female assaulted.

Officers attended and found a 31-year-old woman had been punched in the stomach. The suspect was not identified and there were no arrests.

Anyone with information that could identify the suspect can call police in Hammersmith and Fulham borough via 101.
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David Cameron has dodged the question of whether he will quit as Prime Minister if he loses the EU referendum.

He pledged to campaign for Britain to remain in the 28-state bloc if he secures key reforms and insisted he was giving British voters the very best choice by changing the status quo in the EU as he updated MPs about his EU renegotiation.

Last month he failed to reach an agreement with EU leaders over his plans to block EU migrants from claiming in-work benefits for up to four years.

Recommended Read more Tory ministers will be allowed to campaign to leave the EU

Asked by veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner whether he will resign if Britain votes to leave the EU referendum, the Prime Minister said: This referendum is the Governments policy and the country will decide whether we stay in the European Union or leave the European Union.

What Im doing is giving the country the very best choice there can be by an amendment  the vital amendment  to the status quo we face.

But in the end it will be Britains choice.

Later, when asked the question again by shadow minister Barry Gardiner, Mr Cameron insisted he would stay as Prime Minister regardless of the result.

Come what may, I will continue to lead the government in the way I have, Mr Cameron said.

But if he were to be on the wrong side of the vote he would come under intense pressure to stand down.

He admitted that he would have resigned if he had lost the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014.

Mr Cameron was also asked about which dates he is considering for staging the EU referendum, but the Prime Minister said he cannot guarantee an agreement in February and therefore a summer referendum could not be assured because the Government needs to give four months notice before holding a referendum.

Eurosceptic Tory MPs Show all 7 1 /7 Eurosceptic Tory MPs Eurosceptic Tory MPs Owen Paterson Formerly a cabinet minister, Owen Paterson is now free to make his opinion known on the backbenchers. On the subject of Europe, he does so regularly  claiming recently that the EU referendum was rigged in favour of staying in Getty Eurosceptic Tory MPs John Redwood A longstanding eurosceptic, Mr Redwood warned last year that businesses that spoke out in favour of EU membership would be punished at the check-outs by anti-EU Getty Eurosceptic Tory MPs Bill Cash Awkward squad rebel Bill Cash said last year that he thought the EU had become an undemocratic, German-dominated project. An increasingly assertive German Europe is at odds with British national interests, he wrote in the Daily Telegraph Getty Eurosceptic Tory MPs Philip Davies From the Conservative partys hard right wing, Philip Davies has been a longstanding critic of the EU. He founded the Better off Out campaign and is so eurosceptic that Ukip decided not to stand a candidate against him in 2010 because they agreed with him Rex Eurosceptic Tory MPs Nadine Dorries Outspoken Tory MP Nadine Dorries has previously advocated an alliance with Ukip. At the height of the Greek crisis in 2013 she said that the EU was dying on its feet Rex Eurosceptic Tory MPs Liam Fox The former defence secretary is a central figure on the right wing of the Conservative party. Hes long put pressure on David Cameron over EU negotiations Getty Eurosceptic Tory MPs Zac Goldsmith A socially liberal eurosceptic, Goldsmith was one of the founding members of the Peoples Pledge campaign to get MPs to sign up for an EU referendum. His father ran the Referendum Party, a precursor to Ukip Getty

Mr Cameron also announced that Government ministers will be allowed to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.

As many as half of Cabinet ministers are thought to favour leaving the EU, including senior figures such as Iain Duncan Smith, Sajid Javid and Theresa May.

"There will be a clear government position, but it will be open to individual Ministers to take a different personal position while remaining part of the government," Mr Cameron told MPs.

"Ultimately it will be for the British people to decide this countrys future by voting in or out of a reformed European Union in the Referendum that only we promised and that only a Conservative majority government was able to deliver."


China's environmental watchdog has investigated 1.41 million companies suspected of polluting the environment since the new environmental protection law was implemented at the beginning of last year.

Environmental authorities found 46,800 companies with illegal waste-discharging activities and 63,700 with illegal construction projects. A total of 47,000 were fined and 17,000 were shut down, according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

"The newly revised law has imposed strict controls on various polluting sources, and clear emission limits for different pollutants provide the ministry with solid legal support to take harsh enforcement measures," said Vice-Minister Pan Yue.

In the last year, local environmental protection bureaus in 17 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have cooperated with public security organs, people's courts and people's procuratorates to enhance law enforcement, according to the ministry.

While many heavily polluting enterprises have upgraded facilities for production, efforts made by ministries "are helpful to further tackle pollution problems", according to Pan.

In early August, 56 illegal coal mines without permits in Hohhot, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, were forced to shut down.

A law enforcement team of more than 100 investigators from various agencies facilitated the process, which set an example for other places, according to the ministry.

Cooperation among top ministries will be enhanced in the future, according to Pan.

On Dec 24, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Public Security and the Supreme People's Procuratorate launcheda joint investigation in an environmental case in which a petrochemical factory in Jingjiang, Jiangsu province, is suspected of illegally burying hazardous waste underground.

The local government was subsequently urged by the Ministry of Environmental Protection to investigate the issue and start ecological restoration of the area.

The case marked the first time the top ministries worked together on an investigation.
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Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure to promote more women to prominent posts in his top team as the Labour leader began work on a controversial reshuffle of his shadow Cabinet.

He began a round of meetings with shadow ministers amid accusations that he was planning a revenge reshuffle aimed at purging internal critics who have disagreed publicly on such issues as bombing Isis in Syria and renewing the Trident missile system.

Key announcements are due on Tuesday with attention focussing on the fate of Hilary Benn, the shadow Foreign Secretary; Maria Eagle, the shadow Defence Secretary; and Michael Dugher, the shadow Culture Secretary.

There are indications that Mr Benn is resisting an attempt to move him. The shadow Foreign Secretary has powerful allies in the party and sacking him could trigger resignations by other shadow ministers.

Corbyn allies have said that decisions on individuals future would depend on their loyalty over the last four months and where they shared his direction of travel.

His first reshuffle  which took place the day after his leadership victory in September  was widely criticised for failing to appoint more women to senior posts.

Jess Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, told BBC2s Newsnight: Had Tony Blair not given any of top jobs to the women  had that same make-up of his team existed  people would rightly have been up in arms.

 Jeremy Corbyn's first 100 days in 60 seconds

But it's a bit like some people in the Labour Party are accepting low-level non-violent misogyny because its Jeremy doing it.

Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader, called for a change in its rules to guarantee either the partys leader or deputy leader is female.

I just think we cant have a men-only leadership when we are a party for women and equality. Women in this country expect to see men and women working together on equal terms, thats what the Labour Party believes in and we cant have an all-male leadership again.

Labour sources have indicated that Mr Benns position could be under threat after he made an impassioned Commons speech calling for UK airstrikes on Isis to be extended from Iraq to Syria.

Recommended Read more Jeremy Corbyn begins first Shadow Cabinet reshuffle

Ken Livingstone, a close Corbyn ally, called for him to be moved to a lower-profile role. He said: It might very well be the case  and I have no knowledge of this  that it would be better to move Hilary Benn to something where hes in agreement with Jeremy Corbyn rather than where hes in disagreement.

Mr Benn left a lengthy meeting with Mr Corbyn refusing to comment.

Hilary Benn may have resisted an attempt to remove him as shadow Foreign Secretary (Getty)

Diane Abbott, the shadow International Development Secretary, who is close to Mr Corbyn, described rumours that she was being lined up to replace him as poppycock and piffle.

Ms Eagle s future has been called into doubt over her support for Trident and for querying Mr Corbyns leadership credentials after he indicated he could never use the nuclear deterrent. Asked if she thought she would retain her post, she said: I dont know  well have to see.

The new MP for Norwich South Clive Lewis, a staunch Corbyn supporter, who has been linked with the defence portfolio, said he did not want to succeed Ms Eagle, although stopped short of ruling it out altogether.

Seema Malhotra, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, was called in to see Mr Corbyn, suggesting she had been offered a promotion.

Lord Falconer could be removed as the shadow Justice Secretary and replaced by Emily Thornberry, the shadow employment minister.

Ahead of the reshuffle getting underway, the Labour leader faced numerous warnings that the shadow Cabinet needed to reflect a broad spectrum of Labour opinion.

Mr Dugher, who is regarded with suspicion by leadership loyalists, told Mr Corbyn would end up with a politburo of seven at the top of the party if he tried to surround himself with left-wing allies.

The shadow Europe Minister, Pat McFadden, has warned against a "divisive and petty" reshuffle. He said Labour MPs were given a free vote on bombing Syria. He argued that Mr Benn should not pay the price for his views  particularly given Mr Corbyns own long history of rebellion.
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Jeremy Corbyn has sacked Michael Dugher as Shadow Culture minister as he appeared to pull back from sacking Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn in a reshuffle that has been branded "petty and divisive" by his own frontbench. The party's left wing was accused by figures on its right of being "intolerant of dissent".

It comes as:

The Labour leader held one-to-one meetings with key figures in his Commons office on Monday amid reports that he was planning to remove internal critics who have humiliated Mr Corbyn on key issues that divide the party, such as bombing Syria and Trident.

Sacked Shadow Culture minister Michael Dugher branded it a "revenge reshuffle" - and he became the first victim when he announced on Twitter that he had been sacked by Mr Corbyn.

After an hour-long meeting with Mr Benn on Monday, Mr Corbyn has reportedly backed down from removing him as Shadow Foreign Secretary, while Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle - another top figure under threat - is expected to be moved rather than sacked.

She has publicly criticised Mr Corbyn over his strong opposition to renewing Trident and is expected to be moved to a job where she shares more in common with the leadership.

Maria Eagle, shadow Defence Secretary, is expected to be moved (EPA)

Dame Rosie Winterton, the chief whip, is also expected to survive, following warnings that sacking top figures just four months after becoming Labour leader would trigger a spate of resignations.

But all eyes will be on whether Mr Corbyn takes notice of warnings over the lack of women in the top five jobs in the Shadow Cabinet.

He was accused of "low-level, non-violent misogyny" by Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley.

In an interview on Newsnight she claimed that left-wing feminists had acceptedthe lack of women appointed to shadow the 'great offices of state' (Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary) "because it's Jeremy doing it".

Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, accused Jeremy Corbyn of 'low-level misogyny'

Harriet Harman, the former deputy Labour leader who served as temporary leader over the summer, called for a change in party rules to guarantee either the party's leader or deputy leader was female.

Mr Corbyn is expected to complete the reshuffle by Tuesday lunchtime. It comes after a fortnight of speculation and criticism from Mr Corbyn's own shadow ministers that he had failed to kill rumours that had created instability, with figures such as Mr Benn and Ms Eagle in the dark about their futures.

In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Show all 11 1 /11 In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Jonathan Reynolds,Shadow Railways Minister: RESIGNED He resigned as shadow railways minister in protest at the reasons for sacking Pat McFadden In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Kevan Jones, Shadow Defence Minister: RESIGNED He resigned as a shadow defence minister who strongly supports renewal of Trident. Has spoken out against Jeremy Corbyns leadership before and was also the centre of a row with Ken Livingstone after he said Jones might need some psychiatric help (Jones has previously spoken about his struggle with depression) In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Stephen Doughty, Shadow Foreign Minister: RESIGNED He quit as a shadow foreign minister in protest at the sacking of his colleague Pat McFadden as shadow Europe minister. He said he had looked at his own conscience and decided to step down In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Pat McFadden, Shadow Europe Minister: SACKED He was sacked as shadow Europe minister for "disloyalty" to leader Jeremy Corbyn In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Pat Glass, Shadow Europe Minister: SAFE Former junior shadow education minister Pat Glass replaced Pat McFadden as shadow Europe minister In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Emily Thornberry, Shadow Defence Secretary: SAFE She was promoted to shadow defence secretary. She is anti-Trident and therefore more in tune with Corbyns stance and replaces Maria Eagle, who was pro-Trident Getty In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Emma Lewell-Buck, Shadow Minister for Devolution and Local Government: SAFE Emma Lewell-Buck was promoted to shadow minister for devolution and local government In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Michael Dugher, Shadow Culture Secretary: SACKED Outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyns leadership, has been sacked as shadow culture secretary for his "incompetence and disloyalty" In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Hilary Benn, Shadow Foreign Secretary: SAFE Hilary Benn remains as shadow foreign secretary, but Corbyns team has insisted his role now comes with new conditions that he must agree with Corbyn over foreign policy. Benn insists there are no new conditions attached to his job and insisted: "I haven't been muzzled. I'm going to be carrying on doing my job exactly as before In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Maria Eagle, Shadow Culture Secretary: SAFE Maria Eagle, moved from shadow defence to shadow culture secretary as part of Corbyns move to make his defence team match his anti-Trident views In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Andy Burnham, Shadow Home Secretary: SAFE Reports linked him to foreign secretary brief, but Corbyn appears to have backed down on sacking Hilary Benn. He does not see eye-to-eye with Corbyn on home affairs such as the Snoopers charter, but removing your shadow home secretary so soon after starting would have been a dangerous move by Corbyn

Pat McFadden, the shadow Europe minister who effectively serves as Mr Benn's deputy in the shadow foreign team, told the BBC that Mr Corbyn was guilty of overseeing a reshuffle that was "more petty and divisive than open and pluralist politics."

Internal critics of Mr Corbyn could all be replaced by Corbynists or MPs who accept his huge mandate from the partys grassroots.

Heres who may get a promotion in the reshuffle:

Diane Abbott (shadow International Development Secretary): Veteran MP shares Corbyns politics, is his parliamentary neighbour and had a relationship with him. She served on the front bench under Ed Miliband but was sacked for disloyalty. She sent her son to a private school, which she admitted was indefensible.

Diane Abbott, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn (Rex)

Richard Burgon (shadow City minister): New MP and Motorhead fan, among Corbyns most enthusiastic supporters. Had a difficult start in his portfolio, admitting he could not remember Britains budget deficit and was yet to meet anyone from the City of Londons financial industry.

Cat Smith (shadow minister for Women): She says: Im a socialist. And in no particular order Im also a feminist, Christian, environmentalist, trade unionist, republican and proud Northerner who calls a spade and spade.

Emily Thornberry (shadow Employment minister): Corbyn brought his fellow Islington MP back to the front bench after she resigned over a snobby picture she posted of a house bedecked with England flags. Voted for Yvette Cooper as leader.
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Labours former shadow culture secretary has claimed he paid a price for speaking out after being removed from his position by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Michael Dugher had written an article questioning whether Mr Corbyn should replace MPs on the front bench who disagreed with his policy programme.

But he found himself to be the first casualty of the reshuffle, removed from his post on Tuesday before other announcements were made.

Recommended Read more Jeremy Corbyn sacks Shadow Culture Secretary Michael Dugher

In truth what I did in the last few days really is I chose to speak out, but I chose to speak out because, you know, I was frustrated and angry about the fact that in recent weeks weve seen this terrible trashing of peoples reputations, he told Sky News in his first broadcast interview after his sacking.

We were drowning that out over the Christmas period because of this relentless speculation against colleagues. I took a decision to speak out and I paid a price for it.

Later in the same interview Mr Dugher, however, said the article he had written was not critical of Mr Corbyn at all and that was actually defending him.

If you actually go back and look at that article that I wrote in the New Statesman I was making a virtue and singing the praises of Jeremys New Politics, Mr Dugher said.

I said despite all the stuff youve read in the newspapers: I dont think Jeremy Corbyn is a man motivated by revenge, I didnt think hell do these mass sackings as an act of revenge over Syria that weve read about every day, every week, for several weeks. I was defending Jeremy and I was defending the 'new politics'.

In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Show all 11 1 /11 In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Jonathan Reynolds,Shadow Railways Minister: RESIGNED He resigned as shadow railways minister in protest at the reasons for sacking Pat McFadden In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Kevan Jones, Shadow Defence Minister: RESIGNED He resigned as a shadow defence minister who strongly supports renewal of Trident. Has spoken out against Jeremy Corbyns leadership before and was also the centre of a row with Ken Livingstone after he said Jones might need some psychiatric help (Jones has previously spoken about his struggle with depression) In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Stephen Doughty, Shadow Foreign Minister: RESIGNED He quit as a shadow foreign minister in protest at the sacking of his colleague Pat McFadden as shadow Europe minister. He said he had looked at his own conscience and decided to step down In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Pat McFadden, Shadow Europe Minister: SACKED He was sacked as shadow Europe minister for "disloyalty" to leader Jeremy Corbyn In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Pat Glass, Shadow Europe Minister: SAFE Former junior shadow education minister Pat Glass replaced Pat McFadden as shadow Europe minister In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Emily Thornberry, Shadow Defence Secretary: SAFE She was promoted to shadow defence secretary. She is anti-Trident and therefore more in tune with Corbyns stance and replaces Maria Eagle, who was pro-Trident Getty In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Emma Lewell-Buck, Shadow Minister for Devolution and Local Government: SAFE Emma Lewell-Buck was promoted to shadow minister for devolution and local government In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Michael Dugher, Shadow Culture Secretary: SACKED Outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyns leadership, has been sacked as shadow culture secretary for his "incompetence and disloyalty" In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Hilary Benn, Shadow Foreign Secretary: SAFE Hilary Benn remains as shadow foreign secretary, but Corbyns team has insisted his role now comes with new conditions that he must agree with Corbyn over foreign policy. Benn insists there are no new conditions attached to his job and insisted: "I haven't been muzzled. I'm going to be carrying on doing my job exactly as before In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Maria Eagle, Shadow Culture Secretary: SAFE Maria Eagle, moved from shadow defence to shadow culture secretary as part of Corbyns move to make his defence team match his anti-Trident views In pictures: Jeremy Corbyn reshuffle Andy Burnham, Shadow Home Secretary: SAFE Reports linked him to foreign secretary brief, but Corbyn appears to have backed down on sacking Hilary Benn. He does not see eye-to-eye with Corbyn on home affairs such as the Snoopers charter, but removing your shadow home secretary so soon after starting would have been a dangerous move by Corbyn

Though Mr Dugher said the selection of the shadow cabinet was entirely a matter for the leader the article was widely interpreted as a coded warning to Mr Corbyn.

Mr Dugher also said he believed his sacking had further ramifications.

The truth is, I think the real casualty today has been the 'new politics' that we were all promised four months ago from Jeremy, he told the broadcaster.

The former shadow cabinet ministers statement comes after Chris Leslie, another Labour MP and a former interim shadow chancellor, attacked Labours hard left for allegedly not tolerating dissent.

Labours leader met members of the shadow cabinet and other MPs for one-on-one meetings today and yesterday in a bit to change his top team.

Further changes were expected to be announced after the day's main parliamentary business had concluded.
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David Cameron has postponed a planned visit to Saudi Arabia, but Downing Street claimed the delay was unrelated to the mass executions carried out by the Gulf State on Friday.

He was due to travel to Riyadh for a high-profile tour of the country within weeks but the trip is unlikely to go ahead for at least two months.

It comes after the Prime Minister was heavily criticised for his "shameful" response to the 47 executions that were conducted by Saudi Arabia on a single day at the end of last week and only broke his silence on Monday to repeat a Government press release saying he was "opposed to the use of the death penalty under any circumstances".

He is also facing questions after The Independent reveald that the British Government left Saudi Arabia off a list of thirty countries to be challenged by diplomats over their continued use of the death penalty - despite executing over 90 people a year.

Senior Government officials told The Times that delaying Mr Cameron's visit to Riyadh was not linked to the mass executions, which included the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and triggered a diplomatic crisis with Iran and other states in the Middle East.

They suggested the delay was due to Mr Cameron's on-going efforts to renegotiate Britain's membership of the European Union, which he had hoped would be sorted by now.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

Ministers will come under pressure to explain its relationship with Saudi Arabia in the House of Commons on Tuesday, with an Urgent Question on the matter set to be debated later this afternoon.

Charities have accused him of "bending over backwards to avoid criticising Saudi Arabias appalling human rights record," while Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the time had come to shine a light into the shady corners of the UK relationship with the Saudi regime.

Shadow human rights minister Andy Slaughter wrote to Justice Secretary Michael Gove demanding that the Government publish a 'memorandum of understanding' signed between the UK and Saudi Arabia in 2014.

Labour said the UK Government must suspend its cooperation on judicial issues with the Saudi state following the executions.
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With his possibly sacked or possibly not sacked Shadow Foreign Secretary sitting stony-faced at his side, Jeremy Corbyn generously offered the Prime Minister some advice for his ever ongoing EU renegotiations.

Accompanied as always by the deafening wall of silence from his party colleagues behind him, he cautioned: To deliver change you need patient, effective diplomacy, and you need to make friends.

In a building needing 6bn worth of restoration work these were dangerous words, and sure enough, half the house collapsed in an instant. The Tory benches havent laughed this hard since some idiot threw Chairman Maos Little Red Book at them.

Recommended Read more How Cameron and Corbyn keep their parties together

Behind him, the agonised slow-motion headshakes that have been going on since September got noticeably slower. Chuka Umunna appeared briefly to be wearily following a long baseline rally from the net side seats at Wimbledon.

David Cameron had been updating the house on his EU renegotiations, as well as explaining that that old concept of collective responsibility would be going out the window, and that come the referendum he will grant his party and his cabinet a free vote. The single biggest question of his career  whether to leave the European Union - and his cabinet won't back him.

But as with Maogate, the sheer tenacity of Team Corbyn to exploit the Governments problems for their own disadvantage was almost to be admired.

The Government will have a position, Cameron said. But it will be up to individual ministers to make up their mind.

Recommended Read more Michael Dugher MP adds Corbyn dismissal to his Twitter bio

These, of course, are almost the identical words wearily groped for by Corbyns spokesperson not so very long ago, when he was forced to explain that, yes, the Shadow Foreign Secretary would indeed be arguing the opposite position to his leader over the small matter of whether to bomb Syria.

That incident, in the end, proved to be just the another crumple zone concertinaing in the slow-motion car crash that is the Labour Party in its current aggressive pursuit of electoral oblivion, but when the actual Governments doing the same, youd think there might be some political capital for an opposition to make.

But no. Corbyn had not only timed his 24 non-revenge non-reshuffle perfectly to undermine himself, but then came the advice session.

Never mind how many eagles you end up with, youve all worked out youve got an albatross at the head of your party, Cameron said, and finally a smile cracked across Hilary Benns lips. Five-and-a-half years after walking into 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister has delivered his first-ever funny joke.

Later, Dennis Skinner asked Cameron a pleasingly straightforward question. If you lose, will you resign? He didnt get a straightforward answer, of course. But how can you lose at anything with Corbyn around?
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Conservative government ministers will be allowed by David Cameron to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.

BBC News reports that the Prime Minister will officially make the announcement later today.

It had previously not been clear whether MPs would have to leave the Cabinet in order to campaign for so-called Brexit  because the Governments official position is to remain in the EU.

As many as half of Cabinet ministers are thought to favour leaving the EU, according to recent reports.

The concession to Tory eurosceptics comes despite Mr Camerons favourable attitude towards membership of the bloc.

The move will see the Cabinet divided over the issue.

Labours shadow business secretary Angela Eagle described the decision by Mr Cameron as weak weak weak.

The Prime Minister had previously said he would renegotiate the UKs terms of membership and then hold a referendum under the new terms.

Mr Cameron's renegotiations are now more limited in scope than some eurosceptics had demanded, however. The main measure Mr Cameron is asking for is a four-year ban on EU migrants claiming in-work benefits like tax credits.

The Conservative manifesto pledged to hold an in-out referendum on membership before the end of 2017.

Recent comments by Mr Cameron have been interpreted as suggesting the vote could be brought forward to as early as this year, however.

Polls regarding the referendum have shown a variety of results, with large numbers of people undecided.

The Prime Minister is set to appear in Parliament before MPs at 3.30pm in a statement regarding the European Union, where the announcement is expected to be made
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The UK should act immediately to resettle 3,000 children left to fend for themselves on Europes refugee routes, an influential House of Commons committee has said.

MPs on the International Development Committee (IDC) said that the Government should treat the plight of child refugees as a matter of urgency.

It is estimated that around 26,000 unaccompanied refugee children entered Europe last year. The Save the Children charity has repeatedly warned that lone child refugees are left vulnerable to exploitation and have recorded numerous cases of extortion, sexual abuse and violence against young refugees.

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

In a detailed report on the Governments response to the Syrian refugee crisis, the IDC said it would welcome UK action to resettling 3,000 vulnerable children in Europe  the number estimated by Save the Children to be the UKs fair share - on top of the 20,000 Syrian refugees ministers have already pledged to take in from Syria and neighbouring countries over the next four years.

Charities including Oxfam, the Refugee Council and Amnesty International have criticised the Government this week for what they called its clearly inadequate resettlement plans.

However, the IDCs report commended ministers for providing 1.1bn in humanitarian aid to victims of the Syrian war in the region itself. MPs said it was more cost-effective and in the best interests of refugees to provide support in the region.

Their report, based on evidence from a range of organisations and individual experts, also warned that cuts to humanitarian aid was one the main factors pushing refugees to take the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean into Europe, and urged the UK to put pressure on other countries to match its aid commitments.

Of more than 900,000 people taking the dangerous route across the Mediterranean, one in every two were Syrian. The first refugee casualty of 2016 was a drowned two year old boy pulled from the sea off the Greek coast, said Labours Stephen Twigg, who chairs the IDC.

 The Syrian refugee crisis in numbers

Having survived the treacherous journey, there is a grave possibility that unaccompanied children become the victims of people traffickers who force them into prostitution, child labour and the drugs trade. This is an issue of utmost urgency.

The report also calls on the Government to ensure Syrian refugees settled in the UK are able to start working, and criticised a recent cut to Government grants for English-language teaching classes. MPs said a decision last summer to withdraw 26m in state funding for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses at colleges throughout the UK, would be counterproductive to the integration of refugees.

Justin Forsyth, Save the Childrens CEO said: Britain has a proud history of helping child refugees and we can play our part now in protecting those affected by the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two.

David Cameron told MPs last month that the Government was looking again at the issue of bringing Syrian children to the UK, both from the region and from within the EU.

A Government spokesperson said: As this report rightly makes clear, the UK has been at the forefront of the humanitarian response to the Syria crisis and we will continue to push others to honour their commitments.
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A Foreign Office minister claimed tonight that it was better to work with Saudi Arabia privately to encourage reform rather than criticise the kingdoms human rights record from the sidelines.

Tobias Ellwood told the House of Commons that Britains relationship with Saudi Arabia was one of the most enduring in the world and critical to the UKs foreign policy objectives.

And he said that while he had raised the mass execution of 47 prisoners with the regime, such acts reflected the widely held conservative social values in the kingdom.

Recommended Read more Saudi Arabia omitted from UK death penalty strategy

Mr Ellwoods comments came after The Independent revealed that the UK Government left Saudi Arabia off a list of 30 countries to be challenged over their continued use of the death penalty  despite executing more than 90 people a year.

The minister claimed the document containing the list was a general policy guide rather than a case-by-case list of countries where the death penalty is employed and said it did not reflect a lack of concern over human rights.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

But a former senior Foreign Office figure who was involved in producing the document told The Independent that Saudi Arabia had been given an easier ride because of the importance of Britains economic and political relationship with the country.

To be honest it was a bit of a tick-box exercise and I think some realpolitik came into it. While we put pressure on countries in the Caribbean to abandon the death penalty when it comes to Saudi no one makes too much of an effort.

Recommended Read more David Cameron delays planned visit to Saudi Arabia

The individual who asked not to be named because of his continuing relationship with the Foreign Office said he was not surprised when he heard the Mr Ellwood say the Government was disappointed by the recent executions. The problem is that taking a firm line with the Saudis on this conflicts with our other strategic objectives. It was a necessarily lacklustre response.

The Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said that for Mr Ellwood to describe the 47 executions as disappointing was the grossest of understatements. The shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn, said the executions had caused a major political and diplomatic crisis.
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The number of anti-government militias operating in the US has increased by more than a third in the last 12 months, according to an activist group.

As armed, anti-government protesters continue to hold a government facility at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon, and vow to be killed if necessary, activists said the number of militias now stood at 276, an increase of 37 per cent since 2014.

Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors extremist groups in the US, said the actions in Oregon had come as no surprise.

Ryan Bundy talks on the phone at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon. Bundy is one of the protesters occupying the refuge to object to a prison sentence for local ranchers for burning federal land (AP)

Ms Beirich wrote in a blog post that that centre believed the increase in the numbers of militia was a result of the stand-off in April 2014 between government officials and heavily armed anti-government activists in the Nevada desert.

The activists had gathered at the ranch of Cliven Bundy, whose dispute with the federal government over grazing rights and other issues dates back to 1993. The stand-off ended with the government authorities backing away from a cattle round-up, in order to avoid violence.

As it happens, at three of Mr Bundys sons are involved in the Oregon occupation and one of them, Ammon Bundy, has emerged as the leader of the group.

A member of the armed group involved in a stand-off at Cliven Bundy's ranch in April 2014 (Getty)

The protesters claimed they had gone to support local ranchers, Steven and Dwight Hammond, who have been involved in their own legal dispute with the federal government dating back a decade. The Hammonds have since made clear that they do not support the Bundy militia.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward said the Hammonds reported to court on Monday. Mr Ward called for the armed group of men to leave the community.

We believe these armed extremists have been emboldened by what they saw as a clear victory at the Cliven Bundy ranch and the fact that no one was held accountable for taking up arms against agents of the federal government, said Mr Beirich.

When the federal government was stopped from enforcing the law at gunpoint, it energised the entire movement.

She added: The fact is, Bundy is still a free man and has not paid the money he owes to the federal government  and the militiamen who aimed rifles at federal agents have gotten away with it.
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The Canadian government has no intention of cancelling a controversial $15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia despite decrying the oil-rich kingdoms execution of 47 prisoners, according to reports.

According to Global Research  an independent research organisation based in Montreal  the deal, which dwarves any other military exports brokered by the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), is the largest military exports contract in Canadian history.

Following the mass execution of 47 prisoners, including the prominent Shia cleric and dissident Sheik al-Nimr Nimr, the Canadian government publicly condemned the Saudi government. In a statement Stephane Dion, the countrys foreign affairs minister called on the Saudis to protect human rights, respect peaceful expressions of dissent and ensure fairness in judicial proceedings.

He added that Canada is particularly concerned that the kingdoms execution of Sheikh Nimr could further inflame sectarian tensions in the Middle East.

But speaking to the Globe and Mail, a Canadian daily newspaper, the director of communications for the Canadian governments foreign affairs minister, said a $15 billion contract with the government of Arab country would still go ahead. He said: A private company is delivering the goods according to a signed contract with the government of Saudi Arabia. The government of Canada has no intention of cancelling that contract.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

The report claims that federal rules oblige Ottawa to examine whether arms shipment to countries with poor human rights records would endanger the local population. It adds that Amnesty International has cited the kingdoms abysmal human rights record and said the Canadian transaction would appear to violate their export-control regime.

The Globe and Mail added that the CCC, the Crown agency that helps Canadian exporters access markets abroad, is the prime contractor responsible for the delivery of the light armoured vechiles ordered by Riyadh.

Canadas condemnation of the most recent gross human-rights violations by the Saudi regime rings somewhat hollow against the backdrop of the $15-billion worth of Canadian military exports that this very regime is set to receive with Ottawas blessing. said Cesar Jaramillo, executive director of Project Ploughshares, an anti-war group that tracks arms sales.
Iranians gather during a demonstration against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities, at Imam Hossein Square in the capital Tehran on Jan. 4, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Saudi Arabia has executed, in one day, 47 prisoners including the topmost Shia cleric of the Kingdom, Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr. This is the first state execution carried out by Saudi Arabia in 2016, and the single largest one day mass execution since the 1979 Mecca Mosque capture, when 63 were executed. At least 157 people were put to death last year, a big increase from the 90 people killed in 2014. Most of those executed were allegedly behind Al Qaeda attacks from 2003 and 2004, even though the cases were on extremely thin ground, not to mention that Al-Nimr was a Shia cleric, and Shias are considered chosen enemies and heretics of Al Qaeda.

Nimr was a vocal critic of the ruling Al Saud family and the Saudi government. The Kingdom accused him of being an Iranian agent and charged him with seeking to overthrow the House of Sauds.

The reactions have been strong to this sudden unexpected development. The Guardian reported that the Saudi interior ministry execution statement began with verses from the Qur'an justifying the act, while state television ran footage of the aftermath of al-Qaida attacks in the last decade. The Saudi grand mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, also appeared on television to justify the execution.

In Bahrain, protesters have clashed with police using petrol bombs and the police fired tear gas shells into the crowd. In Pakistan, the Shia minorities protested against the Saudi consulate. In Indian Kashmir, Shia protesters called for a day of mourning. Lebanon and Yemen's Houthis have denounced this act, and has vowed revenge against the House of Saudis. Iran, the most powerful Shia state in the region and the regional counterbalance to Sunni Saudi Arabia, has stated that the act would cost Saudi Arabia "dearly" and the Grand Ayatollah has tweeted a picture of Al-Nimr calling for revolution. The Iranian foreign ministry also stated that this shows Saudi hypocrisy as they continue to support "Takfiri" (heretics) abroad, and suppress dissent inside the Saudi Arabian state. This seems bold coming from Iran, but is nonetheless a valid point.

The major questions being raised are as to why Saudi Arabia is still heading the United Nations human rights council, and if they are, how credible is the UN as an organization anymore? Amnesty International and other organizations have condemned these New Year executions as cold blooded murder, which is heavily detrimental to Middle Eastern peace. Iran has already threatened retaliation for a long time, and according to unconfirmed reports, the country is planning to counter execute Sunni preachers.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
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Donald Trump's election campaign used footage from Morrocco to represent migrants crossing the southern border between Mexico and the United States in his first major television advertisement, a fact-checking website has claimed.

Twenty-two seconds into the campaign video  which gives some of the most divisive proposals of Mr Trumps campaign a starring role  a stern-sounding narrator says of Mr Trump, Hell stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for. The clip then shows dozens of people hurriedly approaching a border fence.

The website Politifact says the border footage used in the video is not from the United States southern border  in fact, it is 5,000 miles away, in a small Spanish enclave on the mainland of Morocco. The video clip used by Trumps campaign team, they claim, has removed the time stamp of May 2014 and the logo of the Italian television network, RepubblicaTV.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY

Politifact  which fact-checks statements by US politicians  says they have traced the footage back to 2014 when migrants were crossing the border into Melilla. A clip, from May 2014, is available on Youtube. The Trump campaign also appears to have added a darkening filter to the clip giving it a more sinister look.

A spokeswoman for Mr Trump told the website she did not know the source of the video included in the campaign advertisement and that she doesnt speak for the video production company.

The advertisement was also used to repeat Mr Trumps controversial call for a temporary ban on foreign Muslims being allowed to enter the US. It also threatens to quickly cut off the head of the so-called Islamic State and take their oil.

A clip from a 2014 Youtube video, bearing the logo Repubblica TV (Youtube)

Trumps campaign says he intends to spend two million dollars - or 1.36 million  a week on the advertisement, set to begin airing today across the first two states to cast votes in the Republican nominating contest.
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A 68-year-old Sikh man has been murdered in California, the first homicide and possible hate crime in the city of Fresno in 2016.

Gurcharan Singh Gill was stabbed to death in broad daylight while he was working at a local liquor store on West Shields Avenue, according to Lieutenant Mindy Casto. He was still working there to put his son through medical school.

Mr Gills body was found by a customer, according to abc30. He did not wear a turban but police are investigating whether the murder was a hate crime due to a recent spate of similar attacks against Sikhs in the vicinity.

This is a convenience store. The motive may have been robbery. We've also seen attacks in the past where the motive was not religious-based but was mental illness, said Lieutenant Burke Farrah, commander of the street violence police section.

Another elderly Sikh man was brutally assaulted by two people in Fresno on 28 December.

A hate crime was also filed against a Chicago teenager accused of abusing and beating a Sikh taxi driver in September.

Mark Reading-Smith, Senior Director of Communications and Media at The Sikh Coalition said they had reeived 42 reports of hate crimes against Sikhs since 2007 to June 2015. He said the number has grown enormously in the second half of 2015 but exact numbers are not yet available.

In the past month the coalition has received three times as many legal calls related to backlash compared to the same time over the past few years.

Compounding the issue [of getting a solid number of hate crimes since 9/11] is that law enforcement, until literally last year, had not been tracking it either, he said.
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A judge has granted bail to Michael Slager  the former South Carolina police officer who was caught on video shooting dead an unarmed black motorist.

Circuit judge Clifton Newman in Charleston agreed to a $500,000 bond for Mr Slager and set the date of 31 October for the trial to start. The Associated Press said that for now Mr Slager remained in custody and it was not immediately clear when he would be released.

Mr Slager was charged with the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston last April, an incident that was graphically captured on cell phone footage.

Michael Slager is seen apparently firing on Walter Scott as he runs away (Reuters)

Walter Scott, the father of the slain man, also addressed the judge, saying he often goes to the cemetery to visit his sons grave.

If we let him out, hes going to go home to see his wife and children. All I can look at is a pot of flowers, he said.

Lawyers for Mr Slager, 34, who faces between faces 30 years to life without parole if convicted, said they were ready to go to trial in the spring.

Walter Scott was a Coast Guard veteran and recently engaged to be married (ABC)

However, prosecutor Scarlett Wilson is also prosecuting Dylann Roof, the white suspect in the killing of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church, in a July trial.

She said a state supreme court order prevents her from trying other cases before that one. As a result, Mr Slagers lawyer, Andy Savage, said his client would face 11 more months of incarceration if he was not granted bail. He has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest last April.

Mr Newman issued his order after an hour-long hearing.

These are difficult issues, he said, according to the AP. These are excruciating issues for the court to deal with.
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US President Barack Obama will announce a series of executive measures his administration will be taking to curb gun violence in a fresh effort during his final year in the White House.

After a preview of the announcement, Mr Obama explained why, in several tweets, executive action must be taken to reduce gun violence.

He said: Whats often ignored in this debate is that a majority of gun owners agree with commonsense steps to save lives.

The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage, but they cant hold America hostage. We cant accept this carnage in our communities.

Mr Obama outlined the commonsense steps he plans to take, which are expected to be announced in more detail on Tuesday.

The main step involves closing a current loophole in the system that allows unlicensed gun shows and online dealers to sell firearms without conducting proper background checks on buyers.

He said: We will keep guns out of the wrong hands, enforce our gun laws, and ensure those with serious mental illnesses get treatment.

Under the current law, only federally licensed gun dealers are required to carry out background checks on buyers, but many who sell the weapons online or at flea markets do not register as dealers.

The news has been celebrated by gun safety campaigners, who have said the loophole is exploited to dodge the background check requirement.

The main lobby group of gun control advocates, Everytown for Gun Safety, praised the upcoming announcement as a victory.

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who co-founded the group, said: President Obamas decision to clarify and enforce the law requiring more gun sellers to conduct background checks is an important victory for public safety and a setback for criminals and gun traffickers.

The actions also include calling for 200 additional agents in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to be added to the 2017 federal budget.

While the legality of Mr Obamas plans is still being clarified, House speaker Paul Ryan has accused the President of being dismissive towards the Second Amendment as well as Congress.

 USA: White House presses Congress to review gun control legislation

In a statement on Monday, he said: While we dont yet know the details of the plan, the President is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will.

His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected. No President should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally.

The Obama administration is confident the actions will be legal. According to the Guardian, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday: I feel confident in telling you now that what the president does announce will be the kinds of actions in which we have the confidence that they are within the legal ability of the United States to carry out these actions.
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Federal authorities in Oregon are planning to shut down the power in the wildlife refuge where self-styled militia ranchers with arms are sitting out a protest over federal land management.

According to The Guardian, an unnamed official from the US Park Service, which liaises with the FBI, said authorities will cut off the power and the phone service to flush out the armed occupiers amid freezing temperatures. The reported plan is also to block the roads to the refuge.

Its in the middle of nowhere, said the Washington-based official. And its flat-ass cold up there.

Recommended Read more Oregon militia gunman holes himself up under a tarp on live TV

Snowstorms are forecast for today and temperatures drop to minus 8C (18F) overnight. Reports say there are a few dozen men who have been building fires to stay warm.

So far there has been limited intervention on the armed siege of the refuge from either the local authorities or the FBI. The FBI did release a statement Sunday evening to say it aimed for a peaceful resolution but would not divulge any details.

Local Harney County Sheriff David Ward said yesterday that ranchers Steven and Dwight Hammond, the men who inspired the armed protest against their increased prison sentences for arson to federal land in 2001 and 2006, reported to court yesterday. Mr Ward called for the armed group of men to leave the community.

Go home, be with your own families and end this peacefully, he said.

The takeover is being led by brothers Ammon, Mel and Ryan Bundy, whose father Cliven was also convicted or arson and took part in a similar standoff in 2014.

Fox news anchor Megyn Kelly interviewed Ammon Bundy and asked him how his activities were not evidence of lawlessness. He asked her a question - "Who are the plaintiffs?" and Ms Kelly responded that she did not answer the questions.

Mr Ward has also requested assistance from the Oregon State Sheriffs Association to carry out daily patrol duties.
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Ammon Bundy, the leader of an armed militia group occupying an empty government building in a remote corner of the Oregon wilderness, has insisted it is truly a peaceful protest.

The group, which Mr Bundy said had named itself Citizens for Constitution Freedom, seized the unmanned headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday, following a demonstration in the nearby town of Burns to support two local ranchers who were due to return to prison today to serve out extended sentences for arson.

Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, were convicted in 2012 for setting fires on federal land to protect their own property from wildfires and invasive plants, but a judge ruled in October that their original 12-month sentence did not satisfy the federal minimum, raising it to five years.

Recommended Read more The infamous family behind the militia occupation in Oregon

Over the weekend, the Hammonds distanced themselves from Mr Bundy and his fellow protesters. Yet the occupation of the refuge HQ is not simply a protest at the ranchers treatment, but also a demonstration of the anger felt by many activists over what they see as oppressive federal land policies.

The Hammond ranch is one of many bordering the refuge, which is run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Its growth, Mr Bundy claimed, has displaced some 100 ranches over the past century. The land, he said, is rightfully owned by the people, not the government. The groups ostensible objective is to see it turned over to local authorities, to be managed without federal meddling.

The local sheriff, David Ward, said the protesters came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.

Law enforcement agencies were reportedly planning to establish a command centre close to the Refuge HQ last night, with the FBI saying it hoped for a peaceful resolution. Protesters at the site said they had so far encountered no law enforcement response whatsoever. The group declined to reveal their numbers, citing security concerns; Mr Bundy had claimed as many as 100 people were involved in the protest, while other reports suggested the occupying force was closer to a dozen.

This morning, a handful of pickup trucks could be seen parked outside the refuge HQ, which is made up of a cluster of one-storey buildings alongside a high watchtower, in an otherwise near-featureless expanse blanketed by winter snow. The refuge, which in warmer months attracts hikers, hunters and birdwatchers, is home to 320 bird and 58 mammal species.

Mr Bundy, 40, is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher whose clash with the federal authorities made national headlines in 2014, when his supporters staged a stand-off with agents from the US Bureau of Land Management over his failure to pay fees for grazing cattle on federal land.

Protesters keeping watch at the entrance to the refuge HQ said they had also been involved in the Bundy ranch protest, including a man who identified himself only as Fluffy Unicorn and said he had served three tours overseas as a US Marine.

Anti-government activist Blaine Cooper, 36, wore combat fatigues and carried a copy of the US Constitution. A patch on his uniform described the Second Amendment  which gun rights supporters say enshrines the right to bear arms  as Americas original homeland security.

However, the First Amendment  which protects free speech and thus the right to protest  is the more significant, Mr Cooper said. Words are more powerful than guns, he said. The First Amendment is more important, but the Second Amendment is there to protect the first.

Few of the protesters were visibly armed, though Mr Bundy has said he and his fellow protesters will not rule out violence if law enforcement tries to remove them. The group plans to occupy the refuge indefinitely. Were planning on staying here for years, absolutely, he added.

Locals including other ranchers had offered the protesters food and support, Mr Cooper claimed, though he acknowledged that the climate was unfavourable. Its freezing! he said. Why couldnt this happen in Hawaii?
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A police SWAT team has stormed a motel room in Georgia where a man had been holding a woman and 11 children hostage.

The children, ages 3 months to 17 years old, and the woman were rescued unarmed, a reporter for WSB-TV said on Twitter. It was reported that the man stabbed himself.

The extent of his injuries are not known, but he was taken to a local hospital.

Their relationship between the woman, the man and the children - none of whom have yet been identified - was not immediately clear.

The man had barricaded himself with the woman and children in a room at a DeKalb County motel after a domestic dispute, said a police official.

Authorities became involved in the standoff after responding to a domestic dispute call from the woman at around 2 am.

An employee at the motel who answered the phone when contacted by NBC News early Tuesday declined to comment.
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At least one US special forces soldier has reportedly been killed and others were wounded in Afghanistan - before the medical helicopter sent to rescue them came under fire.

NBC initially reported that the helicopter flying to pick up the wounded American soldiers had gone down after being hit. However, it subsequently emerged that although it was damaged, the military aircraft was able to take off.

CNN said the soldiers had been involved in a joint counter-terrorism operation in Helmand province with Afghan forces when they came under attack. An unknown number of people were also injured.

Officials said the US medevac chopper called in to recover casualties came under mortar and small-arms fire and was hit.

A spokesman for the Nato coalition in Afghanistan earlier told NBC News that a US helicopter had landed in Helmand province and was "experiencing mechanical problems."
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The widow of a policeman murdered in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices a year ago has brought a legal case against French security authorities for manslaughter.

Ingrid Brinsolaro, whose husband, Franck, was the police bodyguard of the magazines editor, believes that more could have been done to prevent the attack in which 12 died.

There was further embarrassment for the French government when President Francois Hollande unveiled a commemorative plaque outside the magazines former offices in eastern Paris. The name of one victim, the veteran cartoonist Georges Wolinski, was spelled wrongly with a final y. Within seconds of its unveiling, the plaque was covered again as the Paris city hall promised to correct it.

Mr Hollande also unveiled a plaque on the street nearby where a Muslim policeman, Ahmed Merabet, was murdered in cold blood by Cherif and Said Kouachi soon after their attack on Charlie Hebdo a year ago on Thursday. The President embraced and kissed the murdered policemans mother, who was dressed in an elaborate white headscarf and tunic. Nearby, in an echo of the Je suis Charlie slogan adopted after the attack, the words Je suis Ahmed were sprayed on the pavement in red, white and blue.

Later Mr Hollande inaugurated a similar memorial to four people murdered by Amedy Coulibaly, an associate of the Kouachi brothers, at a Jewish supermarket two days later. This weekend, Mr Hollande will unveil a plaque commemorating a policewoman, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, murdered by Coulibaly.

Ms Brinsolaro believes her husband and the others were victims of official bungling. She said her husband had complained of dysfunctions in security at the magazine and that it was impossible to do his job correctly. She has made a formal criminal complaint against persons unknown for knowing failure to impose sufficient security precautions.
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President Francois Hollande and the mayor of Paris have unveiled a plaque to commemorate the Charlie Hebdo attacks, with one of the murdered cartoonists names spelled wrong.

Victims relatives, dignitaries, military representatives and police were on hand to witness the monument being revealed from behind a French flag today, on the outside of the offices where al-Qaeda-inspired gunmen massacred 11 people.

French President Francois Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo unveil a commemorative plaque outside the former offices of French weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 5, 2016 in Paris (AFP/Getty Images)

In memory of the victims of the terror attack against freedom of expression perpetrated at the offices of Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, the inscription reads, before listing the names of those killed.

Nicknames for its cartoonists were used, including Charb and Cabu, but onlookers quickly spotted that the name of one victim was misspelled.

Georges Wolinski appeared as George Wolinsky, with the final letter being swapped for a y.

 Cabu, Tignous and Wolinski: beloved French cartoonists

He was one of Frances best-known cartoonists, signing his drawings with his surname, and served as Charlie Hebdos editor-in-chief from 1971 to 1980.

Mr Wolinski remained at the heart of the team until his death and received the Legion d'Honneur in 2005  Frances highest decoration.

As news of the mistake spread on social media on Tuesday, the plaque was seen covered with a black cloth.

The Mayor of Paris office told Europe 1 radio that Mr Wolinskis widow has been told of the error, which was blamed on the etching company and will be corrected as soon as possible.

Anne Hidalgo and Mr Hollande have been commemorating the Charlie Hebdo massacre and following attack on a Kosher supermarket as the one-year anniversary approaches.

They also paid homage to the Muslim police officer murdered as he chased the gunmen, with Je suis Ahmed sprayed on the pavement in red, white and blue.

The magazine itself is releasing a special anniversary issue laced with cartoons said to lampoon everyone from Islamic fundamentalists to children, politicians and Catholic priests.

The commemorations come under heightened security as part of the continuing state of emergency sparked by the 13 November attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.
A Bahraini protester holds a picture of Baqer al-Nimr in Daih, Bahrain, Jan. 4, 2016. A demonstration was held on Monday in Daih to protest against Saudi Arabia's execution of Baqer al-Nimr, a prominent Shia scholar who was known to be an open opponent to the Sunni ruling dynasty. [Xinhua/Hassan Jamali]

Saudi Arabia and Iran are clearly on a war path. It started with the execution of a known Shiite cleric, namely, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, by the Saudi government on the charges of terrorism. The Iranians reacted with extreme anger by attacking the Saudi embassy. As a result, the Iranian government failed in its international obligation to safeguard the premises.

If Iran's anger was beyond justified limits, the Saudis went a step farther by severing diplomatic ties. It also displayed their regional clout, as Bahrain and Sudan followed path of Riyadh and cut off diplomatic relations with Tehran while the UAE downgraded its ties.

Saudi-Iranian enmity is not a secret. Their problem is partly historical, partly religious but mostly strategic. The two countries adhere to different schools of thought and Islamic jurisprudence. Saudis are predominantly Sunnis, just like the majority of other Muslims around the world. Iran's overwhelming population observes Shiite Islam which also has millions of followers in the Arab world as well as in other Muslim countries. The differences between the two schools are sharp, antagonistic and reactionary.

With the mixing of modern politics, the sectarian differences have become more radical. This phenomenon is more pronounced by the hardline Sunnis and several militant groups like al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and Taliban among others. These groups consider Shiites as heretics and regularly attack them. The worst form of this rivalry can be seen in Iraq, Syria and sometimes in Pakistan.

The radicals among the Shiites are no less dangerous. Those aware of Hezbollah are well aware. Iran faces regular accusations from the West and Saudi Arabia for supporting militant groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and in other places. However, Iran denies these charges.

The issue of Sheikh Nimr could be partly explained within the context of the sectarian strife, but let us also be clear about his political background and keep in mind the particular Saudi justice system. Born in Saudi Arabia and educated in Iran, the cleric was the most vocal critic of the royal government. He demanded elections and led the protests in 2011-12 during the time of Arab Spring. He had also warned of the secession of the eastern province of Al-Awamiyah. It proved too much for the government to stand, and he was shot in 2012 and later arrested for promoting violence. He was given the death sentence in 2014.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has voiced her outrage over a string of "disgusting" sexual assaults that male gangs committed against women in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

As many as 1,000 young men, many of whom were said to be drunk and of Arab or North African appearance, harassed women in the area around Cologne's central station on 31 December, prompting 90 complaints to the police.

The attacks shocked Germany, and prompted Merkel to tell Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker about her "outrage" over the "disgusting attacks and sexual assaults".

Merkel added that the numerous perpetrators of the attacks, who stole from and harassed large numbers of women, must be found "as quickly and comprehensively as possible".

She added that Germany must punish them, "regardless of their origin or background."

At least one woman was raped in the city, and large numbers were groped during what the Mayor called "monstrous" attacks, including one volunteer policewoman.

Women protest against sexism outside Cologne Cathedral on 5 January after the assaults (Oliver Berg/EPA)

There was no official confirmation that refugees and asylum seekers were involved, but one police officer told local news site Express that he had detained eight men, all of whom were asylum seekers.

Express also reported that five men, from the ages of 18 to 24, had been arrested, although their origins and alleged crimes are unknown.

Despite the debate in Germany over the hundreds of thousands of refugees who arrived last year, Mayor Reker said it was "completely improper" to link the group to the newly-arrived refugees.

Cologne is currently gearing up for large carnivals in the city centre in February, and Mayor Reker promised an increased police presence, warnings to young women about potential dangers and "better explanation" to asylum seekers about the meaning of the annual carnivals, which like New Year's Eve, are typically drunken events.

 NYE celebrations in Cologne

She said: "We need to prevent confusion about what constitutes happy behaviour and what is utterly separate from openness, especially in sexual behaviour."
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A flight from Athens to Tel Aviv has been delayed for almost two hours after a group of Israeli Jewish passengers refused to fly with Palestinians on board, reportedly accusing them of being terrorists.

Aegean Airlines flight 928 was stuck on the tarmac on Sunday night as the altercation continued, with the Jewish passengers preventing the plane taking off by standing up until the two passengers they complained about were removed.

The Greek crew did not initially understand the cause of the dispute, Maariv newspaper reported, and continued with preparations as the two passengers from East Jerusalem were bombarded with accusations.

The complainants claimed the Israeli Arab citizens could be terrorists, according to Israel Radio, and demanded to search their luggage even after they had left the aircraft, but were refused by stewards.

Satellite tracking by the Flight Aware website showed the plane was delayed by almost two hours in Athens. (Flight Aware)

Tracking website Flight Aware shows the plane was due to take off at 10.30pm local time but did not leave for Tel Aviv until 00.24am.

A spokesperson for Aegean Airlines confirmed the incident, telling The Independent a small group of passengers had very vocally and persistently asked for two other Israeli passengers to be checked for security issues.

While it is indeed unfortunate that they were possibly racially profiling the customers, indeed their fellow Israelis, because safety must be first, the pilot did feel compelled to delay the flight call the police so to check again the two Israeli passengers documents and identities, she added.

The documents were found to be in order but the spokeperson said the delay had caused further unrest as a larger group of passengers reacted, despite assurances given by the crew.

The Palestinian passengers were offered a free hotel and flight the following day, which they accepted, and their luggage was taken out of the hold.

The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child

We also offered any other passenger of course the possibility to disembark in case they did not feel secure, the Aegean representative said, although those choosing to do so would not have been compensated.

The whole episode, which did indeed delay the flight for more than 1 hour and 30 minutes, is very unfortunate and we are grateful that the two Israeli passengers affected did agree to fly the next day.

We thank again the two passengers that agreed to disembark for their understanding and collaboration and we apologise for the whole episode.



The incident came as a wave of violence continues in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories, where 23 Israelis have been killed and 132 Palestinians, mostly said to be attackers, shot dead by security forces since the start of October.
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Police are investigating reports of a group of 1,000 men carrying out a mass sexual assault on dozens of women in the middle of a German city on New Year's Eve.

German police has received numerous complaints from women who said they were groped and attacked in Cologne city centre. One woman has claimed she was raped.

Wolfgang Albers, the Cologne police chief, says witnesses described the assaults as coming from a group of up to 1,000 men whose appearance indicated they were of "Arab or North African origin."

He said the incidents were "a completely new dimension of crime".

An MP in Angela Merkel's party has claimed the events are proof Germany needs to tighten its borders.

But the police also said many of the men had been known to them for some time and were not newly-arrived refugees, according to The Local.

The crowd, believed to be men between 15 and 35 who were possibly intoxicated, reportedly flooded the city's famous square and began to throw firecrackers and shoot fireworks.

Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Show all 19 1 /19 Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Afghanistan Recommendation: I urge the Government of Afghanistan to adopt legislative reforms to ensure that sexual violence offences are not conflated with adultery or morality crimes and to establish infrastructure for the delivery of protection, health and le gal services to survivors. I call on the Ministry of the Interior to accelerate efforts to integrate women into the Afghan National Police, thereby enhancing its outreach and its capacity to address sexual and gender-based violence Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Central African Republic Recommendation: I urge the authorities of the Central African Republic to ensure that efforts to restore security and the rule of law take into account the prevention of sexual violence and that monitoring of the ceasefire and peace agreement explicitly reflects this consideration, in line with the joint communique of the Government and the United Nations on the prevention of and response to conflict-related sexual violence signed in December 2012. I further encourage the authorities to make the rapid response unit to combat sexual violence operational and to establish a special criminal court Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Colombia Recommendation: I commend the Government of Colombia for the progress made to date and its collaboration with the United Nations, including through the visit of my Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict in March 2015. I encourage the authorities to implement Law 1719 and continue to prosecute cases of sexual violence committed during the conflict to ensure that survivors receive justice and receive reparations. Conflict-related sexual violence should continue to be addressed in the Havana peace talks, as well as in the resulting accords and transitional justice mechanisms. Particular attention should be paid to groups that face additional barriers to justice such as ethnic minorities, women in rural areas, children, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals and women abused within the ranks of armed groups. I encourage the Government to scale up its protection measures and share its good practices with other conflict-affected countries Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Congo Recommendation: I urge the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to ensure full implementation of the armed forces action plan against sexual violence, to systematically bring perpetrators to justice and to deliver reparations to victims, including payment of outstanding compensation awards. I call on donors and the United Nations system to support the Government in its efforts and to pay increased attention to neglected areas, including unregulated mining regions Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Iraq Recommendation: I commend the Government of Iraq for its national action plan for the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and urge its swift implementation, including by training its security forces to ensur e respect for womens rights. Programmes to support the social reintegration of women and girls released from captivity by ISIL are urgently needed, as is community-based medical and psychological care. The capacity of the United Nations system should be enhanced through the deployment of Womens Protection Advisers or equivalent specialists Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Libya Recommendation: I urge the national authorities in Libya to implement Decree No. 119 and Resolution 904 of 2014 to ensure redress for all victims, including those affected by the current conflict, through the establishment of multisectoral services and the adoption of legislation to categorically prohibit sexual violence Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Mali Recommendation: I urge the Government of Mali, with support from United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict, to develop a comprehensive national strategy to combat sexual and gender-based violence and to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers so that services can reach remote areas. I further call on all parties to ensure that conflict-related sexual violence is addressed in the inter-Malian dialogue and that perpetrators of sexual violence do not benefit from amnesty or early release Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Myanmar Recommendation: I urge the Government of Myanmar to continue with its reform agenda and, in the process, take practical and timely actions to protect and support survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and to ensure that security personnel accused of such crimes are prosecuted. Sexual violence should be an element in all ceasefire and peace negotiations, excluded from the scope of amnesty provisions and addressed in transitional justice processes. It is critical that women be able to participate consistently in and influence these processes Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Somalia Recommendation: I reiterate my call to the Federal Government of Somalia to implement the commitments made under the joint communique of 7 May 2013 and its national action plan to combat sexual violence in conflict, including specific plans for the army and the police. I encourage the adoption of a sexual offences bill as a matter of priority Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life South Sudan Recommendation: I urge the parties to the conflict in South Sudan to adopt action plans to implement the commitments made under their respective communiques. I call upon the Government of South Sudan to address the negative impact of customary law on womens rights and to reflect international human rights standards in national law. I also encourage the African Union to make public and act upon the report of its Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Sudan (Darfur) Recommendation: I call upon the Government of the Sudan to grant the United Nations and its humanitarian partners unfettered access for monitoring and the provision of assistance to people in need in Darfur. Given that there has been grave concern over sexual violence in Darfur for more than a decade, I encourage the Government to engage with my Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict to develop a framework of cooperation to address the issue comprehensively Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Syria Recommendation: I acknowledge the Governments invitation to my Special Representative to visit the Syrian Arab Republic and call upon the authorities, in the context of such a visit, to agree on specific measures to prevent sexual violence, including by members of the security forces. I condemn the use of sexual violence by ISIL and all other parties listed in the annex to the present report and call on them to cease such violations immediately and allow unfettered access for the delivery of humanitarian assistance Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Yemen Recommendation: I urge the authorities in Yemen to undertake legislative reform as a basis for addressing impunity for sexual violence, ensuring the provision of services for survivors and aligning the minimum legal age of marriage with international standards. I further call on the authorities to engage with local community and faithbased leaders to address sexual and gender-based violence and discriminatory social norms Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Bosnia and Herzegovina Recommendation: I urge the relevant authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to harmonize legislation and policies so that the rights of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence to reparations are consistently recognized and to allocate a specific budget for this purpose. I further call upon the authorities to protect and support survivors participating in judicial proceedings through, inter alia, referrals to free legal aid, psychosocial and health services, as well as economic empowerment programmes Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Ivory Coast Recommendation: I urge the Government of Cote dIvoire to ensure the effective implementation of its national strategy to combat gender-based violence and the action plan for FRCI, and call on the international community to support these efforts. It is critical to accelerate disarmament, demobilization and reintegration and strengthen law enforcement to ensure that ex-combatants who have been reintegrated into the transport sector do not pose a risk to women and girls who are reliant on those services. The Government and the international community must provide monitoring and awareness-raising to mitigate the possibility of a recurrence of sexual violence in the context of the presidential elections to be held in October 2015 Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Liberia Recommendation: I call on the Government of Liberia to continue its critical efforts to combat sexual and gender-based violence including through the United Nations-Government of Liberia Joint Programme, and in the context of recovery from the Ebola virus epidemic Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Nepal Recommendation: I encourage the Government to ensure that survivors of conflict-related sexual violence are recognized under the law as conflict victims, which will enable them to access services, judicial remedies and reparations. I further call on all parties involved in the transitional justice process to ensure that the rights and needs o f survivors of sexual violence are addressed in institutional reforms and that these crimes are excluded from amnesties and statutes of limitations Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Sri Lanka Recommendation: I call upon the newly elected Government of Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of sexual violence, including against national armed and security forces, and to provide multisectoral services for survivors, including reparations and economic empowerment programmes for women at risk, including war widows and female heads of household Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Nigeria Recommendation: I encourage the Government to implement its national action plan on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) to ensure that womens protection concerns are mainstreamed throughout its security operations. I also call upon the authorities to guarantee security in and around internally displaced persons camps and to extend medical and psychosocial services to high-risk areas

As the festivities took place outside the famous Cologne cathedral, some of the men allegedly began sexually assaulting women and pickpocketing others, according to Reuters.

Local media reported that at least 80 people fell victim to the assaults, 35 of whom were sexually assaulted.

One of the victims, named only as Katja L, told Der Express her buttocks and breasts were grabbed.

I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and beat them, the guys did not stop. I was desperate and think I was touched around 100 times in the 200 meters, she said.

Fortunately I wore a jacket and trousers. A skirt would probably have been torn away from me.

Police sent 143 local officers and 70 federal officers into the area in a large-scale operation to clear the area. (YouTube, Report24)

Some 60 criminal complaints have so far been filed, including the allegation of rape.

MP Steffan Bilger from Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union has claimed the events in Cologne were proof Germany needed to reduce its intake of refugees.

It cant go on like this, he tweeted. Urgently needed: reduction of influx, secure borders, intensifying of deportations and meaningful justice.

But others urged Germans not to jump to conclusions, with one user tweeting "it makes me sad that the refugees who really need protection will bear the brunt of the hatred because of Cologne.

"We need to be able to tell the difference.

Police sent 143 local officers and 70 federal officers into the area in a large-scale operation to clear the area.

But due to the dark and sheer scale of people, Mr Albers said that this operation was not effective.
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The Mayor of Cologne said today that women should adopt a code of conduct to prevent future assault at a crisis meeting following the sexual attack of women by 1000 men on New Years eve.

Mayor Henriette Reker attended an emergency meeting with Chief of Police Wolfgang Albers and Wolfgang Wurm to discuss how to deal with the attack, where dozens of women were repeatedly touched and groped, with one case of alleged rape in the center of town.

It is important to prevent such incidents from ever happening again, said Mayor Reker, as reported in German by RP Online. We have heard by now that they [the attacks] have occurred in other cities. This of course is not comforting to us.

Hamburg also received complaints of sexual assault.

The crisis management team said prevention measures should include a code of conduct for young women and girls, and Mayor Reker said the existing code of conduct will be updated online.

The suggested code of conduct includes maintaining an arms length distance from strangers, to stick within your own group, to ask bystanders for help or to intervene as a witness, or to inform the police if you are the victim of such an assault.

Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Show all 19 1 /19 Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Afghanistan Recommendation: I urge the Government of Afghanistan to adopt legislative reforms to ensure that sexual violence offences are not conflated with adultery or morality crimes and to establish infrastructure for the delivery of protection, health and le gal services to survivors. I call on the Ministry of the Interior to accelerate efforts to integrate women into the Afghan National Police, thereby enhancing its outreach and its capacity to address sexual and gender-based violence Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Central African Republic Recommendation: I urge the authorities of the Central African Republic to ensure that efforts to restore security and the rule of law take into account the prevention of sexual violence and that monitoring of the ceasefire and peace agreement explicitly reflects this consideration, in line with the joint communique of the Government and the United Nations on the prevention of and response to conflict-related sexual violence signed in December 2012. I further encourage the authorities to make the rapid response unit to combat sexual violence operational and to establish a special criminal court Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Colombia Recommendation: I commend the Government of Colombia for the progress made to date and its collaboration with the United Nations, including through the visit of my Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict in March 2015. I encourage the authorities to implement Law 1719 and continue to prosecute cases of sexual violence committed during the conflict to ensure that survivors receive justice and receive reparations. Conflict-related sexual violence should continue to be addressed in the Havana peace talks, as well as in the resulting accords and transitional justice mechanisms. Particular attention should be paid to groups that face additional barriers to justice such as ethnic minorities, women in rural areas, children, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals and women abused within the ranks of armed groups. I encourage the Government to scale up its protection measures and share its good practices with other conflict-affected countries Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Congo Recommendation: I urge the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to ensure full implementation of the armed forces action plan against sexual violence, to systematically bring perpetrators to justice and to deliver reparations to victims, including payment of outstanding compensation awards. I call on donors and the United Nations system to support the Government in its efforts and to pay increased attention to neglected areas, including unregulated mining regions Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Iraq Recommendation: I commend the Government of Iraq for its national action plan for the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and urge its swift implementation, including by training its security forces to ensur e respect for womens rights. Programmes to support the social reintegration of women and girls released from captivity by ISIL are urgently needed, as is community-based medical and psychological care. The capacity of the United Nations system should be enhanced through the deployment of Womens Protection Advisers or equivalent specialists Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Libya Recommendation: I urge the national authorities in Libya to implement Decree No. 119 and Resolution 904 of 2014 to ensure redress for all victims, including those affected by the current conflict, through the establishment of multisectoral services and the adoption of legislation to categorically prohibit sexual violence Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Mali Recommendation: I urge the Government of Mali, with support from United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict, to develop a comprehensive national strategy to combat sexual and gender-based violence and to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers so that services can reach remote areas. I further call on all parties to ensure that conflict-related sexual violence is addressed in the inter-Malian dialogue and that perpetrators of sexual violence do not benefit from amnesty or early release Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Myanmar Recommendation: I urge the Government of Myanmar to continue with its reform agenda and, in the process, take practical and timely actions to protect and support survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and to ensure that security personnel accused of such crimes are prosecuted. Sexual violence should be an element in all ceasefire and peace negotiations, excluded from the scope of amnesty provisions and addressed in transitional justice processes. It is critical that women be able to participate consistently in and influence these processes Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Somalia Recommendation: I reiterate my call to the Federal Government of Somalia to implement the commitments made under the joint communique of 7 May 2013 and its national action plan to combat sexual violence in conflict, including specific plans for the army and the police. I encourage the adoption of a sexual offences bill as a matter of priority Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life South Sudan Recommendation: I urge the parties to the conflict in South Sudan to adopt action plans to implement the commitments made under their respective communiques. I call upon the Government of South Sudan to address the negative impact of customary law on womens rights and to reflect international human rights standards in national law. I also encourage the African Union to make public and act upon the report of its Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Sudan (Darfur) Recommendation: I call upon the Government of the Sudan to grant the United Nations and its humanitarian partners unfettered access for monitoring and the provision of assistance to people in need in Darfur. Given that there has been grave concern over sexual violence in Darfur for more than a decade, I encourage the Government to engage with my Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict to develop a framework of cooperation to address the issue comprehensively Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Syria Recommendation: I acknowledge the Governments invitation to my Special Representative to visit the Syrian Arab Republic and call upon the authorities, in the context of such a visit, to agree on specific measures to prevent sexual violence, including by members of the security forces. I condemn the use of sexual violence by ISIL and all other parties listed in the annex to the present report and call on them to cease such violations immediately and allow unfettered access for the delivery of humanitarian assistance Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Yemen Recommendation: I urge the authorities in Yemen to undertake legislative reform as a basis for addressing impunity for sexual violence, ensuring the provision of services for survivors and aligning the minimum legal age of marriage with international standards. I further call on the authorities to engage with local community and faithbased leaders to address sexual and gender-based violence and discriminatory social norms Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Bosnia and Herzegovina Recommendation: I urge the relevant authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina to harmonize legislation and policies so that the rights of survivors of conflict-related sexual violence to reparations are consistently recognized and to allocate a specific budget for this purpose. I further call upon the authorities to protect and support survivors participating in judicial proceedings through, inter alia, referrals to free legal aid, psychosocial and health services, as well as economic empowerment programmes Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Ivory Coast Recommendation: I urge the Government of Cote dIvoire to ensure the effective implementation of its national strategy to combat gender-based violence and the action plan for FRCI, and call on the international community to support these efforts. It is critical to accelerate disarmament, demobilization and reintegration and strengthen law enforcement to ensure that ex-combatants who have been reintegrated into the transport sector do not pose a risk to women and girls who are reliant on those services. The Government and the international community must provide monitoring and awareness-raising to mitigate the possibility of a recurrence of sexual violence in the context of the presidential elections to be held in October 2015 Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Liberia Recommendation: I call on the Government of Liberia to continue its critical efforts to combat sexual and gender-based violence including through the United Nations-Government of Liberia Joint Programme, and in the context of recovery from the Ebola virus epidemic Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Nepal Recommendation: I encourage the Government to ensure that survivors of conflict-related sexual violence are recognized under the law as conflict victims, which will enable them to access services, judicial remedies and reparations. I further call on all parties involved in the transitional justice process to ensure that the rights and needs o f survivors of sexual violence are addressed in institutional reforms and that these crimes are excluded from amnesties and statutes of limitations Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Sri Lanka Recommendation: I call upon the newly elected Government of Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of sexual violence, including against national armed and security forces, and to provide multisectoral services for survivors, including reparations and economic empowerment programmes for women at risk, including war widows and female heads of household Countries where sexual violence has become a way of life Nigeria Recommendation: I encourage the Government to implement its national action plan on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) to ensure that womens protection concerns are mainstreamed throughout its security operations. I also call upon the authorities to guarantee security in and around internally displaced persons camps and to extend medical and psychosocial services to high-risk areas

In anticipation of large carnivals in the city centre in February, Mayor Reker promised an increased police presence. She warned young women about potential dangers of drunken events.

People expressed frustration at the focus on the victims rather than the perpetrators.

Mayor Reker also said a better explanation to asylum seekers was needed about the meaning of the annual carnivals.

We need to prevent confusion about what constitutes happy behaviour and what is utterly separate from openness, especially in sexual behaviour," she said.

The attackers were described as North African and Arab appearance by the police. The Mayor has said that not all of the attackers were newly-arrived refugees and had already been known to the police, as reported by The Local.

Mayor Reker was seriously wounded herself in October when she was stabbed in the neck by a man who reportedly had anti-foreigner motives amid in escalating tensions about the refugee crisis.
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The refugee crisis defined 2015. In the last year, more than a million people have fled their homes in search of safety, with many risking their lives in the process.

After the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Turkey in September, European governments came under immense pressure to act. And, to an extent, they did. Britain is now accepting 20,000 Syrian refugees until 2020, while France will take 30,000 in the next two years, and Germany will accept 500,000 every year.

But theres a problem. As anyone who has followed the crisis will know, not all refugees are Syrian. Many are from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan  and a considerable number of them can be found just across the channel in Calais.

Its impossible to know just exactly how many men, women, and children are living in The Jungle  the towns now infamous refugee camp  but the latest estimate is over 7,000.

The camp is built on a rubbish dump, and you can tell. A dirt track winds through the camp from one end to another, lined by shops, restaurants and even a barbers shop built from wood and tarpaulins. Walking along this strip you get an impression that things perhaps arent so bad  but stepping off the road you see row after row of makeshift tents covering uneven boggy land. Debris and human waste are everywhere.

 The Syrian refugee crisis in numbers

While the camp has largely been ignored by the French government, it hasnt been by the press. In the last year it has become the uneasy symbol of the worlds forgotten refugees, caught in a strange limbo between misery and safety.

Every so often theres news that another inhabitant of the camp has died trying to smuggle themselves to Britain. Already this year a fifteen year old boy from Afghanistan has died in the back of a lorry. And recently The Jungle was in the news again after Banksy graffitied an image of Steve Jobs within the camp, whose father was a Syrian migrant.

Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

In the run up to New Years, we decided to volunteer at the camp with the charity LAuberge des Migrants. In between sorting through the clothes and food that people have donated, we wanted to know how the people living in the camp felt about 2016. In a place that is widely regarded as being devoid of hope, was there any left at all for the upcoming year?

Danny, 26, from Eritrea has been living in the camp in Calais for 3 months.

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

I dont hope for anything in 2016 because tomorrow is just another day. The 5 changes to a 6, you might write the date differently, but for me nothing will change. I fled Eritrea after being forced to serve in the in army for ten years when recruited at the age of 15. I had no choice but to flee - I would have been forced to fight until I died. I hoped I would gain the freedom to make my own choices in the UK, but here, in the jungle, Im not free either.

Abia, 34, and Nina, 3, from Iraq, have been in the camp for 4 months

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

At the moment I want a bigger shelter. Right now there are six of us living in here: me, my cousin, my three brothers, and Nina. My husband sadly didnt make it to Calais. I suppose there wouldnt be any space in here for him anyway - its already so crowded, although at least this way we are warmer. But a bigger tent would be more comfortable - although Im not saying I want to stay here. I dont want Nina to grow up here, its not safe for children. I hope we will be able to reach a place where she can go to school one day.

John, 30, from Afghanistan, has been living in the camp for 3 months

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

Id like to reach Hackney in London, so I can live with my brother. He was granted asylum in the UK in 2010 and has been living there ever since. The thing is, its impossible to cross the border, and so I wont be able to claim asylum in the UK. Im doing better than most people here with my shop, but I cant stay like this - its not the life anyone would want. When it rains everything is soaked through and its so loud on the roof of my tent. It gets very cold. Back home I had a textile shop where I imported textiles from China and India. I would love to be able to open my own shop in London.

Omer, 19, from Kurdistan, has been in the camp for 3 months

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

I hope Ill be able get this generator to work. I dont think too far ahead because here you cant allow yourself to dream too much. This isnt living. We do nothing but waiting all day, and then try to make the crossing in the evening. Its dangerous here too. Theres is so much frustration that people get very aggressive. I heard two people died last night  there was a big fight in the camp. But theres nothing I can do about that. If we can just get the generator to work then we can sit inside Mohammeds place, outside of the cold and the rain.

Hussain from Pakistan, 42, has been living in the camp for 2 months

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

Id like to go back to Birmingham. I lived there for two years, working in construction. I loved it there. I worked hard and built myself a life and had many friends. I went back to Pakistan in 2013 to be with my family, and now I cant go back to the UK. Im trapped here: if I go back to my family in Pakistan I throw away everything I sacrificed to get here. I want them to be able to join me in Birmingham; there is no opportunity for us where I come from - we dont have enough money to live. Why should the place I was born prevent me from being able to earn enough money to feed my family?

Aslam from Afghanistan, 24, has been in the camp for 2 months

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

Next year I want to complete my business degree. I had been studying for two years in Kabul when the Taliban attacked the city and my course was put on hold. Next year I want to finish my degree and graduate. Then I could go on to get a good job and earn money. Right now I am so poor, I have nothing. There is no chance of making any money in my country, its such a mess.

Mohamed from Sudan, 22 has been living in Calais for 10 months

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

I hope that my hand will stop hurting. I tried to make the crossing on the train a few weeks ago, but the police caught me. They were very aggressive and broke these two fingers. I havent been able to see a doctor and I dont think my fingers will ever look normal again. The police always seem so angry. Some nights, they throw tear gas from the road down into the tents. There are women and children here too. Its not fair, where do they think we will go?

Firas, 18, from Syria, arrived at the camp last night

(Pascale Hughes (Pascale Hughes)

I just want a tent and coat. I have been travelling on foot for the last three months and I dont have anything. When I have those things, come back and ask me. Right now Im too cold.

Twitter: @pascalehughes
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They are leftist politicians whose anti-corruption platform brought them surging to power. Now newly elected MPs from Spains Podemos party have put their money where their mouth is, rejecting a full parliamentarians salary and many of the allowances and perks.

While pledging to slow the rate of public spending cuts, Podemos announced that its own MPs will take only about 1,400 a month, less than the 2,400 to which they are entitled. The MPs, the first to represent the party after it won 69 seats in last months general election, will also forgo a 2,200 annual taxi allowance and any retirement benefits.

Spanish MPs are already among the lowest paid in the European Union, with a backbencher earning less than 30,000 a year  considerably less than the 74,000 salaries paid to British MPs.

The Podemos decision was announced after a nine-hour meeting of the partys executive, known as its Citizens Council. The meeting decided that all deputies in the group should give up privileges. It is in stark contrast to the established parties, especially the governing PP, which has been overwhelmed by corruption scandals in recent years.

Even the Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has been forced to deny that he benefited from a slush fund that was allegedly orchestrated by Luis Barcenas, the PPs former treasurer. Mr Barcenas denies any wrongdoing. Several PP officials serving on municipal councils and in local government have been jailed in recent years following corruption investigations.

Podemos, not yet two years old, was the real and dramatic winner in its first general election, finishing third and preventing either the PP or the other main party, the Socialists, or PSOE, from winning a majority.

As the leader of the biggest party, Mr Rajoy is desperately trying to form a governing bloc in the 250-seat parliament before it returns on 13 January. By that date, King Felipe must propose a candidate for prime minister, on whom MPs must then vote.

The election result has thrown the issue wide open. The PP, with its 123 seats, does not have a majority even with the support of the centrist Ciudadanos, which finished fourth. On Tuesday the Prime Minister, who is now acting as a caretaker, used a radio interview to float the idea of a three-party coalition, with the PSOE and an unnamed third party, presumed to be Ciudadanos.

These three political forces that would add up to more than 200 seats are united by fundamental issues, said Mr Rajoy. He added that such a coalition, would send a good message about the stability of the country.

It is unlikely to be so straightforward. There is much personal animosity between Mr Rajoy and the PSOE leader, Pedro Sanchez. So far the PSOE has ruled out any deal that sees Mr Rajoy remaining in office, while the Ciudadanos leader, Albert Rivera, has refused to join any formal coalition.

However, a leftist coalition seems equally unlikely. Podemos has promised a binding referendum on Catalan independence should it enter government, a policy that the PSOE could not agree to.

If it is not possible to form a government, fresh elections will be held in March or April  at which point Podemoss policy on MPs salaries could prove popular with voters.
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At least 25 people have been murdered in Syria by the so-called Islamic State for being gay, a UK-based monitoring group has told the Independent.

Amid reports of a 15-year-old boy being thrown from the rooftop of a high-rise building in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor - seemingly the latest victim of the Islamist group's brutal crackdown - the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Independent that dozens of men had been killed by Isis jihadists.

Six have been stoned to death, three killed from direct shooting to the head and 16 thrown from high-rise buildings. Those that survived the fall, the group added, were then stoned on the streets below by scores of bystanders. Two of those killed were under 18.

It is alleged that the man who raped the 15-year-old, a senior Isis officer called Abu Zaid al-Jazrawi, was spared execution.

Instead, he faced a demotion and was forced to leave Syria and join the fighting fronts in north-western Iraq.

The horrific execution took place in front of large crowd, said Sarai al-Din, a local media activist who witnessed the murder, told Syrian news agency ARA.

Speaking to the news agency, civil rights activist Rawd Ahmed, said: Daesh (another name for Isis) accuses people of being gay only on the basis of some superficial information without any investigation. Although the Islamic law bans homosexuality, the brutal punishment by Daesh has never been witnessed throughout history.

Footage of terrified men in blindfolds being escorted to the rooftops of high-rise buildings and then being thrown to their death has become commonplace. It has led human rights groups to become increasingly concerned that this extreme violence is inspiring other militias in the war-torn region to attack men they suspect of being gay.

Jessica Stern, the executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, told the United Nations in August 2015 that the so-called Islamic State had established courts in Syria and Iraq that were sentencing men convicted of sodomy.

Mrs Stern told the UN, at the time, that the terrorist organisation had murdered 30 men based on their sexuality but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says this includes those in Iraq as well as Syria.

During the same meeting at the UN security council ambassadors heard chilling details of the treatment of gay men who had fled the war-torn region. One, who hid his identity, said: "In my society, being gay means death."

A second man added: At the executions, hundreds of townspeople, including children, cheered jubilantly as at a wedding. If a victim did not die after being hurled off a building, the townspeople stoned him to death. Another said the terrorist Isis militants used mobile phones and social media to hunt down those they suspect of being gay.

Mrs Stern stressed that persecution of LGBT people in Iraq and Syria began long before the emergence of Isis, and called for UN action to relocate LGBT persons most in need and to bring the gay community into broader human rights and humanitarian initiatives.
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Isis has lost 40 per cent of its territory in Iraq and a fifth in Syria as the so-called Islamic State continues to diminish, military officials have said.

A spokesperson for the US-led coalition bombing the groups territories said the retreat was from militants' point of maximum expansion in both countries.

Colonel Steve Warren told a press conference: The enemy is weaker and on the defensive. They have not gained one inch in Iraq since May.

After fighting in the region as part of al-Qaeda, Isis split in February 2014 and swept through a third of Iraq to reach the borders of Baghdad, while seizing towns and cities in the Syrian civil war.

Britain, the US and allies are supporting the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga attempting to beat militants back in Iraq, and Free Syrian Army and Kurdish YPG in Syria.

A member of Iraqi pro-government forces stands amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Hoz neighbourhood in central Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province (Getty)

Counter-offensives have enjoyed recent success in the cities of Tikrit and Ramadi in Iraq, where Isis militants have been driven out, while the terrorist group is threatened on multiple fronts against Bashar al-Assads troops and rebels in the Syrian civil war.

Air strikes are also attempting to disrupt Isis revenue streams by destroying oil fields and supplies it controls, along with ammunition depots, vehicles, buildings and other infrastructure.

A statement from the American Combined Joint Task Force on Tuesday said that coalition members from 14 countries had trained more than 17,500 Iraqi soldiers, Peshmerga fighters and tribal forces to hold re-taken areas.

This training is critical to enabling Iraqi Security Forces counter Daesh (Isis) as they work to regain and secure territory from the terrorist group, a spokesperson said.

 Cameron: ISIS will be defeated

In the group's latest gory propaganda video, a British jihadist threatened the UK for joining the bombing campaign in Syria.

A Message to David Cameron showed the masked man, thought to be London jihadist Siddhartha Dhar, claimed the so-called Islamic State was here to stay and would eventually invade Britain.

It ended with the man and four other militants shooting five alleged spies at point-black range before a young British boy threatened to kill the kuffar in a warped trailer for another execution video.

The Prime Minister called the latest footage desperate and said the latest threats showed it lashing out over recent losses.

It's desperate stuff from an organisation that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts and people can see that again today, he said.

British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria Show all 10 1 /10 British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria A Tornado jet takes off from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, as RAF Tornado jets carried out the first British bombing runs over Syria British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria Pilots and ground crew prepare combat aircraft Panavia Tornados at RAF Marham at RAF Marham, UK Getty British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria A Eurofighter Typhoon jet takes off from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, as RAF Tornado jets carried out the first British bombing runs over Syria British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria A RAF Tornado arrives at RAF Akrotiri to begin operations in Akrotiri British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria A Tornado jet ahead of taking off from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland, as RAF Tornado jets carried out the first British bombing runs over Syria, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed. The air strikes were carried out within hours of a vote by MPs in the Commons to back extending operations against Isis from neighbouring Iraq British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria Personnel work on a British Tornado after it returned from a mission at RAF Akrotiri in southern Cyprus British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria Two RAF Tornado GR4's, both with remaining weapons ordnance, approach RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, as they return to the base after carrying out some of the first British bombing runs over Syria British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria A RAF Tornado takes off from RAF Akrotiri, on the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria A Tornado jet leaving RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland British jets prepare for air strikes in Syria AKA RAF Tornado arrives at RAF Akrotiri to begin operations in Akrotiri, Cyprus. The RAF has sent two further Tornado aircraft and six Typhoons to bolster aircraft now flying sorties to both Iraq and Syria

"But this is an organisation that's losing territory, it's losing ground, it's, I think, increasingly losing anybody's sympathy, and this again shows what an appalling organisation we're up against.

"They hate us not for what we do but for what we are - the fact that we are a successful, tolerant, democratic, multi-faith, multi-ethnic nation.

"They hate that and that's why they want to take us on and that's why they do what they do.

"But I know that Britain will never be cowed by this sort of terrorism. Our values are so much stronger than theirs.

"It may take a very long time but they will be defeated."



Additional reporting by Reuters
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Kuwait has joined other Arab nations in recalling its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi Arabian diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, amid rising regional tension following the execution of the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh al-Nimr Nimr.

Sudan and the island kingdom of Bahrain said on Monday they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late Sunday. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticising Iran.

The official state-run news agency in Kuwait cited the foreign ministry as saying the attacks on the Saudi kingdoms officials represented a flagrant breach of international agreements and norms and a grave violation of Iran's international commitments for the security of diplomatic missions and the safety of diplomats.

Without elaborating the news agency announced that Kuwait would recall its ambassador in the Islamic Republic. It was not immediately clear how the Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be affected by the move.

The United Nations Security Council has also condemned the attacks on the Saudi diplomats that saw protestors ransack offices and set them on fire. A statement from the 15-member body made no mention, however, of the 47 executions in the Saudi kingdom on Saturday for terrorism offences.

Among the 47 people beheaded and shot was Sheikh Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric and Arab Spring activist whose supporters say was wrongly convicted of terror offences and seeking foreign meddling as Saudi authorities continue to quash dissent.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

His death on Saturday sparked demonstrations around the world, with a group storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran the following day, smashing windows and furniture before setting it on fire, while angry protesters tore down a flag at the Saudi consulate in the city of Mashhad.

Outside the Middle East, world governments including France, China and the US have issued calls for calm and a return to diplomacy. Moscow has offered itself as a mediator between the main players, citing its success in bringing Saudi Arabia and Iran to the negotiating table over Syria.

Additional reporting by Press Association
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Mohammed Rasool, a journalist who was arrested and jailed in Turkey in August last year, has been freed after spending 131 days in detention.

Rasool, a freelance journalist for Vice News, was arrested in the town of Diyarbakir in the south east of the country along with two other journalists, Philip Pendlebury and Jake Hanrahan, on 27 August 2015, while the three were reporting on clashes between police and Kurdish separatist groups.

Pendlebury and Hanrahan were freed 11 days after their arrest, but Rasool remained in detention, never facing indictment for the terrorism offences he was accused of, which Vice called "baseless and alarmingly false."

However, as confirmed by Vice News, Rasool has now been released, bringing the number of imprisoned journalists in Turkey down to 13, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In a statement, Vice News confirmed Rasool's release, saying: "Vice News is pleased to confirm its reporter, Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail having been held in a Turkish prison for 131 days."

Turkey has clamped down on press freedom in recent years, with journalists who write stories critical of the government often facing intimidation, arrest and even detention.

Since Rasool's arrest, Vice has been leading a campaign for his release - in October last year, all of the media network's websites around the world were shut down in a two-hour 'blackout', intended to draw attention to Rasool's plight.

A petition set up by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which called on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to free Rasool, also gained around 90,000 signatures after being set up shortly after his detention.
 Flash

An Egyptian court has turned down death and life sentences against several Muslim Brotherhood figures over violence and murder charges, official news agency MENA reported on Monday.

A file picture taken on May 8, 2014 shows Egyptian Brotherhood's supreme guide Mohamed Badie flashing the "Rabaa" sign, which means four in Arabic, remembering those killed in the crackdown on the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp in Cairo last year, during his trial at a police academy in Cairo. [Photo/Xinhua]

The court of cassation accepted an appeal and ordered a retrial of Mohamed Badie, supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his deputy, Khirate al-Shater, and 11 others, MENA said.

They were accused of inciting riots, violence and premeditated murder outside the group's headquarters in the southeastern Cairo neighborhood of Mokattam. Violence there left at least nine people dead and 91 others injured.

In February 2015, the Cairo criminal court sentenced four of them to death and the remaining 10 to life in prison.

Since the army-led ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, in response to mass protests against his rule, hundreds of his supporters have been detained over charges varying from violence, murder, jailbreak and spying.

Morsi himself was sentenced to death in a jailbreak case. The sentence could still be appealed.
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Repercussions from Saudi Arabias execution of the Shia Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr have continued, with bitter recriminations and sectarian divisions threatening to derail attempts to end the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Kuwait recalled its ambassador from Iran after Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and its allies, Bahrain and Sudan, also broke off diplomatic relations with the Shia state, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its mission in Tehran.

Recommended Read more Kuwait severs ties with Iran following attack on Saudi diplomats

The increasingly aggressive diplomatic moves came after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was ransacked and set alight on Saturday in retaliation for Riyadh ordering the execution of Sheikh Nimr, a Shia cleric, and 46 others. Hundreds of Shia marched through Sunni-ruled Bahrain on Tuesday in protest against the killing.

Meanwhile, Iran chose this volatile moment to show footage on state television of an underground depot storing Emad guided missiles, which the US says can be fitted with nuclear warheads and whose existence violates a UN Security Council resolution agreed in 2010. Another missile depot was shown on Iranian TV three months ago.

The move came even as the US and the European Union continued working towards lifting sanctions on Tehran following the nuclear deal reached last July  a deal which has been scathingly criticised by Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Republican right in the US.

Iran has largely abided by the terms of the agreement, but its President, Hassan Rouhani, has agreed to expand the nuclear programme under pressure, it is believed, from powerful conservative factions in the country.

The missiles are a further complicating factor as the historic enmity between Shia and Sunni states reaches one of its most critical moments. A ceasefire in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, has already collapsed. Now talks about the Syrian war, due to be held in Geneva later this month, may be in jeopardy.

Saudi Arabia, the foremost backer of Syrian Sunni rebels fighting Bashar al-Assads regime, insisted that it would attend the Geneva meeting. But the Saudis have been suspicious of the talks from the outset, claiming that they are designed to entrench Iranian interests in Syria. Diplomats say that recent developments show that Riyadh is determined to counter what it sees as a growing Shia influence.

In Washington, the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said: We have a very difficult situation we are trying to navigate, in terms of reaching a political resolution for the situation inside Syria. Its very difficult to get everybody around a table and its certainly going to be even more difficult if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism.

In Tehran, President Rouhani said: The Saudi government, in order to cover up its crime of beheading a religious leader, has resorted to a strange measure of severing its ties with the Islamic Republic. Such moves will never hide that great crime, criticism should not be responded to with beheading.

But some senior Iranian figures believe that Tehrans own response to the beheading has been ill thought out, and they have taken the unusual step of expressing their views. One official based abroad said the execution was not just another expression of the Saudis brand of brutal, fundamentalist Wahhabism  as it has been portrayed in the West  but a Saudi plan to try to undermine the reintegration of Iran into the international fold.

It was a trap by the Saudis, he claimed. There were not enough police on the street to stop the crowd when they took out their anger on the [Saudi] embassy, and so the pictures were like the old days, of the American embassy being attacked, the British embassy being attacked. The Saudis are very worried about the progress we are making diplomatically, so they are trying to sabotage this.

Fazel Meybodi, a cleric in the Iranian holy city of Qum, said: Saudi Arabia killed Sheikh al-Nimr at this sensitive time to widen the gulf between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Unfortunately, they had predicted our overreaction, and now they are using it against us to try to isolate Iran once again.

A commander in Irans Revolutionary Guards also condemned the embassy the attack. Mohsen Kazemini said what happened was wrong and mistaken, but insisted it was not a spontaneous act by demonstrators but one orchestrated by rogue elements.

Parliamentary elections are due in Iran, as well as the election of a clerical council that chooses the nations Supreme Leader. Mr Rouhani faces opposition from hardliners over the nuclear deal and the rapprochement with the West. Robert Emerson, a security analyst, said: The moderates retaining influence will be good for Iran and the West, but if certain other parties in the region want Iran back in the cold, whats better than having the hardliners back in power in Tehran?
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Isis has executed what is believed to be the first female citizen journalist for reporting inside its territory, Syrian media has reported.

The execution of Ruqia Hassan marks the fifth journalist who reported on Isis to be killed since October, according to Syrian journalism organisation Syria Direct.

Ms Hassan, who also went by the pseudonym Nisan Ibrahim on social media, was a independent reporter. Her death was confirmed by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), a group exposing human rights abuses from within Syria.

Abu Mohammed, founder of RBSS, tweeted on Saturday that Ms Hassans last words were: Im in Raqqa and I received death threats, and when Isis [arrests] me and kills me its ok because they will cut my head and I have dignity its better than I live in humiliation with Isis [sic]

One of her final posts on Facebook mocks Isis, also known as Islamic State, for banning Wi-Fi hotspots in the city of Raqqa. Her post, translated by Syria Direct, reads: "Go ahead and cut off our internet, our messenger pigeons won't complain."

The exact date of Ms Hassans execution is unknown, but her presence on social media stopped abruptly on July 21, 2015.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP

Arab news channel Al-Aan TV reported Isis informed Ms Hassans family of her execution three days ago on charges of espionage.

An independent journalist who was formerly with RBSS, Furat al-Wafaa, told Syria Direct that Ms Hassan frequently participated in all of the revolutions protests.

He is quoted as saying: Ruqia continuously challenged IS and often reported on air strikes on Raqqa as they happened.

 Cameron: ISIS will be defeated

IS always wants to keep the sword hovering over the peoples necks, he said, when asked what Isis seeks to achieve by executing journalists accused of working with foreign media.

He added: They want their fighters and supporters to know that the Islamic State is capable of taking revenge against those who speak against them.

In December, Isis executed RBSS activist Naji Jerf, whose last work 'Islamic State in Aleppo' was a documentary exposing human rights violations committed in the city.
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Isis jihadists hijacked the Facebook account of a captured female activist in Raqqa in a bid to lure other opponents into a trap, according to a member of Syrias most prominent anti-Isis resistance group.

It has emerged that Ruqia Hassan Mohammed, a vocal Isis opponent with a dry sense of humour, was killed by the jihadists three months ago in punishment for her outspoken social media posts. But they continued to operate her social media accounts until very recently.

Recommended Read more At least 25 men suspected of being gay killed by Isis

Ms Mohammed is the latest in a long line of opponents to have been punished for defying Isis, which shocked the world by seizing control of a swathe of territory in Syria and Iraq in the summer of 2014. Only this week, the group released a propaganda video showing the execution of five men accused of spying for Britain.

She is thought to have been detained in Raqqa, Isiss de facto capital, in July and killed some time in September. A citizen journalist from the group Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered (RBSS), which works to document and publicise life under Isis, told The Independent that, since then, Isis has accessed her social media profile and used it in an attempt to flush out other critics.

The Facebook account of Ruqayya Hassan Mohammed before it was hijacked (Facebook/ )

Her Facebook account remained open in order to entrap friends who communicated with her, said the activist, who uses the pseudonym Tim Ramadan to hide his real identity. He said that, about a week ago, Isis was still using her account to send messages to other users claiming that she was alive.

The claim was echoed by the Arabic language site al-Aan. It reported that anti-Isis activists had warned that Ms Mohammeds account had been used to try and identify the whereabouts of other activists, both inside and outside Syria.

Ms Mohammed, a Syrian Kurd born in 1985, wrote under the pen name Nisan Ibrahim. The Facebook page in that name shows a young woman with a fondness for bright eye shadow, pink lipstick and sequinned tops.

She also displayed a dark sense of humour. Her last Facebook post, in July, mocked an Isis ruling to ban wi-fi hotspots in the city. Go ahead and cut off the internet, our messenger pigeons wont complain, she wrote.

Abu Mohammed, founder of RBSS, tweeted that Ms Hassans last words were: Im in Raqqa and I received death threats, and when Isis [arrests] me and kills me its ok because they will cut my head and I have dignity its better than I live in humiliation with Isis [sic].

After studying philosophy at Aleppo university, she joined the uprising against the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad that began in 2011. She remained in Raqqa after the city was seized by more moderate rebels in 2013 and then taken over by Isis later that same year.

Isis made clear early on that it would show zero tolerance of dissenters. A dedicated police force is responsible for enforcing its strict moral and social rules. Serious transgressions are punished with public executions.

Against this backdrop, few civilians in Raqqa dare speak out against Isis rule. Ms Mohammed had been a rare exception, using her Facebook page to provide updates on life in the city and lament the censorious climate. Every day they ban, ban, ban, ban, she wrote in one post in July. After a series of posts criticising an announcement that Isis would be further restricting internet access, the public postings suddenly ended on 21 July 2015.

Isis has been cracking down hard on dissenters in recent months, both inside Syria and in neighbouring Turkey. Between October and December it killed three members of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. Most recently, film-maker Naji Jerf was shot dead in broad daylight in the Turkish town of Gaziantep.

The activist group was cast into the spotlight again this week when Isis executed five Syrian men accused of spying for Britain. One of them claimed that he had communicated with a founding member of Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered. This was denied by Mr Ramadan. They dont work with us, he said. We dont know them.

Some analysts have suggested that the crackdown stems from increasing paranoia among the Isis leadership. Air strikes by the US-led international coalition had succeeded in performing targeted killings against individual militants, suggesting intimate knowledge of the groups inner workings. Others caution, however, that the group shows little sign of weakening despite almost 18 months under assault from the air.
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The execution of 47 people in Saudi Arabia has ignited an already tense situation across the Middle East, splitting the region along sectarian lines.

What has caused such outrage among the kingdoms near neighbours is not simply the number killed, but the fact they included the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

The backlash has been split along sectarian lines, with Saudi Arabia and its Sunni government-led allies Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE severing diplomatic ties to Iran.

Whats the geographical split?

The majority of the worlds Muslims are Sunni, between 85 and 90 per cent according to most counts, and spread across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain have a Shia majority, though the latter is ruled by the Sunni House of Khalifa.

In Yemen, the conflict has become a sectarian proxy war, with Iran backing the Shia Houthi rebels who overthrew the countrys Sunni-dominated government, while a Saudi-led coalition has since intervened to reinstall the Sunni leadership.

What caused the divide?

The Sunni-Shia conflict is 1,400 years in the making, dating back to the years immediately after the Prophet Mohammeds death in 632.

The arguments are complicated but essentially boil down to the fact that Sunnis believe the Prophets trusted friend and advisor Abu Bakr was the first rightful leader of Muslims or caliph, while Shias believe that Mohammeds cousin and son-in-law Ali was chosen by Allah to hold the title.

Read more here.
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The United Nations Security Council has condemned attacks on Saudi Arabian diplomatic missions in Iran that saw protesters ransack offices and set them on fire.

A statement from the 15-member body, including the UK, US and Russia, made no mention of the Saudi executions that sparked the riots amid ever worsening tensions between the two countries.

Among the 47 people beheaded and shot was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric and Arab Spring activist whose supporters say was wrongly convicted of terror offences and seeking foreign meddling as Saudi authorities continue to quash dissent.

Video: Iranians protest against execution of Shia cleric

His death on Saturday sparked demonstrations around the world, with a group storming the Saudi embassy in Tehran the following day, smashing windows and furniture before setting it on fire, while angry protesters tore down a flag at the Saudi consulate in the city of Mashhad.

The Security Council statement said it condemned the attacks in the strongest terms, saying they had violated diplomatic and consular premises, while causing serious damage.

Reminding governments of the fundamental inviolability of such premises and responsibility of host countries to protect them, the council urged all appropriate steps to be taken to prevent further disturbances.

In this context, and expressing their deep concern at such attacks, the members of the Security Council called on the Iranian authorities to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel, and to respect fully their international obligations in this regard, a spokesperson said.

Iranian protesters gather outside the Saudi Embassy in Tehran during a demonstration against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities. (Getty)

The members of the Security Council called on all parties to maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region.

Saudi Arabia has ordered Iranian diplomats to leave the country after severing diplomatic ties, a step repeated by several allies, while Iran defended its response to the embassy attack and said 50 people had been arrested.

High-level politicians in both countries have been accusing each other of incitement as the proxy war continues between Iran and Saudi Arabia and Yemen and Syria, where the countries are backing opposing sides.

There is growing concern that the worsening dispute could derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war, with both nations playing key roles in talks scheduled for 25 January in Geneva.

In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world over Saudi executions Iranian and Turkish demonstrators hold pictures of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as they protest outside the Saudi Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world over Saudi executions Kashmiri Shiite Muslims, carrying a placard with the portrait of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, shout slogans during a protest in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world at Saudi executions Indian police used tear smoke and rubber bullets to disperse Shiite Muslims who were protesting after Saudi Arabia announced the execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday along with 46 others, including three other Shiite dissidents and a number of al-Qaida militants. In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world over Saudi executions Shane Enright, Global Trade Union Advisor for Amnesty International, addresses demonstrators as they protest outside the Saudi Embassy in London, following Saudi Arabia's execution of 47 prisoners in one day, including a top Shiite cleric In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world over Saudi executions Iranian protestor burn pictures of a member of the Saudi royal family in front of the Saudi Arabia embassy in Tehran, Iran, 02 January 2016. Protesters have stormed the Saudi embassy building in the Iranian capital of Tehran early Sunday amid backlash over the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. Flammable substance was seen thrown at the building as protests gained steam over the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Reports states, protesters taking down a Saudi flag and burned the building. In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world over Saudi executions Shiite Muslims hold placards with pictures of Saudi Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution in Saudi Arabia was announced Saturday, during a demonstration to condemn his execution, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 in Peshawar, Pakistan In pictures: Protests around the world over Saudi executions Protests around the world over Saudi executions A Kashmir Shiite Muslim shouts slogan from Indian police vehicle after he was detained during a protest in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir,

Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, urged both to attend and said it was so clearly in the interests of both countries to advance a political solution to the situation.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the UN, Abdallah al-Moualimi, said representatives would attend but Iran has not confirmed whether it will send representatives.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, has spoken to the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers as efforts continue to de-escalate the situation.

A spokesperson said he reiterated his strong opposition to capital punishment in a call with the Saudi foreign minister, Abel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, and disappointment at the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr.

He called the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran deplorable but also said the decision to cut diplomatic relations with Iran was deeply worrying and urged a ceasefire in Yemen.

Mr Ban told Iran to take necessary measures to protect diplomatic facilities and urged both ministers to avoid exacerbating the situation in the interest of their nations, the region and beyond.

Additional reporting by agencies
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The civilian death toll in the continuing war in Yemen has risen to almost 2,800 amid accusations that the Saudi-led coalition is using cluster bombs on populated areas.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), children were among the 81 civilians killed and 109 wounded in December.

The conflict has been raging since March, when the Houthi-led Supreme Revolutionary Committee attempted to overthrow the Hadi government, sparking a civil war drawing in at least a dozen other countries, as well as groups affiliated with Isis and al-Qaeda.

More than 2,700 civilians have been killed since Saudi-led airstrikes began in March (AFP/Getty Images)

Iran is supporting the Revolutionary Committee, while the US and a coalition of Gulf nations led by Saudi Arabia is backing the former government with a bombing campaign.

A spokesperson for the OHCHR said the conflict continues to take a terrible toll on civilians, including more than 5,300 men, women and children in little over nine months.

During the month of December, at least 62 civilians were reported to have been killed by airstrikes attributed to the (Saudi-led) coalition forces, he added.

This is more than twice the number of civilians reported killed in November.

A Yemeni boy runs past a mural painted on the wall of the capital in Sanaa (Getty)

Two air strikes reportedly killed 18 civilians when they hit a house in Saada Governorate on 18 December, while three children were among those who died in bombing that destroyed 14 houses in Al-Hudaydah two days later.

The recorded number of civilians killed by shelling by the Houthi-affiliated Popular Committees decreased last month to 11, according to UN figures.

A spokesperson for the OHCHR said it had received alarming information on the alleged use of cluster bombs by coalition forces in Hajjah Governorate.

Inspectors saw the remnants of 29 of the bombs near banana plantations during a visit to village of Al-Odair, in Haradh District, where witnesses claimed other villages had been affected, with civilians stepping on unexploded submunitions.

The aftermath of an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition on Sanaa earlier this year (Getty)

Senegal is the only nation in the coalition to be among the 98 signatories to a UN convention banning the use of cluster munitions.

The bombs, which release multiple bomblets over a wide area, can be indiscriminate and kill civilians long after conflicts have ended by failing to detonate until they are trodden on.

The UN raised particular concern over the city of Taizz, which has been the scene of violent clashes for the past eight months and has Popular Committees forces blocking all entry points, limiting access to food, medicine and essential supplies.

Dozens of prisoners have also died in bombing since the start of the war, which has also caused more than 4,000 to escape, while those remaining face food, electricity, water and food shortages as disease spreads.

Daily air strikes continued today, as the governor of the southern port city of Aden survived a suspected assaassassination attempt that killed two of his bodyguards.

 More than 570 children killed in Yemen war since March

Aidarous al-Zubaidis car was attacked a month after his predecessor was killed in a bombing claimed by Yemen's local Isis affiliate.

Aden is controlled by the internationally recognised government, while Houthi rebels control the capital and parts of the north, with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Isis seizing other territory.

UN-backed peace talks secured a truce starting on 15 December but, after being repeatedly violated by both sides, it was officially ended by the Saudi coalition on Saturday.

Earlier the same day, Saudi Arabia executed a dissident Shia cleric convicted of terrorism, sparking riots outside Saudi consulates in Iran and a cut in diplomatic ties between the two countries, threatening to worsen their proxy wars in Yemen and Syria and deepen sectarian tensions in the region.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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The NHS is said to be facing its most significant challenge in recent years after a third of students told a new poll they no longer wish to study medicine in the wake of the junior doctors contract row.

The Student Room - which houses the largest online community of medical students in the UK - recently surveyed almost 1,550 students to find 37 per cent who had once hoped to study medicine have now said they no longer wish to do so as a result of health secretary Jeremy Hunts proposed contract changes and the industrial action being taken by dissatisfied staff.

The polls results have come just a day after the British Medical Association (BMA) announced junior doctors from across England will be taking industrial action on 12 January after talks between the BMA and NHS employers failed to reach an agreement.

Recommended Read more Junior doctors announce they will strike next week

Junior doctors leaders have been objecting to the prospect of a new contract in which health secretary Jeremy Hunt has been attempting to redefine what constitutes anti-social hours for doctors.

Community director at The Student Room, Jack Wallington, described how changing junior doctor contracts creates one of the most significant challenges to the NHS weve seen in recent years. He added: While major budget cuts have had a direct impact on the NHS and its staff in the present, this latest cut threatens the lifeblood of the UKs future medical workforce: students.

With todays students being extremely savvy due to the Internet and pressure from the increased personal cost of a higher education, Mr Wallington highlighted how, in recent years, students have researched future careers in great detail by comparing the best options.

He said: The message being sent to our youth today is why bother with medicine?, as over a third of our brightest students now look to other, better compensated careers, reducing our pool of talent within healthcare significantly.

This latest data, he warned, signals an alarming warning of an impending skills shortage in medicine, and places further questions over the future of the NHS. Adding how these results are no doubt of grave concern to the wider public, Mr Wallington added: Their quality of healthcare looks set to reduce right at the time we face our greatest healthcare challenge in the history of the UK: an enormously top-heavy ageing population.

 Junior doctors strike

The BMA has described how, In 2012, the Government asked it to look into negotiating a new contract for junior doctors. After two years, the BMA said negotiations stalled because the contract on offer would not have provided sufficient safeguards for junior doctors and their patients.

On Monday, The BMA warned that, unless progress is made on key areas - including the need for robust contractual safeguards on safe working and proper recognition for those working unsocial hours - next weeks 24-hour day of action will be followed by a second 48-hour strike beginning 26 January. As well as this, it has outlined plans for a third day of action on 10 February, which will see a full withdrawal of junior doctors labour between 8am and 5pm.

Junior doctors voted by a huge majority to go on strike in a ballot conducted in November 2015 in which 98 per cent of voted to strike on a turnout of 76 per cent. 99.4 per cent of doctors said they would take part in action short of a strike.
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Jacques Cousteau, the father of recreational diving, once said: The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. And I have to agree; Ive been obsessed with the Great Barrier Reef since watching nature documentaries in the Nineties, in which the divers fluorescent wetsuits were almost as bright as multi-coloured fish.

Now, the rainforest of the ocean is back on our screens, in BBC1s The Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough. For the series, Attenborough returned more than 50 years after his first visit, in 1957. He recalls the first time he scuba dived on the Great Barrier Reef as the most magical thing I ever saw in my life; the 2,000km stretch of reef that hugs almost the whole length of Queenslands shore is, after all, nature on an epic scale. The worlds largest coral reef system is the only structure made up of living organisms to be visible from Space.

So, determined finally to dive the reef, I caught a float plane from Gladstone to Heron Island, 80km offshore, where Attenborough was also partly based for the series. As we skimmed over the brilliant turquoise water, the pilot shouted above the engine noise to point out the murky shapes of sharks and turtles in the water below. The planes wings dipped as we bobbed down for a closer look, and I tried to imagine how it was going to feel to be underwater gazing up, instead.

The next day, my nose covered in factor 60 sunscreen, I walked down to Heron Islands harbour with Kayleigh, my dive instructor. A tiny-yet-tough American, shed cut her teeth diving in Alaska and looked like she could probably handle whatever the sea could throw at her. This was reassuring, as in the nice, safe waters around the jetty where we were to practise, a small blacktip reef shark was circling. Theyre actually harmless, but it felt of little reassurance when I was about to swim with them.

I hadnt dived in a few years, and as I was loaded with equipment I had to ask what the mouth bit was called. Kayleigh took the hint and taught me how to prepare my gear, how to put a wetsuit on the right way round and how to check my respirator (thats the mouth bit). I felt much more confident after a practice dive around the harbour, especially as the shark had decided we were pretty boring and nosed away.

We climbed aboard the islands dive boat and sped out to Heron Bommie (short for bombora, an indigenous term for a submerged rock shelf). This site is so special that Cousteau considered it one of his favourite dives of all time. The boat stopped half a mile from Heron Island, and all around us was the deep sea, telltale ribbons of lighter aquamarine water indicating where the reef lay waiting. I strapped my buoyancy control device over my wetsuit, pulled on fins and my mask and we stepped off into the waves, quickly descending to 17 metres.

As we dipped below the oceans surface a fiesta of colour opened up in front of us. There was the massive rocky shelf of the reef, covered by rainbow hues of coral. Zebra fish streamed by, brushing against my arm, and tiny angel fish darted between the corals protective spines and spikes. Spotty seaslugs and enormous rays lay motionless on the ocean floor. A glittering shoal of trevally flashed iridescence with every small movement. There were creatures so weird and crayon right they looked like childrens drawings. Yet, the brutal side of nature was present, too  we spotted a big parrot fish munching on half a sea slug, which had spat out its intestines in protest.

It was sobering to think that somewhere so alive, so vibrant, is actually in grave danger  from climate change, pollution, industry, and even the sunscreen left in the water by visitors; some reports state that half the reef has vanished over the past 27 years. The presence of everything from two metre Maori Wrasse to minuscule nudibranches was a reminder of its fragile majesty.

I was swimming along quite happily when a fellow diver reached over and grabbed my arm. Right in front of us, half-hidden under a rocky outcrop, was an enormous, wizened green turtle. I tried to exclaim in delight, then remembered that I had a respirator in my mouth and that its pretty useless to scream underwater, and instead I hung motionless, watching the turtle watching us. He looked like hed seen it all before  he probably had, as green turtles can live for 100 years.

As we kicked along behind Kayleigh like a school of ungainly fish, a younger and sprightlier green turtle joined us, keeping up with elegant flicks of his fins, craning his long, wrinkly neck to check us out. I had to take slow, deliberate breaths so that all the excitement didnt drain my oxygen tank flat. As it was, I was still the first to reach 70 bar, the signal to start ascending to the surface. I was crestfallen to leave the rainbow reef behind, but departed with a new understanding of how precious this wonder of the world is.

Getting there

Sian Lewis travelled with Austravel (0800 988 4834; austravel.com). An 11-night Great Barrier Reef holiday to Queensland costs from 2,379pp, including accommodation at Heron Island, The Point Bagara; Marina Shores in Airlie Beach, One&Only Hayman Island, and the Reef View Hotel on Hamilton Island; plus Emirates flights from Gatwick to Brisbane via Dubai, car hire and all transfers.

More information

queensland.com

The Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough continues on BBC1 on Wednesday at 9pm
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An annual survey of the worlds biggest airlines has revealed those with the worst safety records.

AirlineRatings.com examined audits from aviation governing bodies and lead associations, as well as government audits and fatality records for each airline. It also looked at airlines' operational histories, incident records and operational excellence.

The website provided safety ratings for 407 airlines, awarding them up to seven stars. Of those, 148 were given the top rating, while almost 50 had just three stars or less.

The 10 least safe airlines Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 least safe airlines The 10 least safe airlines Batik Air The 10 least safe airlines Blue Wing Airlines The 10 least safe airlines Citilink The 10 least safe airlines Kalstar Aviation The 10 least safe airlines Lion Air The 10 least safe airlines Sriwijaya Air The 10 least safe airlines TransNusa Air Services The 10 least safe airlines Trigana Air Service The 10 least safe airlines Wings Air The 10 least safe airlines Xpress Air

A total of 10 airlines, all from Nepal, Indonesia or Surinam, qualified for just one or zero stars for 2016:

1) Batik Air

2) Bluewing Airlines

3) Citilink

4) Kal-Star Aviation

5) Lion Air

6) Sriwijaya Air

7) TransNusa

8) Trigana Air Service

9) Wings Air

10) Xpress Air

The announcement follows a troubling year for aviation that included two significant disasters, both of which reignited debate surrounding issues of security and concerns over pilots mental wellbeing.

On 3 January it was revealed that for the second year running, the main cause of aviation deaths in 2015 was "unlawful interference" - in other words, murder - according to a report by leading air safety firm To70. The consultancy cited the still-unsolved disappearance of MH370 and MH17 which was shot down over Ukraine in 2015, as well as the Germanwings and Metrojet crashes in the Alps and Sinai respectively.

224 people were killed when the Russian Metrojet Airbus A321-231 broke apart shortly after its departure from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport in Egypt.

In March 2015, a Germanwings Airbus A320-211 crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. It was later revealed that pilot Andreas Lubitz, who had suicidal tendancies, had caused the crash deliberately.

AirlineRatings.com editor Geoffrey Thomas explained that Germanwings has retained its seven star safety rating for 2016 because the incident was caused by pilot suicide.

"In our rating system, which is endorsed by aviations governing body the International Civil Aviation Organisation, if deaths occurred through acts of terrorism, high jacking or pilot suicide, they are not included in the crash record," he said

Some aviation-safety specialists have questioned the basis for the AirlineRatings survey, because it does not appear to prioritise what many passengers regard as the most significant safety consideration: an airlines track record of flying millions of missions with no loss of life.

By such a measure, the US carrier Southwest is way ahead of all other airlines. It has operated more than 22 million flights and carried 1.5 billion passengers since its foundation in 1971, without a single fatal accident.

The two leading European budget airlines, easyJet and Ryanair, also have fatality-free records, and last year safely flew around 180m passengers between them. The three carriers from the British Isles included in the AirlineRatings top ten safest low-cost airlines - Aer Lingus, Flybe and Thomas Cook Airlines - carried only about 22m between them.

Malaysia Airlines, struck by two incidents that left all passengers on board dead or missing in 2014, was given five stars out of a possible seven in the ratings: the same as Ryanair and Thomson Airways.

If an airline has a crash that involves the death of a passenger and/or crew members it will automatically lose a star from its safety-rating rankings.

Iraqi Airways was last month banned from operating in EU airspace, due to "unaddressed safety concerns", and has been given two-star safety rating by AirlineRatings.com.

Thailands aviation industry was placed under "special measures" in 2015 after issues were flagged by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Carriers including Thai Airways, which was awarded four out of seven stars for safety, were spared being placed on the EU blacklist.

Officials said they would "closely monitor future developments" and would consider bans if air passenger safety was deemed to be at risk.

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Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced on Monday that his country will cut air traffic with Iran and ban citizens from travelling there, Al Arabiya local news reported.

He also said that the cutting of relations will cover commercial ties, while Iranian pilgrims will always be welcome in Saudi Arabia.

The announcement was made one day after Saudi Arabia announced cutting off diplomatic ties with Iran and asked all Iranian diplomats to leave within 48 hours.

This excessive reaction was made after angry Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi diplomat mission to protest the Saudi execution of 47 individuals on terrorism charges, including a Saudi Shiite cleric, Nemer Baqar Al-Nemer, a member of the Saudi Shiite community.

In a press conference held yesterday, the minister accused the Iranian authorities of not taking any measures to prevent the attacks against the embassy in Tehran and the consulate in the Iranian city of Mashhad.

Others Arab countries also responded to the attacks, as Bahrain also cut its diplomatic ties with Iran, UAE lower its diplomatic representation in Iran and Sudan asked the Iranian envoy to leave the country.
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Yesterday morning the Sun newspapers splash had just two words in big type: Jihadi Junior. Next to it was the video-still of a tiny four-year-old boy wearing a bandana of the Isis flag, who had a minor role in their latest video.

I looked at that picture and felt sad. Little Isa Dares life has barely started but it is already in tatters. His mother took him to a country ravaged by civil war, among a hell-hole of religious extremists, and now he has been nicknamed Jihadi Junior by publications in his home country. That nickname will haunt him for life and he had nothing to do with it. He has already been condemned.

I have submitted a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). This isnt just about four-year-old Isa Dare. The Sun is demonising underage Muslim children just because of their parents. We are being pushed into a world where even Muslim toddlers are fair game if their parents are extremists.

Im not a bleeding heart liberal - I want to see Isis militants meet the cold face of justice. I want to see them utterly destroyed. But I dont want to see us turning into demons in the process.

The Jihadi Junior splash, complete with unpixellated image, was utterly vile because it implied that a child, at the age of four, was a terrorist. But four-year-old Isa Dare was the victim, not the perpetrator. The child was used as a prop by Isis; he wasnt an accomplice.

And it's not just The Sun. The Canadian government has listed a six-year-old child as a security threat and put him on a no-fly-list. The British Home Office is asking nursery staff to spy on Muslim toddlers to see if they are at risk of becoming terrorists. Its the same line of thinking: Muslim children are potential terrorists from the day theyre born. Theyre dangerous. Thats precisely the sort of over-reaction and paranoia that ISIS want us to develop.

The story of the Isis video was clearly in the public interest. But the main story is not about the child. Since he is a toddler, his face should have been pixelated, as media outlets such as the Daily Mirror, the Independent and Channel 4 News did.

Under IPSO Editors Code of Practice, it states: Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child's private life.

My main issue is this. By dubbing him Jihadi Junior and showing his face the Sun turned a four-year-old child into a terror suspect and a target of hatemongers. He will likely be treated with scorn and suspicion even though he isnt old enough to know what he was doing. Would a white girl get the same treatment: be branded a religious extremist if her parents were?

In a wider context, Muslim children are being used as pawns - as propaganda tools - by jihadis. The children arent fully aware of the context: they are either doing what theyre told or trying to impress their elders without really knowing the implications. They are being groomed in the way that child sex offenders groom children.

They should be treated as victims, not as willing perpetrators. And yet, British tabloids have almost always branded such under-18 Isis victims as accomplices. Why? Just because theyre Muslims?

Newspapers who publish images of children under Jihadi Junior nicknames want Muslims to speak out against Isis, yet eagerly brand even toddlers as jihadis. This wrong-headed strategy effectively buys into Isis propaganda - and does their job for them.
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Ever since Saudi Arabia executed Shia Cleric Nimr al-Nimr for terrorist offences, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been escalating by the day. After the execution, the Saudi embassy was stormed by protesters in Tehran. Riyadh has now severed diplomatic relations with Tehran  and the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, staunch Saudi allies, have followed suit, spurred on by Irans portentous prediction of divine vengeance for the execution.

Irans president, Hassan Rouhani, condemned those who stormed the embassy, but was also critical of the Saudis' behaviour, suggesting thatthe Saudi government has damaged its image, more than before, among the countries in the world, in particular [among] Islamic countries, by this un-Islamic act.

The concerns that led to Sheikh Nimrs execution  that he was an agent of foreign meddling in the kingdom  are not new. A Shia cleric who spent time in Iran and Syria, Nimr was an outspoken critic of the house of Saud and played a prominent role in the 2011 uprisings in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province.

But the tension goes deeper than that. Relations between Riyadh and Tehran have been tense ever since the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in the revolution of 1979, adding religious competition to a burgeoning geopolitical rivalry.

Since the revolution, the Gulfs Sunni governments have long been concerned that Iran would seek to manipulate Shia populations across the Middle East, whom are often viewed as fifth columns. This suspicion was perhaps best articulated by King Abdullah of Jordan, who in 2004 referred to a Shia Crescent, an Iranian sphere of influence stretching from Iran to Lebanon.

This was furthered by Iranian complicity in a number of subversive acts, including an attempted coup detat in Bahrain in 1981, an attempted assassination of the Emir of Kuwait in 1985 and the establishment of a Hezbollah franchise in Hejaz, in western Saudi Arabia, two years later.

As a consequence of this fear, in recent years, Saudi Arabia and Iran have become embroiled in a number of proxy conflicts, as collapses in political order elsewhere opened up new chances to compete for influence.

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq, a Shia government was established. Under prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sunni Iraqis were marginalised and persecuted  a sectarian crackdown now credited with fuelling the rise of Islamic State, many of whose commanders and fighters are Sunnis purged from the US-trained Iraqi army. This has not only left a legacy of mutual hatred and suspicion, but has also allowed Iran to gain a serious foothold in Iraq  much to the Saudis' chagrin.

On the archipelago of Bahrain, a Sunni minority led by the al-Khalifa monarchy rules over a Shia majority. Ties between the Saudis and al-Khalifa run deep, and given Bahrains close proximity to Saudi Arabias Eastern Province, joined by the 25km King Fahd Causeway, Riyadh pays close attention to Bahrains stability.

As in Iraq and elsewhere, Shia gains in Bahrain are seen to be Iranian gains, and Saudi Arabia has set clear red lines to limit any concessions to the religious majority. In 2011, when pro-democracy protesters took to the streets of Manama, a Saudi-led GCC Peninsula Shield Force helped quash the protests.

In Yemen, meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has spent the best part of a year leading a multinational coalition of Arab states in an air campaign to crush a rebellion by Shia Houthi separatists, who have driven the countrys leaders into exile  and whom the Saudis are convinced receive support from Iran.

The conflict has killed thousands of civilians, but Saudi Arabia has little to show for it. The situation is complicated by a melee of actors vying for power across the sectarian spectrum, including al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of al-Qaedas oldest and most potent franchises.

And then theres the most severe Saudi-Iranian proxy conflict: the war in Syria, which sees Riyadh and Tehran supporting different sides in a seemingly intractable civil conflict that has killed around 250,000-300,000 people and displaced around 11m.

While Iran has long supported Bashar al-Assads embattled regime, the explosion of protest movements across the region in 2011 offered Saudi Arabia a chance to bring Syria back into what it deems the Arab fold by supporting a range of groups opposing the government  many of whom remain locked in combat with it today.

But Irans involvement, coupled with the support from Hezbollah  another Iranian ally  has strengthened Assads position.

So for all that the post-execution flare-up is an alarming development, it springs from decades of mutual suspicion and violent conflict by proxy. And while the bilious rhetoric between the two countries sours by the day, it is still the people caught in the crosshairs of proxy conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon who are paying the heaviest price.

This article first appeared in The Conversation on the 4th January 2015. Simon Mabon is Lecturer in International Relations at Lancaster University.
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The Scottish National Party has long been skilled in the art of political choreography, carefully planning its activity in order to maximize its profile and plaudits.

And so no sooner had 2015 given way to 2016, another election year, than First Minister Nicola Sturgeon set the agenda by proclaiming the fifth battle for Holyrood under way.

Yesterday she led a debate in the Scottish Parliament, the opening salvo in a steady volley of policy pledges over the coming weeks, covering everything from replacing the Council Tax to a renewed debate about independence.

But, as ever with Scotlands governing party, theres a risk all this, accompanied by the usual slick PR and equally slick social media, becomes little more than another triumph of style over substance. In other words, the moves might look good from the rear stalls, but up close theres still little tangible progress after nearly nine years on the political stage.

Recommended Read more Scottish National Party is a victim of its own success

And given the increasingly presidential nature of Scottish politics  as her partys biggest asset Ms Sturgeon will be omnipresent until May  this might not matter very much, although equally theres a risk that as her star wanes so does that of the party and independence movement, a possibility the First Minister is savvy enough to be aware of.

So on Tuesday afternoon all the usual rhetoric was in place. The SNP leader said she took nothing for granted but would ask Scots to re-elect her administration on the strength of its record, our ideas and our vision for the future of this country, while patting herself on the back for having created a flourishing of democratic debate and therefore renewed national confidence.

Your average voter, particularly those already inclined to vote for the SNP, likes hearing this sort of stuff; it makes them feel good about themselves and the country. But the challenge for Nicola Sturgeon, as its been since she took over as First Minister fourteen months ago, is to move beyond hope-fuelled rhetoric and into the real world.

There are signs that she gets this, particularly when it comes to education, which the SNP says will be front and centre of its plans for the next parliamentary term. That is surely laudable, although education has been front and centre every year since 2007 and on certain key measurements its not getting any better.

This week the Scottish Government will publish a National Improvement Framework for Education designed to spark a four-month debate ahead of the election. Top priority is closing the attainment gap, which has worsened in recent years, and something Labour and the Tories have been highlighting relentlessly as proof the SNP hasnt lived up to its own hype.

Health is also contentious, with the NHS in Scotland under the usual stresses and strains. Again, Ms Sturgeon has promised detailed plans to turn this round, while yesterday she pledged to double government-funded childcare to 30 hours a week.

Health and education are both long-standing devolved responsibilities, but Ms Sturgeon also promised to set out (before the end of March) a distinctively Scottish approach to social security using new powers, as well as explaining how the Scottish Government will use, fairly and progressively, forthcoming discretion over income tax. Soon, meanwhile, the SNP will reveal proposals for a fairer and more progressive system of local government taxation.

And having hitherto played down talk of another independence referendum, the First Minister also told MSPs she was confident that over the next few years she and her party would build majority support for Scotland becoming an independent country. Itll be interesting to see what form that takes, particularly in the midst of an ongoing crisis in the Aberdeen-based oil industry.

At the weekend Ms Sturgeon promised her renewed independence pitch would be both realistic and relevant, a recognition that at points during the 2012-14 referendum campaign the Yes proposition was neither. But, again, theres a risk that the SNP simply repackages some rather threadbare arguments rather than fundamentally reassessing them.

Yesterday the SNPs official twitter account posted key sentences from the First Ministers speech, all concluding with the hashtag #BothVotesSNP, an indication that the party intends to fight for every possible seat  just as it did with marked success back in 2011.

Its perfectly possible it will succeed, perhaps even increasing its overall majority and consolidating Nationalist hegemony for the remainder of 2016 and beyond, although in a world of identity politics (sometimes bordering on showbiz), that is a less impressive achievement than it initially appears.

All the policies outlined above could turn out to be pretty radical  theyre certainly intended to look that way  but the proof will be in the pudding, and the SNP has form for dazzling its loyal membership and broad electoral coalition with progressive pirouettes while ultimately falling back on a dull but adequate waltz.
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For universities, 2015 will be remembered as the year of the spoilt student brat. Hardly a day went by, nor a newspaper column escaped untouched, without a pronouncement against student activists. If the right are to be believed, teenage feminists have columnists and professors clutching their pearls and fearing for the state of humanity as they rampage through the education system, shutting down free speech and turning once great universities into absurd spectacles of trigger warnings, privilege checking and safe spaces.

Trigger warnings, safe spaces and no-platforming were the main hallmarks of the so-called spoilt and over-sensitive Feminazi or SJW students in 2015. Now, as we are on the cusp of the first term of 2016, the cause celebre bringing us into the New Year is anti-racism activists at Oxford University campaigning for a statue of white supremacist Cecil Rhodes to be removed from one of the colleges as part of a global #RhodesMustFall campaign.

You might think that this request from students is a pretty reasonable one. After all, Oxford has a tarnished reputation on race issues; data analysis has shown that black applicants are half as likely to be offered a place as white students, even when they have the exact same grades. Black students also report being stopped by staff when they are on university premises who confuse them for construction workers rather than recognise them as students. So for students to wish to open up a debate about racism and white supremacy as embodied by the statue would seem a reasonable and worthwhile debate to have.

Not so, for the right wing free speech proponents. Last week, Harry Mount wrote a column for The Telegraph titled: Its time to say No to our pampered student emperors in which he describes the anti-racism campaigners as tinpot dictators [with] offended egos and little emperors mollycoddled by their parents who have had a lifetime of people saying yes to them.

Curiously for a man moralising about spoilt student emperors, in the 800 word rant preaching about what students get up to during their time at university, Mr Mount forgets to mention how he spent his own Oxford days; namely as a member of the Bullingdon Club.

For students of colour to question monuments of white supremacists on their university campuses is entirely healthy and evidence of the free speech and debate of difficult issues which the right proclaims to be advocates of. Yet, the rights blustering, bitter response in the form of relentless and defensive denial shows how theyre only for free speech when it promotes their own interests.

In fact, underneath the hysterical response to valid student activism in the #RhodesMustFall campaign and on countless other occasions over the last year lies this truth: universities, especially Oxford, have long been safe spaces for white, wealthy men. Their free speech campaigns only highlight how much they squirm and squawk and stamp their well-heeled feet when every single aspect of university life isnt dedicated to massaging their offended egos and protecting their interests.

Free speech is tremendously important and we need to ensure it is protected on campus. But to opponents of student campaigners, free speech means the freedom for the privileged to say as many racist, sexist things as they like without hearing any criticism from those who suffer from it. It does not extend to oppressed groups freely speaking back.

Universities were designed by and for wealthy, white men; their curricula are devoted to praising the work of white, wealthy men of the past and instilling confidence in the white, wealthy men of the future.

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Buildings, portraits and statues surround students on every side in dedicated to the monumental myth of great, white maleness. Consciously or not, they benefit from a society which prioritises and privileges such people, as well as establishing it as a false norm from which others simply deviate.

Because white, male upper class gaze is conflated with neutrality in our society, it wrongly assumes itself to be exempt from identity politics and is blind to how it asserts its identity politics on people as much as those on the left do.

It turns out, ironically, that it is they who are afraid of ideas, refusing to open their minds to the thought that a statue mightnt just be a sandstone homage to a fondly remembered founding father but is in fact a tribute to a revolting racist.

As we slowly remove patriarchal comforts from universities, we strip back the absurdity of the myth of wealthy, white men and their dominance. Like the moment the curtain is pulled on the great Wizard of Oz to reveal a faintly ridiculous and puny little man, so do challenges to white patriarchy reveal how absurd their privilege is. This is precisely why backlash to student activism has been so bitter and brutal as the right hiss and attempt to shut down any real debate about them.

So yes, the right are correct that our universities are full of an elite group of spoilt, self-indulged identity politic-ers, who have had a lifetime of people saying yes to them; its white, upper class men - and they do it with aplomb.
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The British forces that served in Iraq and Afghanistan conducted themselves with great distinction, humanity and dignity in the vast majority of cases. The nation should be proud of them. That there were regrettable lapses is a matter of fact. Given the peculiarly savage nature of the enemy in these theatres, it was more difficult than in other wars to maintain discipline and standards, although that can be exaggerated  other wars have also seen British forces face sheer evil.

Nonetheless, the standards we rightly apply to our armed forces serving in the field are universal, governed by international codes of long standing, and they are there for a reason. And that is that an army fighting to protect civilised values and human rights must itself, so far as possible, uphold those values and rights in its own actions.

For that reason the work of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (Ihat) should not be dismissed or disparaged as some insane politically correct witch-hunt. It is no such thing. If British forces failed in their duties and, for example, abused prisoners of war or civilians, then the facts of those cases need to be examined.

All the circumstances  including the pressures of a battle zone  should indeed be taken into account. Those who have not been involved in combat cannot hope to understand the pressures soldiers face taking split-second decisions of life and death. Ihat should ensure that due weight is brought to its deliberations by witnesses and others who can give context and understanding to the circumstances of any alleged offences.

The cost of such an inquiry will be high in monetary terms; and it may well be that it takes a good deal of time. However, the cost to the reputation of Britain and its armed forces of not taking such allegations seriously will be far higher. To make an obvious, though important, point, the human rights of Iraqi and Afghan citizens are no less valuable than those of British citizens, no matter that the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Isis and the others pay no regard to the rules of war or human rights themselves.

Indeed, difficult as it is to stomach, the human rights of an Isis terrorist, for example, are as valuable as those of a British soldier or a citizen kidnapped and beheaded in the most barbaric way. If we were to fight wars along the same lines as Isis then we would have little claim to moral superiority. We do not, and that is also a matter of pride.

We have been here before. Decades ago, in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, British soldiers committed what are now acknowledged to be war crimes, and due compensation has been paid, long after the events, without controversy. Similarly it is now accepted that certain interrogation techniques used in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, some more or less amounting to torture, should not have been deployed. Facing up to those abuses does not devalue the British military or insult the memory of the fallen and injured. It confirms that we are a nation that takes its moral and international obligations seriously.

So Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, should confirm that the work of Ihat has the full confidence of the Government, and that British forces found guilty of war crimes by due process, with all the necessary appeals and caution that should apply, will receive appropriate punishment, and that innocent civilians, in particular, will continue to receive the help they need to seek justice. That is what our countrys long-standing support for universal human rights requires and deserves.
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We  nurses, healthcare assistants, care support workers, allied health professionals, secretaries, paramedics, pharmacists, porters, housekeeping staff, medical scientists and technicians, practitioners and all members of the NHS workforce  want to publicly demonstrate our support for junior docters during this difficult time.

We have seen them day after day, night after night caring for patients with dedication, compassion and unparalleled commitment. We know this because we have been right there by their side, sometimes needing to care for them as well as our patients.

We stand by them in solidarity at a time when they feel they have no choice but to take industrial action. We too believe that industrial action is the only option now in order to protect our patients first and foremost from an unsafe contract that will see the junior doctors even more exhausted and demoralised than they already are.

We see them miss their childrens birthdays, relatives funerals and precious evenings with their families, just as we do. We know how that feels and what sacrifices they make, because we make them too. It is time for us now to stand together as healthcare professionals and unite for the sake of our patients, our working conditions and most of all, our precious NHS. We believe in the doctors to do the right thing for our patients now and in the future.

Janice Gibson

Junior Sister

Samantha Wallace

Staff Nurse

Rob Abaya

Staff Nurse

Jenny Buisan

Vascular Advanced Nurse Practioner

Karen Fenn

Sister

Varsha Ormerod

Senior Haematology/Oncology Pharmacist

More signatories can be found here

My son is a junior doctor. He spent five years at university and over 70,000 to qualify. His basic pay is about 28,000 a year. He pays for his own insurance, fees and very expensive exams.

He regularly works weekends and nights and spends much of his free time adjusting his sleep patterns. He almost always works one to three hours extra daily because of understaffing. He witnesses death and misery almost every week. If he makes a mistake someone might die.

His social life is almost non-existent because of exhaustion and antisocial hours.

Jeremy Hunt wants junior doctors to work more nights and weekends. Overtime will only be paid when hours exceed 87 a week  39 more than the maximum working hours allowed under the European Working Time Directive.

Most junior doctors are neither well paid, well treated nor well appreciated by their employer. Their recent overwhelming vote in favour of a strike is largely because Mr Hunt apparently believes them to be the root cause of many of the problems in the NHS. His solution  to work them even harder and for even less pay  makes it clear how little the Government values their dedication.

Why would they not strike?

Adrian Whittaker

Ditchingham, Norfolk

Britains dilemma over the Saudi regime

In your editorial Saving the Saudis (4 January) you rightly acknowledge the threat posed by Isis should the House of Saud collapse. However, you miss the true reason for this threat.

You dwell on the geopolitical and religious history of the region but do not recognise that in Isis we have something very new to deal with, a violent new state, not just a mere sectarian group. Max Weber said: A state is that human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a certain territory, and Isis undoubtedly meets this definition of statehood, despite what the UN and international community might say.

It controls territory in Syria and the Levant and, via affiliates, in areas of Afghanistan, Nigeria and Libya. It attracts people from around the globe to join its community and of course its ruthless violence needs no further discussion.

Your suggestion that we should prop up the despotic House of Saud is simply naive; the regime has had many opportunities to mend its ways but it still assassinated 47 people this week.

If Britain were to aid the regime, we would be abandoning the principles of democracy that underpin our nation state; this would result in more individuals such as the new Jihadi John, disgruntled at yet more Western hypocrisy, rejecting their British identity in favour of the Islamic State and ultimately lead to a more rapid expansion of the proclaimed caliphate.

Amelia Baisley

Edingley, Nottinghamshire

Unravelling the US-British-Saudi connection (Letters, 5 January) is an uncomfortable business. The city in which I live is a case in point.

In 2014 Lincoln College announced it had been awarded a contract worth 250m by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is not a wealthy city, and the deal was quietly celebrated. Not a word of ethical or political protest was heard.

It is easy for critics of the British-Saudi connection to challenge the stance taken by David Cameron, but they themselves have some hard pills to swallow. Severing economic links with Saudi Arabia would have massive economic consequences for this country, and not just for employees at Lincoln College. And the fall of the Saudi regime might possibly be followed by something even worse.

Ivor Morgan

Lincoln

Here we go again. No sooner is the original Jihadi John neutralised than a replacement appears, carrying on where the other left off. The reason Isis do this is because the tabloids give them the oxygen of publicity.

In doing so they arent reporting news but creating it. Isis will continue doing it because the Western press lets them.

Mark Thomas

Histon, Cambridgeshire

When the honour is just an extra

Ian McKenzie (letter 2 January) argues that a CBE for the Ann Summers boss, Jacqueline Gold, is no less appropriate than an award to any other business leader who has built up a successful brand. He is right that the nature of the product her company sells should not make her less deserving of an award, but is it really necessary to give an award to any successful business person?

It seems to me that someone who has built up a successful business is sufficiently rewarded by the success of that business and the wealth and prestige thereby generated  why do we need to give them an extra pat on the back? By the same token, it seems odd to me that when a sportsman or woman wins Olympic gold they are automatically given an award in the next honours list. Surely the gold medal is already the appropriate and sufficient reward for their achievement?

If we are to maintain the honours system it seems to me that it would be preferable to use it to reward those whose efforts have not been rewarded already in other ways.

Jonathan Wallace

Newcastle upon Tyne

Your tiny chance of winning the lottery

It is pleasing that you bring some objectivity and mathematical rigour into the chances of winning the lottery (Could it be you? Not with the lottery odds these days, 5 January) and especially comparing the winning odds against the chances of other happenings in our lives.

I have had such a discussion on many occasions with my wife, who regularly buys a ticket or two. She readily accepts my similar assessments of the extremely remote chances of winning a jackpot compared with the odds of other occurrences in her life  such as that she is many times more likely to get run over by a bus on the way to buying a ticket.

These interactions invariably end with her asking: Somebody has to win it?  Yes, eventually, I respond.

And it could be me? My mathematical background can only respond Yes again. She smiles triumphantly and the discussion comes to an end.

Michael G Scott-Robinson

London E4

Surprise! No blood on Labours carpet

Why are the media so surprised that Jeremy Corbyn does not seem to be indulging in a radical or revenge reshuffle, when there was no reliable evidence that he would?

Journalists seem base their current reporting on the Labour Party on gossip, speculation, reading each others conjectures, and wishful thinking  after all, conflict, revenge, chaos, splits, and personality and political clashes make such good stories.

Marilyn Mason

Kingston upon Thames

How can there be a reshuffle of Jeremy Corbyns shadow cabinet, when there has not been a shuffle?

Christopher Court

Ashford, Middlesex

Price tags written in the stars

Reading The Independent Magazine (2 January), I didnt know which was more unbelievable, the article on astrology or the price of the clothes in the following feature.

Eddie Doherty

Wolverhampton
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The political media has been in a frenzy for the last few days. A shadow cabinet reshuffle, a relatively new invention for Labour, has sent political speculators and potential movers and movees into a tailspin.

One thing you never hear spoken about is talent. Not once have you heard anyone talk about whether Hilary Benn would make a better Home Secretary than Andy Burnham or the merits of deploying Andy Burnham's straight talking northern style to international diplomacy.

Reshuffles are about power: Who is in, who is out, which faction wins, which faction loses. The fascination is made all the more intense when the Labour party is so fractured. It is a system of patronage which is deeply ingrained in the British political system.

Anyone with a ministerial post is obliged to vote with the party whip or resign. When you include junior ministers, party whips and parliamentary private secretaries (a form of ministerial internship) there are over 100 MPs with positions that bind them to the whip. Accepting a role means supporting the leadership.

Add to this the many who may want a job one day. As most MPs would see a ministerial post as the pinnacle of their political career, the promise of a job, or the threat of being overlooked for someone more loyal is a great tool of persuasion.

The whole system is an absurd way to run a government, or even a government in waiting. In order to work as a tool of party management, reshuffles have to be relatively frequent. To ensure loyalty a leader has to make sure the outs can see a way in, and the ins can see there is an out.

The ones that are chosen rarely get a fair chance. A report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in 2013 described a 'reshuffle culture' that was damaging to the effectiveness of government. It cited a report from Demos in 2009 that showed that the average tenure of a minister in the 2005 Parliament was a little over a year.

The system also almost guarantees that government will never be effectively regulated by the people who are supposed to oversee it, MPs in Parliament. MPs who want a job are unlikely to be too critical of the government. MPs who have a job can't be. In business we abhor the revolving door between large companies and regulators; in politics we have institutionalised it.

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Britain's reshuffle culture is not universal. In the United States where the public have a chance to directly elect the leader of their government the President is free to choose his cabinet from the whole country. From the beginning Presidents have brought in people from all walks of life to run departments. Occasionally they have even appointed people from the other side, such as when President Obama selected Chuck Hagel (a Republican) to be his Secretary of State for Defence. Senators and Congressmen freed of the coercive allure of government are able to get on with their job of providing oversight.

That of course is very different system of government, but Justin Trudeau's young, gender balanced cabinet that draws from a broad base of the Canadian Liberal Party has shown what can be achieved by a leader in a parliamentary system.

In Britain the public is tired of a system that puts amateurs in positions of authority and stifles any attempt to regulate them when things inevitably go wrong.

What we need is for our leaders, to start talking more about talent, experience and ability when making decisions about who will join them in leading the country. Now that really would be a radical change.
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The so-called "revenge reshuffle" has been trending on Twitter today amid news that Labour's Shadow Culture Secretary - and notorious Jeremy Corbyn rebel - Michael Dugher has been sacked by Jeremy Corbyn. This should not come as a surprise to the MP for Barnsley East, who predicted his own downfall in a recent op-ed for The New Statesman.

Dugher is presumably just the first to fall in what is being branded as Corbyn going to "war" to gain "revenge" for his cabinet defying him on several key issues, most notably on the recent vote on whether to support the dropping of bombs in Syria.

Nine cabinet ministers in total defied the Labour leader over the Syria vote - most notably Hilary Benn, who launched a "tour de force" speech in support of the war in the Commons. Benn, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, reportedly held talks with Corbyn on Monday evening and could be removed from his post.

The rumours around the reshuffle have continued an anti-Corbyn trend in the mainstream press, exacerbated by the poor handling of the affair by individual Labour politicians, such as Dugher, who unhelpfully "spoke out in defence" of his colleagues in the New Statesman.

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The very wording of the "revenge shuffle" is a case in point. Reshuffles within the cabinet and shadow cabinet are actually commonplace. David Cameron reshuffled once the Conservative Party won a majority in the May General Election while also opting to reshuffle his cabinet several times during the coalition era. This is nothing new.

As for the "revenge" aspect, Tony Blair famously removed Robin Cook from the position of Foreign Secretary in 2001, two years prior to the invasion of Iraq, over foreign policy disagreements. The reason of course was to have someone in the cabinet who was in agreement with Blair on foreign policy. Unsurprisingly (whether rightly or wrongly), Blair wanted his cabinet to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

Yet since Corbyn was given a significant mandate to become the new Labour leader back in September the party has been embroiled in internal power struggles. Labour has been riddled with dissenters in both the front and the back benches.

This usefully played perfectly into the Conservative Party's hands because rather than the press focusing on the impact of austerity and George Osborne's failure to improve the economic situation for the UK since becoming Chancellor in 2010, they are concentrating on the House of Cards-esque internal politics of the Labour Party.

As a result, if Corbyn were to clear house in the current reshuffle, it could only be viewed as a positive thing. The back benches are always going to be filled with dissenters - something that won't be unfamiliar to Corbyn.

What the Party needs though is a coherent message coming from the Labour Leader and the Shadow Cabinet, rather than mixed signals being sent out, such as the Shadow Foreign Secretary defying the leader on Syria. That isn't helpful.

In order to act as a truly effective opposition to the Conservatives, Labour must unite at a cabinet level. Those who disagree should be consigned to the backbenches, which is where Chuka Umunna gracefully retreated to after Corbyn's victory.

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While Corbyn may lack popularity amongst many New Labour MPs, nobody within the Party can deny that he has a mandate to govern. Let us not forget that Corbyn won an overwhelming, record breaking victory in the Labour Leadership election. It's time for Corbyn to get tough and to attempt to unite the Party so that they can oppose the Conservatives.

The Tories are not popular right now: they're privatising rampantly, they're cutting services and they're being allowed to get away with it because all the attention is set on the internal wranglings of Labour.

Hopefully after Corbyn's "war" on his dissenters, Labour will outline a new, anti-austerity vision for the British people. This isn't war, and this isn't revenge. This is just pragmatism.

Amit Singh is the co-editor and co-founder of Consented
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Saudi Arabia is nervous. The execution of the Shia political dissident Sheikh al-Nimr demonstrates that the kingdom has lost its cool. In the past, Saudi leaders were commended for their pragmatism. Today, the execution of al-Nimr exacerbates growing concerns about the direction of Saudi foreign policy.

In all the hotspots of West Asia and North Africa, Saudi Arabia is trying to contain Iranian intrusions. This rivalry resembles a Cold War, between two regional powers who vie for regional suzerainty, rather than a religious conflict. World politics is a secular and rather godless realm.

The idea that this competition is determined by an ancient Shia-Sunni divide is analytically flawed. For instance, Saudi Arabia has been entirely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, ostensibly the biggest Sunni movement in the Arab world, and it has supported the Sisi government in Egypt against them.

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Iran, on the other side, supports movements that share its strategic vision, irrespective of their religious orientation. This is why the country has better relations with Christian-Orthodox Armenia rather than Shia majority Azerbaijan. In addition, Iran has close relations with secular-leftists governments in Latin America. The late Hugo Chavez used to be a great fan of the Islamic Republic and successive Iranian presidents praised him for his socialist policies.

This does not mean that religious ideas are not used for geopolitical purposes. In particular, Saudi Arabia has used the Sunni card to outplay Iran. The rather ad-hoc establishment of an Islamic Alliance against Terrorism, which has failed to deliver any political or diplomatic dividend, is a good example. With this move Saudi Arabia tried to marginalise Iran and to claim leadership in the Muslim world. Pakistan and Lebanon were quick to opt out of the alliance exactly because both countries have good relations with Iran.

Governments act in accordance with what they perceive to be in their national interest, and not religious emotions. They are busy securing their power. Ultimately, anything goes to that end.

This geopolitical competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran is likely to flare up regularly until Iraq, Syria and Yemen are pacified. Saudi Arabia fears an Iranian led axis, which would connect Tehran, Baghdad and Sanaa to Beirut and Damascus in the Levant.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia is nervous about rapprochement between Iran and the United States. The nuclear agreement has been implemented smoothly and Iran has reopened high level channels of communication with Washington. The implementation of the agreement will bolster Iranian resources and enable them to play a prominent role in international institutions - the country already has re-entered into negotiations about WTO membership.

Therefore, it is that much more difficult for the Saudis to blame Iran for domestic upheavals in the region, which are driven by demands for democracy and human rights, rather than Iranian imperialism.

Now that the embassies are closed and the diplomats are recalled, the channels of communication have to be reopened. The role of the United States and the European Union is central to that end. Both have the leverage to call for viable security architecture in the region.

Maybe it is time to speak about a regional Organisation for Peace and Cooperation in West Asia, comparable to the OSCE which helped to pacify Europe after two world wars. Given that our security is inextricably linked to the events in the region, it is in the interest of the European Union and the United States to initiate such a diplomatic strategy.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies at SOAS, University of London and the author of On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and resistance today (Bloomsbury, 2014).
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At a time of year when most people will be thinking of tightening their belts as they stare blankly at depleted bank balances, spare a thought for the CEOs of the UKs FTSE 100 companies, who, in the mere two working days since the beginning of the year, have earned enough to outstrip the average UK workers annual wage of 27,645.

Yes, thats right. These pillars of commerce and capitalism have been judged by their boards to be worth on average 2.6 million a year; that works out as an hourly rate of 1,200.

Welcome to Fat Cat Tuesday, so coined by the High Pay Centre, a think tank which monitors executive pay.

Depressingly, if unsurprisingly, its actually taken CEOs even less time to amass wealth in 2016 than last year, when it took an extra day for these corporate gods to rack up the equivalent of a full-time workers average annual salary.

How many of these high rollers are kicking back against governments national living wage proposal which will see workers guaranteed 7.20 an hour, arguing that implementing it will cost their company millions, I wonder?

So far, these fortunate few have kept quiet on the matter.

But what does the odd million matter between (very rich) friends?

Advertising giant WPPs CEO Sir Martin Sorreli earned a whopping 42.98 million in 2014, more than twice his nearest rival. Reportedly, a huge 274,000 of this was so his wife could accompany him on business trips. Sorrell has said hell pay for his wifes travel out of his own pocket next year so it doesnt show up on company accounts. How generous of him.

Tom Pidgely, founder of housing group Berkeley, was paid 23.29 million in 2015 due to a complex renumeration deal secured during the recession which boosted his 850,000 salary by 19.8 million in share options.

Scratch the surface of the murky world of private equity companies, where the top ten CEOs earned over 1.3 billion between them in 2013, and even WPPs Sorrells pay package pales in comparison.

The executive pay gap has increased exponentially in the past 50 years. Where CEOs earned on average 20 times the wage of their average worker in the 1960s, now the ratio is closer to 265 times that of the average worker.

Regulators in the US now demand that companies expose the pay gap between workers and their bosses, a move which campaigners are arguing for in the UK.

The HPC says that over-payment at the top is fuelling distrust of business, at a time when business needs to demonstrate that it is part of the solution to harsh times and squeezed incomes.

But Adam Smith Institute director Bowman has dismissed the HPCs findings as pub economics, giving seven reasons why people shouldnt care about higher pay, including that critics of the widening pay gap have not said how much CEOs should be paid.

This is a man who argues that CEOs might be worth more to a company than they were in the 1960s hence the need to for their pay ratio to have increased exponentially.

So far, so unequal.

And yet, as the pay gap widens ever more, David Cameron continues to bleat out his mantra that were all in this together - Id be creased double in mirth at the fantasy of this statement if the situation wasnt so depressingly grim.

Meanwhile on Twitter, thousands of pictures of overweight (or fluffy) felines have swamped tweets bearing the FatCatTuesday hashtag.

Please, lets campaign for greater wage equality and not get distracted by snaps of slack-waisted moggies. After all, thats what the fat cats would want.

This article was updated on 6th January to remove an inaccurate reference to Sam Bowman's views on CEO pay
 Flash

Many countries including world powers on Monday expressed concern over rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as unrest in the Middle East.

Iranians gather during a demonstration against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities, at Imam Hossein Square in the capital Tehran on Jan. 4, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

Controversy in the wake of the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric by Saudi Arabia was followed by attacks against Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, leading the Kingdom and some of its regional allies to sever ties with Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others over terrorism charges Saturday, sparking protests in Shiite-dominated Iran during which angry mobs stormed and set fire to Saudi Arabia's Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate in the city of Mashhad.

Saudi Arabia announced its dissolution of diplomatic ties with Iran Sunday, requesting all Iranian diplomats depart the country within 48 hours.

Following Saudi's announcement, three Sunni Muslim countries joined the Arab kingdom Monday in severing or downgrading their diplomatic ties with Iran.

Bahrain and Sudan announced they will cut diplomatic relations with Iran Monday, declaring that Tehran interferes in the Arab states' affairs.

In addition, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Iran Monday and reduce the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.

Over and above, Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, announced Monday that Saudi Arabia will cease air traffic with Iran, placing a ban on its citizens from travelling there, reported Al Arabiya local news.

He also said that severing relations covers commercial ties, whereas Iranian pilgrims are always welcome in Saudi Arabia.

Escalated tensions between two key players in the troubled Middle East's political affairs, sparked concerns from various parts of the world.

The European Union (EU) Monday urged concerned parties to act responsibly towards recent events between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the cause of a current strained diplomatic situation between the two countries.

"We expect all regional powers to act responsibly toward this volatile situation," EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini's spokesperson, Catherine Ray, briefed a press conference.

Ray informed reporters the EU would continue to closely monitor the situation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, adding that dialogue was ongoing on all levels with its partners.

Mogherini contacted her Iranian and Saudi counterparts Sunday, advocating for effort from both sides to avoid further escalation of tensions.

The German government also called on Saudi Arabia and Iran Monday to recommence dialogue despite recent souring of diplomatic relations between both countries.

"We support both countries using all possible avenues to improve their relations," said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert.

Seibert stressed that an amicable relationship between the two countries is fundamentally important in resolving the crises in Syria and Yemen, as well as regional stability.

Moreover, France called on both Saudi Arabia and Iran to moderate the escalation of the diplomatic row between the two Middle Eastern powers, a government official said.

Stephane Le Foll, France's government spokesman, said "France anticipates a de-escalation of tensions" between Riyadh and Tehran.

"France entreats both sides to curtail tensions. We must be observant of Saudi and Iranian relations," Le Foll said.

China voiced concern Monday over the dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia, calling on both countries to practice self-restraint.

"China is paying close attention to the developing situation, and is concerned over escalating regional conflict resulting from the dispute," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a press briefing.

"We hope all concerned parties can boost anti-terrorism dialogue and cooperation. We also hope the security and dignity of diplomats and missions can be ensured," Hua said.

She called on both sides to control themselves, show restraint and properly resolve disputes through dialogue and consultations in order to maintain regional peace and stability.

In response to the calls, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Hossein Jaber Ansari, said Monday that Iran is not interested in causing tensions with Saudi Arabia.

"The Islamic republic has no interest in tension and conflict neither in its domestic nor international policies, and has no intent in having tense relations with Saudi Arabia," Jaber Ansari said in his weekly press conference.

Jaber Ansari said the Islamic republic respects international conventions and protects diplomats and diplomatic missions.

He added that with respect to the attacks on the Saudi mission in Iran, Iranian police and judiciary have done their best to control the situation and officially deal with the perpetrators.

However, "Although everything was under control and there was no threat against Saudi diplomats in Iran, the Saudi government decided to sever ties," he said.

Tehran's Prosecutor General, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said Sunday that police forces arrested 40 protestors who raided the Saudi embassy in Tehran Saturday, and that the judiciary issued orders to identify and arrest all others involved in the raid.

The Iranian spokesman said Saudi Arabia's current rhetoric versus Iran and its alleged support of regional extremist groups will only serve to further isolate Riyadh.
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The proud inhabitants of Rochdale, the Lancashire market town which was the historic home of such diverse musical talents as Gracie Fields and Lisa Stansfield, and also the birthplace of the Co-operative movement, must despair at how their hometown has been turned into a theatre of the grotesque.

Take yesterday, for example. Their local MP, Simon Danczuk (currently suspended from the Labour Party for a series of sexual indiscretions and now the subject of a historic rape allegation, which he strongly denies) was touring the streets of Rochdale meeting constituents. He was met by a group of protesters, who included Michael Burke, the brother of Mr Danczuks second wife, and former local councillor, Farooq Ahmed. Both were calling for the resignation of Mr Danczuk, who was branded a scumbag and a paedophile as he walked down the street.

But what of these agitators? Well, the 37-year-old Mr Burke was charged last year with a series of sex offences alleged to have taken place in the early 1990s (he denies the charges) while Mr Ahmed resigned from the local Labour Party when he was found guilty of a public order offence after it was alleged that he had directed a homophobic insult at a council colleague.

And over all this hovers the gargantuan, grisly ghost of the most grotesque figure of all, Cyril Smith, Rochdales MP for two decades, whose systematic sexual abuse of young boys was nobly, and courageously, exposed by the dogged investigation of Mr Danczuk, who, in another life, might have been lauded as an admirable exponent of the journalistic trade.

Then theres Mr Danczuks two wives. Number one, Sonia Rossington, sold her story to a tabloid paper at the weekend, accusing her ex-husband of being a drunken sex pest, while her successor as the MPs wife, Karen, is a shameless self-publicist whose specialism is posting pictures of her cleavage on social media. She has weighed in recently by calling Ms Rossington a money-grabbing leech.

And we havent finished yet. Step forward Sophena Houlihan, an 18-year-old resident of Rochdale, who told The Sun that, after she applied for a job with Mr Danczuk, they exchanged a number of sexually explicit texts. Further to illustrate that no one in this tawdry tale emerges with an unsullied reputation, reports have has now alleged that Ms Houlihan is an internet dominatrix who sells her used underwear online for 15.

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Meanwhile, Mr Danczuk has apologised for his actions, and then went on Newsnight to explain that, in the same way as some men may prefer blondes or brunettes, he likes young women. For a man who did so much to expose Cyril Smiths predatory behaviour, this was an unfortunate admission, to say the least. Where will it all end? Nowhere good, thats for sure.

Readers of this newspaper can consider themselves grateful that they havent had to follow every twist and turn of this grubby saga (youve got me for that). But spare a thought for the good residents of Rochdale, who have to live with the acrid stench of this scandal festered by the prurience of social media, and a town which will no longer be famous for the Biggest Aspidistra in the World.
Irish homebuilder Cairn Homes has said it is acquiring a site in Hanover Quay in the Dublin Docklands for 18m.

The company said the acquisition is expected to be complete in early February.

It said the site will allow for the development of "in excess of 100 apartments". The site has existing planning permission, which Cairn said will allow it to begin construction this year.

It has been acquired from a sub-fund of Targeted Investment Opportunities ICAV, which counts NAMA, Bennett Construction and Oaktree among its partners.

Cairn chief executive Michael Stanley said that the Hanover Quay site represents a "key achievement for the company."

He added: "[It] provides Cairn with the opportunity to provide much-needed quality homes in the Dublin business centre and 'Silicon Docks' area of the city, which has a particularly acute demand for new homes."
The Irish Farmers' Association is moving into full-blown election mode after the entire executive board agreed to all positions being put to the vote of grassroots' members.

It follows mounting pressure from farmers, angered over recent pay revelations. There were demands for all the top officers in the organisation to step aside for a full election.

The six-man board confirmed it had agreed to allow a full round of fresh elections for all the national officer positions, alongside the planned presidential election, in the "best interests of the association".

The unrest follows a pay controversy that saw former IFA general secretary Pat Smith and former president Eddie Downey step down from their posts.

Mr Smith resigned after it emerged his remuneration amounted to almost 1m over two years, with a package of 535,000 in 2013.

A proposal will be put on the table at today's national council meeting at IFA headquarters in Dublin which would see those elected to the top posts taking up the jobs potentially on two terms of two years.

If approved, the change would mean the current board - including deputy president Tim O'Leary and four regional chairmen - could put themselves forward for a second term. The position held by the national treasurer is generally decided at the AGM.

Richard Connell, IFA chair of Cork West, said farmers at a weekend meeting had demanded a full round of elections.

"There was a big call that the full board should step down and get a new mandate," he said.

A protest due to be staged outside the association's headquarters in Dublin is now unlikely go ahead.

To date, seven candidates have sought nominations for the presidency. However, with each person needing the nomination of six county chairs, four can ultimately enter the race.

Henry Burns, the chair of IFA livestock committee, said he was "confident". Carlow IFA chair Derek Deane, who led the charge for more information on pay, was also confident.

Former Macra president Joe Healy has secured all the nominations required.

"I've had a good show of support from the north-west of the country but also quite a lot from throughout the other counties," said Mr Healy, who compiles the Ringside column for the Irish Independent's farming section.

IFA rural development chair Flor McCarthy said he had secured a number of nominations.

Poultry chair Nigel Reneghan said the soon-to-be vacated position of deputy president provided new election openings.

Current deputy president Tim O'Leary and North Tipperary chair Tim Cullinan have also been canvassing ahead of tomorrow's deadline.
Forget every electoral promise made so far and ignore anything heard from candidates and parties between now and the General Election.

If yesterday's global markets meltdown is anything to go by, plans drawn up in the good days of 2015 look set to perish on the financial rocks of the New Year.

Ultra cheap oil and the export Viagra of a weak euro helped Ireland to clock up rapid growth last year - the basis of the increasingly frantic electoral auction being bid up by all of the main political parties here.

But based on yesterday's events both of those key factors could disappear, and potentially at speed.

Oil prices shot up 2pc on yesterday morning as Saudi Arabia and Iran squared off against each other in their intensifying battle for regional dominance in the Middle East.

Oil is still cheap but the opposing Sunni and Shia powers have backed opposing sides in civil wars in Syria and Yemen with Iraq the big regional prize.

Fears that supply could be hit if the crisis escalates further sent oil prices higher - and helped Africa-focused oil explorer Tullow buck the global plunge in shares.

However, the immediate cause of the chaos on the stock markets - described as "a stampede" of selling by one trader - was weak factory output data from China.

In reality it was just the crack in a rickety dam holding back a tide of concerns that the global economy, barely out of the doldrums, could be in trouble again.

China's 7pc plunge was the biggest, but it set off a chain reaction of price falls in other big exporting economies. Stock markets in Germany, the UK and US also took unmerciful batterings.

In China's case, investor concerns are not new. The 40pc plunge on China's mainland stock markets last summer reflected fears that growth there was slowing rapidly and was only reversed by massive government interventions - including a flood of financial support and laws that in some cases blocked shareholders from ditching unwanted stocks.

Selling bans introduced by China last summer are due to expire around now, so the big falls clocked up before trading was abandoned in the small hours of Monday may well be part of a delayed response to the events of last summer.

Unfortunately, propping up markets with cheap government funds is not unique to China. Closer to home the euro area is barely being staying afloat even with the European Central Bank's quantitative easing (QE) programme. That involves pumping euros into the financial markets in a desperate effort to prop-up bond and share prices and weaken the euro.

For Ireland the weak euro has delivered massively, but it's not a given.

If spooked investors now fly to safety - by buying German bonds for example - and China continues its policy of devaluing to maintain exports, the ECB's capacity, and willingness, to keep driving down the currency will quickly be tested, with huge implications for us in Ireland.

Analysis
Developer Gerry Gannon - one of the so-called Maple 10 enlisted to support Anglo Irish Bank before it collapsed - has applied for planning permission for a huge project in north Dublin that will include the restoration of Belcamp Hall, a protected, but derelict Georgian building.

Mr Gannon (pictured) acquired the more than 81-hectare site - formerly the home of the Belcamp College - in 2004 for 105m. The historic house at the location has been subject to arson attacks and vandalism.

He now plans to build over 250 houses and apartments on a 15 hectare portion of the site, as well as retail, restaurant and community facilities.

One of Mr Gannon's firms was granted permission in 2007 to convert the school buildings to 30 apartments, but that plan never proceeded.

Gannon Properties now proposes that 34 apartments will be constructed at Belcamp Hall, which it notes will repaired and upgraded, with the "historic building fabric" conserved.

The planning application to Fingal County Council notes that the new works will include a courtyard of 27 houses and apartments, as well as a retail unit.

There will also be a three-to-four storey block of 37 apartments; one three-storey block of 16 apartments; and 139 semi-detached and detached houses.

Mr Gannon told the Banking Inquiry in a June witness statement that the site at Belcamp has the potential to become a new town centre with in excess of 3,000 housing units.

"During my career, I have developed lands that house over 10,000 residential dwellings and over one million sq ft of commercial space," he added. His loans were transferred to NAMA in 2010 and the agency has helped bankroll his latest developments.

He said in his statement that in 2014 he undertook a NAMA-backed development in Swords in north Dublin, but that the first phase of houses had to be fully complete before any could be sold because potential buyers were concerned they could end up living in a ghost estate.

Just before Christmas, Gannon Properties was granted permission by Fingal County Council for 190 houses and 60 apartments in Swords.

In 2014, Mr Gannon sold a portfolio of houses and land at Malahide in Dublin to UK firm Development Securities for over 30m.

Accounts for Gannon Homes show that it made a pre-tax profit of 4.4m in 2014, on turnover of 43.8m.

It had net debt of 186.9m at the end of the period.
Irish investment firm Lioncourt Capital, which was founded by well-known businessmen Michael Tunney and David Andrews, has acquired Dublin English-language school ECM College.

Lionscourt said that the deal, carried out through its investment company the Real Experience Group, represents an investment of "over 1m".

It marks Lionscourt's first move into Ireland's English language education sector. The transaction was carried out with its minority shareholder Ion Equity.

ECM College was founded in 2010 by brothers Eddie, Patrick and Ciaran O'Loughlin. It is one of Ireland's leading accredited providers of English language courses.

Its turnover increased from 200,000 in 2010 to 2.5m in 2015. The college catered for 1,200 students from Europe, Central America, South America and South Korea last year.

Eddie O'Loughlin will continue as managing director under the new structure as part of The Real Experience Group, while Patrick and Ciaran O'Loughlin are launching a new property venture in 2016. The 60 people currently employed by ECM will also continue in their roles.

The deal adds another brand to the portfolio of the Real Experience Group. Its other brands include USIT, which is best known for its involvement in the US J1 visa programme, and Budget School and Group Tours.

The group has a turnover of 33m, which it aims to more than double to 80m over the next five years. CEO Karen Smith-Watson said the company will continue to expand the language sector of our business with further acquisitions and developments planned for Ireland, UK and the US.

The deal also adds to the investment portfolio of Lioncourt. Its portfolio also includes Valeo Foods, Lioncourt Homes and Beechfield Nursing Home Group.

Mr Andrews and Mr Tunney, both of whom have held a variety of prominent financial positions, founded Lioncourt in 1998. Mr Andrews was previously head of group development with Bank of Ireland and Dublin-based insurance brokerage Woodchester Investments. Mr Tunney was managing director of Woodchester Investment Bank and also several senior positions at AIB.
Minister Michael Noonan arriving at the Department of Finance this morning after spending Christmas in hospital after undergoing surgery

The government took in tax revenues of 45.6bn in 2015, more than 3bn above expectations and a year-on-year increase of 4.3bn.

This means that we are over 8bn better off than this time last year but when you strip out once-off gains the figure is 5.2bn.

The exchequer deficit at the end of the year was 62bn compared to a deficit of 8.2bn in the same period last year as the economy surged ahead.

Levels like this have not been seen since the Celtic Tiger years.

The improvement in the Exchequer balance is driven by increased tax and non-tax receipts, reduced interest expenditure and a number of one-off transactions.

Tax receipts for the month of December were 360m above profile. Generally, there were strong performances in a number of key sectors including income tax and corporation tax.

Non-tax revenues of 3,5bn, were up 550m in year-on-year terms. The primary reason for this is the increase in the surplus income from the Central Bank of about 500m.

The effects of higher consumer spending in the run up to Christmas will not be seen until next month's January figures.

While the country still has significant debts, the latest figures bring the Government within a whisper of balancing the books.

And they also come as growth in the economy powers ahead with Government growth expectations at 4.3pc on the back of a 6.2px figure for 2015.

However, the figures also come against the backdrop of external pressures n world markets from weak economic data in China to a slump in international stock markets as tensions in the middle east have heightened in recent days.

In addition, it comes as world oil prices are at record lows.

Overall, an Exchequer deficit of 62m was recorded at end-December 2015." said Finance Minister Michael Noonan who returned to work today after a hospital visit as a result of a chest illness.

"This is a massive improvement from a deficit of 8.1bn for 2014 which was buoyed by a return from some of our investments in the banking sector.

"When once-off factors are accounted for, we have an underlying Exchequer deficit in 2015 of around 3.bn compared to an underlying deficit of about 8.6bn in 2014.

"In terms of performance against profile, while corporation tax accounts for the bulk of the increase, it is encouraging that there were also strong performances from income tax and VAT. This is further evidence of the economic recovery we have witnessed in 2015," he added.

Minister for Public Reform Brendan Howllin said: "We have spent 54.7bn to deliver public services and invest in our infrastructure during 2015.

"Against a background of strong growth in tax revenue we were in a position to make additional funding available by way of Supplementary Estimate to support key services, social supports and increased capital investment. "
With the construction of a new hotel set to begin in a couple of weeks, one of the last vacant lots in downtown Chippewa Falls will soon be alive with activity.

And thats a good sign, Chippewa Falls Mayor Greg Hoffman and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker both said Monday.

The two men attended a groundbreaking ceremony Monday morning to kick off construction of a 45-room hotel operated by Cobblestone Hotels, which was co-founded by Chippewa Falls native Brian Wogernese.

I always look at how things impact the community, Hoffman said. This is going to bring more people into downtown Chippewa Falls.

Hoffman has said that Cobblestone Hotel & Suites, which will be situated at 100 N. Bridge Street  the site of the former Plaza Building  occupies a prominent position in Chippewa Falls. As such, the city has looked for a developer willing to create a legacy project.

This is a building thats going to be around for 50 years or more, Hoffman said.

On the whole, city officials and representatives from organizations such as the Chippewa Falls Area Chamber of Commerce and Chippewa Falls Main Street believe that the hotel will fit in nicely with other city efforts to revitalize the downtown.

Walker agreed, connecting the local benefits of the hotel with what he claims is an improving economy across the state.

Its part of a trend, he said, pointing to statistics that show the states unemployment rate is heading lower than it has been in more than a decade.

Statewide were at 4.2 percent, Walker said, noting that the last time the state jobless rate was that low was March 2001.

Were proud of the fact that youre here in Wisconsin putting people to work, Walker told Wogernese.

This also fits in with a great trend in tourism, the governor continued. According to Walker, Wisconsins tourism industry has grown by roughly 25 percent in recent years. Lodging is a big driver of that.

All told, the hotel represents about a $6 million investment for Cobblestone Hotels. The company, based in Neenah, currently operates 63 hotels across the country. The Chippewa Falls location is its 13th hotel currently under construction, and Wogernese said he plans to begin construction on even more hotels in 2016.

The hotel will also feature a 50-seat restaurant called the Wissota Chophouse.

The hotel project represents the capstone of years of work by the Chippewa Falls City Council in solving what to do with the former Plaza Building.

In 2012 a deal with a developer from La Crosse fell through when the project lost a multimillion-dollar tax credit. Then in late 2013, the city purchased the building for $65,000, ultimately tearing it down to make the site more appealing to potential developers.

It worked.

Wogernese became interested earlier this year when he drove through his hometown and noticed the vacant lot. He said that if the Plaza Building was still standing, he would have kept on driving.

Both Hoffman and Wogernese have said the deal went exceptionally smooth.

Were very cautious about the projects we do, the mayor said. This has been one of the most seamless transitions of property ever.

Wogernese agreed, adding that city officials clearly are working to better the community.

I travel to a lot of small towns and most towns would be happy to have a fraction of what you have here, Wogernese said.
Figures show the age of people buying homes has risen dramatically, with most now over 40

Investors are selling up residential properties in large numbers, but not enough to meet the demand from families for homes.

New figures from Sherry FitzGerald show around a third of sellers of properties are now investors.

Meanwhile, separate figures show the age of people buying homes has risen dramatically, with most now over 40.

Investor sales have reached around 10,000 a year, according to the Sherry FitzGerald data.

And the mass sell-off by investors has removed around 40,000 properties from the rental market, according to Sherry FitzGerald economist Marian Finnegan.

"During last year, 33pc of vendors were selling investment properties, while a further 13pc of sales were as a consequence of bank repossessions, many of which would be investment properties," she said.

Sellers of investment properties are mainly those who bought a single property some 10 years ago.

But the introduction of the property tax, water charges, the USC, the cost of registering with the Private Tenancies Residential Board and the restriction of mortgage tax relief had made it more expensive to be a buy-to-let investor, Ms Finnegan said.

Costs

Those who were emerging from negative equity were encouraged to sell up because of the extra costs, she added.

Meanwhile, separate figures show a big drop in the number of people in their 20s and 30s taking out mortgages.

Younger buyers are being hit by a shortage of properties to buy, as well as Central Bank lending restrictions.

Data from insurer Royal London show fewer people in their 20s have been buying homes over the past 10 years.

And more of those buying mortgage protection policies are over the age of 40.

The new figures point to what has been described as a fundamental change in the age profile of those paying for a mortgage.

Royal London said its figures on the ages of those taking out protection policies were a good proxy for the mortgage market as a whole.

Mortgage protection cover is usually a prerequisite for anyone buying a home and financing the purchase with a mortgage.

In 2004, the percentage of policyholders who were over 40 was 33pc. That increased to 55pc in 2014.
The PlayStation Network went down yesterday and Sony has apologised for outage while also ensuring users don't lose out on their time

The PlayStation Network suffered an outage yesterday, with both the European and American versions remaining unresponsive for several hours. Sony was aware of the problem and it wasn't part of any kind of scheduled outage. This comes just a few short days after the service was targeted by hackers, leading to a long period of downtime over Christmas.

We can confirm that PSN is back up in Europe now and Sony has apologised for the issue. In addition, it seems like they're going to go the extra mile to keep their customers happy, by giving them back the time. That means PS Plus subscribers will get an extra day for free - which is a very nice thing indeed.

Thanks for your patience today - stay tuned for details on PS Plus, PS Now, and video rental extensions. January 5, 2016

It also seems that if you've rented a movie that the outage time won't count against that purchase. Hopefully these extensions are all applied without any further issues.
Here are the main business stories from this morning's papers

Irish Independent:

***A 7pc slump in Chinese stocks reverberated across global shares yesterday, marking a bleak start to the year for international markets amid renewed growth concerns.

Compounding investor jitters, tensions intensified in the Middle East between oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran. And those tensions pushed oil prices up temporarily amid fears supplies could be disrupted as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain both cut ties with Iran.

Global oil benchmark Brent, which fell 35pc last year because of concerns of over-supply in a global slowdown, climbed more than a dollar to a high of $38.50 per barrel, but then fell back.

***Irish packaging giant Smurfit Kappa has made its first foray into Brazil, cementing its presence in Latin America with the acquisition of two businesses for a total of 186m.

One of the largest paper and packaging groups in the world, Smurfit Kappa has bought privately-owned Industria de Embalagens, and Paema Embalagens. Between them, they operate three recycled container board mills, as well as four corrugated production plants located in the northeast and south of Brazil.

Smurfit Kappa has long been eyeing a potential entry to Brazil. It already has operations in countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.

***Developer Gerry Gannon  one of the so-called Maple 10 enlisted to support Anglo Irish Bank before it collapsed  has applied for planning permission for a huge project in north Dublin that will include the restoration of Belcamp Hall, a protected, but derelict Georgian building.

Mr Gannon acquired the more than 81-hectare site  formerly the home of the Belcamp College  in 2004 for 105m. The historic house at the location has been subject to arson attacks and vandalism.

He now plans to build over 250 houses and apartments on a 15 hectare portion of the site, as well as retail, restaurant and community facilities.

Irish Times:

***The Government looks set to cut its borrowing target for the year in light of tax returns, due to be published today, that are expected to show strong collection figures in the final quarter of the year.

The Irish Times reports that a number of factors, such as a once-off return of 1.6bn from AIB in December, will likely mean that borrowing last year will come in at 2pc of GDP compared to official estimates of 2.1pc.

This is expected to have a knock on effect and Finance Minister Michael Noonan is expected to lower the borrowing target of 1.2pc of GDP for the year.

***Bank of Ireland has redeemed 1.3bn in preference shares that were held by private investors, the Irish Times reports.

The move clears the bank to begin repaying dividends to shareholders, probably in 2017.

Redeeming the shares will save the bank 133.35m a year. The shares were purchased using the organisations existing resources and retained profits.

***Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre is in line for a 10m upgrade as it looks to attract a new anchor tenant.

Coltard, the owner of the centre, is seeking planning permission to create two large anchor stores fronting onto the Dublin towns Maine Road and Georges Street.

The work is estimated to cost 10m and is expected to to be completed at some stage in the second quarter of 2017.

Irish Examiner:

***Former Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) chief Michael Fingleton has lost his High Court action aimed at preventing the Central Bank from conducting an inquiry into alleged regulatory breaches at the financial institution.

Mr Fingleton, along with several other former officials of INBS, are the subject of a Central Bank inquiry that is due to start hearings in February.

He challenged the Central Banks decision to subject him to an inquiry, claiming it was unfair and unreasonable.

***Operations at Irelands only oil refinery could be secured through a joint venture of by moving into cleaner fuels, according to a leading analyst.

Whitegate refinery in Cork was put up for sale by its owner, Phillips 66, in November. It is likely to come into sharper focus in the coming months as stakeholders look to secure the 300 jobs at the facility.

FDE| head of refining Steve Sawyer said if the Government was willing to put a system in place that covered the costs of the facility it would be likely that there would be some interest there. He said the final decision is more likely to be based on political factors.

***The risk of Britain leaving the EU could be nearly as high as 50pc, it has been claimed.

In its latest global economic outlook French financial services giant Societe Generale estimated that the likelihood of a Brexit is at 45pc.

The organisation estimates that the British economy would grow by just 0.5pc to 1pc every year until at least 2026 if a Brexit were to occur.
One final spoiler alert...

Some members of the Steven Avery murder trial voted 'guilty' because they feared for their personal safety, it has been claimed.

'Making A Murderer' documentary makers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos have revealed that they were contacted by one of the trial's jurors after the popular Netflix series aired.

The series focuses on the life of a Wisconsin man, Steven Avery, who initially served 18 years for the rape and assault of a woman he did not commit, before facing a murder trial as he was suing the authorities in Manitowoc County for compensation.

Mr Avery was found guilty of the murder of Teresa Halbach and sentenced to life in prison, without parole.

However, several questions have been raised about the evidence presented in the trial following Ricciardi and Demos' documentary.

Now, as petitions to re-open the trial reach almost a quarter of a million signatures in the US, the directors have revealed the jury may have been intimidated into reaching their 'guilty' verdict.

"We were contacted by one of the jurors who sat through Steven Avery's trial and shared with us their thoughts and told us that they believed that Steven Avery was not proven guilty," Ricciardi told The Today Show on NBC News.

"They believed that Steven Avery was framed by law enforcements and that he deserves a new trial and that if he receives a new trial, in their opinion, it should take place far away from Wisconsin."

When questioned as to how they reached the guilty verdict, the juror told the documentary makers that they "feared for their personal safety".
Gerry Hutch at his 50th birthday celebrations in Lanzarote, in 2013. Photo: Sunday World

Gerry Hutch's days as the untouchable godfather of organised crime may be coming to an end, like those of so many of his predecessors, at the business end of an assassin's gun.

Reports that two masked gunmen burst into a Spanish pub with the intention of killing him have been taken seriously.

The incident threatens to escalate into a full-blown war between the country's two biggest criminal organisations. For this is the first time anyone in the criminal underworld dared to cross the gangland Rubicon by sending a hit team to shoot The Monk.

Tensions have been running high since the murder last September of Hutch's nephew, Gary Hutch, by the drugs cartel controlled by The Monk's former close associate Christy Kinahan - aka the Dapper Don.

Members of the wider Hutch gang have been keeping their heads down, and some have fled the country, as Kinahan's lieutenants here and in Spain have been equally watchful.

Despite the soft image Gerry Hutch has tried to paint of himself as the retired old villain, he is considered to be what the Mafia term as a "man of respect". In Garda intelligence and underworld circles, he was seen as being part of an influential group of elder gangsters who controlled the activities of the more hot-blooded younger villains.

Insiders say Kinahan sought the approval of his peers within this loose grouping when he decided that Eamon 'The Don' Dunne was becoming a nuisance.

The same committee of thugs also decided they were not going to get involved when the Real IRA executed one of their own, Eamon Kelly, in December 2012.

By reaching pension age, Kelly - who had been Dunne's mentor - had (almost) become one of the country's longest surviving godfathers.

But when viewed with the jaundiced eye of experience, the murders of Kelly and Dunne are nothing compared with a deliberate attempt to kill Gerry Hutch.

The very fact a hit team missed their target a few nights ago will be enough to dangerously escalate the feud.

Hutch has been synonymous with organised crime since the 1980s.

In 1987, he made his name in the underworld hierarchy when, at the age of 24, he led the north inner-city gang that robbed 1.3m from a security van in Marino Mart on Dublin's northside.

The spectacular heist, the biggest cash robbery in Irish criminal history, catapulted Hutch into the big league.

Some of the money was subsequently traced to two bank accounts in Hutch's name in Newry and seized by the Northern authorities.

In 1995, Hutch and his gang were the prime suspects for the robbery of 2.8m from a cash holding facility in north Co Dublin. Despite several investigations and arrests, Hutch managed to escape prosecution - although he was forced to pay CAB over 1.2m.

In recent years, Hutch claims to be retired and divides his time between the Canaries and Dublin.

The murder of his nephew, Gary Hutch, was the first time a member of the family had been targeted by gangland killers. It followed allegations by Kinahan's mob that he was a police informant.

Sources said the murder followed a meeting between Kinahan's representatives, Gary Hutch, and his uncle Gerry Hutch, after which it appeared the dispute had been resolved.

It is understood Kinahan gave Gary Hutch money he had been owed and the two biggest Irish gangsters parted company.

Since his nephew's murder, Gerry Hutch has refused to accede to requests from Kinahan to "sit down" to talks.

And now it appears that the oldest law of the gangland jungle has again been invoked: kill or be killed.
A doctor has been accused of showing clinical incompetence regarding diagnosis, prescriptions and disease control while working at three hospitals.

Dr Omar Hassan Khalafalla Mohamed, whose medical registration is currently suspended, is the subject of a disciplinary inquiry at the Medical Council.

The Senior House Officer (SHO) faces a number of allegations relating to events while he was working as a surgical SHO at the Midlands Regional Hospital Portlaoise in 2012 and Mayo General Hospital in 2013, and as an orthopaedic SHO at University Hospital Galway in 2014.

Dr Hassan, who is representing himself at the inquiry, was placed off call shortly after he began all three posts. His medical registration was suspended by the High Court following an application by the Medical Council in March 2015 under Section 60 of the Medical Practitioners Act.

Frank Beatty, BL for the Medical Council, said Dr Hassan demonstrated a level of clinical incompetence regarding diagnosis, prescriptions and disease control. The doctor also demonstrated a lack of knowledge and insight, and bizarre behaviour, Mr Beatty said.

One allegation relates to the admission of a three-year-old child at University Hospital Galway in February 2014. It is claimed Dr Hassan failed to prioritise the child's admission when the child presented with a fractured humerus, in a timely manner.

Dr Hassan denies the allegations.

Separately, it is claimed that while working at the Portlaoise hospital in October 2012 he failed to respond to a number of pages from nursing staff, and that he failed to admit patients and/or obtain consent for procedures on the day ward in a timely manner.

These patients would have come into the hospital for day surgeries.

Up to 30 witnesses will give evidence in the inquiry, which is expected to last two weeks.
Mr Fingleton claimed that proceeding with the inquiry is a breach of fair procedures and an unlawful breach of his right to a fair hearing. Photo: Tom Burke

Former Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) chief Michael Fingleton has lost his High Court action aimed at preventing the Central Bank from conducting an inquiry into alleged regulatory breaches at the financial institution.

Mr Fingleton, along with several other former officials of INBS, are the subject of a Central Bank inquiry that is due to start hearings in February.

He challenged the Central Bank's decision to subject him to an inquiry, claiming it was unfair and unreasonable.

The Central Bank opposed the application. It wants to inquire into allegations that certain prescribed contraventions were committed by both INBS, and certain persons concerned with its management, between August 2004 and September 2008.

Giving judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Seamus Noonan dismissed Mr Fingleton's action, clearing the way for the inquiry to proceed.

In a lengthy and detailed ruling, Mr Justice Noonan said Mr Fingleton had "not satisfied me that there is any unfairness inherent in the inquiry process to which he is subject". Mr Fingleton was not present in court.

The inquiry, in the event of any finding of wrongdoing, has the power to impose a fine on an individual of up to 500,000.

The Central Bank estimates the collapse of INBS cost the taxpayer 5bn, although the figure is disputed by Mr Fingleton.

In his action, Mr Fingleton sought various orders from the court in respect of the Central Bank inquiry, which he claims is disproportionate, oppressive and unreasonable.

Mr Fingleton, pictured, also claimed that proceeding with the inquiry is a breach of fair procedures and an unlawful breach of his right to a fair hearing. He argued the Central Bank cannot conduct an inquiry of this nature because he retired in 2010, and is no longer involved in the management of an entity that was a regulated financial service provider.

The Central Bank had rejected all of Mr Fingelton's arguments and said there was nothing preventing the inquiry from proceeding.

In his decision, Mr Justice Noonan dismissed all grounds of Mr Fingelton's case.

The inquiry, and the elaborate procedures provided for in the 1942 Central Bank Act, ensured Mr Fingleton's right to a fair hearing "is guaranteed", the judge added.

"It seems to me that the public interest is well served by a credible system of financial regulation and enforcement such as that provided in the 1942 Act," the judge said.

Much of Mr Fingelton's claim, the judge said, was "an attempt to preempt in advance issues before the inquiry that may or may not arise, or be determined by the inquiry itself".

Any suggestion Mr Fingleton will be subject to any prejudice by the inquiry, the judge found, was "devoid of substance and without merit".
Former garda Denis OSullivan was today granted High Court leave to serve proceedings on a Sark, Channel Islands, newspaper alleging defamation of him.

Mr Justice Robert Eagar gave OSullivan, described as a businessman, of Merrion Square, Dublin 2, permission to serve the proceedings outside the jurisdiction of the court.

Frank Callanan SC, counsel for OSullivan, told the court his client intended suing a Mr Kevin Delaney, editor of the Sark Newspaper and Sark Newsletter for remarks made about him both online and in print.

Mr Callanan said Mr OSullivan believed he had been seriously defamed in articles which, although having been published over the past year going back to January 2015, had been read by friends of Mr OSullivan in Ireland.

He said a law firm in Guernsey disputed the purported jurisdiction of the Irish courts but had agreed, without prejudice to the matter of jurisdiction, to accept service of the proceedings by fax and e-mail.

Judge Eagar said the court would normally grant a 14-day period for the entry of an appearance by the defendant but would allow 28 days in this case.

Kevin Delaneys address was given as La Friponnerie, Sark, Channel Islands.
Pastor James McConnell has been cleared of charges linked to a controversial anti-Islamic sermon.

The 78-year-old had been accused of two offences linked to an address delivered at Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in May 2014.

The evangelical preacher walked free from court today after he was found not guilty on both counts by a judge in Belfast.

There was applause at Belfast Magistrates Court as the verdict was delivered.

Pastor McConnell smiled before walking over to shake hands with his defence lawyers.

District judge Liam McNally said: "The courts need to be very careful not to criticise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive.

"It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances.

"Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges."

Pastor McConnell, from Shore Road in Newtownabbey, had faced two charges linked to the sermon delivered from the pulpit of his North Belfast church on May 18 2014.

He was charged under the Communications Act 2003.

Pastor McConnell was accused of improper use of a public electronic communications network, and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network.

In the internet-broadcast sermon the preacher described Islam as "heathen" and "satanic" and "a doctrine spawned in hell.

He also said he did not trust Muslims.

Pastor McConnell later apologised following a public outcry.

He was questioned by police at the time, however, last June it emerged he would be prosecuted.

The three-day trial took place last month.

A prosecution lawyer had argued Pastor McConnells comments were not "a slip of the tongue.

He said the pastor was "not on trial for his beliefs", but for what he said and using words that were allegedly grossly offensive.

However, a defence lawyer said the case essentially revolved around five words in an hour-long religious service.

He said the pastor was a man with an unblemished record who should be recognised for his good work in society, not convicted in court.

Judgement had been reserved until today.
A federal investigation into private voucher schools in Milwaukee was quietly closed late last month, with no further actions ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The DOJ probe, launched in 2011, looked into whether private voucher schools in Wisconsin were properly serving students with disabilities. It was prompted by complaints filed by Disability Rights Wisconsin and the American Civil Liberties Union.

DOJ sent a letter to the state Department of Public Instruction on Dec. 23 informing the agency the probe had been closed and no further action is warranted. The letter was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The closure of the investigation "does not preclude investigation of further complaints, if any," according to the letter.

The initial complaint alleged that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program discriminated against students with disabilities. The complaint argued that private schools participating in the program made efforts to deter children with disabilities from attending their schools.

Those schools cannot legally deny admission based on a student's disability. However, they are not required to provide the same kinds of accommodations public schools must offer under federal law.

Two years ago, DOJ directed DPI to implement stronger policies to ensure students with disabilities are properly served by voucher schools. However, some of the steps ordered by DOJ went beyond what is required of voucher schools under state law, leaving DPI uncertain about its authority to follow them.

Monica Murphy, managing attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, said the organization is disappointed but not surprised by the outcome of the probe. In order for DPI to gather much of the information requested by DOJ, changes to state law would have been necessary, she said, adding that the result was a sort of stalemate.

Disability Rights Wisconsin sought assistance from DOJ because it hoped to have a systemic impact, she said. The organization will now consider individual action on behalf of families with complaints.

"As educators, we are deeply concerned about the inadequate services afforded to special needs students in the voucher program," said Betsy Kippers, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, in a statement. "These private schools are funded by taxpayers but pick and choose the students they want to educate. Public schools provide opportunity for every child. We will be vigilant in demanding voucher accountability, as Wisconsin prepares to funnel millions more tax dollars to private schools through the misguided special needs voucher program next school year."

Voucher school advocates are pleased with the outcome but critical of the process that led to it.

"Its a good day for the program," said Jim Bender, president of the pro-voucher group School Choice Wisconsin. "It just still kind of leaves you scratching your head as to, what have we been doing for the last four-and-a-half years?"

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a vocal opponent of the investigation, said in a statement that many people were concerned that the investigation was fueled by President Barack Obama's administrations "hostility to school choice."

"The probe placed a burden of uncertainty on Wisconsin parents who were just looking for a good education for their children," Johnson said. "This is exactly the outcome I had hoped for when I directed my committee to conduct oversight on the Department of Justice's investigation, which had dragged on far too long."

Bender and other voucher advocates have argued from the start that no such discrimination exists, an argument Bender says is enforced by the DOJ's closure of the investigation.

"We think it puts the matter to rest," Bender said. "It should hopefully vaporize the mythical talking point that theres discrimination in the choice program, because there isnt."

Murphy adamantly disagreed.

"We certainly have heard from too many people and heard too many stories of things that have happened to their kids in the voucher schools, or of being politely turned away," Murphy said.

Complaints include students being counseled away from attending voucher schools, students being accepted and then encouraged to return to a public school and students suffering harassment or a failure to have their needs met, Murphy said.

Regardless of the outcome, Bender said, it's troubling how little information has been shared about the probe and its findings. Both Bender and Murphy noted that DOJ was not very forthcoming with information about the investigation throughout its duration.

Bender said his hope is that some of that information will be released in response to open records requests filed by his organization and others, now that the investigation has come to an end.

In addition to considering individual actions, Murphy said, her organization will keep an eye on the implementation of the special needs voucher program created in the 2015-17 state budget.

Disability rights advocates say the program will take away resources from public schools and funnel them to schools that do not face the same federal requirements as their public counterparts. Supporters of the plan say the state's voucher program shouldn't leave out special-needs students. The program will allow some students with disabilities to receive a voucher of about $12,000 per year to attend a private school.
Billionaire JP McManus is refusing to back down in a row with the US government over a tax bill of $5.2m (4.8m).

The racehorse owner has renewed efforts to secure a tax refund for the sum, court papers seen by the Irish Independent reveal.

The disputed cash was part of a $17.4m (15.9m) pot he won in 2012 while gambling against US technology investor Alec Gores.

Lawyers for the US Department of Justice last year rejected arguments made by Mr McManus that he did not have a tax liability on the winnings.

However, the Limerick-born tycoon has renewed efforts to lay claim to the cash in recent days, filing an amended complaint with the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington.

Precisely how the money was won from Mr Gores was not revealed in the legal papers. However, the US businessman has previously been identified in another lawsuit as being involved in high-stakes underground poker games in Beverly Hills, along with Hollywood actor Tobey Maguire.

In the new claim, submitted on Mr McManus's behalf by a Texas law firm, it is argued Mr Gores "erroneously withheld" $5.2m "to cover any potential United States federal income tax liability".

Income

The lawyers argued that Mr McManus had already paid a 200,000 domicile levy in Ireland, a flat tax on Irish-domiciled individuals whose world-wide income exceeds 1m and who own Irish property with a value greater than 5m.

The lawyers claim that because he paid this levy, Mr McManus's gambling winnings were exempt from tax in the US under a treaty for the avoidance of double taxation.

Mr McManus originally sought to have the money returned to him by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2012 and his lawyers claim the refund was approved in August 2014. However, the following month, the request was remitted to another IRS department for an additional review.

The US Department of Justice has previously said it is opposed to the tax refund request as it did not believe Mr McManus was resident in Ireland for tax purposes in 2012.

It also said Mr McManus had not filed an income tax return in Ireland for the 2012 tax year.

According to the legal papers, the matter is unlikely to go to a full hearing. Both sides are in agreement that the issues in dispute are primarily legal interpretations of tax laws and that the court can issue a summary judgment based on submissions made to it.
Dundalk IT, Waterford IT, Letterkenny IT, Galway Mayo IT and the National College of Art and Design will look to boost revenue streams by enticing more international students and offering a new range of courses, among other measures. Photo: PA

Five of the country's third-level institutes have been put on a three-year plan to help them to become more financially stable.

Dundalk IT, Waterford IT, Letterkenny IT, Galway Mayo IT and the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) will look to boost revenue streams by enticing more international students and offering a new range of courses, among other measures. Each had been running a budget deficit after funding reductions put them under financial pressure.

The Higher Education Authority's (HEA) Andrew Brownlee said it is working with them to help them break even.

"At the moment they are all experiencing operating deficits and what we are doing is sitting down with them and working towards a three-year financial plan that will allow them to break even again," he said.

"That involves a review of all of their operations, the types of courses they are providing, if they can introduce more part-time flexitime provision, if they can take in more international students and if they can cut costs in certain areas."
Fine Gael will be happy to continue with a Department of Finance that is split in two after the General Election, the Irish Independent understands.

Responsibility for the public finances was split after the 2011 election to give both Fine Gael and the Labour Party a role as the country grappled with the economic downturn.

This meant that while Finance Minister Michael Noonan was still in charge of setting key tax rates, the main decisions on spending went to Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin.

Sources within Fine Gael now say that regardless of the election result, the party is in favour of retaining the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

"Having one person look after the money coming in and one person looking after the money going out has worked well," said a Fine Gael strategist.

"The question now is will the Department Finance ever go back to having just one minister? In reality, it probably won't any time soon, at least."
Renua leader Lucinda Creighton looks on as five of the 18 party candidates raise their hands to indicate their support for repealing the Eighth Amendment. RollingNews.ie

Just five of the candidates standing for Lucinda Creighton's Renua Ireland have publicly backed changes to the Constitution on abortion.

Renua grew out of a revolt by key Fine Gael figures in July 2013 against changes to the law on abortion. But since the new party was launched last March, Ms Creighton and her colleagues have carefully avoided taking a stance on the matter, saying it was among a series of issues best left to personal conscience. Officials last night also said that such an emotive issue was best not dealt with at election time.

The five candidates who declared their support for some kind of change were: Patrick McKee of Carlow-Kilkenny; Milo Power of Waterford; Frank Cronin of Dun Laoghaire; Anne Farrell of Galway-Roscommon; and Michael Gargan of Dublin South Central.

Row

The launch of the party's manifesto yesterday also sparked the first row between parties over the impact of proposed tax changes. Ms Creighton defended Renua's proposed single 23pc tax rate - and rejected Fine Gael claims that it would mean low-paid workers would end up paying more tax. The party leader also said she would publish before polling day its "red line" issues, publicly stating the price of support for any future coalition government.

On the abortion issue, Mr Cronin said he understood it was a very difficult issue and he respected all views. "I favour change to face the reality of life as it is. But I think we should have an open debate on the matter," Mr Cronin told the Irish Independent.

Defending the proposed 23pc flat tax rate, the former EU affairs junior minister said it would "promote work and fairness" while simplifying the tax system.

But Fine Gael pointed to Dail answers given by Finance Minister Michael Noonan last October, when he was asked about the potential impact of the flat rate on low-paid workers earning 30,000 or less.

Mr Noonan cited Revenue Commissioner data indicating workers in this category could see their share of the total tax bill grow from 4pc to over 20pc.

But a Renua Ireland spokesman last night said that this calculation took no regard of the so-called "graduated basic income payment", which comes with the proposal and is designed to protect low-paid workers.

This would give everyone a basic income payment up to a maximum of 3,050 per year.

"Basically, Fine Gael is comparing apples and oranges here," the Renua official said.

Other eye-catching tax proposals include:

Replacing road tax with a fuel levy, with exemptions for hauliers and public transport;

Abolition of other secondary charges such as the TV licence;

A better deal for self-employed workers, giving them the PAYE tax credit;

A radical reduction of tax shelters and tax credits;

Total overhaul of Irish Water, abolition of the 100 grant and charges based on metered use.

Renua also wants a crime crackdown via a mandatory life sentence for three-time repeat offenders committing very serious crimes.

The party's deputy leader, Wicklow TD Billy Timmins, said it would ask the Law Reform Commission to study the issue and recommend which categories of offence should apply.

"We need to defend people who are suffering from a growing problem of crime due to a lack of respect for the law," said Mr Timmins.
A surge in consumer spending has helped pour 3bn more into the State's coffers than was predicted at the start of last year.

New figures to be released today will show forecasts set out by Finance Minister Michael Noonan as recently as Budget Day in October underestimated the tax to be collected in the final three months of the year alone by 1bn.

However, the figures come against a backdrop of international turmoil as weak economic data from China and heightened tensions in the Middle East wrought havoc on financial markets worldwide, and stock exchanges from Asia to the US crumbled.

Irish shares outperformed the rest of Europe, with the Iseq dropping just 1.28pc. In London, it was the worst new year start for the FTSE 100 in its 31-year history, while Germany's Dax Index dropped 4.3pc.

The Irish Independent understands the full-year Exchequer figures for 2015 will show that the country's finances are in the best shape since the Celtic Tiger boom years. The overall deficit for the year will come in at just 62m - compared with a figure of 8bn at the end of 2014.

Although the country still has substantial debts, the figures mean the Government is within touching distance of being able to claim the State's books are balanced.

The figures are somewhat "flattered" by a number of one-off transactions but even when they are excluded, tax revenues are 3bn ahead of target.

"Overall, when everything is factored in, the country is about 5bn better off than at the same stage 12 months ago," said a source.

The income from VAT, which is charged on the sale of goods or services, during the past year is in the region of

12bn, or 800m more than in 2014.

"There have been no increases in tax so the fact there is 800m extra collected in VAT can only be down to one thing - and that's people spending money," said a source.

The news will come as a boost for Fine Gael and the Labour Party, who want to turn the upcoming General Election into a referendum on their management of the economy over the past five years.

The VAT figures do not factor in the estimated 5m an hour spent by shoppers in the run-up to Christmas as these returns are not made until later this month.

Sources last night also pointed out that the positive data comes ahead of workers' first pay-packet since Budget Day reductions in the much-hated Universal Social Charge (USC) came into effect on January 1.

"People will have more disposal income than they did last month and that should boost the economy even further," said one source.

Overall, the tax take for the month of December is 0.5bn ahead of where it was a year ago, with income tax and corporation tax said to be performing particularly well.

The Exchequer returns are now likely to feed into the election debate about how much scope the various parties see for tax cuts and spending increases. Just yesterday Tanaiste Joan Burton said the Labour Party was prepared to give tax breaks to everyone earning up to 120,000. Its manifesto will also commit to a tax freeze for every individual earning above that figure.

The Cabinet meets today for the first time since their Christmas break with Mr Noonan expected to update his colleagues on the Exchequer returns.

The minister spent Christmas in hospital where he underwent a number of medical procedures for an infection involving fluid in the chest area.

He will make his first public appearance since revealing his illness this afternoon when he hosts a joint press conference with Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin to announce the Exchequer figures.

However, the ministers will also be closely monitoring global events after the Chinese stock market collapsed, sending reverberations around the world.

Another report of poor performance in the country's manufacturing sector sparked worries about the growth potential of the world's second largest economy.

And amid the market volatility, the top economist at the International Monetary Fund, Maury Obstfeld, warned China could spook investors.
Health Minister Leo Varadkar insists overcrowding is down as much as 15pc compared to this time last year despite more than 500 people being on trolleys.

"This is not a problem that can be solved quickly, it's been around for about 20 years," said Mr Varadkar. "We're in better shape than we were last year, but still not in good shape", he said.

This comes after the number of people on hospital trolleys soared in the past few days - the figure hit 516 last night.

Mr Varadkar said 83pc of people visiting A&E were being seen in less than nine hours - while 17pc of people were taking longer than that.

The first few weeks of January are the busiest of the year for hospitals.

The Minister visited a number of hospitals yesterday to see the situation for himself.

"I want to make sure that hospitals are opening any beds that are closed and discharge patients that can be discharged," he said. "What is required is we make incremental improvements over the next number of years and that's going to require sustained focus ... sustained investment and additional capacity."
Maureen McEvoy, from Drimnagh, speaks to Health Minister Leo Varadkar at St Jamess Hospital, Dublin, during his tour of six emergency departments to inspect trolley levels. Photo: Collins

Hospitals suffering "bad press" and a poor reputation for emergency department overcrowding face the biggest difficulties recruiting staff, Health Minister Leo Varadkar has warned in unpublished correspondence.

Mr Varadkar was responding to outspoken Tallaght Hospital emergency consultant James Gray, who emailed the minister and senior executives in recent months to highlight "grossly dangerous" conditions, including having a 91-year-old on a trolley for more than nine hours.

The minister acknowledged the difficulties faced by patients and pointed to the extra investment in tackling overcrowding.

But he said the hospitals that were regularly in the headlines created a "vicious cycle" for themselves. He added that, on investigation, some stories regarding patients turned out untrue.

"I am a strong supporter of patient advocacy and will always defend it but I know what it is and what it is not."

He said he fully appreciated Dr Gray's frustration and concerns for patient welfare.

He asked the hospital chief executive and the clinical director in Tallaght to meet Dr Gray to discuss his proposals for solving the problems.

It provoked a strongly worded reply from Dr Gray in a letter obtained by the Irish Independent.

He said sweeping failures under the carpet in order to "shore up" institutional reputation amounted to a "false veneer".

He added: "We all need to focus on addressing the failures that exist and not the highlighting of those failures in the public domain.

"I have a duty to disclose the substandard environment and delayed care for any patient, as a patient advocate."

He warned it was "only a matter of time" before a patient died or suffered serious illness if the level of dangerous overcrowding was not reduced.

The minister, who has since met Dr Gray and Tallaght Hospital management, did not include it on his tour of six emergency departments yesterday but intends to visit there in the future.

The ER tour included Naas Hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda, Portiuncula Hospital and the Mater, St James's and Beaumont in Dublin.

Staff shortages in Beaumont and Drogheda hospitals have meant that not all beds were open, despite the pressures.

Dr Gray told the Irish Independent that a large part of the emergency department in Tallaght Hospital, including eight bays, remains idle due to ongoing negotiations to secure more nursing staff.

HSE chief Tony O' Brien said yesterday that hospitals would be assessed to see whether they should be fined for not operating an escalation policy when emergency departments reached a particular level of overcrowding.

The 10,000 fine can be imposed if they do not trigger measures such as discharging patients and not admitting people from waiting lists.

A spokesman for Tallaght Hospital said it had started a phased opening of its expanded emergency department.

He insisted the emergency department patient experience times had improved by 20pc since September 2015.

This was despite a 2pc increase in emergency department attendances.
Jailed drug smuggler Michaela McCollum Connolly spent Christmas in a prison hospital according to reports.

McCollum Connolly should have spent Christmas back in Northern Ireland after being cleared to leave prison in November  red tape has delayed her release.

Under Peruvian law, McCollum Connolly and Reid are free to walk free from prison having served a third of their sentence.

She is said to have been struck by a tropical sickness whilst serving time in a Peruvian prison.

One inmate said Michaela has been brought to hospital in the prison. She has a tropical illness but we dont know what it is.

We really hope she is OK. This [illness] is pretty regular in here, especially with the foreigners.

The woman, originally from Dungannon, was arrested in September 2013 with Melissa Reid, from Scotland, when the pair were caught trying to board a flight to Madrid with 11kg of cocaine in their bags.

She is currently in prison in Ancon 2  about an hour north of capital Lima.

There are around 1,500 other inmates currently serving time in the prison and Michaela is said to be quite popular in Ancon 2.

Irish-American Bishop Sean Walsh who has visited both McCollum Connolly and Reid said the two as well as can be expected.

The Bishop said the pair want to get home, finish their sentence, get out and fade out from the public attention.

McCollum Connolly is said to be able to speak Spanish now as well as being an avid fan of local cuisine like cuy - a dish that contains guinea pig.
A 37-year-old web designer is recovering from a horror ordeal after he was brutally assaulted and held against his will in a disturbing incident on Sunday.

Gardai in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, are investigating the shocking event which happened shortly after 5.30pm on Sunday.

Sources say that officers are investigating allegations of aggravated burglary, assault, threats to kill and false imprisonment of the victim, and a forensic examination of his apartment took place.

Completed

The dispute is believed to centre around a website which was due to be completed but has not yet been finalised.

The victim of the attack was targeted after he got into his car in the Derravarra House complex in Mullingar on Sunday evening.

The Pakistani national, who has asked not to be named, was allegedly pulled from his car by a father and son who had arrived in the Co Westmeath town from their home in Dublin's south inner city.

A close pal of the victim explained that after the man was taken from the car, "he was punched in the head rapidly and repeatedly".

The suspects allegedly then took the victim's keys and dragged him back into his apartment.

He then faced a nightmare 40-minute ordeal in which the two men, aged in their 50s and 20s, ransacked the property and continued to make threats against the terrified man.

"They were looking for a computer and told him to sit down. They busted the other side of the man's face. He then produced the computer," a pal of the victim told the Herald.

"He ended up having to get two stitches in the face and two in the back of his head.

STARK

"One of the worst aspects of this was that they left the man with a stark warning in which they threatened to kill him if he went to gardai, but this matter was reported almost as soon as it ended," the pal added.

It is understood that the argument centred around a business dispute between the web designer and the two men who are suspected of attacking him.

It is believed that the suspects in the case became "annoyed" because they had previously paid a four-figure deposit for work that was not completed on time.
In making his case to Republican lawmakers this fall that the states civil service system needed to be overhauled, Gov. Scott Walker cited the case of two state workers who he said couldnt be fired even though they had been caught having sex in their office.

But records released Friday show no efforts were made to fire those workers  and that the only discipline sought and issued to them was letters of reprimand.

Walker administration officials declined to address Wisconsin State Journal inquiries about why the workers could not have been fired for their conduct. Records show their actions included trading sexually explicit emails on their work accounts and engaging in sex acts at their state office in Madison in 2011.

Two former state human resource officials said Friday that nothing prevented state officials from more harshly disciplining or firing the employees  one of whom, Doug Wood, is a Monona alderman.

Wood remains employed with the state Office of the Commissioner of Railroads. The other employee, Elizabeth Piliouras, no longer works for the agency.

Walkers comments about their case are at least the second instance in which he told anecdotes about state workers to plug the civil service changes that arent supported by state records.

Republicans who control the Legislature have passed a bill including those changes through the state Assembly, while the state Senate has yet to take it up. The bill would replace civil service exams with resume-based hiring, eliminate seniority protections, standardize performance reviews, centralize hiring and firing decisions from state agencies in the Department of Administration and clearly define offenses that can be grounds for termination.

Walker cited the case of the two state workers caught having sex at the office but not being fired for it  without mentioning Woods or Piliouras names  in a speech to GOP lawmakers in September.

In a statement Friday, Walkers spokeswoman, Laurel Patrick, said the case shows exactly why we need civil service reform.

Reform is needed to ensure there is clarity in cases like this for agencies to take action against bad actors, Patrick said.

Cullen Werwie, a spokesman for Walkers Department of Administration, said if the civil service bill became law, the state could dismiss employees much easier in situations like this.

State records of the case, first reported on Thursday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, confirm that the employees got scant punishment for their actions.

Susan Crawford, a human resources attorney for the state under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, emphasized that she hasnt reviewed the particulars of this case beyond whats been publicly reported. But Crawford described the reprimand letters as the lightest possible discipline for such offenses.

The records show no attempts at further discipline of Wood or Piliouras. If their supervisors wanted to discipline them more harshly or fire them, they clearly could have done so under current law, Crawford said.

They could have considered anywhere up to termination, said Crawford, now an attorney in private practice in Madison.

Peter Fox, who led the Department of Employment Relations under Republican Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum, concurred.

It looks like the desire of (State Railroad Commissioner Jeff) Plale was to render a disciplinary measure, but at the lightest possible level, Fox said.

Records show Wood and Piliouras discussed their relationship through their work email accounts. The emails contain explicit sexual innuendo and references to sex acts performed at work.

A state investigation into Woods and Piliouras conduct found they violated state work rules by unauthorized use of state facilities and email accounts. But it found insufficient evidence that their conduct violated a workplace policy against sexual harassment, as both acknowledged their relationship was consensual.

The investigation report said that based upon these findings, employees who commit such actions would typically be issued either a letter of warning or letter of reprimand.

Plale issued the reprimand letters to Wood and Piliouras in November 2011. In 2014, Plale took the additional step of removing the reprimand letter from Piliouras personnel file, records show.

Plale declined to respond to State Journal inquiries Friday about his handling of the case.

Court records show Wood and Piliouras entered divorce proceedings with their spouses in 2011, shortly after they exchanged the explicit emails.

Wood told the State Journal in an email statement Friday that the investigation into his and Piliouras conduct was an excruciatingly stressful process for both Elizabeth and I, in part because we didnt know what the outcome would be.

Management determined that a written reprimand was the appropriate discipline and we accepted that discipline, Wood wrote. These events occurred four years ago. It was dealt with at the time, and its in the past.

Piliouras did not respond to State Journal requests for comment on the case.

As part of his push for civil service changes, Walker also claimed that a short-order cook scored high enough on a hiring exam to be considered for a state financial examiner job.

But when pressed, Walkers administration couldnt produce documents to support the claim, the State Journal found.

State Journal Reporter Matthew DeFour contributed to this report.
The scene in Basin Street where a 19 year old Youth fell through a Warehouse Roof (green Coloured Building).

A 19-year-old man is fighting for his life in hospital this morning after falling from a building on Dublin's Basin Lane.

The incident happened at a vacant premises at around 4.30pm yesterday.

Dublin Fire Brigade crews treated the young man at the scene before he was brought to hospital where his condition was described as critical.

Gardai sealed off the scene pending a technical examination.

The incident happened at a disused warehouse which is used as a car park just off Basin St, near James's Street in Dublin 8.

Two youths are believed to have been on the roof when one of them heard a noise and looked back to see his friend had fallen through it.

A section of the warehouse remains closed off today.

It is estimated the youth fell around 20ft onto concrete and suffered devastating injuries.

A small vigil of candles, flowers and rosary beads could be seen by the railings at the entrance to the warehouse this morning.
A young mother was shocked after allegedly finding bugs in the formula she was preparing to feed her children.

Whilst preparing bottles for her two children, Amanda Keller from Kanturk in Co Cork said she spotted the bugs in the SMA powder.

The young mother has two children, new born Anna and one year old Kiera and was said to have been horrified by the discovery.

I actually couldnt believe my eyes. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it now but they were there plain as day to see and Ive wrapped them up and kept them.

According to the Irish Daily Mirror, she had contacted SMA to complain and I left my number for a call back but still havent heard anything.

Amandas children had previously had problems stomaching other formulas and SMA is the only brand she can apparently use  so the alleged discovery of the bugs has left her horrified.

What if I feed the new born one, what if she swallowed one? Ms Keller told the Irish Daily Mirror.

An SMA spokeswoman said We are committed to safety, quality and hygiene of our products ad we take reports like this very seriously.

Insects are strictly controlled by inspections on line, by specialised contractors, preventative spraying and the use of insect-o-cuters.

The company are said to have been unable to explain how the insects gained access to her powder.

SMA have asked Ms Keller to return the tin and the contents to them so they can conduct a thorough examination.
A nationwide survey has been carried out by the Medical council. Getty Images/iStockphoto

THE HSE is appealing an Employment Appeals Tribunal ruling which could result in the State paying consultants millions of euro in compensation.

Nearly 2,000 hospital consultants could be entitled to a massive payout after the recent decision.

However, the HSE have said they will appeal the tribunals decision to the High Court.

The issue surrounds the HSEs failure to pay higher salaries agreed more than seven years ago.

Awarded

It emerged today that the Employment Appeals Tribunal awarded Thomas Hogan  a former consultant anaesthetist in Dublin hospitals  nearly 100,000.

John McDermot, a consultant endocrinologist at Blanchardstown hospital, was also awarded 14,000 by the EAT.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) welcomed the outcome.

The salary underpayments, the subject matter of their claims, are separate from the FEMPI salary cuts that were imposed on consultants like all other public servants, they said.

Concerns have been raised the State could face a compensation bill of more than 100m.

It is understood that 150 consultants have decided to go to court to secure the payment, having decided not to go the EAT route.

Under a 2008 contract, nearly 2,000 consultants agreed to several new conditions  including new work practices, restrictions on weekend work, extended rosters and private practice.

Former Health Minister Mary Harney offered consultants salaries of between 170,000 and 240,000 under the new conditions.

While the first payment was made, a second payment has not been made. Further, as the economy collapsed, the government cut consultants pay by 15pc.

The EAT found that the failure to pay was unlawful under the Payment of Wages Act.
A young woman managed to fight off a man who was allegedly attempting to sexually assault her just yards from her south Dublin home.

The brave woman screamed and kicked the assailant as he tried to drag her into a secluded wooded area in Shankill on Sunday evening.

The woman described how she was "very lucky to be pretty much unharmed" and called on people to be more vigilant when walking alone late at night.

The terrifying incident happened near the Corbawn Lane area of Shankill shortly after 7pm on January 3.

The victim, aged in her early 20s, was making her way home when she noticed a man in his mid-40s following her.

"I was walking home from the shop past the Dart station in Shankill and there was a man, about mid-40s, lingering on the path," the woman said.

"I obviously thought it was a bit odd so I just sped up and overtook him on the path.

"I had my headphones in. He ended up following me into my estate and attacked me and tried to sexually assault me when I was only a few metres from my own house.

Kick

"He tried to drag me into the trees, but thankfully I was able to get away by yelling my head off and giving him a sharp kick.

"I am very lucky to be pretty much unharmed, and he didn't see which house was mine."

Gardai are investigating the attempted sexual assault and have appealed for anyone with information to contact detectives at Shankill Garda Station.

The woman wrote about her ordeal on Facebook and pleaded with people walking alone to be aware of their surroundings.

"I just felt like I should post this here as a warning to everyone to please be careful," she wrote. "If you see a strange man or woman, or anyone who looks sketchy, just ring your parents or a friend and get home as quick as you can.

"Keep all your senses aware - no headphones in darker, quieter areas, and always stay near built-up areas if you can."

The message has been shared thousands of times since it was posted yesterday afternoon.

She described the man as wearing a short, black, puffy jacket, and had "dark, greyish hair and blue eyes". He was approximately 5'10" in height and had a Dublin accent.

Offences

The latest complete garda figures for a calendar year in the area show an increase of 37pc in rape and sexual assault offences compared to the previous year.

There were 59 such recorded incidents during 2014 in the Dublin Metropolitan Region East Division, which includes the 'F' district station of Shankill, where Sunday's attempted assault occurred.

The Central Statistics Office's figure is much higher than the 43 reports that were made throughout the whole of 2013.
THE European Commission has today hit out at claims that EU environmental rules are to blame for Irelands flood crisis.

In an unusual move, the Commission released a statement in which it insists it is not standing in the way of the authorities if they wish to dredge rivers.

A number of TDs, including government ministers, have called for rivers such as the Shannon and Suir to be dredged in order to prevent further flooding.

On Monday, Planning and Housing Minister Paudie Coffey slammed what he described as excessive red and tape and bureaucracy which he says is preventing landowners from protecting their homes.

Opposition TDs in particular have blamed EU rules as being part of the problem.

In a statement today, a spokeswoman for the Commission rejected the criticism.

Any suggestion that EU environmental rules are somehow to blame for the recent severe flooding in Ireland is completely without foundation, the spokeswoman said.

"EU law does not ban dredging. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Floods Directive do not include detailed rules on how Member States manage their water courses. That is decided by the Member States themselves, she added.

The statement emphasised that the Irish Government does not need to notify the European Commission about plans to dredge rivers as there is no such obligation in EU legislation.

Dredging is not always the solution for flooding. It may help to sort out a local problem but it may also transport the problem downstream, sometimes from rural to urban areas where the damage on properties and economic activities can be much higher. Therefore the basin-wide approach included in EU policies is essential to find effective and long-term solutions, the Commission added.
Passengers on board a Ryanair flight have praised the pilot after he was forced to reset the wing flaps before the plane landed.

The captain of the 12pm FR6674 flight from Knock to Liverpool was forced to circle the UK city while he reset the wing flaps.

The captain was fairly relaxed  it came across the intercom, I thought it was a drill I had my earphones on, Damian Heslin said, who was sitting at an emergency exit.

The flight which was about three quarters full circled Liverpool before coming in to land safely.

Mr Heslin said, I managed to take my phone off flight mode and I sent my wife a text.

I fly a lot, I wouldnt panic  I was on a flight to Ghana a few months ago and there was very bad turbulence on that  this was quite sedate.

Ryanair confirmed to Independent.ie that an emergency landing was not necessary following the resetting procedure.

The crew of this flight from Knock to Liverpool noticed a possible flap-setting issue some 12 miles out from Liverpool Airport," a spokesperson said.

We have confirmed with the pilots and cabin crew that no 'emergency landing' PA was made.

"The captain entered a hold pattern, reset the flaps, and the aircraft proceeded to land normally without further incident.

"Once the crew had re-set the flaps, the captain made a PA advising that a normal landing would take place," he added.

The aircraft was inspected by Ryanair engineers, before being returned to service.
SHOTS were fired as two armed men held up a post office in south Dublin this morning.

Gardai are investigating the robbery which occurred at Roebuck Post Office on Farmhill Road, Goatstown at around 9.30am.

Two men, both armed, entered the post office.

One of the men fired shots which caused the glass partition at the customer counter to shatter.

He jumped the counter and took an amount of cash.

The second man took a small amount of cash from a cash register located elsewhere in the premises.

The two female members of staff were uninjured during the incident.

Both suspects fled the scene, via Farmhill Road/Larchfield Park in a blue Subaru Impreza which was the subject of what gardai have described as 'an unauthorised taking'.

This car was later located close to Mount Carmel Road, Goatstown.

The scene of the robbery and the car were both preserved and technically examined.

The first suspect is described as being male, approximately 5'10" in height. He was wearing a black balaclava, black woolly hat, a jacket which was navy on the top half and black on the bottom, dark coloured trousers and dark footwear. This man also wore orange coloured kitchen gloves.

The second suspect is described as being male, 5'6" in height, wearing an all grey coloured tracksuit with a blue t-shirt underneath, black and white runners and black gloves.

An incident room has been established at Dundrum Garda Station.

Investigating Gardai are appealing for witnesses and anyone with information is asked to contact Dundrum Garda Station on 01 6665600, The Garda Confidential Line 1800 666111 or any Garda Station.
The Cabinet has this evening agreed a suite a measures aimed at responding to the countrys flood crisis.

Ministers signed off on a detailed plan aimed at assisting farmers, homeowners, businesses and sports and community groups affected by Storm Desmond and Storm Frank.

Significantly, a new coordination group for the Shannon will be set up within weeks, government sources told independent.ie.

The establishment of a long-term flood forecasting system which will involve 15 extra staff between Met Eireann and the Office of Public Works (OPW).

Taoiseach Enda Kenny told Cabinet that he and other ministers will meet representatives from the insurance industry on Tuesday to discuss how homes without cover can be assisted.

Environment Minister Alan Kelly will also meet the European Environment Commissioner to seek clarity surrounding the rules on dredging of rivers.

The other measures in the plan include:

 A new scheme whereby the State will replace damaged fodder at the market rate

 A new agriculture hardship programme which will see farmers worst affected receiving cash payments

 An additional 10m for local authorities as part of their clean-up efforts

 Extending the 5m business grant scheme to sports and community organisations whose facilities have been affected by the floods

 Two pilot schemes in Crossmolina and Gregnamana for flood protection measures such as flood gates

 Agreement for a new roads programme which could be in the region of 60m

 The provision of funds from the Department of Social Protection for farm homes
In a small terraced house in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, a dizzying smell of bleach does little to drown out the stench of stagnant water and damp.

Standing in her modest kitchen on the Island Road yesterday, 82-year-old Elizabeth O'Connor was moved to tears by the presence of President Michael D Higgins.

Accompanied by countless TDs, ministers and councillors, the President and his wife Sabina crowded into the home Ms O'Connor has lived in for more than 60 years.

Last week it was filled by the flood waters of the River Slaney.

Her son George (53) welcomed President Higgins's visit, but said it was time for action: "I remember when I was three years old when we had a massive flood here. I remember when we had one in the year 2000 and all those in between," he told the Irish Independent.

"On how many occasions does a house and a street have to be turned into a swamp before action is taken? My mother is 82 years old, she is getting too old to be seeing her home being destroyed."

A few doors down President Higgins visited Peter O'Brien, who broke down when describing the damage to his home.

"It is brilliant to see the President. Fair play to him for coming down, but really, what could he say to us," he said. "He said he was sorry, that this couldn't go on, but what does he have the power to change."

Earlier, President Higgins met "the frontline people" and paid tribute to the countless local volunteers and service providers keeping flood water at bay around the country.

Speaking after a visit to the flood-hit village of Labane near Gort in Co Galway, President Higgins called for co-operation between the various State agencies and appealed for an accelerated reaction to the flooding crisis.

He spoke to several people affected by the flooding, including those forced from their homes, local volunteers, Civil Defence and army personnel who have been working in the area.

"I wanted to hear the experience that people have had for themselves and for their families and for their animals," said President Higgins.

"But I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude to all of the different agencies that have been working together. There has been very great co-operation from the local authority and the army, who have been here since December 9, bringing feed to animals as well as looking after the people, the Civil Defence, the community itself."

President Higgins called on agencies such as councils, the OPW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service to continue to work together and to expedite their efforts.
Munster - Clare: Water levels are expected to rise, with properties remaining under threat in

Sandbags are in place in New Quay, while some homes have been evacuated in Dooras and Boston. The council has dealt with more than 300 out-of-hours calls since the middle of December.

Limerick:

470 cubic metres of water a second are being released from Parteen Weir, which will increase the risk of flooding downstream at Springfield, Montpelier, Castleconnell, Mountshannon (Annacotty) and the University of Limerick. Some roads remain closed, and levels are up 5cm since the weekend but are below the peak.

Kerry:

Water levels have stabilised in the last 48 hours and if it remains dry, properties are not expected to be at risk.

Cork:

Water continues to be released from the Inniscarra Dam at a rate of 225 cubic metres per second, and a boil water notice affecting 10,000 people in Midleton South East, Ballynacorra, Cloyne, Aghada, Whitegate, Ballycotton, Churchstown and Trabolgan remains in place. Cork County Council has dealt with 1,683 calls since Christmas Day, and Bandon is on high alert.

Tipperary

No major problems but water levels are high in the north of the county. Flood defences in Clonmel are working as designed, but there are still potential problems in Kilganey.

Waterford

Restrictions are in place on the main route to Cork, the N25, with the road impassable between Killeagh and Castlemartyr. Signed diversions are in place which motorists are urged to follow. Some other local diversions also in place.

Connacht/Ulster

Cavan:

Some 50 roads in the county are underwater and the county faces flooding if heavy rain arrives, as expected, on Wednesday. Some 66 houses are marooned, and rivers are at historically high levels.

Leitrim:

Water levels at Carrick-on-Shannon have risen by 10cm over the weekend. They are expected to peak in the next week and while still rising, they are below the highs experienced in December. Some local road diversions are in place and around 30 homes are at risk of flooding.

Roscommon:

Water levels in the Athlone area have risen by 4cm, and the town is currently 1cm above the 2009 peak level. Levels in Lough Ree are 5cm above the 2009 peak level, and are expected to continue to rise. Flood defences are under pressure in the town around the Jolly Mariner and other areas.

Donegal:

County was most affected during Storm Desmond but minimal damage caused by Storm Frank. Damage to piers, harbours, beaches and parts of the Wild Atlantic Way is being assessed.

Sligo:

Again, more damage caused during Storm Desmond but some roads have flooded. The council is now beginning the clean-up operation.

Mayo:

The River Moy is stabilising but remains at a high level. Minor flood defence schemes due to get underway shortly at Bachelors Walk in the town. Water levels in Crossmolina and south Mayo around Cong are being watched.

Galway:

Some 22 homes are flooded, with the worst of the problems most evident in the south of the county. Another 90 homes have access problems, and water levels are close to peak. Problems have been exacerbated by turloughs, or seasonal lakes, which are coping with significantly increased volumes of rainfall.

Monaghan:

No major problems reported.

Leinster

Carlow:

Flood defences holding, and yesterday was the first day that the fire brigade did not have to engage in pumping measures to relieve flooding problems. Around 50 homes are impacted and drains are overflowing.

Kilkenny:

Water levels remain high in the county and eight homes have been affected.

Westmeath:

Some 48 families are in temporary accommodation, including 23 from the Bastion Quay apartments in Athlone.

Offaly:

The River Shannon has risen by 4cm between Lough Derg and Banagher and is now 1cm above 2009 peak levels.

Dublin/Kildare:

The ESB is discharging some 40 cubic metres of water per second from the Poulaphouca reservoir . The river is now considered bank full with some minor overflows expected, but there are no major concerns.

Longford:

Localised flooding with a small number of houses affected.

Wexford:

Water levels in the Slaney remain high but no major problems reported.

Wicklow:

Some localised flooding but no major problems.

Louth/Meath/Laois

No major problems with flooding have been reported in these counties.
WINTER, Wis./CHIPPEWA FALLS  Richard Dick Harrison Lowater, 80, of Winter, formerly of Chippewa Falls died Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016, at Mayo Clinic Health System- Eau Claire.

He was born Jan. 8, 1935, in Spring Valley, to Donald and Florence (Upman) Lowater. He grew up in Spring Valley and moved to Chippewa Falls in 1951, and graduated from Chippewa Falls High School in 1953.

He continued his education at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., for two years, then attended Dunwoody Institute for one year. In 1957, Dick went to work for his dad at Lowaters Auto Parts in Chippewa Falls. In 1960, he bought Fuel Service, and in 1972, partnered with Jack Salden to become D.J.s Mart. Together they owned and operated 13 stores and in 1992, Dick retired and sold his share to Jack; and sold his auto parts business to his sons, Peter and Richard II.

On March 1, 1975, he married Myrtle Edstrom. Together they loved to travel. In retirement, Dick bought a motor-home and he and Myrt traveled nearly every state, including Alaska. They bought property in Arizona, where they enjoyed spending their winters. They also traveled to Hawaii, Jamaica, Sweden, Norway, Austria and Switzerland.

In his younger years, Dick was very involved with his sons activities, especially motocross and snowmobiling. Friday nights were for going to watch the kids race, traveling as far as Buffalo, N.Y.

He was a member of the Chippewa Shrine Club, Tripoli Shrine Club, Chippewa Falls Masonic Lodge #176 F & AM, and served on the Board of Directors for Welco Warehouse in Minneapolis. Dick had a beautiful voice and sang in community and church choirs.

Dick is survived by his wife of 40 years, Myrt; children, Dick (Kristi) Lowater, Pete (Kathy) Lowater, Julie (Steve) Hugdahl, Carol (Mark) Hoage, Mark (Mary Grace) Olson, Linda Olson, Patti (Steve) Leahy, Paula (Tim) Haws, and Kari (Rick) Blum; 40 grandchildren; 48 great-grandchildren, one great-great-grandson.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Don and Florence; and sister, Donna Bernklau; and grandchildren, Abigail Lowater and Joey Thornton.

A funeral service will be held at 2 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 7, at Calvary Lutheran Church, 3214 WI-70, Draper, Wis., with Pastor Terri Blomberg officiating. Burial will be at a later date at Forest Hill Cemetery, Chippewa Falls.

Visitation will be held from 4 to 7 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 6, at Pederson-Volker Funeral Chapel, Chippewa Falls, with a Masonic memorial service at 6:30 p.m. Visitation will also be held one hour prior to the service Thursday at church.

Pederson-Volker Funeral Chapel & Cremation Services, Chippewa Falls is serving the family.

Visit pedersonvolker.com to express online condolences.
I have seen at first hand the devastating impact of the floods on people's lives, the relentless battle to protect homes, businesses and farms, the exhaustion and despair when destruction cannot be prevented.

It is important to acknowledge that the month of December alone has seen unprecedented levels of rainfall, with the entire expected rainfall for winter falling in one month alone.

The Government is very conscious of the need for fast action, and I want to assure those affected that we are doing everything in our power to assist people in getting their lives back to normal.

We are sensitive to the need for fast action and the particular difficulties faced by businesses who cannot get insurance. That is why we established a 5m fund which is administered by the Red Cross and can be accessed without any bureaucratic delay. Similarly, there is a 10m aid fund available from the Department of Social Protection to assist householders in distress.

The Department of the Environment and Local Government has provided 8m to support the work of local authorities in dealing with the flooding, and emergency fodder supplies are being made available by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for the worst-hit farms.

The Government also stands ready to help local authorities once the clean-up is under way.

This is an example of whole-of-Government approach being taken in dealing with this crisis.

The National Co-ordination Group for severe weather has been meeting on a daily basis to assess the forecast and associated risks, and to co-ordinate efforts to deal with the aftermath of the storms.

This brings together all the relevant Government departments and bodies, like the Defence Forces, An Garda Siochana, HSE and the ESB, and ensures essential inter-agency co-operation.

I would like to pay tribute to the immense voluntary effort of so many in communities around the country helping their neighbours and friends in trouble.

I would also like to commend the local authority and Defence Forces personnel, Civil Defence, the gardai, the HSE and all those who are working day and night to protect life and property, and who are now also engaged in the recovery work.

Responding to the crisis and dealing with the aftermath have required, and will continue to require, a gargantuan effort from all involved, but we must also look forward to how we plan for the future.

The good news is that the Government's capital investment plan will see us spend 430m in the next five years - which was more than in the past 20 years - on flood risk investment and flood works.

The OPW has already completed 32 major flood relief schemes, seven are ongoing, five are due to start in 2016 and 22 are at design/planning stage. The OPW is completing and advancing works in many areas, including Crossmolina, Skibereen and Bandon.

Today, the Cabinet will meet and flooding will be the number one item on the agenda. Each Government department will report on its own area of responsibility, and bring forward its solutions, as requested by the Taoiseach.

Prior to Cabinet, there is a meeting to discuss the specific issue of the management of the Shannon.

No government can ever guarantee that people won't suffer adverse effects from severe weather events but we are determined to use the engine of a stable economic recovery to invest well for the future.

Simon Harris is Minister of State with Special Responsibility for the Office of Public Works
Bedding and feeds have been lost as a result of the flooding on Thomas Cleary's premises

A horse trainer has spoken of the scale of the devastation the floods have caused on his business over the last month.

Tom Cleary from Carrick-O-Brien outside Athlone told Morning Ireland, All of my facilities are under water at the moment and have been since December, 4  I had to move all my horses and I have them stabled here [at the Curragh] since.

Luckily the trainer has been able to keep the swollen flood waters from his house.

Its not in my home  we have [the floods] kept out by sandbags and pumps  the pumps are constantly going there, weve been lucky enough to keep it out of the home, he said.

His days are spent travelling to and from the Curragh and battling to keep the flood waters doing any more damage to his property.

I have to travel up and down everyday to look after the horses to ride them out and do everything that has to be done with them, so it has affected me a lot.

He has estimated the damage to his property could run up to 40,000.

The water stretches out over a wide area theres two and half feet of water on my gallops at the moment and two and a half feet in some of my stables and in my yard, he added.

The horse trainer said that he thought Enda Kenny and Simon Harris "were shocked by how bad the flooding was when they visited Athlone.

Mr Cleary said that when the floods happened in 2009 they were told that it would be a once in a hundred years [event] but it has come back again, six years later.

He has applied for help from the Red Cross, but with no flood insurance available and flooding looking likely to occur again he is considering at the possibility of moving.

If I got any help at all I would move - even if they start the work which they say the will start in 2016, it will take a long time to control it enough to keep the water from where I am.

There needs to be a lot of work done with the Shannon, dredging to take out a lot of the dirt that has gathered there over the years and formed small islands along the Shannon which were not there 20 and 25 years ago, he concluded.
An Irishman is the holder of a dubious record - he is the fugitive who has been on the run for the longest time, a whopping 60 years.

John Patrick Hannan was jailed in 1955 after being convicted of car robbery and the assault of two policemen in the UK.

However, 30 days into his 21-month sentence, he broke out of Verne Prison in England.

The Irish Sun reports that The Guinness Book of Records currently refuse to recognise Hannan's 'achievement' unless he hands himself into authorities.

The Irishman, and his fellow prisoner Gwnant Thomas, fled the jail under the cover of darkness and used knotted sheets to scale the prison wall.

Read More

Both men were aged 22 at the time.

The fugitives were clad in grey prison overalls, but broke into a nearby petrol station and stole coats to disguise themselves.

Thomas was re-captured within 24 hours, but Hannan remained on the run, and it is believed he made his way back to Ireland where he has been living in secret ever since.

Dorset Police ended their active search for Hannan in 1996.

If alive, Hannan would now be aged 81.

Read More

The previous world record for the longest prison escape was held by Leonard Frisco, who successfully evaded capture for 45 years and 11 months.

However Hannan surpassed this record in 2001.
What trends will we see emerging in restaurants in the new year? Aoife Carrigy polishes up her crystal ball, with a ittle help from some insider tipsters

1 Values not Value

Values not value is what serial restaurateur Elaine Murphy (of The Winding Stair, The Woollen Mills, The Washerwoman and next years Legal Eagle gastropub) describes as a hilarious phrase which is set to sum up the ethos for food in 2016.

Sustainability, ethical and ecological trading and food waste were certainly hot topics at 2015s Food On The Edge food symposium. Run by Galwegian chef JP McMahon, it attracted top international chefs such as Daniel Patterson, whose game-changing new US-based Locol chain offers fast food with real ingredients.

McMahon has since been busy on Kickstarter raising funds for Farmer, a new Irish ethical fast food chain with a focus on provenance, sustainability and animal welfare. Watch this space.

2 Dramarama

If theres one Dubliner who knows a marketable food trend when he sees it, its entrepreneur John Farrell of 777, SuperMissSue, The Butcher Grill and Dillingers. He stirred up 2015 with 1950s glamour a la SMS Luna, with the kind of elegant dining room that youd don your gladrags for.

Food consultancy specialist, Tim Magee of Host & Co, believes that next year well see more dressy up dining, by which he means heavy investment in pretty rooms.

People want comfort again, and drama.

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Super Miss Sue Drury Street

3 Less is more (or less)

I love the idea of little restaurants or vendors in stalls that are doing one thing, and doing it really well, says Katie Sanderson of Dillisk and Living Dinners fame.

Katie name-checks Londons Weligama (Sri Lankan egg hoppers from a street market) and Bao (steamed buns) as great single-item examples. I think Id personally like to explore this area, she adds, having just dropped the bomb that there most likely wont be a Dillisk 2016.

4 Fat of the land

Fat is back and butter is the reclaimed Queen of the Dairy. And who does butter better than we Irish? Chefs are taking advantage of all that rain and grass with dishes that celebrate our milk and cream.

Theyre churning their own butter, like Barry Fitzgerald at Bastible, whose menu might also feature milk curd dumplings, smoked ricotta, or truffled creme fraiche for the house chips. And a cows not just for cream, you know. Indigenous breeds are making a comeback with the likes of Dexter and Glenarm Shorthorn being so hot right now.

5 Chucks back

Crispy chicken skin is de rigueur, while wings are getting a going over. Londons Smoking Goat and Portlands Pok Pok pimp theirs with fish sauce for extra umami-whammy. Glasnevins The Washerwoman offer Washerwings, a three-way choice between classic Buffalo, Washerwoman BBQ or Chipotle Ketchup-style, each served with Young Bucks blue raw-milk cheese dip.

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The Washerwoman Restaurant in Glasnevin

6 Ethnic reboot

With John Farrell, chef Karl Whelan and music guru Will Dempsey off to Hong Kong to research their new contemporary Chinese juke joint (which Farrell is designing for owners Dempsey and Whelan), were set to see ethnic being re-mapped.

Farrell describes the yet-to-be-named Camden Street eatery as contemporary Chinese, an homage to Hong Kong with an emphasis on duck. Further up the road, chef Sunil Ghai of Ananda fame opens Pickle in the new year, focusing on regional northern Indian cuisines and eschewing prime cuts for rustic ingredients.

7 Here, fishy fishy

Once there was none and now theyre everywhere. Seafood eateries, that is. But its not just Dubliners who think fish is suddenly sexy. Berkeley Squares preposterous Sexy Fish was the hottest thing to hit Mayfair this year. Next month, The Cliff Townhouses initiative called Heres A Fish You Should Meet, featuring daily special lesser-ordered lovelies such as coley, dory or pickled herrings.

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The Clifftownhouse

8 Preservations Sake

Smoking, fermenting, pickling, brining, curing  all these age-old ways of making food last longer often make food taste better too. And chefs love making food taste better.

Simple infusions can stretch out seasonal flavours, while the lighter touch of marinating may not preserve so much as transform  think raw fish as reconfigured in poke, an on-trend Hawaiian-style ceviche.

Expect a further embracing of these age-old arts, with a particular scope for non-alcoholic fermented drinks such as kombucha and kefir to become the new cold-pressed juice (as per The Fumballys lead).

9 Super Sprouts

We all want to eat well. And we all want to live well. Cant we do both? asks almost everyone these days, and daytime

Hotspots Counter Culture, Cocu and Sprout & Co are answering with clever takes on clean food.

Besides their cold-pressed juices, Sprout & Co offer chia porridge, various veg-tastic salads and build-your-own protein boxes (the new sandwich). Theres kale too, natch

.

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Cocu Kitchen

10 And to drink?

Murphys old-school gastropub Legal Eagle will have an unprecedented whiskey bar with people able to keep and mark their own bottles, with which to wash down all sorts of fare, from devilled kidneys and jugged hare to hefty salads and soul-food sambos.
An annual survey of the worlds biggest airlines has revealed those with the worst safety records.

AirlineRatings.com examined audits from aviation governing bodies and lead associations, as well as government audits and fatality records for each airline. It also looked at airlines' operational histories, incident records and operational excellence.

The website provided safety ratings for 407 airlines, awarding them up to seven stars. Of those, 148 were given the top rating, while almost 50 had just three stars or less.

A total of 10 airlines, all from Nepal, Indonesia or Surinam, qualified for just one or zero stars for 2016:

Batik Air Bluewing Airlines Citilink Kal-Star Aviation Lion Air Sriwijaya Air TransNusa Trigana Air Service Wings Air Xpress Air

The announcement follows a troubling year for aviation that included two significant disasters, both of which reignited debate surrounding issues of security and concerns over pilots mental wellbeing.

On 3 January it was revealed that for the second year running, the main cause of aviation deaths in 2015 was "unlawful interference" - in other words, murder - according to a report by leading air safety firm To70.

The consultancy cited the still-unsolved disappearance of MH370 and MH17 which was shot down over Ukraine in 2015, as well as the Germanwings and Metrojet crashes in the Alps and Sinai respectively.

224 people were killed when the Russian Metrojet Airbus A321-231 broke apart shortly after its departure from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport in Egypt.

In March 2015, a Germanwings Airbus A320-211 crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. It was later revealed that pilot Andreas Lubitz, who had suicidal tendancies, had caused the crash deliberately.

AirlineRatings.com editor Geoffrey Thomas explained that Germanwings has retained its seven star safety rating for 2016 because the incident was caused by pilot suicide.

"In our rating system, which is endorsed by aviations governing body the International Civil Aviation Organisation, if deaths occurred through acts of terrorism, high jacking or pilot suicide, they are not included in the crash record," he said.

Some aviation-safety specialists have questioned the basis for the AirlineRatings survey, because it does not appear to prioritise what many passengers regard as the most significant safety consideration: an airlines track record of flying millions of missions with no loss of life.

By such a measure, the US carrier Southwest is way ahead of all other airlines. It has operated more than 22 million flights and carried 1.5 billion passengers since its foundation in 1971, without a single fatal accident.

The two leading European budget airlines, easyJet and Ryanair, also have fatality-free records, and last year safely flew around 180m passengers between them.

The three carriers from Britain and Ireland included in the AirlineRatings top ten safest low-cost airlines - Aer Lingus, Flybe and Thomas Cook Airlines - carried only about 22m between them.

Malaysia Airlines, struck by two incidents that left all passengers on board dead or missing in 2014, was given five stars out of a possible seven in the ratings: the same as Ryanair and Thomson Airways.

If an airline has a crash that involves the death of a passenger and/or crew members it will automatically lose a star from its safety-rating rankings.

Iraqi Airways was last month banned from operating in EU airspace, due to "unaddressed safety concerns", and has been given two-star safety rating by AirlineRatings.com.

Thailands aviation industry was placed under "special measures" in 2015 after issues were flagged by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Carriers including Thai Airways, which was awarded four out of seven stars for safety, were spared being placed on the EU blacklist.

Officials said they would "closely monitor future developments" and would consider bans if air passenger safety was deemed to be at risk.

( Independent News Service)
Premium

John Downing Opinion Last time the Tories diced with economic disaster it took them another 18 years to win an election

I was listening to the young woman from the Daily Mail trying to recruit a gang of reporters to club together and hire an aeroplane to fly back to Brussels. She got an enthusiastic response from another British colleague who was celebrated for lavishly spending his employers funds.
As the pages turn to 2016 and the US presidential election looms, it is time to handicap the field of Republican and Democratic runners.

After all the pre-race hoopla, they are ready for the starting gate less than a month from now in Iowa, on February 1, for the most important race on earth.

While it all might seem confusing, by March 2 after Super Tuesday and 12 states have voted, I believe we will know who the two squaring off for the White House will be.

Then all eyes will focus on July 18 in Cleveland, when the Republican convention is held, followed by the Democratic one on July 25 in Philadelphia.

Here are the runners and riders and their chances of success.

REPUBLICANS

Donald Trump

The big talking horse is Donald Trump - in fact, this horse never shuts up and, worse, the media cannot get enough of him because their ratings grow markedly like Pinocchio's nose whenever he shows up and mouths more exaggerations.

If this were a running of the mouth, Donald would win by a furlong as he discusses everything from female bathroom habits to Bill Clinton's sex life. But as the year goes on, the stalking horses will begin to close in.

Watch out for March 1, Super Tuesday, when 12 states decide the race. My tip is Trump will become an also-ran at that point.

Presidential Odds: 9/2

Republican nomination: 3/1

Ted Cruz

The ultimate dark horse, a Canadian-born candidate who says he's Cuban - even though he's half Irish. He has settled comfortably in the Trump slipstream waiting for the front runner to falter

Arrogant Cruz is almost as hated by his own party as he is by Democrats. His Harvard roommate said he'd rather pick someone out of the phone book. Yet he has run the cleverest race of all, sneaking up on the outside on Trump. The Republican winner, I suspect.

Presidential Odds: 3/1

Republican Nomination: 7/4

Marco Rubio

The show horse. Elegant, great-looking, JFK aura but so far surpassed by Cruz after a muddled start where he lost several lengths. He thought he was fighting Jeb Bush for the nomination but Trump streaked ahead.

He can still make up the ground but he needs a breakthrough with less than a month to go.

Presidential Nomination: 8/1 Republican Nomination: 5/1

Ben Carson

Needs a visit to the vet right now, suffering from wounded pride after being an early front runner.

This former neurosurgeon was once right up there with Trump but GOP voters were much more unforgiving of his gaffes than Trump's. He made a major error with his statement that China was fighting in Syria. His campaign is likely to be pulled up.

Presidential Odds: 9/1

Republican Nomination: 7/1

Jeb Bush

Morning Glory - a horse who shows great form in the morning but can't reproduce when the real race begins. He utterly misjudged the anger and hate on the GOP side. He is a decent politician who was a well-liked governor of Florida and raised $100m, but he didn't scare the opposition off. He acts like he has been gelded in clashes with Trump, which he invariably loses. Still not totally out of it.

Presidential Odds: 10/1

Republican Nomination: 7/1

Chris Christie

As Governor of New Jersey, he spent too long fattening up in the paddock before entering the race. Could possibly catch on with a surprise result in New Hampshire - but it seems unlikely.

Presidential Odds: 12/1

Republican Nomination: 8/1

John Kasich

A very likely VP candidate, as he is governor of Ohio, the most key swing state of all. A horse of a different colour, as he is a moderate, which dooms him as nomination winner.

Presidential Odds: 20/1

Republican Nomination: 10/1

Nags, also-rans, all 500/1

Mike Huckabee, an elderly nag who has the chance of a donkey in the Epsom Derby. Carly Fiorina is the only filly, but I suspect she is as off-putting as Margaret Thatcher to many with her high horse act. Then there is Rand Paul, the eye surgeon who can't see the reality that he's hopelessly behind and Rick Santorum, the perennial Paddy last runner hovering around the 1pc mark.

DEMOCRATIC RACE

Hillary Clinton: A well-bred filly from a famous political family looking to make history by beating the colts.

History says no, but she is the stand-out in a very weak Democratic field of opponents.

Trump has carried the Republican runners so far to the right that she has a huge gap to exploit along the rail.

She has a history of making mistakes, however, and must keep her campaign gaffe-free if she is to triumph.

Expect her to face Cruz in the presidential election and win - but not by much.

Presidential Odds 1/2

Democratic Nomination 1/20

Bernie Sanders

This veteran - who is outclassed but tough and a hard battler who won't go down without a fight - might win an early state.

But he has no hope when the contest goes to the black and Latino rich voting states.

Presidential Odds 15/1

Democratic Nomination 10/1

Martin O'Malley

Looks and acts the part, with that Irish JFK aura, but he has failed to figure and has fallen too far behind.

Presidential Odds 150/1

Democratic Nomination 50/1
The unwelcome Christmas visitors returned. We were caught on the hop again. They kicked up a storm and left the place in a mess, just like the last time. You'd think we'd have learnt our lesson; every winter they swing by. Clodagh, Desmond, Eva and Frank arrived in quick succession.

There was no time to clean up after Abigail and Barney. Now stay the hell away Gertrude, we're not ready for you, either.

The blame game for the flooding is well documented by now - years of inertia, bad planning, departmental incompetence and climate change. But let's face it, we can't control rainfall and the annual deluges are no longer an exception.

The relentless storms are to be expected and we have to face the reality that climate change is going to play havoc with our built environment.

Flooding destroys businesses and homes, causing massive losses to insurance companies.

Which means it is imperative that the insurance industry and government agencies lead the way on preventive action, through research, funding and implementation.

More obvious than ever is the fact that we need a dedicated flood defence force, not just a national co-ordination group and the Civil Defence to come out and mop up the flood water.

A flood defence force should be a national institution, without political interference.

Our geographical location puts us in the frontline for the onslaught of Atlantic storms.

There is EU funding to help us to deal with this hazard. But at the rate government departments change and national agencies compete, the cohesion required to override competing interests has never been in place.

If we are serious about dealing with the abominable damage for thousands of people across the country, then competing interests must co-operate with a new flood defence force.

Some water courses fall within the jurisdictions of two county councils. And then there's the interests of Inland Fisheries Ireland, ESB, Inland Waterways Ireland, Coillte, Irish Water, special areas of conservation and private ownership to be taken into account.

Dredging, widening, planting, damming, re-settling, funding sources - all will be contentious, but each solution must be addressed based on the balance of convenience. There is a case that the ESB could take Ardnacrusha off the grid for three months of the year and release the dam waters intermittently rather than waiting for the overflow at Parteen Weir and its consequent impact on local villages.

It won't be easy overcoming the mass of litigation that arises with anything to do with land ownership in Ireland, but if compulsory purchase orders can be made for roadways and pylons, they can be made for flood prevention and the greater common good.

The widening of water courses in certain parts of the country would mean farmers have to yield up some river banks.

The consolidation of river banks could be improved by tree planting.

Given the frequency of severe weather and the scale of the devastation, it is quite clear that we need one national flood institution.

In the boom, our topography changed dramatically. The motorway system across the island has created thousands of acres of new uplands. However small the gradient, it still means a faster roll-off of water into culverts, deepening gulches and causing flooding of the rivers close to low-lying farms and houses.

As I drove to Stonyford in Kilkenny on New Year's Eve, surface water had built up on the motorway, but the streets of the picturesque villages of Graiguenamanagh, Inistioge and Bennettsbridge were like canoeing courses. So, an obvious source of funding for any flood defence force should be from road tolls. We have the expertise for flood management in bucket loads. Dr Michael Hartnett, an engineer at the Environmental Change Institute at NUI, Galway, has developed a flood model which can pinpoint the degree of flooding and when it will occur.

From a local area planning viewpoint, the model can predict the flow and velocity of floods and determine where sea walls and embankments are best deployed.

His model can give vital information on flood scenarios and the areas and specific times that are likely to be affected.

It can show individual streets and can identify houses that should be evacuated first.

Which is all very well for existing towns and villages, but for the one-off houses affected, some assistance in rebuilding on elevated ground or an elevated design, may be the solution.

Unfortunately, the cost of flood defence in smaller localities far outweighs the cost of re-locating individuals to safer ground. Extreme measures have been taken in the Netherlands, where small settlements have been moved to safer ground.

This will all be forgotten in a month when the election posters and promises stack up. But the unwelcome guests will return and whatever government leads the country into Easter 2016, it must be one that is committed to real national interests.

Deirdre Conroy is an urban and building conservation specialist Twitter @DeirdreConroyIE
Do we stay or do we go in 2016? The question is being asked by even the well-travelled, which includes the majority of Irish people.

It is a confusing time, as our most familiar travel destinations come under attack or under lockdown - London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels, Hanover and Munich - all in recent weeks.

A Russian plane was suspiciously lost in Egypt last October, and an Air Malaysia jet was shot down over Ukraine in 2014.

Both tragedies raise new questions on the old subject - whether it is safe to travel by air. Tunisia, where Lorna Carty and Martina and Laurence Hayes were killed on a terrible day in Sousse, is closed for business. Flights to Egypt are suspended until at least May.

A bomb was smuggled on board an aircraft in Turkey, where 112,000 Irish go each year. And it all happened when it appeared that, finally, the risk had been taken out of travel.

Sometime when we weren't looking, government departments took over the job of deciding where tourists could go and when.

Airlines decided which air space they could and couldn't fly over.

They told us they erred on the side of caution.

And so we thought, until things went horribly wrong - as they did in Sousse in June. Some things have changed in the world of travel, but not that many. People who love travel will continue to travel.

They will take the little risks that all travel entails, venturing outside their comfort zone, exploring and sampling the unfamiliar.

All travel is risky, but there are ways we can make sure it is not unnecessarily so.

Stay up to date. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) website, www.dfa.ie, contains the latest Government advice provided by Irish ambassadors around the world and it is updated daily. Keep your travel options open for last-minute changes. Be prepared to avoid particular regions.

Let people know where you are and stay connected. The DFA has a registration facility for travellers, even to places not regarded as at-risk. Check out locations where there is free wifi before you go.

Use apps for free messaging, such as Viber, Skype or Tango. Have digital copies of your passport, credit card and travel insurance where you can access them. Make sure your travel insurance doesn't have restrictions, and bring your European Health Insurance Card if you are travelling in Europe.

Respect the locals. Dress down, wear the headscarf to the temple, church or mosque. Follow your instinct. Make sure it feels right. Travel where you are comfortable. Avoid public transport if the city daunts you. If language is a problem, factor that in.

Places that are on high alert with lots of armed soldiers can be reassuring for some, but scary for others.

Is your destination a place where women or minorities are not treated with enough respect? Is there an Irish embassy or consulate (or an EU one) you can turn to?

Evaluate the risk. Remember that 200 Irish people die abroad each year, mainly from the same things that kill them at home - drowning, road accidents and, most of all, the heart conditions they bring with them. Weigh up the risk versus the reward. Consider facts rather than opinions.

Be aware of who is talking up danger, and question their agenda. Be wary of fear-mongers. Alarmists, not militants, will cause most trouble for the world in travel in 2016.

If things go wrong, have a plan B.

Finally, keep travelling. Travel opens the minds of those who travel and also those who meet them along the way. If we stop seeking the fun and the joy that travel brings, who wins?
Details about a committees recommendation to build a new high school and renovate other school buildings will be presented to the Chippewa Falls School Board during a 6 p.m. Tuesday meeting.

The session will be in the choir room of Chippewa Falls Senior High School, 735 Terrill St. The meeting location has been switched from the Administration Building at 1130 Miles St. to allow for more people to attend.

An agenda for the session says the board will discuss the future direction of the district after hearing more about the Facilities Planning Committees recommendation. There is no item on the agenda for this meeting where the public could speak about the proposal.

Besides a new high school, the recommendations include:

Shifting grades 6-8 from the middle school to the current high school building.

Converting the middle school into an intermediate school for district students in grades 4-5.

Closing two elementary schools, likely the districts oldest schools, Stillson and Hillcrest.

And fixing up the rest of the school buildings.

If passed, a $167 million school referendum would be the largest of any in Wisconsin in the past 20 years, according to Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction data.

The school district is currently debt free, according to Twin Cities architectural firm ATS&R, which was hired by the district to examine the condition of school district buildings.

The district then formed a 35-member Facilities Committee, made up of representatives of the community and school district. That committee held five meetings, and recommended the plan detailed above and an April referendum date.

One of the options the committee looked at was repairing all of the school district buildings and to build additions as needed. The price tag for that option was estimated at $140 million.
Jennifer Lawrence arrives to "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" at Ed Sullivan Theater on December 14, 2015 in New York City.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence hugs mother Karen Lawrence after winning the Best Actress award for "Silver Linings Playbook" during the Oscars held at the Dolby Theatre on February 24, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Actress Jennifer Lawrence attends the "Joy" New York premiere at Ziegfeld Theater on December 13, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)

Jennifer Lawrence has spoken candidly in support of Planned Parenthood.

The Oscar-winning actress features on the cover of Glamour magazine and the interview took place in December, the same day as a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, where she discussed her friendship with comedian Amy Schumer.

Amys the most empathetic person Ive ever met in my life. When she came over this morning, she was crying. She had justseen the news about the shooting at Planned Parenthood," she told the magazine.

"Its so awful.It isnt an attack on abortions; its an attack on women. Because Planned Parenthood is so much more [than abortion]. My mom was really religious with me when I was young. Shes not so much anymore. And I wouldnt have been able to get birth control if it werent for Planned P.

Expand Close Jennifer Lawrence arrives to "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" at Ed Sullivan Theater on December 14, 2015 in New York City. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Jennifer Lawrence arrives to "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" at Ed Sullivan Theater on December 14, 2015 in New York City.

"I wouldnt have been able to get condoms and birth control and all these things I needed as a normal teenager who was growing up in a Jesus house.

Read More

When asked about her own experiences with the women's health clinic, J-Law responded: "Yes, I did. And now [gestures widely] I am a successful woman who has not had a pregnancy....But seriously. What harm comes from supplying people with birth control, condoms, Pap smears, and cancer screenings?"

Lawrence, who is currently promoting her latest film Joy, further elaborated on her previous comments describing the leaking of her private nude photos as a "sex crime".

Expand Close Actress Jennifer Lawrence hugs mother Karen Lawrence after winning the Best Actress award for "Silver Linings Playbook" during the Oscars held at the Dolby Theatre on February 24, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Actress Jennifer Lawrence hugs mother Karen Lawrence after winning the Best Actress award for "Silver Linings Playbook" during the Oscars held at the Dolby Theatre on February 24, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

If I was quiet, it would have seemed like I was ashamed," she explained. "And I wasnt ashamed; I was enraged. Not once have I felt like I learned a lesson. I didnt do anything wrong! Even Ive defended myself by saying I was in a relationship with a wonderful man for five years. But even if I wasnt, even if I [just] went on a date with a guy  it doesnt matter what the situation is. Its your body. And you can do whatever you want.
Television personality Scott Disick hosts a New Year's Eve celebration at 1 OAK Nightclub at The Mirage Hotel & Casino

Kourtney Kardashian arrives at WWD And Variety Inaugural Stylemakers' Event at Smashbox Studios on November 19, 2015 in Culver City, California.

Newly single Scott Disick might already be back off the market.

The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star (32) who, on Sunday night's show, spoke of his emotional turmoil since splitting with girlfriend of nine years Kourtney Kardashian (36), is reportedly dating a model.

While viewers saw a distraught Scott speak to Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Kris Jenner about his depression since their summer break-up, it has emerged that he is in the early stages of a romance with Swedish model Lina Sandberg,

"He's seen her a few times in L.A. and thinks she's really hot," an insider told Us Weekly. "He's definitely interested and seeing where it goes."

Expand Close Television personality Scott Disick hosts a New Year's Eve celebration at 1 OAK Nightclub at The Mirage Hotel & Casino / Facebook

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Whatsapp Television personality Scott Disick hosts a New Year's Eve celebration at 1 OAK Nightclub at The Mirage Hotel & Casino

Although Kourtney, who has three children with Scott - Mason (five), Penelope (three) and Reign (12 months), hasn't been sitting at home waiting by the phone and was recently linked to Justin Bieber.

Read More

The pair recently fell out over the father-of-three's decision to spend New Year's Eve in Las Vegas, two months after a stint in rehab.

Kourtneys really p**sed off about it, an insider told New York Daily News Confidential.

Expand Close Scott Disick's rumoured girlfriend Lina Sandberg / Facebook

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Whatsapp Scott Disick's rumoured girlfriend Lina Sandberg

She said to Scott, Youre begging me to come back, but then youre doing this appearance - youre never going to change.

Scott says its just business, he needs the money and promises he wont drink but Kourtney isnt buying it. She wants him to find something else to do businesswise that doesnt involve being in nightclubs all night around booze and girls.

Video of the Day
Demonstrators take part in a rally to demand sensible gun laws in front of the White House, as US President Barack Obama was expected to announce measures aimed at curbing gun violence. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

US President Barack Obama began the new year with gun control at the top of his domestic agenda.

He spent yesterday preparing a set of new executive actions tightening laws, kicking off his final year in office with a clear signal that he intends to tackle one of the country's most intractable issues.

At a meeting with top law enforcement officials, Mr Obama signed off on a package of proposals aimed at curbing gun violence and cracking down on unregulated gun sales.

The president has been looking for ways to work around a Republican-led Congress that has blocked his previous efforts to tighten gun laws in the wake of mass shootings. Mr Obama has accused Republicans - and some Democrats - of being beholden to the powerful gun industry lobby and opposing some measures he says a majority of Americans support, including expanded background checks on gun sales.

But the issue of gun control bitterly divides Americans, with many viewing any attempt to regulate firearms as a possible infringement on their constitutional rights to own guns.

At the top of Mr Obama's list is an effort to expand background checks on gun sales by forcing more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers.

The changes would be aimed at some unregistered sellers who skirt the background-check laws by selling at gun shows, online or in informal settings. Other moves being considered include improving reporting of lost and stolen weapons and beefing up inspections of licensed dealers, according to a person familiar with the plans who did not want to be named.

The package includes measures this White House has long considered but not completed, as it was mindful of the legal fight sure to follow as well as the potential for political backlash for some fellow Democrats.

But after a steady string of mass shootings and with the clock on his tenure ticking down, Mr Obama appears ready to push further than he has in the past.

"We definitely think there are things he can do," said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates expanding background checks. Mr Gross says his recent conversations with White House aides have left him hopeful.

After all but ignoring the issue in his first term, Mr Obama changed course after the December 2012 shooting that killed 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. The US president failed to push a package of gun measures through Congress, including one expanding background checks.

At the same time, Mr Obama took nearly two dozen executive actions to tighten gun laws, but left a major expansion of background checks out of the mix.

But after the shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon in October, Mr Obama ordered his staff to redouble the effort to look for ways to work around Congress.

On Thursday, Mr Obama will take his argument to prime time, participating in a town hall discussion of gun violence on CNN. He's slated to make his case for changes in his State of the Union address on January 12.

Mr Obama's plans immediately set off a political debate on the presidential campaign trail.

Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has already proposed an executive action to close the gun show loophole, welcomed Mr Obama's plans.

"I am absolutely convinced we can have gun safety measures consistent with the Constitution," she said. "I will take on that fight."

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said: "I don't like changing anything ... Right now, they have plenty of rules and regulations."

Republican candidates rejected the proposals, including those who had backed some gun control measures in the past.
MPs are to debate calls for US presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be banned from Britain after his controversial comments about Muslims.

The Commons Petitions Committee has scheduled a session in Westminster Hall on January 18 after 570,000 people signed a petition demanding the billionaire businessman be barred.

Politicians will also discuss a separate petition opposing such a ban, even though it only garnered around 40,000 signatures - well below the 100,000 threshold for triggering a debate.

Republican Mr Trump faced an international backlash last month after urging a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on".

Justifying his comments, he claimed there were "places in London and other places that are so radicalised that police are afraid for their own lives".

Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the remarks as "divisive, stupid and wrong" but made clear he did not support banning Mr Trump.

Labour MP Paul Flynn, a member of the committee, will lead the parliamentary debate.

Chairwoman Helen Jones said: "By scheduling a debate on these petitions, the committee is not expressing a view on whether or not the Government should exclude Donald Trump from the UK. As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the committee has decided that the subject should be debated.

"A debate will allow a range of views to be expressed."
A U.S. Marine's final Facebook post has gone viral after he was killed in a by a drunk driver on New Year's Eve.

Writing on his Facebook page, Matthew DeRemer(31) wrote about "meditating through" all that happened in 2015 and looking forward to 2016.

The image reads "We are born in one day, we die in one day, we can change in one day".

"Anything can happen in just one day".

In the caption, he wrote "I look back at 2015's huge challenges that I've overcome, shared with others, and have once again found myself".

"To say thank you and BRING ON 2016!"

"I really don't know where I'll end up tonight but I do know where I windup is where I'm meant to be".

DeRemer was killed on New Year's Eve in a road accident. The Tampa Bay Times reports that he was driving a motorcycle when he was struck by a drunk driver and died on the scene in Largo, Florida.

Last day of 2015!!!! For me I'll be meditating through all I do, on this entire year. I've lost, I've gained, family is... Posted by Matthew DeRemer on Thursday, December 31, 2015

He was an Iraq war veteran. Driver Steven Lee Clarke (50) was arrested and could face a felony charge of DUI manslaughter.

The post has been shared by over 8,000 people and liked by almost 25,000 since his friends began to share his poignant final message.

One wrote "What a peace you can have knowing without a doubt that Heaven is his home now forever".

A group of his friends and family gathered to remember him last Sunday, placing mini-motorbikes on a cross with his name on it.

Speaking to WTSP, friend Wayne Gutierrez said the vet "touched a lot of people's lives".

"Sometimes those are the ones that are chosen first".
700kg of the drug were found in a truck bound for Malaga

Spanish police have seized 3,000kg of cocaine and arrested 11 people, including Spaniards, Britons and Dutch citizens, they said.

A police statement said 700kg of the drug were found in a truck bound for the southern coastal city of Malaga and the rest in a warehouse in Spain's north-western city of Pontevedra.

The drug was destined for a British drug trafficking gang based in Malaga. The statement said those arrested included two Spaniards, two Dutch traffickers and seven Britons.

The operation was wrapped up on December 14. The police statement said police also seized more than one million euro (730,000) and a handgun.

The statement said it was the biggest drug haul on land in the region in nearly 20 years.
President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House (AP)

His cheek wet with tears, US president Barack Obama recalled the 20 children killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School (AP)

US president Barack Obama was in tears as he unveiled plans to tighten gun control in America, using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he had implored Congress to pass.

Mr Obama accused the gun lobby of having taken Congress hostage, but declared: "They cannot hold America hostage."

He insisted it is possible to uphold the US Second Amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in America that he said had become "the new normal".

The much-debated Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right of US citizens to own firearms.

Mr Obama insisted: "This is not a plot to take away everybody's guns.

"You pass a background check, you purchase a firearm. The problem is, some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules."

Mr Obama's actions ensure that gun rights - one of the most bitterly divisive issues in America - will be at the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign, which begins in earnest next month with the first primary contests.

Accusing Mr Obama of overreaching his responsibilities, many of the Republican presidential candidates have vowed to rip up the new gun restrictions upon taking office.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said she was proud of Mr Obama's efforts and promised she would safeguard them.

The US president wiped tears away as he recalled the 20 young children killed in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

He paid tribute to the parents - some of whom were present for the announcement - who he said had never imagined their child's life would be cut short by a bullet.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Mr Obama said.

At the centrepiece of Mr Obama's plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks.

Under current law, only federally-licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.

Aiming to close that loophole, the US Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is issuing updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone "in the business" of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns.

The government will also consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those weapons are sold for a profit.

The White House also put sellers on notice that the administration planned to strengthen enforcement - including deploying 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks for gun purchases, but are more divided on the broader question of stricter gun laws.

About a third of Americans live in a household where at least one person owns a gun. Particularly in rural areas where firearms are a way of life, many citizens do not believe gun laws should be tightened.

The reverse is true in urban areas, where majorities want more thorough firearm regulations.

Had the rules been in place in the past, the steps would not likely have prevented any of the recent mass shootings that have garnered national attention. The Obama administration acknowledged it could not quantify how many gun sales would be newly subjected to background checks, nor how many currently unregistered gun sellers would have to obtain a licence.

Responding to that critique, Mr Obama said every time the issue is debated, gun rights groups argue the steps would not necessarily have stopped the last massacre, "so why bother trying?"

"I reject that thinking," he said, arguing it would be worth it if the measures prevented even a single gun death.

"We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some."

To lend a personal face to the issue, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans whose lives were altered by recent gun tragedies, including former representative Gabrielle Giffords and relatives of victims from Charleston, South Carolina and Virginia Tech.

Mark Barden, whose son was shot dead at Sandy Hook, introduced the president with a declaration that "we are better than this".

After Newtown, Mr Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks.

When that effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president's powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

But a more recent spate of gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, have spurred the administration to give the issue another look, as Mr Obama seeks to make good on a policy issue he has pushed time and again but has not advanced - until now.
Simon Lewis who died when the Daihatsu Sirion that he was driving was in collision with a blue Peugeot 307 as it travelled along Lamby Way in Cardiff on New Year's Eve

A baby born born prematurely following a car crash which killed his father has also died, police have said.

Simon Lewis, 33, from Trowbridge, Cardiff, died on New Year's Eve when his family car collided with another vehicle.

Also inside as passengers were Mr Lewis' pregnant wife Amanda and their three-year-old daughter Summer.

Following doctors' concerns the couple's unborn baby was in distress as a result of the collision, he was born by emergency Caesarean Section at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, on Sunday morning.

South Wales Police have now revealed that the child died in hospital later that same day.

A force spokeswoman said: "Amanda has requested that her family have privacy while they deal with this further devastating loss.

"In the meantime, we are continuing their appeal for any witnesses to the collision to come forward."

Detectives were called to the crash at approximately 5.30pm on Thursday December 31, about a quarter of a mile east of the Rover Way roundabout.

Two cars were involved - the Lewis family's Daihatsu Sirion and a blue Peugeot 307. The driver of the Peugeot was taken to the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.

Police said he is still being treated for non life-threatening injuries.
Denmark and Sweden have tightened their borders in efforts to stem the flow of migrants entering Scandinavia from Germany.

Just hours after Swedish rules went into effect requiring train passengers travelling from Denmark to show identification, the Danish government announced it had beefed up controls on its border with Germany.

"We are introducing temporary border controls, but in a balanced way," Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told reporters, adding there would be no problem for "ordinary" Danes and Germans to cross the border.

The moves were the latest by European Union countries to suspend an agreement to keep internal borders open after a million migrants entered the 28-nation bloc in 2015, most of them by crossing the Mediterranean to Greece or Italy.

"If the European Union cannot protect the external border, you will see more and more countries forced to introduce temporary border controls," Mr Loekke Rasmussen said.

He said the Danish move was in response to new identification checks introduced by Sweden on Monday for all passengers entering the country by train, bus or ferry: "This could lead to more refugees and migrants being stopped on their journey northward, and therefore ending up with us in Denmark," he said.

His government has taken a series of measures to discourage migrants from coming to Denmark, including a proposal to seize their jewellery to cover their expenses.

The Swedish government initially had a welcoming attitude to migrants, but reversed course after more than 160,000 Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others applied for asylum in 2015.

To comply with the new Swedish rules, passengers are having to show identification to board trains departing from Copenhagen Airport to Sweden across a bridge-and-tunnel link.

Danish officials have criticised the move and suggested Sweden should pay for the cost of the checks.

Mr Loekke Rasmussen called the Swedish move a "big setback" for efforts to deepen ties between Copenhagen and southern Sweden and predicted it would cause problems for commuters.

He stressed that the Danish checks on the German border would not be as far-reaching. They would entail "spot checks" on passengers on trains crossing the mainland border on the Jutland peninsula and on ferries arriving in the Danish ports of Gedser and Roedby.

German officials have not commented directly on the Danish decision, but Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Mr Loekke Rasmussen had spoken with the German leader.

Germany introduced border controls on its Austrian frontier in September and Mr Seibert said those have been successful - "but it is clear to all of us in Europe ... that we need an overall European solution."
Laura Davies, 21, who died after being found with stab wounds near the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society Base in Basildon, Essex

A jealous man stabbed his girlfriend more than 80 times after she tried to end their relationship, a court has heard.

Laura Davies, 21, died after the alleged attack near the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society base in Basildon, Essex, where she lived and worked as a groom.

Chelmsford Crown Court was told the attack was so forceful that the knife used was left badly bent.

Jordan Taylor, 22, of Basildon, is standing trial after pleading not guilty to murder.

Prosecutor Peter Gair said: "We say her life was taken by this man during a sustained and brutal attack with a knife.

"That attack was as a direct result of her telling the defendant that their relationship was over.

"Whether it was motivated by jealousy or anger or a mixture of both and other emotions, he exacted a terrible revenge on her which caused her to die at the scene."

On the night of her death, Miss Davies had cooked a meal for them both at the flat they shared at the sanctuary.

She had decided earlier that day to end the relationship but to let him continuing living at the flat as she did not want to make him homeless.

Police later found plates of uneaten food on the kitchen table, suggesting events had escalated quickly.

Mr Gair told jurors that Taylor initially attacked her in the flat. She fled outside in her pyjamas but he chased after her and killed her in an area known as the Wishing Well before dragging her body to some nearby bushes.

Pathologist Benjamin Swift said a post-mortem examination found she had suffered at least 80 stab wounds. There were also signs she had been stuck all over her body.

"She suffered defensive wounds, suggesting she had been fighting for her life," Mr Gair said.

Witness Bruce Sequin arrived at the sanctuary to see a man holding a knife standing over a woman's body and making downward stabbing motions.

He raised the alarm and when police arrived they found Taylor covered in blood.

Officers rushed to help Miss Davies and she gasped 'help" before losing the strength to speak, Mr Gair said.

In the months before the killing, friends had become concerned about the couple's relationship, the court heard.

Mr Gair said: "You will hear evidence that he would take umbrage at her working with other young men and displayed a controlling nature, telling her for example what she could and could not wear.

"By the summer she had become quiet and subdued. It's clear that, towards the end of the relationship, it was not happy."

The case continues.
Sian Blake has gone missing from Erith, Kent, with her children

Murder squad detectives are searching for the boyfriend of an ex-EastEnders actress after three bodies were found by police looking for the performer and her two children.

Shocked neighbours of Sian Blake, 43, who played Frankie Pierre in the hit soap, broke down in tears after the devastating discovery in the garden of her home in Erith, Kent.

She vanished with her sons Zachary, eight, and Amon, four, in east London on December 13. Three days later, police interviewed her partner, the children's father Arthur Simpson-Kent, 48, at the family home, before he also disappeared.

Officers made the grim discovery today and launched a murder inquiry.

Speaking outside Scotland Yard, Detective Superintendent Paul Monk said: "Sadly today we found three bodies in the back garden of their home address and as such, this is now a murder investigation.

"Formal identification has yet to take place, it's too early to speculate but of course the family has been told and this is obviously a very difficult time for them.

"Our efforts are continuing to find Arthur Simpson-Kent. Our appeal is to anyone who may know his current whereabouts or can assist us in finding him - we do need to speak to him as a matter of urgency."

Former actress Ms Blake had motor neurone disease - a fatal, rapidly progressing disease that affects the brain and spinal cord - and was reportedly looking "very frail" before she vanished.

She and her children were last seen in Waltham Forest, east London, on December 13, and her silver-beige Renault Scenic was found in Calvert Avenue in Bethnal Green, east London, on January 3, but it is not known who parked it there.

Yesterday Scotland Yard confirmed that the murder squad had taken over the investigation, three weeks after she and her children went missing.

Next-door neighbour Sam Sanni-Alashe was in tears over the news. He said: "I am in shock, I can't talk. It is really hurtful. I know the lady. I see the children playing at the back. I say hello all the time. We are not close but she was a very happy woman.

"This is a disaster and it is awful for the community. I can see everything in the garden but these last few days I have chosen not to look. When my son finds out, he will be terrified."

Another neighbour Hannah Cutting, 18, said: "I would see the kids playing at the window, then we were worried when police were there 24/7.

"It's awful just to think that something can happen on your doorstep and you see people and you have no idea what's going on."

A 30-year-old woman living nearby who knew Ms Blake, tearfully said: "She was a lovely, caring lady and we didn't know anything about her being in EastEnders. She was just the sign language tutor with her two boys.

"I just feel really upset because I imagine that house and I just see those boys playing about and getting in the car. I was hoping she was just hiding away to have her last Christmas.

"I knew she was ill but we didn't know with what. I wish I had been a better neighbour. I'm devastated."

Previously an unknown actress, Ms Blake's big break came when she was introduced as soul singer Frankie in EastEnders in June 1996 by series producer Jane Harris.

Her storylines saw her character frequently pursuing attached men and succeeding in breaking up the marriage of Alan and Carol Jackson, played by Howard Antony and Lindsey Coulson.

According to IMDB, Blake was on the show for 56 episodes in total, reportedly quitting in 1997 because of hostility from viewers towards her manipulative character.

Other contemporaries during her time on the BBC soap included Patsy Palmer and Dean Gaffney - who played Alan's step-children Bianca and Robbie - as well as Michael French (David Wicks) and Sylvester Williams (Mick McFarlane).

The actress also appeared in episodes of The Bill, Casualty, Doctors and Skins.

Police are still searching Sian Blake's house and have removed several bags of numbered evidence. Police guards have been on duty at both the front and back of the house all day.

The search for clues at Ms Blake's house has finished for the day.

A police officer told the Press Association the house will be guarded overnight and the search will resume in the morning.
Embattled MP Simon Danczuk has dismissed suggestions he is not fit to remain as an MP, after a wave of criticism over lewd texts he sent to a teenage girl.

The 49-year-old Rochdale representative has blamed a "drink problem" for the sexually-explicit messages he sent to Sophena Houlihan when she was 17.

He has been suspended from the Labour Party while an investigation takes place into his conduct, for which he has apologised "unreservedly".

Emerging from his constituency office, where protesters have gathered, Mr Danczuk insisted allegations by ex-partners about his behaviour were irrelevant.

"It is not for ex-girlfriends or ex-wives to determine who the MP for Rochdale is. It is for the residents of Rochdale to determine who the MP for Rochdale is," he told reporters.

"I have been very clear about what issues I have addressed personally and I will continue to do so."

Mr Danczuk said he was planning to carry out visits in his constituency and "have a chat about it".

He said he was being "lambasted" for being a working class Boris Johnson as he vowed to carry on as Rochdale MP.

The embattled politician compared his treatment in the media to that of the London mayor, as he dismissed a small protest outside his constituency office as a "rag tag" bunch of political opponents.

Explicit

He has blamed a "drink problem" for his tangled personal life, resulting in the sexually-explicit messages he sent to Ms Houlihan when she was 17.

Yesterday, Mr Danczuk said: "I do think there is an interesting dichotomy between people like Boris Johnson, who make a lot of money as a member of Parliament and indeed as mayor of London whilst writing for the Daily Telegraph and the right-wing media and who has a very colourful personal life.

"And yet a working class lad like me in Rochdale, who writes for some of the national newspapers and has a working class colourful personal life, I get lambasted, whilst Boris, playing it out with debutantes and all the rest of it in this upper-class world, doesn't get lambasted.

"And I think there is still very much an establishment, class issue going on in terms of, you know, it's a sociological issue is this, about how some of this stuff plays out. I think it's quite interesting."
Child in Isil video has now been identified as Isa Dare, the son of Grace Dare a Jihadi bride from Lewisham

The key suspect in the hunt for the new Jihadi John was able to travel to Syria with his wife and four children under the noses of the security services, despite being on bail for alleged terrorism offences, it has emerged.

The family of British Muslim convert, Siddhartha Dhar, last night admitted that the killer seen shooting a prisoner in the head in the latest Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) video, could be the 32-year-old former bouncy castle salesman from east London.

Both his mother and sister said they had watched the video, released by Isil on Sunday, and noticed similarities between the voice of the masked Jihadi and Dhar.

Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumasayah, was arrested in September 2014 alongside the preacher Anjem Choudary on suspicion of belonging to the banned group Al-Muhajiroun.

Expand Close Jihadi John was killed in November / Facebook

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Whatsapp Jihadi John was killed in November

Choudary will appear in court on suspicion of terror offences next week, but Dhar will not be in the dock alongside him after fleeing Britain.

Just hours after being granted police bail, Dhar caught a bus to Paris with his family and then travelled on to Syria where he joined Isil.

He then taunted the British authorities by boasting of his new life in the Caliphate and posted pictures on Twitter, showing him holding an AK-47 assault rifle in one arm and his baby son on the other.

Voice recognition experts working for the security services were last night understood to be urgently scrutinising the Isil video amid the suggestion that the Islamists voice matched that of Dhar.

Expand Close Child in Isil video has now been identified as Isa Dare, the son of Grace Dare a Jihadi bride from Lewisham / Facebook

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Whatsapp Child in Isil video has now been identified as Isa Dare, the son of Grace Dare a Jihadi bride from Lewisham

Meanwhile in other developments

* A child who also featured in the video was positively identified as the son of Jihadi bride, Grace Dare, from Lewisham, south east London.

* Prime Minister, David Cameron, denounced the video as despicable but said people should watch it to remind themselves of Isil's "ghastly" tactics.

* Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, refused to answer questions about the Isil video.

Meanwhile, footage has emerged showing Dhar speaking positively about Isil and its role in the world on the BBC's Sunday Morning Live in 2014.

Speaking during the programme, which debated why British Muslims were joining the Islamic State, Dhar said: "For 90 years we have been without a caliphate and many of the rules within the Koran cannot be implemented.

"So now that we have this caliphate, I think you [will] see many Muslims globally seeing it as an opportunity for the Koran to be fully realised".

After appearing on the programme, Dhar fled Britain for Syria in September 2014 after he was arrested on suspicion of belonging to the banned group Al-Muhajiroun.

If Dhars identity in the terrorist outrage is confirmed it will lead to uncomfortable questions for the security services, who allowed him to leave the country just hours after the police granted him bail.

Speaking at the family home, his mother Sobita Dhar said she could not rule out that the man in the murderous video was her son.

She said: I heard the voice, yes, but I dont know, Im not sure of the voice. These are the most difficult questions to answer. I just cannot say. Im not sure within myself whether it is the truth or not.

His sister, Konika Dhar, from north London said she did not want to believe that her brother could be responsible for the outrage, but conceded that the voice on the video did sound like him.

She said: I can't believe it. This is just so shocking for me. I don't know what the authorities are doing to confirm the identity, but I need to know if it is.

She said he had converted more than 10 years ago, and her memories of her brother are from when they were children and teenagers.

She said: "He was a very pleasant boy, and I know it may be hard to believe but he still is, and I still believe that he still can be that person."

Dhar, who was brought up a Hindu, ran a firm hiring out bouncy castles, before marrying his Muslim wife Aisha and becoming radicalised.

Former neighbours in Walthamstow, east London, claimed Dhar's wife was more devout than him and suggested she may have put him on the path to extremism.

In the months leading up to his arrest Dhar was accused of burning poppies and calling for the imposition of Sharia law in Britain.

He was a key member of al-Muhajiroun and offshoot groups such as the Shariah Project, masterminding 'roadshows' in London that aimed to recruit troubled youngsters to Islam.

n one interview around that time he said: We believe that whenever the sharia is established, the pure Islamic state maybe in Iraq or Syria, one day the leader will wage jihad and annexe Britain into the Islamic state.

We are not going to forget Europe, we are not going to forget Britain, the armies will be sent here to conquer these lands.

One former neighbour in east London, who asked not to be named, said: He refused to talk to me - he was quite rude. He converted to marry her - it was her family that were more hardcore.

The Isil propaganda video was released on Sunday and showed the murder of five Syrian men, who were accused of spying for the British.

In the gruesome ten and a half minute clip, the men, who are wearing orange jump suits, each confess to passing on information about Isil and its operatives.

The video then show the men kneeling in front of five masked gunmen in a desert landscape, before the British Islamist delivers his rant.

Using rhetoric similar to that Dhar has used in the past, the gunman dismissed Mr Cameron as an imbecile and said the RAF airstrikes would have no impact against the Isil forces.

Despite much of his face being hidden, analysts will be able to glean a huge amount of information, including a possible positive identity from the gunmans distinctive accent, language and tone.

Dr Frederika Holmes, a forensic speech and voice analyst said the sound on the video was of such good quality that experts would be able to compare very accurately against existing audio clips and ought to be able to positively identify the gunman.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at Royal United Services, said the executioner could be from London and well-educated.

He said: He sounds a bit like Abu Rumaysah from Al-Muhajiroun videos. From watching him in Al-Muhajiroun videos and this new video he sounds very similar.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Iranian demonstrators burn representations of the US and Israeli flags in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran (AP)

Iran has expressed "regret" over two attacks on Saudi Arabian diplomatic missions and says it will spare no effort in arresting and prosecuting those responsible.

Iran's United Nations envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said in a letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon that the Islamic Republic "will take necessary measures to prevent the occurrence of similar incidents in the future".

Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran on Sunday after protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashad. The violence stems from Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent opposition Shiite cleric over the weekend, which predominantly Shiite Iran has denounced.

Mr Khoshroo said more than 40 protesters at the embassy have been arrested and handed over to judicial authorities and investigators are seeking other possible perpetrators.

In a letter circulated to all 193 UN member nations, Mr Khoshroo said Iran supports the Vienna conventions on the protection of diplomats and diplomatic property.

The statement came after allies of Saudi Arabia followed the kingdom's lead and scaled back diplomatic ties to Iran.

Sudan and Bahrain said they would sever ties with Tehran, and within hours, the United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticising Iran.

The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a long-time regional rival.

"What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented. It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message," said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University. "This is the Saudis saying, 'There is no limit to how far we will go'."

The stand-off began on Saturday when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges - the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Mr al-Nimr was a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, who long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. By late Sunday, Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdom's cutting of diplomatic ties.
A screen grab taken from undated footage issued by Isil militants shows the murder of men accused of being spies for the UK. Photo: PA

A still from the Isil video of the terrorist with a British accent brandishing a short arm. Photo: PA

The key suspect in the hunt for the new "Jihadi John" travelled to Syria with his wife and four children under the noses of the UK security services, despite being on bail for alleged terrorism offences, it has emerged.

The family of British Muslim convert Siddhartha Dhar said last night that the killer seen shooting a prisoner in the head in the latest Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) video could be the 32-year-old former bouncy castle salesman from east London.

Both Dhar's mother and sister said they had watched the video, released by Isil on Sunday, and noticed similarities between the voice of the masked jihadi and Dhar.

Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumasayah, was arrested in September 2014 alongside the preacher Anjem Choudary on suspicion of belonging to the banned group al-Muhajiroun.

Choudary will appear in court on suspicion of terror offences next week, but Dhar will not be in the dock alongside him after fleeing Britain.

Just hours after being granted police bail, Dhar caught a bus to Paris with his family and then travelled on to Syria, where he joined Isil. He then taunted the British authorities by boasting of his new life in the self-styled caliphate and posted pictures on Twitter, showing him holding an AK-47 assault rifle in one arm and his baby son in the other.

Voice recognition experts working for the British security services were last night urgently scrutinising the Isil video amid the suggestion that the Islamist's voice matched that of Dhar.

Jihadi John, who was later identified as 27-year-old Mohamed Emwazi from London, was killed in a US drone strike last November.

Meanwhile, a child who also featured in the video was positively identified as the son of jihadi bride Grace Dare, from Lewisham, south-east London.

British Prime Minister David Cameron denounced the video as "despicable" but said people should watch it to remind themselves of Isil's "ghastly" tactics.

Outrage

If Dhar's identity in the terrorist outrage is confirmed, it will lead to uncomfortable questions for the British security services, who allowed him to leave the country just hours after the police granted him bail.

Speaking at the family home, his mother, Sobita Dhar, said she could not rule out that the man in the video was her son. She said: "I heard the voice, yes, but I don't know, I'm not sure of the voice. These are the most difficult questions to answer. I just cannot say.

"I'm not sure within myself whether it is the truth or not."

His sister, Konika Dhar, from north London, said she did not want to believe her brother could be responsible for the outrage, but conceded the voice on the video "did sound like him".

She said: "I can't believe it. This is just so shocking for me. I don't know what the authorities are doing to confirm the identity, but I need to know if it is."

She said he had converted more than 10 years ago, and her memories of her brother are from when they were children and teenagers.

She said: "He was a very pleasant boy, and I know it may be hard to believe but he still is, and I still believe that he still can be that person."

She also pleaded with the UK authorities to provide an alternative for those who have been radicalised and travelled abroad, to help them return home.

Ms Dhar said: If it is him, bloody hell, am I shocked? I am going to kill him myself. He is going to come back and I am going to kill him if he has done this.

Dhar, who was brought up a Hindu, ran a firm hiring out bouncy castles, before marrying his Muslim wife Aisha and becoming radicalised.

Former neighbours in Walthamstow, east London, claimed Dhar's wife was more devout than him and suggested she may have put him on the path to extremism.

In the months leading up to his arrest Dhar was accused of burning poppies and calling for the imposition of Sharia law in Britain.

He was an alleged key member of al-Muhajiroun and offshoot groups such as the Shariah Project, masterminding "roadshows" in London that aimed to recruit troubled youngsters to Islam. In one interview around that time, he said: "We believe that whenever the Sharia is established, the pure Islamic state, maybe in Iraq or Syria, one day the leader will wage jihad and annexe Britain into the Islamic state.

"We are not going to forget Europe, we are not going to forget Britain, the armies will be sent here to conquer these lands."

One former neighbour in east London, who asked not to be named, said: "He refused to talk to me - he was quite rude. He converted to marry her - it was her family that were more hardcore."

Gruesome

The Isil propaganda video was released on Sunday and showed the murder of five Syrian men, who were accused of spying for the British.

In the gruesome 10-and-a-half minute clip, the men, who are wearing orange jump suits, each confess to passing on information about Isil and its operatives. The video then shows the men kneeling in front of five masked gunmen in a desert landscape, before an Islamist with a British accent delivers his rant.

Using rhetoric similar to that Dhar has used in the past, the gunman dismissed Mr Cameron as an "imbecile" and said the RAF air strikes would have no impact against the Isil forces.

Dr Frederika Holmes, a forensic speech and voice analyst, said the sound quality would enable a positive identification.

In the video, released on social media, the masked gunman warned Mr Cameron that the West could never win in the war against Isil.

In the footage, the terrorist claims that one day Britain would be invaded, with everyone forced to live under strict Sharia law. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
A screen grab taken from undated footage issued by Isil militants shows the murder of men accused of being spies for the UK. Photo: PA

Bahrain has joined Saudi Arabia in cutting its diplomatic ties with Iran amid rising sectarian tensions sparked by the Saudis' decision to execute a leading Shia cleric.

Minister of Media Affairs Isa al-Hamadi confirmed yesterday morning that the country would follow the lead of Saudi Arabia by stopping all diplomatic relations.

It comes as blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq amid rising sectarian tensions in the region following the execution of the cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Security officials in Iraq said uniformed men had detonated explosives outside mosques in the Hilla region, south of Baghdad, under cover of darkness. A muezzin was reportedly shot dead near his home in Iskandariyah, some 35 miles from the blasts.

The violence comes three days after Saudi Arabia, a leading Sunni power in the Middle East, said it had executed Nimr, a Shia cleric whose fate became intertwined with the regional power struggle between the kingdom and the theocrats of Shia Iran.

Nimr's execution pushed relations between the rival powers to their lowest ebb for years and set the stage for the exploitation of sectarian tensions across the region. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), which now has a presence in most Middle Eastern countries, is also working to deepen that divide.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts in Hilla, nor for the killing near the town of Iskandariyah. Isil has said it was responsible for several attacks on Iraqi security forces in recent days, apparently in retaliation for the government's recapture of the city of Ramadi last month.

Violence

Sitting along the bottom axis of an area that was dubbed "the triangle of death" during the sectarian strife that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iskandariyah is a confessionally mixed town that has been badly affected by violence.

Nimr's execution provoked fury in Tehran, where a mob sacked and torched the Saudi embassy and consulate on Saturday night. Saudi Arabia has now severed diplomatic ties with Iran.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia said yesterday that a civilian had been killed and an eight- year-old child wounded after a shoot-out in Nimr's home village of al-Awamiya, in the province of Qatif, where mourning ceremonies have begun for the executed sheikh.

Shia residents of Qatif have sporadically protested against what they describe as endemic marginalisation.

The mass execution of Nimr and 46 others - the largest carried out by Saudi Arabia in three and a half decades - laid bare the sectarian divisions gripping the region as demonstrators took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan in protest.

According to its official media, Bahrain has said it will also cut ties with Iran.

Bahrain frequently accuses Iran of being behind the long-running, low-level insurgency in the country since its majority Shiite population began protests in 2011 against Bahrain's Sunni rulers.

Russia said yesterday that it was ready to step in and help resolve the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran, according to AFP.

The incident has also illustrated the Saudi kingdom's new aggression under King Salman. During his reign, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition fighting Shia rebels in Yemen and staunchly opposed regional Shia power Iran, even as Tehran struck a nuclear deal with world powers. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
The closed Hong Kong store, as the mystery deepened over the whereabouts of five people (AP)

The mystery surrounding five missing Hong Kong booksellers known for titles banned in mainland China deepened after one purportedly wrote a letter saying he was fine and helping with an investigation on the mainland, prompting his wife to drop a missing person's report.

Hong Kong police said Lee Bo's wife cancelled the report but they would continue investigating the other disappearances. Their statement did not say whether Mr Lee had been located.

The UK Foreign Office confirmed by email that one of the missing booksellers is British, and Hong Kong media report it is Mr Lee. The email said Britain was "deeply concerned" about the case and has "urgently requested" help from local authorities for information on the individual.

Five people who vanished since October are associated with publisher Mighty Current, which specialises in books critical of China's Communist Party leaders.

When Mr Lee vanished last Wednesday, he reportedly did not have a travel permit for mainland China with him, triggering speculation he did not plan to go there and that Chinese security agents abducted him. The four others were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.

An image of Mr Lee's handwritten letter was published by Taiwan's government-affiliated Central News Agency late on Monday and subsequently by Hong Kong media.

The letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing company's Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, said: "Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren't to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties."

"It might take a bit of time," it said. "My current situation is very well. All is normal."

The letter gave no details on the investigation to which it refers.

Hong Kong police still have missing person's files open for three other staff members or shareholders of the publisher or the book store. One of the publishing company's owners, Gui Minhai, is a Swedish national who went missing in Thailand in October, according to Hong Kong media and human rights groups.

Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Joakim Edvardsson said on Monday the government was "very concerned" about the disappearance of one of its citizens.

Hong Kong media reported that Mr Lee's wife, Choi Ka-ping, asked police to drop the missing person's report after learning of the letter, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed.
SHARE Babiniez

By Mike Eads of the Independent Mail

Editors note: This story has been corrected to reflect the correct spelling of Al Babinicz's name.

Numbers show that Pendleton riders are making good use of Clemson Area Transit.

CAT Director Al Babinicz and his deputy Keith Moody told the town's council Monday night that 58,875 of their system's users started or ended their fare-free trips in Pendleton last year, and Clemson University and Tri-County Tech students and employees account for a good bit of that business.

"And it's helping people hold down jobs that they might not be able to otherwise afford," said Pendleton Mayor Frank Crenshaw, referring to regular riders who don't own their own cars.

The Villages of Town Creek had a 25 percent student occupancy spike last year after CAT extended service to the intersection of Lebanon and Westinghouse roads on Pendleton's east side. The landlords matched the town's $30,000 grant to CAT to help pay for the service, which is subsidized with state and federal grant dollars.

Babinicz said the large retail and housing development Pacolet-Milliken is planning for the U.S. 76 corridor between Clemson and Pendleton and the Douthit Hills project on the southeast end of the Clemson University campus could fuel even greater demand for public transit.

"Millennials don't care to drive as much and they've embraced public transportation," Babinicz told the council. "I'm not suggesting it will ever replace automobiles  but things could change faster than we all think."

In other business:

The town council gave final approval to an ordinance re-establishing the town's police department. New chief Doyle Burdette also got approval for new badge and logo designs to be displayed on department vehicles.

Pendleton will participate in this year's Anderson International Festival, which runs Jan. 8-Feb. 20 throughout the county. The theme is Ciao Italia and Crenshaw said town restaurants including 1826 on the Green would offer Italian menus, and other businesses would also have Neapolitan offerings.

"At the Islander Pub and Grill, they will be speaking Italian  believe or not  or least a few words," joked the mayor, whose cousin Matt Crenshaw owns the establishment on the east side of the town square.

New Pendleton Area Business Association (PABA) President Lou Koppel promised the group would "be partners and pulling in the same direction" as the town council to promote local retailers and attract visitors. He invited the public to a PABA brainstorming session Jan. 19 at the Pendleton branch of the Anderson County Public Library, set to run 6-7:30 p.m.

Follow Michael Eads on Twitter @MikeEads_AIM
Prior to the 2015 IPCPR Trade Show, word came from Caldwell Cigar Company of a new cigar line called Blind Mans Bluff. When Robert Caldwell returned to the cigar business last year with Caldwell Cigar Company, he went to the Dominican Republic and teamed up with Tabacalera William Ventura to produce his lines. With Blind Mans Bluff, Caldwell returns to Honduras. We say return because while he was with Wynwood Cigars, he produced he produced his Wynwood Honduras there. Blind Mans Bluff was released in three regular production sizes, but recently a Corona Gorda was added as a fourth size. This Corona Gorda is a limited production shop exclusive to Burns Tobacconist in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Recently, Ive had an opportunity to smoke the Burns exclusive Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda. Overall, I found this to be an excellent addition to Caldwells portfolio.

For Blind Mans Bluff, Caldwell is teaming up with the Agroindustrias Laepe S.A factory. If this factory sounds familiar, it is because it is the factory owned by Davidoff where Camacho Cigars are made. Last year, Davidoff announced plans to expand this operation in Honduras.

Burns Tobacconist has been the recipient of three shop exclusives in the past year. The other two include the La Aurora Cien Anos Lancero Cameroon and Guayacans Sabor de Chattanooga.

Without further ado, lets break down the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda and see what this cigar brings to the table.

Blend Profile

The Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda shares the same blend as the other three vitolas. It features tobaccos from three countries.

Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano

Binder: Honduran Criollo

Filler: San Vincente Viso (Dominican Republic), Honduran Criollo Generoso Ligero

Country of Origin: Honduras (Agroindustrias Laepe S.A)

Vitolas Available

Consistent with the rest of the Blind Mans Bluff line, the Corona Gorda is packaged in twenty count boxes. While the other three sizes are regular production, the total production of the Corona Gorda is 500 boxes.

One note is that this cigar has also been referred to as the Blind Mans Bluff Corona.

Corona Gorda: 5 3/4 x 46

Robusto: 5 x 50

Toro: 6 x 52

660: 6 x 60

Appearance

The Ecuadorian Habano wrapper of the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda has a medium brown, dark caramel color to it. There is a decent amount of oil on the surface of the wrapper. There is a slightly bumpy look to the wrapper. The wrapper has some visible veins and some thin visible wrapper seams. There is a nice barnyard aroma given off from the footer.

The band to the Blind Mans Bluff has a butterscotch color to it. The center of the band features a charcoal sketch of a blindfolded man wearing a fedora hat and a cigar in his mouth. The sketch is surrounded with a gold dotted oval. The left side of the band has the slogan WE OWN THE NIGHT in a gold a hand-written style font. To the right is the text BLIND MANS BLUFF in larger gold-colored classic-style font. There is gold trim going around the band. On the far right is the text DANLI that is etched on the trim in landscape mode.

Preparation for the Cigar Experience

As I normally do, I went with a straight cut to kick off the cigar experience of the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda. Once the cap was clipped, I moved on to the pre-light draw. The dry draw provided notes of natural tobacco, straw, citrus, and a slight tingly spice. Overall I considered this to be a very good pre-light draw. At this point I was ready to light up the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda and see what the cigar experience would have in store.

Flavor Profile

Right out of the gate, there was a nice mix of flavors with the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda. I detected notes of black pepper, cedar spice, straw, citrus, and cream. Once the cigar settled in, some notes of coffee emerged. I found the coffee and citrus notes quickly emerged as the dominant flavors early on while the other notes settled in the background. The spices were prominent on the retro-hale as I got a mix of black pepper and cedar.

During the first third of the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda, the coffee notes had the edge. The citrus notes from time to time were still present in the forefront. Meanwhile the cedar, straw, and cream notes remained in the background.

During the second third, I still found the coffee notes were prominent in the forefront. While the citrus still made its way into the forefront, I also found the cedar notes started to enter the equation more frequently. By the later part of the second third, these cedar notes fully joined the coffee in the forefront  and the citrus settled into the background. At the same time, there was an increase in the pepper notes.

By the last third of the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda, the cedar and pepper spices took control. The coffee notes still were in the equation, but were a little less prominent. The citrus was a more distant secondary note and the straw and cream had dissipated. The close to the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda was on the spicy side. The very end had a little harshness, but at this point it was time to put the cigar down. The resulting nub was firm to the touch and cool in temperature.

Burn and Draw

Overall the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda scored quite well when it came to burn. The burn path remained straight and the burn line remained relatively sharp throughout the smoking experience. A light gray charcoal ash was produced as the cigar burned. I didnt find the ash to be overly firm, but it wasnt a loose, flaky ash either. The cigar had excellent combustion as it had an ideal burn temperature and ideal burn rate.

The draw to the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda was excellent. It was not too tight, nor too loose. This made the cigar a low maintenance cigar to derive flavor from.

Strength and Body

From a strength perspective, I found the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda to start out medium. Toward the last third, it the strength seemed to sneak up on me and I suddenly found this cigar well into medium to full strength territory. As for the flavors, they remained medium to full-bodied from start to finish. Despite the increase in strength, I still found the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda to have an edge with body over strength.

Final Thoughts

Ive been smoking through several of the vitolas in the Blind Mans Bluff line. I did find the Corona Gorda to offer more in the way of complexity compared to the three regular production offerings. I also found the Corona Gorda to have a more spicier profile. This is a cigar that is ready to smoke out of the box. At the same time, Ive seen the other vitolas get better with age, and have no reason to think the aging potential doesnt exist with the Corona Gorda. This is a cigar Id recommend to a more experienced cigar enthusiast. As for a novice, this is a cigar Id position to someone looking for something medium plus. As for myself, Im sold on the Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda. Its a cigar Id purchase multiple cigars of. Its easily worthy of a fiver in my book.

Summary

Burn: Excellent

Draw: Excellent

Complexity: High

Strength: Medium (1st 2/3), Medium to Full (Last third)

Body: Medium to Full

Finish: Good

Assessment: 3.0  The Fiver

Score: 89

References

News: Caldwell Blind Mans Bluff Corona to be Shop Exclusive to Burns Tobacconist in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Price: $7.49

Source: Cigars Provided by Retailer

Stogie Geeks Podcast: Episode 172

Stogie Feed: Blind Mans Bluff Corona Gorda by Caldwell Cigar Company (Burns Tobacconist Exclusive)
__START__Bhangarh Fort, Rajasthan

Image Credit: Getty Images

Scary story: Located in the Alwar district of Rajasthan, this fort is notorious for shocking paranormal activities. There is a legend that explains why the place is haunted. Apparently there was a tantrik named Singhiya who was in love with Princess Ratnavati. He used his black magic on the princess, but it backfired on him and he died. But just before he did, he cursed the fort, saying that all who dwelt in the fort shall die. Till date people are warned not to visit the fort after sunset.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Dumas Beach, Gujarat

Image Credit: Mumbaigloss

Scary story: Beaches are the best spots to relax. But not this one. Dumas beach is a cremation ground for the Hindus, therefore it is said that the tormented souls and the ones who did not seek moksha loiter on the beach post sunset.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Vrindavan Society, Thane

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: It's hard to believe that ghost stories exist even amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. One such case here is that of Vrindavan society, which is said to be the largest residential complex of Thane. 66 B is the building from the complex that has an eerie past. A man had committed suicide here and since then there have been reports of paranormal activities.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Lambi Dehar Mines, Uttarakhand

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: So apparently these mines were shut down because workers died coughing blood due to improper work conditions. Locals also say that the location is haunted by a witch who makes unnerving noises at night.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Jamali Kamali Masjid, Delhi

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Scary story: The masjid is said to be the home of djinns. It is said that people who visit this place experience nightmares and paranormal experiences post their visit.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Grand Paradi Towers, Mumbai

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: The swankiest area of South Mumbai called Malabar Hill is a home to a 28-storeyed jinxed tower called Grand Paradi. A spate of suicides at this luxurious society has drawn lot of attention and has made it the most infamous society in the locality. There have been about 20 suicides and accidents which have taken place since the towers were constructed in 1976. Residents here have sought psychiatric help and a few have moved out of the premises.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__DSouza Chawl, Mahim

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: A lady who fell in the well while drawing water, apparently haunts the chawl even today.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Tunnel No. 33, Shimla

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: Shimla is abode to many scary stories. One such story is of Tunnel no.33, where the friendly ghost of Colonel Barog loiters around the tunnel during the night. Colonel Barog was a railway engineer during the times of the British Raj. Locals say that his ghost has friendly chats with people who take the tunnel. Though it is said to be a harmless soul, but a ghost talking can never be a friendly thing right?

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Agrasen Ki Baoli, Delhi

Image Credit: Getty Images

Scary story: There's something going on in the well here, that lures people to jump in and commit suicide.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Brij Raj Bhavan Palace in Kota, Rajasthan

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: Major Burton who was the British resident of the Kota palace was killed by sepoys in the 1857 mutiny. It is believed that his ghost walks the palace at night.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Scary story: Imagine a scary story coming from a film city where so many movies are being shot! It is said that there are occurrences of paranormal activities like lights going off on their own and people disappearing.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__GP Block, Meerut

Image Credit: holidaymine.com

Scary story: Locals say that ghosts of men who were drinking partners when they were alive can be seen here. Ghosts of girls in red dresses have also been spotted here.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Malcha Mahal, Delhi

Image Credit: darkmoonblog

Scary story: A family with a royal past stays in the palace. However, it is said that they have no connection with the world outside the palace, and that they stay with their ferocious dogs. Nobody tries to trespass the locality, as it looks horribly terrifying from the outside.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Dow Hills, West Bengal

Image Credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: People never loiter in the dense area of Dow Hills because of its horrid past. The hills have witnessed many deaths and therefore remain secluded.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Raj Kiran Hotel, Lonavla

Image credit: hauntedindiablog

Scary story: Lonavla, a quaint hill station near Mumbai is a famous picnic spot and many travellers plan a night out at lodges and resorts. However, people avoid staying at Raj Kiran hotel because of its haunted ground floor. People have experienced strange knockings on their room door, bed sheets being pulled off and other strange incidences.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Delhi Cantt

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Scary story: Everybody in the area will tell you the terrifying story of a lady in white who seeks a lift from people. If you dont stop you vehicle then she jumps on the boot. Now thats friggin scary!

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Scary story: This story sounds like a horror movie plot. A group of friends visited this place and took a group picture. It is said that the entire group experienced paranormal activities after posing for the pictures. After this incident, people started avoiding this area.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Shaniwarwada, Pune

Image credit: Fanpop.com

Scary story: Punekars have many scary Shaniwarwada stories to share. It is said that strange apparitions and paranormal activities are witnessed during the full moon. And, that the wada should not be visited during the night.

__LISTSEPARATOR____START__Lothian Cemetery, Delhi

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Scary story: This cemetery has witnessed the mass burial of people who lost their lives in the 1857 mutiny. The cemetery is said to be haunted by the ghost of headless Nicholas who was a soldier in the British contingent.
The love story of Peshwa Bajirao and Mastani caught the eye of director Sanjay Leela Bhansali to translate onto celluloid. But the character of Kashibai, who remained in the background, managed to walk away with all the praise, emerging as the real winner of the love saga. And if you are still drooling over the way Priyanka Chopra pulled off the high octane performance of Bajirao's first wife, the reason can be attributed to Kashibai not giving in to her husband's demands. She doesn't protest or sneer. She is angry but doesn't fight back. She teaches the most important lesson, that acceptance of injustice is sometimes the opposite of cowardice. And PeeCee conveys all these emotions with near-flawless comprehension of her character's inner world. Yes, she is at her best to date.

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But who was Kashibai in history? Was she the woman whose face lit up just at the sight of her husband? Or was she the one who refused to surrender to destiny? Some call her portrayal in the film fictionalised, while some say her persona was as unforgiving as projected in the film. We did some research, and here's who she really was.

1. Kashibai belonged to a village, 70 kilometers away from Pune.

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Chaskaman village in Maharashtra is the place where Kashibai, fondly called Laadubai, was born and brought up. Her family lived in a massive house. The 300-year-old fort-like haveli still stands strong in the village.

2. Kashibai was the daughter of Mahadji Krishna Joshi.

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Her father originally belonged to Talsure village in Ratnagiri. He later shifted to Chaskaman. The descendants of Kashibai's brother still live in their heritage old massive house.

3. The haveli still has the room where Kashibai was born.

wikimapia

The haveli in Chaskaman was built in the wada style and is spread across nearly two acres of land. It still has the delivery room where Kashibai was born. Today, the delivery room is used as a store room.

"The newborn and the mother stayed in the same room for four months to keep away from infection." - a daughter-in-law of the family.

4. The descendants of Kashibai claim that a moneylender helped in the alliance between her and Bajirao.

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The 11th generation descendant of Kashibai's brother, Krushnarao, says a wealthy owner of 300 acres of land, who was also the subedar of the Maratha empire, played a strong role in the wedding between Bajirao and Kashibai. They were married in 1711, when Bajirao was 11 years old, and Kashibai, only eight.

5. Kashibai's village still remains a favourite spot for tourists.

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With visitors pouring in to see Kashibai's parental home, every weekend is a busy one for the family. PK Ghanekar's book titled Sahali Ek Divasyachya Parisaraat Punyachya serves as a travel guide for the places one can visit in and around Pune, and it lists the house as a tourist spot.

6. Kashibai was the first wife of Bajirao I.

speakingtree

Bajirao I was a highly influential and brave Maratha chief. He was an immensely successful military general who never saw defeat in more than 40 battles that he fought. He was also the Prime Minister of Shahuji Bhonsle, the fourth emperor of the Marathas. Bajirao was just 20 when he became a Peshwa.

7. Historians say Kashibai was a soft-spoken lady.

indianexpress

Historian Pandurang Balkawade calls her a quiet woman and Bajirao treated her with love and respect. She even had a great rapport with her mother-in-law and sister-in-laws. She never had any malice against Mastani. Yes, we saw that in the film too!

"Kashibai was ready to accept Mastani but couldn't go against her mother-in-law Radhabai and brother-in-law Chimaji Appa. Besides, 18th century women did not have a say in important matters and Kashibai was no exception." - Pandurang Balkawade

8. Kashibai ran the daily affairs when her husband fought wars.

speakingtree

She controlled the day-to-day running of the empire, due to her social nature. After the death of Mastani, she made sure that her son, Shamsher Bahadur got his initial weapon training at Shaniwarwada, and took care of his overall well-being.

9. Kashibai had three sons.

The first lady in the life of Bajirao I bore three sons. They were named Nana Saheb, Rahunath Rao and Janardhan Rao. Nana Saheb, also called as Balaji Baji Rao, was made the Peshwa by Shahu in 1740. Rahunath Rao became the Peshwa a few years later. The youngest son Janardhan Rao died very young.

10. After the death of Bajirao I, Kashibai immersed herself in religious activities.

indianexpress

Over a kilometre away from Kashibai's parental home, the Someshwar Temple stands tall. This temple was built in 1749, on Kashibai's suggestion. Spread across an area of 1.5 acre, it has a tall structure called the 'Deepmala', on which 256 diyas can be placed at a time.

"In 1747, when Kashibai returned from a pilgrimage to Rameshwar, she suggested to her brother that a temple like the one in Rameshwar should be built in Chaskamaan also. The brother instantly began the work on Laadubai's suggestion." -Mahendra Peshwa, the ninth descendant of Bajirao Peshwa

11. Both Kashibai and Mastani attended the funeral of Bajirao.

koimoi

Bajirao I died in the year 1740 near Delhi. Both Mastani, the mother of Shamsher Bahadur, and Kashibai attended the last rites. Mastani either plunged into the pyre of her husband or consumed poison and succumbed to death following the Peshwa. Shamsher Bahadur, an orphaned child at the age of six was then fostered by Kashibai along with her own sons.

india.com

While the film has already touched the audience with its story and performances, it wasn't an easy task for Sanjay Leela Bhansali to get his film to the big screens. While protests continued even on its release day, many descendants of Bajirao, Mastani and Kashibai are yet to watch the film. Some have a problem with the depiction of Bajirao's life, others say the love story is too fictionalised. They even feel the songs, 'Pinga' and 'Malhari', are not in sync with history.

"Back then, if a woman wanted to speak to a man, she would have to speak from the room itself, and not step out. It would not have been possible for Kashibai to dance the way her character does in the film."

While such historical films remain open for debate every time they hit the big screen, they succeed in opening some chapters of our history that have been covered in dust for centuries. That, in itself, is a step forward.
All eyes are set on Wazir. And why not? Being 2016's first multi-starrer, people's expectations are sky high. When your film boasts of a stellar star cast including people like Farhan Akhtar and Amitabh Bachchan, there is no reason why any cinema lover would like to give it a miss.

VVC Films

Wazir is all set to hit the theaters and the plot revolves around two unusual friendsa paralyzed chess grandmaster and a grief stricken ATS officer and how destiny decides to bring them together, along with a peculiar twist of fate. Another big reason why Wazir looks appealing is Farhan & Aditi's chemistry. It's well evident from the songs and trailer that this fresh-pairing has definitely got a lot of offer!

If you're still looking for reasons to watch Wazir, here are 10 facts about the film which surely makes it one of the most promising films of 2016!

1. Apart from being a gripping love story, Farhan Akhtar has claimed that Wazir isn't a thriller, rather it's an emotional drama of two friends, which will leave a deep impact on your heart

VVC Films

Farhan added, "The emotional thrust of this film is the most effective thing and that is something which will remain with you. There is a love story and drama of two friends that is something you'll remember about this film once you watch it."

2. According to some reports, Wazir also has a mysterious resemblance to 1999 Hollywood thriller, The Bone Collector, that had Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington in the lead roles

Bollywoodlife

There hasn't been any confirmation from film-makers' side but there are a couple of similarities. The Bone Collector too was about Angelina Jolie, who plays a cop, wanting to catch a serial killer nicknamed The Bone Collector. It is after taking help of a quadriplegic Denzel Washington (Who too is fond of playing chess) that things turn upside down. In this film too, Angelina tries her best to save Denzel. Similar, isn't it?

3. It was after the unfortunate killing of badminton player Syed Modi, who was shot dead on 28 July 1988 in Lucknow, that Vidhu Vindod Chopra thought of making Wazir

BCCL

VVC claimed that Wazir is very different from Syed Modi's killing incident. It was in 1994 that VVC met his writer Abhijat Joshi in 1994 and discussed that he wanted to make thriller, around two chess players.

4. After several names like Fifth Move, 64 Squares and Chess (these being few of many that were being considered) , Wazir was finalized!

VVC Films

The working title of the film was Do, however, it was later changed to Wazir in October 2014.

5. Wazir was supposed to be VVC's first Hollywood film, with Dustin Hoffman playing the protagonist. However, fate had some other plans and it took five years to complete the script of Wazir

Twitter

In 2005, their producer Robert Newmyer suddenly passed away and thus the script couldn't be finalised & got delayed. One day, VVC saw black-and-white portions of Bejoy Nambiar's David (2013). He got so impressed with Bijoy's work that he rang him up. Recalling the incident, Chopra said, "I called him (Bejoy), and I have an almirah (Cupboard) full of scripts, so I opened it and asked him Which one? He picked this one. Then we worked for two more years on it."

What can one expect when the team is: Vidhu Vinod Chopra + Rajkumar Hirani + Bejoy Nambiar? An unforgettable film, isn't it?

6. To ensure that plot stays realistic and logical, m akers of the film also consulted chess experts from America for the film

VVC Films

To ensure that the film doesn't lack logic, special research was done to set the plot right.

7. Farhan Akhtar and Big B's chemistry! Wazir is Farhan's first action film and it'd be interesting to see Farhan playing to role of a grief-stricken ATS officer

VVC Films

If you've heard Atrangi Yaari, you might be convinced that Farhan and Big's chemistry is enviable! They both look comfortable with each other on-screen. Individually, both are strong actors and together they are bound to give full support to the script.

8. Big B plays the role of Panditji, a paralysed chess grandmaster and his character demanded to move in a wheel chair. It was after testing 43 chairs previously, that after a few months VVC chose the final chair for Big B

Ilovenewz.com

The chair was then kept at Amitabh's house for 3 months. Amitabh, who believes in method acting, would sit on it every day to get into the skin of character.

9. Almost perfect ensemble cast! From Aditi Rao Hydari, John Abraham, Neil Nitin Mukesh to Manav Kaul (Extended Cameo), a good set of actors were roped in to give strength to the script

There is no doubt that John is quiet a pro, when it comes to action sequences! After the trailer, Neil doesn't disappoint either. However, real surprise packet is Manav Kaul.

He is one of those underrated actors who people remember by face and not name.

VVC Films

Some of the most memorable outings of Manav remain, a cunning Bittu in Abhishek Kapoors Kai Po Che and Hansal Mehtas Citylights as Vishnu Sir, where he played a small-town man corrupted by a ruthless city.

10. Farhan's personal favorite scene from the film is the 'Kitchen scene' where his character and Aditi's character (who plays his wife in the movie) reconciles. Farhan said the scene took 4-5 days to be shot!

VVC Films

Farhan said, You see everyone has their own favorite scene in the movie, but this scene with Aditi stands out for me. It took us four or five days to shoot it due to different reasons Every time I got ready to reconcile with Aditi, my wife in film, something happened,

Wazir will be releasing on 8th Jan and if you're as excited as us, there is no reason why you shouldn't WATCH!
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For those who are true lovers of cinema and movies, you all would definitely know about Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan, which rocked the Cannes Film Festival last year. It's cast in particular- Vicky Kaushal, Rocha Chadha, and Shweta Tripathi won much critical acclaim for their brilliant performances. And now, Vicky Kaushal is out with his second film, Zubaan, which too has not only won critical acclaims, but has also managed to floor Hollywood bigwigs like Will Smith, Cate Blanchett, Johnny Depp and Matt Damon!

Oh yes. That's got to be quite something, right! So, after opening the 20th Busan Film Festival last year, Zubaan has managed to impress many Hollywood A-listers there. For the uninitiated, Zubaan, is directed by Mozez Singh, and is a passionate musical romance drama flick. Here's the teaser.

In Mozez's own words, "It was amazing to meet Will Smith and see him watch Vicky as Dilsher on screen, and enjoy the music. He loved the film and wished us luck." And after watching the teaser, one thing is sure, the film definitely looks like an intelligent and content driven movie. Here are X things you need to know about Zubaan, which will definitely make you excited for it!

1. This is film producer Mozez Singh's directorial debut, who has produced films like Peddlers, White Noise, and Haraamkhor.

For anyone who follows parallel and independent cinema, you'd know that Peddlers and Haraamkhor are quite big in the circuit. In fact, both the films are internationally acclaimed, and have received much love from the critics. While Mozez has produced these films, this is the first time he's trying his hands at directing. But no one's complaining!

2. It has quite a solid star cast- Vicky Kaushal, Sarah Jane Dias, and Raaghav Chanana. All of them are known to be great actors in the independent film circuit.

We all know Vicky Kaushal from Masaan. Sarah Jane Dias too is a known name, especially after giving a great performance in the recently releases The Angry Indian Goddesses. You might recognise Raaghav Chanana by face. Indian version of 24, and National Award winning film Lessons In Forgetting are some of his noteworthy work. But the chap is actually a phenomenal actor and also a stage director. Yes, it's surprising that not much is known about such talented actors in our country.

3. The film's director Mozez Singh has already won Rising Director Asia Star Award 20th Busan International Film Festival.

Come on, now that must say a lot about the film, right? In fact, after its screening at the film festival, many international publications have given pretty nice reviews to the film. That's got to amount to something!

4. If you're looking for a great cinematic experience, some stellar performances and a content driven film, this has got to be your pick.

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It's amazing to see how international publications are really praising Vicky Kaushal's performance in the film. In fact, even the plot of the film sounds pretty interesting- a young lad from a Punjab village, who is phobic to music, heads to a big city to make his fortune. And in the process, he ends up at the path towards self discovery.

5. The music has been composed by Ashutosh Phathak, who is a big name in the Indian contemporary music.

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He has also composed music and background scores for many internationally acclaimed films. Considering it's a musical drama, the film boasts of some amazing tracks
Squatchin': Ohio Bigfoot Investigators Are More Determined Than Ever to Prove the Fabled Creature Is Real

Ohio is one of the top states for Bigfoot sightings, and explorers are using new tech for the hunt.

By Allison Babka Oct 19, 2022

Editor's note: This story is featured in the Oct. 19 print edition of CityBeat. Its a peaceful drive between Cincinnati and Perrysville, especially when avoiding the interstate...
Condemning the attacks on the Indian Air Force Base in Pathankot, Airlift actor Akshay Kumar gave a piece of his mind on the same. The gruesome attacks that started on Saturday, left seven soldiers mercilessly dead, and Akshay Kumar spoke for pretty much every Indian at a recent press conference.

Thehindu

Akshay said:

It is very unfortunate that so many of our soldiers die. See, I am not a real hero, they are. With my movies be it Baby, Gabbar is Back or Holiday, I try my level best to depict what happens in the lives of the families of our soldiers,

An angry Akshay Kumar added,

I dont have a final solution to the problem. But the way they entered our country and murdered our soldiers, I will say inhe ghuske maro,

In a lot of his films, including Baby, Gabbar Is Back and Holiday, Akshay has played the role of a dutiful soldier. His upcoming film Airlift, starring Nimrat Kaur, is also based along similar lines.

Tracing the evacuation from a war zone, wherein 1,70,000 Indians stuck in Kuwait were airlifted, using 488 flights in 59 days stuck, after the Iraq invasion.
Four Indian soldiers on Sunday lost their lives in an avalanche in Siachen Glacier of Jammu and Kashmir, said Ministry of Defence. The avalanche hit their patrol party after the first major snowfall.

An army patrol deployed in the Siachen glacier in Ladakh was hit by an avalanche yesterday while they were on a patrol as part of a route opening party, Udhampur-based defence spokesman Colonel S D Goswami told the New Indian Express. However, despite all possible efforts by the rescue party, the lives of four soldiers could not be saved, Goswami said adding their bodies were later retrieved from the avalanche site.

The deceased are:

Havildar Dorjey Gason

Havildar Tsewang Norboo

Rifleman Jigmat Chosdup

Rifleman Mohammad Yusuf.

The bodies were handed over to their next of kin and will be cremated with full military honours, added Goswami.

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In a series of tweets, the Ministry said, "On 03 Jan'16, four Army Jawans in Siachen Glacier came under an avalanche. Despite all possible efforts jawans could not be saved." The Ministry further said that the mortal remains of the jawans have been retrieved from the site and handed to next of kin. They will be cremated with full military honours, the Ministry added. Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed and Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh expressed condolences.

williamcolgan

Also read: Captain Ashwani Kumar Killed By Avalanche At Siachen Glacier, The Highest Battlefield On Earth
Pune based autorickshaw driver Dilip Raising returned a bag with a laptop left behind by a software engineer M Narendra Chaudhari on Sunday morning.

TOI

Raising drove to Baner from Pune railway station to trace the passenger. When he did not find him, he approached Magarpatta police chowky under the Hadapsar police station and handed over the bag.

Chaudhari had come to he police chowky to lodge a complaint and found his laptop intact. Assistant inspector of the Hadapsar police station Salim Nadaf felicitated Raising.

Nadaf says that on Sunday around 8.30 am, Chaudhari had boarded Raising's autorickshaw in Magarpatta area to go to Baner.

"Chaudhari was carrying his laptop bag with him. After alighting from the autorickshaw, Chaudhari hurriedly paid the fare and walked away, leaving behind his possession," Nadaf said.

Raising picked up another passenger and left for Pune railway station. "While checking, Raising found a red bag behind the seat and a laptop in it when he opened it," he said.

He knew it belonged to his previous passenger. "Raising immediately drove back to Baner and searched the area for his passenger," he said. He then went in the opposite direction to Magarpatta from where the passenger had boarded his autorickshaw.

"He waited for some time to locate the laptop bag's owner and then decided to hand it over to the nearest police chowky ," Nadaf said.

Raising told the policemen the entire story. "Just as he was about to leave, Chaudhari rushed in. He identified his bag and laptop worth Rs 70,000," Nadaf said.
The controversy over the deportation of Indian students from the US refuses to die down. Some 200 students from across India have been forced to return to India in the past few weeks, for no fault of theirs.

DNA/ Representative Image

All of them had taken admission in two US Universities, Silicon Valley University or Northwestern Polytechnic both recognized by the US consulate in India but blacklisted by the US immigration department.

While some of them were sent back from US immigration checkpoint in Abu Dhabi, others were sent back after they reached the US. The students who spent lakhs of rupees on their admission and travel, said they were harassed and locked up by US officials.

SVU

A woman business graduate who had taken admission for MBA in Silicon Valley University said she was handcuffed along with a few other Indian students. They were also made to wear a uniform and was locked up in a cell with other offenders for over nine hours.

They told me to go back to India as joining such a university would spoil my career. I was told to apply for a good university and come back, she told reporters in Hyderabad on her return.

The controversy erupted last month after Air India stopped 19 students from boarding a flight to the US as the universities they had taken admissions were blacklisted.

Subsequently reports of more deportations and harassment came into light.

Last week there were also reports that Indians with valid tourist and business visas are being deported by US officials, evoking strong reactions from India.
A special investigation team of Kerala police arrested a Malappuram native, who posted an insulting comment about the Lieutenant colonel Niranjan Kumar, who was martyred in a grenade blast at Pathankot in Punjab on Sunday.

Madhyamam

The accused Anwar Sadhik, 24, native of Kodur near Malappuram town was arrested by a police on Tuesday morning. Police charged Sadhik with section 124-A (Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards government).

On Sunday morning, a Anwar Sadhik posted an insulting comment in Malayalam on the Facebook page of an online Malayalam news portal.

The comment says..... "so, another trouble maker is also gone. Now government will give money and job to his wife and we commoners get nothing. Such a stinking Indian democracy".

In another comment, he said... "Why salute? Have you ever thought how terrorism originates? No one is born a terrorist. 10-50 should die (like Niranjan)"

According to his profile Anwar Sadhik (which is now deactivated) works with a Malayalam daily, however the newspaper has clarified that there is no such employee on their payroll. Police also confirmed that the accused is a salesman in a ration shop and has nothing to do with the daily.

If his deplorable comment wasn't enough, he also shared a link to the 'Islaimic State' Facebook page on his own timeline last month.
In what is seen as major boost to business in India, the government is set to kick-start consultations on a proposed law that will enable malls, restaurants, theatres and local markets to remain open round-the clock.

Journeymart

The move is aimed at providing a level playing field between bricks-and-mortar retailers and online sellers.

As the first step, the government will consult with trade unions, employers to seek their view. Based on their feedback, a draft will be sent to the cabinet.

Indian Express

According to the Economic Times, the bill will be advisory in nature, not binding on states. Currently shops are required to remain shut on a specified day, and at specific times in the days.

The Hindu

India's retail industry is growing at 15% and expected to touch $1 trillion by 2020 from $600 billion now. Modern retail, comprising e-commerce and bricks-andmortar stores, is expected to more than double its share of the overall market to 20% from 8% in the next five years.

Online retail is still a small part of this, but it is rising rapidly and pegged to reach $60-70 billion by 2019 from $17 billion in 2014, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group and the Retailers Association of India that was issued in February 2015.
In a December 2015 press meet, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had urged everyone to follow the new Odd-Even policy of halving the number of cars on Delhi's roads everyday.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, had said that a "strong message" would go out if the Chief Justice of India carpools to work. While the vehicles of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur are exempt from the policy, an elated Kejriwal tweeted today morning that he had chosen to carpool to work.

You have inspired millions thro your act. Thank you so much sir for joining the movement, even though u were exempt pic.twitter.com/4vZOyQb7Wg  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 5, 2016

According to an Indian Express report, T S Thakur and Justice A K Sikri have agreed to carpool with each other. Thakur has an even numbered license plate, and Sikri has an odd numbered plate. Incidentally, Chief Justice T S Thakur had remarked in December that while implementation of Odd-Even would have "difficulties", they would abide by it. "...We judges will abide by it. I and my brother judges will go for car pooling to reach Supreme Court."
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has decided to be bold again, and has released a new ad campaign that reiterates his policies of banning Muslims from entering the United States and building a wall on the US Mexico border.

The only difference is that his new target is ISIS. The ad promises he will "quickly cut" the head of ISIS and "take their oil."

The ad also takes a dig at the perceived failures of the Democrats by featuring Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton. This is followed by an explosive montage of the San Bernardino tragedy, and illegal immigration along the Mexican border.

The narrator, a deep-voiced man, speaks ominously, "That's why he's calling for a temporary shut-down of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what's going on. He'll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he'll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for."

Trump has said that he has six to eight ads in production and that his was a "major buy and it's going to go on for months."

He said he hopes the spots impress upon undecided voters that the country has become "a dumping ground".

"The world is laughing at us, at our stupidity. It's got to stop. We've got to get smart fast  or else we won't have a country," he was quoted as saying. Trump said he concluded that he may end up regretting not spending more of his own money to secure the nomination.

Although the millionaire has enjoyed free media attention, he is ready to spend a huge sum on TV advertisements that will make the rounds on major channels and social media websites.

"We have tremendous crowds, incredible support from all over the country...We have spent the least amount of money and have the best results and this is the kind of thinking the country needs. I am very proud of this ad, I don't know if I need it, but I don't want to take any chances because if I win we are going to make America great again," he said.

Despite being dubbed by critics as "ISIS's top recruiter", Trump is still going strong, giving his voters what they want to hear.
Follow us on wazir movie review when a thriller becomes chess pe charcha

Rating: **(2/5)

Helmed by talented director Bejoy Nambiar and written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi, Wazir', which features Farhan Akhtar and Amitabh Bachchan in pivotal roles, was expected to be a perfect opener for 2016.

However, expectations seem to be an often misused word in our times.

Wazir traces the story of a guilt-ridden ATS officer Danish Ali (Farhan Akhtar) who holds himself responsible for the death of his daughter. Danish finds a friend and philosophical guide in wheel-chair bound Omkarnath Dhar (Amitabh) who has himself gone through the trauma of loss of his loved ones.

Omkarnath believes welfare minister Izaad Qureshi (Manav Kaul) killed his daughter and wants to channel Danish's anguish to avenge his own daughter's death.

When asked whether he has any proof, an overconfident Omkarnath replies, Saboot uski aankhon me hai. Danish believes him and sets on a journey to seek the truth.

The plot may lead you to believe that the film lacks the gravity it promises. But, there is more to the film than it looks from the surface.

The central character is a brooding rook even with his flaws is righteous. Then there is a desperate pawn who has nothing to lose. A dead princess suffices the need for a queen and then there is a dangerous bishop, Wazir, who gets the film named after him.

Despite the intrigue that the film manages to develop to a certain extent, Wazir fails because it makes desperate attempts to look deceptive but never gets outsmarting enough. The twists are quite bland and could easily be guessed.

Omkarnath and Danish have loads of Chess pe Charcha' in the film where they draw parallels between chess and real life with dialogues revolving around baazi (challenge), ghoda (horse), haathi (elephant), and, of course, the wazir (rook)

Even with its predictability, the film manages to gather momentum in the beginning only to lose it to a sluggish second half  as if testing the patience of the audience.

Farhan gives a measured performance as the guild-ridden officer seeking redemption in avenging the death of his friend's daughter. However, his character lacks vigour or perhaps the script did not do justice to his talent. Though the sunshine of the film is the wheel-chair bound Amitabh who shows how one can evoke the strongest of emotions without moving the body.

His mannerisms, spontaneity and homilies are the only things that manage to keep the film alive.

Watch the trailer Here

Latest Bollywood News
Follow us on 300 nsg commandos use smart weapons to combat terrorists at iaf s base at pathankot

New Delhi: About 300 black cat' commandos of the elite counter-terror force, NSG, deployed an assortment of most sophisticated assault weapons and buster ammunition tools to neutralise the terrorists who had sneaked into the Air Force base in the border town of Pathankot.

In one of the longest running counter-terror operations in the country, the National Security Guard (NSG) suffered minor and major injuries to its 21 personnel, besides the death of its bomb squad Commanding Officer Lt Col E K Niranjan, since the first detachment of about 160 commandos flew out from the Palam military airbase on January 1 on an IAF transport aircraft.

Sources privy to the operation said two more similar special strike units, with a strength of about 80 black cats' each, were airlifted to Pathankot from Delhi on January 2 and 3.

They joined their buddies' thick in operations at the sprawling airbase, house to the fighter Squadrons of the IAF.

They said it was a New Year call to the 24x7 on alert' counter-terrorist unit based at its garrison in Manesar sometime in the afternoon on January 1 and the commandos of the Special Action Group (SAG) were airborne by 1500 hours.

The call to air-dash to Pathankot was made by the Union Home Ministry to the NSG headquarters, which quickly asked its Force Commander in Manesar to prepare the commando team for assault.

The first team were led by NSG Inspector General (Operations) Major General Dushyant Singh even as Director General R C Tayal camped in Pathankot from Sunday.

The sources said the NSG commandos made extensive use of their special weapons like MP-5 assault rifles, Glock pistols, corner-shot guns and a heavy cache of door and wall-busting explosive charges to corner and eliminate the holed-up terrorists.

They said the buster' tools, as they are called, were also used during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks when NSG used them to blow off locked rooms and passages of five-star hotels but some of them used this time were the enhanced variants which the force has procured post the Mumbai operation.

Two terrorists, the sources said, were killed by the NSG men when they were hiding and launching continuous fire and lobbing grenades from a room where the family quarters of the Defence Security Corps (DSC) is located in the airbase. The room was later demolished by the use of heavy fire.

They said the NSG commandos and other security forces, for the last few hours, have been undertaking the render safe procedure which entails sanitising the area from hidden improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and booby traps, and hence the operation is taking time.

Such thing is done after every operation. The area of the IAF base is large and complex hence it is taking time, one of the sources said.

Half-a-dozen sniffer dogs from the canine (K 9) squad along with their handlers have also been pressed into service by the NSG.

While the elite counter-terror and counter-hijack force has not given a name to the operation till now like Op Black Tornado' for the 26/11 Mumbai task, the force for the first time lost an officer from its bomb disposal squad.

Thirty-four-year-old Lt Col and Group Captain Niranjan was heading the unit, they said, and was trying to clear and sanitise the body of a terrorist and the surrounding area when a cleverly concealed grenade blew up fatally injuring the officer and five others.

The highly decorated officer was immediately taken to hospital where he breathed his last. He is the 19th martyr of the force which was raised in 1984 for special operations and as a federal contingency force for India.

He was part of the first team that went to Pathankot on Friday as there were inputs that the terrorists are carrying huge explosives. Niranjan and his bomb disposal men were tasked to aid the fighting units.

He joined NSG in May, 2014 on deputation from the Engineers Regiment of the Army which he joined in 2004. He was a dare-devil officer and had been part of a special training with the FBI in the US in combating IEDs and deadly explosives a few months ago, one of Niranjan's commando course colleague said, while refusing to be identified.

The NSG had called the officer's martyrdom as an act bearing exemplary courage and utmost devotion to duty. Seven security personnel and six terrorists have been killed in the attack.

Latest India News
Follow us on pathankot guns fall silent at iaf base parrikar to visit today

Pathankot: Security forces continued sanitization and combing operations inside the IAF base in Pathankot on Tuesday -- the fourth consecutive day after the attack on the frontline Air Force Station (AFS) by suspected Pakistani terrorists.

The counter offensive against the terrorists at Punjab's Pathankot air base was going on for the past 77 hours.

Search and combing operation by security forces continued on Monday night also. The operation was stepped up on Tuesday to scan every inch of the air base, an Air Force official at the base said.

NSG, Army and Air Force commandos were conducting a thorough mopping of the entire area inside the base.

Firing could be heard from inside during Monday night and early Tuesday. Officials said the firing was linked to the mopping operation.

IAF helicopters flew over the base to assist ground forces in the counter offensive against the terrorists.

"The operations are still going on. We have been able to eliminate the fifth terrorist. Combing and search operation continues," Inspector General of the NSG Major General Dushyant Singh told the media on Monday evening.

Read Also: Why talking to Nawaz Sharif is dangerous if Pak Army is not fully on board

The terrorists infiltrated the base on Saturday, leading to fierce gun battle with security forces.

Four terrorists were killed on Saturday after 15 hours of fighting. The fifth terrorist, according to the security forces, was killed on Monday.

Seven security personnel, including an officer of the National Security Guards (NSG), an IAF Garud commando and five Defence Services Corps (DSC) personnel, were killed by the terrorists.

The United Jehad Council (UJC), an umbrella grouping of Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan, on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.

Army and para-military forces continued to surround the entire air force base which is spread in a huge area.

Defence Minister, Service Chiefs to visit Pathankot

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar along with Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag will today visit the Pathankot Air Base, which was attacked by Pakistani terrorists on Saturday.

The three are scheduled to visit the strategic base, situated about 35 km from the border with Pakistan, in the afternoon to get a first hand assessment of the ground situation after six terrorists were killed by security forces.

The visit comes at a time when the government has ordered a security audit of all vital defence installations in the country to find out the possible security loopholes.

With Agency Inputs

Latest India News
Follow us on mouse bites 3 passengers in ac first class railway slammed with claim of rs 10 lakhs

New Delhi: Travelling from Ranchi to Howrah in AC first class cost much more than the ticket's price to an aged couple. Retired Sail engineer P. C. Sinha, his wife Alka Sinha and their co-passenger U. Rai were bitten by mouse on 30th December.

The engineer has demanded Rs 10 lakhs from Indian railways as compensation.

The passengers travelling in HA-1 bogie of the train were bitten by mouse. After the rodent bit Sinha, his finger started bleeding. He was immediately rushed to the emergency ward of the Howrah railway station hospital. He was given injections for tetanus and rabies.

After this the trio lodged a complaint at the Santragachi railway station on the 31st of December. The fourth passenger Lt. Dandi, became the witness to the incident.

Alka Sinha, who was petrified with the entire incident, has said that she will not forgive railway even if they seek so. She has claimed Rs 10 lakhs from railways and will not settle for anything less. She added that her husband had to take 5 injections for rabies and he is mentally disturbed too. The doctors have said that he might suffer from plague or rabies.We will go to High court and Supreme Court if need be, said Alka.

Latest India News
Follow us on thousands pay respect to nsg commando niranjan e.k.

Bengaluru: Thousands of people paid tributes to martyred National Security Guard (NSG) commando Lieutenant Colonel Niranjan E.K. on Monday at his residence in Bommasandra in Bengaluru.

Paying his respects to 34-year-old Niranjan, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said, "We have to be united to end terrorism, then only India can develop."

"Even as the prime minister visited Lahore (Pakistan) to extend a hand of friendship, it is painful to know that seven of our soldiers were martyred. We cannot evaluate their services to the country," added Siddaramaiah, laying a wreath on Niranjan's body.

Siddaramaiah declared a compensation of Rs.30 lakh for Niranjan's family.

Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers Ananth Kumar also paid respects to Niranjan and said, "We have sent a strong message to Pakistan to refrain from using its soil to launch attacks on India."

The NSG bomb disposal expert's body was shifted to Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) ground to facilitate more people to pay their respects. His father Sivaranjan worked with BEL.

Niranjan's body was flown to Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport around 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

He died of fatal injuries suffered while defusing a grenade in the terrorist attack in Pathankot on Sunday.

"I am familiar with Baghavad Gita. I consider my brother Arjuna. My brother had struggled a lot to become Lieutenant Colonel and sacrificed a lot," said Niranjan's teacher-sister Bhagyalakshmi.

Niranjan is survived by his dentist wife Radhika, 18-month-old daughter Vismaya, father Sivarajan, step-mother and brother Shashank.

The final rites of Niranjan will be held at Elumbulsherry village in Palakkad district, Kerala, around 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

Niranjan's body has been shifted to Jalahalli airstrip to be flown to his ancestral place in Kerala by Tuesday afternoon.

Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy is expected to attend the funeral ceremony on Tuesday, said an army official overseeing the arrangements.

Niranjan's death comes after Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan's martyrdom during 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. Both of them belonged to Bengaluru.

Latest India News
Follow us on pathankot terrorists were being guided by pak based handlers nia

New Delhi: NIA chief Sharad Kumar has disclosed that terrorists who attacked IAF base at Pathankot were being guided by their handlers in Pakistan.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) today took over the investigation of terrorist attack in the Indian Air Force (IAF) base attack in Pathankot.

Investigation is in the initial stages. Today is the first day. Call details show that calls were made to Pakistan. The call records provide ample evidence of terrorist being guided from Pakistan by their handlers, " Sharad Kumar told India TV.

He further added that both incoming and out going calls were made to Pakistan and that Pathankot attack and was similar to Dinanagar Police station attack.

"The attack in the Pathankot Air Base is pretty similar to the earlier attack in Gurdaspur and both of them used the same routes to enter India from Pakistan," Kumar said

When asked about the role of Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh, Kumar said," The probe is in the initial stage and he is just an eyewitness as of now".

The NIA chief said that he cannot divulge further details at this stage.The terrorists infiltrated the base on Saturday, leading to fierce gun battle with security forces.

Four terrorists were killed on Saturday after 15 hours of fighting. The fifth terrorist, according to the security forces, was killed on Monday.

Seven security personnel, including an officer of the National Security Guards (NSG), an IAF Garud commando and five Defence Services Corps (DSC) personnel, were killed by the terrorists.

Latest India News
Follow us on will shoot rapists if constitution allows bs bassi

New Delhi: Reflecting his helplessness in ensuring strictest punishment for rapists, Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi on Monday said that the force would not be 'hesitant to shoot or hang such criminals if the Constitution permits it'.

"It will be our pleasure to shoot or hang (the) perpetrators of crime against women if the Constitution of India permits us," Bassi said while addressing the Delhi Police's Annual Press Conference.

Rolling out statistics relating to crime and criminals, Bassi said registration of cases went up by around 24 % in 2015 compared to 2014 and that police was doing everything possible to ensure safety and security of the people with particular focus on women and children.

He also said that women need to be trained in self- defence, which can help in tackling the steep rise in instances of crime against women.

"Analysis also suggests that 60-65 % of women victims are between 15-30 years old. Their self-defence expertise shall be a sure counter to sick mindset men. I have often been criticised for my views on self- defence, mostly by groups who know how to shed crocodile tears," Bassi said.

Police records revealed that 2095 cases of rape, 5192 molestation and 1444 cases of eve-teasing were reported till December 15, 2015, compared to 2085 rapes, 4182 molestation and 1282 eve-teasing cases in the corresponding period previous year. Records further revealed, almost 39 % of the rapes were committed by friends and family members' friends.

While nearly 16.50 % rapes were committed by neighbours of the victims and around 14 % by relatives, around 2 percent of the offenders were co-workers and 25 % cases pertained to other known persons.

While 86.73 % of rape cases took place inside houses, 3.29 % took place inside hotels and restaurants. Similarly, while 39 % of molestation cases were reported to have happened inside houses, closely followed by 39.25 on roads, around 4 % cases happened in malls, markets and shopping complexes. In 1998, 505.71 IPC cases were registered for a population of 1 lakh and the figure went up to 460.75 in 2013, the year in which Bassi took over the reins of the over 80,000 strong force. In 2014, the figure shot up to 881.04, followed by 1054.30 per lakh population in 2015, records revealed.

Delhiites 'fortunate' police not under Delhi govt: Bassi

When asked if he is under any political pressure, Bassi said that it is the good fortune of Delhi Police that it is not under the Delhi government.

Bassi said the city police had not faced any political interference as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh never interfered in police work vis-a-vis local issues.

"The people of Delhi are 100% fortunate that the Delhi Police is not under pressure. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Minister take interest in Delhi. Only the Delhi Chief Minister does so," the top cop, who has been having a frosty relationship with the AAP government, said.

Bassi also announced that 1,000 traffic police personnel will be given guns in view of rising instances of attacks on traffic wing of the force. Currently, traffic policemen are not armed.

Latest India News
Follow us on 7 turning points in saudi arabia iran relationship

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been tense since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, though there have been occasional thaws between the two rivals.

The tensions have now sharply escalated with Saudi Arabia severing ties with the Islamic Republic following attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

Here's a look at how relations between the two Mideast powers have shifted over the last decades:

1) Pre-Revolution Relations: Under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran had rocky relations with Saudi Arabia, though they improved toward the end of his reign. Both were original members of the oil cartel OPEC.

2) Post-Revolution: After the overthrow of the shah and takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Saudi Arabia quickly became America's top ally in the region.

In the ensuing 1980s war between Iran and Iraq, Saudi Arabia backed Iraq despite its concerns about dictator Saddam Hussein. That war would kill 1 million people.

3) 1987 Hajj Riots: The annual pilgrimage to Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life, saw bloodshed when Iranians held a political demonstration.

Iranian pilgrims later battled Saudi riot police, violence that killed at least 402 people. Iran claimed 600 of its pilgrims were killed and said police fired machine guns at the crowd.

In Tehran, mobs attacked the Saudi, Kuwaiti, French and Iraqi embassies, ransacking the first two.

4) Severing Ties: In 1988, Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran, citing the 1987 hajj rioting and Iran's attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf.

Iranians responded by boycotting the hajj in 1988 and 1989. The two countries restored diplomatic ties in 1991.

5) Easing Tensions: Relations between the two nations improved after Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, a political moderate, took office in 1997.

Ties warmed further after historic visits by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to Tehran in December 1997 and Khatami to the kingdom in May 1999.

6) Nuclear Dispute: Worries about Iran resumed in Saudi Arabia amid international sanctions against Tehran over its contested nuclear program and the increasingly harsh rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran and Saudi Arabia each backed opposite sides in Syria's civil war, as well as in the civil war in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia also grows increasingly suspicious of Iran as it reaches a deal with world powers over its nuclear program.

7) 2015 Hajj Disaster: On Sept. 24, a stampede and crush strikes the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

While the kingdom says 769 pilgrims are killed, an Associated Press count shows over 2,400 people were killed.

Iran says at least 464 of its pilgrims were killed and blames Saudi Arabia's "incompetence" for the deaths.

8) Sheikh's Execution: On Jan. 2, Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others the largest execution carried out by the kingdom in three and a half decades.

The execution of al-Nimr, a central figure in Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority, sparked protests across the Mideast and attacks on Saudi diplomatic facilities in Iran.

Saudi Arabia responded by announcing it was severing diplomatic ties with Iran over the attacks.

Latest World News
Follow us on blast near indian consulate in jalalabad afghanistan afghan media

Jalalabad: Close on the heels of the attack on the Indian diplomatic Mission in Mazar-i-Sharif, a blast has now been heard near the Indian consulate in the Jalalabad district of Afghanistan, Afghan media reported.

While there are no details currently available regarding the extent of damage or possible casualties, subsequent attacks on or near Indian missions are becoming a cause of concern.

The blast in Jalalabad occurred at a distance of 400 metres from the Indian consulate in Jalalabad at about 11.30 am in the Jalalabad city centre vicinity, which also houses the Pakistani consulate.

The Indian consulate, however, is not believed to have been the target, news agencies quoted sources as saying.

The Jalalabad blast comes barely hours after reports of an end to a 25-hour gun battle between security forces and terrorists near the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif.

The encounter ended with security forces neutralising all the attackers who made an unsuccessful attempt to storm the Indian Mission building.

Afghan government spokesman Shir Jan Durrani said that three armed assailants had been killed after they mounted an attack on the diplomatic mission from a nearby building late Sunday. The fighting left one policeman dead and 11 others wounded.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack in northern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of assaults on Indian installations in the country.

(With agency inputs)

Latest World News
Follow us on elderly sikh stabbed to death in us hate crime suspected

San Fransisco: A 68-year-old Sikh man has been stabbed to death in California's Fresno city on January 1, prompting police to launch a hate crime probe into the city's first homicide.

Gurcharan Singh Gill, an employee at local liquor store at Shields Express in West Shields Avenue was at work when he was stabbed to death during broad day light, Lieutenant Mindy Casto said.

While investigations are still on-going, local communitymembers feel Gill was attacked due to his identity and skin colour, Casto said.

When officers of Fresno Police Department arrived at the scene they found an elderly man lying in the shop. Emergency medical team tried to provide first-aid but it was determined that Gill had already died, Fresno Bee reported.

The motive and cause of death are not known yet. His death marked the city's first homicide of 2016, police said.

On December 28, another elderly Sikh man was brutally assaulted by two persons in Fresno. No arrests have been made in either cases.

The police have appealed to the local people to report if they find any leads to the incident.

Latest World News
Follow us on afghan mazar i sharif seige encounter continues mission staff safe

Kabul: Heavy fighting continued today as militants made an unsuccessful attempted to storm the Indian diplomatic mission in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif as special forces carried out clearing operations.

According to Krishna Chaudhary, Director General of the ITBP, all ITBP personnel and consulate employees posted in the Afhgan city are safe. The real identities of the gunmen is yet to be ascertained, he said.

Meanwhile, the Afghan national police and Afghan security forces are still engaging with the gunmen.

"Afghan police have cordoned off the entire area. They have evacuated people in nearby areas to prevent collateral damage. At least 2 bodies of terrorists were dragged out of the building," the ITBP DG said, adding that the attackers used sophisticated weapons like RPG, grenades and rifles.

This is the sixth time since 2008 that an Indian mission has been attacked in Afghanistan. Earlier attacks included those carried out in Kabul on July 7 and October 8 in 2008 and on February 26 in 2010. These attacks in Kabul were followed by an attack on August 3, 2013, in Jalalabad and on May 3, 2014, in Herat.

The current attack in Mazar-i-Sharif is the sixth such attack. A total of 32 ITBP personnel deployed at the Indian mission here.

Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Amar Sinha earlier said that clearing operations in Mazar-i-Sharif on by special forces and all were safe in the consulate.

"Heavy fighting going on," he said, adding that Balkh province's Governor Atta Muhammad Noor was personally monitoring the situation.

Explosions and gunfire rang out last night as militants attempted to storm the Indian diplomatic mission in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Indian and Afghan security forces were jointly engaged in a gun-battle with at least two unidentified attackers, who attempted to strike the Indian consulate here. In all 4-5 attackers were believed to have launched the attack, sources said.

The sources said a contingent of Afghanistan security forces and India's Indo Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBP) were retaliating and combating intermittent gunfire that is emanating from a building near the consulate since last night and it is believed that at least 2-3 attackers are still active out of the total of 4-5 who attempted to storm the heavily guarded complex.

"Two attackers are believed to be killed after security forces engaged them," they said.

The operation to completely neutralise the attackers, who first hit at about 2115 hours IST yesterday, is still on and gunfire is being exchanged between the two sides even as Afghan forces are trying to get into the consulate building, the sources said.

"All the Indian staff is safe," they said.

Officials said the gunmen yesterday tried to enter the consulate from its rear end and fired an RPG round which got mis-directed and hit a building called the Alamas wedding hall, about 100 metres from the Indian Consulate building.

At least 4-5 rocket rounds and numerous bullet rounds have been fired towards the Indian complex, they said, but none of them hit the building.

"A tight cordon has been created by the Afghan security forces on the outside and Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel in the proximate circle of the consulate," the sources said.

The forces have been asked to ensure zero movement outside the consulate.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack which came just a day after Pakistani terrorists attacked an IAF base in Pathankot in Punjab.

The attack also comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Kabul on a brief visit on December 25 during which he inaugurated the new building for Afghan Parliament built by India at a cost of USD 90 million.

Latest World News
Follow us on india pak foreign secys to draw dialogue roadmap for next 6 months sartaj aziz

Islamabad: Underlining that there is "visible improvement" in Indo-Pak ties, Pakistan has said the foreign secretaries of the two countries will meet on January 15 to draw up a roadmap for the next six months to carry forward the bilateral engagement.

The Pakistan government will focus on the revival of peace process in Afghanistan and the consolidation of the process of improvement of relations with India, Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz told Radio Pakistan.

He said the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries will meet here on January 15 to draw up a roadmap for the Bilateral Comprehensive Dialogue for the next six months. The dialogue will cover all issues, including Kashmir, Siachen and water, Aziz said yesterday.

Talking about the policy of a peaceful neighbourhood, he said it ultimately paid back as there is "visible improvement" in relations with India and Afghanistan.

Aziz asserted that economic revival, peaceful neighbourhood and non-interference in affairs of other countries is the cornerstone of Pakistan's foreign policy. Aziz' remarks came as Pakistani militants attacked an Air Force base in Pathankot yesterday.

In a pre-dawn attack, a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected to be belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed outfit, struck at the Air Force base in Punjab, leading to a fierce gun-battle.

Pakistan has condemned the Pathankot terror strike and asserted that building on the goodwill created during the recent high level contacts, it remained committed to partner India in tackling terrorism.

The attack came just a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unscheduled visit to Pakistan and met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with an aim of improving ties.

The process of resumption of talks was set in motion after a meeting between Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in Paris on November 30 on the sidelines of Climate Change Conference.

The meet was followed by the national security advisers' meeting in Bangkok a week later following which External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Pakistan to attend the Heart of Asia Conference.

Latest World News
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Follow us on nsa ajit doval s china visit put off in wake of pathankot attack

Beijing: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's visit to China from tomorrow for talks with top Chinese leaders has been put off in the wake of the attack by Pakistani militants on the key Air Force base in Pathankot.

The visit has been put off due to scheduling problems, Chinese Foreign Ministry official told PTI here today.

Indian officials said Doval's visit will be rescheduled as he is preoccupied with the handling of the Pathankot incident.

Doval, who is also the Special Representative for Sino-India boundary talks, was scheduled to visit China this week to hold informal talks with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on January 5.

Doval was also scheduled to meet Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on January 6.

India and China have so far held 18 round of talks to resolve the dispute along the 3488 km-long border.

Besides the annual dialogue on the border, the Special Representatives also meet informally to review the progress and discuss a host of strategic issues concerning bilateral relations including issues related to the neighbourhood.

Latest World News
Follow us on saudis cut ties with iran following shiite cleric execution

Tehran: Saudi Arabia announced Sunday it was severing diplomatic relations with Shiite powerhouse Iran amid escalating tensions over the Sunni kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

The move came hours after protesters stormed and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and followed harsh criticism by Iran's top leader of the Saudis' execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Iranian diplomatic personnel had 48 hours to leave his country and all Saudi diplomatic personnel in Iran had been called home.

The mass execution of al-Nimr and 46 others the largest carried out by Saudi Arabia in three and a half decades laid bare the sectarian divisions gripping the region as demonstrators took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan in protest.

It also illustrated the kingdom's new aggressiveness under King Salman. During his reign, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition fighting Shiite rebels in Yemen and staunchly opposed regional Shiite power Iran, even as Tehran struck a nuclear deal with world powers.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Saudi Arabia on Sunday of "divine revenge" over al-Nimr's death, while Riyadh accused Tehran of supporting "terrorism" in a war of words that threatened to escalate even as the U.S. and the European Union sought to calm the region.

Al-Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh that the Iranian regime has "a long record of violations of foreign diplomatic missions," dating back to the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in 1979, and such incidents constitute "a flagrant violation of all international agreements," according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

He said Iran's "hostile policy" was aimed "at destabilizing the region's security," accusing Tehran of smuggling weapons and explosives and planting terrorist cells in the kingdom and other countries in the region. He vowed that Saudi Arabia will not allow Iran "to undermine our security."

"The history of Iran is full of negative and hostile interference in Arab countries, always accompanied with subversion, demolition and killing of innocent souls," al-Jubeir said, just before announcing the severing of diplomatic relations.

Al-Nimr was a central figure in Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority until his arrest in 2012. He was convicted of terrorism charges but denied advocating violence.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia put al-Nimr and three other Shiite dissidents to death, along with a number of al-Qaida militants. Al-Nimr's execution drew protests from Shiites around the world, who backed his call for reform and wider political freedom for their sect.

While the split between Sunnis and Shiites dates back to the early days of Islam and disagreements over the successor to Prophet Muhammad, those divisions have only grown as they intertwine with regional politics, with both Iran and Saudi Arabia vying to be the Mideast's top power.

Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of supporting terrorism in part because it backs Syrian rebel groups fighting to oust its embattled ally, President Bashar Assad. Riyadh points to Iran's backing of the Lebanese Hezbollah and other Shiite militant groups in the region as a sign of its support for terrorism. Iran also has backed Shiite rebels in Yemen known as Houthis.

Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, condemned al-Nimr's execution, saying Sunday the cleric "neither invited people to take up arms nor hatched covert plots. The only thing he did was public criticism."

Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard said Saudi Arabia's "medieval act of savagery" would lead to the "downfall" of the country's monarchy.

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry said that by condemning the execution, Iran had "revealed its true face represented in support for terrorism."

In Tehran, a protest outside the Saudi Embassy early Sunday quickly grew violent as protesters threw stones and gasoline bombs at the embassy, setting part of the building ablaze, according to Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, the country's top police official, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Forty people were arrested and investigators were pursuing other suspects, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned Saudi Arabia's execution of al-Nimr, but also branded those who attacked the Saudi Embassy as "extremists."

"It is unjustifiable," he said in a statement.

Hundreds of protesters later demonstrated in front of the embassy and in a central Tehran square, where street signs near the embassy were replaced with ones bearing the slain sheikh's name.

Western powers sought to calm the tensions.

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the Obama administration was aware of the Saudis' severing of ties with Tehran. "We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences and we will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions," Kirby said.

Earlier, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif by phone and urged Tehran to "defuse the tensions and protect the Saudi diplomats," according to a statement.

The disruption in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran may have implications for peace efforts in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and others spent significant time trying to bring the countries to the negotiating table and they both sat together at talks aimed at finding a diplomatic solution to the civil war. Last month, Saudi Arabia convened a meeting of Syrian opposition figures that was designed to create a delegation to attend peace talks with the Syrian government that are supposed to begin in mid-January.

Across the region, demonstrators took to the streets Sunday in protest over the execution of al-Nimr.

In Bahrain, police fired tear gas and birdshot at demonstrators on Sitra Island, south of the capital, Manama, wounding some. In al-Daih, west of the capital, Shiite protesters chanted against Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family, as well as against Bahrain's ruling Al Khalifa family.

In Beirut, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called al-Nimr "the martyr, the holy warrior," while protests erupted from Turkey to India to Pakistan.

The cleric's execution has also threatened to complicate Saudi Arabia's relationship with the Shiite-led government in Iraq, where the Saudi Embassy is preparing to formally reopen for the first time in nearly 25 years. On Saturday there were calls for the embassy to be shut down again.

Meanwhile, al-Nimr's family prepared for three days of mourning at a mosque in al-Awamiya in the kingdom's al-Qatif region in predominantly Shiite eastern Saudi Arabia. The sheikh's brother, Mohammed al-Nimr, told The Associated Press that Saudi officials informed his family that the cleric had been buried in an undisclosed cemetery, a development that could lead to further protests.

Latest World News
Follow us on terror attack on indian consulate in afghanistan s mazar i sharif

Kabul: A group of armed men late Sunday attacked the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, the provincial governor spokesperson told media.

Officials said attackers have taken up positions inside a residential home located in front of the Indian mission and are firing on the consulate.

"The number of attackers were 4, two of them killed but not confirmed by police yet," Afghan news agency Pajhwok Afghan News said in a tweet.

"Two attackers were killed in fighting after insurgents attacked Indian consulate in Mazarisharif city," it said in an earlier tweet.

Sources told Xinhua news agency that there were no casualties on the Indian side.

"Two of the four militants, who targeted the three-member consulate, have been gunned down by Afghan special forces," the sources said.

In a series of tweets, Pajhwok Afghan News earlier said: "Police confirmed blast in gun fires in PD4 near to #Indian consulate in #Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif city."

"Balkh governor spokesman told Pajhwok that attackers entered a house and firing on Indian Consulate in Maza-i-Sharif city."

"Police says, no casualties were reported yet from attack on #Indian Consulate in Maza-i-Sharif city."

"Gun fires resumed after armed people attacked #Indian Consulate in MazairSharif city."

BBC also said explosions and gunfire were heard near the Indian consulate.

The report said it was not immediately clear whether the consulate was directly targeted, as the area also has a building belonging to a local politician.

Indian diplomatic missions in Afghanistan have come under militant attacks earlier too. In 2008 and 2009, the embassy in Kabul was attacked, leaving dozens dead.

In May 2014, gunmen attacked the Indian consulate in Herat, while in August 2013, nine civilians died when the consulate in Jalalabad was targeted.

Latest World News
Follow us on us appeals to iran saudi arabia to show restraint

Washington: The US yesterday asked Saudi Arabia and Iran to show restraint as the tensions between the two countries erupted into a full-blown diplomatic crisis over the execution of a Shiite cleric.

Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned the foreign ministers of the two countries in this regard while the White House in a public statement called both Iran and Saudi Arabia to take steps to de-escalate the situation.

We do continue to be concerned about the need for both the Iranians and the Saudis to de-escalate the situation in the Middle East, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily news conference. Earnest called on both countries to show restraint and avoid further inflaming sectarian tensions between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-ruled Iran.

That we are urging all sides to show restraint and to not further inflame tensions that are on quite vivid display in the region. Kerry has been in touch with his Iranian counterpart. US diplomatic officials in Saudi Arabia have been in touch with their counterparts to convey this message, he said.

We have seen a lot of volatility and instability in the Middle East has a tendency to break down along sectarian lines. It is not a coincidence. We believe there's more that can be done by people on all sides to try to bridge those divides in a way that advances the interests of countries all across the region, the White House spokesman said. Syria, he said, is probably the most vivid example of this.

He urged Saudi Arabia and Iran not to let the conflict derail fragile talks aimed at securing a cease-fire and a political transition to end the war in Syria. The United States has succeed in leading the international effort to bring all sides together to try and bring about a political resolution inside Syria, he noted.

It was a lot of painstaking diplomatic work to bring them to the table the first time, and there will always be reasons for them to be suspicious and be reluctant to engage with countries that they consider to be their adversaries. But the pursuit of this ultimate goal is so clearly within their own direct interest, that we are hopeful that they will continue to engage, but ultimately, it will be up to them, Earnest said.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran late yesterday, giving diplomats 48 hours to leave the country, after protesters set fire to its embassy in Tehran Riyadh's execution on Saturday of prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Responding to a question, Earnest expressed concerns over the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia in particular the recent execution of political and religious leaders in that country.

I can tell you that the United States regularly has raised concerns about the human rights situation inside of Saudi Arabia. The President has even done that in his conversations with King Salman, he said.

More recently, there have been direct concerns raised by US officials to Saudi officials about the potential damaging consequences of following through on mass executions, in particular, the execution of al-Nimr, political opposition figure, but also the religious leader, he said.

This is a concern that we raised with the Saudis in advance, and unfortunately, the concerns that we expressed to the Saudi's have precipitated the kinds of consequences that we were concerned about, Earnest said.

Latest World News
Follow us on us asks pakistan to take action against pathankot attackers

Washington: US has strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Punjab's Pathankot and asked Pakistan to take actions against its perpetrators.

We extend our condolences to all the victims and their families, State Department Spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the Pakistani government has spoken very powerfully and 'it's certainly our expectation that they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they would'.

Pakistan yesterday extended deepest condolences to the government and people of India on the unfortunate terrorist incident and said that Islamabad was working on the 'leads' provided by New Delhi on the terror attack on the IAF base.

Describing terrorism as a shared challenge in South Asia, the US also asked all countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and bring justice to the perpetrators of the Pathankot terrorist attack.

We urge all the countries in the region to work together to disrupt and dismantle terrorist networks and to bring justice to the perpetrators of this particular attack. I would note that the government of Pakistan, also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian air base. We have been clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups, Kirby said.

He said the US has for a long time talked about the continued safe haven issues there in between Afghanistan and Pakistan and certainly between India and Pakistan.

We're mindful that there remain some safe havens that we obviously want to see cleared out. And we continue to engage with the government of Pakistan to that end. And again, I would point you back to what the government of Pakistan itself has said and acknowledged that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups and it will continue to take the fight, Kirby said.

With Agency Inputs

Latest World News
Follow us on working on leads provided by india on pathankot attack pak

Islamabad: Pakistan is working on the "leads" provided by India on the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot, the Foreign Office said tonight in a statement whose tone was conciliatory.

Extending Pakistan's deepest condolences to the Government and people of India on the "unfortunate terrorist incident" in Pathankot, a statement by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "We understand the pain of many families who have lost their dear ones in this tragedy, as Pakistan itself is a major victim of terrorism."

Noting that the terror attack that left seven security personnel dead has been categorically condemned by Pakistan, the spokesperson said, "In line with Pakistan's commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism, the Government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it."

The statement, however, did not give details of the "leads" provided by India.

It also said that India and Pakistan should remain "committed" to a sustained dialogue process.

"Living in the same region and with a common history, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained dialogue process," it said, adding, "The challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to a cooperative approach."

An element of uncertainty today crept in over next week's Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan amid indications that these may be deferred in the wake of the Pathankot terror attack last Saturday.

Latest World News
Follow us on pathankot attack yashwant sinha questions foreign policy of modi government

New Delhi: In the backdrop of evidences hinting at Pakistan's role in Pathankot terror attack, senior BJP leader and former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha has said that it would be surprising if 'New Delhi holds Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan' in mid-January.

Criticising the foreign policy of Modi government, Sinha said that the government must be careful while resuming the dialogue with Pakistan as the recent attack once again indicates that 'nothing had changed on the ground in Pakistan'.

"As far as Pakistan is concerned, nothing has changed on the ground and all the red lines were in place. Even then we extended the hand of friendship," Sinha said in a conversation with India Today yesterday.

Reminding the government of its earlier version on Pakistan that talks cannot go hand-in-hand with terrorism, the BJP veteran said, "Government has changed its policy towards terrorism, I don't know the reason for it. I was not only the Foreign Minister in the Vajpayee government, but also the spokesperson for the party on foreign affairs."

Sinha further said that the attack on the IAF airbase was a result of major security lapse and drastic steps were needed to secure the country's border.

"The government must introspect over national security. The impression gaining ground was that India was a 'soft state' since 'we tend to talk more and act less. This must change," he said.

Comparing Pathankot attack to last year's Paris attack, he said that France was quick enough to respond on their soil, whereas, India has done nothing so far.

"Every country has done whatever it could do to deal with terrorism as strongly as possible. It's only India which has suffered from cross border terrorism for over 25 years and we are still struggling," Sinha said.

Security forces continued search and combing operation inside the Pathankot air base on Tuesday -- the fourth day after the attack on the frontline Air Force Station (AFS) by suspected Pakistani terrorists.

The counter offensive against the terrorists at Punjab's Pathankot air base was going on for the past 77 hours.

Seven security personnel, including an officer of the National Security Guards (NSG), an IAF Garud commando and five Defence Services Corps (DSC) personnel, were killed by the terrorists.
Follow us on pathankot strike a suicide attack aimed at harming strategic assets

New Delhi: Union Finance minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley today said that the terror attack on the Pathankot air base was a Fidayeen (Suicide) attack with the objective to inflict maximum damage to strategic assets.

Jailtey further emphasised that the lessons learnt from the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks helped the security personnel at Pathankot. "A lot has been learnt from the Mumbai attacks, this led our security forces to stop the terrorists at the entrance and keep them at distance from our strategic assets," he said.

Jailtey was also all praise for the valour shown by the security personnel and said that they had been successful in meeting all objectives. Security forces have been successful in meeting all three objectives of ensuring strategic assets not hurt; minimal damage and of liquidating or catching terrorists alive, he said.

Jaitley further noted that it was too early to take a call on the proposed talks between India and Pakistan. We are at a stage when operations are still on. We will only take a call on Indo-Pak talks once the operations are over, Jaitley said.

The Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan are scheduled for later this month. However, the government is said to be in two minds following the attack carried out by suspected Pakistani terrorists.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier reviewed the situation arising out of the terror attack at Pathankot's air base. Soon after his return from Karnataka last night, he chaired a meeting of top officials including National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had on Sunday held meetings with former Indian envoys to Pakistan to discuss the way forward in wake of the Pathankot attack.

Meanwhile, encounter and combing operation is going on inside the Pathankot air base.
Follow us on rajnath singh assures of central assistance to quake hit north east states

Guwahati: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday assured of all central assistance to the north-eastern states in the wake of an earthquake in Manipur early morning.

"The prime minister has asked me to coordinate with all the chief ministers of the north-eastern states. I have spoken to almost all of them. However, I could not contact the Manipur chief minister (Okram Ibobi Singh). The Manipur chief secretary told me the damage is more in the state. The Centre will extend all required assistance to the north-eastern states to deal with the crisis," the minister told the media here.

"I have also spoken to Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi-ji and taken stock of the situation," Rajnath Singh, on a two-day visit to Assam since Sunday, said.

A 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook the north-eastern region of India and neighbouring countries around 4.35 a.m. on Monday.

While the temblor shook most north-eastern states, it is feared to have caused more damage in Manipur although the exact loss is yet to be ascertained.

The Manipur government's officials said at least four people died while around 50 people were injured.

Rajnath Singh arrived in Silchar in Assam's Barak Valley on Sunday and inspected the Indo-Bangladesh border at Steamerghat border outpost on the international border and addressed a public rally there.

He is scheduled to visit the Sonahat border outpost in Dhubri sector on the India-Bangladesh border on Monday and is likely to address a public rally in Dhubri before returning to New Delhi on Monday evening.
Follow us on sonia gandhi had met zakia jafri after gulbarg incident tanveer jafri

Ahmedabad: The son of the late Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the Gulbarg society violence, has refuted the claim by former Gujarat DGP RB Sreekumar in his book that Congress President Sonia Gandhi had not met the MP's widow after the 2002 riots in the state.

In his book, Gujarat - Behind the Curtain', Sreekumar said, Soulless secularism and over-sensitivity to Hindu sentiments presumably prompted Congress leaders to block the plans of Sonia Gandhi to visit Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP, butchered to death by rioters on the bandh day (28th February 2002), during her Gujarat visit after the riots, for expressing condolence.

Tanveer Jafri, Zakia's son, said that the Congress chief had met his mother four to five days after the Gulbarg society riot incident at the city circuit house.

As our house was burnt down after the riots, we were staying at a friend's place. Sonia Gandhiji had come to Ahmedabad and my mother and I had met her at the city circuit house, Jafri said.

Ahmed Patel (political advisor to the Congress president) and another gentleman were present during that meeting, he said.

This is the fact, he said in response to the claims made by Sreekumar.

May be the state government had at the time restricted the movements of leaders of political parties fearing a flare up. So we had met her at the city circuit house.

My mother also remembers the meeting, Jafri further said. Sreekumar, an ex-DGP, had taken on the Gujarat government headed at the time by Narendra Modi over the 2002 riots. He has now written a book on the riots which was published last month.

Sreekumar, however, stuck to his stand and wrote an e-mail to Tanveer Jafri after he claimed that Sonia had met her mother to condole the Congress MP's death.

My statement that Sonia Gandhi did not, repeat did not, visit your mother at her residence is truthful and correct. Instead Congress leaders summoned your mother, an old widow, under severe shock, agony and despair to the place of stay of Congress President.

So, my observation that the Congress President never visited the widow of the former MP, killed in a gruesome manner is totally correct, Sreekumar wrote in the e-mail to Jafri.

Let us not forget that while many people ran away from Gulbarg society, Ehsan Jafri Saheb bravely stayed back for the protection of women and children. His martyrdom was not properly recognised by the State and Central Govts and the Congress party, Sreekumar further said.
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After Executing Regime Critic, Saudi Arabia Fires Up American PR Machine





By Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani







January 05, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - "

The Intercept

" - Saudi Arabias well-funded public relations apparatus moved quickly after Saturdays explosive execution of Shiite political dissident Nimr al-Nimr to shape how the news is covered in the United States.

The execution led protestors in Shiite-run Iran to set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, precipitating a major diplomatic crisis between the two major powers already fighting proxy wars across the Middle East.

The Saudi side of the story is getting a particularly effective boost in the American media through pundits who are quoted justifying the execution, in many cases without mention of their funding or close affiliation with the Saudi Arabian government.

Meanwhile, social media accounts affiliated with Saudi Arabias American lobbyists have pushed English-language infographics, tweets, and online videos to promote a narrative that reflects the interests of the Saudi regime.

A Politico article about the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran by Nahal Toosi, for instance, quoted only three sources: the State Department, which provided a muted response to the executions; the Saudi government; and Fahad Nazer, identified as a political analyst with JTG Inc. Nazer defended the executions, saying that they served as a message  aimed at Saudi Arabias own militants regardless of their sect.

What Politico did not reveal was that Nazer is himself a former political analyst at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a think tank formed last year that discloses that it is fully funded by the Saudi Embassy and the United Arab Emirates.

The Washington Post quoted consultant Theodore Karasik of Gulf State Analytics as saying that the executions were a powerful message that Saudi Arabia is intent on standing up to its regional rival. Karasik is a columnist at Al Arabiya, an English-language news organization based in the UAE and owned by Middle East Broadcasting Center, a private news conglomerate that has long been financially backed by members of the Saudi royal family. Its current chairman is Sheikh Waleed bin Ibrahim, a billionaire Saudi businessman whose brother-in-law was the late King Fahd. (Al Arabiyas coverage of the crisis is almost comically pro-Saudi, featuring headlines like Storming embassies.. Iranian speciality.)

An editorial published by the Wall Street Journal approvingly quoted Joseph Braude of the Foreign Policy Research Institute claiming that Nimr was a violent extremist who advocated a military option against Saudi Arabia. But as journalists and editors from the Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, the BBC, and other prominent outlets have reported, Nimr advocated nonviolence and encouraged his followers to protest peacefully. Braude did not provide any evidence for his claims beyond anonymous Saudi sources.

Braude is a contributor to several Saudi-owned media outlets, including Al Arabiya and Al Majalla, a magazine owned by a member of the Saudi royal family. Neither of these affiliations were disclosed in the Wall Street Journal editorial. (Braude was also convicted in 2004 of attempting to smuggle 4,000-year-old artifacts looted from the Iraqi National Museum after the fall of Baghdad into the United States.)

Braudes depiction of Nimr aligns with the Saudi Arabian view. Saudi Arabias terrorism law includes as acts of terrorism merely criticizing the government, merely criticizing the monarchy, Sarah Lea Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watchs Middle East division, told The Intercept.

Meanwhile, the Saudi Embassy is blasting out its message through social media.

As we have previously reported, Saudi Arabias lobbyists, including Qorvis and Targeted Victory, a social media company founded by Republican strategists, help to maintain a Saudi Embassy effort called Arabia Now, which puts a positive spin on all things Saudi Arabian.

Arabia Now has retweeted content from a reportedly Saudi government-run Twitter account called Infographics KSA, which produced a slick English-language video and infographic that deride Nimr as a sedition instigator and point to 10 years he spent abroad in Iran. On Twitter, the same account has started releasing English-language infographics defending Saudi moves to expel Iranian diplomats and bar air travel to Iran, using the hashtag #SaudiCutsTiesWithIran.

The U.S. government is obviously not eager to alienate a government that President Obama has wooed with warm words and over $90 billion in arms sales. The diplomatic offensive by Saudi-financed flacks and media has provided some space for it to provide a muted response to the execution.
Will the U.S. Fall for Saudi Arabias Deliberate Provocation in Killing of Shiite Cleric? By Trita Parsi January 05, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - There should be little doubt that Saudi Arabia wanted to escalate regional tensions into a crisis by executing Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. On the same day, Riyadh also unilaterally withdrew from the ceasefire agreement in Yemen. By allowing protestors to torch the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response, Iran seems to have walked right into the Saudi trap. If Saudi Arabia succeeds in forcing the United States into the conflict by siding with the kingdom, then its objectives will have been met. It is difficult to see that Saudi Arabia did not know that its decision to execute Nimr would not cause uproar in the region and wouldnt put additional strains on its already tense relations with Iran. The inexcusable torching of the Saudi embassy in Iran  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned it and called it totally unjustifiable, though footage shows that Iranian security forces did little to prevent the attack  in turn provided Riyadh with the perfect pretext to cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. With that, Riyadh significantly undermined U.S.-led regional diplomacy on both Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia has long opposed diplomatic initiatives that Iran participated in be it in Syria or on the nuclear issue  and that risked normalizing Tehrans regional role and influence. Earlier, Riyadh had successfully ensured Irans exclusion from Syria talks in Geneva by threatening to boycott them if Iran was present, U.S. officials have told me. In fact, according to White House sources, President Barack Obama had to personally call King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to force the Saudis to take part in the Vienna talks on Syria this past fall. Now, by having cut its diplomatic relations with Iran, the Saudis have the perfect excuse to slow down, undermine and possibly completely scuttle these U.S.-led negotiations, if they should choose to do so. From the Saudi perspective, geopolitical trends in the region have gone against its interests for more than a decade now. The rise of Iran  and Washingtons decision to negotiate and compromise with Tehran over its nuclear program  has only added to the Saudi panic. To follow through on this way of thinking, Riyadhs calculation with the deliberate provocation of executing Nimr may have been to manufacture a crisis  perhaps even war  that it hopes can change the geopolitical trajectory of the region back to the Saudis advantage. The prize would be to force the United States to side with Saudi Arabia and thwart its slow but critical warm-up in relations with Tehran. As a person close to the Saudi government told the Wall Street Journal: At some point, the U.S. may be forced to take sides [between Saudi Arabia and Iran] This could potentially threaten the nuclear deal. Washington should not repeat Tehrans mistake and walk into this Saudi trap. In fact, from the U.S. perspective, Saudi Arabias destabilizing activities are a vindication of the nuclear deal it struck with Iran in 2015. One critical benefit of that deal, left unstated by Obama administration officials, is that it helped reduce U.S. dependency on Saudi Arabia. By resolving the nuclear standoff and getting back on talking terms with Iran, Washington increased its options in the region. As Admiral Mike Mullen wrote in Politico last year in regards to the benefits of the nuclear deal: It would also more fairly rebalance American influence. We need to re-examine all of the relationships we enjoy in the region, relationships primarily with Sunni-dominated nations. Detente with Iran might better balance our efforts across the sectarian divide. Mindful of the deliberate manner Saudi Arabia is driving matters towards a crisis in the region  partly motivated by a desire to trap the United States in Riyadhs own enmity with Iran  Washington is clearly better off being able to play a balancing role between Saudi and Iran rather than being obligated to fully support Saudi Arabias regional escapades. The question is, however, if Washingtons desire to stay out of this fight is tenable. Obama administration officials have already expressed concern over how this Saudi-initiated crisis is affecting the fight against Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, and diplomacy over Syria. This is a dangerous game [the Saudis] are playing, an unnamed U.S. official told the Washington Post. There are larger repercussions than just the reaction to these executions, including damage to counter-ISIL initiatives as well as the Syrian peace process. If Washingtons priority is the defeat of IS and other jihadist movements, then a balancing act between an Iran that ferociously opposes IS and a Saudi Arabia that has played an undeniable role in promoting jihadi extremism may not be the right answer. Trita Parsi is the author of "A Single Roll of the Dice -- Obamas Diplomacy with Iran" (Yale University Press, 2012) and president of the National Iranian American Council.
Home Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter My Prescription for 2016: Collapse Early and Often



By Dmitry Orlov



January 05, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - We are in the time of year when most sensible animals living in northerly climates are hibernating in burrows and hollow tree trunks, while the somewhat less sensible pundits make their predictions for the coming year. My prediction is always the samethings will go on more or less same as before, until something major breaks, while the probability of something major breaking goes up with each passing year. I have called this event collapse, and have predicted, year after year, that it will eventually happen. And so, instead of repeating this less than useful prediction, this year I will instead provide a prescription.



Not too many people, I expect, will want to follow my prescription; not too many of my family members, or friends, or acquaintances, or you who are reading this. And that's fine because, as I have learned over and over again, there is no strength in numbers. Quite the opposite: the probability of any given trick working is in inverse proportion to the number of times it is tried, or the number of people who try it. And so, if you are reading along and think I can't possibly do this because of [insert lame excuse]! thengood! Fine with me. Fewer people equals more oxygen.



And that applies to the few people who will actually bother to read this. Lots more people will not want to read this, becausewhat collapse? Gasoline prices are low, Obama has shut down most of the wars, the economy is strong enough for the Fed to have started hiking rates, and once Bernie Trump gets into the White House, everything else will be set right too. To the people who think that, someone like me, who predicted collapse a while back, was clearly wrong, and needs to be psychoanalyzed, not followed. Again, fine with me, so long and thanks for all the bullshit.



The reasons it's all bullshit are as follows.



 Gasoline prices are low because high oil prices crashed the economy. In turn, low oil prices are destroying the North American oil patch, which was only showing new signs of life thanks to fracking and tar sands, which are expensive to produce and only make sense when oil prices are high. Rest assured, prices will go back up, and then back down, until, in the end, oil comes to be regarded as useless toxic waste. A year ago I described exactly this scenario.



 The wars are over because all of them pretty much ended in defeat for the US. None of them achieved any of their stated objectives. Now, some of you will jump up and try to comment that the stated objectives were not the real objectives, which were to sow chaos and destruction for the sheer hell of it while enriching defense contractors. That's fine too, because such real objectives are consistent with imperial collapse: empire wants to steal a precious vase; empire smashes it instead; success! Moreover, whatever the objectives, they don't matter any more, because now they can't be achieved no matter what. The new Russian/Chinese/Indian/Syrian ordnance, such as the S-300/400/500 air and space defense systems, the Kalibr long-range supersonic cruise missile, along with various electronic warfare systems such as Khibiny, has rendered most US forces obsolete. You can say that defeat is victory but, as I explained two years ago, it isn't. Cancel Red Alert and set course for nearest dry dock.



 The Fed is pretending to hike rates to avoid the impression that it has lost control. This is not the only sort of pretense being attempted in the financial arena; there are plenty of others. The US economy isn't growing, and if you subtract out the effect of runaway debt (which will never be repaid no matter what scenario you consider as likely) then it's actually shrinking. More accurately, it can be said that it is sucking in whatever it can in order to avoid collapsing. It is a black hole, as I described half a year ago.



 As far as the Bernie Trump will save us theme, it is well understood by now that the US is no longer a democracy. (Maybe it was one once upon a time, maybe not; it doesn't matter.) Consider the matter settled. Anyone who thinks that it is still possible to effect positive change in the US by voting is a conspiracy theorist of the most miserable, deluded kind.



* * *

There are some general properties of collapses to keep in mind.



1. All things that must collapse eventually do. All empires collapseno exceptions. All buildings collapseunless they are demolished first. All Ponzi schemessuch as the current financial system, based on runaway debtcollapse when you least expect them to. Seeing as collapses aren't optional, it makes sense to get used to the idea of them happening, and to learn how make the best of them. Some people consider this and are filled with grief. As I pointed out before, collapse is the worst possible time to suffer a nervous breakdown, so please get your blubbering over with ahead of time.



2. Some collapses are actually good for you. Some really important things could be saved provided whatever less important thing that would cause them to collapse collapses first. For instance, if indistrial civilization were to collapse soonish, this would avoid ecosystem collapse, leaving whatever survivors would be left with breathable air and a survivable climate. And if the gigantic bubble in human population, which grew apace with the burning of fossil fuels, were to pop before turning the planet into a giant smoldering trash heap, then the few survivors would have a reasonable chance of making it.



3. Bigger collapses are nastier than smaller ones. For example, if you had lots of local banks and credit unions making loans to people who then couldn't repay them, then some large number of these banks and credit unions would collapse, insured depositors would be repaid, bad debts would be written off, and the entire system would eventually recover. But if you have a handful of gigantic banks and financial institutions holding most of the bad debts, and they fail all at once, then that brings down the entire system. And if you bail them out, then the entire system ends up on life support for the rest of its life, because nobody has any incentive to stop generating bad loans, since now everyone expects to be bailed out again and again.



4. Frequent collapses are better than infrequent ones. This is because unless thingsbe they populations, Ponzi schemes, economies, cities or empirescollapse on a regular basis, they tend to get too big. And when they get too big, their collapse (which is inevitable, see Point 1 above) becomes bigger, making them worse (see Point 3 above). Plus, frequent collapses of the nonfatal kind can be actually good for you (see Point 2).



For example:



 If the electric grid collapses now and again, then you will eventually learn that you need to get yourself a 12V system, a generator, some solar panels, a wind generator, and install LED lights.

 If water pressure goes down to zero periodically, then you will learn that you need to put in some cisterns, a filtration system, a demand pump, and collect water off the rooftop.

 If garbage collection stops for periods of time, then you will learn to incinerate and to compost, and will try to minimize the amount of nonbiodegradable trash you generate.

 If paid work disappears for periods of time, then you will learn that you need to keep a few months' worth of savings around to ride out these periods.

 If stores run out of food on a semi-regular basis, then you will learn that you need to grow your own food, put a chicken coop in the back yard and figure out how many lazy beds of potatoes you need.

 If banks periodically confiscate all your money (that's called a bail-in, and it's actually been made legal not too long ago), then you will learn to keep an absolute minimum of money in the banks, and figure out other, more reliable forms in which to store your savings.

 If you were to periodically find yourself cut off from the medical system, then you would find out ways of staying healthy and of treating yourself.

 If you periodically found it impossible to buy gasoline, you would learn that you can't rely on your car, and would instead bicycle, or walk, or take public transportation.

 If your country's government periodically turned fascist and started detaining, torturing and killing people indiscriminately, then you'd learn that you need to get yourself a second passport, and practice getting out of the country in a hurry.



These are all examples of small, frequent collapses that are good for you.



But that's not what everyone seems to be aiming for, now, is it? What everyone seems to be aiming for is preventing any and all of these small, frequent, nonfatal collapses. However, such efforts are in direct contradiction with Point 1: All things that must collapse eventually do. Instead of preventing collapse, such tactics guarantee a single, huge, catastrophic collapse that can very well turn out to be fatal for huge masses of people. But that's OK: see Point 2: if the gigantic bubble in human population... pops before turning the planet into a giant smoldering trash heap, then the few survivors will have a reasonable chance of making it.



And so, what if you aspire to being one of these few survivors who might stand a reasonable chance of making it? My prescription is simple: Collapse Early and Often. Dmitry Orlov is a Russian-American engineer and a writer on subjects related to "potential economic, ecological and political decline and collapse in the United States," something he has called permanent crisis. http://cluborlov.blogspot.com Click for Spanish , German , Dutch , Danish , French , translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter For Email Marketing you can trust Donate



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How Obama Enables Atrocities President Obama seems so scared of offending the Saudis and their Israeli allies that he will tolerate almost any outrage, including Saudi Arabias mass beheadings and/or shootings of the regimes enemies including a Shiite political leader who dared criticize the monarchy, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry January 05, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - " Consortiumnews " - As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washingtons storylines  on Syria, Russia and elsewhere  even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization. The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi Arabias repressive Sunni monarchy executed prominent Shiite political leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for criticizing the nations kings and princes. Before the killing, the Obama administration held its tongue in public so as not to antagonize the Saudi royals. (Nimrs nephew awaits Saudi crucifixion for his role as a teenager in Arab Spring protests.) After the Nimr execution, the State Department issued a mild protest toward the Saudis while blurring the guilt by twinning it with criticism of Iran where outraged protesters damaged the Saudi embassy, which led to Saudi Arabias retaliatory breaking of relations with Iran. We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences, State Department spokesman John Kirby said meekly on Sunday, while some senior U.S. officials reportedly seethed in private over the latest Saudi provocation. This is a dangerous game they are playing, one official told The Washington Posts Karen DeYoung while insisting on anonymity to discuss U.S.-Saudi relations. But the fact that the Obama administration could not voice its revulsion over the Saudi mass head-chopping (along with some firing squads) for 47 men, including Nimr, over the weekend speaks volumes. President Barack Obama and other insiders continue to tip-toe around the unsavory U.S. alliances in the Mideast. Over the past several years, Saudi Arabia sealed its impervious protection from U.S. government criticism by forming an undeclared alliance with Israel around their mutual hatred of Shiite-ruled Iran and its Shiite allies, a cause picked up by American neocons and shared by the career-oriented liberal interventionists. Some more realist-oriented U.S. officials, reportedly including Obama and some national security aides, recognize the havoc that neocon/liberal-hawk strategies continue to wreak across the region and now spreading into Europe, but they act powerless to do anything bold to stop it. With Israels lobby siding with the Sunni states in their bloody rivalry with Shiite states, most U.S. politicians and pundits have scrambled to defend each recurring outrage by the Saudis, Qataris and Turks by trying to flip the script and somehow put the blame on Iran, Syria and Russia. Getting a Pass Thus, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks get mostly a pass for arming and enabling radical jihadists, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Israel also provides assistance to Al Qaedas Nusra Front along the Golan Heights and bombs allies of the Syrian government and, of course, faces no official U.S. criticism. In 2014, when Vice President Joe Biden blurted out the truth about Saudi support for Islamic terrorism inside Syria, he was the one who had to apologize. [Quote at 53:20 of clip .] In 2015, when Saudi Arabia invaded and bombed Yemen after hyping Irans support for Houthi rebels, the Obama administration sided with the Saudis even as their wanton attacks on poverty-stricken Yemen killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian crisis. For more than a year after President Obama announced his air war against the Islamic State in summer 2014, Turkey continued to let the terror group run an industrial-style oil smuggling operation from Syria and Iraq through Turkey. Only when Russia entered the conflict last fall was the U.S. government shamed into joining in bombing raids to destroy the truck convoys. Yet, Obama still defended Turkey and bought its promises about finally trying to seal a 100-kilometer gap in its border. Then, when Turkey retaliated against the Russian anti-terrorist bombing raids inside Syria by willfully shooting down a Russian Su-24 plane whose pilot was murdered after bailing out, Obama again sided with the Turks even though their claim that the Russian plane had violated Turkish air space was dubious at best. By their account, the plane had intruded over a sliver of Turkish territory for 17 seconds. In other words, whatever these U.S. allies do  no matter how brutal and reckless  the Obama administration at least publicly rushes to their defense. Otherwise, the neocon/liberal-hawk group think would be offended  and many angry editorials and columns would follow. While this strange reality may make sense inside Official Washington  where careerism is intense and offending the Israel Lobby is a sure career killer  this pusillanimous approach to these grave problems is endangering U.S. national interests as well as the worlds future. Not only has the neocon/liberal-interventionist obsession with regime change turned the Middle East into a vast killing field but it has now spread instability into Europe, where the fabric of the European Union is being shredded by dissension over how to handle millions of Syrian refugees. The United Kingdom may vote to leave the E.U., removing one of the original anchors of the European project which  for all its faults  has deservedly gotten credit for replacing a history of European blood-soaked conflicts with peaceful cooperation. The spreading disorder has had political repercussions in the United States, too, where panic over terrorism is reshaping the presidential race. Yet, instead of practical solutions such as pressuring all rational sides in the Syrian conflict to engage in peace talks and hold free elections that give the Syrian people the power to decide who their future leaders will be, Official Washington instead generates talking points, such as calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a magnet for terrorism who must go  although his forces have done the most to stop an outright victory by Al Qaeda and Islamic State. If one buys this magnet theory, then youd also have to seek regime change in every country thats been attacked by terrorists, including the United States, France, United Kingdom, Spain, etc. In the case of Syria, whats remarkable is that the sponsorship of terrorism by U.S. allies and indeed by the U.S. government itself has been so blatant. [See Consortiumnews.coms  Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda .] However, as far as Official Washington is concerned, it doesnt really matter what Assad has or hasnt done . Whats important is that regime change in Syria has been on the neocons to-do list since at least the mid-1990s  along with the brilliant idea of regime change in Iraq. [See Consortiumnews.coms  How Israel Out-Foxed US Presidents .]. The Infallible Neocons And since the neocons are infallible  as far as theyre concerned  the goal cant be changed. The only option is to escalate the regime change planning to include other countries that get in the way, including Iran and now nuclear-armed Russia. Yes, thats the ultimate neocon idea  make the Russian economy scream, overthrow the calculating Vladimir Putin and risk having him replaced by some extreme and unstable nationalist with his or her hand on the nuclear button. That may be how life on the planet ends  but there will be evermore group thinks and talking points right up to the moment of Armageddon. The neocons can never stop generating false narratives. Meanwhile, the liberal interventionists can boast of their own regime change  in Libya, a policy promoted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who delighted at the gruesome torture-murder of Muammar Gaddafi  we came, we saw, he died, she laughed  after having ignored his warnings that the overthrow of his secular government would open the oil-rich country to chaos from radical jihadists, a prediction that has been fulfilled. Yet, despite this record of spreading chaos and death around the world, the grip that the neocons and liberal hawks have on Official Washington remains almost absolute. They control most of the think tanks  from the Brookings Institution to the American Enterprise Institute  as well as the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times and pretty much the rest of the mainstream media. In case you havent noticed, the Times news coverage of the Middle East and Russia has been consistently slanted to favor neocon/liberal-hawk positions. Just as the Times eagerly joined President George W. Bushs bogus case for invading Iraq in 2003, the newspaper of record has peddled false and misleading articles about the crises in Syria and Ukraine as well as promoting anti-Russian propaganda . In this climate of manufactured reality, any old-fashioned foreign policy realist  especially one who has criticized Israel  cannot expect to win Senate confirmation to any senior position, establishing what amounts to a blacklist against realists, such as happened to ex-U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman whose intelligence appointment was dropped by Obama in his early days out of fear of offending the Israel Lobby and its many neocon backers. As the rise of those neocons has played out since their emergence during the Reagan administration, the realists who were known for cold-hearted foreign policy calculations to protect American interests have aged, died out or otherwise disappeared. They have been largely replaced by ideologues, either neocons with their intense devotion to right-wing Israeli interests or liberal interventionists who almost invariably side with the neocons but cite humanitarian concerns to justify regime change wars. Blocking Obama No matter how foolhardy and deadly these policy prescriptions have been, there is almost no way to dislodge the neocons and liberal hawks inside Official Washington, since they monopolize almost all levers of political and media power. Even when President Obama tried to collaborate under the table with President Putin to reduce tensions in Syria and Iran in 2013, Obama was quickly outmaneuvered by neocons and liberal hawks inside the State Department who pushed for the putsch in Ukraine in 2014 that effectively destroyed the Obama-Putin cooperation. [See Consortiumnews.coms  What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis. ] I have long argued that the only way to begin to challenge the neocon/liberal-hawk group thinks is to release facts about pivotal events, such as the 2013 Syria-sarin case, the 2014 sniper attacks at Kievs Maidan square, and the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine. The neocons/liberal hawks currently control all those narratives, using them as clubs to advance ideological agendas just as they did with the false claims about Iraqs WMD. [See Consortiumnews.coms  The Power of False Narrative .] But other evidence suggests very different scenarios. Obama and his national security team could either release evidence to confirm the accuracy of the group thinks or puncture that self-certainty. Instead Obama has chosen to withhold what the U.S. intelligence community knows about these events, all the better to protect the dominant propaganda narratives. So, the Obama administration continues down a road of tolerating or condoning outrages by its Mideast allies as the President and his timid intelligence bureaucrats do nothing to empower the American people with the truth. It is a recipe for worldwide catastrophe. Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).
Political Coverup of Iraq Atrocities By Felicity Arbuthnot Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.

 Tony Blair, CNN, January 15th, 2015 January 05, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - " DV " - A little over three months short of the thirteenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq (March 20th, 2003) now widely accepted as unlawful even by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, it has emerged that the Unit in the British Ministry of Defence established to investigate allegations of torture and unlawful killings by members of the 46,000 UK armed forces originally deployed has been overwhelmed with cases. The Independent reports that: British soldiers who have served in Iraq may face prosecution for crimes, including murder, according to Mark Warwick, the former police detective heading the Unit, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT). In his first major interview, Mr. Warwick told the Independent he believed there would be sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges. The serious allegations which include homicide, could lead to significant evidence being laid before the Service Prosecuting Authority to prosecute and charge. Allegations of torture, rape and unlawful killing by British armed services personnel between 2003 and 2009  after which they slunk out of Iraq under cover of darkness  has increased tenfold since the Unit was established in November 2010: In 2010 (there were) cases involving 152 victims. There are now: more than 1,500 victims, according to recent update. Of these, 280 are victims of alleged unlawful killing by British forces in Iraq, but more than 200 of these cases have yet to be investigated, with just 25 under investigation. Further: Of 1,235 alleged cases of ill-treatment, including accusations of rape and torture, only 45 are under investigation. Cases are to be reviewed over the coming twelve to eighteen months with significant cases being studied with the war crimes threshold in mind. Five years after IHATs establishment there have been no prosecutions. To the cynic IHAT seems to have all the hallmarks of a typical British sweeping under the straw operation with the fox in charge of the hen house brooms. The organization was set up by the Ministry of Defence to investigate the armed services, employees of the Ministry of Defence, alleged misconduct. Though it was established under Mark Warwick, a civilian detective, he was originally assisted by the Royal Military Police (RMP) until a ruling in the UK Court of Appeal in November 2011that their involvement substantially compromised proceeding since they had been involved in detentions in Iraq  which were what were being scrutinised. Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey responded by replacing the RMP with the Royal Navy Police. Birmingham, UKs Public Interest Lawyers who represent many who claim to have been tortured, challenged the new den of advocate foxes, since the Naval Police had also taken part in interrogations, alleging: that abuses were so systemic and widespread that only a public inquiry will satisfy the UKs human rights obligations. The judgment handed down on May 24th, 2013 was that: IHAT has now been structured in such a way that it can independently carry out its investigative and prosecutorial functions. RIP independent British judiciary. The Ministry of Defence has one last, well, defence  and defiance. The funds it gave to the Inquiry were due to be cut off in 2016. They have been extended to 2019. Were there any will hidden somewhere in those handpicked from the ranks of those which includes alleged perpetrators to deliver justice, in such a time scale, given such a massive, meticulous legal task, it would be between Herculean to impossible to achieve. Incidentally the Royal Navy still had a contingency in Iraq until May 2011, even after the Inquiry had been established into the horrors of Britains 9.24 Billion lawless onslaught (2010 figure.) The savagery will surely haunt the UK and allies for countless decades to come. What an age since Tony Blairs Christmas visit to Iraq on December 23rd, 2005 when he crept in to the country, his visit kept a secret until he appeared, helicoptered in from Kuwait. He told the troops: The importance of this is probably greater today than it has ever been and that Iraq would now mean that:  the region is more safe, our own country is more safe, because international terrorism will have been dealt a huge blow. If we manage to defeat the terrorism here, we will have dealt it a blow worldwide. Of course, before the invasion there was no terrorism, car bombs, suicide bombers in Iraq, Syria or widely elsewhere. They manifested and multiplied with the arrival of the invaders. Tony Blair is pursued globally by those aiming to try him for war crimes, crimes against the peace, or crimes of aggression. Events have displayed his delusional mendacity not alone in his hand in the unimaginable horrors of the destruction of Iraq and that inflicted on the people, country and poisoning of the region by the chemically toxic and radioactive weapons used  but the totally predictable blowback it has wrought in terror alerts and acts in the West and against Western interests. The least that is owed, minimal as it is, given the enormity of Iraqs victims, is independent, honest investigations and justice from Britains IHAT. It is very little, very late. It will not quell the grief, the rage, home the dispossessed, the orphans, widows, or bring back the dead, but it would be a start. Charles Antony Lynton Blair, QC, in the Dock with his cohorts in this tragedy, which will be recorded amongst historys great crimes, would also serve as a warning that Nurembergs great Principles still apply, as expressed then by Chief American Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson: To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger's Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.)  2007-2016 Dissident Voice and respective authors
Twenty Seven winners have emerged from the Reload Multivitamin Win -Win promo held among Pharmaceutical companies in the retail segment of the market.

The Promotion which started in the month of September ended in December 2015 with a raffle draw event to produce the winners of the various prizes including the grand prize of an all-expense paid trip to Dubai.



Ikymavian Pharmacy Nigeria Ltd, Shomolu, Lagos emerged the grand prize winner of the all-expense paid trip to Dubai out of over two hundred and fifty participants/retailers.

The draw was picked by Mrs Abiola Paul Ozieh the Chairman of Association of Community Pharmacist (Lagos Branch) and special guest of honour at the Reload Multivitamin raffle draw event.

She commended Reload Multivitamin for engaging the retailers as well as rewarding them for supporting the brand. Prior to the grand prize draw, various prizes of 10 units of pressing iron, 2 units of 32 inches television set, 2 units of Home Theatre system,10 units of ceiling fans, 2 units of refrigerators, and 1 unit of air conditioner were drawn by members of the audience in attendance including representatives of the various media houses that covered the maiden edition of Reload Multivitamin Promo draw anchored by ace broadcaster Omotunde Adebowale David (Lolo of Wazobia FM)

In his welcome remarks, the Chief Operating Officer of Pharmacy Plus, Mr. Chukwuemeka Obi, said the draw was a way of giving back to Reload retailers who have been there for us in the course of the year.

According to him, I am equally excited in as much as Im not a winner. Being the organiser of this event, we have achieved our objective of rewarding those partners we consider key stakeholders in building the reward brand in our society towards improving the health of the consumers. They have helped put the brand in the market place, reach out to Reload customers on our behalf, which is the whole essence of the raffle draw

He stated that the excited retailer will be allowed to decide his preferred time for the trip to Dubai, while other winners will be contacted to pick their prizes.

Mr. Obi reiterated the importance of multivitamins, in our day-to-day life, noting that we live in a very stressful environment and looking at our eating habit, there is possibly no way we can get all our daily nutrition requirements from the food we eat, the only way we can get that is to take multivitamins.

The Reload Multivitamin range of products has been developed as food supplements to make-up for vitamins and mineral deficit.

Reload Multivitamin contains 24 fruits and vegetables. Taking one tablet daily would give you all the nutrients you need on a daily basis. Taking it in the morning will keep you Reloaded for the entire day.

Our wide range of products include: Reload Mens formula, Reload Mens 50+ Formula, Reload Womens Formula, Reload Womens 50+ Formulas, Reload Extra formula, Reload Immunity Formula, Reload 4 Kids Tablet, Reload 4 Kids Syrup and can be purchased in any of the pharmaceutical outlet around.

The Reload! 4 Kids ranges are fortified with vitamins and minerals along with fruits and vegetables. Reload will grow with your child with different formulas for different phases of life. It comes as chewing tablet for kids and liquid drop for babies. The Reload Infant Drops particularly help in cognitive development in infants.

While the Reload Immunity is a balanced nutritional supplement that works to help your body ward off disease, bolstering the seven critical immune systems in your body, he said.
Afghan special forces killed a group of attackers inside in a house in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, bringing to an end a 24-hour siege following the attack on the nearby Indian consulate.

The soldiers killed the three attackers who had shut themselves in a large house near the consulate, said Abdul Razaq Qaderi, deputy police chief of Balkh province.

He said an investigation was under way to try to identify the men and those behind the attack, which occurred on the same day armed men attacked an Indian air basein Pathankot in Punjab state near the border with Pakistan.

Eight members of the security forces were wounded in the Mazar-i-Sharif gun battle which followed the attack on the consulate. The Indian ambassador said all the consulate staff were safe.

Atta Mohammad Noor, Balkhs governor, blamed enemies of peace and stability for the incident. The twin attacks in Mazar-i-Sharif and Pathankot came amid renewed efforts to lower tension between India and Pakistan, and restart peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Aljazzera.
The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has bestowed upon the Governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola the title of Omoluabi of Yoruband just as he urged Osun people to pay their taxes.

The Monarch who was at the Government House, Osogbo to present the award, stated that the governor of Osun State has always been at the forefront of projecting the Omoluabi ethos, which the Yoruba race has always preached.

He explained that he has always monitored the administrative and leadership style of the governor since inception of his administration, saying Ogbeni Aregbesola has always led along the line of a true Omoluabi.

The Yorubas are a tribe that always instill in their children and the youths all the characters of a responsible and well brought up individual, I have studied the leadership style of Aregbesola among all the governors in the country and have discovered that he is the only one whom have through his leadership style projected Omoluabi ethos of the Youruba race.

Aregbesola is man that breathes responsibility at all times, we have always been hearing of an Omoluabi for a long time and am so happy that we now have a Governor who is leading by example, the Alaafin, a foremost traditional ruler in Nigeria said.

As measure of the importance of his honour to Aregbesola, presented to him a photo compendium and signed framed portrait congratulating the governor on his new chieftaincy title of Omoluabi of Yorubaland.

The Monarch further noted: It is a good thing to now have a person in the calibre of a governor who is portraying the Omoluabi virtues to the Nigerian youths.

The royal father also used the opportunity to call on the people of Osun to support the government of the day by paying their taxes regularly, stressing that taxation is the most efficient and sure way to give the people good government.

Oba Adeyemi who lamented the dwindling nature of the federal allocation pointed out that the only way out of the economic logjam is for the people to carry out their civic responsibilities as individuals.

He added that if the people support the government of Aregbesola with their taxes, the present administration will find it easier to fulfill its obligations such as prompt payment of salaries and adequate provision of infrastructure, health care facilities and security.

All over the world, taxation is the way out, for government to be able to conveniently provide for all the amenities and pay salaries conveniently, the people must endeavour to pay their taxes regularly.

I want to urge the people of Osun to assist the present administration with the payment of their taxes, the present administration has done so much in terms of provision of social amenities such as construction of good roads, provision of affordable health care facilities, assistance for the aged.

I also know that the Aregbesola administration has been providing free school uniforms as well as feeding the school pupils, something which no government has ever done, not even the federal government.

If such a government now demands for a tax of just one thousand five hundred naira per individual in a year, I dont think its too much.

We need to realise that it has come to a stage where government can no longer do it alone, Osun allocation has dropped drastically and government may not be able to pay salaries and provide other amenities again except we show our support through the regular payment of our taxes, he stressed.

Responding, Governor Rauf Aregbesola noted that the reign of Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has been very peaceful and fruitful, while praying that God should make the royal fathers resign more peaceful and eventful.
A slow, glitchy or flat-out broken computer can make people do crazy things  like take their PC tower into an alley and shoot it eight times as an act of revenge.

The brave information technology workers tasked with repairing our machines know very well how intense malfunction-induced rage can get, judging by the volume of tech support horror stories available online. From the frustrating to the funny, service technicians deal with a lot of guff from customers. Rarely, however, are their lives actually threatened. An Arlington, Va., man was arrested and charged with abduction this week for allegedly refusing to let a computer repair technician leave his home until his computer was fixed.

Police say that the accused, 50-year-old Joseph Nestor Mondello, threatened to kill the victim while holding a gun when the incident occurred at his residence Monday morning. Mondello is now in custody at the Arlington County Jail, according to an ABC affiliate in nearby Washington, D.C. He was granted a $20,000 bond Wednesday morning, but has yet to post it.

Claiming that the technician only made their computers problems worse, Mondellos wife told ABC7 on Wednesday that the service worker is fabricating everything. Its like, he felt insulted  and he decided to get back at us, she said of the technicians decision to call police after leaving her home. The Arlington County Police Department told a different story.

Officers and SWAT team members made contact with Mondello following the incident with the repair worker and were eventually able to convince him to surrender according to ABC7. He was clearly agitated at the time, said department spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. Police said Mondello had allegedly told the victim: It was essentially along the lines of, I will kill you slowly if you dont fix this computer.' The gun Mondello was holding turned out to be fake, but that didnt win him any sympathy from police.

CBC.
The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has directed its members in Bayelsa State to go ahead and use all means necessary to protect their votes during this Saturdays supplementary election in Southern Ijaw local government area and 101 other wards.

The party warned that its members will not hesitate to unleash anger if at any point of collation of results, fictitious figures appear.

The PDP also said any official of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who becomes a tool in the hands of evil, will have him or herself to blame just as it warned President Muhammadu Buhari to steer clear before and during the polls.

The PDP in a statement Tuesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, said it has since been made aware of plots by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to use compromised security operatives and INEC officials to attempt to produce fictitious votes and declare itself winner but vowed that any such unholy bid would be greeted with vehement resistance and dire consequences.

It said the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area is a well-known PDP stronghold and that it would never accept any results that do not reflect the will of the people of the state.

The PDP also called on the international community and all well-meaning Nigerians to note the ceaseless undemocratic activities of the APC-led Federal Government and to hold it responsible should there be any breakdown of law and order during the Saturdays supplementary election in the state.

The PDP will intently monitor and keep records of activities, including all votes cast in every polling unit in Southern Ijaw and our members will not hesitate to unleash a legitimate anger, if at any point in collation, fictitious figures appear. In this regard, any INEC official who becomes a tool in the hands of evil will have him or herself to blame.

We issue this statement as direct notice to the APC and their compromised INEC, military and other security operatives who have been stationed to ostensibly assist to produce fictitious votes with which the APC intends to declare itself winner.

Let it be known to all that the PDP is fully mobilized for Saturdays supplementary election. Our members across Southern Ijaw have been stationed in every polling unit, every collation center and every exit and entry point in the area, and have been directed to use all means available in a democracy to stop the APC in their trail.

Anything to the contrary will attract terrible consequences. We restate our resolve that never again would the PDP allow itself to be manipulated out in any election at any level, no matter the intimidation by the APC-led administration.

Consequent upon our loss of confidence in INEC and security agencies, we hereby make public our instruction to our members and supporters not to leave the polling area after casting their votes but to remain alert within the distance provided by the law and go ahead to use all means necessary to defend and protect their votes, should there be any attempt by anybody to rig the process, the party said.
Three Sunni mosques in Iraq have been bombed and partially destroyed while at least two people have been killed in suspected retaliation for the execution of a Shia leader in Saudi Arabia, officials and police say. Groups of men wearing military uniforms detonated explosives at two mosques overnight in the Hilla region, south of Baghdad, while al-Fateh mosque in Sinjar, just outside Hilla, was also damaged in similar circumstances.

Saudi Arabia executed 47 terrorists, including the Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr and a convicted al-Qaeda leader, Faris al-Zahrani, on Saturday. Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday it was severing diplomatic ties with Iran following an attack on its embassy in Tehran during protests against the executions in the kingdom on Saturday.

In Hilla, about 80km from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a police officer said the Ammar bin Yasser mosque in the Bakerli neighbourhood was bombed after midnight. After we heard the explosion, we went to its source and found that improvised explosive devices had been planted in a Hilla mosque, a police officer said.

Ten houses were also damaged, he said, adding: Residents said a group of people with military uniforms carried out this operation. Falah al-Khafaji, a provincial council member, and a police source said that a guard inside the building had been killed. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Aljazeera.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arrested the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olisa Metuh over an alleged N1.4 billion fraud.

A statement from the PDP office signed by Richard Ihediwa, Special Assistant to Mr. Metuh confirmed the development. According to the statement, the EFCC officials stated that he has some issues to clear with the commission. However, Ihediwa noted that Metuh was invited but not arrested by the four operatives who stormed his Abuja in a White Toyota Hiace bus.

Chief Metuh is still being kept at the commissions headquarters and his lawyers were making frantic efforts to reach him, the statement read.

While details of why Chief Metuh was invited is yet to be made pubic by the commission, it could be recalled that severally, Chief Metuh, as the mouthpiece of the opposition party had alerted in various press conferences and statements that he has been under threat and that the ruling party and the government have been very uncomfortable with his stance.

The latest being the outburst and threats by the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Oyegun in reaction to Chief Metuhs criticisms of President Buharis widely criticized response on governments disobedience of court orders, during the last Wednesdays Presidential Media chat.

The Office of the National Publicity Secretary will keep the public updated on any development on the issue, the PDP stated.

News of alleged arrest had hit the news, yesterday, but Metuhs Media Assistant, Richard Ihediwa, had debunked the reports of arrest or investigation by the anti-graft agency.
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos on Tuesday granted bail to an alleged Cocaine importer, Michael Okwuma, in the sum of N15 million with two sureties in like sum.

The judge, Justice Saliu Saidu, granted him bail following an application by his lawyer, Mrs Lilian Omotunde.

Okwuma, 35, who pleaded not guilty, was arraigned by National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on a one-count charge of drug trafficking.

Saidu said that one of the sureties must be a blood relation of the accused, while the other must be on grade level 15 in either the federal or state civil service.

He, thereafter, adjourned the case to March 7, for trial.

The Prosecutor, Mr Ichakpa Oigoga, had told the court that the accused committed the offence on Oct. 27, 2015.

Oigoga said the accused was arrested at the `E Arrival Hall of the Murtala Mohammed Airport for allegedly importing Cocaine.

During the inward clearance of passengers on board a South African Airline flight from Brazil, about 3.4kg Cocaine was recovered from the accused after concealing the same, he said.

Oigoga said the offence contravened Section 11 (a) of the NDLEA Act, Cap N30 Laws of the Federation, 2004, which attracts a term of life imprisonment if convicted. (NAN)
Chairman of Daar Communication, Chief Raymond Paul Dokpesi (Jnr) on Tuesday led a delegation to President Muhammadu Buhari to present a New Year greeting card to him.

Pauls father Chief Raymond Dokpesi had regained his freedom, mid-December last year after meeting his bail conditions as stipulated by the Federal High Court in Abuja. He was arrested by the the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and arraigned before the court over an alleged N2.1 billion fraud.

He is facing trial alongside his firm, DAAR Investment and Holdings Ltd, owners of African Independent Television, AIT, and Raypower FM.

Specifically, EFCC, in the charge signed by its Deputy Director, Legal and Prosecution, Mr. Aliyu Yusuf, alleged that Dokpesi received about N2.1billion from the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, for PDPs presidential media campaign.





The prosecution argued that the transaction was in breach of section 58 (4) (b) of the Public Procurement Act 2007 and punishable under section 58 (6) and 7 of the same Act, as well as under section 17 (b) of the EFCC Act, 2004.

Dokpesi pleaded not guilty to the charge. The court slated February 17, 18 and March 2 and 3, 2016, to begin full-blown hearing on the matter.

President Buhari has vowed that no one indicted in any corrupt practice will escape the full wrath of the law.
The Enugu State Government, yesterday, lampooned the state chapter of All Progressives Congress, APC, following what it described as unwarranted attacks on Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi over his administrations resolve to shore-up its revenue base through robust taxation.

The Enugu APC had, in a statement by Mrs. Kate Offor, its Publicity Secretary, on Sunday, described the 2016 budget proposal of Governor Ugwuanyi as prone to excessive taxation.

Reacting to the unguided comment by the opposition party in the state, the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Uwakwe Abugu said, APC has stunned critical observers of the ailing economy of the nation by condemning plans by Enugu State Government to shore up its revenue base in the 2016 fiscal year by generating funds through taxation.

Either inadvertently or merely displaying seeming ignorance of the economic mood of the nation, the state chapter of APC is busy attacking Ugwuanyi for proposing to raise more funds from taxation in the 2016 Appropriation Bill presented to the state House of Assembly, while the Minister of National Planning, Udo Udoma, was explaining to Nigerians how the Federal Government formed by the APC will within the same fiscal year of 2016 raise trillions of Naira from taxes as one measure to cushion the effects of the crashing oil prices on the nations economy almost solely powered by oil revenue.

Is the state chapter of APC living in the past or so oblivious of the programmes of its government at the centre that it did not realize that the attack on Enugu State Governments move to augment the sharp fall in oil revenue constitutes a clear attack on the Federal Governments tax policy which has been designed in the present circumstance to generate trillions of Naira for the apex government?

Or is its condemnation of the Enugu own scheme a part of its usual orgy of orchestration of attacks on the state government just for the sake of making its voice heard at all costs?

Another aspect of the Enugu APC statement that would beat any imagination is its wishful thinking in trying to dictate to Governor Ugwuanyi how to run his administration. Whereas the governor and his team have long since swung into action to dramatically raise the governments internally-generated revenue through various sources including taxes, the opposition party wants him to abandon this noble course of action and rather pursue only actions for the recovery of funds allegedly stolen by the past administration in the state.
There were speculations earlier in some quarters that the Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagardes visit to Nigeria today was to negotiate a loan agreement with the government, however Lagarde after a closed-door meeting with President Mohammadu Buahri at the Presidential Villa, Abuja spoke with journalists and refuted the claim. Lagarde went on to talk about Nigerias economy and her visit. To further aid the public in understanding Lagardes visit INFORMATION NIGERIA has highlighted five things worthy of note about Lagardes visit

 According to the IMF boss, she sees no reason why Nigeria would need IMF money at this time because there is a strong resilience from the president and his team.

 She said Nigerias government needs to widen its sources of revenue in order to not rely so much on oil, the price of which has recently plunged.

 She said oil contributes only 14% to Nigerias GDP but contributes immensely to its revenue.

 Lagarde, who is in the country on a four-day official visit, said her discussions bothered on challenges ahead stemming from the oil price reduction.

 Lagarde stated that the IMF would undertake a review and audit of the N6.08-trillion budget next week so as to really assess whether the financing is in place.

What do you think???
The Garissa University College in Kenya officially reopened Monday, nine months after the al-Shabab siege that left nearly 150 people dead. The schools staff are to report back to work for an academic board meeting on Wednesday, when prospective students will also be given information on courses. Students are expected to return to campus next Monday.

A police post and additional checks have been established on campus to improve security. The French government announced in November it would pay the school fees for a year for 109 Garissa students who survived the April 2 al-Shabab massacre.

Of those killed in the attack, 142 of the 148 victims were students. Al-Shabab said it carried out the attack because it opposes the presence of Kenyan troops in Somalia, where the militant Islamist organization mostly operates. Al-Shabab declared a long, gruesome war against Kenya after Kenya deployed troops to Somalia to fight al-Shabab in 2011.

Al-Shabab imposes strict Islamic law in the areas it controls within Somalia and frequently carries out attacks, including the 2013 Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya in which at least 67 people were killed. Security in Mogadishu has improved since al-Shabab lost control of the capital in 2011.

UPI.
The Lagos State Government yesterday said it had finalized plans to install 10,000 Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras across the state as part of measures to ensure that the nations economic nerve centre is secure against the activities of terrorists in the light of the threat of insurgency in the country

The Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Mr. Akinyemi Ashade, who made the disclosure while giving a breakdown of the 2016 budget, tagged The People Budget, said the government will also activate the existing 1,000 CCTV cameras already installed in the state.

According to him, We will be expanding our ICT infrastructure statewide. Consequently, a budget of N9.6 billion has been approved for this purpose in 2016. This will include a Smart City project targeted at deploying technology to enhance security in the state. It will also aid our revenue generating efforts.

We will be increasing coverage of CCTV installations in the state. Our goal is to have over 10,000 active cameras, connected by Broadband. The existing 1,000 cameras will be reactivated and these will be increased by an additional 3,000 cameras after the completion of the first phase of this project.

Speaking on the need to beef up security and maintain law and order, the Commissioner said We are all aware of the security challenges in the country, and to manage this in the state we have committed about N23.5 billion for the maintenance of law and order, and to support security services in the area of vehicles, security gadgets and logistics.

We shall continue to enhance the welfare of our security agents by providing allowances, fuelling of patrol vehicles and giving adequate life insurance covers to motivate them in 2016. We will provide more buildings for Police Area Commands in our state to enhance their performance. This budget also includes projects that will enhance security of lives and property in other areas of governance as previously enumerated.

You will recall that this administration handed over equipment worth N4.765 billion to the Lagos State Police Command in the last quarter of 2015. In addition to the activities mentioned earlier, we have also made provisions for the completion of on-going court projects in Igando, Imota, Ajegunle, as well as Judges Quarters at Falomo, to complement those that had been completed.
The Director-General of the Directorate of Technical Aid Corps, Dr. Pius Olakunle Osunyinkanmi, has described Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimikos defection to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) about three years ago as a betrayal of progressive ideals.

This, Osunyinkanmi said, explained the reason why the progressive elements in the Labour Party did not follow Mimiko when he dumped the party on whose platform he was elected, for PDP.

In a chat with reporters in Abuja yesterday, the TAC DG said: Technically speaking my press statement said we were resigning from PDP but the truth of the matter is that we were never authentic members of the PDP.

This is because the governor only came to ditch the Labour Party in the Villa and you know the controversy that surrounded it then.

As we speak today, nobody of the Labour Party extraction can claim to be a valid member of the PDP in Ondo State.

Osunyinkanmi added: The movement to the PDP was a movement that was meant to consolidate the emperor-like mentality that has suddenly become the hallmark of the LP leadership.

This was a marked departure from progressive tendencies  and so quite a number of people were hoodwinked into joining the PDP in the desperate move to save the party from internal implosion.

The TAC DG also spoke on his recent resignation from the PDP, saying he did not withdraw his membership of the party for any political interest, but because of Mimikos unfaithfulness to the progressive tenets and principles.

He stated that joining the All Progressives Congress (APC) was the right thing for any progressive to do, as it is natural for progressives to align.

Mr. Osunyinkanmi, however, said his latest action has not affected his friendship with the governor; stressing that his relationship with Mimiko was akin to that of father and son.

He pointed out that a relationship that spanned well over 24 years could not be wished away on the altar of political expediency.
The Peoples Democratic Party in Anambra State has called for the resignation of Governor Willie Obiano over his alleged inability to give a clear account of the N75 billion his predecessor, Mr Peter Obi, handed over to him.

The party also asked the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Mrs. Rita Maduagwu, to resign for the alleged failure of the legislature to do its duties regarding the unaccounted N75 billion.

Rising from an expanded State Council meeting in Awka, the state capital yesterday, the PDP accused Mr. Obiano of several constitutional breaches including a plot to set up a caretaker committee instead of conducting an election.

The Anambra PDP chairman, Prince Ken Emeakayi, who spoke on behalf of the party, insisted that Governor Obiano must resign immediately in the interest of the state and the rule of law.

He said: We call for the immediate resignation of Chief Willie Obiano as the governor of the state for misconduct, abuse of office and public trust, and breach of the 1999 constitution.

We call also for the immediate resignation of the Speaker of the Anambra state House of Assembly, Mrs. Rita Maduagwu, for misconduct, incompetence and negligence.

Emeakayi specifically accused the governor of breaching Section 7 of the 1999 constitution by not putting in place a motion for the conduct of local government elections in the state as stipulated by law and vowed bloodshed in the state should the governor appoint caretaker committees for local governments in the area or renew the tenure of those already occupying council seats in the state.

He said: We have noted with great disappointment and dismay how the APGA-dominated Anambra State House of Assembly has continually degenerated from the position of mere rubber stamp in the hand of the governor to their present status of a collapsed arm of government in the state, which is why the State Assembly has not found a reason for action over the money handed over to Governor Willie Obiano by Chief Peter Obi.

Our position in this matter is very simple; from the totality of the public statements credited to Governor Willie Obianos administration and Chief Peter Obis side of the story, one thing is very clear: It has been established by both sides to the effect that the crime of fraud, false statement of account, falsification, and deceit, has been committed on oath against the government and people of Anambra state.
Punch

Police charge 15-year-old girl for killing mother, mothers boyfriend

Police have charged a 15-year-old Brooklyn girl with the murders of her mother and mothers boyfriend, saying she left the bodies in their Sheepshead Bay apartment for days and even went out partying one night.

http://www.punchng.com/?p=21427

Vanguard

Shiites to FG: Tell Nigerians the whereabout of El-Zakzaky

Bothered by his state of health, three weeks after his arrest and subsequent detention, members of the Islamic sect, Shiites, yesterday, asked the Federal Government to tell Nigerians the whereabout of their leader, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky and his wife.

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/01/shiites-to-fg-tell-nigerians-the-whereabout-of-el-zakzaky/

The Sun

Emperor Buhari or plain poor communicator?

AS Muhammadu Buhari ran for the fourth and decisive time for the Nigerian Presidency, his handlers cast him as a man purged of the dictatorial tendencies and inflexible disposition that marked his time as Nigerias military ruler. Behold, the candidates adroit handlers hailed, a reformed emperor, a convert to democratic ways.

http://sunnewsonline.com/new/emperor-buhari-or-plain-poor-communicator/

Thisday

Boko Haram: Shettima Reassures Fleeing Residents of Safety

Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State has reassured the fleeing residents of Ali Dawari village of their safety after an attack by Boko Haram terriorists on the village recently

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/boko-haram-shettima-reassures-fleeing-residents-of-safety/229538/

Daily Times

Buhari meets Lagarde today

President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to hold talks with the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today in a bid to find solution to economic crisis fuelled by plunging oil prices.

http://dailytimes.com.ng/buhari-meets-lagarde-today/

Guardian

Obaigbena responds to EFCC on NPAN, General Hydrocarbons

PUBLISHER of Thisday Newspapers and President, Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Nduka Obaigbena, yesterday reacted to the controversy on the payments to General Hydrocarbons Ltd and members of NPAN by the Federal Government through the Office of the National Security Adviser ( ONSA).

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2016/01/obaigbena-responds-to-efcc-on-npan-general-hydrocarbons/

Daily Trust

Metuh not under EFCC investigation  PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that its national publicity secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, is not under investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as claimed in a national daily. http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/politics/metuh-not-under-efcc-investigation-pdp/127292.html

National Mirror

You risk your jobs if you come late, Niger govt warns civil servants

Niger State government has threatened to dismiss any civil servant in the state that resumes work late, describing late coming as a sabotage to the development of the state.

Niger State government has threatened to dismiss any civil servant in the state that resumes work late, describing late coming as a sabotage to the development of the state.

Leadership

IMF Boss Lagarde In Nigeria Over Naira Devaluation, Subsidy

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mrs Christine Lagarde, arrived in Nigeria yesterday to begin a four-day visit during which she will meet with President Muhammadu Buhari and his team, hoping to discuss economic issues concerning the nation, including devaluation of the naira and the vexed matter of oil subsidy .

http://leadership.ng/news/489143/imf-boss-lagarde-nigeria-naira-devaluation-subsidy

The Nation

EFCC to quiz Metuh over N1.4b in firms account

Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) detectives probing the $2.1 billion arms contracts have traced N1.4billion to the account of a company allegedly linked with Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) spokesman Olisa Metuh.

http://thenationonlineng.net/efcc-to-quiz-metuh-over-n1-4b-in-firms-account/
The Oyo State Government on Monday issued a 48-hour ultimatum to nine elevated chiefs in Ibadan to revert to their former status, describing their promotions by the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana, as illegal.

A statement signed by the Director, Chieftaincy Matters, Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr. Zaccheaus Jayeola, said it was disappointed with the promotions after it requested that concerned high chiefs should first submit themselves to security and medical examinations before the Olubadan of Ibadan could elevate them as required by Chieftaincy Laws.

Their elevation was necessitated by the death of the Chief Sulaimon Omiyale, the Balogun of Ibadanland and Chief Omowale Kuye, the Otun Olubadan, in November, last year.

The deceased were next in throne to the Olubadan stool from both lines that produce the Olubadan of Ibadan land.

The nine traditional chieftaincy title holders promoted by the Olubadan of Ibadan last Friday are: High Chief Saliu A.O. Adetunji, who was promoted from Otun Balogun to Balogun of Ibadanland; High Chief Sen. Lekan Balogun, formerly the Osi Olubadan now installed as the Otun Olubadan; High Chief Akinloye Olakulehin who moved from the Osi Balogun to the Otun Balogun rank; High Chief Senator Rashidi Ladoja was promoted from Ashipa Olubadan to Osi Olubadan and High Chief Dr Olufemi Olaifa, who was also promoted from Ashipa Balogun to Osi Balogun of Ibadanland.

Others are High Chief Sir Eddy Oyewole who was the Ekerin Olubadan now the Ashipa Olubadan of Ibadanland; High Chief Tajudeen Abimbola formerly the Ekerin Balogun now Ashipa Balogun of Ibadan; High Chief Kola Daisi, who was moved from the Ekarun Olubadan to the Ekerin Olubadan of Ibadanland and High Chief Solomom A. Adabale, who was promoted from the Ekarun Balogun to the Ekerin Balogun of Ibadanland.

The government, in a statement entitled: The Illegal Elevation of Nine High Chiefs in Ibadanland: The Position of the Oyo State Government yesterday expressed disappointment with the January 1 elevation of the high chiefs and ordered a reversal on the grounds of violation the relevant chieftaincy laws guiding such promotions.

The statement partly read, Governments suspicion and ardent belief are that the recent purported elevation could not have received the blessing of our highly revered father and traditional ruler, the Olubadan of Ibadan. He is reputed to be a forthright and foremost traditional ruler with an enviable track record of achievements and a firm belief in due process as well as a respecter of the rule of law.

Consequently, government directs that the organisers and the beneficiaries to reverse the purported elevation within 48 hours, failing which appropriate sanctions will be invoked under sections 21 and 26 of the Chiefs Laws, Cap 28, Laws of Oyo State, 2000.

In an attempt to clarify its position on the matter, the state government said since the inception of the present administration, it had resisted, as a matter of policy, any attempt to be lured into matters that pertain to religion, chieftaincy and labour union.

This is in order to maintain its neutrality, ensure fairness, justice and respect for the rule of law. Government will always uphold the sanctity of the rule of law and would neither encourage nor condone any tradition or peculiar culture of illegality, impunity, disregard and/or disrespect to constituted authority, the statement said.


The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has raised an alarm over the arrest of its spokesperson, Mr Olisa Metuh.

In a statement by its National Secretary, Professor Wale Oladipo, the party said that the arrest of Mr Metuh, based on an intelligence the party claims it got, is part of a larger script by the government to ensure that PDPs wings are finally clipped.

Oladipo said the action was part of the ruling partys efforts to install a dictatorial one-party state in the country.

However, the party said it is not surprised by Metuhs arrest, which it claimed came after series of threats on him.

The excesses of security agencies under this government, especially the Directorate of Security Services (DSS) and the EFCC, in abridging the human rights of PDP members have become worrisome and a threat to our democratic evolution, the PDP stated.

The party went further to say that it was aware of top directives to break Chief Metuh and if possible poison him during his detention by the EFCC.

The PDP alleged that Metuh had, since his arrest at about 10AM on Tuesday morning, been kept incommunicado, with his lawyers denied access to him. The opposition party described the development as the last straw that may break Nigerias democracy.

The party warned the federal government and its agencies to save the nations democracy and release its National Publicity Secretary.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday arrested the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr Olisa Metuh, but is yet to disclose the reasons behind the arrest.
Some 20 of 30 presidential candidates in the Central African Republics election have called on authorities to stop counting the votes, alleging fraud. They made the demand at a news conference on Monday, after nearly 40 percent of the ballots had been counted. Central African Republic citizens voted on December 30 in much-delayed national elections that it was hoped would bring stability after two years of ruinous communal violence.

The candidates said the electoral process was marred by fraud, and that the population would question the results. Signatories include heavyweight candidate Karim Meckassoua , a former foreign minister from the minority Muslim community, who had been seen as a pre-election frontrunner.

According to provisional results, Faustin Archange Touadera, prime minister from 2008-2013, had 30,999 votes followed by another former prime minister in second place, Anicet Georges Dologuele, with 28,162.

More than 1.8 million people were registered to vote at more than 500 polling stations nationwide that were secured by UN peacekeepers and national security forces.

Aljazeera.
An Air India plane flying to London was forced to return to Mumbai after passengers spotted a rat on board, the airline said Thursday. Though the rat was not found, the pilot returned to Mumbai on Wednesday keeping passenger safety in mind, Air India said in a statement. Passengers were later flown by a separate aircraft to London. The aircraft would be fumigated and checked before it is returned to service.

Maintenance workers would have to make sure that the rat did not damage equipment or chew any wires and the plane is certified to be rodent-free, an airline official said.

Indias cash-strapped national carrier had two other mishaps the same day. An Air India pilot aborted takeoff from a northern Indian city after a stray dog ran onto the runway as the plane was taxiing. An official at the airport in Amritsar said the pilot spotted the dog running onto the path of the front wheels of the plane. He applied the emergency brakes and returned the aircraft to its parking bay. All 171 passengers and crew later boarded the same plane which took off for London.

In another incident, an Air India plane from Mumbai was hit by a catering van at the Newark, New Jersey, airport in the United States. Two weeks ago, an Air India technician was sucked into an aircraft engine and killed at Mumbai airport in what aviation experts described as a freak accident.

Fox News.
Saudi Arabia has said its decision to break diplomatic ties with Iran will not affect efforts to negotiate peace in Syria and Yemen  where the two regional heavyweights support opposite sides. Riyadh on Sunday severed relations with Iran after its embassy in Tehran was set ablaze during protests against Saudi Arabias execution of prominent Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr, who was put to death along with 46 other mostly Sunni convicts on terrorism charges.

Abdullah al-Mouallimi, the Saudi Ambassador to the UN, said on Monday that the row with Tehran should have no effect on attempts to end the wars. We will continue to work very hard towards supporting the peace efforts in Syria, in Yemen, wherever there might be a need for that, he said.

How is that going to affect the behaviour of Iran, we do not know, you will need to ask the Iranians for that, al-Mouallimi told reporters in New York, accusing Tehran of not being supportive of attempts to find peace before this latest falling out between the two nations. They have been taking provocative and negative positions and lines, and as such I dont think that the breaking of relations is going to dissuade them from such behaviour.

Earlier, Irans foreign ministry said Saudi Arabia was using the attack on its embassy in Tehran as a pretext to fuel tensions. Iran  is committed to providing diplomatic security based on international conventions. But Saudi Arabia, which thrives on tensions, has used this incident as an excuse to fuel the tensions, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Irans foreign ministry spokesman, said in televised remarks on Monday.

Aljazeera.
The Sisters Forum of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria have staged a peaceful protest to demand for the immediate release of their leader, Sheik Ibraheem El-Zakzaky and his wife.

The women marched to the Secretariat of the Kaduna State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists on Tuesday in northwest Nigeria.

According to the spokesperson of the Forum, Aisha Hassan, the group also wants the immediate release of the corpses of members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, who were killed during a clash with soldiers.

The Forum said that at least 1,000 members of the sect were brutally killed in a coordinated attack by men of the Nigerian Army during a procession they claimed was peaceful. They maintained that the attack was a gross violation of their fundamental rights of free association and movement.

There had been rumours that El-Zakzaky was arrested by soldiers at his residence and his wife killed, but the Nigerian Army had debunked the claims.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has assured that he will continue to place emphasis on the welfare of the ministrys staff in order to boost their morale and enhance their productivity.

Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday while handing over the keys of two newly-acquired buses to the Joint Staff Union of the ministry, Alhaji Mohammed said the ministry had commenced the process of phasing out old staff buses and replacing them with new ones for the convenience of staff.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided in our meeting that the vehicles in the pool are getting very old and we said that we would be gradually replacing those vehicles as the funds are available.

We believe that its morally wrong of us to expect workers to come early to work when they are using staff buses that are 20 years old. These vehicles will break down on the way to work and many of our people also live quite far away from the office, so we decided with the management to look at the best way to relieve the hardship of workers, he said.

The Minister, who was accompanied by the Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Ayotunde Adesugba, and other top officials, assured that the presentation of the vehicles marked the beginning of the numerous welfare packages that would be unveiled for the workers in due course.

I want to assure you that this is the beginning of our gesture to make the welfare of workers in the Ministry of Information and Culture a priority, because without their cooperation the ministry cannot achieve what we want to achieve, he said.
Microsoft's venerable Internet Explorer browser lost its majority position last month, according to a Web metrics vendor, falling under the 50 percent bar for the first time since it thrashed Netscape Navigator and assumed control of the browser market.

By the estimates of Irvine, Calif.-based Net Applications, Internet Explorer (IE) ended 2015 with a user share -- a measurement of unique visitors to the websites of the company's clients, and one of the few proxies for real-world browser adoption -- of 48.6 percent. That was a drop of 1.5 percentage points from November, the largest one-month contraction in IE's share since October 2011.

At one point, IE held a user share as large as 89.4 percent in Net Applications' tracking. That was in January 2005, when Computerworld began recording the firm's metrics.

IE's share had been even higher earlier in the decade, after it had forced Netscape out of the market in the early 2000s, and before Mozilla took up Netscape's mantle with Firefox in 2004. Firefox was the first browser to challenge IE's dominance of the browser space, and was widely adopted by those who viewed the then-IE6 as stuck in the past.

Microsoft responded to the threat from Firefox with a series of improved browsers -- IE7 in 2006 for Windows Vista's launch, IE8 in 2009 preceding the debut of Windows 7, and others -- but its user share decline continued. IE flirted with falling below the 50 percent mark in late 2011; in October of that year, it posted a user share of 51.9 percent. But the browser recovered some of that lost share, scratching its way to 58.9 percent in November 2014.

Since then, however, it's been all downhill for IE.

Net Applications Internet Explorer's No. 1 ranking is threatened by Chrome, which could grab the top spot as early as October 2016 if the last year's trend continues.

The biggest factor in IE latest contraction was Microsoft's abrupt decision in August 2014 to require most users to upgrade to 2013's IE11. By demanding that users upgrade from, say, IE8 to IE11, Microsoft motivated customers to download and run a rival browser, since people had to change in any case.

The mandate was disastrous for IE: In the last 12 months, it shed 10.5 percentage points of user share, an amount representing an 18 percent shrinkage.

The biggest beneficiary of IE's decline has been Google's Chrome, which during the past year has added 9.7 percentage points to its tally, ending December with a user share of 32.3 percent.

Meanwhile, Firefox has languished in the last 12 months, seemingly stuck in a range between 11 percent and 12 percent. Firefox's December share was 12.1 percent.

Nor has Edge, Microsoft's latest browser, made a difference. (Net Applications tosses Edge's share into the overall IE bucket, so the 48.6 percent for December included the 2.3 percent attributed to Edge.) Windows 10 users have largely rejected Edge -- the browser's share of the Windows 10 user base continues to fall -- even though Microsoft went to great lengths to push customers toward the browser, including changing the OS's default browser to Edge after Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users upgraded to Windows 10.

If the 12- and 3-month trends shown by Net Applications' data persist, IE will slip below 45 percent by April or May.

Previously, IE's position as the No. 1 browser seemed safe, in large part because it was the standard for businesses, particularly enterprises and other large organizations. But even that stronghold has been breached by Chrome, which will be the primary browser for two-thirds of enterprise users this year.

If that forecast by Gartner is realized, IE may slip to the No. 2 spot. Net Applications' 12-month average increase/decrease for Chrome and IE imply that the switch in positions -- with Chrome become the top browser dog -- could occur as soon as October.

This story, "Microsoft's IE browser loses its majority, falls under 50% user share" was originally published by Computerworld .


Gone (from the UN) but not forgotten: When Bernardino Leon, set for a $1500 a day job with the United Arab Emirates, came to the UN Security Council for the final time on November 5, Inner City Press asked him if he had sought approval from the UN Ethics Office before pur suing the UAE job, if he acknowle dged the conflict of interest and thought it will impact intra-Libya talks. Video here. Leon did not answ er about the UN Ethics office, but conceded that the optics were bad . Video here.



On December 7, AP quoted a Libyan-American group quoting an unnamed UN Office of Internal Oversight Services that the UN has assigned an investigator to l'affaire Leon. Excusing double hearsay for a moment, how much credibility does OIOS have? It helped to cover up rape allegations in the Central African Republic against French and UN peacekeepers.

More recently OIOS is supposed to be auditing the UN's interactions with two foundations founded by now indicted lobbyists of the UN, Ng Lap Seng's Sun Kian Ip Group and Sheri Yan's Global Sustainability Foundation. Not only have there been no results: senior UN system officials have, as Inner City Press reported, continued cavorting with special advisers to Yan's GSF. So Libyans shouldn't hold their collective breath, for OIOS at least...



Back o n November 6, t he day after Leon said "I have decided to request a full clarification of the issue, including from the United Arab Emirates," Inner City Press asked UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq to WHOM Leon is seeking the clarification: the UN? The UN Security Council Libya Sanctions Committee? V ideo here.



Haq replied that the sentence should be view ed as compr ising the view of the Special Representative: Leon. So the UN, contrary to Reuters ' headline, has not asked the UAE for anything.



On November 16, Inner City Pr ess asked the UN's lead spok esman Stephane Du jarric , video here, transcript here:



Inner City Press: I want to ask something about Burundi. But, since you mentioned the CEB meeting, I want to ask something first on that. It was said after it was revealed that Bernardino Leon had sought this job with the UAE [United Arab Emirates] that the Secretary-General was going to be informing his other envoys, orally and in writing, reminding them of their ethical duties. And Farhan [Haq] said its supposed to come up at the CEB, nothing about the letter. Number one, is any written reminder or something going out to envoys? And, two, are these envoys part of the CEB meeting? Whats the purpose of raising it at the CEB?



Spokesman: Its an issue that will be raised at the CEB. Its an issue that will be raised also at the Secretary-Generals next meeting with his senior management group. Its a message that will be put out through various channels for everyone, not just envoys, to ensure that they abide by the letter and by the spirit of the UNs ethics regulations and guidelines.



Inner City Press : And the note to correspondents that was sent out for or by Bernardino Leon saying he sought clarification from the UAE, is there a timeline on that? And is there any connection, given that, I mean, its put out as a UN note to correspondents, is the information that comes back from the UAE supposed to be for some anyone other than Bernardino Leon personally?



Spokesman: I dont have I think, obviously, thats something we would hope the UAE shares publicly, but I have nothing to add to that.



Inner City Press : And on Burundi?



Spokesman: Ill come back to you.



Inner City Press asked Haq if Ban has yet to remind his envoys in writing about ethics, as lead spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Ban would. Haq replied that the issue will come up at the next UN Chief Exec utives Board and Senior Manag ement Gorup meetings. (AFP asked, what are those?)



But that is not putting anything in writing to envoys like Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Yemen, on whose outside interests Inner City Pr r ess has exclusively reported. Nor would Haq answer Inner City Press what USG Feltman did from August 27, when he learned of Leon's dealings with the UAE.



Leon's predecessor as UN envoy to Libya Tarek Mitri , however, got a formal "N ote" from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, signed by Ban's chief of staff Susan a Malcorra and cc-ed to Under Secretaries General Jeffrey Feltman (Political Affairs), Yu kio Takasu (Management) and Joan Dubinksy (Et hics Office) approving outside activi ty for Mitri, which Inner City Press is putting online here , and embedded below.



Among the continuing out side engagements approv ed by Ban Ki-moon were for Mitri to be on the Board of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, in Beirut and Doha.



Did Leon g et, or even seek, such a Note from Ban? The leaked emails show that Feltman knew of Leon's job search with the UAE by August 27, at latest.



Now after more leaked emails, of the UAE about embargo / san ctions violations and that the UN's Jeff Feltman knew of Leon's UAE job search as of August 27 at l atest, Leon on the evening of November 12 issued this:



"I am aware of the report today in the New York Times about Libya and alleged activities in contravention of United Nations Security Council resolutions. In light of this report, I have decided to request a full clarification of the issue, including from the United Arab Emirate (UAE) authorities, as I take time to reflect on the next steps in my professional career."



While Leon said that "I " have decided to requ est clarification from the UAE, Reuters reported that the UN is seeking an explanation. But Leon did not say he will share the UAE's explanation with t he UN, mu ch less with the public. And shouldn't the UN Security Council's Libya sanctions committee be seeking the explanation, or asking for action against the UAE?



So is Leon no longer taking the UAE job? W hat about Feltman and what he knew? We'll have more on this.



UN Gave Ethics Waiver to Libya Envoy Tarek Mitri, ICP's Ethics Q to Leon UNanswered by Matthew Russell Lee




The Bulls Stampede Again Market Tea Leaves - 16 minutes ago Yesterday we suggested an Upside Day and the markets didn't disappoint. Where will the markets go today?

Russia tightens Ukraine energy squeeze; launches evacuation AP - 1 hour ago KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Russian missile strikes and shelling of energy utilities left more Ukrainian villages, towns and parts of two cities without power on Wednesday, authorities said, tightening an energy... $SPX : 3,719.98 (+1.14%) $DOWI : 30,523.80 (+1.12%) $IUXX : 11,147.74 (+0.77%)

Silver (SI) Tries Halting Slide Towards 2022 Low Tradable Patterns - Wed Oct 19, 2:24AM CDT Silver (SIZ22) is consolidating near downchannel resistance (on the 4hr chart), trying to halt the slide since the October high. Before bulls get excited, theyll need to see a reclaiming of the psychologically... SIZ22 : 18.355 (-1.32%) SLV : 17.23 (+0.64%)

Berlusconi says Russia's Putin gifted him vodka, sweet note AP - Wed Oct 19, 1:26AM CDT ROME (AP)  , the Italian ex-premier who has a longtime friendship with , has been caught on audiotape boasting that he had recently reconnected with the Russian president and exchanged gifts of vodka,... $SPX : 3,719.98 (+1.14%) $DOWI : 30,523.80 (+1.12%) $IUXX : 11,147.74 (+0.77%)
After Mondays brief and violent rout in Chinese equity markets, the government moved in to prop up stock prices. Significant buying by state-controlled investment vehicles was buttressed by a fresh liquidity injection into money markets by the Peoples Bank of China. Meanwhile, the China Securities Regulatory Commission informed investors that the limit on sales by major shareholders set to expire next week would be extended until further notice. After ending 2015 with pledges to cease artificially supporting markets, which included a withdrawal for repurchase transactions by the PBOC, Mondays $600 billion loss in market capitalization appears to be more than Beijings leaders could bear. The response from other global stock markets, which sold off sharply on Monday, was muted Tuesday, with both the Stoxx Europe 600 and DAX indexes down slightly in midday trading.

Major shift in hedge fund industry continues. Nevsky Capital is the latest casualty among major hedge fund managers. The London firm will return roughly $1.5 billion to its investors as opportunities for fundamentally driven long/short equity managers remain scarce. Meanwhile Scott Bessent, who oversaw George Soross family office investments for the past four years, has reportedly raised more than $4 billion for his new fund management firm, Key Square Group.

Oil rally stalls. Despite escalating tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, rivals in both the Middle East and in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, oil markets gave up gains from trading sessions on Sunday and Monday with futures contracts for February delivery surrendering all gains for the week in trading in London. Most strategists argue that barring military conflict, tensions are likely to extend OPECs commitment to robust production levels, with an accord between member states to cut back now less likely.

German unemployment declines. December unemployment data released on Tuesday by the German Federal Labor Agency improved by a margin exceeding consensus economist forecasts, with a decline of 14,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The headline jobless rate remained unchanged at 6.3 percent  the lowest level since the early 1990s.

Funds lose on Porsche ruling. A ruling by the German Federal Constitutional Court today dealt a blow to fund managers, including New York-based Elliot Associates, when it restricted access to government prosecutors research into trading in shares of Porsche Automobil Holding. The funds took heavy losses when Porsche executed an options strategy in secret as part of a failed attempt to acquire Wolfsburg, Germany car giant Volkswagen in 2009 and subsequently launched civil litigation accusing the car maker of market manipulation.

Legg Mason seeks to acquire Clarion. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Baltimore asset manager Legg Mason is in advanced talks to purchase New York real estate investment firm Clarion Partners. The report, based on anonymous sources, places the value of the transaction at roughly $850 million. Clarion oversees more than $35 billion in assets.

Portfolio Perspective: Two Critical Questions for Equities in 2016

There are two essential questions that must be answered in order to get a handle on the outlook for the U.S. stock market in 2016: Will the credit boom persist and continue to generate financial engineering designed to boost stock prices, and will the unwinding of the commodity bubble cease?

As to the credit boom, we believe that it will persist not only through 2016, but likely into 2019 as well.

As to the commodity bubble, we believe it is likely that it will continue to unwind through at least the first part of the year. If enough of the speculative demand for commodities is removed, there is a chance that the unwind may conclude later in the year.

This combination of a credit boom and the unwind of the commodity bubble will continue to drive periodic bouts of volatility.

Brian Reynolds is the chief market strategist for New Albion Partners in New York.
World Insurance Associates LLC, an independent agency based in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, announced the acquisition of the HTK/Hunt Traina Kennard Insurance Agency Inc., also based in Tinton Falls. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

HTK/Hunt Traina Kennard is an independent agency formed in 1996 after a merger of three agencies. The combined agency includes the former Hunt Agency, a second-generation, family-operated agency established in 1960; the Traina Insurance Agency, founded in 1987; and the Kennard Insurance Agency, a third-generation, family-run firm started in 1932.

HTK/Hunt Traina Kennard offers commercial and personal insurance to residents of Tinton Falls and surrounding areas. The firm has approximately $10.5 million in property/casualty premiums.

HTK/Hunt Traina Kennard owners and partners Glenn M. Kennard and Rich Hunt will continue to serve their agency clients, operating as the HTK/Hunt Traina Kennard Insurance Agency, a Division of World Insurance Associates. The current HTK/Hunt Traina Kennard location will close and HTK/Hunt Traina Kennards eight employees will move into World Insurances Tinton Falls headquarters office.

World Insurance Associates LLC is an independent agency with 57 employees and 10 offices in the Northeast region. The firm serves more than 15,000 customers and places more than $90 million in property/casualty premiums.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions New Jersey
More than 40 Chinese insurance companies and asset managers have jointly started an investment firm, raising 40 billion yuan ($6 billion) for a first fund to finance energy and infrastructure projects overseas, Chinas insurance regulator said.

The new firm, China Insurance Investment Ltd., will boost Chinas energy security by directing part of its first fund to finance Russias $27 billion Yamal liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) said in an online statement on Monday, without providing any details.

Yamal LNG, due to start production of liquefied natural gas in 2017, should consist of three lines with a capacity of 5.5 million tonnes a year each.

The project has been struggling to raise funds because of international sanctions on Russia over its involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Chinas Silk Road Fund has already provided 700 million euro to Yamal LNG and obtained a 9.9 percent stake in the project. Chinese lenders are also set to provide $12 billion in credit.

China Insurance Investment Ltd., headquartered in the Shanghai free trade zone, was launched by 46 Chinese corporate shareholders, comprising 27 insurance companies, 15 insurance asset management companies and four private companies. The shareholders each have a stake of less than 4 percent.

The new investment vehicle has 1.2 billion yuan in registered capital and will acquire overseas assets, including stakes in emerging industries such as Big Data, cloud computing and clean energy, the CIRC said.

Its first fund will also help finance China Merchants Steam Navigation Co.s port construction projects in Sri Lanka, Turkey and Djibouti, the CIRC said.

China Insurance Investment Ltd. has signed 100 billion yuan worth of investment agreements, including 60 billion yuan for urban regeneration and infrastructure, the statement said.

($1 = 6.5187 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Shu Zhang and Matthew Miller; editing by Eric Meijer)

Topics Carriers China
The Mississippi River and many of its tributaries on Jan. 3 continued their retreat from historic and deadly winter flooding, leaving amid the silt a massive cleanup and recovery effort likely to take weeks if not months.

The flood, fueled by more than 10 inches of rain over a three-day period that began Christmas Day, is blamed for 25 deaths in Illinois and Missouri, reflecting the Jan. 3 discovery of the body of a second teenager who drowned in central Illinois Christian County.

The Mississippi River was receding except in the far southern tip of both states. The Meramec River, the St. Louis-area tributary of the Mississippi that caused so much damage last week, already was below flood stage in the hard-hit Missouri towns of Pacific and Eureka and dropping elsewhere.

But worries surfaced anew Sunday along the still-rising Illinois River north of St. Louis, where crests near the west-central Illinois towns of Valley City, Meredosia, Beardstown and Havana were to approach records before receding in coming days.

In Kincaid, a 1,400-resident central Illinois town near the Sangamon Rivers south fork, Gov. Bruce Rauner toured flood-damaged homes Sunday as Sharon Stivers and other residents piled ruined furniture, appliances and clothes along the street for disposal crews to pick up. Mike Crews, Christian Countys emergency manager, said the worst of the inundation appeared to be past, until the new weather comes, citing the prospect of potentially heavy rain later in the week.

Stivers shares a home with her 45-year-old daughter battling breast cancer, along with a granddaughter and four dogs. Floodwaters got 4 feet into their home, located in an area where flood insurance wasnt available.

Am I mad? she asked. I lost my home. My daughter has cancer and lost her home. Am I mad? When Im not crying I am.

Across the street, Theresa Gibson was getting help from relatives and friends clearing out what they could salvage after the flood reached 18 inches into her home, buckling newly finished oak floors and saturating walls.

This is just horrible, Gibson, 50, lamented, noting how the fast-rising waters had allowed her only enough time to fill a couple of suitcases. Weve had floods before, but nothing like this.

In Illinois Morgan County, home to the 1,000-resident village of Meredosia, locals were keeping wary eyes on levies fortified with 50,000 sandbags. As of midday Sunday at Meredosia, the Illinois was more than 10 feet above flood stage and pressing toward an expected crest Tuesday roughly a half-foot short of the record set in July.

While optimistic those levies would hold, Jacksonville-Morgan County Emergency Management Director Phil McCarty said the prospect of flooding during the chill of winter carried dangerous health risks, including hypothermia.

President Barack Obama signed a federal emergency declaration Saturday for Missouri, allowing federal aid to be used to help state and local response efforts. It also allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon had asked for the help.

In Illinois St. Clair County just east of St. Louis, emergency management director Herb Simmons said damage assessment began Sunday after the Mississippi started to fall. Though water reached higher than 1993, this flood wasnt as bad, Simmons said.

In `93 that water came up and stayed on the levees for several months, Simmons said. This flood came up quick and went down quick.

St. Louis-area cleanup largely was focused around the Meramec. Two wastewater treatment plants were so damaged by the floodwaters that raw sewage spewed into the river. Hundreds of people were evacuated in the Missouri communities of Pacific, Eureka, Valley Park and Arnold, where many homes took in water.

In southeast Missouri, up to 30 homes and several businesses were damaged in Cape Girardeau, a community of nearly 40,000 residents that is mostly protected by a flood wall. The Mississippi peaked at 48.9 feet Friday night, four-tenths of a foot above the 1993 record, but short of the 50-foot mark projected. Nearby levee breaks in other places kept the crest down.

Amtrak service between St. Louis and Kansas City was back in business on Sunday, four days after high water that reached the tracks at some locations forced the passenger service to be halted.

Moderate Mississippi River flooding was expected in Memphis, Tennessee. The National Weather Service issued a flood advisory for the Cumberland River at Dover, Tennessee, through Monday evening. Minor flooding along the Ohio River was affecting the Kentucky cities of Owensboro and Paducah, and the crest wasnt expected until Thursday.

Suhr reported from Kansas City, Mo. Associated Press writer Don Babwin contributed to this report from Chicago.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood Illinois Missouri Mississippi
Founders Professional has promoted Jaimee Williams to professional liability broker in Chicago. Williams will be responsible for the continued expansion of Founders footprint in the small law firm space.

Williams joined Founders Professional in 2012, and most recently held the position of associate broker. She focuses on lawyers professional liability insurance and other miscellaneous professional lines.

Williams has earned a certificate in Professional Liability from PLUS University.

Founders Professional is a wholesale insurance brokerage focused exclusively on the placement of professional liability insurance.

Source: Founders Professional

Topics Agencies
QBE North America said announced that Joseph Davide has joined the organization as senior vice president, Risk Management, QBEs large risk business in North America. This business is part of QBEs Standard Lines  Property & Casualty division, which comprises its commercial, personal, program and agricultural businesses.

Davide will drive underwriting and business strategies for large property, primary casualty, and excess casualty risks, as well as national and regional distribution engagement strategies.

Davides entire career has been spent at American International Group (AIG), beginning 21 years ago as an underwriting assistant. Over the past 21 years at AIG, he held numerous roles including senior vice president, Alternative Risk Transfer and Financial Products, and chief underwriting officer, Domestic Casualty. Most recently, he served as senior vice president, Excess Casualty, Corporate Accounts.

Working from QBEs New York City office, Davide will report to Kathleen Zortman, president, Standard Lines  Property & Casualty.

Topics Casualty Risk Management
Farmers has introduced a new Rideshare Insurance Coverage designed to make rideshare insurance coverage options available for ride-hailing drivers in Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin.

According to Mariel Devesa, head of product innovation for Farmers Insurance, the company developed the Rideshare Insurance Coverage to offer ride-hail drivers coverage options as part of their Farmers personal auto insurance policies.

Farmers worked with representatives of each states Department of Insurance, legislators and leaders of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) to develop a product specifically designed for ride-hailing drivers and make available a type of insurance coverage specified in the states ridesharing laws.

Under each states law, ride-hailing drivers will be required to have insurance coverage from the moment they turn on their rideshare app. Since personal automobile insurance policies generally were not designed to provide ride-hailing drivers with coverage while they are working, the introduction of this new coverage will help to fill a potential gap in coverage, according to the insurer.

The Farmers Rideshare Insurance Coverage can provide Farmers customers coverage when a driver turns on the ride-hailing application and during the time the driver is awaiting a match. The Farmers Rideshare Insurance Coverage will extend a drivers Farmers auto insurance coverage until they accept a ride, at which point their TNC affiliates commercial insurance coverage would apply.

Farmers Rideshare Insurance Coverage enables a driver to select the coverage that fits their needs; including comprehensive and collision coverage that can pay for damages to their own vehicle, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (in case they are hit by a driver who isnt insured or is underinsured), and medical payments coverage.

While coverage choices and premiums will vary by individual, Farmers said the additional coverage provided by the Farmers Rideshare Insurance Coverage endorsement will generally add approximately $15 per month to a customers premium.

Topics Agribusiness New Markets
Dollar General Corp., headquartered in Goodlettsville, Tenn., has been fined by federal safety officials over workplace safety and health hazards at its store in Sherman, Texas. Proposed penalties total $162,800.

The U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued citations against the company on Dec. 31, 2015. The citations were for one serious, two repeat, and two willful violations.

Dollar General was cited for two willful violations for failing to keep exit routes clear and unobstructed, and for failing to keep working space clear around the electrical panel.

The company was also cited for two repeat violations for failing to keep the store aisles clean and clear, and ensuring that portable fire extinguishers were mounted and accessible.

One serious violation was issued for failing to clearly mark an exit route.

Dollar General stores nationwide have repeatedly been cited for exposing their workers to hazards posed by overstocking issues, while promising time and again to take corrective action, yet workers continue to be exposed to unnecessary hazards, said Josh Bernstein, OSHAs acting area director in Fort Worth, Texas, in the agencys announcement. It is the employers responsibility to find and fix these hazards and OSHA will continue to hold this employer accountable.

Dollar General has 11,500 stores in 40 states, and employs about 90,000 workers nationwide, including eight workers at its Sherman location. OSHA has received complaints from Dollar Generals employees in 21 states since 2006, and has cited the company for 240 safety violations, including numerous willful and repeat violations during this same time period.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of their citations to comply, request an informal conference with OSHAs area director, or contest the citations and penalties before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Source: OSHA

Topics Texas Workers' Compensation
Ridesharing services have started operating in Birmingham, Ala.

Tom Maguire, general manager of Uber in Alabama told Al.com that users would be able to hail rides from their smartphones as of Dec. 29.

Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft let people use smartphone apps to book and pay for rides. Birmingham officials had been discussing whether to allow the companies for more than a year.

Council members in early December passed an ordinance allowing the companies to operate in the city. Officials have said they plan to reevaluate the ordinance in six months.

City officials granted Uber its local business license this week. City Council President Johnathan Austin tells WBMA-TV that drivers are also required to apply for $30 annual individual licenses.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Alabama
Maine Mutual Group, a regional property/casualty insurance company, announced Tuesday it has selected Majesco P&C Suite to replace its core systems as part of the insurers new business transformation.

Our business transformation initiative is a step to reaffirm our commitment to our customers and our agents, said President & CEO at MMG Insurance Larry Shaw, in a press release. Majescos P&C suite will help us become even more nimble, responsive, and cost efficient to our existing insureds and agents as well as new customers and new market opportunities. We look forward to collaborating with Majesco on this transformation and developing a long-term partnership.

MMG will use Majescos cloud services to deploy its policy, billing and claims services. Majesco Business Analytics, a data and business intelligence solution pre-integrated with the Majesco P&C Suite will also provide business intelligence to MMG. Established in 1897, MMG provides home, auto, and commercial insurance to over 115,000 policy holders throughout Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Carta da parati hi-tech in grado di trasformare unintera parete in un maxi display, ma anche Tablet ultra-sottili che possono essere allungati per passare dalla taglia small alla extra-large o monitor indossabili simili a braccialetti di gomma.

Non si tratta di un nuovo capitolo fantascientifico, ma di una realta ormai prossima chiamata elettronica flessibile resa possibile grazie ad una nuova tecnica di stampa a basso costo che permette di produrre circuiti integrati elastici usando una comune stampante a getto dinchiostro. Lhanno sviluppata gli ingegneri della Michigan State University, negli Stati Uniti, che ne hanno descritto le potenziali applicazioni.

Potremmo rendere i costi di produzione dellelettronica flessibile paragonabili a quelli della stampa dei giornali, ha spiegato il coordinatore dello studio, Chuan Wang, sulla rivista Acs Nano. Il nostro lavoro  aggiunge  potrebbe presto portare a display stampati che possono essere facilmente stirati per aumentarne le dimensioni, cosi come a dispositivi elettronici indossabili e a nuove applicazioni per i robot morbidi.

Il segreto di questa nuova tecnologia sta nella particolare composizione degli inchiostri usati per la stampa: al loro interno contengono diversi composti organici e nanomateriali dissolti in soluzione. Inseriti in una comune stampante ad inchiostro, hanno permesso di realizzare tre componenti fondamentali: il materiale elastico, il circuito e il diodo organico a emissione di luce (Oled).

Entro i prossimi due anni, i ricercatori si sono posti lobiettivo di riuscire a combinare il circuito e lOled in un unico pixel, un risultato necessario per la commercializzazione della nuova tecnologia che promette grandi possibilita (non piu) futuristiche.
Un ottobre da sogno per Antonio Conte: lex ct della Nazionale italiana, attualmente alla guida del Chelsea, nelle ultime quattro gare di Premier League ha collezionato solo successi, conditi da 11 reti segnate e addirittura nessuna incassata. Numeri da record che non sono certo passati inosservati alla Federazione inglese, la quale ha conferito al tecnico leccese lambito premio di Manager del mese.

Unavventura oltremanica iniziata in sordina, quella di Conte, pur a fronte di tre vittorie nelle prime tre gare di campionato. A far vacillare, anche se solo per un momento, le certezze del patron del club londinese, Roman Abramovich, i risultati conseguiti tra la 4a e la 6a giornata, coincisi con un pareggio sul campo dello Swansea City e, soprattutto, con le due pesanti sconfitte subite dal Liverpool, sul terreno casalingo di Stamford Bridge, e dallArsenal. In particolare, la debacle interna coi Reds, aveva irritato non poco il numero uno russo, poiche occorsa proprio nel giorno della sua 250esima partita da presidente della societa.

Come detto, solo un momento. Dopo lincontro dellEmirates, il tecnico salentino cambia modulo, adottando un piu equilibrato 3-4-3 e inserendo elementi di corsa come lo spagnolo Pedro. Una svolta totale perche, di li in poi, il Chelsea inanellera solo e soltanto vittorie: 2 gol allHull City e al Southampton in trasferta, 3 ai campioni dInghilterra del Leicester e 4 allo United in casa, con un meraviglioso numero zero nella casella delle reti subite. Un fantastico poker, ottenuto tra l1 e il 29 ottobre. Un cambio di marcia sbalorditivo, confermato dal 5 a 0 rifilato ai toffees dellEverton nel primo match di novembre, e una scalata che, man mano, ha portato i blues al secondo posto in classifica, a soli 2 punti dal Liverpool capolista.

E allora, non poteva mancare il riconoscimento di migliore allenatore del mese, ottenuto surclassando tecnici del calibro di Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool), Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) e Mark Hughes (Southampton). Tanta, ovviamente, la soddisfazione: E un grande onore e voglio condividerlo con i giocatori e con la societa  ha dichiarato Conte sul sito ufficiale della Premier League -. E la prima volta che lavoro in un altro Paese, con una cultura diversa, e portare la propria filosofia non e facile, ma ora sono contento di questa scelta.

A completare la festa, la premiazione del fantasista belga, Eden Hazard, come miglior giocatore di ottobre. Due risultati importanti per il club, ottimo incentivo per la rincorsa al trono dei campioni, occupato dal Leicester di Ranieri. Il prossimo appuntamento per l11 di Conte sara al Riverside Stadium, tana del Middlesborough neopromosso. Il tempo di festeggiare e gia finito.
Key Takeaways Adjusted EPS was $1.08 vs. the $0.95 analysts expected.

Revenue exceeded analyst expectations.

Gross margin was slightly lower than analysts estimated.

Micron posted strong DRAM sales in cloud, PC, and gaming consoles.

What Happened

Micron's fiscal Q4 earnings and revenue were both higher than analysts forecasted. Both metrics also grew substantially compared to the year-ago quarter. Gross margin, however, was slightly below what analysts estimated, but still up YOY. Results were driven by strong DRAM sales and significant increases in QLC NAND shipments.

"Micron delivered solid fiscal fourth quarter revenue and EPS resulting from strong DRAM sales in cloud, PC and gaming consoles and an extraordinary increase in QLC NAND shipments," said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.

(Below is Investopedia's original earnings preview, published September 29, 2020.)

What to Look For

Micron Technology Inc. (MU), one of the leading manufactures of DRAM and NAND memory chips, is experiencing a return to growth amid the COVID-19-induced rise of the remote-work economy. Social-distancing measures have forced many employees to work from home, driving demand for memory chips. This is a welcome development for chip manufacturers like Micron after a glut of supply weighed on prices, revenue, and earnings for much of 2019.

Investors will be watching to see whether the positive effects of the pandemic will continue to outweigh its negative effects when Micron reports earnings on September 29, 2020 for Q4 FY 2020. Micron's FY 2020 ended in August. Analysts expect both adjusted earnings per share (EPS) and revenue to rise sharply.

One key metric investors will focus on is gross margin, an indicator of operating efficiency at Micron as well as other memory chip manufacturers. Analysts expect the company's gross margin to rise compared to the same three-month period a year ago.

Shares of Micron have kept pace with the broader market for most of the past year, but they have lagged dramatically since the company's last earnings report at the end of June. Micron's stock has provided investors with a total return of -0.7% over the past 12 months, well below the S&P 500's total return of 10.5%.

Source: TradingView.

The stock received a quick boost after reporting Q3 FY 2020 earnings announced on June 29 that surpassed analysts' expectations. Despite the earnings beat, adjusted EPS was still 21.9% lower than it was in the year-ago quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year (YOY) declines. Revenue rose 13.6%, the first YOY increase in six quarters.

The earnings beat and revenue growth, however, were not enough to maintain upward momentum in Micron's share price. The stock traded sideways for the next month before experiencing a significant pullback during the first half of August as optimism over continued demand for memory chips waned. Its shares have rebounded since the third week of August but are still underperforming.

Analysts expect adjusted EPS to rise 69.2% in Q4 FY 2020, which would mark the first earnings growth since Q1 FY 2019. Revenue is expected to rise 21.2% compared to the year-ago quarter. For the full FY 2020, analysts forecast annual adjusted EPS to fall 57.2% and annual revenue to decline 9.1%. It would mark the second consecutive annual declines in both metrics.
In a democracy like the United States, anybody can run for office and become elected to positions in the federal government, such as to the Senate. However, it takes time, money, and connections to run a successful campaign. Indeed, even if an ordinary citizen has ambitions to run for office, if they need to work to put food on the table, a few months on the campaign trail is just not a viable option. It is no surprise then, that most current senators (and many in the house of representatives) are multi-millionaires.

In an effort to be transparent and prevent conflicts of interest, the Ethics in Government Act requires many elected officials to file an annual financial disclosure statement that reveals their assets, investments, and businesses interests. Senators are one of the groups of people who must make this disclosure. Their statements are made available to the public and can give a good idea of the financial position of their filers.

Here, we take a list at the ten wealthiest senators as of of the 116th congress in 2020 (disclosures about the current 177th Congress are not yet publicly available).

Key Takeaways U.S. Senators are required to disclose their financial assets each year.

The salary for a U.S. senator as of 2022 is $174,000 per year.

Most U.S. senators today are millionaires, and most of them made their fortunes before entering politics.

There are three mega-millionaires in the U.S. Senate: Mitt Romney of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida, and Mark Warner of Virginia.

Here we look at the top 10 wealthiest U.S. senators.



Understanding Congressional Wealth

All senators have a government-paid salary which, as of 2021, is $174,000 a year. However, many senators make much more from other sources and have a high net worth. Many of them started their careers in business and made the bulk of their fortunes before joining the political world.

On top of that, senators are high-profile people with a lot of power, and through that, they have access to various business opportunities and to other important people, which allows them to further increase their wealth through investments.

The top 10 wealthiest below all are estimates of their personal wealth. Their positions on the list vary from time to time as well, as each senator listed gains or loses a few million dollars here and there.

From 1789-1815, U.S. senators were paid $6 per day.

Sourc: OpenSecrets.org.

1. Sen. Rick Scott (R - Florida)



The former governor of Florida was elected to the Senate in 2019.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida started his career in business, which is where he made the bulk of his wealth. He created one of the largest hospital networks, the Columbia Hospital Corporation.

Scott has an estimated net worth of more than $300 million as of 2022.

2. Sen. Mark Warner (D - Virginia)

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. Senate and in fact of the entire Congress. As of the latest information, from 2018, his net worth is approximately $215 million.

Born in 1954, Warner grew up in a middle-class family. From as early as his college years, Sen. Warner had political aspirations. At one point during his time as a political science student, he even suggested to his parents that he would one day become president.

The bulk of Warners wealth came from Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm he founded shortly after graduating from law school. Under his direction, the firm made several successful early investments in companies in the telecommunication industry, including XM Satellite Radio and Nextel Communications.



3. Sen. Mitt Romney (R - Utah )

Sen. Romney needs no introduction, having been the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012. The U.S. senator for Utah is the third-wealthiest senator, with a net worth estimated at $175 million.

Like most of the wealthiest senators, Romney made his fortune in business before he got started in politics. He co-founded and ran the private investment firm, Bain Capital.

4. Mike Braun (R - Indiana)

A former Indiana representative in the House, Mike Braun is now the state's junior senator. Worth an estimated $137 million, Braun earned his millions as the CEO of Meyer Distributing, a maker of truck parts and equipment.

Today, he is one of the wealthiest, and also most politically conservative senators.

5. Sen. John Hoeven (R - North Dakota)

Sen. John Hoeven has served as the senior U.S. senator from North Dakota since 2011. Before that, he was the states governor for 10 years. Hoeven's net worth has been estimated at $47 million.

Sen. Hoeven worked in banking before he started his political career, and served as the CEO of First Western Bank and the Bank of North Dakota. Sen. Hoeven remains an owner of First Western Bank and sits on its board of directors.

6. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D - California)

Californias Sen. Dianne Feinsteins estimated net worth was estimated at $88 million.

Blum Capital, a private equity firm founded in 1975 by her husband, Richard Blum, is the source for most of that wealth.

7. Sen. Ron Johnson (R - Wisconsin)

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started out in the late '70s as an accountant at PACUR, a Wisconsin-based polyester and plastics manufacturing company owned by his brother-in-law. He moved up through the ranks, and became the company's CEO by the mid-'80s.

Sen. Johnson has an estimated net worth of $78 million.



8. Sen. James E. Risch (R - Idaho)

James Risch has been the junior senator from Idaho since 2009. He was previously the state's governor.

He has an estimated net worth of $42 million, much of it in farm and ranch land in Idaho.



9. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R - Kentucky)

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, currently the minority leader of the U.S. Senate, has an estimated net worth of $34 million as of 2018.

McConnell has been a senator since 1984. The bulk of his wealth comes from a gift his father bestowed on him in 2008. He and his wife, Elaine Chao, also reported a gift of between $5 million and $25 million from her family in his 2008 disclosure. Chao, who is an economist, was a cabinet secretary in the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.

Most of McConnell's wealth is reported to be held in a Vanguard 500 Index fund.

10. Steve Daines (R - Montana)

Steve Daines of Montana is estimated to be worth $33 million, rounding out the top 10 wealthiest senators of the 116th Congress. Before becoming a politician, Daines was an executive at Proctor & Gamble, before becoming an executive vice president at cloud services startup RightNow Technologies in 2000. That company went public in 2004, and was acquired by Oracle in 2012, a windfall for Daines. That year, Daines first ran for office.

Many citizens and analysts believe that Congress is out of touch with the needs of the average American citizen because of the sizable wealth of many of its members.

Who Is the Richest U.S. Senator? In the 116th Congress, public disclosures had Florida's Rick Scott in first place with a net worth of around $300 million. Kelly Loeffler, who served between 2020-2021 as a Republican senator from Georgia was estimated to have been worth $500 million at the time.

What Is a U.S. Senator's Salary? The salary of a U.S. senator is $174,000 per year as of 2022.

Who Is the Poorest U.S. Senator? According to the latest figures available, Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, is the poorest U.S. senator. Her net worth was estimated at $32,500.

Do U.S. Senators Make a Lot of Money? The salary of a U.S. senator is a respectable $174,000 per annum, but many senators make much more money through other investments, the use of their high-profile status to make connections, and various business dealings.

The Bottom Line

Despite being a democracy, it takes time, money, connections, and clout to become elected to the U.S. senate. It's no surprise, then, that nearly all of the senators today in Washington are millionaires. Most of them earned their money prior to becoming politicians, as businessmen, financiers, and entrepreneurs.
UN Security Council resolution 1540, adopted in 2004, places an obligation on governments to implement effective laws, rules and regulations to prevent terrorist groups and other non-State actors from acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As the legislative branch of government, parliament  also entrusted with exercising oversight and monitoring the allocation of funds - has a pivotal role to play in implementation of this resolution and its specific provisions. However, many parliamentarians are not fully aware of the presence of WMD in their countries or region, nor of the danger associated with the acquisition of such weapons by non-State actors. This is why, to varying extents, loopholes often exist in national legislative frameworks and regulations. In this context, the Parliament of Cote dIvoire and the Inter-Parliamentary Union are organizing a seminar aimed at encouraging national parliaments to promote implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1540. The seminar will take place in Abidjan, on 22 and 23 February 2016. The main purpose of the seminar is to strengthen parliaments ability to assess the risk associated with WMD and to take the requisite measures to lower the risk in the region. The seminar will aim to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and allow parliamentarians to establish informal networks across borders or individual contacts. It will take the form of a practical workshop, presenting examples of laws and regulations in place in countries within the region with a view to highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. The proceedings will take place in French and English.
More than 260 homes have been evacuated as residents are being warned of further flooding along the River Shannon, as rain continue.

The warning to Shannon area residents came from Irelands Electricity Supply Board (ESB) who believe Lough Dergs water levels may reach 2009, record levels, in the coming days as further rain is expected. Met Eireann has rain levels will return to average figures this week but this will do little to aid the receding flood waters as the ground remains saturated.

Sadly hundreds of families, especially in the Shannon area, continue in the battle to keep floodwater out of their homes. In Athlone 100 people from about 60 apartments at Bastion Quay were evacuated after electricity was cut for safety reasons. The ESB were forced to make this decision after pillars connecting an electricity substation to the Bastion Quay apartments became submerged.

On Sunday, the National Coordination Group estimated that 260 homes across the country have now been evacuated, including 14 homes in Kilganey on the south bank of the River Suir, in Clonmel, County Tipperary.

1 area evacuated lastnight. Gardai & Tipperary Civil Defence who were calling to all houses in Kilganey, Clonmel. pic.twitter.com/0gN9b9Ud3w  An Garda Siochana (@GardaTraffic) January 3, 2016

Minister Simon Coveney said it was too soon to start discussing the relocation of residents from the affected areas. He made these comments on Sunday evening while visiting Clonlara, South East Clare, where families have been evacuated.

He told the Irish Examiner I don't think that we are looking at that option at the moment," he said.

"We need to look at more effective ways at managing (the River Shannon) flow to prevent flooding in the futureOnly when we have done that, will anybody concede that we have to start relocating people."

Met Eireanns forecast expects rainfall amounts this week around or just below average for most areas, though amounts still above normal in coastal regions of the north, west and south. However, AA Ireland (the Automobile Association) has warned that even a little rainfall will cause disruption as the ground remains saturated.

Along the River Shannon Irish Defence Forces are operating pumps and maintaining sandbags walls in an attempt to help residents.

On Monday Irelands President Michael D Higgins visited Galway. Having visited Labane, he released a statement commenting on the good work of the agencies and volunteers who have been assisting those affected and the extraordinary sense of community that has prevailed for nearly a month now.

One particular aspect of the floods in Labane to highlight is the situation of those who are isolated and marooned and facing a painful wait for the waters to recede. It is only then that the task of recovery, in so far as possible, can begin.

The President also called on the authorities and the public to pull together now to address the urgent challenge of managing these events and of putting in place the mechanisms needed to ensure better preparedness in the future, as the evidence points to these extreme events becoming more frequent, and accelerating, in the years to come.

President Higgins: Lets grow up and be responsible on floods https://t.co/3JSuWHqCAD pic.twitter.com/XR6exDFW8B  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) January 4, 2016

President Higgins also plans to visit Enniscorthy, in County Wexford on Monday evening.

Irelands Cabinet will resume after Christmas break on Tuesday and the flooding crisis will be top of their agenda. Already Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny has requested that all Ministers with a responsibility in the area including costs of prevention, rescue, repair and clean-up costs submit detailed memoranda. Until now $24.9 million (23m) has been allowed for the three emergency funds but this is expected to be increased.

Met Eireann said, on Monday, "Many places will start dry but showers over Munster will become more widespread during the day.

"Showers will be heaviest in west Munster and over north and east Ulster. Highest temperatures of 6 to 10 degrees.

"Showers will continue tonight and they will turn heavy in the east.

"Fog patches may form in the midlands and west in long clear spells. Lowest temperatures of 2 to 6 degrees in light breezes."

Looking ahead to Tuesday, it added: "Tomorrow will see sunshine and showers.

"Some will be heavy again in the east, with good dry periods elsewhere. Highest temperatures of 6 to 9 degrees. North to northwest winds will be mostly moderate."

Motorists are being advised that some roads remain impassable and Garda Superintendent John Ferris recommended leaving extra time for journeys.

He said We have flood warnings in virtually every county in Ireland today, so we're asking people to be very careful using the roads as they return to work, schools and colleges.

"Were asking people to recognize that many roads have been flooded for weeks at this stage, and there will be debris and potholes etc on these roads."
The differing reactions to the Easter 1916 Rising in Irish America and Ireland can be gauged by the editorials in the two most popular Irish papers in their respective countries.

The Irish Independent, which claimed it had more than twice the net sales of any other Irish newspaper, dominated Irish media at the time of the Easter Rising.

It was owned by businessman Martin Murphy, a notorious anti-Parnellite and strikebreaker who led the fight against the workers during the 1913 lockout. His newspaper spoke to the respectable middle-class Irish. He was a former member of the British parliament.

The Gaelic American was the New York-based publication of revered Fenian John Devoy, who was originally from Kildare. He had done five years penal servitude after the abortive Fenian rising in the 1860s. He was likely the least surprised as he kept closely in touch with the 1916 leaders. Five of the seven who signed the proclamation had visited America and he arranged major funding for them.

The Independent reacted with total venom to the Easter Uprising and read it completely wrong given subsequent events.

Its headline on the editorial was Criminal Madness and opened by saying, No terms of denunciation would be too strong to apply to those responsible for the insane and criminal rising of last week.

The Independent added that thankfully Irish blood spilt in the First World War is an expiation (making amends) for the acts of unfilial ingrates who have besmirched the honor of their native land...our heads must hang low in shame for the misdeeds of those...

They stated the net result of The Rising was the death of innocent women and children, the wholesale surrender of the Sinn Feiners and the monetary loss to Dublin and to Ireland. Making clear they agreed with the death sentence for the leaders The Independent wrote We care little what becomes of the leaders who are morally responsible for this terrible mischief.

In one respect the Independent got it right, noting that the Ulster Volunteers led by Sir Edward Carson in the North had only encouraged rebel forces in the south.

IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group.

In its final paragraph, Irelands largest selling newspaper stated, The Rising was a mere matter of hours a miserable fiasco leaving behind its trail of war and horror. Let us in God's name be done with resistance or thought of revolution in Ireland whatever its guise or pretext.

It would be hard to see how a newspaper could get the prognosis of the aftermath of The Rising more wrong. Within two years the country would vote over 70 percent for Sinn Fein candidates, Within five years an independent state would be born. The Independent continued with its anti-Sinn Fein line so much so that Michael Collins ordered the Independent presses smashed.

Devoy, on the other hand, discerned the historic event with much more accuracy. Not for the first time, including the recent peace process, Irish Americans saw something from far away from where those too close to it could not see or understand.

The front-page headline screamed, Ireland in Arms Fighting for Freedom. Devoy's editorial was called Ireland Fighting for Freedom.

He called it the most formidable insurrection that had taken place since 1798... and which exceeds that (1798) in importance because it is a blow aimed at the heart of English power in Ireland."

Pretty prophetic stuff.

He praised the fighting ability of the Irish insurrectionists saying the insurgents fighting with inadequate supplies of arms and ammunition and without highly trained superior officers have given a very good account of themselves and have made a very important change in the whole war situation.

Devoy erred in believing the insurrection would continue until Englands army is smashed on the continent and the Germans get to London.

Devoy ended by appealing for support from Irish Americans for the uprising. Ireland's only salvation lies in cutting loose from England, he wrote.

Whatever temporary advantage England may be able to retain this action will ensure the final triumph of the Irish Cause and must command the vigorous and energetic support of the Irish Race in America.

No doubt, though, that two countries, two versions of Irish, held two views on Easter 1916 that were utterly, diametrically opposed. Irish America certainly got the better of the historic nature of what happened in Easter 1916.

* Originally published in Aug 2016. Updated in 2022.
James Michael Christopher Fitzmaurice DFC died on this day, September 26 in 1965 in Dublin, Ireland. Today, we remember his most amazing feat.

Aviation pioneer Fitzmaurice was born in Dublin in 1898 and attended a Christian Brothers school in Portlaoise, Co Laois as a boy. In 1914, he joined the Irish National Volunteers, and at 16, he enlisted in the Seventh Battalion of the Royal Leinster Regiment (the Leinsters). He was quickly released for being underage.

Fitzmaurice enlisted in the British army again in 1915; throughout his service, he held the titles of Corporal, Sergeant, and Commander. He was posted to the School of Military Aeronautics and trained in Eastbourne in England. Shortly after the formation of the Irish Free State, Fitzmaurice joined the Irish Air Corps and was promoted to Captain a year later.

On the morning of April 12, 1928, Fitzmaurice took off for what would become the first transatlantic aircraft flight from East to West.

Flying in the famous Bremen German aircraft, Fitzmaurice was joined by German co-pilot Hermann Kohl, and plane owner Ehrenfried Gunther Freiherr von Hunefeld as they took off from Dublins Baldonnel Aerodrome.

Through harsh weather conditions and a series of compass issues, the men landed on April 13 atop an iced-over reservoir on Canadas Greenly Island. Just as the plane came to a stop, it broke through the ice and the tail projected 20 feet into the air. Everyone got wet, but everyone was safe. The telegraph message read: "German plane Bremen landed Greenly Island, noon, slightly damaged, crew well."

The crew then began a two-month tour of American and European cities to be welcomed as heroes.

Watch this video of their warm welcome in Detroit:

Days after landing the Bremen, the three men were presented with the United States Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, by former President Calvin Coolidge.

They were also granted the Freedom of the City of Dublin, and rewarded for contributions to the life of the city  more than 80 people have been given this award, including Mother Teresa, John F. Kennedy, and Nelson Mandela.

For the 70th anniversary of the flight, a short film was made profiling the life of Fitzmaurice with a dramatic reconstruction of the flight. The Fitzmaurice Flying School opened in Baldonnel, Co Dublin in 1998.

There is also a granite strip on New York Citys Broadway commemorating Fitzmaurice with the names of the fliers.

Today, the Bremen aircraft belongs to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan but is currently on display in a hangar at the Bremen Airport Museum in Germany where it has been completely restored.

*Originally published in 2014. Updated in 2022.
A born again Christian preacher accused of making grossly offensive remarks about Muslims has been cleared by a court in the North.

Pastor James McConnell, 78, from Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim, walked free from Belfast Magistrates Court where he had faced a prosecution under the 2003 Communications Act.

Delivering his reserved judgment, District Judge Liam McNally said: The courts need to be very careful not to criminalise speech which, however contemptible, is no more than offensive. It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances.

Accordingly I find Pastor McConnell not guilty of both charges.

The high profile evangelical pastor had been charged with two alleged offences - improper use of a public electronic communications network and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network  after the sermon delivered from the pulpit of his Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle on May 18 2014 was streamed online.

In it he described Islam as a doctrine spawned in hell and said he did not trust Muslims.

Although the words upon which the charges were based were offensive, they did not reach the high threshold of being grossly offensive.

The judge added: He is a man with strong, passionate and sincerely held beliefs. In my view Pastor McConnells mindset was that he was preaching to the converted in the form of his own congregation and like-minded people who were listening to his service rather than preaching to the worldwide internet.

His passion and enthusiasm for his subject caused him to, so to speak, lose the run of himself.

The comments about Islam being heathen and satanic were protected under human rights legislation.

And when considering the remarks about mistrusting Muslims, Judge McNally said he was satisfied the pastor had not set out to intentionally cause offence.

If the preacher had qualified his remarks, as he did in subsequent media interviews, he could have been spared the legal battle, the court was told.

Judge McNally said: If he had clarified this in his sermon and set out in a clear and precise way why Sharia law was repugnant to him he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.

In the manner in which he did express this he has, in my view characterised the followers of an entire religion in a stereotypical way.

Indeed when he uses the word may in the context of whether there are any good Muslims it leaves open the inference that that might not be exactly right and there may not be any good Muslims in Britain. Either way, he is making it crystal clear that he does not trust any Muslim.

The judgment was delivered to a packed courtroom in just over half an hour.

The distinction between offensive and grossly offensive was an important one and not easily made, the court heard.

Context and circumstances are highly relevant and as the European Court of Human Rights observed... the right to freedom of expression includes the right to say things or express opinions that offend, shock or disturb the state or any section of the population, said Judge McNally.

As the judge concluded a crowd of about 50 Christian supporters erupted into spontaneous applause.

Throughout proceedings Mr McConnell, who was dressed in a dark grey suit with grey shirt and pink and purple coloured tie, sat alongside his wife Margaret and other families members.

He was not required to sit in the dock.

During the three day trial in December, Mr McConnell spent more than an hour in the witness box giving evidence in his defence. He said he had not intended to provoke, hurt or offend anyone but was unrepentant for preaching the Christian gospel.

He also claimed he had refused the lesser punishment of an informed warning because it would be an insult to Jesus and he did not want to be gagged in the future.

The prosecution had claimed it was a straightforward case because the words were delivered in a rehearsed sermon to an audience of 2,000 and watched by 700 online, and had been carefully chosen.

Outside court hundreds of supporters cheered as Mr McConnell emerged.

Some sang hymns as the preacher gave his reaction to the judgement.

I am very happy, he said.

He said he would do the sermon again, though word it differently.

The only regret I have is the response from the Muslim community  that I was out to hurt them, he said.

There was no way I was out to hurt them  I wouldnt hurt a hair on their head.

But what I am against is their theology and what they believe in.

If there are Muslims out there I want to assure them I love them and, if they need help, I am there to help them, but their theology and their beliefs I am totally against them.

He added: I would do it again but I would word it differently because I would be conscious I was hurting innocent Muslims, I would be conscious I was hurting Muslims who have come here to work hard and are doing their best  theres no way I would hurt those people, but I would do it again  yes.

The pastor said he did not realise how far his sermon would travel.

As far as I was concerned I was preaching to my own people, I was preaching in my own church  I didnt realise it would go out there and so forth, he said.

Mr McConnell also said he believed he had said worse things in other sermons that had been streamed online.
Emergency Department Nurses are to go ahead with strike action next week after they voted to reject a package to tackle overcrowding and staffing issues.

Nurses voted by 58% to 42% against the package which was agreed at the Workplace Relations Commission last month.
President Barack Obama has moved to tighten gun laws in the US following a series of mass shootings, claiming his plan would save lives.

But the proposals were sure to lead to opposition in Congress and the powerful gun industry lobby.

Mr Obama wants to require all gun sellers to register as dealers  even those who sell at gun shows and online  and to run background checks on all prospective purchasers.

The president has been looking for ways to work around a Republican-led Congress that has blocked his previous efforts to tighten gun laws in the wake of mass shootings.

Mr Obama has accused Republicans  and some Democrats  of being beholden to the gun industry lobby and opposing some measures he says a majority of Americans support, including expanded background checks on gun sales.

But the issue of gun control bitterly divides Americans, with many viewing any attempt to regulate firearms as a possible infringement on their constitutional rights to own guns.

This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, Mr Obama said. But he added: It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses.

The presidents plan to broaden background checks forms the centrepiece of a broader package of measures he wants to take on his own on gun control in his final year in office.

Although Mr Obama cannot unilaterally change gun laws, the president is hoping that beefing up enforcement of existing laws can prevent at least some gun deaths in a country rife with them.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers.

But many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or other informal settings do not register as dealers. Gun control advocates say that loophole is exploited to skirt the background check requirement.

The executive actions on gun control fall far short of what he and like-minded politicians attempted to accomplish with legislation in 2013, after a massacre at a Connecticut school that shook the nations conscience.

Even so, the more modest measures were sure to spark a confrontation with Republicans and gun rights groups that oppose new impediments to buying guns.

Were very comfortable that the president can legally take these actions now, said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Mr Obamas announcement was hailed by Democratic politicians and gun control groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which claimed he was making history with bold and meaningful action that would make all Americans safer.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, at a rally in Iowa, said she was so proud of Mr Obama but warned that the next president could easily undo his changes.

I wont wipe it away, she said.

Republicans were quick to attack Mr Obama, with Senator Bob Corker denouncing his steps as divisive and detrimental to real solutions.

He said: I will work with my colleagues to respond appropriately to ensure the Constitution is respected.

Far from mandating background checks for all gun sales, the new guidance still exempt collectors and gun hobbyists, and the exact definition of who must register as a dealer and conduct background checks remains vague.

The administration did not issue a number for how many guns someone must sell to be considered a dealer, instead saying it planned to remind people that courts have deemed people to be dealers in some cases even if they only sell a handful of guns.
Spanish police have seized 3,000kg of cocaine and arrested 12 people, including Spaniards, Britons and Dutch citizens.

A police statement said the drug load was seized in Spains north-western region of Galicia but was destined for the southern Costa del Sol tourist area.

No more details regarding the operation were immediately available.

The statement said it was the biggest drug haul on land in the region in nearly 20 years.
The acquisition of Industria de Embalagens Santana and Paema Embalagens offers the Dublin-based group a strong entry point into a market it has been looking at for some time and means it now has a presence in every country in South America.

Smurfit Kappa Group is already the leading pan-regional packaging player in Latin America and this move will improve its packaging offering to multinationals operating in the Americas.

The two Brazilian companies have net assets worth around 30m and capacity of 210,000 tonnes from three recycled containerboard mills and four corrugated facilities.

The completed transaction  funded from Smurfit Kappa Groups existing liquidity (mainly cash resources, plus credit facilities)  will be immediately earnings accretive.

Irish packaging giant Smurfit Kappa moves into #Brazil with two key acquisitions worth 186 million. https://t.co/8AYZOeKTQX  Latin America Center (@ACLatAm) January 4, 2016

The businesses employ over 1,700 people and Smurfit Kappa Group expects to generate around 6m by the end of 2017 from the pair.

This will be primarily through operational improvements and supply chain optimisation as the businesses are integrated.

Despite the positive news, Smurfit Kappa Groups share price dipped by over 2% early yesterday, although that dip was pared back to under 1% by the end of yesterdays session.

Nevertheless, Davy Stockbrokers has reiterated its share price target of 32 for the group, 36% above where it currently stands.

Smurfit Kappa Group has, for some time, indicated its desire to enter the Brazilian market but to date acquisition multiples have proven too rich.

The deal now extends Smurfit Kappa Groups reach to the entire South American continent and further enhances the companys desire to build its platform in the Americas, said Davys Barry Dixon.

David OBrien of Goodbody noted the significance of the Brazilian market, in its own right, as well as the chance to enhance Smurfit Kappa Groups overall presence in Latin America.

In November, Smurfit Kappa Group reported a 1% annualised jump in revenue for the first nine months of the year to just over 6bn; with profits rising by 27% to 408m.

A strong showing from the Americas division helped drive the growth.
When the kingdom grew tired of Opec members exceeding their quotas in 1986, it opened the spigots and crashed prices to below $10 a barrel, counting on accumulated profits and low production costs to shore the country up against the flood of excess crude.

When Saudi wanted to snuff out US shale oil producers last year, it boosted daily output from 9.5m barrels in December 2014 to 10.6m barrels by July.

Prices fell 30% over the course of the year.

Those expecting the same dynamics to be decisive in the current spat with Iran, which sent oil futures in New York rising as much as 3.5% at one stage yesterday on news that Riyadh had expelled Iranian diplomats, could be in for a shock: Tehran is well placed to fight off the onslaught.

The two countries, already fighting proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, are simultaneously competing for a share of Asias oil market.

For the past five years, Saudi Arabia has held the upper hand, thanks in part to the enhanced sanctions imposed on Iran in 2011 over its nuclear programme.

With Tehran likely to meet the conditions needed to lift those sanctions as soon as next week, thats set to change.

The government is promising to bring an extra million barrels of daily oil production into the market by mid-year, more than a third of its current output.

Saudi Arabia is unlikely to take that challenge lying down.

Its vast reserves and low production costs have traditionally left it best positioned to survive an oil price war, the good sweating that John D Rockefeller once recommended to knock out Standard Oils higher-cost rivals.

The problem in the current situation is that its rival across the Persian Gulf has already been toiling through four years of sanctions.

Combine that with a far more diversified economy, and Iran has much less to lose from low oil prices than it had in the past.

Were both countries oil production to stop overnight, Saudi Arabia would find itself with a 57% budget deficit.

Irans would be just 7.5%, not much worse than many Western countries.

Diminished exposure to weak oil prices is helping protect Iranian government spending in the current downturn.

Government net debt in Riyadh will rise to 44% of GDP by 2020, when Tehran will be holding a net asset position, according to the IMF.

While Iran needs an unlikely crude price of $70.40 a barrel to balance its budget this year, Saudi Arabia needs an extraordinary $95.80.

The kingdom still has some trump cards up its sleeve.

Its $642bn (590.5bn) in foreign-exchange reserves are enough to cover three years of imports, while Irans would run dry after about 20 months.
TWO years ago, US President Barack Obama dismissed Islamic State (IS) as al-Qaedas JV team (a reference to junior varsity players, who are second-string squad members).

Today, it controls roughly a third of Mesopotamia and wreaks murderous havoc as far away as Western Europe.

The story of that brutal blossoming has been well documented in real time across front pages and websites, and most Westerners have some familiarity of what the Islamic extremists want (a global Muslim caliphate) and how they intend to get it (death, death, and more death).

However, another part of the IS narrative has been shrouded in mystery. How did a violent movement that was all but extinguished in the late 2000s become the terrorist juggernaut it is today?

Thats not just an academic question: Just because know your enemy is a cliche of warfare, that doesnt make it any less true.

Three good recent books dive into those foggy years from 2003 to 2011, when what was known as al Qaeda in Iraq first terrorized post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, then was decimated by US special-operations forces, and finally re-emerged as the Islamic State.

One, Joby Warricks Black Flags, is the sort of work every journalist would love to write and few can: A detailed and perceptive analysis thats also a page-turner.

It primarily describes the rise and fall of al Qaeda in Iraq, which makes it necessary reading for anybody who wants to put IS into the context of both contemporary jihadism and the history of Muslim fundamentalism.

Warrick starts where the jihadists did, in the late 1990s at a filthy Jordanian prison housing 50 or so Islamic extremists whom the kingdom didnt want radicalising its run-of-the-mill criminals elsewhere.

This was a terrible idea, and Swaqa prison has since been described as a jihadist fraternity house.

Two detainees stood out. The first was Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Palestinian-born Islamic scholar who saw in scripture a command to overthrow the secular governments of the Middle East.

The other was Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, who, under his nom de guerre Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, would eventually become the most feared man in the Middle East.

A hard-drinking street thug while growing up in Jordan, al-Zarqawi went to Afghanistan in search of life-direction and Soviet troops.

However, the Russians had gone home, so Zarqawi did the same, only to be snared by Jordanian intelligence with an arsenal in his basement and sent to Swaqa in 1992.

His jailers saw him as little more than an illiterate enforcer for Maqdisi, whose preaching entranced the other inmates.

However, as Warrick notes, a local doctor providing medical care for the prisoners knew better from one look at Zarqawis battle-scarred visage: The face was unremarkable, fleshy, with full lips framed by a thin beard, but the eyes were unforgettable.

Deep-set and nearly black in the low prison light, they conveyed a cold intelligence, alert and probing, but lacking any trace of emotion.

Neither welcoming nor hostile, his look was that of a snake studying the fat young mouse that had just dropped into his cage.

Upon release in 1999, Zarqawi made his way to back to Afghanistan only to be snubbed by Osama bin Laden, who was shocked by the Jordanians bloodthirstiness and eagerness to kill fellow Muslims.

Nonetheless, al Qaeda backed Zarqawi to start a terrorist training camp at Herat, near the Iranian border.

After the Taliban fell to the US-led invasion in 2001, Zarqawi made his way west to a lawless corner of Iraq, hoping the Americans would bring the fight to him. George W Bush did not disappoint.

In the insurrection after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Zarqawis al Qaeda in Iraq announced itself to the world by blowing up the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

Attacks on mosques in Baghdad, Karbala, and Samarra inflamed sectarian tensions between Shiites and Sunnis.

Video of his personal beheading of the American businessman Nick Berg in 2004 became a global viral hit, and the US put out a $25m bounty. He took to calling himself sheikh of the slaughterers.

He was killed in June 2006, when a US F-16 bombed his safe house in eastern Iraq, and his followers found their fortunes soured. Sunni tribal chiefs in western Iraq turned on the terrorists, the so-called Anbar Awakening, and the US undertook its troop surge of 2007.

By the summer of 2010, the Pentagon reported that 34 of the top 42 terrorist groups leaders had been killed or captured.

US special-operations forces had adapted to the hit-and-run nature of counterterrorism.

The commandos had found a way to get under the terrorists skin, writes Warrick. The insurgents were no longer the deadliest, most unpredictable force in Iraq. Now, it was their turn to be afraid, and exposed.

The jihadist force also faced an internal schism, with the triumphant faction eventually pledging allegiance to a mild-mannered Islamic scholar named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose demeanour belied his inner savage.

In adopting Zarqawis vision, Baghdadi also enthusiastically embraced the Jordanians most grisly excesses, writes Warrick.

With a new leader came a new moniker: The Islamic State of Iraq. More than a name change, this was a statement of intent.

Zarqawi and his religious mentor Maqdisi had been fascinated with the end-times narratives of Islamic scripture.

Unlike bin Laden, they felt that the return of the Madhi, the bringer of judgement, was perhaps right around the corner.

Zarqawi sought to establish a global Sunni caliphate as soon as possible. This apocalyptic belief, in large part, kept his heirs committed to jihad in those lean times.

The nascent IS also had a business plan, in 2009 releasing its Strategic Plan for Reinforcing the Political Position of the Islamic State of Iraq.

Will McCants, the author of The ISIS Apocalypse and a scholar of Islamic thought at the Brookings Institution, describes it as having the look and feel of a DC think tank report, with analysis and recommendations for policy makers.

One suspects, though, that few DC white papers come to the conclusion that the world needs more Mumbai-style homicidal rampages. The report admitted the group had faltered badly, but insisted that if the jihadists focused their fire on the inexperienced Iraqi army, the nation would quickly fall into chaos after the US withdrawal two years later. Little did they realise that chaos on a much wider scale would soon give them a real chance to create their paradise on earth.

The so-called Arab Spring of 2010 took a long time to reach Syria, but the peaceful protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in 2011 soon led to civil war. IS and its acolytes flourished in the power void and they got an unlooked- for boost from Assads terrible decision to release a horde of jihadists from prison in the hopes that they would disrupt the protests.

Islamic States ranks also began to grow through an infusion of volunteers from across the Muslim world.

Jihadists, especially foreigners who travel to fight in distant lands, call themselves strangers. They are strange, they claim, because they adhere to the true Islam that most Muslims neglect, writes McCants, who has a gift for explaining obscure Islamic thought to the lay reader.

For jihadists, leaving their tribes means leaving their homelands and emigrating to fight elsewhere, just as the Prophets companions, the emigrants, did.

Over the next three years, this growing force took full or partial control of most of northwestern Iraq, capped by conquering the nations second-largest city, Mosul, where the Iraqi army dropped its weapons and ran.

Outwaiting the Americans was proving prescient and profitable. Taxing local populations, smuggling oil and looting antiquities were by then generating $1m to $3m (920,000 to 2.7m) a day.

IS made similar gains in Syria. Zarqawi had been an adherent to an 8th-century prophecy that the final showdown between the faithful and Western infidels would come at a village called Dabiq, outside Syrias largest city of Aleppo. IS fought a bloody campaign to take the militarily insignificant village in the summer of 2014.

By last summer, Baghdadi felt comfortable enough to declare himself the caliph of the Muslim world and his movement to be the heir of the Abbasid Empire, the Sunni movement that dominated the Islamic world from the 8th to the 13th centuries.

McCants explains: There are striking parallels between the Abbasid revolution and the Islamic State revolution. They share a name (dawla), symbols and colours, apocalyptic propaganda, clandestine networks, and an insurgency in Syria and Iraq. The Abbasids had provided a blueprint for how to overthrow a Muslim ruler, establish a new caliphate, and justify both. Apocalypse, caliphate, and revolution were inseparable, just as they are for the Islamic State.

Baghdadi, of course, has something the Abbasids lacked: The ability to spread that apocalyptic propaganda across the globe, streaming in high definition. ISs self-promotion skills are a main topic of ISIS: The State of Terror by Jessica Stern and JM Berger.

Stern, a former National Security Council staffer under US president Bill Clinton, and Berger, like McCants a fellow at Brookings, note the groups longevity owes much to projecting fear.

ISIS flaunts its cruelty, and that literally shameless practice is perhaps its most important innovation, they write. Its public display of barbarism lends a sense of urgency to the challenge it presents and allows it to consume a disproportionate amount of the worlds attention.

Indeed, this penchant for atrocity goes hand in hand with its messianic vision. Violent apocalyptic groups are not inhibited by the possibility of offending their political constituents, because they see themselves as participating in the ultimate battle, the authors write. Apocalyptic groups are the most likely terrorist groups to engage in acts of barbarism.

In terms of pure cruelty, IS is on a par with both its medieval eschatological ancestors and its 20th-century rivals in genocide.

Not only did it implement a regime of crime and punishment which members believed to be divinely ordained, but it celebrated and documented the process in its propaganda, publicising everything from the destruction of cigarettes and drug stashes to the amputation of thieves hands under the supervision of trained doctors to the genocidal extermination and enslavement of Iraqi minorities.

While IS is sometimes compared with Nazi Germany, Stern and Berger note a major difference: The Nazis did not broadcast their atrocities to the world.

Stern and Bergers book is tightly organised and to the point, as if they have reverse- engineered an IS users manual. Its also forward-looking: They want to use history as a guide to winning the present war.

While they find IS atrocities as repellent as the rest of us, they also warn that we in the West should measure our actions to avoid spreading its ideology and influence.

Doing so, in part, means not creating any more lawless places where terrorism thrives, as happened in Libya where Nato used air power to help bring down the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but neglected to help rebuild the state.

As the authors put it, the only thing worse than a brutal dictator is no state at all.

Against IS, they urge consideration of our own waiting game, or the modern version of a medieval siege.

As living conditions and economies in jihadi-controlled regions deteriorate, the terrorist groups income will dwindle, its citizen-hostages will flee and it will no longer be able to pretend it is a state.

Defeating IS on the ground, of course, will not end the threat. Stern and Berger feel that messaging will be key to countering its appeal to the next generation of Muslims.

They would document the groups war crimes, and publicise its military setbacks and governance failures.

Finally, they warn the West not to play into the apocalyptic narrative by sending a huge contingent of crusader forces to the judgment-day battlefield at Dabiq.

They may have a point: Zarqawi and his heirs caught two big breaks with the US invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring. Why give them another?
WHAT a week or so that was. There were times when it seemed as if our country was slowly drowning. I saw the Barrow and the Nore in full flood as if Noah himself was coming. I saw water lapping over the main road bridge in Enniscorthy, a good 2m higher than Ive ever seen it before. I saw water cascading down the main streets of towns in Wicklow and Wexford and Kilkenny as if the apocalypse had arrived.

On the news we all saw exhausted residents and townspeople battling to save their homes, and coping with what seemed like irreparable damage. As storm after storm raged through the countryside it often seemed like it would never end.

Towns like Bandon, that have suffered heavily in the past, were hit again. Shopkeepers who have given up trying to buy flood insurance watched in despair as their Christmas takings floated down their main streets.

For the families involved, it must have been an awful, unforgettable time. You could fully understand the anger and frustration of people meeting government ministers after a week or more of fighting a losing battle with the elements.

But there were other things happening too. I drove a lot of country roads during the awful weather, and it was impossible not to notice that where a bit of decent preparation had been done, culverts were running clear, and coping with an enormous volume of rapidly moving water. Where there was sand-bagging going on, communities were out in force to help. Right through the Christmas period there were signs of local authority staff out and about, working way beyond the call of duty to keep their communities safe.

At national level, decisions were being made and communicated on a daily basis, by a task force that never seemed to go off duty and were all looking increasingly exhausted as the weeks wore on. In the end, I would guess that we all know about the houses and families that couldnt be protected from the floods. But we dont know how many crises were averted by the sort of decent planning that seemed to be going on, and by the remedial work that has been carried out in towns like Clonmel since the last disastrous floods.

We do know that no hospital was forced to shut down, no nursing homes had to be evacuated, no elderly or infirm people were put at risk. There was one terrible tragedy near Fermoy, when a mother and her daughter died in a flooded field, apparently after a car crash. But nobody died directly from the floods, nobody lost a loved one. Everything else can be fixed in time.

So maybe, while we sympathise with all those families and businesses that were affected by the floods, we should also pay a tribute to the public servants who planned the response and the local authority workers at every level who worked might and main to ensure that things werent an awful lot worse. We spend an awful lot of time in this country criticising people who work in the public services, but we never seem to realise that when we need them most, theyre always there.

That applies to people like ESB workers too. There werent too many families left without power for too long, despite some of the worst wind weve seen in recent years. That was because ESB crews left their families to work in some of the worst conditions to get electricity back to their customers, and they deserve thanks for that.

And what of the politicians? As usual, they were in a no-win situation. Joan Burton was mocked for braving the elements and having the kind of accident any of us could have  an accident she dealt with with a laugh. Enda Kenny was mocked, on the other hand, for not being seen in photocalls in Wellington boots, even though he was ensuring that responsible ministers and officials were working around the clock.

A former tanaiste, Michael OLeary, was given the nickname minister for snow because he took an active and visible role in dealing with the consequences of awful weather back in 1981. Ever since then, politicians have known that they are damned if they do and damned if they dont when it comes to the weather.

When were wading through muck and damage, we want our politicians at our side. But we also want them performing miracles at their desks. We never seem to have realised that even politicians cant defeat nature.

But they can plan for it, and they can learn lessons. When property was king in Ireland, there were many who warned that it was dangerous to take the natural flood plains around places like Carrick-on-Shannon and cover them with concrete to facilitate the insatiable appetites of developers. Hopefully weve learned the lesson, even if its the hard way, that our failure over generations to respect the needs and habits of our waterways is going to bite us hard every now and again.

But the main thing we have to realise, and start to plan for, is that this really is the future. Unless the worlds scientific community is wrong about climate change, we already know the sort of consequences it will bring for us. Well before this years bad weather, the Environmental Protection Agency and others warned that climate change consequences for Ireland would include a rise in the sea level, more intense storms and rainfall events, an increased likelihood and magnitude of river and coastal flooding. They are also predicting water shortages in summer in the east of Ireland and adverse impacts on water quality throughout the country.

It may or may not be the case that this years storms are a manifestation of climate change happening now. They are certainly a warning that it is starting to affect us, and we have to plan.

Thats why the worst thing that could happen after the storm passes is we all breathe a sigh of relief and forget about it.We need to worry about the next one.

CLIMATE change has to feature in the election manifestos of every party that contests the general election  not as a platitude, a box to be ticked, but as a leading priority. Planning, preparing for, and investing in climate change measures is more important than tax cuts. The idea that we should all be encourage to go out and spend more, while we fail to invest adequately in reducing our own carbon emissions and preparing for a different climate future, is just absurd.

And yet Id be reasonably certain that as soon as the first opinion poll of the year is published, the entire media concentration is going to be on the gladiatorial side of the election, and not on the real issues that need to be addressed. If a government is elected in Ireland in March, whatever its personalities, that doesnt put climate preparation front and centre of its concerns, it will be letting us all down. If we decide to vote for the best tax cuts package on offer, and ignore the need to invest in the future, well be letting ourselves down.
Sweden began checking documents of travellers from Denmark for the first time in half a century, causing delays of up to 50 minutes for trains and buses crossing the Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo.

Private vehicles were exempt from the checks.
The disappearances have stoked fears of mainland Chinese authorities using shadowy tactics that erode the one country, two systems formula under which the former British colony has been governed since its return to Chinese rule in 1997.

Lee Bo, 65, a shareholder of Causeway Bay Books, vanished last week, according to a missing person report filed by Lees wife.
The Facebook founder said his personal challenge for the next year is to invent the computerised servant to assist with household chores.

And he likened the idea to the character Jarvis in the Iron Man films, a highly advanced form of artificial intelligence (AI) who manages almost everything in the superheros life.

In a Facebook post he wrote: Every year, I take on a personal challenge to learn new things and grow outside my work at Facebook.

My challenges in recent years have been to read two books every month, learn Mandarin and meet a new person every day.

My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work. You can think of it, kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man.

He plans to explore what technology is already in use before personalising the invention so it can recognise his voice and control everything in his home, including the lights, music and heating.

Mr Zuckerberg, who has a month-old daughter named Max, added: Ill teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell.

"Ill teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Maxs room that I need to check on when Im not with her, he said.

The Facebook founder said he also plans to use the assistant to help him visualise data to improve his businesses.

He added: This should be a fun intellectual challenge to code this for myself. Im looking forward to sharing what I learn over the course of the year.

And the entrepreneur has called for girls to be encouraged to be the nerd in school so they can be successful inventors later in life.

He was responding to a Facebook post from Darlene Hackemer Loretto who wrote: I keep telling my granddaughters to date the nerd in school, he may turn out to be a Mark Zuckerberg!

However, responding to the comment, Mr Zuckerberg said families should encourage girls to set their sights higher and be the brains behind the inventions.

Even better would be to encourage them to be the nerd in their school so they can be the next successful inventor! he wrote.

Every year, Zuckerberg comes up with a challenge meant to teach himself new skills.

One year he learned to speak Mandarin, in another he only ate meat from animals he hunted personally. According to his A Year of Books feed, he made it through 23 books on everything from energy production to world religions.

His latest challenge comes as Facebook is working on its own artificial intelligence initiatives, including building an assistant for users through the Messenger application.
Burma 2 Suspected Elephant Poachers Arrested in Irrawaddy, 3 Others at Large

Police in Irrawaddy Division arrest two suspected members of an elephant poaching ring and are still searching for three others, including the gangs leader.

PATHEIN, Irrawaddy Division  Police in Irrawaddy Division have arrested two suspected members of an elephant poaching ring and are still searching for three others, including the gangs leader.

They are [part of] a five-member gang; we have arrested two, three others are on the loose with a percussion lock firearm and we are combing the forest for them, police officer Win Htut of Tha Let Kwar Police Station in the divisional capital, Pathein, told The Irrawaddy on Monday.

On Jan. 1, police detained Maung Poe and Maung Chauk after they were sighted in the Chaungtha Forest Reserve. Their arrests led to the seizure of one Dayun motorbike, 66 pieces of elephant trunks and tails, dried elephant hide and a 13-inch butchers knife from suspect Maung Poe.

As we interrogated Maung Poe, another one got away by motorbike, said officer Win Htut. We combed the forest and found a suspicious man wandering around near the rangers office in the forest at around 8:30pm. We interrogated him and found that he was also part of the gang.

Police searched the area after the arrests and discovered a skinned elephant in a nearby creek, as well as a structure erected to cure the animals hide. The 32-year-old male elephant was eight feet, six inches tall, 12 feet long with a girth of 14 feet.

Additional elephant tails, poison and a syringe were also seized from the second suspect, Maung Chauk, upon his arrest.

All five suspects are residents of Ngape Township, Magwe Division, and the two men currently in custody will face charges under Burmas Forest Law, police said.
Burma Arakan State Civilians Shelter at Monasteries Following Fighting

More than 100 villagers have reportedly fled to monasteries since fighting between the Arakan Army and government troops flared up on Dec. 27.

RANGOON  More than 100 villagers have reportedly fled to monasteries since fighting between the Arakan Army and government troops in Arakan States Kyauktaw Township flared up on Dec. 27.

Tun Tha Sein, from Taungoo village in Arakan State, said the displaced civilians in Arakan State had taken shelter in monasteries in the villages of Kyiya Pyin and Zaytitaung, Mrauk-U Township, where local civil society organizations are providing them with food and blankets.

Villagers said to me that they feared for their safety and left their houses after they heard a huge explosion near their village. As far as I know, more than 130 people are spread among monasteries in the two villages, Tun Tha Sein told The Irrawaddy.

He added that fighting had also erupted in areas between Mrauk-U and Kyauktaw townships, but that not all people from affected villages, including Thantatar and Ba Ei, were receiving aid.

Hla May, founder of the Kyauktaw Womens Network, said she did not believe that there were any war victims in Kyauktaw Township, but that she had heard that in addition to Mrauk-U Township, people had also fled to neighboring Paletwa Township in Chin State.

In late December, Maung Than Sein, a local of Thapyuchaung village, sustained a bullet wound to the arm and was taken to Sittwe Hospital for medical treatment. News of his injury was accompanied by allegations that he was acting as a porter for the Burma Army when he was shot.

Last months fighting is only the latest in a series of clashes between the Burma and Arakan armies. Forces from both sides have exchanged fire with some regularity since fighting first erupted late last March.

At the same time, at least 20 people have been detained under Burmas controversial Unlawful Association Act for alleged links to the Arakan Army. Kyauktaw Township authority Khin Maung said 18 Arakan Army soldiers were arrested following the fighting last year.

Nyo Twan Awng, a colonel in the Arakan Army, claimed that at least 20 people have died and that more than 50 more have been injured by government troops in recent weeks. These claims, however, have not been verified by the government.
Burma Army Chief Defends Civil Conflict as a Just War

The commander-in-chief of the Burma Army defends the nations ongoing civil conflict as a just war geared toward stability of the nation.

RANGOON & CHIANG MAI, Thailand  The commander-in-chief of the Burma Army on Monday defended the nations ongoing civil conflict as a just war geared toward stability of the nation, remarks made on the same day the incoming leadership vowed to make peace its top priority.

Speaking at a ceremony honoring soldiers for their service on Burmas Independence Day, Jan. 4, Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing said the countrys ongoing civil war was for the benefit of the nations citizens.

All military personnel, including the commander-in-chief of the Defense Services, solemnly pledge that any war we are engaged in is for the justice and well-being of the State, the people and the Tatmadaw, Min Aung Hlaing said in the capital Naypyidaw, referring to the armed forces by their Burmese name.

The commanders remarks were published on an official Facebook page of the office of the army chief on Monday, shortly after the ceremony.

By looking at the past events thoroughly and optimistically, one can see that the Tatmadaw is not just engaging in those military operations because it is willing to wage war, his comments continued, adding that those who most deeply despise conflict are the servicemen who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their country.

Burma is home to one of the worlds longest-running civil wars, which began shortly after the country gained independence in 1948. A multilateral peace process between the government and several mostly ethnic armed groups began in 2011, following the onset of a political reform agenda geared toward transitioning from military to civilian rule.

The protracted peace process resulted in the signing of a nationwide ceasefire agreement last October, though the pact was signed by less than half of the countrys non-state armed groups. A political dialogue is set to begin in mid-January to seek solutions to the conflict, which is expected to be attended by about 700 delegates.

A number of ethnic minorities will not be represented in the dialogue, however, as they are still at war with the central government. Among them are some of the most powerful non-state actors, including the Kachin and Shan armed groups from the countrys north and northeast.

Addressing the ongoing clashes, the commander-in-chief said that some ongoing conflict was to be expected and reiterated that the current clashes were in the interest of the population at large.

Our fellows, including myself, can vow that we are fighting a just war for our citizens and the Tatmadaw, he said.

It is the duty of every citizen to safeguard our countrys ground, airspace and territorial waters and [protect] the life and property of our people.

Commending the military for its role in bringing about Burmas recent transition to a more democratic form of governance, Min Aung Hlaing said the armed forces have historically played a unique and central role in modern politics and national identity.

The Tatmadaw also took the lead in marching toward the multi-party democratic system that the citizens have aspired to, Min Aung Hlaing said.

Also on Monday, Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide victory in a November election and is set to take power early this year, told her supporters that her administration will make peace-building its top priority.

The first responsibility of the next government is to build peace. We will organize an effective peace conference to improve the recent ceasefire agreement and we will urge widespread participation, Suu Kyi said at the headquarters of her party, the National League for Democracy.
Burma Domestic Energy Firm Unearths Major Gas Find

A Burma joint venture that includes a local oil and gas extraction company says it has discovered a major gas field.

RANGOON  A joint venture that includes local oil and gas extraction company MPRL E&P, led by business tycoon Michael Moe Myint, has discovered a new gas field in late November, the firm revealed in an announcement on Monday.

Located at the Shwe Yee Htun-1 exploration well in offshore block A-6, the field is believed to reach a depth of 17,408 feet, including some 6,670 feet of water. The announcement also said that a gas column of 129 meters was found, consisting of an estimated 15 meters of net gas pay.

Additional data is still being evaluated.

Moe Myint said that he is pleased and proud that MPRL, as a company with limited resources in a difficult environment, succeeded in unraveling a new petroleum area in a frontier basin.

Our efforts are of interest to international oil companies. Weve finally been able to contribute to a project that could be a world-class discovery, Moe Myint said in the companys statement.

The latest find is part of the companys exploration of block A-6, an endeavor initially put in motion in 2007. MPRL carried out 2-D and 3-D surveys of the site in 2009 and 2010.

MPRL holds a 20-percent interest in block A-6. Woodside Petroleum, an Australian gas exploration and production company, and Total, another firm, each hold a 40-percent interest.

MPRL is looking forward to evaluating this discovery with the help of Woodside and Total, with the aim of proving commerciality for all stakeholders, Moe Myint said.
Burma Heritage Group Calls For Alterations to New Building in Downtown Rangoon

Yangon Heritage Trust has advised changes to the exterior of a new building in Rangoon as the structure detracts from surrounding colonial-era architecture.

RANGOON  A heritage conservation group has proposed an alteration to the exterior design of a newly completed building in downtown Rangoon, as the structure detracts from the surrounding colonial-era architecture.

Located at the corner of Merchant Street and Pansodan Road, the more than six-storey building was redeveloped by Shwe Than Lwin company, a business conglomerate founded by Kyaw Win which owns Sky Net broadcasting service, among multiple other business interests.

The site was formerly occupied by Whiteaway and Laidlaw Co, the biggest department store in Rangoon, famous for its large portico supported by more than 20 columns and dating back to the late 19th century.

After Burmese independence in 1948, the store was nationalized to be used as a government office and host to the State Agriculture Marketing Board until it was damaged in a blaze in the early 2000s and subsequently demolished. The site was then opened to private investors for development.

Thant Myint-U, the founder of Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT), told The Irrawaddy that the group had reached out to Kyaw Win in October to propose some alterations to the structure that would be more sympathetic to the surrounding area, where several century-old buildings remain.

YHT have been very concerned with the building as it is right in the middle of the downtown conservation area, Thant Myint-U said.

The historian explained that the intersection of Merchant Street and Pansodan is probably the most important single heritage area in downtown Rangoon.

Other than this one building, its one of the last completely intact early 20th century streetscapes left in all of Asia, he said.

The proposed alterations were, not a perfect solution, but I think a reasonable compromise, Thant Myint-U said, adding that he hoped to meet the developers this week.

Kyaw Win was not available for comment on Tuesday.

In 2013, the YHT also slammed the planned construction of a US$100 million high-rise office tower directly next to a century-old heritage building in the heart of the commercial capital.

After the objection, the government opted not to allow the project on the grounds that nothing should be built that might harm the surrounding heritage environment.

We are not against modern buildings. But they have to be sympathetic to the surrounding area, said Moe Moe Lwin, the director and vice-chairman of YHT.

She said for the building that has now been completed, the only viable option was to undertake some exterior alterations.

The current design is not quite suitable for the surrounds. If the owner agrees to make changes in design, it would be their contribution to the preservation of the downtown heritage center, she said.
Burma Jade Equipment Probe Continues, Details Sparse

At least three Kachin State officials have been targeted in the investigation, though the outcome remains veiled in mystery.

Two weeks after the government launched an investigation into illegal vehicle imports related to the jade trade in northern Burmas Kachin State, authorities have yet to disclose any firm details about their findings.

Last week the government-led investigation team, spearheaded by Minister for Environmental Conservation and Forestry Win Tun, launched a probe into the involvement of several Kachin State government officials including the states chief minister and two members of his cabinet.

Rumors abounded in local media that Kachin State Chief Minister Lajon Ngan Hsai had been sacked after his interrogation by the investigation team, though Zaw Htay, director of the Presidents Office, has yet to provide further insight into the matter.

The case is still under investigation, and we cant yet say anything for certain, Zaw Htay told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

Naung Tain, assistant to the chief minister, denied that Lajon Ngan Hsai had been fired, stating that he was still at work in his office in the state capital of Myitkyina. The staffer declined to comment further on the ongoing investigation.

State media reported in December that the Ministry of Commerce had seized some 700 illegally imported trucks in Kachin State and had suspended use of the Kan Pai Tee border checkpoint where trucks had supposedly entered the country.

Hpakant locals, spurred by an increase in the number of dump trucks in the area, protested what they described as intensified government-backed jade mining efforts before President Thein Sein leaves office in a few months.

The investigation follows a devastating November landslide that shook Hpakant and claimed the lives of at least 114 prospectors searching for jade residue at a mine site. A smaller landslide left dozens of others believed to be dead on Dec. 25 at a nearby mining site.

A toxic triumvirate of deadly landslides, environmentally damaging extraction and the illegal import of machinery has sparked public outrage and calls to ramp-up safety measures.
Burma Official Vows to Suspend Plans for Controversial Power Plant in Mon State

Aung Than Oo told lawmakers last week that a planned coal-fired power plant in Mon States Inn Din Village would be suspended pending locals consent.

RANGOON  Ministry of Electric Power Deputy Minister Aung Than Oo told lawmakers last week that all works related to a planned coal-fired power plant in Mon States Inn Din Village would be suspended until the consent of locals could be obtained.

The Toyo-Thai company has been seeking to develop a 1280 MW coal plant in the village in Ye Township, expected to cost upwards of US$2.8 billion. A 30-year construction and operating agreement was signed between Toyo-Thai and the Ministry of Electric Power in April 2015.

The deputy minister was responding to a question from ethnic Mon MP Mi Myint Than in the Parliament on Dec. 30 on whether the plant, which has been subject to sustained local opposition, would proceed.

The lawmaker also asked the official about plans to expand the national power grid to include Ye Township, where local residents are forced to access electricity from private generators at a cost of between 500-1,000 kyat (US$0.38-$0.76) per unit.

Under the governments ambitious National Electrification Plan, developed with assistance from the World Bank, the government has targeted ensuring nationwide access to electricity by 2030. Currently, only around 30 percent of the population nationwide has access to the electricity grid.

In Burmas 2014 census, only 32.4 percent of respondents cited electricity as their main source of energy for lighting. Almost 70 percent of respondents said firewood was their primary source of energy for cooking, well ahead of electricity, at 16.4 percent.

Aung Than Oo said the ministry had begun the tender process for development of power supply between Mon States Moulmein and Ye townships and Dawei in Tenasserim Division, with environmental and social impact assessments planned for the 2016-17 fiscal year.

On the proposed power plant in Inn Din, the deputy minister said all preparatory work on the project, including impact assessments, would be suspended amid ongoing local opposition. He referred to past consultations on the project, including a study tour of coal-fired power plants in Thailand and Japan sponsored by Toyo-Thai last year.

The latter trip was criticized by local residents for lacking transparency, with many viewing the trip as an attempt to win the support of participants.

According to a National Electricity Master Plan drafted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and a Japanese consultancy, the suggested mix for the 23,594 MW of generating capacity that Burma is forecast to require in 2030-31 is 38 percent from hydropower, 33 percent from coal, 20 percent from natural gas and 9 percent from renewable energy sources.

The deputy minister talked up the benefits of coal on Wednesday, putting the cost of coal-produced electricity at around 100 kyat per unit.

Hydropower takes longer in construction time, is costly, and care needs to be taken so as not to harm the environment, Aung Than Oo said. Domestic investors are invited to produce electricity from small and medium hydro-power which, however, would not fulfill increasing demand.
Burma Shan Ceasefire Signatory Seeks Answers After Burma Army Attack

A Shan State Army-South spokesman says there may be something wrong with the nationwide ceasefire agreement after his group was attacked by the Burma Army.

RANGOON  A spokesman for the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) has said there may be something wrong with the nationwide ceasefire agreement inked in October if his group, one of the pacts signatories, does not receive an explanation after coming under attack by the Burma Army on New Years Eve. Col. Sai Hla, who represents the SSA-S as well as speaking on behalf its political wing, the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), said his group had sent letters to Presidents Office Minister Aung Min and the commander of the Burma Armys Eastern Command, informing them of the attack in Shan States Mongping Township on Thursday. The letters sought an explanation for the Burma Army assault, in which one SSA-S soldier was killed and another wounded. They knew our ground forces are active in the area. Fighting has even broken out in the past there. After we signed the NCA [nationwide ceasefire agreement], we set up our base there as we intended to allow all our troops to be stationed together. But the Burma Army came to attack our base as they know we are based there, Sai Hla told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday. A meeting at the Eastern Commands headquarters in Taunggyi is scheduled for Jan. 9-10, according to Sai Hla, who said leaders from both the SSA-S and Burma Army were expected to discuss last weeks altercation. They may tell us [the reason for the attack] at the meeting at Eastern Command. If not, there is something wrong with the NCA, wherein we signed it already, but they still came to attack us, the SSA-S spokesman said. Along with the government and Burma Army, the SSA-S is one of eight non-state armed groups that signed the so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement on Oct. 15 in Naypyidaw. The group is active primarily in eastern and southern Shan State. The clash on Dec. 31 is the first time that fighting has broken out between government troops and one of the ceasefire signatories. About a dozen other ethnic armed groups, including some of the nations largest, have abstained from signing or have otherwise been denied the chance to join the peace accord. Non-signatories including the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Kachin Independence Army (KIA), as well as the fellow Shan rebel group known as the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N), have clashed with government troops multiple times since the ceasefire signing.
Burma Suu Kyi Sounds Warning to Overzealous NLD MPs

The National League for Democracy leader warned newly elected lawmakers on Monday not to request ministerial positions in the incoming government.

RANGOON  National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi warned newly elected lawmakers on Monday she would take action against those who request ministerial positions in the incoming government.

I dont very much like those who want to be ministers. The ministerial posts are to be taken only when assigned. I will take action against those who request ministerial posts by letter in the future according to [party] rules and regulations, Suu Kyi said in a speech to mark the countrys 68th Independence Day at the NLDs headquarters in Rangoon.

It was not the first time the 70-year-old NLD chairwoman has publically admonished MP-elects for making overtures to the partys leadership over prospective positions in the executive.

In a meeting with trishaw drivers in Rangoon last month, Suu Kyi compared the drivers support for the party, which she said came without the expectation of anything in return, to those who coveted sought-after positions in government.

Ministerial posts will be given to capable persons, those who can serve the interests of the country, Suu Kyi said on Monday. I want you to understand that I will not appoint you to a ministers post just because you are a NLD member.

The NLD secured majorities in both houses of Parliament in the Nov. 8 general election, enabling the party to select Burmas next president. However, the military retains a strong political foothold, with a quarter of parliamentary seats and the power to put forward ministers for the home affairs, defense and border affairs portfolios.

A cross-party committee, comprised of members of President Thein Seins outgoing administration and senior NLD figures, has been formed to oversee the transition.
Burma Suu Kyi Tipped to Meet Army Chief in Coming Weeks

Aung San Suu Kyi will reportedly meet army head Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing in the coming weeks, sources said, the pairs second dialogue since the Nov. 8 poll.

National League for Democracy (NLD) chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi is tipped to meet Burma Army chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing in the coming weeks, sources close to the government and opposition suggest, the pairs second dialogue since the Nov. 8 general election.

The peace process will reportedly be high on the agenda, with political dialogue, set to be attended by some 700 delegates, to begin on Jan. 12.

The peace process is the first thing the new government will work on. We will try for the all-inclusive ceasefire agreement, Suu Kyi said in a speech to mark Independence Day in Rangoon on Monday, as quoted by Reuters. We can do nothing without peace in our country.

The 70-year-old NLD leader held separate dialogues with President Thein Sein and Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw on Dec. 2, with all parties pledging to cooperate to ensure a smooth transition.

While the content of either discussion was not revealed, observers saw the twin meetings, which had been requested by Suu Kyi shortly after the NLDs resounding election victory, as a positive sign.

Min Aung Hlaing, 10 years Suu Kyis junior, greeted the opposition leader warmly in front of the cameras. But their one-hour confab, the pairs first bilateral sit-down since the commander-in-chief took up the post in 2011, was not thought to have touched on sensitive topics

To the surprise of many, Suu Kyi also met with retired senior general and head of the previous military junta Than Shwe at his residence in Naypyidaw on Dec. 4. Again, few concrete details of the discussionwhich sources suggest lasted two hourshave emerged.

Than Shwes grandson, who also met with the NLD leader in November, quoted the former junta chief as referring to Suu Kyi as the countrys future leader whom he would support with all my effort.

Suu Kyi was reportedly diplomatic and pledged a consultative approach under an NLD-led government, informed sources saidan approach that was deemed to have worked well. But it was not known whether the unlikely interlocutors discussed the military-drafted 2008 Constitution and, more specifically, Article 59(f) which effectively bars Suu Kyi from assuming the presidency.

According to the clause, the president shall he himself, one of the parents, the spouse, one of the legitimate children or their spouses not owe allegiance to a foreign power, not be subject of a foreign power or citizen of a foreign country. Suu Kyis two children are British nationals, as was her late husband.

In December, Thura Aung Ko, a senior lawmaker with the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) told the BBCs Burmese service that Article 59(f) could be suspended with the support of a majority of lawmakers, allowing Suu Kyi to formally assume the countrys top post.

While some observers have played down that prospect, Suu Kyi herself has repeatedly said that regardless of her formal position in government, as the head of Burmas ascendant political party, she will lead the country.

Well-placed sources told The Irrawaddy that Suu Kyi was likely to raise the issue of amending the Constitution during her second meeting with Min Aung Hlaing.

With the army in control of a quarter of parliamentary seats and an effective veto over charter change, the support of military lawmakers is crucial. Further dialogue between Suu Kyi and the army chief could therefore be integral to defining the political landscape in 2016 and beyond.
Economy Concerns for Consumers after Disbanding of Anti-Smuggling Teams

Observers have voiced concern over a potential uptick in illegal imports after Burmas commerce ministry announced the disbanding of anti-smuggling units.

RANGOON  Observers have expressed concern over a potential uptick in illegal imports, including low-quality food and drugs, after Burmas commerce ministry announced the disbanding of anti-smuggling teams last week.

On Dec. 30, the ministry announced that the governments mobile task force teams, which aimed to clamp down on the countrys thriving illegal border trade, would be abolished.

Since late 2012, the cross-departmental teams, including representatives of the commerce ministry, customs and police, worked to intercept illegal overland trade, primarily in Shan States Muse on the border with China and in Myawaddy, Karen State, on the Thai-Burma border.

Min Ko Oo, secretary of the Myanmar Pulses, Beans and Sesame Seeds Merchants Association (MPBSSMA), said he was concerned that government efforts to enforce controls on illegal overland imports entering the local market may be weakened.

For example, frozen meats and foodsmost of it is coming from China. The government needs to monitor these foods for local consumers, he said. Fake drugs, low-quality foods and other consumer products should be checked seriously.

The government should take care of this issue beyond the mobile team, he added.

Over the past three years, the over 600-member task force seized more than 50 billion kyats (US$38.2 million) worth of smuggled goods in border areas, according to the commerce ministry, including jade, timber, foods and electronics.

Economist Aung Ko Ko said that the commencement of the ASEAN Economic Community and the attendant lowering or abolishment of trade barriers may have influenced the governments decision.

When the mobile teams were stopped, they should have formed another controlling team [to safeguard] consumers rights. It will harm people if there is no action, he said.

A lot of low quality food and drugs are coming onto the local market. The government should not only take action after products have entered. There should be proper action to stop [illegal products] coming in.

Former members of the mobile anti-smuggling units are now back in their previous roles, Soe Win, deputy director general of the commerce ministry, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

The customs department will keep working on their processes and other members are back in their workplaces, he said. There is nothing special to explain why these teams stopped working. They stopped because of a government order.

The illegal trade in cheap food, medicine and other products has particularly flourished in Sino-Burma border areas.

Traders can carry these products through border points this is a national health issue, Aung Ko Ko said.
Business Proposed Vehicle Import Limits Dropped After Industry Outcry

After fielding numerous complaints from industry stakeholders in recent weeks, the government makes a policy about-face, dropping most plans to restrict vehicle imports this year.

RANGOON  After fielding numerous complaints from industry stakeholders in recent weeks, the government has made a policy about-face, backing down on most of its plans to restrict Burmas vehicle imports beginning this year.

The Ministry of Commerce last month made a controversial announcement detailing plans to tighten controls on the imported automobiles market, stating on Dec. 15 that importers would only be allowed to bring in private passenger vehicles manufactured in 2006 or later. In addition, buses, trucks and other vehicles were to be manufactured only between 2014 and 2016 to gain import approval.

The announcement prompted backlash from local vehicle importers who said the proposed restrictions would harm their business prospects, prompting the government to reconsider the plan.

At a meeting with automobile dealers and Ministry of Commerce officials on Tuesday, the two sides reached an agreement that will see the proposed import ban on private cars manufactured before 2006 dropped, as well as the limits on other vehicles like buses. A ban on importing automobiles manufactured in 2015 or 2016 with right-side steering columns will be enforced, however.

Myat Tun Kyaw, director of the Ministry of Commerce, said Tuesdays discussion had proved fruitful.

I heard after meeting with car dealers and officials, the dealers proposal was successful, he said, declining to reveal more details about the agreement reached.

Soe Tun, chairman of the Myanmar Automobile Dealers Association, confirmed that Commerce Ministry officials had agreed to drop the most far-reaching aspects of the tightened car import policy at Tuesdays meeting in Naypyidaw.

They will allow importers to import all model cars, except 2015 and 2016 models that are not left-hand [steering columns], Soe Tun said.

The Transportation Department will also issue licenses for cars imported during 2015 as well, he said, referring to an initial reluctance to give these vehicles the necessary permits, which prompted industry complaints last month.

The outcome of Tuesdays meeting will mean that, with the steering column exception, imports of personal or commercial vehicles will again be unrestricted in 2016, according to Soe Tun.

Everything is back to the normal situation, he said.

Since Burmas quasi-civilian government came to power in 2011, car import policies have been changed some 10 times, causing ongoing adjustment issues for many imported car showrooms, individual import dealers and other related businesses.

South Korean, Japanese, American, German and Chinese car dealers have all opened showrooms in the commercial capital Rangoon in recent years, as the citys streets have become increasingly congested. Vehicle imports were long kept tightly restricted by Burmas former military regime.
Tuesday, January 5th, 2016 (2:12 pm) - Score 533

The growing use of controversial Internet filters (censorship) in the United Kingdom is nothing new and many Libraries have implemented them, but a new study suggests that this approach could be damaging public access to the very information that libraries are supposed to provide.

Admittedly Libraries have a difficult balancing act to perform. On the one hand they need to provide freedom of access to information, which must be upheld by ethical and professional standards. But on the other hand librarians also have a duty to protect their most vulnerable users (e.g. children), which can sometimes create an ethical dilemma.

A new dataset compiled by the Radical Librarians Collective (here), which represents a group of librarians that aim to uphold the best aspects of their profession, has pooled together feedback from 200 local authorities on the extent of Internet filtering in their libraries.

The data reveals that many libraries have a top-down approach to content filtering, which often imposes wide blocks against various different content categories and rarely offers a separate profile for children or a process for accessing blocked content. In all cases the usual categories, such as porn, gambling and child abuse, are blocked and often anything related to sex, drugs, abortion and racism etc. can also be filtered out by a large number of libraries.

Example  Aberdeen City (Public Libraries) Filtering Type: Websense Annual Cost: 48,369 Blocked Categories: Nudity, sex, lingerie and swimsuit, adult content, marijuana, abused drugs, dynamic DNS, suspicious content, elevated exposure, emerging exploits, illegal or questionable, intolerance, militancy and extremist, parked domains, security, tasteless, violence, weapons. Separate Filtering Profile for Children: Yes Blocked Categories for Children: Abortion prolife, abortion prochoice, nudity, sex, lingerie and swimsuit, adult content, sex education, bandwidth, prescribed medications, marijuana, abused drugs, dynamic DNS, extended protection, gambling, games, illegal or questionable, web chat, organizational email, text and media messaging, general email, intolerance, militancy and extremist, parked domains, advertisements, application and software downloads, paytosurf, online brokerage and trading, instant messaging, security, facebook, linkedin, twitter, social web various, youtube, alcohol and tobacco, personals and dating, gay or lesbian or bisexual interest, social networking, blogs and personal sites, tasteless, violence, weapons.

The problem of course occurs when you attempt to block a topic like racism, weapons or sex, which takes on a completely different meaning in the educational environment of a library where literature may be neither good nor bad and often provides for a historical context. Learning about the history of racism or investigating abortion is a lot harder when such content is completely restricted.

We were also a bit perplexed to see vague or nonsensical categories like security, parked domains, dynamic DNS and simply suspicious content cropping up so often and that is on the adults-only profile. Indeed we found it kind of comical that in the Aberdeen City example they had adult content blocked via the adult profile, especially as this tends to imply a much wider array of content than porn.

Lauren Smith, a PhD candidate and researcher who contributed to the project, told The Register that some of the blocks (e.g. abortion) are probably completely inadvertent and were most likely included as a sub-category of sexual content, which would have been implemented by the councils IT department and not assessed by the library staff themselves.

Smith also highlighted an example of how one researcher was investigating Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) but found themselves restricted because access to related content had been blocked. Similarly back in 2013 we reported on an example of how the British Library had blocked access to an online version of Shakespeares Hamlet because the text contained violent content (here).

Another problem is that very few people complain about such blocks or ask for them to be lifted, perhaps because most do not know whether such blocks could be lifted upon request or theyre simply uncomfortable with asking a member of staff about the issue (e.g. particularly when researching a very sensitive topic). In any case only a tiny number of libraries actually have a policy in place for unblocking (e.g. York, Anglesey, Derby etc.).

Not that the Government will care about such things, to them filtering is an easy fix and the question of whether or not it often goes too far is not one that they seem to have put serious thought towards.
South Korean tech giant LG at the Consumer Electronics Show 2016 unveiled a prototype 18-inch flexible display that can be rolled up like a newspaper. The new display technology is an upgrade to the company's OLED technology that focuses on flexible, rollable and curved display.

The company's new prototype can easily be rolled up and carried around. Reports furthermore suggest that the display features a full HD resolution. LG put up an 18-inch display for testing, but the company also said that they are aiming to go for 55-inch flexible displays and beyond, according to reports.

The O in OLED stands for organic, and it eliminates the need for a back panel that provides light to the screen so that it could bend. According to reports, LG says it's the ideal solution in making displays, and it's also for consumers that want to save more space.

LG last year had showed off a sample panel as a proof that the concept is indeed in development, and it had its plans to launch a 60-inch rollable panel by 2017. However, the company had kept silent on the development of the technology, but it seems that the South Korean electronics manufacturer has made the improvements to showcase it on the show floor at this year's CES.

Based on information posted last year, this type of rollable display panel uses high molecular substance-based polymide film as the backplane of the display instead of the conventional standard plastic in order to achieve its flexibility. The polymide film also contributed to reducing the thickness of the panel to improve its flexibility by a significant amount.

The company, however, did not discuss how much the new flexible OLED panel would cost, or if it would even be sold to consumers at all. At this time, the company appears to be busy in the prototype stages of the technology itself to improve it further.
Last year saw the release of Samsung's first portable solid state drive, the Portable SSD T1, which happened to appear in the Consumer Electronics Show last year. The South Korean tech giant, however, is keen to make a follow-up as it unveils a worthy successor this year. Meet the Samsung Portable SSD T3, a 2TB SSD that comes with 2TB of storage space, as well as the new USB Type-C standard, to deliver blistering fast read and write speeds.

The Samsung Portable SSD T3 features the company's venerable vertical NAND (V-NAND) memory, which enables the portable drive to deliver read and write speeds of up to 450MB/s. However, the new portable drive comes a bit heavier than its predecessor, but it's still compact enough to be carried around easily.

Not only does it come with much faster transfer speeds, the Portable SSD T3 also received a huge bump on the storage capacity. It will be available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB of storage options to provide more room for users who want the portable storage. Furthermore, the Portable SSD T3 features USB 3.1 and USB Type-C connections; it is also compatible with USB 2.0 ports for connecting to desktops, laptops, mobile devices and so forth.

For security, Samsung's latest offering features AES 256-bit hardware encryption with password protection for securing files of users. There's also a companion Android app that allows users to change the password, as well as see how much storage space their files have taken up straight from their mobile devices.

The Portable SSD T3 will be arriving in February in the Unites States, Europe, China and Korea, while other countries will see it on a later date. There are still no official announcements as to how much the portable drive would cost. But if the price of the Portable SSD T1 is any indication, it's estimated that it will come with a US$600 price tag or higher.
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Crowned Miss Universe 2015, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, of the Philippines has finally spoken about the pageant snafu and admitted that she doesn't like to share her crown with Miss Colombia or any other contender as she believes that it's not a good idea to have two winners.

In an interview on Good Morning America on Monday, Miss Universe winner, Wurtzbach said that although many people suggested that she should share her crown with Miss Colombia after Steve Harvey inadvertently announced that Miss Ariadna Gutierrez-Arevalo was the winner, Pia is adamant that there should only be one winner on the prestigious beauty pageant.

"I understand how they feel because, of course, that's completely understandable," Miss Universe 2015 winner said, but, noting, "It would be a little bit difficult for two girls to share a crown."

Despite the mix- up, Wurtzbach said that there is nothing to worry about Miss Gutierrez as she believes that there will be a lot of opportunities for her and she said that without a doubt Miss Colombia will "do very well."

As for the Miss Universe 2015 host, Steve Harvey, who admitted during the event that he made a "horrible mistake," Wurtzbach said that she doesn't blame him as she thinks that the runner- ups were written in the card "was a little bit confusing" and added that "people make mistakes," especially on "live television." She even said that she would like to see the host return for the pageant next year.

While Miss Philippines believes that no one should be blame for the snafu, Miss Colombia on the other hand said that the pageant gaffe was very "humiliating" for her. At first she thought that it was just a joke by Harvey, but apparently she realized that there was really a dramatic error which was broadcast live worldwide.

"It was very humiliating for me, but also for the whole country and for all the people not only from Colombia but the other Latinos that were in the auditorium," Gutierrez exclaimed to Latin Times.
Abraham Lincoln's hand has reportedly been gone missing, but curators are hopeful that the thief will eventually return it.

According to New York Times, all of the curators at the Kankakee County Museum in Illinois were saddened and perplexed after they discovered that the 150 year old plaster art piece went missing. They are not certain when actually it disappeared but they believed that it went missing sometime before Dec 11 last year.

The sculpture of the 16th president's hand was proudly displayed at the museum for years and it was made by George Grey Bernard, an artist who admired Lincoln very much and channeled his admiration to his art.

Authorities are now hopeful that they will somehow get some information that could lead to the retrieval of the missing hand after they posted it to their Facebook page, which they described that the size of it has a roughly "8-10 pound ham." They also included photographs, so it would be easy for the social media users to identify the missing art piece.

Chief Larry Regnier of the Kankakee police said that their department is currently investigating the case but admitted this is going to be a tough case, given the fact that there's no suspects nor witnesses.

The museum's director, Connie Licon, said that the missing sculpture has been on display since 1991 and this is the first art heists she encountered in more than 20 years.

A custodian first noticed that there's a vacant spot on the shelf and alerted right away Ms. Licon. "We were devastated. It just brought us all to the floor," Ms Licon recalled. "We're a small museum, and we just don't acquire pieces like this," she added.

It is believed that that the sculpted hand is worth $5,000 but curators and police described it as "invaluable" artwork.

Since the incident, Ms Licon said they already kept other Barnard's art into a safe place as they feared that it might also disappear.

Ms Licon also called the thief's attention and urged the culprit to return the missing Lincon's hand right away. "Just return it in a quiet way. Just put it in a bag and leave it somewhere," she said.
Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) 2016

Applications are now being accepted for the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) #TEEP #AfricanEntrepreneurs (http://tonyelumelufoundation.org/teep/) Budding entrepreneurs across Africa can now apply to join the second annual Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) for start-up businesses based in Africa. Applications for 2016 open on 1 January and can be made by any for-profit business based in Africa, including new business ideas which have been in existence for less than three years. Open: To startups and Entrepreneurs from all the 54 African Countries  For Africans based in Africans Worth: $100M for 10,000 Startups/Entrepreneurs The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) a 12-week programme to equip startups with the basic skills required to launch and run their businesses at the early stage of their growth.The programme will bring together the best tools and frameworks to teach and hone entrepreneurship skills in Africa and globally. The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme #TEEP, a Pan-African entrepreneurship initiative of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, is a multi-year programme of training, funding, and mentoring, designed to empower the next generation of African entrepreneurs. The programme will be a mix of online and face-to-face instruction, including webinars and video tutorials with support from your mentor throughout. It will cover topics on starting and scaling a business, business development, marketing strategy, effective management and product design. Requirements: The Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme is open to citizens and legal residents of all 54 African countries. Benefits: Successful applicants who complete the programme will receive the local currency equivalent of Naira 850,000 as non-returnable seed capital, and are eligible for a further Naira 850,000 in the form of either debt or equity, depending on business need and other criteria. Selected entrepreneurs will join the existing cohort of 1,000 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs, from 51 countries, who formed the inaugural 2015 cycle of the TEEP programme and have thus far, received considerable benefits from their participation, including:

Training: 12 weeks of training on how to set up and manage businesses with mentoring and financial support offered by The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Accelerated Growth: Over 90% of Tony Elumelu entrepreneurs, with existing businesses, have reported increased growth in the past year.

Access to Further Funding: A significant portion of our entrepreneurs have accessed additional external funding through the platform provided by Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Networking Opportunities: A flourishing alumni network has developed, providing personal linkages and business opportunities across the Continent.

About You

Tell us about yourself, personal bio and what led you to become an entrepreneur (200 words)

Leadership Skills & Experience

Describe your leadership skills and experience for running the business (100 words)

Personal Achievement

Tell us something impressive you have personally built or achieved (100 words)

Elevator Pitch

In 50 words or less, describe your current business or idea.

Detailed Description

In more detail, describe your product or service (200 words)

Wow Us

What is new, interesting or different about your product or service? (list 3 things)

Problem Solved

What problem does your product or service solve? (50 words)

TEEP is a commitment by theto identify and fund 10,000 African entrepreneurs over a 10-year period.Please be informed that you would be required to upload certain documents, in order to make your application progress faster, you can get and/or prepare these documents before you start your application, these documents are;  Valid Government Recognized Identification  Official Registration Certificate for your business  Official Evidence of Ownership of the business  Official Evidence of Directors in your business  Official Consent by Partners to apply Apply Now for the 2016 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme Midnight WAT on March 1st, 2016
Random thoughts from a Brit in the North West. Sometimes serious, sometimes not. Quite often curmudgeonly.
Detention Center

The inmate count at the Platte County Detention Facility Monday was 78, with 40 from Platte County and 38 from out of county.

Police Department

Dec. 30

2:13 p.m.  In a parking lot at 3315 21st St., traffic accident. Drivers were Megan Andersen, 31, 2909 15th St., and Lanae Drozd, 26, 1876 140th Road.

6:17 p.m.  At 2204 19th St., Zachery Recek, 32, 2310 17th St., was cited for second-offense dog at-large.

Dec. 31

9:23 a.m.  Theft from two vehicles at 1521 Seventh St., safety glasses, phone charger and CDs stolen, $120 loss.

1:13 p.m.  Criminal mischief at Colegrove Counseling Service, 1460 35th Ave., paintball vandalism, no loss amount.

Jan. 1

2:11 a.m.  Criminal mischief at Avenue Bar, 1061 26th Ave., vehicle window damaged, no loss amount.

2:53 a.m.  Criminal mischief at 954 25th Ave., vehicle window damaged, no loss amount.

11:54 a.m.  Criminal mischief at 911 Second St., window damaged, no loss amount.

5:05 p.m.  Criminal mischief at 2422 17th St., tire damaged, no loss amount.

Sheriffs Department

Dec. 26

11 a.m.  At the intersection of 460th Avenue and 437th Street, traffic accident. Drivers were Ronald Konz, 65, Lindsay, and Wayne Jarecki, 29, Lindsay.

Dec. 30

9:18 a.m.  At the intersection of 23rd Street and 14th Avenue, traffic accident. Drivers were Jay Cepel, 27, 2875 Linden Drive, and Ashley McKay, 27, 4617 Ernst St.

Dec. 31

10:45 a.m.  Criminal mischief south of 197th Street on 370th Avenue, no loss amount.

Jan. 1

12:58 a.m.  Accident east of 325th Avenue on 197th Street, Dylan Hellbusch of Columbus jailed for driving under the influence and minor in possession of alcohol.

4 p.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of the Humphrey Spur and U.S. Highway 81, Juan Alarcon of Fremont cited for speeding.

5:34 p.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of 63rd Street and Highway 81, Junior Rodriguez-Soto jailed for no operators license.

Jan. 2

3:42 p.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of U.S. Highway 30 and East 44th Avenue, Alfredo Adame-Magana jailed for driving under suspension and cited for speeding.

Jan. 3

1:19 a.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of 83rd Street and Monastery Road, Brandon Steffensmeier of Clarkson cited for no valid registration.

8:30 a.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of 175th Avenue and 280th Street, Eugene Moore of Columbus cited for a stop sign violation.

3:31 p.m.  Traffic violation north of the intersection of Monastery Road and 83rd Street, Gustave Mazariegos of Schuyler cited for speeding.

11:30 p.m.  Traffic violation on Highway 30 in Columbus, Mauro Dela Cruz-Herrera of Schuyler jailed for driving under the influence and cited for driving the wrong way on a highway.

Fire Department

Dec. 31

2:40 p.m.  In the 4700 block of 38th Street, medical.

Jan. 1

12:58 a.m.  Accident in the 19700 block of 325th Avenue.

1:02 a.m.  In the 3500 block of 13th Street, medical.

1:12 a.m.  In the 3000 block of 21st Street, no patient transport.

6:08 p.m.  In the 3900 block of 14th Street, medical.

8:48 p.m.  In the 2100 block of 44th Avenue, medical.
MKE Diner News and notes on the restaurant scene from dining critic Carol Deptolla SHARE

By of the

Drink Wisconsinbly, which describes itself as "Wisconsin's official unofficial lifestyle brand," is releasing details of its plans to open a bar and restaurant in the building that formerly held Blue Jacket, at 135 E. National Ave. in Walker's Point.

Drink Wisconsinbly Pub is expected to open this month in partnership with Laura van Heijningen, former Blue Jacket co-owner, and Nebi Torbica, formerly of the late Walker's Point bar Moct. Blue Jacket closed in July.

Van Heijningen and Torbica will manage the pub; the chef will be David Sapp, previously sous chef at the Walker's Point Spanish restaurant Movida (Sapp previously was announced as the chef for the mini-hotel and restaurants that Movida's owners are opening at 600 S. 6th St.). The menu was created by Kevin Sloan, chef for the Pabst Theater Group's venues and former owner of the Social.

According to a statement released Monday, the new business "celebrates all that we love about America's Dairyland. The future DW establishment will provide simple, delicious food, Wisconsin idolatry, traditional libations and no beer from St. Louis."

It quotes Drink Wisconsinbly founder Richard Lorbach as saying, "We're aiming to have an experience somewhere between the County Stadium bleachers, your favorite North Woods supper club, and your granddads corner tap. Were excited to open our doors and show everybody what weve been working on the past several months.

Lorbach and Torbica have been friends since childhood, Van Heijningen said.

The menu is said to draw on Wisconsin tavern and supper club fare, along with traditional foods like sausages and state cheeses. The pub is expected to grind the beef for the burgers itself, and it will have a fish fry.

The bar will focus on mixing old fashioneds and pouring Wisconsin craft beers and spirits.

Drink Wisconsinbly Pub will be open daily, from 3 p.m. weekdays and from 11 a.m. on weekends. The exact opening date will be announced after the final city inspections.

Drink Wisconsinbly, which sells apparel, glassware and other items with its logo, has been in business three years.

Drink Wisconsinbly photo
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Kalmbach Publishing Co. said Tuesday it has entered the board game business with the acquisition of Richmond, Ky.-based Rather Dashing Games LLC.

Kalmbach, a Waukesha publisher of Discover, Model Railroader, Bead and Button and other magazines, did not disclose a purchase price.

"Rather Dashing Games provides Kalmbach with an exciting opportunity to serve the passionate audience that surrounds the rapidly-growing board game market," said Chuck Croft, president. "We have more than 80 years of history of delivering quality products to enthusiast audiences, and we can see a lot of similarities between what we do and the tabletop game business."

Under the terms of the acquisition, Rather Dashing Games founders Mike Richie and Grant Wilson will remain with the business, continuing to create games. Among the company's games are tile games such as Graveyards, Ghosts and Haunted Houses and creative strategy games such as Dwarven Miner.

Wilson, a plumber and co-founder of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, was previously a star of the SyFy network show "Ghost Hunters." He left the show in 2012 after eight years.

"We were filming for nearly every week of the year, Monday-Friday, sometimes more," Wilson said at the time. "I felt that after eight years, I had sufficiently reached my goals in spreading awareness and acceptance of the paranormal."

Kalmbach said it will provide business support and resources for the growth of Rather Dashing Games, which is located in the suburbs of Lexington. Along with 11 special-interest magazines, Kalmbach publishes related books, offers subscription video services and hosts niche events.
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Mills Fleet Farm, the homespun upper Midwest retailer that sells everything from udder balm and tires to live bait, is being sold to New York-based KKR, one of the nation's largest investment firms, the companies announced Tuesday.

While officially based in Brainerd, Minn., Mills Fleet Farm has a major presence in Wisconsin, with stores across the state and major operations in the Fox Valley. The retailer also is a corporate partner of the Green Bay Packers and sponsors one of Lambeau Field's entry gates.

Known by its orange and black logo, Mills Fleet Farm's Milwaukee-area stores are in Germantown and West Bend. The company also has stores in Antigo, Appleton, Beaver Dam, Clintonville, Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Hudson, Manitowoc, Marshfield, Menomonie, Oshkosh, Plymouth, Stevens Point, Waupaca and Wausau.

The company traces its retail history to 1955 in Marshfield when members of the Mills family opened Fleet Wholesale Supply to sell merchandise directly to farmers.

Mills Fleet Farm primarily serves suburban and farm consumers. The retailer has merchandise ranging from farm and ranch supplies to sporting goods, tools, power equipment and automotive supplies and service. It also operates convenience stores and gas stations. The company operates 35 stores located throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and North Dakota.

It has also carved a niche in the hunting and fishing sector, coining the term "Orange Friday" for special deals it offers the day before Wisconsin's gun deer hunt, which typically involves about 600,000 participants.

Look for the chain to grow as a result of the deal, a KKR executive said.

"We anticipate investing significantly in the business, adding infrastructure, stores and local jobs," Nate Taylor, who leads the retail portion of KKR's private-equity portfolio, said in a statement.

KKR has holdings in various industries totaling about $100 billion. It plans to operate Mills Fleet Farm independently of its other retail holdings, which include Toys 'R' Us and Academy Sports + Outdoors. Its other holdings include US Foods, Gardner Denver, Go Daddy, Hospital Corp. of America, flooring company Tarkett and retailer Channel Control Merchants.

KKR will seek to take the Mills Fleet Farm chain beyond the upper Midwest, said Burt Flickinger, III, managing director of New York retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group.

"What KKR does exceptionally well is taking a retailer from regional to multi-regional to national," Flickinger said. "They're terrific at it."

The farm and ranch segment is among the fastest growing areas of the retail business, Flickinger added.

Terms of the purchase agreement have not been disclosed. Reuters news service, citing unnamed sources, reported in December that the purchase price would be around $1.2 billion, including debt.

Mills Fleet Farm, founded in 1955 by Stewart Mills Sr., along with his sons Henry Mills II and Stewart Mills Jr., is headquartered in Brainerd, Minn., and operates 35 stores in rural communities and suburbs in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and North Dakota. Its merchandise includes hunting, fishing and sporting goods, as well as clothing and farm supplies.

The Mills sons, co-presidents in their 80s, said in a statement that they decided to "partner" with KKR so the company would be poised for "the next level of growth for the future."The Mills family put the company up for sale last fall. Stewart Mills III, the founder's grandson, told the Brainerd Daily Dispatch at the time that the retailer needed deeper pockets in order to add stores and update it distribution network and warehouse.

Taylor said that while KKR has acquired majority control of the stock, the Mills family will retain a small ownership stake in the company. Several Mills family members are expected to maintain offices and contribute as advisers.

Mills Fleet Farm is not to be confused with Blain's Farm and Fleet, the Janesville-based retailer that remains family owned and operates stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa.

While the two companies share similar store formats and names, they were formed independent of each other and were not formed as a result of a family feud or divorce settlement, contrary to urban legend, said Kristin Mickelson, PR/events manager at Blain's Farm and Fleet.

"There was no split, no divorce," Mickelson said. Blain's Farm and Fleet was founded in 1955 by Claude and Bert Blain. The company is now owned and operated by Bert's daughter, Jane Blain Gilbertson.

Over the years, the two families had a "gentlemen's agreement" that they would not open stores within a certain distance of each other, Mickelson said.

"There's no animosity, no issues," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Amy Lamb, an app development consultant at Northwestern Mutual, has a severe poinsettia allergy so she works at home during the holidays. Lamb, on the right, uses a robot that she controls from home to attend meetings at the office last month. Credit: Angela Peterson

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Shortly before New Year's Day, a ten-person team combed through the 18-story building on Northwestern Mutual's downtown campus seeking an elusive culprit: the poinsettia plant.

At home, Amy Lamb, who works in the insurer's software development and support area, was waiting to hear the results of their search to determine when she could return to the office. For six years, Lamb has been forced by a severe poinsettia allergy to stay away from her workplace during the holiday season.

"I'm lucky this year," Lamb said. "Anytime Fitness  Waukesha West promised me they would keep the gym poinsettia-free, so I can go to the gym, my house and Starbucks."

Lamb's holiday season has also been enhanced by the BeamPro, a 62-inch tall robot on wheels that she can control from her home computer. Once she's logged on, Lamb gets in front of a web camera that makes her face visible on the robot's screen. She's then able to move robotically  around the office.

Using BeamPro, Lamb can attend meetings remotely. She can turn the robot toward whomever is speaking. She's used BeamPro to join her friends for lunch in the cafeteria, and she even participated in a holiday skit.

"The cool thing this year is I actually got to see the poinsettia tree without having a reaction and got to hear the Christmas band," she said.

The BeamPro, made by Palo Alto, Calif-based Suitable Technologies Inc., sells for about $16,000. It is part of the rapidly growing "telepresence" robot market. Annual shipments of such robots, currently at 4,200 units, could reach 31,600 by 2020, estimates Tractica, a market research firm.

Tractica says key markets for the robots are healthcare, education, and enterprise, where executives, for example, use them to be in multiple places at once, or to tour factories in other parts of the world. In one well-known instance, fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden attended the TED 2014 conference in the U.S. via telepresence robot from Russia.

When Northwestern Mutual purchased 14 robots in late 2014, the perception around the company was not universally positive, said Karl Gouverneur, chief technology officer. But now, given the company's seven buildings in downtown Milwaukee and Franklin, the robots have come to be viewed as important tools in helping to build a more interactive and collaborative workplace, he said.

"For a company like Northwestern Mutual, which historically has not been a place where innovation comes to mind, you're seeing a lot more these days -- and we are pushing very, very hard," Gouverneur said.

There have been minor issues with the robots; one of them fell down a step once, and sometimes employees  most often impatient executives, Gouverneur says  leave a robot in the meeting room, rather than returning it to its docking station. Elevators present multiple challenges; the robots lose WiFi connectivity inside them and can't press the buttons for floors.

"It's two wheels and a TV screen," said Gouverneur, adding that the WiFi issue should be improved by an upgrade that's underway.

The technology behind the robots is mature and reliable, said Bilge Mutlu, associate professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. So obstacles to more widespread use are the rate of adoption and infrastructure challenges, like WiFi coverage, he said.

While telepresence robots aren't the giant leap in communication that an invention like telephones were, they represent an incremental step forward, said Mutlu, whose Wisconsin Human-Computer Interaction Lab is one of the largest in the U.S. that studies this area.

"Our research shows that embodiment adds to collaboration," Mutlu said. "It improves trust over more impoverished versions of communication, such as just audio or video."

Breaking the ice

Lamb says she has found that to be true. Sure, some people find it awkward initially, when they see her face on the screen of a robot moving toward them at a pace that she describes as slightly slower than a walk.

"They'll give a little uncomfortable smile and I'll just wave and say 'hi,'" she said.

Lamb, who is 41 and has degrees in accounting and management information systems, says she discovered her allergy five years ago. It happened one morning during the holiday season. She walked into work and her throat swelled and her lungs felt like they were on fire, she said. Life-threatening blood pressure and pulse changes followed, and Lamb figured out poinsettias were the cause.

Poinsettia allergies are usually caused by a misdirected immune system response to proteins in the plant sap, said Mitchell Grayson, an associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin. They are very rare; with only a few reported cases in the scientific literature, he said.

Grayson said he found no published reports of allergies to poinsettia pollen, which is heavy and sticky to help it attach to insects rather than float away in the air. So it would be extremely unusual for someone to react to poinsettias without touching them. Still, this could be a quite unusual case of a poinsettia allergy, he said.

Lamb's experience is that her office building must be clear of poinsettias for two weeks before she can safely return to work. Last year, after one of three unsuccessful attempts to return, co-workers found the offending poinsettia plant four floors away from her desk, she said.

The ten-person team of Lamb's co-workers that scoured the building found a large number of poinsettias on the lower level and six more on the upper floors. They left notes on each plant asking the owner to remove it from the building by Dec. 31. If that happens, Lamb estimates the soonest she can try to return to the office will be Jan. 19th. Meanwhile, she'll rely on her electronic friends to keep her connected at the office.

"I want my clients and co-workers to be confident I'm still here," Lamb said. "I want them to know I can wheel to their desk in robot form anytime they need me."
A sign at the city limits greets people entering Sheboygan. Credit: Mark Hoffman

By of the

Sheboygan  With area companies saying they're strapped for employees, business leaders announced Tuesday they are mounting a campaign to attract workers to Sheboygan County.

It's an effort that will have to wrestle with the perceptions and, as brought home by Tuesday's sunny but frosty weather, the realities of life in and around a small city in Wisconsin.

But the area's post-recession job growth and employment numbers  more job openings than there are people able to fill them  lend urgency to the problem, said Dane Checolinski, director of the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corp.

"Sheboygan County's job market is now underwater," he said in unveiling the "Someplace Better" marketing campaign at the Weill Center, a historic movie theater in downtown Sheboygan that has been restored as a performing arts venue.

From August 2011 through August 2015, the number of jobs in the county increased 7.3%, the strongest growth of any county in eastern Wisconsin and nearly double the statewide rate, Checolinski said. Some 2,400 job openings in the area are posted online, while an estimated 2,070 county residents are unemployed, he said.

And if the trend of the last few years holds true, he said, Sheboygan County will add another 1,000 jobs in 2016.

Sitting alongside Checolinski on Tuesday were executives from four of the county's largest private employers, who collectively indicated their firms would increase local job counts by more than 500 this year, in addition to filling vacancies created by retirements and departures.

"Today we have 337 job openings," said Steve Cassady, a vice president with Kohler Co., which has more than 5,000 workers in Sheboygan County and is by far the area's largest employer.

Only 21 of the firm's job openings are for hourly factory work, Cassady said. Almost three-quarters of the openings, he said, are for administrative and professional positions in areas such as engineering, sales, logistics, information technology, marketing and finance.

Which points to a key challenge for the marketing effort: Companies such as Kohler, Sargento Foods and Bemis Manufacturing aren't going to fill their professional and technical slots by drawing from the pool of the county's unemployed; they often must reach beyond Sheboygan, and even beyond Wisconsin.

"Unfortunately, we live in an area where it's harder for people to feel like they would be comfortable," said Louie Gentine, CEO at Sargento. "...Unfortunately, people stop when the word 'Wisconsin' is said."

Besides the website, which offers a wealth of information on the county and its employers, the marketing effort will include visits by economic development corporation staff to job fairs, particularly in places with higher unemployment, Checolinski said.

Kevin Crowe of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
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The Milwaukee-based accounting and consulting firm Wipfli LLP has acquired a suburban Chicago firm, adding about 50 professionals and continuing its expansion.

Steinberg Advisors Ltd., an audit, tax and business management consulting firm headquartered in Northbrook, Ill., joined Wipfli Jan. 1.

"Steinberg Advisors is a natural fit with Wipfli. Their culture and the services they provide complement Wipfli's broad range of services," Rick Dreher, managing partner of Wipfli, said in a statement. "This combination will add to the depth of our resources in the Chicago area."

In the transaction, Steinberg Advisors will convert to the Wipfli name and seven shareholders will join Wipfli, including Irwin Steinberg, who started the firm in 1999. Steinberg has one full-service office.

With the acquisition of Steinberg Advisors, Wipfli will have approximately 1,500 associates, including 181 partners, 32 U.S. office locations  three in the Chicago area  and two offices in India.

It is the 12th acquisition by Wipfli in the last five years.

According to industry publication Accounting Today, Wipfli ranked 21st among the largest U.S. firms in 2015.
Thinking about college in eighth grade may seem a bit soon, but area school counselors believe it's never too early to get students looking at their futures.

Using grants from the EducationQuest Foundation, Columbus and Schuyler middle school students will be taking a field trip to help plan their college education.

It opens up their options and lets them know what theyre working toward through high school, said Paula Kment, a guidance counselor at Schuyler Middle School.

The grant offers schools across the state up to $750 to give eighth-graders the opportunity to step foot on college campuses and see whats on the other side of high school.

This will be the fourth year SMS has participated using the EducationQuest grant, showing students both two- and four-year colleges.

Although it's Columbus Middle School's first time using this particular grant, guidance counselor Angie Kruse said this is the fourth year the school has offered this type of opportunity to eighth-graders.

We need to get in their head about what theyre doing now is going to affect their future, Kruse said.

Kruse recalls when her son filled out a college application last year. She said she was blown away by all the things the application required, such as providing grades throughout his high school years and the activities he was involved in.

She wants to make sure students arent left in the dark about these expectations before the time comes to fill out their college applications.

So many middle school kids are living in the here and now. They just want to know what theyre doing today and tomorrow. Theyre not thinking about the future, Kruse said.

In April, Kruse plans on taking all 280 eighth-grade students to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.

Kment, who is working with 125 Schuyler eighth-grade students this year, has taken a number of students to colleges across the state over the years, making sure to expose them to all sorts of campuses and types of education.

She wants students to understand that post-high school education can be a two- or four-year school, or even earning a trade certificate for jobs like welding or nursing.

I think they focus on the stigma, Oh man, its four more years of school, Kment said. Not all kids are that traditional four-year student so I wanted to incorporate a two-year college this year so they know what thats like, too.

This spring, Kment will be sending half of the students on a four-year college campus tour while the other half visits a two-year campus.

Before either of the middle schools sends students to the designated college campuses, theyll spend time discussing things like scholarships, grade-point averages and how to apply and save for college.

You cant wait till youre a junior before you start thinking of these things, Kruse said.
The American Club: Wisconsin Food Favorites, Jan. 29-31. Chefs present products from local farmers and producers with food demonstrations, a field to table breakfast, and a Wisconsin heritage dinner. 419 Highland Drive, Kohler. Information and reservations: (855) 444-2838; www.americanclubresort.com.

In Celebration of Chocolate. Feb. 19-21.

Apple Holler: Open year-round for seasonal family activities, and a variety of Wisconsin products. 5006 S. Sylvania Ave., Sturtevant, (262) 884-7100; www.appleholler.com.

Bartolotta Restaurants: From special dinners to tasting events, experience an assortment of unique events. Pricing is per person, plus tax and gratuity. www.bartolottas.com.

Lake Park Bistro, 3133 E. Newberry Blvd. Information: (414) 962-6300.

Black Truffle Dinner. Jan. 13. $150, plus tax and gratuity.

Joey Gerard's, 5601 Broad St., Greendale. Information: (414) 858-1900.

Neil Diamond Tribute Show and Dinner. Jan. 21. $75, plus tax and gratuity.

Bacchus, 925 E. Wells St.. Information: (414) 765-1166.

Wine and Swine. Jan. 29. $85, plus tax and gratuity.

Bay View Community Center: Cooking classes and workshops. Registration required. 1320 E. Oklahoma Ave. (414) 482-1000; www.bayviewcenter.org.

Small Plates Series: Cooking with Popcorn. Jan. 25. $13.

Family Chef's Saturday Cooking Club. Jan. 30. $26.

Braise Culinary School: 'Braise Basics' classes and dinners held at Braise Restaurant, 1101 S. 2nd St. Registration: (414) 212-8843, or email info@braiselocalfood.com.

Cooking with Class:Food demonstration classes by Staci Joers. Information: (262) 681-2908; complete schedule, including other locations, at www.cookingwithclass.us.

Caledonia Park and Recreation Dept.: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. East Side Community Center, 6156 Douglas Ave., Racine. (262) 681-2908.

Better than Chinese Take-out. Feb. 4.

Franklin Community Education & Recreation: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. Franklin High School, 8222 S. 51st St., Franklin. (414) 423-4646.

Modern Twists on Classic Soups. Jan. 18.

Greendale Park & Recreation: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. Greendale High School, 6801 Southway, Greendale. (414) 423-2790.

Modern Twists on Classic Soups. Jan. 26.

New Berlin Park & Recreation: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. Hickory Grove School, 2600 S. Sunny Slope Road, New Berlin. (262) 797-2443.

Modern Twists on Classic Soups. Jan. 11.

Better than Chinese Take-out. Feb. 1.

Nicolet Park & Rec Dept.: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. Nicolet High School, 6701 N. Jean Nicolet Road, Glendale. (414) 351-7566.

Soups. Jan. 27.

Pewaukee Park and Rec: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. Wagner Park, N31-W23320 Green Road, Pewaukee, (262) 691-7275.

Soups. Jan. 25.

West Allis Park & Recreation: Classes meet 6:30-9 p.m. Nathan Hale High School, 11601 W. Lincoln Ave., West Allis. (414) 604-4900.

Modern Twists on Classic Soups. Jan. 12.

Indulgence Chocolatiers:Chocolate Pairing Classes. Preregistration required. Walker's Point, 211 S. 2nd St. (414) 223-0123; indulgencechocolatiers.com

Milwaukee Art Museum: Cafe Calatrava Culinary events. 700 N. Art Museum Drive. Information: Heather Korte, (414) 224-3297.

Art of Craft: Chocolate 101. Jan. 22. $18 nonmember/ $10 MAM member.

Milwaukee Public Market: Cooking classes. Times and prices vary. Registration required. 400 N. Water St. (414) 336-1111; www.milwaukeepublicmarket.org.

Creative Vegetarian Cooking. Jan. 13. $29.

Back to Basics. Jan. 19. $29.

Basic Sauces. Feb. 3. $29.

Milwaukee Recreation: Classes held at a variety of locations. Register at: www.milwaukeerecreation.net

The Mindful Palate: Ann Wegner LeFort and The Mindful Palate teach cooking, canning and food preservation classes throughout Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin. mindfulpalatemke.com.

NuGenesis Farm: Public and private cooking and nutrition classes. N68-W33208 County Road K, Oconomowoc, (800) 969-3588; www.nugenesisfarm.org.

Pabst Theater: 'Lidia's Italy' host Lidia Bastianich, 7 p.m. Jan. 16. $45. 144 E. Wells St. (414) 286-3663; www.pabsttheater.org.

Pfister Hotel: Traditional Afternoon Tea is held Friday to Sunday with seatings at 1 p.m., 1:30 p.m. and 2 p.m.. Reservations required. The afternoon tea is complete with an assortment of fresh scones, sandwiches and pastries. 424 E. Wisconsin Ave. (414) 935-5942.

Ray's Growler Gallery and Wine Bar:Wine classes and events. Registration required. 8930 W. North Ave., Suite G, Wauwatosa. (414) 258-9821; raysgrowlergallery.com/events

River Bend Nature Center:'Chili' Winter Evening, 3-6 p.m. Jan. 16. $15/$5. RSVP requested. Enjoy chili served over an open fire, marshmallow roasts, winter hikes and live music. 3600 N. Green Bay Road, Racine, (262) 639-1515; www.RiverBendRacine.org.

Water 2 Wine: Introductory Wine Tasting Class offered five times weekly. $30 per person. Call ahead to register. 17135 W. Blue Mound Road, Brookfield, (262) 784-9463; www.water2wine.us/milwaukee

Waterford Wine Company:Seminars, 6-7:30 p.m. RSVP required. $30, credited toward a six-bottle purchase. 1327 E. Brady St. (414) 289-9463; waterfordwine.com/tasting.

Waukesha County Technical College: Hands-on noncredit cooking courses. Classes held at 327 E. Broadway, Waukesha. (262) 691-5578; www.wctc.edu/non-credit.

Grain Free Breakfast Baking. Jan. 18. $29.45.

Fat-burning Foods. Feb. 10. $31.45.

Wellspring Education Center: Certified organic farm and retreat center offering programs in wellness. Reservation required. 4382 Hickory Road, West Bend. (414) 522-6989; www.wellspringinc.org.

Wollersheim Winery: Open for tours and tastings from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, year-round. 7876 Highway 188, Sauk City, (608) 643-6515; www.wollersheim.com.

Port Wine Celebration. Jan. 30.
The superstar pie certainly gets its share of attention on the dessert stage. So do the fancy-pants tart and the rustic and oh-so-French galette.

But when considering fruit desserts, do not overlook the humble crisp. Just because something is easy doesn't make it less impressive...or delicious.

In fact, simplicity is part of the crisp's charm. It is uncomplicated and versatile, and it delectably showcases seasonal fruit. It practically shouts "made from scratch," yet it doesn't produce a laborious mess in your kitchen.

An absolutely company-worthy dessert, the crisp is ready for some overdue accolades and deserving time in the limelight.

A mistake to forsake

If you are like most home bakers, you might dig out the token crisp recipe every autumn at the first apple sighting. It would be a mistake, however, to forsake the reliable crisp for the remainder of the year.

January is a perfect, although some might think unconventional, time for a fruit crisp, especially if you're cookied out (is that possible?). But think of it...an aromatic fruit dessert slowly bubbling in your oven in the middle of winter.

Customarily eaten warm smothered by a melting hunk of vanilla ice cream, the homemade fruit crisp seems a satisfying dessert choice, no matter what the calendar says.

But first things first, what exactly is a crisp?

Crisp, cobbler or crumble?

There are a lot of wacky fruit dessert names: betty, grumble, grunt, slump, cobbler, buckle, pandowdy.

A crisp is simply a dessert baked in a shallow dish using sliced fruit topped with a streusel crumb topping.

An easy way to distinguish an apple crisp for example, from other fruit desserts, is to think of it as a French apple pie without the bottom crust. Historically, crisps were a way to use up a fruit harvest on hand.

Amid the fruit dessert family, the crisp is probably most related to the cobbler and crumble because they are all baked in the oven with a topping over a fruit base.

A crisp is considered the American version of the British crumble, but the two are very similar. The cobbler is more of a deep-dish dessert with large, definable "cobblestone" biscuits for the topping. Sometimes a crisp is called a crunch.

Crisp toppings can call for oatmeal, nuts, breakfast cereal, crackers, cookies or breadcrumbs, in addition to the typical ingredients of flour, butter and brown sugar. Crisps personify a simply-constructed, old-fashioned, homemade dessert.

That down-home appeal is one of the reasons Door County's White Lace Inn owner Dennis Statz bakes it for his guests.

Additionally, a crisp showcases the bounty of local fruit orchards. "It is absolutely wonderful; the apples and the cherries tie into Door County specifically," he said.

All about the fruit

You would be hard-pressed to find a bigger local fruit crisp expert than John Bauer, co-owner of the Elegant Farmer in Mukwonago. The Elegant Farmer, known for its Apple Pie Baked in a Paper Bag, also prepares and sells more than 20,000 fruit crisps per year. And yes, they are also baked in a bag.

"It's more about the fruit," Bauer said. "The pie is about the crust a lot, where the crisp is more about the fruit."

The Elegant Farmer sells four types of fruit crisps. Apple and Door County cherry versions are available year-round; peach blueberry crisp from August to October; and a strawberry rhubarb version (Bauer's "all-time" favorite) from May to August. In its apple crisps, the Elegant Farmer uses Ida Red apples for their firmer texture and complex flavor.

Kristie Turik "could not even guess" how many fruit crisps she has prepared in her 16 years as bakery manager at the Elegant Farmer.

"Don't be afraid to experiment with flavor combinations and the baking process," she advised. "The combination of tart and sweet flavors make fruit crisps very appealing."

Pitfalls to avoid

Two words: dreaded sogginess. Mushiness is crisp enemy No. 1. To avoid this, use ripe but firm fruit. Avoid using canned fruit, which is already soft and swimming in liquid. Discard any watery juices at the bottom of your fruit mixture bowl before you add the fruit to the baking dish.

A few more tips:

 Flour or another thickener can be added to the fruit mixture.

 Don't pack down the crumb topping into the fruit.

 Consume the crisp as soon as possible (this is not usually a problem). Reheat leftovers uncovered in a conventional oven to restore crispiness.

 To store, cover with a sheet of loose foil or waxed paper to allow for evaporation.

Although the crisp is an ideal way to take advantage of fresh seasonal fruit, feel free to use frozen fruit if fresh is not available. The kitchen police will not come knocking at your door.

Individually quick frozen fruit is picked at the height of ripeness and liable to taste fresher than imported fruit. So if the fruit is out of season, consider frozen over "fresh." There is no need to thaw frozen fruit as long as it is not frozen in liquid. If it is, thaw to drain and pat dry with paper towels.

While the accompanying Four Seasons Crisp recipe features several fruit combinations, the plum requires honorable mention. Plums make an outstanding choice; just substitute them for the peaches in the summer Blueberry Lemon Peach version of the recipe.

The White Lace Inn's Cherry-Apple Crisp recipe is included for the oatmeal lovers.

Jennifer Rude Klett is a freelance writer of history, food and Midwestern life from Delafield. Contact her at jrudeklett.com.
Steven Avery is seen Nov, 7, 2005, on his family cabin's property in Manitowoc County, days before he was charged with killing 25-year-old Teresa Halbach. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

By of the

A high-profile Wisconsin murder trial from 2007 is generating even more intense scrutiny to start 2016, as the Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer" has renewed the debate over Steven Avery's guilt.

In the latest twist, the filmmakers said Tuesday morning on NBC's "Today" that since the series was released online last month they had been contacted by a member of the jury that convicted Avery of killing 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005.

The unidentified juror thought Avery had been framed but backed a guilty verdict over personal safety concerns, the filmmakers said.

"(The juror) told us that they believe Steven Avery was not proven guilty," said Laura Ricciardi, who filmed the series with Moira Demos. They said they haven't spoken with any other jurors and have not been able to verify claims that the jury was told a mistrial would have made it easier to identify them.

Also Tuesday, the prosecutor who brought the Avery case to trial, Ken Kratz, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that "Making a Murderer" leaves out key evidence that supported Avery's conviction.

He dismissed it as a one-sided "defense piece."

"If some of the evidence that was selected  I would call it hand-picked or cherry-picked  over an 18-month period didn't fit with the narrative, didn't fit wth the conclusion that Mr. Avery was the product of a conspiracy or some planted evidence, it's my belief that the filmmakers just wouldn't include that information."

The series alone is not enough grounds to retry Avery, Kratz added.

Avery had spent 18 years in prison for rape before being released in 2003 when DNA showed another man had committed the crime. He was pursuing a lawsuit against Manitowoc County officials when he was arrested in Halbach's killing in 2005.

His defense in the homicide case argued at trial that Manitowoc County investigators planted evidence to frame Avery for the killing, but a jury found him guilty of first-degree intentional homicide on March 18, 2007. He was sentenced that June to life in prison.

You can find Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Kertscher's original coverage of the trial here, and he set out this week to watch the documentary himself and is tweeting his reactions to each episode as he watches them.
SHARE Andrew Timm Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office

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A Wisconsin driver was charged with seriously injuring a pedestrian during a hit-and-run crash last summer after two tipsters called West Milwaukee police.

The crash occurred on Miller Park Way about 9:45 p.m. Aug. 12 and left a 40-year-old Milwaukee man with severe head trauma and multiple broken bones. The man was still being treated in a hospital as of Dec. 27.

Andrew R. Timm, 25, of Greenleaf has been charged with duty upon striking a vehicle causing great bodily harm and is expected in court for a preliminary hearing on Friday.

According to the criminal complaint:

The tipsters called authorities after police released surveillance video showing an early 2000s GMC Envoy Denali SUV.

Two separate tips, received in November and December, indicated Timm was responsible.

The first caller told police he overheard Timm and Timm's co-workers joking around at a party about Timm running someone over. The conversation included that Timm was "hammered" and had his SUV fixed privately and stored in a garage, the caller said.

Officers verified Timm as a listed owner of a 2005 white GMC with the Wisconsin State Patrol and found photos on Timm's Facebook page of a white GMC Denali.

A second caller said Timm purchased a second vehicle shortly after the accident while his SUV was being repaired. Officers verified that Timm purchased and registered a Volkswagen about 16 days after the crash.

Timm was arrested on Christmas Eve by the Brown County Sheriff's Office on a felony warrant. His GMC Envoy Denali was seized and taken as evidence.

After Timm's arrest, officers spoke to a co-worker who said Timm had been drinking beer at his house the night of the crash. Timm left the house and called the co-worker 20 minutes later, saying he had hit something. The co-worker said he told Timm to call police.

Instead, Timm brought the SUV to the co-worker's garage and stored it there. The co-worker told police the SUV had damage to the hood, right front fender and right front headlight. After a month, Timm went to the co-worker's garage with parts and fixed the SUV.
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For-profit Anthem College closed its Brookfield campus Friday, abandoning a $1.7 million lease and displacing about 150 students in massage therapy, medical billing/coding, medical assisting and surgical technician programs, a state official confirmed.

The closing marks at least the fourth of a for-profit in the Milwaukee area in recent years. Everest College, Kaplan College and Sanford Brown have all left the Milwaukee market amid financial problems and pressures from federal officials to improve performance outcomes.

The state loaded about $250,000 in laboratory equipment from Anthem College into a moving van for safekeeping on Thursday, said David Dies, executive secretary of the Wisconsin Educational Approval Board. The board oversees 230 institutions that serve more than 60,000 working adults in Wisconsin  most of whom are ages 33 to 46.

Under terms of a teach-out agreement required by its accreditor, Anthem College will transfer equipment, faculty and curriculum for each of its defunct programs to whichever for-profit school in the area agrees to "teach out" the students through completion of their diploma or associate degree, Dies said.

"You pick up everything and move it over to the other school," he explained.

The goal in the transition is to minimize the financial impact on the displaced students, Dies said.

The Educational Approval Board evaluates postsecondary schools and institutions  some that grant degrees and others that provide licensing or certification, such as truck driving or private detective schools. The EAB is charged with setting standards for capacity, protecting consumers' rights and ensuring program quality and operational integrity.

Dies said he's negotiating with Milwaukee Career College to teach out the medical assisting and surgical tech students. Herzing University has agreed to teach out students in the massage therapy and medical billing and coding programs, Dies said.

Of Anthem's 40 massage therapy students, 5 are in associate degree and 35 are in diploma programs. Twenty-one have been placed  5 already moved to Herzing University and 16 will start there Sept. 2, Dies said.

Of Anthem's 19 students in the medical billing and coding program, two are in associate degree and 17 are in diploma programs.

The medical assisting program enrolled 57 students  15 in associate degree and 42 in diploma programs; and the surgical technician program has 26 students.

Dies said information for displaced Anthem students will be posted on the Educational Approval Board's website, http://eab.state.wi.us

The school, which has been in Brookfield since 1999, was first known as High Tech Institute, and then as Anthem with a change of ownership in 2006, according to Dies.

Dies said the college paid $47,000 a month to occupy the second floor of a building at 440 S. Executive Drive in Brookfield and was abandoning its lease that ran through October 2017.

Students have known that the closing was coming for several weeks, but they expected the college would continue offering classes through September, Dies said. They didn't know until this week that the college would close Friday.

At least 10 of Anthem's 40 campuses across the country are closing, according to Dies. Anthem has six main campuses and about 34 branches, including the Brookfield branch, he said. Anthem is owned by Florida Career Colleges, which is being sold to International Education Corp., according to Dies.
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As they barnstorm across the caucus and primary states, the Republican and Democratic front-runners for the presidential nomination often sound as if they're from different countries, not just different parties.

According to Republicans, the United States faces a daunting list of crises: an existential threat from Islamic extremism, a tidal wave of illegal immigration, a federal government out of control.

Democrats, meanwhile, are focused on the economy: too few good jobs, too much inequality (both gender and racial), too little access to health care.

They're not just offering different answers to the nation's problems; they're asking different questions.

Two examples from candidates high in the polls:

At a rally in Virginia last month, Republican Ted Cruz discussed illegal immigration, Planned Parenthood, terrorism, Iran, Israel, health care and the Common Core education standards  all before he even mentioned the economy. Even then, it was only as part of a promise to rein in "federal agencies that descend like locusts on small businesses, killing jobs."

At a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire last week, Hillary Clinton flipped the script, addressing the economy first, national security second. "I want to be a president who gets the economy moving for everybody and gets incomes rising and more good paying jobs," she said. "And I want to be a president that keeps us safe and secure and takes on the threats and dangers that we face," she added.

The priority gap is no accident; both candidates are reflecting the preferences of their parties' core voters.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll last month, taken after the San Bernardino attack, found that a plurality of Republicans listed terrorism first when asked what issue would be most important in their choice for president. Democrats and independents said the economy.

Among Republicans, 38% cited terrorism as the most important issue, and 29% named the economy. Among Democrats, 38% cited the economy, and only 17% named terrorism.

Liberals and conservatives haven't always disagreed on priorities. As recently as 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession, voters in both parties listed the economy as their top concern. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, voters in both parties said terrorism came first.

A catastrophe can sometimes create consensus  at least on what the problem is. But that hasn't happened in the case of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Looking at the whole population  not just Democrats and Republicans  terrorism-firsters are in the minority. Among all voters in the ABC-Post poll, 33% listed the economy as their top concern; only 26% cited terrorism.

And that creates a challenge for Republican candidates as the campaign accelerates in the new year. To win the hearts of conservatives in the GOP nomination contest, they've been competing with each other mostly on noneconomic issues. To build a broad coalition of voter support in the general election, the Republican nominee is going to need to deliver an appealing message about creating jobs. At this point, most GOP candidates haven't spent much time doing that, beyond occasional mentions of lower taxes and fewer regulations.

(The Republican who's had the most to say about the economy so far, oddly enough, is Donald Trump, whose stump speech includes broadsides against free trade with China and a big promise: "We're going to be rich again.")

If Clinton turns out to be the Democratic nominee, she faces a mirror-image problem: She needs to convince voters who worry about terrorism that she'd produce better foreign policy results than the president she worked for. But she has at least remembered to include security concerns in her stump speech  as she showed last week in New Hampshire.

There's one more consequence of this priority gap, and it affects both sides: Whoever wins the presidential election will lead a country with a deep and persistent partisan divide.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for The Los Angeles Times. Email doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com Twitter: @DoyleMcManus
Credit: THINKSTOCK

The state Public Records Board has cracked open the door to hearing from the public about its secretive decision last summer to limit access to public records. So please let the board hear from you  let it know that it needs to rescind its action to limit access to text messages, emails, Facebook posts and other electronic communications by public employees.

The board is accepting written comments before midnight Wednesday to: PublicRecordsBoardComments@Wisconsin.gov.

You also can attend the board's public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Monday at the Risser Justice Center, 17 W. Main St., Madison.

As you did last July when the state Legislature's Joint Finance Committee moved in secret to gut the state's open records law on the night before a long holiday weekend, you can let state officials obsessed with conducting their business in private know that drawing the curtains on open government is unacceptable.

Let them know there will be consequences in this election year for those who try to curb access to government. Send an email, call your legislator or attend the meeting if you can. But let your voice be heard.

At issue this time is a policy revision made in August by the previously obscure Public Records Board, which oversees the preservation and handling of government records. Quietly, with no public notice or reporting, the board changed the definition of "transitory records"  those deemed to have only temporary significance.

Make no mistake, the board's action will be used by people in power to limit access to text messages, emails, Facebook posts and other electronic communication by public employees. It also encourages them to conduct the public's business in the shadows through such tools. When government employees conduct the public's business and spend the taxpayers' dollars electronically, citizens have an interest in those communications and a right to see them.

That point was made crystal clear just one day after the board's quiet decision to redefine transitory records. Gov. Scott Walker's administration hid behind the board's action, saying it didn't have text messages requested by the Wisconsin State Journal and adding that officials didn't have to retain such messages.

The newspaper had sought text messages linked to a $500,000 loan by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to Building Committee Inc., which was promoted by top administration appointees. WEDC officials later strove to get federal taxpayer dollars to help the struggling Milwaukee-based company even though the loan to BCI went sour within months and the owner of the firm, a Walker donor named William Minahan, had provided false information to the state.

Those text messages about a pet corporate welfare project belonged to the public just as surely as written notes from the administration would have belonged to the public. Walker's administration demonstrated in this instance, as it has time and again, that it has little regard for open government while claiming that it follows the law. It has done so multiple times in the past year under the state's current system of one-party rule, with help and often leadership from powerful lawmakers  most notably Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester).

After the board's action came to light, open records attorneys and advocates accused the Public Records Board of violating the state's open meetings law with its notice for the August meeting, which did not specifically mention the transitory records issue, and also with its minutes, which failed to provide details of the board's action or of any vote. They also raised questions about whether the board had overstepped its authority and stepped into the Legislature's territory by attempting to redefine public records.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council filed a complaint Dec. 14 with the Dane County district attorney against the state board, alleging open meetings law violations.

Matthew Blessing, chairman of the board, said the August vote was aimed at clarifying existing policies for handling transitory records. "I thus do not believe that the minor clarifying language ... was substantive enough to warrant inclusion in the August 24 agenda," Blessing said in an email to the Journal Sentinel.

But, of course, what the board did has proved to be substantive already. Its change  which the public knew nothing about but which the administration was somehow keenly aware of  was used instantly as an excuse to hide records about an effort to send good taxpayer dollars after bad. Word to the wise: When state officials say they want to "clarify" open records laws, the public should be wary. What that meant in July is that they wanted to curb the public's ability to know what their elected officials were doing with their money.

Don't let them continue to hide that information from you.

After the outcry and the FOIC complaint, Blessing scheduled next week's meeting to revisit the change, which the board must immediately rescind.

Let the Public Records Board know where you stand on open government. The leadership in Madison was forced to backtrack last July only because citizens across Wisconsin  Republicans, Democrats and independents  demanded that they leave our open records law alone. This is a subject we can all agree on and can all act on. Send an email by midnight Wednesday or go to Madison next week. Let the board know that it has a responsibility to keep public records public.

And tell it to stop working behind the scenes to give politicians excuses that they can hide behind.

To contact Wisconsin's top officials and legislators, go to jsonline.com/stateofficials

How to send comments

to the Public Records Board

Written comments can be sent to the board before midnight Wednesday by emailing PublicRecordsBoardComments@Wisconsin.gov.

Comment at the board's hearing at 1:30 p.m. Monday at the Risser Justice Center, 17 W. Main St., Madison. (Comments will be limited to one minute for each speaker).

How to contact

members of the Public Records Board

Board chair

Matthew Blessing, designee of the director of Wisconsin Historical Society

(608) 264-6480; matthew.blessing@Wisconsinhistory.org

Board members

Paul Ferguson, designee of attorney general

(608) 264-9464; fergusonpm@doj.state.wi.us

Bryan Naab, designee of state auditor

(608) 259-9807; bryan.naab@legis.wisconsin.gov

Melissa Schmidt, designee of the legislative council director

(608) 266-2298; melissa.schmidt@legis.wisconsin.gov

Sandra Broady-Rudd, designee of the governor

(608) 429-2368; sandra.e.broady-rudd@wellsfargo.com

Carl Buesing, local government designee of the governor

920-457-8400; bues513@sbcglobal.net

Peter Sorce, other member designee of the governor

(262) 253-0561; ps9444@aol.com
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Madison  The state's railroad commissioner has resigned, one month after the revelation that he and Gov. Scott Walker wrongly argued that the state couldn't fire employees who had an extramarital sexual relationship on state property and on taxpayers' time for five months.

Walker has used the odd episode involving the woman and a male railroad commission employee as an argument for overhauling the state's civil service law and its century-old system of merit hiring and firing.

The governor said the pair couldn't be fired because of civil service rules, calling it an example of what's wrong with them. But in December the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the female worker was an at-will employee, not a civil servant, and that then-Railroad Commissioner Jeff Plale never attempted to do more than reprimand the two employees.

Plale said at the time that he was simply following instructions from the Walker administration's personnel office, though he also acknowledged that he had later consented to removing the letter of reprimand from the woman's file.

Walker announced Tuesday that he had appointed Yash Wadhwa as railroad commissioner and that Plale had resigned on Monday. Walker's office did not provide what new job Plale has taken, if any, and Plale, a former Democratic state senator, did not answer his cellphone Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for Walker did not comment on whether the civil service incident played a role in Plale's resignation.

"It has been a genuine pleasure serving the residents of Wisconsin in this capacity. However, at this point in my life, my family and I feel the need to explore other opportunities," Plale wrote in his resignation letter.

The overall civil service bill is still likely to pass the Legislature. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Tuesday that he expects his house to approve the bill on Jan. 19.

Assembly Republicans passed the bill in October over Democratic objections on a party-line vote of 57-35.

Starting in May 2011, work emails between agency liaison Elizabeth Piliouras and railroad commission attorney Doug Wood, also a city of Monona alderman, graphically documented their relationship. Those emails and other evidence of the affair were turned up and provided to Plale as part of an internal review.

At the time of the discipline, Piliouras' job as an agency liaison for the railroad commissioner's office was considered a "project appointment," a kind of at-will position in which the state can fire the employee without giving a reason. Civil servants, on the other hand, can only be hired for merit and fired for just cause, a requirement that is meant to guard against political influence.

Wood is a civil service employee.

Several former top state employment officials from Democratic and Republican administrations have said Plale and the Walker administration had a wide range of penalties  possibly including dismissal  that could have been imposed on Wood instead of just a reprimand.

Piliouras had to leave the railroad commissioner's office in June 2012 after her limited position was converted to a permanent one. Wood remains a state employee.

Like Walker, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna), a co-sponsor of the civil service bill, has used the example to argue for civil changes and said last month that Plale's decision not to pursue serious actions against Wood and Piliouras shows "why we need to remove this ambiguity" in the civil service law.

Wadhwa, the new railroad commissioner, has served as a board member for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and president of the Wisconsin Association of Consulting Engineers, as well as the Wisconsin Society of Professional Engineers.

Wadhwa is a frequent contributor to the campaigns of Walker and other Republicans and ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly in 2008.
Walnut Way steps into We Energies rate case as voice of low-income gas, electric customers

Advocates say the pain of a large utility rate increase will fall hardest on low-income residents who are already struggling to make ends meet.
A bighead carp (front), a species of the Asian carp, swims in an exhibit at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. A new study based on computer modeling says if Asian carp successfully invade Lake Erie, they eventually could make up about one-third of the total fish weight there and cause declines of walleye and other valuable sport species. Credit: Associated Press

SHARE Special Report A Watershed Moment: Dan Egan's groundbreaking reporting has shown the damage caused by invasive species to the Great Lakes and lays out the bold steps that could be taken to restore and protect the worlds largest freshwater system. Go to section

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A new study shows Asian carp could account for about one-third of the entire fish weight of Lake Erie, if Asian carp move from the Mississippi River basin and establish themselves in the lake.

The study, based on computer modeling and other work, found that the Asian carp invasion could be significant  and become up to 34% of Lake Erie's biomass.

Virtually all fish would experience a decline, although some species, most notably smallmouth bass, could benefit by the entry of Asian carp.

Still, the authors said the "lakewide impacts on the Lake Erie food web will not be as great as some have feared," unless carp begin consuming larvae of sport fish. Asian carp subsist on plankton.

The findings were published online last week in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

Conservation officials have long worried that invasive carp will pose significant ecological and economic threats to the Great Lakes basin.

The new report did not address the effect of the invading silver or bighead carp in Lake Michigan or Lake Superior and other Great Lakes.

But one author, Edward S. Rutherford of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., predicted that Asian carp would pose fewer problems for the two lakes bordering Wisconsin than the carp would have on Lake Erie.

Currently, the researchers are using the same modeling and research approach to see how the invasive carp would affect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, said Rutherford, a research fishery biologist, in an interview. Results are expected later this year.

In their preliminary work, Rutherford said, they found Asian carp would not fare as well in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior because Lake Erie has more supplies of plankton  a crucial source of food for native fish and other aquatic life.

Harvey Bootsma agreed.

He studies food web dynamics of large lake systems at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"Even before this, my thinking was that Asian carp generally were going to have a tough time of it in Lake Michigan," Bootsma said, "because the bottom of the lake is almost completely covered with quagga mussels."

Quagga mussels, another invasive species, are filter feeders, just like silver and bighead carp.

"They have very effectively reduced the abundance of phytoplankton in Lake Michigan, which is leaving a very clear water column with not a lot of food in it for fish like Asian carp to feed on," Bootsma said.

Rutherford and Bootsma both said Lake Superior  cold and deep  has never had the levels of plankton productivity as the other lakes.

The latest study included researchers from several government agencies and universities, including the University of Michigan, UW-Madison and the University of Notre Dame.

Fish stock would decline

The study found that walleye, rainbow trout, gizzard shad and emerald shiners would decline. By contrast smallmouth bass could increase by as much 16%.

The reason for higher populations of smallmouth is because bass would feast on young invasive carp, according to Rutherford.

In their study, the authors said that the effects of Asian carp on Lake Erie may not be as great as some of the more extreme predictions experts have said that carp would have.

They also said there could be localized effects in some parts of the lake.

"I think people are smart to be concerned," Rutherford said. "I think the results of our work, at least for Lake Erie, suggest that it's not going to be doom and gloom, but it's not going to be negligible at all.

"We are talking about increasing Asian carp that should get to a level that are going to be a third of the total weight of the fish in the lake and twice as much as the most abundant fish that was eating plankton and that was gizzard shad.

"So it's going to have an effect."

Even if Asian carp populations did not proliferate in, for example, Lake Michigan, their introduction could pose big problems for tributaries of the lake, Bootsma said.

Silver or bighead carp could prosper in rivers with higher levels of plankton than Lake Michigan, he said.

Asian carp have not yet become established in the Great Lakes. An electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, about 35 miles from Lake Michigan, has been constructed to keep the fish from entering the lakes, but its effectiveness has been questioned.

Bighead and silver carp have been found with increasing frequency in the Mississippi River and tributaries in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Still, there is no evidence that they are reproducing in the Mississippi or St. Croix rivers, according to state fisheries officials.

Five bighead carp were captured in May in the St. Croix River near Stillwater, Minn., according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The discovery is the farthest upstream in the Mississippi that the fish have been caught.
KANSAS CITY, Mo.  Darryl Burton sits a few feet from his desk, where an open laptop waits.

Hes got a research paper to write. At least 10 pages on the doctrine of Scripture and what the words in the Bible mean to him. After that, he has two more graduate papers and some reading to wrap up for seminary at Saint Paul School of Theology.

Pretty heavy stuff for a man who never finished high school. And who not long ago was a skeptic, full of questions about God and the religion his late grandmother clung to so closely. Burton had stopped going to church as a young teen, unable to relate or see how God was working in his life  living in urban St. Louis, where he and his eight siblings, mother and grandmother were stifled by poverty.

His grandmothers words warned: One of these days, boy, youre going to need Jesus. I only hope you remember to call on him.

Today, with the booming voice of a seasoned preacher, Burton tells his story across the country and abroad to prisoners and churchgoers, students and civic groups. And he recalls how his grandmothers words echoed in his mind during the late 1990s as he faced life behind bars as Inmate 153063 inside the Missouri State Penitentiary.

Eventually, he says, those words, along with a newfound faith and a team of people who believed in him, led him from the pit to the pulpit.

I just kept hearing, One of these days, boy,  Burton says, sitting inside his office on the campus of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan. I just couldnt get that out of my mind. So I said, OK, lets learn about this Jesus. 

Part of Burtons story has been talked about across the country for years, flashed in headlines and television newscasts. He served 24 years behind bars for the murder of a St. Louis man before a judge ruled that his 1985 trial was constitutionally flawed and overturned that conviction. It was based on the testimony of two men, one who kept changing his story and another who had more felony convictions than the jury was told.

Since his 2008 release, which lawyers and supporters fought eight years for, Burton has been asked to speak in venues from big halls to biker bars. Many have marveled at his ability to move beyond the nightmare of spending nearly all of his adult life in a prison cell for a crime he said he didnt commit.

As Burton sees it: If I hadnt forgiven them, I would still be in prison. A spiritual prison.

This month, he completes seminary. And in January hell start full time at the Leawood megachurch as an associate pastor in congregational care. Hell continue some of the work he has done as a Church of the Resurrection intern and pastoral associate, helping families in need and working with a mens group, showing people what true forgiveness looks like.

Theres no one who represents himself more humbly than Darryl, said Karen Lampe, the churchs executive pastor of congregational care. He just wants to do the very best he can. I think hes trying to make up for lost time.

He is one amazing gift for us.

A gift the church wouldnt have received if not for the letters Burton wrote and some of the answers he received. He estimates that he wrote more than 700 letters during his time behind bars, reaching out to legislators and attorneys, Oprah Winfrey and groups dedicated to freeing wrongly convicted inmates.

He penned an especially memorable one in 1998, before his religious skepticism turned to conviction.

Dear Jesus Christ, he wrote.

If youre real and you know all things, you and I know Im innocent. If you help me get out of this place, not only will I serve you, but I will tell the world about you.

Sincerely yours, Darryl Burton.

A TWO-DAY TRIAL

On a June day in 1984, Burton had gone to see his parole officer. He was 22, had his GED and planned to start classes at Forest Park Community College in St. Louis. He wanted to study business administration and sociology.

After a burglary charge, Burton was set on his future. He wanted to spend more time with his infant daughter.

Then St. Louis police showed up and arrested him in the death of Donald Ball, a man who had been shot while filling his car with gasoline. Even as Burton was being booked into the city jail, he thought everything would be OK.

The truth would come out. After all, he wasnt even in the state when the murder happened. Hed been in Washington state, visiting a friend.

Witnesses said the man who shot Ball was a light-skinned African-American. Burton has dark skin, tagged with many nicknames growing up, including Lights Out.

The killer was described as 5 feet 5 inches. Burton is 5 feet 10.

No physical evidence or suggested motive ever tied him to Balls death.

I thought Id be let go within 24 hours, Burton said.

He said he saw his public defender just once before the trial, and no one worked to get receipts or other documents that would have proved he was in another state at the time of the shooting.

Burton recalls the trial lasted two or three days. The prosecutor called two witnesses. One was a man hed never met, the other a man hed known in his younger days. Both said Burton killed Ball.

I couldnt believe people would go in and lie on me, Burton said.

It took jurors less than an hour to come back with their verdict. Burton was sentenced to 50 years without the possibility of parole.

Before he left the courtroom, he had a message for the judge: I dont know how long it will take, but Im going to fight this case until I prove Im innocent.

Burton spent countless hours in the prison law library, researching and writing briefs and motions. He told other inmates that one day he would be freed. They told him he didnt understand the system.

I had moments when I felt really sure I was going to get out, Burton said. And then I had moments when I was just depressed and wanted to give up. My mother would leave the visiting room and I would say, Thats the last time Im going to see her. I didnt want to live.

In 1990, he heard back from Centurion Ministries, a small organization in New Jersey. Founder James McCloskey and his group were dedicated to taking on cases of inmates wrongly convicted. Because of the demand for help, it would be 10 years, the group told Burton, before it could take on his case.

He would wait. He wrote Centurion Ministries two or three letters a year to make sure the group didnt forget about him.

In the late 1990s, Burton picked up the Bible and focused on the words in red ink, signifying the words of Jesus. He related to the man and his stories. Some of Jesus edicts were harder.

Jesus said, Love your enemy,  Burton said. And Im like, What? 

Pray for them. And Im thinking, Yeah, right, Ill pray a building falls on them. 

Forgive them  Thats impossible.

Through gritting teeth, Burton started to pray for the people who had lied about him, for the people inside the justice system.

He read Luke 23:34: Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

After a while, he no longer prayed through clenched teeth. The words and intention flowed freely.

It became real, and I began wanting what was best for those people.

LEARNING TO WALK

The world changed without him. His first day at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo., he had walked under a massive welcome banner with the words Leave all your hopes, family and dreams behind.

He walked out of prison in August 2008, unsure of the freedom and hopes and dreams he could have.

At TGI Fridays that night, he asked Cheryl Pilate, a Kansas City attorney who worked with Centurion Ministries since 2000 to free him, if the restroom was an area where he could go.

It was obvious he was overwhelmed, Pilate said. When you havent been in the outside world for 24 years, everything is new, everything is different. It takes a while to come to terms with it.

Inside the restroom, he wondered what was wrong with the toilet. It kept flushing on its own. And at the sink, why didnt the faucet have knobs? How could you get the water to come on without any knobs? (A stranger helped.)

Technology flustered him. Laptops and cellphones. The Internet was new to him. He would struggle getting a job, with a 24-year gap in job experience. He had no drivers license, no set plan for the future.

Initially, he would tour around telling his story. After reuniting with his daughter, the two of them would sometimes speak to groups together.

When Burtons future wife first heard him tell his story, she remembers thinking how gifted he was. She had grown up six doors down from Burtons family in St. Louis and knew his younger siblings.

She wasnt surprised when he wanted to go to seminary in 2012. But the couple didnt know how difficult it would be.

For Darryl, it was like being flown to Japan and just dropped off.

I didnt know the language, anything, Burton said. It was like learning to walk.

Everything about the campus was foreign. Taking notes. Studying. Understanding heavy theology.

He needed complete silence some days, said Valerie Burton, who married Darryl in 2011. I had to be quiet, no TV.  All of his books were spread out on the dining room table. Hed stay up late, overnight sometimes. Hed fall asleep in the chair.  Some days he wanted to give up.

But he always went back to one thought, she said: If I can make it through prison, I can make it through something like this.

When Burton sat down to write his first research paper  hes cranked out many 15- to 20-page papers in the past three years  he grabbed a yellow legal pad and a pen. He planned to write it out longhand and turn it in. His wife laughs at the memory now and how she explained to him they needed to get a computer.

When he didnt understand something, he asked for help. And he often started the conversation explaining why he was so lost.

I remember him coming in, said Margaretta Narcisse, associate dean of students at Saint Paul School of Theology. He sat in my office and talked about where he has come from and how he wanted to make sure he would be able to finish what he started. He knew that he was coming into a foreign land and he wanted to be successful.

And despite having lost more than two decades of his life, he never expected anything, said Stan Basler, visiting professor of restorative justice and prison ministry at Saint Paul.

The students work on the long papers is what impressed him. Basler tells students he doesnt want a book report  he wants to hear their voices in the paper. But he also wants to make sure theyre engaged with the material and understand it. Some papers come in with few sources and little focus on the material.

With Burton, Basler would see papers where two-thirds of the content was on the material.

He wasnt asking anyone for a free ride, Basler said. He really applied himself. It was obvious to me in every course that he was working hard.

HES HELPED PEOPLE

On a recent Friday morning, Burtons voice filled a classroom inside a Johnson County high school.

All of you have been on this earth long enough to have someone say something about you that wasnt true, he said, dressed in sharp dark pants and shirt, a sparkling cross around his neck. Imagine being put in a closet, in a box, for 24 years, and you cant get out because someone lied on you.

For nearly an hour, the two dozen high school students sat fixed on Burtons words. No one yawned or doodled. No one tried to pass a note or talk to a friend.

Its what Burton typically gets when he speaks. No matter where he goes, no matter what crowd hes talking to, everyone understands injustice, he says.

And his message of hope and forgiveness? Very powerful, says Lampe, the minister.

At Church of the Resurrection, where Burton started as an intern in 2013, hes visited homes to talk with families going through rough times. Before Lampes son had surgery last year, she wanted Burton to be the one to give him a blessing  I knew it would be beautiful.

Burton also leads a mens group at the church where members have experienced problems from addiction to incarceration to relationship woes.

Hes helped people in our congregation that have forgiveness issues, Lampe said.

Earlier this month, she sat with Burton and went over his annual review. She gave him goals for the year and told him hed have until January 2017 to complete them. But shes learning thats not how Burton works.

He said, They told us in prison when we had something to do, we had to walk out and start doing it,  Lampe said.  Im going to walk out and start doing it. 

The lessons from behind bars, and his experiences with the criminal justice system, creep up in other ways.

He wakes early, usually around 4:30. Thats when hed get up in prison. He had to leave himself enough time to get ready before the call to breakfast.

And everywhere he goes, whether its to a movie or to a convenience store to buy gas or a soda, he asks for a receipt. He wants proof that he was there. Every receipt goes into a drawer, and at the end of the year, they go into a plastic grocery bag. The bag goes into a stack in the closet.

Hell soon add the bag of 2015 receipts to the pile.

I didnt have a receipt last time, he said, eyes wide. And I was locked up because of it. I couldnt prove where I was.

Though he finishes seminary this month, he wont receive his master of divinity until a ceremony in May.

Theres a lot of temptation to see him simply as a miracle, one of those amazing things that happen, Pilate said. But no one waved a magic wand over him and then he was all of a sudden the amazing man we see today. Hes worked very hard.

For now, Burton will continue to share not only his experiences, but the Scriptures and stories from the Bible.

They helped him, he said, at a time when the only thing or person he had faith in was himself. Now he wants to make sure hes lived up to that letter he wrote in 1998.

I feel like Jesus kept his part of the deal, Burton said. And I feel compelled to keep mine. Im trying to keep my commitment.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Saudi Arabias execution on Saturday of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr Baqir al-Nimr has so far not created a crisis between Riyadh and the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government. But Saudi Arabias name with the rank and file Shiites and parliamentary backbenchers is mud.

On Tuesday, thousands (or perhaps only hundreds) of demonstrators from the Muqtada al-Sadr bloc came out in front of the walled-in Green Zone to demand that the Saudi embassy be closed. Alarmed, al-Jubeir called his counterpart, expressing fears that the mission might be overwhelmed by angry crowds. The Iraqi foreign minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, pledged to Riyadh that his government would protect the Saudi embassy. Contrary to some reports, it has not been attacked.

Although the Green Zone where most embassies are was opened to traffic this past fall, after having been an blast-wall-protected enclosure set up by the Americans in 2003, it can still presumably fairly easily be proofed against mob action.

Many Iraqi Shiites believe that Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) is bankrolled by the Saudi state, and they are furious at what they see as a hard line Wahhabi murder of a pious man of the cloth. Saudi spokesmen accused al-Nimr of plotting terrorism, but the actual legal charges against him seemed just to be a vague allegation that he was a trouble-maker.

Firdaws al-Awadi, a female member of parliament from the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi, lambasted the Iraqi foreign ministry for not having condemned al-Nimrs execution. She said that the Saudi embassy in Baghdad (recently opened after a 25-year hiatus that began under Saddam Hussein) is an espionage operation on behalf of Daesh, and that closing it would deal a painful blow to the terrorist organizations intelligence in the country. Note that this is not a Sadrist speaking, it is a member of the mainstream Dawa Party to which the prime minister belongs.

There is no evidence that Saudi Arabia has backed Daesh, and the kingdom has been attacked by the group. But it is also true that Saudi Arabia hasnt done anything significant to take it down, probably seeing it as a bulwark against Iranian and Shiite influence.

The Sadrist demonstrations dont seem to have been nearly as huge as al-Sadr had hoped for. The al-Abadi government is standing firm against closing the embassy. Despite the passions raging in the Shiite south over al-Nimrs execution, for the moment Baghdad feels too vulnerable and isolated to cut off a major neighbor like Saudi Arabia. Indeed, there is now an opportunity for al-Abadi to be a go-between. Likewise, to the extent that al-Abadi needs Washington to polish off Daesh, after the US-backed victory in Ramadi last week, he will likely hearken to Washingtons advice on this matter, which will be to maintain diplomatic relations.

The question is whether the righteous anger of the Iraqi Shiites can be contained by their pragmatic and beleagured government.

Saudi Arabia was formed as a unified state in 1932 after militant Wahhabi armies conquered much of the Arabian Peninsula in the 1910s and 1920s. The Saudi king is supported by the Wahhabi clergy and vice versa, in an arrangement that goes back to the 18th century. Largely Shiite al-Hasa fell to the Wahhabis in 1913. The Wahhabi branch of Islam was originally technically neither Sunni nor Shiite, though it is now usually included among the Sunnis, and is the most hard line and theologically intolerant form of the religion. Wahhabism likely has about 4-8 million adherents out of the countrys 17-20 million citizens (a majority of Saudis outside the central province of Najd are likely traditional Sunnis, and 15% are Shiite). Wahhabi clerics have often viewed Shiite Muslims harshly, seeing their devotion to the family of the Prophet and their visitation at shrines as forms of idolatry (just as extreme Protestants might see folk Roman Catholicism, with its emphasis on Mary and on saints shrines, as idolatrous).

On top of the theological divisions, geopolitics has been layered. Iran is largely Shiite and since 1979 has emerged as a rival to Saudi Arabia and the promulgator of a (gulp) republican ideology that says there is no place for kings in Islam. Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting for influence in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Lebanon, among other places (likely in Afghanistan as well). Saudi Arabia also maintains that its fight against the Houthi rebels in Yemen is somehow connected to Iran, but that is just a cover story.

It should be stressed that the Saudi-Iran relationship was not always theological or ideological and sometimes has been quite good. In the 1960s, both the shah of Iran and the Saudi monarchs were right wing, pro-capitalist, American allies, and they got along famously. King Faisal visited Tehran in 1966, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian monarch, visited Riyadh in 1975.

Likewise, less than a decade ago King Abdullah brought the Iranian president and foreign minister of Iran to Riyadh for consultations, apparently over the objections of his foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal. But even while the late King Abdullah was pursuing a diplomatic track, the wikileaks State Department cables show that Saudi Arabias ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, was urging the Bush administration to bomb Iran.

King Abdullah, he of the wiser head, is deceased, and King Salman seems to share al-Jubeirs anti-Iran fanaticism and paranoia.

The Saudi establishment was furious over the Bush administrations installation of a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq in 2005, seeing it as a betrayal of the efforts in the Iran-Iraq war to contain Iranian influence in the region. Baghdad and Riyadh have had bad relations, especially under former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was eased out of office at President Obamas insistence after the fall of Mosul in summer of 2014. Under his successor, PM al-Abadi, a Saudi embassy was finally opened this September.



Related video:

Iraq: Baghdad protesters clash at demo against Saudi execution of al-Nimr

Ruptly TV
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Human Rights Watch |  

(Beirut)  Saudi authorities carried out the largest mass execution in the country since 1980, putting 47 men to death on January 2, 2016. According to the Saudi state news agency, all of the men were convicted on terrorism charges, and most were members of Al Qaeda. The mass execution to begin 2016 follows 158 executions in 2015.

Saudi Arabia had a shameful start to 2016, executing 47 people in a day, after a year with one of the highest execution rates in its recent history. The death penalty is never the answer to crimes, and executing prisoners en masse further stains Saudi Arabias troubling human rights record. Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director

Among those executed were at least four Saudi Shia men, including Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric sentenced to death in 2014 after a Saudi court convicted him on a host of vague charges apparently based largely on his peaceful criticism of Saudi officials. The 47 executions were carried out inside prisons across 12 different provinces in Saudi Arabia. In each prison, the men were beheaded except for four that used firing squads, according to Reuters news agency.

Saudi Arabia had a shameful start to 2016, executing 47 people in a day, after a year with one of the highest execution rates in its recent history, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. The death penalty is never the answer to crimes, and executing prisoners en masse further stains Saudi Arabias troubling human rights record.

Saudi authorities first warned they would carry out a mass execution in late November 2015, when local newspaper Okaz reported that Saudi Arabia would execute 55 men belonging to Al Qaeda and Awamiyya, the Shia town in Saudi Arabias Eastern Province from which al-Nimr hailed.

The Saudi Press Agency tied the executed men to a series of Al Qaeda attacks across the country between 2003 and 2004, specifically mentioning coordinated attacks on the Al-Hamra Housing Complex, Vinnell Housing Complex, and Ishbilia Housing Complex in Riyadh in May 2003; attacks on the Arabian Company for Petroleum Investment (APICORP), Petroleum Center Company, and Al-Waha Housing Complex in the Eastern Province city of Khobar in May 2004; the bombing of the Public Traffic Administration in Riyadh in April 2004; bombings targeting the Ministry of Interior headquarters and Emergency Forces building in Riyadh in December 2004; and an attack on the United States Consulate in Jeddah in December 2004.

The announcement did not specify which men were convicted for which crimes, but did note that only four of the 47 were convicted of Hadd (limit) crimes for which Islamic law mandates a specific punishment, including the death penalty, while 43 were sentenced to death based on judicial discretion.

The charges against al-Nimr included breaking allegiance with the ruler, inciting sectarian strife, and supporting rioting and destruction of public property during 2011-2012 protests in Shia-majority towns and cities. The proceedings of Saudi Arabias Specialized Criminal Court, which conducted his trial in 13 sessions over a year and a half, raised serious fair trial concerns, including vague charges that do not resemble recognizable crimes and trial sessions held without informing al-Nimrs legal advocate.

Authorities arrested al-Nimr in June 2012 and held him for eight months before bringing charges, although the Interior Ministry had labeled him an instigator of discord and rioting after his arrest. Officials claimed that he resisted arrest and rammed a security force vehicle, leading to a gun battle in which al-Nimr was wounded. Purported photos of the incident released by the local media show the wounded sheikh slumped in the back seat of a car wearing a bloodied white robe. A family member told Human Rights Watch that al-Nimr did not own a gun and that they dispute the claim that he resisted arrest.

Local activists and family members told Human Rights Watch that al-Nimr supported only peaceful protests and eschewed all violent opposition to the government. A 2011 BBC report quoted him as supporting the roar of the word against authorities rather than weapons  the weapon of the word is stronger than bullets, because authorities will profit from a battle of weapons. In another video available on YouTube, al-Nimr states, It is not permitted to use weapons and spread corruption in society.

Saudi Arabia systematically discriminates against its Shia citizens, who constitute 10 to 15 percent of the population. This discrimination reduces Shias access to public education and government employment. They do not receive equal treatment under the justice system and the government impairs their ability to practice their religion freely, rarely providing permission for Shia citizens to build mosques.

Al-Nimrs 2012 arrest caused demonstrations in Awamiyya, a Shia village in the Qatif district that has been the site of anti-government demonstrations since 2011. Media reported that security forces shot and killed two demonstrators on the evening of al-Nimrs arrest.

The local activists, who asked not to be named for fear of arrest, said that al-Nimr had a strong following among Shia youth because of his outspoken criticism of government policies and advocacy of greater rights for Shia. In late March 2009, al-Nimr suggested in a Friday sermon that the Shia might consider seceding from Saudi Arabia if the government continued to deny their rights. When security forces tried to detain him, he went into hiding. After his execution, Saudi Arabia deployed security forces to Qatif, maintaining a heavy presence as crowds gathered to protest, according to Middle East Eye, an online news site.

Human Rights Watch has documented longstanding due process violations in Saudi Arabias criminal justice system that make it difficult for a defendant to get a fair trial even in capital cases. A Human Rights Watch analysis in September revealed serious due process concerns during four trials of Shia protesters before the Specialized Criminal Court. They include broadly framed charges that do not resemble recognizable crimes, denial of access to lawyers at arrest and during pretrial detention, quick dismissal of allegations of torture without investigation, and admission of confessions that defendants claimed were coerced.

Saudi Arabias execution of a prominent Shia cleric following an unfair trial only adds to the existing sectarian discord and unrest, Whitson said. Saudi Arabias path to stability in the Eastern Province lies in ending systematic discrimination against Shia citizens, not in executions.

Via Human Rights Watch

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Euronews: Saudi Arabia executes Shiite cleric Nimr Baqr al-Nimr
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 5, 2016) - CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQB: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) "the Company" is pleased to announce Denison Mines Corp. (TSX: DML) (NYSE MKT: DNN) has optioned part of the Company's Moon uranium project (claim S-107558) in Saskatchewan. The claim comprises the southern portion of CanAlaska's Moon project which adjoins Denison's Wheeler River project in the eastern Athabasca Basin.



To view an enhanced version of the Moon Project Claim S-107558, please visit:

http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2864/18724_imageenhanced.jpg

On signing of the option agreement, Denison paid CanAlaska $62,405 to make the necessary assessment security deposit to maintain the claim in good standing and will carry out $200,000 of exploration work on the claim over the next two years to acquire a 51% interest. CanAlaska has also granted to Denison the right to increase its interest in the claim to 75% for further $500,000 in expenditures. The claim currently has a royalty payable to Denison. The option agreement includes provisions for the formation of a joint venture and a 2% NSR Royalty which will be automatically granted if either party's interest is decreased below 10% ("NSR Dilution Royalty). The NSR Dilution Royalty may be purchased by the non-diluting party for $500,000.

President, Peter Dasler, commented, "This is a good transaction for CanAlaska as we will start to benefit from Denison's experience in an area where they have had recent multiple success at Wheeler River with the discovery of the Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits. CanAlaska will retain a 100% interest in the northern part of the Moon project."

In other news, CanAlaska is waiting for results for the drill program at NW Manitoba, under option to Northern Uranium Corp, and the drill program at Patterson Lake West, under option to Makena Resources Inc. The Company has acquired by staking additional claims in the Athabasca basin and is continuing discussions concerning its projects with various parties.

About CanAlaska Uranium

CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQB: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) holds interests in approximately 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres), one of the largest land positions in Canada's Athabasca Basin region - the "Saudi Arabia of Uranium". CanAlaska's strategic holdings has attracted major international mining companies Mitsubishi, KORES and KEPCO as partners at its core projects. CanAlaska is a Project Generator and is positioned for discovery success in the world's richest uranium district. For further information, visit www.canalaska.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Peter Dasler"

Peter Dasler, M.Sc., P.Geo., President & CEO,

CanAlaska Uranium Ltd.

Contact:

Peter Dasler, President and CEO.

Tel: +1.604.688.3211 x 138

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The TSX-V has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release: CUSIP# 13708P 10 2.
Jacob Rusher was a status offender in his mid-teens, charged with a crime that would not be a crime if he were an adult.

He was put in the Douglas County Youth Facility three times between 15 and 17. Each time, he was placed in lockdown, the first time for his own good because he had a broken ankle.

What might have been a few weeks in isolation turned into three months, according to a report on kids in solitary confinement released Monday by ACLU of Nebraska. After Rusher pounded on the door and begged them to release him, he was charged with inciting a riot. His second and third visits to solitary lasted more than three months each and came after he was attacked by older gang members.

"It was 23 hours a day alone, no TV or radio. You were in there with one book, a blanket, a mat and a toothbrush. No art materials, no hobby items  everything was considered contraband. No classes or school while on lockdown," Rusher, now 24, said in the report.

He developed a pacing habit -- one wall to the other -- that hangs on today, he said. While he paced, he would imagine he was in one of the books he was reading.

And at night, he said, he'd get a little crazy, with the lights on at all hours.

In the report, "Growing Up Locked Down: Juvenile Solitary Confinement in Nebraska," ACLU of Nebraska said it has uncovered some "disturbing" trends in how state and county lockups in Nebraska use solitary confinement to discipline youths in custody.

"I think it's fair to say as we look to comparisons with our sister states and across the national landscape that Nebraska's use and policies regarding juvenile solitary confinement truly shock the conscience," ACLU of Nebraska Executive Director Danielle Conrad said Monday morning.

On any given day in Nebraska, the report said, juvenile justice facilities routinely subject kids to solitary confinement. There is no uniformity in how kids are kept alone for periods of time ranging from hours to months.

The state Health and Human Services-run facilities in Kearney and Geneva, for example, can use it for as long as five days, and it gets worse from there, said Amy Miller, legal director of ACLU of Nebraska.

Lancaster County can keep kids isolated for as long as 15 days. Confinement logs from Lancaster County Youth Services demonstrate what the report calls the arbitrary and subjective use of solitary confinement as a form of punishment.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services can keep youths isolated for as long as 90 days, the same as adults. Sarpy County has no written policy.

Dawn Renee Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the prisons use restrictive housing as necessary for youths tried and sentenced as adults. Separation of an inmate from the general population is for "the safety, security and good order of the facility." People in restrictive housing have routine interaction with medical and mental health staff, other facility staff and others assigned to that gallery, she said.

Wardens can review decisions and allow for appeal.

The agency is working with the Vera Institute of Justice and the Safe Alternatives to Segregation Initiative, the ACLU, Disability Rights of Nebraska and the Ombudsman's office to develop regulations for use of restriction.

Given the length of time it's subjecting kids to solitary confinement, Nebraska is an outlier, said Amy Fettig, senior staff counsel with the ACLU National Prison Project.

Experts say solitary confinement refers to any physical and social isolation. It does not include short intervention time-out practices used to help manage behavior.

ACLU surveyed all correctional facilities housing juveniles in Nebraska, including two run by the state and five by counties, asking about policies and logs of time juveniles spend in solitary.

The solitary confinement of children is suspect from a legal and policy perspective, the report said. It can cause extreme psychological, physical and developmental harm.

In solitary, kids can be denied the education, programming and treatment they need to rehabilitate, Fettig said.

"You're basically locking a kid in a box, and then expecting that to turn out well," she said. "And unfortunately, as we know from statistics of self-harm and suicide, it doesn't turn out well."

A tragic consequence of the solitary confinement of youth, the report said, is the increased risk of suicide and self-harm, including cutting and other self-mutilation. Research by the U.S. Department of Justice showed more than 50 percent of all suicides in juvenile facilities occurred while young people were isolated, and more than 60 percent of young people who killed themselves in custody had a history of being held in isolation.

Solitary doesn't solve behavioral problems, Fettig said. Like adults, when kids are locked up with no one to talk to for hours and days at a time, they become angry and frustrated. Mental health problems are exacerbated and they they have breakdowns, or violence ensues.

Isolating kids has been done for years with nobody noticing, Fettig said. But the public is noticing now, and it is saying enough is enough. There are better solutions, she said.

The ACLU found a wide range of policy and practices across the facilities it studied. Among the findings of most concern are these.

* Douglas and Scotts Bluff counties lack systems to track or log the amount of time spent in solitary confinement.

* Nebraska Department of Correctional Services allows the use of solitary for up to 90 days when experts agree that lasting damage to a young person happens after four hours.

Nebraska reforms suggested in the report included these.

* Join the growing number of states banning solitary confinement for youth.

* Limit use of solitary confinement to last-resort situations and for no more than four hours.

* Provide due-process and an appeals process.

* Require permission from a facility director for placement of a youth in solitary beyond four hours and mandatory mental health assessments of those who are.

* Mandate reporting for facilities' use of solitary.

* Mandate staff training on alternatives to solitary.

The Nebraska Legislature addressed adult solitary confinement with legislation (LB598) in 2015. This report presents an opportunity to focus on more specific issues for juveniles, Conrad said.

"We can't let these kids keep falling through the cracks."




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Resources for all concerned with culture of authoritarianism in society, banalisation of communalism, (also chauvinism, parochialism and identity politics) rise of the far right in India (and with occasional information on other countries of South Asia and beyond)
Since a ruling by California's 2nd District Court of Appeal in 2013, a consumer's lawsuit against a corporation for falsely labeling products as "organic" went something like this: "Sorry, can't."

That's because the ruling made it impossible for those lawsuits to even be heard. According to the court, it was not the state's job to police the "organic" label. Rather, it was the duty of the federal government. They're the ones who should be putting together a national standard after all, not the states.

But, that's all about to change. In December, the California Supreme Court overturned that decision.

While ruling on a case between a consumer and Herb Thyme Farms Inc. -- the former claiming the defendant mixed organic and non-organic herbs and labeled them all "100% organic" -- the court first had to decide whether or not they had jurisdiction to rule on the case. After mulling it over, the court figured any ruling would actually help the process of putting together a national standard:

"Accordingly, state lawsuits alleging intentional organic mislabeling promote, rather than hinder, Congress's purposes and objectives," Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar wrote for the unanimous court.

So, while the specific suit has yet to be concluded, the biggest takeaway from the battle is that consumers can now file lawsuits against corporations for their improper "organic" claims. Will this help bring about much-needed change to how the label is regulated? Or will it simply mire the courts in an avalanche of lawsuits?

"I don't predict a surge of lawsuits," wrote Alexis Baden-Mayer, the Political Director for the Organic Consumers Association, in an email. "There are very few areas where the organic rules aren't being followed."

In other words, the Herb Thyme Farms suit is an outlier in terms of an organization trying to get around the regulations. Not to say there aren't others out there -- and now, they are more likely to be taken to court -- but this decision isn't going to suddenly overwhelm the system with consumers claiming their organic food isn't really organic.

That doesn't mean the whole landscape will remain untouched. Rather, Baden-Mayer expects more lawsuits involving areas where the "organic" label doesn't have strict regulations yet.

"We may see more lawsuits involving personal care products falsely labeled as 'organic,' an area that USDA doesn't police," Baden-Mayer wrote. "Or 'organic' infant formulas that have several synthetic ingredients in them."

The suits, then, could be a way towards figuring out what the organic label means across the entire spectrum of products, not just food. This may be ultimately the biggest effect this California Supreme Court decision has on the label.

"The USDA defines organic, and they enforce that definition for food," Baden-Mayer wrote. "So when consumers see other products, like body-care, labeled organic, they expect those products to meet the same standard. Now that there's a threat of enforcement, we'll see fewer body-care products labeled organic, but the ones that are, we'll know meet the same organic standard as food and that's a very high standard."

As for how this affects the "natural" label on foods -- which, remember, means absolutely nothing -- remains to be seen.

"The FDA has opened a public comment period up on the definition of 'natural,' so if a stricter definition were to be adopted, it could probably be enforced through the courts in a similar fashion," Baden-Mayer wrote. "Still, we're not going to see detailed regulations for 'natural' like we have for 'organic.'"

Perhaps the biggest thing to watch out for is if other states follow California's lead on the issue.

"I do think that California's decision, while not binding on other states, is a good precedent for other states to follow, and will likely act as a deterrent to organic fraud," Baden-Mayer wrote.

After all, there's a reason for the saying "As California goes, so goes the rest of the country."

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Please stop using the word burnout. You are not burned out. Youve been abused. Lets get the diagnosis right.

We enter medicine as inspired, intelligent, compassionate humanitarians. Soon were cynical and exhausted. How did all these totally amazing and high-functioning people get so fd up so fast? Attention medical students and doctors: Its not your fault.

Burnout is physical and mental collapse caused by overwork.

So why blame the victims?

The fact is medical students and physicians are collapsing because they are suffering from acute on chronic abuse. At some medical schools, 100 percent of students report abuse.

Do you think this gets better? Physicians are overworked and overwhelmed with bureaucratic bullsh*t during most of their careers. They are trapped in assembly-line big-box clinics where they are treated like factory workers and berated for not seeing enough patients per day. These are human rights abuses in our nations hospitals. This doctor worked seven days in a row with almost no sleep!

And the doctor below. Think shes burned out? Nope. She has been abused!

Docs, stop playing nice in the sandbox. You are being abused.

You cant be a victim and healer at the same time.

Only you can stop this.

How do you know if youre being abused at work?

You dont get lunch or bathroom breaks. You are forced to work multiple-day shifts. You are not allowed to sleep. You are forced to see unsafe numbers of patients. You can never seem to find work-life balance. You are threatened verbally, financially  even physically. You are bullied. And if you ask for help, youre called a slacker or worse.

If any of this sounds familiar, its not your fauly.

You are a victim of abuse.

So what should you do? Sign up for a resiliency training? Meditate? Take deep breaths? Your goal should not be to cope with abuse. Your goal should be to stop it.

Physician burnout is a diagnosis that blames the victim, not the perpetrator. The term physician burnout is physician abuse. It implies that YOU are to blame, not the system, not perpetrators of the mistreatment.

To prevent burnout, health care institutions may offer resiliency classes to train doctors to prioritize self-care and manage their emotions. Warning: You can not meditate your way out of abuse. You can not take enough deep breaths in a year to end your abuse.

What you must do: If you are being abused, you must leave your abuser. I know its scary. But you are not alone. Need help with your escape route? Call me! I escaped. You can too.

Pamela Wible pioneered the community-designed ideal medical clinic and blogs at Ideal Medical Care. She is the author of Pet Goats and Pap Smears. Watch her TEDx talk, How to Get Naked with Your Doctor. She hosts the physician retreat, Live Your Dream, to help her colleagues heal from grief and reclaim their lives and careers.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Would my white lab coat be better put to use when I carve the Christmas roast than when seeing patients?

After all, we know that these coats can be covered with pathogens, including drug-resistant ones, which may be transmitted to patients. They are cleaned infrequently: In a survey of physicians, nearly 58 percent said they laundered their white coats monthly or never. Less than 3 percent washed them daily or every other day. What is the harm in adopting a bare below the elbows policy for health care professionals  as has been done in the United Kingdom  to reduce the chance of transmission?

Philip Lederer, an infectious disease specialist in Boston, is one of the latest to argue that the white coat, long a symbol of the medical profession, ought to go the way of the nurses cap. On his informative and frequently entertaining White Coats website, he lays out a convincing case as to why we should voluntarily stop wearing white coats. While raising the infection risks, he points out that the coats are not solely the mark of physicians, but also physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses and other health care professionals. White coats are so widely worn they no longer serve to identify who the doctors are. White coats do not make you a better clinician or improve your fund of knowledge. Theyre just a habit. And I think they should be retired, he writes. The Boston Globe recently picked up on his efforts and highlighted the issue, as did National Public Radio.

Will this be the tipping point or just another scientific issue that goes on unresolved? The white coat debate may be new to some, but it has been raised on and off for the past several years within the infection control community, with no clear end in sight. The Boston Globe reported that there is just one organization in the U.S. that encourages clinicians to hang up these coats: Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

Show me the data

In the medical community, like many scientific communities, we frequently demand convincing evidence before committing to new protocols and policies, or before approving a new drug or device. Yet there are cases in which clamoring for evidence or demanding that evidence come from randomized clinical trials can serve to redirect and deflect arguments, a sort of scientific filibuster.

On this debate, this deflection often involves pointing out that there has been no trial to clearly demonstrate that the coats are responsible for hospital-acquired infections. Such a trial would cost many millions of dollars, and even then, the results may not be definitive.

Certainly, we benefit when the efficacy and safety of a new cancer drug is determined in a clinical trial. But arguing that we need a trial to establish the infection risk presented by white coats, Lederer says, is akin to saying that we need to prove its safer to wear a parachute before jumping out of an airplane. We dont need clinical trials when the theory is strong  a person with no parachute will almost certainly die  the causal relationship between the intervention and outcome is direct and short, and the outcome is immediately observable and unambiguous.

Few things in medicine have these attributes. Theories are uncertain or evolving, causal pathways circuitous and long, and outcomes delayed and difficult to measure. But the white coat issue comes close.

Moving the debate forward

What is missing from the white coat debate and many others is a framework for resolving the tension and uncertainty to move forward. Such a framework would focus on clearly identifying what problem we are trying to solve and might include answering:

What do we know now?

What dont we know?

What would it cost to get better information?

If we take action and our hypothesis  white coats cause infections  is correct, what are the potential benefits? If we act and this hypothesis is incorrect, what are the risks?

If we dont take action, what are the potential benefits and risks?

How might we mitigate these risks or enhance the benefits?

My stance: We could voluntarily ditch the white coats without needing a clinical trial to tell us its OK. We know that white coats can carry pathogens, and it is logical to think that germs could be transmitted from physician to patient. Given that confirming this theory could be prohibitively expensive, we can look at the implications of acting and not acting. While the risks of maintaining the white coat tradition are clear  potentially more infections and preventable deaths  the risks of removing this potent symbol of professionalism would be less significant, though certainly real for some clinicians. How would patients react? Studies disagree on whether they prefer the white coats  some may find them reassuring, but others may see them as elitist.

Some experts may argue that we should instead focus on proven infection control practices, such as hand hygiene. Yet its hard to see how voluntarily giving up your white coat would distract from that. It may even raise awareness in general about the importance of hand hygiene once clinicians consider the pervasiveness of germs on their attire, stethoscopes, and keyboards. The risks of doing nothing seem much greater than of making the change.

The real cost of abandoning white coats, it seems, has less to do with preventing infections and more to do with the potential emotional or social consequences. We often say that people do not fear change itself; rather, they fear loss. Symbols and rituals play important roles in our lives, and loss of these may cause distress for some. To influence change, we need to seek to understand and mitigate that loss of perceived stature or power. Can we replace the white coat with a new symbol that says, I am a physician? I am not sure what that would be, but if we found an answer, it might help advance this debate.

Peter Pronovost is an anesthesiologist and director, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. He blogs at Voices for Safer Care, where this article originally appeared.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
TUESDAY, Jan. 5, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- A well-known antifungal drug used for vaginal yeast infections may be linked to a slightly increased risk of miscarriage, according to a study of more than 1.4 million Danish pregnancies.

Of the more than 3,300 women who took oral fluconazole (Diflucan) in the 7th through 22nd week of pregnancy, 147 had a miscarriage, compared with 563 miscarriages among the more than 13,000 women who did not take the drug, the researchers found.

"From our study, we can only see that women who have been treated with oral fluconazole more often experience miscarriages than untreated women and women who used a topical [vaginal] antifungal," said lead researcher Ditte Molgaard-Nielsen, an epidemiologist at the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen.

However, the study cannot prove that fluconazole causes miscarriages, she added.

"Our findings cannot precisely show whether fluconazole causes miscarriage. We cannot rule out that fluconazole-treated women differ from untreated women in ways that are associated with an increased risk of miscarriage," Molgaard-Nielsen said.

She added that until more data are available on the association between fluconazole and the risk of miscarriage, the drug should be prescribed cautiously to pregnant women.

The report was published in the Jan. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Vaginal yeast infections are common during pregnancy. In the United States, it is estimated that 10 percent of pregnant women will develop one. Treatment is either a topical antifungal cream or the oral drug fluconazole, Molgaard-Nielsen said.

"Topical antifungals (vaginal suppositories) are first-line treatment for pregnant women, but a small number of pregnant women receive oral treatment with fluconazole, for example in cases of recurrence, severe symptoms, or when topical treatment fails. But oral fluconazole may also be used as first treatment by personal preference," she said.

Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said that fluconazole is the only oral drug used to treat yeast infections.

"Women who are trying to become pregnant or who are pregnant should avoid fluconazole," Wu said. "For these women, a topical medicine is the preferred treatment."

The researchers also looked at the association between fluconazole and stillbirth. Although fluconazole was tied to an increased risk of miscarriage, it did not significantly increase the risk of stillbirth, Molgaard-Nielsen said. Among the more than 5,300 women who took fluconazole from the 7th week of pregnancy to birth, 21 had a stillbirth, compared with 77 stillbirths among the more than 21,500 women who did not use the drug.

"Although the risk of stillbirth was not significantly increased, this should be investigated further," she added.

For the study, Molgaard-Nielsen and colleagues collected data on more than 1.4 million pregnancies from 1997 to 2013. They compared women who used oral fluconazole during pregnancy to those who didn't.

Dr. Jill Rabin, the co-chief of the division of ambulatory care at the Women's Health Programs-PCAP Services at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said she prefers using topical treatments for yeast infections because of the side effects of fluconazole, such as flu-like symptoms.

Rabin said that all vaginal yeast infections are not the same and treatment needs to be targeted to the specific type of infection.

Moreover, symptoms that appear to be a yeast infection may be something else, she added. "Women should not assume that if they have a discharge and an itch that it is a yeast infection," Rabin said.

Rabin cautioned against trying to treat these symptoms with over-the-counter drugs. "Women should not try to treat themselves, especially if they are pregnant," she said. "You want to call your doctor, not Doctor Google."

More information

For more on vaginal yeast infections, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Lenovo Vibe S1 Lite launched



The Chinese smartphone-maker launched a new budget smartphone, Vibe S1 Lite, which, as the name suggests, is a toned-down version of last year's Lenovo Vibe S1. Lenovo Vibe S1 Lite seems a pretty good deal despite being a downgraded version of the Vibe S1. It has most features intact, such as a 5-inch Full HD display with 440ppi, 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with PDAF, dual-tone LED flash, and BSI and an impressive 8MP selfie camera, which also comes with an LED flash. Read More...


About eighteen months ago the international price of WTI Crude Oil, at the close of June 2014, was $105.93 per barrel. Flash-forward to today; the price of WTI Crude Oil was just holding above $38.00 per barrel, a drastic fall of more than 65% since June 2014. I will point out several reasons behind this sharp, sudden, and what now seems to be prolonged slump.

The Big Push

Despite a combination of factors triggering the fall in prices, the biggest push came from the U.S. Shale producers. From 2010 to 2014, oil production in the U.S. increased from 5,482,000 bpd to 8,663,000 (a 58% increase), making the U.S. the third largest oil-producing country in the world.

The next big push came from Iraq whose production increased from 2,358,000 bpd in 2010 to 3,111,000 bpd in 2014 (a 32% increase), mostly resulting from the revival of its post-war oil industry.

The country-wide financial crunch, and the need for the government to increasingly export more to pay foreign companies for their production contracts and continue the fight against militants in the country took production levels to the full of its current capacity.

In addition; global demand remained flat, growing at just 1.1% and even declining for some regions during 2014. Demand for oil in the U.S. grew just 0.6% against production growth of16% during 2014.

Europe registered extremely slow growth in demand, and Asia was plagued by a slowdown in China which registered the lowest growth in its demand for oil in the last five years. Consequently, a global surplus was created courtesy of excess supply and lack of demand, with the U.S. and Iraq contributing to it the most.

The Response

In response to the falling prices, OPEC members met in the November of 2014, in Vienna, to discuss the strategy forward. Advocated by Saudi Arabia, the most influential member of the cartel, along with support from other GCC countries in the OPEC, the cartel reluctantly agreed to maintain its current production levels.

This sent WTI Crude Oil and Brent Oil prices below $70, much to the annoyance of Russia (non-OPEC), Nigeria and Venezuela, who desperately needed oil close to $90 to meet their then economic goals.

For Saudi Arabia, the strategy was to leverage their low-cost of production advantage in the market and send prices falling beyond such levels so that high-cost competitors (U.S. Shale producers are the highest cost producers in the market) are driven out and the market defines a higher equilibrium price from the resulting correction. The GCC region, with a combined $2.5trillion in exchange reserves, braced itself for lower prices, even to the levels of $20 per barrel.

The Knockout Punch

By the end of September 2014, according to data from Baker Hughes, U.S. Shale rigs registered their highest number in as many years at 1,931. However, they also registered their very first decline to 1,917 at the end of November 2014, following OPECs first meeting after price falls and its decision to maintain production levels. By June 2015, in time for the next OPEC meeting, U.S. Shale rigs had already declined to just 875 by the end of May; a 54% decline.

The Saudi Arabia strategy was spot on; a classic real-life example of predatory price tactics being used by a market leader, showing its dominant power in the form of deep foreign-exchange pockets and the low costs of production. Furthermore, on the week ending on the date of the most recent OPEC meeting held on December 4th, 2015, the U.S. rig count was down even more to only 737; a 62% decline. Despite increased pressure from the likes of Venezuela, the GCC lobby was able to ensure that production levels were maintained for the foreseeable future.

Now What?

Moving forward; the U.S. production will decline by 600,000 bpd, according to a forecast by the International Energy Agency. Furthermore, news from Iraq is that its production will also decline in 2016 as the battle with militants gets more expensive and foreign companies like British Petroleum have already cut operational budgets for next year, hinting production slowdowns. A few companies in the Kurdish region have even shut down all production, owing to outstanding dues on their contracts with the government.

Hence, for the coming year, global oil supply is very much likely to be curtailed. However, Irans recent disclosure of ambitions to double its output once sanctions are lifted next year, and call for $30 billion in investment in its oil and gas industry, is very much likely to spoil any case for a significant price rebound.

The same also led Saudi Arabia and its GCC partners to turn down any requests from other less-economically strong members of OPEC to cut production, in their December 2015, meeting. Under the current scenarios members like Venezuela, Algeria and Nigeria, given their dependence on oil revenues to run their economies, cannot afford to cut their own production but, as members of the cartel, can plea to cut its production share to make room for price improvements, which they can benefit from i.e. forego its market share.

Its Not Over Until Ive Won

With news coming from Iran, and the successful delivery of a knockout punch to a six-year shale boom in the U.S., Saudi Arabia feared it would lose share to Iran if it cut its own production. Oil prices will be influenced increasingly by the political scuffles betweenSaudi Arabia and its allies and Iran. The deadlock and increased uncertainty over Saudi Arabia and Irans ties have sent prices plunging further. The Global Hedge Fund industry is increasing its short position for the short-term, which stood at 154 million barrels on November 17th, 2015, when prices hit $40 per barrel; all of this indicating a prolonged bear market for oil.

One important factor that needs to be discussed is the $1+ trillions of junk bonds holding up the shale and other marginal producers. As you know, that has been teetering and looked like a crash not long ago. The pressure is still there. As the shale becomes more impaired, the probability of a high-yield market crash looks very high. If that market crashes, what happens to oil? Wouldnt there be feedback effects between the oil and the crashing junk market, with a final sudden shutdown of marginal production? Could this be the catalyst for a quick reversal of oil price?

The strategic interests, primarily of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; the Saudis have strategically decided to go all in to maintain their market share by maximizing oil production, even though the effect on prices is to drive them down even further. In the near term, they have substantial reserves to cover any budget shortfalls due to low prices. More importantly, in the intermediate term, they want to force marginal producers out of business and damage Irans hopes of reaping a windfall due to the lifting of sanctions. This is something they have in common with the strategic interests of the U.S. which also include damaging the capabilities of Russia and ISIS. Its certainly complicated sorting out the projected knock-on effects, but no doubt they are there and very important.

Ill Show You How Great I Am

Moreover, despite a more than 50% decline in its oil revenues, the International Monetary Fund has maintained Saudi Arabias economy to grow at 3.5% for 2015, buoyed by increasing government spending and oil production. According to data by Deutsche Bank and IMF; in order to balance its fiscal books, Saudi Arabia needs an oil price of $105. But the petroleum sector only accounts for 45% of its GDP, and as of June 2015, according to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the country had combined foreign reserves of $650 billion. The only challenge for Saudi Arabia is to introduce slight taxes to balance its fiscal books. As for the balance of payments deficit; the country has asserted its will to depend on its reserves for the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

The above are some of the advantages which only Saudi Arabia and a couple of other GCC members in the OPEC enjoy, which will help them sustain their strategy even beyond 2016 if required. But I believe it wont take that long. International pressure from other OPEC members, and even the global oil corporations lobby will push leaders on both sides to negotiate a deal to streamline prices.

With the U.S. players more or less out by the end of 2016, the OPEC will be in more control of price fluctuations and, therefore, in light of any deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia (both OPEC members) and even Russia (non-OPEC), will alter global supply for prices to rebound, thus controlling prices again.

What we see now in oil price manipulation is just the mid-way point. Lots of opportunity in oil and oil related companies will slowly start to present themselves over the next year which I will share my trades and long term investment pays with subscribers of my newsletter at TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com

Chris Vermeulen
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Dave Dahlke, Port Orchard

Why is methane disaster being ignored?

I have to wonder how many global warming activists are aware or even care about a situation in California, the pride of environmentalism. You would think that global warming activists would treat this situation as worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, since this has its roots in so-called global warming.

Since October there has been a massive methane leak in Aliso County, Los Angeles. This methane leak has been spewing methane into the air at an estimated 97,000 to 127,000 pounds per hour. Yes, you have read this right. Per hour. Just from this methane release it is also estimated that it has increased California's greenhouse output by 25 percent.

In case the global warming activists want to help out, it is estimated that this leak will not be contained until late February or late March. If anyone is wondering, methane gas can be up to 25 times more powerful than CO2 as a global warming gas. I assume this would put California's carbon credits into the toilet.

I have to wonder why the White House hasn't publicly responded to this situation. After all, it hasn't hesitated to state its desire to support legislation to control cow flatulence in support of its climate control agenda.
Stuff reports:

John Lord once walked into a federal government building with $2 million in cash in his backpack to pay his taxes for the cannabis he sells. Due to federal laws, he couldnt get a bank account to bank his drug profits. Its different now. His customers still have to pay cash, but he can now transfer money to the Internal Revenue Service come tax time. Lord is the chief executive of Livwell  the largest marijuana dealer in Colorado, one of a few states that have legalised cannabis. He sells in excess of $80 million worth of product annually. He wont talk profit margins. Not too bad for a one-time Te Aroha dairy farmer. He moved to the States back in 1998, first to manufacture and sell baby products. He sold that business in 2008. Cannabis is much more lucrative. Lord has a staff of 500, owns 20 retail stores and is acquiring more this month.

500 staff is a pretty large business.

The business itself has grown. The company pays full health care, which is a big deal over in the States. We have a retirement plan for employees, paid leave and we try to train and hire from within so it gives our employees the chance of climbing the ladder.

Sounds better than being a black market operator.

But like any good drug dealer, he knows his products inside out, not least because he uses it. Its not a product that had touched my life. I was ambivalent to it. I was aware of its existence. I just wasnt interested in trying the product then. I was 54 when I first tried it. I use cannabis topically every day. Ive got a busted up knuckle from rugby days. Hes not the only senior citizen who uses the products. Every week, a bus load from the local retirement village hobble into his stores to stock up.

Heh, the best outing of the week.

Not only have the gangs gone, Lord said crime has dropped in Colorado. And alcohol consumption is down. Just a couple of months ago, cannabis taxes exceeded alcohol taxes in the state by double. Its huge, he said.

Lord has a vested interest but Ill be very interested to see an analysis of the change in crime rates, health problems etc after say three years of legalisation.

New Zealand and Australia controversially legalised prostitution and the world was going to come to an end and it simply did not and so society was mature enough to handle it. The same has happened with cannabis in Colorado and several other states and we just havent had the social problems. Those who are using the product are usually those who were traditionally using the product prior to legalisation anyway. And those people are now using a safe product, at a safe retail store and a well-lit-up car park outside and a security guy standing there and not a dark alley somewhere. Its made for a safer situation for something that was existing anyway.

It sounds like it has worked well, but again this is a vested interest.

As of a month ago, the Colorado Cannabis Industry was directly employing 25,500 people in legitimate, high-paying jobs.

It became a little difficult for politicians who were perhaps feeling out of their depth, once they understood there were a huge number of genuine jobs coming from this and people were not sitting around in a circle singing Kumbaya and were doing a great job, with prospects, with benefits, all of that sort of thing. Its been interesting watching the evolution of the politicians in their regard to the industry. Local law enforcement is with the industry, too. The local police have embraced the legalisation completely. If they go to break up a party, they usually put their backs to the giggly guys in the corner and watch the drunkards in the other corner. And I think you would find every policeman would tell you that.

Probably true, but the mix can turn some people very aggressive.

Its a polarising topic. Other people sell alcohol. Other people milk cows. I grow cannabis. You can turn around and rail on any industry. You can turn around to somebody brewing beer and say: your product causes all sorts of social problems. With cannabis, we are finding way less social problems compared to alcohol and the great Colorado social experiment is proving that.

As I said I look forward to some independent reviews.

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The Herald reports:

Saudi Arabia has severed relations with Iran amid the furor that erupted over the execution by the Saudi authorities of a prominent Shiite cleric. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubair told reporters in Riyadh that the Iranian ambassador in Tehran had been given 48 hours to leave the country, citing concerns that Tehrans Shiite government was undermining the security of the Sunni kingdom. Saudi Arabian diplomats had already departed Iran after angry mobs trashed and burned the Saudi embassy in Tehran overnight Saturday, in response to the execution of Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr earlier in the day.

Allowing a mob to attack and trash the Saudi Embassy brings back memories of what they did to the US Embassy in 1979.

The Saudi executions were appalling, but allowing diplomatic immunity to be violated will isolate Iran.

Irans supreme leader warned on Sunday that there would be divine retribution for Saudi Arabias rulers after the execution of a renowned Shiite cleric, sustaining the soaring regional tensions that erupted in the wake of the killing.

There wont be any divine retribution, just man-made retribution.

Iran carried out 694 executions in the first half of last year, according to an Amnesty International statement in July. Saudi Arabia, with a population nearly a third smaller than Irans, carried out 157 in 2015, according to Amnesty and media reports.

Both appallingly high levels.

I dont believe any state should have the power to execute its own citizens.

Likewise I believe all religions should promote life, and never justify death for alleged sins.

Islam will never get past the fixation extreme elements have on causing death when Islamic Governments execute so many people.

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Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick
SHARE Roane State Community College instructor Barry Bryant leads an EMT certification class funded by Rural/Metro Tuesday at the companys headquarters. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Ed Marcum of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Rural/Metro of East Tennessee announced Tuesday that it will add as many as 60 emergency personnel in an initiative in which it is footing the training costs, offering bonuses and taking other measures to put more emergency workers in the field.

Since Rural/Metro was acquired by Colorado-based American Medical Response (AMR), in October, AMR wants to boost Rural/Metro's presence in the region, Chris Blach, Rural/Metro vice president of operations in Knox County, said Tuesday at a press event at ambulance service provider's West Knoxville headquarters.

"At the same time, we are seeing fewer people entering the EMS (emergency medical service) field," he said. "What are we doing about it? Today we are announcing that we are offering a $15,000 signing bonus for all qualified paramedics and a $7,500 signing bonus for all qualified EMTs (emergency medical technicians)."

These bonuses will be offered through March 4, or until Rural/Metro has hired 60 EMTs and paramedics, Blach said. Rural/Metro also is paying for qualified students to take EMT training provided by Roane State Community College at the Rural/Metro headquarters at 10410 Gallows Point Drive. Forty two students are taking the course now.

Rural/Metro also has replaced some older ambulances with five new models, for a total investment of $500,000, Blach said.

The cost of training and an increasing level of expertise required to become an EMT have been discouraging people from getting into the field, Blach said. In Tennessee, becoming an EMT generally involves a semester-long course at a community college at a cost of about $3,500. Recently, state law has been changed to require advanced training that adds another semester and another $3,500 to the total.

Nicole Gunter, a Knox County resident enrolled in the Roane State Course at Rural/Metro, said she would probably try to get into emergency services even if Rural/Metro was not paying for her training, but she is grateful that it is.

"The help is absolutely wonderful," she said. "It is providing people a much better chance to get into this than they would have if they had to pay out of pocket and get student loans and have that burden."

Rural/Metro is paying for her basic EMT course under the stipulation that shes agree to work for the company for at least a year, Gunter said.

Gunter said she would like to eventually become a paramedic.

"The biggest thing is I want to help my community. I want to help people and be there for others. If I can be that little spark of hope for someone, then I would be absolutely satisfied," she said.
Hillary Bratton

"Tears of My Pillow"

Rating: 4

Hillary Bratton pulled off a coup by getting the talents of songwriter Barry Reynolds for all of the songs on her new release, "Tears on My Pillow but the Rest of the Bed's Ok." Reynolds is known for his work on Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English" as well as additional songs by Faithfull and scores of other artists ranging from the Brazilian Girls to the Neville Brothers.

Meanwhile, Bratton scored again by landing a gang of seasoned instrumentalists, including Reynolds on guitar, to lay an elegant, jazzy foundation for "Tears."

Yet for all that stellar help, Bratton is outdone by no one, subtly filling her commanding vocal delivery with nuanced textures to create a soul-filled anchor for the absorbing instrumentation.

A native of Los Angeles who also lived for years in both New York City and Paris, Bratton brings an urbane air to the sophisticated sound, making "Tears" feel like the ultimate cosmopolitan lounge. Her voice rises from the seductively smoky context of "Square Moon" like a crystalline beacon to open "Tears," and later her steady chill provides mesmerizing contrast to the sizzling funk of "Give Me Love."

In the mournful, blues-kissed waltz of "Back on the Starting Line" she longs to just, "talk for a while, without the swords," though she ultimately wonders if she even has the will to try to save the troubled relationship. From there, "Tears" flows into a powerful three-song finale  the stately, and penetrating, lament "Missing You by Miles," the disquietingly sober "Times Square" and the lonely-beyond-words "O My Aching Heart."

Although sadness suits Bratton, she's effective with other tones, for instance tapping into the vibe-resonant "Only Yesterday" for sultry lines like, "Darling, was that you last night?/I saw you in the candlelight/You're beautiful."

A couple of stilted arrangements sully the mix, but otherwise "Tears" is a consistent joy.
Howard H. Baker Jr. Federal Courthouse Tuesday, Jun. 17, 2014. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Two brothers have been indicted and a third man charged in a fraud conspiracy case in which authorities allege the Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens were stolen and used to craft fake documents for illegal immigrants seeking jobs.

Brothers Gabriel Climaco Machuca and Juan Climaco Machuca are named in a federal indictment recently unsealed in U.S. District Court charging the pair with conspiracy to commit identification document fraud and unlawful production and transfer of identification documents.

Documents: Criminal complaint in fake documents case | U.S. District Court indictment

A third suspect, Francisco Esau Rodriquez Sanchez, is charged in a criminal complaint with identification document fraud. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Agent John A. Witsell III describes Sanchez as a broker who bought fake documents from Gabriel Machuca and then resold them to illegal immigrants. An exact figure is not listed, but documents suggest the ring netted tens of thousands of dollars.

Search warrant applications allege federal agents have been investigating the ring since July when an undercover agent sent Gabriel Machuca a "passport style photo of a fellow agent" and asked him to craft documents that included a Social Security card, a Puerto Rican birth certificate and a Tennessee identification card. Gabriel Machuca, identified as the ringleader, provided the documents  using the Social Security number of an actual U.S. citizen  for $500, according to court records.

Machuca was living at an apartment on Kim Watt Road at the time with his brother, who records say has since confessed he often served as delivery man for the documents, and met the undercover agent at Lorena's Mexican Food & Market on Lonas Drive to exchange the documents for cash, the affidavit stated.

In November, Machuca moved to a home on Thorngrove Pike, and agents surreptitiously installed a camera on a utility pole as part of the probe, Witsell wrote. Agents also sought court orders to tap phones and, because they initially did not know Sanchez's identity, obtain real-time tracking information on his phone.

The undercover agent then placed another order for 10 "good Social Security numbers with supporting counterfeited North Carolina identification cards," Witsell wrote. The agent met Machuca at a Waffle House on Asheville Highway and paid him $2,500, the affidavit stated.

Agents raided Machuca's home on Dec. 17. His brother was there and allegedly confessed he began helping after Gabriel Machuca supplied him fake documents.

Witsell says wire taps show the documents were used by illegal immigrants to get jobs. The fraud scheme, he wrote, has spanned at least three years in Knoxville.
By Gerald Witt of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre named the county's law director and the Knox County Commission's 9-2 vote last month against extending his contract among contributors to the political landscape leading to his resignation.

Law Director Richard "Bud" Armstrong and commissioners said Monday their problem was with the contract's language, not with McIntyre.

Some elected officials agreed politics are at play, but on the school board.

After the 2016 election, a majority of the school board is expected to shift to members critical of McIntyre. Ahead of that expected outcome, McIntyre offered to step down in July with a severance equal to one year of his salary  $227,256.

"I did think he used some strong words in describing (the future board), saying it's going to be dysfunctional or antagonistic," Knox County Commission Chairman Dave Wright said.

Wright defended the commission's 9-2 vote in December against McIntyre's contract. The school board appoints superintendents and negotiates their contracts, but Wright said the commission's no vote was because the contract was not written in proper legal language.

"That was not a vote about McIntyre," Wright said.

Armstrong said he found language he believed wasn't legally enforceable. Specifically, the package stretched McIntyre's contract further than Armstrong recommended, to 2019, and added a buyout worth the remainder of his time as superintendent if he were fired. That amount could have run to $650,000 or more.

"They (the school board) created a whole new contract, and then they passed it," Armstrong said.

Armstrong asked the Tennessee attorney general for an opinion, who told him to make his own decision.

As for McIntyre's mention of the law director in his decision to step down, Armstrong said he didn't take it personally.

"Meaning I ran him out of office? I don't think that's what he said at all," Armstrong said. "My decisions are not personal."

McIntyre's administration has been divisive enough to draw several new school board members in recent years who have run on platforms at least partially directed against the superintendent. Testing, teacher evaluations and other administrative policies have brought on a group of school board members with a friendly ear toward frustrated teachers, in particular.

With the expected election later this year of Tony Norman  a former Knox County teacher and a McIntyre critic  the board will have a majority of tilted against the superintendent. Norman is unopposed in the school board election.

Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett said he met with McIntyre on Sunday as both looked ahead to the election.

"(McIntyre is) looking at that 5-4 situation," Burchett said. "It could be contentious."

Burchett said he respected McIntyre's decision to leave, pending school board approval of the buyout proposal.

"Now we can focus our energy on where it should have been all along ... getting (students) prepared," Burchett said. "If he had stayed, I'm afraid that his prediction (of a battle with the school board) would be correct."

Some commissioners already looked ahead to possible replacements, although the commission has no say over the hiring of the superintendent.

"I would like to find someone who is local, who understands the culture," Commission Vice Chairman Bob Thomas said, adding he thought McIntyre did a good job.
Mayor Madeline Rogero delivers an address after being sworn into office for her second four-year term at the City County Building in Knoxville on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015. (ADAM LAU/NEWS SENTINEL)

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By News Sentinel staff

Breakfast

Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero has invited local lawmakers over to the City County Building for breakfast Wednesday, a week before the state legislative session begins.

The meeting will not be open to the public or the media, city spokesman Jesse Mayshark said. Exemptions in the state's sunshine law for members of the General Assembly allow them to hold closed-door meetings.

"This is the third year in a row we've done this," Mayshark said, "and the thinking behind it is that (while) we communicate with our delegation at various times throughout the year and especially during the session, as we get into session, it's much more about specific issues  this bill, that bill, whatever.

"This is a chance at the beginning of the session to touch base with all of them and list four or five things that we're interested in."

That list of issues includes bills on annexation by local governments, funding transportation projects and clarifying the guns in parks law, Mayshark said.

Mayshark said he wasn't sure who had RSVP'ed for the event, but that most lawmakers representing Knox County have attended in the past. The mayor also extended the invitation to state Sen. Doug Overbey, R-Maryville.

Packing heat

Texas' new law allowing gun-carry permit holders to carry their guns in plain view, effective Friday, generated considerable national media coverage. But Tennessee has allowed "open carry" for nearly 20 years, since the state enacted its handgun carry permit statute, which transferred issuance of carry permits from local sheriffs to the state.

Despite occasional mistaken references to "concealed-carry permits," Tennessee issues a handgun carry permit that does not require holders to conceal their handguns while carrying them in public. The 1996 Tennessee statute creating the permits and the regulatory scheme for their carry never required concealed carry, as a 2005 advisory opinion by the state attorney general made clear.

"Neither Tennessee Code 39-17-1351 (the handgun-carry permit statute), nor any other statute governing the carrying of firearms, requires the holder of a handgun carry permit to carry the handgun in a concealed manner," according to the opinion signed by Paul Summers, the attorney general at the time. "The plain meaning of the statutes governing, or prohibiting, the carrying of handguns and other weapons indicates that, in situations where the Legislature has permitted the carrying of handguns, the Legislature intended to authorize the carrying of handguns both openly and concealed."

The opinion is cited on the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security's website under frequently asked questions about Tennessee's handgun carry permit law.

Read it at https://www.tn.gov/safety/article/handgunfaqs.
In 1994 I published my second book, "And There Was Light!: The 120 Year History of Knoxville College." The title was taken from the school motto, "Let There Be Light!" For the most part that history followed events of the school from its formal opening on Sept. 6, 1876, to the administration of 1994. While I was aware of the things that led to the establishment of Knoxville College, I did not go into detail.

I recently went to the Knoxville College archives to re-read minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of North America from 1867 to 1879 to get the background of how the college came to be. The Presbyterian Church Board of Freedmen's Missions, by its reports, was dedicated and passionate about bettering the "heathens" that it oversaw. At the assembly meeting in Xenia, Ohio, on May 23, 1867, it asked for an appropriation of $21,000 to carry on its work in Vicksburg, Mississippi; Leavenworth, Kansas; Monmouth, Illinois; and Nashville and Knoxville.

Nashville, the largest of the missions, got $8,300, while Knoxville received $3,800. The school in Nashville had been organized by the Rev. Joseph G. McKee in 1863. The school in Knoxville was established by Robert Creswell in 1864. Creswell resigned on Sept. 10, 1866, and was replaced by the Rev. Richard Miller Patterson. McKee died in office on Sept. 25, 1868.

Although the church had a lot of resources, the Freedmen's Board was operating at a deficit of $11,000 in 1868. It said it needed $30,000 for the coming year. "This it seems to us was the very least we could ask from the Church in justice to the cause, and the great need and promising field spread out before us in the land. This is not a large sum for the United Presbyterian Church." They were aware that some 4 million newly freed slaves were on their own and needed help.

That 1868 report mentioned the work in Knoxville and named the staff and scope of their duties: "This station is composed of Knoxville proper, Eastport, Louisville, and Maryville. The yearly enrollment has been 84. The average daily attendance is 285. In Sabbath schools the enrollment has been 523, average attendance is 203. Mr. Moore reports that the pupils have shown a deep interest in their studies and a degree of improvement which contrast favorably with that of white children in similar schools."

By the May 25, 1870, report, the financial situation had improved, indicating that all mission school debt "has been liquidated." The teachers were living in a house rented for $20 per month. Although there were no tuition fees from the students, $78.98 had been received from other sources to buy fuel and take care of other expenses.

The mention of the school that would become Knoxville College was noted for the first time on May 24, 1871, when the Freedmen's report had the following: "Nothing has been done in reference to the establishment of a Normal school so necessary to success in the work of educating. The reason assigned is the want of funds. While urgent appeals have been made, the response from the churches has been feeble."

Again, the financial picture had changed by May 28, 1873, when the assembly reported, "Considerable sums of money are likely to be available from the sales of mission property in Knoxville, Nashville, and Vicksburg." The committee had looked at possible sites for the new school and believed that Nashville had enough educational institutions. It thought Knoxville was an open field for its work and was said to be "favorable in point of cheap living."
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Shortly before Christmas, the FBI officially said the gunman who attacked U.S. Navy and Marine personnel in Chattanooga on July 16 was inspired by a foreign terrorist organization.

While the label of terrorism for the act that killed five servicemen and wounded another is hardly a surprise, the official designation is important because it means that all six will receive the Purple Heart. After the FBI announcement, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said the Navy would move forward immediately to award the medals.

The Purple Heart is the award given to military personnel from all branches of the service wounded in combat. However, the award also can be given to servicemen and service women killed or wounded in a domestic attack if the attack was inspired by a foreign terrorist organization. It is definitely deserved for these six who were serving their country in the finest tradition at the time of the attack.

FBI Director James Comey did not say what convinced the FBI that the shooter, 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, was motivated by a foreign terrorist organization, except to note "there is competing foreign terrorist poison out there."

The FBI earlier had said that Abdulazeez had spent several months living with an uncle in Jordan in 2014. He grew up in Chattanooga and had graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The FBI earlier had called him a homegrown violent extremist, and his family said he had problems with drugs and suffered from depression that kept him from holding a job.

Abdulazeez opened fire at two military sites in Chattanooga on July 16. His first target was a military recruiting center on Lee Highway, wounding Marine Sgt. DeMonte Cheeley. The shooter then proceeded to the U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center on Amnicola Highway. At that site, he killed Marines Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Lance Cpl. Squire "Skip" Wells and Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith.

Within days after the FBI announcement, the Chattanooga Police Department released the names of the five officers involved in killing Abdulazeez in a gunfight at the Reserve Center. The department also officially ruled that the officers were justified in using deadly force.

The police encounter and gunfire exchange with Abdulazeez lasted only three to five minutes, the officers told The Chattanooga Times Free Press, but it seemed as though time was standing still. One officer was wounded in the exchange and was pulled to safety.

The police officers declined the title of "heroes," claiming that hundreds of first responders and police would react exactly as they did at the deadly turn of events. Whether they accept the hero status, the officers definitely deserve the accolades they have received for stopping a terror attack in progress.

Shortly after the attack, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, whose 3rd District includes Chattanooga, began the push for the servicemen to receive the Purple Heart. He said the decision to award the medals means the men will not be forgotten.

Indeed, they should not be forgotten  nor the act of terror that so violently took their lives while they were performing their duty to their country.
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I firmly believe people have the right to protest any cause they want. However, they must not be allowed to trample the rights of others to freely move about, travel, shop or to simply get home. The cowards that are allowing these protesters to decide who runs a college, police department or political office should be run out on a rail. It's no wonder businesses will not build in some of these cities as they fear being killed, looted and burned out. These same protesters stated they would and did disrupt Black Friday shopping by not allowing people past their lines. Whose community does that hurt? They are also allowed to decide what part of history should be removed  flags, monuments and graves. What is next, protesting linen manufacturers so they cannot make white sheets?

Norman Robinson, Sevierville
By Choi Sung-jin



Korean builders of plants and ships have opened the new year with good news about winning orders from abroad, industry sources said.



Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction said Monday it has won an order for a 670 billion-won ($564-million) project to build a coal-fired power plant, placed by Electricity of Vietnam, the state utility of the Southeast Asian country.



It is the extension of the "Vinh Tan 4" plant, a 600-megawatt power station in Binh Thuan, some 230 kilometers east of Ho Chi Minh City, company officials said. The Korean company won the project on the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) formula and plans to form a consortium with local partners to provide power-generating equipment by 2019.



"Beginning with the 1.4 trillion-won Mong Duong 2 thermal plant, we have won projects worth 7 trillion won in Vietnam in the past five years," said Kim Heon-tak, an executive in charge of Doosan Heavy's EPC team. "Vietnam is about to build power plants with combined capacity of 30 gigawatts by 2020, providing us with good business opportunities."



Chances are also high for Samsung Heavy Industries to win an order to build four VLCC (very large crude carriers)-class vessels, placed by a Chinese shipping company, the sources said.



Samsung Heavy is now conducting exclusive talks to build the four crude carriers with its prospective client, Tianjin Tianhai Investment, formerly Tianjin Shipping, after being selected as a qualified builder in a technological assessment by China National Technical Import and Export Corp. (CNTIC) on Dec. 12, the sources said.



Each vessel is priced at 100 billion won, and Tianjin Tianhai reportedly has an option contract under preparation for orders for another four VLCCs. If everything goes to Samsung Heavy's plan, the shipbuilder will be able to receive orders worth 800 billion in total from its Chinese client.



"As the standards for waste emissions have been strengthened for vessels to be built from this year, international shipping companies are paying greater attention to Korean shipbuilders who boast environmental and highly efficient technology," an industry executive said.




By Lee Hyo-sik





Cho Hwan-eik, CEO of KEPCO

Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) CEO Cho Hwan-eik will serve as the head of the state-run utility firm for one more year, government officials said Tuesday.

Cho, whose three-year term ended on Dec. 16, 2015, has remained in office as the selection of his successor was delayed.

Instead of appointing a new CEO, the government recently decided to let Cho, a former vice minister of commerce and industry, manage the utility firm, which has significantly bolstered its financial health under his leadership.

"Cho has been credited with turning KEPCO into a profitable and efficiently managed state enterprise over the past few years," said an official who declined to be named. "He is currently undergoing the approval process."

The company will hold a shareholders' meeting next month to approve Cho's reappointment. It will be made official once approved by President Park Geun-hye. Cho will then become the third KEPCO CEO to serve more than three years.

His consecutive term will likely enable the utility firm to continue its projects in a more coherent manner and will have a positive effect on its share prices.

"The extension of the term will remove uncertainties regarding CEO risks," a company official said. "We believe the reduction of risks will positively affect share prices."

KEPCO is widely expected to announce a record net profit for 2015, exceeding 10 trillion won.

Analysts are positive about the company's earnings outlook, betting its stock will outperform the stock market.

NH Investment & Securities expects the company to post a 10.4 trillion won operating profit this year, up 0.6 percent year-on-year.

"Falling oil prices will cut fuel costs, boosting its bottom line," the brokerage said in a report.

It said any cuts in the electricity rate this year will be less than 2.5 percent, limiting any negative impact on its earnings.

"Any electricity rate reduction will be limited," it said. "Any concerns over a negative impact on its earnings will be insignificant."

NH also said the company will continue to pay higher dividends to shareholders in line with improving earnings.

It forecast a favorable business environment for the company, with earnings remaining solid through 2016 and 2017, and added that the possibility of expansion of dividends will boost the stock value.
By Lee Hyo-sik





Kim Soo-cheon

Asiana Airlines CEO

Asiana Airlines, headed by CEO Kim Soo-cheon, is facing opposition from unionized workers over its sweeping restructuring measures aimed at bolstering its worsening bottom line.

Korea's second-largest flagship carrier has been struggling in recent years as it has had to reduce fares to compete with rapidly-emerging low-cost carriers while shouldering soaring labor and other operating costs.

In a bid to prop up its deteriorating financial health, the carrier has decided to close unprofitable routes, slash the number of branch offices at home and abroad, and outsource some of its operations to reduce labor costs.

However, the Asiana Airlines Labor Union, which represents cabin crews and other employees, is criticizing management, arguing that the company will in the end dismiss a large number of workers.

Since Sunday, union leaders have been staging a sit-in protest in front of Asiana's main hangar at Gimpo International Airport, western Seoul, calling on the company not to cut jobs just to save costs.

"Asiana's problems resulted from its parent group's failed takeover of Daewoo Engineering & Construction and Korea Express," the union said. "The carrier's debt-to-equity ratio was about 200 percent before it was forced to borrow money to help finance the acquisition of the two entities in the late 2000s. After that, the ratio soared to 700 percent."

Unionized workers said top management, not employees, should be held responsible for Asiana's deteriorating financial soundness. "The carrier cannot even cover interest payments. The CEO and senior executives, not workers, must make sacrifices to get the company back on track."

However, management said it has no intention of downsizing the workforce, stressing that it will take all possible steps to improve the bottom line.

"CEO Kim has promised that the company will not force workers to quit," an Asiana Airlines official said. "Besides job cuts, we will do what other carriers have done to bolster our operations."

He said the union had previously agreed to the restructuring. "We just don't understand why unionized workers now oppose the restructuring steps. Under any circumstances, the company will not dismiss a single employee."

On Dec. 30, Asiana Airlines said it will close three international routes next year. The route to Vladivostok will be closed in February, followed by Yangon and Bali in March.

Eleven routes bound for provincial areas in Japan and overnight flights to Southeast Asia will be transferred to the company's second low-cost carrier, Air Seoul, which will begin operations in June.

The carrier also plans to reduce its domestic branch offices from 23 to 14 and overseas offices from 128 to 96, while outsourcing some of its operations to reduce labor expenses. Some workers will be reassigned to new posts, it said, adding that it will cut the number of new recruits this year and also in 2017.

In the third quarter, Asiana earned 1.45 trillion won in sales, down 8.2 percent from a year earlier. Its operating profit fell 37 percent to 48.4 billion won.
By Lee Hyo-sik



E-Land has been making every effort to raise much-needed cash to improve its financial health. To do so, the mid-tier fashion-and-retail business group recently announced a plan to dispose of Kim's Club, a supermarket chain operating 36 stores nationwide, hoping that the sale would generate about 1 trillion won.



The group, headed by Chairman Park Sung-su, also plans by 2017 to list shares of E-Land Retail, which operates Kim's Club, department stores, outlets and other retail businesses, in order to secure much-needed cash.



Over the past few years, E-Land has been struggling with rising debts after borrowing large sums of money to finance multiple merger and acquisition (M&A) deals at home and abroad.



It also spent money on expanding its retail and fashion businesses in China. The company now runs nearly 7,000 restaurants, fashion shops and other retail stores across the world's second-largest economy.



The group said the sale of Kim's Club, which it expects will be completed in the first half of this year, will significantly bolster its bottom line.



"We chose Goldman Sachs as a sales manager in December," an E-Land spokesman said. "The investment bank will soon begin the sales process later this month by sending request for proposal (RFP) letters to retail companies and private equity firms. Goldman told us that multiple entities have expressed interest in buying Kim's Club."



The spokesman said E-Land expects to earn about 1 trillion won for the supermarket chain, given its 2015 revenue of 1 trillion won.



"When we successfully sell Kim's Club, we will then begin the work to list the shares of E-Land Retail by 2017," he said. "We haven't decided yet where the shares will be listed. It could be Korea or Singapore or Hong Kong. Wherever it may be, we have no doubt that its market debut will be successful, considering its extensive retail operations."



Among E-Land's 27 affiliates, only theme park E-World is listed on the local bourse. E-Land World, the group's holding company, has a controlling stake in E-Land Retail and E-Land Park, which operates hotels, restaurants and other leisure-related businesses. Chairman Park controls E-Land World with a 40.59 percent stake.




Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, will conduct the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra for its first concert on Jan. 9 following Chung Myung-whun's sudden resignation. / Korea Times



By Kwon Ji-youn

Renowned German conductor Christoph Eschenbach will helm the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) for its first concert following Chung Myung-whun's abrupt resignation as music director.

The SPO said Monday that they have invited Eschenbach to conduct the SPO's season opener at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday evening.

Under the baton of Eschenbach, the SPO will perform an unchanged program of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, Op. 64, with violinist Choi Ye-eun.

The SPO found itself in a tight spot last week after Chung offered to resign in a letter addressed to SPO employees, adding that he will not be conducting the nine SPO performances scheduled throughout 2016. His notice came amid an investigation into allegations that his wife conducted a smear campaign against former SPO CEO Park Hyun-jung along with allegations that he embezzled funds. Park resigned as CEO in December 2014 following accusations of abusing employees.

According to the SPO, Eschenbach made adjustments to his schedule to perform with the SPO this weekend.

"I am fully aware that the SPO has grown remarkably over the last 10 years under Chung's leadership, and I have been looking forward to working with the orchestra on Mahler's First Symphony in July," Eschenbach reportedly told the SPO. "I understand the SPO is in rough shape and I would like to help."

Since Chung's departure on Dec. 29 last year, the SPO has kept busy pursuing an appropriate replacement for its concerts this year, but has faced difficulty as most world-class conductors are fully booked for the next five or so years.

"It's not easy scouting a conductor fit to replace Chung in so short a time frame," an SPO staffer said. "It takes all the connections the SPO has built over the last 10 years to invite a world-class conductor like Eschenbach."

Ticket prices for all SPO concerts are being discounted given the situation, now selling for as low as 10,000 won up to 70,000 won.

The SPO is also looking to convene a task force so that it can appoint a new music director as soon as possible.

Eschenbach headed the Houston Symphony Orchestra for 11 years and the Philadelphia Orchestra for six before being appointed music director of the National Symphony Orchestra based in Washington, D.C. and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He won the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize last year for his contributions to classical music, and his recordings have also collected a number of awards.

The conductor for the SPO's concerts set for Jan. 16 and 17 has yet to be announced.

Meanwhile, Chung's legal representation on Monday denied reports that the maestro on Dec. 26 had put his privately owned Gahoe-dong building on the market priced for a quick sale, allegedly as part of intentions to flee the country. Chung left for France with his family on the last day of 2015, the day his contract as SPO music director expired.
Park Seo-joon, left, Go Ara, center, and Park Hyung-sik

/ Screen capture from Twitter



Actor Park Seo-joon, boy band ZE:A's Park Hyung-sik and actress Go Ara have been cast in the lead roles for the upcoming epic drama "Hwarang: the Beginning" which will be aired on KBS 2TV.

The drama depicts a story about the "Hwarang" or young warriors of the Silla Kingdom (B.C. 57- A.D.935). Park Seo-joon will play the role of Sun Woo-rang, who is born into a lower class, but becomes a legendary warrior.

Park Hyung-sik plays Sam Maek-jong, King Jinheung (540-576) ruled Silla from 540 to 576, while Go plays Ah-ro who is loved by the two male characters.

The drama is expected to air between July and August. The drama has already been sold to the Chinese Media group LeTV.
The leader of South Korea's second-largest umbrella labor union has been indicted on charges of leading last year's violent rallies in downtown Seoul, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Han Sang-gyun, the head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, is accused of orchestrating a massive anti-government protest on Nov. 14 that led to violent clashes with the police and some ten other rallies last year.

The labor union leader faces five charges, including disruption of the execution of public duty and damage of public property.

Prosecutors said Han is suspected of inflicting injuries to 90 police officers and damaging 52 police buses as well as illegally occupying the streets by leading protesters on Nov. 14.

Han has been taken into custody since he turned himself in to police in December after weeks of hiding out at Jogye Temple, the main Buddhist temple in central Seoul.

Prosecutors said they need further investigation to apply a charge of sedition against Han, which if applied would be the first time in nearly 30 years.

The crime of sedition refers to "the act of destruction through assault or intimidation by gathering multiple forces."

The last time investigative authorities charged a suspect with sedition was in 1986 when protesters violently clashed with police in the western port city of Incheon.

Prosecutors said they have indicted eight others who allegedly caused violence in the November rally and were investigating three more in custody for the probe.

Hundreds of others are under investigation by police over similar charges, police said.

(Yonhap)
By Jhoo Dong-chan





Han Sang-gyun

The prosecution indicted Han Sang-gyun, former head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), Tuesday, on charges of organizing illegal rallies.

However, charges of sedition that police previously recommended when the case was sent to the prosecution were not brought against him. But prosecutors said such charges may be brought later after investigating his alleged role in illegal acts that occurred during a massive anti-government rally held on Nov. 14 in the center of the capital.

The Seoul Central Public Prosecutor's Office said Tuesday that it indicted Han for interfering with official duties which resulted in injuries sustained by public officials.

Han is alleged to have instigated demonstrations that caused injuries to 90 police officers and the destruction of 52 police vehicles during the downtown rally on Nov. 14. Under his direction, the protestors also refused to follow a police order to disperse and occupied roads illegally, according to the police.

"The KCTU plotted illegal acts, preparing 12,000 masks to hide the identities of the protesters," said a prosecutor.

He was also accused of previously organizing other illegal rallies.

Prosecutors said that they will continue to investigate the allegations of sedition. A conviction on charges of sedition can result in a sentence of up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to 15 million won ($12,695). "There are other KCTU leaders, so we may be able to conclude whether to apply the charge after fully investigating them," the prosecutor said.

Sedition charges were last prosecuted here in 1986 after a violent clash with police took place during pro-democracy rallies that opposed the Chun Doo-hwan government.

Regarding the prosecutor's decision, National Police Agency (NPA) Commissioner General Kang Sin-myeong said he still believes sedition charges should be brought against Han.

"I respect the prosecutors' decision," he told reporters at the NPA building in central Seoul. "But the anti-government rally on Nov. 14 was planned meticulously beforehand. Plus, it was not even a rally or protest but a riot. The participants there attacked uniformed officers with steel pipes and set fire to police buses. Such violence should be considered as sedition and exemplary punishment must be given."

The KCTU condemned Han's indictment.

"The police and prosecution jointly attempted to demonize the KCTU as a mob of rioters. Such malicious attempts will not succeed and the KCTU will continue its fight against the government to protect the nation's 20 million workers' basic right to live," a KCTU official stated in a press release.

After the Nov. 14 rally, Han took refuge in Jogye Temple in central Seoul for almost a month until he surrendered on Dec. 10.

During the street rally, violence erupted between protesters and police, and a farmers' union member in his sixties was left in a coma after being hit by a water cannon.
By Kim Hyo-jin



Opposition parties ratcheted up their criticism of the Seoul-Tokyo deal over Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, Tuesday.



Lawmakers of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) and the minor opposition Justice Party lashed out at the government during an interpellation session for failing to address concerns of the victims.



Later that day, MPK floor leader Rep. Lee Jong-kul visited Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se to protest the deal.



Lee asked Yun to take responsibility for the deal, under which Korea agreed to discuss relocating the statue of a girl symbolizing the sex slavery victims from in front of the Japanese Embassy.



The protest came as the victims and activists are up in arms, saying the government failed to obtain Japan's acknowledgment of legal responsibility for the issue and rushed to sign the deal without proper consultation with the victims.



"Japan evaded its legal responsibilities while promising to provide 1 billion yen instead. It is not what the surviving victims count as a sincere apology," said Rep. Lee In-young of the MPK.



Agreeing with Lee, Rep. Nam In-soon argued that the government should not accept the money unless Tokyo comes up with a legal basis which clarifies Japan taking legal responsibility for its wartime atrocities.



Rep. Hong Ik-pyo argued that no progress was made in the deal.



"Although Tokyo conceded that its military authorities played a role in the sexual enslavement of the women, what should have been acknowledged was that it took part in the coerciveness," he said. "The Japanese government's offering compensation was also included in the plan to establish the 1995 Asian Women's Fund."



Lawmakers also raised questions about the process of striking the deal, criticizing the government's lack of communication with the victims and the National Assembly.



"The government skipped consultation with the victims and did not report the matter to the Assembly before making the deal final and irrevocable," Rep. You Seung-hee said, arguing that without the procedural legitimacy, the deal is invalid.



The ruling Saenuri Party boycotted the session held at the opposition's request. Gender Equality and Family Minister Kim Hee-jung was also absent.



South Korea and Japan reached a rare deal last month to settle with Japan over their wartime sex slavery, for which Japan apologized and contributed 1 billion yen ($8.29 million) to provide for the establishment of a foundation supporting the victims.



The government faced a strong backlash following the deal, under which it agreed to end the dispute once and for all.



Japanese media aggravated negative public sentiment by reporting that Seoul agreed to relocate the statue of the girl as a precondition for offering compensation.



In a recent poll conducted by JoongAng Ilbo on Dec. 29 and 30, 53.7 percent of 1,000 respondents are against the sex slavery deal while 35.6 percent said it was satisfactory.



Amid growing public criticism, MPK leader Moon Jae-in argued that the deal was invalid, calling it "political collusion." Floor leader Lee earlier said he would submit a motion to the National Assembly to dismiss the foreign minister and mount a nationwide protest campaign.




By Jun Ji-hye



The citizens of North Korea are being forced to memorize Kim Jong-un's New Year speech. The North's state-run Rodong Sinmun reported a "dramatic rise" in people's willingness to learn and memorize the speech. The newspaper stated that the whole population, even miners, appears to be in fervor to learn the speech.



The newspaper said that a department in charge of the land and environment preservation at the ruling Workers' Party is encouraging its members to memorize the whole text of Kim's speech that was broadcast for about 30 minutes _ and is estimated to consists of around 10,000 words.



"The party organization has carried out a project calling on its members to set an example by being well versed in the New Year speech," the newspaper stated.



It added that a department in charge of electricity facilities at the party posted some charts and notices summarizing Kim's speech on the wall of its offices.



On Monday, Radio Free Asia (RFA) quoted a source in North Hamgyeong Province as saying, "The residents in the North unwillingly memorized the summary of Kim's speech as the regime is censoring them."



The source said memorizing the speech is a task that they are required to do.



Kim's speech was televised on Friday. In it, he stressed a plan to improve the repressive state's economy and the living standards of its citizens, instead of commenting on the North's nuclear program. Kim also said he is "open to talks with anyone".



However, the source noted that not many North Korean people are interested in the young leader's speech because living standards in the isolated state have not improved at all, despite the repetition of bombastic phrases such as "strong state" and "economic power" which are included every year in the leader's New Year's address.





Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye




By Kang Seung-woo

President Park

President Park Geun-hye called Tuesday for a "carrot-and-stick" policy for dealing with North Korea, saying she will seek ways to boost inter-Korean dialogue this year while dealing sternly with its military threats.

She said that the government should make efforts to improve inter-Korean relations after a conciliatory gesture from North Korea.

However, at the same time, she ordered the military to strengthen the nation's defenses against possible provocations.

"We need to do our best to build a foundation for a peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula. It is my hope that we can make a peaceful Korean Peninsula to ensure that our people can move beyond the North's provocations and threats," Park said during the first Cabinet meeting of the year at Cheong Wa Dae.

"Fortunately, the North is showing its intention to honor the Aug. 25 agreement, so the government needs to make efforts to improve the inter-Korean ties by increasing civil exchanges and holding family reunions."

Her calls came days after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un vowed on Friday to improve ties with the South during his New Year's Day speech, saying that he is "open to talks with anyone" wishing for peace and unification without mentioning the repressive state's nuclear weapons program.

In addition, Kim called on the South to implement the inter-Korean deal in August to defuse military tensions across the border, sparked by the landmine attack by the North in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Two South Korean soldiers were seriously injured in the blast.

As part of the deal, the two Koreas held high-level talks about how to mend ties last month, but they ended the meeting without any agreement.

Park also said that the military should not let its guard down even for a minute, citing an unspecified crucial period in terms of security.

"More than anything else, a strong national defense is important groundwork for inter-Korean relations, so the military should beef up its capabilities, establish military discipline and root out corruption in the defense industry," she said.

For decades, the North has had a track record of carrying out provocations against the South, including the sinking of the naval ship Cheonan and the shelling of the border island of Yeonpyeong, both in 2010, resulting in a total death toll of 50 South Koreans.

In December, the North Korean leader claimed that his country had become a "powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a hydrogen bomb."

Although the South Korean government does not fully buy into this claim, the North is believed to have entered the middle stages of developing a hydrogen bomb that would pose additional threats to neighboring countries as well as to the South.
Passengers crowd Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, Tuesday. The airport's baggage-handling system broke down Sunday, causing luggage and flight delays. / Yonhap



By Chung Ah-young



Incheon International Airport is drawing criticism for causing inconvenience to passengers for a couple of days due to the failure of its baggage-handling system.



The Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC) said Tuesday that the system failed Sunday, causing delays to 169 flights and the blockage of 5,200 pieces of passengers' luggage for several hours.



Some airplanes left the airport that day without carrying their passengers' luggage. The airport belatedly sent the baggage to their destinations through Monday evening.



The corporation said that the number of passengers who traveled through the airport reached 176,432 on the day of the malfunction, the largest number since the airport's opening.



"The large number of passengers contributed to the baggage-handling problem, along with a lack of staff who deal with the luggage," an IIAC official said.



The baggage-handling system can deal with up to 12,600 pieces of luggage per hour during peak time. On Sunday, only 7,500 pieces were processed through the system, far below its maximum capacity.



The airport said that it had a larger-than-usual number of poorly wrapped packages such as boxes and plastic bags, leading to classification errors.



"In the case of such packages, it is hard for the classification system to sort them, so our staff usually check and send them in the right direction on the conveyor belt lines. But on that day, we didn't have enough people there," he said.



The Airline Operations Committee (AOC) consisting of 67 airlines operating at Incheon may seek compensation for damages from the delays, if customers want to file a suit.



The IIAC said that it will brace for more passengers who are expected to travel through the airport during the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls on Feb. 8.



"We will deploy additional personnel for baggage-handling on peak travel days and will not repeat this again," the official said. "We will collaborate closely with airlines and handling companies and make contingency plans."



The airport has a reputation as one of the world's best, with strong evaluations for its services including baggage claim services.



But this large-scale system failure has tarnished the airport which topped the global ranking for Airport Service Quality in a survey conducted by the Airports Council International in 2014 for the 10th year in a row.



To cope with rising passenger numbers, the corporation is now building its second terminal, scheduled for completion by 2017. When the terminal is completed, the airport is expected to accommodate up to 62 million passengers a year.



Also, the leadership vacuum at the IIAC has been blamed for this situation, causing lax management. Park Wan-su who served as IIAC CEO resigned after 14 months to run in the general election in April on the ruling Saenuri Party ticket in a Changwon-Uichang constituency in South Gyeongsang Province.
By Lee Kyung-min



A Korean man who had been on Interpol's wanted list for operating an illegal gambling website, has been extradited to Korea from the Philippines, police said Tuesday.



This marks the first extradition of a Korean national from the Philippines since National Police Agency (NPA) Commissioner General Kang Sin-myeong's visit to the Philippines in November, during which the police forces of the two countries agreed on intensified cooperation for an efficient crackdown on fugitive suspects.



The man, surnamed Lim, 40, allegedly set up an office in Shandong Province, China, in May 2013 and operated the website, where some 14,000 subscribers bet 70.6 billion won.



He took 4.8 percent of the bets as a commission, raking in some 30 billion won in 13 months until June 2014. He managed to evade crackdowns by changing the website address more than 300 times.



Lim has been on the Interpol wanted list since July last year when police found his website during a massive crackdown on operators of illegal gambling sites and phishing groups.



After six months on the run, he took a flight from China to the Philippines on Saturday. He was apprehended at the immigration desk in Manila's airport. The Philippine immigration authorities reported his entry into the country to officers at the Korean desk, a special team of Korean police officers assigned to the Filipino police to exclusively deal with crimes involving Koreans.



The Filipino police extradited Lim and the Korean police took him into custody upon his arrival at Incheon International Airport on Monday.



"After Kang's visit in November, we handed over a list of 15 criminals who are highly likely to flee to the Philippines, and Lim was one of them and the first to be caught," an NPA official said.



He said the two countries will strengthen such joint efforts to apprehend criminals. "It is notable that the suspect was caught at the airport before entering the country, as it is difficult to find suspects once they enter the country. We'll hand over more lists of criminals."




By John Redmond



The Seoul International Women's Association (SIWA) will host a monthly book club discussion in Hannam-dong, Seoul, Friday.

The group will discuss "The Boys in the Boat" by Daniel James Brown.

"The Boys in the Boat" is a story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times, an account of how nine working-class boys from the American West surprised the world at the Berlin 1936 Olympics.

"The University of Washington's eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler," SIWA wrote on its website.

"The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world."

SIWA, established in 1962, is the largest and longest-running international women's organization in Korea.

With more than 400 women from over 40 nations, including Korea, SIWA is an organization for women from around the world to meet, forge friendships, learn about Korea and other cultures, contribute their talents and ideas and help improve the lives of those in need.

Members help run the organization and plan fundraising events as well as weekly and monthly tours, interest group activities, coffee mornings and enrichment classes.

The book group will meet at Hannam Station at 1:30 p.m.

For more information visit www.siwapage.com
Renault Samsung Motors Co., the local unit of French auto firm Renault S.A., said Monday that its December sales grew 8.1 percent on-year mainly due to brisk overseas demand.

The automaker said in a press release that it sold a total of 25,555 units last month, compared with the 23,645 units tallied a year earlier.

Exports jumped 15.3 percent on-year to 15,320 units, while domestic sales edged down 1.2 percent to 10,235 units.

For 2015, Renault Samsung said it sold 229,082 units, up 34.9 percent from 2014. (Yonhap)
By Julia Mellor

Over the past decade, exports of makgeolli to the outside world have been carefully monitored, waiting for the moment it becomes a global household name.

Millions of won have been poured into advertisements in the U.S., touting the glories of a drink widely, as yet, unknown there with hand-wringingly awkward slogans like "Do You Know Makgeolli?" Yet as reports of drops in makgeolli exports continue to make the rounds on news outlets, an undertone speaking of doom and gloom for the beverage's future prevails. If all you do is read the news, you could be forgiven for thinking makgeolli and traditional Korean alcohol are on the fast track to nowhere, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

In order to get an idea of the context of makgeolli and where it fits into its current predicament, it's important to take a look at its past. The Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) could be loosely compared to the era of Prohibition, in that brewing alcohol publicly was illegal unless permitted by the king. As history has taught us, banning alcohol only makes people more creative, and brewing makgeolli therefore became something of a household staple. Just as families had their trusted kimchi, gochujang and doenjang recipes, so too did they have their own traditional alcohol recipes.

The end of the Joseon Kingdom was punctuated by the Japanese occupation (1910-45), which was a turning point for traditional Korean alcohol. Home brewing was promptly outlawed, and whilst the first commercial breweries were established, brewers were ordered to use the Japanese yeast starter koji rather than Korean nuruk. This marked a severe disconnect, resulting in the loss of home recipes across the peninsula that had been passed down the generations orally.

What followed was a century of struggle. Following the Korean War, a rice-brewing ban was put in place due to a food shortage, forcing brewers to use alternative starches to produce their products. The unreliability of ingredients, cold chain storage issues and satisfying a consumer base increasingly reliant on artificial sweeteners set the stage for what we know to be makgeolli today.

Fast forward to now, and we have a very different scene. Not only do we have a much improved cold chain storage, but brewers are free to use rice and experiment however they choose. Brewers of traditional Korean alcohols are reawakening lost traditions, discovering new recipes and methods to produce makgeolli, cheongju (also referred to as yakju) and soju. Small-batch artisan brewers are focusing on the quality of ingredients, learning the various techniques and experimenting with intuition.

So where do they get their knowledge? In that oh-so-Korean way, there are a number of brewing academies across Seoul that have their own teaching style and focus on certain aspects of the industry. People are learning the skills and dedicating their time to practicing and developing their own particular brewing styles. These academies are instrumental in inspiring not just future brewery owners, but home brewers that become messengers to friends, family and beyond.

Brewers without consumers are just people with a lot of booze. But while in the beer or wine industry the product can stand alone, in Korea bar owners play perhaps the most important role in communicating the brew. Many consumers are unaware of the skill, time and quality of ingredients that go into creating artisanal products, and the price tags that accompany them can be startling. But as Korea's culinary culture continues to experiment and innovate, so too are restaurants and bars exploring the world of Korean alcohol pairings. The community emerging is defined by a strong relationship between brewer, bar owner and interested consumers looking for something beyond the usual.

Makgeolli and traditional Korean alcohol is a long game, not quantifiable by export numbers and popularity polls. What may not yet be seen by the public eye is an industry preparing itself for a kind of rebirth in terms of quality, tradition, innovation and respect for the drink.

Julia Mellor is the co-founder and director of Makgeolli Mamas & Papas Korea (MMPK), an organization providing tourism, consultancy and education opportunities about the traditional Korean alcohol industry in English. She can be reached at mmpkorea@gmail.com.
By Choi Sung-jin

Senior writer

Despite  or rather because of  the Dec. 28 agreement between Seoul and Tokyo on the "comfort women" issue, victims and their supporters will conduct a far larger, and angrier, weekly protest meeting here Wednesday.

That alone should be sufficient to revisit  and revoke  the hurriedly sealed, half-baked settlement.

It was President Park Geun-hye who had vowed not to reach an accord unless victims and the public accept it. Apparently most, if not all, of the 46 former comfort women alive and a majority of Koreans oppose it, as polls show. President Park has reneged on countless pledges she has made, but this should not be the case this time.

Yes, the agreement seems to have gone one or two steps ahead of the previous accords: Japan's prime minister acknowledged the Imperial Army's involvement in running military brothels by coercing and coaxing an estimated 200,000 girls and women, mostly from Korea, into sexual slavery, and expressed remorse and an apology for that. In addition, Japan will put some $8.1 million, from the government budget, into a fund to be administered by Korea.

So the two key conditions  direct apology and compensation  have been met for the two nations to leave the past behind and move forward, say Japanese officials and even some foreigners sympathetic to Tokyo. If Korea demands more, it will amount to little more than moving the goalposts, yet again, they argue.

I can hardly disagree more.

For an international accord to carry any significance and ensure practicability, the parties involved should not just stick to its phrases but respect the spirit within it. Of this the Japanese leaders have displayed agonizingly little. The first thing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly did after reaching the agreement was reaffirm the "final and irreversible" settlement of the issue. More than a week later, Abe's top diplomat was still bent on making the removal of the statue symbolizing the comfort women in front of the Japanese embassy an established fact.

So, behind the "tatemae" (the Japanese word for external display) of mea culpa, the "honne" (inner feeling) of these officials and many other right-wing nationalists was saying, "Have our words plus some money, and don't come again. There should be no more apologies whatsoever, or even discussion of it." Abe took extra care to make all moves in indirect ways  the apology was conveyed by his foreign minister and through calls to President Park, not the victims. Even the compensation fund is not in Japan's name but Korea's.

All this shows why the Park administration should stop urging Tokyo to carry out the agreement as it is now but start it all over. No grave war crimes, let alone the largest trafficking of women, including minors, in history, and most brutal (what could be crueler for women than repeated acts of sex against their will?) abuses of human rights, should be dealt with in this way. The core truth of the comfort women problem is the Japanese state's responsibility for coercing numerous women into sexual servitude. For Tokyo to be free from that liability, it must acknowledge facts, apologize, compensate, ascertain truth, set up memorials for historical education and punish those responsible.

Japan has done few of these, at least not in the way victims can accept and most neutral and conscionable academics recognize as conforming to common legal sense established internationally.

Skeptics  including one Korean professor educated in Japan  say some became comfort women on their own, for money and/or out of misperceived patriotism. They may be right or wrong. Yet such exceptions do not weaken the need to properly deal with this issue and only explains why the two governments should restart from the ground up. Cheong Wa Dae says rejection of the agreement means returning to 25 years ago, when the comfort women first came forward, and the compromise deal is the best they can give to these aged victims before they die.

Again, cancellation of the accord is exactly what these aged women want, who think that a bad deal is worse than no deal. And it would matter little whether they are in this world or in the other if a genuine solution  unequivocal acknowledgment of the state's responsibility, a direct apology from the prime minister to whoever may be the last surviving comfort woman, and appropriate compensation in both its nature and amount  fully restores their dignity as human beings.

In many ways, the ongoing fiasco was of President Park's own making by unnecessarily setting the deadline, saying the two nations can ill afford to waste anymore time for restoring friendly ties to cope jointly with threats from the communists, China and North Korea. It was what her father, former President Park Chung-hee, said in 1965 when he hurriedly wrapped up normalization talks to get $800 million from Japan, not as compensation but as consolation or even congratulation, required for demonstrating economic changes to justify his illegitimate snatch of political power through a coup. Then, like now, U.S. coercion played a crucial role, too.

Korea is not what it was 51 years ago, and its two allies  Japan and the U.S.  should not be, either, in settling this last historical and humanitarian homework of World War II left undone.

President Park may try to visit the remaining comfort women and persuade them to accept the deal as the last resort. She must not do this, though, she must tell her Japanese counterpart to do what he should do.

Choi Sung-jin is The Korea Times' senior writer. He can be reached at choisj@ktimes.com.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has unveiled plans to conduct a review of the country's six low-cost carriers following a string of safety lapses.



The plan seems appropriate, given that the recent frequent accidents might augur ill for budget carriers that could be involved in a disaster. The transport ministry needs to make thorough safety inspections.



On Sunday, a Boeing 737-800 jet of Jin Air bound for Busan returned to Cebu, the Philippines, about 30 minutes after takeoff when one of the plane's doors was found to be not completely closed. No serious injuries were reported, but some passengers complained that they had suffered from headaches and pain during the return trip.



On Dec. 23, a passenger jet belonging to Jeju Air, another budget carrier, plunged in mid-air due to problems with its onboard air compression system while flying from Seoul to Jeju, sending passengers into a panic. A few days earlier, an Eastar Jet plane bound for Hong Kong also returned to Incheon 50 minutes after takeoff, again due to a malfunctioning air compression system.



That three accidents occurred in a matter of weeks shows that there might be serious safety lapses in the country's LCCs.



Experts say the series of accidents may have been predicted beforehand, given the LCCs' rapid growth over the past decade. Budget carriers have attracted passengers by offering lower airfares, accounting for more than half of domestic flights. The emergence of the LCCs also helped boost the domestic tourism market.



But they have also been under fire for neglecting safety measures while focusing too much on cutting costs in an increasingly crowded market. Between 2006 and 2014, budget carriers suffered 0.63 accidents per 10,000 flights, nearly quadruple the 0.17 accident rate of Korean Air and Asiana.



LCCs' frequent accidents are attributed largely to the excessive operation of their airliners. The fact is that increasing flights while the number of planes is minimal has resulted in the deterioration of plane fuselages quickly, making it difficult for planes to receive proper maintenance. The employment of less skilled pilots is also blamed.



The low-cost airlines need to use the transport ministry's upcoming inspections as an occasion to overhaul their overall safety systems. What is most desirable is for them to awaken to the importance of the active investment in safety.



The government, for its part, should pay more attention to improving aviation safety-related measures and toughen penalties against offenders.




Park Ji-won

Nexon Korea CEO Kwon Young-sik

Netmarble Games CEO Kim Taek-jin

NCSOFT CEO



By Yoon Sung-won



Korea's leading game companies  Nexon, Netmarble Games and NCSOFT  have pledged to expand their presence in the global market and the mobile sector this year.



Nexon, the nation's largest game firm, said Tuesday it will focus more on the mobile game business, based on its capability in the online computer game sector, to expand its position in the global market.



Nexon Korea Chief Executive Park Ji-won also stressed "diversity" as the keyword for this year.



"In 2015, we prepared for the next generation not only in development and collaboration, but also in technology, platforms and infrastructure," Park said in his New Year's message to employees. "I expect that the company will continue its experiment by creating a culture that encourages the creativity of our employees."



Last month, Nexon established two mobile business divisions dedicated to domestic and global markets to target overseas regions more effectively.



The company said it will launch much-hyped new mobile games including "Durango" and strategy game "Sangokushi Sousouden Online." It also plans to unveil mobile titles based on popular computer online games such as "Dungeon & Fighter," "Maple Story" and "Tera."



Nexon also plans to reinforce its competitiveness in the online computer sector by rolling out new titles such as the gunfight game "Sudden Attack 2," car-racing game "Need for Speed Edge" and action game "Hyper Universe" this year.



Netmarble Games, the nation's top mobile game company, also highlighted a more aggressive approach to the global market.



The company said it expects competition in the global market will be fiercer because game industries at home and abroad have become more dependent on large companies and more businesses are rushing to the mobile sector.



"Netmarble Games will become a global game brand that provides entertaining games to users around the world," Netmarble Games Chief Executive Kwon Young-sik said in his New Year's address, Monday.



The company said it plans to tap more into intellectual property from partners outside the company, such as Disney and NCSOFT. Based on new mobile titles developed through such collaboration, it pledged to expand in the global market.



Netmarble also said it will continue to push the development of the world's first artificial-intelligence game service engine called "Columbus," which aims to provide tailor-made game services for each user.



NCSOFT, the nation's second-largest online computer game business, also anticipated wide-ranging changes to its business this year.



"This year, we will have many new challenges, such as expanding in the mobile sector, launching new titles for the online computer sector and diversifying the use of our intellectual property base," NCSOFT Chief Executive Kim Taek-jin said to employees. "We should share values, stay fearless of failures and concentrate on making a creative organization."
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

Read more
PRESS RELEASE

Whats Underneath the Monday Crash Tremors

Jan. 4, 2016 (EIRNS)The "trigger" for the worldwide plunge of stock markets on Jan. 4 was claimed to be Chinas Industrial Purchasing Managers Index, which showed contraction for the 12th consecutive month (December). This despite the sharp drop in bank stocks with the initiation of the devastating "bail-in" policy across Europe and the United States; and despite Saudi Arabias clear threat to escalate general religious war across the Mideast and North Africa. Those clearly had more impact on the stock markets Monday rout.

But underneath that rout, North American industrial data are also again showing sharp contraction. The December ISM [Institute for Supply Management] Manufacturing Index was shrinking at 48.2, worse than its 48.6 reading in November. The Chicago Purchasing Managers Index (released Dec. 31, for December) plunged to a dismal 42.9, after 48.7 in November. The most recent Dallas Fed survey (December) must have set a contraction record, -20.

These are data characteristic of the mass-unemployment year of 2009. The Canada Purchasing Managers Index for December was at 47.2, even lower than anything in Canada in 2009. U.S. construction spending also fell in November; so did American imports.

Immediately after these reports, the recently accurate Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank announced that its

"GDPNow forecast for real GDP growth fell 0.5 percentage points this morning following the Census Bureaus release on construction spending and the Institute for Supply Managements Manufacturing ISM Report On Business."

Its fourth-quarter growth rate forecast is now only 0.7%, whereas it was 1.3% just two weeks ago.
PRESS RELEASE

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Continues Jabs at Obama, Warning of Nuclear War Threat

Jan. 4, 2016 (EIRNS)On Sunday, Jan. 3, FoxNews TV aired a nationwide, four-minute, feature story, a backgrounder about Army Captain Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, which they titled, "Introducing Hawaiis Democratic Congresswoman: Tulsi Gabbard; The U.S. combat veteran is seen as a rebel and rising star in her party." The reporter set an appropriate tone for the piece by quoting Martin Luther King, that, "the ultimate measure of a man is... where he stands in times of challenge and controversy," and saying Gabbard fits that challenge.

In setting the tone, the reporter stated that Gabbard, "has made headlines with her outspoken criticism of President Obama," as well as when she criticized the Democratic National Committee for favoring Hillary by limiting debates. "When we look at whats in the best interest of our country," Gabbard said, "which is how I think we should make all of our decisionsless dialogue does not help us."

On the war in Syria, Gabbard was blunt, saying,

"This is a war that I believe is illegal, and counter-productive. Its illegal because Congress has not declared war against Syria, and its counterproductive because it helps our enemyISIS, al Qaeda, and other groupsachieve their objective."

"This will kick off a World War," she continued,

"and potentially a nuclear war, given the fact that the United States and Russia are the two countries on this planet, that are literally minutes away from pushing that button, and launching a nuclear bomb."

Essentially calling Obama an idiot, Gabbard said,

"It doesnt take a military genius to understand that you have to know your enemy before you can defeat them. [Its a] big mistake to not clearly identify who your enemy is."

[emphasis in original]

Ironically or not, the "trailer" ad which preceded the interview was for a new movie called The Select Soldiers of Benghazi, the first sound bite of which is a radio call, stating, "We need immediate assistance, Benghazi is under attack."
The crisis in soaring drug prices has produced not merely a new class of public enemies to skewer -- step forward, Martin Shkreli! -- but the best evidence yet that the nations healthcare regulatory priorities are out of whack.

How badly the regulators have failed is the theme of an article by Jeremy Greene of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. His argument is that the Food and Drug Administration has ample authority to quell profiteering in the generic drug market, but hasnt used it.

Addressing monopolistic conditions that give rise to sudden price hikes is a means to prevent future shortages.  Jeremy A. Greene, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Advertisement

Greene pegs his analysis to the run-up in prices of generic drugs whose manufacturers face little or no competition, and therefore almost no disincentive to keep prices reasonable. The poster child for the issue, of course, is Shkreli. Hes the brash young investor whose Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the rights to Daraprim, a treatment for a parasitic disease especially threatening to HIV and cancer patients, and jacked up its price 5,000%, from $13.50 a pill to $750.

But Shkreli was not a pioneer and was hardly alone, as Greene documents. Valeant Pharmaceuticals last year raised the price of two generic heart medicines by 1,886% and 3,650%. In some cases, shortages of generics with only one or two manufacturers prompt gray market middlemen to rush into the breach, providing supplies of vital drugs at huge markups. These activities have generated plenty of political smoke, including policy statements from presidential candidates and congressional investigations, but so far no action.

Sometimes FDA action itself prompts a price run-up. Thats what happened with Makena, a drug to prevent premature births, which won FDA approval as an orphan drug in 2011. As hydroxyprogesterone caproate, the drug had been in common use by physicians at a cost of about $15 per injection. The FDA approval, however, gave its manufacturer, KV Pharmaceuticals, exclusive rights to market the branded generic and keep competitors out of the market for seven years. KV raised its price 100-fold, driving the cost of a full treatment to $25,000, from $250, and ending access to the treatment for thousands of women.

But what the FDA can do, it can undo. Greene observes that one problem suppressing competition in the generic-drug market -- preventing competitors from rushing in to undercut price-boosters -- is the sluggish pace of action by the FDA, which must validate manufacturing quality and certify generics as bioequivalent to their branded versions.

The FDAs years-long backlog of approvals now runs to thousands of drugs. Because of the backlog from previous years, of the nearly 1,600 applications for new generic drug approvals submitted in fiscal 2014, not a single one was approved by the end of the fiscal year.

It doesnt have to be that way for every drug. The agency is empowered to prioritize applications for generics that could help mitigate or resolve a drug shortage and prevent future shortages. Traditionally, the FDA has been reluctant to deal with the economics of drug pricing. But as Greene observes, addressing monopolistic conditions that give rise to sudden price hikes is a means to prevent future shortages.

Priority review could still take six to 12 months. In the interim, the FDA could bolster competition in several ways. It could temporarily allow compounding of the high-priced drug. Thats been an answer to the Turing Pharmaceutical hike in Daraprim, which prompted the San Diego compounding firm Imprimis to offer a cut-rate formulation of the generic drug.

But compounding, in which special formulations of drugs are made for individual patients, isnt normally an option for drugs in high demand, in part because the formulas and manufacturing plants are subject to the same rigors of FDA inspection as other facilities. Bulk compounding can be permitted by the FDA in special cases. Greene argues that the agency should allow it temporarily while a expedited review is taking place. Thats what the FDA did in response to the Makena price hike. The agency also could temporarily allow the importation of generics from overseas sources with competent regulation.

Either step could cut way down on price-gouging by manufacturers exploiting the complexities of U.S. drug regulation, which is what Shkreli and Valeant did. Any signal that the FDA wont allow such exploitation in the future, Greene concludes, would invalidate the business case for cornering markets on older, essential medicines. A simple change in FDA policy could do more, and do it faster, than any number of congressional hearings.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see our Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com
Its Saturday night in San Franciscos Mission District. Two women stand outside a dive bar in the December chill, looking at their phones. Two Toyota Priuses pull up to the sidewalk.

Yo, you Kelly? a driver yells to the taller of the women.

No, she says, glancing up from her phone.

Im Kelly! the other woman calls out.

Yo Kelly, Im your Uber!

The taller woman walks to the door of the other Prius.

Are you my Lyft?

You Rachel? the driver says.

Yes!

The women climb into their respective rides. The Priuses pull away.

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A year ago, Uber dominated San Francisco. As in many cities, Uber had become a verb for ride-hailing apps. But today, youre as likely to spot a Lyft as an Uber in this city.

Those who thought on-demand transportation was a winner-take-all market  that Uber would crush competitors in ride-hailing the way Facebook crushed competitors in social media  are being forced to change their tune.

It turns out that the winner-take-all phenomenon that drives so much of the Internet  a theory also known as network effects  may not be as relevant to the transportation industry.

Last week a small, struggling ride-hailing company called Sidecar pulled out of the ride-hailing business. But Lyfts business continues to improve, and it remains an investment magnet. On Monday, the company announced a new $1-billion funding round, led by General Motors, which invested $500 million.

Since shedding its clownmobile front-grille mustache in favor of a more discreet windshield sticker a year ago, Lyft, ride-hailings second-largest company, has captured 40% market share in San Francisco, and in newer markets, such as Austin, Texas, it nearly matches Uber with 45% market share. Lyft declined to reveal its market share in other markets, including Los Angeles.

------------

FOR THE RECORD

10:16 a.m. An earlier version of this story said Lyfts international expansion is expected to start next year. It is starting in 2016.

------------

From January 2014 to January 2015, the company grew fivefold in rides and revenue. Its on track for $1 billion in gross revenue by October this year.

Which isnt to say Lyft is about to eclipse Uber.

Lyft is valued at $5.5 billion. Ubers most recent valuation is $62.5 billion. Lyft has 315,000 drivers. Uber has more than 400,000 in the U.S. alone. Uber is available in 68 countries. Lyft operates only in the U.S.; its international expansion into Asia through partnerships isnt due to begin until next year.

Despite the gulf in resources between the industrys number one and two, Lyft continues to grow.

People thought that this was a winner-takes-all market, and I think everyones realized thats not the case, said Lyfts co-founder and president, John Zimmer.

Pundits got it wrong, he believes, because winner takes all is such a common scenario in tech. In social media, Facebook came out on top because of the network effect: The more of your friends are on it, the better it gets. That naturally lends itself to one player.

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But in a transportation business, specifically our business, there are very strong network effects, but only to a point, Zimmer said.

Initially, it was thought that whichever service had more drivers would also have more passengers; more drivers meant shorter wait times, more passengers meant more fares. A monopoly would emerge.

But once you hit three minute pickup times, theres no benefit to having more people on the network, Zimmer said.

In fact, according to economist W. Brian Arthur, a prime theoretician behind network effects, if all services are equal, then network effects may not be so advantageous.

For example, Uber might have a strong network advantage in an area, but if Lyft comes in and offers a much better product, it can dislodge a company, network effects and all, Arthur said.

Network effects are a dynamic idea. Theyre not frozen in time. They do exist, but it doesnt mean someone cant come along and just leapfrog that.

Zimmer likes to compare the dynamic between Uber and Lyft to AT&T and Verizon. When both cell networks hit three bars of coverage, people start to see them as equivalent, and base their spending decisions on other factors, such as brand values and customer experience.

Thats what Lyft has spent the last year doing: building the ride-hailing equivalent of cell towers to get pickup times down to three minutes or less.

With that out of the way, its out to capture market share, by attracting passengers who want an alternative to Uber and tapping into the ocean of people who have never used a ride-hailing service.

For its international expansion, Lyft has partnered with incumbents in markets such as China, India and Southeast Asia, so when U.S Lyft customers open the app while overseas, they can hail a ride from local operators such as Didi Kuaidi (China) and Ola (India), and vice versa.

The company will tackle each geography differently.

But Lyfts domestic strategy interests big investors the most, with activist billionaire Carl Icahn investing $100 million in the San Francisco company, telling the New York Times in May: Theres room for two in this area.

Scott Weiss, a Lyft board member and partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, echoed a similar sentiment, comparing the on-demand transportation market to airlines, with the potential for it to be even bigger.

There are probably 10 to 12 airlines that have multibillion-dollar valuations, and every country has one or two flagship carriers, Weiss said. We always bet the market is humongous.

However big we think the on-demand and autonomous transportation industry will be, investors say think bigger. The U.S. logistics and transportation industry totaled $1.33 trillion, or 8.5% of annual gross domestic product, in 2012, and it has only grown with the economy, according to the Department of Commerce.

Although its unclear how much market share a company would need to be financially successful  Uber is, after all, only 5 years old; Lyft is 3  theres a big chunk of the transportation pie up for grabs.

Which is why the on-demand companies are knuckling down now.

Uber has spent $1 billion in China and India to expand its business, and was the first on-demand transportation service in hundreds of U.S. cities. Leaked financial documents show Lyft spent $96.1 million on marketing in the first half of 2015, more than twice its net revenue in the same period.

Under the guidance of marketing chief Kira Wampler, the company underwent a brand redesign in early 2015, scrubbing clean traces of the fluffy mustache in favor of a sleeker, more sophisticated look. It covered San Francisco with billboards, bus shelter ads and posters plastered down the sides of buildings. The Lyft app recently underwent a complete redesign to offer users more transparency and predictability in its ride pricing.

And its message to potential customers? We treat you better.

Although passengers anecdotally have had both great and nightmarish experiences with Lyft and Uber drivers, Lyft believes that because its platforms enable customers to tip drivers (Ubers app doesnt have such a feature), drivers are, in theory, incentivized to offer a better service.

When Lyft launched, it also encouraged passengers to ride in the front and to greet drivers with a fist bump. And though it no longer stipulates how passengers should ride, Wampler believes the culture fostered in the days of the fist bump has stuck around, resulting in a more social and fun experience.

According to Weiss, Lyft has cornered the millennial market, a kind of Southwest Airlines (fun, friendly and social) to Ubers Virgin America (more serious and luxurious).

Although Uber first positioned itself with its black town cars as a service for professionals and UberX as a service for everyone, Lyft has capitalized on a segment of the market that isnt satisfied with the Uber experience, said Hugh Tallents, partner at brand strategy firm CG42.

Uber has in many ways created the category, and with that comes some serious frustrations that Lyft is looking to solve, Tallents said.

Lyft, for example, has a cap on its surge pricing, whereas Uber fares have been known to increase dramatically during busy periods, a frustration for many passengers. Lyft has also created the perception of better driver advocacy, with the ability for riders to tip, and by encouraging passengers to interact with the driver, Tallents said.

It makes it a much more human interaction, and I think people have been craving that, he said.

If Lyft can capture 75% of the millennial crowd, it will be in a good position for the long term, even if Uber continues to dwarf it, Weiss said.

This is a market thats going to float at these two ships, he said of Uber and Lyft. But where Uber stands to lose is the millennial market. Lyft is too consistent. They service that market too well.

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien

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It is a vision of Ethiopia that the average American might not expect: craggy emerald peaks, picturesque villages, a priest blessing a family for a festive religious celebration. Lamb, director Yared Zelekes debut feature film about a young boy named Ephraim, who must live with faraway family members after the death of his mother, paints a nuanced portrait of a place that Western media often reduce to headlines about famine and conflict.

Lamb, which was chosen as Ethiopias Academy Awards submission for best foreign language film, didnt make the Oscars shortlist, but its generated considerable buzz for its 37-year-old writer-director. In November, Variety named Zeleke one of its 10 Screenwriters to Watch. Lamb was the first Ethiopian film to be part of the Official Selection at Cannes and has screened at festivals in Toronto and Milan (where it won the award for best feature film).

This week, the Ethiopian-born Zeleke, who divides his time between New York and Addis Ababa, is at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Lamb screened Saturday and Sunday at the festival, and shows again Thursday morning.

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I caught up with Zeleke in Palm Springs, where he talked about the challenges of casting and filming Lamb in Ethiopia, the personal story that inspired the films narrative and why Bollywood was so important to him as a young boy.

I understand that Lamb is partly drawn from your own experiences of migration and being separated from your family.

The film was a way to heal my wounds, of having to leave my family at the age of 10. My father, he was imprisoned by the Derg regime [the communist military regime that was in power from 1974 to 1987] when I was very young. My mother remarried. So I was raised by my grandmother. My father, after he was imprisoned, he escaped to Japan  then he made it here [to the United States]. He brought me here. But I didnt know him. He was a stranger. It was a huge disturbance for me.

So in the film, I wanted to address how a child deals with loss and grief  but with some humor at its heart.

Youve said that casting was a difficult process since Ethiopia doesnt have a culture of cinema.

Ethiopians can be afraid of the camera because they know the country doesnt have a good image abroad because of the famine and the poverty. Its as if the only thing the world knows about it is its worst aspects. When we hosted castings in Addis Ababa, not a lot of people would come.

So we basically went to theaters and childrens theaters. Ethiopia has an ancient culture of theater  some of it is very good, but it doesnt get out because its all in Amharic. We walked the streets. We went to public schools. For the villagers, we went to the locations we shot in and cast people there. That was tricky too, because you find someone and then who will take over their cows while theyre shooting?

Filmmaking is difficult everywhere. In a place like Ethiopia youre starting from scratch at every level. And you have to deal with plenty of local customs and fears. The Orthodox Church was suspicious when we were filming. We had to get a letter from the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to film a scene that references the church. But in the end everybody said yes.

For your first feature, you could have very easily gone and shot a film about Ethiopian immigrants in Washington, D.C., which would have made the logistics far easier. Why was it so important to shoot in Ethiopia?

Films about Ethiopia are generally not shot in Ethiopia. Angelina Jolies Beyond Borders was shot in Namibia. Theres an Israeli film, Live and Become, which has to do with famine, and it was shot in Israel. In Ethiopia, we dont have desert like that. Therein lies the problem, youre watching a film about Ethiopia, but youre not looking at the country itself. Theres nothing wrong with the desert. But it connotes a certain emptiness and that is not Ethiopia.

And I wanted to do it in Ethiopia because it was my home. Despite the dictatorship and war and famine and poverty  I had even grown up in a slum  I still feel I had a fairy-tale childhood. There was a lot of love and good food and colorful characters and incredible Christian festivities that Id grown up with.

In Ethiopia, there is no colonial legacy. The culture is untouched. Its a dream for a filmmaker and storyteller. Beauty and heartache, its there.

In college, you studied international development, then you turned around and got a masters in film at NYU. What prompted the shift?

I went to do my masters in agro-economics in Norway. It was my young idealist moment. I wanted to give back to my country. But I was not happy studying that. So when I was in Norway, I had this moment where I asked myself, If Ethiopia was prosperous and peaceful like Norway, what would I do with my life?

Well, I would want to tell stories. I grew up with my grandmothers folklore and fables, the oral storytelling traditions. So I put aside the guilt about what I should do and decided to pursue what I love to do. Ive always loved cinema and Ive always loved stories.

What types of films did you watch as a boy in Ethiopia?

In Ethiopia, it was under communism, so we were watching a lot of East German television and Russian television and a lot of Bollywood. I think the government thought [Bollywood] was safer than Hollywood. They didnt want to entice us with that! Though there was the occasional James Bond film.

But I loved Bollywood. I cant name the films I saw as a kid, but living in such a repressive regime, it seemed like Indians were always having a good time. In Ethiopia, we lived with a curfew. And in the Bollywood films everything seemed so fun and free and beautiful.

What were you drawn to as you began to watch and study film in the U.S.?

I was into indie film, dramas. My Own Private Idaho  I remember when I saw that it really blew me away. It was this combination of honesty and dreaminess that Im still really into. I was really into Six Degrees of Separation, which Will Smith was in. I enjoyed the dialogue and the concept. I was like in eighth grade when I saw it.

When I became a film student, I really began to pay attention to dialogue. Im a wordy person. I remember seeing Network. That was an example of a film that when I first saw it, I was, Wow. Then there are more contemporary figures like Todd Solondz, who did Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse. I love Robert Bresson, the French director, and [Abbas] Kiarostami from Iran. Akira Kurosawa, of course. I discovered a lot on my own before film school though. I would check them all out of the library. The library was my best friend.

------------

FOR THE RECORD

Jan. 5, 2:10 p.m.: An earlier version of this post listed the movie title as Welcome to the Doll House.

------------

What are you working on now?

The working title is 1991" because thats the year that communism ended and [Ethiopia] had democracy. Kids born from that era on are totally from another world. Theyre much more educated and much more worldly. Theyve gotten much more sophisticated. I want to deal with the frustration and angst of Ethiopian youth that take on dangerous journeys for a better life  treacherous journeys across the desert to Arabia, across the sea to Europe and across the jungle to South Africa. That is the story I want to tell now.

Lamb screens at the Palm Springs International Film Festival at 10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 7, Camelot Theatres, 2300 E. Baristo Road, Palm Springs, psfilmfest.org. The festival runs through Sunday.

Find me on Twitter @cmonstah.
Netflix is strengthening its ties with DreamWorks Animation as the Glendale studio looks to become more of a player on the small screen.

The companies announced Tuesday they were expanding their partnership, making Netflix the global home to several new original series from DreamWorks Animation, best known for its Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar movies.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

But in a statement, Netflix said it plans to launch several new series produced by DreamWorks Animation in the coming year, including a childrens series, Trollhunters, from Guillermo del Toro, and a reimagining of the 80s animated series Voltron.

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The deal extends  by an unspecified number of years  Netflixs rights to stream such DreamWorks series as The Adventures of Puss in Boots and Dinotrux in markets around the world, except China. Based in Los Gatos, Calif., Netflix operates in more than 60 countries. The pact also gives Netflix streaming rights to DreamWorks movies.

Childrens programming has become increasingly valuable to Netflix and other streaming services that

are competing for subscribers.

Its with great pleasure that we expand on an already successful relationship with DreamWorks Animation to bring more premium kids and family television to Netflix members globally, Cindy Holland, vice president of original series for Netflix, said in a statement.

For DreamWorks, Netflix provides an important distribution platform for the studio at a time when more consumers and their families are watching entertainment on new platforms.

Investors, who had been concerned about whether Netflix would end its deal with DreamWorks by 2018, welcomed the news. DreamWorks shares closed Tuesday at $24.98, up 99 cents, or 4%.

DreamWorks TV effort has been reinvigorated by the Netflix deal, enabling it to build one of the largest TV production studios, James Marsh, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co., wrote in a research note.

The pact expands a landmark deal announced in 2013, when DreamWorks signed a multiyear agreement to produce 300 hours of original programming for Netflix.

DreamWorks, which co-owns with Hearst Corp. the YouTube teen network Awesomeness TV, has been ramping up its television business to lessen its reliance on the performance of movies. Last year, the studio cut 500 jobs and overhauled management because of a string of misses at the box office.

The studios television business, however, has been a bright spot, generating an estimated $250 million in revenue last year.

Last month, the studio said it was getting into the business of producing live-action television shows based on its original characters and those from the

Classic Media library, which it acquired in 2012 for $155 million, securing the rights to Lassie, Waldo, Casper

the Friendly Ghost and

hundreds of other characters.

With the new Netflix deal, DreamWorks has commitments to produce more than 1,600 episodes of television for linear and video-on-demand platforms.

yvonne.villarrreal@latimes.com
Sumner Redstones lawyers are asking a judge to dismiss a petition that seeks to have the media mogul declared mentally incompetent, claiming the case is an unwarranted intrusion into Redstones privacy.

This proceeding is not reasonably necessary to protect Mr. Redstones interest in receiving appropriate medical care, one of Redstones attorneys, Amy Koch, wrote in the motion filed late Monday.

Redstone, who is executive chairman of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp., continues to make his own healthcare decisions, according to court documents filed by his legal team. The latest motion included a declaration from Redstones personal physican, Dr. Richard Gold, who said he visited Redstone on Dec. 30.

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Mr. Redstone seemed to be his usual self, and he joked with me, Gold said.

Redstones former companion, Manuela Herzer, 51, filed the petition in November after she was tossed out of Redstones house in Beverly Park and removed from her position of authority overseeing the billionaires household affairs.

Until mid-October, Herzer was authorized to make decisions about Redstones healthcare should the mogul become incapacitated. But on Oct. 16, Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman replaced Herzer as the agent in charge of Redstones advance healthcare directive.

Herzers camp sharpened its attack this week, with Herzers attorney, Pierce ODonnell, alleging that Dauman was trying to dodge efforts to be deposed.

ODonnell has said that he wants to probe Daumans previous statements that Redstone is engaged in his companys affairs and is capable of carrying on in-depth conversations.

Dauman also has said that Redstone had told him that Herzer wanted Redstones money.

We will be serving a subpoena under New York law to compel Mr. Dauman to testify under oath and finally own up to his previous -- and patently specious -- claims that Mr. Redstone has the mental capacity required to carry on complex personal and professional conversations, ODonnell said in a statement released late Monday.

The issue is an awkward one for Dauman, who is in charge of the day-to-day affairs of Viacom and who simultaneously agreed to serve as Redstones agent in charge of healthcare decisions should Redstone become incapacitated.

Herzers lawyers are attempting to pull Dauman -- and Viacom -- further into the contentious case.

On. Dec. 21, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Cowan ruled that we had the right to take the deposition of Mr. Dauman, ODonnell said in his statement. The truth is this: Mr. Redstone is in rapidly failing health, has severe cognitive deficits, cannot write or speak intelligibly, and is simply incapable of making his own healthcare decisions.

A Viacom spokesman declined to comment.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 8.

Redstones lawyers sought Tuesday to focus the case on Redstones healthcare directive -- and not whether Dauman ultimately testifies.

This action is about the healthcare decisions of a 92 year-old man whose own doctor confirms his ability to make them, Redstones attorney Gabrielle Vidal said in a statement.

We appreciate the courts express regard for Mr. Redstones privacy and leave it to the court to decide what additional information it needs to consider Mr. Redstones motion to dismiss, Vidal said.

Twitter: @MegJamesLAT

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If the hair and makeup from the post-apocalyptic science-fiction film Mad Max: Fury Road looks out of this world, it very well might be. Thats because hair and makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt grew up in a faraway land known as New Zealand.

In those days, we were far removed, she said. Theyd ship everything over, so youd get magazines like four months after theyd been released in the United States and Europe, so we were always quite a way behind the trends. But Kiwis are really innovative people, and we try to make up a lot of our own things.

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After launching her career in New Zealand, Vanderwalt moved to Australia to work with director George Miller on 1981s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Since then, she has become both a longtime resident of Australia and a frequent collaborator on Millers films, having worked with him on 1998s Babe: Pig in the City, 2006s Happy Feet and, most recently, 2015s Mad Max: Fury Road.

What were the challenges of filming in a Namibian desert?

It was extreme temperatures, extreme conditions. We were doing white makeup and white clothes and pale girls and all that. Because the dust coming off the desert was this incredible red color, wed dust them all off, clean them all up, hopefully get them white again. And then some days youd have sandstorms out there, so a major exfoliation that would just remove everything. And the hair lace of the wigs, all the sand would get stuck in it. So it was constant maintenance and constant laundering of everything that turned red during the day with the desert dust.

Was it difficult to convince Charlize Theron to shave her head to play Imperator Furiosa?

We didnt even have to push her. She did it. [Furiosa] was a female living in this mens world. And to me, it would be quite a violent mens world. So she would have had to be better than any of the men. She would have had to be the best mechanic, the best driver, the best fighter. She would not have had hair that would have made her look more like a female.

How did you come up with her black makeup?

There was a tribe of African women that wear clay across the top of their foreheads from the eyes up. And one of them was a chalky brown color, which I ended up using on the War Boys. But originally, we had that on Furiosa. And before we got to Charlize and Namibia, I did it on lots of stand-ins and extras, and we played with it and played with it. And then we went over into black. And then I was going, That could be the grease from the engines. So I just mixed a bit of bronze and a bit of silver together that could have come from metal shavings when they were filing things, and rubbed that on in the center of these foreheads to give a bit of illumination and light. So thats where the black came from, the black foreheads.

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What was your inspiration for the War Boys scarification?

Theyd be sitting around for hours and hours on end with nothing to do. There are no books left in this world. There are no references, no art. So all they know is their cars. So they carve out car pieces on themselves and tools that they might use. Thats their art form.

Miss Giddy had a few tattoos.

Basically, we did a scan of her body and made a model of her body and put acetate paper over it, and we got encyclopedias and actually wrote the history of the world all over this dummy body. And then we sent those off to the States to Tinsley [Transfers], who made the tattoo sheets up. Wed spend nearly five hours applying all those tattoos to her body: her chest, her back, her arms, her neck, her face, her ears, her legs sometimes. And then shed go home with a pair of silk pajamas and a silk pillowslip and silk sheets, and she would sleep in these tattoos. And then come back the next morning, and wed finish the makeup, put the wig on. And that would take another two hours. So she was literally a seven-hour makeup, the longest. But then we could keep the tattoos on for three days in a row.
If theres one thing director Spike Lee has come to expect with each new film, its blowback and controversy.

Notorious for exposing raw-nerve issues around race, class, sexism and everything else that makes America squirm, Lee has stepped back into the fray with Chi-Raq, a satirical take on the gun violence plaguing Chicagos South Side.

Nothings easy, said Lee. I suppose I could do some sort of Pixar-like film, but then Im sure people would find some reason to be [ticked] off about that too.

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Based on the 2,000-year-old Greek comedy Lysistrata, in which women withhold sex to stop their men from waging wars, Chi-Raq has garnered high praise from film critics and just the opposite from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, gun control advocates and defensive Chicagoans (the name of the film comes from a rap term combining Chicago with Iraq).

From the street, its easy to spot the Brooklyn headquarters of Lees film company, Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks. Its plastered with Chi-Raq art: A gun with an impotent, sagging muzzle under the words Put Da Guns Down. A red, white and blue map of the U.S. (made up of firearms rather than states) sitting under a banner the reads America: The Armed and the Dangerous.

Inside, Lees walls are lined with posters of his favorite films (Martin Scorseses Mean Streets) and his own productions such as Jungle Fever and Malcolm X  films that also challenged conventional narratives about the intersection of race, culture and politics.

Critics said Do the Right Thing would cause riots all across the country when it came out [in 1989], that black people would run amok, said the poker-faced Lee, dressed in a black beret emblazoned with Chi-Raq, a military-style jacket and his trademark thick-rimmed round glasses. With Mo Better Blues I was called anti-Semitic. Shes Gotta Have It, Im exploiting black women. Take your pick. It aint nothing new.

Chi-Raq, released Dec. 4 by Amazon films, was written by Lee and Kevin Willmott (Bunker Hill), and stars Nick Cannon as Demetrius Dupree, a gangbanging rapper with the stage name Chi-Raq. His girlfriend Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) is enthralled with his gun-toting swagger just like everyone else in the neighborhood, until she runs into a mother (Jennifer Hudson) whose child was killed in the crossfire of rival gangs.

1 / 3 New York-native Spike Lee and his movies are often described as controversial and thought-provoking. Here are some of the highlighted works he has directed. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 3 Spike Lees 1996 Get on the bus was about a group of African American men traveling to the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. (Lester Sloan / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 3 Mike Tyson stars in Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth - Live on Stage, a one-man show directed by Spike Lee at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. (John Gurzinski / AFP/Getty Images)

On the advice of an activist neighbor (Angela Bassett), Lysistrata starts a No Peace, No Piece movement that literally brings men with guns  gangs and police alike  to their knees. The film also stars Samuel L. Jackson as a dapper if not somewhat supernatural narrarator, Wesley Snipes as an eye-patch wearing gang leader and John Cusack as a peace-waging priest.

The characters speak mostly in verse, playfully rhyming dialogue about otherwise dark and heavy subject matter. Its an odd juxtaposition that Lee says was intentional  a way to make people think. We didnt want to do a documentary, said Lee. Id seen the Vice documentary [on Chicago], and I didnt want to glamorize the violence. In real life, do people speak in verse? No, but satire gives us the license to do stuff that you cant do in a straight drama. Singing and dancing. The film is a heightened reality.

The film was largely shot in Chicago, and more specifically, in the crime-plagued neighborhood of Englewood. The decision to take that premise of the play and move it to the South Side of Chicago, if we had set it in any other place it would have not been the same, says Lee. It needs to be at the place where blood is flowing on the streets. Its not all of Chicago, but on the South Side and the West Side.

While many in the area welcomed the attention on their otherwise underserved neighborhood, the films name alone caused friction between Lee and Emanuel. But right around the time Chi-Raq opened, the mayor came under scrutiny after a police dash cam from 2014 was released showing a white Chicago police officer shooting a black 17-year-old 16 times.

A federal civil rights investigation has since been launched into the Chicago Police Departments practices, and several more cases of police shooting black citizens have prompted calls for Emanuel to resign.

Uh huh, we know what we were doing, said Lee regarding the serendipity of Chi-Raqs release. Thats one of the reasons Kevin and I wanted to do this film. Eighty-eight people die every day in the U.S. due to gun violence. I dont care who pulls the trigger. What their complexion is. A cop or whoever. It dont matter. A murder is a murder.

But it wasnt just the mayor who opposed Lees portrayal of Chicago, which has had nearly 500 homicides this year. Local artist Chance the Rapper said the film was exploitative, and other rappers voiced anger that Lee took a local term for their embattled parts of Chicago and gave it to his film.

They say, Spikes not from Chicago, says Lee of his critics comments. They say, Hes not from the hood; Spike went to college  which is stupid. He has a masters degree  which is stupid. Nick Cannon is soft, hes not hood, hes never been to jail, he aint got no bodies on him, he aint killed nobody. That type of criticism is really sad, and thats the kind of  this film is trying to fight. I dont care where Im from, education, whatever they say. Im not cosigning  and killing people is....

Chi-Raq includes members of Purpose Out of Pain, a group of Chicago mothers whove lost children to violence. In a somber moment toward the films close, they hold up pictures of their late daughters and sons.

When Kevin and I started this film, we thought it might help save lives, said Lee. I still believe that. These young brothers will see this film and it will change their mentality, make them think about what theyre doing. Onward and upward. Positivity. I will go to my grave believing art can do that.



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Follow The Times complete coverage of the Golden Globes and Oscars
When Paddy Breathnach first visited Cuba in the mid-1990s, he stumbled into a club where drag queens were performing. Though the Irish-born director had seen drag performances before, he found himself unusually captivated by the lip-synching on stage  in a communist country with restrictive laws and attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

It had this raw emotional energy to it, he recalled. I wouldnt claim to be a world expert on drag, but from other areas Ive seen drag, the drag queens in Cuba are very different.

This encounter became the basis for Breathnachs latest film, Viva, showing Tuesday and Thursday at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. One of nine on the shortlist for best foreign language film at the Oscars, the picture stars Hector Medina as Jesus, a young, gay hairdresser for drag queens with aspirations of one day taking center stage.

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His dreams are dashed when his macho father (Jorge Perugorria) returns from a 15-year stint in jail. Forbidden to work for his drag queen friends, Jesus turns to sex work to take care of himself and his dad.

The Magnolia Pictures film will have a limited release in the U.S. early this year.

Before the films Palm Springs debut, Breathnach, known for 1997s I Went Down and 2007s Shrooms, spoke with The Times via Skype from Ireland about filming Viva in Cuba, the countrys drag community and shooting a movie in Spanish without really knowing the language.

Describe the difference between the Cuban drag community and others youve encountered.

Cuban drag has a certain emotion to it. Maybe its the circumstances of the place that give it that type of energy. Theres a raw performance of emotion and power in those Cuban drag artists. It was so physical and so present that I felt it was a great vehicle to explore some of those unvarnished, unpolished emotions.

I remember going to a couple shows that were in backyards. These queens were quite ordinary people, but they would throw up a red sheet and one spotlight, and suddenly it transformed into a theater. It transformed both the setting and themselves.

In the film, Havana, the city, is just as much a character as Jesus or his father. How did you go about ensuring that?

When we went to Havana, we noticed that there are two parts of the city. One of them is where the tourists are directed: Its beautiful and renovated and a lot of music. But if you go a kilometer in any direction, youre going to come across a different Havana, a realer Havana. It was in the script to make sure it was an authentic, real, true sense of the place and not an overly romanticized view.

We had 22 days and a small budget, so I knew going into it that we couldnt afford tons of extras to re-create vibrancy. So, as the Cubans say, we decided to go free, [meaning when you see extras in the film, they were regular people on the street, not paid actors]. We didnt try and stop people from walking down the street. The people on the buses are all real people on the bus who werent aware we were going to be filming.

The film also has some truth in showing sex work as a last resort for survival, as opposed to a proactive choice. Was that an important element of the story line?

That was a necessity. Its something thats a truth in Cuba. Lots of people have been forced to do things they might not normally do. People who might not normally be expected to go into [sex work] have gone into that because life is hard and its difficult to make a living and thats the only option. Its wrong to say theres an acceptance of it there, but people understand the reasons behind it.

Tell me about working with a Spanish-speaking cast when you dont speak the language.

I had could-get-by Spanish, but I was nervous beforehand. I knew the script very well and knew the nuances of it, but Spanish isnt even my second language. I discovered quite quickly that if you have something to say and know what it is you want to say, you can overcome language barriers. To get it across yourself with your conviction and force of your personality, [the actors] see the intent in what youre doing.

You obviously make use of English subtitles throughout the film, but you dont during the drag performances. Why?

Thats a question thats come up in festival screenings, but once you start reading, you lose that raw power. Youre reading and thinking rather than watching and feeling. When I saw those drag queens the first time, I didnt know what they were saying, but I could feel it. I wanted the audience to have the same feelings I did.

What about the story do you think resonates most with audiences?

We havent shown it in Europe at all yet, just in America, but a lot of people have connected with the theme of change and managing it in a way that helps people heal. Theres also the idea as well where somebody has to become the master of two worlds, having their individual identity established and accepted but also realizing their place within the tribe or broader group. And obviously its a father-son story as well, so thats kind of universal.

1 / 84 Photos from the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 84 Saskia Diesing of the Netherlands, director of Nena. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 84 Michal Rogalski of Poland, director of Summer Solstice, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 84 Grimur Hakonarson of Iceland, director of Rams, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 84 Frances Deniz Erguven, director pf Mustang, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 84 Britains Heidi Greensmith, director of Winter, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 84 Greeces Yorgos Zois, director of Interruption, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 84 Yared Zeleke of Ethiopia, director of Lamb, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 84 Slavek Horak of the Czech Republic, director of Home Care, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 84 Klaus Haro of Finland, director of The Fencer, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 84 Adriano Valerio of Italy, director of Banat, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 84 Paddy Breathnach of Ireland, director of Viva, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 84 Indias Raam Reddy, director of Thithi, is shown at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 84 Naji Nowar of Jordan, director of Theeb, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 84 Raf Reyntjens of Belgium, director of Paradise Trips, at a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 84 Leena Yadav of India, director of Parched, attends a festival workshop. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 84 Director Grimur Hakonardson peers through a sculpture during a tour of the the estate of Walter and Leonore Annenberg at Sunnyland Center & Gardens in Rancho Mirage. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 84 Deniz Erguven and other directors attending this years Palm Springs International Film Festival tour the historic estate of Walter and Leonore Annenberg at Sunnyland Center & Gardens in Rancho Mirage. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 84 Directors attending this years Palm Springs International Film Festival tour the historic estate of Walter and Leonore Annenberg at Sunnyland Center & Gardens in Rancho Mirage. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 84 Director Jack Pettibone Riccobono, from left, executive producer Chris Eyre, subject Rob Brown and producer Shane Slattery-Quintanilla before the screening of their documentary The Seventh Fire at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 84 Rob Brown, subject of director Jack Pettibone Riccobonos documentary The Seventh Fire, enters the Palm Canyon Theatre before the screening of the film at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 84 PALM SPRINGS, CA--JANUARY 03, 2016-- Director Charlie Kaugman, left and Actor Jack Black are photographed before the start of the Variety magazine luncheon, at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival, held at at the Parker Palm Springs hotel, in Palm Springs, CA, Jan. 03, 2016. Black presented Kaufman with the Variety Creative Impact in Directing Award presented by Mercedes-Benz. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 84 Director Peter Landesman, left, and Will Smith before participating in a panel discussion with Dr. Bennet Omalu after a screening of Concussion. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 84 Laszlo Nemes, right, director of Son of Saul, speaks to media before the start of the Variety magazine luncheon, where he was recognized as one of 10 Directors to Watch. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 84 Actor Jack Black gives the photographers a different angle to shoot before the start of the Variety magazine luncheon. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 84 Actors Jada Pinkett Smith, left, and husband Will Smith before the start of the Variety magazine luncheon, where Will Smith was to be presented with the Variety Creative Impact in Acting Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 84 Concussion director Peter Landesman, left, star Will Smith and the films subject Dr. Bennett Omalu at the Variety magazine luncheon. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 84 Actress Jada Pinkett Smith (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 84 Denis Gamze Erguven, director of Mustang, is one of Variety magazines 10 Directors to Watch. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 84 The cool of actor Jack Black on display at the Palm Springs festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 84 Elizabeth Wood, director of White Girl, at the Variety magazine luncheon, where she was recognized as one of 10 Directors to Watch. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 84 Actors Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 84 Dr. Bennet Omalu, left, Will Smith and director Peter Landesman conduct a lively panel discussion of their film Concussion at the festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 84 Johnny Depp inspects the Desert Palm Achievement Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 84 Brooklyn actress Saoirse Ronan with the International Star Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 84 Kate Winslet and Michael Fassbender, International Star Award recipient, backstage. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 84 Ben Mendelsohn with Spotlight Award winner Rooney Mara. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 84 Director Tom McCarthy with his Sonny Bono Visionary Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 84 Director Ridley Scott with Cate Blanchett, Desert Palm Achievement Award winner, and Matt Damon, winner of the Chairmans Award, backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 84 Room actress Brie Larson with the Breakthrough Performance Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 84 Bryan Cranston with the Spotlight Award, presented to him by Helen Mirren for his work on Trumbo. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 84 Actors Christian Bale, left, Steve Carell, director Adam McKay, Jeremy Strong and Finn Wittrock with the Ensemble Performance Award for The Big Short backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 84 Spotlight duo Michael Keaton, left, and director Tom McCarthy backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. Keaton presented McCarthy the Sonny Bono Visionary Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 84 The Martian actor Matt Damon, right, alongside director and presenter Ridley Scott with the Chairmans Award backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 84 Kate Winslet with Steve Jobs star Michael Fassbender, International Star Award recipient, backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala held at at the Palm Springs Convention Center. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 84 Carol actress Cate Blanchett with the Desert Palm Achievement Award backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 84 The Danish Girl actress Alicia Vikander with the Rising Star Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 84 Brooklyn actress Saoirse Ronan, left, with Carol actress Cate Blanchett, winner of the Desert Palm Achievement Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 84 Johnny Depp shows the world his Desert Palm Achievement Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 84 Inside the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala, which was held at at the Palm Springs Convention Center. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 84 Actress Helen Mirren on the red carpet of the 2015 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 52 / 84 Actors Kate Winslet and Johnny Depp (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 53 / 84 Actresses Amber Heard and Alicia Vikander backstage after Heard presented Vikander with the Rising Star Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 54 / 84 Trumbo actors Bryan Cranston and Hellen Mirren backstage after Cranston was presented with the Spotlight Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 55 / 84 Actor Paul Dano (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 56 / 84 Room actress Brie Larsen (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 57 / 84 Alicia Vikander (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 58 / 84 Alicia Vikander (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 59 / 84 Jacob Tremblay from the film Room. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 60 / 84 Actor Christian Bale and Sibi Blazic (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 61 / 84 Actors Saoirse Ronan and Paul Dano (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 62 / 84 Carol actress Cate Blanchett is photographed on the red carpet. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 63 / 84 Black Mass director Scott Cooper with his movies star Johnny Depp, winner of the Desert Palm Achievement Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 64 / 84 Director Ridley Scott and actress Cate Blanchett (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 65 / 84 Director Adam McKay, left, Steve Carell and Jeremy Strong (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 66 / 84 San Antonio artist Maria Anita, left, takes pictures of movie fans holding her celebrity paintings outside the Palm Springs Convention Center. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 67 / 84 Room actress Brie Larsen (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 68 / 84 Actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 69 / 84 Carol actress Rooney Mara (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 70 / 84 Producer Kai Nordberg, left, and director Klaus Haro greet movie fans at a party after the premiere of Haro's film The Fencer. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 71 / 84 Actor Johnny Depp, on hand to receive the Desert Palm Achievement Award, signs autographs before walking the red carpet. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 72 / 84 Brooklyn actress Saoirse Ronan signs autographs. She received the International Star Award. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 73 / 84 Trumbo actor Bryan Cranston signs autographs. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 74 / 84 Carol actresses Cate Blanchett, right, and Rooney Mara, arrive. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 75 / 84 Attendees pause to take pictures of the red carpet arrivals. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 76 / 84 Movie fans passed through security, then line up with hopes of seeing celebrity arrivals. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 77 / 84 The Martian actor Matt Damon signs autographs. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 78 / 84 A movie fan attends a party following the opening night premiere of director Klaus HSrs fil, The Fencer at the 27th Palm Springs International Film Festival. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 79 / 84 Steve Jobs actor Michael Fassbender signs autographs and takes selfies. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 80 / 84 Actor Christian Bale signs autographs. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 81 / 84 The Big Short actor Steve Carell signs autographs. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 82 / 84 Kate Winslet backstage at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 83 / 84 Security outside the Palm Springs Convention Center before the start of the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in Palm Springs. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 84 / 84 Security outside the Palm Springs Convention Center before the start of the gala. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

What was your reaction to being on the Oscars shortlist as Irelands national submission?

I was delighted and thrilled. We knew we had a chance because the reaction was strong [at film festivals]. But theres so many films that people dont know a lot about. Its like a horse race where you dont know the exact formula. Its difficult to gauge. But really, you make a film, and it becomes a great experience, and you want the adventure to keep going. If Viva got the chance to become a nominee, itd be a great adventure to continue for a bunch of Irish people going to make a film in Cuba in Spanish.

trevell.anderson@latimes.com

Twitter: @TrevellAnderson
Southern California Gas Co. crews are erecting mesh screens around the utilitys leaking natural gas injection well to prevent an oily mist from drifting off the site and across the nearby community of Porter Ranch, company officials confirmed on Monday.

The move comes as the company continues to fix a leaking natural gas well that has displaced thousands of residents, a process that is expected to take several more months.

The structures under construction on the west side of the well head are designed to capture airborne droplets of a brine solution that may have contained trace amounts of oil naturally occurring within the leaking wells reservoir, said Trisha Muse, a spokeswoman for SoCal Gas.

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An earlier version of this article said the mesh screens are 100 feet tall. The screens actually lie flat over the well site. The article also misidentified spokeswoman Trisha Muse as Tracy Muse.

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The mist, she said, may have been carried by the wind to properties immediately adjacent to the facility, particularly when very strong winds blow in that direction.

The gas company used a massive crane Sunday to install a 60-foot section of the mesh, said Don Drysdale, a spokesman for the state Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.

The problem first arose Nov. 13, when SoCal Gas used an automated call system to advise local residents to stay indoors because fluids pumped into the well had returned to the surface and created a mist. The company issued an all-clear the following day.

Now, a mixture of brine water and oil is rising up into the gas companys natural gas storage zone, then traveling up the well and into the air.

As a result, local residents are finding droplets of dark brown residue on their homes, vehicles, fish ponds and gardens. Some are collecting samples on dinner plates, then forwarding photographs of the material to their lawyers.

On Dec. 21, the company posted an update on the massive gas leak that began Oct. 23, pointing out that it was spewing mostly methane, which is not considered to be toxic. It also acknowledged that some residents had asked about dark brown spots on their property.

We sampled it and, according to our retained toxicologist and medical expert, the company said, the residue contained heavier hydrocarbons (similar to motor oil) but does not pose a health risk.

The company has offered to provide cleaning services and reimburse property owners for cleanup costs.

SoCal Gas expects to have the leak fixed in about three months. Until then, the company is paying to relocate and house thousands of residents and pets sickened by fumes that health officials and independent experts say can cause headache, nosebleed, nausea and other short-term ailments but pose no long-term health risks.

On Monday, plaintiffs attorneys sent a letter to state regulatory officials demanding that they issue an emergency order requiring SoCal Gas to stop all injections, including gas injections and water disposal injections, into the 3,600-acre Aliso Canyon field it acquired in the northern San Fernando Valley in 1972.

With capacity to store 86 billion cubic feet, it is one of the largest natural gas storage facilities in the United States.

The attorneys also demanded that state regulators explain what is happening with the petroleum now surfacing.

The natural gas leak in Porter Ranch began in October. Thousands of people have been displaced since. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

There is a complete lack of information in the well files, their letter says, to show where the gas and petroleum migrates underground and the risk for creating sink holes and geysers.

Also on Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown met with members of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council.

We told him we needed him to organize an oversight group of regulatory agencies that will address the most pressing issues with one voice  now and in the future, Paula Cracium, president of the group, said.

Muse, the spokeswoman for SoCal Gas, said the new structure is one of several things the company is doing to help minimize impacts to the community.



louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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A month after the shooting rampage that killed 14 people, the effect of the violence on San Bernardino is still profound. But on Monday, two events helped push the city forward as it begins to rebuild in the aftermath of the second-deadliest terrorist attack in the nations history.

Employees were allowed to return to work for the first time at the Inland Regional Center, and they found a very different place from the one they knew before the Dec. 2 mass shooting.

A fence dotted with memorial messages kept outsiders at bay. Security guards posted at every entrance checked employee IDs. And the building where the shooting took place remained closed, its future uncertain.

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Even so, Kevin Urtz, the centers associate executive director, said he was glad to see employees return.

Im happy were trying to get a little bit back to normal, he said.

Later in the day, thousands of San Bernardino County employees and others filled an Ontario arena to remember the victims and honor survivors and first responders.

I always hoped and prayed Id never be in front of an audience like this, talking about the second-worst attack in our nations history, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, drawing comparisons to his own experience helping that city recover from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He echoed a call he made in the days after Sept. 11, when he asked people to visit New York City, telling those gathered on Monday to encourage others to visit San Bernardino.

Their goal was to break us, their goal was to show theyre stronger than we are, he said. And you defeat that goal by coming out of this as a San Bernardino that is an example to the world of how strong people can be when they love each other, when they care about each other.

You invite people to come here, come to San Bernardino, come here, spend money here. Make something good come out of this.

The countys Department of Public Health was holding a training session and holiday party at the regional center when county employee Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, opened fire. They were killed hours later in a shootout with police.

A security officer checks ID badges as employees return to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino for the first time since the terror attacks Dec. 2. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

County offices closed at noon so employees could attend the gathering at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario.

Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >>

Inside the darkened arena, choirs sang Lean on Me and Youll Never Walk Alone, and Supervisor Josie Gonzales led the audience in a call-and-response poem titled We Remember Them.

In addition to Giuliani, the crowd heard from evangelical pastor Rick Warren and other county supervisors. Gov. Jerry Brown attended the service but did not speak.

Warren, who lost his son to suicide in 2013, spoke about the long process of grieving.

Its only been a month. Its still fresh, he said. Right now your goal is honestly just to survive, just to survive emotionally. I came here today to tell you there will come a day that you will thrive again.

San Bernardino Mayor R. Carey Davis, who attended the memorial, said it helps with the healing process.

They spoke to their hearts, he said.

Tuere Storks, who works as a preschool teaching assistant for the county, said she had reservations about attending the gathering.

As a Muslim woman who wears a hijab, she worried that she would be the target of anger. As a county employee, she worried about being the target of another attack. But the service was uplifting, she said.

It helps us to remember to stay united, she said.

Twenty miles away, regional center employees felt the absence of Larry Daniel Kaufman. Many of them were used to starting their day with coffee from a shop he ran.

Kaufman, who also trained some of centers clients, was killed in the shooting.

All of our staff knew him, said Donaciano Meza, a program manager at the center. He was a very important part of our daily rituals.... We will all miss him.

Inland Regional Center employees coordinate services for more than 30,000 clients with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. After the attack, many worked remotely using iPads that were distributed to them.

1 / 106 Friends and relatives of Sierra Clayborn gather for her funeral at Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in South Los Angeles. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 106 A memorial service was held for Nicholas Thalasinos on Saturday morning at the Shiloh Messianic Congregation in Calimesa. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 106 A Shabbat service was part of the memorial for Nicholas Thalasinos at Shiloh Messianic Congregation in Calimesa, where Thalasinos and his wife, Jennifer, were integral parts of the congregation. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 106 A hired mover carries out personal items from the home of San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 106 Residents turn out to greet President Obamas motorcade in San Bernardino. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 106 President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet San Bernardino Mayor R. Carey Davis, center, and Supervisor James Ramos outside Air Force One at the San Bernardino airport on Friday night. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 106 President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama leave in a motorcade, after arriving at San Bernardino International Airport, to meet privately with the families of the victims of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 106 President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama depart Air Force One at San Bernardino International Airport. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 106 San Bernardino residents Ashrie Matthews, left, Leah Brown and James Matthews line the street to cheer the presidents motorcade. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 106 President Obama stopped in San Bernardino on Friday evening to privately visit with the families of some of the victims of the Dec. 2 terrorist attack. Ashrie Matthews, left, Leah Brown and James Matthews joined others to cheer as the presidents motorcade passed. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 106 Anti-Obama protester Deann DLean, right, holds some of the many signs she brought to a small protest. In the background, Paul Rodriguez, Jr., with America First Latinos holds a bullhorn. Protesters were out on some San Bernardino street corners voicing their opposition to the president and Islamic State. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 106 People continue to visit the memorial just down the street from where the terrorist attack occurred. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 106 Family members and friends pay their respects to Robert Adams, one of the 14 victims killed in the San Bernardino shooting, during his graveside funeral service at Montecito Memorial Park in Colton. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 106 Summer Adams, center, grieves at the graveside ceremony for her husband, Robert Adams, at Montecito Memorial Park in Colton. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 106 A mourner sits on the curb with her head in her hands during the graveside ceremony for San Bernardino shooting victim Robert Adams at Montecito Memorial Park in Colton. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 106 Mourners embrace at the funeral for Aurora Godoy at Calvary Chapel in Gardena on Wednesday. Godoy was one of 14 killed in the attack in San Bernardino on Dec. 2. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 106 Mourners embrace at the funeral for Aurora Godoy at Calvary Chapel in Gardena on Wednesday. Godoy was one of 14 killed in the attack in San Bernardino on Dec. 2. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 106 Mourners arrive for the funeral for San Bernardino shooting victim Aurora Godoy at Calvary Chapel in Gardena on Wednesday. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 106 Shemiran Betbadal, mother of Bennetta Betbadal, is hugged by family after funeral services at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 106 Pallbearers carry the casket of Bennetta Bet-Badal during funeral services Monday at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga. Bet-Badal was one of the 14 people killed in the San Barnardino shooting rampage. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 106 The husband and children of Bennetta Bet-Badal hug Monday following her funeral services at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 106 Funeral services were held for Bennetta Bet-Badal, one of the 14 people killed in the San Barnardino shooting rampage, at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 106 Funeral services were held for Bennetta Bet-Badal at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 106 Funeral services were held for Bennetta Bet-Badal at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 106 Twelve days after the mass shooting attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino the flowers are beginning to wilt but hugs and paryers are still in abundance. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 106 Gwen Rodgers, assistant pastor at the Church of Living God, hugs Cindy Quinones, cousin of the slain Aurora Godoy, during a vigil at the makeshift memorial for the victims of the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 106 Visitors arrive to pay their respects at the makeshift memorial outside the fenced off Inland Regional Center, in the background, the site of the deadly terrorist attacks, in San Bernardino, Calif. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 106 San Trinh, the longtime boyfriend of Tin Nguyen, 31, one of the victims of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, is consoled by family members as Nguyens casket is loaded into a hearse at St. Barbaras Catholic Church in Santa Ana. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 106 Cousins of Tin Nguyen -- Trang Le, left, Tram Le and Krystal Le -- hold onto some of her personal items and cry as they watch her casket being lowered into the ground at her funeral at the Good Shepherd Cemetery in Huntington Beach. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 106 Pallbearers stand guard over the casket of the Tin Nguyen, a Cal State Fullerton graduate, at the start of her memorial service at St. Barbaras Catholic Church in Santa Ana. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 106 Van Thanh Nguyen shouts her daughters name during her funeral at the Good Shepherd Cemetary in Huntington Beach. Tin Nguyen was 31. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 106 Family members and friends write messages on the side of the Tin Nguyens burial vault. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 106 Van Thanh Nguyen places her hand on her daughters casket while surrounded by friends and family. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 106 The casket of San Bernardino shooting victim Isaac Amanios leaves the St. Minas Orthodox Church during his funeral service in Colton. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 106 Two women cry during Isaac Amanios funeral service at the St. Minas Orthodox Church in Colton. Amanios, 60, is survived by his wife and three children. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 106 Funeral goers cry during Isaac Amanios service. Amanios had shared a cubicle with the male shooter at the San Bernardino County Public Health Department. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 106 Frineds and family stand during the funeral service for Isaac Amanios. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 106 Trenna Meins, center with daughters after the funeral for her husband Damian Meins at St. Catherine Of Alexandria in Riverside. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 106 Pallbearers escort the casket of Damian Meins at St. Catherine of Alexandria church in Riverside. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 106 Mourners gather at St. Catherine Of Alexandria in Riverside on Friday morning for the funeral of Damian Meins, one of 14 people killed in the San Bernardino shooting. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 106 Trenna Meins places a cross on her husbands coffin. Damien Meins was killed in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 106 Mourners gather for the funeral of Damian Meins. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 106 Community members sing Amazing Grace during a candlelight vigil for Nicholas Thalasinos and the 13 other San Bernardino shooting victims at Fleming Park in Colton, Calif. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 106 COLTON, CA - DECEMBER 10, 2015: Jennifer Thalasinos,middle, fights back tears during a candlelight vigil for her slain husband Nicholas Thalasinos and the 13 other San Bernardino shooting victims at Fleming Park on December 10, 2015 in Colton, California.(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 106 A portrait of Yvette Velasco, one of the victims of the deadly San Bernardino terrorist attacks, is placed at her funeral service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Covina, Calif. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 106 Robert Velasco, father of Yvette Velasco, consoles a family member during Yvettes funeral service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Covina, Calif. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 106 COVINA, CALIF.--December 10, 2015 - The coffin of San Bernardino shooting victim, Yvette Velasco, is carried to the hearse following a private viewing for family at Forest Lawn Mortuary in Covina, Calif. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 106 An FBI dive team searches a lake located about two miles north of the Inland Regional Center in connection with last weeks terrorist attack and shootout that left the two attackers and 14 victims dead. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 106 An FBI dive team searches a lake near the Inland Regional Center in connection with last weeks terrorist attack. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 106 A memorial to victims of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino continues to grow near the Inland Regional Center, where the attack took place during a holiday party. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 106 One week after the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, the public is posting signs of gratitude and thanks like this one found at the San Bernardino Police Department. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 52 / 106 Family members and survivors paid their respects with a moment of silence at 11 a.m., exactly one week after the shooting occured at the Inland Regional Center. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 53 / 106 Customers wait for the doors to open at Turners Outdoorsman in San Bernardino Wednesday morning. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 54 / 106 Speaking during a Dec. 8 news conference, dispatcher Michelle Rodriguez of the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department becomes emotional as she recounts the events of the deadly San Bernardino attack. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 55 / 106 Trenna Meins, right, of Riverside, hugs friends and family during a vigil t the Riverside County Health Complex for her husband, Damian Meins, and 13 others killed in the San Bernardino shooting rampage. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 56 / 106 On Dec. 8, people bring flowers, candles and remembrances to a memorial to the San Bernardino shooting victims near the Inland Regional Center, the scene of the attack. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 57 / 106 Frank Cobet of the Get Loaded gun store in Grand Terrace shows a customer an AR-15 rifle on Dec. 8. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 58 / 106 Monica Gonzales relights candles Tuesday morning at a memorial for victims of the shooting rampage in San Bernardino. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 59 / 106 Community members and students gather for a Dec. 7 vigil on the Cal State San Bernardino campus to remember the victims of the deadly attack in the city. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 60 / 106 Patricia Corona of Colton, Calif., holds her children, Dejah Salvato, 7, and Brandon Salvato, 9, as they attend a Dec. 7 vigil at the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors headquarters to pay tribute to the victims of the citys recent mass shootings. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 61 / 106 A prayer is said at the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors headquarters to honor the victms of the citys recent mass shootings. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 62 / 106 FBI agents put up a screen to block the view of onlookers as they investigate the building at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) 63 / 106 Syed Farook, father of the suspect in the San Bernardino mass shooting, Syed Rizwan Farook, arrives at his home to a swarm of reporters in Corona, Calif. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 64 / 106 Roses are laid at the entrance to San Bernardino County headquarters as thousands of employees returned to work Monday, five days after Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire on a gathering of his co-workers, killing 14 people and wounding 21. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 65 / 106 Trudy Raymundo, director the the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, is surrounded by San Bernardino County supervisors as she addresses the media during a press conference Monday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 66 / 106 John Ramos of Riverside pays his respects Monday at a makeshift memorial site honoring Wednesdays shooting victims in San Bernardino. (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press) 67 / 106 Claudia Zaragoza writes a message on a banner at the ever-growing memorial site to the victims of the recent mass shootings near the Inland Regional Center. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 68 / 106 Caroline Campbell, from left, Jessie Campbell and Rylee Ponce embrace as they pay their respects at the ever-growing memorial site for the victims of the recent mass shootings. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 69 / 106 Caroline Campbell embraces her son, David Malijan, 6, as they pay their respects at the ever-growing memorial site to the victims of the recent mass shootings near the Inland Regional Center. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 70 / 106 The Zafarullah family of Chino, originally of Pakistan, watches Obamas address. Arshia, at left, is holding her 18-month-old nephew, Sohail Ahmed. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 71 / 106 One of several signs supporting the city of San Bernardino hang above the 215 Freeway on Sunday evening. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 72 / 106 Members of the Muslim community, such as Khadija Zadeh, lit candles and wrote messages to the families of victims of the San Bernardino shooting rampage during a memorial service at the Islamic Community Center of Redlands in Loma Linda. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 73 / 106 Ajarat Bada prays during a memorial service at the Islamic Community Center of Redlands in Loma Linda to remember the victims of the San Bernardino shooting rampage. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 74 / 106 Alaa Alsafadi, center, holds her son, Yousef, 4, during a memorial service at the Islamic Community Center of Redlands in Loma Linda. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 75 / 106 Riders from the Christian Motorcycle Association in San Bernardino pray at a growing makeshift memorial for San Bernardino shooting victims near the Inland Regional Center. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 76 / 106 A candlelight vigil dubbed United We Stand, took place at Granada Hills Charter High School on Saturday evening. The event was organized by Muslim Youth Los Angeles and Devonshire Area in Partnership. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 77 / 106 Ryan Reyes, boyfriend of San Bernardino shooting victim Larry Daniel Kaufman, hugs members of Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah of America mosque who brought roses to a memorial at the Sante Fe Dam on Saturday. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 78 / 106 A bullet hole in the window of a pick up truck where the shootout took place on San Bernardino Avenue. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 79 / 106 A composite photo of the 14 victims of the San Bernardino shooting rampage. (Courtesy of family / Los Angeles Times) 80 / 106 People kneel in prayer for victims of the recent mass shootings at the Inland Regional Center, in San Bernardino. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 81 / 106 After sunset, people continue to arrive at the memorial site for the victims of the recent mass shootings at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 82 / 106 The scene after landlord Doyle Miller opened the doors and allowed the news media inside the Redlands town home where Syed Rizwan Farook and Tafsheen Malik, suspects of the deadly the recent mass shootings in San Bernardino, lived. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 83 / 106 Josie Ramirez-Herndon, center, and her daughter, Chelsie Ramirez, bottom left, join other community members as they pray during a candlelight vigil. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 84 / 106 Fabio Ahumada, a San Bernardino EMT, attends a vigil at San Manuel Stadium (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 85 / 106 A couple embrace at the candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the mass shootings at the Inland Regional Center. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 86 / 106 Angel Meler-Baumgartner 11, who was a member of the Inland Regional Center, where the shooting occurred, attends a vigil at San Manuel Stadium for the victims. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 87 / 106 The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA held a press conference and prayer vigil at Baitul Hameed Mosque in Chino. The group denounced the massacre. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times) 88 / 106 Amy Mahmood, right, holds hands with a woman named Shenaz during the vigil at San Manuel Stadium. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 89 / 106 Ryan Reyes, center, breaks down after finding out his boyfriend of three years, Daniel Kaufman, 42, was one of those killed during Wednesdays mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 90 / 106 Ryan Reyes holds an image of his boyfriend Daniel Kaufman who was confirmed as one of the 14 victims of Wednesdays mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 91 / 106 Larry Jones, left, pastor of Crossover Outreach Church; Dr. Jeannetta Million, pastor of Victorias Believers Church; and Arnold Morales, pastor of King of Glory Church, pray for the victims and those involved in the mass shooting in San Bernardino. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 92 / 106 A coalition of church leaders comes together to pray for the victims and those involved in the San Bernardino shootings. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 93 / 106 FBI investigators inside the suspects Redlands home on Thursday morning. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 94 / 106 The investigation continues Thursday morning on San Bernardino Avenue, where two suspects in the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center died in a shootout with police. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 95 / 106 Law enforcement stands guard at a police line as investigators work at a Redlands home after the San Bernardino attack. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 96 / 106 A SWAT team stands guard with a rifle pointed at a home that is being investigated by police after todays San Bernardinos mass shootings. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 97 / 106 Farhan Khan, second from right, who was identified as the brother-in-law of San Bernardino shooting suspect Syed Rizwan Farook, joins religious leaders during a news conference at the Council of American Islamic Relations in Anaheim. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) 98 / 106 San Bernardino County sheriffs deputies draw guns behind a minivan on Richardson St. during a search for suspects involved in the mass shooting of 14 people at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 99 / 106 Marie Cabrera, Sonya Gonzalez and Christine Duran, all of San Bernardino, pray after the mass shooting in San Bernardino. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 100 / 106 A woman and a man enter the Rudy C Hernandez Community Center after they and other people, who were at the scene of a mass shooting, arrived by bus to be reunited with their familys. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 101 / 106 Emergency personnel bring in a wounded person into Loma University Medical Center after the shooting in San Bernardino on Wednesday. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 102 / 106 A SWAT unit is on the move in San Bernardino. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 103 / 106 A member of the San Manual Fire Department takes the names of people evacuated from the scene of a mass shooting in San Bernardino before they are loaded onto buses and taken away from the area. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 104 / 106 Sheriffs department SWAT members deploy on Richardson Street in San Bernardino on Wednesday. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 105 / 106 Sheriffs department SWAT members deploy near San Bernardino Avenue and Richardson Street in San Bernardino on Wednesday. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 106 / 106 Evacuated workers join in a circle to pray on the San Bernardino Golf Course across the street from where a shooting occurred at the Inland Regional Center. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Lavinia Johnson, the centers executive director, said employees were happy to be back together in the office.

Its been a very difficult time for us and we are very glad to be back at our IRC home, she said.

Wilson Akinmulero, a caregiver at a residential facility who works closely with many IRC employees, arrived Monday to drop off some paperwork.

Hed thought a lot about the long-term effect of the shooting on the centers employees, he said.

I felt for them, he said. If someone can just wake up in the morning and say, Im going to work, and then this tragedy happens. I dont know. It could be stuck in their brains for a long time.

Workers entering and leaving the center were greeted from across the road by Ron Pollakoff of San Bernardino, who stood smiling, waving and holding a sign that read: I love you IRC.

Pollakoff, 41, has a developmental disability and is a client of the center. One employee visits him regularly to help with job placement and other needs, he said.

I want to show my support. I know its been a hard month, he said. Im just so sad that something like this would happen at a place like that.

Just before the lunch hour, a center employee who declined to give her name walked around the complex for exercise. It feels good to be back, she said.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

Twitter: @palomaesquivel



FULL COVERAGE: Terror attack in San Bernardino >>

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Porter Ranch: In the Jan. 3 Section A, an article about the delay in fixing the Porter Ranch gas leak referred to the location of the damaged well as north of Oak Mountain. It is Oat Mountain.

Shootings: In the Jan. 1 California section, an article about a San Fernando Valley shooting being linked to road rage referred to a nearby shooting on Nordoff Street. The street is Nordhoff. The misspelling also appeared in a Dec. 31 California section article about the same shooting.

Native American histories: A review in the Dec. 27 Arts & Books section of two new books about Native American history referred to Michilimackinac, home of the Odawa, as the straits between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The straits are between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

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Book trends: An article in the Jan. 3 Arts & Books section about book trends to watch for in 2016 said that 571 million more books were sold in 2015 than in the year before. The total number of books sold in 2015 was 571 million.

Rose Parade entries: In the Dec. 31 California section, a list of the order of Rose Parade participants misspelled the name of float builder Paradiso Parade Floats as Paradise.

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If you believe that we have made an error, or you have questions about The Times journalistic standards and practices, you may contact Deirdre Edgar, readers representative, by email at readers.representative@latimes.com, by phone at (877) 554-4000, by fax at (213) 237-3535 or by mail at 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. The readers representative office is online at latimes.com/ readersrep.
San Francisco schools Supt. Richard Carranza, a leading candidate to head the Los Angeles Unified School District, has pulled out of consideration, according to a spokeswoman for the Bay Area district.

Carranza said he wanted to focus on unfinished efforts in San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which was the first to report his decision Monday.

I think Los Angeles is an incredibly important school district in the state of California, Carranza told the newspaper. Theyve got a lot of good things happening there. But, he added, Im just really happy with the work were doing in San Francisco.

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Carranza, in his fourth year as superintendent, said that he hoped to provide long-term stability for the districts academic efforts, including enhanced teacher training for the states new learning goals.

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Los Angeles Unified, the states largest school system, is seeking a replacement for Ramon C. Cortines, who retired last month. His second-in-command, Michelle King, is serving as acting superintendent. She also is a candidate for the permanent job.

deliberations over a new schools chief Tuesday morning. The board had hoped to complete the search process by the end of December, especially because Cortines retired from day-to-day management of the district Dec. 11.

School board President Steve Zimmer declined to say Monday whether Carranza was a finalist for the job in Los Angeles, but his name had emerged as one of a handful of likely finalists.

I consider myself someone who admires Supt. Carranza both personally and professionally, and the work that he is engaged with in San Francisco is important work, Zimmer said. I am encouraged that he will be continuing to work on behalf of kids and equity in San Francisco.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Carranza took himself out of the running in a letter to the executive search firm that is assisting L.A. Unified, said Gentle Blythe, a spokeswoman for San Francisco Unified.

Other individuals thought to be candidates or those who have been recruited have included Miami Supt. Alberto Carvalho, St. Louis Supt. Kelvin Adams and Fremont Unified Supt. Jim Morris.

Carranza had qualities that some said would make him a natural finalist: He is Latino, as are 74% of district students, and, like most of them, he was born to working-class parents. The 49-year-old administrator grew up in Tucson and became a teacher and principal at the high school from which he graduated. He worked as a mariachi player to pay off student loans.

Although Carranza has no background in L.A. Unified  and local experience matters to some school board members  he does have extensive experience in California and with urban school systems with low-income populations.

Before taking a senior post in San Francisco, Carranza served as a regional administrator with the fast-growing Las Vegas school system.

Carranza has led San Francisco Unified since 2012, where his focus has included expanding technology and reducing suspensions, two issues of importance in Los Angeles.

San Franciscos district is less than one-10th the size of L.A. Unified; about 60% of its students are from low-income families  a substantial percentage, but lower than in Los Angeles. Carranza recently signed a three-year extension, starting at $315,000 a year.

Emily Murase, the San Francisco school board president, praised Carranzas decision to remain, according to the Chronicle.

We recognize he is one of the top superintendents in the country and we also recognize that he gets recruiting calls regularly, Murase said. Theres a lot of work to be done and we make a great team, so were just happy we can continue with the leadership in the district.

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Steve Herr said he never wants to forget the image of his sons body that was stitched together at a mortuary after being dismembered and dumped in a Long Beach park. One of the hands was missing, Herr said, and the 26-year-olds head was still wrapped to hide the fact that it was only an unrecognizable skull.

Animals got to my sons body parts in El Dorado park, Herr said in an Orange County courtroom. They found him. They ate his flesh off him. They urinated on my son.

Herr testified Monday that he clings to this image because he doesnt want to forget the evilness of the man convicted of killing his son.

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Daniel Wozniak, a 31-year-old community theater actor from Costa Mesa, was found guilty last month of murdering his neighbor Sam Herr and Herrs friend 23-year-old Juri Julie Kibuishi in May 2010. After less than a week of testimony and only a few hours of deliberation last month, jurors convicted Wozniak in both slayings.

Now theyre tasked with deciding Wozniaks punishment: a death sentence or life in prison without parole. Prosecutors began presenting their case for the death penalty Monday. As part of their campaign, Herrs and Kibuishis family members took the stand to describe how the killings have changed their lives.

In my mind, I see him whacking away at my sons head. I see him sawing my sons arm off, Herr said of Wozniak. I have trouble sleeping at night because if I turn the TV off thats what I focus on.

Prosecutors said Wozniak was desperate for cash to cover rent and fund his upcoming wedding, so he hatched a plan to kill Sam Herr and access the bank account where Herr had thousands of dollars saved from his Army service in Afghanistan.

After shooting Herr at a Los Alamitos theater, Wozniak used Herrs phone to lure Kibuishi to Herrs apartment where he shot her twice in the head, prosecutor Matt Murphy told jurors during the guilt phase of the trial last month.

After performing in a play, Wozniak returned to the theater where he dismembered Herrs body so he could hide it at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, according to prosecutors. He then returned to Herrs apartment, ripped off Kibuishis jeans and propped her body against the bed to make it appear Herr had raped her and fled, Murphy said.

Hours before her death, Kibuishi was eating Thai food with her older brother Taka, who described the evening to jurors on Monday.

After dinner, he asked her to be a bridesmaid in his wedding that was planned for the next year. He gave her a tiara she was supposed to wear in the ceremony. According to Taka Kibuishi, his sister left around midnight for Herrs apartment where she thought Herr needed someone to talk to. But the texts shed been receiving pleading with her to stop by were from Wozniak, Murphy said.

What goes through my head is I had so many chances to try to stop her, Taka Kibuishi said before bursting out at Wozniak, calling him a disgusting monster who used his sister as a decoy. And then you disrespect her by pulling her pants off, he said before reining back the emotion in his voice.

Police arrested Wozniak at his bachelor party days after the killing when ATM withdrawals from Herrs bank account led them to him. He confessed to both killings after he phoned his fiancee from jail.

In a recording of the call played for jurors, Wozniak learned police would soon discover a bag of evidence, including the murder weapon. Immediately after hanging up, he called for detectives, according to Murphy. A video of the interview shows Wozniak telling detectives he killed both Herr and Kibuishi for the money.

We lost Julie and Sam for something so simple, Taka Kibuishi said. Its pathetic. Its disgusting.

jeremiah.dobruck2@latimes.com

Dobruck writes for Times Community News.

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti warned Tuesday that a proposed ballot measure aimed at cracking down on real estate mega projects could make things worse for the citys renters.

Garcetti said he plans to meet with backers of the proposed ballot measure, including the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, to see if a compromise can be reached that avoids a public vote. But he also said the restrictions contained in the ballot proposal could depress housing construction for Angelenos already facing higher and higher rents.

We still need to build things in Los Angeles, he said.

We still need to build things in Los Angeles.  Eric Garcetti, L.A. mayor

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The AIDS nonprofit is part of the Coalition to Preserve L.A., a group of activists seeking new limits on the citys ability to change planning and zoning rules for specific real estate projects. The group said it wants voters to impose a moratorium of up to two years for real estate projects that require an increase in the allowable density.

Foundation President Michael Weinstein said Tuesday that neither Garcetti nor his staff had reached out to him to discuss the ballot proposal. Weinstein also disagreed with the mayors assertions, saying the current real estate boom is producing homes for the well-heeled.

The stuff thats being built now is all beyond the reach of even middle-income people, he said. If they were actually building stuff that people could afford, you could make [Garcettis] argument.

The stuff thats being built now is all beyond the reach of even middle-income people.  Michael Weinstein, AIDS Healthcare Foundation president

The Hollywood-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is fighting a proposal for two 30-story residential towers on a parking lot next to its headquarters. To win approval, that project will need a zone change and other special approvals.

The proposed ballot measure also seeks to scale back the citys power to decrease the number of parking spaces required at a specific real estate project.

Garcetti has set a goal of 100,000 new housing units by 2021. Appearing at a news conference dealing with El Nino, he argued that the gap between average incomes and the average rent is worse in Los Angeles County than in any other part of the United States.

Follow @DavidZahniser for whats happening at Los Angeles City Hall

Times staff writer Peter Jamison contributed to this report.

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has chosen a Pasadena official to run the citys Planning Department, a move that comes as neighborhood activists are growing more aggressive in their efforts to block large-scale development projects.

Vince Bertoni, head of Pasadenas Planning and Community Development Department, was nominated Monday to replace Michael LoGrande, L.A.'s departing planning director.

In his announcement, Garcetti said the city needs an expert who brings both fresh ideas and an intricate understanding of our citys complex planning process.

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Bertonis nomination must be approved by the City Council. If confirmed, he will take over a department thats been hit with a series of legal setbacks.

Opposition groups have succeeded in recent years in overturning the citys approval of a Target shopping center, the 22-story Sunset and Gordon residential tower and the Millennium skyscraper complex -- all in Hollywood. They also have forced the City Council to redo its recent vote on Mobility Plan 2035, a long-range transportation plan, and rescind approval of a sweeping development plan for Hollywood.

Those fights are expected to continue raging this year.

Hollywood-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its allies have drafted a ballot measure to place new limits on the citys practice of changing planning and zoning rules for major real estate projects. LoGrande, who is set to leave at the end of the month, said Monday that he disagreed with that approach.

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I just think planning by ballot measure is a dangerous path to go down, he said.

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS nonprofit, voiced optimism about the change in leadership. During LoGrandes tenure, developers could build anything they wanted with any exemptions they requested, said Weinstein, a leader with the Coalition to Preserve L.A., the group pushing the ballot measure.

The fact that the new guy comes from Pasadena, where theres a lot of attention to neighborhood integrity and a lot of attention to what the community wants, is a good sign, he added. The [approach] in Pasadena is community sensitivity.

LoGrande disagreed with Weinsteins assertions, saying he had said no to more projects than any of his predecessors. Behind the scenes, he said, the Planning Department reworked development proposals to assure they match the surrounding community.

Weinstein is coming from an area of no knowledge, LoGrande added.

Bertoni did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He spent the last five years as Pasadenas planning director. Before that, he worked in L.A.'s Planning Department, overseeing the creation of 16 historic preservation zones, approval of a bicycle master plan and new guidelines for downtowns Broadway corridor, according to city officials.

LoGrande said he spoke with the mayor about a departure months ago and is looking to become a private land use consultant. He took over the department in 2010, just as it had been battered by a major budget crisis.

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Since his arrival, the agency has expanded its workforce from 270 planners to 408 this year. In an email to his staff, LoGrande said he had accomplished the goals he had set for himself.

Together we have transformed the Los Angeles skyline through our world-class development review and urban design, he wrote.

Follow @DavidZahniser for whats happening at Los Angeles City Hall.

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The FBI is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrests of those responsible for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a San Joaquin County mosque last month.

Authorities said the president of the Tracy Islamic Center on West Larch Road in Tracy found the remains of an explosive device outside the door of the mosque on the morning of Dec. 26. Photographs released by the FBI show black burn marks on the sidewalk, door and exterior wall of the building.

The explosive device was thrown over a chain link fence, possibly in an attempt to set fire to the mosque, the FBI said in a statement. The Islamic center sustained about $1,000 in damage in the attempted arson, which authorities are calling a possible hate crime.

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Gina Swankie, a spokeswoman for the FBI, said the explosive device was made out of a glass bottle and that very thankfully there were no injuries as a result of the incident.

If the community has any information they are willing to provide about who may have participated in this crime, certainly we want to know, Swankie said. It is unclear, she said, whether one person or multiple people were involved.

Swankie said the incident is being jointly investigated by the FBI, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the San Joaquin County Sheriffs Office.

The Sacramento Valley chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on authorities to investigate the incident as a hate crime.

The recent spike in hate incidents targeting mosques nationwide is unprecedented and should be of concern to all Americans, Basim Elkarra, executive director of CAIR Sacramento Valley.

The Tracy incident is one of several targeting mosques since the San Bernardino shootings on Dec. 2 that left 14 people dead at a holiday gathering at the Inland Regional Center.

Follow @haileybranson on Twitter
As long-awaited rain comes to the state, regulators said Tuesday that California cut its water usage by 20.3% in November, staying on track to meet the target set by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The savings percentage, compared with November 2013, was the lowest in six months of reporting and moved Californias cumulative savings to 26.3% from 27.1% in October. The November savings is still slightly above the 25% cutback that Brown called for.

Water officials have said they expect savings percentages to be lower during the colder, wetter months, when people typically use less water and there is less room to cut back.

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Indeed, Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, nodded to El Nino, opening the meeting by apologizing for a late start on what she called a gloriously gloomy day.

Were in the watch-and-wait season, Marcus said of the anticipated rains effect on the drought.

To cut water consumption by 25%, the water board assigned conservation standards to each of the states 411 urban suppliers last year.

Suppliers with a history of high per-capita water use were ordered to cut as much as 36% from 2013 totals. Suppliers with a history of lower consumption were told to cut as little as 4%.

Some have struggled to meet their targets. In November, six suppliers fell more than 15 percentage points short of their targets. Seventy-five others missed their marks by 5 to 15 percentage points, water board officials said.

The board already has penalized a few water suppliers for falling short of their mandates. Meanwhile, water board staff members said Tuesday that they continue to warn other providers that they too could face fines if they fail to improve.

Many of the hardest-hit districts have complained that their individual targets failed to take into account local conditions. So last month, state water board staff suggested changes to the rules, which prescribe how each district will contribute to the 25% statewide cut.

The effect of the modifications  which would allow regulators to consider regional climate, local growth and other factors when calculating new targets  would be to lower the states mandatory savings to 22%.

The relief could arrive at a crucial time for fledgling water districts. Water conservation has slipped statewide each month since July, according to the data released Tuesday.

For example, California cut its water consumption by 26.2% in September, 22.3% in October and 20.3% in November, compared with the same months in 2013.

Officials, though, remained upbeat about the states conservation efforts. Aided by cooler temperatures and more rain than during the same month in 2013, officials noted that Californians used about 75 gallons of water per person per day in November  the lowest average of any month since the emergency regulation took effect.

I want to be clear that the goal post is still the 25%, Marcus said. Were still winning the race. I dont want [Californians] to be discouraged.

Water board staff members said Tuesday that they would release an updated draft of the emergency regulation by the middle of the month after taking public comments.

The board is likely to consider adopting the updated regulation by early February, just days before the current rules expire.

It may seem incongruous to people that we are extending the conservation regulation when we have rain falling and snow falling, Marcus said. But  in the spirit of better to be safe than sorry, were going to need to keep going.

We have to continue conserving until we dont have to.

Twitter: @ByMattStevens

Times staff writer Bettina Boxall contributed to this report.

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The armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, which started over the weekend as a demonstration in support of two local ranchers facing federal imprisonment, has a cast of colorful characters from across the West. Some have holed up inside the refuge, and others have been standing guard, delivering supplies and protesting outside. A few of the more prominent figures:

Ryan Bundy (Rebecca Boone / AP)

Ammon and Ryan Bundy

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The brothers leading the occupation are among the 14 children of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who led a weeks-long armed standoff over federal grazing fees in 2014.

Its up to us, We the People, to restore and defend the Constitution, Ammon Bundy, 40, who ran a valet car service in Phoenix before recently moving to Idaho, tweeted Monday.

His brother Ryan, 43, runs a construction company in Cedar City, Utah. The local ranchers case, he told NBC News, is an example of the terrorism that the federal government is placing upon the people.

The Bundys, like other participants in the Oregon occupation, appear to be driven in part by their Mormon religious beliefs. In a video posted New Years Day, Ammon Bundy defended the occupation as a righteous cause that he and others were obligated to take on.

I began to understand how the Lord felt about Harney County and about this country, and I clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased, he said.

Said Ryan Bundy: Were trying to accomplish the task of restoring rights to the people who have lost them or surrendered them.

Captain Moroni

Guarding the refuge entrance has been a man in a gray camouflage winter coat who has identified himself to reporters only as Captain Moroni from Utah  another Mormon reference.

According to Mormon beliefs, Moroni was an ancient insurrectionist leader who inspired an army of followers to confront a corrupt king by turning his coat into a flag and raising it as a title of liberty.

And it came to pass that Moroni was angry with the government, because of their indifference concerning the freedom of their country, the scripture says. The king ultimately fled.

When Ammon Bundy called for fellow patriots to join him in the occupation, the Utah volunteer said he felt a religious obligation, especially because Bundys call echoes what Moroni told his followers, according to Mormon scripture.

I just knew it was the right thing, he told OPB News. Im willing to die here.

Jon Ritzheimer, 32. (Rob Kerr / AFP/Getty Images)

Jon Ritzheimer

A retired Marine from Phoenix, Ritzheimer has led various armed rallies in Arizona against Muslims and drew the attention of law enforcement last month after he drove cross-country to confront residents of a Muslim enclave in upstate New York.

In a video about the Oregon occupation posted online Sunday, Ritzheimer appears holding a copy of the Constitution saying: We need to stand our ground together. If we dont stand our ground together, thats when we fall.

Ritzheimer in a second video criticizes the federal Bureau of Land Management: The kids that have never had their hands dirty, and now they get these jobs at the BLM, and now theyre going to tell these ranchers, these people who are more in tune with the ground and with the earth out here, theyre going to come out here and tell them how to run their show, how to ranch, how many head of cattle they can have, where they can go, where they cant go on their own damn land.

Toward the end of the video, Ritzheimer calls on others to join the occupation. We need real men here, he said. Americans who have the intestinal fortitude to come here and take a stand and say enough is enough.

Ryan Payne, an Army veteran from Montana. (Les Zaitz / Associated Press)

Ryan Payne

The Montana electrician and Army veteran is among those in the occupied refuge and has boasted to the press of organizing civilians into sniper squads to confront federal agents at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada in 2014.

We had counter-sniper positions on their sniper positions. We had at least one guy, sometimes two guys, per BLM agent in there, Payne told the Missoula Independent weekly newspaper in Montana. If they made one wrong move, every single BLM agent in that camp wouldve died.

Payne has been a constant presence near the refuge in recent weeks and told the Oregonian newspaper that he was determined to take a stand on behalf of locals. Were sending the message: We will protect you, Payne said.

Former sheriff Richard Mack from Arizona. (Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)

Richard Mack

Mack has been among those protesting in support of the ranchers now serving time on a federal arson charge, but has not been one of those occupying a federal building in the refuge. Mack, former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz., is best known as a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government alleging that portions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act violated the Constitution. A former lobbyist for Gun Owners of America, Mack also founded the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Assn., which claims the right to refuse to enforce federal laws.

Mack met Saturday with the ranchers, Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46. He then blogged about his experience in Oregon, noting he and his group did not support the occupation.

This is about our country, our liberty and our sacred Constitution. This is about federal agents who have done the same thing the Hammonds have been charged with and for which they have received no punishment whatsoever, he wrote.

Mack called for an end to the occupation, saying, Local officials, including the Harney County sheriff, are still working for a peaceful resolution on the Hammonds behalf. We will continue to work and pray for its success.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf
Those who know 73-year-old Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, will tell you that the hot-tempered ranchers can sometimes be their own worst enemies.

But when the men were sentenced to additional prison time for setting two fires that spread to federal lands, many in this remote and rugged corner of eastern Oregon saw it as the federal government wielding too much power.

The ranchers have now become the unwitting inspiration for a self-proclaimed militia that has seized parts of a national wildlife refuge near here, declaring they will stand there until citizens like the Hammonds can manage their own land and die outside of prison.

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Its an honor that sits uneasily with the Hammond family and a number of their neighbors, who have sought to distance themselves from the armed takeover. Signs have gone up around town: Bundy militia go home and No Bundy caliphate, references to Ryan and Ammon Bundy, the brothers from Utah and Idaho who appear to be leading the band of protesters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

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As ordered by a federal judge, the Hammonds pulled up to the Terminal Island federal correctional facility in San Pedro on Monday in a sport utility vehicle and were escorted inside to complete their five-year sentences for arson. Karyn Gallen, a niece of Dwight Hammond who was on hand for the surrender, said the family appreciated the showing of support in Oregon. On the other hand, she said, it has always been a request of the family that things be peaceful.

The mens repeated run-ins with the law have made them a potent rallying symbol in a generations-old struggle between local landowners and federal authorities over how to manage the once-wild Western range.

In economically struggling Harney County, about three-quarters of the land is publicly owned. Ranchers like the Hammonds, whose 10,000-acre spread is checkerboarded with land belonging to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, depend on grazing leases from the federal government. But they face pressure from environmentalists who argue that livestock grazing and other extractive industries imperil wildlife habitats.

Friends and supporters of the Hammonds, who hail from a long line of Oregon ranchers, argue that their attempts to buck federal authorities are the product of a deep commitment to the community in which they live and the land that sustains it.

The Hammonds say they set the two fires in 2001 and 2006 to ward off invasive plant species and protect their property from a wildfire.

Federal prosecutors agreed that Steven Hammond, 46, started the 2006 fire as a defensive measure to prevent a blaze caused by a lightning storm from destroying the winter feed for the familys cattle. But they argued that his actions violated a burn ban that had been in effect and endangered firefighters who were battling the wildfire.

Steven Hammond insisted he called an emergency dispatcher before setting the 2001 fire to make sure there was no burn ban in effect that day. But prosecutors said the call wasnt made until two hours after the fire was set. They contended this fire, which spread to nearly 140 acres of government land, was set to cover up evidence of an illegal deer hunt.

It was not the first time that the Hammonds tangled with federal authorities about setting fires too close to public land. The original indictment listed several other alleged incidents dating to 1982, and said in some cases the Hammonds had obstructed efforts to fight the fires.

After a two-week trial in 2012, the two men served their time  three months for Dwight and a year for Steven  and family members said they assumed that would be the end of the matter.

Instead, the government appealed the sentences, arguing that they did not meet the legally required minimum of five years. U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan had ruled at their original sentencing that such a term would constitute cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional.

It would be a sentence which would shock the conscience, Hogan said.

But a federal appeals court agreed with the government and the men were resentenced to five years. Their last hope is an appeal for clemency from President Obama.

Gallen said the circumstances now facing her family were unfathomable.

We are talking about 140 acres with no lives lost, she said.

Because of the criminal convictions, the Bureau of Land Management did not renew the familys grazing permits last year, and family members say it will be difficult to keep the ranch going.

What has also riled friends and supporters is that the ranchers were prosecuted under a 1996 law intended to punish domestic terrorists.

Sam Glerup, who owns a tow-truck business in Burns, acknowledged that the Hammonds are no golden boys, but said theyre no terrorists, either.

The older one [Dwight], hell be dead before he ever sees the outside of a prison, Glerup said.

In an open letter to the citizens of Harney County, Acting U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams said federal prosecutors never accused the Hammonds of being terrorists.

The evidence at trial convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the Hammonds were guilty of the federal crime of arson, that is, maliciously damaging United States property by fire, he said. The jury was neither asked if the Hammonds were terrorists, nor were defendants ever charged with or accused of terrorism. Suggesting otherwise is simply flat-out wrong.

Anti-government activists rolled into town over the weekend to show support for the aging rancher and his son.

Were trying to accomplish the task of restoring rights to the people who have lost them or surrendered them, Ryan Bundy told The Times on Monday.

Environmentalists, however, argue that what the protesters consider tyrannical treatment by the government is in fact a generous welfare program.

There is enormous subsidization of public lands livestock grazing, the Western Watersheds Project said in a statement Monday. While the going rate for grazing a cow and a calf on private land for a month in Oregon is $17, the equivalent fee on federal public lands is only $1.69 ... hardly a sign that the federal agencies are trying to put ranchers out of business.

The Malheur wildlife refuge, one of the countrys premier bird sanctuaries, is actually open to livestock grazing, according to the group.

Thousands of Americans visit the refuge each year to enjoy the unique species that frequent the Pacific flyway, pouring over $1.9 million into the local economy annually, it said. When Ammon Bundy promotes his agenda of using the resource, hes overlooking the many Americans who use the resource to enjoy quiet recreation like bird-watching.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

nigel.duara@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

Zavis reported from Los Angeles, Duara from Burns and Winton from San Pedro.

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States Medicaid expansions through the Affordable Care Act are helping low-income patients access medical care and improving hospitals bottom lines, according to two new studies that add to growing evidence about the benefits of the health law.

Fewer low-income residents of Kentucky and Arkansas, two poor states that expanded Medicaid in 2014, reported problems paying medical bills after the coverage expansions, especially compared with residents of Texas, which has rejected the health law.

And hospitals in Medicaid expansion states saw a marked decline in the share of patients without insurance compared with hospitals in states that have not broadened access to Medicaid, a second study found.

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Our findings underscore the significant benefits of Medicaid expansion not only for low-income adults, but also for the hospitals that serve this population, the authors of that study conclude.

The two studies, both published Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs, come as new states consider Medicaid expansion, a key pillar of the healthcare law that President Obama signed in 2010.

To date, 30 states and the District of Columbia have elected to take federal aid to broaden eligibility for Medicaid to low-income, working-age adults. (The program traditionally limited coverage to vulnerable populations such as poor children, seniors and the disabled.)

Several more traditionally conservative states, including Louisiana, South Dakota and Wyoming, are looking into expanding.

But many Republican governors and state legislators continue to reject Medicaid expansion, arguing that the program is ineffective and unaffordable.

Meanwhile, in Washington, congressional Republicans for the first time have passed a bill to repeal most of Obamacare, which the president vetoed Friday.

GOP resistance to Obamacare is already affecting low-income residents, the new studies suggest.

In Texas, for example, the percentage of residents reporting trouble paying medical bills, skipping prescriptions or delaying care because of cost barely moved between 2013 and 2014.

By comparison, Kentucky and Arkansas saw major declines in all three measures of access to medical care after the Medicaid expansion began in 2014.

The share of residents in the two states who reported skipping a medication because of cost fell more than 10 percentage points. And the percentage of Kentucky residents who said they had trouble paying medical bills dropped by more than 14 percentage points, from 42.7% to 28.4%.

Researchers also found major gains in the share of residents who said they had a checkup in the prior year, which increased more than 8 percentage points in both Kentucky and Arkansas.

And they found sizable increases in the percentage of patients with chronic medical conditions who got regular care, which increased more than 6 percentage points in the two states.

Texas, by contrast, saw a decline in the percentage of chronically ill residents who got regular care between 2013 and 2014, according to the study, which was based on a telephone survey of 5,665 low-income, working-age adults in the three states.

Researchers at Harvard chose the states in part because the three have historically had high uninsured rates and because Kentucky and Arkansas chose different models of Medicaid expansion.

Kentucky took a more traditional approach, enrolling poor adults in a standard government Medicaid plan. Arkansas set up a new system that allows Medicaid enrollees to select a subsidized commercial health plan.

The Arkansas system, which was approved by Republican lawmakers in the state, has been held up as a potential conservative alternative to traditional Medicaid.

The researchers found little difference in the impact of the two expansions.

Deciding whether or not to expand matters much more than deciding how to expand, the study concluded. Both Arkansas private option and Kentuckys traditional Medicaid expansion appear to be promising approaches that have thus far generated similar improvements in access care.

The researchers found less evidence that the improved access was delivering better health, as residents self-reported health changed little in all three states.

Dr. Benjamin Sommers, one of the studys authors, said he hoped researchers would be able to dig into the health effects of the coverage expansions further as more data become available.

noam.levey@latimes.com
When the armed strangers arrived over the weekend at the wildlife reserve in the remote desert outback of southeast Oregon, their leaders said they were prepared to stay for years and die fighting if they must.

But did they mean it? By the next day, protest leader Ammon Bundy seemed to back down a little, suggesting that the men and women holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters would stand down if the townspeople in Harney County wanted them gone.

Then Bundy emerged again Tuesday and said he and his supporters werent going anywhere. Good things are happening, he said.

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Here in tiny Burns  where some locals have taken hot food to the occupiers, while others have planted street signs imploring them to leave  almost everyone is left to wonder: What do these people want?

A hatchet is buried in a fence at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Without a clear agenda and no immediate goals beyond challenging federal ownership of vast stretches of land in the West, the occupation has left most of those in this sprawling, lightly populated county wondering whether the media extravaganza that has come to town is going to end in bloodshed or merely a lot more verbal brandishing  and when it is going to end.

On Tuesday, local officials announced that schools, closed since the occupation began Saturday, would reopen Monday. Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward scheduled a community meeting Wednesday to answer townspeoples questions and signaled that police didnt intend to wait forever.

If this goes on any longer, it will have an even greater impact on our tourism and [the] local economy, he told Oregon Public Broadcasting. Further attention is what these folks are seeking.

Ward said the FBI was preparing a criminal case against those occupying several buildings. The bureau has assured me that those at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge will at some point face charges, he said.

The occupiers still seem to be saying they wont leave until theyve completed their mission. We will be here as long as needed to secure the land and resources for the people of Harney County, Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundys brother, said in an interview.

The Bundys father, Cliven Bundy, has engaged in a decades-long battle with the federal Bureau of Land Management, which escalated into an armed standoff on his Nevada ranch in 2014.

At a news conference Tuesday, as the activists stood in the snow and took turns addressing the media, Ammon Bundy repeated the groups goal of returning federal lands to the state and county governments. He ducked questions about the sheriff calling for the activists to leave and did not clarify whether the group intended to occupy more land.

It was left to an Arizona rancher named LaVoy Finicum to explain the only concrete element of their plan disclosed so far: He said the group would search county records to find original land deeds that they believed would show the federal government illegally took private land.

That notion is the only constant among the groups messages so far  their determination to take land from the federal government and turn it over to the state of Oregon and Harney County. At the crux of their argument is a legal theory that has propelled the so-called land transfer movement.

The occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. (Rob Kerr / AFP-Getty Images)

The argument hinges on the enabling acts that created most states from territories in the West. In exchange, the new states had to cede control of land to the federal government. Transfer movement advocates are focused on one clause thats standard language in the enabling acts of the states: until the title thereto shall have been extinguished.

That phrase alone, they argue, entitles states to reclaim land from the federal government. Courts and legal scholars since the 1930s have rejected this analysis, holding that while these enabling acts allow the federal government to give up its title to the land, they hardly mandate it.

Still, the pitch resounds in rural communities that have watched their economic fortunes tumble  timber towns in Oregon, grazing land in Utah, mining clusters in the Northern Rockies  and which now struggle to pay for basic services including law enforcement, roads and schools.

The idea also tugs at the heartstrings in a place that defines itself by its self-reliance and freedom from government interference.

Finicum, whose Twitter profile features him galloping on horseback with the American flag at his side, underscored those sentiments.

We want to get the logger back in the forest, get the rancher back to ranching, get the miner back to mining, the farmer back to farming, Finicum said. And to jump-start this economy.

nigel.duara@latimes.com

Twitter: @nigelduara

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A state judge approved bail Monday for a former South Carolina police officer charged with killing an unarmed black motorist.

Circuit Judge Clifton Newman in Charleston allowed a $500,000 surety bond for Michael Slager. Newman also set an Oct. 31 trial date. Slager will have to remain in South Carolina while on bail.

The Charleston County Sheriffs Office said on Twitter that Slager made bond and was released from jail at 7 p.m. Monday.

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Attorneys for Slager, who is white and charged with murder in the shooting death of Walter Scott in April, had said they would be ready for trial this spring.

However, prosecutor Scarlett Wilson is also prosecuting Dylann Roof, the white suspect in the killings of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church, in a July trial. She said a state Supreme Court order prevented her from trying other cases before that one.

Newman issued his order after an hourlong hearing on the defenses motion for a speedy trial and a renewed request for bail.

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Defense attorney Andy Savage renewed the bail request, saying that Slager otherwise would face 11 more months of incarceration and has been held in solitary confinement. He has remained in jail since his arrest in April.

Wilson said there had been no change in circumstances to warrant Slagers release, and added, We believe the defendant remains, as the court found, a danger to the community and a flight risk.

Walter Scott, the father of the slain man, also addressed the judge, saying he often goes to the cemetery to visit his sons flower-bedecked grave.

If we let him out, hes going to go home to see his wife and children. All I can look at is a pot of flowers, Scott said.

Before issuing his ruling, the judge said: These are difficult issues. These are excruciating issues for the court to deal with.

He said he was troubled that the trial was being delayed because of the order in the Dylann Roof case.

Slager, a former North Charleston police officer, is shown on cellphone video firing eight times as Scott ran from a traffic stop.

Attention over the case and the bystanders cellphone video enflamed a national debate about how blacks are treated by white police officers.

Slager, 34, faces 30 years to life without parole if convicted. Wilson has said the death penalty doesnt apply because there are no aggravating circumstances such as robbery or kidnapping.

In October, the city of North Charleston approved a $6.5-million civil settlement with Scotts family.

After the shooting, the U.S. Justice Department said it was looking into possible federal civil rights violations in the case. On Friday, Wilson said federal officials had sent the state a letter saying that Slager could face charges.

Its unclear if they are going to get involved, she said.

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Jeb Bush says Obama is going beyond his authority on guns

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush joined the chorus of Republicans on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hill who are decrying President Obamas executive actions aimed at limiting gun violence, and called it a power grab outside the bounds of the presidents authority.

In Florida, the way we did it is punish people that committed crimes with guns. And it worked, Bush said during a campaign event here.

A woman in the audience interrupted: Trayvon Martin would disagree, she said, invoking the teenager whose 2012 shooting death in Florida drew outcries and set off a national debate on race and gun violence.

She called Floridas stand-your-ground law asinine.

Bush, who left office in 2007, was unfazed.

The simple fact is that gun violence has declined by about 30% when we imposed severe penalties for people committing crimes with guns, he said. Were a pro-2nd Amendment state, and Im totally proud of that.

Obama is directing federal law enforcement officials to warn private gun sellers that they may be vulnerable to prosecution if they dont register with the government and check the backgrounds of potential gun buyers.

But Bush criticized what he called the impulse of the left to always seek more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners.

Its not going to solve any problems by having the so-called gun-show loophole be taken care of by executive order. The president doesnt have authority to do it, he said. (Obama did not announce a closure of the gun-show loophole, nor did he issue an executive order, which is a legal mechanism at his disposal.)

If theres an issue related to federal gun laws, he ought to go to Congress and try and force consensus to make it happen. He doesnt have this power, Bush said. And certainly the best way to do it is the way we have always done it: Allow states to decide what kind of gun control laws that they have.
Saudi Arabias execution of a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric was an inhumane and provocative act that has escalated the tensions with Iran and complicated the already tenuous effort to reach a negotiated end to the Syrian civil war. It deserved  but didnt receive  a strong condemnation from the U.S.

Sheik Nimr al-Nimr was one of 47 people executed last week on terrorism charges. Most were punished for participating in attacks by Al Qaeda on the Saudi government. But the charges against al-Nimr were more amorphous, including inciting terrorism and sedition and disobeying the nations guardians. (He also was convicted of attacking security personnel during his arrest, an allegation his family disputes.)

Neither anxiety about the Syrian talks nor historical ties between Washington and Riyadh justify a mealy-mouthed reaction to al-Nimrs execution.

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Although it is true that the sheiks anti-government rhetoric was heated, he appears to have been more a political prisoner than a terrorist, and his chief crimes, as far as we know, seem to have involved dissent and criticism of the government. Whats more, his execution was certain to enrage Shiite Muslims inside and outside Saudi Arabia. That he was put to death anyway suggests that the government of King Salman, who ascended to the throne last year, was either indifferent to the consequences or determined to provoke Iran, the predominantly Shiite nation with which Saudi Arabia has been competing for regional influence.

The execution justified a strong reaction from the United States, an ally of Saudi Arabia that nevertheless has been willing to criticize the kingdom for its lamentable human rights record. In its most recent human rights report, the State Department faulted Saudi Arabia for, among other things, holding political prisoners; denial of due process; [and] arbitrary arrest and detention.

Yet faced with a specific case, the Obama administration offered a tepid reaction. A State Department spokesman noted that the U.S. had expressed its concerns to Saudi officials about their legal process and warned that al-Nimrs execution risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the U.S. had raised concerns to the Saudis in advance about the consequences of executing al-Nimr.

Those consequences include the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the retaliatory decision by Saudi Arabia to cut diplomatic ties with Iran. U.S. officials fear that another casualty will be negotiations on the future of Syria promoted by a group of nations including Saudi Arabia and Iran. Those talks, which U.S. policymakers hope would also weaken Islamic State, are supposed to take place in Geneva on Jan. 25.

Its understandable that the administration doesnt want to undermine the support of Saudi Arabia for the Syrian negotiations. It is also a fact that the U.S. has sought to reaffirm its support for Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-led Arab states in the aftermath of the nuclear agreement with Iran. But neither anxiety about the talks nor historical ties between Washington and Riyadh justify a mealy-mouthed reaction to al-Nimrs execution. Not for the first time, the Obama administration failed to find its voice.

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The takeover of the federal Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon by armed anti-federal-government zealots might seem like a fresh crisis, but in fact weve been here before. The best option for the government is to practice patient resolve  and have lots of handcuffs ready once the occupation comes to a peaceful end.

The gun toters holed up at Malheur havent issued a political manifesto, but their rhetoric echoes that of movements such as the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion, in which disaffected westerners argued that states or counties are the rightful owners of millions of acres of federal land, despite decades of court battles that say otherwise. Three of the occupiers also are sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who, with a contingent of armed supporters, faced down an effort by the Bureau of Land Management nearly two years ago to seize his cattle for nonpayment of grazing fees  a bill that remains unpaid.

The Bundys and their followers have seized the opportunity, and federal property, to make a grand and unacceptable show of force.

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The Bundy brigade decamped to Oregon recently to join protests over the re-sentencing of two local ranchers, Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven. Their crimes: burning more than 140 acres of federal land adjacent to their ranch in two separate incidents. The government appealed the Hammonds initial sentence of a few months in prison, winning the argument that federal law mandates a five-year term. Although the Hammonds have acquiesced, the Bundys and their followers seized the opportunity, and federal property, to make a grand and unacceptable show of force and disregard for the law.

The good news is that the Malheur refuge, near Burns in the high desert of eastern Oregon, is remote, and the occupiers pose no imminent public safety threat. Some critics have sought to contrast the governments measured response with the quick-trigger killing of Tamir Rice, an unarmed, black 12-year-old, by a Cleveland police officer, but it is difficult to compare a police encounter in a populated area with whats happening in Oregon. Nor is the 2011 Occupy Movement a good analogy because those protesters were unarmed. Malheur also differs from federal showdowns in 1992 with anti-government activists at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and in 1993 with the Branch Davidian cult at Waco, Texas, both of which involved disastrous violence.

A closer parallel would be the American Indian Movements unarmed takeover of the federal landmark of Alcatraz Island, which began in November 1969 and ended, peacefully, 19 months later. Similar restraint leading to a bloodless surrender would be the best outcome here, with the Obama administration pledging to prosecute the occupiers under all applicable laws. Political protest is a welcome part of American life. Armed occupation of public lands by private citizens is another matter entirely.

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In interviews and on the stump, Sen. Ted Cruz likes to attack President Obama, Hillary Clinton and some of the more aggressive Washington neocons for their support of regime change in the Middle East.

Every time we topple a dictator, Cruz argues, we end up helping terrorists or extremists.

He has a point. But what interests me is his use of the word neocon. What does he really mean?

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Some see dark intentions. He knows that the term in the usual far-left and far-right parlance means warmonger, if not warmongering Jewish advisers, so it is not something he shouldve done, former Bush advisor Elliott Abrams told National Review. Another former Bush advisor calls the term a dog whistle.

Today ... the idea that self-identified neocons are uniformly more pro-war than other conservatives is ludicrous.

I think thats all a bit overblown. Cruz is just trying to criticize his opponent Marco Rubio, who supported regime change in Libya.

But Abrams is right  and Cruz surely knows  that neocon has become code for suspiciously Hebraic super-hawk. Thats absurd and absurdly reductive. So maybe its time we retired the term, which is now a catchall for things I dont like.

At first, neocons werent particularly associated with foreign policy. They were intellectuals disillusioned by the folly of the Great Society. As Irving Kristol famously put it, a neoconservative is a liberal who was mugged by reality. The Public Interest, the first neoconservative publication, co-edited by Kristol, was a wonkish domestic policy journal.

Kristol later argued that neoconservatism was not an ideology but a persuasion. William F. Buckley, the avatar of supposedly authentic traditional conservatism, agreed. The neocons, he explained, brought the new language of sociology to an intellectual tradition that had been grounded more in Aristotelian thinking.

The neocon belief in democracy promotion grew out of disgust with Richard Nixons detente and Jimmy Carters fecklessness, but hardly amounted to knee-jerk interventionism. When Jeane Kirkpatrick articulated a theory of neoconservative foreign policy in Commentary magazine in 1979, she cautioned that it was unwise to demand rapid libertalization in autocratic countries, and that gradual change was a more realistic goal than immediate transformation.

During the Cold War, neocons werent any more hawkish than anyone else on the right. They were advocating containment of the Soviet Union while National Review conservatives were demanding rollback and Barry Goldwater was talking about nuking the Kremlin.

Even through the late 1990s, neocons were far from outliers in their belief that the United States should use its military power to support democracies abroad. Many members from both parties held that view. Remember, it was Bill Clinton who in 1998 signed the Iraq Liberation Act calling for regime change.

After 9/11, some neoconservative intellectuals had off-the-shelf foreign policy ready for George W. Bush, which, yes, was hawkish in naturebut other Republicans and even Democrats supported their prescriptions, at least at first. As the Iraq War went south, the neocons were the only ones left defending it, and so got all of the blame.

The association between neoconservatism and Jews stems partly from the fact that the first neocons were mostly Jewish, partly from the reality that they are all to this day  gentiles included  pro-Israel. Thats not particularly remarkable, though, since neocons want to help Americas Democratic allies everywhere and since most Christian conservatives are pro-Israel, too.

Today the neocon sociological persuasion is simply part of the conservative mainstream. The idea that self-identified neocons are uniformly more pro-war than other conservatives is ludicrous.

Granted, neoconservatives contribute to the confusion. They like to claim that the alternative to their approach amounts to isolationism  another horribly misused word. Rubio recently leveled that charge at Cruz.

Cruz, for his part, says he wants to carpet bomb ISIS until the sand glows. There are many criticisms one can level at the position, but isolationist isnt one of them.

Neoconservatism is a product of the Cold War. Its understandable that neoconservative intellectuals who helped win the Cold War might want to hold onto the label, but its time to give it a comfortable retirement in the history books.

Meanwhile, the right is having a long overdue, and valuable, argument about how to conduct foreign policy. Keep it going, just leave neoconservatism out of it.

jgoldberg@timescolumnists.com

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Two years ago, I sat across a table from a high-level Chinese official discussing the countrys then embarrassing foray into electric cars. China had promised to sell 500,000 such cars by 2011 and lead the worlds transition away from oil. Instead, that year it sold exactly 2,338. What would you do? he asked. Surprised by his candor, I gave my two cents: Study successful policies in California. Then I tucked away my files and headed back to Washington.

Many [Chinese] cities ... now offer reduced parking fees, access to bus and HOV lanes and exemptions from stringent commuter restrictions [to electric vehicles].

I wasnt especially optimistic. Over the next 18 months, however, China transformed its sputtering electric vehicle industry into a global juggernaut, surpassing the United States as the worlds largest market for this critical 21st century technology. At the end of 2015, China was on track to sell 180,000 electric cars, nearly 300% more than the year before and 20 times more than in 2013.

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What happened? I claim no credit for this decision, but China did in fact look to California for inspiration.

Until recently, EVs were enormously expensive to build. Bringing the cost down would require technological innovation and mass production, which wasnt going to happen without a little coaxing from the government. In China, huge consumer incentives (almost $20,000 a car) werent enough, and neither was political pressure on automakers. Quality was low, cost was high and the value proposition for Chinese consumers was not good. Companies do not want to build these cars, and people do not want to buy them, one Chinese executive told me in 2011.

Many analysts suggested that China abandon the project altogether.

Instead, in 2014, the China Automotive Technology Research Center, which helps craft policy and standards for the national industry, invited Californias regulators to Tianjin to explain their success. It also sent experts to the West Coast to learn more.

In California, regulators had required each automaker to produce an escalating percentage of EVs. Simultaneously, the state had built a synthetic market that allowed automakers to buy and sell EV credits (awarded for selling electric cars) among themselves, thus rewarding manufacturers such as Tesla that bet big on innovation. California also had invested heavily in public charging infrastructure, provided financial incentives to consumers, given EVs access to HOV lanes and otherwise helped tip the scales in favor of electrification. This bevy of policies was responsible for the advent of the consumer EV and today California accounts for about half of U.S. EV sales.

China was a quick study. Later in 2014, policymakers adopted a California-style EV mandate  though limited to government vehicle fleets. Beijing decreed that by 2016, 30% of municipal vehicles must use batteries or fuel cells. Financial subsidies were somewhat reduced. (The city of Shenzens cumulative subsidy, for example, was about $14,000, compared with $18,500 before.) But the mandate and other incentives more than compensated. Many cities also now offer reduced parking fees, access to bus and HOV lanes and exemptions from stringent commuter restrictions.

In at least one sense, the Chinese have gone even further than California in encouraging EV use. To combat multi-day traffic jams and suffocating smog, major cities have throttled the number of license plates (auto registrations) allowed. In 2015 the average cost of a license plate in Shanghai was more than $18,000, and in Beijing there were nearly 200 applications for each registration granted. But cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have created special carve-outs for EVs. For example, Beijing allotted 30,000 free license plates for EVs in 2015.

Chinas nudging worked. In January 2014, China sold only 600 so-called new energy vehicles  predominantly electric cars. In December 2014, China sold more than 15,000 EVs as local governments scrambled to meet fleet mandates. In November of last year, China sold more than 25,000 electric cars  more than twice as many as the U.S. (Of course, Chinas overall auto market is also larger: In 2014, China sold about 24 million vehicles compared with the United States 17 million.)

Washington provides a sad, sharp contrast. After binge spending on EVs during the 2009 stimulus, the federal government retrenched. It eliminated most of its expenditures on EV technology and practically zeroed out funding for charging infrastructure. Washingtons conversation on electric cars has degenerated into partisan squabble.

Yes, California remains a bright spot, but other states are held back by a lack of direction from Washington, and not only in comparison with China. In November, Europe sold 19,500 electric cars, putting it far ahead of the United States.

Smart policy and regulation will be critical to supporting the transformative sectors of the 21st century  EVs, roboticization, automated vehicles, renewable energy, drones and even artificial intelligence. If Washington remains passive, America will be left behind.

Levi Tillemann is managing partner at Valence Strategic, a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future.

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Jennifer Yang of the Toronto Star writes: Disturbing drug-resistant superbug gene has been detected in Canada. Excerpt:

An alarming new superbug gene that makes bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic has been detected in Canada, the Star has learned.

The gene, called MCR-1, produces an enzyme that makes bacteria invincible to colistin, a highly toxic antibiotic used only when all other drugs have failed.

MCR-1 was first reported in November by scientists in China, who published a paper in The Lancet that set off alarm bells across the globe. Analyzing bacterial samples in southeastern China, researchers found 260 samples of E. coli with the MCR-1 gene on meat, hospital patients and farm animals  the likely source of this new superbug, the paper suggests.

But the news that really sent a shudder through the scientific community was that MCR-1 is located on a plasmid, a free-floating snippet of DNA that bacteria can easily share, thus spreading the resistance to other organisms.

Its clearly the biggest story to come out (in 2015), said Lance Price, a professor of environmental health at George Washington University who studies antibiotic resistance. There have been horrible things all year but this is the most disturbing.

So far, there have been no reports of deaths caused by MCR-1 and some people could be harbouring the superbug asymptomatically. But the nightmare scenario is that MCR-1 will spread to more virulent bacterial strains that also carry other resistance genes  thus creating a pan-resistant superbug capable of defeating every antibiotic in the medicine cabinet.

Since the Lancet paper, at least a dozen other countries have also found the MCR-1 gene. Scientists, looking through databases of bacterial samples, detected the gene everywhere from Denmark and Algeria to Laos.

Among them is Canada, where an investigation was triggered in December by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The Canadian findings have not yet been published, but a case report has been submitted to the Lancet, according to Dr. Michael Mulvey, chief of antimicrobial resistance with the PHACs lab in Winnipeg.

The superbug gene was found in three different samples of E. coli, all previously collected for special research projects: one from a 62-year-old patient in Ottawa and two from ground beef sold in Ontario.

The Ottawa patient likely picked up the bug in Egypt, where she lived for several years, according to Dr. Baldwin Toye with the Ottawa hospital, who co-wrote a 2013 paper describing her case and four others.

She was hospitalized three days after moving back to Canada and treated for an abdominal infection. Toye believes another pathogen was responsible for her illness, however, and the patient was simply harbouring the MCR-1 gene, which Mulvey discovered retrospectively during his recent investigation.
Does the United States need a constitutional amendment to clean up the campaign finance mess created by the U.S. Supreme Court? My answer is absolutely not. Thats neither a realistic goal nor a wise way to curb the influence of the wealthy over our elections.

Nevertheless, Im pleased that the California Supreme Court this week greenlighted a scheme to put that question on the ballot come November, and I may even vote yes.

In the 2010 case Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down on 1st Amendment grounds laws preventing corporations from using their general treasury funds to support or oppose candidates. The majoritys troubling constitutional analysis led to a series of other decisions, including one allowing wealthy individuals to contribute as much as they like to super PACs. As a result, were moving toward a plutocracy, in which the wealthiest Americans are increasingly able to protect their privileged economic position and block policy changes they dont like.

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It is much easier to...appoint different justices to the Supreme Court than it is to follow the formal paths to constitutional convention and amendment.

To reverse this trend, Congress could pass a constitutional amendment allowing reasonable limits on money in politics. That would require a two-thirds majority in both houses as well as ratification by three-quarters of the states  a tall order for any issue, but especially campaign finance since many Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are dead set against reform.

Another path to change is a constitutional convention. Under Article V of the Constitution, two-thirds of state legislatures can vote to call a convention to propose amendments, which three-quarters of the states must then approve.

We have never had an Article V convention, and Congress hasnt amended the Constitution since 1992 (when it approved a change submitted in 1789). Unfazed, in 2014 the California Legislature put a measure on the ballot asking voters advice on whether an amendment was necessary to rid the land of Citizens United. The California Supreme Court at first nixed that popular advisory vote as beyond the Legislatures purview; then, this week in Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. vs. Padilla, it decided the move was kosher. Now the Legislature has the power to authorize a new ballot measure for November.

Danger lies ahead. Setting aside the long odds, if California and 33 more states invoke Article V, theres a risk that wed end up with a runaway convention, during which delegates would propose amendments on issues including abortion, gun rights and immigration.

Even if a convention could be limited to overturning Citizens United, existing proposals for how to word an amendment raise some issues. One would declare that only natural persons have constitutional rights, which would seem to allow the government to ban the printing of corporate-owned newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.

Other proposed campaign finance amendments, including the one Democrats in the U.S. Senate supported in 2015, are equally problematic. They all seem to suffer from one of two defects: either theyre draconian (written in such a way that they could squelch important political debates), or theyre toothless (leaving matters in the hands of the same U.S. Supreme Court that decided Citizens United).

In any case, the California Legislature doesnt really need the voters advice. If it did, it wouldnt have called for a constitutional convention back in 2014. As California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu noted in his concurrence in this weeks decision, It blinks reality to suggest that the Legislature  plainly aware of opinion polls showing that broad majorities of Americans are opposed to Citizens United  enacted [the bill putting the campaign finance measure on the ballot] in order to investigate the citizenrys views.

Whats probably going on is that the Democratic-dominated Legislature sees an issue that is likely to excite Democratic voters and get them to the polls.

To recap: A constitutional convention could spiral out of control, proposed amendment language so far is deeply problematic, and the Legislature may have self-interested reasons for including a campaign finance question on the ballot. There is, however, a good reason for voters to support this flawed proposal.

As the majority in the Howard Jarvis case noted, a call for a constitutional amendment seems stronger when coming from millions of California voters and not just the Legislature. A symbolic vote can serve the salutary purpose of keeping the pressure on for the next president to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will reverse Citizens United.

In these polarized times, it is much easier to change the Constitutions meaning by appointing different justices to the Supreme Court than it is to follow the formal paths to constitutional convention and amendment.

The next president may have up to four appointments to the Supreme Court, and the fate of money in politics could well depend upon who is appointed.

Reminding the next president that the public thinks Citizens United is profoundly wrongheaded make sense  even if that means voting to recommend a misguided amendment.

Richard L. Hasen is a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine and the author of Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections.

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Good morning from a (thankfully) rainy state capital. Im Sacramento bureau chief John Myers, your guide to Essential Politics today. And after a long recess, legislators are back in session for 2016 and gearing up for a rich mix of politics and policy under the state Capitol dome.

DEMOCRATS PITCH HELP FOR THE HOMELESS

The beginning of any legislative session offers a chance for big thinking, a prime opportunity to set the agenda in Sacramento for the year ahead. And Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) wasted no time in laying down a $2-billion marker on the issue of helping the homeless, most notably those who suffer from mental illness.

Gale Holland was on hand as De Leon, surrounded by his fellow Senate Democrats and a few GOP legislators, unveiled the proposal at an event in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. In a nutshell, the plan would dip into tax revenues collected under 2004s Proposition 63 tax on millionaires to help finance statewide bonds and, eventually, housing. The Democrats also want an earmark in the state budget, valued at $200 million over four years, to help the elderly and disabled.

Note that last part: money from the state budget. That will take the blessing of Gov. Jerry Brown.

BROWNS BUDGET ON THURSDAY

The governor will unveil his 2016-17 state budget on Thursday morning in Sacramento. And while there are a number of big items to ponder  from healthcare to transportation and beyond, keep an eye on Browns economic forecast. A big question mark is whether an economic slowdown is on the horizon in California, and whether that emboldens the governors long-running approach to limit new state spending commitments.

ON HIS OWN: OBAMA UNVEILS GUN PLAN

In a move that surprises almost no one, President Obama will formally announce that hes taking executive action to expand background checks for gun buyers. And as Christi Parsons reports, Obama hinted that he may just be getting started.

The presidential action comes in the wake of mass shootings from San Bernardino to South Carolina and beyond, and drew sharp rebukes from both House Speaker Paul Ryan (D-Wis.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Meantime, Obama met with a handful of members of Congress on Monday night to discuss the action, including three members of Californias delegation.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) told Sarah Wire after the meeting that Democrats are happy the president is really thoughtfully taking some action. He added, At the same time I think everyone is realistic that really dealing with the issue, including on background checks, is going to take congressional action.

Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) said the idea is to be ensuring that everyone is accounted for who is buying a gun. She said she urged the president to push for more training of local law enforcement on how to deal with people who have mental health issues.

Look for more on this issue on Thursday, when Obama participates in a town hall event outside Washington, D.C., and during next Tuesday's State of the Union address to Congress.

BRING ON THE ADVISORY VOTE

If youve got an opinion on the U.S. Supreme Courts 2010 ruling on campaign finance, the historic Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, California legislators may want to hear from you on Election Day.

Actually, they wanted to hear from you in 2014. But a lawsuit blocked what was then supposed to be Proposition 49, with critics saying the Legislature had no power to put an advisory, non-binding measure on the statewide ballot.

On Monday, the California Supreme Court disagreed. As Maura Dolan writes, a majority of justices said theres nothing to stop the Legislature from asking voters to offer an opinion. And yes, the ballot measure was motivated by Democrats who hoped a groundswell of voters would rise up to say they oppose the Citizens United ruling. It's unclear whether legislators will move to put the advisory issue back on the ballot this fall.

NO REFERENDUM ON ASSISTED SUICIDE

What wont be on the 2016 ballot, on the other hand, is a referendum to try to overturn Californias new law to allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to someone whos terminally ill. Patrick McGreevy reports that the effort failed to gather enough signatures in the 90-day window for a referendum to qualify.

Its worth noting that the law hasnt taken effect yet. It was passed by the Legislature during a special session on healthcare, which would normally mean enactment in 90 days. But until legislators adjourn that special session, the aid-in-dying law remains on hold. No word on when that legislative action will take place.

By the way, a reminder that were tracking all the action here in Sacramento this week, from new legislation to political maneuverings and beyond.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

-- It was a Clinton double team on Monday on the presidential campaign trail. Chris Megerian reports that Hillary Clinton accused Republicans of being beholden to energy companies during a speech in Iowa, while former President Bill Clinton was stumping in New Hampshire. Mike Memoli reports Clinton called his wife a change maker during her long political career.

-- David Lauter looks at the tax plan rolled out by presidential hopeful Ben Carson and finds it would cut taxes for the wealthy and raise them for the poor.

-- South of the border, down Morocco way? Donald Trump released his first TV ad on Monday, but Kurtis Lee reports it relies on images from a border a long, long way from the United States and Mexico.

LOGISTICS

Miss yesterdays newsletter? Here you go. Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
The periodic table is about to get a little bit longer, thanks to the addition of four new super-heavy elements.

The discoveries of elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 were officially confirmed late last week by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The group is tasked with vetting the man-made elements seeking a permanent spot on the iconic chart that adorns chemistry classrooms around the world.

The new elements are known as super-heavy elements because the nuclei of their atoms are so enormous. Element 118, for example, is the heaviest element to date, with 118 protons alongside 176 neutrons.

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Elements of this size are not routinely found in nature, and it can take years to make them in specialized laboratories.

Probably the only other place where they might exist in a short period of time could be a supernova, where you have so much energy and so many particles that are really heavily concentrated, said Dawn Shaughnessy, the principal investigator for the Heavy Element Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which had a hand in three of the discoveries.

Super-heavy elements are also highly unstable, existing for just a fraction of a second before they begin to decay.

Scientists never observe these elements directly. Rather, they know they briefly existed because they are able to measure their decay products.

The heaviest known elements are made by smashing two particles together and hoping they will stick. Its a probability game with extremely long odds.

Scientists first create a target out of a carefully chosen atom with a particular number of protons and neutrons  a process that can take months. Then they purify it and bombard it with another specialized atom that they think has the best chance of recombining with the target.

Its really hard to smash two things together and get them to stick, Shaughnessy said. There is so much positive charge -- they want to repel each other.

It takes several months to try this smashing experiment roughly 10 quintillion times (thats a 10 followed by 18 zeros). If just one of those attempts works, the experiment is considered a success.

And were not always successful, she said.

At most, it will work about three times in 10 quintillion tries, she added

There are only a handful of laboratories around the world that are equipped to do this work. The experiments generate so much data that supercomputers are required to sift through it all and search for the telltale signs of a successful mash-up.

Elements 115, 117 and 118 were created in Dubna, Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore worked on all three discoveries, and the consortium that created element 117 also included researchers from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The international chemistry body credited a Japanese group with the discovery of element 113. Led by Kosuke Morita of RIKEN, they are the first Asian scientists to find a new element.

Morita and his team spent several years searching for conclusive proof of element 113. During that time, whenever Morita visited a Japanese shrine, he gave an offering of 113 yen.

Its not really a question of whether I believed it or not, Morita told Asian Scientist Magazine. The reason I did it is that I wanted to know that I had done everything humanly possible to get credit for the discovery of the element.

Until now, these elements have been known by the generic Latin names ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium. Their official confirmation paves the way for them to get permanent names.

Traditionally, that honor falls to the researchers who first found them. Element 113 could wind up being called Japonium, periodic table watchers say.

The team from Lawrence Livermore and their Russian colleagues had previously named element 116 Livermorium in honor of the Northern California lab. No word on what 115, 117 and 118 might be called.

With last weeks announcement, a total of 26 elements have been added to the periodic table since 1940. But Shaughnessy said her team isnt done.

The scientists will continue trying to make heavier elements until they hit a wall where there are just too many protons that they wont stick together.

These super-heavy elements help us understand how the nucleus functions, and redefines our ideas of matter and how it behaves, she said. Were really studying the physics of what the extreme limits of matter might be.

Do you love science? I do! Follow me @DeborahNetburn and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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Largest U.S. IKEA under construction

This fall, Burbank officials and IKEA employees in utilitarian blue-and-yellow garb broke ground ceremoniously at the 22-acre site where the Swedish retailers largest store in the United States will be built at 805 S. San Fernando Blvd. in Burbank.

Nineteen buildings were demolished to make way for the new store, including warehouses used by Western Studio Services for prop storage.

When completed, the 456,000-square-foot location will replace the existing 242,000-square-foot store a few blocks away at Burbank Town Center, which company officials have said is high-performing and busy. It was the first IKEA in California when it opened in 1990, but now lacks the size and visibility the new one will have, company officials have said.

The new store will boast an underground parking level, a ground level for retail and warehouse areas, as well as a supervised childrens play area and an upper level consisting of showrooms, offices and a restaurant. It will have 1,726 parking spots and 86 bicycle parking spaces.

Mayor Bob Frutos has touted the new stores impact, which he said will be a great boost to our local economy through more sales tax revenue for the city and a workforce that, at around 450 workers, will be 23% larger than the staff at the current store. In the meantime, the project will create 500 construction jobs.

Future of proposed new air terminal

After a rocky patch in negotiations early last year about a proposed 14-gate replacement terminal at Bob Hope Airport, the city of Burbank and the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority closed out the year with a tentative agreement, in principle, to several conditions for the proposal.

Airport Authority officials have said their target for putting a full proposal for the terminal project before voters in Burbank as required by Measure B is the Nov. 8 general election this year. However, they will have to complete a review of environmental impacts, finalize various project details and gain City Council approval for the project before that can happen.

Airport officials are not wasting time.

Theyve already created a website specifically for replacement terminal project information, hosted public meetings to discuss the scope of the required environmental study for the project, and, days before Christmas, issued notices to public agencies seeking input by the end of January for scoping the environmental study.

Several more public meetings about the project are anticipated in 2016.

Empire interchange under construction

Major portions of an ongoing interchange construction project on the Golden State (5) Freeway at Empire Avenue is expected to be completed in late 2016, as part of a series of freeway improvements between Magnolia Boulevard and Buena Vista Street that are expected to continue into 2019.

The realignment of San Fernando Boulevard and a new underpass to connect it directly to Empire Avenue is expected to open in late fall, said Kelly Markham, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation.

Markham said the southbound ramps of the new diamond interchange at San Fernando and the permanent elevated railroad tracks, which eliminate street-level railroad crossings at Buena Vista Street and San Fernando Boulevard, are also set to open later this year.

The work is part of a $355-million project, which began in May 2014 and is 15% completed, according to a Caltrans informational website about improvements along the freeway.

Among the other upgrades planned are carpool lanes in each direction of the freeway between Magnolia Boulevard and Buena Vista Street. Reconstruction and widening of the Burbank Boulevard overpass and interchange is also slated to begin once the Empire Avenue interchange is fully opened.

Proposed ban on e-cigarettes

In its first scheduled regular meeting in 2016, the Burbank City Council may direct city staff to begin work toward ultimately banning the use of e-cigarettes in public places and common areas, like with traditional tobacco products, and regulating the sale of the battery-powered nicotine vaporizers.

The existing Secondhand Smoke Control Ordinance prohibits smoking in city parks and facilities, outdoor public areas, sidewalks in downtown Burbank and within 20 feet of entrances, exits and open windows of buildings open to the public.

The ordinance also bans smoking in certain areas of multifamily buildings: indoor common areas, private patios and balconies, swimming areas when children are present and within 5 feet of entrances, exits, walkways and hallways.

The council could also direct the staff to regulate the sale of e-cigarettes at retailers that do not sell other traditional tobacco products or paraphernalia and do not qualify for a tobacco retailers license through the California State Board of Equalization.

Under city code, a retailer is required to get a state tobacco retailers license in order to get a tobacco retailer license from the city. However, the state board does not consider e-cigarettes a tobacco product, meaning retailers who sell exclusively e-cigarettes fall into a gray area in Burbank.

There are 113 licensed tobacco retailers in Burbank, but an unknown number of unlicensed e-cigarette retailers.

Completion of Johnny Carson Park

A revitalization project at Johnny Carson Park is on schedule to be completed in February, Burbanks engineer said last month during a City Council meeting.

The work is about 80% finished, despite some challenges and rework that have put the project 18% over its original budget. The council approved amendments to fund the additional work, which involves making the parks new sandy creek bed more resistant to erosion and replacing trees that were killed off by a beetle infestation.

Once work on the park project is completed, the citys Public Works Department will turn the park over to the Parks & Recreation Department.

Judie Wilke, director of the parks department, said via email this week that there will be a 90-day maintenance period to allow sprayed-in grass seed and other plantings time to settle.

So based on that, we are hoping to have the park grand reopening around June 1, Wilke said.
Steve Herr said he never wants to forget the image of his sons body, which was stitched together at a mortuary after being dismembered and dumped in a Long Beach park.

One of the hands was missing, Herr said, and the head was wrapped to hide the fact that it was only an unrecognizable skull.

Animals got to my sons body parts in El Dorado park, Herr said Monday in an Orange County courtroom. They found him. They ate his flesh off him.

Herr testified that he clings to this mental picture of his son Sam Herr because he doesnt want to forget the evil of the man convicted of killing him.

Daniel Wozniak, 31, a community theater actor from Costa Mesa, was found guilty last month of murdering Sam Herr, 26, and Herrs 23-year-old friend Juri Julie Kibuishi in May 2010. The verdicts came after less than a week of testimony and a few hours of deliberations.

Now jurors are tasked with deciding Wozniaks punishment: a death sentence or life in prison without parole.

On Monday, prosecutors began presenting their case for the death penalty.

As part of that, Steve Herr and Kibuishis family members took the stand to describe how the killings changed their lives.

In my mind, I see him whacking away at my sons head. I see him sawing my sons arm off, Herr said of Wozniak. I have trouble sleeping at night because if I turn the TV off, thats what I focus on.

Prosecutors said Wozniak was desperate for cash to cover rent and his upcoming wedding, so he hatched a plan to kill Sam Herr and access the bank account where Herr had saved thousands of dollars from his Army service in Afghanistan.

After shooting Herr at a Los Alamitos theater, Wozniak used Herrs phone to lure Kibuishi to Herrs apartment, where Wozniak shot her twice in the head, prosecutor Matt Murphy told jurors during the trial last month.

After performing in a play, Wozniak returned to the theater, where he dismembered Herrs body so he could hide the pieces at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, according to prosecutors.

He then returned to Herrs apartment, ripped off Kibuishis jeans and propped her body against the bed in the hope that police would assume Herr had raped her and fled, Murphy said.

Hours before her death, Kibuishi was eating Thai food with her older brother Taka, who described the evening to jurors Monday.

After dinner, he said, he asked her to be a bridesmaid in his wedding planned for the following year. He gave her a tiara to wear in the ceremony.

According to Taka Kibuishi, his sister left around midnight for Herrs apartment, where she thought Herr had asked her to stop by because he needed someone to talk to. But the text messages she had been receiving were actually from Wozniak, Murphy said.

What goes through my head is I had so many chances to try to stop her, Taka Kibuishi said before lashing out at Wozniak, calling him a disgusting monster who used his sister as a decoy.

And then you disrespect her by pulling her pants off, he said before reining in the emotion in his voice.

Police arrested Wozniak at his bachelor party days after the killings, after ATM withdrawals from Herrs bank account led them to him.

Authorities said he confessed to both killings after he called his fiancee from jail.

In a recording of the call played for jurors, Wozniak learned that police would soon discover a bag of evidence, including the murder weapon.

Immediately after hanging up, he called for detectives, according to Murphy. A video of the interview shows Wozniak telling detectives that he killed Herr and Kibuishi for the money.

We lost Julie and Sam for something so simple, Taka Kibuishi said. Its pathetic. Its disgusting.
Orange Countys first significant El Nino-related storm of the year dropped more than an inch of rain on Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Irvine on Tuesday as part of what could be a week of wet weather.

Southwest winds of up to 15 mph, with gusts up to 20 mph, coupled with pouring rain Tuesday morning through the mid-afternoon, creating slick roads and other potentially treacherous conditions. However, no significant accidents, damage or injuries were reported, authorities said.

By 4:30 p.m., Newport Beach and Irvine had received 1.02 inches of rain, while Costa Mesa received 1.06 inches, according to data from Orange County Public Works.

Forecasters believe Tuesdays storm was the heaviest in a series that is expected to last through Friday evening. A chance of showers is forecast for Saturday and Sunday, with mostly sunny skies expected Monday.

The National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning Tuesday morning that is expected to last through Wednesday night. The threat of flooding and mudslides is most severe in recently burned areas, as well as steep or unstable terrain, according to a statement from the weather service.

Urban flooding and minor flooding of small streams and low water crossings will also be possible, the statement said.

The Pacific storms not only will bring rain and wind but also ocean swells that have the potential to damage beach structures like piers, officials said.

At local beaches, surf rose to 4 to 7 feet Monday evening and is expected to grow to 5 to 8 feet through Wednesday. The largest swell is expected to hit Thursday through Friday morning, with waves 8 to 15 feet high in areas north of Newport Beach.

This will produce surf capable of damaging coastal structures as well as coastal flooding and beach erosion, the weather service said.

Most surfers abandoned Newport Beach waters by late Tuesday morning as waves pounded the shoreline, lifeguard captain Boyd Mickley said.

Its just ugly out, he said.

The storms are the years first attributed to the effects of El Nino, a warming of the equatorial waters of the Pacific that can result in heavy rain in California. Such storms are expected to peak in January, February and March.

*

Local preparations

This years El Nino is expected to be one of the most powerful ever recorded, and in response, local cities are stockpiling sandbags for residents, as well as cleaning and inspecting storm drains.

Residents of Southern California  especially those living in or below burn areas  now is the time to take action, the National Weather Service said.

During storms or unusually high tides, Newport Beach residents may pick up 10 empty sandbags at no cost at the city corporation yard, 592 Superior Ave. Proof of Newport Beach residency is needed to obtain the bags, which can be filled with beach sand to help protect homes against flooding, according to city Public Works Director Dave Webb.

City crews also are prepared with 18 pumps that can drain standing water from streets in flood-prone areas such as the Balboa Peninsula and Balboa Island.

In Costa Mesa, the city is providing each resident with up to 15 free sandbags, which can be picked up at Fire Station 4, 2300 Placentia Ave., as well as at the City Hall parking lot, 77 Fair Drive, and the Donald Dungan Library parking lot, 1855 Park Ave.

The citys public works staff cleared vegetation to make paths for water to run and placed sandbags and water-diverting structures in Canyon Park, and placed 7,000 sandbags in Fairview Park in preparation for the storm.

Both locations have had high-water issues in past winters resulting in property damage, according to a city statement.

Irvine residents can pick up 10 free filled sandbags at the citys operations support facility, 6427 Oak Canyon Road. The Orange County Fire Authority also has sand and bags available at Station 36, 301 E. Yale Loop, and Station 47 at 47 Fossil.

Laguna Beach is offering 10 free filled sandbags to residents and business owners 24 hours a day on a first-come, first-served basis at two locations  the Act V parking lot at 1900 Laguna Canyon Road and the Aliso Beach Park inland parking lot at 31118 S. Coast Hwy.

Laguna also offers free unfilled sandbags at its four fire stations: 501 Forest Ave., 2900 Alta Laguna Blvd., 285 Agate St. and 34646 Second Ave. Unfilled sandbags cannot be filled with sand from the citys beaches or playgrounds.

In Huntington Beach, residents who show identification and a current utility bill can get up to 20 free sandbags per household. The bags can be picked up between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the city corporate yard, 17371 Gothard St. Bags also are available at the Edison Community Center, 21377 Magnolia St., and the Warner fire station, 3831 Warner Ave.

Serna writes for the Los Angeles Times. Times Community News writer Bryce Alderton contributed to this report.
As Indian forces worked for a fourth day to secure an air force base raided by Pakistan-based militants, the government faced growing questions Tuesday about its response to the attack, which left at least seven troops dead and 20 wounded.

The criticisms focused on Indias continued vulnerability to cross-border attacks and why the operation to clear the Pathankot Air Force station, about 30 miles from the Pakistani border, of a handful of heavily armed assailants was taking so long. Officials said six militants were killed in the incident.

Pathankot should be a wake-up call, said an editorial Tuesday in the Hindustan Times newspaper. That the terrorists could easily intrude into and hold a major air force base hostage for a long period casts doubt on the security of our industrial infrastructure, cities and iconic locations.

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No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which began Saturday, but Indian officials say they have evidence that Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan-based militant group, was behind it.

Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said combing operations to clear the base were continuing and could last into Wednesday. He voiced the question on the minds of many Indians when he said later: My worry was how they [terrorists] managed to come inside the base.

An Indian military commando is seen on the top of a building at the Indian air force base in Pathankot on Tuesday. (Channi Anand / AP)

India has suffered far deadlier terror attacks. But beyond causing embarrassment, the Pathankot raid and its aftermath have threatened to derail an upcoming round of talks between India and Pakistan and has given ammunition to critics of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis efforts to thaw relations with his countrys blood rival.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Modi on Tuesday and said his government would take prompt and decisive action against the perpetrators of the attack, according to a statement from the Indian government. Indian officials have said they would wait for Pakistans response before deciding whether to proceed with the talks, scheduled for mid-January in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Their words are encouraging, said a senior Indian official who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. But obviously if they dont take serious action, that is not a conducive atmosphere for dialogue.

Despite the bloodshed, the statements from both capitals have been conciliatory  a sign that neither government wants to be blamed for calling off the meeting in Islamabad. The top diplomats from both countries are due to resume a long-stalled dialogue on security and economic issues, an effort that gained momentum two weeks ago when Modi made an unannounced visit to Pakistan to greet Sharif on his birthday.

If talks remain on track, it is because both sides have demonstrated unusual restraint, Ajai Shukla, a retired army colonel, wrote in the Business Standard newspaper.

But the governments response to the attack transformed what should have been a short, intelligence-driven, counter-terrorist operation into something that increasingly seems like a debacle, Shukla wrote.

Analysts expressed worry at how the militants likely crossed into India: from a vulnerable area along the Pakistani border that that is commonly used by drug smugglers. Officials in Indias northern Punjab state have long been accused of turning a blind eye to the cross-border drug trade  or covertly profiting off of it  despite concerns that it posed a security risk.

Indias Border Security Force this week acknowledged there were gaping holes along the international border and malfunctioning of electronic surveillance equipment, according to an internal government report cited by the Hindustan Times.

The way the militants crossed such a sensitive border without much effort clearly shows there are problems in Indias border management, said Sameer Patil, a security analyst with Gateway House, a think tank in Mumbai.

Questions also swirled around whether security officials responded adequately after learning Friday, the day before the raid, that militants had entered Punjab. Six months earlier, a similar militant raid in Punjab resulted in the deaths of four policemen and three civilians.

Analysts said security officials erred by not sending sufficient army troops to protect Pathankot, a 2,000-acre base that represented a major target. The responsibility for securing Pathankot was left largely to the Defense Security Corps, a force made up of retired military veterans who suffered most of the casualties, and other units ill equipped for the operation, analysts said.

Although the militants were stopped before they could reach a secure area inside the base where warplanes are housed, Praveen Swami, a veteran national security correspondent at the Indian Express newspaper, said in an interview that the operation pointed to poor training of security personnel.

Defense officials said the militants were found with more than 100 pounds of bullets, grenades and other weapons, raising questions about how they managed to cross the border undetected and scale the bases perimeter walls.

It tells you something was badly wrong, Swami said.

Responding to the criticism, Parrikar said that Pathankot is huge and difficult to defend. The base has roughly 15 miles of perimeter walls and is surrounded on some sides by forests that provide easy cover.

I see some gaps in the operations, Parrikar said. But I dont think we compromised on security. This is a huge campus.

Officials also praised security forces for preventing casualties among civilians, including the families of air force personnel who live on the base.

Many experts said officials should have expected such an attack, because in recent years, violence has nearly always followed signs of warming ties between India and Pakistan. The countries have fought four wars since 1947 and maintain one of the worlds most heavily militarized borders.

Indian officials say the violence has been directed by parts of Pakistans deep state, which opposes the peace process, although the Pakistani government denies the accusation.

Jaish-e-Mohammad, the militant group suspected in the attack, wants to drive India out of the disputed border territory of Kashmir. New Delhi said it has shared information about the attackers with Islamabad.

Some analysts in India say Modi has too much invested in dialogue with Pakistan, and that calling off talks would only embolden those elements of Pakistans government that oppose peace.

Since Prime Minister Modi and his team have taken the gamble of engaging with Pakistanit would not like to abandon this initiative midway, Patil said.

Special correspondent Parth M.N. contributed to this report from Mumbai, India.
A new law in Britain has expanded the meaning of domestic abuse by including emotional or psychological harm that falls short of threats of physical violence.

Under the coercive control statute, people who spy on their partners or family members online or attempt to control them via social media can now face up to five years in prison.

Until now, police in Britain were able to arrest someone for domestic abuse only if the victim was assaulted or threatened with violence.

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The legislation, passed last week as part of a package of criminal justice reforms, was a victory for domestic violence campaigners. But the law will also present a challenge to prosecutors, who must prove repeated controlling or coercive behavior.

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The new law demands much fuller understanding of events that led up to a call for assistance, and this can make evidence gathering more complex, David Tucker, a senior national police official, said in a written statement.

A victim must have a credible fear of physical violence on at least two occasions, or the abusive behavior must have a substantial adverse effect on the victims day-to-day activities.

Domestic abuse investigators will receive specialized training, he said.

Charlotte Kneer, who manages a shelter for abused women, called the new law amazing.

But she also acknowledged that prosecutions could be difficult given how subtle the early warning signs of domestic violence can be. Her own experience more than two decades ago is a case in point.

Her partner moved into her home just a few weeks after their relationship began. Then he told her they should never go out separately.

He later persuaded her that couples in healthy relationships had to have sex every other day.

Early on I wanted to please him, she said. I had fallen in love with him and I thought maybe he was right.

Within six months, the controlling behavior turned physically violent.

Now 45, Kneer said the new law is about more than prosecutions.

I think its important that people are talking about this, she said. I hope people will gain an understanding of what domestic abuse is, because it isnt just the physical violence. Its a much more complicated picture.

This isnt a minor form of abuse, she said. Coercive control is what domestic violence is, and thats what people dont understand.

With the Internet and social media now pervading virtually every aspect of daily life, those who work with victims of domestic violence say nearly every case involves some form of online abuse.

A perpetrator might install GPS applications on a tablet or phone to track a partners movements, or demand access to passwords so online activity could be monitored.

Some abusers exert control by preventing partners from accessing finances and online banking.

Social media can also be used to isolate victims from their friends and family, making it harder to reach out for help.

One national charity, Citizens Advice, which assists more than 5,000 people a year, said more than half of its clients who experienced physical harm were also victims of emotional abuse. About a sixth reported financial abuse.

In a written statement, Alison Saunders, a top prosecutor, praised the new law.

Being subjected to repeated humiliation, intimidation or subordination can be as harmful as physical abuse, with many victims stating that trauma from psychological abuse had a more lasting impact than physical abuse, she said.

Boyle is a special correspondent.

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Kuwait recalls ambassador to Tehran amid Saudi-Iran tension

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Kuwait announced Tuesday it has recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, the latest Arab ally of Saudi Arabia to line up behind the kingdom amid rising regional tensions following its execution of a leading Shiite cleric and opposition figure.

The execution last weekend also heightened the Saudi-Iran regional rivalry, threatening to derail already-shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said Monday they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late Sunday. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge daffaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.

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The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a longtime regional rival.

What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented. ... It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message, said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University. This is the Saudis saying: There is no limit to how far we will go.

On Tuesday, Kuwait announced the recalling of its ambassador in a statement carried on the state-run Kuwait News Agency, without elaborating. It wasnt immediately clear how the Kuwait-Iran diplomatic ties would be affected by the move.

Tiny Kuwait is home to both Shiites and Sunnis living in peace and has the most freewheeling political system among all Gulf nations.

The diplomatic standoff began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheik Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terrorism charges  the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Al-Nimr, a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabias Shiite minority, long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. Late Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir announced the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

On Monday, Saudi Arabias civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdoms cutting of diplomatic ties.

Iran expressed regret over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by the Associated Press, Irans U.N. envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said more than 40 protesters have been arrested and authorities are searching for other suspects.

In response to a Saudi letter, the U.N. Security Council late Monday strongly condemned the attacks by Iranian protesters on Saudi diplomatic posts. The council statement, agreed to after hours of negotiations, made no mention of the Saudi executions or the rupture in Saudi-Iranian relations.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in the Middle East. Their rivalry deepened after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

World powers have sought to calm the tension. On Monday, Germany called on both sides to mend ties, while Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed senior diplomat as saying Moscow is ready to act as a mediator.

The U.N. envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was en route to Riyadh on Monday with plans to later visit Tehran. Iran, a staunch supporter of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia, a key backer of the opposition, have participated in three rounds of international talks aimed at ending the conflict. De Mistura has set a Jan. 25 target date for a fourth round of talks.

The White House urged Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war.

RELATED:

U.S. initiatives at risk as Mideast tensions rise

Mideast rift widens as Saudi allies cut ties with Iran

Saudi Arabia cuts ties with Iran in crisis over clerics execution; other nations follow suit
Saudi Arabias announcement last week that it had executed 47 militants and dissidents prompted international condemnation and sharply widened the rift between the desert kingdom and archrival Iran.

Protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy and consulates in Iran; in response, Saudi Arabia and several of its allies severed or downgraded diplomatic relations with Iran.

But the uproar was largely inspired by just one of the 47 executions: that of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite Muslim cleric who had been virtually unknown outside Saudi Arabia before his arrest in 2012.

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Who was Al-Nimr? And why did his execution rock the already-tense sectarian fault lines of the Middle East?

The cleric was from Awamiya, a village in Saudi Arabias far east, near the Persian Gulf. In a country that is predominantly -- and officially -- Sunni Muslim, the village is in a region that is predominantly Shiite, and has long complained of religious discrimination.

Born in 1959, Al-Nimr came from a Shiite family famous for its history of resistance. In 1929, his grandfather led an armed revolt against government tax collectors and missionaries from the Sunni Wahhabi sect.

Yet Al-Nimr was typically regarded as a second-tier political player, according to a 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable disclosed by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. This, the cable said, was largely because he was not directly affiliated with the two main Shiite blocs in the area.

The cable, however, noted that Al-Nimr was currently gaining popularity locally, particularly with young people. It said he appealed to the poor, who were bearing the brunt of Saudi Arabias economic malaise and saw little sign of reform in the governments relations with Shiites.

Shiites in Saudi Arabia, accounting for 10% to 15% of the population, face systematic discrimination in religion, education, justice and employment, a 2009 Human Rights Watch report said.

Saudi Shia are virtually excluded from serving in senior government posts, the security services, the Foreign Ministry and the justice system, Human Rights Watch researcher Adam Coogle said in an email.

They also face severe restrictions in their religious practice, and Saudi school textbooks continue to use coded language to refer to Shia as unbelievers/polytheists, Coogle said.

The weapon of the word is stronger than bullets.  Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr

Top Shiite leaders in the country have chosen to eschew armed struggle and work with the government to improve Shiites status. Al-Nimr also opposed the use of arms, but refused to soften his rhetoric.

He was someone who was seen as taking an uncompromising view against the regime, said Joas Wagemakers, an Islamic studies scholar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

He always remained steadfast in his belief that the regime was the problem, and no amount of talking or accommodation with the regime will solve these problems, since the regime was fundamentally opposed to the Shiites interests, he added.

It made Al-Nimr a marginal, perhaps even awkward, figure for other Shiite leaders.

He was like that crazy uncle you hear at parties, but he was someone you really loved, said Wagemakers.

Saudi Shiite women (front) and men (back) take part in a Jan. 2, 2016, protest in the eastern coastal city of Qatif, Saudi Arabia, against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr. (STR / AFP/Getty Images)

It was during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that his popularity surged.

From the very beginning he said, We should do street protests and we want an Arab Spring in Saudi, said Toby Matthiesen, a senior research fellow at Oxford University.

He was the only cleric to unconditionally support the protest movement. Others initially supported it, but then issued fatwas [religious edicts] saying to go home, and he said no, peaceful demonstrations is the way forward, Matthiesen said.

When clashes with security forces in Awamiya turned bloody in October 2011, the cleric called for calm, saying that the weapon of the word is stronger than bullets.

Still, he refused to back down.

In a televised sermon, Al-Nimrs gentle, almost avuncular mystique was transformed by anger.

Stretching over a hundred years, we [Shiites] experience oppression, injustice and terrorization. From the moment you are born, you are surrounded by fear and terrorizing and pursuit and pain, he railed.

I am more than 50 years old, I have never felt security nor peace in this country, he added.

But he was accused of going too far when, in June 2012, he practically rejoiced after the death of the much-hated Crown Prince Nayef ibn Abdulaziz (who led the crackdown on protesters).

Where are the soldiers of Nayef now? he asked in a sermon that circulated on social media. Can they protect him from the Angel of Death?

He also criticized the succession of the Saudi monarchy, which has been passed among the now-geriatric sons of King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, Saudi Arabias founder.

Why should he remain king? Why does [the king] not retire? Must the Angel of Death come and take his soul? asked Al-Nimr.

It proved too much for the government. A month later, Al-Nimr was arrested in a shootout with Saudi security forces, who claimed the cleric and those accompanying him had fired at them. Still, the only person injured was Al-Nimr, who was shot in the leg before being apprehended.

His subsequent trial, according to Coogle, was problematic. He had no access to his lawyers during interrogations; they were also not always informed of trial dates; there was a delay in giving him details on the charges against him, which further hindered his ability to prepare an adequate defense.

The government also accused him of having contacts with Iran, a charge that observers believe was untrue.

Of course Iran loved his speeches and used him in the media and loved him in the protests, but he didnt get his orders from Iran, said Matthiesen.

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While in exile in Iran, Al-Nimr joined the Shirazi movement, hard-liners who wanted to see an Iranian-style Islamic revolution in Iraq. He left the group when Iran ultimately rejected and exiled the Shirazis.

After Al-Nimr returned to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, he was repeatedly arrested or detained by authorities.

He was just someone whose primary concern was to speak truth to power who refused to backtrack on his speeches, Matthiesen said. In prison they gave him an opportunity to apologize for everything, but he refused.

When Al-Nimr was ultimately sentenced to death, it transformed him from a minor Saudi figure to an international cause celebre.

His execution last week has now turned into a public relations nightmare for Saudi Arabia, which has been excoriated for its dismal human rights record even as it serves on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Hes a martyr now and he will never be forgotten, said Matthiesen.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

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The deportation of Ethan Couch, the 18-year-old "affluenza"-diagnosed teen jailed in Mexico City, may last for a couple of months, his lawyer revealed on Tuesday.

ABC News said Couch's Mexican legal counsel, Fernando Benitez, has estimated that the proceedings to bring back Couch to the United States may take a long time.

The lawyer, who is expected to meet his client on Tuesday, said that he hopes he can get Couch a hearing early next month.

Couch and his mother Tonya, were detained in Mexico on Monday after they fled from the United States, BBC noted.

The teenager was earlier sentenced to a 10-year probation for a drunk-driving incident two years ago, where four people died.

His case was much publicized because his lawyers noted that the wealthy status of the suspect "encouraged a sense of irresponsibility," which was later on termed as "affluenza."

It was noted in the ABC News that this condition, brought on by his wealthy upbringing, has prevented him from knowing what is right from wrong.

A warrant of arrest was earlier issued against Couch after he was not able to report to his probation officer.

According to Yahoo News, Couch and his mother went south when authorities in Tarrant County, Texas started investigating him not being able to report for his probation.

Tonya was reportedly flown to Los Angeles on Wednesday, but left behind Ethan since deportation proceedings of the suspect are still pending.

"We believe that, until the Mexican Federal Judge enters an appropriate order authorizing it, Ethan will not be returned to the United States. We are uncertain how long the legal process in Mexico will take or how it will ultimately be resolved," said Scott Brown and Reagan Wynn, Couch's lawyers in Texas, in the BBC report.

The legal counsels noted that since they are not licensed to practice in Mexico, they helped the family in getting a lawyer who could treat their client fairly.

Benitez, a high-profile Mexican lawyer, said in a Dallas News report that he wants Couch to be treated lawfully.

"My interest is that if they are looking for his extradition to the United States, that it proceeds only according to the constitution and the law," the lawyer was quoted by the same report as saying.

He expressed confidence that he will arrive at great results for this case since he has also represented ex-Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, who was arrested after guns, used in several murders, were found inside his home.

 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The annual Philadelphia Mummers Parade is once again under fire after racist and homophobic acts interspersed the area's version of Mardi Gras. A group of participants painted their faces brown to depict Mexicans, on top of being accused of harassing gay people and ridiculing Caitlyn Jenner during the event.

According to NBC Philadelphia, participants from a brigade called Sammar Strutters pulled what they called the "Siesta Fiesta," where they, including children, wore ponchos and sombreros and painted their face brown. Some even dressed up as tacos.

Other Philadelphia Mummers Parade goers downright mocked the Black Lives Matter movement, which centers on the battle against police brutality and inequality, by holding up signs that say "Mummers Lives Matter" and "Wenches Lives Matter."

But what is deemed to be the most controversial showing for this year's celebration has to be Finnegan New Year's Brigade. A member of the group dressed as Jenner, who readers will remember won an Olympic gold medal as Bruce Jenner for the decathlon and later transitioned into a woman.

The man then sat on a wheelchair and changed into women's clothes with the Aerosmith song "Dude Looks Like a Lady" playing in the background. Some of the brigade members also held up signs, with a Wheaties box used to portray Bruce Jenner, while the group depicted Caitlyn with a Froot Loops box.

Another Finnegan NYB member was caught on video shouting expletives to condemn gay people. A gay man, who was just walking his dog, was allegedly assaulted as well. ABC News says reports that Finnegan NYB captain Michael Inemer Sr. does not feel the need to apologize about the Jenner showing because they were just embodying the true Philadelphia Mummers Parade theme.

He, however, was apologetic about the assaults. "I find myself, as do many, many members of Finnegan NYB, wholeheartedly apologizing for the abrasive, gross and disturbing action of one of our members who, unfortunately, took it upon himself to embarrass us all with his conduct and inexcusable and hurtful insults to the crowd at the end of the parade," Inemer wrote as quoted by ABC News.

Inemer assured that the videotaped Philadelphia Mummers Parade participant from their group is "no longer considered a Mummer" and has been "dealt with without any outside influence."

The City's director of LGBT Affairs Nellie Fitzpatrick, on the other hand, dismisses the actions as "unacceptable," adding that "there's no place for it in Philadelphia." Fitzpatrick promised that they will be working to prevent such "disgusting display of bias, hateful behavior" from happening in the future.

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The Obama administration began detaining Central American immigrants who have evaded deportation orders this weekend. The US government launched a crackdown on illegal immigrants following a surge of migrants trying to cross the border.

In a report with Press TV, the nationwide crackdown began over the weekend, amidst much criticism from advocates of immigration. There were reports of raids in Georgia and Texas, immigration attorneys told the news agency.

The large-scale operation is being carried out by agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Administration officials have said in an earlier report last December, that they will be stepping up deportations for those who have already been ordered to leave the country.

Advocates of immigration have already questioned the operation. They were enraged by the current administration's response and felt that the administration was treating the immigrants as if they were criminals. The advocates have also dragged the government into a legal battle that has turned messy over the detention of immigrant families. The courts have already sided with the advocates and have ordered the government to release the detained families.

According to the advocates, the new deportation plan is the same political bind that the Obama Administration had last year and its inaction has gained criticism from the right over "border security," while action has created criticism from the left.

It is reported that over 100,000 families have entered the United States via Mexico since 2014. Many of these migrants come from El Salvador and Honduras. A great number of these migrants have come to escape poverty and growing violence.

Some of these Central American families have been granted asylum, while many have not because they have lost their case at an immigration court. Many families have stayed in the country, long after being told to leave. These numbers are said to have reached 15,000.

The LA Times reported that six Central American families detained in the raids in Texas are to be brought to the South Texas Family Residential Center. Many advocates for immigration said that they will try to contact the families being detained in the detention centers to make sure that they have legal help.

Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton said in an official statement that she too has "real concerns" about the raids. Clinton has called for the United States to be "guided by a spirit of humanity and generosity" concerning illegal immigration.

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Recently, a video featured GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in an alleged terrorist recruiting video.

However, despite the waves it made in media, Senator Marco Rubio said that Trump is "not the cause of racial jihadists" and dismissed the video as insignificant.

In a report by NBC, Rubio told reporters, "Those radical jihadists do not exist because of Donald Trump or any other campaign, they were gonna be around no matter what because they have a radical ideology and they are pursuing it violently around the world."

He added, "Ultimately, he's not the cause of radical jihadists. The cause of radical jihadism is a radical view and extremist view of the world, and they need to be defeated. They're gonna continue to spread until they're confronted."

These comments came in response to reports of the terrorist group Al Shabaab using a clip of Trump in their recruiting video, something that many of the politicians have already warned could be an outcome of Trump's anti-Muslim campaign.

The clip of Trump, according to Yahoo!, was taken from his December 7 speech, and made after a radicalized couple in California killed 14 people.

For his part, Trump shrugged off the jihadist video, saying, "I have to say what I have to say."

His call for total ban of Muslims in the United States has drawn criticism around the globe, including from Rubio, who called his proplosal "offensive and outlandish," even saying that Trump suggested it merely to "recapture the limelight."

When asked about the terrorist recruitment video, Trump shrugged, saying, "I have to say what I have to say. And you know what I have to say? There's a problem. We have to find out what is the problem. And we have to solve that problem."

He also said that his stance against Muslims has drawn wide support, pointing out the case of the recent Paris attacks and citing the case of Brussels and many other nations that were "shutting down cities that had never had a problem before."

The video of Trump used to recruit more jihadist extremists is only proof of what democrat candidate Hillary Clinton has said last month about Trump being "ISIS's best recruiter." Although Shabaab is a different terrorist group than the Islamic State, her point still remained true about Trump's words being used to recruit more terrorists.

Still, Trump fails to see his comments as a problem, saying that ""Maybe it's not politically correct," but he did acknowledge that "there's a big problem out there."

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Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla revealed the country's current state as it braces for impending lawsuits from creditors amidst the nation's long-running debt dilemma.

In an interview with CNBC, Padilla confirmed that they are anticipating possible lawsuits to be filed by those who the country owes money from after the Puerto Rican government was unable to pay their dues.

However, such litigation, he admitted, was going to cost the island a very high price and that it was not going to be very easy to be "100 percent" prepared for such event.

"It will be very costly - that litigation - for the commonwealth and our creditors. Every dollar used to pay lawyers will be a dollar ... not available to pay creditors," he told CNBC.

With this already out, he repeated his previous plea for American lawmakers to give Puerto Rico "the tools" necessary for them to restructure their debts that has reached as much as $70 billion, as well as his grant the country access to U.S. bankruptcy rights.

According to BBC, the governor has repeatedly called for the United States government "to extend bankruptcy protections" to U.S. territory to ease what he deemed as a possible humanitarian crisis.

"What we are asking is for Congress to give us the tools to address this crisis. We do not want a bailout, we just want the tools to solve his crisis," he pleaded.

While cities and public utility companies on the mainland can declare bankruptcy, federal law prohibits US states and territories to declare bankruptcy.

"Puerto Rico's public utilities are heavily debt-burdened, but are not allowed the bankruptcy rights that their mainland counterparts are afforded," the outlet explained.

BBC notes that members of the U.S. Congress are set to discuss the matter in the months to come, following their decision to stop budget debates back in December.

The country was able to pay most of the $1 billion due on Monday, but it was far from enough as the Puerto Rican economy continues to struggle to survive such crisis.

The outlet noted that the country was able to pay the $328.7 million-worth general obligation debt, leading to the nation's second default.

Padilla also revealed to CNBC how they managed to raise funds for the debt by explaining a strategy they call "clawback," which entails raiding other government agencies' budget.

Despite this effort, Puerto Rico is in danger of not being able to pay their upcoming dues in February, which costs $400 million, and the heavier $1.9 billion due in July.

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El Salvador reportedly saw a 70 percent increase in violent deaths in 2015. According to records released by the country's authorities, 2015 was the bloodiest since the country's civil war between alleged gang members and police in the Central American nation.

The Guardian reported that the figures released showed that at least 6,657 people were killed in 2015, amidst a surge in mass killings and an alarming increase in violence between gang members and police in the country.

The publication reported that during certain times in the past year, parts of El Salvador resembled war zones, with 6,000 soldiers deployed on the streets, alongside 23,000 police officers. There were reportedly truckloads of masked security forces who carried out house searches, searching for gang members.

The murder rate reportedly surged to 104 per 100,000 residents. These numbers were compared to Venezuela's numbers, which accounted for 90 per 100,000 residents in Venezuela. For reference, Venezuela is reported to be the second most murderous country in 2015.

According to the report, August was the most violent month with more than 900 reported killings, which included 52 unprecedented deaths registered in a single day.

The death toll in 2015 is the highest recorded since 1983. This year marked the very height of what was a 12-year civil war between the US-backed military dictatorship and the leftwing guerrilla groups.

That internal conflict left an estimated 75,000 people dead, most of them civilians. The UN Truth Commission also reported that one million were displaced and thousands more disappeared.

The country reached a peace deal in 1992, which led the guerrillas to disband. However, the peace negotiations never resolved the problems of inequality and weak government institutions. As a result, the violence has continued and has only gotten worse.

El Salvador authorities have blamed the ongoing killings on street gangs who have been involved in territory disputes and drug extortion rings. The murders have reportedly fell by half after the government negotiated a truce between the country's two biggest street gangs, Calle 18 and Mara Salvatrucha 13 in 2012. The murders have soared since the peace pact unravelled in 2014.

There has also some mounting evidence that the El Salvador police have carried out extrajudicial killings against alleged gang members.

Inquirer reported that in March 2015, eight unarmed people were reportedly executed by police at the San Blas farm in San Salvador. The execution scene was allegedly covered up by police to make it seem like the victims had died in a gun battle.

The current violence is mostly centered in cities and semi-urban areas. However, the street gangs have now expanded into the smallest smallest rural communities in order to concentrate on running extortion rings and control territory.

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Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has announced a port agreement with Cuba.

On Monday, the governor said during his three-day trip that Virginia will become the first U.S. port operator to sign a cooperation agreement with its counterpart in Cuba, Raw Story reported. The move is aimed to boost trade and establish direct service with the island.

The agreement, which is between the Port of Mariel and Port of Virginia, is called by McAuliffe as "a strategic alliance," as quoted in Raw Story's report.

McAuliffe is the fourth U.S. governor to visit Cuba since a year ago, when both nations agreed to normalize diplomatic relations, the news outlet noted. His delegation has 30 members that included numerous state officials and around twenty business leaders.

The governor is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a close supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and a long-standing advocate of trade with Cuba, Yahoo! News listed. McAuliffe said that he views 2016 to be hugely important for the U.S.-Cuba relations, noting that the U.S. could allow more open travel to the island.

McAuliffe also said that the U.S. could terminate a ban on American businesses operating on Cuba on credit, the news outlet noted. Cuba has pointed to the credit limit as the primary reason for sharply reducing purchases of goods from U.S. states including Virginia.

"I think 2016 is going to be a very big year. This is an important legacy item for President Obama," McAuliffe said, as quoted by Yahoo! News. "I think this is the year we can get an awful lot of things done: normalization of relations, extending credit, open travel. These are all things I hope to accomplish this year. I think we can do it."

He also said that the delegation, which includes representatives from pork manufacturer Smithfield Foods and poultry producer Perdue Farms, aims to raise and expand Virginia's export to Cuba, which consist mostly of apples, wine, and soy products, Raw Story noted.

On Monday, McAuliffe met with Cuba's top foreign trade official and observed the leaders of the University of Havana and Virginia Commonwealth University sign an agreement for academic cooperation and exchanges, Yahoo! News further reported. He is also expected to sign a similar memorandum of accord on Tuesday concerning the Port of Virginia and Cuba's recently opened Mariel port and free trade zone.

When asked whether he would depart Cuba laden with new deals for Virginia businesses, McAuliffe deflected queries and said that his visit is all about "building relationships for the future," Yahoo! News added.

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NEW HAVEN, CT - OCTOBER 05: Advocates for immigration reform gather as part of the National Day for Dignity and Respect on October 5, 2013 in New Haven, Connecticut. Attendees signed petitions, listened to speeches and celebrated the Connecticut immigrant community. About 175 marches and gatherings are expected to take place across the country on Saturday. An immigration reform bill was unveiled earlier this week by House Democrats. (Photo : Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Will Latinos make significant effect on the 2016 elections?

In the past, Latinos appeared far from U.S. politics. Colombia Tribune revealed that this may have been due to the group's evident lack of interest, after all.

The above outlet cites proof in a Census Bureau record, which revealed less than half of eligible Hispanic voters -- about 48% -- showed up during the 2012 election. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of the total population of whites and blacks participated.

Despite this, there are politicians trying to win Latin Americans over, convinced that having them on their respective sides could mean a comfortable seat in Congress or even the White House.

Politicians, Republicans in particular, are believed to take more consideration for the Latino community, after Republican governor Mitt Romney won over a total of 27 percent of the Hispanic voters during the 2012 elections.

Still, there could be those quietly making moves to gain favor. Donald Trump, long slammed by Latinos, remains in the headlines for some reason.

Fox News' Latino correspondent Geraldo Rivera said about the business magnate, "For all his success among whites, Trump is getting crushed in surveys of minority voters. He is deeply unpopular among blacks, Asians, Muslims, millennials and pro-choice women. For all his charm, there is special loathing for The Donald among Latinos."

Yet Trump pacifies critics with a confident and capable aura, as well as his opinion about the Miss Universe 2015 coronation night flub. He urged the now-reigning Miss Universe Pia Wurtzbach (Philippines) to share the crown with first runner-up Ariadna Gutierrez (Colombia), calling them "co-winners."

"I'll tell you what I think I'd do. I think I'd make 'em a co-winner. It'd be very cool... I would recommend that they go have a beautiful ceremony, which is good for the brand and good for Miss Universe, and do a co-winner," he told NBC in an interview posted over Today's Twitter.

If that does not prove how important Latinos are for him, we can only speculate what will.

While Latinos might ignore their right to suffrage, statistics show a big wave in the election results if a bulk of the eligible population cast their votes.

In a previous article, US News considered Hispanics as "the largest minority group" in the U.S. based on the Census Bureau's records, noting them to compose 17 percent of the entire American population.

The outlet also cited a statement from a University of New Mexico professor, Gabriel Sanchez, who proved how quick the Hispanic community is growing. "Every 30 seconds, a Latino citizen turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote... That's 66,000 each month. That's a powerful number," he said the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual policy conference in Washington.

From what history and these records tell us, will Latinos make big impact in the upcoming elections? Cast your votes below.

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Immigration activists have criticized the weekend raids that apprehended 121 immigrants across the United States for deportation.

The Washington Post reported that immigration officials would begin taking into custody women and children from Central America. These immigrants have crossed the border in 2015 and had been given deportation orders from a judge.

According to the Guardian, pro-migrant groups said that the operation would force undocumented immigrants deeper underground and would ignite resentment towards President Barack Obama, who is frequently referred to as the "deporter-in-chief." The operation generally targeted Central Americans taking off from violence and who were refused U.S. asylum.

The Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson strongly defended the action in a statement: "As I have said repeatedly, our borders are not open to illegal migration; if you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values."

Johnson said that majority of undocumented immigrants now in custody came from raids conducted in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, although the official separated them as part of "concerted, nationwide enforcement operations," the Guardian added.

Although a senior administration official acknowledged the controversial and inflammatory rhetoric against immigrants that has become prevalent in the 2016 presidential campaign trail, though the officer insisted that the raids had "nothing to do with the caterwaulings of any member of the political class," the news outlet noted. Instead, the official said, the operation is an answer to the surge of Central American families and unaccompanied children trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Abraham Espinosa of FIEL, an immigrant rights group based in Houston, said there was "a little bit of a panic" among migrants when news of the arrests surfaced before Christmas, the Guardian further reported.

"You never know where they could strike," Espinosa said of the immigration officers, as quoted in the Guardian's report, adding that many immigrants "don't even want to leave the house at this point."

The Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights responded immediately when news of the action broke out, NBC News reported. To spread the word to immigrants, members used contacts in the community, social media, a hotline in position since 2007, and interviews with local Latino newspapers. The group also hurriedly made a video using an iPhone to inform immigrants of their rights if authorities paid them a visit.

According to Mohammad Abdollahi, a spokesman for Raices, an immigrant advocacy group based in Texas, many of the families detained is expected to be taken to the Dilley family detention center close to San Antonio, the Guardian wrote. Once there, they will be processed for deportation.

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25 people have been reportedly injured during an amateur bullfighting event in Turbaco, a northern Colombian city. Four of these people were reportedly gored by the bull.

Colombia celebrates the traditional festival known to the locals as "corraleja." The public is invited to participate in engaging the bulls in the ring. Unlike the Spanish style of bullfighting, the bulls are not killed after the fight. Only a handful of experienced bullfighters participate in the five-day event, while the rest are thrill-seekers or amateurs who want to try their luck at bullfighting.

BBC reports that those who were gored by the bull are in serious condition. Dozens of people try to tame a wild bull in a ring especially set up for the occasion. Only some of those taking part in the five-day event are experienced bullfighters.

While the event has been met with some criticism, especially from animal rights advocates, those who have participated in the events say that "people enjoy it."

According to Fox News Latino, these improvised bullfights take place in a wooden bullring. Crowds usually come from all over, after some heavy drinking, to participate in the revelry. People are known to leap into the ring, usually brandishing some rag as a makeshift bullfighter's cape. Some of these thrillseekers even come to the ring barehanded, all wanting their moment of glory in the ring amidst cheers from the Colombian crowd.

The locals who have participated in this annual event say that this is in no way like the bullfighting event in Spain where they killed the bulls after the event. Those who attend and advocate for festival say that they try in every way to "preserve the life of the bulls." However, the event has come under fire by advocates of animal rights as many of the bulls have reportedly died due to the excesses of the crowd, who were heavily influenced by liquor.

Last year, it was reported by The Daily Mail that a mob, clearly influenced by heavy drinking, killed a bull with machetes, rocks, knives and sticks during the festival. Dozens of people reportedly chased the bull, and taunted the poor animal until it was exhausted, then slowly beat it to death. Activists and even some Colombian government officials demanded legal action after the killing of the bull was posted online.

The Ministry of Culture has also released a statement that would call for severe punishments for the so-called "barbaric" incident and has suggested a public debate should be held to see whether or not festivals such as this should be allowed to continue.

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Donald Trump has been criticized about his racial slurs and stance on immigration, among other things, but in his latest TV Ad campaign, he is calling for an end to "Illegal Immigration," although it seems that he is not calling out Latinos crossing the US-Mexican border.

Trump's video started with a photo of the former State secretary and current Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton standing beside President Barack Obama. It then cut to photos of the Sand Bernardino shooters, with a mention of the threat of "radical Islamic terrorism." The ad explained that the threat is Trump's basis for his proposed ban on Muslims entering the US.

Then, the ad touched on Trump's plan to minimize the flow of illegal immigration by building a wall on the US-Mexican border and having Mexico pay for it. Footage of Mexicans and other Latin Americans was then shown as they scramble across the border.

While it seems a bit on the tough side, the problem lies not in the message that Trump's camp is trying to say, but in the video itself. This is because, according to Politifact, the video showed not Latin American immigrants, but North Africans. The scene was not set at the border either, but in Morocco.

Politifact said that they were able to trace to the footage to an Italian television network named RepubblicaTV from May 2014, when they posted a video of Moroccans crossing the border into Melilla, one of the encalves in the Moroccan coast that is still held by Spain.

A spokesperson for Trump denied that the campaign purposely used footage to give a false impression, saying that she did not know where the video came from.

However, an official statement from the campaign via NBC on Twitter said, "the use of this footage was intentional and selected to demonstrate the severe impact of an open border and the very real threat Americans face if we do not immediately build a wall and stop illegal immigration. The biased main stream media doesn't understand, but Americans who want to protect their jobs and families do."

The Telegraph noted that the 30-second "Great Again" advertisement will be broadcast repeatedly in Iowa and New Hampshire, as these are the first two states to vote in the Republican nomination early next month. The business mogul is said to be planning on spending $2 million a week in adverts to run up his votes. He now has half a dozen videos in production that he plans on broadcasting "for months."

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It seems that the alleged financial brains behind the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have been busted. Vice News reported that Elvis Gonzalez Valencia, brother-in-law of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mecho," has been taken into custody while recovering from a shooting.

The elusive head of the cartel, based in Jalisco, Gonzalez is the brother of Abigael Gonzalez Valencia, former head of the sister organization that is believed to run the Jalisco Cartel's finances, known as the Los Cuinis. She was captured last February in the nearby resort of Puerto Vallarta.

Eduardo Almaguer, Jalisco state's attorney general, told reporters on Sunday that the alleged financial brains of the New Generation Cartel was injured in a drive-by shooting while traveling from San Miguel El Alto.

Almaguer said that Gonzalez apparently stopped to relieve himself by the side of the road when he and his companions were attacked by a group of armed men in a pick-up truck. He was then taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for a gunshot wound to his arm. While he used a fake name to get treated, he was identified by agents from the Special Investigation Unit For Organized Crime (SEIDO) as he was transferred to another hospital.

He then spent the weekend at the hospital in Guadalajara, guarded by soldiers as well as state and federal police officers. He was confirmed to have been flown to Mexico City on Sunday night, held to be questioned at the SEIDO headquarters.

The New Generation Cartel was founded five years ago and has already established itself as one of Mexico's most powerful enterprises. Its head, El Mencho, continues to evade arrest, although many members have already been captured in recent months.

Along with Gonzalez, El Mencho's brother Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, was detained in October, while his alleged second-in-command, Ivan Czarin Molina, was caught in November. His son Riben Oseguera Gonzales was also arrested in June.

MacLeans noted that the New Generation Cartel has become more aggressive than its rival in Sinaola. In 2015, they sent shockwaves through Mexico when they ordered the killing of federal policemen, set up roadblocks in the Jalisco state and even shot down an army helicopter.

However, the cartel is not the only one to blame, as Mexico has been peppered with gangs for a long time, and it seems that violence is on the rise again. 8,000 people were killed in the fist six months of 2015 alone. Many gangs also appear to be expanding their businesses beyond drug trafficking, touching on other crimes such as kidnappings, extortion and oil theft, among other things.

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With the dreaded Zika virus already rapidly spreading beyond Brazil, Dominican Republic health authorities have already placed themselves on high alert for the possible arrival of the Zika virus. The virus is linked to causing shrinking in newborns' brains.

According to Dominican Today, health authorities have already made the public aware of this. They said that they have introduced prevention, control and vigilance measures. The health authorities have called on local residents to keep their water tanks covered and to eliminate all possible trash and discarded objects that might serve as a potential breeding ground for the mosquitoes.

Raquel Pimentel, general director of the Ministry of Health's Epidemiology Division, told the publication that the Dominican Republic is doing what it can to detect cases as early as possible, and has emphasized eliminating breeding areas and reducing contagion levels.

Forbes reports that Zika virus was first found in mosquitoes in the Zika forest in Uganda, hence the name. There has been an increase in Zika cases in Colombia, with more than a thousand new cases a week. Brazil, on the other hand, saw its first reported case in May 2015. There has been a surge in cases which is estimated to be between 440,000-1.3 million.

Likewise, Puerto Rico reported their first mosquito-borne virus in late December. But Puerto Rican Congressman Pedro Pierluisi said in a report with CNN that there was "no cause for alarm." He added that the public should do what they can to take steps to avoid mosquito bites.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito normally lives around urban areas, and thrives in countries with tropical weather. Known to bite aggressively during the day, it is the same mosquito that can carry diseases such as yellow fever and dengue.

There is no known basis for how Zika virus can cause microcephaly, or the shrinkage in the newborns' brains. Most mothers of these children have been reported to have Zika-like symptoms throughout their pregnancy.

Brazil is already currently dealing with another health outbreak that is threatening the country. The website says that in 2015, Brazil recorded 1.6 million cases of dengue, which is nearly three times as many as in 2014.

There is no current vaccine to prevent Zika virus, and there is no medical cure to treat it. Symptoms may include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. Symptoms normally begin three to seven days after being bitten.

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Miami is bracing itself for an influx of Cuban migrants who are set to enter the city by the thousands. The mayor of the city is already expressing concerns that they are not ready for the estimated thousands of Cuban migrants who have been stranded in Costa Rica.

In a report with NBC News, Mayor Tomas Regalado said that organizations that have been tasked to assist the Cuban migrants have not received any guidance from the government concerning the issue on mass migration.

According to a report with the news agency, there is an estimated 8,000 Cubans that remain stranded in the Costa Rican border. Central American leaders agreed on a pilot program that would arrange for the migrants to be airlifted from Costa Rica to El Salvador. The migrants will then take the bus to Mexico and the United States.

Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said that plan had been delayed because of some problems in logistics. In a report with Yahoo, Gonzalez emphasized that the number of Cubans and the estimated date of departure was still tentative.

Gonzalez said that the flight would depend on being able to find a large enough aircraft to airlift the group. This alone, he said, was already a challenge, given the high tourism season in Central America.

On the other hand, Mayor Regalado believes that many in the group already have their eyes set on Miami as a final destination. He added that immigration should be a federal matter and that the city does not have the resources to offer housing to the potentially thousands of migrants coming their way.

Gonzalez added that high priority is given to migrants with small children. The foreign minister also said that the migrants are required to pay for the flight and buses themselves. On top of this, they are also required to pay Costa Rica's $29 exit tax, El Salvador's $60 entry visa and $10 to enter Guatemala. This is already a big sum for Cubans, as many of its citizens earn an average monthly state salary of $20.

The U.S. Department of State said in an official statement that it has no plans to change the current migration policy with regards to Cuba.

"We refer you to the involved host governments for details of the agreement." the statement said.

Many of the Cuban migrants, who have made the long travel from Ecuador, are risking it all for the so-called American Dream. The US has a policy that dates back to the Cold War to accept any Cuban who enters the country.

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Alzheimer's Disease Linked to Lack of Sleep: Study

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 05, 2016 05:30 AM EST

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and affects about 5.3 Americans, according to the Alzheimer's Association. One in three seniors die with Alzheimer's or other types of dementia and about $226 billion was spent on the disease in 2015.

Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland have recently found how lack of sleep may increase the risk for developing dementia, NPR reports. According to brain scientist Jeffrey Iliff, the brain clears out toxins linked to Alzheimer's as people sleep, and those who don't get enough quality sleep will have those toxins accumulate and bring damage to the brain.

For years, scientists have studied the relationship of sleep to the development of Alzheimer's disease and have found that there is some kind of link between the two.

According to Popular Science, Iliff and his team of researchers are set to conduct a one of a kind research to take a closer look at the key process in the brains of sleeping humans.

"It's very clear that sleep disruption is an underappreciated factor," Dr. Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley told AP in July. "It's a new player on the scene that increases risk of Alzheimer's disease."

Disrupted sleep patterns are common among patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and scientists attribute this to the buildup of beta amyloid plaque, a sticky amalgamation of proteins that collects in synapses and is a characteristic of Alzheimer's.

"Changes in sleep habits may actually be setting the stage [for dementia]," Iliff explained. Initially, researchers thought that sleep disruption was simply because Alzheimer's disease was "taking out the centers of the brain that are responsible for regulating sleep."

However, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found in 2009 that the sticky amyloid plaques linked to Alzheimer's disease develop faster in brains of sleep-deprived mice. In 2013, Iliff and his team discovered that during sleep, a cleansing process takes place in the brains of animals.

Iliff explained the process saying, "the fluid that's normally on the outside of the brain, cerebrospinal fluidit's a clean, clear fluid it actually begins to recirculate back into and through the brain along the outsides of blood vessels."

The cleansing is galled glymphatic system, a waste-disposal process in which the toxins that form Alzheimer's plaques are removed. Researchers have studied this in mice, and the next step would be to study it in humans.

"We have to find a way to see the same sort of function, but in a way that is going to be reasonably noninvasive and safe," Iliff said. The researchers plan to use the world's most powerful magnetic resonance imaging machines found in the OHSU, which is able to detect changes to indicate when the glymphatic system takes place in the brain. If the research is a success, scientists can move on to study more treatments for Alzheimer's.

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'Telenovela' Star Eva Longoria Talks Engagement, Adoption Rumors; Actress Planning a 'Big Mexican Wedding'

media@latinoshealth.com By Rachel Cruz Jan 05, 2016 04:30 AM EST

Eva Longoria is looking forward to a big year as she reveals the details about her engagement, the wedding plans, the adoption rumors and the start of her new comedy series "Telenovela" on NBC.

Speaking with "Today," the actress shared that she was overjoyed when her beau Jose "Pepe" Antonio Baston proposed to her last December. "It was such a surprise," Eva said, per Us Weekly. "It was in Dubai, in the desert. I'm still applauding him for how beautiful and amazing it was," the actress gushed.

The 40-year-old Mexican-American star started dating the television executive in 2013 after going through two failed marriages. However, Eva said that they have yet to talk about their wedding plans as the couple are still trying to soak it all in. "We haven't even begun to discuss a wedding - that's a lot to discuss," she told Extra TV.

But, as far as rituals go, Eva is already sure of what she doesn't want to happen in her "big fat Mexican wedding." She told Extra TV, "We're not getting in the pool in the gowns."

She also discussed the rumors surrounding the couple's plans for adoption. "We're not adopting - I don't know where that came from," she confirmed to the news outlet. Pepe, 47, has three kids from a previous relationship.

"He's amazing, he's gorgeous and really the kindest human being I've ever met," Eva said of her beau, per People. "He's really private, so I never talk about him!"

Meanwhile, Eva's also gushed over her return to television this week as her new sitcom "Telenovela" begins its run on NBC Jan. 4. The actress last starred on "Desperate Housewives" in 2012 and was looking to work on TV afterwards by developing and producing shows.

But, when the idea for "Telenovela" shaped up, it was evident that she had to be in the cast. "I knew I wanted to return to television because television is my favorite medium of content. Television is at its best right now, it's so good," she said, per Variety.

"Telenovela" tackles the behind-the-scenes of a soap opera production and Eva plays Ana Sofia, the Latina star who cannot speak any Spanish. "She's kinda a fish out of water in this world and she has to work with all these crazy people but most of all her ex-husband comes back who she hates and she has to start working with him again," she told Extra TV.

The show also includes Puerto Rican Amaury Nolasco, Cuban-American Jencarlos Canela, Puerto Rican Jadyn Douglas and Diana Maria Riva.

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Kourtney Kardashian to Undergo Facelift to Look Younger? [Rumors]

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Writer Jan 05, 2016 05:30 AM EST

Kourtney Kardashian is planning to get a facelift procedure in order to look younger, according to rumors.

Kourtney is the oldest of all Kardashian sisters. The mother of three and the ex of Scott Disick is reportedly getting the procedure done so she can keep Justin Bieber interested. According to Celebrity Laundry, the two are rumoredly hooking up together.

However, even before the Justin Beiber hookup rumors surfaced, it was also rumored that she wants to have work done on her body following her horrible breakup from Scott. The two were on and off because of Disick's multiple stints in rehab and cheating rumors.

"The strain of the last few years with Scott, supporting him through thick and thin, left her a little tired and exhausted, and she's thinking of having eyelid lift surgery," an insider said as reported by the International Business Times.

In addition to facelift and eyelid lift, Kourtney has planned to have a boob lift as well.

"Now that she's single, she's contemplating having her breasts lifted ever so slightly. She's had three kids, and still looks amazing, but every little helps," the insider said. "She doesn't want them bigger, she just wants them to be more pert like when she was a little younger before she had the kids and lost some weight."

Kourtney split from Disick who was her partner of 9 years, six months ago. Daily Mail reports that the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" star has anxiety issues and works out in order to combat it.

"One thing I've found that really helps is working out," she wrote on her website, KourtneyKardashian.com. "My anxiety is always worse in the mornings so that's when I schedule my workouts. I usually start with a quick run or jumping rope to warm up."

The Mail adds that Kourtney has said that her New Year's resolution will be to continue to do the workout that she started and try to get more in touch with her emotions.

Meanwhile, Scott Disick has moved in with Swedish model Lina Sandberg. The two have been dating after Disick and Kardashian split in July.

"She and Scott have been seeing each other," a source told E! Online. "They had been trying to keep things under wraps and are surprised that it got out."

On the most recent episode of the reality show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians," Disick was tearfully asking for forgiveness to the rest of Kourtney's family for embarrassing them and vowed to straighten himself out.

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Transvaginal Repair Surgery, 'Pelvic Mesh' Get Tighter Requirements: FDA

media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 05, 2016 05:40 AM EST

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration or FDA announced Monday, January 4, 2016 that it had come up with a more stringent data requirements when it comes to the use of surgical mesh devices in repairing pelvic organ prolapse (POP) transvaginally.

This move is taken by the health officials in order to address safety risks amid the numerous reports received by the FDA regarding complications involving the use of mesh for POP repair through the vagina. These complications include bleeding, organ perforation and urinary problems. according to NewsMax.

"These stronger clinical requirements will help to address the significant risks associated with surgical mesh for repair of pelvic organ prolapse," said William Maisel, M.D., M.P.H., deputy director of science and chief scientist for the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

"We intend to continue monitoring how women with this device are faring months and years after surgery through continued post-market surveillance measures."

The new policy given by the FDA is composed of two final orders for both the manufacturers and the public, according to a news release published in the FDA website. These orders aim to bolster the data requirements for surgical mesh in repairing pelvic organ prolapse (POP) transvaginally, or through the vagina.

The first order is about the re-classification of such medical tools from class II (moderate-risk devices) to class III (high-risk devices), while the second order will now force manufacturers to submit a premarket approval (PMA) application beforehand that will support the safety and effectiveness of surgical mesh for the transvaginal repair of POP.

According to an article from UPI, the pelvic organ prolapse occurs in women when the muscle and tissue in their pelvic floor are stretched, torn or weaken. This results to organs such as the bladder, bowel, or uterus to bulge into the vagina.

The FDA classified the surgical mesh as a moderate-risk device back in 2002 after doctors have started using it even before the 90s to repair prolapses transvaginally. But, as early as the 70s, gynecologists were already using the surgical mesh, but during that time, it was utilized for the repair of abdominal hernias.

"The orders will require manufacturers to address safety concerns, including severe pelvic pain and organ perforation, through a rigorous PMA pathway to demonstrate safety and effectiveness," says the FDA.

"The actions apply only to mesh devices marketed for the transvaginal repair of POP. These orders do not apply to surgical mesh for other indications, like stress urinary incontinence (SUI) or abdominal repair of POP."

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A new Samsung Galaxy S7 leak has revealed a host of exciting features for the South Korean giant's next flagship mobile.

The Galaxy S7 release date is expected to be during Barcelona's Mobile World Congress in February, so it's not surprising that rumors about the phone have started pouring in.

According to The Verge, the latest word, or rather, photo on the grapevine shows the smartphone's full specifications for one of the Galaxy S7 variants. The photo leak appears to be that of the Galaxy S7 Edge+, and if it's correct, then it could very well replace the S6 Edge+.

Currently, the Galaxy S6 and the S6 Edge sport a 5.1-inch screen, while the S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5 use a 5.7-inch screen. The leaked S7 Edge+ purportedly leaked photo reveals a 5.7-inch, 2560x1440 screen like that of the S6 Edge+. However, it remains unclear whether a curved or flat display is shown in the photo released this weekend.

A different rumor reported by GSM Arena supports the leaked photo of the 5.7-inch S7 model.

Meanwhile, other leaked specifications from the photo include a 12.2-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front camera, 4GB of RAM and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chip.

Previous Samsung-related leaks from a reliable site also revealed the names of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Models, according to a Forbes report. They include the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7+, Galaxy S7 Edge and the Galaxy S7 Edge+.

Other features of the Galaxy S7 are still unknown, but reports earlier this year have shown possible features including a pressure-sensitive screen, a USB Type-C port and a retina scanner.

Many rumored features also include the highly anticipated Force Touch feature, which would allow the Galaxy S7 to base its responses from the amount of force the user puts on the screen. If this happens to be true, Samsung's next lineup could become one of the most convenient phones on the planet since it would provide more accurate use for phone-based pay systems such as Android Pay.

The new Galaxy S7 line up is also expected to be on Android Marshmallow, which could boast a darker theme with sharper text as compared to the Galaxy phones running on Lollipop (Version 5), according to the Inquisitr.

The S7 is also rumored to have new technology like a wider sensor for the camera to capture more light and have more accurate auto-focus, which will likely get ahead of the iPhone's camera if true.

The new Samsung Galaxy S7 photo leak, as well as other reports regarding the phone, certainly looks phenomenal, but as in everything else on the internet, this report should be taken with that proverbial grain of salt.

We can only know for sure what's ahead for Samsung fans once the company officially releases the smartphone lineup.

 2015 Latinos Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Samsung's rink motion controller for Gear VR looks awesome.

The VR device from Samsung was introduced at the CES in Las Vegas a few days ago. At the time, the rink didn't really grab the attention of the audience as much as it's doing now.

A video of Samsung's Gear VR accessory has recently been released via controllers, and it offers a sneak peek at the Rink hand-based virtual reality controllers that will undoubtedly get fans excited.

According to Tech Crunch, rink for the Gear VR is something "sorely needed" for Samsung's virtual reality experience on mobile.

In the quick rink preview video, a lab environment not far from Tony Starks/Iron Man's lab is shown being controlled by two hands floating in virtual space. The controllers will later be shown shooting virtual reality planes and choosing VR images from a VR album.

With Samsung's rink motion controllers, the South Korean tech giant could dominate not only the mobile industry but the VR industry as well. Oculus' Touch VR device, which will be released late 2016, is much anticipated. HTC and Playstation's VR controllers are also well-known, and if Samsung chooses to compete with these companies, the rink could very well offer something better up its sleeve.

Based solely on images as well as the most recent video of Samsung's Rink, the Gear VR device appears to be a sort of virtual keyboard that would have the same functions as a Wii controller and more.

Through Samsung's partnership with Gear VR, the company is able to release the content of Oculus quicker to the masses. With the new rink video, it seems the company also wants to get ahead in getting consumers to use the device.

According to Mashable, while Samsung's Gear VR is still something new and unknown for most people, the rink's hand-based VR interface will most likely speed things up when it comes to consumers actually using VR devices, considering the Oculus Rift's more expensive price tag.

PC Advisor reported that the Oculus Rift is priced at $350.

Currently, no other details about Samsung's rink are known. There's still are rates or shipping dates shared by the South Korean giant, but all other information is expected to be announced before summer arrives.

Check out the video of the rink below.

The translation for the video's description reads:

"Samsung C lab development challenges 'rink', Samsung VR and interlocking gears, hand-operated controllers. Hand operation via a sensor worn on the hand may move the virtual reality contents. You can click or drag. CES 2016 showcases a scene of demonstrations scheduled in the arena rink. See video!"

 2015 Latinos Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Comedian Bill Cosby's wife, Camille Cosby, is reportedly "livid and humiliated" by her husband's actions, an insider said.

This development may not be a surprise to those following the 78-year-old's fall from grace in the public eye in the wake of sexual assault allegations. Some observers have expressed their confusion over the loyalty of the actor's wife of 50 years in the face of so many allegations that spanned decades and involved a good number of women.

Previously, Mrs. Cosby defended her famous husband and even reportedly accused that the alleged victims "consented to drugs and sex," as revealed by confidants of the pair, New York Post said.

However, as more and more victims came forward, she eventually felt "sickened" by the situation and felt anger towards her husband. As such, according to insiders, she has since refused to stand by her embattled spouse.

"My husband doesn't deserve jail, but he does deserve every bit of the hell he's going through now even though he is still pretending that this hell doesn't exist," a source quoted Mrs. Cosby as saying, Page Six noted.

"She has been thoroughly humiliated and believe me, her anger isn't directed at the women," the same source said further. "Bill has humiliated her, and the affairs he's had have gotten out of hand and this [criminal charge] is him reaping what he's sown."

The source has been described as a close family connection for over 20 years. The said insider also intimated that the comedian's affairs were actually known by his wife, who reportedly wanted him to keep his infidelities under wraps and avoid embarrassing her.

In the wake of Cosby's arrest, Mrs. Cosby had since filed for a deposition - a move that was seen as part of her usual loyal stance in the face of the comedian's affairs. However, according to the source, Mrs. Cosby had done so "not because she wants to keep protecting Bill, it's because it's so humiliating."

"She's still married to Bill because of all of the court stuff and now the criminal stuff," the mole said. "She knows that you can't force a wife to testify against her husband and she doesn't want any part of this at all."

This move was rejected by a Massachusetts federal magistrate judge, though.

"U.S. Magistrate Judge David Hennessy rejected arguments by Camille Cosby that she lacked any first-hand knowledge of the events at issue - and that the court should protect her from 'unnecessary harassment' by limiting the scope of the subpoena," MailOnline said. "In his 12-page decision, Hennessey said Camille Cosby failed to prove that she and her husband were protected by the state's marital disqualification law."

Currently, Mrs. Cosby is obligated to testify against her husband. The deposition will be happening on January 6.

WATCH:

 2015 Latinos Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
There are a good number of ways to avoid getting your bags or pockets picked. One of them is getting a RiutBag.

The range of bags was launched after raising about 160,000 (about $236,000) on Kickstarter. Designed by Sarah Giblin, the backpacks have "all the pockets and zippers up against your back, so that the openings are never exposed to the masses behind you," Digital Trends noted. As such, it's been called a "backwards backpack."

While this is not a new concept, the RiutBag "stands out with its cool design and the ability to hold a ton of equipment and belongings inside," the tech news source said further.

"The R15 has 15-liters of storage space," Digital Trends said in its review. "It's made from a tough and stiff material, with a plastic covered base, so that you can put the RiutBag down on a wet or damp surface, without worrying that moisture will start soaking through to the items inside."

The waterproofing is due to the foam-lined Cordura and Kevlar, Gizmag said. The bag itself can contain a 15-inch laptop, with pockets for small things like wallets, keys, or a smartphone. It also has an adjustable chest strap, recessed bottle holders, and straps with small pockets for boarding passes or tickets.

Sounds like the perfect backpacker's bag.

"The days before RiutBag existed, I used every plane, train and bus journey to sketch," said Giblin, as quoted by Gizmag. "Traveling from London to Berlin by plane most weeks, I got plenty of observation market research done: my own feelings traveling alone with a normal rucksack, the other rucksacks out there and how people react to those around them."

In addition to that, Giblin also did surveys to polish the design and finally make the prototype. She then went on to launch a Kickstarter campaign to gain funding for her creation. After getting a thousand backers for her bag, she jumpstarted production and delivered the first batch of RiutBags, as noted on the timeline of the brand's official site. She then went on to use the feedback she got to create two new versions of her creations - the R10 and R15. The new bags were delivered late in 2015.

"Riot produces two bags, the R15 and the smaller, 10-liter R10. They're priced at 90 ($135) and 80 ($120) respectively, which is quite expensive for a backpack, regardless of the innovative design," Digital Trends said, adding that despite the high cost, the bag is, in turn, "many times more secure."

WATCH:

 2015 Latinos Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Activists, who for two days have been occupying a federal faciliy in rural Oregon, told reporters on Jan. 4 that the federal government had "gone beyond the boundaries of the Constitution" and pushed "people into poverty" by preventing private ranchers from making full use of public lands.

Armed protesters Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their fellow occupiers said they would continue the standoff at the building in a remote area of the state in order to try to draw attention to ranchers' rights, according to Buzzfeed.

"We have a lot of work to do to unwind the unconstitutional land transactions and unwind the land claims that the federal government hast on these lands," Ammon Bundy said, adding that the occupiers have chosen to call themselves "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom."

The FBI, meanwhile, is hoping to peacefully resolve the standoff, and federal officials said they were working with their state and local counterparts to avoid escalating the situation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in the small town of Burns, NBC News reported.

The federal agency was trying "to bring a peaceful resolution to the situation," according to a statement. So far, police have not approached the refuge, located about 30 miles southeast of Burns.

One of the protesters' key demands -- that two ranchers who had been convicted for arson be spared prison time -- meanwhile, is unlikely to be met, after Dwight and Steven Hammond surrendered themselves to federal authorities on Jan. 4, according to NBC. The ranchers also distanced themselves from the protest.

Still, Bundy reiterated demands late Monday night that the government release the Hammonds and relinquish control of Malheur National Forest. Occupiers also maintained they would defend themselves against an attack by law enforcement.

The Hammonds' attorneys have said that Ammon Bundy does not speak for them, but Cliven Bundy -- Ammon Bundy's father known for another standoff with the federal government last year in Nevada -- demanded by letter that Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward take the two men into protective custody to shield them from reporting for prison.

Two other militants participating in the standoff, meanwhile, asked supporters in a video appeal posted on Jan 4. to join them "to prevent any bloodshed." Blaine Cooper and Jon Ritzheimer, who are associated with an Arizona militia, asked like-minded ranchers to join their efforts, the Oregonian noted.

"We need you to get up here and stand with us. That's what's going to prevent any bloodshed," said Ritzheimer, who said he was taping from his vehicle parked at the entrance to the refuge. "Armed or unarmed, you get up here. We don't want bloodshed."
A new political ad for Donald Trump's campaign has been called out for seemingly misrepresenting Moroccan migrants as Mexicans attempting to cross into the United States.

In the video, the narrator says that presidential candidate Trump will "stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for." The statement is accompanied by footage of dozens of people scrambling across the border.

However, PolitiFact reports the footage was not captured on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, but rather from "a small Spanish enclave on the mainland of Morocco."

The footage was originally presented by Italian television network RepubblicaTV, in May 2014. It shows a stream of Moroccan migrants entering Melilla, one of two enclaves on the country's coast that is under Spanish jurisdiction.

As Spain is part of the European Union, the migrants are essentially escaping to European territory without leaving the African continent.

A video of the event can be seen below.

According to video's description (translated by PolitiFact), the footage shows "onslaught of hundreds of migrants to the wall that separates the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco. About 800 tried to cross the border on May 1st. Those who failed to escape the control of the Civil Guard were hanging on the barriers for six hours before being rejected."

While the original video is time-stamped as May 1, 2014, this is absent in Trump's television ad.

According to a Twitter post by NBC journalist Katy Tur, Trump's campaign manager said the video was not intended to show an accurate representation of the current southern border.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN MNGR: "No shit its not the Mexican border but thats what our country is going to look like if we don't do anything."  Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) January 4, 2016

Despite the claims made by Trump's campaign, recent findings from the Pew Research Center show that for the first time since the 1940's, more Mexico immigrants are leaving the U.S. rather than entering. This surprising change is likely due to the current economy and the stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney recently admitted his doubts about Jeb Bush's ability to win the 2016 GOP nomination.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Romney recalled a meeting with the former Florida governor back in January 2015. They were both in Utah at that time and had the opportunity to discuss their respective chances for a presidential run.

Romney told Bush that he would have a hard time distinguishing, if not distancing, himself from his older brother George W. Bush, who forced the U.S. in two unpopular wars and left office while the country was at the height of a major economic recession.

Romney added that it would be very difficult for Jeb to compete against Hillary Clinton, separate himself from his brother's troubled administration and compare it with Bill Clinton's years.

A representative from the Bush camp responded by saying that the campaign would not comment on statements made during a confidential meeting. However, Romney revealed that Bush reacted to his concern by insisting that his campaign would be about the future and not about the past. The strategy hasn't worked well for the 2016 candidate thus far.

Despite having insisted back in February 2015 that he was his own man, Bush has repeatedly fallen into the trap of defending his brother's legacy on the campaign trail. He told TPM in September that George W. Bush kept the country safe after the 9/11 terror attacks. He also applauded his brother's anti-terror efforts and called it a "case study of leadership," per The Hill.

Jeb Bush has employed the services of several members of his brother's team to manage his 2016 campaign. He even said that he calls his brother for advice on foreign policy.

He is presently ranked near the bottom of the GOP field, garnering just three percent of the vote in a nationwide Monmouth University poll released in mid-December. The Bush camp expects Jeb's rating to rise starting this month as the campaign recently launched an aggressive TV and radio ad blitz.

According to the New York Times, Bush supporters went on the air in Iowa with an ad criticizing Marco Rubio over his Senate attendance record. Meanwhile, a New Hampshire commercial compared Bush's achievements as Florida's governor with Gov. Chris Christie's record in New Jersey and Gov. John R. Kasich's tenure in Ohio.

That no-holds-barred tactic is aligned with a strategy Right to Rise has been considering, a source close to the super-PAC told Politico. Jeb Bush's support committee could spend close to $75 million to carpet-bomb the presidential candidate's GOP rivals.
New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order on Sunday mandating all homeless people in the Empire State be taken to shelter in freezing temperatures.

Starting on Tuesday, Cuomo is requiring homeless people across the state to be removed from the streets and brought to shelters when the temperature drops to 32 degrees and below. Cuomo said the order aims to protect the growing homeless population from hypothermia and potential death.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, however, said the executive order would not change much in the Big Apple since the city already takes measure to protect the homeless from severe weather.

"It doesn't change what we do and what we have done many years," said de Blasio speaking of Cuomo's order, according to the New York Daily News. "If someone's in danger we will take them off the streets. That's always been policy."

"We take anyone off the streets we believe is in imminent danger," the mayor explained to WCBS 880. "That's something NYPD does, that's something our outreach workers do through our homeless services department. So we have that capacity right now under state law and we have done that for years and we will continue to do it."

However, "If someone's not in danger, the law says that they still have rights to make that decision themselves," he added.

Some homeless New Yorkers also pushed back against the governor's order, arguing that they prefer to sleep outdoors because the shelters are dangerous.

"It's a choice you make whether you want to go into the shelters or not," Michael Booth, a homeless man in Manhattan's Upper West Side, told a CBS reporter. "There's too much violence in the shelters -- they're very dangerous."

Likewise, a homeless man named Luis said he'd rather sleep outdoors than an unknown shelter. "There's criminals in there, people just out of jail, there's mentally ill in there," he said. "You wouldn't even let your dog eat the food."

Cuomo, however, has vowed to make shelters safe and hospitable.

"If shelters are not up to code, then we are going to be very diligent in our inspection and management of the existing shelter system," he said.
A known opposition group in Cuba, the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, recently released its latest report on the increased political repression happening in the communist government.

In light of the recent actions by Washington and Havana diplomatic reconciliation, according to AFP, which freed five dissidents, the group urged that the government has sustained the political repression last 2015.

According to the report of the opposition group, which is known to be outlawed but tolerated in Cuba, they clarified that the five of the 53 listed prisoners, as part of the reestablishment of the Cuban-U.S. diplomatic relations, were freed but were previously "confined in high-security prisons in the second half of 2015."

The group also stressed that the five prisoners -- Wilfredo Parada Milian, Jorge Ramirez Calderon, Carlos Manuel Figueroa, Aracelio Ribeaux Noa and Vladimir Morera -- were jailed "as a result of rigged trials and without due process."

Furthermore, Morera was in a hunger strike for the past few months starting Oct. 9, 2015 and just started eating again on Dec. 31, 2015.

"All I know is that he is eating again, and that he is speaking incoherently because the doctors say he was very weak," Morera's son said as quoted by the news agency.

And while the Cuban government remains silent on the matter, the commission reports that in January 2015, there have been 178 cases of political arrests. Meanwhile, throughout the past year until December 2015, the commission reported 930 arrests for political reasons, which is considered the third highest number of the year, EFE reports.

The group further clarified that the repressive acts include "acts of vandalism and the extrajudicial confiscation of toys for distribution to poor children, plus the seizing of cash, computers, cell phones and other legally acquired work devices from detained opposition members."

The commission revealed that the country has encountered an increasing amount of "poverty and despair" because of such political repressive actions and that the people have been illegally migrating to other places away from Cuba to escape the troubled situation.

According to the news agency, the Cuban government has considered the commission as the most dissident since the U.S. funded mercenaries. The most current news from the dissident group revealed that "political repression" continued in 2015 "despite the well-known expectations awakened by the announcement of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations" between Havana and Washington, AFP reports.

No further statements have been released from the Cuban government.


UK Special Forces will be joining the coalition attacks in Libya. As of a report by Mirror, Special Air Service (SAS) troops are already preparing for the arrival of 1,000 British infantrymen that would be sent to fight against Islamic State early this year. Special Forces and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment will be taking the lead for the major coalition that's about to take place against the terrorist group.

Around 6,000 American and European troops will be involved in the operation which is led by the Italian forces. The operation is supported by France and Britain.

Their mission is to put an end to the terrorist group's advancement and expansion as it was recently reported that ISIS is eyeing the biggest oil refinery in North Africa, Marsa al Brega refinery which is located in Libya's northern coast as per Daily Mail's report.

Libya has been facing chaos since Gaddafi's governance was abolished. The country is now divided into two governments which is the East and the West.

ISIS already acquired several major oil fields in Syria and they show no signs of stopping in reclaiming oil fields in the neighboring countries, making them the richest terrorist group in the world as per Forbes' list. With their net worth continually increasing, the group would be able to purchase more firearms and battle gears. They would also be able to expand in terms of number making recruitment easy for them.

In addition to the military forces and SAS, Mirror reported that a Royal Navy destroyer is already on its way to the coast of North Africa and the RAF was also asked to gear up for air strikes towards ISIS located in Libya.

Just last month, the ISIS commander by the name of Abu Nabil or Najm Abd Zubaydi was killed in Libya after an airstrike by the U.S. fighter aircraft. After the commander's death, Italy, France, UK and United States decided to work together in mounting an offensive attack against the terrorists supported by the Libyan government which with will take place in the near future.

A senior military source told Mirror that, "This Coalition will provide a wide range of resources from surveillance, to strike operations against Islamic State who have made significant progress in Libya. We have an advance force on the ground who will make an assessment of the situation and identify where attacks should be made and highlight the threats to our forces."
Central American countries El Salvador and Guatemala are hyper aware of the U.S. government's rising deportation campaign. Authorities from both countries took to the web to reach immigrants in danger of being targeted, telling them to be cautious in the following weeks as the country cracks down on foreign families in the country illegally.

In an official statement on the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry via Fusion, citizens were advised to even be cautious of people knocking on their doors.

"Don't be fooled. Don't open the door to unknown people who say they are looking for someone else," the statement warned. "Immigration agents have to show an order signed by a judge to enter your house. If they don't have one, you're not obliged to open your door. You have rights that must be respected. If this is an administrative procedure by the U.S. government, immigration agents have the obligation to respect your fundamental rights and treat you and your family with respect, especially when children are involved."

El Salvador echoed its neighbor's concern in a series of tweets directed to expatriates in the U.S. who are also a target of the mass deportation orders.

"[U.S.] Immigration agents have to show a court order signed by a judge to enter your house," El Salvador's presidency wrote on Twitter via Fusion. "If they don't have one, you are not obliged to open the door."

Also included in the report is the call for citizens to reach out to their government: "The Salvadoran consular offices are standing by the help. Call the consulate in Atlanta for information."

According to a report from Los Angeles Times, over a hundred immigrants have already been detained during the weekend. In a statement by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, it was revealed that a total number of 121 people were taken in custody for deportation mostly from Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

"This should come as no surprise," Johnson pointed out. "I have said publicly for months that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed."

While past federal efforts have primarily targeted adults at workplaces, the recent campaign has focused on families, especially those who have already been issued orders of removal or deportation by an immigration court.

Managing director of the New York-based group United We Dream Cristina Jimenez stressed the importance of being presented warrants before accommodating officials telling Los Angeles Times, "Folks should be asking for the immigration agents to show them this paper, to pass it under the door. We've also advised people to remain silent because you have the right."
In an unprecedented Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement between Vietnam and Latin America, the latter sees great investment in the Vietnam region, which offers young and new generation labor force. The low cost of manufacturing in the country is also seen to have added to the arrival of new investments in Vietnam.

According to the Vietnam Briefing, the TPP is said to have brought Vietnam great partnerships with the U.S., Japan and, now, Latin America in terms of trading. In particular, Chile, Peru and Mexico have seen some great investment prospect in Vietnam, with Chile leading the business partnership ahead.

Vietnam currently enjoys a free-trade agreement with Chile, and with the FTA's short reign, the two countries have definitely emerged at an advantage over the agreement. The past five years have seen a constant 26.8 percent in trade growth. In 2015, exports from Chile to Vietnam have reached $244.7 million while exports from Vietnam to Chile reached a staggering amount of $515.5 million. Out of the three Latin American countries, Chile is the only one who practices the free-trade agreement with Vietnam.

Mexico, on the other hand, remains to be Vietnam's second largest trading partner in the Latin America region. Despite the absence of the FTA, the countries' bilateral agreement on trading has reached around $1.7 billion until 2015. The growth has been propelled by a yearly 57 percent increase on investments and trading. At the end of year 2015, the agreement was also expected to bring in a total of $1.98 billion in investment to Vietnam, a 52 percent increase from previous statistics. Major imports from Mexico to Vietnam range from electronics to machinery and equipment. Scrap iron and steel have also been some of the most imported products from Mexico.

On Aug. 31, 2015, the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Relations and the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade signed an agreement that strengthened partnership on economic, trade and technological issues. The agreement also established some new and concrete framework in other areas of possible investments such as agriculture. The Trans-Pacific Partnership between Peru and Vietnam will see the latter decrease its traffic on seafood products, something that will give boost on the Peruvian export value.

Meanwhile, the Peruvian Embassy in Vietnam opened its doors in May after more than 21 years of diplomatic relations and some $300 million trade value since 2014. Vietnam, in return, is also expected to open its Embassy in Lima, Peru soon.
A new study revealed that a large number of doctors have not been encouraging preteens to get the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause reproductive cancer.

According to a report from the Wall Street Edge, the research team was led by Dr. Allison Kempe, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The findings were published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, Dec. 4.

The survey, which included 582 family doctors and pediatricians, sought to identify the practices related to HPV, including the prevalence of preventive treatment such as vaccination. It discovered that many doctors do not actively encourage preteens to take the vaccine.

In general, there is reluctance in the industry to promote its benefits to the youth and their families. Over a third of the participating physicians hold back in compelling kids to take the vaccine, especially male patients. Reasons for not stressing the importance of the shot include physicians' belief that it is not yet necessary or in deference to parents.

However, it's been shown that the vaccination is most effective when taken at the age of 11 or 12, and when the patient is still a virgin. The report also pointed out that approximately a third of kids under the age of 16 have already had sexual intercourse, highlighting the need for the HPV vaccination to be taken as early as possible.

In a report from WISN, Dr. Lyn Ranta, director of physician affairs at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, explained that the importance of the HPV shots.

"We need to remember that most of us decide to be sexually active at some point in our life," Ranta said. "Sometimes that sexual activity isn't even consensual, so you really want to make sure that our children are protected long before they ever think about having or involving themselves in a sexual relationship."

The lack of stress from the doctors' end may have contributed to the low immunization rates at present. According to the Wall Street Edge, a study from the National Immunization Survey - Teen in 2014 revealed that about six out of 10 boys and four out of 10 girls, aged 13 to 17, are unvaccinated.

The report continued that around 14 million people get HPV infections annually in the United States, and the total number has already hit 79 million individuals, most of them in their early 20s or late teens.

The virus can reportedly cause cervical or reproductive cancers. It's also been tagged by the Centers for Disease Control as the most common sexually transmitted virus in the country, according to the WISN report.
Air Europa is making sure that they are identified in the Latin America region by adding their fleet's route in certain regions such as Colombia and Ecuador.

According to Airways News, Bogota and Guayaquil will be added on Air Europa's new routes. Bogota, the capital of Colombia, will experience Air Europa's fleet services by June 28. The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner is said to be the first fleet for Bogota. Air Europa is currently processing eight orders of the said fleet. Meanwhile, Guayaquil, Ecuador's capital city, will receive Air Europa's promise of new fleet services by December of 2016.

Air Europa is a Spanish airline that is currently facing a steep competition against other giant airlines in the Latin America region, particularly Avianca, which has been servicing the Colombian and Ecuador regions and has installed its mark in the said places. LAN and Iberia also add to the competition as both are considered to be one-world carriers.

Still, Air Europa is determined to extend its service to these regions with non-stop routes from Madrid to Caracas (Venezuela), Lima (Peru), Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia), Salvador de Bahia and Sao Paulo. The regions of Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina will also be on the list of Air Europa routes.

In a report by Anna Aero, Air Europa has also added Asuncion to their target destinations. Dec. 13 commemorated Air Europa's first flight from Madrid to Asuncion. The flight that transpired in Paraguay has seen the return of flights that directly connects Latin America to the European region. The flight from Madrid to Asuncion recorded a 98 percent load factor, a positive number in a place where competition is not a question. Currently, the Madrid-Asuncion flight operates twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, by Air Europa's 299-seat A330-200 equipment.

The launching of the flight from Madrid to Paraguay was attended by the Ambassador for Paraguay in Spain Antonio Rivas, Air Europa's President Juan Jose Hidalgo and Vice-Minister for Industry in Paraguay Oscar Stark.

With Air Europa's latest endeavor, Alitalia is also seen to follow suit as they gear up for their upcoming flights from Rome to Mexico City and Santiago in Chile. Last year, a codeshare agreement between Air Europa and Avianca Brasil was established in order to enhance the two carriers' connectivity. Air Europa will be visible across Latin America this 2016 with Colombia and Ecuador receiving the first fleet services.
A minimum of 25 people was injured in the Northern Colombian city of Turbaco during its annual bullfighting festival. The tradition, called corraleja, is a part of the New Year celebrations with mostly amateur participants.

Four of the injured individuals are in the hospital and in critical condition after suffering wounds from the bulls. Corraleja is held in a five-day celebration, where people will leap inside a ring barehanded or with improvised rags as capes to get the crowd growing.

The bullring is made of wood with about a dozen participants, mostly are already drunk, jumping into it to taunt a bull. The tradition is also popular with tourists as it is close to the coastal town of Cartagena and many colorful bands are playing music throughout the festivities.

"People really enjoy it. This is a tradition of the Turbaco people that must be encouraged because it is a party, it is part of our culture and it doesn't involve cruelty to animals," Turbaco resident Wilman Alcala told EFE via BBC.

The bullfighting culture in Colombia started when the llaneros or cowboys used capes while pasturing cattle in the plains of the northern part of the country. The first ranches were made by Spaniards and passed down from one generation to another. The practice of bullfighting became a part of Colombia's history, heritage and culture.

However, the festivities made national headlines last year after the brutal killing of a bull by 20 people in Turbaco City. The bull was stabbed, stoned, beaten and kicked to death and received resentment from Colombia's Environment Minister Gabriel Vallejo.

"I have to say it is totally barbaric, where people with sticks, stones and knives, and with utter cruelty, kill the bull," Vallejo told the local radio as quoted by FOX News. Even the Attorney General's Office got involved when they conducted an investigation on Turbaco Mayor Myron Martinez and Julio Quintana, the organizer of the corraleja.

The incident was captured on video and uploaded on YouTube that divided the country in terms of preserving their bullfighting culture. Colombia's NGO AnimaNaturalis International called for the banning of the festivities.

Bullfighting was banned in the capital city of Bogota back in 2012 after Mayor Gustavo Petro's referendum. Nevertheless, Colombia's Constitutional Court overturned Mayor Petro's ban on the grounds of violating a bullfighter's rights to express his artistic side.

According to TeleSUR, traditional bullfighting festivals are still held in other Latin American countries including Mexico, Venezuela and Peru. Meanwhile, Ecuador has banned the killing of bulls during the event since 2011.
Homelessness is one of the crippling problems that the state of California is facing today, which is why state senators are addressing this problem and proposed a $2 billion housing project.

According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, the $2 billion housing project is intended to build or rehabilitate permanent housing for homeless people living in the streets.

The housing bond would be enough to help local governments to construct more than 10,000 housing units primarily for those with mental illness when it's combined with other federal and local money, said Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon.

Sen. Ricardo Lara also voiced his concern and said, "It is despicable that in the richest state, that is the state of California, that just last night thousands of Californians laid their tired bodies on a sidewalk or on a cardboard."

NBC Bay Area reported that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress said that nearly 116,000 people are homeless in the state of California -- more than a fifth of the nation's homeless population.

Also in the same report, it projected that more than 29,000 are chronically homeless in the state. The Los Angeles' homeless population have increased more than 10 percent in the last two years, thereby prompting the state senators to propose a solution.

The LA City Council also declared a homelessness crisis back in November, as it prepared to change city ordinances to let people temporarily live in their cars and sleep on sidewalks. Also back in October, the LA County Board of Supervisors declared a "shelter crisis" because of concerns that strong winter storms could flood homeless camped along storm drains and riverbeds.

On the other hand, the neighboring Orange County is buying a $4.25 million warehouse to make a 200-bed capacity homeless shelter.

In a related report by Fox News, the proposed $2 billion bond would be repaid with money from Proposition 63, which was the 2004 ballot measure that added one percent tax on incomes over $1 million to pay for mental health treatment.

Furthermore, the senators also proposed an additional financial support for families living on welfare that is facing the possibility of homelessnes and an increase in the state's supplemental security income payments to 1.3 million elderly, blind and disabled poor people who cannot work.

According to an official, the additional programs would cost about $100 million or more.

Theresea Winkler, a former homeless person said, "It's not fun for people, particularly women, to lie in the dirt," she said. "By having housing, my life has been given a purpose."
Radio La Colifata, a radio station based in Argentina is special and unique. Why one of a kind? Because it broadcasts within the confines of Hospital Jose Borda in Buenos Aires  a mental institution plus the patients themselves are the hosts.

As of now, Radio La Colifata's frequencies have reached 50 stations within Latin America, Asia and Europe. Furthermore, former patients of Hospital Jose Borda will soon be putting together and hosting a Radio La Colifata model outside the asylum, one of Argentina's earliest psychiatric wards.

Estamos al aire! FM 100.3 / http://t.co/ItV1DM1O3Z Hoy inauguramos WhatsApp 15-5000-4601 Comunicate con nosotros! pic.twitter.com/5Gosd02F8g  Radio La Colifata (@RadioLaColifata) May 16, 2015

Radio La Colifata, named after "colifata," slang for a nutcase or crazy individual, has been broadcasting for 23 years every Saturday afternoon inside Hospital Jose Borda. According to Aljazeera, it was started more than two decades ago by then psychology student and now founder Alfredo Olivera, who was doing his training at the institution and was frequently questioned by his friends and family about the situation inside his workplace. In order to answer those queries clearly, he came up with the idea of letting the patients themselves describe in their own words what they were going through.

Thus, Radio La Colifata was born to confront the stigma surrounding mental illness and has bit by bit broken through the wall in FM, AM and even online. As per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental illness alludes to disorders generally indicated by dysregulation of thought, mood and/or behavior. Among mental illness, mood disorders are among the most prevalent and includes major depression, psychotic disorders, anxiety, bipolar disorders and dementia/Alzheimer's disease.

CityLab revealed Radio La Colifata was being broadcasted live inside Buenos Aires' Hospital Jose Borda's inner courtyard, under a mosaic with the words "Siempre fui loco" or " I have always been crazy" and beneath the shade of huge trees.

Estamos al aire! Escucharnos en el FM 100.3 de tu dial o a traves de https://t.co/4b2trijjOx pic.twitter.com/d6oSO7oRDQ  Radio La Colifata (@RadioLaColifata) November 21, 2015

Within the years that the talk show has been heard, Radio La Colifata became a healing space for past inpatients of the mental hospital. These former residents now represented the majority of contributors. Take the case of Eduardo and Silvina who were once former patients of Hospital Jose Borda. They both have experienced the stigma associated with those who were admitted inside and the hardships of starting a new beginning outside.

Eduardo said La Colifata is like his "own family," and continued, "It feels good here. It's very therapeutic."

For therapist Marina Maddaleni, who supported work done in Radio La Colifata, people outside tend to think that "mentally ill people are constantly delirious" but that's not so. People inside can carry on sensible, coherent and up-to-date conversations depending on their "condition" which can surprise quite a lot of outsiders.

"Prejudice will always continue existing, but La Colifata helped minimize it," she ended.
Microsoft released the budget-friendly Lumia 550 in multiple markets across the globe in December. The entry-level Windows 10 smartphone has since been available in the U.S. via third-party retailers like B&H Photo Video.

Now, the handset is finally available from the Washington tech giant itself. The unlocked version of the Lumia 550 costs $140 on the Microsoft Store, $10 cheaper that what B&H is asking for the same device.

As of the moment, Microsoft is only retailing the black version of the Lumia 550 while B&H also has the white version on sale. As an unlocked smartphone, the device can work on both T-Mobile and AT&T.

Priced at $140 with no contractual obligations, the Lumia 550 is the cheapest device out in the market today which boots Microsoft's latest mobile operating system.

The Lumia 550 features all the standard Microsoft apps, including Office, OneDrive and Cortana. Its integration with OneDrive allows users to pick up where they left off across several Windows 10-supported devices.

Windows 10 aims to unify the smartphone and desktop experience by letting developers create apps that can run on all Microsoft platforms, including phones, tablets, laptops, desktops and even on the Xbox One.

Going back to the Lumia 550, it rocks a 4.7-inch LCD screen with 720 x 1280 resolution display. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 210 processor is under the hood alongside 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory. Native storage can be expanded up to 200GB via a microSD card slot.

The lights are kept on by a 2,100 mAh battery which delivers 16 hours of talk time and could theoretically last up to 28 days when the handset is left idle. Videos can run for seven hours while songs can be played for 60 hours, GSMArena reported.

The Lumia 550 is fitted with a five-megapixel rear camera that includes LED-flash, geo-tagging, autofocus and touch focus. The back-facing unit can record 1280 x 720 resolution videos at 30 fps. The two-megapixel front-facing snapper takes subpar selfies and video calls.

The handset is the cheapest Windows 10 smartphone available right now, but it's not the cheapest Lumia-branded device to ever hit the market. Microsoft launched the $90 Lumia 532 and $80 Lumia 435 for developing markets in January 2015, as per VentureBeat.

It should be noted that Windows 10 for mobile devices isn't exclusive to handsets made by Microsoft. According to K-Tai, mobile manufacturers in Asia like Acer, VIAO and Freetel are scheduled to launch their Windows 10 smartphones sometime this year.

Bloomberg reported that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plans to refocus the company's efforts away from "devices and services." Nevertheless, the company hasn't fully given up on its smartphone business with the recent releases of the new Windows 10 devices. Microsoft is still hopeful it can gain some traction in an industry dominated by Android and iOS.
Lenovo may not work noticeably as Apple, but consumers should know that Lenovo has been constantly studying their designs and concepts in order to bring the maximum gadget experience to its users.

In a recent report by Digital Trends, Lenovo has made another appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and, this time, it's for their latest innovation on the Lenovo ThinkPad. The 2016 CES will be a great event for Lenovo as they introduce their series of ThinkPad, newly innovated with excellent specs to deliver something pure to its users.

The ThinkPad T460 and T560 subsequently contain batteries that last for up to 16 hours. The ThinkPad T460 has a 14-inch screen with a 1080p resolution. With a small difference on their specs, both devices are known for their energy-saving capacity. The T460 and T560, also come with a 32GB of memory and 2GB of VRAM. The ThinkPad T560 has a larger screen extending up to 15.6 inches with a resolution of 1440p.

With regards to their physical profiles, the T460 weighs about 3.8 pounds whereas the T560 packs about five pounds. For those who wish to get a better option of a lighter ThinkPad, DigitaTrends recommends the former.

Lenovo's ThinkPad series doesn't end there. DigitalTrends also featured the ThinkPad X1 tablet, which costs around $900. The X1 tablet caters to next-gen users, who wants more than the conventional use of laptops and tablets.

The ThinkPad X1 Tablet has a battery life that lasts for 15 hours; something most users primarily look for when buying devices such as laptops and tablets. The ThinkPad X1 Tablet has a PCIe NVMe solid state drives with a capacity as high as 1TB, a Core m7 processor and up to 16GB of memory. The ThinkPad X1 tablet has a 12-inch display, 2,160 x 1,440 resolution and an aspect ratio of 3:2.

Other choices on the ThinkPad series include the ThinkPad X1 carbon and ThinkPad X1 Yoga. If you're curious when they are coming, the ThinkPad X1 Yoga will be coming this month with as price tag of $1,449 while the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is coming this February at $1,299.

Last but not the least is the ThinkPad X1 series' accessories, which include a wireless touch mouse and Lenovo in-ear headphones. The ThinkPad also has a 65W micro adapter, stack mobile projector and a stack charging station.
Michael Slager, a former North Charleston police officer charged with fatally shooting an unarmed black man in the back last year, was released from jail on Monday after posting bond.

The former cop, who is white, is facing 30 years to life in prison for the April 4, 2015 killing of 50-year-old Walter Lamar Scott. Video footage of the shooting shows Scott running away when the 33-year-old ex-cop opened fire eight times, fatally striking the victim in the back.

The incident occurred after Slager pulled Scott over during a traffic stop in North Charleston. Raw video from the cop's dash cam shows that Scott ran away on foot while Slager was looking up his information, reported CNN.

After chasing Scott down, Slager stated in a police report that Scott tried to take his stun gun during a struggle. However, witness Feidin Santana, who recorded the video of the shooting, said that Scott did not try to grab the officer's Taser, and that Scott was trying to get away.

Following the incident, Slager was fired from his post as a police officer, before he was arrested in April. He has since been in custody, until Monday night when the presiding judge in the case granted him bail.

The judge stated that he decided to take into consideration the length of time Slager would have to wait behind bars due to a delay in the trial, which will start on Oct. 31, according to The Post and Courier.

Under the conditions of his bond -- which was set at $500,000 -- Slager must remain in South Carolina on house arrest until his trial.

At a hearing on Monday, Slager's attorney, Andy Savage, argued for his release citing his health problems, including celiac disease, according to The Associated Press.

Before the judge's decision, the victim's father, Walter Scott Sr., told the judge how sad he feels to watch the video of his son's death.

"Looking at the film that I saw, every time I look at it, it makes me cry," Scott Sr. said, according to CNN affiliate WCSC. "When I go down to the graveyard, the only thing I see there is a pot sticking in the ground with flowers in it. ... If you let him out, he's gonna go home and look at his wife and children."
Following President Barack Obamas executive action announcement on gun reforms, the response, as expected, fell on partisan lines.

On Tuesday, Obama announced that businesses selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks, or be subject to criminal prosecutions, even if the transaction is made at a gun show or the Internet. Including expanding background checks and hiring more than 200 people to monitor background checks, Obama said he's going to work to ensure federal mental health records are submitted to the background check system and allow states to report relevant information.

"And for those in Congress who so often rush to blame mental illness for mass shootings as a way of avoiding action on guns, here's your chance to support these efforts. Put your money where your mouth is," Obama said.

"All of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies," Obama later added. "All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors and legislatures and businesses do their part to make our communities safer. We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented to join with us to demand something better."

Following his remarks, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said Obama "never respected" the right to legal and safe gun ownership. Ryan said Obama's executive actions target law-abiding citizens instead of focusing on criminals and terrorists.

"His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty," Ryan said about Obama.

"No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment. We will conduct vigilant oversight. His executive order will no doubt be challenged in the courts. Ultimately, everything the president has done can be overturned by a Republican president, which is another reason we must win in November."

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, congressman for California's 34th Congressional District, commended Obama for acting but acknowledges that it's the job of Congress to act on gun reforms.

"I appreciate that President Obama is taking action where he can to protect American families from gun violence. The President is doing his job; it's time for Congress to help," Becerra said.

"Only Congress can fully and permanently close the loopholes that allow guns to fall into the hands of criminals, the mentally ill, and those who look to terrorize our citizens. Moments of silence in the House and Senate chambers are no substitute for real action to save our loved ones from the horrors of senseless and avoidable gun violence."

Other Latino members of Congress used social media to respond to Obama's executive action.

We in Congress must set aside partisan rhetoric to keep firearms out of the wrong hands and #StopGunViolence in our communities.  Rep. Roybal-Allard (@RepRoybalAllard) January 5, 2016

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.@POTUS's plan is a good 1st step to make communities safer. Now Congress must finish what the @WhiteHouse started. https://t.co/piUIFLTQOd  Ruben Gallego (@RepRubenGallego) January 5, 2016

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It's simple. If you're in the business of selling guns - in a store, online, or at a gun show - you must conduct background checks.  Ruben Gallego (@RepRubenGallego) January 5, 2016

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Glad to see the president take action to address the gun violence epidemic that has plagued American cities and towns from SB to Newtown.  Pete Aguilar (@RepPeteAguilar) January 5, 2016

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POTUS' action on guns will save lives and is step in right direction, but we must do more. I urge Congress to act https://t.co/oby0t1GYA4  Rep. Nydia Velazquez (@NydiaVelazquez) January 5, 2016

The Republican National Committee (RNC) called Obama's action as an "overreach" on guns. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Obama has "routinely overstepped" the Constitution to restrict the Second Amendment. Priebus added that the executive actions would have prevented the previous mass shootings and it's only a political move.

"The truth is, this executive overreach is all about burnishing the president's legacy and boosting Democrat enthusiasm in a presidential election year. But that's no excuse for subverting the will of the people's representatives in Congress, and the American people won't tolerate President Obama's dangerous power grab," said Priebus.

Presidential candidates also commented on the executive actions, whether through a prepared statement or on social media.

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley said Obama's actions are critical, "because every day we spend debating gun control is a day that we lose lives -- and one American life is worth more than all the gun sales in America.

"As President, I will build on President Obama's progress by taking further executive actions to reform our gun laws. These include using the purchasing power of our federal government -- the biggest customer gun companies have -- to advance gun safety, banning 'cop killer' ammunition, declaring blanket immunity for gun dealers and manufacturers unconstitutional, and ceasing to defend the federal immunity law. I urge my fellow Democratic candidates for President to put forward similarly bold plans to improve gun safety and save lives."

Fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Republicans will not act on gun reforms, regardless of gun-related shootings and deaths, due to the interests from the National Rifle Association.

"They (Republicans) are simply more loyal to gun lobbyists than our children. That's why I support President Obama's executive actions to make our communities safer. A vast majority of the American people, including responsible gun owners who are sickened by the deaths of so many innocent people, agree with the common sense reforms announced today. As president, I will continue these executive orders because it's past time to end the moral outrage of Aurora, and Newtown and Charleston."

Thank you, @POTUS, for taking a crucial step forward on gun violence. Our next president has to build on that progressnot rip it away. -H  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 5, 2016

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Today Obama proved again why hes 1 of most liberal & divisive presidents in history. Ill repeal his exec orders & protect 2nd Amend.  Jeb Bush (@JebBush) January 5, 2016

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My response to Obama's gun control executive order: https://t.co/YPHRlzyQfy  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 5, 2016

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Politics Editor Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
The opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Jan. 5 took control of the country's National Assembly, presumably initiating a period of heightened confrontation between the embattled socialist leader and those who have long fought his policies, which echo those of his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

The swearing-in of 163 new lawmakers means that the coalition surrounding Maduro's United Socialist Party of Venezuela has lost hold of the majority in the legislature for the first time in 17 years, The Associated Press reported. Nevertheless, a court ruling prevented the opposition from assuming the two-thirds majority it was initially believed to have won in the body.

Venezuela's Supreme Tribunal -- the country's highest court, which is controlled by Maduro allies -- barred four elected representatives from taking their seats over allegations of fraud. Maduro, meanwhile, slammed the new National Assembly as a "bourgeois parliament" that would seek to overturn the social gains of the "revolution" begun by Chavez, the Guardian reported.

The president also derided comments by the U.S. Department of State, which had voiced concern over attempts to limit the powers of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, the Spanish news agency EFE reported.

"Today, the U.S. State Department issued a communique as though it were governing Venezuela, involving itself in internal affairs of Venezuela; nobody is allowed to meddle in affairs that only affect Venezuelans," Maduro charged on Jan. 4.

"What do the State Department and the United States government have to do with the swearing-in of the National Assembly tomorrow? They do not have to impose any preconditions, conditions or anything; no conditions, we do not accept them, Empire."

Commencing its official business, meanwhile, the National Assembly elected opposition lawmaker Henry Ramos Allup as its new president, Noticias 24 reported. Ramos replaces Diosdado Cabello, who had long been seen as Venezuela's second most powerful man.

Also part of the parliament's leadership will be opposition members Enrique Marquez, who was chosen as the body's first vice president, and Simon Calzadilla, who will serve as its second vice president.
A lawyer's commentary on cultural property law and its impact on cultural property crime, antiquities trafficking, looted archaeology, illicit trade, art theft, heritage preservation, and museum risk management.
Apple is planning to soon open at least two stores in Mexico City as part of the company's major expansion efforts in Latin America.

MacRumors reports the retail store giant is now hiring in Mexico City up until January 18, with plans for the first store location set for the upscale area of Centro Santa Fe. The other store is rumored to also be destined for a prominent shopping area, and it will reportedly feature the same next-generation store design the company used for its stores in Brussels; Cupertino, California; Dubai, UAE; and other parts of the world.

The second outlet is also rumored to be dedicated to serve as one of 25 "global flagship" stores that Apple is establishing, a plan that will also require renovations to the brand's New York stores on Fifth Avenue and in Union Square. Several of the company's San Francisco outlets are also rumored to be part of that strategy.

Apple's plans to expand in Latin America also call for additional stores to be built in the Mexican cities of Guadalajara and Monterrey. Further down the line, rumors indicate the company will launch stores in Chile, Peru and Argentina as well.

The stores are slated to work in partnership with other locations across Latin America, more than likely including the company's two existing Brazilian stores in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Meanwhile, the company is poised to reveal its iPhone 6 sales figures for the first fiscal quarter, which includes the recently concluded holiday shopping season, in a conference call later this month.

Investors will convene on Jan. 26, and they are surely hopeful demand for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models will be able to replicate the success of last cycle's models. In the three month quarter ending in December 2014, the company sold 74.5 million iPhones for profits of $18 billion in profit on $74.6 billion in revenue.
Tuesday marked the fourth day that a group known as Citizens for Constitutional Freedom continued an armed occupation of a federal building in Oregon.

The group seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a federally owned wildlife outpost in remote Oregon, while the building was empty on Saturday. The armed protesters are calling for the release of local ranchers Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, who were convicted of setting fires that spread to government land. The occupiers have also vowed to remain in the building until federally owned land is returned "back to the people."

At the head of the occupation are Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who led an armed standoff with the federal government in 2014 and notoriously suggested that African Americans were better off as slaves.

The protesters have remained at the reserve in spite of the fact that the Hammonds turned themselves in at the federal prison in California on Monday afternoon and appeared to disavow the occupation.

"Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family," said lawyers representing the Hammonds.

The FBI has not made an attempt to take back the isolated building and said Sunday it aims to bring a "peaceful" end to the standoff.

"The FBI is working with the Harney County Sheriff's Office, Oregon State Police and other local and state law enforcement agencies to bring a peaceful resolution to the situation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge," the agency's Portland office said in a statement, reports CNN.

Meanwhile, Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward publicly called for the occupiers to leave the area.

"The Hammonds have turned themselves in," he said. "It is time for you to leave our community. Go home, be with your own families and end this peacefully."

The protesters, however, said they have no intentions to leave anytime soon.

"We came very well prepared. We're in it for the long haul," said protester John Reitzheimer.

Ammon Bundy also told NBC's TODAY on Monday that the occupiers will resort to violence if the government intervenes in their occupation.

"The only violence that, if it comes our way, will be because government is wanting their building back,'' he said. "We're putting nobody in harm's way. We are not threatening anybody. We're 30 miles out of the closest town."
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz released a new campaign ad that puts a unique twist on anti-immigrant fear mongering.

The eye-catching ad depicts well-dressed people in business attire running across the U.S.-Mexico border as the Texas senator makes a case that illegal immigration negatively affects the economy and American workers.

In the ad, titled "Invasion," Cruz argues that white-collar professionals don't care to stop the flow of illegal immigration since undocumented workers are primarily hurting working class Americans by taking their jobs.

"The politics of it would be very very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande," said Cruz in a voiceover in the 60-second ad.

"Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages of the press. Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation," he continues in the ad, which is set to begin airing in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

Despite being a longtime advocate for legal immigration, the conservative congressman announced a proposal to add new restrictions on legal immigration during a campaign event in Florida back in November.

Under the new Cruz plan, he is calling for the government to put a freeze on legal immigration for as long as the rate of U.S. employment remains "below historical averages." He went on to argue that immigrants might "displace American workers."

In addition, Cruz said the government should suspend workers from issuing H1B visas for 180 days in order to crack down on abuse of the program despite the fact that he had previously advocated for a 500 percent increase in the high-tech program.

"Legal immigration needs to be structured so that it serves America's needs," Cruz has previously said. "We welcome people from all over the world, but we shouldn't welcome people defying and gaming our laws."

"Ted Cruz's ludicrous new ad villainizes immigrants, portraying them as a drain on the economy when in fact, by any measure, immigrants play a vital role in contributing to the U.S. economy," said Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way, a progressive organization, in a statement to Latin Post. "The comprehensive immigration reform bill that Cruz and other GOP hopefuls rail against could have increased GDP by billions of dollars, raised wages of U.S. and immigrant workers, and lowered the national debt. Cruz's ad is not just offensive, it's factually inaccurate."

Watch the ad below:
Communication, commerce, and government are just a few aspects of our daily lives that have been forever changed and, in many ways, made more convenient by the Internet. Unfortunately, these same advancements also have introduced a new breed of technologically-savvy criminal. Such crimes as terrorism, espionage, financial fraud, and identity theft have long existed in the physical realm, but are now being perpetrated in the cyber domain. As criminals more effectively exploit this new frontier, their use of the Internet and technology adds a layer of complexity that cannot be overcome through the efforts of any one agency.

To address this evolving cyber challenge, the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) was officially established in 2008. The NCIJTF is comprised of over 30 partnering agencies from across law enforcement, the intelligence community, and the Department of Defense, with representatives who are co-located and work jointly to accomplish the organizations mission from a whole-of-government perspective.

As a unique multi-agency cyber center, the NCIJTF has the primary responsibility to coordinate, integrate, and share information to support cyber threat investigations, supply and support intelligence analysis for community decision-makers, and provide value to other ongoing efforts in the fight against the cyber threat to the nation
The three escaped convicts who escaped the most secure prison in Argentina last month shot two traffic officers Thursday.

According to the the New York Times, the convicts shot the two traffic police officers at a check point south of Buenos Aires. The officers survived the shooting, but one was critically wounded.

BBC reported that Argentina's authorities launched a major operation to capture prominent convicts Victor Schillaci, Cristian Lanatta, and his brother Martin Lanatta. They were serving life in prison for murdering three businessmen in 2008. They were able to escape the highly secured prison using a fake gun to trick the guards of General Alvear prison.

Business Recorder wrote that one of the escaped convicts is part of a controversy that rocked last month's election. Martin Lanatta revealed in a television interview in prison that former president Cristina Kirchner has a senior ally was involved in a drug syndicate. This was one of the leading reasons for Mauricio Macri's victory to becoming Argentina's new president.

The ally of Kirchner that Martin was talking about was Anibal Fernandez, who lost his bid to becoming the governor of Buenos Aires.

However, Lanatta's lawyer Roberto Casorla announced on television that Martin lied for a reward. He further said that there was foul play in his client's escape.

Maria Eugenia Vidal, Buenos Aires' new governor who defeated Anibal Fernandez, said the prison authorities that the previous administration has appointed should be blamed for the escape.

Lawmaker Gabriela Cerrutti, who is Kirchner's ally, also voiced out her suspicion about foul play in Martin Lanatta's escape. On her Facebook page, she said, "Now we know what the real price was that Lanatta agreed to for making his false accusation against Anibal Fernandez."

The convicts' murder crimes in 2008 were linked to illegal drug business involving ephedrine, which is used to create methamphetamine. The mastermind, Esteban Perez Corradi, who has been convicted, has been hiding from US authorities for several years.
The case on Ernesto Gonzalez, the suspect in the murder of Hells Angels leader Jeffrey Pettigrew, is set for a new trial following an order of the Nevada Supreme Court to reopen the case. Gonzalez and Pettigrew are members of rival biker gangs in the country.

In a previous report on Daily News, Pettigrew, also known as Jethro, was the leader of the California chapter of Hells Angels and was shot to death during a gunbattle between the two rival motorcycle gangs, Hells Angels and Vagos, inside a Nevada casino. The suspect, Gonzalez, a former leader of the Vagos Motorcycle Club in Nicaragua, was said to have shot Pettigrew from behind.

According to New York Times, the Supreme Court's ruling on Thursday overturned the conviction of Gonzalez, saying a District Court had abused its discretion by not answering a jury question about a conspiracy charge. The SC justices added that the lower court failed to split up decisions about guilt and whether Gonzalez should get a harsher penalty for gang involvement.

Gonzalez was sentenced in 2013 to life with parole after 20 years by Judge Connie Steinheimer of Washoe County District Court. He was said to have shot Pettigrew from behind yet he claimed that he was acting in self-defense and other Vagos members after Hells Angels members kicking one Vagos member in the head which almost killed him.

"They left me no choice but to act as I did in defense of my brother," he told the judge.

Prosecutors said the killing was part of an orchestrated hit on Pettigrew, stemming from a long-running feud between the rival gangs in California, according to ABC News. Washoe County special prosecutor Karl Hall added that there was a concerted attack which resulted in Gonzalez sneaking up and shooting Pettigrew in the back.

Gonzalez's lawyers in defense said that some Vagos members may have planned the attack independently without Gonzalez knowing. They also questioned the jurors regarding this conspiracy and asked that if Gonzalez is unaware of such plans from the group then will he be guilty?

Judge Steinheimer has declined to answer and cannot be reached for further comment on the issue.
Bahraini authorities released a warning to its citizens and declared strict implementation on disciplinary actions against whoever mock and react negatively or sarcastically to Saudi Arabia's court verdicts, announcements, and legal system.

The announcement came in effort of the Saudi Arabian government to control and preserve harmony and security of its people.

As reported by Arab News, an "imprisonment of two years, or the imposition of a fine of 200 Bahraini dinars on any person publicly offending a country or international organization that has headquarters in the Kingdom of Bahrain, or its president or representative in the Kingdom, and whoever publicly offends its flag or emblem" is stated under Article 215 of the Criminal Law as The Bahraini Interior Ministry pointed out. The Ministry added that it is the right of the government of Saudi Arabia to punish anyone deems to threaten the peace of the system.

A similar news by Middle East website has been published calling out on citizens to observe and recognize accurate news information and circulation. The government tells its people to refrain from using social media sites as source of information and means to disseminate news. Actions will be taken against who will be caught doing such.

The Bahraini Criminal Law warns offenders as punishment of "prison sentence of two years and a fine of 200 dinars, either or both, for whoever intentionally broadcasts false news, statements or rumors to disturb public order or scare the people, or to inflict harm on the best interests of the public."

Bahrain is known as a strong ally of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. After the announcement, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on spotlight once again for recently proclaiming to take anti-terror measures to protect the Islamic region against terrorism, Al Bab reported.

Such proclamation of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman received negative reactions globally via twitter.
Republican Congressmen Lou Barletta and Scott Perry were quick to respond Tuesday to President Barack Obamas executive actions on firearms.

Both congressmen said the presidents orders wouldnt have prevented any of the shooting incidents he cited while calling for tougher gun laws.

Obamas executive order expands background checks on buyers by requiring more sellers to register as federally licensed gun dealers.

Barletta and Perry released the following statements:

Once again, the president finds himself unable to guide his unpopular policies through Congress  as the Constitution requires  and so he circumvents the legislature by using executive fiat to achieve his political goals. The president could have rammed these changes through when his party controlled both chambers of Congress for two years, but instead he has waited to issue these edicts in order to achieve the most division possible among Americans.

I am a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment and I cannot support the further erosion of these guaranteed rights for law-abiding citizens. I also will never support anything that resembles a national gun registry. To rule by executive order and undermine the rights of law-abiding gun owners is contrary to our founding principles.

We can all agree that those with histories of dangerous mental health problems should not have access to firearms, and we should all support laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, drug traffickers, gang members, and terrorists. The changes the president has ordered, however, would have prevented exactly none of the incidents he has cited as the basis for tightening gun laws. I only wish the president had the same enthusiasm for background checks on potential terrorists and illegal immigrants as he does for law-abiding citizens.

 Congressman Lou Barletta, (R-11th District)

As a proud and responsible gun owner, I am and always will be a resolute supporter of every law-abiding Americans Second Amendment rights. Im open to meaningful solutions that may prevent future senseless acts of violence, but the Presidents proposals wouldnt have prevented any of the recent tragedies. So we have yet another attempt to fit a political narrative through the Presidents use of his pen and phone, rather than trying to solve the actual problem at hand.

The U.S. Government already has more than 240 pages of federal gun regulations. In 2010, nearly 80,000 Americans were denied guns after providing false information about their criminal histories during background checks; yet only 44 would-be buyers were ever charged with a crime. A 2011 Government Accountability Office study found that many states currently fail to share felony and mental health records with the National Instant Background Check System. The first step is fairly simple: we must enforce existing laws to keep guns of out the hands of violent criminals, rather than hampering the rights of law-abiding citizens. I will be introducing legislation this week to stop this clear executive overreach.

 Congressman Scott Perry (R-4th District)
Russian President Vladimir Putin passed a law that allows Federal Security Service (FSB) agents to open fire on crowds, according to reports posted on the government's legal information website.

According to the Moscow Times, the bill was passed through the Russian parliament and the Kremlin, despite human rights activist protesting against it. The new law gives FSB agents the power to "withhold any warnings of their intention to use weapons, special means or physical force."

The new law gives FSB officers to open fire on crowds to prevent possible acts of terror. This includes taking hostages and even launching attacks on government buildings. They are also given the power to shoot disabled people, women, and even children should there be an act of terror.

There are 11 scenarios mentioned in the amendment where FSB agents will be permitted to carry out an open fire on a crowd of people. Besides firing on a crowd, Times of India reported that the FSB agents are given power by the new law to take fingerprints on people at state boarders and conduct searches on any property if there are reasons to believe on a possible terror act.

The Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty wrote that Russian human rights activists were alarmed with the passage of this law. The Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, whose job is to advise the government, appealed to Putin not to sign the law that lets the FSB use weapons on crowds.

According to the petition, "Adopting the bill in its current form is absolutely unacceptable, because it violates the fundamental human rights to life and health." It added that the law should have been reviewed by legal experts, and must undergo public discussion.

The 85-year-old Russian human rights icon Lyudmila Alexseyeva signed the appeal to the president of the country. Lev Ponomarev is another prominent person who signed the petition.
The new government of Argentina is not backing down. The government announced to the public that it would fight for its right and claims Falkland Islands as the nation's sole property.

The dispute territory remains for the moment under the umbrella of the British government. However, Argentina's new conservative government announced last Sunday night that it would carry on pushing for the country's claim to the Falkland Islands, with the hope of that the change of government in Buenos Aries may herald improving relations with London.

According to a report from Telegraph, the diplomatic ties between the United Kingdom and Argentina worsened during the reigns of Cristina Kirchner, who placed the future of the islands as her founding foreign policy.

Although the streets of Buenos Aires rejoiced of Kirchner ceasing to be the president of the country, but for the people in Falkland Islands, it holds no vital significance. Moreover, according to a statement released by the foreign ministry, "Argentina renews its firm commitment to peacefully settling its differences, to international law and multilateralism."

Despite the affirmations that the new president would push through in claiming the islands,it is undeniable that both Britain and Argentina have already fought a two-month long war over the archipelago in 1982, as cited by Channel News Asia.

The war had caused both nations devastating outcomes. There were 649 Argentinean servicemen and 255 British that were killed during the war. For many decades, after the Falklands War, the right to rule this rocky outpost remains at the heart of diplomatic apprehensions between the two countries, as told by The Sun.

The same article reports, how the foreign ministry of Argentina wants to renews its unyielding commitment to calmly settle its differences, from international law and even to multilateralism.For Argentina, the country claims that Falklands was an inheritance from Spain, upon attaining its independence.

Meanwhile, for Britain, it has affirmed that it has traditionally ruled the islands. Looking back at history, since both nations have claimed their rights to the islands, the struggle continues even today and as for its sole owner, it remains to be seen, as talks are yet to come.
It was just recently that the United States appealed for the extradition of Jaime Rosenthal. The 80-year-old Honduran banker and politician is believed to be the key figure in resolving the Honduran money laundering case.

Jaime Rosenthal was accused of contributing in a scheme that moved illicit funds through various U.S. accounts. Jamie Rosenthal is not only rich but he was once powerful and held the office as vice president of Honduras.

Foreign Minister, Arturo Corrales announced earlier that the country already sent the extradition request before Christmas. However, it needs strong evidence for the request to be granted. Even Arturo Corrales acknowledges that the power lies on the higher courts of Honduras. Reuters also reports that it is up to the Honduran courts to decide if they would grant the request or deny it.

Based on the same report, the Rosenthal family, are considered as one of Honduras' wealthiest family. However, the head of the family is considered as one of the main culprit one of the heftiest money-laundering scheme.

The New York Times disclosed that last Oct. 7, the U.S. Treasury Department publicized that Rosenthal, together with son Yani Rosenthal, nephew Yankel Rosenthal have been charged. What's more, even the varied businesses of the Grupo Continental had been charged under the Kingpin Act. in which the U.S. prosecutors charge them of laundering money for Central American drug traffickers.

Even though the Rosenthals have denied the allegations as further reported by the same post, the charge against them has been passed on to Honduras Supreme Court as relayed by Yahoo News. Despite the charges, the Rosenthals are not wavering down and nor confirming the allegations towards them.

Even though the charge was given, the U.S prosecutors have to wait for a while for the resolution to be passed on by Honduras highest court. It is even shocking to point out that even Rosenthal's lawyer Andres Acosta Garcia was involved. All of them have all been charged with leading the decade-long scheme that supposedly laundered drug trafficking and foreign bribery proceeds that have been circulated in different accounts all across the U.S.
SOUTH MIDDLETON TOWNSHIP  Township supervisors agreed Monday to issue a letter that acknowledges the necessity of a two-month detour for Route 174 during the project to replace the Craighead Bridge.

The supervisors asked Cumberland County to include in its bid documents incentives for the contractor to complete the work early or financial penalties for failing to deliver results within an early June to early August time frame.

The county last week briefed the supervisors on a plan to close East Old York Road/Route 174 from York Road to the Holly Pike during those two months while crews construct the north abutment of the replacement bridge.

The detour will take travelers miles out of their way by directing them from West Old York Road onto the Holly Pike, up to the Hanover Street entrance ramp to I-81 north, off the highway at the York Road exit and then back onto East Old York Road.

County Planner Kirk Stoner said unusual site conditions are forcing the road closure and the need to develop a detour route that makes use of state roads that match the criteria of Route 174.

The initial hope was that the contractor could drive sheet pilings into the rock to shore up the road enough to allow Route 174 to stay open though under a single lane restriction during construction, said Brian Emberg, senior vice president of HRG Engineering, the Harrisburg firm the county hired to oversee its bridge replacement projects.

However, core borings show the underlying rock is 10 feet below the streambed of the Yellow Breeches Creek at the point where the north abutment would need to be built, Emberg said. He added that the depth of the rock would require the size of the piles to be cost prohibitive and outside any standard that PennDOT would allow.

So instead of using piles to shore up the road, the contractor would have to completely excavate that segment of Route 174 that would intersect with the north abutment of the replacement bridge, Emberg said.

Supervisor Ron Hamilton asked if there was any way the county could extend a travel lane out along the side to the legal limit of the right-of-way. Emberg said it was not possible because PennDOT regulations bar the county from expanding the footprint of the project, and because the county would have to relocate a line of utility poles along Route 174 to clear a path.

Emberg said the county can include in its bid specifications some provisions for liquidated damages should the contractor fail to meet the construction deadline for the north abutment phase of the project.

Supervisor Tom Faley said adding sanctions may be just the incentive the contractor needs to realize a speedy completion is in their best interest.

The supervisors suggested that the county include in its bid specifications regular weekly job meetings to keep township and South Middleton School District officials informed on the progress of the work during the detour.

School board member Michael Berk, who attended Mondays supervisors meeting, said that school lets out on early in 2016 on June 1. He suggested the county talk with Superintendent Alan Moyer and other district administrators about coordinating the work on the north abutment with the districts need to establish its bus routes for the start of the 2016-2017 year.

You dont want to put a school bus on I-81, Berk said. It is not viable. There are roads that school buses do not want to take.

The plan is to advertise the project for bid this February with a bid opening scheduled in March and the award of a contract sometime in April, Emberg said.
Rolls-Royce confirms new aluminum platform for all future vehicles

Jan 5, 2016, 2:51pm ET

Rolls-Royce is looking the shed weight.

Rolls-Royce has announced that it is developing a new aluminum architecture that will underpin all future vehicles from 2018 on.

Rolls-Royce didn't reveal any other details pertaining to the aluminum space-frame architecture, but the British automaker says it has already begun testing the new platform. In the coming weeks and months engineers will test the new architecture on public roads to ensure it delivers Rolls-Royce's signature magic carpet ride.'

"Since 2003 and the commissioning of the new Home of Rolls-Royce at Goodwood, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has reset the benchmark for luxury motoring, said Torsten Muller-Otvos, Chief Executive Officer of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. "Now it is time to take the next step in the luxury journey. This is why I am announcing today that on-road testing of our all-new proprietary architecture is beginning. This new architecture of pure luxury represents considerable investment in the future of our great brand.

The new architecture will likely debut in the form of the next-generation Phantom. The aluminum platform should provide a significant weight savings, which will translate into better overall economy and performance for Rolls' flagship.

The announcement also signals that Rolls-Royce's upcoming Cullinan SUV will ride on the aluminum platform. When it launches sometime in 2019, the Cullinan will displace Bentley's Bentayga as the most expensive utility vehicle in the world.
BEDMINSTER -- A Pennsylvania man has been arrested and charged with possession of synthetic marijuana after New Jersey State Police stopped him on Interstate 78 and allegedly discovered 754 grams of the drug in his vehicle.

Miquel Angel Delgado-Conception, 24, of Allentown, Pa., was charged with second-degree possession of synthetic marijuana with the intent to distribute. He's being held in Somerset County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail with a 10 percent option.

According to an affidavit filed in Somerset County Superior Court, on New Year's Eve at 10:14 a.m., State Police saw a green Honda Civic sedan driven by Delgado-Conception traveling west on Interstate 78 that was failing to keep right and passing improperly.

After being stopped, Delgado-Conception reportedly admitted to driving with a suspended license. During the stop, Delgado-Conception allegedly said he was in possession of synthetic marijuana.

A search of the vehicle reportedly turned up black plastic bag containing 108 pouches (754 grams) of synthetic marijuana, according to the affidavit. Delgado-Conception was arrested and taken to the State Police Somerville station for processing.

Dave Hutchinson may be reached at dhutchinson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DHutch_SL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
An armed teenager tried to rob a group of people celebrating the New Year, but he was disarmed by partygoers and arrested, Allentown police said.

Allentown police say a city teen tried to rob partygoers at gunpoint on New Year's Day, but was disarmed by the group and then arrested. (Sarah Cassi | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Khalil Sykes, 17, remained in Lehigh County Prison Monday in lieu of $1 million bail.

Sykes, of the 800 block of North Eighth Street in Allentown, is charged as an adult with two counts of robbery, as well as burglary, carrying a firearm without a license, discharging a firearm in an occupied building, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Allentown police said they were called a little after 4 a.m. Friday to a home in the 700 block of North New St., and when officers arrived, they heard a gun being fired.

Police said people were attending a New Year's Eve party at the house, when Sykes walked up to two men who were outside and pointed a handgun at them.

The teen went through one victim's pockets and took a wallet and cigarettes, then demanded money from the second victim but didn't get anything, police said.

The teen then went into the house through a back door and pointed the gun at a third man, then turned and pointed the gun at a woman, police said.

When Sykes pointed the gun at the woman, several men at the party tried to take the gun away, police said. Sykes fired the gun, hitting a kitchen wall, and was eventually stabbed and then disarmed, police said.

Sykes was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township for treatment, but was released and arraigned, said police Capt. Glenn Dorney. No one was else was injured.

Sykes had cocaine as well as a straw with cocaine residue, police said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A homeless man who says he fatally beat his pastor with a hammer to fend off an attempted rape is heading to state prison.

Jose Colon, 20, was sentenced to six to 12 years in state prison for involuntary manslaughter in the heat of passion, in the death of Luis Herrera last year in Allentown.

Colon's defense attorney, Kim Makoul, said the killing was the culmination of Colon's childhood of abuse at the hands of his father, a myriad of mental health diagnoses, and Herrera's preying on Colon when he was a juvenile.

"The last thing he needed was a man he trusted violating him," Makoul said. "I think that was one step too far for my client."

But First Assistant District Attorney Steve Luksa argued Colon was just a time bomb waiting to go off, and his history of assaults, including in prison, proved that.

"There is no doubt this defendant has problems and is dangerous," Luksa said. "This event was going to happen at some point because he's explosive."

Attorneys said Colon and Herrera's families knew each other, and they met when Colon moved to the area with his family when he was 10. Herrera was a pastor whose mission was to help "troubled youth," Luksa previously said.

Herrera began "grooming" Colon when he was a child and eventually it led to sexual contact between the two, Makoul previously said.

Colon previously told police he performed sex acts with Herrera for money and shelter. The day of the attack, Colon said he had smoked K2 earlier and that it was the first time Herrera tried to have sex with him.

The night of March 22, Colon said he went to Herrera's room in a boarding house in the 700 block of West Washington Street, cleaned the room, took a shower and went to bed, police Detective Eric Landis previously testified.

On Monday, Colon said he woke up to Herrera trying to have sex with him.

"I just blacked out...I just raged. I can't describe it," Colon said.

Colon told police he repeatedly bit Herrera, then the two began to fight. Colon said he grabbed a hammer that he had used to hang up some pictures, and hit Herrera in the head about four times, police previously testified.

"You knew what you were doing?" Luksa asked Colon.

"I was trying to save myself," Colon answered.

Colon told investigators Herrera was still alive when he left. Luksa said evidence supported the claim, and that there was blood in the apartment that showed Herrera moved around, and even opened the second-floor window.

At 12:30 p.m. the following day, city police were called for a welfare check and found the padlock still on Herrera's door.

After opening the door, officers found a blood-filled scene around Herrera and a hammer next to his body, police said. Herrera was pronounced dead at the apartment.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Wandering off by children with autism is common and dangerous, and puts stress on families, according to an executive with the national Autism Speaks organization.

Jayliel Vega Batista (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Lisa Goring, executive vice president of programs and services, said when she heard about 5-year-old Jayliel Vega Batista missing in Allentown, she kept up with information about the search.

Jayliel walked away from an upstairs bedroom unnoticed sometime before 11 p.m. Thursday during a New Year's Eve party at the home of a family member. Following a search that included hundreds of citizens, law enforcement officers, firefighters, search-and-rescue teams and dogs, Jayliel's body was found Saturday about 8 feet from the shoreline of the Lehigh Canal.

He wandered less than a quarter-mile from the home in the 200 block of East Union Street.

Goring called the tragedy "really devastating," noting an estimated half of all children diagnosed with autism wander after age 4. In 2015, statistics showed 30 fatalities nationally of autistic children who died after walking away from safe environments, she said.

"It's absolutely heartbreaking for any parent," she said. "Unfortunately, for those with autism, we do know 50 percent do wander. It's really hard."

Children with autism often have an extremely high attraction to water, she noted, but it's unclear why specifically. Of all fatalities of children with autism, Goring said 90 percent of them have involved drownings, she said.

"Our hearts go out to (Jayliel's) family," she said.

Preventing wandering tragedies

Some measures Goring recommends to prevent wandering-related tragedies include securing a home. This can be anything from using deadbolt locks that require keys on both sides to installing a home security alarm system to fencing in the yard or adhering printable stop signs on doors, windows and exits.

She said a tracking device worn on a wrist or ankle or a GPS system also could work. Identification bracelets worn on the wrists of nonverbal children are extremely helpful and can offer the name of the child, telephone number and other important information.

Finally, swimming lessons for children with special needs are available at many YMCA locations, Goring said. Autism Speaks also provides grants to service providers wanting to offer swimming and water safety lessons to children with autism.

Some disadvantages to the measures, Goring said, are trying to keep the identification bracelets and tracking devices secured to the child without them removing it. Autism Speaks recommends considering a temporary tattoo with contact information.

Ann Troxel, of Nazareth, knows the panic that sets in when an autistic child wanders off.

Troxel is the mother of two boys, Talon, 9, and Caiden, 7, both diagnosed with autism, and she is a volunteer with the Lehigh Valley chapter of Autism Speaks. When Talon was 5, she recalled playing with the children on the playground at Nazareth Borough Park during the annual Nazareth Days festival.

As her husband, Brandon, spoke with a vendor, Talon disappeared. The couple later learned the child spotted a bright-colored toy airplane on a vendor table in the distance and became fixated upon it.

It was enough to grab his attention away from his parents, Troxel said.

"All I thought of when I first heard about Jayliel was my own son," Troxel said. "It took me back to when Talon was 5. It's incredibly sad and my heart is breaking for that family."

'Constantly, constantly on'

Once Talon wandered off, Troxel said it heightened her vigilance even more than before. She says no parent can have eyes on their children 24/7 and to speculate any negligence upon Jayliel's parents would be unfair.

"I know all too well the fear," Troxel said. "And then there's blame and heartache involved. And the extreme guilt."

Allentown police said Sunday no wrongdoing, foul play or charges are expected to come out of the case. The Lehigh County Coroner's Office released a report Monday saying the child was not injured and that additional tests were pending to determine the exact cause and manner of death.

Troxel said some measures she implemented in her own home to prevent her children from wandering away included placing a GPS device on Talon, installing slide locks on doors and a "family whistle."

When the whistle is sounded, her children know to clap their hands or raise an arm to say, "I'm here."

She also taught her children a fun song to remember their street address. And she and an estimated 100 people in a group, titled the "Troxel Buccaneers," walk annually in April at Dorney Park in South Whitehall Township to help spread awareness about autism.

Troxel even has gone door-to-door with photographs of her children, telling her neighbors if they see her child unattended, the boy should not be there.

"Parents with children on the spectrum, we don't get a break. We are constantly, constantly on," Troxel said. "And when we're not on, we need to have a trusted person in our place."

Troxel said the news of Jayliel's death has hit home with many parents, several of whom are grieving for and supporting the family.

"It had me hugging my Caiden and Talon a little tighter that night," she said.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Palmer crash involving bank executive

A Palmer Township police officer speaks with a motorist after a reported hit-and-run crash Dec. 23 on Greenhill and Edgewood avenues. (Courtesy photo)

A bank executive slated to take over as CEO of Merchants Bank was involved in an alcohol-related hit-and-run crash in Palmer Township with two other vehicles last month, police said.

Tracey Smith is executive vice president and chief operating officer of Bangor-based Merchants Bank. (Courtesy photo)

Charges have yet to be filed, but police said Tracey S. Smith, 54, of Stroudsburg, was behind the wheel of a car that hit two cars, two mailboxes and a wooden post Dec. 23.

Smith, the chief operating officer of Bangor-based Merchants Bank, is in line to become CEO later this year, bank officials said in September.

She declined comment Monday night.

Police said Smith was northbound about 5:10 p.m. in a 2014 Audi that struck a southbound vehicle head-on in the 900 block of Greenhill Avenue. The Audi then left the scene and hit another vehicle traveling in the 2000 block of Edgewood Avenue a short distance away, police said.

According to police, Smith's car also damaged three properties in the 900 block of Chelsea Street and the 900 block of Greenhill Avenue. The damaged property included two mailboxes and a wooden post and Smith didn't stop, police said.

No injuries were reported in any of the crashes, police said.

Charges are expected to be filed later this week, police said. They said the accidents are under investigation as alcohol-related hit-and-runs.

A police news release did not elaborate on a blood-alcohol content or other details.

Smith joined Merchants Bank in 2002 and was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer in April 2013.

Last September, bank officials announced CEO Anthony J. Biondi would retire June 30 of this year and Smith would be his successor. The move was unanimously approved by the bank's board of directors, officials said then.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
In interviews and on the stump, Sen. Ted Cruz likes to attack President Obama, Hillary Clinton and some of the more aggressive Washington neocons for their support of regime change in the Middle East.

Every time we topple a dictator, Cruz argues, we end up helping terrorists or extremists.

He has a point. But what interests me is his use of the word neocon. What does he really mean?

Some see dark intentions. He knows that the term in the usual far-left and far-right parlance means warmonger, if not warmongering Jewish advisers, so it is not something he shouldve done, former George W. Bush advisor Elliott Abrams told National Review. Another former Bush adviser calls the term a dog whistle.

I think thats all a bit overblown. Cruz is just trying to criticize his opponent Marco Rubio, who supported regime change in Libya. Theres little daylight between the two presidential contenders on foreign policy, and this gives Cruz an opening for attack.

But Abrams is right  and Cruz surely knows  that for many people neocon has become code for suspiciously Hebraic super-hawk. Its an absurd distortion.

At first, neocons werent particularly associated with foreign policy. They were intellectuals disillusioned by the folly of the Great Society. As Irving Kristol famously put it, a neoconservative is a liberal who was mugged by reality and wants to press charges. The Public Interest, the first neoconservative publication, co-edited by Kristol, was a wonkish domestic policy journal.

Kristol later argued that neoconservatism was not an ideology but a persuasion. William F. Buckley, the avatar of supposedly authentic traditional conservatism, agreed. The neocons, he explained, brought the new language of sociology to an intellectual tradition that had been grounded more in Aristotelian thinking.

The neocon belief in democracy promotion grew out of disgust with Richard Nixons detente and Jimmy Carters fecklessness, but it hardly amounted to knee-jerk interventionism. When Jeane Kirkpatrick articulated a theory of neoconservative foreign policy in Commentary magazine in 1979, she cautioned that it was unwise to demand rapid liberalization in autocratic countries, and that gradual change was a more realistic goal than immediate transformation.

During the Cold War, neocons werent any more hawkish than anyone else on the right. They were advocating containment of the Soviet Union while National Review conservatives were demanding rollback and Barry Goldwater was talking about nuking the Kremlin.

Even through the late 1990s, neocons were far from outliers in their belief that the United States should use its military power to support democracies abroad. Many members of both parties held that view. Remember, it was Bill Clinton who in 1998 signed the Iraq Liberation Act calling for regime change.

After 9/11, some neoconservative intellectuals had off-the-shelf foreign policy ready for George W. Bush  which, yes, was hawkish in nature, but other Republicans and even Democrats supported their prescriptions, at least at first. As the Iraq War went south, the neocons were the only ones left defending it, and so got all of the blame.

The association between neoconservatism and Jews stems partly from the fact that the first neocons were mostly Jewish, partly from the reality that they are all to this day  gentiles included  pro-Israel. Thats not particularly remarkable, though, since neocons want to help Americas democratic allies everywhere and since most Christian conservatives are pro-Israel, too.

Today the neocon sociological persuasion is simply part of the conservative mainstream. The idea that self-identified neocons are uniformly more pro-war than other conservatives is ludicrous.

Granted, neoconservatives contribute to the confusion. They like to claim that the alternative to their approach amounts to isolationism  another horribly misused word. Rubio recently leveled that charge at Cruz.

Cruz, for his part, says he wants to carpet-bomb ISIS until the sand glows. There are many criticisms one can level at the position, but isolationist isnt one of them.

Neoconservatism is a product of the Cold War. Its understandable that neoconservative intellectuals who helped win the Cold War might want to hold onto the label, but its time to give it a comfortable retirement in the history books.

Meanwhile, the right is having a long overdue, and valuable, argument about how to conduct foreign policy. Keep it going, just leave neoconservatism out of it.

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. You can email him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com.
One of the weirdest things about Scotland at the moment is that there is no great sense of an asteroid, let alone a bullet, being dodged. The SNPs predictions about oil prices, based on them being around $113 a barrel, have been shown to be well wide of the mark. They said wed have this massive oil boom. Thats before some of their more excitable supporters started going on about secret oil fields whose existence was being kept from us by a malevolent Westminster establishment.

Nobody really appreciates how lucky we are. Scots could be facing independence, which the SNP had said would happen on 24th March this year, thats in less than 10 weeks time, with the price of oil barely above a third of their estimates. It wouldnt be much freedom for people who desperately needed public services. There would have to be either massive cuts or massive tax rises to cope with that massive hole in the public finances.

The plummeting oil price had, according to Oil and Gas UK, cost 65,000 jobs as far back as last September. Its had a devastating effect on the economy of North East Scotland. Aberdeenshire West MSP Dennis Robertson doesnt seem to think so, though. He said that there was no jobs crisis in the North East.

From the Official Report:

The member has just mentioned a jobs crisis in the North Sea oil industry. There is no crisis. We have just extracted more oil than ever before in the North Sea.

Denial or what?

A shocked Alison McInnes, Lib Dem MSP for North East Scotland, said:

While local people are looking to the Scottish Government to help protect jobs, SNP MSPs are telling us there is no crisis. This was a breath-taking display of complacency from the government benches. I am not sure what Dennis Robertson did over the Christmas break but it is time that he and his colleagues got serious about giving people in the North East the support they deserve. We were warned last year that 65,000 oil and gas jobs have already been lost and contractors are predicting further redundancies. This is an employment crisis by any definition of the word.

The Scottish Lib Dem Twitter account used an old video of Jeremy Purvis looking shocked to show its reaction to Robertsons comments:

Our reaction when Dennis Robertson told Parliament theres no crisis in the North Sea, despite 65,000 job losses: pic.twitter.com/m5MMl7G5TA  Scot Lib Dems (@scotlibdems) January 5, 2016

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
2015 was a strange year for me, as it was a strange year for the party; an odd, jarring mixture of losses and new hopes. In my case, one especially sad loss was that of my grandfather, Ted Smith, a pioneer of nature conservation across the UK, and especially in his native Lincolnshire  and also a Liberal and Liberal Democrat since the 1930s (one of the last few times I saw him, I helped him fill out his ballot for last years leadership election). He was a kind, quiet man, relentless in his pursuit of good causes; but others now have to lift that flag, and as such I thought this might be a time to reflect on how we think about conservation as a party.

We know that the natural world is under threat, perhaps more so than ever given the threat of climate change, and we have been the party most committed to strong science-led efforts to tackle that threat. The green agenda, however, must not be simply reduced to a question of climate alone. We owe it to future generations to conserve and protect Britains biodiversity, green spaces and habitats.

Liberal Democrats have to take the lead on the politics of nature conservation. Firstly, we must because nobody else will do so effectively. The Tory agenda for rural areas is one for corporations and landowners, protecting vast mismanaged estates and failing to provide effective solutions to rural issues. Labours agenda for rural areas is all too frequently non-existent. We can do better, and we must.

It is not our fight simply because it is left out of other parties thinking, however; the idea that the countrys natural resources should be preserved and shared is very much a liberal one. Nature conservation is not, and never should be, something to happen on the whim of the wealthy, nor will it be sustainable if imposed solely by central diktat. Conservation has to be a part of how we think about community  with nature reserves and biodiversity seen as collective local assets, precious and not measurable by any simple economic calculation. We must, as a party committed to taking the long term view, start with the principle that we cannot deprive future generations of our wild spaces; peoples freedom to enjoy and use them can so easily be lost forever.

Building grassroots support in rural areas is absolutely crucial for this, and the Liberal Democrats are the only party positioned to do so; we need to both support local and national conservation initiatives and build bridges to farmers to ensure that the land is managed effectively for both its human and wild inhabitants. Biodiversity is also an international problem  nature pays curiously little attention to arbitrary human border lines  and it needs an internationalist party to consider it fully and work on it across borders. Leaving the EU could be a catastrophe for Britains wildlife, given how much of our environmental regulation is now set at a European level.

If there was one major change in conservation that my grandfather helped set in motion, it was to make the vision of how it could be achieved inclusive. Conservation, done sustainably, is not the act of locking the public out of natural spaces; it is the act of creating and maintaining spaces where the public and scientists are able to engage with preserving and supporting a rich, diverse natural world. He left us a vision of an egalitarian, community-centred approach to the natural world that should resonate with us as liberals  lets ensure we keep it alive.

* James Baillie is a member and activist from Breckland and a former chair of the Lib Dems' Radical Association. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of Vienna, where he works on digital studies of medieval Georgia. He blogs about politics at thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com.


Over the festive period, I saw the image on the right on a social media site, stating, against a backdrop of flooded housing:

Its time to STOP sending money abroad and help people in the UK now. LIKE, COMMENT or SHARE if you agree?

A comment under the image mentioned:

the 250 million we are giving to India to fund their Space Programme.

Oh dear. Where to start? Call me an old pedant, but Im naturally suspicious of any entreaty which feels the need to include block capitals. But thats just one of my little foibles.

My mind boggled at the idea that we are giving 250 million to India to fund their Space Programme. It took just a quick Google to see where that came from. Our old friend the Daily Mail had a remarkably thoroughly, if one-sidedly, researched article on 15th February 2015 which was headlined as follows:

EXCLUSIVE: Lunar-cy! India gets enough cash in British aid to allow it to send a 250million rocket to the moon even though government promised to stop it

Do you see what they did there? The first line of the article clarified this a little:

The UK is to give India another quarter of a billion pounds in aid by 2019  the same amount New Delhi spent to launch its first mission to put a man on the moon.

Ah. So, the UK is not giving 250 millionto India to fund their Space Programme. We are investing in projects in India, where the total outlay is roughly the same as the amount which India spends on their space programme.

It should be said that the Indian space programme produces benefits which help the fight against poverty, such as in predicting tumultuous weather events.

UK aid in India has gone towards helping the very poorest in society. The BBCs Justin Rowlatt has an excellent report here which explains the great poverty in India and how British aid has helped fund projects with some of the most marginalised people in the entire country. He visits a community of Muslims and untouchables  Dalits  in Bihar, the poorest state in India:

We were ushered into a dim house off the tangle of streets that make up the small town of Biharsharif. Thirty women, many with babies and infants in tow, had gathered to meet us.

In one corner was a huge pile of dried cowpats  a store of fuel for cooking and to warm houses in the cold winter months.

The women are part of a community organisation  set up by a local NGO called the Poorest Areas Civil Society programme (PACS)  which receives funding from the British government.

The idea, says Arti Verma who runs the project, is to make sure these women  and millions like them across the country  access the money and services that are available to them from the Indian government.

Basically we work with the communities from the marginalised background and we make them aware of their rights and entitlements related to health, education, livelihood, she explained.

A key objective is to make sure they deliver their babies in hospital, giving both mother and baby a much better chance of survival. Until recently few did, anxious that because of caste or religion they might be discriminated against in hospital.

British support for India is now being phased over from aid to technical assistance, a point which the Mail fiercely disputes.

We can be extremely proud that the UK is sticking to its commitment to spend 0.7% of its GDP on international development projects. We are helping some of the poorest people in the world at the cost of about ten pence from an average taxpayer per day. Were in the top three for transparency on what we spend abroad. The Independent has stated that:

In 20 years, the number of people living on less than 1 a day halved from 43% of the worlds population in 1990, to 21% in 2010. Add that to the 10m boys and girls who went to school last year because of UK aid, as well as the 48 million children immunised from preventable diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea

Its not beyond the wit of a sophisticated society such as the UK to be able to properly fund flood protection and give aid to the poorest in the world and do the myriad of other things the government does. It is in the finest traditions of the UK that we show generosity to the poorest communities in the world.

The government was warned back in November that flood protection was extremely vulnerable. We should not let the poorest people in the world suffer (more than they are) because of poor government planning with regard to flood prevention.

* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist. He is currently taking a break from his role as one of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
Veteran Liberal Democrat campaigner, Brian Niblett, sadly passed away on 10 December following a year-long battle with cancer.

Brian Niblett came from modest beginnings, growing up in Filton, South Gloucestershire, the youngest of four children. Brian joined British Gas as an apprentice and went on to become a chartered engineer and enjoy a 22 year career with the company. His final role was as head of public relations for the Middle East and Africa before he left in 1996 to focus on politics and to set up his own PR and marketing consultancy with his partner, Lisa.

Brian joined the Liberal Democrats while living in Taunton in the early 1980s. He always said that it felt like the constituency had a membership prevention officer because he found it so hard to join. The experience always lived with Brian and he became passionate about membership recruitment and activist development.

Brian arrived in West Berkshire in the early 1990s. He quickly re-established a thriving Lib Dem branch in the mainly rural area of Hungerford and Lambourn. Brian was a remarkably skilled organiser and motivator. When he put on a branch event, you knew it would be very well attended, effective and enjoyable. Preparing sheets of voters, calling round volunteers to encourage them, assigning roles  these tasks were meat and drink to Brian. He knew how to get large groups enthusiastically rallying to the cause. He worked long and hard to build the local organisation. When needed, he didnt flinch in taking the bull by the horns and, for example, going round a neglected delivery network to cajole and persuade deliverers, with remarkable success on all occasions.

Brian Niblett took a very active interest in the Newbury constituency organisation. He was a key member of the campaign team which returned David Rendel as MP for 12 years. A very wise counsellor in the leadership of the local party, he was particularly expert at advising on relations with the media, based on his wide professional experience.

In 1998, Brian was selected as a Euro candidate for the East Midlands region. His energy, enthusiasm and humour made him an early front runner but he was eventually overtaken on the partys list by future leader Nick Clegg. Brian put in so much effort, visiting the thousands of members and turning up at so many local party events across the region. He may not have come top of the list, but he did win the affection of the members.

A council by-election in the Erewash ward of Sandiacre provided an opportunity for all the potential MEPs to show off their campaigning skills. Brian left Berkshire in the middle of the night to be there to deliver Good Morning leaflets and kept going until the polls closed. He went on some very long knocking up routes. People were amazed at how refreshed he could be after just a 10 minute power nap.

If Brian committed himself to something, he really delivered. He was an instinctive campaigner who did all he could to help local parties raise their profile. Just before the European election, it looked as if there might be a by-election in Newark after the sitting MP and her agent were found guilty of electoral fraud. Brian was chosen to be the candidate. An HQ on the market square was duly established and the legendary Pat Wainwright moved in to manage it. Brian did a huge amount of work, which contributed to our successful European result.

Brian then went on to fight the Bristol East constituency in the 2001 general election, where he substantially increased the partys share of the vote. During Brians time campaigning in Bristol he was active in membership recruitment and a number of council election and by-election victories. During the 2005 and 2010 general elections, Brian and Lisa were also regular supporters of the campaign for Liverpool Wavertree.

Brian Niblett was a former member of the Federal Policy Committee and helped to shape the partys energy and health policies. He was a regular contributor to Lib Dem News on a wide range of topics and themes, particularly electoral reform and election communication strategy. Brian was passionate about opportunities for everyone and was instrumental in setting up the committee to help encourage minority party members to stand for parliament in the then Chilterns Region.

Wherever Brian went, jollity was never far off. Post-canvassing drinks were full of hysterical laughter as we remembered incidents from the trail, with Brian at the centre of the fun.

Though taken from us sadly far too young, Brian will remain an inspiration to Liberal Democrats who knew him. As we continue the #libdemfightback, the memory of Nibbles will embolden us to get stuck in.

One dictionary describes force of nature, when applied to a person as full of energy, unstoppableunforgettable. Those are certainly descriptions that, those who met him would readily agree, applied to Brian.

Written by Lisa Whellams, Colin Eldridge, Caron Lindsay and Paul Walter.

Our photo shows Brian at the start of the 2003 anti-Iraq war march in London.
Westminsters International Development Select Committee has backed calls by Save the Children for the Government to take 3000 unaccompanied refugee children from Syria.

From the BBC:

The International Development Committee said it backed calls from charities for the UK to accept more unaccompanied minors as a matter of utmost urgency. Lone children risked being forced into prostitution or the drugs trade unless given sanctuary, the MPs said. The UK has taken 1,000 refugees so far as part of a 20,000 five-year target. But humanitarian campaigners say this is inadequate and that refugees already in Europe should qualify for resettlement under the UKs Vulnerable Persons Relocation (VPR) scheme, which is currently restricted to those in refugee camps in Syria and neighbouring countries.

The BBC gives the teensiest, tiniest mention to the fact that Tim Farron supports this measure, but doesnt quite capture the extent of his support, going as far as actually trying to make it happen by lodging a bill in Parliament.

Tim welcomed the Committees decision, saying:

It is good to see the International Development Committee endorsing our call on the government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children from Europe. There are many thousands of orphaned children fleeing war and persecution in Syria. Britain has always been a beacon of hope for people in their darkest hour. It is time for Britain to do the right thing. The government must now act to save these vulnerable children by offering them safety and sanctuary in the UK. It could not be clearer these children deserve our support and our help. David Cameron must start turning warm words into positive action. Politicians from all parties in this country are agreed the Kindertransport, which brought over unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany in 1938, was the right thing to do. Now we need a new Kindertransport to save another group of vulnerable children, and send a clear signal of the renewal of the British values of which we are so proud.

We now have to wait to see how the Government responds. It would be good to think that they would use the committees recommendations as an excuse to carry out the review Cameron promised Tim Farron before the Syria vote, but its probably wise not to hold your breath on that score.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  Allies of Saudi Arabia followed the kingdoms lead Monday and scaled back diplomatic ties to Iran after the ransacking of Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, violence sparked by the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late Sunday. Within hours, the United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge daffaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.

The concerted campaign by Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia highlights the aggressive stance King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have adopted in confronting Iran, a longtime regional rival.

What we have seen during the last 24 hours is unprecedented... It shows you Saudi Arabia has had enough of Iran and wants to send a message, said Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Emirates University. This is the Saudis saying: There is no limit to how far we will go.

The standoff began Saturday, when Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others convicted of terror charges  the largest mass execution carried out by the kingdom since 1980.

Al-Nimr was a central figure in the Arab Spring-inspired protests by Saudi Arabias Shiite minority, who long denied advocating violence. News of his execution has sparked Shiite protests from Bahrain to Pakistan.

In Iran, protesters attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad. By late Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the kingdom would sever its relations with Iran over the assaults, giving Iranian diplomatic personnel 48 hours to leave his country.

On Monday, Saudi Arabias civil aviation authority suspended all flights to and from Iran, saying the move was based on the kingdoms cutting of diplomatic ties.

Iran expressed regret over the attacks on the diplomatic missions in a letter to the United Nations on Monday and vowed to arrest those responsible. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Irans U.N. envoy Gholamali Khoshroo says more than 40 protesters have been arrested and that authorities are searching for other suspects.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long vied for influence in the Middle East, with their rivalry deepening following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which allowed Iran to assert dominance there, and the chaos of the Arab Spring, which gave rise to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen.

An early battleground was Bahrain, where the Shiite majority staged mass protests in 2011 demanding political reforms from the Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent in troops to help quash the revolt, viewing it as an Iranian bid to expand its influence.

Bahraini officials have since accused Iran of training militants and attempting to smuggle arms into the country, which hosts the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet. In October, Bahrain ordered the acting Iranian charge daffaires to leave within 72 hours and recalled its own ambassador after alleging Iran sponsored subversion and terrorism and funneled arms to militants.

Sudan, which has been looking to Saudi for aid since the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011, on Monday announced an immediate severing of ties over the diplomatic mission attacks. Sudan once was closer to Iran, but in recent years has tilted toward Saudi Arabia, and has contributed forces to the Saudi-led coalition battling Shiite rebels in Yemen.

The UAE, a country of seven emirates, has a long trading history with Iran and is home to many ethnic Iranians. It said it would reduce the number of diplomats in Iran and recall its ambassador in the light of Irans continuous interference in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states, which has reached unprecedented levels.

Saudi Arabia previously severed ties with Iran from 1988 to 1991 over hajj rioting in 1987 and Irans attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf. That diplomatic freeze saw Iran halt pilgrims from attending the hajj in Saudi Arabia, something required of all able Muslims once in their lives.

Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Ali Esfanani, spokesman of the Judicial and Legal Committee, said security issues and the fact that Iranian pilgrims wouldnt have consular protection inside the kingdom made halting the pilgrimage likely, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
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After spending thousands of years buried in ancient hills, remnants of buildings dating back to the Byzantine era and earlier emerged from hiding, excavated outside Rosh Ha'ayin in central Israel, about 10 miles (17 kilometers) inland from Tel Aviv.

A recent announcement by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) described a many-chambered farmhouse, estimated to be 2,700 years old, measuring about 100 by 180 feet (30 by 50 meters) and containing a cluster of 24 rooms connected to a central courtyard. The walls were preserved to a height of about 6.6 feet (2 m).

The courtyard once held a storage compartment for protecting grain, Amit Shadman, IAA excavation director, said in the statement. Other artifacts found nearby include a number of millstones used for grinding flour, suggesting that growing and processing grain were "fairly widespread" in the region, Shadman said. "It seems that carbohydrates were as popular then as now," he added. [See Photos of the Farmstead and Church Mosaics in Rosh Ha'ayin]

Excavators also revealed oil presses carved from rock and a pair of silver coins stamped with images of the goddess Athena and an owl  her sacred bird  dating to the fourth century BCE.

Another multiroom structure protruding from a nearby hill was a monastery approximately 1,500 years old. The building once held stables, living quarters, an oil press and a church with colorful mosaic floors. Tiles were laid in intricate geometric patterns, with one pattern spelling out a Greek inscription welcoming visitors in the name of "Theodosius the priest."

The new finds take their place among many others that have emerged in recent years, representing Israel's ancient past. Another farmhouse dating to the eighth century BCE was discovered near Rosh Ha'ayin in early December 2014. Its 23 rooms also radiated outward from a central courtyard that once held a grain silo, and multiple winepresses were found close by. Eventually abandoned as a monastery, the structure was partially destroyed hundreds of years later, when inhabitants during the Ottoman period built a limekiln on the site.

Shadman explained in the statement that the farmstead and monastery represent two waves of inhabitants that settled in the region over time. The older farmstead, and others like it, flourished for hundreds of years, but were largely abandoned when people fled the area during the Hellenistic period.

After many more centuries passed, a wave of Christian settlers arrived during the fifth century CE. At the time, Christianity was spreading rapidly across Israel, evident in the number of surviving ancient monasteries and churches that archaeologists continue to uncover.

The newfound archeological artifacts will be preserved where they stand "for the benefit of the public," even as the city of Rosh Ha'ayin expands to surround them, the IAA statement read. The inscription in the church's ancient mosaic will once more greet visitors with the message, "Peace be with you when you come, peace be with you when you go."

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
People who have been overweight or obese at any time during their lives may be more likely to die early, even if they lose weight later, a new study suggests.

Among the people in the study, those who had ever been overweight were 19 percent more likely to die during the 23-year study period, compared with those who had never exceeded normal weight.

Those who had ever been obese (with a body mass index, or BMI, from 30.0 to 34.9) were 65 percent more likely to die during the study than those who had never exceeded normal weight. And those who had ever been severely obese (with a BMI of 35.0 or above) were nearly 150 percent more likely to die during this time period than those who remained in the normal weight range.

The new study "sheds light on the need for greater efforts to stem the obesity epidemic," said study author Andrew Stokes, of the Boston University School of Public Health. [The Best Way to Lose Weight Safely]

In the study, the researchers looked at the BMIs of more than 6,000 Americans who were between 50 and 74 years old when the study began, in 1988. In addition to looking at the participants' current BMIs, at the time of the start of the study, the researchers looked at the history of the individuals' lifetime BMIs. This approach differs from that of previous studies that have looked at the relationship between a person's BMI and their risk of early death, the researchers said. Those previous studies tended to consider people's BMIs at only a single point in time, the researchers said.

"Imagine if you compared nonsmokers to smokers," Stokes said. "If there are former smokers in the nonsmoking group, it is going to skew the comparison."

One such study, published in January 2013, suggested that being overweight could actually increase a person's life span, Stokes said. Moreover, that study found that being mildly obese was actually associated with no increased risk of death, he said. "You had to be morbidly obese to experience any elevated risks for death," according to those findings, Stokes said.

But the new study found that, "quite to the contrary, risks increase at every level of body mass index above the normal weight category," he told Live Science.

The new results suggest that the problem of obesity needs to be taken very seriously, Stokes said. "We see that obesity is affecting many people in a population," he said. "It is not just restricted to certain individuals or groups." This is why the solutions to the high rates of obesity really need to target not only individuals, but also the population as a whole, he added.

Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the new study, stressed the importance of physical fitness for the reducing the health risks that can come with obesity.

"Bottom line is that not all heavy people will die young," Roslin told Live Science in an email. "But those who are not fit [or who] have metabolic conditions such as diabetes or severe sleep apnea have a disproportionately high risk."

The new study was published Monday (Jan. 4) in the journal PNAS.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
DEAR ABBY: My daughter-in-law, "Eden," is married to my daughter. Eden is now pregnant via artificial insemination. I will never meet the donor and know almost nothing about him. Could this be why I don't have the enthusiasm for this pregnancy that I should have, since the baby will be my first grandchild?

I feel guilty that I'm not excited. I'm wondering if it's because there is no blood connection, but neither would there be if the baby were adopted. Eden is due in a month. We live close by, and I need to generate some enthusiasm. Any suggestions? -- GRANDMA-IN-WAITING

DEAR GRANDMA: Yes. Start by doing all the things you would if you WERE excited about this grandchild. Be as participatory as your daughter and daughter-in-law will allow. If you do, while I can't guarantee that you will feel a bond with the baby, your chances of forming one will be greater. And please stop feeling guilty. Relationships take time to build, and this is no exception.

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I are facing a big decision: whether to move to a better school district for our daughter. The one we're in doesn't rate high, and yes, we can afford to move to a more elite area. So what is holding us back? Our wonderful neighbors!

They are our best friends. Our husbands are close, and it's the same with our kids -- even the dogs. We vacation together and take turns carpooling to school in the mornings. They have welcomed my daughter into their home, and ditto for us and their children. Are we fools to walk away from such contentment and love? -- HEAVY DECISION IN PENNSYLVANIA

DEAR HEAVY DECISION: If you and your friends are close for reasons other than geography and convenience, your relationship with them should be a lasting one. However, your daughter's education should come first, and if they are true friends, they will understand why you are making the move.

DEAR ABBY: As someone on a second marriage, may I point something out to your readers? An engagement is not marriage. People need to take a hard look at the person they are choosing to spend the rest of their lives with, and understand that they cannot change another person. Red flags should be addressed DURING THE ENGAGEMENT. That little annoyance will grow and has the potential to blossom into a huge issue.

Counseling can be wonderfully useful, but bear in mind it can take several tries to find a counselor who clicks with you. Take it from me, divorce is horrible and can cause damage that can never really be undone. -- EXPERIENCED IN TENNESSEE

DEAR EXPERIENCED: You're right; problems don't solve themselves, and people in love don't always think rationally. However, I hope they will pay attention to your excellent advice because I couldn't have said it better myself.

DEAR ABBY: While waiting for my chemotherapy to finish along with two other patients (all three of us have little time left), one of them made a comment about his wife. She was sitting next to him as a visitor, continuously using her cellphone. He said, "She always plays games or talks on her phone while I just sit here!" He looked so sad.

I understand, because my husband does the same thing and has for years. Yesterday morning my husband came out of the bedroom and said, "How are you this morning?" I turned around and asked, "Are you talking to me?" It took a moment for me to realize he was actually addressing me and not someone on the other end of the phone. How sad! -- NEAR THE END

DEAR NEAR: I agree that it's sad. Your spouses will have the rest of their lives to regret the meaningful conversations they missed having, and the important things that were left unsaid because they were too busy hiding from reality on their cellphones.

DEAR ABBY: I have an extreme aversion to alcohol and those who consume it. I suspect that it comes from having a father who was a violent, emotionally abusive alcoholic. Alcohol has zero appeal for me and, as I'm in my mid-20s, it's difficult for me to go on outings with friends without having to go to a bar. I become that grumpy, silent person in the corner.

Because of this, my fiancee has begun socializing with her family and our friends without me. Most recently, they celebrated a sibling's 21st birthday and left me home across the country. Talking to her and knowing she's at a bar and drinking makes me extremely angry, and we almost always end up in a fight about it.

I know this is MY problem. Do you have any advice on getting over it? -- DOESN'T TOUCH THE STUFF IN LAS VEGAS

DEAR DOESN'T TOUCH: Yes. Either get counseling for your issues and to help you recognize that not everyone who enjoys an alcoholic beverage is an alcoholic, or find a woman to marry whose views more closely match your own. There is a support group called Adult Children of Alcoholics that might be helpful to you if you attend some meetings. You can find a group near you by going to www.adultchildren.org.

DEAR ABBY: Before we had kids, my wife and I would occasionally go out with groups of friends or to social functions, but it was difficult to get her to go home. She always liked closing the place down, and if we left early I felt like I was dragging her away.

For the first five years after our children were born we didn't get out much. My wife is now starting to go out with friends from work -- a mixed group of single and married guys and gals. She has invited me to come along, but sitters are expensive and I'm not friendly with her co-workers. She stays out with them until 3 to 4 a.m. once a month. I think that's ridiculously late when you have a husband and children at home.

When she's not here, I can't sleep and I worry that something is wrong. She rarely calls to check in unless I ask her to. Overall I trust her, but with her drinking heavily and many single guys around, I don't feel comfortable with the situation. I don't know what to do. -- LONELY DAD IN ARIZONA

DEAR LONELY DAD: I have it on good authority that last call for serving alcohol in Arizona is 2 a.m. Could your wife be drinking so heavily that she needs the time to sober up in order to drive home? If that's the case, she may be a binge drinker, which isn't healthy.

The implications of your letter are serious, so you should sit down with her and have a discussion about the amount she imbibes on her nights out. You shouldn't have to worry about her, so out of respect for your feelings, she should routinely let you know how long she'll be after the bars/clubs close.

DEAR ABBY: I am an administrative assistant. Part of my job is to make the arrangements for our department Christmas party. Every year we go out in a group of about 15 people. I no longer wish to attend these events. Group settings make me nervous. In addition, we all have to buy gender-neutral gifts to exchange.

I have tried to talk with my boss about it, but he doesn't seem to understand. We have bi-monthly staff meetings, and after everyone is done with business, we always have discussion time for things other than work. Most of us have lunch together every day and talk then. We also have group birthday celebrations four times a year.

I get a sick feeling every time I think about going to this party, and then the headache of trying to choose a gift that won't be made fun of. (I am not good at it.) Last year I called in sick so I wouldn't have to attend. I have tried taking a personal day off, but then my boss gets mad at me. Should I be forced to go to this? -- NOT A GIFT PICKER IN ST. PAUL

DEAR NOT A GIFT PICKER: No, you shouldn't. Because you find these functions to be onerous, consider putting in a short appearance at the Christmas party and then "rushing off" because you have a "schedule conflict." As to your gift selection problem, at this time of year most people are inundated with catalogs with all sorts of offerings. Open a few, select any item in your price range and order it. Or consider a gift card. Problem solved.

DEAR ABBY: Is it OK to hang up the phone on someone who's making you angry on a personal call? I'm referring to adult conversations, not children calling each other.

For instance, when I'm talking to my husband, my mother or a friend and the conversation has deteriorated to an argument or become unbearable and insufferable, can I just hang up the phone? Or must I first blurt out, "I'm hanging up the phone now"?

Are there rules for hanging up the phone angry? Do manners require that phone calls must end by mutual agreement? Please, Abby, give us your permission to "cut off the crazies." -- SICK OF IT IN MICHIGAN

DEAR SICK OF IT: I do not think it is constructive to slam the phone down. If a caller becomes abusive, you could say, "I can't listen to this," or, "We'll talk later when you're not upset," before putting the phone down. However, if these ugly conversations happen often, you might be wise to consider screening your calls before answering.

DEAR ABBY: My fiance, "Rob," and I are pregnant. This should be an exciting time for me, but he keeps bringing up a previous relationship during which he had an unplanned child. That was 10 years ago, and the mother denied him access.

I have told Rob how much his mentioning it upsets me and I have asked him not to do it, especially during my pregnancy. I want to feel happy and special as the woman who will be providing Rob with an actual family unit. But instead I feel like second-best and resentful.

This should be a time to focus on us and our new baby, not the child that isn't in his life or that woman and her stupid actions. Please advise me. -- SOON-TO-BE MOM IN DENVER

DEAR MOM: You ARE special and you ARE the person who is creating a new family with Rob, but your pregnancy may be a painful reminder of the child he "lost." He may be afraid the same thing could happen again and need all the reassurance you can give him that it won't.

Because his bringing up the past relationship is hurtful, suggest he talk with a licensed mental health professional about it. Sometimes the best way to stop grieving is to talk about it.

DEAR ABBY: Call me ungrateful, but I am very uncomfortable receiving gifts. How can I get longtime friends to stop bringing hostess gifts when I invite them over? I don't need anything, and I resent feeling I am obligated to take something to them, too.

Why do women do this and men not feel so compelled? I have tried remarking, "The present of your 'presence' is present enough," but it continues. I need your help. -- UNGRACIOUS IN FLORIDA

DEAR UNGRACIOUS: Women usually bring hostess gifts because they were raised to believe it is the gracious thing to do. ("Don't come empty-handed.") Since "remarking" hasn't gotten your message across, you will have to be more direct with your friends. TELL them that when they visit, you would prefer they bring only themselves and nothing more. Then explain that you are at a point where you have enough "things" and do not need or want any more.

DEAR ABBY: I have been married to "Tom" for nine years. I moved into his house after we married. I downsized a lot of my belongings, but the problem is, Tom doesn't want me to have anything of mine in his house. He's always giving my things away or making remarks about what I do have is trash. I have decided to put everything of mine into storage. I will even keep my clothing elsewhere and keep only a comb and toothbrush in his home.

This makes me very sad because I feel he does not value me. I feel homeless even though I have a place to stay. I work and we split the bills. I don't know why he's so negative about anything that is mine, and I'm wondering if I should just move out.

I have tried talking to him and he says he is "only joking" when he offers something of mine to someone else. However, because he has given away my things in the past, it's not a joke to me. -- GUEST IN MY OWN HOUSE

DEAR GUEST: When a couple marries, depending upon their circumstances, they find a way to combine their belongings or start fresh. That your husband would give your things away without your permission is insensitive and disrespectful. That you have tolerated it until now tells me your marriage is not one of equals, which is not healthy for you. Under these circumstances, I can understand why you would want to leave.

If Tom is willing to accompany you to couples counseling, it MIGHT help you to communicate better. However, if he isn't, YOU should talk to a therapist about your entire relationship with Tom so you won't find yourself in a subservient position in future relationships after you move out and divorce him.

DEAR ABBY: I am a 25-year-old who has been dating a great guy for a year. The relationship is everything I have dreamed of -- and more. My only concern is that my friends don't seem to care much for him. That doesn't bother me, but what does bother me is they are distancing themselves from me now.

I'm no longer invited to gatherings. My "best friend" doesn't keep in touch anymore, and I have given up on trying to reach out every time. If I do manage to talk to her, she makes an excuse to get off the phone as quickly as possible.

I have never done this to any of my friends, regardless of whom they were dating or what life threw at them. Is this a normal part of life? Should I reconsider my friendships? -- BOTHERED IN BOSTON

DEAR BOTHERED: Relationships sometimes ebb and flow. Before "reconsidering" these friendships, have a frank and honest chat with these women about why they don't like your boyfriend. That your BFF would treat you the way she has is puzzling, unless she's jealous because you spend so much time with your boyfriend or he has offended her in some way.

On a different note, does this man have friends of his own? Do the two of you socialize with other couples? Having been together for a year, are you making new friends together? If the answer to these questions is yes, then it may, indeed, be time to move on from this tribe of girlfriends.

DEAR ABBY: So many of your letters involve people having difficulty communicating with others. Here's a safe, honest, straightforward technique for targeting the behavior, sharing feelings and explaining the reasons for those feelings. It is called an "I-Statement" and has three parts: (1) "When you ..." (2) "I feel/felt ..." (3) "Because ..."

I-Statements can be used for the sharing of any and all feelings by kids, teens and adults. Feelings are valid because they are our honest emotions. In addition to giving positive strokes to one another, people can learn to better understand each other and have whole, complete and satisfying resolutions to problems. Try it! -- SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST (RETIRED) IN OHIO

DEAR PSYCHOLOGIST: I will! When I received your suggestion about improving communication, I felt grateful that you took the time to share it because it was not only generous of you but also may be helpful to many of my readers. Thank you for sending it.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
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By Long Island News & PR Published: January 05 2016

With cold weather entering the region, Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano reminds residents that Warm Bed, Nassau Countys Emergency Shelter Relief Program, is open to assist homeless individuals and families during the winter months.

The Nassau County Winter Homeless Hotline runs seven days a week through March 31st, 2016. If winter conditions persist beyond March 31st, the program will continue until warmer weather arrives.

Nassau County, NY - January 4, 2016 - With cold weather entering the region, Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano reminds residents that Warm Bed, Nassau Countys Emergency Shelter Relief Program, is open to assist homeless individuals and families during the winter months. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo issued an Executive Order that directs homeless individuals to shelter during inclement winter weather which can cause hypothermia, serious injury and death.

I remind residents that Nassau County operates a winter homeless hotline, 1-866-WARM-BED, seven days a week and is at the ready to provide shelter to those in need. No resident should have to spend nights in the freezing cold when they can call the Nassau County Hotline and be placed in a warm shelter right away, said County Executive Mangano.

The Nassau County Winter Homeless Hotline began operation on November 25, 2015 and runs seven days a week through March 31st, 2016. If winter conditions persist beyond March 31st, the program will continue until warmer weather arrives.

Between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Monday thru Thursday, and Friday from 6:00 p.m. thru Monday at 8:00 a.m., employees from the Department of Social Services (DSS) will make appropriate referrals and provide shelter placement. Once placed, the staff at DSS and the Office of Housing & Community Development will contact those who are homeless in order to access resources for permanent housing. County Executive Mangano also urges Nassaus homeless veterans to take advantage of the program, where they will be assisted by the Nassau County Veterans Services Agency.

During the 2014/2015 season, a total of 257 individuals were housed by the WARMBED program. These referrals included 165 adults 92 children.

NASSAU COUNTY HOMELESS HOTLINE (WARMBED):

1-866-927-6233 (1-866- WARMBED)

EMERGENCY NUMBERS:

Department of Social Services (516) 227-8519: After office hours (516) 573-8626

Long Island Crisis Center (516) 679-1111

The Safe Center L.I. (516) 542-0404

Nassau University Medical Center (516) 572-0123
Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com

Columnists Press Releases
The Islamic States Libyan province has released photos from yesterdays raid on an oil facility in Al Sidr, a port town on the Mediterranean coast.

Some of the photos (seen below) show the jihadists inside an oil installation, where they purportedly took control of storage tanks. It is not known whether the tanks are full or empty. Several images depict the jihadists firing rockets at unidentified apostates.

The four suicide bombers who were used at the beginning of the attack are honored in another series of images.

Separately, the Amaq News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic State, but not an official propaganda outlet, has posted a short video of the operation. The video, which is just over one minute long, shows the fighters entering the oil facility. Screen shots from the production are included below.

The Islamic State has used propaganda to deceive viewers in the past, especially in Libya. In late 2014, the group claimed to have taken control of Derna, a city in eastern Libya. But that wasnt true. Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists remained entrenched and, in mid-2015, thwarted the caliphates attempt to take over the heart of the city.

Therefore, we do not know if the Islamic State made serious progress in Al Sidr or Ras Lanuf, the other port town the jihadists attacked yesterday. Abu Bakr al Baghdadis followers have made significant inroads in the city of Sirte, which is nearby. And they have taken control of two towns in the area (Bin Jawad and Nawfaliyah) as well.

Pictures released by the Islamic States Libyan province:

A young suicide bomber was among the four who initiated the attack:

Images from the Amaq News Agencys video:

Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
NASHVILLE, TENN. (Jan. 5, 2016)  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nashville District Water Management staff continues to monitor stream conditions throughout the Cumberland River Basin and to manage the release of water from dams within the basin to support flood operations on the lower Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Ben Rohrbach, Nashville District Hydrology and Hydraulics Branch chief, said the Corps is operating its dams in the Cumberland River Basin to hold back as much water as possible until the flood crest passes Cairo, Ill., on the Ohio River. These actions are being coordinated with the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is managing its dams in the Tennessee River Basin.

The entire system is operated in a coordinated fashion. Were limiting releases from our storage reservoirs like Lake Cumberland, Dale Hollow Lake, Center Hill Lake and J. Percy Priest Lake while we are storing water in Lake Barkley to reduce water levels downstream, Rohrbach said.

Rohrbach said he expects elevated flows in the Cumberland River as the Corps of Engineers begins to release water to lower lake levels in the coming days, as the high water levels on the lower Ohio and Mississippi Rivers recede.

The Lake Barkley headwater is forecast to crest near elevation 367 feet late Wednesday. Discharges at Barkley Dam are expected to gradually increase to 100,000 cubic feet per second by Friday.

Increased discharges, including spillway releases, are also anticipated at Old Hickory Dam in Old Hickory, Tenn., and Cheatham Dam in Ashland City, Tenn., later this week. This is a result of operations at reservoirs upstream, such as Center Hill Dam and Wolf Creek Dam, where discharges are expected to average around 11,000 and 23,000 cubic feet per second, respectively, for the next couple of weeks as lake levels are lowered.

A lot of people may not know what a cubic foot of water is or what the impact of a particular lake level might be, Rohrbach said. What the technical jargon means in this situation is that these flows will not cause flooding, but will result in higher than normal river levels and swifter currents. The public is encouraged to be careful when on or near the waterway.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to coordinate the ongoing regional flood control operation with multiple offices with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, TVA, National Weather Service, and U.S. Geological Survey.

For more information about how the Nashville District operates the Cumberland River Reservoir System, see the Water Management Education Series at http://www.lrn.usace.army.mil/Missions/WaterManagement/EducationSeries.aspx.

As necessary, news and information regarding water management and flood operations will be made available on the districts website at www.lrn.usace.army.mil, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/nashvillecorps, and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nashvillecorps. For more information about the Memphis District (Mississippi River), go to http://www.mvm.usace.army.mil/. For more information about the Louisville District (lower Ohio River), go to http://www.lrl.usace.army.mil/.
Miguel Afonso dos Santos is the General Manager at Polana Serena Hotel, one of Africas finest hotels. Built in 1922, the Grande Dame of Maputo offers 142 rooms, 3 restaurants, a spa, a swimming pool, extensive gardens, an exclusive residents lounge, a business centre, a beauty salon and 3 gift shops.

Interview with Miguel Afonso dos Santos, General Manager at Polana Serena Hotel

How would you define the tourism sector in Maputo and Mozambique as a whole? What are the touristic trends?

Mozambique is a great country, it has beautiful beaches, landscapes, raw nature and great people. Traditionally, the trends and interests of tourists have been related to the islands of Mozambique. In Maputo, tourism is mainly related to business, due to the development of the country and to the different kinds of companies that are coming and investing here. In general terms, tourism tends to develop in Mozambique, not only business wise, since many international brands are looking for opportunities to invest here, but also leisure wise as well, due to our natural sceneries. So there is great potential.

What are the main investment opportunities?

In Mozambique, hospitality management has been growing since 2012. Now it is slowing down a bit, but the offer is increasing, not only in Maputo, but also in other areas in the country. However, I believe there are still many opportunities out there, mainly related to future investments in the gas industry, infrastructure, agriculture, agribusiness, etc. So of course we will need to accommodate these people and offer them comfort to come and invest in Mozambique.

Polana Serena Hotel provides 142 rooms, many of which are spacious suites. The hotel offers a choice of three restaurants, as well as the Polana Bar. We also have an amazing spa with a gym, aerobics studio, indoor pool area and separate spa areas for men and women.

To mention another example located just in front of the hotel, there is a wonderful piece of land with an elephant reserve closeby called Machangulo. If we had more animals there and better infrastructure, this could be the hotspot of Mozambique, just like Vilanculos or Bazaruto.

A lot is happening in Mozambique at the moment and we are investing in infrastructure to try and position the country worldwide. I think some brands could add value to the country and help improve the touristic experience.

Could you give us an overview of Polana Serena Hotel?

Polana has a great offer. First of all, we have 4 acres of property. Besides, Polana provides 142 rooms, many of which are spacious suites. The hotel also offers a choice of three restaurants: the all-day dining Varanda Restaurant, the Delagoa fine-dining experience in the French style; the Aquarius Sushi Bar, as well as the Polana Bar. We also have an amazing spa: the Maisha spa. The facility offers a gym, aerobics studio, indoor pool area and separate spa areas for men and women. Polana Serena Hotel was designed in 1922 so it has a touch of old and modern mixed together. We try to innovate as much as we can, so that we always create an exciting atmosphere for our guests.

The Maisha Mind Body and Spirit Spa

We focus our attention on quality and people, both internally and externally. We also focus on sustainability and helping the community, so that the community is part of the growth of the hotel as well as the organic growth in general. It is important for us to act in our own environment.

Polana Serena is a global brand which has been in operation for 93 years, since Sir Herbert Baker designed the hotel. A lot of people came here and are still emotionally attached to the hotel. So we wish to develop as much as we can, being active partners of the city, working with schools, planting trees, and overall being part of the community. We also wish to check out projects that could benefit the touristic experience in general, creating a link between the city, animal reserves, beaches and islands, for example.

Who are your main clients?

Our clients are mainly business people that travel worldwide, from London to NYC, from Lisbon to Paris, etc. So everyday we have people from all over the world in the hotel. The ones that come the most are Portuguese, but South African and national businessmen are also an important part of our clientele. It is an interesting mix, as we don't rely on just one nationality. However, it is interesting to notice that the nationalities change depending on the investment sectors that are trendy in the country.

A view of the pool at Polana Serena Hotel

Do you think the country is getting interesting projects that might be potentially good for you?

The gas industry is the one that is growing the most and if all works well, all the hotels in the region will benefit from that as this means lodging for the teams and investors. But it is a big investment, so it takes time to make decisions, as well as to make operations work.

What would be your message to foreign investors?

I have to say that there are a lot of opportunities for investment in Mozambique, but this is not for those entrepreneurs who want to invest and have a quick return, they need to have the capacity to wait for the revenue and the development of the investment, creating human relations and understanding the country and the culture, only then will real opportunities rise.

What are the challenges that the sector and the hotel are facing here?

Marketwise, we rely mostly on business people. So when it is summer in Europe, it affects our income, for our tourists are on holiday elsewhere. So if we manage to get more leisure tourists, it will balance the tendency. That is why we have to try to increase leisure tourism in the city.

Polana Serena Hotel: 142 rooms including luxurious suites

Another challenge to be faced, not only by the hotel industry but also by other industries, is logistics: you have to plan very carefully in order to receive all the hotel equipment, goods and purchases on time. Our guests have high expectations so we need to be consistent.

Mozambican people are very good people and they are very friendly, which is great for tourism as we work in the "smiling industry". However, technical wise, it takes more time to hire people here, as they are not as qualified and it takes time to show them the ropes. Hospitality schools are needed in Africa.

Where do you wish to see Polana Serena Hotel in 2 or 3 years time?

We are still investing in Polana, and refurbishment is a great part of the investment. As an example, we would like to keep the African roots of our Polana Mar rooms and introduce the modernity of Europe, so that the rooms have a younger and more vibrant look. We also want to build 12 Polana Nature villas for long term rentals, in order to develop leisure tourism. This way, people could stay here for one month, one year or even two to three years! Besides, I would like to point out that we have an amazing team which we want to empower even more. We also want to make sure the hotel reaches its highest potential, thus selling Mozambique as we have been doing for the past 93 years.
Ampelmann, a provider of motion compensated offshore access solutions, announced it has achieved a milestone in the operation of its systems; two million safe transfers. The accomplishment was achieved 10 months after the one millionth transfer.

The two millionth safe transfer took place on a project for Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP). BSP utilizes multiple Ampelmann A-Type and L-Type systems for the transfer of personnel during operations and maintenance activities.

Ampelmann CEO, Jim Craig, said, 2015 marks an important year in Ampelmanns history as we celebrate two million safe transfers. This year we also opened our office in Houston, conducted our first projects in Brazil, Venezuela, Nigeria and West of Shetland, and signed several long term contracts in the North Sea and Middle East. Ampelmann continues to grow globally by providing customers with unrivalled service and system availability and more and more customers realize cost savings and efficiency improvements through the deployment of Ampelmanns access solutions.
Sinopec's LNG tanker floats off Gladstone for more than 2 weeks; demurrage costs climb to more than $500,000.



The Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG) project has delayed its first commercial cargo, racking up costs for China's Sinopec Corp which has had a tanker waiting to load for more than two weeks, two sources close to the matter said on Tuesday.



LNG tanker BW Pavilion Vanda, chartered by the Chinese company, arrived at the Gladstone anchorage on Dec. 18, but has yet to load a cargo, live ship-tracking data on Reuters Eikon showed.



"The plant appears to have run into teething issues," one of the sources said, adding that there was no indication of when Sinopec's cargo would load.



Sinopec may have chalked up demurrage costs of more than $500,000 in the 18 days that the ship has been anchored off Gladstone, a second source said.



Another LNG tanker, Methane Spirit, arrived in the Gladstone anchorage on Dec. 2 and is now berthed at AP LNG's terminal in Curtis, Queensland, shipping data showed.



Origin and ConocoPhillips have a stake of 37.5 percent each in the A$25-billion ($18-billion) LNG project, while Sinopec holds 25 percent.



On Dec. 11, Origin said it had commenced LNG production and was on track to export its first cargo by the end of 2015, but has since revised that timeline.



"Australia Pacific LNG's plant on Curtis Island continues to ramp up production, and first export is expected to occur shortly," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail reply to a Reuters query on Tuesday.



Origin declined to comment on who would pay the demurrage costs.



A senior LNG trader said: "It's not unusual if there is some schedule changes in the first cargo from a new plant."



Plans for Sinopec's new terminal in China's southwestern coastal city of Beihai to receive gas from AP LNG have been pushed to around March this year from the end of 2015 previously, according to a local government source with direct knowledge of the 3-million-tonne-per-year terminal.



Faced with an LNG supply glut, Sinopec has been in talks with global firms to sell part of the 7.6 million tonnes it has contracted to take from APLNG each year from 2016 to 2036.

By Florence Tan
Radio Holland, part of the newly formed company RH Marine Group, has recently completed the installation of new radar and ECDIS equipment on the bridge of TS Golden Bear, the training ship of the California Maritime Academy.



Radio Holland was awarded an initial contract from The United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) in March for replacing the gyroscopes and gyrocompass repeaters. Radio Holland then successfully tendered for a second MARAD contract for the radars and ECDIS in June.



James Stones, Regional Manager Radio Holland USA Inc., said, The project was carried out in two parts while the Golden Bear was on deployment. The project and the acceptance procedure from the US Coastguard and California Maritime Academy went smoothly. The Academy is also very much a trailblazer and sets the standards for the US training vessels.



Our local engineers based in Oakland and Long Beach, helped ensure the project could be completed swiftly, he said. All of the radars and ECDIS were installed in three weeks and accepted within three weeks. This was over the Thanksgiving holiday.



Captain Harry Bolton, USMS Commanding Officer of USTS Golden Bear and Director of Marine Programs at The California Maritime Academy, commented, We are very excited to have the latest technology in radar and ECDIS on the bridge of the TS Golden Bear.



This will allow our cadets to step on the bridge of any modern ship and be better prepared to operate these sophisticated navigation systems. We chose JRC as we felt the equipment was very intuitive, and it had the latest in coherent radar technology. The Radio Holland team did a great job removing the old and installing the new equipment. We were impressed with their professional capabilities.



Radio Holland will also provide training for the cadets on the vessels new systems and carry out the maintenance in the future.
DP World UAE Region in their Circular dated 3 January 2016 have informed all Shipping Lines, Agents and Traders that no cargo or container movement will be allowed to / from Iraqi Ports except the following:



City (Port) Name: Abu Foloos

UN Port Code: IQFLN

DPW Port Code: FLN



City (Port) Name: Umm Qasr

UN Port Code: IQUQR

DPW Port Code: UQR



City (Port) Name: Al Zubair

UN Port Code: IQZUB

DPW Port Code: ZUB



City (Port) Name: Al Maqal Port in Basra

UN Port Code: IQBSR

DPW Port Code: BSR



City (Port) Name: Safwan (Dry Port)

UN Port Code: Not registered

DPW Port Code: Not registered



In compliance with the circular, DP World ports shall not accept any Imports, Export or Transshipment cargo / containers arriving from or destined to other Iraqi Ports except those mentioned above. Therefore all Shipping lines and Agents are kindly requested not to accept bookings to/from Iraqi ports other than the above, via DP World ports.



Should you require any further clarification, please feel free to contact our Customer Service department.

Tel: +971 4 881 5555 +971 4 881 5555

Fax: +971 4 881 6271

Email: [email protected]
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. today announced that the company has received the highest rating for SMBC Sustainability Assessment Loans from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. The loan program evaluates corporate actions such as disclosure of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) information and initiatives on sustainability, based on unique assessment criteria developed by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Japan Research Institute, Limited, and sets loan conditions based on the results the evaluation.



MOL earned high marks for its comprehensive information disclosure, and sustainability, which generally refers to corporate initiatives that are essential to earning the trust of society and ensuring long-term business success while protecting the global environment and contributing to sustainable worldwide growth. MOL received especially high ratings on the following aspects related to ESG and sustainability.



(1) Reducing the environmental burden of its business activities MOL has a strong awareness of the environmental burden of its consolidated group companies in Japan and overseas. It continually pursues technological initiatives to make vessel operation more environmentally friendly and reduce CO2 emissions per unit load by promoting Eco Sailing. MOL also reduces NOx and SOx emissions ahead of international environmental regulations, and steadily implement programs to promote biodiversity, such as installation of onboard ballast water treatment systems before they are required by international treaties.



(2) Comprehensive approach to safe operation/improvement of transport quality MOL has taken steps to improve the safety, efficiency, and quality of its vessel operations through initiatives such as establishing the Safety Operation Supporting Center (SOSC) and

disclosing key performance indicators (KPIs) related to vessel on-time performance in the containership segment.



(3) CSR management MOL has established a structure to help female employees play a more active role in the company, in addition to providing a range of educational and training programs for crewmembers and land-based employees all over the world. In addition, top management has demonstrated a clear commitment to address global social issues such as climate change.



The MOL Group consistently takes a proactive stance in efforts to disclose ESG-related information with the aim of achieving deeper understanding and higher trust among stakeholders.



In addition, MOL fulfills its social responsibility as an ocean shipping company by supporting global commerce and enriching the day-to-day lives of people around the world through safe, reliable, and earth-friendly shipping and logistics services.
Eastern Shipbuilding Group (ESG) has not given up its fight against the U.S. Coast Guards decision to award Stage 2 of the offshore patrol cutter (OPC) program to Austal USA. Although it
At the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Al Asad was the second largest U.S. air base in Iraq, and home to thousands of deployed coalition personnel from II Marine Expeditionary Force/Multi-National Force West and other major tenant commands.



Today, theres only one commandTask Force Al Asad (TFAA)a modest contingent of coalition personnel from the U.S. and Denmark. The majority of the core team are individual augments from I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), which also includes U.S. Marines and Sailors from Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task ForceCrisis ResponseCentral Command (SPMAGTFCRCC), as well as Soldiers from the Royal Danish Army (RDA), and joint-personnel from the U.S. Army and Air Force. The task force was established in support of Combined Joint Task ForceOperation Inherent Resolves (CJTF-OIR) mission to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.



TFAAs mission is building partner capacity (BPC), and to advise and assist (A&A) the al-Jazira al-Badiyah Operations Center (JBOC) and the 7th Iraqi Army Division (7th IAD) in the conduct of combat operations in order to defeat Daesh in the Euphrates River Valley (ERV) and successively enable follow-on operations. Additionally, the task force provides security for the air base and coalition personnel.



Our part of the mission is to train, advise and assist the JBOC and 7th [IAD] in order to allow them to develop (their plans and tactics) to defeat Daesh in their area of operations, and ultimately assist the Government of Iraq (GOI) in expelling threats and restoring their borders, said U.S. Marine Col. David Casey, TFAA commander.



At the time Caseys team arrived on deck, in July 2015 just a few months after the task force was established, the mindset of the Iraqi forces was that of much of the worldthe enemy was invincible.



We received the baton from a team that did great work literally laying the foundation with the establishment of this base, developing those initial relationships and garnering [the Iraqis] trust, Casey explained. But the bad guys at the time were still winning and aggressively taking ground, and to some extent, had the populace living in great fear and certainly had the 7th [IAD] intimidated. Many Iraqi forces had fled to different parts of Iraq, and the threat was right at our doorstep.



Though Daesh was still at the forefront, the combined efforts of the previous task force team and Iraqi forces kept the enemy at bay and reinforced the 7th IADs positions.



[The Iraqis] were in a very strong defensive mindset, partnered with the (Sunni) tribes to hold their ground and were effectively doing so, Casey added.



However, having a strong defense didnt mean the Iraqis were ready at the time to go on the offensive.



In [the minds of the Iraqis], the enemy was 10-foot tallthey were [larger than life]; you couldnt step off base because Daesh held that area; you couldnt get anyone to conduct offensive operations; and they were solely focused on protecting Haditha and Al Asad, as well as their checkpoints, said U.S. Marine Maj. Rick, the operations officer for TFAA and primary maneuver advisor to the 7th IAD. Since then, theyve realized they are competent enough to defeat Daesh, which has come from a preponderance of intelligence gathering that our [intelligence section] developed, and we provided to the Iraqi forces so they understand what the status of [Daesh] is so they can start focusing their efforts on destroying [Daesh] in zone or their area of operations.



Many of the task force members attribute the progress the Iraqi forces have made to the confidence in their training and the change in their perception of the enemy.



In December (2014)-January (2015), the Iraqis were in fixed positions, but by September, they did a small-scale offensive operation (to clear a checkpoint), and you could see the change in mindset to go forward, said Danish Lt. Col. Thomas Knudsen, the executive officer for TFAA and commanding officer of the Danish Contingent (DANCON). Because they had a good experience from this offensive [engagement], they started believing they could go [outside the wire] and fight Daesh.



And the 7th IAD did exactly that by conducting two more offensive operations and planning for a third.



Because were increasing the individual soldiers skills, now we see the Iraqi leaders asking for more training, Knudsen continued. Between the two rotations of the Dane (regiments), weve trained approximately 2,700 Iraqi soldiers of the 7th (Iraqi Army) Division as part of the BPC mission.



Most of the BPC training is focused on basic combat skills, which include military tactics, marksmanship, weapons handling, counter-improvised explosive devices, military operations on urban terrain, mortars, battlefield medicine, land navigation, periods of instruction (POI) in leadership, ethics, the law of war and curriculums in specialized fields.



Most recently as part of BPC, the task forces Danish and U.S. intelligence personnel completed training of its first class of Iraqi intelligence officers, added U.S. Marine Maj. Ben, the intelligence officer for TFAA.



Using current intelligence drawn from the local situation and incorporating elements of ongoing coalition and [Iraqi Security Force (ISF)] planning efforts into the training, allowed [the coalition intelligence team] not only to impart important concepts related intelligence tradecraft to their Iraqi counterparts, but to begin planning with them and preparing them for their next operation, said Ben, who is also the primary intelligence advisor to 7th IAD.



For the task forces part in the A&A mission, key TFAA personnel integrate in staff and operational planning meetings with senior Iraqi staff members at the 7th IAD headquartersadvising them in the planning and execution of offensive operations and continued sustainment of their forces, and assisting them in bolstering their operations with fires support, close air support, and intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) capabilities.



Going to the staff meetings opened the door for us, and thats what really enabled us to be part of their team and know whats going on, said Rick. It gave us a better understanding of how they operate and how we can integrate whatever capabilities we have to fit within their architecture.



According to Ben, the fires support and the ISR capabilities the task force provides in support of 7th IADs offensive operations, primarily focused in al-Anbar province, effectively enables Iraqi maneuvers and that stirs up the enemymaking them more vulnerable to the Iraqi-coalition targeting efforts.



Its a mutually beneficial relationship, added Ben. When the Iraqis go on the offense, our fires become more effective and vice versa.



By enabling ISF through the A&A and BPC missions, the task force is doing their part in supporting CJTF-OIRs multinational coalition in helping the GOI to set the conditions to defeat ISIL.



Now, more than halfway through their deployment, a different kind of energy flows through Al Asadsome could say the Force has Awakened.



To go from a group were trying to convince to go out and attack the enemy to a group that wants to; were doing the training, trying to get these guys to believe in themselves and now theyve completed that training and gone out and effectively executed it, Casey adamantly affirmed. They believe in those things and believe in themselves as well, so the resilience of the force is much better, theyve developed that!



That then has permeated into our partnership so I think were much closer, and theyre a much better force because of it. The summation of it really is the confidence they have, the willingness they have to go out there and defeat Daesh and hold ground. That turning point has significantly hit the 7th (IAD). They now have confidence, now they believe they can do things, now theyre willing to leave that defensive posture and become offensive, and that turning point has been tremendous for us, Casey continued.



Reinforcing the offensive mindset of the ISF, focusing on developing mature operations plans that can be carried out to defeat Daesh, and enhancing their skills and abilities, arguably sounds like a an amazing feat for this modest contingent, but the task force members believe in what theyre doing and also in the potential of the Iraqi forces.



Success builds upon success theyre really riding a wave of high morale and momentum, the Iraqi Security Forces have taken back the initiative from Daesh, reaffirmed Ben.



The second task force rotation is scheduled to return home early this year, and the next rotation will have some big shoes to fill.



Editors note: Special Operations Forces service members assigned to CJTF-OIR routinely go by their first names to protect operational security.


We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit, said Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher credited with laying much of the groundwork for Western philosophy.

U.S. Marines and sailors with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit put Aristotles theory to the test during Marine Expeditionary Unit Exercise 16-1 on Okinawa, Japan, Dec. 7-16, in preparation for their upcoming deployment.

For the first time since its new deployment cycle began in November, the elements of the MEU worked together to its full extent as the Marine Corps smallest kind of the Marine Air Ground Task Force to conduct scenario-based training. The training covers many of the operations the MEU must be capable of executing while deployed. They are also the same training scenarios the MEU will be evaluated on as part of its Certification Exercise, a training event which certifies the 31st MEU on its ability to respond to specific crisis situations in an effective manner.

MEUEX offers an opportunity to bring the sub-components of the MEU together, forming more habitual relationships, which allows Marines to plan, execute and deploy together more efficiently, said Maj. Michael Williamson, a Chicago native and the assistant operations officer with the 31st MEU.

During the exercise, Marines responded to various situations including high intensity missions such as boat raids, air assaults and reconnaissance missions, to humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and other contingency operations.

This training is critical, said Col. Romin Dasmalchi the commanding officer of the 31st MEU. If you do not take opportunities like this to pull everyone together as one team and practice these mission-essential tasks, you accept too much risk prior to embarkation. As soon as Marines get on those ships, they have to do these exercises all over again.

Each deployment, the components of the MEU rotate out, creating an entirely new MAGTF. The new aviation combat, ground combat and logistic combat element use MEUEX to practice operating together for the first time, helping them to build a stronger working relationship for when they deploy and may have to conduct the same missions in a real-world scenario.

The exercise developed a preliminary scenario for the amphibious task force, setting conditions for more advance missions and allowing Marines to execute future missions more proficiently, said Williamson.

This iteration of MEUEX completed, the Marines and sailors of the 31st MEU will continue using the time remaining before their deployment to ensure they are as ready as possible, according to Dasmalchi.

The Marines are prepared, said Dasmalchi. But, practice makes perfect. We will continue to train and improve ourselves until we are 100 percent out of time  that is the nature of being a Marine.
Editors' Note: MarketMinder does not recommend individual securities or transactions. The below simply illustrate a broader theme we wish to highlight.

Welp, so much for starting the year off right: Stocks fell right out of the gate Monday, starting 2016 with the worst opening day since 2001. Some headlines pondered what this could mean for the January Effect-the long-running belief January or its first few trading days (depending on who you ask and what makes the snappiest headline) predict the year. Others warned the drop's apparent cause-sad Chinese manufacturing data and a wild morning in Chinese stock markets that went global-spells doom for the global economy. Both reactions are awfully hasty, in our view. Volatility is normal, and big drops aren't uncommon during bull markets. They can happen any old day of the year, and they aren't any more meaningful on January 4 than they are on February 28, May 4[i], August 23, November 2 or any of the 360 other days[ii] on the Roman calendar. Monday's volatility says nothing about what stocks will do this year.

The first trading day of the year has zero predictive powers.[iii] We repeat, zero. Exhibit 1 aggregates all of them since 1929. When Day One is positive, you have a positive year about 66% of the time. If Day One is negative, you have a positive year about 64% of the time. All this tells you is stocks were positive in about two-thirds of calendar years overall. As far as predictive powers go, this is about as useful as a Magic 8 Ball. Anyone pointing to 2001 (first day down -2.8%, year down -13.0%) and 2008 (first day down -1.4%, year down -38.5%) is confusing coincidence with correlation. We could cherry-pick plenty of counterpoints to disprove their claims. Like 1991 (first day down -1.1%, year up 26.3%), 1985 (first day down -1.1%, year up 26.3%) and 1980 (first day down -2.0%, year up 25.8%).

Exhibit 1: The January Coin Flip

Source: FactSet, as of 1/4/2016. S&P 500 price index, 12/31/1928 - 12/31/2015, returns for each calendar year and its first trading day.

Some went a little more specific, pointing to some big stocks that led in 2015 (and are erroneously credited with being the only reason the S&P 500 delivered positive total returns last year) and warning their underperformance Monday is a harbinger for the rest of the market. As in, eek, now even the big guys can't keep it up, if they're done for, run! But one day's price movement isn't any more predictive for individual stocks than it is for the broader market. Consider the five companies in question: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet and Microsoft.[iv] Out of last year's 252 trading days, Facebook was negative on 115. Amazon had 122 down days. Microsoft had 126. Netflix, the S&P 500's top 2015 stock, had 129. Google/Alphabet had 119. Yet all did great! The up days just had more combined heft than the down days. Tis as simple as that.[v]

As for China, things there didn't just suddenly get worse. Yes, the manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Indexes weren't so hot. But this also continues a very long-running trend-a trend that hasn't brought that long-dreaded hard landing. The Caixin/Markit PMI, which fell to 48.2 in December, has been under 50-signaling contraction-for most of the last five years now. Yet China has grown. The official PMI, which rose to 49.7 (technically signaling a more mild contraction) has hovered around 50 for over a year. Yet China has grown. Chinese heavy industry has slowed markedly, but this is largely deliberate, as China's economic engineers are shifting the country's emphasis from factories and exports to services. As manufacturing has slowed, services have accelerated and are now a larger share of GDP. Services are captured in China's Non-Manufacturing PMI, which rose to 54.4 in December .[vi] This is all par for the course in China's long, gradual, modest slowdown-a very, very well-known event that actually adds to global growth.

So why the big selloff? Again, volatility happens. Today happened to be the first day China's new stock market circuit breakers went live, and they are some rather weird circuit breakers. Once local markets are down -5% for the day, they stop for 15 minutes so everyone can breathe. Once they reopen, if they fall further to -7%, they're done for the day. If you have an itchy trigger finger or need liquidity, this creates weird incentives to sell as soon as that 15-minute pause ends, lest you be locked out for the rest of the day. This likely goes a long way toward explaining why Chinese stocks took just seven minutes to hit -7% after today's 15-minute pause ended. The system was untested, people were scared, and they didn't want to be stuck. Perhaps Chinese regulators will tweak the system so it works more smoothly. But whether or not they do, global markets are used to huge swings on China's local exchanges, and capital controls make actual global spillover minimal. Sentiment surrounding big Chinese down days can impact stocks elsewhere, as it seemed to do today and last August 24, but again, coincidence isn't causality.

Days like Monday are days to take a deep breath, remember the dangers of financial myopia, and keep your eye on your long-term goals and needs. Regardless of Monday's swings, we think global stocks are still in a bull market. Enduring down days is the price we pay for bull market returns. Over time, they look like tiny blips, barely visible on a chart of stocks' long march upward.
Education is what separates us from the rest of the world.

We all have the opportunity to elevate ourselves through education, and the federal government has a role to play to ensure that our citizens are the most educated people on earth.

However, corporations have more influence than theyre due and use that influence to get huge tax breaks from the government at the expense of our education system.

For example, federal support for elementary, secondary and special education has dropped by $1.7 billion this year.

Those cuts hurt our schools and communities.

Meanwhile, hedge fund managers take advantage of the "carried interest" loophole to pay less than you and I do in taxes.

That loophole costs $1.7 billionthe same amount we lost from our schools.

Our United States Senator, Mark Warner, has a huge say in these decisions.

The Constitution of the United States calls on the government to make decisions that provide for the general welfare of the people.

Senator Warner, remember your oath and do the right thing.

Dennis Hairston

Martinsville
SPRINGFIELD - In partnership with Big Y, the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation has announced the second year of the Farm Awards, a program to support local farmers with projects that will help improve their farm business.

The awards are for equipment and physical farm improvements, according to a news release.

Charles L. D'Amour, president and COO for Big Y said:

"Big Y has been supporting local farmers since we began 80 years ago. Through our partnership with the Grinspoon Foundation, we are providing one more way to help the local growers to thrive in our community".

In an effort to have the widest impact, the individual award recipients will be given up to a maximum of $2,500 per award for a grand total of $100,000. Realizing the importance of local farms in our region, Harold Grinspoon launched these awards last year. The 2015 awards were distributed to 33 of the 88 applicants.

The two regional Buy Local farm advocates, Berkshire Grown and Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) will continue to provide insight and assistance which was essential to the successful launch of this program in 2015. Philip Korman, Executive Director of CISA states, "We are so pleased to continue to work with everyone involved in this unique farm awards program to support the vital role family farms play in our communities." Barbara Zheutlin, Executive Director of Berkshire Grown adds "We're thrilled about the continuation of these financial awards for farmers in Western Massachusetts to strengthen their farm businesses. This helps build the local food economy in our region."

The deadline for applying is January 31, 2016. Interested applicants are encouraged to visit the website for more information: www.hgf.org/farm-awards
finest hours.jpg

Chris Pine in a scene from "The Finest Hours," based on the book co-written by Michael Tougias, arrives in theaters on Jan. 29

(Disney)

SPRINGFIELD When author Michael J. Tougias was researching his first true survival-at-sea and rescue book, "Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do," about a rescue during the Blizzard of 1978, he stumbled upon a Coast Guard casualty report about one of the most heroic rescues he'd ever heard about.

Intrigued by the miracle rescue of the tanker, The SS Pendleton, in 1952 off the coast of Massachusetts, Tougias learned there was a simultaneous rescue 20 miles away on the same day when another tanker split in half, the Fort Mercer. "I was hooked," he said.

The result was the 2010 book he wrote with Casey Sherman, "The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue," now set to be released as a movie, "The Finest Hours," by Walt Disney Pictures on Jan. 29.

Four men -- coxswain Bernard C. Webber and his crew -- saved 32 of the 33 Pendleton crewmen and later received the Gold Lifesaving Medal, the service's highest decoration for heroism during a rescue operation.

Chris Pine stars in the film as Webber, a Milton native who died in 2009.

Tougias, of Mendon, was a weekly Outdoor Explorer columnist for The Republican through the 1990's to about 2003. He spent a couple years researching the rescue when he had free time, and when he thought he had a good overview of the story, he called Webber. "When I first called Bernie about the project, he said it was old news and that he didn't want to relive it. I was crushed," Tougias said.

He sent Webber a copy of another rescue book he wrote, "Fatal Forecast," and waited a month before calling to ask if he liked the book. He said yes.

"I asked if he would work with me, and he said 'no.' I was crushed again," the author said.

He sent Webber a copy of "Ten Hours," and the next time he called, Webber suggested working together on a trial basis. "Many years later his daughter said he was just testing me, and he called her and said he decided I was 'legit,'" Tougias said.

Webber worked with the co-authors every step of the way; he was meticulous and thorough. "Bernie was about the same age as my father, Arthur, and he reminded me of him. Both served their country and endured tough times with a smile," Tougias said. "My best memories of Bernie were when I'd make him laugh. We both knew a certain individual, and I would do an imitation of that person, and it was wonderful to see Bernie's tough exterior melt away as he laughed and did the imitation himself."

Webber did not consider himself a hero; he always thought that what he did that night of the rescue was what he signed up to do in the Coast Guard. "He once said his crew of three was braver than he was because they all volunteered for the mission. Bernie always gave credit to others," Tougias said. "And he told me that so many strange events happened that night in the storm that he felt a Divine Providence was guiding his little rescue boat."

To get to the tanker, Webber had to guide his rescue boat over huge breaking seas at the Chatham Bar, a shallow area. On his first attempt, the waves broke his windshield and swept his compass away. At that point Tougias thought Webber was brave, not a hero, but just doing his job courageously. "But when he did not head back to safety and he tried two more times to get over the bar, I thought that was heroic because he didn't have to do that. He had already made his attempt, and the safe thing to do was to turn back."

He considers a hero someone who goes far beyond the call of duty: "It doesn't have to be someone who puts their life on the line. It can also be someone who dedicates their life to helping others with no regard for themselves. I admire people who day in and day out are working to help others. "[Blessed] Mother Teresa of [Calcutta] fits that profile."

In fact, Tougias considers the term "hero" one that is "totally overused" because "just because you do something brave doesn't make you a hero; it makes you brave."

He has no desire to be a hero: "I'm probably not as mentally tough as the very best. But I just want to look myself in the mirror and say I did my best helping others."

Tougias has a new book, "A Storm Too Soon: A True Survival Story of an American Family During WWII" about a U-boat sinking a U.S. merchant ship a few miles off the coast, and a sailor from Massachusetts repeatedly risked his life saving an 11-year- old girl while they were adrift in the ocean. "His actions were incredibly courageous, and he was a hero that never got a bit of notoriety," the author said.

But one of his heroes, Webber, will be featured on the big screen, and he never knew about the movie. In fact he didn't think the book would be a big hit. One day he joked, "If they ever make a movie about 'The Finest Hours,' I want Don Knotts to play me."

"That's how humble he was," Tougias said. "I think he would be astounded that a movie really was made, and Chris Pine will play him."

For more information, go to www.michaeltougias.com.

https://blog.advance.net/cgi-bin/mte/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=17657476&blog_id=8002975&saved_changes=1
INSPECTOR CALLS

Walter Mantani and J. T. Waite in a scene from the mystery "An Inspector Calls," which runs at West Springfield's Majestic Theater Jan. 7 through Feb. 14. Tickets for the play are $25-$30 and are available by calling the Majestic box office at (413) 747.7797. For more information, visit majestictheater.com

(Lee Chambers photo)

Who is the mysterious inspector who visits the Birling family and what is their connection to a young working class factory girl who has taken her own life?



That's the question to be answered in "An Inspector Calls," a mystery and fascinating study of human nature and society, which opens at the Majestic Theater in West Springfield on Thursday.



The Birlings are a prosperous middle-class family. Arthur Birling, a wealthy mill owner and local politician, and his family have just finished a celebratory dinner in their comfortable home in Brumley, England. The happy occasion is that their daughter, Sheila, has just become engaged to Gerald Croft, the son of her father's chief competitor. But then a mysterious stranger arrives, announcing himself as a police inspector -- Inspector Goole -- and begins to interrogate them about their possible "responsibility" in the death of a young working-class factory girl. The result of his questioning leads each person to believe they've in part "contributed" to her death. Responsible for and contributed to are the keywords.



J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls" was first performed in 1945 in Russia and made its West End debut in 1946. Revived at England's National Theatre in 1992, the production received three Olivier Awards for Best Revival, Best Director and Best Designer. It also played on Broadway winning four Tony Awards and seven Drama Desk Awards. For 2015-16, it headed off for a major United Kingdom 28-week tour, including a return visit to Dublin, Ireland.



"I first saw the play during one of its revivals in England. Priestly was very much a socialist, and for sure that explains why it was first produced in Russia. The play is in the guise of a British murder mystery, not Agatha Christie, but with more social implications, still relevant for today, about the distribution of wealth," said Danny Eaton, producing director of The Majestic.

"It is set in 1912, on the historic night that the Titanic set sail, as Arthur toasts the engagement of his daughter and talks about progress, how the Germans don't want war, and a new ship just launched, although he does not refer directly to the Titanic by name," added Eaton.

The Majestic production is directed by Zoya Kachadurian of New York, who was one of the play's stage managers during its revival in on Broadway. It features Walter Mantani as the father, Kate Damon as the mother, Myka Plunkett as the daughter and Gio Castellano as her fiance, Josiah Durham as the son, and J. T. Waite as the inspector

"The author makes this family confront the fact that all people are intertwined and responsible for one another.....that you should look at other people as if they are your brothers. I find that fascinating and it's nice to be the voice of the hero in a way.....to be the voice of reason and make each of them confront what they have done," said Waite.



"While the play looks at the British class, it resonates for audiences today because there are a number of folks with lots of money today, the rest with not so much, and a lot with really not so much, so the theme speaks to folks," he added.

The play runs through Feb. 14.
Bill Cosby, Camille Cosby

Comedian Bill Cosby, left, and his wife Camille are seen at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in 2009 before Bill Cosby received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in Washington.

(Associated Press file)

SPRINGFIELD - Lawyers for Bill Cosby and his wife Camille were successful Tuesday in securing a delay in the planned deposition Camille Cosby was to have given Wednesday, Jan. 6, in Springfield.

David H. Hennessy, United States Magistrate Judge, granted the stay Tuesday afternoon. It buys Camille Cosby more time to try and avoid having to give sworn testimony concerning her husband and the sexual assault allegations he faces.

Hennessy's order does not identify a new date for the deposition.

Camille Cosby was to have been questioned by lawyers representing seven of the eight women who have sued Bill Cosby claiming that he sexually abused them over the decades and then defamed them by denying the sexual allegations in the press.

Cosby had argued that as a spouse she can't be compelled to testify against Bill Cosby.

Lawyers for the women said that protection is limited and that Camille Cosby also acted as her husband's business manager over his long career.

The case is in Springfield because Bill and Camille Cosby have a home in Shelburne.

Eight women are suing Cosby for defamation in federal court. They are among approximately 50 women who have come forward over the last year alleging that he sexually assaulted or had unwanted sexual contact with them decades ago. He also faces a lawsuit in the California state courts.

The eight are Tamara Green, Katherine Mae "Kathy" McKee, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz, Louisa Moritz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis and Angela Leslie. All claim in their suit that Cosby allowed his representatives to portray them as liars after they went public with their allegations.

Cosby has also countersued, saying the women have defamed him.

That's just the civil litigation.

Cosby was arrested and charged last week with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home 12 years ago.

Camille Cosby deposition delay


Most likely by now you have heard about Saudi Arabia executing 40 some people including one for merely criticizing the Arabian system. All this in the name of Islam of course. But perhaps you haven't yet read about Justice Scalia's speech

The Sunday January 3, 2016 Argus Leader buried on the bottom of page 6A reports on an Antonin Scalia speaking at a Catholic High School in Metairie, Louisiana. Apparently Scalia said there is no place in the US constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence. He also claims that God has been good to the US because Americans honor him.

I hope you can also see the parallels between the dangers of free speech in Saudi Arabia and in Scalia's nonsense as political policy.

Scalia is another pox on US government and civil society compliments of Ronald Reagan. His speech strongly suggests he should resign immediately.

This is link to AP Story. Many others can be found with a google search.

***Stay tuned but don't expect a sermon-----Doug Wiken
Mega Damming of the Life giving waters of Ethiopia. This process is menacing the existence of the inhabitants of the region by drying the sources and lakes. The main reason advertised for damming is for production of Electricity and exporting energy. This could be done by small human level dams.The underlying reason is to the irrigation for the great land grabbing for cash crop exportation for financial speculators. Moreover, such mega projects leads to undue water crisis.
17 orthopedic surgeons in Missoula urge the city to enforce bicycle laws more strictly and to "remove unfit bicycles from the streets."

We, the orthopedic surgeons currently practicing in Missoula, would like to express our concern about the large number of injuries which we have been seeing over time from bicycles being involved in crashes with motor vehicles.

Full Opinion: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/bicycle-laws-city-should-step-up-enforcement/article_3b73965c-3c9e-5a8e-94a6-3dcd6d5ec94d.html
Plenty more could be done to transform public workforces into meritocracies.

State and local governments also should have the ability to raise salaries for workers in high-demand fields. When Google and Facebook moved in near an important state data center, North Carolina responded in 2014 by putting $7.5 million into a fund to retain not only state employees those companies might want to hire but also other workers with in-demand skills such as nurses. Such a program could also be used to attract teachers in subject areas where there is a shortage, such as math, science and special education.

by Charles Chieppo

Full Story: http://www.governing.com/blogs/bfc/col-government-employees-performance-pay-productivity.html
Expect more workplace churn in 2016. There will be more retirements among baby boomers, more maternity and paternity leaves  if not outright quits  among millennials, more voluntary departures as workers move to greener pastures. And there will be more hiring as employers seek to fill key openings, and more complaints that they cant find good workers.

By Diane Stafford

[email protected]

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/workplace/article51231795.html#storylink=cpy
Lego Mindstorms robots have done wonders getting kids interested in science and programming. Now Lego Education is launching a new robot learning system, dubbed WeDo 2.0, to help teach kids about engineering, technology, and coding.

The Lego Education WeDo 2.0 system is a combination of hardware and software that gives elementary school children more than 40 hours of hands-on projects.

Dean Takahashi

Full Story: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/04/lego-education-teaches-elementary-school-kids-engineering-and-coding-using-a-new-robot/
A study with more than 6,000 fictitious cover letters reveals employers are less likely to interview qualified applicants who disclose disabilities.

In the first field study of its kind in the United States, researchers sent out fictitious resumes and cover letters for advertised accounting jobs. The overall result: Employers expressed interest 26 percent less often in candidates who disclosed disabilities in cover letters.

Posted by Dory Devlin-Rutgers University

Full Story: http://www.futurity.org/disabilities-jobs-cover-letters-1084262-2/?utm_source=Futurity+Today&utm_campaign=eefa51b02e-January_5_20161_5_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e34e8ee443-eefa51b02e-203916893
Skanderbeg, a Cherrywood Cannon and a Parking Violation

North Macedonia

Following the Crna Drin North from Ohrid

On our last full day in Macedonia we had to return from Ohrid to Skopje , but with no time pressure we chose the scenic route, along the valley of the Crna Drin to Debar and then through the Mavrovo National Park.

This time we took the main road to Struga before turning north up the river valley. North of the lake the land is flat, mainly agricultural though we saw a couple of small factories and some heavier industry. The intense development along the roadside included many new houses and a large hotel, though the area had few obvious attractions.

Further north the valley narrowed and became much prettier. We followed the corridor of land between the river on our right and a range of hills on our left, their summits marking the Albanian border.

In this post we travel from Ohrid to Debar and then to Skopje

Debar

Debar

After 25km the valley widened where the town of Debar sits above a small lake. From a distance Debar looked more eastern than other Macedonian towns, reflecting its overwhelmingly Muslim population. Three quarters of its 14,000 citizens are ethnic Albanians, which is unsurprising given its location but in every other city in the country Macedonians are either the largest or second largest ethnic group; here they are outnumbered not just by Albanians, but also both Turks and Roma.

It was coffee time so, eschewing the by-pass, we drove into town. The centre was busy and traffic disrupted by the work of turning the main shopping street into a pedestrian precinct.

Central Debar

Skanderbeg

We managed to park and took a short stroll. The prominent statue is of Skanderbeg, the Albanian national hero (see also our visit to Tirana ). In 1440 he was appointed the Ottoman Sanjakabey (military and administrative commander) of Debar district. Rebelling in 1443 he spent the next twenty-five years leading a largely itinerant army of 10,000 Albanians, Slavs and Greeks to a series of unlikely victories over the Ottomans. He never succeeded in setting up a viable Albanian state, but his actions seriously impeded Ottoman plans to expand into Europe.

Skanderbeg, Debar

We drank our coffee on a terrace overlooking, if not the town's main square, at least its largest traffic intersection. Lynne was not quite the only woman but, as usual in Muslim areas, the clientele was overwhelmingly male. They were, by and large, the sort of elderly men who have the time to sit drinking coffee on a working day  just like me. It was good coffee and very cheap (30denar - 35p), as is often the case away from tourist centres.

Lynne has coffee, Debar

The Monastery of Sveti Jovan Bigorski (John the Baptist), Mavrovo National Park

We continued north through the Mavrovo National Park following the valley of the River Radika which flows southwards from Mavrovo Lake to Debar Lake and thence into the Crna Drin.

Village in the Mavrovo National Park

After a few kilometres we detoured up the valley side to the monastery of Sveti Jovan Bigorski (St John the Baptist).

From the higher ground on a hot sunny day we had a fine view across the valley where, despite the heat the mountain tops were still streaked with snow. We were about to enter a Christian monastery, but judging by the minarets the villages on the far side were mainly Muslim.

Village across the Radika Valley from Sv Jovan Bigorski

As we walked up the drive to the monastery we were accosted by the guardian who collected the entrance fee and ensured we were properly dressed. Apparently my shorts were acceptable, but Lynnes long trousers were not, so he provided a wrap-around skirt.

The monastery was founded in 1020 by Ivan I Debranin (John of Debar) who had been a bishop under Car Samoil (see Ohrid post), but accepted the post of Archbishop of Ohrid after Samoils Bulgarian Empire fell to the Byzantines (no distinction between Bulgarian and Macedonian existed between the arrival of the Slavs in the 6th century and the mid-20th century). The monastery was destroyed by the Ottomans in the 16th century but restored two hundred years later and vastly expanded in the 19th century. Sadly many of the older buildings were lost in a fire in 2009, though much else survived. The monastery has a church, a traditional priests tower, exactly like the tower we had seen at the Popovo Kula (Priest's Tower!) Winery and monks dwellings.

Sv Jovan Bigorski, Mavrovo

A Cherrywood Cannon

Outside the church is a cherrywood cannon. In the April Uprising of 1876 the Bulgarians attempted to throw off the Ottoman yoke and, being short of conventional materials, resorted to constructing cannons from cherrywood. Although the first to be fired (predictably) killed the gunner but no-one else, this did not deter the manufacture of many more though few were ever fired - and even fewer were fired twice. They became symbolic of the heroic but doomed uprising and were subsequently incorporated into several civic coats of arms and parked outside places of national importance like Sv Jovan Bigorski.

Cherrywood cannon, Sv Jovan Bigorski, Mavrovo

There are impressive, though recent, frescoes in the church portico (where photography is permitted) and inside the church (where it isnt). Various relics have also survived include fragments of the True Cross and body parts of John the Baptist, Lazarus and various other saints, some well-known, others deeply obscure. It is wondrous how these things have been neither lost nor damaged. Holy icons (including one with mystic healing powers) have also miraculously reappeared after being destroyed in fires or when the monastery was sacked. You may belive that, if you like.

Frescoes in the portico, Sveti Jovan Bigorski, Mavrovo

Inside, behind the relics and the icons, is a magnificent 19th rood screen carved by masters Makarie Frckovski and the brothers Petre and Marko Filipovski. Three of their fabulously ornate and detailed screens survive and we had seen another at Sveti Spas in Skopje. There is a photo of that in the Skopje post, though it is not mine, there as here I was too closely watched by those policing the no photos policy.

Sv Jovan Bigorski, Mavrovo

Back to Skopje

Returning Lynne's borrowed skirt we continued up the valley pausing for a picnic lunch by Mavrovo Lake. Then we left the national park and found our way to the Mother Teresa Motorway (yes, really!) which took us back to Skopje. We re-entered the city by the same route as we had left it a week before, found our way back to the same hotel and parked the car roughly where the hire company rep had parked it in a dead end beside the hotel.

I parked the car where the green Volkswagen is in this picture

It was a hot day, and after checking-in a cold beer seemed appropriate so we strolled back down the 'dead end' road to a cafe.

A Parking Violation in Skopje

We had been sitting on the cafes deck behind a low hedge for some twenty minutes when I saw a white car moving down the road. Thats a white Chevrolet like ours, I said to Lynne as I realised it was on the back of a truck. Even when I noticed it had a small dent on the passenger door 'just like ours' I did not immediately twig that it actually was ours and it was being taken away by the parking authorities.

Back at the hotel the receptionist suggested that we should have put it in the underground car park. What underground car park? I asked. They had not told us about it as they had not known we had arrived by car, I had not asked about it as I could not see anything wrong with where I was parked - and the car had sat there for 24 hours a week ago without problem. It was, apparently, something to do with residents permits, and there was a sign on a lamppost, not an international No Parking sign, but a written notice in Macedonian. Ignorance, of course is no excuse, but in my defence I could point out that the sign over what I subsequently learned was the underground car park does not mention the hotel - the unlikely named 'Hotel Duvet Centre'.

The underground car park. Nowhere does it mention the Hotel Duvet Centre.

The reception team were helpful. They phoned the authorities, found out where the car was, did some special pleading so we only had to pay the 35 towing fee and not the fine and then called a cab.

The pound was not far away, under the railway arches by the station. As we arrived the clouds that had been gathering since we arrived in Skopje decided to spoil what had hitherto been a perfect summer day by unleashing a downpour. Retrieving the car was as painless as handing over that much money can be and we drove back to the hotel. This time I did put it in the car park. Behind those gates is a creaky lift which takes car and driver to a subterranean vault in which the hotel had half a dozen marked spaces. Well who knew that?

Later we went out (on foot) for out last Macedonian dinner and last bottle of Vranac - I should seek out a source when I get home.

04/06/2015

A Long Walk to the Wrong Railway Station, Skopje

We had an afternoon flight so in the morning we decided to visit the railway station. The clock stopped at the instant of the 1967 earthquake and the station has been left as a memorial to those who died.

Lynne said there was a sign to it by mother Teresa's house, which was not far away. I pointed out that we had been there the previous day to collect the car and could walk there relatively quickly as, unlike a taxi, we would not have to detour over the river and back to avoid the pedestrianised area. It was so simple I did not even bother to look at the guide book.

After a longish walk on a hot morning we found the bus station easily enough and could see the railway station sitting on top of the embankment but could find no entrance.

Skopje Railway station, this one is not a memorial to anything

Eventually we discovered a small passageway between two ticket booths in the bus station that led into the railway station. It was largely a building site, indeed I am not sure whether it was open or if we should have been there at all, but we had a look round anyway and walked up to the empty platforms. There was no memorial, indeed nothing remarkable, except for us being entirely alone in a capital city railway station.

Pausing en route for a riverside coffee we trailed back to the hotel. Only then did I look at the guide book and discover that Skopje's old station, the earthquake memorial, was somewhere else entirely; the railway does not even go there anymore. Lynnes words were a little harsh  but justifiably so.

Riverside walk and the Archeological Museum, Skopje

To Skopje Airport and Home

After a light lunch we drove to the airport. Despite the poor sign-posting, driving in Macedonia had been easy, indeed a pleasure, as there was so little traffic. This does not apply to central Skopje, which is busy, though the quality of sign-posting is no better. Signs that did exist were often late and required last minute manoeuvring across several lanes of fast moving traffic.

By luck or skill we reached the airport without mishap and toured around looking for the car hire garages. With the aid of a friendly policeman we realised there were no garages, just offices inside the terminal. Lynne went in while I sat in the car - I had no intention of being towed away twice. Failing to find the relevant office she asked the nice man at the Sixt desk. Our companys only office was in the city centre, he told her but kindly offered to phone them. No problem, said the woman on the phone. Leave the car unlocked in the main car park, and place the keys in the boot. And so we did. I presume we would have heard if it had been stolen.

Despite the minor problems at the end we really enjoyed our first trip to Macedonia and second to the Balkans. I finished the final Croatia post three years ago by saying it was a region we hoped to return to. I finish this post with the same feeling.

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzogivina (May 2012)

Croatia (May 2012)
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, January 4, 2016

Amazon is about to change how companies and agencies allocate global media budgets. That is a side effect of its move to build a different type of global logistics and delivery model that will rival Federal Express and United Parcel Service.

With support from Amazon Web Services, the model will prompt brands and agency partners, such as Target, GlaxoSmithKline and Havas Digital, to change their business models.

It will also allow them to redistribute advertising dollars in unfamiliar regions across television, radio, display, video, search, and other digital paid media. These regions would be geographic locations that were not previously served by the companies.

Amazon will open ecommerce borders and allow more companies to participate in online commerce with help from a fleet of planes and semitrailers. It will use its expertise in cloud infrastructure through Amazon Web Services to support truly global Web sites, from small one-person shops to large businesses.

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Using Amazons cloud services, companies will have the ability to activate and support an ecommerce infrastructure with little investment.

For example, consumers in China, Latin America or the Middle East will begin seeing Target advertisements that market the company as a global retailer selling hundreds of thousands of high-quality products.

Amazons shift in strategy also will support consumer product goods companies like GlaxoSmithKline that want to sell and ship direct to consumers around the world.

The redistribution of media budgets is a side effect of Amazon's move, admits Rob Griffin, EVP of media futures and innovation at Havas Media Group. We have many clients that want to build their own ecommerce engine to sell direct to consumers, but dont want to do their own fulfillment and distribution, he says.

Griffin sees Amazon unbundling the agency model where ecommerce becomes a managed service for brands and agencies supporting advertising. Amazon will help with logistics, delivery and ecommerce sales, providing data and reporting to make better decisions on where to allocate media budgets.

The effects from Amazon's logistics services will give advertisers the ownership of their ecommerce business without having to bring it all in house. This new breed of business will become important to metrics and where budgets are allocated, but the biggest impact will be on the operational part of the business, how things get done, Griffin says. "Who gets paid, when they get paid and how they get paid is really what will change."

Ultimately, Amazons model will shorten global delivery times to hours in some geographic areas, and give Amazon Prime subscribers shipping for free, per one source familiar with the project.

Baird Equity Research Analyst Colin Sebastian believes Amazon will become extremely successful, but the amount of data collected and processed could become the companys greatest challenge.

A global logistics infrastructure through cloud services, AWS will give Amazon integration with thousands of manufacturers and retailers, as well as millions of consumers. The move will push information to the ecommerce giant, giving it a more holistic view of online searches, preferences, orders and shipments, outpacing even Google.

Without Amazons plans, eMarketer estimates 2016 will become the year when advertisers in the United Kingdom spend more on digital advertising than on traditional media -- about 51.9%. In 2017, marketers in China will do the same. A year later, Denmark, Australia and Norway will join the list.

For many startups in developing countries, such as Indonesia  where just 7.3% of ad spending was digital in 2015  digital is the most affordable advertising medium. Most startups often spend 100% of their ad budgets in digital.
by Felicia Greiff , January 4, 2016

GroupM appointed two executives in the past few weeks: Christine Fang as CFO, GroupM China, and Robin Bach Kolling as the agency's head of Connect, GroupM Malaysia.

Fang, whose new position starts in February, will replace previous CFO Swee Leng Ng, who left the company for personal reasons, according to a release. Prior to GroupM, Fang worked as a finance director for financial planning and analysis at Mondelez China and was CFO of PepsiCo China Limited, China Beverage. Based in Shanghai, she will work with the leadership teams of all GroupM business, including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom and Maxus.

Bach Kolling was previously head of digital at strategic media agency M2Media. Among his new responsibilities, he will oversee all of GroupMs paid digital media services, including search, performance, paid social and programmatic services.

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GroupM rebranded its Interaction platform as GroupM Connect in May. The global group, which includes Catalyst, Quisma, Medialets and Greenhouse Group, was formed to consolidate offerings in a cohesive platform. Last month, WPPs GroupM announced it acquired programmatic marketing firm The Exchange Lab, which is known for its Proteus proprietary technology.
Reporters for The Boston Globe worked around the clock  literally  to bring their readers the news this weekend, as hundreds of Globe employees rushed to fill in when the newspapers delivery service fell short.

Around 200 Globe workers, including scores of newsroom staffers, worked through the night on Saturday and early into Sunday morning, following an emailed plea from Scott Steeves, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild and an executive board member at the The Boston Globe.

The plea was prompted by growing complaints from subscribers about missed deliveries over the course of the week, resulting from a botched transition to a new delivery service, ACI Media Group, on December 28. According to the Globes own report, ACI delivered 95% of the newspapers successfully, but other reports put the proportion as low as 90%.

Boston Globe CEO Mike Sheehan wrote a letter to readers apologizing for the disruption, but the situation got even worse with revelations that ACI predicted it might take up to six months to restore normal delivery.

The problem: it was having a hard time hiring enough delivery drivers. Many of the newsless readers canceled their subscriptions or took to social media to complain.

With customers livid, the newspaper called all hands on deck. To demonstrate their commitment to resolving the issue, the Guild asked all the newspapers editorial employees to pitch in, with Steeves email warning: We are in crisis mode.

The night shift crew was also responsible for folding, bagging and shipping the newspapers to distribution points.

While everybody loves a cute story around the New Year, and the reporters succeeded in demonstrating their goodwill, it seems like the Globes delivery woes are just beginning. ACIs contract somehow lets it off the hook for delivery disruptions in the first three months, and it wont be easy to switch back to the old delivery service, Publishers Circulation Fulfillment.

Many Publishers Circulation Fulfillment employees have probably gone on to find other employment  not so difficult in the age of Uber.

Theres also one interesting lesson from the Globes snafu: A lot of people still really, really like reading their print newspapers. Heres hoping the Globe doesnt lose its most committed readers over the next few months.

It's just not reasonable to expect even your most loyal customers to continue paying for something you cant deliver.
by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 4, 2016

Programmatic is taking over the world. Pretty soon we won't need any humans to deal with the mundane task of buying media. Based on its aggregate analysis of several studies, eMarketer forecasts 59% of the $26.15 billion spent on display ads in the U.S. in 2015 will have been purchased programmatically. For digital video ads, that figure is 39%. By 2017, though, 65% of digital video ads will be purchased programmatically.

Beyond the desired ability to buy display ads programmatically, 67% of U.S agency media professionals say the ability to buy inventory programmatically from a single platform across multiple channels such as mobile and desktop is important. The ability to programmatically buy rich media and native advertising was deemed important by 58.6% and 51.5% respectively.

The ability to programmatically buy digital outdoor, connected TV and wearables was deemed less important at 26.5%, 24.6% and 15% respectively.
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, January 5, 2016

For most GOP presidential candidates, January will be a 100-yard dash to Iowa and New Hampshire. The first week of 2016 has seen a deluge of ads in support of and attacking a variety of GOP candidates.

Yesterday, Donald Trump released his first paid TV ad online, which goes live on TV today, entitled: Great Again. The campaign allocated $1.1 million for Iowa and almost $1 million for the advertisement in New Hampshire, per Politico.

The ad itself dominated political shows, as Trumps major divisive policy positions -- excluding Muslims from the United States and building a wall on the Southern border -- were front and center.

Fact checkers had another field day with Trump. The ad included a video of migrants in North Africa and tried to spin it as the Mexico-U.S. border. Responses from the campaign: it was entirely on purpose. Trump representatives say they were painting a picture of what could happen at the Southern border.

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Among other front-runners, Sen. Ted Cruz needs a win in Iowa to stay relevant, despite staffers publicly stating that its not the case. The campaign made a significant TV ad buy in Iowa to start out the year.

Sen. Marco Rubio is far behind the front-runners in both Iowa and New Hampshire, but is still the expected GOP nominee on PredictWise. He put out a TV ad on Dec. 30 in New Hampshire, called Lunatic, which frames his foreign policy knowledge while directly attacking the Obama administration.

Jeb Bush, flush with cash, needs some unforeseeable miracle to revive his nomination chances. The campaign released a TV ad in New Hampshire titled Force -- a state hell probably need to win. Unfortunately for the Bush campaign, hes slipped to sixth place there.

Rising in New Hampshire polls, Gov. Chris Christie faces the strongest and largest number of attack ads yet this cycle. One especially poignant ad released by a pro-Rubio super PAC ends with: Chris Christie: One high tax, Common Core, liberal energy loving, Obamacare Medicaid expanding President is enough.

Establishment candidates need to start consolidating support, as do the candidates focusing on the evangelical vote in Iowa (notably Cruz and Ben Carson). For the Republicans to weather the Trump storm, theyll need to coalesce around another candidate.

RNC chair Reince Priebus hopes voters realize that fact as early as possible.
by Wayne Friedman , January 5, 2016

Acxiom -- the analytics and software-as-a-service company -- is launching Acxiom TV, an effort that will expand its data platform for advanced/addressable TV advertising. The announcement was made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Acxiom TV will enable companies to leverage data across all TV advertising platforms -- addressable, national TV, spot cable TV, video-on-demand and online.

The TV industry is in desperate need of a scaled, uniform data grid to support advanced TV advertising, stated Rick Erwin, president of Acxiom Audience Solutions.

Tracey Scheppach, EVP of precision video at Starcom Mediavest Group, said: [Acxiom] capabilities provide scale, automation and flexibility for data used for TV and online campaigns and reports that are driving real, powerful results. Data can be used to inform segmentation and campaign planning, verify campaign reach and frequency and perform conversion and cross-channel attribution analysis.

advertisement advertisement

Acxiom TV will allow TV partners to 1) research and plan cross-platform TV campaigns using precise audience data; 2) automate workflow to streamline segmentation, execution and reporting; and 3) activate segments across all TV platforms including online.

Addressable TV spend, Ad Exchanger reports, was $200 million to $300 million in 2014, eMarketer predicts it will grow into a multibillion-dollar industry in a few years.

The acquisition late last year of Allant, an audience interconnected television data platform, was a boon to Acxiom TV.
Sequencing of genomes from ancient humans has provided key information about the people and culture of Ireland, according to findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Share on Pinterest Genome sequencing has revealed new clues to Irish origins.

Image credit: Daniel Bradley, Trinity College

The genetics of Ireland fascinate many. Ireland lies at the edge of several European genetic gradients for variants that code for lactose tolerance, the Western European Y chromosome type and several important genetic diseases, including one of excessive iron retention called hemochromatosis. However, where this heritage comes from has remained a mystery. The oldest Gaelic literature describes the origins of the Irish people as a series of ancient invasions; Irelands archaeological record also reflects several major cultural shifts. In Europe, the advent of agriculture and later of metallurgy constituted the two greatest shifts in prehistory. These innovations brought huge cultural and also, in places, genetic changes. The current study supports similar transitions in Ireland, accompanied by large-scale genetic shifts.

Two major shifts in prehistoric Ireland The first change came with the introduction of agriculture, bringing animal husbandry, cereal crops, ceramics and timber houses. This occurred around 3750 BC, or some 5,000 years after it first appeared in the Near East. The second transition started around 2300 BC, with the appearance of copper mines, quickly followed by Bronze tool-making, weaponry and gold-working, and the evolution of distinct food vessel pottery at each stage. Exactly how these shifts affected Ireland has been subject to debate. What caused the transitions? Were the new ways adopted locally or did they result from migrations? Now, genetic studies offer new clues. By sequencing genomes directly from ancient people, scientists are able to carry out a type of genetic time travel that is showing us more about the past.
There are ongoing concerns that conception through infertility treatment may negatively impact the development of offspring. But a new study hopes to alleviate these concerns, after finding that children conceived thorugh infertility treatment were at no higher risk for early developmental delays than those who were not conceived through such treatment. Share on Pinterest Contrary to some previous studies, this latest research suggests infertility treatment does not affect offsprings risk of early developmental disabilities. Edwina Yeung, PhD, of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)  part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)  and colleagues publish their findings in JAMA Pediatrics. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 1.5% of all infants in the US are conceived using assisted reproductive technology (ART), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF). Previous studies have suggested such treatment may lead to developmental problems among offspring; Yeung and colleagues point to a 2013 Swedish study that identified an 18% greater risk of intellectual disability among children conceived through a form of ART called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). However, many other studies have found no such association. Additionally, the researchers note that few studies have assessed how non-ART infertility treatments, such as ovulation induction (OI)  the stimulation of ovulation through medication  impacts the risk for developmental delays among offspring. In response to critical data gaps, we designed the Upstate KIDS Study to specifically assess the association between the mode of conception and childrens development through age 3 years, say the authors.

Drawing data on infertility treatment types and offsprings development The Upstate KIDS Study involved 1,422 mothers of 1,830 children who were conceived through infertility treatment and 3,402 mothers of 4,011 children who were not conceived through such treatment. All children were born in New York State between 2008-2010. The team notes that parents of twins and other multiples were included in the study, and there were around three times as many singleton children in the non-treatment group than the treatment group. Four months after the mothers gave birth, they were asked to complete a questionnaire detailing the type of infertility treatment they underwent. These included ART treatments, such as IVF, frozen embryo transfer, assisted hatching and zygote intrafallopian transfer, and the non-ART treatment OI, with or without intrauterine insemination (IUI). When the children were aged 4-6, 8, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months, their mothers completed a questionnaire that was used to identify developmental disabilities. Specifically, the questionnaire was used to assess childrens fine motor skills, gross motor skills, communication, problem-solving abilities and personal and social functioning.
A member of the SSRI class, paroxetine works by increasing the amount of serotonin , which is a substance in the brain that helps with maintaining mental balance.

But this is not the first time antidepressant use in pregnancy has been linked to risks in offspring. A recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics demonstrated a link between SSRI use in pregnancy and increased risk of autism in children.

The latest study, led by Prof. Anick Berard, of CHU Sainte-Justine and the University of Montreal in Canada, is published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

January is Birth Defects Prevention Month , and as such, the medical community is making every effort to inform health care professionals and patients about steps that can be taken to prevent birth defects in newborns.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors  also known as SSRIs  are the most common drugs for treating depression in pregnant women. One particular drug in that class called paroxetine  branded as Paxil in the US  was previously considered safe for use during pregnancy, but a new study reveals increased risks of birth defects for offspring.

According to the researchers, up to one fifth of women who are of childbearing age experience mild to moderate depression. Furthermore, in recent years, prescriptions for antidepressants during pregnancy have increased.

Fast facts about SSRIs SSRIs are the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants

They work by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain

By changing the balance of serotonin, SSRIs help brain cells send and receive chemical messages, boosting mood. Learn more about antidepressants

Although paroxetine was considered safe for use during pregnancy up until 2005, a small  unpublished  study led by the manufacturer showed an increased risk of cardiac malformations in babies exposed to the drug before birth.

However, further studies that employed varying study designs in Europe and North America yielded conflicting results; still, a trend toward an increased risk emerged.

In order to provide a thorough analysis of the effects of paroxetine on newborns, the researchers carried out a literature review and meta-analysis of all pertinent studies published between 1966-2015. Of these studies, 23 emerged that were eligible.

Results revealed that compared with no paroxetine use, first-trimester use of the drug was linked with a 23% increased risk of any major congenital malformations and a 28% increased risk of major cardiac malformations in newborns.

Given that the benefits of antidepressants overall, and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors including paroxetine specifically, during pregnancy is questionable at best, any increase in risk  small or large  is too high, says Prof. Berard.

She and her team note that the baseline risk of major malformations is 3% and of cardiac malformations is just 1%.

However, they add that any increase in risk is significant, particularly considering that the benefit of using SSRIs during pregnancy is questionable, given that changes in metabolism can cause the drugs to be cleared from the body at a faster rate.

Commenting further, Prof. Berard says:

Indeed, the risk/benefit ratio suggests non-use in women with mild to moderately depressive symptoms, which is 85% of pregnant women with depressive symptoms. Therefore, planning of pregnancy is essential, and valid treatment options such as psychotherapy or exercise regimens are warranted in this special population.

The researchers conclude their study by noting that the increase in risk is not dependent on the study method or population.

In August of last year, Medical News Today reported on another study that suggested SSRI use in pregnancy is linked to reduced risk of preterm birth but increased risk of neonatal problems.
Cotrimoxazole (CTX) discontinuation is inferior to CTX continuation among ART-treated, immune-reconstituted HIV-infected adults living in a malaria-endemic region, according to a trial published this week in PLOS Medicine by Christina Polyak at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and University of Washington, U.S., and colleagues. These trial findings were important for December 2014 WHO guidelines recommending that CTX prophylaxis be continued regardless of CD4 cell count or HIV/AIDS clinical stage in settings where malaria is endemic and/or severe bacterial infections are common.

The trial enrolled 500 HIV-infected adults living in a malaria-endemic region of Kenya who had been treated with ART for 18 months, who had a CD4 count of >350 cells/mm3, and who were taking CTX. After 12 months of follow-up, the combined rate of morbidity events (malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea) and non-trauma mortality events was significantly higher in the CTX discontinuation arm than in the CTX continuation arm (IRR = 2.27, 95% CI 1.52-3.38; p < 0.001). The difference in this primary outcome between the trial arms was driven by malaria morbidity - there were 33 cases of malaria in the CTX discontinuation arm but only one case in the CTX continuation arm.

Study limitations included lack of blinding and statistical constraints from lower than expected incidence of morbidity. However, analyses were strengthened by 98% retention rates in both arms. The authors state, "Malaria endemicity may be the most relevant factor to consider in the decision to stop CTX after ART-induced immune reconstitution in regions with high infectious disease prevalence."

For further information see ClinicalTrials.gov - reference NCT01425073.
Analysis by NYU Langone researchers settles decades long- debate over value of newer drug class.

Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) are as effective as angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors developed ten years earlier despite previous study results to the contrary, according to an analysis by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center. Their findings are the result of a meta-analysis of more than 100 published clinical trials of both drugs and were published online this month in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The two classes of drugs, ACE inhibitors and ARBs, interfere in different ways with the function of angiotensin II, a hormone that regulates blood pressure. As part of the body's response to low blood pressure, the hormone restricts flow through blood vessels to raise the pressure. ACE inhibitors prevent the synthesis of angiotensin II, while ARBs prevent the hormone from passing on its message by taking its place in protein receptors on blood vessel surfaces.

"There has been debate for many years over the safety and efficacy of ACE inhibitors compared to ARBs, with many of them using an "ACE inhibitor-first" approach, with ARBs regarded as less effective," says Sripal Bangalore, MD, an associate professor in NYU Langone's Leon H. Charney Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, and lead study author. "We believe that our study ends the debate and gives physicians the option to prescribe either drug for their patients."

Previous analysis had concluded that ACE inhibitors were more effective than ARBs for treating hypertension. Dr. Bangalore says that this difference is due to a "generation gap" between the two set of trials. According to Dr. Bangalore, early trials of ACE inhibitors showed a clear benefit when compared to placebo, but ARB trials done a decade later did not show as pronounced a benefit over placebo. Part of that difference may be explained by changes in the standard of care over the decade between the trials. Patients in the later ARB trials benefited from a greater emphasis on smoking cessation and statin use along with the study drug, making its effect seem smaller compared to placebo than during the ACE inhibitor trials era, when those strategies were not as commonplace.

Thus, previous meta-analysis of the two drugs by other researchers that found that ACE inhibitors should be "first-line therapy" to reduce mortality were based on indirect inferences, not head-to-head, randomized clinical trials, and should be reconsidered, Dr. Bangalore said.

The results of the current meta-analysis showed that outcomes for ACE inhibitors and ARBs compared to placebo were similar when trials were done at similar time points. The only difference was that the ARBs were better tolerated. These results were then confirmed in head-to-head comparison trials where there were no significant differences except for better ARB tolerability.

Specifically, the current research team conducted a meta-analysis of 106 randomized trials that enrolled 254,301 patients. The selected trials compared ACE inhibitors or ARBs to placebo, and were conducted after 2000 to better account for the generation gap between the two medications (improvements in patient background risk e.g. statin use, smoking cessation).

"This is the first time that we have a clear and consistent message from the three buckets of trials of ACE inhibitors and ARBs all of which show that there is not outcome difference between the two agents except for better tolerability of ARBs," says Dr. Bangalore.

"The results of our analysis," Dr. Bangalore adds, "are especially important for patients given that many ARBs are now also generic, which reduces their costs."
A new editorial published by an International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) Working Group urges physicians to individualize treatment decisions based on their patients' fracture risk, rather than automatically interrupting or stopping bisphosphonate therapy after five or three years.

The concept of a bisphosphonate 'holiday' arose following concerns about osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) and atypical femoral fracture (AFF), rare events which have recently been linked to long-term use of bisphosphonates.

Bisphosphonates are a family of drugs used to treat osteoporosis. They bind to the surface of bone and slow down bone-eroding cells (osteoclasts), The therapies effectively reduce the risk of hip, vertebral and other fractures in patients with osteoporosis. Because bisphosphonates reside in bone even after the patient stops taking the medication, they have a persistent, although gradually waning, effect on bone.

The editorial raises the following issues:

Some physicians are automatically stopping bisphosphonates in patients without consideration of the patient's high risk of fracture.

Some physicians mistakenly extend the holiday concept to other antiresorptive drugs, where bone density gains are quickly lost when the drugs are discontinued.

The concept of a need for a drug holiday fuels concerns in patients about rare side effects and makes them unnecessarily fearful of anti-osteoporosis drugs.

Adherence to osteoporosis drug treatment is uniformly low and the above-mentioned concerns are leading to even lower uptake of medication - with greater numbers of high-risk patients left unprotected against fractures.

"There is much clinical confusion about best practice. We have little global consensus on how to identify which patients should have a drug holiday, and how to manage and monitor these patients. More research is needed so that we can provide physicians with clear recommendations," said lead author Professor Stuart Silverman, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Professor of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

"In the meantime we want to remind physicians and patients alike that while the incidence of AFF and ONJ are very rare, hip and spinal fractures in high risk patients are, in contrast, far more common and a major cause of disability, loss of quality of life and early death. The benefits of bisphosphonate therapy with regard to reduced fracture incidence in moderate and high risk women clearly outweigh the risk of rare adverse events."

The authors suggest that clinicians need to rethink the assumption that a patient who has taken an oral bisphosphonate for five years or an intravenous therapy for three years should automatically start a drug holiday. Instead the clinician should individualize the decision for each patient based on their fracture risk.
Children from low income environments appear to have a higher risk of neurological impairment than those from more economically secure circumstances, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. This neurological impairment appears to be distinct from the risk of cognitive and emotional delays known to accompany early-life poverty.

In most cases, the level of neurological impairment the researchers found would not be apparent to a casual observer. That level could, however, increase, the risk for childhood learning difficulties, attention deficit disorders and psychological conditions such as anxiety disorders and schizophrenia.

"The size of the effect we saw was modest," said the study's senior author, Stephen Gilman, Sc.D., acting chief of the Health Behavior Branch at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). "However, the findings do indicate that an impoverished environment may pose a hazard for a child's developing nervous system."

The study was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. The researchers analyzed data from the Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP), funded by NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The current study was funded by NICHD and NIH's National Institute of Mental Health.

The CPP enrolled pregnant women from 1959 through 1966, obtaining health information on more than 50,000 pregnancies and the children resulting from them. Children in the study received comprehensive neurological examinations at birth, 4 months, 1 year and 7 years of age. The physicians performing the examinations looked for obvious deformities, abnormalities in posture, motor skills, response to skin stimulation and muscle strength. The children also received evaluations of the autonomic nervous system - the part of the nervous system governing functions not under conscious control, such as breathing, heartbeat and digestion.

Based on interviews at the start of the study, the researchers classified the parents into three groups: those having a low, medium, or high likelihood of socioeconomic disadvantage based on such factors as educational level, income relative to the U.S. poverty level, occupation, employment status, and whether there were two parents living in the home.

When the researchers factored in the likelihood for pregnancy and birth complications - more common among women in poverty - they found little difference in neurological impairment at birth between the children, despite their parents' socioeconomic disadvantage.

However, beginning at age 4 months, the chance of having a neurological abnormality was higher in the most disadvantaged children (12.8 percent), compared to the least disadvantaged (9.3 percent). By age 7, the likelihood of a neurological abnormality increased to 20.2 percent among the most disadvantaged, compared to 13.5 percent among the least disadvantaged. The greater frequency of pregnancy complications in the most disadvantaged group did not account for its higher percentage of neurological impairment.

Although there have been advances in the techniques used to diagnose neurological impairment in the years since the data were collected, the study authors said that the diagnostic approaches used in the study are still effective for detecting neurological problems. Studies indicate that people living in poverty are at higher risk for substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and child abuse, and the authors theorize that these factors could explain the higher rates of neurological impairment their study found for children raised in impoverished environments.

The authors wrote that further research into how childhood poverty might contribute to neurological impairment could lead to ways to prevent neurological impairment from occurring. They added that the percentage of children living below the federal poverty threshold is higher today than it was when the CPP data were collected.

Researchers from the following institutions also participated in the study: Taipei City Hospital, Taiwan; Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, Burlington, Massachusetts.; Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, Rhode Island.; Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston; Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, Boston; and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
NEW YORK

Jan. 4, 2016

NYU

Miguel Perez-Aso

Yee Cheng Low

Jamie Levine

Greg Williams

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An antiscarring paste when applied to the skin of mice halts fibrosis caused by the radiation used in cancer therapy. That is according to a study led by researchers at Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center to be published tomorrow in the January edition of the, or FASEB.Scarring occurs as key cells lay down tough connective tissue to provide a framework for healing after injury. Fibrosis is a related process that creates connective tissue in the wrong context, often interfering with the architecture or function of tissues as part of disease.The current study addressed a type of fibrosis called radiation dermatitis, which is a side effect experienced by as many as 95 percent of patients undergoing initial radiation treatment. Radiation applied to the skin causes the buildup of fibrotic tissue and skin thickening, with the effects severe enough in some patients to stop treatment.The NYU Langone research team says they mimicked the development of radiation dermatitis by exposing the mice's skin to a single dose of 40 Grays, an amount of radiation similar to what patients undergoing anti-cancer radiation typically receive over five weeks. Some of the irradiated animals were normal mice, while others were genetically engineered to lack a specific protein receptor, known as the adenosine A2A receptor. Signaling molecules fit into certain receptors on cells, like keys into locks, to pass on messages, and the A2A receptor does so in pathways related to fibrosis.Half of the irradiated mice were then treated daily with a topical paste made with the research team's patented A2A receptor blocker. The paste contains 2.5 milligrams of active ingredient per milliliter of 3 percent carboxymethyl cellulose, a gum "binder" used to make drugs and other products. The rest of the mice received a placebo.A month after exposure, normal mice that got the placebo showed a nearly two-fold increase in the amount of collagen, skin thickness, and fibrosis. Those treated with the A2A receptor-blocking paste accumulated only 10 percent more skin-thickening collagen. Mice genetically engineered to lack the A2A receptor developed no skin reaction at all to the radiation."Our latest study is the first to demonstrate that blocking or deleting the A2A receptor can be useful in reducing radiation-induced scarring in skin," says senior study investigator and rheumatologist Bruce Cronstein, MD, director of NYU Langone's Clinical and Translational Science Institute. "The study also suggests that adenosine A2A receptor antagonists may have broad applications as drug therapies for preventing fibrosis and scarring, not just in the liver but also in the skin."If further experiments on animals and eventually people prove successful, Cronstein says, clinicians treating early-stage cancers with radiation could eventually prescribe an A2A inhibitor paste to prevent fibrosis. He adds that the team's findings suggest that A2A antagonist drugs could also be used in treating other diseases involving changes in the structure of collagen, a major component of skin and connective tissues, such as scleroderma and interstitial pulmonary fibrosis.Cronstein, the Dr. Paul R. Esserman Professor of Medicine, and a professor in the departments of Pathology, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone, says such therapies are badly needed because very few drugs are currently available to treat fibrosis and those that are on the market are not very effective. Moreover, he says, using a topical formulation like the one his team tested is advantageous because it can be applied directly to affected tissues and patients do not have to worry about any adverse systemic reaction as in oral drugs.Cronstein says his team next plans to study the mechanism underlying the A2A receptor's role in fibrosis.The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (AR56672, AR6593), the NYU-HHC Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UL1TR000038), and the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center and the Cancer Center Support Grant award (P30CA016087). Under an agreement between Cronstein and, Cronstein is entitled to a share of royalty received by the University on sales of products described in this report. Any revenue from these agreements is subject to being managed by NYU Langone in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.In addition to Cronstein, other NYU Langone researchers involved in the study were, PhD; Aranzazu Mediero, PhD;, MD; Obinna Ezeamuzie, MD; and, MD.Phone: 646-404-3533gregory.williams@nyumc.org

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-paste-prevents-scarring-caused-by-radiation-therapy-for-cancer-300195509.html



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Introduction

The Palestinian public and leadership widely support the ongoing violent events which PA officials have dubbed a "popular uprising" and Hamas calls an "intifada."

The PA and Fatah do not condemn stabbing or even shooting attacks, and its officials and media outlets justify the current wave of terrorism, lionize its participants, commemorate attackers who were "martyred" and praise perpetrators who survived the attack. They also accuse Israel of executing Palestinians, especially children, and claim that it still intends to change the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.[1]

Despite the atmosphere of incitement and accusations against Israel by the PA, several Palestinian intellectuals and journalist, including Hafez Al-Barghouti, the former editor of the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and a Fatah Revolutionary Council member, have criticized the attacks, and especially those carried out by children. They expressed outrage at the participation of teenagers, including very young ones, in stabbing attacks against Israelis, claiming that it was not the place of children, and that their childhood and lives must be protected. They accused the leadership of Palestinian organizations of "trading in the blood of children" and sending them to die by encouraging them to carry out such attacks and praising and glorifying those who do. Some intellectuals called to instill in the public and the youth values of life, study and work, rather than values of seeking death.

Some writers also urged the Palestinians to avoid harming Israeli civilians, for both moral and practical reasons. On the moral level, they claimed that Palestinians must preserve their humanity; on the practical level, they argued that harming civilians, especially at the present time, harms the Palestinian struggle and casues it to be associated with the global terrorism led by ISIS. Some even called to cease stabbing attacks due to their lack of effectiveness and their heavy cost in Palestinian lives, and called to find alternative modes of struggle.

The following are excerpts from the articles:

Criticism Of The Participation Of Children In Stabbing Attacks: We Must Protect Their Childhood

Some writers spoke out against encouraging children to carry out attacks, calling on the public to protect their childhood and not send them to their deaths. On November 11, 2015, Hafez Al-Barghouti wrote: "From the start we said: Do not send your children into the fray, even though the occupation does not distinguish between children, youth, and adults... We must not bring our children into the cycle of violence... Even the Prophet Muhammad refused to bring children into battle... We should keep our children away from the demonstrations in the areas of conflict and clashes so they can experience their childhood. Even if it is a difficult [childhood], it is better than the childhood of the injured, the prisoner, or the martyr who is [completely] bereft of a childhood."[2]

In another article titled "In Defense Of Childhood" Al-Barghouti added: "Do not cheer [the stabbing children] and do not take pride [in them], since this has become a game of blood. Those who scream and roar, congratulating a child for pulling out a knife or a schoolgirl for taking up a pair of scissors, should see them as though they were their own children. Would they agree to throw their son into this furnace?"[3]

Journalist Mohammed Daraghmeh echoed the claim that the attacks were pointless in an article in Sawt Al-Nisa, the women's and social affairs supplement of the PA daily Al-Ayyam. Addressing the youth, he wrote: "Do not march towards death. Palestine needs you alive. You may rage, rebel, and take to the streets and checkpoints. You can block roads, shout, and make your voices heard to the deaf world. If it does not hear you today, it will hear you tomorrow. But do not die. The homeland needs you alive. [True,] it will be a mark of shame for Palestinians, young and old, if they remain silent in the face of the occupation, or remain busy with their own affairs and forget the homeland. However, there must not be only two options: silence or madness. We were silent for a long time and today we are swept up in the madness of destructive revenge. A youth pushed [to the limit] by the occupation may lose all capacity for thought, hide a knife, and take to the street to seek a symbol of the occupation and slaughter it. This has happened and will [continue to] happen, but it remains on the level of individual acts. The youths of Palestine must not all rush to their deaths [en masse] in this fashion. The small number of soldiers killed by stabbing attacks cannot be compared to the large number of Palestinian youths who lay soaking in their own blood at the feet of armed and trained soldiers.

"When the second intifada ended, we stood up as one and said: We made mistakes here and there; sometimes we went mad and sometimes we lost our [humane] feelings. No one had the courage during the intifada to say what was said at its painful end, lest they be harmed. But today we must face ourselves with courage and call things what they are... Indeed, anyone who takes up a knife and attacks a soldier is committing suicide, because the well-trained and armed soldiers will kill him. Every day several Palestinian youths are killed, yet we remain silent or even praise their deaths. We should stand as one and say 'enough'...

"To the Palestinian youths who have lost hope and seek revenge, I say what I say to my children: Take to the streets, go and protest. This is only one round of the conflict, which will not bring about the end of the conflict, but rather a new phase that is necessary for each and every of us... Palestine is an international problem that will be not solved in a round of knife of suicide attacks, or protests and rallies, but only when the world understands that it must intervene and draw borders as it did in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and North and South Korea. How much longer [must we wait]? Until the day comes.

"We must protect the lives of our children and continue the national struggle... If someone asks whether the previous nonviolent struggle against the occupations [the first intifada] brought about the end of the occupation, I will ask in response: Did the armed military struggle accomplish this? The Palestinian problem is not local, but rather an international problem that the world created and only [the world] can solve, but it will not do so if we [either] remain silent or commit suicide."[4]

Jihad Harb, a political scientist and a columnist for the Amad website, which is run by former PA minister Hassan 'Asfour, called in an article to stop the stabbing attacks, since they have played themselves out. He expressed hope that the Palestinian leadership would heed him and protect the lives of the youths "who are pointlessly executed at checkpoints." According to him, "most of those who carried out such operations or attempted them, or those killed due to claims that they tried to stab, were younger than 18 and could not deal with well-protected, armed, and trained soldiers. The stabbing operations have given Israel a pretext to kill our young men and women at checkpoints... The call for the [Palestinian] leadership and organizations to work to stop the stabbing attacks - even though [this leadership and these organizations] did not join those who lead this activity [i.e., the stabbings] - comes to protect the lives of our sons and daughters, whom Palestine needs in order [to build] a better future. This is not a call for a tahdiyya [calm], but rather a call to redirect this activity and develop the methods and means of the popular resistance."[5]

Criticizing The Culture Of Death

Journalist Mahmoud Fanoun wrote in favor of the culture of struggle, victory, and life in place of the culture of pointless death: "You hear children younger than 10 wishing to die a martyr's death... [A child] wishes to die, rather than to live, struggle, fight the enemy, kill him and defeat him. He wants to offer himself up to die at the enemy's hands. Why? Why does he not wish to terrorize the enemy and persist until the enemy leaves Palestine?... When a youth dies wielding a knife - what is the wisdom of this? There is a battle. On one side is the enemy, its army and its settlers, and on the other side is a boy. The battle ends one-sidedly: the enemy kills the Palestinian fighter before he even launches his hidden attack. In this battle the enemy wins and defeats the youth before he even did anything. Had the youth planned this [attack], he could have attacked and survived or [only] sustained injury. These are the rules of war... They say that life is [but] a corridor to the hereafter and therefore it is all right if life is short, since at its end is Paradise and the black-eyed [virgins]. This [belief] does not anger the enemies; on the contrary, they are happy to have defeated the youths, and their soldiers are rewarded, while we experience tragedy in light of the loss of young life and the youths' chagrin at their failure in the battles against the soldiers.

"This is also true of [Arafat's] slogan: 'Millions of martyrs marching on Jerusalem.' Why martyrs? Are we in a swordfight where we are forced to crawl to Jerusalem while the enemy is armed with large quantities of firearms? Why not set out to conquer and win, and then we can arrive safe and sound, even if some of us are killed? These are the rules of war. This culture [of death] does not affect the enemy; on the contrary, the enemy is glad of it... We set out to die and we will indeed die, while the enemy continues to occupy the land from end to end. We achieve martyrdom, if anything at all, while the enemy achieves the homeland, instead of us defeating him and remaining alive."[6]

Criticizing Leaders Of Palestinian Organizations: They Encourage Children To Carry Out Attacks But Do Not Send Their Own Children

The writers also criticized the leaders of the Palestinian organizations, accusing them of encouraging children to carry out attacks while not sending their own children into the fray or carrying out attacks themselves. Hafez Al-Barghouti wrote: "Some organizations and clans that are morally bankrupt go too far with their slogans, acting as though [every] child is a massive army. They make statements, chant [slogans] and call to escalate this action, but in practice they [only] trade in the blood of others and place themselves as the patrons of our blood, while never spilling a single drop of their own."[7]



Hafez Al-Barghouti (Source: Fatehmedia.ps, November 23, 2015)

One day earlier, Al-Barghouti criticized Hamas, which encourages children to participate in violent action: "We must not encourage children to get hit by bullets on the streets. True, we cannot calm raging spirits and boiling blood, but public awareness against [stabbing attacks by children] can create an atmosphere that reduces the pointless motivation [to march] towards the occupation's traps and snares that are present everywhere."[8]

Harsher criticism was voided by Palestinian journalist 'Amid Dwaikat of Voice of Love Radio, who wrote: "Let those who cause children to reach this state show themselves. Let them show us their own children. Do not call to continue [attacks] while you sit [safely] in your offices. God knows what resort your children are vacationing in. Children are not robots that you activate by the push of a button and can shut off as you wish. The blood of these children is on your conscience."[9]

Moahmmed Daraghmeh called on the political leadership of the organizations to speak up: "[The leadership] must channel the surging national rage into protest against the occupation. Protest without death; protest that is all life, revolution, and hope for change."[10]

Journalist Ihab Al-Jariri of Radio 24 FM stated similarly: "Those who write theories on Facebook, behind a computer monitor, and support the idea of children carrying out stabbing attacks and encourage them to do so, should first do it themselves and only then ask the young ones to follow in their footsteps."[11]

Criticism was leveled not only at those who encourage children to carry out attacks and praise them, but also at those who remain silent. Emad Al-Asfar from the Media Development Center at Birzeit University addressed Palestinian organization leaders on his Facebook page, saying: "Send your own men [to attack] with knives and stop welcoming and exalting the actions of children, since you are inciting them to die in vain. Even worse than you are those who do not speak out against this death, especially media personalities and intellectuals.[12]

Schools Should Educate Children To Love Life Instead Of Death

Some writers argued that schools should teach children to love life and explain to them that resistance does not necessarily mean choosing a meaningless death. Hafez Al-Barghouti wrote: "We must set aside [special] classes for young children in schools and teach them how to avoid this slippery slope... Better for the enemy to kill us than for us to encourage our children to march towards this end in vain... Death is not a goal in itself, so do not praise it, so that we do not die in vain. It is our duty to educate the younger generation and instill in it the love of life, study and diligence."[13]

Al-Ayyam columnist Muhannad 'Abd Al-Hamid wrote of the need "to set aside programs in schools and the media to strengthen positive values such as freedom and liberation from the occupation, as well as moral and humane excellence, and justice... There is a need to question social and cultural norms, the political and media discourse, and everything else that might encourage children to embark on violent action that contradicts the qualities of childhood and its natural development." He also called to adopt a national policy that encourages children to participate in nonviolent protests such as candlelight marches, art shows, and music festivals "far from clashes and violence."[14]

Blogger Muhammad Abu 'Allan, who writes about Israeli media, called on Palestinian Education Minister Sabri Saidam "to send a message to schoolchildren that they have a long educational path to complete before [they can contemplate] facing a certain death... Resistance to the occupation does not necessarily mean dying in vain..."[15]

Mahmoud Fanoun wrote: "Why do we educate [children] to die instead of educating [them] to struggle, plan and train for combat?... Why do we educate youths and young children to die, to the point that a youth does not only want people to say to his mother, 'O, mother of the martyr, ululate in joy,'[16] but even dreams of this."[17]

Calls To Keep The Struggle Clean, Avoid Harming Civilians

The involvement of children in perpetrating attacks also prompted a debate about the moral dimensions of the struggle, such as the legitimacy of exposing Palestinian children to danger and also of harming Israeli civilians - an issue not often debated in PA media. Some writers called to avoid targeting Israeli civilians in order to ensure the moral character of the struggle and/or in order to keep the world from labeling the Palestinian struggle as terrorism and as part of the global jihad lead by ISIS.

One of the rare articles calling to avoid harming civilians was published by columnist Hamada Fara'na in the PA daily Al-Ayyam. Responding to an article by journalist Ari Shavit in the Israeli daily Haaretz that dealt with Jewish terror against Palestinians, Fara'na expressed his hope that a Palestinian intellectual would display the same courage and oppose all Palestinian attacks on civilians on the grounds that they are terrorism. He wrote: "The Palestinian struggle against Israel's Jewish-Zionist imperialist enterprise is legitimate, just, and even necessary in order to ensure that Israel pays a steep price for its occupation... However, the Palestinian struggle must be clean of any suspicion of terrorism and must not target Israel's Jewish civilians. It must be a humane and just struggle against the imperialist enterprise that is occupying Palestinian land, and [it must be] the complete opposite of the Islamic terrorism of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, whether [their terrorism] against Muslims or [their terrorism] against Christians and Jews... We must understand the importance of the moral dimension of the Palestinian people's struggle, so that the world feels solidarity and identifies with the Palestinian cause and with the struggle against Israel's imperialism. We must be brave and condemn every act of terrorism, whether it is perpetrated by Palestinians or Arabs, by Muslims or Christians."[18]

Hafez Al-Barghouti wrote similarly: "We must avoid inhuman acts in order to preserve [our] humanity..."[19] In another article he wrote: "It is true that the acts of the lone attackers are not directed [by anyone] and cannot be restrained by the push of a button, but public awareness must nevertheless be directed towards a controlled and moral struggle."[20]

We Must Keep The Struggle Clean To Avoid Being Likened To ISIS

Journalist Mohammed Daraghmeh also called to avoid harming civilians, for practical reasons. He wrote in Sawt Al-Nisaa, Al-Ayyam's women's and social affairs supplement: "The world will resolve the Palestinian problem only if we maintain the humane character of our national struggle. The world will not accept stabbing and vehicular attacks against civilians, just as it opposed suicide attacks. [If we perpetrate such acts] the world, which we are trying to enlist to our cause, will condemn us and distance itself from us. We will lose its [support] and, at the end of the road, we will find ourselves alone, just as [we found ourselves] at the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Our children take up kitchen knives [against the enemy] out of [raw] emotion. We must stand up and say to them: You are throwing away your lives and ours. Palestine needs you alive."[21]

Barghouti, in one of his articles, also focused on the issue of the possible comparison with ISIS. He wrote that the Palestinians should not act so soon after the Paris attacks, since this will only harm them: "We have an obligation to keep our sons and daughters from following in the footsteps of the fanatics and carrying out useless attacks, since the enemies, in their media and diplomacy, associate these attacks with the terror attacks carried out by the terrorist organizations in Paris and elsewhere, in order to present us as inhuman... After the September [11] attacks in New York, [then-Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon [adopted] the term 'terrorism,' which was applied to those attacks, and applied it to our national struggle. Back then I warned against this, and called to keep a low profile until the storm [of the attack in] New York passed. But the term 'Palestinian terrorism' [nevertheless] became common and [was used] instead of the term 'terrorism.' Today, after the Paris attacks, we must keep a low profile so as to avoid being associated with the crimes of ISIS and its ilk. The world is slumbering and will not soon awaken, and therefore we must learn our lesson and wait... The struggle must wait for the right circumstances, and for men [rather than boys]... We must not lose control, and must preserve the essence of the Palestinian cause..."[22]

* C. Jacob is a research fellow at MEMRI.

Endnotes:
He was sentenced to death in the 2002 Akshardham temple attack case, he was subjected to third degree torture in jail to an extent that sometimes he was even given electric shock in his private parts. He was wrongly labeled as a terrorist and put behind bars for a crime he never committed. His name is Mufti Abdul Qayyum Mansuri. However, despite suffering the physical and mental torture for several years, Mufti still feels that India is a better place for Muslims to live in as compared to any other Islamic country, including Pakistan.

After spending 11 years in jail, in 2014 he was acquitted from that case by the Supreme Court. The pain and torture that he went through in those 11 years in jail could not deter his courage and after being released he authored a book titled 11 Years Behind the Bars which is a dreadful narrative of his life in prison.

 Times Of India

While remembering his prison days, Mufti said, When a prisoner is freed from jail, his past always haunts him. It was more of Hindu friends and lawyers who defended and supported me more than the Muslims.

He also recollected the fact that how some security officials changed the rules in order to suit their interest. He even mentions how he was given a choice to choose from any of the three terror attacks cases, so that he can be framed as a terrorist. The cases in discussion are the burning of Godhra train, Akshardham Temple Attack and Haren Pandya murder.

After serving in jail for so many years and with no family to go to, Mufti is a changed man now and despite all this he firmly believes in this country.

Mufti shared his opinion at a function that was organized by a private trust called Sarvoday Youth Welfare Society and said that irrespective of the religion, he will be there for anyone who seeks his help. This shows why he deserves much more respect than all those who try to frame innocent people based on their religion.
Lt. Colonel Niranjan of the NSGs bomb disposal squad made the supreme sacrifice in the ongoing Pathankot terror attacks. The braveheart is survived by an 18-month-old daughter and a wife. Its not hard to imagine how tough a soldiers life is but Indian politicians have failed to uphold the valour of our men on the border time and again. Heres a letter penned by Lt. Colonel Niranjans batchmate that will make you think hard about the state of pain our soldiers live in.

 OneIndia

"R.I.P Lt Col Niranjan Ek.

My Coursemate, my Sutta Pal, Barrack-Type and Punishment-Type. Wish I could turn back the clock for you, Moron!

I would have ensured that instead of CDSE you would have cleared your Civil Services Exam. Your daughter would have had a father to watch her grow up. Your wife would have had a husband to grow old with. And you would never had had to fight to get a decent pension (Not that you would have needed one  everyone knows the price of a Babus signature).

I wish that you had not been a warrior, a leader of men and a guardian of an ungrateful nation. I wish you had been a pen-pushing Babu who charged you just for doing his job. I wish that you had not been an Officer And A Gentleman earning a hardship allowance of Rs.32000 in Siachen. Instead you should have been a blood-sucking Babu earning Rs.72000 HARDSHIP ALLOWANCE for enjoying the salubrious climes of Shillong or Guwahati. Or I wish that you had been a Corporate Honcho, who earns thrice your salary for doing one-fourth of what you do. I wish that you had been an AAM AADMI for whom nothing matters beyond the next increment,the next mobile phone or the next vehicle that he is going to buy.

I wish that you had been anything except what you chose to become  A Real Man, A Professional Soldier, A Leader Of Men, A True Son Of This Ungrateful Nation, Sworn to protect it at all cost. I WishI Wish But You Are No Longer There. So I can only pray that in your next life, you decide to do something worthwhile. Something Anything. Just Dont Repeat The Mistakes You Made In This One..

R.I.P Brother Well Meet In The Afterlife

Now stop whatever you are doing and, for a minute, think what you have done for your country.
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Georgia deepens energy cooperation with Iran, Armenia and Russia

Georgia, Iran, Armenia and Russia are deepening cooperation in the energy sector by increasing the efficiency of the countries electrical systems.Today the four nations signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) that envisaged greater cooperation in the energy sector.Georgias Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze visited Armenias capital of Yerevan to sign the document.The MoC envisages the establishment of a coordination council and a regional dispatch centre to help the four countries react faster and more efficiently to crisis and emergency situations.The action will also allow parties to develop multi-national electricity transit and trade.The MoC will also promote the development of a proper system and inter-system infrastructure.During Kaladzes visit to Yerevan, the Georgian official met Armenias Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan and discussed ways to deepen bilateral relations and future cooperation prospects.East-West Gas Pipeline officially opens in TurkmenistanThe East-West Gas Pipeline to deliver gas from Turkmenistan through Georgia officially opened yesterday.Georgias Economy Minister Dimitry Kumishvili attended the East-West Gas Pipeline commissioning ceremony in Turkmenistan.The ceremony was also attended by Energy Ministers from Turkey, Bulgaria and Ukraine as well as high officials from the Energy Ministries of Romania and Russia. The heads of large corporations operating in the gas sector also attended todays ceremony.The East-West Gas Pipeline runs from the Shatlyk gas compressor station in the Mary province, where Turkmenistans largest gas fields Galkynysh and Dovletabad are located, to Europe via the Belek gas compressor station in the western Balkan province.Earlier it was announced that European Union (EU) is expected to receive gas from Turkmenistan by 2019.The 800km-long pipeline will have an annual capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of gas.Georgia completed building and rehabilitating its section of the East-West Gas Pipeline in March this year.The project was financed by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), who allocated $62 million USD for the project back in 2010.Georgias Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze said the rehabilitation and expansion project of the pipeline supported the development of Georgias safe energy infrastructure. As well as being a transit nation, Georgia will also be able to access some of the gas being transported from Turkmenistan. In March Kaladze said the project was particularly beneficial for residents in western Georgia as it will provide the region with a stable gas supply.The new pipeline will also increase the capacity of transported gas.Within the framework of the East-West Gas Pipeline Rehabilitation project, a 150km section of the pipeline was upgraded and a number of sections were also renewed. These were the Senaki-Poti, Abasha-Senaki, Kutaisi-Abasha, Zestaponi-Kutaisi and Gori-Kareli sections.
The News in Brief

Issue of visa free travel between Russia and Georgia not being discussed  Zurab Abashidze



The issue of visa free travel between Russia and Georgia is not discussed, Zurab Abashidze, the Prime Ministers Special Envoy for Relations with Russia, has declared.



As for the Prague bilateral dialogue format, he says that the Georgian side was informed in the summer with the Russian governments plans to simplify the visa regime with Georgia and later, during a November 19 meeting, it was clearly emphasized that the new visa regime would not take effect till the end of 2015.



According to Abashidze, Georgias government has already assessed this step.

(IPN)







Credit card fraud ring busted in Georgia



The Finance Ministrys investigation service have detained a group of ten people for manufacturing fake credit cards and stealing more than 1.5 million lari.



Investigators describe the case as a large-scale international crime. The ten are suspected of illegally obtaining the data of credit cards belonging to citizens of the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Hawaii and South Korea.



The information was used to register fake credit cards. The next step was to withdraw money with the fake cards.



The total amount of money obtained is more than 1.5 million lari, which is more than USD 600 000. The crimes also affected the banking system. Police seized the fake credit cards in the houses of the detainees, together with data, computers and machinery for making credit cards.

(DF watch)







Armenia, Iran, Georgia, Russia Agree to Work on Interlinked Power Transmission System



Armenia, Iran, Georgia and Russia have agreed to work on development of power transmission system to foster electricity trading between the four countries.



Armenian Energy Minister Yervand Zakharyan, along his Georgian and Iranian counterparts Kakha Kaladze and Hamid Chitchian respectively, as well as the chief executive of Russias power distribution grids company, Rosseti, Oleg Budargin, met in Yerevan on December 23.



A joint memorandum was signed to cooperate in studying technical and legal frameworks for possible synchronous operation of the four countries electricity transmission systems.



While the electricity systems of Iran and Armenia, as well as of Russia and Georgia, are capable of synchronous operation, no such capabilities are currently in place when it comes to all four countries together, according to Russias power grids operator Rosseti.



Rosseti CEO Oleg Budargin said that the energy corridor of Russia-Georgia-Armenia-Iran will be a strategic route for transmission of electricity between the participating states, and the implementation of the signed memorandum will be yet another step in the development of integration processes.



I think we should make maximum use of our countrys geopolitical location, including in terms of [region-wide] electricity trading, Georgian Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze said on December 23.



We have the possibility, especially during the spring-summer period when we have a surplus of electricity, to export it to Iran; in that same period the demand for electricity is high on the Iranian market and we will be able to export electricity not only to Turkey, but also to Iran via Armenia. We will also have possibility to import electricity from Iran during the winter period, when electricity consumption is high in Georgia and when we have a deficit in electricity, Kaladze added.



Armenian Energy Minister Yervand Zakharyan said that the planned 400 kV power transmission line, combined with synchronous operation of power systems of the four countries will contribute to regional cross-border electricity trading.



It will give us the capacity to transmit 1,000-1,200 megawatt electricity from South to North  Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Russia, and vice versa from North to South. It will also provide for synchronous and parallel operation of electricity systems of these states, Zakharyan said.



Speaking at the 26th Meeting of the Energy Charter Conference, held in Tbilisi on December 3-4, Energy Minister Kaladze said that Georgia is considered to be in forefront of fostering regional energy cooperation.



Our goal is to strengthen regional cooperation through electricity trading, as well as through contributing political dialogue and developing transportation routes, Kaladze said.



In this context he noted importance of the Black Sea Energy Transmission Line, running between the east and west of Georgia and connecting to the north-east of Turkey, which was implemented with investments from the EBRD, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the German development bank KfW.



This is one of the most significant infrastructure projects in the energy sector, which links the Georgian and Turkish electricity systems with a capacity of 700 megawatts, Kaladze said at the Meeting of the Energy Charter Conference in Tbilisi in early December.



Logical continuation of this project involves having a similar interconnection with Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is very important for our country, as well as for our neighbours and Europe, he added.



According to the Georgian National Energy Regulatory Commission, the total capacity of Georgias cross-border power transmission stood at 2,230 megawatts as of end-2014; according to the commissions annual report covering 2014, implementation of planned infrastructure projects will increase the capacity to 5,770 megawatts by 2020.

(Civil.ge)




Britain has begun the year by abandoning its strategy on the death penalty which had been in place since 2010  as executions in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan hit record numbers.





Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 people, including at least four protesters, on 2 January. 2015 saw the kingdom execute at least 157 people, according to estimates by international human rights organization Reprieve  believed to be the highest total for two decades.





Meanwhile, Pakistan executed over 300 people since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in December 2014, and Iran executed nearly 1000 people in 2015. At least 600 of those hanged in Iran last year were convicted of drugs offences, the highest total for 16 years.





The UK Government announced last year that it would not be renewing its Strategy on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in 2016. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) also said it would no longer use the term countries of concern when assessing states human rights records. China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia  the worlds most prolific executioners  were all classified as countries of concern in the FCOs most recent Human Rights and Democracy Report (2014).





Reprieve has also questioned why Saudi Arabia was absent from the list of priority countries in the now-defunct death penalty strategy, despite the inclusion of the other most prolific executioners  Iran, Iraq, China, Pakistan and the USA  as well as a number of other countries, such as Jordan and Morocco, which execute at a far lower rate.





Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at international human rights organisation Reprieve said:





With Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan all executing at a horrific rate, now is not the time for the UK to be abandoning its strategy on the death penalty. Taken alongside the decision to stop classifying serious human rights offenders such as Saudi Arabia as countries of concern, this raises suspicions that a desire to avoid embarrassing Britains allies has taken precedence over standing up for basic British principles. The Governments softly-softly approach to Saudi Arabia does not seem to be working  it is time for a re-think.





Source: Reprieve, January 5, 2016




LANSING  Local government leaders are continuing to press Gov. Rick Snyder to veto legislation that would block school districts and municipalities from informing the public about ballot measures within two months of an election.

Municipal and other officials held a news conference in Lansing Tuesday. They say voters need facts to become informed about taxes, charters, land transfers and other local ballot issues, and local governments fill a void as the news media shrinks.

The bill would ban local officials from using public funds for a communication 60 days before an election through radio, TV, mass mailings or robocalls. Read the bill in full here: http://1.usa.gov/22yHU8F.

Huron County commissioners last week urged Snyder to veto SB 571.

Commissioner David Peruski said the section drawing criticism was buried in the last page of the bill."

It reads: A public body  shall not, during the period of 60 days before an election in which a local ballot question appears on a ballot, use public funds or resources for a communication by means of radio, television, mass mailing, or prerecorded telephone message if that communication references a local ballot question and is targeted to the relevant electorate where the local ballot question appears on the ballot.

I really couldnt believe that they did that, Peruski said.

He read it as public agencies could basically not say or do anything to inform voters within 60 days of an election.

His example: If a voter calls the Huron County Road Commission, where there are technically no elected officials because county commissioners appoint road commissioners, and the voter asks about a road millage within 60 days of an election, the road commission couldnt say anything about it or distribute informational pamphlets  they can basically do nothing to help, he said.

The same would be true if a voter sought election information from the Huron Intermediate School District, where there also are no elected officials, Peruski said.

Its literally a gag order (on the county), Commissioner John Nugent said, repeating the notion held by the Michigan Municipal League, League of Women Voters and other organizations.

Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St Clair, voted in favor of SB 571.

I wouldnt categorize it as a gag order, Pavlov said. Its not designed to stop information from flowing to voters. We want informed voters.

Its also not meant to hinder local governments, the senator said.

Instead, Pavlov says the taxpayers interest is at the heart of SB 571.

He said past abuses around the state allowed taxpayer money to fund advocacy efforts against local millages. Its not a widespread issue, but enough to blur the lines between advocating a Yes vote and objectively informing, according to Pavlov.

Its going to clarify that taxpayer money cannot be used to advocate or make an appeal for higher taxes, he said. We want to make sure the person is not pressed politically to raise taxes.

Conservatives say "informational" campaigns are biased and cross the line into improper advocacy, and outside committees can disseminate information without the need for public money.

Snyder has until next week to decide.
BAD AXE  Revenue remained constant and expenses were up slightly in Huron County in 2015, according to Finance Chair Ron Wruble.

Wruble brought 13 resolutions related to the 2016 budget to the final board meeting last week. County commissioners unanimously approved the budget, which Wruble says is incrementally higher than last year.

Wruble said hed have more specific numbers this month, but here are some of the highlights from the finance committee:

 Adding to an extra $1 million in county revenue was the sale of the former Huron Behavioral Health building, which Huron Medical Center bought for about $275,000 in November.

 The sheriffs office was another moneymaker. Housing federal inmates  the county gets $55 per day to house them at the jail  added $160,000 to county coffers.

 The county pocketed more than $160,000 from the Michigan Municipal Risk Management Association, the largest liability and property pool in the state, in part from an insurance distribution announced earlier this year.

 Reviewing wind energy projects and issuing permits banked more than $165,000.

 The largest amount of money set in the 13 resolutions was again for the Huron County Transit fund, at about $3 million. About $2.1 million is marked for roads, and more than $1 million for retirees health insurance, which Wruble says the county isnt in bad shape on, but nowhere out of the woods.

 Unbudgeted expenses totaled about $764,000  twice as much as last year. The county will use part of the $14.5 million in the general fund to cover it.

 About half the costs came from two new boilers for the county building and new switches for the computer information systems department.

 Footing that bill means commissioners had overspent in the capital improvements fund for 2015. Wruble said in July theyd have to be careful on future projects and hold off on larger ones until 2016.

 Contract services ($62,850) and printing and binding for elections ($35,063) were other major expenses.

 While the sheriffs office brought extra revenue, the finance committee says salaries and overtime at the jail amounted to an extra $110,000 in expenses. Several times last year, the sheriffs office said it struggled to fill part-time positions, resulting in overtime for full-timers. Wruble said higher costs of housing prisoners, in part because of higher meal costs, also factored in.

Everything went fairly smooth, Treasurer Debra McCollum told commissioners, adding shes satisfied the countys budget is in good condition.

But McCollum, working with the philosophy that you never know whats going to happen, said budget preparers created a budget bible to follow for the future.
Losing a friend or loved one is always difficult and sometimes traumatic. Whether your best friend or spouse passes away after a long illness or you lose a battle buddy in combat, grieving is painful. There is no right way to cope with losing a friend or relative  it's an extremely personal response that is unique to you and the nature of your loss. But in today's busy world, it can sometimes be difficult to find the time and necessary support to fully process grief.

For Marty, a Vietnam War Veteran, his Army buddies were like brothers, and losing them felt like losing family. He had a difficult time after returning home from service, when memories of the friends who died in combat led to nightmares and feelings of guilt. Marty began spending a lot of time and money at bars, where he frequently got into fights. He finally took steps to get back on track by visiting a Vet Center and getting support through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where he learned how to cope with his challenges. Now he encourages other Veterans to share their experiences and support one another.

VA's Make the Connection campaign features stories of resilience and recovery like Marty's  from Veterans of every age, experience, and service era. MakeTheConnection.net connects Veterans and their families with mental health information and services to discover ways to live more fulfilling lives. Videos of Veterans and their loved ones are at the heart of the campaign, along with information about challenging life events and experiences, signs and symptoms, and conditions. The website also features resources that offer Veterans and their families treatment and support.

The website provides tips for dealing with the loss of a loved one, such as leaning on the support of friends and family. Making sure you eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, and avoid drugs and alcohol can help you take care of yourself as you work through your grief.

There's no need to set a timetable for recovering from your loss  but if your grief makes it hard to function for more than a week or two, you may want to seek support. Talking to close friends and loved ones about your feelings and concerns or joining a grief support group may help you feel less lonely and more connected with other people, while helping you take the pain of loss one day at a time.

In addition to finding support at MakeTheConnection.net, you can connect with care through mental health professionals or other staff members at your local VA Medical Center or Vet Center. Marty made the connection, and so can you.

Make the Connection is also on Facebook and YouTube.
JOHNSTON, Iowa  The military logistics business is not for the faint of heart. Supplies and equipment must be received, inventoried, stored, and issued under stringent rules of accountability.

Joint Forces Headquarters soldiers here can depend on senior supply sergeant Army Sgt. 1st Class Harold G. Tackett, 51, and supply sergeant Army Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Aguirre, 33.

Tackett, who hails from Runnells, Iowa, and Aguirre, who's from Altoona, Iowa, manage the daily logistical support for the Iowa National Guard's JFHQ, United States Property and Fiscal Office, Warehouse 12, Employer Support for the Guard and Reserve, Education Office, Identification Card Section, the U.S. Army Operation Support Airlift Command and 671st Troop Command.

Within JFHQ alone, they service nearly 300 soldiers, 54 percent of whom are officers. All told, this Camp Dodge duo is ultimately responsible for more than $21 million worth of equipment and supplies.

Recognized Excellence

Recently, they were presented the regional Chief of Staff, Army, Supply Excellence Award, which recognizes supply excellence at the organizational level.

"It's validation that we're good at what we do," Tackett said. "We've won the regional competition, after going up against seven other states. Now we go on to the national level."

While recognition is always nice, the duo said their biggest impact is in servicing soldiers through the day-to-day operations of a fluid, functioning logistics system.

JFHQ received 93,000 items from the Defense Reutilization Management Office, worth approximately $840,000. Those items were then re-issued to units throughout the state, making a huge impact on spending, while putting the equipment to good use. They've scored 100 percent on their physical security inspections over the last two years, as well as on their Command Supply Discipline Program.

Organization is Key to Success

Organization is the key factor that's required in managing a successful supply operation, Tackett said.

"You have to be really, really organized in supply," he added. "If you're not organized you'll have nothing but chaos. You simply have to pay attention to detail on a daily basis."

Tackett's been involved with supply throughout his military career, beginning with his first active-duty Army assignment in Okinawa, Japan. After leaving the U.S. Army in 1992, he joined the Iowa Army National Guard.

A 22-year Iowa National Guard member, as well as serving in the active-duty Army for 11 years, Tackett said he's seen or done just about everything when it comes to supply.

"There are too many young supply sergeants today who have been suddenly thrust into new jobs and left to fend for themselves," Tackett said. "You have to mentor junior logisticians on how to do their job and how to do it proficiently. Once you get the basics down, it's easy."

One such soldier is Tackett's right-hand man. A 14-year Iowa National Guard veteran, Aguirre has been a member of the JFHQ supply team since July, when his position moved from the 671st Troop Command and was incorporated with JFHQ.

Aguirre joined the Iowa National Guard in 2001, during his senior year at Ankeny High School. He originally served as a supply technician with the 186th Military Police and then became a supply sergeant for the 671st Troop Command. He began looking into a full-time, Active Guard and Reserve position, so he reclassified into the Unit Supply Specialist career field.

In July, he volunteered to move to Joint Forces Headquarters to assist with supply issues.

"Sergeant Tackett knows everything there is to know about supply," Aguirre said. "Anything I can learn from him definitely helps me. He mentors me, he gives me advice, he answers any and all of my questions."

For these supply soldiers there's no such thing as a typical day at work. An automated property book problem may arise, just as easily as a supply, repair, protocol, or purchasing issue. They may have to prepare weapons and ammunition for the qualification range, while getting ready for the Iowa State Fair Military Day parade.

While having only two supply personnel servicing so many units can provide unique challenges, Tackett said he's confident that he and Aguirre are up to the task.

Taking Care of Customers

"Daniel can do everything I can do, from credit card purchases for local purchases, to dispatching out a vehicle," Tackett said. "I'm in charge ultimately and I oversee everything that comes in and out. Between the two of us, we provide a much better customer service."

According to Aguirre, the best part of the job is taking care of customers. He acknowledged his job can be challenging at times.

"It's pretty amazing how much stuff gets accomplished during the week in order to get ready for a drill weekend. You have to be really fluent in multi-tasking and in working under pressure," he said.

Coming to work is the easiest part of their day, Tackett added.

"It's what happens when you get here," he said with a laugh.
The U.S. Army has launched a formal investigation into how a civilian came to be living in a special operations barracks at a North Carolina base.

A spokesman on Tuesday confirmed that a 15-6 fact-finding investigation was underway in the matter involving a man who last month was found living in the barracks of the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg.

Capt. Douglas Ray, a spokesman for the group, confirmed that the investigation was ongoing but said he couldn't comment on how long the man had been in the barracks, what excuses he may have offered for being there, or why he had not been challenged previously.

Thomas McCollum, the garrison public affairs officer at Bragg, referred questions to the group but added, "This is a very unique and interesting situation."

The case came to light Dec. 16 when the group put out a statement saying that the man was taken into custody when troops "discovered a civilian living in a barracks building occupied by unit soldiers."

The statement said, "The Fort Bragg Provost Marshal was immediately contacted and the individual was detained by the military police. The situation is under investigation."

Two days later, Christina Douglas, Fort Bragg's chief of media relations, said the man had been released without charges.

At the time, Douglas said she couldn't give an explanation on why he had been released or the individual's current whereabouts. She also said she could not comment on how he gained and maintained access to the base, or what his purpose may have been in residing there because of the continuing investigation. The Fayetteville Observer reported that he may have posed as a soldier.

Local news reports, citing social media, speculated that the man may have been living on base for as long as eight months while claiming to be on a special training mission.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@military.com.
Demand for the new tabs had indeed led to small shortages, but the problem was suddenly blown up into something much larger...
Troops and family members who participated in a military-run emotional support and family communication class had their anxiety and depression symptoms halved six months after leaving the program, according to a new report from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Researchers examined military family members at 15 bases with high troop deployments who used the so-called Families Overcoming Under Stress, or FOCUS, program. About 3,500 adults and 3,810 children were examined in the report, which looked at data gathered between 2008 and 2013.

Of the family members examined, about 23 percent of adults were at risk for depression and anxiety symptoms when they started the program while 30 percent of children had behavior problems identified by their parents, the report states. At the six-month mark, however, those rates had dropped to 11 and 14 percent, respectively.

The eight-week program teaches communication skills to participants using a set curriculum developed by UCLA in 2008. Initially offered at a handful of Marine Corps and Navy installations, it's now used at 20 bases worldwide.

The effort is beneficial because it combines communication help with individualized support, according to Patricia Lester, who helped develop the program and co-authored the report.

"It's really reaching into the community, meeting people where they live, where they go to school," she said in an interview with Military.com. "It's not one-size-fits-all. It's where your family is at, what are your needs and really integrating that in a way that's useful to families."

Although researchers stopped their check-ins with families after six months, Lester said she expects that emotional health improvements likely leveled off over time, especially if the families continued to experience new stress and did not receive additional training or reminders about what they had been taught.

Still, she said, the report offers concrete, statistical evidence shows that the program and other, similar interventions are successful.

"Everybody always says These things sound nice, but where's the data?'" Lester said. "I think this helps make the case  yeah, people are using the program, they stayed in the program, they improved using it."

-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @amybushatz.
The U.S. Navy must grapple with traditional competitors such as Russia and China alongside a growing range of other global threats, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said in a report released Tuesday.

The 10-page document, which follows the Maritime Strategy the Navy released last March, details the rapidly changing security environment, the advent of game-changing technologies such as 3-D printing and artificial intelligence, and the way commands across the fleet can work to ensure the service is prepared for future missions.

"Based on the current strategic environment, our Navy is at risk of failing to achieve its potential," said a senior Navy official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the campaign design freely. "If we focus solely on our competitors ... we miss responding to broader forces that are driving fundamental shifts in the security environment. Focusing on the impact of those forces, that's kind of the overarching focus on this."

In the document, Richardson points to three global forces that are changing the way the Navy does business: bustling shipping traffic on oceans, seas and waterways, including new trade routes in the Arctic; the rise of the global information system, empowering anyone with a computer and accelerating the rate of change in all fields; and the increasing creation and adoption of technologies, from robotics to genetic science.

"We must do everything we can to seize the potential afforded by this environment," Richardson wrote. "Our competitors are moving quickly, and our adversaries are bent on leaving us swirling in their wake."

Those competitors and adversaries include an increasingly powerful Russia and China as well as nations with developing nuclear and missile programs, including North Korea and Iran, Richardson said.

And all these challenges come against a backdrop of constrained resources and limited budgets.

"We will not be able to 'buy' our way out of the challenges that we face," he said.

Richardson called for efforts designed to strengthen naval projected power and internal cohesion, strengthen relationships with other services and partner agencies, and promote "high velocity learning" to adapt to new technologies and challenges. Among the action points laid out under those lines of effort was expanding the Navy's use of simulators, online gaming and analytics to develop more creativity and operational agility.

Richardson also called for the acceleration of an initially called "Sailor 2025," the Navy's plan to modernize its personnel structure and career paths, particularly by using information technology to update its personnel system and training.

To strengthen naval power, Richardson instructs units to explore alternative fleet designs, including manned and unmanned systems and kinetic and non-kinetic payloads.

"For the last two decades, we've kind of deployed our forces the same way," the Navy official told Military.com. "What [Richardson] is challenging is, 'Hey, do we have this right? Let's think about it. Given the fact that the maritime environment continues to be contested, are we positioned to deal with threats and adversaries in the future?"

The official said these action points represent opportunities for commanders across the fleet to find solutions, rather than a top-down effort to create change.

"The tasks underneath each of the lines of effort are going to be our way of grading ourselves and we're going to do that at each opportunity," the official said. "Each unit commander is going to create his own unit tasks."

The goals will also be discussed during the CNO's twice-yearly meetings with flag officers, the official said. Richardson is expected to discuss his campaign design in greater detail during appearances at the National Press Club and the Surface Navy Association's national symposium next week.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
These are very sound questions, and I appreciate the candor.



ONE of the reasons that I accept the biblical account over other religious texts is that it comes from a multiplicity of sources over the course of a millennium, rather than from one single individual who claims to have had THE all encompassing vision of ALL truth. Even Mohammad admittedly borrowed from the Hebrew Bible and from early Christian writers to pen the Koran. The probability that all of these ancient prophets over such an incredibly expanded time could convey a cohesive revelation of the same entity with a unified purpose, free of glaring contradictions, is highly improbable if each was acting independently.



It's also significant to me that Judeo-Christianity is so intertwined with actual human history, rather than a disjointed collection of mystical stories of strange beings, gods in the form of animals such as Anubis the jackel-head or Ganesha the one-tusk elephant, and things that allegedly happened somewhere out in the ether that can never be verified. The Hebrew record of Israel's encounter with Yaweh, and the early Christian record of the ministry of Christ and the Apostles are earthy and credible in the purview of human history and archaeology. For me, anything that is credible deserves a closer look.



As far as unicorns, I don't know of any historically credible record of anybody encountering one, or a Pegasus, or a Medusa, or a 10-headed hydra, or an encounter with a guy named Atlas who is holding the world up on his shoulders. Instead we see the mathematical laws of physics propelling the earth at precisely the correct altitude, speed and elliptical rotation to maintain a perfect orbit for--how long do you claim? 4.5 billion years?--with no sign of orbital decay, and at just the right distance from the sun, and tilted at the perfect angle to allow the seasonal changes needed and composed of all of the elements necessary to maintain life, again for billions of years. The probability of such precise mathematical genius happening completely by random accident without intelligent intervention is more inconceivable to me than considering the "evidence" of divine creation and following to where that evidence leads.
A U.S. service member has been killed and two more wounded in fighting in southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon confirmed.

One American troop died as a result of wounds sustained during operations near Marja in Helmand Province on Tuesday and two others were wounded, according to a statement from the Defense Department.

"We are deeply saddened by this loss," Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in the statement.

"On behalf of General Campbell and all of USFOR-A, our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved," he added, referring to Army Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in the country.

The Pentagon is withholding the identity of the service member killed in action to notify next of kin.

The fighting Tuesday against the Taliban was near where the Taliban has made recent gains, the Associated Press reported. Details on the battle were sketchy.

One U.S. official says a U.S. helicopter was sent to the scene to evacuate casualties but did not immediately take off because a mortar landed nearby, the AP reported. It was not clear whether the mortar has damaged the helicopter, it reported.

The officials was not authorized to speak publicly about the fighting and spoke on condition of anonymity, according to the news organization.
One U.S. Special Operations soldier was killed, two others were wounded and a medevac helicopter went down in ongoing action Tuesday to take back territory from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan's southwestern Helmand province, the U.S. military said.

The fighting near Marja, which was the center of the Taliban's drug operations before a major Marine offensive in 2010, highlighted the "continuing risk" to U.S. and coalition forces in their mission to train, advise and assist Afghan troops, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook.

Two Air Force Special Operations HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters were sent to evacuate the Americans from the Marja firefight but neither was able to carry out the mission, Cook said. One was waved off, possibly because of enemy ground fire, and the second went down after apparently hitting a rotor blade off the wall of an Afghan compound.

Cook could not confirm reports that the second helicopter was also hit on the ground by enemy mortar fire or whether there were additional casualties aboard that helicopter. Cook also could not confirm whether the U.S. casualties had been evacuated from the scene, but added, "I'm not aware of anyone that's not been accounted for."

"There's fighting on the ground as we speak," Cook said at a Pentagon news conference, and it was difficult to provide details on the Marja action that occurred as U.S. Special Operations forces came to the aid of Afghan Special Forces.

A statement from Brig Gen. Wilson Shoffner, a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan in Kabul, said, "One U.S. service member died as a result of wounds sustained during operations near Marja in Helmand Province today" and two others were wounded.

On behalf of Army Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, and all U.S. troops in Afghanistan, "our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved," Shoffner said.

The death of the soldier near Marja was the first combat fatality for the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2016 and came amid a series of setbacks and mounting casualties for the Afghan National Security Forces, a wave of bombings in Kabul and the "emergent threat" from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in southeastern Afghanistan.

Last year, 27 coalition troops died in Afghanistan, including 22 Americans. That was the lowest casualty total for U.S. and coalition forces since 2002.

Despite the growing Taliban threat, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter had no plans to change the train, advise and assist mission or increase the number of U.S. troops, Cook said. "We believe we're on the right course," Cook said, while acknowledging "this has been a difficult day."

Western media reports said that the action in Marja came in an operation in which the Afghan forces were seeking to reopen the road between Marja and the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah to the northeast in Helmand.

Heavy fighting to the north in the Sangin district, which was a frequent battleground for the Marines, had threatened the fall of Lashkar Gah, once the headquarters for British operations in the region.

Combat operations for U.S. forces ended in 2014 and President Barack Obama's plan had been to reduce the number of American troops there to about 1,000 by the end of 2016. However, Obama later went along with Gen. Campbell's recommendation to keep the troop strength at about 9,800 through 2015 while aiming to reduce forces to about 5,000 by the end of 2016.

In a Dec. 30 interview with USA Today, Campbell said he might ask for additional forces if Afghan National Security Forces attempts to beat back the Taliban offensives fail.

"If I don't believe that we can accomplish the train, advise and assist and the (counter-terrorism) missions, then I owe it to the senior leadership to come back and say, 'Here's what I need.' If that's more people, it's more people," Campbell said.

"There is reason to hope, despite it all" in Afghanistan, Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon said Monday at a forum on the future of Afghanistan. He cited a recent survey by the Asia Foundation showing that Afghans had a "greater fear" about the country's future but also "expressed high confidence in their army and police."

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Brookings senior fellow, noted the impact of the "brain drain" on Afghanistan's development as more and more young Afghans give up on their prospects at home and flee the country. About 70,000 mostly young Afghans left last year and made up the fifth largest group of refugees seeking to gain permanent homes in Europe, Felbab-Brown said.

While acknowledging the military threat posed by the Taliban, Felbab-Brown said that "politics are really at the core of Afghanistan's troubles" as regional powerbrokers and former President Hamid Karzai continue to undercut each other.

She predicted another year of turmoil in 2016 marked by a "continuing dire economic situation, outflow of people, a major Taliban push and a political system stuck in infighting."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@military.com.
U.S. Marshals arrested an active-duty Marine on Tuesday in connection to the New Year's Eve murder of a woman in Denton, Texas, an official said. Cpl. Eric Johnson of Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1 was arrested at the north gate of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, around 6:30 a.m., officials with the air station said in a press release. The arrest followed the issuance of a warrant in connection with the shooting. Officials didn't immediately have additional information about Johnson and his military career. Sara Mutschlechner, a 20-year-old student at the University of North Texas, was shot just after 2 a.m. Jan. 1 after leaving a New Year's Eve party, according to reports in the Denton Record-Chronicle. She was driving a four-door Hyundai when an SUV pulled alongside her. An individual in the SUV opened fire, shooting Mutschlechner in the head, causing her to lose control of the car and crash into an electric pole. She died at Denton Regional Medical Center that evening. The Yuma Provost Marshall's Office and Naval Criminal Investigative Service assisted the U.S. Marshal Service and the Yuma Police department in the arrest of Johnson, officials said in the release. They continue to support the ongoing investigation into the crime. --Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Last week, GM Dave Stewart told the Arizona Republics Nick Piecoro that his Diamondbacks have been in contact with second baseman Howie Kendrick, and today, FOXs Jon Morosi characterizes discussions between the two sides to be ongoing. Nothing is close between the two sides, per Morosi, and it should be noted that Piecoro wrote last week that the D-backs seem reluctant to sign a player that would require draft pick forfeiture, as Kendrick would.

Arizona has a number of infield options already, though presumed starter Chris Owings certainly doesnt have Kendricks track record and is, in fact, coming off a dreadful season that was submarined by shoulder problems. Other internal options for the Diamondbacks at second base include prospect Brandon Drury (though he can also play third base) and struggling veteran Aaron Hill, who has one season remaining on his deal.

Despite the presence of in-house alternatives  at least one of whom, Owings, was recently viewed as a core player in the future  this isnt the first instance of the D-backs being connected to second base upgrades. Arizona was also said to have discussed a swap of Hill and Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips. While that may appear curious at first glance, such a move wouldve saved the Reds quite a bit in terms of salary and relieved some burden from their payroll in the nearer future; Arizona, in turn, would reallocate Hills salary to a more productive veteran player. Ultimately, Piecoro reported last week that the D-backs werent comfortable with the salary that the Reds wanted them to assume in a Phillips/Hill swap. (And, of course, theres the question of the trade veto ability that comes with Phillips 10-and-5 rights.)

Digression aside, Kendrick would seem to represent an upgrade over what the D-backs have in house. The 32-year-old has batted .295/.340/.414 over the past three seasons despite playing in considerably more pitcher-friendly environments than Arizonas Chase Field. Kendrick has been remarkably consistent throughout his Major League tenure, providing offense that rates anywhere from a shade below to considerably above the league average when looking at league- and park-adjust metrics such as OPS+ and wRC+. Kendrick has never batted lower than .279 in a full season and never posted an OBP south of .313. His career .293/.333/.423 batting line is impressive and a reflection of his repeated seasons of quality at-bats.

However, Kendrick isnt without his red flags, either. Much of his value has come from his quality defense over the years, and he took a significant step backwards in that regard last season. Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved pegged Kendrick at -4.5 and -12 runs, respectively, despite his longstanding history of solid glovework. Kendrick, who has also been highly durable, missed more than a month on the disabled list due to a hamstring strain as well. While that incident could very well be isolated in nature, one cant blame any team for hesitating to surrender a draft pick in order to sign a 32-year-old second baseman with a good-but-not-great bat and possibly deteriorating defensive skills to a long-term pact.

Morosi also notes that the Angels could potentially fit the description of a contending team with a need at second base, though Id add that owner Arte Morenos aversion to the luxury tax would make that a tough fit. If the Angels were to sign Kendrick, from my view, they may as well sign an impact left field bat to upgrade the lineup at that point, shifting Craig Gentry and/or Daniel Nava into backup roles.
Old National Bank was one of the first banks that brought Health Savings Accounts (HSA) to market after they were established as part of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act in 2004.

A HSA is a savings account used in conjunction with a high-deductible health insurance policy that allows users to save money tax-free against medical expenses.

With their swift action upon the Act's passage, Old National Bank garnered plenty of national attention. Old National Bank soon became the HSA Trustee for the State of Indiana employees -- and since has largely expanded into the national market, currently serving clients in 50 states.

The Indiana-based bank's recent arrival in Michigan means their prevailing experience and expertise are now accessible to Michigan employers looking to bolster their employee packages.

"It's important for employers and employees alike," said Kathy Goffer, HSA relationship manager for Old National Bank. "The HSA Authority works with healthcare professionals to be able to provide HSAs to employees. In Michigan, it only strengthens their employee benefit packages."

In a competitive job market, HSA availability for employers can assist in attracting top talent. According to a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services survey of human resource leaders, 60 percent said an attractive benefits package is "very important" in recruiting and retaining quality employees.

As such an integral component to an employee's benefits package, Old National Bank designed the HSA Authority program to be both educational and service focused. It aims to be a partnership to help employers create customized, innovative HSA solutions.

"Old National Bank and the HSA Authority has been a great fit for the city of Brighton," said Jennifer Burke, human resources director for the city of Brighton. "Any time I have questions or need assistance, their customer service is impeccable."

Intensive service and turnkey HSA solutions are what separates Old National Bank from other HSA administrators. As a bank entrenched in HSA expertise since its inception in the market, employers can expect high-quality services for what could become an integral element of its success.

"Employers all over Michigan are working to put together packages that bring value to their employees," Goffer said. "The difference we bring to the table is expertise. We go out and help employers educate employees on how to use these tools and why there's need for these types of things."

Learn more about the HSA Authority at thehsaauthority.com.

Click here to learn more about how Old National Bank is investing in Michigan.
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Atwater Brewery's riverfront location in downtown Detroit.

(Tanya Moutzalias)

DETROIT - Craft brewing is becoming an increasingly competitive arena, but Atwater Brewery owner Mark Rieth said the Detroit brews are going strong.

According to a Monday release, Atwater Brewery saw a 25 percent revenue increase in 2015 across the country.

"The beer business is extremely competitive but our brands have remained strong, especially our Dirty Blonde and Vanilla Java Porter that continue to be market leaders," Rieth said. "With 26 distinct flavors to offer, two award winning brewpubs and a third one in the works, Atwater is able to appeal to the whole spectrum of beer drinkers at our own locations as well as through our extensive Michigan and national distribution network."

In Michigan, Atwater saw a 40 percent increase in revenue. The Mitten State is fifth in the nation when it comes to the number of breweries and brew pubs.

In 2015, Atwater entered the Canadian market (with Vanilla Java Porter handles reaching Toronto) and expanded to 30 U.S. states. Rieth and his team of 44 employees also launched a line of spirits, reopened the riverfront Biergarten and Taproom, came up with five new beers and announced a line of new labels.

In the summer of 2016, the Detroit-based brewery will open another biergarten and tap house in Grand Rapids.

"The good times are continuing for microbreweries in Michigan," Rieth said in a release, "and as the state's third biggest brewer we've got a lot at stake. We're particularly excited about the new growth in our home market and we're continuing to compete aggressively for wider distribution, new flavors, and new locations elsewhere. We've always said we want to 'bring Detroit everywhere' and in 2016 we'll be going after new customers wherever we can find them to enjoy our beers and help us spread the word."

Rieth plans to get Atwater beer into Georgia, New Jersey and New York City in 2016.

Rieth has said that Atwater is still looking at opening a tap room in downtown Detroit.

Currently, the riverfront location is open as a tap room Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Ian Thibodeau is the business and development reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- At the Watercooler is a listing of announcements from Southwest Michigan businesses, individuals and organizations.



WORTH A LISTEN



-Entrepreneur Josh Cook, co-founder of Green Door Distilling Co., will share his company's marketing and business vision at the InterCom 2nd Friday Speakers' series on Friday (Jan. 8). The event is scheduled for noon, with networking starting at 11:30 a.m. in Room 128 of Kalamazoo Valley Community College's Anna Whitten Hall, 202 N. Rose St. Green Door Distilling, which was launched in November 2014, specializes in handcrafted artisan spirits and uses only locally grown grains from Michigan to produce those spirits. Cook has said the area's abundance of natural resources and its legacy of entrepreneurialism bode well for startups like his. Green Door is at 429 E. North St. in the city of Kalamazoo's Rivers Edge district.

-Dr. Richard Bush, director of the Center for East Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, will present "Taiwan's Election Outcomes and U.S.-Taiwan-China Relations," at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 20 at Western Michigan University. Taiwan is scheduled to hold a general election on Jan. 16 and may elect the first female president (Tsai Ing-wen) in its history. That is likely to have profound implications on U.S.-Taiwan-China relations. Bush, who has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, will speak in Room 2028 of Brown Hall on the WMU campus, as part of the timothy Light Lecture Series on China. A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, he joined the Washington, D.C.-based think-tank in July of 2002 after serving nearly five years as chairman and managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan, through which the U.S. conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

A HIGHER LEVEL

-Bjorn Green, a senior principal and planner with the TowerPinkster architectural and engineering firm, has achieved a career milestone by passing the planning certification examination of the American Planning Association. He joins an elite group of professional planners worldwide who have American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) certification, indicating a higher level of leadership, education and professionalism. Green has been with TowerPinkster for eight years. His notable projects include planning work for KVCC Bronson Healthy Living Campus, Aquinas College Campus Master Plan, Northwood University Campus Master Plan, the Kalamazoo County Facility Master Plan.

-Christopher J. Tarkowski, of Greenleaf Trust, has been authorized by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards to use the Certified Financial Planner trademark and CFP certification marks. The certification identifies individuals who have met the rigorous experience and ethical requirements of the CFP Board, have successfully completed financial planning coursework and have passed the CFP Certification Examination. Tarkowski has been with Greenleaf Trust since January of 2014 and is responsible for providing trust services to individual clients and nonprofit organizations. Greenleaf Trust is a Kalamazoo-based, independent Michigan-chartered trust-only bank.

-Jordan Goodwin, of Oak Point Financial Group, recently completing all levels of LPL Financial's AdminU Program. The program involves learning about LPL advisory platforms and working with its advisory consulting department along with LPL's marketing gateway. Goodwin was recently promoted from Administrative Assistant I to an Administrative Assistant II. Oak Point Financial Group is a registered investment advisor and separate entity from LPL Financial. Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC.

WORTH PRAISE

-Western Michigan University advertising and promotion student Carlos Pinon, of Coldwater, is one of 50 students nationwide selected by the American Advertising Federation to participate in the organization's Most Promising Multicultural Students Program for 2016. As such, Pinon is the recipient of the annual, nationwide award for college seniors with exceptional academic and professional achievements. He is the first student from WMU to receive the recognition and will represent WMU at the program in New York City in February. Pinon was nominated by Karen Lancendorfer, associate professor of marketing and director of the WMU advertising and promotion program.



WORTH NOTING

-ServePro of East Kalamazoo & West Kalamazoo County has a new location. The nationwide fire and water cleanup and restoration business has relocated from Lake Street in Kalamazoo to 832 Lenox Ave. in Portage. Its new 7,784-square-foot location has about 5,000 square feet of warehouse space. The building is owned by Stancati & Lambright LLC, a partnership of local investors. NAI Wisinski of West Michigan broker Marc Tourangeau, acting as dual agent for both owner and tenant, negotiated the lease. NAIWWM is a full-service commercial real estate firm that is headquartered in Grand Rapids with a second office in Kalamazoo.

-The Can-Do Kitchen, as it prepares to relocate this year and become an independent operation, reported that 2015 was a good year. The local incubator for commercial cooking and those trying to work their way into the food industries:

*Supported eight new startups and 12 core businesses;

*Wrapped up the first cycle of Business Builder Scholarships, providing startup capital to nine entrepreneurs who lacked the funds necessary to start businesses;

*Helped four clients who now distribute their products in the Detroit and Grand Rapids areas;

*Helped three new clients attain state-required food establishment licenses;

*Provided the kitchen space necessary for 50 products to be produced each week.

*Helped one business graduate into its own facility;

*Facilitated efforts for three clients who were able to hire new employees.

After seven years as a program of Fair Food Matters, the Can-Do Kitchen is poised to become a separate 501(c)3 non-profit organization and will relocate from 511 1Harrison St. to a larger, interim kitchen location that it has not yet announced.

At the Watercooler -- includes the widest variety of general interest business announcements, everything from trade industry awards to staff recertifications. Things that might be included: awards; notices of recognition from an industry trade association; election to a local, regional, state or national business organization; significant changes in business hours; the change of a business location.

Also included are announcements of new businesses in our readership area. With some zigs and zags, that runs from Allegan County in the north, to the Indiana border in the south, and from the Lake Michigan shoreline in the west to just the other side of the Calhoun County border in the east. We require the name of the enterprise, its location, a brief description of the business it conducts, the name(s) of the owner(s) and, where applicable, its hours of operation.

Please send information to ajones5@mlive.com.
LANSING, MI -- A bill that would ban public entities from distributing information about ballot proposals close to an election is sitting on Gov. Rick Snyder's desk, but dozens of local officials are urging him to veto it.

Senate Bill 571 passed the legislature on Dec. 16 with some extensive last-minute revisions. The bill expanded from 12 pages to 53 pages, but of all the changes one provision has rankled cities and school districts: the one that would prevent public entities from distributing information about a ballot proposal in the 60 days before an election.

"In other words, in the weeks before an election we cannot use a mailing or local cable outlets to inform our constituents if a measure will raise or lower their tax rate, who it will affect, if it will mean the community will be selling a piece of property and where it is, how a charter change will affect them or anything else," said Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly, president of the Michigan Municipal League.

It's already the case that public bodies cannot use public funds to advocate for or against a ballot proposal. What they can do is distribute factual information without telling voters how to vote on an issue. That would end 60 days before an election under this bill, which local leaders said at a press conference Tuesday would put local governments at a huge disadvantage.

"I think the point is if I was strategically opposing a millage, I would wait until the last 60 days to oppose the millage and then you have no chance for rebuttal," said Terry Jungel, executive director of the Michigan Sheriff's Association.

Republican Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett said perhaps this is a legislative effort to stop tax increases, but that's not what's going on in his community. Over the past four years the largely conservative community has considered seven ballot proposals, and only one was a tax increase.

To educate voters on these issues, which are often complicated, Rochester Hills government has turned to YouTube and public access television. But the line could get blurry.

"Can I respond to a resident asking a question about a millage proposal? It's very concerning," Barnett said.

That concern was echoed by Democratic Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly, who said "we're going to end up having a lot of effort made trying to interpret where that line is."

Michigan Municipal League President and CEO Dan Gilmartin said it was a mistake to rely on traditional media to inform voters at a time when reporters are dwindling in number.

"There have been huge cuts in media... we've seen the last couple of decades," Gilmartin said.

Under the bills, he said a local official wouldn't even be able to mention an important community ballot issue in their newsletter.

Groups urging Snyder to veto the bill include:
With the killing of deer in Ann Arbor parks set to begin, residents against the cull showed up to Monday night's City Council meeting once again in protest.

The council had a relatively light agenda with no decisions about the deer cull or anything else controversial, but protesters still packed the county board room, where the council met due to renovations in city hall.

Not all were able to get a seat, as the crowd spilled out into the hallway.

"What do we want? Stop the shoot! When do we want it? Now!" the protesters chanted between speakers, wearing red and holding up anti-cull signs.

The meeting ended with council members standing behind their 10-1 decision from November to proceed with bringing sharpshooters into city parks to kill up to 100 deer this winter. The cull is scheduled to take place between now and March 1.

Roughly two dozen parks on the north and east sides of town are scheduled to close from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays during the cull.

10 things to know about the deer cull

City officials were unable to confirm whether the cull began as planned Monday night. The city is contracting with U.S. Department of Agriculture sharpshooters.

Police Chief Jim Baird said he knows when the sharpshooters are going to be out, but he's not going to share specific information for safety reasons.

Some city officials are concerned protesters will try to disrupt the cull if the public knows exactly when and where shooting is taking place.

Barry Powers, a Bloomfield Hills attorney representing Ann Arbor Residents for Public Safety in a lawsuit seeking to halt the cull, spoke out at Monday night's meeting and served city officials with copies of the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges several laws will be violated if any shooting takes place in the city.

Powers paced around the board room, waving a copy of the lawsuit, as he addressed council. It became contentious as council members repeatedly urged him to return to the speakers podium, which he eventually did after initially trying to talk over the council members asking him to move to the microphone.

"Pardon me, I think my voice is loud enough to fill this room," Powers yelled back at the council at one point.

Continuing to speak loudly, Powers expressed disapproval of the city's leaders, suggesting they weren't very responsive when he tried reaching out in advance of the cull starting. He called the cull a "blatant repudiation of state law" and he said no municipality is above the law.

"Does anybody care about the law in Ann Arbor, or are you a third-world nation under yourselves?" he asked.

Powers received a round of applause from residents in the audience after giving his speech.

Council members later met behind closed doors with the city's attorneys to discuss the lawsuit. The city maintains the cull, which is permitted by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, is legal.

The council heard from several residents Monday night who argued the cull is ethically and morally wrong.

Robert McGee, founder of Ann Arbor Residents for Nonlethal Deer Management, criticized the city for asking the state to classify the cull as a non-hunting activity so a safety-zone requirement wouldn't apply. The DNR responded last month by saying there does need to be a safety zone and no shooting can occur within 450 feet of occupied buildings without written consent from the owners or occupants.

"Seriously, the state had to step in and protect the safety of Ann Arbor residents," McGee said, speaking before council.

McGee said citizens against the cull intend to hold the city and the sharpshooters accountable to the 450-foot rule.

In just a few days, he said, they've collected enough signatures from residents against shooting near their homes to prevent any culling in four parks and nature areas: Arbor Hills, Foxfire West, Foxfire South and Narrow Gauge Way.

Similarly, McGee said, culling will be "extremely limited" in five other parks and nature areas where residents are opposed to shooting near their homes: Traver Creek, Dhu Varren Woods, Oakwoods, Oakridge and Ruthven.

"We have only just begun," McGee said. "We have people canvassing every park on this list."

Paula Uche, another resident who spoke, urged council to call off the cull, saying deer eat plants to live and shouldn't be killed for it.

"I see some of you are rolling your eyes, but I hope you hear this," Uche told council members.

Uche called Ann Arbor's deer "refugees," saying developers have bulldozed their habitats, and now they're seen by some as an inconvenience.

"And instead of being concerned about their hunger and displacement, to quote Charles Dickens, we consider them a surplus population," she said.

Uche said the city should be mindful of deer in its development planning and require developers to do environmental studies, figuring out where there are deer trails, and help deer navigate through subdivisions, and plant deer-friendly food.

"Other communities have done so, and we can emulate," she said. "Please consider alternatives to the cull."

Ellen Rowe, who lives on the city's north side, also voiced opposition to bringing sharpshooters into parks to kill deer.

She said she enjoys trail running. And even though the parks are going to remain open most of the day during the cull, and on weekends, she said she can't imagine going in them and finding blood splatter.

"I believe that I represent a great number of Ann Arbor residents who do not believe that wildlife is a disposable commodity," she said. "Many residents are not just upset; they are shocked and horrified."

Rowe said she has deer in her backyard occasionally. And while she's not thrilled about having shrubs and plants eaten, she said, she considers it a logical outcome of having the good fortune to live in such a beautiful area.

"When necessary, I replace bushes or plants with deer-resistant species," she said. "And even with deer present, I have managed to create an attractive area that I enjoy spending time in. I also had a deer-car crash several miles outside of town five years ago, and, because of it, now exercise more caution, paying attention to existing signage, driving slower, and keeping an eye out for bright eyes at night."

Rowe said maps of car-deer crashes show clear patterns, and the city can reduce crashes with fencing, reflective strips along roadway edges, and possibly blinking signs during peak deer traffic times.

Manish Mehta, another resident who spoke Monday night, said it was sad that he had to come appeal to council to take a non-violent approach.

"You're deliberately taking lives of sentient beings," he said. "These are sensitive animals. They are intelligent ... and here we are taking a firing squad approach to shooting away our small problems with nature, just because we can't control our behavior or change our driving patterns, etc."

Council Member Sabra Briere, D-1st Ward, offered a response from the council table following Monday night's public commentary.

Briere said she had a meeting on Monday with the city's administration and learned new information about the cull.

She said the city has worked with Ann Arbor Public Schools to provide information on the cull. And in at least one elementary school location, she said, the school district has added bus routes to transport students safely so they don't need to walk through a park that is adjacent to areas where culling could occur.

She said the city also sent notices about the cull in December to each occupied building that is adjacent to parks on the list of cull locations.

The city also is making new signs for each of the parks where culling could occur, including information in English, Chinese and Spanish.

If residents have concerns or questions about the cull, Briere said they should email deermanagement@a2gov.org.

She said the city won't be issuing new maps showing which areas of which parks could be used for the cull taking into consideration the 450-foot rule.

"Each person involved in the cull will be using GPS, global positioning satellites, to monitor their location with regard to private property and proximity to occupied buildings," she said. "At this time, the city is not soliciting permission from residents to fire weapons closer to occupied buildings than 450 feet."

In the event the city does want to go that route, Briere said, all permissions will have to be given in writing.

Briere said the city has not yet conducted an updated aerial count of the deer population because it works better when there's snow on the ground. The last count in March of last year found 168 deer in areas in and around the city.

"One of the problems that we are going to continue to face is that we don't have a long history of metrics," Briere said of the city's data on the deer population. "We simply have the ability to look at what's happened in other communities."

The deer cull has been controversial since the idea was first proposed. In an online survey conducted by the city last year, nearly 57 percent of respondents expressed at least moderate support for some form of lethal cull, though 48 percent said they were specifically against bringing in sharpshooters in the winter.

The extent of the recently announced park closures has prompted more backlash, including from some people who said they previously supported a cull.

Council Member Julie Grand, D-3rd Ward, said she's confident with Dave Borneman of the city's Natural Area Preservation program on board with the cull.

"We're very fortunate to have Dave Borneman leading this charge," she said. "He has been with the city for approximately a quarter of a century, and he knows these natural areas so intimately, and I don't believe he would agree to do this if he didn't believe they were truly threatened. And that to me is really at the heart of what this is all about -- it's about protecting our natural areas.

"And when I see people being concerned about not being able to use them, because they value them so highly, I want the next generation to be able to use them as well."

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
Camelot said: If armed Muslim Americans seized a Federal facility, how would you like our government to react ? Click to expand...

Primarily the same way the local authorities are handling it. As long as there is no threat of looting or arson, let the situation play-out on it's own. Allow them to voice their grievances. If either group resorts to violence then the authorities must step in and end the matter.
Air power has been a key factor in the recent civil wars in Syria and Iraq. Air attacks were directed against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) or known as Daesh that seized significant areas in these countries. Its rapid growth and victories over the weakened Iraqi and Syrian regimes drew international response in both theaters.

However, unlike the direct involvement of the Superpowers in the 20th century, military interventions in the 21st century are so far limited to the assistance of local forces, by training, equipping and air support. This strategy was first tested in Libya and is now employed in Iraq and Syria, by US forces in Africa and by the Russians in Ukraine and Syria. It has not been the case in Yemen and Central Africa where Saudi-led Arab coalition is fighting in Yemen, and French forces are directly involved in the fighting in Mali.

An international coalition led by the USA and Arab nations supports the Iraqi government in its fight against Daesh; while in Syria. The same coalition is active against this group as well as the Khorasan, an extremist jihadi Islamic group. The massive Russian intervention that began in October 2015 has changed this Daesh focus, as the Russians are primarily supporting the Syrian government in its fight against all rebel forces.

The Syria and Iraq Air Theater

While 65 countries are supporting this war effort, only 8 are directly committing air power to the campaign. Since the interests of the regional powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Gulf States are different from those of NATO and Russia which are carry the weight of the air campaign. Therefore, while the air forces are cooperating with each other, the governments are not always ready to shoulder, particularly where access to their air bases and overflight permissions are concerned.

The Syrian theater is of particular concern, as the entire theatre is considered contested airspace. Despite four years of extensive conflict, the Syrian military still possesses substantial air defense and air force, and electronic warfare capabilities. Therefore, operations of combat support elements, such as refueling aircraft, command & control and electronic attack is limited. Due to the size of the country and distance from operating bases used by the coalition, the endurance of strike packages over their targets is quite limited and therefore they tend to attack known targets rather than prosecute targets of opportunity by short sensor-to-shooter cycles often employed over Iraq and Afghanistan.

Considering those risks, the US Air Force employed its F-22 Raptor fighters to launch the opening strikes of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) in September 2014. It was the first combat missions for the Raptors. These 5th generation stealth fighters were used to to safely probe the Syrian airspace and set the operating rules, without the need to consult and coordinate the attack with the Syrian and air force. Based in Al Dafra airbase in the UAE, F-22s are also used on other operations on demand.

Apart from the air defense assets operated by the Syrians, some of the rebel groups, have obtained Man Portable Air Defense missile systems (MANPADS) looted from military facilities abandoned by the Syrian Army or obtained from the Libyan theater. Small and medium caliber anti-aircraft weapons, primarily Russian 23mm cannons also fell into rebel hands. Both weapon types pose significant risk to low flying aircraft, particularly attack helicopters (AH-64 operated by coalition forces, and Mi-28N operated by the Iraqi Army). Close air support aircraft such as the A-10C and Su-25 are also at risk, when flying rocket and gun strafing runs at low altitude.

The target areas in Syria and Iraq are far from each other. Those in Northern Syria stretch along Daesh land along the Euphrates valley in the East, with the main concentrations at Dir Ez Zor and Ar Raqqa. Along the coastal area hot spots are located in the North West, where Turkish supported rebels are fighting other Islamist groups. Homs and Palmyra in the center are other Daesh concentrations, while others are located in Damascus area, in the South West and along the Jordanian and Iraqi borders in South.

To best serve those targets, multiple forward operating bases are employed. Flight ranges from operating bases in the region to targets in Iraq and Syria vary from few dozens of miles from air bases in South Turkey to the north of the Syria, and few hundreds of miles from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus to targets in Western Syria. However, the shortest paths must pass through SAM protected areas in Syria, recently bolstered by Russian SAMs. Key locations in Syria are protected by Pantsir S1 (SA-22) and SA-17 Buk 2M SAMs, which are especially lethal against aircraft flying in low or medium altitudes. THere are also older SA-8 Gecko mobile air defense systems, some reportedly fell into rebel hands.

Coalition forces have lost several drones over Syria, an F-16 of the Royal Jordanian Air Force was also lost, its pilot captured and killed by Daesh. Two years ago an F-16 of the US Air National Guard crashed in Jordan, but official sources did not attribute this loss to combat actions.

Azraq Royal Jordanian Air Base is also located about a hundred miles from some of the targets in the South East Syria is best positioned for those operations, and was occupied by French, Dutch and US combat elements, besides the Jordanian Air Force F-16s based here.

Other bases located throughout the Arabian Gulf  in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE stretch the flight over 500 miles or more to the nearest target, and, therefore serve mainly forces assigned to the Iraqi theater. However, the relatively permissive airspace over Iraq enables the deployment of aerial refueling. Air power, deployed from aircraft carriers in the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean also launch strikes at targets in Syria and Iraq. Those carriers based in the Arabian Gulf are also tasked with missions over Iraq.

Currently positioned at a striking range from Syria and Iraq are the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle stationed in the Red Sea and US 5th fleet carrier Harry S. Truman, that has entered the Persian Gulf in December. The Truman will remain in the area until June 2016. Previous missions involved the carriers USS George H.W. Bush, Carl Vinson and Theodor Roosevelt.

While the number and status of Syrian air force and air defense forces is not clear, Iraq is just beginning to rebuild its air force, devastated during the 1991 and 2003 wars. Today the Iraqi Air Force is gradually developing an air combat muster, although these capabilities are slow do evolve. In July the first of 36 F-16s fighter jets supplied by the US began to arrive in Iraq, stationed at Ballad airbase north of Baghdad. Prior to the delivery of the American jets 2014 Iraq also received By September these jets performed the first strikes. The Iraqis have also obtained seven Su-25 from Iran and Mi-28NE attack helicopters from Russia, operated from the Imam Ali airbase in Southern Iraq. The nearby Kut Al-Hayy airbase provides the operating base for the new Iraqi drone unit, equipped with Chinese CH-4B armed drones.

Stay tuned for the next parts: Coalition Air Power, The Russian Air Campaign and Targeting ISIS Economic Assets
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Beginning New Years Day, its no longer legal to smoke electronic cigarettes or other nicotine delivery devices in or near workplaces, restaurants and bars.

The Oregon Indoor Clean Air Act expansion went into effect Friday throughout the state, and the Linn County Public Health Department is available to help businesses comply with the new law.

The ban includes e-cigarettes, vaping pens and e-hookahs.

Smoking cigarettes, pipes and cigars in or near workplaces has been banned statewide for years, according to Joscelyn Stangel, health educator with the Linn County Public Health Department.

The new law specifically targets e-cigarettes, which use an electronic element to vaporize liquids that contain varying amounts of nicotine.

Vaping liquids are composed of vegetable glycerine or propylene glycol, nicotine and flavoring.

Stangel said Linn County Public Health wants to help individuals and businesses understand the new rules and to direct persons who want to quit smoking to places where they can get assistance, adding that Public Health staff has contacted area chambers of commerce to provide education and contact information about the new law.

Were providing them with a one-page information sheet and there will be a mailing that goes out through the Environmental Health Department, Stangel said.

Under the expanded Clean Air Act, businesses:

 Cannot allow nicotine delivery devices within 10 feet of entrances, exits, accessibility ramps that lead to or from an entrance or exit, windows that open, or air-intake vents at any indoor workplace or public place.

 Must post no smoking within 10 feet signs at all building entrances and exits. The signs can be ordered through the Oregon Tobacco Education Clearinghouse.

 Must label all tables or outdoor seating or dining areas within 10 feet of entrance as nonsmoking.

 Must remove all ashtrays and other receptacles for smoking debris from outdoor locations within 10 feet of entrances.

An exception is that health care facilities can allow inhalant delivery systems on site for the purpose of administering medical marijuana.

Stangel said preliminary testing has identified chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects in secondhand e-cigarette vapor.

About 27 percent of 11th-grade students in Linn County reported they smoke tobacco products, and of those, 76 percent use flavored vaping products, Stangel said. Its how kids are getting addicted to nicotine.

In Oregon, e-cigarette use among high school students has increased by 150 percent from 2011 to 2013, going from 1.8 percent to 5.2 percent.

Nationwide, e-cigarette use by high school students increased from 4.5 percent to 13.4 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kacey Urrutia, tobacco prevention coordinator for Linn County Public Health, said seven in 10 tobacco retailers in Linn County advertise tobacco outside of their buildings.

One in two retailers displayed tobacco ads at the eye level of a child, 3 feet high or less, and one in three displayed tobacco near toys and candy.

She noted that in 2012, the tobacco industry spent $112 million promoting tobacco products in Oregon.
Ghanaian gospel music star, Kofi Gyan Gabriel has donated to Cherub orphanage at Santasi in the Ashanti Region during the New Year celebrations.

Items worth over thousands of Ghana cedis including an undisclosed amount of money were given to the needy by the gospel musician.

According to the "Yoboyo Sotoyo" hitmaker in an interview with seancitygh.com, his recent donation is not the first time since that has been usual of him during times when people are making merry.

"This is not my first time of giving back to the society and the needy. Even the Bible talks about giving and it is also a way of giving back to the society. I therefore entreat all and sundry especially those with little in their hands to remember the needy all the time so as to be rewarded back by God."

Kofi Gyan is best remembered for his much talked about song that went viral all over Ghana and beyond, "Yoboyo Sotoyo".

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The Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts Mrs. Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare on Monday led a delegation of Creative Arts practitioners to visit Highlife legend Amakye Dede, who is on admission at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.

The legend highlife musician was transferred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital after a fatal accident last weekend at the Bunso junction in the Eastern region.

Speaking to section of the press after a close door visit to the Iron Boy hit maker, Mrs. Ofosu-Adjare said, it was disturbing when she heard the news of Amakyes accident especially during the festive season.

She said it was for this reason that she decided to visit him with his colleagues in the industry.

She also told the media that the Amakye Dede, was recuperating and wished him a speedy recovery as Ghana needs dedicated sons like him.

On his part, the legend musician thanked the Minister for calling on him on his sick bed.

He indicated that her visit would boost his recovery process, adding that her visit was also an indication of her motherly instincts and her compassion for humanity.

'Visit such us this will strengthen me and provide speedy recovery progress," he added.

He also told the Minister that, the President had earlier visited him.

Nana Ampadu on behalf of the Musicians thanked the Minister for showing concern to their colleague and they very grateful for the gesture.

The Ministers delegation also included Members of MUSIGA, GHAMRO,Rex Omar, Daddy Bosco, Nana Ampadu, Rex Omar, Obuor, Kojo Antwi, & Adofo
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Leila Djansi

05.01.2016 LISTEN

An NDC activist in the diaspora, Kofi Adoli, has responded to filmmaker Leila Djansis harangue on Facebook and urged her to continue to campaign for President John Mahama and the governing party.

Ms. Djansi, who said she campaigned for Mr Mahama in 2012 but was now disappointed with his administration due to current hardships in the country, complained on her Facebook wall that: I so regret campaigning for NDC although I have no vote in Ghana.

I lost friends, someone threatened to burn down my office in Ghana because I was NDC, she said.

Read Ms. Djansi full post below:

"Good morning from John Mahama's Ghana!! Multiple days without water. Last week we had to call the company head to have taps opened.

I so regret campaigning for NDC although I have no vote in Ghana. I lost friends, someone threatened to burn down my office in Ghana cos I was NDC.

After all the sacrifices made to campaign and have faith in this party, Ghana has been faced with so much incompetence from this team! Even not living in Ghana, you feel the hardship. But they have money to give to a less qualified individual to brand buses.

Buses we brand at no less than 5000ghc per bus were branded for 30,000. That money could have been used to improve the water-flow system in the country. Beds for hospitals... This is the Ghana you get when selfish people thrive.

When they give only to their family members. Clothe themselves in material things so they can [be] worshiped.

So shameful! And everyone has forgotten that the young woman in question hasn't returned the money and hasn't even been prosecuted."

However, Mr Adoli, who was appointed to the National Working Youth Committees  Research and Projects committees of the NDC  wrote in a counter message on Facebook that: I believe your expression of regret over these matters leaves much to be desired. I earnestly believe that you may be unaware of a number of developments in our country. You may also have been the recipient of false, exaggerated claims from a loud but often uncritical and shallow media.

Read Mr Kofi Adolis full counter:

Dear Leila Afua Djansi,

My name is Kofi Adoli. Just like you I am normally resident outside Ghana but I keep a close eye on developments back home. Occasionally I come home for a variety of reasons. The similarities between us do not end there. I, just like you campaigned for John Dramani Mahama in 2012.The point of departure however is that I have absolutely no regret doing so.

I have read your post this morning in which you raise a number frustrations you have with the the way the country is being run. Specifically you speak about water shortage and the recent rebranding of the buses and what you say is inadequate beds in our hospitals. These I believe form the basis for your expression of regret for campaigning and voting for President Mahama and the NDC.

I respect your right to vent and raise issues with the management of our country. I also uphold your right to criticise government when you feel a number of things have gone wrong. That said, I believe your expression of regret over these matters leaves much to be desired. I earnestly believe that you may be unaware of a number of developments in our country. You may also have been the recipient of false, exaggerated claims from a loud but often uncritical and shallow media.

It is not too clear to me what may have caused the temporary water shortage where you live. I do not in fact know where you live. What is clear however from your post is that at some point you reached the Head of the water company who managed to get the shortage addressed.

Be that is it may when it comes to water provision, there is no single government that has done more than the one you helped put in place. To help foster greater understanding of the enormity of the problem and the amount of work done to alleviate it, let me draw your attention to a few figures that illustrate the point. You see, between 1957 and 2009 when the NDC came to power, which is a period of 52 years, only 58.5% of Ghanaians had water.

That means just 14 million out of our population of 24 million had water. That also meant that a staggering 10 million people had no access to the vital commodity. The NDC under President Mahama has pumped in over US$1 billion to improve water coverage. There are dozens of major water projects aimed at bringing water to the people dotted around the country.

Many of these have been completed and the result is that currently water coverage stands at 76% meaning an additional 4.2 million Ghanaians have had water. By the end of this year when all the ingoing projects would have been completed this coverage will rise to 85% and that will translate to a total of 7million Ghanaian being given water in addition to those who had it prior to the coming of the NDC.

Surely Leila, despite your frustration with the temporary shortage, you would appreciate that any President who gives 7 million more people water in the limited period he has led this country is undeserving of the accusation of incompetence that you levelled at him.

You may have noticed that in previous times when you visited Ghana, young children living in such places as Adenta, Teshie, Nungua and the Northern part of Accra and many cities in Ghana had to carry yellow jerrycans christened Kufour Gallons, over long distances in search of water. That is a spectacle you are unlikely to encounter when you visit those same communities today because the water problem in those communities have been resolved.

On the issue of Health, I am pleased to inform you, that the biggest contribution yet to our health care delivery system has been made by President Mahama. You may be unaware that currently work is either complete or on-going on 2 teaching Hospitals (In the last 40 years not a single Teaching Hospital has been built in Ghana), a massive Military hospital in Kumasi, a Police Hospital here in Accra, an ultra-modern Maritime Hospital in Tema, four large Regional Hospitals, 14 District Hospitals, Dozens of new Polyclinics, over 40 Health centres and 1,260 CHPS compounds.

Leila when you add all these up we are talking of capacity for an additional 6,000 hospital beds in a matter of three to four years. This has never happened in our history as a country. Beyond this President Mahama has carried out the most comprehensive re-equipping of government hospitals in our history. Only a few years ago in Ghana, MRIs were not a part of our health delivery system.

Today you are likely to see not only an MRI but a CT-Scan, Mamography machine, Flouroscopy and x-ray machines. Today ailments that a few years ago had to be diagnosed abroad can be diagnosed and treated here in Ghana. It may interest you to note that in the period before the NDC government came to power, not a single Regional Hospital was built in all 8 years of the NPPs rule.

Ask their rabid supporters who are trooping to your wall to lend you support to point you to anything they did that comes close to what President Mahama has done in office and they will be found wanting. These same people would rip you apart if you dared criticise the many flaws of their leader and his hopeless incompetence. They would savage you if you even questioned their many violent methods at capturing political power.

Again Leila you would agree that levelling a charge of incompetence at a President who has than far more in health than his predecessors is most uncharitable and unfair to the facts.

Regarding the issue of the branded busses, there was widespread outrage. The President was equally outraged by this conduct. It is on this basis that he commissioned an investigation into the matter leading to the resignation of the Minister of Transport and a refund of the outstanding amount from the executors of the contract who you branded less qualified.

I can say with certainty that had you not helped install John Mahama as President, such a matter would not have received the attention it deserved. You may be aware or unaware that during the tenure of the NPP whose members I see are falling over themselves to comment on your post, a staggering US1.4million dollars was used to purchase gold medals to hang around the neck of the President and his friends at a time when school children in Ghana sat under 4,321 tress to study.

Despite public outrage and outcry, absolutely nothing was done to reverse this shocking level of ostentation. Surely Leila you would have more confidence in a President who takes action on a matter like the bus branding than one who leads a party who in spite of public protests displays such grotesque opulence.

I am acutely aware that in the United States where you live and the United Kingdom where I am domiciled, water shortages or inadequate hospital beds are unheard off. But you would be comparing apples to oranges if you viewed our circumstance as a nation thorugh that prism. In the scheme of things we can only compare ourselves to our peers even as we aspire to attain the heights achieved by the US and the UK.

Therefore, in analysing our national situation we ought to be fair to the facts.

In all honesty I can attest that the Ghana we live in today is a much better place than what the NDC inherited though long-standing systemic problem persist. I am also aware that bold measures are in place to address them.

As citizens we have every right to point out ills in our society so that they can be addressed. We are not obliged to praise governments for doing their work. We must however be wary of the shallow opportunism of the opposition and their mercenary media lackeys whose only pre-occupation is to project our country in the worst-possible light for partisan gain.

I implore you to maintain your support for President John Dramani Mahama. I urge you to campaign harder for him in 2016 because I can assure you that it will be a far better thing you do than you have ever done.

I sincerely hope that the temporary water shortage in your neighbourhood is resolved quickly like it was done the last time. Look beyond the temporary setback and have the bigger picture in mind. While you are at it, please download a copy of Accounting to the people, a book published by the government you helped put in place, in which irrefutable evidence of real progress is presented in vivid detail.

You can do so at www.moc.gov.gh,www.ghana.gov.gh and www.presidency.gov.gh.

Your Diasporan compatriot,

Kofi Adoli
Cape Town (AFP) - England were 16 without loss in their second innings at the close of play on the fourth day of the second Test at Newlands on Tuesday.

Alastair Cook was eight not out and Alex Hales unbeaten on five to give England a lead of 18 runs going into the final day.

Earlier, South Africa had declared on 627 for seven after a memorable unbeaten 102 by Temba Bavuma and 201 from Hashim Amla to leave the match looking set to end in a draw.

The tourists won the first Test of the four-match series in Durban by 241 runs.
03.01.2016 LISTEN

Prince William says becoming a father has made him a lot more emotional and made him realise how precious life is.

World events, and the idea of not being around to see your children grow up, affected him much more since the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte, the 33-year-old prince said.

The smallest things now made him well up, he said in an ITV documentary about his fathers Princes Trust charity.

Prince Charles said he hoped his sons would take over the trust one day.

Speaking to presenters Ant and Dec  Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly  alongside his brother Prince Harry, the Duke of Cambridge said: Im a lot more emotional than I used to be, weirdly.

I never used to get too wound up or worried about things. But now the smallest little things, you well up a little more, you get affected by the sort of things that happen around the world or whatever a lot more, I think, as a father.

Just because you realise how precious life is and it puts it all in perspective. The idea of not being around to see your children grow up and stuff like that.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Story of my life

In the 90-minute programme When Ant and Dec Met The Prince: 40 Years of the Princes Trust, which will be aired on Monday evening, the Prince of Wales said people initially didnt see the point of his charity.

The trusts early history had been the same story of my life, Prince Charles added  of having to overcome people who did not believe in it.

He recalled setting up the charity in 1976, using the 7,400 he received in severance pay when he left the Royal Navy to fund a number of community schemes.

Since then, the Princes Trust has grown to become one of Britains leading youth charities and has reached more than 825,000 young people.

However, the prince said getting the trust off the ground had been quite difficult, adding: It is a bit of the same story of my life really, you had to overcome all these people who didnt see the point.

Asked about the possible involvement of his sons in the charity, he said: I hope one of them might take an interest in it because I am probably getting past my sell-by date now. Laughing prince

In the documentary, Princes William and Harry also paid tribute to their fathers charity work, saying he had an insurmountable amount of duty in him.

He is incredibly driven to do his duty and that from a very young age has been instilled in him, Prince William said, adding: It is where a lot of his passion and his drive comes from.

Prince Harry said the advice he has given his two sons throughout their lives had been incredible  although the brothers joked that he had at times made them cringe.

Prince William said on one occasion his father had convulsed with giggles when a pyrotechnic explosion went off at the wrong moment as he was playing the role of narrator in a Christmas play.

He couldnt stop laughing the whole way through the production, he said.

Several times Id stop Id cast an eye across, like you know, a big death stare, and then Id try and get back to my lines, it was terrible.

Speaking in the same documentary, the Duchess of Cornwall said she was really proud to be married to somebody who had the vision to launch the Princes Trust when aged 27.

I mean it was an incredible idea then, Camilla said.

Asked how Prince Charles maintains his enthusiasm for the charity, she replied: I dont know, he just has that energy.

You know if youre passionate about something you can do it, he cares so much about these young people.

-bbc
Linn County Sheriff Bruce Riley will send a sergeant and deputy to help a remote Eastern Oregon county provide basic police services as local officials deal with an armed group that is occupying a national wildlife refuge building.

On Monday, Riley said, Harney County Sheriff David Ward asked the Oregon State Sheriffs' Association for extra manpower, and, initially, at least six law enforcement officers from throughout the state will respond.

Our role is to assist the sheriff in keeping the peace and keeping order. Its a small area with limited resources, Riley said.

Of course, our priority is still Linn County, but fortunately, were able to help him and we will do so, he added.

Much of that help will simply be providing a visual presence with a patrol vehicle in the Burns-Hines area, Riley said. But the sergeant and deputy also will respond to calls for service.

Riley stressed that Linn County Sheriffs Office employees would not be involved in the situation with the militia at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The armed group is protesting the prison sentence of Harney County father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal grazing land.

The Benton County Sheriff's Office is not sending deputies to Burns at this time as the agency is short-staffed with several deputies on medical leave, a spokesman said.
04.01.2016 LISTEN

A judge rejected Camille Cosbys attempts to avoid testifying, after she claimed she was protected by a marital disqualification law.

The women claim Mr Cosby portrayed them as liars after they went public with their allegations against him.

He filed a countersuit alleging their claims were only for financial gain.

The 78-year-old is also seeking unspecified monetary damages and said the women inflicted emotional distress.

Mrs Cosby is also her husbands business partner and the couple have been married for more than 50 years.

Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer for the women, argued last month he should be able to question Mrs Cosby because he believed she had information thats relevant to the litigation in this matter. Shame and embarrassment

As well as throwing out her marital status disqualification attempts, Judge Magistrate David Hennessey also rejected claims the value of her evidence would be undermined by the undue burden it would cause her.

The arguments do not outweigh the potential significance of Mrs Cosbys testimony, nor has Mrs Cosby provided any authority that they do, he said.

The comedian had also tried to prevent his wife having to testify by having his lawyers argue it was an attempt to put pressure on him by causing them both shame and embarrassment.

Mr Cosbys accusers legal claim alleges he and his representatives sought to tarnish their reputations after they went public with their claims of sexual misconduct.

Mr Cosby has repeatedly denied the accusations.

His counter legal claim contends the women engaged in a campaign to assassinate his reputation and character.

He has, however, admitted in court proceedings he obtained and gave women sedatives over the years, but he maintained the women took the drugs willingly.

Last week, prosecutors in Pennsylvania charged the comedian with an alleged sexual assault in 2004. It is the first time Mr Cosby has been charged with any offence after months of accusations by dozens of women.

He is currently on $1m (675,000) bail.

-bbc
Paris (AFP) - Lassana Bathily was an undocumented migrant from Mali until he became an unlikely hero by saving shoppers' lives during the jihadist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris a year ago.

The 25-year-old became the one positive story to emerge from the three days of violence in January, when jihadist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, police and the Jewish Hyper Cacher supermarket in the east of the capital killed a total of 17 people.

"Ah, here is my favourite Frenchman," cried President Francois Hollande when he received Bathily at the Elysee Palace a fortnight after the carnage.

Bathily, a shelf-stacker in the supermarket, helped save shoppers from gunman Amedy Coulibaly on that fateful day, January 9, 2015.

The narrative of a Muslim saving Jews from a jihadist made him a positive symbol of France's diversity.

But as he writes in his book "I'm Not a Hero" to be published Wednesday, heroism has been an uncomfortable mantle for Bathily.

"The next morning, I turned on Facebook and 800 people had asked to be my friend," he told AFP.

"In the days that followed I said 'No, I'm not a hero'. I did something that had to be done."

Bathily was just a few minutes from the end of his shift at the supermarket, unpacking frozen items in the basement, when he heard a flurry of gunfire upstairs and saw around a dozen people fleeing down the stairs.

Coulibaly, who claimed he was working in the name of the Islamic State group, had taken several shoppers hostage upstairs and ordered a cashier to go round up the others.

Some of those who were huddled downstairs obeyed, but others refused to go and Bathily urged them to use the goods elevator to escape.

When no one wanted to take the risk, he ushered them into the refrigerated room, flicking off the light and the motor, and then made his own escape via the elevator and a fire escape.

"My heart was beating so hard that I was scared I'd be heard," he said.

Once outside, he helped police sketch out the layout of the shop and prepare their raid. A few hours later, they stormed in and shot Coulibaly dead.

Some say Bathily's role was exaggerated by media and officials hungry for a good news angle.

"The media and officials wanted to paint this pretty picture, that he helped us escape downstairs, that he hid us, and so on. Which wasn't really true, but that's not Lassana's fault -- at that moment, we needed a hero," one of the former hostages later told the Liberation newspaper.

Bathily is not bothered by the backlash.

"If they now say that I didn't do anything for them, that's their problem. I won't play their game," he said.

- Hero's welcome -

Several days after the violence, Bathily was granted French citizenship by the president himself, something he says had been a dream since his childhood in a small village on the Mali-Senegal border.

But Bathily was passed over for a Legion d'Honneur, France's highest award, according to nominations published Friday.

He returned to a hero's welcome in Mali, where he was offered free rooms in top hotels and was received by President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Bathily has set up an aid group to provide basic facilities in his village, which he left aged 16 to seek work in Paris.

But he has also had trauma to overcome. He lost close friend and colleague Yohan Cohen -- one of the four killed by Coulibaly that day -- and just a few days later, he heard that his younger brother Boubakar had died from a longstanding illness.

Moreover, deadly reminders of the terrorist threat seem to have dogged his life.

Bathily was just 300 metres (328 yards) away from the Bataclan venue in Paris when it was attacked on November 13.

"I ran like everyone else. But I was stuck in the neighbourhood. I didn't get home until 5:00 am," he said.

Just a week later, jihadist gunman attacked the Radisson Blu Hotel in the Malian capital of Bamako -- one of the hotels Bathily had stayed in during his recent visits.

He remains sanguine: "It's not the terrorists who can kill me -- if God decides that I will die, I will die, it's not they who will decide."

The media circus has had its benefits -- he was given new social housing and a job at the Paris town hall.

He is studying and dreams of becoming a teacher.

"I just continue to live, I continue to do what I did before," he said. "We must show solidarity, we must stay united. There is hope."
Suspended founding member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Charles Wereko-Brobby, says the party and its affiliate groups must stop push for a new voters register.

"They should stop wasting our ears," Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby said in an interview on Asempa FM Monday.

Dr. Wereko-Brobbys comment comes as the NPP accuses the EC of bias in after it decided not to replace the current register with a new one.

The NPP alleges the current register is bloated.

Let the NPP decide from today that we want to offer Ghanaians an alternative and tell all the noisemakers to shut up because those going to court, what are they going to argue about?" he asked.

He adds: "I want to hear NPP talk about the fuel price hikes, the wrongs going on in Ghana. This is the time to offer alternatives, not keep complaining and wasting our time with threats of going to court. Therell be no new register. End of the story.

The NPP suspended the founding member two years ago on grounds that he was exhibiting behaviour that put the party's image into disrepute.
Government is expected to meet with organized labour later Tuesday to discuss concerns raised over the recent utility price hikes.

The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) announced an increase of 59.2 percent in water tariffs and 67.2 percent in the tariff for electricity.

The PURC explained that the increase was arrived at after careful scrutiny of proposals submitted various utility providers.

Subsequently, Organised labour in a statement signed by the Trades Union Congress, called for a suspension of the utility tariffs, until service providers are assured availability and reliability of power.

The statement added that "following our consultations with the PURC, we did not expect any increase in tariffs beyond 50 percent as against the 129 to 400 percent proposed by the utility companies, on condition that the power supply would have stabilized. We also expected the implementation of any new tariffs to start next year."

Labour Relations Minister Haruna Iddrisu told Joy News the meeting will explore ways of cushioning Ghanaians against the shocks of the adjustments.

"On the 5th of January, we will engage. Government does not intend to continue to absorb subsidies within that particular industry. But we would appreciate that we need to make those tariffs affordable to the populace...We need to get a middle ground to get out of this," he said.
The passenger fumbled with door before threatening to kill herself, according to terrified eyewitnesses.

She is said to have fought off cabin crew who tried to intervene  with two other passengers joining the violent brawl.

The shocking incident took place on board a Beijing Capital Airlines jet travelling from Hunan Province to Hainan, local media said.

A social media user known as @RogerStandy wrote: "It's really not an easy job to be flight crew, especially when facing the daredevils.

"Fortunately knives are banned on flights."

A spokesman for Capital Airlines said: "A female passenger got up and tried to do something at the door, but was stopped by crew members."

The woman and the two men involved in the fight were arrested when the plane landed, officials said.

They are being held in pre-trial detention on the grounds of endangering public safety, but none of their identities have been disclosed.

Last month China's National Tourism Administration named and shamed five tourists for alleged misbehaviour.

The included two women and a man who brawled during the boarding of a flight from Cambodia to the western city of Chengdu.

The government has grown concerned about the negative impact on China's image following numerous incidents of bad behaviour by Chinese tourists.
The outgoing Central Divisional Commander of the Salvation Army Church, Ghana Territory, Major Peter Oduro Amoah has admonished Ghanaians to endeavour upholding the Truth in their daily activities and to join forces on the fight against corruption in their localities.

In an interview with the media at Agona Swedru in the Agona West Municipality recently, Major Peter Oduro Amoah wondered why Ghanaians were said to be religious people but truthfulness could not be found in their daily lives and practices. " Churches and mosques can be seen scattered all over, yet we keep on with our corrupt practices. Today one cannot distinguish between a Christian, Moslem or traditionalist all are mixed up together doing virtually the same thing.

This is because truthfulness cannot be associated with us. What we like doing is to point accusing fingers at others without regard to our own lies and corrupt practices. Let us resort to our old ways where patriotism, truthfulness and nationalism was what the forefathers used to build the Nation Ghana.

We are all pretenders in our various faith and religious practice thus preaching vice and practicing versa. We don't adhere to our teachings and religious practices as we used to do. Because of economic hardships facing the nation we have become self-seekers of money without consequence whatsoever. Let us change our attitude for God to grant our heart desires"

Major Peter Oduro Amoah who has just been transferred to the Territorial Headquarters of the Salvation Army Church in Accra called on parents to train their children in conformity with the laws of the land and their religious practices adding that would be the best legacy they could leave behind for the next generation.

"Almost every church or mosque has classes for children called Sunday Schools or Makalanta in the case of our Moslem brothers and sisters, yet our children grow up to practice contrary to what they have been taught at the infantry stages.

We buy toy guns for them to use during Christmas and other festivities. What do we expect them to do when they become adults? Your guess is as good as mine. Let us train them the way they should go and when they grow up they would never forget them", Major Amoah concluded.

The Central and Western Regional Manager of the Salvation Army Educational Unit, Mr. Bright Ankoma Asare told newsmen that his outfit has put in place mechanism to check absenteeism, truancy and drunkness among teachers in the Unit.

He lauded teachers under the Unit for the brilliant performance expressing the hope that they would continually bring out their best to enhance effective teaching and learning.

Mr. Bright Ankoma Aware appealed to the Salvation Army Headquarters to assist the Unit with vehicle to cut the cost of monitoring and supervision of schools.
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Several surprises shot up at the tail end of 2015 as two appointees of President Mahama tendered in their resignation letters for reasons connected to their inability to deliver on their promises.

But one person who should have set the precedent for his subordinates to follow is President Mahama, Mr. Bernard Antwi-Boasiako alias Chairman 'Wontumi' has observed.

The Ashanti Regional Chairman for the New Patriotic Party in an interview with Peacefmonline.com insisted that President Mahama should not have crossed over to 2016 as president of Ghana following the niche he has carved for himself as a leader who never fulfills any of his promises.

On Thursday, December 31, 2015, the Power Minister, Dr Kwabena Donkor, tendered in his resignation to the Presidency following how he handled the four-year-old power crisis, one year after his appointment as sector Minister.

His resignation was gladly accepted by the president who thanked him for his services as the pioneer Minister for the Ministry of Power which was carved out of the then Ministry of Energy and Petroleum.

Prior to Dr. Donkors resignation, former Minister of Transport, Dzifa Attivor had also resigned over the controversial GHc3.6m bus re-branding contract.

A statement signed by the Ministers Assistant, Egypt Kobla Kudoto revealed that she tendered in her resignation as Minister due to the current issues surrounding the branding of the 116 buses.

She further wants to take the opportunity to thank her party for the opportunity offered her to serve, first as a Deputy Minister of Transport under the late John Evans Atta Mills, and later as the Substantive Minister."

It is on the basis of those resignations that Chairman Wontumi observed President Mahama should have rather set the precedent for his subordinates to follow by first resigning.
The Ministry of Mines, Industry and Energy of Equatorial Guinea will host a 1-day forum in New Delhi to promote investment opportunities in its energy, hydrocarbons and industrial sectors. The Equatorial Guinea-India Hydrocarbons & Industry Forum will take place on January 22, 2016 at 4 pm at The Leela Palace. The Ministry welcomes the attendance of potential investors and will organize private meetings with ministry officials for interested parties.

The Equatorial Guinea-India Hydrocarbons & Industry Forum will coincide with the India-Africa Hydrocarbons Conference, hosted by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of India in New Delhi from January 20-22. The forum will feature presentations by top ministry officials, including H.E. Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima, the Minister of Mines, Industry and Energy. The ministry will present its policy and regulatory framework and the prime investment prospects in the oil and gas and industrial sectors. Some of the key opportunities on showcase will be offshore hydrocarbon exploration, mining, petrochemicals the Industrial City of Mbini and the Bioko Oil Terminal.

India is a valued trade partner of Equatorial Guinea, said H.E. Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima. With several projects under development, we are eager to extend multiple investment opportunities to Indian enterprises and enhance our energy cooperation.

Equatorial Guinea has made great strides to expand trade relations with Asian economies, which are major importers of African oil and gas. Last April, H.E. President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo led a state visit to China that resulted in significant trade and cooperation agreements, including a $2-billion deal for infrastructure funding from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. In the industrial city of Dalian, the Equatorial Guinea Government hosted a trade and forum to promote multiple sectors of its economy. A resounding success, the forum finished with the signing of 6 memoranda of understanding for energy and industry projects between Equatorial Guinea and Chinese companies.

India is the world's third largest consumer of oil, relying mostly on imports to fuel its economy. Its imports of Equatorial Guinea crude oil and gas totaled $385 million in 2013. As the third largest oil and gas producer in Sub-Saharan Africa and big projects on tap across the energy supply chain, Equatorial Guinea offers India a golden opportunity for new areas of cooperation.

Contact: Mercedes Eworo Milan Director General of Hydrocarbons and Petroleum Economics [email protected] +240 222 241 068

About the Equatorial Guinea-India Hydrocarbons & Industry Forum: To learn more about the Equatorial Guinea-India Hydrocarbons & Industry Forum, please visit www.investineg.com. To RSVP for the event, please contact [email protected]
Charlotte Osei

05.01.2016 LISTEN

Charlotte Osei does not only hate listening to radio as she said recently she also abhors issues of integrity.

We are yet to establish though whether she reads newspapers or hates them as much as she does radio.

Her decision, ostensibly powered by the VCRAC Crabbe-led committee's reasons for not accepting the call for a new voter register, is as unconvincing as they are tendentious.

An aspect of her correspondence to Ghanaians on her decline for the replacement states that the issues raised by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and others sharing similar positions on the integrity of the voter register were not convincing to warrant a replacement of the roll call of voters.

We too find the premises underpinning her foul no new register announcement as lacking integrity and falling below international best practices. It was making good a promise to an interested party which thinks a young register is not changed; it is cleaned.

What is worrying to most Ghanaians is how such a corrupted register is going to be cleaned enough to meet the requisites of acceptableness by the aggrieved citizenry.

Although the outcome was predictable, the premises were not. In undertaking such a project of doing the bidding of a party which is what many Ghanaians think, unfortunately the need to apply some finesse cannot be overlooked.

The journey to the December-end announcement started with the convening of a sham stakeholders' forum on the demand for a new voter register.

The outcome of the theatricals, which were staged to ostensibly tap the positions of the various political shades in the country for an eventual decision by the Electoral Commission (EC) was envisaged long before the nonagenarian and his team submitted their so-called report.

With the Akua Donkors and comatose political parties resurrecting and assembled by those interested in the 'no-new register' outcome to come and perform the way they did, what else were we expecting of Sister Charlotte?

After all, Justice VCRAC Crabbe's disdain for a new register was voiced out even before he was appointed to lead the committee.

Anything in opposition to what we were served would have been incommensurate with the premises feeding the EC decision, including the predisposition of Justice VCRAC Crabbe and the other members of the committee. That is the story.

The speed with which the political history of Ghana is being recorded is amazing and reminds us so much about newsreels of years long gone. It is interesting to note however, the changes which have occurred in our electoral chronicle originated from the same source as the demand for a new voter register. From the demand for transparent ballot box to the use of photo ID cards for polls to a request for a new voter register  the current one being contaminated with multitude of anomalies  a lot of water has passed under the bridge.

Charlotte should cease regarding opposing views with the contempt she is doing. Changes will come when they must, complex machinations unfurled notwithstanding. The Romans put it this way tempora mutantur times change.
05.01.2016 LISTEN

The Electoral Commission (EC) has rejected the New Patriotic Party's (NPP's) demand to purge the existing voter register ahead of the 2016 general election.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the party's vice presidential candidate, revealed last year that a team commissioned by the party to scrutinize the voter register had identified 76,286 persons with the same data in both Ghana and Togo's electoral rolls.

Dr. Bawumia, who was speaking at a widely publicized press conference in Accra last year, was emphatic that the party's team identified the anomaly after comparing Ghana's register with that of Togo's.

The persons, he said, were mostly found in the Volta Region with Ketu South cited as one of the constituencies where the anomalies abound.

The NPP contended that the current electoral roll lacks credibility, citing a deliberate inclusion of aliens in the register.

The disclosure triggered a spontaneous call from civil society groups, religious bodies and the NPP in particular, on the EC to consider the option for a new voter register.

EC Sued

Already, Abu Ramadan, a former national youth organiser of the People's National Convention (PNC), has dragged the EC to court demanding a new voter register before the 2016 elections are held.

The PNC member and one Evans Nimako, citing the Attorney-General (A-G) as second defendant to the action, want the Supreme Court to set aside the 2012 voter register and compel the EC to compile a fresh one before any new public election or referendum was conducted in the country.

EC's Position

But the EC disagreed, insisting that seeking to remove names of persons who appear on the registers of Togo, Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire in the EC's view, would be an arbitrary and discriminatory application of the law.

The EC's response, contained in a 33-page document written to the NPP, argued that in examining the identity and status of the 76,000 Togolese alleged to be on Ghana's register, the EC found that they were all duly registered during the mass registration period in 2012.

No Proof

The EC holds that the NPP did not provide any proof of the citizenship status of the alleged foreign nationals and did not show any proof that they were not entitled to be registered in Ghana.

According to the electoral body, the biometric register has multiple layers of data protection and integrity assurance and does not permit the possibility of pictures on the register being edited.

The consultant's report on the Independent Review of the Biometric Voter Register also supports the position that this is not possible and that the system has adequate integrity and has not been compromised. We would be happy to share the consultant's report with the NPP, the EC stated.

Unconvincing

Christian Owusu-Parry, Acting Director of Public Affairs of the EC, earlier in a statement issued on the electoral roll controversy, said the demand for a new register was unconvincing.

The Panel finds the arguments for a new register unconvincing and therefore does not recommend the replacement of the current voters' register, he posited in the statement.

According to the statement, the report submitted by the Independent Panel led by His Lordship V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, set up by the Commission, indicates that the responsibility for having a clean and credible register is the shared responsibility of all citizens of Ghana.

The statement however, indicated that the EC would continue to engage stakeholders to ensure that a clean and credible register is in place for the upcoming general election through an inclusive and collaborative audit process.

Mr. Owusu-Parry said the Commission was commited to ensuring transparent, inclusive and credible general election this year and to ensuring democratic growth and stability in Ghana.

[email protected]

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson


05.01.2016 LISTEN

A well known Ghanaian community leader resident in the UK has been named on the Queen of Englands New Years Honours list to be awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM).

Archbishop Kwaku Frimpong Manson is a name that most Ghanaians living in the UK instantly recognise. He has been in Ministry for 25 years and carved a niche for himself as a consummate community leader, consulted by the police as well as other organisations on matters relating to the youth and community affairs.

I am very proud to be honoured...I wanted to see change and I have seen change. I am 65 but engaged as ever. When you are passionate about your work, there is no need to retire. I live by the motto: the Beauty of life does not depend on how happy you are but how happy others can be because of you

Archbishop Frimpong Manson is from Wiamoase in the Ashanti region where he was born. On arrival in the UK in 1987, he set up the Born-Again Evangelical Ministries which became a charity 1994 and was renamed Reconciliation International. He moved to the Broadwater Farm Estates in Tottenham in 1991 and became the Chairperson of the Estate in 1994, serving in this capacity until 2009.

In 2002, he was ordained as a Bishop, becoming a freestanding Archbishop ten years later in 2012 when he was elevated. Working in collaboration with then MP for Tottenham, Bernie Grant, recently, David Lammy, and other leaders of the Ghanaian and Afro-Caribbean UK community, Archbishop helped to improve relations between police and the youth living on the BWF Estate.

Archbishop Frimpong Manson carries out his many responsibilities from his busy offices based at the Broadwater Farm Estates, providing services including Bereavement Counselling, Youth engagement, Police liaison, Pastoral care for Mental Health Services and many more sometimes with very limited resources as funding is the biggest challenge for the organisation.

He is married to Mrs Philipina Nana Yaa Frimpong Manson with whom he has five children.
05.01.2016 LISTEN

As part of measures to ensure that Persons With Disability (PWDs), are not left behind in the development process, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection is to monitor the disbursement of the two percent District Assemblies Common Fund across the country.

This is to ensure that the two percent common fund is reserved to support disabled people to start or establish small scale businesses.

Nana Oye Lithur, the Gender Minister who made the announcement said We have launched a campaign to monitor the two percent common fund for disabled persons.

She said this, when her ministry donated assorted items made up of bags of rice, gallons of cooking oil, mosquito nets and toiletries to four PWD groups across the country.

The groups were Cape Coast School for the Deaf, Adjei Kojo School for the Deaf, Efutu branch of the Ghana Federation of the Disabled, St. Theresas Rehabilitation Centre, Abor in Volta Region and Kaneshie Home for the Socially Disadvantaged.

The government, led by H.E John Dramani Mahama, has put in place measures to ensuring that persons with disability are not left out of the development process. Government is therefore working to ensure that issues of disability are mainstreamed into the development process, she stated.

For us as a government, disabled people have abilities like anyone else. Government is therefore committed to developing policies and programmes aimed at enhancing their living conditions, she added.

To this end, she said the President has directed that one presidential nominee under the district assemblies should be a person of disability, saying the Local Government Ministry has already accepted the guideline towards the selection of a physically challenged person as a nominees in the assemblies.

According to the minister, issues of persons with disability will be a priority this year, adding that government has put in place measures to mainstream their issues into the development process.

The economic long term goal of government towards disabled people is to empower them through education and training so that they can take advantage of economic opportunities available to all.

Other measures, Oye Lithur said is to ensure that disabled children enjoy free education at the basic level, adding special schools have been established to cater for the needs of children with severe forms of disability, whiles government has also introduced inclusive policy on education.

Some people with disability are encouraged to further their education at the tertiary level, she said, pointing out that, rehabilitation centers have been established to train disabled people in various vocations.

Touching on easy access to public buildings, Oye Lithur said the National Council on Persons with Disability (NCPD) has been working to ensure that, public buildings, banks, shopping malls, hotels have provided elevators, ramps, signages to help the physically challenged gain easy access.
05.01.2016 LISTEN

The Social Security & National Insurance (SSNIT) has increased the monthly pension by 20 percent for the year 2016.

Accordingly, pensioners on the current minimum monthly pension of GH230.00 will have their pensions increased to GH296.89.

A press statement issued by SSNIT yesterday and signed by Evangeline Amegashie, Corporate Affairs Manager, said the foregoing adjustments were in accordance with Section 80 of the National Pensions Act 2008 (Act 766).

Current pensioners on the SSNIT Pension as at December, 2015, will have their pensions increased by a fixed rate of 12 percent plus an additional flat amount of GH39.29 per pensioner.

This translates into the following after redistribution:

All fresh pensioners from January 2016 will receive a new minimum monthly pension of GH276.00.

SSNIT, a statutory public trust charged with the administration of the First-Tier Contributory Basic National Social Security Pension Scheme under the National Pensions Act, 2008 Act 766, has the primary responsibility to replace lost income of members of the scheme due to old age, invalidity or death.

The Trust has over 1.2 million active contributors and over 150,000 pensioners.

It is currently the largest non-bank financial institution in Ghana.

A business desk report
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Peasant farmers have called on government to stop paying lip service to agriculture mechanization in the country, as it has gravely affected the performance of the sector in recent times.

In a report jointly authored with SEND Ghana christened: '2016 Agriculture Budget Analysis,' the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, said the incumbent government has exhibited a lack of sober commitment towards expanding and improving the Agricultural Mechanization Service Centres (AMSECs).

Drawing comparisons between the 2013 Budget and that of 2016, the organisations noted that not a single promise has been fulfilled by government.

On page 86, paragraph 273 of the 2013 budget statement for instance, government committed to increase the number of AMSECs to cover at least 170 districts in order to provide mechanization services to farmers who cannot afford their own machines. This was not achieved by the end of the budget year.

On page 84, paragraph 392 of the 2014 budget statement, government committed to continue to address the challenges confronting the mechanization of agriculture along the value chain among other interventions to facilitate the expansion of coverage of private sector led Agricultural Mechanization Services Enterprise Centres (AMSECs) to 148 Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in 2014.

On page 73, paragraph, 348 of the 2015 budget statement, government committed to increase the 89 Agricultural Mechanization Service Centers (AMSECs) currently operating in 62 Metropolitan, Municipal and Districts Assemblies to 130. Though the issue of expanding the AMSECs keep appearing in the budget statements since 2013, not a single AMSEC has been added, the report indicated.

The failures notwithstanding, government in the 2016 Budget has again promised to procure 50 tractors with the requisite components to support Agricultural Mechanization Services Enterprise Centres (AMSECs).

The report said the development is affecting smallholder farmers, especially in the rural areas.

This development is not good for smallholder farmers, especially crop farmers, who are in dire need of mechanization services such as tractors, processions and especially combine harvesters. Many farmers in 2015 could not harvest their rice due to non-availability of combine harvesters.

On Fertilizer subsidy, the report found that government again failed to deliver on its promise of providing the required fertilizer quantity for farmers.

Out of a target of 180,000mt of fertilizer promised in the 2015 budget, the report suggested that only 90,000mt was provided and even not all of it got to the farmers.

The report said that could have dire implications on an already shrinking agriculture sector, which grew by 0.4 percent instead of a projected 3.5 percent in 2015.

Myjoyonline


William Quaitoo (2nd left) and some constituency executives

05.01.2016 LISTEN

SOME serial callers of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Akyem Oda constituency of the Eastern Region have defected to the opposition New Patriotic Party, DAILY GUIDE has gathered.

The group, mostly youth numbering about 21, was unveiled by the constituency youth organiser of the NPP, Mr Aaron Donkoh, during a mini rally held at Akyem Oda Old Town after the party faithful had embarked on what they called New Year Jogging on Sunday morning.

This is coming at the time the NDC has launched an Agenda 50/50 in the Eastern Region seeking to get not less than 50% of the total votes that will be cast in the region during this year's general elections.

Speaking at the rally, the leader of the group, Mr Daniel Bosompem, popularly known in the area as Ebo, said having tried the NDC for eight years, it is important to give the NPP under Nana Akufo-Addo the opportunity to also come and help Ghana.

He added that their decision to leave the NDC stemmed from the wanton dissipation of state resources and the incompetence of the Mahama-led NDC administration.

After eight years in government, the NDC has shown that it has nothing good for Ghana and that is why we have decided to leave the party. By leaving the party, we have also decided to stop talking on radio for the party and to stop doing anything for the party.

All our efforts shall henceforth be used in garnering votes for Nana Akufo-Addo and Hon Quaittoo in the constituency, he said.

Several bigwigs including constituency officers and the Member of Parliament, Hon William Agyapong Quaittoo, addressed the gathering.

The MP told the people that the NPP shall hold the event on the last Sunday of every month until the November 7 elections.

Hundreds of people joined in the jogging which lasted for about three and half hours.

BY Daniel Bampoe


The protesters at the party office

05.01.2016 LISTEN

THE CONSTITUENCY executives and branch members of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Upper West Akim constituency of the Eastern Region on Monday staged a massive demonstration against President John Mahama, demanding the reinstatement of the dismissed District Chief Executive.

Mr. Derrick Ohene Asifo Bekoe, who contested for the party's recent parliamentary primary but lost to the incumbent MP, was removed from office on December 29, 2015. That was during a reshuffle of leadership at various MMDAs that saw President Mahama sacking seven others from office.

The angry party members, numbering over 300, were led by the constituency chairman, Hope Kwasi Ahiagbenyor. Dressed in red T-shirts with red bands on their heads and hands and wielding placards with numerous inscriptions, the protesters besieged the premises of the constituency party office chanting war songs. They indicated that they would vote against President John Mahama during the November 7 polls if he failed to reinstate Mr. Derrick Ohene Asifo Bekoe, adding that the DCE's dismissal was orchestrated by the incumbent NDC MP, Joseph Amankwanor.

According to them, the MP had been at loggerheads with the DCE because he sees him as a political rival.

The agitated members also believe that the DCE might have been dismissed because he was suspected to be behind a recent petition signed by 23 branch members of the party, seeking clarity on reports that the incumbent MP has a dual citizenship status.

Mr Hope Kwasi Ahiagbenyor, addressing the angry youth at the party office, appealed to them to exercise restraint but assured them that he and his colleagues would push for the DCE's reinstatement.

He described development projects during the tenure of the DCE in the area as unprecedented, particularly in the areas of road, school and health infrastructure.

According to the protesters, the party risks losing the parliamentary seat in the 2016 election if the DCE is not retained.

FROM Daniel Bampoe, Adeiso


The Okyenhene (right) in a handshake with the Effiduasehene

05.01.2016 LISTEN

The Effiduasehene, Nana Okoawia Dwomo Baabu II, has marked the 5th anniversary of his ascension to the Effiduase stool with a call on his people to unite for development.

The occasion, which reached its peak on Saturday, January 2, 2016 with a grand durbar, brought together many dignitaries, including the Minister of Communications, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah; business tycoon Joseph Kwasi Okyere aka Antatic; Oyokohene, Nana Kodua Kesse, Council of State Member and the Okyenhene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin, who chaired the function.

The Okyenhene, in his usual elements, set the place agog when he arrived with tens of his followers amidst a display of stupendous tradition.

The Okyenehene, who doubles as President of the Eastern Regional House of Chiefs, called on Ghanaians to desist from acts of indiscipline such as insulting elders and people in authority.

He admonished the public and politicians to desist from unnecessary vituperations which do not promote unity, peace and peaceful coexistence. He said such divisive behaviours do not attract blessings and asked the public, especially the youth, to be disciplined.

In response to a statement made by the Eastern Regional Minister, Antwi Boasiako Sekyere, who represented the president, John Dramani Mahama, that the economic hardship Ghanaians are facing is not peculiar to Ghana but a global phenomenon, the Okyenhene explained that Ghana has 48,000 settlements but only 4,000 have governmental departments and agencies. He noted that the unemployment rate is too high and that government needs to do a lot more to create jobs for the youth.

Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin said there is currently too much centralisation which is not promoting rural development, noting that the time has come for practical decentralised system of governance.

We have waited for long. We need to have a feel of what we deserve. Let us decentralize, he charged.

He also noted that in every town there are customs and traditions regarding installation of chiefs, suggesting that all rival chiefs who are not properly installed and accordingly recognized by the various traditional councils, should be arrested and possibly prosecuted.

The Okyenhene donated an amount of GH5,000 to support the new palace project.

In his address, Mr Antwi Boasiako Sekyere was not happy that about 48 towns in the region have two chiefs each, creating security threat to the region. He said that the Regional Security Council (RESEC) has to devote most of its sittings and time to address chieftaincy squabbles.

He was elated that the chiefs and people of Effiduase had formed a sanitation taskforce which is enforcing sanitation laws in the area in support of the government's national sanitation policy.

The Oyokohene, Nana Kodua Kesse, who is also a Member of the Council of State, said he was happy that unity was returning to the New Juaben area.

On Sunday, January 3, 2015, some eminent citizens and allies of Effiduase were honoured by the Effiduasehene. They included the former Inspector General of Police (IGP) Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong and business tycoon, Joseph Kwasi Okyere.

Nana Okoawia Dwomo Baabu II, who is also the Nifahene of the New Juaben Traditional Area, was exceptionally grateful to the Okyenehene for the role played by his (Okyenehene's) ancestors in hosting the people of Effiduase several years ago when they broke away from their original home at Asante Effidwase.

From Rocklyn Antonio, Effiduase


05.01.2016 LISTEN

This is the fifth and final part in the series of articles meant to justify my charge of incompetence directed at the current Head of Local Government Service, Dr. Callistus Mahama. In Part IV, I promised to tackle the contradictions in the publications of Dr. Callistus Mahama for the service and I will do just that to end this series. I wish I could touch on the processes leading to my indefinite suspension by Dr. Callistus Mahama to further buttress the point of his gross incompetence but as you might be aware, those issues are before the law courts now and it will not be proper for me to discuss it here since I may prejudice the process. At the appointed time I will go into them.

Before I proceed to tackle the subject matter of this write up, let me take this opportunity to once again wish all a HAPPY NEW YEAR. May the good Lord guides us unto the path of righteousness and grant us the fortitude to stand for the TRUTH in all our endeavours. Blessed would be those who keep justice and those who do righteousness at all times! (Psalm 106:3). May 2016 be more fulfilling. I wish to also express my sincere gratitude to all who made my Christmas and New Year celebrations a memorable one. I am eternally grateful and God replenish you in a hundred fold! For people who thrive on iniquity like Dr. Callistus Abukari Mahama, I refer them to Psalm 109. Dont get me wrong, I am yet to take that prayer!

Now to business! To those who have followed my write ups keenly, you would realised that I have already touched on some of these contradictions that I intend to discuss here. The contents of the publications of the Local Government Service under Dr. Callistus Mahama as you will see do not only contradict themselves but are alien to the laws, rules and regulations guiding the service in particular and the public service in general. I submit to you that these lapses are born out of inexperience and gross incompetence.

As I said I have already discussed some of these contradictions but for emphasis I will repeat some of them here. The Human Resource Policy Framework and Manual for the Ghana Public Services in section 9.4.12.4 states A public servant who is interdicted shall be paid 50% of that public servants salary. Section 46(b) of the Condition of Service for the Local Government Service produced in 2007 states During the period of interdiction which should not exceed six (6) calendar months, the interdicted officer shall be paid one-half of his/her salary provided he/she is not indebted to the government. Then came Dr. Callistus Mahamas Human Resource Operational Manual (HROM) for the Local Government Service in 2013 which states in section 6.6.3 (g)(iv) that An employee who is interdicted shall receive TWO-THIRDS of his salary for the period of interdiction, and she/he shall not be paid any allowances to which she/he normally would have been entitled. For information purposes, the Local Government Service is just one of the public services of Ghana. I will not say anything further here because I have mentioned this in one of my earlier write ups.

Now to the Code of Conduct for the Local Government Service and Part II section 1.6 states In the discharge of their roles or functions in any project or task, officers and staff of Local Government Service shall not seek election to office as a member of an Assembly. When I first read this I exclaimed, WHAAAAAT?! And not only did Dr. Callistus Mahama include this unconstitutionality in the code of conduct but went ahead to forcefully insist on its implementation. First he wrote to all MMDAs drawing the attention of staff in the Local Government Service (LGS) to this provision in the code of conduct when the district elections were announced. Patriotic staff of the Service who knew what they were about defied this directive and went ahead to contest the Assembly elections and some won. These individuals who were just exercising their civic rights as enshrined in the 1992 constitution were now being coerced and intimidated to resign from their post. It took CLOGSAGs threats to stop Dr. Callistus Mahama from carrying out his threat of terminating the appointment of such staff. In the spirit of giving credit where it is due, I say thank you to CLOGSAG for spotting this illegality early and stopping it but I wish to add that the problems of Local Government Staff now are much bigger than being able to become Assembly members and I employ them to wake up and do more. Harassment, intimidation and victimisation of CLOGSAG members are a daily affair in the public sector and the earlier we look at these things comprehensively, the better.

To think that someone would put this unconstitutionality in a code and go ahead to insists on its implementation beats my imagination. To know why this is unconstitutional and illegal, I employ you to read Article 248(1) & (2) of the 1992 constitution and section 6 and 7 of the Local Government Act of 1993, Act 462 with specific reference to section 6, subsection 5. Even if these laws do not say what they say in these articles and sections, on what grounds would one seek to exclude people (who are knowledgeable in an area and could potentially contribute meaningfully to deliberations in Assembly sittings) from partaking in a process that is purely developmental? I have been asked before and I have said it that there is absolutely nothing legally wrong with a staff of LGS accepting appointments as a government appointee into the Assemblies except that the way we do our politics in this country would not allow me to accept such an appointment. I am reliably informed that Dr. Callistus Mahama served as an Assembly Member in the East Gonja District Assembly as a Government Appointee in the period 2006  2009 and for the benefit of doubts; I might have to wait and hear the experiences he gained that informed his decision to think of breaking the law before I make conclusive conclusions.

Now look at this! In Dr. Callistus Mahamas illegal Foreword to the HROM, he recognises the existence and importance of laws and protocols like the conditions of service in the Local Government Service by saying that Nonetheless the primary sources of information in this manual are EXTRACTS from the protocols of the Service namely; Conditions of Service, Scheme of Service, Code of Conduct and other relevant legislations of the Service. And yet almost everything in the HROM contravenes the content of the Condition of Service. The only exceptions may be the sections of the HROM which says Refer to Conditions of Service or See conditions of service. And what is even that? In the Foreword of the HROM, it states that It (the HROM) is intended to serve as a QUICK REFERENCE to the staff of LGS particularly Human Resource Managers and Senior Managers who have been entrusted with the responsibility of managing staff. How can a document which is meant to be for QUICK reference refer people severally to websites and other protocols? I dont get it! Absurd to say the least!!

Section 5 of the conditions of service states and I quote The Local Government Service Council shall be the highest authority for setting standards, appointments, disciplinary matters etc, and for the implementation of these Conditions of Service within the Local Government Service. This is consistent with relevant provisions of the Local Government Service Act of 2003, Act 656 as I have discussed before. But if you are curious as I am, just take a look at Dr. Callisttus Mahamas HROM. Everything in it is to be done by the HEAD OF SERVICE. Even appointments! This is what section 2.6.5(iii) says under terms of employment The HEAD OF SERVICE shall make appointments to positions required for effective and efficient management of the Service and WHEN NECESSARY in consultation with the Council and the Public Services Commission, setting out the terms and conditions of employment. And yet when he was asked to react to his incompetence after my news conference of 14th October, 2015 where he decided to skew the facts, he said he (Dr. Callistus Mahama) as Head of Service, had no hand in the appointment and promotion of Coordinating Directors, because it was purely the job of the Public Services Commission. Interesting! Again, under section 1.4 of the HROM, Dr. Callistus Mahama says The HEAD OF SERVICE reserves the right of adding to, amending or canceling from time to time any parts of this manual detailed out here as policies, procedures, laws, national regulations and trends in Human resource management change. How does this agree with his own statement in the Foreword of the HROM or the section of the condition of service quoted above?

On disciplinary matters, when I was ambushed and hauled to a Disciplinary Committee at the Northern Regional Coordinating Council at the instance of Dr. Callistus Mahama on the advice of his ill informed advisors, I began preparing to face the committee and what I uncovered was another mark of Dr. Callistus Mahamas legendary gross incompetence. Let me thank those who advice me to appear before that committee. My initial instinct was to be defiant and not attend because I felt it was just going to be a tool for victimisation. I have been vindicated and it was also a good thing that I attended hence my gratitude.

I actually got confused as to which of the protocols to rely on. Section 49 of the conditions of service states that The composition of the Disciplinary Committee shall be as follows: a) Legal/Human Resource Director or his/her representative; b) Head of Department of staff concerned; c) Representative of local union or staff association;

d) Any other senior staff appointed by management. Part IV, Procedure B of Dr. Callistus Mahamas code of conduct states that A Disciplinary Committee at the Regional level shall be constituted in the following manner:

a. A Regional Coordinating Director nominated by the Disciplinary Authority as Chairperson;

b. The District Chief Executive from the District of the Complainant;

c. Regional Human Resource Director/District Human Resource Director;

d. The District Coordinating Director or an officer acting in that capacity shall act as the investigative body;

e. A representative of the Staff Union.

Apart from the lack of clarity and contradiction in the composition of disciplinary committees, reading that of the code of conduct one might think that there is one for the District or National level but I tell you there is none in the code. What did I do? I decided to base my arguments on what is contained in the code of conduct because the committee was at the regional level. I hope you have also realised the confusion even in the composition as quoted above with specific reference to (b) and (d). If you say District of the COMPLAINANT what do you really mean? And must there be a complainant before disciplinary actions can be instituted? And if there is no complainant, what happens? So, for instance, in my case who was the complainant? Dr. Callistus Mahama and the service, I guess because I have now been told I was bringing his name and the service into disrepute for saying he is incompetent at my press conference! Funny!! Again if you say The District Coordinating Director or an officer acting in that capacity shall act as the investigative body, what is that? And what is the whole purpose of the committee then? This is a joke and we must get serious as a service. One part of me feels insulted that I am part of this mess of a service and another part says be consoled because you are acting to get these things changed. Being a head of a service is more than galloping around claiming glory. It is about leadership and for me currently LGS leadership is paralysed as someone puts it.

For me apart from the incompetence, my experience in the service tells me these lapses can also be attributed to someones personal interest. Personal interest in the sense that there was some money to be spent in the production of these documents and someone wanting to chop alone sat in his bedroom and produce them without consulting anybody. I hope you remember Because of chop leff, dem de job leff which I discussed in one of my earlier write ups!

I just cannot stop writing and something tells me I need a Part VI of this series but no; I think I have proving beyond all reasonable doubt that I was not blowing hot air at my news conference but knew what I was talking about when I said Dr. Callistus Mahama should be sacked for incompetence. I think the ball is now in his court for him to, like Dzifa Attivor, do the honourable thing even if he is not sacked since I have justified my claim with verifiable facts. That is the mark of a man of principles! You dare me, I prove you wrong and you act accordingly.

As I conclude because conclude I must (copying one of the great men of Africa in our time- Prof. PLO Lumumba) I pledge to do the bidding of mother Ghana more vigorously in 2016. It is a year of divine action for me. As I close on this series now, I will now direct my energies to what we can do as a people to ensure an efficient Local Government System that will be responsive to the needs of the people while pursuing my struggle against injustice in the system by exposing the many ills in our public sector today. As I said before, it is a call to duty and I am not stopping at the instance of man. A HAPPY 2016!

Hmmmmm... Payment of outrageous rates for accommodation per day for conferences held in Cape Coast and Sunyani at the later part of 2015 has caught the eye of yours truly and I have already established rates for accommodation in these regional capitals. Details later! I shall surely be back.

Charles A. Akurugu

[email protected]
A co-founder of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1954 has died in exile in Switzerland.

Thousands attended the funeral of Hocine Ait Ahmed in his home village named after him in Berber-dominated region of Algeria. Although he was in opposition for well over five decades, the FLN government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika paid respects to the fallen leader who had fought gallantly and suffered immensely in the struggle against French imperialism.

Hocine Ait Ahmed was imprisoned by the French colonialists in 1956 and was not released until the ceasefire of 1962 leading to the independence of the North African state under the leadership of Ahmed Ben Bella. He was known as a founding member of what was described as the Sons of Toussaint, a group of nationalist leaders who initiated the armed struggle on November 1, 1954.

The North African state of Algeria was colonized by Paris beginning in 1830. A system of national oppression and economic exploitation was instituted and lasted up until the early 1960s.

Algerian Nationalists Waged Eight-Year Armed and Mass Campaigns for Independence

During the course of the liberation movement at least one million Algerians died through massacres, mass detentions and tactics aimed at starving out freedom fighters that fought tirelessly utilizing popular demonstrations, general strikes and armed resistance.

On the night of November 1, 1954 a series of attacks by the FLN launched the guerrilla war for independence from France. All the operations took place within an hour or two from one end of Algeria to the other, revealing to Paris that the attacks had been well organized.

The Governor-General for colonial Paris immediately asked for reinforcements from Europe and these were deployed immediately. Three units of Public Security Guards including 600 troops arrived shortly in the country signaling an escalation of efforts to repress the uprising.

Despite the widespread killings of Algerians and the system of detention, torture and attempted isolation of the revolutionary forces, the FLN prevailed after France could no longer justify to its population the tremendous cost of the war in money and lives.

Ait Ahmed broke with other leaders of the FLN and the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic to form an opposition party, the Socialist Front Forces (FFS), in 1963. He had serious differences with other leaders within the FLN over the type of political system instituted during the post-colonial period of the 1960s.

He was imprisoned by the Algerian government in 1964 under threat of death. He escaped from prison and went into exile in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1966.

Nonetheless, he had returned to the country on numerous occasions but never came to terms with the FLN government which is backed by the military.

Ait Ahmed re-located to Algeria in 1989 after the FFS was legalized and stood as a candidate in presidential elections in 1999, but pulled out in the middle of the campaign arguing that the election process was structured in favor of Bouteflika. After the nullification of the election results of 1992 which seemed to have been in favor of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Ait Ahmed went back into exile in Switzerland due to the serious security situation inside the country.

A civil war erupted after the 1992 political crisis which lasted for nearly a decade. A number of smaller Islamic-oriented opposition forces remain in conflict with the largely secular government in Algiers.

According to an overview of the history of the FFS published by medea.be, it says Participating for the first time in parliamentary elections, the FFS became the third most important political party during the December 1991 elections  after the FIS and the FLN, the former single party  and the leading party in the Berber regions. Its relative success is partially explained by its demands for a multilingual Algerian society where Berber and French would be recognized alongside Arabic.

This same report continues noting how the party Strongly condemned the interruption of the electoral process in January 1992 and the setting up of institutions controlled by the army, the FFS has always called for the re-establishment of the democratic process (it supports the principle of a proportional representation voting system which would bring the FIS back to its true electoral proportions).

Ait-Ahmeds health began to fail in 2012 and he soon stepped down in 2013 as the leader of the FFS. He died in Lausanne on December 23.

Recognition by Algiers of His Contributions

His death prompted the government in Algiers to declare him a national hero and designate his memorial as a state funeral.

Ait Ahmed did not want to be buried alongside other FLN veterans in Algiers and was interned in his hometown named after him in the Berber dominated region of Kabyle. However, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, also a veteran of the struggle for independence, declared eight days of mourning after Ait Ahmeds death.

Covered in Algerias national flag, the coffin was transported in an ambulance through the village, where tens of thousands filled the streets. Today and tomorrow, Hocine lives! they chanted. Algeria, Free and Democratic!

During the procession the crowd moved towards the coffin as it was brought out of the ambulance in preparation for the burial, which took place in the early afternoon. The state funeral was broadcast live on television and a wake was later held at the headquarters of the FFS. The funeral cortege had traveled 100 miles (160km) south-east from Algiers to his village.

Algeria despite its contentious post-colonial political history remains a secular state that refrained from participation in the imperialist destruction of Libya in 2011 led by the United States and NATO. The Algerian government along with Syria voted against the Arab League endorsement of a so-called no-fly zone being implemented over Libya by the Pentagon-NATO forces and their allies in March 2011.

The war against Libya resulting in the toppling of the Jamahiriya system under the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi, killed in October 2011, has resulted in Africas once most prosperous state being turned into a source of instability, human trafficking and mass poverty. Imperialist states are attempting to deploy ground troops in Libya under the guise of fighting the so-called Islamic State which has established a base in Sirte and other sections of the oil-rich nation.
The New Patriotic Party is incensed by anti-party comments by suspended member Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, describing him as a mysterious and greedy politician.

Deputy General Secretary of NPP, Nana Obiri Boahen suspects the energy expert wants to stage a comeback into the political limelight by passing unpopular comments about his own party.

Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby who served as a CEO of power generator, Volta River Authority, under the LA Kufuor government lambasted the party for its unflinching call for a new voters register for the 2016 elections.

A panel put together by the electoral commission has rejected calls by the NPP for a new electoral roll to be compiled. The opposition party has described the recommendation as disappointing.

However, the controversial politician says the opposition party should simply shut up.

"I want to hear NPP talk about the fuel price hikes, the wrongs going on in Ghana. This is the time to offer alternatives, not keep complaining and wasting our time with threats of going to court. Therell be no new register. End of the story, he said on Asempa FM Monday.

But Nana Obiri Boahene told Joy News Dr. Wereko-Brobby should be ignored.

In his observation, Dr. Wereko-Brobby was only making ugly noise just to seek attention from the public.

He, the Deputy General Secretary recalled, Tarzan, as Dr. Wereko-Brobby is called, abandoned the party at a critical moment to form a rival political party which contested for election in 2000.

When young people and several other committed people had put in their sweat to win power for the party, Dr. Wereko-Brobby made a u-turn to enjoy the goodies, an irritated Obiri Boahene recounted, explaining why he is a "mysterious and greedy politician".

In any case, he maintained, the suspended members should be the ones who should shut up and not the party that he believes is fighting a good cause.

Meanwhile, the NPP has asked suspended founding member, Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe to seek redress if he feels aggrieved by the sanctions against him.

Dr Tamakloe was suspended for making some unsavoury comments against the party leadership last week.
In the light of the weekend occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, its worth focusing on three statements that would appear to be obvious but might well get confused in days to come:

First, the militants who took over the headquarters of the refuge on Saturday are not heroes, not by any stretch of the imagination. Their actions are illegal.

Second, considering the remoteness of the refuge, there does not appear to be any need for law enforcement officers to force any kind of quick resolution. It strikes us as probable that some of the estimated two dozen militants involved in the occupation would welcome a chance to become martyrs for the cause in some sort of overheated showdown; theres no apparent need for anyone to offer them that opportunity.

But, finally, there is this: There is some validity to at least one of the concerns thats driving the occupation: the idea that the federal government has not done the job it promised it would do to manage the millions and millions of acres in the West that are under federal control.

Dont misunderstand us: We dont believe that, in any way, justifies the actions of the militants in occupying the refuge  a facility that belongs to all of us but now is temporarily off-limits. But when this occupation ends (peacefully, we pray, and with no damage to the headquarters or the refuge), questions will remain about how the federal government has managed its land.

Thats nothing new, of course: These concerns have been raging in the West since the days of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s  and for much of the century before that, as the federal government found itself the owner of big chunks of the region. The federal government, of course, still owns big chunks of the West, including more than 53 percent of Oregon. (Only three other states  Nevada, Alaska and Utah  have a higher percentage of federal ownership.)

Given that influence, tensions about the best use of that land were  and are  inevitable. Just ask the communities around the West that used to rely on money from timber harvests on federal forests  and how that money slowed to a trickle after new policies sharply curtailed the harvest. That drama still is playing out on main streets that used to be bustling.

The drama at the Malheur refuge has more to do with grazing rights on federal lands; ranchers long have relied on the federal permits, which were relatively inexpensive and easy to get. But increased regulation and scrutiny of those permits led to ranchers complaining about federal overreach, and helped inspire the first wave of the Sagebrush Rebellion.

The standoff in Malheur County will not end with the federal government electing to give states control of its array of lands. In fact, it seems unlikely that states have the resources to properly manage those lands.

But lets hope for this: A peaceful end to the standoff. And lets also hope that the federal government elects to properly manage its lands  our lands  for the multiple uses that they can support.
Health experts are warning of a looming crisis in tge healthcare delivery system in the country due to budget cuts.

As a result of the cuts, funds meant for sustaining the National Health Insurance Scheme and the purchase of drugs and vaccines for the treatment of tuberculosis are no longer available.

The MP for Berekum and a Member of Parliaments Health Committee, Dr. Kwabena Twum-Nuamah warned of a major health crisis if government does not provide the needed funds.

"Looking at the budget for 2016, the budget to GDP for the health sector was reduced from 3.4% to 3.2% but the devil is in the detail.

"For goods and services, it was reduced from a little over 800 million cedis to just 3.6 million cedis in the 2016 budget."

He said with this huge cut, medical facilities will not have enough money to pay for their utilities.

"They will not have enough to buy some of the medicines to distribute to various agencies under them.

He said the TB drugs will be the biggest hit.

Kwabena Twum Nuamah said government must look for extra funds to support the sector, otherwise there will be a crisis in the health sector this year.

The Ghana Medical Association is already feeling the pinch and has urged government to prioritise the sustenance of the National Insurance Scheme to ensure better healthcare delivery.

Deputy General Secretary of the GMA, Dr. Justice Yankson told Joy News healthcare delivery in the country will be compromised if the health insurance system is not improved.

"There are two key things in the health sector that we need to look at - budgetary support and then what we generate by way of work.

"If you go to most health facilities now, health insurance takes the chunk of whatever we are doing. We expect health insurance to actually pay their bills on time. That way it will relieve the hospitals of a lot of the pressures they are facing by way of lack of finances.

"It is not good for cuts to happen but we expect that no matter what government should understand the sensitive nature of the health sector.

"The health of the nation is the wealth of the nation. So there are some critical activities like immunization that under no circumstances should we toy with," he said.

He said if the health sector will function properly in the year 2016, government must play its role as expected.
05.01.2016 LISTEN

The Greater Accra Regional police have arrested a military officer and a professional heavy load equipment operator for allegedly snatching a car at gun point.

Deputy Accra Regional Police Commander told Joy News Lance Coproral Fiaku Micheal, 24 and Baffoe Archer, 24, hired the taxi from Tudu in Accra en route to the Osu castle.

On reaching the CEPS traffic light, the military officer requested to use the washroom and directed the complainant to drive to the independence square.

On arrival the military officer used the washroom as requested leaving suspect Baffoe Archer in the taxi cab with the driver, ACP Timothy Bonga stated.

The military officer returned minutes later from the washroom with a gun and with the help of his accomplice ordered the driver to hand over the vehicle.

The taxi driver out of fear handed over the vehicle. He reported the case to the police and it was at the sale of the taxi cab that the suspects were apprehended by the police.

According to Joy News Latif Idris who was at a press briefing organized by the police said one more suspect, Richard Opoku Asamoah is on the run.

Police have called on the public to assist them in arresting him.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Naa Sakwaba Akwa | [email protected]
This article seeks to remind the President of the Republic of Ghana, H.E. John Dramani Mahama of the unpaid salary arrears to the 2013 batch of teachers.

I choose to employ decorum, decency and humility in this article to you His Excellency to express my profound nonacceptance of your unfavourable decision to withhold the salary arrears of teachers.

Because I trust that you have a listening ear, I have decided to draw your attention to a few points especially when I believe that these points are equally of much concern to you.

I have been writing a few articles over the years to press home our legitimate demand for salary arrears but for some few months, I have decided to give myself a break since I have realised that my articles have not yielded the expected results: you have not responded positively.

Well, Mr. President, I am a man who never gives up on my fight against social injustice-an evil that has unfortunately poked its ugly nose in your government and the Ghanaian society as a whole. And that should not obviously serve as motivation for you to disregard us.

I am not writing this article to flex my muscles against you since I have much smaller muscles compared to yours neither do I want to incur your wrath. But one thing I never fear is that in case I incur your wrath because of my fight for social justice, I would be at peace with myself.

Once again, I am not writing this article for fantasy or exaggeration, but for the fact that you have intransigently refused to pay us our arrears. Your decisions concerning teacher-issues and your approach to handling our salary arrears since you assumed office as president of the republic can only be described as intransigent, derogatory, disrespect and disregard of our concerns.

At a time when the standard of education is falling in our dear republic, any disincentive to teachers who are obviously at the centre of education in the country should seriously not be tolerated. Also any fixation on churlish politics as regards teacher-salary issues which have the tendency of destabilising our educational system should be condemned.

The problem is that you politicians have denied the public servants especially teachers our rightful entitlements in the form of good salaries, salary arrears and allowances. But you politicians have successfully been paid all your entitlements, paid fat salaries, fat allowances, per diem, ex gratia and the likes. You encountered no challenge with regard to payment of the above mentioned monies to you. Why then have you placed myriads of obstacles in the teachers' path to recovery of their arrears?

His Excellency, we have given you our endorsement as president and you have made the Flagstaff House your dwelling only because of us. You could never have made yourself president, could you? The answer remains no! Why then have you chosen this path of disregard of our arrears issues? Now it is not about what we can do to retain you as our president as election is approaching, it is about what you can do as president to pay our arrears.

It is now increasingly clear that your decision not to pay our arrears due us has not only set the wrong precedent but you completely disregarded the inevitable negative consequences your decision would certainly have on the teachers.

The accumulative effect of the negative approach has seriously corroded the cohesive fabric of our relationship with you and it is about time something is done to reverse the situation. Your decision was taken unilaterally (without the consent of teacher unions even though that could have been better). Also, justice and fairness were seen lacking.

This article should not be misconstrued in any way as an attack on your personality or political pursuits. We are proud to have you as our president even though not everyone is likely to support you. The problem, as we have all realised now is your decision to withhold our rightful arrears and that is unacceptable. We have not forgotten about it and will continue to fight till we get what is due us.

This article is not a threat but a wish out of extreme confusion and disappointment at the manner in which you have finally degraded the entire issue of our arrears.

There are no proven documents to legitimize my claim but it is your inability to pay us that has necessitated this article.

Mr. President, I humbly but strongly ask that you pay our arrears now. Who knows, it could secure you an additional four years to continue your stewardship at the magnificent Flagstaff House.

Alright then, I wish you all the best.
When: 17 21 January 2016

The 2016 Gender Pre-Summit will hold as follows:

Day 1: GIMAC Civil Society Meeting

Date: 17 January 2016

Venue: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Conference Center

Time: 09h00  17h00

Day 2: GIMAC Civil Society Meeting

Date: 18 January 2016

Venue: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Conference Center

Time: 09h00  17h00

Day 2: Closed Ministerial Session

Date: 18 January 2016

Venue: African Union Commission (AUC) New Conference Center

Time: 09h00  12h30

Experts Meeting of the Continued 1st Specialised Technical Committee on Gender and Women Empowerment

Date: 18 January 2016

Venue: African Union Commission (AUC)

Time: 09h00  12h30

Ministerial Meeting of the Continued 1st Specialised Technical Committee on Gender and Women Empowerment

Date: 18 January 2016

Venue: African Union Commission (AUC) New Conference Center

Time: 14h00 17h45

Day 3: Joint Session of Ministers, AU Organs, CSOs, RECs and Partners

Date: 19 January 2016

Venue: African Union Commission (AUC) New Conference Center

Time: 09h00  17h30

Day 4: Joint Session of Ministers, AU Organs, CSOs, RECs and Partners

Date: 20 January 2016

Venue: African Union Commission (AUC)

Time: 09h00  17h30

Day 5: Africa Consultative Forum of the CSW

Date: 21 January 2016

Venue: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

Time: 09h00  17h30

Who: Under the Presidency of H.E Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the AUC, the 2016 Gender Pre-Summit is jointly organized by the AUC Directorate of Women, Gender and Development; the Gender is My Agenda Campaign (GIMAC), and AU partners.

Why: The year 2016, marks important milestones in the continental and global women's agenda for gender equality and women empowerment. Among others, continentally, it is the 30th anniversary of the coming into force of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights in 1986 and the beginning of the second phase of the African Women's Decade 2010-2020. The African Women's Decade is the AU's implementation framework which aims to advance gender equality through the acceleration of the implementation of global and regional decisions on gender equality and women's empowerment. Globally, 2016 commemorates 36 years since the adoption of CEDAW, described as the international bill of rights for women, and the 21st anniversary of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which is the key global policy on gender equality. To commemorate these important milestones, the African Union Heads of State and Government at their 25th Ordinary Summit in June 2015 in Sandton, South Africa, declared 2016 as the Africa Year of Human Rights, in particular, with focus on the Rights of Women. Considering that 2015 was declared the Year of Women's Empowerment and Development Towards Africa's Agenda 2063, the 2016 theme marks the second consecutive year that gender equality and women's empowerment are adopted as the highest priority on the continental agenda.

The African Union has developed an extensive and progressive body of legal instruments to promote gender equality and women's rights. These are the AU Constitutive Act, which is the foundational constitutional framework promoting gender equality and women's empowerment; Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), which constitutes the AU legal framework on gender and women's rights; Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SDGEA), which is the AU reporting framework; AU Gender Policy, which provides a policy framework for gender and women's rights; African Women's Decade, which is the AU's implementation framework and the Fund for African Women, which provides the financial framework.

Despite these elaborate mechanisms, and women and girls forming the majority of the population in Africa, there is still a huge deficit in the actual enjoyment of these rights by women. African women and girls still face a multitude of barriers to gender equality. These include, among others, economic exclusion and financial systems that perpetuate the discrimination of women; limited participation in political and public life; lack of access to education and poor retention of girls in schools; gender-based violence, harmful cultural practices, and exclusion of women from peace tables either as lead mediators or part of negotiating teams of conflicting parties.

Objective: The overall objective of the Gender Pre-Summit is to bring together voices of key actors in the gender equality and women's empowerment arena, to update and discuss critical developments in the field, assess the extent of implementation of commitments, especially the Declaration on 2015 Year of Women's Empowerment and Development Towards Africa's Agenda 2063 as well as the Mid-Term Review of the African Women's Decade, identify future priority areas of action including the implementation of the 2016 year of Human Rights with a focus on the Rights of Women, and call for greater acceleration in the effective implementation of commitments on gender equality and women's empowerment.

The specific objectives are to:

Raise awareness and develop a common strategy on the implementation of the 2016 theme of African Year of Human Rights, with Particular Focus on the Rights of Women. Assess progress on women's participation in politics, public office and the judiciary and identify challenges and barriers hindering their effective participation as well as develop strategies to accelerate women's agency and leading role in politics, public office and the judiciary. Identify how national regulations and policies, on one hand, and practice from financial institutions and investors, on the other, can work more closely in ways to improve the financial inclusion of women in the formal economy. Stimulate dialogue between AU Member States, regional intergovernmental institutions, CSOs and development partners on the opportunities, gaps and solutions for enhancing women's economic empowerment and ensuring that women are at the centre of sustainable development, peace, regional integration and economic growth in Africa. Explore recent developments on migration, particularly recent trends, challenges and impact on women as well as discuss best ways to manage it by policy makers in Africa and countries of destination. Engage practitioners, policy- makers, activists, and a broad range of stakeholders to review the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda on the continent, learn from various experiences and challenges, and reflect critically on what is needed to accelerate implementation and monitoring at all levels as well as a way forward. Share progress, challenges and opportunities for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Provide an understanding of the extent of the several HTPs still prevalent in Africa, as well as the role that social society plays in amplifying gender divisions. and Provide an opportunity for different stakeholders to discuss the challenges hindering progress in achieving women's land and property rights in Africa, as well as to identify and promote practical approaches to address these challenges with a view to gain commitment towards promoting good models. Among others.

Expected outcomes:

The outcomes document/ communique with concrete decisions will be presented to the AU Summit of Heads of State and Government, for consideration and adoption.

Participants: The 2016 Gender Pre-Summit will draw participants from:

Ministers of Gender and Women's Affairs of AU Member States; AU Organs; Gender units of the RECs; Women's network from GIMAC; Civil Society Organisation (CSOs); UN Agencies; AU partners Officials from the AU Commission and ; The Private Sector.

Background: The African Union (AU) Gender Pre-Summits are organized before each Summit of the AU to bring together the voices of key actors in the gender equality and women's empowerment arena to update and discuss critical developments related to gender equality and women's empowerment, with the aim of influencing and shaping the discussions and decisions of scheduled AU Summits. Building on the AUs obligations on gender equality and women's empowerment outlined in its legal instruments, these preparatory meetings serve as an important vehicle to incorporate gender perspectives into the highest decision-making body of the AU, thus ensuring that gender and women's concerns remain on the high priority list of the AU.

The Gender Pre-Summits are organised by the AU Women, Gender and Development Directorate (WGDD) in collaboration with other Departments of the AU Commission (AUC) and development partners. Initially conceived as civil society consultation platforms, the Gender Pre-Summits now draw the participation of African Ministers responsible for Gender and Women Affairs, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), AU organs, AUC Departments, the private sector, United Nations (UN) agencies and development partners. This is in line with the decision of the Ministerial Consultation with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) held on 24 June 2014, in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, that the AUC should henceforth have inclusive consultative processes involving all relevant stakeholders within the gender equality and women's empowerment sector.

Consequently, the Gender-Pre Summit on the "Year of Women's Empowerment and Development Towards Africa Agenda 2063, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 21-23 January 2015, took the format of a stakeholders' consultation to enhance partnerships between Ministers of Gender and Women's Affairs, RECs and CSOs to enable collective action in shaping decisions of the AU Summit. The following Gender Pre-Summit on Financial Inclusion of Women in Agribusiness held from 10  12 June 2015 in Sandton, South Africa, followed the format of an AU High Level Panel meeting. Building on the previous Summit, the Sandton meeting developed an outcomes document that led to the adoption, by the AU Heads of State and Government, of a Declaration with six (6) priority areas and a Call for Action to implement the commitments made during the Year of Women's Empowerment and Development. This upcoming 2016 Gender Pre-Summit, scheduled for 17  21 January 2016 at the AUC Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, will follow that inclusive format and will be held within the context of the AU 2016 theme of the Africa Year of Human Rights, with a focus on the Rights of Women.

JOURNALISTS ARE INVITED TO MASSIVELY COVER THE EVENT.
Seth Terkper

05.01.2016 LISTEN

Finance Minister Seth Terkper has incurred the wrath of most lawmakers over the imposition of new taxes on petroleum products.

The minister is being accused of misleading the lawmaking chamber to approve increment in the prices of diesel and petrol.

Members of the Finance Committee in Parliament claim the finance minister assured that increments for diesel would not go beyond three percent and petrol by five percent.

But, current increments for both diesel and petrol go beyond 20 percent each.

Starr FM's parliamentary correspondent, Kobby Gomez Mensah, who has been following this new development, said some of the MPs are peeved over the development.

Member of the Finance Committee in Parliament, Mark Assibey Yeboah, said the ministry must explain to the Law House what led to the outrageous increment.

He added that if it is revealed that the minister lied to Parliament, he must be made to face the consequences.

If somebody is being shortchanged, then I think we have to ask the relevant questions but 27 percent at this time when crude oil prices is decliningI think is asking too much of Ghanaians, Mr Assibey Yeboah said.

Source: Starrfmonline


05.01.2016 LISTEN

Some of the 500 recruits who were dismissed by the Ghana Armed Forces for rebelling against what they termed strenuous training, say they plan to sue the Army.

According to Citi News sources, the recruits are heading to court to compel the Army to reinstate them.

A statement from the Ghana Armed Forces said the training of the 500 recruits was terminated after they staged an unauthorised assembly and subsequently marched to their instructor's accommodation to demand that they send them home.

This was after the recruits had described their training as strenuous and constitutes maltreatment.

Speaking on the latest development, human rights lawyer, Francis Xavier Sosu, says he is not surprised at the turn of events.

He told Citi News the Ghana Army opened up itself to lawsuits following its wholesale dismissal of the 500 recruits.

It raises concern for those who were not involved or directly participated in the said insubordination but were affected by the decision.

Especially in the absence of evidence to show that they were involved, some of them can go to court for an order for them to be reinstated, Lawyer Sosu explained.

According to him, those who did not participate in the unauthorised assembly for which they were dismissed can legally compel the Army to recall them unless there is evidence to prove otherwise.

The Army described the conduct of the recruits as far reaching and inimical to the security of the state.

Source: Citifmonline
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Article 104: Philosophy of Vision, pursuant to my mission statement - to meet the knowledge needs of our society - is wisdom-bound and destined to sharpen up the mental faculties of young Africans. Vision, a key element of progressive success and optimum prosperity, is an exquisite topic which ought to be dissected in every nook and cranny daily. Indeed, "Where there is no vision, the people perish..." (Proverbs 29:18). Now let us delve into the rudiments of vision. According to Google, vision is the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom. Yet the eminent scholar, Professor Stephen Adei, an erstwhile rector of GIMPA, once stated that, "Vision is thinking and acting with the end in view." And by logical inference, vision hinges on thought, imagination, plan, wisdom and action - that is the crux of the matter.

Also, "Vision is purely a function of imagination. Your vision is your dream. It is, in fact, the seed for achievement" (Asubonteng, 2006). For Jonathan Swift, the great essayist who wrote "A Modest Proposal" in 1729, was absolutely right when he revealed that, "Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others." Coo! This all-important quote just blows me away since it serves as a cognitive affirmation of my definite vision in life! Look! "The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision," according to Helen Keller, the author of "Optimism" in 1903. Again, clear-cut vision means a lot to some people while others too belittle its overriding essence in life. For someone's vision in life is conservatively connected to his faith or religion. Another person's life-vision looks comprehensively vague in character. One's defined vision may be closely tied to cupidity. Or maybe your chief vision is to do the impossible or be the greatest in your field.

Moreover, some folks hold strong-willed visions which probably lack substance. Others too have seemingly unattainable visions yet somehow believable. Besides, you may not even have a concrete vision in life at all. However, it is about time we remembered that, "Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world," according to Joel A. Barker, the first person to popularise the concept of paradigm shifts for the corporate world. That should be our cardinal guiding principle in the pursuit of our respective visions! After all, no one can sue you for dreaming beyond predefined human expectations, so we can all dream the unthinkable as long as we have the gift of life. No wonder Friedrich Nietzsche declared that, "The visionary only lies to himself, the liar only to others." Above all, "If a dream [vision] is from God, you have to be totally rejected before you can be accepted," according to the late Dr. Myles Munroe.

Therefore, count it all joy when the life-vision you have triggers great obstructions or fierce objections from others! For Myles Munroe has already disclosed that, "You can always tell when your dream is from God: It's much bigger than what your parents thought; it's much bigger than what you thought; even you got trouble believing it; everybody thinks you're crazy." Hey, why should our individual visions be shrouded in absolute secrecy? My vision is to establish a writing super empire in the world even as a true black African - period; no breakdowns, please! For my outlined plans, the pathway to my vision, are only best known to me and my God. And it is also imperative that our various visions are turned into black and white, so that they do not remain abstract or illusionary. Yes, prayers are incredibly pivotal to the realisation of our visions, to be frank with you.

Now here is an inspiring list of unbelievable visions some influential personalities have achieved, and one which has started unfolding! Sarkodie, the BET Award winner and the acclaimed best African rapper, dreams of winning a Grammy one day, though he is a Ghanaian artiste. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, reportedly rejected a $900 million offer from Yahoo to buy his budding Facebook innovation, because his vision was only to establish the greatest social media platform on earth.

Again, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome dreamt of creating a rare ministerial empire on a global scale - no doubts, he has accomplished that vision. Kwame Nkrumah had an inconceivable vision of decolonising and further transforming Gold Coast, now Ghana, and Africa at large. In fact, he attained 80% of his dream.

Source: sirarticle.blogspot.com
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - Workers of Ridge Regional Hospital on Tuesday declared their support for Dr Emmanuel Kwabla Srofenyoh as the substantive Medical Director of the medical facility.

In a petition to President John Dramani Mahama, the 119 staff of the Hospital, called on the Head of State to intervene and revoke the reported appointment of Dr Thomas Anaba.

'The petition to your high office has become necessary because we believe strongly that the appointment of Dr Thomas Anaba was wrongfully done, with so many problems and issues associated with the processes leading to his appointment.

'We are also petitioning your high office because of our desire to see a smooth transition from the old to the new Hospital with the right kind of leadership.'

The workers said all directors of the Hospital have been appointed within the service, more so Dr Srofenyoh is a Consultant whilst Dr Anaba is a specialist.

'The Hospital has reached where it is today because of his hard work and sacrifice. He has been very involved with the building of the new Hospital. It is because of him that the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of the Hospital is seen today as perhaps the best place for maternal health care services in the whole country.'

The petition said it is because of Dr Srofenyoh that the Hospital was accredited by Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons to train Post Graduate Doctors in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Specialisation.

It said Ridge Regional Hospital is the only Ghana Health Service facility in Ghana to have such an accreditation.

The petition said through Dr Srofenyoh's untiring efforts and leadership qualities, he has been able to bring in partners and sponsors who have supported the Hospital over the years to transform service delivery at the O&G Department.

'One of such partners, Kybele Incorporated, from the USA has engaged in a very fruitful partnership with the Hospital and has made substantial investments at the O&G Department. Many of the Nurses and Midwives in the Hospital have had the opportunity to upgrade their skills in the USA through fruitful exchange arrangements with Kybele Incorporated.

The Hospital stands to lose these substantial investments from Kybele, together with all the future opportunities for more Nurses and Midwives to upgrade their skills with the exchange arrangement in the absence of Dr Emmanuel Srofenyoh.

'The O& G Department, and by extension the Hospital stands to lose heavily with the real threat of substantial reversal in service delivery, and a downturn in performance without the only Consultant O&G to direct affairs in the Hospital.'

The petition said Dr Srofenyoh has been a central figure in the Ridge Hospital Redevelopment Programme.

It said: 'The rebuilding of the new Ridge Regional Hospital which your government has kindly adopted was muted and pioneered with his active involvement.'

The petition said he developed the initial proposal, putting forth all the figures and the justifications for the authorities concerned.

He actively contributed in the project design and was the key person when the Hospital had to do value for money justifications of the project with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health.

Dr Srofenyoh represented the Hospital when the final designs, cost and other issues of the project were being discussed and finalised in the US.

'The project is yet to be completed and operationalised, so why change the key person who has been involved with the project from the scratch, especially when the person is equally, if not more qualified to do the job?

'We want a leader who dedicated himself and sacrificed everything for the cause of the Hospital and our clients. We want a leader who will stand by us through thick and thin. We want a leader who is coming to the job for what he can put in and not what he can take out. We want a leader who is very qualified and experienced clinically and administratively to handle the new Hospital complex.

'Above all, we want a leader the staff can relate to, who would be available 24 hours a day to attend to the needs of the clients, staff and the Hospital.

'We have such a leader in Dr Emmanuel Srofenyoh. He has demonstrated in word and deed that he is a real leader, one in whom the staff can depend to move the Hospital forward.

'Dr Emmanuel Srofenyoh has our unflinching, unwavering and unalloyed support for the position of the Medical Director of the Hospital. All the staff love him and that is why we find it necessary to send this petition to plead with you to intervene in this matter and let the right thing be done.'

GNA
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - Samuel Constant Kwaku, former parliamentary aspirant of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the Osu Clottey, on Tuesday described the petition by some aggrieved members of the constituency against Dr Zenator Rawlings as superfluous .

The petition addressed to former President Jerry John Rawlings, Leader and Founder of the NDC challenged the eligibility of Dr Rawlings to contest the November 2015 parliamentary primary.

Mr Kwaku popularly known as 'Alhaji One', said the address of the petition to Dr Zenator's father was wrong and baseless because she was not appointed but elected by more than 4,000 people to represent the constituency.

He said the petition, which was copied to the President, Council of Elders, National Chairman of the Legal Committee, Constituency Secretary among others was s ill-intended and mischievous because the parliamentary candidate went through vetting and was cleared to run.

Mr Kwaku said as a member of Dr Rawlings campaign team, he knew very well that the parliamentary candidate met all the requisite formalities and guidelines before availing herself for the contest.

'So far as I am concerned Dr Rawlings is visible and well known to her constituents, that was why she won the primary overwhelmingly and whoever is in doubt can seek redress at the appropriate platform.

'Those claiming that Dr Rawlings name is not on the voters register are wrong because the parliamentary primary was not contested with the national voters register, and if Dr Rawlings feels disfranchise in the November 2016 general election, she can take up the issue with the Electoral Commission and not aggrieved petitioners,' he said.

Mr Kwaku said Dr Zenator is focused and battle ready to win the parliamentary contest for the NDC this year, hence the need for her supporters and members of the party in the constituency not to allow some few disgruntled and faceless people to distract their attention.

GNA
A 21 year old man has died at Nyinahin Mpumah in Ashanti Religion after allegedly eating poisoned goat soup.

Two other friends who ate the same meal have been left hospitalized.

The deceased, Kwasi Owusu, 21, and his friends had reportedly stolen the delicacy prepared by the mother of one of the two friends.

Nana Adjei Sikapa who was reporting for Adom News, said the soup had been poisoned by the woman ostensibly to punish people she suspects had been stealing meat from her soup.

She chose no other day than Christmas day to carry out her diabolic plot to catch the suspects. According to Sikapa, the woman who is currently on the run, allegedly poisoned the goat soup she had prepared on Christmas day and kept it in her kitchen.

The three friends suffered stomach upset after eating the meat in the soup. They were then rushed to Nyinahini Government Hospital for treatment by residents who heard them scream. Kwasi Owusu died subsequently.

The two others, whose names are yet to be given by the police were later transferred to Okonfo Anokye Teaching hospital.

According to Sikapa, reporters were initially informed that the boys had eaten a dead goat. "It was only after one of them died that a resident hinted that they had been poisoned.

Atwima Mponuah District Crime officer, Thomas Freeman Asante says the two are responding to treatment. He added that the police are currently looking for the suspect.

Residents of Nyinahini have expressed shock at the conduct of the woman.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com| Akosua Asiedua Akuffo| [email protected]
Life in the Desert

I danced in the desert,

I swam by the shores,

I spent warm nights under starlit blankets of silver,

I made friends from far-away places

I ate and drank and savored it all

I loved and was loved

What more could anyone ask for?



(Desert Girl, Kuwait)


05.01.2016 LISTEN

Folks, I have insisted all this while that the NPP can save itself from more disaster (at least, by presenting workable and reliable alternatives for governance to spice contemporary Ghanaian politics) if it abandons its anachronistic rogue and book politics to turn attention toward issues dear to the lives of the people.

I have made it clear that elections are won at the polls when voters are persuaded to give their consent to candidates assuring them of good governance, based on policies and tested personal integrity, and not through the rhetorical acrobatics in the mass media or just any public space or even through legal gymnastics in court at the least prompting.

So also have I made it clear that the NPP's Akufo-Addo and his running mate (Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia) haven't learnt any new lesson to add value to themselves and their party so as to win the hearts and minds of the electorate. From what has unfolded so far, it is clear that the NPP isn't making any progress at all to indicate that it can win Election 2016.

The party's fixation on technicalities, culminating in the "huhudious" work by Dr. Bawumia and all those wasting time, money, and energy looking for just anything in the form of a political straw to hang on to won't solve any problem for the NPP. Instead, they will erode their credibility further, as is the case of the 76,000 Togolese voters' case that the Electoral Commission has discredited and for which the NDC is urging that Dr. Bawumia be arrested for deceiving Ghanaians. Terrible harm to his integrity!!

Now, the issues are assuming a more interesting turn for the worse. Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, a suspended high-ranking member of the NPP, has hit hard the same chord that resonates with me:

"I want to hear NPP talk about the fuel price hikes, the wrongs going on in Ghana. This is the time to offer alternatives, not keep complaining and wasting our time with threats of going to court. Therell be no new register. End of the story, he said on Asempa FM Monday."

Certainly, an astute observation to make! But instead of seeing sense in Dr. Wereko-Brobby's advice, the NPP leaders are going for his throat, dismissing him as a "mysterious and greedy politician" (as framed by Nana Obiri Boahen, Deputy General Secretary).(See http://www.myjoyonline.com/politics/2016/January-5th/npp-descends-on-mysterious-greedy-wereko-brobby.php ).

Is that so? Dr. Wereko-Brobby a mysterious and greedy politician? I dont think so. Having formed his own party and collapsing it into the NPP, how would he turn out to be mysterious and greedy? I think otherwise about the man. He may be too brazen, but he is telling the NPP what it needs to know and act on to improve its politicking.

Of course, there is a lot happening that the NPP can capitalize on for its campaigns; that is, if there is any change in the direction of campaigning for it to make. Dr. Brobby is on suspension but not prevented from commenting on the party's lack of purposefulness. Or...?

As is the case now, all those suspended by the Akufo-Addo team are free to say whatever is on their minds. Will the NPP now turn to gagging them in addition? Or will they be expelled from the party to end it all? Even then, they have every right to make their voices heard. Folks, do you see how these NPP people behave?

I shall return
05.01.2016 LISTEN

The Eastern regional Youth Organizer for the ruling National Democratic Congress, Appau Wiredu Haruna has called on all members of the NDC and Ghanaians in general to treat with contempt a story in which he is reported to have said that the John Mahama led NDC government cannot win the 2016 elections.

Appau Wiredu Haruna, who is also the NDCs Parliamentary candidate for New Juabeng North Constituency says he was quoted out of context by some mischievous journalists bent on creating disaffection for him.

He was misquoted after he addressed party branch executives and party faithful at an end of year get-together at Koforidua. The event was also to welcome the new Municipal Chief Executive nominated by the President and recently approved by the Assembly.

The NDC within the municipality had been plagued by constant infighting; a situation that led to the removal of the previous MCE.

The Parliamentary candidate tells rawgist.com that it was on this backdrop that he was addressing the NDC family. It was a family meeting and I had to let the party within the region know that if the infighting and bickering continued, we would lose the election at that level. I was admonishing them to unite behind the party so that if elections were held today, we would win hands down.

He explains to rawgist.coms Bernard Buachi that I called for all hands to be on deck and for party members to avoid complacency since the grounds is difficult. Victory will not come on a silver platter but we need to join hands and work hard to secure it so that the President himself is not overworked during the campaigns.

News websites including adomonline.com reported the Eastern regional Youth organizer as saying the Mahama-led government cannot win the 2016 general elections; a reportage he has denied and criticized as irresponsible and borne out of bad faith.

He believes the government has performed very well and needs the party to be strong enough to trumpet the achievements of the government and not be complacent as the country approaches its next Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

By Bernard Buachi/rawgist.com
Though the resignation of the minister for transport is welcomed, it is not enough for God & country. We commend however, the swift action taken by government to retrieve the stolen money. This step notwithstanding, is incomplete until the full complement of the law has been applied.

Be it as it may, AFAG will like to know whether the excess payment has been repaid? When it was made? Was there value for money audit before payment? Did the procurement board grant smarty's sole sourcing rights? Is there a criminal intent in the transaction?

Fellow Ghanaians, under the current precarious economic circumstances, such an unconscionable act must be made to face the full wrath of the law. The records should be set straight on this transaction, and any greedy bastard (who have sent this country begging on its knees) trading off our common goal for their paroquial interest punished.

Our simple questions need not escape your attention Mr. President.

We wish Ghanaians a prosperous New Year.

Signed

Wesley Owusu

Arnold BOATENG
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is recommending that 1,700 troops be cut from the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the second drawdown in two years.

Ban said in a report to the Security Council released Tuesday that a further cut could be decided if progress was made in rooting out rebel groups in the east.

The proposal, to be discussed at a council meeting next week, comes amid growing tensions in the DR Congo over elections in November and whether President Joseph Kabila will seek another term in office.

Ban said he was "deeply troubled by the rising political tensions associated with the electoral process" and warned of "a real risk of civil unrest and widespread violence if these tensions remain unaddressed."

Kabila, in power since 2001, has not said publicly whether he intends to run for re-election.

The council in March voted to cut 2,000 troops from the 20,000-strong MONUSCO force, the UN's biggest peace operation.

"A further reduction of MONUSCO military personnel may be envisaged without compromising the mission's ability to implement its mandate to protect civilians, including the neutralization of armed groups," Ban said in the report.

"I therefore recommend that the Security Council, when reviewing the mission's mandate, consider a further reduction of 1,700 MONUSCO military personnel, in addition to the reduction of the 2,000 military personnel endorsed by the council," he said.

The council is due to vote before the end of March on renewing the mission's mandate.

Ban also called for talks with the Kinshasa government on an exit strategy to wind down the nearly two-decade-old mission, in line with repeated demands by President Laurent Kabila.

During last year's debate, Kabila sought an immediate cut of 6,000 troops and a clear commitment to shut down the UN peace operations in the near future.

While the council cut 2,000 troops from the force, the drawdown did not affect the UN-mandated ceiling of about 21,000 forces, which suggested that the council could decide to again boost UN troop presence in the DR Congo.
Kinshasa (AFP) - Some 7,000 refugees arriving from war-torn South Sudan were registered in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, a local official said.

"Seven thousand people have crossed the South Sudanese border at Dungu towards the Democratic Republic of Congo," Ismael Arama Ziama, senior official in Haut-Uele province, told AFP, adding that they had been registered in the northeastern border region.

Arama Ziama said the refugees, who have arrived over the last month, were "fleeing the climate of insecurity in the (South Sudanese) provinces bordering the DRC."

He added that most of the refugees were South Sudanese, but the group also includes some Congolese and other nationals.

The town of Dungu in Haut-Uele province lies some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the South Sudanese frontier.

South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the poverty-stricken country along ethnic lines.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.2 million forced to flee their homes in a conflict that has seen both sides accused of ethnic massacres, the use of child soldiers and widespread rape and torture.

A peace deal was signed last August, but the bloodshed continues.

The UN Security Council decided last month to boost its peacekeeping mission in South Sudan with extra troops and surveillance drones, hoping to shore up the peace deal.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set to present the Security Council with an action plan to bring peace to South Sudan by January 15.
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Asokore (Ash), Jan. 05, GNA - The Director and Head of Other Financial Institutions Supervision Department, Bank of Ghana (BOG), Mr. Raymond Amanfu, has urged rural and community banks (RCBs) to find innovative ways to mobilize more shares.

This, he said, was important not only to aid them to undertake 'big-ticket transactions' but serve as capital cushion to absorb unexpected losses that may occur in the normal course of business.

Mr. Amanfu was addressing the annual general meeting of shareholders of the Asokore Rural Bank in the Sekyere East District.

His call comes on the heels of the new capital requirements set by the Central Bank for the RCBs.

The minimum paid-up capital had now been raised from GHE150,000.00 to GHE1 million.

Mr. Amanfu applauded the banks for their tremendous contribution towards improving rural economies and transformation of the lives of people in the rural communities.

They had also continued to make gains with impressive growth in assets, deposits and customer base on the back of a growing menu of well-tailored products and services, he added.

Mr. Amanfu said it was evident that public confidence in the rural banking system had soared and attributed this to the good management practices employed by many of the banks.

He reminded directors of RCBs to ensure effective oversight - put in place appropriate procedures and structures to avoid conflict of interest situation.

He said breaches of banking regulations and unethical conduct must never be allowed to go unpunished.

Mr. Godfred Frank Opoku, General Manager of the Bank, asked loan defaulters to pay back to avoid prosecution. GNA
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - A group of 60 students from the Harvard University in the United States on Monday toured the Kasapreko Company Limited in Accra.

This was to enable the students gain a deeper understanding of the corporate world in Ghana and Africa.

The students, who are on a 10-day industrial visit to Ghana, were led by Professor Dina Pomeranz, lecturer at the Harvard Business School.

Dr Kwabena Adjei, the Founder and Group Chairman of Kasapreko Company Ltd, who is also a product of the Harvard Business School, said the Company was founded in 1989 in response to the growing demand for good-quality alcoholic drinks that were still within the means of the average Ghanaian.

He said from a humble beginning of five staff, the Company now has a staff strength of over 600.

He said for one to be a successful entrepreneur, he or she must be firm in decision-making; stating that 'the business world is a journey which has got its ups and downs, and you need to keep going.'

'No excuses in business! Once you set your mind to do something, yours is to go ahead,' he said.

The Group Chairman urged the students to see themselves as the light of the world and future leaders.

He said as part of efforts to provide practical industrial experience for Ghanaian students, the Company would in the near future provide a bus for students to be conveyed from their various campuses to the factory; anytime they want to embark on industrial tour.

Mr Richard Adjei, the Managing Director of the Kasapreko Company Ltd, said the Company was the first of the local manufacturers to establish a modern quality control and product development laboratory and the first to introduce their own proprietary bespoke bottles and caps.

He said the Company with the state-of-the art automated factory machines, has over 21 brands cutting across alcoholic and non-alcoholic categories of drinks.

He said their products such as their premier brand, Kasakreko Alomo Bitters were being exported to neighbouring West African countries such as Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

Professor Pomeranz said they were in the country to learn about the business and the corporate world and to observe how things were being done by them.

Mr Kobina Awuah, an old student of Harvard Business School, who facilitated the visit, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, lauded the Founder for his impressive achievements and visionary leadership.

The Group Chairman conducted the students round the factory as they toured the newly commissioned $ 70 million bottling plant, which was commissioned last year.

GNA
Kumasi, Jan. 05, GNA - Three post-menopausal women have each been delivered of a set of twins at the Trustcare Specialist Hospital and Fertility Centre in Kumasi.

They had undergone In-Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer (IVF-ET) at the facility and the deliveries occurred between a space of one month - November 16 and December 16, last year.

Mr. Isaac Kofi Adu, a Clinical Embryologist, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the babies and their mothers were doing well.

One of the women, aged 54, and a resident of Kumasi, had been married for 20 years without a child and gave birth to a set of twins, both boys, after her first IVF-ET attempt.

There is also this other lady from Sunyani in the Brong-Ahafo Region, whose age is put at 55 years, married for 25 years and has been childless.

It was all joy to her family and friends when she was delivered of twins on last November 26.

Another woman from Obuasi shared a similar story. At 54, she had been married for 30 and had been barren until she went in for the IVF-ET procedure.

She is now the proud mother of twin girls.

Mr. Adu said the Centre, since its establishment in year 2011, had assisted many childless women to have their own biological children, something that had brought happiness to their marriages.

The challenge, he noted, had been the rising cost of drugs, which was making it difficult and preventing many a childless couple from seeking help there.

Mr. Adu said its success rate had made it the preferred choice by many.

Meanwhile, the facility had recorded its second delivery of quadruplets (three girls and a boy) and that happened on November 26.

They were given birth to by a 44 year-old woman in Kumasi, married for 12 years without a child.

The IVF-ET is a specialized process in medicine that is used to help couples who for various reasons cannot get pregnant naturally.

In Ghana, the procedure was first introduced by a private specialist hospital in Tema in 1990. GNA
Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - An Accra Circuit Court has remanded Aminu Mohammed, unemployed in police custody for possession of narcotic drug without lawful authority.

The accused person, who pleaded not guilty, would re-appear on January 18, for trial to commence.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Kweku Bempah told the court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh that on December 26, last year, police at the Regional headquarters received information that the accused person, who was wanted in connection with a stealing and causing harm case was at a hideout at Achimota mile 7.

He said the Regional police command dispatched a team of police personnel to trace the accused person to his hideout, where he was arrested.

The prosecution said when he was arrested and a search conducted in his room revealed 30 pieces of wrapped substances and other quantity of green leafy substance all in a black polythene bag suspected to be Indian hemp, a narcotic drug.

GNA
05.01.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Jan. 5, GNA - Reverend Father Alex Awuah-Osei, SVD Priest of the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, New Aplaku on Friday called on Catholics to live in peace with each other in 2016.

Rev Fr Awuah said this in a sermon during a New Year day church service to celebrate the solemnity of Mary, the Mother of the Church.

The day also marked the World Day of Peace on the theme: 'Overcome difficulties and win peace.'

This year, the celebration of the year of mercy was added. It means that Catholics worldwide have three great events that are directed on the arrival of the Prince of Peace in the world.

'In the celebration we are gazing on Christ the incarnate son of God and whilst doing that special emphasis is placed on the mother hood of Christ,' he said.

Rev Fr Awuah, said Pope Francis had reiterated the need for all to work for peace and by this: 'Peace is to be worked at, it is not something that one wins without efforts, without conversion of mind and heart, without a sense of creativity and positive engagements in discussion.'

He said the Pope's message should be a starting point for those who work in education, media culture all aspects of social life in general.

'We' are all called, according to the Pope, to work our best aspirations to build together a conscious and merciful and more free and fair world with the motherly help of Mary.

He asked Catholics to follow Christ the Prince of peace and bring justice to where it is due in the world.

GNA
The 2012 presidential candidate of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) Dr Abu Sakara, will contest the 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate.

Dr Sakara made this known in a release Tuesday evening.

Dr Sakara explains the purpose of his action will be to provide a more focused national interest platform to enable Ghanaians build national consensus around key issues that will transform the country.

The stagnation of our democracy demands a different, innovative and bold course of action to achieve the desired change we seek. For the moment the traditional route of political parties will only produce more of the same lone and weak voices in the wilderness of self righteousness, Dr Sakara said in the two page press release.

More soon.
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business Expect entire country to be covered under UDAY by March: Goyal Piyush Goyal, minister of power and coal, says UDAY is not a centrally directed scheme. It has been prepared in collaboration with all the states, bankers, consumer organisations, PSUs and hence was never made mandatory.
Iraqi refugees make up the largest population of newcomers in Oregon, and most of the Western United States... Decades of war and civil unrest have led to mass immigration out of Iraq [and the] rise of ISIS has only intensified the diaspora.





BadBlue News

Via Ann Corcoran , we discover an interesting map that illustrates the dominant country of origin for "refugees" in each state.Mr. Obama loves blaming his predecessor for all sorts of problems, constantly complaining about the situation he "inherited".But it's worth noting that Barack Obama inherited a Middle East, after the Iraq surge, that was relatively stable. Via a bizarre set of actions, we have seen the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Obama/Hillary attack that destabilized Libya, a failed "red line" threat in Syria, and a newly resurgent Iran.The result is a refugee crisis of nearly unprecedented scale, instigated by the Obama-Hillary-Kerry axis of, well, I'm not sure whether its fecklessness or something more nefarious. So consider the following map in that context; you can thank Obama, Hillary and John Kerry for much of this madness.And according to the right wingers at Mr. Obama wants to import around 200,000 more refugees over the next two years . As an added bonus, "many, though not all, of the additional refugees would be Syrian."What could possibly go wrong?You can see more refugee graphs here
business Slowdown in eco bigger risk than China's meltdown: Capital Mind Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Deepak Shenoy, founder and Chief Editor of Capital Mind says that though China remains a large risk, but may not hurt India largely.
business Auto a good bet to play discretionary spending theme: Franklin According to Radhakrishnan, domestic autos are still positioned for reasonable growth. He expects consolidation in the telecom sector and is unsure if IT companies will see any meaningful growth near term
business Buy Maruti Suzuki, M&M: Prakash Diwan Prakash Diwan of prakashdiwan.in is of the view that one can buy Maruti Suzuki and Mahindra & Mahindra at these levels.
Exactly how bad Dick Smiths books are will become known over the next 12 months as the administrators unwind the company.

I opened my laptop this morning for the first time in 10 days.

Geez, it was a nice feeling.

Since Christmas Eve, I decided the best thing I could do was to power down and log off.

I even ditched the kindle to read an actual book. You know those paper things that bend and take on the shape of your handbag if youre not careful? Yep, one of those.

Even better was the fact that the book had nothing to do with the markets. Wizards First Rule was my holiday read. It was about as far away from economic stuff as I could get.

Sure, Ive got four books sitting on my desk about complexity theory, inverse probability, behavioural economics and analytic methods crying out to be read.

You know what? Thats what a new year is for.

For me this Christmas break was for not thinking about the market. After a day or two of sweaty palms, I realised my world wasnt about to fall apart if I wasnt watching the prices tick over.

And then today, like most people at this time of year, I accepted that my mental shut off period was over. And there in the business section of The Age was the news that Dick Smith has gone into a trading halt.

On the first trading day of the New Year.

My first thought was, this isnt good.

The early weeks of a new year are generally a low volume trading period. Capital raisings are rare, as most people are on holidays.

In fact, when you write about the markets for a living, this time of year is painfully boring to write about. Because nothing happens!

When I read the reasons for the trading halt, my second thought was relief.

When the share price dropped last October from $1.27 to 77 cents per share after DSH downgraded their profit guidance for 2016, I quietly added the company to my watch list.

At the time, DSH said that a forecast net profit after tax (NPAT) for 2016 would be $58 million lower, at $4548 million.

I honestly didnt think it was that bad. I mean, even if NPAT fell into the lower end, it still beats last NPAT of $43 million.

A month later in November, when the share price fell from 66 cents to 30 cents, I finally decided to take a look at the financials. Surely the company couldnt be that bad.

Has this trading halt changed my mind? Even reading the headline This could be the End of The Road for Dick Smith, I remained bullish on the stock.

I was either too ignorant or too arrogant for my own good. It was a good thing I decided actually read the announcement from Dick Smith.

As it turns out, the DSH was trying to work out its funding position and debt financing covenants.

It was at this point I realised that Dick Smith was about to be wound up. I clearly wasnt the only one that worked it out, either.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, analysts say the reference to debt financing covenants indicated that the expected write-downs may be even larger than already flagged.

David Cooke, the director of investor relations reckons the company will resume trading Wednesday morning.

The chairman of Dick Smith, Rob Murray said this morning that short term funding wasnt gaining the sort of support theyd like.

In other words, to buy more stock over the next month or so, Dick Smith couldnt raise the cash from its current lenders.

That alone tells you there are serious mismanagement problems within the company.

Yesterday, before the receivers were brought in, the chief investment officer at Forager Funds Steve Johnson said, receivership could be around the corner. Disk Smith is a very niche business and it is getting out-competed by Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.

Another analyst, Matt Ryan of Forager Funds, wrote a blog post titled Dick Smith is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time in October last year.

Ryans view is that Anchorage Capital stripped inventory from the retailer before Dick Smiths IPO.

I dont know if this is true. However Anchorage Capital did buy Dick Smith from Woolworths [ASX:WOW] for $115 million in 2011. They floated DSH with a market capitalisation of $520 million in December 2013, raising around $345 million for the company in the process.

The initial public offering saw DSH shares list at $2.20, with the shares peaking at $2.40 in January 2014. Roughly one month after its debut.

Then overnight it happened.

Dick Smith bosses called in McGrath Nicol to appoint an administrator. And its two major creditors, NAB and HSBC, have been said to appoint Ferrier Hodgson as the receiver.

Exactly how bad Dick Smiths books are will become known over the next 12 months as the administrators unwind the company.

I didnt buy shares in Dick Smith, but theres going to be a lot of unhappy people who did.

Shae Russell,

Editor, Strategic Intelligence

From the Port Phillip Publishing Library

Special Report:You probably already sense that stocks might be in for another bumpy ride in 2016. But that doesnt have to mean that you have to miss out on making great money. Because, according to small-cap analyst Sam Volkering, certain stocks could rise hundreds of percent no matter what happens in the next 12 months. In this special report, Sam reveals the simple principle behind that success. And youll also discover his top three small-cap picks for 2016, which could bring you gains as high as 338% over the next 12 months. [More]
The Chinese stock market fell by 6.86% on the first trading day of the year, triggering a trading halt for the entire day. This sent a shockwave through the entire global equity market

The Chinese stock market fell by 6.86% on the first trading day of the year, triggering a trading halt for the entire day. This sent a shockwave through the entire global equity market, to Europe and the US, and now back to Australia.

I am still not convinced on the reason for this latest crash. Remember, triggering a trading halt  which is essentially a stop-loss for the stock market  is not an easy thing to do. It only occurs when there is extreme volatility in the market.

The question is why now?

Most people are pointing to the proposed lifting of the restriction on insider selling on previously halted stocks. Remember back in the winter of 2015, China placed historic bans on institutional investors, forbidding them from selling their holdings.

That rule will be lifted in the coming week. This has triggered a pre-emptive selling by retail investors. I believe this is another case of the market over-selling.

Many analysts have pointed to the circuit breaker of putting a trading halt of 15 minutes after a 5% drop (before halting the entire market after 7% drop) as a contributing factor to yesterdays fall.

Thats correct. However, I think the circuit breaker did its job well. I think retail investors will now factor in a potential trading halt in their decisions. This would potentially change trading behaviour and temper (to some extent) the contagious selling behaviour in the future.

Whats important to understand today is that China is going through a bottoming process and the market is overreacting to a change in regulation.

That sent a shockwave through the global equity markets.

Remember, China is all about regulatory and policy changes. The global market may need to get used to it.

Now there are several contentious points that can overthrow my relatively benign view on the latest drop in the Chinese market. One is that China is in fact not growing at 6.57%. Its growing at a much slower pace. The official figures have been lying to us.

That would explain sudden drops like yesterday. However, we know yesterdays drop was not solely influenced by the weaker manufacturing activity reading. It was more about regulatory changes and financial reform.

And if Im wrong about a bottoming in energy prices  which could potentially still drop by another 50%  this would send prices lower in China. This would undermine pricing and profitability, which in turn would prolong negative feedback.

When it comes to energy, we obviously need to look at Saudi Arabia and Iran. But I will leave that for another time.

Finally, theres always the possibility that Chinas financial system reform becomes so badly managed that the world will see more  and larger  shocks from the Chinese financial system.

Ken Wangdong+

Emerging Market Analyst, New Frontier Investor
If Dick Smith had gone down a route similar to JB Hi-Fi maybe this would be a different conversation. But they didnt.

One of the most established names in Australian retailing has gone into voluntary administration. Dick Smith Holdings [ASX:DSH] has been a stalwart of Australian retailing since the late 60s.

Today Dick Smith is a shell of its former self. A last chance saloon fire sale of inventory late last year couldnt keep the companys head above water. Today, the company has told the market what many were expecting; theres no more money.

Dick Smith (the entrepreneur) started the electronics company back in 1968. In 1982 he sold the business to Woolworths [ASX:WOW]. Right from the get go, the foundations of Dick Smith (the electronics company) were for electronics hobbyists.

Even today when you walk into a Dick Smith retail store you see all the bits and pieces you would need if you were a hobbyist. There are plenty of more consumer-grade products; TVs, phones, games, etc. But at the heart of the company is the electronics store for the hobbyist.

Therein lies the key difference between Dick Smith and the likes of JB Hi-Fi [ASX:JBH]. JB Hi-Fi distinctly caters to the consumer electronics market, which Dick Smith never really committed to. They just kind of dabbled in it, staying more of a hobbyist retailer. And the declining sales of the company is proof they cater for a market thats not there anymore.

Even as far back as 2012, when Woolworths decided to sell off the business, the writing was on the wall. If it wasnt good enough for Woolworths  well hindsight tells us it really wasnt good for anyone.

The company never went anywhere after listing in 2013. And as 2015 rolled on and sales fell off a cliff, investors abandoned ship. The stock price went from $2.26 to just 20 cents in December.

The company has really been struggling to shift retail stock. For a retail company, thats usually a bad sign. This all culminated in a clearance sale late in 2015, trying to drum up cash to help keep the company going.

As it stands, they didnt make enough cash, even with heavily discounted products. And now the company is in voluntary administration.

This doesnt mean 100% of the stores will close. It doesnt guarantee the end of Dick Smith Electronics. But I have to admit it doesnt look good from here.

In the current economic climate its a long way to climb back. Its a competitive retail market. And with the ever-impending threat of online retailer Amazon, I think this is the end of Dick Smith Electronics. In the 70s, 80s and 90s there was a clear market for Dick Smith and a strong, loyal customer base. But in the modern world, consumers just arent interested in shopping at Dick Smith. Its a place where only hobbyists go, not your typical shopper.

And when youve got no customers, you cant sell stock. Thats what drives a company into voluntary administration. Its a shame to see a name like Dick Smith Electronics go down like this. But its also a clear sign of the world we live in. 2016 is a different beast to the 90s.

Consumers dont want to tinker with electronics anymore. The hobbyist market is niche  not big enough to sustain a big retail company. If Dick Smith had gone down a route similar to JB Hi-Fi maybe this would be a different conversation.

But they didnt. They stayed true to form and didnt change with the world around them.

While Dick Smith is a big name to fall, there will be others. Which ones? Well, time will tell. But perhaps some of the big names of Australian retailing might be in for further hard times.

Regards,

Sam
The chronicle of a life split between urban Manhattan and rural Montana.
History often takes on a national perspective: American history, British history, Chinese history. Ana Maria Candela complicates this tradition with her approach to studying Chinese migrations to Peru.

Candela, who joined Binghamtons faculty as an assistant professor of sociology in 2014, focuses on how people maintained nationalistic sentiments for their native country while migrating to a new one. Im looking at their sense of national identity around what it means to be Chinese and have a sense of belonging to China while at the same time carving out a life in another country, Candela says.

My goal is to show these histories that get eclipsed, Candela says. This involves studying people without isolating them to a single nation or culture. Chinese migrants arent typically included in the study of Latin American nations, or in the study of Chinese history, so this group is not well known.

Gail Hershatter, a distinguished professor of history at the University of California Santa Cruz, advised Candela while she was a doctoral student school there. Candela has unique qualifications to do this work, she notes, as she is fluent in Chinese and Spanish.

Her research is quite unique, Hershatter says, because most people that are trained to do East Asian history stay in East Asia. They do their research exclusively about China, but she is doing the history of a group that went from China to Peru. They kept really substantial ties to the homeland, and at the same time they were very involved in national events in Peru. And so shes tracking both of those things. Its a really transnational story, which is very unusual and hard to do.

Candela is working on a book about overseas Chinese nationalism drawn from her dissertation. The challenge is that you actually end up in the dissertation with a lot more questions than you started with, she says. And so then the question becomes narrowing down the scope of what you actually want to answer at this moment and finding how the past speaks to the present.

Candela has travelled to Peru and China in search of answers. She has been approached by residents of Peru who had letters from relatives that they were unable to read because they were written in Chinese. As she translates these personal histories, she contributes to the understanding of these transnational relations in the global sense while also helping individual families better understand themselves and their histories.

I think shes a real pioneer, Hershatter says of Candela. I think more and more people are going to try and do the work she does.
January 05, 2016

Contrary To Media Claims U.S. Always Sides With Its Saudi Clients

The "western" public, especially in Europe, now prefers good relations with Iran over relations with Saudi Arabia. It is a natural development when one considers that jihadi terrorism is a real concern and that the people involved in most international terrorist incidents follow variants of the Saudi spread Wahhabi ideology.

This is now developing into a problem for the U.S. administration. Saudi Arabia, as other Gulf statelets, is a U.S. client state. Without U.S. support it would have ceased to exist a long time ago. The Saudis are made to pay for U.S. protection by buying overpriced U.S. weapon systems for tens of billion dollars per year. They also finance joint projects like the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and currently the U.S. regime change war on Syria.

U.S. relation with Iran have become somewhat better due to the nuclear deal. But the Islamic Republic of Iran will never be a U.S. client state. Seen from the perspective of the global strategic competition it is in the same camp as the U.S. foes Russia and China. Unless the U.S. ceases to strive for global dominance it will continue to support its proxies on the western side of the Persian Gulf rather then the Iranians of the eastern side.

The changed public view, very much visible after the recent Saudi execution of Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, necessitates to mask the real U.S. position by claiming that it is opposed to Saudi Arabian policies. The stenographers in U.S. media are always willing to help their government when such a cover up for a shoddy position is needed.

In the Washington Post Karen De Young supports the administration by providing this lie:

The United States has long joined international human rights organizations and other Western governments in criticizing Saudi human rights abuses ..

Her colleague David Sanger at the New York Times is debunks that nonsense point with a rare reference to reality:

The United States has usually looked the other way or issued carefully calibrated warnings in human rights reports as the Saudi royal family cracked down on dissent and free speech and allowed its elite to fund Islamic extremists.

Sanger then replaces the "U.S. supports human-rights in Saudi Arabia" lie with another blatant one:

the administration has [..] been sharply critical of the Saudi intervention in Yemen

The Obama administration has since March provided expedited arms sales, logistics support, targeting intelligence, air refueling and combat search and rescue for the Saudi war on Yemen. Its navy helps with the blockade of the Yemeni coast. How can the Obama administration be "sharply critical" of the Saudi war on Yemen when it provides the critical means for that war?

Since Sunday there have been at least 11 Saudi air attacks on Yemen's capital Sanaa. Last night another wedding hall, the Commerce Chamber and the AlNoor Centre for the Blind were destroyed by U.S. provided Saudi bombs. I doubt that we will hear any "sharply critical" condemnation of that bombing of civilian infrastructure from U.S. officials.

In the Saudi-Iran proxy conflicts the U.S. supports and urges the Saudis on because it is in its geopolitical interest. Saudi financed jihadist have been helpful in achieving U.S. geopolitical goals in the 1980s in Afghanistan against the Soviets, in Yugoslavia, in Chechnya as now in Syria against the Russians and in Xinjiang against the Chinese. There is no room for human rights or other concerns within that framework. There is room though for billions of weapon sales and millions given by the Saudis to U.S. and UK politicians as well as for public relations.

The New York Times editors falsely claim there is no choice for the U.S. other then to do what it does:

The tangled and volatile realities of the Middle East do not give the United States or the European Union the luxury of choosing or rejecting allies on moral criteria. Washington has no choice but to deal with regimes like those in Tehran [..] or in Riyadh to combat the clear and present danger posed by Islamist terrorists or to search for solutions to massively destabilizing conflicts like the Syrian civil war.

That is utter bullshit. The U.S. is working on regime change in Syria at least since 2006. The U.S. is enabling "the clear and present danger posed by Islamist terrorists" through its alliance with al-Qaeda. It always had and has the choice to cease and desist from meddling in the Middle East and elsewhere to the benefit of the average U.S. citizen as well as to the benefit of the people living in the Middle East.

U.S. media lie when they depict the U.S. as a benevolent entity that stumbles through the Middle East and other areas misled in the dark by Saudi Arabia and Israel. It is the U.S. that is the ruthless superpower that solely enables those barbaric entities to exist.

Posted by b on January 5, 2016 at 15:49 UTC | Permalink

Comments
Voltaire  To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize
This article is part of Morningstars Guide to Investing Ideas for 2016, click here to get your financial health in order with some new years resolutions for your portfolio.

Investors favoured banking, supermarket and mining stocks last month, according to Morningstar Data.

Lloyds Bank (LLOY) remains on top as the most popular stock on Morningstar.co.uk last month. The stock is currently rated as undervalued by Morningstar analysts. The bank has retrieved itself gradually after its ill-considered acquisition of HBOS in 2008, according to Morningstar analyst Erin Davis. The U.K. government, which remains the banks biggest shareholder, has begun selling its stake in Lloyds. In 2014 the management announced plans for a nominal dividend, its first since 2008. Management also hinted that it eventually plans to return up to 70% of earnings through dividends.

Our Morningstar analyst expects a 2016 forward dividend yield of at least 4% - although Lloyds has yet to reinstate a dividend following the financial crisis.

One of the largest banks within the U.K., Barclays (BARC), also grabbed investors attention last month thanks to recent news headlines featuring the appointment of new CEO Jes Staley. Staley has a strong background in investment banking and analyst Erin Davis thinks that his appointment signals Barclays intention to maintain an important presence in investment banking.

The firms investment bank has struggled to build scale and control costs which invoked investor fury in 2013 when bonuses grew despite a drop in revenue. It is now going through the process of cutting the size of its investment bank in half, to less than 30% of risk-weighted assets, Davis said. Therefore analysts are looking forward Staleys next move to improving the investment banks profitability. Thus the banks strong retail business reported good results. Personal and corporate banking saw revenue climb 1% compared with the year-ago quarter. Barclaycard saw profits grow 40%, as revenue climbed 15% on growth in the U.S. and the stronger dollar, while operating costs grew more slowly at 7%. Return on average equity was 22.3%, according to Morningstar Data. Barclays now pays an income of 3%.

Intense Rivalry in Supermarket Shares

Investors do not limit themselves in bargaining for groceries among supermarkets; supermarket shares are popular as well. Tesco (TSCO), which is second on the most popular hits list, is considered undervalued by Morningstar analysts. Two other retailers, Sainsbury (SBRY), which pays 7% yield and Morrisons (MRW), which yields at 8.9% also feature in the top 10.

The grocery industry has become increasingly competitive following the rise of challenger low-cost retailers Aldi and Lidl in an environment of low economic growth and stagnant wage growth. Constant price war and changing shopping habits put pressure on traditional supermarkets.

Switching costs are non-existent in grocery retail, and competing on price while sustaining excess returns is a tough proposition.

Morningstar analyst Ken Perkins believes Tesco's scale allows the firm to operate more efficiently than many competitors, and its convenient locations and loyalty program should continue to drive traffic. But Perkins does not have confidence in Tesco's ability to sustain excess returns over the long term to assign the firm an economic moat.

Commodities Slump Keep Investors Clicking

The commodities slump last year dragged down mining share prices, but raised much attention among investors. Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB), BP (BP.), Glencore (GLEN) and BHP Billiton (BLT) all feature in the top 10 most popular securities last month.

Yields look attractive due to supressed share prices: Shell pays an income of 7.4%, and BP yields at 6.7% and BHP Billiton pays dividend at 11%.

Glencore's mining portfolio is decidedly overweight higher-risk countries with relatively underdeveloped institutions and limited legal safeguards for foreign investors, according to Morningstar analyst David Wang. Despite disclosures afforded by the initial public offering and subsequent filings, the marketing business remains incredibly opaque to outsiders.

Shell shares have lost 26% over the past year, according to Morningstar Data. But it is not all bad news  according to analysts the firm has strong cash flow from operations which should be sufficient to fund investments and pay its dividend. However, should oil and gas prices retreat for a prolonged period, the company may need to increase its debt load.

Relative unknown, small company Flowgroup (FLOW) also proves its popularity among investors last month due to a contract signed with Shell last month. Flowgroup and its subsidiaries are engaged in developing and commercializing alternative and efficient energy products and supply home energy. The company now has 46.8 million market capital.
"Creating People On Whom Nothing is Lost" - A high school English teacher in Colorado offers insight and perspective on education, parenting, politics, pop culture, and contemporary American life. Disclaimer - The views expressed on this site are my own and do not represent the views of my employer.
PLEASE NOTE: This blog is a bigotry free zone open to all persons, regardless of age, race, religion, color, national origin, sex, political affiliations, marital status, physical or mental disability, age, or sexual orientation. Further, this blog is open to the broad variety of opinions out there and will not delete any comments based upon point of view. However, comments will be deleted if they are worded in an abusive manner and show disrespect for the intellectual process.


Canadian Press



The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has entered into a joint venture to purchase student housing properties in the United States for a total of US$1.4 billion.



The deal would see CPPIB and global investment firm GIC each own a 47.5 per cent stake in University House Communities Group.



The Scion Group, a U.S. owner and operator of student housing communities, would own the remaining five per cent and manage the properties.



The joint venture entity, called Scion Student Communities LP, is set to buy the portfolio of student housing properties from InvenTrust Properties Corp.



It includes 18 existing communities and four that are in development _ a total of nearly 13,000 beds.



The deal is expected to close in mid-2016.



``The UHC portfolio represents a valuable opportunity to enter the U.S. student housing sector with top-tier, well-located assets,'' Peter Ballon, managing director and head of real estate investment in the Americas for CPPIB, said in a statement Monday.


by Josh Wingrove

Bloomberg News





The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index fell to 53.8, from 54.5 a week earlier, the seventh consecutive decline, with the energy-rich prairie provinces reaching their lowest level in seven years, according to telephone polling by Nanos Research Group. While optimism about job security and personal finances has remained relatively stable, expectations for home prices have dropped after the government moved to tighten mortgage rules.



Consumer confidence has now reached its lowest level since September and erased gains made in the aftermath of Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus October election victory. Economists predict the nations economy will post back-to-back sub-2 percent gains in gross domestic product in 2015 and 2016 for only the third time since World War II.



After a period of economic exuberance following the Canadian federal election, we are now entering a period of greater pessimism in terms of the future strength of the Canadian economy, Nanos Research Group Chairman Nik Nanos said.





Housing Woes



The share of survey respondents who expect local real estate prices to rise was 30.6 percent, the lowest since May 2013. The share of those who see prices falling was 19.2 percent, bringing the gap between optimists and pessimists to 11.4 percentage points, the narrowest since February.



The confidence outlook is worst in Canadas energy-rich prairie provinces, where consumer confidence fell to 45, the lowest level since December 2008.



The regions expectations sub- index, based on perceptions about the economy and real estate prices, fell to 34.5 from 35.6 a week earlier, also reaching its lowest level since 2008.



Confidence in the countrys most populous province, Ontario, fell to 55.9 from 57.9 a week earlier. It dropped to 59.2 from 59.9 in British Columbia. Canadas mortgage rule changes were aimed at each provinces biggest city, Toronto and Vancouver, and raised the down payment requirement on homes valued above C$500,000 ($360,000).



The national expectations sub-index fell to 48.5 from 50 a week earlier. The measure has dropped for seven consecutive weeks after reaching a twelve-month high of 57.6 on Nov. 13. Meanwhile, the pocketbook sub-index, a measure of personal finance and job security, was 59.1, unchanged from the previous week.



Consumer confidence rose in Quebec to 55.1, from 53.8 a week earlier, with increases in both the expectations and personal finance sub-indexes. Its the only region where the outlook improved.



The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index is a weekly measurement of Canadian economic sentiment, based on a rolling four-week average of 1000 respondents. Its considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.





--With assistance from Kristy Scheuble
Mortgage Rates Lowest in 2 Weeks

Mortgage rates moved lower today as financial markets roared back to life after the winter break. In this age of ever-increasing automation and digital connectivity, it would be easy to assume that financial markets continue to hum along in the background even as the rest of the world takes some time off during the holidays. The truth is that financial markets are greatly affected by the Christmas/New Years holiday season and that's readily apparent in today's mortgage rates.

Mortgage rates are primarily a function of mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) prices. Most days, there is a stable connection between the two (in that a certain amount of movement in MBS tends to correspond with a certain amount of movement in mortgage rates). If we were to solely base our assumptions on that relationship, rates would be only marginally better today--somewhere near those seen on December 28th. Instead, rates moved noticeably lower--closer to those seen on December 21st.

The x-factor here is the human element. Strategies vary, but in general, folks in charge of setting rates for lenders tend to be more conservative heading into the holidays. If MBS prices are in decent shape after the holiday season, lenders are able to get back to where they would have otherwise been fairly quickly. As such, it's no major surprise to see rates right back where they were a few days before the holidays kicked into high gear.



Loan Originator Perspective

"As I suspected last week, bonds did rally today, albeit not as much as they should have, given equities' losses. Once again, we're basically cemented in our current pricing range. At this point, we're still closer to the high side of rates than the low, so we may see better pricing the next couple of days. Friday, however, is the December NFP report, which is a huge wild card. Float until Thursday if you like to gamble a little. Only those who love "action" should float into Friday." -Ted Rood, Senior Originator

"Nice little rally today thanks to a global sell off of stocks that started with very weak manufacturing data out of China. If you floated over the long weekend, your rate sheets should reward you today. With today's gains, it would be wise to consider locking especially if you are within 30 days of funding. The trend still isn't our friend, so this could turn around very quickly." -Victor Burek, Churchill Mortgage

"Mortgage bonds started the new year off right rallying at the open of trading. This was largely due to the global sell off sparked by the manufacturing date released in China. Bonds however did not hold their gains which worries me a bit and puts me in lock mode. While it may be possible for rates to continue to improve the risk at this level may not be worth taking." -Manny Gomes, Norcom Mortgage



Today's Best-Execution Rates

30YR FIXED - 4.00-4.25%



FHA/VA - 3.75%



15 YEAR FIXED - 3.25-3.375%



5 YEAR ARMS - 2.75 - 3.25% depending on the lender



Ongoing Lock/Float Considerations

In 2015 global interest rates rose unevenly from a long-term lows brought about by the onset of quantitative easing in Europe. European rates moved most (first lower, then higher), but rates in the US, including mortgage rates, are always taking some of their guidance from the global picture.


A coalition of ranchers, environmentalists and disgruntled landowners has suffered a major setback in its battle to block a proposed pipeline that would carry natural gas beneath 143 miles of largely untouched Big Bend-area land.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff offered a key endorsement of a stretch of the Trans-Pecos Pipeline, writing that it would not constitute a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, in a draft environmental assessment issued Monday.

The agency, which would regulate a part of the project that crosses into Mexico, also declined to expand its environmental review to the entire project as opponents had sought.

"Unfortunately, the most negative, worst-case outcome is what weve received," the Big Bend Conservation Alliance, the group leading the protest, said in a statement that accused the agency of "burying its head in the sand."

The 42-inch-wide pipeline would start at the Waha storage hub near Fort Stockton and cut through Pecos, Brewster and Presidio counties before crossing beneath the Rio Grande near the town of Presidio. It could bring up to 1.4 billion cubic feet of gas each day into Mexico, where officials have recently opened up the energy sector to private companies.

Its planners include Energy Transfer Partners and Mexicos Carso Energy  a partnership that links Dallas billionaire Kelcy Warren with Carso's Carlos Slim, one of the worlds richest men.

Vicki Granado, an Energy Transfer spokeswoman, said Monday that the company was "pleased" with the federal agency's latest assessment. Energy Transfer plans to start construction in the coming months.

Supporters say the pipeline will bring jobs to West Texas  even if almost all are temporary  and yield a few million dollars in local tax revenue. Bringing natural gas into Mexico could help wean the nation's border cities off dirtier-burning coal, wood and heating oil.

CONTINUE READING HERE.
BATESVILLE  It was a slow day selling oilfield pipe  nothing new there  when Richard Collier handed his son a select list of customers. Call them, he said.

There were no buyers.

That list of people I gave him is the ones that dont pay their bills, Collier said. And they wont even buy anything.

To Collier, who owns a small pipe business based out of Concan and a ranch in Zavala County, its starting to look a lot like 1984, when the last great Texas oil boom shuddered to an end.

Anybody who played in this game and didnt take care of their finances really well? Theyre gone, Collier said. Youre looking at living out of your back pocket for three years. I do believe there are people out there who are broke and just dont know it yet.

The drumbeat of low crude oil prices has taken hold in the oil and gas industry, from Colliers South Texas business to Wall Street.

Companies are slashing capital budgets by the billions. Investment research firm Morningstar expects the downturn to last througout 2016 and said last week that near-term prices could be ugly.

Its just the cycle of things, said oil and gas attorney David Roth of Elder Bray. It was bound to arrive.

The army of roughnecks, RVs and heavy trucks that washed across South Texas a few years ago is in retreat, battered by crude oil prices that have tumbled from above $100 to below $40 a barrel.

Alongside oil, other things are crashing, too: the number of working drilling rigs, the hiring signs tacked, the number of people calling Collier, who has been in the pipe business 40 years.

There were 840 active rigs in Texas last January, a number cut to 321 now. In the Eagle Ford Shale, the field that arcs across South Texas in a half-smile, the number of active rigs has tumbled from 200 to 76.

Idle rigs are stacked, folded up like umbrellas, in a field east of San Antonio.

Something was going to cause the Eagle Ford to go bust, Roth said. One thing could have been a better shale formation somewhere with better economics. Someone could have discovered a shale in Michigan with better returns.

Instead, it was a combination of timing and prices. By late 2014, the Eagle Ford already was maturing as a field, with companies zeroing in on the best spots and moving away from the edges of the field. Then oil prices crashed.

When everyone had cheap money and lots of it, they could drill sub-optimal wells, Roth said. Some of that acreage isnt that fantastic. If the Eagle Ford was discovered today, how much would actually be leased? At $40, what would have happened? A lot less would have happened.

Roth was struck by the view when he flew over the field a few weeks ago.

Theres plenty of activity, but nothing like the last five to six years, he said.

Accountant Raul Rios of Padgett Stratemann said many operators hedged oil at about $85 per barrel last year.

They were paid that whether the price is $100 or $50. To some degree, that kept these guys in business, Rios said.

But starting this month, those hedges expire.

If they dont roll off then, they will roll off by June 30, Rios said. I think thats when youre going to see the effects of low oil prices. The first two quarters of 2016 will be very telling.

Rios expects more layoffs, layered on top of the layoffs that already have happened.

Jobs disappear

The view from Colliers ranch is a quiet one, of thorn scrub and white-tailed deer and the blue winter sky.

In November, a drilling rig had added a dash of excitement and hope to deer season. The well was for shallow oil instead of deeper shale  the kind of project Roth said he has seen picking up in the region because of its lower costs. But the well turned out to be dry.

It seemed like the way things had gone for everyone on site in 2015. Collier, who would at least get a new water well, and the crews who were rigging down looked for bright spots.

America is getting low gas prices, Kelly Leininger of Nacogdoches, a third-generation mud-logger, said as she packed away hoses, wrapped a microscope in bubble wrap and rinsed out the trays that organized samples of rock.

Chuck Shepherd of Galveston, the night mud-logger at the site, doesnt think the Texas economy will fare well.

Were not going out to the mall and out to the movies, he said. Were not buying all of those big trucks. It ripples on and on.

Shepherd is a retired Navy submariner and a geologist who used to work offshore. In fall 2014, at precisely the wrong time, he took a corporate office job in Houston just as oil prices tanked. Four months later, in February, he was laid off from his job geosteering, controlling the drill bit as it moves through rock to hit specific geologic targets.

I hit the upper echelon office obviously at exactly the wrong time, he said.

Since June, hes worked on these onshore projects. Its a huge step down in pay and stature, Shepherd said. But its pay for now.

The oil field is brimming with overqualified people.

Allen Gilmer of Drillinginfo said his research firm had a pool of 2,000 applicants to fill 70 positions last year. Anyone hiring today has a very deep talent pool to choose from, Gilmer said.

Charlie Cavazos of Benavides, the driller at Colliers ranch, said he went about six months without work in 2015.

Paying one month my truck, one month my trailer, he said, since unemployment wasnt even half of what he was used to living on.

In the last few months of the year, work had picked up, though Cavazos said theres a noticeable uptick in the level of expertise and experience on rigs.

Some sites, the whole crew is drillers, Cavazos said.

Joe Garcia, 24, has been alternating between the oil field and college, saving up and paying cash as he works on an associates degree in computer science at Coastal Bend College in Kingsville. But the slowdown in the oil field has meant hes that not saving as much money to return to school.

He likes the work  being outside, the satisfaction of being tired at the end of the day, knowing that he earned his money.

Its a good feeling, he said. The crew listens to country music on the drive to work and laughs all the way home. Hopefully I get out of here, though.

Garcia also worries about his hometown, Benavides, and others nearby, Alice, Agua Dulce and Freer.

If it wasnt for the oil field, there would be nothing, Garcia said. Everyone works in the oil field.

Legal disputes

Thomas Tunstall, economic development research director at the University of Texas at San Antonio, published a paper recently that outlined things South Texas communities were doing to create an identity beyond oil  growing olives around Asherton in Dimmit County, or focusing on history and the Come and Take It motto of the Texas Revolution in Gonzales.

It may be a thing that sort of buffers the community, Tunstall said. Its just a buffer. Youre not going to replace a $90,000 oilfield job with a tourism job or something in the service industry, but at least they wont be losing population.

Tunstall said theres a level of anxiety even for workers who still are busy.

They might be the next group of people to get laid off. Its unfortunately the nature of that industry, Tunstall said.

His own dad, a petroleum engineer, had to drive a truck for a couple of years.

Youve got to do what youve got to do, he said.

Attorney Marty Truss of Dykema Cox Smith said bankruptcy filings are on the uptick.

Thats new, and its something thats been anticipated for many months, Truss said.

Law firm Haynes and Boone LLP on Dec. 4 released its Oil Patch Bankruptcy Monitor, which tracked 37 North American oil and gas bankruptcies in 2015, including 17 in Texas.

By mid-December, Irving-based Magnum Hunter, which operates on the far eastern edge of the Eagle Ford, had also filed for bankruptcy protection, saying it had $6.4 million in cash and $1.1 billion in total liabilities at the end of the third quarter.

Its a time for condensing, consolidation and, frankly, survival of the fittest, Truss said. There are folks who will not make it.

Legal disputes over royalty payments are on the increase, with more mineral owners requesting audits to make sure theyve been paid correctly.

As the checks get smaller, people look at them a lot closer, Truss said.

Gilmer said much of the idle equipment now sitting in fields is damaged from a lack of routine maintenance and might never go back to work.

This is exactly what happened in the 1980s. The longer equipment doesnt run, the more likely it will be used as spares or junked, Gilmer said.

But when oil prices turn around, the surviving service companies with good equipment will have a lock on the market. This is also what happened in the 1980s, Gilmer said. Fortunes are built in the busts.

Collier compared the oil business to coyotes, gorging on jackrabbits in the good times.

When it comes to it, well be in the desert and flipping up a rock to try to eat scorpions, he said.

He got a call recently about three truckloads of pipe for sale in a yard near Dilley. He drove south to look at what should have been 600 to 700 pieces of pipe, each 30 feet in length.

This yard is like 50 acres and there is pipe everywhere, Collier said.

He and his son asked about the pipe for sale.

The yard manager held his arms out wide. This is it, he told them.

All of it was for sale, but the Colliers didnt buy anything.
While tomorrow will likely be seen as the first recovery day following the festivities of Christmas, it also marks the first day of Kwanzaa. The nearly 50-year-old, weeklong celebration honors African heritage in American culture, and the Midland African American Roots Historical Cultural Arts Council will host an event to help kick start the holiday.

Its Kwanzaa Time takes place at 4 to 6:30 p.m. tomorrow at Tea2Go, located at 2900 W Loop 250 Suite 160. The event features a silent auction loaded with art, with all the proceeds going to help with Roots Council Latisha Williams medical bills. The council will be raising money for her through the Martin Luther King Center until Jan. 18, executive director Robbyne Hocker Fuller said.

The featured performance of the event, will be Still I Rise, a dance interpretation of the Maya Angelou poem, by 26-year-old Odessa native Maisha Morris. From Odessa to Los Angeles to Brooklyn, Morris Has carried her passion for dance across the country and is finally slated to perform in West Texas for the first time in eight years. The MRT got a chance to speak with Morris about Kwanzaa, dancing in front of family and more.

MRT: How do you think your piece will fit with Kwanzaa?

Morris: It is something that I believed would fit in well. Kwanzaa is about hope, creativity and unity. This piece is about the fact that, even though things continue to happen to us, we still rise. Its about walking through life knowing you already have a victory; still I rise. The picture they chose of me on the website is very much how the dance is, because it shows me standing on a mountain looking down at all Ive overcome.

MRT: What is your relationship with the celebration?

Morris: Well, I have not had the opportunity every year to celebrate it in its fullness. But I am very excited to do it this year, and my whole family from Midland is here to see it. Thats what Christmas is about and what Kwanzaa is about: to be able to use the gift god gave me to bring joy to other people. This will be my Christmas gift to everyone.

MRT: Do you think youll be nervous performing at home, since so much time has passed since the last time you did here in West Texas?

Morris: Im always anxious. I never claim nervousness because of the label that term brings. Im just anxious, but Im so excited. I know that, through doing my worship and ministry when I dance to this music, I'm at my truest form. Im so excited to have people there witnessing with me. And I love an intimate space.

MRT: How important do you think it is for organizations like the Roots Council to continue celebrating Kwanzaa?

Morris: I think its very important to keep it alive. Its important to our ancestors, and to our past. Whether its to the masses or in a small way. It brings others in. It lets people know how much beauty is in this world, theres so much to admire and respect.

MRT: Whats the difference between a personal performance like this, and a performance with a studio?

Morris: I would say that my movement is always very free and expressive because its my language, but there is something that happens when I get to worship. Its my direct connection. Im excited for what Ill feel in the moment, because every time its different. You never know what youre going to experience. I have a plan, but sometimes it changes because Im anointed by the Holy Spirit. Thats when Im at my purest. I performed this song with my sister when I was 8 for my cousins funeral. It was amazing then, and I dont expect anything less.

For more information about the Kwanzaa celebration or how to donate to the Latisha Williams fund, visit rootscouncil.com.
The first-grader was shuffling through his school papers when he stumbled across it: the test he had been taking last month when he got so angry that he had punched another student in the face.

In an ordinary classroom, the memories evoked by the finding could have triggered another outburst, furthering the damage while distracting the teacher and class.

The boy was in no ordinary classroom on this recent afternoon, however. He was in a special Spring Branch Independent School District program for students showing signs of mental illness, and the teacher, a licensed social worker, knew exactly what to do.

Do you want to be that guy? she asked. Because weve met you. You have a heart of gold.

I dont want to be a bully, the boy said.

The scene illustrates a fact that increasingly is becoming a focus of mental health experts: Schools can play a large role in addressing psychiatric issues.

Recent research indicates that half of all chronic mental illnesses begin by age 14, and three-quarters begin by age 24, making educational institutions where kids spend most of their time especially important.

In Texas, that reality is setting in slowly on policy makers. The state Legislature has approved bills in each of the last two sessions aimed at boosting school-based mental health care services but each time has left the details of implementation up to school officials, creating a patchwork of different programs and effectively leaving the level of help that kids get to chance, according to experts and an analysis of districts in the Houston area.

In Spring Branch ISD, for example, officials have created the special alternative program, struck up partnerships with the Harris Center for Mental Health and the Monarch Institute for Neurological Differences and put nearly 500 staffers through an eight-hour training called Mental Health First Aid. There have been no such trainings in nearby Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, where there are few efforts other than a short online suicide prevention course for staff.

Houston ISD also offers an online suicide prevention course and has trained about 175 staffers in Mental Health First Aid, according to a spokeswoman.

Theres very inconsistent application, in part, because the funding is limited, said Janet Pozmantier, manager at the School Behavioral Health Institute at Mental Health America of Greater Houston, an advocacy group.

Were so bad at funding basic mental health services in general, and theres very little available for schools.

As an example, Pozmantier cited Mental Health First Aid, an intensive, evidence-based training gaining praise across the country for its instruction in recognizing and responding to conditions, such as depression, bipolar disorder and severe anxiety.

Pozmantier applauded lawmakers for authorizing grants for the training in the 2013 session and continuing the program earlier this year, but she said they only provided $5 million.

To date, about 14,000 educators and non-educators have received Mental Health First Aid training, according to a report released last month by the Texas Department of State Health Services. The numbers varied widely across the state last fiscal year, with 689 educators in Harris County receiving the training, compared to 204 in the Dallas area.

Another example of the differences in implementation is Senate Bill 460, legislation approved in 2013 that required school districts to offer some type of mental health training to all staffers.

Two years later, school districts mostly are meeting the mandate through online courses, at least in the Houston area, according to a survey of districts.

Pozmantier suggested lawmakers should have gone further by requiring a more robust type of training. Online trainings are inadequate, she said, because these are human people that were talking about. You cant learn how to handle these situations by looking at a computer screen.

Former state Sen. Bob Deuell, a primary care doctor who sponsored the legislation , disagreed.

My continuing medical education is mostly online these days, said Deuell, R-Greenville. They actually have a whole set of effective online tools now.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, who was a co-author of the bill, said lawmakers crafted it to allow each district to provide the training that worked best for their individual situation. The Legislature is monitoring the situation, however, she said.

We included flexibility. If we see that the flexibility was not justified, we will reconsider, she said, noting that House Speaker Joe Straus recently created a special committee to comprehensively study mental health care in the state. If action is needed, we will take action.
Mike Morath has been a headstrong member of the Dallas school board, quick to back district reforms and chastise fellow members he felt overstepped their bounds in administrative operations.

Hes taking that passion -- and his love of data analysis -- to Austin, where he will oversee school districts and charter schools as Texas education commissioner. Gov. Greg Abbott called Morath a change agent when he appointed him to the post last month.

The 38-year-old businessman recently took time out of preparing for his move to Austin to answer questions for The Dallas Morning News.

Q. What are the top items that you want to tackle as Texas education commissioner?

A. Our highest duty is to our children, so all of our efforts should be focused on helping them be successful. To that end, I hope to be able to focus the agency on better supporting our teachers, updating the accountability system given the A-F framework passed by the Legislature, and working on the efficiency of the agency itself.

Q. Some are skeptical that youre ready to lead the states school system. What are your thoughts on that?

A. Our educational system is predicated on the idea that school board members can effectively govern school systems by providing oversight and setting policy. I think its entirely consistent with that system to believe a board member of one of the largest systems in the state can serve in a similar oversight role statewide.

Q. How has being a Dallas ISD trustee helped prepare you for the education commissioner job?

A. The role of a trustee involves supporting a system of schools and educators by providing proper vision, oversight, and a policy framework within which to act. This is very similar to the role of commissioner for the state as a whole.

Q. Are there any Dallas ISD policies or procedures that you would like to see replicated throughout the state?

A. The state of Texas is huge and diverse, with some school districts operating with only a single school and other big urban districts like Dallas. Its hard to imagine any one-size-fits-all approach working throughout the state.

Q. Youre a data-driven type. Does that mean you'll call for more testing? Different testing? Better testing?

A. Data is information that is disorganized. The key is to properly organize the information so it may add value to those supporting our students. Organized data has tremendous value to teachers, parents, students and legislators, and yes, I do value organized data.

Q. What will you miss about the Dallas ISD board?

A. There are so many great people in Dallas -- parents, staff, community members, kids -- and Ill certainly miss working with them.

Q. What wont you miss about the Dallas ISD board?

A. Those who defend low expectations and a failed status quo.

Q. What was your relationship with the superintendents in Dallas? And as you havent been one, how are you going to work with the superintendents across Texas to try to replicate the reforms that you helped institute in Dallas?

A. Ive learned so much from the three superintendents with whom Ive worked directly in Dallas, and from many more across Texas. Each brings different backgrounds, managerial styles, personalities and visions. In Dallas, each superintendent taught me a tremendous amount about our schools and the system itself. I will similarly rely on superintendents throughout the state for wisdom, guidance and feedback, to help ensure that all actions are in the best interests of our students.

Q. What groups/organizations are you involved with?

A. Texas Association of School Boards, Addison Rotary Club, Leadership Dallas Alumni Association, Woodrow Wilson High School Community Foundation, Reunion Church, Alpha Phi Alpha North Dallas Alumni Chapter and many others, though my participation will become less so with this appointment.

Q. What do you do in your spare time?

A. I spend as much time with my family as possible, and with any time left over, I try to exercise and read.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  As the days get shorter, first grade teacher Esmeralda Jiminez watches the dimming afternoon sky outside her classroom window the way her pupils watch the clock at dismissal time.

The studio apartment Jiminez rents for $1,783 a month, or 43 percent of her salary, is located in one of San Franciscos sketchiest neighborhoods. Getting home involves running a gantlet of feces-strewn sidewalks, popping crack pipes, discarded needles and menacing comments  daily irritants that become more daunting after dark.

If I lived in a better area, I wouldnt feel so scared going home and I would be able to stay at school a little longer, Jiminez, 26, said. You have so many things to do to prep for the next day, but its gotten to the point where even if I leave at a decent time I will walk three blocks out of my way to avoid some streets.

Its a scenario that has Jiminez wondering if she should find a profession that pays more, and public officials here and in other cities looking at housing as a tool to prevent the exodus of young educators like her.

Inspired by the success in the heart of the Silicon Valley of a 70-unit teachers-only apartment complex, school districts in high cost-of-living areas and rural communities that have long struggled to staff classrooms are considering buying or building rent-subsidized apartments as a way to attract and retain teachers amid concerns of a looming shortage.

Housing costs especially have become a point of friction for teachers in expensive cities such as Seattle, where teachers who went on a one-week strike in September said they could not afford to live in the same city as the children they teach.

In San Francisco, where many of Jiminezs colleagues have roommates or long commutes, addressing the affordability crisis for teachers was one of the main selling points of a housing bond voters approved in November, the first to pass in a generation.

About $35 million of the $310 million to be raised has been earmarked for construction of up to 100 new apartments on surplus land owned by the San Francisco Unified School District. The units would be rented at below-market rates to the districts 3,500 teachers and 1,600 classroom aides, who also would be eligible for new rental housing allowances and home down payment loans aimed at reducing living costs for another 300 educators, Deputy Superintendent Nyong Leigh said.

Each one of these ideas would reach some modest number, but in aggregate it would hopefully make a difference, Leigh said.

Officials in the Roaring Fork School District in western Colorado, which serves three mountain towns in the valley that houses Aspens posh ski resorts, similarly leveraged a $122 million school construction bond on the November ballot to secure $15 million for subsidized teacher rentals.

The district hopes to acquire 15 to 20 apartments in each of the three towns, enough to house at least 10 percent of its 450 teachers, Assistant Superintendent Shannon Pelland said. In an area where the average home sells for $630,000 and the average teacher makes $47,000, housing costs are without a doubt the number one reason we lose teachers and its the number one reason people turn down jobs, Pelland said.

Our typical pattern with teachers is they come to the valley, its an absolutely beautiful place, its a great lifestyle with wonderful recreational opportunities, and they are willing to live with roommates and do whatever they have to do to make it work for four or five years, she said. And right at that 5-year mark we see a lot of them saying, This is great for a while, but Ill never be able to afford a home here or make it work here, Im moving on.

School districts in Oakland, Milwaukee, Odessa, Texas, and Asheville, North Carolina, also have apartment projects for teachers in the works. Last spring, Los Angeles Unified School District opened its first apartment complex on school grounds for district employees and has two more under construction.

Stockton Williams, executive director of the Urban Land Institutes Terwilliger Center for Housing, said the concern over teachers being priced out of the communities they serve reflects an inadequate supply of new rental housing designed for middle-income workers instead of the high end of the market.

Its not just a San Francisco-New York-Seattle story. Its in many cities, large and small, and in most parts of the country, Williams said.

Officials in Santa Clara, California, found a workable formula more than a decade ago that other school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond still are trying to replicate. Working with a private developer under a tax-exempt financing scheme, the school district built 70 apartments between 2002 and 2009 that collectively are known as Casa del Maestros, Spanish for house of the teachers.

When kindergarten teacher Katy Howser moved into a one-bedroom apartment there 6 1/2 years ago, she was a 23-year-old living with her parents while she paid off her student college loans and credit card debt. The teachers-only complex was all she could afford, but having other educators as neighbors turned out to be more than a financial advantage.

Everyone has the same common courtesy for each other, Howser said. There are technically quiet hours, but its not ever really loud. Everyone just wants to come home and be quiet because we have to be loud all day.

Now married and expecting her first child, Howser and her husband pay $1,700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, at least $1,000 less than for a comparable place in the area. They will have to move out in June because tenants can only stay for seven years. Howser hopes they will have saved enough for a down payment on a house by then.

The fact that our district sees enough value in us teachers to make a way for us to be here says a lot, Howser said. It tends to be a relatively thankless job, and if you cant afford to live, you cant afford to stay.
http://donpolson.blogspot.com/ Bringing you the very best information, analysis and opinion from around the web. NOTE: For videos that don't start--go to article link to view.
DALLAS (AP)  A Marine stationed in Arizona was arrested Tuesday in the early New Years Day fatal shooting of a North Texas college student, authorities said.

The U.S. Marine Corps said in a statement that Cpl. Eric Johnson was taken into custody at the north gate of the Marine Corps air station in Yuma, Arizona. Police in Denton, Texas, said he was arrested on a murder warrant in the death of 20-year-old Sara Mutschlechner.

Mutschlechner, a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, 40 miles northwest of Dallas, was fatally shot in the head after an exchange of words between people in the vehicle she was driving and a group of five or six men in a sport utility vehicle, according to police.

Apparently it was an amicable conversation to begin with that quickly went downhill and some derogatory statements were made toward the female occupants of that vehicle, said Officer Shane Kizer, Denton police spokesman.

Mutschlechner was the designated driver after attending a New Years Eve party that at least two people in the SUV had also attended, according to police. Kizer has said police arent aware of any interactions between the two groups at the party, which was attended by about 60 people.

Police have said that as the vehicles crossed an intersection, someone in the SUV fired multiple rounds. Kizer has said that after Mutschlechner was struck by a bullet, her vehicle hit another vehicle and crashed into an electrical pole.

Kizer said Johnson, 20, was seen with a handgun in the vehicle right before the shots were fired. Kizer said the other people in the SUV are considered persons of interest and witnesses.

He said Johnson, who is from Texas, had family ties to the Denton area. Authorities do not yet know when Johnson might be returned to Texas.

Thomas Smith, a U.S. Marshals Service official in Yuma, did not know whether Johnson had an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

The Marine Corps said Johnson is assigned to the Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1. Capt. Justin Smith, spokesman for the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command in California, said Johnson joined the Marines in August 2013. He said Johnson is an administrative specialist and has never been deployed.

Kizer has said Mutschlechner was from Martindale, about 40 miles south of Austin.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  By executing a senior Shiite cleric, Saudi Arabia effectively lit a match to set off regional sectarian tensions and its rivalry with Iran, threatening to derail already-shaky peace efforts over the wars in Syria and Yemen.

It also is part of a more aggressive stance by the kingdom in the past year, which included launching an air campaign against Shiite rebels in Yemen and increased aid to rebels in Syria.

The policy in part reflects a greater willingness for risk-taking to counter Iranian influence in the Arab world, especially with Riyadh worried about a potential easing of relations between Tehran and Washington in the wake of last years nuclear deal.

But it also has a powerful domestic factor: a show of toughness by King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aiming to bolster their rule at a time when Saudi Arabia is facing an economic crisis brought on by low oil prices.

To the greater world, however, the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr took on a different appearance.

It looks like an extremely irrational and ill-considered decision to do this, said Christopher Davidson, a professor of Middle East politics at Durham University in Britain. In my view, it speaks more about the local dynamics in Saudi Arabia itself that are shifting steadily away from the ruling familys control.

The execution sparked outrage among Shiites around the world, with protests in Iraq, Bahrain and Pakistan, and even in Saudi Arabias tightly controlled Shiite heartland in the east. Irans government  which presents itself as a defender of Shiites in the region  loudly condemned the killing. Attackers stormed, ransacked and burned the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, prompting Riyadh to cut off ties in response.

Al-Nimrs death was a dramatic step because Saudi Arabia has rarely resorted to the death penalty in dealing with unrest among its Shiite minority, which has long complained of discrimination in the Sunni-led kingdom. A vocal opponent of the Saudi royal family, al-Nimr was seen by Shiites in the region as a political dissident, although he always contended he did not foment violence.

Shiites had warned against his execution ever since a Saudi court convicted him of sedition and other charges and sentenced him to death in 2014. He was executed among a group of 47 people convicted on terrorism charges  almost all connected to Sunni radicals and al-Qaida  painting him with the same brush as a threat to security.

For the royal family, the execution signals a tough hand against any trouble from Saudi Arabias Shiites and bolsters the kingdoms posturing as the champion for Sunni Muslims in the region against Iranian influence.

Saudi Arabias allies rallied it to its side Monday, with a number of nations following its lead in either cutting or reducing diplomatic ties with Iran. The Arab League called an emergency meeting of foreign ministers for Jan. 10 to discuss the attack on the Saudi Embassy and other Iranian interference in Arab affairs.

The execution also placates the kingdoms Sunni ultraconservatives, a key source of support for the ruling family. Shiites remain a favorite target of slurs by Saudi clerics, who follow the ultraconservative Sunni doctrine known as Wahhabism. While the kingdoms Shiite community  an estimated 10-15 percent of the population of nearly 29 million has seen only relatively low-level restiveness over the years, clerics often depict Shiites as a threat, a potential lever for Iranian influence.

Ultraconservative support is particularly important at a time when Saudi Arabia is facing the rise of an insurgency by Sunni extremists linked to the Islamic State group. Young Saudi Sunnis have been involved in a string of suicide bombings in the kingdom. Since Syrias civil war escalated in the past four years, Saudi clerics urged young men to fight alongside Sunni rebels there against the Iranian-backed Syrian government.

Analysts believe Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed, the kings 30-year-old son, has been the driving force behind the kingdoms more assertive stance and its willingness to take extreme political risks in the region, particularly the push into the war in Yemen.

Tellingly, it was Prince Mohammed, the Saudi defense minister, whom U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the German defense minister and a Sudanese official contacted for consultations Monday as the crisis spread.

What we have is a Saudi Arabia thats increasingly unhinged, that is run by a young man seeking to prove his bona fides, willing to take a lot of risks and of questionable judgment, said Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of the Eurasia Group. I think that any independent analyst would have to come to the conclusion that the trajectory of the Saudi regime is one of the biggest political risks hanging over the Middle East at this point.

The intensified Saudi-Iranian tensions could doom the multilateral talks launched by the U.S. and Russia in Vienna last month aimed at pushing a plan to end Syrias civil war. Riyadh and Tehran were both participating in those talks, and it was already going to be extremely difficult to get them both fully behind a peace plan: Iran is the main backer of Syrias President Bashar Assad, and Saudi Arabia has backed the rebels, determined to oust Assad and deprive Iran of a key ally.

One has to especially worry about the future of the Vienna talks, given this incendiary episode, Kupchan said.

Efforts for peace in Yemen already appeared to be crumbling. A truce there  largely ignored by combatants  ended this weekend. That civil war has killed more than 5,880 people since March and keeps Saudi Arabia and its allies mired in a conflict that has no clear sign of ending soon.

All the while, Saudi Arabia faces budgetary pressure as global oil prices have sunk under $40 a barrel and likely will remain low well into this year. The kingdom already has made some cuts, but more could be around the corner, forcing it to make unpopular decisions for a society used to government subsidies.

But theres one place its not cutting back: It allocated $57 billion in defense spending for 2016.

Those domestic worries are part of the reason for the show of toughness abroad.

Saudi rulers cant be seen as backing down, and thats not because its necessarily giving the region away to Iran, Davidson said. It is also because they know their own population will drift away from them and it will be interpreted as a great sign of weakness.



EDITORS NOTE: Jon Gambrell, an Associated Press reporter since 2006, has covered the Middle East from Cairo and Dubai since 2013.
DENTON, Texas (AP)  Police are investigating the death of a 20-year-old University of North Texas student who was fatally shot early New Years Day.

The shooting happened after an exchange of words between people in the students vehicle and people in a nearby sport utility vehicle.
Are Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth back together? The exes were spotted partying together on New Year's Eve in Australia. The rumors are running rampant on social media as to whether or not the once-engaged pair are back on.

Cyrus traveled to Australia last week to reunite with her former fiance as well as his family and friends in the small coastal town of Byron Bay. Locals reported that the two attended a Disclosure show at Falls Festival late night. Gold Coast Bulletin reported that an unnamed source said, "They were absolutely back on - they were hugging and kissing, it was full on. There was a lot of affection."

Cyrus and Hemsworth met in 2010 when they co-starred in the film The Last Song. Hemsworth then popped the question to Cyrus in 2012 although an exact date for the wedding was never reported. In September 2013, the engagement was over, although there were always rumors that the two remained close following the break-up.

In other Cyrus news she recently pulled one of her most daring stunts yet when she went topless on stage during her Dead Petz Tour with one-time Baywatch model, Pamela Anderson. At the show held at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, The Huffington Post reported that Anderson took the stage dressed in a full black bodysuit with No captivity written on her left leg in addition to holding up a sign that read Save the whales.

On first impression, the two performing together might seem out of place, but the pairing is more logical than it would seem considering that the two both share a passion for the LGBTQ community as well as animal rights. They have also both been featured in Mac Cosmetics Viva Glam campaigns, which raise money for and teach the public about AIDS and HIV.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Bill Cosby's wife, Camille Cosby, is being forced by a judge to testify in a defamation case against the comedian. This past Thursday (Dec. 31), the judge vetoed a motion filed by Camille to toss out a subpoena that requires her to make an appearance in a deposition. The deposition is connected to a lawsuit that seven women have brought against her husband alleging that he drugged and raped them. Camille is slated to make an appearance in court this upcoming Wednesday (Jan. 6).

The judge in question is U.S. Magistrate David Hennessey from Springfield, Massachusetts. He asserted in his ruling that the couple had not adequately proven that they were protected by Massachusetts' state martial disqualification law. He further vetoed her claims that the testimony's value was set to be outweighed by the "undue burden" that would be instigated by the deposition.

In a 12-page ruling released to Billboard, the judge states that her arguments, "do not outweigh the potential significance of Mrs. Cosby's testimony, nor has Mrs. Cosby provided any authority that they do. A lawyer for the seven women, Joseph Cammarata, additionally asserted that Camille should be cross-examined on the matter because it is thought that she had personal, "information that's relevant to the litigation in this matter."

Bill Cosby's lawyers claim that Camille doesn't possess any information pertaining to the seven women's allegations and that involving her in the deposition was, "nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to pressure the defendant in the face of subjecting his wife to the shame and embarrassment of responding to questions about his alleged infidelities and sexual misconduct."

Camille had previously asked for a protective order to restrict the subpoena as an alternative to throwing it out, which was also rejected by the judge.

Just before the new year, a warrant was issued for Bill Cosby's arrest after he was charged in a sexual assault case brought forth by former Temple employee, Andrea Constand. Montgomery County District Attorney-Elect, Kevin Steele, reopened a case brought against Cosby in 2005 by Constand, who asserts that Cosby drugged and raped her. Cosby claims that the sex was consensual, but Constand claims to be gay and in a relationship with a woman at the time of her assault.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
On Sunday (Dec. 20), Filipina model and actress Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach was officially crowned Miss Universe 2015, after the title was mistakenly given to Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez, first. Although the shocking mishap has been resolved, talk of the women sharing the crown have begun to circulate. Wurtzbach stopped by Good Morning America on Monday (Jan. 4) to voice her opinion about the idea of being a co-winner, admitting she has no interest doing so.

The day after the pageant, controversial presidential candidate and former owner of the Miss Universe Organization, Donald Trump, called into Today to explain how he would handle the crowning fiasco. The 69-year-old business mogul revealed his solution would involve another ceremony where both Miss Colombia and Miss Philippines would be crowned the winners.

Gutierrez also spoke out on the "humiliating" situation to a Colombian radio station, calling it a "great injustice" and agreeing they should share the crown. The real winner however, doesn't hold the same sentiments on the topic.

I think it would be a little bit difficult for two girls to share a crown," Wurtzbach told Good Morning America. "But I have high hopes that this will give great opportunities for me and Miss Colombia and the rest of the contestants.

The possibility wasn't the only opinion the 26-year-old winner disagreed with. Despite the backlash Steve Harvey generated after he announced the wrong winner, Wurtzbach was very understanding of the mishap and welcomes the idea of him taking the stage to host again next year.

Maybe the way it was written, it was a little confusing, Wurtzbach told Good Morning America. I understand. It was his first time to judge a pageant, but its OK. Hes human. People make mistakes. Its live television. People make mistakes and Steve Harvey was very gracious to apologize. I accept his apology and I think it speaks a lot about his character.

She also believes the comedian and talk show host brought a refreshing spin to the ceremony, allowed the contestants to feel at ease, and created a way for the women to let their personalities really shine.

If you're wondering if there are any hard feelings between the pageant contestants, think again. Miss Universe 2015 spoke to Gutierrez over the holiday season to wish her a happy birthday.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
2 Live Crew frontman, Luther Campbell, is not allowing his children to see Star Wars because George Lucas sued him early on in his career. In 1985, around the time that 2 Live Crew first started playing together, Campbell DJ'd locally in Miami using the name "Luke Skywalker." While his name was not inspired by the character portrayed by Mark Hamill in the Star Wars trilogy, Lucas took offense to him using it as his DJ moniker.

When 2 Live Crew began to be taken notice of, particularly for their controversy-laden lyrics, Lucas's team became nervous about the use of the name "Luke Skywalker." One notable controversy involved their track "Me So Horny" from As Nasty As They Wanna Be, released in 1989. A year later, Lucasfilm brought a $300 million federal lawsuit against Campbell citing trademark infringement and unfair competition.

"Every time I see a trailer, or an ad, for that movie, all I can think is I want that motherf*cker George Lucas to give me my money back," Campbell said to Vulture.

He further said to the publication, "I asked them, 'Will this affect me?' I thought I wasn't doing anything to infringe on their copyright. My name is Luke Skywalker and I'm rapping about how I want some p*ssy. How can anyone say that is infringing on a character in a movie that doesn't feature any rap music?"

It's partially understandable why Lucas's camp may have been concerned. This past June, the anniversary of the arrest of 2 Live Crew's members in Florida for obscenity occurred. After the release of their third studio album, Nasty As They Wanna Be, a federal judge in Florida ruled that the tracks "Me So Horny," "D*ck Almighty" and "The F*ck Shop" were too obscene to be played. It was subsequently made illegal to play or sell it in certain counties and the group was banned from performing the songs. They were arrested soon after for playing their songs in a Florida sex club.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
me & @Jamalgravywoolard aka Biggie n talks with the real sharks of the movie industry n it's official "BOOSIE" the movie is on the waybe on the look out for casting call , This Movie will be epic A photo posted by Boosie BadAzz (@officialboosieig) on Jan 3, 2016 at 10:41am PST

Boosie Badazz put his recent struggles in his raps for a project titled In My Feelings (Goin Thru It) and now, hes ready to portray his life in a film. Boosie took to social media to reveal that he has a biopic in the works.

On Sunday (Jan. 3), the Baton Rouge rapper posted an Instagram picture of himself and Jamal Woolard, the actor who starred as Biggie in the 2009 film Notorious. He shared the photo with a telling caption, n talks with the real sharks of the movie industry n it's official "BOOSIE" the movie is on the way be on the look out for casting call , This Movie will be epic.

Woolard was recently tapped to reprise his role as The Notorious B.I.G. for the forthcoming Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez On Me. Though details beyond Boosies announcement have yet to surface, Woolards industry connections may very well prove beneficial in establishing Boosies film.

A movie about Boosies story is undoubtedly something diehard fans would like to see come to fruition. Since making his mainstream debut, Boosie has released and been featured on singles including Zoom with Yung Joc, Wipe Me Down, Independent and Out Here Grindin by DJ Khaled.

His career has also been plagued with adversity, namely a nearly five year stint in the Louisiana justice system and a murder charge. Since overcoming those obstacles, Boosie was diagnosed with kidney cancer and underwent a successful procedure to remove the cancerous tumor.

Following the procedure, Boosie wrote via social media, I want to thank each and everyone for all the support and love. Surgery went well..God is good! Next step recovery! Cancer has been removed from Boosie kidney Thanks to all Boosie family and friends and all my real Boosie fans for all the prayers from #badazzmusicsyndicate I am a #cancersurvivor."

Check back with us for more updates.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
I don't know how it is with you, but for me the shocker of the week was this . Now, look at the photo. Who would be the man hanging on ...
VICKSBURG, MISS., January 5, 2016  Almost 300 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel from throughout the Mississippi Valley Division are continuing to combat flooding from high Mississippi River levels as the river crested January 3 at 56 feet on the Cairo gage. Public safety is the Corps number one priority, and as record-breaking river levels recede on the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, flood fighters remain vigilant around the clock to rapidly respond to trouble spots.



We are working as a regional team to fight this flooding, said Maj. Gen. Mike Wehr, Mississippi Valley Division commander. The amount of coordination and collaboration with other federal and state agencies, our fellow Corps divisions and with local communities, has been incredibly important to the success of this flood fight. Our hearts and prayers go out to everyone suffering from the impacts of the heavy rains and flooding within Missouri, and we will do everything we can to prevent further flooding as the crest moves south.



In addition, the Memphis District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, announced Jan. 2, that, based on the lowered crest and forecast for the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois, all preparatory actions for operation of the Birds Point-New Madrid floodway have been put on hold.



While the decision to hold off loading the barges, and then moving the barges upriver, does mean we will not currently operate the floodway, it doesnt mean were completely out of the woods, said Colonel Jeff Anderson, commander of the Memphis District. While this ends planning and preparation for this event, we must remain vigilant for any other events that may happen this flood season. Theres still a lot of water in the system thats making its way to the Gulf of Mexico and we must be prepared for future rain events within the massive Mississippi River drainage basin.

The National Weather Services current forecast calls for the Mississippi River at New Madrid, Missouri, to crest at 44.0 feet (flood stage is 30 feet) today. The Vicksburg and New Orleans district offices continue to stay in close coordination with the NWS, acutely aware that high water is headed their way.



Flood stage in Vicksburg is 43 feet and current predictions from the National Weather Service take the river at Vicksburg to 52.5 feet on January 15. Flood stage in New Orleans is 17.0 feet and current NWS predictions have forecast the river to crest at 17.0 feet on January 9.



As river levels increase downriver, the Corps and its partners are engaged in a proactive flood fight along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. During this flood fight, the Corps and local levee districts have team members on the ground monitoring and conducting inspections so that any potential threats to the integrity of the levee system can be quickly addressed.



Strong coordination and communication between partners are integral parts of our ability to safely pass this high water, said Col. Richard Hansen, commander of the New Orleans District. In South Louisiana, we have a robust, well-prepared and experienced team of local, state and federal emergency responders whose top priority is the safety of the public.



Current NWS forecasts indicate that the Mississippi River could reach the project-design flow of 1.25 million cubic feet per second (cfs), coinciding with a 17-foot stage, in the greater New Orleans area. If this flow occurs, the Corps has the capability to regulate the amount of water flowing through the city by operating the Bonnet Carre Spillway to safely divert up to 250,000 cfs of water into Lake Pontchartrain.



Upriver from Baton Rouge, the Morganza floodway control structure could be operated if river levels reach 57 feet at the structure and there is a 10-day forecast indicating a Mississippi River flow of 1.5 million cubic feet per second and rising past the structure. The structure would be operated to maintain a water stage of 57 feet on the river side of the structure, and a Mississippi River discharge rate that does not exceed 1.5 million cubic feet per second below the floodway.



The Mississippi River &Tributaries project is being operated, and is performing, as designed. It is one of the worlds most comprehensive and successful flood control and navigation systems and has provided unprecedented protection during two severe floods in the past five years. Because of the MR&T project below Cairo, extensive flooding in protected areas was avoided during the Great Flood of 2011, with more than $230 billion in damages prevented. Additionally, no lives were lost due to the floods in 2011. The system did suffer approximately $2 billion in damages, with $1.5 billion invested in repairs, to date. The investment in repairs and improvements are being tested by the current flood and the MR&T remains incomplete (currently 87 percent complete). This is an important consideration given the system was just one large storm event away from potentially reaching the project design flood capacity.



Day-to-day oversight and coordination of the Mississippi Rivers flow and its watershed are the responsibility of the Mississippi Valley Divisions Watershed Division. Division hydrologists and hydraulic engineers keep track of river stages in real time using satellite links to gages and coordinate closely with multiple organizations, including the National Weather Service, to provide an ongoing picture of current and expected river conditions.

The Corps continues implementing a watershed-wide plan to reduce outflows from reservoirs located on the system. Reservoirs within the Mississippi Valley Division and the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division have been instrumental in keeping the crest at Cairo from reaching higher levels, adding more confidence to the ongoing flood fight. All Corps reservoirs with the ability to impact Mississippi River flood stages are currently evaluating water releases to help reduce stage levels and minimize impacts to communities along the river.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission are coordinating closely with other government agencies, communities, stakeholders, contractors and organizations to ensure the safety and well-being of local citizens along the Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi and other rivers in the system.

-end-




Monique Samuels and Chris Samuels talk about the word on the street. After the couple - who appeared on The Real Housewives of Potomac for four seasons - reportedly split after 10 years of marriage, the couple denied there was any truth to
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The first time I spoke with Tom Wolf was in March, 2013 when he was considered a longshot to replace Pennsylvania's Republican Governor Tom Corbett. It only took a few minutes of listening to him talk before I realized that he was the guy-- the guy who could stop conservaDem Allyson Schwartz from getting the Democratic nomination, the one who could retire Corbett and the one who could show Pennsylvanians what it was like to have a good governor. (Anyone remember Milton Shapp?) Anyway, Tom did a guest post forexplaining who he is and how he wanted to approach governing Pennsylvania.

He is very much the benevolent businessman-- reminded me of my grandfather in that way, who was both a dedicated socialist and the owner of a coat manufacturing factory-- who had a reasonable set of progressive principles he felt would be good for Pennsylvania. The voters agreed. He easily triumphed over the establishment-favored Schwartz-- 58% to 18% (that's the race where Katie McGinty, the Schumercrat running against Joe Sestak, got 8% of the vote)-- and then went on to oust Corbett 1,920,355 (55%) to 1,575,511 (45%). Obama took Pennsylvania 2 years earlier against Romney 52-47%.

He has his own blog now, which he uses to keep Pennsylvanians informed about what he's doing and why. When the Republican-controlled state legislature (Senate has 31 Republicans and 19 Democrats and the House has 120 Republicans and 83 Democrats) decided to cut the state's public education budget, Governor Wolf vetoed the plan. This is his post from New Years Eve:

Why I Vetoed The GOP's Plan to Cut Education

by Governor Tom Wolf





Earlier this week, I used my line item veto power to veto the Republican plan to cut education by $95 million, while also taking action to ensure that schools received money owed to them through December 31.





There are many reasons why this budget is wrong for Pennsylvania, but these are the big reasons why I vetoed part of the GOPs plan:





1. The Republican budget underfunds education.





 Instead of finally providing funding for our schools, Republicans cut $95 million for local school districts. After $1 billion in budget cuts to our schools over the past several years, this budget makes it even worse.





 Republicans continue to refuse to adequately fund Pre-K through 12 education and their budget fails to fund over $305 million in school construction reimbursements. The Republicans failure to provide school construction funding to local school districts and the commonwealths inability to responsibly issue debt-- which is a result of past Republican budgets built on gimmicks that led to a multi-billion dollar deficit-- will lead to a direct cost to the school districts. This will wipe out any marginal funding increases for local school districts.





 The Republicans did not pass legislation to provide funding for Pennsylvanias institutions of higher learning including Pitt, Penn State, Temple, Lincoln, and the Penn Vet School, leaving them completely without state funding.





 They did not pass a fiscal code or a school code.









2. The Republican budget does not balance.





 This budget spends $30.3 billion dollars without sufficient revenues to pay for it. Assuming that we would certify the current year revenue estimate at the amount recommended by the Independent Fiscal Office earlier this month, if I signed this bill, the commonwealth would end the year over a half a billion dollars out of balance.





 There is already $2.3 billion structural deficit, and the Republican budget increases it even more. It will lead to more credit downgrades and fiscal instability in Pennsylvania. Bottom line: It is not responsible.





For the first time in years, we have an opportunity to change the status quo. We have a real chance to make historic investments in schools, truly balance the budget, and begin to fix the deficit. Now, the Republican legislature must return to work immediately and pass a real budget for Pennsylvania.
Our money has been depleted by ...
Hope in a Darkening Age... news, comment, arts, ecology, wisdom, obsessions, the past, the future... "THE END OF ALL INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS IS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR SYNTHESIS."--H.G. Wells. "It's always a leap into the unknown future to write anything."--Margaret Atwood "Be kind, be useful, be fearless."--President Barack Obama.
Microphone and US Flag View Photos

Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler delivered this weeks Republican address, calling for a renewed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Hartlzer was Tuesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are her words:

Hello, Id like to first extend my thoughts and prayers to those affected by the catastrophic weather events of this past week. Missouri is experiencing extensive flooding as are other states. Families across the South are picking up the pieces of their lives after being devastated by tornadoes. Ice and snow have caused power outages in multiple states. It wasnt the holiday week we were expecting but there is help. If you are affected, I urge you to reach out to your U.S. Representatives office, state and local authorities, or the federal and state emergency management agencies for resources to deal with the aftermath. While the assistance cant undo the damage, it can help get you on a path to recovery so 2016 can be a New Year with new hope.

As Congress returns next week, in one of our first acts of the new year, the House will vote on a bill that would eliminate key parts of Obamacare and stop taxpayer funding for abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. This would be a significant step in improving our health care system. If this bill becomes law, patients will be able to choose a health insurance plan that works for themwithout Washington getting in the way.

Thats the problem with Obamacare: It forces people to buy insurance thats much more expensive than what they need. And when you force millions of people to buy expensive and unaffordable insurance, its not that surprising to see premiums going up. Deductibles are going up tooall while peoples choices are disappearing. Theyre losing their doctors. They cant find a good plan. Millions of people have lost the plans they had. Far too many are paying more and getting less.

If we want to make health insurance more affordable, we should make insurance companies compete for your business. That means we should not force people to buy insurance. It means the exact opposite. Our bill addresses this injustice by eliminating the core of Obamacare: It repeals the individual mandate. If this bill becomes law, you wont have to buy insurance or face a penalty. It will be your choice. This bill also eliminates the employer mandate to offer insurance. No longer will job creators have to choose between hiring more workers or paying for coverage they cant afford. And this bill eliminates many of the Obamacare taxes on things like prescription drugs and medical devices. Critical medicine and medical devices are the very things that save lives. They should never have been taxed in the first place. This bill will set things right.

The point of health care is to preserve and protect life. Thats why this bill stops taxpayer funding for abortion providers. The people have, for years, asked Congress to stop sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, especially after we learned last year of the disturbing practices Planned Parenthood officials engage in such as harvesting and selling baby body parts. These actionsalong with the hundreds of thousands of abortions they perform each yearshow a blatant disregard for human life. Thats why this bill places a moratorium on taxpayer funding to abortion providers and redirects that money to community health centers. These health centers serve eight times more women patients than Planned Parenthood, and they provide much more comprehensive care.

We were sent to Congress to fight for the American people. They do not want their healthcare dictated to them by Washington. And they dont want their tax dollars going to abortion providers. We have taken many votes to preserve health care choices and protect precious tax dollars in the House. If the president didnt hear the peoples voices earlier, hopefully, he will through this bill. It will go directly to his desk by way of the reconciliation process, which avoids obstruction by Senate Democrats.

We owe it to the American people to take our best shot at repealing Obamacare, and thats what well do next week. As a result, President Obama will soon have a choice: Does he support the people and womens health, or does he support Washington mandates and tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood?

For the sake of the American people, I hope he makes the right choice.

Thanks for listeningHappy New Year and God Bless.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning on AM 1450 KVML at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 AM.
Florida's ongoing efforts at redistricting has led to an unprecedented result: Starting this fall, all 40 Florida Senate seats will be up for election.



State Senate President Andy Gardiner asked the state auditor general to randomly assign numbers to all 40 Senate districts, based on Circuit Judge George Reynolds' idea during his Dec. 30 redistricting decision.

That decision stemmed from a lawsuit alleging state lawmakers did not follow the 2010 Fair District amendments that voters had approved, requiring the state to create equal and compact districts for the Florida Legislature and the U.S. Congress. The Supreme Court chose a new Congressional map in December.

"Its a very complicated process. It really is," said State Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton. "Youre drilling down into counties and cities. Were required to try to keep cities whole, try to keep counties whole to the extent we can and follow geographical boundaries like rivers and lakes and things of that nature."



A computer Excel program spit out randomly assigned numbers to the 40 state districts on Tuesday morning in Tallahassee.



Twenty districts were assigned odd numbers and 20 received even numbers.



Those assigned odd numbers will run for four-year terms in the fall, while those with even numbers will run for two-year terms, and then again for four-year terms in 2018.



Despite moving ahead with assigning districts, an appeal of the court's redistricting decision has not been ruled out.

The old district map is still available on the Florida Senate website. You can look up your old district there, and then compare it with the new map available below.
A man with a long criminal past was arrested Monday night in connection with the vandalism at a Brevard County mosque, police said.

Michael Scott Wolfe, 35, of Titusville, is charged with criminal mischief to a religious building, a third-degree felony.

Investigators on Monday released surveillance footage that they say shows Wolfe entering The Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque, located at 1011 S. Washington Ave., around 11 p.m. Friday.

Police say Wolfe, wearing a T-shirt and camouflage pants, pulled a machete from a bag and then used it to cause damage to the mosque. Police said several cameras, lights and windows were broken and bacon was also left by the front door of the mosque. The Quran, the holy book of Islam, prohibits Muslims from eating pork.



Investigators released surveillance footage that they say shows Michael Scott Wolfe entering The Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque around 11 p.m. Friday.

Imam Muhammad Musri, with the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said it was a matter of time until an incident like this occurred in Florida based on current Middle East tensions.

"You will get to a point to know where it's going to happen  eventually somebody crazy is going to act out and it's not a matter of if, but when," Musri said. "It is a potential hate crime because the motive behind the vandalism was really hate against a community of faith."

Wolfe has been arrested more than a dozen times, according to jail records. Previous arrests include charges of loitering and prowling, possession of burglary tools with intent to use, grand theft and resisting officer without violence.



Previous mug shots for Michael Scott Wolfe. (Brevard County Corrections)

Rasha Mubarak, the Orlando Regional Coordinator for CAIR, released the following statement to News 13:

We are calling for a local, state and federal hate crime investigation of the vandalism and attempted desecration of this Titusville mosque  the latest such incident in a recent spike in attacks on Muslim houses of worship nationwide.

A similar crime happened last week in Las Vegas. The FBI on Dec. 27 said a man can be seen in a surveillance video putting bacon on the door handles to the entrances of the Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque.

Earlier in December, a severed pig's head was found outside a Philadelphia worship site.
Wayland Baptist University has received a $600,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.s High School Youth Theology Institutes initiative to help fund Kaleo, a program designed to foster Christian leadership among high school juniors and seniors.

Designed by Waylands associate dean of the School of Religion and Philosophy, Dr. Clinton Lowin, the Kaleo programs goal is to transform lives through discovery, discernment and affirmation of Gods call for Christian leadership in the lives of junior and senior high school students.

This grant is one of the most exciting things that has happened to the School of Religion and Philosophy in our history, said Dr. Paul Sadler, dean of the School of Religion. It has tremendous potential to influence the lives of Christian young people, and it also gives churches and Wayland an opportunity to form very productive partnerships.

Lowin said he had been in discussion with leaders at the Baptist General Convention of Texas and other organizations who expressed a growing interest in trying to find a way to help more students consider the call of God on their lives, not only preparing them for service to the church, but also within their communities.

Funded by the Lilly Endowment grant, Lowin was able to design an immersion program through which Wayland partners with local churches, Camp Eagle and Student International to provide students with an experience that focuses on the heart, head and hands to foster the call to kingdom work.

High school juniors and seniors will enter into a year-long mentorship program with a pastor or youth pastor from their church. As part of the experience, the mentees will be sent to Wayland for a month-long immersion that will focus on three phases of development.

The wilderness phase will focus on separation where students will be encouraged to find their true leadership calling. The Camp Eagle Wilderness program near Glorietta, New Mexico, is designed to create experiences that lead to an examined life. Students will hike, backpack and live in tents, away from modern conveniences. At the end of the week, they will be debriefed to help them understand what they have learned.

The second phase will take place on the Wayland campus as they spend a week in the classroom, taking Biblical and theological study modules led by Wayland professors. The week will also include ministry projects with local churches.

The final phase includes a partnership with Student International in a two-week overseas mission trip. Student International focuses on occupational missions, a point of interest for many young people looking to be missional in their approach to everyday life.

Its the demonstration of the gospel, and when given a chance, the opportunity to articulate the gospel, Lowin said of Student Internationals approach.

Once the immersion experience is complete, students will return to their churches and mentors for another eight months of studying and learning, at which time they will be instructed and held accountable by Kaleo for implementing some sort of Christian ministry or channel of influence within their church or community. Lowin said they will also maintain contact with the other students and mentors in their Kaleo group through Blackboard, Waylands online teaching platform. Group members will be able to share insight about their projects and leadership opportunities through a protected, online chatroom.

We are very appreciative of the Lilly Endowment for providing this grant and for Dr. Lowin who deserves a great deal of credit for his determined effort to see this come to fruition, Sadler said.

Lilly Endowment is giving $44.5 million in grants through this initiative. Wayland is one of 82 private four-year colleges and universities participating in the initiative. The schools are located in 29 states and the District of Columbia. Although some schools are independent, many reflect the religious heritage of their founding Christian traditions. These traditions include Baptist, Brethren, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian and Reformed churches, as well as Catholic, non-denominational, Pentecostal and historic African-American Christian communities.

The grants are part of the endowments commitment to identify and cultivate a cadre of theologically-minded youth who will become leaders in church and society.

Dr. Lowin, who has already been in contact with some churches in Ohio, said the Kaleo program is open to students who churches feel have great potential for Christian leadership. Each group will be capped at 30 students, and is open to student and churches through the United States. Recruitment of students has already begun and the first immersion experience will take place June 10 through July 11, 2016.

Any church interested in sponsoring a student may contact Dr. Lowin at 806-291-1165 or by email at lowinc@wbu.edu.








Shirt: Mango

Shorts: H&M





















































Hi guys!Many of you who read my blog might know by now just how much of a traveling addict I am. I get so much energy and joy from vising new places, or re-discovering old ones! It's one of my greatest passions! And in the year that just passed I had one my best vacations ever. Visiting Southern Spain was a dream come true and it was far more beautiful than I had expected.Benalmadena, Malaga, Caminito Del Rey, Tarifa, Alhambra, Ronda, Zahara, Seville, Cordoba, Madrid, Gibraltar... Such amazing travel destinations!Whenever I feel down, I enjoy looking through holiday photos, and I've just recently realized that some of the photos we took the day we visited the Great Mosque of Cordoba hadn't made it to the blog. So here I am, doing justice to one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. And to complete my Spain travel diary, I will soon dedicate a post to the magnificent Gibraltar.I hope you'll like the photos and that I will motivate you to go see it for yourselves (if you hadn't been there yet). Also, I would really love to know which are your favorite destinations, places that you've visited and left a mark on your memory. I really want to start planning my next trips and I would really love some suggestions.Many hugs!P.S. If you want to check out my other posts where I've documented my trip to Spain, you can visit the links below:
There was no denying the discontent of residents living at "The Ranch" trailer park, when they woke up New Year's Day to discover they still had no running water in their homes.

One resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was quick to call the media to pass on the information that the 30-plus residents of the complex had been without water for more than 50 hours and blamed the negligence of Shawn Fuller, owner of the park formally known as the Rio Concho, for the problem.

But Fuller, who lives in Lubbock, says he's not at fault, and states that the problem arose after a criminal act was committed and a solution was hindered by the massive blizzard last week.

According to the Rio Concho resident, the park, which is outside Plainview city limits, is connected to a city water line. The line reaches the park and connects to the park's water system which Fuller maintains.

Water issues have long plagued the park, even before Fuller bought Rio Concho in a foreclosure sale in 2010.

"Just telling it like it is, he didn't take care of business," said Fuller, describing the practices of the park's former owner David Ott of California.

Fuller said residents in the past would go more than a week on some occasions after Ott just didn't pay the City water bill.

"There's not been one minute our residents have gone without water due to a non-payment of the bill," Fuller claimed.

But in the past 18 months, Fuller said, he's had trouble with freak accidents taking down the park's water system.

Fuller claimed that since buying the park he has made some improvements to the water line system which basically encircles the trailer park. Connected to the water line loop are two fire hydrants.

About 18 months ago, Fuller said, "unlicensed movers" broke one of the fire hydrants, causing a massive leak and briefly shutting down the park's water supply. The system was interrupted once again months later when Fuller said Atmos Energy workers kept hitting the water lines of the park. According to Fuller, this too shut the park's water system down.

But last week, just a few days after Christmas, Fuller said somebody at the park was preforming "donuts" in their vehicle. Sliding in a circle on the ice left from last Sunday's blizzard, the vehicle supposedly hit the second fire hydrant causing another leak.

Though he couldn't remember off hand when the vehicle broke the hydrant, Fuller said he called someone to fix the hydrant as soon as he could, but hazardous driving and work conditions hindered the process.

"It's not a simple task," Fuller said of having to fix the 6-inch water main which was buried four feet in the frozen ground.

Despite the tough conditions, Fuller said residents never went more than 32 hours without water.

But the resident claims that is wrong, saying the park went more than 50 hours without water before it was returned Friday at 1 p.m. The resident said Fuller could have done a better job of getting more help to fix the line so the problem could have been resolved faster. He added that residents were stuck in their homes as high snow prevented them from leaving the complex to get more water.

But Fuller said the risk of going without water is something to be expected during winter storms.

"I was prepared at my house," said Fuller. He said news stations advised people to fill up bathtubs and get extra bottled water before the storm. He said he once went three days without water when a main broke near his Lubbock home.

Fuller was upset that someone had broken the hydrant and that a resident was quick to complain about it to the media.

"Every repair is out of our pocket," Fuller said. "It's not a win-win thing when other people tear your stuff up and you're responsible and have to pay out of your pocket to fix it. And the very people you're supplying discounted water to complain about it."

But the resident said not everything is being fixed at the park.

In a 2010 interview with a Lubbock news station, Fuller pledged that he would give the park a new name, The Ranch, as well as a new start and make it a place residents would once again be proud to call home.

However, this past August some residents complained that conditions now were just as bad and maybe even worse than when Fuller took over. Their main complaints were about massive potholes, an unfenced swimming pool and overgrown weeds.

Fuller said the problems were fixed, but residents said the potholes were still bad and the swimming pool was still open.

Fuller said the project to fix the pool will be $12,000 alone, but he is working on finding some ways to raise revenue.

"Unlike the government, we don't get to spend money we don't have," Fuller said.
As a rule, I avoid political arguments. Proclaiming the virtues of one party over another is like arguing with a firing squad over which member gets the live round in his gun. The bottom line is, whether the bullet comes from the right or the left, you're going to get shot. One party says the best way to help people is to take money from the rich, and give it to the poor. The other party says let the rich keep the money, and they will build more 7-11's for the poor people to rob. It's a tomato, tomahto sort of thing. Either way, it's my money they're fighting over. I think the powers that be should create a website where regular people, like me, could offer suggestions. Surely I'm not the only one who suspects there is something wrong with the water or air in Washington, D.C. We send fairly intelligent representatives there, and within days, they become babbling idiots.

I called the White House a few days ago and asked to speak to the president. Mrs. Bush said he had stepped out, and would I like to leave a message. I gave her my phone number and asked if she would have the president call me when it was convenient. I guess he's been busy, he hasn't returned my call. I asked Mrs. Bush if she would like to hear some of my ideas, but she said that unlike the family that lived there before them, Mr. Bush made all the decisions concerning government policy.
Jan. 5, 1946: AMM1c Carl Stanford Sjogren was honorably discharged from the Navy at Shoemaker, Calif., on Dec. 18 after 44 1/2 months of service, including 18 months in the Southwest Pacific.

--Sgt. Paul H. White of Plainview is among the men who recently joined the Eighth Armys Cavalry Division in Tokyo. He has been assigned to Headquarters Troop of the 1st Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment.

--Col. Beverly Warren, maintenance officer with the 20th Army Air Force, where he Friday on a brief visit with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. B.H. Warren. Col. Warren is based on Guam where he is due to report again this month.

Jan. 5, 1956: Troy Porterfield on Monday assumed duties here as state highway patrolman. He was born and reared at Clarksville and recently finished patrolman training. This is his first duty assignment.

--Ground was broken Wednesday at West Eighth and Houston streets for the Nichols Medical and Surgical Building. The facility will be operated by Dr. E.O. Nichols Sr. and son Dr. E.O. Nichols Jr.

--H.P. Pelphrey has been appointed Plainview police chief by the City Council. He replaces former boss Hoyt Curry who moves up to director of public safety, welfare and health for Plainview.

Jan. 5, 1966: Marine Cpl. Raymond S. Joy, 23, of Abernathy, was killed in action in Vietnam on Dec. 16, his wife, Dixie Joy of Abernathy, was notified Monday by the Defense Department. He was a nephew of District Judge James A. Joy of Plainview.

--The city has land under contract for a site of the new police station and corporation court building, which are to be started later this year, reports Mayor M.B. Hood. The two parcels are located at Ninth and Austin and owned by Mrs. J.M. Johnson and Forest Gallaway.

--New officers for the Chamber of Commerce were elected Tuesday. They include Jack Morris, president; John Stoneham, first vice president; Bill Sylvester, second vice president; and Obed Foote, treasurer.

Jan. 5, 1976: Robert Neeley, owner of the Trio Rebel Drive-In, has purchase Casa de Taco, a popular Mexican food restaurant in the Village Shopping Center, from Hartis Enterprises. He plans to operate the business with his wife, Cassie, and their daughter, Rita, a freshman at PHS.

--Bob Wayland, a member of one of Plainviews pioneer families, has announced his intention to seek the office of Plainview mayor. The election is April 3.

--St. Alice Catholic Church is sponsoring a family of Vietnamese refugees. They are Mr. and Mrs. Vu-Ba Hung and their daughters, Thien-Huong, 3 1/2; and Clara Maerline, 3 months. They fled Saigon on April 30 to avoid the Communists.

Compiled by Doug McDonough
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Edward A. Ornelas /San Antonio Express-News

The bankrupt owner of Forest Park Medical Center building on San Antonios Northwest Side has filed a court motion seeking to prevent a lender from foreclosing on the property.

FPMC San Antonio Realty Partners LP, the owner, reported that it was informed last week that it defaulted on a financing agreement with Texas Capital Bank for failing to have a buyer in place by a Dec. 20 deadline.
The Toyota Tacoma was a huge success in 2015, selling more units than in any year since it was introduced in 1995, according to company sales figures.

Toyota sold 179,562 of the pickups last year, a 15.8 percent increase from the 155,041 it sold in 2014. Most Tacoma pickups are manufactured at Toyotas plant on the South Side, with the rest made in Baja California, Mexico.
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SAN ANTONIO  A man was shot three times through his front door Tuesday morning after a suspect requested to use the mans phone in the early morning hours on the East Side, according to the San Antonio Police Department.

Emergency personnel and police officers responded at about 4:26 a.m. Tuesday to a residence in the 100 block of Highway Drive.

The 32-year-old victim and his wife heard someone knock on their door at an early hour in the morning. The man went to the front door with a handgun, according to a police report.

The suspect, wearing a dark jacket, asked to use the victims phone, but the man refused. At this point, the suspect opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun, shooting through the door, according to the report.

A sergeant who responded to the scene said the victim was shot twice in the shoulder and once in the thigh, but he was able to return fire toward the suspect through the door, according to the report. It is unclear whether the suspect was hit.

Patrol officers, a helicopter and K-9 units were dispatched in an attempt to locate the suspect, but they were not able to track him down. He is believed to be between the ages of 30 and 40, according to the report.

The victim was transported in serious but stable condition to San Antonio Military Medical Center.

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
Brazil has one of the worst prison over-crowding situations in the world.

The Latin American country reportedly has some 607,000 incarcerated in a prison system that's built to hold 376,000 inmates. The country has the fourth largest population of people locked up in the world, according to reports. The other countries in the top three include China, the U.S. and Russia. Reports say that Brazil is the only country, however, whose prison population continues to grow.
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When Abel Gonzales began his career as a barber in 1937, he charged 10 cents per head.

Cutting hair up until a few months ago, Gonzales had, over time, raised his price to $7 a head.

He cut the hair of generations of men, often starting when they were young boys. Gonzales served clients that included radio personalities, local politicians and doctors.

He had so many regular customers, his son Arthur Art Gonzales said. A lot of his customers passed away; he outlived all of them.

Gonzales died Dec. 29 at 97.

Growing up as one of 10 children on 250 acres near Charlotte, a community in Atascosa County, he recalled his childhood as beautiful.

More Information Abel Gonzales Born: Feb. 18, 1018, Seguin Died: Dec. 29, 2015, San Antonio Preceded by: Wife Eulalia Amaya Gonzales; infant son Abel Gonzales. Survived by: Son Arthur A. Gonzales and daughter-in-law Elsa; daughter Alicia Reygadas and son-in-law Richard; four grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren. Services: Visitation from 5 to 9 p.m., rosary at 7 p.m., Thursday at Funeraria Del Angel Roy Akers Funeral Home, 515 N. Main Ave.; graveside service at 10:30 a.m. Friday at San Fernando Cemetery No. 2, 746 Castroville Road. See More Collapse

Even during the Depression, they had all the food they needed, his son said. They grew corn, cotton and had a few cattle, and traveled throughout the state to pick other crops.

But when Gonzales and his brothers were offered a chance to attend barber school as young adults, they took the opportunity, moving to San Antonio.

Living near Zarzamora and Martin streets, Gonzales had to walk from there to downtown to go to barber school because he didnt have any money, Art Gonzales said.

Working in another barbers shop for 10 years after graduation, Gonzales and his wife  he had married a childhood friend in 1943  decided to open their own business on the West Side. He cut hair while she sold groceries in a shop next door.

He would take me every Saturday, so I could sweep up the hair for him, Art Gonzales said.

Moving the barbershop to a house on Hildebrand Avenue near Interstate 10 in 1968, Gonzales kept his business in the in the front room of the house while the family lived in the back.

Gonzales and his wife managed their money carefully. They sent their son to Catholic schools and purchased rental properties, which Gonzales worked on in his spare time.

He taught me how to do plumbing, sheetrock  taught me all those things, his son said. Whenever he worked on the properties on weekends, I had to go with him to help him.

The couple also bought a small ranch near Poteet.

He was always out there, plowing the fields so he could grow watermelon and vegetables, had some cattle, his granddaughter Melanie Romero said. He missed having land, so he invested in that.

Although he took little time to relax, Gonzales felt it was nothing compared to the work he did on his familys ranch during his childhood.

He was never still, Art Gonzales said. He used to say, Its how I grew up; working the fields was very hard  this is easy, now.
At least 73 children have died as a result of influenza in Texas during the past five years, deaths that likely could have been prevented if more Texans had gotten their annual flu vaccine.

Because misconceptions abound regarding what the flu actually is, every minor sniffle and cough is referred to as the flu. But the viruss severity cannot be understated: It kills roughly 23,000 people in the United States each year  more than all other vaccine-preventable diseases combined. Vaccination is the best defense against the virus, but not enough people are getting shots.

The flu shot is one of the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions least adhered-to recommendations, with only half of eligible Texans  and two-thirds of Texas children  receiving the annual dose. When vaccination rates are broken down further, only a disappointing 34 percent of adults 18 to 49 in Texas were vaccinated against flu last season, not even close to the U.S. Health Departments Healthy People 2020 objective of 70 percent.

Taking time to go to the doctor or pharmacist might seem like a pain, but there are good reasons the CDC recommends everyone older than 6 months get the vaccine every year. Influenza is a rapidly mutating virus, and the vaccine formulation is often adjusted to protect against new strains. Plus, your bodys resistance to the virus weakens over time; an annual shot ensures peak protection and shields you from the latest strain.

Another excuse for not receiving the flu shot is a concern that it may not work. For example, because the flu virus mutated early last year, the 2014-15 flu shot had a lower-than-average effectiveness rate. This years vaccine formulation appears to be a much better match, closer to the typical 50 percent to 60 percent rate of effectiveness.

The most important thing to keep in mind, though, is that getting vaccinated is not just about protecting yourself. Its also about protecting anyone you could infect even if you do not have symptoms. If that person is a child younger than 6 months, a pregnant woman or the immunocompromised  or someone who cares for them  it can prove fatal. Lowering your chances of getting the flu also reduces the likelihood of infecting those most vulnerable to hospitalization and death as a result of the disease, such as a child. And thats a different story.

Thats why the flu shot should not be an afterthought  and why Texas adherence rate is not acceptable.

Seventy-three deaths: With safe and effective flu vaccines available, this number isnt just devastating  its shameful. Its time for Texans to step up and take personal responsibility for the role they play in protecting our communities.

Get a flu shot today. Do it for Texas kids, and do it for yourself.

Anna C. Dragsbaek is president and CEO of The Immunization Partnership, a nonprofit organization based in Houston. This piece originally appeared in TribTalk, a publication of The Texas Tribune.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State has launched several offensives near the city of Haditha in northwest Iraq in the past 48 hours, the U.S.-led coalition against the militant group said on Tuesday.Coalition air strikes helped the Iraqi army repel a first onslaught towards Haditha on Monday by about 200 militants, U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren told a news briefing in Baghdad.

He said more than 100 Islamic State (IS) fighters were killed, without giving a figure for casualties on the Iraqi government side."Every one of these Daesh (IS) attacks has been broken by a combination of coalition air power and Iraqi security forces," he said.He said Islamic State was diverting attacks to Haditha, 190 km (120 miles) northwest of Baghdad, after losing Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar.Warren denied claims by the group on Monday that it had captured Barwana and Sakran, two towns near Haditha. Islamic State had not taken "a single inch of land" since May 2015, when it captured Ramadi, Warren said. Its forces were in a "defensive crouching position", he added.Warren said earlier on Tuesday that Islamic State's territory had shrunk by 40 percent from its maximum extent in Iraq, and by 20 percent in Syria.

(Reporting Stephen Kalin and Saif Hameed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Giggle Moon owner Susan Kreski talks with Lisa Marie Giese, not pictured, while Giese's daughter Aniela Giese, 6, tries on shoes at the store on Fifth Ave. South in Naples on Saturday, January 2, 2016. (Scott McIntyre/Staff)

SHARE Customers browse through Giggle Moon on Fifth Ave. South in Naples on Saturday, January 2, 2016. (Scott McIntyre/Staff) Toys and clothes are seen in Giggle Moon on Fifth Ave. South in Naples on Saturday, January 2, 2016. (Scott McIntyre/Staff) Giggle Moon owner Susan Kreski stands for a portrait on Fifth Ave. South in Naples on Saturday, January 2, 2016. (Scott McIntyre/Staff) Children's books available in Giggle Moon on Fifth Ave. South in Naples on Saturday, January 2, 2016. (Scott McIntyre/Staff)

By John Osborne

When Giggle Moon owner Susan Kreski first spied the location for her upscale children's boutique  which celebrated its 17th anniversary Dec. 5  she said it wasn't much to look at.

"It was a pile of rubble on Fifth Avenue South, with no building, only a sign saying they anticipated a building that would have space available on the bottom level," recalled the northern New Jersey native. "I signed my lease before the building was built, so it was incredibly speculative. At the time, I only knew one person in town."

Nearly two decades later, Kreski's speculation appears to have paid off handsomely in the form of a 1,100-square foot space at 720 Fifth Ave. South in Naples.

In addition to offering toys, gifts and games, Kreski said her store specializes in outfitting children from newborns up to age 10.

"We have everything from European shoes to 80 different clothing lines from the U.S., Italy, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries," she said. "It's really an international store that offers a wide variety of selections, and we're known for our unique items."

Kreski said high-quality pajamas are especially hot sellers.

"We sell five or six lines made from organic cotton, and a 'Books to Bed' line made from 100 percent cotton that come with a book, with a featured character from the book on the pajamas," she said.

When it comes to buying for her store, Kreski said she undertakes that task herself.

"We're very different in that way, too, because I do all the shopping for the store personally," she said.

Kreski's resume makes her uniquely qualified to fill the role. Before opening Giggle Moon, she served as director of the 5th Avenue Club at Saks Fifth Avenue in the Big Apple. Prior to that, the Fashion Institute of Technology graduate worked for several fashion staples in New York City.

"My first job was in the buying offices of Bergdorf Goodman," said Kreski, who also started her own fashion-styling business in her late 20s. "Then I worked for Vogue magazine when Vera Wang was the fashion editor, and Brides magazine, where I'd book hair and makeup for fashion models and sometimes find myself having lunch with Eileen Ford of Ford Models."

And when she began working as a personal shopper for Macy's By Appointment in New York City, Kreski would have the chance to rub elbows with even more celebrities.

"The first person I worked with in that job was the actress Candice Bergen," said Kreski, who once also sold a pair of green fur coats to John Lennon and Yoko Ono at Bergdorf Goodman.

Asked what she thought of the Beatles legend and his wife, Kreski said, "They were very quiet people."

Kreski said the foundation for making so much noise in the fashion world herself was laid early on.

"My aunt was a fashion designer for bathing suits, and my dad was in the textile business, working for company that made machines that treated denim for shrinkage," she said.

Kreski said that sort of lineage helped Giggle Moon survive the sharp economic downturn of a few years ago.

"We floated with the storm back then," she recalled of the trying economic period. "We felt the effects, for sure, but not enough that we felt we needed to leave."

Giggle Moon employs three others in addition to Kreski, whose store is open 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. seven days a week.

Oriana Di Vito is one of those employees.

"I definitely enjoy the personalized experience we provide for every one of our employees," said the 22-year-old, who has worked at Giggle Moon for the past two years. "Every time someone comes, we cater to them and their needs in every aspect, including walking them through all the newest products available in the store. It's just a very fun time, and since we're all Sagittariuses there, it's always a party there. I love it."

Kreski said much the same.

"I enjoy the camaraderie and teamwork we all have, she said. "I'm here all the time, and we never close if someone is shopping. We'll always keep the store open as long as someone is shopping."

For more information, call 239-643-3833 or see www.gigglemoonnaples.com.
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Grossman Law & Conflict Management said its founder and managing partner, attorney and mediator Keith Grossman, has been awarded the Association of Family Law Professionals annual Hugh E. Starnes "Think Outside the Box" Award, given in recognition of his leadership, critical thinking, innovation and dedication to non-adversarial practice.

Events

The Dellutri Law Group will sponsor a Chili Challenge for Charity 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Six Bends Harley-Davidson. It will benefit Southwest Florida Lawyers Helping Children Inc. Information: 239-939-0900; https://goo.gl/b2gsP7; Cgarratt@ DellutriLawGroup.com

Four startup companies have been selected to present at the 1Q16 VenturePitch SWFL 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in Naples: Nervanix, Koala Home Care, Testimonial Tree and Relax and Order. Ticket information: www. Tamiami-e.co.

The Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce will host Wake Up Naples, featuring Sgt. Stephen Macera, Collier County Sheriff's Office, Economic Crimes Section, and Sgt. Brian Sawyer, Collier County Sheriff's Office, Criminal Investigations/S.W.A.T. They will present the topic of "Are you vulnerable? The need to safeguard your business against financial and identity fraud in the 21st century" at 7 a.m. Jan. 13 at the Hilton Naples, 5111 U.S. 41 N. Reservations are required online by noon Jan. 8 at www.napleschamber.org/events.

Appointments

Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute said Sarah Cevallos has been named chief revenue cycle officer.

Certification

Diane Terrill, director of communications for the City of Naples Airport Authority, has earned the designation of Certified Member from the American Association of Airport Executives.

To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com.
Skipper Ken Bardon shows the vessel's track on its final leg. Bardon brought his 52 sloop Moonbeam back to Marco Island this month after a three-year circumnavigation of the globe. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent

SHARE Skipper Ken Bardon brought his 52 sloop Moonbeam back to Marco Island this month after a three-year circumnavigation of the globe. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Skipper Ken Bardon brought his 52 sloop Moonbeam back to Marco Island this month after a three-year circumnavigation of the globe. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Skipper Ken Bardon brought his 52 sloop Moonbeam back to Marco Island this month after a three-year circumnavigation of the globe. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent Skipper Ken Bardon shows the watch schedule drawn up for the last crew. Bardon brought his 52 sloop Moonbeam back to Marco Island this month after a three-year circumnavigation of the globe. Lance Shearer/Eagle Correspondent

By Lance Shearer

Magellan took three years to sail around the world. So did Ken Bardon.

Actually, Magellan didn't make it  he was killed in the Philippines in 1521, and four out of his five ships didn't complete the circumnavigation. Four hundred years later, Bardon had a bit of an easier time in his odyssey, but sought not to take unnecessary chances.

So while Moonbeam, his 52-ft. Island Packet sloop, did sail around the world, she did the stretch through the Indian Ocean and around the Horn of Africa, notorious for piracy, as deck cargo aboard a freighter.

Captain Ken left his vessel on several occasions and flew home, waiting out refits or storm seasons in various parts of the world.

"Between Somalia and Yemen and everything happening in the Mideast, I might not be here to talk to you," he said, relaxing in the living room of his  shoreside  Marco Island home. "You plan the trip around weather. You don't cross the Atlantic in hurricane season, and you don't cross the Pacific in typhoon season."

But in completing what might be considered the ultimate adventure, Bardon and Moonbeam logged between 40,000 and 50,000 sea miles, crossed the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and visited many exotic ports of call most of us can only read about, or look at the glossy bound volumes Bardon has of his voyage, already put together for year one or in production for the later legs. Like Capt. Cook, Capt. Bardon sailed along the chain of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, but unlike like Endeavour, Moonbeam managed not to strike the coral.

Ironically, perhaps the roughest weather they encountered, said Bardon, came on the very first run across the Gulf of Mexico, when 50-knot winds broke the vessel's topping lift and required repairs at sea, including a crew member having to go aloft.

"It's a boat  there's always something," said Bardon. "But this boat could handle it, and fortunately, I had a crew that could handle it." Moonbeam was not really put to the test, and that suited him fine.

The makeup of the crew changed numerous times over the three-year voyage. Ken Bardon's wife and first mate, Lil, joined Moonbeam for some of the "island-hopping" coastal cruising segments, but bowed out of the ocean crossings.

"She doesn't enjoy the blue water passages," he said, but that is typical of the split among sail crew. Some are long distance sailors and some are coastal cruisers, but Bardon said he had no problem recruiting crew for the blue water runs.

"I'd ask my buddies, and they'd ask their wives, and say, 'Honey, Ken is going to cross the Pacific Ocean. Can I go?' Invariably, the wives say, 'Go.' "

For the final leg of the voyage, returning to Marco Island from the British Virgin Islands, the original crew that began the trip reassembled in Tortola. Nancy DeVries, like Bardon a USCG-rated captain, Mike Cain, Alan Picard, and Lee Henderson, who lives just down the canal from the Bardons, joined Capt. Ken and were welcomed back to Marco Island in early December by police and fireboats sending their hose jets skyward.

"I've crossed the oceans many times flying," said Henderson, a former Navy P-3 Orion pilot. "I covered about 7,000 sea miles this trip. We went 28 days without seeing land." Like Bardon, Henderson flies for the Civil Air Patrol, and has led the squadron.

"You need experienced sailors for crossing the ocean. Ken called us the A-Team," said Henderson. "He's a great guy and a great skipper."

All that time allowed for diversions including reading. In the last year alone, Bardon reported he had read 62 books on his Kindle. And speaking of time, they had to adjust for it. Sailing west, every six days the crew would have to set their clocks back one hour.

Bardon said he couldn't single out one stretch or port of call to designate as his favorite, calling the totality of the experience, and the fulfillment of the lifelong dream, the most satisfying. He did mention stops in French Polynesia  Gauguin country  such as Hiva Oa, Fiji, New Zealand, and little harbors in Indonesia far beyond the "discovered" tourist haven of Bali, as well as stops in the Mediterranean.

He does have a favorite boat name, or family of names, apparently. In addition to Moonbeam, the tender or dinghy is Moonshine, and the Bardon's 18-ft. runabout is Moondance  which means something to someone whose parents lived and cruised for years aboard a trawler named Moonglow.

Like many awesome parties, even those that don't last three years, the least favorite part is probably cleaning up afterward. Weeks after returning, Moonbeam was turned inside out below decks, and Bardon's living room was piled high with items pulled off the vessel.

"Lil's done 27 loads of wash, and I have my neighbor's garage piled with stuff," said Ken. And overall, he said, he did have one favorite thing from the trip  "when Lil came and joined us."
SHARE Felix Armando Oliva Baca Marcos Aleman Gonzalo Viveros-Ruiz

By Jessica Lipscomb of the Naples Daily News

The Collier County Sheriff's Office investigated three homicides in 2015, the lowest number since 1989, the last year for which county data is available.

As a comparison, last year there were five homicides in the county, while in 2013, there were 12, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime reports.

In two of the three homicides committed in 2015, deputies were able to identify and arrest the suspects in a matter of days. The third case remains under investigation.

The first homicide of the year took place Jan. 21, when 17-year-old Marcos Aleman was fatally shot during a drug deal in Golden Gate Estates, according to investigators.

Detectives reported that Aleman and 18-year-old Michael Stallone were in the front of an SUV buying marijuana when they were shot from the back seat by suspect Meliton Cruz Jr., 17. Stallone, who was seriously injured, was able to crawl out of the vehicle and get help from a nearby resident on 50th Avenue Northeast, who turned out to be a Collier County sheriff's deputy. Stallone survived the shooting, while Aleman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Cruz, who is being tried as an adult, remains in jail on charges of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. His next court appearance is Jan. 15, where he will appear for a case management conference.

The year's second homicide occurred May 11, when a 48-year-old named Jorge Castro Pena died during a dispute about automotive repair at a home in Golden Gate Estates.

Witnesses said Pena had attacked a man who was repairing his vehicle and that others at the scene restrained him while waiting for sheriff's deputies to arrive to the home on 45th Avenue Northeast. While waiting for help, a 911 caller told a dispatcher that it looked like Pena was unconscious and may have died.

Reports say deputies performed CPR after finding Pena without a pulse. EMS personnel arrived shortly after and declared Pena dead. An autopsy showed Pena died of asphyxiation.

The Collier County Sheriff's Office said the case is still under investigation but that witnesses' accounts of what happened were consistent. Certain evidence has been sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for testing.

The final homicide of 2015 happened Nov. 22 during a robbery in Golden Gate Estates that left 32-year-old Felix Oliva Baca dead.

Detectives say the suspect, 22-year-old Gonzalo Viveros Ruiz, was in a van with Baca and two other men at the time of the shooting. Ruiz told deputies that Baca was unconscious from drinking. According to an arrest report, Ruiz admitted to pulling Baca from the van and shooting him on a dark, dead-end road. Reports say Baca's wallet, watch and cellphone were taken.

Baca's body was found the next day on an embankment at the end of 72nd Avenue Northeast.

Viveros Ruiz is next due in court Feb. 19 for a case management conference. He remains jailed on charges of second-degree murder and robbery with a firearm.
Photo by Dan Helrigel/Courtesy Indianapolis Motor Speedway Jon Herb, #19 Racing Professionals Dallara/Honda/Firestone, pictured prior to the 91st running of the Indianapolis 500.

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By Jacob Carpenter of the Naples Daily News

A former Indy race car driver received 25 years in prison for child sexual abuse and pornography possession after pleading Monday in Collier County.

Jon Herb, 45, chose not to pursue a planned insanity defense on 248 felony charges, opting instead to plead no contest to the two most serious charges  lewd and lascivious molestation  and 13 counts of child pornography possession. Following his release from prison, Herb will be on probation for life.

Herb made 16 starts in the Indy Racing League, including two appearances at the Indianapolis 500, from 2000 to 2007, according to champcarstats.com. His career best finish was 9th place at a 2001 race in Fort Worth, Texas.

Investigators arrested Herb in October 2013 after 243 pictures and three videos of a 4-year-old girl performing oral sex on Herb were discovered. The files were found on Herb's laptop by his estranged wife, who contacted law enforcement. The victim's relation to Herb is being withheld to protect the identity of a sexual abuse victim.

RELATED STORIES:

On a controlled call monitored by sheriff's deputies, Herb told his wife that he hadn't sexually abused any children other than the 4-year-old. In an interview with deputies, Herb said he's "been trying to understand myself for some time" before asking for a lawyer.

In May 2015, Herb's lawyer, Jerry Berry, filed a notice that he planned to use an insanity defense at trial. Berry wrote that Herb suffered from "a mild neurocognitive disorder with behavioral disturbances, coupled with previous head trauma and brain lesions." Berry would have had to show the medical ailments caused Herb not to know what he was doing or the consequences, or that what he was doing was wrong.

Berry declined to comment about the plea on Tuesday.

Juries seldom are sympathetic to insanity defenses. State court records show fewer than 10 Florida defendants have won insanity acquittals from juries in the past decade.

Had he been convicted by a jury, Herb likely would have spent the rest of his life in prison. Under Florida law, which requires prisoners to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences, Herb now could be released when he's in his mid-60s.

Herb's trial was scheduled to begin later this month. Prosecutors agreed to drop 233 child pornography charges as part of the plea agreement.
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By Daily News Staff

Florida health regulators have suspended the license of Dr. Jacinta Gillis, of Fort Myers, after she was convicted in the Tampa Bay area of trafficking in controlled substances, according to state records.

The Department of Health issued the suspension under an emergency action in late December. The 46-year-old doctor was found guilty in November of conspiracy to traffic in controlled substances and racketeering in Pinellas Park and in Lehigh Acres in Lee County, court records show.

Prosecutors said during her trial that Gillis saw 50 to 70 patients every day for pain medications, where they lined up outside her door for prescriptions and paid $125 in cash, according to Tampa media reports.
Michael Scott Wolfe

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By Associated Press

TITUSVILLE  A man accused of vandalizing a mosque along Florida's Space Coast, leaving behind bacon and lights and windows smashed by a machete, has been arrested.



Michael Scott Wolfe, 35, was taken into custody Monday, report Titusville police officers. Online jail records show Wolfe has been charged with criminal mischief of a religious building.



Authorities say the suspect went to the Islamic Society of Central Florida Masjid Al-Munin Mosque on Jan. 1, when surveillance video shows him entering the mosque's carport late at night when no one was there and using a machete to smash cameras, lights and windows.



Police say the bacon was left by the front door. Consumption of pork and products made from pork is forbidden in Islam.



Wolfe remains behind bars.
A Collier County man accused of driving drunk and causing a crash that killed a father of four has posted bond and left jail.

Rene Miles, 40, made his $260,000 bond last week after a judge set it in mid-December. Miles faces 10 charges, including DUI manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crash involving death, following the Dec. 12 collision that killed 33-year-old James Riner II in Golden Gate Estates.

As part of his pretrial release, Miles must wear an alcohol-detecting monitor, abstain from consuming alcohol, check in weekly with pretrial release services and refrain from leaving home except to travel to work.

At Miles' first appearance, prosecutors asked for bonds totaling $700,000. In setting the bonds at a total of $260,000, Collier County Judge Jim McGarity said they were "still substantial, and I think will protect the community."

Florida Highway Patrol troopers said Miles was driving on Golden Gate Boulevard when he rear-ended a Dodge Durango, causing it to swerve into oncoming traffic. The Durango hit a minivan driven by Riner, killing him and injuring his wife. Miles, who wasn't injured, had slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and smelled of alcohol at the scene, troopers reported.

Miles has pleaded not guilty to the charges, the most serious of which carries a maximum 30-year prison sentence. An arraignment set for Monday was delayed until prosecutors file a formal notice of charges.
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Julie Cerach, Naples

Beware of government

Letter writer John Butcher's "Read it, repeal it," hits right back as to why it isn't repealed.

It addressed the militia and why it was established. Each member had to provide their own rifle, etc.

The letter stated that people of the country were wary of establishing a standing, professional army. It went on to note there was a desire not to allow the central government to have that much control and power.

It is that last statement that still provides the basis for the Second Amendment to stand.

The letter writer seemed to think that because we have a standing army and no longer have a militia, that this amendment is no longer needed.

Some do not understand history or have not studied it. Citizens should still be wary of the same issue today as they were in 1790  giving central government too much control and power. Think Nazi Germany. Take populace guns away and then, piece of cake. Walk in the park.

Think!
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Jaclynn Faffer, Naples

President/CEO

JFCS of Southwest Florida

Kudos to the Naples Daily News for publishing the front-page story, "My so-called life" on Dec. 28, highlighting the ever-increasing sad reality of senior isolation and loneliness.

Here in the greater Naples area, in our own backyard, we find similar data related to this significant challenge of aging. At the Naples Senior Center, a program of JFCS of Southwest Florida, we find that 52 percent of our more than 850 members live alone. They participate in our senior center activities to combat isolation and loneliness and develop active social lives. Our members make new friends and get involved in activities.

Many of our members had active social lives with friends, but as the article referenced, the ability to hold onto this kind of lifestyle becomes "tenuous" once the ability to drive is lost, or a spouse becomes ill or passes away. It is often at that point that seniors in our community hear about the Naples Senior Center from others, or are referred to us by their physicians. (Physicians are becoming increasingly aware of the connection between loneliness and decline in physical and cognitive functioning.)

The Naples Senior Center will be two years old on Jan. 22. Our staff, volunteers and community partners, such as the Alzheimer's Support Network, Collier County Sheriff's Office, Collier Area Transportation and SHINE, among others, are on-site to work with us as we address the needs of this vulnerable population of seniors.

We thank the Naples Daily News for their wisdom in bringing the challenging problem of senior isolation and loneliness to the forefront. Together we can make a difference.
SHARE Aaron Troyer of Troyer Brothers, a major potato grower with farms in Collier and Lee counties Jack Payne

By Jack Payne ,And Aaron Troyer

Agriculture is as Collier County as the mangroves of Big Cypress National Preserve, the Naples Bay Christmas Boat Parade, or the autumn arrival of legions of snowbirds.

It puts food on your plate. It employs 37,000 county residents. It keeps large tracts of land green and open. It preserves a way of life that contributes to making Collier County so special.

So when the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) hires a plant physiologist to work here or expands the working space at its agricultural research center in Immokalee, that sends a ripple to your kitchen table, to your wallet, and to your sense of community.

Agriculture itself needs tending to. Its success rests on a three-legged stool. Growers work the fields. Scientists pursue innovations that allow agriculture to survive pests, drought, disease, market fluctuations, and other threats. Public officials provide funding for agricultural research and outreach, and craft public policy on the use of land, water and other resources.

The three legs stand together in Immokalee on Tuesday as we celebrate a 7,000-square-foot expansion of the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center. It increases by a third the office, lab, and conference space for the research and innovation arm of agriculture in Southwest Florida.

We understand that not everyone can take time off of work to be with us for the day's speeches and the snip of the silly scissors. We hope you'll think of Immokalee, though, the next time you have a glass of orange juice or find your grocery shelves stocked with lush produce in the dead of winter.

If you know a grower, ask him or her how much it means. Many local growers personally made the case to UF/IFAS that it needed to do more to serve agriculture in Collier, Charlotte, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties.

The research center is essentially a satellite campus that makes UF your local public university. But local growers have really taken an ownership of the center by helping guide research with questions they need answered, by allowing scientists to experiment on their land, and by thinking about long-term needs like building expansions.

Then those growers make the case to the elected officials who found money in this year's state budget so that the new wing will be filled with scientists working to save the citrus industry, keep the soil healthy, and reduce the amount of water farms use.

Scientists such as Ute Albrecht. She started work Monday. She comes to UF and Southwest Florida with expertise in plant physiology. If she can advance what we know about how nutrients move from the roots to the shoots, we can help beat back the greening disease that has devastated the orange crop.

Farming survives here because growers, scientists, and elected officials all work together. The ribbon-cutting is a ceremony that marks an economic milestone for Southwest Florida. It signifies that the three-legged stool is still strong, and that bodes well for the future of agriculture here.

There is a fourth leg. That's you.

You provide the market that allows agriculture to provide a livelihood for so many. You determine who represents you in crafting policy on agriculture and everything else government touches. You keep parts of Collier County and Southwest Florida as open spaces with your statements and actions in support of farmers.

We'll pause and use the podium for a few minutes Tuesday morning, maybe grab a slice of sheet cake. But then we'll be back to the field, the lab, and the committee room to keep Collier County and Southwest Florida growing.

__ Payne is the University of Florida's senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources and leader of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. jackpayne@ufl.edu @JackPayneIFAS

__ Troyer is president of Troyer Brothers FL, Inc., which has potato farms in Collier and Lee counties. aaron@troyerbrothers.com
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Gulf Coast Chapter will host a luncheon highlighting The Future of Southwest Floridas Two Largest Daily Newspapers on January 26 at Avow Hospice, 1095 Whippoorwill Lane. The event begins at 11:30 a.m. with social and networking, with the presentation to follow at noon.



The guest speakers are William R. Bill Barker, Vice President, Regional Publisher at the Naples Daily News, and Mike Jung, President and Publisher of The News-Press Media Group. Barker and Jung will provide an update on the proposed merger of their respective publishing companies and what it means for local readers and advertisers. They also will discuss any operational changes and their visions for both organizations.



Barker joined the Naples Daily News in 2013 after spending nearly a decade overseeing newspaper publications and media operations in the Tampa Bay area, including serving as publisher of the Tampa Tribune. He was promoted as one of four vice president, regional publishers of the new Journal Media Group in February 2015. In addition to his duties in Naples, he oversees operations at newspapers in Knoxville, Tennessee; Anderson, South Carolina; Evansville, Indiana; and on Floridas Treasure Coast.



A veteran media executive, Mike Jung took over as president and publisher of The News-Press Media Group in August 2015. Prior to that, he was publisher of the Idaho Statesman. Before joining the McClatchy Co.-owned Statesman in 2011, Jung was publisher of the Santa Cruz Sentinel and was a senior executive at the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. Jung also previously worked for The News-Press parent company, Gannett, as an advertising director at FLORIDA TODAY in Melbourne.



The cost is $27 per person for PRSA members, $35 for non-members, $27 for non-profits and $20 for students. Reservations must be made by January, 22, 2015. For additional information or to register, visit the PRSA, Gulf Coast Chapter online at www.gulfcoastprsa.org or contact Chapter President Russell Tuff at 239-353-1687.



Headquartered in New York City, PRSA is the worlds largest professional organization for public relations professionals with more than 20,000 members organized into 110 chapters nationwide who represent business and industry, counseling firms, government, associations, healthcare, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations.



The PRSA, Gulf Coast Chapter serves Collier and Lee counties and consists of senior public relations, marketing and communications professionals who represent a variety of industries and professional services throughout Southwest Florida and the United States. For more information about the PRSA, Gulf Coast Chapter, visit www.gulfcoastprsa.org.
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No one was injured in a minor crash involving a Collier County EMS ambulance Monday in North Naples.

An ambulance from the Immokalee area was driving a stable patient to NCH North Naples Hospital Monday evening when the driver changed lanes and hit a car in its blind spot, said EMS Chief Walter Kopka. Kopka said the ambulance and second vehicle bumped wheels and fenders.

Another ambulance came to take the patient to the hospital. The Collier County Sheriff's Office is handling the crash scene.
After more than a year of negotiations, representatives of Libya's two rival governments signed an agreement to form a national unity government.

The spirit of cooperation among Libyans of every creed, which pulled them together in opposition to Moammar Gadhafi and his brutal regime, quickly evaporated after the fall of their common enemy. The divisive political struggle that followed destabilized the country and Libya descended into factional strife and violence.

Eventually two rival governments emerged--the internationally-recognized House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk, and in Tripoli in the West, the General National Congress. The discord and lack of a united, effective central authority created a security vacuum that was, and is, exploited by violent extremists and human smugglers.

Clearly, the inability of the two sides to come to terms and establish a Government of National Accord spelled potential disaster for Libya and its people. After over a year of intensive negotiations supported by the U.S. and UN, the two sides signed a final version of this document in late December.

The United States has long pushed for an accord that would unify the many factions that pull the country in different directions. Libya needs a strong central government that will establish the rule of law, promote a just, independent judiciary and develop strong institutions with the capacity to improve the country's stability, security and flailing economy.

"[The United States] salute[s] these courageous Libyans who stand ready to rebuild a united Libya and who are determined to move the country forward," said Secretary of State John Kerry in a written statement.

"All Libyans have a role to play as the political transition continues. I urge all Libyans to support this final agreement and to unite behind the Government of National Accord," he said.

"The United States and the international community are ready to support the implementation of the Political Agreement and to provide full backing for the unified government, as well as technical, economic, security, and counterterrorism assistance."
WASHINGTON  JPMorgan Chase and EverBank were released from business restrictions stemming from the foreclosure reviews that originated in 2011, but also face new civil money penalties for their earlier violations of those restrictions, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Tuesday.

JPMorgan was fined $48 million for not satisfactorily complying with an OCC order against several banks regarding their residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure practices. According to the agency, JPMorgan committed unspecified violations between October 2014 and June 2015. The bank is also accused of violating bankruptcy rules in its bankruptcy court filing practices from December 2011 to November 2013.

In a statement, JPMorgan spokeswoman Liz Seymour did not comment on the fine, but expressed satisfaction for the release from the consent order.

"Our mortgage employees have worked very hard over the last several years to make changes that will further enhance the customer experience," she said. "[W]e're pleased by the outcome of the OCC's assessment of our work."

Everbank, meanwhile, was fined $1 million  in addition to $1.6 million it already owes in remediation  for alleged violations of OCC's order by imposing improper fees to approximately 47,0000 borrowers.

In June 2015, JPMorgan and EverBank were among six banks that saw the foreclosure review process extended and additional business restrictions imposed for not complying to the OCC's orders in time.
WASHINGTON  As the race for the White House heats up, a bipartisan group of housing experts is seeking to inject more discussion about the mortgage market into presidential campaigns.

The J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America's Families launched this summer as a nonprofit to address the country's housing problems, such as rising rental costs and decreasing homeownership rates. Leaders hope to influence the presidential debate through a number of efforts  meeting with candidates, hosting events and attending forums.

"The effort is to make it clear that housing is important to this economy," said David Stevens, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, who sits on the new group's national advisory board.

Other prominent members of the foundation include Carol Galante, who previously served as head of the Federal Housing Administration, former Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Henry Cisneros, President Bill Clinton's secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ron Terwilliger, a top real estate developer, serves as founder and chairman.

The group will hold an Oct. 16 housing summit in New Hampshire, with GOP candidates Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie slated to attend so far, along with a number of housing experts and former officials.

"We're using this event in New Hampshire as an example of going to the core initial state where the candidates are obviously going to be the most active and using this to spearhead an effort to make sure the candidates think about housing," said Stevens.

He added that members of the foundation have held private discussions with a number of Democratic and Republican candidates on a host of issues, from what to do with the government-sponsored enterprises to how the country can build more affordable housing options for renters and buyers.

"One thing that's been clear in my conversations with the candidates  when they go around the country they aren't saying, what are you going to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? It's esoteric," said Stevens. "But the question to ask is, do you feel confident in your ability to afford and maintain a safe home for your family? That's the question we need political leadership talking about."

Stevens described the effort as a "dripping faucet strategy."

"It's being where they are, wherever they speak, asking their views about rental housing, affordable housing, the future of the GSEs," he said. "As they hear it everywhere they go, more and more places, they'll realize this is an issue and hopefully start talking about it more."

Still, analysts cautioned that the effort and others like it face an uphill battle in an era when everybody is chasing the quick sound bite.

"I think it's admirable that they are pushing to inject housing policy into the broader presidential conversation, but it's a difficult task," said Isaac Boltansky, a policy analyst at Compass Point Research & Trading. "Housing issues will be discussed in the abstract during this presidential election but our sense is that the candidates will not dig too deep."

Brian Gardner, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, added that the approach is a familiar one for interest groups that aren't at the center of the national debate in a presidential race.

"This is kind of common for everybody that's wrapped up in a specific industry and on a set of issues that don't necessarily dominate a presidential election," he said.

As such, groups that fall outside of the hot-button issues  the economy, foreign policy and immigration, energy and the environment, health care and education  are likely to be "fighting for scraps," Gardner said.
Home prices across the country rose 6.5% year-over-year in November 2015, including distressed sales, according to CoreLogic.

The increase in U.S. home prices on a monthly basis, including distressed sales, was more muted at 0.5%, the Irvine, Calif.-based company noted in its monthly Home Price Index released Tuesday. CoreLogic predicted that the year-over-year increase in November 2016 would come in around 5.4%.

Prices are also expected to remain flat from November to December 2015.

"Heading into 2016, home price growth remains in its sweet spot as prices have increased between 5% and 6% on a year-over-year basis for 16 consecutive months," said Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, in the report. "Regionally we are beginning to see fissures, with slowdowns in some Texas and California markets, but the Northwest and Southeast remain on solid footing."

Factors that will sustain the home price boom include strong demand and tight supply across many markets, though decreasing affordability will begin to have a larger, adverse effect, according to Anand Nallathambi, chief executive and president for CoreLogic.
From December 13 to 18, dozens of military planners from Africa, North America and Europe met to prepare for Flintlock 2016, the largest Special Operations Forces exercise in Africa.

Beginning in early February 2016, Senegalese and Mauritanian military units will welcome Special Operations Forces from more than 19 European and North American countries to train alongside soldiers from 14 African nations. The U.S. military participation in the exercise is led by AFRICOM, the U.S. military Command engaged in Africa.

Training will focus on increasing military cooperation across the region and will take place at multiple locations, including at the Senegalese military training base in Thies. Additional training locations will include Podor, Bakel, Saint Louis and sites in Mauritania.

Mauritania will, together with Senegal, co-host Flintlock 2016. More than 1,700 military personnel are expected to participate in Flintlock. Training will focus on information sharing, communications, first aid, logistics and civil affairs. In addition, training will cover maritime and riverine operations, as well as headquarters operations.

All Flintlock training activities are aimed at increasing safety and security in West Africa while strengthening government institutions, promoting multilateral sharing of information and developing interoperability among participating nations.

Flintlock is an annual training exercise and was hosted last year by Chad. This years Flintlock event is projected to be the largest-ever for the cooperative military training event and will mark the second time that Mauritania has hosted in recent years. Mauritania hosted the Flintlock exercise in 2013.

The United States is proud to work with Mauritania, Senegal and other nations in helping West African nations provide for the security of their peoples.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 18 years and 38,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Psyops and false flags

(NaturalNews) Natural News can now exclusively report that local schools near Burns, Oregon are being used as staging areas by FBI and other federal officials in preparation for an armed raid on the protesters camping out at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.This has been relayed to Natural News via TalkNetwork.com hosts who are on location and have independently affirmed the accuracy of this startling revelation. Pete Santilli, a talk radio host with TalkNetwork.com, is on the scene and broadcasting live from time to time at Talknetwork.com/live The federal government is staging military-style weapons, tactical equipment and long-range observation gear inside at least one school, Natural News has learned, apparently contradicting the FBI's publicized claim that it seeks a "peaceful resolution" to the standoff. The kind of equipment being staged by federal officials is inconsistent with any "peaceful resolution" and looks intended to bring the standoff to a sudden and violent end with bloodshed caused by an armed government carrying out the mass slaughter of private citizens and protesters.Most likely this equipment includessuch as PVS-27 light magnification optics that can be attached to existing rifle optics with requiring a re-zero, enabling federal officials to conduct night-time sniper fire on targets inside the compound. All signs now point to a night-time or early morning armed assault on the compound, with federal officials likely hoping to catch the armed protesters asleep or operationally disadvantaged by darkness.An armed raid and slaughter by the feds would fulfill the insane calls for violence being heard today by irrational leftists like Montel Williams, just one of thousands of homicidal leftists who openly called for the government to slaughter the protesters with "shoot to kill" orders:In an article entitled Why Are Leftists So Gung-Ho About Shooting Americans For Disobeying Government? , Breitbart.com's Ben Shapiro wrote, "In the aftermath of Ammon Bundys group takeover of an empty government hut in the wilderness in response to the governments egregious miscarriage of justice against the Hammond family, the left has given in to its ravenous, Twilight-style bloodlust... Lets ignore that the left has routinely made excuses for actual violence from groups ranging from Baltimore and Ferguson rioters to Occupy Wall Street."Yesterday, I also warned that a slaughter by the feds could ignite a nationwide armed citizens' revolt against federal tyranny . In that story, I urged federal officials to maintain a calm stance and seek a non-violent solution, even if it means waiting out the Oregon protesters for months.Meanwhile, Natural News has been told that there are "four to five layers of psyops taking place here," and a TalkNetwork hosts is now telling us that he was "confronted by multiple provocateurs" -- meaning undercover federal agents were somehow trying to get him to escalate the situation into more violence, creating a cover story for the feds to more easily "justify" an armed assault when the time comes.Natural News has also learned that, alongside the armed male protesters who have stated they are carrying firearms solely for self-defense and have no intention of initiating any acts of violence whatsoever. This means thatalongside the men.UPDATE: This has also been confirmed by Brandon Darby of Breitbart.com who just posted this article and video , revealing the presence of a mother and baby inside the compound.Furthermore, the FBI is actively attempting to interfere with independent media's ability to report the facts as they unfold on the scene. "The FBI is trying to shut down independent media," Pete Santilli told Natural News. Subtle efforts are being made to intimidate indy media and prevent it from being able to continue to stream video live from the location, most likely in an attempt for the feds to monopolize the narrative as they did in the Waco raids from two decades ago.U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz has called for the armed protesters to "stand down," pleading with them to find an alternative way to resolve the situation that does not threaten violence. Yet right now, it seems like the federal government is the entity preparing to commit mass violence, not the camped-out protesters.Follow more real-time breaking news at Talknetwork.com/live
What is George Soros afraid of?



(NaturalNews) Donald Trump has taken the mainstream media by storm, blowing conventional political strategies up. He almost appears to be having fun on the campaign trail, spouting off whatever he wants and apologizing to no one. Trump has become a symbol of strength for a country that has become afraid to speak the truth under seven years of Obama political correctness. People like Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz scare central planners because they inspire the people to be courageous, motivating We the People to roll up our sleeves and be a part of realistic solutions for modern issues. Trump is riding a wave of frustration fueled by Americans who are tired of the mainstream media , the political correctness and the incessant leftist agenda that seeks to centralize and expand government in every way possible.George Soros helped fund the riots in Ferguson, Mo, which ultimately led to violent destruction of property. Soros doesn't believe in private property. He instigates violence, stirs up chaos and calls on government expansion to solve the problems he funds. He doesn't believe in a country with borders and laws and has even supported open-borders policies in Europe which has led to a migrant crisis Why is Soros attacking Cruz and Trump? What does HE fear would happen if a truly conservative candidate became president? Is it because a Trump or a Cruz could reverse Soros's efforts to destroy American society and reshape it as part of a step toward centralized global government?Working toward global governance, George Soros recently published an op-ed inblasting both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Soros alleges that both candidates use fear to play on people's emotions. In the article, Soros criticized Trump's calls to ban all Muslims from entering the country and makes similar accusations toward Ted Cruz for wanting a religious test for those entering the U.S.Soros wrote, "It's not easy to resist the threats and the hysteria that surround us, but we must do, as fear is the greatest danger to open society."Soros suggests, "Jihadi terrorist groups such as Islamic State and al-Qaida have discovered the achilles heel of our western societies: the fear of death. Through horrific attacks and macabre videos, the publicists of Isis magnify this fear, leading otherwise sensible people in hitherto open societies to abandon their reason."He continues, "Scientists have discovered that emotion is an essential component of human reasoning. That discovery explains why jihadi terrorism poses such a potent threat to our societies: the fear of death leads us and our leaders to think  and then behave  irrationally."Soros concludes, "That is why, as 2016 gets underway, we must reaffirm our commitment to the principles of open society and resist the siren song of the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, however hard that may be."Or is Soros himself scared  frightened that his globalist efforts will be crushed as America shifts toward conservative principles and policies that seek to solve the real issues of government tyranny and violent extremism? The leftist agenda, funded by Soros, seeks to disarm law-abiding American citizens, ostensibly to solve the problem of violence, but this only creates the conditions for Americans to live in the ultimate state of oppression and fear.But a new wave of Americans are rejecting this kind of victim mentality. They will not become a defenseless population of dependents forced to comply with the dictates of centralized power and terrorists, and that's why leaders like Trump and Cruz are here to stay, no matter what they say.
The founders' vision and experience informed the Second Amendment

Words of wisdom

(NaturalNews) Oddly, the mass shootings that have occurred with increasingly frequency during the Obama administration, have always been followed by rancorous calls for more and more gun control. That has even been the case following, as in the most recent jihadi-inspired shootings in San Bernardino, Calif.  religiously inspired murders that led the editorial staff of to publish a front-page editorial  the first since 1920  to call for more gun control and the banning of "weapons of war."I say this behavior is odd, because some of the same people who are calling for gun bans and gun control  even to the point of disarming the populace  also regularly decry centralized government power and the "militarization" of local police.Some of those people can't help themselves because they have been indoctrinated to believe that "all guns are bad" and "the only way to be safe is to be disarmed" by gun control activists in politics, the mainstream media and in academia  the latter demonstrated just recently by students at the University of Texas, Austin in reaction to a staged mock mass shooting Well, it's not possible to write a single column that argues powerfully enough to convince Americans dead set against an armed citizenry that their position is wrong. Most, when their position is challenged, will simply close their minds and shut off debate.But once upon a time, when the country was founded, there were men who had the vision and experience to make convincing arguments for an armed citizenry. And, though many will claim that "that was then and this is now," there is little difference in today's America than in the America of those times, in terms of human and societal behavior. There were miscreants, thieves, murderers and tyrants in the 18th century, just as there are today, and they were every bit as much of a threat then as they are now. That's what makes our founders' perspective on an armed citizenry as prescient in 2015 as it was in 1775.-- "...if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?"-- "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."To critics of gun rights who want to argue that "a bunch of rifle-toting so-and-so's from the boonies can't stand up to the U.S. military," I would counter, "Tell that to the resistance fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, whom I have seen stand up to the U.S. military on a daily basis and, in some cases, prevail or  at least,." Or better still, tell that to the rebel fighters in Ukraine; if a fight came between American "rebels" and the government , don't for one second believe that the "rebels" would not get their hands on U.S. military weapons systems. The point is, an armed populace makes a would-be tyrant think twice and three times before becoming tyrannical.More from the founders onshould be armed, and why:-- "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."-- "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."-- "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms ... "-- "[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."Tyranny, ill-intent, criminal behavior and even terrorism are not 18th century constructs. These dangers to life, liberty and property existed then and they exist today, as our founders knew they would.why it is right and proper to suspect and oppose anyone who seeks to usurp " the right of the people" to "keep and bear arms ."
[A]n American recording artist who performs a mixture of rock and folk music that has captivated audiences all over the US. He is known for headlining at major protests and rallies in support of freedom, peace, and limited government. His lyrical poetry is as poignant as it is spiritual, and is matched only by his incredible guitar skills.



(NaturalNews) Is there a song so powerful, so prescient and so timely that it would be adopted by one of the country's biggest supporters and defenders of the Constitution?The answer is yes; the song is "Arm Yourselves"; the artist is Jordan Page; and the group that adopted his song as its anthem is none other than The Oathkeepers According to Page's website , he isPage has headlined scores of political events since 2008, and he is now known as one of the country's leading voices for liberty. He shared a stage with former Rep. Ron Paul 18 times during Paul's presidential bid in 2008, as well as the Revolution March that same year, the Iowa Straw Poll in 2011 and the Sun Dome Rally in Tampa, Fla., at the Republican National Convention in 2012.In addition, Page "has performed live on CSPAN numerous times at major events as well as television programs including Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano and FOX Strategy Room."He is also the host of the popular Internet radio programand has been a regular guest on political talk shows likeand the. In 2012, he was listed as the most popular artist among Ron Paul supporters by, and "his fearless and iconic anthems, andcontinue to inspire freedom-loving people to stand up against corruption and immoral wars."In addition, "Jordan's songs were featured in independent films of 2013 including Alongside Night and Silver Circle, and he made cameo appearances in both films," his bio notes. "Page's songs have also had major radio play and internet distribution through XM Radio, ClearChannel's iHeartradio, Yahoo! Radio, AOL, iTunes, and Napster. Jordan will be providing the soundtrack to the upcoming documentary 'Liberty,' an in depth look at the Ron Paul Revolution past, present, and future."To have a song selected by one of the country's preeminent organizations focused on preserving liberty and freedom for all is quite an honor, and just the latest in an honor-filled career for a fantastic young artist.Listen to a live recording of his anthem, "Arm Yourselves," here . Get it on iTunes here or Google Play here
Far from a small number of sex assaults reported to have been made by German speaking men in initial reports on New Year's Day, dozens of women are now reported to have been molested and "raped", while dozens more men have been assaulted and robbed.



"Fair game"

"Intolerable"

(NaturalNews) Westerners are being fed a steady stream of propaganda by the Left-wing legacy media regarding the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees flooding into the heart of Europe, namely that they are peaceful, noble and have the best of intentions.The real story, however, is quite different, and there is an emerging body of evidence to suggest that.The most recent confirmation that not all is as it seems comes from Germany, Europe's richest country and the one that is taking in the most refugees from Syria, North Africa and elsewhere. As reported by, a New Year's Eve celebration in Cologne turned into a war zone as about 1,000 mostly male migrants celebrated with launching fireworks into crowds of people, sexual assaults and rape.Worse, just five arrests were made by German police despite the wide number of incidents that were documented and reported:A female victim, "Katja L," 28, talked about her ordeal as she attempted to make it through the crowds to the waiting area at the Cologne railway station with two other women and a boyfriend in the early hours."When we came out of the station, we were very surprised by the group that met us there," she told, one of the area's biggest newspapers. She added that the group was "exclusively young foreign men."Her group  no doubt feeling like strangers in their own country  kept tight as they moved through the group"We then walked through this group of men. There was an alley through [the men] which we walked through," she said. "Suddenly I felt a hand on my buttocks, then on my breasts, in the end, I was groped everywhere. It was a nightmare. Although we shouted and beat them, the guys did not stop. I was desperate and think I was touched around 100 times in the 200 meters."Fortunately I wore a jacket and trousers. A skirt would probably have been torn away from me," she said.Katja L and other witnesses who have come forward said that, as they were being molested, men pulled at their hair and laughed, shouting "ficki, ficki" (f**ky f**ky) and calling them "sluts."Treating her like "fair game," Katja L said so many men groped at her that she would have been unable to positively identify any of the alleged perpetrators to cops.Other women were not as fortunate as Katja L,reported. One woman said she had her tights and underwear torn off in the crowd. Also, a police source said that there had also been "rapes" at the train station that evening.So far, according to reports, police have identified 80 victims of the crowd, 35 of which were subjected to sexual assault. Others were beaten or robbed. And what's more, German police expect many more citizens to come forward in the days ahead, having appealed to victims to speak up.At a press conference the next day hosted by Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers, police confirmed that the attacks were perpetrated by migrants, all of whom were carrying official immigration paperwork.Albers said "the crimes have been committed by a group of people who mostly come from [based on their appearance] the North African and Arab countries." He also said he found the incidents "intolerable."
Should the military kill these guys?

."Could there be a racial element to being labeled a "terrorist"? After all, the doers of violence in our cities last year were mainly African Americans; that action even spawned another political movement, "Black Lives Matter." But the Oregon group consists only of white guys  and we know how much the liberal media likes to dump on "white males" these days.Oh, wait. That's right. Those white guys have. Somust be why they earned the "terrorism" label. Only, there were shots fired during Ferguson demonstrations in Baltimore as well. But that's not terrorism to the lib media. That's. Not only that but, as of this writing,have been fired by the Oregon "militia."Then there is the issue of liberal "tolerance" hypocrisy, and in this arena, the award goes to daytime television talk host Montel Williams, who tweeted that the Oregon group ought to be massacred by the military.After someone tweeted that the group's real goal was to get attention, Williams responded, "Then let's give them some - put this down using National Guard with shoot to kill orders."Nice, Montel. Calling for violence to intimidate peaceful protesters. Do you feel the same way about the protesters in Ferguson? Baltimore? The Left-wing environmental groups that attack legitimate logging operations and oil companies? I tend to doubt it, considering his glowing endorsement of Michael Brown of Ferguson, shot by police as he tried to beat an officer and take his gun a strong-armed robbery of a local convenience store.You may not agree with the manner in which the Bundy-led group is attempting to draw attention to what it feels is a legal injustice, and you are entitled to think that. But by the lib media's " terrorism " description  which it didn't even apply to the jihadis in San Bernardino forafter their act of terrorism armed unlawful action is "terrorism."Except that it isn't.
A new species of roundworm discovered on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean boasts some interesting characteristics. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Developmental Biology say this nematode can develop five different specialized "faces" or mouths, based on what it is in the mood to eat.

This unique worm lives inside fig plants and at first made researchers think they had found five different species, because the mouth parts of each were so distinct. However, using genome sequencing, they concluded the worms - subsequently dubbed Pristionchus borbonicus - belong to a single species and have the mouth they need based on the surrounding food supply.

"The different mouth forms of Pristionchus borbonicus that we have found now are specialized for the preferred intake of bacteria, yeasts or other roundworms. So, obviously they occupy different ecological niches within the fig," Ralf Sommer, co-leader of the study and Director of the Department for Evolutionary Biology, explained in a news release. "With this team of specialists the species can exploit a large food spectrum and efficiently buffer fluctuations in the availability of a certain resource by changing the proportion of mouth forms."

Previously, researchers found worms of the Pristionchus species live on beetles and develop two different mouth forms - either a short, wide, single-toothed variant that's good for predatory behavior, or a long, narrow mouth suitable for grazing on bacteria - depending on food source availability and environment.

However, the recent find represents an extreme example of evolutionary divergence within one species. Similar fig-dwelling roundworms were also found in Vietnam and South Africa, suggesting the creature's association with figs is widespread. Researchers believe the newly-discovered worms ultimately travel between fig flowers on pollinating fig wasps.

Their findings were recently published in the journal Science Advances.

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For more great nature science stories and general news, pleasevisit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).

-Follow Samantha on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13
California would spend more than $2 billion on permanent housing to help the nation's largest homeless population, under a proposal outlined by state senators on Monday.

The housing bond would be enough to help local governments construct more than 10,000 housing units primarily for those with mental illness when it's combined with other federal and local money, estimated Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles.

"It is despicable that in the richest state, that is the state of California, that just last night thousands of Californians laid their tired bodies on a sidewalk or on a cardboard," Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, said during a news conference broadcast from Los Angeles' Skid Row.

Homelessness has become a growing issue across the state.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress says nearly 116,000 people are homeless in California, more than a fifth of the nation's homeless population. The same report projects that more than 29,000 are chronically homeless in California.

Los Angeles' homeless population increased more than 10 percent in the last two years. The Los Angeles City Council declared a homelessness crisis in November as it prepared to change city ordinances to let people temporarily live in their cars and sleep on sidewalks. In October, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors declared a "shelter crisis" because of concerns that strong winter storms could flood homeless camped along riverbeds and storm drains.

Neighboring Orange County is buying a $4.25 million warehouse for a 200-bed homeless shelter.

In Sacramento, police have clashed in recent days with homeless camped outside City Hall to protest an ordinance prohibiting such urban camping.

The bond lawmakers proposed Monday would be repaid with money from Proposition 63, the 2004 ballot measure that added a 1 percent tax on incomes over $1 million to pay for mental health treatment.

The Senate proposal would target the housing money to chronically homeless persons with mental illness. More than 90 percent of the Proposition 63 money raised each year would continue to go to existing programs.

Senators also want to use $200 million from the state's general fund over the next four years to provide rent subsidies and other shorter-term assistance while the permanent housing is built.

De Leon also called for increased spending in the the Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment program that aids about 1.3 million poor elderly, blind, and disabled people who can't work.

But he said the amount will have to be negotiated with the Assembly and with Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who presents his proposed budget on Thursday.

The Brown administration supports empowering local governments to address homelessness, poverty, and mental health issues and will take a close look at the Senate proposals, Deborah Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in an email.

Details on distributing the housing money will also have to be worked out before the June budget deadline, de Leon said. However, he envisions a competitive grant program for local governments. With matching local and federal funds, he estimated the $2 billion could be leveraged into $5 billion or more worth of construction.

Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, said California is following the lead of Utah and other areas that are using supportive housing to help the homeless mentally ill. New York City has a $2.6 billion plan to create 15,000 apartments to aid that population.

"First and foremost we have to stabilize them" before other services like mental health and drug treatment can be provided, de Leon said.
Two people were arrested Saturday in connection with the fatal shooting of a Palo Alto man in Las Vegas, police said.

The victim was identified as 42-year-old Neil Brian Gandler, who died of a gunshot wound to his torso on Dec. 29, according to the Clark County coroner's office.

Kyle Staats, 27, and Megan Hippie, 19, were arrested on suspicion of murder, attempted robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery, Las Vegas Metropolitan police said.

Staats was also arrested on suspicion of possessing a stolen vehicle, according to police.

Gandler was found in a car at the parking lot of a 24 Hour Fitness at 601 S. Rainbow Blvd. last Tuesday, Las Vegas Metropolitan police said.

Officers had responded to a report of a male who was in a car and apparently shot at the gym around 1:20 a.m., police said.

The man, later identified as Gandler, was found suffering from a gunshot wound and was pronounced dead by medical crews at the scene, police said.

Homicide investigators determined Gandler had parked his car at the lot around 10 p.m. on Dec. 28 but did not enter the gym and another vehicle stopped next to him three hours later, police said.

About 10 minutes later, Gandler's car went over a parking median and the driver's side window was shattered, according to police.

Gandler had worked at Hearware Technology as a product manager for more than 10 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He previously worked at Dell Inc., Ford and Mobilewise Inc., according to his profile.

Gandler's friend, Brian Bustamante, described him as a warm and caring individual, who was also very bright. He called news of the death devastating.

Gandler obtained his master's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan in 2005. He also attended the University of Buffalo, where he studied electrical engineering and computer science, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1995 and master's degree in 1997, his profile states.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact the Las Vegas police homicide section by calling (702) 828-3521 or sending an email to homicide@lvmpd.com. Anonymous tips can be made to Crime Stoppers at (702) 385-5555.


Soon, Twitter users may not have to choose their words quite so wisely.

The San Francisco company is expected to alter its fundamental premise by allowing tweets as long as 10,000 characters  more than 78 times longer than the current limit of 140 characters.

The company has not confirmed that the change is coming, but sources familiar with the development have spoken anonymously to the Wall Street Journal and Re/code. The size limit of direct messages jumped to 10,000 characters in July, when co-founder Jack Dorsey rejoined the company as its chief executive officer.

Twitter established the 140-character ceiling from the start in 2006, a response to the 160-character limit that SMS text messages had on mobile phones.
When an Indiana woman allegedly posted to Facebook that her New Years Eve meal at a downtown Indianapolis restaurant was ruined "by watching a dead person being wheeled out from an overdose," she probably didn't expect the response she received from the restaurant's manager.

Holly Jones is accused of writing on Kilroys restaurants Facebook page that she was dining at the restaurant, as she does every year for the holiday, when her table was "screamed at" while trying to figure out a bill discrepancy.

"The manager told us someone dying was more important than us being there making us feel like our business didnt matter, but I guess allowing a Junkie in the building to overdose on your property is more important then (sic) paying customers who are spending a lot of money," she wrote, in part.

The restaurants manager, Chris Burton, wrote a scathing reply to the womans post, pointing out a major error in her note  the "junkie" Jones allegedly referred to in her message was an elderly woman who suffered a heart attack while dining with her husband and son.

"First of all, the 'overdosing junkie' that you speak of was a 70+ year old woman who had a heart attack," he wrote. "Thankfully she was finally revived at the hospital and survived. It sounds like you were very concerned about her so I thought you should know. This poor lady, who was celebrating New Years Eve with her husband and son, had to be placed on the floor of a completely packed bar and have her shirt removed in front of everyone so the paramedics could work on her. But I can completely understand why you think being intoxicated (expletive) that didnt understand your bill should take priority over a human life."

Burton's reply quickly went viral, generating responses from around the world.

The restaurant has since shared a link to a GoFundMe page for the woman who suffered the heart attack, raising money to help pay for her medical bills. Family members wrote on the page that the woman is in critical care at Indiana University Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

Jones appears to have taken down her Facebook profile, according to the restaurant, but upset commenters have since targeted a hair salon where she works.

Serenity Salon has acknowledged that a stylist allegedly posted the message to the restaurants page, but said the Facebook post "in no way represents the views" of the salon or its staff.

"We are saddened by events that took place that evening and will continue to pray for the women (sic) who suffered a heart attack at this establishment on New Years Eve," the salon wrote, adding that it plans to "deal with this matter internally and take whatever actions deemed necessary."

The salon also said Jones "does claim she is not the actual person who posted this and is in the process of trying to clear her name. We all do have to take responsibility for our devices and make sure they are pass code protected."

The salon has since posted a $500 donation to the GoFundMe page. Jones could not immediately be reached for comment.

Read the full Facebook exchange below.

WTHR
President Barack Obama became emotional as he spoke Tuesday about the victims of gun violence, noting that it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

The comment was made as Obama announced new measures to tighten the control and enforcement of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he implored Congress to pass.

Obama wiped tears from his cheeks as he spoke about the first graders killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad, he said. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

Obama was introduced by the father of a first-grader killed during the tragic shooting. Mark Barden's son, Daniel, was one of 20 students killed at the school three years ago.

Behind Obama during his speech, stood the mother of Hadiya Pendleton, an honor student who was fatally shot blocks from her Chicago high school, the unintended target of gang violence.

The death of the 15-year-old girl sent shock waves across the country, drawing the attention and support of First Lady Michelle Obama. Pendletons death came just days after the young teen had performed at Obamas inauguration festivities and happened about a mile from the presidents Chicago home.

Obama's reforms include expanding and upgrading background checks for prospective gun-buyers, hiring more ATF agents and investigators, reporting gun thefts more urgently and providing adequate support for those suffering from mental illnesses.

Obama's package of executive actions aims to curb what he's described as a scourge of gun violence in the U.S., punctuated by appalling mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona, among many others. After Newtown, Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks.

When the effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president's powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the measures "critical steps to protest more children and families from the senseless gun violence that is cutting too many lives short and tearing the social fabric in too many of our communities."

"The Presidents actions in the face of Congressional inaction send a forceful signal that this challenge is too important to ignore," Emanuel said in a statement. "While we have taken important steps in the City of Chicago to keep guns out of the wrong hands, we are not an island. Our gun safety laws will only be as effective as our federal laws and the laws of our neighboring states."

The executive director for the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action, Chris Cox, criticized the move, however, claiming Obama "has chosen to engage in political rhetoric instead of offering meaningful solutions to our nation's pressing problems."
The creators of the popular Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer" said that a juror from Steven Avery's trial reached out to them with an important revelation.

The two filmmakers, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, said on NBC's "Today" Tuesday that the juror believes Avery, who was convicted of murdering a 25-year-old woman in 2005, was not proven guilty in his trial. The juror, who voted to convict Avery, only did so out of fear for his/her personal safety, Demos said.

"(The juror believed) Steven was framed by law enforcement and that he deserves a new trial, and if he receives a new trial, in their opinion it should take place far away from Wisconsin," Ricciardi said.

"Making a Murderer" depicts the story of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault and imprisoned for 18 years before DNA evidence exonerated him in 2003. Avery went on to sue Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, the former district attorney and county sheriff for $36 million. Soon after county officials were deposed in that lawsuit, Avery was accused of murder in the killing of Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer.

Avery ultimately was convicted of murder and of illegally possessing a firearm, but was found not guilty of mutilating a corpse.

The series was filmed over 10 years by Ricciardi and Demos, two Columbia film school graduates, and has garnered powerful reactions from viewers.

The juror who contacted the documentary's filmmakers also said that the verdict reached in Avery's trial was a "compromise."

"The juror contacted us directly ... and went on to describe the jurors ultimately trading votes in the jury room and explicitly discussing, 'If you vote guilty on this count, I will vote not guilty on this count,'" Ricciardi said.

The juror told the filmmakers that they hoped a split verdict would send a message to the appellate courts to give Avery a new trial.

"That was sort of their plan but obviously it didnt work out that way," Ricciardi said.

This juror said that they have been open about what they told us and that if someone were to ask they would admit to being a source, Ricciardi said.

The two filmmakers have not yet contacted other jurors to independently verify this revelation, they said. NBC News has not independently verified this claim with any jurors.

A Change.org petition requesting pardons for Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, who was also convicted in Halbach's murder, has over 200,000 signatures. A petition on Whitehouse.gov received more than 58,000. Should the White House petition receive 100,000 signatures by January 16, the White House has to respond publicly.

The prosecutor in Avery's case, Ken Kratz, has said that the documentary left out important evidence, and told The New York Times that the filmmakers had an "agenda" to stoke public outrage.

Demos and Ricciardi have denied the accusation and told "Today" they were pleased with the reaction to their show.

We made this series to start a dialogue and the fact that so many people are talking is just thrilling, Demos said. She hopes the dialogue will encourage those with information to come forward.
Bettie Jones, the mother of five who was "accidentally" killed in a police-involved shooting on Chicago's West Side last month, was laid to rest Wednesday.

The funeral was held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, 4301 W. Washington Blvd., with a wake beginning an hour before the funeral.

Jones was eulogized as a church-going woman and good neighbor who rarely stopped to think of herself.

"The death and execution of Betty Jones is definitely a wake up call for the city of Chicago," said Tio Hardiman of Violence Interrupters Inc. "But the reality is Chicago police have a lot of changes to make."

Police have admitted Jones shooting was an accident, saying she was tragically killed while officers were responding to a domestic disturbance call on the citys West Side. Quintonio LeGrier, 19, was also killed in the shooting after allegedly threatening his father with a metal baseball bat.

As the family remembered the 55-year-old, they also expressed anger over her death.

My mamma didnt deserve this, daughter Latisha Jones said. She didnt deserve this.

Wiping away tears, she expressed the familys grief.

The police take my mamma from us for no reason, she added. All she tried to do is help them and this is how she gets repaid.

Unfortunately we are going to have to make some adjustments in the police department to make sure these kinds of things dont happen again, said Ald. Jason Ervin of the 28th Ward.

In the wake of Jones killing, Ervin said he plans to introduce an ordinance requiring all Chicago police officers to carry non-lethal Tasers and get training with the weapon.

Meanwhile, Reverend Jesse Jackson called for the Justice department to address a culture that allows police to act with impunity.

This is the 78th killing by police in the last five years, Jackson said. Invariably, there is almost no punishment, there are no charges, because those who witness the killings falsify their reports.

As her casket was led out of church, members of Jones family joined in a chant with the Black Panther Party Cubs calling for more accountability in police involved shooting like that of Jones.

A visitation was held from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday at People Funeral Home, 5018 W. Chicago Ave.
An armed occupation of a federally owned wildlife outpost in remote Oregon rolled into its fourth day Tuesday, even after the two men at the center of the unrest disavowed the protest.

The group, which calls itself the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. It was empty at the time because of the holidays.

They have been calling for the release of Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, two ranchers who were convicted of setting fires that spread to government land. The occupiers have also vowed to remain in the building until federally owned land is returned "back to the people."

The ringleaders are Ammon and Ryan Bundy  sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher known for another standoff with the federal government in 2014.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said President Obamas series of executive actions on gun ownership Tuesday amounted to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.

No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment, the Wisconsin Republican said.

Obama, his aim to keep weapons out of the hands of potential mass murderers, outlined his plans to prevent more killings in a half hour speech to the country.

Ryan said Obama's efforts to expand background checks to cover more firearms would no doubt be challenged in the courts and would overturned if a Republican is elected president in November.

He accused Obama of failing to respect the right to safe and legal gun ownership that the country has valued since its founding.

He knows full well that the law already says that people who make their living selling firearms must be licensed, regardless of venue, Ryan said. Still, rather than focus on criminals and terrorists, he goes after the most law-abiding of citizens."

Reaction to Obama's actions fell largely along party lines.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that Obama's new actions to more tightly regulate gun sales were not worth the paper they were written on, the Associated Press reported.

During a campaign stop in Onawa, Iowa, the Republican presidential candidate repeated his promise to repeal all of Obama's executive actions, including the latest ones on guns.

Cruz said that "when you live by the pen, you die by the pen." And he added that his own pen "has an eraser on it."

GOP front-runner Donald Trump vowed to "un-sign" the president's measures, the AP reported. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that on his first day in the Oval Office, "those orders are gone." Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee labeled Obama's actions "a blatant, belligerent abuse of power."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in a guest column in The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, accused Obama of trying to do an end-run on the Second Amendment.

Obamas declaration that he will impose his gun control agenda by executive order shows an utter disregard for the Second Amendment as well as the proper constitutional process for making laws in our nation, he wrote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that at a time when Americans were looking for leadership from the commander-in-chief to counter terrorist threats from the Islamic State and al Qaeda, they were instead getting lectures, distractions, and attempts to undermine their fundamental Second Amendment rights.

In the wake of the Presidents vow to politicize shootings, its hard to see todays announcement as being about more than politics, the Kentucky Republican said.

He said Congress would examine the latest actions closely to determine whether they followed federal law and the Constitution.

Among the Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton tweeted Thank you, @POTUS, for taking a crucial step forward on gun violence. Our next president has to build on that progress  not rip it away.

[[364260731, C]]

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said that he would continue Obamas executive actions and accused Republicans of being more loyal to gun lobbyists than to Americans.

Its become clear that no mass shooting, no matter how big or bloody, will inspire Republicans to put children and innocent Americans over the interests of the NRA, Sanders said in a statement.


More storms were on the way for Wednesday after a series of super soakers brought flooding and downed trees to Los Angeles County Tuesday.



Heavy rainfall and at least one thunderstorm hit Tuesday, part of the second of four storms anticipated this week that prompted a flash flood warning at midday for parts of Los Angeles County. The warning was issued for burn areas in east central Los Angeles County, where steady rain was expected to saturate hillsides and potentially lead to mudslides.

"So far things seem to be holding relatively well," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a morning news conference, during which he announced that the city's Emergency Operations Center had been activated.

Camarillo Springs saw no mudslides due to a $2-million reinforced wall built to catch rocks and debris.

Garcetti also said city operations are so far continuing as normal, and trash collection will continue as normal. City officials have said previously that they might consider suspending trash pickups to prevent cans and debris from being washed into storm drains during rainstorms.

"We'll let people know and keep people abreast," Garcetti said.

At least three trees were downed from the rain, according to the mayor, and more are likely to come down as the precipitation continues. Flooding has been reported in the Sepulveda Basin, resulting in street closures in the area -- although Garcetti noted that the basin is designed to collect rain runoff.

A man in a Mini Cooper became stuck in Lake Balboa as a flooded street swallowed up part of his car, forcing him to climb onto the roof. By 5 p.m., it appeared that the rain had subsided.

Several recreation areas were closed in the Angeles National Forest and San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The Rowher Flats and Drinkwater Off Highway Vehicle areas were closed, along with the South Fork, Big Rock, Gould Mesa and Coldbrook campgrounds, and the Bridge to Nowhere Trail.

The storms were set to continue pounding the Southland, with a chance of more lightning Wednesday. The heaviest rains Wednesday were expected during the morning and early afternoon.

The potential for mud and debris flows was a concern for fire-stripped areas.

A "yellow" alert was in effect Tuesday morning for residents near the Colby Fire burn area above Glendora, where a fire on Jan. 15, 2014 scorched 1,992 acres. The alert directs residents to remove vehicles, trash bins and other obstructions from streets -- both to ensure access for emergency vehicles and to prevent the items from being damaged or washed away in a mudslide.

As of Tuesday morning, no evacuation orders had been issued for the area bordering the Colby Fire site -- which includes all properties north of Sierra Madre between the western city boundaries of Azusa/Glendora to the eastern boundary of properties on the west side of the Little Dalton Wash.

Glendora city officials reminded residents not to cross flowing water or mud, and protect themselves from debris flows on their property by going to the highest point in the house or the middle of a single-story residence.

Muddy water was spotted cascading down at least one Glendora street near the Colby Fire burn area.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles County, two mountain roads were closed due to anticipated hazardous driving conditions.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works said Lake Hughes Road closed between Warm Springs and Newvale Drive beginning at 4 a.m. Glendora Ridge Road was closed between Glendora Mountain and Mount Baldy roads beginning at 6 a.m. The roads were to reopen "once conditions permit," the county said.

Off the coast, hazardous conditions for mariners were expected much of the week, with forecasters warning of the possibility of thunderstorms over coastal waters Wednesday.

Any thunderstorm that forms would produce gale-force winds and "rough seas, dangerous cloud-to-water lightning, heavy rainfall with reduced visibility, small hail and isolated waterspouts," said an NWS statement.

Large long-period swells were expected to appear off the coast for the week. A much larger swell lasting from Wednesday through Friday was expected, it said. The larger swell will generate "hazardous breaking waves" at west-facing harbors in San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties.

The first of this week's storms, which forecasters attribute to the El Nino effect, was Monday and proved to be weak. More storm activity is expected through the end of the week.

City News Service and Crystal Egger contributed to this report.
Wednesday, Jan. 6 marks Three Kings' Day, the last of the 12 days of Christmas.

Three Kings' Day is also known as Dia De Los Reyes Magos and Epiphany. It revolves around the three wise men who visited baby Jesus after his birth.

The three kings were Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar. They gave Jesus oil, frankincense and myrrh.

Three Kings' Day traditions vary, depending on location. In Spain and other Latin countries, children place their old shoes outside their doors before going to sleep the night before. When they wake up, their shoes are full of toys.

Hispanic communities often serve rosca de reyes on the holiday. Other traditional foods include Mexican hot chocolate and tamales.

Holiday activities often include the singing of aguinaldos or Christmas carols.

El Museo will host its annual Three Kings' Day parade in New York City from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EST. It features camels, colorful puppets, parrandas, music and dancing.
Immigration agents over the weekend conducted the first raids targeting the deportation of families who flocked across the United States' southern border over the past two years, a senior government official said Monday.

Jeh Johnson, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the 121 people rounded up during raids in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina were primarily members of Central American families that crossed into the U.S. via Mexico since May 2014. Most were placed in family detention centers in Texas to await deportation.

In the statement, Johnson said the raids "should come as no surprise," adding that he has said publicly for months "that individuals who constitute enforcement priorities, including families and unaccompanied children, will be removed."

Those targeted in the raids had been issued final orders of removal by immigration courts and had exhausted other legal remedies, including claims for asylum, Johnson said.

The latest actions affect only a fraction of the more than 100,000 Central American family members, mostly mothers with children, who crossed into the U.S. during an immigration surge that began in the spring of 2014. The surge has been linked to a rise in gang-related violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, while many migrants from these countries have also claimed asylum due to domestic violence, or are seeking to reunite with family members already in the United States.

U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement did not say further raids were planned for the coming days and weeks. However, ICE's official position since November 2014 is that it would continue to conduct enforcement actions daily.

In a news conference Monday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that "politics did not factor" into the decision by Homeland Security officials to conduct raids, despite increased debate about immigration enforcement and policy by Republicans on the presidential campaign trail.

Greg Chen, director of advocacy for the Washington-based American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the group was "shocked and outraged" to hear of the roundups on "women and children who are extremely vulnerable and by and large have fled from horrendous violence in their home countries." Chen added that it was unclear whether those apprehended had been represented by lawyers during their immigration proceedings.

Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that supports tighter immigration controls, called the weekend raids "enforcement theater." The 121 individuals taken in over the weekend represent "half a day's worth of new illegal immigrants" crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, he said, and new immigrants will not be deterred.

Guatemala's Foreign Ministry said via Twitter that it was monitoring the situation, and promised to offer consular assistance and protection to its citizens living overseas. Vice Minister Oscar Padilla said that starting Monday, consulates would be interviewing and reviewing the cases of citizens on deportation lists to ensure that each has an order signed by a judge.

"We are going to review every one of the cases. We are going to support them and be sure that these people do not have any alternative," Padilla said.

The ministry also advised Guatemalans in the United States that they need not open their doors to immigration agents unless the officers have a warrant signed by a judge, and that they carry with them at all times phone numbers of family members, a lawyer and the nearest consulate.

El Salvador issued similar advice to any of its citizens facing enforcement action in the U.S. In a statement Monday, foreign minister Hugo Martinez criticized the raids, saying they would not resolve the problem of illegal migration to the United States, and pledged the support of Salvadoran consulates to citizens in need.

Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Mexico City, Sonia Perez D. in Guatemala City, and Marcos Aleman in San Salvador contributed to this report.
President Barack Obama unveiled an array of measures on Tuesday tightening control and enforcement of firearms in the U.S., using his presidential powers in the absence of legal changes he implored Congress to pass.

Obama accused the gun lobby of taking Congress hostage, but said in a ceremony in the East Room, "they cannot hold America hostage." He insisted it was possible to uphold the Second Amendment while doing something to tackle the frequency of mass shootings in the U.S. that he said had become "the new normal."

"I believe in the Second Amendment. No matter how many times people try to twist my words  I taught constitutional law, I know a little about this, I get it  but I also believe that we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment.

Obama wiped tears from his cheeks as he spoke emotionally about the victims of gun violence.

"Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad," Obama said. "And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

At the centerpiece of Obama's plan is a more sweeping definition of gun dealers that the administration hopes will expand the number of sales subject to background checks. Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers. But at gun shows, websites and flea markets, sellers often skirt that requirement by declining to register as licensed dealers.

Aiming to narrow that loophole, the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is issuing updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone "in the business" of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns. To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells, how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.

The White House also put sellers on notice that the administration planned to strengthen enforcement  including deploying 230 new examiners the FBI will hire to process background checks.

To lend a personal face to the issue of gun violence, the White House assembled a cross-section of Americans whose lives were altered by the nation's most searing recent gun tragedies, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and relatives of victims from Charleston, S.C., at Virginia Tech. Mark Barden, whose son was shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced the president with a declaration that "we are better than this."

Invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr., Obama said, "We need to feel the fierce urgency of now."

Obama's package of executive actions aims to curb what he's described as a scourge of gun violence in the U.S., punctuated by appalling mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona, among many others. After Newtown, Obama sought far-reaching, bipartisan legislation that went beyond background checks.

When the effort collapsed in the Senate, the White House said it was thoroughly researching the president's powers to identify every legal step he could take on his own.

A more recent spate of gun-related atrocities, including in San Bernardino, California, shootings have spurred the administration to give the issue another look, as Obama seeks to make good on a policy issue that he's elevated time and again but has failed until now to advance.

In response to Obama's proposed executive actions, Chris Cox, executive director of National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action said in a statement, "Once again, President Obama has chosen to engage in political rhetoric instead of offering meaningful solutions to our nations pressing problems. Todays event also represents an ongoing attempt to distract attention away from his lack of a coherent strategy to keep the American people safe from terrorist attacks."

"The American people do not need more emotional, condescending lectures that are completely devoid of facts," the statement continued. "The men and women of the National Rifle Association take a back seat to no one when it comes to keeping our communities safe. But the fact is that President Obamas proposals would not have prevented any of the horrific events he mentioned. The timing of this announcement, in the eighth and final year of his presidency, demonstrates not only political exploitation but a fundamental lack of seriousness."
The mother of a fugitive teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a deadly drunken-driving case has agreed to be sent from Los Angeles to Texas to face a charge of hindering the apprehension of a felon.

In a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday, prosecutors asked that Tonya Couch, 48, be extradited to the Lone Star State. She was deported from Mexico and flown early Thursday to Los Angeles, where she been jailed ever since.

Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan, were taken into custody last week in Mexico, where authorities believe the pair fled in November as Texas prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation in a car crash that killed four people.

Ethan Couch was being held at a detention facility in Mexico City after winning a court reprieve that could lead to a weeks- or even months-long legal process in Mexico.

Tonya Couch's attorneys released a statement saying she had done nothing illegal and wanted to get back to Texas as soon as possible. Her bond there was set at $1 million.

"While the public may not like what she did, may not agree with what she did, or may have strong feelings against what she did, make no mistake -- Tonya did not violate any law of the State of Texas and she is eager to have her day in court," lawyers Stephanie K. Patten and Steve Gordon said in the statement.

Ethan Couch was driving drunk and speeding near Fort Worth in June 2013 when he crashed into a disabled SUV, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in his pickup truck, authorities say.

During the sentencing phase of his trial, a defense expert argued that his wealthy parents coddled him into a sense of irresponsibility -- a condition the expert termed "affluenza." The condition is not recognized as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association, and its invocation during the legal proceedings drew ridicule.

He was sentenced to probation.
President Barack Obama evoked a string of other government regulations in making his case for his gun control action, framing the hot-button guns issue as one of practical, common-sense reform and where technology can help. He compared his proposals to reducing traffic accidents or walking through a metal detector before boarding an airplane. Obama also talked about his executive action as a continuation of social justice movements. Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Obama said "we need to feel the fierce urgency of now."

Here were eight such appeals to history and pragmatism that Obama used in making his argument:

Yelling Fire in a Theater:

"We all believe in the First Amendment, the guarantee of free speech. But we accept that you can't yell fire in a theater."

Knife Violence in China:

"We know we can't stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence. Some of you may recall that the same time that Sandy Hook happened a disturbed person in China took a knife and tried to kill with a knife a bunch of children in China. But most of them survived because he didn't have access to a powerful weapon. We maybe can't save everybody but we can save some."

The Metal Detectors Example:

"We cherish our right to privacy but we accept that you have to go through metal detectors before being allowed to board a plane."

Traffic Accident Metaphor:

"We maybe can't save everybody but we can save some. Just as we don't prevent all traffic accidents but we take steps to try to reduce traffic accidents."

The Smartphone Fingerprint and Lost Tablet Model:

"We need to develop new technologies to make guns safer. If we can set it up so you can't unlock your phone unless you got the right fingerprint, why can't we do the same thing for our guns? If there's an app that can help us find a missing tablet that happens to be off ... If we can do it for your iPad, there's no reason you can't do it with a stolen gun."

The Medicine Bottle Example:

"If a child can't open a bottle of aspirin, we should make sure that they can't pull a trigger on a gun."

The Freedom of Worship, Assembly and Pursuit of Happiness Example:

"Second Amendment rights are important but there are other rights that we care about as well, and we have to be able to balance them. Because our right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Christians in Charleston, South Carolina. And that was denied to Jews in Kansas City. And that was denied to Muslims in Chapel Hill and Sikhs in Oak Creek. They had rights, too. Our right to peaceful assembly: That right was robbed to moviegoers in Aurora and Lafayette. Our unalienable right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and from high schoolers in Columbine and from first graders in Newtown. ... And by the way it happens on the streets of Chicago every day."

Taking the Long View on Progress:

"But a lot of things don't happen overnight. The women's right to vote didn't happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn't happen overnight. LGBT rights was decades worth of work. So just because it's hard, that's no excuse not to try."
The American Civil Liberties Union called for an end to a South Jersey elementary schools tradition of having students say "God bless America" after the Pledge of Allegiance.

The practice has been in place at Glenview Elementary School in Haddon Heights since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It changed this week, however, after the school received a complaint from the ACLU.

Glenview Elementary School Principal Sam Sassano sent a letter to parents alerting them of the ACLUs concerns.

"A concern has been raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey that this practice in invoking Gods blessing as a daily ritual is unconstitutional and in violation of the Establishment Clause, since it allegedly promotes religious over non-religious beliefs, especially with young, impressionable children," Sassano wrote. "On the other hand, it has been our view that the practice is fundamentally patriotic in nature and does not invoke or advance any religious message, despite the specific reference to Gods blessing."

Sassano also said school officials were aware of the general usage of the term and claimed the question as to whether the phrase was more patriotic than religious has "no clear cut legal answer."

Nonetheless, Sassano said the school administration decided to discontinue the practice in order to avoid a constitutional fight or legal fees.

"We will explore alternative methods of honoring the victims and first responders of the 9/11 tragedy," Sassano wrote.

NBC10 reached out to Ed Barocas, the legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey, for comment.

"It is improper and unconstitutional for a school to have a practice of telling elementary students as young as kindergarten invoking God's blessing at the beginning of every school day during an official school assembly," he said. "Parents, not the government, have the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children. If they're looking for something patriotic there are a number of ways, including the phrase 'United We Stand,' that can do that, without having the requirement of children as young as kindergarten to make this daily recitation asking for God's blessing."

Many parents at the school were upset by the decision.

"I think this is typical of the ACLU," said Christi Clark. "Theyre bullying the masses. Were going to stand up and say that we dont agree."

Clark said her son, who is in the first grade, still decided to say "God bless America" after reciting the pledge Monday and his classmates did the same.

Sassano also told NBC10 many other parents want their kids to continue saying the phrase.

"I also want parents to understand that I recognize everyone's Freedom of Speech right," he said. "Many parents have expressed that they want their child to continue to state 'God bless America.' I do not feel I have the authority to forbid this and have assured parents that is their right."
San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob called the latest details revealed in an NBC 7 Investigates story about the condition of land at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) site "extremely troubling."

On Monday, Jacob told NBC 7 Investigates Southern California Edison (SCE) needs to tell the public what condition the land is in at the SONGS.

Southern California Edison should first be honest with the public, she said. If the land is contaminated, they should clean it up, clean it up in its entirety. Be honest, be transparent.

Through the federal Freedom of Information Act, NBC 7 Investigates obtained letters from the United States Navy to SCE that show portions of the land around SONGS may be contaminated from activities conducted during SCEs occupancy and use.

According to one of the August letters from the Navys Engineering Command, the Mesa site could be contaminated because of how SCE used the land. The Mesa site is 135 acres of land in and around the reactor domes and across Interstate 5. In the documents, the site is called Japanese Mesa or the "Mesa.

Click here to see the complete investigation and read the letters from the Navy.

SCE has not responded to questions about the information revealed in the letters. In a statement sent to NBC 7 Investigates on Oct. 2, 2015, after a previous NBC 7 Investigates story aired, SCE spokesperson Maureen Brown said, There is no current radiological contamination and readings (at the SONGS property) are normal background radiation levels."

One of the letters from the Navy was sent to SCEs Manager of Government Lands Messeret Yilma a month before that NBC 7 Investigates story aired. That story detailed secret negotiations happening between the Navy, SCE and San Diego Gas and Electric to discuss the condition of the land where SONGS sits.

SCE leases the land in and around SONGS from the Navy. That lease is set to expire in 2023. According to the lease, any contaminated land is to be restored for unrestricted use by the Navy. The dynamic can be described in a simple equation: the more the land is contaminated, the more cleanup is needed to satisfy the Navy. The more extensive the cleanup, the more money it costs the utilities.

The Navy letters describe how SCEs own internal reports show the site may be contaminated. According to one letter, SCEs request for partial termination of the lease is held in abeyance until SCE restores the contaminated site to levels that achieve unrestricted use/unrestricted exposure (UU/UE) closure.

It raises a big question that needs to be answered, Jacob said. Not only do we want the spent nuclear waste out of San Diego, but we don't want the contaminated property there either. So good for the Navy for calling it out; the public needs answers."

A plan to store nuclear waste from San Onofre in North County was approved but is being challenged in court.

In the letter from Brown, she said, none of the contamination identified by inspectors in the [NRC] report exceeded allowable limits.

In an email to NBC 7 Investigates, NRC Public Affairs Officer Scott Burnell said the agency will make sure the utility has properly decommissioned the site (or any portion of it) before they can be released from its regulatory requirements.


Money gathered for school field trips, book sales and fundraisers was allegedly stolen by a Howard County school employee, according to county police.

Twyla Renee Blackmon-Green, 50, from Elkridge, Maryland, was charged with 16 counts of thefts from Ducketts Lane Elementary School. The Howard County Public School System said shes not an employee any longer.

HCPSS said they noticed nearly $9,000 in discrepancies in the schools accounts. Officials alerted authorities that Blackmon-Green was the likely suspect, given that she had access to the schools accounts and cash.

In addition to the money, police said Blackmon-Green stole a new document shredder from the school in October 2015.

Her court appearance has been scheduled for March 10.
A new supercomputer designed to provide earlier and more accurate weather warnings went online Monday at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) was on hand for the ceremony and see how the new computer will help save lives and property. As the vice chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she worked to secure the $35 million in federal funding for the new electronics.

The computer is expected to improve river and stream forecasts, derecho forecasts, and hurricane forecasts. The information should help emergency managers and the public prepare for impending and potentially dangerous weather.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 includes $5.76 billion for NOAA, the highest funding level ever for NOAA, and an increase of more than $300 million over the fiscal year 2015 enacted level for the agency to carry out its mission across the country.

NOAAs Weather and Climate Prediction Center houses more than 800 meteorologists, scientists, data managers and researchers who provide the nation with weather and climate forecasts. Forecasts range from weeks in advance to predictions for an entire season, including the number of hurricanes for the year and are provided to news and weather organizations across the country.

Get the latest weather from NBCWashington.com:

Download our free weather apps for iPad and iPhone. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for our e-mail newsletters.
A woman has died after she was hit by a bus in Bethesda, Maryland, early Tuesday just a block from the day care center where she worked.

Devika Gunasekere, 67, died Tuesday evening after she was hit by a Ride On bus on Old Georgetown Road, Montgomery County police said.

"Miss Devika was a wonderful and caring human being," said Silvia Moreno, the director of Guiding Star Child Development Center. "She did not deserve to die this way."

According to a preliminary investigation, Gunasekere, of Rockville, was crossing Old Georgetown Road from west to east at Battery Lane as the bus driver tried to turn left from westbound Battery Lane onto Old Georgetown Road. The bus hit her about 7:50 a.m.

Police believe Gunasekere was walking in a marked crosswalk at the time of the crash.

The bus driver received non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital. The four passengers on the bus at the time were uninjured

Investigators are looking at the timing of traffic signals.

Moreno said Gunasekere had crossed the street where she was hit hundreds of times.

"Devika was a careful person," she said. "None of us can imagine that this had anything of her fault at all."

Josh Mulitz, who lives on the corner of Old Georgetown Road and Battery Lane, said he believes timing of the lights is an issue.

"It's only a 10-second crosswalk, and they always start it at the wrong time when everyone is turning right," he said.

The bus driver has been with Ride On, Montgomery County's bus system, since 2006, a Montgomery County official said. He is undergoing routine testing for alcohol and drugs, which is standard protocol after a crash. The driver has not been charged.

The director of the daycare center where Gunasekere worked said staff members are not speaking with children about their caretaker's death.

"When I met with the staff, they had requested that we not tell the children right now," Moreno said. "We're just saying that she's away on vacation."

Gunasekere is survived by her husband, two adult children and a grandchild.

"Her husband is just so overwhelmed with grief," Moreno said.

Anyone with information for police is asked to call 240-773-6620.
A man was fatally struck in the southbound lanes of I-95 in Springfield Monday night, Virginia State Police say.

The accident happened just north of exit 169 at about 8:30 p.m., Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

Police say the victim was walking across the travel lanes while wearing dark, non-reflective clothing. The driver of a 2012 Toyota Corolla was heading south on I-95 in the left lane when he was unable to stop or change lanes in time to avoid the man, police said.

The pedestrian died at the scene. It's not clear why he was in the roadway.

Authorities said he had no identification on him. His body has been taken to the Office of the Medical Examiner for an autopsy and so he can be identified.

The driver, a 21-year-old man from Fredericksburg, Virginia, will not be charged, Geller said. He was taken to a hospital to be treated for minor injures.
One American service member was killed and two U.S. service members were wounded during counter-terrorism operations near Marjah in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.

American defense officials earlier told NBC News that U.S. Special Operations Forces were involved in an operation when they came under attack.

According to officials, U.S. Special Operations Forces had been involved in a counter-terrorism operation against enemy forces near Marjah. A U.S. medevac helicopter had been called in to recover the casualties but it came under mortar and small arms fire and was disabled, one defense official told NBC News.

Its not clear whether the helicopter was struck by enemy fire and whether any U.S. forces suffered casualties there, or only in the counter-terrorism operation.

U.S.-backed forces have been battling the Taliban in Marjah. A spokesman for the Taliban  which frequently exaggerates its claims  said Tuesday the group had shot down a U.S. transport helicopter in Helmand.
This American Idol hopeful looks kind of familiar, and so does his wife. Kanye West  ring any bells? The rapper dropped by auditions for the 15th and final season of the Fox reality show, and he brought his wife, Kim Kardashian, along for the ride.

Kardashian already tweeted a clip of her husband's tryout before Christmas, but E! News got a hold of the whole cliip, and the audition goes about as well as you'd expect.

West picked an original song to perform for the judges, and even name-checked one of them in it. A little sucking up never hurts when going after that Golden Ticket to Hollywood, right? Watch him perform a snippet of "Gold Digger" for Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick Jr. above.

CLICK: Jennifer Lopez Sounds Off on Kanye West's American Idol Audition

As a bonus, you can watch a pregnant Kardashian gush about her talented hubby to Ryan Seacrest.

As Seacrest told E! News' Will Marfuggi while taping the show's final Hollywood Week round, the Yeezy encounter happened very suddenly. "We were in San Francisco, and they said, 'We've got a contestant that's just going to jump into the line,'" the host dished. "And up walked Kim and Kanye--Kim pregnant and Kanye enthusiastic and ready to go in there. He walks in there and does a lyric about J.Lo from one of his songs."

Spoiler alert: He gets a Golden Ticket.

American Idol premieres Wednesday, Jan. 6, at 8 p.m. on Fox.

PHOTOS: Kanye West Auditions for American Idol
A subdued Bill Clinton offered a deeply personal endorsement of his wife's presidential campaign in New Hampshire Monday, telling voters that Hillary Clinton's plans offer the best chance for the country to achieve economic prosperity and a secure future.

In a wide-ranging address that took voters through Hillary Clinton's work as a young lawyer in Arkansas, ways to combat heroin addiction, the political achievements of President Barack Obama and the failings of America's fourteenth president, Franklin Pierce, Bill Clinton argued that the Democratic front-runner offers the best plan to restore "broadly shared prosperity."

The event marked the former president's debut solo appearance for his wife's campaign, part of a broader strategy to deploy Bill Clinton publicly in the run-up to early voting next month.

"I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done now," he told several hundred New Hampshire voters gathered in a college auditorium.

His appearance comes after days of attacks over his impeachment and decades-old sex scandal by Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

"I don't really care about Monica Lewinsky other than I think that Hillary was an enabler and a lot of things happened that were obviously very seedy," Trump said in an interview with CNN Monday. "I mean, he was impeached, for heaven's sake. He was impeached over this stuff."

So far, Bill Clinton has remained silent about Trump's slams - following the lead of his wife's campaign, which believes their candidate comes across as more presidential by rising above what they see as the Republican's crass political tactics.

He spoke calmly and quietly in New Hampshire on Monday, methodically describing the issues he sees as motivating voters in the next election. Clinton warned voters that the next president could appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices and reverse the health care law and environmental programs of the Obama administration.

Hillary Clinton, her husband said, offers the best path to economic prosperity, dealing with social problems like heroin addiction and foreign policy that doesn't undermine the American character.

"I think it is the plan that offers the best chance to have the most rapid movement to broadly shared propserity," he said.

Still, some of Trump's attacks seem to have struck a nerve.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire on Sunday, Katherine Prudhomme O'Brien heckled Clinton about her husband's sexual history, accusing her of enabling him to mistreat women.

"You are very rude and I'm not going to ever call on you," Clinton snapped at O'Brien, after repeated shouted interruptions by the New Hampshire state representative.

The former president, too, has been known to become heated when he feels his wife is under attack, as he did during the 2008 primary with remarks about then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama that angered black voters in South Carolina.

Clinton supporters believe the attacks will backfire, particularly in the general election. Hillary Clinton had some of her highest approval ratings in the wake of disclosures about her husband's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

After months of having her husband focus on private fundraisers, Clinton said in a December debate that she would turn to Bill Clinton for advice should she win the White House, particularly on economic issues.

Their schedules on Monday showed the degree to which the ubiquitous political couple will be able to blanket the early primary states in the next two months as Democrats hold contests in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.

While the former president was drumming up support for his wife in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton was starting a two-day "river-to-river" tour of Iowa, holding town hall meetings and organizing events across the state.

Bill Clinton's longstanding ability to raise money will also be an asset in the weeks ahead, with fundraisers on the calendar in New York, Seattle, Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., Cleveland and Fairfield, Conn. The finance events will allow Hillary Clinton to spend more time on the ground in Iowa and also in New Hampshire, where polls have shown her trailing Sanders, who represents neighboring Vermont.

The couple's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was also getting into the act, headlining fundraisers of her own in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago next week.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump brought his campaign to Massachusetts, with Trump headlining a rally at Lowell's Tsongas Center.

The Tsongas Center was at its full capacity as thousands turned out to listen to Trump discuss his campaign and his competitiors.

Trump's rally comes after Democratic rival Bernie Sanders over the weekend also campaigned in the state, in Amherst and Worcester.

Trump's visit also comes as he launches a series of TV ads, the first of his campaign. He reportedly plans to spend $2 million a week on the ad blitz.
The Vermont State Senate will vote Wednesday on whether or not to suspend one of its members, Sen. Norm McAllister, R-Franklin County. The vote follows criminal charges filed in 2015 against McAllister for allegedly sexually assaulting three women, including a former statehouse intern.



"Everybody treated me cordially," McAllister told necn, describing his first day back at the Statehouse for the start of the 2016 session.



McAllister, a farmer, has repeatedly said he did not do anything illegal with the women who accused him of sex crimes. He is free on bail and rebuffed calls for his resignation last year.



"I have maintained my innocence from day one," McAllister reiterated Tuesday.



Trial is not expected until later this year.



In the meantime, McAllister's colleagues will decide Wednesday whether to suspend him with pay.



McAllister has already been stripped of his committee assignments, and even members of his own caucus are divided on a suspension.



"I believe so strongly in the presumption of innocence," said Sen. Peg Flory, R-Rutland County, who has said a suspension is problematic because it would leave Franklin County voters without one of their voices in the Senate. "It deprives the people of Franklin County to part of their representation."



"I fully intend to vote to suspend tomorrow," said Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia County, who noted he would have preferred to see McAllister resign his seat and be replaced. "We have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the institution."



Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor County, the Senate President Pro Tempore, urged civility among his colleagues as a controversial and personal vote about one of their own approaches.



"I don't know what tomorrow will bring," McAllister said Tuesday. "Nobody can tell you what's going to happen, I don't believe."



Because McAllister is still a sitting senator, he will get to vote on his own political future, according to colleagues. It may be the final vote of his career in the Vermont State Senate.


Since the beginning of 2016, NBC Boston and necn have been tracking delays and other issues on the MBTA's subway and commuter rail lines every day.

Delays are being tracked based on information provided by the organization's Twitter accounts.

We're also asking you, our necn viewers, to share your thoughts on the MBTA using the hashtag #TTalk on Twitter. Your tweets will be included above, and we may even use some of them on air.
ELKO  The City of Elko Facilities Department got a cat down from a tree Monday after a local homeowner called for assistance.

Lenore McNeil, a resident on A Street, told the Free Press she noticed an orange and white cat in her elm tree a couple days previously. She believed the animal to be stuck. City electrician Justin Alanis used one of the Citys bucket trucks to get the animal down.

The cat was very scared, Alanis said.

The animal was not vicious, but he used gloves from animal control to get the cat down safely. Alanis said he thought the cat could have gotten down on its own after a while.

The City responded after getting a call from the police department. Lt. Ty Trouten said while it isnt law enforcements responsibility to rescue animals, the homeowner acted distressed about the situation. He confirmed later that afternoon that the cat had been taken to the animal shelter because its owner was unknown.

We have an orange and white, well-fed cat thats now at the shelter, Trouten said.

The cat did not appear to be injured or suffering any effects from the cold, he said.

McNeil told the Free Press her concerns about what it took to get help for the animal.

Nobody says its their responsibility, McNeil said after reportedly calling animal control, police and the power company.

Mayor Chris Johnson said he also received a call from the homeowner, and forwarded the complaint to police. He told the Free Press it was a tough choice to balance the Citys resources when McNeil was concerned for the animals safety.

McNeil said problems like this should be addressed by thinking outside the box.

If people want a better United States, its this crap that can make a difference, she said.

Deputy Fire Chief Brian Burgess said typically the fire department does not rescue animals from trees, but leaves that type of response to animal control. Furthermore, most cats in trees are afraid and wont allow personnel to reach out and grab them, he said. Most of the time, the cats come down on their own.

Ive never seen a dead cat in a tree, Burgess said.

The City of Elko Fire Department will discuss the situation with homeowners if they call, he said.

Animal control reportedly told McNeil they did not have the proper equipment for getting the animal down. McNeil did not believe the cat could get down because the tree branches were trimmed higher up as a precaution for parked cars.
Police are investigating a breaking and entering to a motor vehicle outside of a gym in Norwood, Massachusetts.

The victim told the police that he had left his car keys inside of an unsecured locker in the facility. When he returned from his workout he discovered the keys were missing. He then went out to his vehicle to find his glove box and console open, his wallet missing, and other items gone from the car. The keys were left behind by the suspect inside of the car.

Another male came forward saying his keys had been stolen as well, but his vehicle had not been entered.

After speaking with an employee of the gym, the police were able to determine the around the time of the theft, two men came into the gym asking to fill out membership forms. They proceeded to take the forms from the employee and walk in the direction of the locker rooms. They quickly exited the gym stating they had left their gym clothing outside.

The employee stated the two men never returned and the two blank membership forms were found in the area of the victims locker.

The police are currently investigating the situation and are asking anyone with information to inform the Norwood Police Department.
Although vendor-written, this contributed piece does not advocate a position that is particular to the authors employer and has been edited and approved by Network World editors.

Googles recent Eddystone announcement adds another heavyweight to the indoor location-based services market. With beacon location support from the two largest mobile ecosystem providers, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons have become the de facto standard for indoor micro-location applications. Lets investigate some of the nuances of the Eddystone format compared to Apples iBeacon and highlight key items that organizations should consider while deploying a nascent solution.

The main driver for beacons is the search for a suitable indoor positioning technology for mobile devices, enabling real-time navigation and location awareness for mobile apps. Through the iPhone era, we have tested the limits of the established handset technologies: GPS, inertial navigation, cell tower triangulation, and Wi-Fi (Basic Service Set Identifier -- BSSID) scanning. We know their capabilities, both individually and as a group. Indoors, Wi-Fi technology can provide adequate location presence but for use cases requiring real-time, precise location updates, another solution is needed.

Then along came Apples iBeacon, the first standardized implementation of a BLE beacon. Sensing an iBeacon on a mobile device is in many ways similar to sensing a Wi-Fi access point; we use signal strength and the signal-distance characteristics to calculate location. However, the substantive differences in approach relates to packaging and implementation. BLE beacons are portable, fully cordless and inexpensive. As a result, a BLE beacon solution designed for location is significantly cheaper and less complex to install compared to an equivalent Wi-Fi based solution.

Additionally, beacons present a huge real-time accuracy advantage, since location is calculated by the app monitoring beacons that continuously transmit, instead of a Wi-Fi infrastructure waiting for a handset to awaken from variable power-save windows.

Because of these inherent advantages, iBeacons have quickly gained traction for indoor positioning. Not to be outdone, Google recently entered the Beacon arena with Eddystone, which claims to extend capabilities supported in Apples widely adopted iBeacon protocol.

With Eddystone, Google was looking for a better way to push notifications to clients without the need for an app, as well as the ability to manage beacon deployments. To achieve this, Eddystone is designed to support multiple new data packet types, including Eddystone-UID, Eddystone-URL, and Eddystone-TLM.

Eddystone-UID is similar to iBeacon in that it identifies a beacon and allows an app on a device to trigger a desired action. Eddystone-UID is somewhat different from iBeacon in that it is 16 bytes long (iBeacon is 20) and is split into two parts (iBeacon is 3).

Eddystone-URL sends a compressed URL to the mobile device, relying on Android 5.0 or higher to process push events instead of a dedicated app. On iOS devices, users must install the Chrome browser and enable notifications, so an app is still required. As of now, Android users have to open the notification center to check for nearby Eddystone-URL beacons, making it more of a Pull rather than Push notification. Unsolicited, push-based notifications can present phishing risks, although Google mitigates the risk by brokering all transactions, retrieving site titles and description meta tags and embedding them in the notification. This ensures that users know what site they are about to visit before clicking through a notification link.

While Eddystone-URL may seem interesting, its cross-platform caveats and recent privacy concerns around potential implementations, as highlighted in Googles Here project, will limit its appeal.

The third data packet type is Eddystone-TLM. Short for telemetry, TLM sends health and statistics data such as battery voltage, beacons temperature, uptime, and number of packets sent to the applications developer. This is a one-way, best-effort communication and could help venues monitor their beacon deployments. Presumably, an Android client must be in direct proximity to the beacon for Eddystone-TLM to update the cloud with health telemetry. While it does not allow you to update or modify the data being sent by the beacon remotely, it is a step in the right direction.

Googles first crack at Eddystone tells us that more BLE innovations will likely be coming. For early adopters looking to reap the massive benefits from micro location-based services, a BLE beacon infrastructure that can be centrally monitored and managed with firmware updates is an absolute necessity. Most significant is Googles acknowledgement that indoor location positioning based on BLE technology is no longer a fad and is here to stay. With some prominent BLE beacon deployments in existence, Google can no longer have Apple solely control the future of this space.

Ni leads the vertical marketing solutions team at Aruba Networks and has 15 years of experience with mobile technology. He joined Aruba in 2014 from Goldman Sachs where he had global responsibility for the firms mobile infrastructure and computing platforms. ani@arubanetworks.com, Twitter: @alanjni
A majority of PCs in the workplace were struck by at least one attempted malware infection last year, cybersecurity company Kaspersky said in an overview of corporate threats observed throughout 2015 released last month.

Well over half, or 58%, of PCs were infected. Thats a gain of 3% over 2014.

Meanwhile, CryptoLocker attacks doubled, Kaspersky says in its press release about the report.

CryptoLocker attacks are when a trojan-infected PC user receives a ransom demand to decrypt files, stop a denial of service attack, or other onerous result if the ransom isnt paid.

And cybercriminals dont always honor the agreement once the ransom has been paid, Kaspersky says.

Big trouble this year?

Research continues to suggest that cybersecurity will be a big issue in 2016.

One in three business computers were exposed at least once to an Internet-based attack last year, Kaspersky estimated.

And the enterprise is currently the focus of these assaults. Office-oriented applications were exploited three times as often as in consumer attacks, Kaspersky says in the release.

Not an accident

Unlike hacking of old, todays hackers have been gathering intelligence on target companies.

These attacks were found to be carefully planned, with cyber-attackers taking time to investigate a target companys contacts and suppliers, and even the personal interests and browsing habits of individual employees, according to the security outfit.

In other words, its no longer just kids in bedrooms with a laptop and too much time on their hands.

Mobile increasing too

USB sticks and other local threats, such as media devices, also increased last year.

A 7% uptick in the Android arena emerged as more hackers realized data was attainable off mobile devices as well as the traditional PC in the work environment.

CryptoLockers

The ransomware trojans, called CryptoLocker, were detected on over 50,000 machines in the corporate environment in 2015. That was twice the rate found in the previous year, and more than on consumers' devices.

The reason for the enterprise-weighted targeting? Its probably because corporate powers are more likely to pay the ransom with no questions asked. Individuals could be more inclined to put up an argumentor just give up.

Its the money

Banks, investment funds, and financial instrument handlers like exchanges were hit hard, Kaspersky says. It reckons one hacker group raked in $2.5 million to $10 million per successful attack.

It wasnt just traditional banks facing losses, though. Bitcoin was targeted heavily too, Kaspersky writes.

Point-of-Sale

Kaspersky, as one might expect, reckons its products help. It says that over 11,000 attempts to infiltrate Point-of-Sale terminals in 2015 were blocked by Kaspersky products.

Seven families of programs designed to steal data from PoS terminals were brand new in 2015. The security outfit thinks that there are currently 10 families of programs hunting for access to the terminals.

Moving on

Just like their corporate brethren, hackers have started to operate by hedging and diversifying.

The Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is one that has switched targets from companies involved in computer games to those in pharmaceuticals and telecommunications, Kaspersky says.

APTs are stealthy and continuously exploiting processes run over a period of time.

The Winnti Group is also diversifying. Its gotten into pharmaceuticals.

Cat and mouse

And wheres it all headed this year, one might ask? Well, enterprises are now taking security more seriously. There are probably fewer IT employees who arent viewing it as a risk now.

And that likely means law enforcement is catching on, too. So expect more nabs if the cat gets the mouse.

We expect tougher safety standards from regulators, which could lead to more cybercriminals being arrested in 2016, Yury Namestnikov, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs, says in the press release.
Happy new year everyone! Late last year, I wrote a blog with a few predictions for 2016 focused on threats and enterprise security. Here are a few of my additional expectations for the cybersecurity industry:

1. Cybersecurity skills shortage impacts the industry. I cited a bunch of troubling statistics about the global shortage of cybersecurity talent in another recent blog. Depending upon whom you believe, there will be 1 million or more cybersecurity job openings that remain unfilled in 2016. This shortage is already a problem for CISOs, look for it to become a growing headache for cybersecurity product and (especially) services vendors this year as well. Recognizing this issue, firms like Cisco, IBM, and Symantec are developing internship programs, partnering with Universities, and offering cybersecurity training to general IT professionals. Other large cybersecurity suppliers will do the same. As a side note to this problem, cybersecurity vendors seeking talent will be forced to invest in facilities outside of the Silicon Valley, good news for Atlanta, Austin, Boston, and Washington D.C. as well as India, Ireland, and the Philippines.

2. Mergers and acquisitions. Okay, this one is somewhat obvious but allow me to add my own spin. M&A activities will be robust with numerous big deals taking place before the RSA Security Conference at the end of February. That said, many areas of cybersecurity are actually over-invested right now (i.e. CASB, next-generation endpoint security, etc.). Once the first few deals happen, I foresee an industry panic where Johnny-come-lately VCs get cold feet and start fire selling. As this happens, patient cybersecurity companies will be rewarded with cybersecurity technology startup acquisitions at relative bargain basement prices.

3. The Beltway crowd jumps into the commercial market. Federal contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI International, CSC, L-3, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman have strong cybersecurity skills and assets but little penetration into the commercial market. Look for one or several of these federal integrators to follow Raytheons lead by establishing commercial cybersecurity divisions, hiring management teams with vast private sector experience, and acquiring companies with strong commercial cybersecurity market share.

4. Growing trusted systems offerings. Technologies like the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and Intels Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) have been around for years but few software developers have taken advantage of this system-level security functionality. I believe we will see things start to change in 2016 as enterprises look to enhance mission-critical system integrity. Oracle and VMware will join the trusted systems fray while phones will ring off the hook at focused players like Skyport Systems and Virtual Software Systems (VSS).

5. Cybersecurity technology vendors will open their own kimonos. Driven by new types of threats, CISOs will continue to increase oversight of IT vendor risk management in 2016. This will cause a reaction on the supply side as leading vendors trumpet their own internal cyber supply chain management and secure software development best practices as a way of differentiating themselves from more lackadaisical competitors. Microsoft secure software development lifecycle (SDL) is a good example here, look for lots of others to emulate this type of model.

I also expect a lot more software architecture expertise entering the cybersecurity technology market as vendors open APIs, integrate products, and embrace middleware foundations as part of their technology architectures. Should be another interesting and eventful year ahead!
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitters approach.

The NoSQL industry was developed quickly on the promise of schema-free design, infinitely scalable clusters and breakthrough performance. But there are hidden costs, including the added complexity of an endless choice of datastores (now numbering 225), the realization that analytics without SQL is painful, high query latencies require you to pre-compute results, and the inefficient use of hardware leads to server sprawl.

All of these costs add up to a picture far less rosy than initially presented. However, the data model for NoSQL does make sense for certain workloads, across key-value and document data types. Fortunately, those are now incorporated into multi-mode and multi-model databases representing a simplified and consolidated approach to data management.

Lets take a closer look at the impetus for the NoSQL movement and the true impact of abandoning SQL.

Dawn and decline of the NoSQL movement

The popularity of NoSQL grew from the need to scale beyond what traditional disk-based relational databases could handle, and because high performance solutions from large database companies get very expensive very quickly. Coupled with data growth, developers needed a better way for the growing use of simple data structures like users and profile information associated with mobile applications. NoSQL promised an easy path to performance.

Another explanation for NoSQL popularity comes from the perception that SQL can be hard to learn. But Michael Stahnke, director of engineering at Puppet Labs, claims that is an early, and invalid argument, noting that, instead you must learn one query language for each tool you use.

NoSQL is there because SQL is hard to learn. (early argument). Instead you must learn one query language for each tool you use. #losing  Michael Stahnke (@stahnma) March 17, 2015

A few things changed in recent years that have led to the assimilation of NoSQL into the broader database market.

First, in-memory architectures have proven that you can have performance and SQL together, addressing part of the reason for ditching SQL initially.

Second, most NoSQL datastores begin with a limited language for key/value workloads, and then attempt more SQL-like constructs or even try to recreate SQL itself. Starting with SQL means you incorporate core architectural features like multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) or indexes, both critical for real-time analytics on changing data sets.

Finally, relational database vendors have recognized the value of multiple data models by incorporating them into a comprehensive offering.

Perhaps the NoSQL fade away is best summarized by leading analyst firm Gartner: By 2017, the NoSQL label will cease to distinguish DBMSs, which will reduce its value and result in it falling out of use (as quoted in Dataversity).

The value of SQL

Ironically, following the NoSQL hype, the value of SQL-as-a-layer has become immediately valuable to companies and datastores alike. Witness SQL-as-a-layer efforts in rescuing data from Hadoop with projects like Impala (Cloudera), Drill (MapR), and Hive (Hortonworks), as well as solutions like Presto developed at Facebook.

And processing frameworks like Spark, with its popular Spark SQL functions, have proven to be a saving grace for document and key-value datastores that left SQL back on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile in-memory, distributed systems enable the relational model to remain intact, achieve groundbreaking performance and scale for modern workloads, and incorporate NoSQL data types like JSON.

Long live multi-model databases

Of course the death of the NoSQL label does not mean death of the NoSQL model. Rather it points to the use of multiple data models within a single database. This was recently outlined in a webcast by Matt Aslett, research director of Data Platforms and Analytics at 451 Research, on the Internet of Things and Multi-model Data Infrastructure, in which he states:

The database market has been dominated for 40 years by the relational database model (and SQL)  typically with separate databases for operational and analytics workloads.

Emerging databases take advantage of in-memory and advanced processing performance to deliver combined operational and analytic processing.

Polyglot persistence drove the expansion of the database market with NoSQL  specialists databases for specialist purposes and multiple data models.

The use of multiple databases to support an individual application can lead to operational complexity and inflexibility driven by interdependence.

Multi-model enables the flexibility of polyglot persistence without the operational complexity by supporting multiple data models.

The presentation showcases how multi-model, multimode databases support a combination of the SQL and NoSQL data models, especially JSON and key-value, as well as other workloads.

Calculating The Hidden Costs

So while NoSQL promised scale and performance at lower costs, NoSQL deployments can actually be far costlier than initially imagined. Lets look at a few hidden cost areas.

* Added complexity. As referenced by Aslett of 451 Research, use of multiple databases to support an individual application can lead to operational complexity.

Every new datastore adds to the financial and operational burden of the data team. Having to support more databases that only fill a niche workload adds cost.

* Lack of analytics. By abandoning the relational algebra implicit in SQL, NoSQL stores have an uphill battle when it comes to analytics. Many NoSQL stores implemented SQL-like query layers such as the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) or N1QL for Couchbase. These provide some analytical functionality but they are not the same as ANSI SQL and they disqualify these datastores from natively connecting with the enterprise tools that use SQL. This bifurcation can weigh negatively on an enterprise trying to design around open standards like SQL.

This conversation I had with an end user at the same time I was drafting this article is representative of the NoSQL analytics dilemma.

* Query latency. Complex analytics can be challenging for NoSQL datastores, so many companies are forced to pre-compute results. Tapjoy found this to be the case with HBase and outlined their challenges at the In-Memory Computing Conference in San Francisco during their Hitchhikers Guide to Building a Data Science Platform presentation. This batch processing workflow introduces system latency and reduces that business value of data. Never mind that a batch oriented workflow means the results are inherently out of date and disqualifies the opportunity to deliver real-time analytics.

* Hardware sprawl. While scale, and in particular the number of nodes in a cluster, can be a badge of honor, the goal is not how many nodes can be deployed, but rather how few. Even more important is the efficiency of transactions for each node. When NoSQL solutions need to be coupled with additional SQL layers, or pre-computing must be completed before queries can be run, it adds to hardware sprawl and costs.

* Preserve the model, consolidate workloads. There are other options, recently referred by Gartner as the avant-garde of relational databases that provide solutions using relational properties of SQL, and the performance needed to scale, frequently through the use of in-memory technologies. Many of these avant-garde databases also incorporate capabilities like JSON to provide data models for structured and semi-structured data.

Today customers are discovering that what appeared like a novel lower cost solution of NoSQL is actually much higher than initially thought. Fortunately, those challenges can be solved with a database that provides the performance needed and the ability to perform comprehensive SQL analytics all in a single solution.

Many big data industry participants have noted that a revolution is underway in the way companies capture and process data. But perhaps the climate is best summarized by Gwen Shapira, a prominent spokesperson on big data:

The revolution will not be schema-less :)  Gwen (Chen) Shapira (@gwenshap) December 3, 2015

This tweet puts the NoSQL movement in perspective. While it appeared that schema-less data management options offered a panacea for the future, the reality has been quite different, with many recognizing the time-tested value of structure, schemas, and SQL.
Rapid7 disclosed serious flaws in Comcasts Xfinity Home Security system which thieves or thugs could exploit to break into homes while the homeowners continue to receive 'its-all-good' messages even as an intruder moves about the house. Even worse, there currently is no fix.

Comcast customers might be induced to sign up for one of the Xfinity Home Security packages as the company suggests options like being able to check in on your kids, your pets, and the things you love most. With Xfinity Home Security, Comcast said you can Sit back. Relax. Youre in control. But today Rapid7 publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Xfinity Home Security, flaws that can cause the security system to fail to sense motion and instead continue to report All sensors are intact and all doors are closed. No motion is detected.

The first problem is that motion sensors could fail to report motion; a bad guy could be moving around in the house and the homeowner wouldnt be alerted; Rapid7 explained why the Xfinity Home Security would report a window or door is closed even if it is open. The system uses a ZigBee-based protocol and communicates over the 2.4GHz radio frequency band; an attacker could jam the radio frequency or launch a software-based deauthentication attack on the ZigBee protocol. In both cases, the Xfinity Home Security base station fails to detect the communication breakdown in the component sensors and continues to give a thumb's up message as opposed to alerting homeowners that there is a problem.

The system will continue to report it is armed even when the sensors are not communicating with the hub. Sure, homeowners do not want to be spammed with alerts for every little hiccup, but Rapid7 said, There does not appear to be a limit to the duration of the failure in order to trigger a warning or other alert. In addition, the sensors take a significant amount of time to re-establish communication with the hub when the radio failure subsides.

In fact, the researchers discovered that the amount of time it takes for the sensor to re-establish communications with the base station and correctly report is in an open state can range from several minutes to up to three hours.

While you might be thinking that the average crook couldnt abuse the Xfinity home security system, jamming is really not rocket science. In fact, Rapid7 added, There are any number of techniques that could be used to cause interference or deauthentication of the underlying ZigBee-based communications protocol, such as commodity radio jamming equipment and software-based deauthentication attacks on the ZigBee protocol itself.

If you are looking for mitigation, you will be disappointed. Perhaps the best thing to do right now is take down or cover up the Xfinity home security sign in your yard. Until there is a fix, that security sign might as well be advertising, Come rob me; I wont tell the homeowner. Even if you were monitoring the security system messages, you would be blissfully unaware of intruders until you physically walk into your house.

Not only is there no fix, there is no timeline by Comcast Xfinity for a firmware patch. Rapid7 said, A software/firmware update appears to be required in order for the base station to determine how much and how long a radio failure condition should be tolerated and how quickly sensors can re-establish communications with the base station.

Rapid7s Phillip Bosco first discovered the flaws on Sept. 28; After reviewing the issues, Rapid7 attempted contact on Nov. 2 and emailed several Comcast Xfinity addresses to disclose the vulnerability. Comcast being Comcast, it didnt bother to reply. So on Nov. 23, Rapid7 handed the details over to CERT which also attempted to contact the vendor; again there was no response.

Ah, Comcastignoring the problem even as you continue to charge customers for a faulty security system wont help your image as one of the most despised companies in the USA.
The scientists at DARPA will next month detail a new program the group hopes will develop small, portable, battery-powered atomic clocks with stability, repeatability, and environmental sensitivity 1,000 times better than the current generation of atomic clocks.

On Feb. 1 DARPA will detail the Atomic Clocks with Enhanced Stability (ACES) program which will aim to develop clocks that must fit into a package about the size of a billfold and run on a quarter-watt of power. Success will require record-breaking advances that counter accuracy-eroding processes in current atomic clocks, among them variations in atomic frequencies that result from temperature fluctuations and subtle frequency differences that can occur if the power shuts down and then starts up again, DARPA stated.

+More on Network World: +

One of the main applications the ACES program wants to address is what DARPA called a large modern-day national security vulnerability: a deep and growing dependence on the Global Positioning System (GPS), not just within the military but among numerous civilian sectors of the economy.

Thats because satellite-based atomic clockswhose precision and accuracy reside in super-uniform, high-frequency oscillations of atomic energy states (typically those of cesium or rubidium atoms) rather than the mechanical oscillations of pendulums or the quartz crystals inside modern watches, cell phones and computersprovide the key reference signals that are pivotal to GPS. The longer that clocks on Earth or on aircraft can maintain extreme accuracy in the absence of satellite reference signals, the lower the impact of any loss of satellite contact, whether caused by natural forces or adversarial activities, DARPA stated.

+More on Network World: +

According to the agency, within 30 seconds of a GPS shut-down, a GPS receiver would only be able to specify that it was somewhere within an area the size of Washington, DC. An hour of GPS shutdown would expand the area of uncertainty to more than the size of Montana. It would not take long for soldiers in deserts and sailors at sea to lose their bearings; for the critical synchrony in radiofrequency, electronic and photonic signaling to disappear; and for high-precision munitions to be stripped of the astounding navigational control that has changed the character of modern warfare, DARPA stated.

All of our modern communications, navigation and electronic warfare systems, as well as our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, depend on accurate time-keeping, said program manager Robert Lutwak, who will oversee the ACES program in a statement. It will take a collaboration of teams with skillsets from diverse fields, including atomic physics, optics, photonics, microfabrication and vacuum technology to achieve the unprecedented clock stability that we seek.

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US Homeland Security wants heavy-duty IoT protection

Ex-US State Dept. worker pleads guilty to extensive sextortion, hacking and cyberstalking acts

U.S. Marshals issue telephone scam warning

IBM tapped by US intelligence agency to grow complex quantum computing technology

DARPA scheme would let high-tech systems see as never before
ELKO  The health of the county will be on all the commissioners minds as the board has its first County Board of Health meeting Wednesday.

Commissioner Delmo Andreozzi led the charge on establishing the countys health board after several workshops concerning the shortage of medical professionals in the area.

Andreozzi said the goal for the first meeting is to make sure the stakeholders are on the same page. He hopes to identify issues that can be discussed at the Board of Health meetings that will be every quarter, during a regularly scheduled commission meeting.

I really want regular reports on community health issues, he said.

This first meeting will have a PowerPoint presentation from the school districts nurses.

We want to work on becoming a healthier community, Andreozzi said.

The County Board of Health meeting will begin at 3:30 p.m.

Before the health board, the commissioners regular meeting will begin at 1:30 p.m. in Suite 102 of the Nannini Administration Building. They will be choosing a chairman and vice chairman and organizing the other boards the commissioners sit on, such as the highway, Elko Convention and Visitors Authority, museum and other boards.

The commissioners also will make appointments to the Elko County Natural Resources Management Advisory Commission, County Planning Commission and County Library Board of Trustees.

The Nevada Outdoor School is requesting $15,000 in funding.

County staff is requesting authorization to apply for a Nevada Department of Wildlife  Hunter Education 2016 Shooting Range Grant for up to $50,000 with a 25 percent local match for improvements at the County Public Shooting Range.

The commissioners will discuss any updates on the lawsuit filed concerning the sage grouse land use plan and consider the Draft Scoping Comment concerning Sagebrush Focal Areas.

The county also may donate a retired ambulance to Great Basin College that will be used for educational training.
ELKO -- As the election season begins, two local men have officially declared their candidacy for Justice of the Peace, Department B of the Elko Justice Court.

Monday morning Family Court Master Andrew Mierins was the first to file. Local businessman Dennis Parker was the second, said Elko County Clerk Carol Fosmo.

Mierins

Mierins announced his candidacy soon after the creation of the second court.

I was the first person here this morning to file my Declaration of Candidacy with the County Clerk. I made my candidacy known early to the voters of the Elko Township because I believe in openness and transparency and I wanted to give area voters the opportunity to research the issues and understand who I am and where I stand," he said.

He told the Free Press Monday that his campaign is going well and he had "great conversations" with several groups and individuals. He has received "a lot of positive feedback so far."

Mierins said the creation of a second court will allow operation to be more efficient and provide the necessary resources to take on new programs to make the community safer.

"I plan to continue meeting face-to-face with area voters to discuss these critical issues and intend to dedicate significant resources to getting my message out to the voters," he explained.

"Mierins understands that public service is a sacred trust and privilege and is committed to being a judge that is fair and respectful to all that appear before the Court. Mierins is cognizant of the need to be ever-watchful of the Court's fundamental responsibility to ensure the safety and security of the community," explained the candidate's campaign statement.

Mierins has served as Family Court Master since his appointment in 2012. He is also the specialty court judge for the Juvenile Drug Court and has served as a Justice of the Peace Pro Tempore and Municipal Judge Pro Tempore since May 2013.

Before taking the bench, he worked for five years as a criminal defense attorney in Elko County.

Before moving to Elko, Mierins was an attorney in private practice. He worked in civil and family law and business matters.

Additionally, Mierins serves as the chairman of the Continuing Legal Education Committee of the State Bar of Nevada, as a member of the Supreme Court of Nevadas Select Committee for Court Improvement, as a member of the governing board of Nevada Legal Services, as a member of the criminal justice advisory board of Great Basin College, and is a former president of the board of directors for the Family Resource Centers of Northeast Nevada.

He has also worked for several years as an adjunct instructor at Great Basin College teaching courses in government, history and criminal justice in the Social Science Department.

Mierins received his bachelor's degree from the University of New Hampshire and his law degree from the Franklin Pierce Law Center.

Parker

Dennis Parker has been the owner and operator of Parker Heating Company for over 30 years. He announced his candidacy Monday.

"He hopes to serve the community and insure that Elko will be a safe place to live and raise a family for years to come," stated the campaign press release.

Parker is a fourth generation Elko County resident, who has been involved in community and civic activities including president of the City of Elko Planning Commission, Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club.

He recently announced his retirement and, according to his statement, is "always looking for ways to improve Elko.

"His years of community involvement and successful business endeavors establish him as a man with the judgement needed for this position. He has no biases that would preclude him from being a fair and impartial judge," explained the statement.

Parker calls the justice court the people's court, stating that being an attorney is not a prerequisite and, as he does not hold this profession, he will bring a fresh perspective to the court because it handles more than criminal proceedings.

He says his business background will positively effect decisions pertaining to small claims, evictions, temporary protective orders and traffic citations.

Parker is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno.

History

The creation of a second court was a political issue for approximately three years. Judge Mason Simons notified the county on Oct. 2 that the creation of a second, full-time justice of the peace position was warranted because of caseload, county population, voter accountability, the number of search warrant applications and more. The County agreed to notify state authorities of Simons request at the Oct. 21 commission meeting.

According to Free Press records, this new position would be placed on the 2016 Election Ballot and become effective in January 2017. With the creation of a second court, there would be judicial elections every two years.

A judicial candidate can file to declare candidacy from Jan. 4-15.

The filing period for non-judicial candidates is March 7-18.
President Obama has claimed that he wants to make criminal justice reform a priority during his second term. However, he has failed to implement the one criminal justice reform he has the sole authority and power to accomplish unilaterally, without the cooperation of Congress.

It is a reform that has been urged frequently and publicly by John Gleeson, a prominent U.S. District Court judge. Gleeson has argued that criminal defendants in the U.S. justice system are being coerced into pleading guilty by federal prosecutors who threaten them with draconian prison sentences if they insist on going to trial. This so-called trial penalty, Gleeson insists, has deprived defendants of their constitutional rights to trial by jury and due process of law. It has also filled the federal prisons with people who dont need to be there.

John Gleeson is no soft-on-crime, bleeding-heart liberal. He is one of the most experienced federal prosecutors ever to become a U.S. judge in the Eastern District of New York. At the time of his appointment in 1994, Gleeson had worked for a decade in the Eastern Districts U.S. Attorneys Office. There, he served as Chief of Appeals, Chief of Special Prosecutions, Chief of Organized Crime and Chief of the Criminal Division. He directed the FBI investigation into the elusive mobster John Gotti, and helped lead the trial team that handed the Teflon Don a conviction and life sentence on federal racketeering charges.

When Gleeson started work as an assistant U.S. Attorney in 1985, approximately 74 percent of criminal cases in the federal system were resolved through a plea bargain, a process where a defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for an upper limit on his prison sentence. That means that 26 percent of criminal defendants charged with a crime elected to have their guilt or innocence determined in a jury trial. By the end of President Obamas first term in office, 97 percent  we repeat, 97 percent  of cases charged in federal courts were resolved in plea bargains.

Gleeson concluded that the U.S. criminal justice system was broken, and he was persistent in telling the Department of Justice (DOJ) what to do about it. Gleeson urged the DOJ to end its policy of requiring low-level drug offenders to plead to mandatory minimum sentences that far outweighed the severity of their crimes. Gleeson also urged the DOJ to stop charging the most serious offenses available as a means of forcing defendants to agree to plea bargains.

Defendants who rejected plea bargains, and were convicted after going to trial, are receiving decades-long mandatory prison sentences. Meanwhile, co-defendants who were charged with the same offense but accepted a plea agreement often received just a few years in prison.

Everyone who was serious about criminal justice reform recognized that when Gleeson started sounding alarms about the abuses of prosecutorial discretion, he knew what he was talking about. Everyone, that is, except Obama and his former attorney general, Eric Holder.

Obama had an opportunity during his first term in office to enact meaningful criminal justice reforms by abandoning a Bush administration policy that required federal prosecutors to charge criminal defendants with the most serious provable charge available. In 2010, the DOJ announced that federal prosecutors would continue to be subject to a charging policy, which maintains the presumption that prosecutors will charge the most serious readily provable crime.

By contrast, the DOJ charging policy in force under the Clinton administration instructed federal prosecutors to select charges based on individualized assessment of the extent to which particular charges fit the specific circumstances of the case.

The result was a continuing increase in the number of defendants pleading guilty to offenses that required them to serve mandatory prison time. By the end of Obamas first term, the federal prison population was rising while state prison populations were declining.

The charging policies that federal prosecutors are forced to follow are the one area of criminal justice reform that the president of the United States has the authority to impose unilaterally. By agreeing to follow Gleesons recommendations, Obama has the power to transform the U.S. criminal justice system overnight.

Obama continues to pay lip service to criminal justice reform by enacting half-hearted half-measures. Yet he refuses to remedy a culture of prosecutorial bullying and abuse that is ruining the U.S. criminal justice system.
Editor:

Republicans should be asking "who is the best qualified, most conservative presidential candidate who can win the general election against Hillary Clinton"? The answer should be clear -- Senator Marco Rubio.

Rubio's conservative brand puts him close to the GOP center ideologically, and his favorable ratings with Republicans are consistently strong. He's an effective debater, he has a compelling personal story (with Nevada "roots") and a great command on the issues---particularly on national security and foreign policy.

Rubio serves on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees and is the Republican presidential candidate most knowledgeable and best equipped to lead on the increasing international threat of ISIS and on the new realities of domestic terrorism.

Rubio scares Democrats in the general election by striking a favorable contrast against Hillary Clinton. Former Clinton adviser and current political pundit James "The Snake" Carville has opined that Rubio "is the only hope they have." Carville's opinion is confirmed in the most recent Fox News presidential poll (December 18) showing Hillary Clinton defeating Donald Trump by 11%, while Marco Rubio beats Hillary by 2%. Republicans should pay attention.

For a running-mate, Rubio might well select Carly Fiorina -- "whip smart", fluent on the issues, including those of defense and national security having done advisory work with the CIA, Pentagon and the National Security Agency. A "conservative outsider" with an impressive private sector career, Fiorina would also be an aggressively articulate candidate against a Hillary Clinton-led Democrat ticket.

Jim Hartman

Genoa
Dec. 31

Laurie E. Baker, 45, of Buhl, Idaho, was arrested on Lamoille Highway for DUI. Bail: $1,140



Efren Benitez-Ruvalcaba, 54, of Elko was arrested at the intersection of Idaho Street and College Avenue for DUI and headlamps not illuminated when required. Bail: $1,255



Leslie N. Bignell, 40, of Spring Creek was arrested at 384 Valley Bend for failure to appear after bail for a misdemeanor crime. Bail: $1,335



Owen Cannon, 31, of Pendleton, Oregon, was arrested on Chestnut Street for use or possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, and destroying or concealing evidence. Bail: $3,880



Danielle C. Collins, 29, of Elko was arrested at the intersection of Idaho Street and College Avenue for driving with a suspended drivers license. Bail: $355



Anthony J. Dohrmann, 41, of Weiser, Idaho, was arrested at 676 Commercial St. for failure to appear after bail for a misdemeanor crime. Bail: $375



Dwayne D. Jaramillo, 39, of Elko was arrested on South Ninth Street and Clarkson Drive for failure to appear after bail for a misdemeanor crime. Bail: $1,500



Dustin J. Johnnie, 24, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail for failure to appear after bail for a misdemeanor crime. No bail listed.



Bo J. Peppers, 38, of Spring Creek was arrested on Lamoille Highway for speeding, DUI, proof of insurance required, an open alcohol container in vehicle, failure to possess or surrender drivers license, possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, and use or under the influence of a controlled substance. Bail: $8,222



Finau T. Pikula, 29, of West Valley, Utah, was arrested on Interstate 80 for domestic battery, use or possession of drug paraphernalia, and an open container of alcohol in vehicle. Bail: $4,150



Scott W. Reutner, 52, of Elko was arrested on Elko Vista Drive for DUI and failure to maintain travel lane. Bail: $1,255
Through the centuries, and even to the present day, the faith of the Church has been communicated by music, as much as by words; the very Word, through the Church, embodied in music.  It is an essential function; it was never merely decorative. The Mass in its nature is sung, chanted; and the innumerable musical settings of the Mass are intrinsic to its meaning, to its universality, to the dimensionality: it is not just words.  I am convinced that the recovery of the musical traditions, within Holy Church, can do more to evangelize than any quarrelling with the world. For what we must do is not argue, but proclaim; and music in its nature does not argue. It proclaims.

Priests from and for the Divine Beauty

Not your everyday cup

I once shared the following quotation from David Warrens article Oh Had I Jubals Lyre on my Facebook page (that is, when I was still using FB  it might happen again someday, but for now Im enjoying a lengthy fast from social media):This statement seemed to me as resonantly unarguable as a well-played Prelude and Fugue. To my surprise, however, an argument broke out, in which it soon became evident that those who hold a position like Warrens were being accused, whether directly or implicitly, of snobbery, judgmental elitism, holier-than-thou aestheticism, pastoral callousness, and other unpleasant things.It seems to me that Warren is making a triple claim: first, that religious worship, being the sublime act of reaching toward the transcendent God in awestruck homage and receiving the benediction of His grace, is inherently musical  that music is part of the very activity (in a McLuhanite sense of the medium being the message); second, that great music is therefore a moral imperative, not a kind of window-dressing that we can take or leave; third, that the recovery of musical traditions  can do more to evangelize modern men than other approaches that have been tried and found wanting. Why is this? Men who are drowning in desacralized materialism, in the close confines of practical atheism, are in desperate need of anti-secularizing shock treatment. They need not worldly reassurance but otherworldly elevation to the Fear of Jacob. In other words, I believe that Warren is talking about the arresting, converting, and evangelizing power of supernal beauty.Given the knowledge and talent demanded by excellence in the realm of the sacred arts, it is no more surprising that the danger of pride would lurk therein than that the danger of self-indulgence or power trips would lurk among the clergy, who have special temptations in that regard. What a fools bargain if we tried to get rid of pride by getting rid of beautiful and difficult things that elicit pride and going rather for something banal and homely, about which nobody could be proud. Even worse, just as a poor man can be possessive about a spoon, so fools would be proud of their banality. The pride would have migrated to the lowest common denominator and wed be doubly cursed, with moral and artistic unworthiness.Allow me to propose seven points on which Catholics, looking to the Churchs tradition and learning from the mistakes of the past half-century, should be able to agree.1. We need to move from todays comfortably content-free religion of moralistic therapeutic Deism to traditional Catholic faith and worship in their fullness.2. This move should generally be an incremental one, guided by prudence and characterized by a patient pursuit of excellence  although never by tolerance of that which is, strictly speaking, liturgical abuse (cf.).3. In Christianity, the interior and exterior dimensions ALWAYS go together: one must have the beautiful liturgy AND the pure heart. It seems surprising that a discussion of what is objectively best, and most in accord with Church teaching and tradition, should turn towards the problem that some people pursue these things in the wrong manner or with the wrong motives. Isnt this simply a universal and timeless problem of fallen human beings? We cant settle the question of what music should be used at Mass by looking at peoples inner motivations. Rather, we must do what is rightcall people (including ourselves) to continual conversion of heart. Otherwise we risk paralysis through introspection  inaction, lest we be acting imperfectly.4. After all, a liberal/progressive Catholic (think of the self-celebrating celebrant) can drive people away from Christ and His Church just as much as an obnoxious or elitist traditionalist can do. But on the objective side, its not completely equal: anthropocentric and/or ugly liturgy willdeform the faith of the people, whereas liturgy that is theocentric and aesthetically elevated has,an inherent truth and power  regardless of the mixed degrees of sanctity and sinfulness of its ministers. In other words, it is sophistical to argue that, because some traditionalists are imperfect, therefore a traditional manner of worship is imperfect, but it is quite true to argue that a contemporary manner of worship is imperfect and therefore produces moral, intellectual, and spiritual imperfections in our contemporaries. That is why it must be guarded against where it does not exist and, where it does, phased out as soon as possible.5. Just as the Church should give people the fullness of truth, so she should give them the fullness ofThe Churchs claim to possess and to be able to give the fullness of truth is a startling and dangerous one, and yet it is true nonetheless, in spite of how it has gotten mixed up with ambition from time to time in history. Something similar is true for beauty: there is a sense in which the Church is the mother and the home of all that is beautiful, and the fact that this could be corrupted into aestheticism has nothing to do with her evangelical duty to proclaim the beauty of the Lord beautifully.6. At this point one is likely to hear the barb anything good can become an idol (implying: you lovers of tradition are idolaters of some sort), but it seems dangerous  indeed, heretical  to argue that promoting the liturgy and its associated traditions, as received, preserved, loved, and honored by the Church down through the ages, can ever be dangerousAfter all, even the Eucharist can be dangerouswhen It is received by someone in a state of mortal sin. There is nothing so good that it cannot be abused, except the divine nature itself. Nevertheless, we would never say that the Eucharist is dangerous without qualification. Nor should we say that excellence in the sacred arts, the aspiration to it and the use of it once acquired, is dangerous without qualification.7. Jesus preached in parablesto reach people through imagesto say something they wouldnt be able to get (yes, thats written in all three Synoptic Gospels, and it always makes people uncomfortable). In the Churchs Tradition the Logos is preached in a way that makes it clear that it IS the Logos and not a mirror held up to our own philosophies or lifestyles, a way that makes it possible to accept the Logos as our salvationor to reject the Logos as an imposition on our disordered freedom.In its superabundant language of signs that strain their own boundaries and push the human mind to the very edge of rationality, the Latin liturgical heritage is and must be alien in many ways toof us  whether European or American, African or Asian. Its symbolic and musical languages, its hallowed formulae and sacred gestures, speak a language that has always transcended the quotidian customs of any group of people, and rightly so. For it is thus (and only thus) that we are all drawn into that supranational unity called the Catholic Church, a process that is painful, demanding, and liberating for every earthly creature, stretching and reconfiguring us all in various (perhaps different and complementary) ways.If the Holy Mass had ever been merely European, an expression of this or that aesthetic form common in Europe at any given time, it would have been incapable of forming the Mystical Body of Christ and extending its visible and invisible dimensions through missions to every tribe and tongue and people and nation. In fact, it would have been something equivalent to opera, or cinema, or whatever else happens to be our favorite way of entertaining ourselves. The liturgy is most decidedly not any of these, nor has it ever been. Who owns Gregorian chant? For whom is the mystical oblation of the God-Man a matter-of-fact reality? Do Gothic chasubles and zucchetti belong anymore to the Italians, French, and Germans than to Sub-saharan Africa or Kazakhstan? Even in the beginning, the earliest Roman faithful surely trembled in awe as the sacred mysteries were enacted before them. The Jewish converts themselves, no strangers to the awesome worship of the Temple, would have trembled when they heard St. Cyril of Jerusalems catechetical homilies before their baptism.The liturgy is always and everywhere, by the grace of God, aand never just a paltry artifact of history whose richness can be reduced to a particular cultural aesthetic. Because it must immerse everyone in that mystical reality that is the whole Body of Christ worshipping together in spirit and truth, it will always do so by being alien to the daily lives of everyone and every time  precisely in order to infuse into that daily life a heavenly grace and blessing from the Lords holy and mystical altar.
Gun violence has taken a heartbreaking toll on too many communities across the country. Over the past decade in America, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence  and millions more have been the victim of assaults, robberies, and other crimes involving a gun. Many of these crimes were committed by people who never should have been able to purchase a gun in the first place. Over the same period, hundreds of thousands of other people in our communities committed suicide with a gun and nearly half a million people suffered other gun injuries. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been shot to death protecting their communities. And too many children are killed or injured by firearms every year, often by accident. The vast majority of Americansincluding the vast majority of gun ownersbelieve we must take sensible steps to address these horrible tragedies.

The President and Vice President are committed to using every tool at the Administrations disposal to reduce gun violence. Some of the gaps in our countrys gun laws can only be fixed through legislation, which is why the President continues to call on Congress to pass the kind of commonsense gun safety reforms supported by a majority of the American people. And while Congress has repeatedly failed to take action and pass laws that would expand background checks and reduce gun violence, today, building on the significant steps that have already been taken over the past several years, the Administration is announcing a series of commonsense executive actions designed to:

1. Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks.

 The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesnt matter where you conduct your businessfrom a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If youre in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks.

 ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity.

 Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history records and criminal dispositions, information on persons disqualified because of a mental illness, and qualifying crimes of domestic violence.

 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient. The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. The FBI will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process these background checks.

2. Make our communities safer from gun violence.

 The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws.

 The Presidents FY2017 budget will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws.

 ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.

 ATF is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit.

 The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorneys Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts.

3. Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system.

 The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care.

 The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons.

 The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons.

4. Shape the future of gun safety technology.

 The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology.

 The President has also directed the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety.

Congress should support the Presidents request for resources for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws, as well as a new $500 million investment to address mental health issues.

Because we all must do our part to keep our communities safe, the Administration is also calling on States and local governments to do all they can to keep guns out of the wrong hands and reduce gun violence. It is also calling on private-sector leaders to follow the lead of other businesses that have taken voluntary steps to make it harder for dangerous individuals to get their hands on a gun. In the coming weeks, the Administration will engage with manufacturers, retailers, and other private-sector leaders to explore what more they can do.

New Actions by the Federal Government

Keeping Guns Out of the Wrong Hands Through Background Checks

The most important thing we can do to prevent gun violence is to make sure those who would commit violent acts cannot get a firearm in the first place. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which was created by Congress to prevent guns from being sold to prohibited individuals, is a critical tool in achieving that goal. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the background check system has prevented more than 2 million guns from getting into the wrong hands. We know that making the system more efficient, and ensuring that it has all appropriate records about prohibited purchasers, will help enhance public safety. Today, the Administration is announcing the following executive actions to ensure that all gun dealers are licensed and run background checks, and to strengthen the background check system itself:

 Clarify that it doesnt matter where you conduct your businessfrom a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If youre in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks. Background checks have been shown to keep guns out of the wrong hands, but too many gun salesparticularly online and at gun showsoccur without basic background checks. Today, the Administration took action to ensure that anyone who is engaged in the business of selling firearms is licensed and conducts background checks on their customers. Consistent with court rulings on this issue, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has clarified the following principles:

-- A person can be engaged in the business of dealing in firearms regardless of the location in which firearm transactions are conducted. For example, a person can be engaged in the business of dealing in firearms even if the person only conducts firearm transactions at gun shows or through the Internet. Those engaged in the business of dealing in firearms who utilize the Internet or other technologies must obtain a license, just as a dealer whose business is run out of a traditional brick-and-mortar store.

-- Quantity and frequency of sales are relevant indicators. There is no specific threshold number of firearms purchased or sold that triggers the licensure requirement. But it is important to note that even a few transactions, when combined with other evidence, can be sufficient to establish that a person is engaged in the business. For example, courts have upheld convictions for dealing without a license when as few as two firearms were sold or when only one or two transactions took place, when other factors also were present.

-- There are criminal penalties for failing to comply with these requirements. A person who willfully engages in the business of dealing in firearms without the required license is subject to criminal prosecution and can be sentenced up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000. Dealers are also subject to penalties for failing to conduct background checks before completing a sale.

 Require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust or corporation. The National Firearms Act imposes restrictions on sales of some of the most dangerous weapons, such as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. But because of outdated regulations, individuals have been able to avoid the background check requirement by applying to acquire these firearms and other items through trusts, corporations, and other legal entities. In fact, the number of these applications has increased significantly over the yearsfrom fewer than 900 applications in the year 2000 to more than 90,000 applications in 2014. ATF is finalizing a rule that makes clear that people will no longer be able to avoid background checks by buying NFA guns and other items through a trust or corporation.

 Ensure States are providing records to the background check system, and work cooperatively with jurisdictions to improve reporting. Congress has prohibited specific categories of people from buying gunsfrom convicted felons to users of illegal drugs to individuals convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence. In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, Congress also created incentives for States to make as many relevant records as possible accessible to NICS. Over the past three years, States have increased the number of records they make accessible by nearly 70 percent. To further encourage this reporting, the Attorney General has written a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history records and criminal dispositions, information on persons disqualified for mental health reasons, and qualifying crimes of domestic violence. The Administration will begin a new dialogue with States to ensure the background check system is as robust as possible, which is a public safety imperative.

 Make the background check system more efficient and effective. In 2015, NICS received more than 22.2 million background check requests, an average of more than 63,000 per day. By law, a gun dealer can complete a sale to a customer if the background check comes back clean or has taken more than three days to complete. But features of the current system, which was built in the 1990s, are outdated. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will take the following steps to ensure NICS operates more efficiently and effectively to keep guns out of the wrong hands:

-- FBI will hire more than 230 additional NICS examiners and other staff members to assist with processing mandatory background checks. This new hiring will begin immediately and increase the existing workforce by 50 percent. This will reduce the strain on the NICS system and improve its ability to identify dangerous people who are prohibited from buying a gun before the transfer of a firearm is completed.

-- FBI has partnered with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) to modernize NICS. Although NICS has been routinely upgraded since its launch in 1998, the FBI is committed to making the system more efficient and effective, so that as many background checks as possible are fully processed within the three-day period before a dealer can legally sell a gun even if a background check is not complete. The improvements envisioned by FBI and USDS include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to improve overall response time and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to purchase a firearm.

Making Our Communities Safer from Gun Violence

In order to improve public safety, we need to do more to ensure smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws and make sure that criminals and other prohibited persons cannot get their hands on lost or stolen weapons. The Administration is therefore taking the following actions:

 Ensure smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws. In a call earlier today, the Attorney General discussed the importance of todays announcements and directed the Nations 93 U.S. Attorneys across the country to continue to focus their resourcesas they have for the past several years under the Departments Smart on Crime initiativeon the most impactful cases, including those targeting violent offenders, illegal firearms traffickers, and dangerous individuals who bypass the background check system to acquire weapons illegally. During the call, the Attorney General also emphasized ongoing initiatives to assist communities in combating violent crime, including ATFs efforts to target the worst of the worst gun crimes. These efforts will also complement the following actions announced today:

-- The Presidents budget for FY2017 will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators who can help enforce our gun laws, including the measures announced today. Strategic and impactful enforcement will help take violent criminals off the street, deter other unlawful activity, and prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands.

-- ATF is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN). The NIBIN database includes ballistic evidence that can be used by analysts and investigators to link violent crimes across jurisdictions and to track down shooters who prey on our communities. In February 2016, ATF is standing up the National NIBIN Correlation and Training Centerwhich will ultimately provide NIBIN matching services at one national location, rather than requiring local police departments to do that work themselves. The Center will provide consistent and capable correlation services, making connections between ballistic crime scene evidence and crime guns locally, regionally, and nationally. These enhancements will support ATFs crime gun intelligence and enforcement efforts, particularly in communities most affected by violent crime.

-- ATF has established an Internet Investigations Center (IIC) staffed with federal agents, legal counsel, and investigators to track illegal online firearms trafficking and to provide actionable intelligence to agents in the field. The IIC has already identified a number of significant traffickers operating over the Internet. This work has led to prosecutions against individuals or groups using the dark net to traffic guns to criminals or attempting to buy firearms illegally online.

 Ensure that dealers notify law enforcement about the theft or loss of their guns. Under current law, federal firearms dealers and other licensees must report when a gun from their inventory has been lost or stolen. The regulations are ambiguous, however, about who has this responsibility when a gun is lost or stolen in transit. Many lost and stolen guns end up being used in crimes. Over the past five years, an average of 1,333 guns recovered in criminal investigations each year were traced back to a licensee that claimed it never received the gun even though it was never reported lost or stolen either. Today, ATF issued a final rule clarifying that the licensee shipping a gun is responsible for notifying law enforcement upon discovery that it was lost or stolen in transit.

 Issue a memo directing every U.S. Attorneys Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts. In the event of an emergency, victims of domestic violence should call 911 or otherwise contact state or local law enforcement officials, who have a broader range of options for responding to these crimes. To provide an additional resource for state, local, and tribal law enforcement and community groups focused on domestic violence, the Attorney General is issuing a memo directing U.S. Attorneys Offices around the country to engage in renewed efforts to coordinate with these groups to help combat domestic violence and to prevent prohibited persons from obtaining firearms.

Increase Mental Health Treatment and Reporting to the Background Check System

The Administration is committed to improving care for Americans experiencing mental health issues. In the last seven years, our country has made extraordinary progress in expanding mental health coverage for millions of Americans. This includes the Affordable Care Acts end to insurance company discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, required coverage of mental health and substance use disorder services in the individual and small group markets, and an expansion of mental health and substance use disorder parity policies, all of which are estimated to help more than 60 million Americans. About 13.5 million more Americans have gained Medicaid coverage since October 2013, significantly improving access to mental health care. And thanks to more than $100 million in funding from the Affordable Care Act, community health centers have expanded behavioral health services for nearly 900,000 people nationwide over the past two years. We must continue to remove the stigma around mental illness and its treatmentand make sure that these individuals and their families know they are not alone. While individuals with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, incidents of violence continue to highlight a crisis in Americas mental health system. In addition to helping people get the treatment they need, we must make sure we keep guns out of the hands of those who are prohibited by law from having them. Today, the Administration is announcing the following steps to help achieve these goals:

 Dedicate significant new resources to increase access to mental health care. Despite our recent significant gains, less than half of children and adults with diagnosable mental health problems receive the treatment they need. To address this, the Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to help engage individuals with serious mental illness in care, improve access to care by increasing service capacity and the behavioral health workforce, and ensure that behavioral health care systems work for everyone. This effort would increase access to mental health services to protect the health of children and communities, prevent suicide, and promote mental health as a top priority.

 Include information from the Social Security Administration in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm. Current law prohibits individuals from buying a gun if, because of a mental health issue, they are either a danger to themselves or others or are unable to manage their own affairs. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to ensure that appropriate information in its records is reported to NICS. The reporting that SSA, in consultation with the Department of Justice, is expected to require will cover appropriate records of the approximately 75,000 people each year who have a documented mental health issue, receive disability benefits, and are unable to manage those benefits because of their mental impairment, or who have been found by a state or federal court to be legally incompetent. The rulemaking will also provide a mechanism for people to seek relief from the federal prohibition on possessing a firearm for reasons related to mental health.

 Remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information to the background check system. Although States generally report criminal history information to NICS, many continue to report little information about individuals who are prohibited by Federal law from possessing or receiving a gun for specific mental health reasons. Some State officials raised concerns about whether such reporting would be precluded by the Privacy Rule issued under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Today, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a final rule expressly permitting certain HIPAA covered entities to provide to the NICS limited demographic and other necessary information about these individuals.

Shaping the Future of Gun Safety Technology

Tens of thousands of people are injured or killed by firearms every yearin many cases by guns that were sold legally but then stolen, misused, or discharged accidentally. Developing and promoting technology that would help prevent these tragedies is an urgent priority. America has done this in many other areasfrom making cars safer to improving the tablets and phones we use every day. We know that researchers and engineers are already exploring ideas for improving gun safety and the tracing of lost or stolen guns. Millions of dollars have already been invested to support research into concepts that range from fingerprint scanners to radio-frequency identification to microstamping technology.

As the single largest purchaser of firearms in the country, the Federal Government has a unique opportunity to advance this research and ensure that smart gun technology becomes a realityand it is possible to do so in a way that makes the public safer and is consistent with the Second Amendment. Today, the President is taking action to further this work in the following way:

 Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security to take two important steps to promote smart gun technology.

-- Increase research and development efforts. The Presidential Memorandum directs the departments to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology that would reduce the frequency of accidental discharge or unauthorized use of firearms, and improve the tracing of lost or stolen guns. Within 90 days, these agencies must prepare a report outlining a research-and-development strategy designed to expedite the real-world deployment of such technology for use in practice.

-- Promote the use and acquisition of new technology. The Presidential Memorandum also directs the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety. In connection with these efforts, the departments will consult with other agencies that acquire firearms and take appropriate steps to consider whether including such technology in specifications for acquisition of firearms would be consistent with operational needs.
Prime Healthcare Services today announced that it has donated Glendora Community Hospital, a 128-bed bed acute care hospital located in Glendora, California, to the Prime Healthcare Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public charity. The hospital was donated free of any existing debt.

The move will allow Glendora Community Hospital to broaden its reach in the community, and continue to serve all members of the East San Gabriel Valley and beyond in a compassionate and caring manner.

"Prime Healthcare believes that exceptional healthcare should be part of every community," said Prem Reddy, M.D., FACC, FCCP, Chairman, President and CEO of Prime Healthcare Services and founder of the Foundation. "The decision to convert Glendora Community Hospital to a not-for-profit hospital was based on our desire to better serve the residents who rely on the hospital for quality health care."

"With Glendora Community Hospital becoming a non-profit hospital, we look forward to continuing our mission of providing quality and compassionate care to our patients and community," said Oliver Solomon, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Glendora Community Hospital.

The Prime Healthcare Foundation, founded by Dr. Reddy and his family in 2008, is dedicated to improving access to healthcare and increasing educational opportunities in healthcare. The Foundation has donated millions of dollars to support free community clinics, non-profit organizations, scholarships and academic programs in healthcare.

Including Glendora Community Hospital, the Foundation owns and operates eight hospitals in California and Texas. The hospitals were all donated to the Foundation debt free and have transformed into successful community assets. The Foundation maintains net assets of more than $700 million dollars, entirely donated by Dr. Reddy.

With an initial contribution of $40 million, the Prime Healthcare Foundation is also supporting a new not-for-profit medical school, the California University of Science and Medicine, in San Bernardino County.
Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) will move into a new office in Los Angeles today to start 2016, providing the nonprofit veteran's service organization with its most prominent presence in the greater Los Angeles area.

The office provides WWP's growing team an opportunity to serve better the thousands of wounded veterans that call Southern California home. The US Census estimates there are more than 330,000 veterans in Los Angeles County alone.

WWP hosted at least 50 events for injured veterans and their families in the past six months in the Los Angeles area alone. These events included trips to Los Angeles Dodgers and Kings games, concerts, dinners, and a visit to a shooting range. These events help veterans realize they are not alone in their recovery from battle wounds, whether those injuries are visible or invisible.

WWP's vision is to foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation's history. To accomplish that, WWP goes where the veterans are located. The Los Angeles location will become the 22nd office to open nationwide, joining San Diego and Sacramento offices in California.

"We want to reach the most injured veterans, in the most communities possible," said Steve Nardizzi, chief executive officer at WWP. "Los Angeles provides new opportunities for us as an organization to serve tens of thousands of wounded service members who face unique challenges daily."

WWP serves more than 81,000 injured veterans nationwide, as well as more than 14,000 family members and caregivers. Through 20 uniquely structured programs and services, WWP helps wounded veterans become more engaged in their community, helps their mind and body heal, and encourages economic empowerment.

WWP recently launched Warrior Care Network (WCN) with four academic medical centers across the country, including Operation Mend Program at University of California, Los Angeles. WCN will create individualized mental health care for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injuries (TBI). WCN represents a $100 million investment between WWP and its partner academic medical centers.

Wounded Warrior Project strives to adapt to the needs of today's generation of injured veterans. The 2015 annual WWP Alumni Survey details some of the challenges and successes of wounded service members.
Chromatrap, a business unit of Porvair Sciences, has announced that it will be the Lead Sponsor at the prestigious Epigenetics in Drug Discovery conference to be held in Cambridge, UK from 26th-27th January 2016.

Viewed as a new frontier in drug discovery, rapid progress has been made in enhancing understanding of epigenetic mechanisms of both new and existing drugs. With the processes that control epigenomic function providing new opportunities, epigenetics targets are enabling the discovery of novel drugs.

At the conference - Dr Amy Beynon will deliver a presentation highlighting the use of new Chromatrap solid state ChIP technology for assaying methylated and hydroxymethylated DNA marks in addition to Histone modifications and the use of Chromatrap kits for ChIP-sequencing.
Researchers will soon undertake one of the largest-ever long-term clinical trials of a system designed to help regulate blood sugar levels of individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus. If the so-called artificial pancreas system performs in patients as hoped, it could lead to commercial trials and eventual regulatory approval in the United States and abroad.

With $12.7 million in support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the system developed by a team of researchers from the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) will be tested in 240 patients at nine sites in the U.S. and Europe. The two six-month trials will begin in early 2016, in collaboration with a half dozen other institutional partners.

Already one of the most common chronic disorders, the incidence of diabetes is increasing worldwide. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.25 million Americans have type 1 diabetes. In people living with the disease, the body's immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas so that little or none of the insulin needed to regulate blood glucose is produced. Diabetics must vigilantly monitor blood glucose levels and, when necessary, administer doses of insulin either via needle injections or infusion pump. Failure to maintain proper blood glucose levels through insulin management can cause life-threatening hyperglycemia, or low blood sugar, among other complications.

"To be ultimately successful as an optimal treatment for diabetes, the artificial pancreas needs to prove its safety and efficacy in long-term pivotal trials in the patient's natural environment," said principle investigator Boris Kovatchev, director of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology. "Our foremost goal is to establish a new diabetes treatment paradigm: the artificial pancreas is not a single-function device; it is an adaptable, wearable network surrounding the patient in a digital treatment ecosystem."

Through a marriage of control engineering with medical practice and behavioral science, the artificial pancreas system is designed to supply the appropriate levels of insulin by not only reacting to changes in the body, but accurately predicting blood glucose levels in advance.

The artificial pancreas is not a replica organ; it is an automated insulin delivery system designed to mimic a healthy person's glucose regulating function. The closed-loop system consists of an insulin pump, continuous glucose monitor placed under the user's skin, and advanced control algorithm software embedded in a smart phone that provides the engineering brains, signaling how much insulin the pump should deliver to the patient based on a range of variables including meals consumed, physical activity, sleep, stress, and metabolism.

"The idea is that this can lead to an improved quality of life for individuals with this disease -- not a solution to diabetes, but a means to really extend the quality of their healthful living," said co-principal investigator and engineering lead on the project Francis J. Doyle III, dean and John A. & Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Harvard SEAS.

In the first of the two trials planned as part of the new NIH-funded study, 240 patients with type 1 diabetes will test the safety and effectiveness of the artificial pancreas for six months while going about their normal daily routines. The control-to-range artificial pancreas system for this trial was developed at UVA and is now licensed to TypeZero Technologies. The artificial pancreas will be compared with a standard insulin pump on two key measures: how well blood-sugar levels are controlled and whether the risk of hypoglycemia is reduced.

The second trial will follow 180 patients who completed the first study for an additional six months to test the advanced adaptive control algorithm developed by Doyle's Harvard team. That system is based on zone model-predictive control (zone MPC), a strategy originally developed by Doyle and colleagues in a seminal paper published in 1996. Rather than regulating glucose levels to a specific point in the same way that a home thermostat keeps the room temperature at a precise setting, zone-MPC defines an acceptable zone for an individual's glucose levels and controls variables to stay within that range.

"The biggest challenge in the design of the artificial pancreas is the inherent uncertainty in the human body," Doyle noted. "Day to day, hour to hour, the various stresses that impact the human body change the way it responds to insulin-controlling glucose. Physical stresses, anxiety, hormonal swings will all change that balance. To be able to control for those factors we need to see longer intervals of data. This is the first trial where we'll be looking at multi-month intervals of time with cohorts of subjects where we can actually see a long enough window to learn those patterns, to adapt and fine-tune the algorithms, and to improve the overall level of glucose control."

In addition to UVA and Harvard, the institutions that comprise the International Diabetes Closed Loop Consortium and will participate in the clinical trials include: Mount Sinai Hospital, New York; the Mayo Clinic; Stanford University; the University of Colorado; the University of Padua, Italy; Regional University Hospital Center of Montpellier, France; the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam; William Sansum Diabetes Center, Santa Barbara; with coordination by the JAEB Center for Health Research in Florida.

The UVA/Harvard award is the largest commitment by NIH under a $20 million program the agency announced in 2014 to fund advanced clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of artificial pancreas systems. The goal is to acquire the data necessary to satisfy requirements for regulatory approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other international agencies. NIH announced awards to three other teams earlier this year to: the University of Cambridge ($6.4 million); the Diabetes Wireless Artificial Pancreas Consortium (DREAM) comprised of diabetes centers in Germany, Israel, and Slovenia ($2 million); and Boston University/Massachusetts General Hospital ($1.5 million).

For Doyle, the launch of the clinical trials is the latest milestone in a research pursuit now in its twentieth year. Early in his career, he co-authored one of the first papers on the systems control aspects of a hypothetical artificial pancreas. From theoretical mathematical modeling to clinical testing, his research group has been building on that work ever since, as the technology has evolved from open-loop studies with humans in the loop to closed-loop systems embedded on a chip.
Stevens Institute of Technology (Stevens) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) were recently funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to use policy flight simulators - pioneered by Stevens--to simulate use of the Transitional Care Model, developed by Penn Nursing. Through this collaborative project, Stevens and Penn Nursing will use floor-to-ceiling surround screens to interactively estimate health benefits and delivery costs, and create an evidence-based model to aid decision-making. The goal is to accelerate decisions to implement the TCM.

The Transitional Care Model addresses the negative effects associated with common breakdowns in care when older adults with complex needs move from an acute care setting to their home or other care setting. It also prepares patients and family caregivers to more effectively manage changes in health associated with multiple chronic illness. Despite much evidence showing the effectiveness of the transitional care model to reduce costs and increase quality of care, health systems, payers and purchasers have been slow to adopt it.

"Chronic illness is a major health challenge confronting millions of older adults and their family caregivers, and will continue to have a major impact on healthcare delivery for the foreseeable future," said Mary Naylor, PhD, FAAN, RN, the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology, and Director of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health at Penn Nursing." Our team hopes to show through this simulation the efficiency and effectiveness of the transitional care model in response to the challenges faced by health care organizations in the United States."

Policy flight simulators fuse aspects of multiple scientific disciplines with visualization to provide decision makers with a comprehensive understanding of the consequences of interventions on each major stakeholder. By actively engaging a diverse range of decision makers in the design and pilot testing of the simulation, researchers will create a model that anticipates and aligns with emerging health care delivery and payment models, and is customizable to local contextual factors.

"Our modeling and simulation methods will enable payers to fly the future before they invest," said William B. Rouse, PhD, the Alexander Crombie Humphreys Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises and Director of the Center for Complex Systems and Enterprises at Stevens. "Our experience has been that once decision makers get to 'live' the capabilities of TCM, they will willingly participate in the program, resulting in enormous healthcare benefits."

Despite TCM's proven value, it has been difficult to convince decision makers to implement this model. Major barriers to widespread implementation include:

perceptions that the model works only in randomized clinical trials;

it is complex and costly;

the model requires upfront investment that benefit others downstream; and

it is not adaptable to local issues.

"Time and time again we struggle with the challenge of spreading evidence-based models that have the potential to improve health and healthcare," said RWJF director Lori Melichar. "By combining cutting-edge design and technology with the science of decision-making, the Foundation is exploring the question of whether simulation tools can accelerate the spread of programs like the Transitional Care Model that are proven to work."

This project will provide a robust case study on the development and application of the simulation, which will generate key lessons to aid decision making in diverse organizations to adopt or adapt a range of evidence-based interventions.
Bigg Boss 16: Who is Likely to Get Evicted in the Second Week? Find Out Here
Artur Mas speaks to the press this week. A. Garcia

Acting Catalan premier Artur Mas is already counting on there being new elections in Catalonia, thus ruling out an agreement with anti-capitalist group Candidatura dUnitat Popular (CUP), the party that holds the key to power in the region.

On Monday I will sign the decree calling new elections, Mas announced on Tuesday morning in Barcelona. The acting premier added that he would, nonetheless, run the clock down on the legal time frame that the CUP has to change its mind and decide to support his investiture as head of parliament.

The political tug-of-war in Catalonia this week prompted one high-profile resignation, but it is not the one that many people were expecting.

Another issue up in the air is what happens to the breakaway process that began late last year

Mas has been unable to secure enough support for his reinstatement in the more than three months since Catalonia held elections, but this week he has insisted that he will not step aside in favor of a consensus candidate.

Instead, the one leaving is the leader of CUP  the fringe party that is withholding the support Mas so desperately needs to get sworn in and form a government.

This partys 10 elected deputies hold the key to power in the region after Mass own separatist coalition failed to attract enough votes for an absolute majority at the September 27 election.

And in an added twist to the tale, the man who vowed that CUP would never back Mas is walking away because his party has decided to do precisely what he promised.

Antonio Banos, who ran as top of the list for the anti-establishment CUP  a left-wing alliance of organizations that espouse Catalan independence, anti-capitalism and ecofeminism  announced his decision to give up his congressional seat on Monday.

In a public letter, Banos made it clear that the CUPs decision not to support Mass reinstatement bid is the reason for his departure.

I am leaving because I feel unable to defend the position adopted by the majority. This political position is at odds with the ideas and goals that led me to run as a candidate at the September 27 election, he wrote.

Banos had stated that his party would never, never, never help Mas become regional chief again

Yet during the campaign, and even afterwards, Banos had passionately stated that his party would never, never, never help Mas become regional chief again, due to the corruption cases affecting his Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) group and because of the social cuts effected by the liberal premier during his earlier term in office.

In his letter, Banos claims to see things with greater clarity now.

Once a pro-independence majority was obtained on September 27, I understood that our explicit mandate was to begin the break with the [Spanish] state without further ado, he writes. That is the reason why I was among the proponents of accepting the agreement with [Mass coalition] Junts pel Si and voting in its candidate.

Josep Rull (left) and Artur Mas. Massimiliano Minocri

But the CUP decided not to do this following a series of assemblies that came to a head this past Sunday with an internal vote in which 36 members voted against supporting Mas, 30 voted in favor and one person abstained.

The deep division within the left-wing alliance could mean more CUP resignations in the coming days. In a release following Banos departure, its leaders said that we know that we could not please everyone yesterday [Sunday]... But for us this is just a bend in the road, one of many in our firm commitment to the independence of the social, feminist and ecologist Catalan Countries.

In the meantime, there are only five days left before a new premier can be sworn in. If the January 10 deadline comes and goes, Catalonia will be forced to hold a fresh election in March  a scenario that separatists have been trying to avoid. It is unclear whether the CUP would run again as such, or for that matter whether Mas own separatist coalition, Junts pel Si, would be able to hold itself together for a new run.

The Catalan Republican Left (ERC), a veteran party that was one of the main members of the Junts pel Si coalition, may want to go it alone in a new election. Its leader, Oriol Junqueras, has even been named by CUP as a candidate that they would support if he were to step up for the job of Catalan premier. And surveys show that ERC could beat CDC if a new ballot were to be held.

For us this is just a bend in the road, one of many in our firm commitment to the independence of the social, feminist and ecologist Catalan Countries

CUP leadership

But so far, Mass CDC is refusing to produce any new nominees to end the political gridlock. Instead, it has gone on the offensive, accusing the CUP of becoming the great ally of the [Spanish] states powers-that-be in their bid to kick out the premier of Catalonia.

Josep Rull, coordinator general of CDC, said about the CUP that ideology, socialism and revolution took precedence over independence. He also accused the anti-capitalists of a lack of maturity.

Their rejection of Mas is a rejection of what CDC represents, added Rull, whose liberal partys pro-business values are at odds with the CUPs own socialist vision. If Mas goes, the message is that the CUP with its 10 deputies is leading the process, rather than the force that obtained 62 deputies. It sends out the unequivocal message that a minority is taking charge of the process.

While time is running out for an 11th-hour deal that would prevent a new election of unpredictable results, another issue up in the air is what happens to the breakaway process that began late last year, when Junts pel Si and CUP were still working together.

A separatist motion passed by the Catalan parliament on November 9 announced the beginning of this break with Spain, and called on lawmakers to produce legislation to create a new Catalan social security and treasury. There was an 18-month deadline to create the necessary state structures to declare full independence, and a warning that Catalonia would not heed the rulings of the Spanish Constitutional Court.

But with no Catalan government to push these measures forward, the plans are now on hold. Rull, however, said that we still think that the best option for Catalonia is independence. The process is not buried.

English version by Susana Urra.
Jeffrey Marks, the president and general manager of WDBJ (Channel 7) who guided the station through the shock, mourning and recovery that followed the on-air killings of two Channel 7 employees last year, will leave Roanokes top-rated television station for a role with its new corporate owner.

Marks said he will become director of talent development for Gray Television, the Atlanta-based media company that is buying WDBJ and several other television stations from Schurz Communications of Mishawaka, Indiana. The sale of the stations could be complete by Feb. 1, according to a Schurz executive.

Marks said he decided to stay at WDBJ through the sale. In his new job, he said that he will help recruit and develop new talent for Grays stations, which will number 50 after the sale. He plans to stay in Roanoke for the time being and will work from home and on the road.

I expect Ill be working out of my briefcase, he said. Its a big job, and one I think I will enjoy. Gray wants to step up their recruitment of talent and development of talent. This is something I can really sink my teeth into.

Marks, 63, has been the boss at WDBJ since 2007 and is just the fourth general manager in the 60-year history of Roanokes CBS affiliate. His leadership came during a tumultuous time for news organizations, including broadcast outlets, as more digital offerings pried eyeballs away from traditional newscasts. WDBJ was also hit with a record penalty from the Federal Communications Commission after a 2012 newscast included a televised image from a website that briefly showed male nudity. WDBJ has appealed the FCC fine.

Still, nothing could compare to the tragedy that unfolded on Aug. 26 when reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were shot and killed by a former WDBJ employee during a live segment aired on the News 7 Mornin  broadcast.

Following the deaths of Parker and Ward, Marks became a national voice for WDBJs anguish. He conducted interviews with dozens of national media outlets that camped in Channel 7s parking lot, spoke at memorial services and continued to make sure the station produced daily newscasts while reporters and co-workers processed their grief, sometimes during emotional broadcasts.

When August 26 happened, I was so thankful to have him there, said Marci Burdick, senior vice president of broadcasting for Schurz. Burdick praised Marks ability to manage all of the external forces, all while never taking his eye off the way the staff was feeling inside. He never thought about himself, it was always about the staff. Thats the mark of a true leader.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, who was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame last year, Marks came to Roanoke from WAGT in Augusta, Georgia, in July 2007. His broadcasting career began in 1971, when he was a student at the University of Kentucky, and he has been a radio reporter, TV news producer, editorial producer and general manager. He was an executive news producer at WJLA in Washington, D.C. and worked at stations in New York, New Jersey and Maine before joining Schurz in 2005.

Marks also presided over a transitional period for WDBJ, the longtime leader in the Roanoke-Lynchburg TV market. The station saw the departures of longtime anchorman Keith Humphry, sports director Mike Stevens, news director Amy Morris and other veteran reporters. Marks 2011 hiring of then-23-year-old Chris Hurst as co-anchor alongside Jean Jadhon at the signature 6 p.m. newscast was a surprise move at the time.

Now, four and a half years later, WDBJ is still the market leader in broadcast news. The stations newscasts are the most-watched from morning until night.

Kevin Latek, a senior vice president for Gray Television, said the WDBJ job will be advertised after acquisition of the Schurz stations is completed. He said that Marks experience will benefit his company, which will expand from 30 markets in the United States to 50 after the deal.

News is incredibly important to us, and we want to marry his skills with our needs, Latek said. Were a company thats expanding, and we want to make sure we keep up with training talent as we should. Jeff has decades of experience in television and television news. Were grateful hes not ready to retire yet.

Marks has also been active in Roanokes charitable and cultural circles. He has chaired the boards of United Way of Roanoke Valley and Opera Roanoke and has been on the board of the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Ive never had so much career enjoyment as Ive had here, Marks said. That stands in stark contrast with the last five months. Its really hard to balance that out. Its still enjoyable but the meaning has changed. Everything has taken on a new perspective.
The 2015 Three Magi parade in Madrid. Samuel Sanchez

The magic of Christmas lies with children, who will come out in force on Tuesday evening to watch the traditional parade of the Three Kings. In Spain, it is these biblical characters who bring presents to good little boys and girls on the night of January 5, and their nocturnal home visits are preceded by street parades across the country.

But while kids enjoy these simple joys, grown-ups will continue to argue over controversial new elements that have been introduced into the tradition by several local governments.

The debate is particularly heated in Madrid, where three districts (San Blas, Ciudad Lineal and Puente de Vallecas) have decided to let women play the role of the Kings of Orient.

In a Malaga village, 100 volunteers have been working around the clock to repair four floats that were set on fire

While the media first reported that there would now be Queens of Orient in Madrid, it later emerged that the participating women would in fact be dressing as male monarchs. This in turn led some opposition politicians to question the entire point of the exercise.

We support giving women leading roles, but taking a woman and dressing her up as a man... were not quite sure what this is trying to prove, said Mar Espinar, the Socialist spokesperson for cultural affairs. We cannot say we agree to disguising women as men, when we ourselves demanded that King Balthazar should be played by a black man rather than a white man with black face paint.

Many cities have been grappling with this latter issue, which immigrant groups say represents a clear case of racism. In Pamplona, for the first time ever this year the man described in the Bible as a Babylonian scholar who brought gifts to the baby Jesus will be played by a black man.

The Socialist Consuelo Cruz says it is racist to have a white man play a black one. Bernardo Perez

Our demand is to be able to represent ourselves, says Consuelo Cruz, a Colombian-born Spaniard who ran in the December elections with the Socialist Party. How would people feel if we got a black man in white face paint to play Santa Claus? They would laugh, they would say how ridiculous, how absurd.

A reconverted VIP area

Another cause for friction in Madrid is the fact that Mayor Manuela Carmena, of the leftist coalition Ahora Madrid, has converted the VIP area into an area for people with disabilities. Until now, these seats, which benefit from great views of the parade, were reserved for the mayors family and for the children and grandchildren of leading personalities from the fields of finance and culture.

In another widely debated decision, Madrid authorities denied children of a religious school the right to participate in their local parade in Carabanchel on the grounds that the school segregates students by gender, and thus violates non-discrimination principles.

And if the human element in the Cabalgata de Reyes did not provide enough fodder for debate, the use of animals has become another source of grief.

How would people feel if we got a black man in white face paint to play Santa Claus?

Consuelo Cruz, Socialist Party

The Three Magi traditionally ride on camels where authorities can provide them, or else on horseback  or even on mules where no other pack animal is available.

But this year, there will be no animals at all in Valladolid and Valencia. Instead, people will dress up as animals. The same holds true for Madrid, where many locals expressed deep disappointment.

My grandchildren are always very excited to see the camels. Its going to be such a letdown for them, said Encarnacion Martinez, a grandmother of three who stakes out the same spot on Paseo de la Castellana every year, and brings along a stepladder and a basket to carry home the candy that gets passed out.

Burnt floats and overworked kings

Even without all the controversy, the national celebration is always rife with anecdotes. In a small Malaga village named Arriate, more than 100 volunteers have been working around the clock to repair four parade floats that were deliberately set on fire on Sunday night.

The budget also plays a role. In one Navarre valley, the same three magi have to visit 16 villages in one evening. Meanwhile, in the Alicante town of Alcoy, which boasts the oldest Three Magi parade in Spain  now into its 131st year  the celebration is so lavish that the kings have 370 pages at their service who will climb up to peoples balconies to personally deliver their presents.

English version by Susana Urra.
US Military Really Didn't Want

You to Know What's in New

Washington Post Investigation
Pro-government supporters hit the car of Henry Ramos Allup, the newly elected president of the National Assembly. RONALDO SCHEMIDT (AFP)

Venezuela was living through moments of high tension with just hours to go before the new parliament was due to be inaugurated. Among the incidents reported, pro-government supporters blocked Henry Ramos Allup, the newly elected speaker of the National Assembly, from entering the building.

Following the December 6 elections, the government of Nicolas Maduro has been introducing a series of measures to try to curb the powers the opposition deputies will have when they take over the National Assembly, including appointing a panel of new members to the Supreme Court just days after the race.

Chavistas shouted insults at the new speaker and then attacked his car before he could drive away

The Venezuelan president has attacked the incoming parliament, calling it an upper-class assembly, and vowed to continue with his plans to build a socialist state in Venezuela.

On Sunday, 112 lawmakers in the opposition elected Ramos Allup as the new speaker, but on Monday, a security guard denied him entry to congressional offices. Allup said he wanted to get a balance sheet of his savings and expenses from past terms but the man who was guarding the gates told him he could not come in. The opposition leader later reported that as he left, very carefully and very calmly, a group of people who identified themselves as chavistas shouted insults at him and then attacked his car before he could drive away.

Allup said the group told him they would stay in the area in anticipation of the next days inaugural events.

The new congressional leader has urged the oppositions 112 deputies to attend the ceremony even though the Supreme Court suspended the investiture of three opposition lawmakers and one chavista congressman.

Both the regime and the opposition have encouraged supporters to join congressional leaders as they walk to the National Assembly on inauguration day

Earlier in the day, Allup also told the media the congressional investigation of overspending and misappropriation of public funds by the Nicolas Maduro administration will reach truly colossal dimensions.

Both the regime and the opposition have encouraged supporters to join congressional leaders as they walk to the National Assembly on inauguration day.

Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), an umbrella group for opposition parties, invited supporters to walk with lawmakers for the last four blocks toward the National Assembly and it called on people to put up the Venezuelan flag in their homes on Monday night to celebrate the next day, inauguration day, as a public holiday.

Meanwhile, chavista congressmen also asked their supporters to join them in a peaceful march to the ceremony after promising to defend the conquests of the so-called Bolivarian revolution.

I ask for the peoples support so that the Assembly first does not sabotage resources President Maduro

President Nicolas Maduro explicitly asked supporters to march peacefully alongside their congressmen, without falling into provocations. He has also expressed a desire to see this new congress support him in passing a national emergency decree to address the big economic issues. The president said he would announce his official plan in the next few days.

Maduro said the text for the decree is ready and it will raise, one by one, the fundamental elements of production, distribution, commercialization, and price regulation.

I ask for the peoples support so that the Assembly first does not sabotage resources... And second, so that it facilitates the means for the plan for economic recovery, he said during a televised speech from the presidential palace, before adding that he will soon announce his new economic Cabinet members.

The president also responded to the US State Departments remarks regarding its concerns over inauguration day, saying that it should not interfere in issues that concern Venezuelans.

The president also responded to the US State Departments remarks, saying that it should not interfere in issues that concern Venezuelans

On Monday, the Venezuelan government announced an amendment to the Law of the Central Bank of Venezuela. This new measure strips parliament of the power to choose the banks board of directors. Before, the president had to submit his nominations to the National Assembly and lawmakers would approve the new appointees by majority vote. Now, the law grants the president the power to appoint directors for a seven-year term. The new measure also allows the bank to temporarily suspend the publication of information.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino warned that the armed forces will not help disregard the countrys democratic institutions and urged politicians to keep them out of the political diatribe surrounding the inauguration of the new congress.

English version by Dyane Jean Francois.
Liliana Tintori, wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Alejandro Cegarra (AP)

Podemos has not signed up to a manifesto supporting democracy in Venezuela and which has been supported by Spains other leading political groups.

The Popular Party (PP), the Socialist Party (PSOE), Ciudadanos, Union Progress and Democracy (UPyD) and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) all lent their signatures to a document calling on Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to respect the outcome of the December 6 election, in which the opposition won 112 out of the 167 seats in the National Assembly.

Representatives of participating Spanish parties expressed support for the Venezuelan opposition and agreed on the need to respect the election results to achieve a democratic power transfer. The Venezuelan government has been maneuvering to appoint sympathetic Supreme Court justices and has also appealed the election results in three provinces.

At the Madrid signing ceremony, Ciudadanos representative Fernando Maura remarked indirectly on Podemos conspicuous absence.

If anyone ever believed that the chavista regime was based on freedom and democracy, they were wrong, he said.

Leopoldo Lopez's father has thanked Spain for its support. AP

Several Podemos leaders, including Pablo Iglesias himself, used to have ties with the Venezuelan regime, and worked as advisers for the late Hugo Chavez. One of Podemoss founding members was embroiled in a scandal involving large sums paid out by Latin American regimes for alleged advisory work, which he had failed to declare to Spanish tax authorities.

There at the signing ceremony was Leopoldo Lopez Gil, father of the jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. The senior Lopez thanked Spain for its support, and stated that the Venezuelan people are facing a neo-dictatorship and extreme populism that prevent it from expressing its own will.

English version by Susana Urra.
(Newser)  On July 2, 1937, record-setting aviator Amelia Earhart, along with navigator Fred Noonan, likely ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean somewhere between New Guinea and California and disappeared forever, according to the Smithsonian. Not so, says writer WC Jameson. In Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave, out Tuesday, Jameson builds on the existing theory that Earhart was a spy and was shot down by the Japanese (or captured after a crash or forced landing) and taken prisoner while on a mission to photograph Japanese military installations in the Pacific, Fox News reports. FDR knew about the whole thing, per Jameson, but kept it quiet. Released by the Japanese in 1945, he claims, Earhart returned to the US and lived under the name Irene Craigmile Bolam until she died in 1982, when she would have been about 86.

The theory that Earhart was a spy and that she and Noonan were taken prisoner has been around for some time. Early last year a group of men traveled to the Marshall Islands (which was held at the time by the Japanese military, Red Orbit notes) to hunt for evidence to back up the claim, WKYC reports. They found about six pieces of metal they believe came from Earhart's plane. They were having the items tested for authenticity, but there's been no word on the results. For his book, Jameson reportedly interviewed the nephew of a former US Army official who said it was common knowledge in "high-ranking intelligence circles" that Earhart was "involved in an intelligence-gathering operation." Jameson also claims that flight logs from the last Coast Guard station she communicated with were altered after her disappearance. (Click for another intriguing Earhart theory.)
(Newser)  Iraqis aren't the only ones relishing recent victories against ISIS. There are also archaeologists who have returned and made new discoveries at a key Neanderthal site in Iraqi Kurdistan, one they describe as having "iconic status in Palaeolithic archaeology." Shanidar Cave's status was established following 1950s excavations by Ralph Solecki, a Smithsonian Institution archaeologist, Live Science reports. As modern-day archaeologists write in Antiquity, he uncovered several Neanderthal burials; the pollen contained in soil samples taken there was in 1975 proposed as evidence of flowers placed at the burials. Some five years ago, the Kurdistan Regional Government suggested archaeologists return to Shanidar. Initial fieldwork began in the summer 2014; interrupted by ISIS, two phases of excavation ultimately occurred in 2015.

Those excavations, which "focused on the location at which the earlier fieldwork discovered most of the Neanderthal remains," yielded human bones (probably from those previously unearthed remains) and other "ephemeral but persistent evidence for human activity," like ash and charcoal, from around 40,000 years ago. "The emerging picture is of small groups making regular short-term visits for shelter and tool maintenance in extreme conditions," the article reads. Live Science points to additional research on the cave: a pollen-focused scientific paper published in December that suggests the pollen in the cave may have actually been carried in by bees, disrupting the notion of burial flowers. (The remains of a 16th-century pirate may have been found under a playground.)
About this blog Community Engagement stories from Malawi Blantyre , Southern Region, Malawi Science is a new concept in Malawi, despite different innovations introduced in the country, most people don't know how to relate science in their everyday lives. Medical/ Health research is one of subjects, considering its importance there is need to engage people about it. On this blog i will be sharing most of my Community Engagement experiences i come across while working with communities in Malawi. View my complete profile Elvis Moyo

Background Elvis Moyo is currently working as a Community Engagement Coordinator at Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW) in Blantyre Malawi. His main role involves supporting various studies with both public and community engagement during study lifespan. With a strong background. Apart from this his interest also lies on working/conducting research on front line staff at the institution. His current study is focusing on exploring and addressing ethical challenges faced by Fieldworkers at MLW.

Blog Archive
(Newser)  President Obama is gearing up for another whack at gun controlthis time on a smaller scale and without Congress. Unlike his failed push for legislation after Sandy Hook, these moves will mostly enforce existing laws and seek extra funding, the New York Times reports. His biggest planned move: to remind America that gun sellers are legally supposed to register as dealers and perform background checks on buyers. Other moves include getting more money for law enforcement and pushing federal agencies to research guns. "These are ... recommendations that are well within my legal authority and the executive branch," he says, per CNN. Among the reactions:



Donald Trump : "Pretty soon, you wont be able to get guns. Its another step in the way of not getting guns."

: "Pretty soon, you wont be able to get guns. Its another step in the way of not getting guns." House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan : "We may have to go to court just like we did with executive amnesty a year ago."

: "We may have to go to court just like we did with executive amnesty a year ago." Hillary Clinton: "We've got to act, but I don't think that's enough and I think we're going to have to keep pushing forward on the political front and I intend to do that."

Obama met with top law enforcers Monday like Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, and he's planning a CNN town hall on the issue Thursdaywhich seems to speak volumes, Politico reports. "Its obvious, the way that they are rolling out this issue, that the president and staff understand how politically difficult its going to be," says a top Democratic aide. (Read more gun control stories.)
(Newser)  Kuwait announced on Tuesday it has recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions, making it the latest Arab ally of Saudi Arabia to line up behind the kingdom amid rising regional tensions following its execution of a leading Shiite cleric and opposition figure. Sudan and the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain said Monday they would sever ties with Iran, as Saudi Arabia did late Sunday. The United Arab Emirates announced it would downgrade ties to Tehran to the level of the charge d'affaires, while other nations issued statements criticizing Iran.

Iran's president, meanwhile, says Saudi Arabia "cannot cover its crime" in executing a the cleric by severing ties with Tehran. President Hassan Rouhani made the comments in a statement posted to his website Tuesday, referring to the kingdom's execution of leading opposition figure Sheikh Nimr-al Nimr. Rouhani says that the "Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes." He adds that, "undoubtedly, such actions can't cover up that big crime." World powers have sought to calm the tensions, with the White House urging Saudi Arabia and Iran to not let their dispute derail efforts to end the Syrian civil war. (Read more Saudi Arabia stories.)
(Newser)  Politicians are accusing Chinese agents of illegally interfering in Hong Kong to apprehend a bookseller critical of Beijingthe fifth to have vanished in recent months. A missing person report for Lee Bo, a 65-year-old shareholder of Causeway Bay Books, was filed on Thursday, just a few months after four of his associates disappeared in China or Thailand, per the BBC. All of the missing were involved in publishing or selling literature critical of China, reports Reuters. But some say their disappearances are tied to a book purporting to detail the marital affairs of President Xi Jinping. The book is believed to have been commissioned and perhaps written by Swedish national Gui Minhai, the owner of the publishing house that owns Causeway Bay Books, who was last heard from on Oct. 15.

"I can tell you I am really afraid," says Lee's wife, Choi Ka-ping, adding her husband appeared to call her from the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen after his disappearance. "He asked me not to make a fuss. That he would get himself out of the situation somehow. He was not able to say more about his circumstances." She added Lee's return home permit was still at the couple's home. Late Monday, Hong Kong police said Choi canceled Lee's missing person report after a letter apparently written by him surfaced. "I have made (my) own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation," it reads, per NBC News. "It might take a bit of time. My current situation is very well. All is normal." Hong Kong's leader says it would be "unacceptable" if Chinese agents kidnapped Lee, but there is "no indication" that that is the case. (Read more China stories.)
(Newser)  New York City still has thousands of pay phones on its sidewalks, but many have been gathering dust in the cellphone era. This month, the city will start replacing them with free WiFi hot spots, the Wall Street Journal reports. Ultimately, more than 7,500 phone booths will be turned into hot spots, with 500 expected to be up by July, as part of the LinkNYC project. The 9.5-foot-tall WiFi hubs, called "Links," will have Android tablets that can be used to browse the Web and make free phone calls, or users can access the free WiFi using their own devices. They can also charge those devices via USB port, and there will be a dedicated red 911 button at each Link. Of course, there will also be two 55" HD displays on each one featuring sidewalk advertising (and public service announcements). The free WiFi at each Link will cover about a 150-foot radius and be able to service hundreds of users simultaneously, per LinkNYC.

As the Journal notes, other cities have experimented with free public WiFi, but typically speeds are so slow (or users are required to watch ads before connecting) that not many people use it. CityBridge, the joint venture running LinkNYC, says its broadband will be up to 100 times faster than typical free public WiFi and about 20 times faster than average home Internet service, and users won't have to watch ads. The city says data will be encrypted and any information collected for advertising purposes will be anonymized, the AP reports. CityBridge, which is putting more than $200 million into the project, expects to make $1 billion over 12 years from advertising and will pay the city $500 million or a 50% revenue share, whichever is more. The first two Links are being unveiled in Manhattan Tuesday and will be available for use within a week or two, Gizmodo reports. (Read more New York City stories.)
(Newser)  An American Special Ops soldier was killed and at least two Americans were wounded in Afghanistan on Tuesday, reports Fox News. Officials say forces were taking part in a counter-terrorism mission near Marjah in Helmand province when they were targeted by Taliban fighters, per NBC News, which was first to report the attack. A medevac helicopter that arrived on the scene was hit by mortar and small-arms fire, officials say; one of the wounded was on board the chopper and was not a Special Ops soldier. The Taliban claims to have shot down the helicopter. However, a US military rep tells the BBC that it was "experiencing mechanical malfunctions. It was not shot down. It intentionally landed safely." (Read more Special Forces stories.)
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt may be one of the most loving and lasting couples in Hollywood but may have rifts as both are rumored to keep different religious faiths.

World Religion News argued that the 40-year old actress may embrace Hinduism as reflected in the actress recent behavior who was seen praying at a Hindu Temple while vacationing in Phuket, Thailand.

She did not came alone in the temple as Brad and their kids accompanied the actress in reaching the place of prayer.

The news of Anj' praying in a Hindu temple aroused the interests of people having the same faith such as Rajan Zed, a Hindu statesman who issued a statement saying he will be grateful to assist the actress if she wants to probe deeper and enrich her knowledge on the ancient religion.

Back in November last year, the 52-year old actor shares how the strict upbringing by her Southern Baptist parents had backfired causing him to detest Christianity and embrace atheism, instead, according to Inquisitr.

In an interview, Pitt talked about his upbringing in the Springfield Missouri with his parents imposing 'Christian guilt' as a way to discipline them. The actor also shared how his father had been 'very, very tough' and strict.

Regardless of this strict upbringing, the By The Sea actor remembered one good thing about his parents.

"But one thing my folks always stressed was being capable, doing things for yourself. He was really big on integrity - and that informed a lot of what [we] try to do now," he said that time.

Meanwhile, Brad and Angie are enjoying their vacation in Southeast Asia with their brood. Despite, Pax's earlier accident that caused a minor injury in his foot, they whole family enjoyed an action-packed, luxurious vacation while staying in a villa that costs them $18,000 per night, Design Trend said.
Jaden Smith continued his gender-free statement in fashion and is seen in avant-garde unisex clothes in the latest women's wear campaign for Louis Vuitton.

In photos posted in the fashion line's creative director, Nicolas Ghesquiere, one can see the 17-year old son of Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith wearing a sleek, moto jacket-all with a fringed top underneath it. He paired it with a skirt and black footwear.

"Happy to introduce Jaden Smith @christiaingrey in the new SS16 @louisvuitton ad Campaign photographed by Bruce Weber," Nicolas Ghesquiere captioned the photo as mentioned in Color Lines.

In another shot posted on Sunday night, the young actor-musician posed with three other female models, who according to Business Insider are named Sarah Brannon, Rianne van Rompaey, and Jean Campbell.

"@sarahdonnealia @riannevanrompaey @jean_campbell #jadensmith @christiaingrey in the new @louisvuitton SS16 ad Campaign photographed by Bruce Weber," the art director captioned the photo.

Aside from the Instagram posts, the photos are said to have debuted its appearance on Marketing Magazine.

Jaden Smith is not new to wearing eccentric, and gender-free outfits and has been known for being an advocate for genderless clothing. Last year, he made headlines when he was spotted wearing a long dress while attending the high school prom of the Hunger Games actress, Amandla Stenberg.

The actor, who is included in the list for The Most Stylish Men Alive in GQ Magazine, also attended Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's wedding in Batman suit which strengthened his image of being a non-conformist, Think Progress said.

In an earlier press release for Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquiere explained why the fashion brand chose Jaden for the ad.

"...he represents a generation that has assimilated the codes of true freedom, one that is free of manifestos and questions about gender. Wearing a skirt comes as naturally to him as it would to a woman who, long ago, granted herself permission to wear a man's trench or a tuxedo."
2015 was a great year for the firearms industry.

According to new federal statistics, 23.1 million background checks were conducted last year, which is the highest ever to be recorded since the system started tracking these numbers in 1998. This rate marked a 10 percent increase from 2014. Background checks are carried out for people who are either buying guns or seeking a gun permit.

These numbers do not represent a one-to-one ratio, meaning that each background check did not necessarily lead to a gun sale. It is also important to note that since states have different gun control laws, there could have been even more gun sales that were not recorded.

The FBI data also revealed that the single best day for the industry was on Black Friday when more than 185,000 background checks were processed. In terms of monthly numbers, December had the highest rate of background checks. The increased rate could have been due to the shooting in San Bernardino, California carried out by a radicalized couple and the terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, which the Islamic State claimed responsibility for.

President Barack Obama's call for stricter gun control laws could have also led to an increase in gun sales.

On Monday, the President discussed his executive plans to tighten gun control laws with the goal of reducing the rate of violent crimes in the U.S.

"We have to be very clear that this is not going to solve every violent crime in this country," Obama said on Monday reported by the New York Times. "It's not going to prevent every mass shooting; it's not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal."

The entire package reportedly includes 10 provisions. One of the provisions will make it harder for people to sell and buy guns due to licenses and background checks. Republicans and gun rights advocates have already been heavily criticizing Obama's plans for gun control.

Obama made the official announcement Tuesday.
Junior doctors in the United Kingdom could be holding the first ever mass strike in 40 years if the government cannot appease the doctors working under the state-funded National Heath Service (NHS).

The junior doctors, who are doctors in training, threatened on Monday after sitting down with the Department of Health and the NHS, that they will be carrying out a 24-hour strike next week on January 12, which would be followed by two 48-hour strikes if nothing gets settled.

The first two strikes would affect non-emergency care and planned surgical operations. By the third strike, scheduled for February, the doctors will be refusing care in all situations, which include emergencies. About 98 percent of junior doctors have stated that they will be participating.

"In order for them (the strikes) to be called off, the government would have to recognize the deeply held concerns of junior doctors and be able to go rather further than it has been able to push itself over Christmas," Mark Porter, the BMA chairman said to BBC Radio reported by Reuters.

There were talks about a strike prior to Christmas. However, the strike was pushed back to allow for more discussions between the doctor's union, the British Medical Association (BMA) and the state.

The doctors are upset over the new contract proposal presented by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The main issue that the doctors have with the new employment contract is that it does not protect them from working extremely long hours that could potentially be harmful. The government has argued that the new contract ensures that all patients can get a high level of care throughout the week.

The government added that during Mondays discussions, it proposed adding "Guardians" who will be in charge of ensuring that doctors' working conditions, which includes hours, are not abused. The government stated that the BMA read the proposal and threatened to strike immediately after without having a discussion.

"Our absolute priority is patient safety and making sure that the NHS delivers high-quality care 7 days a week - and we know that's what doctors want too, so it is extremely disappointing that the BMA have chosen to take industrial action which helps no-one," Hunt said in a statement.

Hunt stated that ACAS, which is a mediation service, will come in and try to negotiate with the BMS and doctors.

The last time that junior doctors held a strike was in 1975. At that time, the doctors were upset over not getting paid for work that was done outside of the week's 40 hours.
New York:

Bill Clinton today called his wife Hillary the most qualified US presidential candidate in more than half a century, at his first solo campaign event for her 2016 election bid.

The former president went to New Hampshire in support of his wife, the former secretary of state, senator and first lady who leads polls for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Clinton addressed a rally at a community college in the city of Nashua, paying tribute to Hillarys determination to make America a fairer, safer country for the poor and struggling middle classes.

He made no direct reference to Donald Trump, the brash billionaire dominating the Republican race for the White House who recently stepped up personal attacks on both Clintons.

I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job in a moment of great importance who is better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done, the 69-year-old said.

New Hampshire is host to the nations first presidential primary on February 9. Bill Clinton said Hillarys skill set offers the best chance to have the most rapid movement to more broadly shared prosperity.

In an uncertain world, where borders look more like nets than walls, and no one is in total control, she understands what it takes to keep our country as safe as possible, he said, dressed in an open-necked shirt, dark pullover and blazer, wearing a Hillary pin on his lapel.

He lauded her record as secretary of state and provoked laughter by joking: I didnt think she could do that, in reference to getting China and Russia to sign off on sanctionsagainst Iran.

When they met at Yale Law School 45 years ago, he said he thought she was the most amazing person who could have secured any job in life but who wanted only to provide legal aid to the poor.

Everything she touched, she made better, he said, paying tribute to her long career and calling her a change maker.

Trump, the real estate tycoon who has led Republican polls for months, recently blasted Bill Clintons terrible record with womenan apparent allusion to his past alleged marital infidelities.

The worst thing Hillary could do is have her husband campaign for her. Just watch, he tweeted to his 5.5 million followers yesterday.

Republicans in Congress tried but failed in 1998 to remove Bill Clinton from the White House for alleged perjury and obstruction during an investigation into an alleged affair.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

In a shocking incident in Mumbai, Balika Vadu actress Pratyusha Banerjee, has alleged about molestation by men posing as cops. The actress, complaint that some men barged into her flat in Laljipada and left the place only after she threatened to approach Kandivali police.

However, as reported by PTI, police officer has denied all the allegations, said that they went there to search for Rahul Singh, who as they claimed, stays with her. As per the policeman, a non-cognisable (NC) offence has been registered against Rahul.

The officer also denied any kind of ill behaviour with Disha. As per the report, Rahul have allegedly allegedly manhandled a loan recovery agent, Amit Dalvi, when the latter had gone to collect instalment of car loan from him at her house on December 31. Some police personnel, along with Dalvi, went to the house yesterday but couldnt find Rahul there.

They went to her house again today, but were told by Pratyushas mother that Rahul is in Goa following which they returned, the officer said, denying any misbehaved with the actress. However, no FIR has been registered yet, he added.
New Delhi:

Free Basics which is a part of the Internet.org initiative offers certain free basic internet services to people in developing countries has been shut down in Egypt lately.

This happened just a week after the service was temporarily closed by regulators in India. Free Basic services was launched in Egypt two months ago by mobile network Etisalat.

Though it has been unclear why the service has been shut down. Undeniably, social media especially Facebook had played a major role in organising the Arab Spring which ousted former President Hosni Mubarak. Some people have been averse to this service for the simple reason that it poses a threat to net neutrality.

In India also, internet users, regulators and tech entrepreneurs had raise their voice against Free Basics on the grounds that Facebook's limits on what internet services users could access was an assault on the principle that internet service providers should treat all users the same.

The massive opposition from people in India led to Facebook launching a large public relations campaign in the country. Mark Zuckerberg had written a newspaper editorial as part under the campaign in defence of the service and encourage users to save Free Basics by emailing the telecoms regulator.
New Delhi:

The two Middle-eastern giants Saudi Arabia and Iran have called off all ties after the former executed Shite cleric Nimr-al Nimr. Here is a 10 point explanation and analysis of historic prospect of rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

1.) Saudi Arabia and Iran are two religious hard liner nations. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Islamic kingdom with close ties to the West. Iran officially became a Shia Islamic republic in the 1979 anti-Western revolution.

2.) Cold War: At the time of war between Yemen and Syria, Riyadh had supported Sunni rebel forces in the Syria conflict while Tehran backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

3.) Business competition: More than the religious differences, the two nations are business competitors. Saudi Arabia and Iran are two major suppliers of Oil to the world. More than the religious rivalry these two nations are competitors on business fronts.

4.) Relations with western world: Saudi Arabia is a west inclined country, whereas Iran shares a very bitter past with the western forces. Riyadh has always accused

5.) Dominance in middle east: While Tehran accuses Riyadh of their west inclination. Saudi accuses Iran of trying to exert its influence across the Persian Gulf and create its own nuclear arsenal.

Current Crisis

1) Saudi Arabia is a Sunni dominant nation where the Shiites amount to 15 per cent of total population. The executed leader Nimr-Al Nimr was popular name among the Shia community for his vocals against the Sunni government.

2) Riyadh executed Nimr Al Nimr along with 47 others, majorly Sunni leaders, on charges of waging anti-country protests.

3) The execution triggered mass protest in Iran as the common masses saw it as an attack on their religion. The protests were also triggered worldwide as Shia leaders waged strongly reacted to the executions.

4) In a remarkable development, a mob attacked and ransacked the Saudi Arabian mob in Iran. Following which, Riyadh also expelled the Iranian embassy and asked the diplomats two leave the country in 48 hours.

5) Currently, the two nations have broken all ties on economic and strategic fronts. The situation is expected to get worsen as many experts expect that the two nations are heading towards a potential war.

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New Delhi:

How about a town on moon by 2030? While this may be like an impossible dream for many European space chiefs have some plans that will leave you awestruck!

Yes, they have unveiled their plans to build a lunar base on the moon using 3D printers and this may happen within the next 20 years.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking to explore the galaxy from a 'moon village', which will be built from regolith  a naturally occurring material present on the moon. The material would protect the base from radiation.

The moon village will be located on the rim of Shackleton, which would provide limitless solar power. The Shackleton a large crater at the moon's south pole. It will also protect the futuristic settlement from extreme heat and cold.

In the 2020s, robots would be first sent to the moon in a bid to collect data that would pave way for a human colony."The ESA space-exploration strategy sets the Moon as a priority destination for humans on the way to Mars,a NASA's Kathy Laurini told Space.com.



"And the recent talk of a 'Moon Village' certainly has generated a lot of positive energy in Europe a [of] Europe playing a role in a global human exploration scenario.a



"The timing is right to get started on the capabilities which allow Europe to meet its exploration objectives and ensure it remains a strong partner as humans begin to explore the solar system."

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New Delhi:

Noting that industrial effluents and sewage discharged by industries were the primary cause of pollution in Ganga, the National Green Tribunal today directed the Centre and Uttar Pradesh government to take a clear stand on a mechanism to clean the river from Haridwar to Kanpur.



A bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar directed Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Environment Ministry, Ministry of Water Resources, Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board, UP Jal Nigam and Uttar Pradesh government to devise a methodology to rejuvenate the river.



This segment (Haridwar to Kanpur) contains very high pollution by industrial trade effluents as well as huge quantity of sewage being discharged into the Ganga directly or indirectly mainly untreated and rest of it partially treated, the bench said.



The green panel also noted that the condition of zero liquid discharge on the industries situated along Ganga as well as installation of online monitoring system is difficult to be performed and achieved.



The green bench said that it will take up the matter in relation to segment B of Phase-1 (Haridwar to Kanpur) on January 11 and posted the matter for arguments.



The tribunal on December 23, 2015 had held a meeting of stakeholders including chief secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand besides other senior officers from both the states.



The green panel had divided the cleaning work of Ganga into different segmentsGomukh to Haridwar, Haridwar to Kanpur, Kanpur to border of Uttar Pradesh, border of Uttar Pradesh to border of Jharkhand and border of Jharkhand to Bay of Bengal.



On December 11, last year, the tribunal had imposed a complete ban on use of plastic of any kind from Gomukh to Haridwar along Ganga with effect from February 1 while slapping a penalty of Rs 5,000 per day on erring hotels, dharamshalas and ashrams spewing waste into the river.



Earlier, the Union Minister of State for Water Resources had told the Rajya Sabha that CPCB has inventorised 764 grossly polluting industries which were discharging 501 mld of trade effluent directly or indirectly into the drains reaching Ganga and its tributaries.



He had told that CPCB has also identified 144 drains along the main stem of river Ganga, discharging about 6614 mld of sewage/waste water.

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Peshawar:

Unidentified gunmen today shot dead a senior doctor in front of a hospital where he worked in Pakistans restive northwest Khyber Pakthunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

Dr Yousuf was on his way to clinic when unidentified gunmen opened indiscriminate firing on his car near DHQ Hospital Bannu of Khyber Pakthunkhwa.

As a result of firing Yousuf died on the spot. Police has cordoned off the area and started collecting evidence from the crime scene.

Separately, law enforcement agencies arrested three terrorists during raids in Dera Ismail Khan District bordering South Waziristan Agency.

Police spokesman said that all the suspects were hiding in Shaheed Abad, Dera Ismail Khan, to carryout some terrorist activity as all of them were affiliated to a banned outfit.

It said that five kilograms of explosive material was also recovered from their possession in the raid. The accused were involved in terror activities and extortion collection, the spokesman added.

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New Delhi:

The Odd-Even scheme which has been introduced by Aam Aadmi Party from January 1st had shown encouraging results. Its been a jam free drive for the people of national capital. The Delhi govt has termed the scheme as a success and urged the people to change their mindset to save the future.

According to AAP govt, the first air quality data from 24 locations show encouraging results of reduction in air pollution in last four days. The AAP volunteers who are monitoring the street along with police officers across the city also said that they had got tremendous response from the commuters across Delhi.

Earlier, according to High court we are in a gas chamber and anything can happen. The High court slammed both the Centre and state govts and asked to prepare a road map to reduce the rising pollutant in the nation capital. With more such steps, pollution in Delhi can be brought down.

But the million dollar question rises, why we are only talking about Delhi not NCR. Almost 30 pc of people residing in Noida and Gurgaon travel daily to Delhi and its nearby. We are only concern about Delhi but what about factories nearby it, and are cars in NCR not emitting pollutants?

Now a days, commuters are waiting for the time bound to over in bordering areas to enter Delhi, which creates huge chaos after 8 pm in the evening. Hundreds of cars snarling for more than one hour emit pollutants which was reduced during the entire day.

Taking leap from AAP govt, the UP and Haryana govts should take some steps to reduce pollution in NCR.

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Mumbai:

Actress Rinku Karmarkar has shaved off her head to fit into her character on daily soap Yeh Vaada Raha.

Rinku, who is best known for her roles on shows like Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, said she was not apprehensive in going the extra mile to get into the skin of her role.

Honestly if you ask me, I am nervous but at the same time excited about the whole thing because I had only shaved my head as a child and post that, Ill be doing it now. There is a madness in me as an actor and for the character that I am playing.

...I would like to thank my hair dresser for giving me different looks till date but now she will not have much to do after this. So, I am going in to this feeling nervous and excited. Lets see how I feel about it once I start living with it, Rinku said in a statement.

Yeh Vaada Raha airs on Zee TV.
New Delhi:

The Supreme Court today asked auto giantsMercedes-Benz India, Toyota and Mahindra and Mahindrawhether their heavy diesel vehicles were less polluting than those run on petrol even as it agreed to hear their pleas seeking lifting of the ban on registration of diesel automobiles of 2000 CC and above.

How will you dispute the basic fact that diesel vehicles are not polluting the environment? Are you trying to say that diesel vehicles are non-polluting and only petrol vehicles are polluting?

First, we have to ascertain whether diesel vehicles are polluting or not. The fundamental point which we have to go into is which is most pollutingdiesel, petrol or CNG. You have to satisfy us on that aspect, the bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A K Sikri and R Banumathi said.

It directed the car manufacturers to produce documentary evidence suggesting that the diesel cars and SUVs polluted less than petrol cars.

A battery of lawyers appearing for the automobile manufacturers said that diesel-propelled cars and SUVs did not cause pollution as they use advanced technology and adhere to the emission norms.

The counsel appearing for the auto majors also claimed that vehicles like Boleros and Sumos are used by the common man in rural areas and the prohibition has had a tremendous impact on the middle class.

To this, the bench said, which class of people are using 2000 cc vehicles? It is used by the rich people only... You are saying diesel vehicles cause less pollution. So are your vehicles emitting oxygen?

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, counsel for Toyota, said in lighter vein, only this court emits oxygen.

How can the government be a polluter, asked the bench.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae in the 1984 PIL filed by emvironmentalist M C Mehta, opposed the contention of auto majors that it would be difficult for them to leapfrog to stricter emission norms under Bharat Stage BS-VI, saying they are selling Euro-VI compliant vehicles in Europe.

The car manufacturers had moved the apex court seeking modification of December 15 order banning registration of diesel-run SUVs and cars having engine capacity beyond 2000 cc in Delhi and National Capital Region till March 31.

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Lucknow:

Terming the event as a mere gimmick, BJP today slammed the SP government for holding the Pravasi Diwas, saying the ruling party should first improve its image on the law and order front and then invite NRIs to the state.

In reality the law and order situation in the state is so that no industrialist is ready to invest in UP. First the government should improve its image on this front, BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Patahk claimed.

He said that while the government was speaking of entering into new ventures with private investors, it should tell the public what happened to the agreements signed earlier.

The people should also be told about how the MoUs signed earlier have benefitted them (people), he said.

Pathak said that the government should first improve the basic infrastructure.

There is no denial that there is immense possibility of investment in UP, but the government has failed in developing infrastructure required for that, he said.

The three-day Uttar Pradesh Pravasi Diwas began in Agra yesterday where several non-resident Indians (NRIs) have gathered to celebrate their roots.

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New Delhi :

The Pathankot terror attack which went over for nearly 80 hours (combing operations are still underway) is remnicisent of 26/11- an incident which devastated the full proof defence plan of India, but also whose probe is still pending on papers.

Will Pathankot face a similar conclusion or this time under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stern rule India will see a different result? News Nation ponders!

What happened today?

Punjab today dismissed reports that it had not acted on the inputs given by the abducted Gurdaspur SP, who had reportedly claimed that had the authorities acted on his information the Pathankot terror attack could have been averted.

It was immediately shared, Punjabs Director General of Police Suresh Arora told a news conference here when asked about the SPs information whether it was shared with the Centre.

Asked if there was any failure on part of Punjab police despite an alert warning possibility of a terror attack, he said, it has never happened that if the alert is there that it has not been shared. We know it was shared, investigations will prove all this.

The SP, however, today maintained that he had immediately informed his seniors about the incident of his kidnap and release. After that the DGP, ADGP and other senior officers reached Pathankot, he said, adding police swung into action and laid nakas (check posts) at various points.

The DGP said NIA and Punjab police will jointly probe the Pathankot terror attack incident.

NIA has taken over the investigation into the terror attack incident. NIA and Punjab police will investigate the case jointly, he said.

Arora said three cases have been registered. One case pertains to encounter in air force base station, another was registered on the statement of the SP and the third one pertains to murder of Ikagar Singh, driver of Innova vehicle, he said.

When asked that the FIR mentions the name of Jaish-e-Mohammed militant outfit, DGP said a slip was recovered from the SPs vehicle which carried the name of the outfit and which is being verified.

To another question, he said whenever such incidents occur, a detailed report from police department goes to state government and the Centre.

When asked why the SPs vehicle was not stopped at the police nakas, DGP said, that is a matter of investigation.

The curious case of Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh!

Security agencies, including National Investigation Agency (NIA), will thoroughly examine Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh, who was kidnapped along with a jeweller friend and cook by the terrorists who struck at the Pathankot air base, government sources said today.

The agencies will verify the antecedents of Singh, the purpose of his visit to the secluded area in Pathankot at the odd hours and why he was not accompanied by any of his PSOs besides others, the sources said here.

Singh, jeweller Rajesh Verma and Singhs cook were kidnapped by heavily-armed terrorists on December 31 when they were travelling in the officers SUV.

While Singh and the cook was freed without any harm, Vermas throat was slit but he survived miraculously.

Even though Singh informed police about his kidnapping by the terrorists, police officers whom the SP had informed about the incident initially did not take him seriously, thus leading to some crucial hours being lost.

The SP had said that he was returning after visiting a shrine on December 31 night. Singh also said his timely information ahead of the attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot alerted security agencies and prevented a major terror strike.

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New Delhi:

It was 2nd January 2016, the fateful day when seven of our security personnel gave their lives to save Pathankot air base. The nation has come together to pay tribute to martyrs but our politicians have starting blaming each other over the issue. The Congress party has started blaming PM Narendra Modis foreign strategy and the same thing was done by the BJP when it was in opposition during 2008 Mumbai attacks.

From last 60 years, India and Pakistan have been blaming each other for rising terrorism in the region. From 1999 Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijack to Kargil war to 2008 Mumbai attacks to Gurdaspur attacks to Pathankot attacks, every time India has faced the wrath. Every time both the countries tried to stitch the relations incidents like such crop up.

Moving a step ahead former PM Atal Bihari Vajpaee started Delhi to Lahore bus service in 1999 but was back stabbed with Kargil war and recently PM Narendra Modi gave surprise visit to Lahore which was retaliated with Pathankot attacks.

India has long maintained terror originating from across the border should stop for the peace talks to deliver. However, PM Modis visit to Lahore was seen as both the countries are getting ready to write new chapter in the annals of diplomacy. The recent attack has raised many questions on the about to resume official dialogue.

According to some experts, both the South Asian neighbours should not stop the talks over peace as initiatives are reply to such terror incidents. The attack at the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in northern Punjab, around 40 km from the international border, coming within days of PM Modi's maiden visit to Pakistan, might have made a dent, but the balanced response from both the countries have raised hopes.

The six terrorists who staged the attack were killed in a gunbattle that lasted for over 80 hours and seven Indian security personnel were also killed.

For the first time, Pakistan immediately condemned the attack and expressed its commitment to partner with India to eradicate terrorism. PM Nawaz Sharif called PM Modi and assured him of decisive actions against terror outfits within 72 hours.

Not only India, but Pakistan has also tasted the bitter taste of terrorism in 2014, when terrorist killed 141 people including 132 children entering an Army school at Peshawar.

The time has arrived for both the south Asian neighbours to work together and wipe out terrorism from the region. Now, the government should keep peoples sentiments in mind and work cordially.

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Iran:

Iran aired fresh footage today of an underground bunker that houses its latest ballistic missile, which less than a week ago prompted US threats of new sanctions.

State television showed parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Revolutionary Guards officers inspecting the Imad missile, which has a range of 1,700 kilometres and is at the centre of a dispute over the missile programme.

The United States consideredand then shelved imposing new sanctions following two recent missile tests which a UN panel said broke past resolutions aimed at stopping Tehran from developing missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

If such measures, reportedly targeting companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates with alleged links to the missile programme, were imposed they could jeopardise a hard-won nuclear deal due to be finally implemented within weeks.

Irans President Hassan Rouhani denounced the possible US sanctions as hostile and illegal interventions, and ordered his defence minister to expand the missile programme.

Larijani was quoted as saying parliament would support an enhanced missile programme in a future five-year plan for the country.

State media reported a test of the Imad on October 11 and also that month showed footage of an underground missile base for the first time.

Tehran has always denied seeking an atomic weapon and argues that its missiles have never been designed to, nor ever would, carry a nuclear bomb.

Irans ballistic missiles were not within the remit of the nuclear talks which resulted in an accord last July when Tehran agreed to curbs on its atomic programme in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions.

Although Irans ultimate authority, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, explicitly endorsed the nuclear deal in October, he warned that new sanctions, under any pretext, would be a violation.

The accord is due to come into effect on Implementation Day, expected later this month, or soon after, when UN monitors sign off that Iran has applied the agreed restrictions on its nuclear activities.

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Hubbell Electric Heater Co., which dates back 96 years, says it is ready to expand its Stratford workforce.

The manufacturer last week announced what it called a three-year growth strategy that includes construction of a new building as well as the addition of new equipment and machinery, which will mean about 35 jobs new positions.

The jobs will be spread across the company, from marketing to engineering, said Caitlin Carrier, a Hubbell representative.

The company currently employs 73 people with its headquarters on Seymour Street in Stratford. It makes a wide range of engineered water heaters for a variety of industries, as well as supplying products for the U.S. Navy.

Hubbell water heaters are installed at national landmarks including the Smithsonian Institution and the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.

We are extremely excited about the future growth plans... its a clear sign of our business vibrancy, Hubbell Electric President William Newbauer Jr., said in a statement. This expansion marks a significant milestone for our company, ensuring existing jobs and adding a large number of new jobs to our community.

On Oct. 26, the company was recognized by the Stratford Chamber of Commerce, Mayor John A. Harkins, and the state Department of Economic and Community Development. Hubbells award highlighted the companys job retention and growth in Stratford.

Hubbell in 2012 renovated its historic factory building, which dates to 1917, providing the 9,000-square-foot space with a modern office environment alongside its manufacturing center.

Investing in people and new positions is as important as investments in machinery and equipment. Simply put, it is no longer good enough to have good people in our company. We need the best people in the best position if we are going to continue to grow and prosper, said William Newbauer III, CEO of Hubbell and son of the president.

Advancing technology has meant major changes at the company, Carrier said. The product demand is increasing, and we are needing to keep up with that, she said.

hbailey@ctpost.com; 203-330-6233; @hughsbailey
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After noticing the positive impact that martial arts had on her disabled child, Jennifer Saltsberg, program director at Hammerhead Martial Arts in Brookfield, created a class designed for kids with special needs.

Saltsberg began bringing six-year-old son Liam  who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and attachment disorders  to the studio about a year ago, and noticed the calming effects it had on him.

He was having a lot of issues at school, but when he came to the studio and practiced with us all that seemed to just disappear, she said. He was so calm and content and so happy that I wanted to give other children the opportunity that he was being given.

So Saltsberg, whose partner, Tyler Raymond, bought the studio about a year ago, started a bi-weekly class for those with disabilities. Unlike traditional martial arts classes where students work toward earning a belt, students in the class work up to their own individual abilities. The style taught at the studio is International Tae Kwon-Do, according to Hammerheads web site.

While its a class environment, we have a lot of helpers who come in and we provide individualized attention for each of the students, she said. We see what works for them and go from there.

The class has attracted students diagnosed with a variety of different disorders including social anxiety, PTSD and those on the autism spectrum.

One of the students who came in with social anxiety disorder is doing so well that weve been able to move him forward into our regular classes, Saltsberg said. Its really amazing to watch these kids as they learn and excel.

The studio is also looking to take insurance payments for the services, noting that they are often recommended by doctors looking for improvements in everything from range of motion, focus and self confidence.

Anyone with a special needs child knows jut how costly all the different services can become, Saltsberg said. We are looking to get insurance coverage of the services so that we can take one more bill off their shoulders.

She is also looking to work with more school districts and parent-teacher groups. All fees for special needs classes - about $90 a month - that are paid during January will be donated to the Brookfield Special Education Parent Teacher Association.

Raymond, who has been practicing martial arts since his own childhood, said the classes are a great addition to the business.

You see all the time that there arent enough services out there for people with special needs, Raymond said. And this is something we could do to help fill that need. Its wonderful watching the children progress in the program.

The classes are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4 p.m. For more information call the studio at 203-775-7150.

dperrefort@newstimes.com
Turns out there was a secret military space program designed to put a manned station in orbit for more than a month at a time in order to spy on the Russians (and who knows for sure what else) ... and it nearly worked.

If the idea had worked then perhaps our night sky would be punctuated by military space stations instead of the one civilian-focussed International Space Station. Thank NASA, effective spy satellites, ICBMs and the Vietnam War for its demise.

The program  publicly called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory and secretly called Dorian* within a government organization named the National Reconnaissance Office, whose existence was itself classified until 1992  existed from 1963 until 1969. When newly elected President Richard Nixon killed its budget, the MOL/Dorian program had spent more than $1.5 billion.

The program had also test-launched its rocket design and had nearly begun full-scale production of the orbiting space craft (see photos above). Its recruiting and training was so effective and extensive, that many of its engineers and astronauts went to work for NASA, flew Space Shuttle missions and/or took up major positions in government ... such NASA administrator.

After declassifying MOL/Dorian documents over the summer, historians working for the Reconnaissance Office published in October an official history of the project called "The Dorian Files Revealed." Its 232 pages are packed with technical details, personnel and budgetary battles and Cold War motives.

Cover stories

While the MOL program was publicly announced in 1963 as an experimental program to test the viability of humans in space, its real purpose remained classified until the release of more than 800 documents (20,500 pages) and hundreds of photos. Its classified purpose was most-plainly stated in the official history of the project:

Unbeknown to the public, the MOL program included a highly secret set of experiments and capabilities to gain intelligence from space. Information about MOL's secret planned capabilities was strictly protected under a security compartment known as Dorian. The capabilities developed under the Dorian project would result in the United States using the MOL as a manned reconnaissance station in space, collecting both imagery and signals intelligence.

A CIA analyst, NRO staff historian and editor of "The Dorian Files Revealed" explained during a speech at the The Museum of Flight in September that our government's practice of devising a cover story for a classified project was an NRO specialty (especially since the NRO itself was secret).

James Outzen says in a YouTube video of the speech ...

"We have this dilemma, how do we obtain information from space? How do we get images and signals back? ... Cover story: We're going to carry out a number of launches, and we're going to put experiments into satellites which will help us understand, eventually, man's viability in space. Because if we're going to put man into space, we'll want to understand how to allow man to survive up there. "So, we're going to put some mammals into space, including chimpanzees, and there will be a number of other experiments put up. So that's the cover story. ... But the real story is we're trying to get camera systems into space, so that we can take pictures from space" (and get them back). At time-marker 41:17, Outzen adds, "In the 1960s the Air Force receives funding to put Air Force personnel into space. So that's the public story. The classified story is those personnel were going to be put into space to use space as a platform for gaining signal collection and imagery collection."

Outzen pointed out that the agency needed a cover story because, well, rocket launches are hard to to fire off in secret.

How secret was Dorian?

Journalists and others had for decades speculated about the military purposes of MOL, but even in the Smithsonian's extensive 1998 Air & Space article mum was the word.

... today, a polar-orbiting MOL sounds less like a Skylab-type undertaking than the first military outpost in space, a U-2 no Soviet missile could reach, and perhaps something more. That may explain why, 30 years on, those who worked on the project still won't say much about its mission. Lachlan Macleay, who was among the first group of MOL pilots chose in 1965, says only: "As far as I'm concerned, nothing has been declassified at all. We spent a lot of time in training, let me put it that way." President Lyndon Johnson gave MOL an official go-ahead in August 1965. Douglas Aircraft would build the laboratory module and McDonnell Aircraft the modified space capsule called Gemini-B. General Electric would manage the onboard experiments. Launches would be from both Cape Kennedy in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which would allow the lab to reach high enough latitudes to fly over the Soviet Union. The first unmanned shot was scheduled for 1968, with the first crew to follow later that year. Within hours of the White House announcement that MOL would go ahead, a dusk of secrecy settled upon the project, and from that point on the public would see only its innocuous exterior.

So, pretty secret.

In fact, during a symposium on Oct. 22 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, one of the MOL astronauts-in-training said,

"It is really hard to suddenly slip out of all of this classification that's been built into your psyche for all these years, even though there are things that are absolutely inexplicable near where these gentlemen worked. There is this great big building and it has a big sign in front of it that says the National Reconnaissance Office. And, the first lesson that (an official) gave to me when we were brought in was "You never even use the initials NRO. So, it is a little hard to adjust."

The MOL pilot went on to explain that the Dorian project was essentially designed to "try to add human judgment to this automated capability" of spy satellites of the era.

Just another cover story?

This probably necessary dynamic of cover story vs. reality is just the kind of thing that leads people to wonder: But is this the truth or just another cover story? Did we go to the moon or was that a cover story? Did we send men to Mars in the 1970s under the operation name "Project Redsun" and so NASA's current stated plans to go there in 15 years is the cover story?

Well, all one can do is weigh the reasonableness of the current story against what it would take to fabricate all those documents and photos and personal testimony.

That said, secret stuff is going on all the time. Could a government launch people into space without us all knowing about it? Hmmmmm. Can you tell the difference between a missile's fire trail and a space rocket's? Here's two recent news events that can make you wonder.

From SFGate:

A mysterious beam of light streaked across California skies Saturday evening, delighting and confounding Bay Area sky watchers. The light, described by many as a blue-green flash that flew horizontally before falling and lingered for as much as 10 minutes, was reportedly spotted as far south as San Diego and as far north as Santa Rosa. After hours of speculation and finger pointing by meteorologists, astronomers and military officials, the Navy confirmed a submarine had fired an unarmed missile off the coast of Southern California, creating a bright light that was visible as far away as Nevada and Arizona.

And ...

From The Siberian Times:

Astronomers at the planetarium of the Siberian State University of Geosystems and Technologies in Novosibirsk said of the early evening 17 November sightings: 'It is definitely not a comet.' Their theory was that 'the object was the second stage of intercontinental ballistic missile Topol launched at 15:12 Moscow time (or 18:12 Novosibirsk time) from Kapustin Yar cosmodrome in Astrakhan region.'

... just saying.

*"Dorian" refers to the KH-10 DORIAN Eastman Kodak mission reconnaissance imaging camera.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.
BROOKFIELD  Plans to build a cell tower on the towns municipal center property on Pocono Road are moving forward, but construction of the 150-foot monopole is still at least a year away, a site development manager working on the project said.

The proposal, made by Homeland Towers LLC and Cellco Partnership, for a Verizon tower was approved with little fanfare by Brookfield residents at a town meeting in February 2014.

Nearly two years later, Ray Vergati, of Homeland Towers LLC, said the firm will likely submit plans in April to the Connecticut Siting Council, which reviews telecommunications applications.

If approved, Vergati said the company will seek a building permit from Brookfield and the new tower could be built in 12 to 14 months.

Vergati said before the plans are filed with the state, the firm will hold an informational meeting for Brookfield residents and officials at 7 p.m. Jan. 27 in Town Hall when the public can review plans for the project and ask questions about the site and radio emissions or discuss other concerns.

Well present an overview of the project, Vergati said. Well talk to the town and public and answer any questions.

According to the proposal, which is available on the towns website, the tower will be placed in the middle of a fenced compound in the southwest corner of the the towns municipal center to the west of the volunteer fire department. It will include a 500-gallon propane fuel tank and backup generator near the base of the tower.

The proposal says the new tower, known as the Brookfield South Facility, will interact with other towers in Brookfield, Danbury, Bethel and Newtown. The tower is expected to improve coverage along portions of routes 7 , 202, 25 and 133 in Brookfield. It is also expected to relieve other towers in Brookfield and Bethel that are near or at capacity.

While construction of cell towers has been met with opposition in surrounding towns, including the recently approved site on Bethels Codfish Hill Road, the Brookfield location is in a mostly commercial area and has caused little controversy.

First Selectman Steve Dunn said the tower would improve coverage without creating an eyesore for nearby residents.

From a location standpoint, you couldnt ask for a better spot for anyone who might object to a cell tower, Dunn said. Its not near any residences at all.

Dunn also said he thought many residents have embraced the need for better cell service.

I think people have grown more accustomed to them, Dunn said. Almost all people have cell phones and peoples kids have cell phones. People want to have good coverage.

In February 2014, Brookfield voters approved a lease agreement struck between the town and the applicants. The agreement could span as long as 55 years with nine five-year renewal options after an initial 10-year term.

The agreement calls for the cell provider to pay the town $1,800 in monthly rent or 25 percent of the the gross income from the tower, whichever is higher. The rent increases by 3 percent each year, and the base rent also jumps to $2,000 per month if a second provider joins Verizon on the tower.

Vergati said towers apex will be reserved for town emergency antennae, which Dunn said is an added bonus to the deal.

The big plus is that we get free access for all of our emergency services communications, Dunn said. Im not sure it will increase our capability, but it will lend redundancy to our ability to communicate.

In addition to Verizon, Vergati said the tower will be equipped to house other telecommunication providers in the future.

The tower is designed and constructed to accommodate all carriers in the industry, he said.

awolff@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333; @awolffster
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will join President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday as he unveils an executive order that would expand background checks and licensing requirements for buyers and sellers of firearms at gun shows and on the Internet.

The action by Obama bypasses the Republican majority in Congress, which has stymied the presidents efforts to advance federal gun legislation in the wake of the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

It immediately created a flashpoint between gun-control activists and Second Amendment groups, which have accused Obama and Malloy of abusing their powers.

Since the killing of 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Malloy and Obama have become kindred spirits on the issue of gun violence. In addition to shepherding through new restrictions on guns in Connecticut, Malloy introduced an executive order last month to prohibit gun sales to individuals on the federal no-fly terrorist watch list.

The governor is proud to be a leader on this issue, and this is no doubt an important event to attend, said Devon Puglia, a spokesman for Malloy. President Obama is working toward smart, commonsense action to make our communities safer. We must keep guns out of the wrong hands. We are no doubt doing all that we can in Connecticut, and theres no question that President Obama is working to do the same.

Malloy and Obama are scheduled to appear Tuesday morning in the East Room at the White House, along with several families touched by gun violence, including at least two from Newtown. Obama characterized the executive order as overdue and well-justified in a briefing Monday with reporters.

More Information Requiring background checks These states have background check requirements for at least some unlicensed gun sales: California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Hawaii Illinois Iowa Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Nebraska New Jersey New York North Carolina Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Washington See More Collapse

I think everybody here is all too familiar with the statistics, Obama said. We have tens of thousands of people every single year who are killed by guns. We have a frequency of mass shootings that far exceeds other countries in frequency. And although it is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arm around the problem Congress needs to act, what I asked my team to do is to see what more we could do to strengthen our enforcement and prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands to make sure that criminals, people who are mentally unstable, those who could pose a danger to themselves or others are less likely to get them.

Mark Barden and Nicole Hockley, who each lost a son in the Newtown shootings, applauded Obamas intervention in a joint statement Monday night ahead of their appearance with the president Tuesday. They are the founders and managing directors of Sandy Hook Promise, a grass-roots gun-control group.

We believe the presidents orders will be well-considered, sensible safety measures that the majority of Americans would agree to, they said. Poll after poll shows that most people continue to support commonsense gun laws such as background checks, but still Congress has been unable to agree on simple measures that would protect our children and our freedoms.

Scott Wilson, president of the 21,000-member Connecticut Citizens Defense League, bemoaned the move by Obama.

I think President Obama is overstepping the boundaries of his office, Wilson said. The type of orders and actions that hes seeking to implement is something that should be handled by the legislative branch of the federal government.

The measures supporters say the GOP-controlled Congress has refused to bring up legislation expanding background checks for a vote. Among them is U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., whose district includes Newtown. She is scheduled to join Obama on Tuesday.

When Congress is thwarting the will of the American people, it is appropriate for the president to take steps that are legally permitted such as executive orders, said Esty, vice chair of the Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force in the House, a group entirely comprised of Democrats.

Esty was part of a group of Democratic lawmakers that lobbied Obama to use his executive power on the issue and received a briefing from the president Monday afternoon. The group included Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, the latter of whom spent Dec. 31 tweeting out a list of all the gun deaths in the U.S. in 2015.

Connecticuts gun law already requires background checks for Internet and gun-show sales.

Current federal law, however, does not require all sellers of firearms at gun shows or on the Internet to conduct background checks  only those who are licensed gun dealers. It allows many sellers to transfer ownership of a firearm without a license, Murphy said. Proponents say the change would keep weapons out of the hands of domestic abusers, the mentally ill and suspected terrorists.

What happens is is that illicit gun dealers buy bagfulls of weapons from gun shows in states with looser laws and sell them in states like Connecticut with tougher laws, Murphy said. The guns that are being sold out of the backs of vans in Bridgeport and New Haven are likely coming from Virginia, North Carolina or Texas.

State GOP Chairman J.R. Romano said if a Republican president tried to circumvent Congress through an executive order on gay marriage or abortion, there would be a national uproar over the need for the separation of powers.

Obviously the Democrats, based on the poor performance they had in Congress, theyre basically trying to usurp those checks and balances through executive action, which is un-American, Romano said.

Blumenthal said its about time someone forces the hand of Congress.

My hope is these steps provide an impetus and momentum for Congress to act because it is complicit by its inaction in the continuing epidemic of gun violence in Connecticut and across the country, Blumenthal said. This is action is no substitute for Congress providing more effective legislative remedies.

A record 185,345 background checks for gun purchases were processed on Black Friday (Nov. 27) last year, according to the FBI, a surge Second Amendment groups say reflects the fears of law-abiding gun owners that their rights will be taken away.

The numbers are through the roof, Wilson said. It shows what Obama and Malloy are touting what they believe are the wishes of the American people, but are anything but.

neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

 Ernest Hemingway

Leilen Shelton, a middle school teacher in Costa Mesa, California, might translate that famous dictum from the famously plain-writing Hemingway this way: All you have to do is write one illuminating, ineluctably verifiable sentence. Author the most perspicacious sentence that you comprehend.

Shelton wrote Banish Boring Words, a crusade against milquetoast words like good, bad, fun and said. Some of her disciples also eschew go, run, happy, walk and see.

There are so many more sophisticated rich words to use, Shelton told The Wall Street Journal. Instead of said, for instance, she recommends bark, howl, cackle, demand.

We salute Sheltons campaign against lifeless language.

But we worry that the admonition to gussy up writing by jettisoning short, common words in favor of allegedly more expressive terms could go awry in the hands of the average seventh-grader. Sometimes people do say things. They dont aver them. Or assert them. Or declare them.

One website suggests 200 Ways to Say Went and includes wormed and peregrinated. That sound you hear is a collective groan from a nation of seventh-grade English teachers.

By all means, budding sesquipedalians, ransack your Thesaurus. Scour it for synonyms to replace tepid words. Learn the thrill of unearthing le mot juste  the perfect word for a sentence; 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who coined the phrase, often spent weeks in that pursuit.

Some writers pursue the perfect word to show off their test-ready vocabularies, which is egotistical.

Others pursue the perfect word because they want their writing to be lively, which is admirable, to a point.

Still others  Can you hear our soft applause? And the shy trumpet?  pursue the perfect word because it will bring clarity, precision of meaning, to their thoughts, their sentences, their paragraphs, their essays, their books.

To be crisply effective, writing has to efficiently communicate what the writer wants to say. It must be clear. When words send readers exploring alleys of thought  I wonder if, by laconic, shes trying to tell me lazy, or slow?  then the less likely they are to rejoin the writers journey, let alone ever reach its destination.

So remember, we beg, that words are tools, not bludgeons. Avoid obscure polysyllabic words that no one else can read, spell or understand. Because your readers may just stop reading. For them, nothing is easier.

Once you know all the fancy terms, you can choose to wield the simple ones with greater force.

In time, a skilled teacher will mention that understatement often is more powerful than overstatement.

Clarity of purpose, precision of word choice, not letting readers stray from the journey, tools not bludgeons, the power of understatement. Now youre getting somewhere.

Writing a true declarative sentence, Hemingway said, is a good and severe discipline.

In other words, its a lot of fun.

This editorial first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu of has filed a suit at the Supreme Court challenging the Court of Appeal ruling that nullified his ...

Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu of has filed a suit at the Supreme Court challenging the Court of Appeal ruling that nullified his victory in the last governorship election in the State.The lead Counsel for the governor, Mr. Chibuike Nwokeukwu, who disclosed this at a media briefing on Monday after a meeting of elders of Ukwa and Ngwa political bloc at Osisioma Aba, said the Appeal Court judgment was a rape of justice, which required further subjection to legal test at the Supreme Court.Nwokeukwu urged Abia people to disregard the rumour making the rounds that the Court of Appeal had asked that Dr. Alex Otti of APGA be sworn in on Tuesday, stressing that Ikpeazu remains the state governor until proved otherwise by the apex court.The convener of the meeting, Dr. Emmanuel Adaelu, said the politicians came together to air their grievances over the verdict of the Court of Appeal in Owerri last week.Adaelu said, We feel very distressed, embarrassed, highly annoyed and we feel that the judgment was a total deprivation of our fundamental human rights particularly when we found out that the reason given for declaring the opponent of the PDP candidate was that the election results were cancelled in Obingwa, the home of the governor, Osisioma and Isiala Ngwa North local governments.To us, this is a rape of justice and it is unfair. We do not know why the judges we consider to hold the trust of the nation in relation to justice decided to give that kangaroo verdict. How can a court decide to cancel elections in three local governments of Ngwaland and the local government of Governor Ikpeazu?That is to say that he did not vote for himself. We feel very distressed because of this disenfranchisement of our people. We have never seen its parallel in the history of election verdicts.Adaelu added that Ikpeazus legal team would certainly challenge the Appeal Court judgment at the Supreme Court, hoping that the apex court will reverse the judgment.He noted that the Ukwa and Ngwa people with nine out of the 17 LGAs had a history of political deprivation in Abia, adding that the opportunity they have in producing Ikpeazu will not be frittered away.Also, the former Senate President, Chief Adolphus Wabara, said that the Ukwa and Ngwa people would fight for justice until the judgment against Ikpeazu was reversed.Wabara wondered how over 300,000 registered voters could be disenfranchised against their wishes, even as he called on the National Judicial Council to look into the judgment and act accordingly.
The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has bestowed upon the Governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola the title of Omoluabi of Yoruband...

The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has bestowed upon the Governor of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola the title of Omoluabi of Yoruband just as he urged Osun people to pay their taxes.The Monarch who was at the Government House, Osogbo to present the award, stated that the governor of Osun State has always been at the forefront of projecting the Omoluabi ethos which the Yoruba race has always preached.He explained that he has always monitored the administrative and leadership style of the governor since inception of his administration, saying Ogbeni Aregbesola has always led along the line of a true Omoluabi.The Yorubas are a tribe that always instill in their children and the youths all the characters of a responsible and well brought up individual, I have studied the leadership style of Aregbesola among all the governors in the country and have discovered that he is the only one whom have through his leadership style projected Omoluabi ethos of the Youruba race.Aregbesola is man that breathes responsibility at all times, we have always been hearing of an Omoluabi for a long time and am so happy that we now have a Governor who is leading by example, the Alaafin, a foremost traditional ruler in Nigeria said.As measure of the importance of his honour to Aregbesola, presented to him a photo compendium and signed framed portrait congratulating the governor on his new chieftaincy title of Omoluabi of Yorubaland.The Monarch further noted: It is a good thing to now have a person in the calibre of a governor who is portraying the Omoluabi virtues to the Nigerian youths.The royal father also used the opportunity to call on the people of Osun to support the government of the day by paying their taxes regularly, stressing that taxation is the most efficient and sure way to give the people good government.Oba Adeyemi who lamented the dwindling nature of the federal allocation pointed out that the only way out of the economic logjam is for the people to carry out their civic responsibilities as individuals.He added that if the people support the government of Aregbesola with their taxes, the present administration will find it easier to fulfill its obligations such as prompt payment of salaries and adequate provision of infrastructure, health care facilities and security.All over the world, taxation is the way out, for government to be able to conveniently provide for all the amenities and pay salaries conveniently, the people must endeavour to pay their taxes regularly.I want to urge the people of Osun to assist the present administration with the payment of their taxes, the present administration has done so much in terms of provision of social amenities such as construction of good roads, provision of affordable health care facilities, assistance for the aged.I also know that the Aregbesola administration has been providing free school uniforms as well as feeding the school pupils, something which no government has ever done, not even the federal government.If such a government now demands for a tax of just one thousand five hundred naira per individual in a year, I dont think its too much.We need to realise that it has come to a stage where government can no longer do it alone, Osun allocation has dropped drastically and government may not be able to pay salaries and provide other amenities again except we show our support through the regular payment of our taxes. he stressed.Responding, Governor Rauf Aregbesola noted that the reign of Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has been very peaceful and fruitful, while praying that God should make the royal fathers resign more peaceful and eventful.
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, Tuesday, signed a bill into law converting the Lagos State University, LASU, Ojo, to a resident...

Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, Tuesday, signed a bill into law converting the Lagos State University, LASU, Ojo, to a residential institution, as well as approving 70 years retirement age for professors of the institution.The law, LASU (Amendment) Bill 2015, also approved a five-year single term for the Vice Chancellor of the institution.Over the last few years, there has been a running battle between the institutions chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, with the immediate-past Vice Chancellor, Prof. John Obafunwa, over demands that the school approves 70 years as retirement age for professors, single term of five years for Vice Chancellor, among others.Signing the bill into law at the State House, Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria on Tuesday, Ambode said the amended law is aimed at raising the standard of the school to an enviable position and a school that people would be proud of.The governor said it is the desire of the state government to build a LASU that would produce better students, saying that in the next few days, changes would begin to take place in the school.Deputy Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly, Wasiu Eshinlokun-Sanni said the law was amended to address the acrimonies that arose during the tenure of Prof. Obafunwa as Vice Chancellor of the school.He said the major reform of the law is approving five-year single term for the Vice Chancellor of the school in order to prevent the crisis often encountered when the Vice Chancellors position runs for two terms.Another major reform in the law, he disclosed, is converting LASU to a residential campus, while the retirement age of professors of the institution would now be 70 years instead of the usual 65 years.He said turning the school to a residential campus would help in mitigating incessant clashes between students of the school and Iba residents.Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Steve Ayorinde had in November, 2015 said the LASU (Amendment) Bill 2015 was meant to serve as an improvement over the two previous amendments in 1990 and 1992 with the aim of finding lasting solution to the challenges that have plagued the state-owned institution in recent years.The bill is proposing to amend certain sections of the Law to meet current realities in line with best practices. It seeks to review the exercise of general supervision over discipline in the university imposed on the Vice-Chancellor and to propose a single term of five years for the institutions Vice-Chancellor, he had said.He added that the LASU Bill also sought an amendment that would make the appointment of the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council the prerogative of the Visitor in line with standard practice.Yet, it seeks an amendment to Section 36(1) and (2) of the Law which deals with admission policy to place the responsibility of determining the minimum admission requirement on the Senate of the university, he said.
A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has fixed Thursday for ruling on ex-Peoples Democratic Party Chairman, Haliru Bello, and his sons...

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has fixed Thursday for ruling on ex-Peoples Democratic Party Chairman, Haliru Bello, and his sons bail application.Bello and his son, Abbah Mohammed, were arraigned before Justice Ahmed Mohammed on four counts of money laundering involving about N300m, which they allegedly collected from the office of the National Security Adviser.Justice Mohammed ordered the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, to ensure that Bello, who was wheeled into the court in a wheelchair, was monitored in hospital and remanded the PDP chieftains son in Kuje Prison till Thursday.The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had filed charges against Bello, who is also a former Minister of Defence, and his son, along with their firm, Bam Properties.Both men pleaded not guilty to all four counts.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, today, arraigned the former National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, ...

Bello who was docked along with his son, Abba, on a four-count criminal charge bordering on alleged N300million fraud, took his plea in a wheelchair.They are facing trial alongside a firm, BAM Projects and Properties Limited.The anti-graft agency alleged that the accused persons, through the firm, withdrew the sum of N300m from an account the Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA, operated with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.The fund was said to have been transferred to the accused persons, 11 days to the 2015 presidential election, by the embattled former National Security Adviser, NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki, rtd.Both Bello and his Son, pleaded not guilty to the charge dated December 23 but amended on December 30, 2015.Meantime, trial Justice Ahmed Mohammed has okayed 30 minutes stand-down on the matter to entertain arguments on whether or not the accused persons should be granted bail.EFCC lawyer, Mr. Aliyu Yusuf had immediately after the duo took their plea, urged the court to remand them in prison custody pending their trial.However, counsel to the defendants, O. Osoka and Abdulaziz Ibrahim, opposed FGs remand application, saying their clients already filed separate motions for bail.The 3rd defendant is willing and ready to stand his trial, but we vehemently oppose the application to remand him in prison custody, counsel to the former PDP boss, Ibrahim, maintained.One of the charge against them read: That you Bello Abba Mohammed, BAM Projects and Properties Ltd and Dr. Haliru Bello on or about 17th March 2015 in Abuja within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court took possession of the sum of N300million paid into the account of BAM Projects and Properties Limited with Sterling Bank Plc from the account of the Office of the National Security Adviser with the CBN when you reasonably ought to have known that the said fund formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful activity of Col. Mohammed Sambo Dasuki(rtd), the then National Security Adviser( to wit: criminal breach of trust and corruption) and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15(2) (d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011 as amended in 2012 and punishable under Section (15) (3) of the same Act.A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has fixed Thursday for ruling on ex-Peoples Democratic Party Chairman, Haliru Bello, and his sons bail application.Bello and his son, Abbah Mohammed, were arraigned before Justice Ahmed Mohammed on four counts of money laundering involving about N300m, which they allegedly collected from the office of the National Security Adviser.
In what can be described as a clear example of an indirect response to the allegation by Davido that Sophia infected their daughter, Ima...

The veteran journalist disclosed this in a tweet, hinting that he is not fighting anyone but oppression of his niece by the rich and powerful.Good morning Africa! Thanks to all the journalists calling to ask my side of the raging story but I cant talk because lawyers are involved.It is also pertinent to establish the rule of law rather than brigandage but we shall soon know the king of cannabis in Nigeria!The rich and powerful always think they can get away with anything but under a CHANGE government we shall test the laws protecting the weak!, Momodu posted on Twitter.On Sunday, Davido rebuffed claims by his estranged lover, Sophia Momodu on the circumstances surrounding the removal of their daughter, Imade, from Sophias custody.In a lengthy narrative issued, Adeleke alleged that Sophia had been in weekly contact with Imade up till last week and claimed that hospital authorities had sought to transfer the baby to officials of the Lagos State Children Welfare Authority on account of alleged drug use by Sophia.Adeleke in his narrative said the hospital authorities recanted only after Sophia agreed to surrender the baby for care with him, saying his estranged lover had kept to the agreement until she recanted last week as she insisted on going along with the Adeleke family for the treatment and family vacation in Dubai.Adeleke in the narrative poured invectives on the respected veteran journalist, Dele Momodu, who he accused of not taking care of his niece, Sophia, alleging that Mr. Momodu and his wife entered the scene as busybodies who he claimed did not bother about the welfare of their niece until she had a baby for him.
Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde on Tuesday said that her visit to Nigeria was not meant to nego...

Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde on Tuesday said that her visit to Nigeria was not meant to negotiate loans but rather to promote physical discipline and favourable monetary policies.Lagarde stated this while fielding questions from State House correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.She said that she had an excellent discussion with President Muhammadu Buhari on the challenges facing Nigeria occasioned by the drastic fall in oil price.let me make it clear that Im not here nor is my team in this country to negotiate a loan with conditionalities.We are not into programme negotiations and frankly at this point in time, given the determination, resilience displayed by the President and his team, I dont see why an IMF programme will be needed.So, of course, discipline is going to be needed, of course, implementation is going to be key for the objectives and the ambitions to serve the country well, in order for it to be actually sustainable.On the assertion that IMF programmes are always anti-people, Lagarde described such view as outdated, saying IMF programmes were in favour of the less-privileged members of the society.She said that the IMF policies and programmes were not meant to impoverish poorer member countries but rather to assist them with quality policy advice, technical assistance and capacity building.According to her, about 150 out of the 188 member- countries of the IMF had so far benefited from the institutions technical assistance and capacity building. If I may say, I think that you have slightly outdated idea of the IMF.Certainly, the last four and a half years, since I have been managing director of this institution, this is not the recipes we adopted and this is certainly not the feedback I have received from the countries that we have worked with.I just want to point out that we are majorly involved in three kinds of activities.The first one, which is the most traditional one, is under which we give policy advice to our members, we have currently 188 countries that are under this institution and it is our duty and accountability to them to review their economy every year to give them report about their economy.We dont push them, we dont do things necessarily to please them; we say things as we see them.The second activity, which is the fastest growing one in the institution, is technical assistance and capacity building, and there is plenty of that is available to all the countries of the world.It gives us pride to see that about 150 countries have had the benefit of technical assistance and capacity building.Lagarde, who pledged more technical assistance and capacity building for Nigeria, however, stressed the need for the country to develop a strong tax department, efficient debt management and customs authority to achieve a strong economy for the country.She commended the determination of the President Buharis administration to fight corrupt practices and to bring about transparency and accountability at all levels of the economy. (NAN)
The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, arrived Abuja on Monday to begin a four-day visit to N...

The visit is part of a two-nation West African region tour to engage policy makers and top officials of Nigeria and Cameroon on economic developments affecting both countries and the West African sub-region.Prior to Ms Lagardes arrival, the IMF had explained that the visit would underline the Funds strong relationship with its African member countries.The visit to Nigeria will provide an opportunity to strengthen the Funds partnership with the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, the statement said.While in Abuja, Ms. Lagarde would meet with President Muhammadu Buhari, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, and Central Bank, CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, along with members of the National Assembly, top business leaders, and civil society representatives.Nigeria is working hard to improve its business environment, promote opportunities for growth in the private sector, and strengthen social cohesion, all areas where the government has an important role to play, the IMF boss said.She said discussions with President Buhari would focus on various economic issues, particularly the impact of the declining crude oil prices on the countrys economy.The IMF has been one of the international finance organisations that have been critical of some policies by the Buhari administration, particularly the CBNs monetary policy on restriction of access to foreign exchange to strengthen the Naira and stabilize the Nigerian economy.The CBN had removed 41 items from accessing its foreign exchange window on grounds that they could easily be produced in Nigeria rather than spend the countrys reserves on importing them.But the Funds Director, African Department, Antoinette Sayer, had said that measures put in place by the CBN was detrimental to the countrys economy, as it was exerting undue pressure on the national currency, rather than stabilize it.Mr. Sayer said the introduction of the administrative measures to limit access by some items to foreign exchange and ban certain imports as a way of restricting the demand for foreign exchange was hindering private sector investment in the economy.It is not something we think is sustainable or advisable, he said. We hope that there will be an opportunity to review those restrictions and permit the exchange rate to continue to adjust, he added.Although the agenda of Ms. Lagardes meeting with President Buhari during the visit was not made public on Monday, close watchers said that, apart from the impact of the drop in global crude oil price, the review of the CBN policy was likely going to be one of the key issues to be discussed.
If there is anybody I can vouch for in Buharis Cabinet, it is Senator Udoma Udo Udoma. I have known him, and his best friend Keem Bello ...

If there is anybody I can vouch for in Buharis Cabinet, it is Senator Udoma Udo Udoma. I have known him, and his best friend Keem Bello Osagie, for 30 years. All three of us are graduates of Oxford University, England, although I was there before him and Keem. Udoma is as sharp as a razor; he is one of the most intelligent people I know. Better still, he is a man of unimpeachable integrity. Udoma cannot be bought. He has a very successful law practice; the last thing he would do is fiddle public funds.Udoma was a two-term Senator of the Federal Republic, where he distinguished himself representing Akwa Ibom. His people would always remember him as the man who ensured that Akwa Ibom now receives one of the biggest, if not the biggest, share of oil money from the federal government. While many of his Senate colleagues pocketed N50 million bribes to support Obasanjos dastardly third-term bid, including those who nevertheless voted against it; Udoma rejected the bribe and joined the campaign against the scheme.Thereafter, he knew even his re-nomination as PDP Senate-candidate from Akwa Ibom would be blocked. So he quietly bid the Senate and politics goodbye. But righteousness will always exalt a man. Udoma was sought after by blue-chip companies. He re-surfaced as Chairman of UAC and a Director of Unilever. He also became in 2010 chairman of the Governing Board of the Securities and Exchange Commission.On 11 November, 2015, President Buhari appointed Udoma as Minister of Budget and Planning. Six weeks later, the president presented the 2016 budget to the National Assembly. This makes the budget an inevitable casualty of timing. A new Nigerian president is sworn in at the end of May in an election year. He is expected to have his cabinet in place by June. That would give a Minister of Budget and Planning six months to work on a budget.However, when Buhari became president in the middle of an economic crisis, the first thing he did was to squander the first five months. In that time, anti-corruption propaganda became a substitute for policy. The economy nose-dived; going from bad to worse. Queried about the delay in choosing his cabinet, the president bad-mouthed anticipated ministers as noise-makers. When he finally succumbed to the Constitution by unfolding his Cabinet, the year had virtually come to an end.Udoma is a man well-prepared for public office. However, in the short-term, he will have to defend as, a team-player minister, a budget unlikely to be his brainchild. Udoma could not have known he would be the Minister of Budget and Planning. But now he has to defend a budget he could not have planned. Frankly, there are a number of things in this budget that are indefensible.In the medium-term, Udoma is in the unenviable position of being an economics minister to a president who clearly has very limited understanding of economics. Worse-still, he is minister to a president who castigates ministers as noise-makers. That indicates Buhari is not likely to be open to wise counsel. It would not surprise me if schemes like the ante-diluvian counter-trading are mooted again from Aso Rock sooner or later.The first thing that becomes noticeable in the 2016 budget is that it is a budget of pretension. Nigeria is still a monocultural economy. The oil, on which the lionshare of the nations income depends, has suffered a drastic decline in price in the international market. But the government has decided to pretend as if nothing has happened. No austerity whatsoever is entertained. As a matter of fact, in the name of stimulating the economy, the president has decided to present a budget that assumes Nigeria has suddenly become richer overnight, when in fact we have become poorer.This is a very neat trick. In 2015, the total federal budget was N4.45 trillion naira. In 2016, in the middle of an economic downturn, this has been increased dramatically to N6.08 trillion. The new 2016 budget is based on the price of oil being $38 a barrel, ignoring the fact that the price has already fallen below that to $36. Indeed, the IMF projects the price might fall even further in 2016 by $5 to $15; bringing it down to as low as $20. But the government is not prepared to contemplate that eventuality. How can the APC enjoy the trappings of power if, after so long in the political wilderness, its turn is now to be constrained by austerity?Therefore, observe the following contradictions. In the middle of looming economic adversity, the government has decided to be even more profligate than the previous administration. For example, in 2014, the budget for Aso Rock was N12 billion. In 2015, President Jonathan judiciously reduced this to N6.6 billion. But in 2016, Buhari has raised this by 50% to N18 billion. One of the more ludicrous aspects of this is the N3.6 billion earmarked for the purchase of an unspecified number of BMW saloon cars!Clearly, there will be no austerity in Aso Rock in 2016. As a matter of fact, it would appear that elephants will be on the menu for lunch. A whopping N1.75 billion has been budgeted for feeding in Aso Rock in 2016. Goodluck Jonathan was pilloried for spending N1 billion in 2011. He reduced this to N717 million in 2013; N542 million in 2014; and N530 million in 2015. But now Buhari has decided to increase this by more than 100%. N115 million is budgeted for foodstuffs and catering materials for President Buhari alone, an increase of over 64% above that of President Jonathan.If you were of the view that the president has spent too much of his honeymoon period gallivanting abroad this year, think again. N1.4 billion has been allocated for his travel expenses in 2016; N470 million more than that of Jonathan in 2015. The maintenance of the 10 aircraft presidential fleet that the president attacked as wasteful when he was asking Nigerians for our votes will cost N3.6 billion in 2016. N764 million is budgeted for the construction of recreational facilities just for Mr. President.The same lavishness is also proposed for the vice-president. Not to be left out, the National Assembly will cost us nothing less than N115 billion.These are the kinds of changes the APC has in store for Nigeria in fiscal 2016.Where is the money for all the extra expenditures in 2016 supposed to come from given the sharp reduction in our income? There is a lot of talk about squeezing more money out of taxation, creating greater efficiencies in the MDAs, and generating more income from agriculture and solid minerals. But it is just talk.Only N29 billion is devoted to the Ministry of Agriculture, while more money, N39 billion, is earmarked for Ministry of Information and Culture. But of course, Lai Mohammed has already told us he plans to have one cultural festival a day, 365 days in 2016; although he has already missed a few days.Principally, the government has decided to go a-borrowing. It proposes to borrow N1.88 trillion in 2016; 30.9% of the total budget; N1 trillion more than was borrowed in 2015. This is where the whole thing gets even more ludicrous.When the APC came to power, the first thing it attacked was Nigerias debt-profile under the previous Jonathan administration. Vice-President Osibajo complained that: Our economy is currently in perhaps its worst moment in history. Local and international debt stands at $60 billion.The APC answer to this predicament is now to borrow more in 2016 than we did in 2015. Osibajo complained that our debt-servicing bill in 2015 was N953 billion. How then are we to understand the APC decision to increase that debt-servicing bill to N1.8 trillion in 2016; an increase of nearly 100%. Osibajo complained that our debt-servicing bill was 21% of the budget under Jonathan in 2015. But now under Buhari, 30.9% of the total federal budget in 2016 is going to be financed by debt.Suddenly, the same government that complained it inherited a huge burden of debt from the PDP now argues that Nigeria is under-borrowed. That is the new truth now being dished out by government spin-doctors. Kemi Adeosun, the new Finance Minister, now says Nigerias debt to GDP ratio is low at 12%. She compares this conveniently to Angola (57%) and South Africa (48%).In which case, our indebtedness is no longer an albatross. Since the APC has replaced the PDP at the centre, we can now borrow as much as we like. This is all well and good. Except that it is exactly how we got into the debt predicament of the 1980s and 1990s. It means in 2016, we will spend N4 billion every day on debt-servicing.The government promises that, this time, it is only going to borrow for capital projects. But it cannot tell us precisely what these capital projects are. All we have are promissory notes that they will be for infrastructural projects like roads, rails and power supply. However, promissory notes from this APC government are no longer worth a dime.In 2015, the federal budget was N4.5 trillion. Nevertheless, the government was able to gather as much as N1.5 billion into the TSA account. This represents money not spent from previous budgets. This should tell us that we did not even have the capacity to spend what we earned. Monies voted for recurrent expenditure gets gobbled up more or less. But capital projects are either ignored, uncompleted, or big chunks of the earmarked money are stolen.What the government now proposes to do is to increase even that usually unspent money, without first fixing the underlying lack of capacity-utilization. Since the government actually has no structural anti-corruption policy, beyond declaring its enemies guilty without trial, all that might happen here is that we are simply making more money available for graft.Then there is the brilliant idea of employing 500,000 graduates as teachers in the rural areas. Quite apart from the difficulty of assembling and equipping these graduates, the cost of the project is prohibitive. A modest 50,000 monthly wage bill will come to N300 billion per annum, while the total amount allocated for education is N369 billion.My conclusion is simple. The APC won the election in the wrong country. The government should be shipped elsewhere; perhaps to France.
A sharia court in Kano has sentenced a Tijjaniyya cleric, Abdul Inyass to death for blasphemy. The verdict brought to its logical conc...

A sharia court in Kano has sentenced a Tijjaniyya cleric, Abdul Inyass to death for blasphemy.The verdict brought to its logical conclusion 9 months of trial conducted in secrecy.Inyass and 13 others were arrested last May in Kano during a religious functions in the volatile city for blasphemy.An Upper Sharia court Rijiya Lemu had in June last year sentenced Inyass accomplices which included a woman and 8 others to death.A statement by the Registrar, Kano Sharia court of Appeal signed by one Alhaji Nasiru last June stated that 8 persons were found guilty in accordance with section 110 and 302 of the penal code procedure, but Inyass sentence was delayed.Abdul Inyas, Hajiya Mairo Ibrahim and 10 others were accused of making blasphemous statement against the Prophet of Islam, on May 5th at a religious gathering in honour of Sheik Ibrahim Inyass at Dala general area of Kano municipal.The controversial Sheik Abdul Inyass is of Haqiqa (Realist) group, a mystical branch of Tijjaniyya movement with its headquarters in Senegal.When the accused persons appeared in court on May 22nd thousands of youths who stormed the court to witness the proceedings burnt down the Sharia court.This development may have forced government to conduct the trial in secret. But while the accused were in detention irate youths stormed and demolished Sheik Abdul Inyass residence located at Gaida, Kumbotso local government area of the municipality.The statement further disclosed that Al Qassim Abubakar, Yahaya Abubakar, Isa Abubakar and Abdullahi Abubakar were discharged and acquitted by the court in tandem with sec 404 of Sharia criminal procedure.
Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday, the latest country to side with Saudi Arabia in a widening diplomatic feud with Iran t...

Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on Tuesday, the latest country to side with Saudi Arabia in a widening diplomatic feud with Iran that has roiled the region, put the United States in a bind and threatened to set back the prospects for peace in Syria.The decision, reported by the official Kuwait News Agency, came a day after Bahrain and Sudan cut diplomatic ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded relations with the country.The feud was set off by a pair of events on Saturday: Saudi Arabias execution of 47 men, including a Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and the outraged reaction of Iranians, who set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the Saudi Consulate in Mashhad, Irans second-largest city.The Kuwait News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry official as calling the attacks a flagrant breach of international conventions and saying they violated Irans international commitment to the security and safety of diplomatic missions on its lands.On Sunday, Kuwait condemned the storming of the Saudi Embassy, and on Monday, it denounced the attack as a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the 1961 accord that specifies diplomatic privileges.Kuwait, like Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, is a Sunni-led country and an ally of Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy. (Bahrain has a majority-Shiite population but a Sunni monarchy.) Iran, a Shiite republic that has been governed by clerics since 1979, sees itself as a protector of the worlds Shiites.
Teachers in public primary and Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) in Kwara state yesterday carried out their threat to go on strike despite p...

Teachers in public primary and Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) in Kwara state yesterday carried out their threat to go on strike despite pleas from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.The teachers, who had threatened to commence indefinite strike action yesterday over unpaid three months salaries, deserted classes in public schools in the state.When newsmen visited some junior secondary schools along Offa road, Zango road and Saw mail areas in Ilorin yesterday, pupils who resumed from Christmas/New Year holiday were seen playing around the compound without any teacher to attend to them.However, teaching and learning activities were going on in Senior Secondary Schools (SSS) because it was gathered that the state government did not owe SSS teachers.Speaking with journalists, the state Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Alhaji Abubakar Musa, said the strike became imperative following non payment of October, November and December 2015 salary of the affected teachers.Alhaji Musa noted that teachers need to be motivated to carry out their duties as motivation is one of the indices of teaching which the teachers presently lack , there is no way the hungry teachers could deliver effectively, it is better for teachers to stay at home until the Government is capable of paying them. he said.Meanwhile, the Kwara state chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has appealed to the striking teachers to suspend the strike.In a release by its Publicity secretary, Alhaji Sulyman Buhari, the party said, as a party, we wish to state that we feel the concerns and share in the pains of primary school teachers in Kwara State. Quite unfortunate, this issue is chiefly caused by the dwindling allocation from the federation account.Therefore, it is not about non-payment of teachers salaries but non-availability of funds to pay salaries. It requires collective efforts to address rather than strike action, if the resources are available today, the Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed-led Kwara State Government will pay all teachers like it has always done in the past five years.
By Femi Fani-Kayode Mr. President, you will recall that I wrote you an open letter on December 28th, 2015 which I sincerely hope that y...

By Femi Fani-KayodeMr. President, you will recall that I wrote you an open letter on December 28th, 2015 which I sincerely hope that you found most gratifying, illuminating and helpful. That was two days before your Presidential media chat which took place on December 30th. I hereby humbly crave your indulgence to add an addendum to that open letter.That is what this contribution represents. I hope and pray that this second letter, which will be the last, will further enlighten you and impart a little more wise counsel to you that will result in assisting you to properly appreciate the complexities of our times. Mr. President it is pertinent to note that approximately two hundred and sixty five years ago one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, Mr. Benjamin Franklin, said "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God".I am sure that you will agree with me when I say that he was absolutely right. Just in case you do not know who Benjamin Franklin was permit me to point out the fact that he is a man that is reverred by the American people and much of the civilised world up until today and he is the individual whose face appears on the one hundred U.S. dollar bills that are used till today.He was a great statesman, diplomat, politician and intellectual and most important of all he was a deeply courageous man who was motivated by his deepest convictions and his christian values and who was prepared to risk life and liberty and stand up to tyranny. I guess most Nigerian leaders have much to learn from him especially at times like this. Yet thankfully all is not lost and at least a few of our politicians are beginning to find their voice and speak out against the evil in the land.Permit me to share one example with you. A few days ago Chief Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of our great party the PDP, exposed the fact that there was an orchestrated attempt by your government to intimidate, silence and utterly decimate and crush the opposition. In open defiance to what can best be described as this insidious and sinister agenda he told the world that ''President Buhari is not God and we will not worship him".Whether he knows it or not Metuh has not only spoken for the PDP but also for the overwhelming majority of the Nigerian people. Permit me to add the following words to his timely contribution. Woe unto those that tremble before men of power and that worship false gods. Destruction and perdition awaits those who bow before Baal, who exalt the servants of Belial, who kiss the ring of the Baphomet, who say ''Buhari is God'' and who crawl at the feet of the Lord of the Flies.Mr. President the point is simple and clear: you are not God and even though we respect your office we will never bow before you, we will never worship you, we will not relent in our efforts to oppose you and, regardless of your constant threats and wicked intentions, we have absolutely no fear of you. This is because our fate and destiny and the future of our beloved country lies in the hands of the Living God and not in the hands of a misguided and tyrannical dictator like your good self. Injustice, persecution and tyranny last only for a season.At the appointed time the Lord will step in and He will deliver and vindicate the falsely accused and the righteous captive. He will also avenge the spilling of innocent blood and He will fight the cause of the martyrs. With this in mind and regardless of the dangerous counsel of the hardliners and extremists that surround you, I urge you to please take note of the following: Sheik Ibrahim El Zakzaky, Colonel Sambo Dasuki and Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, who are all political prisoners, must NOT die under mysterious circumstances whilst they are in your custody.No matter what your advisers and those in your inner circle tell you if, God forbid, this were to happen the fall-out and consequences for your reputation and your administration would be too much to bear. This brings me to another issue which is a cause for grave concern.Your stated resolve not to obey court orders and to deny Nigerians their right to bail after the courts have given it to them is not only an affront and gratuitous insult to the Judiciary but it is also a violation of the constitution. I say this because, unlike military dictatorships, democracy enjoys and derives its power and legitimacy from the inviolable and sacred principle of ''separation of powers''.What this means is that the Executive arm of Government, which by the grace of God you head today, is distinct and separate from the Legislature and the Judiciary. As head of the Executive and President of the Federal Republic, you have absolutely no power or right to interfere in the processes of the Legislature (which is the National Assembly) or the Judiciary.Both have their own rules, regulations and leadership and the constitution guides them and guarantees them total and complete independence from you. As a matter of fact they are charged by the laws of our land and the constitution to act as a check and balance on you as President and to ensure that you do not abuse your power or subject your people to tyranny.Mr. President I watched you on your media chat the other day and I am constrained to tell you that you not only abused your power but that you also crossed the line with some of the things that you said. For example you have no right to tell the courts how to administer justice and who and who not to grant bail.Again you have no business to tell the legislature which laws to pass and how to run their affairs. Again you have no right and neither do you have the power to pronounce any Nigerian citizen guilty of any crime unless and until a duly constituted court of law has done so. You cannot be the prosecutor, judge and jury in any criminal proceeding and this is especially so when you initiated those proceedings and you are the accuserTo attempt to do so is not only unacceptable and irresponsible but it is also heartless and unkind. The fact that most of our senior and respected lawyers have refused to tell you this simply because they are scared of you or because they are looking for patronage from your government does not mean that what you are doing is lawful or acceptable.What you are doing is morally and legally reprehensible and it is unacceptable in any democratic and civilized society. In the same vein you have no right to try to stop members of the opposition or the general public from criticizing you or condemning your obvious failings. Mr. President criticism, opposition and dissent are the lifeblood of democracy and without accommodating and tolerating them you cannot claim to be a democrat.You have no right to attempt to cower or intimidate the fourth estate of the realm, which is the media, or attempt to pervert and corrupt the Nigerian public with daily doses of lies, falsehood, deceit and propaganda which is being duly and dutifully administered by your Minister of Information and your numerous media aides.All these things give me and millions of your other subjects concern yet it doesn't stop there. Perhaps the most disturbing example of your sheer insensitivity was your reaction to the question about Igbo marginalization during the media chat. In response to that question you asked "who is marginalizing who" and went further to ask "what do the Igbo want?"Mr. President I wish to remind you that it is an incontrovertible fact that in just seven months your government has succeeded in marginalizing the Igbo more than any other Federal Government in living memory and certainly since the civil war. This is a record that you ought not to be proud of. What the Igbo want is fairness, equal rights, equal representation, equity and respect.They also believe that they have the right to determine their own future and make their own choices. Mr. President I do not believe that this Is this too much for them to ask given the fact that they have contributed, perhaps more than most, to national development and integration in the last forty five years? It is not too much to ask given the fact that no less than three million of their people, including one million innocent children, were slaughtered during our civil war in the name of keeping Nigeria one? I have no doubt that you will remember this very well Mr. President given the fact that you were one of those that prosecuted that war and fought in it.You will also remember the brutal mass murder and the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were perpetrated against the unarmed and defenseless Igbo civilian population of Asaba in 1968 when over one thousand of them were rounded up, taken to the town square and shot to death for no just cause. The soldiers that carried out that unspeakable act of cowardice, brutality and barbarity were under the command of your professional colleague, the late Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed.Mr. President that was a dark, shameful and ignoble chapter in our history which still cries out for justice and reparations. Needless to say the pain of such horrendous events and numerous others that the Igbo have been subjected to by the Nigerian state and those that control it over the last fifty five years still haunts them.The truth is that regardless of the obvious contempt that you have for them the Igbo will continue to insist on justice, fairness and on having their rights respected in our country. If you refuse to address their numerous and legitimate grievances and you refuse to treat them with the understanding, sensitivity and compassion that they deserve, the agitation for self-determination, secession and the yearning for the establishment of a new nation called Biafra will wax stronger and stronger until it reaches dangerous and irresistible proportions.That is what you are toying with Mr. President and if that were to happen be rest assured that the Yoruba would take a cue from it and so would the people of the Niger Delta. It would effectively signify the beginning of the balkanisation of Nigeria. Whether you and those with your world view like to hear it or not, that is the bitter truth. May the Ancient of Days grant you the wisdom, knowledge and understanding to accept it and to do something about it.May the Lord of the Universe give you the foresight and the insight to appreciate the fact that Nigeria cannot survive a second civil war. Mr. President I sincerely hope that you do not take offence at my admonitions and counsel. I speak only out of concern for the fortunes of your administration, your reputation and out of love for my country.God bless Nigeria.
Three weeks after his arrest and subsequent detention, members of the Islamic sect, Shiites, yesterday, asked the Federal Government to...

In a statement by the President of the Islamic Movement Media Forum (IMMF), Ibrahim Musa, the group said its members were anxious of the whereabouts of its leader.He said: The condition and whereabouts of the Islamic Movements leader Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky as well as that of his wife, are still unknown, three weeks after their arrest and detention by the security operatives.The Islamic Movement as well as the general public are now seriously anxious.Where is Sheikh Zakzaky and why has he been denied his constitutional rights to an attorney, bail and visitation?If the government is truly interested in finding a peaceful way out of this crisis the army initiated and executed, as the government wants the public to believe, it should by now have allowed an unimpeded access to Sheikh Zakzaky.First and foremost, his first family members and leading brothers of the Islamic Movement and his doctor should have met him by now, since he was shot by the soldiers when they attacked his residence.Adding, he said: We are highly agitated by this seeming needless incommunicado the Sheikh has been placed in.The Federal Government should tell the public where Sheikh Zakzaky is, because rumours of various degrees are flying about his health.We believe it is only when the Sheikhs health condition is made public by the relevant authorities that the tension brewing among the populace will be doused.
A 39-year-old New Jersey man talked his way into the home of two Long Island residents and stole their life savings from a safe, authorities said.

Tommy Marion was one of two men who posed as tree trimmers earlier this year when they knocked on the door of a home in Glen Cove in February, according to police.

While one of the suspects went into the backyard with the 79-year-old husband and his 85-year-old wife, the other went back into the house and swiped $50,000 from a bedroom safe, police allege.

Marion, also known as Nicky Anderson, was arrested in Cliffside Park last month and extradited back to Nassau County on Monday, according to a news release from Glen Cove police.

He is charged with second-degree burglary and third-degree grand larceny. In 2010, Marion was convicted of criminal trespass in Essex County and given a year of probation.

An anonymous donor helped the couple recoup their savings, Glen Cove police said.

A February report from CBS-2 said the scammers claimed to be neighbors.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
HACKENSACK -- A truck driver pleaded not guilty Monday to causing the death of a Hudson County man in a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike in Carlstadt, The Record reported.

New Jersey State Police said Henry G. Flores, 56, was using his cell phone when he failed to slow his tractor-trailer down, leading to a deadly chain-reaction crash on June 9, 2014.

The 1996 Kensworth truck Flores was driving in the left lane slammed into the back of a Chevy Malibu before continuing into five other cars, police said. One of them was a Saturn driven by Jeffrey Humphrey, 43, of Harrison, who died at the scene when his car was forced into a highway barrier.

Several others were hurt, police said.

Flores is free on $50,000 bail, according to jail records.

His next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 1.

Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
GLOUCESTER TWP. -- From newcomers making history to familiar faces shifting into new roles, Camden County officials celebrated the start of 2016 at the county freeholder board's 172 reorganization meeting on Monday night in a packed Civic Hall at Camden County College's Gloucester Township campus. Here are the highlights county residents should know as 2016 gets rolling:

Blazing trails, again

As Susan Shin Angulo took the oath of office for freeholder, administered by state Sen. Jim Beach, the former Cherry Hill councilwoman became the first Asian-American to sit on the board, which oversees a county where 5.8 percent of the population identifies as Asian, according to U.S. Census data.

Breaking ground isn't new for Angulo, however, as she became the first female Korean-American elected to public office in New Jersey when she joined the Cherry Hill Township council in 2009. Angulo's resume boasts a bachelor's degree in biology as well as a post-baccalaureate degree in cytogenetics and a long history of work in pharmaceutical and biotech marketing. She was joined by her husband and two young daughters at Monday's swearing-in.

A new sheriff in town

Former Assemblyman Gilbert "Whip" Wilson spent the past five years representing New Jersey's 5th legislative district, but the Vietnam War veteran and retired Camden police officer returned to his law enforcement roots on Monday as he was sworn in as the county's newest sheriff.

Wilson, a former Camden City councilman who stepped down from the assembly last month, replaces retired sheriff Chuck Billingham, who took on the role after retiring as chief of police in Washington Township. Wilson's oath of office was administered by Congressman Donald Norcross, who served alongside Wilson when Norcross represented the 5th Legislative District in the state senate.

"There's a new sheriff in town," Norcross joked as he presented Wilson with a white cowboy hat emblazoned with a gold star.

The next guide to residents' best, or worst, moments

Camden County residents dealing with the often complex issues surrounding wills, adoptions and guardianships will now turn to former freeholder Michelle Gentek-Mayer, who was sworn in as the county's newest surrogate Monday night.

A county surrogate might be one of the least understood row offices, operating under the state's judicial branch, unlike any other elected office. Surrogates are charged with helping people in the midst of life-changing situations, often working as an intermediary in custodial or estate matters.

Gentek-Mayer steps into the role formerly held by 5th Legislative District Assemblywoman Patricia Egan Jones, who was appointed to the legislature after former Assemblyman Angel Fuentes stepped down to take on a job as the county's deputy clerk. A former Gloucester Township councilwoman, Gentek-Mayer has advocated for sustainability causes, small business growth and community-based projects. Her husband, Gloucester Township Mayor David Mayer, held the Bible as she took the oath of office surrounded by family.

Michelle Caffrey may be reached at mcaffrey@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ShellyCaffrey. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
HADDON HEIGHTS -- A borough elementary school recently received a letter from New Jersey's American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asking them to stop requiring students to say "God bless America" after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Glenview Elementary School received the letter because the ACLU states that saying "God bless America" is unconstitutional.

"It is improper and unconstitutional for public school officials to have elementary school students invoking God's blessing," Ed Barocas, legal director of the ACLU's New Jersey branch, said Tuesday. "Students have the right to engage in religious messages on their own time, but not during official school assembly led by school officials."

Glenview Principal Sam Sassano said Tuesday afternoon that the practice -- now 14 years old and started in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- was not rooted in religion, but patriotism.

"We have never viewed this to have any religious ties," the superintendent said, adding that the school district was "a little taken aback" by the letter sent to the school board's solicitor on Dec. 23, 2015.

"At the same time, we understood how it could be construed," he added.

Barocas declined to say how the ACLU was initially made aware of the phrase being said, but said that teachers at the elementary school reportedly began the practice and administration allowed it to continue.

Sassano said that students who wish to say "God bless America" have continued to do so for the past two mornings following the pledge, but the requirement to do so has been dropped.

The superintendent added parents have stopped by the school to "show their support" and said that they understood why the district had to issue a letter.

Asked whether the age of the students was a factor, Barocas said, "There's always a concern regarding public schools, but courts take into account age and impressionability."

He added that his chapter has also defended religious speech, specifically when the group submitted a legal brief in defense of a student who wanted to sing the 1988 worship song "Awesome God" at a talent show, as it was individual speech.

"Schools can't impose religion on children; parents have the right to direct religious upbringing," Barocas said.

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
NEWARK -- When can university alumni call themselves an "alumni association?"

That's the tricky question a panel of appellate judges is slated to consider Tuesday as a bitter dispute involving New Jersey Institute of Technology alumni heads back to court.

NJIT officials began clashing with members of the Alumni Association of New Jersey Institute of Technology, the school's 80-year-old alumni group, more than a decade ago.

The two sides feuded over money, campus expansion plans and other issues. In 2008, then-NJIT President Robert Altenkirch officially cut ties with the group and started a new alumni group with new leaders. The new group was also named the Alumni Association of NJIT.

The old alumni group took NJIT to court in a lengthy and costly trademark case that spent nearly six years in the Superior Court Chancery Division.

In 2014, the court ruled in NJIT's favor and said the old alumni group had to change its name to "Independent Alumni of NJIT." The judge also said the alumni group had to quit using NJIT's logos and stop handing out school awards.

But, the alumni group filed an appeal. Oral arguments in the case will be heard by three appellate judges Tuesday morning at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, said Joseph Cerra, the alumni group's attorney.

The alumni will argue NJIT stole their group's name and free speech rights, Cerra said.

"They are entitled to use the name 'Alumni Association of New Jersey Institute of Technology' because they were the first association to use this name and the law affords protection to the first user of a name," Cerra said. "The Alumni Association contends NJIT, a state university, acted in violation of the First Amendment by punishing free speech and association rights by trying to take away the Alumni Association's name."

NJIT officials said Monday they don't comment on litigation.

After the 2014 ruling, school officials said they regretted that the dispute ended up in court. But they were pleased the judge said the old alumni group had to change its name.

The case had been costly for NJIT. Though some of its legal costs were covered by the school's insurance policies, NJIT spent at least $460,000 on legal fees defending the initial case in court, a NJIT spokesman said in 2014. That money did not cover the current appeal.

Officials with the alumni group declined to say how much they spent on the case.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
carol-blanchett-left-mara.jpg

Cate Blanchett, left, and Rooney Mara helped make 'Carol' a big winner at the NYFCC awards

((WEINSTEIN))

"How cool is this," Michael Keaton asked. "That someone says you're pretty good?"

It was very cool, as actors from Keaton to Kristen Stewart came to Manhattan's Tao Downtown on Monday night to pick up their prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Also, to belly up to the bar with Alec Baldwin and Samuel L. Jackson, munch some sushi, edamame and chili chicken, and knock back some wine. Maybe too much wine.

"Thank God," a relieved Julianne Moore said partway through, finally taking the stage to present Stewart with her best-supporting-actress award. "I thought I'd get too drunk before I got up here."

Michael Keaton was named best actor for his work in 'Spotlight'

Just as the NYFCC film awards both resemble and stand apart from the Oscars and the Golden Globes - there's no campaigning or cronyism, and the members are regular and respected journalists - the annual ceremony has its own flavor, too.

Unlike the Oscars, there's liquor. Unlike the Globes, there are no TV cameras. For the roughly 300 critics, performers and industry insiders in attendance, that makes for a lubricated, and liberated, evening.

It's still a serious event, though, at least for those doing the silly business of handicapping the Academy Awards race.

This year, for example, the NYFCC honored "Carol" with its prizes for best picture, director (Todd Haynes), screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) and cinematography (Edward Lachman). Acting honors were divvied up among "Brooklyn" (Saoirse Ronan), "Spotlight" (Keaton), "Clouds of Sils Maria" (Kristen Stewart) and "Bridge of Spies" (Mark Rylance).

Saoirse Ronan won over voters with her work in 'Brooklyn'

"Inside Out" won best animated feature and "The Hateful Eight" figured in the special, lifetime award given to composer Ennio Morricone.

Expect many of those names to repeat at the Oscars on February 28.

But the NYFCC gala is also the first big-prize ceremony of the year - and without the months of practice the awards-season death march will bring, celebrities tended to be more spontaneous, even outrageous.

"It's awesome," said the perpetually Oscar-less Jackson, as he picked up Morricone's certificate. "I get to feel what it's like to actually accept something."

Morricone was unable to attend, as was Rylance. But the rest of the winners were there, and couldn't help beaming as they picked up their prizes.

"I've received a lot of MTV Popcorns," cracked former "Twilight" star Stewart, as she held her certificate. "This is a little different."

Former teen star Kristen Stewart surprised many with her role in 'Clouds of Sils Maria'

Many mentioned their New York ties, including best-actress winner Ronan, who spent a few early years in New York before moving to Ireland. Getting an honor from this hometown crowd, she said, was especially sweet.

"I know how tough youse are," she said with a grin, "become I'm one of you!"

Thrown by the Circle's members - including this one - and hosted by chairman Marshall Fine, the event was occasionally slowed by a long-winded or somewhat self-involved presenter. (Warned Liam Neeson, there to introduce Ronan - "My speech will be short and relatively uninteresting.")

And it's sure to spark - as all movie awards nights do - some morning-after complaints from the uninvited, criticizing all these self-congratulatory celebrities.

But the celebrities are fully prepared for that. And not too concerned.

"Gloating," Michael Keaton declared, "gets a bad rap."



Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on Facebook.


NEWARK -- Authorities have identified the man killed outside of the Terrell Homes public housing in the city's East Ward Monday afternoon as 20-year-old Rakim S. Onque.

Onque, a Newark resident, was wounded in a shooting at around 2 p.m. near the Riverview Court complex, said Katherine Carter, spokesperson for the Essex County Prosecutor's Office.

Onque was later rushed to University Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, Carter said.

No arrests have been made, and no suspects have been identified at this time, authorities said. An investigation by the prosecutor's office's Major Crimes and Homicide Task Force is ongoing.

The killing marks the second homicide of the year in Newark.

Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
baraka-3.jpg

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, pictured here in a file photo, said recently revealed threats on his life are being taken "very seriously." (Star-Ledger file photo)

NEWARK - Mayor Ras Baraka offered his first comments Monday about the recently revealed threats on his life, saying they were being taken "very seriously."

During a press conference to announce his intention to hire an attorney to oversee the Newark police department's internal affairs unit, Baraka said he found the two letters, originally sent in October, amidst a stack of mail at his mother's South Ward home.

Though he said he considered hostility from some constituents or other opponents, "part of the job", he said he took the greatest exception to where the letters had been directed.

"What's more frightening to me more than about my own safety is, I'm really more concerned about people going to my mother's home," he said. "It's a bit much for me as a human being."

Baraka called the nature of the threats "alarming" but declined to go into further detail, citing an ongoing police investigation. He added that he believed a single person had authored both letters.

"It makes me wonder about more than my own safety," he said. "We don't take this lightly."

During an afternoon appearance on SiriusXM's "Karen Hunter Show", Baraka was asked whether the threats spawned from a certain issue or position.

"It's not clear. It's just craziness," he said. "But you have to take everything seriously because you never know what people have on their mind and what they intend on doing, especially in this time that we're living in."

In a press release issued Saturday, the city said the threats also targeted city facilities, and that extra security precautions were being taken at City Hall.

The Essex County Prosecutor's Office has confirmed that they are supporting Newark police to help root out the origin of the letters, but few other details about the probe have been released.

Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Faced with a 245-year prison sentence for his role in the 2007 execution-style shooting of three friends in a Newark schoolyard, one of the six men convicted in the case is seeking a new trial.

More than five years after he was sentenced, Rodolfo Godinez is looking to overturn his conviction based on claims that his trial attorney poorly represented him and that a co-defendant has said Godinez did not participate in the slayings.

Godinez appeared briefly on Monday in a Newark courtroom when his current attorney, the prosecutor and Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin scheduled a Feb. 8 hearing for Godinez's trial attorney and his co-defendant to testify.

Godinez - the alleged ringleader of the group - was the first of the six defendants to be convicted in the Aug. 4, 2007, shooting deaths of Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey in the schoolyard behind the Mount Vernon School. Terrance's sister, Natasha Aeriel, was also shot in the head, but survived.

Three of the co-defendants, Jose Carranza, Alexander Alfaro and Gerardo Gomez, were later convicted at separate jury trials. Their co-defendants, Melvin Jovel and Shahid Baskerville, each pleaded guilty.

Godinez and his co-defendants collectively received more than 1,000 years in prison. Prosecutors have said the six men had ties to a Central American gang known as MS-13, and that the murders were gang-related.

During Godinez's trial, an inmate at the Essex County jail testified that Godinez told him he had ordered the schoolyard killings.

In an attempt to overturn his conviction, Godinez, 32, formerly of Newark, has filed a motion for a new trial and a petition for post-conviction relief.

The motion is based on the timing of Godinez's conviction and the statements made by Jovel.

After Godinez was convicted of murder and related charges at his trial in May 2010 and then sentenced in July 2010 to 245 years in prison, Jovel pleaded guilty in September 2010 and admitted shooting all four of the victims.

When Jovel was sentenced in November 2010 to 245 years in prison, he said, referring to Godinez, "the person who was sentenced had nothing to do with this."

According to Godinez's attorney for the motion, Susan Gyss, Jovel has continued to maintain that Godinez was present during the incident, but did not participate in the offenses. Jovel is expected to reiterate that claim when he testifies at the Feb. 8 hearing.

Since Jovel's statements were made after Godinez was convicted, Gyss argued they represent newly discovered evidence that entitles Godinez to a new trial. The motion relies in part on Jovel's remarks during his sentencing hearing.

Rodolfo Godinez, 32, formerly of Newark, appeared before Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin for a hearing on his petition for post-conviction relief in the Newark schoolyard killings case. Godinez was the first of six defendants to be convicted for their roles in the Aug. 4, 2007 execution-style slayings of Terrance Aeriel, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey. Terrance's sister, Natasha Aeriel, was also shot in the head, but survived. Godinez was convicted at a 2010 trial and later sentenced to 245 years in state prison. Through his petition, Godinez is looking to overturn his conviction by claiming he received ineffective assistance from his trial attorney. Hearing was at the Essex County Courthouse in Newark 1/4/16 (Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

"He's willing to testify and he's going to be a key witness," Gyss said on Monday outside the courtroom, referring to Jovel's anticipated testimony at the Feb. 8 hearing.

But in a brief filed in response to the motion, prosecutors rejected the claim that Jovel's statement during his sentencing entitles Godinez to a new trial.

"Simply stated, Jovel's opinion at his own sentencing is not evidence, and certainly did not result in the judicial system denying defendant fair proceedings leading to an unjust outcome," according to the brief. The case is being handled by Essex County Assistant Prosecutors Romesh Sukhdeo and Frank J. Ducoat.

In the petition for post-conviction relief, Gyss is claiming Godinez's trial attorney, Roy Greenman, provided ineffective legal assistance in various ways.

As two examples, Gyss claimed Greenman opposed questioning jurors about an apparent dispute amongst them during deliberations, and that Greenman failed to request a special instruction to jurors about the testimony of an MS-13 expert.

That instruction was necessary to highlight the fact that the expert's opinion was largely based on Godinez's statement to police and that statement contained numerous falsehoods, according to Gyss.

Prosecutors rejected those arguments about Greenman's representation, saying that questioning the jurors "would have needlessly interfered with the deliberative process," and that an instruction provided to jurors "accurately instructed the jury that it had to determine the credibility and the relevance of the MS-13 evidence," according to the brief.

After Monday's hearing, Sukhdeo said he believed Godinez's arguments will be rejected by the judge and his conviction will be upheld.

"I don't believe that Mr. Godinez's sentence or custodial status will be modified in any way at all," Sukhdeo said.

In a brief phone interview on Monday, Greenman declined to comment.

Bill Wichert may be reached at bwichert@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillWichertNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House Jan. 6 committee plans to unveil "surprising" details at its next public hearing about the 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol. The session Thursday afternoon is likely to be the last public hearing before midterm elections next month. The panel is expected to include new evidence from the U.S. Secret Service about its actions with Donald Trump that day. Ahead of a report later this year, the panel is summing up its findings. The committee says Trump, after he lost the 2020 presidential election, launched an unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory. They say the result was the deadly mob siege of the Capitol.
Welcome to non league daily news now - your number one spot for all things relating to the National League System. Our dedicated reporters have come straight from the sidelines to bring you news fresh from the dugout - but not before theyve stopped off at the burger van first!

We know that non league football fans are full of heart, passion, and belief. You trust the manager, you believe in the team, and, for some strange reason, you trust those rickety stands, too! Here at Non League Daily, we hope we can become your trusted non league news resource - a platform thats just as passionate about non league daily news now as you.

Come rain or shine, well be out reporting on the latest non league fixtures. Well also be scouring the news, refreshing social media, and sourcing information from team websites in the hopes of finding the latest breaking non league daily news for our readers.

As youll soon see, weve got exclusive match reports on the Vanarama National League, weve got transfer speculation thatll affect the National League South, weve found great stories thatll spice up the National League North, and weve even got news on the latest giant killers of the FA Cup.

We may not be able to agree on who is going up this year, but we can all agree that any news on the NLS worth knowing will be published here, at Non League Daily.
Dan Roberts will become the third peace officer in Council Bluffs Fire Department history.

Roberts, a fire investigator, will head to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy next week to complete police officer training. When he returns in April, Roberts will able to work more autonomously on arson investigations.

The Fire Department works with the Council Bluffs Police Department on all arson investigations, with the Fire Marshals Office working with the police Criminal Investigation Division. Without a peace officer in the Fire Department, a detective is needed for many basic tasks.

Roberts, a three-year veteran in the Fire Marshals Office and a 13-year veteran of the department, passed a battery of psychological, physical and written tests to be accepted to the academy. Hell join three new recruits to the Council Bluffs Police Department at the academy, which starts on Monday, Jan. 11.

We were excited he got accepted, said Fire Marshal Larry Wohlers, who noted some departments in the state have multiple peace officers. Its a huge commitment for the city to send someone away for three months. Well have to cover that work while hes away.

Roberts said that, after graduation, hell be able to conduct background checks, look into financial records and obtain warrants to search cellphones, residences and businesses.

Now I can go through much of that process myself, he said.

After going through the academy, Roberts will be able to make arrests in arson cases, while hell also be able to assist other arson investigators through his access to law enforcement assets. Hell also carry a weapon.

We have a great working relationship with the Police Department, we always have, Wohlers said. Weve found that once we gain that extra step  of Roberts becoming an officer  we dont have to rely on them every day and wait on their schedule. They have their own load.

We can move forward with investigations without having to rely on another agency; thats a big thing. Dan can move forward immediately  the night of a fire or first thing in morning  with information he couldnt get without being a law enforcement officer.

Former Fire Marshal Dan Branstetter went through peace officer training in the late 1990s, while current Chief Justin James also went to the academy when he was in the Fire Marshals Office.

It helped open up our lines of communication between police and fire; it helped bridge communication, James said.

James went through the academy in 2009, a year after joining the Fire Marshals Office. He was in fire investigation for about five years until his promotion to chief, but he still helps to this day when cases are backlogged.

With James and now Roberts, the department also has two people that have gone through law enforcement training, which helps build trust between the departments.

Theres a level of trust. We work very well together, especially the guys at the ground level, James said. When you have firemen training with cops, it makes for a better working relationship. They know each other one-on-one, face-to-face.

James listed off a number of other benefits, including reducing the police departments case load, while calling the training educational for the Fire Department.

We feel its good to have someone that knows about probable cause, evidence and other law enforcement topics, he said. Its nice to have someone that understands the criminal side of the law. Itll also help with code enforcement, to have that law background.
A new law intended to make roads safer for school children, pedestrians and school crossing guards came into effect on Jan. 1.

A new law intended to make roads safer for school children, pedestrians and school crossing guards came into effect on Jan. 1.As of the first day of 2016, drivers (including cyclists) must stop and yield the whole roadway at pedestrian crossovers and school crossings where there is a crossing guard displaying a stop sign.The new rules do not apply to crosswalks at intersections with stop signs or traffic signals, unless a school crossing guard is present.The new law, part of Making Ontarios Roads Safer Act, also provides municipal road authorities the ability to install new types of pedestrian crossovers on low speed, low volume roads in addition to the existing crossovers.Drivers who fail to obey the new law can be fined $150 to $500 and receive three demerit points for offences at pedestrian crossings, school crossings and at crosswalks where there are traffic signals.The maximum fine for running a red light  an action that puts pedestrians at risk - is $200 to $1,000.Fines are doubled in Community Safety Zones, near schools and public areas. These areas are clearly marked with signs.For more on this new law, including FAQ and illustrations, visit the Ontario Ministry of Transportation website
While this winter's flu virus has been much less virulent than in previous years, the Sudbury and District Health Unit says people should still exercise precaution and get vaccinated if possible.

While this winter's flu virus has been much less virulent than in previous years, the Sudbury and District Health Unit says people should still exercise precaution and get vaccinated if possible.It's never too late to get it (the vaccine), said Justeen Mansourian-Christakos, an infectious diseases nurse with the health unit. This is when flu activity tends to peak.According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 7,719 people across Canada were hospitalized due to the flu during the 2014-2015 season, and 591 people died due to influenza.So far this season, the agency has recorded 105 hospitalizations and three deaths associated with the flu.The flu season starts in early October, and ends around late April, but Mansourian-Christakos said it tends to peak in February.We are seeing activity. But this time last year we would have seen greater activity, she said. It's still low, but we don't know why.One reason last season's numbers were particularly high was because the strains used for the flu vaccine did not match up perfectly with the virus that infected most people.Mansourian-Christakos said it's too early to tell if this season's flu vaccine is a good match, but the low numbers of hospitalizations and deaths across Canada would suggest the vaccine is helping.The Sudbury and District Health Unit has released around 62,000 doses of the influenza vaccine so far this season, and will continue to supply the vaccine until July.The flu vaccine is flying out of our fridge, and has been since October, Mansourian-Christakos said.The flu vaccine is available through participating pharmacies, walk-in clinics, the health unit and family practitioners.For more information about local flu clinics visit the Sudbury and District Health Unit website
Sudbury is expected to have four Syrian refugee families calling the Nickel City home by as early as March, and the City is looking to facilitate sponsorship efforts for interested residents.

Sudbury is expected to have four Syrian refugee families calling the Nickel City home by as early as March, and the City is looking to facilitate sponsorship efforts for interested residents.Ontario has committed to welcome 10,000 of the 25,000 Syrians coming to Canada. One family arrived in Greater Sudbury just in time to ring in the New Year on Dec. 31 and another three families are confirmed to arrive in Greater Sudbury by March of this year.Efforts are being coordinated through the City of Greater Sudbury website at www.greatersudbury.ca/refugees.The website includes an up-to-date listing of community groups who are currently working to sponsor refugee families, frequently asked questions about the refugee crisis and sponsorship opportunities, and a current events section that will feature community events hosted by sponsors.I am so proud of the community-wide support and all the work that is being done to help bring refugees to Greater Sudbury for a best start in their new lives, said Mayor Brian Bigger.I also want to extend thanks to Councillors Deb McIntosh and Lynne Reynolds for their hard work and commitment to help match residents who want to get involved with local community groups.Residents interested in sponsoring a refugee family have three options: a group of five can apply together, a community organization,such as a church, school or other group, can become a sponsor, and an organization that has ties to refugees and a formalized agreement with Citizenship and Immigration Canada can also qualify.Sponsors are required to cover the essential cost of living for a refugee or a refugee family for one year.Including rent, furniture, transportation and food, the Government of Canada estimates up to $13,000 to support one refugee and about $30,000 for a family of four.For those who want to help, but not act as a sponsor themselves, can donate to community groups who are already established.Residents who would like to partner with a local community group, sponsor a family or volunteer their time are encouraged to email newcomers@greatersudbury.ca
Two Lively men have been charged with numerous offences by the Superior East Chapleau Detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police after a string of break and enters last year.

Two Lively men have been charged with numerous offences by the Superior East Chapleau Detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police after a string of break and enters last year.



Officers were called to a break-and-enter incident in the De Gaulle Township of the District of Sudbury at 1 p.m. Dec. 20.



During the investigation police determined that 13 properties had been broken into with various items taken from each. As a result of an extensive investigation, police arrested and charged the two men.



A 20-year-old Lively man has been charged with:



-Eight counts of Adult Break and Enter a dwelling house with intent to commit indictable offence contrary to section 348(1)(a) of the Criminal Code of Canada;



-Four counts of Adult Mischief under $5,000 contrary to section 430(4) CCC;



-One count of Adult Possession of Property obtained by Crime under $5,000 contrary to section 354(1)(a) of the CCC;



-One count of Adult Possession of Break in Instrument contrary to section 351(1) of the CCC; and



-Two counts of Adult Take Motor Vehicle Without Consent contrary to section 335(1) of the CCC.



A 19-year-old Lively man was charged with:



-Eight counts of Adult Break and Enter to a dwelling house with intent to Commit indictable offence contrary to section 348(1)(a) of the Criminal Code of Canada;



-Four counts of Adult Mischief under $5,000 contrary to section 430(4) of the CCC;



-One count of Adult Theft under $5,000 of a Motor Vehicle contrary to section 334(b) of the CCC;



-One count of Adult Possession of Property Obtained by Crime under $5,000 contrary to section 354(1)(a) of the CCC;



-One count of Adult Possession of Break in Instrument contrary to section 351(1) of the CCC; and



-Two counts of Adult Take Motor Vehicle Without Consent contrary to section 335(1) of the CCC



Both suspects were transported to Timmins to attend bail hearings.
INDIANAPOLIS  Gov. Mike Pence is not saying whether he supports or opposes civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Hoosiers, despite spending nearly six months "studying" the issue that's expected to dominate the 2016 legislative session.

The Republican made no mention of gay rights, or, conversely, religious freedom, in the policy agenda he announced Monday, less than 24 hours before the 100 Hoosier representatives and 50 senators convene at the Statehouse.

Instead, Pence touted his $1 billion state road funding plan that several top House Republicans have said is dead-on-arrival, because it relies on one-time surplus funds and $240 million in borrowing, and does not address the state's long-term infrastructure needs.

Pence also endorsed a $418 million local roads proposal, devised by state Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Buck Creek, that similarly provides a one-time funding boost out of state reserves for local street and bridge repairs.

On education, the governor repeated his newfound support for "hold harmless" provisions concerning A-F school grades and teacher performance pay, so that neither are negatively affected by the expected decline in student scores on the ISTEP standardized exam.

An estimated 41 percent of math and 35 percent of English exams for students in grades three through eight are projected to earn a failing score. Less than 20 percent of Hoosier students failed either exam in 2014.

Pence previously insisted that teachers and schools must be evaluated as usual despite the adoption of more rigorous academic standards and a new ISTEP test. He changed his mind in October, hours before the State Board of Education set the 2015 ISTEP pass-fail line.

Other items on the governor's agenda include: increasing penalties on drug dealers, less than two years after he signed a law reducing them; seeking $42 million in additional funds for his Regional Cities program that benefits only South Bend, Fort Wayne and Evansville; and promoting Hoosier use of ethanol fuel and veteran-owned businesses.

He also announced his support for noncontroversial legislative efforts to make naloxone, an opioid overdose-reversal drug, more readily available, provide legal immunity for drug users who seek overdose assistance, establish a financial savings program for the disabled and strengthen the state's human trafficking laws.

"Our 2016 legislative agenda puts jobs, roads, education and health care at the forefront of this session of the Indiana General Assembly, right where they belong," Pence said.

"I am confident ... our legislative agenda will strengthen Indiana by implementing the kinds of policies that improve the lives of Hoosiers."

Democrats immediately criticized Pence for remaining mum on the issue of LGBT civil rights, with Senate Democratic Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, declaring the governor tone-deaf for ignoring a policy poll showing it is supported by a majority of Hoosiers.

"Omitting the issue from his legislative agenda couldn't make his intentions clearer: He wants to make (it) go away. And that won't cut it," Lanane said. "His failure to clearly articulate his position is the ultimate failure in leadership and continues to do undue damage to our state's reputation and economy."

Pence spokesman Matt Lloyd said the governor "will make his position known" at a later date.
INDIANAPOLIS | One of the most effective state lawmakers to serve Northwest Indiana is preparing to close the books on her 34 years at the Statehouse.

State Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, announced Tuesday she will not seek re-election in November to the Senate seat she's held since 1990. Rogers also previously represented the Region in the House for eight years.

"I think 34 years is enough. I certainly have enjoyed my service and I thank my District 3 constituents for supporting me," Rogers said. "Hopefully, I've made life better, for not only them, but for the whole of Indiana."

Rogers is known as "the mother of casino gambling" for her decades of work to establish and preserve gaming in Indiana. Last year, she finally won legislative approval for the state's permanently docked riverboat casinos to relocate on adjacent land.

She accomplished that feat by working across party lines and building a coalition through reasoned arguments and personal relationships, just as Rogers has done throughout her career.

"I like people and I have been able, while I've been here, to set party politics aside and just talk about issues at hand and try to find middle ground," Rogers said.

She was one of just two Democrats to support Gov. Mitch Daniels' 2006 Major Moves plan to lease the Indiana Toll Road to private investors for $3.8 billion.

That decision to work with Republicans helped steer $20 million in state funds for improvements at the Gary/Chicago International Airport and $100 million to the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, which Rogers established alongside former state Rep. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville.

Prior to and during her legislative tenure, Rogers worked as a teacher for 38 years in the Gary public schools, and education issues have been a top priority for her at the Statehouse.

Through numerous shifts in educational standards, tests and the creation of charter schools and private school vouchers, Rogers has been on the front line of education policy debates  ensuring Northwest Indiana and Hoosiers generally got the best outcome she could muster in a Republican-dominated chamber.

"I think the length of time that you are here adds to the effectiveness you have because people have an opportunity to see how you work, you get a reputation for working with people and so it gets easier as you move along," she said.

Rogers, 81, is planning to become a "snowbird" after she retires, spending winters with her son, grandson and great-grandchildren in Arizona. She also recently celebrated her 60th wedding anniversary.

"My goal is to reach 100," Rogers said. "Back home I go to the Y. Every day I'm home I do Zumba and Jazzercise. I've been able to keep my weight out of the obese category, so now I'm getting ready to release myself of stress."

Rogers said she will wait until the Feb. 5 filing deadline to decide whether to endorse a potential successor.

Democrat Eddie Melton, a member of the State Board of Education and leader of the Indiana Commission on the Social Status of Black Males, already has announced his interest in replacing Rogers as senator for Gary, Lake Station, New Chicago, Hobart, Merrillville and Crown Point; an idea that she likes.

"I think that he would make an excellent state senator," Rogers said. "I would feel very comfortable with him in my seat."
INDIANAPOLIS  Uncertainty over the policies set to be crafted in the next 10 weeks hung Tuesday like an ominous cloud over the otherwise cheerful return of Hoosier lawmakers to the Statehouse.

Amid the friendly back slaps, hugs and handshakes  on the day when some 300 pre-filed legislative proposals officially became eligible for action  were heard plaintive whispers about civil rights and tax hikes and guns and bathrooms.

Even on issues that lawmakers admit need attention, such as road funding, agreement appears to be a long way off.

For example, House Republicans still intend to advance a comprehensive roads plan that includes "revenue enhancements." Senate Republicans and Republican Gov. Mike Pence said they favor spending one-time reserve funds and postponing debate on any long-term plan until after the November elections.

House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said it's not in the state's best interest to continue kicking the infrastructure can down the road.

"But I've acknowledged from the start that it's an election year and a short session and it will be difficult to convince everyone that it's time to make some of those investments now," Bosma said. "We're going to continue the adult conversation on it with all interested parties and see where we can go."

Across the rotunda, Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, seemed to dismiss the idea that his caucus might vote for a tax increase.

"It's a discussion we need to have, we don't deny that at all," Long said. "Whether it's this year or next year will be the debate."

Senate Republicans did endorse spending $418 million in surplus funds on local roads as part of their legislative agenda.

They also plan to champion tougher penalties for drug dealers, $42 million in additional funding for Pence's Regional Cities program, expanded eligibility for a state veterans benefit, property tax cuts for farmers and a small increase in the maximum medial malpractice award.

Long said GOP senators "are all over the place" on whether to extend civil rights protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Hoosiers, so that topic did not make the agenda. Though it will be debated, he promised.

"It is an important issue, we don't deny that, and we'll be discussing it here in the Senate," Long said.

One ray of consensus did manage to burst through the cloud of uncertainty.

Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate agreed to fast-track "hold harmless" proposals ensuring that poor student results on the 2015 ISTEP standardized test do not negatively affect A-F school grades or teacher performance pay.

Bosma said he anticipates that legislation will be on the governor's desk before the end of the month.

In the wake of the ISTEP fiasco, House Democratic Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, called Tuesday for a moratorium on education reform to give teachers, students and parents a break from near-constant changes in academic standards, tests and requirements.

He also urged the Republican-controlled Legislature to add "sexual orientation, gender identity" to the list of protected classes under Indiana's civil rights laws, if for no other reason than to finally get Indiana past the lingering economic and reputational damage tied to last year's "religious freedom" controversy.

"If you're unsure that it's the right thing to do, at least embrace an end to the whole thing," Pelath said.
SOUTH HOLLAND  A south suburban Catholic high school will be closed because of declining enrollment and financial troubles.

The Archdiocese of Chicago will close Seton Academy in South Holland. It will work with affected families to help their children continue their Catholic education, and is planning to celebrate Seton Academy's history in the coming months.

"Seton Academy leadership and the Seton Academy School Board were notified of the risk of closure over the last two years, and have worked hard to restore the School to viability," the Archdiocese said in a statement. "In spite of these efforts, finances and enrollment have not improved. Seton Academy will close at the end of 2015-2016 academic year."

Archbishop Blase J. Cupich and the archiocese also plan to close St. Agatha Catholic Academy in Chicago and St. Peter School in Antioch. Only 12 students were enrolled at St. Agatha, which was converted from a grade school into an early childhood program last year.

"These closures result from extensive conversations and planning at all of these sites," the archdiocese said in a statement. "In the end, closure was recommended for each school by the Archdiocesan School Board and the Office of Catholic Schools. Archbishop Cupich has accepted the recommendations."

Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools still operates 230 schools that serve 82,000 students, making it the largest private school system in the United States.
An office volunteer at Meals on Wheels of Northwest Indiana has reached the ultimate milestone for volunteers.

Doris Galinski, of Crown Point, becomes the first recipient of the Presidential Service Award, Gold Star, at Meals on Wheels of Northwest Indiana. To earn the Gold Star, the volunteer must donate more than 500 hours of service during a service year. With more than 501 hours by the end of October, she earned the honor.

Galinski joined the Meals on Wheels volunteer program by attending the Spring into Action Volunteer Fair hosted by the Crown Point Community Foundation in 2013.

"Her previous office experience has helped us in many ways. She has a great demeanor on the telephone and also is kind to our clients when they call about their meals," Volunteer Manager Joan Vith said.

"She assisted us at the Spring Into Action Volunteer Fair in 2015, recruiting new volunteers. By relaying her story of how she became involved, she helped us recruit new candidates," Vith added.

Doris is a great asset to our organization. Her organizational and good communication skills helps us whenever she comes into the office. Her positive attitude has helped us in many ways.

"I am so proud of her accomplishing the 500+ hours. This has been a goal for Doris all year and I am delighted she has earned this recognition, Vith said.

Galinski will receive her gold pin, presidential letter, and certificate at the next Volunteer Recognition Luncheon in April.

Founded in 1977, Meals on Wheels of Northwest Indiana is a nonprofit headquartered in Merrillville and serving Lake County. More information about Meals on Wheels can be found at www.mownwi.org
DEMOTTE  It was November, and Frank Orsini was again waiting for his new eyeglasses to arrive through the Veterans Administration contractor and hoping this time that he would be able to see through them.

Orsini, 79, of DeMotte, served in the U.S. Army's Third Division from 1960-1962 in Bamburg, Germany.

In May, he needed cataract surgery on his left eye.

As a veteran, he was eligible to have it done at a VA hospital, but the nearest location is Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago. He rode a bus from the Crown Point VA clinic to Chicago for the surgery.

After the surgery, he felt dizzy and was told he could spend the night at the hospital. He had surgery scheduled in the hospital at 8 a.m. the next day.

After he was taken to a room, an orderly told him if had any problems during the night, no one would be available to care for him.

Orsini had his daughter take him home -- although it meant a return trip in the morning.

Orsini said the hospital was to send the prescription for the new eyeglasses he would need to the Crown Point VA clinic, but he was told they couldn't find it. He returned a second time and the prescription was there. He picked out the glasses, but he was told it would take six to eight weeks for them to be mailed to his home.

When the glasses arrived, he had to go to the Crown Point clinic to get them fitted. But he couldn't read a thing through the bottom half of the bifocals.

"She said they'd have to send them back," Orsini said. "I asked her if she could rush them, and she said it would still be six to eight weeks. They came to the house again, but they were worse than before."

The clinic initially told him no one could see him, but he responded he would wait. After 20 minutes, an optician checked the glasses and said they weren't positioned properly. She said the fix would take another six to eight weeks.

The glasses hadn't arrived by Nov. 1, and Orsini said he bought a pair of reading glasses at the drug store. He was told the glasses situation is similar for veterans all over the country.

A third pair of eyeglasses arrived Nov. 10, and Orsini said he still had trouble reading with them, but he was able to get by. When the prescription reading glasses arrived later, he finally could manage by switching between the two pair.

"I wanted to call the glasses lab to see what the problem had been all along, but the clinic said they couldn't give me the phone number."

This is an unacceptable situation," U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky said. "We have a responsibility to ensure that our veterans receive the health care they earned. That is why I have consistently supported legislative and regulatory initiatives to address the backlog of veteran claims and increase veteran healthcare options at non-VA facilities through the Veterans Choice Program."

Visclosky encouraged veterans in his district to contact his office for any VA or benefit issues.

"We will do everything we can to address the situation, he said.

Michael McAleer, public affairs officer for the Martinsburg, W. Va., VA Hospital who recently served as the PAO for Jesse Brown, said the optical shop is a contracted service. McAleer agreed the delays Orsini experienced are not unusual and the VA is addressing them. If the VA is not paying for the glasses, the person can take the prescription anywhere.

As to the hospital stay, McAleer said that probably was the facility's "hosp-tel" for outpatients. It offers overnight accommodations for the patient and a family member, if needed, and doesn't have a full-time medical staff. However, a phone call can bring help quickly if problems develop, he said.

"It could have been a misunderstanding as to what is available," McAleer said. "I wish we could do a better job of communication."

He said Jesse Brown is one of the best hospitals in the nation in terms of wait times for patients getting care, usually shorter than in the private sector.

"We actually reveal things other medical agencies don't," he said. "Most other medical agencies aren't open about what their wait times are."
CROWN POINT  A man exited a car and urinated in front of Gary police during a traffic stop Dec. 30, and officers found suspected PCP on another man who was riding in the vehicle, court records state.

Police stopped a burgundy Pontiac near Sixth Avenue and Ohio Street after the driver turned the wrong way down a one-way street, made a four-point turn and traveled in reverse, Lake Criminal Court records state.

As police spoke to the driver, Deandre M. Cooper, 24, of Gary, got out of the front passenger seat and attempted to walk away, a court affidavit says.

Cooper asked officers if he could go to a bathroom and then dropped his pants before police answered and urinated on the grass, court records state.

As police spoke to the back seat passenger, DeVonne L. Tyler, 20, of Gary, they noticed a semi-automatic pistol under the front seat Cooper had been sitting in, the affidavit says. Cooper, who has multiple prior felony convictions, allegedly told police he didn't have a valid gun permit.

Tyler was arrested on a Lake County warrant. During a search at the police station, an officer found a folded piece of foil that contained a black, leafy substance saturated with suspected PCP, court records state.

Police found eight more folded pieces of foil containing suspected PCP during a strip search of Tyler, the affidavit says.

Cooper was charged Dec. 31 with carrying a handgun without a license, possession of marijuana and public nudity. Tyler was charged with dealing in a controlled substance.
SCHERERVILLE  Friends of a woman killed last weekend in Schererville remembered her Monday as a strong person with a magnetic personality.

Alessandra De Moraes-Emiliano, 37, of Merrillville, came to the United States from Brazil to marry her ex-husband, who police say a surveillance video showed fatally shooting her while she was at work at Edible Arrangements on U.S. 30 in Schererville.

De Moraes-Emiliano was always smiling and happy despite living in fear of her former husband, friend Anna Flores said.

"She had so many friends," Flores said. "She was my best friend, but she was everybody's best friend, because that's the kind of person she was."

Flores said she met De Moraes-Emiliano after they moved into the same Schererville apartment complex about the same time. De Moraes-Emiliano had just left a local domestic violence shelter, she said.

De Moraes-Emiliano had been married to Richard J. Kalecki for about five years and divorced him in 2012, she said.

"She was always having to try to hide her car in the back of her workplace for a while and always looking over her shoulder because she was scared of him," Flores said.

Despite the abuse, De Moraes-Emiliano was a good friend and worked hard at Edible Arrangements and as a Mary Kay consultant to support her daughter, she said.

Christine Flores, Anna Flores' daughter, said De Moraes-Emiliano made it a point to cheer others up.

"She gave when she had nothing to give," she said. "She was special. She really was. She was such a strong woman, and I really looked up to her in a lot of ways."

Kalecki, of Crown Point, was found dead Sunday at the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in the 800 block of Michigan City Road in Calumet City. He died from a gunshot wound to the head in a suicide, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Schererville Police Chief David Dowling said the gun found with Kalecki appears to be the same gun used in the homicide, but ballistics testing will be done before a final determination is made. Police also took Kalecki's rental car and clothes for evidence, he said.

Dowling said detectives were still investigating whether Kalecki had any connection to the cemetery.

Kalecki had been scheduled to stand trial in March on three counts of child molesting and three counts of sexual misconduct with a minor. He faced a maximum of 50 years in prison.

Schererville police had been asked in 2013 to conduct extra patrols around Edible Arrangements because of events in Crown Point, Dowling said, but had not responded there recently.

Dowling said the case is tragic and offered condolences to De Moraes-Emiliano's family and friends.

Anna Flores said De Moraes-Emiliano had been hoping she would no longer have to worry about her safety following Kalecki's trial.

"She was so happy when she got engaged again," she said. "Her life was going in the right direction."
VALPARAISO  Porter County government's decision to revamp its self-funded health insurance plan a year ago appears to have paid off in a million ways.

The Porter County Board of Commissioners were told Tuesday afternoon that it appears the plan came in $1 million under budget last year.

The gain is due in large part to the decision to begin negotiating up from a hospital or other facility's actual cost for a service rather than negotiating down from facility prices that proponents of the approach say are greatly inflated, according to Mike Anton, who is the servicing agent for the county's health insurance plan.

The new approach was taken in an attempt to rein in rising insurance costs. The County Council set aside $9 million for insurance last year after paying about $12 million the year before.

Anton also attributed some of the savings to a healthier year among county employees and elected officials using the health insurance benefit as part of their compensation package. Where there had been 30 to 35 people with major illnesses in the past on the plan, there are now 10 to 15, he said.

"That's huge," Anton said.

The number of major medical cases goes up and down, he said.

"At some point, we'll come out of the cycle," Anton said.

Ideally, the county will pocket the savings during the good years to help provide some cushion when costs go back up, he said. But traditionally any surplus in the self-funded plan has been directed by county leaders toward other uses.

The county commissioners also began the new business year Tuesday by announcing that Porter County attorney Betty Knight, who resigned, is being replaced by Scott McClure.

McClure said he will be stepping away from his role as attorney for the County Council to accept the new post.
VALPARAISO  Indiana 4-H enrollment is now open in Porter County through Jan. 15. Its educational programs help young people reach their full potential. Enrollment is easiest using the 4-H Online system, in.4honline.com.

Indiana 4-H is the states largest youth development program for grades kindergarten-12, reaching more than 200,000 youth in all 92 counties. 4-H Youth Development Educators in each Purdue Extension county office coordinate local activities.

In Porter County, approved adult volunteers teach young people specific skills related to a wide variety of subjects through hands-on, experiential learning. Youth also develop leadership and citizenship skills by participating in one of 14 organized 4-H clubs. Subjects include: agriculture, citizenship, healthy living, art, consumer and family sciences as well as science, technology, engineering and math.

The 4-H Online system makes it convenient to offer enrollment, event registration, calendars and secure payment online.

Youngsters may be enrolled in Porter County 4-H by Jan. 15 online at in.4honline.com or by visiting from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays the Porter County Purdue Extension office, 155 Indiana Ave., Suite 301, Valparaiso. The $20 fee (grades three to 12) per child includes all 4-H program fees. For grades kindergarten through two, there is a $5 fee per child for the Mini 4-H program.

For more information about specific 4-H subjects in Porter County or the 4-H program in general, visit extension.purdue.edu/porter, or call Joan Grott, 4-H youth development extension educator, at (219) 465-3555.
VALPARAISO | Safe drinking water will take center stage at the Rotary District 6540 Foundation Dinner set for Friday at Valparaiso Universitys Harre Union. The event begins at 4:30 p.m., with a silent auction preceding dinner and the keynote address.

Drawing from vast personal experiences, keynote speaker Tom Thorfinnson will discuss The Rotary Foundation activities around the world providing safe water and sanitation. Thorfinnson has made 18 volunteer trips to developing countries on behalf of Rotary.

A resident of Eden Prairie, Minn., Thorfinnson is a past Rotary International director and vice president, and is a member of the The Rotary Foundation board. He is chair of the Programs Committee and the Rotary/USAID H2O Collaboration, a partnership between Rotary and the U.S. Agency for International Development that supports lasting, positive change to water, sanitation and hygiene. safe drinking water

Roger Sims, of Highland, governor of Rotary District 6540, which covers northern Indiana, will host and chair the dinner. Sims is a member of the Munster Rotary Club, where he has worked on several matching funds projects with The Rotary Foundation Humanitarian Grant Program, fellowship activities and numerous other Rotary projects.

A graduate of Valparaiso University in civil engineering, Sims holds a master's degree in business administration from Indiana University. He owns an engineering consultant business specializing in the design, analysis and testing of rail cars and components. He is a prolific community volunteer and is active in Griffith Lutheran Church and various music and education endeavors. He and his wife Patricia have three married children and nine grandchildren.
What a strange, challenging and dangerous year it's been for First Amendment freedoms, at home and abroad.

2015 was but seven days old when terrorists, claiming to be angry over the publishing of satirical drawings of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, burst into the offices of the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people.

The tragedy sparked a worldwide outpouring of support for free expression  remember the signs and T-shirts declaring "Je suis Charlie"  I am Charlie? But the incident also prompted draconian proposals in France to limit certain kinds of free expression and new restrictions on Muslims simply because of their religious faith. And Nov. 13 attacks in Paris in which 130 died only added fuel to that.

As the year unfolded, free expression in the United States took a hit in the most unlikely places  at least to the boomer generation which carried the protest banners in the 1960s of the "free speech movement": Colleges and universities. Campus critics assailed everything from ideas and opinions they believe may make some uncomfortable, to professorial musings on subjects from gender to Halloween costumes, to the notion of inviting speakers with controversial or even repugnant views.

The year ended with the specter of journalists' deaths again in headlines.

On Dec. 21, GOP front-running candidate Donald Trump mockingly discussed killing reporters ("I hate some of these people") at a Grand Rapids, Mich., rally, to the laughter of some attending. He questioned reports that Russia had murdered some journalists, and said "I would never do that ... It's horrible," but then finished with the observation "some of them are such lying, disgusting people."

Just a few days later came the annual, somber reports by the Committee to Protect Journalists and by Reporters Without Borders on the numbers of journalist worldwide jailed or killed in 2015. The CPJ report noted that "of 69 journalists killed for their work in 2015, 40 percent died at the hands of Islamic militant groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. More than two-thirds of the total killed were singled out for murder."

The new year starts with "atmospherics" as measured by public opinion polls that are not kind to protecting First Amendment freedoms, from reports that a sizable number of Millennials have no problem with government officials or the Pentagon reviewing or controlling a free press and free speech in the name of public safety, to a survey showing overall faith in democratic ideals is fading among younger voters.

Still, a large majority of Americans  in the Newseum Institute's annual State of the First Amendment annual survey  do not see those core freedoms as "going too far in the rights they protect." And as the late founder of the Institute's First Amendment Center, John Seigenthaler, observed: "First Amendment freedoms are never secured but are always in the process of being made secure."

Keep that last thought in mind.
New York's medical marijuana program is set to officially launch this week.

The state's first medical marijuana dispensary will open its doors at Union Square on Thursday.

New Yorkers with qualifying medical conditions will be able to obtain non-smokeable forms of marijuana.

The launch comes just 18 months after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Compassionate Care Act, making New York the 23rd state to legalize marijuana.

But lawmakers have since been finalizing the companies that will be allowed to legally distribute the drug.

Columbia Care will open the Union Square clinic. It's one of five companies licensed to grow marijuana in the state.

Other dispensaries are slated to open in Murray Hill, the Bronx, and Queens.
The NYPD is investigating an altercation that sent two people to the hospital on Monday afternoon.

Authorities closed off much of the area around 108th Avenue and Union Hall Street in Jamaica after the incident.

Investigators say that around 2 p.m., a 22-year-old man was shot in the ankle and a 20-year-old man was hit in the head with a shovel following an altercation between the men and the suspect or suspects.

Authorities have not released any information on the suspect or suspects in the case.

Both victims were taken to Jamaica Hospital for treatment and were both listed in stable condition but that was of little comfort to residents who live in the neighborhood.

"This is the 3rd shooting here in a month. Thursday they just killed a little kid right around the corner, 16 years old. Couple weeks ago they killed a man here on 108. Now, another shooting I say its time to go. It's time to move. Time to get off Guy Brewer BlvdThere's too much shooting over here," said Ann Moore, who lives in the neighborhood.

One of the shootings Moore is referring to is the death of 16-year-old Jihad Jackson, who was shot and killed around 11:30 p.m. on New Years Day.

The site where Jacksons body was found is just a few blocks away from Monday's crime scene.

The suspect in Jacksons death is still at large, although 3 people have been charged with evidence tampering in the case.
There is little doubt that the Federal Government contributed heavily to two of the biggest law enforcement fiascoes in recent memory. One was the disastrous 1993 Federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Tex. The other was the tragic 1992 encounter between the F.B.I. and a band of white separatists at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. It is now equally clear that official investigations into both incidents are themselves flawed. Those in charge of these inquiries must move decisively to prevent any further erosion of credibility.

The House of Representatives will begin hearings next week into the Waco raid. It has come to light that in the course of preparing for the hearings, Republican committee staff members enlisted weapons experts hired by the National Rifle Association to inspect a Davidian weapons arsenal held by the Texas Rangers. The N.R.A. has little use for the F.B.I. or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, both involved in the Waco raid, and has tried for months to divert attention from the proliferation of firearms in private hands to the alleged misdeeds of Federal agents. This misguided alliance with N.R.A. "experts" has tainted the objectivity of the House investigation and must be terminated.

The House hearings could still be very useful, if only to force Attorney General Janet Reno to explain credibly her decision to let F.B.I. agents batter the Davidian compound and inject tear gas before the cultists set fire to their compound and themselves. But the use of the N.R.A. in the preliminary staff work challenges the Republican chairmen, Representatives Bill Zeliff and Bill McCollum, to maintain the objectivity of their investigation.

Meanwhile, the F.B.I. has reopened its inquiry into the confrontation between its agents and white separatists at Ruby Ridge. An earlier investigation led to numerous censures and the bizarre promotion of one censured official, Larry Potts, to Deputy Director of the bureau.
ROME  Since early July, workers have been carefully unscrewing the steel scaffolding that for months has obscured much of the ancient facade of the Colosseum. Slowly, this monolithic symbol of Rome is coming into view again after the first portion of a 25 million euro ($34 million) refurbishment that underscores how Italy is coming to rely on private aid to preserve national treasures.

Our doors are wide open for all the philanthropists and donors who want to tie their name to an Italian monument, Italys culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said in a telephone interview. We have a long list, as our heritage offers endless options, from small countryside churches to the Colosseum.

Just pick.

It is a message being heard across Rome. While the Italian luxury group Tods is financing the restoration of the Colosseum, not far away, the Trevi Fountain is being restored with $4 million from the fashion brand Fendi. Another luxury giant, Bulgari, is paying $2 million to spruce up the Spanish Steps.

The practice of using corporate largess to finance restoration projects for public antiquities was once fairly rare here. But with the nation struggling with a stagnant economy and crushing public debt  Rome is flirting off and on with bankruptcy  politicians are now looking to private companies and international sources to help preserve Italys cultural heritage.
FRONTLINE 9 p.m. on PBS. The tense relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, fractured over Americas nuclear agreement with Iran and Mr. Netanyahus denunciation of that plan in front of Congress, is the subject of this two-hour documentary. It will also stream online at pbs.org/frontline.

THE SHANNARA CHRONICLES 10 p.m. on MTV. This new post-apocalyptic fantasy series, based on the best-selling books by Terry Brooks, follows three heroes: the elfin princess Amberle (Poppy Drayton), the elf-human hybrid Wil (Austin Butler) and the human rover Eretria (Ivana Baquero). In the two-hour season premiere, Amberle leaves the palace after seeing a vision of the worlds annihilation. When Wil and Allanon (Manu Bennett) discover that she is critical to the fate of the Four Lands, they set out to track her down before demons find her. John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings) also stars. (Image: Ms. Drayton)

Whats Streaming

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (2015) on iTunes. This rags-to-riches film by F. Gary Gray follows the group N.W.A as it barreled out of Compton, Calif., in the 1980s and revolutionized hip-hop and pop culture. The film, released during a national discussion of police shootings of African-Americans and 50 years after the Watts riots in Los Angeles, acknowledges the larger agonizing picture, but mostly it celebrates a crew of Horatio Algers of another color who become crossover kings turned establishment titans, Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times. Its another story of ultimate outsiders turned ultimate insiders, which makes it as blissfully American as apple pie, low riders and gangster rap itself.
Jason Wingreen, a character actor best known for playing the genial bartender Harry on the hit sitcom All in the Family and for voicing the bounty hunter Boba Fett in the film The Empire Strikes Back, died on Dec. 25 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95.

His death was confirmed by his son, Ned.

A slight man with a powerful voice, Mr. Wingreen acted for more than five decades, starting on the stage in the 1940s and ending on television in the mid-90s. He appeared in popular films like Airplane! (1980) and hit television shows, including Seinfeld, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek and Bonanza.

He also made three appearances on Rod Serlings The Twilight Zone, most notably as a sympathetic train conductor during a Manhattan executives eerie commutes home to Connecticut in A Stop at Willoughby (1960).

As Harry Snowden in All in the Family, he tended bar at the Queens neighborhood tavern frequented by Archie Bunker. He first appeared on the series in 1976 (it began in 1971 and ended in 1979) and repeated the role in the spinoff Archie Bunkers Place until that show ended in 1983.
Since Netflix released the documentary Making a Murderer in mid-December, its imprisoned central character has received a wave of support, including more than 275,000 signatures on a petition asking President Obama to pardon him.

The 10-part series, by the filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, depicts a true-crime saga that seethes with troubling questions over whether Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man convicted of the 2005 murder of a young woman, was framed by law enforcement officials.

But the prosecutor in the case, Ken Kratz, said viewers convinced of Mr. Averys innocence did not get to see important evidence that led a jury to convict him.

The series really presents misinformation, Mr. Kratz said in an interview on Monday.

He portrayed the program as a tool of Mr. Averys defense and accused the filmmakers of intentionally withholding facts that would lead viewers to see his guilt.
A year after repaying taxpayers for its bailout during the financial crisis, Ally Financial, the onetime auto-lending subsidiary of General Motors, is facing new investor pressure. This time, though, it is from an upstart hedge fund, demanding two board seats and a potential sale of the company.

Lion Point Capital, co-founded in 2014 by the former portfolio managers from Elliott Management and Perry Capital, has proposed two director candidates, whose names were not released, to stand for election at the companys annual meeting on May 3. The hedge fund also sent a letter on Dec. 23, urging Ally to create a strategic alternatives committee, a step that can often result in the sale of a company.

Ally, which has objected to the activist investors tactics, said it considered Lion Points proposals but concluded that selling the company would not be in the best interest of all shareholders. The board will evaluate Lion Points nominations and said it would express its views to investors in due course. Ally, once known as the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, or GMAC, also noted that the hedge fund held less than a 1 percent stake in the company.

Although we are troubled by Lion Points tactics, our fundamental disagreement is with Lion Points clear agenda to force a sale of Ally, Franklin W. Hobbs, the chairman at Ally, said in the statement. Such a course of action would be contrary to the best interests of stockholders, and our obligations to all stockholders do not permit us to adopt such a course to avoid a proxy contest.
JERSEY CITY  When Charles Gwathmey died in the summer of 2009, New York City lost one of its most prolific and influential architects. Adherents of the strict rationalism of Modernist design, Mr. Gwathmey and his partner, Robert Siegel, had still managed to infuse their clean lines and grand geometries with warmth and humanity in more than 400 projects spanning four decades, including the expansion of the Guggenheim Museum and a new building for the United States Mission to the United Nations.

For Mr. Siegel, it was almost as if he had lost a part of himself.

For 42 years, we sat across the desk from each other, we sketched, we drew, we talked, we argued, we worked, Mr. Siegel said last week inside his Battery Park City apartment. It became difficult to pretend youre just going to continue on as it was before.

Image Charles Gwathmey Credit... William E. Sauro/The New York Times

Anyone looking at 70 Columbus, a 50-story apartment tower that opened here in November, might think Mr. Gwathmey was still seated across from his old partner, swapping ideas for the buildings unconventional trapezoidal layouts and its 545 apartments, the cascading courtyard, its doorknobs and countertops. It is a continuation of what came before, but also a coda to the Gwathmey-Siegel legacy, one Mr. Siegel has had to maintain alone.
The order instructs local governments across the state to remove people, with force if necessary, when the temperature drops to 32 degrees or below and says involuntary placement is an option. The governors chief counsel later said people who are deemed to be mentally ill and a danger to themselves or others could be removed, but such action would not be taken against other homeless people  a distinction the de Blasio administration said it is already making.

Image Charles Anthony Hill Credit... Dana Ullman for The New York Times

But Mr. Cuomos order angered the street homeless community.

Charles Anthony Hill, 55, who was pushing his handcart at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, talked about his time as a foster child, addiction and his stints in every shelter for men in the city. He said he has been homeless since he was 6 years old and was currently staying in a subway station in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where he said transit workers have given him food and warnings about approaching police officers.

Right now, Im not ready to go into a place, he said.

The city estimates that about 3,000 homeless people live on the streets, a small but highly visible share of the citys homeless population, which totals about 57,000. The accuracy of the counts, particularly of the street homeless population, has been challenged, but the visibility of such people has drawn attention to the near-record levels of homelessness in the city.

Most of the homeless people interviewed said they preferred the streets to shelters because of poor conditions and theft.

Teri LaRocca, 53, who has multiple sclerosis and spinal arthritis, uses a wheelchair and said there was little accessibility for disabled people in the citys shelters for women. Ms. LaRocca said she would consider staying in a more welcoming shelter. The elevators dont work, she said. Theres nothing that makes it easier.
In even colder climes to the north of New York City, Stephanie A. Miner, the mayor of Syracuse, called the governors action an admirable goal. But she, too, questioned forcibly removing homeless people from the streets, something she likened to criminalizing homelessness.

Sheltering people means you have to build relationships, because a lot of them have mental health issues or substance abuse issues, said Ms. Miner, a Democrat who has frequently criticized Mr. Cuomo. In order to enforce this executive order, were going to have to have the police do it. And that goes against what weve been doing in building those relationships.

The governors office said on Monday that the plan would be flexible, and that assessments would be made of each individual, as required by the Mental Hygiene Law, and people will not be held against their will, unless they were deemed mentally ill and a danger to themselves or others. Administration officials also continued to offer assistance and guidance on the order. The State Police could be used in some rural areas, though homelessness is primarily an urban problem.

In an interview, Alphonso B. David, the governors chief counsel, said the order is saying to the municipalities that they must engage with their homeless population.

Its not intended to be punitive; its intended to save lives, Mr. David said.

While the executive order is a directive, Mr. David said, an administrative policy is just that: Its not an edict, and its subject to interpretation.

The governors remarks earlier on Monday also cast the order  which invoked the State Constitution and powers usually employed to address natural and man-made disasters  as an outreach effort. He assigned much of the blame for street homelessness in New York City  where several thousand people permanently live out of doors  at what he repeatedly said was the citys lack of an adequate shelter system.

Most people dont want to freeze to death; they want to go into the shelter. Its called human instinct, Mr. Cuomo said, adding that he planned to initiate a review of conditions in the citys shelter system. The simple answer is we need to get people off the streets. We need a safe, clean and decent shelter system to do that. And as we stand here today, that is a major obstacle.
For years, the New York Police Department has tried to stop robberies before they might happen by intervening in the lives of some young offenders. The approach was heralded by the author Malcolm Gladwell in a best-selling 2013 book as an innovative way to shake up the criminal justice process. Elected leaders gave $2 million over the last two years in support.

The problem is: The program has had no effect on stopping robberies.

That was the conclusion of a damning internal Police Department report in November 2014, obtained by The New York Times, which found that the approach, known as the Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program or J-RIP, did not change the likelihood that the mostly black and Hispanic men it targeted would commit robberies again.

But instead of making changes based on the report, which studied arrest patterns over several years among teenagers in the program and comparable teenagers outside of it, the department is pressing forward with an expansion.

Top police officials now say the robbery program, designed and trumpeted at the time as a tool to cut crime, is still valuable because of the good will it fosters in minority communities, a goal that has grown in importance for the Police Department as it seeks to enhance its image after a series of national protests over police practices.
The principal at a Success Academy charter school who created a Got to Go list of difficult students is taking a personal leave of absence, a Success Academy spokeswoman said on Monday.

Critics of Success Academy, the high-performing New York City charter school network, have said its high test scores are partly a result of weeding out underperforming and disruptive students. The existence of the list, reported by The New York Times in October, appeared to support the accusations.

At a news conference that month, Success Academys founder, Eva S. Moskowitz, said the list was an anomaly and that it existed for only three days in 2014 before the principal, Candido Brown, was chastised for it. Mr. Brown apologized, saying he was doing what he thought was needed to fix an unsafe school and that the list was his idea alone.

Image Candido Brown Credit... Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Still, nine of the 16 students on the list eventually left the school, Success Academy Fort Greene, in Brooklyn.
Manufacturing  that is, the business of making stuff  has changed significantly over the past half-century. Perhaps youve noticed. While Americas share of industry has constricted, with fewer people needed to perform the same amount of work as in the past, its not quite time to start eulogizing.

But the way the presidential candidates have been talking about reviving manufacturing jobs has not been very enlightening, and in some cases they have been willfully obtuse. Their statements are meant to appeal to disaffected workers, but they both oversimplify the problems and ignore the real source of trouble.

Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to American workers from abroad. They cant get jobs, because there are no jobs, because China has our jobs and Mexico has our jobs, Mr. Trump said in his campaign announcement speech in June. (He neglected to mention that his own line of neckties is fabricated in China.)

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, seems to regularly misconstrue the state of American manufacturing  more than any other candidate. At the undercard debate in Milwaukee on Nov. 10, Mr. Huckabee explained that the United States has lost five million manufacturing jobs since 2000: The reason they dont have jobs is because their jobs are in Mexico, theyre in China, theyre in Indonesia, he said, referring to American workers. While that is certainly true for some of the jobs lost, outsourcing is not the main driver of domestic job loss.
WHEN Saudi Arabia executed the Shiite cleric and political dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, the countrys leaders were aware that doing so would upset their longtime rivals in Iran. In fact, the royal court in Riyadh was probably counting on it. It got what it wanted. The deterioration of relations has been precipitous: Protesters in Tehran sacked Saudi Arabias embassy; in retaliation, Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties. More severe fallout could follow  possibly even war.

Why did Saudi Arabia want this now? Because the kingdom is under pressure: Oil prices, on which the economy depends almost entirely, are plummeting; a thaw in Iranian-American relations threatens to diminish Riyadhs special place in regional politics; the Saudi military is failing in its war in Yemen.

In this context, a row with Iran is not a problem so much as an opportunity. The royals in Riyadh most likely believe that it will allow them to stop dissent at home, shore up support among the Sunni majority and bring regional allies to their side. In the short term, they may be right. But eventually, stoking sectarianism will only empower extremists and further destabilize an already explosive region.

Over the past decade, Saudi rulers have turned to Iran and Shiites every time they needed an easy scapegoat. Anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite sentiments have long existed among religious extremists in the kingdom, but today they are at the heart of Saudi Arabias national identity. This development is dangerous for Saudi Arabias Shiite community, estimated at 10 to 15 percent of the population, and for the entire Middle East.
TO many skeptics, particularly on the right, the spectacular failure of the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra in 2011, after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, demonstrated the industrys shaky future and the danger of government efforts to subsidize it to success.

Fast forward to today. Solar energy prices have continued to fall rapidly, twice as many Americans work in the solar industry as in coal mining, and last year one-third of new electricity generation came from solar power.

Solar, long viewed through the lens of crony capitalism, has shown the ability to inject real market competition in energy distribution, one of the last monopolies in the energy sector, while improving the efficiency of the grid and putting more dollars in the pockets of middle-class Americans. Conservatives, in other words, need to take another look at solar.

The case for solar isnt limited to prices and jobs. Consumers want choice. Unfortunately, in most markets around the country, electricity is still one of the few areas where we have virtually no choice over our supplier. Imagine you want to buy a G.M. car, but you were told you can buy only a Toyota. Youd be outraged  yet this is how almost all Americans are forced to procure their electricity.
One key action will require more gun sellers to be federally licensed and perform a background check for every attempted purchase. Tens of thousands of dealers already follow these rules, but many others are able to evade them by relying on vague language in the law. While they are a small fraction of all unlicensed sellers, these dealers account for an outsized percentage of guns sold, according to a study by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. For obvious reasons, they are also more likely to appeal to criminals and others trying to hide from the authorities.

The law will be clarified to consider not only how many guns these dealers sell, but also how quickly they resell them after purchasing them, whether they sell them in their original packaging and how much they profit.

The president is also taking steps to improve the functioning of the federal background-check database, a critically important tool that has stopped millions of sales of weapons to prohibited people since 1998. Among other things, the F.B.I. will work to notify state and local authorities whenever a prohibited person tries to buy a gun and is rejected. This is a sensible and proven approach to reducing gun crime. In Virginia, follow-up investigations of those denied a gun because of a background check have led to more than 14,000 arrests.

Other presidential actions include delivering a budget proposal with money for 200 new agents and investigators for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help enforce existing gun laws; requiring dealers to notify authorities when guns are lost or stolen in transit; increasing law enforcement access to mental-health records; and providing funding for research into gun-safety technology.

None of the actions will make a big dent in Americas gun-violence epidemic, but thats because Mr. Obama can do only so much on his own. Congress could pass far more expansive and effective legislation, such as universal background checks, which have been associated with large declines in gun deaths in the 18 states that have implemented them.
To the Editor:

Dimiter Kenarov asks us to accept Russias illegal annexation of Crimea (Ending Crimeas Isolation, Op-Ed, nytimes.com, Dec. 27). We should not.

In 2014 Russia invaded Crimea, part of sovereign Ukraine, sending in Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms to occupy the peninsula. This was the first armed, cross-border invasion of one European country by another since World War II. President Vladimir V. Putin first denied sending the Russian Army into Crimea. He later admitted that he had lied. (He also denied sending the Russian military into the Donbass region, in southeastern Ukraine, and has tacitly admitted that he lied about that, too.)

The United States never recognized the Soviet annexation of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania in World War II. It took more than 60 years, but the three Baltic countries are now members of the European Union and NATO. The West should never recognize the attempted annexation of Crimea.

As we did in the Second World War and during the Cold War, we should resist armed aggression against sovereign nations. We should maintain and toughen the economic sanctions in coordination with the European Union until Russia withdraws from Donbass and Crimea.
Federal immigration enforcement agents last weekend arrested 121 migrants for deportation, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Monday, starting a wave of removals of parents and children, mainly from Central America, who came during the border surge in 2014 and failed to win asylum in immigration courts.

Most of the arrests were in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina, officials said, and were of migrants who had lost their cases and were ordered deported by immigration judges. The deportations are part of concerted nationwide enforcement operations to achieve a greater rate of deportation of parents who crossed the border illegally with their children, Mr. Johnson said.

Obama administration officials are scrambling to stem a new influx of people crossing the South Texas border since July, many of whom are families or children without their parents, often fleeing rampant gang violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The administration wants to send a stronger message to the region that many migrants crossing illegally, even mothers and children, will be sent home.

Our borders are not open to illegal migration, Mr. Johnson said.

The deportations have provoked outrage from immigrant and Latino groups, just when they had been organizing support for President Obama because of his efforts to provide protections for immigrants already living in the country illegally, which have been held up by federal courts.
The former South Carolina police officer charged with murder in the April death of Walter L. Scott, an unarmed black man, was released on bond on Monday, nine months after the shooting that prompted a national outcry.

The decision by Judge Clifton Newman to grant bond was a long-sought victory for Michael T. Slager, who was fired from the North Charleston Police Department after the shooting, which a passer-by recorded with a cellphone. Judge Newman set bond at $500,000 and said Mr. Slager, who is white, would be on house arrest before his Oct. 31 trial.

Were genuinely pleased that the court made the decision that it did, and not only that he set bond, but that he set a reasonable bond, said Andrew J. Savage III, Mr. Slagers lawyer.

Mondays ruling allowed Mr. Slager, who shot Mr. Scott in the back and fired repeatedly as Mr. Scott ran, to go free for the first time since April 7, when the recording of the shooting became public. The confrontation happened after Mr. Scott fled from a traffic stop.
SOUNDBITE (English): Bill Clinton, Former US President: So, this is what I want to say, things that a lot of you may not know. When we met, soon be 45 years ago in a couple of months when we met, we fell in love. I thought she was the most amazing person because unlike now where more than half the law students in America are women, then they were a distinct minority and there she was, in law school She could have written her ticket to go anywhere she wanted. All she was really interested in was providing legal services to poor people. When we got out she could have gone to work big law firm, get a fancy clerkship. She took a job with the Childrens Defense Fund. There was a nice story in the press you might have seen in the last several days talking about a trip she took to Alabama to see if these so-called tax-exempt private schools were rally just segregation academies and therefore not entitled to the tax exemption. I valued even more a trip she took to South Carolina to see why so many African-American children were being held in adult prisons. Its hard to remember 40 years ago what things were like. She hadnt been elected to anything, but everything she touched she made better. SOUNDBITE (English): Bill Clinton, Former US President: I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I do not believe that in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done now to restore prosperity. To deal with these human issues. To make us as safe as possible. Thank you very much and God bless you.
The Willie Horton story is still part of the legend and lore of American politics, said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and one of the chief authors of the bipartisan Senate criminal justice proposal.

While the episode is almost three decades old, it still resonates in Washington, where some are quietly monitoring whether any drug offenders granted early release by the Obama administration in the fall quickly get back into trouble. At the same time, Democrats are leery that Republicans and their campaign allies could try to stick a soft-on-crime label on candidates who support the criminal justice legislation.

This Willie Horton dynamic makes clear what supporters of the legislation need to do if they hope to enact it into law this year: They must persuade leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader who will decide if the legislation reaches the floor, that the politics of criminal justice have been upended and that the real political risk is to those who do not support the efforts. That could be a very steep climb.

The politics of a presidential year threatens the issue, but I also think there will be consequences if Congress does not act, said Holly Harris, the executive director of U.S. Justice Action Network, one of the groups promoting criminal justice changes. These issues poll through the roof in support of reform. It is going to be our job to convince members that these are not only good data-driven policies, but they make for good politics.

The high incarceration rate in the United States and an epidemic of drug abuse in some regions of the country have exposed more American families to the criminal justice system and the impact of mandatory minimum sentences, building a broader grass-roots base of support for the initiative. Promoters say new programs that would be instituted to help offenders return to their communities and get jobs actually help reduce crime  another selling point.
BURLINGTON, Iowa  Four weeks before Iowa voters start whittling down the sprawling and fractious Republican presidential field, the nomination fight is taking on a decidedly dark tenor, with candidates warning of a country left weakened by an administration that would prefer to apologize for America rather than keep it safe.

This despairing tone was on display Monday as Republicans crisscrossed the country on the first full day of campaigning in the new year, and began airing commercials that had a singular and sometimes fearsome focus on national security.

The Republicans were intent on targeting not just President Obama, but also Hillary Clinton, seeking to use her tenure as Mr. Obamas secretary of state to discredit her with Americans who feel vulnerable in the aftermath of terrorist attacks at home and abroad.
But the political upheaval in the Middle East and the American perception that the Saudis are critical to stability in the region continue to hold together an increasingly fractious marriage. So when Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, including Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the dissident cleric, on Saturday, beheading many of them in a style that most Americans associate with the Islamic State rather than a close American partner, the administrations efforts to explain the relationship became more strained than ever.

In fact, the executions were the culmination of a series of events in the past few years that have led to clashes between the two nations.

We havent been on the same page with the Saudis for a long time, said Martin S. Indyk, the executive vice president of the Brookings Institution and a former top aide to Secretary of State John Kerry. And it starts with Mubarak.

In 2011, Saudi leaders berated President Obama and his aides for failing to support President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt during the Arab Spring, fearing Mr. Obama might do the same thing if the uprisings spread to the kingdom.

The nuclear deal with Iran only fueled the Saudi sense that the United States was rethinking the fundamental relationship  and Saudi officials, on visits to Washington, openly questioned whether they could rely on their American ally. It was King Abdullah who was quoted in a 2008 State Department cable, released two years later by WikiLeaks, exhorting the United States to cut off the head of the snake  Iran  by launching military strikes. He died before last summers deal, but Saudi leaders, who still see Irans hand behind every destabilizing act in the Middle East, argued that the administration was naive to think that Iran would abide by any negotiated accord.
BAGHDAD  In 2008, an American diplomat traveled to a poor village in eastern Saudi Arabia to visit a thin, bearded preacher who was known for criticizing the government and wrote him off as a secondary player in local politics, according to a report on the visit released by WikiLeaks.

Years later, that preacher, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, fueled a protest movement with his virulent sermons excoriating the Saudi royal family.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia executed him on terrorism charges, leading to the collapse of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and solidifying Sheikh Nimrs status as a potent international symbol of Shiite opposition to the Saudi monarchy.

The rise to prominence of Sheikh Nimr, who was scarcely known outside of Saudi Arabia before his arrest in 2012, corresponds closely with the intensification of the strategic and sectarian rivalry between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia that has put them on opposing sides of conflicts across the region.
Alan Hartman, another partner at Centerview, suggested that the health care property company Ventas spin off a major division last year, which turned into a multibillion-dollar deal. Another partner, David A. Handler, routinely spends time with the technology giant Cisco Systems, mulling over potential acquisitions and sometimes simply helping the company think through its quarterly earnings release.

These deal makers are well compensated for their work. Centerview reaped a $60 million fee for helping orchestrate the merger of Kraft and Heinz. It earned $40.8 million for helping Pharmacyclics sell itself to AbbVie in March. For helping Time Warner Cable secure a sale to Charter Communications, Centerview will make $27.5 million. It will receive $44.4 million for advising Salix on its sale to Valeant, and $32 million for helping Omnicare sell itself to CVS.

For these assignments and others, Centerview earned about $600 million last year, according to a review of public filings, a huge sum for a firm with just 35 partners.

To be sure, the big banks do all this and more. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase were again the top merger advisers last year, capitalizing on longstanding relationships with big companies and the ability to throw a lot of resources at complicated assignments. And when a company needs to borrow billions of dollars to finance an ambitious takeover, it must tap institutions with big balance sheets for loans. Often, companies will hire boutiques and big banks to work together on a deal.

But boutiques, and Centerview in particular, are turning heads as they continue to rake in more fees and bigger assignments. A boutique was involved in each of the eight largest deals of the year, all of them worth $50 billion or more, and Centerview advised on three of those.

Over a sushi lunch in 2005, Mr. Effron, then at UBS, and Mr. Pruzan, at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, decided they had enough with big banks and decided to found Centerview. At the time, they were at the vanguard of an exodus of top bankers from big firms, a movement that intensified after the financial crisis.

In the years that followed, dozens of top bankers left big firms to join boutiques. Mr. Hartman had risen to become Bank of America Merrill Lynchs head of mergers and acquisitions for the Americas. But in 2009, he and several top colleagues, including Mark J. Robinson, left to join Centerview.
The French telecommunications giant Orange said on Tuesday that it was in talks to acquire Bouygues Telecom, a local rival, in the latest effort to consolidate Europes highly fragmented cellphone market.

Orange is partly owned by the French government, and is the largest mobile carrier in the country. A price war is occurring across the European Union, where operators are increasingly bundling their services  mobile, fixed-line, pay television and cable  in low-price offers for the regions 500 million customers.

Orange has more than 260 million subscribers worldwide, including 28 million in France. Bouygues Telecom has 14 million customers, all in France.

Industry analysts have long expected Europes largest carriers, like Orange and Deutsche Telekom of Germany, to buy national rivals to reduce competition. Such acquisitions could allow them to invest more in their high-speed mobile and cable networks, which have fallen behind those of their counterparts in the United States and Japan, among other countries.
The explanation, however, is not quite satisfactory. As Matthew Yglesias at Vox suggests, many white Americans are most likely drawn to Mr. Trumps xenophobic, anti-immigrant message because they agree with it.

Such voters are nostalgic for the country they lived in 50 years ago, when non-Hispanic whites made up more than 83 percent of the population. Today, their share has shrunk to 62 percent as demographic change has transformed the United States into a nation where others have a shot at political power.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause. Learn more about our process.

Their fear is understandable. In general, the concerns of Hispanic and black American voters are often different from those of white voters. But the reaction of whites who are struggling economically raises the specter of an outright political war along racial and ethnic lines over the distribution of resources and opportunities.

Race, of course, has shaped political choices for a long time. The Republican takeover of the South is understood by scholars as a reaction to whites sense of betrayal after the Democratic push for desegregation under President Lyndon Johnson.

Racial animosity has long helped foster a unique mistrust of government among white Americans. Nonwhite voters mostly like what the government does. But many white Americans, researchers have found, would rather not have a robust government if it largely seems to serve people who do not look like them.

Americans owe their unusually minimalist state in large measure to racial mistrust. As the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote put it in an important paper, European countries are much more generous to the poor relative to the United States mainly because of American racial heterogeneity. Racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters, they wrote.

The eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson described two decades ago how race and economics collided. In the United States, he wrote, white taxpayers have opposed welfare because they see themselves as being forced, through taxes, to pay for stuff for blacks that many of them could not afford for their own families.
HONG KONG  A few months ago, Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, hosted a technology summit meeting at the companys headquarters near Seattle with some of Chinas most powerful political leaders. He smiled for a photo while flanked by Xi Jinping, the countrys president, and Lu Wei, its Internet czar.

On Tuesday, though, that harmony faded, as one of Chinas regulators said it would demand answers to new questions about Microsofts business practices there.

The announcement, related to electronic data that the government collected in an antitrust inquiry, shows how a sustained effort by Microsoft to cozy up to Chinas leadership has done little to relieve the regulatory challenges that it faces in the country. At best, the company is getting mixed messages.

Multinational companies have for years gone out of their way to curry favor with leaders in China, one of the worlds largest technology and consumer markets, which are overseen by rival regulatory agencies eager to score wins against high-profile foreign companies. For Microsoft, its setbacks in the country are particularly galling because high rates of software piracy have sharply limited its sales there, even though products like Windows and Office are widely used.
Richard Sapper, an industrial designer whose sleek, precision-engineered prototypes spawned the Alessi espresso maker, the Tizio lamp and the IBM ThinkPad, died on Dec. 31 in Milan. He was 83.

The cause was complications of cancer, his daughter Carola said.

Mr. Sapper also designed for Mercedes, Fiat and Pirelli; conceived an ergonomic executive chair and computer monitor arms for Knoll; and invented teakettles that whistled in two keys, emulating an American locomotive. But he was especially revered by coffee connoisseurs for his lustrous stovetop Coban 9090 espresso maker, a graceful stainless-steel, single-piece machine that was introduced in 1979 by Alessi, the Italian housewares manufacturer.

The machine revolutionized home espresso-making, which had been dominated by the Bialetti model, an angular, narrow-waisted cast-aluminum design with a plastic handle. (The Bialetti was patented by an uncle of Alberto Alessi, now the companys president, in 1933.)

The Coban 9090  named for the town of Coban in central Guatemala, where Mr. Sappers grandfather had harvested coffee  is now in the Museum of Modern Arts design collection.
Once upon a time in Albany, or so the Capitols origin story goes, the men who governed New York State from the Legislatures vaulted chambers were farmers: citizen-legislators who laid down their plows for a few months every year to represent their fellows before returning home to make their living from the land.

The modern version is less pastoral parable, more American Hustle. The list of lawyers, insurers and full-time politicians in the Legislature is long; the farmer count stands at zero; and outside income, as the money earned from non-Legislature work is known, is at the crux of the corruption scandal that toppled the former speaker of the State Assembly in November, as well as many scandals to afflict the state capital before that.

It is difficult, then, to know what to make of those legislators who, if not precisely the salt of the earth, hold jobs that do not seem ripe for payola, either. The Finger Lakes undertaker, for instance. The owner of a dry-cleaning business outside Buffalo. The assemblyman who for his 25 years in the Legislature has moonlighted as a one-man auction house in Cazenovia, N.Y., selling antique silverware, chickens and farm machinery.

Im living the dream right now, Assemblyman Stephen M. Katz said on a recent morning, before striding into an examination room at his veterinary hospital in the Bronx to tend to a Shih Tzu with a corneal ulcer. And then I come back to the nightmare of Albany.
In October, there were 59,568 homeless people, including 14,361 families with 23,858 children, sleeping in the New York City municipal shelter system each night. Families make up nearly four-fifths of the homeless shelter population.

The authorities can force people off the streets only if they appear to be mentally ill and pose a threat of harm to themselves or others. In the past, efforts to force people into shelters have been struck down by the courts.

The seeming increase in the number of people sleeping on the streets recently has driven the issue of homelessness to the top of the political agenda for both the mayor and the governor.

But even with more aggressive outreach efforts, some people refuse to go into shelters.

A homeless man in Pennsylvania Station who gave only his first name, Michael, said that around midnight on Monday a police officer checked on him and a group of others.

They just asked if we wanted a ride to a shelter, he said, but he declined.

Ive been there before and I didnt like it, he said.

Another man, who gave his name as Clarence, said employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked him on a train in the Bronx on Monday night if he wanted to be taken to a shelter, but he said he had bad memories of them.
Mayor Bill de Blasio moved on Tuesday to fill a crucial post in a depleted team at City Hall, appointing a Bronx-born public health official who has held key roles in California and Texas as his new deputy mayor for health and human services.

The appointment of Herminia Palacio, 54, ended a four-month vacancy in the position, at a time when the de Blasio administration is facing criticism over a rise in the homeless population.

At a news conference at City Hall, the mayor highlighted Dr. Palacios biography  the daughter of a subway token clerk and a bus driver whose mother suffered a psychiatric break when Dr. Palacio was 17  as well as her experience confronting the AIDS crisis in San Francisco and Hurricane Katrina as the top public health official in Harris County, Tex. The county, which includes Houston, received tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans after the hurricane.

Shes born and bred in the Bronx, understands the life of this city, has our values and obviously is passionate about making change, the mayor said in introducing her to the post, which oversees the citys health and homeless services departments, among other agencies. Dr. Palacios predecessor, Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, resigned in August amid growing concern about the citys handling of street homelessness.
To the Editor:

Re Hungarys Angry Stance on Migrants, Once Vilified, Gains Some Acceptance (news article, Dec. 21):

Brussels and Budapest do not differ only on the migrant issue. They have a different view of the future of Europe itself.

The Hungarians want a federation of independent nations, a federation that respects the different identities, cultures and traditions of the member states.

The Hungarians, the Poles and the other Central and Eastern Europeans also want to re-establish the power balance of Europe. But the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels are defending the status quo and their goal of a multicultural and Western-dominated Europe.

It is time to let the Europeans decide their own future. It is time to hold direct elections to resolve this conflict.
In March 1968, my father was a member of the Warsaw University students committee that helped lead the enormous protests demanding reform from the Communist Polish government. The government responded with a smear campaign to try to delegitimize the protests leaders, claiming they were acting in the interest of Western powers, or  exploiting widespread anti-Semitic sentiments  of a Jewish-Zionist plot against the Polish Peoples Republic.

In other words, the government labeled my father and his friends foreign agents. Traitors.

My father was detained for three months and expelled from the university. After his release, he left with his family for Israel, where I was born. Unlike my father, I grew up in an environment that welcomed free political discussion and allowed people like me to become human rights activists and criticize our government. When I claimed a few years ago, after yet another right-wing attack on Israeli human rights organizations, that we had reached the bottom of the pit, my father gave me a knowing smile. The pit is much deeper than you think, he said.

My father was right. Over the past month, I have begun to see its true depth.

On Dec. 15, an Israeli ultranationalist group released a video portraying four Israeli human rights defenders as moles planted by foreign states to assist terrorists. The 68-second video, which rapidly made its way across Israeli social media, shows four mug shots and claims that While we fight terror, they fight us.

The video is outright slander and an outrageous incitement. It is also the natural evolution of a process led by the government of Israel. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked deserves to own the copyright on branding human rights organizations as agents of foreign governments. For years, she has led a campaign to convince the Israeli public that such organizations are the long arm of foreign powers.
Remember the Gores? Al and Tipper? At the Democratic convention in 2000, they shared that hungry, happy kiss, and it was more than a meeting of lips. It was a window, or so we thought, into a partnership of enduring passion and inextinguishable tenderness.

Theyre separated now. Have been for more than five years.

And the Edwardses? John and Elizabeth? He resembled a Ken doll. She didnt take after Barbie. That endeared them to voters  endeared him to voters. Only later did we learn about his double life, the furious fights and the copious tears.

We know nothing of other peoples marriages. Nothing at all.

So why do we pretend otherwise? Why do we make so many assumptions and judgments?

And why, every election cycle, do we treat candidates spouses and unions as the keys to their characters?
The hotels main building and its signature lobby were demolished in September. The South Wing, erected in 1973, will remain operational, and the owners plan to replicate the lobbys mezzanine, based on a Japanese painting known as Bridge of the Dream, and its hexagonal ceiling lights. A newly designed bar will try to recapture the stylish retro-chic of the former Orchid Bar, the Okuras elegant, dimly lit cocktail haven loved by diplomats, expatriates and journalists. The new complex will also incorporate upgrades to meet the latest standards in earthquake-resistant construction technologies.

But those plans have done little to assuage the concerns of preservationists, many of whom contend that Tokyo is destroying its greatest postwar architectural assets to accommodate the 2020 Olympics and a recent surge in tourism. In a twist worthy of Bond, the most outspoken critics are not from Japan.

When the reconstruction was announced, many foreigners, especially well-known designers, voiced their regret, said Yoshio Uchida, professor of architecture at Toyo University. The magnitude of their protest was beyond our imagination.

The original Okura opened in 1962, two years before the first Tokyo Olympics, an event that signaled to the world that Japan had recovered from the devastation of World War II. It was erected across the street from the American Embassy, and became so popular with diplomats it was referred to as the annex.
A deputy sheriff who works for an anti-narcotics task force in Northern California found himself swept up in a $2 million marijuana arrest in Pennsylvania last week. The authorities are now trying to determine if any of the cases he worked on have been tainted.

According to a criminal complaint, Christopher M. Heath, the deputy, and another man, Tyler Long, 31, drove across the country to deliver more than 122 packages of marijuana to a person in West Manheim Township, Pa.

But investigators had been tipped off, and they stopped the car at around midnight on Dec. 28. The pair were arrested, along with a third man in another vehicle, identified as Ryan J. Falsone, 27.

In addition to the marijuana and $11,000 in cash, the authorities found Deputy Heaths badge and his duty firearm, David Sunday, the York County chief deputy prosecutor, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON  Low-income adults in Kentucky and Arkansas have had similar improvements in access to medical care under the Affordable Care Act, a new study found, despite the two states differing approaches to expanding Medicaid.

Both states expanded their Medicaid programs in 2014 to cover most adults with incomes under 138 percent of the federal poverty level, as the health law allows. While new enrollees in Kentucky joined its traditional Medicaid program, Arkansas chose to buy private coverage for poor people through the new federal insurance marketplace using federal Medicaid funds, a model that several other states have since followed. Its program, known as the private option, was intended to appeal to Republicans who opposed expanding a federal entitlement program.

The study, published in Health Affairs, found that Arkansas and Kentucky had significant reductions in the number of low-income adults without insurance from 2013 to 2014. In Arkansas, the number of uninsured for the group dropped to 19.4 percent from 41.8 percent; Kentuckys rate dropped to 12.4 percent from 40.2 percent. The finding is consistent with recent surveys that put Arkansas and Kentucky among the states with the largest overall declines in people without insurance since the health law expanded coverage in January 2014. The study also looked at Texas, whose Republican leaders have refused to expand Medicaid under the law, and found far more modest gains in coverage and access to care among low-income people.

Kentucky and Arkansas had similar increases in rates of regular care among low-income adults with chronic conditions, the study found, and similar decreases in the percentage of such adults who skipped medications because of cost. But the study found one notable difference between the two states: Low-income people in Kentucky reported significantly less trouble paying medical bills after getting coverage.
LUBBOCK, Tex.  After a mild and dry Christmas Day, a fierce blizzard whipped across the rolling plains of West Texas and eastern New Mexico. The wind blew mercilessly for 48 hours, leaving snow drifts as high as 14 feet.

Though winter storms are not strangers to this region, the unrelenting wind  sometimes gusting to 80 miles per hour  and blinding snow of this blizzard surpassed even the most dire of forecasts. Dairy farmers in the region, who produce 10 percent of the milk in the United States, are now tallying their losses.

So far, more than 35,000 dairy cows have been found dead; many other animals developed frostbite and could still die. In West Texas, about 10 percent of the adult herd was lost. Farmers are trying to decide how to dispose of the carcasses that dot the landscape, though others might not be found until the snow melts.

It was just beyond anything we ever saw, said Nancy Beckerink, who moved her dairy farm, Dutch Road Dairy, to Muleshoe, Tex., from western New York six years ago to escape the harsh winters of the Northeast. Her dairy lost 300 of its 2,200 cows, and Ms. Beckerink said she might lose 50 to 75 more to frostbite.
An angry exchange of words on a street in Denton, Tex., escalated on New Years Eve, leaving a 20-year-old student dead after someone in an S.U.V. fired twice into the car she was driving.

After several days of intense investigation, the Denton police announced Tuesday that an active-duty Marine corporal had been arrested in Arizona and was being held on a murder warrant in the case.

The victim in the shooting was Sara Wynette Mutschlechner, a junior at the University of North Texas in Denton. She had been the designated driver for three friends after they left a party and were confronted by six men in the S.U.V., some of whom had also been at the party.

Image Cpl. Eric Johnson was arrested on Tuesday in Yuma, Ariz., on a murder warrant in a shooting in Denton, Tex. Credit... Yuma County Sheriffs Office, via Associated Press

The marine, Eric Jamal Johnson, 20, was arrested on Tuesday morning in a car on a street in Yuma, Ariz., by United States marshals, according to Matthew Goodwin, a deputy marshal. He is expected to be extradited to Texas to face the charges, the deputy said.
The super PAC supporting Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is focusing its attacks on Gov. Chris Christie, an emerging rival in the New Hampshire Republican primary, through two new harsh, negative ads, one of them titled Favorite.

On Screen

The Favorite ad opens with an image tying Mr. Christie to a moment that has haunted the New Jersey governor: his embrace of President Obama, days before the 2012 election, after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy (the actual opening image is from 2011, after Hurricane Irene). The ad then levels criticisms against Mr. Christies record as New Jersey governor, such as embracing an online sales tax, Common Core and the expansion of Medicaid, while images of Mr. Christie  who, the narrator says, could well be Obamas favorite Republican governor  and Mr. Obama remain in the background. The ad saves its final 10 seconds for a syncopated list of critiques  One high tax, Common Core, liberal energy loving, Obamacare Medicaid expanding president is enough. It closes with the widely seen photograph of Mr. Christie and Mr. Obama shaking hands after Hurricane Sandy.

The Message

Blunt and direct, the ad accuses Mr. Christie of embracing the policies of Mr. Obama. It is a relentless attempt to portray the New Jersey governor as a left-leaning Republican, just as Mr. Rubio hopes to align the right-leaning establishment behind his own candidacy.

Fact Check

While Mr. Christie did once support the Common Core education reforms, he reversed his position early last year, claiming that he gave it four years to work, and it didnt work. He stands by his support of an online sales tax, calling it a fairness issue that should be left to individual states. And while he also claims that expanding Medicaid was the right move for New Jersey, he has also made entitlement reform a cornerstone of his campaign.
Mr. Obamas executive action does not expand the existing law. Instead, his administration has now clarified that people who claim to be hobbyists may actually be engaged in the business of selling firearms if they operate an online gun store, pass out business cards or frequently sell guns in their original packaging. The presidents action also reiterates that there are criminal penalties for violating the law.

Q. So, is the president ordering better enforcement of the existing laws to crack down on people who are selling without the proper licenses and background checks?

A. Yes, to the extent he can. He is asking Congress for funding to hire 200 new agents and investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, though that request may be denied by Republican lawmakers. Mr. Obama says the F.B.I. will increase the number of workers who process the background checks by 50 percent, or 230 people. He says that should reduce delays in a system that receives 63,000 background check requests each day. He also announced the eventual development of a more modern computer system that can process background checks 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The mother of the Texas teenager known for using an affluenza defense in a fatal drunken-driving case waived extradition in a California court on Tuesday and agreed to return to Texas, where she faces charges related to helping her son flee to Mexico.

The mother, Tonya Couch, will be held without bail by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department until the Texas authorities pick her up, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorneys office. Ms. Couch is wanted in Fort Worth on a felony charge, according to the complaint.

Ms. Couch, 48, fled to Mexico last month with her son, Ethan, 18, who was facing the prospect of a probation violation hearing that could send him to jail. They were arrested in Puerto Vallarta after United States marshals tipped off the authorities there to their location.

Ms. Couch was sent back to the United States, arriving in Los Angeles, where she was turned over to the police and booked into the city jail. Her son remained in Mexico, and it was unclear whether he would be returned to face charges of violating probation.
KABUL, Afghanistan  An American soldier was killed and two others were wounded Tuesday in fighting at the heart of a Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan, the United States military said.

The death took place in Marja, in Helmand Province, where American Special Operations forces have been trying to help the Afghan military fend off a fierce Taliban offensive that has claimed several districts over the past few months. The American casualties came during a push by Afghan and American soldiers to clear territory between Marja and the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, according to Afghan military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the news media.

Later, Afghan and American officials said an American helicopter had sustained damage in the area, but they disagreed on the details. In Washington, American officials said that a medical evacuation helicopter had been sent to Marja to help the wounded soldiers and that its rotors had struck the wall of a compound there. It was unclear whether the wounded soldiers had yet been evacuated.

But one Afghan military official said that an American Black Hawk transport helicopter had gone down in enemy territory because of a mechanical problem, and that the casualties had come afterward. There were no further details or confirming accounts.
NEW DELHI  All six gunmen who infiltrated an Indian Air Force base near the border with Pakistan and exchanged fire with security forces have been killed, Indias defense minister said Tuesday.

Security forces were searching the base for explosives on Tuesday, the fourth day of the operation, Manohar Parrikar, the defense minister, said in a televised news briefing from Pathankot, in Punjab State, where the attack took place.

The attack, which began Saturday, was viewed as an attempt to undo recent improvements in the relationship between India and Pakistan. It came a week after Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister in 12 years to visit Pakistan in a step toward reviving dialogue between the two countries.

Seven Indian security personnel died in the gun battle at the base, which lasted several days. Ammunition recovered from the gunmen is believed to have come from Pakistan, Mr. Parrikar said Tuesday. The head of Indias National Investigation Agency told reporters that intercepts of phone calls made by the gunmen indicated that they had come from Pakistan.
Yet the countys unusual pitch for a nuclear plant was driven by the same fight for survival seizing rural communities in South Korea and many other parts of the world. (Cheongsong, a county west of Yeongdeok, is campaigning for a new state prison.)

Yeongdeoks population, numbering 113,000 in 1974, has plunged to just 38,000  nearly one-third of the people are 65 or older  and with deaths outnumbering births four to one, it is expected to shrink further. The county can supply only 8.8 percent of its budget on its own; the central government makes up the rest.

So in 2005, when South Korea sought a storage site for low-level radioactive waste from its reactors but faced often violent protests from many communities, Yeongdeok volunteered.

But Yeongdeok lost out to a rival bidder, Gyeongju to the south, after a greater percentage of residents, 89.5 percent, agreed to put the radioactive dump there.

Five years later, when Yeongdeok learned of the governments search for sites for new nuclear power plants, it did not want to lose out again. This time, it won the approval of all residents of the three villages offered as a site, as well as from all seven members of the County Council, before applying to the government.

Kim Il-kwang, a fisherman, said he had few qualms about vacating Seokri, the village where his family has lived for nine generations, chiefly because it was dying a natural death anyway. Five hundred people lived there when he was young. Most of the 100 or so who remain are so old, Mr. Kim said, that he was considered on the younger side.
(SOUNDBITE) (German) GERMAN JUSTICE MINISTER, HEIKO MAAS, SAYING: What happened at Colognes main train station and in other areas in Germany is not acceptable. It must not be allowed to be repeated and the perpetrators must be punished. We must clarify if what happened is a new form of organised crime against which the state must take measures. (SOUNDBITE) (German) GERMAN JUSTICE MINISTER, HEIKO MAAS, SAYING: At one point there were at least 1,000 people there and the amount of people who were there which used this to sexually harass women by simply not allowing them to get away and this means clearly that those who made sure that the women could not get away, are not onlookers but rather co-perpetrators. (SOUNDBITE) (German) GERMAN JUSTICE MINISTER, HEIKO MAAS, SAYING: During these investigations it will become clear which circle of perpetrators is involved. Making this an issue through over-simplifications, and connecting it to the issue of refugees is nothing more than misuse of the debate. Now it is about determining the facts and drawing the necessary conclusions. (SOUNDBITE) (German) PASSER-BY, SIGRIED EHM, SAYING: The problem is of course where did suddenly 1,000 people come from. They say that they were 1,000 North Africans and that they were not refugees but where did they come from all of a sudden? (SOUNDBITE) (German) PASSER-BY, DORIS FROHNAPFEL, SAYING: I would advise young people not to get so drunk that you dont know whats going on. And to perhaps not be alone. And to call for help as quickly as possible. And especially at large events there are always enough people around who hopefully are not drunk. It is worse in areas where there is nobody and where you cant get help.
LONDON  Acknowledging bitter divisions within his Conservative Party and his cabinet over Britains role in Europe, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament on Tuesday that he would allow government ministers to campaign for or against remaining in the European Union in a referendum that could take place as early as this summer.

Mr. Cameron favors remaining in the European Union if he can get some relatively modest changes to his nations relationship with Brussels, in particular protection for countries not using the euro and some restrictions on benefits for new immigrants who come to work in Britain.

But some of his key cabinet ministers and other party figures, including Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Home Secretary Theresa May and Mayor Boris Johnson of London, are known to have doubts about Britains membership in the bloc, although they have remained noncommittal about their positions on the referendum.

Three additional ministers, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary and a former party leader; Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary; and Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons, are believed to oppose British membership in the union and are said to have threatened to resign if Mr. Cameron required that his entire cabinet speak with one voice on the issue.
MOSCOW  The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday in favor of a Russian man who was detained during a political rally in Moscow in 2012 and later sentenced to two weeks in jail for jaywalking.

The ruling was a rebuff to the Russian practice of cracking down on political rallies with harsh fines and jail time. It undermined a central element of Moscows narrative of the clashes  that unruly protesters had set off the violence, thus justifying new laws cracking down on public assembly.

The police arrested about 400 people, including the plaintiff in the case, Yevgeniy Frumkin, after scuffles broke out at the rally, on May 6, 2012, in Bolotnaya Square.

The demonstration followed a series of large, peaceful protests by people who opposed the election in March 2012 of Vladimir V. Putin to a third term as president, and who suspected fraud during voting.
MOSCOW  Col. Gen. Igor D. Sergun, who oversaw covert military operations for Russia as the director of its military intelligence service, died on Monday. He was 58.

The Defense Ministry, which published an obituary on Tuesday on its website, did not specify where he died or give the cause.

General Sergun had managed the Main Intelligence Directorate of Russias General Staff, commonly known as the G.R.U., since late 2011.

Western and Ukrainian officials repeatedly accused the G.R.U. of playing a crucial role in Russias takeover of Crimea in 2014 and backing separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
GENEVA  The number of civilian casualties in Yemen rose sharply in December despite a cease-fire called by the warring parties at the start of face-to-face negotiations, according to details released on Tuesday by the United Nations, which attributed most of the deaths to airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition.

The assessment came two days after coalition forces said that daily attacks by rebel Houthi forces, including rocket assaults targeting Saudi cities and border posts, had prompted them to end the truce declared when the two sides met in Switzerland last month.

At least 81 civilians were killed in the fighting in December, more than double the figure for the previous month, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, and an additional 109 were reported wounded. At least 62 civilians died in coalition airstrikes, and 11 people were reportedly killed in shelling by Houthi-affiliated forces, he added.

The United Nations said that the conflict had been responsible for 8,119 casualties in 2015, including 2,795 dead and 5,324 wounded.
AMMAN, Jordan  The deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Zaki Bani Rushaid, was released from prison on Monday after serving 13 months for criticizing the United Arab Emirates, a Jordanian ally, in a Facebook post.

Mr. Rushaid told supporters after his release that Jordan needed political reform without any delay, and said that he planned to form a new campaign that will put the interest of Jordan above all else.

The Muslim Brotherhood is regarded as the largest political party in Jordan, with ties to the regional movement that has been banned in several other countries, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. The Jordanian branch has recently suffered a serious rift. Four hundred members, including some of the groups founders and top leaders, resigned last week from the Islamic Action Front, the groups political wing, which lost its official registration in Jordan last year. Some of them have joined a new group, the Muslim Brotherhood Society, which is legally registered in Jordan and has no ties to the regional Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Mr. Rushaid was detained in November 2014 and tried by a special state security court last February; he was found guilty of acts harmful to the countrys relations with a friendly nation.
CAIRO  For all the diplomatic dominoes that have fallen across the Middle East in recent days, with ambassadors from different countries flying home as a result of the explosive rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the map of allegiances has not significantly altered.

Certainly, several countries offered muscular shows of solidarity to Saudi Arabia after an Iranian mob attacked its embassy in Tehran over the weekend, prompting a crisis that has put the United States in a bind and has threatened to set back the prospects for a resolution to the conflict in Syria.

By Tuesday, Kuwait had recalled its ambassador to Iran, the United Arab Emirates had downgraded its diplomatic relationship, and Bahrain and Sudan had joined Saudi Arabia in severing its relationship with Tehran entirely.

Yet many other Sunni Muslim countries signaled that they intended to take a more measured approach to the argument  sympathizing with Saudi Arabia, a rich and powerful ally, but also determined to avoid getting sucked into a harmful conflict with Iran, a country governed by Shiite clerics, with potentially grave costs.
CAIRO  Officials in Saudi Arabia have said that the executions of 47 prisoners on Saturday were a long overdue reckoning for militants, including accused Qaeda members who were said to be recruiters, propagandists or bomb makers who helped carry out deadly attacks in the kingdom more than a decade ago.

But despite the weight of some of the accusations, the Saudi authorities had been in no hurry to put the men to death, allowing some to languish in prison for a decade or more. Only four of the men were convicted of crimes in the most severe category, punishable by death under Islamic law, reinforcing the fact that the death penalty is far less common in terrorism cases in Saudi Arabia than in drug or murder cases, according to human rights advocates.

With its decision to execute the accused militants, along with Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken antigovernment cleric and advocate for Saudi Arabias Shiite minority who was arrested in 2012, the Saudi government seemed willing to endure the potentially high political costs of the killings in order to deliver a warning to would-be militants, political dissidents and others that any challenge to the royal familys rule would not be tolerated, analysts say.

It remained to be seen whether the executions would provoke a backlash among Sunni ultraconservatives. But the killings of Sheikh Nimr and three other Shiite dissidents undermined the governments assertions that it had executed only terrorists and prompted an explosion of tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Shiite government of Iran that has shaken the region.
The police said at the time that they were examining a possible link between Mr. Shaabans death and the attack on the Simta bar on Dizengoff Street, a major commercial artery, and they have refused to release further details of the investigation. But during a condolence call on Tuesday at the home of one of the victims from the Simta bar, Mr. Alsheich also conveyed condolences to the Shaaban family.

Hours after the assault, the minister of public security, Gilad Erdan, said it was unclear if the motive was political, terrorist or criminal in nature. Since then, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and police officials have been careful to refer to the gunman as a murderer rather than a terrorist.

Relatives of the suspect have described him as mentally disturbed.

Questions deepened on Tuesday as the suspects father, Muhammad Melhem, a brother and an aunt were held for questioning by the Israeli authorities. Another brother was released after being in detention for three days.

The Israeli news media said the father was suspected of being an accomplice to the crime and of interfering with the investigation.

The father, who volunteered with the Israeli police, has publicly condemned his sons actions and told reporters over the weekend that he had alerted the Israeli authorities after it became clear from security-camera footage broadcast on television that his son was the gunman. On Monday, he appealed on Israeli television for his son to get in touch and turn himself in.
Now hes a grown-up  freshly 34, the perfect age. In that intervening decade, too, he has touched a trifecta of products with deep fan bases, having done years as a werewolf in Being Human and guest-starring in Sherlock and Doctor Who. Then hes got gay indie cred from HBOs terrific Looking. One potential future in the Hollywood multiverse has an explosive and logical outcome: a big, fat superhero franchise. There are certainly other outcomes, though.

Mr. Tovey sipped his beer. He did not appear to be one of those actors given to second-guessing or self-torture after a night onstage. I think Im a pretty basic bitch when it comes to having a postshow meltdown moment, of having to release, Mr. Tovey said. Im really not one of them guys whos like: I cant sleep. Im buzzing. I have to go out, I need to drink whiskey! I need to go to the bar where everyones out and, like, network. I want to go home and catch up on Netflix.

His only passions, as far as we can know, are hard work and contemporary art. All my money goes to art, he said. Most of this Broadway moneys going on something.

He is not a dilettante. He started with Tracey Emin drawings. On Instagram, he follows dealers like Jose Freire, Peter Amby, Zach Feuer. (A poser would start and stop at David Zwirner.)
Pusha T, 38, who is based in Norfolk, Va., has been involved in nearly every major facet of the hip-hop world, beginning with his early days as half of the duo Clipse. He recently signed on as president of Kanye Wests record label G.O.O.D. Music, and his latest album, King Push: Darkest Before Dawn  the Prelude, was released on Dec. 18. Here, five favorites from his diverse closet.

Jacket: I love the pieces from By Walid. Its this London brand my stylist Marcus put me on to some time ago. This piece is silk with 18th-century embroidery. Every jacket is a one-off. I actually went to the designers studio last week in London and got to meet him. It was pretty fresh. Hes extremely artsy and a really cool guy. He had some newer patterns and jackets to choose from. For me, the details matter: Fashion and hip-hop are always about being first and being different and being able to set yourself apart from the bunch.

T-Shirt: Right now Im really into John Elliott. Hes an American designer. He has a pretty comfortable sportswear brand. His T-shirts, I probably have one of every color. I first met him at the first season of Kanyes fashion show. He sort of let me know what he had going on, and when his newest collection dropped, I got a couple pieces.
KABUL, Afghanistan  Two bombings struck near Kabuls international airport on Monday, killing one and injuring more than 20, Afghan officials said.

The more powerful of the attacks was in the evening, when a truck full of explosives was rammed into the wall of a compound for foreign and Afghan civilian contractors called Camp Baron, said Abdul Basir Mujahid, a spokesman for the Kabul police. One person was killed and 22 others wounded in the attack, all of them civilians, he said. Witnesses reported extensive damage in the area.

Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber detonated his vest near the entrance to the airport, but the vehicle he was driving in, also laden with explosives, did not blow up, security officials said. There were no other casualties.

The truck attack occurred just as an overnight siege of a building near an Indian Consulate in northern Afghanistan ended after 25 hours of fighting between militants and Afghan security forces.

The airport bombings follow a deadly attack Friday on a French restaurant in Kabul that had once been popular with foreigners.

The string of bombings in the Afghan capital comes days before a major meeting of senior officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China to chart a course for the start of peace talks with the Taliban.

The attacks may be an attempt by the Taliban to gain more leverage if they join the talks, which Afghan and Pakistani officials say could happen within a matter of weeks.

The Taliban took responsibility for the evening attack in Kabul, but no group has claimed responsibility for the earlier bombing at the airport or the assault on the consulate.

In the consulate siege, which began on Sunday evening, a small group of militants occupied an empty house near the Indian Consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province. Fighting continued all night, and Afghan commandos made a push in the morning to clear the house. Afghan Army helicopters were seen dropping commandos onto the roof of the building.

Officials declared the attack over after 25 hours of fighting, according to local news media reports. The siege left at least one police officer dead and nine people wounded, including three civilians.

All of the staff members at the Indian Consulate were safe, said Amar Sinha, Indias ambassador to Afghanistan, on Twitter.

Dr. Muhammad Afzal Hadeed, the head of the provincial council, said the house had once been used by Americans, possibly working for an aid agency, and it had a secure room where insurgents could take cover.

The attackers hid themselves in that safe room, which made it too hard for the security forces to kill them, Hadeed said. The house is completely surrounded by the security forces. We dont care as much about the length of time as about avoiding casualties.
Mayday, a Westminster-based maker of disaster preparedness kits, was acquired by an Escondido-based competitor, Ready America, the two companies said Monday.

Terms of the sale were not released.

There will be no layoffs as a result of the acquisition and both the Ready America and Mayday offices have been hiring accounting and warehouse workers, said Dean Reese, the chief executive of Ready America.

Mayday currently has 16 employees.

As a part of the acquisition Mayday will be operated as a separate division of Ready America. It will focus on selling products through its established dealers and distributors.

John Tepel founded Mayday in the 1990s. The company sells home, office and automotive preparedness kits packed with water and food that has a five-year shelf life as well as other emergency items like pop-up showers.

Ready America sells a variety of emergency supplies from outdoor survival kits to emergency lighting and earthquake fastening supplies.
Luis Angel has been a memory athlete since 2012, competing around the world and, in a dozen competitions, finishing only once as high as second.

He had never won a dime of prize money.

All that changed Monday night when Angel, 25, a former DirectTV installer who lives in Irvine, was chosen by the audience as the winner of $100,000 on the premiere of the Fox television show SuperHuman.

When host Kal Penn announced that the memory master had won the show, Angel said he thought his opponent and mentor Ronnie White had won. White had remembered the names and phone numbers of 15 women in a segment called The Pickup Artist.

I was going to go give him a big hug, Angel said. But then they said my name. I couldnt believe it. I was discombobulated for a while.

His mother, Yesenia Carrion, ran out of the audience to hug her son.

She almost tackled me, Angel said.

In the show, Angel was one of a dozen SuperHuman competitors, each with a particular skill. One was a contortionist. One could identify smells. One could recognize music by watching a keyboard without sound. One could identify tastes.

Angel said he thought the contortionist Brandee Mills, who had to move through a maze of lasers while blindfolded, was the most talented. But she touched the last laser.

Angels segment was shown in the last 20 minutes of the competition.

He had met 100 members of the audience before the show, which was filmed in June. He had to remember the names and hometowns of five random audience members.

The first was Bailey S. of Mankato, Minn. Angel said he pictured a baby with leaves to remember Bailey.

He was almost stumped with the name of the fourth audience member.

Her name was Paris S. of Chicago.

At first he paused and said he had drawn a blank.

Then he remembered the Eiffel Tower in Paris coming out of her curly hair.

When he got that one right, he pumped his fist in the air and screamed.

Angel barely graduated from high school and has had trouble with his memory his entire life.

In 2012, he began taking online courses taught by White.

Angel said the prize money is going to help him give back. Hes going to contribute some to the Living Waters church in Fountain Valley, where he participates on Tuesday nights to feed the homeless.

He also said he is going to form a nonprofit organization to help orphanages in Mexico.

His mother is from Mexico, and she raised five children.

She is my inspiration, he said.
TEL AVIV, Israel  For all its years of strife, Israel has rarely seen anything quite like this: an armed, wanted Arab killer on the loose, spreading fear across the land.

Even the most stoic are keeping their children home from school following the deadly daytime shooting at a popular bar on a busy Tel Aviv street that has become among the most unsettling attacks in a three-month wave of violence.

Israelis are used to quickly resuming their daily routines following attacks because assailants are typically captured or killed. But the frantic search for this gunman, whose attack on Friday afternoon was caught on security cameras, has sent jitters across this seaside city.

The unusual escape of the accused gunman, Nashat Milhem, an Arab from northern Israel who is considered to be armed and dangerous, is one of many elements of a case that has left Israelis on edge.

Everything about this is characterized by uncertainty, said Yossi Melman, a prominent security analyst, adding that the level of planning and sophistication were closer in style to those of Islamic State attackers in Brussels, Paris and California.

Im not familiar with an event like this, with an unclear nature that has lasted this long, he said.

The shooting on Tel Avivs busy Dizengoff Street, which killed two Israeli men and wounded six other people, was recorded on security cameras at a health food store next door.

In the footage, a man with short dark hair, glasses and a black bag over his shoulder is seen scooping up nuts from the shops bulk food section, putting them in a plastic bag, then emptying them back. He then walks to the store entrance, places his backpack on a shopping cart and takes a gun out of it before stepping outside and opening fire into the bar. He then runs away.

Police say that after tossing his cellphone, Milhem hailed a cab that took him to northern Tel Aviv, where he killed the driver and escaped in the taxi before abandoning it and going off the grid.

Authorities got their first lead when Milhems father, Mohammed, recognized his son from the closed circuit footage aired on TV. Milhem apparently obtained the licensed semi-automatic weapon he used by stealing it from his father, a security guard. The father condemned the killing and called on his son to turn himself in. Residents of their Arab town, Arara, also quickly denounced the attack.

The brazen shooting comes amid more than three months of almost daily Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. On the Israeli side, 21 people have died, mostly in stabbings and car-ramming attacks. At least 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, 90 of them identified by Israel as assailants.

Israel has accused Palestinian leaders and social media sites of inciting the violence. Palestinians say the attacks are the result of frustration over five decades of Israeli military occupation.

Whereas most attackers have been Palestinians from the West Bank or east Jerusalem, Milhem is one of just a handful of Arab citizens of Israel accused of such violence. And, he comes from a family that was well integrated into Israeli society.

Police say they found a Quran in his bag, hinting at Islamic inspiration, though family members say he was emotionally unstable and traumatized after a cousin was shot dead in a 2006 police arrest raid. At the time, police said they were searching for weapons and claimed the shooting was in self-defense.

Milhem served time in an Israeli prison after being convicted of attacking a soldier and trying to steal his weapon. But he was also described by residents of the upscale Tel Aviv neighborhood where he worked as a grocery store delivery man as being so trusted that customers gave him their house keys to make deliveries when they were out.

I knew him like the back of my hand. He ate and drank and worked with us, a local Israeli vegetable salesman who was not identified told Channel 10 TV. He was a normal guy.  People really liked him. And I liked him too.

The suspects picture is plastered across newspapers and television screens, and police say they are on heightened alert, with stepped-up security in Tel Aviv, as they conduct their investigation.

With the search stretching into its fourth day, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai implored residents to return to their routines. But the city remained subdued Monday, and attendance at many schools was sparse.

Oren Helman, a resident of Tel Avivs upscale Ramat Aviv neighborhood, where the search has focused, said he sent his two young daughters to school, but there were few other parents dropping children off. The few who came to school were not allowed to play outside in the playground.

The parents who send their kids to school are worried. Those who dont are scared, he said.

Helman said the heightened security in the neighborhood helped put him at ease, and he didnt want to cave in to violence or cause panic with his children. But he said there were heated discussions among parents on social media over whether their children were safe. Repeated rumors that the gunman has been seen also added to the unease, he said.

Assaf Zamir, a deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, said some neighborhoods reported only 50 percent school attendance but he expected the numbers to rise.

From our experience as days go by, the numbers will fill up and everyone will come back to school, he said. We have always bounced back.
Board members of the Anaheim Union High School District and Superintendent Michael Matsuda took to the Voice of OC news site to argue that charter schools main goal is to make money, that they are unaccountable and that they lack democratic input.

None of these charges is true, and the regulations the authors propose to fix charter schools would instead transform them into just another cog in the traditional system they were designed to escape, taking choices away from parents and students.

Over 158,000 students are already on waiting lists to attend charter schools in California; now is not the time to hobble the growth of charter schools in the state and leave parents with fewer options than they already have.

Contrary to the assertion that many charters operate only to make money, less than 1 percent of charter schools in California  just six schools out of almost 1,200  are organized as for-profit entities. Furthermore, there is no evidence that for-profit and nonprofit charter school management models have different outcomes for parents and students in other states where for-profit charter networks are more common.

Traditional public schools contract with for-profit entities all the time to build their classrooms, create their textbooks and train their teachers. To indict the small percentage of charter school operators that are turning a profit by providing parents education services they need is disingenuous on the part of charter detractors.

Charter schools are unaccountable only if their opponents define accountability as compliant with the same litany of regulations and red tape that have dragged down traditional public schools. In fact, charter schools are, in many ways, more accountable than traditional public schools.

Among other elements, a charter school applying for authorization in California must provide the authorizer a detailed description of the schools proposed education program, how it is going to measure and report student achievement (something for which traditional public schools are totally unaccountable), the qualifications of its employees, its governance structure, its operational strategies and an annual financial audit of its funds.

Most importantly, charter schools are held ultimately accountable by parents, who  unlike in traditional public schools  have the power to take their kids and the funds associated with them elsewhere if the charter school fails to meet their needs.

Finally, in California, the overwhelming majority of charter schools are authorized by local school boards, with as direct democratic accountability as the traditional public schools. However, since local school boards exist primarily to run their traditional public school districts, allowing them to be the only route to authorization for charter schools is rather like allowing Burger King to decide whether a new McDonalds should be allowed to open next door.

Unsurprisingly, charter school growth in California has been severely hampered by pure anticompetitive sentiment among local boards. The state board provides a neutral venue, free from direct conflict of interest, to which charter schools can appeal.

Research shows that charter school students overall gain about 40 extra days of learning in math and 28 in reading compared with their traditional public school peers, with even more dramatic results in the Los Angeles area, so it is easy to understand why local school boards might fear the competition.

The authors of the Voice of OC article claim that competition and choices for parents are good things, even while urging a moratorium on the only alternative choice to the traditional public school system for California parents who cannot afford to send their kids to private schools. As Henry Ford remarked about the Model T in 1909, [The] customer can have a car painted any color that he wants as long as it is black.

While Thomas Jefferson championed universal public education, his purposes for doing so  literacy and civic understanding among voters from all walks of life  are not being fulfilled by todays monopolistic education system. Supporting public education need not mean supporting the overfunded, stagnant system that currently consigns students to schools where they are unlikely to succeed, based on where their parents can afford to rent or buy a house. In a constitutional republic, where we the people choose our leaders and direction, we must do better, and charter schools are part of the solution.

Inez Feltscher is director of the Education and Workforce Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Twitter: @inezfeltscher
The relics of St. Sharbel Makhlouf, a pious hermit who lived in the 19th century, will visit St. John Maron Maronite Catholic Church in Orange this weekend.

St. John Maron is the only Maronite church in Orange County, a part of the Catholic church practicing Eastern traditions. While the Orthodox part of the church draws from Latin or Roman traditions, many traditions in Maronite churches come from Lebanon, where the church patriarch resides.

The Rev. Antoine Bakh said this is the first time the church has hosted the relics of a saint.

The remains of Sharbels body will enter the church at 11:30 a.m. Saturday during a processional and will remain the subject of events throughout the day  including an overnight adoration that will last into Sunday.

The relics will leave the church at 6 p.m. Sunday.

Sharbel, sometimes spelled Charbel, was a Maronite monk and priest in Lebanon who lived from 1828 to 1898.

Months after his death, people claimed to see a light coming from Sharbels tomb. When it was reopened to investigate, they found his body had not decayed at all.

Documents from the Vatican library record that the tomb was reopened several times throughout the years, each time revealing the body had not decayed. The body also oozed blood and liquid while still remaining perfectly intact.

Church documents state that Sharbels body did not start showing signs of decay until it was looked at in 1965  67 years after his death.

Many Catholics considered these events miraculous.

The tomb became a place people would pilgrimage to, Bakh explained. People would pray to Sharbel for intercession, and they would receive answers to their prayers, and a lot of them would be healed.

By their lives, saints testify to Christ, Bakh said. Christ, in turn, honors them by working through them. Often this means performing miracles through their bones or things they touched or through their prayers in heaven.

Bakh said Sharbels tomb is covered with hundreds of letters and testimonies of his healing power.

For these reasons, Sharbel was made a saint in 1977 by Pope Paul VI.

Bakh said being able to have the body of the saint in the church will be a spiritual experience and offer many a chance to pray in Sharbels presence.

(This) is a way of being physically close and feeling spiritually close to the saint, Bakh said. It brings people closer to God through the saint. Its an opportunity to share in his presence.

Its very sacramental, he said.
DANA POINT  The California Coastal Commission has granted an extension until Jan. 29 to the city to respond to demands to remove gates that the commission says restrict public access to Dana Points popular Strand Beach.

We have extended the deadline so we can work out detail of the mitigation requirements for the site, Sarah Christie, a spokesperson with the Coastal Commission, said Wednesday.

City officials agreed to the extension. City Attorney Patrick Munoz said the city is continuing to try to resolve the issue with the Coastal Commission. In doing so, Munoz said the city has voluntarily suspended the operating hours on the gates.

We did this as a show of good faith to the California Coastal Commission in order to demonstrate our commitment to try to resolve the issue, Munoz said.

The Coastal Commission has called for removal of two gates that block the shortest access to the beach.

But Sanford Edward, the developer of Strand at Headlands, said public officials have misinterpreted agreements involving access to the beach that were made as part of the original plan for developing the area.

Edward said his company, Headlands Reserve LLC, has received communication from the commission of being in violation of the Coastal Act  the same assertions the commission made to the city. Edward said he has submitted a statement of defense saying claims of lack of access are without merit.

Its a waste of taxpayers money; Headlands Reserve LLC will not pay a single penny in fines, Edward said.

Although the commission calls the gates unpermitted, they were agreed upon in 2003 when specifics of the development were being hashed out, Edward said.

In a Nov. 3 letter to Dana Point officials and Edward, California Coastal Commission Executive Director Charles Lester called for the removal of the gates. Lester said the two gates at Mid-Strand represented unpermitted restrictions that had been in place for more than six years.

As part of the Coastal Act, any development done without a Coastal Development Permit can result in fines as high as $30,000 for each violation and an additional $1,000 to $15,000 in daily fines.

In order to move this matter toward conclusion and effect formal resolution to the matter, I am commencing cease-and-desist order proceedings, Lester wrote.

The letter from the commission came after a September ruling in Superior Court that said city officials cannot set unusual time limits on public access to the sand. That ruling did not become effective until Dec.7.

Edward has argued that a prior legal finding from June 2011 stands. In that ruling, a Superior Court decided that the Coastal Commission and staff dont have power to issue notice of violation letters.

Ignoring the commissions request, the City Council voted unanimously Nov. 3 to restrict public access at the developments midpoint through the use of electronic gates.

The gate access hours were amended to one hour before sunrise until one hour after sunset.

Dana Point officials say the gates are a way to defuse more than five years of legal battles and disputes between the city and the Coastal Commission.

On Nov. 4, city officials sent a letter to the commission saying that their action was part of a good-faith gesture to avoid further conflict and litigation.

The dispute between the city and the Coastal Commission and Surfrider Foundation arose in 2009, when Dana Point enacted an ordinance to limit beach-access hours through the neighborhood after requests by the developer and some homeowners. The city passed the ordinance, saying it didnt have to follow the Coastal Act of 1976.

The Coastal Commission and Surfrider Foundation fought the ordinance in court, saying it could set a precedent that might limit beach access throughout California. A court ruled in the publics favor in 2011.

In recent years, beach access to places such as the Carbon Beach section of Malibu and Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay have become contentious, often pitting landowners against public interest groups.

Opponents say any gate to the development is a violation.

Edward, who got approval for the development in 2004, said the beach access paths were built 100 percent consistent with the permits.

He said the continuing disagreement between the city, himself and the Coastal Commission and Surfrider are in part a confusion over what was originally agreed to.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
A deputy sheriff who works for an anti-narcotics task force in Northern California found himself swept up in a $2 million marijuana arrest in Pennsylvania last week. The authorities are now trying to determine if any of the cases he worked on have been tainted.

According to a criminal complaint, Christopher M. Heath, the deputy, and another man, Tyler Long, 31, drove across the country to deliver more than 122 packages of marijuana to a person in West Manheim Township, Pennsylvania.

But investigators had been tipped off, and they stopped the car about midnight on Dec. 28. The pair were arrested, along with a third man in another vehicle, identified as Ryan J. Falsone, 27.

In addition to the marijuana and $11,000 in cash, authorities found Heaths badge and his duty firearm, David Sunday, the York County chief deputy prosecutor, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

The Pennsylvania officers did not know before the arrest that Heath, 37, worked in law enforcement, he said.

Details about the drug bust were announced by Tom Kearney, the York County district attorney, on Monday and reported in local newspapers.

One has to be both saddened and angry when you hear of something like this, Kearney said, according to The Evening Sun of Hanover. The work that is done by the task force and police officers in general is very dangerous work, and it is made more dangerous by the fact that occasionally there is a bad apple in the barrel.

The three men were arrested on felony drug charges and each posted $1 million bail, Sunday said.

Sunday said the marijuana packages altogether weighed more than 240 pounds and had a street value of more than $2 million.

The arrest means that authorities are now reviewing drug cases in at least two counties in northern California to see whether they have been compromised.

Yuba County is north of Sacramento, and marijuana growing has been a hot political issue. Early in 2015, the county board of supervisors put limits on cultivation, over substantial protests from some residents and support from others opposed to criminality around the drug business.

As part of the Yuba County Sheriffs Department, Heath has worked on a task force known as NET-5, which targets illegal drug use, possession, manufacturing and sales. He worked on the task force for three years, which also serves Sutter County, investigating crimes and serving as a witness, including in at least one major federal case.

The Appeal-Democrat newspaper quoted the units commander, Martin Horan, as saying that the deputy had led 62 criminal cases related to marijuana.

The district attorney in Yuba County, Patrick McGrath, said he is now reviewing all the cases in which Heath had an investigative role to see if they were still viable.

If Heaths work was witnessed or can be otherwise credibly covered by the testimony of another investigator, the case may not be significantly impacted, he said in an emailed statement. In other situations, the case may be tainted to such a degree that we cannot proceed and the case will be dismissed.

The Sutter County District Attorney, Amanda Hopper, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The paper reported that the deputy had been placed on leave but would continue to receive his salary during the administrative investigation.
UNITED NATIONS  The death penalty is steadily receding into the dustbin of history in most countries around the world. But in a handful of countries where it is still used, the number of people sentenced to death have surged recently, and a few countries that had stopped sentencing people to death have resumed the practice in what they call cases of terrorism.

The countries that are among the most active executioners are regional rivals: Saudi Arabia and Iran, and China and the United States.

They are in a minority of nations. All told, 105 countries have abolished the death penalty, with Suriname and Mongolia the latest to scrap it altogether. According to the United Nations, 60 other countries allow for the death penalty but have not carried out an execution in a decade, making them what the U.N. calls de facto abolitionists. Only 28 countries have retained capital punishment on their law books and used it in the last 10 years.

But even as the number of countries using capital punishment has declined, there has been a rise in the number of convicts sentenced to death. Amnesty Internationals latest report found that at least 2,466 people had been sentenced to death in 2014, a 28 percent increase from 2013.

Some countries have returned to using capital punishment after suspending the practice for many years. Jordan and Pakistan executed several citizens in 2014 in terrorism cases. That year, Egypt, on more than one occasion, sentenced several hundred citizens to death, many of them supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood who had participated in violent political protests in which a single police officer was killed.

It is a troubling paradox that while the majority of countries have abandoned the use of the death penalty, the overall number of those sentenced to death has been increasing recently, said Ivan Simonovic, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights. Terrorism offenses and drug-related offenses seem to be the driving arguments behind this increase, although there is no evidence of its deterring effects.

According to the latest figures compiled by Amnesty International, Iran executed at least 289 people in 2014, including for drug offenses. The same year, Saudi Arabia executed at least 90 people, including those convicted in nonlethal crimes, like the Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, one of 47 people who were put to death on Saturday. Those latest executions came after a year in which the rights group Human Rights Watch estimates that Saudi Arabia put to death 158 prisoners in 2015.

Iraq and the United States are among the top five executioners, though in the United States there has been an effort by state governments to limit the use of the death penalty; the federal government still uses it, though rarely. At least 12 states have a moratorium or an official hold on the use of the death penalty, and in several others, courts are considering challenges to lethal injections, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Twenty-eight people were executed in the United States in 2015, continuing a six-year decline, according to the center.

China is the top executioner in the world. The total number of people it sentences to death is a state secret, but human rights groups and the U.N. say China carries out the largest number of executions. The U.N. estimates that China executed 6,687 people from 1999 to 2003.

India, the second-most populous country in the world, still has the death penalty, too, and last used it in July 2015 to execute one of the central figures in a deadly series of bombings in Mumbai in 1993. The condemned, Yakub Memon, was only the fourth person executed in India since 2000, although in 2014, three men convicted of raping a photojournalist in Mumbai were sentenced to death under new, more severe rape laws.

In the Islamic world, the authorities often argue that capital punishment is justified under Shariah law. But the punishment is used on virtually every continent. In South America, for instance, Trinidad and Tobago retain the death penalty, as do several countries in Africa, including Guinea and Zimbabwe.
The League of Women Voters of North Orange County is hosting a forum next week with four candidates vying to fill a vacant spot on the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees.

Long-time Trustee Donna Miller announced her resignation in the summer, saying she had moved out of the districts area to be closer to her grandchildren, according to the boards minutes. That left a vacancy on the board that oversees Fullerton College, Cypress College and the School of Continuing Education.

A special mail-in election will be held Feb. 9, with vote-by-mail balloting beginning Jan. 11.

The League of Women Voters is planning a campaign forum with the candidates at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 12 at Cypress College, 9200 Valley View St., in the Fine Arts Building, Room 304.

The four candidates running for the Area 3 seat are: Stephen L. Blount, a Cypress School District trustee; Daniel D. Billings, a contract manager; Steve Hwangbo, a businessman and La Palma councilman; and Alan Al Salehi, a Buena Park Library District trustee.

On Aug. 25, the districts trustees voted to appoint Billings to the vacant seat. But during a 30-day waiting period, Salehi filed a petition with the required number of voters signatures to the California Department of Education asking for a special election, a district spokeswoman said.

The estimated cost of the all-mail ballot election is approximately $168,000 to $197,000, Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said Monday.

The new trustee will hold the post through November 2018.

More information and candidates statements are available at ocvote.com/info.

Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com
San Bernardino County employees took time off work Monday, Jan. 4, to fill an arena and honor their colleagues who were killed or injured in the Dec. 2 mass shooting.

The 2 p.m. ceremony at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario featured a religious speech from Pastor Rick Warren, of Saddleback Church in Orange County, pondering how to grapple with such a tragegy. It also saw former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led the city during 9/11 and its aftermath, deliver defiant remarks against terrorism.

Come to San Bernardino and spend money and tell the terrorists screw you,' he said to loud applause. You cant beat us. Were stronger than you are.

Giuliani got a standing ovation after his speech.

As for Warren, he posed a tough question that was likely on the minds of many.

How do you find the strength to go on? What do you do when your heart has been broken in a thousand pieces?

The grieving process will take time, he said.

You dont get over it, he said. You get through it.

Warren told the crowd, You need to feel your feelings and let it out.

He talked about how he and his wife overcame grief when their youngest son took his own life.

You need to release your grief  let it come out, he said.

Grief is a good thing, he said.

Grief is a tool God has given us to get through the transitions of life. Its healthy.

Never tell someone you know it feels, he said. There is only one appropriate response for grief.

Im sorry for your loss, he said.

Its important to receive help from others, he said, and not to feel bad about what happened.

Bitterness will eat you alive.

You cant hold onto hurt, said Warren, who launched what became one of the nations largest megachurches and now includes 10 Southern California campuses.

Warren called the shooting evil and quoted a Bible verse from Proverbs about how God will lead mourners through the valley of the shadow of death.

What do you do when you are going through hell? You walk on, he said.

Then Giuliani spoke, telling the audience he felt sympathy and empathy for them and offered his prayers and condolences.

He was mayor when terrorists hijackers slammed planes into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2011.

I know what youre going through, he said. I lost so many of my fellow citizens and 10 of my closest friends.

You can make us mourn, you can make us cry. Theres one thing you cant do. You cant break our spirit, Giuliani said to loud applause.

He urged the crowd to tell people to visit San Bernardino as a strike against the attackers.

Fight back. Make something good come out of this, said Giuliani, who also told them not to blame Muslims for the tragedy.

Of the shooters, he said: They cannot beat us.

This is psychological warfare, he said. They want you to be afraid.

Come to San Bernardino and spend money and tell the terrorists screw you,' he said to loud applause. You cant beat us. Were stronger than you are.

Let this become a turning point for San Bernardino, Giuliani said. You got the whole country behind you.

This is a long war with a very sick and determined adversary, he said.

There will be more terrorist attacks.

People around the world are planning to kill us. We have to stand together, he said.

The crowd gave Giuliani a standing ovation after his speech.

Next up was San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford.

She told employees We have to be careful not to spread sorrow. Find the good things (in life) and spread good cheer.

She applauded county workers for their courage, bravery, compassion, dignity and grace in facing the tragedy.

In the worst moments, the best of our characters come out, she said.

As employees took their seats for the 2 p.m. service, instrumental music played in the background. An image of a desert landscape and mountains appeared on a large screen behind the stage with the words: Remember, Honor and Support.

Thousands of county employees were expected at the ceremony, which was attended by Gov. Jerry Brown and California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Giuliani waived his usual speaking fee for the event, county spokesman David Wert said. Giuliani typically makes between $100,000 to $300,000 per speech, according to articles in the New York Times, Huffington Post and Washington Post.

San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Chairman James Ramos welcomed the audience of San Bernardino County employees to the private memorial service.

The tragedy has brought together workers who have shown resilience despite the loss of their colleagues and friends, he said.

As a county we will never forget Dec, 2, 2015, Ramos said. The events of that day could have torn us asunder  but they have driven us closer together to fulfill our mission of public service.

Outside the arena before the event, security was tight.

A sheriffs deputy cruised the aisles of the parking lot in an SUV and a command trailer was positioned in sight of the arenas entrance.

Kristin Stevens, who works for the San Bernardino County library system, said the mood at work has been solemn, but employees are supportive of each other and have an attitude of perseverance through difficult time.

Over the long term, Stevens said, she expects residents and county employees to have maybe a greater sense of community and the necessity to be aware and to support one another.

Beryl Holman, who works in the countys preschool services department, said some county employees have been on edge since the shooting.

The office has been not a happy place, she said. Everybodys been pulling together, but I also know a couple people that were scared to come (to the memorial).

Holman said the attack didnt make her feel significantly less safe at work.

My opinion is it could have happened anywhere, she said.

For Lorraine Aguirre, a victim advocate in the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office, said the shooting and the aftermath hit really close to home.

Her office has been helping shooting victims and their families.

She and her co-workers have been so busy in recent weeks that there hasnt been time to process their emotions. What happened still seems surreal, she said.

I think once everything has kind of calmed down, it will affect people even more, Aguirre said.

She used to think the multiple layers of safety precautions her office already takes were excessive, but she no longer feels that way.

Aguirre said shes noticed her fellow employees seem more fearful, even if its below the surface.

Theres an awareness that any day, any time, something like (the attack) can happen.

But Aguirre and other employees said the memorial event is an important opportunity for them to show their support for each other and try to begin healing.
WASHINGTON  President Barack Obama moved Monday to expand background checks to cover more guns sold at gun shows, online and anywhere else, aiming to curb a scourge of gun violence despite unyielding opposition to new gun laws in Congress.

Obamas plan to broaden background checks forms the centerpiece of a broader package of measures the president plans to take on his own on gun control in his final year in office. Although Obama cant unilaterally change gun laws, the president is hoping that beefing up enforcement of existing laws can prevent at least some gun deaths in a country rife with them.

This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, Obama said. Still, he added, It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers, but many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or other informal settings dont register as dealers. Gun control advocates say that loophole is exploited to skirt the background check requirement.

Now, the Justice Departments Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will issue updated guidance that says the government should deem anyone in the business of selling guns to be a dealer, regardless of where he or she sells the guns. To that end, the government will consider other factors, including how many guns a person sells and how frequently, and whether those guns are sold for a profit.

The executive actions on gun control fall far short of what he and likeminded lawmakers attempted to accomplish with legislation in 2013, after a massacre at a Connecticut elementary school that shook the nations conscience. Even still, the more modest measures were sure to spark a confrontation with Republicans and gun rights groups that oppose new impediments to buying guns.

Were very comfortable that the president can legally take these actions now, said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Far from mandating background checks for all gun sales, the new guidance still exempt collectors and gun hobbyists, and the exact definition of who must register as a dealer and conduct background checks remains exceedingly vague. The administration did not issue a number for how many guns someone must sell to be considered a dealer, instead saying it planned to remind people that courts have deemed people to be dealers in some cases even if they only sell a handful of guns.

And the background check provision rests in the murky realm of agency guidelines, which have less force than full-fledged federal regulations and can easily be rescinded. Many of the Republican presidential candidates running to succeed Obama have vowed to rip up his new gun restrictions upon taking office.

In an attempt to prevent gun purchases from falling through the cracks, the FBI will hire 230 more examiners to process background checks, the White House said. The FBI has a computerized system that can process background checks for many in seconds.

But in instances where the FBI needs more time, the government only has three days before prospective buyers can return and buy the gun without being cleared.

The White House also said it planned to ask Congress for $500 million to improve mental health care, and pledged to move forward with efforts to keep guns out of the hands with people deemed unsuitable because of mental illness. The Obama administration also plans to complete a rule long in the works to close a separate loophole that exempts guns purchased by trusts or corporations from background checks.

Obama planned to announce the new measures at an event at the White House on Tuesday as he continued a weeklong push to promote the gun effort and pushing back on its critics.

He met at the White House on Monday with Democratic lawmakers who have supported stricter gun control, and planned to take his argument to prime time on Thursday with a town hall discussion about gun violence on CNN. The initiative also promised to be prominent in Obamas final State of the Union address next week.
PARIS  In a special edition laced with blasphemy, obscenity and profanity, Charlie Hebdos surviving artists and writers declared that the satirical newspaper is alive, but the murderer is still at large.

The 32-page copy marking the anniversary of the Jan. 7 attack on the papers staff accuses Islamic fundamentalists, organized religion, an irresolute government and intelligence failures for the 2015 violence in France by Muslim extremists that started with that day.

Seventeen people died at Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher supermarket two days later. They were among the first victims of a string of attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in France last year that ultimately left at least 147 people dead and hundreds of others injured.

Almost all of those believed directly responsible for the Jan. 7-9 attacks and the Nov. 13 carnage in Paris that killed 130 people are dead as well. But Charlie Hebdos special edition this week, with a front-page caricature of a bloody God wielding an assault rifle, darkly predicts that more violence is to come.

Laurent Sourisseau, the newspapers director who goes by the name Riss, drew the cover and wrote an editorial describing the horror he survived  and that took the lives of friends and colleagues. He described the newsrooms silence moments after the two gunmen opened fire, saying that was how he knew his colleagues were dead.

Riss wrote that Islamic fanatics and other religious zealots wanted Charlie Hebdos secular journalists to pay the ultimate price for daring to laugh at religion. He insisted that the newspaper would remain alive because never have we wanted so much to break the faces of those who dreamed of our deaths.

The editorial is violent and very insulting toward religion, Abdallah Zekri, president of the Observatory against Islamophobia, told BFM television on Monday.

In a separate piece, chief editor Gerard Biard marveled that, although the Charlie Hebdo killings launched a global debate on the role of religion and free speech, no one even bothered to explain to the world why the attackers went after the kosher supermarket.

We are so used to Jews being killed because they are Jewish, he wrote. This is an error, and not just on a human level. Because its the executioner who decides who is Jewish. Nov. 13 was the proof of that. On that day, the executioner showed us that he had decided we were all Jewish.

The edition, on newsstands Wednesday, details the moments of horror in Paris 11th arrondissement in the first staff meeting of 2015. The day had started in usual French fashion for the New Year, with kisses on the cheek and well wishes. One staffer went downstairs to fetch her daughter from daycare, and the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi called out her pen name upon seeing her: Coco.

They had already killed the buildings handyman, Frederic Boisseau. With their guns at her back, the staffer opened the door and then the attackers opened fire. It took just minutes to kill 11 people in the building; they would fire point-blank on a Muslim police officer on the way out, his death horrifically immortalized in cell phone video.

Patrick Pelloux, an emergency room doctor and columnist for the newspaper, was among the first to arrive after a call from one of the survivors in the room. The more I went upstairs, the more blood there was, Pelloux wrote.

In a series of editorials later in the edition, Charlie Hebdo takes aim at university students who wear veils or openly pray in classrooms, hospital patients who refuse medical treatment from someone of the opposite sex, and Frances intelligence community. Mixed in were blasphemous caricatures targeting a range of beliefs, obscene sketches, and a variety of French profanity that takes standard grade cursing as a mere starting point.

In all, typical Charlie Hebdo, alive and well.
SANTA ANA  A 29-year-old janitor was charged Monday with murdering a 23-year-old escort last week inside a Newport Beach printing business.

Nain Issac Nieto Hernandez of Santa Ana pleaded not guilty to one felony count of murder and faces life in prison if convicted, said Chris Kim, spokesman for the Orange County District Attorneys Office.

Hernandez is accused of killing Sarai Alcaraz, a 23-year-old Long Beach woman and professional escort, around 1:30 a.m. Dec. 29 at Coast to Coast Copy, a copy and printing company at 5030 Campus Drive, Newport Beach.

How Hernandez allegedly killed her was not immediately released.

Around 12:11 a.m. that morning, two of Alcarazs associates called police after she went inside the business and stopped answering calls and text messages, said Jennifer Manzella, spokeswoman for the Newport Beach police and fire departments, the morning of the incident.

The callers had searched for the young woman but were unable to find her, Manzella said.

Newport Beach authorities identified Hernandez as a suspect early in the case because he was a janitor at the business.

We are not sure if he was supposed to be there that night or was assigned to that specific building, but over the course of his normal duties he would have had access to the building, Manzella said.

Hernandez is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 12.

Staff writer Louis Casiano Jr.

contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or aduranty@ocregister.com
SANTA ANA  Taking the witness stand on Monday, Steve Herr described the pain and horror of knowing that his only son, Samuel Herr, was brutally murdered and his body dismembered.

I never want to forget. I need to remember, Herr said, as many in the courtroom audience wiped away tears. In my mind I see him whacking away at my sons head. I see him sawing my sons arm off. I have trouble sleeping at night because when I turn off the TV thats what I see. I dont want to forget the heinousness of this.

The penalty phase began on Monday in the case of Daniel Wozniak, a Costa Mesa community theater actor who was convicted on Dec. 16 of killing his neighbor, Samuel Herr, a 26-year-old Army veteran, and Herrs friend, Juri Julie Kibuishi, 23, in a bizarre plot to steal Herrs money in May 2010.

An Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated for just over two hours before convicting Wozniak, 31, in the double murder. Jurors will now decide whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.

The case lingered for more than five years as Wozniaks defense attorney battled to have the death penalty taken off the table, but on Monday, the family members of Herr and Kibuishi, in emotional testimony, had the chance to tell jurors how theyve been devastated by the losses.

We spent a lot of time talking about Daniel Wozniak. Now in the penalty phase you get to think about those people, Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy told the jury.

While the guilt phase of the trial focused on evidence, jurors in the penalty phase will consider factors including the circumstances of the crimes, Wozniaks mental state and the impact on the victims families.

Wozniaks attorneys, assistant public defenders Scott Sanders and Tracy LeSage, have not yet presented mitigating factors as to why Wozniaks life should be spared. The defense attorneys in the guilt phase declined to give an opening statement and did not present any witnesses.

In her opening statement on Monday, LeSage asked jurors to consider all the circumstances and be fair to both sides.

Jurors may have an emotional response to the testimony, but it is important for them to keep an open mind, she said.

Prosecutors said Wozniak was broke with no money to pay for his wedding when he plotted to drain Herrs bank account through $400 ATM withdrawals. Wozniak shot and killed Herr after luring him to the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos. He returned the next day and cut off Herrs head, hand and forearm and tossed the body parts in Long Beachs El Dorado Park.

That evening, Wozniak took the stage as the lead in the musical Nine at the Hunger Artists Theatre Company in Fullerton.

In an attempt to throw police off his trail, Wozniak used Herrs cellphone to lure Kibuishi to Herrs apartment and then shot and killed her and staged the crime scene to make it look like Herr had killed Kibuishi in a jealous rage, prosecutors said.

Police arrested Wozniak at his bachelor party at a sushi restaurant in Huntington Beach, two days before his wedding. He later confessed to the killings in videotaped interviews with Costa Mesa Police detectives that were played for the jury.

In his opening statement, Murphy painted the picture of a callous killer who carried on with his wedding plans and theater performances while the victims families agonized.

The Kibuishis are making funeral arrangements for their daughter, while Daniel is planning his wedding in Huntington Beach, Murphy said. He knew Sam and Julie were loved, and he didnt care.

Taking the stand, Kibuishis brother, Taka Kibuishi, choked up as he talked about his sweet and funny younger sister. The two had dinner together in Long Beach on the night of her murder, and he said he still holds guilt about letting his sister go after dinner.

I had so many chances to try to stop her, he said, as he sobbed. I protected and helped her her whole life, and she was with me (that night).

Kibuishi said his family has been devastated by the death of his sister. His parents, Masa and June Kibuishi, have both battled cancer since the loss.

Samuel Herrs mother, Raquel Herr, said her life will never be the same of after the loss of her only child, who was her prince.

While she has found comfort through her faith in God, she said she worries about her husband, Steve Herr.

I dont want anger. I want to go on with life, and I see him how its destroying him, she said.

On the stand, Steve Herr said he struggles over his sons death.

As the time has gone on, the pain and anger, does it go away? Murphy asked.

No, I visit my sons grave every week, Herr replied. The one thing I did get out of this is that my anger and my hate has grown exponentially.

While questioning some witnesses, the defense has focused on Wozniaks ex-fiancee, Rachel Buffett, an actress and former Disneyland princess who is charged with being an accessory after the fact.

Among other allegations, Buffett is accused of lying to Costa Mesa police and repeating a fabricated account that Wozniak initially told detectives about Samuel Herr having problems with his family.

The defense is expected to present its case when the trial continues Tuesday in the courtroom of Judge John Conley.

Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com, 714-834-3773
The beginning of a new year tends to be a time when we make promises that are more hopeful than realistic. But novelist George R.R. Martin has earned a reputation for undercutting such optimism in his Song of Ice and Fire novels, which take a broadsword to the sanitized conventions of the chivalric tradition.

And he kicked off 2016 with the real-world equivalent of one of his famous plot twists: an announcement that he was nowhere near done with The Winds of Winter, the latest novel in the saga that began with Game of Thrones, and that the HBO adaptation of the series will bypass his books starting in this new season.

This doesnt exactly come as a surprise to Martin-watchers. The installments of A Song of Ice and Fire have slowed down over the years: while there were two-year gaps between A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings and then A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, it was another five years before the fourth book in the series, A Feast for Crows, arrived, and then another six before A Dance With Dragons was published in 2011.

Readers and even other authors, including Neil Gaiman, have been debating whether Martin has an obligation to pick up the pace for more than half a decade. This latest development will certainly sharpen the cries of Finish the book, George! but its hardly the first time theyll have echoed through the fandom.

While Ive previously shared that desperation, Martins latest missive made me feel something different. Ive long been unsure that Martin will ever finish the series. And if he cant do it to the standards he wants, Im not sure I care if I ever get a final installment of A Song of Ice and Fire.

I cant imagine that this will be a popular opinion. But Martins post reveals a man under considerable pressure, and not of the productive kind.

The writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked, Martin acknowledged. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact  you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too  but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesnt, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s.

And while he says that his publishers can have the hardcover out within three months of delivery, if their schedules permit, thats not a timeline that permits for any editing and polishing. I am going back to my stance from last March, before all this, Martin finally declares. It will be done when its done. And it will be as good as I can possibly make it.

That may drive a lot of you completely bananas. But this is how it ought to be.

At times, it seems as if our rapacious hunger to know the fates of Martins colossal cast of characters could just as easily be satisfied by a carefully annotated list as by another book. When youve come to prize outcomes over the journey that leads to them, and to fetishize being spared the dread specter of so-called spoilers over the quality of prose, character development or carefully established themes, what youre really admitting is that you care less about engaging with a work as a whole than knowing the basic facts of the story.

If thats really what you want, then I suppose it doesnt matter to you if The Winds Of Winter or A Dream of Spring, the planned final novel in the Game of Thrones saga, are any good. All you need are the raw data about what happens to who, and when, and how those puzzle pieces fit into the final battle. And while those things are interesting to me, theyre not exactly what Game of Thrones is about, and theyre certainly not why Ive dedicated so much of my career to the world that George R.R. Martin created.

Game of Thrones for me is less about the Red Wedding and more about how Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) reacts to it, the ruin not just of her family but of a world that operates by any rules she can recognize. Its the quiet moment when Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) passes the tattered mantle of his nobility on to Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie), recognizing in the lady knight someone actually worthy of the facade Jaimes used as a disguise for so many years.

Its Arya Starks (Maisie Williams) rough camaraderie with Sandor Clegane (Rory McCann) and the loneliness of the moment she leaves him to die and sets out on her own, a grand staging of the melancholy all of us experience when we begin our voyage into adulthood. Game of Thrones isnt really a story about the Others and some resurrected dragons for me; its about what happens when a world falls apart, and how, up and down the social ladder, everyone scrambles for advantage at best or a scrap of safety at bare minimum.

And thats why Id rather have The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring be strong rather than merely done. HBOs Game of Thrones will get us to the end of Martins story; what I want from Martin now is the wonderful writing and storytelling that characterized the early Song of Ice and Fire books, giving them thematic resonance that elevated them above other entrants in the genre.

And if the books cant be strong; if Martin has written himself into a tangle from which he cant extricate himself; and if his publisher is more concerned with getting them out than making them great? Well, then I think Ive reached a point where Id be all right not having those books at all.
A committee of legal experts hand-picked by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas on Monday issued a report declaring his office a rudderless ship and calling for a deeper investigation into the use of jailhouse informants.

The five-member panel called for the Orange County grand jury, the state Attorney General or the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate allegations that prosecutors and police misused a covert network of jailhouse informants and withheld evidence from defense attorneys.

Panel members indicated their six-month review had only scratched the surface because of their limited authority.

Without subpoena power, the (panel) cannot represent that it has investigated and uncovered the truth as to what may or may not have occurred in individual cases involving the use of jailhouse informants, the 26-page report said. (Read the report)

Rackauckas responded Monday by inviting U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch to investigate, saying he believes his office will be vindicated of any intentional misconduct.

We know there is no evidence whatsoever of any of this sensational wrongdoing thats been alleged, Rackauckas said at a news conference hours after the reports release. If a federal investigation will put this to rest  then lets get it done.

The five-member panel includes Jim Smith, a retired Orange County Superior Court judge; Patrick Dixon, a retired Los Angeles County assistant district attorney; Robert Gerard, former Orange County Bar Association president; and Blithe Leece, an attorney who specializes in legal ethics and professional responsibility. Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor and ethics expert, served as an adviser.

Panel members interviewed 75 prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys and law enforcement officials.

RELATED: Inside the Snitch Tank: Read the full story of murder, misconduct and justice delayed

Their report cited serious deficiencies in supervision and training in the District Attorneys Office, leading to a win-at-all-cost mentality among some prosecutors.

This mentality is a problem. Stronger leadership, oversight, supervision, and training can remedy this problem, the report said. Key to addressing the problem is changing the culture of the office by not rewarding prosecutors with the must win mentality with promotions.

The report also noted that the District Attorneys Office, with the high level of trust given to senior members, functions in many ways as a ship without a rudder.

There does not appear to be any consistent or clear cultural message emanating from the top down to the bottom of the organization. In short, the office suffers from what is best described as a failure of leadership, the report said.

The committee called for the creation of a new unit that would look at post-conviction claims of innocence.

Such a unit would have responsibility for investigating and evaluating claims of wrongful convictions, including those involving jailhouse informants. Instituting a unit would improve the district attorneys ability to detect and remedy police and prosecutor mistakes earlier, the panel said.

Rackauckas responded Monday that the office already has an Innocence Project and will adopt the recommendation to formalize it.

The committee recommended specific changes in the offices operations, most of which Rackauckas already began in recent months. The changes include:

 Revise policies and procedures regarding the use of jailhouse informants. (Rackauckas said he would adopt the recommendation, including using jailhouse informants infrequently. An extensive written request, including an informants background, must be submitted to the office. )

 Establish a Confidential Informant Review Committee with defined protocols and include an outside or independent member. (The district attorney said his office will launch a search for an outside member.)

 Overhaul the district attorneys training program, with extensive additional training regarding discovery obligations and the use of jailhouse informants. (This measure is underway.)

 Coordinate with the Orange County Sheriffs Department and all local law enforcement agencies regarding jailhouse informant protocols and procedures and engage in detailed training on the Orange County Informant Index, written backgrounds on each informant. (This change is in progress.)

 Create a chief ethics officer position, which Rackauckas embraced.

The panel also recommended no longer embedding gang prosecutors with special police units.

Although having prosecutors embedded with local law enforcement creates obvious efficiency, it also has the potential to create undue, and at times unfair, pressure on the prosecutor to file cases that he or she does not believe should be filed, the report said. The (committee) is concerned that having Target Unit prosecutors housed with law enforcement risks blurring the lines of the objective professional distance required between prosecutors and law enforcement.

Rackauckas said his office will continue to embed in police agencies, but will adjust the program.

In addition, the committee wants to dissolve the chief of staff position currently held by prosecutor Susan Kang Schroeder.

With one exception, every member of the OCDAs Office who was interviewed expressed what could only be described as an extreme level of concern regarding the toxic and combative relationship between the OCDAs Office and the press, the report said.

While members of the OCDAs Office were careful not to attack the OCDA Chief of Staff or members of the OCDA Media Relations Unit personally, there is an overwhelming frustration that the OCDAs Office does not have a more transparent and less hostile relationship with the press. Most members of the OCDAs Office believe that the jailhouse informant controversy had been greatly overblown because of a lack of transparency.

Rackauckas strongly disagreed with the suggestion. He said Schroeders job includes more than work with the media.

In July, Rackauckas convened the five-member committee to review the District Attorneys Offices use of jailhouse informants.

The action came after an exhaustive probe by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, who alleged police and prosecutors routinely used jailhouse informants to coax confessions from inmates awaiting trial and also withheld favorable evidence from defense attorneys.

In March, Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals removed the District Attorneys Office from the penalty phase trial for confessed mass killer Scott Dekraai after revelations that authorities secretly bugged his jail cell and recorded more than 100 hours with a seasoned jail informant. Dekraai faces a possible death sentence for gunning down his ex-wife and seven others at a Seal Beach salon in October 2011.The judge held extensive hearings and later found the prosecution and sheriffs deputies violated the defendants right to a fair trial.

In recent months, prosecutors have dropped charges or reduced penalties in at least five murder and attempted murder cases in the fallout from the snitch controversy.

Under federal law, prosecutors and police cannot use jailhouse informants to question defendants who have retained lawyers.

The committees report found that the District Attorneys Office and its staff of 250 lawyers had a host of administrative problems. Supervisors were not aware of large caseloads, the use of jailhouse informants, and evidence discovery challenges experienced by prosecutors in the gang and homicide units, the report said.

The lack of oversight of these serious cases led to repeated legal errors that should have been identified and rectified by management long before the problems reached the current scale, the report said. This is an issue that must be acknowledged, shouldered, and remedied by the entire leadership team at the OCDAs Office.  In fact, the evaluation revealed that the District Attorney himself was unaware of many of the problematic issues that led to the jailhouse informant controversy.

The panel found that the offices top management hesitated to bring bad news to Rackauckas. There appeared to be an ambivalence among staffers that nothing would change if they reported problems, the report said.

Rackauckas said he takes responsibility for any mismanagement.

It happened on my watch. I was unaware of the kind of management we were getting and I should have been aware, he said.

Certainly I am responsible, he said. But no, I dont intend to resign.

Contact the writer: tsaavedra@ocregister.com
An upstart New York-based health plan is seeking a share of Orange Countys Obamacare market by using sophisticated technology designed to simplify how consumers decipher costs and seek care.

Last fall, health insurance company Oscar began selling individual policies here and in parts of Los Angeles County through Covered California, the states exchange. The open enrollment deadline for 2016 is Jan. 31.

Oscars plans are exclusive provider organizations, which dont require referrals from a primary care doctor but cover only in-network care. In Orange County, Oscars contracted providers include St. Joseph Hoag Health.

Industry observers say Oscars strengths include ease of use, appeal to young adults and a solid network with large hospitals. For instance, around-the-clock phone consultations with a doctor are free and can be requested with the push of a button on the mobile app.

But they also note that the fledgling company, funded by venture capital, must overcome lack of name recognition and track record as well as higher premiums than some competitors in Southern Californias crowded market.

For an unsubsidized plan for a 35-year-old in Orange County, the least expensive bronze plans in the market range from $200 to $252 per month, with Oscar at $244. For the most expensive platinum plans, premiums range from $357 to $471, with Oscar costing $401.

Their price is an issue because a lot of Covered California people are price-conscious, said George Balteria, chief executive of Quote Selection Insurance Services based in Santa Ana. Their big push is technology. For the Uber-riding, DoorDash crowd, they do have some appeal and bring something new to the marketplace.

When Oscar consumers search online for a doctor, the results include their projected out-of-pocket cost, which can differ depending on the provider, as well as how much experience the physician has treating patients in their age range.

We know that many younger people dont really understand insurance, said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California. Oscars got some tools that really address that head-on.

Oscar CEO Mario Schlosser, 37, started the company in 2012 with two other Harvard Business School graduates, all with tech industry backgrounds. Oscar is named for another founders great-grandfather.

The company was born out of personal confusion and frustration with the existing insurance system, Schlosser said. In his case, it was sorting out costs when his wife was pregnant with their first child.

Oscars explanation of benefits has been bundled with a table of contents for each episode of care  the care provided for a particular medical problem  instead of piecemeal by provider, in order to eliminate confusion.

Our EOB uses a lot of plain language, it doesnt just give you the strange code words. It has a much better layout and design, Schlosser said. Its almost like looking at your Facebook timeline. It has everything in my health history.

Oscar offers members free activity trackers they can use to earn Amazon.com gift cards for increasing how much they walk. Oscar says that program is most popular among customers ages 18 to 34.

They are innovative in that they do things like provide incentives for meeting certain wellness goals, said Dylan Roby, a University of Maryland School of Public Health professor and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research researcher. Those are fairly new to the insurance world.

Oscars marketing campaign includes lighthearted advertising in print, television and social media. One ad reads, We wouldve been here sooner but we took the 405. Another boasts, New Yorkers love us and they hate everything.

But those ads may not reach parts of the untapped market for health insurance in California, experts said.

It could be difficult to break into that market, Roby said. If youre thinking about the Covered California population, you have lots of people that have limited English proficiency, largely Latinos and Asians that may be more recent immigrants.

Despite the emphasis on technology, Schlosser said help from a real person is also essential. Even he fields calls from customers.

Health care is fundamentally a very human industry, he said. I personally explain to callers on the phone how to use the website, how to use the features. Pretty much everyone here answers phone calls.

Contact the writer: 714-796-3686 or cperkes@ocregister.com
DETROIT  Ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. said Monday its partnering with General Motors Co. on various projects, from hubs where Lyft drivers can rent GM vehicles to an on-demand, autonomous ride service. Even with the investment, Lyft is much smaller than Uber, the giant of the ride-hailing space.

Here are some of the major players who are changing the way we get from Point A to Point B.

Uber:

Locations: Based in San Francisco. Operates in more than 300 cities and 58 countries around the world.

Funding: More than $10 billion from traditional venture investors, institutional lenders and tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Chinas Baidu, which see value both in its fast-growing ride business and its accumulated data on traffic and rider habits. Its reportedly seeking additional investors at a valuation of $62.5 billion.

Technology: Has its own mapping software, working on autonomous driving systems; also has customer-loyalty partnerships with hotel chains.

Profile: The 800-pound gorilla of on-demand ride-hailing services, Uber has a reputation for treating local regulators and competing cab companies as minor potholes to steer around or roll over.

Lyft:

Locations: Based in San Francisco. Operates in more than 190 U.S. cities but has forged partnerships with major ride-booking services like Indias Ola, Chinas Didi Kuaidi and Southeast Asias GrabTaxi. While they are separate companies, the partners let users hail rides from each others apps.

Funding: About $2 billion from venture investors, including its new infusion of $500 million from General Motors, at a current valuation of $5.5 billion.

Technology: Like Uber, has a ride-booking app and has experimented with car-pooling service. Plans to work on self-driving technology with GM.

Profile: Known for the pink furry mustaches on its cars, Lyft is smaller than Uber but remains the second-largest ride-hailing service in the United States, while regional competitors like San Francisco-based Sidecar have left the business.

Alphabet (Google):

Locations: Based in Californias Silicon Valley, the Google parent company doesnt currently operate a ride-hailing service. But its been a leader in developing autonomous cars and some reports suggest it might get into the ride business.

Funding: More than $14 billion in net income last year, thanks to Googles lucrative Internet advertising operation. Alphabet has a stock market value of $526 billion.

Technology: Google has its own industry-leading digital maps and navigation service, and its already testing self-driving cars on public roads.

Profile: After investing in both Uber and Sidecar, Google has tested a car-pooling service in Israel and, by some accounts, has considered spinning off its self-driving car division as a unit that would also offer rides. Google hasnt publicly confirmed this, but the company has vast resources and an appetite for dabbling in a variety of businesses, from medical technology to broadband Internet networks.

Car2Go:

Locations: Founded in Ulm, Germany, in 2008. It now operates in 29 European and North American cities.

Funding: Car2Go is a subsidiary of Daimler AG.

Technology: Car2Go offers Smart cars for one-way rentals by the hour or day. Drivers can reserve a car through a mobile app and park it anywhere when theyre done.

Profile: Car2Go is one of several mobility models Daimler is experimenting with. In 2014 it bought RideScout, an Austin, Texas-based app that shows the fastest way to get somewhere using buses, bikes and other modes of transportation. It also operates Boost, a San Francisco Bay Area van service that picks up kids from school and brings them home or takes them to appointments.

DriveNow

Locations: Founded in Munich, Germany, in 2011, it now operates in nine European cities.

Funding: DriveNow is a partnership between BMW AG and Sixt, a rental car company.

Technology: Like Car2Go, DriveNow is a one-way car sharing service that lets drivers pick up a car wherever its parked and use it as long as they wish. DriveNow has a fleet of BMW and Mini cars.

Profile: BMW tested DriveNow in San Francisco with all-electric BMWs but suspended the program due to parking problems.
There is no single answer about what to do with buildings where mass shootings or other tragedies have taken place, such as the conference building at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, where 14 died on Dec. 2.

Two of the three buildings at the center, a private, nonprofit agency with more than 500 employees who work with Inland residents who have developmental disabilities, reopened Monday.

But officials said they are reviewing what to do about the building where the massacre took place. It includes a coffee shop, a library and conference facilities that can be rented out.

A conference room in the building had been rented by the San Bernardino County Division of Environmental Health Services for a training session. Authorities said Syed Rizwan Farook, a health services employee, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on the group, killing 14 and wounding 22.

Some infamous places, such as the San Ysidro McDonalds where 21 died in a 1984 mass shooting, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 first-graders and six educators were murdered in 2012, were razed.

But the theater in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed in 2012 during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, and a salon in Seal Beach where eight people were killed in 2011, were remodeled and reopened.

And at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 died in 1999, the campus reopened but the library, where most of the carnage took place, was torn down and replaced.

In places such as New York and Oklahoma City, where terrorist attacks destroyed the buildings, the decisions were about appropriate memorials.

What to do with a surviving building that is usually accessible to the public is always a difficult passage, said psychotherapist Nancy Bohl-Penrod. Her San Bernardino-based Counseling Team International worked with victims in the Seal Beach, Columbine and 9/11 attacks.

The business needs to ask employees and get a consensus, she said in a phone interview Monday. While many people can avoid the building, theres no such option for those who work there, she said.

Some will be heartbroken if you take it down, seeing it as giving the perpetrators more power, she said. But others will want to rebuild.

When Salon Meritage in Seal Beach reopened in 2012, Sandi Fannin, the widow of slain owner Randy Fannin, said the reopening was a symbol to her that good wins out over evil.

But on the third anniversary of the re-opening of the renamed Century Aurora 16 theater multiplex in Colorado, local resident Daisy Rothschild told the Aurora Sentinels website, I dont even drive down that street, and I avoid the mall, too  they should have torn it down or made a memorial there.

Its a fascinating question, and I think there are two schools of thought about it, UC Riverside psychology professor Steven Clark said in an email.

On the one hand, we try to avoid stimuli that have negative associations. Thats an argument to tear it down, he wrote.

But, on the other hand, there is a thing called systematic desensitization, which is a fairly common technique to help people deal with fears and phobias. The idea  is to expose ourselves to fear-inducing stimuli  in very small doses  until the fear dissipates.

Whatever is done, for the powers that be to make a decision without consulting the people (who work there) is an incorrect way to do it, Bohl-Penrod said. Letting them take part empowers them, and makes them feel more in control.

Here are the outcomes for some mass-shooting sites:

San Ysidro McDonalds

A gunman armed with a semi-automatic Uzi rifle, shotgun and pistol kills 21 and wounds 19 on July 18, 1984. The shooter is killed by a police sniper. McDonalds Corp. tore the restaurant down and deeded the land to the city of San Diego, which in 1988 sold it to Southwestern College. There is a memorial at the scene.

Killeen, Texas, Lubys Cafeteria

An enraged man crashes his pickup through a front window on Oct. 16, 1991, emerges from his pickup truck with a pistol in each hand, and slays 23 people, wounding 22 before committing suicide as police close in. The cafeteria reopens and does business for another nine years, closing only because of economics, its operators said.

Littleton, Colo., Columbine High School

Two students open fire in the school library on April 20, 1999, and kill 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives. Most victims die in the library. The school campus eventually reopens, but the library is closed and razed. A foundation raises more than $3 million to replace it in 2001.

Blacksburg, Va., Virginia Tech

A 23-year-old student goes on a shooting rampage on campus on April 16, 2007, killing 32 before committing suicide. The engineering building where most of the slayings took place reopens, but only for administrative offices. Virginia Tech officials said the building will never again be used for classrooms.

Seal Beach, Salon Meritage

A gunman enraged over a custody dispute kills his ex-wife and six others inside a salon in the Orange County coastal town, then an eighth victim in the parking lot on Oct. 12, 2011. He is later arrested. The salon, under the same name and owned by a former worker, opens again in November 2012. A memorial to the victims is in Seal Beachs Eisenhower Park, overlooking the ocean.

Aurora, Colo., Century 16 movie theater

Twelve people are killed and 70 wounded on July 20, 2012, when a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and two .40-caliber handguns opens fire on an audience gathered for a midnight screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. The shooter is arrested outside the theater. Renamed the Century Aurora 16, the renovated and repaired theater reopens six months after the shooting.

Newtown, Conn., Sandy Hook Elementary School

On Dec. 14, 2012, 20 children and six adults are murdered by a 20-year-old man, who kills himself. The gunman also killed his mother. The surviving children are moved to classes at a nearby middle school that had been closed. Sandy Hook Elementary is bulldozed. A new school is scheduled to open this year.

Contact the writer: rdeatley@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9573
LONDON  The continued flow of people along Europes migration trail, from Turkey and Greece to the Balkans to Scandinavia, faced new impediments on Monday as two of the northernmost destinations further tightened border controls in response to political, economic and logistical pressures.

Sweden, once one of the most welcoming of nations for refugees, introduced new identity checks on Monday for travelers arriving from Denmark. Fearful that migrants who otherwise would pass through on their way to Sweden would now be unable to leave, Denmark swiftly moved to impose new controls on people traveling via its border with Germany.

The moves by the two Scandinavian countries represented another step in the erosion of the ideal of borderless travel across most of the European Union, amid rising concerns about the costs imposed by the tide of migration and fears that terrorists are seeking to enter Europe masquerading as refugees.

In recent months, Scandinavian countries, like other countries in Europe, have expressed increasing concern about the scale of migrants seeking to reach prosperous Northern European countries known for their generous welfare systems and for relatively welcoming attitudes.

The arrival of migrants  roughly 1 million reached Germany last year alone, though a significant minority were from other parts of Europe rather than from Syria, Iraq and other conflict-ridden nations  has gradually led European countries from south to north to seek to stem the tide.

Hungary built a razor-wire fence along its border to keep migrants out. Denmark has cut benefits to new arrivals by about 50 percent and has introduced tough language requirements for those seeking permanent residency. Finland has issued news releases in Arabic detailing additional restrictions, with the apparent aim of warning would-be asylum seekers that the country is not a paradise.

Under the temporary border controls introduced on Monday in Sweden, travelers to Sweden from Denmark will have to show valid identification with a photograph, like a passport, for the first time in more than half a century. The move raised the prospect of ongoing delays in travel between the two nations, especially on the Danish side of the Oresund Bridge, a major link between Copenhagen, the Danish capital, and Malmo in southern Sweden, a popular gateway for migrants seeking to enter Sweden.

The new border controls in Sweden are likely to present a hurdle to thousands of would-be asylum seekers, many of whom lack official documents. (The Oresund bridge has also gained a foothold in popular culture, being at the center of the hit Scandinavian crime television series The Bridge, which starts with detectives from the two countries teaming up to investigate the murder of a woman whose body is found on the structure.)

Travel between Denmark and Germany has not required a passport since 2001 under the Schengen agreement, which permits borderless movement across much of the EU. The system has already been teetering in recent months as even its staunchest supporters such as Germany have erected temporary controls.

German officials, while generally refraining from specific remarks about the Danish decision, expressed concern about the future of passport-free travel across Europe. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Johannes Dimroth, said the effect on migration north from Germany would have to be watched very carefully.

Martin Schaefer, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said freedom of movement within the European Union was perhaps one of the greatest achievements in the last 60 years. He acknowledged, however, that the influx of migrants was putting enormous strains on the system.

The passage of migrants through Austria prompted Germany to impose its own border controls last year, and Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, used the developments to once again press for a broader solution to the migrant crisis, in particular on the blocs external borders.

While the move by Sweden, which has a long tradition of welcoming refugees, was expected, Denmarks was more sudden. The Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, used his New Years Day address to warn that his government might impose controls at its border with Germany, and on Monday it followed through.

In both countries, the issue has been influenced by the rise of populist, anti-immigration parties on the right.

The legislation mandating the Swedish controls is valid for three years, while the controls in Denmark are to last 10 days, with the possibility of extending them for an additional 20.

David Brax, a researcher of hate crimes at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said the countrys center-left minority government had justified the measures on the grounds that its system for processing migrants and refugees could no longer cope with the influx.

But he said a backlash against migration was also gaining force in Sweden at a time when a populist far-right anti-immigrant party was gaining ground and when public sentiment against migrants was hardening in some quarters.

Rights groups and those on the left are very upset by the measures, he said in an interview. There is a deep polarization on migration in Sweden. Some people see it as a duty to help as many migrants as we can. But others argue that Sweden, in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and California, must be very vigilant, secure its borders and prevent terrorists pretending to be migrants from entering.

Tensions over migration in Sweden were stoked over the summer when a woman and her son were stabbed to death at an Ikea in Vasteras, and an Eritrean whose asylum request had been denied was charged with the crime. Several refugee centers in the country have been set on fire in recent months.

The far right in Sweden, as elsewhere in Europe, has been exploiting fears about immigration to draw support. The Sweden Democrats, a far-right anti-immigrant party, won almost 13 percent of the vote in a 2014 general election, and recent polls show it gaining strength. But the center-left minority government and the opposition have both avoided joining forces with the party, mitigating its influence.

Last year, more than 1 million refugees and migrants fled to Europe by sea or land, many of them undertaking perilous journeys on rickety boats organized by human traffickers. At least 3,735 have drowned.
KABUL, Afghanistan  A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded Tuesday in fighting at the heart of a Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan, the United States military said.

The death took place in Marja, Helmand Province, where American Special Operations forces have been helping the Afghan military fend off repeated attacks by Taliban insurgents.

We are deeply saddened by this loss, said Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, the spokesman for U.S. military forces here. On behalf of General Campbell and all of USFOR-A, our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved. The statement referred to the American military commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, who is both head of NATO forces and United States Forces  Afghanistan, which includes Special Operations troops.

Helmand Province has been heavily besieged since last summer, with the U.S. military involved in supporting Afghan forces to an increasing degree as one district after another has fallen to Taliban insurgents.

The United States and NATO pulled all combat forces from Helmand in the spring of 2014, and combat operations by the coalition were scheduled to end by Dec. 31 that year.

The mission of U.S. forces in Afghanistan was to remain in a training and advising role, for the most part. But as the Taliban have gained ground this year, Special Operations troops have been directly involved in the fighting, particularly in Helmand, according to senior Afghan officials and Western diplomats.

Marja had been a longtime Taliban stronghold until a surge of U.S. Marines took it back beginning in 2010, and until recently it was relatively quiet, even as northern parts of Helmand were besieged by the Taliban. In the past month, the Taliban have increased their activities in the area despite the onset of winter weather.

The death of the soldier Tuesday was believed to be the first confirmed U.S. fatality in southern Afghanistan since the official end of combat operations in 2014, and the first confirmed fatality of 2016.
A man in Germany was killed on Christmas Day 2015 while attempting to rob a condom machine after his bomb exploded prematurely.

The unidentified 29-year-old and two cohorts tried to blow up the machine in Schoppingen for condoms and cash. However, one of the robbers was hit in the head by a shard of metal when the bomb exploded before they could reach a safe distance from the blast.

The survivors told authorities their friend had fallen down the stairs but later confessed to wrecking the machine. They were subsequently arrested and later released from custody.
Murray Weissman

Murray Weissman, a partner in Weissman/Markovitz Communications, Los Angeles, a leading publicist for many years, died Dec. 28 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.

Variety called him a trailblazer in the field of awards campaigning whose clients included Frank Sinatra, the Television Academy, Miramax, Judy Garland, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, the Smothers Brothers and hit series including The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, Route 66, Wyatt Earp and Hogans Heroes.

He worked on Oscar-winning campaigns for Best Picture winners The Sting, Kramer vs. Kramer, Dances with Wolves, and The English Patient, among others.

More recently, he worked as a publicist for the Mad Men TV series. Matt Weiner, creator of the series, called him an essential part of the Mad Men team, praising his cleverness and patience.

Weissman/Markovitz is currently handling The Big Short which analyzes the 2007-08 financial collapse.

Started at ABC and CBS

A native of Brooklyn who moved to L.A. in 1936 with his family, Weissman graduated from the University of Californias School of Journalism. He served as a Navy radio operator during World War II in 1944-45 aboard the attack transport USS Clearfield.

Weissman started his career with ABC and CBS TV networks, moving in 1966 to Universal Pictures where he was chief of the motion picture publicity department for ten years. He opened his own firm in 1981 after working for Lorimar Productions and Columbia Pictures. Weissman/Markovitz was formed in 2006 with his son-in-law Rick Markovitz.

He is survived by his wife, Kay Friedman, children Benjamin and Julie, and three grandchildren.
The news Sunday that a band of armed, antigovernment protesters had taken control of a federal wildlife refuge building in Harney County, OR has besieged headlines and inspired the laugh-track of social media to birth spectacularly biting insults aimed at the group, ranging from Y'all Queda to Vanilla ISIS.

Behind the specter, however, beyond the easy caricature of beleaguered hillbillies waving guns at the pariah of big gubment, the curious part of me got to thinking. Assuming these men are doing what theyre doing for a reason, I couldnt help but wonder: What do they intend to accomplish here? Why this place, and why now? And  dare I ask it  do they have a point?

The incident has a messy backstory. Oregon ranchers Dwight Hammond and his son Steven had been in and out of the court system due to fires theyd set off on federal land dating back to 2001. (In one instance, a blaze was allegedly set to hide the fact that they were illegally hunting, an act that allegedly destroyed 140 acres.) After serving a moderate prison sentence, the federal government unexpectedly appealed the case and re-sentenced the men, under the auspices that the Hammonds sentences did not meet mandatory minimum requirements as dictated by a 1996 law that applies to arson committed on federal land.

The Hammonds yesterday reported to serve their sentences without incident. Leave it to the sons of Cliven Bundy, however  the infamous Nevada rancher who last year kicked off a highly-publicized standoff with the Bureau of Land Management for refusing to remove his livestock from government land  to refuse to let those flames of discontent die. The Bundy family and its ragtag band of supporters have since used the event to showboat their own anti-federal agenda, first holding a rally over the weekend in Burns, OR in support of the ranchers, before later breaking into and occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, effectively provoking a standoff with the federal government in the process.

The Hammonds, who have no connection with the Bundy clan, have denounced any involvement with the Oregon militia or its agenda. And residents of Harney County dont seem particularly thrilled regarding the prospect of a revolution against government tyranny occurring in their backyards. Most want the men gone, and local schools have been shuttered, citing the possibility of violence.

With their seditious talking points, violent rhetoric and anti-government fervor, it might be easy to despise these buffoons. Easier still is our ability to make fun of them: the notion of a militia so brave they managed to breach a vacant bird sanctuary on a Sunday evening, or the surplus of armchair frontiersmen in this country whose lifelong, unrequited hero fixation has convinced them that they can overthrow a government with a $600 billion military budget, is comedy that practically writes itself.

What's far more intellectually challenging is the exercise of building an empathic bridge to these individuals, of taking a walk in their tactical boots for the sake of understanding why they feel the way they do, and why theyre going about accomplishing their objectives in such an extreme manner.

The Bundy clan, which has repeatedly asked sympathetic Americans to convene on the occupied site and lend arms to its cause, has proven itself very effective in the last year of getting the medias attention. What theyre not so good at is crystalizing their message and elucidating to the public why their plight matters. What they need, in effect, is a crack PR man  or at least someone who understands nouns and verbs.

Here are the two themes Id focus on if I was head of the Oregon militias communications team.

"Our gripes are legitimate"

In the court of public opinion, the Bundy clans biggest reputational challenge  aside from the guns, the idiotic rhetoric and the fact that they broke into a federal building  is the notion that the current standoff reveals a message without a cause. The Hammonds plight, after all, wasnt the Bundys to begin with.

De facto militia spokesperson Ammon Bundy on Monday stumbled through a press conference, outlining the group's core philosophy before announcing a new name for the organization, Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. Bundy did one thing right in his ramshackle statement yesterday  and he didnt do this nearly enough  when he touched on their grievances with federal government and its alleged mishandling and mismanagement of public land, as well as its alleged routine mistreatment of ranchers.

Are Bundys gripes valid? Ill admit, Im not an authority in the matter, so I really don't know. Cursory research shows that ranchers being forced to sell their property to the federal government via the process of eminent domain is apparently common in some areas of the country. Recourse and resources available to those who have been disenfranchised by this process are apparently few. To be honest with you, as a New York City resident, this is the first Im hearing about it.

Agree or disagree with them, the practice of educating the public to the facts, of outlining a legitimate plight and detailing how people have been affected by it, is a first step in making the public sympathetic to any cause.

"We are not terrorists"

Bundy and his followers have said repeatedly that they are occupying the refuge building with peaceful intentions. Well, thats a start. Heres the pending question: should the Oregon militias actions be considered acts of "terrorism?" The media seems to think so, my friends seem to think so, but Im not 100 percent convinced.

They havent hurt anybody yet, so one could argue that labeling someone a terrorist when their only crime thus far is trespassing, at the very least, diminishes some very real acts of terrorism that have been committed recently on both American and foreign soil. San Bernardino was terrorism. Paris, terrorism. The illegal occupation of a bird sanctuary? Lets hold the histrionics until that moniker is deserved.

Second  and perhaps more lucidly  the practice of occupying federal property, while certainly illegal, is a tactic that's been utilized countless times in recent history by many different groups outlying many different ideological tenets. These were the bricks of the Vietnam War protests. Were members of the Occupy Wall Street movement terrorists too? I dont think so.

The Oregon militias reputational problems are myriad. As a group they come across as churlish, childish, militant and grossly ignorant, and if they were truly interested in overthrowing the anathema of "tyranny" as much as they say they are, they'd do well to start by standing up against any number of daily injustices committed around the country against people who dont happen to bear the same skin color.

However, dumb rhetoric succeeding dumb rhetoric wont yield a positive anytime soon. Perhaps whats needed now, until this blows over  and Im sure it will before long  is to resist trivializing someones grievances, at least until an attempt is made to unpack and understand them. This process can be beneficial not only in the communications milieu, but in helping us tackle some larger  and arguably, more important  questions that have been yoked out by this event, namely, why a growing number of people in this country suggest law enforcements reaction to a group of armed white men has been far different from how it would be if this standoff were committed by any other group.
If you choose to email a question to this forum, then you must conduct yourself accordingly. Therefore, the following rules are in order:

1. Do not write your email to me IN CAPS. If you do so, I will print out your question and do terrible things to it.

2. Do not request a personal e-mail response. Since I get thousands of questions each month, trying to answer them all would cut deeply into my leisure time, which I value more than your current state of confusion.

3. Try to spell at least in a semi-correct fashion. If you choose to mangle the English language, expect no mercy from this quarter. You might be mocked severely.

4. Do not ask for me to send you copies of my many manuals and literature. I am not in the library business, nor do I want to spend the bulk of my day at the copy machine just because you're too lazy to ask your dealer, or look around a bit.

5. Don't bother me with truly stupid questions, like how to get 50 more horsepower for a buck and a half

6. Now that you know the rules, think carefully and have at it!

Oh yes Ill leave your e-mail unedited, for what its worth.

Send your questions to [email protected], Attn: Don't Ask, or leave your questions in the comment section below.

Previous Don't Ask Columns

December 2015

November 2015

October 2015

***

SUBJECT: HOW ABOUT THE OLDER MAICOS?

Hi Rick,

Just saw your great article on The Ultimate Vintage Dirt Bike Guide and thought Id drop you a line with the chance youd have some knowledge about the 1969 Maico 360. One has come up for sale in my area.

I ride a 1979 Maico 250 in local classic races and would potentially like to race the 360 in the pre 74 class as well. Im a bit concerned that it doesnt seem to have been made for long and hence parts may be scarce (will be asking a dealer here in the UK) but I was mainly wondering if anyone knows this model and how it rode. Maybe how it compared to the 400s of the early 70s? Any views?

By the way, my brother has just bought his old Greaves 380 he had back in the day. Looks identical to the picture you have in your article. It had been sold a few times and been around the block, including a local farmer using it to bring the cows in. But now after a few decades its miraculously back in his hands & I believe he plans to ride it next year in the pre 74 class. Hopefully hell be behind me on my Maico..!!

Thanks for your time

Kevin Foy



The 360 Maico was a good bike, but the 400 square barrel is worlds better. When I was in the Dirt Diggers motorcycle club, I used to race an open class Greeves and usually finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. A club member who I would normally beat, bought a 360 Maico and he almost lapped me. This was demoralizing to say the least, however, I got a 400 Maico square barrel not too long after that and promptly proceeded to leave him in the dust.

***

SUBJECT: 96 YZ250 PLUG FOULING

Hi and thanks for taking my question. I have a 96 YZ250 that is really a nice bike, one of the most powerful 2-strokes Ive ever owned and I recently bought it in seriously mint condition. The issue I'm having is with plug fouling. Standard jetting for this bike is 42 - slow, 175 main. It has a Boysen reed in it and they recommend 42 - slow and 168 main which I installed, clip is dropped one notch . Put in a new plug and it runs absolutely awesome but then begins to blubber down low after riding for an hour or so then will completely quit. The weird thing is that when it quits it's almost as if I hit the kill switch which I've never experienced before with all the other 2 strokes I've owned.

I've had fouling issues and have always been able to solve them but when they have fouled it has never been in the manner this one does. It also will backfire at times while I hitting the kill switch. I makes me think there could be an electrical problem... a short or grounding somewhere. The plug is black and sometimes wet though normally not soaking wet. Would appreciate and welcome any and all advice. Thanks you.

Michael Brown

Newark, DE



My best bet is that you have a leaky crank seal. If this is the case, then transmission fluid is getting sucked directly into the barrel and this will give you a black plug that will just stop sparking. Check this out first.

***

SUBJECT: PICK A BIKE... BUT CAREFULLY

Hi Rick,

I race a 74 CZ400 in the Sportsman INT class @ AHRMA NW events. Was thinking of getting a bike for the Classic 250 class. Bikes typically in that class are CZ twin pipe,Ossa Stilleto 4 spd, AJS 250 Stormer, Rickman/Montesa 4 spd and Greeves Griffon.



CZ twin pipes are way too much $, Ossa 4 spd is hard to find. I used to race a 370 Stormer in vintage racing and it was OK after I sorted it out except for the weird shifting pattern.



There is the 71 Greeves w/ low hrs from new for sale in AZ (pics attached) and another 1973 in Calif. What do you know about them? Do they work OK? How is the power?

thanks,

Mark Roler

Victoria,BC

Canada





If you were going to race an open class Greeves, I'd say it would be a smart move. But the 250 is not a fast bike. I would definitely consider some sort of Yamaha 250 for that class. There are still hop-ups available for the Yamahas and they are definitely faster and more reliable than the Greeves.

***

SUBJECT: PENTON MINT 400

Rick: I have raced and restored my most prized possession, a 430 Husqvarna Automatic. Since 1988 I have won trophies on this machine in four decades. A couple years ago my wife gave me the John Penton book, later that year I met him at the ISDT Reunion Ride in Oklahoma. Later that same year saw the movie, and I am hooked. Joined the POG to get more details and become a part of something bigger and have been unable to locate the appropriate machine for myself. Im 66 tall and think that I want a 400 mint. It seems everywhere I go is a dead end. Can you send me down a road where a Mint 400 could be found?

Many thanks,

Wm. David Rozell







I went to Google and typed in Penton Mint 400 motorcycle and found five different bikes for sale. The one in Virginia sounded like the best as he had a clear title and a manual. Give it a try.

***

SUBJECT: WHO WAS THE REAL MR. KNOW IT ALL

who was mr.know it all? he was awesome as you r too. my question where can i find the tips from trail rider magazine i was all over there and cant find anything. thanks.

Kevin Stearns



The first Mr. Know It All was Vic Krause. We came up with the idea while riding in his motorhome on the way to the Cincinnati motorcycle trade show. The column was used in Modern Cycle magazine and was incredibly popular. In 1979, when I went back to Dirt Bike magazine, we carried the column with us and Krause continued doing it until the mid-1980s. Then, he had a run-in with the publisher and quit doing the column. At that point, I took it over and did it myself. Now you know.





***



SUBJECT: STRANGE PARTS ON A HONDA CRF230

Hi Rick,



We've met but I won't bore you with that story. I took some plastic and the pipe off of my crf230 to access the carb and put all the bolts etc in a plastic bag. Months and months and more months later now I'm putting it back together and there is a rubber o-ring about exhaust diameter in size left over. After looking at an online stock exhaust diagram it shows a washer or spacer of some unknown material between the head pipe and exhaust port. Is it rubber? It can't be rubber! Right? Please help! "I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!" ;-)

Thank you

Jim McCleary



There is no way that a rubber O-ring would be used in the exhaust. Some sort of metal ring could be used, but that's it. The BBR exhaust system doesn't use any sort of washer or spacer and we were satisfied with the performance.



***

SUBJECT: FAMOUS HODAKA?

The little Hodaka in my garage photo is sort of famous. I bought it from Rick Sieman, Mr. Super Hunky of Dirt Bike Magazine fame maybe 13 years ago. The bike was featured in 4 issues of Dirt Bike in the fall of 1989 and spring of 1990. The infamous Mr. Hunky restored it and even raced it. The multiple issue story is funny as hell as you would expect from "Super Hunky". I have never even tried to start it, preferring to think my hero of that day was the very last one to ride it. Maybe Rick will chime in on this post. When I get time I will cut and paste the entire story out of the magazines he gave me and post them, it is hilarious.

It is that same bike from the article. I did realize I stole the brand new Works shocks off it right after I bought it for my Bul. Other than that it is the same. I have the Works Shocks so if I hang them back on the bike will you believe me? I copied Rick Sieman into the thread hoping he would confirm the whole deal. Hardly think I would be doing that if I was trying to pull someones leg. The basis of the article was that he shook down all the Dirt Bike Mag advertisers for all the new parts including Creet who furnished a new seat cover for a little advertising. He got a box of Arturo Fuentes cigars and some cash from me in the deal. I have all the mags that Rick sent including a handwritten note from him apologizing for not having the last issue but I found one on ebay so I have all of them. The photos out of the mag I took the other night. I will scan everything and post it but leaving for a two-week vacation so it will have to wait. I am guessing it was more like 15 years ago that I bought it and it has rolled since.. If Rick stole some of the parts before he sent it to me, I don't know. nor care.

Mike Linbeck



That little bike was fun to restore and even more fun to race. I'm glad someone owns it now who really appreciates what it was.



***

SUBJECT: STEVE McQUEEN REMEMBERED

Rick Sieman,



I remember hearing about how you used to ride dirt bikes with Steve McQueen at Indian Dunes. You might get a kick out of this shot.

You may be cool but you will seldom be "James Coburn riding in a sidecar of a vintage motorcycle being operated by Steve McQueen with James Garner riding on the back" cool.

John Ker shared Dennis Bridwell's post.





Steve McQueen did a lot of testing bikes with me when I was in charge of Dirt Bike magazine. The only thing was that we were not allowed to use his name in any of the photo captions, or any face shots that would identify him. Why? He had a multimillion dollar deal going with studios and they didn't want him getting hurt doing stupid stuff like riding dirt bikes. But that didn't stop Steve from racing motocross under the name of Harvey Mushman, or stop him from testing with us for years. Cool guy? You bet.



***

SUBJECT: DIRT BIKE RACING

Hi!! My son wants to a professional dirt biker. He is 10 years old. We just moved to Oceanside, CA. I have no idea how to get him involved with groups, classes, racing teams, ect. Could you give me some direction? He has a bike. We off road and he is really good. FYI

Thanks in advance.

Crystal Starks



Your best bet is to go to a good dirt bike shop and find out what racing clubs are active in your area. For example, District 37 runs races. Take the recommendation of the man at the shop and sign up your kid with one of these organizations. You'll have to sign for it, as he is obviously under age. At his age, you'll probably start out racing mini bikes. As he gets bigger, better and faster, you'll move up into the larger bikes. By the time of 16 or so you should know whether the kid is really fast enough to become a pro or just another fun racer.



***



SUBJECT: WHAT WAS THE SUZUKI TM 400 REALLY LIKE?

Hunk,

Gotta question for you. I've seen you comment many times on the widowmaker-like tendencies of the infamous Suzuki TM400. The flexy frame and the erratic/unpredictable ignition advance combined to the make the bike virtually unrideable (safely) at any meaningful speed. Got it.



But recently I was talking to this dude who claimed he had ridden all years the TM400's were made (in stock trim). He said the 1972 to 1974 models were just as you said. But he said in its last year of production, Suzuki finally addressed the technical issues and released what was essentially an entirely new bike in 1975. He claimed the '75 was a much more rideable bike, with the frame and ignition problems resolved - a very good bike by the standards of the day. But by this time, no one trusted Suzuki any longer, at least on their big bores. Consequently, hardly anyone bought the '75 model, even though apparently it was actually a decent bike. I'm guessing that may have been one of the reasons they dropped the TM designator in '76 and started the RM line with a clean slate the following year.



I actually rode a TM400 once about 30 years ago, although I don't remember what year it was. A friend had one, which was pretty beat up, but it still ran well. I just opened it up in a grassy field. All I really recall about it is that it would shred the knobby at will, otherwise was a pretty typical early-mid-70's dirt bike with bone jarring suspension and marginal brakes.



Anyway, do you know if the story about the '75 TM400 being a different animal is true? That was at the height of the Dirt Bike mag years, so I'm sure you must have ridden one and been all over the yearly changes at that time.



Thanks,

Sean

The 1975 version of the bike was indeed a little bit better than the others, but still not something you would want to race on a regular basis. The original TM 400 was a real pile of crap and hurt a whole lot of people. You could take the swing arm with both hands and the bike on a stand and make it flex. Can you imagine what it would do under power, or if you hit a bump at speed?

***

SUBJECT: INCREDIBLE MODEL OF THE GYDBT

I received this absolutely incredible model of the Great Yellow Dirt Bike Truck from the Amazing Dave. If you are an old timer, you might recall that this was an El Camino that was used by us to haul dirt bikes around from 1971 thru 1974. We put over 300,000 miles on the motor and I don't believe we ever changed the oll.

Dave went into an astonishing amount of detail on this model, including dried up old french fries on the dashboard. This model will find a place of honor in my office. Thanks again, Dave.



SHAMELESS PLUG

My new book, THE LAST RIDE, is at now out. It's fiction and starts in 1969, when an 18-year-old kid just out of high school gets a chance to ride his Yamaha 250 DT1 from PennsAAAAylvania to Los Angeles all off-road. His adventures are truly amazing.

The book then jumps 40+ years where the same person, now in his 60s, wants to get that old Yamaha back in his possession and return it home by riding it all off-road across the country again. The book is $15 plus $2.75 for mail anywhere in the US and for more information, the email is: [email protected]; paypal address: [email protected].
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GRAND ISLAND, Neb.  Hendrix Genetics announced Monday afternoon that it would expand its ISA poultry division by building and operating a chicken hatchery in Grand Island.

"This is a great win-win for the city of Grand Island, for Hendrix-ISA, for the state of Nebraska to be able to expand the agribusiness right here in our state and in your community to be able to create more jobs and get that investment," said Gov. Pete Ricketts, who attended the announcement at the Yancey in downtown Grand Island. "This really is a great day for the city of Grand Island and the state of Nebraska."

The $10 million hatchery will be on 20 acres at the Platte Valley Industrial Park-East at the southwest corner of Blaine Street and Schimmer Drive. It will produce 24 million chicks per year. That equates to 100,000 chicks per day, five days per week, Hendrix-ISA Managing Director Peter Mumm said.

Mumm said Hendrix-ISA has 40 hatcheries across the world but just two in the United States  one in Virginia, and one in Pennsylvania. With growing demand for its Isa Brown, Bovans Brown, Shaver White, Dekalb White and Bovans White laying chickens, the company was looking to add a third hatchery.

Hendrix-ISA wanted a Midwest location so chickens could be delivered across the United States within a day of hatching. Mumm said the company evaluated four different sites based on location, biosecurity aspects, economic development incentives  all of which were quite comparable  but Grand Island stood out for one reason.

"The difference was the people of Nebraska," Mumm said. "The support we received from your community was far and above any other that we received during our visits."
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Bengaluru: Nandini Milk hiked by Rs 4; New Year bonus for farmers

Bengaluru

oi-Shalini

Bengaluru, Jan 5: The Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) has revived their popular brand Nandini milk price by Rs 4 per litre and also that of all products made from milk, with an announcement made by the state government. The new price came into effect from today (Tuesday), Jan 5.

A litre of toned milk (blue packet) will now cost Rs 34 as against Rs 30. Accordingly, 500 ml packet will cost Rs 17 as against the earlier price of Rs 15. Nandini's Homogenised cow milk is priced at Rs 19 for 515 ml as against Rs 17, from today onwards now.

However, the curd price will remain same for 200 gram quantity will continue to be sold at old price of Rs 10 but it will cost Rs 19 for 415 grams.

Ravi Kumar Kakade, the Director of Marketing exclusively told OneIndia that, "Earlier what we used to pay to farmers in return of milk was not enough and they complained to a TV media that the current situation to continue milk supply is disappointing for them and they might move away from this profession, so we have to take care of them as they are the center of this profession and if they are happy, everyone would be happy."

While comparing the milk rate of other metropolitan cities, he said "Most of the metro citties have a difference of Rs 8 and Rs 9. Delhi, Mumbai and other cities were selling milk at Rs 38 and Rs 39, so how do you justify that."

"All these metro cities are in India, so if all city people can afford to buy then why not Bengaluru which is also an IT hub and in that way Karnataka is not a poor state and consumers can afford to buy", he concluded.



OneIndia News
Pathankot attack: After every goodwill gesture of Pak, India needs to up its guard

Feature

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

For over 60 hours, there have been reports of how there was specific intelligence and no action taken. Fair enough we had advance intelligence, the IB was in the know of the infiltration and the Punjab police too were aware that terrorists had infiltrated.

What is the use? The Pathankot air force station referred to as the Pride of India has been hit and while terrorists would call this a spectacular attack, for all of us it embarrassing.

Speaking to several officers who have served in the IAF, they have just one question to ask. If there was intelligence, why was it not acted upon. Who is to ensure that the specific intelligence is acted upon? [Timeline of Pathankot terror attack]

However, the bigger debating point in all this is that the attack took place only a few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an unexpected visit to Pakistan. For many it seemed like a good will gesture.

Prime Ministers may change, but Pakistan will not. History has shown that Pakistan has attacked India after every such attempt is made by India to strike peace.

Pakistan has 2 policies:

It is a well known fact that the Prime Minister of Pakistan is a mere puppet in the hands of the army and ISI. The army and the ISI benefit more from war and terror when compared to peace. Pakistan is a proxy state for many in the West to keep the region under boil and all of us aware that the military and the ISI get funds in large numbers because of this.

[Pathankot terror attack: Were terrorists helped by a familiar face on the border?]

Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif may have all the good intentions, but the question is how much can he really do. He can do nothing and any attempt made by any Prime Minister in Pakistan to ease out the powers of the ISI and the army has never succeeded. Sharif has a had a dose of a coup when he was over thrown by Pervez Musharaff.

Even in the recent past he was almost thrown out of power by Imran Khan who was clearly talking the words of the ISI and the Pakistan army.

Did the PM and his men forget that Pakistan has a two faced policy- one for the world and one for India. Was the guard let down as a result of this diplomacy? Ideally after every good will gesture with Pakistan, it must be remembered that the borders need to be more secure rather than the guard let down. We have seen a Kargil and a 26/11 and these were all presents from the Pakistan army to India for trying and talking peace.

What is the line of defence?

When it comes to Pakistan there is always that nagging problem of it being a nuclear state. Pakistan would not mind its self destruction, but can India afford it. Taking these into account, war is really not the option. Prime Minister Modi would know that unlike the United States of America, we cannot send in our soldiers anywhere and at anytime and launch a war.

When George W Bush told Pervez Musharaff post 9/11, " your are either with us or against us," he was dead serious about his intentions. He made that statement knowing fully well that the US could attack Afghanistan whether Pakistan supported them or not. The army, the ISI and the government towed the line. Can India issue such a statement in the aftermath of a terror strike on its soil? [Pathankot: How did terrorists carry so much ammunition around for 2 days]

There has been a lot of buzz about conducting surgical strikes or carry out covert operations in Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pathankot attack. It is not as simple as many would think to fly in fighter jets into Bhawalpur and take out Maulana Masood Azhar. It would blow into a full fledged crisis with China and the US quickly coming to the aid of Pakistan.

Intelligence is fine, but what about the coordination?

In the aftermath of every terror attack, there are two points that crop up. Was there intelligence or did it fail. In this case there was intelligence that even pin pointed the place the attack. We hear of high level meetings that were conducted in New Delhi by the National Security Advisor and how the NSG was sent in time.

Statements such as, " had there been no intelligence, the attack would have been worse, " are feel good in nature. Even the terrorists were aware of the extent of the damage they could inflict at the air force station. The IAF has said that key areas of the station are safe. While that is commendable, it came at the cost of seven brave soldiers.

However, the bigger point is not about what was secured, but the fact that the terrorists kept over 500 armed personnel engaged in a battle for over 60 hours. [Pathankot attack: Why did terrorists let the SP go, NIA seeks to know]

Is it sufficient if intelligence is shared. Someone in New Delhi in control of national security must also ensure that intelligence is acted upon. The IAF, BSF are under the control of the centre it must be remembered. They report directly to the defence ministry. One could also blame the Punjab police for failing. What Delhi has to realise that the seriousness of international terrorism is understood better in the capital than the states.

Another point of debate is the premature declaration of the operation being concluded by the Union Minister Rajnath Singh. On January 2, he put out a tweet stating that five terrorists were killed and the operation was over.

The tweet was deleted a few hours later after he realised that the operation was still underway. Why did Singh take information from the Punjab police and tweet about it. The NSG which reports to his ministry was undertaking the operation and they had not confirmed that the operation was over.

Where diplomacy must work

When 18 military personnel were ambushed by the Myanmar based terrorist group, NSCN(K), there was a claim made by a minister that India had carried out surgical strikes. For starters this is not something to announce in public. Myanmar showed good will in allowing a surgical strike on its soil, but did not expect that India would go public with it and even denied any such incident.

Sri Lanka is a crucial nation for India. It is after all the gateway to South India. After the Sri Lankan elections were over, there was a report which stated that the R&aW had staged a coup to ensure that Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated. India wanted him defeated because of his proximity to China. Has the China role in Sri Lanka reduced. The answer is no and Sri Lanka cannot afford to let go off China for a variety of reasons and one being heavy financial investments.

[Pathankot attack: A meeting at Tihar jail under the scanner]

Nepal is another case where diplomacy has failed. Ever since Nepal came out with its new Constitution, there have been protests by a section of the people. India had blocked out key trade routes and this has only led to Nepal seeking aid from China. The countries in and around must matter to the Indian government. India needs to become the big brother in this region. If diplomacy continues to fail in this part of the country, then it could spell more trouble.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, January 5, 2016, 11:16 [IST]
Saudi-Iran tension: Here are the facts you need to know about it

Feature

oi-Jagriti

New Delhi, Jan 5: The execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr has escalated tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia who have already in strained relation. Nimr was among 47 people executed by Saudi authority on Jan 2.

Al-Nimr was a central figure in Shiite protests that erupted in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. Carrying out his execution sparked new unrest among the OPEC powerhouse's Shiite minority.

After his execution, Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran after later protested against cleric's execution. Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

But the dispute between the two Middle Eastern nations has deep religious, historic and political roots.

Who was Nimr?

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, had been calling for more rights for the kingdom's marginalized Shiite community.

He came to national prominence in February 2009, when Shia pilgrims at al-Baqi cemetery in Median clashed with religious police and security forces.

He was given death sentence by Saudi Arabia's specialised criminal court in October 2014 for taking up arms against the security forces, seeking foreign meddling in Saudi and disobeying' its rulers.

His brother, Mohammad al-Nimr, was arrested for sharing death sentence news on social networking site Twitter.

Born in Saudi Arabia, he studied in Iran and Syria. He had been sharing brittle relationship with Saudi authorities since his return to Saudi Arabia in 1994.

Ups and downs in ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia

Both the countries have been sharing tense relationship since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that overthrew Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Ties severed between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 1987 when hundreds of Iranian pilgrims were killed in clashes during the Haj.

Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran citing the 1987 haj riots and attacks carried out by Iran on shipping in the Persian Gulf. Diplomatic ties restored in 1991.

Both the countries saw thaw in their relation under the regime Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. A political moderate took office in 1997.

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah reached Tehran on a historic visit in 1997 which was reciprocated by Khatami in 1999.

Saudi worries about Iran resumed amid international sanctions against Tehran over its contested nuclear program and the increasingly harsh rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran and Saudi Arabia each backed opposite sides in Syria's civil war and the conflict in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia also grew increasingly suspicious of Iran over the nuclear deal reached with world powers.

The toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 empowered the Shia majority of Iraq which resulted into shift in political alignment towards Iran.

During the Arab Spring in 2011, Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain to quash pro-democracy protests fearing Shia opposition would align with Iran.

Saudi Arabia also extended its support to rebels fighting to topple Iran's all Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad in 2012.

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia started campaign in Yemen to stop Houthi.

2015 haj stampede: Iran alleged that due to Saudi Arabia's incompetence more than 400 of its pilgrims killed on September 24.

Cleric execution: It has become latest reason to spark the ongoing tension between the two nations.
DU UG first cut off list 2022 releasing today: How to check

Delhi air quality 'poor' for fourth day with no relief in sight

Delhi: Ahead of Diwali, police seizes over 1400 kg of firecrackers in 3 separate operations

17 percent rise in Delhi crimes, 27 percent cases solved

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Jan 4: A total of 182,644 cases of crimes were reported in the national capital in 2015, up from 155,654 in 2014 - a 17.33 percent rise, Delhi Police said on Monday.

The Delhi Police's annual report released on Monday claimed the rise in crime incidence was due to proactively recording of first information reports (FIRs) at the city's police stations.

Of all the crime cases, only 27 percent (49,903 cases) were solved, the city police force admitted.

Among the heinous crimes, marginal increase was recorded in rape cases with 2,095 instances reported till December 15, 2015, as compared to 2,085 cases reported last year in the corresponding period.

There was also increase in the number of molestation cases in the city -- 5,192 were reported in 2015 as compared to 4,322 cases in 2014.

"Cases of registered crimes against women grew slightly, but 70.15 percent cases were solved. If we leave 0.15 percent, 70 percent of cases were solved within a fortnight," the report said.

Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi said 2015 was "very satisfying" as the force's initiative to lodge the maximum number of first information report (FIRs) was achieved.

"From goat theft to stealing of Rs.20, we registered every relevant FIR. It is really satisfactory as per the expectation of people of Delhi," Bassi told the media at the annual press conference.

The annual report shows that the complaints of non-registration of FIRs saw a substantial decline compared to 2014 and 2013.

"As a result, the registered IPC (Indian Penal Code) crime rose from 80,184 in 2013, 155,654 in 2014 to 182,644 in 2015 (up to December 15)," Bassi said in its introductory comments.

"Along with truthful registration comes the onus of prevention and detection of crime, and Delhi Police have given an excellent account in this regard," he added.

A total of 49,903 IPC cases, including 6,328 heinous ones, were solved in 2015 as compared to 43,431, including 5,784 heinous cases, in the previous year, Bassi said.

"Almost all sensational cases were solved in a record time," he said.

At least 7,192 cases of robbery were reported in 2015, while the number was 6,176 in 2014.

The number of snatching and dacoity cases touched 9,422 and 73 respectively in 2015, from 6,943 and 80 in 2014.

At least 12,208 cases of burglary were reported in the city in 2015, comparatively a slight rise over last year's 9,653 cases.

House thefts, motor vehicle thefts and other theft cases touched ten figures of 14,781, 31,114 and 53,503 respectively in 2015 - up from 12,285, 22,219 and 39,568 in 2014.

As many as 62,017 people were arrested in connection with the cases of dacoity, robbery, snatching, burglary and vehicle theft, as against 55,187 in 2014.

Bassi said there were problems in recovery of theft articles as there was no evidence and this led to the recovery of only 20 percent of stolen articles.

"Maximum FIRs were lodged. Detection was comparatively low, but satisfactory," said Bassi.

The number of cases of other heinous crimes such as murders decreased from 561 to 541 in 2015. Out of these, 76.89 percent cases were solved, the report said.

IANS
Act on plea of grandson to bury centenarian grandfather: HC

India

oi-PTI

Chennai, Jan 5: Observing that equality eludes a person till death starting from birth, the Madras High Court on Jan 4 directed Nagaipattinam district administration and police to swiftly act on a plea from a local whose deceased 100-year-old grandfather could not be buried allegedly due to opposition from upper caste people to use of a pathway to a burial ground.

"It is unfortunate that equality eludes a person till death starting from his birth. Petitioner's grandfather who died on January 3, 2016 could not be given a decent burial due to malice which is still prevalent in society. This Court expects the authorities to act immediately to do the needful and report the same on January 5, 2016, failing which appropriate orders will be passed," Justice M M Sundresh said.

The judge said this when a petition filed by one M Sankar of Vazhvur Village of Nagapattinam District came up. The petitioner submitted that though his grandfather died on January 3, he could not be buried for two days as upper caste people prevented him from using the path leading to the burial ground.

Sankar said his grandfather died at his native place in Vazhuvur where they were prevented from using the common burial ground.

They were using a portion of the land on the bund of Makimaiaru river from time immemorial. But there was no pucca road to the burial ground.

The local upper class people (Vanniars) prevented them from using this path, the petitioner contended. The Judge posted the matter for hearing tomorrow after direcing that a compliance report be filed.

PTI
India at UNSC: Pathankot, Mumbai terror attack victims yet to get justice

Bury slain terrorists in pigskin: Tripura Guv Tathagata Roy

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Jan 5: In remarks that could kick up a controversy, Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy today said that bodies of slain terrorists should be wrapped in pigskin and then buried.

"I seriously suggest Russian treatment to terrorists' carcasses. Wrap them in pigskin, bury them face down in pig excreta. No chance of Houris," Roy said on Twitter.

In common understanding, Houris denote beautiful Women in heaven, who are believed to be given to Muslim men who die as martyrs.

Roy's tweet about the treatment that should be meted out to slain terrorists came against the backdrop of the Pathankot terror attack in which six Pakistani terrorists were neutralised. This is not the first time that Roy has made controversial remarks.

In July last, Roy had tweeted "Intelligence shd keep a tab on all (expt relatives & close friends) who assembled bfr Yakub Memon's corpse. Many are potential terrorists" sparking off a controversy.

Roy, who was appointed Tripura Governor after NDA came to power at Centre, has held strong views on many issues.

He was earlier President of the West Bengal unit of the BJP. His earlier tweets about Love Jihad and post Godhra riots had also evoked sharp reactions.

PTI
BSNL cancels 4G tender after DoT directs it not to use Chinese telecom gear

Govt trying to strengthen BSNL: Sumitra Mahajan

India

oi-PTI

Indore, Jan 5: Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who on Jan 4 inaugurated seven Wi-Fi hostspots of BSNL in Madhya Pradesh, said the government was constantly endeavouring to improve the condition of the public sector telecom firm.

She chaired a meeting hosted by BSNL chairman and MD Anupam Shrivastava here, in which several MPs from the state were also present, said G C Pandey, General Manager of the MP circle of BSNL.

One of the Wi-Fi hospots inaugurated by the Speaker is at Potlod village in Indore district which she has adopted under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojna.

At the meeting with top officers of BSNL and the MPs, Mahajan said, "BSNL plays an important role in the telecom sector of the country. The government is taking every necessary step to improve its condition."

Kantilal Bhuria, Congress MP from Jhabua-Ratlam, told reporters afterwards that he raised the issue of poor BSNL network in the state at the meeting.

"It was harming BSNL's image, and a collusion between its officers and the private telecom operators may be responsible for this," he said.

PTI
K'taka: DK Deputy Commissioner proposes to stop 'meat-free day' with state govt

India

oi-Shreyas

Mangaluru, Jan 4: Pointing at evolving time and irrelevance, in a fresh move, a Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Dakshina Kannada is seeking the Karnataka government to withdraw an order pertaining to meat-free day observed during festive occasions.

A DC A B Ibrahim has sent a letter (available with OneIndia) to the principal secretary of the Urban Development Department on the same.

Meat-free days are observed during Mahaveer Jayanti, Buddha Poornima, Ambedkar Jayanti, Mahashivaratri, Ramanavami, Krishna Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi, Gandhi Jayanti, Sankranti and Ramalinga Adikalar Memorial Day .

The order in connection to this was passed in 1970. The DC, in first of its kind step, categorically stated that evolving time is not supporting the implementation of the order and order appears outdated in current time.

The letter further added that few festivals mentioned in the order does not enjoy relevance in Dakshina Kannada and other districts of the state. Which means, on that day, meat-ban sounds irrelevant to the denizens.

The order also puts sanction on sale and consumption of meat (goat and sheep) during Ambedkar Jayanti. However the DC in the letter argues that Dalit activists and associations oppose such sanctions as they are fighting for food rights from long. In consideration of this, the order seems draconian.

The DC also in the letter drafted about modified economic infrastructure, post-liberalization. "Due to mall culture and cold storage facility it is difficult to check all the places to learn whether malls running meat sale on the particular day," the letter pointed.

The letter also opines that the district administration finds hard to implement the order in frenzied mall, bar and pub culture. According to the order meat is restricted to goat and sheep .

"We cannot go around checking all non-veg hotels and bars to make sure same is not cooked on the day, besides chicken, fish and egg," the letter conveys. The administration is in no position to order the closer of hotels, bars and other food outlets.

On the other hand many active associations claim that the constitution of India has given the right to each individual to practice his/her food culture. A day ban on meet subsequently conflict with constitutional right. "Many associations have submitted this submission to the district administration demanding to stop the meat-free day.

The DC Ibrahim, speaking to OneIndia said this is not the problem of Dakshina Kannada alone but also problems of other districts. "I have placed the proposal with the secretary to review and withdraw this order in changing times." If the government feels to squash the order then it would be applicable in across the state, DC added.

OneIndia News
Kolkata: Liberal Muslim headmaster banned from Madrasa for teaching National Anthem

India

oi-Preeti

Kolkata, Jan 5: A Madrasa headmaster was allegedly thrashed by maulanas for teaching his students the "National Anthem" in Kolkata.

According to a report published in India TV, the headmaster, Kazi Masum Akhtar, has been banned from entering the premises of Talpukur Aara High Madrasa.

The report also said that the maulanas and clerics, who beaten up Akhtar are inclined towards Islamic terror group, ISIS.

They have reportedly termed singing the "Hindu" National Anthem and hoisting the Tricolour in an Islamic teaching institution as "anti-Islamic".

They have also issued a fatwa against Akhtar asking him to grow his beard and wear traditional kurta and pyjama, worn by Muslims.

To make sure that Akhtar implements their diktat, they have asked him to send his photograph every week, to check his beard is growing! Presently, Akhtar has a clean shave and he wears shirts, t-shirts and trousers.

Due to his liberal views, in March 2015 too, Akhtar was badly thrashed with iron rods that landed him in hospital for months.

Akhtar even claims that he has approached West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the state Governor and the chairman of State Minorities Commission many times, but he is yet to get any response from them.

Akhtar also strongly bats for girls' education and abolition of child marriage, for which he had even launched a campaign to make people aware.

Even the Kolkata police seems to be helpless as they have expressed their inability to provide security to Akhtar, as it may lead to "communal tension".

Singing national anthem is duty of every Indian,WB Govt must take action-Maulana Khalid Rashid on Madrassa teacher pic.twitter.com/324urrIJwm  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2016

We condemn this incident: Mufti Syed Meraj Uddin Abrar(VP,Jamiat Ulema) on Madrassa teacher thrashed for teaching national anthem in Kolkata  ANI (@ANI_news) January 6, 2016

OneIndia News
Induction of Congress MLAs into BJP is death of Parrikar's legacy, says outgoing Goa deputy CM

Swaraj, Parrikar, Ananth Kumar: BJP has lost some of its tallest leaders recently

Manohar Parrikar admits 'security lapses' lead to terror attack

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Pathankot, Jan 5: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar admitted on Tuesday that "security lapses" led to the terrorist attack on the IAF base here that left seven security personnel and six terrorists dead.

Pathankot terror attack: Here are the proofs which nail Pakistan

Parrikar also told the media after visiting the base that combing operations were still going on but "this is only for safety purposes" and that no more terrorists were believed hidden in the huge complex.

Some gaps led to security lapses, leading to the pre-dawn terror attack on Saturday, the minister said. He did not elaborate. "What is worrying is how they (terrorists) entered the base," he added.

Parrikar visited the Pathankot Indian Air Force base in Punjab on Tuesday along with the chiefs of the army and air force.

The head of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the audacious terrorist strike, also visited the base separately.

"Combing operations are (still) going on," Parrikar said. "This is only for safety purposes."

He said the body of one of the terrorists still had a suicide vest, with a grenade sticking out.

"I am very, very clear that they (our officers) should not take any risk," he said, recalling how a National Security Guard (NSG) officer lost his life earlier while trying to reportedly shift a similar body.

Parrikar admitted that the entire operation "is a very difficult" one.

"It is tedious. This has been done without compromising any assets... Not just the strategic assets but even a building."

He said barring one building where the terrorists took shelter, no other building was even damaged because the security personnel managed to corner the raiders in a corner of the sprawling base.

Pathankot attack: Terrorists took orders from a Major

He said the terrorists had AK-47 rifles, pistols, Swiss knives, commando knives besides 40-50 kg of bullets. They also had improvised mortars. "They had high quality explosives."

The minister said the NIA had started investigation into the attack. He said it would find out "who sent them".

"They have got initial leads, where they have come from, how they have come."

IANS
Pathankot attack: A meeting at Tihar jail under the scanner

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Jan 5:A meeting between an army officer and Jagtar Singh Hawara, who was convicted for his role in the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister, Beant Singh, is under the scanner of both the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Delhi police.

A Delhi police official informed OneIndia that they are trying to find out if the meetings between the two at the Tihar Jail had anything to do with the Pathankot attack.

[Timeline of Pathankot terror attack]

"There has been intelligence since 2007 that Sikh militant groups are trying to revive militancy in Punjab. In this context we wanted to learn if the meeting had any connection with the Pathankot attack," said the officer.

Meeting under scanner:

The Delhi police questioned an army Major after it was found that he had met with Hawara several times at the Tihar jail.

[Pathankot terror attack: Were terrorists helped by a familiar face on the border?]

It is a well known fact that several Sikh militants, who escaped, had taken shelter in Pakistan with the help of the ISI.

In return for this favour, the ISI may have sought the help of some of the militants to help the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants infiltrate into India and also provide logistic help.

The questioning of the officer has not revealed anything relevant as of now. He is being questioned for two days now, the officer noted.

The police are also likely to question Hawara in connection with this case.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, January 5, 2016, 9:23 [IST]
Pathankot attack: Terrorists took orders from a Major

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Jan 5: The call intercepts picked up between the terrorists who attacked the Pathankot air force station and their handlers in Pakistan suggest that they kept referring to a Major and very often took the word Air Force.

The calls were made from the cell phone of the Superintendent of Police, Gurdaspur, Salwinder Singh.

The National Investigation Agency which is probing the case is questioning the SP, his cook Mohan and jeweller friend Rajesh who were in the car when the terrorists abducted them. While the terrorists let off Singh and Mohan, they slit the throat of Verma.

Pathankot terror attack: Here are the proofs which nail Pakistan

The terrorists may have thought that Verma was dead and let him off, but he managed to get up and reach out for help.

Air force was a word often used:

According to the account of the witnesses, the terrorists referred to the caller at the other end as Major. The word Major is a very commonly used by terrorists and they often refer to their handlers as Major, Commander of Aaka (supreme commander).

Pathankot: How did terrorists carry so much ammunition around for 2 days

When the terrorists first abducted the SP, they drove around without any direction. However after they let go of the SP and the cook, they continued to drive on. They used the SP's phone to make a call and kept using the world Air Force according to the account given by Verma. They even asked Verma how far the Amritsar airport was.

NIA officials say that they will cross verify the statements of all the three persons who were in that car which was stolen by the terrorists. The NIA had said earlier that there was too much contradiction in the statements.

Earlier today the SP, Singh told reporters that the terrorists let him go because they did not know he was a cop. Further he also said that his hands had been tied up, but he managed to escape. He further added that the terrorists had returned in search for him in a bid to kill him.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, January 5, 2016, 14:13 [IST]
Pathankot attack: There were gaps in operation, but security not compromised says Defence Minister

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Jan 4: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar who visited Pathankot today said that 6 terrorists have been killed in this operation.

He said that combing operations would continue for another day before the entire area is declared as secure.

Addressing the media, the minister said that two of the bodies of the terrorists have been charred beyond recognition. A DNA test would have to be conducted to cross check and be sure, he also said.

The minister reiterated that all the equipment at the Pathankot air force station is secure. I will request the personnel to permit the media to go inside the air force station once the combing operations are completed, he also said.

He congratulated the security forces and said that they battled highly motivated terrorists and have done a commendable job.

The terrorists were highly motivated. Terrorists had carried 40 to 50 kilograms of ammunition and high quality explosives on them. Some of the material found on them have a Pakistan mark to it. This will be probed and the NIA is already doing its job.

Further the minister also added that while there were gaps in operations, the question of security being compromised does not arise.

The operations took sometime because the terrorists had plenty of ammunition on them and also it takes time to guard and cover such a large campus. The minister also added that all defence bases are being audited now.

Further he also added that the martyrs of the Pathankot operations are being declared as battle casualties. This would mean that the families will be given the benefits that war casualties get.

Further the minister also added that the Border Security Force has been asked to give details on the areas from where the terrorists could have infiltrated. He also said that the NIA would probe how the terrorists managed to enter into the air force station.

On why the NSG was roped in for the operation, the minister said that there were civilians in the campus. Apart from the 5,000 civilians there was defence equipment which needed to be safeguarded as well. The NSG was better equipped to handle such a situation, the minister added.

OneIndia News
Aerial Assassin: How AH-64 E Apache became the world's best Attack helicopter?

Pathankot terror attack: Here are the proofs which nail Pakistan

India

oi-Mukul

New Delhi, Jan 5: India once again exposed Pakistan for waging 'proxy war' against India. Arch rival of India, Pakistan has been refuting India's claim that it provides logistic supports to terrorists who dare to disturb peace in India. But Pakistan's 'real intention' once again came to fore in Pathankot terror attacks.

Timeline of Pathankot terror attack

Reportedly in the ongoing combing operation of Pathankot attack, our security agencies have got some proofs which prove Pakistani hand in Punjab terror attack.

Reportedly while fighting with terrorists, who stormed Pathankot airbase on January 1, BSF and NSG have found many Pakistan-made items.

Shoes of slain terrorists

As per reports, shoes of popular Pakistani brand 'EPCOT' have been recovered from the terrorists

Batteries

Batteries have also been recovered from slain terrorists. As per Zee news reports it bore Pakistani marking on it.

Phone connection

It is being said that terrorists repeatedly called up on some Pakistani numbers. Reportedly they were in direct contact with Pathankot attack's mastermind in Pakistan. Security agencies have recovered Pakistani phone numbers from terrorists.

Pakistani rifles

It has been five days since our security agencies are fighting with terrorist who dared to attack high security zone airbase in Pathankot. As per news reports, terrorists possessed Pakistan made advanced weapons including AK 47 rifle. Weapons recovered from the terrorists had 'Made in Pakistan' mark written over it.

OneIndia News
Aerial Assassin: How AH-64 E Apache became the world's best Attack helicopter?

Pathankot Terror Attack: Martyr Lt Col Niranjan insulted on FB, abuser arrested

India

oi-Nairita

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 5: A man, who hails from Ketala, has been arrested as he has been accused of making derogatory remark against Lt Col Niranjan Kumar who died while fighting with terrorists in Pathankot.

The man, who has been identified as Anwar Sadhik, had claimed that he was a staff of popular Malayalam newspaper Madhyamam.

He made derogatory remark against Niranjan and against the government on social networking site Facebook.

While the nation paid its tribute to Niranjan and other six martyrs, Anwar Sadhik criticised the government.

Making a comment on Facebook, Anwar Sadhik said, "One trouble less, now! His wife will be given financial aid and a job, common man gets nothing! What a stinking democracy!"

Initially, he faced stern criticism on the social networking site. Later Madhyamam officials filed a case against him saying that he never had worked with the media company.

24-year-old Anwar Sadhik was arrested by Malappuram district police on charges of sedition (Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code) from his house in Kodur.

Anwar Sadhik, who originally works as a salesman in a ration shop, stated that he had mentioned himself as an official of Madhyamam because he wanted people to take him "seriously".

Lt Col Niranjan and many other commandos died while fighting against terrorists who attacked Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot, Punjab on Saturday, Jan 2.

Lt Col Niranjan's body initially was airlifted to Bengaluru where his family members are settled for last 30 years. Later his body was taken to his ancestor's home in Kerala.

He is survived with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. Lt Col Niranjan, who was with NSG's bomb detection squad, has been laid to rest at Elambulassery, a village in Palakkad district of Kerala on Tuesday, Jan 5.

OneIndia News
After the verdict in Kathua rape case chief investigator regrets Vishal's release

Aerial Assassin: How AH-64 E Apache became the world's best Attack helicopter?

Police checkpoints along Jammu-Pathankot highway alerted after carjacking in Punjab

Grenade blast near Pathankot, all check-posts put on high alert

News Flash: US military chopper crashes in Helmand province, Afghanistan

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, Jan 5: Investigating agencies and security officials still continue to their search operations in Pathankot where terrorists attacked Indian Air Force (IAF) base on Saturday.

Get all news updates here on Tuesday, Jan 5:

10.50 pm: US service member killed, two wounded in Afghan mission, says NATO - AFP.

10.30 pm: Indian Cricket team departs for Australia where it will play five ODI and three T20 International matches.

9.40 pm: The real heroes of the country are the security forces who have once again shown their steel in the Patankhot attack: Sachin Tendulkar

Tragic to lose some of these bravehearts. Heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the martyrs: Sachin Tendulkar #Patankhot  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

9.20 pm: Congress leader Amit Jogi responds to Chhattisgarh PCC notice on tape issue. Decision likely to be taken on him by PCC tomorrow in a meeting.

9.10 pm: US military chopper crashed in Helmand province. No details on casualties yet: Afghan media.

8.50 pm: PM Nawaz Sharif called up PM Narendra Modi and conveyed his sadness & grief on the loss of lives in Pathankot terror attack: Pak PM office.

Both PMs agreed that cordial &cooperative relationship b/w two countries wud be most appropriate response to nefarious designs of terrorists  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

8.25 pm: Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das met PM Narendra Modi at 7RCR, earlier today.

8.15 pm: Special CNG stickers required for exemption from #OddEvenRule will now only be available at CGO Complex and Lodhi Road CNG stations.

Syed Kirmani receives the Col CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award from BCCI President Shashank Manohar pic.twitter.com/4lpb19m3eM  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

8.00 pm: Virat Kohli receives the Polly Umrigar Award from the BCCI President Shashank Manohar.

Virat Kohli receives the Polly Umrigar Award from the BCCI President Mr. Shashank Manohar pic.twitter.com/U5iJHLCw6C  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

7.55 pm: CBI arrests Senior Section Engineer (TRD/Electrical) working in the office of DRM, Agra (UP) for demanding & accepting a bribe of Rs. 35,000

7.45 pm: CBI arrests SDMC assistant engineer for demanding & accepting bribe of Rs 30,000.

7.25 pm: Japan condemns terrorist attack. Terrorism cannot be justified for any reason. Japan expresses solidarity with gov & people of India: MEA

7.10 pm: Syria's declared chemical arms stock '100% destroyed', says watchdog: AFP

7.00 pm: France condemns attack on Indian military base; stands alongside India in fight against terrorism: MEA.

6.53 pm: This is probably the first time that NSG unit was posted before the attack took place says Punjab DGP Suresh Arora in Pathankot

6.48 pm: Punjab Police was stationed inside the airbase in Pathankot says Punjab DGP Suresh Arora.

6.18 pm: CBI takes over investigation in Mumbai crime journalist Jyotirmoy Dey's murder case.

6:00 pm: Record breaking Mumbai U-16 batsman Pranav Dhanawade celebrates with team mates.

5:10 pm: Mohd Shami has been a very good bowler for us,so it is good to have him back from injury, says MS Dhoni.

5:00 pm: Fire at Manyata tech park, Hebbal.

4:45 pm: DNA confirmation will be done on the bodies of two terrorists who have been badly burnt.

A total of 6 terrorists have been neutralised.

4:38 pm: Thank security personnel for containing the highly-motivated terrorists, says Manohar Parrikar in Pathankot.

4.37 pm: 6 terrorists have been neutralized in this operation.Combing operations underway for safety purpose-Manohar Parrikar

4.20 pm: "I have practically visited all the spots where the gun battle took place", says Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Pathankot attack.

Thank security personnel for containing the highly-motivated terrorists- Manohar Parrikar #Pathankot pic.twitter.com/HUeFlBMfD1  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

4.15 pm: Total of 17 migrants drown in two boats sinking off Turkey's coast, say reports.

4.10 pm: Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif in a telephonic chat with Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has assured of assistance and cooperation in the probe into the Pathankot terror attack.

4.00 pm: Operation at Pathankot to end today.

3.55 pm: Journalist Rajat Sharma records his statement as a witness in Arun Jaitley's criminal defamation case against Arvind Kejriwal & other AAP leaders.

3.50 pm: Hearing on Peter Mukerjea's bail plea adjourned till 16th January by Special CBI court.

3.45 pm: Sensex ends over 40 points lower at 25,580.34.

3.35 pm: "Congrats Pranav Dhanawade on being 1st ever to score 1000 runs in an innings.Well done,work hard.U need to scale new peaks", says Sachin Tendulkar.

3.30 pm: "As President, I did not receive any money from anybody", says Finance minister Arun Jaitley in court on DDCA.

3.15 pm: Loud explosion heard from inside #Pathankot air base. Combing ops underway.

3.00 pm: Person arrested in Calicut, Kerala for posting insulting remarks about Lt Col Niranjan Kumar on Facebook.

2.55 pm: Cabinet Secretary P. K. Sinha chaired meeting of National Crisis Management Committee today to take stock of Relief operations in Manipur.

2.06 pm: FM Arun Jaitley arrives in Court for hearing of criminal defamation case filed by him against Delhi CM & AAP Leaders.

1:39 pm: They were four persons in army fatigues. I was driving the car when they stopped us says Rajesh Verma, who abducted by terrorists.

12:48 pm: Blast reported close to Indian Consulate in Jalalabad, Nangarhar.

12:23 pm: SC issues directions that all commercial vehicles which are not Delhi-bound will not enter through NH-10,NH-2, NH-58 & State highway 57.

12:10 pm: Home Minister Rajnath Singh has approved 33% posts at Constable level for being filled up by women.

11:51 am: Pathankot attack was not only a terror attack and attack on humanity. It was an attack on India, said Congress leader Anand Sharma.

11:46 am: We urge PM Narendra Modi to take nation into confidence and consult leadership of principal opposition parties, said Congress leader Anand Sharma while speaking about Pathankot terror attack.

11:33 am: Supreme Court of India directed Gujarat Govt to file a chargesheet against Hardik Patel by January 8 in connection with the infamous sedition case, court will hear the matter on January 14.

11:23 am: Death toll following the earthquake in Imphal reached to 7. More than 80 people receives serious injuries.

11:15 am: Last post ceremony of NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost hi life in Pathankot terror attack.

Last post ceremony of NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost his life in #PathankotAttack pic.twitter.com/ik3lKrDH3l  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

Last post ceremony of NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost his life in #PathankotAttack pic.twitter.com/JTGG2rPADe  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

Last post ceremony of NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost hi life in #PathankotAttack pic.twitter.com/W68RBi4dSR  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

Last post ceremony of NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost hi life in #PathankotAttack pic.twitter.com/CGyxKtOU5I  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

11:07 am: Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar will leave for Pathankot at 1:00 pm. He will be accompanied by IAF Chief Arup Raha and Army Chief Dalbir Singh.

10:56 am: Home Minister Rajnath Singh chaired meeting on internal security, NSA Ajit Doval and senior security officials were present at the meeting.

10:40 am: Last year we made a push in the direction, a push that we intend to continue. A lot of resources were put in the direction of railways, national highways. Result of that is visible in the last one year that the stalled projects amongst the highways have got moving, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

10:12 am: NIA team reached Air Force Base in Pathankot, Punjab.

9:43 am: Terrorists initially didn't know that I was Superintendent of Police. Those people had GPRS with them. They did not ask us the way, said Gurdaspur SP Salvinder Singh who was abducted by the terrorists who later attacked IAF base in Pathankot.

9:35 am: An unidentified body is being examined at the Pathankot air force station. The security forces suspect that it may be that of the sixth terrorist. According to the official version of the NSG, the number of terrorists killed so far is 5.

9:30 am: Cold wave hit Amritsar, Punjab. People lit fire to battle conditions.

Cold wave hits Amritsar, people light fire to battle conditions. pic.twitter.com/sw9MhL47Fm  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

9:08 am: When we stopped the car, 4-5 persons rushed towards me. Those people had AK 47 with them, said Gurdaspur SP Salvinder Singh who reportedly was abducted by the terrorists who attacked Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot, Punjab.

When we stopped the car, 4-5 persons rushed towards me-Gurdaspur SP Salvinder Singh (who was abducted) pic.twitter.com/iDJZuAXDxN  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

8:50 am: Actor Pratyusha Banerjee, who had played the lead role in popular TV serial Balika Badhu, filed FIR in Kandivali PS, saying, "8 policemen tried barging in my house and misbehaved with me."

Actor Pratyusha Banerjee files FIR in Kandivali PS,says "8 policemen tried barging in my house & misbehaved with me" pic.twitter.com/eN46nI8RV4  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

8:30 am: People paid tribute to NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost his life in Pathankot terror attack.

People pay tribute to NSG Lt Col Niranjan in Palakkad (Kerala), who lost his life in #PathankotAttack pic.twitter.com/17VwOSiqYl  ANI (@ANI_news) January 5, 2016

8:25 am: 12 Tamil Nadu fishermen were detained by Sri Lankan Navy in early morning hours.

8:12 am: Patiala House Court will hear the criminal defamation case filed by FM Arun Jaitley against Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP Leaders today.

OneIndia News
Golden intelligence rule: When your cover is blown, you are on your own

Spoke in Punjabi dialect, posed as Army men, the mystery behind the missing Innova

Pathankot terror attack: Were terrorists helped by a familiar face on the border?

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Jan 5: The National Investigating Agency (NIA), which is probing the Pathankot terror attack, is convinced that there were some elements along the Kathua-Gurdaspur border who helped the terrorists infiltrate.

Going by the initial account, it appears that the terrorists had no problem what so ever entering into India through a border which is considered to have the highest security.

[Pathankot attack: Why did terrorists let the SP go, NIA seeks to know]

NIA officials tell OneIndia that they are exploring the possibility of a local link behind the attack.

These terrorists from Pakistan were dropped off in batches of two. While a group came in a Range Rover the other lot were dropped off near the border in a Pajero.

How did the terrorists cross over?

How did the terrorists manage to cross over into India? This is a major question before the NIA and unless this is cracked, the probe would remain half baked.

First and foremost there was an alert that had already been sounded since December 25th and the BSF were informed about a possible infiltration.

Despite such specific alerts, how did the terrorists manage to slip in? Was there a familiar face at the border waiting to receive the terrorists?

[Pakistan working on "leads" provided by India on Pathankot attack: Foreign Office]

NIA officials say that there is a lot of smuggling activity along this border and some security forces are familiar with such activities and may have let these men enter mistaking them for smugglers and not terrorists.

The role of smugglers can never be ruled out in such cases. During the probe into the 26/11 Mumbai attack, a commission of inquiry had learnt that there was a diesel smuggler at Machimarnagar who had helped the ten terrorists seek cover until they were ready to attack.

"We are not ruling out a similar possibility in the Pathankot terror attack as well," NIA officials said.

[Timeline of Pathankot terror attack]

Several terrorist groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT) are known to use the services of smugglers to be part of a sleeper cell.

These sleeper cells are activated ahead of an attack and more often than not there are smugglers who are close to security personnel who are part of the network.

OneIndia News
Pathankot: When did the terrorists infiltrate the air force station?

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Jan 5: The first meeting that the National Security Advisor convened was on Jan 1 when an alert was received suggesting that terrorists had infiltrated into Punjab.

It was then decided that the National Security Guards (NSG) would immediately be pressed into service.

[Timeline of Pathankot terror attack]

The intelligence regarding the infiltration of terrorists became extremely clear by Jan 1 itself. It may be recalled that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had been tracking intercepts from Dec 25 itself and it was found at that there would be an attempt to attack Punjab either by the al-Qaeda in the Sub-Continent or the Jaish-e-Mohamamd (JeM).

When did terrorists enter the air base?

There were several communications between New Delhi and Punjab on Jan 1. While there was a state of alert in Punjab since Dec 25 onwards, a red alert had been sounded on Jan 1 when the intercepts became extremely clear.

It has been found that the terrorists came to Punjab in two batches. There is a question that has been raised on whether one batch had entered the air base late on Jan 1 itself.

[Pathankot terror attack: Were terrorists helped by a familiar face on the border?]

Investigations would also show that one batch had entered the air force station earlier and began provided cover fire while the rest entered and engaged with the security forces.

During the communication between Delhi and Punjab the terrorists had already infiltrated.

There was a clear delay in searching for the terrorists despite a complaint by Salwinder Singh, the Superintendent of Police of Gurdaspur who had been abducted.

Further the murder of Ikagar Singh a taxi driver also suggested that there was something fishy. The police are trying to find out why he had left home so late in the night after he got a call from a Pakistan number.

The other bit of information that the police got was when they tracked the mobile phone of the SP to a forest area.

The terrorists after abducting the SP released him but took away his mobile phone and vehicle. They used the same mobile to call Pakistan and this was tracked on Jan 1.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, January 5, 2016, 9:41 [IST]
Post Pathankot, Punjab needs a border as secure as Jammu and Kashmir

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Jan 5: The introspection has already begun and there are many loop holes that need to be plugged following the terrorist attack at Pathankot.

The terrorists attacked the Pathankot air force station with a specific intention of embarrassing the Indian security establishment.

The Indian Air Force says that the terrorists have not managed to achieve their goal and all the technical area was secured at all times. Air force stations house several assets such as fighter jets and attack choppers.

Moreover, in the Pathankot operation, the biggest achievement is that the terrorists were not able to inflict any damage on the runway.

In every war that India has had with Pakistan in the past the latter has always tried to damage the runway at Pathankot first as it cripples the air force.

The bigger problems that need to be addressed:

First and foremost, India cannot continue to take the Punjab issue lightly anymore. Terrorists have hit Punjab twice in six months and this clearly signals the urge by Pakistan to set up shop in the state once again.

There has been talks of the revival of the Khalistan movement. In the investigations being conducted into the Pathankot attack one of the angles of focus is whether Khalistan militant groups provided support to the Jaish-e-Mohammad.

While Pakistan based militant groups have their eyes set on Kashmir, they will continue to look for other states to attack in a bid to embarrass the Indian establishment. The fact that Punjab has been hit twice in six months calls for tighter vigil along the border.

Following the attack, the Home Ministry was quick to understand this and called for a report from the Border Security Force on how the infiltration took place.

The BSF in its report stated that there was no breach in the fence, but some of the equipment along the International Border were not functioning. This led to a breakdown of some of the electronic surveillance as a result of which the terrorists could have infiltrated.

Fence every pocket:

The vigil and the protection at Punjab must be as good as Jammu and Kashmir. The fact that the terrorists managed to enter despite additional security personnel of 1,000 being deployed along the Punjab border after the Gurdaspur attack points towards a technical glitch.

The BSF in its report to the Home Ministry has said that there are several pockets which are unfenced. Moreover there is growth of elephant grass in these areas which can provide cover for a group of people attempting to infiltrate.

Moreover, on the day that the terrorists infiltrated some of the hand held thermal imagers and the Battle Field Surveillance Radars, placed at the places where fencing is not erected, did not pick up any signal due to a technical glitch.

During the high level meetings that were held following the Pathankot attack, the relevance of border security especially at Punjab came up for discussion.

It was decided that security along the Punjab border needs to be reviewed and a system as strong as the one we get to see in Jammu and Kashmir will be set up in due course of time.

Dealing with Pakistan:

The good will gesture by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi following his Lahore visit was clearly not respected. It is amply clear that the JeM militants were launched into India with the help of the Pakistan army/ISI.

However, going by the history of Pakistan this was on expected lines as the military of that country wants no peace.

For now India will take the diplomatic path to address the issue with Pakistan post the Pathankot attack. The foreign secretary level talks scheduled to be held later this month is being postponed to facilitate a National Security Advisor level talks first.

Moreover, the proof that India has compiled so far relating to the attack is being submitted to Pakistan. The ball now is in the court of Pakistan and India would want to see how they act against the JeM. The rest of the action would depend on how Pakistan reacts.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, January 5, 2016, 16:10 [IST]
International news brief: Confident of Pak's commitment, ability to secure its nuclear assets, says US & more

From 'dangerous' to 'secure and confident': US makes a u-turn after Biden's comment on Pak

What assurance Pakistan gave to India, Congress asks Modi

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Jan 5: The Congress on Tuesday, Jan 5 sought to know from Prime Minister Narendra Modi what assurances were given to him by Pakistan that paved the way for a comprehensive dialogue with that neighbour.

The party's remark came after Saturday's pre-dawn terrorist attack at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in Punjab, in which seven security personnel and six terrorists suspected to be Pakistanis were killed.

"In August, the National Security Advisor (NSA)-level talks were cancelled. After that, the NSAs (of India and Pakistan) met in Bangkok. We want to know what was discussed in the meeting and what agreement was made between the two countries with regard to responding to such attacks," said Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma.

"What assurances were made to the prime minister by Pakistan that he made a sudden and surprise visit to Lahore. We need to know whether the entire establishment of Pakistan - the army and the ISI - approved of this visit or not," he added.

Sharma said that when Modi landed in Lahore on December 25, the NSA of Pakistan, Naseer Khan Janjua, was not present. "Shouldn't we get a message from it that the entire establishment of Pakistan is not in support of rapprochement between two countries?"

Post Mumbai terror attack, he said a dialogue should begin only after Pakistan keeps its promises.

"But they couldn't keep their promises. The first assurance was that the handlers of Mumbai attack would be tried and punished and only after that a comprehensive dialogue with Pakistan should start," he added.

He urged Modi to take the nation into confidence and "consult the leadership of the principal opposition parties on these matters".

The Congress also termed as the offensive the terrorist attack on the country.

"Pathankot attack is not only a terror attack or an attack on humanity. It is an attack on India. It is an attack on the nation. We sense it as a conspiracy theory because along with Pathankot, the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, was also attacked," said Sharma.

"Seventeen days after the Ufa agremment between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, there was an attack in Gurdaspur (Punjab), breaching the international border. This (Pathankot) attack is also similar to that. Therefore, it should be termed as an attack on India," he said.
Iranian unrest : Will US and Europe really back protestors?

Pakistan shows concerns over Saudi-Iran tensions

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Islamabad, Jan 5: Pakistan showed concerns over the escalation of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran and criticised the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

The statement came on Monday after Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Iran after angry protesters stormed its embassy in Tehran to protest at the execution of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Xinhua reported.

"We call for resolution of differences through peaceful means in the larger interest of Muslim unity in these challenging times," the Pakistan foreign ministry said.

A foreign ministry statement described the attack on the Saudi embassy against international norms, most unfortunate and deeply regrettable.

"It is the responsibility of states to provide full safety and security to all diplomatic Missions and their personnel."

The ministry said the dark forces of extremism and terrorism can take advantage of any disunity in the Muslim nations.

The Pakistani parliament also debated the issue and Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal told the house that Pakistan was fully alive to the happenings in the Middle East.

He assured the members that the country will play a positive role in defusing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Responding to a point raised by the opposition leader Syed Khurshid Shah, Iqbal said it has been the policy of the government to promote unity and solidarity amongst the Islamic countries.

IANS
Saudi-Iranian tension to negatively affect conflict in Syria

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Damascus, Jan 5: The escalation of tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran against the backdrop of the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric could negatively rebound on the efforts for establishing a peace process in Syria, analysts here said.

The tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran has hit a new high after the Saudi authorities executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shia cleric, who was arrested two years ago and sentenced to death for fomenting dissent against the Sunni royal family in Saudi Arabia.

After the execution last week, Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran, bringing down the Saudi flag, Xinhua reported.

Al-Nimr's execution also sparked waves of condemnation and support between Sunni and Shia communities in the Middle East, something analysts said could enflame an all-out Sunni-Shia conflict in the region.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saudi Arabia will face "divine revenge" for al-Nimr's execution, calling it a "huge crime" and "a wrong deed".

Also, the leader of the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah group, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, slammed Saudi Arabia for the execution, saying "Better than any other time, Saudi Arabia is showing its real face to the world. The dictatorial face, the criminal face, the terrorist face, and it's doing this every day."

The tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia was not only confined to the accusatory rhetoric.

After the assault on its embassy, Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday that it had cut diplomatic ties with Iran, a move seen by Tehran as a Saudi pretext to sever ties in a diplomatic crisis that could prolong the tension between both regional powerhouses.

The Saudi-backed Bahrain, which has seen an uprising by its majority Shia population and was largely crushed with the help of Riyadh, also followed Saudi Arabia, announcing on Monday severing diplomatic relations with Iran, in another step seen by observers as deepening the sectarian tension in the region.

Sudan, another ally of Riyadh, also cut ties with Iran, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) downgraded its diplomatic representation in the Shia republic.

This tension, which is largely based on old grudges between both powers on the regional sway, could negatively impact the situation in Syria, where the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is hugely supported by Iran, while almost all of the rebel factions were supported by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.

Syria's Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi on Saturday said the execution of al-Nimr is "a crime and an assassination of the freedom of speech and human rights."

Meanwhile, the rebels' Free Syrian Army (FSA) said in a statement on Monday that it supports the Saudi move in severing ties with Iran.

"With the threats of the Iranian regime to the security and stability in the region by supporting Shia groups in the Arab region including the killing and criminal thugs of Assad and finally fomenting sedition in Saudi Arabia, the decision to cut the ties is a normal and clear response to the aforementioned actions," it said.

"We in the armed revolutionary forces fully support the decision by the Saudi kingdom and back any future step Saudi Arabia may find suitable to preserve its peace and security," said the statement, urging all Arab countries to follow the Saudi lead to cut ties with Iran.

Syrian analysts expressed pessimism about the new development in the region, particularly after blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq on Monday, sparking fears of renewed sectarian strife in Iraq, which has for long been suffering from tension and tit-for-tat attacks between Sunni and Shia people.

Maher Ihsan, a Syrian political analyst, said the new tension was "worrying".

"It's extremely worrying what happened on the political arena in terms of the severing of the Iranian-Saudi relations, because those powers could seek revenge from one another, and surely they will not engage into a direct war, so where will they settle their score? I am afraid they will avenge one another in other arenas, including Syria," he said.

"Again, this country could be dragged back to the conflict zone, from which it hasn't even been pulled. I am afraid the poor people of Syria will keep paying the bills of others' wars on the Syrian soil," he lamented.

The fear of pulling Syria back was due to the new hope, which was given during recent meetings in Vienna and New York, during which superpowers and regional ones, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, agreed on roadmap to end the Syrian conflict politically.

The roadmap, which will be first implemented with a meeting this month in Geneva between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition, is designed to establish dialogue, a cease fire and a new government in Syria as a prelude to broader and more inclusive solution.

While the details of the roadmap are yet to be crystalised with proper mechanism, the new regional tension is feared it could affect the renewed efforts to end the long-lasting crisis, which killed over 250,000 people and forced half of the country's 23 million population out of their homes.

For his part, Ahmad al-Ashqar, another analyst, said the negative impact could happen in countries where there is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, such as in Yemen and Syria.

"Unfortunately, I think the repercussions of the Iranian-Saudi tension will increase, which will reflect on the Syrian crisis, because Syria has become a stage for regional conflicts. Such countries don't need to open new fronts, while already-opened fronts already exist, meaning Syria will surely be affected by the conflict of such countries," he said.

"Despite our conviction that international efforts to establish a political solution was close, but after the recent events, the political efforts could be delayed, which means more exhaustion to the Syrian people."

IANS
What does the US actually want in Syria?

US asks Pakistan to fight terrorists of all hues

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, Jan 5: While it believes warmer relations between India and Pakistan would be in the interest of both countries, the US says it was for them to resolve issues bilaterally after the terrorist attack on an Indian Air Force base.

Washington has also "made clear with the highest levels of the government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups" - including those targeting India - without discrimination.

"Obviously the leaders of both countries are going to have to decide for themselves what they believe is in the interests of their citizens," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday when asked if India should continue the peace initiative.

"The United States certainly believes that warmer relations and more cooperation between the government of India and the government of Pakistan would in the interests of both countries," he said.

"But ultimately the leaders of those countries will have to decide for themselves."

Asked if the US sees Pakistan taking action against terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taeba as promised in a US-Pakistan joint statement, Earnest suggested Islamabad has its own interest in fighting against terrorist groups operating inside their own country.

The US has offered its support to the Pakistani government, he said, "particularly in light of that terrible terrorist incident where we saw an extremist organization carry out an attack against an elementary school inside of Pakistan" a little over a year ago.

Pathankot attack: Why did terrorists let the SP go, NIA seeks to know

That was a rather "vivid illustration" for people "that citizens in Pakistan and the Pakistani government has their own vested interest in trying to deal with terrorist organizations that are attempting to operate inside their country."

Asked about a report that President Barack Obama has invited the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in March, Earnest said he was "not aware of any upcoming meetings between the President and the leaders of India and Pakistan."

At the State Department, again strongly condemning the terrorist attack on an IAF base airbase, spokesperson John Kirby said the US remained "committed to a strong partnership with the Indian Government to combat terrorism."

Noting that Pakistan "also publicly and privately condemned this recent attack on the Indian airbase, he said, "we've been clear with the highest levels of the Government of Pakistan that it must continue to target all militant groups."

"The Government of Pakistan has said publicly and privately that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups as part of its counterterrorism operations," Kirby said.

"And the Government of Pakistan has spoken to this, has spoken very powerfully to this, and it's certainly our expectation that they'll do exactly what - they'll treat this exactly the way they've said they will."

The US was mindful that there remain some safe havens between Afghanistan and Pakistan and certainly between India and Pakistan "that we obviously want to see cleared out," he said.

"And we continue to engage with the Government of Pakistan to that end," he said adding "Pakistan itself has said and acknowledged, that it's not going to discriminate among terrorist groups and it will continue to take the fight."

Asked if Pakistan was taking enough steps against terrorist networks like Lashkar-e-Taeba and Jaish-e-Mohammad which are targeting India, Kirby said the US wants to see Pakistan continue to press the fight against all terrorists without discrimination.

But "this is an issue that - as are so many issues between India and Pakistan - we want to see them work out bilaterally."

IANS
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Old Testament - Today in Genesis chapter 11 we read about the tower of Babel! You can view the location of the tower at a high level below:

I probably should not confess this, but I will - verse 4 made me smile and laugh at myself a bit, which really shouldn't be funny. This verse reminded me of myself at times: "Let's build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies--a monument to our greatness!" This verse is obviously not one that made God happy, as we see in subsequent verses. And I guess I have to ask myself - are there times my life or areas of my life where I am attempting to build something that will be a "monument to my greatness"? And I'm afraid that the answer is too often yes. Or it surely has been in the past. I pray that I'm turning over the desire to "be great" over to God more and more these days. I pray that I am not seeking glory for myself - but seeking glory for God. But, I am afraid that sometimes I revert back to wanting to build a "monument to my greatness" in my work or volunteer activities or maybe even personal relationships. And this is pride. It was this pride that brought about the building of the tower of Babel - and it was because of pride that God stopped the building of the tower by giving the human race different languages. In your life today - are you seeking to build monuments of greatness for yourself? Or are you instead seeking to only glorify God? Below is an oil on panel painting of the "Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel, circa 1563:

Today is a big day in our readings! We are introduced to Abram & Sarai! Genesis chapter 12 is significant in that it transitions our Old Testament readings from being about the world at large to being primarily about a specific man, Abram, his family, and his descendants. Verses 2 and 3 are an amazing promise from God to Abraham: "I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you." This is a powerful promise that we will see played out throughout the rest of our Old Testament readings - and into the New Testament this promise continues and is fulfilled in Jesus - and continues in us as spiritual descendants of Abram today. I heard somewhere once that one way to paraphrase this promise is "I will bless you, so that you will be a blessing to others." And I think about that today for our own lives. If we have been blessed by God, is it possible that we have been blessed in part so that we will be a blessing to others? Do you believe that you been blessed by God? Are you passing along that blessing to others in your life?

The brief story of Abram and Sarai in Egypt is a foreshadowing of what we will see later in Genesis and into Exodus - the descendents of Abram going into Egypt to escape a severe famine - and then ultimately leaving Egypt to the north "with all their household and belongings" (verse 20). I also was intrigued in our Matthew readings a couple of days ago that Jesus as a child went into Egypt, when Mary & Joseph fled Herod's decree to kill all boys 2 & under around Bethlehem. Egypt plays quite a supporting role in the Bible! Below is a map of Abram's journey that we read about today:

Bible.org's commentary on today's readings in Genesis titled "The Unity of Unbelief" is at this link, "The Call of Abram" is at this link, and "When Faith Fails" is at this link.

New Testament - Okay... as I said above, today is a big day my friends! We are starting the Sermon on the Mount! Whoo-hoo! (are you cheering here with me?? :) And as we do, let me encourage you in a few ways on what we'll be reading here. First of all, personally, these 3 chapters of Matthew (5, 6, 7) have been transformative for me over the years. Before I had faith in Jesus, I would continually read these chapters and I kept thinking to myself - "This guy has got some wisdom! I like what he's saying!" And I do believe that the Spirit was no doubt working on me as I read these chapters. So, I do ask that you would be sensitive to the Spirit as you read The Sermon on the Mount. What is the Spirit speaking to you as you read? Which verses are really jumping out at you - maybe making you think about some areas of your life that might need some tidying up... I know that this happens to me every time I read the Sermon on the Mount. It's probably because of reading chapter 5 today, and the Beatitudes, that I went into my pride / Tower of Babel thing above... :)

Here's my other big request for you as you read through the Sermon on the Mount - and really all of the gospels. Try to experience what you are reading as something more than just "historical" teachings or "historical" readings. Try to envision yourself maybe down at your local park and maybe imagine that Jesus was actually at that park surrounded by a bunch of your neighbors and imagine that you heard Jesus actually saying these words to you and your neighbors - today. Would this change your perception of what you are reading? Or, maybe imagine that indeed Jesus is not just at your local park - but in your very home saying these words to you. And truly - He is - as you are reading the Bible you are hearing directly from Jesus. I just want to encourage you that the words you read here in the Sermon on the Mount are incredible spiritual food. And I don't think we can come back to these 3 chapters of Matthew often enough. I pray that you will let the Spirit of Jesus speak directly into your mind and your heart as you read and meditate on the meanings of these 3 chapters of the gospel of Matthew...

We read the Beatitudes today! I would love to share with you the Beatitudes from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. I really like the way he looks at the Beatitudes -

""You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are--no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being "carefull,' you find yourselves cared for.

"You're blessed when you get your inside world--your mind and heart--put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom." - Matthew 5:3-10 The Message

I know verses 17 & 18 probably are interpreted in different ways - but a friend of mine has encouraged me when in doubt, just stick to the text, which is wise. So, let's look at the Jesus' words here in this text - "Don't misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to fulfill them. I assure you, until heaven and earth disappear, even the smallest detail of God's law will remain until its purpose is achieved." What does the reading of this text say to you?

And now that we've looked at the text... I need to dive into a commentary on these verses... :) I'm quoting this from Tyndale's One Year Bible Companion book - which I have found to be a very helpful commentary to our daily readings: "In the Old Testament, there were 3 categories of law: ceremonial, civil, and moral. 1. The ceremonial law was related specifically to Israel's worship. Its primary purpose was to point forward to Jesus Christ; these laws are therefore no longer necessary after Jesus' death and resurrection. However, the principles behind these laws - to worship and love a holy God - still apply. 2. The civil law applied to daily living in Israel and these laws cannot be followed specifically today in our modern society and culture. But the principles behind theses laws are timeless and should guide our conduct. 3. The moral law (such as the Ten Commandments) is the direct command of God, and requires obedience. The moral law reveals the nature and will of God, and it still applies today." So, there you have it from one evangelical commentary. I know probably different people reading this blog are going to interpret these verses a bit differently. This framework of these 3 categories of laws above and their fulfillment in Jesus I personally have found helpful and agree with. One other commentary I found related to these verses says this: "Christ does not terminate the law. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; we establish the law. (Romans 3:31) The law will always be there to point out what sin is, but the law is not the focus, Christ is the focus. Only He can cleanse, and sanctify and change the heart and mind." Again, I know this can be a hot topic to say the least. I recommend everyone please spend a few minutes reading this wonderful article on this topic from Bible.org titled, "The Mosaic Law: Its Function and Purpose in the New Testament," at this link.

Bible.org's commentary on our readings today in Matthew titled "The Beatitudes" is at this link and "A Pinch of Salt in the Recipe for Persecution" is at this link.

Psalms - I love Psalm 5 verse 3: "Listen to my voice in the morning, LORD. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly." This is a great reminder to pray in the mornings - before we start the hustle and bustle of the day. I know that many of you are reading the One Year Bible readings in the morning, which I think is a great way to start your day! I do see a huge positive difference in my day if I do pray to God in the morning and pray specifically about the upcoming day - and pray for others that I will interact with that day as well. Praise God for the morning!

Actually, while I'm talking about the morning here, let me go off on a tangent if you don't mind... :) I honestly have lived much of my life as a "night owl." I went to bed late and woke up late. And I had all kinds of good "reasons" of why I was a night owl. But, I will be honest here - I don't think being a night owl was good for me. I honestly believe there is so much wisdom in the old adage of "early to bed, early to rise, helps make a person healthy, wealthy and wise." I personally think that being a night owl was a lack of discipline on my part. I don't mean to say all this to make you other night owls out there feel guilty... :) But, I do want to encourage you, in that if you think you are stuck being a night owl the rest of your life, I don't think it is true. I believe you can make the transition to being a morning person. I am an example of someone who has transitioned from being a late-night person to an early-to-bed person. (well, yes, I'm still a bit in the transition phase sometimes it seems...) And I am here to tell you, mornings rock! Early mornings are so beautiful and peaceful! They really are an amazing time of the day to connect with God... Praise God for the morning!

Proverbs - Our readings in Proverbs 1:24-28 today is a great reminder to not ignore an opportunity to gain wisdom when the opportunity comes, or we may regret it later. Is wisdom knocking on your door today? Will you let Wisdom enter in?

Worship God: Psalm 5:3 in today's readings reminded me of the wonderful worship song "A New Hallelujah" by Michael W. Smith. Here's a great live version of the song featuring the African Children's Choir from Uganda!

Have you ever sung "A New Hallelujah" to God? Click here and sing!

Please join me in memorizing and meditating on two verses of Scripture today: "You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:14,16 NIV

Prayer Point: Based on Matthew 5:14,16 above, pray to God that you will let your light shine before others in this new year. Pray that God would show you how we wants you to truly be the light of the world this year. And pray that you will give all of the glory to God for your good deeds.

Comments from You and Questions of the Day: Based on our Psalm 5 reading today, what do you do in the morning to set your mind and heart on God? Is it prayer, reading the Bible, reading other devotions? If you wouldn't mind posting up in the Comments section below, I'd love to hear what others are doing? It always encourages me - and oftentimes gives me other ideas of things I might want to be doing as well. Thanks! Also, what verses or insights stand out to you in today's readings? Please post up by clicking on the "Comments" link below!

God bless,

Mike

p.s. Download our monthly Small Group study notes for our One Year Bible readings at this link.

p.p.s. Download a schedule of our One Year Bible readings for the year in PDF format at this link.

p.p.p.s. I would greatly appreciate it if you would pray for this One Year Bible Blog ministry today. Thanks!
Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Blackstone s vice chairman of multi-asset investing Byron R. Wien on Monday issued his annual list of ten surprises on a number of economic, financial market and political surprises for 2016.

His predictions ranges from Hillary Clintons victory in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, weak U.S. stocks arising from a weak economy, global instability, devaluation of the Chinese yuan, oil languishing at $30 a barrel, and others.

Byron defines a "surprise" as an event that the average investor would only assign a one out of three chance of taking place but which Byron believes is "probable," having a better than 50% likelihood of happening.

Byrons Ten Surprises for 2016 are as follows:

1. Riding on the coattails of Hillary Clinton, the winner of the presidential race against Ted Cruz, the Democrats gain control of the Senate in November. The extreme positions of the Republican presidential candidate on key issues are cited as factors contributing to this outcome. Turnout is below expectations for both political parties.

2. The United States equity market has a down year. Stocks suffer from weak earnings, margin pressure (higher wages and no pricing power) and a price- earnings ratio contraction. Investors keeping larg......................

To view our full article Click here
Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Balter Capital Management has announced the conversion of its two existing hedge funds, Balter European L/S Small Cap Fund the Balter Event-Driven Fund, were converted into liquid mutual funds.

In a statement, Balter said the conversion was done through its Balter Liquid Alternatives LLC unit. The two funds will now trade under the tickers BESMX and BEVIX respectively.

Brad Balter, CEO of Balter Liquid Alternatives LLC said, "Our differentiation in the marketplace is that we succeed in partnering with hedge fund managers on an exclusive basis to provide not only the same strategy, but the same portfolio that the managers' LP structure has. This is a significant evolutionary step in the liquid alternatives space."

The Balter European L/S Small Cap Fund is sub-advised by S. W. Mitchell Capital, a $2 billion European equity specialist based in London, UK. The Fund has an 8+ year record with an annualized return of 10.6%. Portfolio manager Jamie Carter uses a bottom up fundamental security selection process. The fund's investment objective is to generate absolute returns for investors, primarily by investing both long and short in Small Cap European equities. Historical performance of the fund is provided below.

The Balter Event-Driven Fund is sub-advised by Tiburon......................

To view our full article Click here
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"You have something special and important here. Somehow you manage to teach and suggest and introduce the reader to concepts in a way that feels inclusive. Like, we're thinking about it together. Partly it might be because the subject, bottom-up, is innately understood by all of us and so it feels like you're stirring up stuff we already know. But also I think it's because you truly are practiced at connection consciousness and so it's natural for you (I'm guessing) to write about it with a desire to include us. As a reader I was learning more because it feels like you're inviting me to think with you."



Tsara Shelton, author
Many incidents later, including destruction of fencing and more threats, the Hammonds were arrested. This article details the long history of abuses by the Hammonds, and how local anti-government people engaged in threats and intimidation.

Federal Fish and Wildlife Service agents sought to fence off a wetland that had been trampled by a ranchers cows on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. In an affidavit, Earl M. Kisler, a Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement officer, said that rancher Dwight Hammond had repeatedly threatened refuge officials with violence over an eight year period. On one occasion Hammond told the manager of the federal refuge that he was going to tear his head off and sh*t down his neck.

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet (more...)




Naughty Secrets IMG_0781

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Just some of the stories here: Bernie Sanders has generated some of the largest crowds of any candidate for his presidential campaign and surprised pollsters with a strong challenge to the establishment favorite in the race. But good luck hearing about the Vermont senator if youve relied on broadcast media for the news this year. Federal regulators enforcement of what remain of Americas campaign finance laws has all but collapsed . Over the past year, mass incarceration finally became a regular topic of mainstream media headlines. Yet most reports fail to recognize immigration detention (in reality, a form of incarceration) as a facet of the prison industrial complex-more...
This is a reprint from Newsbred.



Saudis have worked up the heat in Middle East

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Saudi Arabia and its cohorts breaking off diplomatic ties with Iran is pure madness and has slid the region closer to a devastating war.

The two countries lead the Sunni, Shia camps in Middle East and presently are waging proxy wars in Yemen and Syria. Lost in the news was the terrible Saudi decision to call off the cease-fire in Yemen. The gloves are truly off.

It delivers a devastating blow to the Syrian peace talks in Vienna where Saudis and Iranians are to sit on the same table on January 25. Lately there's been hope that Syrian peace talks were closer to fruition.

The Saudi action is unlikely to exacerbate Shia-Sunni largely peaceful coexistence in India. Shias number 40 out of 175 million Muslims in India. But Saudi-supported Islamic State (IS) is another matter. Recent report states that as many as 30,000 Indian Shias want to go to Middle East and fight IS or Sunni forces. This is a potential audience for Iran. Those in opposition could flock to Saudi camp.

The year 2016 couldn't have begun on more stupid, insane manner after Saudi Arabia went ahead and executed Shiite cleric Nimr Baq al-Nimr despite repeated warnings from the Iranian quarters. Then Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran was attacked by protestors who smashed windows and furniture and then set the embassy on fire. Iran was quick to arrest demonstrators and pledged to deter future attacks. Saudi Arabia would've none of it.

It usually is the pattern between the two that each provocation is met with escalated provocation from the other side. Now the two sworn enemies apparently have decided to take matters in their own hands and go against the restraining voices of United States and Russia in the background.

United States has been quick to urge restraint and Russia has offered to play peace-broker between the two but so far there has been little response from these two Middle East heavyweights.United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also made phone calls to two camps.

Critics doubt that Saudi Arabia could've executed the revered cleric without consultation with United States; or that it could've broken off the diplomatic relations with Iran without conferring with the superpower.

There are more chances though that Saudi Arabia, by its present act, wants to tell United States to make a choice between them and Iran with whom it's been trying to mend fence lately, including the peace deal of last year.

Saudis have cut all commercial relations and air travel between the two countries which would affect Iranian pilgrims visit to Mecca; and of the Saudi Arabian Shiites to visit Iranian shrines.

It is also bad news for oil-rich region where 20 percent of world's oil traverses every day. The plunge in market showed the concerns. Saudis have been deeply hurt economically by falling oil prices and the anti-Shia plank is their best bet to keep the House of Sauds in power. Newsbred has recently highlighted the collapsing rule of Sauds.

Not to speak for already-marginalized Shias in Saudi Arabia who constitute 15 percent of the country's population and largely reside in country'e eastern province from where, incidentally, Nimr al-Nirm belonged. Saudi Arabia's act could've also been intended to increase sectarian conflict in the country.

It would surely worsen the situation in Iraq where Shias are in majority and where the minority Sunnis expanded their frustration with the creation of Islamic State (IS). It's certainly a boost to IS in terms of recruitments.

Lesser forces such as Bahrain and Sudan have joined Saudis and United Arab Emirates have downgraded their diplomatic relations with Tehran, recalling its ambassador. Turkey and Qatar have so far kept their counsel but could soon show their hands.

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Reprinted from Consortium News

As the New Year dawns, the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks remain firmly in control of Official Washington's storylines -- on Syria, Russia and elsewhere -- even as their policies continue to wreak havoc across the Mideast and threaten the stability of Europe and indeed the future of civilization.

The latest proof of this dangerous reality came when Saudi Arabia's repressive Sunni monarchy executed prominent Shiite political leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr for criticizing the nation's kings and princes. Before the killing, the Obama administration held its tongue in public so as not to antagonize the Saudi royals. (Nimr's nephew awaits Saudi "crucifixion" for his role as a teenager in Arab Spring protests.)

"We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences," State Department spokesman John Kirby said meekly on Sunday, while some senior U.S. officials reportedly seethed in private over the latest Saudi provocation. After the Nimr execution, the State Department issued a mild protest toward the Saudis while blurring the guilt by twinning it with criticism of Iran where outraged protesters damaged the Saudi embassy, which led to Saudi Arabia's retaliatory breaking of relations with Iran.

"This is a dangerous game they are playing," one official told The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung while insisting on anonymity to discuss U.S.-Saudi relations.

But the fact that the Obama administration could not voice its revulsion over the Saudi mass head-chopping (along with some firing squads) for 47 men, including Nimr, over the weekend speaks volumes. President Barack Obama and other insiders continue to tip-toe around the unsavory U.S. "alliances" in the Mideast.

Over the past several years, Saudi Arabia sealed its impervious protection from U.S. government criticism by forming an undeclared alliance with Israel around their mutual hatred of Shiite-ruled Iran and its Shiite allies, a cause picked up by American neocons and shared by the career-oriented liberal interventionists.

Some more "realist-oriented" U.S. officials, reportedly including Obama and some national security aides, recognize the havoc that neocon/liberal-hawk strategies continue to wreak across the region and now spreading into Europe, but they act powerless to do anything bold to stop it.

With Israel's lobby siding with the Sunni states in their bloody rivalry with Shiite states, most U.S. politicians and pundits have scrambled to defend each recurring outrage by the Saudis, Qataris and Turks by trying to flip the script and somehow put the blame on Iran, Syria and Russia.

Getting a Pass

Thus, the Saudis, Qataris and Turks get mostly a pass for arming and enabling radical jihadists, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Israel also provides assistance to Al Qaeda's Nusra Front along the Golan Heights and bombs allies of the Syrian government and, of course, faces no official U.S. criticism.

In 2014, when Vice President Joe Biden blurted out the truth about Saudi support for Islamic terrorism inside Syria, he was the one who had to apologize. [Quote at 53:20 of clip.] In 2015, when Saudi Arabia invaded and bombed Yemen after hyping Iran's support for Houthi rebels, the Obama administration sided with the Saudis even as their wanton attacks on poverty-stricken Yemen killed thousands of civilians and created a humanitarian crisis.

For more than a year after President Obama announced his air war against the Islamic State in summer 2014, Turkey continued to let the terror group run an industrial-style oil smuggling operation from Syria and Iraq through Turkey. Only when Russia entered the conflict last fall was the U.S. government shamed into joining in bombing raids to destroy the truck convoys. Yet, Obama still defended Turkey and bought its promises about finally trying to seal a 100-kilometer gap in its border.

Then, when Turkey retaliated against the Russian anti-terrorist bombing raids inside Syria by willfully shooting down a Russian Su-24 plane whose pilot was murdered after bailing out, Obama again sided with the Turks even though their claim that the Russian plane had violated Turkish air space was dubious at best. By their account, the plane had intruded over a sliver of Turkish territory for 17 seconds.

In other words, whatever these U.S. "allies" do -- no matter how brutal and reckless -- the Obama administration at least publicly rushes to their defense. Otherwise, the neocon/liberal-hawk "group think" would be offended -- and many angry editorials and columns would follow.

While this strange reality may make sense inside Official Washington -- where careerism is intense and offending the Israel Lobby is a sure career killer -- this pusillanimous approach to these grave problems is endangering U.S. national interests as well as the world's future.


Americans Anger Profile

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Chuck Todd gave some results of an Esquire Magazine poll that to many seemed shocking. The angriest Americans are white Americans. Latino and black Americans were not nearly as angry.

Those of us in the socio-economic justice movement, a movement that generally reflects America in its diversity, are not surprised by this and similar polls. One gets angry when promises and expectations are not met.

Americans have been lied to from the inception of our country. Social structures were setup in order to ensure a particular class reigned supreme. White supremacy and racial gradations were used to create a pecking order that worked perfectly as long as those in the lower pecking orders could be exploited or had what to exploit.

The system breaks down when the latter ceases being true. When the supreme class has taken all that it can from the lower pecking orders, it must go up to the next. For many who had not realized that race is nothing more than a social construct, the built-in, 'never have to think about' privilege is now being lost. That causes anger and it causes people to lash out.

So what is the response of the plutocracy to attempt to redirect that anger? Blame the other. Donald Trump does it best but it has been a staple of the Think Tanks on the Right who have implemented the Powell Manifesto over the last several decades.

When real human rights are not codified, these measures can only work temporarily. At a recent Human Rights Conference, David Cobb, Move to Amend's co-founder alluded to the genesis of what is to come.

"Sadly the United States Constitution is a property rights document," Cobb said. "It is not a Human Right's document. We don't have a right to clean air or clean water. We don't have a right to healthcare. We don't have a right to education."

In other words, Americans were never guaranteed humane treatment or humane rights. They were made available as long as it did not infringe on the supreme class.

So what is the solution? In my recent Politics Done Right radio program I had an exchange with a caller with regards to Donald Trump's support from blue-collar white Americans. In that exchange I explained the lie that the plutocracy is using to deflect the anger of white Americans. I then made a stereotypical statement to exemplify the solution. When we unite Appalachia, the ghettos, and the barrios Americans will see that we are really all the same. The plutocracy pits us against each other in order for us to ignore the real genesis of what ails the poor and middle-class. What ails us? An unsustainable economic system that continues to extract our wealth and progressively deteriorates into a system that makes us all indentured servants to the supreme class.

It use to be that only low skill workers needed to be concerned about their economic and employment plight. Now even professionals must worry. The insurance companies dictate to the doctors. The radiologists can either take a cut or X-Rays and scans can be read and interpreted in India. Almost every job can be outsourced leaving a large pool of workers available to compete for jobs that cannot be outsourced at much lower wage rates.

This is what happens when an economic system is more important than humanity. An economic system is man-made. It is not divine. We can choose to ensure that humanity is built into the economic system.

Where are these angry white Americans flocking? To Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. The reality is only one of these guys want to make a systemic change that actual makes humanity a component.
Here's what happened: First, Vladimir Putin made some positive comments about Donald Trump in December. Then a great media controversy erupted in the US denigrating Trump for being praised by Putin. Next, early morning TV host Joe Scarborough baited Trump with a fallacious story about Putin, and Trump fell into the trap. But, then when ABC commentator George Stephanopoulos tried piling on over the Putin remarks, Trump stumped Stephanopoulos.



Scarborough had laid it on the line to Trump: How could he accept the recent accolades of Vladimir Putin? "He kills journalists that don't agree with him," Scarborough cautioned during a December 18 MSNBC interview.



Scarborough pressed Trump to repudiate that practice of Putin's. "You obviously condemn [it], right?"





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I recently spoke at a Jubilee Sunday service in Chatham County, North Carolina and proposed a new tactic in the struggle to ensure that Black Lives Matter and that Black Votes are not taken for granted. Our future and the future of the next 3 generations will be decided by our actions between now and March 15, 2016 (NC Primary Day).

During that first Jubilee JULIUS C. MORELL a native of North Carolina, said that, though he was born in the Old North State, he felt no particular pride in it, I can honestly say that as a North Carolinian, I feel no particular pride in how our state is currently governed. Morell recounted many of the barbarities of Slavery and said that "the present rebellion would have broken out long ago had it not been for the anti-Slavery societies of the North who through their preaching and promises, the slaves were induced to keep quiet."[1]

I have been active in political circles for over 30 years and we were induced to keep quiet and did not hold Democratic Administrations accountable. We kept quiet, we compromised on Criminal Justice reform, on Housing Policy that put our families at risk, on Education Policy, on so called Welfare Reform, we sacrificed our people on the altar of expediency.



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Our current president was induced to keep quiet on matters affecting the Black community. He compromised on so much in his first four years in office that even the white middle class is suffering. Let's remember, who he was listening to in those early years, Rahm Emanuel was his chief of staff and Larry Summers was his chief economic advisor. Summers when he was chief economist for the World Bank advocated exporting polluting industries and dumping toxic wastes to"under-populated countries in Africa" because the economic logic was "impeccable." [2] Brazil's then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: "Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in""[3]

President Obama was induced to keep quiet by these key advisors because he did not want to appear to be the "Black President". So once again, we kept quiet, we had his back and we did not hold his administration accountable to meet the needs of our community. Folks we cannot in 2016 be induced to keep quiet.

If we don't become radical in our thinking the left will take us for granted as they have in the past. We can no longer expect that any party or candidate on the left or the right will address our issues or concerns without a demand, it is NOT in their interest. That is why our actions between now and March 15, 2016 are so important.

The Black Lives Matter Movement is already being congratulated for bringing to other folks attention the facts we face in our communities everyday. We are being told we have won, but the blood of our children still runs red in the streets. No indictments in the case of Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Eric Gardner or Michael Brown. 150 armed terrorists have occupied a federal building, leaving behind video saying they will kill or be killed but there is no wall-to-wall coverage like there was in Ferguson, no tear gas, no calling out of the national guard. It takes 2 seconds to determine that a 13 year old black child is a threat but 150 armed men are "peaceful protesters", how do we change this paradigm?

I am recommending that Black Lives Matter Movement activists and Black Democrats across the country but especially here in NC vote uncommitted in the Presidential race. I want to see Black Lives Matter activists INSIDE the convention hall in Philadelphia demanding action during the first 100 days of the administration; not outside the hall fenced off in demonstration pits.

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Reprinted from Smirking Chimp

We're not supposed to question juries. They're our peers. They put in long hours, working hard essentially for free. Most of all, they see all the evidence. We don't. We have to assume that they know what they're doing.

Sometimes, however, a jury verdict relies on so many false assumptions, baseless assignments of privilege and twisted logic that you have to call it out. The decision of a Cleveland grand jury not to indict the cop who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death is one such time.

Tamir Rice was playing outside his apartment building with a toy gun when a nosy neighbor took it upon himself to do the one thing you should never do in America unless you're absolutely certain there is no other option: call the police. Tamir, the caller told 911, was "probably a juvenile" and that the gun was "probably fake." According to Cleveland police, 911 dispatch didn't relay that information to the two officers who responded, amped up and loaded for bear.

Officer Timothy Loehmann blew Tamir away between 1.5 and 2.0 seconds after arriving at the scene.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty called Tamir's killing the result of a "perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunications."

Stuff happens. (Let's hope the moron who called 911 is happy.)

I don't need to have been a fly on the wall in the grand jury room to conclude they made a bad call.

First: what's with this ridiculous assumption that, if a cop fears for his life, he is justified in instantly escalating the use of violent force to the nuclear option -- firing his semiautomatic pistol into an American citizen?

McGinty, who made it abundantly clear he didn't want anyone indicted, told a press conference that Loehmann feared for his life. So what if he did? Fearing for your life comes with the job, a job that requires common sense and sharp instincts to do well. Like, take a little time to assess a situation before speeding your cruiser up to a possible suspect and popping him faster than it takes to read half this sentence.

Second, whether or not the dispatcher passed on the info that Tamir was probably a kid with a probably fake gun is irrelevant. Who cares what a random nobody who calls 911 says?

There's a phenomenon called "SWATting," in which pranksters (often gamers) call 911 hoping that a heavily-armed paramilitary force descends on an address and freaks out the inhabitants, or perhaps kills them. Callers can understate a threat as well. What if Tamir Rice's gun was real, and he wasn't a kid, and dispatch had failed to forward that information along to the officers? Big duh here: cops need to use their brains to figure out what, if anything, is actually happening at the scene when they respond.

Third, Cleveland's ersatz prosecutors made an awful lot of their assertion that Tamir was "big for his age" and looked older than 12. This is important because, how many 12-year-old boys go on shooting sprees? It can happen. But's it's rare. After I read this Tamir the Giant argument, I looked at his recent photos and was puzzled. He looks exactly like a 12-year-old kid. On the bigger side, sure. But 12. Why did Officer Loehmann think he was older?

Well, his highly abbreviated assessment time -- about 1.75 seconds between screeching to a halt and unloading his service pistol -- may have had something to do with it.

Also, studies have shown that white cops tend to radically overguesstimate the age of black males. "Black 13-year-olds were miscategorized as adults by police officers (average age error 4.59 years)," according to The Washington Post. Yet another argument in favor of insisting that urban cops live in the communities that pay their salaries -- they'll learn what black kids look like.

Nothing can bring back Tamir. But we can learn from his murder. We can take back the assumptions that killed him and countless other young black men.
Reprinted from Dispatches From The Edge

Each year Dispatches From The Edge gives awards to individuals, companies, and governments that make following the news a daily adventure. Here are the awards for 2015

The First Amendment Award to U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter for issuing a new Law Of War manual that defines reporters as "unprivileged belligerents" who will lose their "privileged" status by "the relaying of information" which "could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities." Translation? If you report you are in the same class as members of al-Qaeda.

A Pentagon spokesperson said that the military "supports and respects the vital work that journalists perform." Just so long as they keep what the see, hear, and discover to themselves? Professor of constitutional law Heidi Kitrosser called the language "alarming."

Runner up is the U.S. Military College at West Point for hiring Assistant Professor of Law William C. Bradford, who argues that the military should target "legal scholars" who are critical of the "war on terrorism." Such critics are "treasonous," he says. Bradford proposes going after "law school facilities, scholars' home offices and media outlets where they give interviews." Bradford also favors attacking "Islamic holy sites," even if that means "great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage."

The Little Bo Peep Award for losing track of things goes to the U.S. Defense Department for being unable to account for $35 billion in construction aid to Afghanistan, which is about $14 billion more than the country's GDP. The U.S. has spent $107.5 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan, more than the Marshall Plan. Most of it went to private contractors.

The Pentagon response to the report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan on the missing funds was to declare that all such information was now classified, because it might provide "sensitive information for those that threaten our forces and Afghan forces." It has since partially backed off that declaration.

While it is only pocket change compared to Afghanistan, the Pentagon also could not account for more than $500 million in military aid to Yemen. The U.S. is currently aiding Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf monarchies that are bombing Houthi rebels battling the Yemeni government. Much of that aid was supposed to go for fighting Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), against which the U.S. is also waging a drone war. The most effective foes of AQAP are the Shiite Houthis. So we are supporting the Saudis and their allies against the Houthis, while fighting Al-Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

If the reader is confused, Dispatches suggests taking a strong painkiller and lying down.
Reprinted from Reader Supported News

Without any doubt, the crisis of police use of force, often lethal, against the communities they serve in the United States of America has reached an unprecedented and unacceptable level.

While the killings of people confronted by law enforcement officers continues at record levels, the tenure of the Obama administration has been marked by compassion, but it has also been marked by nearly total inaction.

The Justice Department, under the guidance of then-incoming attorney general Loretta Lynch, in fact stated as an objective greater cooperation with police departments, with no apparent plan whatsoever to confront police killings raging across the nation. Officially, Attorney General Lynch hasn't even recognized that a problem exists. As it stands now, it is the position of the attorney general that local and state police agencies should not even be required to keep statistics on the number of people they kill.

It is left to independent reporting to tabulate the staggering numbers. The Guardian's running count of people killed by police is called The Counted. They list 1,136 people killed by U.S. police in 2015. Also quite helpful are the efforts of a small organization, KilledByPolice.net. They put the number of those killed by police in 2015 at 1,200.

Former attorney general Eric Holder was at least willing to litigate Consent Decrees mandating a few reforms at some departments. However no action was ever filed against any officer for any killing, regardless of the circumstances. Litigation cannot stop a bullet. When the killers go uncharged and unpunished, the killings continue.

The circumstances in many of the cases not only rose to the level of establishing probable cause, they often portrayed conduct on the part of the officers involved that was so brazen as to demand justice. But justice from the Department of Justice was never forthcoming.

The killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann was a stark example of the human cost, the suffering caused by police officers empowered to use lethal force with virtual immunity from prosecution.

The shocking video of Loehmann gunning down a child is just the first piece of evidence in a case that demands action. After shooting the 12-year-old, Loehmann falsified his report to investigators, telling them that he had instructed the child several times to drop the pellet gun he was holding. Loehmann was lying. He simply jumped out of the patrol car and gunned the boy down. No warning, no protocol -- just two bullets.

The presence of a pellet gun in Tamir's possession is used to justify his killing. A completely false premise. In fact, carrying an unconcealed firearm publicly in Ohio is completely legal. A choice made by the voters of that state.

It's not surprising. One of Loehmann's firearms training instructors was so concerned about Loehmann's instability that he literally confiscated Loehmann's guns during a training exercise.

The training instructor, Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence Police Department, described an "emotional meltdown, dangerous loss of composure, dismal handgun performance." Polak concluded, "Individually, these events would not be considered major situations but, when taken together, they show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion, and not following instructions ... I do not believe time nor training will be able to change or correct these deficiencies."

Clearly there was a threat to public safety at the Cudell Recreation Center on November 22nd, 2014, but it was Police Officer Timothy Loehmann, not Tamir Rice. Tamir just paid the price.

The prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, was free to do or say anything he wanted with the Grand Jury convened in the case, and no one is ever allowed to know what that was. There is zero accountability, and as a result zero credibility there. None.

When state and local authorities will not prosecute local police, the last recourse for victims is the United States Department of Justice. You know well that this is your sworn duty.

The inaction of the Obama administration and the Justice Department can only embolden men like Timothy Loehmann. The message is: "Regardless of the facts, federal law enforcement will not intervene." In fact, throughout the entire Obama tenure that has absolutely been the case.


Wake up. It's time to panic!

(Image by Alan Cleaver) Details DMCA



This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

It's time to panic!

As 2015 ended, this country was certifiably terror-stricken. It had the Islamic State (IS) on the brain. Hoax terror threats or terror imbroglios shut down school systems from Los Angeles to New Hampshire, Indiana to a rural county in Virginia. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, citing terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, cancelled a prospective tour of Europe thanks to terror fears, issuing a statement that "orchestra management believes there is an elevated risk to the safety of musicians and their families, guest artists, DSO personnel, and travelling patrons." By year's end, the Justice Department had charged an "unprecedented" 60 people with terrorism-related crimes (often linked to social media exchanges).

While just north of the border Canada's new government and its citizens were embracing the first of 25,000 Syrian refugees in an atmosphere of near celebration, citizens and government officials in the lower 48 were squabbling and panicking about the few who had made it here. ("Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes, posting on Facebook images of snakes and refugees and asking, 'Can you tell me which of these rattlers won't bite you?'")

In the two presidential debates that ended the year, focusing in whole or part on "national security," the only global subject worthy of discussion was -- you guessed it -- the Islamic State and secondarily immigration and related issues. Media panelists didn't ask a single question in either debate about China or Russia (other than on the IS-related issue of who might shoot down Russian planes over Syria) or about the relative success of the French right-wing, anti-Islamist National Front Party and its presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen (even though her American analog, Donald Trump, was on stage in one debate and a significant subject of the other). And that just begins a long list of national security issues that no one felt it worth bringing up, including the fact that in Paris 195 countries had agreed on a potentially path-breaking climate change deal.

As the Dallas Symphony Orchestra signaled, "Paris" now means only one thing in this country: the bloody terror attack on the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theater and related assaults. In fact, if you were following the "news" here as 2015 ended, you might be forgiven for thinking that we Americans lived in a land beset by, and under siege from, Islamic terror and the Islamic State. The latest polls indicate that striking numbers of Americans now view the threat of terrorism as the country's number one danger, see it as a (if not the) critical issue facing us, believe that it and national security should be the government's top priorities, and are convinced that the terrorists are at present "winning."

You would never know that, if you left out what might be called self-inflicted pain like death by vehicle (more than 33,000 deaths annually), suicide by gun (more than 21,000 annually) or total gun deaths (30,000 annually), and fatal drug overdoses (more than 47,000 annually), this is undoubtedly one of the safest countries on the planet. Over these years, the American dead from Islamic terror outfits or the "lone wolves" they inspire have added up to the most modest of figures, even if you include that single great day of horror, September 11, 2001. Include deaths from non-Islamic right-wing acts of terror (including, for instance, Dylann Roof's murders in a black church in Charleston), a slightly more impressive figure in recent years, and you still have next to nothing. Even if you add in relatively commonplace mass shootings, from school campuses to malls to workplaces, that are not defined as "terror," and accept the broadest possible definition of such shootings (a minimum of four killed or injured), you would still have the sort of danger that couldn't be more modest compared to death by vehicle, suicide, or drugs -- phenomena that obsess few Americans.

The Islamic State in Perspective

Still, as 2016 begins, terror remains the 800-pound gorilla (in reality, a marmoset) in the American room and just about the only national security issue that truly matters. So why shouldn't I join the crowd? Who wants to be left in the lurch? But first, I think it makes sense to put the Islamic State in perspective.

Yes, it's a brutal, extreme religious-cum-political outfit, the sort of movement that probably could only arise on a shattered landscape in a shattered region filled with desperate souls looking for any explanation for, or solution to, nightmarish lives. There can be no question that it's had remarkable success. Its self-proclaimed "caliphate" now controls territory the size of (to choose a common comparison) Great Britain with a population of perhaps a few million people. Since there are seldom reporters on the scene (for obvious reasons of health and well-being), we have no idea whether IS has 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 fighters and potential suicide bombers under arms. We do know that those arms (despite a couple of captured tanks) are generally light and the bombs largely of the homemade variety.

The Islamic State has shown quite a knack for generating a stream of revenue from black market oil sales, ransoms from kidnappings, the ransacking of the region's archeological heritage, and wealthy Sunnis elsewhere in the region. In addition, it's been skilled at promoting its "brand" in other parts of the Greater Middle East and Africa, from Afghanistan to Libya, Yemen to Nigeria, where local populations are also facing shattered landscapes, failed states, oppressive governments, and desperation. Finally, thanks to the talents of its social media militants, it's shown a facility for attracting disaffected (and sometimes whacked-out) young Muslims from Europe and even the United States, as well as for inspiring "lone wolves" to acts meant to unnerve its enemies in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere.

So give credit where it's due. Compared to a few training camps in Afghanistan -- the al-Qaeda model before 2001 (and again recently) -- this is no small thing. But the Islamic State should also be put in some perspective. It's not Nazi Germany. It's not the Soviet Union. It's not an existential threat to the United States. It's a distinctly self-limited movement, probably only capable of expanding its reach if even more of the region is laid to waste (as is, for instance, happening in Yemen right now, thanks in large part to a U.S.-backed Saudi war on the Iranian-inclined Houthi rebels).

IS is so deeply sectarian that it can never gain the support of a single Shia, Christian, Alawite, or Yazidi. Its practices, religious and political, are too extreme for many of the Sunnis it might want to appeal to. It is also an embattled movement. It has already lost some of the lands it captured to U.S.-backed Kurds in both Syria and Iraq and to the U.S.-backed, U.S.-equipped, and U.S.-trained Iraqi Army as well as Shiite militias. Its extremity has clearly alienated some of the Sunnis under its control. It's unlikely to take seven decades, as in the case of the Soviet Union, to implode and disappear.

On the other hand, if the Islamic State, at least in its present form, is crushed or driven into some corner and the region is "liberated," one thing is guaranteed -- as images of the rubble and landscapes of skeletal buildings left behind at the "victorious" battle sites of Kobane, Sinjar, Homs, and Ramadi will tell you. Combine the massively bomb-laden, booby-trapped urban areas under Islamic State control, American air power (or, in parts of Syria, the barrel-bombing air force of the government of Bashar al-Assad and now the firepower of Russia), and fierce urban combat, and what may be left in the moment of "victory" could be a region in utter ruins. One expert suggests that it may take decades and cost $200 billion -- three times Syria's prewar gross domestic product -- to rebuild that country, bringing to mind the famed line from Tacitus: "They make a desert and call it peace."

And just remind me, who's going to help with the reconstruction of that shattered land? Donald Trump? Don't count on it. And don't for a second believe that from such devastated worlds nothing worse than the Islamic State can arise.

While we may be talking about a terror machine, IS represents a far more modest and embattled one than its social media propaganda would indicate. Its ability to threaten the U.S. bears little relation to the bogeyman version of it that at present occupies the American imagination. The sole advantage the Islamic State has when it comes to this country is that it turns out to be so easy to spook us.

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Seymour Hersh's recent revelations about an effort by the US military leadership in 2013 to bolster the Syrian army against jihadist forces in Syria shed important new light on the internal bureaucratic politics surrounding regime change in US Middle East policy. Hersh's account makes it clear that the Obama administration's policy of regime change in both Libya and Syria provoked pushback from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

That account and another report on a similar episode in 2011 suggest that the US military has a range of means by which it can oppose administration policies that it regards as unacceptable. But it also shows that the military leadership failed to alter the course of US policy, and raises the question whether it was willing to use all the means available to stop the funnelling of arms to al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups in Syria.

Hersh details a JCS initiative in the summer of 2013 to share intelligence on Islamic State and al-Qaeda organisations with other German, Russian and Israeli militaries, in the belief that the information would find its way to the Syrian army. Hersh reports that the military leadership did not inform the White House and the State Department about the "military to military" intelligence sharing on the jihadist forces in Syria, reflecting the hardball bureaucratic politics practised within the national security institutions.

The 2013 initiative approved by the chairman of the JCS, General Martin Dempsey, was not the first active effort by the US military to mitigate Obama administration regime change policies. In 2011, the JCS had been strongly opposed to the effort to depose the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya led by then secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

When the Obama administration began its effort to overthrow Gaddafi, it did not call publicly for regime change and instead asserted that it was merely seeking to avert mass killings that administration officials had suggested might approach genocidal levels. But the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which had been given the lead role in assessing the situation in Libya, found no evidence to support such fears and concluded that it was based on nothing more than "speculative arguments."

The JCS warned that overthrowing the Gaddafi regime would serve no US security interest, but would instead open the way for forces aligned with al-Qaeda to take over the country. After the Obama administration went ahead with a NATO air assault against the Gaddafi regime the US military sought to head off the destruction of the entire Libyan government. General Carter Ham, the commander of AFRICOM, the US regional command for Africa gave the State Department a proposal for a ceasefire to which Gaddafi had agreed. It would have resulted in Gaddafi's resignation but retain the Libyan military's capacity to hold off jihadist forces and rescind the sanctions against Gaddafi's family.

But the State Department refused any negotiation with Gaddafi on the proposal. Immediately after hearing that Gaddafi had been captured by rebel forces and killed, Clinton famously joked in a television interview, "We came, we saw, he died" and laughed.

By then the administration was already embarked on yet another regime change policy in Syria. Although Clinton led the public advocacy of the policy, then CIA director David Petraeus, who had taken over the agency in early September 2011, was a major ally. He immediately began working on a major covert operation to arm rebel forces in Syria. The CIA operation used ostensibly independent companies in Libya to ship arms from Libyan government warehouses to Syria and southern Turkey. These were then distributed in consultation with the United States through networks run by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The plan went into operation within days of Gaddafi's death on October 20, 2011 just before NATO officially ended its operation at the end of that month, as the DIA later reported to the JCS.

But the result of the operation was to accelerate the dominance of al-Qaeda and their Islamist allies. The Turks, Qataris and Saudis were funnelling arms to al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise, al-Nusra Front or other closely related extremist groups. That should not have surprised the Obama administration. The same thing had happened in Libya in spring 2011 after the Obama administration had endorsed a Qatari plan to send arms to Libyan rebels. The White House had quickly learned that the Qataris had sent the arms to the most extremist elements in the Libyan opposition.

The original Petraeus covert operation ended with the torching of the US consulate in Benghazi in September 2012 in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. It was superseded by a new program under which Qatar and Saudi Arabia financed the transfer of weapons from other sources that were supposed to be distributed in cooperation with CIA officials at a base in southern Turkey. But "thousands of tons of weapons" were still going to groups fighting alongside the jihadists or who actually joined them as Vice-President Joe Biden revealed in 2014.

By spring 2013, al-Nusra Front and its Islamic extremist allies were already in control of wide areas in the north and in the Damascus suburbs. The Islamic State had separated from al-Nusra Front and established its own territory south of the Turkish border. The secular armed opposition had ceased to exist as a significant force. The "Free Syrian Army," the nominal command of those forces, was actually a fiction within Syria, as was reported by specialists on the Syrian conflict. But despite the absence of a real "moderate opposition," the Obama administration continued to support the flood of arms to the forces fighting to overthrow Assad.

In mid-2013, as Hersh recounts, the DIA issued an intelligence assessment warning that the administration's regime change policy might well result in a repeat of what was already happening in Libya: chaos and jihadist domination. The JCS also pulled off a clever manoeuvre to ensure that the jihadists and their allies were getting only obsolete weapons. A JCS representative convinced the CIA to obtain much cheaper arms from Turkish stocks controlled by officials sympathetic to the CIA's viewpoint on Syria.

But the JCS failed to alter the administration's policy of continuing to support the flow of arms into Syria. Did the military leadership really use all of its leverage to oppose the policy?

In 2013, some officials on the US National Security Council staff pushed for a relatively modest form of pressure on Qatar to get it to back off its continued supply of arms to extremists, including al-Nusra Front, by pulling out a US fighter squadron from the US air base at al-Udeid in Qatar. But as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, the Pentagon, obviously reflecting the JCS position, vetoed the proposal, arguing that the forward headquarters of the Central Command at the airbase was "vital" to US operations in the Middle East.

The political implications of the episode are clear: bureaucratic self-interest trumped the military's conviction that US security is being endangered. No matter how strongly the JCS may have felt about the recklessness of administration policy, they were not prepared to sacrifice their access to military bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Turkey to pressure their Middle Eastern allies.
As roughly 20 militants continue to occupy a federal wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon, observers are left scratching their heads. Why would an out-of-state rancher lead a self-styled militia in defending federal land far from home?

Because God told him to, Ammon Bundy said in a YouTube video posted Friday. Bundy is a son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher known for his stand-off with the federal government over cattle grazing.

In the video, Bundy, who is Mormon, said he believed God wanted him to defend Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, a father-and-son duo convicted of arson on federal land in Oregon.

"The Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds," Bundy said in the video. "If we allowed the Hammonds to continue to be punished, there would be accountability."

Bundy and his brothers were among hundreds who protested Saturday on behalf of the Hammonds and later led a group of about 20 to take over an office at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

One militant interviewed by Oregon Public Broadcasting only identifies himself as Captain Moroni, a historic general who, according to church scripture, threatened to "stir up insurrections" and fight "until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct" because he felt the government did not care about the country's freedom.

"I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear," Moroni said in the Book of Alma, "and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country."

In a deep dive into the Bundy brand of Mormonism, OPB explains the significance of one militant's insistence on identifying as the church hero:

"That name is not a silly response to deflect responsibility: In many ways, it encapsulates a deeply intertwined anti-federal sentiment mixed with Mormon symbolism... In the modern day west, Captain Moroni has become one of several powerful symbols for the Bundy militia's anti-governmental extremism."

Tension has existed between government and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the faith's inception. In 1838, the governor of Missouri signed an order that Mormons be killed or driven from the state, and in 1858 the U.S. Army marched on Salt Lake City in what became known as the Utah War.

"There is this persecution complex that Mormons have and have had for a long time," Steve Evans, editor of Mormon blog By Common Consent, told BuzzFeed News.

Though negotiators settled the 1858 conflict before Mormon militants faced off with the Army, the Smithsonian Magazine explains the so-called war was significant:

"The Utah War culminated a decade of rising hostility between Mormons and the federal government over issues ranging from governance and land ownership to plural marriage and Indian affairs."

Even then, land use was among the chief disagreements.

Mormons consider the U.S. Constitution divinely inspired, making federal misbehavior -- or the perception thereof -- more serious than mere politics.

Bundy has repeatedly said he feels the federal government is veering from the Constitution and must be stopped, rhetoric scholar Susanna Morrill said is consistent with early Mormon teaching.

Morrill, a Lewis and Clark College professor who has studied Mormonism for 20 years, said leaders in the nineteenth-century Church of Latter-day Saints spoke about the country heading the wrong direction. They considered themselves divinely-appointed leaders who would turn things around.

But after decades of conflict with the government over polygamy in the 1800s, Morrill said, church leaders encouraged patriotism. In the media, Mormons have become poster children for conservative America.

Bundy's rhetoric, though consistent with some scripture and early Mormon teaching, is considered extreme. Mormons have distanced themselves from the Bundy's expression of faith and condemned law-breaking in the name of God. Morrill is skeptical about attributing Bundy's motives entirely to faith.

"While the Mormon stuff seems important, it also seems like these folks just have their own agenda and may be using Mormonism for that," she said.

Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement Monday condemning militants' actions:

"Church leaders strongly condemn the armed seizure of the facility and are deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles. This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis."

-- Melissa Binder

mbinder@oregonian.com

503-294-7656

@binderpdx
CX7RSnNW8AA2xaj.jpg

(Courtesy of @sambeebe/Twitter)

Apparently, in the the process of planning for

in Burns, everyone remembered to bring their extra camo cargo pants but no one packed snacks.

On Monday, the group - known as Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, the #TaliBanjo or Y'all Qaeda, depending on who's doing the talking -- sent out a social media plea for snacks to sustain them through their wait-and-see standoff with law enforcement.

On Reddit, people are already preparing care packages for the long eastern Oregon winter. However, the suggested treats, including glitter, diapers and baby food, may not to be the militants' liking.

That's sweet. But these dudes are hungry.

So I've decided to put together my ultimate list of the best snacks to send to a self-styled militiaman from another state holed up in the middle of nowhere in your state.

Note: This is intended to be satire, with the hope that we can laugh about this whole crazy mess when it's over (and soon).

I'm assuming they have a sense of humor. I mean, they did decide to make their big stand against the government at a closed avifauna sanctuary that no one had heard of until this week. (Speaking of which, they better think up an exit plan before miffed bird watchers show up in the spring and take matters into their own hands.)

Of course, the skewering of the self-styled militiamen on the Internet seems to have no end. The latest parody meme takes on the "Daddy Swore an Oath" video posted by Jon Ritzheimer, whom Talking Points Memo describes as "the notorious anti-Muslim activist and one ringleader of the ongoing protest."

The KISS Army video is the best.

-- Drew Vattiat of The Oregonian contributed to this story.

-- Joseph Rose

503-221-8029

jrose@oregonian.com

@josephjrose
After a year of public forums and hours of rule-making, Oregon on Monday opened its application process to anyone interested in entering the country's newest regulated marijuana market.

The license paperwork appeared online at 6 a.m. By noon, 70 people had slogged through the application, which asked for everything from security plans to electrical and water use information. The agency said it had received 36 applications from producers, 18 for retail locations, eight for processors and eight for wholesalers.

Unlike Washington, where the state capped how many licenses it issued to growers and retailers, Oregon has no limits. A report prepared by the liquor commission estimates the state will issue a total of 850 recreational marijuana licenses by the end of 2017.

Steve Marks, executive director of the liquor control commission, said the agency will prioritize applications, reviewing those for outdoor production facilities and laboratories first.

The state wants to sign off on licenses for outdoor production so growers can get the crop in the ground in time to have products ready for the retail market later this year. Marijuana sold in recreational marijuana establishments, as well as medical dispensaries, must undergo testing for potency and pesticides, thus liquor control officials plan to prioritize lab applications as well.

The agency initially planned to staff a call center with policy advisors to answer questions from applicants as they went through the process Monday. However, the weather-related closure of state offices in Portland complicated that. The agency plans to open the center on Tuesday provided weather conditions improve.

Amy Margolis, a lawyer with Emerge Law Group, which represents cannabis businesses, said she expects her firm to file about 30 applications by the end of the week.

She said the forms are time-intensive and somewhat inefficient, but the system appears to be working. Her firm fielded calls throughout the day, she said, from clients struggling with the forms and their request for a blizzard of detailed information.

"My hope is that as we submit more of these, that familiarity will breed some contentment with this process," she said.

Though the state agency will review applications as they come in, Marks said regulators aren't likely to approve any until after the Oregon Legislature meets next month. Lawmakers are expected to take up some marijuana-related issues that may impact the licensing process, such as requirements related to out-of-state investments.

Marks said the agency also expects to receive a lot of requests to waive certain requirements, particularly those related to security in outdoor grow sites, where locations may be out of the way and already shielded from view. He said reviewing and authorizing waivers will add to the time it takes to process each application.

While the Oregon Health Authority oversees medical marijuana, including dispensaries that for now may sell to recreational consumers, the recreational marijuana industry will shift entirely to the liquor commission by year's end.

The commission will employ 33 people, including 11 inspectors, to oversee recreational pot.

The agency plans to spend $92,000 a year in subscription fees for the online application system, which did not seem to experience any major glitches on its first day. It spent another $1.8 million on a system that will track cannabis from seed to sale.

Growers and others required to use the system will be trained starting next month, Marks said.

Meanwhile, applicants hunkered down Monday to complete the forms.

Case Van Dorne and Joel Jennings, both longtime cannabis growers who own Five Zero Trees, with locations in Southeast and Southwest Portland, checked into the downtown Hilton early Monday to work on their applications. They plan to apply for licenses to grow, process and sell recreational cannabis.

With ESPN on in the background, Jennings documented the electrical appliances and lighting they plan to use and a breakdown of their expected kilowatt. Van Dorne, meanwhile, separated the rest of the application into parts, stacking them into neat labeled piles spread out on a bed.

Jennings and Van Dorne spent the past month gathering everything they need for the applications. They've collected documents related to water rights, site plan development and security.

The pair left their busy shops to their employees to manage for three days so they can focus on getting the forms to the state his week.

"We don't need anyone disturbing us," said Jennings. "This is the most important thing in our lives right now. We have been thinking about this day for a year and a half."

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
1militia.JPG

LaVoy Finicum, 55, a rancher from Mojave County, Arizona, and neighbor of Cliven Bundy, has joined militia members at the Malheur National Wildlife headquarters in Burns.

(Mark Graves/Staff)

By Janell Ross

As of Sunday afternoon, The Washington Post called them "occupiers." The New York Times opted for "armed activists" and "militia men." And The Associated Press put the situation this way: "A family previously involved in a showdown with the federal government has occupied a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon and is asking militia members to join them."

Not one seemed to lean toward terms such as "insurrection," "revolt," anti-government "insurgents" or, as some on social media were calling them, "terrorists." When a group of unknown size and unknown firepower has taken over any federal building with plans and possibly some equipment to aid a years-long occupation - and when its representative tells reporters that they would prefer to avoid violence but are prepared to die - the kind of almost-uniform delicacy and the limits on the language used to describe the people involved becomes noteworthy itself.

It is hard to imagine that none of the words mentioned above - particularly "insurrection" or "revolt" - would be avoided if, for instance, a group of armed black Americans took possession of a federal or state courthouse to protest the police. Black Americans outraged about the death of a 12-year-old boy at the hands of police or concerned about the absence of a conviction in the George Zimmerman case have been frequently and inaccurately lumped in with criminals and looters, described as "thugs," or marauding wolf packs where drugs are, according to CNN's Don Lemon, "obviously" in use.

If a group of armed Muslims took possession of a federal building or even its lobby to protest calls to surveil the entire group, it's even more doubtful they could avoid harsher, more-alarming labels.

In fairness to those assembled in Oregon, it is true that there have been no reports of actual violence, injury or anyone being held inside the Oregon building against their will.

And in the interim, some may feel particularly inclined to take real care with the language used to describe the situation so as not to inflame it or offend people who, in some cases, have already been troubled by the decision to charge a father and son pair of ranchers with arson under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The charge not only carries what many of the rancher's supporters believe to be an unjust five-year jail term, but it brings the very same t-word into the mix.

For those who know the father and son - Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond - personally, it is understandable that they would disagree vehemently with any government action that implies that the men they know as engaged members of the community are terrorists. But one really cannot help but wonder where similar outrage lives when data clearly indicate that black Americans are far more likely than white ones to face serious charges and jail time rather than misdemeanor penalties for resisting arrest. Where has the lock-step adherence to careful and delicate language been in all of 2015 when unarmed black Americans were disproportionately more likely to be killed by police than others?

Beyond that seeming incongruity, the Hammonds are not among the occupiers. The man who has helped to organize the building occupation in Oregon is Ammon Bundy. Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who engaged in a standoff in 2014 with the government over grazing rights. And the younger Bundy has, again, described the occupiers as "armed" and prepared to die.

The armed occupation of a federal building might be what Bundy considers an assertion of rights and a mere gathering in a taxpayer-financed space. But it would seem to contain the real risk of violence, serious injury or even death.

Deliberate language choices are always a wise and reasonable move. That is especially true when telling stories of conflict with government and political protests. But the incredibly limited and relatively soft range of words in wide use Sunday seems to extend beyond all of that. The descriptions of events in Oregon appear to reflect the usual shape of our collective assumptions about the relationship between race and guilt - or religion and violent extremism - in the United States.

White Americans, their activities and ideas seem always to stem from a font of principled and committed individuals. As such, group suspicion and presumed guilt are readily perceived and described as unjust, unreasonable and unethical.

You will note that while the group gathered in Oregon is almost assuredly all or nearly all white, that has scarcely been mentioned in any story. You will note that nothing even close to similar can be said about coverage of events in Missouri, Maryland, Illinois or any other place where questions about policing have given way to protests or actual riots.

You will note the extended debate about whether admitted Charleston shooter Dylann Roof's apparently racially motivated shooting spree was an act of terrorism or even violent racism and the comparatively rapid way that more than one news organization began hinting at and then using terms such as Islamic extremism to describe the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

The sometimes-coded but increasingly overt ways that some Americans are presumed guilty and violence-prone while others are assumed to be principled and peaceable unless and until provoked - even when actually armed - is remarkable.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post
For years, the Daily News has editorialized on the many dangers of the Asian carp.

Weve urged Congressional action. Weve highlighted the problem in a number of ways.

This week, more bad news has come to light.

A scientific report says if Asian carp become established in Lake Erie, they eventually could make up about one-third of the lakes combined fish weight and cause drop-offs in other fish species, according to a story by the Associated Press.

The study was based on computer modeling and interviews with experts. It was conducted by scientists with several universities and government agencies in the U.S. and Canada.

Asian carp  which eat tiny plants and animals that other fish need  were imported to the southern U.S. from Asia decades ago and have migrated northward.

Lake Erie, which has the most abundant fish population of all the Great Lakes, now appears vulnerable to the carp. The study says a successful Asian carp takeover could reduce numbers of walleye and rainbow trout, along with prey species including gizzard shad and emerald shiners.

In September, eight Michigan lawmakers sent a bipartisan letter urging President Barack Obama to extend funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative into 2017.

Forty-six lawmakers from the House 32 Democrats and 14 Republicans signed the request to continue funding of the program at $300 million, the same level as recent years. It was supported by U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Midland.

In December, Congress approved the Fiscal Year 2016 Omnibus Appropriations Act (signed into law by President Obama on Dec. 18), giving the U.S. Department of Treasury the ability to fund efforts in the fight against Asian carp and other Great Lakes restoration and protection efforts. The bill has $300 million in funding for the multiyear plan aimed at restoring and preserving the Great Lakes by eliminating toxins, combating invasive species and promoting the general health of the Great Lakes, among other measures, while also formally establishing the program into law. It also will direct the Army Corps of Engineers to quickly establish emergency procedures to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes, while accelerating ongoing efforts to find a strong solution.

People of our region love the Great Lakes and our nations leaders have clearly heard the unifying call to protect them, Joel Brammeier, Alliance for the Great Lakes president and CEO, said on the groups website. The public demands clean water, safe beaches and a halt to new invasions by species such as Asian carp. We are pleased the Great Lakes congressional delegation worked to include critical provisions to protect and restore the Great Lakes in the (2016 federal) budget.

Now, more than ever, we support federal programs that battle against Asian carp, other invasive species and anything else that could possibly harm the Great Lakes.
The following list includes reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department.

Sunday, Jan. 3

2:23 a.m.  A motorist was arrested in the 600 block of East Ellsworth Street for drunken driving.

3:04 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at North Waldo and East Wheeler roads for drunken driving.

3:40 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at Washington Street and Discovery Way for drunken driving and drug possession.

5:35 p.m.  Deputies were called to a Jerome Township campground for a report of a disorderly person.

6:41 p.m.  A deputy was sent to Hope Township for a report of a crash involving an Amish horse and buggy. It was found the accident occurred in Gladwin County, and authorities from that county handled the accident.

10:26 p.m.  A motorist was arrested in the 1000 block of East Pine Street for driving on a suspended license.

Saturday, Jan. 2

11:11 a.m.  A motorist was arrested at Waldo and James Savage roads for driving on a suspended license, no insurance, unregistered vehicle and improper plate.

12:47 p.m.  Deputies assisted state police in Mills Township with a report of fleeing suspects. Arrested were a Mills Township man, 36, for drug possession and a Gladwin County warrant, and a Mills Township woman, 38, for a Midland County warrant. A tracking dog also was called to the scene.

1:09 p.m.  Tools, valued at a total of $2,108, were stolen from an Edenville Townships home and barn. The case is being investigated.

1:56 p.m.  An Edenville Township woman, 31, was arrested in Jerome Township for drunken driving after a deputy responded to a report of an erratic driver. She was cited for driving with an expired license and expired registration.

3:51 p.m.  Deputies are investigating a breaking and entering that occurred in Warren Township. Property, valued at a total of $327, was stolen.

3:54 p.m.  Gasoline, valued at $10, was stolen from a Greendale Township gas station.

7:49 p.m.  A deputy went to a Greendale Township home and collected ammunition for a 77-year-old woman who asked for it to be disposed.

9:41 p.m.  A motorist was arrested at Michigan and Washington streets for driving on a suspended license.

Friday, Jan. 1

12:24 a.m.  Deputies were sent to a Lee Township home for a report of a fight. No fight was found and no one at the scene knew anything about a fight.

1:14 a.m.  A deputy responded to a Lee Township home for a report of a person the residents did not know who was knocking on the door. Found was a Lee Township man, 34, who was intoxicated, lost and trying to walk home from a bar. He was taken to his home and left with his roommate.

8:46 p.m.  A Midland woman, 22, was cited for no insurance and seat belt violation after a traffic stop in Larkin Township.

Thursday, Dec. 31

10:44 a.m.  A deputy was sent to South Meridian and East Chippewa River roads for a report of a two-vehicle crash. A report listing a charge of drugged driving is being sent to the prosecutor.

10:56 a.m.  A deputy responded to a report of a truck traveling 90 mph and cutting between other vehicles in Lee Township. The driver, a 17-year-old Lee Township male, was spoken to. The deputy did not see any reckless driving.
PHUKET, Thailand (NNS) -- The littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) arrived in Phuket, Thailand for the first time Dec. 30 for a scheduled port visit.

The visit allows the independently deployed ships the opportunity to experience the local culture and customs, enjoy a variety of recreational activities and participate in a community service event.

"I first visited Phuket 15 years ago and it's great to be back," said Cmdr. Michael Atwell, Fort Worth commanding officer. "I know our Sailors will enjoy it here and this is a great way for them to be good ambassadors of the United States while meeting the warm and friendly people of Thailand."

In addition to the community service event, the ship's Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) program representative informed Sailors about opportunities for tours.

"One of the advantages of LCS is that we have a small crew and it opens up more affordable and diverse options when we pull into port because we don't need to book tours for large groups of Sailors," explained Naval Aircrewman-Tactical Helicopter 1st Class William Petri, Fort Worth's MWR representative. "Unlike larger platforms, we have a relatively smaller footprint and that allows us to collectively experience more."

In an effort to increase integration between the U.S. and partner nations in Southeast Asia, Fort Worth embarked one naval officer from Sri Lanka and one coast guard officer from the Maldives prior to making the transit to Phuket. The embarked officers stood watch with the crew of Fort Worth and participated in underway operations, gaining firsthand knowledge of what life is like on the Navy's newest class of ship.

Fort Worth is the second LCS to deploy as part of an initiative for up to four rotational deployments of these ships simultaneously to U.S. 7th Fleet in the coming years. Fast, agile and mission-focused, littoral combat ships are designed to operate in near shore environments and employ modular mission packages that can be configured for surface warfare, mine countermeasures or anti-submarine warfare.

The U.S. 7th Fleet conducts forward-deployed naval operations in support of U.S. national interests in the Indo-Asia-Pacific area of operations. As the U.S. Navy's largest numbered fleet, 7th Fleet interacts with 35 other maritime nations to build maritime partnerships that foster maritime security, promote stability and prevent conflict.
BLOOMINGTON  CliftonLarsonAllen, a national certified public accounting and consulting company headquartered in Minneapolis, has acquired a second accounting firm in the Twin Cities.

Guthoff Mehall Allen & Co. in east Bloomington joined CLA, effective Friday.

"Joining CLA allows us to offer deeper resources and expertise to our clients, while retaining the close, personal attention our clients expect and appreciate from a small firm, said Guthoff Mehall Allen partner Richard Mehall.

CLA  with nearly 4,000 employees, more than 90 U.S. locations and a global affiliation  provides wealth advisory, auditing and other specialized accounting services, including payroll processing, business evaluations, preparation of various tax returns and assistance with international business expansion.

"Guthoff Mehall Allen had the culture that we felt fit best with our firm," said Steve J. DeBruyn, who oversees CLA operations in Illinois and other parts of the Midwest. "The firm years ago had gotten into the wealth advisory practice, which is something we do, too."

Guthoff Mehall Allen principal partners Mehall and Cathy Allen and their eight employees will continue to serve clients at their current location, 2710 E. Lincoln St.

CLA's first acquisition in the Twin Cities was the Illinois Agricultural Auditing Association in April 2014, said DeBruyn. CLA maintains that office, with about 20 employees, at 318 Susan Drive, Normal.

The two offices will continue to operate as separate offices for the time being, but CLA is looking to combine them into one, said DeBruyn. He added a new location in Bloomington-Normal for the consolidated office has not been determined.
NORMAL  Demolition of the old Feeney Dining Center is under way at Illinois State University as interior work continues in the closed residence halls on either side.

The plan is to do Feeney first, said David Gill, ISU director of facilities planning. That will be followed by Whitten-Hamilton, then Atkin-Colby residence halls along busy Main Street in Normal.

It's going to take awhile, he said.

Gill said Feeney's demolition should be done by mid-February. Whitten-Hamilton isn't expected to be down until April 1, with Atkin-Colby following about a month later, he said.

Dore & Associates is the contractor for the $3.9 million demolition project.

The residence halls have been vacant for three years and Normal City Manager Mark Peterson said it will be nice to have the buildings down and the property cleaned up.

The town expects to start construction this spring on a fire station south of the buildings site. Peterson said the town hopes to have the station completed by the end of 2016, although it could go into early 2017.

Gill said asbestos abatement is complete at Feeney and Whitten-Hamiliton, but is not quite complete at Atkin-Colby, adding the contractor also is doing interior demolition, such as taking out non-load-bearing walls and partitions.

Although there was speculation  serious or joking  that the 10-story buildings could be imploded, perhaps using the event as a fundraiser, that wasn't really an option. Gill explained that implosion wasn't possible because the site is next to a state highway, which would have to be closed  something the state doesn't want to do.

Instead, the demolition method is up to the contractor, and Gill said, most likely, will be a large wrecking ball.

Gill said the project has been going relatively smoothly.

A separate contractor will be hired for the next phase  landscaping, a parking lot and other improvements.

Peterson said there is continuing interest in the Main Street corridor, noting, "Over the past 10 years, the corridor has seen a lot of new investment," including restaurants and apartment buildings.

The town is hoping to work with the Illinois Department of Transportation on a study of pedestrian routes to improve the sidewalk network and pedestrian crossings, he said.

Normal also wants to do some beautification work along the corridor, said Peterson, noting that "will dovetail well with the long-range plan of the university."

Gill said, The Campus Master Plan calls for the site to house the Mennonite College of Nursing building.

But when that building will be built is anyone's guess.

The college is spread out over several locations on campus. A building to bring the classrooms, offices and lab spaces under one roof has been on the university's capital improvements request list for several years. It is highly dependent on the state having a capital projects program.

In the capital improvements request for fiscal year 2017 approved by the ISU Board of Trustees in October, the Mennonite College of Nursing building was ranked second on the university's priority list, behind rehabilitation of Milner Library.

The estimated cost of the building in that latest request is $28.3 million.

Whitten-Hamilton opened in 1960, followed two years later by Atkin-Colby. Together, they housed about 1,500 students. Their life as residence halls ended in the summer of 2012. Compliance with a state law requiring the buildings to be retrofitted with sprinklers by 2013 was deemed too expensive by university officials.
BLOOMINGTON  McLean County Board Chairman Matt Sorensen is accused of defrauding State Farm of more than $400,000 in unearned consulting fees.

The eight-count federal indictment was filed Monday in Chicago against Sorensen and co-defendant Navdeep Arora, a former partner at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which was hired as a consultant by State Farm.

Sorensen, who left State Farm three years ago, worked as an internal consultant at the insurer, according to the charges. His job involved determining whether to hire outside consultants, including McKinsey, the indictment said.

Sorensen and Arora, who supervised McKinsey's work for State Farm, allegedly billed clients through two companies, Gabriel Solutions and Andy's BCB, for consulting work that never was performed.

Arora, who worked on State Farm projects from 2003 to 2012, is accused of stealing more than $890,000 through fraudulent invoices and expenses submitted to State Farm and several other clients. That included the more than $400,000 Sorensen allegedly received, according to the charges.

The indictments were returned by a grand jury in August but sealed until Arora's arrest on Sunday in New York.

State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said Tuesday the allegations involve "a matter we discovered and shared with the U.S. attorney's office in April 2012, and on which we fully cooperated throughout the investigation."

Sorensen is accused of keeping more than $370,000 paid to Gabriel Solutions and nearly all of the $38,265 paid to Andy's BCB for work that was never performed.

Sorensen, who now is self-employed as a data management consultant, did not respond Tuesday to The Pantagraph's request for comment.

Sorensen has not worked for State Farm for more than three years and the insurer has had no contractual relationship with McKinsey since June 2012, said Supple.

Sorensen, 49, is scheduled for a Jan. 11 arraignment in federal court in Chicago.

It is not unusual for U.S. citizens to remain free while federal charges for financial crimes are pending. In the case of Arora, he was living in London and may be considered a flight risk by federal officials.

Arora, 51, was arrested Sunday as he stepped off a flight from London, where he lives and works for KPMG.

He was jailed in lieu of posting $1 million bond. He is due in court Wednesday for a bond hearing in New York before he is transferred to Chicago to face charges.

In addition to the phony consulting fees, federal officials also allege that Arora billed State Farm and other clients for more than $400,000 in fraudulent travel and expenses. Trips to Scottsdale, Ariz., Napa, Calif., Vail, Colo., Miami, Fla., Las Vegas, New York, London and Prague were among the locations listed in indictments related to Arora's personal travel billed to his clients.
BLOOMINGTON  A Florida man who represented himself during a 2011 trial agreed Monday to accept a lawyer's help for a second sentencing hearing in his marijuana trafficking case.

Charles Hamilton was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2013 for having 60 pounds of marijuana in his truck when he was stopped by police in McLean County.

Hamilton, 61, was convicted in a jury trial in which he served as his own lawyer. He admitted he accepted $15,000 as payment to transport the drug to Chicago.

Last year, the Fourth District Appellate Court ruled the 22-year prison term was appropriate, but the state Supreme Court said Hamilton should have a new sentencing hearing on the issue of his criminal history.

On Monday, Hamilton met briefly with public defender Brian McEldowney before a hearing to discuss his case. McEldowney continued as Hamilton's lawyer.

At his first sentencing hearing, Judge Robert Freitag was told by prosecutors that Hamilton was previously convicted of felony burglary, assault and cocaine possession.

Hamilton challenged the cocaine charge, saying Georgia officials erred in identifying him as committing that offense.

First Assistant State's Attorney Adam Ghrist said Monday the state has confirmed that a different man named Charles Hamilton was convicted of the drug charge.

A March 4 hearing has been set on the issue of whether a new sentence should be imposed in light of the error in Hamilton's criminal history.
BLOOMINGTON  James "Jim" Finnegan, a former alderman who served Bloomington's Ward 5 for 12 years, is being remembered for his loyal service on the City Council, to State Farm and organizations for which he volunteered.

Finnegan, 82, died Sunday at his home.

"I remember Jim as a practical voice of reason on the City Council," former Mayor Steve Stockton said Monday. "When the council was split on something, Jim was always somebody you could count on to help bring the council together, usually with a practical solution."

Finnegan, first elected in April 1997 without opposition, had already been an alderman for eight years when Stockton was elected mayor in 2005. After three terms on the council, Finnegan did not seek re-election in the spring of 2009.

Finnegan occasionally brought humor "usually a wry humor"  to the council's discussions, said Stockton.

Ward 6 Alderman Karen Schmidt, who has served on the council since 1999, admired Finnegan for his directness and candor.

"I could always count on him to give me solid advice," she said. "He was not a political person. He spoke directly from what he believed. He spoke his truth. We could disagree, and he was always respectful."

In addition to serving on the council with Finnegan more than eight years, Ward 9 Alderman Jim Fruin said he worked with him at State Farm. They also attended the same church, Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Bloomington.

"He was very dedicated to his family, his faith and his community," said Fruin. "He was very proud of his family. His wife, Jo, was always at his side. I remember Jim as being very respected on the City Council and at State Farm."

Finnegan retired in 1998 after 35 years with State Farm.

Also a co-worker at State Farm, Stockton said he developed a respect for Finnegan.

"He bridged his longtime career in the claims department with a second career in the purchasing department, where he helped set up the State Farm replacement service," said Stockton. "He was always looking for ways to help improve the company's service to its policyholders."

Finnegan was active in his church and Golden Kiwanis Club and volunteered for other Twin City organizations, including the Prairie Aviation Museum, Heart Menders at Advocate BroMenn Medical Center and The Salvation Army. He also was active in the McLean County Republican Party.

"He was always very loyal to the organizations that he served," said Stockton. "He loved Bloomington and the Bloomington-Normal community. I think he always looked for ways that he could contribute to the well-being of the community."
NORMAL  Officials said Monday they're concerned how vehicle and foot traffic will interact with the new Normal Fire Department headquarters station to be built starting this summer on Main Street.

"This is going to be a change for us because we're going to a much more urban-type setting where there's going to be a lot more pedestrians, a lot more cars," said Fire Chief Mick Humer of the site in the 600 block of South Main, near Illinois State University. "We'll be very cautious."

Humer and representatives of BLDD Architects of Bloomington described their ideas to address those issues during an update for the Normal City Council. Members received the first sketches of the building, which will feed trucks onto Dale and Osage streets.

Carson Durham, a principal at BLDD architects, said the company designed the building with visibility for cars and pedestrians in mind and will ask for code variances to help. Humer added the department will manipulate traffic signals like it does at its current stations to alleviate road congestion.

"The engineer (on the fire truck) is going to ... approach that slowly and carefully like they would any busy intersection," said City Manager Mark Peterson.

Council member Kathleen Lorenz also questioned a request to change the project's cost from $7 million to $7.96 million. That includes an additional $384,000 on top of $517,000 previously allocated by contract to BLDD Architects, which is designing the project and will manage bidding and construction.

"(This proposal includes) things that are not typical to most buildings. That's why we addressed them as additional services," said principal Bruce Maxey.

He added constructions bids have increased across the board and that the company increased its fee, which is a percentage of the project's total cost.

Maxey and Durham also spoke in detail about the design of the facility  a 27,000-square-foot, two-story building with an attached one-story meeting facility with parking behind the facility and across the street on Osage.

The company also included a tentative project schedule with bidding documents coming to the City Council on April 4, bids awarded May 16 and construction beginning June 16. The building would open Sept. 1, 2017.

"I'm more optimistic," said Peterson of the schedule. He said previously "we're probably looking at early 2017 for occupancy."

Normal is building the station to replace its current No. 2 station at 604 N. Adelaide St. The department will phase out its previous locations as new ones are built to improve fire call response times across the community.
ODELL  An Odell woman was identified Tuesday as the person killed Saturday in a two-vehicle crash in Odell Township.

Livingston County Coroner Michael Burke identified her as 65-year-old Charlene E. Pozdol.

She was thrown from a Jeep driven by Steven J. Pozdol, 39, of Odell, according to Illinois State Police based in Pontiac.

They were northbound on U.S. 66 about 4 p.m. when the Jeep collided with a Ford F-150 pickup truck that was westbound on Livingston County Road 2500 North, police said. The pickup truck driver, Ralph A. Hermann, 74, of Cornell, apparently stopped at a stop sign and then pulled into the Jeep's path, which rolled over and landed in a ditch, police said.

Hermann received a ticket accusing him of failing to yield the right of way at a stop intersection, police said.

Steven J. Pozdol and two children, ages 3 and 9, who also were passengers in in the Jeep, were taken to OSF Saint James-John W. Albrecht Medical Center, Pontiac. He later was transferred to OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, but the children's conditions were not available.

Hermann and his passenger, Shirley A. Hermann, 69, of Cornell, were not injured.
Enbridge pipeline company recently bulldozed the land and the rights of the land owners. The courts unfortunately aided and abetted this land seizure in the worst tradition of totalitarianism. Totalitarian governments always seize private land in the name of the collective good and without citizen consent. This happened in Soviet Russia during the 1920s and again in Communist China during the 1950s.

One of the most important rights in America is private ownership of land. Through the doctrine of eminent domain, this right is being steadily eroded. Across the spectrum, farmers, environmentalists and concerned citizens opposed the Enbridge project because the pipeline would damage the land and pose potential environmental risks.

Despite these voices, the courts sided with Enbridge. The 4th District Appellate Court ruled that the state constitution did not protect the land owners, and it also said landowners had not sufficiently supported their case. Incredibly, the court also stated that "the constitution does not require just compensation be paid in advance of, or even contemporaneously with, the taking."

This opinion expresses the tenets of totalitarian power in which the state assumes the power to interpret the law while making sure the voice of the people is not heard or is buried under the dense legal language. Little wonder the case was not heard by jury, which would have had a sharper sense of justice and fairness. Eminent domain is used by corporations against the people and supported by the courts. This is appropriately termed a criminal justice system.

Jerry Bingham

Normal
BLOOMINGTON  After getting home from Evans Junior High School, 10-year-old Vivek Abraham completes his 6th grade math homework, then studies for his online astrophysics class at Northwestern University in Evanston.

"Sometimes I get bored with my sixth-grade homework, said Vivek, fiddling with a chessboard in his Bloomington home.

His 9-month-old sister, Aradhya, eyed the chess pieces and tried to snatch a rook to chew on. On top of caring for the baby, parents Anupama Chandrappa and Antony Abraham have a genius son to support.

Vivek is considered a child genius with an IQ score of more than 160; the average is between 85 and 114.

He aced the ACT Explore exam twice, won a first ranking in Northwestern's Midwest Academic Talent Search and, at 7 p.m. Thursday, will appear on Lifetimes second season of "Child Genius."

We dont know where all this knowledge came from, said his mom.

Vivek's parents said they didn't use any unique techniques to teach their son when he was younger.

"When he was less than 6 months old, we had an alphabet fridge magnet set and I would say a letter and he would hand it to me," said Chandrappa. "We just knew he was different."

Around the age of 5 or 6, I discovered a deep love for astronomy, said Vivek, whose bookshelf is stacked with publications by Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. I also love physics. So when I found out there was a subject called astrophysics, I knew it would be my favorite. I want to be an astrophysicist.

Vivek loves working with robotics and builds LEGO Mindstorm robots. He enjoys watching YouTube and reading. During winter break, he spent time studying for an upcoming geography bee.

Because Vivek is a member of Mensa  the high IQ society  he was contacted by the producers of "Child Genius" and asked to apply to join 11 other gifted children from around the United States.

After interviews, tests and elimination rounds, Vivek was one of the 12 children selected. His family headed to Los Angeles to compete and record the show.

When I found out, I said, Hooray! I was surprised and wasnt expecting to make it into a show this big, he said with a grin.

The episodes have been recorded; Vivek and his family signed a contract to keep the outcome under wraps.

I was nervous. Every other test and competition Ive been in has been written. This was all on stage, being recorded, he said.

Vivek was the second youngest of the contestants, who competed against each other in game show-style quizzes. With each round, the contestant with the lowest score was eliminated. The grand champion wins a $100,000 college scholarship.

I didnt really have any strategy in the competition, but I did some exercises to relax, said Vivek. It was intense, because I knew I could either win $100,000 or leave with nothing.

His father said it was challenging to give full attention to Vivek's studies during the competition because Aradhya was just 2 months old at the time.

"Sometimes it's hard to understand the things he studies. It can be a struggle to be the parent of a gifted kid," said Abraham. We always wondered if we were doing the right thing for him. So we were able to form this support group with these other parents on the show because were all going through the same challenges.

After putting away his chess set, Vivek walked to the stair case. With bare feet, he balanced on the lower lip of the banister and swiveled around the newel post; proving that even with his IQ, there's still time to play.

When the kids got off the stage during the competitions, they ran around and played games together, said Abraham. Vivek is still a child.
Voter, ballot deadlines near

BLOOMINGTON  Voter Registration closes Feb. 16 for the March 15 election. Residents who need to change their address or register to vote, but are unable to visit a voter registration office, can receive assistance from precinct committeemen.

Residents of McLean County who live outside of the city of Bloomington should call the office of McLean County clerk at 309-888-5588, and residents of the city of Bloomington should call the Board of Election Commissioners at 309-888-5136.

All polling places are accessible to persons with disabilities and voter assistance will be available. With prior notification, judges may be available to assist residents in their vehicle at the polls.

Vote by mail ballots are available by calling the numbers above.
Having children may mean that a mom would have to give up her professional career in order to take care of her kids. However, this no longer has to be the case because mothers can now work in their own time with The Second Shift, which will pair them with companies looking for reliable freelancer workers.

Friends Jenny Galluzzo and Gina Hadley, who are mothers themselves, founded the Second Shift. They have also enlisted the help of friend and fellow mom Kemp Steib to be their CFO.

The goal was fairly simple when they first began running their own company. What they set out for was to give women with experience and marketing some part time work and additional income.

Galluzzo and Hadley started The Second Shift when they saw friends and colleagues stepping down from their position at work, which they have worked very hard for, in order to pursue motherhood full-time or because they did not want to be away from their newborn due to spending the entire day at the office. Now they make the work of new mothers more flexible thanks to their service.

Since the company's inception, they now have 300 members whom they have connected with 45 project-based jobs. They also have 500 potential members currently in the application process, awaiting approval. A lot of notable companies are looking into hiring employees from The Second Shift. Recently, professionals from Conde Nast and Google attended a mixer hosted by the service.

Membership to The Second Shift is completely free of charge. "The Second Shift makes money when a job is successfully matched; employers pay 15 percent of the total fee on top of the agreed-upon salary, and members have 5 percent deducted from their payment as a service fee," as said in a report on The New York Times.
One of the many concerns of parents is that other kids will bully their children. But recent reports suggest that parents should also worry about parents bullying kids.

True stories about a father who beat up a kid for bullying his son, a mother who did not allow a girl to seat beside her child and her friends in the school bus, a mother who gave birthday invitations to everyone in the class except a few to humiliate them, and a mother who schemed to prevent a girl from joining a camp cabin confirm the horrifying truth about bullying parents.

"We had moved to a new town and chose a camp for her, not knowing that three or four other girls from the school would also be attending," Jamie Kanner, a mother of four in Chicago told ABC News. "One of the moms of those girls, who had been attending the camp for years, called the camp director that she was friendly with and requested my daughter not be allowed in the cabin with the popular girls."

Lisa Barr, founder of the "GIRLilla Warfare: A Mom's Guide to Surviving the Suburban Jungle", explains that one of the main motivations for many mothers why they bully other children is insecurity, "There's this insecurity that they were not the 'it' girl, and 'I will make sure my kid doesn't have that experience."

Bullying can be done in a variety of ways. They can cause great harm to a child's physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It is the responsibility of adults to protect children against all forms of bullying from people of all ages. Parents can help fight against bullying parents by teaching their kids to remain calm when bullied and to report every incidence of bullying to them and to the school authorities.
If youre visiting Salvador de Bahia, known for its bustling vibes and colorful buildings, youll want to book accommodations equally brightboth in energy and design. For that reason and more, Hostel Galeria 13 is ideal. While there are probably more glamorous hotels in the area, none offer the opportunity to sleep in one of the houses that make Salvadors streets so famous.

First Impressions

Walking through Salvador de Bahias cobblestoned streets, misery ensues if youre traveling with a wheeled suitcase. Good luck making your way through the crowded plazas and narrows sidewalks with that thing. However, as you turn the corner onto a widerand much quieterstreet lined with houses all painted a different color (the entire rainbow is represented), youll breath a sigh of relief. Dont be alarmed by the barking dogsthose are your very friendly hosts. They mark the entrance to the hotels small shaded courtyard, which leads to reception. The cave-like Moroccan-themed area features a juice and liquor bar (where you will also check in), bright blue walls that contrast the unfinished ones across the room, and eclectic tchotchkes from all over the world like lanterns. Here youll also find a dry erase board with daily events/activities the owner and staff think youll enjoy. Flanking both sides of the reception/bar area are the hostels pride and joys. The Moroccan chill out room comes with hammocks and beaded pillows, perfect for  well  chilling out. But if youre anything like us, youll go in the opposite direction to the hostels patio and pool.

While the reception area sets the tone for your stay in terms of personality and decor, youll find the rooms are much less confined. Youll be staying either in the upper floors of the main building or down the block in other houses Hostel Galeria 13 owns. Dont worry, theyre all easy to spot, thanks to their bright facades.

The Room

Hostel Galeria 13 consists of a few of the restored colonial houses for which Salvador de Bahia is famed. Whether youre in a private room or a dorm, you can rest assured that everything is authenticeven the wooden beds, which are locally crafted. All the rooms have en-suite showers, hardwood floors and either an air conditioner or fans. The walls will likely be painted in a bright blue that matches the hostels reception area, but otherwise, the rooms are minimally decorated, which is fine because this place really doesnt need anymore character than it already has. Of course, like any hostel, you either get a room full of bunk beds and strangers, or if you splurge ($70 a night is hardly a splurge, and thats during high season), a big bed and spacious room all to yourself. If youre lucky youll get a hammock and a view of the colorful block on which you temporarily live but will never want to leave. Unlike situations at other hostels, the rooms are taken care of and cleaned daily. Basically, you wont mind coming back to these rooms after a long day of exploring, which, if youve ever stayed in a hostel, you know isnt always the case.

What Pops

Hostel Galeria 13s amenities are unbelievable. Really. Its rare that a backpacker lodge in the middle of a historical city comes with an outdoor pool (albeit tiny), a plant-filled patio, or a free daily happy hourand this one has all three. The pool is a small square, ideal for cooling off, and space on the patio is limited, but after making the most of the caipirinha happy hour, you wont even notice how packed the patio has become, as youll be too busy happily swaying with your new friends.

The Locale

Most likely, the reason you are visiting Salvador de Bahia is because youve seen Instagram pics in the colorful colonial buildings of the citys historical center, Pelourinho. Luckily, Hostel Galeria 13 is situated right in the middle of Pelourinho, so not only do you get to snap pics of the cute traditional Brazilian homes, you also get to stay in one. Pelourinho is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the hostel is located steps away from the areas main squares, which offer tons of shopping and dining during the day and come alive at night with live music and dancers.

Maggie Parker is Paste Magazines assistant travel editor.
On its most superficial level, The Treasure could be seen as a deconstruction of treasure-hunt narratives. Theres no hint of hype or glamor to Costi (Toma Cuzin) and Adrians (Adrian Purcarescu) search for buried treasure, theres just a lot of hard workhiring a metal detector (person, not device), figuring out logistics and digging. Lots and lots of digging. Plus, in Romania, even if the two do find the loot, they have to go through the police to determine the findings heritage value, which means the finders only get to keep 30%. Of course, tempers will occasionally flare, as occurs between Adrian and the older metal detector (Corneliu Cozmei) theyve hired. The sense that in his latest film, Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu is showing us how a treasure hunt would actually play out in the real world is intensified by both the directors close focus on process and his use of long takes to induce a feeling of observing events in something like real time.

Both characteristics are consistent with the style he has used in his previous fiction features, including 12:08 East of Bucharest, Police, Adjective and When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism. But also like these films, The Treasure has a broader social vision underpinning its surface subversion. As ever, Porumboiu is fascinated by the ways Romanias troubled history continues today to affect the lives of ordinary people. To some extent, thats the underlying theme of a lot of the Romanian films that have been coming out in the past few years, but instead of the harrowing miserablist journeys chronicled by fellow Romanian New Wave filmmakers like Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) and Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu), Porumboiu funnels his concerns through deadpan humor and a more humane emphasis on the quotidian. There have been few scenes in recent cinema as incisively hilarious as the climax of Police, Adjective, during which a police officers superior uses semantics to whittle away at an officers ethical and moral compass. As dryly funny as it is, the scene doubles as a devastating condemnation of the way words can be twisted by authority figures for genuinely dangerous purposes.

In The Treasure, economic anxieties drive Costi and Adrian on their adventure. Adrian, Costis next-door neighbor, especially needs the money to finally pay off a mortgage he has neglected for three years. But Romanias past, not just its present, is once again on Porumboius mind. According to Adrian, the treasure they seek is located in a property that was once the home base of the progressive-minded organizers of the short-lived 1848 Wallachian Revolutiona property that Communists seized from Adrians family before the family reclaimed it in the 1989 revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceau?escu. In essence, these two Average Joes are digging through history just for the sake of immediate monetary profit.

Despite the historical angle, perhaps the most important thread of The Treasure is one that is mythical in nature. In an early scene, Costi reads to his son a picture-book retelling of Robin Hoods story, and given the main characters financial circumstances, theres some fantasy in that: Costi and Adrian could really use a Robin Hood-like figure to rescue them from their economic travails. Yet, Costi does become something of a Robin Hood figure to his family, especially after his wife tells his son about his treasure-hunting mission.

Porumboiu, however, saves his biggest surprise for the final scene, which sees this filmmaker so often concerned with the absurdities of everyday life reach for something like transcendence in making the Robin Hood comparisons literal. Still, theres a fascinating ambiguity even as the camera lifts its lens up to the sunny heavens: Costi may be passing on a more materialistic mindset to a younger generation as much as he is passing on enduring, necessary myths.

Director: Corneliu Porumboiu

Writer: Corneliu Porumboiu

Starring: Toma Cuzin, Adrian Purcarescu, Corneliu Cozmei

Release Date: January 8, 2016

Kenji Fujishima is a freelance film critic, contributing to Slant Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, The Playlist, The Village Voice and Paste. He is also Deputy Editor of Movie Mezzanine and former editor-in-chief of In Review Online. When hes not watching movies and writing and editing film criticism, hes trying to absorb as much music, art and literature as possible. He has not infrequently been called a culture vulture for that reason.
. . . Especially that of the Early Church, and the Jerusalem Council

Menno Simons (1496-1561), founder of the Mennonites, from Two Hundred German Men in Portraits and Biographies, Leipzig 1854, edited by Ludwig Bechstein. Illustration by Hugo Burkner (1818-1897) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

(5-30-12)

This exchange took place on Devin Roses blog, in the combox of his review of my book, 100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura. Phil Wood is a Mennonite, and sometimes calls himself an Anabaptist as well. His words will be in blue. This dialogue is posted with Phils express permission.

* * *

Devin, as you know by now Im no fan of Catholic/Protestant apologetic ping pong. I agree with your tack on this one for the first few steps, but part company half way through. It is quite right that Sola Scriptura is biblically untenable. I offer a loud Amen to the role of the Church. Even a mainstream Conservative Evangelical scholar such as F.F. Bruce makes a cogent case for the importance of Tradition in Scripture in Relation to Tradition and Reason (ed Dewery and Baukham, Scripture Tradition and Reason).

I do think you make a leap though, in assuming that the Church is co-terminous with the views of the hierarchy. Im coming at hermeneutics from below. I believe in a hermeneutic of peoplehood and (with Moltmann) that there is nothing higher than the congregation. The best example I can find of that perspective is found in John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom. I have also developed his theme of the shape of conversation.

Im curious how this is squared with the Jerusalem Council in Scripture (Acts 15)? Are you saying that this council was strictly a temporary (and henceforth merely optional) expedient, and that St. Paul preached its results as binding (Acts 16:4), but then as history goes on all that is kaput and we go to a strictly congregational model?

That makes no sense to me. There is also all the scriptural data about Petrine primacy that seems to presuppose an overarching authority of one super-bishop and leader of the Church, so to speak. I lay that evidence out most succinctly in my 50 New Testament Proofs for the Primacy of Peter.

I am somewhat surprised that you should use the example of the Council of Jerusalem. Of Peter, Paul and James it is the latter who takes the lead role. Acts 15:22 makes explicitly shows the whole church engaged in the decision-making.

I followed your link. My overall sense is that you are seeking biblical precedent to bolster the authority claims of a contemporary institution (i.e. its anachronistic). Petrine primacy is a phrase from a later period. As far as we know it was Clement of Rome who first used the term lay to mean a non-minister in A.D.96. The idea of priestly ordination wasnt fully complete until the 5th Century (as Herbert Haag points out).

Congregationalism makes far more modest claims. One of the few passages in the Gospels which mentions church (Matt 18.15-20) follows the rabbinic precedent of binding and loosing, focusing on ethical reasoning, pastoral care and conciliation. Where two or three gather together in the name of Christ, there Christ is present (Matt 18.20). I see no mention of clergy or super-bishops.

You didnt reply to my direct questions; instead heading off onto various rabbit trails, of varying degrees of irrelevance; therefore I wont answer yours (too busy anyway to get into this in depth today). It so happens that I just cited one of my arguments in the book in another discussion that had to do with the Jerusalem Council. Ill quote it here again (slightly different from the book, as it is my final manuscript):

74. Pauls Apostolic Calling Was Subordinated to the Larger Church and Was in Harmony with Peter

Pauls ministry was not self-validating. He was initially commissioned by Peter, James, and John (Gal 2:9) to preach to the Gentiles. After his conversion, he went to Jerusalem specifically to see Peter (Gal 1:18). In Acts 15:2-3 we are told that Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent their way by the church, they went off on their assignment.

That is hardly consistent with the idea of Paul being the pope or leading figure in the hierarchy of authority; he was directed by others, as one under orders. When we see Paul and Peter together in the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:6-29), we observe that Peter wields an authority that Paul doesnt possess.

We learn that after there was much debate, Peter rose to address the assembly (15:7). The Bible records his speech, which goes on for five verses. Then it reports that all the assembly kept silence (15:12). Paul and Barnabas speak next, not making authoritative pronouncements, but confirming Peters exposition, speaking about signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles (15:12). Then when James speaks, he refers right back to what Simeon [Peter] has related (15:14). Why did James skip right over Pauls comments and go back to what Peter said? Paul and his associates are subsequently sent off by the Council, and they delivered the letter (15:30; cf. 16:4).

None of this seems consistent with the notion that Paul was above or even equal to Peter in authority. But its perfectly consistent with Peters having a preeminent authority. Paul was under the authority of the council, and Peter (along with James, as the Bishop of Jerusalem) presided over it. Paul and Barnabas were sent by the church (of Antioch: see 14:26). Then they were sent by the Jerusalem Council (15:25, 30) which was guided by the Holy Spirit (15:28), back to Antioch (15:30).

Just one more thing:

Acts 15:22 makes explicitly shows the whole church engaged in the decision-making.

Yes, of course; but so what? This is the Catholic model: ecumenical councils make decisions (led and guided by the Holy Spirit), in tandem with the popes who preside and have veto power. Its both/and.

The Council spoke for and to the entire Church. This is the whole point. Paul then proclaimed its edicts (in other regions; in this case, Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey, which was quite a ways away) as binding and obligatory upon all (Acts 16:4: for observance). If you want to say James was top dog at the council, fine. Even on that view, he is being a bishop (of Jerusalem), and presiding over a council that makes binding legal decisions, obligatory on all Christians everywhere. That aint congregationalism, sorry; its not even Presbyterianism [i.e., that form of Church government]. It is clearly episcopal / Catholic ecclesiology.

This precisely contradicts some notion of local congregationalism only. The problem is with your view of ecclesiology, not ours. Hence, you sidestepped the relevant issue and went into diverting side-issues.

Perhaps you didnt intend to (people often wander off-topic to the detriment of constructive discourse and dialogue), but that was the result.

Dave,as I began by original contribution to this thread by expression disdain for ping pong Im not going to go down the route of you say black and I say white. I think youre beating the text into shape to make it serve the truth claims of a clerical elite. Im a Mennonite writing from a UK and not a US context. Frankly, after thousands of years of Christendom truimphalism we have had enough of hierarchical church structures and forms of argumentation that resort to our bishop is more purple than yours.

Why comment at all, then, Phil, if youre not willing to subject your positions to scrutiny and defend them? I dont write this in any anger whatsoever, but in perfect calmness, and with true befuddlement. I always marvel at people who want to take their potshots at other views; then when challenged back, appeal to a calm, above the fray non-involvement ethos, as if their initial comments were not getting involved in the discussion.

So you were involved in this thread, but really not. You entered the discussion but in fact never did . . . I cant be faulted for simply responding to your critique, in any event.

Hi Dave, I apologize if I was unclear. Im looking over what I said in my previous comment and I agree with you; its inconsistent. I suspect the business of arguing back and forth, point by point would take up more time than either of us have. Im in something of a cleft stick where this blog is concerned, as Devin knows from my previous comments. Fundamentally I dont believe apologetics is an appropriate form of Christian communication. I am very much an unreconstructed liberal wishing for the good old days of enthusiastic ecumenism. At the same time, I think its important for Christians of different traditions not to retreat into our comfort zones.

There are clearly disagreements between us. Broadly, I believe we have stumbled over centuries of scaffolding and encrustation where the Council of Jerusalem is concerned. The phrase Council of Jerusalem, is after all a later interpretation of what went on. I am wary of attempts to impose a model (e..g. the Calvinist fourfold ministry) on a 1st Century picture than was almost certainly far more fluid and eclectic than attempts at systematization allow.

My sense of befuddlement lies mainly in why it should matter so much to prove Petrine Primacy. Is this a way of arguing us back to Rome? What is your objective?

Fair enough. I appreciate the clarification.

Im as ecumenical as you are, which is why I just completed the book, The Quotable Wesley: presently under serious consideration by a Protestant publisher. There is no fundamental conflict between ecumenism and apologetics, though for some odd reason lots of folks seem to think there is.

Last Friday we had a very friendly discussion at my house with three atheists (one the main presenter) and about a dozen Catholics. Thats about as ecumenical as it gets, I think.

I agree that there was fluidity in early ecclesiology, and stated that in my first book, written in 1996. We would fully expect this, because ecclesiology developed, just as all theology did. That said, the outlines of the later episcopal structure of Christian government is remarkably evident in the New Testament. See my Appendix Two from A Biblical Defense of Catholicism: The Visible, Hierarchical, Apostolic Church.

Apologetics is thoroughly biblical, as I have, I think, demonstrated many times. Contend earnestly for the faith (Jude 3). Stand ready to make a defense [apologia] for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15). Paul argued and disputed endlessly with Jews and Greeks; he didnt simply preach. Jesus argued with Pharisees, and engaged and challenged them. Paul defended his Christian views at great length at his trial. Its all very biblical. In fact, the word apologia is the same one that was the title of Platos famous book, detailing Socrates defense of himself at his own trial.

My objective (since you asked) is to seek truth and follow it wherever it leads. Period. End of story. I defend what I believe to be the fullness of Christian truth (Catholicism) because I think it is better to reside in the fullness than not to: that truth (along with love) is a wonderful, godly end that all should seek with all their might. We all [should] proclaim and defend what we believe in good faith to be true. If I am convinced that the fullness of truth lies elsewhere, then I surely will move to that position, just as I moved from religious nominalism / paganism to evangelicalism, and from that to Catholicism.

Its all by Gods grace. I proclaim and defend, as an apologist / evangelist. God moves hearts as He wills, and as human free will allows, in cooperation with Gods grace. But (like Paul) woe to me if I preach not the gospel because this is my calling.

Is it okay with you if I put our dialogue on my blog (its already public here, anyway)? I can include your name or not, as you wish. I think it is an exchange that might be of some value to others. I am a great advocate of putting up dialogues and letting people decide where truth lies.

Dave, you are welcome to include the dialogue on your blog. It may also give me an opportunity to contribute in some more detail on some of the knotty ecclesiology we have touched on. Ill place your blog on my blogroll. Its an interesting discussion, partly because Im not coming at this from a mainstream Protestant perspective.

As for Apologetics, I entirely agree with your helpful biblical summary. Where I have concerns lies in interface between Apologetics and ecumenism. I have a strong sense, in talking to some Traditionalist Catholic interlocutors, that Apologetics have supplanted ecumenism. As you will gather from my own blog (and blogroll) I have an extensive range of Catholic contacts. My wife Anna is Roman Catholic. I wish you well with the writing. I also have a book in process at present  The Gospel of Slow.

I sometimes wonder why I have stuck with this blog for so long. In large part its because I have always found Devin gracious and fair. To be honest, some of the discussion has been bruising, because Im frequently expressing a minority viewpoint. God forbid, five hundred years after the Reformation, that disunity should ever be seen as normal. Speaking as an Anabaptist can be a painful in-between place  as Walter Klaasen said, neither Catholic nor Protestant. I believe there is something in that experience of value across the ecumenical spectrum, as all of us encounter a sense of loss and marginality after Christendom.

If youd like to continue the discussion, that would be great. From where I sit, the hard questions I asked about the Jerusalem Council still remain to be dealt with. Im curious how an advocate of congregational government would answer those. You can always concede that you dont have any answers to my questions; thats fine, too. :-)

Dave, as I am heading off to Strasbourg tomorrow in connection with Mennonite Central Committee responsibilities, I shall try to keep this succinct. You should be aware that I am a British Mennonite and that there is considerable variety amongst Mennonites in terms of polity. Overall, I think it would be true to say that Mennonites in particular and Anabaptists in general have congregational DNA. Whilst it is true that local congregations are self-governing, strong inter-Mennonite institutions such as the Mennonite Central Committee and the Mennonite Mission Network act as a counterpoint and ensure that congregations have a view beyond the local and are able to act in concert.

Sort of like Baptists or evangelicals, who form overarching associations of varying governing or at least significantly guiding force . . .

I do not believe that there is a single New Testament leadership model. Over the past two thousand years Christianity has existed in many forms  fusions of cultural, pragmatic and biblical concerns. This does not mean that the New Testament is exegetically unintelligible. In response to your suggested hard question I do wonder how you would address the open multi-voiced mutuality of 1 Cor 12-14, for example.

Well, again, that is not responding to my question; it is simply asking a different one of your own (that you think runs counter to my assumptions). But I do directly respond to questions, so here I go:

These three chapters, first of all, indicate a strong central authority, since it is the apostle Paul giving all of these rather obligatory instructions (see, e.g., 1 Cor 11:2 and 23, where Paul refers to traditions he received and delivered, to be followed). At the time, remember, it was simply a letter, and not known to be Scripture. So there is your authority. Paul is writing to the Corinthians, but that is only one church of many that he oversees and guides.

This is apostolic authority, and to the extent that it continues to be a model and binding today, it remains apostolic authority, now encapsulated in Scripture. Peter does the same thing in his letters, and he doesnt even narrow them down to one congregation. Both of those phenomena are strongly indicative of the later more fully-developed episcopacy with a pope leading.

You call this mutuality. But I see strong central authority far more akin to Catholicism than Anabaptism or wider Protestant sectarianism and denominationalism with a congregational notion of governance. Paul details a clear hierarchy of authority and (higher) gifts in 12:28-31, mentioning apostles, prophets, teachers: not all fit in every category (is his point in 15:29-30). Thus, hierarchy . . .

Most of the material Paul deals with here has to do with worship practices, which can vary widely according to time and place, and which are not doctrines or dogmas, strictly speaking. Nothing here goes against the Catholic model, so it is mostly irrelevant to our discussion.

Turning to the so-called Council of Jerusalem,

This is one of the curiosities of your view: the reluctance to call a thing what it is. I was unaware that this was some controversial thing (and certainly not a position confined to those who hold to episcopal ecclesiology). For example:

The first council of the Church was that described in Acts 15.

(Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L. Cross & E. A. Livingstone, 2nd edition, Oxford Univ. Press, 1974; p. 351: Council)

The Council of Jerusalem is the name commonly given to the meeting convened between delegates form the Church of Antioch (led by Paul and Barnabas) and the apostles and elders of the Church of Jerusalem . . .

(New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, Eerdmans, 1962; p. 263: Council, Jerusalem)

The Bible seems clear enough to me:

Acts 15:6 (RSV) The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.

Apostles and elders gathered together to discuss doctrinal issues and issue binding decrees is not a council? Thats odd. What is it then? A pow-wow? A campfire meeting with a singalong? A Sunday get-together after church with (beef) hot dogs?

One of my hard questions that you have chosen not to respond to directly was the following:

Paul then proclaimed its edicts (in other regions; in this case, Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey, which was quite a ways away) as binding and obligatory upon all (Acts 16:4: for observance). If you want to say James was top dog at the council, fine. Even on that view, he is being a bishop (of Jerusalem), and presiding over a council that makes binding legal decisions, obligatory on all Christians everywhere.

If you want to say it is merely a local council of Jerusalem (F. F. Bruce takes that view), then how is it that Paul acts as he does above, in Asia Minor? How can the Jerusalem Church have jurisdiction over those Christians unless episcopalian government is in place?

Moreover, the biblical text informs us that a letter was written to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15:23). It is written in the language of command (though gently so):

Acts 15:28-29 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: [29] that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.

How is it that one local church in Jerusalem (according to your view) can give binding orders to other local churches far away? That is nonsensical in a congregational interpretation. But it makes perfect sense with an episcopal or even papal / Catholic view.

I begin by saying that there is no evidence that there was some superior organizational level to which local congregations are accountable.

I just gave an example (a pretty compelling one, in my opinion) of why I think this perspective is biblically untenable.

There is no indication that this gathering should be be taken as a standing paradigm for wider authority.

Again, if it shows a higher church authority giving binding decisions to Christians over wide geographical areas, then it is a model, by common sense. Otherwise, why is it included in revelation? These things are in Scripture for our instruction. Its not just the council, but also Peter and Paul exercising apostolic (and papal) authority.

In fact the use of the word Council is potentially misleading. We tend to think of Ecumenical Councils and so on. Paul and Barnabas didnt go to Jerusalem to get a ruling on the issue. This was straightforward fraternal contact between two churches over a pressing matter of mutual concern.

Thats not what I see in the text:

Acts 15:2 And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

The ruling came in Acts 15:22-29. Paul them delivered them for observance in Asia Minor. This is exactly how Catholicism works: an ecumenical council takes place (Vatican II: in my lifetime), and I am to receive the instruction from it in Detroit, Michigan, since it applies to all Catholics.

Elsewhere in the New Testament ethical reasoning (i.e. binding and loosing) is practiced by the local church body rather than by elders or bishops (see Matt 18:15-17).

Thats right. We believe it is exercised by every priest, and that is local. However, there is also a sense in which Peter and his successors can bind and loose for the entire Church. I have detailed many Protestant commentators writing about this, in my book on Catholic ecclesiology. For example:

And what about the keys of the kingdom? The keys of a royal or noble establishment were entrusted to the chief steward or majordomo; he carried them on his shoulder in earlier times, and there they served as a badge of the authority entrusted to him. About 700 B.C. an oracle from God announced that this authority in the royal palace in Jerusalem was to be conferred on a man called Eliakim . . . (Isa. 22:22). So in the new community which Jesus was about to build, Peter would be, so to speak, chief steward.

(F. F. Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus, Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1983, 143-144)

In Matthew 16:19 it is presupposed that Christ is the master of the house, who has the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, with which to open to those who come in. Just as in Isaiah 22:22 the Lord lays the keys of the house of David on the shoulders of his servant Eliakim, so Jesus commits to Peter the keys of his house, the Kingdom of Heaven, and thereby installs him as administrator of the house.

What do the expressions bind and loose signify? According to Rabbinical usage two explanations are equally possible: prohibit and permit, that is, establish rules; or put under the ban and acquit.

(Oscar Cullmann, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr, translated by Floyd V. Filson, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953, 203-205)

These terms [binding and loosing] thus refer to a teaching function, and more specifically one of making halakhic pronouncements [i.e., relative to laws not written down in the Jewish Scriptures but based on an oral interpretation of them] which are to be binding on the people of God. In that case, Peters power of the keys declared in [Matthew] 16:19 is not so much that of the doorkeeper, who decides who may or may not be admitted to the kingdom of heaven, but that of the steward . . . . whose keys of office enable him to regulate the affairs of the household. . . . [Isaiah 22:22 is] generally regarded as the Old Testament background to the metaphor of keys here. . . .

(R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1989, 247)

In the . . . exercise of the power of the keys, in ecclesiastical discipline, the thought is of administrative authority (Is 22:22) with regard to the requirements of the household of faith. The use of censures, excommunication, and absolution is committed to the Church in every age, to be used under the guidance of the Spirit . . .

So Peter, in T.W. Mansons words, is to be Gods vicegerent . . . The authority of Peter is an authority to declare what is right and wrong for the Christian community. His decisions will be confirmed by God (The Sayings of Jesus, 1954, p. 205).

(New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962, 1018)

It was a local church that commissioned Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13.1-3).

Thats a partial truth, but not the whole truth. From chapter three of my book, mentioned above:

He [Paul] went to see St. Peter in Jerusalem for fifteen days in order to be confirmed in his calling (Gal 1:18), and fourteen years later was commissioned by Peter, James, and John (Gal 2:1-2, 9). He was also sent out by the Church at Antioch (Acts 13:1-4), which was in contact with the Church at Jerusalem (Acts 11:19-27). Later on, Paul reported back to Antioch (Acts 14:26-28).

Acts 15:2 states: . . . Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. The next verse refers to Paul and Barnabas being sent on their way by the church. St. Paul did what he was told to do by the Jerusalem Council (where he played no huge role), and Paul and Barnabas were sent off, or commissioned by the council (15:22-27),. . .

In Galatians 1-2 Paul is referring to his initial conversion. But even then God made sure there was someone else around, to urge him to get baptized (Ananias: Acts 22:12-16). He received the revelation initially and then sought to have it confirmed by Church authority (Gal 2:1-2: . . . I laid before them . . . the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain); then his authority was accepted or verified by James, Peter, and John (Gal 2:9). . . .

In Galatians 1:8-9 Paul tells the Galatians to reject any gospel that is different from what he presented to them. He preached the truth to them. In the same book, however, he says how this gospel had been confirmed as true by the Church (Gal 1:18; 2:1-2, 9). No opposition between Paul and the apostolic tradition and gospel of the Church is present in these biblical texts. The Church is guided by God to preserve apostolic truth. St. Paul is in communion with this same Church, and obedient to her.

Whatever the unevenness of the biblical text, I believe Congregationalism best expresses the dynamic open process described in 1 Cor 12-14.

And I believe Catholicism best reflects the overall biblical picture (all things considered). I have stated why I dont think 1 Cor 12-14 is decisive for your side.

I am quite aware of Episcopal and Presbyterian objections to a congregational approach. There is clearly, for example, evidence of the influence of the Jewish synagogical model on early churches. So, I am not arguing that the New Testament is a flat text. There is, for example, clearly a change of temperature with the Pastoral Epistles.

Id love to see how you would reply to my arguments above.

Behind the scenes of our discussion is a broader question that relates to change and continuity in the Christian tradition. Is it possible for example for the church to fall so that restitution is required. Luther drew back from that position but the Radical Reformers carried in through.

Luther was more correct. It is biblically, historically, and logically absurd to posit a Church that initially was in Gods grace and then entirely fell away. Most of the biblical arguments for this position of mine is detailed in my book on the Church and papacy (I can send you a free PDF if you like), but there is some in a dialogue I had with a Lutheran.

Whatever the variations in the biblical record, we continue to argue strongly that what the Church became under Constantine was an aberration.

Not at all. There was a lot of caesaropapism in the east, but the papal model is already strongly indicated in the Bible (my 50 NT Proofs that you passed by without comment), so that Church history merely develops that kernel.

This is why Anabaptists regard our peace testimony and open, congregational process as in some sense, a looping back to Christian origins. I offer two reflections on restitution by way of starting points for further discussion [one / two].

I read those; thanks. I didnt see much of direct relevance to this discussion, though.

* * *
I dont often mention my wife and family on this blog because the blog is public and I have a private side.

However, people do often ask what it is like being married to a priest. I think I can answer for Mrs Longenecker and my family.

These are the main questions and answers:

Q  How does your wife cope with the time demands of your being a priest?

A  Much like any wife would do who is married to a man with a demanding, but rewarding career. Many wives deal with husbands who are away more than I am. Im thinking of long distance truck drivers, soldiers, sailors, traveling executives. Others have demanding and irregular schedulesdoctors and nurses, emergency responders, fire fighters and police. Furthermore, those wives sit at home worrying that their husband might not come home because his job is not only demanding time wise, but life threateningly dangerous. A priests wife doesnt face those hardships. Furthermore, although we dont have weekends, a priest sets his own schedule. If I have to I can re-arrange many things in order to be there for the family in a way other men cant.

Q  But arent priests on duty 24-7always ready to race off to hospital to anoint the dying?

A  Ask your celibate priest if hes available 24-7. No hes not. We all take days off and vacations. We have to or wed burn out. Sure I get up sometimes in the middle of the night to go anoint the dying. But we have hospital chaplains too you know, and they usually cover those duties.

Q  How do you manage financially?

A  I receive only what the diocese advises all diocesan priests to receive. No more. The pay a priest receives varies from diocese to diocese, but lets be realistic. There are many families who struggle on low incomes. They get by. Maybe the wife works. Maybe they both drive an old car, make do, buy clothes from the Goodwill and learn to live on a little. A priest and his wife can do this too and why not? On the other hand, look what a priest receives: 1. housing 2. a car 3. health insurance 4. job satisfaction with no immediate boss looking over his shoulder 5. complete job security 6. retirement plan 7. working expenses 8. retirement housingand more depending on where he works. I can think of a good number of men and their wives who would jump at the chance to work on those terms.

Q  How do you afford college for your kids, the orthodontist and everything else it takes for kids these days?

A  How does anybody? We get by . Im blessed to have extra income from my writing, but we both work hard. We save. We borrow if we have to. People are generous. The Lord provides. Its actually an adventure to live by faith. You should try it!

Q  Doesnt your wife interfere with your work in the parish?

A  Does your dentists wife interfere with his work? Your lawyers wife? Your car mechanics wife? Of course not. She runs her own business and contributes to the family income.

Q  Are your kids supposed to be especially holy?

A  No more and no less than any other Catholicwhich means I dont expect to them to be saints, but I expect them to be working on it.like me and their mom.

Q  What about confession. Dont you tell your wife everything?

A  Cmon. Would a lawyer or doctor go home and tell his wife everything about his clients? I dont think so. Professionals can keep secrets. I dont tell my wife anything about the confessional and she would never expect me to.

Q  Do you think we should have married priests?

A  It could work if both the husband and wife are committed to the calling and are prepared to be flexible, live by faith, have a sense of humor and make the necessary sacrifices.

Q  Do you think Pope Francis will change the rules and allow married men to be ordained?

A  Probably not.
Patna: A man who was brutally beaten up by a group of criminals on the New Year's night died of his injuries at a hospital in Patna on Monday.

Shankar Sahni, age 55, who suffered serious injuries when he tried to save his two sons from a gang of criminals in Dariapur under Kadam Kuan police station on the night of January 1, breathed his last at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) in the presence of his family members.

As reported, Sahni, along with his two sons Kundan and Sonu, was returning to his home in Dariapur after visiting family members in Sabzi Bagh on the New Year night. Around 1:00 am, a group of criminals jumped on Kundan and Sonu and started to beat them mercilessly.

Seeing his sons in trouble, Sahni jumped into the melee at which point the criminals beat him up brutally hitting him in his head multiple times.

The death of Sahni on Monday resulted in a protest in Dariapur as grieving family members blocked the road with Sahni's body demanding immediate arrest of his killers.

"We filed a police report immediately after the incident and the police has yet to do anything in the case," said Raju Sahni, another son of the victim.

Authorities have lodged FIR against eight persons in the case as they conduct raids in many areas to apprehend the killers.

Meanwhile, in another case, 52-year old Madhusudan Singh, a teacher, was gunned down by unidentified criminals on late Sunday night under Buddha Colony police station.

Police believe Singh's murder was related to an ongoing dispute over some properties.

No one had been arrested in either case till the time of reporting.
Patna: Senior Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, just days after reminding Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of his responsibility in keeping crime under control in the Bihar, accused the Nitish government of failing to inform the Center about drought situation in Bihar thus failing to procure financial aid for the purpose.

"Bihar did not get any help from the Center because the Nitish government failed to send its report on drought to the Center. In contrast, the Uttar Pradesh government declared 50 districts drought-hit and was able to collect Rs. 1,500 crore from the Central government. Bihar failed to submit report on time as a result of which it did not get a penny to combat drought," Singh said.

The RJD national Vice President said that he had talked to senior government officials in the Narendra Modi government and he was told that Bihar never did send its report on drought situation in the state.

Singh blamed the Bihar bureaucracy for botching up the drought assistance from the Center saying a senior official in the agriculture department told him that disasters like flood or drought reports were prepared by the Disaster Management department and when he talked to the Disaster Management Principal Secretary Vyasji, he told him that the government did not send a report to the Center because technically Bihar was not undergoing drought situation.

The RJD leader also shrugged off allegations of trying to derail the Nitish government saying he was simply telling the truth and was not going to give 'pass mark' to the government if it did not deserve to get the pass mark.

Expressing solidarity with the Madhesi movement in Nepal, the former Union Minister accused the Modi administration of refusing to acknowledge Madhesi's plight and their second-class citizen treatment by the Nepali government.

"Eighteen meetings with the Madhesis have been organized and Lalu Prasad Yadav will attend a number of them," Singh informed.
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The Saudi Executions: Fury in Iran But Not Here

01/05/16

By Thomas Lippman (source: LobeLog)



Sheikh Nimr Bakr al-Nimr





The Obama administrations reaction to the mass executions in Saudi Arabia on New Years Day came in the form of a mildly worded statement issued over the holiday weekend by State Department spokesman John Kirby.

It said that the United States has:

seen the Saudi governments announcement that it executed 47 people. We have previously expressed our concerns about the legal process in Saudi Arabia and have frequently raised these concerns at high levels of the Saudi Government. We reaffirm our calls on the Government of Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights, and to ensure fair and transparent judicial proceedings in all cases. The United States also urges the Government of Saudi Arabia to permit peaceful expression of dissent and to work together with all community leaders to defuse tensions in the wake of these executions.? We are particularly concerned that the execution of prominent Shia cleric and political activist Nimr al-Nimr risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced. In this context, we reiterate the need for leaders throughout the region to redouble efforts aimed at de-escalating regional tensions.

The statement did not indicate that the United States would take or contemplate taking any action.

The statement was not surprising. In the eight decades since Americans first arrived in Saudi Arabia to look for oil, the United states has never allowed the Kingdoms dismal human rights record to interfere with economic or strategic business. In fact, it has been Washingtons official policy not to do so.

Making Money, Preserving Alliances

In a long policy statement distributed to all American diplomatic posts in the Arab world in 1951, the State Department said that it was in U.S. interests to foster economic development and stability in Saudi Arabia, promote its security through the sale of weapons, and observe the utmost respect for Saudi Arabias sovereignty, sanctity of the holy places [of Islam] and local customs. To further those objectives, the policy guidance said, We should take care to serve as guide or partner and avoid giving the impression of wishing to dominate the country.

In practical terms, that meant that the United States was engaged with Saudi Arabia to make money and to encourage the kingdoms rigorous anti-Communism, not to tell the Saudis how to run their affairs. That was during the administration of Harry S. Truman, and every subsequent president, Democrat or Republican, has more-or-less adhered to the same policy. Even Jimmy Carter, who made human rights the cornerstone of his foreign policy, was obsequiously laudatory of his hosts when he visited Riyadh in 1978, because he wanted two important commitments from them: to restrain oil prices and to support the Egyptian-Israeli peace process, to which Carter was committed. For President George H.W. Bush, the target was Saudi cooperation in the war to drive Saddam Husseins Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Presidents always want something from Saudi Arabia-for the past decade it has been help in the fight against al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism-and know they cant get Saudi cooperation by haranguing the kingdom about its domestic affairs.

Its not as if American officials are unaware of Saudi Arabias record of mass arrests, secret rigged criminal trials, restrictions on speech and association, and intolerance of any religion other than the Kingdoms unique form of Sunni Islam. The State Department duly notes these abuses in its annual report on human rights conditions around the world as does the autonomous U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its reports.

For years, the U.S. governments reliance on the Saudi government for cooperation on counterterrorism, regional security, and energy supplies has limited its willingness to press the Saudi government to improve its poor human rights and religious freedom record, the commission noted in its 2015 report.

In accordance with a system created by Congress, the commission in 2004 designated Saudi Arabia a country of particular concern because it engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom. Those violations include the exclusion from the Kingdom of all forms of worship other than Islam, its requirement that all citizens be Muslims, and its systematic oppression of its Shiite Muslim minority, an estimated 10-15 percent of the population. Under the law, such a designation requires the imposition of sanctions unless the president issues a waiver. Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, have always done so.

The United States is hardly the only country that has faced this contradiction between its professed ideals and Saudi reality. Asked about it by a television interviewer in October, British Prime Minister David Cameron replied,

We have a relationship with Saudi Arabia and if you want to know why Ill tell you why. Its because we receive from them important intelligence and security information that keeps us safe. The reason we have the relationship is our own national security. There was one occasion since Ive been prime minister where a bomb that would have potentially blown up over Britain was stopped because of intelligence we got from Saudi Arabia. Of course it would be easier for me to say: Im not having anything to do with these people, its all terribly difficult etcetera etcetera. For me, Britains national security and our peoples security comes first.

Execution of al-Nimr

As the State Department noted, the most provocative of the January 1 executions was that of Sheikh Nimr Bakr al-Nimr, a firebrand Shia theologian and activist who has long been an outspoken critic of the Saudi regime. The State Departments concern that the execution risked exacerbating sectarian tensions in the region was validated almost immediately when anti-Saudi demonstrations erupted in Shia-ruled Iran and other Shia-majority communities. On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced it was breaking diplomatic relations with Tehran, Riyadhs chief rival for regional and religious dominance. Iran had predicted dire consequences and divine vengeance if Nimr were executed.

To Saudi Shiites, Nimr had become a heroic symbol of their well-documented grievances. His family issued a statement saying that

He was a shining example for peaceful and non-violent protest. He advocated personal responsibility and courageously called for the legitimate civil rights [of Saudis] and had renounced sectarianism for more than four decades. We denounce and condemn this unjust killing, which exemplifies the killing of wisdom, moderation, and betrayal of the peaceful means of protest the late Sheikh followed. He had always rejected and denounced the use of arms and violence, which is evidenced by his sermons and statements.

But Nimr he was not a peaceful activist in the style of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., according to the British writer Robert Lacey, author of The Kingdom, who attended news conferences in 2007 by him and a rival Shiite leader, Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar. The tone could not have been more different, Lacey wrote for a membership-only news service yesterday.

Al-Saffar was conciliatory, moving, passive-quietist in a constructive fashion, anxious to emphasize the gains for the Shia community that he and his colleague Jaffr Al-Shayeb had made through engaging in dialogue with the government. Al-Nimr was anything but quietist. He was positively incendiary-angry, inflammatory and notably uncompromising. He was contemptuous of the Al-Shayeb and Al-Saffar for playing the Saudi game, and called openly for the overthrow of the house of Saud.

Nimr had also called for Saudi Shiites to secede from the Kingdom and affiliate with nearby Shia-majority Bahrain.

Iranian threats issued in advance of the execution are likely to augment the already deep suspicions about the loyalty of Saudi Arabias Shiites that are prevalent among the Saudi leadership and general population. Saudi children are taught in school that Shiites are apostates and heretics. Suspicion that the Shiites are aligned with Iran will not improve their status.

For the Obama administration-and for Russia, France, and other Western powers-the immediate affect of the breach in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran is that it will complicate their efforts to find solutions for the wars in Syria and Yemen. For Saudi Shiites and for human rights activists, the next question is what will happen to Sheikh Nimrs nephew, Ali, who is also under a death sentence. The young man, now 20 years old, has been in prison since he was 17.



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About the author:

Thomas W. Lippman is a Washington-based author and journalist who has written about Middle Eastern affairs and American foreign policy for more than three decades, specializing in Saudi Arabian affairs, U.S.- Saudi relations, and relations between the West and Islam. He is a former Middle East bureau chief of the Washington Post, and also served as that newspaper's oil and energy reporter. Throughout the 1990s, he covered foreign policy and national security for the Post, traveling frequently to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. In 2003 he was the principal writer on the war in Iraq for Washingtonpost.com. Prior to his work in the Middle East, he covered the Vietnam war as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Saigon. Lippman has authored six books about the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, where he serves as the principal media contact on Saudi Arabia and U.S. - Saudi relations.
Danish FM in Iran for 'win-win' exchange with Tehran

01/05/16

Source: Press TV

Denmark seeks to increase its economic exchange with Iran and looks forward to a win-win trade with the Islamic Republic, says Danish Foreign Minister Christian Jensen. The top Danish diplomat made the comments on Tuesday in Tehran at a gathering on the promotion of trade between the two countries, IRNA reported.



Danish Foreign Minister Christian Jensen speaking at the Iran-Denmark trade gathering in the Iranian capital, Tehran, January 4, 2016.

(Photo:

(Photo: Islamic Republic News Agency

Jensen made reference to the decades-long diplomatic relations between the two sides, noting that Denmark has had a history of cooperation with Iran in different areas, including the construction of a thousand kilometers of railway to connect the Persian Gulf in the south to the Caspian Sea in the north.

Iranian media reports said Monday that delegates from Danish shipping giants were in Tehran for maritime cooperation and help in areas of oil, gas and petrochemicals.





Iran-Denmark trade gathering in Tehran

(Photo: Islamic Republic News Agency)



Meanwhile, Iranian Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian has spoken of an offer by Denmark to develop renewable energy industry in Iran and build a wind-turbine manufacturing factory in the country.

Chitchian further said the Danish delegation meeting sought to find ways of investing in Iranian water and power industries.

He also spoke of a 'very good understanding' between the two sides of cooperation in different sectors of renewable energy.





Denmark exports an annual USD 213 million worth of goods and services to Iran and imports just over 10 million dollars worth of Iranian commodities, according to IRNA.


Cutting Iran ties can't hide Saudi crime: President Rouhani

01/05/16

Source: Press TV

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says Saudi Arabia will not be able to distract from its "great crime" of killing a religious leader by severing its ties with the Islamic Republic. Referring to the Saturday execution by Saudi Arabia of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, President Rouhani said on Tuesday, "It is only natural that a crime against Islamic and human rights will be met with reaction from public opinion."





Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (R) meets with Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen in the Iranian capital, Tehran, January 5, 2016.

(Photo:

(Photo: Islamic Republic News Agency

"Of course, the Saudi government, in order to cover up its crime of beheading a religious leader has resorted to a strange measure and has severed its ties with the Islamic Republic, whereas, undoubtedly, such moves will never hide that great crime," said the Iranian president, who was speaking during a meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen in Tehran.

Saudi Arabia faced strong condemnation from Iran, as well as other countries, soon after the execution of Sheikh Nimr, who was a vocal critic of the Riyadh regime.

"Criticism should not be responded to with beheading," President Rouhani said, adding, "We hope that European countries, which always react to issues of human rights, would act on their human rights-related obligations in this case, too."

Demonstrations were held in the Iranian capital and other Iranian cities to condemn the killing of Sheikh Nimr. Demonstrations were held, among other places, in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad by protesters censuring Saudi Arabia.

Amid the largely peaceful protests, a group of people scaled the walls of the consulate in Mashhad while incendiary devices were hurled at the embassy in Tehran. Some 50 people were detained over the violation of the diplomatic perimeters.

On Sunday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced his country was cutting diplomatic relations with Iran.

Recounting Copenhagen's reaction to Saudi Arabia's execution, Jensen told President Rouhani that Denmark was the first country to condemn the killing of Nimr.



Security Council urges Saudi Arabia, Iran to avoid tensions

The UN Security Council has called on Saudi Arabia and Iran to avoid actions that could exacerbate tensions in the region after the kingdom's execution of prominent cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. In a statement on Monday, the 15-member council urged the two sides to "maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region."



Iranians hold a protest rally against the Saudi execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Tehran, January 4, 2016.

(Photo:

(Photo: Islamic Republic News Agency

The council made no mention of the Saudi execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia, which has triggered angry protests in Iran and elsewhere across the world.

The statement, instead, censured assaults on two Saudi missions in Iran during angry protests which broke out following sudden execution of Sheikh Nimr.

The Security Council called on Iran "to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel."

Iranian officials have said some 50 people were detained over the incidents outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.

President Hassan Rouhani denounced the assaults and pledged to deal firmly with "unruly" elements.



Saudi Arabia used the incidents to attack Iran and on Sunday, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the kingdom was severing all diplomatic relations with Iran.

Iran has said Saudi rulers were trying to divert attention from the Nimr execution fallout and other domestic problems.

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said the decision to cut relations showed the kingdom's "survival hinges on stoking tensions."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said "the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Tehran was deeply worrying."
It's the nightmarish flip side of the on-the-road productivity we discussed last week: You've grabbed your laptop and headed out to a client's office, ready to dazzle him or her with a presentation. After some small talk, you flip open your machine, fire up Microsoft PowerPoint, and discover...you can't find the file. It's securely sitting on your home office PC15 miles away.

How could you be so stupid? Maybe you saved the document to a flash drive that you left plugged into your desktop computer and forgot to take with you. Maybe you saved it to a folder that isn't synchronized with your Dropbox ($9.99 Per Month at Dropbox)(Opens in a new window) or Microsoft OneDrive ($0.00 at Microsoft Store)(Opens in a new window) cloud storage account.

Alternatively, let's say you're a telecommuter who works two or three days a week at home and, on one of your home office days, you find you need a document from your cubicle PC at work. No matter how you find yourself in this type of predicament, you're in troubleunless you have an assistant back at your office who can send you the file you need. Or, failing that, you will be fine if you can magically reach across the miles and pull the file from your main system.

Fortunately, since this is the age of high-tech magic, you can. Actually, you could have done it back in the low-tech days of DOS. What you need is remote access, a way to control and fetch files from what's called a host PC (which you left switched on back at the office) using what's called a client or local PC (which is what you have with you). If you have a Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive in your home office, used for backup or as a server for multiple computers, you can grab files from the drive from anywhere there's an Internet connection. Such devices give you your own private cloud.

Remote access software solutions, by contrast, let you do more than just retrieve files, as lifesaving as that may be. These solutions work by sending your keyboard and mouse (or touchpad) input to the host PC and sending back an image of its screenso it's as if you're virtually sitting in front of your primary system. This lets you run applications you don't even have on the client machine. Say, for instance, your home office PC is a workstation with powerful graphics cards on which you run Computer-Aided Design (CAD) or engineering software. You can't run the software on your lightweight laptop but you can give a demonstration or show a client your designs and data sets by remotely logging in.

Two Routes to Remote

As I said, remote access has been around for decades (Symantec had a popular program called pcAnywhere which, given the reliability of dial-up modems, I used to call pcSometimes). I've been playing with two of the best known examples today, LogMeIn Pro(Opens in a new window) ($149 per year) and Citrix's GoToMyPC(Opens in a new window) ($10 per month for one user accessing one computer; $10 per additional computer). Both LogMeIn Pro and GoToMyPC are free to try for a limited time.

The two remote access solutions work the same way: You visit the vendor's website and sign up with a username (e.g., email account) and password, and then download a small host module which you install on your home office PC. Once that's done, you can use any device with a Web browser (they have Android, iOS, Mac OS X, and Windows clients) from anywhere there's an Internet connection to sign in at the website and see your accessible computer or computers.

Enter another password and, if this is your first connection, you'll be prompted to download and install a viewer or ActiveX control. LogMeIn also offers a Windows direct-connect client or alternative to using a browser, which it suggests if you're using Windows 10's Microsoft Edge, but I used Internet Explorer 11 and Chrome instead. (Yes, over the holidays I upgraded Ye Olde Core i3 to Win 10 and Microsoft Office 2016 , which is worth a cranky column in itself later.)

That done, the host PC's screen appears on the client's displaya black screen in GoToMyPC, which by default turns off desktop wallpaper to reduce lag (though I turned it back on for the screenshot below).

GoToMyPC offers pull-down menus and a tabbed dialog box for system options ranging from sound quality to printer selection. LogMeIn Pro has a top-of-screen toolbar including whiteboard and laser pointer tools for underlining or circling items on the screen. Both GoToMyPC and LogMeIn Pro provide a side-by-side File Manager view for transferring files and folders between systems. Each remote access solution also provides a shared clipboard so you can select some text or spreadsheet data on the host and paste it into a document on the client. Each supports hosts with multiple monitors, though I didn't test the feature.

Both programs yielded surprisingly snappy performance over my 802.11n Wi-Fi and Cablevision ISP connection. The biggest complaint I had with either was my own fumbling when trying to switch between remote control and sending keystrokes (like the Windows menu key) to the client.

Which solution did I like better? As a reviewer, I haven't seen a closer call in some time; I can only recommend that you try before you buy. I found GoToMyPC a bit friendlier to use but LogMeIn Pro's menu and toolbar a bit smoother once I topped its learning curve. Either one is a potentially invaluable resource for a part-time telecommuter or a forgetful traveler.

Have you used remote access to save the day or as an alternative to a teleworker's VPN client? Share your staying-connected secrets in the comments below or at [email protected].
Lenovo already showed off its CES business lineup, but it also has a few things in store for consumers.

First out of the gate is a flashy gaming rig with Razer Chroma lighting and Nvidia GTX SLI graphics, but Lenovo has a number of new PCs.

The Lenovo Ideacentre Y900 RE (above) starts the ball rolling, showing off for the tech adopters otherwise known as gamers. The RE stands for Razer Edition, and there's no doubt that the gaming peripheral manufacturer is standing side by side with Lenovo on this stage.

Outside, the tower desktop has the Razer triskelion on its haunches, along with customizable Chroma lighting effects. Inside, you'll find a sixth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, up to two Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 cards, a hard drive, an SSD, and up to 32GB of DDR4 system memory. Wired and wireless connections are plentiful, and the system includes a Razer BlackWidow Chroma keyboard and Mamba Tournament Edition Chroma gaming mouse. Look for the Y900 RE in June, starting at $2,299.

The $599 Lenovo Y27g RE is a matching 27-inch full HD curved display with Nvidia G-Sync and Razer Chroma effects as well. Gaming laptop updates center on the high-end $1,999 ideapad Y900, with a 17.3-inch Full HD IPS screen, sixth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GTX 980M graphics, up to 64GB of memory, and up to 512GB SSD (RAID 0). The Y900 has one button overclocking for extra gaming performance.

Less flashy, but still innovative is the Lenovo Ideacentre 610S, a small form factor (SFF) desktop with a sixth-generation Intel Core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 750ti graphics that comes bundled with a wireless projector that fits on top of the desktop like a cap. At $849, the combo gives you the ability to project clear images and videos on any wall up to 110 inches.

The $699 Ideacentre AIO 510s, meanwhile, is an all-in-one desktop's 23-inch Full HD touch screen has a bezel that's only 7.2mm (0.28 inch) thick. That means you can use it with other frameless external displays for an almost seamless panoramic view. Both desktops will be available in June.

Laptop aficionados have a lot to like, with Lenovo's uber-thin Yoga 900s (left), a follow-up to the Editors' Choice Lenovo Yoga 900 ($949.99 at Lenovo)(Opens in a new window) we saw last year.

The 900s uses an Intel Core m7 processor to reduce cooling needs, and therefore weight is down from 2.85 to 2.2 pounds. It's got a smaller 12.5-inch screen, but the system has the same watchband hinge, multimode design, up to 512GB SSD storage, and USB-C port. The Yoga 900S arrives in March for $1,099 and up.

Finally, the ideapad 710S and ideapad 700 laptops have similar names, and have the same $799 price tags, but are three different consumer systems.

The ideapad 710S is the slim model, with up to Intel Core i7 power in a 13.3-inch laptop that weighs 2.6 pounds. The ideaPad 700 15-inch and 17-inch are performance-oriented desktop replacement laptops with more powerful Intel Core i7 processors, Nvidia GT X940M or GT X950M discrete graphics, and much heavier bodies (5.1 pounds for the 15-inch; 5.9 pounds for 17-inch). The ideapad 700 siblings are available in June, while the ideapad 710S follows a month later in July.
LAS VEGASVive is getting closer to reality. HTC and Valve today unveiled the latest version of their joint virtual-reality system, with clearer images, streamlined equipment, and most notably the ability to see what's in front of you thanks to a built-in front-facing camera.

The Vive Pre is still a headset, which is cabled to a desktop PC, along with two wireless, handheld controllers and two laser-positioning boxes. But performance has been improved all around from the first Vive developer units, HTC VP Dan O'Brien said.

Most notably, the front-facing camera enables a better "chaperone" mode, which can give you a picture-in-picture view of the real world in front of you, or wireframes of physical objects overlaid in the VR world, so you don't bump into tables or trip over cables.

"If you want to be able to give people the most immersive experience to move around, they also have to be able to move around safely," O'Brien said.

Safety was one of my major concerns with the original Vive, which needed a large, empty room to work in. Now, Vive can work with standing VR experiences just fine on a 5-by-8 carpet, or even with seated VR experiences at a table, O'Brien said.

But Vive is definitely not about sitting down. O'Brien spent a bit of time promoting "room-scale" VR experiences, where you walk around and interact with objects, differentiating Vive from its more sedentary Oculus and Samsung Gear VR ($29.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) competitors.

"Room scale brings us to that highest level of presence, where you're actually inside the content, not only interacting with the content," he said. "VR is going to get bigger, not smaller."

The headset is still bulky, but noticeably smaller than the one I saw last March at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and it will have various face-gasket options for differently sized faces. The screens now have "mura correction," which makes the image more immersive by removing a "dirty window" quality.

The new base stations are attractive little cubes which look like Bose speakers; you ideally want two in a room, although they'll work with one.

The controllers that you use to create virtual "hands" are better balanced and more comfortable, with two-stage triggers. They're wireless, with a four-hour battery life, although they can also be connected via USB.

There will be one more version of Vive before it goes to retail, O'Brien said. Like the previous version, this one is for developers to work with so the consumer version has enough experiences to make it worthwhile.

"We will reveal the final version in the coming weeks," he said.

The last question about Vive, of course, is still unanswered: how much it will cost, when it finally hits retail this April. The system needs a recent desktop-class GPU, and the hardware itself also won't be cheap.

"Like with all new technology ... there's early adopters, innovators, and gamers make up a big portion of that. They're going to consume this product," O'Brien said.
LAS VEGASMost product and series announcements at CES are for one type of device. A company will announce an HDTV, a speaker, a washing machine, or a tablet. LG is eschewing that tactic by revealing LG Signature, the company's cross-category premium brand that combines home electronics and appliances.

LG Signature productsthe first of which include an HDTV, fridge, washing machine, and air purifierare stark and stylish. The fridge, washing machine, and air purifier were designed by Torsten Valeur, master designer of the line and president of David Lewis Designers.

First up is the LG Signature OLED G6, the company's newest and highest-end HDTV. It takes LG's philosophy of minimizing HDTV bezels to an extreme by eliminating them entirely. The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel is attached to a single glass sheet, measuring just 2.57mm thick with no physical frame. The base is an integrated speaker system that can fold behind the screen for wall mounting.

Because it's an OLED panel, it lacks a separate backlighting system and, if it performs remotely similar to previous LG OLED HDTVs we've reviewed, it's capable of displaying perfect black levels. The G6 supports high dynamic range (HDR) content with Dolby Vision, and LG claims it can cover 99 percent of the DCI color space. It is, of course, an ultra high-definition (UHD or 4K) television, and the president of the UHD Alliance, Hanno Basse, appeared at LG's press conference to discuss the G6's UltraHD Premium certification.

The new LG Signature washing machine is a stark white-and-black box that looks like a console from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's an all-in-one washer-dryer unit that features a heat pump for drying, and incorporates a Centum drive suspension system that LG says reduces noise. The controls are integrated into a touch-sensitive disc on the front-loading door. Oddly, the model displayed at LG's press conference doesn't seem intended for the U.S. market; a separate stainless steel version will be released for North America.

The LG Signature air purifier users a semi-permanent filter system that can be washed repeatedly for up to 10 years, and can remove particles as small as one micrometer.

Finally, the new LG Signature fridge is a stainless steel side-by-side-door fridge with LG's door-in-door for easy access to foot items. The door features smart glass that automatically becomes clear when you knock on it, and darkens when you walk away. A foot sensor on the fridge also automatically opens the door when you put your foot in front of it, and the interior is clad in stainless steel, like the exterior.

LG has not yet yet announced pricing or availability for the LG Signature line in the U.S. An LG Signature dishwasher and oven are coming later this year.
LAS VEGAS The first smartphone with Qualcomm's new premiere processor is coming from an unexpected place.

At CES today, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf announced that the LeTV Le Max Pro will be the first phone running Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820, the processor that is supposed to vault Qualcomm back into chipset dominance.

I'm not going to downplay Qualcomm's strength too much; the company is still the leading smartphone chip manufacturer. But after it decided to switch from custom cores to standard ARM designs with last year's round of chips, it's seen Samsung and Huawei peel off to power their leading smartphones with their own processors, while Mediatek nips at Qualcomm's heels on the low end.

Snapdragon 820 Phone

Along with the basic features of the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm said the phone uses Qualcomm's ultrasonic SenseID fingerprint scanner, which detects touches under the metal back of the phone, Mollenkopf said. The phone also supports 802.11ad, 60GHz super-fast data transfer between devices that support it, which will enable 4K streaming from the phone to a TV, for instance.

LeTV is a Chinese company that's likely unfamiliar to Westerners. Mollenkopf described it as the "Netflix of China"; it makes a range of phones and streams a huge amount of video to Chinese consumers. This is a big shift from last year's CES, when the Snapdragon 810 debuted with a global launch of the LG G Flex 2 .

Qualcomm debuted the Snapdragon 820 in November, and it now says it has 80+ customers for the chip, although it isn't revealing any others. Also at CES, Qualcomm showed an automotive version of the Snapdragon 820 which can help enable self-driving cars.

We don't know much more about the LeTV Le Max Pro; I can't find anything else about the Web on it, and LeTV's website is entirely in Chinese. We'll hunt it down here at the show.
LAS VEGASHuawei is a conundrum. Globally, it's the third-biggest smartphone maker in the world, well ahead of LG. As we found with the Mate S and the Google Nexus 6P, Huawei makes compelling high-end phones and tablets.

But it's only been able to get low-end, lower-quality products into U.S. carriers' lineups. Today at CES, Huawei showed off the Mate 8 phablet, GX8 phone, and MediaPad M2 10 tablet, all of which would look good in any carrier's lineup.

Hands On With the Huawei Mate 8

The Mate 8 was introduced this November in China, but this was our first chance at getting hold of Huawei's new flagship. Huawei gave us a week with the phablet, which was plenty of time to get a good feel for some of its idiosyncracies.

The Mate 8 starts at 599 Euros, which puts it within striking distance of the big dogs like Apple and Samsung. Its all-metal build quality is excellent, although it's squarer and a little more formal than the curves both Apple and Samsung have been crazy about recently. The fingerprint scanner on the back is easy to reach with your forefinger, and it's super fast and accurate.

The phone's best feature is its super-bright 6-inch screen, which makes it terrific for reading books. It's only 1,920-by-1,080 resolutionSamsung's phablets are much higher-resbut I didn't notice until I was also holding a Samsung phone, at which point I was blown away by the Samsung's competing sharpness.

The Mate 8 has 16-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras. The main 16MP camera comes with a lot of fun filters, but it's noisier in indoors lighting conditions than I'd prefer. The selfie camera has a great little guide to make you look at the actual camera rather than down, though.

Performance on the 2.3GHz Kirin 930 processor is similar to what we saw on the Mate S: excellent productivity performance with so-so gaming frame rates. This is the first Huawei phone we've seen with Android Marshmallow 6.0, although you wouldn't know it because of Huawei's very thick EMUI skin. Most notably, EMUI gets rid of Android's app trayall your icons are on the home screens. Huawei says that's simpler.

I'm also concerned EMUI is a battery hog. I used the Mate 8 without a SIM card, in Wi-Fi-only mode, and yet it would frequently run its gigantic 4000mAh battery down after two days in standby. Samsung phones have the same problem; HTC's generally do not.

The biggest remaining question about the Mate 8 is whether it will be sold in the U.S. Huawei officially says no, while the Wall Street Journal says yes(Opens in a new window). According to my own sources, Huawei is still internally discussing whether to sell the phone in our market, as sales of unlocked smartphones that cost over $500 in the U.S. haven't generally gone well for anyone except Apple.

Hands On With the Huawei GX8

The Huawei GX8 is the U.S. version of the Huawei G8, which was introduced last September. This is a midrange, 5.5-inch, Android 5.1-powered smartphone with a 1,920-by-1,080 screen, a sizeable 3000mAh battery and a thoroughly middle-of-the-road 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor on board. It has 16GB of storage plus a MicroSD card slot, 13-megapixel and 5-megapixel cameras, and a fingerprint sensor on the back. Huawei says it's the same sensor as on the Mate S and Mate 8, which is a fast, accurate model. The body is all metal, which you usually don't get at a sub-$350 price point.

The GX8 is well-built, with a cool metal frame and glass to the edges. I only got a few minutes with it, and frankly, it's good looking but a little nondescript in terms of performance. I'm concerned about Huawei's thick EMUI skin over Android, which gets rid of the app tray and adds a lot of powerful, but confusing functionality, like letting you crop images by knocking on the screen with your knuckles.

The GX8 will be available sometime in Q1 unlocked, compatible with T-Mobile and AT&T for $349. That makes it a little less expensive than Google's Nexus 5X ($379), but a step up from the OnePlus X ($249).

Late tonight, meanwhile, Huawei has an event for its Honor sub-brand, where it's expected to announce an affordable, unlocked Honor smartphone for the U.S.

Hands On With the Huawei MediaPad M2

The MediaPad M2 10 is designed for watching movies and drawing pictures. So, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and Apple iPad Pro ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , it defaults to landscape mode, with the home button centered for landscape. It also has a 16:9, 1,920-by-1,200 10-inch screen, unlike the higher-resolution 4:3 screens on its major competitors. That's a 1080p movie resolution and a film aspect ratio, so you see where Huawei is going.

The M2 runs Android 5.1 on a 2GHz octa-core Kirin 930 processor and will come in 16GB and 64GB storage sizes, both with a MicroSD card slot. The tablet is only 0.28 inches thick, and weighs 17 ounces. There's a 13-megapixel camera on the back and a 5-megapixel camera on the front. Super-loud quad speakers (treble on the top, bass on the bottom) blast sound with Harmon/Kardon's Clari.fi enhancement technology. I demoed the tablet in a very loud room, but I can confirm that yes, the speakers are loud.

I'm also intrigued by the M2's Wacom pressure-sensitive pen, which will be included with the 64GB model. The tablet comes with Wacom's Bamboo app, which suggests that the pressure-sensitivity will be compatible with any app in Wacom's ecosystem. That's encouraging.

Holding the Mediapad in my hand made it clear that it's a major competitor to Samsung. The tablet is thin, smooth, and light, and the screen is sharp, although the colors aren't as rich as Samsung's AMOLEDs. I played with the stylus a bit, and palm rejection and pressure sensitivity are both good. However, the stylus is a little bit slippery on the screen, and pressing hard creates a slight ripple effect in the screen plastic, similar to the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 ($750.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) but unlike the harder iPad Pro + Pencil ($98.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) combination.

The Mediapad M2 comes in four configurations. There's a silver, 16GB/2GB model ($349 for Wi-Fi, $399 LTE) and a gold, 3GB/64GB model ($419 Wi-Fi, $469 LTE). Only the 64GB model has the Wacom pressure-sensitive layer and pen. Both are coming to the U.S., but via direct sale, not necessarily through carriers.

Huawei Watch Elegant and Jewel

The company also showed off some new colors and styles for the Huawei Watch (the Jewel has 68 Swarovski crystals around the face for $599) and the Nexus 6P (gold). The new watches have a built-in speaker so you can make phone calls on them; when I tried it in the hall, the speaker was too quiet to hear, but it was a very, very noisy room. Check them out in the video below.
Self-driving cars, deep learning, easy parking: Nvidias press conference at CES provided an interesting glimpse into how our future on the roads will look. Unlike previous years the press conference was light on technical details.

But buried deep inside the hour-long presentation was a momentary glimpse into the companys latest integrated Tegra chip, which could have a significant impact on Nvidias direction in supercomputing, entertainment and mobile products.

Nvidia introduced the Drive PX 2, a lunchbox-size supercomputer for cars that provides the horsepower equivalent of 150 MacBook Pros. Inside the car computer are next-generation Tegra CPUs and Pascal GPUs, which could bring better graphics and smarts to other products like GRID servers, supercomputers and the Shield TV box.

The chip in Drive PX 2 may be a mobile processor code-named Parker, which Nvidia has said would ship this year. According to Nvidias previous roadmaps, the Pascal GPU has new technologies such as 3D stacked memory and the NVLink interconnect, which can bring big performance and power efficiency gains to Nvidias Tegra chips.

The Drive PX 2 chip has two integrated computing modules with 12 CPU cores and two GPUs. Each module had four ARM-based Cortex-A57 and two Denver 64-bit cores and a Pascal GPU. Nvidias homegrown Denver CPU has returned after it was abandoned in the previous Tegra chip, called X1, which had prior-generation Maxwell GPUs.

Lighter and lower-power variants of the Drive PX 2 chip could be used in Nvidias Shield TV set-top box, which doesnt require as much horsepower as a car or supercomputer. Implementing a variant of that chip in one of the companys Shield tablets is less likely as Nvidia is moving away from mobile products, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Nvidias drive to get into high-performance computing and machine learning suggests an unprecedented pairing of Tegra CPUs with Pascal GPUs for more powerful servers and supercomputers, McGregor said.

Some of the fastest computers in the world already have Nvidia GPUs for complex calculations, but are paired with Intel CPUs. The new Tegra CPU and Pascal GPU could give Nvidia a full package of chips for ARM-based supercomputers.

The chip in PX 2 also has some deep-learning instructions, which can process large data sets and build predictive models to spot and recognize trends. For example, self-driving cars with Drive PX 2 can be trained to recognize objects, signs and respond to on-road situations. The same deep-learning models could be applied to areas like financial forecasting and health, where high-performance computers with Nvidias new chips could fit, McGregor said.

Nvidia is building its own machine-learning system for cars, and its GPUs are already being used in deep-learning systems from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM.

The Drive PX 2 delivers about 8 teraflops of performance with the new chips, a significant improvement over the Drive PX 1, which had Tegra X1 and clocked in at 2.3 teraflops. Some of the improvements also come from the 16-nanometer FinFET manufacturing process, which has helped cram more features and bring more power-efficiency to the chips. Transistors will be stacked on top of each other in the chips.

In the detailed talk about self-driving cars and the Drive PX 2, Huang left the new Tegra CPU and Pascal GPU as a side note.

Drive PX 2 is not a chip strategy, its not a processor strategy, but more of a strategy to build full computers for cars and other products, Huang said.

But theres a possibility Nvidia could spill some technical details on the new chip later this year.
For Karin Storm, her trip to Disneyland on Sunday, Jan. 10 will be a last hurrah of sorts.

The annual passholder from Fountain Valley plans to eat all she can at Big Thunder Ranch Barbecue, watch the last Aladdin show at nearby Disney California Adventure, then head back to Disneyland at night to hitch a ride on the Disneyland Railroad before the train is suspended for at least a year.

This is our last chance to say goodbye, the 39-year-old said. Im sad that things are closing for a very long period of time and permanently  but Disneyland has always been about change.

On Monday, Jan. 11, Disneyland is closing several attractions  some for at least a year and others permanently  to make room for a 14-acre Star Wars land.

The land, as previously reported, will be built in the northern part of Frontierland, forever replacing the Big Thunder Ranch area, meaning the end of Big Thunder Ranch Barbecue, in the Big Thunder Ranch Jamboree where Disneyland hosted special events and the petting farm.

A backstage area with warehouses and the Circle D Ranch will also be replaced. The horses and animals housed at the ranch have been moved to a nearby off-property location.

Construction of the Star Wars land will temporarily affect attractions that are part of Rivers of America, which will be drained.

The Disneyland Railroad, which loops through that part of the park, will be closed for at least a year with Davy Crocketts Explorer Canoes, the Mark Twain Riverboat, Sailing Ship Columbia, Pirates Lair on Tom Sawyer Island and the Fantasmic! show.

Star Wars land will be an immersive experience for visitors, Disney officials have said, with two signature attractions, including one in which guests ride the Millennium Falcon spaceship, and a cantina similar to the famed Mos Eisley joint from the films.

Unrelated to Star Wars land, Disney California Adventures popular Aladdin  A Musical Spectacular will make its final curtain call Sunday. Aladdin, which has played for more than a decade in the Hyperion Theater, will give way to a new Frozen musical show.

Cast members who work in these attractions will be relocated to other parts of the park.

Many annual passholders and visitors are treating the impending closures as a farewell. People in Disney groups on Facebook and other social media plan to meet up to experience, one last time, some of the attractions and rides that are closing. The barbecue restaurant is already booked.

Andy Lowe, 40, who will be coming in from Los Angeles, said the changes are bittersweet. Many die-hard Disneyland fans, he said, cling to the attractions from the parks past, and anything that disrupts or changes those memories is like ripping something away from their childhood.

Theres a lot of fan loyalty and nostalgia, Lowe said. The idea of not having some attractions  is a frustrating point because they just raised annual pass prices. And if its not necessarily how you remember, it is a scary thing.

He can see good in the change: What has made Disney parks so successful is they have been constantly evolving and updating to keep themselves relevant.

Jackson Keith, 37, and his family are planning to visit from Phoenix that weekend.

We arranged our vacation for those dates just for this, Keith said.

Im not a hard-core Star Wars fan, but Im looking forward to the changes, he said. Walt Disney has always said the park will always be changing as long as there is imagination in the world.
Former British diplomat Sir Tony Brenton is scheduled to speak about relations between the United States and Russia Wednesday, Jan. 20 at the The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside.

Brenton, who served as British ambassador to Russia from 2004 to 2008, was in charge of the British Embassy in Washington D.C. during the Iraq War. He served more than 30 years in the British Foreign Service.

His talk, Living with the Bear: What Do We Do About Russia? is set for 6:30 p.m. A reception and buffet precedes the program at 5:30 p.m.

The event is presented by the World Affairs Council of Inland Southern California. Tickets for the reception and talk are $40 for members and $45 for prospective members. The talk is $30 for members and $35 for prospective members. Student registration to the talk is free.

Information and registration: http://www.wacinlandsocal.org/event-2113698 or 909-537-5648.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292 or swall@pressenterprise.com
It was no surprise when the California Public Employment Relations Board overturned San Diegos landmark 2012 pension reform initiative last week. After all, the board members and general counsel, who are appointed by the governor, are mostly former union leaders and union attorneys, including representatives of the Service Employees International Union and the California Teachers Association, so it seems there is rarely a benefit to which public employees are not entitled in PERBs eyes. But it was nonetheless a blow to democracy that will cost the city even more much-needed funds in a protracted legal battle.

With San Diego facing a pension debt of more than $2 billion and retirement obligations eating up 20 percent of the citys budget, pension reformers crafted Proposition B. The measure, which passed with an overwhelming 66 percent of the vote, replaced traditional, defined-benefit pensions with 401(k)-style defined-contribution plans for all new city employees except police officers; capped new police pensions at 80 percent of final salary; excluded supplemental and specialty pay from pension calculations; directed the city to negotiate with the unions to freeze employee salaries for several years; and required that city officers and employees convicted of a felony related to their positions lose their pension benefits.

Then-mayor Jerry Sanders was an ardent supporter of Prop. B, but, according to PERB, he acted illegally by not first getting permission from the unions through the meet and confer process. Apparently, public officials must sacrifice their First Amendment rights at the altar of union interests.

The law does not give labor unions the power to negotiate the terms of a citizens initiative, San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith said. After a judge rejected PERBs attempt to get Prop. B thrown off the ballot in 2012, Mr. Goldsmith maintained, For hundreds of years, governors and mayors have said, Im going directly to the people. PERB came up with this loony idea that before you go to the people you go to the labor unions and negotiate whether thats OK.

Given the monopoly of public employee union political power in California, the ballot initiative has been the last vestige of hope for fiscal responsibility for state and local taxpayers. Through examples like Vallejo and San Bernardino, the public unions have proven that they are willing to bleed cities dry, even to the point of bankruptcy. City Attorney Goldsmith is confident that the state courts will rebuff PERBs ruling. For the sake of taxpayers and residents who depend on city services, we hope he is right.
Alejandro G. Inarritu knew Leonardo DiCaprio would go to the ends of the earth to make the 19th-century survival epic The Revenant exactly as the famously meticulous director wanted.

For Inarritu, DiCaprio was the best person to play Hugh Glass, a real-life fur trapper who survived a bear mauling and then went to find his mates who left him for dead in the unforgiving wilderness. Over the course of the nearly yearlong production, the Oscar-nominated actor and environmentalist proved his commitment over and over. He ate raw bison. He stripped naked in sub-zero temperatures. He even jumped into an icy river. But, early on, Inarritu had one very specific worry: Could DiCaprio grow a beard?

You cannot shoot this film with a fake beard. It would look terrible, Inarritu said in a recent interview. Not every man grows so much hair in his face. That was a bet.

Thankfully for the director, DiCaprio sprouted a gnarly, unruly beard that becomes a symbol of where exactly his character is on his journey, and how deeply hes devolved. Makeup added dirt daily, and a combination of glycerin and grit gave his hair that unwashed, bloody look  the look of someone whod survived a bear attack.

Its a minor thing, and perhaps the easiest test DiCaprio had to endure to make the sprawling epic, but its one of those details that illustrate the overall productions commitment to authenticity.

Its a really primal story of man and the natural world, said DiCaprio in a recent phone interview. Its almost biblical.

In an era of computer-generated imagery and other post-production fixes, this was an unconventional shoot from the outset. Inarritu traveled with his crew to Calgary, Alberta, and then to Argentina when the Canadian snow melted earlier than expected. As if shooting on location isnt hard enough, he and cinematographer Emmanuel Chivo Lubezki also opted to shoot only in natural light, giving the production a mere 90 minutes a day to achieve complex, highly choreographed long takes. The duo had done this before in Birdman, but never in the unpredictable wilderness.

But DiCaprio knew very well what he was signing up for.

When youre out in the elements like this  and there are people who have much harder jobs than people making a movie  but you just appreciate the endurance of man and how were able to adapt to circumstances, DiCaprio said. Youre signing on to find elements that will ultimately transform the narrative and find the poetry.  It was all basically us really putting ourselves in this environment and seeing what happens.

Partly by nature of the story and partly for the sake of his character, DiCaprio largely isolated himself from the rest of the cast, including his friend Tom Hardy.

He studied the life of Glass and the lives of fur trappers at the time. He learned and practiced the choreography for the shots, too. But when it came time for the cameras to roll, everything became very animalistic  a largely silent performance rooted in instinct and reaction.

For me it was about really thinking these thoughts and really trying to feel this mans pain, DiCaprio said.

Leo thinks like a filmmaker more than an actor, Inarritu said. He understands the whole. He was able to be not only a machine doing exactly what we agreed in a natural way but at the same time be absolutely present to react to any improvisation. Thats when I felt that this is one of the greatest actors.

Little remains of DiCaprios full mountain man transformation externally. Production wrapped. He shed the beard. The bumps and bruises healed. But the grit of the shoot, the trials and tribulations, the tension of getting that perfect shot, its all left on the screen  particularly in the bear attack.

I think it will go down in history as one of the most voyeuristic action sequences ever created, DiCaprio said. You feel the blood and the sweat. You almost smell the bear. It accomplishes what movies do at their best, which is to really make you feel like the rest of the world has evaporated and youre singularly in that moment.

Inarritu wants to keep the specifics of how exactly he achieved such a harrowing sequence to himself. Revealing the process would destroy the magic of it all, he said.

I wanted for people (to) feel the cold, smell the fear, he said. It was difficult, but thats what we were supposed to do. Nobody should care. Nobody should be bothered with having a good time or not. Thats not the purpose of doing a film.

Judging by the results, I would not change a bit.
Googles dangerous bid to block hate speech [Opinion, Jan. 2]: The column rightly says that it is difficult to brand hate speech.

But liberals are desperate. They brand everything Donald Trump says as hate speech. The constitution guarantees the right to free speech. But that applies to everyone, not just the liberals.

Free speech is a valuable thing and should be used wisely. I do not believe that free speech gives one individual the right to say hurtful or disrespectful things about another human being. But it does give you the right to disagree with someones actions or positions. That is not hate or racist, which is what liberals constantly accuse Republicans of doing. They are desperate and dead wrong.

This country is waking up to the lies they have been fed for so many years. It is in danger from our enemies, and those enemies are now Islamic. The president and the peaceful Islamic community needs to wake up and condemn the radical Islamists before they destroy the faith.

Donald is right, we cannot allow anyone into our country when they are suspected of terrorism. This applies to everyone, not just the Syrian refugees. This is not hate speech, this is a matter of our safety.

So lets shut up with the hate and racism rhetoric and protect our country. We do not need anymore refugees, so let them stay home and fight for their country of origin. And while were at it, lets demand proof of citizenship for all employees and jail employers that hire illegal aliens. That would soon solve the illegal alien problem as they would go back home voluntarily if they cannot find work.

The only hate involved in any of these ideas is the hate of government which constantly makes excuses for law breakers and possible terrorists.

Clean up government and enact these ideas and the problem goes away.

Glen Chaffin

Corona
The deportation roundup targeting Central American migrants in about a handful of states this weekend is generating fear in the Inland immigrant community as news spreads of more similar efforts underway.

In a Monday, Jan. 4 statement the Department of Homeland Security said 121 undocumented immigrants were detained and are now in the process of being deported to their home countries.

Our borders are not open to illegal migration; if you come here illegally, we will send you back consistent with our laws and values, said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh. C. Johnson in the statement.

Additional enforcement operations such as these will continue to occur as appropriate, Johnson said.

The arrests signal the departments first major counter effort after numerous families and unaccompanied children from Central America attempted to cross the southern border in the spring and summer of 2014. Many are fleeing gang violence.

Those arrested over the weekend of Jan. 2 are primarily from Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina, but immigrant rights groups are urging Inland residents to be vigilant and report any presence of immigration officials in their neighborhoods.

Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Service Center, said the Inland community is concerned because the deportations focus on women and children who are not a danger to the community.

Were not talking about terrorists. Were talking about families, Amaya said.

In a statement, the DHS said the weekends arrests focused on adults and their children who:

Were apprehended after May 1, 2014, crossing the southern border illegally;

Were issued final orders of removal by an immigration court;

Have exhausted appropriate legal remedies;

Have no outstanding appeal or claim for asylum or other humanitarian relief under our laws.

Inland community organizers, across social media networks, are sharing an information line where people can call if they need help accessing legal services or if they want to report the presence of immigration officials.

Amaya said the information line was set up in response to the immigration raids in 2008 and 2010 that targeted day laborers in Riverside. He said through the information line theyve assisted about 75 Central American families, many who immigrated about a year and a half ago and settled in the Inland area.

Amaya said at least one family has called the information line, alerting them theyve been ordered to show up at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office this week to begin their deportation process. Its unclear if that order is part of the deportation roundup.

The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry issued a statement in Spanish on Saturday, Jan. 2 with a list of warnings for immigrants in the U.S.

Do not open the door to strangers who indicate theyre looking for another person. Immigration agents must show an order signed by a judge to be able to enter your house, the advisory said.

San Bernardino Guatemalan Consulate Billy Munoz said a number of people have reached out to the consulate, asking for legal assistance in the wake of the news.

News of the raids has generated fear and confusion, he said.

Munoz said its been difficult for many recent Central American migrants to navigate the immigration system. The role of the San Bernardino Guatemalan consulate is to help immigrants determine whether they have an upcoming court date or a deportation order, he said.

A lot of people did not show up to their court date, that is the major problem, Munoz said.

The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice is denouncing the deportations and is holding a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 7 at the San Bernardino ICE Office, 655 W. Rialto Ave.

Contact the writer: amolina@pressenterprise.com
A Moreno Valley resident  charged in the Murrieta drug rehab death of a 53-year-old man  did not appear in court in the case Tuesday after reports surfaced that he had gone missing.

Defense Attorney Kenneth Miller spoke on behalf of defendant Kristofer Michael McCausland, 32, who is charged with murder and dependent adult abuse, during a trial readiness conference in the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta. Miller made no mention of McCauslands reported disappearance until California Deputy Attorney General Joel Samuels brought it up.

Samuels, who is prosecuting the case, requested that Superior Court Judge Elaine M. Kiefer order McCausland to appear in court on the next court date in the case, citing an article that was published in The Press-Enterprise. The article provided details about McCauslands reported disappearance.

Kiefer denied Samuels request, saying he needed more than a newspaper report.

Im not inclined to make that order unless you can find anything else, she said.

McCausland was reported missing Dec. 19 by his sister after she had not seen him for more than four days, San Bernardino police spokeswoman Eileen Hards said. McCauslands last known location was San Bernardino.

Miller refused to address the reports of whether McCausland disapeared or where he is  anything youre going to ask me is going to be no comment, he said outside the courthouse Tuesday.

Miller argued in court that there was a valid waiver in place for him to speak on McCauslands behalf and no clear reason to bring him into court.

McCausland  along with four other defendants  is charged in connection with the death of 53-year-old Gary Benefield, who died after being admitted to a Murrieta drug and alcohol treatment center.

None of the defendants appeared in court Tuesday, only their attorneys.

McCausland was named in a July 21 indictment that alleges his employer, A Better Tomorrow Treatment Center in Murrieta, its parent company, and four other employees admitted Benefield under circumstances that could result in great bodily harm or death.
BURNS, Ore. (AP)  The armed activists who flocked to a remote wildlife refuge to take a stand against the federal government also looked prepared for a nippy day of hunting or fishing.

They were bundled in camouflage, plaid shirts, ear muffs and cowboy hats in the bleak, snow-covered high desert of eastern Oregon where they seemed more likely to encounter a bird or animal than a member of the public outside their own group or the throng of news media beyond the pickup trucks blocking the entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

That may be one of the main reasons law enforcement hadnt taken action Monday against the group numbering close to two dozen who were upset about the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.

These guys are out in the middle of nowhere, and they havent threatened anybody that I know of, said Jim Glennon, a longtime police commander who now owns the Illinois-based law enforcement training organization Calibre Press. Theres no hurry. If theres not an immediate threat to anyones life, why create a situation where there would be?

Schools were closed for the week in Burns, about 30 miles north of the refuge, out of an abundance of caution, but no one had been hurt and no one was being held hostage on Monday.

The takeover puts federal officials in a delicate position of deciding whether to confront the occupiers, risking bloodshed, or stand back and possibly embolden others to directly confront the government.

The activists seized the refuge about 300 miles from Portland on Saturday night as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

The armed group said it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.

The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006, one of which was set to cover up deer poaching, according to prosecutors. The men served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

Their sentences were a rallying cry for the group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, whose mostly male members said they want federal lands turned over to local authorities so people can use them free of U.S. oversight.

The group  led by two of the sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the government over grazing rights  sent a demand for redress for grievances to local, state and federal officials.

We have exhausted all prudent measures and have been ignored, Ammon Bundy said.

The group, which included a couple of women and some boys and girls Monday, did not release a copy of its demands and Ammon Bundy would not say what the group would do if it got no response.

President Barack Obama said Monday federal authorities were monitoring the situation, but agents made no apparent moves to surround the property or confront the group  an approach that reflected lessons learned from bloody standoffs at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, in the early 1990s.

That prompted complaints from many observers who suggested the governments response would have been swifter and more severe had the occupants been Muslim or other minorities.

There seems to be somewhat of a reluctance to think white people are as dangerous as people of color, said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

Beirich said the group was emboldened by the governments failure to hold Cliven Bundy or his supporters accountable in 2014 after hundreds of armed anti-government activists rallied to his defense when federal authorities started seizing his cattle over more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

Michael Barkun, an emeritus professor at Syracuse University who has studied extremist groups, said not confronting the Oregon group could embolden others.

You can say, well, a negotiated settlement emboldens them, he said. But by the same token it deprives them of a confrontation that some of them want.

The Hammonds have distanced themselves from the protest group and many locals, including people who want to see federal lands made more accessible, dont want the activists here, fearing they may bring trouble.

Seeds of the dispute date back decades in the West, where the federal government owns about half of all land.

In the 1970s, Nevada and other states pushed for local control over federal land in what was known as the Sagebrush Rebellion.

Supporters wanted more land for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting and opponents wanted federal government to administer lands for the widest possible uses, including environmental and recreational.

The refuge established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt to protect birds from hunters selling plumes to the hat industry has expanded to 300 square miles over the years.

The valley rimmed by distant mountains contains lakes and marshland and now surrounds the ranch Dwight Hammond bought with his father in 1964.

Hammond said his family resisted pressure to sell the ranch as the federal government chipped away at his grazing allotments and increased fees on other lands.

Ammon Bundy said the group plans to stay at the refuge as long as it takes.
There is no single answer about what to do with buildings where mass shootings or other tragedies have taken place, such as the conference building at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, where 14 died on Dec. 2.

Two of the three buildings at the center, a private, nonprofit agency with more than 500 employees who work with Inland residents who have developmental disabilities, reopened Monday.

But officials said they are reviewing what to do about the building where the massacre took place. It includes a coffee shop, a library and conference facilities that can be rented out.

A conference room in the building had been rented by the San Bernardino County Division of Environmental Health Services for a training session. Authorities said Syed Rizwan Farook, a health services employee, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on the group, killing 14 and wounding 22.

Some infamous places were razed, such as the San Ysidro McDonalds where 21 died in a 1984 mass shooting, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 first-graders and six educators were murdered in 2012.

But the theater in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed in 2012 during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, and a salon in Seal Beach where eight people were killed in 2011, were remodeled and reopened.

And at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 died in 1999, the campus reopened but the library, where most of the carnage took place, was torn down and replaced.

In places such as New York and Oklahoma City, where terrorist attacks destroyed the buildings, the decisions were about appropriate memorials.

What to do with a surviving building that is usually accessible to the public is always a difficult passage, said psychotherapist Nancy Bohl-Penrod. Her San Bernardino-based Counseling Team International worked with victims in the Seal Beach, Columbine and 9/11 attacks.

The business needs to ask employees, and get a consensus, she said in a phone interview Monday. While many people can avoid the building, theres no such option for those who work there, she said.

Some will be heartbroken if you take it down, seeing it as giving the perpetrators more power, she said. But others will want to rebuild.

When Salon Meritage in Seal Beach reopened in 2012, Sandi Fannin, the widow of slain owner Randy Fannin, said the reopening was a symbol to her that good wins out over evil.

But on the third anniversary of the reopening of the renamed Century Aurora 16 theater multiplex in Colorado, local resident Daisy Rothschild told the Aurora Sentinels website, I dont even drive down that street, and I avoid the mall, too.  They should have torn it down or made a memorial there.

Its a fascinating question, and I think there are two schools of thought about it, UC Riverside psychology professor Steven Clark said in an email.

On the one hand, we try to avoid stimuli that have negative associations. Thats an argument to tear it down, he wrote.

But, on the other hand, there is a thing called systematic desensitization, which is a fairly common technique to help people deal with fears and phobias. The idea  is to expose ourselves to fear-inducing stimuli  in very small doses  until the fear dissipates.

Whatever is done, for the powers that be to make a decision without consulting the people (who work there) is an incorrect way to do it, Bohl-Penrod said. Letting them take part empowers them, and makes them feel more in control.

Here are the outcomes for some mass-shooting sites:

San Ysidro: McDonalds

A gunman armed with a semiautomatic Uzi rifle, shotgun and pistol kills 21 and wounds 19 on July 18, 1984. The shooter is killed by a police sniper. McDonalds Corp. tears the restaurant down and deeds the land to the city of San Diego, which in 1988 sellsit to Southwestern College. There is a memorial at the scene.

Killeen, Texas: Lubys Cafeteria

An enraged man crashes his pickup through a front window Oct. 16, 1991, emerges with a pistol in each hand and slays 23 people, wounding 22 before committing suicide as police close in. The cafeteria reopens and does business for another nine years, closing only because of economics, its operators said.

Littleton, Colo.: Columbine High School

Two students open fire in the school library April 20, 1999, and kill 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives. Most victims die in the library. The campus eventually reopens, but the library is closed and razed. A foundation raises more than $3 million to replace it in 2001.

Blacksburg, Va.: Virginia Tech

A 23-year-old student goes on a shooting rampage on campus on April 16, 2007, killing 32 before committing suicide. The engineering building where most of the slayings take place reopens, but only for administrative offices. Virginia Tech officials say the building will never again be used for classrooms.

Newtown, Conn.: Sandy Hook Elementary School

Twenty children and six adults are murdered by a 20-year-old man, who kills himself. The gunman also kills his mother. The surviving children are moved to classes at a nearby middle school that had been closed. Sandy Hook Elementary is bulldozed. A new school is scheduled to open this year.

Aurora, Colo.: Century 16 movie theater

Twelve people are killed and 70 wounded July 20, 2012, when a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and two .40-caliber handguns opens fire on an audience gathered for a midnight screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. The shooter is arrested outside the theater. Renamed the Century Aurora 16, the renovated and repaired theater reopens six months after the shooting.

Seal Beach: Salon Meritage

A gunman enraged over a custody dispute kills his ex-wife and six others inside a salon in the Orange County coastal town, then an eighth victim in the parking lot Oct. 12, 2011. He is later arrested. The salon, under the same name and owned by a former worker, opens again in November 2012. A memorial to the victims is in Seal Beachs Eisenhower Park, overlooking the ocean.

Contact the writer: rdeatley@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9573
Inland congressmen on opposite sides of the aisle had opposite reactions to President Barack Obamas plan to use executive action to lessen gun-related violence.

In a written statement, Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, said the presidents unconstitutional executive actions are now a trademark of his failed presidency.

The presidents actions today go a step beyond his previous regulatory overreach by restricting constitutionally protected rights in a manner that itself is a violation of the policy-making powers the Constitution reserves for Congress.

Americans are understandably concerned by any source of violence that may threaten them or their loved ones. I am once again disappointed that rather than having a meaningful conversation about the root causes of violence, President Obama is once again trying to restrict a fundamental, constitutionally-protected right.

Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, issued his own statement critical of the president.

Today, using recent tragedies as political justification, President Obama took divisive action attempting to restrict law-abiding gun-owners and, in effect, creating a disincentive for Americans to seek help for mental health issues, Cook said.

Regardless of how you feel about 2nd Amendment rights, no President should create the equivalent of new laws through executive order. The courts have struck down numerous Obama executive orders where he exceeded his constitutional authority, and I expect the Presidents actions today will meet the same fate.

(The presidents) actions would allow Washington bureaucrats to one day regulate every private gun owner just as they would a dealer, making it effectively impossible to transfer or sell a legally-owned firearm. Additionally, todays actions included a directive to the Department of Health and Human Services that would remove important privacy safeguards for Americans mental health records by allowing transfer of those records from states to a federal database.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, who represents Temecula, said: The President has an aversion to the Second Amendment, and the fact that hes preparing new regulations, which are likely not to make a difference where actually needed, underscores his personal resentment toward this fundamental Constitutional right. 

There needs to be far more focus on mental health and keeping guns out of the hands of people who are intent on harming others. Preventing law abiding citizens from exercising their right, as the President has tried, wont stop the type of violence we all want to prevent.

RELATED: Presidential candidates, national politicians weigh in

On the other side, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, said he strongly supports Obamas actions.

The executive actions announced today will make us safer, Takano said in a news release. Expanding background checks, bolstering enforcement of existing gun laws, and improving mental health services are all important steps to protecting our communities. These policies recognize the rights of law-abiding gun owners, while making it more difficult for those who would commit a violent crime to purchase a firearm.

However, a long-term solution to our gun violence epidemic can only come from Congress. Todays executive actions do not fill the void left by Republicans who have repeatedly blocked even basic gun control legislation.

In a written statement, Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Redlands, whose district includes the site of the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino, said: Im glad to see the president take action to address the gun violence epidemic that has plagued American cities and towns from San Bernardino to Newtown.

Children should be able to go to school and feel safe, families should be able to go to movie theaters and not worry, and men and women should be able to go to work every day without fear, said Aguilar, who was part of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition as the mayor of Redlands and co-sponsored the Assault Weapons Ban of 2015.

Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert said: I support increasing mental health services and closing the gun purchase background check loophole in order to help reduce gun violence in our communities and needless deaths in emergency rooms.

Responsible gun owners and I agree that high risk individuals, terrorists, domestic violence abusers, convicted criminals, and those that suffer mental illness inclined to hurt themselves and others should not be allowed to purchase weapons. Although I prefer congressional legislation over presidential executive actions, doing nothing is irresponsible.

In a news release, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said: Congress is immobilized by its fear of the gun lobby, and it has proved impossible to pass even modest reforms to require universal background checks or add known or suspected terrorists to the list of prohibited purchasers.

In response to this inaction, President Obama rightly said enough is enough. Im very pleased he is using his authority to bring some sanity to our gun laws and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and other potentially dangerous individuals. I fully support these actions and am prepared to do whatever I can to help implement these new policies.
Inland residents face a long haul: At least a chance of rain is forecast through Sunday as a series of storms prompted by El Nino moves through the region.

Tuesdays storm dumped up to 4 inches of rain and 6 inches of snow in the mountains, and even an inch and a half across much of the the Inland valleys, causing treacherous traffic and flooding that closed major roads. But the snow brought a smile to skiers faces as fresh powder fell in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Mountain roadways  where chains were required  were badly affected.

Its the way it is every time it snows, Officer Garret Morris said late Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 5, from the CHP office in Running Springs. People are in a rush. They need to slow down.

Earlier in the day, CHP dispatchers said there had been several hydroplaning incidents, particularly along Highway 18 in the San Bernardino Mountains. Affected areas included the highways intersection with Highway 138 and locations near the Big Bear Dam, dispatchers said.

FLOODED ROADS

Several roadways flooded Tuesday, including the northbound I-215 at University Parkway near Cal State San Bernardino.

About 11 a.m., the rain contributed to at least three crashes within a 10-minute period, according to a California Highway Patrol incident log.

In Redlands, storm water closed a 2-1/2-mile stretch of San Timoteo Canyon Road shortly before the start of the evening commute, Redlands city officials say.

Unaffected by the closure was the portion of the road that serves as a main thoroughfare that helps link Redlands and Moreno Valley.

Other flooded areas stretched from Jurupa Valley, where two lanes of the eastbound 60 at Valley Way experienced troubles, to Wildomar, where mud had covered Bundy Canyon Road.

POWER OUTAGES

Several power outages were seen throughout the Inland region.

In Valle Vista east of Hemet, more than 1,300 people were briefly without power on Tuesday evening.

Earlier in the day, about 12:50 p.m., the Target Shopping Center on Rancho California Road in Temecula also experienced a power outage. Customers were given coupons for $3 off any purchase.

About 12:15 p.m., businesses on Commerce Center Drive in Temecula were briefly left pitch black. Power was returned about 12:37 p.m.

RAIN TOTALS

By 5 p.m., six Inland areas were among the Southlands 10 rainiest locations, according to the National Weather Service.

Just east of Cajon Pass, Lytle Creek led the list at 3.96 inches. Close behind were the mountain towns of Lake Arrowhead and Mount Baldy Village, tied for third place at 2.86 inches.

Placing 8th through 10th on the list were Running Springs at 2.69, Crestline at 2.67, and the valley city of Murrieta at 2.65.

Even the deserts got soaked.

At 6:44 p.m., trained weather spotters reported heavy rain and urban flooding in the southern portion of the Coachella Valley, according to the National Weather Service.

FORECAST

Wednesdays rain will likely be just as heavy as Tuesdays, forecasters say.

The brunt of that storm, which is expected to bring an inch and a half to 2 1/2 inches of rain to the Inland valleys, is likely to hit in the afternoon and last into early Thursday. Residents should be wary of flash floods, the National Weather Service warns.

Lighter showers are expected Thursday through Sunday evening. The wet weather is expected to move out of the region Sunday night.

In the San Bernardino Mountains, a winter storm warning is in effect through 4 a.m. Friday. Snow is expected to fall at the 5,500-foot level today Wednesday and creep into the 4,500-foot level tonight. Six to 12 inches are expected through Sunday.

The temperatures in the mountains are expected to be 5 to 15 degrees below normal, the National Weather Service says.

EL NINO

The storms come amid conditions associated with El Nino, in which unusually warm water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean can lead not only to torrential downpours in Southern California, but also drought in other parts of the world.

This season, experts had predicted an exceptionally strong El Nino, one that may compare with winter 1997-98, which brought storms that caused $65 million in flood damage in Riverside and San Bernardino counties as well as destruction in other parts of the world.

However, forecasters had also warned that weak El Nino conditions can just as often yield dry winters.

In 2006-07 and 2012-13, for instance, ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific were above normal  technically El Nino conditions. But those years were dry in California. Similarly, 2009-10 was an El Nino year, with average precipitation.
The mass killings that erupted last year seemed linked by little more than a hail of gunfire. Their locations became etched in public memory, the terror and bloodshed drawing our attention to a church in Charleston, South Carolina, military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and most recently, a holiday gathering in San Bernardino.

But together, these violent rampages contributed to a grim statistic: At least 52 people in the United States were killed by domestic extremists in 2015, the highest number in two decades, according to a report released Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism.

What a tragically noteworthy year 2015 was in terms of extremist violence, said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the center.

More people were killed by domestic extremists last year than in the prior two years combined, and 2015 was the deadliest single year for such violence since 1995, when a federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed by men with ties to the U.S. militia movement, the report said.

The ADL linked all 52 deaths to people with ties to just four movements: White supremacists, anti-government extremists, domestic Islamic extremists and anti-abortion extremists. Pitcavage said the death toll represents the minimum possible final count for 2015, because it can take at least a year for extremist connections to emerge in some killings.

Nearly two-thirds of the 52 victims were killed in incidents directly related to these movements, where ideology played at least some role in their deaths, the report said. The rest were killed by extremists acting in ways unrelated to their beliefs. For example, the ADL counts Trevor Casper, a Wisconsin state trooper killed by a bank robber who had been involved with skinhead and neo-Nazi movements. Casper died in a shootout with the bank robber that was unrelated to ideology.

More than half the 52 deaths occurred in incidents involving multiple victims  a sharp contrast to recent years, when most killings carried out by extremists involved a single victim, according to the groups research. And all but four of the victims died by gunfire.

The blunt fact is that, in the past 50 years, firearms in the hands of domestic extremists have killed far more Americans than have bombs, blades, chemical or biological weapons, or any other type of weapon, the ADL report said.

This ADL report, which The Post reviewed before its release, is the latest attempt to track and quantify the danger posed by violent extremists in the United States. New America, a Washington research center which also tallies such violence, has identified 93 deaths by homegrown extremists since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks; the killings have been split about equally between right-wing attackers (48) and people inspired by jihad (45), the center says.

Theres no question that domestic extremist violence is on the rise, said J.M. Berger, a fellow with George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism.

However, Berger said, detailed academic research is required to determine whether these killings are due to different kinds of extremist ideologies versus people acting out for their own reasons.

New Americas count focuses on jihadist attacks and far right-wing attacks and does not include all of the deaths tallied by the Anti-Defamation League. Both groups included the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs last year that killed three people; the accused gunman later expressed anti-abortion views. Neither group included the deaths of three young Muslims shot and killed near the University of North Carolina last year in their tallies. There, the accused gunman had railed against religion, sparking questions about whether the victims were targeted for their faith. But he also had a history of anger over parking issues, which investigators cited as a possible explanation for the shooting.

In recent years, law enforcement officials have grown acutely concerned about violent domestic extremism  particularly from anti-government extremists. Michael A. Clancy, deputy assistant director of the FBIs counterterrorism division, warned in 2012 about smaller, localized acts of violence that could be carried out by domestic extremists, calling this threat one of the bureaus highest priorities.

A report released last year found that law enforcement agencies said they were most concerned about the national threat posed by violent extremism. According to a 2014 survey conducted by Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and David Schanzer of Duke University, 74 percent of the agencies who responded said that anti-government extremism was one of the top threats in their area, nearly double the number who listed terrorist extremism.

That report was released last June and based on a survey that predated the rise of the Islamic State. In follow-up phone calls after ISIS became more prominent, the officers did not change their responses, Kurzman and Schanzer wrote  though the report was released before the shootings in Chattanooga and San Bernardino ramped up concerns about terrorism on U.S. soil.

Both of those attacks were included in the ADL figures released Tuesday, and federal officials said attackers in both places appeared to be inspired by the Islamic State or other overseas terrorist groups.

Domestic Islamic extremists are definitely one of the extremist movements causing serious problems with violence in this country right now, so we couldnt ignore it, Pitcavage said.

With 19 people killed in Chattanooga and San Bernardino, the death toll from attacks motivated by Islamic extremism was nearly equal to the 20 people killed by white supremacists in 2015. Each year for the past two decades, white supremacists have been responsible for more deaths than any other extremist faction, Pitcavage said. Over the past decade, killings by white supremacists have accounted for 70 percent of the nearly 300 extremist deaths tracked by the ADL.

For most years of the past 20 years, youre basically looking at white supremacy and anti-government extremism, he said. And every now and then, there will be an act of anti-abortion violence or anti-immigration violence or left-wing violence or anarchist violence or the people killed in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Pitcavage said that the death toll in these two attacks raises concerns about the role of the Islamic State going forward. The militant group uses social media and carefully-produced videos as it seeks to try and attract disaffected, alienated, volatile people and get them to commit violent acts in its service, he said. 2016 or 2017 may actually see similar acts.

Pitcavage said he hopes Tuesdays report raises a useful alarm.

In some small way, this helps us measure the threat and understand the threat, Pitcavage said. If you understand something better you can respond to it better.
The first of four candidates for dean of UC Riversides School of Medicine will address the campus at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 5.

Dr. Bruce Ovbiagele, a neurologist currently with the Medical University of South Carolina, will present his vision for the school Tuesday morning in the universitys Genomics Auditorium.

The three other candidates will speak in similar sessions over the next 10 days.

University spokesman James Grant said such speeches are a standard part of the search for deans heading up the universitys major schools.

Its meant for the campus community, Grant said. Its an academic presentation and a chance to get to know the candidates campus vision.

The address is part of the candidates interview process. Grant said the other candidates would not be identified until a day or two before they visit the campus.

Videos of the presentations will be posted at provost.ucr.edu/searches/

Ovbiagele, a native of Nigeria, graduated with his MD in 1991 from the University of Lagos. According to a resume provided by UCR, Obviagle did internships in psychiatry and internal medicine at UCLA/King-Drew Medical Center from 1996-1998. He did a residency in neurology at both UC Irvine Medical Center and Long Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center from 1998-2001, and a fellowship in vascular neurology from 2001-2002 at UCLA.

Since 2012, Ovbviagele has been the co-chairman of the department of neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina.

The School of Medicine is searching for a permanent dean to replace interim dean Neal Schiller. Schiller has been serving since the schools first dean, G. Richard Olds, left in July.

Contact the writer: mmuckenfuss@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9595
The following list includes business bankruptcies that were filed in United States Bankruptcy Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg) from December 1, 2015 - December 31, 2015.

CHAPTER 7

Under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code may be used by businesses or individuals. A portion of the debtors assets is liquidated and distributed among creditors by a trustee to satisfy debts. In some cases, action can be brought against a debtor by creditors.

W.J. Forbes & Associates Inc., 13625 Ridge Road, North Hopewell Twp. Docket No. 15-5212.

Complete College Solutions Inc., 6408 Dublin Road, Lower Paxton Twp. Docket No. 15-5422.

CHAPTER 11

Provides businesses or large investors with protection from creditors while they continue operating and develop a repayment plan. Both creditors and owners must agree on a reorganization plan, which ultimately must be approved by a federal bankruptcy judge

Aesys Technologies LLC, 693 North Hills Road, Springettsbury Twp. Docket No. 15-5333.
keystone correctional

The Keystone Correctional Services Inc. work-release center in West Hanover Township

(Matt Miller, PennLive)

West Hanover Township officials can't keep violent criminal offenders out of a privately run work-release center, a Commonwealth Court panel ruled Tuesday.

The ruling upholds a decision by a Dauphin County judge that overturned a township ordinance which banned the Keystone Correctional Services center from accepting sex offenders and those convicted of violent crimes.

Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter concluded in the Commonwealth Court opinion that state regulations trump the township's rules.

If the state Parole Board determines an offender is suited for the Keystone facility, the township has no say in the matter, Leadbetter found. To rule otherwise would enable township ordinances to undercut the state's plan for integrating offenders back into the community, she wrote.

The Commonwealth Court ruling comes nearly four years after the same court upheld a township regulation that limits Keystone to housing no more than 150 offenders at its facility in the 7200 block of Allentown Boulevard.

The current dispute erupted in August 2013 when the township zoning administrator cited Keystone for holding two sex offenders at the 8-year-old center in violation of the township prohibition against housing violent offenders.

Keystone receives offenders under contracts with the state Department of Corrections. Its first contract, which expired in 2013, allowed the firm to reject offenders referred to it. Its current contract, which expires this June, requires Keystone to accepted every referral, regardless of the person's criminal history, Leadbetter noted.

Although state officials relocated the sex offenders whose presence triggered the dispute, Keystone and the property owner, TWL Realty LLC, appealed the zoning citation to the county court. The case went to Leadbetter's court after county President Judge Richard A. Lewis voided the township's ban on violent offenders.

Like Lewis, Leadbetter rejected the township's argument that the prohibition is necessary to protect West Hanover's residents.

"It is the purview of the sentencing courts and the parole board to determine which offenders are appropriate for community work-release programs," she wrote. She noted that state law allows the parole board to place offenders in such programs only when "there is no reasonable indication that the inmate poses a risk to public safety."

"When the commonwealth places an offender in a particular work-release program, the commonwealth has determined that the offender's placement is consistent with both the public's safety and the needs of the offender to reintegrate into society," Leadbetter wrote.
Associated Press

Five things you need to know about Obama's gun control policies

On Monday, President Barack Obama introduced a package of proposals that aim to tighten gun laws and curb gun violence in the United States.

The proposed executive actions are receiving a mix of support and opposition -- both on the national and state levels. The president's proposals come after there were more than 300 mass shootings in 2015 -- including a number in Pennsylvania.

On Tuesday, the president spoke about the proposals, giving more details about what he hopes to accompish and how he plans to do it.

Heres five things we think you should know about Obamas proposals:

Don't Edit

Closing the 'gun show loophole'

Obama said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is making clear that firearms dealers conducting business -- whether it be from a store, at gun shows or over the Internet -- must get a federal license and conduct background checks.

Currently, private sellers do not have to perform background checks to sell long guns in Pennsylvania -- known as the gun show loophole.

Closing the loophole would mean that anyone purchasing a rifle from a private dealer would be required to go through a background check. Now, only people purchasing handguns have to go through a background check when they buy from a non federally licensed dealer in Pennsylvania.

Don't Edit

Christian Alexandersen | calexandersen@pennlive.com

Requiring background checks for 'some of the most dangerous weapons'

Obama said the National Firearms Act imposes restrictions on sales of "some of the most dangerous weapons" -- like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.

But, people can avoid the background check by purchasing these firearms through trusts, corporations and other legal entities. Obama said he plans to change outdated regulations that allow people to purchase some of the most dangerous weapons without a background check.

The ATF is finalizing a rule that makes clear that people will no longer be able to avoid background checks when they buy guns identified in the National Firearms Act and other items through a trust or corporation.People avoid the background check by purchasing these firearms through trusts, corporations and other legal entities.

The ATF is finalizing a rule that makes clear that people will no longer be able to avoid background checks when they buy guns identified in the National Firearms Act and other items through a trust or corporation.

Don't Edit

Agencies enforcing the nation's gun laws will get an influx of cash

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is tasked with performing inspections of all federally licensed firearms dealers in the country. Thousands of inspections are performed in Pennsylvania a year.

ATF Spokesman Steven Bartholomew said the ATF performs as many as we can with our limited resources. The president has proposed funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce gun laws.

The FBI has also been directed to hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process background checks.

Don't Edit

Christian Alexandersen | calexandersen@pennlive.com

Cracking down on illegal gun sales online

The ATF has established an Internet Investigations Center staffed with federal agents, legal counsel and investigators to track illegal online firearms trafficking and to provide actionable intelligence to agents in the field, according to the president.

The Internet Investigations Center has already identified a number of significant traffickers operating over the Internet, Obama said.

The president said that this work has led to prosecutions against individuals and groups using the dark net to traffic guns to criminals or attempting to buy firearms illegally online.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Christian Alexandersen | calexandersen@pennlive.com

Reducing accidental gun deaths with technology

The president issued a memorandum directing the US. Department of Defense, Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology.

The technology, the president said, would reduce the frequency of accidental discharges and unauthorized uses of firearms as well as improve the tracing of lost or stolen guns.

Within 90 days, these agencies must prepare a report outlining a research-and-development strategy designed to expedite the real-world deployment of such technology for use in practice.
HARRISBURG- Harrisburg officials on Monday installed four council members, three of whom were endorsed by Mayor Eric Papenfuse and known as the "mayor's slate."

But they flexed their independence on Monday by unanimously re-electing Wanda Williams to another two-year term as council president. The ten-year council veteran has been president since 2012.

Papenfuse last year said he wanted to see a change in council leadership. He worked against the reelection campaign of Councilman Brad Koplinski last year, in part, because he said Koplinski was propping up Williams.

In another blow to Papenfuse, the new council selected another frequent critic of the mayor, Shamaine Daniels, as vice president during their reorganization meeting Monday.

Daniels won the spot over Jeff Baltimore in a split vote, 4-3, with support from new councilwoman Destini Hodges, longtime ally Ben Allatt and Williams, who nominated her.

New councilman Cornelius Johnson nominated Baltimore for the vice presidency, with support from new member Westburn Majors.

Baltimore was the only council member who had expressed an interest in the presidency, but he did not nominate himself at Monday's meeting.

Daniels nominated Williams for president, saying she appreciated Williams' leadership experience and years of public service. Majors seconded the motion.

Williams was the only candidate considered and she won with a 7-0 vote. She had been working hard behind the scenes in recent months to secure support.

After the vote, Papenfuse didn't hide his disappointment.

"It's an inauspicious start," he said.

The president wields power by running legislative sessions and determining what is placed on each agenda.

Allatt said the leadership roles are important, but in the end, each member of the seven-member board still casts just one vote. He said a majority of the board must agree to enact important changes.

A few hours prior to the reorganization meeting, Papenfuse led a swearing-in ceremony to inaugurate the incoming council members. He gave them ten pieces of advice, including a reminder that they are all members of the same party, elected by the same constituents.

"There's no need for gridlock," he said "We can disagree respectfully. We should work toward common ground, toward those common values we share."

He also noted what he thought was the biggest issue facing his administration and the new council this year.

"The main issue before us this year is how are we going to define our own independence, vis-a-vis the Commonwealth," he said, referring to the financial oversight provided by the state through the Act 47 program. "Only by doing that can we truly represent our constituents. They are our constituents, not the state's. It's important that we reclaim our identity and our government."

Monday afternoon, Williams issued committee assignments for the new council. Williams will remain chair of the Administration Committee. The other committee chairs are:

Ben Allatt, Budget and Finance

Jeff Baltimore, Community and Economic Development

Shamaine Daniels, Building and Housing

Destini Hodges, Parks, Recreation and Enrichment

Cornelius Johnson, Public Safety

Westburn Majors, Public Works.
FotorCreated2.jpg

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama called for support of "commonsense" executive actions he plans to tighten gun regulations to curb gun violence in the United States.

(File)

Pennsylvania and its residents have a long history with guns.

The Right to Bear Arms was included in the Pennsylvania Constitution in the 1800s, sportsmen have hunted around the Keystone State for generations and hundreds of thousands of residents own guns.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama called for support of "commonsense" executive actions to tighten gun regulations and curb gun violence in the United States. The president's proposals include everything from closing the so-called "gun show loophole" to performing more background checks.

With the president shining a spotlight on gun control, gun violence and laws regulating firearms, we've decided to list some of the most interesting and surprising facts about guns in Pennsylvania.

(The information gathered below came from the Pennsylvania State Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives)

Scott Petrasaic an employee at Staudt's Gun Shop in West Hanover Twp. inspects a gun a customer was interested in selling Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012.

Gun sales are up around the state

Preliminary numbers from the Pennsylvania State Police indicate that there were more gun sales and transfers in 2015 than the previous year.

State Police Trooper Adam Reed estimated that there were approximately 710,000 handgun and long gun sales and transfers in Pennsylvania last year. That would be a 4.7 percent increase over the 676,000 gun sales in 2014.

Westmoreland County nearly had as many gun dealers as Allegheny County did

In 2014, there were 134 federally licensed gun dealers in Allegheny County -- making it the jurisdiction with the most. However, Westmoreland County -- which has about a fourth as many resident as Allegheny does -- had a whopping 132 licensed dealers.

Forest County -- which only has about 7,700 residents -- has the fewest licensed dealers with three.

One of Pennsylvania's most populated counties has the largest number of gun sales/transfers

Allegheny County -- which has more than 1.2 million residents -- had the largest number of gun sales and transfers in 2014, according to the ATF.

In 2014, there were 25,264 handgun sales or transfers and 16,554 long gun sales or transfers in Allegheny County.

Harrisburg investigation into gunshot victim in 2014.

Gun were used in more than 10,000 crimes in Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Report indicates firearms were used in approximately 10,500 homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults in 2014.

Approximately 67 percent of Pennsylvania homicides -- 545 -- were committed with a gun. Firearms were also used in 5,577 robberies and in 4,346 aggravated assaulted in 2014.

North west county tops most sportsman permits

Erie County -- located in north western Pennsylvania -- has the largest number of of sportsman's firearms permits issued in 2014. There were 177 permits issued.

Philadelphia and Lehigh Counties had zero permits issued the same year.

Canon fire at weddings is illegal

It is illegal in Pennsylvania to discharge a gun, cannon, revolver or other explosive weapon at a wedding.

More than 13,000 gun sales were denied in 2014

The Pennsylvania State Police indicated that 13,178 sales to purchase guns in 2014 were denied during background checks on the Pennsylvania Instant Check System. Of the 4,345 denials that were challenged, 1,439 were reversed.

Joe Williamson an employee at Staudt's Gun Shop in West Hanover Twp. looks for ammunition for a Polish made AK-47 Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012.

2012 and 2013 were record setting years for gun sales

The number of gun sales and transfers have been rising over the past 10 years in Pennsylvania. In 2005, there were 386,382 gun sales or transfers. Ten years later in 2015, there were 710,000.

But the biggest years for gun sales and transfers was in 2012 and 2013.

In Pennsylvania, there were 800,890 gun sales or transfers in 2012 and 808,507 gun sales or transfers in 2013.
A statewide investigating grand jury has found no criminal evidence that links specific fraternity members to the March 2014 death of Marquise Braham, a Penn State University student hazed prior to his suicide.

The grand jury also decided not to recommend criminal charges related to any hazing at the university, calling it "a fraternity-wide problem."

Marquise Braham

"There is simply no evidence that establishes a link between the fraternity pledging process and fraternity activities and Braham's death," the grand jury report reads.

The 18-year-old killed himself by jumping from the Marriott Long Island Hotel in Nassau County, N.Y., and his family claimed it was in part because he had suffered while pledging the now-suspended Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity at the university's Altoona branch campus.

The chapter was suspended for six years following his death, and the suspension bars the chapter from participating in campus events and using Penn State facilities.

Braham pledged the fraternity during fall 2013. He died while on spring break.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General issued the report Tuesday, which is based on testimony from 11 witnesses and interview summaries from seven people. The findings do not criminally link the fraternity's pledging process to the freshman's death, but it does highlight "ongoing issues" with the process.

The jury ruled that without the ability to tie the issue to specific members, along with "the unwillingness or inability of former pledges to name persons allegedly responsible for the hazing," they were unable to recommend charges against Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity brothers.

The grand jury also did not recommend any charges related to general university hazing activity because there is "both conflicting evidence and a lack of direct evidence that would sustain criminal prosecutions for that offense."

"While there is no question that hazing occurred during the pledging for the Fraternity during both the fall 2013 semester and continued for a new pledge class up until Braham's death in March 2014, that hazing was a Fraternity wide problem and not limited to just a few individuals," the report reads.

The jury did find, however, that the fraternity's hazing activities were "extremely dangerous and put the health and safety of all pledges at risk." Pledges, according to the report, fell victim to hazing activities, including locking individuals in closets, excessive drinking and vomiting, sleep deprivation and forced fighting.

Evidence brought before the grand jury included two suicide notes that showed "Braham had been thinking of committing suicide for a very long time," according to the findings. Some of Braham's fraternity brothers also testified and said he was a proud fraternity brother and loved Phi Sigma Kappa members.

The evidence presented to the jury, though, was incomplete, which resulted in a waste of resources and a flawed investigation, according to Mike Paul, a spokesman for the Braham family.

Paul refuted the grand jury's claim that Braham had been contemplating suicide for an extended period of time, saying, "There is absolutely no evidence or reason to suggest that Marquise was considering suicide since childhood."

Paul said the family was disappointed but not surprised by the grand jury's finding because the jury "was denied access to a substantial amount of evidence detailing the outrageous hazing Marquise experienced and its direct connection to his death."

"So too, the Grand Jury was not given access to mental health experts and friends and family of Marquise, who know the truth about the cause of his psychological crises and its direct link to the brutal hazing," Paul said in a released statement following the release of the jury's report.

Braham's family sued the university and fraternity in December, claiming Braham "had been hazed for months."

The suit claims fraternity members forced Braham to drink "gross amounts of alcohol" and mouthwash, fight other pledges, was burned with candle wax, deprived of sleep for 89 hours, had a gun held to his head, was forced to swallow live fish, and kill, gut and skin animals.

"The bottom line is this: Penn State University knew Marquise was being hazed and in deep psychological crisis, before he ever returned home for spring break and lost his life," Paul said in his statement on Tuesday.

Criminal defense attorney Thomas M. Dickey, who represented about 10 members of Phi Sigma Kappa, said some fraternity brothers felt they were part of a "witch hunt" as officials launched investigations into the fraternity.

The grand jury's findings were not the first time hazing has been evaluated in connection with Penn State University greek life. The university has placed different chapters on probation for hazing violations, including the Alpha-Zeta chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon in fall 2010 for alcohol and hazing violations. That probation ended in May 2011.

More recently, the Kappa Delta Rho fraternity came under fire at the university's State College campus after being named in a civil suit filed on behalf of James Vivenzio, a former member of the fraternity. The suit -- filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in June 2015 -- claims Vivenzio suffered cigarette burns and alcohol abuse, among other hazing activities, that led to physical, mental and emotional stresses.

In response to hazing issues, Tuesday's released grand jury findings recommended that all fraternities and sororities provide "a description of their mission and initiation (pledging) policies and procedures" to their college or university.

Editor's Note: This post has been updated to include comment from Mike Paul, a spokesman for the Braham family.
pa-carjacking-victim-Rachel-Stephenson-speaks-out.jpg

Rachel Stephenson, 23, is now taking about her harrowing carjacking and kidnapping that began East Stroudsburg, Pa., last week and ended only when she made a daring dash for freedom at a Pa. gas station.

(screen shot/6ABC)

A young victim is now taking about her harrowing carjacking and kidnapping experience that began East Stroudsburg, Pa., last week and ended only when she made a daring dash for freedom at a Pa. gas station.

The victim, New York college student Rachel Stephenson, tells WABC and 6ABC that she is still having trouble coping with the trauma of the event:

"The thought of getting in my car, like even just thinking about it now, it's really hard," she said tearfully. "If someone had asked me a month ago what I would have done if I was in this sort of situation, I honestly think I would have said that I would be sobbing in the front seat the whole time."

The nightmare began for the 23-year-old last Wednesday, as she was returning from Greenport, Long Island, NY, to graduate school at SUNY Binghamton. That's when police say 18-year-old Raliek Chambers jumped into her car as she was filling it with gas at a Uni-Mart in East Stroudsburg, according to the ABC affiliate reports.

But Rachel kept her head and bided her time, telling the news station that she knew she had to do something if she wanted to live. And when they stopped for gas near Frackville, Pa., she made a break for it, saying:

"I knew as soon as he let me out of the car, I was just going to to run," she said, describing her escape that was caught on surveillance video.

Meanwhile, her alleged abductor, Chambers, was later arrested near Harrisburg after a high-speed chase with Pennsylvania State Police.

Check out 6ABC for more, including video of her interview.
pennsylvania capitol building

Pennsylvania Capitol Building

Know that feeling you get when a tax refund lands in your bank account?

Accountants for schools, non-profits and businesses that supply or do work for the state relate are about to experience something like it.

Pennsylvania Treasurer Timothy Reese said school districts, contractors and suppliers and other state aid recipients will begin receiving payments tied up by the protracted budget stalemate as early as Tuesday.

Reese, in a release issued Monday, said his staff has worked with Gov. Tom Wolf's budget office to identify and pre-audit thousands of individual payments so they could hit the ground with disbursements as soon as possible.

In all, some $3.3 billion in outlays to third parties have been approved and are on their way, since Wolf's Dec. 29 partial adoption of the budget.

All other delayed payments should be release within two weeks, Reese's office said.

***

It's not all rosy out there, though.

Complaints were beginning to be heard at the Capitol over the formulas being used by the Wolf administration to drive out some of the school funding, with top Republican staffers expressing concerns that a disproportionate amount of funds are being routed to Philadelphia.

Here's a complete listing of the half-year allocations as approved by Wolf to the state's 500 school districts last week as a way to keep them operational while final aid levels are negotiated.

***

As for the rest of the incomplete 2015-16 budget - including subsidies to the state's major public universities, and revenues to make it all balance - look for a new round of talks to resume Tuesday.

That's when most top House and Senate leaders are expected back at the Capitol for procedural steps needed to open session for the new year.

To recap, Wolf is still seeking increases in spending for public schools and he asked for higher taxes to close recurring income / expense gaps in the state's general fund budget.

House Republicans, in particular, have argued they aren't seeing enough progress on public employee pension reform or changes to the state's retail liquor monopoly, two key GOP policy priorities, to justify those spending increases.

Staffers are also reviewing what other interim measures, if any, are needed to help complete implementation of the partial budget that Wolf signed on Dec. 29.

***

While latter-day policy makers grapple with the issues at hand, a major milestone from budget's past was achieved on New Year's Day.

Pennsylvania's capital stock and franchise tax, long-considered a punitive, secondary hit to businesses already facing income and / or property taxes, is finished.

Once labelled the No. 1 tax problem for the Pennsylvania business climate, the reviled tax on physical assets has been subject to an on-again, off-again phaseout since 2000.

As of Jan. 1, the tax's rate has finally stepped down to zero.
MIDDLEBURG -- A Snyder County man has been accused of leaving a 4-year-old girl home alone while he threatened to kill a man he suspected of having an affair with his ex-girlfriend.

Tyler Hockenberry, 23, of Middleburg, was arraigned early Monday on numerous charges, including attempted first-degree murder. He was committed to the Snyder County Prison in lieu of $200,000 bail.

Troopers say Hockenberry broke into the home of the 50-year-old man, who lived across the street, about 8:30 p.m. Sunday and threatened to kill him with an 8-inch kitchen knife.

The man grabbed a shotgun and disarmed Hockenberry, but as Hockenberry fled, he set a fire on the enclosed back porch, which state police said they extinguished. He was arrested in the area.

Hockenberry and his former girlfriend, the mother of the child, had broken up but still lived together, troopers said.

Besides attempted homicide, he is charged with arson, burglary, aggravated and simple assault, terroristic threats, endangering the welfare of children, recklessly endangering, criminal trespass and criminal mischief.
It's been a familiar scene at county sheriff's departments across Pennsylvania: phones ringing off the hook and lines snaking out the door as more state residents line up to get a license to carry a concealed firearm.

Throughout six local counties, nearly 7,300 midstate residents last month got permits to carry firearms. That's a 155 percent increase from the nearly 2,860 permits received during the same month a year earlier.

The biggest spike locally occurred in Lancaster, which processed a record 2,293 permits in December.

Lancaster County Sheriff Mark Reese has noticed an uptick before - usually after terrorist attacks or mass killings - but the numbers have never been this high.

Last week, the office had 10 to 20 people waiting at the door before it opened in the morning. By Monday, the rush had slowed to three people waiting in line.

The National Rifle Association claim that only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun seemed to resonate with the crowd there yesterday.

A Lancaster County resident, who asked not to be named, said he sought the concealed carry permit for protection and as a means of "leveling the playing field."

"You've got law abiding citizens who need to protect themselves against guys breaking the law," he said.

"You read the news and see all the stuff that's happening, someone with a gun walks into a building and no one inside is armed. So if ten good guys have guns, it would level the playing field," he added.

The man said it's his first time getting a concealed carry permit, and he's still shopping for a gun.

Similar permit increases and concerns are being reported by other local sheriffs.

Some 1,772 York County residents applied for a permit last month.

Sheriff's Deputy Wayne Boyce, who has handled the firearm permits for 10 years, said it was triple or quadruple what the office normally sees.

But he has seen this scenario before.

"It's typically driven by anything in the news, a shooting or terrorist attack or (President) Obama starts talking about gun control," Boyce said.

Obama is set to announce unilateral action on gun control during his State of the Union address next week, according to multiple reports.

In Dauphin County, however, very few of the 1,200 people who applied for permits last month said they were worried about gun laws, said Cpl. Jim Shade.

"They just want to be protected," he said.

The Dauphin County sheriff's office typically processes 15 to 20 concealed carry permits a day. That number has ballooned to 50 to 60 a day, Shade said.

Cumberland County also saw a huge increase in December. More than 1,000 residents purchased a license to carry, compared to 390 who applied for a permit during the same month a year earlier.

"The general conversation is they have concerns," said Sheriff Ron Anderson. "We really saw a spike after the terrorist incident in San Bernardino and talk of refugees coming to Pennsylvania from Syria."

His office has previously seen upticks after school shootings and when Obama was elected to a second term.

"This has been a little longer with higher numbers," Anderson said.

Has the wave of new permits also reached Lebanon County?

"Oh my goodness, yes," said county Sheriff Bruce Klingler.

Nearly 600 residents purchased licenses there last month, compared to 300 in December 2014.

"This has been typical since the Paris attacks," he said. "I think this terrorism issue has a lot of folks on edge."

And the sheriff is noticing a demographic shift.

"I'm seeing more women come in for permits. They're not coming in with their husbands or anything. They're coming in by themselves," Klingler said.

The Perry County sheriff is noticing a similar trend.

"The majority of new applicants are women," said Sheriff Carl Nace.

More than 300 residents purchased concealed carry permits in December, compared to 110 in the same month a year before.

"It was the biggest month in my 14 years as sheriff," Nace said. "I think people are really getting scared."

But this is hardly a trend contained to the midstate.

In Pittsburgh, the wait can be as long as two hours. The Allegheny County sheriff has put a notice on the website, letting people know they have to be in line by 2 p.m. due to the overwhelming volume of applicants in the firearms division.

Nearly 3,300 Allegheny County residents paid for a permit last month, compared to nearly 2,000 in November.

"It used to be we'd see 50 to 60 people a day. One day last week, we had 201. It's as high as four times as what we normally do," said Allegheny County Sheriff William Mullen.

When people say why they want the permits, the comments are almost always the same.

"Because of the shootings in Paris and San Bernardino. They already have a firearm and feel there's going to be another attack," Mullen said.

A similar increase has been reported on the eastern side of the state.

Montgomery County normally processes about 500 to 600 permits a month, but the sheriff's office received about 1,000 applications in December, according to a worker in the firearm's division.

The increase hasn't slowed down in the new year, with a line crawling out of the door Monday.

"I'm sorry I don't have time to say more. We're too busy to tell you how busy we are," the worker said.

Staff writer Colin Deppen contributed to this report.
iran nuclear deal

By Fariborz Ghadar

Are Iranian-Americans not really American enough?

Fariborz Ghadar (PennLive file)

Apparently, according to Congress.

Legislation known as the "Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015a"originally targeted Syria and Iraq, but Iran was added in due to some political maneuvering between Republicans and Democrats.

The addition of Iran is an obvious attempt to isolate Iranians (and people in America - and 38 other countries- with any Iranian ties or heritage) from engaging in business, cultural enrichment, family relations, and exposure with large segments of the world.

It is a reformation of the Visa Waiver Program (which passed in the House of Representatives with 90 percent support) whose stipulations bring up numerous questions about American-Iranian relations as well as inherent American rights.

While the Act was put in place to prevent terrorists from entering the US, there is no evidence that travelers to Iran have become radicalized or engaged in acts of terror in the United States.

Fifteen of the 19 jihadists in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi Arabian, the others were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Tashfeen Malik of the San Bernadino shooting was Pakistani. And both she and her husband Syek Farook had Saudi Arabian ties.

All of the shooters in the November Paris massacre had strong ties to ISIS, which, again, is a sworn enemy of Iran and of Shiites.

Even Iran's own president, Hassan Rouhani, is on the side of peace, saying that Muslims should strive towards bettering the world's opinion of Islam which has been sullied by violence.

The Iranian hardliners who vehemently want to eliminate any Western (but specifically US influence) must really appreciate this legislation.

It is a real New Year present to them from our legislative branch. The IRGC considers American investments Satan's tool, according to their doctrines. This Act will assist their attempts to spook investors.

Iranians are some of the most successful people in the U.S. and abroad, and have strong family ties.

This Act will discourage the Iranian diaspora who have done well abroad and who may want to extend their businesses to their own homeland from investing in Iran.

It is the successful Iranian's abroad who had left after the revolution that worries the hardliners in Iran.

Iranian-Americans (well over a million in number that have direct family relations with some 20 percent of Iranian society) are the most effective source of soft power that highlights the success of the United States' economic and social system of freedom and opportunity for all.

The bill will also punish European business travelers to Iran because they will be excluded from the U.S. visa waiver program.

Many see this as a violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the nuclear agreement), and if the United States is seen as dishonoring the ideals of the JCPOA, it will be hard to forge ahead with Iran if they violate the agreement as well.

Yet, pumping power, credit and money into an old elite is not something that the IRGC wants to do.

The United States has the largest expatriate community of Iranians of any other country. Iranian law contains elements of jus sanguinis and jus soli, so anyone with an Iranian father is also considered an Iranian citizen, and will therefore be subjected to cumbersome and costly (about $160 each time to apply for a Visa) travel processes and potential restrictions.

The Visa Waiver program is built on reciprocity. If this legislation becomes law, it will very likely trigger reciprocal restrictions from other participants in the Visa Waiver program.

Thus, if the United States requires Iranian-Europeans to obtain visas to travel to the United States, the European Union nations will require Iranian-Americans to obtain visas to travel to Europe.

Generating two tiers of American passport holders is biased and strikingly un-American.

It means that businesspeople, lawyers, tourists, journalists, and others from friendly countries in Europe as well as Australia, Japan and South Korea, who have visited Iran since 2011, will soon be forced to apply for a United States visa instead of freely traveling.

Beyond the international political-economic concerns, the amendments rank as absurd human rights violations.

We are talking about a group that includes some of the most successful, peaceful, forward-thinking, and highest-educated people who offer technological, educational, and health-related advances to our society at an astonishing level.

Iranian-Americans have major presence in academia, health care, global financial institutions as well as high tech industries.

To present just a few of the top-ranking American success stories there are: Code.org founder Ali Partovi, Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Twitter Chairman Omid Kordestani, and Uber director Shervin Pishevar.

More than one in four Iranian-Americans holds a master's or doctoral degree, the highest rate among 67 ethnic groups studied in census data.

They were also found to have the second highest rate of college graduates of any ethnic group in America.

As the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives: "By singling out these four nationalities (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan) to the exclusion of other dual nationals in Visa Waiver Program countries, [the legislation] amounts to blanket discrimination based on nationality and national origin without a rational basis. It is wrong and un-American to punish groups without reason solely based on their nationality, national origin, religion, gender, or other protected grounds."

The National Iranian American Council, and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee are among many groups angered by this legislation.

Facebook pages and articles are being created daily in hopes of raising awareness; as an example- Iranian-American Comedian Mitra Jouhari has done much in the last weeks to bring attention to the racism behind the bill.

Not only is it nonsensical from a terrorism prevention standpoint, but it is a violation of the recently signed nuclear pact.

Many Iranian leaders, American citizens, and some European officials (to list only some) feel that the new rules will block potential investors, tourists, visitors, and business from doing business with Iran.

It also disregards the nuclear deal which stated that Iran will curb its nuclear program in return for a lifting of international sanctions. The visa restrictions, many feel, are effectively a new sanction.

Nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi, who heads a committee that oversees the nuclear deal, says that the visa law contravenes the agreement.

Earnest safety concerns here for the American people may not be what truly underlies the amendments.

The bill surely has more to do with political and monetary, relations between the world's lobbyists who are interested in torpedoing the Iran nuclear agreement, and keeping Iran out of the global economic arena.

Policies that benefit the IRGC by continuing to make it easy for them to earn money through their subversive economic entities is neither beneficial to American companies, our allies, or even the Iranian public.

The inclusion of Iran in the legislation plays in the hands of the power groups that want to keep Iran from entering the global economy in a constructive manner and remain the potential problem power in a volatile region.

It is time that we all speak out against these absurd actions by our legislative branch which unwisely passed legislation that helps Iranian hardliners and keeps Iran from becoming a responsible partner in the global economy.

In particular Iranian-Americans must take a more active role highlighting the significant contribution to the US economy they have made and protest the attempted diminishing of their civil rights.

Fariborz Ghadar is founding director of The Center for Global Business Studies at Penn State's Smeal College of Business and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.. He is author of the book "Becoming American: Why Immigration is Good for Our Nation's Future." Follow him on Twitter @FGhadar
State-run coalmines with wage arrears to be able to receive budget aid after agreeing programs

State-run coalmines that failed to pay wages to employees will be able to receive aid from the national budget only after drawing up and agreeing corresponding programs, the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry has reported.

The ministry said that the funds to cover debts to pay to employees of state-run coalmines that do not make profits have not been financed via direct subsidies for the second year in a row.

Ukraine's 2016 national budget passed at the end of 2015 foresees the possibility of using UAH 500 million to pay debts of coalmines.

"Corresponding documents should be drawn up in the shortest term, and this work is being done from the first days of the year. As soon as the documents are ready and agreed with other agencies, the funds will start arriving at the enterprises," the ministry said.

The ministry said that the only way to avoid problems with debts to miners is growth of coalmines' efficiency, increase of extraction and profit making.

Earlier Chairman of Ukrainian Miners' Independent Trade Union Mykhailo Volynets said that personnel of state-run Lviv Vuhillia's Stepna coalmine located in the village of Hlukhiv, Lviv region, went on strike on January 2, demanding the repayment of delayed wages. He said that miners did not receive 78% of their wage for November and 100% for December 2015.
Gary Coleman, who by age 11 had skyrocketed to become TVs brightest star but as an adult could never quite land on solid footing, has died after suffering a brain hemorrhage. He was 42.

Coleman died at 12:05 p.m. at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah, where he had been in a coma.

He was removed from life support; soon thereafter, he passed quickly and peacefully, his manager John Alcantar says. By Gary s bedside were his wife and other close family members.

The actor suffered an intracranial hemorrhage at his Utah home on Wednesday night. On Thursday, he was conscious and lucid, the hospital says in a statement, but by early afternoon that same day, Mr. Coleman was slipping in and out of consciousness and his condition worsened.

PHOTOS: Gary Colemans Big Life

Precocious Child

Despite congenital health problems which led to his never growing taller than 48, Coleman experienced a towering achievement at the start of his career.

As Arnold Jackson, the plucky Harlem boy adopted into a wealthy white household on Diffrent Strokes from 1978-86  with his much-mimicked catchphrase of, Whatchoo talkin bout, Willis?  Coleman was pulling down as much as $100,000 per episode, though it was later reported that three-quarters of the money ended up being shelled out to his parents, advisers, lawyers and the IRS.

At the pinnacle of his fame in 1979 PEOPLE reported that Coleman had grown up in Zion, Ill., north of Chicago, with nephritis, a potentially fatal kidney defect.

He underwent two transplants before the age of 14. At one stage in his life, he underwent dialysis four times a day in order to survive.

The reason I survived is that I had a kidney that wouldnt give up, he once said. Now I got a Greek kidney donated from a kid who was hit by a car.

His talent, said his mother, Sue, may be Gods way of compensating him for what hes been through, and the fact that hell never have the physical size of other boys.

Colemans father, Willie, worked for a pharmaceutical company near Chicago, where Gary started modeling at age 5 after he wrote a brazen pitch letter to Montgomery Ward. (He could read at 3.)

That led to commercials for McDonalds and Hallmark cards before producer Norman Lear cast him in a pilot remake of The Little Rascals, which didnt get picked up, en route to Diffrent Strokes.

Troubled Lives

As has been chronicled, the three children on the series grew up into troubled lives. Dana Plato, 34, died of a drug overdose in 1999. (Platos son, Tyler Lambert, never came to terms with his mothers death, and committed suicide on May 6, 2010. He was 25.)

The shows Willis, actor Todd Bridges, now 45, was first arrested in 1994 after allegedly ramming someones car during an argument, He also has owned up to serious drug habit, which he struggled to beat.

By 1999, Coleman also faced troubles of his own. Long gone from Diffrent Strokes, he had gone broke. His string of misadventures and humiliations included a bitter lawsuit that fractured his family, reports of erratic behavior (his father claimed Gary tried to run him over with a car during an argument in 1986) and a stint in 1998 as a security guard on a movie set.

All told, Coleman had amassed and lost an estimated $18 million fortune. Although he argued that his parents had a huge role in dissipating his wealth, he makes no apologies for having spent like a star. I have lifestyle requirements, he said at the time. Photos, meetings, lunches, dinners, facial care, tooth care. It requires an exorbitant amount of money.

Also in 1999, Coleman pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace after he punched a female autograph-seeker in California, for which he claimed self-defense. The previous year, he was again in the headlines, after allegedly hitting a pedestrian with his truck after arguing with him in a Salt Lake City bowling alley. In 2007, there was an incident involving a public argument with a female companion.

Married at 40

At times, there appeared to be turnarounds in his fortunes. In February 2008  at the age of 40  Coleman married for the first time. Hed met his bride, Shannon Price, on a movie set the previous August. She was 22.

Coleman admitted that Price was the first woman in his life. I never got the opportunity to be romantic or feel romantic with anyone, he said. I wasnt saving myself, she just happened to be the one.

Their relationship, they both admitted, was often rocky. We may go a week and not speak to each other, he said, while she claimed, He lets his anger conquer him sometimes He throws things around, and sometimes he throws it in my direction. Still, they remained together, and Price survives him.

In recent months, Coleman suffered a series of medical problems. He had been admitted to hospitals three times this year: in January, for reasons that were not disclosed; in February, when he suffered a seizure on the set of TVs The Insider; and again on May 26.

Thanks to everyone for their well wishing and support during this tragic time, his manager says. Now that Gary has passed, we know he will be missed because of all the love and support shown in the past couple of days. Gary is now at peace and his memory will be kept in the hearts of those who were entertained by him throughout the years.

PeopleTV Archive: 21 Years Ago: Gary Coleman Sings for Armenian Relief Efforts
Norwegian companies involve in Petrobras corruption scandal



The Skandi Santos leased to AKASTOR Offshore (AKOFS). The ship is on a five-year contract extension from Petrobras. Akastor is one of the companies named in the Petrobras scandal, a spun off from the large Norwegian oil supply company Aker Solutions in 2014.

MONTEVIDEO

Petroleumworld.com 01 05 2016

The huge corruption case swirling around Brazilian oil company Petrobras is being called the world's largest, and increasing numbers of Norwegian companies seem to be getting tangled up in it. Norwegian bosses mostly claim no knowledge of any bribes being paid, but investigations are underway on several fronts.

Sevan Marine's rig deals with Petrobras are not the only business transactions with the corruption-embroiled Brazilian company that are sounding alarms. Several other Norwegian companies are also having to investigate their own transactions because of suspected bribery.

Newspaper Dagens Nringsliv (DN) reported on Monday that the latest company feeling a need to probe suspected or unwitting involvement in the Petrobras scandal is Akastor, which was spun off from the large Norwegian oil supply company Aker Solutions in 2014. It's now run by Kristian Monsen Rkke, son of the wealthy self-made Norwegian industrialist controlling Aker Solutions, Kjell Inge Rkke.

In addition to new questions tied to payments made by an Akastor subsidiary, both criminal and internal investigations already are underway regarding the involvement of another large Norwegian company, Sevan Marine of Arendal, with Petrobras. DN reported that other Norwegian firms faced with questions about their own dealings with Petrobras include LMG Marin of Bergen, Subsea 7 controlled by London-based Kristian Siem and Rolls Royce Marine.

Norwegian companies as a whole have invested an estimated NOK 175 billion (USD 20 billion) in Brazilian ventures, a volume that has prompted various Norwegian government ministers and members of the royal family to make a string of official trips to Brazil in recent years. Monica Mland, Norway's current trade minister, was in Brazil this spring with Crown Prince Haakon and a large Norwegian business delegation, officially to enhance ties with Brazilian companies. They arrived, however, in a country plagued by political chaos, corruption allegations, ill effects of the dive in oil prices and high unemployment rates.

This is a country in a critical situation, Mland told DN. One main reason is the corruption which has been and still is a major problem, first and foremost at Petrobras, combined with the economic downturn in the oil and gas industry.






The town of Henichesk in Ukraine's Kherson region consumes gas solely from the Strilkove deposit, located near Arabatska Strilka in Kherson region, national NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy said in a press release on Tuesday.

"Russian gas has not been shipped to Henichesk and is not being shipped now," it said.

Henichesk is not physically connected to other sections of mainland Ukraine's gas transportation system, it said.

"In summer, gas extracted at the Strilkove field is delivered to households in the town. An excess of the gas extracted in summer, which has not been used by residents of Henichesk, is pumped into the Hlibovske underground storage facility, located in temporarily occupied Crimea for storage. In winter, that Ukrainian gas is taken from this underground storage facility and shipped to Henichesk to cover peak consumption levels," Naftogaz said.

The Ukrainian energy company also reported that, starting from January 1, 2016, Crimea's de facto authorities had been blocking the Kherson gas stored in the Hlibovske facility in Crimea for four days.

"These gas volumes are more than enough to meet the town's needs until the end of the heating season," it said.

According to Naftogaz, Henichesk consumed 9.2 million cubic meters of gas in 2014. The Strilkove deposit's maximum gas output capacity is 25 million cubic meters a year. Ukraine's privately owned gas production company Plast has been the field's operator since March 2014.

The website of the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Service's main department in Kherson region reported that at 21:30 local time on January 4, pressure in the Strilkove deposit's gas pipeline started to grow due to the reverse supply of gas.

Personnel of PJSC Khersongaz's Henichesk division used the Internet, the local radio and posters at the entrance of residential buildings to inform households that the gas supply would resume at 07:00 local time on Tuesday, January 5.
Merck, Pfizer and Syndax have formed a clinical trials pact to evaluate a combination of their cancer drugs in patients with heavily pre-treated, recurrent ovarian cancer.

The companies will assess Merck and Pfizers avelumab, an investigational fully human anti-PD-L1 IgG1 monoclonal antibody, in combination with Syndax entinostat, an investigational oral small molecule that targets immune regulatory cells.

Data has shown that entinostat can boost the effect of checkpoint inhibitor therapies, resulting in a greater immuno-response to tumour cells, prompting the companies to test whether the avelumab/entinostat combo is more powerful than either component alone.

Financial terms of the deal werent disclosed, but it was revealed that Syndax will be responsible for conducting the Phase Ib/II clinical trial.

Combination therapy is the next frontier in immuno-oncology and a key strategy for the alliance, said Luciano Rossetti, head of Global Research & Development at Mercks biopharma unit.

Avelumab as a monotherapy has already shown promising early activity in ovarian cancer in a Phase Ib trial, and through our ongoing research and this collaboration with Syndax, we will hopefully be able to make a real difference to women fighting this complex cancer.

The Merck-Pfizer Alliance is currently assessing avelumab across a broad range of tumour types.
With over 1.6 million TikTok followers, Catieosaurus has proven herself as one of the leading voices in living with ADHD as an adult. Justin Perlman finds out more about neurodivergence and how it relates to sex, relationships, and queer identities.
The Individuals' Deposit Guarantee Fund in 2015 sold the assets of insolvent banks for UAH 1.2 billion, according to the website of the fund.

According to the report, in the last week of last year insolvent banks' assets that were sold amounted to UAH 120 million.

As reported, the Individuals' Deposit Guarantee Fund planned by the end of 2015 to sell the property of 47 insolvent banks for UAH 2.4 billion.

According to the fund, the assets of insolvent banks managed by the fund as of September 1 amounted to UAH 331.4 billion, of which the amount of assets pledged to the National Bank amounted to UAH 119.6 billion.

The National Bank of Ukraine in 2015 withdrew 33 banks from the market, while in 2014-2015 declared 63 financial institutions insolvent.
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Ukraine International Airlines (UIA, Kyiv), the largest airline in the country, in December 2015 received UAH 7.966 million as reimbursement for VAT, the State Treasury Service of Ukraine has said.

At the same time, the press service of the air carrier told Interfax-Ukraine that as of December 2015 VAT refunds arrears to UIA came to UAH 138 million.

The company confirmed it received about UAH 8 million of compensation in December.

Thus, the airline was compensated for a mere 5.8% of the debt on VAT refunds.

According to UIA, the outstanding debt on VAT refunds (UAH 130 million) is part of the debt for 2014 and the entire year of 2015.

The airline noted that the probability of VAT refunds for 2014 is practically zero.

Earlier, UIA President Yuriy Miroshnykov in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine voiced the problem of reimbursement for VAT to the company.
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has proposed that the parliament legalizes house servant jobs and foresees the signing of labor agreements when house servants are hired.

This is outlined in government's bill No. 3734 posted on the parliament's website.

The cabinet proposed that the following amendments to the Labor Code are made: homework is work performed around the household over 80 hours a week under a labor agreement.

The government proposed that house servants could pay single social security tax along with farmers or private households on a voluntary basis.

According to the assessments of the State Statistics Service, there are around 162,000 house servants in Ukraine. Employers do not register them and do not pay taxes for them.

According to the preliminary data from the State Fiscal Service, today around 7,500 workers pay social and pension taxes on a voluntary basis.
Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko says Kyiv invites an assessment mission of the UN Secretariat to Donbas to examine the situation in the east of Ukraine.

"We are ready to discuss the mandate and other aspects of such a [peacekeeping] operation. In order to analyze the situation on the ground we invite the assessment mission of the UN Secretariat to visit Ukraine," Yelchenko told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon while presenting his credentials on January 4, the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the UN said in a statement on its website.

One of the possible ways the UN could engage in the de-escalation of the conflict in Donbas would be the deployment of a peacekeeping operation there, Yelchenko said.

Opening a UN mission in support of the implementation of the Minsk peace agreements on Donbas could be another possible area for cooperation, Yelchenko said. This mission could be engaged in coordination of a land mine clearance operation in the east of Ukraine due to the UN's huge experience in that area, he added.

The parties also discussed the Ukrainian agenda at the UN Security Council.

Yelchenko said that one of Ukraine's priorities would be to promote consistent adherence to the UN Charter, in particular to the respect for territorial integrity and political independence of states. Moreover, he stressed that Ukraine would pay special attention to peace and security in Africa and the Middle East, the fight against terrorism, protection of civilians in armed conflicts, and nuclear non-proliferation.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko early in December 2015 appointed Yelchenko as Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN to replace Yuriy Sergeyev, who had worked in this position since 2007.

Yelchenko joined the New York City-based Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the UN late in December 2015.
Illegal armed groups in Donbas opened provocative fire on Ukrainian troops participating in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) 20 times from 06:00 local time on Monday to 06:00 local time on Tuesday, the ATO press center has reported.

"In the past 24 hours, Russian-backed illegal armed groups opened fire on our positions 20 times, which is almost twice more than on the previous day," the ATO press center wrote on Facebook on Tuesday morning.

The hottest spot after 18:00 local time on Monday to midnight on Tuesday was the area near the ruined Donetsk airport. Donbas militants opened untargeted fire from large-caliber machine-guns on the nearby village of Pisky seven times. The village of Opytne was attacked once  the enemy used small arms.

Militants also opened untargeted fire from large-caliber machine-guns towards the village of Luhanske along the stretch between the militant-controlled town of Horlivka and the town of Svitlodarsk in Donetsk region. The village of Zaitseve was twice attacked by illegal armed groups, who used small arms and grenade launchers.

In the same sector, militants tried to provoke ATO forces into violating the full ceasefire after midnight, but failed, the ATO press center wrote. The enemy used an anti-tank grenade launcher near the village of Zaitseve and small arms near the village of Novhorodske. They also shelled ATO forces deployed several kilometers to the south of the village of Troyitske, using a large-caliber machine-gun.
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Pig sector research efforts in the Netherlands have been given a fresh platform for innovation with the appointment of Theo Duteweerd as the full-time manager of the countrys Swine Innovation Centre (VIC) in Sterksel, with effect from January 1, 2016.

Mr Duteweerd (pictured above) moves into the post having previously been vice chair of the Dutch Union of Pig Farmers and treasurer of the countrys Producers Organisation for Pig Farming. He replaces Han Swinkels, who had held the position of interim manager at VIC Sterksel for the past year and a half.

VIC Sterksel is one of the innovation centres attached to Wageningen University and is seen by Dutch pig farmers as an important focus for research and innovation. The unit endured a troubled 2015, however, with more than half its employees being laid off mid-way through the year for financial reasons.

We are delighted at the arrival of Mr Duteweerd as the new manager of Sterksel, said Wageningen UR livestock research director, Annie de Veer. He has good connections with pig farmers, understands their work and he has demonstrated that he has a good eye for innovation. In our view, he is highly capable of working alongside the sector to take steps towards innovation.

The sector has had difficulties for quite a while already, and a great deal is demanded of the capacity for change by pig farmers. We believe that VIC Sterksel can perform an important role in this process.

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Thirteen dangerous criminals who have committed serious criminal offences and crimes against peace and security in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine have been put on Interpol's international wanted list, the media liaison office of the Ukrainian National Police's main department in Donetsk region has reported.

"These are the people being suspected of murder, torture, kidnapping and robbery of citizens are also involved in terrorist groups' activity," the source said.

What is more, a total of 137 cases were handed over to Interpol's General Secretariat in order to put the suspects on the international wanted list in 2015, the Donetsk regional police said. Among them are 27 individuals simultaneously involved in several criminal cases, including crimes against peace and security.

"We closely cooperate with representatives of law enforcement agencies from different countries. Thirteen dangerous criminals, who have committed crimes in occupied territories [in Donbas], have already been put on the wanted list; we have succeeded in proving their involvement in serious crimes despite absence of police's access to those areas. It has been established that simultaneously all these lawbreakers with criminal experience are or were among [Donbas] militants. That is why terrorists and their accomplices, who commit grave crimes, have no chance of hiding beyond Ukraine's borders  we have done everything we could, so that they won't escape the punishment," chief of the Donetsk regional police's main department Vyacheslav Abroskin said.

At present, 85 individuals in total were put on the international wanted list on the Donetsk regional police's initiative. They are subject to detention and extradition. Five persons who have gone missing in other countries were also put on the wanted list at the Donetsk regional police's request. Their whereabouts are to be determined.

Besides, over 300 individuals and 22,500 vehicles were verified with the use of Interpol's databases in Donetsk region within the year.
If you ask me whether Tatsuya at Goodwood Park Hotel is one of my favorite Japanese restaurant in Singapore and my answer is no, it mea...
Ukraine's Culture Ministry on December 30, 2015, issued resolution No. 1126, having launched a national Ukrainian project entitled 'Ukrainian Donbas,' which is aimed at cultural integration, the ministry's official website said on Monday.

The project is designed to create conditions for the full-fledged integration of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in one Ukrainian cultural space through interregional cultural partnership. "The implementation of the project suggests events involving arts, museums, libraries, and other cultural spheres in the cities, towns and villages of Donbas with the participation of creative groups from various regions of Ukraine during one year," the Culture Ministry said.

The resolution defines the system of interaction between separate regions and specific districts and cities of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This system has been developed as a result of meetings among heads of structural departments in regional administrations and Kyiv city state administration in the field of culture.

The resolution provides that in 2016 all the cultural establishments subordinate to the Culture Ministry are scheduled to visit Donetsk and Luhansk regions with their creative projects.
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Retrospective: Stars Shine in $100K Super High Roller

January 05, 2016 Donnie Peters

Taking place from Jan. 6-14, the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) marks the 13th installment of the famed poker festival. The series "promises to be the biggest PokerStars festival ever held" and is comprised of 104 events, with a wide variety of buy-ins ranging from $120 to $100,000.

It all started in 2004 on a luxury cruise ship visiting Jamaica, Mexico, and the Cayman Islands. That first year, the event was co-branded by PokerStars and the World Poker Tour. In 2008, WPT sponsorship of the event ended and the stop became part of the European Poker Tour (EPT). In 2010 and 2011, the event was a featured stop of the North American Poker Tour, and then it returned as part of the EPT in 2012.

Currently, the PCA makes his home as the highly anticipated midway point on the EPT schedule.

While the PCA Main Event is widely considered as one of the most important and prestigious poker tournaments of the year, we'd like to kick off our PCA retrospective series with focus on the $100,000 Super High Roller event, taking place Jan. 6-8, 2016. This event is coming off a record-setting edition in 2015, with 66 entries, and it's a marquee event that poker enthusiasts everywhere look forward to.

2011: First Year Sees Katchalov Defeat Negreanu

I can still remember how I felt when it was announced that the 2011 edition of the PCA would feature a mammoth $100,000 buy-in poker tournament. Estimations quickly made ways around the PokerNews offices as to how many entries the event would get and who would show up, but none of that chatter had me prepared for the buzzing feeling that ran through my veins while walking the floor of the event as the first cards were pitched in the air. For the players, this was a six-figure buy-in event and some were, without question, overextending themselves by taking a shot. For the media, we all knew the same  this was a six-figure buy-in event and some of these players were without question overextending themselves by taking a shot.

The first few hands of the event were played in almost complete silence, but the tension broke just 30 minutes into play when Dutch player [Removed:39] hit the rail in spectacular fashion. For Berendsen, his $100,000 ticket saw him wake up to pocket kings halfway through the first level of the day. Each player began with 250,000 in chips and a stack of 250 big blinds. That didn't stop Berendsen from getting every last one of those chips into the middle against Nick Schulman. Unfortunately for Berendsen, Schulman woke up to a brighter sunrise that day in the Bahamas, as he held pocket aces. Berendsen couldn't improve and was the first player sent packing.

"Seat open!" was the cry from the voice of Daniel Negreanu at the table, which prompted plenty of jaw dropping and chatter from around the room.

As the day wore on, 38 players entered the competition. Day 1 finished with 23 left and German Tobias Reinkemeier in the lead.

With a prize pool of $3.743 million up for grabs, the grind to the final table on Day 2 was exactly that, a grind. Following the completion of Day 2, the field had been cut down to just seven, and it was Schulman leading the pack. Only the top five spots were set to reach the money, meaning two unfortunate players would go home with nothing to show for their efforts come Day 3.

Andrew Lichtenberger was the first player to go on Day 3, and his elimination set up the bubble. Then, the richest person in Hungary and 1980 TIME Magazine Man of the Year, Sandor Demjan, busted in sixth place to Eugene Katchalov.

With everyone then in the money, Humberto Brenes hit the rail in fifth place for $200,000, Schulman fell in fourth for $400,000, and Bryn Kenney was knocked out in third for $643,000. That set up a near-even heads-up duel between Katchalov and Negreanu, and it didn't take long for Katchalov to pull away.

A couple big pots for Katchalov gave him a sizable lead, but then Negreanu doubled back to give himself additional life. Even so, Katchalov took a chip lead of nearly 4-1 into the dinner break. Upon their return, Katchalov didn't stop the charge and soon finished off his opponent to earn the $1.5 million top prize and the inaugural PCA $100,000 Super High Roller title. Negreanu scored an even $1 million for his runner-up finish.

2012: Online Legend Viktor Blom Scores the Massive Win

The following year, the $100,000 Super High Roller returned to the 2012 PCA schedule. The second edition of the event tallied 30 players and 32 entries, thanks to the reentries of Bill Perkins and Jonathan Duhamel. The attendance was down from the opening installment, but nevertheless a prize pool of $3.136 million was generated. Of that, $1.254 million would be awarded to the winner and the top five spots were slated to pay out.

Day 1 of the event saw 18 players advance to Day 2 with Isaac Haxton in the lead. Day 2 finished with eight players remaining and Galen Hall atop the pack. Also still alive at this point were Brenes and Negreanu, who both made Day 3 and cashed the prior year. Duhamel, who was in the event for $200,000 in buy-ins, also maneuvered his way to Day 3.

Brenes fell short of a cash in eighth place, and then Mike "Timex" McDonald busted in seventh. With the tournament on the official bubble with six players remaining, Scott Seiver saw his stack get shorter and shorter. Eventually, Seiver ran pocket jacks into Hall's pocket kings and finished as the event's "bubble boy."

Negreanu was the first to go in the money, earning $250,900 and brining his two-year total in this event to $1.25 million. Duhamel then busted in fourth place, winning $313,600 and profiting $113,600 on his run. Both of those eliminations were taken care of by Viktor "Isildur1" Blom.

Hall then busted in third, leaving Blom and Dan Shak heads up with Blom in front. The two jabbed back and forth in the early portion of the match, but then Blom took the first big chunk from his opponent to really extend his lead. Not too long after that, Blom finished Shak off to earn the $1.254 million first-place prize. Shak scored $846,700 for his second-place result.

2013: From Bubble To Champion, Redemption for Seiver

Seiver's $100,000 entry in 2012 didn't work despite the player putting in three days of work. After earning the unwanted title of "bubble boy," Seiver was back in the action the following year and looking to reach the money. After Day 1, he trailed only Philipp Gruissem on the leaderboard, and the final number of entries came in at 59.

With a prize pool over $5.724 million, the top eight spots were planned to pay out. First place was over $2 million, and Seiver found his way at the final table once again with the sixth-best stack. Antonio Esfandiari was eliminated as the "bubble boy" to end Day 2, meaning Seiver, and the others, had locked up at least $228,960 in prize money.

The action at the final table came fast and furious. On just the third hand of the day, the prior year's runner-up, Shak, busted in eighth place. He was quickly followed out the door by Vladimir Troyanovskiy in seventh place and Greg Jensen in sixth place during the same level. Gruissem then busted in fifth place for $400,700 a little over an hour later and four players remained. Seiver had busted both Shak and Gruissem.

David "Doc" Sands maintained his chip lead for quite some time before Seiver finally edged him out with four players left. Then, Sands busted Cary Katz in fourth, and it was a neck-and-neck between Seiver and Sands while Schulman, who finished fourth in 2011, brought up the rear. Eventually, Sands took out Schulman and entered heads-up play with the lead.

Sands quickly extended his lead in the match, but Seiver fought back until a big clash in Level 24 with the blinds at 100,000/200,000/30,000 saw Seiver get lucky and double. It was his pocket nines that were all in preflop against the pocket tens of Sands, but Seiver spiked a nine on the flop to take nearly a 6-1 chip lead. Shortly thereafter, Sands was eliminated in second place and earned over $1.25 million.

2014: Dan Shak Reaches Third Final Table in a Row

After a runner-up finish in 2012 for $846,700 and an eighth-place finish in 2013 for $228,960, the familiar face of Shak returned to the final table for the third year in a row. This time he had done so in a field of 56 entries and found himself leading the final seven players into Day 3.

After a double elimination on the bubble to end Day 2 saw Paul Newey finish one spot outside the money in ninth place and McDonald cash in eighth for $217,320, the group returned the next day to see Ole Schemion bust seventh, Tony Gregg go out sixth, and Matt Glantz finish in fifth. Esfandiari, who was the prior year's "bubble boy," fell in fourth place and earned $575,920.

In the final trio, Shak was joined by the tough competition of Vanessa Selbst and Fabian Quoss. Despite at one point holding the chip lead over her opponents and looking like she would go on to win, the tides turned for Selbst quickly when Quoss doubled through to to lead knock her to the bottom of the group. Shortly after that, she was all in against Quoss once again, and this time she was eliminated.

Quoss entered heads-up play with about a 2-1 advantage over Shak, soon extended the gap, and there wasn't much Shak could do. Shak was certainly hoping to improve upon his second-place finish from two years prior with a victory, but it would be another bridesmaid result for the semi-professional high-stakes poker player and hedge fund manager. This time around, Shak scored nearly $1.2 million for his result and brought his three-year total in this event from 2012-2014 over $2.25 million.

For Quoss, he banked over $1.6 million and ignited the best year of his poker career. When 2014 was all said and done, Quoss had won over $3.12 million.

2015: Steve O'Dwyer Tops Record-Setting Field

The 2015 edition of the PCA $100,000 Super High Roller was a record-setting affair. There were 66 entries in all, stemming from 50 unique entries and 16 reentries. That generated a prize pool of $6.402 million and first place was set at nearly $1.9 million.

At the start of Day 2, there were 44 players remaining with Sam Greenwood in the lead. The top nine places were to pay out, and that meant one player had to go home empty handed with 10 players left. That proved to be David Peters to send the remaining nine into the money.

To close out Day 2, Jake Schindler fell in ninth place and Seiver, the winner from two years prior, busted in eighth place.

Sorel Mizzi led the way over the final seven players with everyone left guaranteed at least $313,700. On Day 3, Andrew Robl was the first to go, and then Greenwood's run ended with a sixth-place finish worth $396,920. Fifth place was then secured by Christoph Vogelsang, before Mizzi's run landed him with a fourth-place result.

The final three players were Steve O'Dwyer, Roger Sippl, and Kenney, who finished in third place in 2011. At the time three-handed play began, O'Dwyer was last in chips, but fortunes would see him come out on top when it was all said and done.

First, O'Dwyer doubled through Sippl to take the lead, and then O'Dwyer busted Kenney to give Kenney another third-place finish in this event. That prompted heads-up play between O'Dwyer and Sippl, with O'Dwyer holding a big lead.

In the heads-up match, O'Dwyer drew first blood and Sippl could never really gain his footing. Eventually, it was all over shortly into Level 23 with the blinds at 80,000/160,000/20,000 when O'Dwyer's beat out Sippl's . For the win, O'Dwyer earned over $1.87 million and catapulted himself to having a career year that would see him earn nearly $4.9 million. Sippl scored almost $1.35 million for finishing in second place.

That concludes the first part of our retrospective series on the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. The 2016 PCA $100,000 Super High Roller will commence on Wednesday, Jan. 6, and is anticipated to be another spectacular event with big names involved and huge prizes up for grabs. You'll be able to find live reporting coverage right here on PokerNews, plus stayed tuned for more to come from our retrospective series as PokerNews will look at both the Main Event and $25,000 High Roller.

Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!
The small band of antigovernment protesters who took over a group of federal buildings in rural Oregon said Monday that they aimed to restore and defend the Constitution, in particular the rights of ranchers, and set off a national movement, forcing the federal government to release its hold on vast tracts of Western land.

The federal government, for its part, appeared content, for now, to monitor the situation and wait out the protesters, the New York Times reports.

The F.B.I. said in a statement that while state and local agencies would remain involved in the episode in rural Harney County, the bureau would take the lead. The law enforcement presence in the area appeared to be minimal, and no effort was made to keep the occupiers of buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge from coming and going as they pleased.

Due to safety considerations for both those inside the refuge as well as the law enforcement officers involved, the F.B.I. said, we will not be releasing any specifics with regards to the law enforcement response.
Charles Stutts (Photo: Storey County Sheriff's Office)

The Storey County (NV) Sheriff's Office has arrested a man who shot and injured a deputy during a domestic violence call in the Virginia City Highlands Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016.

Storey County Sheriff Gerald Antinoro says it happened at 4:30 p.m. when deputies responded to a report of domestic violence in the Highlands area.

Antinoro says when deputies arrived, 51-year-old Charles Stutts fired multiple rounds from a rifle, hitting a deputy and another person.

Antinoro says the deputy was able to return fire and Stutts surrendered. The deputy then took Stutts into custody without further incident.

The deputy, Stutts and the other person were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Stutts was then booked into the Storey County Jail on charges of attempted murder of a peace officer, attempted murder and aggravated domestic battery. Bail had not yet been set as of Sunday, KOLO TV reports,
To hear the media tell it, America is in the grip of an unprecedented crime wave, an orgy of wanton murder in which heavily armed thugs randomly gun down innocent unarmed people, some of them teens, just for sport.

Except that these homicidal goons are wearing the blues and badges of American police departments.

Its the narrative thats given rise to the protest movement Black Lives Matter and to a growing public mistrust of the police in general. From Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to the recent shooting of a middle-aged woman and a teen in Chicago, the body count seemingly keeps rising, exacerbating racial tensions and keeping the nation on edge. And each incident is breathlessly reported by a media determined to show that America remains deeply, irredeemably racist.

Problem is, its simply not true.

Last week, the Washington Post published a study of the police shootings that took place in 2015. Likely they intended the story to be shocking  as on Dec. 24, 965 people were killed by police! Instead, the report quells the notion that trigger-happy cops are out hunting for civilian victims, especially African-Americans.

Read more at New York Post.
If this months deadly terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., has special resonance in North Texas, its because on a sleepy Sunday in May, it could have been us.

Like San Bernardinos husband-wife team, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi had desire and tools, if not specific instructions. Inspired by the Islamic State, they drove from Arizona to crash Pamela Gellers Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland.

Outfitted in body armor and armed with assault-style rifles and explosives, they charged the Curtis Culwell Center until shots from a Garland police officers Glock handgun put them down. SWAT officers, hearing the gunfire, rushed up to finish the job. That anonymous officers heroism and accuracy qualify him as a finalist for 2015 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year.
The enemy is now engaged in the fortification of the facilities of the front line of defense at the Severodonetsk direction in the Anti-Terrorist Operation zone in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Department said.

"In the past 24 hours, the enemy's efforts focused on the fortification of the forward units of the 1st and 2nd army corps at the direction of the village of Novoaidar (Luhansk region) and in the Donetsk sector. It is also engaged in keeping groups of the Russian occupation forces in a state of combat readiness, conducting reconnaissance of the ATO forces in the Sloviansk and Mariupol sectors; fortifying the facilities of the front line of defense at the Severodonetsk direction. The enemy is also working to improve its combat capability, it additionally mans formations and units of the 1st and 2nd army corps, providing their logistics support," the Ukrainian defense intelligence service wrote on its website on Tuesday.

According to the source, the situation in the ATO zone remains tense. The enemy attacked Ukrainian troops 20 times from 06:00 local time on Monday to 06:00 local time on Tuesday, using small arms and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. In particular, seven attacks were recorded at the Sloviansk direction, namely on the villages of Luhanske, Zaitseve, Novhorodske, while the towns of Avdiyivka and Maryinka, the villages of Opytne and Pisky, and Butivka coalmine in the Donetsk sector were attacked 13 times..

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine was informed that in the village of Lobacheve and the town of Stakhanov (both in Luhansk region), and the occupied city of Donetsk, there are main battle tanks, self-propelled guns and 122mm Grad multiple launch rocket systems, which are banned under the Minsk peace agreements.
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From the New York Times:

German authorities said on Tuesday that coordinated attacks in which young women were sexually harassed and robbed by hundreds of young men on New Years Eve in the western city of Cologne were unprecedented in scale and nature. The assault, which went largely unreported for days.

In Germany, as in the U.S., the liberal media consider themselves gatekeepers whose primary role is to suppress stories that might cause people to draw the wrong conclusions.

set off a national outcry after the Cologne police described the attackers as young men who appeared to have a North African or Arabic background, based on testimony from victims and witnesses. More than 90 people have filed legal complaints, the police said on Tuesday. The police in Hamburg also said that 10 women had reported being sexually assaulted and robbed in a similar fashion on the same night, and they urged witnesses to come forward.

The attackers were killing two birds with one stone:

The Cologne police say they believe several hundred men, ages 15 to 35, were involved in the violence that began in the early hours of the New Year. The men appeared to have broken into smaller groups, the police said, with each one encircling a woman; while some would grope the victim, others would steal her wallet or cellphone. One victim reported that she had been raped, the police said.

The mass assaults are being chalked up to a cultural misunderstanding:

Germany took in more than one million migrants last year, and with the country struggling to deal with the political, social and wider consequences of the influx, the delayed public response has led to concerns that the authorities were playing down the seriousness of the assault to prevent it from becoming a point of contention in the broader debate. In an effort to prevent further violence, Ms. Reker said that city officials would begin working on measures to help young women protect themselves and to explain the citys attitudes and norms to its many newcomers. We will explain our Carnival much better to people who come from other cultures, she said, so there wont be any confusion about what constitutes celebratory behavior in Cologne, which has nothing to do with a sexual frankness.

Apparently a considerable number of newcomers need to be told that sexual assault and robbery are frowned upon in Germany. This does not bode well.

The euphoria that accompanied the first wave of arrivals in Germany this summer has since given way to growing unease about the difficulty of integrating hundreds of thousands of people of a different religion and who were raised in a different culture.

Who could have seen that coming? The BBC has more, including this:

A policeman who was outside Cologne station during the New Years Eve trouble told the citys Express news website that he had detained eight suspects. They were all asylum seekers, carrying copies of their residence certificates, he said.

Despite news stories like this one, public officials persist in their cluelessness:

Heiko Maas, Germanys justice minister, warned on Tuesday against linking the assaults to the influx of refugees, saying that the ethnicity of the perpetrators was irrelevant. The rule of the law does not look at where someone comes from but what they did, Mr. Maas told reporters in Berlin.

Of course. But immigration law does look at where someone comes from. The influx of one million immigrants is a political choice, not a natural event.
This past October 16 the Rathergate film Truth opened in more than a thousand theaters around the country. John and I warned viewers not to take the film at face value in the Weekly Standard article Rather shameful. On the films opening weekend the Star Tribune also carried my column reminding readers of the films factual background. The column was published as Lies upon lies: The sad state of the movie Truth.'

The lies of Truth matter. They are intended to rewrite the historical record and to vindicate an audacious journalistic fraud committed with the intent of influencing the outcome of an American presidential election. The left simply does not give up in its efforts to rewrite history. It is unrelenting. And it has highly effective tools of persuasion at its disposal.

On the weekend of the films release I posted my notes on the film here. In retrospect, I think these notes explore certain elements of the film from angles that others have overlooked, perhaps with good reason. Borrowing the format that Jay Nordlinger occasionally employs in his Impromptus columns for NR. I am reposting my notes on the film below in slightly revised form as a companion to The Times stumbles onto

 The film is based on Mary Mapess 2005 memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power. I provided my take on the book when it was published in 2005 in the Weekly Standard column Second Times a Charm? I thought it was an egregiously bad book.

 What about the film? Its not as good as the book.

 The best reviews of this bad film may be the ones by the Atlantics Christopher Orr and the New York Posts Kyle Smith. Orrs is A terrible, terrible movie about journalism. Smiths is Wacko Dan Rather movie still insists forged Bush-National Guard documents were real.

 The movie dramatizes the scene in which Mapes answers a query from the Thornburgh panel about the use of the nonexistent abbreviation O.E.T.R. in one of the fabricated Killian memos. Its in Mapess memoir at pages 277-278. In the book and the movie, Mapes triumphantly cites the copy of an authentic Air National Guard document with the abbreviation. William Campenni served in the same unit as President Bush. He explains why the abbreviation in the fabricated Killian memo is like seeing a digital wristwatch on a supposedly authentic portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Campennis column is The truth about Dan Rathers deceptive reporting on George W. Bush. The column was only recently posted online at the Heritage Foundations Daily Signal site. I highly recommend Bills column for advanced students of Rathergate and viewers of the film.

 Like a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western, the film is full of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

 The good: Dan Rather, Mary Mapes and Mapess team of disinterested seekers of the truth.

 The bad: The evil forces around President Bush who scared off those in the know in Texas from disgorging the deep secrets of President Bushs service in the Texas Air National Guard. CBS/Viacom management. The bloggers.

 The ugly: Theyre bad too! But theyre also ugly: the lawyers who made up the Thornburgh panel commissioned by CBS to issue the report determining how that 60 Minutes story ever got on the air. I think Mapes is lucky that the lawyers feel constrained from commenting on their portrayal in the book or in the film.

 CBS appointed Richard Thornburgh to conduct the investigation. In the film Thornburgh is described inaccurately as a twice-defeated candidate for Congress whose campaign was managed by Karl Rove. The implication is that the investigation will be in the service of Roves interests. Karl Rove: hes bad.

 Thornburgh was a former United States Attorney, a former two-term governor of Pennsylvania, and former Attorney General of the United States. Its an impressive resume that is elided in the films ludicrous description of him.

 Thornburgh resigned as Attorney General to run a losing campaign for the United States Senate. Rove conducted direct mail advertising for him in the campaign. With an unpaid bill of nearly $170,000 at the end of the campaign, Rove sued Thornburgh personally on the debt. So if you want a buddy of Karl Rove who can be counted on to do Roves bidding, Thornburgh is your man. Obviously.

 The conceit of the film is that Mapes and her band of happy warriors were just asking questions. The phrase is the films central motif. Orr writes, for example: [M]y notes include, among others, the lines Questions help us get to the truth, You stop asking questions, thats when the American people lose, and Youre supposed to question everything, thats your job[.] The 60 Minutes story asked a couple of questions, alright, but its the answers that failed spectacularly. The answers were fraudulent duds.

 Both the book and the movie depict the investigation conducted by Thornburgh as a McCarthyite witch hunt. Mapes uses the term in her book. The film gives us one of those insufferable throw-down-the-microphone speeches in which Mapes challenges the Thornburgh panel: Are you saying am I now or have I ever been a liberal? In the book, Mapes describes the taunt as a joke. In the film, she is as earnest as Billy Graham on one of his crusades.

 Although the book and the movie disparage the Thornburgh investigation, they both draw on the Thornburgh reports finding that the 60 Minutes storys deficiencies were not attributable to political bias. In the movie, the statement runs as a graphic postscript before the credits roll. The Thornburgh report also notes in this connection, however, that certain actions could support charges that political motivations prompted CBS News to report and air the story. Fortunately for Mapes, the Thornburgh panel didnt have Mapess then unwritten memoir to draw on. It is full of crazed political animus that belies her absolution by the Thornburgh panel.

 So the Killian memos: real or fake? The film has it both ways. Its in fake but accurate territory, but it also leaves Mapes with the last word defending the documents authenticity in her concluding speech.

 The film has someone referring to the documents typeface as New Times Roman (rather than Times New Roman). Its the only reference to the Killian documents typeface in the film. Youd think they would get it right.

 In her memoir Mapes denies that the typeface is Times New Roman. In the film, someone triumphantly asserts that, contrary to the claims of ignorant bloggers, New Times Roman was available as of 1931! True. It just wasnt licensed to typewriters. Its ubiquity is a tribute to Microsoft Word and the era of computerized word processing.

 Bill Burkett was the source of all the fraudulent documents purportedly from the personal file of Col. Jerry Killian on which Mapes based the second part of the Rathergate segment. Before the segment was broadcast, Burkett told Mapes that he had received the documents from an unknown source in the mail. He subsequently told Mapes that he had been given the documents by one George Conn, an assertion which Mapes was unable to confirm. After the story was broadcast and the provenance of the documents became an issue critical to CBS News, Mapes pressed Burkett on the source of the documents. At this point Burkett served up his laughable cock-and-bull story involving Lucy Ramirez. In her memoir Mapes says of the Lucy Ramirez story: I believed it was quite possible that Bill Burkett was finally telling the truth, the whole weird truth, and nothing but the truth. By contrast, the movie portrays Mapes as rolling her eyes at Burketts story. Even the producers of Truth know that only a fool would buy what Burkett was peddling then. Only a knave would peddle it now.

 The film is all about rewriting history. Thus the celebration of the film by the New York Times at the TimesTalks event hosted gingerly by Susan Dominus this past October, just before the movie went into commercial release. The left is unrelenting in its support of the myths that sustain its political religion. Truth runs 121 minutes, but its an Orwellian Two Minutes Hate for the ignorant, the gullible, and the true believers.

 Andrew Heyward was president of CBS News at the time of Rathergate. He hasnt spoken much about the scandal for public consumption, but he talked about Truth to the New York Times for its story on the TimesTalks celebration of the film. Heyward commented to Times reporter John Koblin that the film takes people responsible for the worst embarrassment in the history of CBS News, and what was at the time a grievous blow to the credibility of a proud news organization, and turns them into martyrs and heroes. Only Hollywood could come up with that. Thats one truth missing from Truth.
No Ukrainian servicemen have been killed or injured in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian presidential administration's spokesman for Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) issues Oleksandr Motuzianyk said.

He also told a press briefing on Tuesday that the situation along the contact line remained unchanged in the last day, and "low-intensity fighting" continues without the use of heavy weapons.

In his words, illegal armed groups occasionally violated the ceasefire along the so-called Svitlodarska Du h a, the stretch between the militant-controlled town of Horlivka and the town of Svitlodarsk in Donetsk region. They also shelled areas on the outskirts of Horlivka and near the ruined Donetsk airport, Motuzianyk said.

"Yesterday, the most tense situation was in the village of Opytne, where the enemy used a grenade launcher and where the enemy's snipers were active. All of the strikes were targeted," he added.

Militant forces also breached the ceasefire in the town of Maryinka in Donetsk region, where they were firing small arms on Ukrainian military positions for about an hour, Motuzianyk said.

There has been no shelling in Luhansk region, he said.

At the administrative border with Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukrainian border guards saw a drone and a jet-propelled plane on a reconnaissance mission flying over the peninsula, he added.
As Scott was kind enough to preview, I have retired from the practice of law and have embarked on a second career as the President of the Center of the American Experiment, a think tank based in Minnesota. I have been associated with the Center for a long time. Scott and I wrote research papers under its auspices in the 1990s, before we started Power Line. In 1995, the Center published our piece, The Truth About Income Inequality, which was cited and republished around the country. It led to a Center-sponsored debate between me and Congressman Martin Sabo that was televised by C-Span and received considerable press coverage. It was the Center that published our (really, Scotts) epic takedown of the Minnesota Supreme Courts report on racial bias in the criminal justice system. Everything old is new again, as income inequality and racial bias in criminal justice, real or imagined, are again in the news. And without the Center, I never would have met such luminaries as Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom I spent the better part of a day.

Both Scott and I have served on the Centers Board of Directors. I chaired the Board in 1999 and 2000. More recently, I have served as the master of ceremonies at American Experiments annual dinner for the last 11 years. Being an MC is an easy rolethe less you do, the betterso it suits me well.

Mitch Pearlstein founded American Experiment and has led it as President for the past 25 years. It is a great honor to follow in Mitchs outsized footsteps.

Do I have plans to expand the Centers reach and influence? Of course! Most fundamentally, I intend to get the Center into the business of mass communications, somewhat along the lines of Power Line. We will write, and contract for, intellectually impeccable research papers on important issues of public policy. Those papers are critical; they are the seedbed from which all else springs. But how many people will read a 40-page research paper? Right. Not many.

So we will distill the findings of those papers, we will extract key data points, and we will turn them into op-eds that will run in newspapers all over Minnesota. Not just the Twin Cities, but in every nook and cranny of Greater Minnesota. We will create internet videos and radio ads that convey a few key facts about, for example, the current state of Minnesotas economy. We want millions of Minnesotans to receive our messages in these ways.

Much more could be said, but I will stop with this, for the moment: it is absurd that Minnesota is a deep blue state. Most Minnesotans are not wild-eyed leftists; Barack Obamas current approval rating is around 35%. The surrounding statesWisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraskarange from purple to deep red. Minnesota is a huge opportunity for the conservative movement, and I intend to make the most of it.

What is happening in Minnesota is not just of local interest. A significant theme has emerged on the Left to the effect that Minnesota is the state that proves the blue state model can work. (Governor Anderson, land that fish!) President Obama is one of many who have asserted this claim. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. But demonstrating that fact to an audience of millions will require financial support.

If you want to contribute to what we are doing in Minnesota, please go here to learn more about the Centers good work, and here to donate to the cause. Dont worry if its just $20. We are taking on an entrenched power structure, and need all the help we can get. Of course, if you have the means to donate $100,000, dont hesitate to do that too!

We are going to have a lot of fun in Minnesota over the next few years, and I will keep you fully apprised. More to come, soon. For now, please join our effort to turn a blue (liberal) state into a purple (moderate) one, and ultimately red (conservative).
On New Years Eve, the Obama administration published a 200-page proposed rule in the Federal Register. The proposed rule is another executive order, in plain violation of the immigration laws. Obamas executive order would illegally ignore the immigration caps that are enshrined in law. Senator Jeff Sessions denounced Obamas usurpation, which, interestingly, was covered by hardly any mainstream news sources.

Sessions wrote:

The President has announced another brazen, illegal executive action.  In a proposed federal rule published on New Years Eve, President Obama decreed that hundreds of thousands of additional foreign workers will be licensed to replace American workers at lower pay. Congress must act with urgency to stop him. The Presidents nearly 200-page rule bypasses federal immigration caps, increasing significantly the number of foreign nationals authorized to work in the country above the limits set by Congress. These lower-paid foreign workers will be able to take jobs in technology firms, neighborhood pharmacies, energy companies, local schools, public administration, civil engineering, and innumerable other professions both sought and filled by millions of Americans.  The number of aliens authorized to work in the United States each year is limited by law, according to the number of foreign work visas and green cards that are statutorily available. Under this breathtaking executive action, those limits set by Congress are waived.

I got an A in Constitutional Law, but somehow I must have missed the provision that gives the President power to waive provisions of federal law.

Here is how the scheme works: under current law, there is a statutory cap on the number of aliens who can receive green cards based on sponsorship from their employers, and thus a cap on the number who can receive the all-purpose work authorization those green cards provide. Under this new rule, the administration can bypass those caps with two easy steps. First, it would simply approve as many aliens as it wishes to seek green cards in excess of the cap. Then, it would give those workers  and their spouses and children  a renewable all-purpose work permit while they wait for their green cards to become available, nullifying Americans statutory protections against job-threatening flows of excess foreign labor. Adding further to the pool of workers, it expands the number of H-1B visas exempt from the annual cap. Brazenly, the proposed rule would also result in the automatic renewal of work permits for aliens who, among other things, merely file applications to have their deportations cancelled or asylum granted. It is as if these policies were designed to create chaos and disorder.

Funny how many actions of the Obama administration seem to be designed to create chaos and disorder. Maybe he thinks thats a good thing.

This lawless action comes at a time when immigration is already at an all-time high. The total foreign-born population is at record-breaking 42.4 million, having more than quadrupled since immigration caps were raised five decades ago. Excess labor supply has already helped drive down todays median household income more than $4,000 beneath levels at the turn of the century.

But you already know that.

When the history of the Obama administration is written, it will be condemned, more than anything else, for its lawlessness. Its many policy failures and betrayals of the American people are important, individually. But the overarching theme of the Obama administration has been its contempt for the rule of law. President Obama, in seeking to govern illegally by executive decree, has taken us half-way down the path toward a tinpot dictatorship in the Mussolini/Peron/Chavez mold. This is unprecedented in American history, and the first task of Obamas successor will be to restore the rule of law to the United States.
President Muhammadu Buhari said Tuesday in Abuja that an inter-ministerial committee will soon be established to speed up the re-organization and reformation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Speaking at a meeting with the Chief Executive Officer of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Jin-Yong Cai, at the Presidential Villa, President Buhari said that the reformation of the NNPC had become inevitable in view of the corruption and abuse of its present structure in the recent past.

The President also cited Nigerias current need to maximize income from every source of revenue as a further imperative for reforming the NNPC.

He said his administration was doing everything possible to boost national revenue so that it can effectively implement its programme of change and significantly improve the living conditions of Nigerians.

Mr. Jin-Yong Cai, who is also the Vice President of the IFC, told President Buhari that with proper reformation and re-organisation, NNPC could become Africas largest company.

You have brought monumental changes since you got to power. You have brought in strong leadership and Nigeria has the opportunity under you to become highly reputable, presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, quoted Mr. Buhari as saying.

In NNPC, you can create an entity that is dominant in Africa, and this is the right time to do it, with the momentum you have created, he told the President.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, says the Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri refineries now produce over 6.76 million litres of petrol per day.

This is contained in a statement issued on Tuesday in Abuja by Ohi Alegbe, NNPCs Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division.

The statement said the three refineries had been projected to increase combined production to over 10 million litres per day by the end of January.

It said a breakdown indicated that the Port Harcourt refinery, which was re-streamed a week earlier, produces about 4.09 million litres while Kaduna yields 1.29 million litres.

The statement added that Warri refinery, which was re-streamed on Sunday, posts a yield of 1.38 million litres.

It said the volume of petrol from the refineries currently operating at an appreciable percentage of their nameplate capacities would help stabilise supply and distribution in the country.

(NAN)
The Board of Trustees of the Investors Protection Fund of the Nigerian Stock Exchange on Tuesday appointed Lawrence Anga as the chairperson of the board.

The appointment followed the death of the chairman, Gamaliel Onosode.

Mr. Anga, a partner at AELEX, a leading commercial and litigation law firm, joined the IPF Board of Trustees in September 2012.

He has a multi-disciplinary background in law, economics, management and fiscal policy and is qualified to practice law in Nigeria, England and Wales and in Ghana.

Mr. Anga was also a contributor to the chapter on Nigeria for the Harvard Securities Project and Chairman of the CBN SMIES policy guidelines review committee.

He was a former chairman of the Capital Market Solicitors Association and a member of various ad-hoc committees established by the Ministry of Finance and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He was a past member of the Presidential Policy Advisory Committee, and served as a member of the sub-committee on finance and investment.

He appears as counsel before all superior courts of record in Nigeria and Ghana and has acted as a party appointed Arbitrator on several arbitration panels.

He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation.

Mr. Anga, in accepting the new position, said he was honoured and excited about the possibilities that lie in future for the capital markets in Nigeria.

Having crossed the hurdle of paying first set of claimants under the fund, we now have learning to rely on in the speedy but thorough examination of claims to compensate investors for pecuniary losses suffered by them as a result of wrong doing by certain dealing member firms of the exchange.

The Board will continue to do its best to move the fund forward, Mr. Angar said.

Oscar Onyema, NSE Chief Executive Officer, appealed for excellent working relationship between the new chairperson and other IPF Trustees in the promotion of strong corporate governance while stepping up compensation of investors when the need arises.

I am strongly convinced that having been part of the development of the IPF and its compensation framework, the chairperson will be able to provide quality leadership and steer towards the realisation of the funds objectives, said Mr. Onyema.

The IPF is a statutory fund established by NSE pursuant to Section 197 of the Investment and Securities Act to compensate investors who suffer pecuniary loss arising from the revocation or cancellation of the registration of a dealing member firm by SEC.

The other areas covered by IPF include insolvency, bankruptcy or negligence of a dealing member firm of the exchange, defalcation committed by a dealing member firm or any of its directors, officers, employees or representatives in relation to securities, money or any property entrusted to, or received or deemed received by the dealing member firm in the course of its business as a dealing member firm.

Meanwhile, the IPF has paid about N24 million in settlements after the verification of 103 claims.
A Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja on Monday sentenced Tajudeen Folaji, a stockbroker, to seven years imprisonment for fraudulent sale of shares.

The convict was found guilty of a one-count charge of unauthorized sale of shares and stealing contrary to Section 390(8) (b) of the Criminal Code Law, Cap C17, Vol. 2 Laws of Laws of Lagos State 2003.

While Mr. Folaji is to serve prison term, his company, First Alstate Securities Limited, where he was the managing director, was fined N20 million by Justice Kudirat Jose.

Mr. Folaji was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, following a petition from the Security and Exchange Commission in 2010 that he fraudulently sold the shares of Adesoye Holdings Limited in IPWA Plc.

After diligent investigation by the anti-graft commission, it was discovered that the convict fraudulently sold 31,886,200 units of Adesoye Holdings Limited shares in IPWA Plc worth millions of naira.

Aside the seven years imprisonment, the court also made an order that the EFCC should trace the properties of Mr. Folaji and cause same to be sold with the proceeds forfeited to Adesoye Holdings Limited.
The United Nations spokesman, Steplane DuJarrick, has said the UN Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is visiting Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Mr. DuJarrick told reporters on Monday in New York that de Mistura would also visit Iran later in the week.

He said during the visits, the Special Envoy would assess the implications of the recent developments between Saudi Arabia and Iran on the momentum of the Vienna process for Syria.

The spokesman said de Mistura believed the crisis in Saudi-Iranian relations is a very worrisome development.

Mr. DuJarrick told reporters that the envoy stressed the need to ensure that the development did not cause a chain of adverse consequences in the region.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Iran on Sunday, following the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr and 46 other prisoners by Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

The Saudi authorities gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country as the kingdoms execution of the cleric inflamed sectarian tensions.

In another development, Mr. DuJarrick said the UN Mission in the Central African Republic reported that the National Elections Authority had released partial provisional results.

He said that the results were based on votes cast in eight prefectures and 15 per cent of votes cast outside of the country.

The spokesman said the election authority is expected to announce the final results by the end of this week and the Constitutional Court is due to confirm the results on Jan.15.

He said that the Mission reported that 95 per cent of the polling stations were open on election day.

Mr. DuJarrick said the mission confirmed that the participation of voters in the prefectures was estimated to have reached 75 per cent.

(NAN)
Former Governor Sule Lamido, has been criticized by many and praised by others for his eight-year reign in Jigawa State aptly known as The New World.

In this interview with our Regional Editor (South), IBANGA ISINE, the former governor addresses some of the criticisms against his administration and offers a rare insight into his past.

PT: What was your primary motivation for joining politics?

Lamido: You may not believe it. I was in business and working with a company in Lagos called Chrysler at No 49 Creek Road, Apapa. We were involved in the importation of toothpastes, Vaseline, Heinz varieties, Quaker Oat, etc. It was also involved in the making of confectioneries. I was doing very well at the time. But I was very concerned about the country because I considered Nigeria as my primary constituency. In those days, I used to drive from Ijebu Ode to Ore and then to Benin and then to Uli, Ihiala to Aba from where I went to Uyo and Calabar and then went to Nsukka after crossing Itigidi River from where I came up North. Really, I knew every part of Nigeria and its traditions and the level of poverty in the country. When I left that company in Lagos in 1978 and by 1979, I formed my own company in Kano.

PT: What was the name of the company?

Lamido: Bamaina Company Limited is the name. As I was saying, I was doing well but somehow, I found myself in the then Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, a party that had a lot of concern for humanity. PRP was a party that had so much like for those who are weak, the young and the orphans. It was a party that was primarily concerned about humanity and touched by situations which were below human standard.

Besides, as a child back then in my village, I was well off by every standard and my father was very prosperous. I had a good upbringing and I was pampered and loved and I did not know hunger. But even then, I also saw the contrast in the neighbourhood where many people were poor. I did not, however, for once imagined, why I was like this or that but I was concerned about the poverty in my immediate society. I think it was that concern and what I saw when I was young in relation to my status and those of others and my faith in Islam which is all about humanity. I have never believed in being a European, American, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Ibibio, Anang etc. I have always believed in humanity. It was that single consideration that defined my political belief  what I felt about human beings, what I saw in their lives, their social status and their comfort, misery and agony. I have always been concerned about how human beings are agonized by deprivation. These have defined my political belief  humanity.

PT: After serving in the national legislature, appointed as federal minister and recently a governor for eight years, can you confidently say you have fulfilled those dreams you had for going into politics?

Lamido: Get it very clear; human beings are not satisfied with anything. Like that animal that cries moo, moo the more they get the more they cry for more. And there is no way any human being can get to a level of contentment. Every human being is always aiming for something higher and to me. I cannot say I was able to really attain my dream because whatever it was cannot be defined by all what I did or what is found on the ground. Leadership is all about making improvement in whatever one is doing and making things better. I cannot really say that I fulfilled my dreams. I wish I could do more. I had done my best and I cannot go beyond my limits but obviously, I wish I could do more.

PT: Jigawa, the state you governed, was and is still rated one of the poorest states in Nigeria. Are you worried about that?

Lamido: You see Jigawa State is a part of the Nigerian family and to me anywhere there is poverty or anguish, a Nigerian should be worried. Whether it is in Jigawa State or Akwa Ibom or in Lagos, it is your brother or sister who is going through the poverty. Even when Jigawa is rated as the poorest, it is a source of pain and embarrassment but I also know that it is a Nigerian problem.

When I became the governor, I assembled all the leaders of the state including emirs, malams, political leaders and others and say look, this is how our state has been rated among others in the federation and I think it is an embarrassment because in spite of all the things claimed to have been done, it does not manifest in terms of education, economy etc. Jigawas poverty is caused by denial and deprivation. So whatever you see today in Jigawa State came because we the people on our own decided to save ourselves from ourselves by developing the state by ourselves and rally the people to solve our own problem and then give everything we have to Jigawa State. I think if there is any improvement in the state, it was through the collective sacrifice of our people across all divides.

PT: In the course of our investigation, we found that many primary schools in the state are dilapidated and this was confirmed by the permanent secretary in the state ministry of education. What can you say to this?

Lamido: You see, if you know what we inherited, and then you will understand the enormity of the problem. But when you say that we are the poorest, it means we are also poor in education, we are poor in agriculture and in infrastructure.

We were at the lowest level with so many competing needs. When you come in and face with such situation, how do you holistically address these issues? Education is very critical, so also is health, food security and infrastructure. So you begin to think on how to apply available resources based on priority. We paid serious attention to education because when we came in Jigawa State was only voting about five percent of its budget to education. But based on the need I met on the ground and based on available resources, we had raised the budgetary allocation to the extent that we even exceeded the UNESCO target of 25 percent. This was a state that spent about five percent of its budget on education and by the time I came in, we raised it above UNESCO standard. Again because of our terrain, by the time you re-roofed one primary school, the following year, the same storm will come and remove the entire roof. So it was a continuous thing. No matter what you do, because of the area is very windy, you find that most of the roofs will be blown off.

My first commissioner for education was Prof. Ruqayyah RufaI, who later became the minister of education. In the first two years of our administration, we were able to address 50 percent of the schools affected by wind storm in the state. Later on, all the schools were renovated. But it was not only renovation we did because in most cases after the renovation, there was no furniture. If there were no roofs, then it means they were no furniture and enrollment was low. So when we addressed the problem of roofing, we also looked at furniture, feeding and books. It was a huge phenomenon and a continuous effort at rehabilitation. We used available resources to address these issues at every given time.

PT: If one is building a super structure, the foundation is very important. And in this case, primary education is the foundation for any educational development. How much did you spend in the primary education during your eight-year tenure as governor of the state?

Lamido: In our budgets and because of what we found on the ground we invested so much and unknown to us, we had even exceeded the UNESCO target. It is not about the quantum, it is about the budgets. It is difficult for me to say it in quantum but before I left, our primary school enrollment had increased by more than 20 percent. The rot we found was a huge thing we had addressed continuously. We were not only engaged in renovation, you know education is one huge industry in which when you get the structure, you worry about the furniture, the books and then you also look at the learning environment including the teachers who must be properly trained. We also looked at the issue of education inspectorate system to ensure that they monitor what is being done by the school management. We also set up management committees for schools and they go round to see what were being done, including the environment and the curriculum. I mean it was a huge problem.

The fact that we were able to give over 25 percent of our budget to education means we were very committed to the education of our people.

PT: If you had put that much into the system, why is it that over 70 percent of the schools we visited didnt have furniture?

Lamido: I dont know it when you say there was no furniture. You see, when we came in, some schools were virtually empty and then the urban schools were having over 50 pupils per classroom sitting down on the bare floor. If also look at the pattern, you will find out that in areas with high population, school attendance is more and vice versa. I dont know what you mean when you say you didnt see furniture. Your conclusion may be wrong because you have to look at the schools in terms of those in urban centers, those in semi-urban centers and those in rural areas and must also look at the enrollment and population. You dont provide furniture just like that. It has to be based on the population and enrollment of pupils. When you have between 20 to 30 pupils per classroom, you dont give more furniture to such schools. We hired very committed and professional person, who is also an educationist as my commissioner for education. And so in looking at the issue, you need to know what the enrollment in Jigawa State was in 2007 and what it was after I took over and up to 2015 to be able to know the difference.

PT: Lets now talk about primary healthcare service which is also in a very pitiable state of decay. In the Due Process report for 2012, the contract for the renovation of Gwaram Cottage Hospital was duplicated and over N28 million was paid in each of the awards while the primary health center in the area is dilapidated. Can you tell us what happened?

Lamido: Let me clarify something here. The Due Process should have been able to go and inspect every contract before they issued any certificate for payment. Therefore, if they had issued certificates on jobs that were not done or duplicated, then they should be able to tell you what happened because the ministry of finance only paid for contracts based on the certification issued by the Due Process office. If they had issued certificate for a job that was duplicated, then they have to tell you why it happened. All payments in Jigawa State were based on Due Process certification. In any case, the ministry of finance only paid vouchers approved by the Due Process office. So if they brought two vouchers which were approved by the Due Process, then it means something was wrong.

PT: Given all that your administration invested in the primary healthcare sector, we found a health center fifteen minutes drive from the Government House, Dutse, in a terrible state. How can you explain that?

Lamido: If your mission was to find fault generally, I will tell you that in every human institution, there are faults. Right now on your head, I can find fault in the way you shaved your hair. There are areas which have more hairs than the other and I can clearly see it. You must have a reference point on what Jigawa was before and what is Jigawa now. Before we came in, the state recorded one percent success in WAEC. I mean only one percent of the entire students who wrote the exams. Before we came in, the state owed N13 million in WAEC fees. Remember you said Jigawa is one of the poorest in the Federation and now you are speaking on specifics in spite of the general efforts we put in to remedy the situation. I have no case when you are looking at specifics but I want to remind you about the fact that you said the state is the poorest in the country. What that means is that our healthcare delivery system was bankrupt, our educational system was zero but we were able to increase school enrollment by 20 percent before we left.

So if you are looking at it in terms of our failures, of course, we are human beings and as a governor, I cannot sit here and tell you that in every village, town and local government, we had water, health facilities, education, transportation and food security; right. It is not humanly possible and that is because we are running a human institution. You cant find a perfect situation anywhere in the country. But you must also look at the situation in terms of relativity- what were the needs of the people and what were the available resources to meet them and how were the resources utilized? Does it mean that you didnt see anything good when you went round the state?

PT: While many have commended you for the modest achievements in secondary and tertiary healthcare system; the primary healthcare which is closest to the people and very significant, is not working. What can you say about it?

Lamido: But you must understand that we were not running a normal system that is popular in Nigeria. We introduced the Ganduma Healthcare System which considers primary healthcare first. We met a primary healthcare system that was not functional at all and that was why we had so many cases of, whooping cough, malaria, diarrhea, tuberculosis, meningitis and high maternal and infant mortality in the state.

In the past, before a woman could deliver a baby, she had to be driven in a cart for over 50 kilometers to a medical facility. When a woman under labour is sitting on a cart to the hospital which is located very far away, then you can imagine the fate of the mother and the baby. Our duty, therefore, was to provide the primary infrastructure to alleviate the suffering of the people and by every standard; we were able to achieve 90 percent in infrastructure development and even in water supply. If there is no good drinking water, then you know the people are in serious trouble. That was why we achieved 90 percent in the provision of water in villages across the state.

What Im saying is that based on what I met on the ground when I took over, we should be praised for what we did and with all sense of modesty, I am not saying I did so much but I put in my best and those who know what the situation was in the past can attest to what we did. We were able to lay the basic foundation for the development of the state.

PT: Between 2007 and 2014 when you left office as governor, you spent a total of N21.3 billion on basic education with 48 percent of the funds coming from the state. Can you say the funds achieved the purpose for which they were deployed?

Lamido: First, you must understand where we were coming from and what was responsible for why we were there. That is very important. When I got into office in 2007, we inherited a total of 18,000 primary school teachers and out of these; only 6,000 were qualified, meaning that 12,000 others were not qualified. We also found that some of them could be trained while a vast number of them could not be trained at all. We went to the National Teachers Institute in Kaduna and asked them, how do we train our teachers? However, during our first three years, those who were trainable were trained and others had to go.

PT: How many of them did you sack?

Lamido: It was not a matter of sack. When you are talking about an issue, you must put it in a proper context. When you find that people are not trainable, you dont talk about sack because if you say that, you would be bringing another dimension to it. What happened was that they themselves knew that they were not supposed to be there in the first place and they left on their own.

We insisted that people should not be wage takers but wage earners and there is a world of difference between wage earners and wage takers. It was when these people had left that we started employing new teachers. Education is one huge investment for us having to turn around a situation where the state recorded only one percent success in WAEC. As I said, before we left, primary education enrollment had improved by over 20 percent and the success recorded in WAEC was also significant in spite of what you said about dilapidation.

Education is a consuming industry and not like something you plant today and harvest tomorrow. By the time you give your people the right education, you find out that you have produced people who are knowledgeable, people who can defend their rights and ready to save the society and humanity. Education is not all about employment; it is also about creating better human beings.

PT: In many of the places we visited, the people praised you for the development you brought to the state but there were some who complained that primary healthcare sector and primary education were abandoned by your administration. What can you say to that?

Lamido: You must know what we met on the ground first. With all sense of modesty, there were not even roads for children to go to school. So we started by creating roads even in remote areas. Health services and education dont function in isolation. They have to operate in harmony with other development fundamentals. Our people used to produce large quantities of food but there were no roads for them to move these to the towns where they were needed.

It was not possible to take a piecemeal approach. Everything you do must be in tandem with the overall needs of the people. When you are investing in education, you must also think about agriculture and infrastructure in order to make meaningful change to happen. Before we came in, there was pain on the faces of our people; there was a feeling of lack and misery everywhere. There was no hope. But today, things have changed. I dont want to be praised. I did not get elected as governor so people could praise me at the end. I was simply performing the duties for which I was elected.

PT: Can you tell us one of your greatest achievements or something you think you will be remembered for as governor of Jigawa State?

Lamido: Well, I am not in the best position to say that since I was the governor. The people are the ones to tell you about it. Go and ask the people of Jigawa what they think Lamido did for them. I cannot tell you anything on that.

PT: You are alleged to have collected bribe from a major contractor in the state. Can you tell us what actually happened?

Lamido: I cannot speak on that because the issue is already in court. Secondly, the EFCC should proof whether it was a bribe or a Code of Conduct issue. In the charges they brought against me, there was no where they said I stole the Jigawa State Government money. Because we are in court, I dont want to say more on the issue. Let the court determine whether I am guilty or not.
Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has approved a draft memorandum of cooperation between the governments of Ukraine and the United Kingdom in the defense sector, the security, defense, justice department of the Cabinet's Secretariat has reported.

The cabinet approved a respective resolution on December 30, 2015, the department said in a statement posted on the government's website.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak was authorized to sign the memorandum on behalf of Ukraine.

" The decision taken to sign the said memorandum will create legal grounds for cooperation in the defense sector," the statement said.
A former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Haliru Bello Mohammed, on Tuesday appeared before the Federal High Court, Abuja, sitting on a wheel chair.

Mr. Bello appeared alongside his son, Abba Bello, following allegations of money laundering levelled them and their company, BAM projects and Properties Ltd, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The EFCC had on December 26, 2015 filed a four-count charge of money laundering against the politician and his son for their alleged role in the diversion of funds meant for the procurement of arms in the office of the National Security Adviser.

Abbah Mohammed is alleged to have received N600m from the office of the National Security Adviser in the name of Bam Properties.

The EFCC has charged several other individuals in connection with the arms money, disbursed from the NSA office.

At the court on Tuesday, Mr. Mohammed and his son pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The former PDP chairmans counsel prayed the court to grant him bail, so he can attend to his health.

More to come
The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has said that contrary to widespread perception, she was not in Nigeria to negotiate a loan for the country.

I am not here to negotiate loan with conditionalities because Nigeria does not need a new IMF programme, the IMF chief said.

Ms. Lagarde, who addressed a press conference at the State House, Abuja, said she had a fruitful discussion with President Muhammadu Buhari on the state of the Nigerian economy in the light of dwindling oil prices.

She said she also discussed how Nigeria could face the challenges associated with global economic downturn.

She said her meeting with the president also dwelled on Mr. Buharis fight against corruption and his commitment to transparency and accountability in governance.

Ms. Lagarde said the IMF considers Nigeria a key player in global financial structure, adding that ongoing reforms in the country would definitely have a great impact on Nigerias neighbours.

More to come 
A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has ordered the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, to place a former acting Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party under intensive watch while he undergoes treatment at an Abuja hospital.

Justice Ahmed Mohammed gave the ruling, Tuesday, after hearing the arguments of various counsel in the criminal charge levelled against Mr. Mohammed and his son, Abba.

The former PDP chairman and his son are facing a four-count charge of financial misappropriation, levelled against them and their company, BAM projects and Properties Ltd, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Both men are part of those indicted in the N31 billion meant for the purchase of arms to fight terror in the country, but which was allegedly distributed to some PDP members for the 2015 election campaign.

Counsel to Abba Mohammed, Ogala Osoka, had made an application asking the court to grant his client bail, pending the determination of the suit.

Mr. Osoka said the application for bail was made on December 29 and filed the following day.

He said the charges levelled against his client were bailable in nature.

The condition for bail is the applicants appearance in court, Mr. Osoka said.

He told the court that his clients health condition is bad, and that he had been in custody for 41 days.

He therefore requested the court to grant him bail, with conditions that were not excessive.

The counsel to the former PDP chair, Abdulazeez Ibrahim, also prayed the court to adopt the application of the first defendant for his client.

He told the court that Mr. Mohammed was undergoing surgery in London, but upon discovery of the charges against him and the conditions attached, decided to fly into the country, and even had to be treated at an Abuja clinic, because his surgery was still fresh.

He said exhibits four attached to his affidavit contained a letter given to him (Mr. Mohammed) by the surgeon attending to his case.

He added that there were also pictures of the PDP chieftain while receiving treatment.

But the counsel to the prosecution, Aliyu Yusuf, prayed the court not to grant the bail requested by Mr. Ibrahim, and Mr.Osoka

He said the allegations against the defendants were serious, adding that the first defendant, in his application for bail, did not prove that his health conditions cannot be treated in prison custody.

Citing Section 19, sub section 2b of the EFCC Act, Mr. Yusuf urged the court to consider the character of evidence, as provided by the court, and deny Abba Mohammed bail, stressing that he had the likelihood of interfering with the cause of justice.

He asked the court to issue an order for accelerated hearing.

After listening to the counsel, Justice Mohammed ruled that Abba Mohammed be remanded in Kuje prison.

He also ruled that since Mr. Haliru Mohammed indicated in his affidavit the status of his health, he should be placed under the care of the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, while undergoing treatment.

The matter was adjourned till January 7, 2016.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has demanded the immediate release of the partys National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, who was Tuesday morning arrested and detained by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

The party said the arrest of its spokesperson was no surprise as the governing APC has obviously not (been) comfortable with our stance on the confused state of the nation under their watch.

The party, in a statement by its national secretary, Wale Oladipo, said the arrest of Mr. Metuh underscores the growing political intolerance in the country and the foisting of a police state which was last Wednesday underscored by the President and Commander-in-Chief himself, who defended why a government in a democracy should flout constitutional provision and brazenly disobey court orders.

PDP said it has intelligence that the arrest of its spokesperson, is part of a larger script by the government to ensure that PDP wings are finally clipped in their mission to install a dictatorial one-party state in the country.

The excesses of security agencies under this government, especially the Directorate of Security Services (DSS) and the EFCC, in abridging the human rights of PDP members have become worrisome and a threat to our democratic evolution.

Nigerians and the international community will recall that on a number of occasions, the PDP, through its spokesman has been outspoken on some undemocratic proclivities being exhibited by the APC-led Federal Government in the last seven months.

The PDP insists that for whatever reason Chief Metuh was arrested, his rights as a citizen under the law must not be trampled upon. We therefore demand (for) his immediate release and that due process of investigation and prosecution concerning him should be strictly adhered to.

We state this because we have been made aware of top directives to break Chief Metuh and if possible poison him during his detention by the EFCC, the party said.

The party said Mr. Metuh has, since his arrest at about 10 am, has been kept incommunicado, with his lawyers denied access to him.

The PDP also described the arrest of Mr. Metuh as the last straw that may break Nigerias democracy.

We therefore forewarn the Federal Government and its agencies to save our democracy and forthwith release our National Publicity Secretary.

We are also calling on the international community and well-meaning Nigerians to stand up for this democracy, which our party nurtured for 16 years and deepened to a level where the opposition, for the first time in our political history, had the opportunity to win in a general election, the party said.
The Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, has deployed a deputy inspector general of police, an assistant inspector general of police and three police commissioners for the gubernatorial election rerun in Bayelsa State on Saturday.

The IGP has also approved the deployment of no fewer than 5,000 officers for the poll.

The Force Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Kolawole, told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr. Arase has deployed Hashimu Argungun, a Deputy Inspector General of Police, to supervise the rerun.

Musa Daura, an Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of Zone 5, Benin, Leye Oyebade, Commissioner of Police, Oyo State, among others were also deployed for the poll.

She said plain clothes detectives, well-armed anti-riot policemen and other specialized officers have also been deployed to the state.

A source at the Force headquarters had earlier told PREMIUM TIMES that the IGP was also deploying three commissioners of police, over 5, 000 officers, as well as plain-clothes detectives, surveillance helicopter for aerial patrol, gun boats, speed boats and personnel from the Mobile Police Unit.

Mr. Arase was also said to have ordered the restriction of movement between 6am to 6pm.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Monday, December 7, 2015 declared the governorship election in the state inconclusive, after it cancelled votes from Southern Ijaw LGA.

Southern Ijaw is mainly riverine and biggest local government area in the state.

However, the commission declared the results from seven out of eight local government areas of the state.

In it, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, polled 105,748 votes, while the All Progressives, APC, got 72,594.
The managing director of the Nigerian Film Corporation, Danjuma Dadu, on Tuesday said the National Film Institute, Jos, has received a grant of N600 million from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund to equip the institution for better productivity.

The institutes chief executive officer disclosed this while briefing journalists during the opening ceremony of the Entrepreneurship Film Training Programme for Kogi youth.

The youth were sponsored by a federal lawmaker representing Kogi West, Umar Jibril.

Mr. Dadu said N300 million was first accessed to purchase critical equipment, while an additional N300 million was accessed for the building of classrooms and offices at the institutes permanent site in Lamingo, Jos.

He said the grant was accessed through the University of Jos, and a part of it had already been used to purchase about 100 of the latest iMac computers with animation software as well as the construction of a sound complex for the institute.

We are a monotechnic so we cannot access the TETFund. The only way was to go through University of Jos because UniJos supervises our degree programme and the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Haywad Mafuyai gave us his platform so that TETFund can assist the NFI.

In the first stage, TETFund provided N300 million through the university and there is an additional N300 million now for the building complex at the permanent site.

The contract has already been awarded; they are only waiting for TETFund to pay them the first tranche, Mr. Dadu said while conducting journalists round the facilities.
The Chairman of Ward 6, Tudun Wada, Kaduna South Local Government, where the Senator representing Kaduna Central in the Nigerian Senate, Shehu Sani, hails from, on Monday insisted that Mr. Sani remained a bonafide member of the All Progressives Congress and has not been suspended.

Some members of executive of the party in the Ward, including the secretary, Ahmed Abdulhamid, the Public Relations Officer, Auwal Maianguwa and an ex-officio, Aminu Alilan, had on December 27 announced Mr. Sanis suspension from the party, for 11 months.

The officials listed Mr. Sanis offences to include, uttering statements that allegedly violate the rules of engagement of the party, factionalizing the party, and engaging in anti-party activities by criticizing the policies of Governor Nasir El-Rufai.

However, the three officials who purportedly signed the letter suspending the Senator told PREMIUM TIMES their signatures were forged.

In spite of their denial, the state chapter of the party, in a December 30 statement by Assistant Publicity Secretary, Salisu Wusono, said the party was left with no other option than to uphold the suspension in order to restore discipline to the party.

Following the rules and procedure laid down by the constitution, we shall uphold our commitments and defend the constitution of the APC at all times, the statement said.

In this quest, having exhausted all avenues available to us in the party, we are left with no option than to uphold the suspension of Comrade Shehu Sani as a member of the party for a period of 11 months.

By this suspension, he is to desist from all party activities until when the suspension is lifted.

The party calls on all its members to be law abiding as we move forward to fulfill our campaign promises.

The Ward Chairman, Abbas Anni, however visited the national headquarters of the APC in Abuja on Monday, alongside some of his colleagues in the ward executive, and submitted a letter to the National Secretary of the party, Mai Mala Buni, insisting that Mr. Sani committed no offence warranting his suspension from the party.

In an interview with PREMIUM TIMES after submitting the letter, Mr. Anni again distanced his executive from the attempt to suspend the Senator.

He also reiterated his earlier claim that all the signatures in the suspension letter were forged.

 It is regrettable and lamentable that we were portrayed as having suspended Senator Shehu Sani from the APC for 11 months. We reiterate our unalloyed support for Senator Sani, he said.

The ward chairman requested the national executive of the APC need to wade into the matter by restoring discipline in the party in Kaduna state.

All that is happening is totally unnecessary, he said. As a governing party, we need to all work together to fulfill our promises to the electorates. My prayer is that the national executive will do the right thing for Kaduna APC before it is too late, he said.
A Kano upper Sharia Court has sentenced Abdulaziz Dauda, popularly known as Abdul Inyass, to death by hanging after finding him guilty of blasphemy.

The court upheld the death sentence passed on Mr. Dauda by a lower Sharia court.

Mr. Dauda was arrested on August 18, 2015 in Abuja and taken to Kano, where he faced trial on a two-count charge of blasphemy and inciting crisis that led to the burning of a Sharia court and some vehicles.

The man reportedly made some blasphemous remarks against Prophet Muhammad during a Maulud festival held on June 31 last year.

State counsel, Lamido Sorondinki, said five witnesses, including the police, had testified before the court.

Counsel to the defendant, who craved anonymity, neither commented on the ruling nor possibility of appealing the judgement.

Five other accused persons had also received death sentence by the court in June.
The All Progressives Congress, APC, says it is worried by the latest and familiar antics of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which has been beating war drums ahead of Saturdays Bayelsa state governorship supplementary election in Southern Ijaw Local Government.

According to the APC National Secretary, Mala Buni, the party is aware of the PDPs ploy to intimidate eligible voters, officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and security operatives deployed to ensure peaceful, free and credible supplementary elections in Bayelsa state on Saturday.

While the APC prays for a peaceful, free and credible supplementary election come Saturday, security agencies must be on high alert over the dangerous threats by the PDP to cause a breakdown of law and order in Bayelsa State on Saturday.

Already, the PDP leadership through its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, has issued instructions to PDP members and supporters to go ahead to use all means necessary in Saturdays supplementary election in the Southern Ijaw come Saturday.

This is among other dangerous threats by the PDP warning of terrible consequences to INEC officials and security operatives.

As the saying goes, history may not repeat itself but it rhymes. It is clear that the PDP is still hungover its old ways of doing things. The days of do or die politics is over. Never again will the country return to the PDP ways of election fraud and violence. Change has come. We call on the PDP to embrace the new Nigeria where elections are peaceful and votes of the people count.

The APC is confident in INEC and security agencies ability to deliver peaceful, free and credible supplementary election come Saturday.

On election day, we urge Bayelsans and all eligible voters in the state to go about their legitimate activities. We also call on INEC and security operatives to be mindful of the dangerous threats by the PDP while also focusing on its legitimate election duties.

The APC encourages the people of Bayelsa, particularly Southern Ijaw Local Government to come out during Saturdays Bayelsa supplementary election and vote massively for the APC Governorship candidate, Chief Timipre Sylva, as he is poised to deliver on APCs Change Agenda as well as the dividends of democracy that has eluded the state.

Looking back at the last seven months under the APC, it is clear that the party is on the right track to delivering on its Change Agenda. It is the right of Bayelsans to abandon a sinking ship and join one that is smooth-sailing, Mr. Buni said.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov suggests the sweeping reform of the judicial system when the existing courts stop working for three months while new judges are being selected on a competitive basis.

"I believe that it is necessary to return to the radical project that the People's Front [party] once insisted on, however, did not garner support of. It was about the full (!) replacement of the judiciary. Full rebooting with the recruitment of new members, professional competition, and a real EXTERNAL performance review of the current judiciary. It was proposed that new courts should have been created while the old ones continued working. I am in favor of even tougher measures," Avakov wrote on Facebook on Monday.

He says he is sure that everyone will understand and agree if the courts in the country don't work for three months while new courts are being formed. "If people know that it will be a real change and a purge, they will agree to wait! Adopt all the necessary legal acts for the period of transition ranging from the extension of procedural periods to the order of proceedings and that's it  you've got three months for rebooting. A brand-new judiciary will appear after all the contests have been held!"

The minister says he thinks both Ukrainians and investors will support such changes.

"I believe we need to decide in favor of the sweeping reform of the courts  and this is both a process and a task for all of us in 2016, along with the completion of the key stage of reform at the Interior Ministry, and real change rather than simulation at the prosecutor's office," Avakov said.
Appeals Court of Kyiv to continue to consider Korban's appeal against custody on Jan 13

The Appeals Court of Kyiv has postponed the consideration of an appeal by the defense team of UKROP Party leader Hennadiy Korban against the pre-trial restriction for him in the form of custody until January 13.

Presiding Judge Denys Masenko announced that the next meeting will start at 11.00 on January 13, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

As reported, Korban, a former deputy head of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Administration, who recently ran in the mayoral elections in Kyiv, was detained during a sweeping special operation aimed at eradicating a criminal ring on October 31.

Korban was later notified of being suspected of 'setting up and participating in a criminal organization', 'obstructing elections commissions' activities' (implying misappropriation of a large amount of money belonging to the Country Defense Foundation charity organization),'illegally gaining possession of a transport vehicle' and 'taking hostage a government official' (implying an incident in which the chairman of the Ukrainian State Land Agency and the director of a Dnipropetrovsk city council department were taken hostage in Dnipropetrovsk). Korban was placed under house arrest until December 31.

On December 28, the Dniprovsky District Court of Kyiv ruled to change the pre-trial restriction measure for UKROP Party Leader Hennadiy Korban from house arrest to custody for a period of 60 days. The court sitting on this matter lasted for several days. The participants of the heating spent over 30 hours in court.

On Tuesday, January 5, the Appeals Court of Kyiv will consider the appeal by Korban's defense team against the ruling of Dniprovsky District Court.
The New Jersey Hospital Association is supporting a bill requiring nonprofit hospitals to make annual payments in lieu of property taxes to host communities, but groups representing local governments and other nonprofits have concerns about it.

We see problems, including constitutional issues, said New Jersey State League of Municipalities Assistant Executive Director Michael Cerra. He said the bill was written without input from municipalities, which want more local control rather than a one-size-fits-all formula.

The Hospital Community Service Contribution Bill would uphold the states 62 nonprofit hospitals tax-exempt status but set a daily fee of $2.50 for each acute-care bed to be paid to towns in which the hospitals are located. Funds would have to be used for police, fire and other public-safety costs, or for tax relief.

Hospitals have traditionally been exempt from paying property taxes, except on buildings they own that are used exclusively for for-profit activities.

Sponsored by state Senate President Steve Sweeney, D-Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem, the bill was written in response to a New Jersey Tax Court decision this summer. The decision upheld Morristowns revoking of tax-exempt status for Morristown Medical Center in Morris County.

The judge found profit-making was so interwoven into the hospitals activities, with for-profit medical providers and others using it as their place of business, it should pay property taxes on most of its real estate.

The parties settled in November, with the hospital agreeing to pay taxes on 24 percent of its real estate  about $1.05 million a year and retroactive to 2006. It will also pay about $5.5 million in interest and penalties.

The NJHA wants the payments in lieu of property taxes bill passed as quickly as possible.

Ever since the Morristown Tax Court case there has been a great deal of uncertainty with hospitals and municipalities about what it means, said NJHA President and CEO Betsy Ryan. We are in the midst of the biggest change in health care ever with the Affordable Care Act. We need to get this resolved, put behind us.

The NJHA board of trustees voted unanimously Dec. 21 to support the bill, which was introduced in the state Senate Dec. 7 and quickly passed out of committee.

The Center for Nonprofits in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, is watching the bill closely, to be sure other nonprofits are not pulled into its orbit, said Executive Director Linda M. Czipo.

We dont have a position on it, mostly because it is focused specifically on hospitals, said Czipo. But she said most nonprofits could never afford to pay similar fees.

Meanwhile, changes made in the committee process make the bill a bit less generous to municipalities.

When introduced, the bill required hospitals satellite emergency centers to pay their host municipalities a $750 per day flat charge. But the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee amended the bill Dec. 21 and dropped the amount to $250 per day.

Locally, that would mean AtlantiCare would pay Hammonton $91,250 annually rather than the $273,750 required in the introduced version.

The bill would require that municipalities share 5 percent of the payments with their county governments.

The League of Municipalities Cerra said some municipalities  mostly in North Jersey  have negotiated voluntary payments from hospitals that are larger than that required under the bill. He said that and other factors indicate the $2.50 per-bed, per-day charge needs to be reconsidered.

Locally, Shore Medical Center has been making a voluntary annual contribution of $100,000 to its host municipality of Somers Point. The five-year agreement ends in 2016, said City Administrator Wes Swain. Under the bill, Shore would pay the city about $264,625.

AtlantiCare in Atlantic City and Galloway Township, Inspira in Vineland, Cape Regional Medical Center in Middle Township do not make voluntary contributions but pay taxes on their for-profit entities such as physician and staff office space.

According to AtlantiCare, it pays about $1.7 million on its for-profit entities to 18 communities in Atlantic, Cape May and southern Ocean counties.

Shore also pays about $239,000 to Somers Point for its properties used in for-profit activities, Swain said.

NJHAs Ryan said the bill exempts financially challenged hospitals from the fee and does not allow retroactive charges. She said the fees it imposes are fair given the large amount of charity care, education and economic benefits hospitals already bring to their communities.

Cerra said it is still not clear if all or most hospitals in the state are operated like Morristown Medical Center.

We dont have our hands around a funamental issue. Was the Morristown hospital a new normal or an anomoly? Cerra said. He said smaller hospitals in urban areas, especially Catholic hospitals such as St. Francis in Trenton, may be operated quite differently.

We need more time for these issues to be vetted, Cerra said. The court indicated the Legislature should look at it. But there is no crisis, no rush. We think it is better to get everyone in the same room to see if there is a middle ground that meets the constitutional test and is fair to all parties involved.

But Ryan said her member hospitals of all sizes and types support the legislation, and time is of the essence from their perspective.

Contact: 609-272-7219

Twitter @MichelleBPost
LOWER TOWNSHIP  John Brier remembers yelling at somebody to put a match out as aviation fuel poured out of the commuter plane that had just crashed in the swampy woods short of the runway at Cape May Airport.

I remember yelling at him, and then I must have passed out, Brier said.

The Timber Lane resident was reliving a memory from a foggy night on Dec. 12, 1976, when he was a 36-year-old flight commander on the Atlantic City Airlines-owned commuter plane that ran between Philadelphia and the shore.

Steven Gross, a 20-year-old Maryland resident returning to his U.S. Coast Guard post in Cape May, had kicked out the emergency exits, managed to get out and lifted survivors onto the wreckage to get them out of the swampy waters near the Fort Apache Campground that were quickly filling with aviation fuel.

It was Gross who was lighting the match. He had soaked a paperback book in fuel and was lighting a torch to successfully signal a Coast Guard helicopter looking for the crash site. His actions likely saved the lives of several injured passengers.

Brier only recently learned about this from a group of volunteer firefighters in Erma working to preserve the memory of Allegheny Airlines Flight 977. The group has found the site, where the trees still bear the scars, and put up a plaque remembering the four who lost their lives and the six survivors whose lives were changed forever.

May Flight 977, its crew and passengers, never fall from our memories, reads the plaque.

The effort is led by John Piggott, an Erma firefighter and dispatcher for the Lower Township Police Department. An aviation buff, Piggott has studied the National Transportation Safety Board report and feels the pilots, Brier and Capt. Jon Scheaffer, 31, of Somers Point, who was actually piloting the plane going from Pomona to Cape May, have been unfairly blamed. Both were experienced pilots who landed at the Cape May Airport many times at night.

They know a lot more about wind shear now. There were 20-30 mile per hour winds, dense fog and the ground crew at Atlantic City Airport in Pomona mishandled the luggage. The captain said they were fighting to keep the nose up the whole trip, Piggott said.

It was one of the worst aviation disasters in Cape May County history, taking the lives of Scheaffer, retired Wildwood Crest Judge Maurice Hayman, his wife, Rita, and James Simmons, of West Wildwood.

The crash also left six survivors, some with serious life-long injuries. Brier spent the next year in the hospital and still suffers aches from the many bones he broke when the DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter crashed into the trees.

I never went back. This happened and life goes on. I flew for another 15 years. The first time you throw the throttles forward you feel apprehensive. After that, its just like riding a bike, Brier said.

Brier also had injuries to his shoulder, arm and face. He still has a scar on one finger and remembers that when he was on the stretcher somebody was trying to get the ring off it. He kept the ring but never did find out what happened to his watch.

He said he also remembers getting no attention at the hospital and finding out why.

I heard somebody say dont worry about him, he wont make it through the night, Brier said.

Fuzzy memories

Piggott met Brier recently and was able to draw out some fuzzy memories. The most significant was not mentioned in the NTSB report.

There was another airplane there shooting the approach, probably illegally. I occasionally see in my mind an airplane above us. The reaction is you dont want to hit him, so go lower, said Brier.

Did another plane drive them into the trees 3,900 feet short of the Runway 19?

While there is no record of another airplane in the air, a worker at the Wildwood water utility on Route 47 reported hearing the sound of intermittent airplane engines, which could have been two planes or one with engine issues. Brier said a weather observer at the airport said another plane went over the airport just before Allegheny 977 arrived. He theorized it could have been military.

Brier said he has slight flashes of another airplane but admits his memory is fuzzy and they were in the soup with almost no visibility. They couldnt even land at the normal stop at Bader Field in Atlantic City due to the conditions and had to drop those passengers off in Pomona.

Even if another plane was in the air, Brier said Allegheny 977 should not have crashed.

Obviously we were too low. We should never have hit the trees, Brier said.

NTSB

The NTSB blamed the pilots for lack of altitude awareness that brought the plane below a safe approach profile for landing. There was also debate on whether the altimeters were working properly.

The report also said visual references were degraded by fog while the airplanes descent increased due to wind shear. An FAA meteorologist identified two distinct layers of wind shear in the area as a cold front replaced a warm front. It concluded wind shear probably induced a higher than desired rate of descent. The NTSB found the company had not provided the required training on wind shear.

Atlantic City Airlines was blamed for improper procedures on pilots calling out the altitudes on approach. Brier cant remember if they did this or not.

It also blamed the forward center of gravity being off due to improper loading of luggage. The plane discharged five passengers in Pomona and all their baggage came from the rear compartment. All the baggage from the remaining passengers was left in the forward compartment, creating what the NTSB called a forward condition. The FAA received some blame for inadequate monitoring of weight and balance computations.

The last radio transmission from the Atlantic City Airlines station manager at Cape May Airport reported decreasing visibility due to fog and a low ceiling.

Are you sure you want to give it a try? he asked at 11:17 p.m.

Several minutes later he went outside and saw conditions were even worse. The one-mile visibility had dropped to half a mile. He said he didnt radio Flight 977 again because it was already on its final circling approach. At 11:26 p.m. he heard explosions north of the airport.

At 11:40 the fog lifted and visibility increased to three to four miles as northwest winds at 20 to 30 knots arrived with the cold front.

Contact: 609-463-6711
Does Prince William Not Want Kate Middleton To Become Popular? Royal Reportedly Jealous

Following the birth of their youngest child, Prince William and Kate Middleton have been attending events and helping out charities together.

According to reports, however, the Duchess of Cambridge is steadily becoming more popular with every appearance. Is her husband growing jealous of his wife's public appeal?

According to Movie News Guide, the Duke and his brother Prince Harry have been "completely sidelined" by Prince George's mother.

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The report, originally from Celebrity Dirty Laundry, implied that the future king was feeling neglected by the public with his spouse's soaring popularity.

Royal watchers reportedly noticed Prince William's slow decent to being featured only in the background, using the Cambridge's recent Christmas card photograph.

"When looking closely, one sees Prince William's eyes are fixed on Prince George instead of the camera. The Duke is crouching off to one side - which would make it quite easy for the future King to be cropped out of the photo," the gossip site noted.

This observation, apparently, resulted to speculations of an imminent divorce for the royal couple. This isn't the first time that rumors of separation plagued Prince William and Kate Middleton. Other issues involve the latter's family disrupting royal protocols and traditions.

CDL surmised that a change in the prince's looks and fashion should be enforced.

"Is it time for the Duke of Cambridge to update his look?" the site continued. "As one Royal watcher observed, it is the middle-class Middleton who looks as if royal fairy dust has been sprinkled upon her. The blue-blooded William is beginning to resemble an ordinary run-of-the-mill Sloane Ranger."

A recent ITV documentary about Prince Charles showed his eldest son focusing more on becoming a father to his two children.

"I'm a lot more, um, I'm a lot more emotional that I used to be," he said. "Yeah, weirdly."

He also added that he gets more affected about little things because of his experiences as a doting father.

An insider from Prince William and Kate Middleton circle, debunked the jealousy rumors. He reportedly adjusted better to his wife's popularity than Prince Charles did with his mother, Princess Diana, adding that he's very proud of his wife.

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For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




Koreas First Lesbian University Student Council President Kim Bo Mi Wants A Society Free From Hatred and Discrimination

In a recent article published in The HuffingtonPost, a lesbian student council president at Seoul National University announced herself to the public. Coming out of the society where homosexuality or LGBT issues remained a taboo, she has become a subject of attention by many Koreans.

A 2014 survey conducted by the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in South Korea determined that while the tolerance and acceptance to LGBT issues substantially increased from 15.8 percent to 23.7 percent among South Koreans, still a significant number of respondents perceived LGBT issues with reservations.

On her speech during a campus campaign meeting November last year, Kim Bo Mi, the SNU council president, said she desired for the world where people can live confidently regardless of gender preferences and identity.

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"I want this to be a world in which no one has to fit under a label of what is normal," Kim said. "That's why I am telling you. I'm a lesbian."

Her speech was published officially in Seoul National University's online newspaper, which gained substantial site traffic.

In an interview with The HuffingtonPost on December 23, Kim said her decision of coming out was a personal choice and was directed along with her party's campaign slogan "Moving As One Towards Diversity."

She mentioned that she wanted a society that is free from hatred, violence, and discrimination and "society in which you don't have to be uncomfortable or embarrassed about yourself or your differences."

Despite the reality where some people still despise the LGBT community and same-sex relationships, Kim said she remained grateful to the people who supported and encouraged her all the way.

"Your love and support fuel my conviction and faith in myself, for having one's words and actions deemed meaningful is paramount," she said.

Kim is a 23-year-old student taking up a consumer and child studies major in South Korea's most prominent university.

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Historic inn offers cocktail hour, romantic seated dinner, and overnight luxurious accommodations in the heart of New York's Hudson Valley

Media Contact

Maria Coder

***@bedandbrunchpr.com

646-559-8530 Maria Coder646-559-8530

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-- Forget Seattle, this Valentines Day surprise your loved one with a romantic dinner and luxurious long weekend at the Caldwell House Bed and Breakfast . Spend the day visiting wineries along the Hudson Valleys most scenic views, then return to the historic 1800s inn for cocktail hour and hors d'oeuvres. A chef-prepared, four-course, farm-to-table dinner for up to 40 people, will be served by the roaring fire at the inn's Great Room."This Valentine's Day we wanted to put together a very special getaway that really captured the moment and the beauty of Hudson Valley," said Dena Finneran, who runs the inn with her husband, John. "Our Sleepless in Salisbury Mills package is a romantic and playful take on a movie we love and a holiday we adore."Cocktail hour (cash bar) and hors d'oeuvres begin at 5 p.m. on Sunday, February 14, 2016. A seated dinner follows at 6 p.m.The "Sleepless in Salisbury Mills" package includes: Three nights' lodging at the Caldwell House Bed and Breakfast  Homemade breakfast each morning Complimentary WiFi and amenities Complimentary round-trip transportation to closest Hudson Valley train station, if desired Complimentary parking, for those driving to the inn Optional add-ons (billed separately) include: a bottle of local wine, roses and massages Chef-prepared, farm-to-table, dinner for two on Sunday, February 14, 2016Package costs start at $855 plus tax and gratuity per couple; a minimum three-nights' stay is required. Dinner may be reserved separately from accommodations for $150 plus tax and gratuity, per couple. Note: Dinner space is limited to 40 people.For additional information contact the Caldwell House Bed and Breakfast at 1-800-210-5565 or visit http://www.caldwellhouse.com The Caldwell House Bed and Breakfast is a multi-award winning member of the prestigious Select Registry and Diamond Collection groups of Inns. Located in the heart of the Hudson Valley just 60 minutes from NYC by car or train and close to the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Storm King Arts Center, Brotherhood Winery (and many of the Shawangunk Wine Trail Wineries), and the Woodbury Premium Outlet Mall. Some of the Hudson Valleys most beautiful hiking/biking trails are within walking or easy driving distance. Built in 1802, this historic inn is full of many original features, antiques and original paintings, as well as modern amenities. Each guest room includes its own private full bath (several with Jacuzzi tub for two), smart TVs with Netflix/Hulu, free Wi-Fi Internet access, individual room temperature controls, iPads and more.
Life Insurance Company Honors Milestone with Year-Long Series of Events in 2016

Media Contact

Meredith D'Agostino

Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company

meredith_dagostino@ bostonmutual.com Meredith D'AgostinoBoston Mutual Life Insurance Company

End

-- Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company, a national provider of insurance solutions for individuals and at the workplace (http://www.bostonmutual.com/), today announced the launch of a series of celebratory events in 2016 to commemorate its 125year. The company, which has a long-standing history of offering insurance products since its founding in Boston in August 1891, is hosting a variety of initiatives over the course of the year to honor this milestone.Were proud of our enduring success for the past 125 years and were looking forward to honoring our achievements with this years celebrations,said Paul A. Quaranto, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer. Weve been committed to providing exceptional service to our producers and policyholders for more than a century, and we remain loyal to that promise as we enter 2016.To celebrate, Boston Mutual is kicking off a years worth of activities starting in the first week of January. Throughout the year, the company will recognize its history with themed initiatives, including a new commemorative logo, a time capsule, a monthly internal newsletter designed to mirror its first edition from the turn of the century, and more. The companys annual General Agencies sales convention, held in rotating locations each year for its agents, will be held in Boston in May as a tribute to its city of origin. Boston Mutual will host additional special activities in August to highlight the month the company was founded.Boston Mutual was founded by John Wheeler on August 18, 1891, then known as Boston Mutual Life Association, and established its first home office at 17 Milk Street in Boston. The company operated out of a number of offices in downtown Boston until it moved into a larger space on Royall Street in Canton in 1974, where the home office is currently located. Starting with offering individual life insurance, the company added employer group offerings in 1956 and worksite products in 1978. In 1988, Boston Mutual organized Life Insurance Company of Boston & New York (LICOBNY), a subsidiary company to offer a comparable product portfolio in New York.Continuously expanding its product lines, distribution, and geographical reach throughout its history, the company now does business from coast to coast, including the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Boston Mutual currently insures more than 732,000 individuals with over $18 billion in life insurance. It is deeply involved with the community, including supporting the Town of Canton, and regularly works with a number of charitable organizations, such as The American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Jimmy Fund, Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, My Brothers Keeper, The Salvation Army, and United Way.Founded in 1891, Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company has enjoyed a long history of financial strength and stability. Headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts, Boston Mutual has been a recognized leader for 125 years in providing flexible insurance products to working Americans and their families in the private and public sectors of the USA. For more information, please visit www.bostonmutual.com or follow the company on Facebook (/BostonMutualLifeIns)
Due to recent major changes in the business marketplace, Stephen Bush and AEX Commercial Financing Group are expanding career training services involving small business consulting and specialized business writing.

1 2 3 Expert Help and Practical Solutions from Stephen Bush and AEX Steve Bush: Always Have a Plan B  plan Bush Cost-Effective Training Programs for Business Consulting and Business Writing

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-- AEX Commercial Financing Group (AEX) and Stephen Bush proudly announce the immediate expansion of advanced career training services for business writing and small business consulting. While Stephen Bush and AEX will continue to provide business writing and consulting help for traditional business projects, specialized career training will be expanded due to significant marketplace changes such as reduced availability of small business financing from traditional banks and increased emphasis on high-quality business writing by business customers. AEX is also expanding career training programs in response to changing employment trends.AEX career training services can facilitate accelerated learning for professional consulting and writing. According to Stephen Bush, Chief Executive Officer for AEX Commercial Financing Group, "Business writing and consulting are viable career paths for anyone seeking a solo career opportunity or looking for a second job and part-time work. AEX career training is provided on a one-to-one basis. Why is this important? Expensive college degrees and other group training approaches frequently fail to produce expected career-oriented results."Preliminary career analysis and feasibility fees start at $300. For more extensive career training, fees range from $1500 to $5000 for AEX individualized programs. AEX specialized career training is provided by the Founder and CEO of AEX Commercial Financing Group, Stephen Bush.As noted by Steve Bush, "Anyone looking ahead at future career success should be increasingly skeptical of traditional career paths. Business writing and consulting careers that AEX is preparing individuals for can be pursued on a part-time basis or as a second job. Time management flexibility is essential for anyone juggling multiple responsibilities."Stephen Bush (a Navy veteran) offers two primary suggestions for military personnel transitioning to a civilian career:1. "For most career changes, finding effective individualized training is the most prudent strategy  but avoiding ineffective group training is rarely easy."2. "The role of college education in producing tangible career benefits has changed  the need for an expensive college degree is seriously over-rated for a growing number of promising business careers."Video presentations in this press release were produced by Stephen Bush  the business writing video describes 10 ways to make business writing more effective. AEX Commercial Financing Group currently provides career training services throughout the United States and Canada. Please contact Stephen Bush at AEX for practical and candid help from a business career expert and military veteran. http://www.youtube.com/ embed/p_HXrXCArms
Not Your Average Networking: Charleston-based JTE Marketing Group has confirmed January 20, 2016 for their BrewWorking 5.0 networking event.

Contact

JTE Marketing Group / John Tripolsky

john@jtemarketing.com

(800) 975-7096 JTE Marketing Group / John Tripolsky(800) 975-7096

End

-- The fifth and upcoming event (5.0) is slated for January 20, 2016 5:30-7:30PM at Revelry Brewing Company, located at 10 Conroy St, Charleston, SC 29403. For this event, local businesses; Lifetime Wealth Strategies, Stoney Design Group, Southern Smoke and Carolina Marine Group have also joined in as supporting sponsors.BrewWorking, a series of social networking events hosted by JTE pulls together over 100 local professionals and entrepreneurs for an evening filled with business connections, prizes and brews. This is what makes our business so great, having the opportunity to not only meet new people but introduce them to each other. In the first two events weve had out-of-town attendees from cities such as New York City, San Francisco and Toronto, Canada says JTE Marketing Group CEO, John Tripolsky.Event registration and further information can be found at www.BrewWorking.comJTE Marketing Group, provides website design and development, social media management, branding, SEO/PPC, content management, printing, marketing strategies, consulting and public speaking services. Maintaining offices in multiple locations in the United States, JTE serves clients both domestically and abroad. For more information, visit www.jtemarketing.com
Contact

CarePICS, LLC

John Williams, Project Lead

john.williams@ carepics.com

(855) 440-5605 CarePICS, LLCJohn Williams, Project Lead(855) 440-5605

End

-- CarePICS, LLC, with headquarters located in Raleigh, NC, is pleased to announce the introduction of a revolutionary new auto-measurement planimetry tool designed to be the next generation in wound assessment technology. CarePICS CTO, Terry Williams, described the technology as a fusion between best clinical practices and new evolving software edge detection algorithms that are now available for integration into imagery applications.He further commented, Clinical science in wound care is very much a trained eye environment  we do not believe that a computer program can take the place of this acumen, but we do think we may aid in general determination of wound edges and morphology identification, then let the wound care professional determine exact clinical parameters with their overview.The termin the dictionary is defined. The manual mathematical methods currently utilized for determining surface area of a wound are woefully inaccurate and often time length and width are transposed from one week to the next when measurements are taken. Planimetry algorithms in digital imagery software where the clinician traces the outline of the wound have become commonplace in the last ten years but require fairly intensive user interface to trace the wound edges. And recently the emergence of totally automated imagery analysis systems have emerged but leave little room for humanistic clinical analysis.Now, with the introduction of CarePICS Fusion, consistency and accuracy of measurements are possible to a very high standard but still leave the practice of medicine to the clinician. This initiative has its sentience in our development center in Denver, Colorado. This team, comprised of graduates with advanced computer and applied sciences degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the University of North Carolina, the University of Colorado and the University of Denver, brings together a group with the skill sets that truly define a clinical imagery company.The new CarePICS Fusiontool is a client-side algorithm that automatically determines the edges of the wound utilizing a set of proprietary mathematical methods aimed at identifying points in a digital image at which the image brightness changes sharply or, more formally, has discontinuities. The points at which image brightness changes sharply are typically organized into a set of curved line segments termed. In addition to the detection system, the algorithm fuses a manual planimetry methodology that allows the clinician to tweak the line sets of the edges if not in agreement with the interpolated values  thus giving the care professional last overview of clinical wound metrics, such as length, width and surface area.Therefore a fast, accurate and easy to use tool now exists that allows measurement of wounds in any environment, whether it is utilized as a screening tool in a busy general medicine practice, a predictive aid in wound assessment in home health or a skilled nursing facility or a time saver to staff in a wound care clinic. This, coupled with our interactive front-end that provides voice, text and email interaction between users, brings a state of the art patient encounter tool for wound care management. CarePICS, LLC will be demonstrating this breakthrough technology at the upcoming SAWC meeting in Atlanta, Georgia in April. We encourage all attendees to attend a hands-on demonstration of all aspects of our remote clinical imagery management tool. www.carepics.com
Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update:Google Nexus Users Deal With Sync Issues? Official List Of Devices Out Now!

Android 6.0 Marshmallow update rolled out to Google Nexus owners. However, some users apparently deal with sync issues.

According to NDTV Gadgets 360, several users have taken the issue on Google's support forum, Reddit, and AOSP tracker page. The publication has been also facing the same issue with its Nexus 6 test phone. It noted, "notifications from Gmail occasionally take hours before showing up on the device."

Though this is an issue Google is yet to acknowledge, Nexus users who are dealing with it believe that it stems from Android 6.0 Marshmallow Doze feature. Users who disabled "Gmail and some other Google apps and services from battery optimisation apparently fixes the issues," NDTV Gadgets 360 added.

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"This is the answer that needs to be at the top. Gmail is getting dozed, causing sync to get disabled. Just remove it from battery optimisation and all issues should be resolved," a user wrote on Reddit.

Meanwhile, Google has already announced the official list of smartphones that are receiving the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update. Some phones are even starting to receive the OTA.

Reportedly, Moto G(Third Generation) commenced its OTA in New Delhi as announced on its official Twitter account.

Here is something new and amazing for your Moto G (3rd Gen.), the Android 6.0 Marshmallow! pic.twitter.com/0etB1IncHi  Motorola India (@MotorolaIndia) December 30, 2015

"Here is something new and amazing for your Moto G (3rd Gen.), the Android 6.0 Marshmallow," shared on Twitter.

On the other hand, Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are on an Android Beta program of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This will bring an overhauled interface for its TouchWiz UI.

Accordingly, it features "cleaner, and minimized look for its icons, combining white and blue for its windows." Though it is being said that users still have the option to change colors through themes, with some new ones being added with the new Android 6.0 Marshmallow based build, Christian Today reported.

See the official list of smartphones here

.

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 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Crystal Infoway announced launch of its training centre, Crystal Infoway for Web Design,Web Development,SEO and Mobile Application Development in Rajkot,Gujarat.Crystal Infoway provide IT services with client base in India,USA, UK, Canada and many mo

Contact

Gaurav Kothari

***@crystalinfoway.com Gaurav Kothari

End

-- Crystal Infoway is one of the Leading IT Company offering PHP live project training in Rajkot,India(http://crystalinfoway.com/project-training/php-project-training-course-rajkot/). This training and certification center offers comprehensive PHP training solution. Through its training program, Students get work experience on LIVE projects.PHP is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development. PHP is extremely simple for a newcomer. you can create static as well as dynamic webpages with php . This language is Open Source and therefore, is more popular than its parallel technologies like ASP and JPS,CGI ,PerlOne great advantage of this language is no costs associated with using PHP.you dont require licenses, restrictions, or royalty fees involved at all. PHP is 100% free for anyone to use.The students in the training period get knowledge about introduction To PHP,Basic PHP Programming,Arrays & PHP Library Function,Functions,OOPS - Classes and Objects,PHP Forms & Scripts,Validation & File System,Database,Cookies & Session,Basic HTML 5 / CSS3 jQuery,Social Media Integration,Framework OR CMS. The projects included in their PHP live project training in Rajkot,India.Crystal Infoway( http://crystalinfoway.com/ ) provide project based professional training program. students will get detailed material on PHP with examples. trainers in Crystal Infoway are expert industry leaders. Therefore, students get the best training from the best trainers.
SWA Conference, Epworth by the Sea, St. Simons Island, Georgia

Media Contact

Loiacono Literary Agency

***@loiaconoliteraryagency.com

9122302207 Loiacono Literary Agency9122302207

End

-- Jeanie Loiacono, President of Loiacono Literary Agency, to be the featured agent at the 2015 Southeastern Writers Workshop Southeastern Writers Workshop will be June 19-23, 2015 at Epworth by the Sea on scenic St. Simons Island, Georgia. Great conference. Great location. Great information. Great opportunity.A facilitator of dreams, Jeanie Loiacono represents over eighty authors. Her forte is mystery, romance, thrillers, historical/military/southern fiction, and all quality fiction/nonfiction. Her passion is to see her authors succeed.Jeanie has been involved with the literary arts all her life. Starting at a young age, her sister, Barbara, taught her to read and write before she started school. It was never enough to be read to as a child. She discovered the magic of escaping through the written word and never looked back; had to learn to read so she could go to the land far, far away on her own. With a sister passionate about literature, a father who was Aid de Camp for two governors, empowering her with the skills to type and compose letters and meaningful essays and a mother who taught her to speak German, she naturally excelled in language arts. So to be a part of the literary arts world is a dream come true.There is nothing more rewarding than to hold one of my authors books and know I helped bring it to fruition. I am so blessed and privileged to be able to work with some of the most talented writers in the world.What use is living without giving? It is all about making memories.I had a home day care for fifteen years and read many children's books. One I made sure we read a lot was Big Bird on Sesame Street. Big Bird bought a handful of flowers which he intended to decorate his nest with, but on his way home he encountered one friend after another who needed cheering up or who he just wanted to make smile. When he got to his place and turned around there were colorful flowers in every hand on the street, and that was better than seeing them in his nest. When I look back at the end of my road, I want to see happy faces; the faces of my authors, family, friends and those I encountered along the way that were touched by my smile or simple love. To me that is what it is all about; to look back and know what you did made a difference. Cant really isnt in my vocabulary.Be persistent. Editors change; tastes change; editorial markets change. Too many beginning writers give up too easily.  John Jakes, Author of the North and South TrilogyJeanie LoiaconoPresidentLoiacono Literary Agency, LLC448 Lacebark Dr.Irving, Texas 75063912-230-2207
Readers recognize RedShelf as a top digital reading solution, enhancing learning and efficiency on campus.

By: RedShelf

Media Contact

Shannon Godfrey

***@redshelf.com

312-878-8586 Shannon Godfrey312-878-8586

End

-- RedShelf (http://www.redshelf.com), a Chicago-based educational software company and one of the fastest-growing distributors of eTextbooks in the U.S., has been recognized for making a positive difference on college campuses. Its eReader was named a Readers Choice Top Products for 2015 by the University Business magazine, the most widespread publication for higher education leaders at two- and four-year colleges and universities.RedShelf was nominated by higher education leaders who have experienced the RedShelf platform firsthand in the classroom to enhance students experiences through digital reading. Instructors also use the RedShelf platform to digitize and distribute self-created coursepacks or other textual course materials. RedShelfs eReader offers innovative and academically focused digital reading features such as its highlighter, flashcard and study guide creator, and a note-sharing tool.RedShelf partners with more than 400 college bookstores and offers content from over 2,000 publishers to deliver digital textbooks to students through a centralized academic eReader. As a rapidly-expanding edtech company, RedShelf has attracted the attention of publishers and higher education players alike as eTextbooks continue to build momentum among students, faculty and institutional leadership. RedShelfs end-user offerings, a combination of more affordable textbook options, user-friendly software, and a high-level, responsive customer service team, just might be the secret sauce of a new era of eTextbooks.We are thrilled to receive this award. Winning the Readers Choice Top Products is the recognition RedShelf needs to help transition the learning community from print to digital, said Greg Fenton, RedShelfs CEO and Co-founder.About RedShelfRedShelf is a leading supplier of digital learning materials, dedicated to providing paramount technology to the learning community in order to accelerate the transition to digital. In collaboration with strategic partners, publishers, institutional bookstores, and other content creators, RedShelf streamlines the discovery and distribution of eBooks and other digital course materials for todays student learners. Utilizing a seamless browser-based eReader solution along with a powerful eCommerce engine, RedShelf provides easily accessible and cost-effective learning materials to learners everywhere.Please visit www.redshelf.com for additional company information.About University BusinessUniversity Business is the most widely received, most regularly read publication for higher education leaders at two- and four-year colleges and universities nationwide. UB provides cutting-edge coverage of higher education technology, news, finance, policy, profiles and more to this exclusive audience across print, digital and in-person event platforms, including the annual higher ed technology conference, UBTech. Independent surveys have proven that year after year, no other higher education management publication matches the reach, readership and audience engagement of University Business. For more information, visit www.universitybusiness.com
Known for its designer eco-conscious handbags, The Underground Chic along with their new line of sophisticated eco-friendly pet carriers, A Pet with Paws, will be exhibiting at the Seattle Gift Show, Booth 3109.

By: Whitegate PR INC

Seattle Gift Show

Contact

Dana Humphrey

***@gmail.com Dana Humphrey

End

-- Known for its designer eco-conscious handbags, The Underground Chic along with their new line of sophisticated eco-friendly pet carriers, A Pet with Paws, will be exhibiting at the Seattle Gift Show, Booth 3109. Running from Friday, January 22 through Monday, January 25, 2016 at the Washington State Convention Center, this highly anticipated show is custom-tailored to its Pacific Northwest buying audience. Learn more about the Seattle Gift Show: http://www.seattlegiftshow.com/312/home.htm.Its no surprise The Underground Chic and A Pet with Paws will be exhibiting at this years show. The Seattle Gift Show is a onestop shop to get a first-hand look at all the best-selling product and newest designs. The Underground Chic found their unique niche by providing affordable style alternatives that are amusing, functional, and cruelty-free, with the added bonus of being vegan and contributing toward preserving the environment.Who would have imagined that plastic bottles could be recycled into innovative fashionable handbags? At first glance, The Underground Chic bags look like leather; however upon closer examination, you realize your eye has been tricked and what you are seeing is a crisp photo printed image on fabric made from recycled plastic bottles! Learn more at: http://www.theundergroundchic.com/ "We had great success with The Underground Chic's designer eco-conscious handbag line, but I soon discovered that the pet industry lacks eco-conscious companies supplying sustainable, yet fashionable pet products as well," expresses Founder and CEO of The Underground Chic and A Pet with Paws, Ann Greenberg, "Thats when A Pet with Paws was born!A Pet with Paws began with chic pet carriers, but their brand quickly expanded to innovative pet accessories too. All of A Pet with Paws products will be showcased in the Pet Product Category at the Seattle Show, which includes: Poop Pickup Clutch Wristlets, Doggie Backpacks, and Pet Carriers.Im very excited to showcase my products at the Seattle Gift Show and I look forward to sharing my eco-friendly brands with the West Coast! states Ann Greenberg.The Underground Chic and A Pet with Paws takes being an eco-conscious company seriously and feels it is their responsibility to contribute towards protecting and respecting our environment. This fabulous company has partnered with Tress for the Future and for every bag, carrier, or accessory that is purchased a tree is planted. Learn more about A Pet with Paws at: http://apetwithpaws.com/ . & www.theundergroundchic.com.Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apetwithpaws/Twitter: @APetwithPawsInstagram: @APetWithPawsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVOfVepWUcm6oq4Y2ca5xw.
ICS Australia has broadened its scope to improve multicultural peoples health and wellbeing and is now calling for papers for the 2016 National CALD Workers Conference scheduled on the 26th  28th September 2016.

Media Contact

Maria Liza Edubas-Callaghan

***@iinet.net.au

0741942803 Maria Liza Edubas-Callaghan0741942803

End

-- Inspired by the huge success of the international and national Indigenous conferences in improving Indigenous Peoples health and wellbeing, ICS Australia has broadened its scope to improve multicultural peoples health and wellbeing and is now calling for papers for the 2016 National CALD Workers Conference to be held at the Hervey Bay Community Centre on the 26 28September 2016 in the Fraser Coast, dubbed the whale capital of Australia.ICS Australia is looking for presentations that empower CALD workers, community gatekeepers, ethnic leaders and community service managers with tools and knowledge on how to effectively instil change to improve services to multicultural clients and positively create an impact on todays global society and provide participants with an opportunity to gain greater cultural consciousness. The conference agenda will focus on a variety of topics to include:Developing a culturally inclusive services & practicesHealth and wellbeing in culturally and linguistically diverse communitiesCommunity Engagement that Works:CAMS Program Stories:Migrant Settlement Program Stories:My Aged Care Reform:Barriers in Community Services Access from a CALD Clients perspectivesUnderstanding and Healing:Respecting Ones Religion:CALD Family Carers:The New Face of Discrimination:Overcoming Adversity in CALD Clients with a DisabilityExploring the Cultural, Social and Political Influences that Shape IdentityTransforming notions of global diversity through cultural integrationCultural Diversity: What You Think You Know and What You KnowNavigating global trends and the impact on migration of labour and skillsWorking with CALD Consumers:Social Constructions of Inequality:Racism STOPS with Me CampaignLessons Learned from Multicultural Workers perspectivesCommunication across cultural and ideological barriersInterpreting Services for CALD ClientsCALD Youth Leadership ProgramsEducational Opportunities, Economic Participation and Skilling Programs for CALD JobseekersThe Philosophy of Diversity: From Theory to Social and Cultural Inclusive PracticesFamily Violence Affecting CALD FamiliesWorking effectively with CALD employeesCulturally inclusive local governmentsCultural and Environmental sustainabilitySkill Development Workshops:Get Ready to Lead - Leadership StoryTalks:Papers should not contain offensive language and take in to account cultural sensitivities.Papers may treat the themes in a manner that contributes to a further discussion of the conference aims.Conference papers must be presented in the finish format not less 60 days prior to the event.First call for papers will close onwith a second, if required.Papers that are not chosen in the first round may be resubmitted if there is a second round.Papers should be submitted in Microsoft Word format.Author/s of papers presented at the conference will be formally notified acceptance.Call for papers registration fee of $650 will apply to all persons submitting papers payable upon acceptance of papers.Papers should explore ways in which the themes show up in the philosophy of the conference.A maximum of two presenters for each paper are eligible for the discounted call for papers registration fee.All papers must be presented in a positive and informative light.WHY ATTENDThe conference will enable you to discover new strategies for better serving your clients and experiencing unparalleled professional and personal growth. The event offers more than 30 sessions with engaging and inspiring keynote speakers, workshop sessions and unparalleled networking opportunities.For more information, please visit the conference webpage at this link: http://www.indigenousconferences.com/#! 2016-cald/c1mhi or contact us by e-mail at adminics@iinet.net.au
By: Bournemouth Property Association

Representatives of the BPA and DCCI

Media Contact

AE Marketing Solutions

***@aemarketingsolutions.co.uk AE Marketing Solutions

End

-- THE Dorset Chamber of Commerce & Industry is pleased to welcome the Bournemouth Property Association (BPA) as its first Business Associate Member, a new membership programme specifically for recognised, not for profit business associations.The BPA was formed in July 2008 to bring together property professionals from all aspects of the property and construction industry across the region, to provide information to encourage fruitful relationships and create business opportunities for all its members.BPA Chairman, Andrew Singleton, said: The BPA is very established and for a few years now the committee have agreed that we needed to engage with other local organisations to have more of a voice on the economy in this sector. By joining with the Dorset Chamber, we will be able to work together to share information between our members and aid the growth of our local economy.Ian Girling, Chief Exec of the DCCI said: This is the first of these memberships, especially created for not for profit organisations to link with the DCCI. We are committed to working with our partners and members in creating a vibrant economy, allowing businesses to grow and prosper. With our accreditation with the British Chambers of Commerce we are part of a wider chamber network across the UK and beyond, which opens the door to new business opportunities.He added: We are also dedicated to promoting the interests of businesses across Dorset and will continue to represent them to influence and develop policy through local authority and government consultation and provide a powerful voice for Dorset businesses at a local, regional and national level.The BPA are delighted that the Chamber have created this new membership which is a great fit for us and we are looking forward to working with them to promote the interests of our sector, added Andrew.If you are a property professional and are interested in attending any of the BPA events, either as a guest or a member, further details can be obtained from www.bpa-online.co.uk For more information on Dorset Chamber visit www.dcci.co.uk Words: 340AE Marketing Solutions is run by Alexandra Eaton, Chartered Marketer MCIM, who specialises in working within the property and construction industries. She previously worked in the legal arena.AE Marketing Solutions offer anmarketing facility on a retained or 'pay-as-you-go' basis.For more information about, or this release, please contact :Chartered Marketeralex@aemarketingsolutions.co.uk07861899375
Media Contact

Public Relations Department

Transcend Security Solutions

***@transcendsecurity.com

(480) 656-6500 Public Relations DepartmentTranscend Security Solutions(480) 656-6500

End

-- Transcend Security Solutions, a leading provider of contract security services, is pleased to announce that Chris Vetter has been appointed to the Board of Directors for BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association)of Greater Phoenix.Mr. Vetter is the Co-Founder and President of Phoenix-based Transcend Security Solutions. Under Mr. Vetter's leadership, Transcend Security has witnessed tremendous growth and visibility. Mr. Vetter leads a team security professionals and support staff who are responsible for security for approximately 20 million square feet of commercial office, flex, industrial, residential, and retail assignments in the Phoenix area.said Shawn Crane, Co-founder and Executive Vice President of Transcend Security Solutions.In his new appointment as a Board of Directors Member, Mr. Vetter will assist in overseeing the general direction, control and management of BOMA Greater Phoenix, working in the interest of the membership at large. During his two-year term, Mr. Vetter will help guarantee that the operations of BOMA are in line with its mission to enhance the professionalism and ethics in the commercial real estate industry.Mr. Vetter has been an active BOMA member since 2008, and has served on several BOMA Committees and most recently resurrected the BOMA Emergency Preparedness committee where he serves as Committee Chairperson.Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Transcend Security Solutions is Arizona's fastest growing private security company; and a premier provider of highly trained security personnel to multiple vertical markets. With a passion for service perfection, Transcend Security delivers superior physical and virtual security services that protect people, homes and businesses. Our Mission Statement guides us: "To provide a level of service that transcends good work, and discovers the tremendous experience of doing great work." For more information on Transcend Security Solutions, please visit us at www.transcendsecurity.com
Three nonprofits strengthen local eco-system for tech entrepreneurs in educational programming, available co-working space and startup funding.

Contact

Donna Mackenzie

***@starterstudio.com Donna Mackenzie

End

-- In 2016 entrepreneurs in Central Florida will have even greater access to three crucial ingredients for startup success, thanks to three local nonprofits, all based in one location in downtown Orlando.Canvs, a co-working space established in 2014 with the mission to make it easier for anyone in Central Florida to start and grow a technology company, has seen high demand for its flexible workspace options and supportive community atmosphere. Already the largest co-working space in the region, it will expand again in 2016 with 18 private offices and an additional community conference room.Its location in the revitalized Church Street Exchange building is already recognized for its frequent arts and technology events and is home to 200 members and more than 100 companies.Canvs is also home to Starter Studio, a technology accelerator that is now accepting applications for its fifth class of Starterswho will take their ideas to a viable product during an intensive 12-week program. Starter Studio received more than 70 applicants for the ten slots it eventually filled in its most recent class. The 29 graduating companies of it first three classes generated revenues of more than $4 million in 2015, employed 90 people and have received more than $2 million in investment funding to date.FireSpring Fund, launched in 2015, is the areas first nonprofit seed-stage investment fund that will invest in early-stage, high-growth-potential technology startups in the same way that angel groups now invest. Its pay-it-forward strategy is distinct from these groups in that the success of companies that receive funding will return back to the fund when they successfully exit from the business.The fund is on track for its first-year goal of raising $1 million. In addition to a five year goal of $5 million for its evergreenstrategy to be self-sustaining, FireSpring Fund will also launch an advanced accelerator program in 2016.Donna Mackenzie, executive director of the three nonprofits, confirms entrepreneurship in Central Florida truly is a force to be reckoned with. I consider Canvs, FireSpring Fund and Starter Studio to be key components to building a flourishing eco-system for technology entrepreneurs. They provide three things:that grow entrepreneurs,that educate them to take their ideas to the next level, andthat will help them to start here and stay here to stem local brain-drain. I am truly excited to see the impact we will have in 2016.Canvs: www.canvs.org FireSpring Fund: www.firespring.org Starter Studio: www.starterstudio.com
North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un Cuts The Ribbon To Formally Open The Pyongyang Sci-Tech Complex

North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un attended the opening ceremony for a majestic science and technology complex in Pyongyang on Friday.

According to the North's state-run KCNA news agency Saturday, Kim added yet another ostentatious building to the already impoverished country's showcase capital. The complex is situated on a "propitious site" just next to the Taedong River in the capital.

The Southern China Morning Post reported Monday that Kim described the complex as a "a great center" that is open to everyone for education purposes and "for disseminating [the] latest science and technology in which the party's plan has been materialised."

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"It is the party's firm determination to ... advance the establishment of a rich and powerful fatherland through the locomotive of science and technology," Kim said in his speech.

It is reported that Kim attended an opening ceremony on Jan.1 as a way of fulfilling the promise he made during his New Year address. The Supreme Leader reportedly promised the struggling one-party Stalinist State that he would raise their living standards.

During the opening ceremony, Kim was filmed cutting the ribbon to the gleaming structure. He was applauded by thousands of participants in attendance as balloons floated in the air and "Happy Tomorrow" played in the background. A TV commentator described the building as a model structure built from the nucleus. Other participants described the building as a mock-up model of the North's Unha rocket.

Kim Jong Un was also filmed getting the grand tour around the complex. He also commented that the complex's completion showed how great the Worker's Party of Korea attaches to the development of science and technology.

According to a statement by The Channel News Asia, Pyongyang's KCNA news agency reported that the complex will be utilized "for disseminating [the] latest science and technology in which the party's plan has been materialised."

Generally, Pyongyang comprises of numerous monuments and pompous edifices of dubious purpose spawned by the personality cult of the Kim dynasty. Its construction has siphoned a lot of money as well as resources during the state's poor economy.

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 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
BRISTOL, England, January 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Kudan are the world's first Augmented Reality software provider to launch SLAM tracking on native platforms and Unity 3D.

(Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbaEw5-YvA0 )

Until today, no SLAM AR capability existed for AR developers using the enormously popular Unity 3D development platform. Now, the Unity developer community, who've been instrumental in the growth of the AR market, can quickly integrate this next-generation capability into their apps using the brand new Kudan AR Unity Plugin.

The ability to position digital content anywhere, without the need for a graphic trigger, means that AR apps can be more versatile and contextual. This marks one of the major evolutionary steps in the Augmented Reality market.

Uniquely, Kudan's SLAM initializes immediately, without the need for the pre-registration of the environment to be tracked; Thus solving one of the major barriers to entry of the practical usage of SLAM for Augmented Reality. It functions well in low-feature environments, such as a desk surface, and also in difficult lighting conditions. The ability to visualize 3D objects in real-world scale opens up new possibilities for a wide-range of applications.

The plugin is available to download as of today and provides Unity developers with professional Computer Vision capabilities via a simple GUI, rendering the need for specialist knowledge or complex programming obsolete.

Unity support for SLAM is a major milestone, not only for Kudan, but the wider AR community. Howard Ogden, Chief Evangelist at Kudan says, "With environment tracking it's possible to create AR apps that people can use on a whim, effortlessly, whether they're out on the street, in the park, or even in a plane without a data connection. It will change the way we think about AR. Just as image recognition superseded location based AR, SLAM will provide the next step forward for the industry."

The Unity 3D SLAM package is available to download from https://www.kudan.eu/

Market

In the last twelve months two European startups with mobile SLAM technologies have been acquired. Their software was removed from the marketplace leaving developers with no alternatives.

Swedish company 13th Lab, who developed an SDK called Pointcloud, have been purchased by Facebook Inc. They plan to use their knowledge in the Oculus Rift division.

German AR company Metaio GmbH were purchased by Apple Inc, shortly after announcing a SLAM capability in their SDK. This has helped fuel the speculation that 2016 is the year Apple will make an aggressive push into the AR/VR space.

Unlike Kudan, both Pointcloud and Metaio SDKs required pre-registration of the environment before displaying AR content.

Kudan AR Engine

The Kudan Engine supports a wide range of devices on multiple platforms, including native iOS & Android SDKs and Windows powered devices.

The SDK has a very small footprint, meaning that devices with limited storage space can benefit from the lightweight SDK. It is also highly modular, and portable, written in a platform agnostic code base (C++). This means the Kudan AR Engine is ready to run on any device with a camera, including smart phones, smart glasses, head mounted devices (HMD), robots and robotic devices, Machine Vision and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors.

The AR Engine with SLAM is available to developers worldwide via the Kudan website.

https://www.kudan.eu/

SOURCE Kudan Limited
NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Swiss Re Corporate Solutions has signed an agreement with Independence Holding Company (NYSE: IHC) to acquire IHC Risk Solutions, LLC and its direct employer stop loss (ESL) business, for an aggregate of USD 152,500,000 in cash. The transaction includes IHC Risk Solutions' operations, its team of experts and business portfolio, including in-force, new and renewal business written with IHC subsidiaries, Standard Security Life Insurance Company of New York and Independence American Insurance Company. Upon closing, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions expects the transaction to be accretive to earnings already in 2016.

Through this arrangement, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions broadens its current ESL capabilities in the small- and middle-market self-funded healthcare benefits segment. The transaction enhances the company's underwriting and claims management capabilities, while strengthening its product distribution through IHC Risk Solutions' direct broker and third-party administrator relationships. Under the terms of the agreement, business produced by IHC Risk Solutions will be written through Swiss Re Corporate Solutions' largest US carrier, Westport Insurance Corporation, rated "A+ (Superior)" by A.M. Best and "AA-" by Standard & Poor's.

Bob Petrilli, CEO North America of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, comments: "We are very pleased to join forces with IHC Risk Solutions, a firm with an excellent reputation and disciplined underwriting. Employers will realise tremendous value from our combined capabilities and expertise as they seek to better manage high-cost healthcare benefits and the financial risks associated with catastrophic medical events."

Mike Kemp, President of IHC Risk Solutions, says: "Since its inception, IHC Risk Solutions has focused on growing a world-class employer stop loss operation. Joining Swiss Re Corporate Solutions allows us to advance toward that objective. Our current and future clients will benefit from the financial strength of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, while we grow our existing operations and core partnerships."

IHC Risk Solutions has over 100 employees in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close during the first quarter of 2016.

About Swiss Re Corporate Solutions

Swiss Re Corporate Solutions offers innovative, high-quality insurance capacity to mid-sized and large multinational corporations across the globe. Our offerings range from standard risk transfer covers and multi-line programmes, to highly customised solutions tailored to the needs of our clients. Swiss Re Corporate Solutions serves customers from over 50 offices worldwide and is backed by the financial strength of the Swiss Re Group. For more information about Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, please visit www.swissre.com/corporatesolutions or follow us on Twitter @SwissRe_CS.

About Independence Holding Company

Independence Holding Company (NYSE: IHC) is principally engaged in the life and health insurance business, and the acquisition of blocks of policies through its insurance company and its marketing and administrative affiliates. The company furnishes medical stop-loss, group major and limited medical, short-term medical, group long-term and short-term disability, group life and various supplemental insurance products.

Cautionary Note on Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements and illustrations contained herein are forward-looking. These statements (including as to plans, objectives, targets, and trends) and illustrations provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to a historical fact or current fact.

Forward-looking statements typically are identified by words or phrases such as "anticipate", "assume", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "foresee", "intend", "may increase", "may fluctuate" and similar expressions, or by future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would" and "could". These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause Swiss Re's actual results of operations, financial condition, solvency ratios, liquidity position or prospects to be materially different from any future results of operations, financial condition, solvency ratios, liquidity position or prospects expressed or implied by such statements or cause Swiss Re to not achieve its published targets. Such factors include, among others:

instability affecting the global financial system and developments related thereto;

deterioration in global economic conditions;

Swiss Re's ability to maintain sufficient liquidity and access to capital markets, including sufficient liquidity to cover potential recapture of reinsurance agreements, early calls of debt or debt-like arrangements and collateral calls due to actual or perceived deterioration of Swiss Re's financial strength or otherwise;

the effect of market conditions, including the global equity and credit markets, and the level and volatility of equity prices, interest rates, credit spreads, currency values and other market indices, on Swiss Re's investment assets;

changes in Swiss Re's investment result as a result of changes in its investment policy or the changed composition of its investment assets, and the impact of the timing of any such changes relative to changes in market conditions;

uncertainties in valuing credit default swaps and other credit-related instruments;

possible inability to realise amounts on sales of securities on Swiss Re's balance sheet equivalent to their mark-to-market values recorded for accounting purposes;

the outcome of tax audits, the ability to realise tax loss carryforwards and the ability to realise deferred tax assets (including by reason of the mix of earnings in a jurisdiction or deemed change of control), which could negatively impact future earnings;

the possibility that Swiss Re's hedging arrangements may not be effective;

the lowering or loss of one of the financial strength or other ratings of one or more Swiss Re companies, and developments adversely affecting Swiss Re's ability to achieve improved ratings;

the cyclicality of the reinsurance industry;

uncertainties in estimating reserves;

uncertainties in estimating future claims for purposes of financial reporting, particularly with respect to large natural catastrophes, as significant uncertainties may be involved in estimating losses from such events and preliminary estimates may be subject to change as new information becomes available;

the frequency, severity and development of insured claim events;

acts of terrorism and acts of war;

mortality, morbidity and longevity experience;

policy renewal and lapse rates;

extraordinary events affecting Swiss Re's clients and other counterparties, such as bankruptcies, liquidations and other credit-related events;

current, pending and future legislation and regulation affecting Swiss Re or its ceding companies and the interpretation of legislation or regulations;

legal actions or regulatory investigations or actions, including those in respect of industry requirements or business conduct rules of general applicability;

changes in accounting standards;

significant investments, acquisitions or dispositions, and any delays, unexpected costs or other issues experienced in connection with any such transactions;

changing levels of competition; and

operational factors, including the efficacy of risk management and other internal procedures in managing the foregoing risks.

These factors are not exhaustive. Swiss Re operates in a continually changing environment and new risks emerge continually. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Swiss Re undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

This communication is not intended to be a recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities and does not constitute an offer for the sale of, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, securities in any jurisdiction, including the United States. Any such offer will only be made by means of a prospectus or offering memorandum, and in compliance with applicable securities laws.

Related Links

http://www.swissre.com/corporate_solutions



SOURCE Swiss Re Corporate Solutions
NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT) today announced the Grand Prize winner of the fourth annual "My Empire State Building" contest. The winner, Gary Hershorn, will be awarded a prize of $5,000 for his photo highlighting the beauty of the iconic Empire State Building (ESB), and its central place as the heart of New York City. Additionally, Runner-Up Marissa Durnan, will be awarded a $2,000 prize.

The winning photo by Gary Hershorn Runner-up Marissa Durnan's photo

The winning photo will be featured as ESB's Facebook and Twitter profile pictures from January 5 through January 11, 2016. Mr. Hershorn's photo will also be showcased in a display in the Empire State Building's highly trafficked Fifth Avenue lobby windows along with the photo entries from the Runner-Up, the 24 finalists, and the 4 weekly winners who were chosen during the contests duration.

Amateur photographers of all skill levels were invited to participate in the contest that ran from October 1 through November 2, 2015. As one of the most photographed landmarks in the world, the annual contest has become an opportunity for people to present many different perspectives of both the exterior of the building and the view from its world-famous 86th and 102nd floor Observatories.

"To photograph the Empire State Building is to join a group of millions of people worldwide who have also captured the essence of New York City in a picture. These contestants stood out for their capture of truly unique moments in moving and emotive compositions. We are continuously impressed by Empire State Building fans and their talents highlighted by the images they capture and share," said Anthony E. Malkin, Chairman and CEO of ESRT. "This contest expresses just how much we value our fans and followers."

Throughout 2016, the finalists will be celebrated by having their photos showcased to ESB's global online community via the building's Facebook and Twitter pages. Additionally, the finalists may be featured in future ESB materials.

Entries for the contest were accepted via ESB's Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/EmpireStateBuilding) or via Instagram and Twitter using the hashtag #ESBHeartofNYC.

For the official contest rules, and more information about the judging process, please visit: www.facebook.com/empirestatebuilding.

About the Empire State Building

Soaring 1,454 feet above Midtown Manhattan (from base to antenna), the Empire State Building, owned by Empire State Realty Trust, Inc., is the "World's Most Famous Building." With new investments in energy efficiency, infrastructure, public areas and amenities, the Empire State Building has attracted first-rate tenants in a diverse array of industries from around the world. The skyscraper's robust broadcasting technology supports all major television and FM radio stations in the New York metropolitan market. The Empire State Building was named America's favorite building in a poll conducted by the American Institute of Architects, and the Empire State Building Observatory is one of the world's most beloved attractions as the region's #1 tourist destination. For more information on the Empire State Building, please visit www.empirestatebuilding.com, www.facebook.com/empirestatebuilding, @EmpireStateBldg, www.instagram.com/empirestatebldg, www.youtube.com/esbnyc or www.pinterest.com/empirestatebldg/.

About Empire State Realty Trust

Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT), a leading real estate investment trust (REIT), owns, manages, operates, acquires and repositions office and retail properties in Manhattan and the greater New York metropolitan area, including the Empire State Building, the world's most famous building. Headquartered in New York, New York, the Company's office and retail portfolio covers 10.1 million rentable square feet, as of September 30, 2015, consisting of 9.4 million rentable square feet in 14 office properties, including nine in Manhattan, three in Fairfield County, Connecticut and two in Westchester County, New York; and approximately 724,000 rentable square feet in the retail portfolio.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes "forward looking statements." Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "believes," "expects," "may," "will," "should," "seeks," "approximately," "intends," "plans," "pro forma," "estimates," "contemplates," "aims," "continues," "would" or "anticipates" or the negative of these words and phrases or similar words or phrases. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results and future events to differ materially from those set forth or contemplated in the forward-looking statements: the factors included in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014, including those set forth under the headings "Risk Factors," "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," "Business," and "Properties." While forward-looking statements reflect the Company's good faith beliefs, they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect changes in underlying assumptions or factors, or new information, data or methods, future events or other changes after the date of this press release, except as required by applicable law. For a further discussion of these and other factors that could impact the Company's future results, performance or transactions, see the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014, and other risks described in documents subsequently filed by the Company from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Prospective investors should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which are based only on information currently available to the Company (or to third parties making the forward-looking statements).

Media Contact:

Katherine Davis, Edelman

(212) 738-6098

[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/319097

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160104/319096

SOURCE Empire State Realty Trust, Inc.
ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- From popular film franchises Frozen and King Kong to Orlando's tallest, fastest and longest roller coaster, the theme park capital of the world is a destination where unique experiences mix with activities specifically for kids and families.

While Orlando has long been known as home to seven of the top theme parks in the world, Disney, Universal and SeaWorld constantly evolve each year with one-of-a-kind attractions, resorts and retail, dining and entertainment complexes.



Walt Disney World's "Frozen Ever After" ride opens in the Norway Pavilion at Epcot this year.

With vehicles diving into movie magic and immersive themed environments, Orlando's newest openings set the stage for another year of millions of unforgettable guest experiences that can only be found in Orlando.

New in 2016

Walt Disney World Resort will complete a multi-year transformation of Downtown Disney into Disney Springs . Featuring an eclectic and contemporary mix from Disney and other noteworthy brands, this new expansion will double the number of shops, restaurants and other venues for guests to explore, to more than 150 establishments. The new area will include already announced restaurants: The Edison , similar to its sister location in Los Angeles , is the third new venue announced to open at Disney Springs. With a theme that centers around a 1920s-period electric company with live entertainment, classic American food and craft cocktails, the industrial gothic space will have 35-foot ceilings and a number of themed areas. Frontera Fresca also opens at Disney Springs, the creation of celebrity Chef Rick Bayless , a six-time James Beard Foundation award winner. Known for his authentic Mexican cuisine, Bayless' menu includes specialties such as hand-crafted tortas, tacos, salads, fresh-made guacamole and classic Mexican braised meat entrees, all crafted with his time-honored recipes. Homecoming: Florida Kitchen and Southern Shine is celebrity Chef Art Smith's new restaurant opening in summer at Disney Springs. The James Beard Foundation award winner was born and reared in the town of Jasper, Fla. , and after 25 years of preparing award-winning meals for celebrities and heads of state and appearing on television, he is making Florida his home once again. The rustic-chic restaurant will feature Southern classics and whimsical cocktails, punches and coolers. STK planned to open in early in the year, an upscale steakhouse that blends two concepts into onethe modern steakhouse and a chic lounge. Features include a live DJ, high-energy atmosphere and a sleek environment designed to encourage guests to interact and mingle.

. Featuring an eclectic and contemporary mix from Disney and other noteworthy brands, this new expansion will double the number of shops, restaurants and other venues for guests to explore, to more than 150 establishments. The new area will include already announced restaurants: Universal Orlando Resort announced a new groundbreaking attraction opening in summer at Universal's Islands of Adventure. "Skull Island: Reign of Kong" will honor one of the most monumental figures in movie history, King Kong. Guests will board large vehicles and explore ancient temple structures while encountering hostile natives and fending off unspeakable terrors.

will honor one of the most monumental figures in movie history, King Kong. Guests will board large vehicles and explore ancient temple structures while encountering hostile natives and fending off unspeakable terrors. SeaWorld Orlando announced plans for Mako , a brand new 200-foot-tall coaster opening in summer. Named for one of the ocean's fastest known sharks, it will be Orlando's tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster, reaching speeds of 73 mph as it races along 4,760 feet of steel track. SeaWorld's new hypercoaster will be the centerpiece of the newly themed two-acre plaza. The surrounding realm will be fully shark themed, providing guests with the opportunity to learn about the impact humans have on sharks and why these animals are critical to the environment.

, a brand new 200-foot-tall coaster opening in summer. Named for one of the ocean's fastest known sharks, it will be tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster, reaching speeds of 73 mph as it races along 4,760 feet of steel track. SeaWorld's new hypercoaster will be the centerpiece of the newly themed two-acre plaza. The surrounding realm will be fully shark themed, providing guests with the opportunity to learn about the impact humans have on sharks and why these animals are critical to the environment. Universal Orlando Resort and Loews Hotels & Resorts have announced plans to build the Loews Sapphire Falls Resort . It will be the fifth onsite hotel at Universal Orlando Resort, featuring 1,000 rooms and suites with a casual Caribbean theme, built around a lagoon and towering waterfall. The resort is expected to open in the summer.

. It will be the fifth onsite hotel at Universal Orlando Resort, featuring 1,000 rooms and suites with a casual theme, built around a lagoon and towering waterfall. The resort is expected to open in the summer. Epcot guests will be able to visit the kingdom of Arendelle when the highly anticipated attraction "Frozen Ever After" opens in the Norway Pavilion. The family adventure welcoming guests to the magical world of "Frozen" will feature the popular story of the royal sisters, hit songs and new technology for an icy trek that is sure to warm hearts. Once onboard their boat, guests will visit Arendelle for the Winter in Summer Celebration.

opens in the Norway Pavilion. The family adventure welcoming guests to the magical world of "Frozen" will feature the popular story of the royal sisters, hit songs and new technology for an icy trek that is sure to warm hearts. Once onboard their boat, guests will visit Arendelle for the Winter in Summer Celebration. On Soarin' Around the World guests on board the popular Soarin' attraction will journey to far-flung lands and fly above some of the world's most unique natural landscapes and man-made wonders when the new Soarin' Around the World makes its debut at Epcot.

guests on board the popular Soarin' attraction will journey to far-flung lands and fly above some of the world's most unique natural landscapes and man-made wonders when the new Soarin' Around the World makes its debut at Epcot. Sunset Kilimanjaro Safaris , the popular Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park will be extended for a new nighttime adventure. Guests will travel through the African savanna amid the magically extended orange glow of the setting sun and discover two species new to the attraction: African wild dogs and hyenas.

, the popular Kilimanjaro Safaris attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park will be extended for a new nighttime adventure. Guests will travel through the African savanna amid the magically extended orange glow of the setting sun and discover two species new to the attraction: African wild dogs and hyenas. "Rivers of Light" is an innovative experience unlike anything ever seen in a Disney park, combining live performances, floating lanterns, water screens and swirling animal imagery. "Rivers of Light" will magically come to life on the natural stage of Discovery River, delighting guests and truly capping off a full day of adventures at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.

is an innovative experience unlike anything ever seen in a Disney park, combining live performances, floating lanterns, water screens and swirling animal imagery. "Rivers of Light" will magically come to life on the natural stage of Discovery River, delighting guests and truly capping off a full day of adventures at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park. "The LEGO Movie 4D A New Adventure" is premiering at LEGOLAND Florida Resort on Jan. 29 . The new 4D animated film will feature the popular characters from The LEGO Movie and use elements such as wind, water, smoke and special lighting effects. The larger-than-life experience will bring the film's main characters, Emmet and Wyldstyle, back together with their friends for another awesome adventure.

is premiering at LEGOLAND Florida Resort on . The new 4D animated film will feature the popular characters from The LEGO Movie and use elements such as wind, water, smoke and special lighting effects. The larger-than-life experience will bring the film's main characters, Emmet and Wyldstyle, back together with their friends for another awesome adventure. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex announced the addition of a new attraction, Heroes and Legends . Heroes and Legends will feature the U.S Astronaut Hall of Fame and showcase the heroism of America's early space pioneers by inviting guests to vicariously experience the thrills and dangers of America's earliest missions through high-tech elements and special effects, including simulated holograms and augmented reality.

. Heroes and Legends will feature the U.S Astronaut Hall of Fame and showcase the heroism of America's early space pioneers by inviting guests to vicariously experience the thrills and dangers of America's earliest missions through high-tech elements and special effects, including simulated holograms and augmented reality. DoveCote in downtown Orlando is the next project for James Beard nominated chefs, James and Julie Petrakis , who also own Winter Park's Ravenous Pig, Cask & Larder and Swine & Sons, set to open in spring. A twist on the Classic French brasserie, Chef Clayton Miller , a past winner of a "Best New Chef" award from Food & Wine magazine, who also worked under Thomas Keller at French Laundry, will oversee the kitchen.

in downtown is the next project for nominated chefs, , who also own Ravenous Pig, Cask & Larder and Swine & Sons, set to open in spring. A twist on the Classic French brasserie, Chef , a past winner of a "Best New Chef" award from Food & Wine magazine, who also worked under at French Laundry, will oversee the kitchen. Cask & Larder at Orlando International Airport. Another expansion for the Petrakises, the airport outpost for the popular Winter Park restaurant that was named one of Esquire magazine's Best New Restaurants in America in 2014, will open in the summer. The first restaurant at the airport to specialize in seasonally driven cuisine and locally sourced ingredients.

media.visitorlando.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160105/319290

SOURCE Visit Orlando

Related Links

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NEW YORK, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Emerging infectious disease threats, progress on sequencing in clinical medicine, near patient DNA testing are among the trends that manufacturers and investors should be on the lookout for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) testing in 2016. The market research publisher specializes in vitro diagnostic testing markets. Recently the healthcare research marketer released the sixth edition of its report in Molecular Diagnostics, which covers many of these trends in detail.

Expect More Acquisitions by Heavyweights: IVD testing is complex now and companies will need to acquire the technology parts they lack to continue to compete. Last year there were scores of acquisitions, partnership deals and distribution agreements in IVD. In March, Roche announced a global distribution agreement for kits and enzymes for cellular analysis, proteomics and conventional PCR applications with Sigma-Aldrich. In April 2015, Roche became the majority shareholder in Foundation Medicine. Foundation Medicine is a molecular information company dedicated to understanding the genomic changes that contribute to each patient's unique cancer. March 2015, Qiagen announced an expansion of its portfolio of liquid biopsies through the acquisition of AdnaGen's (Hamburg, Germany) technology from Alere Inc. AdnaGen markets the CE Marked line of AdnaTests that enable enrichment and molecular analysis of CTCs from blood samples including AdnaTest BreastCancer and AdnaTest Prostate Cancer, which are already marketed in Europe and offer improved treatment monitoring and earlier detection of tumor relapse.

Pragmatic Personalized Medicine: Kalorama Information's global report on molecular diagnostics lists over 50 PGx (companion) test products on the market or in development. In the area of infectious diseases, personalized medicine (PGx) tests detect therapy resistance factors in HIV, hepatitis, hospital acquired infections and tuberculosis. Tests for hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, cardiac diseases and others are helping hone into new therapeutic approaches. Molecular assays in coagulation help treat difficult to manage patients and dose drugs such as Coumadin and Plavix. The contribution that personalized medicine has made in oncology is almost beyond measure. The anticipated death sentence associated with cancer has been all but eliminated in some cancers such as breast, colon and prostate. Technologies such as next-generation sequencing-based gene panels are making the heralded concepts of targeted medicine a reality. 2016 should see more solutions, and we expect, companies will limit expectation about immediate delivery of exact personalized care and focus on obtainable results. As more gene variants are linked to various forms of cancer and more drugs are targeted to those specific forms of disease, lab professionals claim that the regulatory path for commercial tests does not respond to physicians' need because it takes too long to adjust test panels. In house developed lab panels can be updated as soon as validated gene targets are discovered.

Some government efforts from 2015 should bear fruit. In January 2015, President Barack Obama outlined the Precision Medicine Initiative that is seeking $215 million from the U.S. Congress to build a research cohort of 1 million participants, and advance data sharing, regulatory, and privacy standards to advance more molecularly informed personalized treatments. On the private payer scene, March 2015, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Michigan and the University of Michigan Health System announced they are collaborating with physicians and laboratories across the state to improve molecular testing practices.

The Service Industry Is Here to Stay: The test service model has become a major route for highly sophisticated and specialized molecular tests. At one time, the most successful molecular test services offered cancer diagnostics using in situ hybridization (ISH), sequencing and PCR analysis of biopsied tissue. More recently test services have emerged for prenatal chromosome mutation analysis, autism, psychosocial drug metabolism, gastro intestinal autoimmune diseases and cardiac risk genetics, among others. The service model for molecular tests has been adopted by private reference labs, large hospitals and company-owned test services. The company-owned test service business model is primarily a phenomenon of the U.S. There is a long history for the commercialization of highly specific assays as test services. Many groundbreaking tests in the areas of viral load testing, anatomical pathology special analyses and molecular assays were first launched by reference labs in the U.S. This sensitized the medical community to the value of these test services. The first generation of these tests targeted small markets where the financial investment for FDA market clearance  especially the PMA route that would have been required for these unique and first to market tests  would have been difficult to recuperate with a commercial test kit.

Emerging Disease Threats - A number of emerging diseases are making their global presence a public health problem. Once thought to be limited geographically to the tropics or developing countries, they continue to show up all over the world and are among the most complex and dangerous infectious diseases to prevent and control. The Ebola threat has awakened the American public to pandemic disease threats and created an opportunity for elevated approvals on related test devices. But Ebola is by no means the only emerging disease threat, nor is it the most likely to find cases in the United States. The rise of global transportation, trade and climate change allows insects to easily carry disease organisms across borders, infecting animals as well as humans because of increased global travel there is the fear that disease usually found only in the developing world can be transported, unwittingly, to countries of the developed world as well. Furthermore, developed nations are no longer safe from diseases such as malaria. Chagas and Dengue Fever, once thought to be a developing world problem alone. Today, infectious diseases can travel in a matter of hours to any part of the globe. A number of natural and human actions influence the introduction and spread of these diseases.

Near Patient Molecular: To test for infectious diseases where time is of great concern, Kalorama believes 2016 will see more developments in POC molecular diagnostics. In 2015, Alere announced It's Alere i Influenza A & B, that provides molecular flu results in less than 15 minutes . Cepheid announced its 9 inches tall GeneXpert Omni, the world's most portable molecular diagnostics system enabling unprecedented access to accurate and fast diagnosis for patients suspected of TB, HIV and Ebola. Such products also push infectious disease testing into the point-of-care (POC) and near-patient testing arena, allowing providers to initiate care during the same visit or day. These announcements build on previous developments in near-patient molecular last year.

Kalorama published three reports recently that covered these topics in detail. The World Market for Molecular Diagnostics, 6th Edition, The World Market for Cancer Diagnostics, 6th Edition, and The World Market for Infectious Disease Diagnostic Tests. For information on these reports visit: http://www.kaloramainformation.com/.

About Kalorama Information

Kalorama Information, a division of MarketResearch.com, supplies the latest in independent medical market research in diagnostics, biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and healthcare; as well as a full range of custom research services. Reports can be purchased through Kalorama's website and are also available on www.marketresearch.com and www.profound.com.

We routinely assist the media with healthcare topics. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and our blog at www.kaloramainformation.com.

Contact:

Bruce Carlson

(212) 807-2622

[email protected]

www.KaloramaInformation.com

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SOURCE Kalorama Information

Related Links

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RICHARDSON, Texas, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Anritsu Company and PCTEST Engineering Laboratory, Inc. announce that PCTEST has acquired LTE data throughput test capability for the Anritsu ME7834L Mobile Device Test Platform (MDTP). RFT 113 data throughput tests installed on the ME7834L include both static and dynamic fading configurations across multiple LTE bands, with more than 60% of the test cases verified by PTCRB. Initial static tests were approved for release in September 2015, as the dynamic fading tests in RFT 113 are forecast to accelerate in early 2016 with their expected addition to the PTCRB certification requirements.

"As a PTCRB Accredited Test Lab, PCTEST has elevated its device performance testing capabilities by partnering with Anritsu and utilizing the ME7834L to conduct LTE Data Throughput test cases defined in the PTCRB RFT113," said Randy Ortanez, President and Owner of PCTEST Engineering Laboratory. "Data throughput is a critical feature for users in today's wireless networks, and we are pleased to offer manufacturers the opportunity to conduct device testing to verify the data throughput performance of new devices prior to their market introduction."

"Anritsu is pleased to partner with PCTEST to support the industry's LTE data throughput testing needs," said Paul Innis, Vice President and General Manager of Anritsu Company. "PCTEST recognizes that Anritsu has been a leader in the rollout of the newest LTE categories with ever-increasing data rates. Anritsu will continue to introduce a wide range of wireless test solutions as part of our commitment to meet the needs of the wireless device ecosystem."

The ME7834L MDTP is a scalable GCF, PTCRB, and carrier-validated test system that enables certification of LTE devices to industry and carrier standards. The ME7834L provides test coverage for 3GPP 36.523 and 37.901, as well as a wide portfolio of CAT test plans, including leading eMBMS coverage for a large North American operator. The ME7834L, as well as sister test platform ME7834LA, provide industry-leading LTE-Advanced coverage, including 2CA and 3CA test cases for both inter- and intra-band CA with MIMO.

About PCTEST Engineering Laboratory

PCTEST Lab is a leading independent test laboratory offering one-stop conformance, performance, and regulatory testing of wireless devices in accordance with industry and 3GPP/3GPP2 technical requirements, including RF, Protocol, RRM, Carrier Aggregation (CA) and carrier-specific test plans. PCTEST Lab is an approved CA & VoLTE Lab, LTE/CDMA Safe-For-Network (SFN) Lab, an Open Development Lab, an OTA Antenna Performance Lab, as well as an A-GPS test facility for major U.S. carriers including GCF and PTCRB certifications. For more information regarding PCTEST Lab's test services, visit www.pctestlab.com.

About Anritsu

Anritsu Company is the United States subsidiary of Anritsu Corporation, a global provider of innovative communications test and measurement solutions for 120 years. Anritsu's "2020 VISION" philosophy engages customers as true partners to help develop wireless, optical, microwave/RF, and digital solutions for R&D, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance applications, as well as multidimensional service assurance solutions for network monitoring and optimization. Anritsu also provides precision microwave/RF components, optical devices, and high-speed electrical devices for communication products and systems. The company develops advanced solutions for 5G, M2M, IoT, as well as other emerging and legacy wireline and wireless communication markets. With offices throughout the world, Anritsu has approximately 4,000 employees in over 90 countries.

To learn more visit www.anritsu.com and follow Anritsu on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

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SOURCE Anritsu Company

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CLEARWATER, Fla., Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "The average time between an attacker breaching a network and its owner noticing the intrusion is 205 days," according to a recent article from CFO.com. The study, "Cybersecurity: The Cost of Immaturity," goes on to say, "the penalties for getting cybersecurity wrong are steep. Nortel, a Canadian telecoms giant, went bust in part because hackers stole so much of its intellectual property. Target, an American retailer, lost the credit-card details of 40 million customers."

However, many end-users of most companies, government agencies and non-profits don't have this realization, which can make them a major liability in the form of "weak links" to even the strongest of security "fences."

"When your users aren't trained on the risks of network security, things can go wrong, fast," says Ed Clark, Chief Operating Officer of LinkTek Corporation. "CIO's and IT departments need to know where everything is on their network, so they can easily see if something's wrong. Untrained end-users can easily muck that up by moving files and folders, as well as putting data in insecure places."

The first solution is perhaps the most obvious  keeping end-users trained up on the best practices for their organization's security. Mistakes do happen, however, where employees can unknowingly tamper with their folder structure, causing disorganization within their file system and, in some cases, security holes. The solution for this issue is LinkFixer Advanced. It can give a detailed report of files and their links, so that IT staff can keep on top of their networks and know where everything is.

LinkFixer Advanced automatically finds and fixes broken links in an organization's most critical file types, so that data migrations and file system reorganizations can be completed quickly, accurately and without causing lost data or lost productivity. LinkFixer Advanced supports Microsoft Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint, as well as Visio, Acrobat, InDesign, MicroStation and AutoCAD, to name a few. LinkFixer Advanced eliminates problems before they happen, and aids overworked IT professionals in moving forward on their projects.

About LinkTek

Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, LinkTek Corporation (http://www.linktek.com/our-story/) provides the world's solution for the management and automatic repair of file links found in today's most common file formats. LinkTek's purpose is to improve the lives of computer users, IT professionals, Records & Information Managers and CIOs by providing software that automatically repairs file links and also protects them from the effects of data migrations and user errors.

For more information about LinkFixer Advanced, please visit LinkTek's Web site at http://www.linktek.com/, call 727-442-1822 extension 1546, or e-mail [email protected].

1. "The Cost of Immaturity". http://www.economist.com/news/business/21677639-business-protecting-against-computer-hacking-booming-cost-immaturity

2. "Improve Security Awareness". http://www.cybertrend.com/article/18833/improve-security-awareness.

Media Inquiries:

Heather Johnstone

727-442-1822

SOURCE LinkTek Corporation

Related Links

http://www.linktek.com


SAN DIEGO, Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Franchise Maker, a franchise development company that takes business owners through a step-by-step process to franchise their businesses, was recently honored with the Better Business Bureau's (BBB) Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics. The award recognizes businesses for their integrity, transparency and exemplary ethical business practices in the marketplace. The Franchise Maker is the only business in their industry to have ever had the honor of receiving the Torch Award.

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The Torch Awards is an annual BBB awards program that recognizes businesses and nonprofit organizations that demonstrate exemplary ethical business practices in their relationships with employees, vendors, customers and the community. The award recognizes the importance of ethical business practices and the willingness and efforts made by outstanding businesses to ensure that the marketplace remains fair and honorable.

Over its ten year history, The Franchise Maker has franchised more than 100 businesses providing opportunities for economic expansion for business owners, creating countless jobs in support of local economies, and contributing to the social good for many communities. The company has helped many businesses from diverse industries including education, child care, mental health, fitness, retail, pet, home services, professional services and much more.

The Franchise Maker was developed to harness the founder and CEO David Waldman's passion for helping business owners achieve the next level of growth through franchising while making an often daunting process easy and affordable. Before starting The Franchise Maker, Waldman worked with some very large and successful franchising companies in the United States. He has a true passion for the work and has seen first-hand the power of franchising if it is done correctly.

"I'm honored and thankful that The Franchise Maker received the BBB Torch Award, which highlights our integrity and ethical business practices - the cornerstone of our business model," says Waldman. "I have witnessed time and again how people from different backgrounds, ethnicities and levels of education have bought into one of these franchise systems and experienced tremendous success."

The Franchise Maker is unique to their industry because the company only focuses on franchise development and does not sell or market any franchises or deviates into services unrelated to franchise development. The Franchise Maker also does not lock clients into any long term contracts. One of the challenges in the industry, according to Waldman, is that there is no regulation for the people or companies that offer franchise development services. This creates challenges for business owners who wish to franchise and creates confusion in the marketplace between true franchise developers and those who are simply franchise sales brokers.

"Because of the extremely high standards we hold ourselves to and the quality of work we produce, we have earned a well-respected reputation in our industry," adds Waldman. "We have never deviated from our values in the ten years we have been in operation. Our steadfast commitment to honesty, transparency, and accountability contribute to our success and that of our clients."

The Franchise Maker works with clients in all industries across the U.S making the franchising process quick, easy and affordable. To learn more about the company, their services and recent BBB Torch Award, visit TheFranchiseMaker.com.

ABOUT THE FRANCHISE MAKER

The Franchise Maker takes business owners through an affordable step-by-step process to franchise their business, which enables them to sell franchises throughout the United States. To learn more about the company, their services and recent BBB Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics, visit TheFranchiseMaker.com.

SOURCE The Franchise Maker

Related Links

http://www.thefranchisemaker.com


BENTON HARBOR, Mich., Jan. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Completely and intuitively re-imagined on the inside, the pantry-inspired layout in the Whirlpool Smart French Door Refrigerator is designed to use space more efficiently with a unique shelving system for families to fit and find all their edible favorites, making it the easiest refrigerator to organize.

With pantry shelves that store 30 percent more, the refrigerator won top honors with two 2016 CES Innovation Awards in the Smart Home and Home Appliances categories.

"The market has traditionally provided stagnant, similarly spaced interiors, and has not been responding with new designs that account for which items people reach for most often," said Shannon Blakely, brand manager, Whirlpool brand. "Based on global food trends and family observations about how they store food, a team of Whirlpool consumer researchers, designers and product engineers helped design an interior space that moves the least-used, small items out of the way to create easier access to larger items, improves visibility of all items and reduces the need for re-shuffling."

Industry's Easiest to Organize Refrigerator Based On A Radically New Interior Configuration

Whirlpool designers considered everything from the grocery store produce aisle to the modern kitchen pantry in developing this refrigerator that does more than keep food cold.

Every section, every shelf, every bin in the French Door Refrigerator was re-designed to deliver smart organization with greater access and better visibility to change the way families think about storing food. Key innovations include:

Infinity slide shelves line the perimeter of the fridge, so families can move small items to the edges and make room for big, high-use items front and center. The shelves are precisely spaced apart based on common sizes of food packaging so that yogurts, spaghetti jars, 12-pack soda boxes and egg cartons fit perfectly. And, they glide just as far as needed to accommodate taller items like corked wine bottles and pitchers.

line the perimeter of the fridge, so families can move small items to the edges and make room for big, high-use items front and center. The shelves are precisely spaced apart based on common sizes of food packaging so that yogurts, spaghetti jars, 12-pack soda boxes and egg cartons fit perfectly. And, they glide just as far as needed to accommodate taller items like corked wine bottles and pitchers. Industry-first "flippers" allow families to adjust the shelves up or down without having to clear the shelves completely.

allow families to adjust the shelves up or down without having to clear the shelves completely. With an understanding of what families buy most, the PerfectPlaces system has just the right spot reserved for every item, so the refrigerator and freezer spaces no longer become a dumping ground with overflowing bins. Gallon door bins give families the most gallon door bin storage in the industry. [ii] From chocolate to cheese to kid's snacks, a small items bin and treasure bin help keep the little items in clear sight. Asymmetrical crispers are designed with dividers to display fresh produce like bell peppers up front, and store bags of apples in the back. The biggest crispers in the market  were thoughtfully designed to hold common foods and packaging like unwieldy long and wide celery stalks and large plastic lettuce containers.

has just the right spot reserved for every item, so the refrigerator and freezer spaces no longer become a dumping ground with overflowing bins. A full-width "platter pocket" shelf, which slides out entirely to get to favorite foods easier. It's spaced from the other shelves at a height specifically for wide, flat items so families have a special spot for brownie pans, lasagna dishes and pizza boxes.

which slides out entirely to get to favorite foods easier. It's spaced from the other shelves at a height specifically for wide, flat items so families have a special spot for brownie pans, lasagna dishes and pizza boxes. Bright LED undershelf lights in the EasyView system boast 40 percent more brightness under the shelf to help illuminate even those far-back corners where half-filled condiment jars have been known to hide for years.

in the boast 40 percent more brightness under the shelf to help illuminate even those far-back corners where half-filled condiment jars have been known to hide for years. The StoreRight system's dual cooling allows for fresh and frozen foods to be maintained at the perfect temperatures using sensor technology. Dual cooling also measures humidity levels and adjusts the temperature automatically, without the need to manually adjust.

dual cooling allows for fresh and frozen foods to be maintained at the perfect temperatures using sensor technology. Dual cooling also measures humidity levels and adjusts the temperature automatically, without the need to manually adjust. Always be ready for unexpected guests with the ReadySet system with dual icemakers that make more than twice the ice.[iii]

Making Care More Intuitive with Smart Home Technology

The Smart French Door Refrigerator also helps make care more intuitive, with home automation features that offer families peace of mind.

"Whirlpool brand designs products with innovations that fulfill a human need and deliver a real purpose to our consumer, all inspired by the way families care for each other," said Ben Artis, senior manager for connectivity strategy, Whirlpool Corporation. "That is no different from how we approach smart technology. A smart home should work in concert with what families are already doing and adapt to those human behaviors  that's why we designed this new smart refrigerator to include special modes like automatically making more ice for a large dinner party."

The following features help cater to distinct needs[iv]:

Uses smart notifications to alert families of a power or WiFi outage, and even reminds them to change the air and water filters.

to alert families of a power or WiFi outage, and even reminds them to change the air and water filters. Showcases customized settings, including Party Mode. By activating Party Mode in the Whirlpool mobile app, the refrigerator automatically makes ice faster, so hosts have a full bin faster, and also lowers temperatures inside, anticipating loss of coolness when the fridge doors open and close more often as families entertain at home.

By activating Party Mode in the Whirlpool mobile app, the refrigerator automatically makes ice faster, so hosts have a full bin faster, and also lowers temperatures inside, anticipating loss of coolness when the fridge doors open and close more often as families entertain at home. Consumers who are signed up for Nest Rush Hour Rewards can delay the defrost cycle to off-peak times through the Whirlpool mobile app.

Features advanced customer care. Through the Whirlpool mobile app, the refrigerator displays fault codes and schedules service appointments. The app even allows customers to check on the status of a request and easily call to speak to an actual customer care representative live  the brand's Care Agent promise.

From January 6-9, CES attendees can experience this smart refrigerator and other innovations at Whirlpool brand's booth #74352 in the Family & Technology Marketplace, located at the Sands Expo Center.

For more information, to join the conversation and see the company's care-centric product innovations and conceptual inspirations come to life, visit ces.whirlpool.com and follow #EveryDayCare.

About Whirlpool Brand

For more than one hundred years, Whirlpool brand has been inspired by how people care for their families. Whirlpool brand is designing home appliances that are focused on improving how families give and get the care they need with the latest technologies and innovations  whether that means most flexible refrigerator storage for all types of family needs, induction technology for efficient cooking and easier cleaning, or laundry pairs that sense and adapt to clothes with the latest in connected technologies. Whirlpool brand is part of Whirlpool Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. Whirlpool Corporation is also one of Habitat for Humanity's largest corporate partners for over 15 dedicated years, donating a refrigerator and range to every new Habitat for Humanity home built in North America. For more information on Whirlpool, please visit whirlpool.com /everydaycare or find us on Facebook at facebook.com/whirlpoolusa or Twitter at @WhirlpoolUSA. Additional information about the company can be found at whirlpoolcorp.com.

[i] Among leading french door bottom mount refrigerator brands

[ii] Among leading french door bottom mount refrigerator brands

[iii] Compared to all Whirlpool french door refrigerators including WRX988SIB, WRF997SDD, WRF757SDE, and WRF736SDA with In-Door-Ice system only

[iv] Requires Wifi and account creation. App features and functionality subject to change. Subject to Terms of Service available at: www.whirlpool.com/connect. Data rates may apply.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150729/249144LOGO

SOURCE Whirlpool Brand

Related Links

http://www.whirlpool.com


SHIJIAZHUANG, Jan. 4 -- A one-month environmental protection inspection of north China's Hebei Province began on Monday, at the behest of central authorities.

The inspection will continue till Feb. 4, examining implementation of Party and state environment policy by the provincial Communist Party of China (CPC) committee and local government, including their handling of environmental problems and what they are doing to improve the situation.

The inspection team has set up a hotline and a mail box for public consultation.

Inspectors nationwide are focused on how provincial-level Party committees and governments carry out their environmental duties, according to the Ministry of Environment. Teams report major problems to the central authority and inspection results are passed to the organization department of the CPC Central Committee as part of official appraisals.

Central authorities plan to inspect each of the provincial regions in China every two years, "China Environment News" reported last month.
On his first inspection trip of the year, Premier Li Keqiang visits a shantytown in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, on Monday. An emotional Li told some of his accompanying ministers: "Haven't you seen that these people are still living in such conditions?" [Photo/Chinanews service]

Li Fanyu, 78, a resident of Xinghualing district in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, never expected that she would meet China's premier in her humble home.

Nonetheless, Li's one-story house, a rundown home built in the 1950s, was where Premier Li Keqiang spent part of his first work day of the new year on Monday morning.

The shanty neighborhood, named Xiaobeiguan, houses 830 households like Li Fanyu's.

Residents of the community share one toilet. Tap water is available, but there is only one faucet for everyone to use.

Walking out of Li Fanyu's house, the premier was told that the woman's situation was not rare in Taiyuan, which is about 500 kilometers from Beijing. There are at least 80 more such shantytowns in Taiyuan.

At this, the premier stopped and stood still. Becoming emotional, he said to some of the accompanying ministers: "Haven't you seen that these people are still living in such conditions? There are way too many things left to be done in China!"

He told the residents of Xiaobeiguan neighborhood that he knew well their hardship.

"We'll let you live in new buildings as soon as possible," the premier told the residents as they waved goodbye.

Renovating shantytowns has been a government priority.

In October, Li told a national work conference, "Renovation of shantytowns raises many low-income families' hopes for improving their living conditions and is also a focal point in pushing forward people-oriented urbanization."

During his inspection tour in Shanxi, Li also visited Taiyuan Iron& Steel (Group) Co, which is struggling with sluggish global iron prices.

He told hundreds of workers that difficulties faced by iron and steel companies will surely be conquered, as long as workers use wisdom and courage.

Taiyuan Iron &Steel, founded in 1934, is the world's largest stainless steel producer. In recent years, the company has worked on developing other products related to the iron and steel industry, hoping to diversify.

Li praised the idea. "Developing with some diversity will help the company stand stronger in facing unexpected challenges," he said.
More houses available to buy in Australia is making the market more affordable, but properties in Sydney and Melbourne are still too pricey for many, it is suggested.

A record home building boom means that prices are falling in many locations, with the latest affordability index from the Housing Industry Association (HIA) reaching 75.4 in the fourth quarter of 2018, up 1.5% quarter on quarter and up 3.3% year on year.

Geordan Murray, HIA senior economist, pointed out that 2018 was the fifth consecutive year where the industry commenced construction of over 200,000 homes and it was a record year in terms of new dwelling completions.

This strong flow of new housing supply is one of the key factors behind the moderation in price pressures in housing markets across the country, which has ultimately improved housing affordability, he said.

The other key factor has been the modest improvement in wages growth. Strong growth in employment over the last two years has boosted demand for workers. We are seeing the early signs that this tightening in the labour market is translating into rising wages, he explained.

He also pointed out that a combination of declining home prices, growth in wages and historically low interest rates creates a situation where the HIA Affordability Index shows that affordability in six of the eight capital cities is more favourable than the 20 year average. Melbourne and Hobart are the only exceptions.

Despite the improvement in affordability over recent quarters, housing in Sydney and Melbourne remains far from affordable for average households. We will need to see wage growth continue to exceed home prices in order to restore more appropriate levels of affordability, Murray added.

A breakdown of the figures shows that five of the eight capital cities saw improved affordability over the year to December 2018. Sydney continues to be home to the greatest improvements, its index is up by 11.3%.

This was followed by Melbourne up 5.9%, Perth up 5.7%, Darwin up 3.2% and Brisbane up 0.8%. Affordability deteriorated in Hobart with a fall of 9.3%, while in Canberra it was down by 3.6% and down by 3.3% in Adelaide.
New home building in Scotland has increased by 15% in the last 12 months, a rise of 3,000 new properties compared with the previous year, official figures show.

However, Housing Minister Kevin Stewart has warned that a No Deal Brexit could have a damaging effect on future growth.

It is the sixth consecutive annual increase in the total housing supply, the highest annual figure since 2008/2009, and for the first time since 1980, local authority housing stock has also increased.

We want to ensure everyone has a warm affordable home and these figures show we are on target to reach delivering 50,000 affordable homes by 2021. However, I am deeply concerned that all our good work towards increasing Scotlands housing supply could be significantly undermined by a No Deal Brexit, said Stewart.

Private house builders are particularly vulnerable to the implications of Brexit. Construction material imports to the United Kingdom from European Union member states accounted for more than 60% of the total value of construction material imports to the United Kingdom in 2018, he pointed out.

In addition, more than 7,000 EU nationals were employed in the Scottish construction sector in 2017. A No Deal Brexit poses significant risks to builders supply chains and the construction workforce in Scotland. Housing is yet another example of the deep damage that could be done to Scotland by a No Deal Brexit, he added.
For the last 5 years, Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery has proudly hosted CAPS For the Cure, a fundraising event in support of Susan G. Komen. This years event, held on October 8th at J. Liu in Worthington, was attended by 250 supporters and raised over $10,000; the largest amount raised by CAPS to date. All proceeds from the event go to supporting Susan G. Komen, particularly the Columbus chapter.

Due to their high involvement with breast cancer survivors and their expertise in breast reconstructive surgery, Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery found that fundraising for the Susan G. Komen organization to be a perfect match. This year in particular, the event took on even more meaning as one of CAPS own staff members shared her cancer survivor story in front of all attendees.

Amber Preston, an aesthetician at Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgerys MedSpa, shares why she felt moved to speak at the event this year:

CAPS for the Cure is such a special event to me not only as an employee of CAPS, but as a reconstruction patient as well. When faced with the diagnosis of Breast Cancer and the reality of a surgery that takes away a part of your womanhood, it can be devastating and overwhelming. The Doctors and staff at CAPS are the absolute best. I am forever grateful for Dr. Wakelin and his team. Not only does CAPS for the Cure raise awareness for Breast Cancer, but it also gives us survivors a chance to celebrate the battle we have overcome and share that moment with the Doctors and staff that have been by our side during the process.

Breast cancer survivors, family members, friends and the entire CAPS staff were present for the event. After celebrating the special evening that included a silent auction, music, drinks and food, Dr. John Wakelin discussed why Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery hosts this event:

We have always been passionate about the care that we provide for our patients that are affected by breast cancer, and breast reconstruction has been a major focus of our practice since our doors opened. CAPS for the Cure gives us an opportunity to celebrate the victories of our patients with the community while raising funds to provide resources for the Komen Foundation whose wonderful work speaks for itself. We are truly honored that this year's event was such a tremendous success.

Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery plans to continue to host their annual event as a way to spread awareness and raise money for the cause.

About Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery

Columbus Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery consists of four Ohio based board-certified plastic surgeons: Dr. Timothy Treece, Dr. Susan Vasko, Dr. Robert Heck and Dr. John Wakelin, as well as the newest surgeon, Dr. Tyler Angelos. They specialize in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery of the face, body and breast. Commonly performed procedures in their Columbus plastic surgery practice includes breast augmentation, tummy tucks, face lifts, liposuction, Botox, and much more. They also offer full service Columbus Medical Spa locations, and a certified laser skin treatment physician, Dr. Christine Edwards.

To find out more about cosmetic or reconstructive surgery, laser hair removal, medical spa services or laser skin treatments offered at Columbus Aesthetic & Plastic Surgery, go online to request a consultation today or call 614.246.6900. The physicians and staff look forward to meeting you, hearing your goals and discussing the exciting possibilities.
Wine Market Council is a non-profit association of grape growers, wine producers, importers, wholesalers, retailers, and other affiliated wine businesses and organizations. We are honored to champion wine-related research from graduate students studying wine-related topics, said John Gillespie, President of Wine Market Council.

Wine Market Council today announced that the non-profit has opened the application process for their 2016 research grant. Graduate-level students are invited to apply for a $10,000 grant to support a wine business or wine marketing related research project in the coming year. Wine Market Council is looking for exceptional students who have the capability of conducting research on topics of interest to the Wine Market Councils membership and the wine industry as a whole.

Wine Market Council awarded their first-ever research grant in 2015 to Texas Tech University doctoral student, Nicholas Johnston. Johnston has spent the past year researching how Millennials respond to traditional and less traditional wine packaging and will present his findings at Wine Market Councils 2016 Consumer research conferences taking place Monday, January 25 in New York and on Thursday, March 10 in Yountville, California.

We are honored to champion wine-related research from graduate students studying wine-related topics, said John Gillespie, President of Wine Market Council. We are also looking forward to Nicholas Johnsons presentation which will provided valuable insight on Millennials and their interaction with wine packaging.

The council is looking for exceptional students who have the capability of conducting research on topics of interest to the Wine Market Councils membership and the wine industry as a whole. The project proposal deadline is April 15, 2016, and the research must be completed and the final report submitted by November 23, 2016.

Examples of such research projects include:



Beverage alcohol purchasing and consumption preferences among recent college graduates, including occasion-driven choices of wine, spirits/cocktails, beer (including craft beer), or other beverage alcohol choices.

Factors influencing purchase and usage of all forms of beverage alcohol, including family/friends recommendations; wine reviews, scores and ratings; recommendations of staff in stores and restaurants or bars; information accessed on social media; and other sources.

Wine on-tap: Who/what/where does it work best, what is the growth potential, problem areas, and how could this area continue to change?

How consumers make choices between wine, beer, and spirits by occasion and venue.

Other topics of relevance to Millennial-aged beverage alcohol consumers will be welcomed and considered.

All proposals will be reviewed and three finalists selected. The finalists will be invited to present their research project proposal to the Wine Market Council grant committee via WebEx or Skype.

Any student enrolled in a graduate-level program at an accredited university doing research on a wine business or wine marketing related topic is encouraged to submit a proposal. Proposals should include:



Student background

A detailed description of the research project

Methodology to be used

How grant money will be used

Why student feels the research to be conducted would be of importance to the wine industry

Description of how the resulting data will be presented in a final report

The student chosen will have the opportunity to present their project results during a 15-minute slot at one of Wine Market Council research conferences in January or February 2017 (in Napa or New York).

Questions should be directed and proposals emailed to Jennifer Pagano, Director of Research, Wine Market Council, jpagano(at)winemarketcouncil(dot)com 415-608-0335.

Wine Market Councils 2016 Consumer Research Conferences

Wine Market Councils 2016 Consumer Research Conferences take place on Monday, January 25, 2016, in New York and on Thursday, March 10, 2016, in Yountville, California. Wine Market Councils Consumer Research Conferences are free for Wine Market Council members (up to 3 company representatives can attend) and $125 for non-members. Both conferences include a networking wine and hors doeuvres reception directly following the conference presentations. Registration is now open. Attendees can register at winemarketcouncil.com/conference. Media passes are available. For media passes contact Teplin+Nuss at contact(at)teplinnuss(dot)com. For more information on the conferences, contact Sherri Fidel at admin(at)winemarketcouncil(dot)com or 707.738.8796.

About Wine Market Council

Wine Market Council is a non-profit association of grape growers, wine producers, importers, wholesalers, retailers, and other affiliated wine businesses and organizations. The councils mission is to grow, strengthen, and stabilize the wine market in the U.S. on behalf of all segments of the industry. Wine Market Council provides its members with consumer research that is proprietary to Wine Market Council members, who incorporate it into their strategic planning, marketing and sales execution. Wine Market Council was established in 1994 as a non-profit (501c6) trade association working through all tiers of the U.S. wine industry to grow the wine market. More information can be found at WineMarketCouncil.com and on Twitter @WineMktCouncil.
Michael Cushing Experiencing the death of a loved one is an unfortunate and devastating event, especially in a wrongful death situation. Past News Releases RSS Cushing Law Offices Commits to...

Cushing Law Offices Share...

The wrongful death lawsuit, Fred Saltzman, as Special Administrator of the Estate of Tenessa Vincent, deceased v. Embassy Holdings, LLC, et al. (Case No. 12 L 897), filed in the circuit court in Will County, IL, stemmed from the passing of Tenessa Vincent, who died at Embassy Care Center. According to court documents, Vincent was admitted to the hospital with chest pains and was discharged two days later and sent to Embassy Care Center. Court documents further state that between her discharge and death, Vincent was allegedly given at least 10 different medications, including Fentanyl, and her death was assigned to combined drug intoxication.

Experiencing the death of a loved one is an unfortunate and devastating event, especially in a wrongful death situation, said Cushing, of Cushing Law Offices, which have successfully prosecuted dozens of product liability cases and medical malpractice cases in recent years involving wrongful death. We are happy that we were able to bring some closure to this family.

For more information about Fentanyl, please visit the CDC. For more information about Cushing Law Offices services, including wrongful death, please call (312) 726-2323.

About Michael Cushing, Cushing Law Offices

Michael Cushing has dedicated his career to helping people who have been injured by the negligence or misconduct of others. Michael is an aggressive advocate for his clients and has made a difference in the lives of thousands of injured adults, children and newborns since beginning his practice in 2003. The law office is located at 30 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 1728, Chicago, IL 60602.

About the NALA

The NALA offers local business owners new online advertising & small business marketing tools, great business benefits, education and money-saving programs, as well as a charity program. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361.
Invisible Fence Brand Logo Radio Systems Corporation and SPC share a strong customer focus, and the combination of resources will help deliver a richer and more comprehensive Invisible Fence Brand experience for customers in Florida.

Radio Systems Corporation (RSC), a leading manufacturer of pet products with the mission to build the most trusted pet brands, is pleased to announce today it has entered into a binding agreement to acquire SOUTHERN PET CONTAINMENT and its related companies. The acquisition will finalize on March 31, 2016.

Southern Pet Containment (SPC), based in Tampa, Florida, is a distributor for Invisible Fence Brand. Its territory includes most of Florida and includes both independent and directly owned dealerships.

SPCs seasoned management team, led by Michael Gibbs, has done a great job building a solid and successful business operation that provides superior customer service, said Lance Tracy, Chief Commercial Officer. Radio Systems Corporation and SPC share a strong customer focus, and the combination of resources will help deliver a richer and more comprehensive Invisible Fence Brand experience for customers in Florida.

By teaming up with one of the leading pet product manufacturers and distributors, SPC will be able to leverage Radio Systems vast network and resources to enhance its presence in Florida, said Michael Gibbs, President, Southern Pet Containment. We are pleased to combine our strengths and deliver an enhanced Invisible Fence Brand customer experience.

About Invisible Fence Brand

Invisible Fence Brand is the original electronic pet containment system and offers a comprehensive family of containment, avoidance, and access products to keep pets out of harm's way and prevent unwanted behaviors throughout both the home and yard. Owned by Radio Systems Corporation in Knoxville, Tenn., Invisible Fence Brand solutions are sold nationwide by professional, authorized dealers who provide Perfect Start Plus training and custom installation that have safely contained over 3 million pets. Invisible Fence Brand has taken pet care beyond the home and started the Project Breathe Program, which has donated more than 12,000 pet oxygen masks to fire departments and first responders. For more information on Invisible Fence Brand or to find a local dealer, visit http://www.invisiblefence.com.
Whether to set up ADIZ over South China Sea or not will be based on full assessment of security situation: FM

Hua Chunying, Foreign Ministry spokesperson, holds a regular press conference on Jan.4, 2016. (Photo from official website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters and Chinas test flight to the newly built airport on Yongshu Jiao falls totally within Chinas sovereignty, said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson Monday.

At a regular Foreign Ministry press conference on Jan. 4, 2016, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry Spokesperson was asked whether China plans to declare an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over parts of the South China Sea.

In response to this question, Hua said that as for whether or not China will set up an air defense identification zone, the decision will be made based on a full assessment of the security situation and China's needs. "We believe that the overall situation in the South China Sea is stable," Hua said

Hua said that China stands ready to make joint efforts with all relevant parties to safeguard peace and stability of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, China hopes that relevant countries would not flex military muscles by sending aircraft and vessels. Instead, they should take concrete actions to uphold peace and stability of the South China Sea together with China.

Related:

>> Expert: Tokyos using Nansha test flight to stir anti-Beijing sentiment

China has the legitimate right to land a plane on its own territory, and Japan is merely sensationalizing the issue for political gain, experts said after Tokyo expressed concerns over the landing of a Chinese plane on an island in the South China Sea.
ZOG Digital, a leading digital marketing and technology company, partnered with Pep Boys to launch a hyper-engaged mobile search campaign that attributed calls from search ads to revenue from brick-and-mortar stores. Localized ads tracked calls and appointments scheduled from paid search campaigns to Pep Boys nearby towing and service centers.

ZOG Digitals results quickly exceeded expectations, driving an influx of calls to Pep Boys locations nationwide and increasing mobile ROAS by 28 percent just two weeks after launch. During that same time, scheduled appointments increased by over 17 percent, resulting in a 62 percent growth in appointment revenue from mobile campaigns.

Overall, these campaigns attributed in-store revenue to digital campaigns, generated additional revenue streams from mobile advertising, and expanded online exposure for Pep Boys. Additional paid search campaigns, including Google Beta programs, helped ZOG Digital further connect paid search tactics to revenue generated from brick-and-mortar stores.

Before launching the click-to-call campaign, Pep Boys was only tracking online appointments via form fills. To expand this campaign to include phone calls, adjustments to ad timing and location filters were applied to enhance overall user-experience and engagement. Detailed campaign targeting was paired with ad copy customized to user search queries and resulted in an influx of appointments booked nationwide that were attributed to paid search ads.

Pep Boys continues to see increased in-store engagement from paid search campaigns and leverages audience data to deliver improved targeting, performance-driven content, and online-to-offline revenue attribution.

About Pep Boys

Since 1921, Pep Boys has been the nations leading automotive aftermarket chain. With over 7,500 service bays in over 800 locations in 35 states and Puerto Rico, Pep Boys offers name-brand tires; automotive maintenance and repair; parts and expert advice for the Do-It-Yourselfer; commercial auto parts delivery; and fleet maintenance and repair. Customers can find the nearest location by calling 1- 800-PEP BOYS (1-800-737-2697) or by visiting http://www.pepboys.com

About ZOG Digital

ZOG Digital helps brands connect with consumers through its award-winning marketing services and technology. The company specializes in discovery marketing solutions including search engine optimization, social media marketing, content creation, paid advertising, web design and development. The companys proprietary Keyword Revenue Forecasting Tool was recently certified to provide accurate and quantifiable search and content marketing performance insights through keyword revenue projections. ZOG Digital is headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ. Clients include Pep Boys, Panasonic, Allstate, Capital One, National Geographic, and Wyndham Vacation Rentals. For more information, connect with us at zogdigital.com or on Twitter @ZOGDigital
Marcia Denbeaux, Esq. Managing Partner Our firm prides itself on zealous, goal-centric, advocacy in all areas of the law, including our family practice. Our hope, win or lose, is that a client leaves us in a better place than when they met us

Denbeaux & Denbeaux announces the expansion of their Family Law Practice. The group is led by Partner Marcia Denbeaux, a family law practitioner with more than 25 years experience. Joining her are attorneys Abigail Kahl, a 2012 New Jersey Super Lawyer Rising Star, and the firms managing associate, Nicholas Stratton.

Mrs. Kahl previously clerked for Chief Judge John W. Bissell in New Jersey Federal District Court in Newark and practiced criminal defense law and employment litigation before coming to Denbeaux & Denbeauxs litigation department in 2011.

Mr. Stratton is a graduate of Seton Hall Law, and has quickly risen through the ranks at Denbeaux & Denbeaux. Since 2013, Mr. Stratton has been the managing associate at the firm and led the firms foreclosure defense team before transitioning his practice to family law.

The Denbeaux team handles an array of family related cases including divorce, estate planning, custody disputes, domestic violence actions and real estate matters. Our firm prides itself on zealous, goal-centric, advocacy in all areas of the law, including our family practice. Our goal is that at the end of any matter each client is in a better a position than when they retained this firm. This includes financially, emotionally and the client's ability to move on with his or her life  says Mrs. Denbeaux.

Our clients come to us in some of the most exciting times of their lives, like when they buy or sell a home, and some of the absolute worst times, like when they are confronted with divorce and other intra-family disputes reflects Mr. Stratton. No matter the situation, good or bad, we tackle the case with the same passionate and creative problem solving approach that Denbeaux & Denbeaux has come to be known for, adds Mrs. Kahl.

Mrs. Denbeaux has been a respected member of the legal community but time constraints have limited her practice to a select few clients each year. With the addition of the dedicated advocacy of Mrs. Kahl and Mr. Stratton, Denbeaux & Denbeaux aims to bring their brand of personalized, high level legal representation to the families of New Jersey in 2016.

Denbeaux and Denbeaux, located at 366 Kinderkamack Road in Westwood, is a family operated law firm rooted in New Jersey. Since 1989 they have provided zealous advocacy for individuals, families and small to mid-sized New Jersey businesses. Areas of expertise for the firm's attorneys include financial consumer rights law, foreclosure defense, real estate closings, estate planning, family disputes, and business planning. Denbeaux & Denbeaux, aims to provide its clients with individualized representation tailored to the specific objectives of each client. To accomplish this goal the firm works with its clients to assess needs, goals and concerns, to aggressively pursue a plan of action resulting in meaningful resolution. To speak with Denbeaux & Denbeaux, call (855) 237- 7770 and set up a free initial consultation to see if they are the right legal team to advance your goals.
Bethesda Health has been recognized for its remarkable Commitment to Care (C2C) transformation initiative in the fall issue of Sunspots magazine by The Florida Chapter of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA). The article, written by Bethesda Health CFO Joanne Aquilina, explains why todays hospital financial leaders must focus more on operations, patient care and quality control to guide financial success.

Bethesda Health knew that it had to create an infrastructure for efficient, reliable, predictable care delivery, to sustain exceptional operational performance, said Aquilina. That, in turn, would be the key to increasing volumes and revenue while controlling costsand moving margins back into the black.

Aquilina goes on to describe the production model for care and patient-first, zero defect culture Bethesda adopted, collaborating with Atlanta-based Care Logistics. With this new model, the two Bethesda Health hospitals are achieving dramatic improvements in length-of-stay, CMI and reimbursements, care quality, patient satisfaction, and financial performance.

Among the results Bethesda has achieved with Care Logistics are:



Place patients efficiently and appropriately from the ED to appropriate units

Strengthen collaboration and relationships with the medical community by creating a high reliability organization

Cut preventable harm and associated infection rates

Reduced acute length of stay more than half a day while improving care quality measures and patient satisfaction

Increase care mix index from 1.30 to 1.41 while reducing cost per case

The complete article is available here: http://www.carelogistics.com/media/1135/bethesda-profile-hfma-florida-magazine-fall-2015.pdf

About Care Logistics: Care Logistics partners with hospitals to establish a patient-first, zero-defect production system for care. This Hospital Operating System transforms hospital operations, powered by culture change, a hub-and-spoke care coordination model, and logistics software. The results: The best possible patient care and experience your hospital can deliver, with the greatest efficiency at the lowest costs.

For more information, contact Care Logistics at (800) 930-0870, or learn more about the dramatic results Care Logistics customers are achieving at http://www.carelogistics.com.

About Bethesda Health: Founded in 1959, Bethesda Health, Inc., is a healthcare organization serving the medical needs of South Palm Beach County with a mission to provide quality health services in a caring manner. With two not-for profit hospital, 401- bed Bethesda Hospital East and 80-bed Bethesda Hospital; West, Bethesda Health is comprised of more than 67- physicians and 2,700 employees. Bethesda Health and its affiliates offer a full array of healthcare services, including Bethesda Heart Hospital for cardiovascular services, general, vascular and endovascular surgery maternity, neonatal and pediatric intensive care, womens health and the Bethesda Comprehensive Cancer Center. Bethesda Hospital West, which opened in January 2013, is an all-private room, state-of-the-art hospital, with a 24-hour Emergency Department for adults and children to serve our western communities. Bethesda Hospital West provides general medical, surgical and intensive care services, imaging and rehabilitation. Learn more at: http://www.BethesdaWeb.com
I believe Ive been called to this work, to help business owners and CEOs in the middle TN area apply Biblical principles and best business practices to their businesses."

The C12 Group, Americas leading Christian CEO and Business Owner roundtable organization, is growing the Music City area practice with addition of new Chair, Brian Messick. Messick joins Troy Blackmon, Trent Messick and Dewey Greene.

We are very excited about having Brian join our C12 practice as the fourth full time Chair serving CEOs and business owners in the region. Having been a former member of C12, as a business owner, Brian will be a tremendous asset to our team and our collective members as we focus on building great businesses for a greater purpose, said Managing Chair, Troy Blackmon.

Messick will host two introductory meetings for Christian CEOs and Business Owners at Stones River Country Club, 1830 NW Broad Street in Murfreesboro. The first will be a breakfast meeting on Tuesday, March 1st at 7:30-9:30am and the second a lunch on Wednesday, March 2nd from 11:30am to 1:30pm. Those interested in attending may contact Messick at 615-785-9276 or by email at Brian.Messick(at)C12Group(dot)com.

After graduating from the College of Pharmacy in Memphis, TN, Messick enjoyed a successful career in the pharmaceutical industry in Murfreesboro, including operations of an Option Care franchise, pharmacy locations for Housecall Infusion Services, and operating his own community drug stores in Rutherford and Wilson counties, Messick answered the call to join the C12 Group.

I believe Ive been called to this work, to help business owners and CEOs in the middle TN area apply Biblical principles and best business practices to their businesses, transforming their companies into mission fields to expand His kingdom while having a positive impact on the bottom-line, offered Messick. Im excited to be a part of the C12 Music City team; Im confident that C12 is a worthwhile investment for any Christian business owner.

About The C12 Group

Founded in 1992, The C12 Group is Americas leading provider of executive roundtables for Christian CEOs and Business Owners. C12s mission is to change the world by advancing the Kingdom of God in the marketplace through the companies and lives of those Christ calls to run businesses for Him. For more information about The C12 Group Music City, contact Brian Messick at 615-785-9276, by email at Brian.Messick(at)C12Group(dot)com or visit C12MusicCity.com.
Find Documents:

Press release: http://tinyurl.com/q6ae562

Review: http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-integration

Reviewed report: http://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-10-The-Integration-Anomaly-WEB.pdf

At a time of growing diversity in the U.S., school segregation is deepening. Well-designed, diverse schools benefit all students, yet students of color are often isolated in highly segregated schools with weak educational opportunities and outcomes. A new report from the Friedman Foundation claims that a universal system of school choice offers a solution to increasing school segregation, but a review of that report finds that the arguments are not based on evidence.

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Erica Frankenberg, an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, reviewed The Integration Anomaly: Comparing the Effects of K-12 Education Delivery Models on Segregation in Schools for the Think Twice Think Tank Review Project at the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulders School of Education.

The Integration Anomaly explores what its author calls a puzzling divergence between changes in metropolitan residential and school segregation. While neighborhoods in some metropolitan areas are experiencing relatively more racial integration, these trends are largely absent from schools. Based on a literature review, the report argues that the best way to address rising school segregation is to decouple school assignment from neighborhoods through universal school choice. The report suggests that housing integration has not been an effective way to pursue school integration, and it concludes with recommendations for how to structure school choice to achieve integration.

Professors Siegel-Hawley and Frankenberg note the surface appeal of the reports recommendations for the expansion of school choice, including ending virtually all regulation of school choice and providing universal scholarships, as a means for addressing persistent school segregation. They explain, however, that the analysis of the empirical relationship between school and residential segregation relies on flawed methodological decisions with regard to how to define segregation and divergent trends over time. Those problematic definitions, in turn, yield biased results and prompt the reader to incorrectly assume that housing integration policies will have little bearing on school segregation.

The review also points out that the reports use of research literature on school choice is haphazard and incomplete, drawing conclusions either beyond what the research supports or contrary to what research has found. Perhaps most importantly, The Integration Anomaly ignores a growing body of literature finding that the very type of unregulated school choice it proposes has, in many instances, exacerbated racial segregation.

The reviewers conclude that the Friedman Foundations report presents arguments and solutions largely driven by ideology, not evidence, and offers little value for policymakers or educators meaningfully engaged in the critical search for strategies to reduce school segregation.

Find Siegel-Hawley and Frankenbergs review at:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-integration

Find The Integration Anomaly: Comparing the Effects of K-12 Education Delivery Models on Segregation in Schools, by Benjamin Scafidi, published by the Friedman Foundation, at:

http://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2015-10-The-Integration-Anomaly-WEB.pdf

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Think Twice Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu/
We are very excited to get into the PCIe storage space. With the launch of Intels latest Skylake Processor, we are seeing more motherboards available in the consumer market that support PCIe devices.

Patriot, a leading manufacturer of SSDs, computer memory, flash storage solutions, mobile accessories and gaming peripherals, today announced the release of their latest solid-state drive offerings, the Patriot Hellfire M.2 PCIe SSD and the Hellfire PCIe AIC (Add-in Card).

Hellfire M.2 PCIe SSD

The Hellfire will be Patriots first M.2 PCIe SSD, and an impressive one at that. With a Gen 3 x 4 interface and NVMe 1.2 compliant, the Hellfire M.2 will reaches speeds of up to 2,500MB/s read and 600MB/s. Designed with the needs of content creators, gamers and PC enthusiasts in mind the, Hellfire will lower latency while increasing the productivity and response times of any PC, laptop or notebook.

The Hellfire M.2 will be released in capacities of 240GB, 480GB and 960GB in a M.2 2280 form factor to fulfill the high performance storage needs of consumers looking to upgrade their systems. Powered by the Phison 5007 controller and MLC NAND, the Hellfire will be your weapon of choice when battling those latency bottlenecks.

Hellfire PCIe AIC SSD

In addition to the Hellfire M.2, Patriot will also launch the Patriot Hellfire PCIe AIC for those looking for the ultimate performance boost to their PC. The Hellfire PCIe AIC with a Gen 3 x 4 interface is Patriots top of the line choice for a storage solution. With sequential read speeds of up to 3000MB/s and write speeds of up to 2200MB/s the Hellfire PCIe AIC smokes the competition to position itself as Patriots premium performance drive.

With varying speeds between capacities, the Hellfire PCIe AIC will be available in capacities of 240GB, 480GB and 960GB to meet the market needs of every demographic. Also utilizing the Phison 5007 with MLC NAND , the Hellfire PCIe AIC will set your system ablaze.

We are very excited to get into the PCIe storage space, said Les Henry, VP of Engineering at Patriot. With the launch of Intels latest Skylake Processor, we are seeing more motherboards available in the consumer market that support PCIe devices. Along with the launch of Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, which supports PCIe storage devices without the need for additional drivers, we feel this will be the future trend and will allow users to take full advantage of the PCIe storage speeds.

Availability

The Patriot Hellfire drives will be available for purchase at the end of Q1.

About Patriot

Patriot designs, manufactures and markets high performance, enthusiast memory modules, flash memory, and mobile accessory products. Patriot products have become world renown for their extreme performance, reliability and innovation. Patriot sells its products through original equipment manufacturers, retailers, e-tailers and distributors throughout the world with operations in North America, Asia and Europe. Patriot Memory LLC was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Fremont, California, USA.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice. All company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

Media Contacts:

North America

Stacey Pinheiro

Marketing and Communications Specialist

Patriot Memory

spinheiro(at)patriotmem(dot)com
CSSs devotion to its customers is both inspiring and a real motivation for me each day. I am excited about the opportunity to be a key contributor to the companys growth.

Cambridge Security Seals (CSS), a global quality leader in tamper-resistant and loss prevention seals, has announced the appointment of Jessica Gurdak as the companys Vice President of Operations. Gurdak, who has been the Operations Manager of CSS for the past year, brings to the position extensive management experience and a results-driven customer focus that will be critical to supporting the New York manufacturers continued growth.

In a relatively short period of time at CSS, Jessica Gurdak has demonstrated her ability to drive operational excellence throughout the organization, explains Brian Lyle, President of Cambridge Security Seals. Her all-out commitment to our customers and her tenacious pursuit of continuous improvement are the exact values around which we have built our company.

Cambridge Security Seals is one of Americas fastest growing private companies, as ranked by Inc. Magazine. The company credits its customer-centric philosophy and high performance products for its nearly 500% 3-year growth rate.

Since arriving at Cambridge Security Seals, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by a team of extraordinary professionals and specialists, stated Gurdak. CSSs devotion to its customers is both inspiring and a real motivation for me each day. I am excited about the opportunity to be a key contributor to the companys growth.

Gurdak previously served as a Senior Operations Manager at Align Technologies after beginning her career managing client relations at Kline & Company. According to Lyle, Jessicas energy and her unique background of operations management combined with client support make for an ideal fit for Cambridge Security Seals, with its focus on customer-driven performance.

Cambridge Security Seals can be contacted at 845-520-4111 or via email at info(at)cambridgeseals(dot)com.

About Cambridge Security Seals

Cambridge Security Seals, a privately-held enterprise headquartered in New York, offers an extensive line of tamper evident, tamper resistant, and high-security loss prevention seals to customers across a wide range of industries. The companys dedication to uncompromising quality, dedicated customer service, and outstanding value provides a blueprint for reliability and security. CSS services an increasingly diverse customer base spanning a variety of industries, including airlines, freight, logistics, distribution, trucking, retail, cash handling, rail transportation, government, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, medical, and agriculture.

Cambridge Security Seals commitment to technology, quality standards, environmental responsibility, and attention to detail fuels its drive to provide security-conscious customers with the products, services, and value they demand from an industry leader.

The backbone of Cambridge Security Seals is a diversified team of technical experts and business professionals, including experienced engineering, design, production, and logistics specialists. This unique blend of management and production expertise enables the company to provide an unmatched level of value. For more information about Cambridge Security Seals, please visit http://www.cambridgeseals.com.

Contact:

Michael Berean

845-520-4111

mberean(at)cambridgeseals(dot)com
Natascha Weiss - Field Application Specialist, Eppendorf

Photometry, which entails measuring the intensity of light, is an analytical method used extensively in molecular biology labs. In numerous applications, such as cloning, sequencing, or polymerase chain reaction (PCR), labs might be working with nucleic acid preparations from varied sources. Having knowledge about the quality and quantity of the starting material is crucial to the reliability and reproducibility of experimental results. How can you be certain you are applying photometric methods correctly? The answer is at hand.

Eppendorf is sponsoring a new, free educational webinar, Photometry made easy!  Obtaining reliable results with nucleic acid measurements, which will discuss the basics of photometric nucleic acid determination, and which critical factors affect the measurement. The speaker, Natascha Weiss, field application specialist for Eppendorf, will also shed light on the correct interpretation of the results and offer tips and tricks for troubleshooting.

Natascha Weiss is responsible for the photometry product portfolio within Customer Support at Eppendorf AG headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. She joined the company in 1999, and has worked on electroporators, dispensers, PCR equipment, consumables, and several cross-thematic projects. Natascha studied biology at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, and for her diploma thesis she employed numerous molecular biology methods investigating genes coding for virulence factors in the genome of pathogenic bacteria.

The complementary webinar, hosted by LabRoots, will be presented on January 27, 2016, at 12 am PT/9 am CET.

For full details about the event and free registration, click here.

About Eppendorf AG:

Eppendorf is a leading life science company that develops and sells instruments, consumables, and services for liquid handling, sample handling, and cell handling in laboratories worldwide. Its product range includes next to spectrometer, pipettes and automated pipetting systems, dispensers, centrifuges, mixers, and DNA amplification equipment as well as ultra-low temperature freezers, bioreactors, CO2 incubators, shakers, and cell manipulation systems. Associated Consumables such as cuvettes, pipette tips, test tubes, microtiter plates, and disposable bioreactors complement the instruments for highest quality workflow solutions.

Eppendorf was founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1945 and has about 2,930 employees worldwide. The company has subsidiaries in 25 countries and is represented in all other markets by distributors.

About LabRoots:

LabRoots is the leading scientific social networking website and producer of educational virtual events and webinars. Contributing to the advancement of science through content sharing capabilities, LabRoots is a powerful advocate in amplifying global networks and communities. Founded in 2008, LabRoots emphasizes digital innovation in scientific collaboration and learning, and is a primary source for current scientific news, webinars, virtual conferences, and more. LabRoots is the owner and producer of BioConference Live  which has grown into the worlds largest series of virtual events within the Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics community.
Representatives with Freeditorial.com, online publisher of classic and contemporary literature, today announced the winners of its 2015 Literary Contest.

Yolanda Montesinos, spokesperson for Freeditorial, has announced that the 2015 Literary Contest First Prize Winner of $15,000 is What's in a Name? by Louie Lozano. The synopsis of the literary work is that Doctor L.J. Corbray is a humble psychotherapist working out of the Chicago area who, one day, begins receiving a series of strange emails from what appears to be a former patient. The problem is the sender refuses to identify themselves by anything other than the letter A. As the messages become more and more suggestive that the person writing them is a violent predator the doctor plays along, hoping to stall As next violent outburst and aid the police in drawing out information that might lead to As identity.

Montesinos said The Tree by K.M. Fox is this years second prize winner of $5,000. Giving a sneak-peak into chapter one, on March 14, 2009 Aiken Somerset looked around, blinking away the rain from his eyes. There were red and blue lights flashing through the trees in the direction of the street, and he hoped that no one he knew needed the ambulance. He craned his neck to look at the familiar specimen of fagus grandifolia, smiling at the sight of buds forming along the outermost twigs. The rain may have been close to freezing, but his tree knew that spring was just around the corner. He looked down again, and his smile faded. It had been the first time hed ever received anything from the hole in the enormous beech trees trunk. Before, he had only ever deposited gifts.

The third prize winner of $2,000 is Evan's Island by Ivanela Arabadzhieva. In the story, Evan's Island is a gut-wrenching coming-of-age story about a teenager struggling with depression and trying to come to terms with his sexuality. Seen through the eyes of his best friend, this is the realistic tale of a kid fighting to stay alive in a world which refuses to accept him.

Freeditorial, according to Montesinos, will be inviting entries for 2016 literary content from January 1, 2016. To participate in the contest ending on Thanksgiving Day, entries can be submitted starting at 12pm EST January 1at and no later than 12pm EST June 30th. Writers must send their submissions to: contest(at)freeditorial(dot)com. All submissions for the contest entry must be sent to Freeditorial in Microsoft Word format (.docx) as an attachment.

Yolanda Montesinos, spokesperson for Freeditorial, a free and global meeting place for readers and writers from all over the planet, explained that Freeditorial is a platform for readers and writers where tens of thousands of books are at their disposal to read, share, gift and enjoy wherever they are. All reading on Freeditorial is free. Freeditorial's writers find their place to participate in its literary contests, submit their work for purchase proposals and self-publish.

For more information, visit https://freeditorial.com/en/statics/about_us

About Freeditorial

Freeditorial is a free and global meeting place for readers and writers from all over the planet. People from several continents have collaborated on this initiative.

Contact:

Yolanda Montesinos

INV&B Corporation

2500 Plaza 5, PMB 2709 Harborside Financial Center

Jersey City, NJ 07311 USA

Source: INV&B Corporation

###
Flux Resources, LLC, an Oregon-based recruitment firm, debuts, January 5, 2016, at http://www.workwithflux.com, for both employers and job seekers in the architecture, engineering, business operations, and information technology sectors.

Originally part of Portland-based architecture, engineering, and consulting services firm, David Evans and Associates, Inc. (DEA), Flux, began in 2010 as an additional service offering to existing clients  the offering took off like wildfire. And because Flux was incubated within DEA, the team holds deep roots in architecture and engineering and has already provided world-class talent to some of the largest and most recognizable engineering projects in the U.S.

As of January 1, Flux becomes a sister company to DEA and a wholly owned subsidiary of David Evans Enterprises, Inc. (DEEI). The spinoff affords strategic advantages to both companies and offers the opportunity and flexibility to better serve new and shared clients.

The concept was born when our clients needed staffing options that were safe, nimble and reliable, said David Evans and Associates Inc. Chairman and CEO Dr. Al Barkouli, P.E. We already knew the technical industry well  it was a natural service offering for us.

Theres a run on qualified technical and professional employees  engineers, architects, scientists, information technologists  prompting Flux to carve-out a niche in specialized staff placement. The Lake Oswego, Oregon, company takes a very customized and modern approach to hiring  benefiting both employers and candidates.

The company is focused on A&E (Architecture and Engineering), IT (Information Technology) and Business Professionals (Marketing, Human Resources, and Finance). Flux provides highly qualified candidates within specified time frames and manages the entire process: recruiting, sourcing, screening, background checks, security clearances, drug testing, education verification, references, onboarding, training and staff management.

The transition to Flux is the next logical step in our evolution from a client service offering to a robust business with national reach, said Flux President, Dominic Moore. We saw there were only a few choices when it came to increasing technical staff on a large scale and across multiple geographies  our approach is changing the standard in recruitment.

Flux offers three core services: staff augmentation, direct placement and contract to hire  depending on the client need and the candidates request. Staff augmentation is an increasingly popular, long-term growth option, saving organizations and municipalities time, internal resources and money.

Our team thinks and moves fast; we adapt to the needs of our client, Moore said. We customize our services to meet business goals and budgets while investing in individual people and upholding our clients culture and momentum.

About Flux

Flux is a contemporary recruitment firm with deep roots in professional services. The company specializes in providing careers and high-caliber professionals in the Architecture & Engineering, Information Technology, and Business Professionals industries. Flux works with every level of government, as well private clients, with employee bases ranging from 10 to 100,000. Flux bridges company needs and technical talent, saving organizations time and money. The firm is based in Lake Oswego, Oregon, with an office in Austin, Texas, and aims to be the benchmark in technical staffing. Employees and employers can learn more at http://www.workwithflux.com.

-END-
Premier Li Keqiang inspected a coal mine in Shanxi province on January 5, 2016.

Others see you as dark as coal, I say youre the stars of coal, said Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to the coal workers, as he inspects the coal mines of Shanxi Coking Coal Group in Shanxi, on January 5, 2016.

Dressed in coal workers uniform, Premier Li walked one kilometer to a 300-meter deep workstation underground to cheer up the workers.

Premier Li Keqiang walked one kilometer to a 300-meter deep workstation underground to cheer up the workers.

During his two-hour underground inspection, Li accentuated the priority of safety. He examined the safety mechanism of the mine through underground phone lines: Dispatcher? What is the gas density here? This is Li Keqiang at spot 33413. Learning that the gas density is 0.05, Li again emphasized on the significance of safety.

Premier Li Keqiang examined the safety mechanism of the mine through underground phone lines.
GWTT Meets with officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China We were pleased to be able to educate some of the Department of Environmental Monitoring of China about treating water from construction sites.

This January, Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT) is pleased to announce the success of an educational presentation between its environmental remediation contractors and officials from the Department of Environmental Monitoring of The People's Republic of China. On December 9, 2015, visiting Chinese engineers and officials met with Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT) in Wharton, NJ, to learn about regulating groundwater discharge from construction sites and how to better monitor for ongoing compliance with relevant regulations.

A group of 19 senior officials and engineers from China reached out to the United States and Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT) through Jessica Tan, who works with the international exchange department affiliated with the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China.

While in the U.S. the Chinese officials also engaged in a training program at the University of North Carolina to better understand American surface water environment monitoring techniques, assessment systems, and treatment methods. China is still developing regulations for the control of contaminated groundwater and expressed interest in learning from techniques and methods utilized by U.S. companies like Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT).

We were pleased to be able to educate some members of the Department of Environmental Monitoring of China about treating water from construction sites," said Robert Kunzel, CEO of Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT). "We hope they utilize the information they learned while in the U.S.

The experts from Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT) conducted a presentation that focused on monitoring temporary treatment at construction dewatering sites, then covered the U.S. regulatory environment on a macro scale. Early U.S. regulations of the industry were modest, and only over the last 20 years have they become more strict.

In the presentation, Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT) also shared their knowledge of the economic benefits of clean sustainable water, which helps drive commercial and residential development along rivers and seas. People have always wanted to live near the water, and clean water is increasingly an important consideration both environmentally and financially.

In addition to the December educational exchange with the Chinese engineers, Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT) has participated in international outreach programs in the past. On May 18, 2015, Kunzel also gave a presentation at the Low Impact Development Environmental Solutions Seminar in Hong Kong.

"I see river walkways, hotels, restaurants being built along rivers throughout the world and it is in some part due to the enacted regulation and our diligence in minimizing the impact of development on the environment," Kunzel said at the time. "In the construction dewatering industry we have gone from virtually no regulation of the discharge, to a single page document, to a complex set of regulations of more than several hundred pages."

About Ground/Water Treatment & Technology, LLC (GWTT)

Ground/Water Treatment and Technology, LLC (GWTT) focuses on delivering innovative, optimized, value-based solutions to their wide range of clients. Their knowledgeable operators have years of experience with remediation systems. To learn more, visit http://www.gwttllc.com.
The 15th Annual Wall Street Green Summit on March 14, 2016 goes in-depth on Cleantech Financing and Impact Investing. The Summit boasts an impressive lineup of over 25 speakers, including executives from Cornerstone Capital, Clean Energy Advisors, Encourage Capital and more.

The Wall Street Green Summit continually sets the agenda on topics, speakers, insights and offers unparalleled networking with the leading experts in the environmental markets, said Peter Fusaro, Founder of the The Wall Street Green Summit.

Renewable energy investment dollars once again are on the upswing. Interest in cleantech financing has continued to attract significant global interest catalyzed by the recent Paris Climate Accord. As such, this years Summit will include in-depth analysis of new emerging financing models as well as discussions around where cleantech financing is headed.

Keynote speaker tracks include:



Green Finance and Sustainability Today: Peter Fusaro, Global Change Associates

Corporate Sustainability Keynote: Erika Karp, Cornerstone Capital

Solar Finance Trends for 2016: Chris Warren, Clean Energy Advisors

The Latest in Cleantech Investing: Cory Honeyman, GTM Research

A growing number of socially responsible investors seek to make investments that not only generate social and environmental value, but also financial returns. The emerging industry of impact investing has the potential to address major global environmental and social challenges. While impact investing is gaining momentum, there are still issues remaining  including scalability, the lack of appropriate capital across the risk/return spectrum and shortage of high-quality investment opportunities. This year's Impact investing track includes Clean Energy Advisors, Encourage Capital, World Wildlife Fund and the Closed Loop Fund who will share their insights on this new marketplace.

Launched in 2002 by Peter Fusaro, the Wall Street Green Summit covers cutting edge content, industry developments and features the practitioners and the leaders of tomorrow. The 15th annual WSGS promises to deliver stimulating dialogue around distributed generation, the smart grid, emissions mitigation, green funds, and renewable energy finance.

For more information on the Wall Street Green Summit, please visit: http://www.wsgts.com

Media Contact:

Carmen Cook

Vice President, Marketing, Global Change Associates

212-222-3775| Carmen(at)global-change(dot)com
Scholarship Winner Alamea Deedee Bitran on her Wedding Day When Alamea detailed to us her desire to dedicate herself to helping people with disabilities fully enforce their rights under the law, we were exited to help further that mission in some small way.

Nationally-recognized California-based Personal Injury law firm The Reeves Law Group is pleased to announce the 2015 winner of its $2500 legal education scholarship. The winner is third year Florida International law student and newlywed, Alamea Deedee Bitran of Miami, Florida.

Currently ranked in the top 5% of her law school class, Alameas application was chosen from among dozens of submissions who were tasked with answering the following question: what is your dream contribution to society? How do you, as a future attorney, plan to help the less fortunate. Alameas essay detailed her background as an ASL-certified volunteer in audiology, experience helping the hearing-impaired navigate the Americans with Disability Act, and her future desire to work as a public interest law advocate, and was the clear standout.

Finding out I won $2500 to help complete my law degree hours before I was walking down the aisle on my wedding day, was truly a dream come true, said Alamea. I did receive several interesting looks from my family as I was returning emails with the firm while walking into wedding photos with my family, but of all the distractions you can have on your big day, this was a good one.

Alameas road to law school was not an ordinary one. After graduating Summa Cum Laude from the University of Miami with a degree in Health Sciences, she initially accepted a full academic scholarship to study Audiology at the University of Maryland. But after listening to a visiting attorney talk about the Americans with Disability Act she got the legal bug and soon left her doctoral program for law school.

Public interest law is something that is very close to our hearts here at The Reeves Law Group and giving back to society is at the core of our pro bono work efforts in the office, said firm founder Robert Reeves. When Alamea detailed to us her desire to dedicate herself to helping people with disabilities fully enforce their rights under the law, we were exited to help further that mission in some small way.

The American with Disability Act (ADA) recently celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2015. First passed in 1990, the ADA was a landmark law that prevented companies from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment. According to the most recent US Census in 2010, there exist 56.7 million Americans who live with a disability.

For more information on The Reeves Group Scholarship and to consider submitting an application for 2016 please visit http://www.robertreeveslaw.com/scholarship/

About The Reeves Law Group:

The Reeves Law Group is a personal and accident injury law firm based in Southern California with over twenty-five years experience. The firm has won millions in jury verdicts and its attorneys have been rated top practitioners in the field of personal injury by Newsweek, Super Lawyers, the National Trial Lawyers Associations, and many others. For a free case review call 800-644-8000 or visit them online at http://www.RobertReevesLaw.com.
Research indicates that active involvement is the most fundamental and most powerful principle of human learning and college success (Astin, 1993)

Besides the quality of the classroom and curriculum instruction, students academic success and individual development depends on Student Development Services also known as Student Affair, which is a major educational unit or division of college. When this important student-service division combine with instructional faculty interface, a combined effect is likely to be applied on student development and learning, maximizing the quality and effect of college experience.

It has been a long known fact among student development professionals that the success of a colleges student development program is contingent upon collaborative relations between the faculty and the student affairs staff. In order to maximize students development in college, students need to go through integration of the co-curriculum and curriculum. Both student affairs and academic affairs professionals require each other to acquire their respective educational goals and dreams. It is important that the professional forces of student and academic affairs come together to successfully promote student graduation and retention rates.

In order to identify a common language of student learning and student success that can be used across the curriculum and co-curriculum, AudioSolutionz is presenting a webinar titled Building Bridges between the Curriculum and Co-Curriculum: Promoting Partnerships between Academic & Student Affairs with expert speaker Joe Cuseo, who holds a doctoral degree in Educational Psychology and Assessment from the University of Iowa and is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Marymount College (California)  where for more than 25 years he directed the first-year seminar, a core course required of all new students.

The training session will provide participants knowledge and practical tools to implement the tenet that student success is promoted through an intentional integration of curricular and co-curricular efforts.

For more information visit: https://www.audiosolutionz.com/education/bridge-curriculum-cocurriculum-student-affairs.html

About AudioSolutionz

AudioSolutionz is the countrys leading source of knowledge and training for professionals in food safety, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. With renowned experts on its panel, AudioSolutionz offers important updates, regulatory knowledge and compliance information on the hot topics in these industries. It also provides the opportunity for professionals to get answers to their most complex questions directly from experts. To know more visit: https://www.audiosolutionz.com

About Joe Cuseo

Joe Cuseo holds a doctoral degree in Educational Psychology and Assessment from the University of Iowa and is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Marymount College (California)-where for more than 25 years he directed the first-year seminar-a core course required of all new students. He is a 14-time recipient of the 'faculty member of the year award' on his home campus-a student-driven award based on effective teaching and academic advising, a recipient of the 'Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award' from the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, and a recipient of the 'Diamond Honoree Award' from the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) for contributions made to student development and the Student Affairs profession. Currently, Joe serves as an educational advisor and consultant for AVID-a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote the college access and success of underserved student populations.

Joe has delivered hundreds of campus workshops and conference presentations across North America, as well as Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. He's authored articles, monographs, and books on effective teaching, advising, student retention and student success, the most recent of which are: 'Thriving in College and Beyond: Research-Based Strategies for Academic Success & Personal Development,' 'Humanity, Diversity, & The Liberal Arts: The Foundation of a College Education' and 'Peer-to-Peer Leadership: Transforming Student Culture.'
Autotalks' SECTONm-based V2X module Customers who are targeting SECTON for mass-market get today a mature, Automotive-grade device for prototyping and pre-development

Autotalks announced today a new IC, called 'SECTONm' (ATK4000), to complete the first and most advanced V2X portfolio. SECTONm, will inherit the maturity level and Automotive qualification, while offering customers today a mature V2X add-on IC with a forward compatible host API. Autotalks will showcase SECTONm IC and first SECTONm-based prototype module at CES, Las Vegas, NV on January 6th-9th, and CAR-ELE, Tokyo on January 13th-15th, 2016.

Following Autotalks' security-by-design principle, SECTONm introduces an unmatched security performance, being capable of verifying all received packets at line-rate with dedicated hardware acceleration engines. This not only minimizes V2X cyber-attack surface, but also maintains the host completely available for running V2X protocol stack and applications.

SECTONm is provided with OS/CPU agnostic host API that makes SECTONm security, communication and management services accessible to a host running V2X protocol stack and applications. Forward compatible API assures that host software will not undergo any change upon migration to next-generation SECTON.

SECTONm is worldwide compliant supporting IEEE802.11p, IEEE1609, ETSI ITS G5 and Japan ARIB STD-T109 specifications. It is Automotive qualified, supports a wide temperature range of -40 to +85C and is available today.

Mr. Ram Shallom, Autotalks Director of Marketing, explained: "Through the introduction of SECTONm, customers who are targeting SECTON for mass-market get today a mature, Automotive-grade device for prototyping and pre-development." Mr. Shallom continued: "With SECTONm, module makers are capable of designing today a very small V2X hardware add-on module with forward compatible pinout. The ability to maintain footprint and pinout in the migration to SECTON, assures a transparent transition for module end-customers. Evidently, we see a growing interest for SECTONm by this market segment."

About Autotalks Ltd.

Autotalks enables the V2X communication revolution by providing an automotive qualified chipset that supports all functions required from a V2X ECU. The unique technology of Autotalks addresses all key V2X challenges: communication reliability, security, positioning accuracy and vehicle installation. Autotalks ready solution is used in series production units. Autotalks and STMicroelectronics have formed a strategic partnership for the V2X market, and are working to produce a mass market-optimized second-generation V2X chipset.

For more information, visit http://www.auto-talks.com or e-mail: info(at)auto-talks(dot)com
Lt. Gen. Dana Atkins, USAF (Ret.) Our primary focus remains to promote a strong national defense and ensure the nation keeps its commitments to those who have sacrificed so much for our nation.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dana Atkins became the new president and chief executive officer for the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) today, succeeding retired Navy Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., who led the association since 2002.

Atkins, 61 and a native of Portland, Ore., will lead the more than 390,000 members of the nation's largest military service organization and fourth-largest veterans service organization in its advocacy mission on behalf of the entire uniformed services community.

Since his 2012 retirement from the Air Force, Atkins had been the president of Chronicle Media, a large media and publishing company in Augusta, Ga.

For more than 86 years, MOAA has excelled at providing an influential voice for the troops and military families, both currently serving and retired, said Atkins. Our primary focus remains to promote a strong national defense and ensure the nation keeps its commitments to those who have sacrificed so much for our nation.

Atkins takes over during a period when budget cuts and continuing worldwide deployments pose major challenges for the all-volunteer force.

There will be no lack of challenges in the months and years ahead, said Atkins. Whenever our country has experienced an extended period of conflict, the trend has been to seek some sort of a peace dividend, often in the shape of cutting end strength and curtailing pay and benefits for those who serve. Unfortunately, were seeing that happen again right now. Our challenge will be to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, when similar cuts ultimately undermined retention and readiness.

At the time of his retirement from the Air Force, Atkins served as the commander of Alaskan Command, Alaska NORAD Region, Joint Task Force Alaska and 11th Air Force at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

During his career in the Air Force, Atkins served as a command pilot with more than 4,000 hours in fighter aircraft, as vice commander of the 7th Air Force and U.S. Air Force Korea, as director of operations (J3) U.S. Pacific Command and as special assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe during the air war over Serbia. During his career, he flew as a demonstration pilot for both the European A-10 demonstration team and the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.

Atkins earned his bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Portland. He also holds two master's degrees, one in aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and another in national security strategy from the National War College.

He and his wife, Laura, were the 2004 recipients of the General and Mrs. Jerome F. O'Malley Award, which recognizes the wing commander and spouse whose contributions to the nation, the Air Force and the local community best exemplify the highest ideals and positive leadership of a military couple. Atkins and his wife have two children, a son who served in the Air Force and is currently a student at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and a daughter who earned her doctorate in education and teaches in Washington state.

-End-

About MOAA:

Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) is the nations largest and most influential association of military officers. With more than 390,000 members  active duty, former, retired, and National Guard and Reserve officers from all seven uniformed services and their spouses and surviving spouses  it is a powerful force speaking for a strong national defense and represents the interests of military officers and their families at every stage of their careers. For those who are not eligible to join MOAA, Voices for Americas Troops is a nonprofit MOAA affiliate that supports a strong national defense. For more information, visit http://www.moaa.org.
Dr. Mark Leondires, Dr. Spencer Richlin, Dr. Joshua M. Hurwitz, Dr. Cynthia Murdock and Dr. Shaun Williams are all "Top Doctors" "We have a connection with our patients, which motivates us to provide the best fertility care possible. Thats what drives us and I believe it is the secret to achieving our impressive pregnancy rates," says Dr. Mark Leondires, Medical Director at RMACT.

The complete team of Board Certified reproductive endocrinologists at Reproductive Medicine Associates of Connecticut (RMACT) has earned the accolade Top Doctor. Moffly Media publishes the list of Top Doctors in Fairfield County in the January/February issues of Fairfield Living, Greenwich, New Canaan-Darien, Westport and Stamford magazines. Dr. Mark Leondires, Dr. Spencer Richlin, Dr. Joshua M. Hurwitz, Dr. Cynthia Murdock and Dr. Shaun Williams have each been chosen by their peers for the 2016 list based on their exceptional infertility patient care and stand-out results.

Moffly Medias list is compiled by the renowned healthcare research firm Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., which conducts a rigorous, peer-reviewed assessment of local doctors by their peers. Not only is it an honor for an entire practice to be selected for this designation, but each of the doctors have also chosen as a Top Doctor in numerous previous years.

We are proud that over the past 12 years our fertility team at RMACT has become an integral part of the community, says Dr. Leondires, Medical Director at RMACT. We have a connection with our patients, which motivates us to provide the best fertility care possible. Thats what drives us and I believe it is the secret to achieving our impressive pregnancy rates.

RMACT is a leader in the fertility field with a live birth rate significantly higher for women under 35 with thawed, non-donor cycles; RMACT has a live birth rate of 66% (84/127) as compared to 44% nationally, according to the latest report from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART). SART, an independent, non-profit organization responsible for gathering, verifying and distributing data from fertility practices nationwide, released its latest report for all U.S.-based in vitro fertilization (IVF) programs. A full list of data for RMACT and other practices is available at http://www.sart.org. Please note a comparison of clinic success rates may not be meaningful because a patients medical characteristics, treatment approaches and entrance criteria for ART may vary from clinic to clinic.

Unlike most fertility practices, RMACT approaches fertility care by treating the whole patient. Before embarking on medically advanced assisted reproductive technologies such as genetic screening and in vitro fertilization (IVF), the RMACT team encourages patients to improve their overall health. Factors such as body mass index (BMI), blood sugar levels and stress or anxiety can affect hormone production and reproductive health. RMACT offers a robust nutrition program, support groups, acupuncture, yoga, emotional support, complimentary classes and counseling  for individuals and couples  through its Integrated Fertility and Wellness Program.

About Reproductive Medicine Associates of Connecticut (RMACT)

RMACT specializes in the treatment of infertility, including assisted reproductive technologies (ART) such as intrauterine insemination (IUI), in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and Comprehensive Chromosome Screening (SelectCCS). RMACT, Fairfield Countys largest fertility clinic and egg donation center, is one of 11 leading In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) centers nationwide chosen by In Vitro Sciences to participate in its Centers of Excellence program. RMACT has offices in Norwalk, Danbury, Stamford and Trumbull, and an affiliate New York fertility clinics serving Putnam and Dutchess counties. RMACT also offers infertility treatment financing and support services, such as nutrition counseling, massage therapy, psychological counseling, acupuncture and yoga, through RMACTs Integrated Fertility and Wellness Center.

The RMACT team includes lead physicians Drs. Mark P. Leondires, Spencer S. Richlin and Joshua M. Hurwitz, as well as fertility specialists Drs. Cynthia M. Murdock and Shaun C. Williams. All five physicians are Board-Certified Reproductive Endocrinologists and are members of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) and the Fairfield County and Connecticut Medical Societies. Each has received numerous awards, and all five are Castle Connolly "Top Doctors." RMACTs IVF laboratory is accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP), and CLIA; other accreditations include the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) and the American Institute for Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM). For more information visit http://www.RMACT.com or find us on Facebook.

# # #
Edventures - Analyzing the Transformation of Higher Educatioin According to Richard Garrett, Eduventures Chief Research Officer, By nearly every measure, 2016 will be another challenging year for higher education.

Eduventures, Inc., the leading research and advisory firm that is focused exclusively on analyzing the forces that are transforming higher education, today revealed its top predictions for 2016, providing perspective on long-term industry trends and highlighting new themes that will play an cimportant role in the future of higher education.

According to Richard Garrett, Eduventures Chief Research Officer, The year 2016 will be another challenging one higher education. Traditional age enrollment is flat, and adult numbers are down. Even online enrollment is now confined to single digit growth. Regulators, students and employers want greater transparency from higher education, and alternative providers are winning influence. In this environment, colleges with strong brands and a willingness to grow, and niche players with a distinct offering the market values, will thrive. Our analysts predictions span online proctoring, CRM adoption, OER (Open Education Resources) and teacher preparation programs. We look forward to continuing to help our clients- higher education institutions and education companies- make decisions that will optimize opportunity and mitigate risk in coming year.

Eduventure analysts have highlighted five predictions for 2016:



Enrollment & Institutions: Flat overall enrollments among traditional-age learners and ongoing decline among adults and online enrollment now up only in the single digits signal another challenging year for many colleges and small, private institutions in particular. The number of high school graduates peaked back in 2009 and will be flat at best for the next decade. Adult demographics are positive, but enrollment is counter-cyclical. Short of another recession, colleges will have to work extra hard to grow adult student numbers. Online enrollment is still a bright spot, but the market is ever more crowded, as colleges of all types turn to online to make up for poor performance elsewhere.

Overall, this enrollment environment favors well branded institutions that are willing to grow and niche players with a distinct message that the market values. Other institutions will need to increase financial aid allocations further yet to meet their enrollment goals and make renewed efforts in retention to make up for revenue shortfalls. We expect to see increased merger activity among non-profit colleges, if tempered by constituent resistance. Additionally, institutional credit rating downgrades will increase 25% year-over-year, particularly among private colleges with enrollments below 1,000 students. Look for double-digit growth in the number of public-private partnershipssuch as with online program management firms or international student pathway companiesas colleges seek to monetize their assets and raise much needed capital.

We also expect alternatives and complements to traditional degree programs (e.g., boot camps, competency-based education), touting faster, cheaper programs and enhanced employability to accelerate. The U.S. Department of Educations new experimental sites initiative, to kick off this year, will offer participating providers access to federal aid. Just possibly another major for-profit institution will go bankrupt, trapped by regulator scrutiny, crashing enrollment and loss of investor confidence.

Technology: The market for online proctoring is poised to go mainstream in 2016. Eduventures market analysis suggests that about 1,000 universities and colleges currently use some form of online proctoring, about a quarter of the total. A majority of institutions now offer at least a few online degrees, not to mention hybrid programs and online courses. Concerns about student cheating, closer scrutiny of student assessment, and the cost advantages over in-person solutions point to a bigger role for online proctoring. We expect the number of institutions using any form of online proctoring to increase from 1,000 in 2015 to 2,000 in 2016, hitting about 50% of the market. Testing centers without institutional relationships will account for another 1,000-2,000 sites. Providers will consolidate or collaborate to provide comprehensive menus of online proctoring options, including fully live, record-and-review, fully automated, and in-person options. Eduventures will publish more analysis on this market in 2016.



Open Educational Resources (OER): For a number of years, many have predicted that OER was about to reach a tipping point. In reality, adoption has been slow and piecemeal. Many institutions encourage faculty to consider OER, but faculty adoption is still in the single digits. The logic of OERcost reduction for students and institutions compared to commercial resourcesis hampered by decentralized production, distribution, and selection. Theres also the not-invented-here syndrome. Many faculty like the idea of OER in theory but for other peoples courses.

In 2015, University of Maryland University College, a large adult and online-centric institution, became the first major American university to replace 100% of undergraduate textbooks with no-cost digital resources. Graduate courses will follow suit in 2016. This bold move sets the stage for OER to (finally) become mainstream. If UMUC can convince the market that OER is not only a major financial benefit but also results in a higher quality student experience, prospective students will take notice. If UMUC can show it can run a more efficient operation with OER and redeploy resources, then competitors will have to respond.

Advancement: Its a safe bet that general alumni giving participation will tick down another notch in 2016. That has been the pattern for at least a decade. The proportion of alumni who say they donated to their alma mater is now barely in double digits. A wide range of good causes are competing for the attention of alumni. This is good news for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system companies touting software designed to reach a wider swathe of contacts, develop richer profiles, and fine-tune outreach. Based on Eduventures data, large development offices are leading the way in making a switch, with 40% having implemented a new CRM in the past five years. Only 8% of mid-sized development offices and 6% of small development offices have incorporated a new CRM system, suggesting a great opportunity for institutions and CRM vendors if a compelling case can be made for investment. Eduventures predicts that as much as 10% of all colleges will seek to acquire a new CRM system in 2016. Vendors will boost sales if they can speak to the integration of different CRM systems across campus rather than add to the clamor of disparate databases and help institutions make best use of the software.

Teacher Education: In 2016, teacher preparation will be at the heart of state-level education policy decisions. The new Every Student Succeeds act gives states significant flexibility on routes to teacher preparation. Add to this the Gates Foundations funding in this area, and we expect to see a shift in licensing requirements for teachersand principalsin 2016. The high cost of tuition, the level of preparation needed for success in the classroom, and teachers low pay will push states to further favor alternative teacher preparation options. While the average school or college of education awarded nearly 70% of its degrees in teacher preparation a decade ago, this figure will fall to 60% in 2016, excluding special education and adult education. In response, schools of education will do more to experiment with alternative models, blurring the lines between approaches. The next few years will be a matter of trial and error, but eventually the pendulum will swing back in support of those models that emerge as most effective.

For additional information about these predictions or to arrange a one-on-one briefing, please contact Ellen Slaby at eslaby(at)eduventures(dot)com.

About Eduventures

Eduventures is the leading research and advisory firm that is focused exclusively on analyzing the forces that are transforming higher education. Building on twenty years of success in working with education leaders, Eduventures provides forward-looking and actionable research based on proprietary market data, and advisory services that support both strategic and operational decision-making. Our recommendations and personalized support enable clients to understand the top traits of leaders in critical disciplines and to evaluate the opportunities presented by new technologies. For more information about Eduventures research, practice areas and team, visit us at http://www.eduventures.com.
The new location is an extraordinary facility, designed to meet the needs of every patient, staff member and colleague of San Diego Fertility Center.

San Diego Fertility Center (SDFC) is proud to announce the official opening of their brand new, 13,700 square foot facility located next door to the current Carmel Valley/Del Mar clinic. The new building will house a full range of fertility treatment services, advanced technology, and community/educational programs that will help better serve their growing patient population.

Over the past few years, SDFC has experienced tremendous growth, including a marked increase in international fertility patients from Europe and Asia. The new facility was designed to meet the needs of both local patients and the global community, and boasts:



A CAP-accredited (College of American Pathologists), state-of-the-art IVF laboratory with a full glass window for viewing

Two floors of clinic space, with the first floor specially designed for educational enrichment activities and support services for both small and large groups

A state-of-the-art surgical center that is AAAHC-accredited (Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care) and Medicare certified

A dramatic increase in space in all exam rooms, consultation rooms, and patient education areas to allow for expanded clinical appointment availability

Teaching facilities with conference and classroom space as well as a viewing areas and integrated monitors to enable observation and collaboration

An industry-leading air handling and monitoring system that offers pristine air quality in the entire building

The facility also offers a serene location just 25 minutes from San Diego International Airport, and is easily accessible to San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange Counties. This also includes the communities of La Jolla, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Encinitas, Murrieta, Temecula and Inland Empire.

The new location is an extraordinary facility, designed to meet the needs of every patient, staff member and colleague of San Diego Fertility Center. Our new facility's warm, private and comfortable environment provides an ideal experience for all members of the fertility community, says Lisa Van Dolah, CEO of San Diego Fertility Center.

SDFC is recognized as one of the top fertility clinics worldwide for fertility treatment, including IVF, IUI, surrogacy, egg donations, egg freezing and LGBT family building. This new facility will help better serve those who are seeking treatment outside of their home city or region, and will also more fully support the influx of overseas patients who are traveling for fertility treatment and third-party reproductive services in the U.S.

Dr. Michael Kettel, F.A.C.O.G., noted that At SDFC we are privileged to be able to help so many people from around the world who want to become parents. We are all excited about the new facility because it allows us to provide the latest in cutting edge technology, and has the space we need to allow us to support even more patients than before.

SDFC believes that their continued growth is evidence of the special attention and care provided at their practice. Their doctors have 70+ years of combined experience in fertility diagnosis and treatment. They are currently the leading provider of fertility care in the San Diego area and are excited to add this new facility to their practice.

About San Diego Fertility Center

Located in Southern California, San Diego Fertility Center (SDFC) is an internationally recognized fertility treatment center. SDFCs infertility specialists are named among the top fertility doctors by a variety of publications, and are leaders in IVF (in vitro fertilization), egg donation, egg freezing, ICSI, male infertility and PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis).

SDFCs passion is to encourage fertility clinic patients to hold on to their dreams by creating miracles every day. They are also committed to offering cutting edge technology in a private and personal environment using intelligence, integrity, and innovation. The center is easily accessible from local communities including La Jolla and Carlsbad or points further like Murrieta and Temecula. SDFC also welcomes out-of-state patients and provides fertility tourism and fertility travel accommodations for patients all over the world. For more information, visit http://www.sdfertility.com/.
The print component of Fighting the Flu is distributed within USA Today in the New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas and South Florida markets with a circulation of 250,000 copies to an estimated readership of 750,000. Its digital component was distributed nationally through a vast social media strategy, and across a network of top news sites and partner outlets. To explore the digital campaign, click here.

Fighting the Flu encourages readers to get their flu shots annually to increase their chances of staying healthy. As a doctor, scientist, a son, husband and father, I believe that the value of influenza vaccination is indisputable and more people should get vaccinated, says Daniel B. Jernigan, Director of the CDCs Influenza Division. Jernigan does warn, however, that the vaccine effectiveness can be lower in certain people, or against viruses that are different from the vaccine virus.

Also among the campaign partners is five-time U.S. National Dancing Champion and Dancing with the Stars professional Karina Smirnoff. When Smirnoff and many of her fellow cast-mates tested positive for the flu 2 years ago, she decided to do everything she could to ensure that she remained healthy for seasons to come. If people around me are fighting the flu, I will cut open a lime or lemon, the Mirror-Ball trophy winner shares, mentioning its often the simplest thingslike getting a good nights restthat add up to a healthy winter.

Fighting the Flu also highlights how sickness can affect patients in different stages of life. March of Dimes shares about the flu shots importance during pregnancy to keep both mother and newborn healthy. Meanwhile, the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases shares about the complications flu can cause for the elderly, if not treated properly.

The campaign was made possible with the support of the CDC, National Foundation of Infectious Diseases, Staples, Teladoc, Rite-Aid, Immunization Action Coalition, March of Dimes, Karina Smirnoff, Bath & Body Works, Bare Bones, Families Fighting Flu, MedStar Visiting Nurse Association, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, International Association of Sleep Products, Progresso Soup and ServiceMaster.

About Mediaplanet

Mediaplanet is the leading independent publisher of content-marketing campaigns covering a variety of topics and industries. We turn consumer interest into action by providing readers with motivational editorial, pairing it with relevant advertisers and distributing it within top newspapers and online platforms around the world.
Premier Li Keqiang rode on a solar-powered electric car in Shanxi Tsinghua Holdings Innovation Base in Taiyuan on January 5, 2016.

Premier Li Keqiang rode on a solar-powered electric car in Shanxi Tsinghua Holdings Innovation Base in Taiyuan on January 5, 2016. Learning that the vehicle was invented by Shanxi locals, and that its capability to transfer solar power is highly above average, Li said, Innovation is everywhere.

Premier Li Keqiang with startup owners

Li reassured the startup owners in the base that Chinese market has great potential and promising perspective, and the government will build convenient and effective platforms for their enterprises.

The Premier inspired the young entrepreneurs with the spirit of Shanxi merchants, who rose to become very much influential in Ming and Qing Dynasty in China. Li said that young entrepreneurs should use their ideas, instead of relying on local natural resources, just like Shanxi merchants did.

Premier Li Keqiang inspired the young entrepreneurs.
Bielat Santore & Company is ready to launch their 10th tip in the Restaurant Tip of the Month series: Preparing to Sell Your Restaurant. This final video and blog post provides restaurant owners with guidelines for preparing their businesses for sale. The tip will be released this week on the companys sponsored Jersey Beats & Eats blog page and YouTube channel (http://www.jerseybeatseats.blogspot.com/ or http://www.youtube.com/BeatsandEatsNJ)

Previous tips in the series include: choosing the right restaurant location, developing a business plan, financing your restaurant, restaurant design and layout, menu and pricing; the importance of the employee manual; restaurant equipment; reviewing and maintaining your business plan; and managing working capital.

This is the final tip in the series. If you have missed any of the previous tips and would like a complete copy of the entire Restaurant Tip of the Month series, contact Courtney Ciandella at 732.531.4200 or email your request directly to her at courtney(at)123bsc(dot)com.

About Bielat Santore & Company

Bielat Santore & Company is an established commercial real estate firm. The companys expertise lies chiefly within the restaurant and hospitality industry, specializing in the sale of restaurants and other food and beverage real estate businesses. Since 1978, the principals of Bielat Santore & Company, Barry Bielat and Richard Santore, have sold more restaurants and similar type properties in New Jersey than any other real estate company. Furthermore, the firm has secured in excess of $500,000,000 in financing to facilitate these transactions. Visit the companys website, http://www.123bsc.com for the latest in new listings, property searches, available land, market data, financing trends, RSS feeds, press releases and more.
Our new COO, Chad Witcher, is a game changer for our companies and the clients we serve.

Neon Workforce Technologiesparent company of TaxBreak, Smart Suite and Terra HRtoday announced that Chad Witcher has been named Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Partner, effective immediately. As COO, Chad has responsibility for all of Neons operating units nationwide and will report directly to the President and Chief Executive Officer, Shannon Scott.

As a veteran executive of ADP, Chad provided leadership and expertise to clients both big and small for more than 17 years, including well-known brands like Walmart, Kelly Services, FedEx, UPS, Lowes, Publix, Darden Restaurants, and McDonalds.

With Chad weve added a leader to our management team who is second to none in the industry, said Shannon Scott, Neon Workforce Technologies President and CEO. Chads successful track record of establishing premier client relationships is a game changer for our companies and the clients we serve. We are excited to take the performance of each of these companies to the next level.

Explore the Neon Workforce Technology family of companies and see which one can help meet your HR compliance and tax incentive needs. Visit NeonSmart.com today.

About Neon Workforce Technologies

Neon Workforce Technologies creates workforce management solutions that serve more than 17,000 clients in 75,000 locations nationwide. From tax credit expertise to HR compliance automation for employers and insurance brokers, Neon has a software platform to meet a diversified array of business needs that improve productivity and profitability while streamlining daily tasks. Each brand forms a unique value proposition that compliments and integrates with the sister companies: TaxBreak, Smart Suite and Terra HR. Visit NeonSmart.com to see which company can help meet your needs.
Ahmed Pahlovy, PhD Dr. Pahlovy has been working as an Expert Research and Development Engineer for Dynax Corporation Japan since 2011.

SAE International announces that Shahjada Ahmed Pahlovy, PhD, Expert Research Engineer with Dynax Corporation, is the winner of the Subir Chowdhury Medal of Quality Leadership.

Dr. Pahlovy will receive the award during the SAE 2016 World Congress, which will be held April 12-14 in Detroit.

The Chowdhury Medal honors those in the mobility industry who bring forth innovation and broaden the impact of quality in mobility engineering, design and manufacturing. This prestigious award recognizes the mobility professions benefits to society through quality in engineering. The award is named for Subir Chowdhury, who is Chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group. Chowdhury, an SAE Fellow, is also the author of Global Quality Awareness, a Subir & Malini Chowdhury Foundation initiative.

Dr. Pahlovy has been working as an Expert Research and Development Engineer for Dynax Corporation Japan since 2011. Before, he served as an Assistant Professor and Post Doc Researcher at Tokyo University of Science, Japan from 2008-2011.

He introduced a new term called 3S (Save materials, Save energy and Save environment) in the automotive transmission clutch industry. He developed an analytical model to predict the drag torque characteristics of disengaged wet clutches of transmission. His key research areas are R&D of low fuel consumption transmission clutch disk; CFD Simulation and modeling; and green nano tribology: reduction of friction loss by DLC coating, micro/nano patterning or structuring.

Dr. Pahlovy has published more than 32 research papers, delivered more than 25 talks in 17 international conferences, and received several awards and scholarships from Japan, China, India, USA, UAE and Spain. He is a regular reviewer of SAE International Journal and JVST-B, and member of SAE International, ASME, CSME and JSPE. He obtained his bachelors, masters and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from universities in Bangladesh, China and Japan respectively.

SAE International is a global association committed to being the ultimate knowledge source for the engineering profession. By uniting over 137,000 engineers and technical experts, we drive knowledge and expertise across a broad spectrum of industries. We act on two priorities: encouraging a lifetime of learning for mobility engineering professionals and setting the standards for industry engineering. We strive for a better world through the work of our philanthropic SAE Foundation, including programs like A World in Motion and the Collegiate Design Series.

http://www.sae.org
Through this leadership expansion, we will continue the record growth of our firm. In 2015, our firm doubled and we expect continued strong growth in 2016

Blue Ridge Partners, a management consulting firm exclusively focused on helping companies accelerate profitable revenue growth, announced that Chris Madaus has joined the firm as a Managing Director and the promotion effective January 1, 2016 of three new Managing Directors and a new Principal in the leadership team.

Chris Madaus recently joined the firm as Managing Director in Boston. Previously Chris was a Group VP in the Marketing Department at The Walgreen Company, the President of Yacobian Group, an enterprise software company and the Head of Marketing for Staples, Inc. in Europe. Earlier he was with Bain & Company for eight years, primarily in their Private Equity Practice, where he focused on growth strategy and due diligence engagements.

Hank Boye, new Managing Director in Boston, joined the firm from Mass Insight, a research and strategy consulting firm where he was Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. Earlier Hank was Executive Vice President, Information Solutions and Media, at HCPro. Including his years with McKinsey & Company, he has worked extensively with content and information businesses across traditional/digital media and information services, healthcare, education, and professional services sectors.

Kevin Berger, new Managing Director in Chicago, joined the firm five years ago from SAIC in McLean, VA where he was a Senior Business Consultant. Prior to SAIC, he was an Engagement Manager for Oliver Wyman (formerly Mercer Management Consulting), where he led revenue enhancement projects for clients in a variety of industries. Kevin begin his business career as a management consultant with PwC Consulting.

Mike Anglin, new Managing Director in Chicago, joined the firm three years ago. His previous career included several senior corporate positions including COO of ICAP Patent Brokerage, LLC. and Vice President of Rewards Network with responsibilities for product development/research, product management, and business development areas. Mike also worked at KPMG Consulting for seven years where he was the Manager for the Financial Services and Public Services lines of business.

In addition, Rodrigo Navarro joins the leadership team as a Principal in Los Angeles. Rodrigos 15 year business career includes consulting, private equity, mergers and acquisitions and leading a family-owned business. He was with McKinsey & Company and then in leadership positions in the M&A and Private Equity areas of a Mexico City-based bank. He has served companies in the oil and gas, healthcare, retail, financial services and public sectors.

"We are pleased to welcome Chris to our firm and to recognize the continued professional development of Hank, Kevin, Mike, and Rodrigo and their outstanding service to our clients. Through this leadership expansion, we will continue the record growth of our firm. In 2015, our firm doubled and we expect continued strong growth in 2016, said Jim Corey, Blue Ridge Partners' Managing Partner.

About Blue Ridge Partners:Blue Ridge Partners is a management consulting firm exclusively focused on helping companies accelerate profitable revenue growth. We have worked with more than 350 middle market and large cap clients to improve their strategic understanding of markets and customers, deepen and expand their customer relationships and enhance marketing and sales performance. Our clients include over 65 private equity firms  both during deal evaluation/ due diligence and post-acquisition. We have a reputation for delivering measurable impact quickly and efficiently. For more information, visit http://www.blueridgepartners.com.
Award-winning heavy-duty truck handle

A hydroformed stainless steel truck grab handle manufactured by East Tennesseebased metal fabricator Mills Products Incorporated has won the 2015 Paccar Inventors Award. The grab handle competed against submissions from Paccars global staff of 22,000 in the annual competition to identify the most inventive project of the year.

A popular option on Paccar trucks since its launch in March 2014, the hydroformed stainless steel grab handle significantly reduces wind noise compared to the standard grab handle offered on Paccar trucks, is equipped with contoured finger grips to aid drivers getting in and out of the cab, and can withstand over 4,000 lbs. of pull force, exceeding the OEMs requirements by more than three times.

Mills contributed to the project by helping develop the design and by providing the manufacturing method  tubular hydroforming  that made its realization possible. Millss tubular hydroforming expertise not only facilitated the products noise-reducing aerodynamic shape and contoured finger grips, it also consolidated productions tooling requirements into a single step, reducing Paccars overall tooling costs for the project by 32 percent.

Visit http://www.millsproducts.com to learn more about Mills Productss manufacturing work for the heavy truck industry and the companys advanced expertise with hydroforming, roll forming, and tubular stamping.

About Mills Products Incorporated

Mills Products is a Tennessee-based turnkey metal fabricator with a reputation for producing superior parts and making existing components stronger, lighter, and more affordable. With facilities in middle Tennessee and northern Mexico, Mills offers hydroforming, tubular stamping, roll forming, and finishing services. An industry leader since 1945, Mills Products was the first metalforming manufacturer to use hydroforming technology for appliance manufacturing. The company continues its legacy of creative innovation today from its headquarters in Athens, Tenn.

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Data Optimization Seminar Seminar brings leading authorities together to explore the ways in which leveraging new technologies can accomplish these federated searches to meet todays data requirements.

Netmail, the experts in compliance and data management for Microsoft Exchange, today announced a complimentary upcoming seminar on Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 8:15 A.M. PST on Data Optimization.

During the seminar, special guests Steve Conn, MSFT MCA, Benjamin Wright, a leading authority on privacy, electronic law, and forensic investigations, and Phil Van Etten, CEO of Netmail, will discuss new trends in data archiving, federated search, eDiscovery, and Microsoft Exchange 2016 data migration strategies.

In this seminar, learn how to:



Leverage New Data Transport Models: Listen to Steve Conn, MSFT MCA, explain the benefits of Exchange 2016 and the right time to migrate.

Retain Only the Data You Need: Hear Benjamin Wright, leading data retention attorney, discuss data retention policies to ensure you keep only the data you need.

Plan for the Future of Your Data: Understand the latest thinking and approaches on capturing and archiving all enterprise data in multiple clouds with Phil Van Etten, Netmail CEO.

According to Netmail CEO, Phil Van Etten, "The historical ways that organizations have stored, secured and accessed data are no longer adequate for todays enterprises. Most organizations have data located on premise and with multiple clouds and they need a solution that can seamlessly search data across multiple platforms with accurate results and analytics. This seminar brings leading authorities together to explore the ways in which leveraging new technologies can accomplish these federated searches to meet todays data requirements.

There will be plenty of time for questions, answers and open discussion. So come share ideas, mingle with peers, listen to the experts, and enjoy a hearty American breakfast courtesy of Netmail.

If youre interested in learning more about the future of data management, register today for Netmails Data Optimization Seminar on Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 8:15 A.M. PST.

About Netmail

Netmail provides on-premise or cloud-based security, archiving and file share solutions across multiple platforms including Microsoft Exchange/O365, Google, Amazon, and GroupWise. As companies spread their data across multiple cloud platforms, Netmail allows for simple consolidation of all that data into a single repository with singular indexing and eDiscovery features.
iFunding Real estate crowdfunding is a new way investors are finding they can build their wealth. With financial experts guiding iFunding on how to mix disruptive ideas with investment best practices, together we will define the industry and iFundings success.

With a new year to look forward to, iFunding, Americas largest commercial real estate crowdfunding platform, announces strategic developments for 2016. Today, the company releases that part of its plan for headway this year includes an expert advisory board made up of professionals from the financial services industry, including seasoned professionals with significant experience in real estate, venture capital, and peer-to-peer lending. The formation of this board will enable iFunding to further build the organizations success and growth under the leadership of accomplished thought leaders.

The new iFunding board members include Jason Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Cardinal Rose Group; Alicia Syrett, Founder and CEO of Pantigrion; Greg Weingast, Executive Vice President for Van Metre Companies; and William Sipple, Executive Managing Director of HVS Capital Corporation.

Jason Jones is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cardinal Rose Group, who owns and operates the LendIt Conference, NSR Invest, and Lend Academy Media. Jason is a serial entrepreneur, and a trusted advisor of iMENA Holdings and AlphaClone. Jason is a thought leader in technology, and has a deep understanding for how the industry works.

Alicia Syrett is the Founder and CEO of Pantegrion Capital, LLC. Alicia was named as one of Wharton's "40 Under 40" young alumni by Wharton Magazine. She has been featured on CNBCs Cash Crowd and Power Pitch, Fox Businesss Risk & Reward, MSNBCs Your Business, Inc., Associated Press, Huffington Post, and USA Today.

William Sipple is an Executive Managing Director of HVS Capital Corporation. He is a seasoned real estate investment leader with a track record across deal production, revenue increases, bottom-line improvement, cost control and relationship development. Previously, William held positions at Index Consulting Group, Carlson Hotels Worldwide, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

Greg Weingast is the Executive Vice President for Van Metre Companies and Principal of Rock Creek Capital Partners. Weingast focuses on acquisitions and structured finance in commercial and multi-family real estate. He previously worked as Executive Vice President at Archstone, where he oversaw organization-wide investments.

There are many exciting things to come this year. By creating the advisory board with seasoned professionals like Jason, Alicia, Greg and William, we are investing in the future of iFunding, William Skelley, Founder and CEO, states, Real estate crowdfunding is a new way investors are finding they can build their wealth. With financial experts guiding iFunding on how to mix disruptive ideas with investment best practices, together we will define the industry and iFundings success.

About iFunding

iFunding is a leading real estate crowdfunding platform, facilitating debt and preferred equity fundraising for properties range from multi-family residences and condominium estates, to apartment towers, hotels and resorts, single-family homes, retail locations, malls, offices, mixed-use buildings, and more. iFunding provides opportunities for accredited investors to invest in institutional-quality real estate deals, with a minimum investment of just $5,000. The company oversees deals throughout their lifespan, providing extensive information and transparency to give investors insight and oversight into their investments. It also generates financing for multi-project funds, and partners with family offices to co-fund opportunities with its individual investors. We offer flexible financing terms to real estate developers. Visit http://www.ifunding.co for more information, or connect with us on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/innovational-funding, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/iFunding , or via @inno_funding on Twitter. The phone number for investor and operator inquiries is 844-367-4386.

iFunding Contact:

Leslie Cottle

Marketing

844-367-4386 ext.3
Best and Brightest We thrive when our employees are satisfied, which is why we are committed to putting our employees first and helping facilitate their professional and personal well-being

RiseSmart, a Randstad company and the leading provider of contemporary career transition services, was named one of the nation's Best and Brightest Companies to Work For. The top distinction, presented by the National Association for Business Resources (NABR), celebrates organizations that display a commitment to excellence in their human resources practices and employee enrichment.

The Best and Brightest identifies and honors the most influential, trend-setting companies across the country and regionally in focused programs. Best and Brightests national winners are assessed based on various categories, such as communication, work-life balance, employee education, diversity, recognition and retention. In addition to receiving this national award, RiseSmart has also been recognized over the past two years as one of the San Francisco Bay Areas 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.

It is an honor to be recognized nationally as one of the best and brightest places to work, said Sanjay Sathe, President and CEO at RiseSmart. We thrive when our employees are satisfied, which is why we are committed to putting our employees first and helping facilitate their professional and personal well-being.

This year RiseSmart also earned a distinction as a Best Workplace for Women by Great Place to Work and Fortune.

For the list of the nations Best and Brightest Companies to Work For, click here.

About the Best and Brightest Programs

The Best and Brightest Companies to Work For competition identifies and honors organizations that display a commitment to excellence in operations and employee enrichment that lead to increased productivity and financial performance. This competition scores potential winners based on regional data of company performance and a set standard across the nation. This national program celebrates those companies that are making better business, creating richer lives and building a stronger community as a whole. There are numerous regional celebrations throughout the country.

About RiseSmart

RiseSmart, a Randstad company, is a leading provider of contemporary career transition services that strengthen employer brands, improve retention and re-engage talent. RiseSmart's contemporary approach to outplacement combines personalized services from trained professionals with unmatched technology delivered through a convenient, cloud-based platform. High-performing organizations in more than 40 industries rely on RiseSmarts outplacement solution to help former employees find new jobs faster. Landing rates exceeding 80 percent and time-to-placement averages more than 60 percent faster than national averages have helped make RiseSmart the nations fastest-growing outplacement firm. RiseSmart's innovative approach to human capital management has earned the company a wide range of awards and recognition from organizations including Bersin by Deloitte, the Best in Biz, Gartner Inc., the Golden Bridge Awards, GreatRated!, LAROCQUE, the Momentum Index, Red Herring, the San Francisco Business Times, SiliconIndia, the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, the Stevie Awards and TIE. Additionally, RiseSmarts outplacement solution has earned the exclusive endorsement of the American Hospital Association. For more information, visit http://www.risesmart.com.
2016 January Thaw Sale

The January Thaw Sale at Bretz RV & Marine, which features huge savings on select RVs and Boats, will include inventory discounted up to 50% off their regular price. It is an excellent time for those looking to purchase an RV or boat at an affordable price.

With over 9 million households now owning an RV in the US, and such a wide variety of brands to choose from, deciding which type of RV or boat to purchase can often make the overall experience feel overwhelming. Bretz RV & Marine can help you choose the right RV or boat for your specific wants and needs. Whether it is a weekend getaway, family vacation, or a day on the lake, Bretz RV & Marine is committed to providing personalized customer service and ensuring that your RV dreams come to life.

When my family purchased their first RV, it was a huge deal, and people rarely bought RVs back then, so I know how scary it can be for first time RV owners. Thats why at Bretz RV & Marine, we really try to get to know our customers before we explore different options. The January Thaw Sale is one way we can help first time RV owners to find the perfect RV without going over a certain budget. And for current RV owners who know what they want, we are always happy to help in whatever way possible, said company president Mark Bretz.

Here is a sneak peek at some of the RV selections on sale during the January Thaw Sale between Jan. 4 and Jan. 31:

Missoula



2016 Keystone Cougar 19RBEWE: $19,995 (Regular price: $29,736)

Save 50% on the 2003 Dutchmen Aerolite Cub 20: Sale price at $8,497

Billings

2015 Keystone Alpine 3510RE: $59,995 (Regular price: $94,039)

2015 SmokerCraft Pro Angler 172: $22,995 (Regular price: $30,489)

Boise

Save 50% on the 2014 Little Guy Worldwide 5 Wide: Sale price at $6,998

2013 Thor ACE 29.1: $52,826 (Regular price: $79,995)

About Bretz RV & Marine:

Bretz RV & Marine first started in 1965 when Frank and Vi Bretz brought their first Aloha Trailer and began operating a service station in Missoula. Eventually passing on ownership to their two sons Mark and Dave, the family-owned dealership now boasts over 55 years of experience and a location on North Reserve with a recently expanded 20,000 square foot showroom. Today, Bretz RV & Marine currently has three different locations in Missoula, Boise, and Billings. Also, the dealership is proudly recognized as the largest RV & Boat Dealer in Montana, Idaho, Eastern Washington, Wyoming and the Dakotas. Equipped with an extensive selection of RV and Marine vehicles, 26 fully equipped service bays, a dump station, Parts and Body shop, 99cent propane, and the dealership in Montana with the most RVDA technicians under one roof, Bretz RV & Marine continues to set the highest standards in customer service.

Explore and Share:

Keep updated on Bretz RV & Marine news, and join in on the fun during our January Thaw Sale and through the 2016 year.

Facebook: Like our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/bretzrvandmarine.

Twitter: Follow @BretzRV or hashtag #BretzRV.

Pinterest: Follow our RV, Boat, and Travel themed boards at http://www.pinterest.com/bretzrv/

Youtube: Subscribe to our Youtube channel MontanaRVDealer.

For more information on Bretz RV & Marine, please visit http://www.bretzrv.com or check out our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/bretzrvandmarine.
Rino Aldrighetti, Pulmonary Hypertension Association CEO, will retire in 2016 as association marks 25th anniversary. In a little more than two decades, as a team of patients, caregivers, clinicians, researchers, fundraisers and volunteers, PHA has seen great progress in the areas of patient care, public awareness and PH research.

Since Rino Aldrighetti joined the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) as the first paid staff member in 1999, the national nonprofit has grown to include more than 50 staff members with four chapters around the country. As he approaches retirement in 2016, which coincides with PHAs 25th anniversary, Aldrighetti is reflecting on the associations contributions to advancing care for pulmonary hypertension (PH) patients and their caregivers.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH), which some people call the other high blood pressure, is increased blood pressure in the blood vessels of the lungs that puts pressure on the right side of the heart and can lead to death from heart failure.

PHA is a national nonprofit that relies on donations to fund its many programs, including the nations largest PH patient and caregiver support group network, lifesaving early diagnosis awareness and education programs, specialty care resources, and research to find ways to prevent and cure PH. For 12 consecutive years, the association has received the highest rating  four stars  for fiscal accountability and transparency from Charity Navigator, placing it in the top 1 percent of all rated charities.

PHA, which serves as a model for more than 70 international PH organizations, represents a community of patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals and scientists who are guided by PHAs mission and rooted in its humble beginnings. Three PH patients and a caregiver founded PHA Jan. 12, 1991, as they met at a kitchen table in Florida with the mission of ending isolation and extending the lives of people affected by PH. Today, that kitchen table sits in a conference room at PHAs national headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.

If you look at the four founders around the kitchen table, what you really had was a microcosm of what PHA is today. Four women  three patients, one caregiver, Aldrighetti said. Two of those women were medical professionals (nurses). Two of them had PAH [the most common form of PH], one of them had CTEPH [a rare form of the disease caused by old blood clots in the lungs] and the other was a caregiver. They described themselves as a patient organization, but they were also very open to and actively reached out to the medical community for their involvement.

Aldrighetti recalls his job interview 17 years ago with Bonnie Dukart, a PH patient who learned she had the disease while attending Cornell University. She told him she kept her diagnosis a secret for 10 years until she finally visited the PHA support group closest to her home, which at the time was 800 miles away in Chicago. She said when she walked in the door and saw seven other patients, her life changed, and she became very active in PHA.

I immediately got a sense of the isolation that existed for people with this disease at the time, Aldrighetti said. Later, when I went to my first Board of Trustees meeting, three women walked in about the same time  all with oxygen tanks. During the course of the day, people said things like, You know, this decision may not help me, but it will help other people. It will help patients in the future. I thought to myself, these people are heroes. What I came to understand is that survivability for patients without treatment was less than three years. In 1999, there was only one treatment, and it had been approved for quality of life rather than extension of life.

Aldrighetti said he knew he could make a difference for PHA. As the organization marks its 25th anniversary, members will honor Aldrighetti among the 25 individuals and groups recognized as PHA Periwinkle Pioneers for their contributions to the associations successes since its founding.

In a little more than two decades, as a team of patients, caregivers, clinicians, researchers, fundraisers and volunteers, PHA has seen great progress in the areas of patient care, public awareness and PH research, Aldrighetti said. Since PHAs founding, the number of FDA-approved PH treatments has grown from 0 to 14  more than those approved for all but two of the 7,000 identified rare diseases; PHA has made more than $17 million in research commitments for PH research programs; and more than two dozen Pulmonary Hypertension Care Centers [PHCCs] have undergone and completed PHAs new accreditation process.

In December, PHAs new PHCC Board of Directors, made up mostly of PHA Trustees, met for the first time. The centers will provide data for the new Pulmonary Hypertension Association Registry, a major advancement in PH care and research.

PHA is the central source for information about PH. Advances in Pulmonary Hypertension, The Official Journal of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, reaches 40,000 cardiologists, pulmonologists and rheumatologists quarterly, with licensed editions in Spain and India. In addition, PHA distributes its Pathlight magazine to 10,000 patient/caregiver/medical professional members and supporters each quarter. In April 2015, the association launched myPHA, a social network for its community of patients, and in November, to broaden public awareness about the disease, PHA launched Heart2CurePH, a national multi-media public service campaign, which includes radio and TV public service announcements, print ads, billboards, digital ads and public transit advertising.

About the Pulmonary Hypertension Association Headquartered in Silver Spring, Md., with a growing list of chapters across the country, the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) is the countrys leading pulmonary hypertension organization. Its mission is to extend and improve the lives of those affected by PH; its vision is a world without PH, empowered by hope. PHA achieves this by connecting and working together with the entire PH community of patients, families and medical professionals. Among its programs, PHA facilitates more than 245 support groups around the country and delivers continuing education for medical professionals through PHA Online University. For 12 consecutive years, PHA has received the highest rating  four stars  for fiscal accountability and transparency from Charity Navigator, placing it in the top half of 1 percent of all rated charities. For more information, please go to http://www.PHAssociation.org, @PHAssociation on Twitter or http://www.facebook.com/PulmonaryHypertensionAssociation.
TEHRAN, Jan. 4 -- Many countries including world powers on Monday expressed concern over rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as unrest in the Middle East.

Controversy in the wake of the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric by Saudi Arabia was followed by attacks against Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, leading the Kingdom and some of its regional allies to sever ties with Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others over terrorism charges Saturday, sparking protests in Shiite-dominated Iran during which angry mobs stormed and set fire to Saudi Arabia's Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate in the city of Mashhad.

Saudi Arabia announced its dissolution of diplomatic ties with Iran Sunday, requesting all Iranian diplomats depart the country within 48 hours.

Following Saudi's announcement, three Sunni Muslim countries joined the Arab kingdom Monday in severing or downgrading their diplomatic ties with Iran.

Bahrain and Sudan announced they will cut diplomatic relations with Iran Monday, declaring that Tehran interferes in the Arab states' affairs.

In addition, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided to downgrade its diplomatic relations with Iran Monday and reduce the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.

Over and above, Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, announced Monday that Saudi Arabia will cease air traffic with Iran, placing a ban on its citizens from travelling there, reported Al Arabiya local news.

He also said that severing relations covers commercial ties, whereas Iranian pilgrims are always welcome in Saudi Arabia.

Escalated tensions between two key players in the troubled Middle East's political affairs, sparked concerns from various parts of the world.

The European Union (EU) Monday urged concerned parties to act responsibly towards recent events between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the cause of a current strained diplomatic situation between the two countries.

"We expect all regional powers to act responsibly toward this volatile situation," EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini's spokesperson, Catherine Ray, briefed a press conference.

Ray informed reporters the EU would continue to closely monitor the situation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, adding that dialogue was ongoing on all levels with its partners.

Mogherini contacted her Iranian and Saudi counterparts Sunday, advocating for effort from both sides to avoid further escalation of tensions.

The German government also called on Saudi Arabia and Iran Monday to recommence dialogue despite recent souring of diplomatic relations between both countries.

"We support both countries using all possible avenues to improve their relations," said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert.

Seibert stressed that an amicable relationship between the two countries is fundamentally important in resolving the crises in Syria and Yemen, as well as regional stability.

Moreover, France called on both Saudi Arabia and Iran to moderate the escalation of the diplomatic row between the two Middle Eastern powers, a government official said.

Stephane Le Foll, France's government spokesman, said "France anticipates a de-escalation of tensions" between Riyadh and Tehran.

"France entreats both sides to curtail tensions. We must be observant of Saudi and Iranian relations," Le Foll said.

China voiced concern Monday over the dispute between Iran and Saudi Arabia, calling on both countries to practice self-restraint.

"China is paying close attention to the developing situation, and is concerned over escalating regional conflict resulting from the dispute," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a press briefing.

"We hope all concerned parties can boost anti-terrorism dialogue and cooperation. We also hope the security and dignity of diplomats and missions can be ensured," Hua said.

She called on both sides to control themselves, show restraint and properly resolve disputes through dialogue and consultations in order to maintain regional peace and stability.

In response to the calls, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Hossein Jaber Ansari, said Monday that Iran is not interested in causing tensions with Saudi Arabia.

"The Islamic republic has no interest in tension and conflict neither in its domestic nor international policies, and has no intent in having tense relations with Saudi Arabia," Jaber Ansari said in his weekly press conference.

Jaber Ansari said the Islamic republic respects international conventions and protects diplomats and diplomatic missions.

He added that with respect to the attacks on the Saudi mission in Iran, Iranian police and judiciary have done their best to control the situation and officially deal with the perpetrators.

However, "Although everything was under control and there was no threat against Saudi diplomats in Iran, the Saudi government decided to sever ties," he said.

Tehran's Prosecutor General, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said Sunday that police forces arrested 40 protestors who raided the Saudi embassy in Tehran Saturday, and that the judiciary issued orders to identify and arrest all others involved in the raid.

The Iranian spokesman said Saudi Arabia's current rhetoric versus Iran and its alleged support of regional extremist groups will only serve to further isolate Riyadh.
We believe this integration is another example of how technology can open up new possibilities for seniors by helping them lead more mobile and independent lives

grandPad, creator of the first simple and safe tablet based solution and private network that connects the core family with a platform built for seniors, will integrate the Uber app into grandPads groundbreaking technology platform and network, making it easier for seniors not only to connect with families, friends, and caregivers, but also to request a convenient, affordable ride at the push of a button.

For millions of seniors across the country, mobility and getting from one place to another are critical challenges to living an independent, healthy life. The grandPad-Uber integration will enable seniors to easily get rides and help keep them mobile. Already, grandPad pairs with a smartphone or desktop app and empowers seniors to connect easily and effortlessly to loved ones. With grandPad, seniors can video chat with the family, check emails from the family in real-time, share photos, play games, make phone calls, and much more. Now thanks to the Uber API, seniors also can use Uber on their grandPad tablet to obtain transportation to everything from the local grocery store, to the doctor or pharmacy.

This integration with Uber will open new possibilities for millions of seniors, notes Scott Lien, CEO of grandPad. Our technology solutions already help seniors become more connected. Now they can use our platform and Uber to get around town. The ensuing freedom and independence has the potential to be extraordinarily empowering.

The solutions provided by this integration couldnt come sooner. More than 15.5 million Americans over the age of 65 live in areas where public transportation service is poor or nonexistent. Additionally, according to AARP & American Public Transportation Associations, more than 20% of Americans over 65 don't drive. Beyond lifestyle independence, seniors with better transportation can access health care services more easily and lead healthier lives. The need for a transportation solution for seniors has never been greater.

Ubers ridesharing technology offers seniors a safe, easy-to-use and affordable way to get around, said Christopher Ballard, General Manager of Uber Southern California. We believe this integration is another example of how technology can open up new possibilities for seniors by helping them lead more mobile and independent lives.

Additionally, CEO Scott Lien and several other executives from the company will be at 2016 CES Las Vegas. Live product demonstrations, as well as executives available to discuss the Uber partnership, will be at Eureka Park, Booth 80144 at CES, January 6-9. To learn more, please visit http://www.grandpad.net or contact Jeannine Jacobi of Fresh PR at (323) 903-7063 or jeannine(at)freshpr(dot)net.

About grandPad

Using technology to help bring families together, grandPad provides innovative solutions that are intuitive, engaging, and safe for all age ranges. The companys flagship product, the grandPad, is the first tablet based solution and network to privately connect the core family with a platform built for seniors. With grandPad, seniors can video chat with the family, check emails from the family in real-time, share photos, play games, and much more. The intuitive, easy-to-use design turns technology into a gateway instead of a barrier. grandPad is a privately held company based in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.grandpad.net or follow @grandpad_social.
How do colleges and universities retain students? How can academic advising successfully keep students on the path to graduation? How can assessment and early-alert strategies jump-start a retention effort?

Colleges and universities that have successfully answered retention questions like these are encouraged to apply for the Lee Noel and Randi Levitz Retention Excellence Awards, sponsored by Ruffalo Noel Levitz. Deadline for applications is March 18, 2016. Awards will be presented at the National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention, to be held July 26-28, in Dallas.

The awards program was established to honor student retention and completion achievements of regionally accredited postsecondary institutions throughout North America. Since the awards program began in 1989, Ruffalo Noel Levitz has honored more than 160 two-year and four-year colleges and universities with Retention Excellence Awards.

Nominees are judged by a panel of higher education leaders on identifiable and measurable institutional outcomes, originality and creativity, clarity of focus, use of resources, and adaptability to other institutions. As a result of this national exposure, these award-winning programs serve as models of retention excellence to stimulate the creativity and energy of two-year and four-year institutions across the U.S. and Canada.

For an application, visit http://www.RuffaloNL.com/awards.

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About Ruffalo Noel Levitz

Ruffalo Noel Levitz is a nationally recognized consulting firm focused on higher education enrollment management, student success, and fundraising. Since 1973, Ruffalo Noel Levitz has partnered with more than 3,000 colleges and universities throughout North America. For more information, visit http://www.RuffaloNL.com.
Andrew Lustigman AALS members face many of the same issues as my clients in sorting out acceptable limits and content in promoting their brand through social media.

Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP today announced that Andrew B. Lustigman, partner and chair of the firms Advertising Marketing & Promotions practice will speak at the 110th American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting to be held Wednesday, January 6 through Sunday, January 10, 2016 in New York.

Im delighted to be speaking at the AALS Annual Meeting, addressing an issue that impacts law school communications practitioners across the board, said Andy. AALS members face many of the same issues as my clients in sorting out acceptable limits and content in promoting their brand through social media, and I look forward to a lively discussion with my fellow panelists on this timely topic, he continued.

Andy will be speaking as part of the Section on Institutional Advancement in a Communications Track session on Sunday, January 10, 2016 from 10:45 AM to 12:15 PM titled, Copyrights, Trademarks and Fair Use of Social Media Content: What's Fair Game and What's Off Limits for Communications Practitioners? The session is geared toward communications professionals at law schools and will address fair use and copyright law when dealing with social media content. Andy and fellow panelists will discuss acceptable and unacceptable practices in using publicly available social media content for communications and marketing efforts, and will provide an update on rapidly evolving substantive laws and best practices, along with examples of real world scenarios. The panel will provide valuable insights for both law school marketing and communications professionals and faculty members specializing in copyright law, fair use and social media issues.

Andy represents marketers, advertisers, media, mobile and Internet companies in connection with the legal aspects of their advertising and promotional marketing business, including clearance of advertising and marketing materials, sweepstakes, games of skill, and other contests, and social media programs, and advises on digital marketing campaigns, intellectual property issues, and privacy matters. An equally significant portion of his practice involves investigations and litigation brought by regulatory agencies regarding national advertising campaigns, as well as defending private consumer individual and class action lawsuits.

The AALS Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of law faculty in the world and is an unparalleled opportunity for legal educators to connect with colleagues from different law schools and countries around matters of common interest. Click here for information on programs and registration.

About Olshans Advertising, Marketing & Promotions practice

The Advertising, Marketing & Promotions practice group provides constructive and effective legal advice in the ever-evolving advertising and promotional marketing arena. Whether utilizing the latest in new digital technology to conduct a sweepstakes or delivering their message through traditional or social media channels, the advertising and promotional marketing clients of Olshan rely on the group for innovative and proactive legal advice that allows them to market effectively. The Advertising, Marketing & Promotions practice group offers sophisticated, experienced advice. The group regularly represents clients in regulatory inquiries and defends litigation brought by federal, state and local regulatory bodies. The group has a significant competitor advertising dispute practice.

About Olshan

Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP, a law firm based in New York, represents major businesses and entrepreneurs in their most significant transactions, problems and opportunities. Olshans clients range from public companies, hedge, venture capital, private equity and other investment funds to entrepreneurs and private companies worldwide. Clients choose Olshan for innovative strategies and sophisticated, game-changing advice in corporate, securities law, equity investment and shareholder activism, complex commercial, corporate and securities litigation, real estate, intellectual property, bankruptcy and creditors rights, and advertising. Since its founding, Olshan has offered an alternative to the AmLaw 50 law firm business model with responsive, independent and client-focused legal counsel provided by the firms senior lawyers.
SemaConnect is the leading provider of electric vehicle charging stations in North America Installing these EV charging stations is just one example of Arrows commitment to the environment.

Arrow Electronics, a global provider of products, services and solutions to industrial and commercial users of electronic components and enterprise computing solutions, installed seven SemaConnect electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at its corporate offices on Dry Creek Road in Centennial and Lima Street in Englewood.

Arrow Electronics is always ahead of the curve when it comes to emerging technology, said Mark Pastrone, vice president of business development at SemaConnect, a leader in Class A commercial EV charging solutions. Arrows focus on corporate responsibility and innovative technology pairs perfectly with the addition of our charging stations.

Arrow maintains a robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) program that is focused on making the world a better place for us allnow and five years out. The installation of SemaConnect charging stations reflects Arrows ongoing commitment to CSR and the environment.

Arrow is always looking for innovative ways that technology can help us live more sustainably, said Paul Nelson, vice president of global real estate at Arrow. Installing these EV charging stations is just one example of Arrows commitment to the environment.

About SemaConnect

SemaConnect is the leading provider of electric vehicle amenities to the North American commercial and residential property market. A complete EV support partner, SemaConnect delivers a truly modern property experience through innovative, elegantly designed charging stations and a robust and open network. The company has helped maximize property value and appeal through thousands of successful Class A deployments since its founding in 2008, for companies like CBRE, JLL, Hines, Greystar, Cisco Systems, and Standard Parking. SemaConnect remains the preferred charging solutions partner to municipal, parking, multifamily, hotel, office and retail customers across the United States and Canada. For more information, visit http://www.semaconnect.com.

About Arrow Electronics

Arrow Electronics is a global provider of products, services and solutions to industrial and commercial users of electronic components and enterprise computing solutions. Arrow serves as a supply channel partner for more than 100,000 original equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers and commercial customers through a global network of more than 460 locations in 56 countries. Learn more at http://www.arrow.com.
Seagull Scientific Best Channel Vendor 2016 Award Logo The readers of Business Solutions magazine have honored Seagull Scientific ... as a "Best Channel Vendor"  the only labeling software company to be recognized so many years in a row.

The readers of Business Solutions magazine have honored Seagull Scientific, manufacturer of BarTender software, for the eighth straight year as a "Best Channel Vendor"  the only labeling software company to be recognized so many years in a row. With more than 2,700 readers voting, the magazines reseller subscribers again cited Product Features and Product Reliability as the company's top two areas of strength in the category of Labeling Software.

We are grateful that our channel partners have publicly supported Seagull longer than any other labeling software company, said Harold Boe, President of Seagull Scientific. In our 30th year in business, we launched a major new version of our BarTender software and introduced fresh new branding and a new website, but this award demonstrating the continuing strong relationship with our valued channel partners is really the icing on the cake. We look forward to deepening our relationship in 2016.

Business Solutions conducts its annual survey in partnership with Penn State University, and does not consider vendor advertising in the magazine as a factor in the results. The full results and methodology were published in the January 2016 issue.

About Seagull Scientific

BarTender software by Seagull Scientific enables organizations around the world to improve safety, security, efficiency and compliance by creating and automating labels, barcodes, RFID tags, plastic cards and more. Hundreds of thousands of companies in manufacturing, chemicals, healthcare, food and beverage, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, supply chain/logistics and other industries trust BarTender with the labeling and marking processes that keep their businesses running. With corporate headquarters and software development in Bellevue, Washington, USA, and branch offices in Madrid, Taipei and Tokyo, BarTender is available in more than 150 countries through a global network of local partners. Learn more at http://www.seagullscientific.com.
Rick Dreher, Managing Partner of Wipfli LLP Steinberg Advisors is a natural fit with Wipfli. Their culture and the services they provide complement Wipflis broad range of services," said Rick Dreher. This combination will add to the depth of our resources in the Chicago area.

Wipfli LLP (Wipfli), one of the top 25 accounting and consulting firms in the United States, announced today that Steinberg Advisors, Ltd. (Steinberg Advisors) joined the firm effective January 1. Steinberg Advisors, a firm headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, provides audit, tax and management consulting services to businesses and individuals in the Chicago area.

Steinberg Advisors is a natural fit with Wipfli. Their culture and the services they provide complement Wipflis broad range of services," said Rick Dreher, managing partner of Wipfli LLP. This combination will add to the depth of our resources in the Chicago area.

Gary Shutan, managing partner of Steinberg Advisors, commented, "Steinberg Advisors is pleased to join Wipfli. This will be a great combination of two strong firms that will position our firm to provide expanded services to our clients while continuing to provide the personal attention and exceptional client service they expect from our firm."

As part of this combination, approximately 50 Steinberg Advisors professionals, including seven shareholders, have joined Wipfli, including Irwin Steinberg, the founder of Steinberg Advisors, Ltd. Founded in 1999, Steinberg Advisors is one of the leading accounting and consulting firms in the Chicago area. The firm has one full-service office located in Northbrook, Illinois.

The combined firm will have approximately 1,500 associates, including 181 partners, 32 U.S. office locations (three offices in the Chicago area), and two offices in India.

About Wipfli LLP

With 31 offices in the United States and two offices in India, Wipfli LLP (Wipfli) ranks among the top accounting and business consulting firms in the nation. For over 86 years, Wipfli has provided private and publicly held companies with industry-focused assurance, accounting, tax and consulting services to help clients overcome their business challenges today and plan for tomorrow. The firms clients include manufacturing companies, financial institutions, health care organizations, construction companies, real estate companies, insurance companies, nonprofit organizations, units of government, agricultural businesses, dealerships and individuals. For more information, visit wipfli.com.

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The MIAMI Association of REALTORS (MIAMI) and the Greater San Diego Association of REALTORS (SDAR) co-presented the 21st annual International Real Estate Congress on Nov. 8-11 in Miami and San Diego. About 50 foreign delegates from 15 different countries networked and collaborated with more than 400 U.S. and foreign real estate professionals in both cities.

The 2015 International Real Estate Congress brought together a dynamic list of local and national industry speakers as well as international delegates from some of MIAMIs 136 foreign partner associations, said Teresa King Kinney, the chief executive officer of MIAMI. The vast number of countries and delegates in attendance in Miami underscores South Floridas position as a center for international real estate investment. Sharing this years event with San Diego, another top international destination, added a unique opportunity for our U.S. and international partners.

The Miami event, held Nov. 8-10 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, featured foreign delegates from Spain, France, Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador, Peru, Costa Rica and Argentina. The San Diego event, held Nov. 10-11 at the Hard Rock Hotel, had international delegates from Russia, United Kingdom, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Costa Rica and Bulgaria.

New 2015 MIAMI Profile of International Home Buyers

Kinney revealed initial findings from the 2015 MIAMI Profile of International Home Buyers, prepared annually for MIAMI by the research division of the National Association of REALTORS (NAR).

In 2015, international home transactions accounted for 22 percent of all South Florida residential sales. Florida (12 percent) and the U.S. (4 percent) had lower shares of international home transactions. Miami-Dade County had 70.4 percent of all South Florida international home sales in 2015. Broward posted 25.2 percent, while Palm Beach and Martin counties had 3.9 and 0.4 percent, respectively. South Florida international home sales accounted for $6.1 billion in dollar value in 2015.

The complete survey will be released by MIAMI in early 2016.

Miami: The Financial Capital of the Southern Hemisphere

Miami-Dade Countys diversified economy, continued population increase and thriving downtown were key themes at the 2015 Congress. Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Realtor.com, discussed Miamis strong economy and falling unemployment rate. Miami-Dade Countys unemployment rate has fallen consistently since the recession and sits at 5.9 percent, according to recent state figures.

Hedge funds, private equity, and venture capital companies are relocating to Miami because of its strong startup network, reputation for aggressive development and multilingual population. Personal finance website Wallet Hub recently ranked Miami as the second-fastest growing economy among large U.S. cities.

There is no question Miami is becoming the financial capital of the southern hemisphere, Smoke told 2015 Congress attendees.

Downtown Miami is one of the countys top submarkets. Congress panelists discussed how downtown has become one of the fastest-growing residential districts in the U.S. Downtown Miami boasts the highest concentration of cultural institutions in the Southeast, almost 400 restaurants and bars, and three megaprojects. The 9-acre Brickell City Centre and the 27-acre Miami Worldcenter plan to bring major retail, residential and hospitality uses to downtown. All Aboard Florida aims to transform South Florida transit with rail connecting downtown Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando.

Miami Public Schools among Best in Nation

Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS), provided great statistics regarding the strength and unique quality of local public education. MDCPS, the countrys fourth-largest district, outperformed its other big city peers in the recently-completed National Assessments of Educational Progress, posting higher than average scores in most categories.

Communities with great schools create job development, sustain a good economy, and create and support a strong real estate market, Carvalho told 2015 Congress attendees.

International Market Presentations

Delegates from Brazil, France, Costa Rica and Spain provided market presentations on their respective countries on the second day of the MIAMI Congress. More than 75 members attended the optional session at the Biltmore Hotel, where U.S. and foreign real estate professionals continued their networking and collaboration.

San Diego Congress Attracts Big Crowd

More than 280 U.S. and foreign real estate professionals attended the San Diego portion of the MIAMI International Real Estate Congress.

Dr. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for the National Association of REALTORS, San Diego Congressman Scott Peters, Unified Port of San Diego Vice Chairman Marshall Merrifield, San Diego Airport Authority Chairman of the Board Robert Gleason and Nathan L. Moeder, the Principal of the London Group were featured speakers.

San Diego also hosted a global showcase panel, where experts discussed opportunities and challenges for investment in their respective countries.

For PDFs or video of the 2015 Congress presentations, visit: http://www.miamire.com/international/congress/resources

http://sdar.com/index.php/irec

For a photo gallery from the 2015 Congress, visit: http://bit.ly/1Nod1ZI

The 2016 MIAMI International Real Estate Congress will be held Oct. 31- Nov. 1, 2016 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. Congress activities begin Oct. 26, 2016 and end Nov. 2, 2016. Registration includes chartered transportation from Miami to the 2016 NAR Conference & Expo in Orlando as well as property tours and programming in Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties. Visit: http://www.miamicongress.com

About the MIAMI Association of REALTORS

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 95 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward Council, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents more than 41,000 real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S., and has official partnerships with 136 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.miamire.com.

About Greater San Diego Association of REALTORS

The Greater San Diego Association of REALTORS is the largest trade association in San Diego County. They help their members, who adhere to a code of ethics and professional standards, sell more homes. They also help people realize the dream of home ownership, and are dedicated to protecting private property rights. Follow SDAR on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Our research suggests that support for violent groups can be countered if we improve the quality of governance in Iraq.

Perceptions of a lack of inclusivity in governance in Iraq have fueled support for extremist groups, according to new research from the global organization Mercy Corps. The report, Investing In Iraqs Peace, is based on a public opinion survey of 5,000 people across Iraq, repeated over three years from 2013 to 2015, coupled with interviews of Iraqi citizens including civic leaders, youth, government officials and activists. The survey found that, contrary to popular assumptions, tensions between Iraqs different sects have been overplayed as the main cause of conflict. Instead, it is the perception that the government is unjust, unresponsive and unaccountable that pushes people to support militias or terrorist organizations.

Sectarian tension is undoubtedly worrying, and can be exploited by political actors, says Beza Tesfaye, Conflict and Governance Research Manager for Mercy Corps. But our research suggests that support for violent groups can be countered if we improve the quality of governance in Iraq, in particular its responsiveness to the needs of groups who feel marginalized.

These findings suggest the failure to support fair and accountable government in Iraq following the US-led invasion has directly contributed to the rise of extremist groups. The research also indicates that one way to address instability in Iraq is to support civil society so that people who are frustrated, in particular young people, have a forum to engage with government institutions instead of siding with armed groups.

The resignation of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in August 2014 coincided with a sharp decline in those expressing sympathy for armed opposition groups in Iraq, according to our surveys, says Tesfaye. The data showed that public support for extremist groups can be eroded. Improving governance, particularly by strengthening civil society, is one good way to invest in Iraqs peace.

Download or read the full report.
Glenn Gaudette works with students at WPI lab.

Glenn Gaudette, a biomedical engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), has been recognized by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) as its 2015 Outstanding Faculty of the Year.

Gaudette is credited with leading a team at WPI to implement a new program on campus, "Developing the Entrepreneurial Engineer." The program is designed to infuse the undergraduate experience with entrepreneurial experiences, challenges, and opportunities as students develop the skills they need to solve the grand challenges of the world.

I was very surprised to win this award, and Im very grateful, said Gaudette. I am part of a wonderful team of educators and administrators who are truly passionate about incorporating an entrepreneurial mindset in our technical courses and as part of our core curriculum. WPI has worked hard to bring these programs to campus as the next step in our project-based education where impact will become an expectation of all WPI graduates.

The Kern Family Foundation created KEEN to support colleges and universities interested in developing innovative ways of instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering students to help ensure that the United States remains competitive in the global marketplace. Its approach centers on teaching students to recognize and act on opportunities to create economic, personal, and societal impact. Students are challenged to be continually inquisitive about the worlds problems, to investigate them fully, to connect discoveries and ideas in order to seek solutions, and to develop viable results that create real value and meet the needs of the world around them.

Glenn was a clear choice for the 2015 Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award, said Doug Melton, KEEN program director. He has been a constant promoter of the transformative education students receive at WPI and provided exemplary leadership in establishing a connection with KEEN. He is respected by his peers and has the ability to work collegially within our network of schools.

Gaudette has served as an example for other faculty members by integrating entrepreneurial thinking and skills into his courses. Last year he worked with a team of 12 faculty members and two WPI trustees on a successful proposal to the Kern Family Foundation to further this approach on campus. The $488,500 award, received in July 2015, supports faculty training, a new problem-solving course for first-year students, extracurricular activitiesincluding the student-initiated WPI Test Kitchenand an annual team competition designed to reward the entrepreneurial mindset. These programs align with WPI's project-based approach to education, which helps students create value and have a positive impact on society.

Gaudette has also participated in many of the faculty development opportunities made available through two previous grants from The Kern Family Foundation, which originally brought WPI into KEEN. The network currently includes 22 universities from across the country that are collaborating and co-creating tools and resources to promote entrepreneurial engineering.

Roman Gutierrez '15 credits Gaudette with having a profound influence on his education. Glenn helped fuel a passion for entrepreneurship through his class called Entrepreneurship in Biomedical Engineering Design. In a school in which so much emphasis is put on impact, entrepreneurship should be integrated in all levels of education. By injecting this spirit into the school through the KEEN programs, Glenn is helping create a new generation of WPI graduates with even more appropriate tools and skills to change the world.

Gaudette has been a member of WPIs faculty since 2006. He holds a BS in mechanical engineering from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, an MS in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a PhD in biomedical engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His primary area of research involves studying treatments for cardiovascular diseases; he has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Heart Association.

Gaudette will receive the KEEN 2015 Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award on Jan. 5, 2016, at KEENs winter conference in Tempe, Arizona. WPI President Laurie Leshin will be in attendance and will introduce the conferences keynote speaker, Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University.

About Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Founded in 1865 in Worcester, Mass., WPI is one of the nations first engineering and technology universities. Its 14 academic departments offer more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, leading to bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees. WPI's talented faculty work with students on interdisciplinary research that seeks solutions to important and socially relevant problems in fields as diverse as the life sciences and bioengineering, energy, information security, materials processing, and robotics. Students also have the opportunity to make a difference to communities and organizations around the world through the university's innovative Global Projects Program. There are more than 45 WPI project centers throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

Contact:

Colleen Wamback, Public Relations Specialist

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Worcester, Massachusetts

508-831-6775, cbwamback(at)wpi(dot)edu
Attorney Perry Cockerell recently spoke and presented a paper on Developments in Texas Home Equity Litigation in Bankruptcy Court at the 25th Annual Robert C. Sneed Texas Land Title Institute to over 500 title industry professionals and Texas attorneys gathered December 3-4, 2015 in San Antonio, Texas.

The topic is timely because the Texas Supreme Court just heard oral arguments in a case where they will decide if home equity violations can be asserted more than four years after the closing, commented Mr. Cockerell. That is the law according to the Fifth Circuit and Texas appellate courts that agree that borrower defenses used to forfeit a home equity loan cannot be asserted more than four years after the closing.



Case in point, one bankruptcy court has forfeited two home equity loans by allowing borrowers to raise forfeiture defenses in response to litigation or the filing of a proof of claim more than four years after the closing by holding that the Fifth Circuit ruling has no application in the bankruptcy context. The Texas Supreme Court will have to decide if the Fifth Circuit made the right call in interpreting Texas law. This issue has to be settled once and for all so that all courts in Texas apply the law uniformly, added Mr. Cockerell. The 25th Annual Robert C. Sneed Texas Land Title Institute is hosted by the Texas Land Title Association (TLTA). The TLTA is a trade association that represents the title insurance industry throughout Texas, serving over 13,000 professionals who work to ensure the safe and efficient transfer of real estate. Its estimated that over 90 percent of title insurance agents and underwriters who are licensed to do business in Texas are members of TLTA.

About Perry J. Cockerell, Attorney at Law:

Perry Cockerell is a civil attorney practicing in Dallas, Texas. He has over 34 years of general civil and appellate experience, specializing in civil trial law that involves creditors rights, real estate litigation, title insurance defense, employment litigation, and bankruptcy litigation. Clients of Perry J. Cockerell, Attorney at Law include banks and business entities as well as individuals. For more information on Perry Cockerell or his cases, visit http://perryjcockerell.com or call (214) 740-2521.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying [Photo: fmprc.gov.cn]

Opposition leader Khaled Khoja is scheduled to stay in China from Tuesday to Friday, during which he is expected to discuss the Syrian peace process with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing.

He is the second key political player inside Syria to visit China within a month, after Wang hosted Syrian deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs Walid al-Moallem in late December.

During that meeting, Wang Yi proposed three principals for pushing forward the peace process in the war torn country.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying explains.

"We hold that the Syrian issue must be solved through political dialogue, and we believe that the future of Syria should be decided by the people of Syria, and the Unites Nations should play a leading role. So China is now doing everything to move the Syrian issue along on the correct path of political dialogue as quickly as possible. We think it is the only and best way for the Syrian people's interests."

The United Nations Security Council unanimously voted on a draft resolution at the end of last year.

The resolution endorsed an international roadmap for a Syrian-led political transition, and called for a ceasefire.

To achieve the goals, world powers are now hoping to bring representatives of the Syrian government and opposition together to launch the intra-Syria peace talks in Geneva on Jan. 25.

Hua Chunying says China is willing to work with all parties relevant to the conflict.

" Each party should also make a concerted effort and be united as one to jointly combat terrorism, to push relevant Syrian groups to cease fire and stop violence, and to sit down as soon as possible to start and continue dialogue to reach a peaceful solution which is feasible and accepted by each Syrian party as soon as possible."

Geneva has been the venue for two previous rounds of the UN-mediated Syrian peace talks between representatives of the Syrian government and opposition, but the talks have failed to yield any significant results.

The Syrian conflict has raged for nearly five years, killing around a quarter of a million people.
CheapDomains.com, after reaching an agreement with ROTD, will be auctioning some of its most valuable domains, at no reserve, on January 11th at NamesCon in Las Vegas. Online bidding is currently available and can be accessed at NameJet.

Domain name valuations have skyrocketed over the past year as insiders believe the Chinese are investing heavily into domain names as part of a move to diversify their wealth into a new and fast growing asset class - one of a kind, premium domain names. Over the past several months, dozens of multi-million dollar sales have been recorded, with many of the largest sales, believed to be in the tens of millions, remaining private.

One of the domain names available from CheapDomains.com has a third party valuation of over $5M, but the parties have agreed to let the market decide the final price for these ultra rare premium domain names.

Some of the domains up for auction at no reserve include: Tuscany.com, Housewives.com, Katie.com, iFlirt.com, and Democrat.club.

The complete list of premium no reserve domains can be found at: https://www.cheapdomains.com/premium-domains/

CheapDomains.com is a leading sales platform, focused on selling premium domain names at fair, market driven pricing.
ConvergeHub We are pleased to welcome Ted to ConvergeHub as the Chief Marketing Officer. His strong vision and deep insight will ensure that ConvergeHub remains at the forefront of applying new marketing strategies and become positioned as an industry leader in CRM. Past News Releases RSS

ConvergeHub is pleased to announce Ted Finch as its Chief Marketing Officer. He has commenced employment on December 15th, 2015 and is a welcome addition to ConvergeHub's management team.

Mr. Finch brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the company. He is a leading channel and marketing expert and has helped launch over 450 products into the channel for vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Apple, HP, Citrix, Adobe, Intel, Toshiba, Disney, Mitsubishi, Western Digital and so on.

He has held the position of Vice President of Marketing at GE and Senior Vice President of Marketing at Motorola. He has also headed the sales and marketing team at IQ Tech Pros.

He has been quoted in several books and publications, such as Cyber Rules, Newsweek, Entrepreneur Magazine, Marketing Computers, PC Magazine, Business Week and many more.

''We are pleased to welcome Ted to ConvergeHub as the Chief Marketing Officer. His inclusion in the management team is a significant turning point for ConvergeHub. As we begin another year, we look forward to build an effective marketing drive and strategy for the upcoming twelve months, a dynamic channel partnership ecosystem and a strong media presence. And we are confident that with Ted's 30+ years of experience in sales and marketing domains, ConvergeHub will certainly accomplish all the three objectives.

"His strong vision and deep insight will ensure that ConvergeHub remains at the forefront of applying new marketing strategies and become positioned as an industry leader in CRM,'' - said Manash Chaudhuri, CEO of ConvergeHub.

CRM industry influencers around the world have defined ConvergeHub's move of appointing Ted Finch as highly strategic. As ConvergeHub continues to innovate and bring new thinking to the CRM space, the newly appointed CMO Mr. Finch will make plans to aggressively spread the word about ConvergeHub and its USPs in the explored and unexplored target markets. Together this will create a stellar combination and bring compelling benefits for ConvergeHub.

About ConvergeHub

ConvergeHub is a cloud-based all-in-one CRM software, designed and developed specifically for the fast growing small and medium-sized businesses. Unlike the traditional standalone CRMs that only manage post-sales customer service, ConvergeHub offers the management of sales, marketing and customer service from one powerful, unified, easy-to-use platform. Small businesses across verticals use ConvergeHub to tie sales, marketing and support interactions and engage, communicate and collaborate with leads, prospects and customers at every stage and from any device.

Features within ConvergeHub include  Sales Force Automation, Multi-channel Marketing, Case Management, Reports & Analytics, Document Management and many more. ConvergeHub has received positive reviews from CRM experts such as Chuck Schaeffer and Rich Bohn; has been a Semi-Finalist at 2014 CRM Idol Awards and has become the Community Choice Honoree in the 2014 & 2015 Small Business Influencer Awards.

Click here to get a free 30-day trial of ConvergeHub.
By looking at the brands that tend to be mentioned together, you can learn more about who your closest competitors are as well as potential partners for collaborative advertising.

Quick! Think of a brand name. Which one comes to mind? Does the brand you first think of say anything about you? And what, if anything, does it say about the brand? OdinText Inc., a company that develops Next Generation Text Analytics software, has set out to answer just this in Text Analytics Tips, a blog series focused on sharing insights from brand research and text analytics. The research and tips intend to educate social scientists and marketing researchers on the power of text mining.

OdinText surveyed more than 1,000 Americans asking several unstructured (text-based) questions, rarely used in research due to the high level of complexity when analyzing results. Next Generation Text Analytics can easily analyze and interpret complex text questions. Additionally, the software understands how various data are related to each other, yielding much deeper insights for researchers trying to understand human behavior.

Theres a lot more information in even simple unstructured data if you know how to look, said Tom H. C. Anderson, founder of OdinText. By looking at the brands that tend to be mentioned together, you can learn more about who your closest competitors are as well as potential partners for collaborative advertising.

According to the research, if a person is asked which brand of coffee he or she prefers and he or she says Maxwell House versus Folgers (for example), OdinTexts analytics can predict that the person is about six years older than if the person would have responded with Folgers.

Brand awareness and text analytics can discern much more about a person than how old he or she is. OdinText can analyze results according to gender, age, satisfaction and even political differences.

According to OdinTexts research, the brand Dawn is 10 times more likely to be mentioned by Republicans than Democrats (3% vs. 0.3%). The brands that surfaced the most with Democrats included Target (7% vs. 3%), Adidas (5% vs. 2%), Bose and Pizza Hut (both 1.4% vs. 0%), to name a few.

To learn more about the findings of the research, visit: http://odintext.com/blog/category/text-analytics-tips/.

Note to Editor: The U.S. nationally-representative sample was fielded to the CriticalMix consumer panel and yields statistics with a +/-2.91% confidence interval at the 95% confidence level.

About OdinText Inc.

OdinTexts Next Generation Text AnalyticsTM turns market researchers into data scientists. The powerful cloud-based software helps users discover patterns and trends in complex unstructured text data. Visit http://www.odintext.com to learn more or schedule a demo. Backed by Connecticut Innovations and private investors, OdinText is a privately-held company based in Stamford, Conn.
We are thrilled at the early response to our introduction of Sonablate in the U.S. and the continued interest overseas, and expect widespread worldwide dissemination of the technology over the course of 2016 - Dr. Mark Carol, CEO

SonaCare Medical, LLC, a pioneer in minimally invasive high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) technologies, and first to receive FDA regulatory authorization for the ablation of prostate tissue, reports impressive Q4 growth in 2015 since receiving a de novo grant from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market and sell Sonablate in the United States in October, 2015.

This grant created a new product class for urologic HIFU medical devices and paved the way for urologic HIFU ablation technologies to enter the U.S. market. Post grant, there have been 14 sales of Sonablate technology in the U.S. with eight systems installed to date, five of which have been used. Sonablate already has been used to deliver 23 HIFU prostate tissue ablations in the U.S. post commercial launch, including whole gland ablations, hemi-ablations, and true focal ablations using MRI-US fused image guidance. According to Paul LaPine, V.P. Sales, The response from the urology community since we received our grant has been extremely favorable. There is a large base of urologists in the U.S. experienced in the use of Sonablate due to their participation in our concierge medical program outside the U.S. and our clinical trials in the U.S. This has provided us with a robust sales funnel of physicians who are eager to deliver this type of care in the geographic region where they practice. In addition, academic departments have been waiting for a long time to be able to offer tissue sparing options to their patients and are looking to HIFU in general, and Sonablate specifically, to provide this ability.

Sonablate regulatory authorization in the U.S. has had a positive effect across borders as well. Since the October grant, three new international distributors have been trained and three new countries have adopted Sonablate technology. Vice President of International Operations, Alex Gonzalez, comments, The international response for the latest Sonablate technology post FDA clearance has been significant. Sonablate HIFU technology has made its debut in five new countries since the start of 2015 and the substantial early demand in the U.S. is indicative of the great momentum that exists at a worldwide level. In addition to Sonablate prostate ablations performed on an ongoing and regular basis at sites in Germany, England, and Switzerland, SonaCare Medical technology also was used recently in Switzerland to deliver an open kidney ablation in a patient with a single kidney for whom tissue preservation was considered essential.

We are thrilled at the early response to our introduction of Sonablate in the U.S. and the continued interest overseas, and expect widespread worldwide dissemination of the technology over the course of 2016, states Mark Carol, SonaCare Medical CEO. It is an exciting time in the field of whole gland and focal soft tissue ablation, and SonaCare is delighted to be at the forefront of applications of this capability in the prostate and the kidney.

Sonablate is the first device to receive regulatory authorization from the FDA for the focused ultrasound ablation of prostate tissue. Since its introduction over 15 years ago, Sonablate technology has been used around the world on nearly 15,000 patients in over 30 countries, including approximately 4,000 U.S. men who have had this procedure performed outside the U.S.

About SonaCare Medical, LLC

SonaCare Medical is a world leader in minimally invasive focused ultrasound (HIFU) technologies. SonaCare Medical is committed to developing focused ultrasound related technologies that support precise and innovative procedures for the treatment of a range of medical conditions. SonaCare Medical, with its subsidiary Focus Surgery, Inc., designs and manufactures medical devices, including the following: Sonablate, which has 510(K) clearance in the U.S. under a De Novo regulatory classification; Sonablate 500, which has CE Marking and has obtained regulatory authorization in more than 49 countries outside the U.S.; Sonatherm laparoscopic HIFU surgical ablation system, which has 510(K) clearance in the U.S., has CE Marking and has obtained regulatory authorization in more than 30 countries outside the U.S.

For additional information, visit http://www.SonaCareMedical.com

COMPANY CONTACT:

SonaCare Medical, LLC

Erica Griffith (704) 936-1834, EricaGriffith(at)SonaCareMedical(dot)com

Forward Looking Statements.

The Company's forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions regarding the Company's business and performance, the economy and other future conditions and forecasts of future events, circumstances and results. As with any projection or forecast, forward-looking statements are inherently susceptible to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. The Company's actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in its forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by the Company speaks only as of the date on which it is made. The Company is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, subsequent events or other factors.
SPEEDWRAP Customers can now pick up our product at local Fastenal branches, have our product delivered to their dock in one of the infamous Fastenal pickup trucks, or have the products managed as part of their stock and bin program inside their warehouse or factory Past News Releases RSS Speedtech International, Inc...

TheStrapStore.com Introduces...

Speedtech International 20th Year...

Speedtech International, Inc., a leading manufacturer of hook and loop ties, straps and specialty fasteners, is pleased to announce its partnership with Fastenal Company, a leading industrial distributor. Fastenal, one of the largest MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) Distributors, will carry the SPEEDWRAP Brand of Hook & Loop and Specialty Fasteners.

With a factory dedicated to the fabrication and distribution of innovative bundling, banding, and cable management products, Speedtechs niche has historically been hook and loop products. After 20 years of dedication to solving customers banding and bundling application problems primarily, Speedtechs product line has grown into a plethora of highly innovative specialty fasteners. Today, Speedtechs SPEEDWRAP branded product line features one of the widest offerings of cable management, and material handling products including several new patented items.

Fastenal Company, one of the largest MRO distributors worldwide, ranks Number 12 on Industrial Distributions 2015 Big 50 List. Fastenal serves its customers with more than 2,700 stores, 50,000 FAST Solutions vending machines, and online. Fastenal operates 14 distribution centers in North America with additional locations in Asia, Europe, Central and South America, and Africa. SPEEDWRAPs growing popularity, stellar reputation, and high quality industrial-grade products led Fastenal to add the SPEEDWRAP Brand of Products for their quality-conscious customers.

Steve Pope, Speedtechs Vice President of Sales, asserts, We are pleased to partner with Fastenal and to offer our customers multichannel acquisition of SPEEDWRAP products. The MRO channel remains a top priority for Speedtech. By partnering with Fastenal, customers can now pick up our product at local Fastenal branches, have our product delivered to their dock in one of the infamous Fastenal pickup trucks, or have the products managed as part of their stock and bin program inside their warehouse or factory. We are thrilled to be associated with such a fine distributor!"

Along with the hook & loop products, Fastenal will carry some of the new SPEEDWRAP Specialty Fasteners, including the recently patented, Kwik Bandit line of rubber straps and the versatile Ty-Up  Pallet Ties.

The SPEEDWRAP brand is offered through Industrial, MRO, Data Communications, Audio, Video, Hardware, and Recreation Distributors Nationwide. SPEEDWRAP products ship from Speedtechs ISO Registered factory located in Racine, Wisconsin.

More About Speedtech International, Inc.

Founded in 1994, Speedtech International Inc. pioneered the development of cable and wire management using hook and loop fasteners. Speedtech provides OEMs, engineers, product managers, purchasing agents, and distributors the most complete line of hook and loop products including ties, straps, continuous rolls, and unique patented fasteners. Today the company also offers non-hook and loop products for bundling, banding, and securing wires and cables, or for material handling. Newer products include the Kwik Bandit Rubber Banding Straps and the Ty-Up Pallet and Cargo Ties. For more information and Speedtechs full product offerings, visit http://www.speedtechinternational.com/.

More About Fastenal

Fastenal sells a variety of industrial and construction supplies. Products include threaded fasteners, tools, metal cutting tool blades and abrasives. Fastenal also offers fluid transfer components and accessories for hydraulic and pneumatic power. In addition, Fastenal offers material handling, storage and packaging products, janitorial supplies, chemical and paint products, electrical supplies, welding supplies, safety supplies, metals, alloys and materials, and office supplies.

For more information

Visit

http://www.fastenal.com

http://www.speedtechinternational.com

Email: pr(at)speedtechinternational(dot)com

Or Call 262-635-9394
Jonathan Orpin, long-time thought leader in the timber frame industry, was recently named President of the Timber Framers Guild. The Guild has been an inspiration and guide to both myself and our company for thirty years. In some ways, serving again on its board as President is about giving back.

Jonathan Orpin, founder and owner of New Energy Works Timberframers and Pioneer Millworks, was recently named President of the Timber Framers Guild. Orpin served on the Guilds Board of Directors as its president and in October 2015, acted as the Conference Chair/Creative Director for the 30th Annual Guild Conference in Idaho.

Orpin, a long-time thought leader in the timber frame industry, previously served on the Guilds board as treasurer in the early 1990s. He has been a member since the groups inception in 1985. As an organization, the Timber Framers Guild seeks to perpetuate and strengthen the robust craft of timber framing, communicating information about building methods, events, people, and the timber frame building community. They have almost one thousand members  and growing  across the nation.

The Guild has been an inspiration and guide to both myself and our company for thirty years, said Orpin. In some ways, serving again on its board as President is about giving back. In just as many ways, it is about growing both personally and professionally by working so closely with such a like-minded team.

The Timber Framers Guild recently merged with Timber Frame Business Council to create the most comprehensive collection of timber frame knowledge, made easily available through many avenues, including their newly re-built website, tfguild.org. Numerous community timber framing events sponsored by the Guild, such as this years farmers market raising in Portland, Michigan and last years community market building in Pemberton, BC bring timber framing knowledge and experience directly into communities. The work of the Guilds Engineering Council, Historical Council, Business Council, and Apprenticeship Training Program also work to further extend the mission of the Guild to its members and the greater community.

In November, the Timber Framers Guild hosted their 30th Annual Conference in Coeur dAlene, Idaho. The conference marked thirty years of skills development, building science, history, and shared leaning experiences from the best the industry has to offer. Speakers traveled from throughout the United States and Europe to share their knowledge and experience with attendees.

There was a sense of focus and relevance with featured speakers, sharing of timber framing skills, and building science education  as well as the always enjoyed session of slides of timber frame work from around the country, explains Orpin, who chaired the Conference. Also exciting, the Saturday auction rang up record-setting funds to support the Guild's programs and community events.

Finding hours daily to work with the Guild showcases Orpins mastery in time management given his many industry commitments and the growth and activity in his two companies. In November, Pioneer Millworks was named #32 in the Rochester (NY) Top 100 firms, the second year in a row that the company has been named due to its year over year growth. On the West Coast, Orpin has expanded the facilities to include an additional 8,000 sq ft of manufacturing space in McMinnville, southwest of Portland, Oregon.

Recently, Orpin was at Greenbuild in Washington, DC where Pioneer Millworks was honored with the FSC Leadership Award for their initiatives and support of the Forest Stewardship Council. He is frequently sharing his industry expertise with crowds around the country, including design firms, energy science groups, and more.

New Energy Works is having one of their largest growth years with expansive popularity for their timber frames, design/build (including interior design) and fine woodworking products. Both companies use the Triple Bottom Line of People, Planet, and Profit as their guiding filter while working across the nation and in several other countries.

The Timber Framers Guild is a nonprofit organized exclusively for educational purposes to provide training programs for timber framers, disseminate information about timber framing to the public, and serve as a general center of timber framing information for the professional and general public alike. Through the Guilds community projects, more than seventy-five heavy timber structures have been raised since 1985.

New Energy Works Timberframers have been designing and building environmentally responsible timber frames across the USA for more than 30 years from their facilities in New York and Oregon. Offerings include: Timber Framing (design, engineering, manufacturing, and build), Enclosure Systems, Fine Woodworking, and Recycled and Sustainable wood products. New Energy Works has two LEED AP staff members, is a member of the US Green Building Council, and is FSC-certified.

Pioneer Millworks is the leader in the reclaimed wood industry. To date, theyve rescued nearly 25 million board feet of old wood from rot and landfills, giving it new life as flooring, paneling, millwork, cabinetry, and more. All wood is manufactured in a way thats healthy for customers, employees, and the environment. Pioneer Millworks is FSC-certified and Green America approved. All of their products are LEED point eligible.
Peacock Quartz Necklace from Yagmin Designs, as gifted at GBK's 2016 Golden Globes Celebrity Gift Lounge. Peacock quartz captures the beauty and intensity of emeralds in fun, affordable way. Past News Releases RSS

Yagmin Designs (http://www.yagmindesigns.com), in association with The Artisan Group, will gift its Peacock Quartz Necklace to celebrities and members the press and media at GBKs 2016 Golden Globes Celebrity Gift Lounge. The Gift Lounge takes place January 8-9, 2016 at an exclusive location in Hollywood, California.

Candice Yagmin, designer/founder, Yagmin Designs, is known for her personalized and handcrafted sterling silver heirloom jewelry and has had her Garnet Gemstone Briolette Necklace worn by Candice King (as Caroline Forbes) on Episode 701 of CW Networks The Vampire Diaries.

The Peacock Quartz Necklace that will be gifted at the Golden Globes is minimalist in design and perfectly wearable for every day. It showcases a stunning teal peacock hydro quartz briolette, wire wrapped tightly by hand with sterling silver jewelers wire. The pendant is attached to an 18-inch, sterling silver cable chain with a spring ring clasp.

Says Candice, When I think of the Golden Globes, I think of elegance and class. Emeralds were the first gemstone that came to mind. I think the peacock quartz briolette captures the beauty and intensity of this classic jewel in a fun, affordable way.

The necklace will be presented in a mint and teal gift box wrapped with cream grosgrain ribbon, nestled inside the Artisan Groups classic black swag bag.

Since its inception, Yagmin Designs has received numerous press mentions, including from the Huffington Post. Candice has been creating and designing jewelry for many years. She began the business creating jewelry in support of her dog rescue. Of the resulting trajectory she remarks, We had placed over 100 dogs in homes before the jewelry business took over and we decided to close down the rescue. We still have 5 dogs and support our local dog charities when we can.

Journalists who would like to reach out to Candice can do so using the Email button at the right-hand side of this press release.

Yagmin Designs jewelry is available online at yagmindesigns.com. Contact Candice via social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest) using the handle cydesignsstudio.

ABOUT CANDICE YAGMIN & YAGMIN DESIGNS

Candice is a self-taught jewelry artist (http://www.yagmindesigns.com) who specializes in personalized and heirloom handcrafted jewelry. She drinks entirely too much coffee and has been spotted tripping over her own feet on several occasions. Candice currently lives in North Carolina with her husband Daniel and together they are the parents of five wonderful rescued dogs.

Yagmin Designs is a proud member of The Artisan Group.
If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity.

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Wei Yunyang, 16, left her hometown Panzhihua city in July 2015 for art training in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan province.

Wei wakes up early in the morning and practices basic dancing skills with the guidance of teachers. "Even though the training is so hard, I think it is worthwhile pursuing my dancing dream of 10 years," said Wei with smiles on her face.

"Yunyang is a steady and diligent girl. She not only has excellent basics of dancing but also a good academic performance. Our society needs this kind of well-qualified artistic talents," said Li Bichun, the teacher who has engaged in art training for many years in Chengdu city.

Wei Yunyang participated in the art examination full of confidence on Dec. 20, 2015. This test was only a small step for the girl's dancing dream. "I want to be a professional dancing teacher in future," said Wei.
Nobel Prize laureate Tu Youyou, along with four other scientists who have won top science and technology awards in China, were honored with asteroids named after them at a ceremony held by the Ministry of Science and Technology on Monday.

The other four scientists are Xie Jialin, Wu Liangyong, Zheng Zhemin and Zhang Cunhao.

Asteroids are currently the only type of internationally recognized celestial body that can be named at the will of the person who detects them. Each asteroid can only be named once, which makes the gesture a globally recognized honor.

The asteroids that were named on Monday were discovered by National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They were permanently numbered and named at the approval of the International Astronomy Union.

Among those awarded the honor, Tu is the 2015 recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicinethe first Chinese scientist who has won that award.

Xie and Wu were awarded Chinas top science prize in 2011 for their respective groundbreaking achievements in the areas of particle accelerators and architecture.

Zheng received the same prize in 2012 for his expertise in explosion mechanics, while Zhang was honored in 2013 as a pioneer of high-energy chemical lasers and molecular reaction dynamics.

As a mechanical scientist, this honor has special meaning to me, Zheng said in his speech during the ceremony, pledging to continue his devotion to science and technology.

The asteroid naming tradition was started in China in 2009. So far, several dozen scientists have received the honor, including 21 winners of top science and technology awards.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue Extension's Pest Management Programs will host a series of crop management workshops during January at four sites throughout Indiana.

Participants will get the latest agronomic and pest management information from Purdue Extension specialists.

Topics and presenters:

* "Planes, No Trains, and Automobiles:" Joe Becovitz, Office of the Indiana State Chemist.

* "Weeds - New Tools for New Problems:" Bill Johnson, professor of botany and plant pathology, and Travis Legleiter, weed science program specialist.

* "In-Season Wet and Post-Season Dry - Consequences for Nutrient Management:" Jim Camberato, professor of agronomy.

* "Answers to 2015 Field Crop Disease Questions:" Kiersten Wise, associate professor of botany and plant pathology.

* "Soybean Seed Insecticides - Does Prophylactic Equal Profit?" Christian Krupke, professor of entomology.

* "Soybean Planting Dates - Managing Yield and Quality:" Shaun Casteel, associate professor of agronomy.

* "Agronomic Management to Increase the Resilience of Corn to Weather Extremes:" Bob Nielsen, professor of agronomy.

* "Hoses - Arteries of Application Equipment:" Fred Whitford, coordinator of the Purdue Pesticide Programs.

The schedule:

* Jan. 25: Lawrence County 4-H Fairgrounds; 11265 U.S. 50, Bedford.

* Jan. 26: Equipment Technologies Inc.; 455 Merriman Road, Mooresville.

* Jan. 27: Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne Walb Student Union; 2101 E. Coliseum Boulevard, Fort Wayne.

* Jan. 28-29: Beck Agricultural Center; 4540 U.S. 52 W, West Lafayette.

All sessions run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $80.

Continuing education units, Private Applicator Recertification Program credits and commercial pesticide applicator credits will be available. Ohio applicator credits have been applied for.

To sign up, go to www.conf.purdue.edu/crop.

For registration information, contact Tom Robertson at 800-359-2968 or tlrobertson@purdue.edu. For more information about the topics and content, contact John Obermeyer at 765-494-4563 or obe@purdue.edu.

Writer: Darrin Pack, 765-494-8415, dpack@purdue.edu

Sources: John Obermeyer, 765-494-4563, obe@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: (765) 494-2722;

Keith Robinson, robins89@purdue.edu

Agriculture News Page
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. and INDIANAPOLIS - Women who have an interest in entrepreneurship, innovation and collaboration are invited to attend two events to help them attain their goals.

The events are part of the Purdue Foundry program WomenIN and will be held in Indianapolis and Lafayette, Indiana.

The goal of the WomenIN program is to increase the total representation of women in technology and entrepreneurship and establish a network for supporting one another. It provides resources normally reserved for clients of the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurial hub at Purdue University's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, to all women across Indiana. These resources include online ideation workshops, entrepreneur-in-residence assistance and open invitations to quarterly networking events and educational opportunities.

The Greater Lafayette WomenIN Hub Launch Luncheon will be 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 12, at Carnahan Hall, 800 Main St., Lafayette. The Indianapolis WomenIN Hub Launch Luncheon will be 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 14, at The Willows on Westfield, 6729 Westfield Blvd., Indianapolis. Seating is limited, and attendees are required to RSVP at http://bit.ly/1NTQwQD

The events will feature guest speakers who will share their stories about becoming entrepreneurs. The Greater Lafayette launch luncheon will feature Dr. Sarah Hallberg of Key to Life, a personal health company. The Indianapolis launch luncheon will feature Tiffany Sauder of Element Three, a strategic brand and marketing agency. The events include dedicated networking time and informational sessions about entrepreneurial resources.

"Our goal is to increase the participation of women in Indiana's entrepreneurial community," said Juliana Casavan, entrepreneurial programs manager at Purdue Foundry. "Purdue University and the Purdue Foundry are at the forefront of this movement, and we have the ability to activate a change in women's involvement in entrepreneurship."

About WomenIN

WomenIN is an initiative that will empower aspiring women throughout Indiana by providing resources and a network to increase the future growth of women entrepreneurs by creating a supportive ecosystem. WomenIN will open up resources typically reserved for Purdue Foundry clients to all women in the state.

About Purdue Foundry

The Purdue Foundry is an entrepreneurship and commercialization hub in Discovery Park's Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship whose professionals help Purdue innovators create startups. The Purdue Foundry is managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, which received the 2014 Incubator Network of the Year from the National Business Incubation Association for its work in entrepreneurship. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org

Purdue Research Foundation contacts: Steve Martin, 765-588-3342, sgmartin@prf.org

Hillary Henry, 765-588-3586, hkhenry@prf.org

Source: Juliana Casavan, 765-588-5253, jbcasavan@prf.org
DALLAS (AP)  A persistent glut of oil is trumping Middle Eastern tension, extending the slump in oil markets into the new year.

The price of oil fell 30 percent last year, following a 50 percent plunge in 2014. At below $36 a barrel on Tuesday, the price is down more than 2 percent early in 2016. Even the breakoff of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two big oil-producing countries, failed to halt the slide.

Oil prices are likely to remain about where they are until either production drops or the world economy perks up and drives demand higher. The U.S. Energy Department expects the nation's production to drop by about 500,000 barrels a day this year, but OPEC has vowed to hold to existing production levels.

The price of benchmark U.S. crude was down 77 cents to $35.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in afternoon trading after falling 28 cents on Monday. Brent crude, reflecting the price of international oils, was down 2 percent on Tuesday after a smaller drop Monday.

New reports indicated that manufacturing is continuing to struggle, with factory activity falling in December for the second straight month in the U.S. and the 10th straight month in China.

Slow growth means that the current oversupply of oil could be more stubborn than expected. Government figures show that the stockpile of U.S. crude oil grew by 2.6 million barrels during the week ended Dec. 25 and was 9.9 million barrels higher than a year ago.

Surveys by Genscape Inc. show that stocks of benchmark U.S. crude near the key hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, are at all-time highs, said Brian Busch, director of oil markets for the energy-research firm. It's not limited to the U.S. Oil-storage terminals in South Africa are full, and China-bound tankers have been seen waiting offshore until there is room to offload their shipments of crude, he said.

With little reason to expect stronger demand or cuts in production soon, investors seemed to discount the rising tension between the Saudis and Iranians over Saudi Arabia's execution of an opposition Shiite cleric. Stewart Glickman, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ, said geopolitical risk has lost some of its ability to influence on oil prices.

"It is maybe a sense of security from the marketplace that with this seeming glut of crude oil that you can have tensions in Middle East and they don't count for as much as they used to three or four years ago," he said in an interview.

The explanation lies partly in robust production from the U.S., Glickman said. Saudi officials are reluctant to cut production in a bid to raise prices because they'll just concede sales to U.S. producers who will fill the void in supply.

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said that lifting the ban on exports of U.S. crude has changed the geopolitics of energy. Oil prices didn't spike after the Saudi-Iran confrontation partly because "the US has come in as a major player," he said Tuesday during a speech in Washington.

Iran wants to regain some oil exports that it lost while under economic sanctions, soon to be lifted, for its nuclear program. Judith Dwarkin, chief economist at ITG Investment Research, said that the confrontation with Saudi Arabia makes the Saudis unlikely to offset Iranian increases by trimming their own production  potentially adding to the glut.

Low prices are a boon to consumers. On Monday, the nationwide average price for a gallon of regular was $1.99, according to the auto club AAA  22 cents cheaper than a year ago.

The Energy Information Administration estimates that the average U.S. household saved about $660 on cheaper gasoline last year, compared with 2014.
An Andalusia man has been allowed to take back his plea in connection with a 2013 DUI crash that killed two people.

In vacating Mitchell Gayer's 18-year prison sentence and ordering a new trial, Associate Rock Island County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Berglund ruled Mr. Gayer's previous attorney, William "Gerry" Schick, failed to properly advise his client of the "full effects" of his plea.

"Under the totality of all of the foregoing circumstances, the Court cannot conclude that Mr. Schick's performance was reasonable under prevailing professional norms," the judge wrote. "The Court feels there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's performance, the results of the proceeding would have been different."

Judge Berglund has recused himself from the case and ordered Mr. Gayer to be held in the Rock Island County Jail on a $50,000 bond. As of Monday afternoon, Mr. Gayer remained in custody with no court date set.

Rock Island County State's Attorney John McGehee said he was surprised by the judge's decision. Mr. McGehee said he believed Mr. Gayer's plea was "knowing and voluntary" and that the 25-year-old had understood the "parameters" of the agreement.

In January 2015, Mr. Gayer entered an Alford plea to aggravated driving under the influence for the Nov. 27, 2013, crash that killed Jamie Sedam, 22, of Port Byron, and Clayton Carver, 24, of Taylor Ridge. In May, Mr. Gayer -- who alleged head trauma from the crash caused him not to remember most of it -- was sentenced by Judge Berglund to 18 years in prison.

Mr. Gayer later filed a motion to withdraw his plea through his new attorney, Katherine Drummond. At a Dec. 4 hearing, Mr. Gayer testified that Mr. Schick had advised him he would receive probation or a minimum prison sentence. Mr. Gayer also claimed Mr. Schick did not tell him about certain collateral consequences of his plea, such as losing his right to vote, own a gun and have a driver's license.

Mr. Gayer said, had he been aware of the ramifications, he would not have entered the Alford plea.

On Monday, Judge Berglund commended Mr. Schick's 43 years of practicing law. However, noting the attorney's "prolonged" health issues, the judge said he and other court personnel saw Mr. Schick fall asleep at Mr. Gayer's sentencing hearing.

"During this time, the defendant took Mr. Schick's notepad and began taking notes as Mr. Schick slept," the judge wrote.

Mr. Schick retired soon after Mr. Gayer's sentencing and moved to Florida; he did not attend the Dec. 4 hearing. Judge Berglund said prosecutors should have arranged a Skype call with Mr. Schick if he could not attend in person.

That is among issues Mr. McGehee said he intends to raise in his motion to reconsider.

"We could have easily made arrangements," he said. "But we believed the court was not requiring Mr. Schick to be in attendance."

Mr. McGehee said his motion to reconsider is among the limited options available to prosecutors because the judge's order cannot be appealed to a higher court. He said his office intends to argue both law and "factual questions" raised in the judge's order, and that they are in discussion with the victims' families.

Mr. McGehee said he was unsure if Judge Berglund or another judge would hear the motion to reconsider.

Mr. Schick could not be reached for comment Monday. In an October affidavit, he denied telling Mr. Gayer he likely would receive probation, saying instead he told Mr. Gayer such a sentence was unlikely, per state statute, except in "extraordinary circumstances."

The affidavit said Mr. Schick suggested Mr. Gayer speak at local high schools about drunk driving while the criminal case was pending and that "pleading guilty would be the right thing to do for the families of the victims."

In letters filed with the court, Mr. Gayer's family claims Mr. Schick did not heed suggestions about the case, including having Mr. Gayer wear a GPS ankle monitor or undergo alcohol tests to dispel rumors he continued to drink after the crash.
ALEDO  A resolution approving an agreement to move forward with an intersection and sidewalk reconstruction project was sent to committee for review Monday on a 4-3 vote.

The council already approved the Capital Improvement Plan budget for 2016 for $950,000 and requested an engineering agreement for professional services from Missman Inc. Greg Rychaert of Missman gave a presentation to the council on the project.

To move forward, the council would have to approve an initial $85,000 for design and planning services by Missman. The intersection and sidewalk reconstruction project includes the intersection of Main Street and College Avenue and Main Street from College Avenue to Southwest 2nd Avenue.

The work entails replacing intersection pavement and raising elevation, replacing sidewalks to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act standards, adding bump outs at the College/Main intersection, ADA ramps, possible aesthetic elements and replacement of sanitary sewer laterals. The targeted completion date of the project would be between Rhubarb Fest (June 3 and 4) and Antique Days (Aug. 27).

In the last two years of planning, weve broken the downtown into as many as six different phases of sidewalk and intersection reconstruction," administrator Bob Mahrt said. "Because of the senior center site being tied with West Main, we decided to combine two phases under this construction project.

Questions were raised about whether the city has a legal obligation to make the upgrades.

You cant go in there and start replacing sidewalks," Mr. Rychaert said. "Once you start doing that, youd have to start being (ADA) compliant then.

It seems to me years ago when we initially were talking about this, it was $1.2 (million) to do the whole downtown, and now were talking $950,000 for a small section of downtown," Ald. Jay Doherty said. "Thats the part thats tough to even absorb.

Mayor Chris Hagloch said, Also that $1.2 was sidewalks only, not street.

A Property Committee meeting was scheduled at 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 11, to continue discussion.

We were given a lot of information, involving a total community project of $3 million," Ald. Doherty said. "I would like to take a little time to absorb it, and this is the first opportunity that the community has had to hear it, and I think they should get an opportunity to absorb it.

In other action, Police Chief Christopher Sullivan told the council the Aledo Police Department has been invited to join the Henry Mercer County Investigative Task Force.

The task force, according to Chief Sullivan, allows us to step back from something that could potentially be officer-involved so theres no conflict of interest.

He said it also would be a source of additional manpower and expertise if something happened beyond the resources of a small department to deal with. He said there are no fees. The only cost would be to continue to pay the salary of any Aledo investigator sent to assist another department. He plans to have the plan to the council for approval by the next meeting, Jan. 18.

Mayor Hagloch also read a proclamation prepared by the Mercer County 4-H Federation designating March 2016 as Police Officers, Firefighters and EMS Personnel Appreciation Month.

The council also:

- Approved agreement with Hutchinson Engineering for sewer main replacement on East Main Street from Northeast 7th Avenue to Northeast 9th Avenue for $23,500.

- Approved accepting sole ownership of the Senior Center, located at 137 W. Main St. Formerly the building was jointly owned by Mercer Township, Mercer County and the city of Aledo.

- Approved a lease agreement between the city and the Mercer County Senior Center.
A Chinese man named Gao Yanlong from Henan province in central China submitted an application to a local court for a 2.03 million yuan compensation on Monday after six and a half years imprisonment for an unsubstantiated conviction.

Gao was detained by police in Lingbao county, Henan province on charges of homicide on Jan. 21, 1992. He was then convicted of robbery and sentenced to death with reprieve by the Sanmenxia Intermediate People's Court.

But Gao rejected the decision and appealed to the high court, saying that he was tortured until he confessed the crime. Henan High People's Court later ordered a retrial, citing a lack of evidence for his conviction.

On Aug. 21, 1998, Gao was granted bail, but the case was never re-investigated in the following 18 years. He was informed on Dec. 21, 2015 that a review procedure on his case has started.

Gao later demanded a compensation and apology from authorities, claiming that the charge damages his reputation.

The compensation he is claiming includes 529,000 yuan for his 2,410 days in custody, 500,000 yuan for loss of business and 1 million yuan for mental damages.

Gaos lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, said that Gao has the right to apply for state compensation even though a final conclusion has not been reached in his case.

According to the latest regulations issued by Chinas Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, if the bail of the accused has expired and the final decision has not yet been made, the accused can apply for compensation for imprisonment.

Liu added that this is the first such application since the new regulation took effect in December.

According to regulations, the court is required to decide whether to compensate Gao within two months.
DAVENPORT  Hillary Clinton took aim at big pharma during a Monday campaign stop in Davenport, pledging to take tax breaks away from drug companies and let the government negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs.

The former Secretary of State is among a group of Democrats escalating their rhetoric against drug companies in recent months. In September, Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of a pill that treats parasitic infections 5,000 percent  from $13.50 to $750.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, drug prices increased 12 percent in 2014, more than double the rise in overall medical costs.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.  Ms. Clinton's main rival for the Democratic nomination  also has criticized drug companies. In a recent statement, he pointed to a government report that showed nearly one in five Americans did not fill a prescription in 2014 because they couldn't afford it.

Ms. Clinton, speaking in front of about 400 people at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds on Monday, said prescription drug costs were simply too high, despite tax subsidies for research and tests that help drug companies bring new products to market.

"After we've done all that, the drug companies charge us more than anybody else in the world," Ms. Clinton said. "Why? Because they have to negotiate prices with Canada, with Europe, with Australia, with other countries because other countries say 'Hey, we're happy to buy your drugs, but we're not going to pay exorbitant prices for them.'"

Letting Medicare negotiate prices with drug companies would help both the Medicare budget and seniors insured through the program, she added. Ms. Clinton said drug companies say her position will undermine research, but she disagrees.

"Drug companies spend more on TV advertising than on research," she said. "So actually, I'm going to give them the opportunity to put more money into research by taking away the tax benefit they get from advertising."

The proposal would eliminate drug companies' ability to deduct advertising costs from their taxes. Nine out of 10 of the biggest drug companies spend more money on marketing than on research, according to the health care research firm GlobalData.

Republicans are incapable of taking on the issue of rising prescription costs because they've been in "cahoots with the drug companies for so long," Ms. Clinton said Monday.

Ms. Clinton is leading in Iowa polls ahead of the Feb. 1 caucus. Sen. Sanders, who is in second place, introduced a bill in September that would authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies to bring down costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

His bill also includes tougher penalties for drug companies that commit fraud and bans drug companies from paying competitors to keep lower-priced generic substitutes off the market. The proposed legislation would lower barriers to importing cheaper drugs from Canada.

Sen. Sanders' bill has not been voted on by the Senate or the House of Representatives.
BURNS, Ore. (AP)  Federal authorities kept their distance and made no immediate attempt Monday to retake a wildlife refuge in the remote high desert of Oregon after armed anti-government protesters seized it as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

The group came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to contest the prison sentences of two ranchers who set fire to federal land, but their ultimate goal is to turn over the property to local authorities so people can use it free of U.S. oversight.

People across the globe have marveled that federal authorities have not moved to take back the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Residents say they have not seen a large presence of officers, and the government's tactic generally is to monitor the situation from afar but leave them be as long as they don't show signs of violence.

That's how federal officials defused a high-profile 2014 standoff with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy over grazing rights. Now Bundy's two sons are leading the push in Oregon.

Ammon Bundy told reporters Monday that the group wants authorities to look into claims that local ranchers have been intimidated by the federal government.

Bundy spoke at the refuge south of Burns, Oregon. He said the group calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and has sent a "demand for redress" to local, state and federal officials.

They want a response within five days. Bundy did not say what the group would do if they get no response.

Reporters have seen roughly 20 people at the remote national facility.

The latest dispute traces its roots to the 1970s and the "Sagebrush Rebellion," a move by Western states like Nevada to increase local control over federal land. While ranchers and others complain of onerous federal rules, critics of the push for more local control have said the federal government should administer the public lands for the widest possible uses, including environmental and recreation.

Residents of the tiny town of Burns are concerned about the potential for violence.

Keith Landon, a longtime resident and employee at the Reid Country Store, said he knows local law enforcement officials who fear their kids will be targeted by the group.

"I'm hoping most of it's just muscle, trying to push," he said. "But it's a scary thing."

If the situation turns violent, Bundy contends that it will be because of the federal government's actions.

"I mean, we're here to restore order. We're here to restore rights, and that can go peacefully and easily," he said.

The ranchers whose cause has been the rallying cry also reject the group's support. Dwight and son Steven Hammond were convicted of arson three years ago for fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. They served their original sentences  three months for Dwight and one year for Steven  but a judge ruled that the terms were too short under federal minimum sentencing laws.

Both men were ordered back to prison for about four years each. They have said they plan to turn themselves in Monday.

Kendra M. Matthews, an attorney for the men, said Monday they will seek clemency from President Obama.

The Bundy brothers say the group plans to stay at the refuge as long as it takes. They declined to say how many people were at the property where several pickup trucks blocked the entrance and armed men wore camouflage and winter gear.

The FBI is working with local and state authorities to "bring a peaceful resolution to the situation," the bureau said in a statement late Sunday. It said it is the agency in charge and would not release details about the law enforcement response to ensure the safety of officers and those at the refuge.

Some are criticizing the lack of action, saying it is because those occupying the property are white.

Landon, the longtime Burns resident, said he sympathizes with the Bundys' frustrations. Landon was a logger until the federal government declared the spotted owl a protected species in the 1980s, damaging the local logging industry.

"It's hard to discredit what they're trying to do out there. But I don't want anybody hurt," he said.
The veteran emergency management director for southeast Missouri's Cape Girardeau County is fighting floods again, just as he did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.

"Prior to levee building, the river was a wild thing and it spread out between the river bluffs," Knaup said Monday. "Now we've tried to tame it. Mother Nature and Old Man River will fight back."

The rains that caused this winter's flood, blamed already for 25 deaths and damage to hundreds of homes and businesses, ended a week ago, but the water was still rising Monday in southern Missouri and Illinois. The Illinois River, which joins the Mississippi above St. Louis, was expected to reach near-record crests this week between the Illinois towns of Havana and Valley City, creating "a very dangerous situation" as levees there become saturated, said Steve Buan, a National Weather Service hydrologist.

Several other states along the Mississippi River were still bracing for the crest, which was flowing past Tiptonville, Tennessee, and expected to reach Memphis on Thursday at 6.5 feet above flood stage.

For many in the flood-weary Midwest, fighting the river has become an almost annual event. In Cape Girardeau County, all but five of the 32 highest crests on record have occurred since the record-setting 1993 flood, and four of the top 10 have happened since 2011.

So what's going on? Unusual weather patterns are a symptom of global warming, but experts also blame more immediate developments, including efforts to protect growing towns and cities from the rivers both that sustain and threaten them.

Bob Holmes, a Missouri-based hydrologic engineer for the U.S. Geological Survey, says the Midwest has received far more rainfall than normal over the past quarter of a century, and more extreme rainstorms, such as the three-day downpour Dec. 26-28 that dumped 10 inches of rain over much of Missouri and Illinois and caused this latest mess. But urban sprawl also increases flood risk, he said.

"Farm fields will soak up water," Holmes said. "If you pave it with concrete or asphalt, all of a sudden that is a very efficient conduit right into the streams and you get increased flooding."

Bob Criss, an earth and planetary science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, also blames urbanization, and says this latest spike of rain wouldn't have caused major flooding if the river wasn't constricted by levees and floodwalls.

"The Mississippi River behaved during this event like a small river, and it's acting like a small river because the water has no place to go," Criss said.

Earthen mounds have held back the Mississippi in places since French settlers installed the river's first levees in Louisiana in 1717. They spread quickly as riverfront communities developed, but floods have continued to pose threats ever since.

This was predicted as far back as 1852, when engineer Charles Ellet Jr. warned in a report to Congress that risks would only increase as "water that was formerly allowed to spread over many thousand square miles of low lands is becoming more and more confined to the immediate channel of the river."

By 1926, the Mississippi River Commission declared its levee system to be complete, and able to "prevent the destructive effects of floods." The claim collapsed less than a year later, when the "Great Mississippi Flood of 1927" devastated much of the Midwest.

That calamity led to still-higher barriers as the Flood Control Act of 1928 urged the Army Corps of Engineers to develop a system of more levees, spillways and other controls.

Flood control took on renewed urgency after flooding in 1993, which the Corps describes as "a hydro-meteorological event without precedent in modern times on the upper Mississippi." Damage totaled $15 billion as hundreds of levees failed; 50 people died and thousands were evacuated, some for months.

The federal government bought out hundreds of homes and businesses, turning floodplains into greenspace throughout the Midwest. But locations deemed too valuable for buyouts are now protected by even-bigger and stronger levees. The Mississippi River now has an estimated 3,500 miles of levees, ranging from small barriers around farmland to Corps-built structures protecting towns and major cities.

Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Rene Poche defends the federal system, saying it prevented an estimated $230 billion in damage in 2011, when the river south of St. Louis experienced its worst flooding since 1993.

In Cape Girardeau County, Knaup knows that the same system he blames for increased flooding also protects homes and businesses.

"I appreciate every levee and floodwall we have," Knaup said. "I'm grateful for them."
The mystery took another turn Tuesday when the wife of the latest man to disappear said she now believes he went to China voluntarily and has canceled a missing person's report for him.

Lee Bo, a British citizen who vanished Dec. 30, purportedly wrote to say he went to mainland China to help with an investigation. His case has sparked fears that he was seized in Hong Kong by security agents from the mainland and taken there in violation of an agreement giving Hong Kong a high degree of control over its own affairs.

Lee's wife said she believed the letter showed he wasn't acting under pressure.

"I believe that it was voluntarily written, so that's why I retracted the case," Choi Ka-ping told reporters in brief comments.

Lee and the other four missing men are associated with the publisher Mighty Current, which specializes in gossipy books on political scandals involving China's Communist leaders and other sensitive topics that are banned in the mainland.

The disappearance of the five  all since October  has raised concerns Beijing is eroding the "one country, two systems" principle that's been in place since Britain ceded control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. The principle maintains civil liberties in Hong Kong that are nonexistent on the mainland, including freedom of the press.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, on a visit to Beijing, said he pressed officials for information on Lee.

"We have urgently enquired, both of the Hong Kong authorities and of the mainland Chinese authorities, what  if anything  they know of his whereabouts," Hammond said. He added that if Lee is involved in any investigation, it should be settled by the Hong Kong judicial system.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at the same press briefing, warned against making "assumptions or meaningless speculations" about Lee, saying that "above all, he is a Chinese citizen."

When Lee vanished, he reportedly did not have a travel permit for mainland China with him, an indication he didn't plan to go there that triggered speculation about Chinese security agents abducting him. The four others were last seen either in mainland China or Thailand.

An image of Lee's handwritten letter was published by Taiwan's government-affiliated Central News Agency late Monday and subsequently by Hong Kong media.

The letter, faxed to an employee at the publishing company's Causeway Bay Bookstore in Hong Kong, said: "Due to some urgent matters that I need to handle and that aren't to be revealed to the public, I have made my own way back to the mainland in order to cooperate with the investigation by relevant parties."

"It might take a bit of time," it said. "My current situation is very well. All is normal."

The letter gave no details on the investigation to which it refers and raised more questions than it answered.

Hong Kong police still have missing persons' files open for three other staff members or shareholders of the publisher or the bookstore. One of the publishing company's owners, Gui Minhai, is a Swedish national who disappeared in Thailand in October, according to Hong Kong media and human rights groups.

Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Joakim Edvardsson said Monday the government was "very concerned" about the disappearance of one of its citizens.

Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers and human rights activists were skeptical the letter proved Lee was safe.

"If he did indeed write the letter, it was almost certainly written under duress," said William Nee, Amnesty International's China researcher. "What we see in mainland China all the time is that police and state security put enormous pressure on family members not to speak to media and not to raise a fuss on social media. If indeed it was state security that detained Lee Bo, one wonders whether the same tactics are being used to silence family members here in Hong Kong."

China's nationalist newspaper Global Times slammed the bookstore in an editorial Monday for "profiting on political rumors" and selling books with "trumped-up content."

"Although the Causeway Bay Bookstore is located in Hong Kong, it actually stays in business by disrupting mainland society," the paper said.
STATE-owned Chilean State Railways (EFE) is responsible for some 2100 route-km, and its main activities comprise supervising infrastructure maintenance contractors and running suburban services through wholly-owned subsidiary companies.

Two privately-owned concessionaires also operate railfreight services on EFE's tracks: Ferrocarril del Pacifico (FdP) and Transportes Andres Pirazzoli (Transap). EFE itself operates no freight services, although it has plans to do so, possibly in 2016, using infrastructure owned by its Arica to La Paz Railway (FCALPSA) subsidiary. The line is separated from EFE's southern core network by almost 2000km and it has carried only internal service trains in the past 10 years.

EFEs current passenger operations are limited to less than 1% of all public transport in Chile due to suspension of some services due to infrastructure works. This includes the MetroTren suburban service over the 81.8km stretch between Santiago and Rancagua, and the twice-daily 397.6km Santiago - Chillan service. Operations continue on the 43.2km Valparaiso Regional Metro (Merval) service between Valparaiso and Limache, BioTren surburban services in the Concepcion area, and three low-frequency rural services, from Concepcion to Laja, Victoria to Temuco and Talca to Constitucion.

EFE draws up three-year development plans, which must be approved by the Finance Ministry if they involve state-funded disbursements, which they invariably do. Projects must meet the Social Development Ministry's criteria for project evaluation, which, in principle, are quite conservative, not admitting, for instance, benefits from greater willingness to pay for improvements in service quality unrelated to journey time savings.

On the other hand, the financial resources available for transport projects in regions away from Santiago have mushroomed since Congress insisted that, as a quid pro quo for approving a funding law for TranSantiago, the capital's deficit-ridden public transport system, equivalent financing must be made available for transport projects elsewhere in the country. However, this has created a situation in which investment funds are looking for projects rather than the other way around.

The main projects which EFE is currently developing are:

Nos/Rancagua Express: This amounts to a thorough modernisation of the current MetroTren suburban service which operates on the main line between Santiago's Alameda (Central) station and the city of Rancagua, some 81.5km to the south. The project is behind schedule but should be completed in the first quarter of 2016. It will offer a four-minute peak frequency service as far as Nos, 20km from Alameda, and a 15-minute service onwards to Rancagua using Alstom Xtrapolis trains. Work has required the suspension of both MetroTren operations and the sparse interurban service to Chillan. The project is estimated to cost $US 545m and services should have an annual ridership of 23 million passengers due in part to the inclusion of Nos Express in the TranSantiago integrated fare structure, thereby permitting passengers to continue their journeys by metro or bus without having to pay an extra fare or, at least, paying only a minimal surcharge.

This amounts to a thorough modernisation of the current MetroTren suburban service which operates on the main line between Santiago's Alameda (Central) station and the city of Rancagua, some 81.5km to the south. The project is behind schedule but should be completed in the first quarter of 2016. It will offer a four-minute peak frequency service as far as Nos, 20km from Alameda, and a 15-minute service onwards to Rancagua using Alstom Xtrapolis trains. Work has required the suspension of both MetroTren operations and the sparse interurban service to Chillan. The project is estimated to cost $US 545m and services should have an annual ridership of 23 million passengers due in part to the inclusion of Nos Express in the TranSantiago integrated fare structure, thereby permitting passengers to continue their journeys by metro or bus without having to pay an extra fare or, at least, paying only a minimal surcharge. Valparaiso Regional Metro (Merval): The current Merval suburban service, inaugurated in 2005, operates on a 43km corridor between Valparaiso and Limache. With ridership of 22 million annual passengers, Merval is finally reaching the initially forecast levels, and should increase further due to an integrated fare structure for all electrically-powered public transport in the Valparaiso area. To meet this demand, Alstom is delivering an additional eight Xtrapolis trains, with a further five under consideration. The investment cost is $US 75m.

The current Merval suburban service, inaugurated in 2005, operates on a 43km corridor between Valparaiso and Limache. With ridership of 22 million annual passengers, Merval is finally reaching the initially forecast levels, and should increase further due to an integrated fare structure for all electrically-powered public transport in the Valparaiso area. To meet this demand, Alstom is delivering an additional eight Xtrapolis trains, with a further five under consideration. The investment cost is $US 75m. Concepcion area BioTren: This involves the electrification of the 17km stretch of line from the current suburban railhead at Lomas Coloradas to Coronel, a former coal mining town and now a satellite of Concepcion. The project, which is budgeted at $US 88m, was reported as 60% complete in August and is due to be completed early next year with forecast ridership of 3.5 million annual passengers. The suburban trains will access the city of Concepcion via a single-track, 124-year-old bridge over the Biobio River, which is the longest in Chile. The bridge is also used by freight trains transporting cellulose and other products, and with the traffic set to increase, construction of an additional bridge is under consideration.

Master plan

In addition to its three-year plans, EFE also has a longer term Master Plan, which consists of 18 projects valued at $US 7.6bn, which are in different stages of evaluation and design.

One of the most advanced is what is popularly known as the Melitren, a suburban service over an existing right-of-way which is planned to link Santiagos Alameda station with the dormitory town of Melipilla, 61km southwest of the capital. This was unsuccessfully tendered in the 1990s, and fell foul of a disagreement between EFE and the Santiago Metro company.

For cost reasons the former wanted to locate the city terminus at Alameda. However, the latter argued that a new intermodal terminal at Quinta Normal was necessary to avoid overburdening the EFE-Metro interchange facilities at Alameda and to encourage EFEs passengers onto metro Line 5 rather than Line 1, which has no spare peak capacity. The result was the partial building of the intermodal terminal but without a new tunnel to connect it to the line to Melipilla.

The new Melitren service, which is estimated to cost $US 1.07bn to realise, will not be tendered but instead operated by EFE. The potential overload problem at Alameda has not gone away, and to some extent has become more critical. Although some of the Melitren's 31 million annual passengers and the Nos/Rancagua Expresses' 23 million would switch to metro Line 6 at stations short of Alameda, most would prefer to change to Line 1, which serves both the city centre and more recently-developed business districts further east. As a result, the Transport Ministry is currently trying to find a suitable solution through a dedicated working group.

Once completed, these projects will increase EFEs annual ridership from an average of 30 million in recent years to nearly 100 million. The implementation of other projects included in the Master Plan, such as a 27km suburban service from Quinta Normal to the north-easterly town of Batuco, and a 24km extension of the Merval service to La Calera, would push the total beyond 100 million.

Restricted

One of the features of EFEs network is that the distance by rail from the capital to Valparaiso/Vina del Mar and Talcahuano/Concepcion - the second and the third most important urban agglomerations in the country - are, respectively, some 60% and 13% greater than the corresponding distance by road. Speeds are restricted, with the railway climbing at 2.5% through sharp curves on the Valparaiso/Vina del Mar line and winding around the northern banks of the Biobio River to reach Talcahuano/ Concepcion. Both lines are also mainly single track, meaning that the railway is at a competitive disadvantage for daytime passenger traffic.

A new railway to Valparaiso has been proposed almost from the moment the existing one was opened 152 years ago and the EFE Master Plan includes a prefeasibility study of a direct tunnelled route via the scenic La Dormida pass through the coastal mountain range. The line would link stations at Til-Til and Limache on the existing route and is estimated to cost $US 1.2bn.

One difficulty of implementing the project is to combine high-speed intercity trains and greatly increased freight movements with the frequent Merval suburban service between Limache and Valparaiso. A study of a possible link to Santiago's international airport from the existing line is also underway.

The new line to Concepcion would diverge from the main line to the south at Rucapequen, a few kilometers beyond Chillan, and would essentially follow a secondary line which was in use until around 20 years ago but never for inter-city services.

Railfreight traffic in Chile is close to a historical high, mainly due to the transport of minerals by privately-owned railways in the north, and so too is passenger traffic. However, rail's modal share remains low in both cases, and this is what EFE is aiming to address.

For financial, economic, and technical reasons the entire package of 18 projects has no chance of complete implementation by the plan's 2022 target deadline, but some of them will get off the ground, which will provide a real boost for rail in the country, and take ridership to new heights.
The decree covers the northern section of Line 14 from Mairie du Saint-Ouen to Saint-Denis Pleyel, and the section of Line 16/17 from Saint-Denis Pleyel to Le Bourget RER, Clichy-Montfermeil, and Noisy-Champs.

The granting of public utility status gives the project's developer, Societe du Grand Paris, the legal powers it requires to begin land acquisition and preliminary construction as well as demolition, archaeological works, and test bores for tunnels.

Last October SGP awarded Arcadis a contract to provide project management services on the 26km section of Line 15 between Saint-Denis Pleyel and Champigny Centre. The section from Saint-Denis Pleyel to Rosny is due to open in 2025, with completion of the line to Champigny Centre scheduled for 2030.

The southern section of Line 15 became the first phase of the network to be granted public utility status in December 2014 and preliminary works are now underway. Studies are continuing on other parts of the network and public inquires will be held in the first half of this year for the northern section of Line 17 and Line 18.
In its 2015 state of the railroad report, released to employees on Jan. 4, 2015, Kansas City Southern (KCS) said the company will see many of the same challenges in 2016 that it faced in 2015, creating a cautious outlook for the year ahead.

We expect continued volatility in oil and natural gas pricing, which means our energy business, just like our peers businesses, will again be difficult to predict, said KCS CEO David L. Starling and President Patrick J. Ottensmeyer.  The strong U.S. dollar will make American exports more expensive and less attractive to other global producers, which may impact many of the products we move, such as steel and paper. Beyond these key indicators, there are various other factors that signal softness in the global industrial economy, but we must focus on making the best of market dynamics at hand.

For these reasons, among others, we are cautious about our outlook for 2016. Despite these challenges, we will proceed with many of the planned strategic capital expenditures that will drive our longer-term growth in areas such as plastics, automotive and intermodal. However, we will need to be extremely thoughtful about the cost side of our business and must ensure we are using our financial and human resources assets wisely. As such, we will remain flexible and respond quickly to evolving circumstances in order to protect our profitability in the short term.

Starling and Ottensmeyer added, however, that the company demonstrated resilience in 2015 in every aspect of its operations, finances and marketing, and is well positioned for future growth.

That said, we operate in an industry that must consider both the long and short term timeframes and we can say with confidence that our long term future is bright. Just as in the past, we will get through this period of economic uncertainty and will make the appropriate strategic capital investments that will facilitate industry-leading growth when macro-economic dynamics shift in our favor. For the foreseeable future, however, we will need to continue to be nimble and resilient. KCS demonstrated its resiliency in 2015 and we should all be proud of our meaningful accomplishments. We will operate with this hallmark mentality through 2016 and we should be excited by the future prospects for our great company.

This state of the railroad report provides an overview of KCS primary accomplishments in 2015 and the progress planned for 2016. Highlights include:

 Installation of 40,000 ties and 20 track-miles of rail between Beaumont, Texas and Dequincy, La., completing a three-year program for track upgrades over this rail segment.

 Installation of 132,000 ties on the line from Kansas City, Mo. to East St. Louis, Ill.

 Installation of 76,000 ties and five track-miles of rail in the areas of Artesia, Columbus and Aberdeen, Miss.

 Continued annual tie cycle programs on the Pittsburg subdivision from Kansas City, Mo. to Pittsburg, Kan.; Laredo subdivision from Laredo to Corpus Christi, Tex.; and New Orleans subdivision from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, La.

 Replaced 38 miles of curved rail and other priority rail areas across the system.

Additionally, this past July, KCS opened a new, state-of-the-art intermodal terminal in Wylie, Tex., providing an annual lift capacity of 342,000 containers, 1,500 parking spaces, and 400 container stack spots.

For the full breakdown of KCSs 2015 accomplishments in both its U.S. and Mexican operations, by division, click HERE.
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Although Mexico's Instituto Ferderal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT) claims to have concluded the countrys DTT transition, 1.5 million Mexicans still have no digital coverage.





Through its last scheduled switch-off, the Mexican broadcasting industry was to be the first in Latin America to complete digitalisation. However, 497 stations will still be broadcasting analogue TV during 2016, leaving over 1% of the population with no DTT signal.The IFT recognises that the country's most remote and less populated areas are far from completing digitalisation, and has said that the owners and managers of those 497 stations must carry out the necessary investment to be DTT-ready by 31 December 2016.The same deadline has been set for TV stations, which were not required to digitalise production in 2015, although the country's main networks did so. In a statement published at the beginning of December, Mexico's Senate agreed to grant extra time for small and local operators to prepare for switchover.But the IFT figures refer to coverage, not actual DTT reception, and some reports have shown that between 12-17 million Mexicans are at risk of not receiving any free-to-air (FTA) TV due to a lack of available technology.But the IFT has said that 90% of the lower income population has been subsidised to be able to acquire digital technology.
The National Cable TV Cooperative (NCTC) and AMC Networks have ended their TV carriage dispute, avoiding a blackout situation for hundreds of thousands of pay-TV subscribers.





"We are pleased to have reached a new distribution agreement with NCTC," said Bob Broussard, president of network sales, AMC. "We have enjoyed a long and successful partnership with NCTC, and we look forward to continuing to provide our popular and acclaimed programming to NCTC members and their customers.""We appreciate AMC Networks' willingness to take the time to understand our members' unique challenges and concerns, and their creativity to construct an agreement that addresses the concerns of many of our members," said Judy Meyka, executive VP of programming, NCTC. "AMC Networks has made a significant investment in the programming on their networks and we are pleased that our members have the option to continue offering this programming to their customers."NCTC represents more than 700 cable systems. It said that AMC was asking for fee increases of as much as 400% in some cases.AMC still has trouble elsewhere  it was recently removed from the line-up at GCI in Alaska.
Ukrainian court seizes drilling rigs transferred to Russian territorial waters

MOSCOW, January 5 (RAPSI) - The Pechersky District Court in Kiev has seized two jack-up floating drilling rigs belonging to Chernomorneftegaz oil and gas company, according to court records.

Drilling rigs, Ukraine and Pyotr Godovanets have been earlier transferred from the Odessa gas field to Russias territorial waters in connection with complicated international situation.

The process occurred under cover of the Black Sea Fleet warships because of increased terrorist threats, according to the companys report.

Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov said that relocation of the drilling rigs was conditioned by the technical need. Ukraines Foreign Ministry in turn claimed that the rigs are owned by Ukraine and their transfer to the Russian territorial waters is robbery. Ukraine may also seek damages.

Chernomorneftegaz, a gas distributor on the Crimean Peninsula, belonged to Naftogaz of Ukraine until March 17, 2014. After the referendum on Crimeas reunification with Russia, the company was nationalized. Currently, it is a republic-run company managed by the Fuel and Energy Ministry of Crimea. The company extracted hydrocarbons in the Black Sea and Azov Sea shelves as well as on the Crimean Peninsula. It also transports natural gas via pipeline.
The New York Times, December 27, 2015

By Alissa J. Rubin



Farkhunda, was accused of burning the Quran and beaten and burnt by an angry mob. Farkhunda, was accused of burning the Quran and beaten and burnt by an angry mob.

KABUL, Afghanistan  Farkhunda had one chance to escape the mob that wanted to kill her. Two Afghan police officers pulled her onto the roof of a low shed, above the angry crowd.

But then the enraged men below her picked up poles and planks of wood, and hit at her until she lost her grip and tumbled down.

Her face bloodied, she struggled to stand. Holding her hands to her hair, she looked horrified to find that her attackers had yanked off her black hijab as she fell. The mob closed in, kicking and jumping on her slight frame.

The tormented final hours of Farkhunda Malikzada, a 27-year-old aspiring student of Islam who was accused of burning a Quran in a Muslim shrine, shocked Afghans across the country. That is because many of her killers filmed one another beating her and posted clips of her broken body on social media. Hundreds of other men watched, holding their phones aloft to try to get a glimpse of the violence, but never making a move to intervene. Those standing by included several police officers.

Unlike so many abuses against Afghan women that unfold in private, this killing in March prompted a national outcry. For Farkhunda had not burned a Quran. Instead, an investigation found, she had confronted men who were themselves dishonoring the shrine by trafficking in amulets and, more clandestinely, Viagra and condoms.

At first, the trial and convictions that followed seemed a victory in the long struggle to give Afghan women their due in a court of law. But a deeper look suggests otherwise. The fortuneteller who several investigators believe set the events in motion was found not guilty on appeal. The shrines custodian, who concocted the false charge of Quran burning and incited the mob, had his death sentence commuted. Police officers who failed to send help and others who stood by received slaps on the wrist, at most. Some attackers identifiable in the videos avoided capture altogether. Afghan lawyers and human rights advocates agree that most of the accused did not receive fair trials. Farkhundas family, fearing reprisals and worried that the killers would not be held accountable, fled the country.

Farkhundas death and the legal systems response call into question more than a decade of Western efforts in Afghanistan to instill a rule of law and improve the status of women. The United States alone has spent more than $1 billion to train lawyers and judges and to improve legal protections for women; European countries have provided tens of millions more.

But like so many other Western attempts to remake Afghanistan, the efforts have foundered, according to Afghan and Western lawyers and officials. Afghan society has resisted more than 150 years of such endeavors by outsiders, from the British to the Russians to the Americans. This remains a country where ties of kinship and clan trump justice, and where the money brought by the West has made corruption into a way of life. The rule-of-law programs were often designed in ignorance of Afghan legal norms, international and Afghan lawyers say. And Western efforts to lift womens legal status provoked fierce resentment from powerful religious figures and many ordinary Afghans.

Yet Afghan women most need the legal system to defend them: They are largely powerless without the support of male family members, and it is usually family members who abuse them.

Where is the justice? asked Mujibullah Malikzada, Farkhundas elder brother, as he sat in a sparsely furnished apartment in Tajikistan. In my Islamic country, a girl was disrespectfully, dishonorably lynched and burned, and what has happened? We have left our home. They never caught all the people. What are we to do?

As a last resort, Farkhundas family has appealed to the Afghan Supreme Court, which has wide power to impose new sentences or order a new trial. The decision is pending.

If she gets justice, all women in Afghanistan who were harmed or killed or abused get justice, said Leena Alam, an Afghan television actress who found herself joining hundreds of women at Farkhundas funeral, defying tradition by carrying the coffin. If she doesnt, then all these years of the international community being here, all the support they gave, all the money, this whole war, means nothing. It all went to waste.

The Killing

Farkhunda first visited the Shah-Do Shamshira shrine  named for a foreign warrior who is said to have helped bring Islam to Afghanistan  four weeks before her death.

It was a Wednesday, womens day at the shrine, when men are not allowed. The women commiserate about their lives. They visit the fortuneteller to buy amulets to help them get pregnant, find a husband or have male children. Known as tawiz, the amulets usually consist of writings on a small piece of paper that a woman can pin to her body or keep in a pocket.

Farkhunda was appalled at the way the womens superstitions were being exploited, her brother Mujibullah recalled. She confronted the custodian, Zainuddin, and the fortuneteller, Mohammad Omran, saying: You are abusing the women. You are charging them money for something that is not Islamic, that is not religious.



Farkhundas funeral in Kabul. Hundreds of people gathered in Kabul to bury Farkhunda. Women carried her coffin, breaking the custom of staying away from funerals. (Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AP) Farkhundas funeral in Kabul. Hundreds of people gathered in Kabul to bury Farkhunda. Women carried her coffin, breaking the custom of staying away from funerals. (Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AP)

As the atmosphere at the shrine became tense, Mujibullah said, The custodian said to Farkhunda: Who the hell are you? Who are you to say these things? Get lost. 

The Malikzadas are an educated family. Farkhundas father, Mohammad Nader Malikzada, 72, worked for nearly 40 years as the lead engineer for Afghanistans Public Health Ministry, keeping its medical technology, such as it was, running. Mujibullah had a job at the Finance Ministry, and a second brother was an engineer.

Farkhunda, one of eight sisters, was academically inclined. The girls were either graduates of or students at universities or teachers colleges. Several were still single in their 20s, unusual for Afghan women. The family did not patronize places like the Shah-Do Shamshira shrine, which was known for attracting the local riffraff as well as pilgrims.

Farkhunda turned out to be right: There was something amiss at the shrine. Investigators from the police and the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service, learned later that the fortuneteller, almost certainly with the assistance of the custodian, was trafficking in Viagra and condoms, said Shahla Farid, a member of the investigating committee set up by President Ashraf Ghani after the murder. Viagra is popular and easily available in Afghanistan. Some men see it as an aphrodisiac; others as a remedy if they are nervous on their wedding night.

The investigators also found pregnancy test strips and sweet-smelling body wash in the fortunetellers bathroom, suggesting that women might have used it. Ms. Farid and police investigators said it was possible that the fortuneteller moonlighted as a pimp.

The last thing the fortuneteller wanted was a young woman, fired with religious faith, disturbing his means of making a living.

On March 19, the last day of her life, Farkhunda returned to the shrine. After lecturing the women about the uselessness of the amulets, she gathered up some used ones and may have set them on fire in a trash can, said Ms. Farid, who is also a law professor at Kabul University.

The custodian, Zainuddin, was illiterate, and he took the burnt papers and added to them some old pages of a burnt Quran, and thats what he showed people outside the mosque as proof that she had burned the Quran, Ms. Farid said.

That is a charge almost guaranteed to bring a violent reaction in Afghanistan, where even the rumor of a Quran burning can bring hundreds into the streets, calling for blood.

Muhammad Naeem, who sells pigeon feed across the road from the shrine, said he had heard the custodian calling out to people walking by: A woman burned the Quran. I dont know if this one is sick or mentally disturbed, but what kind of Muslim are you? Go and defend your Quran.

It was about 4 oclock, time for the afternoon prayer. The streets were full, and a crowd quickly gathered. Cellphone videos captured the first moments of the argument.

Why did you burn it? a man shouted.

As Farkhunda insisted she had not, another man shouted, The Americans sent you.

She responded, Which Americans?

He said, Stop talking or I will punch your mouth.

Mr. Naeem said that a police officer had tried to lead Farkhunda away, but that, mindful of Afghan custom as well as strict Islamic teachings, she had asked the officer to bring a policewoman. The crowd broke through. In cellphone recordings, more than one person can be heard shouting, Kill her!

Then she fell down on the ground and the people tried to beat her and pummel her, and the police would try to help her up, and then the people from the other side would push her down, Mr. Naeem recalled. They were like kids playing with a sack of flour on the floor.

In the videos, Farkhunda seems at first to be screaming in pain from the kicks, but then her body convulses under the blows, and soon, she stops moving at all. Even when the mob pulls her into the street and gets a car to run over her, and she is dragged 300 feet, the police stand by.

By then, she was little more than a clothed mass of blood and bones. Yet still more people came to beat her. One of the most fervent was a young man, Mohammad Yaqoub, who worked at an eyeglasses shop. He heard the crowd as Farkhunda was dragged behind the car and rushed out, eager to join.

Eight months later, neatly dressed with a small beard and mustache, Mr. Yaqoub hardly looked like someone capable of violence. Yet in the videos, he is so caught up in the moment that he has a terrifying ferocity.

People were saying, If someone doesnt hit her, he is an infidel. That was when I got emotional and hit her twice, he said in an interview at Pul-i-Charkhi prison, just east of Kabul. My third punch hit the road, and my hand got injured.

After going back to his shop and patching up his hand, he heard the men outside still shouting and said he felt drawn back. The men had dragged Farkhundas body to the riverbank, and Mr. Yaqoub looked for heavy rocks to drop on her. One was so large, he could barely lift it, he said.

Mr. Yaqoub was hardly an illiterate day laborer. He had completed 11th grade and, when interviewed in prison, said he was 18. He explained his fury by saying, The Quran is like our honor: It is our personal honor and the honor of the prophet.

As Mr. Yaqoub milled with the crowd, other men set Farkhunda on fire, using their own scarves as fuel because her clothes were so soaked with blood, they would not light.

In the middle of the mayhem, someone found Farkhundas phone and called her father. He, his wife and Farkhundas brother Mujibullah drove to the police station. They had no word of her fate until Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahimi, Kabuls chief of police, broke the news.

It is proved that she burned the Quran, he told Farkhundas stunned parents, who knew she was deeply religious and planned to study theology at Kabul University. General Rahimi also informed them that he had told an Afghan television station that Farkhunda was mentally ill, in an attempt to calm an angry public.

It was true that Farkhunda had been treated for mental illness. Its severity is unclear, but details given to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and other investigators indicated that she had gone through several difficult periods  including one in which she mostly stayed in bed and said she feared praying because she might make a mistake, according to her mother. She was put on medication, which helped for a time, her mother said, according to the Human Rights Commission report.

General Rahimi told Farkhundas father that the police had failed to protect her and advised him to leave Kabul for his own safety. Months later, her brother Mujibullah recalled his despair.

I felt the sky had touched the earth and I was between the two, being shattered into pieces, he said. I thought I am in some other world. Someone is telling me that a girl who loved the Quran, who would die for the Quran, had been killed, murdered, for burning the Quran.

I couldnt believe it could be our Farkhunda.

Within two days of the killing, the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs announced that Farkhunda had been innocent. Soon, she was transformed from a person into a cause. Video clips of her death were broadcast on Afghan television, prompting shame among many citizens.

Swelling numbers of young women, joined by some young men, gathered spontaneously at the shrine and held candlelight vigils. They formed a Justice for Farkhunda organization. They marched, demonstrated and demanded that her killers be brought to trial.

Most extraordinary, women rebelled against the custom of staying away from funerals, and hundreds gathered to carry and escort her coffin.

Ms. Alam, the Afghan actress, said she had felt compelled to go to the cemetery on the day of Farkhundas burial.

Her body was brought to her grave by women and buried by women, she said. We took all our shawls and scarves and knotted them together and held them on each side, and then lowered the coffin into the grave. And I remember I had a little cut from the wood from the coffin, and I didnt want that cut to heal.

Investigation and Trial

The case posed two sometimes conflicting challenges for the Afghan legal system: satisfying public pressure for retribution while making sure the trial was perceived as fair.

Mr. Ghani himself pressed for action, declaring, We are not going to allow mob justice. Ms. Alam played Farkhunda in a re-enactment of the killing held just before the trial began.



More than 50 people were detained in connection with the killing, and 49 stood trial, including 19 police officers. (Photo: Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images) More than 50 people were detained in connection with the killing, and 49 stood trial, including 19 police officers. (Photo: Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images)

The circle of those culpable was wide. But the degrees of responsibility varied considerably and ultimately confounded the prosecutors, who charged only 30 civilians, 28 of them with the same crimes: murder and burning. Investigators believed that the fortuneteller, whose business was threatened, had incited the custodian of the shrine to accuse Farkhunda. The fortuneteller himself was not present the day she was killed, yet he was charged with her murder.

Two or three police officers seem to have tried to help Farkhunda, but others who arrived later appeared to be overwhelmed by the mob. Officers called on to send help claimed that reinforcements had not arrived because the police pickup trucks had no fuel and because their radios had not been working. The mob was huge, and it was never established at what point in the beating, dragging and burning Farkhunda actually died.

The police, acting on the orders of the Interior Affairs Ministry, ultimately detained more than 50 people, 49 of whom  including 19 police officers  stood trial.

Yet some who appeared guilty based on video evidence avoided capture or charges. They included the driver of the car that ran over Farkhunda and a man wearing a sweatshirt with the number six on it, whom the videos showed repeatedly jumping on her body. Also involved was a well-known local figure, Habib Deh Afghanan, who trained as a wrestler and was at the shrine during the beating, according to witnesses.

A senior police investigator in Kabul acknowledged that the police had failed to capture all of those responsible. He estimated that three or four key suspects had fled Kabul; it was unclear if they had political connections and therefore had been tipped off, or if some had been detained and then released. None of the provincial police forces had the will or the clout to arrest them, said the investigator, who asked not to be identified because the appeals process is still underway. The case became politicized, he added, with intense pressure to make arrests to show that the government was taking a stand.

Everyone tried to use this case for their political leverage, the investigator said. Some used it as a way to attack the police chief, some to attack the government; others used it, under the guise of civil society, to undermine the role of spiritual leaders or Islamic scholars. So all of that made our work difficult.

If some of the guilty were spared, the legal system also appeared to entrap some of the innocent. Some of those arrested were later shown not to have even been physically present during the killing. And Afghan defense lawyers described multiple failures in protecting the rights of the accused, including their right to counsel.

Zaki Ayoubi, an idealistic lawyer who had worked for a Western rule-of-law organization, had great hopes for changing the legal system. He began to worry about the lack of attention to appointing counsel for the accused. He turned to friends from university and from Western legal workshops and began to recruit them.

The American notion of defense lawyers does not exist in Afghanistan, where defense lawyers traditionally played the role of middleman between the accused and the prosecutors and judge. Until as recently as 2008, the few pro bono defense lawyers worked directly for the Ministry of Justice, which did little to give defendants confidence in them.

Gradually, that is beginning to change, in part because of one of the more successful parts of the American rule-of-law programs, which helped create a bench of defense lawyers within the Justice Ministry and outside of it.

Mr. Ayoubi recognized early that even if he could find defense lawyers, the trial would be heavily politicized. Mr. Ghani continued speaking out. The countrys chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, had visited Farkhundas family to offer his condolences. These moves clearly signaled to the judiciary that it needed to find people guilty.

The judge appointed to preside over the trial was Safiullah Mujadidi, a man who could be trusted to get the results leaders wanted. He was well known for his 2014 ruling in the case of seven men accused of raping four married women in a rural area of Kabul Province. In that case, Hamid Karzai, then the president, asserted publicly even before the trial that he would approve a death sentence. The judge sentenced five of the men to death even though they testified that they had confessed under torture. The men were quickly executed.

In Farkhundas case, Judge Mujadidi again moved quickly. The prosecutors delivered their completed file to the judges on April 27, and the trial began just five days later. It was not clear whether the judges had even had time to review the more than 4,000 pages of material, according to international and Afghan lawyers who closely followed the case.

When the trial opened, fewer than seven of the 49 accused had retained defense lawyers. None of those lawyers were notified of the date or time of the trial, several of them said, and only three or four were present at all during the proceedings. Few, if any, were given access to the documents compiled by the prosecution until the trial started, so they were unable to prepare a defense of their clients, the lawyers said.

Judge Mujadidi, who has since been appointed as a counselor at the Supreme Court, said in an interview that he had attended training sessions provided by several American-funded rule-of-law programs and a German one.

In his view, he said, The decision in the primary court was according to the law, which brought justice.

He argued that criticisms about the lack of defense counsel and scant time for preparation were motivated by defense lawyers greed. All they think of is their business, not the people and the good of others, he said. They even overcharge their clients to make more money.

Judge Mujadidi added that every defendant had been asked if he wanted a lawyer. All of them said they could better defend themselves and they know what to say in court, so there was no need for the defense lawyers, he said.

Abdul Masood Khorami, a lawyer representing Mr. Yaqoub, the eyeglasses shop worker, did not even know the trial had begun until he received a call from Mr. Yaqoubs father, who was watching the proceedings on television. When Mr. Khorami rushed to the courtroom, he found that the trial was being run as if it were a terrorism case rather than a murder case. Heavily armed guards wearing dark glasses stood behind the judges.

It took most of two days for the prosecutor to finish reading the indictment. Then the three-judge panel took a day to deliberate privately. On the third day, they delivered a verdict.

Each defendant or his lawyer was allowed to speak for scarcely five minutes after the prosecutor read the evidence against the defendant. Many of the statements were pushed to the trials last day and were unlikely to have been taken into consideration by the judges, who had deliberated the day before and announced the verdict shortly after the defendants finished speaking.

In any case, few of the defendants were given a chance to speak beyond perfunctory responses to questions, and neither were most of their lawyers. One exception was Mr. Khorami, who had learned about the importance of objections in one of the Western-run rule-of-law courses he had taken. He understood that it was a critical moment under Afghan law as well: Unless an issue is raised in the trial court, it cannot be raised in an appeal. He objected to a statement that his client, Mr. Yaqoub, was an adult, claiming that he could prove he was a minor. Minors are not subject to the death penalty under Afghan law.

Judge Mujadidi said in an interview that he did not believe Mr. Khorami. He forged his clients tazkera to prove him underage, he said, referring to an Afghan identity document, but the forensic medicine test and our knowledge said he was a grown adult with a full beard.

The judge ignored Mr. Khoramis objection, and Mr. Yaqoub was one of four sentenced to death. The others were Zainuddin, the shrines custodian; Sharaf Baghlani, a onetime employee of the Afghan intelligence service who had boasted on Facebook about his role in Farkhundas killing; and Abdul Basheer, a driver.

Eight others were found guilty of major roles in Farkhundas murder and were each sentenced to 16 years in prison. The other 18 civilian defendants were found not guilty for lack of sufficient evidence. Of the police officers, eight had their cases thrown out, and 11 were given the lightest penalty possible: They were required to continue working in their assigned police districts for one year and to refrain from traveling.

Legal Changes

Farkhundas case highlighted the limits of the Western rule-of-law effort, but it suggested that there had been at least one significant achievement: Afghans did hold a trial and try to bring people to justice.

However, a full investigation, a trial perceived as fair and sentences based on evidence would have sent a message that Afghans agreed that a lynch mob was unacceptable; that the police and courts could deliver justice; and that victims, even female victims, had rights.

In reality, Afghans were divided about the event and what the punishments should be. Some believed that everyone in the crowd that beat Farkhunda and applauded should be punished; others thought only a few should be. Almost no one had faith in the justice system: In surveys, it is the least trusted Afghan institution.

In the face of competing pressures and beliefs, rumors and corruption, many of the legal lessons painstakingly taught by Western-funded lawyers were simply ignored.

That is all the more surprising because almost everyone involved in the case had some exposure to rule-of-law training.

Since 2005, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the United States has spent more than $1 billion to train prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges in such areas as legal procedure, questioning witnesses and computerizing case loads. It has also underwritten programs encouraging transparency, justice for women, changes to detention practices and a stronger informal justice system, which dominates in rural areas.

Every defense lawyer interviewed for this article had attended workshops or legal courses funded in part by the State Departments Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs; by the United States Agency for International Development; by the Justice Department; by the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan; or by individual countries such as Canada, Germany or Sweden. Many prosecutors, particularly the elite ones used for Farkhundas case, have also attended such programs, according to American and international trainers. Although most of the judges in the case did not respond to requests for interviews, several who were not involved said it was common for judges to have received some Western training.

But Afghan and Western observers alike said the efforts had been hobbled by ignorance of Afghan norms and, in some cases, by arrogance. Some trainers tutored Afghans about how to pick jurors, but judges decide cases in Afghanistan. Some also brought young lawyers in to teach older Afghans in a society where age is a symbol of authority and knowledge. The intricacies of law were often literally lost in translation from English to Dari, according to two international lawyers who have spent years working in Afghanistan.

An effort to rewrite the criminal procedure code, rather than translate it so the West could use it as a starting point, captured the occasional absurdities of the process.

At the time, it was the Italians who were in charge of the rule of law, so they wrote one close to the Italian code, said a Western lawyer who has spent years in Afghanistan, and who asked not to be named because he is not allowed to speak for his organization. Why would they write a new one when the Afghans had a criminal procedure code that everyone knew?

As with efforts to engineer gender equality, many Western ideals ran head-on into entrenched Afghan beliefs. For example, one lawyer recalled a two-week course in representing clients who bring sexual assault cases. But despite Western efforts, few sexual assault cases ever come to trial in Afghanistan because of family pressures and a well-founded fear of reprisal.

Siavash Rahbari, an American lawyer who speaks fluent Dari and works on rule-of-law issues for the Asia Foundation, said the West fundamentally misunderstood Afghanistans needs. The experts thought they were helping to rebuild a system in transition from the Taliban period to a more secular one. Rather, Afghans are still trying to determine what kind of system they want. The Afghan system still draws on Islamic law, as well as its own legal code, which has roots in both the German and Egyptian systems.

Defense lawyers and prosecutors study law and political science in college, but almost all judges study theology and Shariah, Islamic law. So when the two meet in a courtroom, they come with completely different frames of reference. Often, they are talking past each other. And judges, who are the backbone of the system, are often resistant to change.

Afghan lawyers said the Western designers of the program had not paid enough attention to Afghans deference to age and experience.

An American lawyer is standing before a class of Afghan lawyers or judges in their 40s and 50s, and the American lawyer is in his 30s, said Sayed Mohammad Saeeq Shajjan, an Afghan defense lawyer with a Harvard degree who returned to his country to practice law. Everyone has his pride, and they say, Why is this young kid teaching me? 

Mr. Shajjan also faulted a lack of follow-up.

At the end of the one-month training, they have a ceremony, get a certificate and photos, but who follows up and sees if they learned something or not? he asked. No one is doing that, and its a big mistake.

Nor did the Western training reckon with the pervasiveness of corruption, a scourge in the justice system as in so much else in Afghanistan.

When your client is a poor guy, you are asked to pay a bribe or he spends 16 years in jail, said Muhammad Aziz Sofizada, a defense lawyer who represented two clients in Farkhundas case, including one who was sentenced to 16 years in prison. What are you supposed to do? In this country, without spending money, you cant get anything.

But the trial also showed that some ideas had taken root, particularly among a growing cadre of young, Western-influenced defense lawyers. Michael J. Fannon, who was the chief of party for the International Development Law Organization and worked in Afghanistan for six years, said that when he left in 2014, the number of defense lawyers had swelled to about 2,000, from 200 in 2008.

Two defense lawyers said they had drawn on their training in making legal arguments and registering objections to prosecutors, but they were in the minority. And several who were not directly involved in the trial, and so were freer to speak about it, said they believed the system had failed in Farkhundas case.

So many didnt have a defense lawyer  there were almost 50 people tried, Mr. Shajjan said. You cannot try such a huge number of defendants, and defendants who dont have lawyers, in such a short period. You need to give the defendants a chance to speak. Everyone was given two minutes.

Human rights lawyers also argued that the legal system needed to send a clear signal that it is unacceptable to stand by and watch as a mob beats someone to death. All those watching her being killed should have been given a sentence, said Shamsullah Ahmadzai, the head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission office for the Kabul region. When someone is being killed, it is not a play. It is not a movie.

Verdicts Overturned

While supporters of Farkhunda celebrated the trial-court verdict, defense lawyers rallied on behalf of their clients. But unlike the televised trial, the appeal in late June took place behind closed doors, according to lawyers involved in the case and others who managed to slip into the hearing.

That secrecy is against Afghan rules of criminal procedure  although there is a loophole that allows judges not to announce a proceeding to the news media as long as no one is stopped from attending. The defendants and their lawyers were called in for discussions with the judges in groups, depending on their sentences.

Lawyers for those condemned to death or long prison sentences pointed out that no one had bothered to determine when Farkhunda died. Under Afghan law, the penalty is far lighter for desecrating a dead body than it is for murder, so Mr. Sofizada, Mr. Khorami and other lawyers drilled down on that point.

Who is the guy who hit the first blow? Who is the one whose blow killed her? asked Mr. Sofizada, who represented a shopkeeper named Mohmand. If its violence, who is responsible for this violence? The guy who started the episode and encouraged the people to hit her? The guy chanting slogans who encouraged the people? Was it a blow from a stick that killed her? A stone? Was it that she was burned, or was it the car running over her?

Mr. Yaqoub said he had only desecrated a corpse. I knew she was dead because she was not moving, he said. Asked if Farkhunda might have been unconscious, but not dead, he did not reply.

Mr. Yaqoubs lawyer, Mr. Khorami, used his session with the appellate judges to try to convince them that Mr. Yaqoub had been wrongly tried as an adult. He produced a tazkera, the Afghan identity document, saying that his client had been 17 at the time of the killing. Although the trial-court judge believed this document had been forged, the appeals panel deemed Mr. Yaqoub underage and commuted his death sentence to 10 years in prison.

The argument that there was no evidence on who had struck the blow that killed Farkhunda made sense to both the appellate court and the Supreme Court, according to people close to the courts. Its very difficult to determine responsibility if you dont know what killed her, a person close to the Supreme Court said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because court employees are not allowed to talk to the news media.

So the judges commuted the other three death sentences to 20-year prison terms.

They also reviewed the evidence that the fortuneteller was not at the shrine when Farkhunda was killed and ruled that he was not guilty because he had not been present. They exonerated a ninth police officer, so that in the end, only 10 were disciplined at all.

When the appeals courts ruling became public in July, Farkhundas family and many womens groups were stunned to find out that they had been given no chance to make their case. Farkhundas brother Mujibullah said the new verdict was a travesty.

You saw that boy who hit her with that big stone, and the court said hes underage, he said. Even if he is underage, he knows how to hit, but he doesnt know how to answer for his actions.

Female lawyers who followed the case said the verdict showed Afghanistans cultural bias against women. There was some discrimination against women, said Najla Raheel, a young lawyer who takes cases on behalf of women, even when they cannot pay, and who was appointed by Mr. Ghani to lead the team representing Farkhundas family in the appeal to the Supreme Court. Some government officials didnt want 49 men punished for the death of one woman.

Soon after the new verdict, Farkhundas family asked Mr. Ghanis wife, Rula, who had taken an interest in the case, to help them get temporary visas to leave the country. They felt the appeals verdict signaled that the public did not support them.

In the meantime, the legal team appointed by Mr. Ghani decided there had been so many flaws in the case that the only fair course was to ask the Supreme Court to order a retrial, according to Ms. Raheel and Mr. Ayoubi, who had also joined the legal team representing Farkhundas family.

The Road Ahead



Farkhunda's half-finished grave outside Kabul. (Photo: Lynsey Addario/The New York Times) Farkhunda's half-finished grave outside Kabul. (Photo: Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

The request for a retrial was made in August, and the Supreme Court has not yet announced its decision. The court, which has great leeway to increase, reduce or throw out penalties, often simply confirms appellate decisions or sends them back to the appeals court for review. None of the lawyers interviewed for this article could recall a time when the court had sent a case back for a complete retrial.

Farkhundas family is beginning to worry that there will never be a decision and that she is being forgotten.

Five miles north of the Shah-Do Shamshira shrine, a sprawling graveyard covers a slope in Chaikhana, a northern neighborhood of Kabul. The rocky earth is brown and gray. The graves are gray, too, modest piles of small stones fenced off from one another. The ground is littered with empty water bottles and small pink or blue plastic bags blowing in the late autumn wind.

In the middle of the cemetery, far from the main road, lies Farkhunda Malikzada. Her grave is large but half finished. The coffin has been sunk into a concrete slab facing west, toward Mecca. At each of the four corners is an unfinished concrete column with metal spikes sticking out. A flag with her ghostly pale face, wrapped in a black hijab so not a hair is visible, hangs over the grave. It is hard even to make out her features. She is fading into memory.

On a recent Friday, the only people near the grave were four neighborhood children who use the cemetery as a playground.

The children all knew her name. Ishaq, 6, volunteered: Her name is Farkhunda. She burned the Quran, so she was punished and she was lynched.

Correction: January 5, 2016

An article on Dec. 27 about the failure of the Afghan legal system to provide justice in the case of Farkhunda Malikzada, a young Afghan woman who was beaten to death and set on fire after being falsely accused of burning a Quran, quoted incorrectly from comments by a Western lawyer who discussed efforts by Italian legal experts to rewrite the Afghan criminal procedure code. He said, Why would they write a new one when the Afghans had a criminal procedure code  not penal code  that everyone knew?

Ahmad Shakib and Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting.
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Price: $ 1,035 Seller State of Residence: Florida Property Address: Canyon Road State/Province: California City: Twentynine Palms Type: Homesite, Lot Zoning: Residential Location: , Yucca Vally, California

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Nearby Residential
New York City's real estate has a new trend -- the so-called "micro-living" currently being considered by some single New Yorkers as Carmel Place introduced the first micro-apartment.

The first official micro-apartment done in partnership with the city is at the Carmel Place, near Kips Bay. According to Tech Insider, a new set of small and much better designed apartments will arise this year, with an area measuring not more than 370 square feet. It will boast little balconies, tall ceilings, dishwashers and storage space.

Arranging authorities are proposing to end a point of confinement on how little apartments can be, opening the way for more miniaturized scale lofts that supporters see as a reasonable adjustment to a developing population of "single" individuals.

The Daily Herald reported that the Carmel Place being an experimental project got city land and a waiver from New York's 400-square-feet minimum apartments set in 1987.



"For us, it is really important to demonstrate how small space could be an enhancement to quality of life," Carmel Place's interior designer Christopher Bledsoe stated. Developer Monadnock Construction and architecture firm nArchitects worked together to meet develop a wheelchair accessible bathroom given the little amount of space.

"It re-imagines the modern day rental apartment and brings a much needed sustainable solution to the city," Bledsoe told Tech Insider. To make the 370 square feet livable, the developer seeks the help of Jacqueline Schmidt of Screech Owl who designed Ollie, a meticulously set of furnished units.

The interiors contain long flat walls for owners to maximize furniture-arranging options. Some units also come with furnished units like a desk that expands into a 12-seater table and a retractable bed that could be made into a love seat. The monthly rate can be a bit pricey -- 40 percent of the units are set around $1,500 per month.

There are more than 60,000 who applied for the affordable ones while about 20 people have applied for the market-rate units. Real estate agents say that there is an increase of young professionals in New York seeking small studios to be near their work, willing to sacrifice space and be away from their roomies.



"People are spending $1,800 a month renting a room that's 10-by-10 and living with strangers that they met in Craigslist," deputy director of the Citizen's Housing Planning Council Sarah Watson exclaimed.

Critics fear a move back in the direction of the city's dwelling past and question whether less space will truly mean less costly. "It just, on some level, is offensive: The only way we can manage to house people is to stick them in a closet," said state Assemblywoman Deborah Glick.
Holidays are the best time of the year for spending with loved ones and Mandy Moore did just that!

On her Instagram account, Mandy posted a lot of sweet photos with her current boyfriend, Taylor Goldsmith. The two spend their time together in Maine. With all the beautiful snow and some fun.

Looks like she documented their Holiday so well, she posted one photo of him walking towards the log cabin in a wilderness of snow. Another one of him making snow angels on the ground and a photo of the two of them outside just having fun and all smiles in the snow with their dog.

She also posted photos where Goldsmith was playing some guitars, and another with some company playing musical instruments. It looks like they loved their time together basking in some good warm indoor ambiance and enjoyable music and a few people to be with. There was also a selfie of half of her profile on the passenger seat with her boyfriend in the background driving the pickup truck.

Her Instagram photos of their Holiday in Maine garnered more than 2,000 - 5,000 plus likes, and some comments coming from the fans. She did document their time together so well. She also captioned one photo that says, "I couldn't think of a greater way to end one year and start with another."

Moore was already off the hook with her former husband Ryan Adams. They were married for 6 years and they have been divorced since January of 2015. It was reported that, the divorce with her former was a respectful and amicable parting of ways. The asked the public and the media to respect that privacy.

In a report from PEOPLE magazine last month, Moore filed a spousal support from Adams for taking care of their 8 pets of cats and dogs.

For now, let's give it to Mandy; her time to be happy with her newfound love in Taylor Goldsmith.
Egypt has decided to hire the global consultancy Control Risks to help them in reviewing their airport security a few months after the crash of a plane killing Russians holidaymakers causing a scar in the country's tourism. British tourists on the other hand are taking advantage of the cheap holidays Egypt offers despite terrorist threats.

It has been almost three months since the unfaithful airplane crash in Egypt that killed 224 Russians on board. At present, the Egyptian investigating body found no evidence linking the crash to terrorism or any illegal actions, but confirms that the jet was brought down by a bomb, Yahoo Singapore reports.

Islamic State already claims responsible for planting a smuggled bomb on the said plane which was hidden in a soda can. This crash has greatly affected the Egyptian tourism industry with several airlines suspending their flights to Sharm al-Sheikh, the resort where the flight departed. Thus, the London based assessment group, Control Risks was hired to perform security assessments in Cairo as well as in Sharm al-Sheikh.

Meanwhile, thousands of British tourists are not taking the terrorist attacks and threats too seriously and are taking advantage of the cut price holiday bargains offered in the different resorts in Tunisia, Telegraph UK narrates. Several package deals have been slashed in prices including resorts in Egypt and Tunisia where several tourists were already reportedly killed in 2015 due to attacks of the ISIS.

Several advisories were already released advising tourist not to go to these areas. However, the interests among customers for the deals and packages available in these areas are still making them spend their holidays in these destinations.

Although, the government claims that there are adequate protection available for all the British tourists visiting Tunisia. The 34% discount offered by hotels in the area, all inclusive with flights and hotel transfer, however seems to be very appealing for foreign tourists. Egypt on the other hand is doing its best to improve the security in their airports after the unfaithful Russian crash.
Just before the year 2015 ended, another achievement was reported in the Chemistry world. According to recent reports, there are four new elements discovered, thus making some periodic table of elements and textbooks obsolete.

Updates should be made for four elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118 were officially verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). And these said new elements are synthetic elements which were brought artificially through experiments. The guardian reported that these new additions in the periodic table of elements were discovered by scientists from the different parts of the globe, particularly by scientists in Japan, Russia and America. This event follows the recent discovery of elements 114 and 116 back in 2011.

What makes this discovery very exciting is the fact that it was the first time that Asian scientists were able to discover an element. According to reports this was not the first time that the team from Japan's Riken Institute were able to create the said element, for back in 2004 and 2012 they were able to create it 3 times.

And with such achievement, they will be able to name the element they have discovered, the element 113. In a statement via rappler, it was stated that, "IUPAC has announced that Morita's group will be given priority for the discovery of the new element, a privilege that includes the right to propose a name for it."

Indeed this is a time for celebration for the research team at Riken and all over the globe. "The chemistry community is eager to see its most cherished table finally being completed down to the seventh row," said Professor Jan Reedijk, president of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC, via theguardian. But still despite the said achievement of the Japanese researchers, Kosuke Morita, who was leading the research at Riken, is still "look[ing] to the unchartered territory of element 119 and beyond."
BIKER SCOUT

2015 The Legacy Collection

Biker Scouts patrol the forest of Endor. The Imperial scouts fly speeder bikes through the dense forest, guarding the shield generator that protects the second Death Star. They are highly skilled troopers who mount a strong resistance when a small band of Rebels launches an attack to disable the generator.

Hasbro intended to release The Legacy Collection Droid Factory collection in 2012 to promote the 3D theatrical release of Attack Of The Clones, but the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm quickly put a end to their plans. The action figures meant to be a part of this line was split between the first two assortments of the Black Series and the Amazon exclusive The Legacy Collection set, both of which came out in 2013.

Collectors were surprised when the assortment originally meant to come out in two waves in 2013 found its way to discount chains across North America in May 2015. The date stamp for this figure is 22841, which translates to October 10, 2012. This indicates that the line was in production when it was cancelled and the stock found in 2015 was a clearance of what was produced.
Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight

A person walks through downtown Redding on Monday. Rain is expected for much of the rest of the week.

SHARE Mt. Shasta Ski Park logo

By David Benda of the Redding Record Searchlight

The Mt. Shasta Ski Park was closed Monday as crews worked to repair a water line that broke late Sunday.

Spokesman Michael Smith said he expects the ski park to reopen at 8 a.m. Tuesday as the resort braces for more new snow.

"We have had a water line break that has cut services to the lodge," Smith said Monday morning. "Of course, we can't serve guests when we don't have water for food, the restrooms."

Initially, the ski park planned to open noon Monday but the repairs took longer than expected and by late morning officials made the announcement to stay closed for the day.

Smith said it's fortunate the water line break came after the holidays. The line broke late Sunday so it did not affect business.

"This would have been a real catastrophe had it happened on the weekend when we were packed to the max," Smith said. "Obviously, the holiday is over and the kids are back in school. We are glad it didn't break (during the holidays)  you bet."

Still, the ski park is eager to reopen as it enjoyed record business during the two-week Christmas break, Smith said.

"The place was absolutely overrun," Smith said.

After three seasons of drought, the Mt. Shasta Ski Park is basking in a healthy snowpack. The resort has more than 4 feet of snow at its base and 5 feet at the top of the Douglas chairlift.

And more is on the way.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for the area around Mount Shasta that will remain in effect until 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Some 3 to 5 inches of snow is possible. More snow is expected Wednesday with another 5 inches possible, the National Weather Service said.

Rain is forecast for the Sacramento Valley.

Redding is expected to get 1 to 2 inches of rain through Tuesday. More is expected Wednesday and Thursday before forecasters call for a slight chance of showers Friday.

Showers are likely over the weekend in Redding.
Sheriff: Shasta Lake man dies under 'suspicious' circumstances

The death of a Shasta Lake man who died Tuesday is being considered by investigators as suspicious.
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By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight

Updated at 1:30 p.m.

Shasta County Department of Public Works has lifted the boil water advisory for Crag View in the northern part of the county. Residents are safe to consume their tap water, according to Troy Bartolomei, deputy director of operations.

Original story

A water leak in a rural neighborhood is forcing residents to boil their drinking water for fear of bacteria, according to Shasta County Public Works.

Troy Bartolomei, deputy director of operations with Shasta County Department of Public Works, said the boil water advisory issued on Dec. 31 to the residents of Crag View is a precaution required by the State Water Resources Control Board.

The advisory has been extended to Wednesday due to a delay in water test results over the holiday weekend, said Bartolomei.

"The system is hyperchlorinated and then flushed out. Then water testing is done to ensure there is no bacteria present," Bartolomei said about recent testing conducted to determine whether the water is safe for consumption. He expects the test results to come back negative.

Water pressure in rural Crag View, in northern Shasta County, dropped to zero sometime before Dec. 31, according to Bartolomei.

Residents in Crag View said a recent house fire in the area compounded with a broken fire hydrant may have been the cause of the low water pressure in the water tank that supplies the neighborhood.

Crag View resident Colleen Batman said she saw a leaking fire hydrant and notified county workers in the area when they were making repairs to the water system. The neighborhood was without any water pressure for one day and residents have been advised to boil their water for less than a week. Batman said the advisory is not upsetting.

"Of course, I don't drink the water the county pumps to us in the first place, because it tastes like straight-up chlorine," Batman said.

As part of a county service area, Crag View's water needs are serviced by the county but paid for by enterprise funds, meaning the costs of maintenance and bacterial tests are passed on to the ratepayers.

"Our poor little water agency has to pay for all of these repairs," Batman said.

Last year residents of Crag View faced a water shortage after contesting a potential rate hike to pay for diverted water, as the neighborhood's water right became inactive during the summer.

In the ensuing months, the county and residents debated the rate dispute and the lack of a community advisory board in Crag View that would have been comprised of residents.

Public Works issued water restrictions for the service area, asking residents to reduce their usage.

The county supervisors will appoint property owners to the advisory board, and will provide direction for those members. Batman said she is prepared to be part of that community advisory board, but also approaches the process with caution.

"It's going to take some time for the county to build a relationship with us," Batman said.
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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

Amid California's worst drought in recent memory, the city of Shasta Lake is eyeing looking into studying whether to raise water utility rates.

"The loss of revenue due to decreased water sales coupled with the rapidly increasing cost of water supply cannot be sustained for a prolonged period of time," said John Duckett, city manager.

He will ask the City Council to approve a $66,030 contract with the Los Angeles-based Raftelis Financial Consultants, Inc., for a water rate study at the council's meeting Tuesday night.

In the agenda report for the council, Duckett says the city is being squeezed at both ends by the drought. Shasta Lake customers have cut back on their water use by almost 36 percent, reducing 2015's revenue by about $411,574 from original projections.

As the state and Bureau of Reclamation also instituted cutbacks in the allocations, the city also had to seek water from the McConnell Foundation at $250 an acre foot  for a total price of $225,000.

That's far more than reclamation's price, which is also increasing by 134 percent for the city to $94.74 an acre foot, Duckett said.

"(Reclamation) is experiencing many of the same issues that the city faces with reduced sales of water with the same costs for operation and maintenance," he said.

Normally, the city would wait until after July 2017 for another rate study, he said. But the severe drought and cutbacks mean the city should look into this sooner, as the last rate study completed two years ago didn't include the most recent and severe years, he said.

Based on that study, the city is in the second year of a five-year series of 2.5 percent annual rate increases.

According to the proposal prepared by Sanjay Gaur and others at Raftelis, the consultant would work on developing tiered rates for normal years and drought years.

According to its website, Raftelis has worked with organizations around the country, including Palo Alto's water utility on a 2012 rate study and a 2015 update.

"They completely fulfilled the terms of their contract on time and within budget," said Jonathan Abendschein, senior resource planner with the city of Palo Alto Utilities Department.

IF YOU GO

What: Shasta Lake City Council meeting

When: 6 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Shasta Lake City Hall, 4488 Red Bluff St., Shasta Lake
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By Jenny Espino of the Redding Record Searchlight

The city of Redding must produce all Blueprint for Public Safety-related documents sought by the Record Searchlight under the California Public Records Act, a Shasta County Superior Court judge said in a tentative ruling.

Judge Stephen H. Baker's tentative decision in favor of the newspaper pointed to two categories of documents that the city has yet to produce: Police Chief Robert Paoletti's rewrites of the blueprint and a staffing plan he submitted to Matrix Consulting Group.

The tentative order was the subject of a hearing in court on Monday morning.

Existence of the records listed by the judge came to light after the city released its correspondence about the blueprint in response to the newspaper's lawsuit seeking the original and second versions of the blueprint.

The city released hundreds of pages of communications on Dec. 8, the day the fifth and final version of the blueprint went public.

The city in response made two separate document dumps, on Dec. 15 and Dec. 29. But the chief's edits and his staffing plan and other potential correspondence did not turn up.

"These documents would not have been produced were it not for the efforts of the newspaper to file a lawsuit to force the city to release the records," said Walt McNeill, a Redding attorney who is representing the Record Searchlight in the case. "It's taken a fair amount of work and this isn't something that a public citizen should go through.

"The newspaper, legally, is in no different position than an ordinary person off the street asking for public records, and the only difference is that we're a little more tenacious and the newspaper will hire an attorney to pursue it when we know documents aren't being released properly."

Assistant City Attorney Lynette Frediani, writing for the city, said the chief's secretary had inadvertently failed to print and produce email attachments, and she had not known about emails in his sent and deleted folders.

"Her failure to produce these emails to the City Attorney's Office previously was a result of her inexperience in responding to a Public Records Act request and my mistaken belief that all of Chief Paoletti's email, including those he sent or deleted, were all included in his Matrix folder on his computer," Frediani wrote to the court.

Baker in his tentative ruling said the city has continued to make good faith efforts to locate and disclose documents. But the newspaper's discussion of "unknown unknowns" is noteworthy, adding that as the city locates records and other materials related to the Record Searchlight's request, more and more documents have been discovered and disclosed.

"The court finds this would not have occurred without the filing of the writ and without the continuing efforts of the Petitioner," Baker wrote, underscoring in the sentence the word "and."

"The Court concurs with Petitioner that, in order to maintain public trust and confidence in our Government, it is critical that timely and thorough disclosure is made of all non-privileged materials associated with the City of Redding's Blueprint for Public Safety."

Paoletti was present for Monday's hearing in Baker's courtroom in case he was needed to answer questions. But the judge said the court does not receive testimonial evidence on the law and motion calendar.
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As they barnstorm across the caucus and primary states, the Republican and Democratic front-runners for the presidential nomination often sound as if they're from different countries, not just different parties.

According to Republicans, the United States faces a daunting list of crises: an existential threat from Islamic extremism, a tidal wave of illegal immigration, a federal government out of control.

Democrats, meanwhile, are focused on the economy: too few good jobs, too much inequality (both gender and racial), too little access to health care.

They're not just offering different answers to the nation's problems; they're asking different questions.

Two examples from candidates high in the polls:

At a rally in Virginia last month, Republican Ted Cruz discussed illegal immigration, Planned Parenthood, terrorism, Iran, Israel, health care and the Common Core education standards  all before he even mentioned the economy. Even then, it was only as part of a promise to rein in "federal agencies that descend like locusts on small businesses, killing jobs."

At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire last week, Hillary Clinton flipped the script, addressing the economy first, national security second. "I want to be a president who gets the economy moving for everybody and gets incomes rising and more good paying jobs," she said. "And I want to be a president that keeps us safe and secure and takes on the threats and dangers that we face," she added.

The priority gap is no accident; both candidates are reflecting the preferences of their parties' core voters.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll last month, taken after the San Bernardino attack, found that a plurality of Republicans listed terrorism first when asked what issue would be most important in their choice for president. Democrats and independents said the economy.

Among Republicans, 38 percent cited terrorism as the most important issue, and 29 percent named the economy. Among Democrats, 38 percent cited the economy, and only 17 percent named terrorism.

Liberals and conservatives haven't always disagreed on priorities. As recently as 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession, voters in both parties listed the economy as their top concern. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, voters in both parties said terrorism came first.

A catastrophe can sometimes create consensus  at least on what the problem is. But that hasn't happened in the case of Islamic State.

Looking at the whole population  not just Democrats and Republicans  terrorism-firsters are in the minority. Among all voters in the ABC-Post poll, 33 percent listed the economy as their top concern; only 26 percent cited terrorism.

And that creates a challenge for Republican candidates as the campaign accelerates in the new year. To win the hearts of conservatives in the GOP nomination contest, they've been competing with each other mostly on noneconomic issues. To build a broad coalition of voter support in the general election, the Republican nominee is going to need to deliver an appealing message about creating jobs. At this point, most GOP candidates haven't spent much time doing that, beyond occasional mentions of lower taxes and fewer regulations.

(The Republican who's had the most to say about the economy so far, oddly enough, is Donald Trump, whose stump speech includes broadsides against free trade with China and a big promise: "We're going to be rich again.")

If Clinton turns out to be the Democratic nominee, she faces a mirror-image problem: She needs to convince voters who worry about terrorism that she'd produce better foreign policy results than the president she worked for. But she has at least remembered to include security concerns in her stump speech  as she showed last week in New Hampshire.

There's one more consequence of this priority gap, and it affects both sides: Whoever wins the presidential election will lead a country with a deep and persistent partisan divide.

It's little remembered now, but when Obama arrived at the White House in 2009, he enjoyed a brief honeymoon of bipartisan support in public opinion (although not with most Republicans in Congress). That stemmed partly from a national consensus on which problem the new president needed to solve: the recession.

Now that consensus is gone; even terrorist attacks haven't put a new one in its place. That means the next president, whoever he or she turns out to be, won't get even the brief cease-fire in partisan warfare that Obama was given.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Readers may send him email at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
BURNS, Ore.  A leader of the small, armed group that is occupying a remote national wildlife preserve in Oregon said Tuesday they will go home when a plan is in place to turn over management of federal lands to locals.

Ammon Bundy told reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that ranchers, loggers and farmers should have control of federal land  a common refrain in a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

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"It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching," said the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The younger Bundy's anti-government group is critical of federal land stewardship, but environmentalists and others say U.S. officials should keep control for the broadest possible benefit to business, recreation and the environment.

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The armed group seized the refuge's headquarters Saturday night. Roughly 20 people bundled in camouflage, earmuffs and cowboy hats seem to be centered around a complex of buildings on the 300-square-mile high desert preserve.

As the takeover entered its third day, authorities had not moved in and had not shut off power to the refuge, Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum said. On Tuesday evening, Finicum said he believes federal officials have issued warrants for the arrest of five group members  including himself and Ammon Bundy  but offered no details.

The FBI in Portland referred calls to the Harney County Joint Information Center, which said in a statement it had no information on arrests or arrest warrants and that authorities were "still working on a peaceful resolution."

Finicum, holding a rifle and a backpack, told reporters he would stay at the entrance to the refuge overnight so authorities could find him. Bundy said they would take a defensive position anticipating a possible raid.

Earlier, Bundy offered few specifics about the group's plan to get the land turned over to local control. But Finicum said the group would examine the underlying land ownership transactions to begin to "unwind it."

The federal government controls about half of all land in the West, which would make the wholesale transfer of ownership extremely difficult and expensive. For example, it owns 53 percent of Oregon, 85 percent of Nevada and 66 percent of Utah, according to the Congressional Research Service. Taking over federal public lands in Idaho could cost the state $111 million a year, according to a University of Idaho study.

Randy Eardley, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman, said the group's call for land ownership transfer didn't make sense.

"It is frustrating when I hear the demand that we return the land to the people, because it is in the people's hand  the people own it," Eardley said. "Everybody in the United States owns that land. ... We manage it the best we can for its owners, the people, and whether it's for recreating, for grazing, for energy and mineral development."

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Bundy said the group felt it had the support of the local community. But the county sheriff has told the group to go home, and many locals don't want the group around, fearing they may bring trouble. A community meeting was scheduled for Wednesday.

So far, law enforcement has not taken action against the group whose rallying cry is the imprisonment of father-and-son ranchers who set fire to federal land.

"These guys are out in the middle of nowhere, and they haven't threatened anybody that I know of," said Jim Glennon, a longtime police commander who now owns the Illinois-based law enforcement training organization Calibre Press. "There's no hurry."

Some observers have complained, suggesting the government's response would have been swifter and more severe had the occupants been Muslim or other minorities.

The group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom said it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.

The Hammonds, who have distanced themselves from the group, were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

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The takeover comes amid a dispute that dates back decades in the West. In the 1970s, Nevada and other states pushed for local control in what was known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. Supporters wanted more land for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting.

Associated Press
A new BYOB spot, a comedy show based on anonymous secrets and more things to do in Chicago on Tuesday, Jan. 5.

EAT



Prix-Fixe Menu



Nacional 27



325 W. Huron St. 312-664-2727

Prixe Fixe menu at Nacional 27

Kick off 2016 with a three-course menu offered Tuesday to Thursday during January including chips with salsa and guacamole, lamb tacos and Latin skirt steak with crispy potatoes. 5:30-10 p.m. $20.16.

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DRINK

Now Open



Bang Chop Thai Kitchen



605 W. Lake St. 312-285-2800



BYOB or cool your mouth with coconut water ($2.50) or Thai iced tea ($3.50) at this fast-casual spot, from the owners of Saigon Sisters, that serves spicy fare including papaya salad ($8.50), basil chicken ($11) and green curry with chicken or tofu ($9.50). 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

DO



Tail Eats Snake: Part Deux



The Side Project



1439 W. Jarvis Ave. 773-340-0140



The Rogers Park theater celebrates its 16th anniversary by presenting 16 world-premiere, 10-minute plays, each set in a different year. 7:30 p.m. $10. Tickets: thesideproject.net

Tuesday Funk (Free!)



Hopleaf



5148 N. Clark St. 773-334-9851



Hear stories from five readers including Chicago Writers Conference founder Mare Swallow and crime novelist Lori Rader-Day at the monthly Andersonville series. 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m. Free.

Advertisement

Secrets, Lies and Alibis



Elbo Room



2871 N. Lincoln Ave. 773-549-5549



The monthly show combines stand-up, sketch and musical comedy based on anonymous secrets from the audience. 8:30 p.m. Doors open at 8 p.m. $5 suggested donation.
In the premiere of Season 6, the myriad characters of "Downton Abbey" and their storylines all revolve around three things: money, sex and power. Or, more specifically, lack of money, sex and the loss of power.

Lack of money is on Lord Grantham's mind as he worries over how to Downton will keep running and how to pay its bills, even as his neighbors are throwing in the towel. Sex is on the minds of the engaged Carson and Mrs. Hughes, as well as Lady Mary's, who is being blackmailed for her affair last season with Lord Gillingham. And loss of power threatens the contentment of even Lady Violet; though she still wields formidable power in this little corner of England, even she can't deny that the aristocracy are surely and slowly becoming obsolete.

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Throughout the final season of "Downton Abbey" and in the spirit of the upstairs/downstairs dichotomy of the household, we'll be keeping track of which characters are trending up(stairs), who is trending down(stairs) and who is stuck on the landing.

TRENDING UPSTAIRS

Lord Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), would much rather go on a hunt than attend a hospital board meeting in Season 6, Episode 1 of "Downton Abbey"

Robert: Though he would rather go on a hunt than attend hospital board meetings (lol, who wouldn't?), the Earl of Grantham is finally accepting that it's 1925 and an estate like Downton Abbey isn't going to be sustainable for much longer. He's subtly preparing everyone for staff reductions. Yet he also realizes he isn't the right person to lead Downton into the modern age and basically hands the reins over to Lady Mary, who has more or less run things from the beginning anyway.

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Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) toasts Anna during Season 6, Episode 1 of "Downton Abbey"

Edith: Though she's having some trouble with her editor, even that shows just how far she's come from being just the spinster middle sister. For much of the episode, Edith is debating whether she and her daughter, Marigold, should move to London, while also trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. It's clear that whatever it is won't include remaining at Downton, under the sniping shadow of Lady Mary.

Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) and Carson (Jim Carter) awkwardly talk about his and Mrs. Hughes' upcoming marriage in Season 6, Episode 1 of "Downton Abbey"

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Carson and Mrs. Hughes: The engaged couple were stuck on the landing for most of the episode, but the productive interfering of Mrs. Patmore resolved the ambiguity about what kind of marriage they're going to haveaka yeah, they're going to have sex. Whether that makes you shudder or swoon, it's nice to have one couple sort out a misunderstanding in the space of one episode instead of across multiple seasons.

TRENDING DOWNSTAIRS

Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) gets ready to join the hunting party in Season 6, Episode 1 of "Downton Abbey"

Mary: For most of the episode, Lady Mary is unsure of how to deal with a blackmailing chambermaid who saw her and the now-married Lord Gillingham during their weekend fling in Liverpool last season. This uncertain and flustered woman cannot be the same Lady Mary who has a set-down for everyone, can juggle multiple suitors and gets her way no matter what. It was strange to see the usually strong, sharp and savvy Mary have to be saved by her usually bumbling and clueless father. And I'm not sure how being unable to deal with a blackmailer proves she's capable of running the Downton estate.

Thomas: Despite some sweet moments of the underbutler giving piggyback rides to Georgie and Marigold, all this talk of Downton staff reductions has got Thomas antsy that his job's on the chopping block. For sure, he'll be up to no good by next episode as he tries to scheme his way into job security.

Daisy Mason (Sophie McShera) and Mr. Mason (Paul Copley) walk through Mallerton Hall in Season 6, Episode 1 of "Downton Abbey

Daisy: The news that her father-in-law's (and eventually her own) farm is in jeopardy leads Daisy to confront the estate's new owner in front of everyone. This could have been such a badass moment for the mouse-like assistant cook, but she doesn't express herself very well, ends up only angering the new owner and nearly gets herself sacked from Downton in the process. (She isn't, btw.)

Denker: Lady Violet's lady's maid loves running the gossip mill, and when Violet confides that Downton will likely have to reduce staff, Denker lets it slip to the rest of the staff out of sheer spite. Her rumor-wielding backfires, however, when Violet finds out that her confidence has become common knowledge and retaliates by letting Denker believe she'll be the first servant let go. Yes, Lady Violet, sometime it is good to rule with fear.\

Bates (Brendan Coyle) and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) thank Molesley and Baxter for helping them clear their names in Mr. Green's murder in Season 6, Episode 1 of "Downton Abbey" (Nick Briggs / )

Bates and Anna: Nope, the show's unluckiest couple can't ever be simply happy. Though Anna gets cleared of all charges in the murder of her rapist, there's still some tears amidst the celebration. Anna suffers a miscarriage and fears she won't be able to have any children. Despite Bates assuring her that he's happy with her, Anna's self-pity and sadness casts a shadow on their happiness.

STUCK ON THE LANDING

Violet and Isobel: The world could be crashing down around them, and these two would still find something to argue about. This time, it's about whether the village hospital should be taken over by the larger county hospital (Lady Violet: no; Isobel: yes.). Their spat is a redundant subplot. We don't need extra reminders that the aristocracy's rule is slowly but surely being absorbed into modernity, what with Robert talking about cutting staff every time he's on screen and the auction of a nearby estate. All it shows is thatViolet and Isobel's relationship has regressed to Season 1 and 2 levels.

ekdelossantos@redeyechicago.com | @elisekdelo
'Ajit Doval has done a splendid job in handling the Pathankot attack and certainly helped save heavy destruction of critical air force assets,' says Abhay Jere.

Ajai Shukla's column is another example of the pathological hatred within a section of armchair columnists towards Narendra Modi's establishment.

Shukla has certainly pretended to be objective while analysing the handling of terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase, but he has purposefully chosen to overlook/ignore the facts which does not support his viewpoint. Moreover, he has labelled all the journalists praising the handling of the Pathankot attack as National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's 'cheerleaders'.

So now let us systematically dissect the various issues raised by Shukla to perpetuate his prejudice that the Pathankot terrorist attack was poorly handled by Doval and that he is incompetent to be the NSA.

The first and foremost aspect of the Pathankot attack was the availability of credible intelligence inputs before the actual attack. This itself a very positive sign as India has paid heavily in the past for not having credible and actionable intelligence inputs prior to any major terrorist attacks like the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Doval, being an ex-spy, certainly must have done something right to ensure that our intelligence system is geared enough to give credible inputs. Needless to say, if we didn't have the intelligence inputs, then the damage would have been far worse.

Moreover, the primary objective of these terrorists was to destroy our critical air force assets, but our armed forces ensured that they were not successful.

In his article, Shukla implied that Doval was casual in his approach and initially failed to understand the gravity and magnanimity of the problem. He also suggested that Doval initially restricted the role of the army and relied on hapless Defence Security Corps jawans, thus resulting in more casualties. This is absolutely not true.

On the contrary, after getting credible intelligence of an imminent terror attack on the base last Friday itself, a special forces team of the Indian Army along with two infantry columns (25 to 30 soldiers per column) of the army were deployed at the air base.

In addition, a team of the National Security Guard's Black Cat Commandos was also immediately deployed. More importantly, the overall command of the entire military operation was with a brigadier of the Indian Army and then with an NSG Inspector General (Operations).

Later, nine more columns of the army were moved in to ensure that the entire base was sanitised and completely under control. Doval was continuously monitoring the situation and for the very reason he cancelled his scheduled visit to China.

Shukla says that NSG commandos are not the first line of defence and not trained to protect assets like airbases and only trained to flushing out terrorists holed up in a house. He is not completely right. NGS commandos are special forces under the ministry of home affairs primarily trained for combating terrorism in every form. Their training is comprehensive and covers all aspects of countering terrorism and not just the holed up terrorist.

The NSG commandos are trained to conduct counter-terrorist tasks that include counter-hijacking tasks on land, sea, and air; bomb disposal (search, detection and neutralisation of IEDs); post blast investigation as well as hostage rescue missions. Anyway, during the Pathankot operation, NSG commandos were never the first line of defence.

Finally, Shukla talks about the delay (three days) in finishing the operations, especially the time taken to neutralise the last two terrorists who were holed up in a staff residential building. Now, according to Shukla, the NSG commandos are experts in tackling holed up terrorists, then questioning the delay in neutralising the last two holed up terrorists is to directly question the competence and ability of our NGS commandos.

It will be extremely unfair on our part to make judgments regarding the length of duration of an operation sitting inside air-conditioned chambers in far away locations, as we are still unaware of all the details which might have resulted in the delay.

It also could have been a strategic decision by the NSG to ensure that the terrorists are tired before making the final assault.

I completely agree with Shukla on a couple of minor points. First, the statements by the home minister in almost announcing the end of the operation without validating all the facts could have been avoided. Moreover, Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi's statements during Sunday's press briefing were quite insensitive and should have been worded more carefully.

Having said this, I have no hesitation in proclaiming that Doval has done a splendid job in handling the Pathankot attack and has certainly helped saved heavy destruction of critical air force assets.

Instead of mindless criticism just based on prejudice and conjecture, people like Ajai Shukla, who have no real experience or expertise in counter-terrorism operations, need to learn to give credit where it is due.

IMAGE: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
Inept handling by the National Security Advisor transformed what should have been a short counter-terrorist operation in Pathankot into an apparent debacle, argues Ajai Shukla.

'Between Doval and the deep blue sea'

This title, borrowed from a comment posted on Twitter after the Pathankot attack, accurately sums up Prime Minister Narendra Modi's current predicament. His bold opening to Pakistan last week, which shifted the moribund peace dialogue from the morgue to intensive care, depends upon peace -- both on the Indo-Pakistan border, and in the relative absence of terrorist strikes originating from Pakistan.

But National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's inept handling has transformed what should have been a short, intelligence-driven, counter-terrorist operation into something that increasingly seems like a debacle.

For the peace dialogue to continue, India cannot afford to gift an aura of success to the terrorist 'spoilers', who will inevitably follow up with further strikes. If only for our own sake, India must competently defend itself.

Providentially, the jihadis, who entered the Pathankot air base and killed seven security men and injured another 20, have not achieved their main aim -- which was clearly to derail the peace dialogue even before a preliminary meeting between India's and Pakistan's foreign secretaries in mid-January.

If talks remain on track, it is because both sides have demonstrated unusual restraint. Modi blamed the incident on 'enemies of humanity who can't see India progress.' And Pakistan's foreign office condemned the terrorist attack and proposed to 'partner with India... to completely eradicate the menace of terrorism afflicting our region.'



Yet, it was a close run thing. Had the terrorists inflicted mass casualties in the family lines, or entered the technical area and blown up some fighter aircraft, India's forbearance would have been seriously strained.

By good luck India's intelligence agencies were forewarned on Friday, the day before the attack, by telephone calls the terrorists foolishly made to Pakistan.

This intelligence, which went straight up to the NSA, provided precious hours to beef up security at potential terrorist targets -- a list headed by the Pathankot air base.

The means for this were readily available from the nearby Pathankot cantonment, India's biggest, which houses two infantry divisions and two armoured brigades (over 50,000 troops).

Yet, when the NSA met the army chief on Friday, he asked for only two columns of soldiers (some 50 troops). Intent on directly controlling what he anticipated would be a walk in the park, and without anticipating that there might be more than one group of terrorists, Doval led with his trump card -- he ordered 150-160 National Security Guard troopers to be flown down immediately from New Delhi. The army was placed on the sidelines.

In effect, knowing that armed terrorists were prowling the vicinity, the NSA left the Pathankot air base in the hands of Defence Security Corps jawans; a handful of air force Garud commandos; and the NSG contingent.

The DSC, composed of retired military veterans well past their prime, can hardly repulse a well-equipped and motivated terrorist suicide squad.

The NSG is not a first responder, and is neither trained nor equipped to protect sprawling air bases; it is meant for pinpoint operations like hostage rescue or flushing out terrorists holed up in a house.

As for the Garuds, even the air force has not been able to adequately clarify what they are meant for. The army, which flushes militants out of large forests every day in Jammu and Kashmir, was given a peripheral role.

Only when things started going wrong was the army asked for more troops. Although six army columns (150 soldiers) were eventually deployed, it was never in command of the operations.

It is revealing that not a single Pathankot casualty is from the army. The hapless DSC jawans took most of the casualties. The NSG took unacceptable losses, including an officer killed from a booby-trapped terrorist body. The army knows this ploy well and approaches terrorist bodies in J&K with caution, knowing the jihadi's dying act could have been to activate a grenade and lie on it.



But in New Delhi, the flawed initial allocation of resources set the stage for further bumbling. Eager to crown Doval with credit, even before the operation was done, his cultivated troupe of journalist cheerleaders began tweeting his brilliance. A sample tweet: 'Ajit Doval take a bow. Superb counter action, moved NSG on Friday brilliant synergy...'. Another: 'Hats off to those in national security/int(elligence) op(eration)s/ military/Punjab pol(ice) who haven't winked in past 24 hours to exterminate the vermin 4rm (from) across.'



Perhaps taken in by this drivel, which was being corroborated by credit-seeking air force commanders on the ground, top political leaders joined the premature victory chorus. Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted at 6.50 pm on Saturday: 'The nation is proud of its brave security forces who have always rose (sic) to the occasion. I salute our forces on successful operation in P'kot (Pathankot).'

At 9 pm, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar joined him in saluting the martyrs. At 10.05 pm on Saturday, the prime minister tweeted with finality: 'In Pathankot today, our security forces once again demonstrated their valour. I salute their sacrifice.'



It took just a few bursts of terrorist fire in Pathankot on Sunday morning for these sonorous statesmen to be unmasked as national security amateurs.

Stepping in to explain the continuing casualties that day, Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi -- clearly a votary of the police tradition of throwing troopers into action without training or equipment -- declared the Pathankot attack was not a security lapse, because 'when weapons are in use, (a) few security personnel are bound to be injured.'



This attack comes on the heels of dialogue resumption, exactly as predicted by analysts in both India and Pakistan. It underlines the fact that New Delhi's penchant for calling off talks in response to a serious terrorist strike provides an attractive incentive to jihadi groups to launch such strikes.

After all, terrorist groups stand to lose the most from improved India-Pakistan relations. New Delhi must state clearly that it will continue talks through even the most heinous terrorist attack -- and through the inevitable Indian response that will follow such an attack.

Currently, the possibility of an Indian military response against terrorists does not deter them, since this capability is not evident.

If Doval wishes to provide real options to his boss, he must stop dabbling in day-to-day intelligence operations and, instead, coordinate the development of strike options that are a viable alternative to stalling the dialogue (yawn from Islamabad) yet again.

IMAGE: Security personnel stand guard at the Pathankot air base during the terror attack. Photograph: PTI
'In international relations, you don't trust anybody. Bottomline. I wouldn't trust even my mother in international relations because what happens is when interests change, when situations change and then alliances and friendships change.'

'I have no problems with prime ministers interacting with each other, that is not a bad thing. My problem is that if we think engaging with the Pakistanis is going to solve our security problems, then I am afraid that is not going to happen.'

'If you continue engaging with them, we can actually end up encouraging the Pakistanis giving them a sense of impunity, who will then think that they can continue with their acts (of terror) even as you talk to them.'

Sushant Sareen, Consultant, Pakistan Project, at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com how terror attacks like the one at the Pathankot air base puts Indian governments in a fix when it comes to engaging Pakistan in peace talks.

IMAGE: Army trucks arrive at the Pathankot air force base, January 3. Photograph: PTI Photo.

Were you expecting a terror attack after Prime Minister Modi's visit Lahore?

I suppose this fits into a pattern. This has been happening since (then prime minister Atal Bihari) Vajpayee went to Lahore in 1999.

Whenever you start the talks process or some atmospherics that comes ahead of a peace process, if you can call it that, there is always some kind of spectacular attack.

It happened in 1999; it happened in 2001, within a couple of months of Agra we had the attacks on the Srinagar assembly and then Parliament; it happened in 2006, the Mumbai train blasts, which we seem to have forgotten because ordinary people died; we seem to have remembered 2008 (the 26/11 terror attacks) because some rich people died.

A couple of days before Nawaz Sharif landed here (for Modi's swearing-in) you had an attack on the Indian consulate in Herat (Afghanistan) which we seem to have forgotten.

We had Ufa and then we had Gurdaspur; we had Lahore and then we have had Pathankot...

In that sense, there seems to be some kind of pattern when over time there seems to be some kind of movement (on the peace front).

Also, we had some studies that state that in the years between 2004 and 2008 when we did seem to have good relations with Pakistan we had 18 major terror attacks in India which had links with Pakistan.

Then post 2008 when we stopped talking to them, the number of attacks fell drastically.

I see a pattern here; I don't know how somebody else sees these attacks.

Is the Pakistani army playing mischief? Are political leaders in Pakistan, who don't want good relations with India, in cahoots with the army?

I will not distinguish between the two. I will call them the Pakistani State. We give them an alibi by saying, 'Oh, the Pakistani guys (political leaders) are the nice guys, but the army is evil.'

I don't think it behoves of us to give them an alibi. To my mind, I see them acting as good cops and bad cops.

Are you saying there are no Pakistani leaders who want to invest in a good relationship with India?

Number one, I am putting them both in the same category. I don't distinguish between the two.

When I say 'good cop, bad cop', I mean there are some guys who say all the good things and there are other guys who want to play hardball.

In that sense, there is a kind of perfect synergy between them.

Based on your understanding and insights into the India-Pakistan relationship, do you think any Indian government should trust the Pakistani leadership and carry forward the peace process just like Prime Minister Modi did in Lahore about a week ago?

In international relations, you don't trust anybody. Bottomline.

I wouldn't trust even my mother in international relations because what happens is when interests change, when situations change and then alliances and friendships change.

As long as interests converge, you do business with each other and when interests diverge, you do business with whoever your interests are served.

With a country like Pakistan, where is the question of trust? I would have to take a leap of faith to have trust on Pakistan. To be very honest. I would not trust Pakistan.

Just before Prime Minister Modi arrived in Lahore, he was in Afghanistan. Is there a message from the Pakistan army, which considers Afghanistan as its 'deep asset' to India to keep away from Afghanistan?

There are number of messages here, but I don't see how one country can tell another country to not have any relationship with a third country. It is like India telling Pakistan that if you have good relationship with Sri Lanka, we will bomb you.

The message to India is (with attacks like Pathankot) basically what the Pakistani army is trying to test is how serious are you when it concerns the peace process with that country.

This is a kind of Catch-22 situation. If you try to break off the peace process because of such an attack, everybody will accuse you of being churlish to react to what the non-State actors are doing.

While I don't buy into these fictions of non-State actors, there is this problem and you can't break off (from talks).

But if you continue engaging with them, we can actually end up encouraging the Pakistanis giving them a sense of impunity, who will then think that they can continue with their acts (of terror) even as you talk to them.

This does catch the Government of India in bit of a bind.

In what way will Prime Minister Modi react to such an audacious attack?

I have no way of knowing how he will react because he never ceases to surprise. I don't know what he is going to do.

Was the Indian security establishment caught napping?

I think there was some kind of apprehension that some kind of attacks will take place. But I don't think they had any solid information about such a kind of attack.

One could say they were caught napping, in the sense that, how could so many terrorists enter the airbase?

I think to the credit of our security forces, the way they reacted... perhaps they were lucky. At least, they reacted fairly fast and managed to take out four or five terrorists...

But to an extent that these terrorists could enter, you could call it a security failure if you want to be very uncharitable, but to the extent that they managed to react fairly quickly and snuff out some of these terrorists is to their credit.

What should be India's response to Pakistan after the Pathankot terror attack?

I am too small a person to comment on that. It is not my business to advise the government... the government is very wise.

How do you react to such terror attacks?

My take is that don't tread the beaten path. We have done that since the last 70 years. If it hadn't worked out in this time, I don't see how it will work going ahead.

The old plot needs to change.

Now that includes a whole lot of other things that need to be done. But I don't know if that fits into the political or strategic calculations which governments have. Unless that parading changes, I don't know how you are going to get over this.

What exactly are you suggesting?

I am saying that you can't tread the beaten path any longer. It is not working. So you really need to rethink, going back to the drawing board... but I don't think anybody is interested in doing that.

Was Prime Minister Modi's visit to Lahore to meet Nawaz Sharif along the beaten track?

That was certainly not along the beaten track, but what it has led up to is along the beaten track.

I have no problems with prime ministers interacting with each other, that is not a bad thing.

My problem is that if we think engaging with the Pakistanis is going to solve our security problems, then I am afraid that is not going to happen.

Is Pakistan trying to open another frontier in Punjab once again given the Gurdaspur and Pathankot terror attacks?

I think that is very clear. Not just Punjab... they will open a frontier wherever they can.

They have been trying to revive militancy in Punjab for a number of years and they have started getting some traction over a couple of years now.

This game is not played only by using terrorist attacks.

They have been trying to revive militancy in Punjab for almost 8, 10 years now. There are telltale signs of them (the Pakistani establishment) making inroads (in Punjab).

But I think we would be stupid to blame it all only on the Pakistanis. Our known acts of commission and omission are also responsible for that.

What are these acts?

Basically, the way politics in Punjab is being handled. The kind of governance or the lack of it of the (Chief Minister Parkash Singh) Badal regime; the fact that they have bloody reduced it to a narco state also adds to the problems in the state.

Is this narco money being used to fund terrorists?

Absolutely.

A whole generation of young people are being made into junkies and nobody seems to be bothered about this.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has refused to disclose a first information report registered against gangster Chhota Rajan for adopting alleged corrupt practices to obtain a passport by providing fake details, saying it is exempted from the Right to Information Act.

The transparency law, however, makes it clear that even exempted organisations are covered under the RTI Act when the information sought (any material in any form held by or under the control of an authority) pertains to allegations of corruption.

It does not make any distinction whether the allegations are against an authority, its staff or not. According to law, the only condition to be seen is whether the authority has the information in its control.

But the CBI, after being inducted in the list of exempted organisations, is citing Section 24 of the RTI Act to deny any kind of information even if it is related to allegations of corruption.

Activist Venkatesh Nayak said that when he approached the CBI seeking the details of the FIR against Rajan in which allegations related to corruption have been levelled, the agency cited Section 24 of RTI Act to reject the application after 49 days.

"As such, the RTI Act is not applicable to the CBI," the agency said.

Nayak said that the proviso under Section 24 makes it clear that 'even exempt organisations must provide information about allegations of corruption'.

"According to the media report attached to the RTI application, the FIR is said to have been registered under Prevention of Corruption Act. Clearly, no FIR would have been registered suo motu under the provisions of PoCA if the CBI was not investigating a case of corruption involving issuance of the allegedly fake passport by officials of the Indian Mission in Sydney. By the CBIs own admission, there is an allegation of corruption," he said.

Underworld don Rajan was brought to India in November last year from the Indonesian tourist city of Bali by a joint team, headed by CBI officials, to face trials in over 70 cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling in Delhi and Mumbai.

The 55-year-old gangster, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, was deported after being on the run for 27 years following his arrest in Bali on October 25, 2015.

Ahead of his arrival in India, Maharashtra government, in a surprise announcement, had said it was handing over all the cases related to the underworld don to the CBI as the agency had expertise in handling such cases.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday admitted to 'some gaps' that led to the terror attack on the Air Force base in Pathankot in which all the six infiltrators, who used some 'Pakistan-made' equipment, have been killed.

Addressing a news conference after a visit to the forward base, he said the terrorists were neutralised in an operation that started at 3.30 am on Saturday but combing operations are still on.

"There is no suspected terrorist inside right now. (Still) I will not give a negative report till the combing operations are over. The combing operations may be over by tomorrow," he said.

Parrikar announced that all those seven security personnel killed during the attack will be treated as martyrs that will entitle them to all the benefits available to 'battle casualty' as in war-like situations.

He said the terrorists were carrying 40-50 kg of bullets, mortars, which were fired from modified Under-Barrel Grenade Launcher besides some magazines.

Replying to questions, he said, "I see some gaps. But I do not think there is any compromise on security. Once the investigations are over, things will become clear."

He said that every security detail cannot be discussed and something should be kept for investigation.

Parrikar said that he was worried as to how the terrorists had managed to come inside the base which has a perimeter of 24 km and located in an area of about 2,000 acres.

Asked about the Pakistani connection, he said there are indications that some of these equipment are made in Pakistan.

Parrikar said except the Garud commando, no one else was killed in direct operation.

"Five Defence Securiuty Corps personnel died more because of a bad luck. One of them, Jagdish Chandra, virtually grappled with the terrorist before killing him," he said hailing them as martyrs who made their supreme sacrifice.

Calling the counter-terror operation as 'very difficult', Parrikar said that all assets -- strategic and buildings -- and the families, were secured.

The only building that was damaged is the one in which the terrorists were holed up, he said.

He complimented the joint efforts of the Army, the Air Force, and the National Security Guards and said that they should undertake joint training in future.

Brushing aside criticism over opting for the NSG for the main role rather than the Special Forces of the Army, he said, "50 per cent of the NSG is made up of the Army only. All assets were provided by the Army and they worked together smoothly."

The minister said the initial focus was to secure all the assets at the base where 3,000 families were staying besides the foreign trainees from five to six countries.

Asked about the failure of the Border Security Force personnel in stopping the infiltration from Pakistan, Parrikar referred to media reports which said that the BSF has already been asked to give details of areas from where terrorists could have entered.

He said the National Investigation Agency is probing the case and it will not be proper for him to divulge details as it was the matter of ongoing investigation.

Parrikar said a security audit of all defence installations is being carried out.

According to the details given by him, the encounter started at 3.30 am on Saturday and the last contact with the terrorists was made at about 7.30 pm on Sunday.

Parrikar said the operations after the attack were for combing purposes as there were a lot of live bombs and hence there was delay in retrieving the body.

He added that the body of the sixth terrorist was yet to be retrieved as agencies apprehend it could be a booby-trap.

"I have said there is no need to rush," he said adding that the forces should take its time to avoid any more casualties.

"We cannot take any risk. We have already lost one personnel in a booby trap. We should not lose any more," the minister said.

Punjab to give Rs 25 lakh, jobs to martyrs' kin

Paying rich tributes to the security personnel who laid down their lives during the Pathankot terror attack, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal announced financial assistance of Rs 25 lakh and government job each for the next of kin of two martyrs from the state -- Honorary Captain Fateh Singh and Havildar Kulwant Singh.

The chief minister said that it was a modest effort of the state government to pay tribute to these bravehearts who made supreme sacrifice while protecting the unity and integrity of the nation.

"The state government will leave no stone unturned to bail these families out of the crisis in this hour of grief," Badal told reporters.

Image: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar with Chief of the Air Staff Air Marshal Arup Raha and Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag addressing the media regarding the military operations at Pathankot airbase on Tuesday. Photograph: PTI Photo
The Union home ministry on Tuesday directed the Punjab government to submit a report over the Pathankot Air Force Base attack within 24 hours.

Earlier, the MHA had sought a report from the Border Security Force demanding an explanation as to how the terrorist managed to sneak across the border carry out a full-fledged terror attack on a military base.

The operation against the terrorists at the air base entered its fourth day on Tuesday as security forces continue to carry out combing operation to smoke out any remaining terrorist.

Six terrorists have been killed so far but since uncertainty reigns over the number of infiltrators, operations are expected to continue until the base is declared safe.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar left for Pathankot to take stock of the current situation and he was accompanied by Indian Air Force chief Air Marshal Arup Raha and Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag.

Earlier on Monday, the National Investigation Agency team reached Pathankot to carry forward its probe of the three cases lodged in connection with the ongoing terror attack.

The NIA had registered three cases at local police stations in Punjab on Monday to probe the conspiracy angle behind the attack.
Pakistan would be given a befitting reply if it does not stop sending terrorists across, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said adding that Indias initiative for friendship should not be construed as its weakness.

Addressing a public function, Gadkari said in an apparent reference to the Pathankot terror strike that Pakistan was waging a proxy war against India.

You know yesterdays incident. Terrorists are coming to India continuously. Pakistan knows very well that it cannot defeat us in open war. Pakistan wants to provoke and bring India on the brink of war by killing innocent people and by making Hindus fight against Muslims with the help of terrorists. They are doing a proxy war.

We want to forge friendship with Pakistan. But this does not mean that we are weak. If Pakistan will carry out such incidents in India with the help of terror then we will give them a befitting reply. (Hum eet ka jawab patthar se denge), he said.

Taking a dig at some political parties for accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of playing communal politics, the road transport and highways minister said the National Democratic Alliance government was committed to the welfare of all sections of society.

There are some anti-national elements roaming in Hyderabad. They do not want our country to grow. They do not want poverty to be eradicated, he said, without taking any names.

Taking a swipe at Congress, Gadkari said people of the country became poorer during its misrule of 60 years.

Gadkari said some political sections are trying to malign the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP by portraying them as anti-Muslims.

Some people do not want us to work for the benefit of people. They try to spread hatred and fear among Muslims. They try to create an impression that the BJP and Modi are against them. They say that they (Modi and BJP) will send you (Muslims) to Pakistan, if you dont vote for them. These people do vote bank politics, he alleged.

Gadkari said Modi was trying to give a facelift to the countrys image in the world.

The senior BJP leader further said the NDA government will work in coordination with all state governments cutting across political affiliations.

He also appealed to people to vote for the Telugu Desam Party-BJP combine in the upcoming elections to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.
Dumped after being attacked with a knife, the Gurdaspur SP's jeweller friend Rajesh Verma on Tuesday said the militants who had abducted them were in constant touch with a 'commander sahib' and used to call him at an interval of every 10 minutes.

40-year-old Verma, who was in the captivity for more than four hours after he was abducted along with SP Salwinder Singh and a cook on Friday last, said the militants told the 'commander sahib' that the area looks "peaceful" and that they would easily reach their target.

Rajesh, who is recuperating in a hospital, also heard heavily-armed militants, saying "hamara kam Insha Allah fateh ho jayaga (we will achieve our mission)".

"The person sitting next to the driver's seat (in SP's vehicle), was called 'major sahib', who in turn was talking to some 'commander sahib'. The rest were not talking at all. They used to talk in Urdu, and I could not understand much except 'Insha Allah'," he said.

Narrating his ordeal, Rajesh, who was dumped after militants tried to slit his neck, said, "They used to speak to their 'commander sahib' after an interval of 10 minutes each. They talked to him numerous times."

"When they reached near their target, they said 'commander sahib' the area looks peaceful and the mission will be achieved and they will easily reach the target," said Rajesh, who was tied up by the militants in the vehicle.

Asked whether the militants used GPS, he said, "They perhaps lost their way once. The driver said this is not the right way. Then they activated (GPS), then one of them said this is the way as we have reached near river."

Asked for how much time he was in their custody, Rajesh said, "I was in their custody between 12 and 4 am. I had no hope that I would be alive. May be God had something else in mind".

He said they were carrying 'pithus' (backpacks). "I believe they were heavy and must be containing some explosives like grenades," he said.

The terrorists also took Rs 2,000 from Rajesh. "They first took Rs 500 from me and said they will be thankful for it. In all, they took Rs 2000 from me and left the purse on the vehicle's dashboard," he said.

"I was having more money in my wallet.They could have kept more money with themselves.

But the person sitting by my side kept Rs 500 note in his jacket's pocket".

Rajesh said the abductors were using five phones.

"The one who was sitting next to me, his phone's battery was dead. They had two phones also, one was my phone and two phones of the SP, in all they were using five phones," he said.

Rajesh said when militants reached near their target, they tried to kill him by slitting his throat.

"At last when they stopped, two of them who got down and told 'Alpha', who was sitting on my legs, to send me to heaven, after which I realised that they were going to kill me. My hands and legs were tied. I tried to free myself.

"But they hit me with a rifle butt and punched me. All were in Army fatigues and carrying backpacks which were heavy. Every time they lifted these bags, they used to say 'Insha Allah'. In between they used to ask for an energy drink and chocolate," said Rajesh.

"They told me that my accomplices (SP and cook) had betrayed them and they want to teach me a lesson for this.

They attacked my throat with a knife and blood oozed out and told me that within a few minutes I will reach heaven (die), after which they left me," he said.

When Rajesh realised they had gone, he removed his shoes and freed himself from ropes and other things they had stuffed inside his mouth.

"Later, I opened the vehicle's door, it had central locking and it started blinking. I thought now I would surely be in trouble as the vehicle's central locking was making a sound, but then I realised that several minutes had passed and they would have moved forward," he said.

Rajesh then ran for half a km. "Blood was still oozing out and to stop it, I removed my jacket and tied it tightly around my neck to prevent further loss of blood," he said.

"I was feeling thirsty and I was forced to take few sips from a drain," he said.

He then saw a Gurudwara and started knocking at its door.

"I requested the priest to help me reach hospital immediately. I told him that I was abducted by some terrorists.I took a phone from him and rang up my brother-in-law who took me to hospital," he said.

The police was informed as soon as he reached hospital.

Asked whether he heard the conversation between the SP's gunman and militant, he said, "Yes, they received the call of Kulwinder (SP's gunman) who had asked them where was SP sahib. After that they damaged both the phones with the rifle's butt."

Meanwhile, talking to reporters in Pathankot, Madan Gopal, the cook who was kidnapped along with the SP and his friend, said, "I along with SP Sahib was blindfolded with my saffron colour 'patka' (head gear) and pushed to the rear seat of the vehicle."

"They (terrorists) asked us not look up and talk, threatening us that if we speak, they will kill us. They hit me with a rifle butt. I pleaded with them not to hit me and also told them that I was suffering from cervical problem," he said.

When asked what kind of conversation he heard, Gopal said, "They were saying one is Sikh, one is an old man and one is Hindu, which they were telling on phone to someone."

"On the way they stopped vehicle, I was wearing plastic slippers and we (SP and cook) were dumped.

"They (the terrorists) were carrying AK-47 rifles and they appeared to be well equipped carrying backpacks... After being dumped, we managed to free ourselves, but they took Rajesh along in the vehicle," he said.

"Our officers did a good job and cordoned off the area," the cook said, adding "otherwise things could have been worse".
TUESDAY

Veterans benefit meeting, 10 a.m. to noon, Disabled American Veterans, 2555 Grape St. 325-793-9699 or 325-480-6175.

Mission on the Move Soup Kitchen, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Southwest Drive Community United Methodist Church, 3025 Southwest Dr.

Abilene Southwest Rotary Club, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St.

High Noon Al-Anon, noon, Southern Hills Church of Christ, 3666 Buffalo Gap Road (south end; follow the yellow signs).

Blood drive, 1-6 p.m., First Baptist Church, Albany.

Stroke/Aphasia Recovery Program support group, 1:30-2:30 p.m. West Texas Rehabilitation Center boardroom, 4601 Hartford St. 325-793-3535.

Betty Hardwick Center board of trustees, 5:15 p.m., Betty Hardwick Center, 2616 S. Clack St., Suite 150.

Dystonia Support Group, 5:15-6:15 p.m., Not Without Us, 3301 N. First St. Suite 117.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS), 5:30 p.m., Brook Hollow Christian Church, 2310 S. Willis St. 325-232-7444.

Legacies Al-Anon Family Group, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-280-7584.

Dining For Women  Abilene Chapter, 6 p.m., First Christian Church, 1420 N. Third St.

Overeaters Anonymous, 6-7 p.m., Highland Church of Christ, 425 Highland Ave., Room 111.

Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous, 6-7 p.m., Highland Church of Christ, 425 Highland Ave., Room 108.

Family (of Mental Health Consumers) Support Group, 6-7 p.m., Mental Health Association in Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

MHAA Bipolar/Depression Peer Support Group, 6-8 p.m., Ministry of Counseling & Enrichment, 1502 N. First St. 325-673-2300.

Free certified nurturing parent class (pregnancy to toddler), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Abilene Star Chorus, 6:15 p.m., First Baptist Church, 1333 N. Third St. 325-829-1470.

Al-Anon Parents Group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. Use Church Street entrance.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., Doug Meinzer Activity Center, Knox City. 940-658-3926.

Abilene Society of Model Railroaders, 7-8:30 p.m., 2043 N. Second St.

Parents, Family, Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) of the Big Country, 7-9 p.m., Unity Church, 2842 Barrow St. 325-232-4726, www.pflagbc.weebly.com.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.

WEDNESDAY

Overeaters Anonymous, 8 a.m., Hinds Square Building, 100 Chestnut St., Room 112.

Blood drive, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sweetwater Lions Club.

Abilene Cactus Lions Club, 11:45 a.m., Cotton Patch Cafe, 3302 S. Clack St.

Abilene Wednesday Rotary Club, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway. $12 for lunch. Jo Ann Wilson, 325-677-6815.

Kiwanis Club of Abilene, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway Blvd.

Clearly Speaking Toastmaster Club, noon, Westgate Church of Christ, 402 S. Pioneer Drive. 325-795-5570.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 5:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Veterans Peer Support Group, 6 p.m., Ministry of Counseling & Enrichment, 1502 N. First St. 325-672-9999.

Mid-week Al-Anon Family Group, 6-7 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-698-4995.

Advanced Square Dancing, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Wagon Wheel.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 1501 N. Broadway, Ballinger. 817-689-2810 or 325-977-1007.

DivorceCare support group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. 325-691-4200.

THURSDAY

Coloring Club

The Coloring Club, a new coloring program for adults, will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. All required materials will be provided, but participants are invited to bring other coloring books and supplies. Admission is free.

Other ...

Blood drive, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Clyde High School.

Veterans Association Club, 10 a.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center (in Rose Park, South Seventh and Barrow streets).

Chronic Pain and Depression Group, 11 a.m. to noon, Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St., 325-673-2300.

Abilene Founder Lions Club, 11:30 a.m., Al's Mesquite Grill, 4801 Buffalo Gap Road.

Kiwanis Club of Greater Abilene, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St. 325-695-0092.

Retired Military Wives Club business meeting, 1 p.m., Rose Park Senior Activity Center, 2625 South Seventh St. 325-677-9656 or 325-793-1490.

Mental Illness Open Support Group, 1-2 p.m., Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

Abilene 42 Club, 6 p.m., Rose Park Senior Center.

Teen Recovery Group, 6-7 p.m., Mission Abilene, 3001 N. Third St.

Free certified nurturing parent class (all ages), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 6:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Gambler's Anonymous, 6:30 p.m., Unity Spiritual Living Center, 2842 Barrow St. 325-338-2575.

Round Dancing, 7 p.m., Wagon Wheel. 325-829-1517.

Old Town Abilene Neighborhood Association, 7 p.m., Shining Star Baptist Church, 302 Palm St. 325-676-4068.

Big Country Audubon Society, 7 p.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center.

Key City Coin Club, 7 p.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center, Room B. 325-675-0266.

American Legion Post and Auxiliary 661 meeting, 7 p.m., Lueders Legion Hall, Highway 6, Lueders.

South Pioneer Al-Anon Group, 8 p.m., 3157 Russell Ave.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.

FRIDAY

Healthcare marketplace enrollment

Certified navigators will provide free assistance with enrollment into the healthcare marketplace from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Holmes Plaza, 402 Butternut St. Open enrollment ends Jan. 31.

'Auntie Mame'

As part of the Paramount Film Series, a showing of "Auntie Mame" will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 352 Cypress St. Tickets are $6 for adults and $5 for students, seniors, military and children. For more information, visit paramount-abilene.org.

Other ...

Blood drive, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Texas Oncology, 1957 Antilley Road.

Overeaters Anonymous, noon, Hinds Square Building, 100 Chestnut St., Room 112.

Abilene Chinese Corner, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Abilene Christian University library. lld09a@acu.edu.

Disabled American Veterans and Auxiliary, 6 p.m., 2555 Grape St. 325-793-9699 or 325-480-6175.

Mid-City Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First Christian Church. 325-670-4304.
WEDNESDAY

Overeaters Anonymous, 8 a.m., Hinds Square Building, 100 Chestnut St., Room 112.

Blood drive, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sweetwater Lions Club.

Abilene Cactus Lions Club, 11:45 a.m., Cotton Patch Cafe, 3302 S. Clack St.

Abilene Wednesday Rotary Club, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway. $12 for lunch. Jo Ann Wilson, 325-677-6815.

Kiwanis Club of Abilene, noon, Abilene Country Club, 4039 S. Treadaway Blvd.

Clearly Speaking Toastmaster Club, noon, Westgate Church of Christ, 402 S. Pioneer Drive. 325-795-5570.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 5:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Veterans Peer Support Group, 6 p.m., Ministry of Counseling & Enrichment, 1502 N. First St. 325-672-9999.

Mid-week Al-Anon Family Group, 6-7 p.m., Open Door Building, 3157 Russell Ave. 325-698-4995.

Advanced Square Dancing, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Wagon Wheel.

Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First United Methodist Church, 1501 N. Broadway, Ballinger. 817-689-2810 or 325-977-1007.

DivorceCare support group, 7 p.m., Hillcrest Church of Christ, 650 E. Ambler Ave. 325-691-4200.

THURSDAY

Coloring Club

The Coloring Club, a new coloring program for adults, will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. All required materials will be provided, but participants are invited to bring other coloring books and supplies. Admission is free.

Other ...

Blood drive, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Clyde High School.

Veterans Association Club, 10 a.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center (in Rose Park, South Seventh and Barrow streets).

Chronic Pain and Depression Group, 11 a.m. to noon, Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St., 325-673-2300.

Abilene Founder Lions Club, 11:30 a.m., Al's Mesquite Grill, 4801 Buffalo Gap Road.

Kiwanis Club of Greater Abilene, noon, Beehive Restaurant, 442 Cedar St. 325-695-0092.

Retired Military Wives Club business meeting, 1 p.m., Rose Park Senior Activity Center, 2625 South Seventh St. 325-677-9656 or 325-793-1490.

Mental Illness Open Support Group, 1-2 p.m., Mental Health Association of Abilene, 333 Orange St. 325-673-2300.

Abilene 42 Club, 6 p.m., Rose Park Senior Center.

Teen Recovery Group, 6-7 p.m., Mission Abilene, 3001 N. Third St.

Free certified nurturing parent class (all ages), 6-8 p.m., Mission Church, North Third and Mockingbird streets. 325-672-9398.

Free swim class for people with multiple sclerosis, 6:30 p.m., YMCA, 3250 State St.

Gambler's Anonymous, 6:30 p.m., Unity Spiritual Living Center, 2842 Barrow St. 325-338-2575.

Round Dancing, 7 p.m., Wagon Wheel. 325-829-1517.

Old Town Abilene Neighborhood Association, 7 p.m., Shining Star Baptist Church, 302 Palm St. 325-676-4068.

Big Country Audubon Society, 7 p.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center.

Key City Coin Club, 7 p.m., Rose Park Senior Citizens Center, Room B. 325-675-0266.

American Legion Post and Auxiliary 661 meeting, 7 p.m., Lueders Legion Hall, Highway 6, Lueders.

South Pioneer Al-Anon Group, 8 p.m., 3157 Russell Ave.

Unity Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, 602 Meander St.

FRIDAY

Healthcare marketplace enrollment

Certified navigators will provide free assistance with enrollment into the healthcare marketplace from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Holmes Plaza, 402 Butternut St. Open enrollment ends Jan. 31.

'Auntie Mame'

As part of the Paramount Film Series, a showing of 'Auntie Mame' will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 352 Cypress St. Tickets are $6 for adults and $5 for students, seniors, military and children. For more information, visit paramount-abilene.org.

Other ...

Blood drive, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Texas Oncology, 1957 Antilley Road.

Overeaters Anonymous, noon, Hinds Square Building, 100 Chestnut St., Room 112.

Abilene Chinese Corner, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Abilene Christian University library. lld09a@acu.edu.

Disabled American Veterans and Auxiliary, 6 p.m., 2555 Grape St. 325-793-9699 or 325-480-6175.

Mid-City Al-Anon, 7 p.m., First Christian Church. 325-670-4304.

SATURDAY

Texas Gun & Knife Show

The Texas Gun & Knife Show will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Abilene Civic Center, 1100 N. Sixth St. Admission is $5.

Nutrition workshop

Garland Niblett will present a workshop on nutrition and healthy eating from 10:30-11:30 a.m. at the Redbud Family Center, 3125 S. 32nd St. For reservations, call 325-695-3400.

Chautauqua

BUFFALO GAP  The Chautauqua Learning Series will continue with a presentation by Sam Gaylon, 'Uniforms and Textiles in the Confederate Trans-Mississippi,' from 11 a.m. to noon at Buffalo Gap Historic Village, 133 N. William St. in Buffalo Gap. Admission is free.

'Auntie Mame'

As part of the Paramount Film Series, a showing of 'Auntie Mame' will begin at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 352 Cypress St. Tickets are $6 for adults and $5 for students, seniors, military and children. For more information, visit paramount-abilene.org.

Other ...

Overeaters Anonymous, 10 a.m., Shades of Hope, 402A Mulberry St., Buffalo Gap. 800-588-4673.

Abilene Society of Model Railroaders, 10 a.m. to noon, 2043 N. Second St.

Celiac Support Group, 10 a.m. to noon, Abilene Regional Medical Center, Classroom 2. 325-721-5645 or 325-660-6834.

Abilene Creative Arts Club, 1:30-3:30 p.m., Buffalo Gap Historic Village, Rode Gallery. 325-514-0665.

Aglow International, 6 p.m., The Crossover, S. First and Poplar streets. 325-829-8826.
The Hendrick Breast Institute has been awarded accreditation by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Cancer (NAPBC).

What that means to Melissa Boyd, the program coordinator for the institute, is that Hendrick can offer not only its patients, but other breast cancer patients in the Big Country, too, the same treatment they would receive at a hospital in a big city..

"We provide everything (they do), but you get to sleep in your own bed," she said.

There are 38 other centers with the NAPBC accreditation in Texas, mostly in larger metropolitan areas, but a few are in cities comparable to Abilene such as Baytown, Temple, Bryan and Edinburg. The accreditation, which is for three years, is administered by the American College of Surgeons.

The Hendrick Breast Institute opened in October of 2013 and Boyd said that Hendrick started the process for accreditation as soon as the facility opened. So far, more than 300 patients have gone through the institute, according to Boyd.

"There are 29 standards that we were either doing or were implemented," she said. "We think those standards are basically the foundation of good care."

One of the programs is that of a nurse navigator, a nurse who is provided to each patient throughout their treatment, whether they receive their treatment through Hendrick or another hospital. Another program is a comprehensive multi-discipline breast conference which convenes twice a month. Boyd said that the conference brings together all of the physicians who may come in contact with the breast cancer patients.

"Instead of getting a second opinion, they may be getting 12 opinions," said Boyd. "The patients are presented without any identification."

Boyd said the regular conferences provide doctors the opportunity to hear about other procedures with which they may not be familiar or to get a different perspective.

"Since we've been doing it, there have been 40 patients whose treatment plans completely changed," she said.

Another one of the standards has led Hendrick to hire a radiation oncologist.

Boyd said that the accreditation survey came after a rigorous evaluation of the breast institute's performance and included adding services that were expensive. She said the accreditation was worth the effort and the expense.

"You're willing to do it because it improves outcomes for patients," she said.
Victor Rocha is passionate about mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiujitsu, in particular, but that isn't why the personal trainer is introducing MMA training as an exercise class at Hendrick Medical Center in February.

Rocha is just looking for another way to help people reach their personal goals when it comes to getting fit.

"My end goals are for people to have measurable results and to make them feel better," he said. "It's something new and I'm wanting to empower them."

It is a thrice-a-week class that meets from 6:30-7 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from Feb. 1 through Feb. 24, and is limited to 24 people.

The cost is $129, $119 if a person signs up before Jan. 22. The class is open to anyone, even if they aren't members of the Hendrick Health Club.

The people in the class will work between two rooms and will use ropes, step-up boxes, a body bag and other exercises that uses their own body weight. Rocha describes the workout as a good cardiovascular workout that also is a full body workout. As for its effectiveness, Rocha can point to himself as an example. He described himself as a pudgy teenager when he became interested in Brazilian jiujitsu about seven years ago.

"I go about 170 now, but I weighed 230," said Rocha, whose physique, as they say, is cut. "I was pudgy while I was working out, too. I had to change what I ate."

As of the end of 2015, the class was about half full, and Rocha said the attendees run the gamut from people who are in great shape and "could hang with anyone" to people who have been avoiding the gym. It doesn't matter to Rocha  in fact, he looks forward to taking the people who need the exercise most and making them healthier.

"I like to meet people where they are," he said.

Rocha said that members of the class will work out with a partner, but that the mixed martial arts description shouldn't scare them off. There will be no sparring, or rolling as it is called in Brazilian jiujitsu. The striking gloves the participants receive as part of their entry fee will be used on a body bag. Rocha said he has taken precautions to make sure the equipment used will be safe.

"I've made it Victor-proof," Rocha joked. "If there's a way to be injured on equipment, I've found it."

Therefore, the body bag is filled with water rather than sand, meaning it gives when its struck, just as a human body would. Rocha's students can whale away on it and take out the frustrations caused by a stressful day without worrying about causing injuries to their joints.

The "boxes" used are mats that can be attached by Velcro straps, giving the students a range from six inches to more than two feet for their stepping exercises. Gone are the metal steps used in some workouts.

"About the worst that can happen is that someone will get embarrassed if they slip," Rocha said. "I'll take the embarrassment over the pain."

Rocha said the workouts will be geared toward the level of each person in the class.

"It's inner-man inspired," he said. "I'll have some regression for people who aren't in very good shape."

Rocha said he came up with the idea of the MMA sessions as an attempt to come up with a different type of exercise class.

"My inspiration came from trying to break the mold," he said. "I don't like the idea of one size fits all."

He's confident that the students will enjoy the workout, which he described as "chess for your body" because it makes people aware of what their body is doing while they train.

"They're going to feel empowered, which is cool," said Rocha. "They're going to be caught up in the idea, 'I can do this.' "

People interested in joining the class must register in person at the Hendrick Health Club, 2110 Pine St., as payment is due at sign-up.
The Mitchell County Sheriff's Office sent to Dallas for autopsy the body of a missing Colorado City woman who was found in her submerged car Monday evening, said Sheriff Patrick Toombs.

The preliminary autopsy will help the sheriff's office determine in which direction to investigate the death of Amber Sevier, 39.

A final autopsy is expected in a couple of months, Toombs said.

"We've got three possibilities, whether it was an accident, suicide or foul play," he said. "We have not ruled anything out yet. We're looking at everything."

A family member located Sevier's body around 4:30 p.m. Monday off Texas 208 near Lake Champion, Toombs said. It was "three-quarters of the way" submerged in a ravine about a mile from her home.

It took about two hours for emergency personnel and wreckers to pull the car from the water, Toombs said.

Sevier tried to call someone around 10:30 Saturday night, and it appeared she was traveling in the direction of her home. She leaves behind two sons, one in high school and the other in junior high school.
Early Monday morning two Abilene Police officers were fired upon by a suspect, according to an APD news release.

Officers returned the fire, hitting the suspect, who has been identified as Derek Lee Casey, 31.

"Officers then provided immediate lifesaving measures until the Fire Department and EMS arrived," according to the news release.

After he was released from Hendrick Medical Center a few hours later, Casey was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated assault on a peace officer. He was booked into the Taylor County Jail just before 5 a.m. His bond was set by Judge Sparky Dean at $250,000 per count.

The incident began about 12:13 a.m., when APD was dispatched to the 1100 block of Burger Street, after receiving a call that a man was at a home with a gun and was believed to be on some type of drug.

According to the news release, the caller indicated that the man was possibly trying to get into the home to reach his girlfriend. The home was locked, but the suspect reportedly tried to get into the house.

"When officers arrived, they approached from the front and the rear of the residence," according to the news release. "The two officers in the alley observed the suspect near the back door. They gave him verbal commands, whereupon early information indicates the suspect fired at the two police officers. The officers returned fire, striking the suspect."

The officers have been placed on administrative leave in accordance with policy. Additionally, the Police Department contacted the Texas Rangers and requested an independent investigation.
Three people, identified by the Abilene Police Department as "top suspects" have been arrested after a two-month-long fraud investigation.

According to an APD news release, detectives contacted several people in a hotel in the 700 block of East Highway 80 last Thursday. When they entered the hotel room, they found three people and what the news release identified as "a large amount of methamphetamine."

Arrested were Roianna Carrion, 25; Priscilla Del Rio, 27; and John Robert Davis, 36. The trio was arrested and charged with third degree felony possession of methamphetamine.

Police also arrested Scott Day, 32, a state jail felony forgery suspect, walking in the 1500 block of North 12th Street shortly after leaving the hotel, according to the news release.

Toby Jack Davee, 37, was located in a rural home off County Road 100 in Hamby. According to the news release, he was in possession of "numerous evidentiary items and was arrested on suspicion of his part in the forgeries."

Subsequent to this contact, Heather Baugh, 27, was arrested on suspicion of possession of methamphetamine (state jail felony). According to the news release, John Hlava, 32, was at the residence and had outstanding warrants, for which he was arrested.

Randal Alan Day, 54, was arrested last week after the APD Fraud Unit executed a search warrant in the 2500 block of Stonecrest Drive.

His arrest was in conjunction with parole violation, theft and state jail felony forgery, according to the APD.

"The investigation continues into the link between the eight suspects, as well as others not arrested at this time," according to the news release. "These suspects have been dealing in the distribution of stolen checks, credit/debit cards and IDs that had been taken from vehicles."

Police warned residents to avoid leaving personal information or valuable in vehicles.
The victim of a shooting in Maryneal Saturday afternoon has been identified as Lonnie Odell Sturdivant, 50, of Maryneal.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, assisting the Sweetwater Police Department with public information requests, the shooter is Lance Light, 44.

Light was shot when a DPS unit located and pursued him to the intersection of Interstate 20 and State Highway 70 in Sweetwater. According to a DPS news release, a Sweetwater police officer shot the suspect "when he produced a gun and pointed it at officers."

Light was said to be in critical condition Saturday, but no updated condition report is available.

The officer is on paid administrative leave.

DPS, Texas Rangers, the Nolan County Sheriff's office and Sweetwater PD are working on the investigation.
Renovating Jane Long Elementary, transforming it into an early childhood center, will be up for decision come Monday's Abilene ISD board of trustees meeting.

At Monday's agenda review session, construction coordinator Joe Humphrey said the roughly $8 million job will be the final major project in the school district's $87.7 million bond.

It's also going to be one of the more extensive projects, tapping into a large amount of savings other bond projects realized to create a more safe and secure building to host a large number of the district's youngest charges.

"They built the office in the middle of the school," Humphrey said during informal discussion on the proposal. "What were they thinking? So we're going to correct this and move the office to the entryway. The east side of the school will be new construction. There's a lot of alternatives we included in this because we wanted to make sure we did the best job. It became expensive, but the goal is to get us out of Woodson (Early Childhood Center), which is one of the oldest buildings in our district, and it gets us (early childhood students) out of Locust and out of Reagan."

How much more expensive the Long project will be compared to original plans, though will be based on how many alternatives the school board adopts. There are five total, ranging from expanding and renovating parking lots to re-flooring the gymnasium. The most expensive, about $600,000, would renovate two areas of existing classrooms, the "B" and "C" areas, according to district documentation.

If everything is approved, Associate Superintendent for Operations Scott McLean said the project could use $3.2 million of the realized $3.7 million in savings from ongoing projects.

McLean said both the bond oversight committee and the project committee have seen these estimates and approve of spending the money to complete the Long renovations.

Data presented to the board during the agenda review pointed to Lubbock-based Collier Construction Co. as the lowest among three submitted bids. Others included The Crowe Group Inc. and Imperial Construction Inc. All three companies have either provided or are currently performing work in the district.

Collier, Humphrey said, will be recommended to the school board next week as the best option. The company has been providing safety and security upgrades to various elementary schools throughout the district as part of the ongoing bond.

While the company is from Lubbock, Humphrey said it's not a problem for local contractors. Those individuals are all being used as subcontractors in this case.

"They didn't have to do it, but Collier submitted a list of all of its subcontractors," Humphrey said. "We recognize every one on the list. Everybody is local."

If approved next week, work would begin in February with an anticipated completion of May 2017, Humphrey said.

In other news from the agenda review session, Superintendent David Young announced a shift in how the board will conduct its regular meetings, held on the second Monday of each month.

Beginning Monday, meetings will begin at 5 p.m., a change from 5:30 p.m. previously. The board will then convene in closed session with anticipated return to public session at 6 p.m., Young said.

Twitter: @TimothyChippARN
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By Staff Report

A 16-year-old died early Monday morning after being struck by a truck on U.S. Interstate 20, police said in a news release.

The Abilene Police Department received a call at 2:11 a.m. Monday of a major motor vehicle collision around the 283 mile marker of Interstate 20 eastbound.

Preliminary investigation indicated that a 2014 Kenworth truck driven by Glen Rhodes of Abilene had been traveling east on Interstate 20.

According to police, the driver stated that as he approached the 283A exit, a pedestrian crossed the roadway northbound into the truck's path.

The truck and pedestrian collided in the outside lane. The truck came to rest atop the U.S. Highway 277 overpass, while the pedestrian was thrown into the interstate's center median.

The pedestrian was identified as Dawson Edward Wendt, 16, of Abilene. Dawson was pronounced dead at the scene by Justice of the Peace Sparky Dean.

Alcohol is not believed to be a factor. An investigation by APD's traffic division is ongoing.
Shakespeare once wrote: " ... A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

But when it comes to the Rose Parade, what you see isn't always what you smell.

Gary Norman, owner of Gary's Floral Gallery, spent nearly the whole week after Christmas in Irwindale, California. Irwindale sits just down the 210 Freeway from Pasadena, home of the Rose Parade.

Norman was invited to be one of the float designers/decorators for Fiesta Parade Floats, which built 10 floats for the 2016 Rose Parade  the 127th  held on New Year's Day.

Norman, who is a Texas Master Florist, found out he'd been chosen on Aug. 5, his birthday. He left for California the day after Christmas and returned to Abilene late Friday night.

He was still in recovery mode on Monday.

"There's a lot of work to it," he said. "It's a rough week. It's like three Valentine's Days at once."

The workdays started off long, roughly 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but just got longer as the date for the parade got closer.

One night the work continued until after 3 a.m.

The day of the parade, the designers had to be in the hotel parking lot at 3:45 a.m. to get to the staging area by 4 a.m.

He kept his personal Facebook page filled with photos taken during the building process.

"People could really tell what was going on," Norman said.

Every inch of every float must be covered with flowers or other natural materials, such as leaves, seeds or bark, according to the Tournament of Roses' website.

And they mean everything. The "tile" roof on the Mission-style building on the Miracle-Gro "Life Starts Here" float were Styrofoam cups cut in half, painted reddish brown, then covered with cutup flower petals. Even the tiles along the bottom of the float were all covered with natural materials.

White leopards on another float were covered with cotton seeds and black beans.

Different materials are used to create different color. A huge white flower seen on a float is most likely covered in coconut, not flowers.

It isn't the kind of coconuts found in cookies, cakes and pies, Norman explained. The tropical fruit is sliced into large, thin pieces and dried.

Volunteers take those bags of coconuts and pound on them to break them up into small pieces.

Dolphins on "The Bachelor" float were covered with eucalyptus leaves to give them a gray color.

Norman pointed out a photo of one float with "pearls" nestled among the flowers. Their scent gave them away immediately  designers used peeled onions as a stand-in.

Norman said the smell was awful the first day, but luckily it faded overnight.

The numbers related to the floats are mind-boggling: Hundreds and hundreds of boxes of flowers and other materials, hundreds and hundreds of water vials to hold fresh blooms.

Add on hundreds of volunteers, from teenagers to retired folks and everyone in between, and hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to create the final product.

Some 7,800 Oncidium orchids were used to create the yellow trees on the Dole "Soaring Over Paradise" float. The Cattleya orchids used on the same float would cost $50-$60 each from a florist, Norman said.

"They say that one (the Dole float) cost at least $500,000 to make," he said.

Norman worked on a number of the Fiesta floats, including those for Dole, Kaiser Permanente Thrive's "Helping Mother Nature Thrive," "The Bachelor" float, Kiehl's (beauty products) float and the Miracle-Gro float.

Norman got to meet "The Bachelor" Ben Higgins and TV host/carpenter Ty Pennington, who was on the Miracle-Gro float.

Norman said it's difficult for people watching the parade on TV to understand the sheer scope of the floats.

The Northwestern Mutual "Dancing into Adventure" float featured huge swans. The volunteers used three-story high scaffolding to work on the swans.

Creating a Rose Parade float requires hundreds of man-hours by volunteers and staff. It's a job that physically wears a person down.

"Everybody's bodies hurt," Norman said. "Our hands were sore, with cuts."

His body might still be feeling that pain, but he won't count out doing it in the future.

"I think so  it's a lot of hard work," he said. "Yes, I would."
WASHINGTON  One of the arguments for the Iran nuclear deal was that it would encourage greater openness and investment from the West. But Iranian hard-liners have been working in recent months to sabotage the proponents of economic globalization and change.

The clearest example is the case of an Iranian-American businessman named Siamak Namazi, 44, who was arrested around Oct. 14. Iran hasn't announced any formal charges, but he has been accused in the Iranian press of being a tool of such institutions as the World Economic Forum, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

According to Iranian press accounts, Namazi is being held by the intelligence service of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in a special section of Evin Prison. News organizations close to the IRGC have published conspiracy stories that appear to be drawn from his interrogation and from information on his laptop computer.

The allegations center, bizarrely, on Namazi's status as a 'Young Global Leader' under a program organized by the World Economic Forum. A story posted on the hard-line website Raja News describes the WEF and its youth fellowships as part of a 'Zionist' network that uses investment and trade as tools of political subversion. Another story, posted by Jahan News, links Namazi to the other think tanks and foundations that it claims are part of a Western 'influence network.'

The real target of the hard-liners may be President Hassan Rouhani, whose government has been a proponent of greater openness and economic integration with the West. Rouhani's government had blessed a planned visit to Iran last June by 20 members of the Young Global Leaders, arranged through Sorena Sattari, Iran's vice president for science and technology. But the trip was canceled after it was criticized by hard-liners.

The Namazi incident is a reality check for those who hoped that the nuclear agreement would be the prelude to a broader opening. Since the agreement was reached in July, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has repeatedly said that Iran won't allow economic 'infiltration' by an America he described several months ago as a 'deceitful, crafty, skillful, fraudulent and devilish enemy.'

The imprisonment of Namazi in October came days after an Iranian court convicted Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, also an Iranian-American, on charges of espionage. Marty Baron, the Post's executive editor, called the verdict an 'outrageous injustice.'

'Their message is that they are going to scare and intimidate Iranians abroad who want to return to Iran,' argued Bijan Khajehpour, an Iranian who hired Namazi in 1997 at Atieh Bahar Consulting, a Tehran firm that advised Western companies investing in Iran. Namazi left Atieh Bahar in 2007, and Khajehpour left the country in 2011 under pressure from the regime. He now operates a similar consulting firm in Vienna.

There may be a class warfare aspect to these political attacks. Like many Iranians who have prospered in the Diaspora, Namazi is from a family that was prominent during the Shah's time. His father was governor of Khuzestan Province and left Iran after the revolution. Namazi graduated from Tufts University and then studied management at London Business School and urban planning at Rutgers.

The message from the hard-liners, whose IRGC-linked businesses have prospered since the revolution, is that they won't give up economic or political power to the old elite, as sanctions are lifted and foreign investment grows in Iran.

Just as the IRGC evidently hopes, the Namazi case has chilled some Iranian-American business leaders who had considered investing in Iran. An example is a group called iBridges, which includes some wealthy Iranian-Americans, such as Hamid Biglari, who was a senior executive at Citigroup. The technology group gathered Iranian entrepreneurs for a first iBridges meeting in 2014 in Berkeley, California; they held a second, larger meeting with nearly 2,000 participants in June in Berlin.

But iBridges has been attacked in the Iranian press, and some of its members  who were enthusiastic just a few months ago about funding new startups in Iran  are said to be reconsidering. Says one Iranian-American who has pulled back from planned investments: 'All this is a warning shot across the bow to the entire Diaspora: Don't even think about coming back to rebuild relations with the West.'

Rouhani and other pragmatists argue that foreign investment will strengthen Iran and boost its national security. But hard-liners insist that Western money is a tool of the Great Satan that will undermine the revolution. This battle over foreign influence will be one of Iran's fault lines in the year ahead.

Email David Ignatius at davidignatius@washpost.com.
Today in history: On Jan. 5, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower proposes to Congress that the U.S. have a more proactive policy in the Middle East. His plan is called the 'Eisenhower Doctrine,' and it turned that arid area of the world into a Cold War battlefield. Egypt had cozied up to the Soviet Union, causing the U.S. to stop its support to build the Asw n Dam on the Nile River in 1956. When Egypt was repelled in its attempt to seize the Suez Canal that October, tensions greatly increased in the region.
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China's biggest oil company has sold a half-interest in its Central Asia gas pipelines for a fraction of its cost, raising questions about its finances and the government's energy reform plans.



On Nov. 25, PetroChina, the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), announced the decision to sell 50 percent of its Trans-Asia Gas Pipeline Co. subsidiary for 15-15.5 billion yuan (U.S. $2.3-2.4 billion).



The sale was one of two PetroChina deals, including a share sale in the country's West-East gas pipelines last week. Both appeared aimed primarily at raising cash.



The Trans-Asia sale to a unit of China Reform Holdings Corp., a state-owned asset management firm, was first reported as a step in the right direction for CNPC and the government-controlled energy sector, which have been urged to demonopolize, restructure, and open up to investment for years.



"Most major integrated oil and gas companies do not own pipeline networks. Neither should PetroChina," said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Neil Beveridge, as cited by Bloomberg News.



Despite the questionable implications of shifting assets from one state pocket to another, many comments focused on the benefit for PetroChina's finances, which have suffered from the global plunge in energy prices over the past year.



In the first nine months, PetroChina earnings fell 68.1 percent from a year earlier to 30.6 billion yuan (U.S. $4.7 billion), while the company's return on net assets dropped to a negative 5.6 percent.



But there has been less focus on the Trans-Asia Gas Pipeline assets themselves and the apparent beating that CNPC has taken on building the 1,830-kilometer (1,140-mile) cross- border connections to import gas from Central Asia.



Rising costs



While there appear to be no complete estimates for the three-stranded system from Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Xinjiang, a sampling of figures suggests that project costs have far exceeded the valuation of U.S. $4.8-billion (31 billion yuan) implied by the November sale.



Reports during construction from 2007 through 2009 put the cost of the first strand at U.S. $7.3 billion (47.1 billion yuan). Investment in subsequent strands have added billions more.



In 2010, a report from Uzbekistan on the second line estimated project costs through that country at U.S. $3 billion (19.3 billion yuan).



In the same year, Interfax cited a cost of U.S. $4 billion (25.8 billion yuan) for a branch linking cities in southern Kazakhstan.



In 2011, the Uzbek section of a third line was estimated at U.S. $2.2 billion (14.2 billion yuan), Interfax reported.



A fourth planned project through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, known as "Line D," will cost U.S. $6.7 billion (43.3 billion yuan), the official Xinhua news agency said last year, although pipelines "under construction" are not included in the current sale, according to Moody's Investors Service.



In a research note, Moody's said the sale would be "credit positive" for CNPC, since it would "partially offset the negative impact from low crude oil and natural gas prices and help preserve its financial profile during the current industry downturn."



But CNPC also stands to lose half of the long-term profits it might earn from the Central Asia pipelines, which would typically be expected to have a long payback period with "thin profit margins," Moody's said.



Changed prospects



The sale, coming just six years after the Central Asia network opened, is a sign of the changed prospects for such projects, which are normally designed to last 30 or 40 years.



The dramatic drop in oil and gas prices, along with the cooling of China's economy, may be forcing CNPC to sell assets far below cost and long before costs can be recovered.



In the case of the Trans-Asia system, CNPC has never been in a position to earn profits from its investment, since it has been forced to supply imported gas to the domestic market at state-controlled rates.



"I suspect the reason it looks to be so cheaply valued is that it's a big money-losing operation," said Mikkal Herberg, energy security research director for the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research.



In effect, there is no payback period for the Trans-Asia pipelines, because CNPC has been losing heavily on the gas import business from the start.



In 2011, for example, PetroChina lost 21 billion yuan (U.S. $3.2 billion) on imported gas sales, the official English-language China Daily said.



In the first half of 2015, losses reached 10.6 billion yuan (U.S. $1.6 billion), including sales of both pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG).



As a state-owned company, CNPC has been made to absorb costs of pipeline development and gas sales in the national interest of promoting energy security and the switch to cleaner fuels to reduce China's reliance on coal.



In some years, gas losses have been offset by profits from the monopoly's privileged position in the oil industry and domestic gas development. But with the decline in world oil and gas prices, PetroChina faces pressure on all sides.



Government regulation



Government regulation of gas prices has not helped.



After years of robust gas demand in coastal cities drove up LNG import prices, the high costs and weakening economy slowed growth to just 2.1 percent in the first half of this year.



The government responded last month with a sharp 28- percent cut in wholesale gas prices for nonresidential use to ease industry's burdens of complying with anti-smog efforts. But the move has left suppliers like PetroChina holding the bag with further losses on sales.



The announcement of the pipeline sale just five days later suggests the decision was motivated mainly by finances rather than energy sector reform.



"They're selling it to another arm of the state, which is telling you something about what kind of deal it is. It's finding a way to shore up CNPC's balance sheet," said Herberg.



Financial pressures also appear to be the main force behind the partial sale of the West-East gas system announced last week.



Under the deal, PetroChina is consolidating its three West-East pipelines into a single PetroChina Pipelines entity, in which it would retain 72.26 percent, the Financial Times said.



The remaining interest would be sold to a group including Baosteel, financial institutions and investors that acquired shares in an earlier 20-billion yuan (U.S. $3-billion) financing deal in 2013.



The entire West-East system is valued at 281.4 billion yuan (U.S. $43.4 billion), somewhat less than reported two weeks before.



State control



From an operational standpoint, the sales may not make much difference, since one state-owned company or another will likely remain in control of the pipelines due to agreements with transit countries and energy security concerns.



But more significant moves toward reform are possible if CNPC sells larger shares and eventually cedes control of the network.



The company's 20,500 kilometers (12,738 miles) of domestic pipelines carry 80 billion cubic meters (2.8 trillion cubic feet) of gas per year, or 45 percent of China's consumption, Reuters said.



Like the Trans-Asia deal, a larger domestic pipeline sale could recapitalize PetroChina and help to pay down debt, but it could also be a step toward setting up a separate pipeline management entity.



That would be a more meaningful reform that would open up pipeline access for independent producers and shale gas development, Herberg said.



Reuters said the government is expected to introduce "a sweeping reform package" for the energy sector within weeks, aimed at increasing efficiency and attracting private investment.



The government has been trying for over a year to promote a "mixed ownership" initiative to draw private capital into state-owned enterprises (SOEs). But the response has been poor because the investment opportunities fall far short of privatization as long as the state stays in control.



That could change if the government reform package clears the way for more asset sales, competition and comprehensive market pricing, but past decontrol measures have been limited to avoid social risks.



Even if the government is ready to take big steps, the outlook for low energy prices is likely to offer poor prospects for profits, so that losses may have to be buried or subsidized in the pipeline system for years.




Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has questioned the quality of roads built by Chinese companies under soft loans provided by Beijing, saying a highway completed just four years ago has already begun to break down.



Hun Sen on Tuesday told Chinese firm Shanghai Construction (Group) General Co. to pay attention to quality when expanding National Road 5, citing the now-crumbling National Road 7 it had constructed in 2008.



National Road 5 connects the capital Phnom Penh with Poipet at the Thai border crossing and is aimed, officials say, at boosting economic opportunities to people living along the highway.



Based on experience, the Shanghai Group must experiment [with different construction methods] from the building of National Road 7, he said, speaking in front of around 500 villagers at a groundbreaking ceremony for the expansion on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.



It didnt last longproblems must have developed under the road. The company must use different techniques for road construction, said Hun Sen, who relies heavily on aid from China, Cambodias top ally.



Hun Sen also ordered Cambodias Ministry of Public Works and Ministry of Finance to work with Chinese companies to ensure better quality of the road projects.



Expansion of the 407 kilometer (253 mile) National Road 5 will cost U.S. $56 millionto be funded through a loan package of U.S. $400 million signed by Hun Sen and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in December 2009.



Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Pan Guangxue, who attended Tuesdays groundbreaking ceremony, called National Road 5 an economic lifeline between Cambodia and Thailand.



This road is very important for tourism, culture, and the economy, he said.



We hope that the Shanghai Group, which will be constructing the road, will work closely with local residents [to ensure they are happy with the project].



Cambodian officials have not discussed the issue of compensating villagers who will be affected by the road construction.





Mismanaged project



The 509 kilometer (316 mile) National Road 7 runs from Skuon in Kampong Cham province through Kratie province and north to Trapeang Kriel in Stung Treng province, where it meets the international border checkpoint with Laos.



Part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Highway Network, the road was partly rebuilt by the Shanghai Group through a U.S. $76 million interest-free loan from the Chinese government and inaugurated in April 2008. The remaining U.S. $4 million was supplied by the Cambodian government.



Critics in Cambodia have often slammed Chinese companies for building poor infrastructure in the country and have pointed to National Road 7 as an example of a mismanaged project.



Opposition Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Yim Sovann welcomed Hun Sens statement, adding that poor-quality construction is largely the result of rampant graft.



This is all about corruption. We need to have measures in place ahead of the awarding of contracts, he said, calling on the government to better regulate the bidding process for construction projects.



Previous reports have said that some Chinese companies instructed Cambodian laborers to use less concrete during road construction, with the remainder of the concrete then sold on the black market for profits.



Reported by Sok Serey for RFAs Khmer service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.




Authorities in the northern Chinese region of Ningxia are holding a man suspected of setting fire to a bus filled with passengers, killing 17 people and injuring dozens more during morning rush hour on Tuesday, official media reported.



Police detained suspected arsonist Ma Yongping after the blaze sparked a manhunt in Ningxia's Helan county, ruling Chinese Communist Party paper the People's Daily said in a post to its official microblog account.



The fire started aboard the 301 bus route at around 7:08 a.m. outside a furniture store in Helan county, close to the regional capital of Yinchuan, state news agency Xinhua reported.



The bus was operated by state-owned Yinchuan Public Transport Co., and was heading for the city's railway station, it said.



Photos posted of the blaze online showed the entire bus aflame and engulfed with black smoke.



Some posts suggested that Ma had started the fire out of anger over back pay owed to him by an employer. However, official media said his motivation was still unknown.



An employee who answered the phone at the Ningxia Medical University hospital on Tuesday said many of the injured had been transferred to a special burns unit.



"They're no longer in the main building here, but they have been sent to the burns unit," the employee said. "Some went into intensive care, and some are under observation."



Flames, smoke



A Helan resident who asked to remain anonymous said she had seen the fire and smoke rising from the scene along with large numbers of police and emergency vehicles.



"It's pretty scary ... a lot of people on that bus were just going to work in the morning," she said. "I wasn't at the scene, but I saw flames and smoke; I think the police had already got there by that time."



She added: "I feel very sad for those poor, unlucky people. It even occurred to me to take the bus to work this morning."



"Now I won't dare to take the bus."



Another resident surnamed Li said local people are now waiting anxiously for more information.



"We are waiting to see what the government is going to say," she said. "There is always such a delay in getting information, and some people are wondering if their friends and family were killed or injured."



"Of course we are all very worried; it could be the friend of a friend, or someone in our family [in the bus]."



An employee at a business near where the suspected arson attack took place said the entire area had been cordoned off for several hours.



"We didn't go to work today; we were in shock," the employee said. "The incident happened when we were on our way to work but we didn't see it."



"They have cleaned everything up now, and everything has returned to normal."



"The cordon has just been lifted."



Public acts of violence



Public acts of violence, often involving fires or homemade explosives, are a longstanding problem in China, which observers say are symptomatic of deep social tensions and numerous injustices that have no immediate solution.



In July 2014, China's Ministry of Public Security ordered operators of subways, buses, and other transport networks nationwide to post security guards on all public transport in the wake of a fatal bus fire in the southern province of Guangdong.



Guangzhou police detained a 25-year-old man surnamed Ou in connection with the attack that left two people dead and 32 injured.



Ou told police he had started the fire out of frustration at his gambling debts, official media reported at the time.



The majority of those injured in the fire had severe burns, and were transferred to the Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital on Wednesday.



Earlier in 2014, a bus in the eastern city of Hangzhou was destroyed in a fire that injured 32 people, many of them critically, in what police said was "not a terrorist attack."



And in March, a man accused of starting a bus fire in the southern city of Guiyang that killed six people reportedly said he was taking "revenge on society" when he lit up a barrel of gasoline on the vehicle, causing it to burst into flames.



Chinese authorities have kept up a stranglehold on petitioners and rights activists in recent years, subjecting thousands to arbitrary detention in unofficial "black jails," which fuels their sense of desperation, rights groups say.



Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Ho Si-yuen for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.




Fears have been growing in recent days for detained Chinese rights lawyer Shu Xiangxin after allegations that he was tortured while in a police-run detention center in the eastern province of Shandong, his lawyers told RFA.



Shu was redetained suddenly last Friday after being released on bail, on charges of "extortion and blackmail," and detained in the No. 2 Detention Center in the provincial capital Jinan.



His defense team, lawyers Li Fangping and Cai Ying, were refused permission to visit him in the detention center on Monday, Cai said.



"He was injured by a detention center guard, who asked him to do some kind of work, to which Shu Xiangxin replied that detention center rules mean he doesn't have to carry out any labor," Cai said.



"But the guy wouldn't listen and beat him up."



He said Shu had been suspended naked, by one handcuffed hand after the incident and denied food, water or visits to the toilet for nearly eight hours before his visit.



"His temperature is very low now, and he was shivering when he was brought in to meet with me, and he had injuries all over his face, which had been badly smashed up on the right hand side," Cai said.



He said Shu had been dragged off by police after barely five minutes.



"They wouldn't let us talk ... they just took him away again immediately," he said.



Cai said he is in the process of lodging an official complaint against the detention center.



Fellow defense lawyer Li said the involvement of the police



"Cai Ying got to the Jinan No. 2 Detention Center at noon and was told that he couldn't see Shu because he was being interrogated," Li said.



"But we don't understand why the police would suddenly get involved at this point, because this is a private prosecution, not a public one, so the police have never investigated it," he said.



Coercive measures



Shu was initially detained on suspicion of extortion and blackmail in November 2012, after he had spent several months gathering evidence of connections between local officials and organized crime in Jinan.



His lawyers said at the time that he had been detained in connection with his work on behalf of villagers who were trying to fight the acquisition of their land by local officials.



He had also made online allegations that an official in Shandong's Guan county had tried to bribe him to drop a lawsuit brought against the government by local farmers, and that he had been beaten and harassed by local mobsters, official media reported at the time.



Authorities later withheld Shu's lawyer's business license, a tactic frequently used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to target lawyers who represent "sensitive" and disadvantaged groups, often evictees who have had their land requisitioned by cash-strapped local governments.



"It is very strange that this case should have dragged on for such a long time," Li said. "The case was initially dismissed, and then both sides appealed, and the appeal court overturned the original court's decision to dismiss the case."



"But all of it has taken far longer than the legal time limit, and then they suddenly formally arrest Shu on the New Year holiday," he said.



"That's not normal. Usually, such cases ... don't involve coercive measures like that."



Cai agreed. "We can say for certain that the Jinan No. 2 Detention Center is holding him illegally," he said, adding that Shu has so far received no official notification of his formal arrest.



"I think that there is something going on behind the scenes, and that this is a case of long-planned revenge, because of the sensitive cases that Shu was involved in, representing the legal rights and interests of petitioners."



"That's why he was arrested," Cai said.



Reported by Yang Fan and Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Building peace in Myanmar with separatist ethnic armies left out of a cease-fire agreement signed in October will be the first priority of the countrys new government when it takes office early this year, National League for Democracy (NLD) leader Aung San Suu Kyi said in a speech Monday.



The new governments first priority will be building peace, the veteran democracy activist said in a speech in Myanmars commercial capital Yangon during celebrations marking Myanmars independence in 1947 from former colonial power Britain.



We must all try to build a real federal democracy union, Suu Kyi said.



A peace deal signed with Myanmars military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in October was boycotted by seven of 15 ethnic groups that have battled Myanmars central government for decades in a bid for greater autonomy.



Three rebel armiesthe Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA)have since vowed support for Suu Kyis NLD, which swept national polls in a landslide victory Nov. 8 amid renewed fighting in eastern parts of the country during the last few months.



'A stronger union'



I want to see a stronger union when we celebrate next years Independence Day, Suu Kyi said. We have many people who are willing to help us, but we ourselves are the ones who must struggle [to accomplish this].



Myanmars new NLD-led government will take office in February at the earliest, and though the party has won a majority in parliament and will be able to select the countrys new president, Aung San Suu Kyi herself is barred from the post by a provision in Myanmars military-drafted 2008 constitution.



Military officers meanwhile continue to hold 25 percent of the national legislatures seats through appointment, giving them veto power over all constitutional amendments.



Conference planned



Plans for a Jan. 12 peace conference led by the present government were meanwhile discussed on Monday, with talks set to continue Tuesday focused on issues to be debated during the conference and the preparation of lists of those to be invited.



The upcoming conference will be one more step toward building a foundation of peace, Sai Kyaw Nyunt, secretary of the organizing Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee told RFAs Myanmar Service on Monday.



We had planned to hold the conference from Jan. 12 to 16, but the NLD suggested that we hold it for only three days, he said.



Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi said that the conference would cost a lot of money if we held it for a longer period, and that we would also waste our time, Sai Kyaw Nyunt said.



The conference will be hosted by the current government. At this time, the NLD is only an invited political party.



About 750 participants will take part, including representatives from Myanmars government and military, political parties, and armed ethnic groups, he said.



Reported by Thiha Tun, Myo Zaw Ko, and Wai Mar Tun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Moh Moh. Written in English by Richard Finney.




An explosion has been heard in an area that houses several foreign consulate buildings in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, local officials say.

Attaullah Khugyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said on January 5 that there were no immediate reports of casualties from the blast, which follows an attack on the Indian Consulate in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on January 3.

A provincial police spokesman for the Nangarhar Province later said it was a controlled explosion carried out by police in Jalalabad, the provincial capital.

Hazrat Hussain Mashriqwal told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that "a small amount of explosives were placed in a rubbish can and police detonated it."

Based on reporting by Reuters, Tolonews.com, Khaama.com, and RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
WASHINGTON -- The United States says one of its soldiers has been killed and two others wounded when a joint U.S.-Afghan mission in Afghanistan's troubled Helmand Province came under attack.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said on January 5 that U.S. special operations troops were near the city of Marja when the incident happened.

Taliban gains in Helmand in recent weeks have alarmed the United States and its allies, which fear that the weak Afghan government is unable to fend off an increasing number of offensives.

Cook said two medical evacuation helicopters came under fire while trying to land. He said one left the area without landing, while the other was damaged when one of its rotors hit a wall.

An unknown number of Afghan troops also were wounded in the fight, which Cook said was still ongoing late on January 5 and continued to involve U.S. forces.

It is safe to say that Afghanistan is a dangerous place, Cook said.

"My understanding is that there may still be Americans on the ground in this immediate situation engaging with the enemy in support of Afghan forces," he said. "This is a fluid situation."

About 12,000 U.S. and other troops are deployed in Afghanistan as part of NATOs Resolute Support mission.

Helmand, a sprawling province that stretches from the Pakistani border into central Afghanistan, has long been a stronghold of the Taliban and has seen fierce fighting in recent weeks.

Several dozen British special operations troops last month joined U.S. troops in Helmand after the town of Sangin appeared in danger of being overrun by Taliban forces.

In September, Taliban fighters seized the northern city of Kunduz -- the largest city to date -- and held it for about three days before Afghan forces, backed by U.S. air strikes, regained control.

A December 15 Defense Department report, prepared for Congress, warned that Afghanistans security situation had deteriorated sharply in 2015.

Earlier, President Barack Obama announced a halt to the withdrawal of U.S. forces, with 9,800 troops to remain in place through most of 2016 then dropping to 5,500 by early 2017.
Like so many other political prisoners in Iran, Bahareh Hedayats crime was speaking her mind.

A student activist known for her work on the One Million Signatures Campaign aiming to change discriminatory laws against women, Hedayat was repeatedly detained and harassed beginning in 2008. Despite the intimidation, she continued her activism, publicly calling on other Iranians to do the same. She was among those arrested in the wake of the 2009 antigovernment protests following disputed presidential elections, and in 2010 was convicted on various charges, including insulting the leader, and gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security.

After serving more than five years in prison, she was set to be released this summer by order of an appeals court in Tehran, but was suddenly given an additional two-year sentence, which human rights lawyers argue contravenes Iranian law. Hedayat is the winner of Swedens 2012 Harald Edelstam Defence of Human Rights Award, and was among the 20 women political prisoners whose cases were highlighted in September 2015 as part of the U.S. State Departments #FreeThe20 campaign.

RFE/RLs Persian language service, Radio Farda, has doggedly followed her case on a weekly radio program focusing on human rights that is hosted and produced by Mahtab Vahidi Rad.

I have talked with the judiciary about my wifes new sentence and her court process, but I have not received any official legal response, Amin Ahmadian, Hedayats husband, told Vahidi Rad in a September 2015 interview after the additional sentence was handed down.

Vahidi Rad says this development, along with the recent closed-door trial and conviction of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, does not bode well for the future of the hundreds of other political prisoners estimated to be incarcerated in Iran.

The families and lawyers of the imprisoned write to Vahidi Rad, sometimes passing her messages directly from prisoners themselves, which then allows her to update listeners on conditions in the prisons.

They write to me that they are not given access to medical care, that they are not allowed to see their family or legal counsel, she said. Especially for women prisoners this can be very damaging to their mental and emotional health when they are not allowed to see their children.

Tehran's Evin Prison, where both Hedayat and Rezaian are being held, is notorious for rights abuses, but Vahidi Rad says that based on her reporting of first-hand accounts from relatives and prisoners, the situation is even worse in provincial prisons not under the same scrutiny as a facility in the capital.

In addition to political prisoners, the program, which Vahidi Rad has produced since 2011, covers censorship, imprisonment of journalists and bloggers, the conditions for ethnic and religious minorities, and executions in Iran--all topics not otherwise discussed in Iranian media.

If an Iranian woman wants to speak out for womens rights in Iran, its risky, and we have seen many cases like Hedayats in recent years, said Vahidi Rad. But the overwhelming number of messages I get on social media and on our website shows Iranians care about these women and other political prisoners.

--Emily Thompson
Coca-Cola Russia, the affiliate for the global beverage giant whose iconic advertising campaign once tried to make drinking soda synonymous with global harmony, has found a new way to do just the opposite after wading into the geopolitical standoff over Ukraines Crimean Peninsula.

On December 30, Coca-Cola Russia posted a holiday greetings message to the Russian social-media site VKontakte along with a map of the country dotted with Christmas trees.

The map, however, sparked an angry response from Russian VKontakte users, who complained it excluded several regions, including Crimea. The seizure and annexation of the Black Sea peninsula by the Kremlin in March 2014 has been rejected by most UN members and triggered Western sanctions against Moscow.

On January 5, the company issued an apology on its official VKontakte page, along with a new map that included Crimea, as well as two territories missing in the earlier map: Russias western Kaliningrad exclave and the Kurile Islands, the Pacific Island chain whose ownership is partially contested by Japan.

The new map generated a fresh wave of outrage from Ukrainians, who began circulating the hashtag #BanCocaCola and calling for a boycott of the company.

Personally, I'm not going to buy more of these products, and I call on all sober fellow citizens, and their friends and followers, to do the same, Mustafa Nayyem, pro-Western lawmaker in Ukraines parliament, wrote on his Facebook page.

A replacement can be found for the loss of something small. But to destroy an entire country, having suffered thousands of losses, and yet to operate in its marketplace -- that seems to me, at the very least, to be strange, Nayyem added.



Later on January 5, Coca-Cola Russia deleted the post entirely from its VKontakte page, though images of the disputed maps themselves could still be found in the pages photo gallery. Cached versions of the post could also still be found online.

A similar map showing Crimea as part of Russia was also displayed prominently on Coca-Cola Russias website as of January 5, though it was removed from the site later in the day.

Coca-Colas Ukraine affiliate, meanwhile, included on its VKontakte page several artistic versions of Ukraines map, all of which included Crimea as part of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington said in a January 5 statement that it had expressed its concerns to Coca-Cola and the U.S. State Department about the posting in social media by Coca-Colas Russian office of a map of Russia that included the illegally occupied Crimea.

The Embassy emphasized that Coca-Colas actions violate the official U.S. position condemning Russias illegal occupation of Crimea, which is and has always been an integral part of Ukraine, and urged the company to immediately correct the mistake, the embassy said on its website.

The Atlanta-based Coca-Cola told RFE/RL in a statement that an agency working with its Russian affiliate had made the changes to the map without our knowledge or approval.

"We, as a company, do not take political positions unrelated to our business, and we apologize for the controversial post, which we have removed, the company said in the e-mailed statement.

Though Coca-Colas global headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia, its franchises around the world are typically independent bottling and distribution operations.

Coca-Colas chief rival, Pepsi Co., meanwhile, also didnt escape the attention of Ukrainian activists, who circulated a map -- which appears to be from a Russian-language investment brochure -- that also showed Crimea as part of Russia.

-- With reporting by Carl Schreck
Highly destructive computer malware infected power authorities in Ukraine last week and caused a power failure that affected hundreds of thousands of homes, researchers say.

The outage on December 23 left about half of the homes in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine without electricity. Researchers from security firm iSIGHT Partners, who studied samples of the malicious code that infected at least three regional operators, confirmed the malware led to "destructive events" that in turn caused the blackout.

"It's a milestone," John Hultquist of iSIGHT told Arstechnica.com. "It's the major scenario we've all been concerned about for so long."

"This is the first time we have proof and can tie malware to a particular outage," Trend Micro researcher Kyle Wilhoit told Reuters. "It is pretty scary."

Antivirus provider ESET said multiple Ukrainian power authorities were infected by "BlackEnergy," a package discovered in 2007 that has been repeatedly updated to include new destructive functions.

Until now, BlackEnergy has mainly been used to spy on news organizations, power companies, and other industrial groups. A Moscow-backed group, Sandworm, is suspected of using it for targeted attacks.

Based on reporting by Reuters and Arstechnica.com
Russia's use of Iranian-made drones to attack Ukraine shows that Russia is both politically and militarily bankrupt, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on October 18 after saying that Russian air strikes in the past week had destroyed almost one-third of Ukraine's power stations.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Zelenskiy said for decades Russia spent billions of dollars on its military-industrial complex, "and in the end they bowed to Tehran to get rather simple drones and missiles."



Speaking in his nightly address, he said that strategically, this will not help Russia in any way.



"It only additionally proves to the world that Russia is on a losing path and is trying to draw someone else into its accomplices," he said. "We will definitely ensure an appropriate international reaction to this."



Iran denies supplying drones to Russia, and the Kremlin said it had no information about whether Iranian kamikaze drones were used.



But British intelligence early on October 18 identified the drones used by Russia as being Iranian-made, and the U.S. State Department assessed that Iranian drones were used on October 17 in an attack on Kyiv.



White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre accused Tehran of lying when it said Iranian drones were not being used by Russia in Ukraine.

Jean-Pierre on October 17 told reporters that the White House "strongly condemns Russia's missile strikes" and that the attacks continued "to demonstrate [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's brutality."

The U.S. State Department, meanwhile, said Washington would "not hesitate to use sanctions or take actions" against companies and countries working with Iran's drone program.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel also said a deepening alliance between Russia and Iran "is something the whole world -- especially those in the region and across the world, frankly -- should be seeing as a profound threat."

Moscow began the recent wave of air attacks last week, hitting residential areas in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Zelenskiy tweeted early on October 18 that the attacks had caused massive blackouts across Ukraine and that there was "no space left for negotiations" with Putin.



Kyiv's prosecutor office said two people were killed in the October 18 strikes in Kyiv after five others lost their lives in the drone attacks of the previous day in the capital.



NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance will deliver air-defense systems to Ukraine in the coming days. Speaking at a security conference in Berlin, Stoltenberg said the systems would help Ukraine defend itself against attacks, including by drones made in Iran.

"The most important thing we can do is deliver on what allies have promised, to step up and deliver even more air-defense systems," Stoltenberg said.

Earlier on October 18, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, said there had been three Russian strikes on an unspecified energy facility in northern Kyiv.

"The situation is critical now across the country. It's necessary for the whole country to prepare for electricity, water, and heating outages," Tymoshenko told Ukrainian television.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack was on "critical infrastructure."

The northern Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr was left without water and electricity supply after Russian air strikes, but its mayor told RFE/RL that the services had been largely restored.

"Around noon, we connected the main sewage plant, and the water supply was more or less operational. Currently, approximately 80 percent of the city has electricity, but the central part of the city remains without it," he said.

Russian troops also shelled energy facilities in Dnipro and blasts were reported in Kharkiv.



Explosions also shook the cities of Kriviy Rih and Mykolayiv, local officials said, a day after Russia launched waves of kamikaze drone strikes that killed at least seven people, four of them in Kyiv, and damaged infrastructure in the Ukrainian capital and several other cities across the country.

"Kriviy Rih. Explosions in the northern part of the city. We are in shelters," Oleksandr Vilkul the head of the central Ukrainian city's military administration said on social media, adding that so far there were no reports of casualties or damage.

In the southern port of Mykolayiv overnight shelling killed at least one person, Mayor Oleksandr Sienkovych said early on October 18.

The Russian-appointed head of the Kherson region announced on October 18 that the civilian population will be evacuated from part of the region as he warned of an expected escalation of hostilities.



Vladimir Saldo on October 18 announced an "organized, gradual displacement" of civilians from four towns on the right bank of the Dnieper River.



The new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, said the situation in Kherson "is difficult," telling state-owned Rossia-24 television news channel in an interview, "The enemy is deliberately striking infrastructure and residential buildings in Kherson."

With reporting by Reuters, AP, dpa, and AFP
Iran's President Hassan Rohani has said that Saudi Arabia cannot hide "its crime" in executing a prominent Shi'ite cleric by severing ties with Tehran.

"Saudi government has taken a strange action and cut off its diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran to cover its crimes," Rohani said in a statement posted on his website on January 5.

"Undoubtedly, such actions can't cover up that big crime," Rohani added, referring to the kingdom's execution of leading cleric and opposition figure Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Sudan broke all ties with Iran and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations on January 4 after the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran on January 5.

The Iranian government has distanced itself from the embassy attack and even blamed foreign elements for organizing it.

Tehran called the attack "suspicious" and "in favor of Saudi Arabia's policies."

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
Islamic State (IS) fighters have launched several offensives near the city of Haditha in northwest Iraq in the last 48 hours.

The U.S.-led coalition against the IS extremist group said on January 5 that the attacks had been broken by a combination of coalition air power and Iraqi security forces."

U.S. Colonel Steve Warren said more than 100 IS militants were killed.

Security sources were quoted as saying at least 25 fighters were also killed on the Iraqi government side.

Iraqi officials said IS fighters were able to seize the village of Sakrana in the course of their offensive, which comes after the group lost control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, a week ago.

Haditha is located in Anbar some 200 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. The dam north of the city is the country's second largest.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
Kyrgyz were variously enraged and bemused after a British expat working at a foreign-owned gold mine jokingly compared a beloved local equine delicacy to a "horses penis" (sic).

But the Facebook jest by Michael McFeat -- a welding superintendent at the Kumtor Gold Company in Kyrgyzstan -- could scarcely have come at a worse time for his Canadian bosses, whose relations with Bishkek are at an all-time low.

The mine's owners have recently been locked in a fierce battle with the Kyrgyz government over fresh mining permits and a redivision of profits from an enterprise that generates around 10 percent of Kyrgyzstan's GDP.

McFeat is already paying a price for the perceived slur. He was detained at Bishkek's Manas Airport early on January 3 for "document irregularities" and sent to the regional capital, Karakol, before being expelled two days later, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service confirmed, quoting the border service.

Initial reports said he faced racially motivated hate charges that could have resulted in up to a five-year jail sentence.

Issyk-Kul police chief Emilbek Saliev told RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service that dozens of Kyrgyz employees at the Kumtor gold mine filed a collective complaint about McFeat's comments on January 2.

They also staged a brief strike at the mine the next day to protest the failure by Kumtor management to punish McFeat for his comment, which he deleted from his Facebook page before issuing an apology.

Many in Kyrgyzstan were outraged that McFeat would dare to compare chuchuk -- a sausage prized among the former nomadic Kyrgyz, who consider the horse a noble animal that is only eaten on special occasions -- to horse genitalia.

Prominent Kyrgyz historian and publicist Kyias Moldokasymov wrote on Facebook: "The guy who mocked chuchuk must definitely be punished! And don't you think that those who are destroying Kyrgyz glaciers and creating irreparable damage to our environment while taking natural wealth out of the country are also laughing at us and asking, 'What can you do about it?' must also be punished?"

Samat Dolotbakov, a director at the Emark construction company and the CEO and founder of the magazine #ONE, wrote on Facebook: "Dear friends, I saw in [McFeat's] post written in English that he laughed [and made fun] of our nation.... I can't leave that without reacting. It is not his first day in Kyrgyzstan. He works here, makes his money. I want him and other foreign guests to learn their lesson. Because I will never insult another nation while visiting it, I hope you wouldn't either..."

But some Kyrgyz suggested the real outrage was the authorities' response to the Facebook quip, which merely appeared crafted -- however crudely -- to get a laugh out of McFeat's friends and family in Scotland.

"Horsesausagestan -- a country without leadership, where the emotions of three-year-old hooligans rule the day," tweeted Edil Baisalov, a former parliament member and government official.

Bektour Iskender, founder of the kloop.kg website, asked: "OK, to call chuchuk a horse's penis is, of course, not the smartest thing. But please tell me why for doing this someone should be taken to the police station? What law is violated when somebody refers to horse sausage like that? I would like to now hear from the most competent lawyers."

Aliya Suranova, a well-known Kyrgyz blogger, said the strong reaction to McFeat's comment is a symptom of something deeper in society.

"What happened is that this story is a very vivid reflection of us [and our society] at the current time. It is the result of our anger toward 'strangers, foreign agents, State Department spies,' etc. We have so much hatred and anger toward all of them that we are ready to go out and start beating anyone who is not Kyrgyz by blood," she wrote on Facebook.

Whether an overreaction or not, McFeat's comment has certainly resulted in some bad PR for Centerra, the Canadian-based company that owns the Kumtor mine -- which is Central Asia's largest Western-managed gold-deposit project.

Centerra has been especially image-conscious since 1998, when a Kumtor truck carrying cyanide overturned while driving along the curvy mountain road that leads up to the mine. The spill poisoned the Barskoon River that supplies water to many of the villages along the southern shore of the lake at Issyk-Kul. Hundreds of people became sick and several died (here and here); pregnant women were advised to have abortions; and the government evacuated many of the downstream villages.

Centerra Gold and Kumtor mine officials have rejected reports that the cyanide spill caused fatalities.

But after that tragedy, Kumtor officials made infrastructure investments in the region and in small communities near the mine, partly, no doubt, in an effort to generate positive PR.

In 2014, government officials heeded calls by Kyrgyz nationalists and told Kumtor to revise its agreement with the state to give the government a bigger share of the mine and, therefore, its profits.

Under a veiled government threat to nationalize the gold mine, negotiations between the two sides began nearly two years ago. At issue was a government proposal to exchange its 32.7-percent stake in Centerra for 50 percent of a joint venture that would give the state control over the gold mine. Those talks broke down on December 22, with the government citing its "national interest" in walking away from the table, casting doubt on the sides' ability to agree on mining permits that were running out fast.

Kyrgyz officials said afterward they will propose a new deal that would give Kyrgyzstan "an increase in financial flows."

The government has also accused Centerra -- which is also Kyrgyzstan's biggest taxpayer -- of lowballing its estimate of the gold reserves at the Kumtor site.

Centerra officials have argued that Kyrgyzstan is bound by the current agreement and that any dispute over the current contract should be decided by an international court.

Prospects of reaching an agreement have been complicated by a Canadian court's freezing of Bishkek's portion of Centerra stocks after international arbitrators ruled in favor of foreign investors.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged his Pakistani counterpart to take "firm and immediate action" against those behind an attack on an Indian air base near the country's border with Pakistan.

Modi "strongly emphasized the need for Pakistan to take firm and immediate action against the organizations and individuals responsible for and linked to the Pathankot terrorist attack," the Indian government said in a statement posted on January 5, after Modi spoke by telephone to Nawaz Sharif.

Seven Indian soldiers were killed in the attack that began early on January 2 and dragged on for nearly four days as the troops struggled to contain the heavily armed attackers in the sprawling compound.

Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said on January 5 that six attackers were killed and that a search operation was under way to make sure no militants remain on the facility.

An air force spokeswoman said that "there has been no firing since the night on January 4 at the base."

The United Jehad Council, an alliance of 13 Kashmir-based rebel groups, claimed its "highway squad" stormed the base.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents in its portion of Kashmir. Pakistan denies the claim.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russian authorities violated the rights of an activist who was jailed for his participation in a massive antigovernment protest in Moscow in 2012.

The January 5 ruling by the Strasbourg court was a pointed rebuke to Moscow just weeks after President Vladimir Putin signed into law measures that allow Russia to reject decisions by international courts.

Yevgeny Frumkin was detained by police on May 6, 2012, on the eve of Putins inauguration for his third term, along with hundreds of others who had participated in a protest at Moscows central Bolotnaya Square.

Thousands joined the demonstration, which ended with protesters clashing with police. It was one of a series of protests in 2011-12 that were the largest since Putin first came to the presidency in 2000.

In its ruling, the Strasbourg court, known as the ECHR, said Frumkin spent a night in custody without being charged and the court refused to explain to him the reasons behind his arrest. The court said the authorities also violated Frumkin's right to peaceful assembly.

He was sentenced to 15 days in detention for failing to obey police orders.

The court also ordered Russia to pay a total of 32,000 euros ($34,400) in compensation and to cover court expenses.

In my view, [this verdict] acknowledges once again the most important fact that there is no justice in Russia, Frumkin said in a televised interview. It is because [defendants] are not being given a chance to defend themselves in court and there is no objective and independent court as such.

Several dozen people have been prosecuted in connection with the 2012 demonstration.

In 2013, the ECHR ordered Moscow to pay nearly 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) to shareholders of Yukos, an oil company that was once Russias largest until it was broken up and many of its assets absorbed by state-run companies, such as Rosneft.

On December 14, Putin signed a law that gave Russias Constitutional Court the power to decide whether to enforce verdicts by interstate courts like the ECHR.

The new law was widely seen as a response to the ECHRs Yukos ruling, though Russian legal scholars questioned its legality, saying it contradicted Russia's own constitution.

Russia at one point had more cases being heard before the ECHR than any other member nation.
Russia appears to be practicing a bit of "divide-and-conquer" politics in Central Asia, and state-owned Gazprom is spearheading the campaign.

On January 4, Russia's main news agencies quoted a "source" within Gazprom Export, the Gazprom wing charged with handling gas imports from other countries, saying Russia would not be importing any gas from Turkmenistan this year. Shortly after, those same Russian news agencies quoted what they said was the same source saying a new deal had been reached for gas supplies from Uzbekistan.

At the time, the "source" provided no further details. He or she did not need to; the reasons seem clear enough.

Turkmenistan has been a thorn in the Kremlin's side for many years now. Turkmenistan downgraded its participation in the CIS to "associate" status a decade ago and Ashgabat does not participate in any of the Russian-led intra-CIS groupings, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) or Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

More recently, Turkmenistan, which has the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, has been pushing to open new export routes, including one to Europe that would put Turkmen gas in direct competition with Russian gas.

And all this happened as Turkmenistan continued to sell gas to Russia. In fact, not so long ago Russia was Turkmenistan's primary gas customer, buying some 45 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas in 2008.

That amount has dwindled, and Gazprom announced at the start of 2015 it would purchase only 4 bcm of Turkmen gas, not the 10 bcm the Russian company bought in 2014. Ashgabat complained bitterly about the 2015 reduction and later accused Russia of failing to pay for gas it received.

Small wonder that Gazprom, already with more of its own gas than it can sell, has now canceled all purchases of Turkmen gas.

But at the Qishloq, we think there is more to this development than just gas purchases.

As mentioned, the Gazprom Export "source" said the company would continue to buy gas from Turkmenistan's neighbor Uzbekistan. In 2015, Gazprom also reduced the amount of gas it bought from Uzbekistan, from 4 bcm in 2014 to 1 bcm.

Gazprom chief Aleksei Miller confirmed a new agreement for gas purchases from Uzbekistan on January 5 and sources in his company said Gazprom would buy at least 3.1 bcm from Uzbekistan this year.

Uzbekistan's ties with Russia are not much better than Turkmenistan's ties with the former colonial master, and like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan is not a member of the CSTO or EEU.

Not surprisingly, the Turkmen and Uzbek leaders have seen in recent years they share much common ground and the relationship between the two countries is probably the best it's been since 1991 independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And not only has that left Russia with little influence in either country, it is an example of how some former Soviet republics in Central Asia can do without Moscow's help, the sort of example the Kremlin would rather not see.

By rejecting any more purchases of Turkmen gas while at the same increasing the amount of Uzbek gas, Gazprom is creating a rift between the two Central Asian countries.

Turkmenistan only has two other customers for its gas at the present -- China and Iran -- and the Turkmen economy is beginning to show strains from lower prices of gas on world markets. It is a symbolic slap in Ashgabat's face that Turkmenistan will not be selling even modest amounts of gas to Russia, and instead that revenue will be going to Turkmenistan's neighbor.

There is more subtext here. Although Uzbek-Russian ties have never been great since the fall of the Soviet Union, Tashkent has allowed Gazprom and Russian company LUKoil to explore and develop gas and oil fields in Uzbekistan. This makes it difficult for Gazprom to cut ties totally with Uzbekistan. In fact, the gas Gazprom said it will buy from Uzbekistan is probably coming from gas fields Gazprom is developing.

Ashgabat has never allowed Russian companies to develop the huge onshore fields in Turkmenistan. The only company that has such a contract is the China National Petroleum Corporation. That makes it easy for Gazprom to cut ties with Turkmenistan.

There is one more point worth considering when reviewing Russia's refusal to buy Turkmen gas, and it has nothing to do with hydrocarbons.

On January 3, the Russian news agency Interfax reported, Aleksandr Sternik, identified as the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Third CIS Department, announced Russia is ready to assist Turkmenistan with security problems along the Turkmen-Afghan border. Sternik said, "Russia, Turkmenistan's neighbors, its partners in the CIS have been monitoring with friendly attention the efforts of Turkmen friends to strengthen what actually is our common southern borders." (Qishloq Ovozi has reported on these security problems, for instance, here, here, and here.)

Ashgabat denies there is any security problem along the Turkmen border with Afghanistan.

Sternik also mentioned that along the Turkmen-Afghan border "more resources are needed for solid protection than, for instance, on the Uzbek-Afghan border." Again, Russia draws a distinction between the situations in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Gazprom's January 4 announcements were a low-cost move that could pay big political dividends for the Kremlin in its effort to restore some of the lost Russian influence in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Dutch prosecutors are investigating a claim by a citizen-journalist group that at least 20 Russian soldiers were involved in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The Britain-based Bellingcat group said it had identified up to 100 Russian soldiers who may have knowledge of the movements of the Buk missile launcher that destroyed the Boeing 777 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 on board.

In an interview with the Dutch TV channel NOS on January 3, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins said his organization believed at least 20 soldiers in an air-defense unit based in Kursk "probably" either fired the missile or know who fired it.

The sources for the group's findings include the soldiers' social-media accounts, photos posted online, and army data about personnel deployment that was available online.

"We have the names and photos of the soldiers in the June convoy who traveled with the MH17 Buk, their commanders, their commanders commanders, etc," Higgins told the London Telegraph.

He added that the group's redacted 123-page report on the matter will be released shortly.

Bellingcat specializes in trawling through data on social media and other online sources. It has been investigating the crash since it occurred.

It reported in 2014 that a Buk mobile launcher was spotted on July 17 in an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists and said that the missile launcher came from a military convoy from Russia's 53rd Antiaircraft Brigade -- a unit based in Kursk but sent on maneuvers near the Ukrainian border.

Dutch prosecutors in charge of the official investigations of the MH17 crash said on January 4 that they were investigating the claims that Russians were involved.

"We received the report just after Christmas," Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch prosecutor's office, told AFP.

"We will seriously study it and determine whether it can be used for the criminal inquiry," he said.

A criminal investigation by the prosecutors office is expected to name suspects in the case later this year.

An air-accident investigation by the Dutch Safety Board released in October concluded that the Boeing 777 was destroyed by a Buk antiaircraft missile fired from a position inside separatist territory.

Russia has denied sending troops or weapons into eastern Ukraine at any time since the war broke out in 2014, and has blamed Kyiv for the shootdown.

The Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian-backed group that controls the area, insists it never had access to BUK missiles and has dismissed evidence showing a BUK launcher operating in the area when the jet was shot down.

With reporting by AFP and the London Telegraph
Saudi Arabia has dismissed concerns that its severance of ties with Iran will harm efforts to negotiate peace in Syria even as its actions have opened up a new sectarian rift among opposing sides in the war.

A top Syrian opposition group urged all Arab countries on January 4 to follow the Saudi example and end diplomatic ties with Iran, while four Saudi allies -- Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Sudan -- all moved to cut off or downgrade their ties with Tehran.

Kuwait said on January 5 that it had recalled its ambassador to Iran while Sudan's state media reported Khartoum has given Iranian diplomats two weeks to leave the country.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the United States, and Britain all voiced concern on January 4 that the Saudi-Iran split has laid bare and could worsen a sectarian divide that has simmered beneath the Syrian conflict and the broader Middle East for decades -- setting back efforts at peace.

Iran's regime, led by Shi'ite Islamic clerics, backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the Sunni monarchs who hold power in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states back many of the rebel groups fighting the government.

Together, the two regional powers and their allies, along with the United States, Russia, and other world powers, have been seeking to arrange a peace process for Syria that has foundered in the past because of such stark differences.

"From our side, it should have no effect because we will continue to work very hard to support the peace efforts in Syria and Yemen," Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations Abdallah al-Mouallimi said on January 4.

Saudi Arabia "will attend the next Syria talks and we are not going to boycott them because of Iran," he said, even as he took a swipe at Iran's role in the peace negotiations.

"The Iranians even before the break of diplomatic relations have not been very supportive, not very positive in these peace efforts," Mouallimi said.

"They have been taking provocative and negative positions...and I don't think the break in relations is going to dissuade them from such behavior."

He spoke as the UN dispatched Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura to Tehran and Riyadh to try to ensure the conflict does not derail negotiations scheduled for January 25, while the UN Security Council debated a statement addressing the Saudi-Iranian tensions.

UN Secretary-General Ban spoke by phone with the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers to urge them to "avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation," Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"A breakdown of relations between Riyadh and Tehran could have very serious consequences for the region," Dujarric said.

The UN Security Council late on January 4 issued a statement urging the two sides to "maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions" while condemning the sacking and burning of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran by demonstrators on January 2.

But Ban took Iran's side on the kingdom's execution of 47 men over the weekend, including a prominent Shi'ite cleric, which prompted an outpouring of rage among Shi'a throughout the Muslim world.

Ban said he was "deeply dismayed" by the executions, prompting a curt response from the Saudi's UN mission, which insisted that those executed had been "criminals" who had "fair and just trials without any consideration to their intellectual, racial, or sectarian affiliation."

Shi'ite Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a fiery critic of the Saudi authorities, was sentenced to death in 2014 on charges of causing sectarian strife and disobeying the ruler. His trial was condemned as unfair by human rights groups and his supporters say he had only called for peaceful protests.

Like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Gulf Emirates are dealing with restive Shi'ite minorities, and both accused Iran of interfering with their internal affairs as the reason for curbing diplomatic relations on January 4. Sudan said it was acting in "solidarity" with Riyadh.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, a top Syrian opposition group, also declared its support for Riyadh and criticized what it said was Iran's support for militias in Syria and Iraq.

Also rallying behind Riyadh was the Arab League, which has scheduled talks on January 10 on the split with Tehran.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest urged the two sides to calm down and said the United States had raised concerns with Riyadh about executing the Shi'ite cleric for fear it would provoke a backlash in the Shi'ite world like the one that came to pass.

Now, the United States is concerned that the flare-up between Iran and Saudi Arabia will derail the Syrian peace effort spearheaded by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, he said.

"It was very difficult to get everybody around the table. It certainly is going to be even more difficult to get everybody back around the table if you have the Saudis and the Iranians trading public barbs and public expressions of antagonism," Earnest said.

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, AP, and AFP
Usually, when Tajik President Emomali Rahmon visits Saudi Arabia the trip does not generate much news outside of Tajikistan. But Rahmon's January 2-4 visit, though it was undoubtedly planned months in advance, came as both Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia found themselves in fresh disputes with Iran.

Reports about the official portion of Rahmon's visit to Saudi Arabia mention a meeting with Saudi King Salman, the signing of new bilateral agreements, and discussions about combating terrorism, extremism, narcotics trafficking, and transnational criminal organizations.

The word "Iran is absent from these reports, though it was surely on the minds of Tajik and Saudi officials, and Rahmon's visit to Saudi Arabia was likely something officials in Iran were watching closely as well.

Tajik-Iranian ties have been good for many years, in part because Iran sees Tajikistan as a natural gateway for Iranian policies in Central Asia. But at the end of December, Iran invited the leader of the recently banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IPRT), Muhiddin Kabiri, to attend an international conference on Islamic unity in Tehran. Kabiri had fled Tajikistan months before, as it became clear the Tajik government was intent on closing the party. Since his departure, Tajik authorities have accused the IRPT leader of attempting to overthrow the government.

At the conference in Tehran, Kabiri was seated next to the head of Tajikistan's state-backed Islamic Council. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Kabiri on the sidelines of the conference.

Kabiri's presence at the event drew sharp criticism from Tajikistan. The Tajik Foreign Ministry released a statement on December 29 saying it was "greatly concerned that the leader of an "extremist and terrorist organization was invited to the conference. Tajikistan's chief mufti, Sayidmukarram Abdulkodirzoda, spoke about Iran during Friday prayers on January 1, saying Iran had always claimed to be Tajikistan's friend but "at the conference we saw that Iran clearly showed disrespect to the Tajik nation and government.

Saudi Arabia's recent trouble with Iran has been well publicized. The execution of one of Saudi Arabia's leading Shi'ite clerics, Sheikh al-Nimr, on January 2 sparked protests in Iran, including the torching of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. The next day, while Rahmon in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia cut its ties to Iran.

For Saudi Arabia, the Rahmon visit was an opportunity to dampen Iran's relations with Tajikistan, a country with which Tehran maintained excellent ties even as it came under international sanctions and was considered an international pariah. Prying such a good ally away from Iran would suit the Saudi government, which has warned about what it sees as growing Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

For Tajikistan, Rahmon's visit -- which concluded with a pilgrimage to Mecca -- was a timely reminder to Tehran that Tajikistan has other friends in the Islamic world; friends in the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia pledged to provide some $108 million through the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) for the construction of major roads in the poorly connected eastern Tajikistan. It was pocket change for Saudi Arabia, but seeing as the IDB allocated only some $84 million to Tajikistan from 2002 until 2015, Rahmon came away from the trip with something more than usual.

Probably a few people remembered during Rahmon's visit that the majority of Tajikistan's people are Sunni Muslims, as in Saudi Arabia, not Shi'a, as in Iran. That fact has always tempered Tajikistan's relations with the Iranian regime.



Saudi-Iranian ties have been bad for some time now and are likely to remain so. But Tajikistan cannot afford to engage in political brinksmanship with Iran for long. Dushanbe needs Tehran.

When calling Iran an "accomplice to traitors in last Friday's sermon, Tajik Mufti Abdulkodirzoda noted the linguistic and cultural affinities that helped Tehran forge ties with Dushanbe since the early days of Tajikistan's independence. Iran used those similarities to also gain an economic foothold in Tajikistan.

Iran is helping complete the Anzob or Istiqlol Tunnel (far behind schedule and dubbed by some the "tunnel of death) to better connect northern and southern Tajikistan by road.

More importantly, Iran invested some $180 million, and endured countless objections from Uzbekistan, to help build Tajikistan's Sangtuda-2 hydropower plant, which has already become an indispensable supply of electricity for Tajikistan.

However, Iran retains ownership of Sangtuda-2 until about 2029 under a "BOOT (Buy-own-operate-transfer) deal and that hinges on Tajikistan repaying the Iranian investment. Currently, both Sangtuda-2 and the Russian-built Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant are tens of millions of dollars in debt.

Iran has invested in many other projects in Tajikistan and, in return, Dushanbe has backed Tehran in international disputes, such as Iran's right to have nuclear power.

The Tajik government's strong reaction to Kabiri's attendance at the conference in Tehran is somewhat surprising.

Iran was one of the main players in arranging talks between the Tajik government and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) during Tajikistan's 1992-97 civil war. The IRPT was the backbone of the UTO and IRPT leaders sheltered in Iran during much of the war. The peace accord Iran helped broker included providing the Tajik opposition, including the IRPT, with places in the Tajik government.



That deal unofficially ended when, after nearly 18 years, the IRPT lost its last places in the government after the March 2015 parliamentary elections that some feel were rigged by the Tajik government.

Iranian officials reacted to Tajikistan's complaints by pointing out Kabiri and his party had been invited to Islamic Unity conferences in years past, before the IRPT was banned and declared an extremist group by Tajik authorities.

Tajikistan's position in world politics is not good at the moment. Western interest in the region is on the wane, while Russia and China appear interested in Central Asia but their domestic economic situations preclude significant investment or attention in the near future.

Iran is a different position. With sanctions on exports of Iranian oil and gas expected to be lifted soon, Tehran will receive a lot of attention and offers, making this an inopportune time for Tajikistan to aggravate a relationship that for nearly 25 years has benefitted both countries.

Based on material from RFE/RL's Tajik Service, known locally as Ozodi
For years, experts have warned with mounting concern that critical infrastructure virtually anywhere in the world is vulnerable to cyberattack.

Malicious code sent remotely could shut down or otherwise wreak havoc at airports, hospitals, skyscrapers -- anywhere that relies on computers to steer traffic, deliver life-saving technology, or carry out any number of vital functions.

Now, cybersecurity specialists say that doomsday scenario has arrived.

They are pinning a blackout in a swath of war-torn Ukraine last month that darkened hundreds of thousands of homes on code that they say directly shut down at least three regional utilities.

ESET, a Bratislava-based security software firm, called the interruption the first power outage proven to have been caused by a cyberattack. ESET, which studied samples of the malicious code that infected at least three power authorities in neighboring Ukraine, said the malware caused the blackout.

U.S.-based computer security firms Trend Micro and iSight Partners have confirmed ESET's findings.

'Dangerous Scenario'

Robert Lipovsky, senior malware researcher at ESET, said the incident in Ukraine was "unprecedented" and called it a "dangerous scenario."

"The alarming aspect of this attack was that the infection vector that the malware was getting in was phishing" -- a reference to the practice of gathering sensitive information like passwords or other confidential data, often to cause harm -- "mail with a malicious attachment, which is quite a trivial way to get in," Lipovsk says. "It's alarming that it was so easy."

Ukraine power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported the power outage on December 23 that left about half of the homes in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, in western Ukraine, without electricity. Similar malware was also found in the networks of at least two other utilities in Ukraine. All three blackouts occurred around the same time.

Prykarpattyaoblenergo said part of the area it serves had been left without energy due to "interference" in the work of the system.

Lipovsky said multiple Ukrainian power authorities were infected by BlackEnergy, a malware toolkit discovered in 2007 that has been repeatedly updated to include new destructive functions, including the ability to render infected computers unbootable (so they cannot be started up).

He said the attackers used BlackEnergy to access utility networks and then planted a related component of malware, KillDisk, on targeted systems. KillDisk can delete or overwrite data files.

KillDisk destroys critical parts of a computer hard drive and also appears to have functions that sabotage industrial control systems.

Whodunnit?

Until now, experts in cybersecurity and law enforcement say BlackEnergy has mainly been used to spy on news organizations, power companies, and other industrial groups. A Moscow-based group, Sandworm, is suspected of using it for targeted attacks.

Lipovsky says the latest BlackEnergy also includes a covertly planted tool -- referred to among experts as a "backdoored secure shell utility" -- that gives attackers permanent access to infected computers.

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has blamed Russia for the outages, and the Energy Ministry in Kyiv has set up a commission to investigate the incidents.

Russia invaded Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 before annexing it and has continued to supply troops, weapons, and other support for armed pro-Moscow separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, Kyiv and NATO allege. In the face of seemingly overwhelming evidence, Russian officials continue to deny they are involved.

Cybersecurity experts consider Russia one of the world's most advanced cyberpowers, along with the United States, China, Israel, France, and Britain.

Russia complains that it has itself become a target, saying Russian security services detected a sharp rise in cyberattacks after the Ukraine crisis worsened and ties with the West deteriorated.

But Lipovsky said it was difficult to point fingers at anybody because clues in the coding of the malware can easily be forged.

Fears Of More Attacks

"It's a dangerous precedent," said Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist weekly and senior vice president at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank in Warsaw and Washington.

Lucas, whose latest book, Cyberphobia, heaps questions on popular notions of digital security, added that because attribution is difficult in cybersecurity, the Ukraine cyberattack could even be carried out by "someone using the tension between Russia and Ukraine to test some malware."

The Ukraine incident has raised fears that it could provide a precedent, prompting other countries to use similar tactics.

"If there is a determined attacker trained to get in and they have the sufficient resources and time and money to put the effort in, then they can" carry out similar cyberattacks, said Lipovsky.

He said there were only so many companies or governments capable of leading the fight against cyberattacks.

"People need to put a lot of effort into mitigating these risks so they aren't hacked into in the future," he said.

The cyberattacks came before Ukrainian police blamed saboteurs for blowing up an electricity pylon on December 31, thus shutting down the delivery route for electricity to at least one-quarter of Crimea's residents.

The sabotaging of four other pylons in late November cut off power and prompted a state of emergency, prompting mutual finger-pointing by both Russian and Ukrainian authorities.
MOSCOW -- Google's hugely popular translation tool has taken to rendering certain Ukrainian words into Russian with a pronounced pro-Kyiv political spin.

On January 5, for instance, "Russian Federation" in Ukrainian ( ) was being translated as "Mordor," the fictional realm occupied and controlled by evil necromancer Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic, The Lord Of The Rings.

It was unclear if the mistranslations were the result of a hack, or whether they were due to a malfunction in the algorithms used by Google to power its translation tool.

Meanwhile, the surname of Sergei Lavrov, the long-serving Russian foreign minister who has been a prominent and outspoken figure since the crisis erupted between Ukraine and Russia nearly two years ago, was translated as "sad little horse."

Ukrainian media reported that "Russians" () was being expressed as "occupiers," although a test on January 5 failed to produce such a result.

Kyiv and NATO accuse Moscow of providing regular troops, heavy weapons, and other forms of support to pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine since the fighting began, and a United Nations vote confirmed Crimea's continued status as part of Ukraine despite Russia's invasion and annexation of that peninsula in March 2014.

It is not the first time politically charged mistranslations have crept into the Google Translate service between Ukrainian and Russian. The misconstructions tend to cast Russia as a malevolent marauder and Ukraine as its victim in a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people. But that's not always the case.

According to RBK Ukraine, in November Google Translate rendered "All-Ukrainian" () as "All-Russian."

The news outlet Ukraine 112 reports that in mid-2015, the "Revolution of Dignity" -- one of the many nicknames given to the Euromaidan uprising that overthrew Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych -- was translated into Russian as "political crisis in Ukraine" in what appeared to be a dig at Russian state propaganda.

The wonky translations appear to have lasted online for at least the better part of a day. Ukrainian media first reported on the political inflections on January 4.
Carl Loser, a former candidate for a Richmond-area seat in the Virginia state Senate, has been charged with assaulting a police officer during a traffic stop in Henrico County, according to police.

Henrico police said Loser rolled up his car window on an officers hand after debating a speeding ticket on New Years Day. Loser rolled up the window before signing a court summons, which the officer was attempting to explain, police said.

The officer was not injured, according to Henrico police Lt. C.J. Eley.

The stop occurred at 9:47 p.m. at the intersection of Havenwood Drive and Lauderdale Drive in western Henrico, according to police.

Loser said Monday that he is innocent and the arresting officer lied. He encouraged a reporter to check the police body cameras, but declined to comment further until he had spoken to an attorney.

The police incident report, released by the Henrico police with the main narrative and personal information redacted, indicates that the incident was captured on video. Eley said if body camera footage exists, it would not be released because the case is pending.

Eley said Henrico redacts some information from police reports to protect citizen privacy.

Under Virginia law, assaulting an officer is a felony charge that carries a mandatory minimum of six months in jail.

A 25-year-old Powhatan County resident, Loser ran as a Libertarian for the 10th District Senate last year. He finished fourth of four candidates in a contest won by Republican Glen H. Sturtevant Jr., a member of the Richmond School Board.

At a public forum in August, Loser raised eyebrows by pulling out what he called a bag of weed as he argued that drug policy has devastated families.

No charges for Loser appeared in online Henrico court records, but police said he is also expected to be charged with speeding.
More than 190 nations came together in December in Paris and agreed to fight climate change and expand clean energy. For the first time in history, the international community has united against the climate threat. Countries, states, cities and companies have taken up shared responsibility to protect communities from unchecked global warming.

This joint effort isnt just about preserving the environment. Its also about strengthening our national security and our economic prosperity.

We saw this together in Paris during the COP 21 climate talks, and we know this as veterans and as business people. One of us was a U.S. Navy SEAL and worked in elite security details in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The other served as an F-16 pilot and commander for Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas.

We have seen firsthand how fossil fuel dependence puts American troops in harms way and how extreme weather intensifies conflicts in volatile regions. The Pentagons 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review identified climate change as a threat multiplier because it exacerbates disputes over water, land, food and economic resources.

Climate change, in other words, makes a bad situation worse. We see it in Nigeria, where prolonged drought contributed to the instability that bred terrorist group Boko Haram. And we see it in Syria, where the worst drought in the countrys history hit just before the civil war, sending more than 1.5 million people into cities, weakening communities and fueling unrest.

People who know national security know we must address climate change. As a bipartisan group of former Department of Defense and State Department secretaries recently said, climate action is a national security imperative. Climate change isnt the only risk our country faces. Clearly we must confront ISIS, homegrown terrorists and other challenges. But to ignore the implications of climate change today would be disastrous. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who served under President Ronald Reagan, says that when it comes to climate change, We have to be a leader.

The good news is that leading on climate action generates enormous opportunities for our country.

Some of the best weapons against climate change are wind and solar power, energy efficiency and other clean energy technologies that slash carbon pollution. These solutions have also unleashed economic growth and job creation in all 50 states in our nation. Companies invested more than $70 billion in clean energy sectors in the third quarter of 2015 alone. In several regions, wind power is the cheapest form of electricity, bar none. And more than 250,000 clean energy and clean transportation jobs were announced in the U.S. in the past three years, according to the national nonpartisan business group we belong to, Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2).

The Paris climate agreement will spur even more economic growth. It sends a powerful market signal that international demand for clean energy will continue to grow at a steadily increasing pace, that the global market for U.S. products will expand, and that climate action is good for the bottom line.

At the Paris climate talks, we were struck by the groundswell of support within the business community. General Motors, Nike, GE, Walmart, Unilever and hundreds of other companies committed to reducing carbon pollution. And more than 500 financial institutions representing $3.4 trillion in assets agreed to divest from fossil fuels. Captains of industry like Bill Gates attended the talks, and ahead of the conference he said solving climate change is about American innovation, American jobs, American leadership.

And yet some lawmakers are complaining about the Paris agreement and trying to block the Clean Power Plan  our countrys main tool for cutting carbon pollution from power plants. They may want to take the country backward, but the push for clean energy and climate action is too strong. Our nation has so much to gain by moving forward.

When we left the armed services, both of us decided to transition into the private sector  and the clean energy industry specifically  because we wanted to help reduce climate-fueled conflict abroad and build strong communities here at home. By helping expand our clean energy economy, the Paris agreement will help countless more Americans do the same.
Jeffrey Marks, the president and general manager of WDBJ who guided the station through the shock, mourning and recovery that followed the on-air killings of two WDBJ employees last year, will leave Roanokes top-rated television station for a role with its new corporate owner.

Marks said he will become director of talent development for Gray Television, the Atlanta-based media company that is buying WDBJ and several other television stations from Schurz Communications of Mishawaka, Indiana. The sale of the stations could be complete by Feb. 1, according to a Schurz executive.

Marks said he decided to stay at WDBJ through the sale. In his new job, he said that he will help recruit and develop new talent for Grays stations, which will number 50 after the sale. He plans to stay in Roanoke for the time being and will work from home and on the road.

I expect Ill be working out of my briefcase, he said. Its a big job, and one I think I will enjoy. Gray wants to step up their recruitment of talent and development of talent. This is something I can really sink my teeth into.

Marks, 63, has been the boss at WDBJ since 2007 and is just the fourth general manager in the 60-year history of Roanokes CBS affiliate. His leadership came during a tumultuous time for news organizations, including broadcast outlets, as more digital offerings pried eyeballs away from traditional newscasts. WDBJ was also hit with a record penalty from the Federal Communications Commission after a 2012 newscast included a televised image from a website that briefly showed male nudity. WDBJ has appealed the FCC fine.

Still, nothing could compare to the tragedy that unfolded on Aug. 26 when reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were shot and killed by a former WDBJ employee during a live segment aired on the News 7 Mornin  broadcast.

Following the deaths of Parker and Ward, Marks became a national voice for WDBJs anguish. He conducted interviews with dozens of national media outlets that camped in Channel 7s parking lot, spoke at memorial services and continued to make sure the station produced daily newscasts while reporters and co-workers processed their grief, sometimes during emotional broadcasts.

When August 26 happened, I was so thankful to have him there, said Marci Burdick, senior vice president of broadcasting for Schurz. Burdick praised Marks ability to manage all of the external forces, all while never taking his eye off the way the staff was feeling inside. He never thought about himself, it was always about the staff. Thats the mark of a true leader.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, who was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame last year, Marks came to Roanoke from WAGT in Augusta, Georgia, in July 2007. His broadcasting career began in 1971, when he was a student at the University of Kentucky, and he has been a radio reporter, TV news producer, editorial producer and general manager. He was an executive news producer at WJLA in Washington, D.C. and worked at stations in New York, New Jersey and Maine before joining Schurz in 2005.

Marks also presided over a transitional period for WDBJ, the longtime leader in the Roanoke-Lynchburg TV market. The station saw the departures of longtime anchorman Keith Humphry, sports director Mike Stevens, news director Amy Morris and other veteran reporters. Marks 2011 hiring of then-23-year-old Chris Hurst as co-anchor alongside Jean Jadhon at the signature 6 p.m. newscast was a surprise move at the time.

Now, four and a half years later, WDBJ is still the market leader in broadcast news. The stations newscasts are the most-watched from morning until night.

Kevin Latek, a senior vice president for Gray Television, said the WDBJ job will be advertised after acquisition of the Schurz stations is completed. He said that Marks experience will benefit his company, which will expand from 30 markets in the United States to 50 after the deal.

News is incredibly important to us, and we want to marry his skills with our needs, Latek said. Were a company thats expanding, and we want to make sure we keep up with training talent as we should. Jeff has decades of experience in television and television news. Were grateful hes not ready to retire yet.

Marks has also been active in Roanokes charitable and cultural circles. He has chaired the boards of United Way of Roanoke Valley and Opera Roanoke and has been on the board of the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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LYNCHBURG  Donald Trump, the GOPs 2016 presidential front-runner, will address Liberty University students at convocation Jan. 18, the first day of classes for the spring semester.

Trump last visited Lynchburg in September of 2012, when he also spoke at a Liberty convocation.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said he and his wife, Becki, have stayed in close contact with Trump and his top aide, Michael Cohen, since that visit. The Falwells son Wesley was married in October at the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, where Trumps son, Eric, is president of the vineyard, Becki Falwell said.

In an interview Monday night, Falwell said a group affiliated with the Republican National Committee contacted GOP candidates to see if they would participate in a forum hosted by an outside group in February on campus after plans for a GOP presidential debate at Liberty in January fell through.

A number of GOP candidates said they would only commit to the debate if Trump was a part of it, he said.

Trumps staff replied they would rather he appear solo at Liberty, Falwell said.

Trump and Falwell were also in contact in December, following Falwells appearance on The Sean Hannity Show, where he defended his call at convocation for students to get concealed carry permits. Trump called Falwell to say he was proud of him, Becki Falwell said.

[Trump] liked that Jerry said he compared Trump to Jerrys dad, she said.

During that roughly eight-minute segment on Fox News, Falwell offered his thoughts on who he said are his three favorite presidential contenders: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.

I think Trump reminds me so much of my father, Falwell said. He says exactly what he thinks no matter what anybody cares.

Libertys convocation  the largest weekly gathering of Christian university students  has drawn many of the current GOP political candidates, most recently retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who spoke at convocation Nov.11. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addressed students Sept. 14, and GOP candidate Ted Cruz made his first campaign appearance there in March of 2015.

Falwell said he thought students will be excited a front-runner in the Republican field had taken time out of his schedule to come speak with us.

I think the students will be supporters and some will not be, like with [Bernie] Sanders, he said.

The convocation will be open to the public, with a reserved section for area residents who want to attend, Falwell said.

Trump spoke at convocation on Sept. 24, 2012, sharing the stage with former GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.
Researchers at the University of Virginia will head a $12.7 million project studying so-called artificial pancreas technology, in this case a smartphone application that wirelessly reads a sensor measuring a persons glucose level and that tells an insulin pump to deliver the correct dose of insulin.

Such technology, under development by several companies, is referred to as an artificial pancreas because it does the work of the pancreas, the organ in the body that normally releases insulin to control the bodys blood sugar levels. In people with diabetes, the pancreas doesnt work like its supposed to.

The smartphone application in the study was initially developed at the University of Virginia and later licensed to Charlottesville-based TypeZero Technologies, which has further improved the technology. The grant dollars will be awarded over four years.

Essentially the person ... will carry that smartphone in addition to their current equipment, said Boris Kovatchev, director of the UVa Center for Diabetes Technology and the principal investigator on the grant, which was won through a competitive process.

The smartphone talks wirelessly to a little sensor that scans glucose, blood sugar level, every five minutes and controls an insulin pump, also wirelessly.

Our development is the most mature and the most tested in the world, Kovatchev said. We have close to 200,000 hours of human testing of this system in several countries and in several U.S. states.

Type 1 diabetes used to be called juvenile-onset diabetes because it is most often diagnosed in children and adolescents, though it can occur at any age. It results when the bodys immune system for some unknown reason attacks the cells in the pancreas that make insulin.

(Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, typically develops gradually and in older people. Obesity is a factor and, with lifestyle changes such as losing weight, changing eating habits and adding more physical activity, people can often control glucose levels without medication.)

About 5 percent of the people in the U.S. with diabetes have Type 1 diabetes, while 90 to 95 percent have Type 2.

The grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund two trials in which people will use the technology. The first will enroll 240 people at nine study sites  UVa, Harvard University, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic, the University of Colorado, Stanford University, the University of Montpellier in France, the University of Padova in Italy and the Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

People in the first study will be followed for six months as they go about their regular lives.

A second trial will follow 180 of the original participants and use a different algorithm or mathematical formula to determine how much insulin to deliver and when.

The biggest challenge in the design of the artificial pancreas is the inherent uncertainty in the human body, said Francis Doyle of Harvard, co-principal investigator on the study, in a Harvard news release on the grant.

Day to day, hour to hour, the various stresses that impact the human body change the way it responds to insulin-controlling glucose. Physical stresses, anxiety, hormonal swings will all change that balance. To be able to control for those factors, we need to see longer intervals of data. This is the first trial where well be looking at multi-month intervals of time.

The technology has been decades in the making.

Ten years ago, nobody really believed that this was even possible, Kovatchev said. He said the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, funded much of the early research.

Its been a huge project, over $100 million that weve spent to try to move this field forward, and the team at UVa led by Dr. Kovatchev has been kind of a linchpin of this project, said Aaron Kowalski, JDRF chief mission officer.

The goal is helping people with diabetes do better. While we have insulin, people with Type 1 diabetes still have significant challenges in managing their glucose levels. We believe artificial pancreas systems will do two very important things: They will help them be healthier  and they will make life with diabetes easier, Kowalski said.

Other companies developing artificial pancreas technology include Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson.

Molly McElwee-Malloy was in one of the earlier trials of the UVa technology in 2006 and later changed careers  pursuing a nursing degree  so she could help in the devices development. She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 20 in 1998.

It was that different from my regular treatment and that much easier that I decided that anything I was doing at that time was unimportant, said McElwee-Malloy, head of patient engagement and director of marketing for TypeZero Technologies.

Even now with a glucose monitor and insulin pump, she checks her blood sugar at least 12 times a day, she said.

Its all-consuming. I tell people all the time once this gets on the market and I can wear this device, I will have time to have a hobby. It will be liberating.
SARAH Champion will demand the Government establish a watch list of those carrying out war crimes against Palestinian children.

The Rotherham MP is to lead a Parliamentary debate on the illegal military detention and treatment of youngsters by Israel.

She will also raise concerns about the treatment of Palestinian minors in the Israeli criminal justice system.

Ms Champion will tell Wednesdays debate: The issue of transferring detainees en masse from occupied territory is a standalone issue because it is a war crime.

After nearly half a century, it requires decisive action in accordance with our international legal obligations.

The Fourth Geneva Convention makes it clear that the UK has a positive legal obligation to search for persons accused of committing grave breaches and to ensure that if such persons enter the UK, they are arrested and prosecuted with all speed.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo unveiled on Jan. 5, 2016 the second signature proposal of his 2016 agenda: a comprehensive plan to transform and expand vital infrastructure downstate and make critical investments in the region, including a major expansion and improvement project that would increase service on the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) between Floral Park and Hicksville. Cuomo outlined these initiatives at an event in Nassau County, where Long Island Association President Kevin Law, MTA Chairman Thomas F. Prendergast and LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski joined him.

Long Islands future prosperity depends on a modern transportation network that eases congestion on our roads, improves service on the LIRR, helps this regions economy and preserves the character of these great communities, said Cuomo. This is a robust and comprehensive agenda to do just that and help build a brighter tomorrow for Nassau and Suffolk residents.

The signature components of Cuomos 2016 Long Island agenda are detailed below:

LIRR Improvement Program: Floral Park-Hicksville Expansion

Currently, the LIRR is limited by track capacity. At peak times, the LIRR is forced to run trains in one direction between Floral Park and Hicksville, making it impossible for reverse commuters and intra-island travelers. In essence, millions of people are limited by a system of transportation designed and virtually unchanged from 50 years ago.

In order to modernize the system, improve commutes for millions of customers, and reduce congestion on Long Islands roads, Cuomo is announcing a renewed effort to expand the LIRRs capacity between Floral Park and Hicksville. The project will allow the LIRR to increase service, reduce congestion and train delays caused whenever there is an incident along this busy stretch of tracks and will enable the LIRR to run reverse-peak trains to allow people to take the LIRR to jobs on Long Island during traditional business hours. By allowing the LIRR to increase service between Floral Park and Hicksville, it will provide a more attractive alternative to driving and thereby reduce traffic on Long Islands major east-west highways, like the L.I.E., Northern State and Southern State, and more trains will make it easier for Long Islanders to reach LaGuardia and Kennedy airports by train.

Unlike previous plans, this new effort dramatically minimizes the impact on communities along the right of way. Cuomos proposal reduces the previous length of the corridor from 11.5 miles to todays proposal of 9.8 miles. Even more importantly, the Governors proposal would confine virtually all construction activity within the existing right of way. The number of property acquisitions required would be reduced from approximately 200 in prior proposals to just 50 in the Governors proposal. Of those acquisitions, only 20 would involve residences, and the average resident acquisition would be five feet wide.

Property Owner Protections

Cuomos proposal contains an innovative landowner protection program. Residential land owners would be offered the choice of compensation for the strip of land  on average five feet wide  that the LIRR needs to acquire, or the option of a full buyout. For commercial landowners they would be offered compensation, plus assistance, if needed, from Empire State Development to remain in their community.

Environmental Reviews

Across the whole corridor, the LIRR will conduct environmental reviews including studies to analyze noise mitigation strategies and new rail technology.

Grade Crossing Safety Reviews

Additionally, the LIRR will conduct a comprehensive safety analysis to address and ensure all aspects of safety at the seven remaining street crossings.

Robust Community Engagement

Finally, the LIRR is launching an extensive community engagement program to ensure local input is heard and addressed. This will include direct outreach to property owners adjacent to the tracks and broad outreach across all affected communities  elected officials, community organizations and advocacy groups. Meetings will be organized in all communities along the corridor to provide information and to solicit input. LIRR will also launch a new website to provide a venue for residents to provide feedback directly to the project team and to receive continuously updated information about the project.

Rider Benefits

Two out of every five LIRR riders use the main line between Floral Park and Hicksville. It is the route used by the busy Ronkonkoma and Port Jefferson Branches. Some Montauk Branch trains use the corridor as well, and all Oyster Bay Branch trains use it for a portion of their trips. With just two tracks, this busy corridor becomes congested during rush hour. In the event that a train becomes disabled, the LIRR has very few options to route trains around a disabled train, and the result can be cascading delays rippling across the line and impacting thousands of people.

The LIRR Expansion project will also complement the East Side Access megaproject, which is doubling the LIRRs capacity into Manhattan by building a new terminal underneath Grand Central Terminal.

The next generation of young people wants to live in urban areas, whether it is within the five boroughs of New York City or in thriving suburban downtowns and transit-oriented enclaves with easy access to train transportation, Prendergast said. Our efforts to expand the Main Line will support transit-oriented development around Long Island and make it easier for Long Island to attract businesses and employees. This isnt experimental, its a well understood direct correlation that weve seen happen already in the region served by Metro-North. When there is train capacity to allow New York City residents to reverse commute to suburban jobs, people take that opportunity and the job growth follows.

When I first came to the LIRR, I was impressed with the magnitude of the operation, and the lengths that our people go to think creatively to overcome challenging situations, Nowakowksi said. But I was very surprised that an operation of this magnitude  the central spine of the busiest commuter railroad in the United States  was at its heart very fragile. A third track will enable us to provide a better experience for our customers with better on-time performance and fewer hassles from delayed trains. And it will attract new customers to our environmentally friendly mode of transportation.
Indian shares held marginally lower on Tuesday, giving up early gains. The rupee gained ground in early trade after plunging by 47 paise to end at a two-week low of 66.61 per dollar the previous day.

Asian shares held mostly steady as investors waited to see how China will respond to the latest stock selloff that sent shivers across global .

Closer home, the benchmark BSE Sensex was trading down 25 points or 0.10 percent at 25,599 while the broader Nifty index was down 6 points or 0.08 percent at 7,785.

State-run banks led losses, with SBI, PNB and Bank of Baroda losing 1-3 percent. Among the prominent gainers, NTPC, Asian Paints, GAIL and Tata Steel were up 1-2 percent.

TCS eased 0.2 percent on reports the company is back in talks to acquire Perot Systems, an IT management of Dell Inc.

Wipro slid half a percent after naming Abidali Neemuchwala as its new CEO.

SITI Cable Network soared 6.6 percent. The RBI has allowed foreign investors to invest up to 49 percent of the paid-up capital of the company under portfolio investment scheme.

Grasim Industries added half a percent after announcing merger of Aditya Birla Chemicals (India) with itself.

The benchmark indexes Sensex and Nifty fell over 2 percent each on Monday, tracking weak global markets after a seven percent fall in Chinese equities prompted exchanges in China to halt trading.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
German conglomerate Bayer AG (BAYZF.PK,BAYRY.PK,BYR.L) Tuesday said it closed on its previously announced agreement to sell its Diabetes Care to Panasonic Healthcare Holdings Co., Ltd. The total consideration for the transaction was around 1 billion euros or 132 billion Japanese yen.

The sale includes Contour portfolio of blood glucose monitoring meters and strips, as well as other products such as Breeze2, Elite and Microlet lancing devices.

Panasonic Healthcare is backed by funds sponsored by investment firm KKR (KKR) and Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic Corp. (PCRFF, PCRFY). The new stand-alone Diabetes Care business is named Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings and is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.

Bayer Diabetes Care or BDC, is a provider of blood glucose monitoring systems to people with diabetes and healthcare professionals around the world. Bayer's Diabetes Care business accounted for 909 million euros in sales in 2014.

It was in June last year that Panasonic Healthcare agreed to acquire the diabetes devices business from Bayer for 1.02 billion euros or $1.16 billion to create a truly global diabetes care solutions business.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
KKR, a leading global investment firm, announced that it has entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire Mills Fleet Farm, a Midwestern, value-based retailer of lifestyle merchandise serving active outdoor families as well as suburban and farm consumers.

Financial terms were not disclosed and closing of the transaction is subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Founded in 1955 by Stewart Mills Sr. along with his sons, Henry Mills II and Stewart Mills Jr., Mills Fleet Farm has 35 retail stores throughout four Midwestern States: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and North Dakota.

Nate Taylor, Member on KKR's Private Equity team, said, "We are proud to partner with Mills Fleet Farm, a highly differentiated brand in the Midwest, and invest behind its continued growth,"

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
With Congress failing to take action in response to recent mass shootings that have taken place across the country, President Barack Obama has decided to go ahead with a series of executive actions designed to reduce gun violence.

In an at times emotional speech in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, Obama said Americans are not inherently more prone to violence but claimed the U.S. is the only advanced country that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency.

"It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close," Obama said. "And as I've said before, somehow we've become numb to it and we start thinking that this is normal."

He added, "And instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our most polarized, partisan debates -- despite the fact that there's a general consensus in America about what needs to be done. "

Obama said he believes in the Second Amendment but argued Americans understand there are some constraints on their freedom in order to protect innocent people.

"A majority of gun owners agree that we can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale," Obama said.

Obama was joined at the event by Vice President Joe Biden, stakeholders, and individuals whose lives have been impacted by the gun violence epidemic.

The executive actions announced by Obama include requiring more gun sellers, including those who do on the Internet and at gun shows, to be licensed and conduct background checks.

The White House said the FBI is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient and will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process the background checks.

"Just because you shop for guns with your mouse and not your feet doesn't mean you should be able to avoid background checks," White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett said in a conference call on Monday.

Obama also asked Congress for funding for 200 new agents and investigators at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help enforce gun laws.

Additionally, the administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental care, the White House said.

The White House said the ATF is also finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit.

While Obama has claimed the actions are supported by the vast majority of Americans, including the vast majority of gun owners, Republicans have already signaled their opposition.

Ahead of the announcement, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., accused the president of potentially overturning the will of Congress.

Ryan argued that lawmakers in the Senate previously debated and rejected the president's proposals to restrict gun rights

"No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally," Ryan said. "The American people deserve a president who will respect their constitutional rights - all of them. This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, warned the devil will be in the details of the regulations Obama's is proposing and argued the debate over changes to America's gun laws should take place in Congress.

Several of the Republican candidates running to replace Obama have said they would immediately repeal the new actions if elected president.

Meanwhile, Obama has claimed the measures are within the legal authority of the executive branch and consistent with the Second Amendment.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
A Japanese sushi boss bought a giant bluefin tuna for more than $117,000 at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. Tuesday's auction was its last New Year auction ahead of a much-needed modernization move.

Tuesday's auction winner was Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the firm behind the popular Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain. Bidding stopped when he quoted a whopping 14 million yen for the enormous 200-kilogramme (440-pound) fish -- an endangered species -- that was caught off Japan's northern coast. The price was three times higher than last year but still far below a record 155.4 million yen paid in 2013.

The New Year auction is a traditional feature at Tsukiji, where bidders pay way over the odds for the prestige of buying the first fish of the year. But Japan, the world's largest consumer of bluefin tuna, faces growing calls for a trade ban on the species, which environmentalists warn is on its way to extinction. The population of Pacific bluefin tuna is set to keep declining even if governments ensure existing management measures are fully implemented, Amanda Nickson, director of Global Tuna Conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said in a release.

Bluefin is usually the most expensive fish available at Tsukiji, the biggest fish and wholesale seafood market in the world. A single piece of otoro, or the fish's fatty underbelly, can cost up to several thousand yen at high-end Tokyo restaurants. The growing popularity of Japanese sushi worldwide has stoked demand elsewhere. Given the already dire state of the population -- decimated to just four percent of unfished levels -- it is of particular concern that the auction price is rising again, Nickson of Pew Charitable Trusts added.

Tuesday's auction winner, Kiyoshi Kimura, said he was glad to make a winning bid in the last New Year auction at Tsukiji. Tsukiji -- a sprawling complex of tiny stalls and wholesalers popular with tourists -- will end its eight-decade history this year when it is relocated to a modern facility in Toyosu, a few kilometers away.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Hero MotoCorp

Leading two wheeler makers Hero MotoCorp registered a dip in sales with 499,665 units dispatched in December 2015 as against 526,097 units sold in December 2014. This means that the largest two wheeler maker in the country registered a dip in sales of 5%.

Honda Motorcycles and Scooter India

Honda Motorcycles and Scooter India sold 3,06,779 units in December 2015, as against 3,48,737 units sold in December 2014; thereby registering a decline in sales of 13.6%. Scooter sales were at 1,98,332 units (as against 2,08,490 units sold in Dec 2014) while motorcycle sales stood at 92,380 units (as against 1,21,489 units sold in Dec 2014) and exports during the past month were at 16,067 units (as against 18,758 units exported in Dec 2014). Domestic market share was at 26 percent while overall market share stood at 22 percent.

TVS Motor Company

TVS Motors recorded a 4 percent increase in sales, registering 2.02 lakh units during December 2015 as against sales of 1.94 lakh units in the same month of the previous year. Three wheeler sales were registered to the tune of 8,020 units in December 2015 as compared to 10,007 units in December 2014 while exports dipped marginally from 32,969 units exported in December 2014 to 32,771 units exported in the past month. TVS Motors recorded a 5.5 percent increase in two wheeler exports from 24,556 units in December 2014 to 25,906 units in December 2015.

Bajaj Auto

Bajaj Auto Limited also reported a marginal decline in sales during December 2015. Total sales during the past month stood at 2,89,003 units as compared to 2,89,244 units sold in December 2014. Motorcycle sales increased by 1 percent to 2,47,782 units as compared to 2,46,233 units sold in December 2014. However, exports of Bajaj Auto Limited declined sharply by 12 percent in December 2015 to 1,45,477 units as against 1,66,134 units exported in December 2014.

Mahindra Two Wheelers

Mahindra Two Wheelers (MTWL), part of the $16.5 billion Mahindra Group announced sales at 12,112 units in December 2015 as compared to 13,445 units sold in December 2014. Domestic sales dipped from 12,835 units in December 2014 to 10,488 units in December 2015 while exports increased from 610 units in December 2014 to 1,624 units in December 2015.

Royal Enfield

Royal Enfield factories in Tiruvottiyur and Oragadam inChennai suffered setbacks due to the havoc caused by severe rains and flooding in the last week of November and early December. Despite this, the company reported a 41 percent growth in December 2015 where domestic sales were concerned. Royal Enfield domestic sales stood at 40,453 units in December 2015 as compared to 28,634 units in December 2014. Exports of the company however fell by 9 percent from 455 units in December 2014 to 416 units in the past month.

Yamaha and Suzuki are yet to reveal sales figures for December 2015.
After the hearing today, Supreme Court of India has upheld the diesel vehicle ban in Delhi and NCR. This means, for the next three months, people will not be able to buy or register diesel vehicles which have 2000 cc or above engine.

The worst affected car manufacturer by this ruling is Mahindra in the mass market while Mercedes Benz in the luxury segment. Almost the entire line-up of vehicles of both these manufacturers has been banned in Delhi for the next three months.

Apart from this, Supreme Court also upheld the other rulings which charges pollution cess from heavy commercial vehicles which are entering into Delhi. Supreme Court has also asked all government officials in Delhi to replace their diesel cars which are older than 5 years.

The reason for these new rulings is the rise in pollution in Delhi. Research has revealed that one of the major reason behind rise in pollution is the BSIV fuel. Govt of India is aiming at replacing the BSIV fuel with BSVI, which will emt up to 80% less pollutants as compared to the BSIV fuel.

Govt of India plans to directly introduce Bharat Stage VI norms for all vehicles by 2020. Earlier it was planned that the shift from BS IV to BS V would be completed by 2019-20 while BS VI norms would be introduced in 2021-22. Reasons to fast forward these norms is in view of rising pollution specially in cities such as Delhi and pressure on the Government of India to speed up and bring in better and more environmentally compliant fuels.

An inter-ministerial meeting is being conducted to look into this matter which will assess views from various departments, representatives from petroleum and heavy industries prior to arriving at a decision and fixing timeline for adoption of BSVI norms.

Also Read  List of diesel cars banned in Delhi, NCR  Total 50 cars banned

BS norms in India are based on the same Euro emission grading system which was introduced across Europe. The focus now shifts to India where the Supreme Court has already cracked down on larger diesel powered cars.

However, while the Indian auto sector welcomes in more stringent environmentally friendly fuel norms, the timeline seems rather unreasonable. President of SIAM, Vinod Dasari has said that BS V norms itself would considerably reduce pollution levels by 80% where heavy commercial vehicles are concerned and by 90% in the case of passenger cars where PM 2.5 is concerned. NOx will also be reduced by 60% in the case of Heavy Commercial Vehicles and by 64% in the case of passenger cars. This being the case, Oil Manufacturing Companies will have to invest at least INR 60,000 crores for upgradation of fuels to BS VI norms.
Volkswagen Group had earlier announced an investment of Rs 8,000 crore in the India 2.0 project. But this new investment will be utilized in a new setup, which will be headed by Skoda India. Yes, internationally, Skoda is a sub-ordinate brand of VW. But in India, it is now the opposite.

This has been done so as to bring a boost in sales in India, and also to be more effective at the time make savings during these troubled times. Bringing operations under a single umbrella would equate to savings on purchases, and efficacy of manufacturing.

It also brings focus on R&D that benefits all under the groups aegis. Sharing and synergies will result in reduction of vehicle, and engine platforms. Volkswagen had been awaiting a NCLT nod to merge its business entities in India. This includes Volkswagen India, Volkswagen Group Sales and Skoda Auto India.

Reconstruction of Volkswagen Group companies is in tandem with the India 2.0 project announced in 2018. Thereon, the groups operational control has been taken on by Skoda. The development is designed to rehaul brands limited sales performance in India. It takes into consideration ongoing losses, and poor sales. Reconstruction and consolidation are key to the project to reach full brand potential.

As on September 5, 2019, Skoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited has been announced, and mergers will reach completion by September 21, 2019. This is an important step under India 2.0, and bringing together tech knowhow and managerial skills of all three erstwhile entities will equate to cost benefits, and bring to the fore, the brands full potential.

Changes warranted under the new arrangement will dwell on integrations and mergers without without any break or changes in terms and conditions of these established associations.

Skoda Auto has for long been canvassing plans to increase sales in India. Back in 2017, Tata Motors had signed an MoU with Skoda-led Volkswagen Group. The association intended to explore joint development of a small car platform. The association was called off 4 months after taking shop as it wasnt a feasible one.

Skoda Auto looks forward to a market share of about 3 percent in India by 2023. In the months to comes, the brand will introduce a midsize SUV, and a notchback by 2021 to boost sales volume here. Brand footprint too will be increased to improve brand reach and accessibility.
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Saudi war jets launch airstrikes on Capital





SANA'A, Jan. 05 (Saba) - The Saudi-led coalition launched on Tuesday a series of violent raids on several residential areas in the capital Sana'a.



The Saudi warplanes struck al-Noor Center for the Blind in al-Safia district in the Capital, wounding at least three people, security official said.



The second Saudi bombing targeted al-Hasaba area, where the hostile warplanes fired two missiles; the first hit the building of the Capital Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was completely destroyed, the official said.



The second missile fell down near al-Ameen Hospital neighborhood area, but did not explode, the official said. A lot of houses, residential buildings and shops were damaged.



Moreover, the Saudi aggression targeted a wedding hall in Bait Me'ayad area in Al-Sabeen district. The hall was empty but the nearby houses were seriously damaged, the official said.



Finally, the Saudi war jets targeted al-Nahdain with high explosive bombs which caused damage to a number of residential buildings in the adjacent neighborhoods.



HA/AF

Saba

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[05/January/2016]
A first-of-its-kind journey along India and Pakistan border

What binds the two most talked about nations - India and Pakistan together? What makes the
Tiny house being built in Salina to help homeless people in Missouri

For the fifth year and second in Salina, a local group is partnering with Tiny House Ministries to help homeless people in Missouri.
Chiz seeks incentives for renewable energy developers to lure investors, curb carbon emission

By Office of Senator Chiz Escudero

December 1, 2015

PASAY CITY  Sen. Francis Chiz Escudero said the government should come up with incentives to encourage renewable energy developers to invest in areas that remain without power and at the same time, help the country fulfill its pledge to address climate change.

Escudero made the proposal as the Philippines commits to a global effort to reduce the worlds carbon emissions at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris.

The Philippines chairs the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of 20 nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

If we are serious about reducing carbon emissions and making good on our international commitments, then we should push for the development of renewable energy sources, Escudero said.

The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the Philippines will need an additional 11,400 megawatts of generating capacity to meet the demand for electricity from 2016 to 2030  an opportunity for power producers to consider renewable energy development, the senator said.

Escudero, who heads the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, said renewable energy sources are not only sustainable but cheaper than fossil fuel because the sources, such as wind and sunshine, are virtually free.

Unfortunately, as of 2014, only 37 percent of generated power was supplied by renewable sources while 63 percent came from non-renewable energy, mainly coal, according to DOE data. Of the renewable sources, less than one percent was from wind and solar energy.

Its pitiful. We have the resources that we need right here that can solve our problem of insufficient, unreliable and expensive power supply. But were not developing them, so we have to ask ourselves: why isnt there enough interest in this business? Escudero said.

Escudero, who is running as Sen. Grace Poes vice president, said the government should study the possibility of giving tax incentives to companies that would go into renewable energy development, especially in areas with power problems like Mindanao.

He also proposed conducting a nationwide survey to identify which provinces could be tapped for various renewable energy projects.

Having access to electricity is a basic right of all Filipinos, and our goal is to provide this access to low-income families without costing them half their take-home pay, Escudero said. We cannot move forward with genuine economic development unless the problem of insufficient power supply is addressed.

He said the government should exhaust all means to bring affordable electricity to some 15 million Filipinos who still have no electricity in their homes.

It is time to harness the resources that we have to produce the energy that we need. Otherwise, we will forever be at the mercy of the big power firms who control the supply of power, and hence, the amount that we pay for electricity, the senator said.


Restructured Reenlistment Training (RRT) students of 8ID, PA together with the city health workers headed by Dr. Gerarda Tizon, during the Blood Letting activity at Pier 2, Catbalogan City on December 1 which was organized by the Catbalogan City Health Office in support to Worlds AIDS Day.

8ID join blood letting in Catbalogan

By DPAO, 8ID PA

December 2, 2015

CAMP LUKBAN, Catbalogan City  The 8th Infantry (Stormtroopers) Division, represented by the Restructured Reenlistment Training (RRT) students of the Division Training School (DTS), participated and provided support and assistance to the Blood Letting Activity organized by the Catbalogan City Health Office held at Pier 2, Catbalogan City on December 1, 2015.

The said activity is in support to the World AIDS Day celebration of Catbalogan City dubbed as "Zero HIV Transmission Through Safe Blood Donation: Be a Blood Donor" was also participated by local government agencies of Catbalogan City, Philippine National Police (PNP) Catbalogan City, ROTC Students of Samar College and barangay residents of Catbalogan City. It was facilitated by the City Health Office as organizers headed by Dr. Gerarda C. Tizon, the City Health Officer.

Major General Jet B. Velarmino, Commander 8ID, encouraged everyone to participate in activities like this in order to strengthen the spirit of Bayanihan which is the trademark of every Filipino.
Improved living conditions for inmates affected by Leyte prison fire

By ICRC

December 2, 2015

MANILA  Access to clean water, sanitation and overall health and living conditions have improved for 1,800 inmates affected by the fire that struck Leyte Regional Prison two months ago.

On October 8, the prisons Maximum Security Compound was completely destroyed by a fire that also claimed the lives of 10 inmates and injured several others.

Since it would take some time before a permanent structure could be rebuilt, we supported the prison authorities in taking temporary measures so the inmates may have slightly better conditions, said Woody Assaf, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Tacloban.

On October 25, the ICRC installed two rub halls or relocatable tent-like structures as emergency shelters. The affected prisoners were initially moved to the Minimum Security Compound or slept outdoors after the blaze.

We continue to improve the rub halls by working on its concrete flooring. Elderly prisoners and those with ailments were prioritized to occupy the rub halls, which also helped decongest the Minimum Security Compound, where about 750 affected prisoners remain. The authorities could partly restore the segregation between compounds, which helps in prison management, said Assaf.

Two 10,000-liter water tanks, distribution lines, and water points were installed by the ICRC to increase the availability of potable water in the prison, benefiting all inmates. Twenty-four new toilets are also being built for their use.

Relief assistance for the prisoners, in the form of dressing kits, medicines and medical items, 2,000 hygiene kits, and 409 sleeping mats and blankets, were provided by the ICRC about a month ago, on top of other emergency items it distributed with the Philippine Red Cross a day after the fire. Support was provided to ensure that access to basic health services was maintained.

Within its confidential dialogue with the Bureau of Corrections, the ICRC shared its findings, coordinated its response plan, and will further support the authorities in January to develop a plan of action to restore optimum conditions of detention.

As part of its long-term support to the detaining authorities, the ICRC will soon complete the construction of a new infirmary in Leyte Regional Prison to enhance access to, and improve the quality of, medical care for the inmates.
Partisanship, openness, charity

By Fr. Roy Cimagala , roycimagala@gmail.com

November 30, 2015

IN our political discussions and exchanges, its just fine to be partisan as long as we are open and respectful of all other views, including those that are different and opposed to ours. We should avoid any form of extremism by demonizing others who do not agree with us.

Partisanship is inevitable in our politics. And thats simply because we have different backgrounds and orientations, different preferences and priorities. Given our human condition, let alone, our weakness, mistakes and failures, we will always have differences among ourselves.

We should not be surprised by these, but rather learn to live with them as befits our human dignity. We should not allow that we be dragged by the dynamics of anger, animosity and hatred. Charity should always rule, even in our political choices as it should in all other aspects of our life.

Yes, we can be quite strong and fixed in our views, but this does not give us an excuse to let go of charity. In fact, these differences should be a good ground for charity to grow. Thus, the sharper the differences, the more intense should be our charity.

We have to avoid painting those who disagree with us as if they are the very personification of evil, completely incapable of doing anything good or saying anything true and worthwhile. This would be a simplistic and naive way of looking at things, and as such, is fraught with potential dangers.

If we have to disagree, then lets disagree amicably, respecting each other and each others position. No need for harsh words to be thrown, much less, uncharitable thoughts and bad intentions. Charity knows how to unite us even in our most hopeless and irreparable differences.

Sad to say, many of us today are behaving the opposite of what is proper to us. It starts with our political leaders and candidates down to the electorate and even to the general population, including children. We have to stop this.

We cannot paint a favorite candidate to be so perfect and saintly that we can observe no defect, mistake or fault in him. Neither should we picture a disliked candidate to be so bad that we can find no saving grace in him.

Lets always remember that all the saints and the appointed patriarchs and prophets of old have their defects and mistakes too, even after their conversion. They were always struggling, because they know that their sanctity is always a work in progress. It is never completed in this life.

Also, even those who are generally considered as bad people are still capable of doing something good. I remember one gospel episode where this possibility is illustrated. Its in the gospel of St. John:

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.

He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. (11,49-52)

It is quite clear that even if by living charity, we may appear to be suffering a defeat according to human standards, God in his providence would know how to derive good from it.

We should not be afraid to suffer the consequences of human pride and worldly arrogance just because we try to be consistent with the requirements of charity. For those who love God and others, as St. Paul in his letter to the Romans would say, everything will always work out for the good.

Now that we are going through this delicate political process of electing our next leaders, we should try our best to avoid the pitfalls of emotional, knee-jerk reactions to the issues at hand.

Let us learn to be level-headed and to have a good grip of our emotions and passions. More than that, let us see to it that we follow the requirements of charity as strictly as possible. It is precisely in moments like this when charity is most needed.
If I keep at it, I will find the absolute easiest way to do everything. It is not that I am lazy, but that I do not like to fuss. I want to start a task an...

4 months ago
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

It was deja vu for several citizens that had attended sessions for the last General Plan update in 1998 when they met November 19 at the Community Center for the first of three community workshops centered on Santa Paulas future.

About 30 people attended the workshop where workstations manned by consultants centered on topics that included economic development and the citys Downtown, land use, traffic circulation, and environmental protection.

On display were the results of the first wave of surveys distributed to residents in their water bills or completed online on the special website created for the General Plan update process, which is expected to take about two years.

Some attendees needed some basic information on the purpose of the plan as well as education on the 1998 General Plan update while others came armed with lists of suggestions for the citys future.

So far 266 surveys had not only been completed by residents but also, filled out in detail, said John Douglas, the citys General Plan consultant. Thats quite a few

In addition, one-on-one meetings are being held with residents for detailed input.

Hopefully, said Santa Paula Planning Director Janna Minsk to the attendees, youll make your way around each station, to learn about and offer input into each component of the General Plan that will help define Santa Paula 20 to 25 years into the future.

The plans for East Area 1 and future land use and development  specifically Adams and Fagan canyons  were topics that many residents were interested in.

With land-use agency LAFCo threatening to eliminate Adams Canyon from the citys sphere-of-influence in spite of its downsized building plans the city must reexamine growth said Gary Nasalroad, a former Santa Paula Planning Commissioner.

We have to take a second look at the numbers, in Fagan Canyon which now calls for 450 homes, and find a development number that would support the city and the desire of the voters.

I dont know what that magic number is, but Nasalroad said it must be addressed.

We need creativity, to booster the historic Downtown and economic growth outside the shopping centers that City Councilwoman Ginger Gherardi said quality growth will bring the city.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Santa Paula will have a new Mayor and Vice Mayor when new leaders are selected at the December 7 City Council meeting and although its probably a given whom will occupy the middle seat, there is some question as which council member will be second in command.

The meeting at City Hall Council Chambers will be broadcast live on Time Warner Cable Channel 10 at 6:30 p.m. and replayed according to schedule. The session will also be live-streamed on the citys website and archived for viewing on demand.

It should be a short meeting with naming a new Mayor and Vice Mayor as well as bidding farewell to Mayor John Procter being the only items on the agenda.

It is likely that Vice Mayor Martin Hernandez will be named Mayor; Hernandez was first elected to the council in 2012. Although the highest vote-getter, Hernandez was passed over by the past council for a leadership role. A year ago when Procter, Ginger Gherardi and Jenny Crosswhite joined the council  which also includes Jim Tovias  it was expected that he could be named Mayor.

Instead Tovias, who was Vice Mayor and traditionally next in line for the Mayors middle seat, nominated Procter for the top job. Hernandez was then made Vice Mayor.

The office for Mayor in Santa Paula is largely ceremonial and largely rotates between council members.

Gherardi, a former Simi Valley councilmember who retired after 17 years as the executive director of Ventura County Transportation Commission has ruffled some feathers on the council while Crosswhite has the least amount of government service. Tovias has made it known he will not seek another council term in 2016.

According to the agenda after public comment and a presentation by a Color Guard, City Clerk Judy Rice will review the procedure for the election of Mayor and Vice Mayor.

Rice will then conduct the selection process that involves nominations for the top spot by council members. Once the Mayor is selected there will be a ceremony presenting the Gavel to Procter the outgoing Mayor and other council members can offer comments.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

Ventura-based Cars 4 Causes was sued Tuesday by local and state prosecutors, who allege it improperly profited from its charitable status by taking donated vehicles and not channeling millions in profits to nonprofits.

The lawsuit filed by the Ventura County District Attorneys Office and the state Attorney Generals Office says Cars 4 Causes, which operates in every state but Illinois, used 87 percent or more of its donations to pay for items such as advertising and administrative costs, including staff salaries. That left only 13 percent  or less  for charities.

According to a statement issued by Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten, Cars 4 Causes last tax return reported that in spite of raising over $5 million in donated vehicles, less than 10 percent of the proceeds were donated to any charity.

The state also filed a lawsuit Tuesday in conjunction with the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office against another car-donation nonprofit group, Peoples Choice Charities.

Car donation organizations are 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations that solicit car donations (often through extensive advertising), sell the vehicles, deduct all their costs, and then use what is left to fund a charitable program, which they choose or allow the donor to choose. Other charities such as the Ventura Rescue Mission would accept such donations directly; they now partner with Riteway Charity Services on vehicle donations.

According to a statement by Attorney General Kamala Harris, Cars 4 Causes and Peoples Choice Charities, exploited the goodwill of generous donors by misrepresenting their charitable programs, misappropriating donations and accruing excessive administrative costs. These lawsuits hold Peoples Choice Charities and Cars 4 Causes accountable for breaking the law and give California consumers greater confidence that their donations go toward the intended charitable cause.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

John Procter was lauded at Mondays City Council meeting where the outgoing Mayor was presented with a plaque bearing the gavel he had used to run meetings for the previous year.

Procter, who was elected to the council in November 2014, had served the panel previously from 2000 to 2008 before declining to run for a third term.

Newly selected Mayor Martin Hernandez expressed his thanks to Procter, who previously served as mayor, and said it was a great privilege and honor to present him with the mounted gavel.

It has been a privilege to be your right-hand man and your vice-mayor this last year, and Hernandez said, Ill always be your right-hand man no matter what kind of city business or other business we conduct together in the future.

I thank you for the whole communityJohns dedication to the citizens of Santa Paula is greatly appreciated.

Its been a real pleasure working with the leadership, said Councilman Jim Tovias. Its been great, its been fun, the whole council has changed and its been good...thank you John for your time, the job, of mayor is a time-consuming duty.

Procter said to Tovias, You were the whole reason he became mayor as then Vice Mayor Tovias told him he would pass on taking the center seat and then nominated Procter for the largely ceremonial position. Its been a pleasure serving with you.

During later comments Procter said his tenure as mayor was a great year whose notable highlights included the citys purchase of the waste water treatment facility, which will generate property tax savings for the city and lower bills for residents, a new fire engine and increased staffing for police and fire.

Police is back up to about 30, full time sworn officers and Procter said The crime stats have been going down under very difficult circumstances.
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Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/05/2016 -- Zion Research has published a new report titled "Cement Market for Residential, Commercial, Infrastructure and Other Applications: Saudi Arabia Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2014  2020" According to the report, Saudi arabia region demand for cement was valued at USD 3.90 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach USD 5.27 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of slightly above 5.1% between 2014 and 2020. In terms of volume, the cement market in the Saudi Arabia stood at 61,000 kilo tons in 2014.



Cement is a one of the key binding material used in construction industry. Cements acts as a binding agent for mortar, concrete, non-specialty grouts and stucco, etc. Cement is manufactured from raw materials such as limestone, sand and clay. These kinds of raw materials are widely available in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, cheap and widely available petroleum fuel has been resulted into cost effective manufacturing of cement in the region. Various physical and chemical properties of cement such as high durability, high dependability, cost-effectiveness and versatility are favorable for construction applications.



Browse the full "Cement Market for Residential, Commercial, Infrastructure and Other Applications: Saudi Arabia Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast 2014  2020" report at http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/cement-market-for-residential-commercial-infrastructure-and-other-35998



Key factors driving the demand for cement market in Saudi Arabia is increasing the construction activity in different segments such as commercial, residential, industrial and infrastructure. Rapidly growing population has been resulted into growing demand for residential & commercial buildings as well as infrastructure. Residential application market for cement in Saudi Arabia is expected to witness strong growth during the forecast period. Infrastructure is one of the largest segment, which accounted for around 50% share of the total market in 2014. Infrastructure refers to the construction that includes roads, bridges, canals and dams. The increasing number of airports and road construction projects are anticipated to boost the cement market in Saudi Arabia. Commercial application is the second largest application segment of the market in 2014, which include construction of walls, floors, exterior walkways and pavements of commercial buildings.



The cement market was dominated by Central region of Saudi Arabia, which accounted for slightly above 32% share of the Saudi Arabia market in 2014. Saudi Arabia was followed by the Western, Eastern, Southern and northern regions respectively. Cement market in central region is also expected to witness rapid growth as compared to other regions. Over the past few years, there has been an increase in construction activities in the Saudi Arabia, especially in the eastern and central provinces. Various cities in the Kingdom have initiated infrastructure projects, thereby fuelling demand for cement. Strong economic growth in the Saudi Arabia is expected to fuel growth of the cement market in various cities of the Saudi Arabia.



Get Sample research Report at http://www.marketresearchstore.com/report/cement-market-for-residential-commercial-infrastructure-and-other-35998#RequestSample



The manufacturing companies of cement have a significant impact on the value chain through a higher degree of vertical integration. These companies manufacture raw materials as well as the final product. Some of the key players operating in the Saudi Arabia cement market include Saudi Cement Company, Riyadh Cement Company, Yamama Cement Company, and Najran Cement Company. This report segments the global market as follows:



Saudi Arabia Cement Market: Application Segment Analysis



Residential

Commercial

Infrastructure

Others (including cement bricks and farm construction)



Saudi Arabia Cement Market: Regional Segment Analysis



Central

Eastern

Northern

Southern

Western



About Market Research Store

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Each Market Research Store syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food and beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve the overall research requirement of clients.



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Pune, Maharastra -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/05/2016 -- The report titled "Global Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Trends and Opportunities (2015 Edition) analyzes the significant trends and potential opportunities in the global takeaway food delivery market. The market size and forecast in terms of value for global takeaway market has been provided for the period 2015 to 2019, considering 2014 as base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (% CAGR) for the forecasted period 2015 to 2019. Over the next five years, global food takeaway market revenue is forecasted to grow due to increased spending power of consumers, rising emerging economies and recovery of GDP of developing countries.



Complete report available at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/438258.html.



The report also provides an analysis of consumer behavior on the basis of how many times consumers placed an order, spending nature of customer on per food delivery and the percentage share of restaurants of total food spend.



The report provides the detailed analysis of ten countries with their actual and forecasted market size. The US is the largest market for takeaway food delivery market with highest revenue. The UK is the largest takeaway food delivery market within European region and second largest in the world. The report also provides the detailed description of the US food takeaway market on the basis of revenue, net food sales and online market penetration.



The report also provides a detailed comparison of key market players of food takeaway market. GrubHub is the market leader with highest revenue earned in the fiscal 2014 with highest number of restaurants in comparison to other key market players like Just Eat, Delivery.com, and Foodler.com etc.



Furthermore, the report profiles key market players such as GrubHub, Just Eat Inc, Foodpanda, Delivery Hero and Hungryhouse on the basis of attributes such as company overview, recent developments, strategies adopted by the market leaders to ensure growth, sustainability, financial overview and recent developments.



Order a copy of this Takeaway Food Delivery Market research report at USD 800 (Single User License) http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=438258.



Country Coverage: US, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland & Brazil



Company Coverage of Takeaway Food Delivery Market : GrubHub Holding Inc, Just Eat Plc. (JE), Foodpanda & Delivery Hero and Hungryhouse



Food is an essential, social and enjoyable aspect of everyday life. However, there is often little time to cook at home or dine out. In addition, diners are increasingly looking for a broader and more diversified choice of cuisines and menu items. Food takeaway market facilitates customer with a wide variety of options at any place at any point of time. Consumers have many choices for takeaway food, including online takeaway food aggregator portals, independent restaurants and restaurant chains offering online ordering services, as well as local restaurants offering telephone-based and walk-in takeaway food services.



The online purchase of takeaway food is growing continuously with upward market trends. There is large number of companies that provide online food ordering services and feature attractive menus on their web portals that allowed consumers to place orders with restaurants and food chains at their supreme convenience. Introduction of these online platforms benefit both restaurants as well as diners. Traditional telephone based ordering has taken over by online platforms which facilitates consumer with wide variety of choices, ratings and reviews including payment by credit or debit card and provide more efficient consumer experience.



The major factors driving the growth of industry are increase in urban population, rising demand from emerging markets, increased spending power of consumers etc. But takeaway market is also facing some challenges like stricter food safety regulations, seasonal demands, and change in internet regulations etc. which create hurdles for the growth of market. Recent market trends in global food takeaway market are increased use of online media for ordering, industry consolidations through mergers and acquisitions, increase in commission rates by market players etc.



Major points from Table of Contents (http://www.marketreportsonline.com/438258-toc.html) are listed below:



1. Executive Summary

2. Takeaway Food

3. Global Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis

4. Country Analysis

5. Consumer Behavior Analysis

6. Growth Drivers

7. Challenges

8. Market Trends

9. Competitive Landscape

10. Company Profiles



List of Tables

List of Figures



Explore more related reports on food and beverages market at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/cat/food-and-beverages-market-research.html.
Indianapolis, IN -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/05/2016 -- It is well-known fact that selling a business is a challenging task due to the intricacies and difficulties involved in the process. Among various intricacies, figuring out the correct value of a business is extremely tough. There is an online business valuation calculator, but business owners should not simply rely on it. Therefore, it is a vital for business owners to take assistance from business brokers. For those who want to put their businesses for sale in Indiana, now can get the services of Indiana Equity Brokers who are known for rendering reliable buying and selling services for small and mid-sized businesses. Their selling or buying strategies are proven over time and helps business owners to sell their business at higher prices.



Indiana Equity Brokers is one of the most sought after names when it comes to selling a business or buying in Indiana. They also suggest various measures to the customers, which help to increase the value of their business. The company has employed a team of award-winning brokers who know how to win the deals. They manage the complete process of a deal from beginning to end and also maintain the confidentiality throughout the process.



Talking more about their services, one of the representatives of the company stated, "At Indiana Equity Brokers, not only do we use our proven IEB methodology to carefully create a customized marketing plan to sell your business at the highest price, we also immediately provide you with an honest Free Opinion of Value so that you know the price range that you can expect from the sale of your business."



About Indiana Equity Brokers

Indiana Equity Brokers (IEB) is one of the nation's leading firms specializing in the sale of small and medium-sized businesses. Their focus is to provide confidential and professional representation to owners who want to sell their business. They sell businesses located in Indiana and market them to buyers across the country. Since 1996, the professionals at Indiana Equity Brokers have sold hundreds of companies spanning practically every industry. Their award winning brokers have been recognized as some of the highest volume producing business brokers in the country.



For more information, please visit: http://www.indianaequitybrokers.com



Contact Details:

Indiana Equity Brokers - Central

Address: 5750 Castle Creek Drive, Suite 275

Indianapolis, IN 46250

Telephone: 317-333-6655
Sturtevant, WI -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/05/2016 -- Topper Industrial, leader in the material handling equipment industry, highlighted in a recent company blog how a Minnesota manufacturer partnered with Topper to increase productivity and reduce injuries. Matt Parenteau, industrial sales engineer with Topper Industrial, explained how the electronic panel manufacturer started eliminating fork trucks inside the production and assembly areas four years ago. Parenteau said, "We were able to provide them with our unique one of a kind walk-through Mother/Daughter system. They purchased six walk-through mother carts and about a hundred (100) daughter carts of various sizes. They were able to reduce 22 fork trucks and deliver more products to the line with only three tuggers."



While the safety benefits of Fork Truck Free operations heralded the initial push for the trend, when companies experience significant savings, rapid ROI (return-on-investment) -- payback with seven months, the purchase decision is rather simple. The improved safety data was substantiated and the Minnesota company had zero injury reports since fork trucks have been eliminated. They were able to move nineteen fork truck drivers into more value added positions. The company has had the system for four years now and has only spent about $600 on spare parts (mostly due to tugger drivers fault not failure due to parts wearing out).



To read the entire blog, go to: http://bit.ly/1OxqQFE



Topper Industrial is exhibiting at MODEX 2016, the largest expo for the manufacturing and supply chain industries from April 4-7, 2016 at the Georgia World Congress Center.



View the one-minute MODEX 2016 video about Topper Industrial titled, "At the Intersection of Material Handling," go to http://www.modexshow.com/attendees/youroneminute.aspx



About Topper Industrial

For more than twenty years, Topper Industrial, (http://www.TopperIndustrial.com) based just outside of Milwaukee, WI, has been a leader in the material handling equipment industry. The company's product roster features industrial carts, conveyors, lifts, lifts & tilts, shipping racks, containers, casters, and cart components. From mother-daughter carts to quad steer carts to tilt carts and rotate carts, Topper's material handling solutions make delivering material line side more effective through more efficient practices. Topper Industrial has a team of experienced professional experts able to assess and provide the right product for all material handling equipment requirements.



Topper Industrial is a proud member of MHI. The Topper Industrial client roster includes Anderson Windows, Detroit Diesel, Honda, Kia Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Aramark, Johnson Controls, Whirlpool, and Caterpillar. Follow on Twitter @TopperInd. Call 800-529-0909.
Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/05/2016 -- Molecular spectroscopy is the qualitative and quantitative study of molecules by observing their interaction with variousfrequencies and energy. In other way, it is the study of absorption of light by molecules. It is analyzed by ultraviolet (UV) light, visible light and infrared radiations using an instrument called a spectrometer. Thermo Fisher Scientific,Agilent Technologies, Danaher Corporation, PerkinElmer, Inc., Shimadzu Corporation, JASCO International Co., Ltd. and Jeol Ltd. are some major players engaged in the development, manufacturing and marketing of instruments used in molecular spectroscopy study. Antaris II FT-NIR Analyzer, picoSpin 80 spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific) and Cary 630 FTIR Spectrometer, 4300 Handheld FTIR (Agilent Technologies) are some prominent brands available in the market.



The global market for molecular spectroscopy has been segmented as follows by technology type:



Color Measurement Spectroscopy



Infrared Spectroscopy



Near-Infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy



Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy



Raman Spectroscopy



Ultraviolet Visible (UV-Vis) Spectroscopy



Request Free Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-399



These technologies may be further segmented as well. For example, infrared spectroscopy may be segmented by the type of devices available on the market such as bench top IR spectroscopy, portable spectroscopy or terahertz IR spectroscopy. Similarly, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy may be categorized as continuous wave nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, fourier transform NMR and Solid-State NMR. Ultraviolet visible spectroscopy may be segmented as single-beam UV spectrometer, double-beam UV spectrometer and array based UV spectrometer.



On the other hand, on the basis of application, the market has been segmented into:



Pharmaceuticals



Biotechnology



Food and Beverages Testing



Environmental Testing



Research Institutes



Governmental legislation that are compelling pharmaceutical companies to maintain very high quality of drugs and excipients during manufacturing and increasing concerns for food and beverages safety are some major factors driving the growth of molecular spectroscopy market.Governmental support by funding research related with molecular spectroscopy is also oneof the major factors driving the market growth worldwide.Technological developments in the area of molecular spectroscopy are also encouraging manufacturers to opt for this technology as it will give them competitive in terms of quality. On the other hand, high cost associated with acquiring molecular spectroscopy technology may hamper the market growth to some extent.



Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-399



Geographically, the market for molecular spectroscopy has been segmented into four major regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). North America holds the largest regional market, followed by Europe. Federal government's investments to support research in the area of medical sciences are one of the reasons driving the market growth in the region. Presence of a large number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in the region also plays a key role in propelling the market growth. Europe represents the second largest market after North America. The market in Western European region which includes countries like Germany, France, Spain and United Kingdom is relatively mature than the markets of Eastern European region. Emerging economies of countries of Eastern region will help in driving the market growth in the region due to the significantly large contract manufacturing market.India and China in particular are expected to increase the number of companies offering contract manufacturing services to the western region. It is likely to result in growing demand for various molecular spectroscopy devices, and thus will help in driving the market growth in the region. In RoW region, Brazil, Mexico, Israel and Middle East countries are the potential markets for molecular spectroscopy.



This research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as market segments, regions, product types and distribution channels.



Browse Full Report@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/molecular-spectroscopy-market



Regional analysis includes



North America



US & Canada



Latin America



Brazil, Argentina & Others



Western Europe



EU5



Nordics



Benelux



Eastern Europe



Asia Pacific



Australia and New Zealand (ANZ)



Greater China



India



ASEAN



Rest of Asia Pacific



Japan



Middle East and Africa



GCC Countries



Other Middle East



North Africa



South Africa



Other Africa
Helsinki, Finland -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/05/2016 -- RepDigger, an automatic business reputation check service that is available to users free of cost, has recently announced that the reputation checker service has now been expanded to include persons and individuals. Prior to the new update, the website's free reputation digging services was limited to companies and websites. This easy to use tool has been developed to allow users to dig information which is available online about individuals to learn the truth about a person. The easy to user service has been designed to the compile information in a matter of few minutes and presents it to the user for free.



The service has been created to aid people who wish to know about the online reputation of a person to intend to engage in a business or personal relationship with. As more and more people begin to spend time online looking for business opportunities and have a stronger online presence than ever before, tin this process they also lay down the foundation of their online reputation, this is especially true for professionals. This reputation can prove to be vital criteria of assessment others can collect and analyses before engaging in any type of business relation with them. Similarly, reputation digging can also be of aid to recruiters considering hiring certain professionals to be a part of their team.



"RepDigger is an automatic online-reputation scoring service. It generates online profiles and reviews for companies, brands, and websites. RepDigger's proprietary formula also calculates a reputation score from 0 to 100% (worst to best) to further aid you in your decision. With the new reputation look up service for persons you are welcome to check your prospective business partner, contractor, or company by typing its name in the form above. It usually takes about 15-20 seconds to get your results. If you like what you see, feel free to share in your preferred social media by clicking the buttons on the left. If you feel that the info has room for corrections, you can update or report an incorrect listing."  explained the RepDigger spokesperson.



Persons can also use the RepDigger service to lookup their own online reputation free of cost. The service allows individuals to monitor their reputation and then take appropriate steps to ensure they maintain a positive standing that compliments their goals.



About RepDigger

RepDigger is a free Automatic Reputation Check Service for companies, brands, websites and individuals.



For more information please visit: http://repdigger.com/



Name: Ilya Nikitin

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[MANILA] Extracts from seaweeds, with a little tweak of gamma irradiation, can increase rice production by about a third and guard against major pests.

Using gamma radiation, we were able to cut up the polymer into oligomers without using chemicals or complicated and expensive processes. By Lucille Abad, PNRI

Scientists at the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) have developed the carrageenan plant food supplementor (CPFS), which is derived from carrageenan extracted from red edible seaweeds. Carageenan is widely used for its gelling, thickening and stabilising properties in the food industry and as a binder in toothpaste and shampoo.

In a study published in Radiation Physics and Chemistry this January, the PNRI scientists showed that carrageenan-derived polysaccharide, a carbohydrate, enhances rice growth when degraded through a very small dose of gamma radiation.

Plant food supplements are substances that improve the overall health, growth and development of plants, says lead researcher Lucille Abad, chief of PNRIs chemistry research section.

The agricultural benefits of carrageenan are achieved from its building blocks: the long-chain carrageenan polymer that can be broken down into shorter chain fragments known as oligomers (oligo for few), Abad explains. These oligomers are readily absorbed by the plant to help their growth and development and also improve their resistance to diseases.

Using gamma radiation, we were able to cut up the polymer into oligomers without using chemicals or complicated and expensive processes, she says.

CPFS can be made with nothing more than the organic carrageenan and water processed by gamma radiation. The product that is formed is not and can never be radioactive. It is a clean and additive-free method that is safe, non-toxic, environment friendly and, most of all, effective.

Abad says the CPFS formulations will be registered with the Philippines Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority as soon as results are verified from field trials in around 37,000 hectares nationwide for two planting seasons.

Once adopted by farmers, the new technology may boost rice production by at least 30 per cent. However, in one experiment in Bulacan province which is near Metro Manila, results showed a 65 per cent increase.

Gil Magsino, a scientist at the National Crop Protection Center and who headed the field trials conducted in Bulacan says three bags of chemical fertiliser per hectare combined with 200 parts per million or 20 milliliters per litre of CPFS yielded higher rice grain weight of 450 grams per 10 hills (mound of soil that is planted with seeds).

In contrast, conventional farmers practice of applying nine bags of chemical fertiliser per hectare yields a grain weight of only 275 grams per 10 hills.

Abad and her research team first tested the CPFS in pot experiments inside greenhouses at PNRI. Various concentrations were sprayed on the leaves of rice. Results showed rice stems and the length of the panicles that bear the grains were significantly higher in the test crops compared with conventional crops. CPFS also induces resistance against rice tungro virus and bacterial leaf blight, both major rice pests.

The CPFS was also sprayed on Chinese cabbage, mungbean and peanut, resulting in a product yield of as much as 200-300 per cent in the vegetables.

Apparently, spraying the CPFS enhanced the presence of friendly insects such as ladybird beetles and spiders that help control harmful insects like the brown plant hoppers and green leaf hoppers, Abad notes.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.
Two-and-a-half billion people worldwide have no access to safe, durable sanitation systems. Brian Arbogast, director of the water, sanitation and hygiene programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tells SciDev.Net how innovative toilet technologies and business models could help fix this  and help communities cope with the devastation of climate change.



How does climate change impact sanitation?

With sea levels rising, you have flooding that causes huge health problems. As latrines and septic tanks get flooded and waste goes into the streets and streams, it can carry a lot of disease, including cholera, dysentery and typhoid.

The problem is that the world has only one gold standard for sanitation, which is having flush toilets connected to sewer lines, that are further connected to big and expensive wastewater treatment plants. Growing cities that already have water shortages may not have enough water for everybody to bathe and cook, let alone to flush toilets. So, are these cities going to follow the same path we have taken for the last century in developed cities?

Spending on sewer systems and treatment plants would be as bad an idea as building a new coal power plant. You are committing to the next 50 years and if you are going to have an infrastructure that requires a lot of water and electricity, you are only making your city less resilient in the face of climate change.

What does the Gates Foundation suggest to address this problem?

We are working with partners to try and invent another gold standard for sanitation, one that does not require connection to a water line, a sewer line or an electrical line. Our Reinvent the Toilet Challenge is pushing to build toilets that are their own treatment plants, only powered by what users deposit into them. We gave grants to over 15 candidates and what we have now are a growing number of university partners who are proving they can kill all the germs in the waste so that what comes out is safe to handle. We have a couple of prototypes undergoing field testing  one was designed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and a second one by Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.



How would these toilets work in a disaster setting?

We were very concerned after the earthquake in Nepal that if the sanitation system broke down, you would have a second wave of people getting ill and hurt. If we had these technologies ready then, you could imagine shipping in a lot of portable technology that has the ability to treat waste. These toilets dont depend on having a pit or a septic tank, so they would also be more robust in the face of flooding.



What business model are you promoting behind off-grid sanitation?

One thing we get excited about once there are reinvented toilets, is a service model where the household doesnt even have to buy the toilet  what they do is they buy a toilet service.

A sewage system requires huge capital investment in tearing up roads, putting in sewage lines and building wastewater treatment plants, plus significant ongoing costs for maintenance and operation. Oftentimes, one of the reasons why this doesnt work too well is because governments dont have the tax base and the fees to actually run these expensive systems.

Now compare that to a system where you have pit latrines and septic tanks, and vacuum trucks that come and empty those, take the waste to a sludge treatment plant and treat it. We found that this non-sewage approach was five times cheaper, but the household has to pay to have someone empty their pit.

We worked with a partner on a treatment plant that is much smaller than conventional plants and treats the waste of about 100,000 people. This plant not only doesnt require water and electricity, it also actually generates water and electricity. We call these OmniProcessors.

Who do you work with to achieve this in developing countries?

Two things are very disruptive about them. First, they take up less land [than conventional plants] and they dont smell, so they can be placed near poor urban communities. Second, instead of just costing money, they generate utilities that can be sold. And when you finally get to the reinvented toilet, you dont have any transportation costs, and neither do you have any pumping costs.

We at the Gates Foundation are not going to be in the business of selling toilets or toilet services. Our goal is to do the early-stage innovation and spend our money in places where entrepreneurs dont.

We work with a lot of governments: for example, we have a formal agreement with the government of India, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made sanitation a high priority. In Africa, we have carried out various marketing exercises in Dakar, Senegal, to lower per household sanitation costs.

But our end goal is that we wind up having our technology partners work closely with commercial companies that might get in the business of selling the service or product. A great example would be the team at Caltech, which is working with the Kohler Company, one of the biggest toilet manufacturers in the world, to do some trials in Tamil Nadu in south India. It is very new for them to have a toilet that is itself a treatment plant.

Q&As are edited for length and clarity.
The growing role of the private sector and emerging economies in development have made it onto a list of the biggest research needs to achieve the UNs Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), collated by academics and nongovernmental organisations.

The list of 100 research areas, drawn up in a paper published last month in Development Policy Review, aims to highlight the most important research questions around the SDGs, which were introduced in September 2015 to replace the Millennium Development Goals.

It includes topics in the physical and life sciences  such as climate changes impact on health and better energy distribution  along with social science issues such as making the interplay between businesses and marginalised groups fairer, and improving gender equality.

If you try to find something that everybody can agree on, the more surprising, outlier questions are knocked out. Simon Trace, Practical Action

A team of 14 academics and 21 NGO representatives collated the questions, which they describe as of critical importance for the post-2015 international development agenda. They are divided into nine main themes, which cover governance, food security, conflict and inequalities.

The list itself is proof that you can get people to agree, says co-author Johan Oldekop from the International Forestry and Resources Institutions network at the University of Michigan in the United States. And the next step is how we can answer these [questions] together.

The questions cover existing problems  for example how to best improve rural livelihoods  as well as newer issues, including the role of business in protecting human rights and the complex and contested role of middle-income countries as both donors and recipients of aid.

The list was drawn from an initial 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations. Collectively, these questions could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations, the paper says.

This list should also be useful to funding agencies and policymakers, adds co-author Lorenza Fontana from the Open University in the United Kingdom.

Simon Trace, former chief executive of the UK NGO Practical Action, who took part in the consultation, says the list is an interesting starting point for any research agenda. However, because of the consultations averaging process, the shortlist might reflect the 100 most important questions, but maybe not the 100 most interesting ones.

If you try to find something that everybody can agree on, the more surprising, outlier questions are knocked out, he says.

The authors acknowledge another limitation of their study: the low participation of organisations in the global South. Institutions in Europe and North America contributed 74 per cent of the initial long list, with those in Africa, Australasia and Latin America contributing the remaining quarter.

It is a real challenge to involve equally people from different regions, but something can be done, says Fontana, who worked on a similar consultation in Latin America in April. We brought this exercise to the region in Spanish, which helped overcome distance and language barriers, and adapt the method to the regional culture.

Fontana expects this kind of priority-setting exercise to become more important under the revamped global development agenda. The SDGs are so huge and have so many targets, and this exercise to prioritise is less arbitrary than a few policymakers deciding on research agendas, she says.
[CAPE TOWN] Four leading international science organisations have announced a global accord proposing principles and practices for open access to research data.



The accord titled Open data in a big data world was announced last month (9 December) during Science Forum South Africa held in Pretoria.



Maximising public benefit from the data revolution in both developed and developing countries is a priority,  [and] needs a global, coordinated response from the scientific community, says Geoffrey Boulton, president of the International Council for Science (ICSU)s Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) and leader of the working group that developed the accord.



The ICSU is a non-governmental organisation with 122 national scientific bodies and 31international scientific unions in 142 countries, according to its website.

With this accord, we take a coordinated step forward with the bodies that advocate and support open access, and the academies that influence government, policymakers and funders. Geoffrey Boulton, Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA)

With this accord, we take a coordinated step forward with the bodies that advocate and support open access, and the academies that influence government, policymakers and funders, Boulton adds.



Outlining 12 guiding principles for the practice and practitioners of open data, the accord specifically addresses the responsibilities of scientists, institutions, publishers and funding agencies in supporting access to data.



It also addresses boundaries of openness, whereby open data should be the default position for publicly-funded science, with limited exceptions. The accord also focuses on enabling practices which clarify citations and other technical issues.



The accord was developed by the ICSU, the InterAcademy Partnership, the International Social Science Council and TWAS (the World Academy of Sciences)



Over the next year, the bodies will lead a campaign to gather more support from science, education and policy bodies, with final results to be revealed in the third quarter of 2016, says a statement from the ICSU released last month (7 December).



Daya Reddy, president of the Academy of Sciences South Africa, which supports the accord, says the announcement has received positive feedback from science academies of other African countries including Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar and Uganda.



It is imperative for Africa to be part of the open data community and access knowledge as full participants and not consumers of science from abroad, Reddy advises.



According to Anthony Beitz, director of eResearch Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, there are challenges to adopting open access policies including technical, ethical and cultural issues. Its important to consider regional and international institutions and the infrastructure and technical skills needed for them to use and build on open data, Beitz notes.

But Beitz points out initiatives such as the South Africa-based Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy launched to manage big data from the SKA (Square Kilometre Array) project  an international initiative to build the world's largest radio telescope  as examples of progress.The open data movement enables developing countries to access resources, data and publications at lower cost, and levels the playing field for our researchers, Beitz notes. The accord, as a statement of roles and responsibilities of players across the board, is a very important first step in providing an open data framework that is applicable internationally and regionally.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Now that 2016 has finally opened, technology enthusiasts surely cannot wait to check out what are in store for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year. New inventions and one-of-its-kind technology will surely surprise more than 150,000 people that have vouched to attend the exhibit of over 3,600 companies this week.



The CES is the most strategic event for tech giants, and even aspiring ones, to brag their new products or creation. As last year's CES event has been the best so far, with surprising revelations from brands like LG, Lenovo, HP, Intel and Microsoft to name a few, there is basically a big pressure to outbest it this year.



While many seem fascinated with high-end products, mobile devices are almost always a head turner for many. Some smartphone companies reportedly put their announcements on hold for the Mobile World Congress, which will take place in March this year in Barcelona. Big mobile vendors are saving their energy and resources for the bigger break. This is most particularly true for Samsung's Galaxy S7, LG, HTC and Motorola, leaving other small-time companies and Microsoft in the CES. Meanwhile, since Apple does not participate in trade shows, its rumored iPhone 6c and Apple Watch 2 will be launched in a different event.



However, still, CES is starting to prove itself as the new launching pad for smartphone products. In 2015, guests were excited as they witnessed the release of new models from LG, Asus and Acer. Well, this year, spectators are likely to watch Acer's Liquid Jade Primo, the first mobile phone not powered by Microsoft Windows 10. Also, Sony will hold a huge press conference but will only display its Z5 series.



Also, Chinese brands like Huawei and ZTE will once again try their luck to attract consumers during the CES. Huawei is teasing the market with either its Honor brand or Mate S, whereas ZTE will show off an unlocked version of Axon smartphone or its smart projectors. And the audience might also see Alcatel OneTouch.



Aside from the smartphone itself, the event will also cater on hardware manufacturers, which create the components that will power our future cellphones. After unofficially unveiling last November, Qualcomm can formally introduce its highly advanced Snapdragon 820 chipset. Competing against is Mediatek's Helio X20 chipset that partnered with Blu, which is the maker of unlocked phones for the U.S. consumers.



With a lot of people complaining of the battery life, CES will surely display cutting-edge battery technology solution to address smartphone battery longevity. With Huawei initially launching its new batteries that could speed up charging up to 10-fold faster than the usual, CES spectators anticipate more Chinese companies to display thrilling demos.



Aside from those mentioned earlier, other low-key mobile companies set to display their new products include CAT and Freetel. While Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and Meizu prefer to skip the party this year.
The Widlife Conservation Society-owned New York Aquarium has a team of scientists and veterinarians that recently discovered an interesting patch of area in the waters of Long Island's Great South Bay: a sand tiger shark nursery ground. The find was made by a group of researchers who have been tracking sharks in the local water over the years via acoustics tags, which allow scientists to track movements of marine life remotely.

The sand tiger shark, although fearsome looking, is a rather non-aggresive fish found all over the world, also known as the grey nurse shark. They're generally nocturnal bottom dwellers that hunt for food on the sea floor, and can grow from six to 10 feet in length and weigh 200-350 pounds.

The finding confirmed the nursery's existence in the rich estuary that is the Great South Bay, one that the team believed existed but could not find before. The team has identified a handful of shark nursery grounds, one of which is located in Massachusetts's waters. The team first saw signs of the nursery in 2011, after receiving a photograph depicting a dead juvenile sand tiger shark from a local marina. Fisherman in the area confirmed that they had been catching these juvenile sharks for several years, so the team began tagging and monitoring the local shark population of juveniles.

The team has identified 15 total juveniles, 10 of which were tagged in 2015. Five of the tagged sharks exhibited "site fidelity" behaviors, where they would return to the same section of the bay.

"The discovery of a shark nursery is fantastic news for local conservationists seeking to learn more about sharks and other species in the New York Bight," said Jon Dohlin, Vice President and Director of WCS's New York Aquarium, according to a press release. "Through field projects and outreach efforts by the New York Aquarium and other organizations, we hope to raise awareness about our local marine environment and the need to manage our natural wonders."

Data that's been gathered from the tracking has helped the scientists dive deeper into the migratory patterns of the sharks, as well as their habitat needs. In 1997, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service declare them a "Species of Concern" and banned fishing for them since. Part of the concern is the low birth rate for the species - females only give birth to one or two pups every two years.

"Sand tiger shark pups are not born here but migrate from down south to spend the summers as juveniles in New York's coastal waters," said Dr. Merry Camhi, Director of the N.Y. Seascape program, WCS's local marine conservation program. "The acoustically tagged animals in our study will help us better understand where the sharks go, their habitat needs, and how we can better protect them."

In the Great South Bay, the nursery ground allows these juvenile sharks a chance to eat and grow without being so open to danger, like attacks from other sharks. This will allow for growth in the population during the summer months, before they return south during the fall months.

The team is still unaware about much involving the grounds, though. They do not know the size of the nursery grounds, how many sharks occupy it or how many are born there, nor do they know what the sharks are consuming. The trouble faced by the sharks, although it is illegal to fish for them, is that the Great South Bay sees heavy amounts of boat traffic, as well as fishing, dredging, and other human activity. The team hopes public outreach will allow for as much species growth as possible.

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For more great science articles and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
Just two years ago, Dunia Sibomana was playing with two other boys when some chimpanzees killed both of his friends and severely disfigured his face.

Now 8, Dunia, who's originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is set to undergo a rare and complicated surgery at Long Island hospital to repair the damage. He lost his lips in the attack, making it extremely difficult for him to communicate. One of his cheeks was also torn apart, leaving him with muscle damage that makes it difficult to eat and swallow properly.

"Difficulty eating, drools a lot, certain speech sounds, psychosocial sides are most damaging, made fun of. Other children in his position, they withdraw, they isolate themselves," Dr. Leon Klempner, Stony Brook Children's Hospital explained, via CBS News.

Dunia came to the country through Klempner's non-profit organization Smile Rescue Fund For Kids. He is currently staying with a host family in Hauppauge as he prepares for surgery.

Health officials hope to use tissue from his forearm for his lips. However, the really difficult part will be giving his new lips life--including the ability to move and feel, according to Dr. Alexander Dagum, Chief of Plastic Surgery at Stony Brook.

He and staff hope to carry out three to four operations within the next six to eight months, according to the news organization.

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Facial Reconstruction Operation Leaves No Scar

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site,Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
FLORENCE  An expert on the international political and military environment in the Middle East was in Florence on Monday afternoon to give members of the Florence Rotary Club some food for thought during their weekly lunch meeting.

U.S. Army Col. Jeffrey Wyatt, a South Carolina native currently working out of Fort Sumter, wasnt there on official Army business but did take time to talk on his experience on a coalition of nations operation in the region.

What we were trying to do at the time was identify what these other countries had to offer, Wyatt said. Its a full spectrum of help, not just military support but humanitarian support as well.

Wyatt said since the United States' 2011 departure from Iraq, the country has fallen into disrepair, leaving many areas susceptible to takeover by Daesh, commonly called the Islamic State.

Iraq is pretty much destroyed, so you have to ask what we do when Daesh is defeated, he said. A lot of the dams and roads are destroyed, the infrastructure is gone, agriculture is gone, normal things you see in every city are all destroyed.

Wyatt said the answer to whether the Islamic State is continually gaining power varies with who is asked, but the official response remains that the group is in check and isnt advancing. He said this is due to a combination of U.S. and Middle Eastern forces quelling movements.

What you see them doing now, their technique today, is a result of the tactics and effectiveness of Iraqis and coalition forces, Wyatt said. Theyre having to revert from standard, guerilla-type activities to more traditional terrorist-type activities.

He said he couldnt comment on recent news about Saudi Arabias decision to cut diplomatic ties with Iran but said every country in the region plays some type of role in the grand scheme. He said the United States' job is to find its place in that scheme.

This means we have to take a hard look at our strategies, and I think our president is doing that, Wyatt said. What are our roles and responsibilities in the Middle East? What do we have to offer our partner nations? Who are we working with to achieve our goal, which is essentially peace and security.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Anahanum Khidayatova - Trend:

After more than a year without a meeting, it was important for the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia to talk face-to-face and clarify their positions in Bern, the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick told Trend. .

The President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev held a summit Dec.19 in Bern under the auspices of the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Ambassadors Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, James Warlick of the United States of America, and Pierre Andrieu of France).

Although the sides didn't achieve any breakthrough in Bern, the co-chairs will aim to bring the presidents together again in 2016, Warlick said.

The sides discussed a range of issues, including violence along the line of contact and Armenia-Azerbaijan border and proposals regarding a settlement of the conflict, he said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.

"In the meantime, the co-chairs will continue their work with the foreign ministers on proposals regarding a settlement, measures to reduce the risk of violence, and programs to promote dialogue between the communities of Nagorno-Karabakh," Warlick said.

The diplomat went on to add that the position of the OSCE MG regarding the conflict hasn't changed.

The United States fully supports the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs' efforts to mediate a lasting settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Warlick said.

"We urge the sides to approach the upcoming summit constructively and use the opportunity to make progress towards a settlement," he said.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Amy Schmidt is an accomplished writer based in Southern California, who often writes about women's and community issues. She is a passionate about animal protection.

The impact of war is often incalculable. But there are those that cannot defend themselves, those that are the innocent victims of man-made tragedies. Those that don't and cannot have a voice in their future. They are the lost victims of conflict that cry out in death and no one ever hears them. They are many, yet few also face the realization that with death also comes the specter of extinction. To this I offer up a homage to the lost refugee horses of Karabakh.

Death is always tragic and permanent, but the senseless demise of an entire species is offensive to the most basic laws of nature; an irreparable devastation to the world, for every generation to follow. An Arabian Proverb states that "the wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears." Sleek, strong and majestic, for much of recorded time the horse has played a meaningful role in the story of man. Horses changed the world many times over; a component of arguably the most intensified advances to mass communication, travel and warfare across history. More than all, for all of time and culture, the horse has served as a symbol for the qualities inherent; nobility, grandeur, the rush of speed, change and power.

In the Republic of Azerbaijan, images of the native Karabakh horse are found all over the country; on postage stamps, statues and storybooks. This exquisite, golden-hued thoroughbred is known by horse enthusiasts for its unusual combination of speed and tranquility, built to win races, yet also, sweet, like the distinct honey complexion of its mane. Once an abundant breed, the Karabakh horse has moved rapidly into endangerment, now facing the likelihood of extinction, in only the past twenty years. Estimates on the number of Karabakh horses vary. According to the Karabakh Foundation, there are less than 1,000, other agencies believe there could be less than 10 mares that are one-half pure-bred.

Native to a diverse and picturesque region, the Karabakh horse is named for its birthplace, the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Karabakh has undergone dramatic transformations over the last twenty years, and these changes are directly responsible for the near disappearance of Karabakh horses. In the thickly forested foothills of Sheki, a small city 300km (187 miles) from the capital Baku, is one of world's largest and purest Karabakh herds.

Among those most affected by the turmoil of the last two decades were the horses. Since 1992, when Armenian forces invaded and laid siege to a large swath of Azerbaijan, most of the horses were permanently displaced and became "refugee horses", almost entirely lost in the toil of national crisis.

Defenseless and unable to thrive outside of their natural habitat, the future of the innocent Karabakh horse depends on the possibilities of return. It's a mostly unexplored area of injustice; a totally innocent creature that may become permanently lost to the world, in a nation grieving for the murdered victims and communities, uprooted and destroyed. At some point, the occupation will eventually end, and Azerbaijani refugees will be able to return to their homes in Karabakh. At that time, perhaps communities will once again thrive, and investments will transform and return the region to its former beauty, but the lost refugee horses of Karabakh may not survive into that day.

During the attacks, great efforts were undertaken to protect the beloved Karabakh breed from what had quickly proven to be an extreme onslaught of violence; lasting several years, unthinkably brutal and indiscriminatory of victims. Repeatedly moving the horses away from growing and shifting danger, compounded with a lack of pasture, and many stress-induced mare miscarriages, have led to a dramatic decrease in the population of Karabakh horse.

Azerbaijan continues to address the crisis, but the ongoing occupation and destruction of the Karabakh horses natural habitat is the most significant barrier to repopulation, despite meaningful efforts, ongoing for many years. With so much of the breed lost amidst the storm of the massacres, the most optimistic estimates today of remaining Karabakh horses is around 1000 in the world. Some might assume that the Karabakh horse would flourish anywhere, distinguished by a nimble appetite, and bred to handle Azerbaijan's often mercurial climates and mountainous terrain with ease, but the horse relies on this very climate to develop and survive.

The Karabakh horses have a unique and remarkable history. In 2013, a Karabakh horse won a race in the U.S., the very first thoroughbred in history to win on American soil; a testimony and inspiration to a hopeful future. Even during Soviet times, the Karabakh horse had a special place in the world. In 1956, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain was gifted a Karabakh horse on behalf of the Soviet Union. The name of that horse was Zaman, which in Azerbaijani means Time. In heartbreaking irony, time is a factor that will actuate their extinction. The longer the horse remains as refugee, so the chances of survival continuously narrow.

The symbology of the Karabakh horse offers layers of meaning; a majestic legend, that shines light on current realities; from a strong and noble nation, assaulted by the heartlessness and thoughtlessness of an unjust war. Whether or not the experts in Azerbaijan succeed in repopulating the Karabakh horse remains unknown, but even in the story of their decline, the fabled horse evokes great lessons and meaning, capturing both the deep cultural richness of a culture and the horrific impact of recent tragedies. However more than all, with all its beauty and unbridled passion, its love for freedom, honor and tenacity, the Karabakh horse stands as a symbol of the defining spirit and culture of a brave and hopeful people and their homeland, of the perilous costs of unjust war, and the powerful hope for redemption. The uncertainty of their fate represents a bleak paradox; known for durability, grace and speed, this unknowing victim of strife and hatred has been rendered completely powerless against the toll of human savagery.

Amy Schmidt is an accomplished writer based in Southern California, who often writes about women's and community issues. She is a passionate about animal protection.

Source: wfmj.com/
The BHOS (Baku Higher Oil School) students will always commemorate the dead oilmen, victims of the tragedy that took place at SOCAR Gunashli oil platform.

The BHOS students said they would continue the work of the oilmen with the feeling of honor and pride. This will certainly be possible, considering the opportunities offered at the Baku Higher Oil School.

What is the advantage of studying at BHOS? How will it affect your future profession?

Gulnar Huseynli, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: I am very proud of being the student of BHOS. It is certainly very crucial for my development as a future specialist. The theoretical knowledge I gain here is applied during the internships offered by local and international companies, partners of BHOS. Therefore, I think the higher school we are studying at is offering high quality education.



Aytekin Gasimova, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: Studying at BHOS means having great incitement for our future career. While studying we enjoy the opportunity to take internship at local and transnational companies and I am very happy of that.

Elchin Allahverdili, Petroleum Engineering, second year student: Studying at BHOS opens opportunities for us to become professional engineers in future and work for well-recognized oil companies.

Emil Mammadov, Petroleum Engineering, first year student: BHOS offers all necessary opportunities for my development as a specialist in the corresponding field. The courses taught by professors specialized in this area, based on teaching programmes in English that comply with international standards largely contribute to students becoming highly-qualified specialists in petroleum engineering.

How will your studies affect your future career? What kind of perspectives and opportunities do you expect to have?

Gulnar Huseynli, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: For me, studying petroleum engineering means to expect a brilliant future, stable career and of course becoming a useful specialist for my nation. In short, I realize that I've chosen a very responsible and challenging profession which requires hard work.

Aytekin Gasimova, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: As I previously mentioned, during the studies we also take internship in a number of companies represented in various oil sectors. These internship programs are very interesting. We have the opportunity to study the operation principles of oil facilities and see the procedures applied there. It is very crucial for us as future specialists.

Elchin Allahverdili, Petroleum Engineering, second year student: BHOS offers each of its students every single opportunity for becoming highly qualified specialists. The courses in English, good professors, internship opportunities, regular meetings with well recognized company managers are among these opportunities.

Emil Mammadov, Petroleum Engineering, first year student: Studying petroleum engineering opens new horizons for us. My primary goal is to be a good and useful specialist for Azerbaijan. My specialization is petroleum engineering and we know that gas production is the second one after oil in Azerbaijan. I think the specialization I chose encompasses great perspectives for near and distant future.

Don't you shrink from the challenges of this profession?

Gulnar Huseynli, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: I know how challenging engineering is, as I was born in the family of engineers. My father has been working as an engineer in the field of gas production for a long time. This is why I am quite aware of the challenges of this profession. However, I am not afraid at all, because when the choice with regards to specialization is made, it should be accompanied with the feeling of fondness.

Aytekin Gasimova, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: More or less, I was informed about the work of oilmen, before I came to study at BHOS. I knew it from the literature and movies. Today, I am keen on learning the peculiarities of this profession. I am not afraid of the challenges of this work.

Elchin Allahverdili, Petroleum Engineering, second year student: Azerbaijan is the country well recognized for its oil industry and the profession of an oilman has a certain national value. Eventually, being an oilman in the country specialized in oil industry is advantageous providing a lot of opportunities. This profession is considered to be the second challenging one after a miner profession. I have no fear, but love to this profession and it stimulates me to be more devoted, as I believe that only those who come through challenges and hard work are able to succeed.

Emil Mammadov, Petroleum Engineering, first year student: I believe that there is no work without challenges at all. If you want to completely master your profession you should work hard. That is why I am committed to study hard to be fully prepared both theoretically and practically.

- And what about the tragedy that happened on Gunashli Platform rig#10? Aren't you afraid of the outcomes? Are you committed to have the courage and bravery to continue the work of the oilman who tragically died while on duty?

Gulnar Huseynli, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: I was deeply saddened by the tragedy. It was especially hard for me as I knew the majority of oilmen who died there. Last summer, I took internship at a number of facilities of 28 May Petroleum Department. On the oilmen tragedy - it was the tragedy caused by nature. These kinds of accidents do happen every year all over the world. Of course, as the future oilmen we should be strong and courageous. I know how honorable and at the same time challenging this profession is. But I've already made my decision and I should be ready for this. And I am ready to carry on the lost oilmen's duty.

Aytekin Gasimova, Petroleum Engineering, fourth year student: It was a naturally caused accident. The death of so many oil workers was a big tragedy for our entire nation. But we should accept that challenges and risks are eventual aspects of this profession. Similar accidents may and do happen in different parts of the world. No matter how deeply I realize it, I face it with no fear. I will always try to be strong while doing my job. If you really love your job you should be ready for everything.

Elchin Allahverdili, Petroleum Engineering, second year student: Such accidents happen quite often in the world and it is not possible to avoid human losses. I always knew how risky being an oil worker is, but I was dreaming about becoming an engineer since my childhood. I love this profession and I have no fear of any difficulties and challenges I may encounter in future. I am totally ready for this. I will honor the memories of the lost oilmen and bearing the name of an oilman will be a pride for me.

Emil Mammadov, Petroleum Engineering, first year student: I am convinced that we will continue their work. The lost oilmen proved that though being challenging and risky our profession is at the same time honorable. We will always follow their way giving tribute to their memory. This is our moral obligation.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Samir Mammadov - Trend:

Twelve people arrested after the events in Nardaran township of Baku have been released, Nardaran resident Natig Karimov told Trend Jan.5.

On Nov. 26, five members of a criminal group, operating under the guise of religion, were killed during a police operation in the township of Nardaran, some 25 km northeast of Baku. Two police officers were also killed in the standoff.

Fourteen members of the criminal group were arrested along with the group's ringleader Taleh Baghirov. All 14 detainees were arrested for four months as a preventive measure against them.

Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office has initiated criminal cases.

Karimov said that the period of the administrative detention has expired.

Atamali Nur, who calls himself an akhoond (cleric who leads prayers) of the Juma mosque in Nardaran township of Baku, is also among the released, the resident said.

Karimov went on to add that 57 people administratively arrested in connection with the Nardaran events have been recently released.
Tehran, Iran, January 3

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

The Chinese government has decided to swap currency with Iran, Deputy Chairman of Iran-China Chamber of Commerce Majid Reza Hariri said.

This comes after China recently succeeded in making yuan stand as an internationally credible currency.

However, Hariri said, it must be seen what method china will use for swapping currencies and when the intention turns practical, Mehr news agency reported January 3.

He went on to comment on Iran-China trade relations, asserting that China is expected to remain Iran's top partner in 2016.

China is partner to 25 percent of Iran's foreign trade.

In 2015, Iran-China trade fell by 34 percent after key goods such as oil, gas condensates, and iron ore lost much value.

Hariri also said Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Iran has been made certain and will be paid in late January or early February.
Press Release

January 5, 2016 Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano's statement on ad expenses I would like to thank all our supporters for supporting our efforts to communicate our message of real change for the country. I have always believed that the media is the most effective way of communicating with our people. Using media and advocacy advertising, we were able to communicate better to a broader audience amid the black propaganda mounted against us by those who were affected by my relentless anti-graft and corruption campaign. The continued support we have received is a testament of the people's confidence in the change Mayor Rodrigo "Rody" Duterte and I want to bring to the entire country. However, I believe that the amounts reported are overstated because Nielsen itself admitted that these are based on published rate cards, which in all cases are so much more than what was actually paid for. Nonetheless I would like to again thank all of our supporters who continue to believe in what Mayor Duterte and I stand for and will work hard to deliver - real change in the lives of every Filipino.
Press Release

January 5, 2016 Marcos Backs Calls for Extension of Term of Barangay Officials Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. backed calls of barangay officials to extend their term from the current three years to five years. Speaking before barangay officials and workers in Rodriguez, Rizal, Marcos, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Government noted the continuing clamor of barangay officials for a longer term. In the 15th Congress Marcos filed a bill seeking the extension of term of barangay officials but it failed to pass. "Initially, the DILG agreed to a 5-year term with re-election for barangay officials but later Malacanang said it will not support any move to change the term of barangay officials, so the process stopped there," Marcos said. Despite this Marcos said he supports on-going moves in the Senate and the House of Representatives to push for at least a postponement of the barangay elections in October next year to give Congress time to study proposals for term extension. He said the three-year term is quite short for barangay officials to effectively implement their programs in their respective areas. In filing the bill for term extension of barangay officials, Marcos noted that this would also enable the Commission on Elections to save at least P16 billion from the term extension. "For every barangay elections the government spends around P8 billion so that in a fifteen-year period when only three elections are held under a five-year term instead of five, the government will save around P16 billion which can be used for other social services," he said. Marcos is also the author of the approved bill that gives retirement benefits to barangay officials. Senate Bill No. 12 provides a retirement pay of P100,000 for each qualified Barangay Chairman, P80,000 for each member of the Sangguniang Barangay and P50,000 each for Barangay Treasurer and Secretary, Barangay Tanod, member of the Lupon Tagapamayapa and Barangay Health and Day Care Workers. To be qualified for the benefits, a Barangay Official or Worker must be at least 60 years old and with at least nine years of service. Some 95,616 Barangay Officials and Workers are qualified to receive the benefit as on June 2013, according to the National Barangay Operations Office (NBOO). The approved bill has been submitted to Malacanang and is awaiting the signature of the President to become a law.
An African American investigative assistant with the San Francisco district attorneys office says a co-worker called her a racial slur and that human resources representatives with both the city and the office failed to take action or properly look into the matter.

Twanda Bailey sued the agency and the city in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging she was retaliated against professionally for complaining about the slur.

To be called the n-word is offensive enough, Daniel Bacon, Baileys attorney, said Monday after filing the lawsuit last week.

He said the human resources director for the district attorneys office considered the alleged conduct not hostile enough to create an environment that is hostile to a person because of their race. The city refused to investigate it, saying it was not something that would alter the terms and conditions of employment.

Bailey said the dispute began Jan. 22, 2015, when a mouse ran through the office she shared with her co-worker, who was identified in the suit as being Southeast Asian. Bailey said that when she jumped and screamed, the co-worker quietly told her, You n are so scary.

Though upset, Bailey said she did not initially report the slur to human resources because she knew the co-worker was friends with the offices human resources director, Evette Taylor-Monachino.

She reported it a few days later, she said, after other co-workers and her supervisor encouraged her to do so. But according to her lawsuit, when she met with Taylor-Monachino to get a copy of the complaint in March, Taylor-Monachino told her there was no paper record of the complaint.

Bailey said she was then forced to take over duties for the co-worker as well as other menial tasks that were not part of her job description. She said Taylor-Monachino went on to jeer and make snide comments at Bailey whenever they interacted.

Bacon said that treatment, coupled with the first and only poor job evaluation Bailey had received in her more than 14 years at the office, pointed to a pattern of retaliation. Bailey filed an equal employment opportunity complaint with the city, but the city declined to investigate it.

While we acknowledge the extreme offensiveness of the N word and understand how upsetting it was to you to hear such a highly offensive term, one comment is not sufficiently severe or pervasive as to alter the condition of your employment and create an abusive working environment, Micki Callahan, the citys human resources director, wrote in a July letter.

Callahan went on to say that an offensive utterance or even a pattern of social slights by either the employer or co-employees cannot properly be viewed as materially affecting the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.

The city attorneys office declined to comment on Baileys lawsuit.

Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorneys office, said, The matter was referred to the city Department of Human Resources. They looked into it and took the action they deemed appropriate. Given that it is a personnel matter, we are unable to comment in more detail at this time.

Both the co-worker who allegedly used the slur and Taylor-Monachino remain with the office, though Taylor-Monachino was placed on leave in August for allegedly misusing a family members disability parking placard.

Bailey is still employed by the office as well, but has been out on disability from stress and depression she says stemmed from the slur and its aftermath. She said two black female co-workers had endured similar harassment from the woman who used the slur.

Hopefully, they wont be able to do this to anyone else, she said. Hopefully, it stops here.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jan. 5



By Demir Azizov - Trend:



Rustam Azimov, the Uzbek First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, and Ahmad Khaled Abdullah Al-Jeeran, the Ambassador of Kuwait to Uzbekistan, discussed a wide range of issues of developing the bilateral relations and cooperation, KUNA agency reported.



The sides considered the issues of expanding the trade and economic relations and stressed that the development of economic cooperation is in the interests of both countries.



Azimov urged Kuwaiti businessmen to invest in various sectors of the Uzbek economy.



It was previously reported that the two countries signed the bilateral intergovernmental agreements in the field of economy during Uzbek President Islam Karimov's official visit to Kuwait in January 2004.



In particular, the sides signed a memorandum on cooperation between the governments of Uzbekistan and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), envisaging the financial assistance worth $ 215 million to implement nine projects in Uzbekistan in the fields of health protection, energy supply, land reclamation and water supply.



Another intergovernmental document, envisaging KFAED's financial assistance in the implementation of 10 projects totaling $375.2 million, was signed as part of Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah's official visit to Uzbekistan in July 2008.



At present, the total amount of funds, allocated by the KFAED to implement the investment projects in Uzbekistan, is $135 million.
Stanley Karnow, who died in 2013, was one of the pre-eminent historians of the Vietnam War  hes best remembered for his Vietnam: A History (1983)  and his daughter, Catherine Karnow, has inherited her fathers interest in the country. A National Geographic photographer who lives in San Francisco, Catherine Karnow recently published Vietnam: 25 Years Documenting a Changing Country, whose many striking images grew out of a photo exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the war. Shell discuss her book on Sunday at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera.

 John McMurtrie
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Raymond Shrimp Boy Chow is a ruthless, opportunistic, ego-driven thug, a federal prosecutor told jurors Monday during the final phase of a two-month racketeering and murder trial in San Francisco.

The 56-year-old leader of a venerable Chinatown brotherhood is not a reformed ex-con, as Chow has claimed he is, but a brutal conspirator in the murder of two Chinese gang rivals, assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Badger told the jury in her closing argument.

Who is the real Raymond Chow? Badger said. He would have you believe he has been wronged, he is a victim. ... This is how Raymond Chow operates. Do not be deceived.

In her four-hour address to the jury Monday, Badger recounted a seemingly nonstop trail of violence, money laundering and conspiracy to commit crimes ranging from the two murders to the peddling of 3 million black market cigarettes.

Throughout the day, Chow sat impassively in a blue vest and salmon-colored shirt and tie, occasionally whispering in the ear of his attorney J. Tony Serra. Across the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled courtroom and only a few feet from the jury was a table overflowing with 38 guns introduced as evidence during the trial.

Then it was Serras turn to address the jury, and the 81-year-old courtroom veteran with the trademark silver ponytail wasted no time in ripping into the credibility of prosecution testimony from an undercover FBI agent, whom he called a coiled snake, and the convicts who were brought in at the last moment to do their foul deed of perjury in exchange for promises of reduced sentences.

Prosecutors, he said, went to the toilet, scraped the bowl and came up with six or seven scumbags.

According to Serra, the main prosecution witnesses were like a bunch of crabs in a bucket crawling over each other, mangling my client ... homicidal maniacs, some of them.

But when Serra raised the specter of George Orwells dystopian novel 1984, prosecutors objected and U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer sternly instructed Serra that he was obliged to argue what the law is.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating this week over whether Chow is guilty of more than 150 counts of money laundering to hide proceeds of drug and liquor deals as head of the organization Ghee Kung Tong. Chows lawyers have maintained that the crimes were manufactured by undercover FBI agents and attested to by convicts promised leniency in exchange for testifying against Chow.

The most serious charges against Chow involves the murder of rival gang leaders Allen Leung and Jim Tat Kong, whose killings, prosecutors say, were authorized by Chow.

Badger, countering defense claims that Chow was entrapped, told the jury that undercover FBI agents did not just parachute into a group of law-abiding people and create crime.

And of Chows repeated claim that he knew of no crimes being committed by gang members, Badger said, You dont say, I know nothing, unless you know something.

Serra is expected to complete his argument Tuesday morning, followed by prosecutors presenting a brief rebuttal. Then, Breyer said, he expects to allow the jury to begin deliberating. If convicted, Chow could return to prison for life.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
FBI / FBI

The FBI offered a $2,500 reward on Monday for information leading to the arrests of those responsible for an attempted firebombing on a San Joaquin Valley mosque last month.

Police said a Molotov cocktail was thrown over a chain-link fence to a door of the Tracy Islamic Center. The president of the mosques board discovered the remains of the explosive device Dec. 26. The San Joaquin County Sheriffs Office and FBI are investigating the incident as an attempted arson and possible hate crime.
Oakland police

A woman suspected of killing an Emeryville business owner after she intentionally hit him with a car has been arrested and charged, authorities announced Monday.

On Dec. 21, the Alameda County District Attorneys office charged Ella Coleman, 24, of Oakland, with murder after she struck Royce V. Vaughn in a May 29 hit-and-run.
A federal prosecutor wound up the racketeering case against Raymond Shrimp Boy Chow on Tuesday by telling jurors that the alleged crime boss brought newfound corruption into Chinatown by murdering the leader of a venerable community organization, then importing a stable of criminals, approving their illicit transactions and accepting payoffs from an undercover FBI agent.

Chow was a chickenhawk  a guy who wont go to war but who sends other people out to fight wars for him, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Frentzen told the U.S. District Court jury in San Francisco in closing arguments after a nearly two-month trial. He said the evidence could be found in the agents secretly recorded conversations with Chow and one unrecorded conversation in which Chow allegedly admitted his guilt. Evidence, he said, was also in the testimony of fellow conspirators who cooperated with the prosecution.

But defense lawyer J. Tony Serra said the prosecutions case was based on lies by witnesses with long criminal records, and by an agent who posed as a businessman with mob connections and who repeatedly proclaimed his love and respect for Chow while pressing money on him.

Its the Judas syndrome  to kiss and then to kill, and then to lie, Serra told the jury. Can you trust any human being who resorts to that?

The jury began deliberations Tuesday afternoon.

Undercover operation

Chow, 56, is charged with operating his organization, the Ghee Kung Tong, as a racketeering enterprise that trafficked in drugs and stolen liquor and cigarettes and laundered more than $2 million for the federal agent, who was part of a five-year undercover operation. More than two dozen other defendants were charged, including state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from agents posing as campaign contributors.

Chow had served a previous sentence for racketeering but testified that he renounced crime after his release from prison in 2003. Mayor Ed Lee and other leaders had praised Chows post-release work with troubled youths, but Frentzen said Chow never reformed and instead brought in some of his former cohorts to help him take over the Ghee Kung Tong by murdering its leader, Allen Leung, who was shot to death at his import-export business in February 2006.

Three witnesses said they heard Chow order the killing, and two admitted participating, the prosecutor said. All three had criminal records, and one was a convicted murderer, Frentzen said. They were horrible human beings because they had learned from Raymond Chow, he said. He asked why the witnesses would fabricate a confession to a murder.

Witnesses slammed

The answer, Serra said, is that all three were looking at long sentences for other crimes and hoped to get reductions by implicating Chow. He described one witness, Andy Li, as a psychopath who discussed torturing his enemies, and said a guard had disclosed that Li and another murder witness, Kongphat Chanthavong, were allowed to meet in jail, where they could coordinate their stories.

These people are without morality, the defense lawyer said. He also said a guest who was in Leungs office at the time of the murder, and fled to China afterward, was a likelier suspect than Chow.

Chow is also charged with trying unsuccessfully to set up the murder of another rival, Jim Tat Kong, who was shot to death in Mendocino County in 2013. But most of the charges against him, including more than 150 counts of money laundering, involve transactions between Ghee Kung Tong members and the undercover agent for purportedly stolen liquor and cigarettes as well as guns and drugs.

The main issue in dispute is whether Chow, who accepted a series of cash payments from the agent totaling more than $60,000, had arranged or approved the deals, and thus could be held responsible for them.

Frentzen cited tape recordings in which the agent referred to an illicit transaction and told Chow, before handing him a payment, that the tong leader had made it all possible.

He said the most incriminating statement came from Chow, who  according to the agent  whispered to him at a karaoke club in April 2011 that I know what my people are doing on the streets and I approve of it. Those words, however, were not recorded.

Out of the business

But Serra said Chow repeatedly told the agent he was out of the business and didnt want to know any details of alleged lawbreaking. Serra said Chow accepted money only at the agents insistence. He said Chow was forthright and direct in three days on the witness stand after taking the unconventional step of testifying in his own defense.

How many times do defendants testify? Only when theyre innocent, Serra said, drawing a rebuke from U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who told jurors to evaluate Chows testimony like that of any other witness.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@egelko
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkish airlines Pegasus and Onur Hava Yollar have temporarily suspended flights to Russia, the Milliyet newspaper reported Jan. 5.

The temporary suspension of the flights is due to a crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara.

The airlines expect to resume flights to Russia starting from January 13, 2016, according to the report.

Relations between Moscow and Ankara deteriorated greatly after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber in Turkey's airspace Nov. 24, 2015. Ankara stated that Su-24 entered its airspace, while Moscow said the plane didn't violate Turkey's airspace.

Earlier, Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrey Karlov said Turkey must meet three conditions for normalization of relations with Russia.

"Turkey must apologize to Russia over the incident involving the downed aircraft," he said.

He added that the other two conditions are to find and punish the perpetrators of the incident involving the plane and to compensate for the damage to the Russian side.

After the incident, Turkish foreign ministry said Ankara won't pay a compensation for the downed Russian plane.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Stabbing in Spa City as new year begins

SARATOGA SPRINGS  A 21-year-old man was stabbed in the chest on Lake Avenue just 10 minutes after 2016 arrived, police said Monday.

Officers responded to the area near City Hall for a call of a fight involving two groups of people around 12:10 a.m. Friday. They found a man who had been stabbed with a knife.

"Investigation shows that two groups of people passed by each other while walking on Lake Avenue when words were exchanged for no apparent reason," city police said in a statement. "A physical altercation started between a few of the individuals, and it was during that altercation that the stabbing took place."

No arrest had been made as of Monday. Those involved in the fight did not know each other, police said.

City firefighters took the victim to Saratoga Hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.

 Dennis Yusko

Argument ends with man shot in leg

SCHENECTADY  A 34-year-old man was shot in the leg, police said Monday.

Police were called Sunday to 103 Prospect St. to investigate a report that a man was shot. They discovered the victim with a leg wound. He was taken to Ellis Hospital and treated for a non-life-threatening injury.

Police said the men told them that two others arrived at the Prospect Street home about 10:30 p.m., and an argument started.

One of the men pulled a gun and shot the victim in the leg, police said he told them.

No one has been arrested.

 Staff report

Pedestrian killed by car in East Greenbush

EAST GREENBUSH An unidentified person died Monday after being struck by a car on Columbia Turnpike, police said.

East Greenbush Police said the incident occurred shortly before 1 p.m. on Columbia Turnpike in front of the wastewater treatment plant at 80 Columbia Turnpike. According to witnesses, a red Hyundai Elantra, traveling westbound, left the roadway, ran over road signs and struck a pedestrian walking along the shoulder of the road, police said.

The Hyundai then crashed and came to a stop in a wooded area along the road. The driver was taken to the hospital for evaluation. Police declined to disclose the names of the victim and the driver. Police in East Greenbush reconstructed the scene Monday. Authorities are asking anyone who may have seen the incident to call the East Greenbush Police Department at 479-2525.

 Dennis Yusko

Car collides with DOT snowplow, CDTA van

MALTA  A driver was taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital on Monday after his vehicle collided with a state snowplow and a medical transport van, according to the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies said Dennis Jourdanais of Ballston Spa was driving a car that collided with the state Department of Transportation plow and a Capital District Transportation Authority van about 5:19 a.m. at the intersection of Route 9 and Malta Avenue.

Jourdanais' vehicle glanced off the plow's blade, causing the car to hit the van and roll over, Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo said.

Part of Route 9 northbound was closed as authorities investigated the crash, according to the sheriff.

The driver was taken to a nearby hospital with head injuries and was expected to survive, Zurlo said.

CDTA medical transport van driver Brian Bullis and passenger Richard Wigfall were both taken for evaluation at Saratoga Hospital.

 Staff report

Schenectady man arrested on crack-selling charge

ROTTERDAM  Town police on Friday arrested a Schenectady man wanted on outstanding arrest warrants.

Daijoun McNair, 25, of Norwood Avenue was wanted on three outstanding arrest warrants for felony criminal sale of a controlled substance. McNair is accused of selling crack cocaine in May and June in Rotterdam. He was arraigned in Rotterdam Town Court and sent to the Schenectady County Jail on $25,000 bail.

 Staff report
RENO  A private autopsy is planned to determine how a 20-year-old college freshman died while on life support in the midst of an end-of-life court battle, the familys lawyer said Tuesday.

Aden Hailu, of Las Vegas, died about 4:30 p.m. Monday at Saint Marys Regional Medical Center in Reno, said David OMara, the attorney representing Hailus father and family.

Hailu never woke from anesthesia after surgery in April, and doctors first pronounced her dead May 28, but her father, Fanuel Gebreyes, went to court to delay removing her from life-support.

Correcting an earlier report, OMara said hospital officials told Gebreyes on Monday that Hailus heart stopped and resuscitation efforts failed  not that the cause of death was respiratory failure.

The family is making arrangements for a private autopsy, OMara said.

The Washoe County coroner was notified but didnt plan a medical examination because the death was at the hospital and a public autopsy isnt required, said Lynn Sack, aide to Coroner Ellen Clark.

The hospital asked the family to have an autopsy done, OMara said. In this situation, we think an autopsy will be helpful to find out the true cause of death, and it may provide guidance about how these cases are handled in the future.

Gebreyes was at the hospital when his daughter died, the attorney said, and he noticed Hailu was having trouble breathing  even with a ventilator. But Gebreyes wasnt in the room when hospital staff later told him that monitors signaled Hailus heart had stopped.

Saint Marys officials declined to immediately comment about the case. Spokeswoman Jamii Uboldi cited patient privacy provisions of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

Uboldi said administrators need Hailus father, Fanuel Gebreyes, or a legal representative to allow them to talk about Hailus death. OMara said Gebreyes was considering the request.

Two medical ethics and law experts said the hospitals interpretation is proper. HIPAA regulations about the release of medical records apply for 50 years after a persons death, said Timothy Jost, law professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University, and Arthur Caplan, at New York Universitys Langone Medical Center.

Hailu was a freshman at the University of Nevada, Reno. Saint Marys said in court filings that she suffered severe low blood pressure and a lack of oxygen to the brain April 1 during surgery to remove her appendix and explore the cause of abdominal pain.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled in November that Washoe County Family Court Judge Frances Doherty was too quick to reject the familys bid to keep Hailu on a ventilator and intravenous fluids.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to Doherty for more hearings about what justices acknowledged was an extraordinarily broad standard: Whether Saint Marys met state law requiring a finding that irreversible cessation of brain stem functions met accepted medical standards that are uniformly applied among the states that enact the Uniform Determination of Death Act.
A professional dancer has parlayed her skills into a health and fitness career in Friendswood.

On any given day, Cristie Anton can be found at her studio, Underground Pilates and Barre, taking her clients through routines designed to improve their strength, flexibility and posture. She opened her studio at 607 S. Friendswood Drive, Suite 21, in 2013 and spent four years before that conducting exercise classes from her home.

On Oct. 26, members and officials of the Friendswood Chamber of Commerce welcomed Anton to the business networking organization. She wasn't always a health and fitness instructor, however.

Anton was a professional dancer, and her skills took her to Japan and Puerto Rico. She also was in a production of the musical "A Chorus Line" in New York City. At one time, Anton said, she wanted to add actress and model to her resume.

New York was where she met the man who would become her husband, David Anton. The two moved to New Jersey to start a family. She began teaching fitness classes at gyms.

"I've continued my training and certifications while raising my family," Anton said.

In 2000, she discovered Pilates, a fitness system named after Joseph Pilates. The German physical fitness specialist designed the method in the 1960s.

The Antons later moved to Friendswood. A year after Anton opened her commercial studio, her daughter, Kimberly Anton, joined the business.

"We are a small, personal and friendly studio," Cristie Anton said.

Underground's group equipment classes are small and personalized with no more than five people, Anton said. In addition to teaching Pilates, the studio offers fitness routines that incorporate ballet barres.

"We offer barre and mat training where the classes go up to eight people," she said.

The studio offers private and duet training, as well. Underground is open Mondays - Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. To learn more about the studio, visit www.undergroundpilatestx.com or call 281-797-6442.
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Community leaders in northwest Houston are taking a closer look at the Grand Parkway as a marketing tool as the regional roadway moves closer to completion.

Representatives from the Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce and the Tomball Economic Development Corp. recently took a tour of the nearly completed Grand Parkway with members of the North Houston Center for Economic Development, the Greater Houston Partnership and the Harris County Precinct 4 representatives to see firsthand the opportunities for economic development as a result of the Grand Parkway.

"We are all so close (proximity), but they were just amazed at what we had to offer out here," said Bruce Hillegeist, president of the Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce.

The purpose of the tour was to showcase economic benefits of the area of northwest Houston and the Grand Parkway to business leaders in and around Harris County, and see firsthand many of the available properties along the Grand Parkway.

More Information By the numbers Community and economic development leaders recently toured northwest Harris County around the nearly completed Grand Parkway, and noted a number of properties ready for development. Some of those properties include: 134.5 acres at Hufsmith-Kohrville in Tomball 141 acres at FM 2920 and near the Grand Parkway 150 acres at Bauer Road and Schiel Road and the Grand Parkway in Cypress 150 acres at Cypress Church Road and Mueschke Road in Cypress See More Collapse

Many of those properties are owned by Caldwell Companies, and NewQuest Development, Hillegeist said.

"This was a game changer for us," he said.

The Greater Tomball region has become a significant player in attracting business large and small, including Baker Hughes, which relocated to the Tomball area in 2012, and Packers Plus, which announced plans to relocate to the Tomball Business and Technology Park in 2016.

"The idea behind doing that trip was to get a little more of an understanding of the activity that's going on in the north Houston region," said Kelly Violette, executive director for the Tomball EDC. "We wanted to bring everyone together, and look at regionally what is going on, and the spine of it - being the Grand Parkway - and how that really connects us."

Debbie Howle, director for the North Houston Regional Center for Economic Development, said the tour was exciting from an economic development standpoint, but seeing the vast amount of land between U.S. 290 and Interstate 45 means the region will likely begin to see substantial development soon after the Grand Parkway officially opens to traffic in 2016.

"We try and imagine and we have seen maps with dots and the Grand Parkway on it, but to actually driveand see all of the land that is now accessible for development, our metropolitan area is greatly expanded," she said. "It's just made our region so much bigger because of accessibility now. These were farmlands. They were out in the country, but they aren't now."

Segments F1, F2 and G of the Grand Parkway - between U.S. 290 in Cypress, and Interstate 69 north of Kingwood - include more than 33 miles of land that is already seeing some development in mixed-use or residential communities.

However, in northwest Houston, much of that land is untouched.

Howle said the accessibility will likely attract industrial manufacturers, or corporations looking to relocate their administrative teams.

"We receive a lot of inquiries through the Greater Houston Partnership or site selectors who are looking to find large parcels of land to develop.

Since there are few, if any, economic development organizations outside of the Greater Tomball area, a great many commercial developers could look more toward the Tomball region in an effort to obtain grant or incentive funding to help with infrastructure costs, as well as to provide direction with the Tomball City Council.

"The message was relayed over and over of this really being a game changer for us," Violette said. "I think this really opened everyone's eyes and brought us together as a region."
A strong team culture is an integral part of successful ventures. A motivated team can translate into better work productivity, increased product quality, enhanced customer support and overall office spirit.

Related: How to Build Social Capital Within Your Team

Benefits like these are the reasons that the best places to work are those that foster team culture. (Work-life balance and a healthy work environment are close offshoots.)

For examples, consider a list titled "Baltimore's Best Places to Work in 2015." The list's winners featured such perks as bring your pet to work day, paintball outings and office gyms.

Similarly, free daily lunches, volunteer days and family games were shared themes among Crain's New York Business' 2015 Best Places to Work in NYC.

As these lists revealed, your team builds the foundation for your culture to grow and sets the overall tone. But if you try to build a structure on soft ground, it will likely fail. And starting a company with a weak team culture and scale has the same result. A strong, sturdy culture for your team established from the beginning will determine your company's overall tone.

But creating a prosperous team can be tough during your companys initial growth stages, or, worse, when it's in bootstrapping mode. So how do you foster team spirit on a startup budget? Here are five quick, practically free ideas you can employ to build positive team spirit:

1. Homemade surprises

As Jim Rohn has stated: Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time." In a similar vein, nothing says appreciation quite like the boss taking that time to make homemade cookies or cupcakes for the team.

Home-baked goods not only reflect extra care but can be surprisingly cheaper than store-bought goods (and much tastier). So, be creative. Bake or cook up your favorite dish for a snack or lunch and share it with your team.

2. Group crafts

Even those who are not overly creative can benefit from activities that promote self-expression. Art therapy has proven therapeutic benefits for individuals experiencing illness, trauma and mental health struggles, and also has professional application. Art helps professionals achieve personal insight, resolve conflicts, improve interpersonal skills and, most importantly, reduce negative stress. All of these factors foster an enhanced workplace culture.

Consider offering an interactive crafting activity to your team. For Halloween, I hosted a pumpkin-carving contest at my office. I picked up some fun decorations and paint from a dollar store along with a few pumpkins and carving materials from home. Then we all had fun seeing the final masterpieces take shape. Whether the context is an office decorating party, a vision board creation or holiday-themed activity, group crafts are a fun way to inspire your team members and learn more about them.

Related: 8 Ways to Motivate Employees Into an Unstoppable Team

3. Games night

Play can lead to more creative and adaptable workers. In Response of the Brain to Enrichment, neuroscience researcher Marian Diamond described how enriched playful environments powerfully shape the cerebral cortex -- the area of the brain where the highest cognitive processing takes place.

"There are measurable benefits to enriching [making playful] an individuals environment in whatever terms that individual perceives his immediate environment as enriched," Diamond concluded. And some companies have taken note: Apple, Zappos, Twitter and Google are just a few of the corporate leaders that have adopted this playful attitude in the workplace. When I visited Google headquarters, for instance, Lego bins were plentiful, followed by Foosball tables, giant slides and a variety of games for employees.

Certainly, you dont need Googles budget to tap into these benefits of play. Hosting a games night is sure to inspire your team's creative spirit. Grab a deck of cards and chips for a fun poker night or, better yet, have each of your team members bring his or her favorite game to your party. Games are an effective way to relieve stress, promote team conversation and inspire team spirit.

4. Motivational content

According to a 2013 State of the Global Workplace study from Gallup, only 13 percent of employees surveyed worldwide considered themselves to be engaged. The bulk of "unengaged" employees, meanwhile, indicates a lack of motivation in the work environment. An occasional inspirational quote or message to your team is an affordable idea that can go a long way to improving employee motivation and commitment to your company.

As this same study showed, 67 percent of employees surveyed reported feeling engaged when their managers focused on positive characteristics.To tap into this insight, reflect on what personally motivates you.

Do you have favorite quotes, TEDtalks, music, articles, books or videos that inspire you? Share that content with your team. A simple quote emailed at the start of the day, or a funny photo at the end of a long days work, can help keep spirits high and create a positive team mood.

5. Recognition

Recognition is the best way to make your team feel valued and appreciated, which in turn will build your companys progress. As an American Psychological Association Harris Interactive 2012 Workplace Survey indicated, employees who reported feeling valued were also 60 percent more likely to do their very best for their employers.

Fortunately, recognition need not be an expensive proposition. While employee incentives are part of a $100-plus billion industry, non-cash incentives make up 46 percent. Verbal recognition and a pat on the back can go a long way. A recognition strategy could be as simple as sending a shout-out on Friday to recognize a members progress or emailing a quick digital card to the "team member of the month."

These small gestures not only show that you care and you value your teams efforts, they can enhance your teams self-confidence. The key to building team culture is to remember that your foundation is built on attitude and motivation. Activities that enhance self-esteem, promote expression and create positive memories contribute to your overall team spirit.

Related: 3 Ways to Know If You Have the Right Team for 2016 and Beyond

Related:

5 Ways to Foster Team Culture on a Startup Budget

Having an Ego Is Healthy. Letting It Get Between You and Your Co-Workers Is Not.

Finding the Right Second-in-Command Is the Biggest Decision An Entrepreneur Will Make



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Police in Oakland arrested a 15-year-old boy on Monday in the December killing of a teen who was considered a grandson to Oaklands City Council president.

The juvenile suspect, who was not identified because of his age, was charged with murder in the shooting of 17-year-old Torian Hughes.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Azerbaijan increased the production of tank gas in 2015, Rahman Gurbanov, the vice-president for oil and gas production and transportation of the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), said in an interview with Natural Gas Europe.

"The production of tank gas exceeded 18.9 b c m in Azerbaijan for the first time, which is 0.2 billion more than in 2014," he said.

"The production of tank gas increased at both Shah Deniz gas condensate field and the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields due to the associated gas," he said. "Some 9.9 b c m of gas were produced at Shah Deniz field in 2015. However, the total volume of gas production in Azerbaijan amounted to 29.4 b c m in 2015, which is 0.2 b c m less than in 2014."

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) produced 6.33 b c m of gas from January-November 2015 compared to 6.65 b c m in the same period in 2014.

SOCAR produced 7.22 b c m of gas in 2014, compared to 7.31 b c m in 2013.
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs growing support among Californias hard-core conservatives and evangelical voters has pushed him out in front of Donald Trump among likely voters in the states June 7 Republican presidential primary, a new Field Poll shows.

While Cruzs 25 to 23 percent lead over the billionaire businessman is a statistical tie, the freshman senators position is stronger since plenty of California Republicans are scared to death of seeing Trump as their partys nominee.

In a state where 28 percent of likely Republican voters say theyd be upset if Trump was on the ballot come November, Trump doesnt have much room for growth, said Mark DiCamillo, the polls director. He has his support, but theres an upper limit.

Trump and Cruz are running well ahead of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who at 13 percent is the only other candidate polling in double digits. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who led the state polls in February and May, mirrored his slide in the national polls and saw his California support slip to 4 percent, down from 8 percent in October and 16 percent in February.

More for you Candidates ramp up campaigns as Iowa caucuses approach

Even worse, 58 percent of likely GOP voters have an unfavorable opinion of Bush, and 55 percent would be either dissatisfied or upset to see him as the nominee.

Even in the party, (Bush) doesnt stand up well, DiCamillo said. Its hard to see how he regains his footing.

The new poll is a snapshot of a very dynamic process, and changes are going to continue, he added. But the numbers behind the horse race show just how narrow a path to victory Trump, who has been the national front-runner for months, has in California.

Trump, for example, is the second choice for only about 11 percent of likely Republican voters, compared with 22 percent for Cruz, 14 percent for Rubio and 8 percent for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and businesswoman Carly Fiorina.

Low favorable ratings

Only 51 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Trump, compared with 69 percent for Cruz, 61 percent for Rubio, 60 percent for neurosurgeon Ben Carson and 52 percent for Christie. Trumps 45 percent unfavorable rating is topped only by Bushs.

Typically, its much more difficult to change peoples minds if they already are opposed to you, DiCamillo said.

That ability to gather new support is likely to be a deal changer by the time Californians go to the polls at what will be the tail end of a long, hard-fought GOP primary season. With delegate selection opening with the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9, the South Carolina primary on Feb. 27 and then a full slate of primaries in early March and beyond, the number of hopefuls in the GOP race, which stands now at 11, probably will be trimmed considerably by June 7.

And as each candidate fades or drops out, his or her support will be divvied up among those still in the race, with those suddenly bereft voters moving to their newfound favorites.

Cruz rises as others fall

Thats already happening in California, where Cruz saw his support leap from sixth place  at 6 percent  in October to first place at 25 percent now, thanks in part to falling support for Carson (15 to 9 percent), Fiorina (13 to 3 percent) and Bush.

This poll could be a harbinger of what will happen by the time the California primary comes around, DiCamillo said. And Trumps strength seems very thin.

Trumps support in California rose from 17 percent in October to 23 percent now, while Rubios support rose from 10 to 13 percent.

Cruzs strength is among the strongly conservative voters who make up 53 percent of Californias likely GOP voters and self-identified evangelicals, who are 42 percent of the Republican electorate. While he holds a 33 to 28 percent lead over Trump among those conservatives, that widens to a 29 to 18 percent margin with evangelicals.

Cruz also leads among younger Republicans, with Trump the favorite of Republicans over 50.

While Rubio is well behind the top two, he is running stronger among more moderate Republicans, putting him in a position to compete for the same voters as Christie and Bush.

Rubio is in a strong position for movement and, overall, is not doing that badly, DiCamillo said.

The race is certainly in flux, and Im certainly not saying anything is hard and fast, he added.

The poll is based on a telephone survey taken between Dec. 16 and Jan. 3 of 1,003 registered voters, including 325 Republicans considered likely to vote in the states presidential primary. The margin of error is plus or minus 5.6 percentage points.
A Walnut Creek man, with an apparent vendetta against his former wedding party, went on a fiery rampage through Contra Costa County, tossing Molotov cocktails and leaving joker playing cards at the homes of his victims, police said Tuesday.

The wild case all came together Christmas Eve when authorities identified 33-year-old Joshua Van Buskirk as a suspect in a string of arson fires in Antioch, Concord, and Pleasant Hill.

Van Buskirk was arrested and later hit with charges, including arson and child endangerment. He is being held in Contra Costa County Jail in Martinez on $2.1 million bail.

The bizarre case began on Oct. 12 with an unusual truck fire on the 100 block of Gregory Lane in Pleasant Hill  right around the time Van Buskirk and his wife were going through a divorce, Contra Costa County Superior Court records show.

Someone had torched a Ford Ranger by pouring gasoline on the hood and igniting it with a match, said Cpl. Chris Blakely of the Concord Police Department.

At the scene, though, the apparent firebug left a confounding clue: the joker from a deck of playing cards.

The case went cold until Dec. 23 when someone again splashed gas and set another pickup truck ablaze  this time on the 400 block of Ridgewood Court in Antioch, said Fire Marshal Robert Marshall with the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District.

At that scene, someone left the joker card along with some sex lubricant, Blakely said.

The next day, the attacker hurled Molotov cocktails at a home on the 3600 block of Walnut Avenue in Concord. Several fires burned in front of the home, but no significant damage was reported.

That same day police were called to a house on the 4100 block of Churchill Drive in Concord where the arsonist exploded a Molotov cocktail and partially burned the homes garage door. The assailant struck while a family  including several children  was sleeping inside, Marshall said. At the scene, the suspect left a dog collar on the front gate with joker and ace of spades playing cards attached.

Investigators quickly identified Van Buskirk as a suspect when they linked the victims in each of the arson fires to his wedding party, police said.

When police showed up at Van Buskirks home on Dec. 24, that same day as two of the arson fires, they found several more Molotov cocktails and a list of more potential targets, Blakely said.

Officers arrested Van Buskirk without incident. He was charged on Dec. 29 with arson to an inhabited dwelling, three counts of possessing Molotov cocktails, two counts of child endangerment and three counts of arson to property.

According to court records, Van Buskirk and his wife divorced in October  roughly one month after she filed a restraining order against him  and right around the time of the first reported arson.

It was not immediately clear why Van Buskirk allegedly committed the arson spree.

The motive is still unclear, Blakely said. But its possible he suffers from some mental health issues.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

At least three people were killed in a fire that occurred at Phase 14 of Iran's South Pars gas field.

Three workers died from suffocation, while several other people were injured in the incident, Abbas Jamshidi, governor of Iran's southern Kangan city said, the official news agency IRNA reported Jan. 5.

"The incident took place Jan. 4 evening, while workers were insulating a 36-inch gas transmission pipe as glue used for insulating caught fire," Jamshidi explained.

He further said that experts started an investigation into the incident.

South Pars, divided into 29 development phases, contains 40 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. It covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers are situated in Qatar's territorial waters.
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The shadow of the Sandy Hook shootings again hung over the White House as President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined actions his administration will take to stem the tide of gun violence, including increased pressure on informal gun sellers to obtain federal licenses and conduct background checks.

Speaking in the East Room packed with shooting survivors and relatives  including several from Newtown  Obama wiped away tears as he said the right to life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence had been stripped from ... first-graders in Newtown. First-graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.

Obama added: Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad.

Mark Barden, who lost his son, Daniel, at the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings and who introduced Obama on Tuesday, said the presidents emotions resonated with all in the room.

More Information President Obama's executive actions to reduce gun violence Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn't matter where you conduct your business-from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you're in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks. ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history records and criminal dispositions, information on persons disqualified because of a mental illness, and qualifying crimes of domestic violence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient. The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. The FBI will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process these background checks. Make our communities safer from gun violence The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws. The President's FY2017 budget will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws. ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network. ATF is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit. The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorney's Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts. Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care. The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons. The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons. Shape the future of gun safety technology The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology The President has also directed the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety. See More Collapse

It touched everyone deep inside their souls, Barden said after the rollout. At the end of the day, the president is a dad.

Jimmy Greene, a jazz composer and saxophonist who lost his 6-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, at Sandy Hook and who composed an album Beautiful Life to her memory, said he was very proud of Obama.

Greene was among 13 relatives of victims or gunshot survivors who stood to Obamas right as the president addressed the crowd.

Greene recalled his last trip to the White House in 2013, just four months after Sandy Hook, when the Senate blocked a proposed expansion of background checks.

That was not a very inspiring day, but today was much different, he said. Today theres motion, theres executive orders, theres going to be action, theres going to be change. Even if its small and incremental, its in the right direction.

Strengthening regulations

Underneath the highly charged feelings on display in and out of the White House was a series of technical adjustments to gun regulations that administration officials insisted were aimed at bolstering current law rather than doing an end-run around the Republican Congress, which has no appetite for passing new gun laws.

Chief among these is renewed emphasis by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that those who fits the laws federal licensing requirement for anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must get a license.

Federal licensees who typically operate gun shops have been required to carry out background checks on each sale, whereas occasional sellers at gun shows and others involved in strictly private transactions have not.

The presidents measures propose budgeting the addition of 200 ATF agents and investigators to carry out beefed-up enforcement, and 230 examiners for the FBIs National Instant Criminal Background Check System  NICS  which performs the checks to make sure gun customers are not felons, illegal immigrants, mentally impaired, domestic abuses or have any other disqualifications.

The president earmarked an extra $500 million to combat mental illness, which often undergirds acts of gun violence.

The measures emphasize smart-gun technology to keep guns out of the hands of anyone other than rightful owners, and a requirement that legal entities such as trusts must get background checks when purchasing weapons.

Some gun-control advocates had called for a numeric limit to be imposed on unlicensed sellers, beyond which they must get a license. Some had mentioned setting the limit at 50 guns a year  requiring anyone who sells more than that to be licensed and run background checks. The White House measure did not establish such a limit.

U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn. who attended the White House event, insisted there is more to determining who should (and should not) get a license than numbers.

The answer is not to harass hunters and collectors, Esty said. Theyre not the ones killing people.

The dividing line on which sellers do and do not require a license could hinge on whether the seller has a business card or sells weapons in their original packaging.

Esty noted the rise of gun sales on the Internet, a category that didnt exist 20 or 30 years ago when the most recent laws governing licenses and background checks were formulated. One area that the FBI and ATF likely will focus on is the Dark Net, a shadowy underground online network in which guns are bought and traded with no oversight whatsoever.

The presidential initiatives evoked derision from Republicans, especially those contending for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. New York billionaire developer Donald Trump said Monday that pretty soon, you wont be able to get guns.

Connecticut at forefront

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, who was at the White House gathering, dismissed their objections.

Its how many people can get out of a clown car at one time? he said. Its a substantial test, which theyre all passing.

Malloy embraced his reputation as a state-level champion of keeping guns out of dangerous hands, as compared to states such as Texas and Florida that are more amenable to gun rights.

If you want to increase your chances of dying because of gun violence, there are states you should move to, Malloy said. And Connecticut is not one of them.

Obama was careful to reiterate his support for Second Amendment rights of qualified individuals to own guns, insisting this is not a plot to take away everybodys guns.

Nevertheless, he argued, Second Amendment rights had to be balanced against other rights including freedom of religion and peaceful assembly, which Obama said were violated when shooters opened fire at a church in Charleston, S.C., and a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in addition to Sandy Hook.

So the gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they cannot hold America hostage, Obama said. We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom.

The president indirectly praised Connecticut and its tough gun law adopted after the Newtown shooting by comparing the state to Missouri, which went in the opposite direction and loosened its gun laws.

Gun deaths (in Connecticut) decreased by 40 percent  40 percent! Obama said as the audience applauded. Meanwhile, since Missouri repealed a law requiring comprehensive background checks and purchase permits, gun deaths have increased to almost 50 percent higher than the national average.

The month after the Sandy Hook shootings, Obama issued executive orders that similarly were aimed at strengthening existing gun laws and protecting Americans against random shootings. But mass shootings have continued in regular succession, including ones in Roseburg, Ore., and San Bernardino, Calif.

Barden, who introduced Obama at a previous gathering, said he and other supporters of these measures had to be patient and stay in it for the long haul.

When youre talking about influencing attitudes and behaviors of the American public, thats a long process, he said. I see this moment today as part of that process.

dan@hearstdc.com
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5



By Vagif Sharifov - Trend:



Iran and Saudi Arabia, who seek to hold leading positions in the Middle East in particular and in the Islamic world in general, are engaged in an open conflict with each other - the second time in the past 30 years.



Relations between the two oil giants in the Gulf were cordial in 1960s-1970s and have deteriorated after the revolution in Iran. The relations greatly deteriorated in July 1987 when Iranian pilgrims staged a demonstration in Mecca in support of Tehran. This resulted in clashes with Saudi police and left 275 dead Iranians. Afterwards, the relations between the two countries were inconsistent and resumed only after a long hiatus.



One of the spiritual leaders of the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia was executed there in early 2016. He was sentenced to death in 2015 for disobeying the authorities, inciting riots and resisting police. In response, protesters set fire to the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran.



The conflict with Saudi Arabia, which recently has been holding a principled position in the hydrocarbon export volume, occurred amid the supply of the first batch of oil by Iran to the EU in January.



OPEC's policy, in which Riyadh has a leading position, has, for the last several years, included the maintenance of low oil prices to expand its own share on the global market through dumping.



By supplying the first oil to the EU, Iran joined the fight for the European market. The US appeared on this market in January. In principle, such a supplier as Tehran is unfavorable for the US. The conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia caused a short-day rise in oil prices up to $38.4 per barrel on the ICE in London.



Later, the prices began to fall again. Brent Dated Spot cost $36.5 per barrel Jan. 4. By the way, a similar situation with oil prices occurred in July 1987 when the first evident conflict occurred between the two countries. Back then Brent price increased to $20.65 per barrel compared to $19 preserved on average since early 1987. The price has reached $18-19 per barrel again since mid-August, when the peak of the conflict passed.



The European banks have predicted this week that the oil price will drop to $30 per barrel in the first six months of 2016 due to the excess supply. Such a "glut" can be created by Iran and the US. It can be supported by Saudi Arabia and Russia, which will not want to give away its traditional sales markets.



Saudi Arabia and Bahrain broke off the diplomatic relations with Iran. The fact that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are Tehran's partners in OPEC - the organization seeking to maintain the world oil balance at an effective level for everybody, is noteworthy.



During the last period, which has been observed for many years, and this fact is recognized by many large Western experts, OPEC has ceased to perform its primary function, "sliding down" to a commercial company, which serves the interests of certain countries. The conflict between Tehran and Riyadh will certainly have a negative impact on the internal structure of the OPEC and the cartel's implementation of its quotas for the supply of oil to the world market.



Iran can continue to supply oil to the EU on near-market conditions to ensure quick fast foreign currency earnings and obtain a market share as long as economy of the state budget allows it to do so, and Saudi Arabia will continue to fight with Russia for old and new customers.



The US will also supply oil until the world price is less than the break-even price of supplies. The significant decline in oil prices will reduce investment in the industry, cut jobs in the world economy, which will constantly decline. Looking at the history of oil industry over the last 60 years, one can notice that namely after bringing the situation to such absurd, the prices began to rise until their values tripled.



First of all, the prices may increase in reaction for the potential threat of failures in supply of raw materials via the Strait of Hormuz, which is of strategic importance to the world market, through which one-third of the world's maritime oil supplies pass. The northern coast of the strait belongs to Iran, the southern - to the United Arab Emirates, which have lowered the rank of its embassy in Tehran as a result of the recent conflict.



For temporary diversification and security of oil supplies to the world market, Iran can potentially start transportation through Azerbaijan, which has an extensive network of oil pipelines. Technically, Iran can deliver its oil to Baku via the Caspian Sea or railway with a view to its subsequent export via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline with access to the Mediterranean Sea. However, the economy of such deliveries should be seriously studied, especially against the background of low global oil prices.



Thus, on one hand, a mess in the OPEC may lead to uncontrolled oil supplies to the global market, which would reduce oil prices to historic lows, on the other hand - the deliberate blocking or, at least, a threat of restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz with the further development of the conflict may cause an increase in oil futures prices.



Vagif Sharifov is an analyst, expert in oil and energy markets.

Follow him on Twitter: @VagifSharifov


Tehran, Iran

When a Saudi state executioner beheaded the prominent Shiite dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday, the Shiite theocracy in Iran took it as a deliberate provocation by its regional rival and dusted off its favored playbook, unleashing hard-liner anger on the streets.

Within hours of the execution, nationalist Iranian websites were calling for demonstrations in front of the Saudi mission in Tehran and its consulate in the eastern Iranian city of Mashad. The police, outnumbered, looked the other way as angry protesters set the embassy ablaze with firebombs, climbed the fences and vandalized parts of the building.

Now, Iranian leaders are suddenly forced to reckon with whether they played into the Saudis' hands, finding themselves more isolated and in crisis at a time they had been hoping to emerge from international sanctions as an accepted global player.

"They knew we couldn't look the other way," said Fazel Meybodi, a cleric from the Iranian holy city of Qum, one of the world's main centers of Shiite theology. "That they would actually go ahead with killing him? That caught all of us by surprise."

After the embassy attack, Saudi Arabia officially severed diplomatic ties with Iran, and Bahrain and Sudan followed suit on Monday. The United Arab Emirates, one of Iran's most important regional trading partners, decided to downgrade its relations.

The moves formalized the Sunni-Shia polarization that has fueled the chaotic proxy wars and maneuvering across the Middle East. And they seemed to put pressure on the United States and other Western nations to choose between their Saudi allies or the Iranians right at a time when those countries had been more closely engaging with Iran in hopes of easing the war in Syria.

Just in December, the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers sat directly across from each other during a high-level meeting in New York to talk about Syria. Direct talks among the warring parties in Syria, overseen by a U.N. mediator, Staffan de Mistura, are scheduled to start on Jan. 25 in Geneva. There was little clarity before about who would represent either the Syrian government or the various opposition groups fighting it, and now, after the diplomatic schism, there seemed to be even more confusion.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke by phone on Monday with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, condemning both the execution of al-Nimr and the attack on the embassy in Tehran. Ban  who has repeatedly urged the two countries to cooperate on regional conflicts  called the break in Saudi-Iranian relations "deeply worrying."

Iran sent a letter to Ban saying it had taken "necessary measures, including the increase in the number of security forces," to protect the Saudi mission, adding that 40 protesters had been arrested.

Some Iranian officials had hoped that January would become a celebration of Iran's growing importance.

After years of hard negotiations, sanctions over Iran's nuclear program were to be lifted. Once the nuclear deal is implemented, "Our great people will experience peace and the opening of the country's economy to the world," President Hassan Rouhani promised in a speech to the nation December. Some "reactionary" countries in the region had tried to block the nuclear agreement, he said, hinting at Israel and Saudi Arabia. "But they have failed."

Now, some Iranians are wondering whether Saudi Arabia has again gained the upper hand in the new diplomatic crisis.

"Saudi Arabia killed Mr. al-Nimr at this sensitive juncture in time to widen the gap between Sunni and Shiite Muslims," said Meybodi, the Iranian cleric in Qum. "Now they are using it against us to try to isolate Iran once again."

Al-Nimr was not only a leading opposition figure in the Saudis' Sunni kingdom but also a symbol of Shia activism abroad. After he was sentenced to death by the Saudi judiciary in 2014, Iran warned of "dire consequences" if al-Nimr were to be executed.
San Francisco's skyrocketing rent, evictions, and the tech boom were the themes of a 2015 musical featuring, oddly enough, the city's K-5 students.

The idea was so odd it was featured in a recent episode of "This American Life," which focused on one father's befuddled reaction to seeing his kindergarten-age daughter perform songs about some serious adult issues that were the talk of San Francisco.

The musical, "City Not For Sale," was put on by the nonprofit CASA (Children's After School Arts program). CASA executive director Leslie Einhorn said in an interview with SFGATE that despite concern from parents over the complex themes of the play, the ideas actually came from their fifth graders. The teachers worked with students through writing exercises and theater games to develop the musical throughout the year.

"Parents might think that the things they say aren't impacting their kids, or they might think that the changes in the city, that the kids aren't aware of it," Einhorn said. "But the truth is that they are: They were talking about it and they have a lot of questions and a lot of anxieties and they were watching their friends leave San Francisco and wondering what was happening and what they can do. So to be able to talk about it and to be able to make art about it, is very empowering for them."

Writer Jon Mooallem first wrote the article on "City Not For Sale" for Pop-Up Magazine and performed it at a live show, before it made its way to "This American Life." Mooallem juxtaposed the themes of the play with his own family's struggles of deciding whether to stay in San Francisco or not.

"So there they were, these blameless children, up there performing a kind of kiddie grotesque of the same exasperated conversation that all us parents were constantly having behind their backs," Mooallem narrated on "This American Life." "The conversation that more and more seemed to hang over every conversation in San Francisco, then inevitably spiraled into panicked Zillow searches for homes in Oakland, or Petaluma, or Portland."

"City Not For Sale" featured evil privacy-stealing tech execs, a song called the "Eviction Blues" and even hipsters. While the central plot of the musical might seem heavy for the kids to perform, CASA has a history of creating plays from a "social justice perspective," Einhorn said. Last year's theme was "San Francisco."

"CASA has this social justice mission," Einhorn said. "With every theme, we're looking at a social justice perspective. Looking at San Francisco at this time, we would be remiss to not address what's happening in the city in relationship to the influx of technology."

"We looked at San Francisco history and looked at all these different social movements in the city and talking about tech," Einhorn continued. "We were handling it very carefully, being aware that so many families have parents that are working in tech."

The seemingly anti-tech sentiment of the play was something that Einhorn ultimately had to address with parents, when a concerned father questioned the contents of the play after overhearing his daughter practice her lines. For Einhorn, the content of the play wasn't meant to be anti-tech, but the villain of the play was greed.

"The villains in this play were greed and what was representing greed was this guy who was in advertising and someone who was in technology," Einhorn said. "Yes, there are definitely a lot of those who live in San Francisco who feel like the city is less welcoming, there's a lot of residents vilifying new San Francisco, but the ultimate message is about everyone coming together."

"The kids got that, no problem," Einhorn added.

Since the episode of "This American Life" has aired in December, Einhorn said she's received a lot of positive reactions to the musical, and said that for the most part, "people really get it."

"Listening to this piece on 'This American Life' made me very proud to be part of this community of people who are brave enough to put these messages out there and to have these conversations that a lot of people shy away from or think that they're too complex for kids," Einhorn said. "In reality, it's the parents who have a hard time having these conversations  for the kids, it's a lot more simple."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

The tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran will unlikely provide a lasting boost to oil prices, analysts at British economic research and consulting company Capital Economics believe.

"Oil prices have risen, but not materially. Indeed, ample global stocks of crude and higher production elsewhere mean that geopolitical risks from the Middle East are not as great as they once were," analysts said in a report obtained by Trend.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran soured after the execution of a prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr in the Kingdom.

Iran strongly condemned the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, there were mass protests in the country, in particular, Saudi embassy in the capital Tehran and the consulate in the city of Mashhad were attacked.

Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on Jan 3.

Capital Economics' analysts believe that the bulk of today's weakness in global equities can be attributed to the negative headlines coming out of China, including a near-7 percent fall in the main Shanghai stock index.

They also noted that the impact of the surge in Middle East tensions on the oil price itself has been limited.

"Admittedly, the prices of the main crude benchmarks have risen by about 2-3 percent, but these are not big moves compared to those over the course of last year. What's more, given that the previous slump in oil prices appeared to be having a negative impact on the global economy, or at least on investor confidence, a small increase may actually be welcomed by some," analysts said.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about the pace of economic growth in China and a stronger U.S. dollar, handing back some of the gains triggered by an escalation of tensions in the Middle East, according to Reuters.

Global benchmark Brent crude prices were down 17 cents at $37.05 a barrel at 1314 GMT. U.S. WTI crude slipped 7 cents to $36.69 a barrel.

Capital Economics' analysts believe that while there are many doomsday scenarios resulting from a further escalation in Saudi-Iran tensions, none of these are actually at all likely.

"Iran has often threatened to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, but new pipelines and high global stocks have reduced the credibility of this threat. What's more, the West would surely retaliate by extending its sanctions, rather than lifting them later this year as Iran hopes," analysts said.

Alternatively, Iran or Saudi Arabia might step up the proxy conflicts being fought elsewhere in the region, but few of the countries involved (notably Syria) are major producers any more, according to the analysts.

"A renewed deterioration of the security situation in Iraq would be a bigger threat to supply, but we judge the additional risks here to be small. Indeed, there is also one good reason why a further escalation of tensions could lead to an extended period of lower oil prices: Saudi Arabia might now be even less willing to cut its own output to support oil prices if Iran would be a major beneficiary," they added.

Overall, analysts believe that a sustained recovery in oil prices will have to depend on production cuts outside OPEC and on signs of stronger global demand.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 4

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the Dutch-British company Shell have agreed on the terms of paying off the giant's outstanding debt of $2.3 billion to Iran, an Iranian oil official said.

Director of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Company, Mohsen Qamsari, has said that Iran will resume exporting oil to Shell in case the company pays back all of its outstanding debt after the removal of international sanctions against Tehran, Mehr news agency reported Jan. 4.

Earlier Iranian Deputy Minister of Economy Mohammad Khazaei said that the UK's Exchequer had agreed to settle Shell's debt to Iran as soon as the sanctions are lifted.

He noted that Iran's entire debt to international monetary institutes is less than the amount that Shell owes to the country.

The Iranian crude oil has turned into one of the cheapest available as it experienced the greatest decline among all oils in market in the past week to hit about $28 per barrel.

By holding 157 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves, Iran possesses the world's fourth largest oil reserves.

Iran's current oil production is estimated to be around 2.8 million barrels per day of which about one million barrels are exported.

Iran expects international sanctions imposed by the West over its nuclear program to be lifted in early 2016.
Tehran, Iran, Jan. 5



By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:



Riyadh will suffer from severing ties with Iran, said the Iranian government's spokesman, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht.



He made the remarks at a press conference in Tehran Jan. 5, Trend's correspondent reported from the event.



"Saudi Arabia was naive to tread in the footsteps of greater countries who have previously tried cutting relations with Iran," Nobakht said.

He went on to say that Iran is looking forward to comprehensive ties with the world, and there will be no place for Saudi Arabia to occupy a big place in Iran's plans for national development.

Nobakht condemned Saudi Arabia's cutting ties with Iran, but also blasted protestors for attacking the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

He said the protestors act is suspicious and needs investigation to see who is behind it, aiming to harm Iran's interests.

Saudi Arabia announced Saturday it had executed 47 men on terrorism charges, including al-Nimr, an outspoken critic of Riyadh authorities, and several alleged al-Qaeda members.

On Saturday, demonstrators in Iran protesting the execution of the prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Riyadh, attacked the Saudi embassy in the capital Tehran and the consulate in the city of Mashhad.

Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday after its embassy was ransacked and set alight.

The UN Security Council has strongly condemned an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran by protesters angered by the execution of a Nimr al-Nimr.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Fatih Karimov- Trend:

Storming the Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran was a "fully organized" move, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) top commander in Tehran province, Brigadier General Mohsen Kazzemeini said.

He further rejected any involvement of the forces close to the government in the attack, saying the "believers and followers of Hezbollah ideology" did not take part in the attack, Iran's official Mizan news agency reported Jan. 4.

Kazzemeini did not unveil further information about the group or groups which he believes were responsible for the attack.

Following execution of a prominent Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia some Iranian protesters stormed Saudi embassy in Tehran on Jan. 3, smashing furniture and setting the building on fire before being dispersed by police. The Saudi consulate in the eastern city of Mashhad also was attacked.

Kazzemeini further said that storming and burning the Saudi embassy in Tehran was very wrong and "dirty" move and can not be justified anyway.

Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on Jan 3, following the attack.

The UN Security Council, in response to a Saudi letter, has strongly condemned the attacks on the embassy in Tehran and Saudi consulate in Mashhad.

The council called on Iranian authorities "to protect diplomatic and consular property and personnel, and to respect fully their international obligations in this regard".
Tehran, Iran, Jan. 5

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

An Iranian expert claims that Saudi Arabia is responsible under the UN's Genocide Convention for executing 47 people, among them being a prominent Shia cleric, Nimr Al-Nimr.

"The Saudi government is liable under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) for executing 47 people who had no international crime records," Ali Khorram, Iranian political commentator, told Trend Jan. 5.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran soured after Nimr al-Nimr's execution by the Kingdom along with other 46 people, which was followed by a strong protest from Iran.

"The way the "Islamic State" [IS, aka ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh] has been executing people strikes as very similar to the way Saudi Arabia has decapitated the claimed convicts," Khorram further said.

Mass protests took place in Iran following the said execution. In particular, the Saudi embassy in the capital Tehran and the consulate in the city of Mashhad were attacked, after which Riyadh broke off diplomatic ties with Tehran on Jan. 3.

Khorram, further commenting on Saudi Arabia's announcement to severe ties with Iran, said the world realizes that Riyadh acted hastily.

He also pointed out that none of Iranian leaders approves of the protestors' attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, but rather admit responsibility for securing diplomatic missions.

Earlier, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, expressing deep sorrow over al-Nimr's death, criticized the protestors who stormed the Saudi embassy and consulate.

Chairman of the Expediency Council, an advisory body for Iran's supreme leader, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani too condemned those who stormed the Saudi embassy and consulate.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said at a press conference on Monday that Iran's security forces took control of the Saudi embassy and were acting to their duty to ensure the safety of foreign diplomats on Iran's soil.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Umid Niayesh - Trend:

Saudi Arabia is unlikely to enter a new oil price war with Iran as the casualty might be its own economy, said Hassan Hashemian, an Iranian expert on Arab affairs.

"It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia will play the oil card to impose pressure on Iran by supplying more oil to market to impact the price more, at a time it is already suffering a deficit in budget," Hashemian told Trend Jan. 5.

"No more oil price war is expected between the two countries," he added.

Saudi Arabia's 2016 budget is facing a record annual deficit of nearly $98 billion as a result of plunging oil prices.

Hashemian further said that the Iranian side now tries to calm down and decrease the tension between Tehran and Riyadh.

Following the execution of a prominent Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi Arabia some Iranian protesters stormed Saudi embassy in Tehran on Jan. 3, smashing furniture and setting the building on fire. Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran on Jan. 3 after the attack.

Bahrain, Sudan, Kuwait and the UAE have also rallied to Saudi Arabia's side, breaking off or downgrading relations with Iran in recent days.

"What had happened lately has been within Riyadh's policy and in line with its interests as an Arabic-Islamic solidarity was formed around the Saudi Arabia," said Hashemian.

He added that the recent statements made by Iranian officials including condemning the attack on the Saudi embassy and linking it to "infiltrators" indicates that Tehran is determined to not permit the crisis go deeper.

The expert also noted that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his second speech after the start of the crisis preferred to not return to the issue, whereas in his first speech he condemned the execution, saying "divine vengeance will afflict Saudi politicians."

A few countries have expressed readiness for mediation between Tehran and Riyadh, and the tension seems to not escalate from the current level, said Hashemian.

He also touched upon some hypothesis that say Saudi Arabia deliberately provoked conflict with Iran with execution of al-Nimr to show the "aggressive face" of Iran to the world following the historic nuclear deal, at a time when the Islamic Republic is trying to re-emerge on the global economic arena with the lifting of sanctions.

"If it is true it will indicate that the Saudi Arabia runs very smart policy, accurately reading Iran's reaction," Hashemian said.

The execution of al-Nimr was criticized by West and human right activists, but Saudis used Iran's aggressive reaction in attacking the diplomatic centers as an advantage, he explained.

"It means that Saudi Arabia trapped Iran via forecasting Tehran's reaction," added the expert.

"There is another hypothesis, which says the execution of al-Nimr was a message to Iran after Jaysh al Islam chief, Zahran Alloush, who is close to Riyadh, was killed in Syria in an air strike by Russia, which is Iran's ally," noted Hashemian.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @UmidNiayesh
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

Iranian parliament's speaker, Ali Larijani visited an IRGC (Islamic Revolution Guards Corps) underground missile base Jan. 5.

Iran's Tasnim news agency reported Jan. 5 that during Larijani's visit the IRGC's Emad missiles were exhibited as well.

In October last year, Iran test fired its latest long-range missile dubbed Emad, which triggered a negative reaction from the West.

Following the test-fire, several Western sources claimed that Tehran violated the UN Security Council's resolution 1929 by test-firing the Emad missile, which is believed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

The resolution prohibits Iran from developing missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads, but, Iran argues that Emad is a quite conventional weapon.

The IRGC claimed that it constructed many underground missile bases in Iranian cities, which are capable of launching various types of missiles.

For the first time, Iran released footage of an underground missile base in October last year.

The base was located 500 meters below ground surface, according to media reports.

"Iranian missiles of varying ranges are ready to be launched from underground bases once Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei orders to do so," the IRGC commander, Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying Oct. 14.
The military operation against the Wilayat Sinai (Sinai Province) militant group involved attack helicopters, planes and ground forces units, the Egyptian Masrawy news portal reported Monday.

Last week, Egypt's Air Force aircraft attacked a group of the Sinai Province militants and killed at least 40 terrorists.

The group notorious mostly for targeting military and security forces in the region. Recently, the group has also expanded its operations outside Sinai, notably in Egypt's Western Desert, relatively popular among tourists.

Egypt has been conducting anti-terrorist operations in North Sinai for the last two years, particularly against the Sinai Province previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis.
The United Nations worked quickly on Monday to salvage fragile international bids to broker peace in Syria and Yemen from a spillover of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran after Riyadh's decision to cut off ties with Tehran.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday told Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir he was extremely troubled by the break in ties, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Ban spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday.

"The Secretary-General reiterated that the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran was deplorable, but added that the announcement of a break in Saudi diplomatic relations with Tehran was deeply worrying," Dujarric told reporters.

"The Secretary-General urged both foreign ministers to avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation between the two countries and in the region as a whole," Dujarric said.

Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday, two days after Iranian demonstrators stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran in protest over Riyadh's execution of a senior Shi'ite cleric.

Ban wanted to ensure that both Iran and Saudi Arabia, regional rivals with a long history of tense relations, continue their commitment to ending the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, where the two countries back opposing sides, Dujarric said.

"(The U.N.) will be pushing forward and very much hoping that the current tensions will not impact negatively on the two peace processes," Dujarric said.

The United Nations has said that it wants peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition to begin in Geneva on Jan. 25. It is also pushing for a ceasefire to take place when those U.N.-brokered negotiations begin as part of an international push to end the five-year Syrian civil war.

U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura is visiting Saudi Arabia and Tehran this week on a preplanned visit, while U.N. Yemen mediator, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, is to return to the region on Thursday, Dujarric said.

"Mr. de Mistura believes that the crisis in Saudi-Iranian relations is a very worrisome development and he stresses the need to ensure that it does not cause a chain of adverse consequences in the region," he said.
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Before deciding to move to downtown Oakland, the longtime San Francisco art supply store Flax scoured the city for a new location.

It toured warehouses and former auto repair shops in the Mission District and on the central waterfront. It looked at the vacant Fresh & Easy grocery store in the Bayview and a former OReilly Auto Parts on Mission at Cesar Chavez.

But nothing quite worked. Some places were too small; others offered little or no parking. Still others were isolated and lacked access to public transit. Several of the best options were zoned PDR  production, distribution and repair  and would have required a six-month process to gain planning approvals.

With its store at Market and Valencia streets closing this month, Flax didnt have the luxury of time.

We exhausted every possibility we could in San Francisco, but it didnt work out, said Howard Flax, the stores third-generation owner.

So the store is shifting its main operation to Oakland, where it will take 14,500 square feet at 1501 Martin Luther King Way, a former automotive repair shop and indoor soccer facility on the outskirts of downtown. The store will open in February.

Flax, with its signature retro, tilted-letter sign, has anchored the corner of Market and Valencia for 37 years. But its being forced from that location because the building will be razed to make way for 162 condominiums, part of a housing boom that is transforming Market Street from Powell Street all the way to the Castro.

The move is sure to bolster the argument that Oaklands arts scene is benefiting from San Franciscos astronomical rents and a development boom that is swallowing up land and warehouses across the city.

Supe laments loss

Im heartbroken that they are leaving the city, said Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose district borders Flaxs current location. Flax is one of the most unique and interesting businesses around. Im not an artist, but I just loved walking through there and feeling the energy.

The store isnt leaving the city completely, however. In November, Flax opened a 5,000-square-foot store at the Fort Mason Center. Flax said that store  which caters mostly to the art students, actors, musicians and workers who staff the many cultural nonprofits at that waterfront arts campus  has been busy.

But for the main store, Flax said he was drawn to the 1922 Oakland buildings architectural features  soaring ceilings and an exposed truss system  and its location in an up-and-coming neighborhood.

There is drama in the interior space that spoke to us and played into the decision, he said. The Martin Luther King building had more of a wow factor than our current building on Market Street.

The Oakland building is a block or two from the cafes and restaurants popping up in the neighborhood, but there are plans to develop housing across the street.

In some respects, its not unlike when we moved to Market Street 37 years ago, he said. Its a little pioneering.

The city of Oakland also offered Flax a $99,000 grant for interior improvements, and the property owner received $30,000 for facade improvements, according to Brian Kendall, who works on downtown development for the city of Oakland. Flax is also eligible for grant money to help pay for signage.

Downtown anchor

What is great about this is that its a couple of blocks off the main drag. It will be a great anchor for that area, which doesnt have a lot of retail, Kendall said.

Of the San Francisco sites, only the Fresh & Easy store in the Bayview would have been eligible for public grant money because of its location. They were very interested in having us as tenants, but we felt it was a bit too far out of our market, Flax said.

Todd Rufo, who heads San Franciscos Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said he was happy that Flax was able to plant a flag at Fort Mason and that his office spent more than a year working to find Flax a new headquarters in the city.

Unfortunately, we just werent able to find the site that fit their unique needs for a space that mirrored the facility on Market Street, he said.

Much-needed retail

For Oakland, which does not have nearly as strong a retail base as San Francisco, the arrival of Flax could be a watershed event. While 300 restaurants, bars and cafes have opened in greater downtown Oakland since 2004, very little of the new business has been retail, Kendall added.

Flax is a perfect use for downtown, he said. And art supplies is a niche that has not been met at all.

Flax will help attract shoppers back to downtown Oakland, said Keira Williams, a retail specialist for the city.

For many years, Oakland has not been the retail powerhouse it should be for a city its size, she said. Flax is a destination that will add a lot of strength. ... Its a name with great brand recognition. It will bring people to Oakland, and hopefully they will stay awhile and discover the other things that are here.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jdineen@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @sfjkdineen
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan 5

Trend:

Bahrain said it was stopping all flights to and from Iran, a day after it recalled its ambassador to Tehran amid a diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic, Reuters reported citing the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV and Bahrain News Agency Jan.5.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations on Sunday and froze commercial ties with Iran the following day after its embassy in Tehran was stormed in response to its execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric.
No one called it terrorism back then, but the angst of day-to-day existence during the Cold War was chillingly recalled with the release last month of the government's top-secret nuclear target list for 1959.

"Population" was the obscenely brief title of target category No. 275  population, as in the citizens of major cities who war planners estimated would necessarily die by the millions.

In my neighborhood, people had vague apocalyptic notions, though it felt plain crazy to believe that the doctrine known as MAD, or mutual assured destruction, could actually happen. Against this grim though remote possibility, the whole idea of civil defense seemed lame, when the best the government could do was to designate a few thousand of the most mundane New York apartment house basements as supposedly impenetrable "nuclear fallout shelters" for a city of millions. What  survival in Brooklyn on soda crackers, drums of water and aspirin?

"Duck and cover" jokes and tight-lipped laughter became the real civil defense in the Cold War. It felt smarter to seek survival in satire like Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove." Or in Mort Sahl's stand-up skewering of Dr. Wernher von Braun, the captured German rocket scientist, who metamorphosed into an American space-age hero. Von Braun said in his best-selling autobiography that "I aim at the stars." "But," Sahl amended, "sometimes hit London."

Backyard fallout shelters and bank loans to build them were promoted in the suburbs, but salesmen eventually went bust peddling doomsday. Politicians eager to guarantee protection were soon ensnared in nuances resembling today's bickering over carpet bombing. (Could a shelter owner morally use a gun to deter neighbors when the attack came?)

The man President John F. Kennedy designated as the nation's first nuclear civil defense chief, Steuart Pittman, was supposed to guarantee 180 million Americans shelter space stocked with two weeks of food, water and medicine. He met budget resistance in Congress and apathy from the public. "I hate to hear people say that they would prefer to die in a nuclear attack rather than face the horrors of survival," he complained as the plan faded.

By 1970, ordinary citizens, though certainly still targeted by the Kremlin, had distractions like Vietnam to worry about. Then suddenly the notion of nuclear Armageddon reappeared with the discovery by the New York state Assembly during a routine session that the state, in 1963, had actually constructed a bomb shelter with 4 1/2-foot-thick walls and drawn up a list of 700 or so people who would be privileged to survive in it.

The long-forgotten shelter was a quiet pet project of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who was also one of the era's chief promoters of bunkers. Immediately, questions arose among the lawmakers: Why didn't I know about this until now? More urgently: How do I get on the list? And from one legislator: What about my constituents?

As the debate prattled on, a sane voice cut through the chamber. "I think we'd do better to trust in God, rather than put money in a hole in the ground where only a few Herrenvolk would be saved," boomed Assemblyman Guy Brewer. The scene faded to grim laughter, a whistling past the nuclear graveyard, the same civil defense employed by the targeted populations back home.

Francis X. Clines writes for The New York Times.
ANKARA, Turkey  Authorities recovered the bodies Tuesday of at least 36 refugees who drowned off Turkey after their boats overturned in rough waters as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos, officials and news reports said. Twelve others were rescued.

Nine bodies, including those of children, washed up on a beach in the resort town of Ayvalik early in the morning, prompting authorities to dispatch coast guard boats and gendarmerie officials to search the area by sea and by land for possible survivors.

Seven other bodies were washed up on a shore at Dikili, a resort about 30 miles south of Ayvalik, the victims of a second refugee tragedy, the private Dogan news agency reported. The dead included women and children, the agency said.

By late afternoon, the gendarmerie forces had recovered a total of 29 bodies in the area while seven others were found by the coast guards, a Coast Guard statement said, without providing details.

Around 850,000 refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in frail boats.

Undeterred by the bitter cold and the rough winter seas, refugees are continuing to risk the journey to Greece in the hope of a better future in Europe. Most of them are Syrian refugees escaping the civil war.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that 3,771 refugees overall died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe last year. It says that makes it the deadliest year on record for refugees crossing the Mediterranean, with the number of deaths rising from 3,279 in 2014.

The IOM said 2,892, or 77 percent, of the deaths last year were on the central Mediterranean route, mainly involving people crossing from Libya. However, there were 805 deaths in the eastern Mediterranean, accounting for 21 percent of the total. Thats 1 percent more than the previous year, reflecting the increasing popularity of that route.

Top officials from Denmark, Sweden and Germany, meanwhile, were scheduled to hold talks in Brussels on Wednesday amid concern about new border control measures aimed at stopping refugees entering northern Europe, EU officials said Tuesday.

Sweden introduced ID checks on all people entering from Denmark, and Denmark tightened border controls on its border with Germany on Monday for at least 10 days, citing concerns about public security because of refugee movements and border measures taken by other EU member states.

Danish officials said 18 people without proper ID were refused entry from Germany in the first 12 hours of the increased border crossing checks. Three people were also arrested, suspected of human smuggling.

In Turkey, Namik Kemal Nazli, the local administrator for Ayvalik, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the victims of the first incident are believed to be from Iraq, Algeria and Syria. There was no information on the nationalities of those drowned in the second incident.
WASHINGTON  There were more airline deaths worldwide because of deliberate acts in 2015 than to accidental air crashes for the second year in a row, according to an industry tally.

There were only eight accidental airline crashes last year accounting for 161 passenger and crew deaths  the fewest crashes and deaths since at least 1946. The tally by Flightglobal, an aviation news and industry data company, excludes a German airliner that was deliberately flown into a mountainside in the French Alps last March, and a Russian airliner packed with tourist that exploded over Egypt in October. The toll for those two incidents was 374 killed.
TEHRAN  A commander of Irans hard-line military group on Tuesday condemned the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and its Consulate in Mashhad as an ugly, unjustifiable act, while the countrys president said it should not distract from Saudi Arabias execution of a dissident Shiite cleric.

The commander, Brig. Gen. Mohsen Kazemeini of the Tehran unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, joined other representatives of Irans hard-liners in condemning the Saturday attacks, calling them totally wrong.

His statement  the most prominent so far by a representative of Irans hard-liners  was one more indication of the fallout from the street violence on Saturday that followed the execution of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

By criticizing the ransacking of the diplomatic buildings, the hard-liners might be indicating regret that they did not do more to keep the protests under control, according to political analysts. The condemnations could also be a sign that the hard-liners have been taken aback by the vehemence of the international response.

President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who had denounced the storming of the Saudi diplomatic buildings, tried on Tuesday to refocus attention on Sheikh Nimrs execution.

Rouhani, who has been struggling to balance the demands of hard-liners at home with his efforts to improve relations abroad, added that beheading should not be a response to criticism, and that it is natural that the crime against human and Islamic rights will cause public reaction.

Europe has expressed widespread revulsion at 47 executions Saudi Arabia recently carried out  including that of al-Nimr  and Rouhani said I hope that European states, which always react to human rights issues, will act in accordance with their human rights obligations in this regard as well.

On Tuesday, Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran, becoming the latest country to side with Saudi Arabia in the widening diplomatic feud, which put the United States in a bind and even threatened to set back the prospects for peace in Syria.

Separately on Tuesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey urged both sides to act with common sense.

Kuwaits decision News Agency, came a day after Bahrain and Sudan cut diplomatic ties with Iran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded relations with the country.
BAGHDAD  The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group said Tuesday that the militants have lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria.

Baghdad-based spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters the extremists have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, adding that they are now in a defensive crouch.

Since the U.S.-led coalition began launching air strikes in 2014, Kurdish forces have pushed Islamic State out of parts of northern Iraq, including the town of Sinjar, and driven the extremists out of a band of Syrian territory along the Turkish border. Further south, Iraqi forces and Shiite militias recaptured the Iraqi city of Tikrit last year.

But Islamic State has also made fresh advances, capturing the Syrian town of Palmyra  home to famed Roman-era ruins  and the western Iraqi city of Ramadi in May of last year.

Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes drove Islamic State militants from Ramadis city center last month, recapturing most of the provincial capital of the sprawling Anbar province.

All of these things add up and we believe this enemy is weaker, Warren said, adding that Islamic State has not gained any new territory since May. Militarily they are struggling, he added.

Islamic State has continued to launch attacks at Iraqi military positions in Anbar province.

Car bomb attacks on the outskirts of the city of Haditha on Monday killed 11, just a week after Islamic State was pushed out of Ramadi.

Islamic State still holds much of northern and western Iraq, including the countrys second-largest city Mosul, and large parts of Syria.

It also boasts increasingly potent affiliates in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Afghanistan.
1 Afghanistan attack: Troops rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a four-story building near the Indian Consulate in a northern city Monday to drive out gunmen who had attacked the diplomatic mission the night before, officials said. The standoff in the northern Balkh province began Sunday night when the attackers tried to storm the consulate and then retreated into the adjacent building. Two troops were killed, said a spokesman for the provincial governor. Meanwhile, a suicide car bomb attack near the Kabul international airport killed one civilian and wounded 22 others, police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.

2 Earthquake: At least eight people died when a strong, 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck Monday in Indias northeast region. The temblor damaged buildings and injured more than 100 people, most near Manipur states capital, Imphal. The quake cracked walls, damaged a bridge on the outskirts of the capital and caused a newly constructed six-story building to collapse. The area is remote, with poor cell phone and Internet connections, and information about conditions outside of major cities may take time to emerge.
KABUL  A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were wounded Tuesday in fighting at the heart of a Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said.

The death took place in Marjah, Helmand province, where American Special Operations forces have been trying to help the Afghan military fend off repeated fierce Taliban offensive that has claimed several districts over the past few months.

The U.S. casualties came during a push by Afghan and U.S. soldiers to clear territory between Marjah and the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, according to Afghan military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.

Later, Afghan and U.S. officials said an American helicopter went down in the area, but they differed on the details.

In Washington, U.S. officials confirmed that a medical evacuation helicopter that had been sent to Marjah to help the wounded soldiers was damaged when its rotors struck the wall of a compound there. It was unclear whether the wounded soldiers had yet been evacuated.

But one Afghan military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said a U.S. troop transport helicopter went down in enemy territory because of a mechanical problem, and that the casualties came afterward. There were no further details or confirming accounts.

We are deeply saddened by this loss, said Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, the spokesman for U.S. military forces here. On behalf of General Campbell and all of USFOR-A, our heartfelt sympathies go out to the families and friends of those involved. The statement referred to the American military commander, Gen. John Campbell, who is both head of NATO forces and U.S. Forces  Afghanistan, which includes Special Operations troops.

The United States and NATO pulled all combat forces from Helmand in the spring of 2014, and combat operations by the coalition were scheduled to end by Dec. 31 that year.

The mission of U.S. forces in Afghanistan was to remain in a training and advising role, for the most part. But as the Taliban have gained ground this year, Special Operations troops have been directly involved in the fighting. particularly in Helmand.
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said Tuesday he had stopped considering any projects or investments in Iran, amid a Tehran-Riyadh diplomatic row.

Alwaleed did not elaborate the details of the cancelled investment plans, Sputnik reported.

Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran on Sunday after its embassy in Tehran was stormed by protesters. The attack was triggered by the Sunni-ruled kingdom's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.
Dick Smith Holdings, the consumer electronics chain with 393 stores in Australia and New Zealand, says it was unable to find alternative funding in time to order inventory in the short term after its banking syndicate withdrew support.

The company announced the appointment of McGrathNicol as voluntary administrator after the banks withdrew their support and sought to put Dick Smith into receivership, two years after it was taken public by buyout firm Anchorage Capital Partners.

"Sales and cash generation in December were below management expectations, continuing a trend experienced during 2Q 2016," chairman Rob Murray said in a statement to the ASX. While Dick Smith had explored alternative funding, "directors formed the view that any success in obtaining alternative funding would not have been sufficiently timely to support short-term funding requirements and allow the company to order required inventory during the next four to six weeks."

Murray said the directors were confident about the long-term viability of the business but "have been unsuccessful in obtaining the necessary support of its banking syndicate to see it through this period." Dick Smith would work with McGrathNicol "to explore all options to allow the company to continue as a going concern," he said.

Company officials didn't immediately return calls. A notice to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission today said Jim Sarantinos, Ryan Eagle and James Stewart of Ferrier Hodgson had been appointed as receivers and managers pursuant to Dick Smith's general security deed.

The stock last traded at 35.5 Australian cents on the ASX, having tumbled 84 percent from the A$2.20-a-share Anchorage set for its initial public offering. It bought Dick Smith from Woolworths in 2012, in a deal reportedly valued at about A$115 million, before selling down in 2013 in an IPO that valued the company at A$520.3 million. Anchorage sold its remaining 20 percent in September 2014 for about A$2.22 a share.

The Australian newspaper reported today that among changes made by Anchorage was a rapid depletion of inventory, which then had to be rebuilt.

The stock was suspended today, having been halted yesterday pending an announcement on its funding position and debt financing covenants. That followed a A$60 million impairment against inventory, flagged on Nov. 30 with the possibility of more charges, which meant the retailer couldn't affirm its profit guidance. It cut prices in the run-up to Christmas to clear inventory, having struggled to compete against more profitable rivals such as JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman. Rivals are likely to benefit long term from Dick Smith's malaise, analysts said.

"There's going to be disruption but in the end there's going to be consolidation in the industry because none in the industry are making money," said Rob Mercer, head of private wealth research at Forsyth Barr. "They are all struggling to make an appropriate return. It has been a crowded marketplace for a long time. Any slashing of prices pre- and post-Christmas - that will eat margins, that's a short-term issue. But rivals should benefit from consolidation of the market."

Mercer said Forsyth Barr doesn't cover Dick Smith so he could only talk broadly about the industry. One issue for the company would be maintaining the confidence of suppliers, who in happier times might extend credit for up to 50 days. "That's where the banks are important to give them some assurances, to have suppliers continuing to be there," he said. New Zealand was a particularly tough market for electronics retailers, he said.

The retailer brought in external consultants after disappointing trading in October and November, and was underway with "significant marketing activity" to stimulate sales ahead of Christmas, the company said in November. At the time, managing director Nick Abboud said Dick Smith would maintain "flexibility on gross margin to reduce inventory and improve our debt position," a signal that more discounting is likely.

Dick Smith lifted sales by 7.5 percent to A$1.3 billion in 2015, although gross margin shrank to 24.8 percent from 25.1 percent, while profit fell about 10 percent, including one-time items, to A$37.9 million.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Kuwait says it has recalled its ambassador to Iran over attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic, Associated Press reported.

The move comes after Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties to Iran over the storming of two diplomatic posts in the country following the kingdom's execution of a top Shiite cleric who was also an opposition figure.

Several Saudi allies followed the kingdom's lead and Jan.4 scaled back or cut diplomatic ties to Iran.

Saudi Arabia executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr Jan.2 along with 46 others convicted on terror charges, including three other Shiite dissidents and a number of al-Qaida militants.

Al-Nimr was an outspoken critic of Saudi Arabia's Sunni monarchy but denied ever calling for violence. His execution has sparked outrage among Shiites across the region.
BANGALORE: New Year brings new hope, new possibilities and definitely new technology to look forward to in a Smartphone. Every month new handsets are introduced by the manufacturers and the list of top performing Smartphones are refreshed to prove the evolving technology. So, heres a list of top 10 handsets for the new month of this year.

Top Flagship Smartphones

Samsung Galaxy S6 Series (S6, S6 Edge & S6 Edge+)

Price: 36,900/ 43,950/ 53,900

In 2015, Samsung took a major step in designing the phone which amused the consumers with unique style and build quality. The flagship devices made some sacrifices such as expandable memory and removable battery to fit in the premium build range. However,thesenew age Samsung Smartphones have astonished all the reviewers and they have given a thumbs up.





Key Features:

SCREEN: 5.1/5.7-inch, Super AMOLED + Curved Edge Screen

PROCESSOR: Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 and Quad-core 2.1 GHz Cortex-A57

GPU: Mali-T760MP8

RAM: 3/4GB

CAMERA: 16MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing camera

BATTERY: Non-removable Li-Ion 2550mAh

STORAGE: 32/64/128GB Internal

CONNECTIVITY: LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

ADDITIONAL: Fingerprint scanner, Samsung Pay, Heart rate monitor

Read Also:

15 Best Smartphones Launched in 2015

7 Unique & New Gizmos to Look Out for in 2016
The homeless in New York may be subject to "involuntary placement" as part of the state measure to deal with them during the cold season, Press TV reported.

Signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, the statewide executive order took effect on Tuesday.

Advertised as an effort to for enhanced outreach to the homeless, the order includes a provision that allows forcing those who resist into shelters despite their will.

"Our state, which has a beautiful tradition of social progress and community, should not leave anyone outside in freezing temperatures. That's called basic humanity," Cuomo said in an interview recently.

The homeless in New York view many of the shelters as filthy places replete with drugs and violence.

"I've been robbed, I've been assaulted, I've been name-called. I don't have any comfortability with the security or the staff there," The Guardian quoted a homeless New Yorker as saying.

With the temperatures falling below 32F, New York doubles the number of vans deployed for the homeless but the "involuntary placement" could endanger the situation for them especially those with mental disorders.

"The shelters are filthy. They steal from you. The food makes me sick," a homeless woman said. "We'd rather deal with the freezing cold than be in a situation like that."

"It's violating your rights. If you feel unsafe going into a shelter, then that should be your choice," said 34-old homeless man.
Bill de Blasio

Caregivers will have protections against employment discrimination under a measure signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday.

(Associated Press/Mary Altaffer, File)

CITY HALL -- Caregivers will have protections against employment discrimination under a measure signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday.

"Our caregivers are unsung heroes -- they literally keep families together in times of distress," de Blasio said during a ceremony at the Council Chambers in City Hall. "It's critical that we give them the employment protection that they deserve."

Councilwoman Debi Rose's law makes "caregiver status" a protected class under the city's Human Right's Law, which also shelters New Yorkers from discrimination based on race, religion, age and sexual orientation.

The distinction means employers can't discriminate against caregivers during the hiring process or in conditions of employment, including work hours, pay raises and promotions.

"Many of these workers are afraid of losing their jobs because of their important family obligations," Rose (D-North Shore) said in a statement. "When enacted, this bill will protect caregivers from being treated differently than colleagues who are not caregivers."

Caregivers include those providing direct and ongoing care for children under the age of 18 or family members relying on them for daily help. Protections are also extended to those perceived as being caregivers.

De Blasio on Tuesday also signed bills related to reporting on incidents in which people leave the scene of accidents, data transparency, geothermal energy and security in nonpublic schools.
LFS Christmas Bird Count

Marie King scans for waterfowl in the cove on Richmond Terrace, at the foot of Van Name Avenue, while Catherine Barron records the birds during the 2011 Christmas Bird Count. The bird count is a census conducted by teams of birders in different sections of Staten Island. Organized by the National Audubon Society, the count takes place all over the country and internationally.

(Advance file photo)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Every year, on the third Saturday in December, Staten Island birders spread out in teams of two to five members to take count of all the birds present on the Island at the time.

This year, 49 participants in 12 teams scoured the Island's woodlands, fields, shorelines and skies for the feathered descendants of dinosaurs.

They counted a total of 106 species here, ranging from the ever-present mourning doves and cardinals to winter arrivals such as Brant geese and white-throated sparrows, as well as a few newcomers.

This isn't just a local event, however. Between December 14 and January 5, birders across the nation are doing the same thing. Our official count was held on December 19 and was coordinated by the Staten Island Museum and Cliff Hagen, president of Protectors of Pine Oak Woods.

This year's most notable avian visitor was the Swainson's hawk, which was actually seen in Freshkills Park in the week preceding the bird count. Often described as "a classic species of the open country," this bird was far from home -- its natural range is on the western half of our continent.

Normally these hawks migrate to South America for the winter, but this particular bird apparently headed east instead. This is particularly unusual, inasmuch as the Swainson's hawk is one of the most social raptors and is noted for migrating in large flocks.

When an individual bird shows up someplace far from its natural range, the behavior is known as vagrancy.

Our Swainson's hawk is not the only vagrant in the area. A painted bunting that appeared in Brooklyn last week made quite a hit among birders and with the general public as well, due to its bright rainbow of colors. So far, the bunting hasn't made its way to Staten Island.

Other newcomers spotted in this year's Christmas Bird Count included three ravens and two black vultures. Though these birds have been seen here at other times of the year for a decade or more, this is the first year they've been included in the Christmas Bird Count.

Species that have been familiar faces in the Christmas Bird Count for a while -- but were seen in record-breaking numbers in the Staten Island count this year -- include the wood duck and bald eagle.

Once rarely observed here, the bald eagle, our national bird, is becoming an increasingly common visitor, with a total of 12 eagles observed during this year's bird count.

On the downside, there were 5,681 starlings counted. This invasive species has driven off a number of native species, most notably the bluebird.

The first Christmas Bird Count took place in 1900, when the Audubon Society was in its early years. Frank M. Chapman, an Audubon officer, proposed holding an annual "bird census" for the purpose of keeping track of the populations of American birds.

Hunters already had a tradition of hunting as many birds as possible in competitions known as the Christmas "side hunt." At the time. a number of species were threatened with extinction, due to over-hunting.

There were only 27 participants in the first bird count, which covered 25 locations between Toronto, Canada, and Pacific Grove, California. One hundred and fifteen years later, there are thousands of participants in just about every area of North America.

The data collected during the Christmas Bird Count is collated by the National Audubon Society for use by researchers, conservation biologists, and wildlife organizations. When combined with data from other surveys taken at other times of year, researchers are able to obtain good documentation of the changes in the size and range of the bird populations in North America.

One example of the use of this data is the Audubon's 2014 Climate Change Report, which predicts how climate change could affect the populations of 588 species of birds in North America. The report warns that more than half the species studied will be threatened, with 314 species facing at least a 50 percent reduction in the size of their range. A review of data in the 2007 Audubon's Common Birds in Decline Report has already shown that the populations of many of the commonly recognized species have greatly declined over the last four decades.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

A Turkish Airlines plane, flying from Istanbul to Trabzon, has made an emergency landing in Samsun province, northeast of Turkey, the Turkish Sabah newspaper reported Jan. 5.

The adverse weather conditions, namely strong wind and snowfall, caused the emergency landing. After landing, all passengers were sent to Trabzon by bus.

Earlier, some domestic and international flights were cancelled in Turkey due to the weather conditions.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Bodies of nine Syrian migrants, who were trying to illegally cross into Greece, have been found off the coast of Turkey's western province of Balikesir, the Milliyet newspaper reported Jan. 5.

Initial reports suggest that the killed Syrians were the passengers of a vessel that sank on Jan. 5 morning.

The vessel was carrying 22 Syrian migrants.

Reportedly, there are two children among the killed.

The Turkish Coast Guard managed to rescue eight migrants Jan. 5 morning. They too were trying to illegally enter Greece.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has called for Iran and Saudi Arabia to be "careful" and use the language of diplomacy rather than threats, amid rising tension between Tehran and Riyadh Hurriyet Daily News reported

In a written statement on Jan. 5, the ministry expressed concern about attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, stressing that those premises should be protected by host countries in line with the Vienna Accord.

Saudi embassy and consular offices were attacked by angry crowds in Tehran and Mashhad in recent days, protesting Saudi Arabia's execution of prominent Shiite cleric and activist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry described these attacks as "unacceptable," adding that strains between the two countries should not negatively influence the security, stability and peace of the region.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 5

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

The crisis in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran can escalate into an open interconfessional conflict and Ankara should stay away from all that is taking place, Ermagan Kuloglu, a retired Turkish major general, told Trend in an exclusive interview Jan. 5.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran soured after execution of Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia cleric, by the Kingdom along with other 46 people, which was followed by a strong protest from Iran.

Mass protests took place in Iran following the said execution. In particular, the Saudi embassy in the capital Tehran and the consulate in the city of Mashhad were attacked, after which Riyadh broke off diplomatic ties with Tehran on Jan. 3.

Saudi Arabia's permanent representative to the United Nations Abdullah al-Moallem had earlier said that relations with Iran will be restored only when Tehran stops "interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, including that of Saudi Arabia's".

Meanwhile, Turkey's Foreign Ministry expressed concern about the attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran and described the attacks as "unacceptable."

The ministry also called for Iran and Saudi Arabia to be "careful" and use the language of diplomacy rather than threats.

Kuloglu believes that the severance of diplomatic ties between Tehran and Riyadh can negatively affect the whole Muslim world.

He also didn't rule out that a number of other countries, protecting their own interests, may take part in a possible open military conflict that can arise as a result of the crisis in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

"There is already a religious polarization in the Islamic world - Shiites and Sunnis, who are supported by a number of non-Muslim countries," he said.

The expert believes that the Shiite Muslim bloc led by Iran is supported by Russia and China, while the Sunni Muslim bloc led by Saudi Arabia is supported by the US and Europe.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
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context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

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/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612effe0a20)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f097a898)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612effe0a20)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f097a898)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612effee6c0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f097a898)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f097a898)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ebbd3850)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0c2e0c8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0c2e0c8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f08faaa8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08ddac0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f08faaa8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08ddac0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f08ebb70)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08ddac0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f08ddac0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e466c798)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0900320)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0900320)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612e38fb7d0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0b22328)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612e38fb7d0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0b22328)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe32888)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0b22328)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0b22328)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ebbd37c0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0b1ea18)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0b1ea18)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
China's robotics industry will need a push despite rapid growth and development in recent years, said experts. (Photo : www.scmp.com)

Several industry analysts have agreed that more efforts are needed to make the Chinese robotics industry competitive despite its rapid development in recent years, the Global Times reported.



In a recent conference, Zhang Wenqiang, director of the Robot Intelligence Lab of Fudan University, said that 90 percent of the Chinese market is dominated by foreign companies such as Swiss ABB, German Kuka and Japan's FANUC Corp., adding that many Chinese companies have been commissioned to make parts by these firms, which are more technologically advanced.



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Zhang said that in terms of product design, material and system integration techniques, many Chinese companies still lag behind their foreign competitors. He also noted that many local manufacturers still rely on foreign suppliers for their core technology and parts.



The report said that robotics research was conducted mainly by universities and research institutes, as several industry observers also pointed out, but little was done to take advantage of the findings for commercial use.



"Many research institutes are now investing heavily in R&D, but they are still somehow distant from the market," Wang Hongbo, a mechanical engineering professor at Yanshan University, said.



"Usually the process of turning technology into products is extremely slow. Currently, more money shall be channeled into application-based technology," Wang added.



According to statistics, the global service robotics industry has generated $17.1 billion in 2010, which is expected to reach $51.7 billion by 2025.



Qu Daokui, director general of the China Robot Industry Alliance, said that with state support for the sector, the Chinese robotics industry has the potential to develop and grow.



"More supportive policies shall be made to facilitate cooperation between researchers and manufacturers to sharpen the competitive edge of 'Made-in-China' robots," Qu said.


Dick Smith has collapsed after being unable to secure funding to keep the debt-laden electronics retailer running, leaving customers with thousands of dollars worth of unredeemable gift vouchers and employees uncertain about their future.

Dick Smith announced on Tuesday morning that advisory firm McGrath Nicol had been called in as administrator, while Ferrier Hodgson was appointed as receiver to try to claw back debt owed to the company's creditors.

Dick Smith stores have gone into voluntary administration. Outside the Majura Park store is long time customer, Ray Arthurs, 50 of Conder, who hopes the stores survive. Credit:Graham Tidy

Conder's Ray Arthurs, a longtime shopper of the "Aussie icon", is disappointed with the company's decline.

"I've been going in and out of stores for many years, I was a hobby electrician as a teenager and went into the trade, " he said.
Will Eve of Bondi has taken 25 overseas trips in his adult life and believes he has spent at least $3000 on travel insurance.

He had never made a claim until an adventure in Peru: in a "freak accident" at a Lima skateboard park he suffered a double fracture of his right ankle that trapped him in a local hospital for two weeks. The hospital bill totalled $30,000.

Will Eve broke his right ankle in Peru and spent two weeks in a local hospital.

"My insurance covered everything, from the hospital stay, treatment, to my flights home," the 27-year-old marketing professional said. "You only ever hear the bad stories, but it's important to have. It's a small expense in the scheme of things."

Comparison service Finder has calculated the difference in costs between a one-night stay in an overseas hospital bed, based on WHO figures, and a typical travel insurance policy for a 35-year-old traveller spending two weeks at that destination.
It was a 2am brainwave that prompted Hugh Bateman to buy a tractor from a Sydney auction. A lick of pink paint back in his hometown of Mudgee and the 64-year-old real estate agent was ready for the 27km/h road trip of a lifetime.

Mr Bateman's 22-day October odyssey took him to Dubbo, Griffith, Wollongong, Sydney and Coffs Harbour, and raised $355,000 for the McGrath Foundation. Although he has been lucky to avoid breast cancer in his immediate family, he felt called to action by the experiences of his clients and friends.

On the road to beating breast cancer: Hugh Bateman and his pink tractor. Credit:Ben Rushton

"Everybody knows somebody that's affected by breast cancer," he says.

Mr Bateman crawled all the way back to the Sydney Cricket Ground for this week's Pink Test, now in its eighth year. The funds he raised will soon be used to hire a new staffer, the McGrath-Bateman Breast Care Nurse, at Bankstown Hospital, to support women with breast cancer.
Belconnen Arts Centre: College Express 7. An exhibition of artwork by students from north Canberra colleges. Until January 31. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-4pm. 118 Emu Bank, Belconnen. See: belconnenartscentre.com.au .

E. Phillips Fox's "Promenade" (c.1909) is part of an exhibition of Federation-era artwork at Canberra Museum and Gallery until February 21. Credit:Studio

anberra Glassworks: Borland+Borland. A photographic and glass exhibition that explores the formal and conceptual qualities of each practice. Until February 7. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-4pm. 11 Wentworth Ave, Kingston. See: canberraglassworks.com

Canberra Museum and Gallery: Home in Time. This exhibition focuses on 10 homes from 100 Canberra Houses: A Century of Capital Architecture, written by Tim Reeves and Alan Roberts to commemorate Canberra's centenary. Capital and country: the Federation years 1900-1914 is a celebration of the art of the then newly federated Australia alongside the work of Australians living in Europe during this formative period. All until February 21. Wendy Saddington: Underground Icon is an exhibition mapping Saddington's career as a celebrity and influential figure in Australian popular music history. Until April 17. Open Monday to Friday 10am-5pm, Saturday and Sunday noon-5pm. Corner of London Circuit and Civic Square, Canberra City. See: cmag.com.au.

Ginninderra School House Gallery: An Artist's Perspective. An exhibition by prominent local watercolour artist Jan Vincent featuring flower paintings and landscapes. Until January 30. Open Thursday and Friday 10am-4pm, Saturday and Sunday 8.30am-4pm. Sweet Copper, Ginninderra School House Gallery, Old Ginninderra Village, 3/11 O'Hanlon Place, Nicholls. See: sweetcopper.com.au, or ph: 0417 414 641.

goulburn.art Regional Gallery: Giving Voice: The Art of Dissent. A selection of works examining the complexities of current social and political issues. Until February 20. Open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm and Saturday 1pm-4pm. Civic Centre, corner of Bourke and Church streets, Goulburn. Ph: 02 4842 3494 or see: grag.com.au.

Museum of Australian Democracy: Behind the Lines 2015: The year's best political cartoons. This selection of 80 cartoons reveals how Australia's political cartoonists viewed the biggest events of the year and pushed the boundaries while contributing to our political and social discourse. Until November. Right Here Now: A powerful regional voice in our democracy. A unique collection of works from around regional Australia featuring collaborations between up-and-coming artists and experienced mentors with a distinctive rural focus. Until March. Open daily, 9am-5pm. 18 King George Terrace, Parkes. Ph: 6270 8222 or see: moadoph.gov.au.
North Canberra's new suburb, Throsby, has been named after ship's surgeon Charles Throsby who explored the land in the 1820s.

ACT Planning Minister Mick Gentleman said Mr Throsby explored the country around Lake Bathurst, Lake George and the Murrumbidgee River.

ACT Planning Minister Mick Gentleman says the Gungahlin suburb's streets reflect Australian native fauna, which would have familiar to Charles Throsby. Credit:Jamila Toderas

He said the Gungahlin suburb's streets reflect Australian native fauna, which would have familiar to Mr Throsby.

"A quick look at the newly gazetted roads of the new suburb is a great way to be reminded of how diverse, colourful and peculiar our native animals are," he said.
For safety reasons, punters are not allowed to watch the cruise from the central median strip on Northbourne Avenue or the Federal Highway.

But that doesn't mean you'll miss out on a great view of the unofficial opening of Australia's biggest horsepower party, Mr Marshall said.

"The best vantage points are in the city and at the entrance to EPIC at the intersection of the Federal Highway and Stirling Avenue. These locations are where the vehicles will be travelling at their slowest so people have more of a chance to see them. There is also parking available in the city and parking is available at EPIC via Old Well Station Road, off the Federal Highway."

An alcohol ban is in place along the Federal Highway and Northbourne Avenue for the duration of the cruise and police will assist with crowd control.

Motorists are warned to expect delays and closures around EPIC from Thursday until Sunday.
Malaysia Airlines has temporarily banned checked-in baggage on some flights to Europe because of "unreasonably strong head winds" on the longer routes it is taking for safety reasons.

The airline did not elaborate on the safety reasons behind its new flight paths to Europe. Malaysia flight MH17 was shot down over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of all 298 people on board including 38 Australians.

The national carrier said in an advisory on its website it could only accommodate one cabin bag of up to 7kg for economy passengers and two bags of up to 14kg for business- and first-class passengers.

"The longer flight path consumes more jet fuel and for safety reasons Malaysia Airlines has had to impose temporary limitations on checked in baggage allowance," it said, referring to the routes to Europe it was flying for safety reasons.
China has launched on Dec. 29 Gaofen-4, its most sophisticated satellite for its HD Earth observation project. (Photo : www.spaceflight101.com)

China has launched on Tuesday, Dec. 29, Gaofen-4, its most sophisticated observation satellite, as part of the country's high-definition (HD) earth observation project, the Xinhua News Agency reported.



According to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND), Gaofen-4 fired off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan at 00:04 a.m. aboard a Long March-3B carrier rocket, which was the 222nd flight of the Long March rocket series.



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Xu Dazhe, head of SASTIND and China National Space Administration, said that Gaofen-4 is China's first geosynchronous orbit HD optical imaging satellite and also considered as the world's most sophisticated HD geosynchronous orbit remote sensing satellite.



Tong Xudong, the chief designer of the Gaofen project with SASTIND, said that the successful launch of Gaofen-4 marked the 19th space mission in 2015.



The satellite will be used for disaster prevention and relief, surveillance of geological and forest disasters, and meteorologic forecast.



The report said that the project aims to launch seven high-definition observation satellites before 2020.



The country launched Gaofen-1, the first satellite of the project, in April 2013. Gaofen-1 and Gaofen-2 have low orbits (600-700 km) around the Earth, different from Gaofen-4, which is located at the orbit 36,000 kilometers away and moves synchronously with the Earth.



Gaofen-4 is capable of "seeing" an oil tanker on the sea with a huge CMOS camera, getting the best imaging level among global high-orbit remote sensing satellites, Li Guo, chief designer of Gaofen-4, told the media.


A world expert in black lung disease will examine a sample of the 100,000 X-rays of Queensland coal miners after confirmation of a fourth case of the disease in Queensland.

Black lung disease, or pneumoconiosis, is a fatal emphysema-like choking infection caused by microscopic coal dust fibres.

Percy Verrall is dealing with the health effects of a lifetime working in underground coal mines. Credit:Glenn Hunt

The first confirmed case in Queensland in 30 years was confirmed in May 2015 and reported in September 2015 in the Commissioner for Mines Safety and Health 2014-15 annual report.

Since then, two more cases of black lung disease in Queensland were confirmed in October and a fourth case in late December, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources and Mines said.
The entrepreneur told Fairfax Media the company had "done very well" under Woolworths, which paid Mr Smith $25 million for the business in 1982, and promptly converted its product from components for electrical enthusiasts to consumer goods, placing it in a "very competitive field" alongside Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.

The electronics goods chain on Tuesday morning announced that advisory firm McGrath Nicol had been called in as administrator , while its major lenders appointed Ferrier Hodgson as receiver.

Dick Smith is optimistic the troubled chain bearing his name can survive alongside Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi but said its $500m valuation from its 2013 IPO was "clearly ridiculous".

"I imagine there is room for three consumer electronics companies, but they need to be well managed" Mr Smith said, noting the company had "changed drastically" since 1968 when he started the store with his wife for $610 in 1968.

Dick Smith has not owned shares in the company since the sale in 1982.

He blamed uncritical financial media outlets and Australia's growth-focused economic system for the company's financial fall from grace, saying "most people" would know Anchorage Capital Partners' sale of the company for $520 million after picking it up from Woolworths for $94 million was "impossible - you can't have that type of gain in a short time".

Mr Smith, who considers the present economic system a "Ponzi scheme", says "there's no such thing as sustainable growth" and cited the Dick Smith bubble burst as a "classic case of people going for quick growth and getting into very quick problems".

"They [Woolworths] opened too many shops and then ended up in problems with it, and that's why they sold it for $90 million" he said. "I basically don't play the share market because I don't have expertise. I've never owned shares in Dick Smith Electronics or Woolworth or Coles or any of those type of organisations. Too risky for me."
Saudi Arabia is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Saudi Arabia last weekend executed 47 people, most by beheading.

The Middle East kingdom is one of the worst perpetrators of state-sanctioned executions in the world. Yet because of its strategic importance and oil wealth, the West can live with the nation's disgraceful record on human rights, indeed, Australia's trade with the nation runs into the billions of dollars and America is its chief source of imports. The West even accords it membership of a world body established to promote and protect human rights.

Saudi Arabia's record on rights for women is equally appalling. Women are less than second-class citizens. They are chattels. The regulation and impedance on a woman's rights flows from adherence to Islamic law.

Despite women recently being allowed to vote in local elections, they still are, in effect, slaves. They must have a male chaperone in public, they cannot drive or conduct business such as banking, they must ask a male guardian for permission to marry, they must remain covered in public. There are many other restrictions, all of which amount to human bondage.

This control over half the population runs parallel with its regime of capital and severe punishment meted out against its enemies who, it says, threaten its security.
In an Australian Muslim community that is multi-ethnic, multi-traditional and for the most part has no religious hierarchy, any Muslim individual can probably be dismissed as unrepresentative on some basis. But it is also true that talking to any Muslim will give you a picture of what some Muslims think. The question then is whether you decide this is a discussion or a political pantomime. He said something about "duplicitous foreign policy"? What's all that about? Ibrahim Abu Mohammed comes from Egypt, so he may be talking about Western countries which condemned Egypt's incarceration of Peter Greste and his colleagues but also help to arm Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, a military dictator masquerading as a civilian president who some particularly feeble-minded Australian politicians think is a sort of Martin Luther of Islam. It is also possible that he is talking about the despair some in the Lebanese and Syrian Sunni Muslim communities here feel when they hear that Western countries hope to make common cause with Vladimir Putin to fight terrorism in Syria, knowing what they do about Putin's conduct in Chechnya and Ukraine. To know for sure, you'd have to talk to him. Again.

But don't the terrorists attack us for what we are, not what we do? If you say so. Are you suggesting that people might have done something to deserve what happened in Paris or San Bernardino? Absolutely not. But it doesn't follow that what has happened has nothing to do with what Western powers have done in the Middle East. And it should also be pointed out that those powers have for centuries been doing things that aren't consistent with their proclaimed values. Such as?

One of many, many examples: the French, who are so committed to secularism that it is illegal to ask about people's religion in the census, created a state called Lebanon in which people were represented in parliament according to their religious affiliation and the offices of the president, prime minister and parliament's speaker were fixed according to religion. But isn't it time Arabs and Muslims looked at themselves? Isn't it time you "owned the problem and owned the solution"? It is time everyone owned the problem and owned the solution, since everyone is involved in creating it. Eh? Australia isn't in the Middle East. Perhaps not, but its forces certainly are, repeatedly. Indeed, the war memorials that dot this country's landscape are full of the names of Middle Eastern places to which its soldiery keeps returning, each time under a less coherent strategy than the last.

What about Gallipoli? Exactly. Hold on. Islamic State didn't come from the West. Isn't Ted Cruz right, that saying Islamic State isn't Islamic is just nutty? The Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't democratic. Does that strike you as a nutty thing to say? But you're right. Islamic State didn't come from the West. It came from the violence that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which is something that the US and its allies did, not something that they "are".

Age columnist Julie Szego says that that is a "skewed, back-to-front analysis" because we invaded in response to a terror threat and "the response to terrorism cannot, by definition, be its cause". There was no terrorism threat emanating from Iraq at the time of the invasion. Iraq was invaded based on false claims about a threat it might one day pose and even more false claims about the beneficial effect such an invasion would have on the whole region. David Kilcullen, an Australian soldier who observed the Iraq conflict from its front lines as an adviser to those carrying out the "surge" of 2007, puts it this way: " in the case of Afghanistan the infection and contagion phases occurred first and were followed (after 9/11) by Western intervention  By contrast, in Iraq, we started the cycle by intervening, and the rejection of our presence opened the way to infection of the conflict  the Surge of 2007 was an attempt to arrest a vicious cycle that we ourselves had begun." I'll never remember all that. Don't you have a shorter explanation? Certainly. You can call it a graphic failure of leadership.
Widespread flooding, a landslide and a helicopter search were among the havoc that took place across the NSW South Coast on Monday and Tuesday as heavy rain swamped the region.

Some areas recorded up to 200 millimetres, while the Illawarra and South Coast region State Emergency Services received 60 calls for help across the two days.

One was to a heavily pregnant woman who was rescued from her confined property, Incident controller Tom Jory said.

At least 21 people were isolated in a camp group near Moruya on Tuesday night.
Another day of persistent, heavy rain lies ahead for Sydney and coastal regions to the north before the big wet moves offshore.

Baulkham Hills had notched 78mm of rain by late afternoon on Tuesday - the most in the Sydney basin - while Newcastle has been copping falls at the rate of more than 20mm an hour, said Zach Porter, a forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology.

Heavy rain caused flooding across Castlereagh Road in Cranebrook on Tuesday. Credit:Wolter Peeters

The Test match between Australia and the West Indies was washed out for the day, while commuters were facing major disruptions especially if they were heading north.
A dying Pakistani man studying in Melbourne has been reunited with his family, after a federal government decision to initially deny them visas triggered a public outcry.

The mother and brother of Hassan Asif, 25, who is receiving end-of-life care for skin cancer, arrived in Melbourne on December 29.

In a statement, Melbourne City Mission said the pair has since been "a constant and loving presence at Mr Asif's side".
Anne Hathaway has beaten the paparazzi at their own game by releasing pictures of her pregnant self enjoying a beachside holiday . . . herself.

The 33-year-old actress, who is believed to be in her third trimester, is on holiday in Hawaii.

Anne Hathaway attends the British premiere of The Intern in London last September. Credit:Getty

In an Instagram post shared with Hathaway's 1.9 million followers on Monday, she wrote she was inspired to share the smiling shot when she realised photographers were taking her picture.

"So, posting a bikini pic is a little out of character for me, but just now while I was at the beach I noticed I was being photographed," the Les Miserables actress wrote.
Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) took the image of 50-Earth long plasma filament, which divided the sun into two hemispheres. The photo was taken by SDO and was updated on NASA's website yesterday. (Photo : Courtesy: NASA)

Astronomers just discovered that most stars apparently possess strong magnetic fields that can shed new light about the evolution of stars in our galaxy and beyond.



Astronomers led by scientists from the University of Sydney found out that these stars are only slightly larger than the sun where they have internal magnetic fields or moving electrical charges that is 10 million times more powerful than Earth's.



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According to lead researcher, astrophysicist Dennis Stello from the University of Sydney, this discovery has been terribly exciting as it is also totally unexpected since only five to 10 percent of stars were first thought to host powerful magnetic fields, and current models of stellar evolution also lack magnetic fields as a fundamental factor.



He also adds that these fields were often thought as insignificant in the general understanding of a star's evolution however, these new results reveal that this should be further studied.



Using data from NASA's past Kepler missions that involve sound wave measurements known as stellar oscillations that are found inside the stars, these waves were highly crucial in detecting the presence of strong magnetic fields among stars.



In this new study, researchers investigated numerous "evolved versions" of the sun or red giants, where 700 of them emitted strong magnetic fields.



Stello adds that this sample has been a large number that the team was able to conduct further analyses that conclude that strong magnetic fields are indeed very common among stars that possess a stellar mass of 1.5 to twice the mass of the sun.



Past studies only measure the surface activity of stars where the results revealed rare events of magnetic field activity. Now, astronomers can see those powerful magnetic fields near the stellar core which is pivotal in predicting change as the star ages, as magnetic fields can trigger these changes.



Stello describes these changes as ringing like a bell, where the sound it produces can reveal physical properties of the star as the team believes that these new findings can provide more information of how magnetic fields form and evolve in stars.



This new study is published in the journal Nature.


Guy Ritchie is allegedly ready to fight ex-wife Madonna for custody of 15-year-old son Rocco.

According to TMZ, the British film director and his son have formed a "united front, and plan to wage a custody war against Madonna".

Rocco Ritchie with stepmother Jacqui Ainsley, father Guy Ritchie and brother David. Credit:Getty Images

The site claims to have information from an inside source close to Guy, who stated that after being on tour with his mother, Rocco finds Madonna 'too controlling' and doesn't appreciate her 'oversharing' his life on social media.

The source also claimed that Guy, 47, has hired a lawyer in preparation for the ongoing custody battle.
Publishing phenomenon: The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo (Random House) After assessing what sparks joy in their lives, two of her clients have decluttered themselves of their husbands. These are the basic principles of the KonMari method: First, dump everything you own of a certain category - start with clothes, then move to books, etc. - onto the floor to force a decluttering "shock." Then go through them, deciding whether each item "sparks joy." "When deciding, it's important to touch it, and by that, I mean holding it firmly in both hands as if communing with it. Pay close attention to how your body responds when you do this," she writes in the new book. "When something sparks joy, you should feel a little thrill, as if the cells in your body are slowly rising. When you hold something that doesn't bring you joy, however, you will notice that your body feels heavier." Anything that doesn't meet this bar gets chucked.

Then, decide where to store each item you are keeping and always put it back in its place. Kondo has a way to fold everything - down to plastic shopping bags - so that each item can stand upright, saving space and making everything visible. (But be careful not to squeeze your underwear in too tight or they won't be able to breathe.) This method means you will have to declutter only once and then just maintain it, Kondo says, claiming a zero "rebound" rate. Some of Kondo's suggestions will make people who are already struggling to find a work-life balance sigh. Writing about infusing mealtimes with joy, Kondo notes a recent fad in Japan in which grated radish is molded into crazy animal shapes. Who has time for that? But, Kondo says, such efforts are worth it. Decluttering once will save busy people time over the long run. Kondo estimates that she spends 20 minutes a day folding clothes - she doesn't watch television while folding, but concentrates on the folding and talking to the clothes - and says this is when she has some quiet time to herself. In response to questions she received after publishing The Life-Changing Magic, Kondo says that items that are necessary but not necessarily joyful - such as funeral clothes and those screwdrivers - should be "showered with praise" and recognised for the way they make life simpler. In her home, Kondo removes the labels from her laundry detergent and wraps ribbons around it to make it more visually pleasing.

Kondo, 31, has always been a neat freak. As a child, she would pore over her mother's magazines, reading articles on tidying and organisation, and, as a teenager, she read every book available in Japanese on the subject. She became so obsessed with decluttering, she says, that she had a nervous breakdown in high school. That got her thinking about how to make tidying a happy process. By deciding what to keep rather than what to discard, Kondo says she can help people create a "bright and joyful future." Although she says she does not practice Shintoism, Kondo had a part-time job at a shrine while she was in high school, and her method incorporates Shinto ideas of order and personifying objects. "For many people in Japan, it's natural to think that things have souls and that you should show gratitude when you use them," she said. When getting rid of sentimental objects such as soft toys, she recommends trying the Japanese purification rite of throwing coarse salt on them to send the spirits on their way.

In Japan, Kondo's decluttering method has become a booming business. She used to visit clients and organise their houses, but the popularity of her method - plus the arrival last year of her first child, now five months old - has meant she has had to outsource much of her practical work. Her business - run by her husband - has trained 122 women as certified KonMari consultants. They complete a training course that involves four day-long sessions followed by 10 supervised declutterings, a process that takes an average of six months. Kondo's trainees pay about $450 a year to remain accredited. The consultants are based across Japan, and all are women who work only for female clients for safety reasons. A five-hour lesson at home with a top-rated consultant costs about $460. Kondo says she has been asked about extending this service to the United States and is considering the possibility. Some of her trainees also run a group called the Japan Spark Joy Decluttering Association, teaching classes to those who want to learn the KonMari method or start a career as a decluttering consultant. There's an online Konmari Club where members can read essays about decluttering and look at photos of Kondo's life, as well as apply for visits from Kondo. This month, Kondo will launch a smartphone app in English for KonMari devotees, a place where they can post before-and-after photos and share experiences of their decluttering.
The number of house fires in NSW has increased and such fires are becoming increasingly fatal, latest figures from Fire & Rescue NSW show. And single, elderly men who live alone are at greatest risk.

Last year there were 4070 house fires across the state, causing 17 deaths. Four people died from house fires in December alone.

Fire & Rescue NSW's Assistant Commissioner Mark Whybro said that fires in people's homes are a bigger threat to life and property than bushfires. On average, the fatality rate of home fires is double that of bushfires in NSW.

"It's the major disaster against many minor tragedies, but the little disasters add up," he said.
I was 15 and a half when I got my first job as a sales assistant for David Jones. You weren't meant to start there until you were 16, officially, but I had a friend whose dad worked high up in the company, who put in a good word.

Is that bad? I certainly ended up worthy of it.

Detail from the author's In-Book of Department Store Paraphernalia. Credit:Cathy Wilcox

I don't know why I needed a job then, but I was young for my school year and old for my age and some of my friends were getting their first summer jobs too, so it seemed time.

The fact that my pocket money only extended to one Crunchie bar per month probably helped  parents, be stingy with your children, it's for their own good!
Circular Quay to Mosman Bay

Gliding past the Opera House and the waterfront mansions of Sydney's east, this ferry trip is one of the best introductions to our magnificent harbourside. Spot the grand residence of the Governor-General, Admiralty House, and next to it, the most premium address in Australia, Kirribilli House. Make a pit stop on the island of Fort Denison, where you can enjoy a leisurely lunch, before finally making your way to Mosman Bay, home to one of Australia's first whaling stations. It also houses Mosman Rowing Club, one of the oldest such institutions in Australia.

A late afternoon ferry to Mosman. Credit:Nick Moir

Palm Beach to Ettalong

With two kilometres of white beaches, Ettalong is a hidden gem of the Central Coast. Depart Palm Beach and embark on a 45-minute ride that will take you past deep ocean lagoons, native marine creatures and stretches of fine sand.
Customers at an east Brisbane Bunnings car park have been warned to check their cars are actually locked after a black spot of interference that renders remote mechanisms almost useless has been discovered.

Mike Ando, an energy efficiency assessor in the building industry and a former Beauty and the Geek contestant, said the "phase interference" appeared to be a quirk of building design in the area.

After seeing a Reddit thread about the phenomenon, he went to the Cannon Hill car park with his FUNcube Dongle Pro  a software-defined radio that could pick up radio frequencies from about 100kHz to 2.2GHz  and an antenna to get to the root of the problem.

"It only affects two or three car parks in that little area," he said.
A Caboolture family, who realised they weren't "promised forever", have packed up their lives to embark on a year-long exploration of Australia, and themselves.

Tammy Roche, 36, and her husband Mark, 44, first got the idea to spend a year travelling with their two children, Zoe, 13 and younger son Kolton, 4, after talking to a couple who were travelling around Australia in 2013.

Tammy and Mark Roche said the everything felt "surreal" just days out from their big adventure. Credit:Epic Aussie Family Adventures/Fa

"I said to Mark, 'if you found out you had six months to live and you think back to this moment and you say well, would I wish I had have done it, you would have," Mrs Roche said.

"People put things off and say 'one day I'll get there'. I said now is the time to do it if we can."
To most of us, 93-to-1 odds would make for a clear-cut bet. To physicists? Not so much.

On December 15, the New York Times reported that Santa may have brought physics a new subatomic particle, a hitherto unknown entity materialising in the giant collider at CERN, near Geneva. It wasn't a sure thing, but according to the reports, the odds are in the scientists' favour, with only a 1-in-93 chance that the data pointing to the particle represent a statistical fluke.

If real, this kind of discovery by CERN would alter the course of a scientific field, catapult careers and revolutionise the world's understanding of the universe.

If real, this is the kind of discovery that would alter the course of a scientific field, catapult careers and revolutionise the world's understanding of the universe. Focusing on the slim chance of a statistical fluke seems almost as irrationally pessimistic as Dick Cheney's assertion that if there's even a one per cent chance that Pakistani scientists were helping al-Qaeda develop nuclear weapons, the response should be the same as if it were a certainty.

It turns out, though, that the physicists' caution is quite rational. And that there's a lesson in it for others who would jump to supposedly obvious conclusions about statistics.
Two silver carp on the Mississippi River in Missouri. (Photo : Sara Tripp/Missouri Department of Conservation)

Biologists are now concerned as Asian carp are now threatening Lake Erie's ecosystems. New research suggests that this invasive fish species can threaten as much as one third of the lake's total fish populations that can cause massive fish declines including the prized sport fish known as walleye.



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These invasive species that includes bighead and silver carp were imports from southern United States originally from Asia, that began decades ago where the fish have migrated and established their populations up north through the Mississippi River. Ever since then, the fish are now dwelling in watersheds close to the Great Lakes but not inside the lakes themselves according to researchers.



However, their arrival can disrupt the natural balance of the lake's ecosystems, increasing food competition as they will also feed on tiny plants and animals that other native fish consume as well. Apart from the walleye, other fish that can be severely affected are rainbow trout, gizzard shad and emerald shiners, according to this new study.



It is estimated that Asian carp can make up as much as 34 percent of the overall mass of fish that are dwelling inside Lake Erie according to researchers from the University of Michigan.



According to Hyong Zhang from the School of Natural Resources and Environment of the University of Michigan, this percentage will not become as high as the Illinois River where Asian carp already changed its ecosystems including human use of the river.



Prior research also predicts that the impact of Asian carp on the Great Lakes is estimated to be minor since waters are not ideal for the carp to thrive.



According to co-author of the study, Doran Mason of the University of Michigan, it is still unknown as how two species of Asian carp will fare in Lake Erie which will be crucial to current projection models of this study.



Apart from this, this invasive species can be good for the smallmouth bass as they feed upon smaller carp. Researchers also believe that smallmouth bass including other native fish species can feed on juvenile carp that can eventually lead to population increases.



The new study is published in the journal, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.


A Melbourne man is facing charges after riding his motorbike to court while unlicensed and on drugs.

The 55-year-old Frankston North man had his Kawasaki Ninja impounded after police questioned him in the carpark of Frankston Magistrates' Court about 3pm on Monday.

Police discovered his license was suspended due to demerit points. The man then tested positive for illicit drugs in an oral fluid test.

The motorbike was impounded for 30 days and the man will face $1032 in towing and storage costs to get it back.

He is expected to be charged with driving while suspended and drug driving offences.
A man who was shot in the face by police after allegedly terrorising five hostages in a Perth home has been granted bail.

Confined to a wheelchair and handcuffed, 27-year-old Daniel Ashley was granted bail with a $50,000 personal undertaking and $50,000 surety at Fremantle Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

The siege in Mosman Park ended in dramatic fashion. Credit:Emma Young

Ashley is accused of bursting into the Mosman Park home of a 23-year-old woman he knew in June last year, armed with a gun and baton, before taking her and four others hostage for three hours.

After emerging from the house, Ashley allegedly ignored calls from police to drop his gun and was shot once before falling to the ground where he pointed his weapon at officers who shot him again.
A woman has been charged by police after she allegedly started a fire at her Belmont home on Monday night that killed two dogs.

Emergency Service crews were called to the two-storey unit in Daly Street around 10.25pm after reports of a fire in the apartment.

A woman has been charged by police after two dogs die in a Belmont unit fire. (file image)

Police spokeswoman Susan Usher said two dogs died in the blaze, while a 25-year-old woman received minor burns and was taken to Fiona Stanley Hospital.

She has been charged with criminal damage by fire, endangering life, health or safety of a person and causing unnecessary harm to an animal.
Home owners have expressed outrage over the trashing of properties they rented out through Airbnb on New Year's Eve.

A San Francisco couple who thought they were renting their home to an older man from Chicago were horrified to discover the tenant was a teenager who threw a raucous 18th birthday party for 200 friends.

Reshma Vasanwala and Jim Santi Owen told American news outlets they were alerted to the wild party by a concerned neighbour.
After a meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who he had ordered to "scrub" the law books to see what gun-control regulations he could introduce without congressional support, the President announced he would detail new measures through the coming week.

True to his word on the first day at work in the last year of his second term on Monday the President returned to what could be the most controversial domestic policy of his last months in office: gun control.

It was more than a year ago that US President Barack Obama observed: "My presidency is entering the fourth quarter. Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter."

It is expected he will seek to close or tighten what is known as "the gun show loophole" which allows some private dealers operating from gun shows to skip the background checks that licensed dealers operating from shops must conduct on potential buyers.

Mike Howse, left, helps David Foley as he shops for a handgun in Spring, Texas. Credit:AP

Addressing the media after the meeting Mr Obama said he was moved to act not only because of the string of mass shootings that have struck the US, but because Congress had failed to act.

"It is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arms around the problem Congress needs to act," he said. But until it does, he has ordered White House and Department of Justice lawyers to "see what more we can do to strengthen our enforcement and prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands".

"We have to be very clear that this is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, it's not going to prevent every mass shooting, it's not going to keep every gun out of the hands of a criminal," he said.
The factory where John Lord grows his crops. "It's attracted a huge number of younger people. Not what you would first think. Over two-thirds of the company have a degree, mostly millennials and they are interested in marijuana as social change." Grandfather is far from your typical drug dealer He grew up on farms in Otorohanga, Kio Kio, Te Awamutu. He holidays annually at his parents' home on Paterangi Rd, near Te Awamutu. They go fishing in Kawhia. John Lord is one of the biggest manufacturers of cannabis in the United States.

He dresses like a grandad, carefully tucked shirt into tidy khaki pants. Maybe that's because he is a grandfather. He's in his 60s, has three adult children - one is a doctor in Australia - and has one grandchild. Mr Lord is not what you think a typical drug dealer would look like. But like any good drug dealer, he knows his products inside out, not least because he uses it. "It's not a product that had touched my life. I was ambivalent to it. I was aware of its existence. I just wasn't interested in trying the product then. "I was 54 when I first tried it. I use cannabis topically every day. I've got a busted up knuckle from rugby days."

He's not the only senior citizen who uses the products. Every week, a bus load from the local retirement village hobble into his stores to stock up. Teaming up with the gangs When cannabis was legalised in Colorado, he opened up a shop and undercut the gangs. "What actually occurred is, once it was legalised in Colorado, the gangs moved to other states where it was illegal, to get more money for the product," Mr Lord said. "The price in Colorado went to 25 per cent of the illegal price.

"That was the concept in the first place, was that legalising and legitimising it would drive out the black market and it did just that." Not only have the gangs gone, Mr Lord said crime had dropped in Colorado. And alcohol consumption is down. "Just a couple of months ago, cannabis taxes exceeded alcohol taxes in the state by double. It's huge," he said. All this in contrast to the near mass hysteria politicians generated at first. They like the legislation now, but it explains the strange banking regulations that had him carting masses of cash into the IRS. "New Zealand and Australia controversially legalised prostitution and the world was going to come to an end and it simply did not and so society was mature enough to handle it. The same has happened with cannabis in Colorado and several other states and we just haven't had the social problems.

"Those who are using the product are usually those who were traditionally using the product prior to legalisation anyway. And those people are now using a safe product, at a safe retail store and a well-lit-up car park outside and a security guy standing there and not a dark alley somewhere. It's made for a safer situation for something that was existing anyway. "A lot of politicians came kicking and screaming. A lot were caught in a situation that none understood or wanted to understand. It's been about education to get them to this point of understanding." The money and jobs created by the industry grouping Colorado Cannabis Industry has further calmed those fears. "This business evolved over a recession and at the time, young people were coming out of university with big student loan fees and no jobs. As of a month ago, the Colorado Cannabis Industry was directly employing 25,500 people in legitimate, high-paying jobs. "It became a little difficult for politicians who were perhaps feeling out of their depth, once they understood there were a huge number of genuine jobs coming from this and people were not sitting around in a circle singing Kumbaya and were doing a great job, with prospects, with benefits, all of that sort of thing.

"It's been interesting watching the evolution of the politicians in their regard to the industry." Local law enforcement is with the industry, too. "The local police have embraced the legalisation completely. If they go to break up a party, they usually put their backs to the giggly guys in the corner and watch the drunkards in the other corner. And I think you would find every policeman would tell you that. "It's a polarising topic. Other people sell alcohol. Other people milk cows. I grow cannabis. You can turn around and rail on any industry. You can turn around to somebody brewing beer and say: your product causes all sorts of social problems. With cannabis, we are finding way less social problems compared to alcohol and the great Colorado social experiment is proving that." Snoop gets on board

Mr Lord has just signed up rapper Snoop Dogg to put out a line of cannabis called Leafs by Snoop. The deal has been two years in the making. "Snoop Dogg's business managers approached us because we are the largest manufacturer in Colorado. "Snoop came for a visit to the plant and he, too, was suitably impressed. It was a great meeting. He's actually a really intelligent guy. He's perhaps not quite what you would think from his music - well articulated and a good businessman. Mr Lord said the biggest problem for the industry is federal taxation. The government takes a cut of 85 cents in every dollar. It's ludicrous, he says. "We cannot claim a lot of our costs from goods. Taxation is federally based, not state based, so at the moment there are several court cases out there trying to overturn the IRS ruling on taxation. A substantial amount of product goes off in taxes."

Although cannabis was legalised in the early 2000s, regulations weren't developed until about eight years ago. "We are now one of the most regulated industries in the world ... We have to show seed to sale tracking of every gram produced. It's not an industry for the casual or the fainthearted. "The regulations are good. The public are assured of getting what they paid for and are assured of a safe product." He hopes New Zealand considers legalising cannabis. "If New Zealand did entertain legalisation of cannabis, it needs to come along with a good social education policy. That can be built into the taxes of the drugs, so it is not a burden on taxpayers.
New Delhi: Fresh gunshots were heard from inside an air force base in northern India on Monday as troops continued to try to clear the area of militants for a third day.

At least seven troops and five militants have been killed in the fighting. Authorities said it was not immediately clear how many militants were still hiding inside the compound. Air force helicopters flew all night to assist the operations on the ground in Pathankot, a front-line air base near India's border with Pakistan.

An Indian army soldier looks from inside an army vehicle at the Indian air force base in Pathankot, India, on Monday. Credit:AP

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting with top security and diplomatic officials late on Sunday to discuss the situation, even as criticism mounted that his surprise visit to Pakistan last week had yielded few positive results.
Istanbul: Turkish authorities said they found the bodies of 34 migrants, at least three of them children, at two locations on the Aegean coast on Tuesday after they apparently tried to cross to the Greek island of Lesbos.

The flow of mostly Syrian refugees and migrants braving the seas to seek sanctuary in Europe dipped towards the end of last year with the colder weather, but the total still reached 1 million last year, nearly five times more than in 2014.

The migrants died after their boat or boats apparently capsized in rough seas. It was not known how many vessels were involved or how many people were on board.

Twenty-four of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalik, the Turkish coast guard command told Reuters. Ten others were found in the district of Dikili, a gendarmerie official in the local headquarters said.
PHILIPSBURG:--- A delegation from the First Chamber of the Parliament of the Netherlands paid a courtesy visit to the General Audit Chamber on Monday, January 4th, 2016.

Members of the delegation included the chairman Mr. Ruard Ganzevoort, as well as members Mr. Frank van Kappen, Ms. Sophie van Bijsterveld, Mr. Thom de Graaf and Ms. Meta Meijers. The clerk of the First Chamber, Mr. Fred Bergman accompanied the delegation along with Mr. Gert Versluis, the representative of the Netherlands in Philipsburg. Chairman of the General Audit Chamber, Ronald C. Halman, received the delegation. Secretary-General Joane Dovale-Meit and legal advisor Mr. Keith de Jong supported him during the meeting.

The visit was a first meeting between the General Audit Chamber and members of the Parliament of the Netherlands. During the short meeting, the members of the delegation discussed the development of the General Audit Chamber since its inception on October 10, 2010. Mr. Halman outlined challenges as well as successes in starting up a supreme audit institution on Sint Maarten. The Dutch Parliamentary delegation was particularly interested as to how the recommendations and findings from reports issued by the General Audit Chamber were received and utilized by Parliament and Government. In that regard, the General Audit Chamber is cautiously optimistic, citing an improved frequency in meetings with Parliament in 2015.

Other topics that were briefly discussed included integrity and the financial management of Sint Maarten. In terms of integrity, the delegation was interested in the status since publication of the Baseline Study: State of Affairs Institutional Integrity Management 2014.

The discussion on the financial situation related to the instruction issued to Sint Maarten by the Kingdom Council of Ministers.

It was a cordial, insightful and interesting introductory meeting. Though short in length, I believe that the contact is helpful. We were able to explain more about the growth of a national audit institution, and thus illustrate to the Dutch representatives that successful institutional development is possible through commitment as well as efficient and effective use of resources. In addition, we gained insight regarding the issues that are of interest to the Dutch representatives, according to Mr. Halman.

As an institution that seeks facts as part of its daily work, the General Audit Chamber welcomes opportunities to exchange ideas and broaden its knowledge base, Mr. Halman concluded.

Additional information regarding the General Audit Chamber is available on the website www.arsxm.og.
Three Tourists visiting the island arrested for assaulting Security Guard.

MARIGOT/PHILIPSBURG:--- The Captain of the Gendarmerie Emmanuel Maignion as well as the management of KPSM St. Maarten refuted the article printed in one of the local newspapers that states the Gendarmes and Police had a stand-off Monday night in the vicinity of Sunset Bar. Captain Maignion said the reporters working for the daily newspaper did not even contact them prior to publishing the article. Maignion further stated that the three French citizens that were arrested Tuesday are not Gendarmes and they are not affiliated with the military or no other law enforcement agencies of France. Maignion said the suspects are regular French people that are here on St. Martin on vacation.

Asked if the Gendarmes went to Sunset Beach Bar where an incident involving four French nationals took place the Captain of the Gendarmerie said that they did not go over to the Dutch side and at no point they were involved.

Police Spokesman Ricardo Henson also told SMN News that he does not know where the newspaper got their information from because he also did not see or heard that Gendarmes were on the scene. Henson said police was called when four men were assaulting a security guard in the vicinity of Sunset Beach Bar. The police spokesman said when the patrols reached the scene the men turned on the police and they became extremely aggressive and resisted their arrest. At some point the patrols called for back-up and when the four men saw that more police were called to the scene they began running and hid in the bushes nearby. Police hunt down the suspects and managed to arrest three of them. He said on Tuesday morning the acting chief of police Denise Jacobs was in contact with the Gendarmes to determine the identity of the suspects.

2 men arrested for assault and resisting arrest.

On Monday January 4th at approximately 08.00 p.m. the Emergency Central Dispatch received a call requesting police assistance at the Sunset Beach where four men were assaulting an on-duty security guard. When the patrol arrived on the scene and approached the situation in order to detain these men all four suspects resisted their detention and started to fight with officers. Immediately back-up was called in to assist in the arrest. When the suspects noticed that back-up was called in they took off running and fled the scene through the bushes in the Maho Reef area and surrounding. At that same time a second call came into the dispatch center informing them that the suspects in question were possibly military trained.

Several patrols were sent in the Maho Reef and surrounding areas in search of the suspects. During a lengthy search two of the suspects were arrested and taken to the Philipsburg Police Station where they are detained for further investigation. The other two were not caught. The security guard that was assaulted filed an official complaint with the Detective department.

The Police Department is also stating that contrary to a press release by a local news paper in the edition of Tuesday January 5th as follows; the suspects in question are not officers from the Gendarmes or from the French military. At no time did the Gendarmes come over to the Dutch side in connection with this case. There was absolutely no stand-off, at any time, between the Gendarmes and the Dutch-side Police. The Gendarmes and the Dutch Police have a very good working relationship between them and are striving to make this relationship much stronger.

Finally the Police Department is stating that they are totally not responsible for any statement made in that press release.

KPSM Police Report
Genuine Adds Eric Freedman as SVP, Marketing

BOSTON, MA  (Marketwired)  01/05/16  Adding to its growing roster of top talent, , the full service digital-first agency distinguished by its invent together approach, today announced it has hired veteran marketer Eric Freedman as its SVP, Marketing to oversee brand communications as the agency continues its geographic expansion.

Erics career-long experience at the leading edge of digital, combined with his focus on what Genuines clients and their customers require, makes him a fantastic fit, said John Grayson, President of Genuine. We are excited to have him as a leader on the team to help catalyze our next phase of growth.

Freedman comes to the agency from Quantum Designs, the Cambridge-based nutrition technology company founded by Harvard professor Dr. David Edwards. There he served as SVP for Sales, Marketing and Business Development for sister organizations, WikiFoods and AeroDesigns. Prior to that, he was with the agency Mechanica, where he oversaw major branding programs for clients such as Boston Beer, Houghton Mifflin, Symantec, Fast Company and Partners in Health. His deep experience in interactive extends further back to his work at Modernista!, where he led award-winning campaigns for (RED), Stop Handgun Violence, Rockport and Cadillac. Freedmans first executive position was as VP, Account Director at Mullen, working on Panera, GameTap, Four Seasons, Stanley and Nextel, among others. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and son, and is a graduate of Tufts University.

Im incredibly proud and honored to join the talented team at Genuine, said Freedman. Their unique recipe of technological expertise, creative progression and insightful user-centric strategy aligns perfectly with my desire to build and grow remarkable, next-generation brands.

An award-winning digital-first agency, Genuine drives extraordinary results for its clients by connecting experts from all disciplines  strategy, media, UX, design, and technology  to create experiences that are remarkable and truly valuable. Fueled by the belief that to invent better we must invent together, Genuine closely collaborates with clients to develop meaningful and relevant experiences that are uniquely designed for their customers. Client work features innovative elements and the capability to evolve in real time as needed, shattering the divide between traditional and digital marketing.

Since Genuines founding in 2005, the company has invented and launched digital experiences for some of the worlds most innovative brands. A member of the IPG group of companies, Genuines reach extends to serving brands around the world, including Novartis, Akamai, Red Hat and Lysol. Our mantra, Invent Together, keeps the agency true to its core values and fosters a collective determination to create the best user-driven, digital-first experiences that challenge and lead industry categories. Offices are located in Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Visit us at .

Sue Parente

781-642-7788
ABODA Expands Operations to Portland, Oregon

Posted by Publisher Internet

SEATTLE, WA  (Marketwired)  01/05/16  ABODA, one of the industrys largest corporate housing firms, is launching its expansion into Portland, OR. After announcing its global growth plans early last year, ABODA has been looking at domestic markets that align with its growth strategy.

ABODA Global Housing Management chose Portland as both a logical and strategic growth opportunity. Due to Portlands proximity to our corporate headquarters, the citys rising economy and job growth, the market made strategic sense, stated Robyn Joliat, Vice President of Global Client Services & New Market Development.

According to the 2015 Reis report, Portlands economy is on the rise. Home to major global brands such as Intel, Nike and Adidas, Portland is attracting the worlds workforce with the creation of 76,600 jobs in the last six months. Growth is projected to continue well into 2016, making this a very smart market for ABODA.

With industry veteran, Jana Cooper, heading up the Portland office, ABODA is fully up and running on the operations and sales side, and executing against an aggressive strategic plan. With its first bookings in the market and strong relationships with valued accounts, ABODA is set to be a competitive industry player in the market.

According to ABODA Global Housing Management president, Lee Curtis, the goal in Portland is simple, We will provide our renowned world-class customer service to clients and guests while delivering a reliable and responsive housing solution that fits the needs of relocation decision makers, procurement managers and human resources executives doing business in the market. Were excited about this move because it allows ABODA to secure its dominant share of the corporate housing industry in the Pacific Northwest.

For more information about ABODAs operations and corporate housing services available in Portland, please contact our General Manager at 503.753.2451, or visit .

ABODA is an innovative leader in global housing management services, providing end-to-end solutions to some of the biggest brands in the world, many headquartered in the Seattle area where the firm is based. ABODA Global Housing Management uses a logistics-focused approach, combining the best of program planning and administration, inventory management, execution, service delivery and technology to help corporate clients operate more efficiently and enhance customer experiences. Employee-owned ABODA is flexible enough to meet clients ever-changing business needs through its award-winning customer service. Learn more about ABODA at or call 1-888-389-0500.

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ABODA

(425) 602-5535
Edward Fiawoo, a West African attorney and Brigadier General in the Ghana Armed Forces, will begin his final required residency this week at Union Institute & University prior to completing his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Social Change. As an international student, Fiawoo is ineligible for federal financial aid and was unsure of how he was going to raise the $2,500 expense for his flight this year.Each January and July, about 100 or more doctoral candidates come together to participate in very valuable face-to-face time with their faculty and fellow students," says Carolyn Krause, UI&Us Vice President for Advancement. Edward had attended all his required residencies for the past two years, borrowing from friends and relatives and scrimping and saving.This time around, however, the financial burden was going to be too much for Fiawoo to bear. When UI&Us International Alumni Association heard the news, they joined together to produce the needed funds.This is not something Edward or his faculty wanted to miss, Krause says. It is a testament to both Edwards success as a doctoral student and the passion and loyalty that our Union alumni feel. Union is all about service and social responsibility, and this exchange brought our mission to life.For Fiawoo, the assistance makes all the difference.It is normally a tall order for me, he says. That is why I am most grateful to the alumni association. Learn ways to give at Union Institute & University. Consider UI&U as an option for your future studies  Connect with UI&U on Facebook
'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown' won't be on TV this year: How to see it
Judge Nagy Shehata has presided over a number of high profile cases in recent years and is well-known for handing down numerous mass death sentences

The Cairo Appeals Court accepted on Monday the recusation request submitted by the defence team in the case known as "Awsim Cell", presided over by Judge Nagy Shehata.

In the "Awsim Cell" case, defendants are accused of creating and managing a terrorist cell responsible for calls for suspending the constitution, attacking public and private facilities, and targeting army and security personnel.

Awsim is a city in Giza, southern Cairo.

The general prosecution further accused the defendants of planting an explosive device in front of the Awsim City Council, and attempting the assassination of a criminal court judge.

The court's order indicates that Shehata has been deemed unqualified to perform his legal duties with regards to this particular case, and therefore another judge will be assigned.

The defence team submitted the request following Judge Shehata's controversial statements in a recent interview with Al-Watan newspaper.

"Judge Shehata's statements to the press, in which he expresses his political opinion regarding events and certain movements and individuals, are considered an infringement of judicial norms that can potentially influence the verdicts, deeming him unqualified to preside over the case," the defence team stated.

The judge's statements reveal contempt for the 25 January revolution and its aftermath as well as the targeting of certain movements and individuals.

After facing strong criticism, Shehata retracted his statements, and accused the newspaper of fabrication, instigating a media battle between the judge and the privately owned newspaper.

In response to Shehata's accusations, Al-Watan published a statement confirming that the interview was accurately published and that the newspaper took all necessary precautions to ensure objectivity, in addition to removing certain statements that would have caused serious problems within the judiciary.

Well-known for handing down numerous death sentences, Shehata presided over several high-profile cases, among which are the "Rabaa Operations Room", "Marriot Cell" or Al-Jazeera trial, the cabinet clashes and the violence in Kerdasa trial.

In April 2015, Shehata handed down death sentences to Mohamed Badie and 13 others, while 26 received life imprisonment on charges of forming an "operations room to resist the state and spread chaos" following the dispersal of the two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Squares in August 2013.

The Court of Cassation accepted the appeals on verdicts issued against 38 defendants in the case in December. The first retrial session is scheduled for 8 February.

In December 2014, Shehata sentenced 183 individuals to death on charges related to violence in Kerdasa town in Giza in 2013.

The three well-known Al-Jazeera journalists; Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Greste were initially given sentences of seven to ten years in prison.

In all of the cases mentioned, higher courts overturned the initial sentences and retrials were ordered. In some cases, as in the Kerdasa trial, the appeals of some defendants have yet to be reviewed by the cassation court.

Egypt is battling a militant insurgency, particularly in North Sinai, that peaked following the military's ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 following mass protests against his one-year rule.

The government listed the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in December 2013 and insists it is behind the wave of violence that has targeted security personnel since July 2013.

The Brotherhood has continuously denied the accusations.

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China is Egypt's 5th largest trading partner and has expressed interest in projects in Suez Canal zone

Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry will meet China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhang Ming in Cairo Tuesday, to prepare for the upcoming visit of Chinese president Xi Jinping in January, MENA reported.

They will also discuss bilateral relations and ways to cooperate between both countries, in addition to coordination regarding regional matters of common interest.

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi visited Beijing in December 2014 and signed five strategic partnership agreements including for cooperation in economy, trade, electricity and industry.

China is Egypt's fifth largest trading partner.

In December 2015, Egypt proposed 15 investment projects worth $15 billion at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in South Africa's Johannesburg and China expressed its interest in projects in the Suez Canal zone related to power generation, logistics, infrastructure and transportation.

Egypt's cabinet spokesperson Hossam Qaweesh said then that the 60th anniversary of Chinese-Egyptian cooperation relations is in January and that Egypt considers the Chinese president's upcoming visit as the "inauguration of a new stage in the relationship."

China said it stands with Egypt in its efforts to combat terrorism, Qaweesh added.

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Suburban schools grow slightly, or lose less than state average

Numbers from the state Department of Public Instruction show that in suburban Milwaukee, about 27 school districts grew last year, or lost fewer students than average.
The U.S.S. Enterprise appears to be torn apart in this scene from the first trailer of "Star Trek: Beyond," which arrives in theaters in July 2016

The year 2016 won't be much of a year for realistic space movies, but apocalypse, beloved franchises like "Star Wars" and "Star Trek," and romance on an interstellar stage will make for a year of epic adventure. And frankly, we can't wait to see them all.

Here is our guide to the most intrguing space movies of year, and maybe some surprising sci-fi finds:

"Moonwalkers" (Jan. 15)

Start off the year with this weird satire (based on a real conspiracy theory, apparently): A CIA agent is directed to hire Stanley Kubrick, legendary director of "2001: A Space Odyssey," to fake the moon landing in case the Apollo astronauts don't make it. When the real director proves elusive, the filming must go on  and hijinks ensue.

"The Fifth Wave" (Jan. 22)

A young woman fights to save her younger brother and survive an alien invasion after four waves of alien attacks have destroyed much of the Earth. The film is based on a popular science fiction novel published in 2013  it's one in a series, so if all goes well, you'll likely see more from this franchise.

"Lazer Team" (Jan. 27)

Humanity is sent a superpowered suit to defend against an incoming alien threat. The only problem is, instead of a highly trained "Champion of Earth" getting his hands on the suit, it's four random guys, each sporting a single piece of the high-tech armor. The online comedy group Rooster Teeth funded the project (the team's first full-length film) through the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. It will have a limited theatrical release and will also be released through YouTube's new paid subscription service.

"The Last Man on the Moon" (Feb. 26)

A new documentary follows the life of Gene Cernan, commander of NASA's Apollo 17 mission and the last man to walk on the moon. The film features new interviews with Apollo 12 crewmembers Alan Bean and Dick Gordon, Apollo 13 Cmdr. Jim Lovell, former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, and Chris Kraft, founder of Mission Control. Those interviews and rare archival footage are interspersed with Cernan's own recollections of the Apollo program and his life. (Space.com reported on the film's creation in December.)

"The Little Prince" (March 18)

A retired aviator describes his adventures with a little boy who lives on an asteroid to a young girl on Earth. Later, she is drawn into the story herself. The movie is inspired by the famous 1943 novella of the same name. The segments of the movie drawn from that classic story are filmed in stop-motion animation, while the rest is computer animated.

"Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" (March 25)

Everyone's favorite Kryptonian alien, Superman, squares off against Batman in an epic-scale DC Comics crossover blockbuster. Plus, Wonder Woman joins the fight against a bigger threat.

"Independence Day: Resurgence" (June 24)

Twenty years after aliens attacked Earth in the 1996 blockbuster "Independence Day," they're coming back  and the next generation of heroes prepares to fight them off. Although "Independence Day" star Will Smith won't be in the new movie, it will feature his character's stepson and about half of the original cast. Perhaps a line from the trailer referring to a looming alien ship best reflects this movie's main goals: "That is definitely bigger than the last one." The film features Joey King, Maika Monroe, Liam Hemsworth and Bill Pullman.

"Star Trek Beyond" (July 22)

The new generation of "Star Trek" heroes sets out again in their third movie. This time, they're stranded on an alien planet that doesn't seem to appreciate the Federation's incursion. It's the first of the new movies not directed by J.J. Abrams, so it'll be interesting to see what the new team brings to the table. (Screenwriter Simon Pegg, who also plays Scotty, and director Justin Lin have said they hope to recapture the spirit of the original show.) Plus, Idris Elba is cast as an original villain.

"The Space Between Us" (July 29)

An online romance blooms between the first human born on Mars, played by Asa Butterfield, and a teenage girl living on Earth. He seeks her out, and the duo race to understand the mystery of his birth and secret upbringing (while dealing with the life-threatening embrace of Earth's gravity on the space-raised protagonist).

"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (Dec. 16)

The first of Disney's stand-alone spinoffs of the "Star Wars" franchise is set in between the prequel trilogy and before "A New Hope"  following the rebel fighters who stole the Death Star's secret plans, which Luke later used to blow up the moon-size superweapon. Confirmed cast members include Felicity Jones, Alan Tudyk, Mads Mikkelsen and 40 British soldiers. Stories like "Rogue One" will alternate with Disney's entries into the main series on a yearly basis.

"Passengers" (Dec. 21)

Jim Preston (played by Chris Pratt) wakes up from cryogenic sleep 90 years early on an interstellar voyage. Stuck awake among thousands of hibernating travelers, he decides to wake up another passenger, too (played by Jennifer Lawrence).

Some others to watch for:

"400 Days" (Jan. 12):In this movie produced by Syfy films, four astronauts make their way underground for a simulated deep-space mission. Then, things get scary.

"Terminus" (Jan. 22): A mysterious alien organism gives a man visions showing him how to prevent the Earth from destroying itself.

"Ratchet & Clank" (April 29):This film was originally slated for last year, but the galactic origin story of the beloved PlayStation video game characters is back with a new release date.

"A Beautiful Planet" (April 29):This vivid documentary made for IMAX screens will show Earth as seen from space.

"Captain America: Civil War"(May 6): These Avengers-focused Marvel movies often have space cameos one way or another, although this fight between Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Tony Stark (Iron Man) about superhero accountability seems particularly Earth-bound.

"Ice Age: Collision Course" (July 22):The fifth "Ice Age" installment ventures to space after a frozen flying saucer activates and the series' animals have to stop an incoming threat to Earth.

"Trolls" (Nov. 4):In this upcoming flick starring Justin Timberlake, the famous troll dolls from the '80s are aliens.

So which space movie are you looking forward to most this year? Let us know in the comments below and happy watching!

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The SEIS instrument qualification model for the Mars InSight mission in testing at the CNES facility in Toulouse,

PARIS  The French space agency, CNES, on Jan. 4 created an outside board of inquiry to examine the circumstances surrounding the discovery of multiple leaks in an instrument intended to launch on NASA's Mars InSight lander  leaks that appeared so late in the instrument's development that NASA and CNES were forced to scrap a planned March launch.

The next launch opportunity is in May 2018.

In a briefing at the agency's headquarters here, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall said it was only natural to want to have "a set of new eyes" investigate an anomaly of such serious consequence, which he said was "a real blow" to CNES.

CNES is prime contractor for the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument  three seismometers designed to analyze the Mars interior by detecting ground movement from small seismic events in the Mars interior.

One French official said the SEIS seismometers were so demanding that their development may have obscured the challenge of the titanium vacuum sphere, intended to operate in a temperature range beyond which that material is normally tested.

A first leak, appearing in November, was repaired in time for the March launch. Then another appeared, and then another. Up until Dec. 22 NASA and CNES had hoped to be able to deliver SEIS (already three months behind schedule) by Jan. 5  just within the latest deadline to make the March launch.

A final leak, apparently from a different location, resulted in the decision to abandon the 2016 launch opportunity. Le Gall said the leak source was still not entirely clear. CNES officials have said it would take several months to get to the bottom of the problem.

CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall said it was only natural to want to have a set of new eyes investigate an anomaly of such serious consequence, which he said was a real blow to CNES. (Image credit: Paris Air Show)

He said NASA has asked CNES to continue as though a 2018 InSight launch is assured. But NASA officials said during a Dec. 22 conference call with journalists that the agency's budget rules leave some doubt as to whether sufficient funds can be foundto cover 26 months of storage of InSight  assuming that the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket being readied for the March launch can be repurposed to another customer.

NASA officials said the agency had spent some $525 million of the $675 million, including launch and operations, that had been budgeted for Mars InSight.

Le Gall said SEIS had been budgeted at CNES at around 50 million euros ($54 million). Assuming a rapid discovery of the leak's root cause and its resolution, Le Gall said the 26-month delay would add between 10 percent and 20 percent to the SEIS budget.

As is usually the case for science missions, CNES and NASA are operating on a no-exchange-of-funds basis, meaning CNES will incur the SEIS cost overruns on its own. Similarly, NASA will incur the cost of storing InSight and managing costs associated with the Atlas 5 rocket.

CNES had already positioned 2016 as its "Destination Mars" year. The agency's main briefing room was decked out in Mars terrain photos on the floor and wall. CNES is playing a role not only on InSight and other NASA Mars exploration missions but also on the Euro-Russian ExoMars 2016 and 2018 missions.

ExoMars and InSight had approached their launch dates with opposite profiles. InSight had secure funding and development as it approached final assembly. ExoMars faced funding challenges from the start and had already missed its January launch date because of a component glitch.

Now InSight will spend 26 months awaiting its next launch opportunity, while ExoMars 2016 has arrived at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport in Kazakhstan for final launch preparations.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
The retired space shuttle fleet used ceramic tiles on their undersides to dissipate the atmospheric heating on reentry, but the tiles were fragile, prone to cracking and often needed to be replaced.

Engineers have always liked ceramic parts  they are strong, lightweight and handle heat better than many metals, ideal for crafting parts for airplanes or rockets. Heat-shielding tiles on the space shuttle were made from ceramics, for example.

Now researchers have used a 3D printer to make customized ceramic parts that have also overcome the Achilles heel of ceramic objects: their tendency to crack.

PHOTOS: Meet the Space Station's Resupply Fleet

The finding could open the door to a new class of ceramic-body or ceramic-engine jets, perhaps even a hypersonic craft that can fly from New York to Tokyo in a few hours.

"If you go very fast, about 10 times speed of sound within the atmosphere, then any vehicle will heat up tremendously because of air friction," said Tobias Schaedler, senior scientist at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, Calif. "People want to build hypersonic vehicles and you need ceramics for the whole shell of the vehicle."

Schaedler and colleagues at HRL invented a resin formulation that can be 3-D printed into parts of virtually any shape and size.

The printed resin can then be fired, converting it into a high strength, fully dense ceramic. The resulting material can withstand ultrahigh temperatures in excess of 1,700 degrees Celsius (3,092 Fahrenheit) and is 10 times stronger than similar materials.

PHOTOS: International Space Station: 15 Years Living Off Earth

Ceramics are much more difficult to work with than plastics or metals because they cannot be cast or machined easily, according to Schaedler, who is an author on the new study appearing today in the journal Science.

But Schaedler's team figured out how to trick ceramics into behaving like plastic.

"We have a pre-ceramic resin that you can print like a polymer, then you fire the polymer and it converts to a ceramic," he said. "There is some shrinkage involved, but it's very uniform so you can predict it."

The big picture is that this method could help rocket and satellite designers who have to make lots of special small parts that are capable of resisting the heating that occurs during high velocity air friction, as well as high temperatures generated by the exhaust during takeoff.

ANALYSIS: Could Ancient Pottery Improve Spacecraft Tiles?

A form of ceramic called alumina is being used in new ion propulsion drive, which uses electricity to heat gas and generate ions, according to Charlie Spahr, executive director of the American Ceramics Council.

"Ceramics are really good where you want to reduce wear and tear," Spahr said.

The Pentagons research branch has been funding various projects to discover new ways to build lighter, stronger and more heat-resistant materials for aerospace and military applications.

"The method described in the new Science paper brings us closer to the goal of being able to 'engineer in' desired material properties that generally are not found together, such as strength and low density or low weight, and to craft these materials into complex shapes," said Stefanie Tompkins, director of the Defense Science Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Figuring out how to make customized 3D-printed ceramic parts could also make a difference in gas-fired power plants, for example, or other types of gas engines, according to DARPA officials.

This article was provided by Discovery News.
It is uncertain whether the killing had political or criminal motivations

Unknown assailants on Tuesday killed a policeman in the governorate of Beni Suef, 100 km (62miles) south of Cairo, Ahram Arabic news website reported.

Two masked gunmen on opened fire on Diyab Abdel Latif, a 48-year-old policeman with National Security while he was driving his motorbike home.

He later died in hospital.

It was not immediately clear if the attack has criminal or political motivations.

Egypt has been battling an Islamist insurgency, mainly based in the North Sinai region, which has killed hundreds of police and troops since the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Militant group Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, which swore allegiance to the militant Islamic State group in November 2014, has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Egypt, including the downing of a Russian passenger plane last month over Sinai, where all 224 passengers and staff were killed.

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A crewmember of the Canadian Forces Station Alert in the High Arctic tests out virtual-reality gear that could help make the long trek to Mars more enjoyable for astronauts.

Could virtual reality make the long trek to Mars more exciting and less stressful for astronauts?

An ongoing study in the Canadian High Arctic attempts to answer that question. Researchers have outfitted the residents of Canadian Forces Station Alert (CFS Alert)  the most northerly permanently inhabited outpost in the world, at just 508 miles (817 kilometers) from the North Pole  with new virtual-reality gear that gives them access to beautiful scenery from New Hampshire, Australia, Ireland and an English seaside village called Wembury.

The goal is to help find "effective ways to maintain and even improve astronauts' psychological health on long-duration spaceflights" to Mars and other far-flung destinations, project leader Jay Buckey, a former NASA astronaut and a professor at Dartmouths Geisel School of Medicine, said in a statement. [5 Crewed Mars Mission Ideas]

Crewmembers will be isolated from their family and friends  indeed, from their entire home planet  for more than a year, during which time they will undoubtedly confront feelings of loneliness and boredom. Interpersonal conflicts could also prove challenging on a Mars mission, since the astronauts will be in close contact with each other at all times.

NASA is already investigating the best ways to mitigate such potential problems. For example, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and his cosmonaut colleague Mikhail Kornienko are more than 9 months into an unprecedented yearlong mission aboard the International Space Station. (Stints aboard the orbiting lab typically last 5.5 months.)

Researchers are studying the behavioral and physiological responses of the two spaceflyers  and comparing Kelly's results to those of his identical twin brother Mark, himself a former NASA astronaut, who stayed on the ground.

The three-year-long CFS Alert study, which just began its second year of field work, aims to contribute to this larger goal as well, by studying the effects of scenic beauty on folks who are isolated in an extreme environment.

"At the projects conclusion, the CFS Alert crewmembers will be asked to rate the virtual scenes for their realism and immersion, which scenes they preferred and why, and how the scenes affected their mood and stress," Dartmouth representatives wrote in the same statement. "The research is designed to enhance psychological health in space, but it is useful in other settings, such as intensive care units."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
An artist's image of the exoplanet HD 189733b as starlight streams through the planet's atmosphere. Scientists are searching atmospheres on other planets for possible signs of life.

The search for signs of life beyond the solar system is kicking into a higher gear.

Scientists are working to compile a catalog of gases that could potentially be evidence of life, so researchers will know what to look for when scanning the atmospheres of rocky, Earth-like alien planets.

"Every way we have possible, people [are] trying to find exo-Earths," planetary scientist Sara Seager, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said last month at the American Astronomical Society's Extreme Solar Systems III conference in Hawaii. [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

"We have a shot at finding signs of life in the next decade or so," she added. "The question is, what will we look for?"

Many different possibilities

Astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 exoplanets to date. Scientists are beginning to probe the upper atmospheresof some of those worlds using instruments such as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. As technology improves, researchers should be able to see deeper into these alien atmospheres, and with better precision.

The search for alien "biosignatures" typically centers on the kinds of gases produced by Earth organisms, because Earth life is the one example that scientists have to work with. As a result, Seager called oxygen "our favorite biosignature gas." A close second is methane, she added.

Astronomers can study the starlight that filters through exoplanet atmospheres, searching for signatures of molecules that may be signs of life. (Image credit: NASA, ESA and A. Feild (STScI))

But there are thousands of other molecules produced by life on Earth that are not directly related to keeping an organism alive.

"Imagine walking in a pine forest and smelling the smells that come off of trees," Seager said. "Those are technically all biosignatures."

With the exception of the noble gases  helium, neon, argon, xenon, krypton and radon  life produces every gas available in Earth's atmosphere, she added. Living organisms may not always be the dominant method of production, but they play a role.

"Pick any gas  it's made by life," Seager said.

Seager and her team compiled a list of 14,000 different molecules that could conceivably be biosignatures on alien worlds. This enormous database should aid scientists as they search the atmospheres of planets around other stars.

Hunting for Earth 2.0

Scientists have studied the atmospheres of more than three dozen worlds beyond the solar system, to some degree. The number is so small because most of the exoplanets that have been discovered to date lie hundreds or thousands of light-years away  generally, too distant to probe in any detail with current instruments. (More than half of all confirmed exoplanets were spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope, whose search field lay relatively far away.) [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

But the situation should change soon. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite(TESS), which is scheduled to launch in 2017, will hunt for planets around more than half a million nearby stars. While it will not be able to detect Earth-like planets around sunlike stars, TESS should be able to identify Earth-size planets circling dimmer red dwarfs, in regions where they could host liquid water on their surfaces, mission team members said.

NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which should launch in 2018, will be able to perform atmospheric studies of the rocky worlds found by TESS. Indeed, TESS should discover dozens of "super-Earths"  planets slightly bigger than Earth  whose atmospheres JWST can probe, NASA officials have said. So, if life is common and widespread throughout the Milky Way galaxy, the TESS-JWST pair should give researchers a decent shot at detecting it.

Like Kepler, TESS and JWST will use the "transit method," detecting and studying alien worlds when they pass in front of their host stars from the telescopes' perspective. But a different technique, known as direct imaging, is not so dependent on such favorable cosmic alignments.

As its name suggests, direct imaging refers to snapping actual photographs of exoplanets. This is tough to do, especially for relatively small, distant or close-orbiting alien worlds, but technological advances promise to extend the technique to more and more planets as time marches on.

For example, an instrument known as a coronagraph can be attached to a telescope, to block out the overwhelming glare from the parent star. Just as placing your hand over the sun allows you to see an airplane flying by, a coronagraph can help scientists directly image a wealth of planets and learn more about them. Seager said NASA is considering adding a coronograph to its proposed WFIRST-AFTA mission, which could study exoplanet atmospheres, along with other tasks.

Another possibility is a starshade, or external occulter, a massive, petal-shaped object that sits in space a set distance from the telescope, blocking starlight like a coronagraph does. In principle, any telescope (including JWST) can use a starshade, because this kind of light-blocker doesn't have to be built into the instrument.

Studying exoplanet atmospheres via the transit method is generally limited to larger bodies such as super-Earths around dim stars. But direct imaging, including observations performed with starshades, holds a great deal of potential for spotting and studying Earth-size worlds circling sunlike stars, Seager said.

"The starshade must happen," said Seager, who is chair of NASA's Exoplanet Occulter Science and Technology Definition Team.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Astronomers have found a "burping" supermassive black hole is 26 million light-years from Earth in the Messier 51 galaxy (which includes the picturesque Whirlpool galaxy). They used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to spot the monster black hole, which is singled out in the X-ray view inset.

KISSIMMEE, Fla.  A black hole's epic "burp" may help solve one of the deep mysteries of the galactic core.

The dust-filled expanses of spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are bursting with star formation  the dustier the area is, the more likely it is for new stars to form there. But astronomers have found that stars rarely form in the center of a galaxy, where a supermassive black hole often rests, and researchers don't know why. Smaller, elliptical galaxies also show little star formation.

A black hole relatively close to the Milky Way  a mere 26 million light-years from earth  has shown evidence of a huge X-ray blast outward that may have "snowplowed," or swept away, nearby star-forming dust. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]

"This is the best example of snowplowed material I've ever seen," Eric Schlegel, lead author on the new study and researcher at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said in a press conference today (Jan. 5) at the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting today in Kissimmee, Florida. "This is clearly a way of ejecting gas from a galaxy."

"For an analogy, astronomers often refer to black holes as 'eating' stars and gas," Schlegel added in a statement. "Apparently, black holes can also burp after their meal."

Schlegel's team analyzed data from the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory to investigate the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195, which is in the process of merging with the flashier Whirlpool galaxy. The researchers observed two arcs of X-rays near the center of the dwarf galaxy, which appear to be the remnants of two huge blasts outward from the black hole. Plus, the view from an optical telescope revealed a region of cooler hydrogen gas just past the X-ray arcs, which suggests the blasts pushed dust outward.

Schlegel said that dust and gas from the galaxy's collision with the Whirlpool galaxy could have slingshotted around the black hole, but that he finds that unlikely. More probably, the black hole actually reacted to the large additional quantities of dust pushed into its path, resulting in the "burp," he said. The inner X-ray arc may have taken about 1 million to 3 million years to expand to its current position, and the outer one 3 million to 6 million years, officials said in the statement.

There's much more to explore about this system, Schlegel noted. "How that reaction goes is very unclear, but I think it's clearly something that's worthy of study at other wavelengths," he said at the conference, "in addition to using simulations to try to [replicate] it."

The researchers said they suspect this type of reaction might have been much more common in the early universe, when galaxies were more densely packed together, but this "nearby" galaxy exhibiting the behavior is an exciting opportunity to see it happening up close, with less distortion. The effect can reach further out than the dramatic winds that push material away from a black hole, and it is an interesting new example of how a supermassive black hole's activity can shape a galaxy, a process called feedback, the researchers said.

An annotated view of the "burping" supermassive black hole in the galaxy Messier 51 as seen in X-rays by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in the galaxy Messier 51. (Image credit: NASA/CXC/Univ of Texas/E.Schlegel et al)

The scientists also found something strange along the border of the blast: Although the "burp" may have swept dust-forming gas away from the center of the galaxy, enough was pushed up together outside the outer arc to form new stars, as well.

"We think that feedback keeps galaxies from becoming too large," co-author Marie Machacek, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Massachusetts, said in the statement. "But at the same time, it can be responsible for how some stars form. This shows that black holes can create, not just destroy."

These results have been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe, who beat out thousands of other people to become America's first civilian astronaut, practices a lesson she planned to beam to kids from orbit in this screenshot from the National Geographic Channel's upcoming documentary "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes.

A powerful new documentary takes a fresh look at the space shuttle Challenger explosion, a tragedy that is still seared into the minds of a generation 30 years after the smoke cleared.

The National Geographic Channel's hour-long "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" will premiere Jan. 25, three days before the 30th anniversary of the accident that claimed the lives of seven astronauts, including New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe. But you can get a sneak peak at the documentary now in this 3-minute teaser video, which the National Geographic Channel provided exclusively to Space.com.

The teaser opens with the 37-year-old McAuliffe, who had beaten out thousands of other applicants for the chance to become the first American civilian in space, practicing a lesson she planned to beam down to schoolkids from orbit. [Challenger Remembered: Photos from NASA's Tragic Shuttle Disaster]

"Good morning," McAuliffe says in the video, clearing her throat. "This is Christa McAuliffe, live from the Challenger, and I'm going to be taking you through a field trip."

"Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" proceeds in this fashion, relying on contemporary audio and rarely seen footage rather than voice-over narration to tell the story of the doomed shuttle mission. For example, the documentary features, among other things, NASA interviews with McAuliffe, candid video of the teacher touring Challenger with her husband and two children, and behind-the-scenes footage of Vice President George H.W. Bush and Ohio Senator (and former Mercury mission astronaut) John Glenn talking to members of the Challenger launch team just hours after the tragedy.

New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe, who beat out thousands of other people to become America's first civilian astronaut, practices a lesson she planned to beam to kids from orbit in this screenshot from the National Geographic Channel's upcoming documentary "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes. (Image credit: The National Geographic Channel)

Challenger exploded 73 seconds after blasting off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 28, 1986, killing commander Dick Scobee; pilot Mike Smith; mission specialists Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka and Ron McNair; and payload specialist Greg Jarvis, in addition to McAuliffe (who was a payload specialist as well).

An investigation later determined that a rubber seal called an O-ring in the shuttle's right-hand solid rocket booster failed during liftoff, allowing hot, high-pressure gas to escape. This gas damaged the shuttle's huge external fuel tank, as well as the gear that attached the booster to the tank.

Cold weather played a role in the O-ring's failure, investigators found.

The space shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years in the wake of the disaster, finally lifting off again with the orbiter Discovery's return-to-flight STS-26 mission on Sept. 29, 1988. And Challenger wasn't the only shuttle ever lost during flight; the orbiter Columbia broke apart upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

"Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" premieres on Jan. 25 at 9 p.m. ET/8 Central. The documentary will also air on National Geographic Channels in 171 countries in 45 languages, and in Spanish on Nat Geo Mundo, network representatives said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Mahmoud El-Khodeiry was sentenced in the same case as a number of Muslim Brotherhood figures for torturing an opponent protester during the 2011 Tahrir Square sit-in

Egyptian former judge Mahmoud El-Khodeiry filed an appeal Tuesday calling for his early release from prison after serving half his sentence.

The 75-year-old, who was sentenced to three years in October 2014 on torture charges, asked for the release on account of his age, saying it is customary for elderly inmates who served half their prison sentences to be pardoned on national and religious anniversaries.

He also stated that he had previously handed in a request to the interior ministry for conditional release but received no response, which violates the law.

In his appeal, he reminded the court that he has served the country as a judge and as deputy head of the Court of Cassation.

El-Khodeiry was sentenced in the same case as a number of Muslim Brotherhood figures for torturing an opponent protester during the 18-day Tahrir Square sit-in that led to the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

The former judge was elected as a parliamentarian in Alexandria governorate in 2011, running under the umbrella of the Democratic Alliance electoral coalition led by the Muslim Brotherhoods Freedom and Justice Party.

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Even on the most controversial of British demands, it looks as though concessions could be made. Cameron is insisting on implementing a law whereby citizens of EU countries who work in Britain will be prevented from accessing social benefits for four years. It is a clear case of discrimination and is in violation of European Union law. The Portuguese, Belgians and Greeks have tried to convince the British to rescind the demand.

Possible Solutions

Merkel too is disinclined to sign a document that discriminates against EU citizens. At least in principle. For Cameron's demand to be implemented, European treaties would have to be amended -- and that is something that Merkel is open to. She would like to see treaty changes made in an effort to make the EU and the Euro Zone more crisis resistant. But with all 28 member states having to approve such amendments, years often pass before they are implemented and Cameron doesn't have that kind of time. He would like to finalize an agreement with Brussels and with his EU counterparts by February.

There are possible solutions to the dilemma in circulation. At a 1992 summit in Edinburgh, for example, exceptions were granted to Denmark on EU defense policy and on the currency union plans, but they weren't formalized in the treaties until later. That model could be applied once again in the current situation.

Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz has introduced a second idea, which has been circulating in Brussels for some time. He envisions a compromise whereby citizens of EU member states could be excluded from British social benefits for one year in accordance with a previous European Court of Justice decision.

It is unclear, though, whether such maneuvers could convince British voters to remain a part of the European Union. Indeed, Cameron had hardly returned home from the pre-Christmas summit in Brussels before the conservative press began bashing him. "His negotiations have exceeded even our lowest expectations," screeched the tabloid Sun. "It is already clear that he has demanded virtually nothing and will get even less."

The European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs likewise recognized during a visit to Britain that Cameron could be losing control of the situation. "I returned even more disillusioned than I was when I left," says Jo Leinen, a European parliamentarian from the German Social Democratic Party.

Wealthy and Largely Independent

Those in favor of a Brexit have been dominating the public debate in Britain with those wanting to stay in the EU having trouble attracting attention. Not even the bankers in the City of London can be depended on. The influential and financially powerful industry is seeking to use a potential split for its own agenda. The dream is that of transforming Britain into a kind of northern Singapore: wealthy and largely independent.

The anti-EU campaign is being financed with money from business leaders and finance barons who had largely been unknown until now. Two large initiatives are competing for supporters: Vote Leave, led by the Westminster insider and lobbyist Matthew Elliott; and Leave.EU, headed up by real estate tycoon Arron Banks. Billionaire hedge fund managers like Michael Hintze and Crispin Odey have indicated their willingness to further the cause.

Banks' organization Leave.EU has managed to raise enough funding that he is able to employ 60 call-center agents in Bristol and has engaged US-based experts for his campaign -- including consultants from Goddard Gunster, which in the past helped both the soft-drink and pharmaceutical industries achieve their desired results on ballot initiatives in America.

The pro-Brexit activists have employed an aggressive online marketing strategy. Leave.EU was able to quickly assemble more than 320,000 Facebook likes and 39,000 Twitter followers, vastly more than the pro-EU crowd has been able to attract. Indeed, the campaign to keep Britain in the EU has had trouble gaining much momentum -- which is hardly surprising given that not even Cameron's own government is sure if it really wants to avoid a Brexit. Important cabinet posts are held by EU-skeptics, such as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith and Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon.

The pro-EU initiative Britain Stronger in Europe has thus far failed to gain traction, partly because arguments that the British profit handsomely from being part of the EU market have been made thousands of times and aren't particularly sexy. In Westminster, the pro-EU crowd is primarily known -- and ridiculed -- for its abbreviation: BSE.

A Shortage of Accomplished Politicians

Moreover, British successes in the EU are relatively rare, particularly on far-reaching issues such as defense and diplomacy, where Britain has increasingly taken a position contrary to that of the EU in recent years. It is an ironic state of affairs, since it was London, with its military strength and global diplomatic experience that helped Europe achieve a modicum of respectability in foreign and security policy in the past. But when it came to peace talks for the Ukraine, which resulted in the Minsk Protocol, Britain played no role at all. Instead, it was the Germans and French who engaged with the Russians and Ukrainians.

Furthermore, there is a shortage of accomplished British politicians in Brussels who might be able to convince voters back home of the benefits of EU membership. Jonathan Faull, who is leading Commission President Juncker's taskforce on questions relating to the British referendum, has long been a senior EU official. But when it comes to making the case for Britain to stay in the EU, it is mostly Juncker himself who does the talking.

Jonathan Hill, a former financial lobbyist an member of the House of Lords, is another experienced British EU functionary and is currently the commissioner responsible for financial markets. But he generally attracts attention with new proposals for market regulations -- which has done little to endear him to London bankers.

More than anything, though, there is a lack of new blood. The Foreign Office has complained about the lack of interest among young diplomats for being stationed in Brussels and posts in the EU capital are no longer seen as being particularly beneficial to a diplomatic career. The number of Britons occupying important Commission posts fell by roughly half between 2004 and 2014, putting the UK at a disadvantage to countries like Germany, France and Italy.

Collapsing Empire

Given this lack of interest, doubt is growing about the deal being pursued by Merkel, Tusk and Juncker. Why doesn't Cameron simply move to silence the EU-skeptics in his cabinet? "A government where everyone can simply say what they like isn't a government," says one European commissioner.

Plus, granting too many concessions to the British could encourage other EU member states to emulate them. "If Marine Le Pen becomes French president and then, like Cameron, demands special rules for France, should we then just give in?" wonders European Parliamentarian Leinen. "We need Cameron to win," says a Commission official, "but it could be a dangerous victory for the future of the EU."

These are good times for those in favor of a Brexit. They hope that British voters will choose to leave the EU no matter what kind of deal Cameron strikes in Brussels in February. For them, the union is a sclerotic structure, mired in disagreement overthe refugee crisis and unable to reach consensus . In the weekly New Statesman, the Cambridge historian Brendan Simms recently compared the EU with collapsing empires like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Austria-Hungary.

Multi-millionaire Jim Mellon, who is actively supporting the Brexit camp, is likewise forecasting the end of the common currency. He believes that the economic crisis on the Continent will worsen and that it is high time for Britain to distance itself. "The Euro Zone ship is like the Titanic, it will sink sooner rather than later," Jim Mellon says. "It is better to be sitting in a lifeboat than to be dragged down."
An Egyptian court confirmed Tuesday a 10-year jail sentence for Egyptian militant Adel Habara on charges of using force, carrying light weapons and resisting arrest.

Habara, known for his involvement in the killing of policemen in Rafah in 2013, had initially received the sentence in absentia but was retried following his arrest.

The Islamist militant was arrested on 31 August 2013 in the North Sinai town of El-Arish.

Habara has already been sentenced to death in absentia on charges of involvement in the bomb blasts in Taba in 2004 and Dahab in 2006, both touristic sites in Sinai, which left 42 dead.

The latest verdict against Habara was issued on 6 December 2015, marking his third death sentence, on charges of killing a police officer in Sharqiya's Abu Kebir in 2012. The sentence, which was issued after the Grand Mufti's approval, can still be appealed.

The first death sentence Habara received was on 14 October 2014 for the execution-style killing of 25 policemen in Rafah in August 2013 in what became known as the second Rafah massacre.

In December 2014, the sentence was confirmed after the Grand Mufti's approval, but was revoked on 16 June 2015 and a retrial was ordered.

The death sentence was again confirmed on 14 November 2015 but can still be appealed, as death sentences can be appealed twice.

Habara received his second death sentence in May 2015 on charges of joining a jihadi group that aims to overthrow the government and target the army and police, receiving funds from foreign parties to achieve this goal, possessing explosives, and having connections with the ISIS militant group.

May's death verdict was appealed and a retrial was ordered, after which it was confirmed on 29 September 2015.

Many Islamists have received similar sentences over the past two years.

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"The entire square was full of almost exclusively men with just a few fearful women among them being stared at," says Anne, a 27-year-old who was at the scene on New Year's Eve and who spoke to SPIEGEL ONLINE. "I can hardly describe it. I felt very uncomfortable." She says that she was groped soon after arriving to the square.

Careful Calibration

The attacks occur at a time when sentiment toward Muslims and foreigners in Germany appears to be becoming increasingly antagonistic. Even as the numbers of refugees arriving in Germany has slowed with the onset of cold weather, those critical of Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of welcoming refugees fleeing war and violence have become more vocal. Indeed, groups critical of Islam and foreigners have been quick to seek to appropriate the events in Cologne for their own purposes. Pegida, for example, the Islamophobic movement that got its start in Dresden, has posted several comments about the Cologne attacks on its numerous Facebook sites, with supporters responding in a predictably offensive manner.
'A Very Common Pattern'

"Utter nonsense," says the director of the Halberstadt zoo, Marina Breitschuh. No one plundered the zoo, she adds, and all the animals, including the goats, are doing just fine. There are also no right-wingers threatened with termination among the zookeepers, she says. Breitschuh was, however, familiar with the rumor of the slaughtered goats, but the story she heard allegedly took place in Erfurt. One call to the Thuringian capital was all it took to confirm: no missing animals.

"This is a very common pattern," says Andre Wolf from Mimikama, an online platform in Austria that fights Internet abuse. Once a fabricated story is clearly refuted, those behind it will often uproot it to another location and begin spreading the rumor there. "Some stories are like old acquaintances," says Wolf. "They resurface every few weeks or months from the depths of the Internet."

Wolf, a 38-year-old theologian, sits with his colleague, Tom Wannenmacher, 45, in front of a computer screen in their top-floor office in Vienna, not far from the Danube canal. With the help of a dozen volunteer activists, they scour the Internet every day for targeted misinformation and offer clarification or warnings on their website. "It bothers us that so many people are out there spreading lies and deceit," Wolf says. Rumors about refugees have really taken off this year. Some days they discover as many as nine new cases.

Among the classics in the Mimikama archive are official-looking letters that have either been forged or taken out of context. In the Oberhavel region north of Berlin, for instance, residents received mail bearing the letterhead of the district office, in which families were asked to come forward if their homes or apartments had more than 12 square meters per family member. Because the municipality's ability to house refugees was almost exhausted, "hosting refugees in your apartment may be necessary," the fake letter read.

Lending Authenticity

The letter was a montage of actual bureaucratic wording and fantastical formulations, but the threat of compulsory quartering of refugees in private homes was entirely fictitious. "A very perfidious method of confusing people," one district administrator criticized upon learning of the scheme. The activists at Mimikama also discovered an almost identically worded letter in Dresden bearing the letterhead of the "Migration Department" of the Saxon capital's social services office.

Sometimes, Wolf explains, old pictures or videos are used to lend authenticity to the false news stories. In one instance, the folks at Mimikama found a photo of a blonde child with grotesque injuries on the far-right website "Netzplanet," under the headline, "Twelve-year-old beaten by Arabs because of his blue eyes." An Internet search revealed the photo was years old and had been used again and again in other contexts as well. In 2008, the allegedly abused boy was described as a four-year-old girl who had been attacked by a Rottweiler.

Domestic intelligence services and law enforcement officials have also begun to track down the sources of xenophobic or racist rumors that appear online. Often their research leads them to home pages or forums of right-wing extremist groups or political parties. But many operators of these sites have enough legal savvy to keep their formulations just shy of being criminally punishable, says Roland Keilen, an expert in far-right extremism at the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. A lot of the time, the websites claim to simply be passing along information from third parties. "Really extreme statements, ones that meet the criteria for sedition, are usually found in the commentaries and forums where people discuss the stories," Keilen says.

In September, the website "Dortmundecho" published an obviously fictitious report about the rape of a 17-year-old girl in the western German town of Lunen. The site is a mouthpiece for far-rightists in the Ruhr valley and has links to the neo-Nazi party Die Rechte.

'More Intense from Post to Post'

The text consisted of a crude mix of anonymous whispers and purported facts: A "group of foreigners" made up of at least five men supposedly "badgered and beat a girl and forced her to perform oral sex," the report vaguely stated, although it listed a precise location. Then it said: "Only due to violent resistance on the victim's part could she (mostly) prevent further humiliation."

According to the Dortmund police department, that assault never happened. Detectives began a meticulous investigation once the rumors emerged, but to this day, they have found neither a victim nor any of the alleged suspects, a police spokesman said. Nevertheless, word of the supposed crime sparked intense reactions online. "Send them all away, those camel herders," commented one user using the pseudonym "suchmich." "Just cut off all five appendages with a dull spoon," suggested another going by the name "max." Others talked contemptuously of "bimbos," a derogatory German slang term for people with dark skin, and called upon "the Germans" to "wake up," saying that if necessary, a coup d'etat "like the ones in South and Central America" could be the way to go. And, of course, the "lying media" are accused of concealing "the criminal activities of the supposed war refugees." Their proof? No newspaper carried the story.

Keilen, the LKA expert, has a file of even more disturbing comments. He gets involved in cases when hardly veiled calls surface to set refugee shelters ablaze or kill asylum seekers with poison gas. "The comments often get more intense from post to post," he says.

Contrary to what one might expect, most hateful comments don't originate in neo-Nazi circles, according to Keilen. "We are registering an increasing amount of hate speech coming from thus far respectable citizens," many of whom are using their real names. More than a quarter of the 41 suspects against whom the LKA in Rhineland-Palatinate is investigating on suspicion of incitement are women. This too is a "new development."

In the Hessian town of Fulda, it has been reported that as many as 30 rapes have occurred since the refugees moved into town. Journalists were pressured to finally write about the situation -- although no one provided specific evidence and the police firmly deny that any sexual abuse has taken place to such a degree.

So why do even well educated people take such fabrications at face value? Rumors spread particularly easy when they seem to confirm stereotypes that already exist in society, says the Leipzig-based social psychologist Immo Fritsche. A part of the population obviously regards asylum seekers as being predisposed to crime and willing to exploit most people's good nature. Strategically placed gossip that reinforces this sentiment is particularly effective in times of uncertainty, according to the psychologist.

That some people's threshold for turning to violence can be lowered if they feel strengthened in their xenophobic stereotypes is one of Keilen's fears too. He has dealt with far-right extremism for nearly 25 years, but things haven't been as serious as they are at the moment since the early 1990s. "Things escalate thanks to the Internet," says Keilen. "And some people blindly take the stories for the truth. They radicalize themselves to such an extent that they are no longer receptive to rational arguments."
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While many southwest Connecticut residents spent New Year's Eve celebrating 2016's arrival, a handful of soon-to-be-moms were busy preparing for the arrival of a new family member.

2016's first local bundle of joy made his entrance into the world in Bridgeport. Anthony Josiah Rosa arrived around 1:20 a.m. on Jan. 1.

Anthony and his family instantly became Bridgeport Hospital's most popular residents, as reporters from across the state made their way to town to interview the familyand 2016'snewest addition.

"I didn't expect to be so popular," new mom Julie Serrano said at the time. Anthony was named after the dad of his father, Jesse Rosa.

A Stamford couple welcomed a daughter into the world as Stamford's first baby of 2016. Alex and Meegan Bluman of Stamford celebrated the birth of Beatrice Ann Bluman into their family at about 2:06 a.m. at Stamford Hospital.

"We are so happy," Meegan Bluman said. "We couldn't ask for a happier new year."

Just further south along Interstate 95 Loren Raszick Hynes of Larchmont, N.Y., gave birth to her sonand Greenwich's first baby of 2016Holden Robert Hynes at about 2:39 a.m. at Greenwich Hospital.

"We are so excited to have Holden," Raszick Hynes said. "This is a great way to ring in the new year. For him to be the first baby born in Greenwich will be a great memory for all of us."

At about 3:41 a.m. Danbury Hospital welcomed the first birth of 2016, Eily Sophia Abreu Almonte, about two weeks before her due date.

"It's amazing how one person can change your life," Eily's new aunt Claribel Almonte said. "We are all in love with Eily."
Do you know someone who has performed an extraordinary act of courage to save someone's life? Or maybe you know someone who commits countless hours to a special cause?

The Red Cross wants to help honor and celebrate these individuals at its 17th Annual Connecticut Heroes Breakfast, Friday, April 29, 2016, at the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa. Each year, the Red Cross in Connecticut accepts nominations from the public for recognition of people who go above and beyond in service to others, exemplifying the spirit of the Red Cross mission. These heroes are honored in recognition of their good works.
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BRIDGEPORT  Solmarie Rivera expects it will help.

I hope it will, she whispered, accepting hugs from anyone willing to offer one.

Sitting in the front row of the Warren G. Harding High School auditorium Tuesday beside her two surviving sons, Rivera on Tuesday soaked up words from the stage that paid homage to her youngest son, who was gunned down on Christmas Eve.

Luis Colon, 14, an innocent bystander, according to police, was struck in the chest by a bullet intended for someone else as he crossed State Street. He was the citys 19th and last homicide victim of 2015.

He was also a freshman in the bilingual program at Harding. Freshmen, back from winter break, spent first period in the auditorium at a Celebration of Life for Colon. It was meant for them as much as their late classmate.

Ill be very honest with you, I did not sign up to do Celebrations of Life, Kingsley Osei, founder of Connecticut Against Violence, told the students. No one of your age has to die.

As President Barack Obama in Washington was signing an executive order to try and keep guns out of the hands of criminals, Osei and others in the city were working to keep young people to turning to guns in the first place.

Osei called the executive order way due.

Yes it will make an impact in a matter of time, he said.

In the meantime, said the Rev. David Miller, another participant at the program in honor of Colon, it is up to the community to continue to fight for the minds of city children.

I pray some good will come out of this tragedy, Miller said.

Both Interim Schools Superintendent Fran Rabinowitz and Mayor Joe Ganim told the students they needed their help to figure out ways to lessen the violence in the city.

Ganim said hed like to convene a summit of young people to provide input.

There is way too much hope and energy in this room, Ganim told the students.

Stephen Nelson, a former school resource officer and now a city sheriff, said Colon lived for a purpose.

He brought this whole community together to take a look at what we can do to stop some of this violence, Nelson said. He is one of the examples. We have lost a lot.

Before Colon, a 17-year-old Bassick High student was shot and killed in September. A number of others have been wounded in gun violence.

When you take a life, you can not say, Sorry,  Osei told students. I am not sure, (do) you know the meaning of consequences?

Silence.

Anyone know meaning of retaliation? Osei said, to a swell of murmurs.

Consequences is one of the reasons some of us are up on this stage, he said. You know what freedom means? When you are locked up you cant do anything you want to do. Cant talk to friends. Cant celebrate birthdays.

Michael Majors, 23, who police said confessed to aiming at someone else when he fired his .357 Magnum, was arrested for Colons murder.

How do you just shoot into a crowd? Osei asked.
Stamford police department / Contributed

STAMFORD  The strip search of a Bridgeport man caught with a switchblade and cocaine revealed another package - marijuana split in more than a dozen baggies for street sales - in a purple pouch tucked in his crotch.

A Travis Avenue resident called police at 6:30 p.m. Sunday because a man was lurking next to a car and appeared to be ready for a break in, Sgt. Kelly Connelly said. When police arrived they found Jonathan Rosario, 31, of Cloverhill Road, standing in the street next to the drivers side door of a white Hundai Sonata.
Anthony Cheeseman, 55, of Cove Road, Stamford, was charged Sunday with violation of probation.

Tyrone Dobbins, 46, of Greenwich Avenue, Stamford, was charged Sunday with breach of peace and third-degree assault.

Jonathan Rosario, 31, of Cloverhill Road, Bridgeport, was charged Sunday with breach of peace, interfering with police, attempt to commit burglary, possession of narcotics, sale of a controlled substance, possession of narcotics and carrying a dangerous weapon.

Valerie Georges, 22, of Woodland Place, Stamford, was charged Saturday with disorderly conduct.

Geoff Herzog, 40, of Palmer Street, Stamford, was charged Saturday with violation of a protective order and harassment.

Stephen McDonough, 56, of Hope Street, Stamford, was charged Saturday with disorderly conduct.

Derek Pflueger, 40, of Glenbrook Road, Stamford, was charged Saturday with criminal violation of a restraining order.

Alex Garcia-Gomez, 26, of Aberdeen Street, Stamford, was charged Saturday with driving while under the influence, driving without a license and failure to drive in the proper lane.

Kristin Blazarini, 27, of Elm Tree Place, Stamford, was charged Saturday with disorderly conduct.

Kevin Martin, 23, of Youngsville, N.C., was charged Friday with breach of peace and third-degree assault.

Jose Mejia, 31, of Port Chester, N.Y., was charged Friday with disorderly conduct, threatening, unlawful restraint, third-degree assault and conspiracy to commit third-degree assault.

Robert Walmsley, 57, of Houston Terrace, Stamford, was charged Friday with criminal mischief and violation of a protective order.

Carlos Canales, 43, of East Main Street, Stamford, was charged Friday with unlawful restraint, disorderly conduct and conspiracy to commit third-degree assault.

Alexander Carrillo, 39, of Richmond Hill Place, Stamford, was charged Friday with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct.

Eduardo Castro, 28, of West Broad Street, Stamford, was charged Thursday with risk of injury to a child, criminal mischief, strangulation, disorderly conduct and third-degree assault.

Jahmel Greathouse, 23, of State Street, Danbury, was charged Thursday with possession of a controlled substance, operating a drug factory, possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell and driving while under suspension.

Richard Correa, 27, of Cove Road, Stamford, was charged Thursday with disorderly conduct.

Panteleimon Hatzivasiliadis, 57, of Wardwell Street, Stamford, was charged Thursday with driving while under the influence and failure to drive right.

Jorge Peralta, 36, of Mills Lane, Easton, was charged Thursday with breach of peace and criminal trespass.

Jamere Brutus, 19, of Columbus Place, Stamford, was charged Wednesday with disorderly conduct, threatening and risk of injury to a child.

Jose Chaves, 38, of Clinton Avenue, Norwalk, was charged Wednesday with possession of narcotics, sale of certain illegal drugs and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Rudy Gonzalez, 22, of Lipton Place, Stamford, was charged Wednesday with harassment.

Manuel Ortega, 30, of 44 Crestview Avenue, Stamford, was charged Wednesday with being a fugitive from justice.

Sergio Baltazar, 35, of Henry Street, Stamford, was charged Tuesday with violation of a protective order.

Marcos Caliz-Martines, 29, of Cedar Street, Stamford, was charged Tuesday with failure to appear in court.

Paul Kornegay, 52, of Pacific Street, Stamford, was charged Tuesday with sixth-degree larceny.

Ricardo Horton, 21, of Rye, N.Y., was charged Monday with failure to appear at court.
Egypt is set to open Al-Salam Bridge, which crosses over the Suez Canal, following a two-year closure since September 2013 due to security concerns.

Minister of Transportation Saad El-Geyoushi inspected on Tuesday the bridge, the first suspension bridge over the Suez Canal, prior to its re-opening upon orders by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

Inaugurated in 2001 by then-president Hosni Mubarak, the bridge connects the northern Sinai Peninsula with the rest of the country. It is also the main gateway crossing the Suez Canal to Port Saids east terminal.

On Monday, the head of the armys Engineering Authority General Kamal El-Wazir said in an official statement that the bridge will be reopened in the coming days.

In a press release by the authority, El-Wazir said that there will be a complete revision of security procedures, the provision of modern explosive and narcotics detection equipment, along with increasing security services in coordination with the army, police and the Suez Canal Authority.

El-Wazir said that it has not yet been determined when in the day the bridge will be open, and that all cars, with the exception of heavy transport vehicles, will be allowed to cross.

He explained that the reopening of the bridge will serve the industrial, agricultural and business interests related to the Suez Canal area developmental project.

The bridge was closed by authorities in September 2013 for security concerns following an upsurge in militant attacks after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi.

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V olkswagen is facing a US Department of Justice (DoJ) lawsuit over its emissions cheating scandal that could cost it billions of dollars in penalties.

The DoJ has filed a civil lawsuit against the German auto giant claiming the company violated the Clean Air Act when it used so-called "defeat devices" to mask the true level of emissions from its some of its vehicles engines.

Fines resulting from the legal action could in theory hit $90 billion (61 billion), or as much as $37,500 per vehicle per violation of the law.

The US government earlier estimated fines from the scandal would likely exceed $18 billion.

"The United States will pursue all appropriate remedies against Volkswagen to redress the violations of our nation's clean air laws," said Assistant Attorney General John Cruden, head of the departments environment and natural resources division.

The DoJ filed the case on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and accuses Volkswagen of tampering with the emissions control system and failing to report violations.

"We're alleging that they knew what they were doing, they intentionally violated the law and that the consequences were significant to health," a senior Justice Department official said.

The Justice Department has also been investigating criminal fraud allegations against Volkswagen for misleading US consumers and regulators.

"Volkswagen will continue to work cooperatively with the EPA on developing remedies to bring the TDI vehicles into full compliance with regulations as soon as possible," Volkswagen said in a statement.

"In addition, we are working with Kenneth Feinberg to develop an independent, fair and swift process for resolving private consumer claims relating to these issues."

"We will continue to cooperate with all government agencies investigating these matters."

Additional reporting by Reuters
T he onward march of gender fluidity continues apace, to the point where I may end up as the only person in my professional circle to be invincibly gender-static. I mean, I do possess male traits  I loathe continuous assessment for exams, I like PG Wodehouse and I rarely adopt a consensual debating style (having this much in common with Nicola Sturgeon).

But on the great girl-boy divide I remain in the pink corner. Indeed, you could call me a gender fundamentalist; if youve got two X chromosomes, as far as Im concerned join the girls.

It doesnt mean you cant dress up to suit whatever sex takes your fancy, of course. Free country and all that, and girl clothes are more fun. Cate Blanchett says about playing Hamlet, I forget Im male or female... Fine.

But adopting a gender as a choice issue? There I find myself with Germaine Greer, and Barry Humphries, who has flauted all the contemporary diktats of good taste by describing sex change surgery as self-mutilation. Sounds about right. Thats why I was oddly perturbed to learn ministers are considering proposals to allow anyone over 18 to change their gender simply by filling out an application form.

This came hard on the heels of a proposal from Maria Miller, formerly best known in the context of the parliamentary expenses issue, who now heads the Commons Women and Equalities Committee, that driving licences and passports should be gender neutral.

You do not, I think, have to be particularly hung up about Genesis 1, 26-28, to feel that this is a faintly frivolous way of determining what has been until now the most fundamental aspect of our identity.

Forget sexuality; its sex that makes us most profoundly what we are. Of course you can play the part any way, and the past 50 years has seen a transformation in gender roles, but the boy-girl identity is what shapes us most, from how we go to the loo to our reproductive capacity. Its the most basic aspect of our personhood.

So the notion that you can simply put on a gender the way you change your contact lenses is, I think, symptomatic of a worrying indifference to a basic question of what makes us ourselves.

There are, of course, more trivial problems  can a criminal simply opt to become a girl to muddy the waters when it comes to being identified? Dont passports have security aspects? But these pale by comparison with the issue of whether changing sex is something to be lightly done, by filling in a bit of paper. I gather some amphibians can change sex more or less on a whim; for us the thing has a philosophical and bodily basis. Or rather, it did.

Changing the Irish constitution

There is to be an election in Ireland by next month, enlivened, if thats the word, by a debate on whether the Irish constitution should be changed from its 1930s version. The bit saying economic necessity should not oblige women to work outside the home is the biggie, though its wholly irrelevant to peoples real lives.

Actually, a friend whos a big Fine Gael man tells me that women in politics are certainly being promoted: the EU has threatened to withdraw political funding from any party which does not have 30 per cent of women candidates, so the parties are scrambling to do it.

It strikes me that constitutional debate is pretty academic in the circumstances. For Ireland, real sovereignty is gone already.

Beckenham, where Ziggy played guitar

At last, Beckenham is getting the credit it deserves in the Sixties counter-revolution. The suburb, for which I have a fondness from the time the local council moved my granny there from Penge, was, it seems, the seedbed for David Bowie.

Southern comfort: the making of David Bowie started in lodgings in Beckenham Getty Images / Getty Images

His former landlady Mary Finnigan has described in her memoir, Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab, how he transformed the place  once a byword for suburban gentility  into a place fizzing with excitement and activity, the highlight being the Beckenham Free Festival in 1969, an event she says was the bedrock of his stardom. Its far from being the place Radio 4 plays used to mock.

Its true in lots of ways that the places where real artistic creativity flourishes is where there are conventions to rebel against, like Ireland in the Fifties. A society where anything goes is less stimulating.

For some of us, Christmas isn't over yet

You may already be in full Spartan mode, eating amaranth and being kinder to your gut bacteria as part of the New Year makeover thing, but for some of us the Twelve Days of Christmas are still under way, thank you. The Christmas season comes to an end tomorrow, Wednesday, when the Three Kings come to Baby Jesus, and not before.

Thats half the trouble with us: were always ahead of ourselves, which means when we actually get to whatever it is were meant to be celebrating were already thinking of the next thing on the agenda. So were practically in Creme Egg season when what we should be going out to buy is one of those Three Kings tarts that the French have for the Epiphany, with a crown on top and a bean in the middle.

Besides, have you actually looked at the weather? This is no time to be eating bloody quinoa; nature is calling out for starchy carbs.
T he uproar, including that from Iran, after the execution by Saudi Arabia of the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr seriously rattled financial markets. The last thing we need in this new year is the threat of another war.

Of course Iran is in no position to lecture anyone about human rights. But Britains reaction was strangely muted. We have a close relationship with Saudi Arabia based on history and in recent years on massive sales of defence equipment. So maybe we shouldnt be surprised that Britain supported Saudi Arabias election to the UN Human Rights Council.

The Saudis have for the past decade become more and more insecure about their position in the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution they replaced Iran as the USs main ally in the region against the Soviet Union. But following the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the position of Iran became relatively more powerful.

Most recently the nuclear agreement between the West and Iran has led to quite unreal fears in Riyadh that Iran is about to become the main ally of the US.

Saudis complain that their country today is discussed disrespectfully in the West. Certainly there have been concerns that Saudi money, not necessarily from the Government, has been finding its way to extremists. In fairness to the Saudis this is strongly denied but we know from WikiLeaks that Hillary Clinton was concerned about it.

Saudi Arabia and Iran represent the two sides of the main split in Islam between Sunni and Shia, going right back to the seventh century. The Shia, while a minority in the Islamic world, are a majority in Iran and Iraq and form substantial populations in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. For centuries the Shia under the Ottomans and then subsequently in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Bahrain were second-class citizens but the Iranian revolution caused a Shia awakening and demands for greater civil rights.

My impression is that certain Gulf states are more hardened in their sectarian dislike of the Shia than the other way round. Certainly the senior Shia clerics of Iran and Iraq speak out against sectarianism and regularly issue fatwas against the killing of Sunnis in Iraq.

The Saudis have for the past decade become more insecure about their position in the Middle East

The Saudis complain about Irans meddling in the region but when the Bahrainis complained to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates that the Shia uprising in 2011 was caused by Iran he told them that the real cause was their own treatment of the Shia. Inciting fear of the enemy within is a good way of consolidating domestic political support.

It is difficult to believe that Saudi Arabia did not foresee that its decision to execute Sheikh al-Nimr would create a crisis with Iran. The kingdom has long opposed all attempts to normalise relations between the West and Iran.

The mistake of Iran in not protecting the Saudi Embassy gave the Saudis the excuse to break off diplomatic relations. This manufactured confrontation with Iran threatens the US-led peace initiatives in Syria and Yemen in which Iran is involved. But if the House of Saud is not careful it will create the very thing it most fears: a Middle East in which Iran does become an ally of the West

Lord Lamont of Lerwick is chairman of the British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce
M ulling over Brexit, I thought of that iconic photograph, taken 75 years ago last week, of the magnificent dome of St Pauls, standing intact and aloof above an ocean of smoke, billowing from the Luftwaffes Blitz on London.

Britain then stood in dangerous isolation. But the Little Englanders had fought back against the pounding Third Reich that had trampled across the whole of Europe.

Of course the Second World War would not have been won against Hitler without the Americans and the Russians, but Britain played a seminal role in the resistance that bought precious time and eventually led to victory. I mention this to remind Britain that having a mass of Little Englanders does not necessarily imply insularity nor feebleness. Indeed, only a few months earlier in the same year of 1940, an armada of ships, boats, small vessels and lifeboats, filled with Little Englanders, had also performed a miracle in rescuing nearly 350,000 soldiers. Again, Britain really did punch above her weight and did it damn well. I once asked Fidel Castro which historic event in his lifetime he would identify as indelible. Dunkirk, he replied.

Mind you, the British intelligentsia would disagree because they regard those historic incidents as remnants of Empire thinking that no longer have a place in the modern world. These are many of my well-educated British friends who possess an innate sense of self-deprecation and would sneer at Little Englanders and in the same breath decry the declining influence of Britain and much of what it has contributed to the rest of the world: institutions like the BBC and British schools and universities and its innovative industrial powers. They would also be embarrassed about Britains shrinking armed forces and her desperation for Trident.

I call these people Belittlers. They belittle the tremendous history of this nation which I, as a foreigner, have grown to admire, and it irks me to hear the so-called intelligent class poking fun at Little Britain being left in isolation if and when Brexit occurs. Yet history, recent history, contradicts this vision, and the current state of play suggests otherwise at the same time.

Although the EU has become the largest economy in the world (surpassing the US since 2003), its share of the global economy has dropped consistently in the past 10 years: from 30 per cent to 24 per cent. This will continue because of the steady and robust growth of non-EU economies, especially the BRIC nations.

Therefore, the EU economic power is declining in the new world order. And this decline will accelerate if the EU does not reform much of its constitution, whose pretty cornices have been systematically chiselled away by an increasing number of diverse nations joining. The fact is that the EU is being confronted with a plethora of reforms needed if it is to cope with a fast-changing 21st century: its cumbersome intergovernmental decisions, an ageing population, the imbalances of the eurozone, as well as immigration and refugee problems.

In terms of the EU economy, what has it achieved, for example, with China, which has indisputably become a major player on the world stage? Not much, in fact. During Chinas stratospheric economic rise over the past three decades, her investments and trade with the EU have been pitifully insignificant.

A Brexit would not isolate Britain into an insignificant island of insular Little Englanders

Indeed, Britain within the EU has been the largest beneficiary of Chinese business, well ahead of the other European countries, including Germany. Notice that it was the French, whose EDF energy firm owns the nuclear plant at Hinkley Point, that benefited from the investments that the Chinese promised to make in Britain. And the EU will benefit further if Chinese technology were to prove suitable in Britain for the creation of new nuclear power plants. This is an instance of how Britain is spearheading serious businesses into the EU.

Britain would do well to increase immigration from other countries such as China. This would not be the first time that Britain has invited the Chinese to come to Britain: ahead of 1997, when the former colony of Hong Kong reverted to the sovereignty of China, Britain granted British passports to 50,000 Chinese families in the territory, a total of around 150,000 passports. Not very many of them came to settle in Britain because Hong Kong turned out to be stable and prosperous. So much so that my compatriot there, Li Ka-Shing, has invested more than 50 billion in Britain. This amount far exceeds the 11 billion that Chinese companies have invested in Britain in the past nine years.

But individual Chinese people from mainland China are now surging ahead in the accumulation of wealth, and these individuals, rather the state enterprises of China, will become the business giants of the future, perhaps comparable to the Fords, Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers.

My prediction is that if Britain did really become cosy with China, Sino-British relations could reach new heights, not only in business, but in politics. And let us not forget that English remains by far the most important language in the world. Already 300 million Chinese are learning English and this means of communication should never be undermined as a reason why the Chinese would regard Britain as the first natural port of call in Europe. And ditto for the Indians and all the other Asian countries, including Japan, where English is by far the most popular foreign language.

Therefore, a Brexit would not isolate Britain into an insignificant island of insular Little Englanders. Britain has many other fish to fry, especially with the provenance of her imperial past and within the Commonwealth. This is exactly the time when that great entrepreneurial and indomitable spirit of the Brits should wake up and take pride in finding itself among all the non-EU countries with a seat at the top table in the 21st century. Britain can of course still remain a friend and ally of continental Europe, but she herself could bring about an era of renaissance.

My gut feeling  although who am I to say as a Chinaman?  is that Brexit could spur on the Little Englanders to show their real mettle again, without that complacency of hanging on to the hem of the EU across the Channel.

After all, the motto of the EU is United in Diversity. Let Britain still be united in Europe in spirit, but let her diversity be developed into her own strength.
While 13 fishermen are to return to Egypt, three will remain in Tunisia to stand trial for trespassing and illegal fishing

Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has managed to secure the release of Egyptian fishermen who were detained for illegal fishing in Tunisia.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid stated that 13 fishermen would return to Egypt either later this week or early next week.

He added, however, that three of the fishermen, including the captain of the Egyptian fishing boat, will remain in Tunisia to stand trial for trespassing and illegal fishing in Tunisian territorial waters in late December.

The Egyptian embassy in Tunis as well the ministry of foreign affairs will follow the trial, according to Abu Zeid.

In August, Tunisia released 15 Egyptian fishermen who were arrested near Sfax port, also for trespassing.

This is one of the latest incidents involving Egyptian fishermen arrested in the territorial waters of neighboring countries like Sudan, Libya, and Tunisia.

Egypts foreign ministry has repeatedly intervened in these cases to ensure the release of the fishermen.

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L ondon's punk scene is being celebrated with a year of events including gigs, exhibitions and film screenings four decades after it first hit the headlines and the charts.

The British Library, the BFI and the Museum of London are all helping mark 40 years since the Sex Pistols released their debut single Anarchy In The UK, inspiring musicians including The Clash and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

An eight-day music festival starts this week at the 100 Club in Oxford Street, where there will be an exhibition of fanzines, photos and fashions at the Museum of London, and DJ and musician Don Letts will host a season of films at the BFI on the South Bank.

A two-day Punk Fest will take place at the Design Museum on June 25 and 26  the venues final weekend at its Shad Thames site before it moves to the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington High Street.

Museum trustee Sebastian Conran, son of designer Sir Terence, was part of the scene at the beginning, booking Sex Pistols gigs at Central St Martins college and working as a Clash roadie. He said: Some say once a punk always a punk. Initially I saw it as a disruptive style movement along the lines of Dada, it was about throwing out the rulebook.

When I listen to Anarchy In The UK today it still quickens the pulse. I studied industrial design engineering and graduated in rock n roll.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
A sexual predator who travelled to London from the West Midlands with the intention of abusing two young girls has been jailed.

John Proctor, 59, of Druids Walk, Walsall made contact with a woman who told him she had two young daughters, and asked to meet her children, aged eight and 10.

In a series of vile text messages he described to the woman the ways in which he wanted to abuse the two young girls, and arranged to meet them at the Gateway Services on the M1 in north-west London.

On November 6 last year, Proctor travelled from his West Midlands home to London to meet the mother and her two daughters, but when he got to the service station, he was greeted by detectives from the Mets Sexual Offences, Child Abuse and Exploitation Command.

In his car, officers found indecent images of children, pornography, and a number of items officers believe he was planning to use during the sexual abuse against the two young girls.

Proctor was arrested and taken into custody at Wembley Police Station and subsequently charged, and he later pleaded guilty to a string of offences including arranging a child sex offence, distributing indecent images of children, and possession of extreme pornographic images.

He was jailed on Monday at Harrow Magistrates Court for four-and-a-half-years for one count of arranging the commission of a child sex offence, three counts of distributing indecent images of a child, and six counts of possession of indecent images of a child.

Detective Constable Kate Suffolk, from the Sexual Offences, Child Abuse and Exploitation Command, said: "Proctor is a predatory offender who I have no doubt intended to carry out these offences. It is possible there may be further victims and I would urge anyone with knowledge of any offending to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Met Police or West Midlands Police, quoting Operation Howell. Both forces have specialist officers who are here to listen and trained to support victims. Alternately you can contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000. In an emergency always call 999.
T wo men drummed up support for Islamic State by handing out leaflets in Oxford Street, the Old Bailey heard today.

Muslim convert Ibrahim Anderson also had details of how to travel to Syria to fight for the terrorists when his home was searched by police in December 2014, the jury was told.

Anderson, 38, and Shah Jahah Khan, 62, both from Luton, are charged under the Terrorism Act of inviting support for a banned organisation.

Anderson is also accused of possessing information likely to be useful for the preparation of, or carrying out, an act of terrorism, when police searched his property in December last year.

The pair are alleged to have handed out leaflets by Topshop Carl Court/Getty Images / Carl Court/Getty Images

Mark Seymour, prosecuting, told the jury the two men were part of a group that put up a trestle table outside Topshop in August 2014.

They approached members of the public and distributed leaflets "encouraging support for a caliphate which had been announced by IS," he said.

"IS is a proscribed organisation and inviting support is prohibited by law and these defendants would have been well aware of what they were doing."

A week later police searched Anderson's house and found his HP mini notebook computer which contained three images involving instructions for travelling to Syria to support jihad, the court was told.

Both defendants deny the charges.

The case continues.
T hree men have pleaded guilty to offences relating to the death of a convicted art thief found tied to a shopping trolley in a canal.

The body of 46-year-old carpenter and convicted thief Sebastiano Magnanini, originally from Italy, was discovered in the Regents Canal on September 24.

It was pulled from the water after being spotted by a member of the public close to the entrance of Islington Tunnel.

On Tuesday, Paul Williams, 61, of no fixed abode, and Michael Walsh, 41, of Wharfdale Road, Islington, pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful burial of his body.

Walsh and a third man, Daniel Hastie, 22, of no fixed abode, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

The men will be sentenced on February 5 at Blackfriars Crown Court.

A post-mortem examination on September 25 proved inconclusive and the cause of his death remains unclear.

Scotland Yard said enquiries were still under way into the circumstances of his death.
P olice today stepped up searches for the missing EastEnders actress Sian Blake amid mounting concern for her safety after she disappeared before Christmas with her two young children.

Homicide detectives are also trying to trace her boyfriend, hairdresser and stylist Arthur Simpson-Kent, 48, who vanished three days after Ms Blake was last seen.

The 43-year-old actress, who played Frankie Pierre in the BBC soap in the mid-1990s, and her sons Zachary, eight, and Amon, four, were last seen on December 13 when they visited relatives in Leyton.

Ms Blake is said to be in the final stages of motor neurone disease and texts from her phone have reportedly been received by relatives saying she wanted to be alone with her children for her last Christmas.

However, nothing has been heard from her since and Scotland Yard said it had not ruled out the possibility she and her children had been victims of crime.

Vanished: Arthur Simpson-Kent with Amon / Metropolitan Police

Police were today carrying out a detailed search of her home in Erith which she shared with her boyfriend.

Forensic officers are also examining Ms Blakes car, a silver and beige Renault Scenic, which was found parked in Calvert Avenue, Bethnal Green, on Sunday.

Ms Blake rarely drove herself because of her condition and detectives say they dont know why the car was parked there or by whom, .

Ms Blake and her two children were reported missing on December 16 when officers spoke to to Mr Simpson-Kent at the actresss home in Erith.

He was reported as a high-risk missing person three days later when officers were unable to contact him.

Police say they do not know if the couple are together and there is no sign of where they have gone.

Officers are also examining her phone records and bank transactions in an effort to trace her.

The cast of EastEnders made a plea to her at the weekend when they tweeted :Sian Blake we are all here for you. Please contact your family and friends.

Neighbour Sandra Metzgen reported seeing the actress putting black bags into the back of her Renault Scenic with Mr Simpson-Kent before she vanished.

Ms Blakes family did not want to comment when contacted by the Standard last night.

Detective Chief Inspector Graeme Gwyn, of the Homicide and Major Crime Command, said: They have all been missing for a considerable period of time now, and I am growing increasingly concerned for their welfare.

In particular Sian suffers from a serious life-threatening condition and we do not know if she is receiving the medication and treatment she requires to keep well.

I am appealing directly to Sian and Arthur to get in touch with the police and let us know they are all well. I am also appealing to anyone who has seen the family or knows where they may be to get in touch as soon as possible.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact them on 020 8721 4805 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.


T he UKs leading base jumper has released a new film of himself leaping off buildings on the Isle of Dogs.

Dan Witchalls, who rose to prominence after leaping off The Shard four times, was videoed making the latest jumps for a new online documentary.

The father-of-two told the Standard the film involved three jumps on a single night ranging from 390 feet to just 170 feet and took place three weeks ago.

The buildings were a residential block under construction, another construction site which is to be a hotel, and a council block.

He glides safely to the ground after his audacious stunt

Each had security guards but he managed to avoid being spotted, he said.

Im quite resourceful - Im quite experienced in doing this sort of thing.

Its trespass, but only if you get caught.

Witchalls is famed for evading security to jump from London landmarks, and was featured in a Channel Four documentary about his thrillseeking exploits.

The roofer from Bishops Stortford is a world champion in the extreme sport, whose acronym stands for building, antenna, span and earth.

The documentary in two parts, was uploaded on January 2 under the title Londons illegal BASE jumper.

He made three jumps safely on a single night

In the programme, filmed by friend Alan Quinn, Witchalls, believed to be 49, says: It fulfils my need for excitement...It has to be dangerous otherwise it is not worth doing.

Every time you jump you are risking your life - there are no half measures.

He adds: It is the only sport in the world where you can do everything right and still die.

His parents and wife Tea, a skydiving enthusiast, are keen for him to retire, following the deaths of a number of base-jumping colleagues.

Witchalls says: It is definitely time for me to give up, I know that. But I cant.

Base jumping was made popular in 1978 by film-maker Carl Boenish, who filmed jumps from El Capitan cliff face in Yosemite National park and coined the term for the extreme sport  which killed him six years later.
A leading City chief executive kissed a female worker in his offices like a piece of meat, the Old Bailey heard today.

It followed a meeting which she described as very Wolf of Wall Street, the jury was told.

She was one of three women Anthony Constantinou sexually assaulted in the Heron Tower at Bishopsgate, the jury was told.

Constantinou, 34, the head of Capital World Markets (CWM), is accused of six attacks over five months.

He is said to have kissed or groped his alleged victims in the ladies toilet, a stock room, a utility room and a reception area.

He was arrested after one alleged victim made a formal complaint at Grays police station in October 2014.

She said Constantinou had assaulted her three times on the same night a few days earlier, prosecutor Eloise Marshall told the jury.

The alleged victim told police the CEO grabbed her and kissed her first in the ladies toilet and then in the office reception area.

Later in small stock room he pulled her pants down, exposed himself and touched her in an intimate area, the court heard.

She pushed him off and stopped him going any further then almost immediately she left the office and never returned, said Ms Marshall.

The second alleged victim was contacted by police after the first complaint but said Constantinou had attacked her before the other alleged incidents.

She said the CWM boss had dragged her into a utility room and began kissing her before she pushed him away and left.

But later she went to a City bar with a group of friends only to find Constantinou was there as well.

She said he touched her bottom and squeezed it, said Ms Marshall.

At the time the alleged victim shrugged off what happened as an unpleasant experience but there it is but later made a complaint to the police.

The third alleged victim said she was attacked in February last year when working at CWMs offices.

She described a meeting in which Constantinou had thrown her mobile phone against a wall and told her dont answer your phone in my meetings.

She said the atmosphere was very Wolf of Wall Street, referring to the Hollywood film about New York traders starring Leonardo di Caprio.

Afterwards Constantinou pushed her against frosted glass and thrust a big chunk of wasabi into her mouth then kissed her by shoving his tongue down her throat as if she was a piece of meat.

She said the CEO had told his colleagues that she had a cracking ass and t***.

The alleged victims employers then terminated the contract she had been working on at CWM because of Constantinous behaviour, the court heard.

Ms Marshall said that Constantinou denies any sexual contact took place on any of the occasions and suggests the complainants have fabricated it for financial gain.

Constantinou, of Hampstead, has pleaded not guilty to six charges of sexual assault.

The case continues.
A n iconic south London pub that has played host to legendary music stars such as U2 and Frank Sinatra is set to reopen this summer, three years after it was forced to close because of flooding.

The Half Moon in Herne Hill shut in August 2013 after an 88-year-old water main burst, leaving homes and businesses in 5ft-deep floods.

Last month an online petition, set up by campaign group Save the Half Moon Pub Herne Hill, called on Mayor Boris Johnson to save the pub from closure following fears its future as a live music venue was under threat.

It was signed by more than 6,000 people.

And supporters will hope the music will continue to play after a deal was announced on Monday between between the pub freeholders The Dulwich Estate and London brewers Fullers to reopen it later this year.

Flooded: The Half Moon was forced to close in August 2013 because of a burst water main / Rex

A spokeswoman for Fuller, Smith & Turner PLC said: We are delighted to announce that we have acquired the lease for The Half Moon, Herne Hill.

In conjunction with The Dulwich Estate, we will be making a substantial investment in the pub to return it to its former glory.

We aim to be reopening the pub, complete with a small number of hotel bedrooms, in the late summer subject to gaining relevant planning and listed building consents.

Fullers is famous for providing great hospitality, a fantastic range of beers, wines and delicious, fresh food in an excellent environment and The Half Moon will be no exception.

Our aim is to create a wonderful pub that the local community can be proud of and that will have a place in the daily life of Herne Hill for many years to come.

While John Major from The Dulwich Estate added drinkers could return to the pub by the summer.

Musical heritage: U2 are said to have performed at the pub and live music venue / Niall Carson/PA

He said: We are both pleased the building will be reopened. We are delighted to have a successful pub chain like Fullers on board and bring a beautiful building back into use.

Peter Blair, from the Save the Half Moon Pub Herne Hill, said the pubs music heritage would continue to be highlighted as plans are drawn up for the reopening.

He wrote: We will obviously continue to seek to stress the importance both of live music and of working with the local community as Fuller's develop their plans.

The Distillers in Hammersmith is one example of a Fuller's pub that hosts live music and open mic nights. Thanks again to everyone for your ongoing support.

According to campaigners, musicians that have played at the Grade II-listed building include Eric Clapton, U2, The Police and Paloma Faith.

Legend has it even Frank Sinatra sang a number when he visited the pub following a show in London to see his old chauffeur.

Comedians Mark Lamarr, Eddie Izzard and Jo Brand are also said to have performed stand-up comedy at the venue.
C ampaigners hoping to pay for extra police officers in Hampstead via crowdfunding say Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howes objections are simplistic.

Lawyer Jessica Learmond-Criqui has raised 210,000 for dedicated officers for two wards. It will cost 600,000 to fund a sergeant and two constables.

Ms Learmond-Criqui said she was left with no choice after Hampstead police station shut in January 2014, which she says led to a rise in violent robberies.

But Sir Bernard told MPs he would be intuitively against the proposal if it meant that we only provide extra policing to those who can afford it.

Today Ms Learmond-Criqui, who chairs the local police safer neighbourhood panel, said: Thats a simplistic view. Im not saying that he doesnt have a right and proper view, but theres a basic contract between citizen and state: you pay your taxes and they keep you safe. That wasnt happening in Hampstead.

Under fire: Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe / Jeremy Selwyn

Under the MetPatrol Plus scheme, run by the Mayors Office for Policing and Crime, local authorities can pay for officers to be dedicated to an area.

If residents raise enough for three officers  a sergeant on 40,000 a year and two constables on 25,000  then Mopac will fund three more. Ms Learmond-Criqui said dozens of residents in the Frognal and Fitzjohns and Hampstead Village wards had pledged to back the crowdfunding.

On November 10, Sir Bernard told the Home Affairs Select Committee he had concerns if only a small group could afford extra policing. But he said he was open-minded to crowdfunding.

Ms Learmond-Criqui said she started the campaign because of cuts to dedicated police in the wards, which left residents in a desperate situation after a series of armed robberies. After more than 200 residents met the borough commander last summer, officers were temporarily placed on the streets, which Ms Learmond-Criqui said brought an end to the crime spree.

Detective Chief Superintendent Penny Banham said: To date, no resident or community group has provided funding for additional officers, neither has the MPS received a formal approach to fund additional officers from the Hampstead residents group.

As such, the scenario cited is without precedent and should a request be received, it will be reviewed by the Met and Mayors Office for Policing and Crime to decide whether and how it could be progressed, bearing in mind the complex, legal and contractual arrangements that will need to be considered.

Hampstead, as with all wards across Camden Borough, has its own dedicated Neighbourhood Policing Team and is also supported by our 24/7 Emergency Response Teams. Hampstead remains one of the safest areas in London and officers will continue to ensure that the community of Hampstead receive a professional and quality service.
A man has died after being hit by a train at West Brompton station ahead of the evening rush hour.

Officers from British Transport Police and Metropolitan Police Service were called to the London Underground station shortly after 4pm on Tuesday after reports a person had been struck by a train.

Paramedics from London Ambulance Service pronounced a man, whose age is currently unknown, dead at the scene.

A British Transport Police spokesman said the incident is being treated as non-suspicious.

The man has not yet been identified and officers are working to trace and inform his family.

District line services between Earls Court and Wimbledon were suspended in both directions while emergency services attended the scene.

Tube services passing through the station resumed with minor delays at about 5pm.

London Overground and Southern rail services were temporarily unable to call at West Brompton, but began stopping again at the station shortly after 5.10pm
The Egyptian president visited the Egyptian General intelligence Service headquarters to discuss the latest regional developments and their impact on Egypt

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi visited Tuesday afternoon the Egyptian General Intelligence Service headquarters in Cairo where he held a meeting to discuss the latest regional developments and their impacts on Egyptian national security.

In a statement issued Tuesday by the presidency, spokesperson Alaa Youssef said the meeting was attended by the head of General intelligence Khaled Fawzi and other officials.

The Egyptian presidency added that the president listened to a number of assessments regarding national security strategies proposed by the Egyptian intelligence officials regarding the different challenges Egypt is currently facing.

This is the third time El-Sisi has visited the General Intelligence headquarters, with the prior meetings taking place in January and October 2015.

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T wo former Olympic swimming stars today branded plans to close up to 16 pools across London as appalling as they lent their names to a campaign to save them.

Since buying LA Fitness last year, Pure Gym has closed seven of its London pools and campaigners claim at least nine more in the capital are at risk.

They also claim that the swimming lessons of at least 1,700 children nationwide are under threat.

Duncan Goodhew, who won gold and bronze medals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and Sharron Davies, a silver medallist in Moscow, today spoke against the plans.

Goodhew, 58, said it would affect the young and the old and could even hit Britains future swimming champions. The businessman, who lives in South Kensington, said: Two things bother me. One, the younger people who will fail to learn to swim because of the closure of that pool.

Medalist: Sharron Davies / Neil Mockford/Getty

Two, a lot of older people use swimming pools because its the only exercise they get. Every child who hasnt learnt how to swim cant be a gold medallist, can they?

According to Sport England figures, more than 2.5 million people swim every week, making it the countrys most popular sport and Goodhew said it was the largest force in the fight against obesity in England today.

He said: To serve this huge demand there are 3,287 publicly accessible swimming pools. Therefore, the proposed closure of 30 pools  as planned by Pure Gym  threatens a significant drop in swimming capacity.

Speaking about the importance of swimming, Davies, 53, said: Pure Gyms destruction of 30 pools is closing successful swim schools and taking lessons away from 1,700 children. This is appalling. Swimming is an essential life skill for all. Pure Gym should never have bought pools it has no intention of keeping.

The #PureGymSaveOurPool campaign was started by members of the Kentish Town branch of LA Fitness and has spread across the country. Last month, the Highgate Road building became the first indoor pool and gym to be awarded an Asset of Community Value status under the Localism Act. A petition has attracted more than 1,000 signatures, with support from Dame Tessa Jowell, MP Sir Keir Starmer, London Green mayoral candidate Sian Berry and Dame Joan Bakewell.

A Pure Gym spokesman said it took no pleasure in closing pools but claimed that only councils or clubs charging high fees could afford to run them. He said its lower fees would make fitness facilities available to more Londoners. @mirandeee
A uthor and journalist Rachel Johnson is locked in a third battle with neighbours over wildly unsuitable and potentially hazardous plans to dig a basement near her Notting Hill home.

The London Mayors sister has joined forces with neighbours to fight plans for the build in Elgin Crescent she claims will cause major disruption.

Residents say it is the third application Igor and Christina Kryca have submitted to Kensington and Chelsea borough council for an underground expansion to their 7 million three-storey home.

The previous two were rejected because of a list of concerns including structural stability and flooding.

The latest plans include the construction of a single-storey rear extension to their four-bedroom home, with a roof terrace and a basement to house a gym and media room.

In a letter signed by Ms Johnson, 50, and her husband Ivo Dawnay, London director of the National Trust, she said: The council has rejected the last two applications and this third one should also be thrown out.

Dispute: Elgin Crescent in Londons Notting Hill, where Victorian terrace houses are worth up to 10 million / Alex Lentati

This terrace section of the street is wildly unsuitable to the digging out of what would in effect be a double basement. These are small, delicate, jerry-built Victorian houses, not Kensington mansions.

They are quite unsuitable for deep subterranean excavations and all the attendant noise, traffic movements, disruption, structural damage and environmental impacts they cause for up to years at a time.

This continues to be the wrong plan, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. It is long, long past time to call a halt to this madness.

Producer Stephen Lambert, who won Baftas for his shows Gogglebox, The Secret Millionaire and Faking It, is also fighting the plans. He said in his objection to the council: The applicants have appealed the councils decision [to reject the previous plan] and we are awaiting the Inspectorates ruling on the appeal.

In the meantime, our neighbours need for a basement media room and gym is obviously desperate as, rather than wait for the Inspectors decision, they have now submitted this third application which their architects describe as almost identical.

The planning statement claims that the new application addresses the five reasons the council gave for rejecting the last application. We do not believe the new application adequately addresses the reasons for rejection.

Another neighbour, Justin Abbott, said: Given that RBKC has recently finished an excellent gym two minutes walk away and the fact there are several local cinemas I cant really see the point of either.

Developers describe the latest proposal as similar to its predecessor but said a number of alterations had been made including amendments to their flood risk assessment. The council is set to make a decision on the plans at a meeting next week.
A trendy east London cafe has launched a search for the owners of an "adorable" dog after it strolled in like it was going to order a coffee.

Grind & Co worker Ted Robinson said staff at Shoreditch Grind noticed the lost pet when it walked into the fashionable Old Street coffee shop and bar at about 7pm on Monday.

The dog, thought to be a terrier mix, was wearing a collar which gave its name as Bob but offered no address.

Staff assumed the animal was not a stray thanks to its dog jacket and well-kept fur.

Staff took an instant liking to the cute dog / Shoreditch Grind

They have now launched a social media hunt to track down the its owners.

Mr Robinson said: It walked in completely of its own volition, walked up to the counter and sat there.

Lost dog found in Shoreditch - collar but no number. Help us find his home! pic.twitter.com/ZT2bDXstii  Shoreditch Grind (@Shoreditchgrind) January 4, 2016

It walked up like it was going to order a coffee.

Obviously the staff like it because its completely adorable. So we took a picture and put it on Twitter to see if we could find its owners.

He added the response to the tweet had been the biggest they have ever received on social media.

But so far the efforts have been in vain, with no one coming forward to claim the pet.

The pet is now with Islington Council, whose wardens will check for a microchip in a bid to reunite him with his owners.

Should they fail, Mr Robinson said staff at the coffee shop would consider finding a home for the dog themselves.

Update 5pm:

The dog was reunited with his owners, from Clerkenwell, on Tuesday evening.
A London lifeboat crew says booze is to blame after they were called out to the Thames eight times in just six hours on New Years Eve  making it one of their busiest nights of 2015.

The string of incidents included a drunken reveller spotted balancing on the embankment wall, bottle of drink in hand, near HQS Wellington just before midnight.

Helmsman Steve King from the Tower lifeboat crew explained: The man was at risk of falling and had clearly had a few too many as he started to crawl along the river wall clutching a bottle of brandy.

We stood by as he attempted to stand up and he then plunged off the wall into the crowds of public on the nearby pavement.

The crew also helped a man in his 70s who toppled down the steps of a passenger boat, along with a person who tried to wade into the river from the shoreline.

Other emergencies included a vulnerable woman near Shadwell Basin and a passenger boat which broke down near Blackfriars Bridge.

The night did not quieten down until around 4am on New Years Day and the RNLI said many of the call-outs were due to people drinking too much.

Adam Robson, the charitys incident reduction manager, said: New Years Eve is traditionally a busy night for us and this year was no different.

Were pleased that thousands of people enjoyed the New Year celebrations safely but there were some who needed our help, most of whom had been drinking.

"Slips trips and falls can happen at any time, especially if youve had a drink or two. If you do end up falling into the river Thames, the combination of fast flowing currents and cold water shock pose extreme risk to life.

Add alcohol to this and you have a cocktail for a potentially fatal situation.
D avid Cameron gave way to Cabinet Right-wingers today by agreeing that they can campaign to quit the European Union without being sacked.

The Prime Minister planned to give a strong signal in the Commons this afternoon that he will abolish collective responsibility during the referendum.

His concession to Eurosceptics such as Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Chris Grayling was a dramatic change in Downing Streets position in the space of a fortnight.

It dealt a bitter disappointment to pro-EU MPs and peers, such as former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine, who recently warned that Mr Cameron would become a laughing stock if he allowed the Cabinet to split in public.

Just before Christmas, Downing Street official sources insisted that no announcement on whether ministers would have to resign would be taken until after Mr Cameron concluded negotiations with other EU leaders on a new membership deal for Britain.

Those negotiations stalled, however, when the other 27 leaders flatly refused his key demand to curb migration.

The last occasion that a Prime Minister was forced to suspend collective responsibility  the principle that ministers defend government policy in public or resign  was in 1975.

Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, faced with a divided government, gave ministers freedom to campaign on either side in the referendum on whether to remain in the then Common Market.

Mr Cameron will insist that ministers stay loyal during the negotiations. An official source said: Once the deal is done the Government will take a clear position but if there are any ministers who want to campaign in a different way they will be able to.

Among powerful voices demanding the right of ministers to speak out was Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which represents Tory MPs. Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, said it would be sensible to let MPs and ministers speak out.

Mr Camerons negotiations came under fire from a leading Right-winger during a Commons debate today. Philip Hollobone said: The PMs renegotiation strategy has been unfortunately weak. It has been undermined from the very start because the PM is in favour of staying in the European Union whatever the outcome. Any reforms we are likely to get will be too little too late.

Theresa May has surged in the Tory leadership stakes, fuelling fears among ministers that the referendum battle is unleashing a wave of scepticism that will strongly influence who succeeds Mr Cameron. A monthly survey by Conservative Home put her on top and showed a big lift for Liam Fox, the ex-defence secretary calling for Brexit.

Boris Johnson today insisted Mr Cameron would not have to resign as PM if he lost the referendum. If the British people were to say we dont think thats good enough I dont think for a minute that means David Cameron has to resign, he told LBC radio.

The Mayor claimed glutinous harmony prevailed within the Tory party  including Mr Grayling and Ms Villiers  and MPs were backing their leader.

Mr Johnson denied he planned to take a Cabinet post or lead the EU Out campaign before his term finished in May. Ive got to do my job in London thats got months to run, I will not take any other job whilst Im here, he said.
T he London Mayoral race descended into an angry row today after Zac Goldsmith accused Sadiq Khan of playing the race card.

The Tory candidate defended campaign literature in which he had described his Labour rival, who is Muslim, of being radical and divisive.

Mr Khan had taken offence at the claim, which his campaign team said could be seen as a coded racist attack amid current fears over Islamist extremism.

Yesterday he accused Mr Goldsmith of playing with fire in his choice of words in the leaflets, which were distributed in London last month.

The Tory MP launched a counter-attack, today insisting his criticisms concerned the Left-wing agenda adopted by the Labour Party.

Mr Goldsmith said: I think he is playing with fire. I dont think there is anything more divisive than playing the race card when clearly, unambiguously, it does not apply. Its very obvious that what I was referring to when I described him as a radical candidate as part of a radical process that has enveloped the Labour Party.

He told Radio 4s Today programme: If I cannot use the term radical to describe what has happened to the Labour Party  I dont know when Id be able to use it. We have an opposition party that is now more extreme than at any point on my lifetime.

The leaflet had claimed Mr Khans divisive and radical politics will mean fewer affordable homes, less reliable transport and divided communities.

Today Mr Khan stepped up his campaign to ensure Londoners rather than overseas buyers are given priority to purchase properties in the capital.

The Tooting MP tabled an amendment to the Housing Bill allowing councils to ringfence a proportion of new homes to be marketed exclusively to Londoners before they are offered elsewhere.

New evidence of the scale of overseas marketing by major agents emerged  with one alone, JLL, staging no fewer than 40 events last year.

Hong Kongs Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hotel was the venue for more than quarter of these events. Mr Khan said: This investigation reveals the shocking scale of homes being sold to overseas investors rather than to the Londoners who desperately need them.

A spokeswoman for JLL said: "We are fully supportive of the Mayoral Concordat - New homes for Londoners signed by the all the major London House builders which ensures an opportunity for London purchasers to buy before, or at least at the same time as international buyers.

The London mayoral candidates must be clear that off-plan purchasers are vital to underpin construction activity, employment and crucially affordable homes. New supply is the only long-term solution to Londons housing crisis and all policy efforts must be towards ensuring Londoners see the homes built that they need.
J eremy Corbyn was in open warfare with shadow ministers today as he fired one senior critic but was forced to cancel a string of other high-profile sackings.

Labours leader swung the axe on shadow culture secretary Michael Dugher  but was expected to abandon attempts to remove shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn.

His long-awaited reshuffle was derailed as deputy leader Tom Watson and seven shadow cabinet members including Andy Burnham and Lucy Powell staged an extraordinary public show of support on Twitter for Mr Dugher.

The sacked shadow minister later told the Evening Standard that his dismissal made a mockery of Mr Corbyns so-called new politics.

Mr Corbyn looked set to insist on replacing shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle with an ally who shares his own opposition to the Trident nuclear deterrent  which would mean Labour having a unilateralist military spokesman for the first time in three decades. But the impression among MPs watching in astonishment was that a reshuffle trumpeted in advance as a purge of critics had been massively watered down in the face of a highly-organised shadow cabinet rebellion, including threats of mass walkouts if Mr Benn was ejected. A shadow cabinet meeting due after lunchtime  supposedly the first meeting of the new team  was cancelled pending further announcements.

One Labour MP said it was becoming a war between Mr Corbyn and supporters of Mr Watson, who is seen as a potential replacement, hailing from Labours heartlands and enjoying strong trade union support.

Im certain this is a Corbyn-Watson battle, said the MP. Tom Watson is mopping up the Right and centre of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Another attack on the Corbynites as a remote North London elite appeared to be made by Labour MP Graham Jones who tweeted: With the sacking of Dugher, traditional working class Labour is dying.

The day of drama began with a tense-looking Mr Corbyn entering his office building through a side entrance to avoid journalists outside his office. As he stepped from his official car, he would only say to the Standard: No  no questions, sorry.

Once inside, he telephoned Mr Dugher and told him he was fired. But he did not go quietly, tweeting just after 10am: Just been sacked by Jeremy Corbyn. I wished him a happy new year. That was the trigger for a series of tweets by Labour figures heaping praise on their sacked colleague, who had publicly warned Mr Corbyn against sacking moderates, warning him not to make Labour a religious cult or to carry out a revenge reshuffle.

Deputy leader Mr Watson issued a statement saying: Michael Dugher is a rare politician  a talented working-class MP who hasnt lost his strong Yorkshire roots. Politicians with his ability and commitment can make a difference in any role. Labours loss in the shadow cabinet will be compensated for by Michaels free thought on the backbenches.

The reference to Mr Dughers provincial working-class roots was seen by MPs as a contrast with Mr Corbyns North London circle.

Mr Burnham, the shadow home secretary, said: We face a big challenge in winning back the trust of our traditional supporters in the North and the Midlands and Michael is one of the authentic voices who can do that.

Shadow education secretary Ms Powell also spoke out, saying: Michael is a formidable campaigner who has provided an important and authentic voice to the shadow cabinet. Him going is a loss. Shadow cabinet members Gloria De Piero, Luciana Berger, John Ashworth and Vernon Coaker also praised Mr Dugher, a former aide to Gordon Brown at No 10.

Speaking to the Standard, Mr Dugher said he had been fired for defending colleagues who were victims of a whispering campaign by the party leaders own staff. I chose to speak out in defence of good hard-working Labour colleagues who had their reputations trashed for weeks over Christmas by people that Jeremy chooses to employ, he said.

I thought it was deeply unfair on them, damaging and destabilising to the party and a distraction from the real task of opposing the Tories. Jeremy did not like what I said and has sacked me, which makes a mockery of his so-called new politics. Mr Benn, Ms Eagle and chief whip Rosie Winterton were all tipped for the sack in recent reports quoting allies of Mr Corbyn.

A number of shadow ministers said they would resign if Mr Benn, whose acclaimed speech backing Syria air strikes infuriated Mr Corbyn, was axed. It looked likely that Mr Benn and Ms Winterton would keep their jobs while Maria Eagle would shift to a less sensitive post. Nia Griffiths, the unilateralist spokesman for Wales, was seen as a possible replacement at defence.
M Ps are to debate calls for Donald Trump to be blocked from entering the UK.

The debate will take place on Monday January 18 after more than 560,000 people signed a petition calling for the tycoon to be banned from the country.

The controversial billionaire is seeking to run as the Republican candidate in the American presidential election.

Mr Trump faced an international backlash last month after urging a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on".

He was also widely criticised for claiming London is so radicalised that police fear for their lives.

Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the remarks as "divisive, stupid and wrong" but made clear he did not support banning Mr Trump.

Petitions on the Parliament.uk website which reach 100,000 signatures are automatically considered for a debate.

The petition created by Suzanne Kelly said: "The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry.

"The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. The same principles should apply to everyone who wishes to enter the UK.

"If the United Kingdom is to continue applying the 'unacceptable behaviour' criteria to those who wish to enter its borders, it must be fairly applied to the rich as well as poor, and the weak as well as powerful."

The Commons Petitions Committee has scheduled a session in Westminster Hall on January 18.

Politicians will also discuss a separate petition opposing such a ban, even though it only garnered around 40,000 signatures.

Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the remarks as "divisive, stupid and wrong" but made clear he did not support banning Mr Trump.

Labour MP Paul Flynn, a member of the committee, will lead the parliamentary debate.

Chairwoman Helen Jones said: "By scheduling a debate on these petitions, the committee is not expressing a view on whether or not the Government should exclude Donald Trump from the UK. As with any decision to schedule a petition for debate, it simply means that the committee has decided that the subject should be debated.

"A debate will allow a range of views to be expressed."
A Sudanese man who entered Britain after walking 31 miles through the Channel Tunnel has been granted asylum.

Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, was granted refugee status after being found inside the tunnel near its exit at Folkestone, Kent, on August 4

He had been charged with causing an obstruction to an engine or carriage using the railway under the Malicious Damage Act 1861.

Haroun's caseworker, Sadie Castle, from Kent Defence, said he was granted asylum on Christmas Eve.

At a hearing at Canterbury Crown Court, prosecutors said they were considering whether to drop the charges in light of the decision.

Haroun walked 31 miles through the tunnel / PA

Operator Eurotunnel said it was disappointed with the decision to grant asylum, as it may encourage others to attempt the same journey.

Spokesman John Keefe said: "We believe that it is something that can only act as an incentive to other illegal immigrants to seek to enter the country.

"We had hoped the authorities would use the full force of the law as a dissuasive measure."

The decision to grant asylum was criticised by Damian Collins, the Tory MP for Folkestone and Hythe.

"People who break the law should lose the right to asylum," he told the Daily Mail.

"What we want to do is send a message to those people in Calais that if you try and break into our country by hiding in vehicles or trains  or by walking through the Channel Tunnel  you will immediately lose your right to making an asylum claim in this country.

"This is completely the wrong message to send to other migrants waiting in Calais."

TODO: define component type apester

Haroun was released on bail until another court hearing on January 18.

Countless migrants have risked their lives trying to enter the UK via the Channel Tunnel.

The crisis in Calais became part of a wider migrant surge in to Europe from countries in north Africa and the Middle East.

As of November at least 15 migrants had died in or near the Channel Tunnel since the start of the cross-Channel migrant crisis at the beginning of last summer.
F ears of a Christmas trading bloodbath gripped the High Street today as fashion giant Next revealed that sales at its 500 stores slumped in the run up to the festive break.

Balmy weather during November and December was blamed for lacklustre trading figures from a brand seen as the retail worlds most reliable performer. It stopped shoppers from buying the jumpers and coats that filled the racks during the key autumn season.

The surprisingly weak Christmas trading figures sent shares in the company tumbling as City analysts scrambled to downgrade their forecasts.

By mid-morning they stood at 6797.5p, down 395p or 5.5 per cent, slashing almost 600 million from the value of the company. Shares in other big beasts of the sector, including Marks & Spencer, Burberry and Sainsbury, also fell.

Next is the first major retailer to reveal its Christmas trading figures and there are now growing fears that other High Street names have been badly hit by the discounting frenzy and the unseasonal mild weather.

Retail analyst Neil Saunders, of researchers Conlumino, tweeted: Nexts lacklustre results do not bode well for the rest of the High Street.

Lord Wolfson, chief executive of Next, said that disappointing sales were down by almost 4 million a week in the mildest spells during the record-breaking December, which was 4.1C warmer than average for the time of year.

He also blamed poor stock availability for shoppers using its Next Directory catalogue and online service and stiffer competition from internet rivals.

Next is one of the few retailers not to launch sales before Christmas but Lord Wolfson said he had seen unprecedented levels of discounting from rivals desperate to clear their shelves of stock, particularly during the Black Friday weekend.

He said: I think there were two things that dominated the Christmas trading  the weather, and the amount of pre-Christmas discounting, which was unprecedented, and certainly more this year than last year. He added I think the weather had the biggest impact, although I agree its always incredibly weak for a retailer to blame the weather.

Sales in stores dropped 0.5 per cent in the 60 days up to Christmas Eve  despite there being 1.5 per cent more shopping space than in 2014  compared with double digit growth in some previous years.

Its Next Directory catalogue business was hit even harder, with sales inching up two per cent versus a 6.2 per cent rise just three months earlier. Total sales from shops and online were up just 0.4 per cent year-on-year.

Steve Clayton, retail analyst at brokers Hargreaves Lansdowne, said: We can forgive them the impact of bad weather... but the news about specific issues within Directory is more concerning. Poor stock availability sounds like a euphemism for a warehouse problem, which can be a painful experience for any retailer.

City commentator Louise Cooper described the results as a bit of a shocker as Next so rarely reports falling sales. She added: Next has done very well selling bland beige to Britons. But fast fashion is now the trend. Our taste in more extravagant clothes and desire for colours (and of course sequins and bling) has recovered with the economy.

John Lewis will unveil its Christmas results tomorrow, which are also likely to be down, while Nexts biggest rival M&S is expected to reveal on Thursday that fashion sales at its stores dropped by as much as 5.5 per cent.
The partial victory of Iraqi forces in the battle for Ramadi 18 December could mark a turning point for Islamic State, if Iraqi government gains can be held and further pressure put on the militant group

On 28 December 2015, the Iraqi government declared a landmark victory against the Islamic State (IS) group in Ramadi. However, field indicators show that the Iraqi city is in a state of flux between locally supported Iraqi government forces and IS militants that still control parts of the city.

The Iraqi government rushed, nonetheless, to announce victory in the battle, as well as to exaggerate the size of the military victory. It announced that it took over 80 percent of the city, yet participating US forces stated that they controlled only 30 percent of it, or more precisely three neighborhoods (El-Tamim, El-Warar and Mamal Zogag) in addition to part of the international road between Syria and Iraq crossing through Ramadi.

In comparison, IS still controls five neighborhoods (Alsofih, Andalus, Alsjarih, Jweideh and Almaji) as well as retaining supply lines in the east towards Fallujah through Saqlawiyah, ensuring access to the Syrian borders.

According to the US forces spokesperson, there are 400 IS militants in the middle of the city and 300 others on the eastern axis towards the supply line of eastern Fallujah.

Inflating the victory

The political propaganda by the Iraqi government locally and internationally relates to its aims in the Ramadi battle. The citys central government complex was the main strategic goal for the Iraqi government. Raising the Iraqi flag on that building would symbolise taking over the whole city. Yet, this may also mean that the government does not intend to liberate the whole city.

The Iraqi government aims to raise the morale of its troops and win a psychological war against IS. Showcasing that Iraqi troops defeated IS in Anbar Province, one of the groups main strongholds in Iraq, helps overturn negative images of Iraqi forces retreating in the face of the IS invasion over the past 18 months.

Moreover, this victory would guarantee an agreed upon military deal between the Iraqi government and its American counterpart. This deal includes selective arms to counter car bombs, a tactic IS employs widely.

The remaining rounds of the Ramadi battle are unpredictable. There are obstacles that halt a final resolution, on top of which is IS planting explosive devices in many buildings in the city.

Strategic outcome of Ramadi battle

Aside from the way the Iraqi government portrayed the "victory," the battle of Ramadi produced strategic achievements on several levels.

Firstly, the Haider Al-Abadi government proved that it no longer puts anti-IS operations within an ethnic/sectarian context by involving  unlike in the Tikrit battle  popular militias in such confrontations.

This was shown in the considerable mobilisation of some Sunni tribes, which joined the battle as they sought to retaliate against IS, engaging simultaneously in a process of trust building with the current government.

This situation comes in contrast to previous Sunni stances towards the government of Nuri Al-Maliki. The Sunni tribes hope that building trust will lead to the implementation of a government vow to allow Sunni tribes to administer the city in coordination with state security forces.

Other Sunni tribes, nevertheless, were connected to IS during the conflict over Ramadi, due to their dissatisfaction with the exclusionary approach adopted by the government.

Secondly, the loss by IS of a strategic site as Ramadi is a multi-level success. Ramadi is a pivotal city in terms of Iraq's borders, in addition to the Sunni weight in it, which IS takes advantage of to portray itself as the defender of Sunnis in Iraq.

Ramadi, meanwhile, saw the birth of the militant group under the leadership of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and later under Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

Thirdly, the performance of Iraqi troops is another achievement to observe. It is widely known that these troops previously lacked sufficient experience to handle such operations, as seen six months ago in their failure to enter Ramadi after the Tikrit battle.

This time, IS suffered enormous losses at the hand of Iraqi forces, including the arrest of Abu Safaa Al-Damashki and the killing of Abu Ahmed Al-Aelwani (who managed the financial and military affairs of IS in Ramadi), while controlling the major road in Anbar that connects Iraq with Jordan and rehabilitating the image of the Iraqi military.

Moreover, the end result of the Ramadi battle might end the ambitions of IS to seize control of Baghdad, which lies 110 kilomres away from Anbar.

Indirect benefit for the United States

The United States claims it is supporting Iraqi forces by carrying out air support operations under the umbrella of the anti-IS coalition. But while the US exceeded 600 sorties during the Ramadi operation, in addition to planning operations, it is in fact reducing its role in the battle. The US, nonetheless, scored major returns based on its strategic objectives:

1. US forces have invested in the Iraqi army since 2003. The goal was to build an army to fight terrorism. However, other powers were able to divert the US and succeeded in building a sectarian army. Following the Tikrit battle, the US succeeded in achieving its goal. The US has also attempted to clean up some of what it had done in Iraq during its occupation, which led the country to chaos.

2. Refuting the idea that the US is not fighting in Iraq and Syria. Even though the US says that it plays a role in the anti-IS coalition, in reality it is in this fight on it's own, or at least as a partner to Iraqi forces in accordance with a joint security cooperation protocol.

Though French forces in Iraqi Kurdistan were part of military operations alongside Peshmerga forces, they did not participate in the latest operation. Also, the US cost the IS organisation losses on the Iraqi and Syrian fronts at the same time. The US announced during the Ramadi battle that it had killed 10 leaders of IS in Syria.

Accordingly, the outcome of the battle in Ramadi repudiates Russian attempts to belittle or undermine the US role in the war against IS.

Future scenarios: success or repeated failure

The Ramadi battle is a two-sided coin. The first future scenario suggests that the Ramadi operation will be successful and will expel IS. There are material and morale factors that suggest an ability to reach this outcome. IS supply lines have been damaged, and the symbolic victory of seizing the government building is not insignificant.

In an attempt to make sure IS has no way back to dominance in Ramadi, an important point is following up on and continuing to disrupt the supply lines of IS. This in addition to maintaining links with local tribes and investing American support for Iraqi forces to score more victories.

The other scenario is a major setback that would allow IS to regain control of areas they have lost to Iraqi troops. This scenario would come into play in case of a lack of security and governmental control. While unlikely on current indications, a great deal of the dust of battle is yet to settle.

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A police station in Hertfordshire has been evacuated after a suspected First World War bomb was found in a car outside the building.

Army experts have been called to inspect the object in Hoddesdon after the discovery shortly after 9.30am on Tuesday.

Police said a man had driven the item in his car to the station.

Other buildings have also been evacuated while an investigation is carried out and local residents have been told to stay away from windows.

Some roads near the police station have also been closed.

A Hertfordshire Constabulary spokesman said: "A 200-metre cordon has been placed around Hoddesdon police station after a call to police at 9.38am this morning to reports what is believed to be a WW1 shell was within a vehicle in the car park.

"A member of the public brought the item to the station to be examined by police.

"Buildings within the cordon have been evacuated as a precaution and roads closed to allow the EOD to attend and access the object."

Chief Inspector Dean Patient said: We fully appreciate this incident may cause some disruption within the community however army experts must the scene to fully assess the situation and deal accordingly. Until this has taken place, the cordon will remain in place as a precaution.

I would like to thank people on the local area for their patience.

Police said the object was a four-inch "training mortar" and added it had been taken away by bomb disposal officers.
T ea time favourite Tunnocks has been accused of abandoning its Scottish heritage with a new advert on the London Underground network.

The posters branded the famous and well-loved treat as the Great British Tea Cake in a move which has angered some Scots.

Managing director Boyd Tunnock said the advert on the Tube network was simply a nod to the BBC show the Great British Bake Off and was not a way to ditch the Lanarkshire-based firms Scottish roots.

Mr Tunnock told Radio Scotland: The advert we put in London was a sort of spoof of the British Bake Off. It was my son-in-law who suggested this and I thought it was okay."

But he later told Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show: "We're in Britain, that's what we say.

"We are advertising the Great British Tea Cake because we had a referendum here and 55 per cent of Scottish people wanted to be in Britain and that's why we're calling it the British tea cake.

But one SNP member posted on Twitter the move was a brazen rejection of Scotland.

Another independence supporter posted: "Imagine if Guinness had said they wouldn't promote Ireland or Toblerone saying they wouldn't promote Switzerland."

But Mr Tunnock branded the furore a storm in a tea cake and said the lion rampant image had not been removed from the packaging as some people had claimed.

The family-run Tunnocks firm was established in 1890 and sells an estimated 3.5 million tea cakes each week.
S eventeen people were reportedly killed in a suspected arson attack on a public bus in China.

Another 32 people were injured in the fire around 7am this morning in the northern city of Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia region.

Police were hunting a 33-year-old man suspected of setting the bus ablaze.

The Ningxia government said firefighters put out the flames in five minutes, and that eight of the injured were in critical condition.

It said the preliminary investigation showed the fire was an act of arson.

Several serious bus fires in recent years in China have been blamed on people who were mentally unstable or with personal vendettas.

In 2013, a fire killed 47 people on a bus in the southeastern city of Xiamen. Police concluded a resident fed up with his life set the fire in anger and killed himself in the blaze.

Last year, a 35-year-old man was executed for starting a fire on a bus in Hangzhou in July 2014 that injured 33.
A man from south west London has been arrested in Spain after police seized three tonnes of cocaine in a record-breaking raid.

Spanish National Police uncovered the haul of Class A drugs, which had apparently been trafficked from South America to Spain and were destined for the UK, after a tip off from the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The find in a warehouse in Galicia is thought to be the biggest drug haul in the region in almost two decades.

An NCA spokesman said three tonnes of the drug had been seized by police and a British gang were intending to hand over money to release the consignment.

The group, who are thought to be based in Spain, travelled to Galicia on December 11 to make a payment of 500,000 [360,000] as a deposit for the first 700kg of the cocaine.

Seized: Piles of Euro notes were found by police / Spanish National Police

The following weekend  December 14 and 15  members of the group were seen meeting Spanish and Dutch suspects, who were tasked with collecting the first 300kg of the drug.

The British gang were then identified by police as the customers for the entire three tonne importation.

Two Spanish and two Dutch suspects were arrested as 300kg of the substituted cocaine was being collected on behalf of the British group.

Loaded: A Glock firearm was also found at an address / Spanish National Police

Seven British men, including a 41-year-old man from Kingston-upon-Thames, five men aged between 31 and 59 from Liverpool and a 50-year-old from Thornbury, were later arrested in connection with the alleged trafficking.

A loaded Glock firearm and bundles of 100 Euro notes, totalling almost a 1million [720,000] were also seized.
B arack Obama has announced new moves to tighten gun laws in the US following a series of mass shootings, insisted his plan would save lives.

The US president wants to require all gun sellers to register as dealers - even those who sell at gun shows and online - and to run background checks on all prospective purchasers.

This is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, Mr Obama said. But he added: It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain of these extraordinary losses.

The presidents plan announced last night to broaden background checks forms the centrepiece of a broader package of gun control measures he wants to push on his own in his final year in office.

But the proposed executive actions were quickly opposed by Republicans who accuse the president of undermining Americas constitutional rights to own guns.

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said he would fight the executive actions tooth and nail.

And Senator Bob Corker denounced his steps as divisive and detrimental to real solutions.

He said: I will work with my colleagues to respond appropriately to ensure the Constitution is respected.

Under the plan announced last night, states will have to provide information on people disqualified from owning guns due to mental illness or domestic violence.

The FBI will have to increase workforce processing background checks by 50 per cent, hiring more than 230 new examiners. The departments of defence, justice and homeland security will explore smart gun technology to improve gun safety.

The president has been looking for ways to work around a Republican-led Congress that has blocked previous efforts to tighten gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members.

Mr Obama has accused Republicans - and some Democrats - of being beholden to the gun industry lobby and opposing measures he says a majority of Americans support.

But the issue of gun control bitterly divides Americans, with many viewing any attempt to regulate firearms as a possible infringement on their constitutional rights to own guns.

Although Mr Obama cannot unilaterally change gun laws, the president is hoping that beefing up enforcement of existing laws can prevent at least some gun deaths in a country rife with them.

Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must conduct background checks on buyers.

But many who sell guns at flea markets, on websites or other informal settings do not register as dealers. Gun control advocates say that loophole is exploited to skirt the background check requirement.

Were very comfortable that the president can legally take these actions now, said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Mr Obamas announcement was hailed by Democratic politicians and gun control groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which claimed he was making history with bold and meaningful action that would make all Americans safer.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, at a rally in Iowa, said she was so proud of Mr Obama but warned that the next president could easily undo his changes.

I wont wipe it away, she said.
A woman who helped save lives in the Paris terror attacks today told how she is still haunted by the bloodbath she was caught up in.

Anne Sophie de Chaisemartin was walking past the bar, La Belle Equipe, when gunmen attacked the crowd, killing 19. She told how one woman died in her arms, and how she treated others for wounds while surrounded by bodies.

The TV producer said she recently had a tearful reunion with one of the victims she helped save on November 13, when terrorists shot dead 130 people across the French capital.

Miss de Chaisemartin, 31, said: I went to hospital to visit one guy called Djamel, who I spent two hours with that night. I found him on the ground outside the bar with a gunshot in his left arm and two on his leg.

"I tried to stop the bleeding as much as possible and then I just stayed with him, held his hand for two hours until help arrived.

First aider: Anne Sophie de Chaisemartin was walking past La Belle Equipe when it was attacked

I kept him talking, I made him laugh, I did anything I could to keep him alive and awake. His arm looked like it was completely destroyed and I thought he would die. He kept asking why it was taking so long for the ambulance to take him to hospital and I told him that there were others who were in a much worse situation.

The 33-year-old had been trained to treat wounds in case she was sent to a war zone for her job with news channel France 24.

After the shootings, she ran to her apartment, three doors from the bar, and grabbed her medical kit.

Miss de Chaisemartin said she tied a tourniquet two people including an American woman with a wounded arm, who she also stayed with until help arrived.

She has been in touch with the family of the American, who had been in hospital until recently. Miss de Chaisemartin said: The hardest thing is to walk past the scene every day. The images are very fresh. I take pills to sleep at night and I am now seeking professional help to cope with my thoughts.

It really was a war zone, a bloodbath. I just want the images to go away. The thing I really remember was the silence following the gun shots. It was very, very quiet.

"People were not screaming, it was very scary. It was only after a few minutes that the screaming began and people were begging me to help them, grabbing at me, panicking, shouting at me, but I could only help one at a time.

A few days after the attacks I thought we will not let the terrorists win or defeat us but it is happening. I am afraid when I go out, afraid when Im drinking a coffee in a cafe, afraid when I hear a siren.

Of her meeting with Djamel, Miss de Chaisemartin said: He was so thankful to me and thankful for being alive. We hugged for a very long time. It was a powerful moment.

A lot of people are dead but there are a lot of people still alive trying to deal with it all.

Three teams of gunmen were believed to have been behind the attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, the Stade de France and at restaurants and bars.

Hundreds were injured, including more than 100 who were left in a critical condition.
A woman was arrested after reportedly trying to open the emergency exit door on a flight.

Crew members had to restrain the woman as terrified passengers looked on during the flight across China.

A scuffle broke out and the woman was eventually subdued, according to witnesses to the incident on a Capital Airlines plane.

One said: "Its really not an easy job to be flight crew, especially when facing the daredevils. Fortunately knives are banned on flights.

The woman, thought to be in her 20s, was arrested after the flight landed at Sanya in China's Hainan province.

The incident happened on a flight from Changsha in the Hunan province on Monday afternoon, according to reports.

A spokesman for Capital Airlines said: "A female passenger got up and tried to do something at the door, but was stopped by crew members.
A ustralian born music impresario Robert Stigwood, who managed bands such as the Bee Gees and Cream, has died aged 81.

Spencer Gibb, son of Bee Gees band member Robin Gibb, announced the news on Facebook. No cause of death has been given.

Gibb  who was Stigwoods godson  described him as a creative genius and thanked him for his kindness.

I would like to share the sad news with you all, that my godfather, and the longtime manager of my family, Robert Stigwood, has passed away, he wrote.

I would like to share the sad news with you all, that my godfather, and the longtime manager of my family, Robert... Posted by Spencer Gibb (Official Artist Page) on Monday, 4 January 2016

A creative genius with a very quick and dry wit, Robert was the driving force behind The Bee Gees career, as well as having discovered Cream, and subsequently managing Eric Clapton. He was also of course, the creator of the movies Saturday Night Fever and Grease, and many Broadway musicals with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

RSO Records pretty much defined the late 70s. Of course, his biography is very extensive and can easily be found online..I would like to thank Robert for his kindness to me over the years as well as his mentorship to my family. Stiggy", you will be missed.

Lloyd Webber led the tributes, tweeting: Farewell beloved Robert, the great showman who taught me so much. With love, ALW.

Robert Stigwood with ALW & Hal Prince at @OfficialEvita's opening night at @AdelaideFesCentre in 1980. #TeamALW. pic.twitter.com/0rkaITdSMF  Andrew Lloyd Webber (@OfficialALW) January 4, 2016

He later posted a picture of himself with Stigwood and Hal Prince at the opening night of Evita at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 1980.

Tim Rice also paid tribute, tweeting: "Farewell to the extraordinary innovative generous #RobertStigwood. A vital part of my life (& @OfficialALW's). Thanks for so much, Robert."
V ictoria Beckham hasn't ruled out regrouping with the Spice Girls for the group's 20th anniversary.

Melanie Brown (Mel B), 40, has hinted that all of the girls (Beckham, Emma Bunton, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell) will be back to celebrate the anniversary of their debut single Wannabe in 1996 - despite earlier claims that Beckham is too busy to take part.

"I think its our 20th year next year so were going to be doing something at some point with hopefully all of us," the Lip Sync Battle presenter said.

"I think once youve had a taste of that youll always strive for that high.

"Theres nothing like getting up on stage and performing live to your fans and to a great crowd. You cant beat that. So Im always wanting that feeling back."

Her comments come weeks after it was reported that a reunion was in "crisis".

The Sun reported that Chisholm (Mel C) is refusing to take part unless Beckham agrees and all the cogs are in place.

A source told the publication: "This means good management, good tour promoters and good sponsorship to maximise revenue. To fulfil this Mel believes the band has to be the original five-piece and Victoria needs to be involved."
While some analysts see the expansion of Islamic State in Libya as a response to the challenges IS faces in Syria and Iraq, it is more likely a component of ISIS regional expansion, rather than a shift in focus

Security threats in Libya are increasingly a burden on regional and international security. Alongside politico-security clashes between different local actors, Libya has also witnessed the expansion of the Islamic State (ISIS) group.

This situation did not lead to the weakening of IS in Syria and Iraq, but rather offered an arena for the militant group in North Africa.

ISIS seeks to turn from an "Islamic State" into an "Islamic caliphate"  its core goal, revealed two years ago  spreading in more than one state outside the Levant.

While the greatest share of the burden is faced by countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, due to IS's expansion in Libya, the extremist group is currently seeking to strengthen itself through working with similar militant groups in Africa.

The Derna test: An imperfect choice

ISIS apparently has learned from its failures, including the pressure it came under one ago with Egyptian airstrikes in response to the killing of 21 Egyptians by ISIS militants. The siege imposed on the group by Ansar Al-Sharia in Libya's eastern city of Derna is also instructive.

ISIS's mistakes included sending an emir (leader) for its militants in Libya (Yemeni Al-Baraa Al-Azdi, killed during Egyptian airstrikes on Derna in late 2014), the strong presence and popular backing enjoyed by Ansar Al-Sharia, and the existence of ex-Al-Qaeda figures within the latter's leading positions.

In fact, ISIS was apparently testing whether Derna was a suitable location to be based in. The group stayed in Derna from April 2014 until June 2015, when it was kicked out of the city. Yet it officially announced its presence in the area in February 2015, four months before losing the battle in Derna.

ISIS subsequently moved to the coastal city of Sirte, which lies on the south coast of the Gulf of Sidra and halfway between Tripoli and Benghazi  a city with number of strategic advantages.

Firstly, Sirte is far from the Egyptian borders, to an extent that reduces the possibilities of facing new air strikes, unlike the case in Derna.

Secondly, Sirte is far from the areas where the Libyan National Army has a strong presence. ISIS seeks to benefit from the latter's involvement in confrontations against Ansar Al-Sharia.

Thirdly, ISIS exploited the state of division between militia fighters in Tripoli and Benghazi. Not having strong competitors might have contributed to increasing militant recruitment in Sirte.

Fourthly, the economic importance of the Sirte is the most important factor, as the city represents a point of intersection of oil fields and gas pipelines in Libya, which constitutes an economic lure.

Therefore, it was not a surprise to see that IS's first attacks in Libya were on Al-Mabruk field, which is located about 100 kilometres south of Sirte. The French oil company TOTAL holds the production process at Al-Mabruk field.

The importance of Sirte economically also is due to the presence of many strategic sites and institutions, including Alkarzabih Air Base, the industrial river, as well as the Sirte power plant.

Fifthly, there is no local competition for ISIS, neither in Sirte nor in the Libyan scene in general. Ansar Al-Sharia share similar views to ISIS, as expressed in their ideological discourse, such as not recognising the government, rejecting the political process and bringing down the state. These groups also share a similar view on Sharia law, in accordance with the jihadi Salafi trend.

Another element is the possibility of attracting elements loyal to the former regime of Gaddafi. Ex-intelligence officer, for example, was appointed the local governor of Nofaliya.

Libyan officials say the relationship between Gaddafi loyalists and ISIS is based on a carrot and stick mechanism. However, IS has been attempting to reproduce the Iraqi situation of polarising Baathist elements.

Illustrative is the fact that the mmir of ISIS in Libya, appointed by Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, was Iraqi Wessam Al-Zubaidi (known as Abu Nabil Al-Anbari), who was killed in a US strike in November.

Is Sirte a pivot for ISIS from Iraq/Syria to Libya?

A lot of analysts have looked at ISIS's growing presence in Libya an an attempt to root the mother organisation there, to avoid the collapse of the militant group, especially after the international coalition intensified combat against ISIS in Syria. However, this perception is not accurate, for a number of reasons:

First, there is no certainty that ISIS in Iraq will collapse in a certain timeframe. Thus, ISIS does not attempt to move to Libya to avoid confrontation in Iraq.

Second, even though stances in the international community towards Syria are close, there is no united front to counter ISIS. Hence, ISIS's presence in Libya isnt a tactic to move its capital to Libya.

Meanwhile, geopolitical factors and the deterioration of the security apparatus in Libya have led to increased ISIS presence in Libya, even if ISIS leaders in Nofaliya and Harawah are Iraqis. This increase aims at expanding the caliphate, not moving its capital.

International reports suggest that ISIS might be forming a more developed training field in Libya to support ISIS in Iraq, especially Um El-Gerfan camp.

There are challenges arising by the increasing Jihadist influence of ISIS in Libya; locally, regionally, and internationally.

Locally, the lack of a centralised government in Libya is one of the factors that increased ISIS's influence in Libya. Meanwhile, the political steps expected according to the recently signed agreement between Libyan factions on forming a national unity government are less than those necessary to face the multi-dimensional Libyan crisis. Nonetheless, speeding up the formation of a national unity government would be a step on the right track.

The existence of multiple fronts pose a challenge to, and illustrate the weakness of, Libya's security apparatus. The Libyan army is now battling militias and ISIS amid a freeze on the import of weapons to Libya absent a national government.

Regionally and internationally, there are parties with interests in Iraq and Syria. Yet in the Libyan case, there other parties who are fuelling the conflict and providing support to militias. The Tobruk government often refers to Qatar and Turkey as responsible for the escalation of the conflict.

On the other hand, Egypt cannot gain enough support from regional and international partners to intervene in Libya. Cairo is still waiting to receive international support through the UN from France, Russia and maybe Italy. But without a consensual strategy including the US and UK, the creation of an international coalition to counter IS in Libya would be ineffective.

No information currently implies that the Saudi-led anti-terrorism coalition could conduct strikes against ISIS in Libya.

Meanwhile, it is expected that the increase of IS influence in Libya will put a greater security burden on Egypt, not only on its western front, but even the cost of halting IS recruitment of Egyptians in Libya. According to the testimony of Abo Obaida El-Masry, who was recently arrested in Libya, there are 300 Egyptians in ISIS in Sirte.

In addition, ISIS in Libya will try to support its counterparts in Sinai, particularly in light of the operations conducted by the Egyptian army.

Similarly, the situation is ideal for ISIS in Libya to be the main communication centre for its brother organisations in Tunisia and Algeria, in addition to Chad and Mali, which witness low-intensity confrontations. Even more, African countries may facilitate the transfer of support to or from organisations such as Boko Haram.

Internationally, Western countries and Europe in particular are top ISIS targets, as the first ISIS speech from Libya tackled the so-called "Conquest of Rome."

Besides, there is vast recruitment in illegal immigrants, according to local Libyan reports. Despite the fact that France has realised the threat, it still has not made a decision to intervene in Libya.

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The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was in Riyadh Tuesday for talks with diplomats and Syrian opposition representatives on efforts to end the nearly five-year war, an Arab source said.

His visit comes amid heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia, the main Sunni power in the region, and Shia-dominated Iran over Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shia cleric and dissident.

There are concerns that the row could derail growing efforts to end the conflict, as Riyadh backs rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and Iran supports the Syrian president's regime.

De Mistura is also expected in Iran later this week and in Damascus on Saturday, according UN sources.

Early Tuesday, he met ambassadors of countries that were involved in discussions on Syria in Vienna in October and November, in which both Tehran and Riyadh took part, the Arab source told AFP.

Those talks broke ground by drawing up a roadmap, unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council on December 19. The plan foresees talks between the different sides on January 25, establishment of a transitional government within six months and elections within 18 months.

De Mistura will also meet Syrian opposition representatives in Riyadh to discuss the date for peace negotiations, an agenda for the talks and the names of members of their delegation, the source said.

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran Sunday after protesters ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad over the execution of Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke by telephone with the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers to urge them to "avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"A breakdown of relations between Riyadh and Tehran could have very serious consequences for the region," said Dujarric.

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Algeria's government unveiled on Tuesday draft constitutional reforms that include limiting future presidents to two terms in office and obliging the head of state to consult parliament on naming prime ministers.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, re-elected in April 2014 to a fourth term, has promised a package of amendments to strengthen democracy in the energy-rich North African state, which has been mostly governed by the ruling FLN party and the army since winning independence from France in 1962.

Critics of the government say that, despite elections, Algerian politics remains too dominated by behind-the-scenes negotiations between the FLN elite and army generals who compete for influence, leaving opposition parties with little power.

The new reforms, which Bouteflika's cabinet director Ahmed Ouyahia presented to reporters, will be submitted to parliament this month for approval, the last hurdle before being incorporated into the constitution.

"The amendments have been drafted after consultations. About 70 percent of those amendments reflects collective proposals from parties who took part," Ouyahia said.

The amendments would also officially recognise the Amazigh language spoken by Berbers, the original inhabitants of North Africa before the seventh century Arab invasion.

In 2002, the Algerian government recognised Amazigh or Tamazight as a national language, meaning it could be taught officially in schools in Berber-speaking regions for the first time. But Berbers had pushed for Tamazight to gain official status, putting it on a par with Arabic.

The president's allies have a strong majority in parliament and the reforms are unlikely to face a serious challenge there, but a group of prominent opposition figures and political parties have already criticised the proposals as insufficient.

"Any revision of the constitution that involves the country's future requires that the people be consulted through fair and honest elections," they said in a joint statement.

Since his re-election last year, Bouteflika, 78, has not appeared in public, only in brief images on state media. He suffered a stroke in 2013 that left him in a French hospital for months before he returned to Algeria.

Approving the proposed amendments last month, the presidency said they would allow a "deepening of the separation of powers.

Analysts say the reforms may also be aimed at facilitating a stable transition of power if Bouteflika decides to step down.

Algeria's government is facing economic challenges after the dramatic collapse of world oil prices cut its vital oil and gas revenues by 50 percent in 2015, forcing authorities to trim budget spending for last year and 2016.

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Police arrested a 26-year-old Scottsbluff man on Dec. 31 after he allegedly assaulted another man.

Martin Little Eagle was arraigned Monday on charges of aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon, according to Scotts Bluff County Court documents.

Scottsbluff Police were called at about 11:33 p.m. to the 1700 block of Tenth Avenue on Dec. 31 and spoke to a man, Jose Frias, who said he had been assaulted by Little Eagle. The man told police that he had been laying in his recliner when, he alleged, Little Eagle came into the room and started wailing on him.

The officer filing the affidavit said Frias face appeared swollen, red and discolored. His right hand was also swollen and he had spots of blood on his clothing.

Little Eagle had left the area, but police made contact with him and placed him under arrest. While officers were taking Little Eagle through the intake process at the detention center, they allegedly located a pair of black govles with plastic covering the knuckles in Little Eagles front waistband of his jeans. He had allegedly been wearing the gloves during the assault.
LINCOLN  The federal judge from Nebraska who emerged as the talk of the legal community before retiring his controversial blog last year is sounding off on social media once again.

Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf has recently been contributing to a blog titled Fault Lines, which defines its mission as monitoring the cracks in Americas criminal justice system. Kopf said he will reflect on general legal topics and stay away from the day-to-day workings of the courtroom, which some court staff members thought unsuitable for public dissemination.

Scott Greenfield, a New York defense attorney and popular legal blogger, encouraged Kopf to give up his brief writing hiatus. Greenfield said Kopfs willingness to let lawyers and laypeople get a glimpse of judges beyond their written opinions or scholarly contributions helps encourage a better understanding of the legal system.

Losing Judge Kopfs writing would be a huge loss for the law, Greenfield said.

Kopf also has launched an Internet column, in which he shares personal vignettes about his life as a husband and father and days spent practicing law. He calls the blog Wednesdays with the Decently Profane.

Since I had been previously indecently profane, I thought the play on words would be fun, Kopf said in an interview.

He was referring to his blog, which he maintained from February 2013 until July 2015. The blog was called Hercules and the Umpire. In it, Kopf described his job as a federal trial judge and in the process he traded the judicial code of silence for what amounted to a digital bullhorn.

There was the time he suggested that Congress go to hell over a budget stalemate that threatened to shut down the government. Or the posting in which he described himself as a dirty old man for leering at a young female attorney and then telling her to tone down her fashion choices or risk being called an ignorant slut behind your back.

Kopf also wrote that it was time for the Supreme Court to stfu, an acronym for shut the (expletive) up.

But the one that got him in hot water involved his view that Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz  based on Cruzs statements about the judiciary  wasnt fit to hold the office. A George Washington University law professor called out Kopf, saying the judge had violated a conduct rule that prohibits judges from opposing or endorsing political candidates.

It crossed the line and I owned up to it, Kopf said, referring to an apology he published on the blog. But by July, he announced Hercules was done, a decision prompted by general agreement among court staff members that the blog was an embarrassment.

While the blog is dead and wont be resurrected, Kopf said, he never vowed to quit writing. In September, he started contributing to Fault Lines, where hes one of several contributors.

So far, his posts have addressed confusion in federal sentencing guidelines, defended federal prosecutors as generally ethical and forcefully denounced the danger of angry political rhetoric being directed at Muslim-Americans. His postings tend to involve more technically legal discussions, but they are still marked by his colorful opinions, humorous asides and penchant for profanity.

He launched his personal blog in October. Among the posts on Decently Profane are one in which he describes losing his son in a dust devil and another where he tells about the Christmas morning he disappointed his young daughter by failing to properly construct her toy pony the night before.

Greenfield, the New York attorney, said that while a few other judges will write posts that more closely resemble law review articles, Kopf is the only guy with a gavel willing to really put himself out there.

Having a judge expose his human frailties and strengths makes some people feel awkward, Greenfield said. But its also what allows people to see that judges arent just cogs in a machine, but human beings who try to do their best to be fair.

Some people get stuck on the frailties, that judges were supposed to maintain that degree of circumspection that would keep them aloof from the rest of humanity, he said. Others, myself included, see Judge Kopf as doing an enormous service to the law and the judiciary by removing the cloak of secrecy.

Thats a view with which Kopf, 69, agrees. When he started blogging, he wanted to practice his love of writing while bringing some transparency to the judicial branch. He quoted federal Judge Richard Posner, who said the public knows more about the CIA than they do about the federal judiciary.

We literally have a monopoly on the third branch of government, Kopf said. Think about that. In a democracy, thats not a particularly good thing. Thus, in my view, the more transparent judges can be, the better we all are.
What started as a peaceful protest on Saturday in support of two Oregon ranchers and highlighting the governments overreach, has turned into an armed militia occupying a federal building.

As much as we hear about protests, often bookended in violence, in countries like Iran or South Africa, this weekends occupation reminds me that violent civil unrest is all too common on our home soil as well.

In 2015, the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray resulted in civil disorder including the burning of local businesses and a CVS drug store. Gray was arrested by Baltimore Police officers but due to injuries inflicted during the arrest, Gray fell into a coma and died seven days later. The protests and riots escalated to the point that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and activated the Maryland National Guard.

In 2014, protests and riots filled the streets of Ferguson, Missouri amid the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. Law enforcement resorted to tear gas to help subdue the riots, looting, vandalism and arson. Whether it was the goal of the protesters or not, the protests filled online message boards and living rooms across America with debate about the relationship between law enforcement and, not only African Americans, but the public at large.

It could be argued the call-to-action demands and riots surrounding the deaths of Gray and Brown resulted in a sense of justice and awareness of the underlying issue. However, the practice of non-violent protests, from vigils honoring the dead to protest disrobings, can inspire social change, raise awareness of injustices and spark real progress. Those methods have a stronger and deeper impact on the American people, and there are plenty of examples throughout American history.

Founded in 1913, the National Womans Party (NWP) was instrumental in raising public awareness of the womens suffrage campaign. The non-violent tactics used by the NWP, including relentless lobbying and creative public stunts, resulted in President Wilson signing the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

For months, the NWP picketed outside of the White House which led to the arrest and imprisonment of many activists. Instead of retaliating with violence, what followed was the NWP labeling those imprisoned as political prisoners rather than criminals. That successful campaign, along with hunger strikes and other in-jail disobedience, brought national attention to the cause.

In the fall of 2011, somewhere between 100 and 200 people camped out in Zuccotti Park in New York City. That number would rise to over 5,000 supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement, which is still alive today, focuses on the reduction in the influence of corporations on politics, a more balanced distribution of income and jobs, bank reform and other changes to the American financial system. Protesters not only occupied parks, but also banks, corporate building, board meetings, foreclosed homes and college and university campuses.

As of Monday morning, the armed protesters occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building in Oregon have not fired their guns to force change. But so far, they seem to be armed with guns moreso than with a positive ideology, demanding land owners be able to use the land and resources without fear. It may be a noble cause but being armed during their occupation has caused some to label it domestic terrorism, which only diminishes the protesters impact.

Change cannot be achieved without conflict. Our country is leveed with problems, from the disappearing middle-class to a destructive healthcare system. We have questionable education and foreign policies along with political corruption and high unemployment.

These concerns shouldnt be addressed with violence but rather peaceful conflict. Ronald Reagan once said, Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means. Thats an ideology all Americans should embrace.
While you may have heard about the research and development (R&D) tax incentive  the Australian Governments tax incentive to encourage innovation  you may be unsure how to apply for the incentive, or...
| By Mark McDonald

The startup space is filled with advice - giving advice to a starting entrepreneur is so popular that theres an entire market built around it.

Bloggers, commentators, business gurus, social media experts and wantpreneurs seem to be obsessed with providing the top 10 tips on pretty much anything.

Sadly, many of the people giving advice to startups have never run companies themselves and dont refer to any valuable, data-backed sources.

A lot of popular advice is, if not useless, plain wrong and can cause more damage than good.

Here are a few nuggets of wisdom that startup founders should think twice about before embracing, if not completely disregard.

1. Just follow your passion





If solving a customer problem or building a business is your passion theres no problem with this advice. But if you use passion as the only guidance in what business youre going to start then you might be in trouble.

In his post, Dont follow your passion, follow your effort, Mark Cuban makes this point: Follow your passion is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.

He argues there will always be things we love to do and those passions arent worth a nickel.

The real passions come with the effort and progress. When you invest your time in something, you become good at it and with that comes passion and motivation. While passion alone isnt a good guide, passion combined with skills and the potential to monetise is a killer combination.

2. Persist in your vision and never give up





When taken too literally this piece of advice might be a surefire way to fail. Entrepreneurs often start with an idea, imagine a certain way to execute it and dont want to give that vision up.

True entrepreneurship is about adaptability  market conditions change and your assumptions can often be wrong. The ability to pivot and embrace secondary plans is crucial. Its the customer who decides where they are going to spend their money, and no amount of sales can make them repeatedly purchase a product that doesnt meet their needs.

3. Embrace failure





Failure is not a bad thing - its not something to fear. But the entire fail fast and hard culture has been taken a bit too far.

There are a number of blog posts where you can see entrepreneurs bragging about how they screwed up and are about to return the money to investors. There are examples of startups that pivoted their way towards bankruptcy.

Be flexible, watch your metrics, and be willing to change the direction based on your data, instead of blindly following your business plan, but dont give up on progress just because things didnt work out.

Try to learn from the mistakes of others instead of making them yourself, and find a way to succeed.

Theres plenty of data indicating that success builds upon success, not the other way around.

Be persistent but dont be stubborn. Stubborn founders persist, despite plentiful evidence that they should not. Persistence is a vital attribute that includes the ability to acknowledge when one has made a mistake and that a new plan of action must take place.

4. Build it and they will come





The majority of startups that failed in recent years thought that too.

When the internet was a new, hot thing in the 1990s, it worked for a while. Today, people are more distracted than ever before, and are overly cautious when it comes to giving their credit card details to an unknown startup. It turns out that, today, high customer acquisition costs are the number one reason why startups fail.

Build it and they will come is a mantra of the failed dot-com boom.





While the popular belief may seem to work if you look at startups like Facebook, Dropbox or Instagram, the real reason behind their growth is that they had an excellent user acquisition strategy.

5. You need a patent





Unless you have developed some truly breakthrough technology, you dont need to waste $50,000 for a patent. Most of your idea will likely change anyway, so if your app is built around an incremental change on something that already exists, a patent will be a waste of your resources.

The best protection is fast execution - thats what investors want to see the most.

Startup advice you get might be totally wrong. It all could also be 100% right. A lot of advice you get is biased.

Ask for advice, listen to it, but make your own decisions and most importantly keep moving forward.

Mark McDonald is the co-founder and co-CEO Appster, a leading mobile app and product development company with offices in Melbourne and San Francisco.
| By Luke Anear

In 1952 one man created history when he claimed the worlds largest iron ore deposit in Western Australia, driving a stake into the ground to secure what was worth up to $20 billion.

It took the next 50 years to realise the value of those deposits, for Chinas booming cities to create the demand that drove iron ore prices to a record high of $180 a tonne.

Lang Hancocks family became the wealthiest in Australia for a time, but by 2012 Chinas growth slowed, the shine started to come off the price of iron ore and miners scaled back production. Towns that had created overnight property millionaires in regional Australia were fast becoming towns of tumbleweeds.

Today, there is a new currency in town and it isnt minerals, its tech.

We are seeing the technology revolution transforming industries across the globe. From people transport to farming, nothing is spared from the efficiency gains that new tech promises to deliver.

But this boom wont take 50 years to realise.

It is coming much faster and todays value isnt buried in the ground, it is in the young minds of our university students and tech companies across Australia, and right now we dont have enough of them.

Meet the new breed of business leaders in town, where boot steel caps have been swapped for skateboards.

Atlassian started in 2002 and has now put Australia firmly on the technology map with a workforce of over 1200 people and a market capitalisation of$US5.6 billion. To the tech community working in Sydney over the past 10 years, the rise of Atlassian has been far from sudden.

Before venture capital existed in Australian tech, Atlassian had to develop the type of discipline required to make a company sustainable in its infancy.

It has been said that companies outside of the VC-funded San Francisco area have to be more disciplined businesses, they need to adopt a measure twice and cut once type of approach.

These companies didnt have millions to spray at a problem hoping that some of it stuck. They were disciplined in developing a product-market fit and business model that was sustainable.

There is an opportunity for Australia to play a significant role in the tech industry, but we need to move quickly.

Companies like Campaign Monitor, Canva and SafetyCulture have small teams working extremely hard on solving complex challenges as we scale our businesses. There is a shortage of skilled technology workers in Australia - we cant get enough people who have experience in hyper-growth tech companies with skills in computer science, data science, user experience and mobile first marketing strategies.

We need to cultivate the tech talent base within Australia, through university curriculum and business experience, but we also need to import it from overseas.

There are 23,000 Australians working in Silicon Valley today. They are there because the worlds best tech companies were clustered around that area until recently, but more frequently we are now seeing the rise of world leading companies emerging from previously unknown regions.

Governments across the world need to innovate the way forward and formulate policies to spur on development of the new tech economy.

I receive sometimes two calls a month from people in Ireland asking me if I need help to set up a team in Dublin. They are pushing the low tax and tech friendly benefits that Ireland has become famous for in recent years.

Tax breaks are no longer an innovation for governments trying to attract tech, they are now a minimal viable product and we need to do even more than the cities that have been leading the way.

We are now competing on a global stage to attract the smartest and brightest tech companies who can leverage our proximity to Asia and our low Australian dollar to build new products and share them with the world.

Zendesk opened a Melbourne office last month with up to 100 staff to be based there. Slack is rumoured to be looking for office space in Melbourne also and Xero have 320 staff in their Melbourne office. The Victorian government has had people working in San Francisco with tech companies to bring them to Melbourne  its a smart move, and one that is starting to pay off.

One company with hundreds of staff brings in substantial benefits to a city and over time those staff will start transitioning out of their current companies into other tech companies, which continues to expand the tech ecosystem.

People need to think differently about how to solve the problems of today.

Innovation isnt a choice, its an imperative. The cost reductions across companies and entire industries are too great for anyone to ignore, and if we dont respond with urgency, we will be consumers of technology instead of producers.

Lets take notice of the smoke signals and drive our technology stakes into the ground to make our claim on the worlds tech stage.

Luke Anear is the CEO of SafetyCulture.io. This piece was originally posted on Medium.
Related Obama to hold public meeting on gun control

President Barack Obama shed tears Tuesday as he announced limited measures to tackle rampant US gun violence and called on Americans to punish lawmakers who oppose more meaningful reforms.

Flanked by survivors of the gun violence that kills around 30,000 Americans every year, and relatives of those killed, Obama became emotional as he remembered 20 elementary school children shot dead three years ago in Newtown, Connecticut.

"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," the president said, struggling to collect himself. "So all of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby's lies."

Obama was unveiling a handful of executive measures that will make it harder to buy and sell weapons, but which he admitted would not stop the scourge of mass shootings.

"We know we can't stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence," he said.

There are thought to be substantially more than 300 million guns in circulation in the United States, more than one per person.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House, Obama invoked the words of his hero, Martin Luther King, as he called for urgency in a generational struggle akin to the fight for women's, African-American, or gay rights.

"We do have to feel a sense of urgency about it. In Dr. King's words, we need to feel the fierce urgency of now, because people are dying," he said. "And the constant excuses for inaction no longer do."

"Yes, it will be hard. And it won't happen overnight. It won't happen during this Congress. It won't happen during my presidency," he said.

"But a lot of things don't happen overnight. A woman's right to vote didn't happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn't happen overnight. LGBT rights, that was decades worth of work."

Taking on Republicans directly, he decried the gun lobby's grip on Washington.

"The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they can't hold America hostage," he said.

Polls have shown most Americans back tougher gun laws.

But that support has ebbed recently amid concerns about the Islamic State group and the wider threat from terrorism.

Republicans, who have long championed gun owners, quickly castigated Obama for trampling on the constitutional right to bear arms.

"His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty," said the speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan.

"No matter what President Obama says, his word does not trump the Second Amendment. We will conduct vigilant oversight. His executive order will no doubt be challenged in the courts."

The measures would tighten rules on who must register as a gun dealer, narrow a "gun show" loophole that allows buyers to dodge background checks, and crack down on "straw purchases" of weapons through intermediaries.

It would also encourage the Pentagon, with its vast buying power, to procure weapons from manufacturers who invest in "gun safety technology," such as fingerprint scanners that could be applied to commercial weapons.

Obama's remarks and recourse to controversial executive actions during an election year ensure that gun control will feature prominently in the 2016 race for the White House.

In the past, both Democrats and Republicans have used the issue to invigorate supporters and raise campaign funds.

Gun manufacturers frequently see sales surge each time tighter gun controls are proposed or a mass shooting occurs.

According to FBI figures, requests for background checks jumped by a third to over three million in December.

Gunmaker Smith and Wesson on Monday hiked its earnings estimates for the year ending in April, citing data which point to increased sales.

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Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei on Friday announced plans to create a memorial on the Greek island of Lesbos to the plight of refugees, many of whom have lost their lives trying to reach Europe.

"A lot of people have lost their lives under the waves... we need a memorial," Ai told AFP after a news conference on the project.

"I already set up a studio in Lesbos. Next year we are going to be involved with different projects," said Ai, adding that his workshops in China and Germany as well as a number of his students would be involved.

"This is a very historical moment from any perspective. As an artist I want to be more involved, I want to (create) artworks in relation to the crisis and also create some kind of consciousness about the situation," he said.

The artist earlier this week paid a holiday visit to refugees and migrants flocking to the Greek island of Lesbos, tweeting out photos and videos that bore witness to their plight.

He posted a video on Monday showing the arrival of a rubber dinghy carrying desperate people to the island's shores from nearby Turkey.

"It's very important to come and be part of it," Ai said Friday.

The 58-year-old also retweeted photos, including one of him posing with Norwegian humanitarian workers from the group Drop in the Ocean.

Another shows him on a beach holding a child's life vest, an object that has come to symbolise the human cost of the migrant flight, with over 700 people having drowned in the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece this year.

The outspoken critic of the Chinese regime has made ample use of his passport since he got it back in July, four years after it was confiscated.

During a visit to London in September, the artist said he was "very proud" of the "civilised" welcome that Germany -- where his son lives -- has accorded to refugees.

More than one million migrants and refugees reached Europe this year, mainly fleeing violence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, of whom four in five travelled via the Greek islands.



For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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CLEVELAND  An estimated 936 workers at Freightliners Rowan County truck manufacturing plant will lose their jobs this week, the company announced Monday.

The cuts will shrink the number of employees from 3,100 to about 2,200. Daimler Trucks North America said in a press release that it was reducing the plants output by one-third in anticipation of a softer North American truck market in 2016, which will be somewhat below the very strong market of 2015. The workers' last day will be Friday.

Its not clear how many Iredell County residents work at the Cleveland plant, which sits about 10 miles from Statesville at 11710 Statesville Blvd.

A representative at the UAW Local 3520 on Salisbury Highway in Statesville declined to comment on the cuts Monday afternoon.

Some Statesville City Council members discussed the news at a meeting Monday night.

Wow said Statesville Mayor Costi Kutteh, responding to the number of jobs lost. This brings up concerns on how it may impact the local government, and what we can do to ensure enough economical development to get those people working againI hope we (the city council) can improve the reemployment.

Council member Arnold Watt said he knew a few people who work at the plant. They thought since they had been working there for so long they were immune to something like this  he said. It really it stunning how many people were let go. But this isnt the first time it has happened over the course of these past few years.

According to the Daimler Trucks North America press release:  employees will receive payment in lieu of the notice period at each employees regular rate of pay, and employees are free to seek and accept other employment during the notice period without jeopardizing their entitlement to the (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) period payment or benefits.

The Cleveland plant manager broke the news to workers whod just returned from holiday break, according to reports.

In May, the company announced it would add more than 600 jobs and a third shift at its Mount Holly plant, which makes Freightliner medium-duty trucks.

The Cleveland plant is the largest Freightliner manufacturing plant in the U.S. and produces Class 8 truck models including the Cascadia, Argosy, Coronado, Columbia, Western Star 4700, Western Star 4900 and Cascadia Natural Gas, according to the company.
In an exhibition titled Formal Spectres (4x6), photographer Mohamed Ezz focused on studio portrait photographs, the ones mostly on official identification documents like passports with the standard size of 4x6 centimetres.

He explores how these photos that are preserved for years in these documents hold more than a blank look, and how their redundant usage affects their value.

Ezz was inspired by Roland Barthes book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, in which he reflects on portraits as an intersection of repertoires saying In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art.

For Formal Spectres (4x6), Ezz shot some portraits in studios around Cairo, and also installed a basic studio at Artellewa to photograph the locals.

Ezz studied engineering at the University of Cairo and is working in the field. His interest in photography goes back to 2003, and has since been exhibited extensively locally and internationally.

He has also won several awards including the golden award at the Emirates International Photography Competition in 2009, the golden award from Sharjah awards for Arab photo in 2011 and the Salon award from the 24th Youth Salon in Egypt in 2013.

Programme:

The exhibit will open on Tuesday 12 January at 6pm and will run to 25 January. The venue is open everyday from 12 - 8pm except for Sundays and Mondays.

Artellewa, 19 Mohamed Ali El-Eseary street, Ard El-Lewa, Giza

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Tuesday, 05 January 2016 14:15:53 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In the week from December 28 to January 1, on the Orbis Steel Index the Turkish scrap index declined, while the US (East Coast) HMS I/II scrap export index moved sideways. In the given week, the Turkish rebar maintained its downward movement, whereas the Turkish flat rolled indexes remained stable.

As per the Orbis Steel Index data, the index movements in the week from December 28 to January 1 as per product are as follows:

Turkish Scrap Index decreased by 1.48 percent week on week to 73.33. decreased by 1.48 percent week on week to 73.33.

US (East Coast) HMS I/II Scrap Export Index moved sideways in the given week, with the index value remaining at 77.88. moved sideways in the given week, with the index value remaining at 77.88.

Turkish Rebar Index moved downwards by 0.89 percent to 78.02 compared to the previous week. moved downwards by 0.89 percent to 78.02 compared to the previous week.

Turkish HRC Index remained unchanged at 48.23 compared to the previous week. remained unchanged at 48.23 compared to the previous week.

Black Sea HRC Export Index switched to sideways movement. The index value remained stable at 50.36. switched to sideways movement. The index value remained stable at 50.36.

Turkish HDG Index continued to move sideways, with the index value staying at 75.71.

Turkish CRC Index maintained its stable movement. The index value stayed at 60.27. maintained its stable movement. The index value stayed at 60.27.

*Explanations:

Turkish Scrap Index: based on the weighted average of prices published by SteelOrbis of domestic ferrous scrap purchased weekly by Turkish steel mills, and imported HMS 80/20 CFR Turkey

Turkish Rebar Index: based on the weighted average of prices published by SteelOrbis of commercial quality deformed steel reinforcing bars produced and sold by Turkish mills and subsequently merchants, both in the domestic market on ex-warehouse basis and for export on FOB Turkey basis.

Turkish HRC Index: based on the weighted average of prices published by SteelOrbis of commercial quality HRC produced or imported, and then sold by Turkish mills on ex-warehouse basis.

01.01.2005 value is 100.




Tuesday, 05 January 2016 11:01:17 (GMT+3) | Shanghai

In the week ending January 5, average hot rolled coil (HRC) prices in the Chinese domestic market have continued their overall upward trend, while transaction activity in the overall market has been at decent levels. Average HRC prices in the local Chinese market are presented in the table below.

During the given week, although HRC futures prices in China moved down on January 4, which was the first trading day after the New Year holiday (January 1-3), HRC prices in the domestic spot market still continued their rising trend due to the rebound in semi-finished steel prices and the supply shortage in the market. Inventory in the HRC market is at relatively low levels, providing a certain degree of support for domestic HRC prices. It is expected that HRC prices in the Chinese domestic market will likely continue their rising trend in the coming week if supply shortages continue to be observed.

Product Name Spec. Category City Steel Plant/Origin Price (RMB/mt) Price ($/mt) Weekly Change (RMB/mt) Medium HRC 5.75 mm x 1,500 mm x C Q235B/SS400 Shanghai Tangshan Steel 2,080 319 80 Tianjin Tangshan Steel 1,990 305 120 Lecong Liuzhou Steel 2,220 340 150 Average - 2,097 321 117 Thin HRC 2.75 mm x 1.,250 mm x C Q235B Shanghai Tangshan Steel 2,120 325 0 Tianjin Tangshan Steel 2,070 317 120 Lecong Lianyuan Steel 2,220 340 120 Average - 2,137 327 80

17 percent VAT is included in all prices and all prices are ex-warehouse.



$1 = RMB 6.53
Related What goes on in the minds of ballet dancers

"Multi-award winning Egyptian director Hisham Abdel Khalek from Paris, France is taking us on a journey through the history of ballet in Egypt as he portrays the legendary Egyptian prima ballerina Magda Saleh in this feature-length documentary filmed between the United States and Egypt."

With those words we are introduced to Abdel Khalek's new project with Indiegogo, a crowd funding platform. The result of his work will be a documentary titled A Footnote in Ballet History, a film that will capture the important years of Egypt's ballet through the presentation of the "legendary ballerina Magda Saleh," as Abdel Khalek describes her.

Over the past decades, the Paris-based scriptwriter, director and producer created a large body of works that found its realisation in cinema. Although in his creative repertoire he tackles a variety of topics, the world of arts seems to occupy a special position.



The life of Magda Saleh, Egypt's renowned ballerina, a graduate of the Bolshoi Academy of Ballet in Moscow and Cairo's Academy of Arts in Egypt, and former dean of the Higher Institute of Ballet, as well as a founding director of the New Cairo Opera House (-1988), is a current preoccupation for Abdel Khalek.



"I always heard about Magda Saleh but I first met her when I was preparing my new Broadway bound musical Akhenaten [in production]. I found her to be a very fascinating person. We stayed in touch," he recalls in an online interview with Ahram Online.

It didn't take the director long to decide to make a movie about Saleh, a project which the latter welcomed warmly. "Saleh is an international artist and even if her career was short, her life was very rich," Abdel Khalek explained, adding that the documentary will look into a few important eras in Egypt's art history and will also draw comparisons with today's status of the field."We will focus on Magda Saleh of course, yet through the eras of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak," he revealed, adding that even though a large part of the footage will look into her achievements, the film will also include interviews with many personalities from the cultural scene.

"We will approach Ahlam Younis, the dean of the Academy of Arts, actress Nelly Karim, as well as Saleh's dance colleagues. We will talk about Saleh's career in the former Soviet Union and the USA and her acting experience in Ibnaty Al Aziza (Dear Daughter), a 1971 movie directed by Helmy Rafla and starring Roushdy Abaza and Nagat."



The film will include historical footage, provided by Saleh and institutions mentioned in the production. Abdel Khalek also hopes to get a hold of some of the videos that could be incorporated into the production.



Shot in both Cairo and the USA, the filmmaker will present "Egypt where Saleh's career kicked off and where she lived and New York where she has resided for many years now, together with her husband Jack Josephen, the world-renowned art historian and authority on ancient Egyptian sculptures," the director added.

Naturally, the film will incorporate a lot of music, from segments that rely on ballet such as Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker and Swan Lake alongside music by Hesham Nazih.

"We will also include a song composed by Remon Sakr featuring Paris-based Egyptian soprano Amira Selim," he said.

Abdel Khalek revealed that the recording of the song, which took place in Egypt, is among the most recent developments in the production.



"We will also include dance segments with two American dancers. Magda Saleh will choreograph those. We already agreed to cast Peter Chursin who recently performed in an American TV series Flesh and Bone, while the female dancer will be decided upon around mid-January once I arrive in New York," Abdel Khalek explained.



The director also revealed that the Egyptian interviewees are already scheduled for mid-January, a part that will be executed by Abdel Khalek's Egyptian partner Wanny Yazan and his crew.



Paralleling his efforts in an ongoing production, the director has already secured funds and the currently open crowd funding campaign aims to complete the budget.

"We have already secured some money from the co-producers and we remain very positive," he said.

Khalek concluded that once the film is completed, the team will take it to many international festivals and then move to the theatre release and Video on Demand.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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BY MICHAEL BOYD JR. A Goose Creek fire truck crashed into a tree and flipped upside down while responding to a house fire in the lake area this morning (Thursday, Oct. 13). A witness said that the breaks went out on the fire truck, causing it to leave the road. The driver could not get
Peabody Energy Corp. has agreed to pay $75 million to a special trust that pays health benefits for retired Patriot Coal mine workers, ending a dispute that had threatened retiree health benefits for about 12,000 people.

The deal with the United Mine Workers union nearly halves the amount of money that Peabody had owed the Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association, or VEBA.

Peabody spun off Patriot in 2007, unloading its mostly higher-costing Appalachian mines and employee obligations on to Patriot. Peabody agreed to contribute to the VEBA in 2013 as part of a Patriots restructuring plan during its first bankruptcy.

Peabody, which already contributed $165 million to the VEBA, announced in October that it wouldnt pay an additional $145 million owed to the trust after Patriot was again forced into bankruptcy earlier this year and later liquidated itself.

Filing a motion in the bankruptcy court in St. Louis, Peabody said it shouldnt have to make those last payments because Patriots actions had breached the 2013 agreement.

On Monday, however, Peabody said it agreed to pay of $75 million to the trust in equal monthly installments beginning Monday, subject to approval by the bankruptcy court.

The payments would end early if VEBA participants can begin to receive an alternate form of health care benefits from new legislation, the company said. The mine workers union is pushing legislation in Congress to add Patriot VEBA beneficiaries to a coal miner health plan lawmakers created decades ago. The union says its necessary to make sure workers are covered after the VEBAs funds are exhausted.

The mine workers union has said Peabodys contributions to the fund cover only as much as it pays out in annual benefits. Even if Peabody had made all $145 million in payments, the VEBA would have run out of money sometime in 2017.
French actor Gerard Depardieus love affair with Russia is set for a new twist as he prepares to play Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a forthcoming movie, his press representative has confirmed

Depardieu, who was made a Russian citizen by Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin, will feature in a screen adaptation of a 2013 novel called Le Divan de Staline (Stalin's Sofa), the representative said, confirming a story in The Hollywood Reporter.

The novel, written by Jean-Daniel Baltassat, is set in the Soviet Union of the 1950s, centering on a young artist who is commissioned to create a monument to Stalin but faces scrutiny by the KGB, the Reporter said.

The movie business journal said the film would be directed by fellow French cinema icon Fanny Ardant, who has played alongside Depardieu in numerous movies.

It will be produced by a French-Portuguese company, Leopardo Filmes, while the Moscow-based studio Mosfilm will provide costumes and props.

Depardieu, 67, is one of France's most successful actors, winning huge praise for his roles in Cyrano de Bergerac, Les Miserables, Jean de Florette and other films. He is best known abroad for the romantic comedy "Green Card".

But he has repeatedly made headlines in his country of birth for stirring controversy and backing unpopular causes.

Russian citizenship

Depardieu was given Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2013 after publicly criticising France's high taxes and taking up residence abroad.

He has since marketed a "Proud to be Russian" watch range and announced plans to open a Moscow restaurant called "Gerard" and launched an organic vodka brand.

In separate interviews this year, he has praised Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko  condemned for rights abuses by monitoring groups  as "a nice guy" and described Americans as "a people who have constantly destroyed others."

"They fought each other, destroyed the Indians, after that they perpetrated slavery, then there was the civil war. After that, they were the first to use the atomic bomb... No, I prefer being Russian," he was quoted as saying.

The larger-than-life actor has been involved in a number of Russian film projects, including a recent Rasputin biopic, in which he played Czarina Alexandra's notorious confidant.

Earlier this year, Depardieu said he was planning a film about French fighter aces who fought alongside Soviet pilots on the Eastern Front during World War II.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

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Two Edwards pheasants, also known as Vietnamese pheasants, hatched on Jan. 1 and 4 at the zoos Bird House. The chicks, which weigh about 0.75 ounces each, are the first hatchings for this species at the zoo and are being hand-raised in a private area of the Bird House. Native to the rain forests of central Vietnam, Edwards pheasants are endangered due to habitat loss and hunting.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY  A Berkeley man has been charged in an April fatal shooting in Berkeley.

William C. Clarett, 33, of the 6100 block of Shillington Lane, was charged Friday with first-degree murder and armed criminal action. Charges say he fatally shot Travis Hayden, 28, of Kinloch, on April 22.

Clarett was following Hayden in a car into a driveway in the 8000 block of Busiek Avenue about 12:30 p.m., police said. Both men got out of their vehicles and Clarett chased down Hayden and shot him. Clarett fired at Hayden several times as he lay on the ground, police say.

Clarett then fled in his car, police said. Police have never given a theory for the killing but have said it was not random.

Clarett was arrested on New Year's Eve after police got information that he was at an address in North County. He was being held at the St. Louis County Jail on a $1 million cash-only bail.

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong date for the fatal shooting.
The old and new wings of Dar Al-Mahfouzat at Salaheddin Citadel is to be restored soon in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance

Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty has finally assigned an archaeological engineering committee to inspect the current condition of the old and new wings of Egypts National Archives (Dar Al-Mahfouzat) located in Salaheddin Citadel in Old Cairo.

Gamal Mostafa, director-general of Al-Qalaa (citadel) Antiquities, told Ahram Online that after its inspection tour, the committee is to write a detailed report on the condition of both wings and send it to the minister in order to take concrete procedures to restore the great monument.

Among the required restoration works are the installation of a new electronic security system and an automatic extinguishing system.

On Wednesday, Mostafa said, a meeting is to be held in the projects department at the ministry with the members of the committee in an attempt to put early steps towards restoring the archives. A review of previous restoration works would also be discussed.

Mostafa also said that the Ministry of Finance is to form a committee to decide on the beginning of the restoration work.

Egypt National Archives is among the oldest in the world, founded in Cairo in 1828 when Mohammed Ali Pasha constructed a building in Salaheddin Citadel to preserve official records and named it Daftarkhana (House of Documentation).

The main aim behind its construction was collecting written documentation of the states activities and maintaining it in one place. Over time the Daftarkhana became a storehouse of Egypt's national heritage. It accumulated so many governmental documents after they were no longer needed that Mohammed Ali was forced to construct the Archival Storehouse in governmental ministries and agencies in the capital as well as the provincial governorates.

In 1932, an order was issued by King Fouad to construct the Historical Records Department in Abdeen Palace in downtown Cairo.

After the 1952 revolution, a new National Historical Archive was established by law no. 356 of 1954, with the purpose of collecting and keeping documents from all periods. In 1969, it was transferred from Abdeen Palace to the Citadel and in 1990 it was moved to its current location on the Nile Corniche.

In 1993, a new independent authority was created that united the Book Organisation and the National Archives and separated them from the Egyptian General Book Organisation.

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JEFFERSON CITY  Former Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones wants $10,000 in donations to rebuild his Eureka political office damaged by recent flooding.

Jones, a Republican, set up a GoFundMe page Monday for repairs to his office, "affectionately known as Jones WHQ."

The page calls the office "a community landmark and has been the site of countless meetings, debates, campaign committee discussions and decisions that have forever left their mark on the permanent record of the history of the state of Missouri."

Only $55 has been donated so far, $5 of which came from Jeffrey Mazur, formerly of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. AFSME actively lobbied against "right to work," which prohibits companies from requiring union membership or dues as conditions of employment, when Jones was attempting to push the measure to the finish line as House speaker.

The page does not say what repairs the $10,000 will be used for, but that Jones will match whatever is donated.

As of November, Jones still has $725,164 in his campaign account. His time as a legislator ended last January.

Jones currently is director of political communications at First Rule Media, a division of Pelopidas (a Rex Sinquefield lobbying group) and Senior Policy Fellow at the John W. Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University. He also is chairman of Sinquefield-based group, Missouri Club for Growth.
WASHINGTON  President Barack Obama and the Republican Congress are starting 2016 on one of the countrys most divisive issues: the availability of guns in an era of mass shootings.

In a speech touting executive actions that the White House concedes will not be a panacea in stopping gun violence, Obama said Tuesday that he would issue executive orders requiring tighter federal oversight of gun sales; step up efforts to increase gun safety; devote $500 million for mental illness treatment; and require more stringent reporting of lost and stolen guns.

Surrounded by victims of past shootings, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was gravely injured in a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, an emotional Obama said the discord over gun restrictions has become one of our most polarized partisan debates.

At one point, speaking about victims of gun violence, he paused and wiped away tears.

I am not on the ballot again, I am not looking to score some points, he said, adding that I believe in the Second Amendment.

But he said that the constant excuses for inaction no longer do it, and he invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s fierce urgency of now on civil rights to describe his motivation on guns.

In announcing the new restrictions, the president followed through on a promise from his end-of-2015 press conference.

He spoke then from the James R. Brady press briefing room. It was named for Ronald Reagans press secretary, who was gravely wounded in the attempt on Reagans life in 1981.

Obama had vowed to do everything I can with every minute of every day that I have left as president to deliver on behalf of the American people.

Democrats applauded the move.

The president acted because even after multiple gun violence tragedies like Sandy Hook, Charleston and San Bernardino, Republicans in Congress still refuse to allow a vote on something as obvious as mandatory background checks for all gun sales, which 85 percent of the American people support, said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, who faces a primary challenge from state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal in August.

Ive never been prouder of this president, Clay told the Post-Dispatch. He showed compassion and that he had a heart.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that Obama had taken small, common-sense steps but that more was needed.

My colleagues in Congress need to get off the sidelines and take action to expand background checks, and close loopholes that let dangerous criminals and terrorists legally buy firearms  steps overwhelmingly supported by a majority of Americans, she said.

While many Republicans support Obamas mental health angle, they generally oppose his new executive actions on guns, both on policy and constitutional grounds. Presaging what could be a theme throughout Obamas final year in office, Republicans pushed back on Obamas unilateral action as overstepping his power in divided government.

If the executive actions President Obama is proposing are constitutional and will save lives, why has he waited until the final year of his presidency to act? Its simple  because they are not legal and they will not work, said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, who faces a Republican primary challenge from state Sen. Kyle McCarter in March.

Todays news isnt about winning the war against terrorism, improving public safety or getting serious about the mental health crisis in America, Shimkus said. Its a purely political announcement designed to punish and scare the millions of law-abiding gun owners the Obama administration despises.

Said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who has pushed better treatment of mental health as a response to gun violence: There seem to be no limits to how far this president will go to overstep the constitutional limits of his power. His latest target is the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.

He urged Obama to work with Congress to enact measures that will improve our mental health care system and help keep America safe.

Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, called the executive actions legally dubious and said they impose substantial burdens on law-abiding citizens while doing little to nothing to stop criminals. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, called it a distraction from (Obamas) failure to confront ISIS, his failure to battle Islamic extremism, and his failure to prioritize the safety and security of all Americans.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, accused Obama of ignoring the checks and balances of our government, and said Obamas proposals do not solve this problem.

And Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, who is co-sponsoring mental health treatment legislation, said Obama had a blatant disregard for our nations Constitution.

We have a mental health crisis in this country that cannot be ignored, and I hope the president will join Congress in trying to reform the system and address these issues legally and through our legislative process.

Obama said that Americans could disagree without impugning other peoples motives. But his speech had a partisan edge, with criticism of the NRA and of Republicans who oppose him in Congress. He said Republicans who supported mental health reform were doing so as a way of avoiding action on guns.

The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they do not hold America hostage, Obama said.

So the brief surge of comity and cooperation that ended 2015, when Congress passed budget compromises that Obama signed into law, is last years news. And with Republican presidential candidates roundly criticizing Obamas actions, and Democrats defending it, a dominant issue of 2016 has been enjoined.
(Updated at 10:30 a.m.)

JEFFERSON CITY  Gov. Jay Nixon said he doesnt blame people for being angry about the behavior of a University of Missouri communications professor during protests in Columbia in November.

On Tuesday, the governor was asked if he supports a legislative attempt to oust assistant professor Melissa Click, who helped activists trying to block reporters from interviewing protesters at his states flagship university.

Nixon said he doesnt agree with the intent of a letter from 100 GOP lawmakers in the Missouri House and Senate, but he does agree that Clicks behavior was outrageous.

Anybody who saw that video I can understand how completely unacceptable her behavior was. The fact that people are upset, Im OK with that, Nixon said.

Click was seen on video during the protests calling out for muscle to help remove a student journalist from a gathering place on Mizzous Carnahan Quadrangle.

The video sparked a national wave of criticism against Click and other activists.

In their Dec. 18 letter to the university, members of the House and Senate wrote, The fact that, as a professor teaching in the communication department and the school of journalism, she displayed such a complete disregard for the First Amendment rights of reporters should be enough to question her competency and aptitude for her job.

In explaining why he doesnt support the letter, Nixon said he does not want to micro-manage the university.

At the same time lawmakers were chiming in on Click, more than 100 Mizzou faculty members released a letter supporting the professor.

The letter - first reported by the (Columbia) Missourian - argues that Click has been harassed despite apologizing for her actions.

"We believe that Click has been wronged in the media by those who have attacked her personally and have called for her dismissal," the letter reads.
JENNINGS  City Council members in Jennings took one more step Monday evening in their effort to get rid of a controversial mayor.

The council voted to line up John Hessel as special counsel and Paul Martin as special prosecutor if needed to work on impeachment proceedings against Mayor Yolonda Fountain-Henderson.

But first, they planned a town hall meeting for 10 a.m. Jan. 16 at City Hall to let residents know how much the process will cost.

Were really sorry for having to be going through this right now, Councilman Rodney Epps told the crowd. This is a sad time for the city.

Though all but one councilman voted for the measures to hire the attorneys, the mayor said she would veto them.

The mayor was elected in April, and meetings have been heated since.

Soon after she took office, she filed suit seeking to declare illegal a prior councils votes to give fixed terms to employees and appointees, ones she could not terminate. She launched an investigation against Epps and his wife, Carol Epps, who also sits on the council, saying they are getting insurance benefits from the city but are not entitled to them.

Meanwhile, the council questioned whether the mayor legally hired Anthony Weaver, the citys special services coordinator.

Some residents have collected signatures to recall Henderson if the impeachment proceedings dont work in their favor.

Also Monday night, resident Allen McDonnell stood in the parking lot outside City Hall, turned away from going inside after a police officer served a restraining order the mayor filed against him. The complaint said McDonnell came up to Fountain-Henderson at a previous meeting and yelled at her, and she felt like he could have harmed her.

McDonnell said he merely questioned the mayor at the meeting. I think shes scared and she doesnt like to be questioned, he said. She feels like her words the authority.

He said its his right to question elected officials, and that shes familiar with him and hes questioned her before. We dont exactly exchange Christmas cards.
UPDATED at 2 p.m. to include more detail from the National Guard.

HIGH RIDGE  The water district that serves northern Jefferson County has canceled its conservation request but remains under a boil order, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Public Water Supply District No. 2, based in High Ridge, imposed a boil order and asked customers to limit use after the flooding Big River breached a sandbag wall around part of its water plant on Dec. 30. Units of the Missouri and Iowa National Guards assisted by running water-tanker trucks from St. Louis County to district distribution points. Bottled water also was made available to customers.

The water plant resumed operating on Sunday and the guard units pulled early Tuesday.

Missouri Guard Lt. Caton Jeffries, with a support unit based in Nevada, Mo., said Missouri and Iowa crews hauled 1.1 million gallons of water to High Ridge. He said the units operated 14 or 15 trucks around the clock and made 520 deliveries of water from Missouri American Water Co. to the High Ridge district.

Jeffries praised the cooperation of district officials and other local authorities. "The cohesion was fantastic," he said.

The water district serves about 5,500 homes and businesses in and near High Ridge, House Springs and Fenton. The spokeswoman said the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which is testing the water supply, is the agency that must lift the boil order. That is not expected Tuesday, she said.
Mohamed Abdel Moniem, a journalist for Tahya Misr, was arrested and charged under the provisions of the 2013 protest law

Cairo Criminal Court sentenced an Egyptian journalist to three years in prison over charges of illegally protesting in April 2015.

Mohamed Abdel Moniem, a journalist for the privately owned Tahya Misr newspaper (Arabic for Long Live Egypt), was charged with protesting without a license and breaching security, public order and traffic laws.

However, some local media reported that the newspaper's board chairman said Abdel Moniem was just covering a protest of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood and was caught by authorities as if he was among Brotherhood protesters.

The court's panel said Abdel Moniem is not officaily a journalist as he is not a registered member of Egypt's Journalists Syndicate.

In November 2013, Egypt's interim president, following the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi, issued a protest law that bans demonstrations without police authorisation and gives security forces the right to bar any public gathering of more than 10 people.

Dozens of people, including several prominent activists, have been charged and convicted under its provisions, heightening fears of a slide back into authoritarianism following the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

According to the Journalists Syndicate, 32 journalists, including 14 syndicate members, are currently imprisoned, 20 of whom are jailed in cases related to their work.

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President Barack Obamas administration on Monday unveiled a series of new executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence and hoping to make progress in one of the most frustrating policy areas of Obamas tenure.

The package, which Obama plans to announce Tuesday, includes 10 separate provisions, White House officials said. One key proposal would require more gun sellers  especially those who do business on the Internet and at gun shows  to be licensed and would force them to conduct background checks on potential buyers. Obama would devote more federal funds to treating mental illness  a move that could require congressional approval  and require that firearms lost in transit between a manufacturer and seller be reported to federal authorities.

Even before its official unveiling on Tuesday morning, the idea was blasted by Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail, and some advocates have threatened to challenge it in court. While it is modest compared to any legislation that Congress could adopt, it would still affect everything from how the federal government might leverage its purchasing power to advance safe gun technology to what information federal and local law enforcement will share on individuals who are illegally trying to purchase weapons.

The president, who went over the initiatives in the Oval Office on Monday with administration officials such as Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey, said inaction by Congress in the wake of several high-profile mass shootings and other gun-related violence justified his decision.

It is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arms around the problem, Congress must act, Obama said in brief remarks to reporters after the meeting. In lieu of that, he added, the actions he will announce are well within my legal authority in the executive branch but also are ones that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including gun owners, support and believe in.

One of the main provisions is federal guidance requiring some occasional gun sellers to get licenses from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and conduct background checks on potential buyers. Rather than set a single threshold for what triggers this rule, it will be based on a mix of business activities such as whether the seller processes credit cards, rents tables at gun shows and has formal business cards.

Other aspects of the presidents plan aim to bolster the FBIs background checks system, including a push by the U.S. Digital Service to modernize its processing operations and a proposal to add at least 200 new ATF agents and investigators to bolster enforcement.

Obama will instruct federal agencies, which collectively represent the nations largest firearms purchaser, to explore potential ways to promote technology that would prevent the accidental discharge or unauthorized use of a gun, according to White House officials.

Another proposal will require federally licensed gun dealers to report lost and stolen guns to the National Crime Information Center. Over the past five years, according to the White House, an average of 1,333 guns recovered in criminal investigations each year were traced to sellers who claimed the gun in question was missing, but did not report it to authorities.

This is a broad set of actions that tackles a variety of the issues related to gun violence, said Arkadi Gerney, of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and in combination it represents a comprehensive effort to strengthen the laws we already have on the books.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., by contrast, issued a statement on Monday that said even without knowing the plans exact details, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will. ... This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.

Though the number of mass shootings in the United States has risen in recent years, overall gun violence is at lower levels than in previous decades. Obama, however, emphasized that gun deaths in the United States remain higher than in other developed countries in almost every category, including suicides.

We have to be very clear this is not going to solve every violent crime in this country, is not going to prevent every mass shooting, is not going to keep guns out of the hands of every criminal, he said. But it will potentially save lives in this country and spare families the pain and the extraordinary loss theyve suffered.

Obamas determination to act in his final year in office comes after he pledged in the fall to make guns a political issue after a gunman killed 10 and wounded seven others at a community college near Roseburg, Ore. The president has made public statements after at least 16 mass shootings during his presidency, including the killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December by a married couple authorities believe were inspired by the Islamic State group.

His administration failed to persuade lawmakers to approve tighter legislative controls on gun sales in 2013, in the wake of the Dec. 2012 killings of 20 elementary school students and six adults in Newtown, Conn. After that, the president issued a series of 23 executive actions to tighten controls and increase safety preparations, and he added two more in subsequent years.

But the White House was moved to act again after the shootings at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Administration lawyers have spent months reviewing various proposals to ensure redefining what it means to be engaged in the business of selling firearms can withstand legal challenges.

The law has long been fuzzy, and the transition of gun sales away from brick and mortar stores to gun shows and the Internet requires the administration to clarify the definition, said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has urged Obama to act. By forcing more dealers at gun shows to run background checks, there will be less criminals that buy guns and less illegal guns sold on the streets of America.

It is unclear how many sellers will now be required to obtain a federal license, because the government does not currently track these informal sales. A 2001 survey of thousands of state and federal prison inmates by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than two-thirds of those who had used a gun in a crime had acquired it from a source other than a licensed dealer and did not undergo a background check.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview Monday that it was a historic step that would subject thousands of gun sales each day to stricter scrutiny.

Obama is set to talk about his new policies in the East Room Tuesday, and will participate in a televised town hall at George Mason University Thursday, which will be televised on CNN.

The president will only put forward executive actions in which he has confidence in their constitutionality, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday. Asked if the White House was concerned that Republicans or gun-rights advocates would challenge Obamas actions, Earnest said: I wouldnt be surprised if they try, but the arguments we could mobilize in a court of law would be powerful and persuasive.

One dilemma for the Obama administration would be that a legal fight could put the executive actions on hold as a court deliberates, potentially dragging out the process until Obama leaves office next January. The presidents executive actions to defer the deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants, announced in 2014, have been held up in a legal battle that could head to the Supreme Court this spring.

Obamas plans already have resonated on the presidential campaign, where Republicans and Democrats have staked out different ideas on the question of how to address gun violence.

Even before the unveiling of the package, nearly a half-dozen Republican presidential candidates have gone on the attack. Every candidate who has spoken about the proposal has vowed to reverse the executive order if elected president, underscoring the fragility of any initiative that has not won congressional approval.

Speaking at a Christian bookstore Monday in Boone, Iowa, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called the idea illegal and unconstitutional, a theme echoed by several of his colleagues in recent days.

On Sunday, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told an audience in Raymond, N.H., that Obama has waged war on the Constitution.

You can pass all the gun laws in the world that you want, he said. It will not stop the criminals.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton applauded Obama on Sunday for taking a hard look at the issue.

I know that a Republican president would delight in the very first day, reversing executive orders that President Obama has made, including this one that we expect him to make, she told a crowd in Derry, N.H.
If they want to keep their Social Security and Medicare not to vote for any Republicans, as they seem to want to end it.
(Beijing)  The Chinese government is powering a homegrown "precision medicine" initiative aimed at improving patient treatment for chronic ailments such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.

Officials have declared precision medicine  a customized form of health care based on genome-sequencing technology  as one of the nation's foremost science and technology projects under the 13th Five-Year Plan for the 2016-20 period.

A document published after a March meeting hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology says the central government plans to spend 20 billion yuan to support precision medicine research by 2030, matching an anticipated 40 billion yuan in private investment. Moreover, the top public health authority, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, is drafting a strategic plan for promoting precision medicine's development nationwide.

Companies that expect to benefit from the initiative include Shenzhen-based BGI Genomics Co., Hangzhou's Berry Genomics Co. and Beijing Biomarker Technologies. Although young, the genetics services sector in the country is already diversifying, with firms staking claims in specialties such as prenatal care and niche services like disease and cancer detection through genetic testing.

BGI, the nation's leader in genome sequencing, is a 16-year-old company that bought U.S. medical equipment maker Complete Genomics in 2012 and last October rolled out its first homegrown genome sequencing machine. Berry, established in 2010, is China's second-largest genome sequencer and the developer of non-invasive prenatal testing procedure that's been offered since 2011. Beijing Biomarker, founded in 2009, serves research institutions with genetic analyses and testing services.

The precision medicine movement has also won the attention of Internet and computer companies. In October, the U.S. chip maker Intel Corp. and China's e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. announced a three-way partnership with BGI. The firms said they will collaborate to build a cloud-based online platform allowing clinics to access genetic data and other precision medicine services.

"Precision medicine requires sharing an individual's genetic data and comparing it to huge amounts of data from similar patients," said Li Yingrui, chief executive of BGI Tech Solution Co., a subsidiary of BGI. Health specialists then use those comparisons "to find differences and similarities to work out precise treatment regimes for individual patients."

The Next Step

China's initiative parallels a similar movement in the United States. In January 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned the field in his State of the Union address, calling for the government to spend US$ 215 million in fiscal 2016 to support precision medicine and build a national genome register. The effort would be coordinated by the National Cancer Institute and other agencies.

Precision medicine is considered a step up from today's basic approach to medical treatment, which is based on the general idea that "one size fits all." Such an approach to diagnosis and treatment can mean curing some patients but not others.

Precision medicine revolves around customized disease prevention, diagnostics and treatment services based on a patient's unique biological, environmental and behavioral circumstances. Supporters say the approach gives health care specialists the tools they need to work out unique treatment strategies backed by genome sequencing.

Many medical experts are particularly excited about precision medicine's role as a powerful tool in the fight against cancer, particularly for its ability to help with early detection. Cancer is now a leading killer in China. A report by the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences said an average of six people in the country were diagnosed with cancer every minute in 2015, and five of those six would eventually die of the disease. Many tumor experts blame the nation's high cancer death rates on diagnoses that come too late.

The World Health Organization found that half of all newly diagnosed cancer patients worldwide in 2014 lived in Asia. China saw the biggest increase in cancer patients between 2013 and 2014.

A doctor who tells a patient that he or she is at risk of getting cancer, but does not use genome sequencing, usually offers no more than a "rough probability" diagnosis, said Cai Qiang, the founder of the health care consultancy Beijing Saint Lucia Hospital Management Consulting. But "probability sometimes is meaningless," he said.

"For instance, a 50 percent probability of breast cancer provides little in terms of references" that can help a patient decide whether or how to pursue treatment options, Cai said.

Li agrees that genetic testing can play a key role in precision medicine treatment for cancer patients. "With new technologies, we can accurately catch a tumor's DNA molecules in blood and detect mutations at early stages," he said.

Lucrative Market

Genome sequencing began in the United States in 1990 with the launch of the Human Genome Project. Scientists from around the world participated in what became a 15-year, US$ 3 billion program that ended with the first comprehensive catalogue of human genetic variations.

Genetic testing costs have fallen dramatically in recent years. Genome sequencing had fallen to about US$ 1,000 per person as of October, from about $100 million in 2001, says the National Human Genome Research Institute, a division of the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health. Sequencing a person's genome can now be completed in only two weeks.

Medical experts expect costs to continue to fall even as sequencing takes less time. Future testing will "get faster and cheaper," said BGI's CEO Yin Ye.

The business is also expected to become more lucrative. A Guolian Securities report said global revenues for genome sequencing services rose to US$ 4.5 billion in 2013 from US$ 7.9 million in 2007. That figure is expected to reach US$ 11.7 billion by 2018.

Companies that could benefit from the precision medicine movement include genetic services providers BGI, Berry and Guangdong Province-based DAAN Gene Co. Experts say companies that find niches in the growing market space will come to stand out.

"Profit margins are low for genome sequencing" companies, said Xu Junpu, chairman of Beijing ACCB Biotech Ltd., a sequencing provider. "The future points to profits in downstream businesses, where the competition will intensify,"

Genome sequencing's core technologies are controlled by a few upstream companies that, for example, make sequencing machines. Most of the world's genome sequencing relies on equipment made by the U.S. firm Illumina Inc., California-based Life Technologies Corp. and Switzerland's Roche Holding, which combine to control about 70 percent of the market, Li said.

"The most profitable part of the genome sequencing market is equipment manufacturing," said Li Tao, investment director at Huaxia Renhe Capital, a venture capital firm. "It will remain the most profitable business for quite some time."

In 2010, BGI bought 128 gene sequencing machines from Illumina. It was the manufacturer's largest order ever, and it helped BGI become the world's largest provider of genome sequencing services. Clients include international research institutions and pharmaceutical companies, the company says.

Like other precision medicine companies, BGI is looking for ways to expand genetic services into other areas of health care. For instance, BGI has rolled out a service that can be used to test a person's ability to tolerate alcohol. Other companies claim they can use sequencing to detect specific talents in a child.

The rise of precision medicine has raised questions about data access, patient privacy, and how companies and hospitals should share genetic data.

Some medical experts have urged the government to work with companies to build an information-sharing platform and make new rules for the sector. But others argue that the industry should not be forced into sharing information, since a genetic test's impact on a patient can be complicated.

Experts such as Yu Ying, a former emergency room doctor at Peking Union Medical College Hospital and a popular blogger of health care issue, noted that genetic testing may cause adverse effects for people with certain health conditions. "Not everyone is suitable for genome sequencing," she said.

"We have no idea whether a therapy to change a patient's gene with breast cancer risks will trigger Parkinson's disease," said Ketan Paranjape, general manager of Life Sciences and Analytics, Health Strategy and Solutions Group at Intel.

"With advanced technology, we can test a person's genome sequence at a very lost cost," said a genetics expert at Beijing's Tsinghua University who asked not to be named. "But there is still a wide gap between understanding a gene sequence and human life."

(Rewritten by Han Wei)
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5 January 2016

Bronze Age fortified settlement in Poland analysed Studies of the fortified Bronze Age settlement in Bruszczewo, west-central Poland, reveal that it was founded by representatives of the Unetice culture shortly after 2000 BCE, and functioned for about 350 to 400 years.

Excavations started in the 1960s, with interdisciplinary and international involvement beginning in the late 1990s.

"What we excavated is important for the analysis of the beginnings of the Bronze Age in Europe", argues Professor Janusz Czebreszuk, head of research for the site for the Institute of Prehistory.

The oval-shaped settlement occupied an area of 1.5 hectares, and measured approximately 120 metres in diameter. It had at most 100 residents, protected by a deep moat and at least two rows of wooden palisades. Fortifications were the objectives of the team's excavations in 2015.

"We found scorch marks that clearly indicate that the fortifications had been destroyed by fire several times during the existence of the settlement", says Professor Czebreszuk. There were also numerous traces of repairs and alterations over the centuries. Environmental analysis clearly shows that the region around the settlement by around 1500 BCE had been heavily exploited. A possible clue to the end of the settlement is the discovery of dozens of flint arrowheads in various places in the settlement - more than in all other Unetice culture settlements combined.

Among the latest findings are sensational discoveries regarding a bronze workshop within the settlement, proving that metallurgists worked here continuously for hundreds of years: "... a continuous, passed down from generation to generation knowledge of technology is certain - finished products were not arriving here from the outside", the professor explains. Also new is the discovery of traces of gold processing on stone tools.

Intensive farming still threatens the registered prehistoric site. Fortunately, it is partly also in peat, which effectively preserves monuments and structures.

"Maintaining water ratios within the settlement is crucial. Unfortunately, the area is constantly drained and adapted to more intensive cultivation, which could jeopardise maintaining the monuments. It is important that the relics of the settlement survive for future generations of researchers", says the professor, who has the support of the local government.

To date, archaeologists have examined approximately 20 percent of the settlement surface Edited from Science & Scholarship in Poland (30 December 2015) Share this webpage:

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5 January 2016

Ancient Vanuatu cemetery sheds light on Polynesian migration Scientists studying skulls found at a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu say they may have unlocked a vital clue to the origins of Polynesian people.

Professor Matthew Spriggs, from the Australian National University's (ANU) school of archaeology and anthropology, is part of a team that in 2004 discovered the oldest known cemetery in the South Pacific, at Teouma, just outside the capital of Port Vila. The excavation took place over several years, between 2004 and 2010, and the archaeologists found about 68 graves, although curiously only seven heads.

"The heads were removed as part of burial rituals and were taken away and put elsewhere. But luckily for us, some of them were brought back in the cemetery and put on the chests of other bodies, or between their legs, or in pots sitting on top of other bodies," Professor Spriggs said.

The cemetery was proved be about 3,000 years old and related to the first known culture in Vanuatu and Polynesia, called the Lapita culture. "Before 3,000 years ago - although people had been in Australia, New Guinea and the Solomons for maybe 50,000 years or so - they hadn't got out beyond into islands like Vanuatu, Fiji, New Caledonia, and out into the further reaches of the Pacific," Professor Spriggs said. "So this was exciting, because it was the first generations of people into Vanuatu."

It has long been established that the Polynesians, who share similar physical features to people from South-East Asia, migrated from Asia. What is not clear is the route they took.

As part their research, Professor Spriggs' colleagues in Europe compared the seven skulls found in the Teouma cemetery with examples of skeletons from Melanesia and Polynesia. "What we found, which was a surprise for a lot of people, was that these first people in Vanuatu were Polynesian. Whereas today if you come to Vanuatu, the people are obviously generally of Melanesian appearance. Darker skinned, and not as tall as Polynesians would be. These [the people buried in cemetery] were very tall Polynesians."

The skulls found at Teouma were similar in appearance and measurements to present day Polynesian and Asian populations. Professor Spriggs said this provided evidence that Polynesia was populated by people who came from Asia via Vanuatu.

Professor Spriggs said DNA analysis could help confirm or discount the team's conclusions about the Teouma skeletons. "Or it could even narrow it down to where in South-East Asia these ancestors of the Polynesians, and these ancestors of the people in Vanuatu came from," he concluded. Edited from ABC News (29 December 2015) Share this webpage:

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(Beijing)  A Communist Party figure in Beijing who has been the only official in the capital to become a target of a major graft crackdown bought luxury homes in a downtown district for far below market value, says a person with knowledge of the inquiry into her.

Lu Xiwen, a 60-year-old vice party secretary of Beijing, bought at least two homes for far less than the 20,000 yuan per square meter price tag when they first hit the market, the source said.

The ruling party's graft-fighting agency announced on November 11 that Lu was being investigated for ""serious violations of party discipline."

The party has used that euphemism for corruption frequently since late 2012, when Xi Jinping took its reins and launched a major crackdown on graft.

Lu became the first city official in Beijing to run afoul of that cleanup effort, but many others of her rank or higher have gotten in trouble recently. Some 35 officials of the vice-minister rank and above became the subject of probes last year, Caixin has found by counting announcements published by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's graft watchdog.

The number in 2014 for figures of the rank of vice-minister or higher  which describes the top government and party figures in ministries, provinces and major cities around China  was 39.

Lu was the director and later the party secretary of Beijing's downtown Xicheng District from January 1999 to October 2006. She was later promoted to top posts in the city government.

Nearly 40 apartments in the development that Lu bought two homes in were sold to senior government officials and executives of state-owned companies for less than 15,000 yuan per square meter, the person close to the inquiry said.

Twenty three units were sold for between 11,000 and 12,000 yuan per square meter, he said.

Second-hand homes in the development now fetch nearly 100,000 yuan per square meter.

The apartments were built by a company linked to state-owned Beijing Financial Street Investment Group Co. Ltd. A check of that company by the National Audit Office led to the investigation into Lu, the source said.

He added that days before she was detained by party investigators, the former president of Beijing Financial Street Investment Group, Wang Gongwei, and its general manager, Ju Jin, were taken into custody over corruption allegations.

Financial Street Holdings Co. Ltd., a listed unit of the group, told the Shenzhen stock market on November 16 that Wang and Ju were being probed over violations of party discipline.

Ju was an aide to Lu when she was in charge of the Xicheng District. Lu's husband, Yu Shaoou, was also detained, the source close to the probe said.

Lu and her family also own two homes in a residential complex in northwestern Beijing, housing registration documents that Caixin has viewed show.

(Rewritten by Li Rongde)
Wellesbourne Airfield

A woman in her 30s, who was driving the car, a teenage girl, a young girl and a young boy were all in the blue Volkswagen when it collided with a tree and ended up in a ditch.

The car had suffered significant damage after leaving the main carriageway, travelling approximately 15ft down an embankment and colliding with a tree.

A spokesman for the ambulance service said: There were four patients, one of whom, a young boy, was trapped in the vehicle. The fact he was properly fastened into a car seat appears to have helped him avoid more serious injuries in the collision.

The teenage girl was treated for a suspected broken arm, while another young girl was treated for very minor injuries.

The driver also received treatment for minor injuries. All four were taken to Heartlands Hospital.

It is not known what caused the crash.
Wellesbourne Airfield

Television viewers will be able to join in the celebrations with a special programme broadcast live on BBC Two from the RSC.

Events include a film festival, an exhibition celebrating favourite Shakespearean quotes, a new self-guided tour of Stratford, and, on Shakespeares birthday itself, a wealth of free family activities and a fantastic fireworks display.

Family friendly activities around the RSCs Stratford theatres, Saturday 23rd April, 11.30am-4.15pm, including a special acrobatic show at 2pm and 4pm, and fireworks at 10pm.

Stratford-upon-Avon Picturehouse and the RSC present screenings of some of the Companys most admired productions adapted or captured for television and the cinema. This is a chance to see iconic performances from many of the greatest actors associated with the Company, including Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench and David Tennant.

The RSC has commissioned, Shakespeare Steps a free, self-guided tour of Stratford. Opening 30th January and running throughout the year and the Birthday period.

Full details about more of these special events will appear in this Thursdays Herald.
Wellesbourne Airfield

Residents say they are angry that local knowledge was ignored by planners at Stratford District Council when the application was approved in 2012.

Kineton resident, Gerard Lewis, said: Its beyond belief to me and many other residents that they were given permission to build there. The pictures I have taken of the flooded site are no exaggeration and the flooding is very typical for that field, Ive seen it happen many times over the years.

The rainfall here has not been severe and this is the result. Ive sent the pictures to the developers and the local MP with my concerns. I think there is apathy towards the new developments around Kineton, residents feel that they have no control over anything.

Though planning permission was granted in 2012, Kineton Parish Council along with some residents, objected to the application at the outline planning stage, citing concerns over flooding and other issues.

At the time, the district council received 38 letters in objection to the application and three in favour. The Environment Agency did not object to the application though it said a scheme to mitigate the risk of flooding would need to be built into the plans. Bloor Homes and Stratford District Council were unavailable for comment on the matter this week. Elsewhere in Stratford district, the Environment Agency has the area on high alert as further rain is expected in the coming days.

At the time of going to press yesterday (Wednesday), there were flood alerts in place on the Middle Avon and the Environment Agency said further alerts could be issued in the event of heavy rain.

Late last week, there was a flood alert on the River Dene through Wellesbourne, but that has now been withdrawn A spokesman told the Herald: Environment Agency teams will be out and about on the ground making sure that blockages are removed from rivers so they can run freely and monitoring the impact of the rain on the rivers.

Residents and businesses are encouraged to do their bit by signing up to Environment Agency flood warnings online or by calling floodline on 0345 988 1188. Once registered, if a Flood Warning is issued, they will receive an automatic message by telephone, SMS text message and/or e-mail.

For further information about how to prepare for flooding and to find out if your home is at risk please visit www.gov.uk/prepare-for-a-flood Flood alerts and warnings can be checked at: www.gov.uk/check-if-youre-at-risk-of-flooding and you can also follow the Environment Agency on Twitter, @EnvAgencyMids A specialist firefighter from Stratford has been sent to help flood victims deal with flooding in North Yorkshire.

Alan Smith, a high volume pump tactical advisor, is helping the emergency services responding to the floods in York. Hundreds of people in the city have been forced to leave their homes following torrential rain over Christmas.
City have already had four matches fall foul of the weather at Westwood Road this winter and should the rain continue to fall there is a strong chance another will be added to the list.

I dont think well be playing on Wednesday, said the Town boss.

Its very frustrating for us again. I can see us falling even further behind with our fixtures.

Were coming off the back of a winning a derby game against Redditch in front of 500 people and we just want to keep it going

Now we havent played for 11 days, so we will be going into the Cambridge game rusty.

If it does go ahead, then Adams will be without the services of skipper Gary Moran, defender Aaron Stringfellow and midfielder Jack Roberts.

Moran misses out due to work commitments, while Stringfellow starts the first of his two-ban game following his red card against Redditch United.

Town will also be without Roberts, whose loan spell at the DCS has now ended.

Adams is hopeful of renegotiating a new deal with parent club Telford, in time to face league leaders Poole Town on Saturday.
Wellesbourne Airfield

The Chamber has identified skills, infrastructure, property and land, identity, international trade and finance as the six key areas to be addressed throughout the year.

And it plans to lobby local authorities, MPs, ministers, business groups and other key bodies to help tackle them.

Chief executive Louise Bennett said: The indicators at the end of 2015 were positive. The QES threw out very confident predictions from businesses, and unemployment continued to fall across Coventry and Warwickshire.

So there are plenty of reasons to look forward to 2016 with great optimism that this can be the best year for business across the region since the recession.

But while we see the opportunities on offer in the forthcoming year, we also see the barriers to the city and the county fulfilling their potential.

The idea of the campaign is to raise the profile of those businesses who are achieving success but also to shine a light on those matters that could stunt our growth.

Louise added: If you look at a business that is in a position to grow, it needs new staff, it may need new premises, it may need finance and it might need to expand into new markets.

As a region, we have to be geared up for that  so is there the supply of skilled people? Is there the land to allow our businesses to expand and to attract new ones to the area? Is the finance available and through which channels?

Some issues are going to be very local  some even unique to each our five branch areas of Coventry, Rugby, mid-Warwickshire, south Warwickshire and north Warwickshire.

Others, however, will be on a much bigger scale such as the whole issue around EU membership and how that affects our members.

It is fantastic to be going into 2016 with such optimism from business and, as a Chamber, we want to help ensure that those aspirations can be realised and not blocked by some of those issues weve highlighted. We cant leave it to chance that it will happen, we have to make a concerted effort to Go For Growth.
Wellesbourne Airfield

Picturehouse cinemas nationwide will not show what is expected to be another blockbuster from Tarantino nor will Cineworld for the same reasons. This means two of the biggest cinema chains in Warwickshire will not be showing the film which stars Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson in a post-American Civil War thriller set against the backdrop of bounty hunting and a raging blizzard.

The failure to reach an agreement with the films distributor relates to issues over venues, booking arrangements and even screen sizes but ultimately Stratford cinema goers may well miss out on what has been described in the nationals as a classic!

This week a spokesperson for Stratford Picturehouse said: We regret we wont be showing the film. We do make every effort to show a wide range of films but were unable to reach agreement with the distributor.

The film is released on Friday 8th January.

Full story in this Thursdays Herald.
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DJI, the world leader in aerial technology, Monday kicked off its 2016 developer challenge and announced a new version of the software development kit that will underpin the competition and facilitate creation of a more robust application ecosystem for drones.

The 2016 DJI Developer Challenge, now in its third year, is a highly anticipated event for the startup and developer community. The new Mobile SDK 3.0 is the most open, flexible, and user-friendly software platform to date and participants will build their applications based on DJI's SDK suite including the new and redesigned Mobile SDK 3.0, Onboard SDK and Guidance SDK.

"Various industries are starting to realize how capable and powerful unmanned aerial vehicles can be," said Robert Schlub, Vice President of Research and Development at DJI. "As usage cases arise, there will be a growing need for applications. With our developer challenge and new SDK, DJI is doing its utmost to foster an environment that's conducive to development and creation of those applications."

2016 DJI Developer Challenge DJI is collaborating with Ford Motor Co. (NYSE Symbol F) and the United Nations Development Program (UNPD) on this year's developer challenge. Disaster relief has benefited from recent developments in aerial technology and there is an increasing use of drones by emergency response units, NGOs and the government sector around the world. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford has been at the forefront of turning its vehicles into smart, connected platforms.

This year, DJI's challenge to developers is centered around a theoretical search-and-rescue mission. Participants will be tasked with building an application that enables a drone to autonomously take off from a moving vehicle, collect data on the whereabouts of survivors and transmit the information from the disaster site back to the vehicle, then land autonomously on the same moving vehicle.

Fifteen teams will be shortlisted into the challenge's second round. They will be provided with DJI's flagship SDK aerial platform, the Matrice 100, as well as a Zenmuse X3 camera to mount on the Matrice. The teams will provide progress reports leading up to the final competition. Ten teams will advance into the final round, where they will use their app to perform the mock search-and-rescue mission, taking off and landing on a moving Ford F-150 pickup truck and transmitting the data collected.

The competition features a US$100,000 prize to the winning team and is open to students and developers around the world.

The winner of last year's challenge was UT-Dronefly from the University of Texas at Dallas and Penn State University. Their app was designed to conduct powerline inspection in a safer and more-efficient way. In 2014, the first year of the DJI Developer Challenge, Team BetterW from the South China University of Technology developed a forensics app specifically designed for highway accident investigations.

For more info about the 2016 DJI Developer Challenge, visit http://developer.dji.com/challenge2016

DJI SDK 3.0 Suite In conjunction with the 2016 Developer Challenge, DJI has released a new software development kit for both iOS and Android. After listening to feedback from SDK users and partners, DJI engineers have re-written and simplified the SDK architecture from the ground up. The Mobile SDK 3.0 brings powerful new features and a more user-friendly interface that will enable developers to streamline and speed up the development process. It will support DJI's latest aerial platforms, including the Phantom 3 series, Inspire 1 Pro, Matrice 100, as well as the Zenmuse X3, X5 cameras and the Osmo.

The new mobile SDK provides more control over the drone's onboard systems, including the camera, gimbal, flight status system, intelligent flight missions and flight control data. That means more flexibility and possibilities for developers. Other new features include:

Removal of Developer Levels: one-time application process where all developers get full access to the SDK suite and unlimited installation quota

Mission Manager and Custom Missions: allows developers to combine multiple missions and create a custom mission with less coding (for example, quickly incorporating standard waypoints, follow-me functionality and return-to-waypoint commands)

Bridge App and Remote Logger functionalities for iOS: application development tools that allow debugging, profiling and logging of the application in lab and field environments

"DJI's support for the startup and developer communities has not only meant creation of new UAV applications, but also new business opportunities for different industries, such as ground inspection, 3D mapping and inventory-tracking," said Schlub. "The new mobile SDK will remove many pain points for developers. The new architecture will enable developers to identify problems quicker and create better applications for their customers."

The Mobile SDK 3.0 will be available starting Jan 9, 2016. For more info, visit https://developer.dji.com/

About DJI DJI is a global leader in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology for commercial and recreational use. DJI was founded and is run by people with a passion for remote-controlled helicopters and experts in flight-control technology and camera stabilization. The company is dedicated to making aerial photography and filmmaking equipment and platforms more reliable and easier to use for creators and innovators around the world. DJI's global operations currently span North America, Europe and Asia, and its revolutionary products and solutions have been chosen by customers in over 100 countries; for applications in film, advertising, construction, fire fighting, farming, and many other industries.

For more information, visit DJI online: www.dji.com Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/DJIGlobal Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DJIGlobal Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/DJI

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dji-kicks-off-2016-dji-developer-challenge-releases-new-mobile-sdk-30-300198724.html

SOURCE DJI
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Fitch Ratings has published a new issue report for Ballyrock CLO 2014-1 Ltd./LLC.

The new issue report is available at 'www.fitchratings.com' or by clicking on the link below.

Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'.

The sources of information used to assess these ratings were the transaction documents provided by the arranger (Citigroup Global Markets Inc.) and the public domain.

Ballyrock CLO 2014-1 Ltd./LLC

https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=872601

ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160105006430/en/

Fitch Ratings

Erika Tsang, CFA

Director

+1-212-908-0817

Fitch Ratings, Inc.

33 Whitehall Street

New York, NY 10004

or

Trevor Lee

Associate Director

+1-212-908-0881

or

Media Relations:

Sandro Scenga, +1-212-908-0278

[email protected]

Source: Fitch Ratings
DENVER, Jan. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ID Watchdog, Inc. (TSX VENTURE: IDW) (PINKSHEETS: IDWAF) ("ID Watchdog" or the "Company"), provider of consumer-facing identity theft protection and resolution services, announced today that effective January 1, 2016 (the "Effective Date") it has retained Mr. Randy Haag to provide investor relations services to the Company. The investor relations program is designed to create awareness for the Company within the financial community and to assist the Company in expanding its shareholder base by introducing the Company to brokerage firms, institutional investors, family offices and accredited investors with whom Mr. Haag has a relationship.

"Mr. Haag has over 30-years of experience working with micro-cap companies and will be a great resource in helping the Company increase awareness of and interest in the Company and to assist management in communicating its growth strategy and key initiatives for growth through his extensive network of potential investors," said Michael Greene, CEO of the Company.

The Company has retained the services of Mr. Haag for an initial period of three months (the "Initial Term"), which shall automatically be renewed for successive one month terms following the expiration of the Initial Term, unless terminated upon written notice by either party after the expiration of the Initial Term.

Mr. Haag shall be compensated U.S. $5,000 per month for his services. In addition, Mr. Haag will be granted an option to purchase up to 1,000,000 of the Company's Ordinary Shares. The options are priced at U.S. $0.11 per Ordinary Share, vest at a rate of 25% per calendar quarter during the term of the arrangement, and are subject to the terms and conditions of the Company's stock option plan and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Mr. Haag currently owns the following securities of the Company: 750,000 Ordinary Shares; 120 shares of Series C Convertible Preferred; and a total of 2,720,000 warrants to purchase Ordinary Shares with various exercise prices and expiration dates.

About ID Watchdog, Inc.

ID Watchdog was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The Company provides comprehensive monitoring, detection and resolution for identity theft. ID Watchdog proactively detects identity theft problems at their source and provides immediate resolution services to ensure complete peace of mind for individuals. All the Company's services have been developed with input from industry experts; national consumer advocacy groups; federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies; consumer protection agencies; and adhere to guidelines published by the Consumer Federation of America. For more information, please visit www.IDWatchdog.com.

Forward-Looking Statement

This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 which address future events and conditions which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. The actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors, some of which may be beyond the Company's control. Although the Company believes that its expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements are disclosed in the company's filings with Canadian regulators at www.sedar.com. ID Watchdog assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of management beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors should they change.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Company Contact: ID Watchdog, Inc.Jay B. LewisChief Financial Officer303-339-8099[email protected]www.idwatchdog.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130829/NY71341LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/id-watchdog-appoints-investor-relations-consultant-300199152.html

SOURCE ID Watchdog, Inc.
SECAUCUS, N.J., Jan. 05, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a region facing some of the nations highest medical costs, four times the national average in some cases, the Riverside Medical Group has pioneered and proven a patient-centered model that improves healthcare and patient satisfaction while reducing costs. Riverside Medical Group has quickly become the largest private primary care and multi-specialty group in the New York City Metro area, recently expanding to over 100 providers with offices in four New Jersey Counties including Bergen, Hudson, Essex and Passaic. Open every day of the year, sometimes 24 hours a day, Riverside Medical Group physicians provide optimal patient access to healthcare while receiving the highest levels of quality certification from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

Started nearly four decades ago by Dr. Azzam Baker, a Jersey City pediatrician, Riverside Medical Group now includes his three sons: Iyad, Zeyad, and Omar, each of whom followed in their fathers professional footsteps. Together they form a team of 115 providers practicing both adult and pediatric primary care  all board-certified and teaching in area medical schools to maintain their professional edge.

Our father taught us to honor patients because patients honor us with the care of their family, says Dr. Zeyad Baker. My fathers example of giving good care across long hours taught us that patient access is a fundamental feature of healthcare quality. I just think its crazy that we can get a Dunkin Donuts coffee at midnight, but we cant take our grandmother to a doctor at 8:00pm with a chest pain.

According to Baker, Riverside is revolutionary for addressing the issues of healthcare access, quality and cost as a whole. By providing quality healthcare and assuring real access with same-day appointments, seven days a week, and speedy specialist care, Riversides providers are cutting healthcare costs, says Baker. The biggest costs come when patients have medical problems and cant see their doctor the same day. Sometimes a patient calls with a respiratory problem on a Friday, cant get an immediate appointment, and ends up in the ER by Sunday, and then gets admitted to the hospital for 10 days at a cost of $15,000! Had this patient seen us on Friday afternoon, the patient could have been saved the suffering and our system could have saved a lot of money.

Riverside Medical Group sees significant growth even as many physicians consider retirement in the face of declining reimbursements and rising expenses. Were expanding into Central and Southern New Jersey as well as Manhattan with expectations of doubling the practice in two years, notes Baker. This growth in patients is all due to our patient-centered approach.

About Riverside Medical GroupRiverside Medical Group (RMG) is the premier medical group in Northern New Jersey with over providers who serve patients in Hudson, Bergen, Passaic and Essex counties. Started over 35 years ago in Hudson County, RMG has grown due to its unwavering commitment to continuity of care and evidence-based medicine of the highest caliber. RMG has over 25 locations specializing in Adult Medicine, Pediatrics, ENT, Foot & Ankle, and Physical Therapy. As a nationally designated Patient Centered Medical Home, RMG provides patient-focused precision medical care to families. The team consists of 85 board certified medical providers trained at the most prestigious academic institutions in the nation. RMG locations have the longest hours of operation of any private multi-specialty group in the country, with our headquarters open 365 days a year until 10pm. As an advocate for prenatal health and birthing education, RMG offers free prenatal classes. RMG is a proud partner of the Hackensack University Health Network, the top ranked hospital system in New Jersey. At RMG, we say your family is our family. To learn more, visit: www.riversidemedgroup.com

Contact: Norris Clark, (609) 425-1325

Source: Riverside Medical Group
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A global index measuring the confidence of logistics companies fell in December to its lowest level since March 2012, hit by lower margins for European freight forwarders such as Denmark's DSV (NYSE: DSV) because of overcapacity in shipping.

Consulting group Transport Intelligence's (Ti) Stifel Logistic Confidence Index showed particularly low confidence in the transport business along the Asia-Europe routes where spot freight rates were barely profitable for shipping companies for much of last year.

However, future expectations were slightly improved, with companies expecting overcapacity to lessen, Ti said.

Freight forwarders use companies such as Maersk Line , the world's largest container shipping company, to transport goods on the behalf of clients.

Like the shipping companies themselves, freight forwarders have had their margins squeezed by low freight rates.

Ti noted Maersk Line's commitment to lay-up an 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) vessel last month as part of moves to decrease capacity, as well as a wave of consolidation among shipping companies.

"It is clear ... steps are now being taken to tackle the overcapacity crisis endemic in the shipping industry," Ti said.

The world's third-largest shipping line, French CMA CGM, agreed a deal with Temasek Holdings to acquire struggling Neptune Orient Lines and Chinese authorities gave the green light for a merger between state-owned giants China Shipping <600026.SS> and COSCO <601919.SS>.

Container vessel capacity reached a record high last year as 212 new vessels, with total capacity of 1.7 million TEU, joined the global fleet.

The logistics confidence index for sea freight declined by 1.8 points to 44.3 in December, down 14.7 points year on year.

(Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen; Editing by Sabina Zawadzki and David Goodman)
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras looks on during a parliamentary session before a budget vote in Athens, Greece, December 5, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

By George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's leftist-led government offered a reform plan for the country's pension system that would cut future benefits, with no backing from the political opposition, before talks with official lenders resume later this month.

Reforming the country's ailing pension system, which Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said is on the verge of collapse, is a prerequisite for the first review of Greece's 86 billion-euro ($93.4 billion) bailout agreed in July last year.

The tough pension reforms will be a test for Tsipras' ruling coalition, which has a majority of just three seats in parliament, and his resolve to carry out measures demanded by international creditors, who must sign off on the plan.

The proposed overhaul of the pension system, which has been a drag on the budget for years, sets a ceiling of 2,300 euros on the maximum monthly pension outlay and an upper limit of 3,000 euros for those getting more than one pension.

The plan calls for merging all six main pension funds into one and foresees cuts in future main pensions that could reach up to 30 percent. It sets a lower limit at 384 euros per month.

The plan includes higher social security contributions for employers and employees, by one percentage point for those paid by employers and by 0.5 percentage point for employees.

"The government is trying to avert the collapse of the social security system ... the opposition parties must lend support in this national goal," said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili. She blamed previous governments for drastic cuts in benefits during the debt crisis.

"The average (monthly) pension was 1,480 euros in 2010 but ended up at 863 euros when the (conservative) New Democracy and (socialist) PASOK handed over the government," she said.

All parties in the political opposition object to the benefit cuts in the plan, which has been handed over to the country's lenders.

The overhaul, which must deliver savings worth 1 percent of gross domestic product, or 1.8 billion euros, next year, is the most sensitive of a raft of reforms demanded by the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for aid.

"We disagree with raising social security contributions," former conservative Labour Minister Yannis Vroutsis told Skai TV. "This would reduce growth and raise unemployment."

The government aims to submit the legislation to parliament by mid-January and have it voted into law by early February, a government official told Reuters, declining to be named.

Official lenders have warned that raising social security contributions may deter job creation and set back economic recovery, meaning negotiations before the final version of the sweeping reform gets to parliament will be tough.

(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos and Lefteris Papadimas, editing by Larry King)
Migrants queue on a street to enter the compound outside the Berlin Office of Health and Social Affairs (LAGESO) for their registration process in Berlin, Germany, in this December 9, 2015 file picture. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/Files

BERLIN (Reuters) - Favorable economic conditions and an influx of foreign workers boosted employment in Germany to its highest since reunification in 1990, according to data published on Monday as the jobless rate hovers at a historic low.

Around 43 million people living in Europe's largest economy were in work last year, up 0.8 percent on 2014 and a 12th consecutive annual increase, the Federal Statistics Office data showed.

It said an inflow of workers from eastern European states including Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia as well as from countries hit hard by the euro zone crisis such as Greece, Portugal and Spain had boosted employment.

Meanwhile, more people already living in Germany had found jobs thanks to the robust economy.

Germany's unemployment rate has repeatedly reached monthly post-reunification lows in 2015 and fell in November to 6.3 percent from 6.4 percent the previous month, according to Federal Labour Office data. December's data is due on Tuesday.

Croatian citizens have been able to work in Germany without restriction since the start of July, and Romanians and Bulgarians to take jobs in all European Union countries without a work permit since the beginning of 2014.

Germany saw a record influx of migrants last year, with 1.09 million entering the country according to one newspaper.

Many are not yet in work, meaning the correlation between that number and the growth in employment was very limited, if linked at all, the office said.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; editing by John Stonestreet)
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made his first solo campaign appearance Monday for his wife, Hillary, the former U.S. secretary of state who is the leading 2016 Democratic presidential contender.

The country's 42nd president, whose two terms in office enveloped most of the 1990s, told several hundred voters at a political rally in the northeastern state of New Hampshire that Hillary Clinton offers the best chance of restoring "broadly shared prosperity" in the United States.

"I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done now," he said.
Form 6-K Gazit-Globe Ltd For: Jan 05

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UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 6-K

REPORT OF FOREIGN PRIVATE ISSUER

PURSUANT TO RULE 13a-16 OR 15d-16

UNDER THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the month of: January 2016

Commission File Number: 001-35378

Gazit-Globe Ltd.

(Translation of registrants name into English)

State of Israel

(Jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)

1 Hashalom Road

Tel-Aviv, Israel 67892

(Address of principal executive office)

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant files or will file annual reports under cover of Form 20-F or Form 40-F:

x Form 20-F  Form 40-F

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule 101(b)(1): 

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule 101(b)(7): 

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.

Gazit-Globe Ltd. Date: 01/05/2016 By: /s/ Gil Kotler Name: Gil Kotler Title: Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

THE INFORMATION SET FORTH ON EXHIBIT 99.2 TO THIS CURRENT REPORT ON FORM 6-K IS HEREBY INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE INTO THE REGISTRANTS REGISTRATION STATEMENT ON FORM F-3 (SEC FILE NO. 333-188107), AND SHALL BE A PART THEREOF FROM THE DATE ON WHICH THIS REPORT IS FURNISHED, TO THE EXTENT NOT SUPERSEDED BY DOCUMENTS OR REPORTS SUBSEQUENTLY FILED OR FURNISHED.

EXHIBIT INDEX

Exhibit No. Description 99.1 Immediate Report on an Amendment to Increase an Outstanding Credit Facility. 99.2 Amendment Deed No. 4 to the Credit Facility Agreement between the Company and Israel Discount Bank Ltd. dated January 4, 2016

Exhibit 99.1

January 5, 2016

To: To: Securities Exchange Commission Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Ltd. www.isa.gov.il www.tase.co.il

Immediate Report regarding an Amendment to Increase an Outstanding Credit Facility

Gazit-Globe Ltd. (the Company) is pleased to report that on January 4, 2016, it entered into an agreement with Bank Discount Ltd. (the Bank) regarding an amendment to an existing credit facility between the two parties (for details, please see Section 19.2.2 of Exhibit 99.1 to the Current Report on Form 6-K furnished to the U.S. SEC on March 26, 2015), pursuant to which the size of the credit facility was increased from $200 million to $275 million.

In addition, as part of the amendment, the ratio of the market value of the pledged shares under the facility (i.e. the shares of the fully consolidated subsidiary Citycon Oyj., whose market value is calculated according to average daily trading price) to the utilized debt under the facility will not be less than 1.25 (instead of 1.1 prior to the amendment). As of the date hereof, the credit facility has not been utilized and the aforementioned ratio is zero.

Forward Looking Statements:

This report contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. In the United States, these statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside of the Companys control, that could cause its future results, performance or achievements to differ significantly from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include risks detailed in the Companys public filings with the SEC and the Canadian Securities Administrators. Except as required by applicable law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking or other statements herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Kind regards, Gazit-Globe, Ltd.

Exhibit 99.2

[Translated from the original Hebrew; to the extent of any discrepancy between this version and the original Hebrew version, the latter shall control]

Amendment Deed Number 4 to Credit Facility Deed Dated May 17, 2010

Executed in Tel-Aviv on the 4th day of the month of January, 2016

Between

Israel Discount Bank Ltd. (hereinafter  the Bank)

The First Party

and

Gazit-Globe Ltd., Company No. 52-003323-4

(hereinafter  the Company)

The Second Party

Whereas On May 17, 2010, the Parties entered into a Credit Facility Deed in regard to the Companys receipt of credit and various banking services from the Bank, which was amended in Amendment Deed Number 1, dated August 9, 2010, in Amendment Deed Number 2, dated June 28, 2012 and in Amendment Deed Number 3, dated November 30, 2014 (the Credit Facility Deed and its Amendments will be called hereinafter  the Facility Deed); And Whereas The Parties have once again agreed on an amendment to the Facility Deed, inter alia, by increasing the credit facility allocated to the Company pursuant to the Facility Deed, in an additional amount of U.S.$ 75 million, to a total amount of U.S.$ 275 million (hereinafter  the Credit Facility), as set forth in this Amendment Deed; And Whereas The Parties have agreed on additional terms and conditions that will apply to the Credit Facility, all as set forth below in this Amendment Deed.

Accordingly, it is hereby agreed and declared that the Facility Deed

will be amended as follows:

1. Preamble and interpretation

1.1. The preamble to this Amendment Deed is an integral part thereof.

1.2. This Amendment Deed constitutes a continuation of the Facility Deed and is an integral part thereof; the two should be read together, continuously and in one sequence, as one document and as a whole, as provisions which supplement each other and complement one another.

1.3. Words and phrases mentioned in this Amendment Deed are to be construed, defined and interpreted as provided in the Facility Deed, unless expressly stated otherwise.

1.4. Other than the provisions of this Amendment Deed, no additional change has been made in the Facility Deed, which continues to apply in full force and scope, and binds the Parties for all intents and purposes.

1.5. If a discrepancy arises between this Amendment Deed and previous documents signed in regard to the Credit Facility, the provisions of the Amendment Deed will prevail.

1.6. The provisions of this Amendment Deed shall be effective from January 4, 2016.

2. Increase in the Credit Facility

It is agreed that the Credit Facility will be increased by U.S.$ 75 million, to a total amount of U.S.$ 275 million.

3. Fees

3.1. On the signing date of this Amendment Deed, the Company will pay the Bank an up-front fee of 0.2% per annum in U.S. dollars, in advance, for the entire Credit Facility period beginning from the signing date of this Amendment Deed and until the end of the utilization period for the amount added to the Credit Facility, namely an amount of U.S.$ 679,726. The payment is final and absolute, and will not be refundable under any circumstances whatsoever, including, and without derogating from the generality of the aforesaid, non-utilization of the Credit Facility, wholly or partly, or the cancellation at any time of the Credit Facility, except in the event of the Credit Facility being canceled or reduced at the request of the Bank, as a result of regulatory restrictions applicable thereto, or due to any other reason depending on the Bank and unrelated directly to the Company (and in the aforesaid instance, a proportionate part of the up-front fee will be refunded, in accordance with the remaining period and the relative percentage by which the Credit Facility has been reduced).

3.2. The Company will pay the Bank a documents amendment fee in an amount of U.S.$ 254.62 thousand on the signing date of this Amendment Deed.

4. Immediate repayment of the above amounts

4.1. Clause 10.3 of the Facility Deed will be amended and restated as follows:

If the ratio between (a) the number of pledged shares multiplied by the market value of a pledged share; and (b) the above amounts, will be less than 1.25, and provided that such an event is not remedied within two business days from the date of it materializing, by way of furnishing the Bank with additional collateral to its full satisfaction and/or by way of repaying credit so that the above ratio will not be less than 1.25.

Signed by us to attest to the above:

[handwritten signatures] [handwritten signatures] Gazit-Globe Ltd. Israel Discount Bank Ltd.

- 2 -

I, the undersigned, Revital Kahlon , acting as the lawyer for Gazit-Globe Ltd., company no. 520033234 (hereinafter  the Company), do hereby certify to Israel Discount Bank Ltd. (hereinafter  the Bank) that the above document has been signed in the name of the Company by Messrs. Adi Jemini ID No. 03286243 and Gil Kotler ID No. 02230848 who are authorized to bind the Company vis-a-vis the Bank with their signature pursuant to the lawfully made decisions of the competent organs of the Company and as prescribed in the Companys documents of incorporation, its memorandum and its articles, and that there is no limitation and/or hindrance by law and/or agreement to creating and/or signing and/or issuing the said document and/or to implementing the contents of the said document in favor of the Bank, all as specified and as provided in the above document, such that the said document binds the Company, can be enforced against it by the Bank and is in force vis-a-vis the Bank for all intents and purposes.

Date 4/1/16 Lawyer [Signed and stamped by Revital Kahlon Adv.]

- 3 -
Police attended the incident in Randwick Park after receiving a call from St John on Tuesday evening.

A woman is critically ill in hospital after being attacked in south Auckland on Tuesday evening.

The 32-year-old woman was rushed to Auckland Hospital following the attack at a Randwick Park property.

She suffered serious head injuries in the incident, and was transported to hospital in a critical condition.

Police said they received a call from St John ambulance about the assault around 6.30pm on Tuesday.

Two people, a 16-year-old male and a 37-year-old female, have been arrested in connection with the incident and charged with wounding with intent to cause bodily harm.

They were due to appear in court on Wednesday.
The advertising watchdog in Australia has dismissed a complaint against a cinema ad labelled "incredibly racist and offensive" to Maori.

In the ad, which was posted to Slurpee Australia's Facebook page and shown in cinemas, viewers were asked: "Can you haka Kiwi Berry?"

As two teenagers browse in a convenience store, a Maori warrior leaps out and performs a dance of sorts.

The actor is Maori but some viewers felt the ad was offensive.

The slot prompted a flurry of complaints, including a New Zealander who said the depiction of a warrior was totally inaccurate and offensive to Maori.

"As a New Zealander and someone of Maori descent, I found this advertisement incredibly racist and offensive.

"The character in the advertisement that is apparently meant to be a "Maori warrior" is a totally inaccurate and offensive representation of Maori people.

An advertising watchdog in Australia dismissed a complaint against the ad for Slurpee.

"Nowhere is this inaccuracy more evident than in the character's performance of what is supposed to be a haka.

"The haka is a highly meaningful part of Maori culture and in the advertisement, a version of one of our most famous haka, Ka Mate, is completely bastardised. The awkward performance depicts Maori people as illiterate savages who simply grunt and yell their way through their own native songs and dances, when authentic performances of the haka involve chanting meaningful words in the Maori language, which are accompanied by specific hand gestures that act out the words."

The All Blacks use Ka Mate as one their pre-game rituals.

The warrior was depicted wearing incorrect clothing, a red blanket instead of a flax skirt with black dye, and the traditional tattoos on the actor's face and arms were apparently drawn with marker pen, the complaint said.

The viewer said this amounted to a racist representation of Maori people as mute simpletons, incapable of speaking their native language properly.

In the Advertising Standards Bureau decision, the advertiser said that although the boys appeared nervous they were also smiling, indicating the man was not intimidating them.

"The man's appearance is reminiscent of a Maori warrior. [His] depiction is not in any way intended to ridicule or portray Maori people in a negative manner.

"His appearance in the middle of a 7-Eleven store is deliberately out of place and is intended to be humorous ... [The] advertisement in no way passes any form of judgement on the haka dance he performs or depicts it in a ridiculous or negative light.

"The performance itself is respectful of Maori customs and culture and does not ridicule the same at any point.

"With specific regard to complainant's concerns, we note that the actor in the advertisement depicted as a Maori warrior is indeed of Maori descent and is a member of a Maori tribe, and he willingly agreed to participate in the advertisement and perform a haka from his tribe.

"We note that whilst the details of the dance may not conform exactly to traditional methods, most reasonable viewers would not be offended by this and we note that the performance is consistent with the spirit of a haka dance, and most viewers would recognise this."

The watchdog said there was considerable discussion but their decision was the use of the haka and the depiction of Maori did not have any negative connotations.

"The board noted that the haka has become more commercialised over the years due to its use in sport and considered that whilst the use of the haka in an advertisement for a product may be viewed as poor taste...one person performing a haka is not representative of the whole Maori culture."

The haka in question is protected in New Zealand by legislation preventing its unauthorised use.
French President Francois Hollande's plan to strip citizenship from dual citizens convicted of terrorism has received support from the public, but also criticism from the French Left.

OPINION: French President Francois Hollande's plans to strip terrorists of their citizenship is an outrage, writes French-New Zealand national Rachel Panckhurst.

The French President, Francois Hollande, is currently considering amending the French constitution in order to revoke French nationality for French-born citizens with dual nationality, who have committed acts of terrorism. In France, the law pertaining to "droit du sol"  one is automatically French if born on "French soil"  is one of the symbols of the French Republic.

Of course, a French-born citizen with only one nationality who happens to commit acts of terrorism cannot be deprived of French nationality because this would mean becoming stateless.

So, if this modification of the constitution is undertaken, it would mean that there would be "deux poids, deux mesures" (two different yardsticks): 1) solely French terrorists remain in France; but 2) French binational terrorists will ultimately be deprived of French nationality and sent off to their second country.

The measures are similar to those passed by Australia last month.

There is currently much heated discussion on the topic in France. On the one hand, there are those who suggest that if terrorists are going to commit such horrific acts then they do not deserve to be French. On the other hand, there are those who believe that an amendment to the constitution would create a divide between those who were born French but with just one nationality and those who were also born French but happen to have a second nationality. The latter category (slightly less than the population of New Zealand) may feel they would be inclined to be treated as "second-class citizens".

It is different again for foreigners who reside in France and subsequently obtain French nationality, by becoming 'naturalises'. Under current French law, these people can already be deprived of their acquired nationality in specific circumstances  for instance for acts of terrorism.

I am a French-New Zealand binational myself. I was born and raised in New Zealand, but I have lived and worked in France since I was 18. I went there for a one-month intensive course in French and never left, obtaining French nationality by decree in 1990.

My son, Saji, was born in 1999 in Montpellier, France. Therefore, he was born French. He was able to obtain New Zealand citizenship by maternal lineage. He is thus a French-born binational citizen. The other day we were discussing current affairs and I asked him if he felt more French, or more a New-Zealander; he was unable to indicate any preference, responding: "I feel like a citizen of the world." It is this openness that I hope I have succeeded in passing on to my son. He is bilingual, multicultural, at ease in different countries when we travel. Dual nationality, to my mind, should be an asset, not an obstacle.

I am deeply shocked, even scandalised, that a government  which calls itself left-wing, for which I voted in total confidence, and I feel this trust has now been trampled on  can consider for one second revoking French nationality for French-born binationals. One could retort that this will affect a small minority. That is probable. But terrorists will not feel concerned by this measure, or hardly so. As highlighted by Samir Khebizi in an open letter he recently published in the French national daily newspaper Liberation, "Which binationals are actually targeted by this measure? Radical Islamism is not a nationality, as far as I know, and I do not know of anyone holding a French-terrorist passport."

Attacking the symbol of "droit du sol" is, for me, one of utmost violence, and reminds me of dark chapters of history. I do hope Francois Hollande decides to abandon this initiative, because it is highly detrimental to the future values of the republic.

Rachel Panckhurst is a senior lecturer in computational linguistics at France's University of Montpellier.
Two children were taken in to a Christchurch home to be showered and fed when they were found in a shocking condition.

A Christchurch woman was horrified when she found two young children she had previously cared for underweight with severe head lice and boils.

Kelsey Lourie had not been in contact with the children for about a year, but received a phone call in December asking if she could pick up the 8-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy on their last day of school.

The call came from a grandparent, who had been responsible for the children's care since they were babies.

"We were shocked at the state of them," Lourie said.

"The girl had two inch blocks of nit eggs in her hair and she has psoriasis. It's got so bad that the nits have started burrowing into her scalp.

"The boy is 18 kilograms and he is 7, that's in the bottom 10 per cent of where he should be."

This case of neglect is one of thousands reported each year. In the 2014-2015 financial year, 3644 cases were reported nationally to Child Youth and Family (CYF).

However, Christchurch's City Missioner said the state of the children, as described by Lourie, was an "extreme case" of neglect, especially in Christchurch.

Lourie said when she showered them, black water drained from their hair and when they were fed, they were sick from having food.

Lourie took the children to CYF. She kept the pair for another night and took them to their local GP the following day.

The girl had a boil from malnutrition and her brother had a sore on his chest, which was diagnosed as impetigo, also known as school sores.

Lourie said instead of changing the dressing on the boy's sore, another had been put over the top.

"The plaster was actually green."

She said the doctor told her it was the worst case of head lice she had seen in 10 years, despite Lourie's efforts with a comb and treatment the night before.

Lourie contacted the children's mother, but said she was told she should give them back to the grandparent who had been caring for them, or she could be "done for kidnapping them".

She had not heard from the children's mother since dropping them off at the woman's home.

"I only have a two-bedroom flat; I want to have them here, but it's pretty hard," Lourie said.

Lourie said she felt "helpless" to make a difference to the children's situation and wanted them to be put in alternative care.

Family First NZ National Director Bob McCoskrie said in a neglect case like this where "all the red flags have been raised", intervention was necessary.

"It's Christchurch based so you are going to have to take into account the issues around the earthquake and how families are coping but at the same time it can't be used as an excuse," he said.

City Missioner Michael Gorman said the condition of the children was an "extreme case" and was not common in Christchurch.

"We might see kids living in situations that are really rugged but not the extreme, this sounds to me like absolute neglect. We see parents who want what is best for their kids and try their best to achieve that."

The number of neglect cases was second only to emotional abuse, of which 8318 cases were reported in the last financial year.

Information provided under the Official Information Act showed CYF breaks down abuse into four categories  emotional, physical, sexual and neglect.

In 2003-2004, 2878 cases of neglect were reported. According to CYF records, neglect cases peaked in 2012-2013 at 5405, before dropping to 4583 the following year.

CYF would not confirm its involvement in this case.
Taranaki smokers seem largely undeterred by the 10 per cent price increase on cigarettes and tobacco.

Many Taranaki smokers are expected to keep puffing away despite a 10 per cent tax hike on tobacco.

The price increase was introduced on cigarettes and tobacco on January 1 and saw the average pack of cigarettes rise by $2 to about $22.40, roughly $1.10 per cigarette.

Packets of loose tobacco now cost between $43.60 and $78.

Marc Mackellow of New Plymouth has been growing his own tobacco for around eight years and said although the price increase didn't affect him it was unlikely to stop anyone from smoking.

It costs Mackellow roughly "a couple of bucks" a week over the year to smoke his homegrown tobacco and he said the rise in prices might encourage others to grow their own too.

READ MORE:

* Health board backs fourth cigarette price spike in as many years

* Tobacco tax hike prompts Marlborough smokers to stub out cigarettes

* Smokers feeling the pinch with increased tobacco tax

* Taranaki mum to quit smoking to help her little girl walk

* Taranaki league team to give up smoking together

New Plymouth hypnotherapist Roy Bridger said there had been a "slight increase" in clients wanting to quit smoking early this year, however not all of those were due to the increased prices.

"It's not the first reason, but some are saying they are fed up with the prices," Bridger said.

Bridger said he did not believe the 10 per cent increase in cigarette prices would deter many people from the habit.

"Anyone that's addicted will find the money and feed the addiction," he said.

However, Taranaki District Health Board health promoter Jason Matthews said he did expect the increased prices would help some people kick the habit.

"All of the tax increases to date have resulted in a spike in numbers of people accessing support services to quit smoking," Matthews said.

One of these people was Dave Nuku, who said he was likely to try and quit once he had finished his last pack.

"Fortunately I bought my packet before the price hike went up, but I probably will stop after this packet," Nuku said.

The rise on the annual tobacco excise tax is the last of four increases signalled in 2012.

With the new average price for tailor-made cigarettes working out to roughly $1.10 per cigarette, the cost for five cigarettes is now more than such items as punnets of blueberries, a 450g pack of Sizzlers sausages and a litre of orange juice.

Smokefree Coalition director Prudence Stone said the price going up is the single most effective incentive for people trying to quit smoking.

"The Smokefree Coalition has always supported this legislative measure: raising the excise tax on tobacco forces the tobacco industry to put its prices up," Stone said.

Stone said it would be interesting to see the increase in Quitline registrations following the tax increase.

Quitline spokesperson Robyn Bern said since the start of the year the organisation had fielded over 570 calls and online registrations had been increasing by the day. Taranaki-specific numbers were unavailable.

"In previous years the spike has been on January 1st with a marked drop-off in subsequent days. We think this shows that people are increasingly using a range of channels to get support," Bern said.
Police have released a computer-generated sketch of a man they believe tried to abduct a woman in Central Canterbury.

Detective Senior Sergeant David Harvey said a man tried to abduct a woman at Coes Ford, south of Christchurch, about 10pm on December 5.

Harvey said a dark coloured station wagon travelling south along Lake Rd was understood to have slowed down and travelled next to the woman, who had left friends to go to the toilet block.

"The driver and sole occupant has called to the victim through the open passenger window telling her to go with him.

"He then stopped the car and approached her. The victim made it clear that she would not go with him and walked away from the man."

Harvey said the man then grabbed the woman and pulled her back towards the vehicle.

"The victim then told the man to let her go and used self defence techniques to get away from him.

"She heard the vehicle leave as she ran back towards her friends."

The man was described as European, about 175 centimetres tall, and in his mid to late 20s.

He was wearing a sleeveless top at the time of the incident.

Anyone who recognised the man in the computer generated sketch or who was in the area at the time was asked to call Christchurch police on 03 363 7400.

Information could also be provided anonymously by calling Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A tourist driver who crossed the centre line about 50 times in 35 minutes has been given education on how to drive in New Zealand.

Christchurch woman Julia Shier was driving with her boyfriend from Christchurch to Arthur's Pass on December 28, when a driver pulled out in front of them and started driving erratically.



In the short clip they filmed, the silver four-wheel-drive crossed the centre line several times and narrowly avoided a truck coming the other way on a bend. At one point, the entire vehicle was on the wrong side of the road.



Shier's boyfriend recorded the driver on two occasions as they navigated the windy road just after Castle Hill.

READ MORE:

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* Tourist drivers an easy scapegoat for problems on NZ roads



"About 50 times [the driver] goes over the line," she said.



Shier called police and told them about the driver's behaviour. She came across the driver again in Arthur's Pass and called police a second time, giving them the man's number plates.



A police spokesman said the tourist was eventually spoken to by police, who were yet to see the video footage.



"Because there was insufficient evidence to take formal action then the driver was warned and given some education on driving in New Zealand."



Canterbury acting road policing manager Senior Sergeant Ash Tabb said crossing the centre line was "very risky behaviour".

More dead on our roads: What can we do? Share your stories, photos and videos. Contribute

"It only takes one crossing of the centre line to put persons on the road at risk; to do it 50 times, the risk is huge.

"It's just ensuring that all people stay on the right side of the centre line, particularly where there is windy roads  people don't have a great view down the road and these things can happen very quickly."
None of the richest Koreans are self-made billionaires, according to Bloomberg's list of the world's 400 richest people.

All five Koreans on the list inherited their wealth, whereas 28 out of the 29 Chinese entrants and all five Japanese tycoons on the list are self-made.

Worldwide, some 65 percent or 259 are self-made billionaires and only 35 percent or 141 inherited their money.

The world's top 10 richest people are founders of start-ups that revolutionized their respective industries -- Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amancio Ortega, who co-founded Inditex that owns retail brand Zara, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Korea's top five automakers failed their annual sales targets for 2015, as they struggled last year with lackluster sales overseas despite a slight increase in sales in the domestic market.

Their combined domestic sales totaled 1.58 million units, up more than 11 percent from a year earlier, while overseas sales dropped 1 percent to 7.43 million units.

Hyundai sold 714,121 cars at home last year, up over 4 percent on-year. Its midsize Sonata sedan drove sales as it became the best-selling car for two consecutive years. However, Hyundai's overseas sales dropped 0.6 percent due to sluggish sales in China.

Kia's domestic sales rose 13 percent on-year to 527,500 units, breaking the 500,000 mark for the first time since its founding. GM Korea sold 158,404 cars at home and Ssangyong sold 99,664 cars to have its best year in 12 years, but its exports decreased 37 percent from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Renault Samsung saw overall sales jump 66 percent on-year as exports of its Nissan Rogue compact SUV rose from 20,000 units to 110,000 units.